Start something you can't stop, with Mark Masters

Welcome to amplify the personal brand entrepreneur show. Today on the show, Bob is speaking. With Mark Masters and I asked Mitch Joel advice to someone if they want to start, they want to create a blog of podcasts, video, and his answer is very simply, begin something that you cannot stop. And that's what encourages us to start something that we can be curious about, that we can find momentum with, because then we start to build up these ideas and the content and the thoughts that we can share with people to say, it works like this. Everybody. Hey, I deleted my entire database. Hi there, and welcome back to amplify the personal brand entrepreneurship. My name is Paul Gentle and every week I'm joined by incredible people who share their secrets to building marketizing. I did this last week. Marketizing. It's not even a word. Hi there and welcome back to the Personal Brand Business show. My name is Bob Gentle and every week I speak with incredible people who share their secrets to building, marketing and monetizing your expertise, intentionally growing a unique personal brand and the mindset you need for your business to grow and thrive. If you're new to the show, then while you still have your device in your hand, then take a second to subscribe. That way you won't miss a single episode. And if you're a regular listener, then consider sharing it with just one person. It's the very best way you can help the show grow and help me reach more people. So when I discovered this week's guest, I thought to myself, you know what? I think I found my outgoing, crazy twin. We have so much in common and I know I'm going to learn a lot from him today. So I'm really excited for this interview. Mark Masters, welcome to the show. Bless you, Bob. One lovely lill one lucky to sit here and relax, listen to your voice. You should be there listening. Listening. I be should to everyone should be listening to these before we go to bed in a nice way to relax down. I'm in. I have thought about doing kids stories, but there's no money in it anyway. One of the things I really admire about your work is the commitment to community, and I have no doubt we'll be speaking about that today. But for the listener who might not be in your universe just yet, could you tell us a little bit about who you are, where you are, and an introduction into exactly who you and we are the media is. Thank you very much. And I'm going to talk to you and you listening in a relaxed tone of voice. Perhaps I will start getting excitable in a minute. So my name is Mark Masters and I live down at the seaside on the south coast of England. And one thing that helped me over the years is to build a project called you were the Media and you were. The media is in its most broadest stroke, is a supportive marketing learning community that started in 2013, and where it is today, nine years later, is this community. But I'm a big advocate of sharing building in public disability, that sometimes we have to push this car up the hill on our own, but when we have people around us, it makes life a lot more easier. So I document, I share. I'm an advocate of how we can build audience, how we can create community, and also, as small business owners, how we can get the right clients and the people that want to work with us and stay with us. So people think, I don't want to go anywhere else. One phrase you mentioned was building public. And I think this is a really interesting idea. It's one that I wasn't really aware of until fairly recently. I don't know how new it is, it's maybe been around for a long time, but a lot of people think that the face they turn to the world has to be a finished thing. It has to be polished, it has to be perfect, there needs to be no cracks in it, it needs to be professional in inverted commas. And that holds an awful lot of people back, because the reality is, nothing is ever perfect. What does the whole building public idea mean for you? Yeah, so if we're putting our marketing businesses heads on, it's how we differentiate at the end of the day. But when we look around, we look to emulate others. There are other people that have larger audiences, the people that are saying the words that people are queuing up and wanting more. But many of us are not in that space. We probably never will be. And one thing that I believed in, and I think a lot of this comes from confidence over the years, so I am I can just tell you all the things that have gone wrong over the years, but most things I put my hand to have gone wrong. Yeah. So I came in to start this podcast. I'm at the bottom, I'm building this up trust. And people think, yes, Mum's a good guy, but everything, most things I've put my hand to has failed. But I realised that I can share this and I can be quite open by talking about and it's not failure, it's all about going back into the garage and tinkering and experimenting. And that's kind of encouraged me over the years, this thing about living in this live lab and sometimes we have to be resourceful over having the resources that are in front of us. So building in public is this ability to say, right, I'm going to test this out. I'm then going to report it back to you to tell you how it went, the good and the bad, and then I'm gonna share the modifications and things that I need to look at and understand