Kevin Garber: [00:00] This week on the "It's A Monkey Podcast."

Daniel Knowlton: [00:03] You've got to want to do it. You've got to live it, breathe it, before you just try and jump on the new shiny thing.

[00:09] I think your listeners first of all need to really audit themselves, and kind of look at, "Right, let me write down five things I'm most passionate about in life," even if it's eating peanut butter or whatever. Just write down the five most passionate things you're passionate about.

[00:26] Then write down the five things that you're best at. What are the things that you do? It could be you're an amazing sports player. It could be you're amazing at writing books, whatever it is.

[00:36] Then cross-reference those to see are there any crossovers of things that you're incredibly passionate about and things that you're incredibly good at. If you are lucky enough to have something that crosses at the top where you are really passionate about it and you're incredibly good at it, that is where you can become incredible at whatever it is that you do.

[00:56] [background music]

Kevin: [01:03] Good morning, good evening. Hello, wherever you are in the world. It is Thursday, the 11th of May. We've been a little bit naughty. We missed a week because we run a startup. We're building two products. We are a small team. Sometimes, we literally just run out of time/head space/energy, but here we are. We're back with episode 92 of the It's a Monkey Podcast.

[01:25] We talk about everything relating to tech, startups, entrepreneurship, and we interview thought leaders in this space, and excited to say that later on in the show we're going to be playing an interview that I did with Daniel Knowlton.

[01:36] Daniel, he is a top 100 digital marketing influencer, and he's the cofounder of KPS Digital Marketing, and he's a writer for SMExaminer. Daniel is pretty young, but he has got a very successful social media business.

[01:53] I actually chatted to him more actually about the entrepreneurship journey, which was quite interesting. We've bounced around some experiences and some thoughts. We also spoke a little bit about social media and the state of play with social media. That's coming up later on in the show.

[02:06] As usual, we have the tech news, and as I say every time and I've said for the last 92 episodes, there is always [laughs] so much going on that Kate and I struggle to choose two stories.

[02:18] One day, I'd love to just do a two-hour episode a day where we just thrash out the latest news.

[02:23] With me as always is a slightly sick Kate Frappell, who is the design lead at ManageFlitter. Kate, thanks for joining us.

Kate Frappell: [02:30] No worries. You just have to put up with my croaky voice for a little while. [laughs]

Kevin: [02:34] That's OK. It seems like half of Sydney is sick with the colds and flu. As long as you're here and alive and kicking, and that's fine. Kate, lots going as always. Now, Yik Yak.

[02:45] I don't know if we've ever spoken about Yik Yak on the show. We may have in the very, very early days. Yik Yak shuts down and they sold their team for one million dollars to Square, and Square, of course, being Jack Dorsey's other company...

[03:00] Jack Dorsey of Twitter fame. Jack Dorsey created Twitter. Jack Dorsey's in the unique position of being CEO of two listed companies, brave man. One of them is Square and Yik Yak shut down, and all the developers moved to Square for the grand total of one million dollars.

[03:18] Now, Yik Yak had raised $74 million from investors and at its peak in 2014 was worth $400 million. This just shows you how crazy the startup world is, right? They raised a ton of money from leading investors.

[03:34] The top tier of venture capital companies had backed them and they were doing really well and raised it on a valuation of $400 million, and have struggled to find their space in the social media marketplace.

Kate: [03:48] Definitely. They had a lot of competition and they're in this space where there's a lot of cyber bullying and plenty of problems, particularly because the app is around anonymous messaging.

Kevin: [04:01] Yik Yak was very much focused, initially, on the university students segment and outwards. It was around this anonymous messaging where there were other apps called Secret, Whisper, they all went the same way.

[04:15] They all had issues with bullying and shut them down, some of them with a lot of money still in the bank. Secret still had quite a bit of money in the bank, but they just said they couldn't get round this bullying issue.

Kate: [04:25] There's a few new apps of the same description, I guess, but they've got a slightly different twist. One is called Blind, which a lot of the big tech companies are getting on.

[04:36] If you work for these particular companies, Facebook or basically lots of the ones in Silicon Valley, you can log into this app with your work email -- but somehow it doesn't identify you -- and you can ask questions about salaries, working conditions, ethics, anything you like. Other people in the community and from other companies can answer you anonymously.

Kevin: [04:59] It's sort of like Glassdoor in a way.

Kate: [05:03] Similar. I thought it was an interesting take on the anonymous messaging. They found a niche where it works.

Kevin: [05:06] I definitely see the benefits of anonymous forums. In the first incarnations of the Internet in the '90s, everything was anonymous.

[05:18] A lot of the forums, Internet Relay Chats, Usenet groups -- which a lot of people won't even know what that is, but they were like discussion forums -- it was all about anonymity, and a lot of the time we had no idea who we were talking to. Facebook really was the first time that suddenly the Internet became real.

Kate: [05:37] And you put a name to something.

Kevin: [05:38] And you put a name to something. Pre-Facebook, it was all anonymous, and you would only after knowing someone for a long time, would you share a GIF or JPEG of yourself, or something. We've been there before, and I guess it was more an enthusiastic type of...There were enthusiasts only.

[05:58] I used Yik Yak when I was in New York a couple of years ago. I found it really interesting. It was really, really interesting. I used it quite a bit. It wasn't too bad. It had this upvoting, downvoting system, so if there was bullying or things like that, things got downvoted and spat out really quickly.

[06:16] I never really saw any problem with it, but when I left New York I stopped using it. I think it worked in New York because there was such a critical mass of people there.

[06:27] The counterargument to the bullying of these anonymous apps is that it can actually help with bullying, because you have people that can actually share and get support from anonymous people in a way that they're not judged for who they are, or their age, or their background, or something like this.

[06:45] There's something to be worked out there, and I'm sure someone will crack the magic at some stage of this formula.

Kate: [06:52] Funnily enough there's another newish app, I tried it out just before the show. It's called 7 Cups, and it advertises an active, non-judgmental chat. You can have the option to be a listener, or a speaker, and it's a safe place you can go, be anonymous, and talk about your problems. You can also upgrade to a therapist.

Kevin: [07:18] Wow. That's interesting, I'll check that out. I mean, a huge value to anonymity. I think Twitter faces this issue, where on Twitter, different to Facebook, you don't have to be yourself on Twitter.

[07:30] You're not allowed to impersonate someone real, but you can be satire, or you can just be a faceless account, which is good in a way, but it's bad because of the trolling and the abuse, then there's no accountability. Zero accountability, so you need somehow these checks and balances in there.

Kate: [07:49] Interestingly, the Yik Yak founders -- some of them -- are behind a new app called Hive. Similar idea, the going back to their roots, back to the college space. It's a mix between Facebook groups and Slack. You can join classes, communities, social groups around your college, and then connect on the app.

Kevin: [08:18] Facebook groups are just a massive success. There's Facebook groups for everything under the sun.

