Overview:

Grant will be revealing how to build marketing assets, not just campaigns.                       

In the vast landscape of marketing, where many are chasing the fleeting allure of campaigns and short-term promotions, Grant Thom stands apart. With over 35 years of international advertising and marketing experience, Grant doesn't just create campaigns; he crafts enduring marketing assets.

While the majority of marketers are fixated on the immediate returns, Grant's vision is rooted in the future. He understands the real power lies in building assets that not only generate revenue today but continue to do so long into the future. It's not just about the money today; it's about creating a legacy of value.

Takeaways:

• The fundamental shift from short-lived campaigns to lasting marketing assets.
• Why most marketers are missing the mark: The pitfalls of a promotion-only mindset.
• Crafting marketing commodities that are valuable, sellable, and enduring.
• The art of transforming fleeting promotions into tangible assets that buyers crave.
• Harnessing the hidden assets within your business for long-term wealth and success.

Grant's approach is a breath of fresh air in a world dominated by the next big campaign or promotion. It's a call to think bigger, to see beyond the immediate, and to build something that stands the test of time.In this transformative session, Grant Thom will challenge the status quo, urging marketers to shift their mindset and embrace the new paradigm of building marketing assets.

Automatically-Generated Transcription:

Yeah, welcome everyone to the October 20, 23 edition of Elite Marketers.

So today we've got a couple of great speakers including Grant, grant, Tom and Zach Mason.

And first off the rank is, is Grant.

So what the, the reason I wanted to bring Grant in is, is I had a, a couple of sessions with him earlier in the year and not only does he have like, just such an extensive experience in branding and marketing, but he actually thinks of, thinks about things from a different level about actually building assets and not just generating revenue today, but also looking, looking into the future.

And that was, that was what I was really yeah, interested in him really sharing, daring with us.

And he's gonna explain why most marketers are really missing the mark and how to cra craft, you know, marketing assets that are valuable and saleable and often they're actually, you know, hidden and lurking within our business anyway.

So yeah, with that being said, I'll hand the reins over to, uh, Mr.

Tom and he will, you know, take us, take us from here for the next 30 minutes or Something.

Thanks, Scott.

Thank you very much.

And let me just get up and running here, right?

So I called today's speech the Unfair Advantage.

So Judith, I apologize, she met me on a early meeting and I gave this presentation before, so she's received notes and I think we can hear Stella.

So anyway, so basically what I did was, Scott, was we just went and sort of unlooked at at all his assets as, as to what he is got.

And so we've, we, I've just turned this into a little bit of a, a presentation for today.

This is something that I've done personally myself, and this is something I've done with a few clients, but it's a case of just looking at, at all the assets that you've got.

Now, when I talk about assets, there are two types of assets.

You've got those kind of assets that you like.

It's a building, it's, it's a bit of software, it's a bit of intellectual property or it's basically some of the stuff that you've created that can be utilized as a, as a form of an asset.

So one of the things that, that we look at is how do we take things to market?

So lemme give you a bit of background to myself.

So my name's Grant Tom, I'm a brand scientist and where it comes from is that it's 35 years of, of running a digital marketing agency.

I ran six in six international countries.

I sold them all off in 2019.

Basically I've worked on about 4,000 accounts in my lifetime.

And so where I look at it, what I really enjoy the most is brand.

And the brand has multiple values.

There's about 3000 topics around brand that is really quite cumbersome and that's why it is like a mental Rubik's cube.

But what I really help with business owners is to help them to stop leaving money on the table by getting their brand right from the beginning.

Because ultimately at the end of the day, when you want to exit the business, that's ultimately your fifth gear, that you can leverage more money as long as the brand has got its right reputation in place when you're trying to exit a business, that's the last or the wrong place to start fixing a brand.

If you come to work every single day, then start making your brand become prevalent and, and prominent.

And a and a and a brand is not a logo.

A brand is about of reputation that people remember you buy and, and be able to distinguish you by as to, to the value that you're given.

What I also do is I uncover brand hidden values in the sense of what we're gonna talk about today.

I unleash the power of ai.

So I've created an AI bot with the view to help businesses to, to, to unlock and create competitive analysis at a very low cost.

And then basically enhancing the brand secret sauce.

And every business has a secret source.

It comes down to its people, it comes down to its touch points, it comes down to how it interacts with the customer in order to ensure that, that you're giving the very best experience.

