The Simple Manifesto (Part 1)

Welcome to Readers, the podcast for the lifelong learner. Join us on our weekly dose of wisdom where we talk about the real-life lessons and applications of books. Enjoy! Welcome back to Readers, everyone. Today we're joined by Wes Towers, author of The Simple Manifesto. Wes, welcome to the podcast. I'm really excited for this one.

Ah, fantastic to be here and speak through, uh, about the book and so on. Thanks for connecting.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, kind of before we begin, we'd love to hear a little bit about you, your journey, this book, of course, um, and, you know, why it matters to our readers and what they can kind of get out of it.

Yeah, well, I'm Wes Towers. I run a digital agency here in Australia. Uplift 360 is the, is the agency. So we do websites and SEO and search engine optimization, marketing, those sorts of things. So I, I wrote the book a little while now ago, now, um, before AI. So Things have changed somewhat in the way in which we apply the tools and techniques, but the book, curiously enough, the principles in there are more relevant than ever before, I believe, in this day and age.

Yeah, I mean, I love to hear it. I think today is going to be really cool because you, you know, kind of break this down up into 4 different lenses. And today we're going to be diving into Lens 1 standpoint, right? This is the foundation of your whole framework from what I understand. And today we'll talk a little bit about why business as usual like we talk about, often makes things harder than they need to be. How entrepreneurs can get pulled into complexity and how to build a standpoint that keeps you clear, consistent, and resilient. So today we'll hit everything from, you know, the standpoint shift to defining your center, eliminating confusion, and simplifying your own vision. So, you know, all of our listeners today, everyone who's listening can leave with something that you guys can actually apply this week. So Wes, whenever you're ready, let's jump right into lens 1.

Yeah, sure. So yeah, the SIMPLE manifesto, as it, as the title indicates, simple is in my view the best way to, to go about anything. So if you can simplify things, they become streamlined and easier. And certainly standpoint is a foundational aspect of any business. And as I said before, it feels like it's more important than ever before to be, uh, have a really clear core set of values, your standpoint, what are you standing solid on and your convictions, these sorts of things because we business people do business with other people. So we want to know the people we're working with are aligned with what we're trying to achieve. So our core set of values, what we're centered on, where we position ourselves or come from the standpoint in which we set ourselves upon. So as I said, the book was written before AI, but now with the noise and the, um, so much the flooding of information through social media and videos and content, uh, the overwhelm. If you haven't really got a clear, um, standpoint to hinge your business on and your life, uh, businesses are typically a reflection of our own personal lives. So as a small business, as the founder, the business values will be aligned to your own values. So taking the time to, to figure out what that is and what sets you apart in this world where you've got competitors, we all do, but there's some things that make you different to everybody else.

Yeah, no, I love it. I mean, I think it's kind of funny because this whole book and, you know, what you do is all about helping people create their own brand, their own identities, as well as, you know, develop their business. But you kind of start this book by challenging the whole, you know, guru approach to business, right? Now I want to ask you to expand on that a little bit. What and when you realize that a lot of the popular advice people hear today actually pushes people towards complexity rather than progress.

Yeah. And it's just, it came out of my own experience starting in business. I mean, I was really naive to business. I had my great skill set and I feel it was a great skill set working in agencies, but I'd never, there's a whole bunch of things from a business standpoint that I just never had done because it wasn't in my role as an employee. So being thrown in the deep end and you start to listen to experts and a whole bunch of different advice and it, it can be overwhelming and it creates a whole level of complexities because there's so many things that people suggest you need to do in order to make progress and create a powerful business. And curiously enough, every guru who's promoting a particular scenario also sells that particular service offering. So they frame the, they frame the need that you potentially might have and then that they have the solution for that, curiously enough. So it's kind of difficult to wade through all that information because as a small business, it's really difficult to do everything really, really well. But you need to just find the few key elements, the few levers that are going to move you to the next step at the, at the point in the process that you are right now. So if you're starting today, um, from ground zero, there's different things you'll need at this point of your business than you might in a few years' time. So it's building complicated systems can kill a business because by the time you've built it, you haven't really done any sellable, you haven't made any money and you've just spent all this time building something that you don't even know will work.

