Ideal Client Positioning: How Wes Towers Attracts Better Leads in an AI-Driven Market | Ep. 175

Wes Tower: 00:00:05

Especially in this day and age of AI where people can mass produce content and look like they're the real deal, but they're not. And so there's a lack of trust.

Intro: 00:00:15

But I am the world's biggest super fan. You're like a super fan. Welcome to the Business Superfans podcast.

We will discuss how establishing business super fans from customers, employees and business partners can elevate your success exponentially. Learn why these advocates are a key factor to achieving excellence in the world of commerce.

This is the Business Super Fans podcast with your host, Freddy D.

Freddy D: 00:00:55

Hey super.

Freddy D: 00:00:56

Fan superstar Freddy D. Here.

Freddy D: 00:00:58

In this episode 175, we're joined by Wes Towers, founder of Uplift 360 and he's tackling a fear that's quietly keeping a lot of trade and construction business owners up at night. Is AI about to make my website and my marketing obsolete?

When a business valuation during his divorce labeled his own agency as vulnerable to AI disruption, Weston Retreat he he rebuilt. From traditional digital marketing to fully embracing AI powered SEO and conversion driven websites. Wes transformed his agency and his perspective.

Today he helps service businesses turn their websites into trust building client generating machines without losing authenticity in an automated world. Welcome Wes to the Business Superfans, the service providers Edge and all the way down from Melbourne, Australia.

Good morning to you, good afternoon to me. Welcome to the show Wes.

Wes Tower: 00:01:58

Thanks Freddie. Great to see you in person.

I've been reading your material and watching some of your podcasts and so on and good to see you in the flesh even though it's through a computer.

Freddy D: 00:02:06

Likewise, great conversation we had before we started recording. So let's continue that conversation.

And I know that you guys have got uplift360 is a web digital marketing organization, but let's go back to what's the backstory, what's the beginning? How did you get to where you are involved with this company?

Wes Tower: 00:02:24

Yeah, I studied graphic design multimedia at university. Websites weren't really a thing for business.

I know they've been around a long time now, but it was the 90s and when I got my career counseling no one was talking about website design. So I got into graphic design multimedia. It felt like a good fit for the technical and the creative which I loved.

I got my first job in a marketing company in Sydney. They were an award winning marketing company. I actually found them in an awards book and cold called them and said I love your company.

Can I come and show you my work and see if there's a job opening? And I got that job. This is how Far things have changed in the marketing landscape since I started. They had never designed a website.

years ago, the year: 2000

But they won a project to do a website design and they said, right, you better figure out how to build this. You're the young guy, you're the tech, better than us, a lot of older people there.

And so they gave me that opportunity to build the website I fell in love with. It was that perfect match for me from the technical and the visual and to see how that worked together.

cally started the business in: 2003

So realistically, only working for others for a short time before I started my own. And I was completely naive. I had no idea how to run business. I hadn't been to client meetings, I had done nothing client face to face.

I attended a couple of meetings actually, but I was just quiet, just sitting there while the salespeople spoke. I had no idea about any of that stuff. Didn't know to put a proposal together, didn't know anything.

All I knew was I was really confident in my skill set and I had to learn this everything else the hard way.

I struggled through those first few years like most of us, a lot of us do, probably me more than other people, but doing website design, my own company, Uplift360 built out a little team to support in that way as well. And things have always changed a lot as you know.

But the last few years with AI, everything's accelerating and transforming, even at a greater rate of knots.

Freddy D: 00:04:28

Well, one of the things I want to circle back to, Wes, was that you did something that most people don't do and that was that you actually pursued the company and then you went and presented your skills even though they weren't looking for somebody that took some tenacity to go in there and say, hey, here's what I'm doing and I'm offering an opportunity to work that shows that organization or anybody really, and I'm sharing this for our listeners, that you make things happen. Because I look at it, there's three types of people in the world.

There's those that make things happen, those that watch things happen, and those that wonder what the muck happened. And so you Made some things happen. So you really created that opportunity.

That's one thing that organizations, when they see a talented person, even though they don't have an opening or a job posted, they make opportunities happen and they find a way to grab the right talent because that's transformative to the company. And it was obviously transformative for you.