At the end of the day, I also work with investors who like to look for businesses that are making money so I can raise capital to fuels your success.

And also because I've worked in six countries, I've got quite a vast leverage on my network as well.

So that's sort of what I bring to the table.

And with the bot, we call it Einstein, not ei, but AI as to what it is.

And it basically, it, it's a very good prompt with the view to help businesses to do a competitor analysis.

So if you have a look at our website, van scientist.com, it works basically on the paid chase GPT version where it, we found it to give its very best test results.

So there is a version there for doing a competitive analysis.

So you, if you had to choose say, five to 10 of your competitors that are doing what you do, and you want to try and find where there's a point of difference and basically you can run it through this.

And basically what a prompt really does is that it starts the question, you end the question because you know your your co your business best and basically it will sort of give you a lot of answers.

I use chat, GBT is a brainstorming tool as brand sciences.

We call it a co-pilot with the view to basically that you, you're not working alone or having to think from yourself, but you can really just really just explore.

And the fact that chat GBT has now been able to explore websites as well.

Now that that's just gives a, an a advantage.

But basically in business, any kind of business, it doesn't matter what kind of business it is, there's basically nine key areas to a business in the sense of where you get your, your suppliers from to the key activity to your resources that you need with you to put a value proposition, be it a service or be it that it's a, a product.

And then of course with your, your customer relations to that, your channels of communication or distribution to your customer segment, what you already sit with.

But all businesses face a couple of things from the top.

We've got the trends on the left, we've got the competitive environment from the right, we've the marketplace and at the bottom we've got the economic environment of what we're trying to channel in all nine areas, I'm able to go and find branding opportunities with the view to put it together.

Now not all, all businesses need to apply branding all nine.

So When did you start doing engage ai?

What time?

Okay, you got that Scott.

Alright, but I Don't see Anything now.

Okay.

And then basically, so when I talk about the unfair advantage, it's this area over here that I look at.

So basically this is your business.

This is what happens in the backend that people don't normally see.

And this is what the area where your customers see it the most and what I call the unfair advantage.

And the unfair advantage is very much in the sense of your customer, how you deliver it to your customer, where the revenue really sits.

And what I call it, the unfair advantage is that you've got upteen amount of opportunities with the view to bring about understanding of where it is.

All customers have a problem, nine outta 10, they've got a problem that you, they wanna buy a solution from you.

And so therefore you is your opportunity to create the marketing, to create the asset, to create the, the brand with the view to get that reputation with the view to engage.

Now in all kinds of businesses, there are seven levels in which businesses are serviced.

So we, Jane mainly sits on number four.

I think there's that book code is the enemy of great, I think it's Phil Collins, I think it is, is the author.

But we, we know that to go from good to great is quite hard.

But most businesses sit at a number four where they're floating, they're good.

And number three, it's average to you.

You look at someone's investment, you say you bought something, how was it?

Yeah, it was, it was good, it was okay, you know, whatever the case was, it is what it is.

It wasn't fantastic.

We know when we get to number two and number one when we, we disappointed or really we've had a bad experience, I call it sucking nine times outta 10, you're not gonna go back to them.

You're going to go and find someone else.

That's just how it is.

There are a few businesses that are great, number five that are great.

And so from that point of view, you know, you, you, you, you, you, you've got an expectation and they deliver and you really just love what it is.

But if you were to, to take a trip to London, for example, and we had to go choose a, a top end hotel and we walked in and, and it wasn't great.

Let's say that the bed wasn't made, there wasn't towels and the the dustbin was still there, but you, it's a five star hotel, you really wouldn't say it's an excellent experience.

So the chances are when you're booked into a high end hotel, you're rarely expecting excellent kind of experience all the way going through.

And so one of the things is that it comes down to the delivery as to how people anticipate what your brand is, as to what your service level is, as to your touch points as to how you scale them or do them a little differently to that of your competitor.

And so that's the, those are the opportunities of unfair advantage that you have with the view to try and find areas where you can add more to what you're doing at this point in time.

When you get to awesome, awesome is an incredible place to be.

It's extremely hard.

So I'll give an example.

Uh, we had at the, in, in Dubai and I picked up by, uh, a Rolls Royce.

I got taken there by the, by the time I got to the front door, they knew who my name was, they knew my partner's name, they took us straight to the elevator, they took us up to the 27th floor and we had great high tea and we had a lady play in the hop, but they knew everything about me by the time I got to the building.

