Episode 126 Transcript
Heather (00:02.212)
Damien, welcome to the show. How are
Daimien Patterson (00:06.105)
Hi, I'm good, I'm good. Thank you for having me.
Heather (00:08.528)
Guys, okay. This is going to be the coolest conversation. Damien's one of those guests. We were just having a chat and I was like, no, stop, stop, don't tell anymore. I'm gonna have to hit record. Cause you don't want all the like jewels to come out just to me. got to share it with everyone else too. Cool. So as always, everyone that's listening, you know, I like to start with some really cool tangible tips and Damien's like the best guy to give these to you based on what you're going to hear about him coming
Daimien Patterson (00:19.134)
I love
Daimien Patterson (00:24.389)
True that, yes.
Heather (00:38.298)
but we'll start with the tips then we'll get into your backstory and what you're up to these days. So tips, please share a few tips that you have for these business owners that are listening to the show right now, growing their business, stressing out, going through overwhelming moments. How do they grow it smarter?
Daimien Patterson (00:52.011)
Yeah, I mean, that's a great question. I think the first thing that people need to really think about is ultimately like why are you in business? And the standard answer usually is more money and more freedom,
That's why people go into business and then they find it to be the opposite. And the reason why they find it to be the opposite is because they don't have the knowledge and skills and the techniques to actually achieve that. Right. So I think first and foremost, you've got to look at a business as an asset that you own, not a job that you create for yourself. So and from day one, you've got to say, I'm going to build this business so that I never need to work in it. Now, that's an aspirational goal.
And there will always be things left to you to do but your whole goal is to get yourself out of the business So how do you do that? And then by the way that business will be exponentially more valuable because it's saleable if you if you're not in it, right? so you can sell that business to a You know a hedge fund or whatever or you know a bigger business bigger competitor and things like that
And you can actually sort of manufacture a lottery win for yourself and sell your business for millions and millions of dollars. And you'll be surprised just how easy that is to actually do once you decide that's something you want to do and you start studying how to do it. So, and the concepts that you need to understand to do it are not that difficult to understand. But I think the first thing is remember that, you know, that your goal is ultimately to remove yourself from the business. And if you do that from day one, if you focus on that day one, you'll do very well.
So I had five points that I prepared and so I'll go through those five and you know if you're listening at home you want to write these down. Number one is focus on your most profitable product and service first. You know a lot of people go sort of wide and far and they have 20 different services that they offer and then they end up doing all 20 of those really poorly and what I would say is go narrow and deep.
Daimien Patterson (02:55.167)
and focus on that one thing you get paid the most to deliver, right? Whatever it is that the product that's got the highest margin in it or the, the service that you provide that delivers the most value to the customer and focus on that first, because if you focus on that, your business will be profitable and growth costs money. Right? So if you want to recruit someone else, you want to create systems, you want to, you know, pay people when you recruit someone that takes time, it takes time before that individual is profitable for you as in there.
their productivity is actually producing a return. So you have to fund the gap basically, while you wait for that person to get there. So you have to start on the most profitable thing. I think that's really important. A lot of people wasting time and just go narrow and deep. One of the things, know if you mentioned in the intro, but I used to be an army officer, And in the army, one of the things, of the metaphors I use is when you clear a minefield, you don't start at the edge and just roll the minefield back.
Heather (03:45.21)
So cool.
Daimien Patterson (03:54.919)
a very small lane through the minefield and you focus on being able to just get a small sliver through so you can walk through and then widen the lane. And widen the lane then you can get a car through and then a tank through and multiple vehicles through.
but you want to get the blood flowing. You want to be able to get to the other side as fast as possible. And in business, what that means is you want to have a full process from start to finish delivering money and put money in the bank before you start doing anything else. So pick your most profitable product, map it out from start to finish and just focus laser like focus on that until that's turning over and bringing in the money consistently. Then you can start adding other lanes to the minefield or widening the lane and which is other products and services and do that. I think that's a
Heather (04:36.559)
Nice.
Daimien Patterson (04:40.266)
important insight so if you're listening at home ask yourself that question what's your most profitable product or service right now and just go all in on that until you're making a really good profit.
The second thing I then say is proceed, write a procedure for everything, create a procedure for every single step. So one of my favorite exercises to do with my team, I've got about 60 people who work for me now across four different businesses. One of my favorite things to do is to start with big arrows on a map. So you map out your processes with those big arrows and then you're right inside the arrow what it is. So it might be, post the ad online and then it might be,
landing page conversion and then just whatever the whole series is for the process. Map that out and then create a procedure document for every single step of the way. And that's really important. Now there are two ways that you can create procedures for. One is that you can write them yourself, which is probably the hard way. And the other way is you can hire a VA and then allocate time to teach your VA
Heather (05:42.202)
Yep.
Daimien Patterson (05:51.731)
what those things are in a recorded session much like we're doing now and then say, okay, this is how we enter some like say share your screen. This is how I enter someone into the database, blah, blah, blah. And then it's being recorded. Your video is listening, you're explaining it. And then you say to them, okay, after this recording, after this session, I want you to create a procedure document based on what I just told you verbally.
and then I want you to present it to me at our next session and then we'll keep working our way through every single step of the process. And that's, that's super smart, right? Yeah, it's the hard way. There's an easy way and hard way to do it. Generally all the knowledge is in your head. And the hardest bit is getting it out of your head.