Wes Tower: 00:05:27

Yeah, I was really fortunate in that when I went up to Sydney, I went for another job interview actually, and I stayed with my uncle who was a specialist in training people to find work at the higher end executives, that sort of thing.

Not your lower end positions, but people who had been in high level executive positions for a long time had been made redundant and he would go in and support them to find new pathways. So he gave me lots of tips over the dinner table and just different things to do.

I think it ties in really with relationship building and who I've become. Some of those key lessons, dining table, just simple things like just introducing yourself in a friendly manner.

And at the end of a meeting, like an agency, marketing agencies I was presenting at, he would always say, just ask them, hey, now that you've seen my work, I had a portfolio of visual designs. Is there anyone else that you think might be interested in seeing the work?

And it was the most brilliant thing that I could do because I was just cold calling and then I was doing that as well. And nearly always they would say, hey, yeah, such and such. They're running an agency similar to ours. We've got no work right now, but they might do.

Then when I called them, I had the somewhat warm introduction of being able to say, hey, James suggested so and so referred me. Yeah, and that was brilliant. That was brilliant. And that's something, a foundational element that I've applied.

Not that exact same model, but that sort of thinking right through business from there on. I think it was really a great opportunity to be with my Uncle Ken at that time.

Freddy D: 00:06:50

in charge of global sales in: 1997

The Internet was out and people were kind of putting some kind of at least a page up of some sort of a website. The company was at. The website was absolutely horrible. And so I said, hey, we got this Microsoft front page says I can't screw it up.

Let me give it a whirl. It's the first time I ever dived into creating a website and I built it. Some of the resellers said, hey, who built the website? Looks pretty good.

I said, I did. How much do you want to do ours? And I had a side gig that it wasn't even looking for a side gig for years. And it's carried me on still.

As I mentioned before we started recording, I just got a customer that I've hadn't talked to in probably at least five years or so that reached out to me and want some help with some stuff. Yeah, it's changed dramatically like you said. And now with AI, it's exponential.

I mean, I remember back in the 80s when I got into the software industry, we had a release one year, once a year was a release, then we went to two, then we went to four.

Now you wait five minutes and they push out a plugin, a patch, I mean, because they screwed it up yesterday because they don't do the level of QA that they used to back in the day. Now if it doesn't work well, we'll just fix it tomorrow and ship it out and it's done.

Wes Tower: 00:08:15

Yeah, it's an interesting space to play in. A friend of mine, he does a SaaS solution, really heavily customized for clients, but it's a SaaS solution.

And so his team are being able to roll out updates far more faster than they've ever done before because they're using AI to help do the heavy lifting.

But that's presented new challenges because the support team, as you know, whenever software changes that, even the smallest of changes, moving a button somewhere or changing something slightly, people find it difficult.

So the support team find it difficult because it changed from yesterday and now they've got to try and support people through the phone or the online calls and so on and new challenges, new levels, new devils. I heard someone say, so as you progress and the world's progressing fast, it's presenting a whole bunch of different challenges.

Freddy D: 00:09:00

Yeah, I think it was early 80s, I was still an applications guy and I got picked for a project and we ended up writing what we called cprox. Well, that came out of nowhere and it was really command strings. What we would do is we would computer aided design, computer manufacturing stuff.

It was me and another guy. There's just two of us in this project. We work late at night, we go till like 5 o' clock to 1 in the morning or something like that.

The whole intent was that the software guys would run their application through the CProc, which was mimicking an actual CAD user computer design guy designing something. If the CPROC didn't work all the way through, then we knew that there was a bug.

So back then that was very forward thinking mindset like you just mentioned today, it's a completely different world because you now you're leveraging AI to do some of that stuff for you to say check to see if this is all right. These seven things are messed up and it's like whoa.

Wes Tower: 00:09:55

Yeah, there's lots of speed wobbles in that as well.

We were meant to launch a website yesterday actually, so we do WordPress websites typically and there's so many plugins and opportunities to expand upon WordPress. So they were using a well known LMS learning management system that was in behind the scenes of their website.

They rolled out an update which broke a bunch of stuff but couldn't launch because it was no longer working. We could have rolled back but then we were concerned because they said they were rolling out the fix so that I can see it.

They fixed it this morning so we're a day late on that launch. Sometimes these things happen outside our control with software and tech and all these things. It's just part of the nature of the work we do.

