DeepSpecialization_EP 102_Simon Bowen_Video_Edited_V2
===
[00:00:00] Simon Bowen: So if you wanna scale selling, you have to be able to scale the founder story.
[00:00:04] Corey Quinn: Yes.
[00:00:05] Simon Bowen: The philosophy, how we think about this, the genius that we bring as a company to the table through multiple generations of salespeople. Well, I don't know of a better way of doing that than to give people a model that they just need to learn to use.
[00:00:19] Simon Bowen: And have the genius built into the model, and so the model becomes the delivery mechanism for founder genius.
[00:00:25] Corey Quinn: Welcome to the Deep Specialization Podcast, the show where we blend focus, strategy and client intimacy in order to scale and simplify our businesses and our lives. I'm your host, Corey Quinn.
[00:00:36] Corey Quinn: Let's jump into the show. Welcome back to the Deep Specialization Podcast. Today we have an extraordinary guest who is an absolute expert in helping businesses simplify complexity, communicate powerfully, and scale their influence. Simon Bowen. Simon is the creator of the models method and the Genius model, and he's widely regarded as one of the best visual model experts in the world.
[00:01:04] Corey Quinn: His work is used across over 30 countries and in every industry imaginable from tech and startups through the defense industry and professional services. If you are an agency founder who's looking to scale just beyond yourself, grow your sales team, clarify your unique value, and become a true authority in your vertical market, you're in the right place.
[00:01:30] Corey Quinn: Simon helps businesses do just that by transforming complex ideas into visual models. He sees visual models as a fundamental system. And accelerated influence He's worked with and influenced incredible people, including helping. His thinking for his book, buy Back Your Time. That's actually how I met you, Simon.
[00:01:55] Corey Quinn: Uh, and many and many others. So let's dive in and learn from the master of Visual Models. Simon Bowen. Welcome Simon.
[00:02:04] Simon Bowen: Corey, it's a pleasure to be here. It, I'm thrilled to be on your show. I'm familiar with your work as, as we both know. So I'm looking forward to having a really, really great chat about, um, you know, agencies and what it's actually, you know, what does the world mean for them.
[00:02:20] Simon Bowen: Right now, you know, it's changing. So what does it mean?
[00:02:23] Corey Quinn: Yes, it is, it is absolutely changing and we're gonna dive into that. I wanna give you an opportunity to share, share about how influence influential models are, and uh, I'm just so excited to have you here. So I'll kick things off with my first question here, which is, you know, you've mentioned in the past and working together.
[00:02:43] Corey Quinn: That the most successful people have a system for elevated thinking and accelerated influence, and for you, that system is models. So for agencies and agency founders specifically who are trying to break through all the noise and they, and they, they genuinely wanna scale, how does developing a unique system for thinking help them stand out in this crowded world?
[00:03:06] Simon Bowen: Yeah, sure. Well, let me talk about the system for thinking and influence first, right? A business is only as good as the idea on which it's built and then the quality of the thinking of the leaders of the business and. Then the ability to influence the choices everybody else makes to support you. So, you know, team members to work hard, suppliers to serve you, banks, to fund you, regulators to let you operate, customers to buy from you.
[00:03:33] Simon Bowen: You know, success is a function of how good is your idea and the thinking behind it, and how strong is your ability to influence people. So elevate your thinking and, uh, accelerate influence. And you know, I, when I started thinking about that as a system. Used what pops into people's heads when we use the word system, right, when a system.
[00:03:58] Simon Bowen: Is there such a thing? Because certainly what I know is the written word is not it, you know, human language is so limited in its ability to express, and so if you think about, you know, a visual model, a two by two matrix, for example, it, it expresses an interplay between a vertical and a horizontal AEs that never actually gets spoken about when you're talking through the matrix with somebody.
[00:04:21] Simon Bowen: Yet it's right there in front of 'em and everybody gets it. Right, but to explain that in language only is, is phenomenally difficult. We're also limited by vocabulary of the receiver, not the sender. And so when you are marketing, the reading level of your audience is what determines the quality of the message, not the quality of what you've actually written.
[00:04:45] Simon Bowen: Written. And, and you know, frighteningly the average adult reading age in Australia and the US and UK is about 14. And so if you are using sophisticated language, you, you're missing big chunks of the audience. But, you know, we, we say things like, you know, picture this and, and if I said to you, what is your, what, what did your primary school, what was your primary school like, Corey, uh, an image would be popping into your head.
[00:05:12] Simon Bowen: Not a series of words, you know, flying through your brain and image is imagination. And so when we want people to imagine working with an agency, meaning putting themselves in the scenario when they're working with an agency, a specific agency, imagine working with us and what that would be like for you.
[00:05:32] Simon Bowen: We're actually saying think of the imagery of what your business would be like if we were your digital agency helping you to be successful. And so I and 83%. Of the information that the brain brings in from the world outside, comes through the optic nerve, directly through the optic nerve. 53% of the brain's reflex action is connected directly to the optic nerve.
[00:05:57] Simon Bowen: Only about 11% of the information that comes in comes in through the auditory channel. And when we, when we're reading words out to ourselves in our heads, that's the auditory channel in play. So why would we default to 11% when 83 percent's available to us? Right. I had to find a way of turning language into visual without just using photos and things.
[00:06:18] Simon Bowen: Right? Yeah. And that's when I landed on visual models and frameworks. And so basically, I think of them as blueprints for the brain. So if, you know, if you, let's say you were gonna spend a million dollars and build a house, you wouldn't go to a builder and say, I'm gonna give you a million dollars. Build me a house.
[00:06:35] Simon Bowen: It's up to you. Up to you. You go for it. You'd actually go to an architect and say, I want drawings. Yeah, right. And then we're gonna give those to the builders. So the metaphysical movement of most things in the real world were that they were a drawing on paper or on a screen. First they came from the brain, they became a drawing on paper or screen, a blueprint type drawing.
[00:06:58] Simon Bowen: And then they became a table or a chair or a house or whatever. And so these visual models, geometric models with words in them are like blueprints for the brain to share an idea, here's a thing that I can do. Let me explain that to you. Let me give you a framework. And frameworks make people feel confident.
[00:07:16] Simon Bowen: Yeah. And people see a framework they go, that looks like that would work. And so I, I just started, I just started exploring and I got deeper and deeper. And then I came across this idea of company genius that in a world where everyone's selling products and services. What the customer really wants to buy is what kind of genius do you have as a company?
[00:07:40] Simon Bowen: Yeah. Like how clever are you really? And any product or service you sell is probably gonna be great because as a company you have real genius. And there's a whole science behind the idea of company genius. Yeah. But you know, this might speak to the founders. Founder or the idea company, three things who.
[00:08:09] Simon Bowen: The reach of the founder, the, the tone of the founder starts to dissipate and dilute. Right. And you left what and how, and in that moment you become a commoditized agency just like everybody else.
[00:08:21] Corey Quinn: Yeah.
[00:08:21] Simon Bowen: Because the founder brought a philosophy that they had about this. They brought. History and expertise.
[00:08:28] Simon Bowen: And so I had to figure out a way of codifying company genius that kept the founder in the business, even if the founder's not there day to day. And we were able to do that. We built the genius model that you are so familiar with. So yeah, it's a system for thinking nuance.
[00:08:41] Corey Quinn: Yeah. So, so another way to say it is you're speaking there and, and I'm, I'm thinking about you mentioned the brain.
[00:08:47] Corey Quinn: The way the, the way the brain works, the brain works in models and so. The, the art and science of extracting that model from the founder. Yeah. The, the genius that exists in that. And then being able to communicate that in the marketplace from a sales and marketing perspective, and then also be able to share it internally.
[00:09:07] Corey Quinn: Not only get internal buy-in, but also to help sales and marketing teams that are supporting the founder and growing the agency in this context to be able to communicate that model. Effectively in that sales conversation that also that that, that, that creates the impression or the understanding that there is elevated thinking here and that there's greater sense of influence.
[00:09:28] Simon Bowen: Yeah. So, uh, you know, I, I've spent a lot of time thinking about wisdom and genius, right? Wisdom and insight and the currencies of wisdom and insight is not intellect. The currencies of wisdom and insight is actually patience. The wisest people have spent a long time thinking about something and observing.
[00:09:52] Simon Bowen: You know, one of, I think one of the best examples is Newton and gravity and the apple. Now, if he didn't have time just to sit and ponder, he wouldn't have wondered why the apple fell anyway. Yeah. Right. And so if he'd be, if if mobile phones existing, he would've been on his phone scrolling. He wouldn't even seen the before.
[00:10:09] Simon Bowen: Right. Yeah. So it never would happen. The, the currency of wisdom and deep insight is actually patience. The willingness to spend the time to really think something through to its, and strip it back to its core, right? Yeah. That by itself is not genius. It becomes genius when you turn it into action in the real world that impacts people.
[00:10:32] Simon Bowen: Yeah. And so, you know, I'm, I'm a real music fan and I love great musicians, but somebody who's a phenomenal musician who doesn't play for audiences, does not have genius. No one else is enjoying the music. What they have is real skill and talent, but it turns into genius when the world gets to hear them.
[00:10:54] Simon Bowen: And so, you know, the transition we were unpacking was, you know, the founder of an idea that becomes a business, usually had some deep wisdom and insight about it that. I was formed just in the passing of time and the patience to continue to unpack this thing and go deeper and deeper. Yeah. And deeper. You know, we, we, we were talking to a friend just yesterday who, you know, decided to start to explore a specific topic and I don't wanna talk about what the topic is 'cause he'll probably turn it into something, but, you know, he spent.
[00:11:27] Simon Bowen: A week and a half just sitting at his computer researching that thing. That's it. But, but he has a depth of wisdom about that. That is not common. Right. And so we talk a lot about the uncommon common sense. What, what is common sense? Common sense is something you spent long enough studying and understanding that it, it's really obvious to you.
