Discover How to Stand Out as a Visionary Marketer: Wisdom from Stephen Kelly, CEO of Sage!

Welcome everybody to another Blab Hangout. Super excited to be here with you and my good friend Stephen Kelly, CEO of Sage, who's in London again. Stephen, welcome back.

It's great to be here, Evan. Really enjoy these sessions.

Today we are talking about how to be a visionary marketer. I know a bunch of you already asked a ton of questions. It's great to see the live chats rolling in. Those of you who are here for the first time, if you want to ask a question, you do /q and then start typing your question after, and it will come in. Stephen, before we get to the question, there's a lot of them already came in. I just wanted to get your thoughts on what a visionary marketer looks like. Lessons for entrepreneurs, kind of high-level overview from your perspective on what being a visionary marketer means.

Yeah, I think Evan, and it's such a critical area of the business. I think everybody who's an entrepreneur understands that. It's how do you kind of create a community and be in the conversation all the time. And this is probably the one area of business that's transformed and totally different from how it was 30 years ago. So if you looked up, you know, the experts, what Philip Kotler or someone 30 years ago, he'd say about promoting and selling, digital economy has changed everything. So we'll talk about a lot of really useful stuff, I'm sure, on this plan around how do you make yourself at the center of the conversation, how do you kind of create that volunteer community of interest and how do you really meet the customer need. So I think it's a really exciting— the thing that scares me actually, Evan, is this is such a vast topic and there's just so much we could cover. But I think you'll keep us honest and keep us focused on all the audience issues that they want us addressed. I love it.

There's a little bit of noise coming in and out. I don't know if people are mentioning in the comments too about the microphone. —on the mic. So—

We'll get another— Yeah, we'll get another mic. Don't worry.

Another mic and maybe another headset and figure it out. For me, if you're looking at being a visionary marketer, I think it starts with having a vision. You know, surprisingly, a lot of— you look at most marketing, in my view, it's not visionary. It's boring. It's stale. It's, you know, I want to click away. In my view, you know, a company should stand for something. I think entrepreneurs get this maybe a little bit more than most big companies. Because we've started a business around our passion and we are here for a reason and we want to get our message out there to build a better world somehow. It's what we're trying to do as entrepreneurs. And in my view, marketing should be about providing value still to your customers. I think too many people see marketing just as a way to sell. And if your marketing is distracting, if your marketing is something people want to click away from, then that's not something that is really adding long-term value to your business. In my view, that's not visionary marketing. In my view, you wanna have something that when people look at, it changes their lives, it sparks something, it makes them think, it makes them want to go out and do something more, which may include buying your product as well, but the marketing itself is value. It's not just trying to sell something. And I think if you look at the most visionary and most valuable campaigns, the one that we still talk about 20, 30 years later, is because when you see their marketing, it makes you think about your life and your world and what you wanna do with your business, as opposed to just, "Oh, if I buy that, I'm gonna get 5% off, so I'm gonna go for it." And so I think that is kind of the biggest difference for me. It's understanding what your vision is, since we're talking about visionary marketing, standing for something as a business, and then letting that seep into every marketing channel you have so that the consumers see your vision and they wanna help you on your path to make a better world.

I love it. The key thing is, Evan, I love that. The key thing is how do you stand out? How do you differentiate? How do you be part of the conversation and you're shaping the conversation? And that's really what the market is, the heart of the business. And I think it's also how do you connect emotionally to your consumers or the people in the business, business environment. So there's loads to cover because I think this is a rapidly changing area. And it's a great way to differentiate your company. And marketing shouldn't be, as you said, an add-on. It's core to what you stand for. It's almost the marketing is the company, the company with a heart, and it is the product. They all come together. I love it.

Well, we're hearing you better now. It's good. Good work on the tech. Great. Well, let's get to the questions. First up, longtime viewer, loyal Blabber and already giving tons of props to everybody here. J-Rise, what exactly is marketing according to you guys? Like people toss around the word, every business basically, but it could be argued that simplifying your brand or speaking controversially or any number of things are marketing. Could you clarify please?

Yeah, maybe I'll start, Evan. You know, as I said, if you went to business school, I don't know, 20, 30 years ago, They talk about promoting and selling your products or services. I think the digital world has changed everything. Everything through social media has transformed things. And I think it's harder now than ever to stand out because we're operating in a sea of noise. I just looked at some stuff coming in today. Every minute there's 277,000 tweets posted, you know, 100 and I think it's 216,000 photos uploaded to Instagram. So, you know, there's so much noise out there now. Marketing, I would say, in today's world is how do you actually connect yourself and be in the conversation with your customers and the community? And how do you want to portray that? We'll talk about, you know, key to be focused, authentic, and marketing does lead the way for the product. And you talk about brand, the question talks about brand. The brand is the essence and the focus of what you said in the opening, Evan Carmichael. How do you, with your product or service, really change the world? How do you get that excitement in a compelling vision where people get excited with you and you create the conversation? You're part of the conversation. As a byproduct of that, you sell a lot of stuff, but you start with what's really important, being in the conversation and servicing the need of the customer. What is the user need? What does the customer need? How can you invent that? And fundamentally then, how do you build your integrated kind of marketing plans and strategies to be driving that conversation and being part of that conversation all the time? What do you think, Evan?

Yes. I mean, for me, marketing is about getting your message out, right? So we start with our vision. Here's the message. Here's the better world that we want to create. And then marketing is how do we tell the world about this? How do we get people to join our mission, jump on board this bandwagon, get on this rocket ship, and let's go change the world?

And so there's a lot of different ways to do it.