Freddy D: 00:10:36

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Freddy D: 00:12:02

You let's go into a little bit of a story of how do you guys work with customers and what really separates you from a lot of the other guys that are in your space.

Because there's a lot of digital marketing companies, there's some one man bands, there's large agencies, and then there's people that actually go into specific verticals. And they say, okay, this is the niche that we're staying in. And we're not varying out of that. Let's talk a little bit about that.

Wes Tower: 00:12:30

I've done that as well with our business, so. And it didn't start that way, but we've really niched into the trades and construction industry.

We're a slightly smaller market than a lot of places in the world. You can't niche probably as tightly as some other people do. Internationally, people might niche right down to, say, a H vac or something like that.

Well, we're doing the whole trades, the whole construction space, and that's a good size for us to niche into. It's been a really powerful move. Or at the start, we just took on any.

It was just me initially, more a freelance business than anything else, just took on anything and everything. And my background was graphic design as well. I did graphic design and web design and anything that would come across my table.

That led to a whole bunch of headaches as well. I mean, there was one job just to give you into not being really clear on what you do. I had a lead developer with me and he was.

I could see he was getting a little bit bored with the work. It is quite repetitive. We've got processes that we always follow. So the end product is always consistently high quality.

It is monotonous and it can get boring because you're following the same thing every day. The designs come out the same and there's always different nuance to every website.

But the process, I could see he was just getting a little bit bored. And he'd been with me a number of years by that time.

This opportunity came along to do a website that was completely outside the scope of what we've ever done before, needed different software, a whole bunch of other things. It was a dating website. It was before the apps.

Everyone's on apps who are in the dating world these days, but it was a website to connect people and subscription and all that kind of stuff, but a whole bunch of other sophisticated things back then, pretty advanced. I said to the lead developer, hey, I don't know how to build this website, do you? And he said, yeah, sure, I know how to do that.

And he put the proposal together. All the scoping, everything, the timelines and estimates, everything was done by him because I didn't know anything about it and I trusted him.

So he did it. We won the project for two weeks into the project, I think it was about two weeks, and it was a lengthy, massive project, he quit.

So you're the only guy on team who knew how to do it. What that meant was I was spending midnight hours figuring it out myself and doing all that grunt work and just so many hours.

I stopped counting the hours spent on it because I just didn't want to get depressed the loss if I considered my own time in it. So we got the job done and launched and the client was completely unaware of all the heartache and pain I was going through.

But at the end of that launched, she actually sold that business, did really well out of it. I'm glad she did because the apps eventually took over that industry. At the end of it, I thought, right, I'm just going to stick to my lane.

I'm going to do what we're really great at and I don't want to deviate away from that ever again. So in such a great large degree, other people said, well, you've learned the dating website thing now, maybe that you could make that your niche.

I just couldn't stomach it anymore. It caused me too much pain. Lesson learned the hard way for sure.

Freddy D: 00:15:13

Yeah, I can appreciate that myself.

And I've seen other people where they've all of a sudden they've got something on their hands in a project and it looks like it's going to pretty simple and then it turns like you just said, it turns into a beast. You can't go back to the client and said, oops, I under quoted this or this is much more complicated.

You're in this position where you've got to deal with it and you got to deliver.

I can appreciate what you went through because I have gone through that in my career in the past where all of a sudden it's like, whoa, this is not going to be so fun.

Wes Tower: 00:15:44

Yeah, it happens from time to time. The curious one thing with that somewhat frustrating was there was just so much in the site.

It did so many things that the client thought would be useful for the of the site. But a lot of those things people never used. So we ended up stripping out a lot of that hard work anyway.

And it just really did become a simple dating website where you just get your membership level and then you can connect what you could do. You could see the people's profiles, but as soon as you wanted to connect with them, you had to pay the monthly fee.

But there was so many other things that you could do as a community or she wanted it to be like a community. No one was interested in any of that. So a lot of the man hours and the time spent were effectively a waste of time.

Freddy D: 00:16:25

Wes, tell us a little bit about where you've came into a customer in a construction industry where you've redid their whole branding, their online digital marketing, and it's really transformed their business to where now they're one of your biggest champions, or as I like to call them, business super fans and they're out promoting you and a certain what you did for them to all the people that they know, which is getting you much more business.