[00:11:49] Simon Bowen: But my father, you know, old farming family used to say common sense is just not that common. And, and so when you, when you take this deep wisdom and insight, you need a way of explaining it to people. So they go, oh, that makes sense,
[00:12:03] Corey Quinn: right?
[00:12:04] Simon Bowen: And we call that genius. So, you know, a digital agency that has the ability to package that deep, insightful wisdom that they bring to the market that nobody else brings in a way that has their customers saying, well, that makes more sense than anything else I've seen or heard.
[00:12:24] Simon Bowen: That's genius.
[00:12:26] Corey Quinn: Right? And but you couple that with the reality that I've experienced that many of these agency founders who have. A genius about how they operate and the, and the, and the, the value they create in the world. But many times it's very intuitive, right? Yeah. It's not articulated right. Yeah. And I think one of the things that has been powerful for me and what my work with you is being able to articulate really the genius model, which is really help is, is the vehicle.
[00:12:56] Corey Quinn: Could you talk about what the, the genius model is and how it can be leveraged in this context? Sure.
[00:13:01] Simon Bowen: So, you know, we talk about, I talk a lot about the shift from intuitive genius to organized genius, so nobody can buy your intuition. It is like, because your intuition has you make, has you making mental leaps between concepts at such a fast rate that no one else can keep up with you.
[00:13:22] Simon Bowen: Right? That's what intuition is. And so you say something and as you are saying it, you are already connecting 13 dots to it. Yeah. To, to the outcome. Right. But the audience is just, you're hearing you say that one thing, wondering what does that even mean? Right. And so it's hard for anybody to buy someone's intuitive genius.
[00:13:42] Simon Bowen: So we need to turn it into organized genius. One of the things that often happens, Corey, when we're working with companies and helping them unpack their, their company genius, is there's often this moment where people lean back, throw their pen on the desk and go, well, I've been trying to explain that for 25 years.
[00:13:56] Simon Bowen: Right? But the model just captured, it's because. What is so natural to them is completely uncommon to everybody else. That's right. And they, and they almost wonder why no one else gets it. And so a lot of agency owners and founders that you deal with. Might be thinking, why doesn't everybody else get this the specific thing that I do for this particular niche or this area of specialty?
[00:14:22] Simon Bowen: Right? How come no one else sees it like I'm seeing it? Well, because the world has beaten it out of people to be special. Just let me let that sink for a moment. The, the world has made a practice of being unique and special out of people, and so that plays into, I have this unique genius that I can bring to the table for a specific industry as a digital agency that almost no one else sees.
[00:14:48] Simon Bowen: I don't know why no one else has seen it, but I've seen it and it works. The world has actively discouraged that kind of claim, but actually everybody's got. A unique perspective, which means they have an angle on it. So we built this thing called the genius model, which is a basically a shape, a geometric shape that says the heart of the heart of what the customer wants should sit at the center of everything that a company does.
[00:15:16] Simon Bowen: What most companies do is they put their product map. Their journey map or whatever in front of the customer and they say, we'll do these things and then we'll just pop you onto the end, right? And what the genius model does is it puts context, which is what's the big promise in the center, and what are the three big outcomes that you create for your clients no matter what.
[00:15:40] Simon Bowen: And this is context now. Context is usually the first thing that leaves the sales conversation. Yet context is where all the value is. And so we anchored context to the center of the model. And so context is always in front of the customer. Do you want this big outcome in the middle? Yeah, I sure do. And would these three results matter to you?
[00:16:05] Simon Bowen: Yeah. There's many more that would deliver, but these three, everybody gets, 'cause we know that they're the three most important. How's that sound? You? That's everything I want. And sitting in the middle of the model and we. Create these levers that drive those results for them. And this is, you know, this is where the concept of the selling company, it comes into, into play.
[00:16:30] Simon Bowen: So this is our big concept, right? The model really popped when I added. What I call the accelerators around the outside, these nine things that drive these levers that represent the bridge into reality. So from these concepts, we can step through these nine accelerators and make reality happen. And so basically saying to a customer, do you want these things?
[00:16:58] Simon Bowen: I sure do. Here's how we do it. And here's, and, and these are the specific things that we do that make that happen in the real world. Do you wanna see how those things work? And now what we're having is a structured dialogue about something that's completely intuitive to the agency, but, but it gives the agency the chance to say things in here that the customer had no clue about.
[00:17:27] Simon Bowen: Is to have the client realize they know nothing about what they need to do to get the result in the middle. And they're talking to someone who has done the work of thinking this out well enough to be able to put a highly organized framework in front of them. They go, that looks like it would work, that that.
[00:17:43] Simon Bowen: And so this genius model now is in use in well over 30. Countries in every industry we can think of, you know, banking, finance, tech, SaaS engineering, construction, medical technology, agency, work, consulting. We haven't found an industry yet where we can't build the models. Defense ship building, which is one of my favorite areas, you know, building warships.
[00:18:06] Simon Bowen: Yeah. If you can explain defense shipbuilding in a single model that takes about seven minutes to walk through. Win billion dollar contracts, right? Spreadsheet.
[00:18:21] Corey Quinn: Clearly being able to in an organized. Way, be able to communicate the genius of the company and help educate, enlighten the, the buyer on the, the sort of the true nature of, of the thing that they're trying to achieve is very powerful.
[00:18:35] Corey Quinn: You've said that the only thing that scales your business is the ability to scale your selling.
[00:18:41] Simon Bowen: Yeah.
[00:18:42] Corey Quinn: So how does having this genius model, this articulation, help facilitate your ability to scale as an agency?
[00:18:49] Simon Bowen: Yeah, so. What I often say is, you know, any money you spend on delivery is over capitalization until you've scaled how you sell.
[00:18:57] Simon Bowen: And so you can have the best delivery systems, but if you can't bring more clients to it, you can't scale the business. So the founder of a company, and I think this would be true in the agency world, the founder is often the best sales person in the company, and they're the best salesperson for two reasons.
[00:19:13] Simon Bowen: And unfortunately, it's not gonna appeal to anybody's ego when I lay these out. The two reasons are they have insured a genius. So they can kind of say things that a sales person working for them probably won't have the ability to say. The second reason is they can cut any deal. They like to win a client that's, they can offer offer discounts, they can package stuff up bundle value.
[00:19:35] Simon Bowen: Your sales person doesn't have that license. And so to scale a business by scaling the selling, you have to be able to scale your selling through multiple generations of sales team. So someone might start an agency, it's just them and a couple of people, and they're doing really, really well and it starts to grow.
[00:19:54] Simon Bowen: And so they hire their first sales person, and the first sales person is in direct contact with the founder, have a lot of conversations with 'em. So the first sales person's like a mini me and they can get sales done and they're probably working in. The agency as well, and the agency continues to grow, and then you need to hire more salespeople, and that first salesperson probably becomes the sales manager.
[00:20:15] Simon Bowen: Being a good salesperson doesn't mean that they're a great manager, but that's usually what happens. So they become the sales manager. Now they're under pressure for results. You know, sales, basically, the salespeople are now a second generation away from the founder, so they don't have the same connection to the original conversations.
[00:20:34] Simon Bowen: Right. Yeah, and the sales manager starts to drift away from that founder connection and they start looking for what are the sales techniques everybody else is using when the thing that always sold the agency was the story that the founder had. Right. That's the thing that is,
[00:20:50] Corey Quinn: uh, that's, that's the unique Yeah.
[00:20:52] Corey Quinn: Aspect of the, it's not what they do or how they do it. It's the, it's the, it's how they think about it.
[00:20:58] Simon Bowen: Yeah, exactly. It's not what or how, it's how they think about it. Right. But, but once you're in the second generation sales team, how the founder thinks about it's starting to dilute. That's right.
[00:21:07] Simon Bowen: Internal dilution is a bigger issue than external commoditization. And then that sales manager leaves. Because they love selling and they hated being a manager anyway. And now you get another sales manager who never actually had that original first point of connection with the founder. You might've hired them in from outside.
[00:21:25] Simon Bowen: Now they come in saying, well, here's how we used to sell at our old place. So also, they're not that interested in the founders' original thinking and philosophy around this. And the founders don't realize that. The price they're paying for them, not having that connection to it. And they sound like they're pretty clued in sales managers.
[00:21:42] Simon Bowen: So they go, here's what we're gonna do. And the founder goes, that sounds good to me. You know, let's try and do that. But the story now has gone and, and the agencies immediately commoditized because of internal, right? Yep. So if you wanna scale selling, you have to be able to scale the founder story.
[00:21:58] Corey Quinn: Yes, the
[00:21:58] Simon Bowen: philosophy, how we think about this, the genius that we bring as a company to the table through multiple generations of salespeople.
[00:22:06] Simon Bowen: Well, I don't know of a better way of doing that than to give people a model that they just need to learn to use. And have the genius built into the model. And so the model becomes the delivery mechanism for founder genius. We build it into the model. Then you just give the sales team the model and say, just learn how to use that, learn the choreography of the model, how to walk through it,
[00:22:26] Corey Quinn: you know, that, that, that, uh, also relieves the, the company from.
[00:22:30] Corey Quinn: Having to hire the, the world's best salesperson who has the thing that people want. Right? Yeah. So you have a model that is more systematized, more standardized, and that's the thing that creates the, the attraction versus
[00:22:43] Simon Bowen: the charisma. Absolutely. Well, if you hire the world's best salesperson, you are completely at their whim, right?
[00:22:58] Simon Bowen: They can sell anywhere. Right? And their customers follow them. What actually want is your customers following your business. Correct? 'cause they know your business is amazing. Think about, you know, your best salespeople are actually your best clients. And if you, you know, if your clients love you because of who you are, they're gonna say to other people, yeah, you gotta work with Corey.
[00:23:23] Simon Bowen: He's amazing. He's just, he's a great guy. And he is just so clever. They're actually trying to describe your intuitive genius. Right, right. As opposed to your best client saying you've gotta work with Corey. I mean, he is amazing. His team's amazing, but he has a model for helping companies do this. It's incredible and it works.
