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00:00

Hey everyone. Welcome back to the show. This is Ted, your host speaking. On today’s show, we have Grand Difford, who’s joining us from New Zealand. Grant is the founder and head of client strategy and waking giants. A firm that specializes in helping businesses grow through leadership strategy and strategy implementation. Grant shares a ton of actionable takeaways such as the dangers of bad leadership in a business, the importance of providing good customer service as an overall brand strategy, and how entrepreneurs tend to look at and solve the wrong problems in their business. Now, guys, Grant has been super generous because he has given us free access to his course on how we can create a step by step 90 day strategic plan, just click on the link on my website and enter t EDT. Oh, to gain access. This free access cost is only available to the end of September. So make sure you grab it while at less. Now all episodes show notes, tools and resources are online at Ted teo.com. That’s to.com. And if you’d like to support the show, then make sure you share it with a friend or leave a review on your favorite part because they’re actually now as a way to say thank you and to show my appreciation to you guys. If you actually do subscribe and leave a review on Apple iTunes by the end of September, then you stand a chance to win $50 worth of gift vouchers from Amazon. Now let’s dive right in. Hey, Grant, thank you so much for joining us today. Hey, Ted, how are you? grant? I’m doing great. Now this stove a simple icebreaker? Could you share a verse who is grant deferred when it isn’t working?

 

01:18

That depends on what I’m wearing, essentially. So if I’m at home, I’m wearing my hunting gear working on my land with various animals and building various buildings. And if I’m not in my hunting gear, I’m probably in my running gear, running trails as we’re just preparing for our next ultra marathon. So generally, I’ll be outside as a rule.

 

01:41

Cool. What’s the training for an ultra marathon like?

 

01:44

tricky. We tend to do it the hard way we we run in the forest up near where we live. And it’s very Boggy and very hard work at this time of year. So it’s really about time on feet, doing some good volume. And trying to stay uninjured basically, is really the trick.

 

02:03

Yeah, it sounds very challenging to run through the forest, it’s probably very easy to fall down, right?

 

02:07

Oh, yeah, there’s plenty of trips and falls. And we’ve got a weed here called gore’s which is very spiky. So you end up covering, covering cuts and blood and you know, there’s definitely the other falls. But luckily, the benefits outweigh the challenges. Now,

 

02:21

Grant, if I know you, I know you like a challenge. You originally came from the UK. But could you share how you actually got to New Zealand and started your company working giants.

 

02:30

That’s quite good one. We were live in a fairly pedestrian life in the UK and one day decided we we should move to New Zealand, we thought it would be quite a good idea to just buy one way tickets and rent our house out and put all of our stuff in a container and jump on a plane we’d never been here we had one Kiwi friend who lived here. And we decided once we ran out of money, we’re a bit stuck. So we had to sort of get on with it. And that was 1415 years ago. And never really looked back to be perfectly honest. It’s a sort of the lifestyle that we love. And our daughters born here, and after a few years working in roles, I found that sort of challenge wasn’t there anymore and started waking giants in 2011. So grant, could you share with us?

 

03:25

What is the idea behind waking giants? And maybe could you explain the name?

 

03:29

Like any good entrepreneur, I thought I knew better than my previous boss and waking giants was really, Kiwis are interesting. They are these quiet achievers, but they’re not really good with success. And ultimately, waking giants was about a belief system in and I still believe in it and that many people can do far greater things than they possibly realize. So waking giants was about realizing potential is sort of the phrase we would use. And the vision superseded sort of the actions. So I was a trained graphic designer. And you know, my wife and I had come out of the same company. And then within about a month we both ended up sort of working for our business because of necessity. So we went from a really good income to sort of zero overnight. And it came down to the age old thing of do what you can to pay the bills. So you know the first few years of the business was doing what I knew how to do the vision had to sort of park itself for a little while. We had bought a house and you know the mortgage needed to be paid. So for a few years, the vision had to go on hold and it was about paying the bills and using the skills we had to generate revenue to to survive. Really.

 

04:49

It sounds like you took waking giants true in evolution. What was the journey like Could you share with us what it was at a start and where is it now?

 

04:56

It was an interesting one. Like I say it was about I fell into the trap of building a business around what I could do skills, core skills. And it took about probably five years of hitting a bit of a brick wall. You know, you grow more staff, more clients, more staff, more clients and, you know, methodology that I didn’t really like. And it kind of got to the point where I went through a development program as a bit of a guinea pig with a friend of mine, a strategic program. And about halfway through over about six weeks, I realized that we were just pointing in the right or wrong direction. And really, that sort of started the evolution, I went out and spoke to our clients and said, sort of where is the value that we bring in, we realized it was around more of the strategy and the thinking and passion for philosophy around business. Ultimately, it was, well, we had a young daughter, so my time was really stretched, and it wasn’t very fulfilling as an owner, I was just doing things to pay the bills. So it came across roads where it was either pull the pin and give up, or find the thing that made the difference in November 2019, I made a full commitment to make the change into like the space that we’re in now, which is focused heavily on the relationship between leadership and strategy. So it’s been probably a three to five year evolution to the path we’re at. And whereas now, the market understands what we do, operationally, we know what we do. And that’s just about building on on that focus. And, but the interesting thing is that vision is no different to what it was 10 years ago, is in the vision, it’s just how we do it is really, really different now. And I couldn’t be more happy. But it proves that

 

06:50

building a vision takes a long time. Grant, it sounds like you’ve always known what you wanted to do, it just took you some time to get there. Because life got in the way, you have your bills to pay, you have a family to feed, you have a mortgage to pay. And that’s perfectly fine. But you know, what is important is you never give up. Now, to the listeners, as Grant has shared, it does take a lot of time to get your vision sometimes, but it doesn’t mean you should give up on it. As long as it is the guiding principle for your business, you will get there eventually.

 

07:15

Yeah, I think the one thing I’ve learned is, there’s a difference between just being a business owner and a leader. And I think for me, the first 567 years maybe I was I was a business owner, I ran a business, whereas I’ve taken the role of being a leader far more seriously. And I’ve been developing that capability and will continue to develop that capability. And that’s made a huge difference in clarity. Where I put my energy most of the team’s energy who we work with what I say yes to I say no to and I think that just comes from discipline, ultimately, and having a vision with putting the work in because like I say, we’re 10 years in, and we’re only just getting it right now,

 

08:02

Greg, I know that the core strengths of waking giants is leadership strategy and brand strategy. So let’s come back to this point later on. Grant, let’s talk a little bit about point your waist earlier on, you mentioned that when you first started your company, both you and your wife had no income and you’ve had a mortgage to pay, what was it? Like? How did you feel during this period? It must have been very stressful.

 

08:22

Oh, gosh, I probably terror. I think probably something I remember most was maybe it’s in our DNA, but you know, need to protect and look after my family as the sole also, it was my vision to build the business and start the business, you know, life could have been a lot easier if I’d have got a high paying job, which we often talked about back then. But I mean, yeah, it was hard. I mean, I remember times, I would, you know, I’d sit in the car in the morning at 6am. And just be nearly in tears wondering if there’ll be enough money in the account to pay the bills and stuff like that. And and I don’t think we can underestimate the level of stress that comes with building a business, even a successful business. The pressures never really go away. They just evolve and change. But I guess what got me through it was I never I was never fulfilled being employed. I always felt there was something else. And the reality was my wife said to me, now’s the time to do it, just do it your way. And it’s not been easy. It’s really not been easy have to say. And, you know, for 10 years, almost all of our income has been driven by the business. So you know, there is a responsibility that comes with that. Obviously, responsibility for other families and part of the team. And that, you know, that’s that was a hard burden to bear early on. But I think as the years go on, Grow a bit of a thicker skin? Yeah, you get a bit tougher you, you know, you get smarter with the kind of work you do, and you get smarter with cash flow and you get, and then you know, a pandemic arrives, and then it all goes out the window. I think resilience is possibly the thing that I didn’t have early on. Well, I hadn’t had, I was probably stubborn, but I wasn’t resilient. And that stubbornness got me further along enough along the line to build resilience to know how to get through certain things and where to put my energies. So I think, you know, if I summarize it, you really don’t know what you’re getting into. When you start a business, you have no idea. It’s just you, I don’t think you can learn enough from books to really set you up. It, it’s a big emotional roller coaster, the highs are high, the lows are low, and everything in between. and I find it very hard to shut off from it. I’m getting better as I get a bit older, I’ve got a little girl and I’ve got land. And so I’ve got mechanisms. But yeah, it’s it’s not the glorified vision that we see online. Most people, it’s about the work. And the percentage failure, the failure rate for particularly New Zealand for businesses is probably the high 80%.