Yeah, I feel like it's pretty interesting to me because you introduced this idea of simple agents a little bit later on, right? People who kind of move a little differently from the crowd, people who understand that, yeah, you know, the popular advice may not be the one that applies to me. And like you mentioned, right? These are the people who've developed some of those traits, some of those skills that have helped them leverage exactly what they need to in order to become successful in their small business. And I'd love to ask you to, you know, harp a little bit more on that and talk a little bit about what the biggest mindset shift is or skill shift or trait that people have to develop to actually become, you know, a simple agent, as you put it.

Yeah, well, to be a little bit contrarian, to always think through what, what is it that I'm hearing and seeing? What's the advice being Answered. And is it complex? It doesn't mean it's necessarily bad if it's complex, but to, to say, if this was easy, if this was simple, what would it look like? I think that's a great way to break through that. So sometimes just asking ourselves the question, okay, here's the concept that we've got, the marketing concept maybe, or whatever it is, systems in your business, is the complex? What would it look like if it was simple? What could we remove and would it still work? Are there elements that we can just remove, strip back to the foundational process? That's what I've found. So even, you know, we've always evolved our standard operating procedures as a business. So the SOP, so the steps in which you do things. And so the temptation is to add new things in because, you know, you find something, a, a, something that's not working quite right. So you add a new step to make sure that thing gets, um, done. But in the end, you end up adding so many steps in the process, it's overwhelming, and nobody really follows it because it's just, um, cumbersome and clunky. So you, you, you get to a point where you say, right, where can any of these steps be, um, changed into one simple step? And often they can. It just takes a set of fresh eyes Things get complicated, and particularly these days with the technology evolving so fast, and there's just so many options, like so many options how to run your business with software, and it's changing so fast. And if you, if you make the wrong selection, you know, you might be going down the path that's, that's not ideal. So to think about what your specific needs are and matching that to your very specific needs, they get tools that do exactly what you need. Not an all-in-one, like a lot of the all-in-one softwares, they just have so much in there, but you don't need most of the things. So find the one that works. And I mean, vibe coding is pretty exciting these days. People can build their own systems, you know, that was, that's come about after the book was written, of course. But if you were to get some of these solid foundational things in place in your own mind, you'd be really well framed to jump into vibe coding. And build something that works for you.

Yeah, no, I mean, it kind of brings up a couple of questions for me, right? Because I think you, you move on a little bit and talk about how easy it is to get pulled into the wrong rooms, right? Which is what you just touched on here. I mean, with obviously AI and just the fact that so many things are accessible today, you know, it's easy for us to sit here and say, oh yeah, pick the one that works or pick the simple option or You know, things like that. But I want to ask, you know, kind of two questions. One is, what's the biggest, you know, obstacle to becoming that kind of a simple agent? And how do you, you know, filter out which rooms, events, opportunities are actually worth your time? And, you know, what's the red flags that get raised there that, okay, you know, this opportunity isn't a real opportunity, it's just a distraction?