for myself. So I can share with you how it went. And this is the little brain wave that I had that I understood, is that I was effectively this is what we're doing. I was effectively creating for me, twelve months before, during the Pandemic, we understood how to do online events. We tested hybrid that bond, but how that can work and what went into it, we are effectively creating for our younger selves. And that makes a lot of sense, I think. What's interesting, just listening to your speaker, if you look at any of these TV heroes, for example, if you look at what it is that really gets us up and rallying for them, it's not the triumph, but it's the trials. When they get to the end and it's all fantastic, that's when we leave the cinema. We're there for the hard journey and the excitement and being able to watch somebody else's business grow in public and participate in it. Not just the finale, but actually be invited to go on that journey with them. It's so much more instructional and educational. You picked up an interesting point here, this thing about rolling your sleeves up and being involved for the long term, because it's far easier today and we're seeing this around us. All we're seeing, like LinkedIn is hypnotic. So we're drawn in and we can talk about things that are generic, because the generic things are what frustrate many people. But it's easy. But it's easy to get likes and have strangers acknowledging what we're saying is what they agree with. But it's this thing that you just picked up on their bob. This thing about right. It's the thing of locking ourselves in for the long term, because that's the reason this whole building public has relevance. I love this phrase. We had a show during Lockdown called You In the Media Online, and I asked Mitch Joel advice to someone if they want to start, if they want to create a blog, podcast, video. And his answer was very simply, begin something that you cannot stop. And that's what encourages us to start something that we can be curious about, that we can find momentum with. Because then we start to build up these ideas and the content and the thoughts that we can share with people to say, it works like this, everybody. Hey, I deleted my entire database. We can talk about that on another show. I deleted my entire database. I've been growing for five or so years. But see, there you go, that's heart in your sleeve territory and saying, it doesn't always work as we want it to be. Was it deleting the database intentional? Bob 2019. Very quickly. 2019 July 2019. I was cleaning the database. We just got back after the conference, had a bit of a summer break. Oh, I can see what I'm doing. I pressed a button. I was used to use MailChimp. I pressed a button. It was two and a half thousand people, 2321, 600 and 5922, 28. I was just going before my very eyes. I thought I could go to Malcolm and say, by the way, I did this by mistake. And I thought there'd be something on the server to go back 40 minutes ago. And their response was, it's your database. It's got nothing to do with us. Oh, Bob and I just nicked, I did everything I shouldn't have done. So if you listen to this, I did all the things that we shouldn't have done with the GDPR world scraping lists, people that come into my head that thought I'd attended events via eventbrite and all these things. But it became a story and it became a way how not to do things and the value of saving that database and having that little Excel sheet or something that says here safe on our desktops, looking at your business. Now, there are the two parts as I see it. We've got we are the media and you are the media. So for the listener, what's the difference? Yeah, so one side is saying let's do it together and the other side is the commercial arm to it. So this is how I make money. So how I built a business, one is effectively a consultancy. So my whole belief is in how people can create without necessarily being 100% reliant on social media. So how can we find our voice? How can we step forward? How can we champion independence, creativity? You, the media is very much this whole punk ethos, this DIY ethos that it doesn't need to be brilliant, it doesn't need to be pristine, but this ability that we can build and we can congregate and people want to stay with us, so we do that in a communal space. You are the media. So we have learning and people can come and attend that, whether that's online or offline or we are the media is the side that says, well, we will do it for you, we will work with you. And all this the strategic process, which is a marketing consultancy side that says all this stuff that you see but you want to go deeper in it, let's do it together. So that's how the two sides are working. And it's this lesson as well of diversifying our income streams as well. It works. But what's happening now is you, the media is starting to gravitate. That's the thing I'm trying to work out now is how one is becoming much kind of bigger than the other when I say bigger than the other revenue opportunities, how you build, how you grow. And I'm coming to this place where you kind of think, well, where is the future of this going? If I'm being honest, I'd like to lean into the community space and how that grows and comes to fruition. People attending events, learning, the online community that we're building as well. So it's a