 

11:27

Yeah, but you know, you made it so you know that something’s so far, so far. Grant,

 

11:32

thank you so much for sharing your story. And that moment of vulnerability, all the social media stories of instant success and instant gratification, I think it paints the wrong idea and story and expectations for new entrepreneurs. So stories like yours are really important to be shared. Now, Grant, let’s talk a little bit about leadership, which is a core strength of waking giants. What is one of the most common leadership issues that you see your clients make? And how do you help them overcome them?

 

11:54

If I can, I’ll probably talk more to the our experience, particularly in the New Zealand markets is quite unique. A friend once said to me, we have a country of managers, but we don’t have a country of leaders. And what it means is that you know, you manage a process, but you lead people. And the difference is a process can be written down and it can be followed. And if it breaks, he can fix it. But you know, leadership is about understanding people. And you know, number one is understanding yourself. And I think the old model of being a boss of people is dead, and anyone who’s trying that, they’re gonna fail. And we know that if we work with a strong leader, and they allow themselves to develop with us, we can get results. So the downstream results, whether it be profit, or revenue, or growth or whatever, whatever outcome you want, we find if the barrier is often with the leader themselves, the potential of the business comes from its leadership, not that they are the solution to everything. But if you have poor leadership, you’re probably going to get poor outcome. What we have as a problem in New Zealand, particularly is a lack of capability around leadership and a lack of capability around what strategy actually is, and then the discipline around executing on that strategy. And that’s why we, we look at the relationship between the leadership will leader and the strategy that needs to be implemented, when we align them. Oh, boy, it’s terrifying.

 

13:25

So guys, as Greg has shared, a business is only as good as his leader. Poor leadership leads to poor outcomes. And it’s important to remember that management and leadership are two separate different things. So guys have a thing as to what the vision is for your business. And whether you’re taking the right steps in terms of leadership to get your people and your company there. Now, granted, can you share with us when you onboard a new client? How do you actually uncovered the right problems to solve for them? Is there a methodology that you use to actually uncover these problems?

 

13:53

Yes, ultimately, it’s a bit of an interesting one. We, whenever someone approaches do some work with them, we generally assume that that the solution they’re looking for is wrong. So we kind of start on a negative thing. So and I would say, 90% of the time, we’re correct. Oh, interesting.

 

14:11

So what I would do is redefine what we’re actually trying to solve. It’s really, it’s really important because like, for argument’s sake, over the years, so many times, people say we need to rebrand and they think rebranding is changing the logo and the look in the field. But when you dig deeper, generally, it’s a sales issue, or it’s a culture issue. But the rebranding thing is a new bad, so everyone feels better, but it doesn’t change anything. So once you actually understand once you dig into what the actual problem is, so that’s just about asking the right questions, challenging their own thinking, and actually looking at the market. So you ask them, Do they have a vision? Do they have strategy? Because essentially, generally, people say if they’re really, really busy, they generally don’t have strong strategy. If they’re busy in the right way. They’re aligning. They know why they’re busy. So then what you need to do is we actually have to really define what we’re trying to solve, because what we find is if we aren’t solving the right thing, then we get blamed for not solving anything. So you have to set really good expectations. So with defining it, you have to really set the objective. So if we know problem solving, what does the solution look like for argument’s sake, I spoke to some morning and, and they have a goal of helping a million Kiwis. So I go, Okay, so where are you at? Now? We’re at 500. Okay, so what kind of growth pace are you on? Well, we’re in we’ve just been in build phase now in marketing phase. So you can hear they’re using language and saying, expand said, Well, we’d like to look at about a growth of 200 a month just to get a feel for what’s possible. So they’re already thinking about how it works. So if in a month that if we, you know, we work together, they can’t say to me, oh, we haven’t we haven’t hit our million, but we’re never trying to hit a million. We’re trying to hit 200. So what you do is you set the objective. Yeah. And it’s realistic. It’s it’s not opinion, it’s not emotions, it’s fact. On that side, you have to get buy in. So my next question, and the next question they said is, would you work with our internal team? I said, Yes, of course, depending on what they need, and what we do. And our second value of waking giants is grow together. So I said to him, if we kept arm’s length we fail. If we’re part of the team and have a seat at the table, and we can be part of proper discussions, we will will succeed. I know this for a fact right? Now. That’s why we don’t really work with corporate organizations anymore. We work with private business, because they allow us at the table, then what you need to do is fundamentally extend what are you how and what are you going to implement? So it might be, it might be workshops, it could be anything could be coaching, and that’s when we actually reveal what we will help with. So we then open the toolbox go, right, and here are the tools that we’re going to use to help you or we’re going to implement or we’re going to whatever. And I mean, that can look different things, you know, I’ve I’m coaching someone who’s gone from no sustainable income to looking doing very, very well and employing his first employee over 12 months. So that’s been about coaching him around what decision to make when, whereas in Australia, you know, I’m coaching a group of leaders in redefining strategy around a $20 million business, same principles be really clearly defining. And then it’s just about measuring what matters, which comes from john Doerr. book I discussed with you is, do less and measured, do less do the right things and measure what matters. So it’s really, really easy to hide in numbers. So what we’ve been doing actively as a business, and we do it with with our clients now is, let’s look at the right numbers. Let’s look at what the numbers say against the objective. And that’s about accountability. So you know, we’ve got a client, we’re coaching at moment, they spend their time on the ethereal, emotional, pretty stuff, and I go, what does the data say? And this morning, they said, we’ve got to change this and we go, Okay, well, let’s show you the data, they come back and go, the data is amazing. We don’t need to change that. So it’s about accountability to the right numbers. And so with measuring what matters, we use okrs. So you set an objective, and you measure key results, and it shows progress. And generally you don’t have more than sort of one to three objectives. So ultimately, it is about hyper discipline, in solving the thing that will make a difference, and tracking the progress of that with your team, and then disseminating the pieces of that out to your team or whoever, and, and then managing that whole process. So actually, you’re not running around working on 1000 things, you’re working on one thing, or two things or three things that will move the needle.

 

19:02

So guys, if you’re trying to solve an issue in your business, you need to take the emotion out of it and really look at the numbers be hyperfocus and look at what exactly is needed to be done to move the issue forward. Granite, can you share an example when your clients are maybe trying to solve a problem but they’re not looking at data properly?

 

19:17

If so, for argument’s sake, if if a marketing manager comes to us and say, our real problem is that we need Facebook for more leads, as I say, Okay, so what leads you getting and what are your sales team converting it? Well, I don’t know. Okay, well, why are you going to put more into the top of the funnel when you don’t know what you’re converting? Oh, but we want to do Facebook. Okay, well, you’re solving the wrong thing. And I mean, we had it with this client work in Australia years ago, he phoned me said, we need to put more leads in I said, What’s your conversion rate? 7%. I said, Okay, well, we don’t need more leads, you need a better sales team. And recently we and it’s quite a tricky one to convert the recently now moving up to 1213 14%. And that to them that Hundreds of 1000s of dollars. So you don’t need to put more in, you need to know what you’ve got. And then you need to realize what you’ve got. And people don’t really like to do that, because it’s seen as more work. But generally, it’s the cheapest way of growing.

 

20:15

So the idea is to work within the boundaries of what you happen to make things better.

 

20:19

Yeah, and it’s about values. And it’s about impact, it’s not about doing more, it’s about the impact. So measuring what matters should be measuring the impact you’re having on your activity. And people don’t like that, for some reason, we have real barriers, with people wanting to do less, it’s really strange. We’re trying to coach them to do less, and then show high level impact, and then layer the next thing on top of that, and then layer the next top thing on, it’s like building a house, you don’t build it, start building a house with a roof there. Because we just don’t you found and it’s a cliche, you build a foundation, and then you put the frame up. And then once the frame solid, you put the windows in, you know it’s sequential. So part of our job, particularly My job is to have those really tricky conversations up front and actually challenge what it is we’re solving. And if people insist that we solve them, I just say no. It’s really simple. Just Say No, because they’re solving the wrong thing.

