The Value of Authenticity in Business | Aaron Witnish

people are really going to want to do more interaction and business with human beings, given that they're going to get so much more synthetic exposure in the future that that connection piece is going to become increasingly important. So people that are prepared to not be lazy have a massive advantage.

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Welcome to another episode of The Profitable Creative, the only place on the internet that you will learn how to turn Your Passion into Profit. With me today is Aaron Whitnish of Content Only. Welcome, Aaron.

Thanks for having me, Christian. It's great to be here.

Well, I, I'm glad to have you here. Tell us the short story of how you got here, your entrepreneurial journey.

I'll do my best and apologize up front for the accent.

So no, no, that's great. I love it.

We rewind the clock back to 2008, the internet was very different. There was a lot of social media platforms that we use today that didn't exist back then, and that's when I started to learn how to copyright. And back then you could write a landing page, set up a Google ad to drive traffic very cheaply, and you could sell products. So that's where I got my toe in the water, and what I found early on when I was a young guy, early 20s, that talking to adult business owners, one of the ways that I was able to showcase that I had some knowledge, what I was talking about was actually through what I called how-to content. So I would write back then articles before ChatGPT and all these resources could do it for you, and I'd give away step-by-step how to get an outcome. So you hear here's how to get to the result. And that's initially how I got a lot of clients in the agency space, which I've launched my first one in 2010. So the obsession with content started all the way back then because it actually became the conduit to growing my business. And then as the internet's changed, social media's evolved, content's become so much more important for business owners. And the one thing that's been evident the whole way through is it's an area that so many business owners, creatives, people really struggle with because there's so many moving parts, there's so many different formats. And over time, I found myself in that niche helping people solve that problem. So that's the, the short version of the story.

Well, that's, that's an interesting space to be in considering the technological changes. I have a couple of thoughts that I want to ask your opinion on. So With the advent of AI creating content out of whole cloth, and in some cases, how does that affect what you do as a content marketer and, and what we as business owners need to be aware of?

It's a very interesting topic, and it depends on your business to a large extent because there's businesses where I think content plays less of a role in what you're able to do. And then there's other businesses where people might be in advisory spaces where they need to showcase their expert gap in order to stand out from other competitors in the marketplace. So I think when you're in that particular category, that humanization is really, really important because if you're going to a tool like ChatGPT or you're going to resources and creating synthetic videos that don't have the people's faces and voices on that. People are pretty cluey now that they've seen what AI does and doesn't do. You can kind of distinguish between the, the content at this point in time. So the more authentic you can create it as a business, the easier it is to stand out because no one's duplicating it. If you're in a space that doesn't need a lot of explaining, that's pretty black and white to the consumer. Then you probably don't need as much humanization built into the content that you're doing. But AI was just there essentially to put fuel on the fire in terms of the speed and rate at which you can produce content and how you can turn it around. So there's so many different pathways you can take it, but I think the businesses that will succeed in the short term when more and more synthetic content comes out are the ones that start with human input and then maybe use AI to repurpose and turn that into other versions of content.

There is a gentleman in Australia, I do not know his name, but I met him at a marketing conference and he is using AI to basically build a wall around his intellectual property. He's in the residential solar business. And I guess he's like the largest in the country, but he's been doing it for 10 years. And essentially what he's, he's done is he's taken all of his support tickets and queries and blog posts about, about solar and created his own, his own LLM. To help his customer support team. Like, I think he said that they're 30% more efficient than they were because the robot gets it right some of the time and then it gets partially correct. But the purpose is that, you know, as, as more feedback is given to it, it gets, it gets better. Right. But this idea that you could take your intellectual property, that you have that knowledge that you have as a team on the subject and turn it into a tool to use was fascinating to me.