[00:23:45] Simon Bowen: And, you know, he, he can walk you through that model. I, I'd love to do the introduction, so, so he can walk through the model. It's an entirely different kind of referral. How many referring customers have the to say.
[00:23:59] Corey Quinn: Yeah, I've spoken, I've worked in, and I've spoken to many agency founders who are in the unfortunate situation where they have a single salesperson
[00:24:08] Simon Bowen: Hmm.
[00:24:08] Corey Quinn: Who is the rainmaker, and that they have a lot of leverage over the founder because Oh yeah. They become dependent on the, on this salesperson and, and therefore makes the, makes it difficult for the founder to be able to run the play that they want, because. You know, they don't wanna upset the, uh, the golden goose.
[00:24:28] Corey Quinn: You said Simon, uh, real quickly before moving forward, something that I, I loved, which is that internal dilution is more dangerous than external commoditization.
[00:24:38] Simon Bowen: Yeah. Can I just make a comment on the founders that have one sales? Yeah. Just something. Yeah, let's go. Just something I'd love people to think about and it will help them immediately in their business be clear about who generates the leads versus who actually makes the conversion.
[00:24:52] Simon Bowen: Right. And high performing salespeople generally are great prospectors. Like back in the day, you know, when I first started in industry a long time ago, you know, well over 40 years ago now, the salespeople had to prospect. The salesperson had to find the leads to sell to and then sell. Right, right. And do the conversion.
[00:25:14] Simon Bowen: Right. And so we, we have this thing that I call industrial age selling. And so when people have a rainmaker salesperson, is that person prospecting or finding their own leads and selling to them and converting? And if they are, they're absolutely a rainmaker, but if they're not. Are generating all leads just happens.
[00:25:40] Simon Bowen: Don't fall into the trap of thinking that they're a rainmaker, and if you lose them, you are completely at risk, right? 'cause, uh, if one person can do it, others can do it. You can replicate what that person does. And if you have a, if you have a really powerful framework that you can talk to a customer about, you're less dependent upon a, a highly skilled salesperson, as opposed to, you just need a great communicator.
[00:26:04] Simon Bowen: Someone who can actually talk to people generates. You are looking for two things. When you're recruiting salespeople, someone who loves to sell, it's hard to get someone who doesn't love to sell to be successful. And the second thing is, someone new clients are gonna love. Yeah. Like hire someone for those two qualities and then teach them your genius model.
[00:26:26] Simon Bowen: They will sell for you, right? Yeah. But, but to control your selling, control the lead. How the business, so every agency owner absolutely should be taking full lead. And, you know, we control our own lead flow and then we put great communicators in front of the customer. It just might give people some ease of relief.
[00:26:48] Simon Bowen: You're not, you're not trapped as trapped by this one rainmaking salesperson. Absolutely.
[00:26:53] Corey Quinn: Right. And it's a good frame that a business really in order to build a true asset. If you think of a business as an asset, yeah, it, it must really control the leads.
[00:27:01] Simon Bowen: Yeah.
[00:27:02] Corey Quinn: And, and control the sales process.
[00:27:04] Simon Bowen: And, and you know, we, we, we could get deep into lead generation, but if your lead generation is all inbound through social media and things like that, you're not really in control of your leads.
[00:27:15] Simon Bowen: You know, the highest value companies have a, a conscious internal outbound lead gen. You know, people. Outbound mail pieces and, you know, identifying lists and targeting them and things like that, as opposed to just relying on social media and paid ad placement and stuff like that, both in an outbound lead, you know, lead generation.
[00:27:35] Simon Bowen: But let's talk about dilution, please, and commoditization. So I, I alluded before about this idea. You know where this company genius comes from? It comes from a who, which is usually the founder or the person who came up with it. And really that is what is their philosophy. So, you know, what is an agency founder's philosophy about helping a certain industry niche or sector or specialization to really be successful?
[00:28:06] Simon Bowen: And then what is their history? The high story, the, the wins and the lessons they've learned along the way. And then what is their expertise? So formal and informal, so experience and education, and that forms the founder, and then they, and then they have this unique internal way of viewing the world that's just almost in them.
[00:28:27] Simon Bowen: When you, you look at the word genius, it generally comes from the, you know, meaning it's in, started. Uh, you know, they either had a fit of entrepreneurialism or, or, or they just recognized there was something that could be done better. Right. And so they have a philosophy around it and that they really believe to be true.
[00:28:50] Simon Bowen: And then that turns into a what? Which is the big idea. And the big idea has context. So context is why this even matters. So why a specific niche might need help, you know, with their digital marketing or whatever the case might be. What is the concept? What actually is the big idea? You know, for example, someone could.
[00:29:12] Simon Bowen: Uh, you know, as a digital agency, help people who, you know, are highly specialized, do low volume, high price sales, and don't want to use ad placement and paid advertising, but still want, you know, a, a really powerful digital marketing strategy. There, there's a concept, what's, you know, or versus volume.
[00:29:32] Simon Bowen: Someone's trying to generate 10,000 leads a month, you know, through a high volume digital placement strategy or whatever. So what's the concept and then what the consequence. You know, uh, uh, AI is just fascinating. I, I'm fascinated by it. I'm having a deep philosophical conversation with chat right now that I'm in the middle of about where the future's gonna be.
[00:29:55] Simon Bowen: And, um, chat made an interesting comment. It said, you know, the future will be based more on solving problems than being a profession. Now that actually should be a, you know, a a little kind of thing in the brain for everybody. The future will be based more on solving problems than actually being a profession.
[00:30:15] Simon Bowen: I think that's probably true. You know, no one wants to hire an attorney just because they're a professional. They actually just wanna solve a problem and, and so you know, what are the consequences? Who have you solved this problem for? And how has this big idea worked? And then the third side of company genius is the how, which is all about speed, ease.
[00:30:41] Simon Bowen: And leverage. People want stuff to happen fast. We're impatient in the world today. We don't wanna have to do work too hard to make it happen. And we want a 10 to one, you know, we want a 10 x result. We want leverage. I give you a dollar to gimme $10 back. 10 x is such a a, a, you know, a ridiculous thing for people to be saying.
[00:31:00] Simon Bowen: But you know, we, we want leverage. And so it starts with, it starts with this idea of the who. And then becomes, you know, the what and the how. But imagine that that who starts to move away from the business. Yeah. You know, they were in the day to day, they were running it. They've got a salesperson, sales manager, they're just one step back, and then they've got a CEO or a general manager, and they're just another step back.
[00:31:30] Simon Bowen: And then they become the chair of the board, and then they're just another step back, and then they become a non-executive director and they're another step back. And then eventually they just want this thing to make money and for them to not be involved at all on a day-to-day basis. And every time that, every time that founder takes a step back.
[00:31:48] Simon Bowen: The what and the how are left to make their own decisions without the founder's insight there to really keep people connected to what we were all about in the first instance, right? And so as, as the founder steps back, these internal stories start to dilute and you know, you imagine. A company now that has a CEO and a sales leader and a sales team and a marketing manager who really haven't had direct contact with the founder.
[00:32:22] Simon Bowen: What you actually have is a diluted internal story. They probably jump into chat and they start asking chat for a whole bunch of information, and chat is a dilution mechanism, and so this internal dilution. Uh, where will I put that? This, you know, diluting the origin story internally is the fastest path to commoditization because the salespeople start selling to what they start selling to price.
[00:32:52] Simon Bowen: Because they're, what, what are they saying that's different to everybody else? They don't, they don't have this connection, you know, look at Apple, right? Tim Cook's a great CEO, but are Apple the same company? Because they had this experience of the, the, you know, the, the founder. Actually just disappearing altogether.
[00:33:11] Simon Bowen: Yeah. Is Apple the same companies today as it once was? No. Or is it? No. And it had a lot of internal dilution, and it's now just in the tech market like everybody else. Right. What made it famous was a conversation that Steve Jobs had with Bill Gates when they were in their twenties. Bill was a bill, was a fixed point cursor guy.
[00:33:35] Simon Bowen: The screen is divided into a grid pattern and used the arrow keys to move around the screen and Bill and, and, and Steve Jobs was a float point technology guy, meaning the mouse could move anywhere in the screen, the cursor could move anywhere in the screen, and the mouse had not been invented yet. And Bill said, but I dunno how that would work.
[00:33:52] Simon Bowen: Steve and Steve went, bill, one day people will just reach in front of their screen and go like this, and the mouse will follow their hands. This is when they're in their twenties and then Apple invented the mouse and the rest is history and the phone came out. You know, so where's that thinking coming from?
[00:34:10] Simon Bowen: Right. And the company dilutes. It's another tech company now. Right. And so internal dilution is, is, you know, founders absolutely have to guard against that. Yeah. But by making sure that everybody can connect to their original thinking.
[00:34:25] Corey Quinn: I think about, I'm applying this to my last company. I was the chief marketing officer of an agency.
[00:34:30] Corey Quinn: We grew from a hundred people to a thousand people from 20 million to 200 million in a very short period of time. And because we were. We were on a growth tear. We had to grow. Like that was the, that was the initiative. And without direction from the founder about what made us different, what made us unique, our approach, we had to make it up on the fly.
[00:34:51] Corey Quinn: Yeah. And of course we would just use the more functional terms that would speak to our buyer, which, which of course were much more commoditizing because we didn't have that direction. And I think that many founders who have that intuition have that genius inside of them. Just don't have a great way to externalize it and to, and to structure it.
[00:35:11] Corey Quinn: Right. Yeah. And that's the big, that's the thing that's holding them back. It's not that they don't want to be able to have a team that communicates effectively and eloquently their, their genius. They just don't know how to get it to the team,
[00:35:23] Simon Bowen: because I've gotta get it out of themselves. Right. Yeah, that's right.
[00:35:26] Simon Bowen: We're not our own best counselors. Right. That's right. But the other thing is, salespeople wanna make the easiest possible sale. That's right. The shortest distance. Right. They wanna, and the commoditized sale is the easiest sale to make. 'cause you just make the price, that's it, right? To make the same, the
[00:35:44] Corey Quinn: buy,
[00:35:44] Simon Bowen: right?
