DANNY DE HEK Entrepreneur Decision Maker Connector Podcaster EducatorELITE : SIX Think Tank meetings are discussed over ZOOM with our members every Friday at 9:30am.

Facilitated by DANNY : DE HEK meetings are recorded for our Podcast, we’ve been doing this since COVID-19 if you’re interested in joining in with us check out our Website.

Transcribed by Otter

Danny de Hek 0:00
Welcome to elite six business networking Think Tank, facilitated by your host Danny de Hek. The place where decision makers come together to share their experience, knowledge and skill.

Alright, so I will officially start the podcast, and I welcome you all along just to run around the room. Let’s just do a wee introduction. So people listening if you are looking for these people on on the internet, you can actually go to dehek.com, or danny.co.nz. Click on elite six and click on members and you’ll find everyone’s profile there and all the details. So I’ll get the start. I’ll go pull from Kenny computers. Introduce yourself, please.

Paul Starling 0:46
I’m Paul from Canterbury Computers based out in Rangiora our job is to make life simpler for small to medium sized businesses will look after all their it needs. We also look after the needs of residential home users as well.

Danny de Hek 1:03
Brilliant Helen Oakes…

Helen Oakes 1:04
Helen from Mode de vie. I’m a photographer, digital digital artist, and creator of

Danny de Hek 1:12
art as well. And she’s wearing a green top when I’ve got a green screen. Anyway, wait, hold that right Steve from Garmin looks like

Steve Amstand 1:22
our studio finishes on the Garmin specialist Papanui Road anything Garmin, and also do online marketing.

Danny de Hek 1:31
Yeah, he’s just cranked over a million dollars worth of sales. This year. We tiny shop middle of nowhere.

Helen Oakes 1:39
Looks like a massive shop.

Danny de Hek 1:40
It’s brilliant. It doesn’t break a big shop. Right and Laughlin.

Lachlan McNeill 1:46
Yes, I’m Laughlin McNeil. I’m a technical recruiter, recruiting for engineers and attics, many of whom can’t fly anywhere at the moment. So that’s quite interesting. But look, I’m still still pretty busy. Yeah, I do specialise in mainly technical sort of Senior Technical roles. And it keeps me busy.

Danny de Hek 2:02
Brilliant. Rob Woolley, who’s Roblet, but what?

Rob Woolley 2:06
I’m a corporate trainer, as well as an antique dealer. If you want to learn anything about public speaking management, leadership skills, etc. Let me know.

Danny de Hek 2:19
And what do you do at Toastmasters? You’ve got the right yeah.

Rob Woolley 2:22
I am God. Chief guy for Toastmasters, New Zealand. Who would think in here today talking to us live. Nigel, the man that builds small things for big people.

Nigel Young 2:34
Almost putting it I suppose. Yes, Nigel young, affordable housing and effect. Almost very close now to seeing reality. Interesting meeting yesterday with the guys who are going to be building, building the show home and other homes. It looks like we even have a setup.

Danny de Hek 2:50
Oh my goodness. That’s a good enough excuse to miss your elite six meeting yesterday. I didn’t put a big strike against your name. It’s still carved into the wall. But that’s excellent. Well done for you. Thank you.

Nigel Young 3:01
It all comes after will be a party I can assure you

Danny de Hek 3:05
love parties join me. Yeah, this guy good. Matt James.

Matt James 3:17
Hey, So I’m Matt James. I’m a business consultant coach. I work with my wife based in our offices in around Europe.

Danny de Hek 3:27
Good daughter marriage counselling.

Matt James 3:31
No

Lachlan McNeill 3:33
just got 97

Danny de Hek 3:36
well done. Welcome along. Mac.

Mark Scown 3:40
Max down insurance brokers have been in the industry for four years now and specialise in personal risk and small business with a particular speciality for providing long term affordable and sustainable cover for people through doing aspects and levelled things to avoid the four or 5,000% increase that people typically have for their premiums.

Danny de Hek 4:05
Brilliant. Well done. Raymond, our newest member of elite six welcome along. You miked up.

Raymond Lum 4:13
You hear me?

Danny de Hek 4:14
Yes, it could be your sound guy. So I’m glad we can.

Raymond Lum 4:18
Yeah, well, that’s true. It’s just that I’m at a different computer and I’m glad there’s a mic on the camera because I’ve never used it before. And it’s working. So yeah, I’m so productions I do make films and stuff and if you ever need a video, Facebook page or YouTube, give me a Hello. I’m based in Christchurch and Northcote lets me

Danny de Hek 4:45
know that I’ve just gone through your Facebook page and found the video there and put it onto your profile. It’s a very good. I will jump to now Steven, it did look like you hit a microphone there for a second the tour sort of flicker up. Is it working now? We’ll go to david Clarkson. In the meantime, stop eating the food David and bite. We can see you.

David Clarkson 5:08
Hi, I’m David Clarkson from dynamic communication. We public speaking and presentation skills trainers for business and corporate clients. And we’ve been teaching communication skills in that area for something like an excess of 20 years. So a lot of experience around training. We also do some training around soft business skills like time management, goal setting, that sort of thing strategically.

Danny de Hek 5:41
You don’t look old enough to be doing that long day. So well. Right now, I can’t pronounce your name because I’m hopeless. I told you that when we talked the other day. Ji Han Ji. You’ve got your mic on mute. There you go.

Hongze Yao 5:55
Hongze, actually, you can call me Yao with my last name. Now I’m a financial planner, working for FoxPlan based in Wellington, based in Hawke’s Bay, so yeah, nice to meet you guys.

Danny de Hek 6:09
That is awesome. So you’re working from Hawke’s Bay, but you work for a company in Wellington. Excellent. A lot. The sound of their spot zooms or bad isn’t that sounds really good. Shawn, have you got yours on I see you got your mask on? Don’t be scared. If you haven’t met Shawn before. He’s a pest control specialist. Obviously. He’s not a covert fighter. Same same

Shaun Jin 6:29
idea. Are Sean Sean is all from quality, clean. One Stop services for property improvement, including pest controls. And we recently we do a lot of housing home checks for agents.