Heather (06:18.64)
Deima, that's smart. I love that. Yeah.
Daimien Patterson (06:29.311)
and on the pipe in the easiest way to do that is a recorded session that someone else did the transcription things about so number two proceduralize anything because you can't grow something that's not documented because if you want a hundred employees will what are you gonna train them all individually one by one that you need to have a manual and then that tells me how to do it you look at all the big successful enterprise in the world they all have that
has the manual, the fries are made the same way in every single McDonald's restaurant. They actually have a headquarters and they have a training depot, like a training sort of cell or whatever, that write that manual and train everyone to the manual. So very, very important.
Heather (07:06.576)
Hey, who do you get to actually update those SOPs over time and make sure they're up to date?
Daimien Patterson (07:12.705)
Generally in each business you've got an operations manager and that's one of their key duties is to be the czar of SOPs.
And so I would do the general manager, you just anyone, your executive assistant, it just needs to be someone's job. And that someone needs to be relatively, relatively competent, you know, in it. And one of things I want to do is I want to get used to say five hats, but now say six hats made and anyone like a set of baseball caps. And when you start a business, you know, you buy these baseball caps and the first one says marketing manager. The second one says sales manager. And the third one says operations manager.
fourth one says admin manager. The fifth one says training manager. You you've got to create training systems as well. And the last one is general manager. And then throughout the week, you've got to put these hats on and go, who am I today? And then your goal ultimately is to delegate those hats off. So the first person you should buy, first, the first, first,
you should hire is really, I think, marketing manager because that's the start of every business process is marketing to bring people in. So, but the realization is that.
Heather (08:16.334)
Yeah. Yeah.
Daimien Patterson (08:25.941)
You've either got to wear all those hats yourself, in which case you need to be competent in each of those roles, or you've to find someone else to do those things for you. And until you manage to do that, you don't really have a business, you just have a job, you know? And you're going to continue to flail around. So, focus on your most profitable product and service, create procedures for everything, embrace outsourcing, coming back to that, how you get it done. And I remember the very first business conference I went to, our mutual friend
Bowman actually ran it and he got up on stage and I'm sure he was sharing a lesson he learned from others before him too but he said look when I got in the business I was taught write down a list of all the things you do that you need to do and that you can do and he said put the hourly rate that it costs that you can earn to get to do that task
and then how much it costs to pay someone else to do that task, you know? And he said straight away, once you do that, you'll have a couple of tasks which you earn hundreds of thousands of dollars an hour for, and then everything else will either cost you money, or you know, and he said, just do the top two tasks and then hire people to do the rest. And it was that moment I was like, so obvious, you know? So from that day on, I'm
Heather (09:37.07)
I remember that exercise too, by the way. Yeah, I know, it's really good.
Daimien Patterson (09:39.861)
Yeah, that's how it's like, right. Getting a housekeeper had young children at the time. we're getting an au pair and so housekeeper au pair and then personal assistant, virtual assistant in the Philippines. And then that's how you do it. And what's, when you think about the smart thing to do is actually whatever's the cheapest rate. So getting a Filipino VA is probably the number one thing.
Heather (09:45.316)
Yeah.
Daimien Patterson (10:03.499)
But before you do that, need to actually make a list of all the things you're going to give them. So when they start work, you can then train them and things like that. And then so price outsourcing, because otherwise you have to do all yourself. And people forget, like, if you spend an hour doing your admin, because you like to do your own admin, right? Then you're an idiot because you could be spending that hour doing the thing that pays you a couple of hundred bucks an hour to do, you know, and, you'll never get out of the starting gates if you are not willing to embrace.
a team and delegate stuff to other people, you know, and it's really some people say, you know, if you want something done properly, you should do it yourself. It's like, just give yourself a slap. If you ever, you ever say it gives you some stuff. No, first of all, if you want something done, the quickest way to get something done is what? Get someone else to do it. That's the quickest way. Cause if you're doing it, you're going to wait until you've got the time to do it. Right? Quickest way to get someone else to do it. And if you want something done properly, just get someone who's competent to do it. You know,
Heather (10:52.4)
Absolutely.
Heather (10:57.146)
Yeah.
Daimien Patterson (11:02.335)
and you get someone who's more competent than you to do it. You wouldn't go, you wouldn't do your own surgery. You wouldn't go to court without a lawyer. So just find someone more competent than you to do it and you'll get lots of things done.