And I can turn around and say, well that was an, an awesome experience in the sense that normal hotels that I go to, normal buildings that I go to, they don't know who I am.

So I would regard that as an awesome experience.

But the one thing is, is that when you're at number seven, number six or number five, you just need to make one little mistake and very quickly you're gonna fall, fall to a three, to a two, to a one.

And when you're down there, you work damn hard to try and get up against.

So if you ever read the book of Good to Great, we'll tell you how hard it is to sort of maintain a, a good, to a great experience and from a great, excellent experience and how we as as consumers or purchases are quite satisfied with good to average.

But at the end of the day, we would love to see great experiences coming to us, and so therefore your customers are expecting the very same experience from yourself.

So the idea that I was talking about with, with Scott was that when we look at a particular business, whatever the business is made up of, or whatever the business does or whatever role it is, whatever category it plays in, it's basically around a brand.

And that brand has a couple of key fundamentals in the sense that it's got a data in the sense of its customers in the sense of its database, A CRM, which is very, very important in the sense of its attributes as to how the business runs.

Naturally the revenue that this business creates is, is of most interest, especially if you wanna sell this entity at one stage.

So what kind of revenue is your business maintaining?

And naturally the investment that you make in the sense of software as to what software do you utilize that makes this business robust, that makes this business flexible, makes this business adaptable, is very important to the, the foundation as to what this business is made up of.

But naturally there's also a lot of the other stuff as well in the sense of goodwill.

Now goodwill is a, a, a strange subject in the sense of heart's calculated, but nine to outta 10, if you've got customers that are staying with you, there is a lot of goodwill that is sort of maintained and naturally patents and trademarks that you go and create with the you that are are, are attainable to you, that are personable to you, that are valuable to you are are sort of the, the makeup of what your service would be to your delivery as to what it is.

And, and not to say that everyone needs a trademark and everyone needs a patent, but it's, a lot of people have a secret recipe or secret sauce as I like to refer to it as, as to what it is and how they, they go forward and what they put together.

So nine times outta 10, what happens is we sit with a situation where we've got the goodwill, the patent, the trademark, the the brand, the software, the revenue, that is the business that actually goes to the customer base at the end of the day, that's where the problems already sit.

We are, we are there to supply a solution to the problem that they may have.

And so basically we always want to take businesses that go to market and one of the things that we spoke about with Scott was to turn around and say, well, how do we unlock other ideas, other aspects of your business that you may have?

So for example, I I let's call the paper jets as other ideas.

So you may go and say, listen, we, we do this already as our main shift business, but what we could do is add this as well to to our service offerings so we have another idea and we can have a another aspect to it.

So in Scott's business, for example, we spoke about that he is got so much content that, you know, he could write a, a series of books or of training models, he could go and create like a, an another opportunity where people are buying his workshops.

And once again, depending on how those are, are generated and reved, you know, it's a case of just going back through the archive.

So what I did was, in the agency world, you know, you, you spend so much time coming with ideas that don't really go to market, but they are relatively good ideas.

How can you dig back into your archives and really just unravel what you can bring to the market again and, and revisit.

And so the thing that I look at is what I call pinpoint, pinpoint pivot with the view of of going forward.

So I like to do this with a team because I, I don't think that it's done by one person alone, but if there's a team that could be gathered, a pinpoint is basically to gather your team to brainstorm revenue opportunities, revenue, other areas that the market would be willing to buy or pay for the inventory is to take stock as to what you've already got in the sense of your archives.

What you've already got is business talent.

So what you've got is knowledge that you can leverage to these to get these ideas to market.

The visualization is to determine how will these ideas add value to the customer?

Because if it doesn't add value, what's the point of you going for, for the whole exercise and how does it add value to your business?

At the end of the day, opportunities, there's always been lots of opportunities in every single category.

And so once again, if you are working in a particular business, there's a, a thing that I call spare capacity.

So for example, you're having staff or whatever the case may be, and they're not working full eight hours or they could work like an extra two by putting more projects onto to, to the the, to their plan that this is where you look at and say, well, well let's, let's explore opportunities to source and apply the right people to support and launch these concepts.

But the one thing you gotta be careful about doesn't go mean.

You need to go hire more people to get your idea.

If you don't have it in your natural realm, in the natural expense and something that you want to go and source, you've gotta realize that it's gonna cost you money and you hope that you're gonna make it work.