[00:35:45] Simon Bowen: Yeah. Original ideas or deeper thinking. Founder led thinking is often harder to sell because you're probably putting something in front of the customer that the customer's not that familiar with. If you confuse them, you lose them. But if you can frame it as a model or a framework where the customer goes, well, that makes sense.
[00:36:05] Simon Bowen: I, I, you know, I'd, I'd want everyone to kind of burn that into their brain. You should measure your message with that frame of reference. If you put it in front of the customers. Are they gonna say that makes more sense than anything else I've seen. That's, that's when the sale's made. But is the, is the original genius of the founder codified into that message.
[00:36:26] Simon Bowen: Right. Otherwise, you know, what the customer says makes sense is lowest price. And, and now we're in commodity land. You know, and this is actually about clarity. I think it was Donald Rumsfeld said, clarity is power. Yeah. And, and I think that's right. We talk a lot about, a lot of what we are trying to do at the models method is help.
[00:36:46] Simon Bowen: Founder led businesses kind of tap into the, the clarity that counts, basically. And what is the clarity that counts that makes the biggest difference for a specialized niche of companies that you might serve as a, as a, as a digital agency, right? What is that really specific, hard to find clarity that counts that no one else in the space seems to have tapped into.
[00:37:09] Simon Bowen: Everybody else is into tools, tech tips, and so on. But you somehow found this. Clarity that counts. That makes the biggest difference and isn't gonna make the sale the easiest sale, but it's gonna make it the highest value sale. I mean, with ai, we've, we've moved into a world where the middle market has evaporated.
[00:37:27] Simon Bowen: You know, there, there used to be a line from low price to high ticket, and that line has become a U shape and the middle markets evaporated down the bottom. People have gravitated to low price, high volume, or high price, lower volume, and I don't think you can choose to be in both markets anymore. And so if you wanna sell at a high ticket price, you're gonna have a lower volume of clients.
[00:37:48] Simon Bowen: But you really need to communicate powerfully to them. You need to be able to communicate the clarity that counts for those people. Otherwise sell to the lower priced volume into the market, but be great at commoditized selling. Right. It's much more transactional. Yeah. And the internal, the internal discipline of lowest price is lowest cost of production.
[00:38:06] Corey Quinn: Right,
[00:38:07] Simon Bowen: right. It's
[00:38:08] Corey Quinn: the Walmart, it's the Amazon, it's volume.
[00:38:11] Simon Bowen: You have to be that if you wanna be at the low end of the market. But if you wanna be at the high end of the market, the internal discipline is customization and specialization. And so you seem to be able to do this for that specific client better than anybody else.
[00:38:25] Simon Bowen: That makes more sense than anyone else. And I think AI has kind of forced this, this disappearing of the middle market. Right. Uh, you know, I I, the market that makes most sense to me, if you can do it, is to be in the high price, low volume market, because you can say, I know more about this. I've got a client that builds farm sheds for farmers in South Australia.
[00:38:48] Simon Bowen: And initially they were going, well, they're just sheds. They're big steel boxes. You know, like, they're not that special. But my question was, do you know more about building sheds for farmers in South Australia than any other shed company in. I said, well, of course we do. 'cause this is what goes on in South Australia and this is what farmers in South Australia do.
[00:39:07] Simon Bowen: And they're a different group of people because South Australia's quite a, you know, closed agricultural community stuck between Perth and Melbourne. No one likes South Australia sort of thing. And there's, there's all this local stuff going on, right? It's not about the shed. They know building farm sheds for farmers in South Australia than anybody else.
[00:39:28] Corey Quinn: I understand their buyers at a deeper
[00:39:30] Simon Bowen: level than anyone else. Yes, they had this unique founder genius. The company's existed for 75 years. The original founder of the company was the father of one of the owners, and he's a local identity. He's no longer with us, but he was this. Odd, super bright, intelligent guy that just built playgrounds for kids in his spare time.
[00:39:52] Simon Bowen: And he's this local identity. So they have this real rural community genius baked into the business. They will sell that. Company one day to another farm shed company from New South Wales or Victoria, and they will almost certainly destroy the genius that allows him to drive a really, really successful business in South Australia.
[00:40:14] Simon Bowen: Sure. Because they'll try and treat them like New South Wales and Victorian farmers, you know? So genius is unique to a group of clients, to a specific circumstance, and that's where the premium lives.
[00:40:26] Corey Quinn: Yeah, and I, and I, I tend to actually, I don't tend, I, I prefer to work with. Clients who value my services willing to pay a premium 'cause they value and they're, they're willing to hire the best.
[00:40:38] Corey Quinn: Right. And that's where I think the genius model fits in
[00:40:41] Simon Bowen: nicely. Yeah. It's not just the best, Corey, they're hiring the person that makes more sense than anyone else they've spoken to. It's not actually just the best, it's like, well you just make sense. Yeah. No one else has said it to me like that. And that just makes sense.
[00:40:55] Simon Bowen: I wanna work with you. You know, people pay a premium for clarity. Often it's stripping away stuff, not adding words. That's right. People pay a premium for clarity. Clarity is power. And when you are, when, when you have clarity that counts. Like imagine you are serving a a particular niche and you're saying when it comes to digital marketing, 90% of what the world does does not apply to you.
[00:41:27] Simon Bowen: Imagine what a customer's gonna feel like in response to that statement. Like, yeah. Thank God someone knows. Yeah. Here's the 10% that we've figured out. Yeah. Works better than everything else for this particular type of business that you've got. And the client's gonna go, oh my goodness, that's, you mean we don't have to do every, no, absolutely not.
[00:41:48] Simon Bowen: We've tested this. And, um, you know, we have a philosophical view about this, that this is, this is true. And 90% of what digital agencies will tell you you need to do, you do not need to do. We are gonna get this 10% done and this is what's gonna happen. Clarity that counts. The customer's gonna go, well, that makes more sense than anything else anyone shared with
[00:42:09] Simon Bowen: me.
[00:42:09] Simon Bowen: Yeah. You know? Absolutely. Yeah. How much It's remarkably.
[00:42:13] Corey Quinn: It's remarkably different than how a typical agency would, would approach this. Yeah.
[00:42:17] Simon Bowen: And they might say, how much are you gonna charge me for that? And you go a lot more than all the other agencies. That's right. Because I know the 10%. So it's just a, you know, it's, it's, it feels like an oversimplification, but simplicity is the greatest form of sophistication that we have.
[00:42:35] Simon Bowen: You know, and it takes people a little while to kind of step into it, but when you map your genius, it gives you confidence to step into that space and go, we know that the core bit that makes the difference.
[00:42:47] Corey Quinn: Simon, there is so much more to unpack here, and unfortunately we, we are short on time. I'd love to have you back because I've got a dozen on top of a dozen more questions on top of this.
[00:42:57] Corey Quinn: But I wanted to just wrap up with, uh, two, two final questions. The first one is. What advice advice would you give to an agency founder who really does want to scale, but they're, they're struggling to do that. What's a, what's a first step that they could take in order to, to step more into the ability to scale?
[00:43:16] Simon Bowen: Well, I think, you know, people are leaning into technology as the mechanism for scale. I still think people, a, how you scale company is not technology. Certainly technology should take care of the things that are repetitive. That can be done really well by technology. But, you know, PE people scale companies and so.
[00:43:38] Simon Bowen: Having the right people that actually believe in the founder genius I, I think, is, you know, people who wanna defend what you stand for more than anyone else would. Is is critical to being able to scale and then you've gotta make a fundamental decision and you're gonna scale on volume, or are you gonna scale on.
[00:44:01] Simon Bowen: I mean, scale is a, use is a throwaway term that everyone's using. Right? But what does it actually mean? It doesn't have to mean more clients, you know, like get crystal clear in your own mind about what your definition of scale is. Is it, is it bottom line? That you're measuring scale by? Is it impacting the world?
[00:44:20] Simon Bowen: Is it the number of clients? Like, and these are often forces that are working against each other. And so, you know, if you wanna scale on volume, then you're gonna be a low cost producer. Is that the sort of work that you wanna do? So what is your definition of scale? And if you wanna scale at the top end of the market, it's still people that scale.
[00:44:39] Simon Bowen: We should be thinking about people first. Companies that are given superpowers by ai. Not companies that are replacing people. You know, there are certain human activities that become replaceable. But we should be using AI to elevate the uniquely human qualities. And AI isn't going to wipe out creatives.
[00:45:00] Simon Bowen: AI is going to bring better creatives to the table. That's it, you know? And so, you know, depending on what scale means, if it means high volume, low price, that's one formula. But of scale means I wanna serve a specialty better than everybody else. Be known for that. That's still gonna be a human. Quality, you know, and, and so the more people connect to and wanna defend the original founder thinking around this and then add to it rather than fight against it, you know, the greater the ability to scale.
[00:45:32] Simon Bowen: Does that make some sense?
[00:45:34] Corey Quinn: Yeah, absolutely. That's a great, that's a great reframe on, on the idea of scale, that people are the ones that scale companies. Last question, Simon, what's your motivation?
[00:45:45] Simon Bowen: I think business is the most powerful force for good on the planet, but only in the hands of the right leaders and it, it can cross international boundaries.
[00:45:55] Simon Bowen: It is self-sustaining 'cause it generates its own revenues through the exchange of value. It's not a charity, it's not looking for handouts and the right leaders tend to want build businesses that make a difference at some level. I'm not talking about save the world and everything else, but. You know, make the greatest possible difference in the context of what they do.
[00:46:13] Simon Bowen: But every business employs, it gives people a place to belong that they form. It forms communities. And you know what motivates me every day in terms of. Professionally is to equip great businesses with the ability to hold onto their uniqueness in the marketplace and, and not be commoditized with this idea that everything should be cheap.