[08:24] If you want to join a Facebook group that perhaps is of a sensitive nature -- not necessarily anything untoward, but perhaps it's a sensitive health condition, or something like that -- people have to go through the trouble of setting up a fake account, and things like that, if they don't want to be above the radar with it.

[08:43] Whereas with these apps they can just come in and be cloaked, so to speak, or just be anonymized. The Internet comes from an era of anonymity, so it'd be interesting to see if we can work it out, but things have also moved on in the sense of...I think people have gotten used to being themselves online.

[09:05] In the old days it was weird. You'd feel very naked, very exposed, very vulnerable, if someone prematurely found out who you were. But these days, people don't think about it.

Kate: [09:18] I guess it's a permissions thing. You go into Facebook and you're saying, "Yes, I agree to having my face and my name out there," but if you sign up for something anonymous like Yik Yak and you say, "OK, I don't want to disclose information," and then somebody hacks it, it becomes a problem.

Kevin: [09:36] Your cover gets blown. I know Cora have an anonymous mode where you can post and answer anonymously, which is quite cool.

Kate: [09:45] I've seen that.

Kevin: [09:46] Anyway, that's Yik Yak. Long live Yik Yak, or I should say rest in peace, Yik Yak. I saw those guys talk at TechCrunch conference. One of the reasons I love going to the TechCrunch conferences is they manage to get the founders and investors of the latest, buzzy products and you get to talk to them.

[10:04] Usually, they were from the Midwest in the US, so they weren't from the coasts. Not many -- especially consumer startups -- are actually from the Midwest. Most of them are from the cost, either in San Francisco, LA, or New York.

[10:19] Speaking of LA, Snap's share price crashed. I know we talked about overnight. Their numbers came out, and they weren't very good. I will quickly check. It dropped even below its listing price of $17 in afterhours trading.

[10:34] Let's see, 17.39. Is Snap listed? I think it's 17 or 18? Went right up to 24 or 25, and it came right back down now. So interesting.

[10:49] They face a massive uphill battle, as we've spoken. We won't get into it, but massive...Mark Zuckerberg, he is intent on squashing them. You can just see it. He's got resources. He's got market penetration that Snap may have to find some other niche and not go head to head.

[11:07] It reminds me in the old days of Google. If you were a startup, and if you even uttered the word to your potential investors that, "One of our big competitors are Goggle," forget it. Dream on. You couldn't take on Google.

[11:19] If Google own the space, that's it, and Facebook is at that place now as well. You just can't take them on. They're too good. Too big, and too good. Too good, that they're doing a whole lot of good.

[11:30] The way they launch, the speed with which they launch products, and execute well? That ratio of speed to execution? I've never seen it. I take my head off to them. You compare that to some other companies and it's slow, or not as well executed. They're doing it right.

Kate: [11:47] Snap just came out with some new features this week, but if you think of how long it took them to add those cool, nifty things verses Facebook and Instagram, or WhatsApp, all just coping the entire set of features, it's just nuts.

Kevin: [12:01] As a listed company, there's lot of advantages, in that it forces you to be disciplined and accountable, but boy, it puts a lot of pressure.

[12:08] The market is unforgiving. The market will be forgiving for a while when it buys into your promise of the future. Then, when there's one inkling that you're not delivering on that promise, bam. The bottom falls out. That is very hard to recover. That's not for the faint-hearted.

[12:23] Anyway, our other story, speaking of Facebook, is one of the products that Facebook owns is WhatsApp. They bought that for whatever, $23 billion, or something like that.

[12:35] They launched a status feature a couple of months ago, which is just literally a way you can share with your WhatsApp contacts a photo or a comment...

Kate: [12:47] A story.

Kevin: [12:48] A story, so to speak. I see that's already hit 175 million users of that feature a day. I've only got one person on my contact list that regularly uses it. [laughs] It's the same woman...

Kate: [13:02] On WhatsApp.

Kevin: [13:03] ON WhatsApp. She posts a photo with the quotes every day on WhatsApp. That's it. I don't have anyone else.

Kate: [13:09] Interesting. I don't think I have any. Finally in our Facebook as well, maybe two people out of the few hundred friends that I have actually use theStories feature.

Kevin: [13:22] The tricky thing with WhatsApp as well, if you share a WhatsApp story, all of your WhatsApp contacts, or even the people that have WhatsApp that you might not have engaged with, get to see that story. The good thing is it shows you who looks at that story. What happened when I tried it out were people that I haven't spoken to in 10 years. You know?

[13:50] [laughter]

Kevin: [13:50] Suddenly, you see all these people that have seen your...I wouldn't call it a privacy issue. It's an awareness of how it works that everyone that's got your phone number can essentially see that status, which can be...It wasn't obvious to me in the first instance. Then I had to block some of those people, because these are people long out of my life.

Kate: [14:17] You don't necessarily want them to see that.

Kevin: [14:20] Yeah, but interesting that WhatsApp is...They're hitting it from all angles. On April Fool's Day this year, when there were a few products like Atlassian's Jira who came out on a joke, saying, "We're releasing Stories for Jira, because the story is for Instagram, for Facebook, and for WhatsApp. Everything is being about stories.

Kate: [14:42] Well, there's definitely an argument. People were saying, "You know what? Why did Facebook need to put stories on WhatsApp when they've already got them on a messaging platform, on Facebook Messenger?" WhatsApp interestingly have a lot of traction in countries where Snapchat and the likes don't have any users.

Kevin: [15:00] It's low bandwidth, right? It's super low bandwidth.

Kate: [15:03] Yeah, so people who've never even heard of Snapchat or Snapchat stories, they get introduced to WhatsApp stories. That's the beginning. That's the first step for them.

Kevin: [15:12] I know in countries like Kuwait and India, its whole business is built in WhatsApp. When I say businesses built in, the entire communication, its CRM system, its marketing system, it's all based on WhatsApp.

[15:29] I would imagine those 175 million daily users probably come from some of those markets where low bandwidth is more useful. Speaking of low bandwidth. Australia is very quickly becoming a country of low bandwidth compared to other countries, right?

Kate: [15:46] [laughs] Why?

Kevin: [15:49] I've signed up for our new government-funded NBN, and just having endless issues with it, and lots of discussions around all sorts of countries that are "less advanced, and less wealthier" than Australia. Countries like Nepal, that people are just saying, "Internet is great there." It's a big issue for Australia. It really is. I know there's no easy solution.

Kate: [16:11] Do they say why?

Kevin: [16:12] [sighs] Lack of competition causes weird things. It's the one company funded by the government...

Kate: [16:22] That's not an environmental thing? Or a geographical...

Kevin: [16:24] It contributes to that it's a big country that needs to be wired up.

[16:29] The fact that there's no competition...There's essentially one provider over this called NBN. Then the other provider that provides the wholesale layer. Then other providers tap into that. There's only one provider of that infrastructure.

[16:45] The fact that you don't have real competition, this is what happens. That's why competition is just so valuable to a marketplace. Anyway, we won't go down that path today.