Wes Tower: 00:16:49

Yeah, and that's the key, isn't it? And especially in this day and age of AI where people can mass produce content and look like they're the real deal, but they're not.

And so there's a lack of trust. I think what you're communicating with the superfans philosophy is the future of business.

If you're not building super fans, which can be referral partners, but collaborations, but the real connection of people passing on a bit of your trust to another person who you also trust and making those strong, solid connections, I think that's the future and certainly my business has been built on a lot of referrals. We're digital marketers, we do websites, we do all the digital stuff, but still the relationships.

Doing a quality job so that people do become super fans is the foundation for any small business. But the one story that just springs to mind because it's reasonably fresh is we had a client didn't write his content initially.

He had his site for a while. He had a different challenge.

He was getting lots and lots of leads through his inquiry forms and phone calls ended up being frustrating because they weren't really a great match. They certainly needed his service offering, but with the smaller end style of work, it was just time consuming.

He has a B2B solution, business to business, but then B2C and it was most of the inquiries were B2C. So these people needed so much hand holding. So their projects and they were one off projects where a B2B.

For him, business to business is repeat ongoing work that's consistent and more reliable. For him. We just reworked all his content within his website to focus purely on his ideal client.

And there was a little bit of fear in that because he was concerned, hey, maybe this is going to turn off all my opportunities. We had to get that balance right a little bit.

But we just explained to him, and this is just comes from years of experience, if you aim for the very best client or customer, then you're likely to get the other ones by accident anyway. That's Definitely what happened.

So all of a sudden when we reworked his content, we freshened up the design and so on as well because it was looking a little dated. The lead flow, it did diminish quite a bit. But the quality of the leads were so much greater than they were before.

So the inquiries were coming through and they were good opportunities because they were business to business.

They were likely to be ongoing work and they're the people more likely in your philosophy of becoming superfans because if it's a one off project they might get that and then they forget about you. Even if you do a wonderful job, they may forget about you because it was just a small part of their life and their journey and they move on.

But when you've got people working with you ongoingly, you do build that ongoing relationship and there's that trust element that that's built over time. And so all of a sudden there's his early days. But I believe he'll start to see a greater level of referrals coming through and superfans being built.

And he can invest more time into these people now because he's not constantly having to deal with the smaller ones who were taking up all of his time. He's a micro business and I think he's got an admin assistant, that's it.

So changed his world just by changing his message, Just adapting his message and cleaning up the design a little bit.

The other issue he had with the website was it was fairly confusing because over the course of the years he kept adding new things in which somewhat useful but it diluted the core message of what he was trying to offer and the benefits.

Sometimes you just get so stuck on the process as a business because that's what you do day in, day out and you think that's really important, but the end customer only cares about the outcome, what they were trying to achieve. And so we adjusted some of those things. Small tweaks, massive impact for him. He's already sent some referrals through and it's such early days.

You look at our website, you'll see we've done heaps of steel. Come company websites as well.

What happens is you get kind of known in a certain job and what happens is the marketing person will change jobs, change companies and so you kind of follow them around as well. That's a huge plus. And they'll typically stay in a similar industry. So that steel is building material.

So it fits into our trades construction niche with anything to do with the trades and construction we serve in. So you Do a great job and things flow naturally and build strong relationships as well. It's really foundational.

Freddy D: 00:20:47

Yeah. Because that's a super fan that's actually worked with you in one company and goes to another company and he says, hey, we got this challenge.

Oh, I know somebody, I know Wes can come in here and help it out. If you didn't have that relationship, they wouldn't be doing that. They would be looking at other vendors and everything else.

The other thing that I think a lot of people overlook, especially in the trades businesses and especially in the B2C aspect of it, is they'll do a great job for a customer. They'll do a kitchen remodel, bathroom remodel, whatever it is, and that's it. They get the project done. They don't reach back out.

And it just baffles me because all those people, they're not one offs necessarily. This is. Well, they're never going to get a kitchen remodeled again. We just did it. But they know 250 people.

Typically you get a sphere and that could be a referral source of advocate that would say, hey, they might be at their church, they might be at their playing golf, whatever it is. And if conversation can come up and it says, oh yeah, I know this XYZ construction company, they did a fabulous job on my place.

