0:00:00 Ben Wright: I’ve been trying and, you know, I’ve been tested.
0:00:06 B: Welcome to the Friends in Business podcast with your hosts, Ben Wright and Jemima Ashley. Ben, known as the sales strategist, and Jemima, our resident visibility expert, are here to share their wealth of knowledge and experience with a little fun along the way. Whether you’re a leader, entrepreneur, or aspiring business owner, this is the podcast where we share everything we know about business to help you succeed.
0:00:31 B: Let’s get started. Welcome to the Friends in Business podcast.
0:00:44 Ben Wright: Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back to Friends in Business. When we have just found out that Jemimah is going to be a contestant on Deal or no Deal,
0:00:54 Jemimah Ashleigh: We have just found that out and I feel like we’ve already got this spotlight going on. What’s going on here?
0:00:58 Ben Wright: Yeah. For those watching the video, we have an unavoidable ray of light shining through our recording studio. And it means that Jemimah is
Jemimah Ashleigh: Extremely well lit.
Ben Wright : Very well-lit in part. Yeah.
0:01:12 Jemimah Ashleigh: Just sections that I want you to highlight on my face, my eyes. I don’t need to see you. It’s okay.
0:01:18 Ben Wright: Well, do you know what? It shows we’re human. Right? We put this podcast out to help people. We are not interested in big budget productions. Right. That are out there
0:01:28 Jemimah Ashleigh: Aren’t we? Cause I feel like if when Spotify calls, I will fold so quickly for that.
0:01:32 Ben Wright: I was just trying to find a reason to justify. But unfortunately, we just haven’t been able to resolve this one because the windows are so high. Anyway, what are we here to talk about today, Jemimah?
0:01:40 Jemimah Ashleigh: We’re here to talk about little things becoming big things, Ben.
0:01:44 Ben Wright: Right.
0:01:45 Jemimah Ashleigh: Which I’m excited to talk about. You know, last night, I flew in last night and we had a discussion with someone we met at the pub. Cause we go out for dinner whenever I’m here. It’s a really nice excuse for us to grab dinner. But one of the things someone said, like, how did this podcast start? And I actually think it’s been a while since we’ve talked about that, and I think it’s a really interesting discussion. This is where I got this idea for this episode today. I want to take us back about 12 months ago, if not a little bit longer now, where you and I met at a networking breakfast in Melbourne. We had the chance, just a bit of a flick situation where we sat next to each other at a networking event. And I said, hi, I’m Jemimah. Who are you? He said, I’m Ben. Cool. And that was really the discussion point that we had over the course of the day we ended up having a coffee shortly after the meeting and I was telling you a little bit about my history, that I had done a podcast and been fairly successful. You said you had a podcast. I said, oh, that’s great. And that was really as far as that initial kind of discussion happened. But I think it’s fair to say we both liked each other pretty quickly and saw in each other, I think, a like minded person. Both successful, both doing our own thing, but very different but in the best possible way.
0:03:09 Ben Wright: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Absolutely. Completely complimentary. You focused very heavily on visibility, on pr, on some of the softer skills. I focus very heavily on proven type of, you know, rack and file business skills, sales growth. Right. Very, very different even in how we operate on a day to day basis. And I think for me, that’s probably what makes this work. I don’t think coming together as a team, that is mostly same same. And I mean, you would be as different to me or I am as different to you as anyone I work with.
0:03:45 Jemimah Ashleigh: A 100% and that honestly was very funny. Very early on for us, we were like, I don’t know why this works, it just kind of does. And it’s been fairly effortless. But the point of this was we had a coffee. The following day, you’re in Melbourne, you’re visiting from Noosa, and it just started with you saying, hey, let’s grab a coffee tomorrow. So we met at a cafe that was really near my place because I didn’t know what you wanted. So I just picked a really central place. It’s in the city where I have to travel to. Which was next to my house. So I had limited travel time. And one of the things you said, hey, I don’t really know why or how this kind of came out, but you floated the idea, would you be interested in doing a podcast? And I said, yeah, that sounds interesting. Happy to explore that. We are now, over a year later, 40ish episodes. Almost 40, I think almost 40 in today.
0:04:36 Ben Wright: Well, I know today’s number 39.
0:04:39 Jemimah Ashleigh: Almost 40 episodes. Multiple trips back forth to Melbourne, back to Noosa. I’ve basically moved in on your family. No one’s complaining about that. Aunty Jemimah comes to visit. Your daughter loves me. She’s my best friend.
0:04:52 Ben Wright: We’re up north of 10,000 followers on. Well, north of 10,000 followers on Instagram.
0:04:58 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yes. Yep. We’ve got people writing in sponsors, like, coming forward. There’s some really fun stuff happening. I just want to take you back to that minute where we sat down at a cafe, two people that could not be more opposite in so many ways, and you say to me, hey, new person, we should start a podcast. And I went, yeah, that sounds fun. And how this tiny micro moment technically changed things pretty dramatically for the next 12 months for us.