[16:58] You're listening to Kevin Garber. I'm the CEO of ManageFlitter, and soon-to-be ManageSocial as well. I'm chatting with Kate Frappell. My cohost is the Design Lead at ManageFlitter, and ManageSocial.

[17:09] We're going to take a short break. After the break, we're going to be talking to Daniel Knowlton, who's the cofounder of KPS Digital Marketing. I talked to him all about his road to entrepreneurship, and social media marketing. Stay with us. We'll be back shortly.

[17:26] [commercial break]

Kevin: [17:28] You're back with It's a Monkey Podcast. My name is Kevin Garber. I am the CEO and co-founder of ManageFlitter, and soon-to-be ManageSocial as well.

[18:11] Now, we have a lot of people that listen to the podcast -- you might be one of them -- that's always wanted to start-up their own business, or maybe in the process of starting-up their own business.

[18:22] It's a question I get asked a lot, or even I see people and I chat to people. They're like, "Ah. Wish I could start my own business, and, you know, I don't know how to take that first step."

[18:32] I found someone who's sort of...I guess relatively new in the journey of starting-up their own business, and he's also all across the social media landscape.

[18:40] I'm happy to say, from the UK, I've got Daniel Knowlton, who's the co-founder of KPS Digital Marketing, and also ranked within the top 20 of the most influential digital marketers on Twitter. Daniel, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast.

Daniel: [18:56] Thank you so much for having me, Kevin. I'm excited to be here, mate.

Kevin: [18:59] Tell us a little bit about your story. I know you're still relatively early, but quite successful in your journey. Take us back to the start and what you were doing before you started your business. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Daniel: [19:13] Sure. I've always been interested in business from a young age. I've been really, really lucky with my parents. I've had great parents, especially in a business sense.

[19:23] My dad, he's like a business veteran. He's done some great stuff, so he really, from a really young age, has inspired me to want to get into business. Even when I was at school, I was selling sweets, built a small eBay business when I was really young.

[19:40] I've always been that kind of entrepreneurial business type person. I suppose my marketing career, so to speak, started when I did a business management with a marketing degree at Brighton University in the UK. Did that for four years.

[19:56] The first year, I kind of got into the UniParty mode, and didn't do much work, so I was one percent away from failing my first year. For those who know about the UK university scene, it's impossible to fail your first year.

Kevin: [20:11] [laughs]

Daniel: [20:11] [laughs] I did pretty rubbish my first year, and I was, "Crap. I actually need to like pull my finger out and do some work."

[20:19] In my second and final year, I pulled my finger out, worked my ass off. I managed to get a first in business management marketing, which was crazy from not doing any work. After that, all of my friends were going off traveling.

[20:34] They were having loads of fun, and I wanted to do that, but I also had been so driven, so inspired by my dad, that I knew I had to get on the career ladder to get some real experience. I applied to a ton of jobs. I failed so many times, went to loads of interviews, and finally I got a job at a large blue chip organization up in London.

[20:55] I worked my way up the ranks there. The [laughs] company worked you incredibly, incredibly hard, a huge amount of hours, but they invest in teaching you, and giving you experience to not only run a business, but all the different elements of working with people, communication skills, and sales.

[21:14] I really worked hard there. I did really well there. I was the quickest-promoted in the company that they'd ever seen and worked hard. However, after a year of working there, I was knackered, I was tired. I wasn't feeling it, Kevin. I was working so many hours, and not getting much in return, so I quit.

Kevin: [21:31] Bone tired.

Daniel: [21:32] I quit my job.

Kevin: [21:32] It's quite a well-known strategy of companies to take young hungry people, work them to the bone, and then they get spat out [laughs] at the other end when they're tired.

[21:42] [laughter]

Kevin: [21:42] There's a time limit to the amount that a human being can work at that intensity.

Daniel: [21:47] Exactly. I had enough, Kevin. I was putting money in someone else's pocket, and working all those hours, so I basically quit. [laughs] I went traveling around Thailand, which was amazing, for a month.

[21:58] While I was in Thailand, I got to think about what I really wanted to do. I started to actually build my own personal brand, mainly on Twitter. I was reading a lot about how you can use social media marketing content to build a brand.

[22:14] I was in the trenches doing that stuff, sharing what I was learning, sharing the strategies I'd learned, and building up my own personal brand on social media.

[22:25] This was before I even thought about starting a business, so I was already doing a lot of this stuff beforehand. Yeah. I was using the strategies. I was learning, I was consuming so much content, constantly reading, constantly looking at all the results online, like "Social Media Examiner," DigitalMarketer, Content Marketing Institute.

[22:41] I was like an absolute sponge, taking all these strategies, trying them, and having a lot of success with them. Obviously I was failing in some areas, but I'd learned from that, and I'd improve and I'd grow.

[22:53] After a while, I thought, "I can actually help other businesses do this. I'd had success with it. I'd learned from my mistakes." I went out and started the KPS Digital Marketing just over...I don't know, about [indecipherable] ago, and started working with small [indecipherable] , providing training.

[23:09] Pretty much going out there saying, "Look. This is what I've learned, this is what I've done, let me show you how to do it," and then that started to work as well, started to win bigger contracts. My brother came on board, which has been one of the biggest and best things I've ever done. Got a partner in the business who has lots of great skills that I don't have.

[23:25] That's one thing that we did to change things up, and we started to win much bigger contracts with the big county councils, with multinational organizations. We're just incredibly passionate about digital marketing.

[23:39] We absolutely love what we do, and that helps, and [laughs] it's been a roller coaster, and that's how we got to where we are today.

Kevin: [23:46] Sorry, but you broke up at the moment where you said how long you've actually...How long ago you actually started the business.

Daniel: [23:54] It was around two years ago now.

Kevin: [23:57] Around two years ago. It's still very, very early in the piece. What's so exciting is, I've been around a little while, and I started up my businesses when all the social media networks didn't exist.

[24:12] To build your personal brand and to build relationships was very painstaking, very tough. It was a whole different environment. What's so exciting about social media side of things is, yes there's a lot of...

[24:26] It is competitive and there's a lot of noise out there., but it's certainly still a opportunity for people to scale their capability, and their efforts in ways that, pre-social media, wasn't possible at all.

[24:43] You can still become a thought leader in your niche, or in your niche of your niche, or in a niche in a geography, etc., etc. The opportunities are really unlimited, and social media lets you [laughs] access them in such a convenience and scalable manner.

Daniel: [25:03] I completely agree, Kevin. I still think that not enough people are taking advantage of the exact thing you just said though. There's still people in the jobs like I was in where they're working incredibly long hours, not getting much in return, but they're not doing anything about it. It's crazy.

Kevin: [25:21] You also mentioned one other important aspect. That you brought on your brother, and business partner, is definitely an important part of the journey to help you through the tough times.

[25:32] There's a lot of schools of thought around working with family as well. It's a type of thing that when it works well, it really works well, but when the wheels come off, boy, can they come off. There's a famous family in Australia...