transitional time, it's an interesting time. So I appreciate you bringing that up as well. I think one of the things that's interesting there is the blend of what I'm going to call the traditional agency where it's done for you, and then the more teaching evangelical mission of helping people become essentially the presenters of their own business. In many respects, you could say they're competing with each other, but the reality is some businesses should do things themselves. Some business owners, some entrepreneurs and others. It's just not going to make sense for them. When you meet somebody, how do you know, okay, this is a company, this is an organisation where independence isn't the right route. Yes. So the audience is predominantly small businesses, but small business owners, freelancers. But you do see companies, larger businesses, different departments, marketing heads that join in. And it just so happens that those people with deeper pockets and want to be more committed, that becomes easier for someone to make that step. And it says, how can we work together? But you're right, listen, it follows a traditional agency route, or let's all call this an owned media approach. If we're putting an old money and that's how things have built over the years, but this is the point that you mentioned. This is the way that the world was, because that's how we have to build and how we I am an old ad agency exec background, but that follows the model. We do the work, we invoice the work and we move on and we find that cycle and the right people to work with us. But this other side that says let's this sense of communal activity, let's learn, let's put this together, let's listen, let's come to this page to attend this event, come to learn this. We're starting to move into this online community where I think of the you of the media club. How can we be mobile and how can we create and how can things be of value to somebody else? But there was this other side that says, well, let this route where you work together with clients to help them and get them up and running. Something I'm interested to know about how you approach your own business. I guess the first question I want to ask before I get to that is if we were to look at your business now and again, you don't have to tell me the answer to this question and if you're uncomfortable with it, I'll just take a question that never happened. But I am interested to know, in terms of revenue, how much of it in your business is traditional done for you, agency work, as opposed to the stuff that really lights you up in terms of looking ahead into the future. Yeah, that's a good question. So where it was and this is the interesting right, the starting point is this. You, the media was a side project. Right. So to me the side project was I had the company, the commercial arm similar to us. All we have with our businesses, we have the commercial arm that makes us our living and pays us our bills. The side project is the side that leans into our values and that's the way that I look at it. Not an indulgent hobby, but something that aligns with our values, that links into how we build our businesses and how we commercialise what we do. So where we were a few years ago, it was probably more 70 30 towards the company side. So where that's going now is becoming slightly less it's more becoming 60 40. Yeah, because you're starting to find other strands that are happening, for instance and it all comes down to longevity. Again, what you said at the beginning, how we stick around, how people see what's happening. Because when we do something for the first time, people are going to point at us and we have to convince people that examples of things that are happening now, such as we must apply for government funding to work with colleges, have we put it into education? This thing called the U of the Media Creator Lab, and that was to work with the local college to bring students on board for what was effectively how to draw attention to young adults that were starting in the industry. You, the media started to build its reputation and rapport and trust more. It starts to find more opportunities. But those opportunities, Bob, go beyond come to this event. It's wider involvement now. So when I say from where it was a few years ago, so it's now more 60 40. But I think where I would like to take it is to still have the reason I have the consultancy side is that it keeps me relevant. So what you're doing for clients and measuring and what they're saying and how they're competing and how you're just being at the coalface and you're putting your flag in the ground and says, it works like this rather than just stepping right back and effectively being a teacher and saying, everybody, this is what we need to do together. I still want to keep that element because that's the way that I've always been. And I enjoy working with clients and I enjoy that rapport and kinship that we can build with others. But where it's started to become is yeah, it's how you, the media is finding its own feet and finding opportunities in different places for people to get involved that also become and this is the other thing now, Bob, is how we start to look at community as a genuine business approach. I think this is really where I want to get to. I think listening to you, your decision to lean into community is