Heather (11:13.454)
Yeah, the best managers or leaders are people that find people that are better than them in all the different areas,
Daimien Patterson (11:18.263)
100 % yeah 100 % and I think once you sort of the penny drops on that you go yeah of course
Do it right now. And anyway, it be a good time to give smart workforce solutions a plug. Yeah, we'll talk about that But the other two things I had was create team structures and career models in your business. So when someone joins your business, they have to see a future for themselves there, right? And if you've only got one station for them, then they're gonna go, they're gonna do that. Then they're gonna go somewhere else, because they wanna advance. So what you will need to do is sort of paint a
picture to them and say, look, this job actually has five levels, not one. And the first level is trainee. And then the second level is junior consultant. The next level is senior consultant. And then we've got management consultant and senior management. Right. So those five are great. Trainee, junior, senior manager, senior manager. Right. And then you can give them a little table and you say, look, this is the level of pay that you get at each level. And this is the qualifications and experience you need to go to the next level.
and then these are the jobs that people at that level will do.
And that's so critical to when people join your business for them to see a future. Otherwise you're going to constantly be replacing them and build that up and then put people in teams so that they're not work. They're not thrown in the deep end. Like always have like a senior person who's been with you for a while running that. And then you bring in the new person works under the senior person. You look at any successful organization, they all do that. They all work in teams. And it's like I remember
Daimien Patterson (13:01.532)
I was in the Army and we had to do a physical training session. was 150 people in this training session and one PT instructor, one physical trainer. I thought this will be interesting to how he handles this. And what he did is the first thing he did is he divided everyone into groups of three, which so he brought down his management liability from 150 down to 50 groups, you know? And then he went, right, we're gonna run the ring road. So there was a circular road through the barracks
Heather (13:12.122)
Well, yeah.
Daimien Patterson (13:30.488)
He said, okay, we're gonna run the ring road in groups. And I was like, okay. And he said, so start here, finish here. And so then he had full control. Like he'd just stay there at the start line, finish line. And he said, but the first group back are going to do zero pushups. The next group will do two pushups. The next group will do four pushups. And the last group will do 100 pushups.
I never ran so hard in my bloody life, you know, because I didn't want the two other people in my team to do more pushups than they needed to. Right. And so when you put people in teams and you reward them, based as a team, then what happens is everyone pulls a lot harder because, know, you'll let yourself down, but because you only have yourself to answer to, but when you have other people answer, you'll work 10 times harder. So forming teams is really critical, I think, in the sense that you get that.
and people work a lot harder when they're in teams. But also when you're the junior member of the team, you get a chance to just be a fly on the wall and learn before you're the team leader where you're then held accountable for the performance of the whole team. And that's been a game changer for me in business is forming teams and getting, yeah.
Heather (14:34.778)
It's brilliant. And I have a question for you on that because you said the piece around when
Farming teams. Yeah, got it. So when you bring somebody on, let's say you are in a state of growth and you're not a hundred percent in, you're in that state of growth and you're not a hundred percent like really where that job could potentially go. And you mentioned earlier, map out the future for that potential job. Say there's like five different levels, but what if you don't know a hundred percent what's next in that potential role? How do you then get somebody to buy into the vision?
Daimien Patterson (14:44.981)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Daimien Patterson (15:05.771)
Yeah, I think you have to have a greater vision for the business than where the business is now.
So when someone comes in and then share that vision with those people, so you might only be one person, you might be three people, you might be 20, but whenever someone comes in and say, hey, listen, we're a growing business and this is our vision, in five years from now, we're gonna be five times bigger. And when we get to that point, we're gonna need middle managers, we're gonna need team leaders, we're gonna need middle managers, the whole thing, and then draw the org chart for what it's gonna look like in five years time.
And then show them that and you say, here, here's the org chart. You know, right now we only have one team, but we're to have multiple teams and you know, the team leaders and you might be to see the team right now, but I'm going to raise a second team and I want you to be in charge of it. So first of all, I need you to just learn how to do it and understudy your team leader. And then I'm going to give you your own team one day. And then they go, great. You know, so it doesn't have to exist now. You just got to be good at painting the vision and let them see what, you're doing. And,
That's enough. know, most people, as we're actually excited about that, they want to have the idea of getting in the ground level of the business as well. And being part of that story that really excites people. And, and rather than coming into a business has been around for 50 years and there's bureaucracy and a pecking order and people like, I don't know about this. Yeah.
Heather (16:23.694)
I'm, I'm really glad you said that. That's, that's yeah. Great advice. So what else? There's another one in there. There's another tip, right? Did I, was that, were we up to four? Yeah, I think. What's the last
Daimien Patterson (16:27.167)
Yeah, it's... I don't want to think
Daimien Patterson (16:33.631)
Yeah, I got one more and one more was to get just you just kind of really just be honest with yourself about your own abilities and make sure you are getting coached or trained both yourself.
and the other leaders in your business. Make sure that that's happening because I think the conference where we were at and I was speaking there and I got everyone in the room, said, right, put your hand up if you're a business, if you are the owner of your business and you're, sorry, you're running the business, you're in charge of your business and everyone but two people put their hand up, right? And then I said, right, put your hand up if you think you're a good leader and only like a third of the room put their hand up.
I said, right, so two thirds of you have got a bad leader running your business. And then I just let that sink in for a second because ultimately, if you were gonna hire someone to run your business for you, would you hire yourself?
Heather (17:17.572)
I remember that.