Yeah. And it is really difficult to make those decisions if you haven't got this one piece of this nugget within your business, and that's the end goal. So if you've got a really clear understanding where you're going now, we know where we are right now, point A, and we know where point Z is, or point— we say Zed here in Australia, Z or Zed. We know the start, we know the end, but we don't necessarily know all the in-between. But if we have no understanding of what the Z is, what the end goal is, Um, it's incredibly difficult to make decisions, but, um, getting really clear on what that end looks like, the decisions almost make themselves. So what I've decided in my own business, for example, and it's just one thing that can help with it, is to be niched. So we got really specific in the niche in which we serve for our agency. And so what happens with that is you really get to understand your customer really well, your client really well, and you— their needs are likely to be suitable, somewhat similar to the next customer because you're kind of understanding and you're building a wealth of knowledge for the types of people that you serve. Now they're all nuanced and different, but the foundation, like the 90%, is probably similar. So it's that 10% you can really spend your time and focus on once you are really niched. And I think niching is possibly the, the, the best lever you can pull as a small business to compete against the big players because it's just so hard to go head-to-head with the big guys if, if that's the type of industry you're in that there's some big players and how are we gonna beat them? When they've got so much resource and, and capacity. But if you're a specialist, if you know exactly who, what you're trying to do, who you're doing it for, you've got your ideal client in mind, then the decisions sort of make them themselves and you can say, okay, I don't need the complex widget over here. What I need is this simple little widget here because that's aligned to my trajectory and where I'm going.

Yeah, I think thinking a little bit about that temptation, right? You know, a little bit later on you share kind of a pretty intimate, close story about, you know, a family friend, a story of addiction, things like that. And I want to ask you if you can expand a little bit on the deeper lesson that you took from that situation about, you know, your own desires, identity, or, you know, chasing these kind of quick fixes and how that connects, you know, or the story that you share connects to the way a lot of entrepreneurs today chase quick wins in business, how it has tended to harm them, and, you know, real tangible ways that people listening to this podcast today can actually have a pivot, you know, because looking at the big guys out there, looking at the big companies and these complex solutions, you would think that, okay, this seems like the way to go, you know, um, this is what the blueprint looks like. But, you know, you're saying it's not, right? So I'd love to hear a little bit more about that.

Yeah, that was, yeah, a personal story of a good friend. He, he was, um, similar age and he was married and, um, they had children at a similar time to us. Um, one of their sons pretty much you know, might have been a month or two apart. So going through similar scenarios, and we were in the similar circles of friendships, they, they had had a, a, a different background to ours. So that they had, um, some troubles. He certainly had some troubles as a youngster, um, but when things got hard, um, for them, they had a few challenges, um, which it just made the burden. I won't go into all the details because it's a long story, but the, the overwhelm, they, they went back to the addiction. And just a few bad decisions, um, along that journey, um, he ended up in a, in a horrible place, like living in, um, squatting in old homes and, and, um, you know, running from the law and a whole bunch of other things that are caused from that. And so, um, I think we all have addiction and the tendency to potentially have addiction, but it's about getting addicted to the, to the things that are helpful for you. So for me. I can be just like that, not addicted to substances, that sort of thing, but I can, you know, potentially be sucked into social media too much, for example. I think that's a big one for nearly all of us. And so, and those things dilute our capacity to concentrate even. So there's proven science around that. So These things are distractions. And so whilst I'm really active on promoting through social media for other people to watch, I don't do the posting myself. I don't really monitor it. I don't really know what's going out. I mean, videos, I'm on guests' podcasts a lot. So to avoid the dangers and to keep myself focused on what the core things I wanna do is, is to remove that potential addiction of social media. So these sorts of things, Yeah, just to set yourself up in the way in which you focus on the right things and not drawn into things that are damaging for you for the long term, because we all have tendencies and temptations outside of what's helpful for us.

You know, you mentioned taking a little bit of distance or, you know, stepping a bit aside when you feel like something can lead to, you know, harming you or, um, you know, pushing you a step back. You know, you mentioned that example about not being on social media very much as somebody who works in marketing. Do you feel like that's kind of, do you feel like that's a realistic expectation for a lot of people? Because, you know, a lot of people might say, yeah, you know, I work with social media and that's kind of my job, but I have to know what the trends are. I have to know what the landscape looks like. I have to know what kinds of people are on here, what our customers look like to actually deal with that, you know?