very nonobvious in many ways. There are lots of reasons why a different version of McMasters might have decided not to do that. McMasters, who wanted to build, to sell and build a traditional agency, didn't have to do all of these things. But leaning into what lights you up, that's really what's shining through there. And that's what will build a business you continue to enjoy running for the next 15 years. So the community side of things, where am I going to go with this? So many questions I could ask around this. I'm interested to know how it started. What was day one? Yeah, so day one, that's a good place. Let me give this right. So the reason I started you in the media is, was off the back of having to start from zero again. So it was starting off the embers of the last recession. I had a client that took us for tens of thousands of pounds, court cases, and it was really affecting me at the same time, to build attention for my business, I was spending money on advertising, pay per clicklick ads. And whilst the delicate time that happened from losing a client really affected the business, nearly going out of business to be seen, I was given money to somebody else that did not care about my business. Another example was I thought, well, let's get involved in sales promotion ideas. I can remember we made cupcakes. I still love this. So on our website, it always starts from this. I made cupcakes to give to local businesses, prospects, people to potentially work with. But I realised that people just wanted free food. They had no interest in my business and what the business did. So I thought, okay, this comes back to day one. Day one was this. I'm going to write, I'm going to start an email, I'm going to write a newsletter. I'm going to call it you or the Media, and I'm going to share this thing around independence, saying something, championing creativity, which had the industry tick to content marketing. But when I started from day one, it was really generic, Bob. It was the same as what you'd see everywhere else. What's the difference between a brand and a logo? And what does it mean to be an entrepreneur? There was no heart in it, but that was easy because you have to start somewhere. But it's this ability to just hone your craft, because sometimes if you find your niche, find your niche. And I was just trying to get better. I was creating for me at the time. So day one was saying you were the media that started in October 2013 was to say, this is a newsletter. And the audience again, it was nothing that should be endorsed on this show. It was lists that were scraped from places. It was prospects, it was lapsed people that were never interested. But I started with that and found a way to come back every week, every Thursday, I'm going to do it again. And the little moment that gave me joy was the first official subscriber that I did not know. So those small wins are magnified that somebody put that time and commitment to send their email. So I could send them an email on a Thursday. So day one was from zero. And it's lonely, all of us. It's lonely when we start, but sometimes when we're backed in the corner, we've got nothing around us and that's all that we've got to do. In a way, it took my mind off all the stress and everything else that's happening around me. And two, I could practise at something. The practise for me was writing. So, moving on from day one, when did community start to show its head? At what point did it go from Mark Masters shouting into the wind to their people put in their hand up and saying, I like this and I want to participate? Yeah. And this goes to May 2016 for three years. Yes, three years. So, again, this slow build and I could see that the audience was building. So when I say audience, people that were subscribing to receive the newsletter were predominantly from a local audience, where I live down here, paul at the beach, paul and Bormouth, what Dorsett, shall we say, is where we live? So I thought, well, there's people here that are from the local area. Wouldn't it be easy if I just put something on to see those faces, to say hello? And in May 2016, we started the Euro, the Media Lunch Club, and it was a lunchtime event at solicitors called Steele Raymond in the middle of Bournemouth, and there were 28 people that come together for a lunchtime event. And from there and this is the thing, when I talk about around Community, it's not about our Twitter followers, it's not about those LinkedIn connections, it was about people you could see eye to eye and people knew they were all a part of something. And to me, that was my first inkling of what a community was all about. People congregated in a space that were connected to something. And that's how we start to see this transition from what is an audience, followers, people that are in front of us, people that even people that just subscribe to a community, which is people that make a commitment to be around each other. So listening to that, what shines through it is the humility to start small. It's very easy for people to think, I want to start a big conference and I want to be the centre of attention and everyone's going to think I'm wonderful, but that's a huge risk. And it's frankly a little bit egotistical coming at it from a place of service, of providing a space and trying to fill that space with value. That's how it needs