Daimien Patterson (17:28.143)
And if the answer to that is no, then you've got a job to do and that is to go and work on those six hats. Learn marketing, learn sales, learn operations, learn admin, learn the training systems and all of that and the general manager leadership.
learn all those things or hire someone who can do it and get out of the way. And often you can't afford to hire someone because your business is not profitable enough yet. So then go back to point number one, focus on your most profitable product or service so that you can fund that growth. Yeah.
Heather (18:03.056)
Brilliant. Do you know, actually remember when you said that to the audience and you're like, then you have a bad leader running your business and you could hear a pin drop. Yeah, it was, but it's true. Like you have a really great way of distilling down some simple wisdom in a way that people can understand. love the metaphors you're bringing in from your, your days in the military as well. It's pretty cool. So we're going to change gears yet, because speaking of your past, I want to know.
Daimien Patterson (18:10.423)
Yeah, it was confronting, but true, but true, know.
Daimien Patterson (18:26.859)
Yeah.
Heather (18:32.024)
Earlier when before I hit record you said, know, my main focus is now is to not be a technician. It's to be a businessman. So I want to know what the hell that means and where have you come from? So what's your journey to where and what you're doing right now? Tell me the whole
Daimien Patterson (18:38.475)
Yes.
Daimien Patterson (18:46.335)
Yeah, okay, so guess, know, the brief sort of story of my life is, you know, working class kid from Western Sydney joins the army lucky enough to get into officer training.
So had 18 months of training at Duntroon and then graduated from there. 20 years of age. I'm in charge of 30 soldiers. So I feel very privileged to have had that opportunity. But the army is a very different place than the commercial world because it's not a business. It doesn't do marketing. It doesn't do sales. It doesn't really do budgeting and bookkeeping. Like as officers, you don't get involved in all that stuff. They've got civilians to do that. So there, and it's not a profitable
So it doesn't have that commercial reality of getting things done that that pay the bills, you know So anyway, then I left I worked briefly for a property investment company and then I went started my own property investment company So when I was in the army, I was a property very successful property investor So I decided that I wanted to do that afterwards and that was my first business
And then I've been a serial entrepreneur that businesses still going. It actually got wiped out once I had to restart it. And that was brutal and educational. But I've done all sorts of things. had a boot camp for kids. I had an adventure park that I bought during vendor finance and then I hand it back. I had a land speaking company.
Heather (20:09.691)
my god. Yeah, right.
Daimien Patterson (20:14.249)
And then I end up getting rid of that. And I've learned a lot of lessons, both the easy way and the hard way, you know, and the easy way is always better. And the easy way is just to listen to other people who've already done it. Okay. And be careful of be careful listening to people who haven't done it, but listen to the people who have done it. And unfortunately there is a lot of sort of business coaches inverted commas who have never actually run a business other than their one man band business coaching business, you know, and those people, my advice for those people is
Don't call yourself a business coach. Call yourself a systems coach or a just like pick that one little thing within a business that you're an expert in and leave the rest. But yeah, the yeah, I think that's good advice. I don't pretend to be something that you're not just whatever you're really good at. Just focus on that.
Heather (20:53.732)
Yep. Good advice.
Heather (21:02.38)
said on this show before, it's the whole coaches, coaching coaches, coaching coaches, like you take a course and then you teach it.
Daimien Patterson (21:07.467)
yeah. Some of the smartest coaches I see out there are the ones who coach coaches, know, the coach for coaches. And I'm like, well, if anyone doesn't need to be convinced that they need a coach, it's a coach.
Heather (21:17.904)
So well said. But yeah, I love that you said, listen, pay attention to who you take advice from. Really important. Yeah. Keep going.
Daimien Patterson (21:24.629)
Hmm. Yeah, I think that yeah, I think that's important. That's a good way to sort of cut through it all but anyway, so then I I
Heather (21:30.183)
yeah.
Daimien Patterson (21:33.783)
Right now I've got the prop investment company still that's a multi -million dollar turnover. It's got about 20 something staff. And then the second business is smart workforce solutions, which is an outsourcing. So we will recruit and place both South African and Filipinos into your business to help you, know, very hard to find high quality Australians with such a low unemployment in Australia. And the labor cost is very expensive.
A lot of people already know about the Philippines, but they don't understand what the massive opportunities in South Africa right now. So smartwareforcesolutions .com .au, give it a plug. And I also have a couple other things. have a finance company. have a Airbnb management business. And I also do individual business, speaking and consulting, which I'm really, it's really, I just do that for fun, hey. I really just love helping people. And so I do speak on stages like when we met.
and I can go into businesses and do consulting, even one -on -one or group training and things like that. I really enjoy that. And I do have up to five people that I coach one -on -one on a routine basis. That's all my schedule allows for. So, know, anyone who needs or is interested in that, happy to consider them. And there's an app. Really.
Heather (22:56.794)
So what's your area of specialty? Speaking of coaching, what do you excel
Daimien Patterson (23:01.217)
Well, scaling leadership and scaling businesses, know, how to be the boss of the business, not like, you know, I mean, I know a little about a lot, know, but the thing that I really focused on is how do you grow that business? How do you get yourself out of the business? How do you grow it? How do you build the team structures and the career models so people want to stay? What should you focus on?
Heather (23:03.386)
Yeah.
Daimien Patterson (23:31.113)
that guy Gordon Ramsey goes into restaurants and he, you know, and he'll go and look at the menu and go, you know, you've got 500 of the items on your menu and he'll just rip it out and go just.
Heather (23:40.324)
Simplify.
Daimien Patterson (23:41.515)
Yeah, just had like six items. That's it. You know, be really good at those six things. And it's a bit of that sort of stuff as well. But what I'm focused on now is I'm the CEO of my business group. And as a CEO of that group, I still do a couple of key functions in the property investment group. Like I do the webinar every week that we use to as part of our marketing funnel. And I do the weekly meetings for each company. I chair the weekly meetings and give direction
guidance to my teams. But I'm really focused on how I grow those businesses. So my time is spent now reading books about scaling, attending conferences about scaling, talking to people about scaling, just anything and everything that deals with growing a business. ultimately people, know, if you want to have more time and more money, build a business that you can sell for millions and then you'll have all the spare time and all the money in the world.
Heather (24:39.386)
But valid point, how many businesses do you have now as part of your
Daimien Patterson (24:44.361)
Well, there's five.
but two bigger ones. And then the mortgage breaking business, the finance business is basically on ice at the moment because it exists, but we've just found it easier just to outsource that. And I'll bring that back to life soon. The Airbnb management businesses in its early days and they were just really refining. I think whenever you start a business, you really need to just get the business model right before you scale because if you don't have the business right, when you scale, all you will do is
scale your mistakes, scale your problems. So as fellow, Ryan Deese, might've heard of digital marketer, Ryan Deese, he talks about the flywheel and he says that the flywheel is like that heavy wheel that spins and that's your business process from start to finish one rotation and you need to just perfect the spinning of the wheel so that it spins stably.
Heather (25:23.876)
Yeah, yeah. yeah, definitely.
time
Daimien Patterson (25:41.301)
And if you spin it too fast, too early, it'll wobble and shake and fall off and break, you know? And I think that's a great metaphor for your own business. Just get your business process right from start to finish. Test it at a small level, fix those problems, amend your procedures to learn those lessons and make sure those mistakes don't happen again. And then when you get that right, you can then spin the wheel really fast, which is scale the business and service a thousand customers a month instead of five customers a month, you know? And that's a
great metaphor. So the Airbnb management companies in that stage at the moment where we're just refining the flywheel, property investment companies at full speed ahead. Smart workforce has just come out of the refinement process and we're now scaling. So there's different stages of business, which is really good. I highly recommend Ryan Deeson's stuff as well. I've been really impressed by what I've learned from that guy.
Heather (26:35.406)
Yeah, Ryan's great. He used to have, gosh, the summit. did the, he had the podcast, Perpetual Traffic, which has now changed hands. And he had the Traffic and Conversion Summit, which I went to one of the very first ones way back in the day in Austin in Texas. But yeah, with Perry Belcher was his co -founder of that. So yeah, great, great group to learn from. So I want to know a little bit around how you work with somebody, specifically a case study. And I'm curious to see where you're going to take this because you have multiple businesses.
So which one? Tell me more about how you've helped somebody.
Daimien Patterson (27:07.543)
So I'll tell you, I thought about this and I thought, I've got a great story. One of my friends who's actually very successful person in his own, right? And I won't say his name because he's a bit of a cheeky fella, but one of the things that he did in the early days, he made a lot of money from, he found a way to hack something and then made a lot of money from it.
And it wasn't against the law. And it was just a bit cheeky what he did. And then he made a lot of money. then basically he kind of, he hadn't broken the law, but he kind of wanted to go into something else after that. So we went aboard a business, was a, it was a business that specialized in things for people who caravans. know, satellite dishes to get TV. And when you're traveling around the country in your van or motor home, little generators and things like that. And anyway,
Heather (28:00.879)
Mm -hmm.
Daimien Patterson (28:05.633)
this business off this guy and like most cases when you buy a business off somebody often you don't find all the skeletons until you're actually running it and he he being sold a bit of a dog and and he rang me up and he said demo he goes I need a real business person to come and have a look at his business because he goes it's I'm bleeding money
Heather (28:11.812)
Mm -hmm.
Daimien Patterson (28:27.349)
Like he goes, like, and he's a very competent businessman himself, but he said, I just need fresh eyes to look at this. Cause I can't find the thing. And he goes, will you, and he flew me over to where, to where he lives. And, and he said, just come out off, pay for your flights and accommodation. And can you just spend like a couple of days? I'm like, sure, mate, no worries. And I did it as a favor, you know? So I went over and,
And day one, just, he, we got in a room. had a conference room sort of set up and I just put the butcher's paper on the walls. And I said, right, let's just go back to basics and da da da. And, got them all thinking about the right stuff again. And then I just asked the question. I said, you know, what's your most profitable product or service? You know, and, he was selling, he said the generators and I said, are they any good? And he goes, not really. They break. I said, why do they break? And he goes, I don't know. I don't know. So I said, well, we, said, all right, hear me out.