[00:46:35] Simon Bowen: And, uh, you know, every, everything should be manufactured at low price. I think great businesses deserve to be great. They're the ones that tend to make the biggest difference in the world. I.
[00:46:44] Corey Quinn: You're definitely doing your part in, in, in helping bring that mission to life with Yeah. All the work you're doing with the models.
[00:46:51] Corey Quinn: The models method, the genius model. Well, I think I wanna Thank you. Sorry. I
[00:46:55] Simon Bowen: just, you know, business should be more noble and selling should be the most noble thing we do. And so my little agenda is I want selling to be the most noble thing any company does.
[00:47:07] Corey Quinn: Where can people learn more about you? Sure
[00:47:12] Simon Bowen: your.
[00:47:15] Simon Bowen: It's really simple. Models method.com. People can subscribe. Uh, I send out, you know, a couple of emails a week. You know, I have a LinkedIn newsletter that they'll be able to get to from there. Every month I do a 20 minute teaching, which is probably the most popular thing people come to. I, I turn on Zoom. I have a timer running for 20 minutes.
[00:47:35] Simon Bowen: And I teach one topic and try and get in and out in 20 minutes. And, uh, you've been to some of those. So I have a 20 minute teaching that people can subscribe to and just, uh, you know, come into our environment and, uh, see what we're doing with models and for those people that are, that it makes sense to, obviously we have programs at multiple levels, from groups who, to one to one that they can participate in the 20 minute teaching probably thing to.
[00:47:59] Simon Bowen: To jump into first, you know, come to the website and subscribe. And there's a lot of content on the website that they can, a lot of video content and things like that, that they can take a look through as well. So there's plenty of, plenty of resources there.
[00:48:11] Corey Quinn: Yeah. I'll, I'll second the 20 minute teaching.
[00:48:14] Corey Quinn: It's free, it, you, you can show up and just get a ton of value in 20 minutes and, you know, take off after that. It's, it's a, it's a great investment in time. So thank you so much Simon, for coming on the show.
[00:48:26] Simon Bowen: It's pleasure. Absolute pleasure, Corey. All right.
[00:48:29] Corey Quinn: Thanks for tuning in to the Deep Specialization Podcast.
[00:48:32] Corey Quinn: If you haven't checked out my bestselling book, anyone, not everyone, you can download the audiobook for free right now by going to anyone, not everyone.com. That's anyone, not everyone.com. And finally, a special thank you to our sponsor, E two M. We'll see you in the next episode.
[00:48:53] So if you wanna scale selling, you have to be able to scale the founder story. Yes. The philosophy, how we think about this, the genius that we bring as a company to the table through multiple generations of salespeople. Well, I don't know of a better way of doing that than to give people a model that they just need to learn to use.
[00:49:12] And have the genius built into the model, and so the model becomes the delivery mechanism for founder genius. Welcome to the Deep Specialization Podcast, the show where we blend focus, strategy and client intimacy in order to scale and simplify our businesses and our lives. I'm your host, Corey Quinn.
[00:49:30] Let's jump into the show. Welcome back to the Deep Specialization Podcast. Today we have an extraordinary guest who is an absolute expert in helping businesses simplify complexity, communicate powerfully, and scale their influence. Simon Bowen. Simon is the creator of the models method and the Genius model, and he's widely regarded as one of the best visual model experts in the world.
[00:49:58] His work is used across over 30 countries and in every industry imaginable from tech and startups through the defense industry and professional services. If you are an agency founder who's looking to scale just beyond yourself, grow your sales team, clarify your unique value, and become a true authority in your vertical market, you're in the right place.
[00:50:24] Simon helps businesses do just that by transforming complex ideas into visual models. He sees visual models as a fundamental system. And accelerated influence He's worked with and influenced incredible people, including helping. His thinking for his book, buy Back Your Time. That's actually how I met you, Simon.
[00:50:48] Uh, and many and many others. So let's dive in and learn from the master of Visual Models. Simon Bowen. Welcome Simon. Corey, it's a pleasure to be here. It, I'm thrilled to be on your show. I'm familiar with your work as, as we both know. So I'm looking forward to having a really, really great chat about, um, you know, agencies and what it's actually, you know, what does the world mean for them.
[00:51:13] Right now, you know, it's changing. So what does it mean? Yes, it is, it is absolutely changing and we're gonna dive into that. I wanna give you an opportunity to share, share about how influence influential models are, and uh, I'm just so excited to have you here. So I'll kick things off with my first question here, which is, you know, you've mentioned in the past and working together.
[00:51:36] That the most successful people have a system for elevated thinking and accelerated influence, and for you, that system is models. So for agencies and agency founders specifically who are trying to break through all the noise and they, and they, they genuinely wanna scale, how does developing a unique system for thinking help them stand out in this crowded world?
[00:52:00] Yeah, sure. Well, let me talk about the system for thinking and influence first, right? A business is only as good as the idea on which it's built and then the quality of the thinking of the leaders of the business and. Then the ability to influence the choices everybody else makes to support you. So, you know, team members to work hard, suppliers to serve you, banks, to fund you, regulators to let you operate, customers to buy from you.
[00:52:26] You know, success is a function of how good is your idea and the thinking behind it, and how strong is your ability to influence people. So elevate your thinking and, uh, accelerate influence. And you know, I, when I started thinking about that as a system. Used what pops into people's heads when we use the word system, right, when a system.
[00:52:51] Is there such a thing? Because certainly what I know is the written word is not it, you know, human language is so limited in its ability to express, and so if you think about, you know, a visual model, a two by two matrix, for example, it, it expresses an interplay between a vertical and a horizontal AEs that never actually gets spoken about when you're talking through the matrix with somebody.
[00:53:15] Yet it's right there in front of 'em and everybody gets it. Right, but to explain that in language only is, is phenomenally difficult. We're also limited by vocabulary of the receiver, not the sender. And so when you are marketing, the reading level of your audience is what determines the quality of the message, not the quality of what you've actually written.
[00:53:38] Written. And, and you know, frighteningly the average adult reading age in Australia and the US and UK is about 14. And so if you are using sophisticated language, you, you're missing big chunks of the audience. But, you know, we, we say things like, you know, picture this and, and if I said to you, what is your, what, what did your primary school, what was your primary school like, Corey, uh, an image would be popping into your head.
[00:54:06] Not a series of words, you know, flying through your brain and image is imagination. And so when we want people to imagine working with an agency, meaning putting themselves in the scenario when they're working with an agency, a specific agency, imagine working with us and what that would be like for you.
[00:54:25] We're actually saying think of the imagery of what your business would be like if we were your digital agency helping you to be successful. And so I and 83%. Of the information that the brain brings in from the world outside, comes through the optic nerve, directly through the optic nerve. 53% of the brain's reflex action is connected directly to the optic nerve.
[00:54:50] Only about 11% of the information that comes in comes in through the auditory channel. And when we, when we're reading words out to ourselves in our heads, that's the auditory channel in play. So why would we default to 11% when 83 percent's available to us? Right. I had to find a way of turning language into visual without just using photos and things.
[00:55:12] Right? Yeah. And that's when I landed on visual models and frameworks. And so basically, I think of them as blueprints for the brain. So if, you know, if you, let's say you were gonna spend a million dollars and build a house, you wouldn't go to a builder and say, I'm gonna give you a million dollars. Build me a house.
[00:55:29] It's up to you. Up to you. You go for it. You'd actually go to an architect and say, I want drawings. Yeah, right. And then we're gonna give those to the builders. So the metaphysical movement of most things in the real world were that they were a drawing on paper or on a screen. First they came from the brain, they became a drawing on paper or screen, a blueprint type drawing.
[00:55:51] And then they became a table or a chair or a house or whatever. And so these visual models, geometric models with words in them are like blueprints for the brain to share an idea, here's a thing that I can do. Let me explain that to you. Let me give you a framework. And frameworks make people feel confident.
[00:56:09] Yeah. And people see a framework they go, that looks like that would work. And so I, I just started, I just started exploring and I got deeper and deeper. And then I came across this idea of company genius that in a world where everyone's selling products and services. What the customer really wants to buy is what kind of genius do you have as a company?
[00:56:33] Yeah. Like how clever are you really? And any product or service you sell is probably gonna be great because as a company you have real genius. And there's a whole science behind the idea of company genius. Yeah. But you know, this might speak to the founders. Founder or the idea company, three things who.
[00:57:02] The reach of the founder, the, the tone of the founder starts to dissipate and dilute. Right. And you left what and how, and in that moment you become a commoditized agency just like everybody else. Yeah. Because the founder brought a philosophy that they had about this. They brought. History and expertise.
[00:57:21] And so I had to figure out a way of codifying company genius that kept the founder in the business, even if the founder's not there day to day. And we were able to do that. We built the genius model that you are so familiar with. So yeah, it's a system for thinking nuance. Yeah. So, so another way to say it is you're speaking there and, and I'm, I'm thinking about you mentioned the brain.
[00:57:41] The way the, the way the brain works, the brain works in models and so. The, the art and science of extracting that model from the founder. Yeah. The, the genius that exists in that. And then being able to communicate that in the marketplace from a sales and marketing perspective, and then also be able to share it internally.
[00:58:00] Not only get internal buy-in, but also to help sales and marketing teams that are supporting the founder and growing the agency in this context to be able to communicate that model. Effectively in that sales conversation that also that that, that, that creates the impression or the understanding that there is elevated thinking here and that there's greater sense of influence.
[00:58:21] Yeah. So, uh, you know, I, I've spent a lot of time thinking about wisdom and genius, right? Wisdom and insight and the currencies of wisdom and insight is not intellect. The currencies of wisdom and insight is actually patience. The wisest people have spent a long time thinking about something and observing.
[00:58:45] You know, one of, I think one of the best examples is Newton and gravity and the apple. Now, if he didn't have time just to sit and ponder, he wouldn't have wondered why the apple fell anyway. Yeah. Right. And so if he'd be, if if mobile phones existing, he would've been on his phone scrolling. He wouldn't even seen the before.