 

21:12

So grid, let’s see an entrepreneur has identified the right problems in their businesses solve, do you have any tools or resources that you can share with them as well?

 

21:20

Yeah, so another learning from last year is, we wanted to make sure that our model wasn’t purely consulting. So we were sort of documented the things we do, we didn’t really realize we had a method. And so one of my colleagues, cams and I will we always do this. So we spent a bit of time last year breaking it down. And and what we’ve got, we’ve got a 90 day strategic plan, which is based on the learnings of scaling up by Vern harnish, the EEO global network on entrepreneurship, and some latter learnings from john Dewar. And that’s all about starting at the why, you know, Simon Sinek, why are we doing this? What business are we in? Because it’s all tactical? For many people, and we want to go, Well, why are we doing what we’re doing? You know, or do we understand? So our 90 day plan goes back to basics. Why are you doing what you’re doing? What are your values? What are your strategic opportunities, break them down into the things that are going to make the most difference, and layer and it’s just layer in their lane, and we go through, it’s the thing I coach, but also, we’ve turned it into an online course, it’s about 26 videos. The reason we’ve done it like that is because if you sit and do a workshop with someone on a strategic plan, they get massive overwhelm, because they go well, there’s so much to do. What was what we’ve done is say, Well, if you understand why you’re in business, that gives you energy that allows you to then produce your value proposition. So this is how I serve, that then helps your marketing and it helps your culture because you align your behaviors to those things. And then you go, well, we’re going to do these three things. And then how are we going to measure these three things? And then what do we do next? And then what we realized, and 90 days is a really good timeline for actually making things happen. Three months is probably a really strong for real big stuff. Otherwise, it’s probably too soon or you start to get fatigued. And then on top of that, we’ve created a 30 day plan, because most people go, Okay, I’ve got my plan, but we realize they don’t know how to start soon. Okay, so what does the next 30 days look like? So what are you going to do today? What are you going to do tomorrow? What are you going to do the next day? What are you going to do the next day, and then it’s a we sort of feed that in to that. And the so we realized that that was a way for people to take away the overwhelm of strategy. And especially if it’s not your thing, it can be really, really, really overwhelming. And people will actually just just move it to one side. And they just do business as usual. And what we’ve done is, you know, we try and talk in stories, we try and talk in reality, we don’t talk theory, you know, there are worksheets for every single module, there’s a video working new through and then there’s a video working you through the whole 90 day plan. So you could literally build it on the fly. And yet some of the decisions take a bit of time. But the way we’ve done it is we helps you build the plan. And we found agile in all of this is to take that complexity and make it simple, because that person then can do it themselves. So we don’t want them to be beholden to us as experts. We want them to better do it themselves, you know, so to you know, teach them. And then often what we’ll do is we’ll play a different role. So it might be coaching or it might be executing on some of the strategy depends. So we try and be really agile on the role we play and because it changes at times, sometimes It’s about doing things acquired, he’s got a very successful business, I’ve been coaching him on building his personal brand on LinkedIn. And helping him craft the way he gets his message across, helping them understand the technology and leveraging, you know, they’re already seeing a huge upsurge in the market, approaching them. Because he’s never used this platform to get his ideas out. So, to me, I’m not coaching LinkedIn, I’m coaching his ability to tell his story. And I think that’s really, really important difference between a tactician and strategists. I know how to get the best out of him. The tactic happens via LinkedIn. And I’ve coached him and now. Yeah, and he, he now does that himself. And actually, the first effect, the several posts he’s put out, have created connections with several million dollars.

 

25:54

So it was the takeaway for him is about him understanding the value of his expertise in context of that environment. And then me given him some tactical, you know, old school whiteboard to this hashtag here that now he does it himself, and he’s empowered, and he sees the results. So that’s where we’re coaching and realizing value. And on the other side, we’re working on a project for him, but now I’ve become his trusted advisor. So, you know, he phoned me that day and say, Look, how do we how do we leverage this for recruitment against our vision? So we end up solving different things, but it’s about empowering him to go into a new space and then realizing that value.

 

26:41

And the way to approach this is, of course, like you said, to either do a 30 day plan or a 90 day plan and uncover the problems and the road strategies to do it. But with the idea of a fixed timeline, at least, there’s a way to quantify your progress and to reevaluate what has happened the end of the 30 or 90 days, and then you can actually re evaluate and redeploy a new strategy that seems to be working, right?

 

27:03

Yeah. And don’t get me wrong, we’ve used the word problem a lot. But it’s, it’s the same an opportunity, you know, we’ve got clients at the moment who are struggling with opportunity, as in too much. There are operational problems there. You know, here in New Zealand, we’ve got some real recruitment challenges at the moment, because I bought it a shot. So if you think about it, they’re having to adapt to realize opportunity. And it’s all well and good having opportunity, but if you can’t deliver on it, that’s a problem, too. So, so we talked about, I mean, I, I like to look at the strategic stuff as rather than solve a problem is how do we solve the opportunity? Because generally, if you solve a problem, it creates a new opportunity. And I think even down to the language we use is really important as leaders, as you know, we’re presented opportunities all day, every day, it’s knowing which ones to take on is the real trick.

 

27:58

Now grunt, let’s talk a little bit about brand strategy. What are the key tenants of brand strategy that you personally believe in? Apart from the obvious things like being consistent and providing value to your customers? What are the inputs Do you have,

 

28:10

it might be a bit left field, but your brand strategy is driven by a culture, because ultimately, if you don’t live the brand, you know, for argument’s sake, you know, a Gucci handbag, you know, that if the stitching on that is not perfect, then that breaks the brand, it destroys the brand. And that comes down to someone not stitching it properly. And so you’ve got to operationalize your brand strategy. So you know, we have a running business and e commerce business. And from the very start, we’ve really focused on customer journey, and really focused on doing the right things to support them. Because what we realized in the data early on is that the more we help them, the more they came back, go figure, what a surprise. And now we have cars. And we’re a tiny brand. And we’re up against Adidas and Nike and all these people. But we’ve really focused on getting close to our customers. So we go to events, and we talk to them. And I used to you love this, the first few months of us going to these events, I’d take a tiny little book, The little notebook. And every time someone asked me a question or gave us feedback, I’d write it down. And then I’d come back on on a Monday and have a look at the notes. And then I’d speak to the team and we’d give feedback. And then we get also this is happening here. How do we turn that from a real world into the digital world. And it was really, really good. And now our clients or customers, we encourage that feedback. And then the way we actually measured that is our Google reviews. So we obviously ask them to give us a Google review. And we look for key indicators. So they that we want them to mention customer service. We want them to mention the quality of the product. We want them to mention how easy It was to work with us or deal with us even when we got it wrong. So we’ve got we’ve, we’ve got things really wrong with the supply chain because of COVID, etc. And we’ve still got five star reviews because the way we dealt with it. So we now use that as part of our brand strategy. So it’s our customer service. I mean, we know our product is amazing. It’s world class, no problems there. So then we go, Well, how do we create brand awareness? using digital? How do we how do we know that what we’re tracking? Well, so a recent event, I raced in the event. And I just saw a flood of people wearing our product running towards me on the course. And then those people I saw came to the stand afterwards. And one lady is wearing it and saying, I love this product so much that they’re convincing her friend, she said, this is the best product I’ve ever heard, we should do that. And in the end, she said, we should have the same. So she bought the same top as her. And she said it’s same same. And then she said to her, she said I’m work slowly working my way through my wardrobe to make sure I have all of your stuff. And she’s and they are if I email you, who will I speak to? And it’ll be I will be myself or Amy. Obviously, like you guys run the business. Yeah. So they, they’re seeing this connection to the brand. And then like we now know, people who like certain things. So we’ll email them if they arrive. And so we’re building we’re building. We’re building the relationship and you know, one of our challenges can we do at scale? Well, we can, it just is harder.

