Why content is the future of business

Welcome to a very special live episode of No Bullsh*t Talks.
I’m so excited to kick off the third season of this podcast.
I cannot believe we’re already at Season 3, and we have got so many amazing guests for you.
I cannot thank everyone enough for their support with the show.
We’re just growing and getting better, and that’s why we’re bringing you these live episodes where we are actually in front of a live audience.
You can actually buy tickets for the event, so stay tuned if you want to have some more details on that.
But I want to start off by saying a massive thank you to Drake and Morgan, who have been hosting our live podcast.
They are this fantastic venue space in London.
I know how difficult it is to run events. I run them every single week.
Drake and Morgan have been an incredible partner to NOBS, and they’ve just been so wonderful with their gorgeous space, their hospitality, the friendly staff, incredible food, and obviously delicious drinks.
So, I wanted to say a big thank you to them.
We hosted our podcast at Drake and Morgan in King’s Cross, but we’ve also had events all over London.
They’ve got so many different venues, and if you’re looking for a fantastic spot to host your event, or even just throw a massive dinner or a party, they are dog-friendly too.
We have dog brunches, honestly.
Beautiful space.
I cannot recommend them enough.
Big shout out to Drake and Morgan.
Thank you.
Without further ado, though, I want to start our special live podcast episodes.
Everything will look a little bit different, but we are going back to the usual format later.
For the next two episodes, you’ll enjoy a live format.
So, thank you for joining us.

How can I maximize the reward for the time that I put into things, right?
So, I think since 2022, I had the idea of shutting the business down and kind of exploring other avenues.
I got into consulting, I got into events, and started different businesses and all the shiny objects and those sorts of things.
I think the real killer for me was hiring the wrong people.
I didn’t realize how much of an effect a single person can have on a team.
No Bullsh*t Talks is a podcast for entrepreneurs, by entrepreneurs.
There’s too much bullshit out there, especially when it comes to business.
This podcast aims to highlight what’s true and what’s not in the world of entrepreneurship, bringing you honest and raw conversations about the roller coaster that is entrepreneurship.
Each week, my guest will be a high-performing entrepreneur sharing the ups and downs of their journey and helping you prepare for the road ahead while providing you with actionable insights and absolute gems of knowledge.
Stay tuned as I introduce this week’s guest.
Jack Gaisford is the founder of the Content Club, an online community for those who want to up their content game.
He’s a former agency owner and video expert who’s built a big personal brand for himself on LinkedIn using video.
Now, he teaches others to do the same.
I now present to you this week’s guest, Jack Gaisford.

Thank you all to those who are still here, and sorry it’s been late, but hopefully this is—I know it’s going to be a great conversation.
I’m so happy to welcome Jack Gaisford here, who actually was my first ever guest on my podcast in season one.
So, that was season one on Zoom. You were my first ever guest, which was really cool. And now you’re back for season 3.
I’m back live and in person.
Live and in person, and doing a completely different business.
It’s very true, which is why I want to talk about that because I want to show that it’s not just sunshine and rainbows in business. We’ve had lots of really honest, open, and frank conversations about how bloody tough it is running a business.
We were talking about the highs and lows earlier. We were saying actually there haven’t been that many. It’s just been quite, you know,
shits.
Yeah.
Consistently shits, and it’s just been really tough. I actually distinctly remember calling you at some point and being like, “Why are Gen Z people so difficult to work with?” No, that’s not quite what it was like.
I’m like, “Oh, I’m finding it really hard,” and I had to ask you for advice about the Gen Z generation. But at least I did that as opposed to being like, “Screw all you Gen Z people. Apparently you’re all lazy,” and that’s what the narrative is, or what people are like.
I’m like, “Okay, how do I actually get through to people, understand it, and not be a millennial.” Which is what I think a lot of people do.
I’ve really appreciated that really open and honest relationship we’ve had.
I was reminding you because you forgot how we met. I was saying that actually I met Jack, I think it was 2018 now.
2018. Long time.
Yeah, probably.
Yeah, probably.
And you’d just started your business, which was V21 because you were 21 years old, which is a video agency.
It was V21. Video 21.
Video 21. There you go. Super creative.
He dropped into my DMs on LinkedIn and was just like, “Hey, I can see you’re running an agency. Do you do any video? Because if not, we should chat.”
It’s basically like that, but less cringe.
I really admired how you were. You were so young, and I went through your content. We chatted, and I really liked what you do.
The reason why I think you stood out is because you were on LinkedIn every day back in 2018. Bear in mind this was before the LinkedIn boom, which is now another world.