[00:59:02] Right. Yeah. So it never would happen. The, the currency of wisdom and deep insight is actually patience. The willingness to spend the time to really think something through to its, and strip it back to its core, right? Yeah. That by itself is not genius. It becomes genius when you turn it into action in the real world that impacts people.
[00:59:25] Yeah. And so, you know, I'm, I'm a real music fan and I love great musicians, but somebody who's a phenomenal musician who doesn't play for audiences, does not have genius. No one else is enjoying the music. What they have is real skill and talent, but it turns into genius when the world gets to hear them.
[00:59:48] And so, you know, the transition we were unpacking was, you know, the founder of an idea that becomes a business, usually had some deep wisdom and insight about it that. I was formed just in the passing of time and the patience to continue to unpack this thing and go deeper and deeper. Yeah. And deeper. You know, we, we, we were talking to a friend just yesterday who, you know, decided to start to explore a specific topic and I don't wanna talk about what the topic is 'cause he'll probably turn it into something, but, you know, he spent.
[01:00:20] A week and a half just sitting at his computer researching that thing. That's it. But, but he has a depth of wisdom about that. That is not common. Right. And so we talk a lot about the uncommon common sense. What, what is common sense? Common sense is something you spent long enough studying and understanding that it, it's really obvious to you.
[01:00:42] But my father, you know, old farming family used to say common sense is just not that common. And, and so when you, when you take this deep wisdom and insight, you need a way of explaining it to people. So they go, oh, that makes sense, right? And we call that genius. So, you know, a digital agency that has the ability to package that deep, insightful wisdom that they bring to the market that nobody else brings in a way that has their customers saying, well, that makes more sense than anything else I've seen or heard.
[01:01:17] That's genius. Right? And but you couple that with the reality that I've experienced that many of these agency founders who have. A genius about how they operate and the, and the, and the, the value they create in the world. But many times it's very intuitive, right? Yeah. It's not articulated right. Yeah. And I think one of the things that has been powerful for me and what my work with you is being able to articulate really the genius model, which is really help is, is the vehicle.
[01:01:49] Could you talk about what the, the genius model is and how it can be leveraged in this context? Sure. So, you know, we talk about, I talk a lot about the shift from intuitive genius to organized genius, so nobody can buy your intuition. It is like, because your intuition has you make, has you making mental leaps between concepts at such a fast rate that no one else can keep up with you.
[01:02:15] Right? That's what intuition is. And so you say something and as you are saying it, you are already connecting 13 dots to it. Yeah. To, to the outcome. Right. But the audience is just, you're hearing you say that one thing, wondering what does that even mean? Right. And so it's hard for anybody to buy someone's intuitive genius.
[01:02:35] So we need to turn it into organized genius. One of the things that often happens, Corey, when we're working with companies and helping them unpack their, their company genius, is there's often this moment where people lean back, throw their pen on the desk and go, well, I've been trying to explain that for 25 years.
[01:02:49] Right? But the model just captured, it's because. What is so natural to them is completely uncommon to everybody else. That's right. And they, and they almost wonder why no one else gets it. And so a lot of agency owners and founders that you deal with. Might be thinking, why doesn't everybody else get this the specific thing that I do for this particular niche or this area of specialty?
[01:03:15] Right? How come no one else sees it like I'm seeing it? Well, because the world has beaten it out of people to be special. Just let me let that sink for a moment. The, the world has made a practice of being unique and special out of people, and so that plays into, I have this unique genius that I can bring to the table for a specific industry as a digital agency that almost no one else sees.
[01:03:41] I don't know why no one else has seen it, but I've seen it and it works. The world has actively discouraged that kind of claim, but actually everybody's got. A unique perspective, which means they have an angle on it. So we built this thing called the genius model, which is a basically a shape, a geometric shape that says the heart of the heart of what the customer wants should sit at the center of everything that a company does.
[01:04:09] What most companies do is they put their product map. Their journey map or whatever in front of the customer and they say, we'll do these things and then we'll just pop you onto the end, right? And what the genius model does is it puts context, which is what's the big promise in the center, and what are the three big outcomes that you create for your clients no matter what.
[01:04:34] And this is context now. Context is usually the first thing that leaves the sales conversation. Yet context is where all the value is. And so we anchored context to the center of the model. And so context is always in front of the customer. Do you want this big outcome in the middle? Yeah, I sure do. And would these three results matter to you?
[01:04:58] Yeah. There's many more that would deliver, but these three, everybody gets, 'cause we know that they're the three most important. How's that sound? You? That's everything I want. And sitting in the middle of the model and we. Create these levers that drive those results for them. And this is, you know, this is where the concept of the selling company, it comes into, into play.
[01:05:24] So this is our big concept, right? The model really popped when I added. What I call the accelerators around the outside, these nine things that drive these levers that represent the bridge into reality. So from these concepts, we can step through these nine accelerators and make reality happen. And so basically saying to a customer, do you want these things?
[01:05:51] I sure do. Here's how we do it. And here's, and, and these are the specific things that we do that make that happen in the real world. Do you wanna see how those things work? And now what we're having is a structured dialogue about something that's completely intuitive to the agency, but, but it gives the agency the chance to say things in here that the customer had no clue about.
[01:06:21] Is to have the client realize they know nothing about what they need to do to get the result in the middle. And they're talking to someone who has done the work of thinking this out well enough to be able to put a highly organized framework in front of them. They go, that looks like it would work, that that.
[01:06:36] And so this genius model now is in use in well over 30. Countries in every industry we can think of, you know, banking, finance, tech, SaaS engineering, construction, medical technology, agency, work, consulting. We haven't found an industry yet where we can't build the models. Defense ship building, which is one of my favorite areas, you know, building warships.
[01:06:59] Yeah. If you can explain defense shipbuilding in a single model that takes about seven minutes to walk through. Win billion dollar contracts, right? Spreadsheet. Clearly being able to in an organized. Way, be able to communicate the genius of the company and help educate, enlighten the, the buyer on the, the sort of the true nature of, of the thing that they're trying to achieve is very powerful.
[01:07:29] You've said that the only thing that scales your business is the ability to scale your selling. Yeah. So how does having this genius model, this articulation, help facilitate your ability to scale as an agency? Yeah, so. What I often say is, you know, any money you spend on delivery is over capitalization until you've scaled how you sell.
[01:07:50] And so you can have the best delivery systems, but if you can't bring more clients to it, you can't scale the business. So the founder of a company, and I think this would be true in the agency world, the founder is often the best sales person in the company, and they're the best salesperson for two reasons.
[01:08:06] And unfortunately, it's not gonna appeal to anybody's ego when I lay these out. The two reasons are they have insured a genius. So they can kind of say things that a sales person working for them probably won't have the ability to say. The second reason is they can cut any deal. They like to win a client that's, they can offer offer discounts, they can package stuff up bundle value.
[01:08:28] Your sales person doesn't have that license. And so to scale a business by scaling the selling, you have to be able to scale your selling through multiple generations of sales team. So someone might start an agency, it's just them and a couple of people, and they're doing really, really well and it starts to grow.
[01:08:47] And so they hire their first sales person, and the first sales person is in direct contact with the founder, have a lot of conversations with 'em. So the first sales person's like a mini me and they can get sales done and they're probably working in. The agency as well, and the agency continues to grow, and then you need to hire more salespeople, and that first salesperson probably becomes the sales manager.
[01:09:08] Being a good salesperson doesn't mean that they're a great manager, but that's usually what happens. So they become the sales manager. Now they're under pressure for results. You know, sales, basically, the salespeople are now a second generation away from the founder, so they don't have the same connection to the original conversations.
[01:09:27] Right. Yeah, and the sales manager starts to drift away from that founder connection and they start looking for what are the sales techniques everybody else is using when the thing that always sold the agency was the story that the founder had. Right. That's the thing that is, uh, that's, that's the unique Yeah.
[01:09:45] Aspect of the, it's not what they do or how they do it. It's the, it's the, it's how they think about it. Yeah, exactly. It's not what or how, it's how they think about it. Right. But, but once you're in the second generation sales team, how the founder thinks about it's starting to dilute. That's right.
[01:10:00] Internal dilution is a bigger issue than external commoditization. And then that sales manager leaves. Because they love selling and they hated being a manager anyway. And now you get another sales manager who never actually had that original first point of connection with the founder. You might've hired them in from outside.
[01:10:18] Now they come in saying, well, here's how we used to sell at our old place. So also, they're not that interested in the founders' original thinking and philosophy around this. And the founders don't realize that. The price they're paying for them, not having that connection to it. And they sound like they're pretty clued in sales managers.
[01:10:35] So they go, here's what we're gonna do. And the founder goes, that sounds good to me. You know, let's try and do that. But the story now has gone and, and the agencies immediately commoditized because of internal, right? Yep. So if you wanna scale selling, you have to be able to scale the founder story. Yes, the philosophy, how we think about this, the genius that we bring as a company to the table through multiple generations of salespeople.
[01:11:00] Well, I don't know of a better way of doing that than to give people a model that they just need to learn to use. And have the genius built into the model. And so the model becomes the delivery mechanism for founder genius. We build it into the model. Then you just give the sales team the model and say, just learn how to use that, learn the choreography of the model, how to walk through it, you know, that, that, that, uh, also relieves the, the company from.
[01:11:23] Having to hire the, the world's best salesperson who has the thing that people want. Right? Yeah. So you have a model that is more systematized, more standardized, and that's the thing that creates the, the attraction versus the charisma. Absolutely. Well, if you hire the world's best salesperson, you are completely at their whim, right?
[01:11:51] They can sell anywhere. Right? And their customers follow them. What actually want is your customers following your business. Correct? 'cause they know your business is amazing. Think about, you know, your best salespeople are actually your best clients. And if you, you know, if your clients love you because of who you are, they're gonna say to other people, yeah, you gotta work with Corey.