 

31:36

So it’s really, really, it’s about the customer experience and brand strategy. Once you’ve aligned ways in the market, your pricing strategy and the data. It’s about the customer experience, it’s every single part of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Like I say, we’ve had five star reviews after we’ve made a mistake. Now, that’s about customer experience, and they come back and buy again, and they buy again, and they buy again. So guess what? customer experiences everything. And also look, you know, it’s really easy for people to complain nowadays. So you may as well just reduce the risk of them complaining. So the brand strategy to me is really now all about customer experience. But you can’t, you can’t fake a product or service. So if you build a brand strategy around a premium offering, but your products rubbish, you’re wasting your time you’re going to get caught, you’re going to get caught every day of the week, don’t waste your time, you can’t fake the market, it’s not possible, because consumers are too clever. So why don’t you just do it the proper way, might take a little bit more time might be a little bit harder. But we now have customers who have spent, you know, our average value for sale is around $77, depending on the what’s happening, you know, we’ve got people that spent $1,000. with us. This is running gear. You know, people don’t need that much running gear, we convinced them they do but so we’ve gotten loyalty around the brand. And we’ve had people email and saying I will never buy Nike or Adidas again, because your product is so much better. And the services are much better. That’s the brand promise we’ve created. And some days it’s real challenging, but that’s what drives us because we know the revenue will follow.

 

33:15

So guys, as Grant has shared, you know, brand strategy comes with culture and providing good customer service, when downright this can be really powerful. To the point as grant shared, you can have a customer who actually had a bad experience becoming your best advocate. So back to you grant, let’s talk a little bit about a future of waking giants. I know you started Little Giants Academy, could you share what this is about? Um, so

 

33:36

the little jazz Academy is, it’s an observation I’ve made. So I’m on the board of trustees for my daughter’s school. And I’ve been asked several occasions to do some leadership work with six to 13 year olds. And it’s really about and these kids really understand the concept of leadership, self awareness and accountability. What they struggle with is applying it to real life, applying it to the playground and applying it to their friends and applying it to their actions. And and it’s something I’ve been rattling around with for a few years about doing something about it. And it’s it’s in its infancy, it’s so it’s like step point, one of step one is if we can help this this younger generation understand leadership and self leadership, not just business leadership, we then produce a whole bunch of leaders that are just what far more educated and, you know, go figure, strong leaders create a strong world. And so what I there’s nothing in our curriculum in New Zealand that talks to leadership. So what I’ve decided to do is one of the many things I’m doing is how do we take our real world learnings and disseminate it down into younger generation and how can they learn that one of the big barriers is Schools generally are watching budgets all the time. So I’m going to make it free. And, and digital in some way. But what we’ve learned through looking at the curriculum is they need an application model. So it needs to be a physical iteration. So when see and do rather than fear theory, and then we’ll do is we’ll get support from businesses to essentially invest in the next generation of leaders. That’s as far as I’ve gotten, I’ve seen the need and but above that is leadership toolbox, which is essentially the next. That’s the direction that we’re taking wg and is actually around the leadership learning methodology for people to make it more accessible. And then we’ll use that then to feed the Little Giants Academy, which is essentially a feeder program for future leaders.

 

35:55

So great, I know you have a podcast called the leadership diaries, could you share with us what this is about and what you hope to achieve it?

 

36:00

So the leadership diaries is, I guess, my, my response to the theoretical rubbish that we tend to see on LinkedIn, people, you know, there’s nothing wrong with formal education, it’s great, but I think we’re starting to live in a really different world. And I think a lot of it is gesturing. You know, it’s, it’s that old cliche picture of me in front of a Lambo money, all these cliche things that are mostly mostly fake, because anyone I know, he’s got serious wealth. They’re not flaunting it, they’re getting on with it, you know, and, and they’re different people. So their leadership diaries was sort of two pronged, it’s actually to talk about what reality of being a leader is, particularly in a smaller business. And really, most businesses, sort of a warts and all approach. So we’ll talk about all sorts of different stuff. It’s a way for me to get that thinking out of my head. And ultimately, it’s, it’s my thought leadership pieces, it’s about my personal brand strategy. So people can understand me, and my approach, which means they’ll start to understand waking giants and where we sit in the world. The challenge I have at the moment around it is is taking the time out to to share those insights. So, you know, if I’m not doing a podcast, I am doing, you know, posts on LinkedIn, and the generally fed by daily situations. So they are thoughts. It’s essentially like an elite. The reason I call it the leadership diaries, it’s like, it’s a journal for what’s happening. And the feedback I’ve got is that people really appreciate the ability just to talk about real things, you know, real things. And the fact that we haven’t all got it worked out and, you know, it’s, it’s maybe cathartic. It’s, it’s like a therapy type thing. It’s about sharing it. And mainly because, you know, most of last year during the pandemic, I was getting calls from other leaders about all sorts, suits, you know, talking about suicide and talking about their stresses and talking about their challenge. But these are not conversations happening out in the real world. And in New Zealand, we have a real challenging mental health crisis, we are a nation of small businesses, so they go hand in hand. So I mean, I even did a video once on, on suicide, because I was sick of hearing about the amount of suicides we were experiencing as a nation, and no one else would do it. And so to me, it’s about bridging that gap between what we have to do daily, and, and maybe people reading it and getting something from it. So 90% of the feedback I get on the content I put out directly on LinkedIn is offline, people read it, they consume it, and they do something with it, but they don’t respond online. So I’ve learned very quickly that just because you’re not getting a like or a comment doesn’t mean it’s not having an impact. I just need to be doing more of it. Because that’s about our vision of so it goes back to our original vision for is a world of conscious leaders, we need leaders that are really aware. And that’s the hard stuff as well as the the good stuff.

 

39:24

He knows it’s a great point at Grand your shit. Just because you’re getting a like a comment does not mean that your work is not making an impact. In fact, this is something I have experienced many times before. I could be posting a piece of content and I don’t hear anything about it. I don’t see any likes and comments. But sometimes, people actually approached me in person or text me separately after a few weeks, and they could really be sharing about how they enjoyed the content and how he helped them. So you know, I still get a lot of satisfaction from dad as well. So grant, if our listeners only remember one thing from today’s conversation, where would you like it to be?

 

39:55

Um I’ll go with the theme of the moment. do less to do more, I think one of the biggest challenges I’m seeing with a lot of business owners and senior leaders at the moment, they’re so busy doing, they’re not spending any time thinking. And that thinking will make the doing easier. So have some have some discipline around doing less. I think that’s, that’s the secret of what we’re seeing success in.

 

40:25

So grant, how can listeners get in contact with you if they need your help,

 

40:28

um, the best, the best way to see what we’re all about is find me on LinkedIn, Grant defense, I’m the one Virginia beard pretty unique, and I own it. Otherwise, it’s waking hi from giants.com. That gives you a full breakdown of how we do business who would like to work with and, and the other thing that I think maybe another sideline is that we, we choose our clients as much as they choose as we don’t have hundreds of clients. And we work in exclusive relationships and verticals. So when we work with a client, we go deep, we are on their team. And while that’s not unique, it’s something that we bring to the table that many don’t. So yeah, awaken hyphen, giant calm is really where you can find out more the courses on there, we’ve got some webinars that are all about some of like our running brand, we’ve got a whole strategy webinar there for free. That tells you how we use 20 steps to develop 1,000% growth in 12 months, we’ve got a you know, using leadership influence online, which is something I did for Deloitte in New Zealand. So the other thing we do, you know, we’re not about hiding the secrets, we’re about giving them up. And then that’s a way for people to understand what we’re really made of No, no hidden agenda. It’s all up there. So there’s plenty and then I think your listeners are going to get access to our course for free. So the great thing is if you know, it’s it’s the thing, the feedback we’ve got from it is most people have said, the main thing I’ve got is not the strategic plan, but it’s changed their mindset around how they think. And if that’s the feedback, we’ve achieved that goal, because if the thinking changes, the outcome has changed. So yeah, if anyone’s got any questions, feel free to email me or connect with me on LinkedIn.

 

42:22

Grant, thank you so much for joining us today. It’s been such a pleasure to hear your stories.

 

42:25

Thanks so much for listening to my stories. Some people don’t want to listen anymore, they get bored of them, so I’m happy to share them. Thanks so much.

 

42:34

Guys, thank you so much for joining me and grant today. Hopefully you have some actionable takeaways that can help you wake you up in a giant Now remember, Grant has given us free access on this course and how we can create a step by step 90 day strategic plan that’s available until the end of September. Just click on the link on my website and enter t d t o to gain access. Now remember to subscribe to the show so you never miss another episode. And don’t forget about the Amazon gift voucher giveaway. If you actually do subscribe and leave a review on Apple iTunes by the end of September. Then you stand a chance to win $50 worth of gift vouchers from Amazon. That’s all for me today. I’ll see you next time.