Yeah, we look at it like an employee, and just like if you were training a human employee, the input and the training that you give is going to determine the output that it gives on the other side, which is why to get good content, you need the technical skill to be able to give it the right prompts in order to get it to achieve what you want. So people that give AI lazy inputs, get terrible outputs, and that's not going to help their business. So the more you can, I guess, train your robot employee, or your AI, or however you want to frame it up, the better it's going to be for your business. And again, it takes that skill set in the first place to be able to give it the right feedback and the right prompting to be able to give you what you want on the other side.

Well, that— yeah, that's the other interesting aspect of it, is that it's only as good as the data that it's using, right? And so these large language models are basically taking everything that's out there on the internet, which we know the veracity of that. As a professional, I'm constantly stupefied by some of the things that people believe that they read on the internet. And it's more of like, I want to believe it than— but I, I think the professional expertise is— I think the demand grows, right? Uh, as these large language models start producing more and more content, to your point, people are going to have to be more involved in the process or the outputs are not going to be usable. Hey listeners, are you ready to turn your passion into profit? Then grab a copy of Profit First for Creatives. Click the link in the show notes to purchase a copy. And if you're not ready to make that full commitment, you can download a free copy of the first chapter. Check it out right now.

Hmm. You see a lot of duplicates. I I, if you give the same prompts, and I tested this multiple times in early on because we had a trainee employee that was looking to come work with us, and what they'd send us as a sample project looks suspiciously AI. So I went and gave the same project questions to ChatGPT that we had essentially given this test project human. And verbatim, word for word, when we asked the questions to ChatGPT, we got the exact same responses that they'd sent us. So we were very quickly able to—

did they get hired?

Of course not. So that was to see what, uh, and the funny thing is that a lot of the facts too that you get from all the data you do get from an AI machine are not always accurate. So you can ask it some questions where you do know the answer and it could be a curly one where it's a little bit off the radar from mainstream knowledge to see what answer you get back and you may get something that isn't accurate and then you go, okay, this is why you also need to be able to fact check what it's giving you back because if you put out information and data that isn't accurate, that could really hurt your brand or business if someone does go and check out the validity of that information.

Well, you know, before LLMs came on the scene a couple of years ago, I read somewhere that someone said Google gave us the ability to not remember. And basically it was like, well, you don't need to remember when Pearl Harbor happened because you can just Google it, right? I was always very concerned with that. Concept. Not that I didn't disagree with it, because I, I, I think it's true. But like, what happens if the machine starts spitting out inaccurate information? Who's around to say, wait a second, this thing's glitching, like, this is not, this is not accurate? And, you know, I, I think this, the need for critical reasoning, right, to be able to to analyze something and be able to say, does this pass muster? Does this even make sense? Is, I think, lacking in our society in a lot of ways, but it's going to become even more important. There's going to be even more demand for it because it's just like, there's so much out there. How do you even know what's true, right?

Hmm. Sorting is going to be really challenging. For people. And I think from a business standpoint, it actually creates more skepticism because people are like, well, what, what's right? What's, what's wrong? And that's why, again, the human, the human side of content creation, people on videos that are clearly not an AI avatar, and taking words that have come out of your mouth, starting with that, so a transcript, and then repurposing that using an AI tool is where you can separate so much easier and start to eliminate skepticism. And I think people are really going to want to do more interaction and business with human beings, given that they're going to get so much more synthetic exposure in the future that that connection piece is going to become increasingly important. So people that are prepared to not be lazy have a massive advantage.

Yes, I, I think, uh, the word I would use is authenticity. Like, the, the— I think that is— I don't know that that's just a buzzword. Like, I, I think that's where marketing is headed because there's so many bad actors. I mean, I, I— we ran across somebody in our space. We actually lost a client to this company, and, uh, one of my team actually went and joined one of their webinars to hear what they were saying. And it was— and then he got all these subsequent emails from this company, and it's like he was sharing them with me, and I'm like, these guys are going to be in jail. I mean, like, this stuff is just flat out wrong, but they're selling it like hotcakes. And the bad actor is kind of which is so uncontrollable, right? Like, I mean, you could be anywhere in the world beyond legal repercussion and just take people's money because you tell them what they want to hear.