How do you do that? Because marketing, I think a lot of people just think, oh, I need to take out an ad in a newspaper, on TV, or web ads, or Google ads. It's not just advertising. To J-Rice's point, simplifying your brand can be marketing. If your brand is too complex, nobody knows what you stand for, and it's boring, and it's static and stale, then simplifying your brand can be a huge talking point, right? If you get it to the point where people can understand what you're all about, then that's awesome marketing. Speaking controversially, I wish more brands, more entrepreneurs did speak controversially. I wish people did stand up for something that they felt was important and different and valuable. And, you know, if you want to change the world, it means you're upset with the status quo somehow, right? So get upset, speak controversially, right? I want to tie on to that leader who's guiding that shit forward. And so I wouldn't be boxed in by a typical definition of marketing that you may find in a textbook. Marketing is about how do you get people to understand what your message is all about? And there's a lot of different ways to do that. And so, you know, thank you, Jay Raj, for that great question and being able to highlight some of the more kind of controversial points around it. Do you, how do you guys do your marketing, Stephen? Or are there new campaigns that you're launching that you're really excited about on the marketing side to kind of get the message out?

Yeah, yeah, I think you gotta be, we're all about entrepreneurs. We're all about, you know, living the lives of entrepreneurs, working hard, you know, using your life savings to grow your business, the anxiety of like making payroll, paying your suppliers, managing your business, growing, exporting, whatever the issue is. So kind of marketing point number one is we've got to be where our audience is. You've got to go where the audience is and we've got to feel the same issues. And I do think marketing, this is unlike what it was 30 years ago. It's very emotional now. There's a huge— you know, I talked last time with you, Evan, about companies with a heart. I think we're trying to connect both through marketing our hearts with our audience. And you get very much into the areas of how you drive emotion as well as the kind of the thoughts. So we think definitely with our products, we're doing this in things we've built called the customer business centers. Where we take what are all the issues our customers have. And there's a product we launched called Sage Live where we crowdsourced all the requirements with our users, small business owners and accountants and entrepreneurs to say what do they need for technology of the future that will allow them to run their business much more efficiently and focus on what they love doing, which is winning customers, servicing customers and growing their businesses. And therefore we built the product, took about 51 days actually, and then we launched it. And this is where it's different is Marketing kind of used to be a little function that was an afterthought. Now it's kind of front and center because the product is marketing, it is distribution, it is all totally integrated. So we go through and we build these integrated digital marketing sales servicing hubs where we actually— and we've had customers come in literally 30 days from hitting the web through to buying the product. But they didn't— the initial thing was all about the conversation. What are the issues they're facing? How do we solve those? Issues. And that was where we focused the effort. And as a byproduct to that, they bought the product and then we helped them through, again, many digital tools, the whole onboarding process so they get live. And we're getting customers live in less than 30 days on this product. So, you know, it's awesome in terms of kind of really changing the way we do it. But the point to make is around marketing. What 10 years ago would have been something we think about in a rearview mirror. We've got a product launch. How do we do it? Market it, traditional channels, you know, all the 4 Ps and stuff like that. It is, and then advertising and all that sort of stuff. It's very different now. It's much more integrated process. It starts with the user. It starts with where your audience is. And then it talks about how do we be part of that conversation, especially through social media. And it's a totally different world now. I think for all entrepreneurs out there, there's some really good lessons that probably we can share in terms of how do you get your products or services to be part of that conversation? How do you make the issues that differentiate you? Because it's all about standing out. How do you stand out? You know, Seth Godin, all these great people, all these marketing geniuses, they all say it's all about standing out, differentiating. It's all about getting found first. So when they hit the website, when they do a Google search, how do you jump out the page and look different? Not just look the same old kind of corporate stuff. Look really different and address their needs in a radically different way. And it does, I think, definitely have to include the rational— how do you solve their problem? But how do you appeal to their emotions? Well, how do you kind of get engaged around something exciting and compelling and really get them evangelical, create a raving, raving fan for your product?

I like that— evangelical. I like the first 4 letters of that. I love that.

I have an idea.

So one of my favorite quotes on marketing is Dave Packard, who said, "Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department." And it's something that, like, as an entrepreneur, you need to lead, right? Like, you lead with the heart. There's lots of tactical, you know, head, how-to examples, but it needs to be, like Stephen said, emotional, something impactful, something that when I see your marketing, I want to make a change in my life. You know, that's what I want to see in the marketing campaigns that you guys are creating. Let's pop in on some of the questions. So Rishi Cupp, another loyal viewer, she called in last time for us. When I think visionary, I think innovator. It's easy to look at what everyone else is doing and do that. Can you share a time you found success innovating in marketing? Thank you.