Danny de Hek 6:46
Brilliant. Excellent. Now do we get these Stephen? You we didn’t just design English Stephen as an architect. And I remember going to Tyler’s mistake. And every time I go to tell us a mistake, I drive past this house called the rocks. And I absolutely love it. And even Steven come on board, I jumped on his website. And he was the creator of that house as my favourite house in Christchurch. So he builds really amazing actually design houses. No, I like he builds shelters. So he’s gonna be participating by waving at us every now and again. So if you haven’t been to our Think Tank meeting before, we have a mind map, and I use a programme called mind node, so I’m sharing that on the screen for the people who listen to our podcast. Hopefully, you should be able to see a lovely screen. And it’s Today’s topic is actually generating leads in sales online. And we have four parts to the meeting. It’s not rocket science as to hit science. First of all, we talk about people’s experiences trying to advertise and generate business online problems people have come up with when doing so. And then some proactive solutions. And at the end of the day, I’m going to ask you guys, what did you get from coming along to the meeting today, and we’re going to have some takeaways. And then at the end of all that we’re going to come up with the topic for next week to entice you guys to tune up next week. So Excellent. So let’s get started. We’re talking about generating leads and sales online. What is people’s experience of trying to do that so far? I’ll open the floor to everyone who wants to talk.

Helen Oakes 8:23
Yeah.

Mark Scown 8:26
Oh, kick off. From the time we went into lockdown, and then all of our networking groups and thanks to Danny, we went on to zoom. And so we all went through this steep learning curve, I guess over that first three, four weeks, my my realisation as an insurance brokers, where am I going to find my next set of clients. And I guess as the the weeks turned into months, I realised that probably my best pet form was through this virtual world. And I guess by the time I got to August, I remember looking at one particular screen, and there’s eight or nine people on there, and I found that three of them were my newest set of clients. So that was pretty heartening for me, and that was my initial steps into this virtual world. Okay,

Danny de Hek 9:21
I like it. So, zoom, virtual world, I think the problem I did see with zoom is we had to learn new ways to build relationships with people and connect, and not everyone really wanted to embrace that straightaway, or thought it was possible. Anyway, eight months later,

Nigel Young 9:43
There had to be a mind shift, though, didn’t I mean, initially, it was there as a means to an end to get us through a period of time and it works. But then afterwards, thinking that oh, this is actually a shift in the way we do things that takes a bit of getting used to

Danny de Hek 10:02
You’re asking experiences with generating leads online.

Rob Woolley 10:07
If we’re talking online domain when you’re all things online,

Danny de Hek 10:14
all things online.

Helen Oakes 10:16
Pretty much. Yeah.

Rob Woolley 10:21
I went for years without a website and I created a website in the lockdown whenever that was your APR, and I’d say half of my inquiries enquiries now for that. So yeah, as the most obvious Avenue but obvious is not always what we do.

Helen Oakes 10:50
I think you, you have to have that online presence, don’t you to at least put yourself out there. Online.

Danny de Hek 11:00
We went crazy online with COVID. Without online shops, to the point where we were doing a month’s worth of sales in a day, which was, but then we obviously hit other problems of tried to keep up with shipping and also correspondence. So that was quite fortunate. But sometimes you stumble across some advertising that you do. It’s something changes in the economy, and your advertising kicks in. And you realise you had been doing it right, just that there wasn’t any demand, perhaps for your product, or service. So things change. So sometimes, yes, I’m just gonna think about that. Really. Has anyone had any luck with COVID obviously, a lot of people lost business. But there’s some people out there who have gained business. Oh, Steve. His shop, he sells Garmin products in the first week of COVID was diabolical. And then all of a sudden, people got used to the idea and started going back to online and started buying stuff. Is that right, Steve?

Steve Amstand 11:54
Yeah. Firstly, it was pretty shocking. And those, you’re wondering what the outcome will be, but something we’ve seen quite an embrace, which has been quite incredible, which is, yeah, a very good implausible result. I still personally feel that we’ve got the worst to come. But yeah, we’ll just have to wait and see and hope. Yeah.

David Clarkson 12:25
Hi, Rob. When you were talking about generating the business off the website, was it for your antique business or for your training business?

Rob Woolley 12:36
It was for the the collectibles or so yeah, yeah. Collected? Yeah. Like collected created a website for ketamine. Thanks. Yeah. Like around about April. And interesting. I’ll tell you a really interesting story here. And the last three or four months, I haven’t got a page for a ketamine taste. I have not updated the page in six months. And I’m getting ding ding, ding, ding thing? Yeah. Every day. Yeah. Extra people liking it. I’m not telling us things, though. I have no idea what’s going on there. But it is interesting how that can happen. So yeah, if you’ve got those avenues. Yeah.

Helen Oakes 13:20
That’s interesting, Rob. Because the the Oh, no website, the sorry. Internet likes fresh content. And what’s more bias on that? So yeah, that that is quite interesting that you’ve solved.

David Clarkson 13:37
But if your site’s getting lots of heads, Helen, yeah. Does that also help with the register? We use? So it does, yeah.

Danny de Hek 13:47
I published an article yesterday, and it’s already showing up on the internet quite strongly. But it’s the strategy I’ve used to get it out there really quickly, which I’m real pleased about because basically, it’s a five hour turnaround and your content straight online. The definitely the biggest thing I’ve ever done is create content and contents King as really as you can share everything or you can create brand new content.

Helen Oakes 14:13
Well, it’s also what platform you use as well like some people do really well with let’s say Facebook, and others maybe like you rob a more website base and do well that way. So you kind of got to choose your platform to heaven. Yeah,

Rob Woolley 14:27
I can I can tell you a piece of small useless information here when I was creating my own website. I know I know nothing about creating website right. So online, you know, read up about it and applied it. And what I realised is that a lot of people there. Well, I realised I’m going online reading other people’s content. Okay, right. So that was the first thing I’m reading a lot of online other people’s items. And then I realised most people that create content online are crap. I thought, yeah, like, you go around your site and you watch heaps of videos, particularly American ones, they talk a million miles an hour. I don’t know why they do that. But it’s like, if you’re creating online content on video, you talk really fast. And I thought, what if you actually recreated everybody else’s content that slowed down and spoke well, or you presented it in your own way, you know, like, you may be able to establish yourself out there is the go to person.