0:05:28 Ben Wright: Well, yeah, particularly some of the stuff that we have planned, which by now people are starting to hear. Yeah. It’s interesting how small decisions, how the very, very slight changes in course. I remember giving the example around flying from Sydney. Right. If you take a 1 degree different angle your way to Japan, you’ll actually end up in New York,
Jemimah Ashleigh: L.A. L.A.
Ben Wright: There we go. Right. One degree from Sydney all the way to that trip will get you from Japan into L.A.. Amazing. And yeah, it’s very interesting how small things can make a big impact. And that’s today’s topic.
0:05:59 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah. And the discussion was last night, like, why did you agree to do the podcast? And I was like, I don’t know. Why did you ask, Jemimah? I don’t know, it was just. It made sense in a way that I can’t explain even now.
0:06:10 Ben Wright: Sometimes you back your intuition, so you go with your gut feel. And I think that is perfectly reasonable in business to do that. And other times you need to heavily rely on data, and in this instance, we didn’t have data to go by. You’d had a podcast that was successful. I like that. From what we’ve spoken about before, I am very structured and have, you know, frameworks and a lot of probably those business fundamentals. Right. Which is a different upbringing to you. So I think there’s some differences in there.
0:06:37 Jemimah Ashleigh: I bought a sense of humor that I think you sorely needed.
0:06:41 Ben Wright: Yeah, I’m a good person, which you sorely needed. So here we are. Right.
0:06:47 Jemimah Ashleigh: But today I deserve that actually, to be fair
Ben Wright: You deserve more.
0:06:50 Ben Wright: But today I think we’re here to talk about what’s a decision that either of us have made in our business that has made a significant difference in the growth of that business over time.
0:07:01 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah. And I think has been really fundamentally paramount. Maybe you didn’t know at the time, maybe you did. I’d love to hear yours. Because we didn’t share these stories before.
0:07:11 Ben Wright: Yeah. You want me to go first?
0:07:12 Jemimah Ashleigh: I’d love for you to go first.
0:07:14 Ben Wright: Okay. This one’s going to be a little bit different. Right. I have had plenty of decisions around funding, around key hires, around markets that we’ve chosen to chase that make a difference, but I think for me, they’re quite obvious. And I’m not sure they’re going to add value to people listening what I can. Fundamentally, there are two things that I did within my largest business. I’m going to go with two today that made significant impacts to how the business performed. The first one was around bringing a sense of continuous improvement to our sales process. And what I mean by that was we constantly evolved how we went to market and that was not the case at the start of the business. That actually took some encouragement from people within the team. I always used to say, yeah, yeah, I’m always up to change, I’m always wanting to grow. But I realized I wasn’t right. I wanted to get a process in, get it right and set and forget we were iterating our sales process, our quotation templates, our materials, how we went to market, how we workshop deals, how we as a group evolved together constantly. I mean there would be weeks where it would be two or three times a week where I’d sit down with one of the key members of our team. You know, from our sales team. I don’t think you’ll mind me mentioning Nick Blampade. He’s now over in the uk. He’s a terrific fellow. Nick, a big hi, if you’re listening.
0:08:33 Jemimah Ashleigh: And if you’re not listening, why aren’t you listening?
0:08:35 Ben Wright: Absolutely. You’re dead to me now. So he really was magnificent in driving that. And there was a number of others who worked in our business as well. Right. And they know the Paul’s the ones. Right. They absolutely know who they are from a sales point of view who drove some of that really serious improvement. So I think for me, really at a team level, sitting down and saying we are going to evolve to be the very best we possibly can. That made an unbelievable difference in that business. For me, the second piece, and I think it’s worth wrapping them together is something that again I started in that business, but I’ve rolled out in every business since and it might surprise some that are listening is a dedicated training program.
I remember distinctly about 12 years ago to be someone within my team coming up to me, approaching me, saying we don’t do enough training and I said okay, thank you. What does good or great look like to you when it comes to training? They said every week I said not too much. They said no. So I rolled out a training program for the wider business very specifically around the sales and marketing team. We were a sales driven organization. We had, by the time the business was at its peak, we had a team of about 26 across sales and marketing combined in an 80 strong business. But what we actually did was we had a weekly training session. Right. It was scheduled, so we knew the topics that were coming. We varied facilitators, we varied what we spoke about, we varied how we went through things. But what came out of that was that the team started to really feed back significant pieces of information from the field. So our learning loop, right. And our feedback loop from our customers closed dramatically. So we were able to respond to market movements. And yes, it’s great to be ahead of the market, but all businesses go through periods where they’re responding. For us, we were able to respond to market movements and find little opportunities or little gold seams unbelievably quickly.
0:10:27 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah. Wow.
0:10:27 Ben Wright: We were so rapid, we were so agile. And to this day, I still, with every team I work with, recommend they roll out a weekly training program. Most teams end up at fortnightly or monthly. Right. But for me, that to this day is still one of the most tangible changes I’ve ever made to a business. And that’s to roll out a training program not just for the learning of the team. Right. But simply that the team would bring me back so much information. I had market intel just at my fingertips constantly. Right. And I knew that when that team at 26, when they went all in on me. 26 on one. Right. I knew it was something really significant and we had to pay attention. So we were able to upskill their development, help them grow, help build them be better people, better professional operators. But at the same time, they were giving back just as much as they were receiving. And our business just evolved unequivocally from it. So.