I think, yeah, Rishi, I'd say And one of the guys I got here running digital marketing, I'll give you an example, a real example. When I was in a startup, I hired a really great rockstar marketer, Neil Morgan. And this is way back when we were in the startup back in California in 1997. And our challenge, it's pretty crazy, like we're a no-name company. And I think the problem we were trying to solve is when consumers called into their bank or telecoms company, Verizon or whatever, AT&T, you know, they got passed around. Customer service was appalling. And we created this great technology that allowed you to have a single view of the customer. So anybody calls in through all these crazy 1-800 numbers, they can actually be kind of consolidated. And then the company could deal with you as an individual, as a human being, and understand all your product relationships with that company. So literally, we launched this company, got a product out to market, and then I said to Neil said, you know, the challenge is how do we within 6 weeks get on the front page of things like Wall Street Journal or Financial Times? And this was kind of pre-digital, pre-internet, or the internet was just kind of embryonic. And how did he do it, Rishi? He said, right, let's connect ourselves back to what we talked about. What are the issues that consumers really feel? What is their frustration? What is their anger? What is their agony when they're hanging on for hours on these customer service calls and then they get passed around or they get given another one 800 number they're going to call, you know, the anxiety and agony of customer service. And then what we did actually was a really intelligent survey where we did, you know, very simple, low cost. It cost— we sort of ran the company on fumes, which is a great way to kind of think mentally as an entrepreneur. It's not about spending big dollars. So we did a really small customer survey, got about 1,000 people, and then it was like a shock horror story. And you know what? And then on the Monday after 6 weeks, it was on the front page of the Financial Times in London. And we got calls, inbound calls, saying, you're the thought leaders on this issue. You're absolutely right. You're on the money. We want to talk to you. So I think that was an example. That was the end of the marketing era where it was all about promoting and selling and pushing. And now we're in a different world. It's all about pulling, being part of the conversation. It would be so much easier now. I said this on the last question, actually, Rishi, when you were on last time, is what to— 3 years, 3 months, years ago now happens in 3 days. And through the power of, well, you know, what Evan's doing here with this around Believe, a really core focus around serving entrepreneurs and inspiring them to really fulfill their dreams and pursue their passions. It's great clarity, great sense of purpose. And I think that is a— I gave an example from 18 years ago. But that still serves as well. So the lessons learned there is marketing dollars doesn't solve any problems. The real issues are what Evan said is marketing is not a kind of adjunct, it's core of the business. And marketing really should speak to all the entrepreneurs kicking off their businesses about what do we need to do to meet customer needs? How do we actually connect the emotion for them to solve their problems and take the frustration out of their lives? And then how do we really simply and articulately in a very focused way, and then relentlessly keep to that focus, uh, hit the button in terms of what their issues are and how we solve their problems, and then market it. And I think we'll probably talk on this blab around how we market it through social media and digital channels, because that, that is the way, because you could be part of the conversation, uh, and throughout that conversation, you know, they'll buy at a point in time when they're ready to buy. Evan, what do you think?

I'm just looking in the comments and, and Top Steak is recommending that you did a weekly Blab answering questions from your clients and having your staff interact with them live. So you're feeling the Blab love here. Um, my thought on this, you know, I think you can pull a lot— just as a little curveball— yes, I think you should be an innovator, and at the same time, I think you can also pull from other industries. I think too, too many times you're locked into here's how to do things in YouTube world, or in dancing world, or in, you know, whatever business that you're in, where you can learn so much from other businesses and other industries and apply those lessons to your company. And that's what makes you you, because you like League of Legends, and because you like, you know, dancing salsa, because you like surfing, taking lessons from those industries that have worked and applying it to be the first one in your industry to do it. I take insane amount of knowledge from League of Legends, from from music, from things that I just love, and that makes my business better where other people in our industry don't. They're doing the same thing that everybody else is doing. And an example, one thing that helped lift my brand was the first big video that I made on YouTube that blew up was around Believe, and I got a guy to collaborate with me who did a bunch of motivational videos. And nobody in the entrepreneur space had ever collaborated with him or done anything similar, and I worked with him because I liked his video and I was just watching for my own interest. Put it up on YouTube. A bunch of people who I respected, I showed it to and they said, "Ah, it's too long. It's never going to work. Don't do it." That's where the little man idea came from. For those of you who've been friends with the channel, that video now has over a million views. And that was my first big video that took off. And that was from taking an idea from a different industry and applying it to mine. And so your other interests are fuel for you. It's money for you. Take what you love about John Lennon, who's your favorite singer, and apply it to your business because he's already figured out a ton of stuff. Even though it's in a different industry, there's lessons that can apply to your software company. And we figure out that that's going to help you be able to do a little introduction.

We're in the office up in Midtown, up in London. Hey, I've got Katie Rose. She's got a direct answer to that question. Could she just come on as a little guest cameo? 30 seconds. Here you go.

Bring it up. Hi Evan, hi. Hello. We were actually just talking about like fashion marketing and fashion houses, and I'm— I guess I'm kind of here as like the millennial voice. So as a millennial, we were talking about how the main way I want to consume fashion now, what means a lot more to me than like traditional runways, is like street style and like vloggers and what makes me want to buy a bag is not these glossy photos of it on the runway, but like a photo, like on the Vogue Instagram, you know, an it girl, like cool, really cool, walking around New York, like she has great hair and she's like carrying the bag. That's what makes me want to buy that bag. And we were talking about how it's much more about buying the lifestyle and the story. And you could link that to things like Humans of New York, you know, Humans of New York, like that, everyone, who doesn't know? The really like viral Facebook page and how it's about like buying people's stories and buying them more than the actual product. So that's my millennial intent.

I love it. I love it. That's great, Katie. Thank you. I love that. I love it. I love it.

So you got an accounting software company here learning from the fashion industry.

And I kind of think the takeaway is, Rishi, you get this. Everything's about the heart, the companies with a heart connecting with consumers with a heart. It's all about the emotion. And being in the conversation all the time and creating the excitement and the blur between kind of business and separation of life is gone forever. So you've got to be there right in the conversation all the time and you've got to be found first and exceptional. Everything you say, Evan, it's got to be— you've got to jump out the page and then from that point onwards have everything authentically consistent with what you're talking about in terms of the message from the marketing right through the product. Right through the service, everything's got to kind of match that up and you've got to do it with honesty. And invariably, you know, and I know every business has things you've got to fix. You've got to be honest with those. I think it's a much more exciting business world we live in now than ever before.

I love that extension that you just took us down because a lot of people stop with the marketing where it has to go on to your product or your service. Right? That vision that you have, because people buy something based on the marketing, then they get the product and it sucks. Where that vision has to flow through. When I load up your software, or when I load up your fashion magazine, or when I come to your dance class, I want to feel the vibe that I got in the advertising. And when you don't make that connection, people are gonna— they're gonna drop, and you're gonna get negative word of mouth spreading. So thank you for taking us deeper, because I think a lot of people just stop at the marketing and don't realize that the product is also marketing. The service is marketing. How you deal with your customers is marketing.

Marketing is the product. Marketing is the company.