to start. And I think that's how any great event and any great community begins. So I love that story and, you. Know, I really appreciate you for picking this up as well, because a lot of the time we're skewed into following what works and what we have to do is something of scale. But I guess it comes down to Seth Godin's minimum viable audience, the minimum amount of people that you need. I don't want to but you know what? I don't want to be under the fat. You don't want that. You want to be there if somebody reaches out. I mean, OK, we all need ways that we can commercialise what we're doing, but we can still do that from a place that doesn't need hoards and hordes of people that are around us. We just need the right people, what we share with them as meaning to them, so they want to come back for more because that's how they will tell other people and that's how you with the media has grown. People think, yeah, this is I want to say the word different, but this kind of feels not like something out that I've been to. My natural way that I present is always high energy and I believe in that and that's just my natural approach to life. So when you do that and you base it around learning and figuring out together, it becomes slightly different from a traditional networking sense where you build something that people come together where you don't know one another. Contact and communications is not as pronounced as it should be. But this thing around your catering for the few, not everyone, I think, as. Well, it's also slightly decentralised. Yes, you're the facilitator, yes, you're the host, but it's not just about the value coming from the periphery to the centre, but it's about the value spreading within the community as well. That's something that I see you doing really well. Can I highlight an example? What you mean there exactly what you mean there is this ability when we start to create something where other people can take from the world as well. For instance, people who are a part of the community reach out to each other whether that is a project, whether that is being a guest on someone else's podcast or show, whether it is just someone backing someone else out when they share something on a social media, on LinkedIn or wherever, there is somebody that's there for them. And this is the thing that I started to see, is that when you're a part of something, it's the people that start to lift each other. And I think that is so powerful, particularly as we're going into pretty confusing times. Is this important to be around the right people rather than thinking that we need to be around everybody? I absolutely echo that. I think there's this whole it's often a bit of a cliche, but your income rises to the sum of the averages of the five people you spend most time with, or something like that. You hear that one all the time. But the truth is, it doesn't matter who you are. And I ask this question of many of my podcast guests. Opportunity can come through ads, it can come through Outbound sales, it can come through content and content marketing, or it can come through relationships. Those are the only four routes, really. But it doesn't seem to matter who I ask, what level of business they're at, the opportunities that change the dial, and this is as true of Pat Flynn as it is of someone like Jeff Walker. The opportunities that move the dial are always driven through relationships. And if you can bring lots of people with lots of opportunity together, and business owners, entrepreneurs, they tend to be opportunity rich. They don't necessarily convert them all, but they live in a world of opportunity. And if that opportunity can be shared, if it can be distributed, it's incredibly powerful. Yeah. And again, I love chatting to you, Bob. Let me just pick up on this. So we're told about creation, content creation. Let's create, let's create, let's get more stuff out. Listen, that I am an advocate of that. That's how I built my business and that's how I invoice out. We're told to create, put stuff out there. Whereas sometimes we forget about the outreach, which is sometimes more important, that people know that we're there, we can reach out to each other, people know we're on the same wavelength, and it comes down to this whole place of trust in one another and you never know when that opportunity comes. But this thing of outreach and reaching out to people and knowing that people are there is so important. And sometimes that goes beyond the ability to create content. Yeah, it absolutely does. I think to be fair on content, content is often what can insert you into the conversation. If you weren't creating content and I wasn't creating content, this conversation probably would never have happened. And I often use the analogy of time travellers in a kind of spooky way, that whenever you watch a movie and the two time travellers are walking through a crowd, they always see each other. For some reason, content creators are a little bit like that. They're very supportive of each other and they spot each other from across a football field. Yeah. And I think that's the value of content. It's external to content designed to attract consumers. I think content that other creators spot and recognise, this guy is on the same path as me and fellow travellers. It just makes a lot of sense. I like that analogy. So one thing