Helen Oakes 15:45
I think most people do that, though. They look at other people’s websites or videos, and they take bits from everyone and then create their own, but it’s all taken from other people. And that’s, I guess, how you put your own content out there? Well, your own is and your own spin on it. Yeah.

David Clarkson 16:02
Yes, you see, and that’s interesting. When you when you say that, Rob, because just from observation, if you go and have a look at the TED Talks, and what have you, they speak at normal patient knows, they don’t go quickly. And they get they continue to get a good audience, I believe because of that, you know, and they use all the other inverted commas stuff as well, you know, like, PowerPoint, or, or whatever. Apple one is key keynote, they use PowerPoint or Keynote to support what they’re doing was most of the people who use thing, putting their own up, they’re not doing any of that. They’re just doing the talking head stuff, which doesn’t really appeal.

Danny de Hek 16:48
Just know, guys, we’ve got a chat room too. So if you got any comments, check them in the chat box, and then we’ll paste them into the mindmap. I forgot to mention it at the start. Good stuff like that.

Helen Oakes 16:59
Can we talk about problems?

Danny de Hek 17:01
Problems? Oh, here we go.

Helen Oakes 17:03
Well, a problem I see is that if you’re not well known, you’ve got to generate trust, before you can generate leads and sales. So help me out there.

Danny de Hek 17:14
Yep, I was talking about the other day of Helen St. Because she’s a photographer. And she said that, you know, people don’t know her not searching for it. So she’s thinking, do I promote yourself as a brand or person? And I’m saying, well, let’s look at some of the top photographers, do they use the name? Or do they use a brand? And I said suggested to her that she actually changed her name to something that’s or, you know, she, she’s been married, and now she’s divorced, if you want to know. And she’s going by her married name. And if you build a business upon her current name, you know, it’s all nicely What do we promote a name or brand? And I’m going name and she’s going brand and I’m going well, will you stop? When you’re trying to promote a brand? It’s a lot more expensive. In brand recognition is a different ballgame than promoting. You know, photographer. I don’t know, what’s your thoughts on that sort of stuff?

Lachlan McNeill 18:08
Well, if you wanted to sell the business, you’d want to be promoting a brand wouldn’t ship?

Nigel Young 18:12
Yes. That’s the that’s the issue.

Danny de Hek 18:15
I think there’s been a shift with that though. Because I’ve been trying to build a brand for 20 years, and I’ve given up on it now. Now. I’ve gone back to promote my name.

Lachlan McNeill 18:23
But what what if I thought what if I you decide you’re sick of this whole online business, you’re going to become a hermit and sit and live in a cave? And I say, Oh, I’d love to buy this business. Danny de Hek.

Danny de Hek 18:33
Yeah, well, do I just

Lachlan McNeill 18:37
Change my name by Depol?

Danny de Hek 18:38
I think I’m lucky with my name is Bill Hicks. Really weird. I didn’t change my name, but depot. My name used to be Danny Charlesworth. But my stepfather’s name was de Hek. And I got known as Danny de Hek. And then when I would open a bank account, they told me I had to use Charlesworth, so I changed it by Depol, but I think that there’s my point it’s my name to hc could technically be a brand.

Helen Oakes 18:58
It stands out because it’s definitely it. Danny actually said that to me. Why don’t you change your name by Depol? And I just think that’s all a bit too weird. Coming out as some person with a completely different surname. You know, that’s not my maiden name. So

Lachlan McNeill 19:14
You should turn your sirname damnation because calling yourself Helen damnation i think is a great word.

Steve Amstand 19:19
Look how name brands can actually work you take? one of the biggest in history kim.com. And look at well it works for him.

Helen Oakes 19:31
Yeah, actually, you’re right. I could be helen.com.

Danny de Hek 19:34
Trump Tower have not talked about him yet!, just put it up? Yeah,

Rob Woolley 19:44
If you create, yeah, like a name implies. Yes. Hey, there’s a lot of you.

Helen Oakes 19:54
Yeah, that’s what I think to like my Devi. I feel like you know, I have people around Hey, whereas if it’s just fun, it’s like, just me. You know,

Danny de Hek 20:05
I used to have my brains. And I used to use New Zealand Information Network by Danny de Hek. And everything I did was by Danny de Hek. And that was a different way of doing it. I hope you know, but just never really eventuated.

Lachlan McNeill 20:20
I mean, I personally, I mean, I started my brand new year, Acorva sort of thing. And I chose the name quite precisely because it didn’t mean anything. And I could actually make it be what I wanted. But also, I thought, if I ever want to sell it, I can sell it. And it can be adapted to anything. So I put I’ve decided specifically for that. But I’m also thinking, I mean, I’ve got domain names for my name, you know, I think lachlanmcneill.com I think I’ve got that. And so I guess I’ve always got that option. But my name is not easy to spell necessarily for a lot of people. It’s you know, not like Nigel young. It’s a nice easy one. I’m glad I mean, Nigel changed his name from Felicity your suggestion that he is right. Yes.

Rob Woolley 21:02
I, I did not know until now. You are recorder?

Danny de Hek 21:13
We do now. Remember your first or your days on it.

Rob Woolley 21:17
If you go back before when you just told us that you a new alone are a Corvette. But for then I thought a Corvette was a big business.

Lachlan McNeill 21:28
straightaway.

Rob Woolley 21:28
You worked for it.

Lachlan McNeill 21:30
Yeah, that’s right

Helen Oakes 21:32
Exactly Same, Yeah,

Lachlan McNeill 21:34
I went out of my way to pay appear to be be there. Right. So I had these notepads with a cord written on there. And what observed was that small players always put their cell phone number underneath. And I thought, I’m not going to do that. Because big companies don’t have to say that. So I purposely did that. I have done I’ve created pins. I haven’t got any environment with me. But I’ve got pins, which just had a core and the question mark on it. And of course, work with engineers. They’ve got to have to Google that.

Helen Oakes 22:00
Yeah, that’s a good idea. Yeah,

Lachlan McNeill 22:02
yeah. Yeah. But now I purposefully did that. And I decided wasn’t going to care with the with the cell phone number and all those things. Yeah, just all these things.