I love it. Okay, let's, uh, get to our next question. Let me pop it up here. This one is from Exit Outlet that J-Rice posted for us on his behalf. Marketing these days is evolving as audiences are becoming harder to see and meet face to face, with online presence growing What are the best ways to reach out to your demographics in the beginning before you can simply buy the audience as a big marketing—

Yeah, I think, um, again, some of the things— being disruptive. The example I gave you almost 20 years ago, you want to be— how do I actually be part of the conversation? How do I get found first? And I think to Evan Carmichael's point, you don't want to do the same old boring content, uh, but there's loads of obviously digital channels, uh, where you can connect with your audience. And I think number one, so point number one, go where your audience is. Find out where your audience is and go there. And, you know, it could be Instagram, could be Facebook, could be Twitter. And then what is the exceptional authentic content that you can serve up that speaks to the excitement of your product or service? And then I think, you know, our view of life is then it's all about recruiting the volunteer army. It's all about exciting people. When they get hold of your product, they tell all their friends. You know, here I just saw a drone that takes video footage. Awesome, awesome. Called Lily, check it out online. Check the YouTube. And if you're a skier or you dance classes, you can have a little drone flying around above you watching all your moves. It's just awesome. It's got a 20-minute battery life. But that, if the product's half as good as YouTube video, then it's just going to blow away and it's going to go viral and it's going to create a community. And the best way you do it is it's almost like recruit one volunteer fanatic who's using your product and that person will give you 100 and those 100 will give you 10,000 and those 10,000 will give you 100,000 because products that are awesome, services that are awesome, it's all about being referred by the viral economy.

I love it. I just bought a drone that also has a GPS sensor built in.

Yeah, so this is the one. Check it out. Check it out on YouTube. It's a bit of a crazy suggestion, but if you're a mad skier or you're one of those kite surfers or something crazy like that, then you would have just a ball and it kind of matches down. It's almost like a bird of prey. It comes back down when you want to call it back in. Awesome. Right.

So here's an opportunity to be visionary because the guys who are going to do it are the skiers, are the surfers, are the whoever. Like, be the entrepreneur who's walking down the street answering questions, right? Like, whatever your business is, be the first to take this and apply it to your industry, because every skier is going to start doing this, but nobody's doing it in software. So how can you be the software guy to do it? Or how can you be a baseball player to do it, right? These are opportunities to leverage what's being used in other industries and apply it to your business, which may be a little more important.

On that as well, one thing that's changed, right? You remember the old Mad Men Madman metaphor around kind of advertising. And it was like think, feel, do, think, feel, do. And that was sort of the advertising process. The world's changed again. So it's about do, think, do, think. And there's intermediate steps. Do, feel, think, engage the conversation. And it's not a one-hit with this stuff. It's all about the conversation. And then people will buy when they're ready to buy. But what it means is if you're just starting up as an entrepreneur, The first thing you've got to do is do and then feel, think. And also the measurement around analytics on digital is so powerful. If you've got it wrong, you can do real quick course correction and you can kind of do the next campaign literally the next day with a whole different sentiment to make sure you kind of get it right, to find out what the— you know where the audience is. And now it's how do you get the audience sentiment? And the audience frustration and express that in the way you're going to sell your products and solutions to wow them. And so I do think the world's changed again. It's no more kind of Mad Men metaphor. It's all about do, feel, think, engage the conversation. You've got to be part of the conversation.

You're getting some love in the comments. They're saying, thank you, Mr. Kelly, that's it. And you have over 2,000 props already and thumbs up. So that's great. To the question, my view on it is I think as an entrepreneur you can't do everything. I think too many entrepreneurs try to do everything. You, you have accounts on all the social media platforms and you're trying to post everywhere, and as a result, it's— everything is mediocre because you also have a business to run. And so you're just posting boring stuff, and because people say, oh, you need to be on Instagram, so then you get on Instagram too, and then you're posting more boring stuff and nothing is what's working out for you. I would say, one, to Stephen's point, figure out where your audience is. I would couple that with what are you great at being able to do? Like, are you good on camera and can you make video? Are you great at taking pictures and can you go into Instagram, right? Are you great with words and can you write blog posts or LinkedIn posts or go to Twitter? So couple where the audience is with something that you are naturally good at and then can destroy and dominate. Then you don't need to spend money, right? My YouTube channel has 200,000+ subscribers and 20 million+ views, and I've spent zero on advertising because I pour my love into the work, and because it's good, people want to share it. And that should be the goal of your marketing. Whatever you post, uh, don't just spam stuff out there. If you're going to make an Instagram post, be proud of it. Create something that you want to show your grandkids and say, look what Grandpa Evan made, right? Grandpa, whoever made, right? Like you're proud of what you made and then people will see it and share it and then they become your army. Like Stephen said, the people out there.

I've got a question for you. So, you know, I think what you've done is awesome and I've got huge respect for you and you're a legend in the world of entrepreneurs and gaming as well. You know, I know, I know you love it. I know you love it. So you're a legend out there. But one thing I massively respect also that you've done is the focus you apply to your message, which is really compelling. And even kind of the word believe, the focus and relentless focus and consistency. How do you value for the entrepreneurs out there watching today the relevance of the focus and simplicity?

