From Radio Broadcasting to Building a Marketing Agency: An Interview with the MostFM

Jordan: Hi, my name is Jordan McFadyen. Welcome to the Marketing Mindset podcast. This podcast is designed to help you navigate this cluttered world of marketing, challenge you to move away from random acts of marketing towards planning intentional marketing strategies. In a slightly different episode today, I’m going to share this fascinating conversation I had with Adam Harris. Now, he’s the host of the Business Hour radio show on the Most FM here in Taranaki. I’m chatting about my journey from being made to do local stunts on the radio, founding Done By Nine, and literally everything in between. I’ll share some of the unique experiences that I’ve had in my life, and how that’s helped shape our approach to business and marketing and building Done By Nine as well. Plus, Adam and I discuss and share insights on things like the evolution of marketing, the impact of AI tools and the importance of building authentic connections with your audience. Hopefully you enjoy.

Adam: Good morning and welcome to the Business Hour. I am your host, Adam Harris. I’d like to welcome Jordan McFadyen from Done By Nine. Good morning, Jordan.

Jordan: Thank you so much for having me. It’s a privilege to be here.

Adam: So, we were talking just before, you’re not a stranger to the radio, are you?

Jordan: Funnily enough, no, but in a very different sense. It was definitely not working on a Business Hour type show, let’s be fair. I cut my teeth in radio, and I started on the night show on Energy FM. This is going back a little bit.

Adam: How long?

Jordan: Back when there were local night shows.

Adam: Okay.

Jordan: So, let’s say that’s going back maybe 20 years. And then worked my way to work on the drive show, so the afternoon show, locally again on Energy FM. And then I essentially started, back then, I kind of turned into… Back in the day with radio, there used to be all those stunts that you do out in the street. That was me. I was having to do all those crazy things. So they’d send me up on those aerobatic planes, and live broadcasts doing loop-de-loops over the Wind Wand and stuff like that. And then doing all the stuff on the streets. I remember some stories, like, around, I don’t know, we once made our own fragrance and perfume, and we were testing it with people live on the streets. Back in those days, where we would just grab a mic and go broadcast from anywhere.

Adam: Why has that kind of stopped?

Jordan: I don’t know. I’m really not sure, but it was…

Adam: Because it was, you know, that kind of thing was really kind of big in the community, wasn’t it?

Jordan: Yeah, it was. It was. And I think just times change. Maybe listener demands kind of change, potentially. Hey, you never know. That style may kind of come back, as history sometimes repeats. And I guess it’s maybe just the way that people consume. Obviously, there’s still some great local radio here as well, and obviously this is a great example of it. But it’s just a different type of style, I guess, that potentially the type of entertainment that we were kind of craving for back in those days. Potentially, this is even back before Facebook. I remember I got my first Facebook account, was working on that station, back at Energy FM. It probably had rebranded to More FM by that stage, because I went through that rebrand.

Jordan: But obviously, we consume content differently now. So potentially, all that type of content that we were delivering back then, we’re able to get on TikTok and Instagram or Facebook. So potentially, there’s not that type of drive to search out that type of content in the mornings, on a morning breakfast radio. So instead, more information-based content might be more what people are kind of searching for.

Adam: What was the craziest thing that you did?

Jordan: Yeah, honestly, we used to do, I don’t know how, one of the ones that I do remember, and I think we were pushing the boundaries. But we did a promotion with, I can’t remember, it was one of the local retailers. This is with Barney on Classic Hits. So this is Classic Hits before it turned into The Hits, because I moved stations. And he came up with this crazy idea that somehow got signed off. And it got signed off, and it got sold, and a client bought it. And it was called, I can’t remember the exact thing, but it was essentially called the Golden Shower, which sounds as crazy as what you think. But we literally got a local hardware store to give us an old shower, a shower off their thing. And we got them to paint it gold, and we put it on the back of a trailer, and we would take it around Taranaki.

Jordan: And the first person each morning who would come and have a golden shower with me, live on the radio, would win this prize, whatever it was. So those type of things. So having to get down to literally my undies on the street, hopping into this gold-painted shower, freezing mornings, for entertainment, and hoping that someone would come and join me, so that we could turn the shower off and kind of move on with my day.

Adam: I’ll be completely honest. When I woke up this morning, I was not thinking that this conversation was going to go this way.

Jordan: Yeah, yeah. So yeah, it was a different type of entertainment. But look, it was fun, and it really cut my teeth in terms of communication, communication styles, working with people, getting out the community. As you say, it was a great chance to be able to do that, and meet a lot of people and have a lot of fun. I think that was the main thing. It was a fantastic job, and we had a really good team, and I know they still do great work now as well. And yeah, it was great. It was a really good job to kind of do in those early 20s for me, that allowed me just to go out and have fun and get paid for it. Paid really badly, but paid for it.

Adam: So what do you do for fun now?

Jordan: Well, interesting how times have changed. And for fun now, me and my wife have four kids. That keeps us very busy. But what I enjoy now, which is probably why I’m on a show talking about business now, is literally business, and learning and reading about everything. At the moment, for example, trying to learn as much as I can about investments. