Tag: Australia - Page 2

There are many people before me, and there will be many others after, but I am starting to think to myself, that I do not belong in Australia. The country is too small, and there is not a big enough market to capitalise on the business I have built and newer businesses that I am involved with.

I have a long history watching Malcolm Turnbull. I knew of him from his days as a tech entrepreneur, then later through a friend of mine who was proactive in helping him as part of his greater team of volunteers get into Parliament.

I even flew to Canberra for his Maiden Speech and watched him knowingly that one day he would become Prime Minister of Australia. And he is. Today he is Prime Minister of our amazing country that I am so proud to live in.

A woman whom I know name called another woman that she doesn't really know a "gold digger" to me this week. I was mortified. Not only was she completely wrong, and she knew it, she was acting out against another woman due to her own personal insecurities and trying to influence another. On top of this, the person she name called is a highly successful business woman who is 100 percent self made and never taken a penny from any male. She lives a highly luxurious life on her own dime and everyone knows it.

Somehow we got through the end of financial year in Australia. There's a lot to be done to make sure that everything is in order; every box ticked, every invoice accounted for.

My team made that deadline and for that I am thankful. No late nights, just a lot to be considered. My headspace over the past 2 weeks feels like there is so much in there, that it is impossible to take in any more.

I am in strategy phase. What's next? Where to from here? Who is doing what? What does the next 5 years look like? What does the next 10 years look like? 

Then of course, what about me? What is going to make my life more fulfilling in the next 5 years? Next 10 years?

It was enough to make me burst into tears.

In the past few months, I have had a business that is fairly much smooth sailing. We are adapting to our growth issues and ensuring that we streamline processes and constantly improve what we are doing in every facet of the business.

It's interesting to go through this process and realise that after 10 years, some sort of switch has been turned on, and we are picking and choosing our clients. We can't scale fast enough to cater for our burgeoning growth. Scale for most businesses isn't hard as long as you have the right processes in place. But for us, it is extremely difficult. 

Every now and again I have to take stock and start all over again. It's not necessarily because I have gotten something wrong. Instead, it's usually because I travel so much and am exposed to some of the most brilliant minds in business, who kindly share their thoughts and philosophies with me, that somewhere along the line, I become inspired or a thought makes more sense than the original plan.

A catalyst for change is the inate desire to be better. To do things in a way that transcends what may be normally expected, and sets in motion a purposeful action leading to an end goal.

December was a short month in the office; only two weeks in length, yet it produced the most sales on record. We surpassed our sales forecast by 62 percent in the first week, and finished off hard with two contracts coming in from Geelong Grammar and Parramatta City Council on the last day in the office.

Internationally, we are in a fast-growth phases and this holiday has been spent working out how we will accomodate the extra sales and at the same time keep moving forward, leveraging our unique positioning. 

We now have three inside sales executives in the company, with that set to double by the end of the first quarter next year. This investment has paid dividends as it allows marketing managers to focus on their jobs and not be tied down by talking to prospects that are warm and not hot. They no longer put together the proposals or the contracts, which are all done by our well trained inside sales executives.

An inside sales executive at Marketing Eye is an entry level position, giving marketing graduates the first taste of what it is like to work at Marketing Eye. Their job to date is to manage incoming leads generated from social media and our website, following them through first point of contact via email or phone through to presentation of Marketing Eye services and sending of proposal documents. They then close with a contract. 

This usually takes up most of their day, but we try and keep time aside for marketing. They get to work on client marketing strategies, social media, writing of electronic direct mail pieces and copywriting for our 600 page websites.

By ensuring that they work on client marketing activities and marketing our company, they are getting experience to jump to the next level as a marketing executive. They also understand what they are talking about when a lead comes in because usually they have either done it too or have worked as part of a team to achieve a particular client goal.