Helen Oakes 22:10
But I guess we can generate interest and leads by like what you’re saying, but let’s say with clothing, and you’ve got Yeah, I know a jacket with a quarter on the back and people are going to be interested in go Oh, who’s there are a lot or for example, on your car like Danny’s dots and things. It’s probably quite a good way. Except if it’s on your car, and then you cut someone off and give them the finger. That’s not a good idea. I’ve done

Danny de Hek 22:35
that quite a lot.

Lachlan McNeill 22:41
is a running shirt don’t really

Rob Woolley 22:43
treated material.

Lachlan McNeill 22:45
It’s reflected as well. Yeah. So when you run at night

Danny de Hek 22:50
Yeah, often do you get run at night, man.

Lachlan McNeill 22:52
Only when i’ve you know, maybe I don’t know being chased by Wolf perhaps.

Helen Oakes 22:57
Anyway, he went

Lachlan McNeill 23:02
here’s how I made these shirts. He got the shirts made I sponsored a running the five k race. But everyone’s about the size of a small child. They the people who run up the hill. So I’ve got these sort of x all the XL. The two excels and stuff I’ve got I’ve got spare ones. Let me know. A grey shirt. By the way.

Helen Oakes 23:23
Does anyone ask you that? Does anyone have clothing or branding like that? They?

Danny de Hek 23:30
I did. Like my we’d pull up sign I use elite sex. I used to carry it around these big $300 pull up signs. And now I’ve got this mini one that’s only about 500 high and I put it on top of a disk and it’s just so awesome. And it was only like I think $75 once I got it all printed up.

Helen Oakes 23:48
But like your cars are good thing because that people are always interested what the doctor I hear people sometimes we get out the car and people sort of point to the car and laugh and go look at that. What are the dots down to work it out. He’s got a gambling problem. Steve’s advertising he’s got his Garmin t shirt on do you we much Garmin gear Steve

Steve Amstand 24:09
on the shop.

Helen Oakes 24:10
Yeah. That out and about out of the shop.

Danny de Hek 24:13
Steve’s got Garmin has a licence plate number and has cows covered.

Helen Oakes 24:18
that’s true, yeah,

Steve Amstand 24:20
Garmin number plate as well.

Helen Oakes 24:21
Yeah, yeah.

David Clarkson 24:23
I also have have name badge, which has my name and my my corporate brand on it. Yeah. And it’s really handy, especially if I’m going into different clients and it’s amazing the number of times the guy people will say to me, I’ll see you back again doing your courses and straight away. It’s, it’s an instant recognition. I just don’t think it’s my face. I think a lot of the time they actually like the name badges is clear and they pick it up pretty quickly. So reinforced reinforces Brandon, while I’m pushing?

Danny de Hek 25:01
Yeah, I see that what you’ve just said is really good. One of your comments I posted onto the mind map is it’s basically not being familiar with social media. Now, when we talk about generating leads and sales, a lot of times we think about advertising and putting content online. But what’s some other forms of advertising that we can do? Obviously SignWriting. as can be, like, 500, or thousand dollar exercise?

Helen Oakes 25:23
What about does anyone still go to like cafes or restaurants and put a business card or leave their information? Gordon?

Lachlan McNeill 25:33
Keep business card?

Helen Oakes 25:35
Yeah.

Lachlan McNeill 25:37
Yeah, when appointed, we all had different pitches. And you get a lot of meeting and people say, Oh, that’s cool. Can I do? Can I join your company just to get one? I know. That was quite funny. But I tell you what, just just these notepads, I have ones with the one to Team list, and then it’ll squared on the bottom. And this other one here, which is a grid identity, you can see that.

Helen Oakes 25:57
Yes,

Lachlan McNeill 25:58
I have what what I do is, is in recruitment, you’ve got to be a little bit covert sometimes, because some people will say that they sort of, you know, there’s all this often there’s companies who’ve got contracts with with people. So what I do, like, for example, people, engineering consultancies, I’ll just go over a section, I’ll say, oh, someone asked for these, and I just dropped one thing, and they go right throughout the company. So my name is I’m pretty much everyone’s come as I’m looking for. And when I bring up they cost, they think I’m a really big corporation, because I’m notepads are everywhere.

Danny de Hek 26:26
I’m gonna tell you a story when I got invited to a $600 course, from a guy called Patrick snow. And he was a self published author. And he’s from the States, he lives in Hawaii. And he said the most cunning plan he ever did was he got his book, when he was going through the airports and go went into the bookshop and put his book right next to the bestseller. And he said he was giving away his books. But what happened is, when somebody purchased that book, they would use the scanner on the back of the book. And when the stock got low, it would pick up and say you need to reorder the book. Genius. I know. Yeah, minds thinking

Helen Oakes 27:05
is awesome. But you think it wouldn’t be in that stores

Danny de Hek 27:08
System, but they use a global system of books? And a lot of us? Yeah,

That’s awesome. The other one was business cards, I put a question, a unique question on the back of all my business cards. And so when I get when I meet somebody, I asked them that question and give them that card. And it gives it a purpose. I quite like that idea. Anyone else? David, you were gonna say something?

David Clarkson 27:31
Yeah, just just on the cards, I always remember guy once said to me, if you’re cold calling, and trying to develop your business, because it’s another way of doing it, he never tried on the first visit, to to get to talk to the people concerned, he would ask the receptionist, who was the person who looked after such and such and so on. So you know, whether it was buying services or buying products or what it was? And invariably, the the, the receptionist would tell him? And he’d say, Would you mind just passing this cat on to them? I don’t want to speak to him at the moment. But I’ll be giving them a call later. So would you pass this on. And he said, the strike rate that he got on that was something like about 90%. And so that when he bring the person that cheats, or he or she had suggested he actually got through to the person he wanted to talk to. So that’s just a, it’s a small thing, but it’s a good way to use business cards. If you’re at cold calling.