I think one, it's super helpful for yourself. Just like believe is my guiding principle. I believe everybody has one word that guides them forward. You just have to figure it out. And I think too many people live by accident and are living by reacting to things in the external environment instead of purposely setting forth to create a plan for themselves. And as entrepreneurs, this is something that we can do, right? We are breaking free of the box of the typical world and we're creating out to create a better one for ourselves and the people around us. And so, uh, understanding what you stand for helps me one with like making decisions, like, is this about belief? Or not. If it's not, I'm not going to do it, right? You know, I love working with you guys. I love having these sessions. There's a lot of companies that I don't work with because they're not about belief, because they don't care about entrepreneurs, really just want to sell products. And so having that one word helps make a difference for me to say yes or no to, and also helps keep me motivated. Like, I have a big goal. I want to help a billion entrepreneurs. You know, part of what I do, the things that I create, I want it to be at scale. You know, I love helping one-on-one entrepreneurs. It feeds my soul, but I want to be able to have a huge impact. And so making videos on YouTube, uh, writing my book, uh, doing speaking engagements, you know, the things that have the potential to reach massive audience and have massive impact, right? More than just Denton universe, right? This is what I want to create. And so I think, uh, having that clarity and focus helps as entrepreneurs because you're doing too many things. You're everything from the CEO to the janitor. You're responsible for the marketing as well as product creation, as well as customer service, as well as cleaning up, you know, the shop. And, you know, being able to focus on these things only helps. So in terms of marketing, again, I would come back to pick what you're really good at and actually talented at, combined with where your audience is, and just focus on that. And don't get distracted by people telling you you need to be on LinkedIn or you need to be on Instagram. If that's not where your audience is and what you're naturally good at. I mean, I believe in believe. It's, it's everywhere. It's on the wall.

But also, to your point, I just looked again, the level of spamming and email, it's crazy. There's 20 billion a day. So, so it's just no good to do what everybody else is doing because no one reads this stuff. You got to go where the audience is. To Evan's point, find them, really think to unlock their dreams. In terms of the product and services and be part of that conversation. And then the consistency of focus is so compelling and you gain huge trust. And I think Evan says it all, it's about authenticity. It's a really undervalued word, but authenticity of everything. And that's how you create this volunteer army of raving fanatics who are your best salespeople. They're your fans and they believe in what you're trying to do and how you're trying to change the world. And they get excited about the product. And you know, and I know when you get excited about something, you see some really cool technology, you tell your friends about it, and literally you've told hundreds of people, thousands of followers within seconds.

I'm so excited right now. I'm getting hot. I want— I almost want to take off my hoodie. It's too hot. The energy is awesome in here. Great. Let's go. Next question. So this one was asked by Agbola, who wrote in to say, the services I render are accounting, auditing, taxation, management consultancy. My question is, how can I market these services professionally well? So I mean, you deal with accountants all the time, you see tons of different entrepreneurs. How can, how can they market themselves?

Yeah, I think, Evan, really good question. So first thing, simple things, if you want to connect with us, you've got my email address, connect with us. I'll link you up to something called the Accountants, Sage Accountants Network. We've got 100,000 accountants as part of that. Part of what we do as part of the service is any entrepreneur who wants to have a local accountant comes through the Sage Accountants Network, all kind of obviously Google Maps enabled, and you can find an accountant with the skills and relevancy, whether you're in construction or whatever, hospitality or whatever industry. Then I think the other thing is this is so important because the— what you have as the brand is trust and competence. And I think with all these things, it's always going to be a referral business. So you get your first few clients and then it does go, it goes, it goes completely seismic in terms of how you can serve more clients. And I think the challenge you have is once you're successful is how do you keep the quality of service and maintain that quality of service? You know, it's easy to do for your first 20 clients, but when you get up to 200, 300, 400 clients, then how do you actually maintain an exceptional— now I think on this there's some really good ways both us and other companies are doing some awesome work of what we call real-time accounting, integrating payments from your website, your shop window on the world, right through to inventory management, all these sort of things. So the manual handoffs and where you need a lot of sort of people, bookkeepers and stuff, is changing. And the roles that you could play is almost you can— because a lot of stuff is what we call frictionless. So it kind of goes straight through. It's all automated. You run your business from the palm of your hand on your smartphone. And the role of the accountants like yourself can be tremendous in terms of almost virtual finance directors, CFOs of all your clients. And you could say, you know, your cash flow forecast, how do you raise finance, how do you go overseas, how do you get contracts that work out in Europe and places like that. So you can play a much bigger role, I think, and actually drive up your revenues and your value to your clients because you're offering much higher value service. So kind of point number 1, there's a lot of channels that can help you. Sage is one of them. Point number 2 is your business is all about obviously building the first network of clients and they'll recommend, as all entrepreneurs do, whether they go down to the Chamber of Commerce, whether they go to the gym or wherever they go, they'll recommend you to other people. And then I think you could build up a huge social presence around that. The other thing I'd love you to do if you want to is build really good content. So when it comes up to the tax year, easy stuff, how to help your clients move much more quickly. A lot of it's automated and you could build a really good kind of website shop presence where they not only can get a hold of really useful information, but some tools to actually help them be more efficient in their business. So I think a lot of stuff going on and a lot of disruption in technology that you can take advantage of.

For me, I, I would come back to We're talking about visionary marketing. What's your vision? I mean, you tell me what you do, but what's the vision? Like, how are you different? What do you stand for as an accountant? Because if I need— what'd you accounting, auditing, taxation, management consulting, there's a thousand people more, like hundreds of thousands of people I could go to for this service. Why am I going to pick you, Abola? What's so special about you? What's the better world that you want to create? How do you stand out versus everybody else? That's what I would lead with. And then when you're creating content, when you're talking to people, that's what flows through. As an example, there was a lawyer friend of mine here in Toronto who was trying to stand out when he started his legal practice. And he, this guy loves entrepreneurs, like really like has a soft spot in his heart for entrepreneurs. Somebody that obviously I would be able to connect with easily. And he changed his branding to be the entrepreneur-friendly lawyer. 'Cause a lot of lawyers aren't seen as being friends of entrepreneurs. We don't like going to lawyers. It's like, It's a worst-case scenario kind of thing. And so that, just that one switch of being entrepreneur-friendly made a huge difference in him being able to get his message out and people being able to relate to him and him standing out from a sea of lawyers, because there's tons of them. So the same thing for you, you know, all of the practical stuff we've been talking about, the content, the application, amazing, but what do you stand for? Like right now we could be helping you with some high-level stuff cool stuff about your vision and how to have a major impact in the world, but I don't know enough about you. How you introduce yourself matters, right? So it's great, I want to know what you do, but more importantly, I want to connect with who you are as a person, what you stand for as an individual, and the better world that you're trying to create. Make me feel something. I'm getting excited already for you because I feel it's in there. Put that out in every communication, and that's gonna let people talk about you, connect with you, want to buy your services, want to refer you. Yeah, on that as well.