You were creating high-quality videos pretty much every day on LinkedIn in 2018 at the age of 21. Again, before video was such a big thing, before LinkedIn was a big thing, and you were smashing it.
I was just like, “Damn, okay. This guy’s actually making an effort and really, really working hard.”
For me, that made you stand out from the crowd because it was like, “Okay, you’re not a young kid trying to look for the quick win, trying to do things, looking for the hacks and doing all that sort of stuff.”
You were like, “Right, I care about my stuff.”
So, I guess I want to hear a little bit of backstory before we talk about what you’re doing now.
Tell us about what made you start your video agency, I guess, what your vision was for it, and what actually then happened.
I started when I was 21. I started my first production company after working with my dad, who ran a recruitment agency in the UK that was quite big at the time.
I saw this massive gap for personal branding on LinkedIn at the time.
We started to make video. I think we were probably one of only two people making video content on LinkedIn at the time.
He smashed it—80K followers in about six months.
Kind of smashed it.
Turned it into a service. Started to get clients for myself. Started to build my own personal brand. Started to make more video.
It kind of became this really nice flywheel system that really worked.
Yeah, that’s kind of the condensed story anyway, but that’s sort of how it all started.
Yeah. I think I remember asking on the first podcast episode, and you got really offended.
I was like, “Who’s more popular on LinkedIn, you or your dad?”
I still get offended now by it. Every conversation my dad gets brought up.
Is that because he’s more popular than you?
Yeah.
Thanks, Sabrina.
You’re welcome.
Go search Mark. He’s really popular.
No, don’t do that. Don’t do that.
I’m joking.
I’ve never had Mark on the podcast, so you’ll be on twice.
That’s true.
So, who’s actually the real one?
Yeah, exactly.

But I think what I love is talking about the agency world because I know there’s at least one other agency owner in here, or a previous agency owner, who we talk about stuff with.
I think agency world gets glamorized, and there’s all this kind of talk around growing and scaling. Obviously, this is your realm. This is what you do. I just think there’s a lot of bullshit.
Our name was actually literally No Bullshit Agency for that reason because there is just so much bullshit around agency world. There seems to be a lot of bravado in it, and also around scaling and growth.
Talk about your journey because you obviously started in 2018, but then you closed it in 2024.
Yes.
So, six years is a long stint, but what did that six-year journey look like?
I think in the earlier days of the agency, we got to a team of 10 by the age of 24—10 full-time staff—doing pretty good money.
I think I just reached this point where I felt like, to grow the business, we needed new clients. To get new clients and support those clients, we needed a bigger team.
It kind of became this ladder game where, on the surface, from an optics standpoint, it looked great. We were growing really fast, doing good money, working with big brands, blue-chip, Fortune 500 global brands, which is great.
But under the surface, when you take out the cost of the team, you take out the cost of VAT and tax and all the shit stuff, you’re left with maybe 5% to 10% margins.
For me, it was like I just didn’t… I felt like I could put a lot of my skill set and effort into something else that would reward me greater than agency life.
I think that was what it was.
I also think it was because when I started in video production in 2018, I checked this earlier, there were 3,971 production companies in the UK.
Is that it?
In the UK. That’s it. That was it.
Now, there’s 17,500.
The supply is outweighing the demand, in my opinion.
The problem is, because the barrier to entry into the industry has become significantly lower in terms of kit costs, AI, and people coming out of university and calling themselves professionals because they shot their second cousin’s dad’s sister’s wedding or whatever it is.
It hurts us when we’re a reputable business, we’ve got this team, we’ve got all this serious kit, we work with all these big brands, and suddenly someone’s coming in at like 20% of the cost and still somehow managing to make money.
It didn’t make sense for me to keep it going, I guess.
It was a harder conversation with the guys because some of them were kind of like family.
When you’ve spent six years with people, you kind of love them in a way. Some of them you hate, but most of them you kind of love.
It was tough.
But now I feel much more purpose-driven. I feel happier, healthier, fitter.
Yeah.
Yeah, that’s really good.
I mean, that’s what we’re trying to aim for, right?
I think that especially in the agency world, it’s so cutthroat, and there’s this thing that you must basically kill yourself until you exit.
That’s kind of what it is.
It’s like, “Yes, you must grow, grow, grow. Burn out. It doesn’t matter. That’s just part of the journey.”
Like, you have to do it. If you’re not doing it, then you’re not taking it seriously enough. You have to put all your effort into it. Give up seeing your friends, give up your family, whatever.