Daniel: [25:43] [laughs]

Kevin: [25:43] One of the richest families, a mining family where...It's been so much unhappiness fighting over wealth. I've also seen examples where it works incredibly well, because there's trust. There's implicit understanding, and you can get on and build a business together.

Daniel: [26:02] You're so right. We've been incredibly lucky that we get on so well, and we don't argue. Us working together, it provides a much greater service for our customers, because we've got completely different skills. We know that we're working towards the same goal, and it works really well.

Kevin: [26:19] What has been the greatest surprise on your journey so far? Either a good or bad surprise.

Daniel: [26:32] For me, the biggest surprise I'd guess has been the time it takes to get what you [laughs] want. In a short space of time, we as a company have done quite well, but we've got much bigger goals in mind.

[26:50] It did surprise me how long it takes to actually for people to start to want to work with you. It's not just an instant thing. You need to get good at it. You need to show people that you're good at it. That was the biggest surprise, the time it takes and that how patient you've got to be. That would be it.

Kevin: [27:09] The sales cycle, right? The sales cycle. The time of the sales cycle.

Daniel: [27:14] Yeah. It's so much longer. I was quite naive starting out thinking, brilliant. You meet someone, then you say you can help them, you show them how, and then it's done. No. Definitely not.

Kevin: [27:24] Usually the bigger the company, the bigger the prospect, the longer the sale cycle is.

Daniel: [27:29] Exactly. We've more recently come to realize that since pitching for bigger companies, it's a [laughs] long, long-winded process, and you really have to build those relationships over time.

[27:41] It's not a quick win. People need to like you, and they need to want to work with you before you can suddenly click your fingers, send the proposal in, or an action plan, and boom. You get the job. It doesn't work like that.

Kevin: [27:53] That's a very valuable point. Someone once told me that people like to do business with people that they like. It's a pretty obvious statement, but we forget about it sometimes. Even being a CEO where I recruit people now, you also like to work with people, team members that you like as well.

[28:12] Particularly in the technical side of the industry, where people don't necessarily see the value of relationships, they're very focused on technology and coding, and what that can deliver.

[28:28] At the end of the day, every business is a human business, is a people business. People like doing and working with people that they like. It's definitely worthwhile always considering everything from a relationship perspective.

Daniel: [28:41] Backing up what you're saying Kevin, I think the people listening to this should...Whatever they're doing, audit their current final, or their sales process.

[28:54] Literally stop and look at what is it you do before you go in for the kill, and go in for the sale. How many times are you actually meeting that person, speaking to them, engaging with them, having chats?

[29:03] For us, one thing we've recently done, is really looked at our sales funnel, and changed it up completely, and made sure that the whole relationship-building steps, that there's more of them before we go in for the, "This is what we can do for you. This is how much it's going to cost."

Kevin: [29:23] I'm a great believer that everyone should be in a sales role at least once in their life. I think it's an incredible skill to learn whether you like it or not, or even whether you live in a capitalist society or not. There are so many aspects of life that is about sales.

[29:40] I don't mean sales in the sort of...There's people that aren't involved in sales don't really...Sometimes sales has got a bad name, they picture this sort of spammie type of sleazy guy...

Daniel: [29:51] Yeah. [laughs]

Kevin: [29:51] Just trying to push something on you that you don't want. That's not sales. I don't know what that is.

Daniel: [29:57] [laughs]

Kevin: [29:57] That's bullying.

Daniel: [29:57] Bad sales. [laughs]

Kevin: [29:58] Bad sales. Sales is actually one of your misconceptions I believe. Sales is a listening process. It's not a talking process, and that surprises people when I tell them that.

[30:12] Sales is about presenting the best version of yourself, and the best version of your company as well. It's a very subtle, nuanced, fascinating process, and excellent sales people, actually psychologically-minded people experts.

[30:25] It's been fascinating for me. I once worked with a chap in one of my previous businesses. He was an ex-American football player, very physically had an incredible physical presence. He's the only sales chap I worked with.

[30:38] We were selling in the early days of email marketing, newsletters for corporates, and he was the only salesperson I've worked with that could get a sign-off in the first meeting.

Daniel: [30:48] Wow, very impressive.

Kevin: [30:49] I've never seen it. I've never heard of it. He was just an incredibly likable guy and he had incredible skills of building rapport. It was quite fascinating to watch him in the field, so to speak. I also started out doing a lot of cold calling, which I believe everyone should do as well. I don't think many businesses do cold calling these days. It probably doesn't really work much, I would say.

Daniel: [31:15] I don't know. I understand that cold calling works or has worked in certain situations, and there's obviously big examples of that in some places. For me, it just completely goes against our whole ethos of calling people when they don't want you to speak to them, and trying to sell when they don't want to be sold to.

[31:35] For us, we used a complete inbound approach, where we put lots of stuff out there, show what we're made of, show examples of what we've done, and people come to us.

[31:45] The reason that's better for us is because when you try to convert someone that doesn't want to be converted, you're always on the back foot. You're always trying to show them, "Oh, we can help you. We can achieve that. We can achieve this."

[31:59] We don't ever work with people who aren't fully, fully confident in us. That's a point that a lot of other businesses listening to this should really think about. Who are they choosing to work with?

Kevin: [32:10] These cold calling days were the days pre-LinkedIn, pre-social media, pre-content marketing. Sales was a very different animal then. There are endless opportunities to create that inbound marketing, and it makes a lot of sense for everyone.

[32:28] Cold calling back in the day, it was a numbers game. It could get you somewhere, but the approach today is much more sensible for everyone. I agree with you.

[32:39] You want to appeal to people that need a service, maybe not necessarily your service yet, but are in the market for a service that you're offering. Not just scattergun approach, because at least 90 percent of your efforts is going to be lost on a scattergun approach.

Daniel: [32:57] Exactly. Answer me honestly, Kevin. Have you ever received a cold call that you enjoyed?

Kevin: [33:06] Very, very seldom. I think, in the UK, you got what they call -- we got them as well -- called chuggers, charity muggers. There's people that walk up to you...

Daniel: [33:16] [laughs] [indecipherable] I haven't heard of that.

Kevin: [33:17] They're people that walk up to you and they're wanting to get a charity...

Daniel: [33:22] Oh, yeah.

Kevin: [33:22] A similar thing, I've had one in San Francisco. She was an incredibly charming, delightful conversationalist, and I actually enjoyed having a chat about what she does in the organization.

[33:38] The rest of the time, it's just an absolute pain and absolute pester. I agree with you. Why take an approach towards others that you don't want towards yourself? Let's talk about that personal brand side of things.

[33:53] Reid Hoffman, who's the founder of LinkedIn, he wrote a book about this and saying, "We're moving to an environment where everyone, in a way, is going to be like a little business, whether you're a freelancer or you're a contractor." He talks about it.

[34:07] I tend to agree with him. Everyone should, to some degree, think about how they create their personal brand, whether it's thought leadership or being an expert. It doesn't matter even if you're in a job.

[34:22] What will be surprising is if people create some thought leadership and expertise. If they do want to create some business out of that, they'll be three-quarters of the way there, right?