Yeah, it's— there's so much opportunity now to take advantage. And if you're good at that, then people that are not willing to dig a little deeper and take things at face value, going to find themselves in some situations that are not going to end well. So it's to your point, people, that discernment is going to become significant. And I know personally, if you're posting content daily now, you get a fake account that'll say, hey, you violated XYZ terms, particularly on Meta platforms. Trying to get you to click on a link to give your details so they can then take over your account. This happens across every single account that we manage daily, and it's so easy to get caught up in something that can really compromise your business, your brand, and your personal data. So you have to really pay attention.

That, if I were going to say anything that keeps me up consistently at night, is cybersecurity. Because we deal with people's financial data, birth dates, Social Security numbers, you know, I mean, like, if we get breached, people are going to have a bad day. And I realize that in cybersecurity, everybody is vulnerable. Like, you know, we've seen that even in the last few weeks with CloudStrike and, you know, like, Nobody's immune, right? So it's really like, can you make it difficult enough to not be worth their while? And that scares me. Like, that still scares me that someone could say, well, you know what, that looks like a pretty good honeypot. I'll go dig.

Well, interestingly enough, I was talking about this with my brother on the weekend about deepfaking and mimicking voices and all that sort of thing, it's going to be very easy for, for someone to make a fake video of you in a situation and to potentially hold that over your head. So I'm very curious to see how authorities, platforms treat this and what that happens to the justice system when someone could play the card, well, how do you know it's not deepfaked and AI-generated if someone's being caught out on a video? That's going to be very interesting as it unfolds.

Yeah, a lot of societal changes coming from technology for sure. So I'm going to pivot here. What, uh, what did you learn about money growing up?

I grew up middle class, to give some, some context, and I remember that anyone that was doing well, there was a bit of a stigma towards them. There was like, ah, energy that wasn't great. So we had a few, I guess, not direct friends, but friends of friends that had done well in business and clearly were making money, there's always some energy towards that. Or if someone that was rich on television came on, there would be some comment. And I've been leaning into that more recently because I was looking at my own financial performance and I was like, I've been around for a while. I wonder what underlying things could be influencing the results. I was like, well, if all my people that I cared about made comments about people that were doing well, I wonder how much that impacts your ability to go out and do well. So that's something that I've been playing around with more recently. My parents, they get a house, save your money, very traditional mindset. So that was the mentality that I was brought up around.

So how did you become an entrepreneur? Uh, like what, what made you say No, I want to do this myself.

There was a fascination with money, oddly enough. So from a young age, I always gravitated towards the people that were doing well. I always bought toy money when I was little. I pretend I'd sit at a desk pretending I was a businessman wearing a tie.

Did you play Monopoly?

Yeah, I did. I did play Monopoly. Yes. And at school, I would draw— I'd write up business plans when I was sitting in class. And I got 3 jobs as soon as I could start working from the legal age to make money. There was this pull towards it. I don't know what that was. It was inbuilt and I've been fascinated with it. And then also investing and that side of what you do with money when you get it. So I was just wired that way and I, yeah, it's kind of strange.

Have you read the book Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki? Yeah. And, and, you know, similar situation where his parents were educators. Believe. And so, you know, they were in that— I don't want to say herd mindset, but like what's generally accepted as the, the path to go forward. And I don't know if it's fear or envy or disdain that, that you see a lot of what you're, you're saying, where it's like when someone's successful, everybody wants to to take them down, right? And I've talked to clients where they're like, I don't tell the other business owners in my space how much money I make because I'm embarrassed. I'm like, really? You're embarrassed? I mean, not like that's normal dinner conversation. Like, well, how much money did you make? Is that, you know, no, but like you would hide your lifestyle from people because you didn't want them to think that you were Somehow I think a lot of people think that if you make a lot of money, you must have done something wrong to obtain it. You might— you must have screwed some— somebody out of it, or, you know, I don't know. But that can, that can be a, a devastating mindset to an entrepreneur where they're like, I'm doing well and I'm enjoying what I'm doing, and, and that doesn't feel right.