So before you do anything, the the last one is test in the sense that you've gotta test that this is what people want, that it's got the correct metrics because if you can measure it, you can manage it, it's ultimately what you can do.

And so therefore you can add value and, and as you build it.

So what I like to use as, as, as as pivot is, is a form of how do you get your ideas to expand in the sense of your, the business that you're already running.

Not all ideas might be that fruitful, not all ideas might be that valuable, but once again, it, it expands to the repertoire of what you want to do.

Now the biggest thing that I find with business owners is that they come to me and they want to have an investment or they want to get someone to buy in or they're looking for a silent partner or whatever the case may be.

And it gets very, that's that it's extremely hard to do.

And, and from an investment's perspective, it's extremely hard 'cause the investor only has got one thing in mind is that he, when he puts his money in, he wants to know that he is getting get X multiple back and he doesn't really wanna sweat or stress about the business that it can maintain or deliver where it goes forward.

So one of the things that I've always done is to look for opportunities that go to market with a view that you can actually highlight as intro factor.

So one of the business I had bought was a storage business that was a document storage business.

And basically, especially in Australia, you had to keep documents for like 15 years and this was before the, the whole cloud thing really took off.

And what happened was we started to do with pick, pack and dispatch and pick, pack and dispatch was something we noticed from an online shopping is that that was becoming morbid.

A lot of people didn't have the warehouse or the facilities to be able to deliver this.

So what would happen is people would have an e-commerce store that place an order.

Our warehouse would receive the order, we would take it out of a box or out of A-A-A-A-A crate, put it in an envelope, put a an address on it and send it off as to the instruction that we were given.

And so what we did was after a period of time we found that the business was doing extremely well, but it was a hassle factor for us.

It wasn't really our main focus.

And so what we did was we sold the business and the money that we got came back to the business, but we still owned the building.

So we were still getting the rental from the business, but we weren't having to sit and stress about the business going forward.

And what that did was with people who paid us for the ideas that we had or the, the, the intellectual property that we had generated and take to market that was creating revenue that someone wanted to buy.

We were able to channel money back to the business.

And by taking money back to the business, you were becoming more cash positive and becoming more cash positive gave you more opportunity to create more marketing for the actual thing that you really do for the actual function that you really do.

And so once again, even though you might have an association of those ideas, there's many ways of selling them off in the sense that you could license them, you can franchise them or you can sell them outdrive depending on what the entity is as to how you go.

And therefore the choice of the branding is very important because if it's related to your mother brand, the main brand, then it gets very hard to to defrag your business because then people take a, a chunk of your business.

But if you've created a, a reputation or a brand of that idea and someone wants to take it off your hands and it's giving you a good multiple back, it's a good way of create getting cash injection.

And by getting cash injection, you get the main core of the business to be able to grow without having to borrow money, pay off loans, pay off investors, and with the view to create an opportunity of of getting things to market.

So the thing that I always look forward to is how does a business unlock its value?

So with Scott, for example, you know, Scott's been writing for over 20 years.

He is relative written for multiple clients, multiple strategies, multiple documents.

How do we put them into silos?

How do we put them into ideas that we were able to take to market with the view that they'd become revenue streams and by that revenue stream let them grow up to become an asset or an intellectual property of its own right that can be leveraged, that would unlock more revenue.

That at the end of the day that when you get to the ultimate business that you want to retire from, that you were then able to get it to the very best that you could with the least amount of debt or borrowed money coming into the business.

So ultimately that was an idea that we got, I dunno, Scott, if you wanted to come in here as to anything else that you were referring to on your case as to how we looked at things, but that's basically the, the model that we were exercising and what we were just trying to demonstrate today as the, the unfair advantages to what people have as to what they can utilize.

Yeah, I I I think once one of your strategies, and I haven't haven't, I've been on holidays and, and in a, in a bit of a catch up mode, so I haven't gotten to it as yet, but one of, one of the strategies you discussed Grant, was really making a list of all of the assets within your business and really focusing on, you know, on those, you know, on those assets and building, you know, building those up so you're not just, you know, you're not just creating cash flow today, you're creating assets for the future.

Correct?

Very much so.

So basically the more market share that you have, the more that you've got, the more appetite you have in the sense of what you've built gives you that opportunity with someone that wants to acquire you by them acquiring you.