Daniel: [34:35] Yeah, one thing I just picked up on, you mentioned creating a personal brand. I honestly don't think anyone creates a personal brand. Your personal brand just happens and it evolves over time, depending on your experiences and what you've done.

[34:50] Every single person right now has some kind of personal brand. I mentioned this last night on the social ROI Twitter Chat. The people that think they don't want to get involved with a personal brand, they don't want to grow a personal brand, that's irrelevant. You've already got one, so this is why people need to think.

[35:06] Listeners, everyone needs to think about what are they doing to positively develop their own personal brand? If they're doing zilch, then that's going to have a negative impact on them as a person, them as a business, and the people around them. People really need to start thinking about what are they doing to positively develop their personal brand?

Kevin: [35:26] Basically, what I hear you saying is that whether you like it or not, by definition, you've got a personal brand because you're a living, breathing thing. You may as well be the one who takes control of your personal brand.

[35:37] If anyone is in a good position to...I agree with you. It should be an extension. No one saying be who you are not. That doesn't serve anything. We're lucky enough to live in a time and a place where an authentic path will probably lead to payoffs, so just be an authentic extension of yourself.

[36:01] Take control of your own personal brand, at least. It surprises me. I hire lot of developers at ManageFlitter and ManageSocial.

[36:13] Most developers are incredibly smart people. It's one of the reasons I like working with them, but there's so few that really surface how good they are or what they've been involved with in a very easy manner.

[36:27] Creating a simple website or really fleshing out a LinkedIn profile with nice recommendations, or having a Twitter account that's just not a test Twitter account for services they've integrated with.

Daniel: [36:40] [laughs] That's a nice one.

Kevin: [36:42] Which always makes me snort. Even at the very, very least, a well-formatted resume. Pay someone 300 bucks to present your resume well. I see 90 percent of engineers and developers just do not even just present a resume or have a website. It's quite remarkable really.

[37:05] It's also got to do with the fact that they're in high demand regardless of the quality of the resumes. There is a little bit of that factor. They can afford to be lazy.

Daniel: [37:14] I get that, but you make a great point, Kevin. If there's any developers listening now, this is a huge, huge opportunity for them to actually take advantage of this. There's not many people doing it.

[37:27] Yes, there's high demand for them now, but think of what they could be doing if a ton more people knew about them, or if they built a presence online, they built some kind of community online. Think where they'd be in relation to where they are now. You're completely right. Not enough developers are building up their own personal brand. It's just a huge opportunity.

Kevin: [37:48] It might be lost in some young people, because they've grown up with it. Again, I don't like the phrase "Build your personal brand." It has the insinuation to build something that you're not, but I guess to showcase the best version of yourself through social media, and particularly even as young people as well.

[38:12] It just, as someone who grew up in a word without this, is absolutely remarkable. When I was at high school and I had my first business-selling customized stationery, the only way I could promote it was on physical notice boards at the high school. I had the grand total of one customer, ever.

[38:29] [laughter]

Kevin: [38:29] That I sold some stationery to. I was lucky enough to have a father interested in technology. We had one of the first laser printers in South Africa. He helped me work out how we could develop customized stationery pads. God, it sounds so archaic, and I'm really not that old.

[38:47] [laughter]

Daniel: [38:47] That's cool though. That's cool. I can see your entrepreneurial flair there, Kevin.

Kevin: [38:53] Look, I always get a buzz out of creating something that people are willing to pay for. You feel like you're contributing to the world and you're adding value. I don't know. Maybe you feel the same way when each time you...It never gets old, signing a new deal or bringing on a new ManageFlitter customer. You could probably talk about that yourself.

Daniel: [39:17] That's the one thing that my brother and I...We get complete buzz for. When you get that call or that email saying, "Yes, we want to do business with you," we're on an absolute high. That's why we've got this obsession with continuing to improve what we're doing to get more of those highs.

[39:37] The thing is, once you've got that customer, you've got that high, that's not the end. You can't just go gain lots of customers and not keeping them. Then is the hard slug of making sure you're providing value for that customer, you're keeping that customer happy.

[39:52] It's difficult because all I want to do is just get the sales and then see you later, but to have a successful business, it doesn't work like that. You have to keep them happy, and obviously, provide value like you know, Kevin.

Kevin: [40:03] A classic error is that the adrenaline rush from getting new customers is wonderful, and keeping customers is far less glamorous, but far more important. There are many companies, even big companies; even the biggest of the bigs, the banks, and the telcos.

[40:19] It always astounds me the amount of money they put into new special offers and billboards and sponsoring sports teams. Then, you try to get some help from them around something.

Daniel: [40:34] They're too busy.

Kevin: [40:35] I always think, "Wow, you were probably bleeding so many customers because your service is ordinary. Now, if you just cut your marketing and put it on the retention..." I don't know. They are working that out slowly, but they're getting there.

Daniel: [40:54] I don't know, Kevin. The one for me is mobile phone companies. For the last 10 years, I've been upgrading my contract ever two years. At the end of the contract, they show you the offers for the people who are current customers. On the website next to it, it says new customers. The offers are crazily better for the new customers.

[41:15] What you have to do is cancel your contract, change your number over, and get a new contract, because they just want to get the new people in and they don't give a crap about the current customers. It peeves me off.

Kevin: [41:27] It's the same in Australia. Whenever I see that, "excludes existing customers," it always jars me. That's exactly the opposite. It's, "So, you're saying, 'OK, you've been a customer for 10 years, but sorry, you can't get this latest deal.'"

Daniel: [41:42] What is that about?

Kevin: [41:44] It is very peculiar. It should be offers for existing customers. They haven't self-reflected on the psychology that they're confident with their existing customers, so they got to treat their new customers better. There's lost opportunity there.

[42:00] Speaking of opportunities, Daniel, tell us about some people that listen to this podcast, as I mentioned, wanting to take that next step of building their own business. What are some of the niches that you see, whether it's social media consulting or helping out with contents?

[42:20] Anything that you see as areas that are low-picking fruits for someone that's been in a corporate job for a while? Or even just straight out of uni, that you see that there's nice low-picking fruits for them to start with and build a business around?

Daniel: [42:36] I'm going to turn the question on its head, Kevin, because I don't think they should do that. Let me explain why. I don't think people should really be looking for low-hanging fruit and just going for that.

[42:48] What I think they should be doing is reverse engineering what they're passionate about and what they're good at, and then go out and see if there's any areas where they could take advantage of low-hanging fruit.

[42:59] Too many people try and just get on board with the new shiny thing. "Social media's taking off. Let me become a social media expert." To really, really be truly be successful -- you've had a lot of success, Kevin, in the space you are in -- is you've got to have a passion for it. You've got to want to do it. You've got to live it, breathe it before you just try and jump on the new shiny thing.

[43:22] Your listeners, first of all, need to really audit themselves and look at, "Right, let me write down the five things that I'm most passionate about in life." Even if it's like eating peanut butter or whatever, just write down the five most passionate things you're passionate about. Then, write out the five things that you're best at. What are the things that you do?