Heather (29:13.84)
no.
Daimien Patterson (29:21.289)
I said, how much do you buy these generators for? And I forget the numbers exactly, but it something like $500 each landed, but you buy them by the shipping container load, right? And I said, okay, no problem. And I said, well.
Heather (29:29.721)
Yeah.
Daimien Patterson (29:32.481)
Could we just get some of these generators and run them until they break? Like just run them nonstop in the car park until they break and maybe even look at all the ones that have been sent back and just quickly survey the braking. And then can you get on the phone or even get on a plane and fly to China to the factory and get them to upgrade those particular points of the generator that break? And he was like, mate.
That is so simple and obvious, but I never even thought to do it. I just thought that we couldn't, that was just, we had to deal with it. And so he went and did exactly that. the increase the lander price to $700 from $500. And then all he did was put, used to sell them for a thousand. So he put the price up to 1200. And I said, great. And then so that, so he went and fixed that. And now he had a good product.
Heather (30:02.266)
That's how it yeah.
Daimien Patterson (30:22.327)
And then what I said is I said, who's your best salesperson? And this guy puts it And I said, right, sell me the, give me your spill when you sell me the generator, when you sell it in the shop, you know? And they just had a shop front as well. And, and he got, you know, he started talking about the, this is a Funkmaster 2000 generator, does all this. And I'm like, okay, cool. I'm like.
Can you grab that generator, go down somewhere nice and get down on one knee and someone hold up an iPhone and just film that, that sales pitch about the generator. And, and then, okay. And then I have to put that on Facebook as a Facebook ad, get a Shopify account, start taking online orders. This is ridiculous that you're only trying to do retail. You've got the whole world and we can just send them out anyway. So this was the thing. And then they said they, and they were good students. You know, they just focus exactly.
on what they needed to do. really, when you think about the advice I've already given you, that's a great example because what was your most profitable product? Focus on that, fix the flywheel. So the product was breaking, fix that and then scale it, which was take it online instead of just the retail shop. And anyway, I went back a couple of years later, I was in town for a different reason and I rang him up and said, hey, let's catch up. He goes, I said what? He goes, but yes, dinner's on me.
Let's go. I've got so much to tell you. And he told me about how everything went and they went and said, we did exactly what you said. And he said, you know what? I already knew that stuff, but I hadn't, I didn't have it in the forefront of my mind. I didn't, I needed someone else to just remind me of those things. And he goes, we now sell, you know, we now make $700 a, so $500 generator cause it lands for several. He goes, we now sell 50 a week and we distribute all over Australia, New Zealand.
Heather (32:04.976)
That's amazing.
Daimien Patterson (32:07.211)
I'm like, yeah, mate, because anything you want. I said, a hammer, can I get a hammer? And he goes, sure. gives a hammer. But I'm still waiting. I'm still waiting for my hammer. the, but that's the point, you know, and sometimes business is actually really easy. You know, it's right in front of you, but we get so overwhelmed.
Heather (32:12.1)
Or she'd ask for that.
Daimien Patterson (32:27.351)
And we got all this advice coming from different people and the good idea fairies. And you know, go to a business conference and there's 10 different speakers and you come home and you just like, I don't know what to do, you know? And it's actually really simple. Just focus on your most profitable product, refine that business process, narrow line through the minefield. Don't try and clear the whole minefield. Just get that one product seamlessly pumping and watch the money come in and then grow your business from there.
Heather (32:51.29)
God, that's such great advice. Again, you just make it simple to listen to as well. You just don't cut around, you I love your messaging. It's great. okay, Damo, where do people learn more about you? I mean, you have a of things going on. So if they want coaching from you, let's start with that. Where do they find out
Daimien Patterson (33:08.983)
Well, damienpaterson .com that's spelled with the extra I D -A -I -I -E -N, paterson .com. You can reach me through there. If you wanna do, if you wanna build a team and you wanna get some great Filipino, South Africans working for you, then smartworkforcesolutions .com .au. It's Australian based company. And if you wanna do any property investing, integritypropertyinvestment .com .au. Now that, and that's a whole nother segment, you know, on the property, but I'll tell you something, I've made a lot of money
business, but some of easiest money ever made is by having buying properties in the right locations and don't yeah, it's not about re it's not about renovating and all that stuff. It's just about research. Pick the places booming, buy a house there and make hundreds of thousand dollars with a little effort, you know.
Heather (33:54.234)
Could be an interesting chat to have actually, cause a lot of people in business think that that's, they don't know how to funnel their, their money from their business into property and how that all works. that, good. Yep. Yeah. Smart. Okay. I love this so much. And one quick question is we start to wrap up because I have to ask it. I'm sure people are thinking this as well. Why South Africa for the VAs.
Daimien Patterson (34:02.703)
Yeah. Make your cash in business and park it in properties.
There you go.