Selling Licensing Agreements

We have a huge announcement to make on January 5, 2015, in relation to Licensing Agreements. Over time we have realized how unique our business model is and the fact that we have so many systems and processes, along with technologies to ensure that our people work harder, faster and smarter than our competitors is appealing to other marketers looking to set up their own businesses.

Our licensing model provides highly skilled marketers with an opportunity to build a successful business while leveraging of a well-recognised marketing consulting brand, and a sophisticated backend of marketers, branding experts, public relations, journalism, social media, web development and graphic design.

We will help licensees build a business that is sustainable, retainer based and collaborative in its approach.

One of the standouts of Marketing Eye's model is our commitment to excellence. We have identified a gap in knowledge in the market and continually strive to educate those in our team on the latest in marketing techniques and processes. 


Launching into 2015

There are many things that we need to improve in our business, and this time of year we have dedicated ourselves to ensuring that it happens. If you don't continually improve your business, you will fall to the wayside and find that other competitors capture greater market share.

Hiring new people is imperative to our growth as we don't have an issue getting clients, but finding quality marketing managers is a lot more difficult than we would like. Is there a global shortage of qualified marketing managers? I think there is. So many marketing managers don't have the opportunity to work across the entire marketing mix and therefore are not 'qualified' to be consulting on a clients business. Or they have had so many agencies at their disposal in corporate that they only know how to manage an agency, not how to do tactical marketing activities nor do they know what the latest in marketing techniques or analytics are, relying on agencies to feed them with information. Bu we are the agency, so our job is to know what we should be doing for a client in order to help them reach their business goals.

It's a fine line but education is key. 2015 is very much about education of marketing managers internally and externally. We are committed to lifting the benchmark in marketing talent around the world and will be hosting marketing strategy seminars around the US and Australia over the upcoming year.

What is your business theme for 2015?

"Same bed, but it feels a bit bigger now" is the lyrics in the famous Bruno Mars song "When I was your man". An apt description of Marketing Eye's business expansion into the US market. It's the same company, but it's a bit bigger now. 

What started out as a step to expand the international footprint of our brand, has taken on a whole new dimension. Australia and America have long been tied and now more so than ever. The ebbs of the economy has led to an opportunity for Australian companies that are geared for expansion to leverage the strength of the Australian dollar, and affordable set up costs in the US market without breaking the bank. The downside, is US dollars are not worth as much, as the dollar loses its grip on parity.

Historically, Australian companies that have expanded into the US have benefited immensely from foreign exchange rates. After the initial shock of start up costs, companies see the silver lining of building businesses in the US and bringing US dollars back to Australian shores.

When I started Marketing Eye more than 9 years ago, I had a vision to be the world's best small business marketing firm. I dreamt that I would open offices all over the world that would sell marketing services backed by sophisticated technology platforms, media and education, to businesses that had revenues of $1 million to $200 million.

Primarily, the companies that would be ideal clients were one's that were entrepreneur-led, like me, and who had a dream to significantly grow their businesses and mostly be industry game-changers - although the latter wasn't exactly necessary.

In the early days, we had hurdles. The first was our own mind-set of being use to working with funded startups or medium to large corporations and shifting the way we interacted, engaged and nurtured our clients to success to cater for burgeoning SMB market.

It took time. More time than I ever imagined. 

First day back in Atlanta and I am excited! I cannot express to you how much I love my US team and how inspirational each and every one of them are.

It's been a phenomenal journey, one full of great surprises, obstacles that were easier than expected to overcome and an incredible amount of love and support that has led Marketing Eye's success.

Like all bosses that are a nuisance, I asked for a photograph of a couple of my team members who were sitting in a meeting with me this morning. They are quite use to it - as they know that nothing makes me more happy than to take their pictures and share it with the world.

This year is going to be great. Actually, better than great - it is going to be awesome!

I started the morning with a "pep talk". There are a few changes that need to be implemented and sadly, I have to divide my time more evenly with Australia, so I won't be here so much.