[43:43] It could be you're an amazing sports player. It could be that you're amazing at writing books or whatever it is. Then, cross reference those to see, are there any crossovers of things that you're incredibly passionate about and things that you're incredibly good at?

[43:56] If you are lucky enough to have something that crosses at the top, where you're really passionate about it and you're incredibly good at it, that is where you can become incredible at whatever it is you do.

Kevin: [44:07] I feel though that there is a third element that they got to cross check against. That is if it's commercially viable and there's a demand for it. There is a reality. A lot of people would like to be rock stars or professional...Want to travel the world and get paid for it.

[44:24] Marc Andreessen, who I'm sure you're heard of, is famous VC and entrepreneur and created Netscape. He's written a great piece on why the advice of doing what you love isn't always the best thing.

[44:41] I tend to agree with you up to a point, but there are some constraints that people need to work within as well. Maybe I'm just being incredibly pragmatic as I tend to more the pragmatic side of things.

Daniel: [44:55] No, no, no. I do completely agree with you, Kevin. In the back of your mind, that needs to be a given that you can't go out there and just become a rock star, like you said. That's not commercially viable, but it is definitely something you need to think about.

[45:12] On the other hand, I don't think people should go out with the commercially viable or being at the front end. There could be really good opportunity for developers, but you could spend all the time learning how to become a great developer. You can get really good at it but then you could absolutely hate it.

Kevin: [45:31] I have to agree with that.

Daniel: [45:32] You could be the most successful one in the world, but if you're not happy, then what's the point? However, I do still completely agree with your point, Kevin. It's got to be commercially viable. Otherwise, it wouldn't work.

Kevin: [45:44] You may have a sense this as well, and I think a lot about this, and chat to the close people in my life about this. For me, entrepreneurship is a calling, and if you're lucky enough to be able to go with your calling in life...That also means that any path that's a calling -- and any path, in fact -- has got ups and downs as well.

[46:11] Entrepreneurship is like some other professions, like being a rock star or whatever. It is over glamorized. Particularly at the moment, there's almost this cult of entrepreneurship, but the level of commitment that you need to build a business...

[46:27] I don't think people really understand it until they get involved, because you will have incredibly tough times. I can give you a 100 percent guarantee that you will have incredible tough times. There's a very high likelihood that you'll have near-death experiences. When I say near-death, your business will have near-death experiences. Hopefully, not you.

[46:49] That commitment comes from a calling. I want to encourage people to give it a go. The worse that can happen is it doesn't work out. At the same time, the commitment is something that you definitely do need. Starting is easy. Finishing is hard.

Daniel: [47:10] I'm so glad you've said that, Kevin. I talk a lot about the smoke and mirrors. There's a ton of entrepreneurs out there that put out this front that it's all glamorous Ferraris and private jets. It's not. If you're actually running a successful company, or you're a successful entrepreneur, it's never like that. It's a lot of hard work, like you said.

[47:34] People need to stop thinking that it is just a glamorous champagne lifestyle. It's working crazy amounts of hours. It's not seeing your friends, not seeing your family as much, because you want to make this work. They really, really do need to understand that, so I'm glad you said that.

Kevin: [47:50] Kevin Rose is the found of Digg. I've said this before on a podcast. He said, "I wouldn't wish being a CEO on my worst enemy."

Daniel: [47:57] [laughs]

Kevin: [47:59] On the flip side, someone else tweeted around that, said, "Being a CEO, it is incredibly one of the toughest gigs in the world, but it's also a great privilege as well." We also shouldn't get to...

Daniel: [48:10] And rewarding.

Kevin: [48:11] The fact that we've got the opportunity to give it a go. I don't know if someone's listening to this podcast. I believe everyone can create a "lifestyle business" of some sort. Maybe I'm contradicting what I said earlier, but everyone's good enough at something to have a replaceable income.

[48:34] Long story. I bought a new fridge. It wouldn't fit in my kitchen. I had to hire someone to take off the door to my kitchen and I used an app that's -- I think it's only Australia-based -- called Airtasker, and a chap came to remove the door.

[48:48] He was an ex-investment banker. He said he always had a passion. He was a derivatives trader at one of the biggest investment banks. He said he got really sick of it and he was always wanting to start up his own business. He loved doing handyman work.

[49:03] This app matches people who need small tasks with people that are willing to supply it. He built up a very successful...When I say very successful, he's earning as much as he did at the investment bank. It probably will never be a Facebook or a Google, but he is now free to do his own thing. He found a way.

[49:24] There are these great platforms these days for whatever you do, whether it's Etsy, if you're a creative person. There's these platform where you can sell goods and sell services within your niche and kick-start it and get it going.

Daniel: [49:40] Just to pick up on something that you said about everyone's got a skill or something that they can use as a business. Even if they haven't, or people don't think they have, everyone has this amazing resource which can teach them how to do anything.

[49:53] It's called the Internet. They can learn how to do whatever they want to do. If they put passion behind it and if they use the Internet in a clever way, you can learn anything.

[50:03] I pretty much self-taught all of the stuff we do -- social, digital content -- from just learning online. I did a degree, but I didn't learn anything about digital in my degree. It's all self-taught. Anyone can learn anything online. They just need to learn how to use the Internet.

Kevin: [50:20] Isn't that so incredible? I talk about this with younger friends who grew up with it and all the friends who didn't. In my day, universities had a monopoly on information education, essentially through their courses and through their libraries.

[50:34] Now, you could probably literally learn how to do dentistry on YouTube, literally. It's that incredible. What we're saying now is you don't have an excuse anymore. You really don't have an excuse to learn something and share it with someone else.

[50:53] There's always someone willing to pay for consulting or lessons. There's niches within niches. If you are listening to this podcast, I hope, if one thing, if there's one person that starts a business or tries to start a business from it...

Daniel: [51:09] I'll be happy.

Kevin: [51:09] Absolutely. Please let us know. You can email us though and let us know if we've motivated you. Perhaps we can even mentor you.

Daniel: [51:17] Tweet me.

Kevin: [51:17] Yeah, along the way. Daniel, one last question before we wrap up. I know you're all across the social media side of things, and people are always asking me as they're probably asking you, "Where is it all going? I can't do all of them."

[51:32] Give a little bit of advice to the lay of the land as to this...Twitter's not the flavor of the month, but still got lots of opportunity. Instagram's evolving at the rate of naught. Snapchat is, well...Give us a little bit of a synopsis of the marketplace.

Daniel: [51:49] The whole social media space is changing, as you've probably seen, Kevin. The platforms are evolving into story-telling platforms. If we look at what Snapchat did, Snapchat started this kind of evolution of social media, where it's now all about telling an authentic story.

[52:06] We let then Instagram stories come in, Facebook stories. Even WhatsApp has got a WhatsApp status, which is a similar thing. As entrepreneur's businesses, you need to be really thinking, "Wait a minute. The biggest social platforms in the world are evolving towards storytelling." Surely, that's showing you that people are interested in stories.