 

[This transcript has been automatically generated by a digital software and will therefore  contain errors and typos. Please kindly take note of this and only rely on the digital transcript for reference.]

00:00

Hey everyone. Welcome back to the show. This is Ted, your host speaking. On today’s show, we have Grand Difford, who’s joining us from New Zealand. Grant is the founder and head of client strategy and waking giants. A firm that specializes in helping businesses grow through leadership strategy and strategy implementation. Grant shares a ton of actionable takeaways such as the dangers of bad leadership in a business, the importance of providing good customer service as an overall brand strategy, and how entrepreneurs tend to look at and solve the wrong problems in their business. Now, guys, Grant has been super generous because he has given us free access to his course on how we can create a step by step 90 day strategic plan, just click on the link on my website and enter t EDT. Oh, to gain access. This free access cost is only available to the end of September. So make sure you grab it while at less. Now all episodes show notes, tools and resources are online at Ted teo.com. That’s to.com. And if you’d like to support the show, then make sure you share it with a friend or leave a review on your favorite part because they’re actually now as a way to say thank you and to show my appreciation to you guys. If you actually do subscribe and leave a review on Apple iTunes by the end of September, then you stand a chance to win $50 worth of gift vouchers from Amazon. Now let’s dive right in. Hey, Grant, thank you so much for joining us today. Hey, Ted, how are you? grant? I’m doing great. Now this stove a simple icebreaker? Could you share a verse who is grant deferred when it isn’t working?

 

01:18

That depends on what I’m wearing, essentially. So if I’m at home, I’m wearing my hunting gear working on my land with various animals and building various buildings. And if I’m not in my hunting gear, I’m probably in my running gear, running trails as we’re just preparing for our next ultra marathon. So generally, I’ll be outside as a rule.

 

01:41

Cool. What’s the training for an ultra marathon like?

 

01:44

tricky. We tend to do it the hard way we we run in the forest up near where we live. And it’s very Boggy and very hard work at this time of year. So it’s really about time on feet, doing some good volume. And trying to stay uninjured basically, is really the trick.

 

02:03

Yeah, it sounds very challenging to run through the forest, it’s probably very easy to fall down, right?

 

02:07

Oh, yeah, there’s plenty of trips and falls. And we’ve got a weed here called gore’s which is very spiky. So you end up covering, covering cuts and blood and you know, there’s definitely the other falls. But luckily, the benefits outweigh the challenges. Now,

 

02:21

Grant, if I know you, I know you like a challenge. You originally came from the UK. But could you share how you actually got to New Zealand and started your company working giants.

 

02:30

That’s quite good one. We were live in a fairly pedestrian life in the UK and one day decided we we should move to New Zealand, we thought it would be quite a good idea to just buy one way tickets and rent our house out and put all of our stuff in a container and jump on a plane we’d never been here we had one Kiwi friend who lived here. And we decided once we ran out of money, we’re a bit stuck. So we had to sort of get on with it. And that was 1415 years ago. And never really looked back to be perfectly honest. It’s a sort of the lifestyle that we love. And our daughters born here, and after a few years working in roles, I found that sort of challenge wasn’t there anymore and started waking giants in 2011. So grant, could you share with us?

 

03:25

What is the idea behind waking giants? And maybe could you explain the name?

 

03:29

Like any good entrepreneur, I thought I knew better than my previous boss and waking giants was really, Kiwis are interesting. They are these quiet achievers, but they’re not really good with success. And ultimately, waking giants was about a belief system in and I still believe in it and that many people can do far greater things than they possibly realize. So waking giants was about realizing potential is sort of the phrase we would use. And the vision superseded sort of the actions. So I was a trained graphic designer. And you know, my wife and I had come out of the same company. And then within about a month we both ended up sort of working for our business because of necessity. So we went from a really good income to sort of zero overnight. And it came down to the age old thing of do what you can to pay the bills. So you know the first few years of the business was doing what I knew how to do the vision had to sort of park itself for a little while. We had bought a house and you know the mortgage needed to be paid. So for a few years, the vision had to go on hold and it was about paying the bills and using the skills we had to generate revenue to to survive. Really.

 

04:49

It sounds like you took waking giants true in evolution. What was the journey like Could you share with us what it was at a start and where is it now?

 

04:56

It was an interesting one. Like I say it was about I fell into the trap of building a business around what I could do skills, core skills. And it took about probably five years of hitting a bit of a brick wall. You know, you grow more staff, more clients, more staff, more clients and, you know, methodology that I didn’t really like. And it kind of got to the point where I went through a development program as a bit of a guinea pig with a friend of mine, a strategic program. And about halfway through over about six weeks, I realized that we were just pointing in the right or wrong direction. And really, that sort of started the evolution, I went out and spoke to our clients and said, sort of where is the value that we bring in, we realized it was around more of the strategy and the thinking and passion for philosophy around business. Ultimately, it was, well, we had a young daughter, so my time was really stretched, and it wasn’t very fulfilling as an owner, I was just doing things to pay the bills. So it came across roads where it was either pull the pin and give up, or find the thing that made the difference in November 2019, I made a full commitment to make the change into like the space that we’re in now, which is focused heavily on the relationship between leadership and strategy. So it’s been probably a three to five year evolution to the path we’re at. And whereas now, the market understands what we do, operationally, we know what we do. And that’s just about building on on that focus. And, but the interesting thing is that vision is no different to what it was 10 years ago, is in the vision, it’s just how we do it is really, really different now. And I couldn’t be more happy. But it proves that

 

06:50

building a vision takes a long time. Grant, it sounds like you’ve always known what you wanted to do, it just took you some time to get there. Because life got in the way, you have your bills to pay, you have a family to feed, you have a mortgage to pay. And that’s perfectly fine. But you know, what is important is you never give up. Now, to the listeners, as Grant has shared, it does take a lot of time to get your vision sometimes, but it doesn’t mean you should give up on it. As long as it is the guiding principle for your business, you will get there eventually.

 

07:15

Yeah, I think the one thing I’ve learned is, there’s a difference between just being a business owner and a leader. And I think for me, the first 567 years maybe I was I was a business owner, I ran a business, whereas I’ve taken the role of being a leader far more seriously. And I’ve been developing that capability and will continue to develop that capability. And that’s made a huge difference in clarity. Where I put my energy most of the team’s energy who we work with what I say yes to I say no to and I think that just comes from discipline, ultimately, and having a vision with putting the work in because like I say, we’re 10 years in, and we’re only just getting it right now,

 

08:02

Greg, I know that the core strengths of waking giants is leadership strategy and brand strategy. So let’s come back to this point later on. Grant, let’s talk a little bit about point your waist earlier on, you mentioned that when you first started your company, both you and your wife had no income and you’ve had a mortgage to pay, what was it? Like? How did you feel during this period? It must have been very stressful.

 

08:22

Oh, gosh, I probably terror. I think probably something I remember most was maybe it’s in our DNA, but you know, need to protect and look after my family as the sole also, it was my vision to build the business and start the business, you know, life could have been a lot easier if I’d have got a high paying job, which we often talked about back then. But I mean, yeah, it was hard. I mean, I remember times, I would, you know, I’d sit in the car in the morning at 6am. And just be nearly in tears wondering if there’ll be enough money in the account to pay the bills and stuff like that. And and I don’t think we can underestimate the level of stress that comes with building a business, even a successful business. The pressures never really go away. They just evolve and change. But I guess what got me through it was I never I was never fulfilled being employed. I always felt there was something else. And the reality was my wife said to me, now’s the time to do it, just do it your way. And it’s not been easy. It’s really not been easy have to say. And, you know, for 10 years, almost all of our income has been driven by the business. So you know, there is a responsibility that comes with that. Obviously, responsibility for other families and part of the team. And that, you know, that’s that was a hard burden to bear early on. But I think as the years go on, Grow a bit of a thicker skin? Yeah, you get a bit tougher you, you know, you get smarter with the kind of work you do, and you get smarter with cash flow and you get, and then you know, a pandemic arrives, and then it all goes out the window. I think resilience is possibly the thing that I didn’t have early on. Well, I hadn’t had, I was probably stubborn, but I wasn’t resilient. And that stubbornness got me further along enough along the line to build resilience to know how to get through certain things and where to put my energies. So I think, you know, if I summarize it, you really don’t know what you’re getting into. When you start a business, you have no idea. It’s just you, I don’t think you can learn enough from books to really set you up. It, it’s a big emotional roller coaster, the highs are high, the lows are low, and everything in between. and I find it very hard to shut off from it. I’m getting better as I get a bit older, I’ve got a little girl and I’ve got land. And so I’ve got mechanisms. But yeah, it’s it’s not the glorified vision that we see online. Most people, it’s about the work. And the percentage failure, the failure rate for particularly New Zealand for businesses is probably the high 80%.