Danny de Hek 28:38
One of their members was going around handing out Moz bars when he couldn’t get any business. So he just go around to all the receptionist desk and leave a Moz bar on the counter for the receptionist. It was his way of staying in touch with people. I think they knew who he was, but he couldn’t do anything with a business at the time. So he’s decided hippie Father Christmas and you know, dollar investment each time, I would have eaten them all. Okay, so we’ve got problems, we’re doing quite good time. Any other problems with advertising, obviously, it costs money. Once upon a time, I used to always have a theory that knocking on people’s doors and big in the streets was quite a good way of doing it. I used to do that quite a lot when I had an event. And what I liked about doing it as I’d get a really good feel for what people’s perceive my business to be when I used to say I’m running a speed networking event, would you be interested in coming along? And they’ll normally say yes or no, because in it because reason was gold to me when I went marketing so and also, I remember one insurance salesman, he used to do 90% of his cold calling on the streets, knocking on people’s doors, walk around the businesses, and any and I thought that was quite good because some of the old advertising that we used to use we don’t do any more because we’ve got this new wave of angle systems out there now. So keeping it real suppose I’m sitting

Lachlan McNeill 29:54
there skills are pretty useful. I knew a guy who’s sold a one time and double glazing in the UK He said the only things that are harder than selling double glazing door to door selling doors door to door. But he said he built the hipbelt skills.

Danny de Hek 30:09
Yeah. Yeah.

Helen Oakes 30:11
Has anyone tried sponsoring? Like a sports team or something like that getting their name out by sponsoring something? Yep.

Paul Starling 30:21
I give out pens to the RSA and the bridge club. sponsor the Saracens Rugby Club.

Helen Oakes 30:31
Oh, good.

Paul Starling 30:36
Just brand awareness. Really? A few jobs but not a great deal. What else is sponsored the Hockey Club that didn’t bring anything in at all?

Helen Oakes 30:48
Okay, brand awareness, it gets your name out there.

Paul Starling 30:51
That’s the only thing Yeah, getting the brand out.

Danny de Hek 30:53
You shouldn’t go to all the polling booths because that you’ve been

Paul Starling 30:59
given away the white throwaway ones, weren’t they? Yeah, that you won’t let you do that.

Lachlan McNeill 31:08
But we sponsored a five k race for a couple of years. But it really wasn’t our target Levine. You know, we I recruit for engineers. And they tend really to be more into things like mountain biking and kayaking. So really, it was a quite a bit of time and effort and cost. I mean, those shirts cost $35 just to make so that sell for, you know, 85 bucks or something. If you’re sponsored a real ale. It should sponsor the real owl Exactly. No, but really, I’ve really found sponsorship. It’s a very easy to throw money away in these areas. And often people want to sponsor them. They don’t want to sit back and don’t do anything. I think if you sponsor it and you’re involved in the day, and you’re actually turning up on the day and you’re doing something stupid, see you’re doing stuff then probably tends to work but just sponsoring means sitting back. Yeah.

Danny de Hek 31:56
That lady that come into your shop on Sunday. Steve.

Steve Amstand 32:02
Would you see

Danny de Hek 32:04
the police lately? Our Mail icon? It’s a she’s a marathon runner news, one of New Zealand’s Best Female runners in Steve sponsor suiting. Yeah. Yeah. She came in. She’s never met Steve before, which is ironic. She’s from Wellington. But then she wants to take photos of Steve put on a Facebook page. And that she’s really in the know. And she’s really at the Grateful actually. So it’s another way. I think one of the cutting planes I’ve seen you to stay lately is you’ve had a they had this was the Hindi at Rice picks. So you’ve gone to an event organiser and said, Well, how about you use my shop as the pickup point for race picks when people will enter in these competitions?

Steve Amstand 32:46
Yep, that works quite well just offer them a nice spot prize given the watch or something like that. And on the condition that you have respect pick up here in the shop. And there’s lots and generate sales generates people’s knowledge of the shop x years. works really, really well for getting 500 people through the shop.

Helen Oakes 33:08
I connect that awesome idea. Really good idea. Yeah, to get people earning. And it’s even brand awareness. Isn’t that you know?

Danny de Hek 33:15
Yeah. All right. So it’s um, so we’ve come up with, we’ve got some solutions here of things. So just bear in mind, we’re looking at leads what some solutions that we might have come up with just by talking about leads and generate sales online.

Rob Woolley 33:29
I think I think if you go back to that comment, that was my boy, David. And that is about that you’re not comfortable or familiar? to do anything online? Yeah. If you’re not, you may plan to do it. Right. But then you stop doing it. And perhaps you can actually hand it off to your like another one. Yeah, who’s specifically helping you with their and you’re helping them with like something else?

Danny de Hek 34:06
Hmm. I just the Lana’s. I know Steve and I have as we’re very verse online, and we’ll spend, I spent probably four hours putting together a blog is today. But I’ve got 20 years with a knowledge while using it. So technically speaking, if somebody wants to do what I did before, as Oregon, I would hate to spend 20 hours at least and they would have only done half my job on it. But I mean, it’s a real advantage for people like me, but I can’t go and help you, Robin say look, I’m willing to spend four hours of my time posting one blog for you. But you know, if you did one yourself, you know, I could give you a few tips. Get your team to spend 10% I mean Laughlin is really good on LinkedIn. So I mean, his knowledge is amazing. You did a post you see it the other day and you got 10,000 people viewing it. And I’m going oh my god, amazing is the most I’ve ever had. I think there’s about 700 but then I’m looking I’m following him around. He’s got heaps at Traffic, he probably takes it for granted.

Helen Oakes 35:06
I think you can also partner with a similar company. So for example, I tried a while back doing portraits and offering like, you know, people to have their hair done and the makeup done prior to the session. And I have a hairdresser that I go to. And I said, Oh, can I put some things up in your salon to get people to come to me and also come to you, she was all into it. But she wasn’t in my business. So nothing ever came of it. And it was a real shame because I think it could have been quite a good synergy. So if you can find someone that similar to you, or you know, that you can partner with or work with, I think it can work but you’ve got to do it properly minded. And

Danny de Hek 35:50
this is a good point. Just put in the solutions as your partner partnering with like minded business a good one. Was it like Raymond’s a videographer, Helens, a photographer and element into the job a year ago with a videographer and a photographer, and they’re both invoices, I think separately, yeah. So the client, and just two different lots of content. And now we’re we’re seeing that content actually being used on the Facebook pages even today. Yeah. Which is brilliant. Yeah.

Helen Oakes 36:16
Yeah. They originally asked me if I could do video and photo for the website, and I said, Well, I’m not a videographer. I wouldn’t do a good job. I know someone so I brought him on board. And yeah, we we did it separately, but together and it worked really well.