Daimien Patterson (34:18.039)
Yeah, it's a great story. So we all know the history of South Africa, right? And we know that they had apartheid for up until about 30 years ago. And in that is a pretty brutal regime where if you were black or colored, you know, you was you were structurally disadvantaged, you weren't allowed to own real estate, you weren't allowed to have shares in a business. You were given opportunity to go to the good schools and things like that.
What's happened in South Africa is obviously Nelson Mandela was elected and he's obviously since passed away. But what's happened now is the sort of the hard right of the ANC are now running South Africa. And there's a lot of reverse racism going on where they have a quota system now, affirmative action quota system where your workforce has to be racially diversified relative to the country, which basically means about 90 % of your workforce has to be black.
and then the other 10 % can be coloured or white. And so we now have a situation in South Africa where you've got a lot of people who are exceptionally capable, very well educated, but because of the colour of their skin, can't get a job because there's not enough quoted positions for those people. And look, in the big picture, it's probably what South Africa has to do. The same way that we had affirmative action for women in the workplace and things like that.
of affirmative action or not. I think it's ironic that they've now got racism going the other way. And then COVID made it a lot worse. So if your company, by the way, is not compliant with that policy, you get fined by the government and you're not allowed to do any government contracts. So you do want to get your company out of that situation. When COVID hit South Africa, which is only a few years ago, a lot of those whites lost their jobs, were laid off. And then when COVID passed and they
Heather (35:47.0)
Isn't it?
Daimien Patterson (36:10.583)
recruiting again they couldn't get their jobs back. now we have a situation in South Africa where you got a lot of very highly like you know English first language. Can you hear me okay I've got an internet connection little signal there. English first language and university educated their university qualifications are as good or as any Australian university and they're available for
Alright, did you lose me there? Yeah, what was the last thing I said? I saw the internet
Heather (36:41.762)
I did. Yeah. You're back. I was just going to wait till you hit back in. Let me make a note really quickly of the timestamp of this. Okay. so you were saying, you were saying a lot of the whites were laid off and then it just went.
Daimien Patterson (36:58.795)
when COVID happened, a lot of the whites were laid off and as was everyone and then but when COVID passed and they're rehiring, the whites couldn't get their jobs back. So you have a lot of people who have and of course, we don't care what someone's race is in Australia or anywhere else around the world. So it's just there's a lot of people there who are looking to work online now remotely. So and incredible, incredible people.
And because of the difference in the Rand versus the dollar and the, it's actually ends up being about less than half the cost of an Australian. And, but yet their work ethic is arguably superior because they have 35 % unemployment. We have 3 .5 % unemployment.
So they are so grateful to have a job that they will work their backsides off just to impress you and retain their job. And so that's what we found. And I've now got, I think somewhere between 15 and 20 South Africans who work directly for me, and then a whole bunch of South Africans who work for clients through us. So we employ them and then they work for the client. They give 95 % of their time to the client and 5 % of their time to our team building and accountability type things
If you want to build a team, to Smart Workforce Solutions because we do everything. We recruit, we train them, we even give you some training, your managers training, how to manage that.
Heather (38:28.976)
I love that so much. Yeah, you guys, and thank you for sharing that story as well, because you told me that in the Philippines about the country and what they're going through and everything. And I never had thought about the flip side of what is actually happening and how you can find incredibly qualified workers over there. But also you did mention to me, you train the entrepreneur or the business owner. I think that's equally as important.
Daimien Patterson (38:48.715)
Yes. Yeah, absolutely. I think what happens to a lot of people, the file and outsourcing is because they don't really have the systems in place to manage remote workers effectively. So the process that we now have is we do a strategy session with the new client. We say, okay, what roles we go right through your business and identify everything that you can outsource and, and build job descriptions or duty statements, whatever you want to call them for those roles. And then we'll go and recruit.
South Africans or Filipinos to fill those roles. then not only that will recruit them, we'll also train them as much as we can before they start work with you. But then with you and your any other managers we have, we then do a thing called remote staff managers.
training course, right? So we actually train how to manage like how you what sort of meetings you to run, what rules, what agendas, what systems do you need to use, what reports you get them to make, and things like that. And how do you maintain morale of someone who's working from home on the other side of the world, you know, and all of that all of those problems have been faced by other people and solved. So we just need to teach you what those solutions are, and you will succeed. I remember when I hired my first VA, she sat there for six months doing nothing because I was the problem.
Heather (39:49.744)
Absolutely brilliant.
Heather (40:02.512)
remember that way back in my days too. Totally, yeah.
Daimien Patterson (40:04.5)
Yeah, yeah. then, and so what we do now is I just thought about, when I first started, what training did I need? So I didn't file at that, you know, so we offer that. And then we have the third session we do with the client is where we actually go, okay, well, let's talk about your person that we're gonna hire for you. What training do they need? And we talk about our training, your training and third party training. So say you wanna hire a bookkeeper.
then we've actually got a training package that we can give a bookkeeper from another country in Australian taxation and ASIC rules and things like that. So we get them to do that. You might have a procedure manual you want them to read, a website you want them to read and something else. And then third party might, we might get them to do the Xero software course online. And so we put all that together and then so we'll recruit the person and then we'll train them for the first couple of weeks in all those things and they come to work for you and they're ready
So pretty exciting. I'm really proud of it. And we're now rolling that out across the board and everyone would talk to about it's like, wow, that's actually pretty amazing. So because no one's doing that. Yeah, no one's doing that. Recruit someone for you and wish you the best.