0:11:16 Jemimah Ashleigh: And that was just a piece of advice. Then someone’s like, actually, we need more training anyway.
0:11:21 Ben Wright: Yeah, yeah. And I look, I listen, right. You know, credit, I think you gotta give yourself, go easy on yourself at times. I really genuinely listened to what this person said and we ended up building out that training program. Yeah. And to this day, it’s still one of the key things I recommend and I’m so grateful that we did it because of all the change that it made.
0:11:40 Jemimah Ashleigh: I think you hearing that is really big because it is a very easy no. Yeah. Well, training, we’re good, Steve. We’re fine. Whereas this discussion is going, actually, this is really big thing.
0:11:53 Ben Wright: It’s a lot easier to say no than yes, tell me. And look, for those out there listening, I’m really passionate about this. So I have resources on the strongest sales teams website on there. We don’t promote that very often, but there’s actually one there around a training calendar. I can do this with my eyes closed. I can roll out an annual training program in about 60 minutes. Right. People go, what? And I go, yeah, I can set you up topics for a full year program in about 60 minutes. It doesn’t mean we’ve got all the content built, but that’s actually not that difficult. That’s something I love doing, so people are welcome to get in touch. But for you, one thing that made all the difference that you’ve used in the past?
0:12:24 Jemimah Ashleigh: There’s kind of three of them that I love, but the two big one, the first one is going all in. And so this was a really way before I felt ready. Unlike other people that I know will be listening, I didn’t have any skill sets in this initially. I didn’t have any official training. I didn’t have. I just had actual lived experience for it and I had what’s best to be. Have you stolen my sunshine? Is this what’s going on?
0:12:47 Ben Wright: The sun has slowly drifted over to me. Yes, yes. But let’s not break the beautiful chain of thought, right? You came in with lived experience.
0:12:53 Jemimah Ashleigh: I came in with lived experience exclusively. And I knew what I had done was special. I could recognise that for what it was, but I also recognised that I had some gaps there. So I actually quit everything else that I was doing and went all in on that and leaving a very powerful six figure job with a career that I liked and letting go of a really big safety net against all odds and saying, I think this is going to work. The small change that I made is so simple. I started using social media every single day.
0:13:26 Ben Wright: Yeah. Wow. Okay. So that’s not gonna be the first time many people have heard that, but I think to hear it from you, who has 50,000 followers on Instagram?
0:13:35 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah, 50 plus thousand.
0:13:37 Ben Wright: They’re good numbers, right.
0:13:39 Jemimah Ashleigh: They’re healthy numbers. I got consistent and I used social media every day. And I know it sounds like it’s a little bit of work that went into that, but it was as simple as me just turning it on and going. Every single post that we do has an intention. It’s an expert post, it’s a sales post. We are going to do this every single day. We’re going to prove to you that we’re experts on repeat.
0:14:02 Ben Wright: Yeah, yeah. Wow. And what came as a result of doing that? What was the result?
0:14:07 Jemimah Ashleigh: Tenfold followers. We’re seeing about 5,000, we’re about 50 now. We had more EOIs than I’ve ever had. We had people filling out visibility plan forms. We had people. People reaching out. I’ve picked up. I know a few episodes ago, we talked about the honey company that I’ve been working for that came through Instagram. I think we do get quite jaded on Instagram being a bit fluffy that no business comes out of it. Social proof is everything. Social proof will always continue to be everything. And we just decided. It was a really, really conscious decision. We’re not putting content for the sake of content. It has a purpose and it’s to convert.
0:14:45 Ben Wright: Yeah, I love it. Okay, so great. So you’ve got one big one there.
0:14:48 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:14:48 Ben Wright: Right. May seem small now, but I think that’s big. Right. To really commit yourself to going all in and then a small one there around posting or getting active on social media every day.
0:14:56 Jemimah Ashleigh: Every day.
0:14:57 Ben Wright: Yeah. Yeah. So I think for me, out of today’s podcast, short and sharp today is my request for everyone out there is have a think about the things that Jemimah and I have just gone through. Right. Going all in, posting on social media every day, applying a lens of absolute continuous improvement to what you do and then also that training piece, and have a think about if there are any small pivots that you’ve made to your business and where you’ve seen some serious improvement. Right. The reason I ask that is because that might be some justification to go even harder in those areas, but also to start to have a think about from a really objective lens where you might be able to actually make some small changes in the business that, when done repeatedly, might take you from Tokyo to L.A. . Right. I’d probably argue, depending on the time of year, I might want to go from LA back to Tokyo. But the point here is think about those small micro changes that can really make a difference and then you have that opportunity to actually make that difference and have that impact. So well done today, Jemimah. Great job.
0:15:55 Ben Wright: Thank you. We will be back again next week. Friends in Business.
0:15:59 Jemimah Ashleigh: It’s been a long journey here. No murders, no one’s yelled at each other. Just Meowing a little bit.
0:16:04 Ben Wright: Yeah. And there has been threats, certainly not from my end. But thank you very much, everyone. Have a lovely week. We’ll see you soon.