 

11:27

Yeah, but you know, you made it so you know that something’s so far, so far. Grant,

 

11:32

thank you so much for sharing your story. And that moment of vulnerability, all the social media stories of instant success and instant gratification, I think it paints the wrong idea and story and expectations for new entrepreneurs. So stories like yours are really important to be shared. Now, Grant, let’s talk a little bit about leadership, which is a core strength of waking giants. What is one of the most common leadership issues that you see your clients make? And how do you help them overcome them?

 

11:54

If I can, I’ll probably talk more to the our experience, particularly in the New Zealand markets is quite unique. A friend once said to me, we have a country of managers, but we don’t have a country of leaders. And what it means is that you know, you manage a process, but you lead people. And the difference is a process can be written down and it can be followed. And if it breaks, he can fix it. But you know, leadership is about understanding people. And you know, number one is understanding yourself. And I think the old model of being a boss of people is dead, and anyone who’s trying that, they’re gonna fail. And we know that if we work with a strong leader, and they allow themselves to develop with us, we can get results. So the downstream results, whether it be profit, or revenue, or growth or whatever, whatever outcome you want, we find if the barrier is often with the leader themselves, the potential of the business comes from its leadership, not that they are the solution to everything. But if you have poor leadership, you’re probably going to get poor outcome. What we have as a problem in New Zealand, particularly is a lack of capability around leadership and a lack of capability around what strategy actually is, and then the discipline around executing on that strategy. And that’s why we, we look at the relationship between the leadership will leader and the strategy that needs to be implemented, when we align them. Oh, boy, it’s terrifying.

 

13:25

So guys, as Greg has shared, a business is only as good as his leader. Poor leadership leads to poor outcomes. And it’s important to remember that management and leadership are two separate different things. So guys have a thing as to what the vision is for your business. And whether you’re taking the right steps in terms of leadership to get your people and your company there. Now, granted, can you share with us when you onboard a new client? How do you actually uncovered the right problems to solve for them? Is there a methodology that you use to actually uncover these problems?

 

13:53

Yes, ultimately, it’s a bit of an interesting one. We, whenever someone approaches do some work with them, we generally assume that that the solution they’re looking for is wrong. So we kind of start on a negative thing. So and I would say, 90% of the time, we’re correct. Oh, interesting.

 

14:11

So what I would do is redefine what we’re actually trying to solve. It’s really, it’s really important because like, for argument’s sake, over the years, so many times, people say we need to rebrand and they think rebranding is changing the logo and the look in the field. But when you dig deeper, generally, it’s a sales issue, or it’s a culture issue. But the rebranding thing is a new bad, so everyone feels better, but it doesn’t change anything. So once you actually understand once you dig into what the actual problem is, so that’s just about asking the right questions, challenging their own thinking, and actually looking at the market. So you ask them, Do they have a vision? Do they have strategy? Because essentially, generally, people say if they’re really, really busy, they generally don’t have strong strategy. If they’re busy in the right way. They’re aligning. They know why they’re busy. So then what you need to do is we actually have to really define what we’re trying to solve, because what we find is if we aren’t solving the right thing, then we get blamed for not solving anything. So you have to set really good expectations. So with defining it, you have to really set the objective. So if we know problem solving, what does the solution look like for argument’s sake, I spoke to some morning and, and they have a goal of helping a million Kiwis. So I go, Okay, so where are you at? Now? We’re at 500. Okay, so what kind of growth pace are you on? Well, we’re in we’ve just been in build phase now in marketing phase. So you can hear they’re using language and saying, expand said, Well, we’d like to look at about a growth of 200 a month just to get a feel for what’s possible. So they’re already thinking about how it works. So if in a month that if we, you know, we work together, they can’t say to me, oh, we haven’t we haven’t hit our million, but we’re never trying to hit a million. We’re trying to hit 200. So what you do is you set the objective. Yeah. And it’s realistic. It’s it’s not opinion, it’s not emotions, it’s fact. On that side, you have to get buy in. So my next question, and the next question they said is, would you work with our internal team? I said, Yes, of course, depending on what they need, and what we do. And our second value of waking giants is grow together. So I said to him, if we kept arm’s length we fail. If we’re part of the team and have a seat at the table, and we can be part of proper discussions, we will will succeed. I know this for a fact right? Now. That’s why we don’t really work with corporate organizations anymore. We work with private business, because they allow us at the table, then what you need to do is fundamentally extend what are you how and what are you going to implement? So it might be, it might be workshops, it could be anything could be coaching, and that’s when we actually reveal what we will help with. So we then open the toolbox go, right, and here are the tools that we’re going to use to help you or we’re going to implement or we’re going to whatever. And I mean, that can look different things, you know, I’ve I’m coaching someone who’s gone from no sustainable income to looking doing very, very well and employing his first employee over 12 months. So that’s been about coaching him around what decision to make when, whereas in Australia, you know, I’m coaching a group of leaders in redefining strategy around a $20 million business, same principles be really clearly defining. And then it’s just about measuring what matters, which comes from john Doerr. book I discussed with you is, do less and measured, do less do the right things and measure what matters. So it’s really, really easy to hide in numbers. So what we’ve been doing actively as a business, and we do it with with our clients now is, let’s look at the right numbers. Let’s look at what the numbers say against the objective. And that’s about accountability. So you know, we’ve got a client, we’re coaching at moment, they spend their time on the ethereal, emotional, pretty stuff, and I go, what does the data say? And this morning, they said, we’ve got to change this and we go, Okay, well, let’s show you the data, they come back and go, the data is amazing. We don’t need to change that. So it’s about accountability to the right numbers. And so with measuring what matters, we use okrs. So you set an objective, and you measure key results, and it shows progress. And generally you don’t have more than sort of one to three objectives. So ultimately, it is about hyper discipline, in solving the thing that will make a difference, and tracking the progress of that with your team, and then disseminating the pieces of that out to your team or whoever, and, and then managing that whole process. So actually, you’re not running around working on 1000 things, you’re working on one thing, or two things or three things that will move the needle.

 

19:02

So guys, if you’re trying to solve an issue in your business, you need to take the emotion out of it and really look at the numbers be hyperfocus and look at what exactly is needed to be done to move the issue forward. Granite, can you share an example when your clients are maybe trying to solve a problem but they’re not looking at data properly?

 

19:17

If so, for argument’s sake, if if a marketing manager comes to us and say, our real problem is that we need Facebook for more leads, as I say, Okay, so what leads you getting and what are your sales team converting it? Well, I don’t know. Okay, well, why are you going to put more into the top of the funnel when you don’t know what you’re converting? Oh, but we want to do Facebook. Okay, well, you’re solving the wrong thing. And I mean, we had it with this client work in Australia years ago, he phoned me said, we need to put more leads in I said, What’s your conversion rate? 7%. I said, Okay, well, we don’t need more leads, you need a better sales team. And recently we and it’s quite a tricky one to convert the recently now moving up to 1213 14%. And that to them that Hundreds of 1000s of dollars. So you don’t need to put more in, you need to know what you’ve got. And then you need to realize what you’ve got. And people don’t really like to do that, because it’s seen as more work. But generally, it’s the cheapest way of growing.

 

20:15

So the idea is to work within the boundaries of what you happen to make things better.

 

20:19

Yeah, and it’s about values. And it’s about impact, it’s not about doing more, it’s about the impact. So measuring what matters should be measuring the impact you’re having on your activity. And people don’t like that, for some reason, we have real barriers, with people wanting to do less, it’s really strange. We’re trying to coach them to do less, and then show high level impact, and then layer the next thing on top of that, and then layer the next top thing on, it’s like building a house, you don’t build it, start building a house with a roof there. Because we just don’t you found and it’s a cliche, you build a foundation, and then you put the frame up. And then once the frame solid, you put the windows in, you know it’s sequential. So part of our job, particularly My job is to have those really tricky conversations up front and actually challenge what it is we’re solving. And if people insist that we solve them, I just say no. It’s really simple. Just Say No, because they’re solving the wrong thing.