Those opportunities are mind boggling how they're squandered because again, it's the one and done mindset and it's not the fact that that's a potential sales rep for me.

Wes Tower: 00:22:03

Yeah, that's so true. We've actually got a proposal out. I'm pretty confident we'll win for a styling. They style houses for sale.

So they'll go into an empty house and they'll put in the beautiful furniture and artwork and style so people can see might be like in the home with wonderful furniture.

Freddy D: 00:22:20

Yeah, we call that staging.

Wes Tower: 00:22:21

Staging. Yeah, staging. That's right. That's what they call it here too. Looking at their current website, it doesn't really speak to the real estate agents.

In part of the process of talking to the client, we've proposed that we focus on the real estate agents.

Building out portions of the website to attract the real estate agents and make it super simple for them to connect and build relationships with the stylist styler.

So if you can build a relationship with the real estate agent who's selling houses every single day as opposed to the end customer who's selling a house. I don't know how many houses people typically have, but maybe through their life. But maybe it's a couple of times they sell a home.

Who knows, might be two or three times and a number of years in between, in between drinks. That's a pretty hard way to build a sustainable long term business with a consistent steady lead flow.

Getting those messages really right for the thinking about who comes before the buying decision of what you sell. Sometimes in their instance, the real estate agent is selected and what's the next step to the styling?

Thinking through what are my ideal clients buying before they buy my thing? Sometimes that's a good way of thinking about it.

Freddy D: 00:23:24

I mean you remind me when I was going through a divorce back 20 some years ago, I ended up being lucky and I got two realtors and they were both females and it worked out because my ex wife didn't like one of them, but she liked the other one. So it worked and we got the whole thing done. I had to sell the house and et cetera. So until the dust settled, I moved into an apartment and.

And I was planning on buying a house afterwards. Ironically, I don't understand why they never kept in contact with me.

A year later when everything was all done and everything else, I was ready to go buy a house and I didn't remember them. I didn't find their cards anywhere or anything else. So I ended up, I was part of a networking group.

I ended up going with the realtor in the networking group and I ended up buying a house and then I ended up buying an investment property.

Those two ladies completely blew it because if they would have stayed in contact with me, they would have got the business and probably for other business down the road and they disappeared.

Wes Tower: 00:24:24

Yeah, happens all the time, doesn't it? It can be challenging to keep in contact with everybody all of the time.

There's ways to stay visible as well and that's where the online world can really enhance that as well. To stay front of mind.

And so to publish on social media, for example, and people who choose to do so will connect and see your friendly face pop up from time to time or your brand. Just remember that you even exist because we're all so busy we even forget people exist.

We might have had a great experience at a company, but if there's no points of contact for a while, how would we ever remember them? And we certainly won't be super fans.

Freddy D: 00:25:02

There's tools that you can use. I use a tool that for example, sends out birthday cards. I've got customers that I've dealt with and people that I've met that have Birthdays.

And I have the system and it automatically sends out birthday cards through the mail and they actually get a physical card and then they also get sometimes a gift. That depends on who they are. That's how one of the ways I stay in contact with people.

And so every now and then I get a text message from somebody saying, oh my God, thank you so much. I can't believe you remembered my birthday. And he says, oh, no big deal. I'm not telling them it's on an automated system, but it is.

I'm leveraging technology, but I'm staying in contact with them in an old school way. Because in marketing, everybody's gone digital digital. But what really still works is old school direct mail marketing. Yeah, it still works.

It's one of the best, most powerful marketing methods that's out there. And we overlook it because we're all caught up in all the digitals and the smartphone and everything else.

But at the end of the day, you get something in the mail that's personal.

Wes Tower: 00:26:04

Yeah.

Freddy D: 00:26:05

You go, wow, it's a game changer.

Wes Tower: 00:26:07

Yeah. I'd love to find out more about that tool. Maybe you should drop it in the show notes as well because that sounds amazing.

Anything that's tactile and tangible is so powerful in a digital age.

Freddy D: 00:26:17

I usually have a water bottle because one of the things I talk about is I have a water bottle, but it's in my other room is if you send something with someone's logo on it. So swag, as we call it. Right. Who's it about? About the company. Right. Who cares?