Yeah, absolutely. It's a tricky situation, and certainly if it's your industry, well, of course you need to stay on top of the trends. It's your job, so you do that. For the most of us, when we're using it as a marketing tool, we don't necessarily need to do all of that ourselves, and we can hire people. It's kind of a low-end task oftentimes, so you can hire someone for a pretty competitive price to do it outsourced, or if you've got someone internally in your team, if you've got a marketing team, you can have that person do it for you as long as you trust what, you know, they know the message. Well, that's why it's really important to have some really solid foundational messaging. So it's the standpoint, to get back to that standpoint, when you've got really clear direction in that, then someone else can take the reins and they can understand precisely what's important to you as a business and they can get the messaging right. There'll be different angles and so on, but they can go back to the standpoint and think, is this aligned to what we want to be positioned as? And you know, is it an appropriate post that then you're not sort of having to check over every single thing they do and micromanage. And I don't check anything really hardly at all. There's occasionally I'll be asked if something's appropriate, if they're not quite comfortable or not quite sure, but eventually they kind of learn. What's going to be suitable for us. And so you can only get to that if you're really clear. That's why being a simple message is a clear message. So, and it takes sometimes a lot of work to get to that simple point. So you can delegate the things like social media. There's all sorts of things you can delegate once things are simplified.

Yeah, it sounds like you're comparing a lot of, you know, day-to-day and how you build your business as well. To who you are as a person, your values, a lot of the core principles that you live by, and almost trying to incorporate that into how you live your life. I mean, you even have a whole section within this part about, you know, an example of a time where, you know, you may not have lived up to that standard and how you still remember it to this day and how, you know, with the work that you do, you constantly are trying to ensure that the work you do is aligned with your principles. But I want to ask you this, right? For a lot of small business owners, A hard part of work is being able to convey that message. You know, like let's say I am somebody who is a small business owner or a startup owner or whatever you want to call it. And I'm somebody who wants to put that message out, but you know, every company, every business wants to act like, or, you know, claim that they're a principled organization. You know, you have your, you know, no cruelty or cruelty-free products and you have your, You know, no, nothing was harmed in the making of this product. But in reality, how do you sell that? You know, not just as a sales point, but as a core identity of your company, you know? And I want to ask you this because not only have you clearly obviously written the book on it, but you work in marketing, you know? So when it comes to people who face an issue like that, how are you able to convey that message?

Yeah, well, I think that to build a humanized brand is really important for a small business because It's the key distinct advantage we have as founder-led businesses to be the personal brand, but also the business brand as well. That the big businesses can't do that because there's just so many people involved and there's, I mean, oftentimes not one entity, not one person that's driving it. Now, there are brands that do leverage the founder. Now you think of Richard Branson and so on, and when he's involved in something, he'll be involved and he'll be the face of it and so on. But as small businesses, that's often a key distinct advantage that we have. And I think more than ever, humanizing is really important. So there'll be little unique aspects of you. Now there's the general kind of thing that, you know, I think people think of building these types of brand values and they'll be drawn to some of those social conscious type scenarios that are kind of getting a little bit generic, but there'll be always something that's a little bit different What I do more than ever with the, with all the noise being created online these days is I share even personal anecdotal stories of, you know, things that I've messed up in, you know, flaws and failures. I mean, I went through a divorce and so on and that was a horrible time and how I balanced business and that type of scenario in my life at that time. I've shared lots of those different things and people will see that I'm just a person and I make mistakes. And I'm, I mean, I'm trying to live by my own principles in the book, you know, I have to always keep correcting course. It's, it's never a linear path. It's always ups and downs and wavy. It feels like a roller coaster sometimes. And there's good times and there's horrible times. But the more you can open up, I think, and share, the more, the more relatable you are. And that's the one thing. I mean, we see videos, we're doing a real podcast. And there might be reels shared about it, but you see so many AI videos and they look real and there's no ums and ahs and that they might be a little bit more beautiful than I look. You know, I've probably got some pimples right now that I wouldn't be there because it's an AI video of me, but people know it's not really me and there's the people are feeling a little bit ripped off and they know it's not the genuine authentic person. So anything you can do to leverage your personal values into your brand is going to be an advantage because people like to do business with those people that they like, they know, like, and trust. So, um, I really think that's a, that's a massive advantage as a small business.