Danny de Hek 36:33
Thanks for your comment locked on, I’ll put it in the problems. So anyone else got Any thoughts? What are we up to on this? how’s this going? To be been good meeting and really nice to see everyone here. We want to book the rest of your life away at 930 on Fridays, please do the awesome. And we’re going to get Stevens going to get in his car. Come see me with his laptop and we’re going to fix the sound. So you can sit there and not look so frustrated because we know you’re busting to say stuff. Is it I want to talk about Steven why he’s got a mic.

Helen Oakes 37:07
I think so something that’s

Rob Woolley 37:12
good stuff. Alright, so got a workout your interest? Yeah. Like if it interests you, you’re like, you gotta do it. I yell. And when I had, you know, like, as bad as y’all can month over again, I did create some blogs and stuff out and I love to do is just Yeah, like you get strict and with other stuff. Yeah.

Danny de Hek 37:32
Staying focus could be a good solution, then, you know, and that’s how I mean, I’ve been helping Helen. She’s been perplexed a couple of days ago. And she doesn’t know where to begin. She’s got so many projects. And as I said, You’ve got to finish your Etsy store. This is a Monday. And I said, I want 20 products in your Etsy store. Let’s we started a job. We didn’t finish it. Let’s Let’s do this. And then I’ll show you how to market it. And it’s been a good exercise and what needs to get done, I got 20 done. Yep. And then yesterday, she wants to start doing headshots, photography. And she started another task. And so hold on a minute. Let’s go back to it. See, I want to see if this task is finished yet. Oh, but but I’m getting no. So sometimes accountability.

Helen Oakes 38:16
He’s my taskmaster. And it does help because I’m very, I start something and if it’s not really getting traction, I go to something else. And it’s a bad trait of mine. But I just like to see, you know, progress. And if I don’t I yeah,

Lachlan McNeill 38:30
I certainly think identifying the things that you’re avoiding as well, is pretty important. In it, I’ll tend to stick around with the technology, whereas in fact, sometimes I’m just like, I really should be picking up the phone and talking to someone.

Danny de Hek 38:43
It’s great stuff, you know, it’s really good. Actually a solution is actually, if you’re looking for ways of generating leads, and swallow the frog would be actually picking up the phone and doing a phone call, isn’t it? And it’s so simple, as

Lachlan McNeill 38:59
well. Bill Gates says, when they start something, the two questions they ask is, who does it? Who does this thing? Well, and what can we learn from them. And it’s a good thing. And I must admit, in terms of the traits, I just have to sometimes I will sometimes tend to try and work so much of the things out of myself. But I think also the other point I was trying to make was that identifying the things that you might be avoiding is sort of thing you can do or the thing you should be doing but you aren’t something just straight up mean, you know, we know that public speaking sometimes you’re just avoiding doing stuff and just identifying things. Hang on a minute. I should be doing that. But I’m not profound with this.

Danny de Hek 39:44
It sounds good, man. You got me again. Yeah. It’s really my lights.

Rob Woolley 39:52
Right. I think also Yeah, if we have a look at, you know, if we’re online, what are we looking at big Cuz you’re, we’re looking at it, you know, the odds, you know, others are as well, right? So just, you know, like mimic your own behaviour. And just, you know, like St. Well, if I’m having a look at your meetings online, you’re like, or I’m fine, you’re entering in some information yellow, if I’m writing a blog or having a look at others, you know, the odds are Yeah, others out there, you’re gonna be actually able to do what you will do, you know, I always say the other way around. So, hit Have a look like when I went online, and I created a website, I created a website, because everybody else has got a website. And yeah, the reason that everybody else hate is a website is everybody looks at websites. I got heard the other day, and I said, Oh, you know, like websites, you know, like her out. And it really, you know, like, whenever I’m anxious or anything, I go onto the website, and move around from there.

Lachlan McNeill 41:05
But there’s also not just looking at that, Rob, is, I think I heard this morning as on the morning walk. Someone said, look at the questions your competition are answering. and answer those as well. You know, you can be you’re in the part, the one thing about so being online is that you don’t have to have a huge office to be to be listened to. So, you know, you might find in these public speaking space or the antique space, people don’t want to know what’s a good gift or something. Just look at what other people are answering and dive on on their

Danny de Hek 41:37
website gets just short of 3000 page views a month. And I’ve got one I was talking about last week, I’ve got one article on Kiwi slaying that has had just short of 900 visits in one month. So by looking at that one blog, I’m thinking Oh, my goodness. And now I look there’s lots of other people who have articles about Kiwi slaying. So that’s why Helens just produced a whole lot of downloadable artwork around a kiwi slang. And you know, take that same article, though, I know it’s got good traction and used it on her website. And they linked it all to her products, because I’m trying to capitalise on some traffic I’ve discovered. But what I’ve really done is I’ve just found what’s trending. And the article has been online for 15 years, and I haven’t edited it, and it brings in all that traffic. So if I put a blog online, I monitor it, and or I see a spike on traffic, then I’ll try to turn it into a sale or some like minded product. And I’m just wondering if I was give you guys any advice on creating content, what you want to write about is one thing, but what’s trending on the internet in your industry is another. And it’s an app finding trending content.

Lachlan McNeill 42:47
But there’s also another thing, Danny, though, I mean that when you look at slang, that’s not trending itself. It’s not like the US elections, which is trending right now spiking, isn’t it? Because people people won’t be worrying about that in a few months time. But see, I see the slang thing is almost being evergreen content.

Helen Oakes 43:06
Yeah, it is.

Lachlan McNeill 43:07
Yeah, like a long term view. I might be generally trending up like renewable energy, but but people are still going to read an article about New Zealand slang. And then they’re not going to write they’re not going to follow a review about the latest hybrid car. Now in five years time that China is going to go out or the latest arm and watch for Steve, you know, if he doesn’t do this Garmin watch will that that’ll spike but no one’s going to be reading that in a year’s time when it’s superseded.