You must get to an exit, and you have to sell your business.
That’s kind of the mentality in the agency world. It’s very, very dangerous.
I spoke about this with Holly on the podcast as well. Exiting is not all it’s made out to be.
Holly actually said it. Holly and Adam both said it on the podcast. Listen to it.
They basically said that they think their exits were the worst parts of their lives.
Related to the exit, it’s everything you wish for, and then your world collapses.
Yeah.
They glamorize this, but if that’s what you’re fighting for, you’re like, “What is the bloody point?”
Like you’re saying, you then saw that there was an exit there that looked so much better, and we’re going to talk about that.
I just want to spend a few minutes talking about the hard stuff because I know there are going to be people here thinking, “Should I start an agency?”
I’m in front of so many rooms where there are people at the start of their journey. Whether they’re marketers, content creators, or whatever stage they’re at, I do so many talks.
Then I get a question. They go, “Okay, so I want to start an agency. What advice have you got for me to start an agency?”
I have to refrain from saying, “Don’t.”
I don’t say that, but I’m always asking, “Why do you want to start the agency?”
The most common answer is, “Because I want more freedom.”
Yeah, you’re laughing because that’s ironic as hell, because that’s the last thing you’re going to see if you start an agency.
You get way more freedom as a freelancer.
They also go, “Oh, it’s more kudos.”
They’re like, “I think it’s better for me.”
I get it.
I’m not saying that agency life is bad. I’m saying it’s tough.
I’m saying that what is out there, and what a lot of advisers or people talking about it are saying, isn’t quite what it actually is in reality.
I know we were talking earlier about how many times you say to yourself, “If only I could just be employed.”
Like, “I’ll give up my business,” or whatever.
Shutting down your business is a daily conversation you have with yourself.
There was a point, I think in October 2022, where I really considered it.
So, I decided to call 37 of my agency friends that I respected and whose agency businesses I really admired.
I decided to just ask them straight out, “What’s going on? How are you feeling right now? What are the ups and downs?”
I asked them all one question.
I said, “Are you happy?”
Of the 37, how many do you think said yes?
You got it right.
Zero.
I would’ve thought so.
Yeah.
Zero.
Not a single one was like, “Yeah, I’m happy.”
Some of them were like, “Oh, define happiness.”
Or like, “Well, you know, it’s hard.”
I’m like, “Is that a yes or no?”
Not a single person said yes.
That’s when I realized, “Oh my God.”
This is why. Why are we doing this?
What people see online is not what it actually is in reality.
I love my life. Don’t get me wrong.
I am happy.
But I’m also now not fully running an agency as my main thing.
That’s probably why.
But I wasn’t.
I was miserable.
It might have been my mindset with money and my relationship with money. It really probably was.
I was like, “Oh my God, bad stuff’s going to happen,” because it probably did.
Actually, if I did have a mindset coach, I might be better at that.
It’s a fair few things.
I think things are done badly.
But I think we’ve talked about that a lot.

And it takes a lot to close something that you’ve been working on for six years because there’s a sunk cost fallacy. Everyone’s like, “But I put six years of my sweat and tears into this. How can I give it up?”
I want to talk through that first before we talk about the happy stuff.
Let’s break through this. This is therapy.
Sure.
Let’s break through this pain. Talk us through the decision because we talked about this. It’s like, “Would it be so much easier if I shut down the business?” There’s thinking about it. There’s drowning yourself in a glass of champagne about it. Then there’s actually doing it.
Run us through it because, like you said, you’re working with great brands. Your work’s amazing.
Bear in mind, you also just spent 20 grand on a new rebrand, right?
Forty.
Okay, 40 grand on a rebrand. Let’s just say that.
I mean, just to bring that up. It looked sick.
It was cool.
I went to your new launch. It was so cool.
I was like, and you were like, “Yeah, this is the agency 2.0. It’s a new era.”
It was really cool.
You seemed hyped, and then you were like, “Yeah, no.”
Yeah.
I’m like, “So, talk us through this because it was crazy.”
I think it was… I’ve always been a very philosophical person.
I’ve always been thinking, “How can I maximize the reward for the time that I put into things?”
Since 2022, I had the idea of shutting the business down and exploring other revenue.
I got into consulting. I got into events and started different businesses and all the shiny objects and those sorts of things.
I think the real killer for me was hiring the wrong people.
I didn’t realize how much of an effect a single person can have on a team.
Naivety of being 26 at the time when I hired those people.
I’m still like that, and I’m 38.
Fine. Okay. Fine.