Wes Tower: 00:26:32

Yeah.

Freddy D: 00:26:33

Right? You don't care.

Wes Tower: 00:26:34

Yeah.

Freddy D: 00:26:35

Okay. Tank's nice. It's on the shelf. However, if I have your logo and I put your name on it. So I put Wes on the thing.

Now, whose coffee cup or water bottle it is, it's yours.

Wes Tower: 00:26:47

Yeah.

Freddy D: 00:26:47

It's got your name on it.

Wes Tower: 00:26:48

Personalized.

Freddy D: 00:26:49

That little thing, that little personalization automatically flips it from being all about you, which nobody cares, to all about the other person. Yeah. And so now all of a sudden it's, this is my coffee cup. Even though it's got your branding.

So it might have uplift360 on there, but it says Freddie D. Well, that's my coffee cup from these guys.

Wes Tower: 00:27:12

Yeah, that's so true. Anything that you can go that extra mile and if you can set up systems like your automated cards as well, it's just so powerful.

I've got the philosophy, I mean, as we know, I'm a digital guy, we do websites, we do SEO, we call it search everywhere optimization. But in my view, the goal of, say, social media, for example, it's to get them off social media into your website and they web.

A goal for the website is to get them off the website into. To us, conversation. Typically for our clients, it starts with some form of conversation.

Even if it's an email, it's a personal connection, which everything we're doing on the online world is all geared around creating that human connection so a sale can be made effectively.

Freddy D: 00:27:51

Another thing that I've done is reached out to somebody on LinkedIn and if I see it's their birthday, I always strive to wish them a happy birthday if I don't have a mailing address or whatever. Because one of my sayings is the little thing things are really the big things.

And that's a little thing to send me to take two minutes to send somebody a happy birthday message. But that may be a big thing to them.

Wes Tower: 00:28:15

Yeah.

Freddy D: 00:28:16

Another thing that's a good time to really build those relationships is you don't have it in Australia per se, but I always tell, especially for US market, is Halloween is a great time to recognize people because it's a fun, goofy time time. And I had a mortgage guy send out cards to all his customers and he took a picture and put himself in a costume on the front of the car.

And he thought it was the wackiest idea. He thought it was completely nuts. But he was humoring me into doing it because I told him, hey, give this a whirl.

He was stunned on all the calls he got from people saying, wow, that was so funny and so something. And he ended up getting several refi. Mortgages and everything out of. Of the thing.

Wes Tower: 00:29:00

Yeah. That's brilliant.

Freddy D: 00:29:01

The other time I tell people of again, in the US we have Thanksgiving, it says, flip it around. It's giving thanks. That's the perfect time to say, hey, I appreciate you as a customer.

I want to just take a moment to thank you for the business we've done. We've grown. Our company's expanded because of you and everything else. Because people want to know that they're dealing with the successful company.

Yeah. So it's okay to tell them that you're. You're growing and you're making money because that's why they're with you.

Wes Tower: 00:29:30

Yeah.

Freddy D: 00:29:31

And we get caught up in thinking, oh, I don't want to tell them that I just bought a new Mercedes or whatever it is. No, they're happy. Yeah.

Wes Tower: 00:29:38

And then the thing when you start to introduce People into your. An aspect of your personal world as well. There's more relatability in that as well because they might do the same things.

They might celebrate Halloween, for example, and they've done similar costumes, but it's making you less stuffy as well. So all of a sudden he's seen as a fun and relatable guy.

He's got more dimensions than just the business aspect, which I'm sure he does really well too. But people like to work with people that they know like and trust that like factor likability.

Freddy D: 00:30:06

Exactly. Those are some things we're sharing is that people can do is sometimes you got to get out of the business mode.

I mean, I've told the story numerous times. I was selling to one of my superfans. Customers was a mold shop. They made mold molds for plastic injection molds.

And the IT guy that I was typically dealing with and he worked for several of the different companies. I was in there for a business meeting and I noticed he wasn't in his right space.

I could tell visually and stuff was going on and I asked him, hey, what's going on, Bob?

He goes, well, my wife asked for a divorce and I said, let's go, we're going to the restaurant, let's go have a couple pints and let's talk and forget about the business. He didn't need business that day. He needed a friend to be able to just talk.