[01:12:16] He's amazing. He's just, he's a great guy. And he is just so clever. They're actually trying to describe your intuitive genius. Right, right. As opposed to your best client saying you've gotta work with Corey. I mean, he is amazing. His team's amazing, but he has a model for helping companies do this. It's incredible and it works.
[01:12:38] And, you know, he, he can walk you through that model. I, I'd love to do the introduction, so, so he can walk through the model. It's an entirely different kind of referral. How many referring customers have the to say. Yeah, I've spoken, I've worked in, and I've spoken to many agency founders who are in the unfortunate situation where they have a single salesperson Hmm.
[01:13:01] Who is the rainmaker, and that they have a lot of leverage over the founder because Oh yeah. They become dependent on the, on this salesperson and, and therefore makes the, makes it difficult for the founder to be able to run the play that they want, because. You know, they don't wanna upset the, uh, the golden goose.
[01:13:21] You said Simon, uh, real quickly before moving forward, something that I, I loved, which is that internal dilution is more dangerous than external commoditization. Yeah. Can I just make a comment on the founders that have one sales? Yeah. Just something. Yeah, let's go. Just something I'd love people to think about and it will help them immediately in their business be clear about who generates the leads versus who actually makes the conversion.
[01:13:45] Right. And high performing salespeople generally are great prospectors. Like back in the day, you know, when I first started in industry a long time ago, you know, well over 40 years ago now, the salespeople had to prospect. The salesperson had to find the leads to sell to and then sell. Right, right. And do the conversion.
[01:14:07] Right. And so we, we have this thing that I call industrial age selling. And so when people have a rainmaker salesperson, is that person prospecting or finding their own leads and selling to them and converting? And if they are, they're absolutely a rainmaker, but if they're not. Are generating all leads just happens.
[01:14:33] Don't fall into the trap of thinking that they're a rainmaker, and if you lose them, you are completely at risk, right? 'cause, uh, if one person can do it, others can do it. You can replicate what that person does. And if you have a, if you have a really powerful framework that you can talk to a customer about, you're less dependent upon a, a highly skilled salesperson, as opposed to, you just need a great communicator.
[01:14:57] Someone who can actually talk to people generates. You are looking for two things. When you're recruiting salespeople, someone who loves to sell, it's hard to get someone who doesn't love to sell to be successful. And the second thing is, someone new clients are gonna love. Yeah. Like hire someone for those two qualities and then teach them your genius model.
[01:15:20] They will sell for you, right? Yeah. But, but to control your selling, control the lead. How the business, so every agency owner absolutely should be taking full lead. And, you know, we control our own lead flow and then we put great communicators in front of the customer. It just might give people some ease of relief.
[01:15:41] You're not, you're not trapped as trapped by this one rainmaking salesperson. Absolutely. Right. And it's a good frame that a business really in order to build a true asset. If you think of a business as an asset, yeah, it, it must really control the leads. Yeah. And, and control the sales process. And, and you know, we, we, we could get deep into lead generation, but if your lead generation is all inbound through social media and things like that, you're not really in control of your leads.
[01:16:08] You know, the highest value companies have a, a conscious internal outbound lead gen. You know, people. Outbound mail pieces and, you know, identifying lists and targeting them and things like that, as opposed to just relying on social media and paid ad placement and stuff like that, both in an outbound lead, you know, lead generation.
[01:16:29] But let's talk about dilution, please, and commoditization. So I, I alluded before about this idea. You know where this company genius comes from? It comes from a who, which is usually the founder or the person who came up with it. And really that is what is their philosophy. So, you know, what is an agency founder's philosophy about helping a certain industry niche or sector or specialization to really be successful?
[01:16:59] And then what is their history? The high story, the, the wins and the lessons they've learned along the way. And then what is their expertise? So formal and informal, so experience and education, and that forms the founder, and then they, and then they have this unique internal way of viewing the world that's just almost in them.
[01:17:20] When you, you look at the word genius, it generally comes from the, you know, meaning it's in, started. Uh, you know, they either had a fit of entrepreneurialism or, or, or they just recognized there was something that could be done better. Right. And so they have a philosophy around it and that they really believe to be true.
[01:17:43] And then that turns into a what? Which is the big idea. And the big idea has context. So context is why this even matters. So why a specific niche might need help, you know, with their digital marketing or whatever the case might be. What is the concept? What actually is the big idea? You know, for example, someone could.
[01:18:05] Uh, you know, as a digital agency, help people who, you know, are highly specialized, do low volume, high price sales, and don't want to use ad placement and paid advertising, but still want, you know, a, a really powerful digital marketing strategy. There, there's a concept, what's, you know, or versus volume.
[01:18:25] Someone's trying to generate 10,000 leads a month, you know, through a high volume digital placement strategy or whatever. So what's the concept and then what the consequence. You know, uh, uh, AI is just fascinating. I, I'm fascinated by it. I'm having a deep philosophical conversation with chat right now that I'm in the middle of about where the future's gonna be.
[01:18:48] And, um, chat made an interesting comment. It said, you know, the future will be based more on solving problems than being a profession. Now that actually should be a, you know, a a little kind of thing in the brain for everybody. The future will be based more on solving problems than actually being a profession.
[01:19:08] I think that's probably true. You know, no one wants to hire an attorney just because they're a professional. They actually just wanna solve a problem and, and so you know, what are the consequences? Who have you solved this problem for? And how has this big idea worked? And then the third side of company genius is the how, which is all about speed, ease.
[01:19:34] And leverage. People want stuff to happen fast. We're impatient in the world today. We don't wanna have to do work too hard to make it happen. And we want a 10 to one, you know, we want a 10 x result. We want leverage. I give you a dollar to gimme $10 back. 10 x is such a a, a, you know, a ridiculous thing for people to be saying.
[01:19:53] But you know, we, we want leverage. And so it starts with, it starts with this idea of the who. And then becomes, you know, the what and the how. But imagine that that who starts to move away from the business. Yeah. You know, they were in the day to day, they were running it. They've got a salesperson, sales manager, they're just one step back, and then they've got a CEO or a general manager, and they're just another step back.
[01:20:23] And then they become the chair of the board, and then they're just another step back, and then they become a non-executive director and they're another step back. And then eventually they just want this thing to make money and for them to not be involved at all on a day-to-day basis. And every time that, every time that founder takes a step back.
[01:20:41] The what and the how are left to make their own decisions without the founder's insight there to really keep people connected to what we were all about in the first instance, right? And so as, as the founder steps back, these internal stories start to dilute and you know, you imagine. A company now that has a CEO and a sales leader and a sales team and a marketing manager who really haven't had direct contact with the founder.
[01:21:15] What you actually have is a diluted internal story. They probably jump into chat and they start asking chat for a whole bunch of information, and chat is a dilution mechanism, and so this internal dilution. Uh, where will I put that? This, you know, diluting the origin story internally is the fastest path to commoditization because the salespeople start selling to what they start selling to price.
[01:21:45] Because they're, what, what are they saying that's different to everybody else? They don't, they don't have this connection, you know, look at Apple, right? Tim Cook's a great CEO, but are Apple the same company? Because they had this experience of the, the, you know, the, the founder. Actually just disappearing altogether.
[01:22:04] Yeah. Is Apple the same companies today as it once was? No. Or is it? No. And it had a lot of internal dilution, and it's now just in the tech market like everybody else. Right. What made it famous was a conversation that Steve Jobs had with Bill Gates when they were in their twenties. Bill was a bill, was a fixed point cursor guy.
[01:22:28] The screen is divided into a grid pattern and used the arrow keys to move around the screen and Bill and, and, and Steve Jobs was a float point technology guy, meaning the mouse could move anywhere in the screen, the cursor could move anywhere in the screen, and the mouse had not been invented yet. And Bill said, but I dunno how that would work.
[01:22:45] Steve and Steve went, bill, one day people will just reach in front of their screen and go like this, and the mouse will follow their hands. This is when they're in their twenties and then Apple invented the mouse and the rest is history and the phone came out. You know, so where's that thinking coming from?
[01:23:03] Right. And the company dilutes. It's another tech company now. Right. And so internal dilution is, is, you know, founders absolutely have to guard against that. Yeah. But by making sure that everybody can connect to their original thinking. I think about, I'm applying this to my last company. I was the chief marketing officer of an agency.
[01:23:24] We grew from a hundred people to a thousand people from 20 million to 200 million in a very short period of time. And because we were. We were on a growth tear. We had to grow. Like that was the, that was the initiative. And without direction from the founder about what made us different, what made us unique, our approach, we had to make it up on the fly.
[01:23:44] Yeah. And of course we would just use the more functional terms that would speak to our buyer, which, which of course were much more commoditizing because we didn't have that direction. And I think that many founders who have that intuition have that genius inside of them. Just don't have a great way to externalize it and to, and to structure it.
[01:24:05] Right. Yeah. And that's the big, that's the thing that's holding them back. It's not that they don't want to be able to have a team that communicates effectively and eloquently their, their genius. They just don't know how to get it to the team, because I've gotta get it out of themselves. Right. Yeah, that's right.
[01:24:19] We're not our own best counselors. Right. That's right. But the other thing is, salespeople wanna make the easiest possible sale. That's right. The shortest distance. Right. They wanna, and the commoditized sale is the easiest sale to make. 'cause you just make the price, that's it, right? To make the same, the buy, right?
[01:24:38] Yeah. Original ideas or deeper thinking. Founder led thinking is often harder to sell because you're probably putting something in front of the customer that the customer's not that familiar with. If you confuse them, you lose them. But if you can frame it as a model or a framework where the customer goes, well, that makes sense.
[01:24:58] I, I, you know, I'd, I'd want everyone to kind of burn that into their brain. You should measure your message with that frame of reference. If you put it in front of the customers. Are they gonna say that makes more sense than anything else I've seen. That's, that's when the sale's made. But is the, is the original genius of the founder codified into that message.
[01:25:19] Right. Otherwise, you know, what the customer says makes sense is lowest price. And, and now we're in commodity land. You know, and this is actually about clarity. I think it was Donald Rumsfeld said, clarity is power. Yeah. And, and I think that's right. We talk a lot about, a lot of what we are trying to do at the models method is help.