Examine this with— I've got a mentor in business and he grappled with a lot of that himself, and he does very well financially now. And I— he reframed it in a really nice way because you definitely can't help people if you don't have much money. Sure, you can give your time and you can do that, but in terms of the resources that you can acquire, you have to lean into other people's. And then there was the notion of, well, if you build a company and you give other people jobs, you're creating their income. And I look today that we employ— we've got a team of 9. I go, wow, that's fascinating. Like, I've been able to create resources that 9 people essentially able to run their lifestyle and household through what I've pulled together over the years. And when you come of it from a place of contribution and impact and role that has on the economy and go, well, if I'm pulling those resources together and creating that, then there should be compensation, I guess, for me, for being able to do that at a higher level than someone that say isn't doing that. And it was just looking at it another way. And then I, me and my, my wife, my partner, Paula, it's also understanding what you want to do with the money and what's the reason beyond just having the money. And when you can lean into that, then you look at it differently than if you just accumulating money, and that, that's helped with overcoming some of those limiting beliefs, let's call them, from growing up.

We had a family business and we had a lot of money, and I was rarely told, no, we can't do that because we can't afford it. Like, that, that, that was not a conversation that I heard. And so what I learned was that you can always make more money, which I believe to be true. But the flip side of it is, is that, okay, what do you do with it after you get it? Do you just spend it? Like what? And I spent a lot of my business just spending as much as I made, which I mean, no, you can't take it with you, but you certainly could be more intentional about what you do with it.

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Definitely there's different schools of thought, I guess, with what you do with the money. And I wiped myself out in my early 20s following— what I did was I was investing from ego. So I was like, I want to have proper these things that I can tell other people that I'm doing. And I was chasing very aggressive returns. So in the space of roughly 12 months, we have something that's called superannuation, which is similar to a 401. I wiped that out buying property options. I bought US properties just after the GFC. Our dollar was a lot stronger and I didn't follow the right protocols and essentially had to offhand those properties for nothing because they're untenable in the end. And I also wiped out my stock portfolio by investing in a company that had a class action filed against it and got pulled out of the exchange. So I went through 3 different investments that all essentially went to zero. And I'm so grateful for that because I learned that lesson of don't invest from ego, but based on the fund, make decisions from the fundamentals. And also don't just take someone else's advice. Do the work yourself. Do the due diligence so you're making the decision. And that, that was a really powerful— it was painful, but it was a very important lesson to get younger in life as opposed to down the track.

So have you been able to apply that learning into your own business?

Yeah. Yeah. So I look at the business itself as an investment. Shareholder owning the shares in the company. And I treat it as, as an asset and look at it that way. And then our distributions, our profit that we take out, we have a plan for that. So it is allocated. And when we created that plan, our accountants are actually— they're younger than us, but they self-made multimillionaires, which is really impressive, and come from a very broken family and have achieved that. Which is phenomenal. So we sat down with them and like proper structures, how do you set up, how did you do it? What, how do you, how do you allocate your money? And they went through it with us based on the different stages of business that you're at. So they had a very proven way of handling and managing money and structuring it and protecting it. And we thought, well, let's deal with people that are very neutral around our money that have a proven track record. That are doing it themselves and we'll let them help us build our wealth outside of the businesses and through the businesses as well.

You have come to that realization much quicker than I did. And I, you know, I think most business owners don't ever come to the conclusion that, yeah, their business is an asset. It exists outside of them. And I have asked my colleagues before when they're asking questions about investing money into their business or taking money out of their business, I'm like, "Well, if you owned IBM stock or Apple stock, what would your expectation be?" Right? And having that mindset towards your company. Most business owners don't ever get to that, objectively looking at it that way. I think a lot of it is they get caught up with their ego being tied to the business, right? So it's kind of hard to separate yourself from the business. But I think once you do that and have that objectivity, it really changes the paradigm. You're like, Would you accept this behavior if you owned that stock in another company? And the answer would be, oh, hell no, I wouldn't accept that. Well, then why are you doing it?