I would like to know, and I kind of know the answer, is becoming a content creator, becoming a sort of central nexus in a community. There are lots of other people who sell content marketing, do what you do in the pool area, but they don't have that. And I'm interested to hear from you how much. Of a competitive advantage. Let's assume none of them are listening to this. How pleased are you and how well impacted is your traditional side of the business by this more outreach side of the business? Say that again. Say that again. Let me give it my thoughts better. For me looking in. My assumption is what has happened in your business. It must be a little bit like when you're pitching for work, if you even need to pitch for work anymore against other people who don't have what you have as an asset. I would imagine it's a little bit like when somebody is deciding whether to use you or somebody else. They have to decide, you know what, there's that guy, that guy or that guy or there's the Mark Masters. They're going to have to work quite hard to decide not to use you in a very active way in order to make the decision to use somebody else. Is that how you experience it? Yeah, very much so. And it becomes around laying these continual breadcrumbs that people can pick up, for instance, blog articles. My writing is always used as a way to signpost other people and it's that ability to have a presence and that ability to be seen. It's not just fill in space, it's not just you do it for a reason. So again, the reason I use Social, I use LinkedIn a lot is this ability for outreach and to share and to let that message reverberate. But my whole goal is to pull people back to me. So that means that if somebody subscribes, we send a Thursday newsletter. Thursday morning newsletter. That almost becomes the hook for many people. So if they're deciding to buy, if the conversations start, conversations have always started from someone subscribing to the newsletter and that in itself becomes the unfair advantage, shall we say, because you're already finding ways that you're reaching out to people and you're finding ways to make them feel at home, let them know that they're seen. I send a video to piece of you people subscribe, I send people a little welcome video. And you're trying to make people feel comfortable and at ease with you from an early stage. Which is why, again, this was the thing that makes us different. It's who we are. It's how we present ourselves wherever we are extroverts, wherever we are introverts. It's how we bring our quirks to the table. But sometimes we put these little welcome maps in them and be very good hosts for people around us. So when it comes to people deciding we've done enough of the work for them to say we want to work with that person there or that business there because you've done the effort, you've done the mileage to share and to be present and to have a point of view really. So one thing that I hear a lot is this whole idea of you must niche, you mustn't you mustn't niche or if you're in America, niche. Sorry, you don't appear on the surface superficially to have niche. No. But you must have an idea in your mind who you're for. Yeah, this is good. And I think it's okay. It's okay to be vague, vague as we start. And it's like a big boulder that we're chipping away at, because when we start, we might not know in terms of you might not have that breadth of customers that are in front of you, but I realised that by creating, looking at the stats, looking at even as something as basic as Google Analytics, I can see what strikes a chord with people. I can see the people that reply to the Thursday email with a point that may have struck a chord. I can see if people retweeted something. So I initially thought, Bob, that my audience was senior marketers. I initially thought that my business was aimed at directors, owners, large companies, and it was exactly the opposite. The audience, my audience is predominantly small business owners, freelancers creators, those people who are trying to make their stand and looking to find a way. Hence it says on the tin, you are the media. And that's who my audience is today. It's based on more the solopreneurs, the small business owners that are trying to carve their own space in the world and to find their voice. But I only found that over time it's coming back to it. It's honing my Practise, honing my skills, listening to people, inviting feedback as well because I can't do all this on my own. Otherwise we're just creating in a vacuum. Thinking that I'm going to still be talking in this highbrow convoluted way of trying to convince people to buy from me, is only by tuning into your audience and understand what ticks with them and what they enjoy, that you cater for them. So if somebody is listening at home or in their office, if they still have one thinking, you know what? The way that Mark has lent into, on the one hand, being very visible online and on the other, and this is for me as a key thing actually existing in real life, in people's world, in terms of events, in terms of the content you create. It creates a depth of experience that's quite different from simply posting selfies or the odd YouTube video. How would you advise somebody else to go about taking the first steps on that road? Yeah, so do it comes this place. The advice that was given to me