It's amazing. If I go on to the old accountant's kind of websites, one thing I think they could— a lot of people do is talk to their customers, to their clients. So, you know, why don't we have kind of YouTube clips about your clients out there, how you change their business, how you, how you created millionaires, how you allow people to live their dreams and allow them to focus on their business. And you took care of all the back office and just made that absolutely pricing, how you help them export, how you help them set up, you know, maybe set up finance and allow them to accelerate their growth. And it would be great to, you know, you just take your iPhone along. Everybody wants to do it because you're giving them free kind of marketing. You talk about marketing. If I'm a client of yours and I'm growing my business at 300% a year, I'd love it if I appear on your website and there's a 30-second download video of me talking about how fantastic your services are and how it's allowed me to export to Canada, back to the UK, over to Brazil and to stuff like that. And so the story again, connecting the emotion and connecting and making it just— it's all about people. It's all about connecting the heart. And I think to Evan's point, just a simple thing today would be go and do kind of videos of your customers at the end of the tax year and how you assure them they sleep well at night.

I love it. Uh, next question, Varun. Varun, uh, how can a person who is not a marketing professional convince people to invest in his business? Is hiring a networker the only option, or can he do something himself? So marketing now in terms of getting an investor as opposed to going out and getting customers, what— I mean, you're, you're an angel investor, you put money into companies. We've talked about this in the past too, but now in terms of being a visionary A visionary entrepreneur pitching an angel investor. You want to say the same thing.

And we talked about this, which we should actually probably come back and do a separate Blab on this because I know it's a big issue for your audience out there about how do you grow your business, how do you raise finance, what's the different ways as you kind of grow up and scale your business right from startup through to, you know, hundreds of people. I'd say obviously kind of point number one, back to the conversation, how do you stand out? How do you let him know or her know that this is a significant market opportunity? But how do you— how are you different from everybody else? What's your innovation? How do you leapfrog people? And then also, how cogent and coherent is your plan for execution? And it's not like boiling the ocean, but it's like, what are you going to do next 30 days, 60 days, 90 days? What are the kind of revenue forecasts? What is your plans around what we talked about today in terms of marketing, customer engagement, product, all the areas of the business that are fundamental to being successful? And I think at the end of the day, you need to convince that individual that it's about the management team. You're going to be the guy that he can trust or she can trust to grow their business and take good care and be a great custodian of the finances and the funds that they've lent you to really grow your business. And I think the most important thing, you've got to get them excited. So it's about what is your dream, what is your passion, and what is your experience to make this a reality? That's the thing you've got to leave them with. And how do you stand out? Because, you know, and I know these guys see hundreds of thousands, literally thousands of people probably every 3 months. So, you know, if they're kind of seeing 20 companies a week, then what do you need to do to really stand out? And when they go home and have a glass of whatever they want to drink at the weekend, they remember that session and say, that's the one I need to invest in.

Yeah, I think if you— if there was ever a time for visionary marketing, it's in trying to raise funds, because all you have is a piece of paper, right? You haven't created anything yet. All you are selling is your dream, is your vision, right? Like, if you're, uh, if you're selling to customers, you have a product or something you can show them. Here, I'm selling air. I'm selling that. I'm selling my vision. And so for me, this isn't something that you hire a networker to go out help you find. This is you. What sells it is your passion, your excitement, your experience. You know, I want to— if I'm looking at a company to work with, I want to see that that entrepreneur has the fire. I want to feel it, right? So yes, you need a business plan. You're not going out with no business plan. You know, that's not a recipe for success. But the business plan is— it's just paper. Like, you need to sell the business plan with your passion and excitement and energy and this vision that you want to create that most people might say is crazy, I believe that you are going to will it into existence, right? That's what— that's the fire that I want to get from any entrepreneur who's pitching me as an investor. Uh, and so I would do it myself. I would tap into the passion of what I want to create. I would make sure that I'm doing this because I want to create something for a better world, not just as a money-making opportunity. Uh, and I think if you do that, then, then you'll be able to get the right investors on board. Not that it's— that's still easy, but But I think it's better for you to do it yourself than to try to hire a network.

Yeah, it's got to be yourself because it's all about people first. It's all about trust. The other thing Evan Carmichael would do is if I was looking to raise money from an angel, I'd also probably work with a millennial, build a website in 2 days, maybe build a prototype, do some YouTube videos and show them what it could look like. So not just a kind of sterile business plan, But what jumps off the web browser? What will the shop window look like? And just take them through the first 3 screens and show them what the experience of the consumer might be, because now it's all about helping visualize the journey that you're on, how you're going to, you know, absolutely kind of crush it in terms of your dreams, make it reality. But a great way of doing that is not just kind of pages of word processing stuff, but it's actually seeing stuff, visualization of stuff. And then also you just think about if you went to do a presentation, everybody else does a presentation, they do PowerPoint slides and you actually show them the product and you show them the website. Wow, that's different. That's really awesome. Love it.

Love it. Okay, next, moving on. We got a lot of questions here. Tim. Hello, Evan, Stephen. I have a question about tactical execution against the vision. A strong vision sets direction and enables the whole business to focus on outcomes. But what are your top 3 recommendations for creating a vision that has high tactical value? In other words, a vision that everyone knows what to do with and how to execute.