That makes me feel better.
I still do that.
That makes me feel better.
No, it’s still…
Yeah.
Yeah, that’s good.
Okay, I’m glad that’s the case because it kind of just killed it, really.
I think it became this point where I created a really nice job for myself, and I was hiring people that were on sort of double or triple my salary, and kind of thinking, “You do like a third of the work that I do.”
I just didn’t like doing it.
I completely fell out of love with it.
I fell out of passion for it.
The industry, I felt, was just in a bit of a shambles as well.
I think creatives aren’t valued as much as they once were.
For most people now, done is okay, and okay is kind of fine.
When you have someone charging a lot of money for that finesse and that perfection touch, they don’t even appreciate it.
You are kind of churned and burned as an agency.
I think it got to the point where, in 2022, we’d been working with this client for three years on retainer. Big brand.
Had a great relationship with them.
It came up to renewal, and I was like, “We’ve got to go through a tender process. We’ve got to get five different agencies to tick all the boxes.”
I just thought, “We do great work for you guys already. Why have we got to go through this whole process?”
They chose someone else because they were 10% cheaper.
It kind of made me think, “What’s the point?”
This is the way the industry is going.
This was the early days of it.
At the end of 2023, which was the rough fucking year, I said to my kind of business partner-ish sort of person, “I’m going to rebrand it.”
“I don’t enjoy it now. I think it needs a big refresh.”
“I’m going to bring it a new lease of life.”
Spent a fortune rebranding it.
Lots and lots of hype.
Trying to create almost like the fire up my backside again and refuel that energy for it.
I thought that would solve the problem, but I was kind of ignoring the culture aspects and the industry changes as well.
We launched it as Odyssey in 2024, which you came to the launch party for.
That was in May 2024.
About five months later, it was just the same problems popping up again.
Cultural problems.
Client problems.
I just thought, “I can’t be bothered.”
So I sat the team down in a room like this, and I just came in and said, “Guys, I’m letting you all go tomorrow.”
It was rough.
Rough.
How did you go from that though?
You went from spending 40 grand, and you were like, “Right, yeah.”
Know that I’m also just like…
I don’t mean to, but it’s quite a decision.
We’ve all done it with stuff.
We’ve tried to keep things, whether it’s a relationship.
You’re in a relationship, and you’re like, “Oh, but we can make it last.”
“Let’s go on another holiday,” and spark some romance into it or something.
I’m so glad my fiancé’s gone, by the way, in case he thinks I’m talking about him.
But it’s like that sort of thing.
You try to relight that fire, like you said.
You did that.
What then made you think…
Because I feel like a lot of people keep it going.
People do that.
Whether you stay in a job that you just don’t enjoy because you feel like, “Oh, I’m here. I could be on my next progression of my career.”
We’ve all done it.
Relationships, everything.
We all do that, right?
But how did you decide?
Because it was inevitably the right decision.
We’re only here and can only talk about it because you are happy, and it’s got a happy ending, which we’re going to get to.
I just really admire it.
I really admire that you could have the strength to be like, “I invested so much into this, but it was wrong.”
“I was wrong to have done this.”
“Actually, it’s better to cut it off.”
I don’t think most people have that strength.
A lot of people would have carried it on.
“I’ve just spent this much money doing it. Let’s try it out for at least another couple of years to justify this cost.”
Then be miserable and sink into burnout, depression, or whatever.
But you didn’t do that.
How did you come to that and decide this was the right decision for you?
I think you can always get more money, but you can’t get back more time.
For me, that was it.
My analogy for the whole situation is that it felt like we were in a plane that was falling out of the sky.
I hadn’t yet put my own oxygen mask on, but I was putting everybody else’s on.
Oh, God.
I think it made me realize I needed to look after myself a bit more.
Health.
Mental health.
Borderline depression.
Just eating shit.
Not seeing my partner for weeks on end because I was out on shoots.
There were people that thought I didn’t enjoy it.
It became a very negative thing.
Honestly, I just had enough of it.
That was kind of it.
At the end of the day, people are adults.
There’s no such thing as security in any job.
It literally was when I walked in, I just said, “Guys, I’m letting you all go.”
There wasn’t any fluff.
They’re all adults.
They can’t change my input, but they can change how they react to things.
That’s on them.
That’s not my issue.
If they have a problem with that, they need to do all that themselves.
It’s a little bit cutthroat.
That’s kind of business.
Ultimately, I did it for the benefit of myself, which sounds very me, me.
But I’m not there to please anybody else.