is to start something that you cannot stop, this something that when there is an interest, but an interest that could be relatable to other people. My advice is this is to find a space that you can be curious about, that you know, that you can practise at it over time and come back to it. We can start to put your own stamp in your own voice. For instance, somebody could be listening to it's in recruitment. But recruitment has always told us to talk about how to write the perfect CV when we look at blogs, how to prepare yourself for an interview. But over time, when we try to find our own stamp so we could be a young recruiter trying to find our own little place in the world, we can share those experiences of experiences of where we were and what we learned today, how the marketplace is and what's happening around us as well, and is to find that place of value to yourself and how that can relate to other people. And the only way of finding that out is to start, is to create, but knowing that you're not just going for it for the quick wins. You're not just giving it a thumbs up on LinkedIn because you had that picture review, because you were at the beach and went surfing the week before you went paragliding it's finding something that could potentially strike a chord with somebody else and come back to it, because that's where the rewards can be. One thing that I feel I know a lot of traditional business owners worry about is time, that content takes time. And I'm always interested to hear from people like you. If we were to sort of apply a ratio, how much of your time goes into content and existing in other people's lives and getting your stuff done. Yeah, that's a good one. So I have a structure, I have a system that I work to, and it works like this. I used to be all over the place. So the thing to base around is a newsletter that I send on a Thursday morning. When my children were younger, it used to be I would write the newsletter, the main article, after 07:00 on a Monday. I realised I'm not very good on evenings. So the newsletter is based on, say, a 1300 main article piece that's based around other incidental things that are happening around us. Someone from the community always starts the email that says hello and introduces them. Things that have things such as just time wasting and to spend a few minutes on before you start the day. So the way that I structure my week now is based on I write on Monday mornings for an email that sent on for Thursday for people's inboxes, I customise the week. I use Hype Fury to work on my posts and to schedule posts, make sure that I'm there. It's not just I'm sending at 03:00 A.m. In the morning, I do it during the work time, but how I break down the main article, find smaller nuggets from the main article that can be broken down into 200 words tweets. So you're already creating the work that will cover you for the next two to three weeks. So I spend the time on the Monday, block out Mondays. Don't do anything on Monday mornings, come back to the article, let it air on the Tuesday, put the email together on the Wednesday. But it's not honestly Bob, it's not something now that's like oh my goodness. He's spending an extra 911 hours extra a week on his creating around his side project. That's you and the media. I've kind of got it down to now around about three 4 hours a week I create daily. But these are sparks that come into my head. I use Twitter as a sounding board, as a place to share ideas and see how that goes. That's how we use Twitter. And LinkedIn is a main form of building on these ideas and breaking down what's already been shared. One question I would like to ask and it brings us back full circle to the whole building public thing. One of the things with podcast interviews is interviewers are very good at asking about all the things the guests are great at and the things where they are, the great case studies. But I'm always curious to ask of all the things you do, where do you feel you struggle the most? A thing is always the thing around self criticism. I would guess a lot of what I do is haphazard. It can be seen as quite haphazard. The things that we try our hands at, the things that we do that no one has done, such as testing out hybrid events. We did an event in a theatre where we turn a theatre into a giant zoom screen and that didn't work. But to some people that is where we put the effort in to try to make it work. So my biggest criticism sometimes is around my own self reflection and not wanting something perfect, but still being quite quick to put myself down with that self deprecating way that we can normalise us. Maybe sometimes I do tune a bit too much into it. I was quick to say that things don't work, but to some people I come back to a space to practise. So this ability to self reflect and to be quite selfcritical is there you go, what a cathartic show this is. Well, it's not intended that way. No, it's fine. But it is. I want something to work. I want to put on things that work for people. I want people to see things. I want people to go away thinking that was great, I took something from that. It doesn't have to mean that you're getting tightrope walkers or stuff around you, but you want people to leave knowing that that was good, that was a good time. I've invested in that because it's getting even tougher for us all the time that we