[01:25:40] Founder led businesses kind of tap into the, the clarity that counts, basically. And what is the clarity that counts that makes the biggest difference for a specialized niche of companies that you might serve as a, as a, as a digital agency, right? What is that really specific, hard to find clarity that counts that no one else in the space seems to have tapped into.
[01:26:02] Everybody else is into tools, tech tips, and so on. But you somehow found this. Clarity that counts. That makes the biggest difference and isn't gonna make the sale the easiest sale, but it's gonna make it the highest value sale. I mean, with ai, we've, we've moved into a world where the middle market has evaporated.
[01:26:20] You know, there, there used to be a line from low price to high ticket, and that line has become a U shape and the middle markets evaporated down the bottom. People have gravitated to low price, high volume, or high price, lower volume, and I don't think you can choose to be in both markets anymore. And so if you wanna sell at a high ticket price, you're gonna have a lower volume of clients.
[01:26:41] But you really need to communicate powerfully to them. You need to be able to communicate the clarity that counts for those people. Otherwise sell to the lower priced volume into the market, but be great at commoditized selling. Right. It's much more transactional. Yeah. And the internal, the internal discipline of lowest price is lowest cost of production.
[01:27:00] Right, right. It's the Walmart, it's the Amazon, it's volume. You have to be that if you wanna be at the low end of the market. But if you wanna be at the high end of the market, the internal discipline is customization and specialization. And so you seem to be able to do this for that specific client better than anybody else.
[01:27:18] That makes more sense than anyone else. And I think AI has kind of forced this, this disappearing of the middle market. Right. Uh, you know, I I, the market that makes most sense to me, if you can do it, is to be in the high price, low volume market, because you can say, I know more about this. I've got a client that builds farm sheds for farmers in South Australia.
[01:27:41] And initially they were going, well, they're just sheds. They're big steel boxes. You know, like, they're not that special. But my question was, do you know more about building sheds for farmers in South Australia than any other shed company in. I said, well, of course we do. 'cause this is what goes on in South Australia and this is what farmers in South Australia do.
[01:28:00] And they're a different group of people because South Australia's quite a, you know, closed agricultural community stuck between Perth and Melbourne. No one likes South Australia sort of thing. And there's, there's all this local stuff going on, right? It's not about the shed. They know building farm sheds for farmers in South Australia than anybody else.
[01:28:21] I understand their buyers at a deeper level than anyone else. Yes, they had this unique founder genius. The company's existed for 75 years. The original founder of the company was the father of one of the owners, and he's a local identity. He's no longer with us, but he was this. Odd, super bright, intelligent guy that just built playgrounds for kids in his spare time.
[01:28:46] And he's this local identity. So they have this real rural community genius baked into the business. They will sell that. Company one day to another farm shed company from New South Wales or Victoria, and they will almost certainly destroy the genius that allows him to drive a really, really successful business in South Australia.
[01:29:07] Sure. Because they'll try and treat them like New South Wales and Victorian farmers, you know? So genius is unique to a group of clients, to a specific circumstance, and that's where the premium lives. Yeah, and I, and I, I tend to actually, I don't tend, I, I prefer to work with. Clients who value my services willing to pay a premium 'cause they value and they're, they're willing to hire the best.
[01:29:32] Right. And that's where I think the genius model fits in nicely. Yeah. It's not just the best, Corey, they're hiring the person that makes more sense than anyone else they've spoken to. It's not actually just the best, it's like, well you just make sense. Yeah. No one else has said it to me like that. And that just makes sense.
[01:29:49] I wanna work with you. You know, people pay a premium for clarity. Often it's stripping away stuff, not adding words. That's right. People pay a premium for clarity. Clarity is power. And when you are, when, when you have clarity that counts. Like imagine you are serving a a particular niche and you're saying when it comes to digital marketing, 90% of what the world does does not apply to you.
[01:30:20] Imagine what a customer's gonna feel like in response to that statement. Like, yeah. Thank God someone knows. Yeah. Here's the 10% that we've figured out. Yeah. Works better than everything else for this particular type of business that you've got. And the client's gonna go, oh my goodness, that's, you mean we don't have to do every, no, absolutely not.
[01:30:41] We've tested this. And, um, you know, we have a philosophical view about this, that this is, this is true. And 90% of what digital agencies will tell you you need to do, you do not need to do. We are gonna get this 10% done and this is what's gonna happen. Clarity that counts. The customer's gonna go, well, that makes more sense than anything else anyone shared with me.
[01:31:02] Yeah. You know? Absolutely. Yeah. How much It's remarkably. It's remarkably different than how a typical agency would, would approach this. Yeah. And they might say, how much are you gonna charge me for that? And you go a lot more than all the other agencies. That's right. Because I know the 10%. So it's just a, you know, it's, it's, it feels like an oversimplification, but simplicity is the greatest form of sophistication that we have.
[01:31:28] You know, and it takes people a little while to kind of step into it, but when you map your genius, it gives you confidence to step into that space and go, we know that the core bit that makes the difference. Simon, there is so much more to unpack here, and unfortunately we, we are short on time. I'd love to have you back because I've got a dozen on top of a dozen more questions on top of this.
[01:31:50] But I wanted to just wrap up with, uh, two, two final questions. The first one is. What advice advice would you give to an agency founder who really does want to scale, but they're, they're struggling to do that. What's a, what's a first step that they could take in order to, to step more into the ability to scale?
[01:32:09] Well, I think, you know, people are leaning into technology as the mechanism for scale. I still think people, a, how you scale company is not technology. Certainly technology should take care of the things that are repetitive. That can be done really well by technology. But, you know, PE people scale companies and so.
[01:32:32] Having the right people that actually believe in the founder genius I, I think, is, you know, people who wanna defend what you stand for more than anyone else would. Is is critical to being able to scale and then you've gotta make a fundamental decision and you're gonna scale on volume, or are you gonna scale on.
[01:32:55] I mean, scale is a, use is a throwaway term that everyone's using. Right? But what does it actually mean? It doesn't have to mean more clients, you know, like get crystal clear in your own mind about what your definition of scale is. Is it, is it bottom line? That you're measuring scale by? Is it impacting the world?
[01:33:13] Is it the number of clients? Like, and these are often forces that are working against each other. And so, you know, if you wanna scale on volume, then you're gonna be a low cost producer. Is that the sort of work that you wanna do? So what is your definition of scale? And if you wanna scale at the top end of the market, it's still people that scale.
[01:33:32] We should be thinking about people first. Companies that are given superpowers by ai. Not companies that are replacing people. You know, there are certain human activities that become replaceable. But we should be using AI to elevate the uniquely human qualities. And AI isn't going to wipe out creatives.
[01:33:53] AI is going to bring better creatives to the table. That's it, you know? And so, you know, depending on what scale means, if it means high volume, low price, that's one formula. But of scale means I wanna serve a specialty better than everybody else. Be known for that. That's still gonna be a human. Quality, you know, and, and so the more people connect to and wanna defend the original founder thinking around this and then add to it rather than fight against it, you know, the greater the ability to scale.
[01:34:26] Does that make some sense? Yeah, absolutely. That's a great, that's a great reframe on, on the idea of scale, that people are the ones that scale companies. Last question, Simon, what's your motivation? I think business is the most powerful force for good on the planet, but only in the hands of the right leaders and it, it can cross international boundaries.
[01:34:48] It is self-sustaining 'cause it generates its own revenues through the exchange of value. It's not a charity, it's not looking for handouts and the right leaders tend to want build businesses that make a difference at some level. I'm not talking about save the world and everything else, but. You know, make the greatest possible difference in the context of what they do.
[01:35:06] But every business employs, it gives people a place to belong that they form. It forms communities. And you know what motivates me every day in terms of. Professionally is to equip great businesses with the ability to hold onto their uniqueness in the marketplace and, and not be commoditized with this idea that everything should be cheap.
[01:35:28] And, uh, you know, every, everything should be manufactured at low price. I think great businesses deserve to be great. They're the ones that tend to make the biggest difference in the world. I. You're definitely doing your part in, in, in helping bring that mission to life with Yeah. All the work you're doing with the models.
[01:35:44] The models method, the genius model. Well, I think I wanna Thank you. Sorry. I just, you know, business should be more noble and selling should be the most noble thing we do. And so my little agenda is I want selling to be the most noble thing any company does. Where can people learn more about you? Sure your.
[01:36:09] It's really simple. Models method.com. People can subscribe. Uh, I send out, you know, a couple of emails a week. You know, I have a LinkedIn newsletter that they'll be able to get to from there. Every month I do a 20 minute teaching, which is probably the most popular thing people come to. I, I turn on Zoom. I have a timer running for 20 minutes.
[01:36:29] And I teach one topic and try and get in and out in 20 minutes. And, uh, you've been to some of those. So I have a 20 minute teaching that people can subscribe to and just, uh, you know, come into our environment and, uh, see what we're doing with models and for those people that are, that it makes sense to, obviously we have programs at multiple levels, from groups who, to one to one that they can participate in the 20 minute teaching probably thing to.
[01:36:53] To jump into first, you know, come to the website and subscribe. And there's a lot of content on the website that they can, a lot of video content and things like that, that they can take a look through as well. So there's plenty of, plenty of resources there. Yeah. I'll, I'll second the 20 minute teaching.
[01:37:07] It's free, it, you, you can show up and just get a ton of value in 20 minutes and, you know, take off after that. It's, it's a, it's a great investment in time. So thank you so much Simon, for coming on the show. It's pleasure. Absolute pleasure, Corey. All right. Thanks for tuning in to the Deep Specialization Podcast.
[01:37:25] If you haven't checked out my bestselling book, anyone, not everyone, you can download the audiobook for free right now by going to anyone, not everyone.com. That's anyone, not everyone.com. And finally, a special thank you to our sponsor, E two M. We'll see you in the next episode.