Mark Scown 43:38
Yeah, that adds on from my perspective in terms of the marketing strategy and and Danny doing what he’s done and matching back to Helens blog, is that thing, what you’re saying there about adding value, because so often, we just cast a big wide net, the old scattered down effect. And unless we are conscious and analysing their own marketing strategies, we’ve got no idea where these leads are. And we potentially could be wasting a heck of a lot of energy and resource, getting a message out there. And so we really got to take stock from time to time and just think, what are we doing? And is this working for me? Yeah, yeah, I’m just

Danny de Hek 44:21
thinking if I was to write some content for you, Mark, on your website, I would write about the embarrassment of potentially prostate exams or mammograms, and having content around that, like a blog of, you know, what’s the big deal or because I think a lot of people find that, you know, embarrassing to go get that yearly test that we need to do. Yeah, you know, but you can incorporate it on your website, you probably get quite a bit of traffic in a way. No pictures please.

Helen Oakes 44:49
Interesting though, the advertising for mammograms lately, this advert came on and it was this woman talking about her family and it’s all animated. And I had no idea what it was about. I’m right at the end they say go and get a mammogram. And I’m like, that seemed like it had nothing to do with the in message. I don’t know if anyone’s seen it, but I have no idea what it was about. Yeah. Until right at the end. Yeah.

Paul Starling 45:16
The moments.

Helen Oakes 45:17
What’s that? So

Paul Starling 45:18
Lots of adverts like that at the moment, the contact energy one?

Helen Oakes 45:22
Oh, yeah, yeah.

Paul Starling 45:24
Weird. You don’t know what it’s all about till it gets to the end. But yeah, not relevant and spark do as well. Yeah.

Lachlan McNeill 45:30
Like, maybe that’s why people want in

Raymond Lum 45:34
That emotional thing they’re

Lachlan McNeill 45:37
Getting back to this adding belly in terms of solution, though. I mean, that my strategy. I mean, look at me as when I’m marking it, we don’t mark it to, let’s say, graduates, because I tend to fill senior roles, and I go spearfishing for candidates. So I’ll advertise specific out. When I’m on an advertising, for example, for a facade engineer, I don’t want a whole bunch of wastewater engineers coming to me and saying, help me find a job, what have you got? And it just ties up my day? So but what I do want is I do want clients to come to me, so I’ve been thinking, what are the pains of my clients? So kind of my clients, they tend to be, you know, generally sort of professional construction professionals, or the HR people in those. So I’m thinking to myself, what are the pains? And that I could answer in those areas? That’s one thing, I tend to think when I’m putting stuff up, you know, not just to be entertaining, I have to think what’s going to engage people and put me out as a bit of an expert in my area. Does that make sense? Yeah, if one of the paints you know, what people gonna be searching for?

Helen Oakes 46:36
It’s really solving people’s pain points. Yeah.

Lachlan McNeill 46:39
So think for example, salary negotiations, that can be a tricky one. How do you deal with those sort of things? That would be a good post for me? How to interview is a good post for for me to do? Yeah. Because often they got to go do an interview. And often smaller companies don’t have expertise. And they quickly do what question sort of asked, you know, so like, look at Steven near that. He can’t say anything. I’m like, Am I right there, Steve? Yes, I’m right. And that, you know, I might want to think about how to interview an architect. And so if Steve was doing if you had an interviewer, urban designer or something, he might think, oh, Google, that he’s getting extra tips to make sure that something I could I could, I can answer. So that would be a

Danny de Hek 47:18
thing that I would put out. Definitely questions to ask somebody you want to job for? Yep. I think Stephen Floyd, a young lady to work in a shop on a Saturday morning. And I think that’s exactly what Steve asked me. I said, Well, you’re going to ask you some questions. And hopefully, she’s going to ask you some questions. But, and also, being PC about it, like asking the young girl where she lives might not be good. And she’s in a relationship of a good idea or things you can ask people. Can you

Lachlan McNeill 47:45
what yeah, I mean, I probably put a thing up how to completely to stuff yourself in an entity or something as an interviewer, or how to really cut things up or something like that. And that would get people really, I think, good stuff.

Danny de Hek 48:00
Yeah. All right. So we do have time we’ve got seven minutes. So what about some takeaways? I’ve just stuffed up the the mind map. Yeah. And but I’ll get that fixed in a second. Okay, yeah, fixed? Wasn’t it had two takeaways today? We’re going to get seven minutes left. So what do we got from come along to the meeting today? I just must the thank you for your comments in the in the chat room. They’re really good guys. Got some really good stuff here.

Helen Oakes 48:28
Instead of being a hunter working hard for food, how about building a high funnel B’s, your networks? aceo eyes which click honey for you? It’s good. Yeah.

Danny de Hek 48:39
Yeah. Love it, love this stuff. So we’re going to publish all this. What we do with this content is we’re good at scribed by a company called otter, and they ascribe it into a blog for us. And then I take all your names into it. So and then we use the mind map picture as the feature for the blog. And also we record it as a podcast, all in one. And if you guys get really brave one day, we will record this and put it on YouTube. But that would see us on the windows, but I’m doing it at the moment.

Lachlan McNeill 49:09
Danny, you I think you gave me a tip A while ago in terms of I can’t use your sauna. When you look on Google, when you search in Google, if you put start to put questions in about your industry, you’ll find what other people are asking because the Google thing will have suggested ins to your sentence. So for example, let’s say Rob was doing some down ticks, you know, buying an antique and then see what other people say, Oh, I thought you know, for for my grandma or, or something. And you look at this, you see how Google finishes the questions that tells you what people are asking.

Paul Starling 49:40
Did you know Laughlin that if you type in a question, and I type the question, we’ll both get different answers.

Lachlan McNeill 49:47
That’s right. That’s right. Because basically got better looking than you.

Paul Starling 49:53
Down to the search engine and how that’s

Lachlan McNeill 49:57
exactly right.

David Clarkson 50:00
Near at all Laughlin

Lachlan McNeill 50:03
whatsoever.

Danny de Hek 50:04
Maybe next week, kindness. Yeah. Okay. some takeaways in what do we get from the meeting? Come on guys. What are we getting thing that you do feel like going away write the blog? Probably not. Yeah, I’ve published to

Rob Woolley 50:18
Work you working mass market online? What’s it? And what are for online marketing to work? You must market online?