give and time away from work, the time away from our offices, our home, has to be worthwhile. And to me sometimes if something doesn't go right can I share this one with you? Can I share this right? Can I share this one with you? You absolutely can. I don't know what it is, but I'm just going to see if you're willing to take the risk. I'll do it. So here we go. Good example of me at this thing of self criticism. We had our last event of 2021 in a theatre nearby, so people were joining on Zoom, as well as people in the theatre as well, to be a part of this show. Just before Christmas, there was a power cut in the local area and this was 20 minutes before people were going to be on Zoom. So the people in the audience were in pitch black. We had to leave the theatre. It was a health hazard, but it was still people on Zoom. Well, I've paid for this. Don't you let me down. Someone from the community knew someone that owned the pub from over the road at the theatre. We had someone down at their cello to a fella, the Titanic, because you're walking into this pub with a cello playing and then thought, Right, the show must go on. And we got Zoom out, everyone was there in Zoom. We continued the show in the pub and then the WiFi went in the pub and all I wanted to do, Bob, was just to put my laptop down and just say, I've had enough, I'm going home, I'm broken, I can't do this. But to everyone else, it was the most fun thing that they've done all year. It was, again, this sense of camaraderie and togetherness and sharing a drink with someone and talking and fun and knowing that we were knowing Bob, that we were all going down on this ship together. I didn't see that. It took me 24, 48 hours to see that. To me, it was just a huge failure that had been a part of and that had orchestrated. I think I think when I've been involved in leading events, I think the only thing I can think of is it must be a little bit like being a fighter pilot, that you know what you're supposed to be doing, and it's perfection. Everybody's having a great time on the wings, but you can't see them. You've got to look straight ahead at what you're supposed to be doing and what you don't realise is everyone else is having a great ride. Their expectations were way lower than you expected them to be. They just wanted to have fun and be entertained, or to an extent. But, yes, I totally recognise my analogy, I think is terrible, but I totally recognise what you're talking about. Nobody asked for the money back, no one complained, no one. And that is a lesson in togetherness and building something that's not just reaching out to random people and saying, this is a networking event. It was having people on board, something that you believe in, that feel apart of something just big thing around, belonging. To something so market people want to connect with you. If they want to go deeper with you, they want to find out more about you are the media. We are the media. How can they do that? The best place is to come to you themere co UK if you look at the top of the page there's subscribe button, so leave your email to get the weekly newsletter there. There's also the events page as well at the top that shows what's going on in the live in person space as well. And the one question I need to end with is what's one thing you do now that you wish it started five years ago? It's this ability to know that we're not here for everybody. We don't have to pamper and have to be seen as everybody's friend, whether that is having to meet up with organisations within your local area or region because that's what we've had to do and that's what inertia and that's what time has done. It's to have this ability to understand that we need to create something that's meaningful for the right people. We haven't got time. We want to be everybody's friend. We become an egomaniac, but as I've learned over the years, particularly you say if you're putting a timeframe in five years is to know who your friends are and to lean into those people. When I say friend may not be your friends kind of business, peers, people that support you. And this thing of knowing that we're not here for everybody is to find the right group of people that want to come on board. If they're not interested, then not for us. We move on. We have to stop thinking that more is seen as success. It's the ability to create for some and not all. That is a really good answer. Blessed. Thank you so much for your time. I've had great fun with you. I think I'm going to have to have you back again sometime. I'd love to, Bob. Listen, bless you. It's so kind of you to invite me. Thank you. It was my pleasure. So that brings us to the end of another episode. Thank you to you for listening and if you did enjoy the show, then I would gently encourage you to leave a five star review. That's five. Like the fingers on your hands. Five stars. Not four, not three, not doing it one. And if you did enjoy the podcast, then share it with just one person. Again, if you did enjoy the show, then I would love for you to download the personal brand Business roadmap. It's 100% free as a gift from me. 30 pages of everything you need to start, scale or just fix your expert business. Click or tap the link in the show notes or visit amplify meagency robot. Thanks again for listening and thank you, Mark, for joining us and see you next week. You.