The, the, the formula's simple.

They want to get you at the very best price because they want to pay themselves back as quickly as possible.

The more assets that you've got in the marketplace and the more revenue streams that you've got, naturally the higher price that you can charge.

But the more, the faster they can try and get their money back, you know, selling a couple of business, it all comes down to the PE ratio that someone's prepared to pay as to how long that it's gonna take for them to pay themselves back from the working of this particular business.

And so therefore, you know, the goodwill, the patents, the trademark are all extremely valuable assets, but how you apply that to your category, to your knowledge, to to the team, to the talents that you've got in the, the team that you've hired to the opportunity in the marketplace where people are still wanting more or need more in order to solve their problem or make it fully fledged.

So another example would be a client that I worked on, he was, they were medical supplies and so basically they were selling things and they were just naturally just bringing on more and more elements.

So the one guy that he started to take on dentistry and he started to bring in dentistry equipment, eventually he was doing so well that someone offered him to take his dentistry off his hands and he did so with the you to go buy more stock for the hospital side of things.

That was the bulk of his business was the main draft of his business eventually.

So it's ama it's a, look, I'm giving you just very bland examples at this point, but I think from a a an agency perspective, from a a creative perspective, we sit with multiple opportunities and talent to market.

And so therefore they can be revenue streams or they can be sellable assets that come back into the mothership that basically helps to create more leverage, more exposure, more marketing going forward.

No, I think that's, I think that's great.

I'm just wondering, grant, like if you were working, let's say I don't, I don't know if we could do a quick case study, would you be happy to do that?

Yeah, I'm happy to try.

Yeah.

Does anyone want to volunteer for a, for a case study on, on their business?

J James?

James, yep.

So James has a, or James maybe you can, you'll be able to explain it better than I And for Penny and for a PAM grant.

Yeah, well I couldn't, like, I've a digital marketing business that's been going for about 20 years in various forms core business and where I repeat revenue comes from is from doing Google advertising, but we also offer content writing, social media, content, websites and, and similar services that most of us off.

So I'm open embarrass me.

Well, is that a case of embarrassed you, James?

It's a case of just unlocking where there's opportunity.

So for example, you might find that your, your core business, which is around being making business Google friendly in the sense of, of getting the best return of the investment is sort of the, the big flagship that you sort of go under.

But at the same time, building the websites might be one of these, these paper jets putting a workshop together as to how people should apply their business with the view to, to get the very best out of their Google rankings.

And their, their, their ad spend is another workshop that you can basically put to, to together.

So you can put those kind of workshops further.

You know, you've got multiple assets that people are wanting on a regular basis, how can you put them into different channels, into different reputations?

They don't run by you, but at the same time, if you've got enough disturbance or you've got enough gain or you've got enough market share of it that someone says, you know what, can I buy that from you because it's easier for me to buy from you than for me to go create it myself?

Then you find that someone who might find that he's got more interest in that subject than what you have and you want to focus on something else or something new comes up that you want to pivot, but you're now lumbered with these other assets that you've got is an opportunity where you can do it.

But the thing that you've gotta look at is how do you get this to become a revenue stream?

How does this become a mini business within the business?

How do you get to a point where it's got the goodwill, it's got the software, it's got the revenue, it's got the data that when someone buys it, it's not an idea.

It is something that's fully fledged working that I take it and I know that I'm, I'm prepared to pay for it, but I know I'm gonna make money from it as well.

One of the, one of the things that we had done, it took us quite a long time because of the relatively little staff availability we had, is that we have completely systemized everything we do around Google ads.

I mean there's, you know, this, it's, it was a huge effort.

So I had considered that that the process of how to, how to onboard and manage an ads client might be a saleable product.

And the other thing that we've developed, which we haven't actually taken to market yet, is a service called website concierge.

Mm-Hmm.

Where we will actually sit with a client and write a complete specification for a new website build so that they can give that to their preferred developer and we will act as the intermediary between them and the developer to make sure that they get what they're expecting and the developer doesn't try to shortcut or hood wing or come up with any excuses for not doing what's required.

So those, those are a couple of things I, we have I think are a little unique.

Yeah.

So for this, let's say to your concierge for example, that could be one of these paper jets, but basically how would you take it to market?

How can you get its revenue stream?

How can you build it to a point that someone said, you know what, I'd like to just take it off your hands and you're quite happy to let it go because you know, you've built it and, and you've done something the same.