Yeah, I think, um, with the vision, it's really important to have a clear sort of end result, an outcome. What is it? You know, your, your mission is about launching and helping millions of entrepreneurs. You know, Sage's vision would be to launch the next 10 million businesses. And create the foundation for millionaires to go and help their communities and create huge prosperity and job creation. So the clarity around that mission, that rallying cry, is really important. And it has to be end-result bound. So, you know, what are we going to do by 2020 and how are we going to change the world and how are we going to get really excited? And then I think you need to bring it down to some very tactical things in terms of getting back to what we talked about before. It's not about the old world. It's not about think, feel, do. It's about do first. So what is the kind of thing we're going to do tomorrow to achieve that? What are we going to do next week? What are we going to achieve? And get really tactical and really focused. And then I do think it's really important, this business, that a business is fully integrated now. It's not marketing's an adjunct, it's not an afterthought, it's right at the heart of the business. And how do you think about being where the audience is and being part of the conversation throughout? And what's that journey look like? So simply, 3 things. One is have a big vision, big rallying cry, know where the journey is going to take you. Number 2, kind of be really clear about what the milestones and the steps are there. And then number 3 is just get on and do it, you know, crack on and do, feel, think, engage, be part of the conversation.

Yeah, I think my perspective, maybe just to add a little bit on that, is I would be attached to what you're trying to do, but not how you're going to do it. Because the how changes a lot, right? And if you have a clear vision, so I want to help entrepreneurs, right? I believe in entrepreneurs. I want to help a billion entrepreneurs. That's our big, you know, what I'm all about. That influences down to a tactical level because anything that I do has to have big-scale value, right? So doing one-on-one meetings, probably not doing that anymore unless that person has an ability ability to go out and reach millions of people, right? So I'm doing much more in the public eye, uh, when I'm directing my team, right? Somebody helping me with my YouTube videos, or somebody helping me on my social accounts, and somebody helping with my website. Having that big vision helps align them for what we all want to do, but I'm not locking them into how to do it. I want them to be creative. I don't want to just give them always, here's what you have to do, because then you— we're working with a bunch of task managers instead of people who can actually lead projects. And so your vision, in my mind, helps you create the big picture of where you want to go. But then when you drill down, it can give you ideas. And I see it more as the, as the lens through which you see the world. As if I'm going to make this next Instagram post, is this Believe or Not? Is this YouTube video Believe or Not? Does it tie into our mission or not? But then not restricting people to say you can only you can only do these 3 things because there's probably a lot of things that if you can unlock the creativity of the people on your team around the mission that they all understand, then they're gonna surprise you with a bunch of amazing initiatives that you would've never come up with yourself because hopefully they're better than you at the skills that they know. And that's why you brought them on in the first place.

Yeah. And the other thing, you know, this vision is hallucination without execution. So to your point, Evan, it's all about course correction. You know, what I would say to entrepreneurs on a Sunday night, you know, you're probably catching up on the paperwork and all that sort of stuff, but also just carve out like 30 minutes to reflect on what's really gone well this week, what worked really, really well, actually what didn't go so well, what are we going to change next week, how are we going to do it differently? Just an example, I hadn't met Evan Carmichael and my life was a lot poorer 18 months ago. Now Evan on his business plan probably never knew that I'd existed. And we got together and we thought, actually, let's have some fun together. And that's actually— we've got such alignment between our mission and our purpose and sense of purpose. We want to change the world. So why don't we do something together? We just started. Why don't we just do, you know, a Google Hangout together? And obviously we love doing it. You probably get that. We really enjoy it because it's all about serving you guys and making a difference and supporting a billion entrepreneurs is awesome. But also hopefully we're providing some value. But every time we do one of these, Evan and I kind of reconnect. What's the big issue out there for the next one? What can we do better? How can we serve you as an audience better? We never stop learning. You know, we always kind of at the end of it beat ourselves up. How can we do a better job for you guys? And we're never done on that journey. So it just shows you it's more about execution, getting on with stuff. And then staying true to your vision, being a company with a heart, and just pursuing your passion.

I love it. Somebody wrote bromance in the comments there. Yeah, I love it. And it's funny because, I mean, to Stephen's credit too, I think one of the first times we connected was on the floor of Sage Summit, and we just decided we would pull out a camera and just start recording. And so many CEOs, I can't tell you how many I've worked with, who are so like afraid afraid of spontaneity and saying the wrong thing and having everything being, you know, what's the question? In advance and having staged answers. And it's always a terrible answer. It's always so corporate and that doesn't connect with entrepreneurs. And Stephen's willing just to jump in like, yeah, let's do it. You know, we don't know what questions are coming up on this blab. You guys ask them, we're answering them, trying to be as genuine, authentic as possible. And, um, you know, credit to you, Stephen, as well for, uh, for, for Being honest.

Yeah. You know, honestly, if there's one thing we say on the Blabs that makes a difference to your business through things like the Sage Foundation, you know, it's a great charitable organization. If there's just one life we change, then that, you know, we feel just very humbled and very privileged to serve.

Love it. Okay. Next question. Be different. On Trip asking, do ads work in this noisy world? Or if not, what could work to reach your audience with your business?

Great question. I think just in terms of the noise, we talk about spam, 20 billion emails a day. Hey, Ivan, can I take a liberty? Can I introduce the guy I talked about a couple of minutes ago? This is all by Neil Morgan, rockstar digital marketer. Here he is.

Hey, Evan, hey guys, great lab.

Hey, good day. Mr. Morgan.