People early days, and I'm guilty of this when I started out, is sort of businesses as ATMs. Oh, the money in there is my money. And the first time I started making profit, I hadn't paid tax because I'd made losses in the previous years. So you get a very rude shock when you start making money, like, oh, this is great, and you start spending it. And then we have the ATO here in Australia, which is like your IRS. You get this letter or a phone call and they're like, you owe us this money, and I'd already spent it. So the education came from messing, messing up. And that's when I did start to seek mentorship and help because I'm like, well, I need to understand how to actually be a business owner. Because right now I'm just a cowboy out there in the Wild West. And yeah, you need to know the accounting, the financial side, because so many businesses come unstuck because they run out of the fuel, which is cash and the money and the way that they treat the income that comes in. And that's why the stats are not favorable for small business owners around the world.

No. And then they get caught on, and I did this too, is like the whole grow the business thing. And so like That was a very convenient excuse for me for many years of like, I'm just putting the money back in the business. But was I getting the return on that money that I should have? And most of the time the answer was no. But, you know, the growing— yes, growing takes money usually to grow a business. But being objective of saying, okay, if I'm investing $100,000 in my business, Am I getting a reasonable return on that money? And a lot of business owners don't recognize the risk that they have as a small business owner and what those expected returns should be. So I used to do business valuations and that's knee-deep in that model of return on investment. You know, if you, if you buy a U.S. Treasury, you're going to get, you know, 5%, say, and— but that's risk-free. I'll just stipulate that. But let's say it's risk-free, and then everything that has more risk, you need to add points on there to compensate you for that risk, right? And most business owners are, because of the inherent risks because of their size, should be making 30%, 35%, 40% return every year on the money they have invested in it. Now, that's not a profit percentage. That's not what I'm saying. But if you've got $100,000 you invested in the business, that business should be producing $30,000 to $40,000 a year in income above or regardless of your time. Right? Like, I'm not paying you for your, your, your time. This is just what the business should return. And you have those conversations with business owners and they're like, oh, I'm not making enough money. And I'm like, no, you're not.

It's actually conversation. Like, I speak to people that don't know what they're getting themselves into when they, they go down the business path and everything that we look at as a decision in the business is through that investment lens. So in a reasonable timeframe, what do we anticipate this will take us to? So you're bringing someone in, okay, we're putting them in this seat. How much, how many client accounts can they fulfill or manage? And then what are we paying them and what would that equate to in the business? And that's how we make decisions. Sometimes it is buying back time to an extent. It's going, okay, if I buy back my time and repurpose it into a higher ROI activity, so instead of doing this task, I can get someone else to do for $30 or $40, and I can then go put it into sales or retention or something that's worth thousands of dollars to the business, then that's much better resource allocation. So there's a couple of different ways that we approach looking at where we put money in our business. But I look at the financials on a weekly basis. I used to just hand everything over to the accountant when I was early stages and go, where are we at? And it was never good. It was always, it was always like a smack on the hand. Now it's weekly. Okay. And then I look for anomalies. Is there any cost line item that I can see that doesn't look like it has the last few weeks or last few months? And then I can investigate it. Okay. What? Why? Oh, it's an annual expense that came out. We pay that every 12 months. I can see why that happened. Oh no, that shouldn't have come out. I can need to cancel that. So you if you're paying attention and you're caring for the money, that's when it tends to work for you.

Yes, I was asked— I was a guest on a podcast and they asked me for some financial advice for, you know, just anybody starting a business. And that was exactly what I told them. I said, although I did it on a daily basis, I was like, you need to know what's going in and out of your bank account and credit cards anywhere you're spending money, and you need to know what every transaction is. And a lot of people don't want to get into that detail, but until you do, you're not going to know what's going on. You can put it together and get a financial statement and start looking at it at a higher level after you're intimate with it. But to learn it, you need to know everything. And a lot of people don't want to put in that work.