Again, if you look at all the, the, the, the, the, the systems and process that you've come up with on Google ads, you might break them into industries and say, alright, I've got one for the jewelry industry, I've got one for the property industry, I've got one for the, and you go to to market with those and you can say, Hey, who would like to buy this from me?

Once you've actually made it, when you, when you haven't made enough revenue and you haven't got enough customers or database around it, it's very hard to sell any entity.

But if you've really got the market share of it or you're really attaining the market, or you are onboarding the market share at a really good rate, that is the very best time to then let it go for a premium profit that you can then go and go back to the things that you really want to do or the things that are of interest that, that are coming in your space.

There's always new things being invented or training, which is part of the trend.

And so in those cases you might find that you need to pivot just as much as what your businesses or, or your client's businesses are pivoting and therefore you want to put your interest into that space, but you wanna unlock the assets that you've already invested in.

You don't wanna shut them down.

So you want to try and make sure you're always building them to the best that you can in the sense of its brand, in the sense of revenue, in the sense of its data because that is valuable to someone else who would rather pay for it than try and do it again for themselves.

Yeah, Fair call.

Yep.

No, that's, that's that, that, that's excellent.

That's excellent.

Thanks.

Thanks.

Grant a, any does anyone Thank You.

Thank you Grant, I appreciate and thank you Scott for giving the opportunity.

Yeah, yeah, no, you're, you're welcome.

And, uh, does anyone else have any questions for, for Grant or would you like to ask him a question specifically about your business and how you can, you know, how you can turn what you've done into, into assets?

What about you, Tim?

You you would've built some automations and stuff there that are, that are pretty powerful.

I Got a few there.

So yeah, just thinking about the applications of kind of, you know, either creating this assets that we can then kind of onsell or, you know, putting some, you know, trademarks and stuff around them.

So interesting.

Specula actually we like this, this kind of layered thinking grant.

It's pretty good.

Could, Could you, could someone like, could someone like Tim for example, grant, he's built out all these automation sequences, right?

I mean I guess it's the same with what, with what I do as well, but let's say you did build an automation sequence out for a plumber or something in Canberra that could easily be applied to plumbers all over Australia, all over the world.

What are your thoughts on that?

Very Much so intellectual property is the, the, the, the best diamonds that we can create in the sense that if there's something that other people need and you can license it or you can franchise it or you can, whichever way you, if you still want to hold it or just let it go completely, whichever the, the price point is that, that you feel is the economic number at the end of the day is the way that you've gotta think about it.

The thing that you've gotta remember is that, let's say for example, you get to the end of the day and the end of the day is you want to now sell this business and you turn around and you say, oh, I've got this and I've got that, or whatever.

There's a good chance that someone's gonna come in and says, you know what, I'll just buy the two jets, the two top jets.

I'm not gonna buy the rest, let, let them fall by the way.

So I'll offer you X for that.

Then suddenly that those, those, those assets can just fall by the way, and you don't really get anything for them.

But I think what the point about where this idea comes from is that, say for example, you had an idea of, of some system and software and you were doing it for plumbers and it was running around the world and, and it was giving you a licensing fee that you weren't running yourself, but you, you owned it, it was yours, but you were getting a revenue from it.

It's a revenue that you're not having to look after that much and therefore you can go concentrate on something else or pivot your business to something else or bolster an area where you would like to do more, but you don't have the funds right now and you're hoping to get more sales.

And so therefore you're putting a lot of emphasis on sales to say, come on guys, get me to this revenue so that I can reinvest the business to do x.

Where sometimes you can just unlock value that you're prepared to, to license off.

So it's a case of just thinking as assets rather than a, a full entity, a full co compliance of one business that has multiple elements to it.

It's actually something that, you know, I just, for what I'm doing, I, I've actually sort of gone down in that rabbit hole a little bit and really builds out around, in this case around go high level a bunch of systems based on the last thousand odd companies we've automated.

You know, that that, you know, it's not just the, the software, I mean software's just just the software, right?

But the systems that we then deploy in, which includes all the automations and all the emails and all the text messages and all the copy and everything kind of becomes a system that if you bought it outright, you know, you might be spending $20,000 to have it bespoke built or 30,000 bespoke built, but can license that product to that customer for 300 or 200 or 400 or 500 bucks.

Yeah.