Wes Tower: 00:30:51

Yeah, that's so good. When people step inside their world and help them out in their need. And that's a massive point in your life, isn't it?

When you're going through something like that, you certainly need people in your corner. I can see he'd be a super fan for life for sure. When someone's taken a while. Yeah, for sure.

Freddy D: 00:31:08

Yeah. We're still friends. And that's how you differentiate yourself. Sometimes you gotta stop with the business.

Because I use the example of Sir Richard Branson, he says there's no difference between work and personal life. It's called life. Hello. And that's really it. It's. You're living.

Wes Tower: 00:31:24

Yeah. Another one too.

Just what you were speaking about then is sometimes it's better to pass on refer work onto perceived competitors if they are genuinely better fit for a certain thing. Sometimes we'll have a scarcity mindset, so we're just. Just try and do everything.

It doesn't go to the competitor, but refer on the competitor if they're genuinely going to do a better job for that particular scenario. Because they might be Better niched or have some sort of specialty, it always comes back to you.

But the trust you build in sending work away, it always comes back and pays off dividends. It's just breaking out of that scarcity mindset and having an abundance mindset really is helpful in. In that form of relationship building too.

Freddy D: 00:32:05

Yeah, you bring up a great point there, Wes, because that really separates the leaders from those that are trying to get there. Because a leader will actually do that, will say, hey, you know what, we could sort of do it, but these guys are much better.

And I'll refer them to you, or you can contact and use my name that I gave them to them. And you'll get a call because I've done it. And so I know exactly what you're talking about.

And I'll get the other guy to call me up and go, wow, thank you so much. I really appreciate that. I'm going to emphasize it from this perspective. In the early 90s, there was a guy that I used to sell against.

He was a competitor and we were like two samurai warriors. We would bow, we would go into the customer and one of us would win, one of us would lose. We would bow and see it to the next time.

Well, I'm still friends with this guy. Don calls me up one day and what's he doing calling me? And he goes, hey, I want to buy you lunch. What? And so we go to lunch.

It turned out he was getting promoted to major accounts in the company. This was a bigger company company. He's getting promoted, major accounts. He wanted me to take over his district.

Wes Tower: 00:33:10

That's awesome. Such a huge opportunity.

Freddy D: 00:33:14

Yeah, it was a huge opportunity because of what you just said, though. That was it. Having integrity and creating super fans even with your competitors.

Wes Tower: 00:33:22

Yeah, so true. A couple of weeks back, I was at a networking type of event and there was one of the competitors, really close.

So if you looked on the Google map, if you show up on the map app for searching for web development in our area, he's like right next door. And so I never met him before, but he was there and I said, oh, you're. You're Nathan. We're in similar industries. Oh, you're Wes. Yeah.

Great to meet you. And so we're going. He runs another networking group. He said, now come along.

It'd be great for you to connect with my group of buddies at the networking. He runs it. I thought that's the way to do business and life, not to be fearful of your competitors.

He'll do some things differently to Me and some people like his style better than mine and vice versa. There's plenty of work for both of us in this small town, the best way to do it. So he's doing the exact same thing.

So he's prepared to introduce me to his world, which is I thought was amazing too.

Freddy D: 00:34:12

So let's kind of wrap up here. What's all the services that you guys offer?

Wes Tower: 00:34:16

Well, website design is sort of the foundational thing. We think your website should be your core pillar in your digital presence. So that's foundational for us. Website design and development.

We're doing what we call search everywhere optimization. Everyone knows about SEO, search engine optimization, but it's not just about showing up in Google anymore.

Once upon a time that was the highest priority and it's still really important that there's obviously large language models people are using these days. And even in Google things are changing somewhat with the AI overview.

So you're getting your answer on platform, so on Google, on ChatGPT, whatever it is when you're researching.

So really building people's brands, personal brands and company brands so they show up in all the right places when people are doing their research and ideally being brought into their world through the online, into their website and into being a customer. So it's been really exciting and fun and it's changing all the time.

With AI, we're getting a lot of inquiries of how we tinker with strategies as well. Because a lot of people have been doing SEO for many years and it was simple back in the day.

So you'd target your ideal keywords, typically your service and your location if it's a service based business. But now with large language models that really understands the context and nuance of language, that's what they're there for.