You sit down with— if you don't understand it, because for some business owners they may not have much knowledge in, in that side, sit down with your accountant and get them to set up your profit loss and your various statements so you can read it and it makes sense, and get them to explain it to you so you can then interpret the data. Because if you don't know what's happening, you're so exposed. And it can be very painful when a business is in a hole or in a place where it's barely hanging on or it's trading insolvently, which can be a real big problem.

There's nothing worse than not knowing where you're going to have to— where the money is coming from to make payroll. There is no worse feeling as a business owner than scrambling to have to make payroll. And I would tell you, whether you have employees or not, whether you're having, you know, trouble paying your employees or you're having trouble paying yourself, that's a red flag. Like, you, you should not be in that situation, and you do not have to be in that situation. Uh, it is totally fixable, but you're going to have to do some work, and you probably are going to have to, to involve someone else. But, you know, that, that's no way to run a business. Uh, I've done it, and, and it's, it's not fun.

For me, going to a direct debit model was a really powerful shift for cash flow management because then you've got continuity and predictable income coming in versus invoicing and when there's spaced out payment terms where you might actually on paper be showing a profit, but the cash isn't in the account. So it's a very different story. So we decided several years ago that we would go to the direct debit model and we debit weekly. So the clients that work with us, they pay a weekly investment for our service. Which is amazing for managing the cash flow in the business versus the, the other models that we see. So that was a game changer for making sure there's always money there for payroll, to easily work out what we can pay ourselves through the business from the profit. And seeing the money come into the accounts on a consistent weekly basis is a very different energy to when it's sporadic and up and down. That and we just use Stripe if people are looking for a tool that you can use to collect that's easy to set up. So that was a good shift for us.

I think that's probably— I bought a franchise when I started my business, and back then we actually had to order banknotes, printed banknotes that looked like checks, and we'd fill in the amount and then deposit them. But that's from day one. I was debiting the client's accounts on the 10th of the month for our service. And it was the most brilliant thing that I didn't really think anything of. But, and it's, it's so funny when you start talking about that with people, they, they, I get all kinds of pushback. So I couldn't do that in my business. I'm like, why not? Do you, does your business, Aaron, have more of a menu of services, fixed menu of services for a fee, or is it variable like you've got advertising costs?

And we, we just have one service. So over the many years, we've gone from having multiple services to just one. And again, that was just to have a very predictable, very good service that we could offer that was quality controlled. Everyone in the team has their seat on the bus to fulfill. And remove all the complexity out of the marketing, out of the sales. We went from all these moving parts, a red one, a green one, a blue one. We just got one offer. And again, that has made our business so much easier to manage, so much easier to grow, and so much easier to run. So that again, through mistakes, learnings, that's where we've arrived at 14 years later or 16 years later, whatever the maths is.

I love that you've learned all these things at a younger age. What experience, if any, have you had with Profit First?

I can see that in the background. I've read the book. I've read The Pumpkin Plan as well. I think a couple of Mike's books. And that was a really eye-opening read. And it was a suggestion by my mentor in business. And it makes so much sense paying yourself first. And that mentality and mindset really was a game changer as a business owner because you're taking on all the risks. You're doing— yeah, you're the one that's up late at night. You're the one that is responsible. So that even that just as a mindset, pay yourself first. Yeah, it was a really nice lens to take into business and made it for me just the way that, yes, the business is paying us, it is giving us back. Yes, we might be putting in a lot of time at various parts in the journey for various reasons, which is fine. That's why you get the upside and the reward. You, you do those things at certain points. But I, I remember just that, that, that sentence was significant for, for how I looked at business.