Which makes it both more accessible to the client, but also then increases the stickiness because if they go, they lose access to those systems, which you've then licensed to them.

Sure.

And They could do that, you know, websites, you could do the same thing, you know?

Yeah.

You get access to the website, but it's not at a, you know, it's at a sort of fractional cost of compared to building all up front and if you go, you lose access to the website.

Yeah, very true.

You know, one of the things we've gotta look at amortization in the sense that, you know, Warren Buffet always said that, you know, if you're making business only when you're awake, then you've got yourself a job.

But when you're making business when you're sleeping, then you've got yourself a career.

So I think it's those kind of things that you've just gotta look at those assets as to who wants them, who needs them, and who's utilizing them for their aspect of their business.

That co culminates into to annuity income is the best way to try and unlock.

But at the same time, I find too many people holding to too many things for too long and at the end there, there's, there's just not enough appetite to wanna buy it and therefore just falls apart where you can actually unlock the value as you go along.

And as things trend and change, how Do you, how do you carve up your business too?

Grant, like you talked about, for instance, like, you know, like maybe having a different company name or something like that.

So if someone wants to buy you and you don't wanna sell one aspect to your business, but you wanna buy the other one, sell the other one, how does that work?

So from a logistical perspective, So all you do is you, you don't create multiple companies because that's just expensive, but what you do is you create multiple brands and then if someone wants to take the brand, then they take the brand, they take the software, they take the, the, the data, and they go and put it into their structure as to however they want to do it.

And it just comes out of your structure.

But to go and run, run multiple companies, that's just expensive.

And I dunno if that's a good idea, especially if you don't know what it's gonna do yet.

You know, if for example, you've got something that is just incredible and the revenue's ridiculous and, you know, it just helps, it makes good sense to separate it.

So for example, one of the businesses that, that I run in is that when I had the agency, I owned the building and when I owned the building, well, I didn't own the building in the agency name, I owned the building in a separate and I charged myself rent, you know, type of stuff.

So basically I was my own landlord, but I was charging myself rent.

But if I wanted to sell the building, I could sell the building from the company and the, the agency wasn't affected.

If I wanted to sell the agency, the building wasn't affected.

So it's just things of how to set it up.

So it's a case of when to, in this case, when it comes to assets and ideas and, and products, I would just create sub-brands around it and say, oh look, this is our triple A plus version.

And, and, and, and not try and not attach your name too embedded into the brand because then, then it does destroy your brand every time you, you take it away.

Yeah.

Yeah.

James, Yeah, just further to that grant, about 10 years ago we sold off our web hosting and web development business that we had at that time.

Yep.

And what we did was we didn't sell the company, we sold the business part of the business.

Of the business.

Yes.

So, and, and the, the only issue that we had and, and it was very successful, it was, it was a very good transaction.

What we, we found out as part of the process was that the, the purchases lawyer reminded us that we had the name medically trademarked for web development.

So we couldn't trade us under the name of Mely for two years.

We, we had to register another trading name, which was a little unfortunate, but it, it wasn't too much of an inconvenience.

But there's, there's an, and I do a lot, one of my biggest clients is a business brokering firm, business brokers and valuers.

So I've worked with them now for about six years.

So I know the business very well and, and there's a big difference between selling a company and selling the business of a company.

So you've, you've gotta, and, and seriously, I mean, this is an unabashed recommendation that dealing with the business broker for this kind of things is gets you a lot more input in what, what legally and structurally you can do.

Sure, absolutely.

I totally agree with that.

I think when it comes down to the, the, the sub-brands is that you've gotta choose those names carefully.

If your intent is to let it go, and you never know when it's got enough value that you can save.

So let's say for example, we've got paper jet number one at the top and someone came and said, listen, I'll take off your hands, but it's worth a million to me.

You know, you've just made yourself an extra million.

You say, look, I'll take the million.

I let it go.

I've got other things to, to, to concentrate on you, you would take a million.

But if someone comes to you and said, let's not give you 20,000 for it, and you say, but it's making a hundred thousand a year, why do I want 20,000 for it?

No, I won't do that.

You know, type of stuff.

So it comes down to making sure that you're always on the ready to let it go, but you ultimately need to always ensure that you are, are, are trying that every day that you are working, you are always making sure that you've got talent, you've got people you're paying, how do you get the very best out of them with the view to create multiple assets going forward to a marketplace that needs these solutions.

Yeah, No, that's, that's.