 

21:12

So grid, let’s see an entrepreneur has identified the right problems in their businesses solve, do you have any tools or resources that you can share with them as well?

 

21:20

Yeah, so another learning from last year is, we wanted to make sure that our model wasn’t purely consulting. So we were sort of documented the things we do, we didn’t really realize we had a method. And so one of my colleagues, cams and I will we always do this. So we spent a bit of time last year breaking it down. And and what we’ve got, we’ve got a 90 day strategic plan, which is based on the learnings of scaling up by Vern harnish, the EEO global network on entrepreneurship, and some latter learnings from john Dewar. And that’s all about starting at the why, you know, Simon Sinek, why are we doing this? What business are we in? Because it’s all tactical? For many people, and we want to go, Well, why are we doing what we’re doing? You know, or do we understand? So our 90 day plan goes back to basics. Why are you doing what you’re doing? What are your values? What are your strategic opportunities, break them down into the things that are going to make the most difference, and layer and it’s just layer in their lane, and we go through, it’s the thing I coach, but also, we’ve turned it into an online course, it’s about 26 videos. The reason we’ve done it like that is because if you sit and do a workshop with someone on a strategic plan, they get massive overwhelm, because they go well, there’s so much to do. What was what we’ve done is say, Well, if you understand why you’re in business, that gives you energy that allows you to then produce your value proposition. So this is how I serve, that then helps your marketing and it helps your culture because you align your behaviors to those things. And then you go, well, we’re going to do these three things. And then how are we going to measure these three things? And then what do we do next? And then what we realized, and 90 days is a really good timeline for actually making things happen. Three months is probably a really strong for real big stuff. Otherwise, it’s probably too soon or you start to get fatigued. And then on top of that, we’ve created a 30 day plan, because most people go, Okay, I’ve got my plan, but we realize they don’t know how to start soon. Okay, so what does the next 30 days look like? So what are you going to do today? What are you going to do tomorrow? What are you going to do the next day? What are you going to do the next day, and then it’s a we sort of feed that in to that. And the so we realized that that was a way for people to take away the overwhelm of strategy. And especially if it’s not your thing, it can be really, really, really overwhelming. And people will actually just just move it to one side. And they just do business as usual. And what we’ve done is, you know, we try and talk in stories, we try and talk in reality, we don’t talk theory, you know, there are worksheets for every single module, there’s a video working new through and then there’s a video working you through the whole 90 day plan. So you could literally build it on the fly. And yet some of the decisions take a bit of time. But the way we’ve done it is we helps you build the plan. And we found agile in all of this is to take that complexity and make it simple, because that person then can do it themselves. So we don’t want them to be beholden to us as experts. We want them to better do it themselves, you know, so to you know, teach them. And then often what we’ll do is we’ll play a different role. So it might be coaching or it might be executing on some of the strategy depends. So we try and be really agile on the role we play and because it changes at times, sometimes It’s about doing things acquired, he’s got a very successful business, I’ve been coaching him on building his personal brand on LinkedIn. And helping him craft the way he gets his message across, helping them understand the technology and leveraging, you know, they’re already seeing a huge upsurge in the market, approaching them. Because he’s never used this platform to get his ideas out. So, to me, I’m not coaching LinkedIn, I’m coaching his ability to tell his story. And I think that’s really, really important difference between a tactician and strategists. I know how to get the best out of him. The tactic happens via LinkedIn. And I’ve coached him and now. Yeah, and he, he now does that himself. And actually, the first effect, the several posts he’s put out, have created connections with several million dollars.

 

25:54

So it was the takeaway for him is about him understanding the value of his expertise in context of that environment. And then me given him some tactical, you know, old school whiteboard to this hashtag here that now he does it himself, and he’s empowered, and he sees the results. So that’s where we’re coaching and realizing value. And on the other side, we’re working on a project for him, but now I’ve become his trusted advisor. So, you know, he phoned me that day and say, Look, how do we how do we leverage this for recruitment against our vision? So we end up solving different things, but it’s about empowering him to go into a new space and then realizing that value.

 

26:41

And the way to approach this is, of course, like you said, to either do a 30 day plan or a 90 day plan and uncover the problems and the road strategies to do it. But with the idea of a fixed timeline, at least, there’s a way to quantify your progress and to reevaluate what has happened the end of the 30 or 90 days, and then you can actually re evaluate and redeploy a new strategy that seems to be working, right?

 

27:03

Yeah. And don’t get me wrong, we’ve used the word problem a lot. But it’s, it’s the same an opportunity, you know, we’ve got clients at the moment who are struggling with opportunity, as in too much. There are operational problems there. You know, here in New Zealand, we’ve got some real recruitment challenges at the moment, because I bought it a shot. So if you think about it, they’re having to adapt to realize opportunity. And it’s all well and good having opportunity, but if you can’t deliver on it, that’s a problem, too. So, so we talked about, I mean, I, I like to look at the strategic stuff as rather than solve a problem is how do we solve the opportunity? Because generally, if you solve a problem, it creates a new opportunity. And I think even down to the language we use is really important as leaders, as you know, we’re presented opportunities all day, every day, it’s knowing which ones to take on is the real trick.

 

27:58

Now grunt, let’s talk a little bit about brand strategy. What are the key tenants of brand strategy that you personally believe in? Apart from the obvious things like being consistent and providing value to your customers? What are the inputs Do you have,

 

28:10

it might be a bit left field, but your brand strategy is driven by a culture, because ultimately, if you don’t live the brand, you know, for argument’s sake, you know, a Gucci handbag, you know, that if the stitching on that is not perfect, then that breaks the brand, it destroys the brand. And that comes down to someone not stitching it properly. And so you’ve got to operationalize your brand strategy. So you know, we have a running business and e commerce business. And from the very start, we’ve really focused on customer journey, and really focused on doing the right things to support them. Because what we realized in the data early on is that the more we help them, the more they came back, go figure, what a surprise. And now we have cars. And we’re a tiny brand. And we’re up against Adidas and Nike and all these people. But we’ve really focused on getting close to our customers. So we go to events, and we talk to them. And I used to you love this, the first few months of us going to these events, I’d take a tiny little book, The little notebook. And every time someone asked me a question or gave us feedback, I’d write it down. And then I’d come back on on a Monday and have a look at the notes. And then I’d speak to the team and we’d give feedback. And then we get also this is happening here. How do we turn that from a real world into the digital world. And it was really, really good. And now our clients or customers, we encourage that feedback. And then the way we actually measured that is our Google reviews. So we obviously ask them to give us a Google review. And we look for key indicators. So they that we want them to mention customer service. We want them to mention the quality of the product. We want them to mention how easy It was to work with us or deal with us even when we got it wrong. So we’ve got we’ve, we’ve got things really wrong with the supply chain because of COVID, etc. And we’ve still got five star reviews because the way we dealt with it. So we now use that as part of our brand strategy. So it’s our customer service. I mean, we know our product is amazing. It’s world class, no problems there. So then we go, Well, how do we create brand awareness? using digital? How do we how do we know that what we’re tracking? Well, so a recent event, I raced in the event. And I just saw a flood of people wearing our product running towards me on the course. And then those people I saw came to the stand afterwards. And one lady is wearing it and saying, I love this product so much that they’re convincing her friend, she said, this is the best product I’ve ever heard, we should do that. And in the end, she said, we should have the same. So she bought the same top as her. And she said it’s same same. And then she said to her, she said I’m work slowly working my way through my wardrobe to make sure I have all of your stuff. And she’s and they are if I email you, who will I speak to? And it’ll be I will be myself or Amy. Obviously, like you guys run the business. Yeah. So they, they’re seeing this connection to the brand. And then like we now know, people who like certain things. So we’ll email them if they arrive. And so we’re building we’re building. We’re building the relationship and you know, one of our challenges can we do at scale? Well, we can, it just is harder.