Yeah. And, and I love Mike's— if anybody in the audience hasn't read Profit First, I recommend reading it just to hear Mike's story because His story is awful and great at the same time. It's very illustrative, but he had started and sold two businesses, and in both instances, the business didn't really make any money until he sold it. And after he had sold the second one and went into angel investing, investing in other people's businesses and gone bankrupt, lost it all, he started thinking there's got to be a different way. He was not an accountant. He was not trained in finance. It was just hard knocks of like, there's got to be a way to make money besides selling the business and do it consistently. There was a book all of these Australia references. There was a book written by a couple of gentlemen in Australia. I think one was a lawyer and one was a CPA. It was called Firm of the Future, and it was this huge book. I don't even know if it's still in print, but they talked about a lot about value pricing. And I, I have a whole chapter in my book around that. What is your experience in your business, if any, with value pricing?

Can you explain value pricing and I'll explain why?

So rather than looking at your costs and looking at your margins, you base your pricing on the value perceived by the purchaser.

Gotcha. Yeah, that's always been A— so I had a business that we did build and sell when that goes back, it goes back. When did we sell? 2016. And that was an education company and that was built on, I guess, value pricing because we would take something that you could buy somewhere else that was significantly less expensive than what we did, but we added value to it.. So the perceived value to, to the person that was looking at it would expand. And so we're able to take something that at one place in the market cost this much, but over here with us was maybe 2 or 3 times bigger investment, but the value perceived by the client was much higher. And I'm a firm believer, as long as value exceeds price, then that's when you get a transaction. So if you go to, you can have the same solution. For two different people and it's going to be worth completely different amounts. So if you've got someone that's a startup and you give them a marketing strategy, that, that might not be worth much to them because they can't do too much with it. Because you give that to someone that's got a $100 million business and it fixes their lead generation or their conversion, that could be worth $10 million in the next 30 days as an example. So you've got the same solution, two very different value outcomes, which is why the who you market to, who you offer your services to, is a really important piece of the business equation because that's where you can get resistance. Someone that gets very poor results with the same solution, that someone that gets insane results with minimal effort.

The first time this really shocked me that I saw in the marketplace was that pregnancy tests are priced differently based upon whether the person using the test wants to be pregnant or doesn't want to be pregnant. The ones that market towards the expectant mothers that are looking for a positive result, they pay more. It's the exact same product. And I'm like, that doesn't make any sense. And I'm like, people don't make sense. I, you know, I don't know what to tell you.

I mean, exclusivity, uh, you've got these different status, there's all these variables that can go into what someone is, is willing to pay. There's— you look at the different suburbs that you may live in, you've got the more affluent suburbs, they just want outcomes, they want the exclusivity, they want the status. Then you've got someone that's in the lower end, they, they generally want the bargain, they want the discount, uh, they want the lowest price. So you've really got to know which part of the market you're playing in because you've got two very different buyers and motivations to buy.

I was at— and I referenced this story in my book— there I was at some conference and they were talking about pricing. And he asked the audience of entrepreneurs, "Who has a commodity business?" And there were several people that raised their hands. And then he went on to demonstrate. He had a bottle of water and he was like, "What's more commodity than water? There's nothing more commodity than water." And then went all through the various ways it's priced in different segments and different locations and blah, blah, blah. And I would tell you it works in every business. It doesn't matter if you think, well, I can't raise my prices because my competitors will undercut me. Well, you've got to be different. You've got to give more value.

Demand and supply. One of the best books someone that's in business can read that I found in Australia. So you might not have stumbled across this one in the States. It's called Oversubscribe, and it basically explains where you get the demand above the supply, which is basic economic principles. When you get to that place in business, then you've got so many choices. You've got a waitlist, you can increase prices to bring demand and supply to parity, you can add more team to expand your capacity to fulfill more clients, but If you can get your business to where there's more demand than you can fulfill, that's the holy grail. And that's what I aspire to in our business. That's what I hope my clients aspire towards, because that's when you ultimately have the terms on your side as a business owner. And of course, you can impact that as a new business because you can limit capacity, you can limit supply. You can do things that can start to build up that demand, even if you don't necessarily have the advantage of being established, being known. So I think that's a really good conversation.