I’ve got a mortgage to pay, bills to pay, and family to sort out.
I’ve got to put my own oxygen mask on first.
That’s what they tell you to do as well.
They do tell you to do that, and so many of us don’t.
You’re saying it sounds cutthroat, but I’m also jealous because I don’t do that.
I put everyone else first.
I constantly get told, sort of calling someone today, “You need to start putting yourself first.”
I do that.
I am a victim of that, and it’s something that can get exploited.
I think there’s a balance.
You did it respectfully, like you said, and it was the right decision.
I have great relationships with the guys, by the way.
I’ve either got them other jobs, or I still work with them on a freelance basis, or support them with other work and stuff.
It’s not like it was, “That’s it. Out the door.”
It was very much like, “Look, you’ve put four years into the business. This is the situation I’m in.”
So, the respect was reciprocated.
Yes, they were frustrated with me, but they understood why I made that decision.
Some didn’t deal with it well.
Some did.
The ones that did, you know, don’t burn your bridges.
I think the ones that did respect that decision, we still have a really good relationship.
Well, I wouldn’t say friends, but we still have a good relationship with each other.
Yeah.
It depends on how you react.
You were just honest and transparent, and that’s what you can be.

It’s the good stuff. Finally.
So, can you tell everyone what you’re up to now and why you decided to do it and why it has made you feel like the best you again?
Yeah. Cool. So, I now run a community called the Content Club, which is essentially taking everything that I’ve learned over the last decade and condensing it into an online community for small business owners who want to level up their content within a group of other people that are kind of doing the same thing. So, it kind of speeds up the process, essentially.
It’s all online. We’re starting to do more in-person stuff as well. It’s only small, so it’s only been going since October, but we’re 78 members strong, which is great. We’ve got 500 people on the waiting list to get in, which is great.
It’s essentially condensing everything that I’ve learned because the thing is, you can find out how to make content on the internet for free, but it will take you a long time to be able to do that, getting all the right things and the tools and the knowledge.
I think once you amalgamate it into a space that is much more efficient, has everything in one place, and also you’re learning at a much faster speed because everyone’s making different mistakes. If I know you’ve made a mistake on this, well, that’s going to make me not do that, and I’m going to try something else. It speeds my process up as well.
There isn’t a space like that online. I think social media is getting so saturated with all this guru and expertise, and, you know, the whole consistency stuff and “you need to do this and this and this.” I think it kind of just removes the waffle. It removes the clutter and kind of just brings genuine supportive advice. I think that’s kind of what I’m all about.
I’ve kind of coined it as my… is it an ikigai? Ikigai?
Yeah, it’s a Japanese proverb.
Yeah, it’s basically like… yeah, it’s a Japanese concept that determines your purpose in life. So, your ikigai.
Yeah. It’s like the four parts.
Yeah. So, it’s essentially: What are you good at? What does the world need? What can you actually charge money for? And what do you love? The intersection of all four of those things is your ikigai.
Like you said, the world needs this. You love what you do, you’re good at it, and you can charge money for it. Therefore, it’s your ikigai. I think it’s this search for your purpose and your mission in life. It’s a Japanese cultural thing.
So, I found it at 28, which is great. So, yeah, it’s cool.
But it’s early days, and it’s a new business. There are always problems, but they’re just not the same problems as they were when it was agency life. It’s much more manageable stress. I haven’t got people to worry about. It’s kind of predictable revenue because people pay a monthly subscription for it. It’s only going to grow. It’s going to compound.
Yes, it’s super early days, so it doesn’t make sense financially to do it now because it’s really small. But in a year’s time, when you’ve got 300, 400, 500 members, it starts to make a bit more sense, you know.
I’m happy to commit those years to building that level of support.
I think it’s different because with an agency, you can build that and then suddenly COVID happens or something else happens, and all of those clients leave. Or they’ve had one client pull out, so now they pull out all their clients.
It’s slightly different with this because it’s such a small amount of money.
It just compounds and compounds and compounds.
So, yeah.
Yeah. And I know there’s a few people in the audience who have got communities or are trying to build communities. I’d love to hear more about your experience with that because I think community is a massive buzzword at the moment, right? I think everyone has a different impression of what community is as well.
Like I said, you’re new, but you’ve been doing really well with it. What has been your experience so far? For anyone who wants to build a community right now, what advice would you give them? How have you done it, and what’s worked well for you?
Like you said, the whole point of your Content Club is learning what hasn’t worked well and what has worked. So, what would you say has worked well and what hasn’t worked well?