Danny de Hek 50:28
Oh, that’s a good one. Yeah. And there’s an old saying that, never ever not say in his content, I can’t even spell it as King as King. No, you know, honestly, there’s no other secret in business marketing. Even when I had a terrible looking website, I used to get 25,000 ip visits per day, that’s individual people every day. And my website was criticised because of it Look, but the whole website was built out of text. And at the time, anything on the internet is actually only found by text. It’s got smarter, now they can you can upload a picture and Google will go away and find out the pictures. So if you wanted to make a beautifully designed website, we’ll click here to enter. And those guys would never compete with me in the search engines. So still rule today is content is king, but producing content that is trending is double king,

Helen Oakes 51:20
king and queen.

Lachlan McNeill 51:22
I also think you have to do you know who’s certainly know your target audiences? Absolutely know your title. In fact, even conversely, know who they’re not. Don’t take on everybody. Hmm. Try and don’t try and market for the sake of marketing. It’s wrong. Yeah.

Helen Oakes 51:38
Yeah. Rob, can you type up what you see before put it in the chat box, and we’ll put it up, they’ll

Danny de Hek 51:43
keep him busy for half an hour. Yeah. No suffering in the typing place.

Paul Starling 51:48
A zoom tip for everybody. If you click down the bottom right hand corner where it says more, you can actually save the chat of a zoom meeting. Read it later. You get all the comments.

Danny de Hek 52:00
Yeah, except the private ones that we’ve been talking about in the background. Don’t pick your nose on the screen map.

Lachlan McNeill 52:09
Another thing in terms of takeaways, my takeaways, I should take a long term view. I mean, Danny, you talked about those posts that mantra from from ages ago. The long term view is a good one. Yeah. And

Danny de Hek 52:21
that’s what I call it marinating in the search engine. I do it all the time. One of my blogs yesterday, I had this article and stuff newspaper for 10 years. And pisses me off. It’s not accurate. And I’ve never done Think about it. But every time recently, I’ve been marketing my personal brand. So every time I search for my name, up comes a stupid article. So I thought I’ll, I’ll write the stuff newspaper and see that will remove that. At the end of the day, that whole experience, decided I would write a blog about the whole experience. And there was my content. My point was that my name had been 14 years. And it does tarnish my business. So I thought, well, the editors name is now going to be on the internet. You know, and wonder how he likes it sort of style, you know, but I know the power of content doesn’t fall off the bottom. When you go to Google. You search for it. You’ll find stuff years ago.

Lachlan McNeill 53:13
Yeah. But I’m just sort of saying, hey, you can use that. For example, I was thinking, if I was doing reviews about Apple, I think Hang on a minute. What did I write an article about the apple, the iPhone 14. Because by the time it comes out, I’ll have been a bit sitting around for a year.

Danny de Hek 53:30
Yeah. If you see it right now, some of these probably redundantnature the head. And I’ll tell you now, Steve, is still

Paul Starling 53:38
Ahead of the game. Do the one for the iPad 15. Yeah.

Danny de Hek 53:43
If you search for any Garmin watch, I guarantee Steve shock will come up. Now. When he tells me that Garmin has just released a sport Watch now, Steve will have that watch every detail we can find about that watch photos. He cropped I think 500 images up in a day and then re posted them on on the website. But he wants to be the first person to have that content online. Because he knows that once that contents online, he’ll dominate anyone else who tries to catch up. Yeah, cool. So I think so iPhone 14 is a brilliant idea if you’re an iPhone seller, of course. Yeah.

Steve Amstand 54:17
For the user, someone had created the iPhone, iPhone 12 Twitter handle a couple of years ago and now they’ve started posting an advertising roundup

Lachlan McNeill 54:29
for Ferraris, as well the look at the new Ferrari Ferrari and predict a new Ferrari model. And they reserved the domain name for that.

Danny de Hek 54:36
Yeah,

Lachlan McNeill 54:37
maybe it sold as a Ferrari

Danny de Hek 54:40
as your domain his or her case was

Lachlan McNeill 54:42
but certainly to the point I guess I was taking was taking looking at the longevity of something looking at a lot there and thinking more can I write that might keep on working for me in many years time. Yeah, that’s a good point.

Danny de Hek 54:53
And I mean, do a mind map in structure and I say a bush is better on the internet then a stick and meaning they A tree has branches. So catergory structure is everything. So Helens got a really good category structure on her website. And I see now I know you want to write about photography all day long, but they have a well balanced website. It might be one might be about editing. The tree can be all around her industry, but don’t just write about one topic all the time. Yeah, you know, make a pie into

Lachlan McNeill 55:23
feelers out though, you might get a surprise response from something where you can develop you can delete get heavy, a little niche.

Danny de Hek 55:29
Yeah. Or in the space of time, I want to finish this meeting in a couple of minutes. Next week’s topic. Am I talking about? content creation as a topic? things we could write about? What what what what would be a good topic while I’ve got a captive audience here? And if you got any more takeaways do let me know.

In the room went quiet. What do you guys want in your business right now? more clients, more clients. Yeah. How to get more clients

Mark Scown 56:10
about recruitment, I guess in my industry.

Danny de Hek 56:14
Yep. So that could be a nice progression going from generating leads and sales, we’ve got a really good mind map here today. So I can’t wait to get the scribed up and get it out there. And just in case, you didn’t realise that elite six code NZ is now going to hit.com. And if you are a member of elite six, you need to be able to login. And if you don’t know your username, password, reset your password. Just so you know. And but what the point of that is, we’ve also moved the podcast to podcast.com and you’ll see all the old What do we call it? Think Tank meetings that we’ve done? And I bet I’ll publish this by later on today. So just thinking the topic next week, are we talking about? What did you say Mike?

Mark Scown 56:58
Well, it’s about recruiting new business or recruiting new clients. So that’s, that’s for me. That’s my on top. Thank you

Danny de Hek 57:07
for that, and I everyone agree. So that’s cool. All right, recruiting new clients, how to find new clients. I think it’s really important. I think we all want that really. I think it’s pretty cool. Um, well, I’d like to thank you all for being here. As I see that’s really cool. If you want anyone’s contact details, do go on to Danny dot coda. nz, click on elite six, click on members, and you’ll find everyone’s details there. And that’s us for this week. I’ll turn off the recording and then we can say naughty words. I’m just trying to figure out how to do that.

Transcribed by Otter

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