There's a bourbon here in America, which is a, is a whiskey, and distillery burnt down. And rather than rebuild it the way it was. They intentionally made it smaller, and it's one where you consistently cannot find it, and it goes on the secondary market for like 2 and 3 times retail. And all they did is exactly what you said. They lowered the demand. I mean, they increased the demand by lowering their production. There's nothing— I mean, I'm a bourbon drinker and I'm like, it's okay. I mean, it's not like that special. Like, I don't understand why people are paying $300 a bottle for it. I don't get it.

But great example. And any business can play that. There's a few restaurants in my area that are very smart and they, they're booked out for a couple of months in advance. So when you can't get in, people want to get in even more. And then they're not price sensitive at all when they get in. They're just so grateful to be in the restaurant and they feel so so special that they'll pay whatever price is on the menu. And don't— I, I— that's one of the biggest challenges I think for early stage businesses is don't sell to everyone. Don't— and I— there's that pull because yes, you need money, you need to come in, but the lessons you'll learn from working with it with a client that you shouldn't be working with can be very expensive, not just financially but also emotionally and mentally. And chances are you're probably going to make that mistake. But if you are very firm in your boundaries right from the outset and your standard, you become very attractive to do business with versus someone that's doing cartwheels and backflips and discounting to get someone across the line.

I couldn't agree more. I think the quicker the business has their customer's problem pinpointed and provide a valuable solution very specifically, the more success they're gonna have. And, you know, I, I was like that. Like, you just want to grow, and you— or you just want to succeed starting out, and so you just take whoever, right? And the quicker you can get to that point where you're picking rather than taking all comers, the more profitable and more successful you'll be.

There's that intuition part too. I think we all know shouldn't take this person on, and you need to lean into that right from the outset because you'll be right in nearly all cases. And you look at— it's the same kind of like a relationship with a human being. If you come across as needy and desperate, it's not attractive energy, it repels. But when you're not needy and when you're kind of detached, that's attractive to like, oh, they don't need me, okay, I'm I'm intrigued. I'm curious about that. And that's really hard to do, I know, when you need to pay the bills, when you need to make money.

When you're thirsty, right? I mean, you know, you're— I get it. Aaron, this has been a fascinating conversation. I can tell that whoever needs content work in Australia would be wise to hire you simply because I don't know anything about your product. I haven't looked at any of your product, but you are a very competent business owner and that in and of itself will help anybody that does business with you. So how do they find you if they want to get in touch?

I've got a system that's completely free. You don't even need to opt in for it. So if you want to see our process which is called the 30 Days in 90 Minutes Content Creation System which is the model we use to create authentic original content without taking up too much of a business owner's time, you just go to contentonly.au and you can just watch the video and see how to do that.

And it's in English too, right?

English. How exciting.

I went to an event and the founder— and I can't remember his name— the founder of UGGs was speaking and he was kind of soft-spoken and it was a small crowd, maybe 50 or 60. And he said something to the effect of like, can everybody hear me all right? When we started and I was in the back, I said, something to the effect of like, yeah, but I can hear you, but you talk funny.

Was he Australian?

Because Australians— yes, yes. No. Yes, he's— no, the founder of UGG is a fascinating story. So he— when he was a young man, like just out of college, he was an accountant. As a fact— as a matter of fact, he was an accountant, worked in public accounting in Australia for like 6 months and said, I'm not doing this. He came to California, Southern California, to find a product to bring back to Australia to sell. So, but, but what happened was he ended up going there and saying, well, nobody has any sheepskin boots. All these surfers, you know, everybody has them in Australia. Why don't you have them here? And so this is a fascinating story. I'll find the book and the title and I'll send it to you.

Amazing. Thanks, Christian.

Thank you, Aaron. I appreciate it.

And that's a wrap for today's episode of The Profitable Creative. Until next time, you money lovers. And don't forget, Profit First for Creatives is live via Amazon. Link below.