Adapting the keywords into topics of conversation and therefore creating content around those conversational topics to attract the attention of large language models effectively. It's been really powerful for a lot of clients. People are getting some really solid wins.

There was a consultant, we did the work for a little while back and just a few weeks ago he rang and say I want to give you some feedback on the work that you did. He left a message. I rang him back the next day, it was quite late and he said, thanks so much for the work you did, we've just won $140,000 contract.

And he said he didn't know how they found him, but he was asking them the question and they said we found you. On ChatGPT, I was having a conversation looking for the very best consultant in his field in Australia.

And so this was a company, a plumbing company a long way from where we are here in Geelong, just outside of Melbourne. They were in Brisbane, quite a distance away, but they chose him because he was perceived, he was, was said to be the best by ChatGPT.

That's the work we're kind of doing and getting excited by these days.

Freddy D: 00:36:25

Yeah, that's where the whole game is changing now. It's completely changing. I mean, by the minute almost.

Wes Tower: 00:36:32

Yeah, yeah. I've been doing a fair few podcasts and people are looking for the secret sauce around AI and all that kind of stuff.

It's a challenging space to speak about because it is changing so fast.

And I don't think anyone's genuinely expert in all of it because even the people who create AI and the software and the tech, they don't even know precisely how it works half the time. It's a wild frontier.

But I have the long term view that they're trying to surface the very best information for the need in which someone's searching for to produce that quality content that can be found and answers the questions people might be having. They're getting better and better at surfacing the best information.

We're sticking to that and playing the long term game, not looking for loopholes or tricks. And these things might work for the short term, but we don't want to set up our clients up for long term failure.

We want to set them up for the long term growth.

Freddy D: 00:37:19

Well, as we kind of come to the end here, Wes, great conversation. How can people find you?

Wes Tower: 00:37:24

The easiest thing to do is just jump on our website uplift360.com and from there there's all the socials that you would expect. You can find the little links there. Even my personal LinkedIn is there.

And if people want to talk further, maybe about what we've discussed today, you can book a meeting with me through the website. You'll see, see the meeting link right in the, on the homepage there.

Freddy D: 00:37:46

We'll make sure that's in our show notes. And again, great conversation, thank you for your time and we definitely would love to have you on the show down the road again.

Wes Tower: 00:37:54

Fantastic. I've really enjoyed it.

Freddy D: 00:37:55

Thanks, Wes.

Freddy D: 00:37:58

What really stood out in today's conversation with Wes is this reminder. Clarity creates momentum. When you know exactly who you serve, what problem you solve and stay in your lane, everything gets easier.

Your messaging, your marketing, and most importantly, the quality of the clients you attract. For service based business owners, that's a game changer.

Growth doesn't come from chasing everyone, it comes from attracting the right people, building trust over time, and turning great relationships into long term superfans.

Wes's journey shows us that when you focus on outcomes, relationships and consistency, referrals stop becoming accidental and start becoming predictable.

And that's what we talk about here on Business Superfans building businesses that don't rely on hustle alone, but on trust, alignment and real human connection. If you enjoyed today's conversation, make sure to hit subscribe and follow the show so you don't miss future episodes packed with insights like this.

And if you're serious about building a service business that actually compounds instead of constantly resetting, start with the Service Provider Prosperity Playbook that I wrote recently.

It's a hundred plus page step by step guide built from decades of real world experience helping service business entrepreneurs align their people, processes and profitability so growth becomes predictable, scalable and sustainable. No fluff, no theory, just practical frameworks, clear examples and proven strategies you can apply immediately.

You can get the entire playbook free when you join the Entrepreneur Prosperity Hub on School platform. And yes, the hub is also 100% free to join inside the hub. You won't just read about growth, you'll activate it.

Join free and get the Service Provider Prosperity playbook at school. S K-O-O-L.com eprosperityhub thanks for listening today.

Freddy D: 00:40:06

By showing up, you've already proven you.

Freddy D: 00:40:09

Care about growth, impact and building business Superfans. Remember, one action, one stakeholder, one superfan closer for lasting prosperity.

Intro: 00:40:19

We hope you took away some useful knowledge from today's episode of the Business Superfans Podcast. Join us on the next episode as we continue guiding you on your journey to achieve flourishing success in business.