I think, first and foremost, I just want to caveat that with: it is not passive at all.
Building a community is bloody hard work. It is ridiculously hard work. I’m working longer hours than I did in agency life.
Really?
Yeah. One hundred percent.
Okay, just for context, what does that look like at the moment?
I get up at five, start at six, and I won’t finish until eight, nine, maybe even later. Then, by the time you’re in bed, you’re thinking about it. You wake up thinking about it, and you talk to your partner about it. It’s kind of 24/7.
But I love it, so it’s different. It’s a nice thing. It’s a passion. If I wasn’t getting paid for it, I’d still probably do it. So, it’s different.
I’m not thinking about the client who hasn’t paid me for three months. I’m thinking about, “How do I help John make even better content?” It’s a nicer feeling because you actually really want to make something of it.
The thing is, if people win, I win. If they win, they refer people. If they refer people, it gets more members. If it gets more members, it brings in more cash. Then I can start to invest into it.
So, it’s a really nice system. It incentivizes me to genuinely help people. It’s not just package a service, flog it, do an alright job, and maybe they’ll return, maybe they won’t.
If I genuinely care, I talk to everyone in the club every single week, without a doubt. At least once or twice a week, I’ll message someone.
Yeah.
It’s just that connection, that communication, I think, is really valuable.
Please don’t tell me that the route to success is the 5 a.m. club because I just…
No, it’s not at all. I mean, I have one rule. If I’m getting up at 5 a.m., it has to be for a flight.
No, it’s not. It’s just not happening.
One hundred percent. But I do think if you want to build a thriving business, you have to put the hours in.
Yeah. Okay.

So, we… annoyingly, there’s no passive income. We all know the answer to that anyway.
Let’s be real. We’re a no [ __ ] podcast. There is no such thing as simple passive income because, if there was, everyone would be doing it, right?
Even the passive income streams that do work eventually take bloody ages to monetize over time and require a lot of work.
So, we know it’s hard work, but for those who have communities now and want to try to build them, what tactics or strategies have you used that have actually worked for you, and what would you avoid?
Awesome. So, with the limited knowledge that I have in four months of doing this, but with the knowledge that it has never not sold out, it always sells out as soon as I open the doors.
Nice.
It’s got hundreds of people on the waitlist to get into it.
I think there are a few things that I’ve done well with it so far, if I’m not going to, you know, lick my own ass a little bit there.
I think: create FOMO. Create scarcity. Make it feel like it’s something that people can’t just join whenever they want to. It’s like, “You have to be here at this time to become a member of this club.”
I think that qualifies the right people because you don’t want people coming in and then going, “This isn’t right for me. I’m going to cancel.” Then the churn is massive.
I think you want people who are dedicated to join your community and are willing to set an alarm in their diary to be there at a certain time to make sure that they get one of these limited spaces that you have.
I think create a waitlist for it as well.
I think people need time to understand whether it’s the right thing. Again, it’s all about qualifying people and that kind of quality control process.
I could let everyone in now, but from a community perspective, it would damage it massively because it would just be chaos. It’s not manageable, and it’s not sustainable.
I think communities only work when they are thriving, everyone is engaged, and everyone wants everyone else to win. It’s not a money thing. You need to build that support system, but that takes time.
I think you need to implement a bit of patience and a bit of persistence and know that it’s going to take time to build this amazing thing.
In the first year, nothing’s really going to happen that’s substantial.
I’ve been in lots of communities before where they have hundreds and hundreds of people, and the onboarding is [ __ ]. You don’t speak to the people who are inside it, you don’t connect with someone, and you don’t find your place straight away. If you haven’t clicked straight away, you tend to leave because you don’t know how to use it properly.
So, I think: limit the amount of people, create scarcity, create FOMO, build a community, be social within that space, and give it time.
That’s probably what I would say, but that’s with four months of knowledge.
Yeah. It’s a new business. It’s four months of knowledge with your, like, 20 hours a day that you’ve been doing. So, it’s quite a lot of knowledge, I think, that you’ve built up.
You’ve also been running a business for six years, and you’ve been building a community on LinkedIn for that time. I think you’re underestimating that.
You’ve built up an audience and a community, and people forget that your social media followers who are loyal to you and turn up every day on your posts are your community. You’re doing the same sort of thing there.

Um, I want to talk about content, though, because obviously that’s what you do.
Talk to me about what people are coming to you with. What are the common concerns that they have, and how do you help them? What are people worried about when it comes to content at the moment?
Time is the biggest thing, I think.