Yeah, I love it. I love it. I think a lot of this is really aligned with just who you are as a person, how you feel like business and, you know, your life should be lived. And I think that's a big reason why I'm a, I'm a huge fan of a lot of what your philosophy talks about. Um, And I, you know, I know our time is running out a little bit here. So I'll finish off with kind of one final question about a concept that you talk a lot about here at the finishing touches of this section here. And that's about simplifying your vision and kind of creating a plan forward, right? Now, I think, you know, you talk about not just making a plan, right? You say vision should feel true at a deeper level, but a lot of people, you know, are in business or, you know, do work for, a very simple purpose of making money, right? Not to say that these people don't have, you know, their own values at heart. They don't have a vision for their lives. They don't have a certain philosophy by which they live. But at the end of the day, for a lot of these people, work is not where they practice, you know, their virtues or their values or tie that in, right? What would you say to a lot of these people and how would you, you know, say, or how would you convince somebody who may feel like, okay, but I'm out here trying to sell somebody a product. Why would I have to, you know, bring my values into my vision? How do I even set, you know, a vision? And what does that look like? Is that just, you know, some sort of like a, um, a go-to-market strategy or something? Or what's the difference between, you know, your vision and something, let's just say, ChatGPT can spit out at me in, in a minute or two?

Yeah, I, I understand what you're saying. So there's the really pragmatic, practical, hands-on type of person who who will find it more difficult. And then there's the, I mean, I guess you would say the heart-led businesses, um, who, who like those softer approaches. I think you've gotta, you've gotta have both. Um, and so if it's a weakness, if you're naturally a, a pragmatic, practical, hands-on, how are we gonna make some money type thing, there's nothing wrong with that, but there'll always be some heart-led aspect of business that you just need to sort of think about from time to time and massage that through your vision. Reason being is you won't be doing business alone. Even if you are a solo operator, a freelancer, you will be working alongside other people all the time and they'll want to connect with you on some deeper level. So I've got, I mean, I've got a broad team of different types of people and some are really heart-focused. So they wanna know some more about what we're up to. From that level. And there's others who are programmers typically. So we obviously got the creatives who do design type scenarios. We've got the technical people who are typically programmers and that's just generalized, but every business will have that. So you need to be able to connect with everybody and so they can understand where you're going as a business because if you don't differentiate in those ways and build a culture around that, so people want to work with you, well, they'll just, go to someone else who's going to pay a slightly higher, you know, wage or for your project, whatever it is. So you've gotta differentiate and make a reason why people wanna work with you above and beyond just the pay.

Yeah, I love it. I love it. Wes, you know, I mean, kind of wrapping up here, thank you so much for, you know, laying the groundwork for this standpoint, right? Why simplicity isn't laziness, why values actually do matter not just when you're at work, but when you are creating your own workplace, your own business, your own brand, and why your vision matters more than just, you know, a day-to-day go-to-market plan or something like that. And thank you so much for joining us today.

My pleasure. I love talking business. Thanks.

Absolutely. And to our listeners, if there's one takeaway from today, it's this, that, you know, before you chase the strategies, the go-to-market, you know, the plan, build a standpoint that keeps you grounded when everything else gets noisy, right? Build a vision and not just, you know, like we've mentioned some sort of ICP foundation or go-to-market strategy, but rather a set of values that you're rooted in, how you want to live your life and how you want to bring that into your company. And that'll keep you grounded, you know, even when everything else is kind of falling down. So for the next episode, we'll move into lens 2 of the Simple Manifesto, nonconformist. Now, you know, in this episode, we'll really talk about what it means to stand out, how to handle haters, how to, you know, choose customers and the people you work with, and why actually being normal may actually be the most expensive path. So until next time, keep on learning, keep on changing, and keep on growing. And we'll see you next episode.