[52:27] As entrepreneur's businesses, we need to be thinking how can we better tell our story and communicate our story across social. We haven't got the time to use every platform. We haven't got unlimited resources and unlimited time, so what you need to do is truly think about three things when choosing your social platform.

[52:46] First of all, you need to think about where are your audience? There's no point going on Instagram if you're trying to grow a business and none of your potential customers are there. It's important to know your audience.

[52:55] Second, it's really important to know what skills do you have and which platforms that those skills match? Every different social platform requires a different set of skills. It's all about networking. Do you have someone in your team who is incredibly good at speaking to people when having conversations?

[53:11] Instagram is all about high quality photography and imagery. Do you have someone who can create that kind of artwork and use that on the Instagram? You need to audit your own business and your team, what skills they have.

[53:23] Finally, you need to think about -- and this is a bit fluffy, Kevin, but I think it's really important -- which of these platforms did you and your team really enjoy using?

[53:32] Because if you're going out there just for the sake of jumping on every platform and you're not enjoying it, you're going to be not using your time effectively, rather than if you're using other platforms where you enjoy using it, your audience are there, and you got the skills to use it properly.

[53:47] One more thing I just want to say, Kevin, is with these social platforms, I mentioned you can't be on every single platform, but it is absolutely crucial that you do not focus on building some kind of audience on a single platform. That is so, so, so important.

[54:05] You need to be on at least a few platforms, because if Facebook goes down, if Twitter goes down, where are you going to be? Where is your community going to be? That is such an important point. Your listeners really need to understand that, Kevin.

Kevin: [54:20] Mitigate your risk. At least be on two of them. If one of them tends to go backwards in terms of interest and engagement, at least you got a little bit of head start to another one, right?

Daniel: [54:34] Yes, but even better than that. Build a base on your website, something that you own that iisn't rented land. Try and guide people back to your website, and use as a resource to then build relationships, nurture, and provide value because that's not going to go down. That is yours.

Kevin: [54:51] Email database, right? Don't forget about the good old fashion email database. You'll control that and they are pretty valuable as well.

Daniel: [54:58] Exactly.

Kevin: [55:00] One point that you made, Daniel, which was incredibly valuable that gets a lost today, storytelling. There's so much obsession with likes, and retweets, and engagements, and automation.

[55:18] At the end of the day, if you think about old school marketing, we got a lot to learn from old school marketers and old school ad people, where it was about emotion. It was about evoking vocative type of experiences, creating emotion, and creating those stories.

[55:43] We've forgotten about that. Such an obsession with the technical details. If I post this time, do I get more retweets? If I post through an app do I loose on the algorithm, etc.? Old school marketing is still going to really work.

[56:05] Why? Human beings are wired for stories for millions of years. That's how we learn. That's how we share. That's how we have culture experience. It's all about storytelling.

Daniel: [56:17] Exactly. That old school marketing method you're talking about -- SnapChat, Instagram stories, Facebook stories, storytelling on social -- that is the new version of that. That's applying those old-school, storytelling, emotion-triggering marketing tactics to the new social media space.

[56:37] If you're listening to this, and you're not currently documenting, showing your story in some kind of content on social media, then you'll seriously, seriously missing out. You really need to think about what you're doing, because it's so important to start telling your story.

[56:52] There's no easier way than to use these social platforms that are purely built to tell your story, like SnapChat, Instagram stories, Facebook stories.

Kevin: [57:02] No matter what business you have or no matter what type of individual consultancy you have, and even if you're selling widgets or something very "boring," human lives are always interesting. Business experience is always interesting and someone else is always interested in your story.

[57:21] You mustn't worry. I hear a lot of people that they're worried about...Even you meet people sometimes and they say, "I'm only an accountant" or "I'm only this."

Daniel: [57:32] That makes me sad.

Kevin: [57:33] It is sad. I was at the dentist this afternoon. In a way, I love going there because I chat about technology and the latest dental technology. I find it fascinating and every industry is [laughs] fascinating to me, even an accounting industry.

[57:52] There are stories to share everywhere, so no matter what type of business you are, you definitely can make use of that. You can make you start small and you can experiment.

[58:02] People do get overwhelmed. They don't know where to start and they get into this paralysis. Pick one or two things and even if you start doing it not particularly well, that's OK. Just get some momentum.

Daniel: [58:15] Get better.

Kevin: [58:15] Get better and get a momentum and follow people like yourself. There's tons of resources out there, and they may even start enjoying it and that's when it will really come to life, right?

Daniel: [58:26] Exactly. I just want to add thing to that, Kevin, as well. I completely agree that people need to stop worrying and actually get out there do stuff before they're actually perfect. However, a big, big thing, people needs to do is invest, even in a small amount of time, in educating yourself in how to develop some strategy.

[58:47] Even if it's in ultra-basic strategy, just before you jump out there doing random stuff, try and have some organized way and reasoning behind why you're doing what you're doing.

[58:59] If you are just doing random stuff, then yes, you may be getting used to the platforms, but it will be so much more beneficial and valuable to you as a person, or as a business, if you educate yourselves and develop some kind of small strategy.

Kevin: [59:12] There's so many resources out there. There's so many fantastic resources and I know you've shared them before. We'll put them on the show notes. Daniel, so much to talk about.

[59:24] I know we've gone a little bit all over the place, but that's one of the great things about a podcast is we do it so that we can just see where it goes, a bit of long form and people can listen while they're exercising, or etc...

Daniel: [59:39] I enjoyed it.

Kevin: [59:40] Likewise, enjoyed a few different angles. Of course, you're also on the ManageFlitter social ROI chat talking about personal branding. By the time this podcast is up and people are listening to it, the recap is probably on our blog, and there's really fantastic insights there about the personal branding.

[59:59] There are a lot of great contributions from people that were on the chat. I really enjoyed it. The Twitter chats are really a fantastic, niche little exercise, I really enjoyed them.

Daniel: [60:11] I agree.

Kevin: [60:12] Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast, Daniel. Really appreciate it. We've been chatting to Daniel Knowlton who is the co-founder of KPS Digital Marketing, and also a leading influential digital marketer on Twitter.

[60:28] We're going to be putting up all his links on the show notes as usual. If you want to connect with him and learn more about social media strategy or what they do, etc., check out the show notes at itsamonkey.com and thank you again so much for your time.

Daniel: [60:41] Thanks so much, Kevin. It's been fun.

[60:43] [commercial break]

Kevin: [61:07] Kate, I always get excited by success stories, entrepreneurial success stories. As we've spoken about a lot of the times on the show, it's a passion of mine and I love hearing the passion in people. You can hear whatever business, not only online business.

[61:23] Even if it's a cafe that's doing well, you just talk to the business owners and you can just always sense the buzz.

Kate: [61:31] Yes. They find their niche and their passion, and you can tell when they're definitely enjoying it.

Kevin: [61:38] Yes. It's definitely a very, very big niche. A lot of people are trying to make sense of social. Social is just changing every few months. It's very confusing for companies how to approach social, how to get value out of it, yet it is extremely powerful.