People run their own businesses, so making content is not a priority. They get frustrated that they’ve posted a video and it hasn’t gone viral and they haven’t become a billionaire. I think that’s a big thing.
So, it’s a lot of, “You know, stick with it.”
What else? What did you say, sorry? What was the question?
Just the main concerns and how your community is helping them with those concerns.
Main concerns. Yeah. Consistency is a thing.
I think finding the time to be able to create quality content, not just put out waffle stuff. Technical skill. Even down to the commercial side of things and strategic know-how.
I think a lot of people can create some very pretty stuff, and I think you can grow quite fast on some of those platforms if you’re regular, you show up, and you build a following of people.
I think that’s fine.
I think when it comes to converting that attention into cash, which is kind of what we’re all here for, it’s a very different story.
I think great content is 50% science and 50% art.
The art is the production value, the design, the colors, the aesthetics.
The science is the data, the analytics, the metrics, the results, the performance.
That’s the stuff that’s super unsexy that a lot of people don’t focus on.
They focus on, “I’m going to film this in 4K. I’ve got this really fancy camera. I’ve got some cool lighting. I’ve got a podcast setup.”
It’s just criticizing my setup.
Not at all.
But I think they forget to look at the data.
Who’s watching? How long are they watching for? What are they doing after they’ve watched? Are they joining your waitlist? If so, how long are they subscribed to the waitlist for?
It’s all about data.
I think when you know who is consuming your content, you can make better stuff, and that helps you to grow.
I think that’s the biggest thing.
Anyone can film a video on their phone. Even going back five years, the quality of the stuff that you can film now for fairly cheap wasn’t accessible then.
But now, because it is so saturated, it’s more of a game of, “How can I maximize value and not maximize attention?”
That’s kind of how I’d say it.
I think data is such a big thing.
I literally think my YouTube video this morning was on how I use the skills I learned from chess in business. Obviously, analytics is one of the biggest things there.
I was saying that analysis is such a big tool, and I find it so shocking because, in chess, people don’t analyze properly. They’ve got data there to analyze, but you don’t always have all the data because when you’re playing a game of chess, you don’t know what your opponent’s thinking, and you can’t analyze what they’re thinking.
But in marketing, you are presented with so much data, especially in digital marketing, and that’s why it’s so much more beneficial than a billboard.
You spend half a million quid on a billboard outside. It looks cool, but how do you know what your ROI is? You never officially know what your ROI is.
In digital marketing, you should always be able to determine this.
Whether it’s social media, a website, or email marketing, there’s so much data across all of it.
But as you said, it’s so unsexy, and most people are like…
I mean, if we’re being honest in the audience, how many people actually regularly look at the data?
Of course, Al does. Nerd in the corner.
Honestly, who regularly looks at the data?
I mean, that’s good. Okay, two people.
Some.
But if we’re not all putting a hand up, it means that we all should be doing this, and we’re all fallible.
I run a bloody marketing agency, and I still don’t do it as often as I should.
When you do, you start to realize some of the stuff…
Not the other day—this morning, I did something ridiculous.
I realized, because I wasn’t looking meticulously… We have another story for another day, but we’ve had someone try to sabotage our website.
No, another website.
Just to add to this whole thing, they’ve set up this script for our Knobs membership so that fake applicants apply every two minutes on the platform.
So, we have 17,000 applicants to our membership, which I know is not true.
I mean, I might just publish that data. “Look how popular we are.”
Because that’s what you’ve got to do, right? Fake it till you make it.
But we have 17,000 applicants that have come through, and they’re all fake data.
Someone’s done this just to be spiteful.
I’ve had to wade through some of this stuff.
What someone on my team did was export a lot of that data and put it into our email marketing database.
So, when we sent out an email marketing campaign, it went out to the fake data list.
I’m like, “Why have only 8% of people opened my email?”
I’m sitting there going, “Oh my God, this email’s terrible. What’s wrong with it?” I’m freaking out about it.
I didn’t realize that actually it was because the data was all messed up.
Had I been putting it under more scrutiny, I would have realized.
Yeah, that’s a whole thing.
Then I cleaned the list, and I said this morning already, 64% of people opened it.
I was like, “Oh, this is much better.”
You realize that sort of thing, but unless you’re paying attention to it—and it’s boring for most people—they’re not going to do that. They won’t understand it.
So, how do you advise people in your community to do that?
Where do you start with data? Because obviously it can be overwhelming.
Where do you start with it?
It depends on what you’re trying to do with it.
I see content sitting in three different stages.