All right, great conversation, enjoying the conversation. So the question about ads working in this world of thousands of impressions a day that we all see, I think more than ever we've got the chance to get ads in front of people using the platforms that are out there. And I think if there's one thing I'd encourage people to do, if you're not already doing it, is take advantage of things like Facebook advertising. You can go to Facebook. We've all put our information in there that we've made available that Facebook would love to see you use to target people based on any of those demographics, any of those behaviors, any of the groups that you follow, where you live, what kind of business you're in. All of those interests make targeting advertising much more cost-effective for a small business. Might not have a big budget. We're seeing costs of leads in the $1 to $2, where previously we might have seen them $100 to $200, but just by using great Facebook targeting, firstly. Secondly, if you've got— if you're Evan Carmichael, you've got an amazing following on YouTube or Facebook, you're posting great conversations, you're getting great content and engagement on your content, don't forget to put some money behind that. The most effective form of advertising we're seeing today is organic post boosting in the newsfeed. You might love it or you might hate it, but as a business, it's a really effective way to drive the engagement of great conversation, of great organic content. So make sure you're putting money into that Facebook budget. It might be $20 a day, it might be $100 a day, but always feed in Facebook, in Twitter, in whatever your platform is that you're engaging people.

I love it. Thanks for sharing, John.

Thanks. Oh man, love you, man.

Hey Evan, do you love it? Yeah, so for me, I think advertising is one of the things that you can do I think to Neil's point, if you are going to advertise, I think Facebook is the best way to do it because you can get so targeted with the people that you want to go after, right? If you want to target moms in Omaha who love Oprah Winfrey and do yoga, you could do that on Facebook. It's never been easier to get that specific targeting. So if you're going to advertise, that would be my number one platform where I think most people think, uh, ads of like, uh, you know, advertising a newspaper and a magazine or banner ads on websites. I think I would do through Facebook as my number one test. With advertising, it's test, test, test, test. Make sure it's working out. You know, if Neil can test to say that a lead costs him $1 to $2 and he knows that he's converting it at whatever X percent and that leads to customers, that's what you want to do. I think as we move forward, it's going to get harder and harder to make advertising work unless the ads are fantastic and you see ads as content. Right? The ads are not just selling something, but the ads add value to my life. And I think every entrepreneur should be telling their story in the various platforms with passion, because that is— you don't have to be Evan Carmichael, you are you, and start telling your story and tell me why you started your business, why you're so excited about, and highlighting your customers and what you're passionate about. And that forms a bond, uh, with people. And I think I think, I think content is going to be the answer. It's going to be only more important as you go forward, whether you're doing Blabs or YouTube or Instagram or Facebook or whatever. Authentically showing yourself, you know, just like Sage is doing here. You get a chance to talk with the CEO of Sage, answering your questions. You know, we're not here pitching Sage software and how great it is. You're going to go buy now Sage software because it's the number one accounting software, hurrah! You know, but the next time you guys have accounting issue, you're thinking about software, hopefully Sage becomes one of the companies that you look at as like the default company because Stephen has shared such great knowledge and now showing your team. I kind of like this, bringing the team members in too.

Hey, a couple of things actually on sort of the old business-to-business world. It's incredible, um, 75% of the research is done by the customer before they actually make any calls. So if you're not in the conversation right at the start God, you're kind of running to catch up. The other thing I think is really important, and I think you've sort of said it, you know, look at it. Evan Carmichael, believe it's about you. I can feel your passion, your energy, your love, and the mission you're on around changing the world for entrepreneurs. You know, if I look at Richard Branson, rock star, you know, Virgin, he speaks to it. He'll go out and he'll say, going hard on people that can put you out of business and things that really resonate to every entrepreneur. You look at Anya Hindmarch, who creates great fashion, again, awesome in terms of the brand, personalization and enthusiasm around it. Dolly Singh, who we had at Summit around those awesome shoes that were designed beautiful, but it was— you could see the energy and the love that she had in terms of, you know, making stilettos, zero pain and stuff like this. So, so I think when you look at some of these people, especially in the world of, you know, noisy world of advertising, it's a sea of mediocrity in many ways and just noise, noise, noise. How do you stand out? Again, it's all about how do you stand out and really make your product the inspiration of what you want to feel in terms of the passion around the business. And I think that comes actually, it does come about yourself if you're comfortable doing kind of YouTube clips and stuff like that, then people really get that. And then obviously YouTube talked in terms of the advertising. And then if you can do, create the viral army, the volunteer army of your customers. There's nothing more powerful than seeing customers loving your product and getting excited and being part of your community and following you and really connecting you into their world and all their folks.

I love it. We're at time. An hour flies super quick, man. It's crazy. Anything, any kind of final words or how can people find out more about you or the things that you're up to? I know there's a Twitter handle.

Twitter handle. Anybody out there, you know, I'm very approachable. You've seen some of the guys in the team as well. We're generally here like yourself, Evan. We want to change the world for entrepreneurs, to give you guys the conversations so you don't make the same mistakes that I've made. But I think this is the time where, you know, it's a very emotional sale. It's kind of human to human and you've got to connect with your customers. It's not the old world of B2C and B2B. It's human to human. You've got to go where the audience is. The product is the brand, is the advertising, is the marketing. The authenticity of all of those coming together is so compelling, powerful. And you've got to be out there and you've got to be found first. And that comes through focus and simplicity. And really kind of delivering on passion. And also, if you want to follow me, I do a blog, as Evan knows, is quite controversial, but I'm trying to kind of say, let's pick out, as they say in Europe, the elephant in the room. As they say in Canada, let's put the moose on the table and let's be honest about it. What's stopping entrepreneurs being even more successful? How do we kill red tape and bureaucracy and crazy tax laws that stop you guys being successful? So I write a lot of things on behalf of the community of entrepreneurs to say we should call this out. This is not fair and it's absolutely suffocating the engine room of the Canadian economy and the US economy and Europe. So we're backing you. We're on your side and we love doing these things. So thanks very much. You keep the questions coming. Evan. I love it.

Rise Online said you were mentioning Sir Richard Branson. And he wants to see Sir Stephen Kelly. Uh, so if there's a petition for that, uh, I'll sign up. Let me know, we'll get that going. Uh, Stephen, super appreciate the time. Thank you guys for joining in too. I know we didn't get all the questions, but, uh, we'll do another one soon, I promise. Have an amazing end of the week.

Thanks, guys. Bye.