Heather (41:08.602)
love it. Yeah. feel like I'm thinking it's like, I'm like the matrix. They're like, just plugging up the things that they should learn for your company. And then we train you up and it's like, boom, you're just off and running. It's so smart. So smart. So that's smart workplace solutions. Dot com. Smartworkforcesolutions .com is the URL. Dot au. I'm going say it one more time because you say it one more time.
Daimien Patterson (41:25.673)
It's about workforce solutions,
Daimien Patterson (41:30.603)
dot au. Smart workforce solutions dot com dot au Australian company, but we service people all over the world. And yeah.
Heather (41:41.264)
Excellent. Good. And the property one, one more time, if they want some property help.
Daimien Patterson (41:45.503)
integritypropertyinvestment .com .au and then damianpaterson .com
Heather (41:48.44)
And your name one more time for coaching. Excellent. As we start to wrap up, I just want to have you think about the people listening to the show or watching on YouTube or wherever they are in the world. And if you have one last piece of advice that you could give them around overwhelm and getting through the harder moments of business life, what would it
Daimien Patterson (42:08.769)
Okay, so this is really good. Now, this is what we call the one question, okay? So whenever you find yourself overwhelmed, you ask yourself this question, just don't think about anything else, just go, what's the one thing I can do right now that will best improve my situation? What's the one thing I can do right now that will best improve my situation? Then stop thinking about it and bloody well do it. Just execute, right? And then when it's done, you then,
Mike, have a break, whatever, then ask yourself the question, okay, what's the next thing that I can do right now that'll best improve my situation? And what it does is it just, you know, when you're over, you've got so much stuff, you can only do one thing at a time, right? So just ask yourself, what's the most important thing? What's the thing that's gonna make the biggest difference? And in business, it's often the thing that's gonna bring in the money. You know, what's gonna bring in the most money if I do it? Because there lots of little things you can do to keep yourself busy and feel like you're busy, but you're not gonna get paid the bills, you know? And with money, you can pay other people who do things for you.
So what's your one most, usually it's most profitable product and just focus on that.
And so in the military, they teach that as a sort of battlefield survival thing. So you know, you're patrolling along and next thing you know, the trees are up, you're in an ambush, the enemy's shooting at you and you hit the deck and you're like, you're overwhelmed, right? What am I going to do? What's the one thing I can do right now to best improve my situation? there's a little ditch in the ground over there. I'm going to leopard crawl over there and get in there so they can't hit me, you know, but I'm still stuck in the ambush. So what am I going to do? Maybe I'll throw some grenades at them and shoot back a bit
get their heads down and then, okay, what's the next thing I can do? I'll get on the radio and call in for some support. I'm stuck in an ambush, grid reference one, two, three, five, six, and then what's the next thing you can do and so on and so on and so on, right? And maybe crawl out of the ambush area and then to the flank or something like that and escape. So.
Daimien Patterson (44:00.171)
But in business, you sometimes you can sit there and I got another great client and friend of mine who I was coaching and she had found herself a really difficult situation where she was in business with her husband and her husband was really the driving force and light and he was the entrepreneur and he unfortunately died. And she was left to run the business, look after their beautiful daughter and to grieve all at the same
And I said to her, I actually offered to coach her for free when it happened. And I said, look, I've never run a business like yours. I've run a lot of businesses, but I just want to help you. And I think this is the best way I can help you right now. And I said to her, what's that one thing you can do? then she had a product, which was her most profitable product. And I said, just stop thinking about anything else and let's work out how we can sell a lot of that real fast.
And then she gave me the answer and I said, okay, and we worked that out and guess what? And then she pulled in like a couple hundred grand worth of revenue just within about three or four months. And just total game changer took the pressure off her, but also gave her a bit of a boost as well that she could do it, you know? And so yeah, the one question. So if you're listening to this, what's the one thing you can do right now that best improve your situation, then stop thinking about it and just do it.
Heather (45:09.708)
Incredible.
Heather (45:29.776)
Absolutely. And I reckon you should write a business book called The Simple Things I Learned About Business in the Army. And each page could be a metaphor with like a cute little illustration.
Daimien Patterson (45:37.514)
Yeah, well I might just do that
Heather (45:42.49)
I know, I'm game if you put it out there for sure. Wow, that was, thank you. can see what, well, first of all, you're an excellent speaker and that's how I met you as we said, but I can see how you are so good at what you do and speaking in communications because it's been an absolute privilege and pleasure listening to you. And I could keep going with this conversation, but I'm going to cut it because then I'm going to invite you back later for another chat, another day.
Daimien Patterson (45:44.811)
Yeah.
Daimien Patterson (46:01.641)
It's a con.
Daimien Patterson (46:06.589)
Anytime, anytime. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate
Heather (46:09.818)
Thank you for being here as well.