You have your awareness stage, which is all about attention—new followers, growth, waitlist members, those sorts of things.
Then you have your middle of funnel, which is nurture, educate, build relationships, engagement, comments, likes, those sorts of things.
Then you have your bottom-of-funnel content—your conversion piece—which is sales, cash in the bank, leads, those sorts of things.
That’s how you track what is successful at each stage.
If you’re tracking a promotional video that you put out to try and get clients based on impressions, it’s irrelevant because it’s not going for reach. It’s going for people who convert from that video to the next stage.
If you’re putting a piece of content out that’s trying to get followers and it’s just getting comments, that hasn’t worked because it’s not reaching new people.
So, it all comes down to understanding what you create and why you’re creating it.
I think a lot of people think of an idea, go, “Oh, brilliant,” script it out, film it, edit it, post it, then go, “Oh, 50 likes. Brilliant. This is great.”
But actually, they don’t know why they’ve created that.
What’s the purpose? What’s it trying to achieve? Who’s it trying to target?
All the other scientific parts.
So, I try and teach that.
It’s more of a mindset thing. It’s about having a bit of clarity in terms of why you post, where you post, what you’re trying to achieve with it, how it resonates, and all these things that then give you confidence that, when you are creating content, it’s being done purposefully.
That’s kind of what I try and do.
I actually remember now—you’ve flashed me back to what you said on the first podcast.
You were telling me about how you created this video that you were convinced was going to go viral, and then it massively flopped.
Was it the one where you shaved your head? I swear.
Did you shave your head during COVID?
I did, yeah.
I don’t know. That might have been the one. I don’t remember.
Maybe you were telling me that you created a video, and I swear you shaved your head for it.
Like, you actually went full-on dedicated.
You said, “I was convinced it was going to go viral,” and then it flopped.
Maybe I did. I’ve done some stupid things.
And that’s the thing.

Like you’re saying, I think a lot of people do that. They have a video and they’re like, “This is so good. It’s going to go viral,” or any piece of content where you’re like, “This is so good,” and then no one meditates for it. Then the question is, why not?
I think, how do you do that properly then? Like you said, if we’re all here to generate cash, if we genuinely want to, if we’re not here just for the vanity metrics—because don’t get me wrong, some people just want to go viral for viral’s sake. “I went viral,” and it’s like some kind of credibility. But if you genuinely just actually wanted clients, what needs to go into that strategy? How do you genuinely think about what content to create?
A lot. It’s a lot.
I mean, it’s an art. It takes years to master, and this is why there’s a whole industry around it because people don’t know how to do it themselves. It’s a lot of time that you need to invest into it.
So, how much time have we got?
Yeah, I was going to say, we want to hear.
I know. This is the thing. It isn’t sexy. This is the thing, right?
People honestly go into it with the wrong mindset.
Totally.
Right. It’s that quick-win, short-term, quick-cash mentality. It’s just not that game.
If it was that easy, we’d all be millionaires sipping piña coladas in the Maldives.
No, it’s not like that.
It does sound nice.
I think you’ve got to get new people into your network through attention content. You’ve got to educate them through educational stuff, top tips, behind-the-scenes stuff, products, services, testimonials, and then you’ve got to tell them how good you are by talking about recent case studies and wins.
You’ve got to do an amalgamation of everything all at the same time.
Just because you post an awareness video once a month, of course you’re not going to convert because you’re not doing all the other crucial parts of that system.
You’ve got to create a system in your content. Otherwise, you could be losing a lot of people.
A lot of people get stuck in what I call the education trap, where you may have heard, “Just give value and give value, maximize value for your audience, and consistently post valuable content.”
That’s great, but often you’re going to be talking to the same people that have seen your stuff for a year, and they’re never going to be ready to buy. You’re talking to a crowd that don’t really ever need what you want.
But actually, if you started to get new people into that funnel, then start to educate them, the chances are they’re probably going to come out the other side of it.
So, you’ve got to have a balance of all three of those pieces of content.
Yeah.
Well, I’m so disappointed. That’s really boring.
I know. It’s really boring.
You know, there’s no quick win to go viral and become a millionaire and sip piña coladas in the Maldives.
I’m sorry.
How disappointing.
But that was the no bullshit response.
I’m very happy to hear that, and that’s obviously why I resonate with you.
I think I’m going to stop talking and actually let some people ask some questions because I think you’ve got a lot of good value to give.
So, yeah, if there’s any food and drink left, please eat and drink it all because it has to be eaten.
But otherwise, it’s so good to see you.
And you.
[Music]