 

31:36

So it’s really, really, it’s about the customer experience and brand strategy. Once you’ve aligned ways in the market, your pricing strategy and the data. It’s about the customer experience, it’s every single part of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Like I say, we’ve had five star reviews after we’ve made a mistake. Now, that’s about customer experience, and they come back and buy again, and they buy again, and they buy again. So guess what? customer experiences everything. And also look, you know, it’s really easy for people to complain nowadays. So you may as well just reduce the risk of them complaining. So the brand strategy to me is really now all about customer experience. But you can’t, you can’t fake a product or service. So if you build a brand strategy around a premium offering, but your products rubbish, you’re wasting your time you’re going to get caught, you’re going to get caught every day of the week, don’t waste your time, you can’t fake the market, it’s not possible, because consumers are too clever. So why don’t you just do it the proper way, might take a little bit more time might be a little bit harder. But we now have customers who have spent, you know, our average value for sale is around $77, depending on the what’s happening, you know, we’ve got people that spent $1,000. with us. This is running gear. You know, people don’t need that much running gear, we convinced them they do but so we’ve gotten loyalty around the brand. And we’ve had people email and saying I will never buy Nike or Adidas again, because your product is so much better. And the services are much better. That’s the brand promise we’ve created. And some days it’s real challenging, but that’s what drives us because we know the revenue will follow.

 

33:15

So guys, as Grant has shared, you know, brand strategy comes with culture and providing good customer service, when downright this can be really powerful. To the point as grant shared, you can have a customer who actually had a bad experience becoming your best advocate. So back to you grant, let’s talk a little bit about a future of waking giants. I know you started Little Giants Academy, could you share what this is about? Um, so

 

33:36

the little jazz Academy is, it’s an observation I’ve made. So I’m on the board of trustees for my daughter’s school. And I’ve been asked several occasions to do some leadership work with six to 13 year olds. And it’s really about and these kids really understand the concept of leadership, self awareness and accountability. What they struggle with is applying it to real life, applying it to the playground and applying it to their friends and applying it to their actions. And and it’s something I’ve been rattling around with for a few years about doing something about it. And it’s it’s in its infancy, it’s so it’s like step point, one of step one is if we can help this this younger generation understand leadership and self leadership, not just business leadership, we then produce a whole bunch of leaders that are just what far more educated and, you know, go figure, strong leaders create a strong world. And so what I there’s nothing in our curriculum in New Zealand that talks to leadership. So what I’ve decided to do is one of the many things I’m doing is how do we take our real world learnings and disseminate it down into younger generation and how can they learn that one of the big barriers is Schools generally are watching budgets all the time. So I’m going to make it free. And, and digital in some way. But what we’ve learned through looking at the curriculum is they need an application model. So it needs to be a physical iteration. So when see and do rather than fear theory, and then we’ll do is we’ll get support from businesses to essentially invest in the next generation of leaders. That’s as far as I’ve gotten, I’ve seen the need and but above that is leadership toolbox, which is essentially the next. That’s the direction that we’re taking wg and is actually around the leadership learning methodology for people to make it more accessible. And then we’ll use that then to feed the Little Giants Academy, which is essentially a feeder program for future leaders.

 

35:55

So great, I know you have a podcast called the leadership diaries, could you share with us what this is about and what you hope to achieve it?

 

36:00

So the leadership diaries is, I guess, my, my response to the theoretical rubbish that we tend to see on LinkedIn, people, you know, there’s nothing wrong with formal education, it’s great, but I think we’re starting to live in a really different world. And I think a lot of it is gesturing. You know, it’s, it’s that old cliche picture of me in front of a Lambo money, all these cliche things that are mostly mostly fake, because anyone I know, he’s got serious wealth. They’re not flaunting it, they’re getting on with it, you know, and, and they’re different people. So their leadership diaries was sort of two pronged, it’s actually to talk about what reality of being a leader is, particularly in a smaller business. And really, most businesses, sort of a warts and all approach. So we’ll talk about all sorts of different stuff. It’s a way for me to get that thinking out of my head. And ultimately, it’s, it’s my thought leadership pieces, it’s about my personal brand strategy. So people can understand me, and my approach, which means they’ll start to understand waking giants and where we sit in the world. The challenge I have at the moment around it is is taking the time out to to share those insights. So, you know, if I’m not doing a podcast, I am doing, you know, posts on LinkedIn, and the generally fed by daily situations. So they are thoughts. It’s essentially like an elite. The reason I call it the leadership diaries, it’s like, it’s a journal for what’s happening. And the feedback I’ve got is that people really appreciate the ability just to talk about real things, you know, real things. And the fact that we haven’t all got it worked out and, you know, it’s, it’s maybe cathartic. It’s, it’s like a therapy type thing. It’s about sharing it. And mainly because, you know, most of last year during the pandemic, I was getting calls from other leaders about all sorts, suits, you know, talking about suicide and talking about their stresses and talking about their challenge. But these are not conversations happening out in the real world. And in New Zealand, we have a real challenging mental health crisis, we are a nation of small businesses, so they go hand in hand. So I mean, I even did a video once on, on suicide, because I was sick of hearing about the amount of suicides we were experiencing as a nation, and no one else would do it. And so to me, it’s about bridging that gap between what we have to do daily, and, and maybe people reading it and getting something from it. So 90% of the feedback I get on the content I put out directly on LinkedIn is offline, people read it, they consume it, and they do something with it, but they don’t respond online. So I’ve learned very quickly that just because you’re not getting a like or a comment doesn’t mean it’s not having an impact. I just need to be doing more of it. Because that’s about our vision of so it goes back to our original vision for is a world of conscious leaders, we need leaders that are really aware. And that’s the hard stuff as well as the the good stuff.

 

39:24

He knows it’s a great point at Grand your shit. Just because you’re getting a like a comment does not mean that your work is not making an impact. In fact, this is something I have experienced many times before. I could be posting a piece of content and I don’t hear anything about it. I don’t see any likes and comments. But sometimes, people actually approached me in person or text me separately after a few weeks, and they could really be sharing about how they enjoyed the content and how he helped them. So you know, I still get a lot of satisfaction from dad as well. So grant, if our listeners only remember one thing from today’s conversation, where would you like it to be?

 

39:55

Um I’ll go with the theme of the moment. do less to do more, I think one of the biggest challenges I’m seeing with a lot of business owners and senior leaders at the moment, they’re so busy doing, they’re not spending any time thinking. And that thinking will make the doing easier. So have some have some discipline around doing less. I think that’s, that’s the secret of what we’re seeing success in.

 

40:25

So grant, how can listeners get in contact with you if they need your help,

 

40:28

um, the best, the best way to see what we’re all about is find me on LinkedIn, Grant defense, I’m the one Virginia beard pretty unique, and I own it. Otherwise, it’s waking hi from giants.com. That gives you a full breakdown of how we do business who would like to work with and, and the other thing that I think maybe another sideline is that we, we choose our clients as much as they choose as we don’t have hundreds of clients. And we work in exclusive relationships and verticals. So when we work with a client, we go deep, we are on their team. And while that’s not unique, it’s something that we bring to the table that many don’t. So yeah, awaken hyphen, giant calm is really where you can find out more the courses on there, we’ve got some webinars that are all about some of like our running brand, we’ve got a whole strategy webinar there for free. That tells you how we use 20 steps to develop 1,000% growth in 12 months, we’ve got a you know, using leadership influence online, which is something I did for Deloitte in New Zealand. So the other thing we do, you know, we’re not about hiding the secrets, we’re about giving them up. And then that’s a way for people to understand what we’re really made of No, no hidden agenda. It’s all up there. So there’s plenty and then I think your listeners are going to get access to our course for free. So the great thing is if you know, it’s it’s the thing, the feedback we’ve got from it is most people have said, the main thing I’ve got is not the strategic plan, but it’s changed their mindset around how they think. And if that’s the feedback, we’ve achieved that goal, because if the thinking changes, the outcome has changed. So yeah, if anyone’s got any questions, feel free to email me or connect with me on LinkedIn.

 

42:22

Grant, thank you so much for joining us today. It’s been such a pleasure to hear your stories.

 

42:25

Thanks so much for listening to my stories. Some people don’t want to listen anymore, they get bored of them, so I’m happy to share them. Thanks so much.

 

42:34

Guys, thank you so much for joining me and grant today. Hopefully you have some actionable takeaways that can help you wake you up in a giant Now remember, Grant has given us free access on this course and how we can create a step by step 90 day strategic plan that’s available until the end of September. Just click on the link on my website and enter t d t o to gain access. Now remember to subscribe to the show so you never miss another episode. And don’t forget about the Amazon gift voucher giveaway. If you actually do subscribe and leave a review on Apple iTunes by the end of September. Then you stand a chance to win $50 worth of gift vouchers from Amazon. That’s all for me today. I’ll see you next time.