[61:53] It is the layer that we all exist on, so companies need to be on this social layer. Who knows what next week, next year is going to entail? There's VR coming, there's AR coming, where social is going to mix in with all of that.

[62:08] The velocity is just going to continue, so people like Daniel that can help businesses make sense of it are going to do very well.

Kate: [62:16] Definitely. I like to use a point about reverse engineering, what you were passionate about. Finding the things you're good at, then finding the things that interest you, and then looking it where they overlap.

Kevin: [62:30] Also then, looking at another overlap point where there's a market for them.

Kate: [62:34] Yes.

Kevin: [62:35] That's important.

Kate: [62:36] You made that point.

Kevin: [62:36] Yes. I do feel strongly about that point, because I do things sometimes the mythology of "follow your dream and you will make money out of it" is overstated a little bit. Maybe it's my practical nature because yes, people do make a living out of, as Gary V said today, going to Peru and painting with tomatoes, but I don't know what many people do.

[63:00] [laughter]

Kate: [63:01] Love it. [laughs]

Kevin: [63:03] There's a reason why so many of us work in tech. There's a reason why so many of us work in social media. Do that many people love tech? Is it just so happens that suddenly that many people love tech? It's where the jobs are, right?

[63:14] I come from Johannesburg, a gold mining town. There's gold rush there. People were selling spades to dig out the gold. Is it because they had a passion for spades? No. There needs to be pragmatism. It is a little bit dangerous I feel, but yes. To find that overlap, you can find something you've love, and enjoy, and something that there's a market for.

Kate: [63:34] Yeah, and sometimes you can maybe think about on bigger scales, so instead of saying, "Oh, I really like social media and so does the rest of the world," you say, "Oh, I like connecting." It's like a broader term, and then you look at ways that you make a business out of connecting, and networking, and that type of thing.

Kevin: [63:51] Absolutely. I believe we're lucky we live in the west. We live in a time and era where we can configure our careers in a way that it's fulfilling, which is wonderful.

[64:03] I do have to believe you shouldn't be hating what you do, but there has to be a bit of a market for it. There's a lot of sub-niches within social. If you're passionate about animals, you can help companies that work with animals to do their social, and then you do both the type of thing.

Kate: [64:27] Definitely. On a bit of a side note, but still relevant, I'm reading Mark Manson's latest book, and...

Kevin: [64:35] That's "How Not to Give an F," right?

Kate: [64:37] The Subtle Art of Not Giving an F." [laughs] . He points out, which I find really interesting, is that every decision that you make is going to bring its own set of problems. Instead of just constantly seeking happiness, you've got to seek the problems that you're willing to live with.

Kevin: [64:56] In other words, as I coin it, you got to choose your bag of shit. There's always going to be a bag of shit whether you own a business, or whether you're an employee, or if you have a relationship with X person, or Y person, there's a bag of shit. It's just which bag you want to deal with.

Kate: [65:12] Definitely.

Kevin: [65:12] Yes. That's certainly a good lesson to learn. Being a business owner and entrepreneur is a huge privilege and a huge joy, but there are many bags of shit there. [laughs]

Kate: [65:25] That would come with the different niches as well, going back to social media and stuff. If you're going to be on social, do you want to deal with the complaints? If you hate dealing with complaints, then it's probably not a good idea to go into social.

Kevin: [65:38] And dealing with all the networks. Facebook's got its quirks and things don't work today and tomorrow in their terms of service. All of those things, but if you want to be a school teacher, you have other quirks.

[65:49] I was working in the park yesterday. We're lucky enough to live in Sydney and we've had a beautiful autumn, or as the Americans call it, Fall. It's just sunshine every day. I've been sitting and working in the park a bit.

[65:59] Yesterday, I was in the park and there was a group of kindergarten kids. They must have been, three or four years old with the teacher, and cute as all hell, sitting there with there with their little hats on. I was watching this teacher and she was loving it.

[66:17] I was just thinking, what a lovely job that is. I'm sure. Look, to change nappies and deal with snotty noses, there's her little bag of shit, right?

[66:28] Kate's pulling a very distinct, unimpressed face now. I don't think she will enjoy that job. My point is from the outside, it's easy to glamorize. I saw this beautiful 20, sweetest, innocent kids, but I'm sure she has to deal with the kicking and screaming.

Kate: [66:47] She didn't realize there's one of them run away behind her back and she's in a panic trying to look for them.

[66:53] Kevin. That's it. Yesterday, this is a total aside, but I had a very funny experience on the train in Sydney. There was a woman alone with a kid and a pram. She was holding the kid's hand, and the pram in the other hand.

[67:08] She arrived at a station and she couldn't work out how to coordinate both off the train without causing any issues and doing it safely. Some guy saw her and helped move the pram.

[67:21] The kid stayed inside the carriage wall. This guy helped just lift the pram over the gap, and she was sorting out her pram and checking everything was there. Part of like a little blanket fell in the gap and she looked to me. Long story short, she had totally forgotten about her kid, and her kid was just standing in the cabin, and the time was ticking.

[67:41] This all happened within seconds, and I couldn't work out...Because I just arrived on the platform. I couldn't work out if this was a kid, but I saw immediately what happened. I was tempted to reach in and just pick up the kid, because I saw what's going on, but then I was worried that they'd get scared by me. I just yelled out to this woman...

Kate: [67:58] Abduct him! [laughs]

Kevin: [67:59] Yeah, we yelled out to this woman, "Hey, hey, hey! Is that yours?" and I pointed to the kid. "Is that yours? Is that yours?" and she's like, "Oh, yeah."

[68:04] She reached in quickly and picked up the kid, and it was all just...I saw this poor little...And it was a tiny kid. I mean, three or four years old. It would have been OK. It's in Sydney. [laughs] The kid would have found his way back at the poor little kid was about...

Kate: [68:18] Take off of the train. [laughs] Couldn't imagine.

Kevin: [68:23] It was funny.

Kate: [68:24] As a kid I'll freak out because I lost my mom in the shopping center. She was in the isle, two isles up, probably not even, and I went the other way and I thought she was gone, and could only imagine...That poor child on this train, going God knows where. [laughs]

Kevin: [68:42] It had a happy ending so that was fine. Mothers get overwhelmed sometime. Anyway, that's episode number 92 of It's a Monkey Podcast. Please email us podcastitsamonkey.com, tweet us. We're always looking for guests. We've have great emails with future guests coming on the show, so I look forward to some great future guests.

[69:01] I'd love it if you would tell a couple of people about this podcast. This podcast has grown by word of mouth. Also, previous episode, episode 91, we spoke with Zeryab Cheema, who's a Sydney entrepreneur, only 20 years old, CEO of HOP, an alternative to Uber. That was a fantastic chat as well, so go check that out at itsamonkey.com.

[69:21] We will hopefully see you in a week's time, so wherever you are, have a great week, and thanks for joining us.

Kate: [69:26] See you.

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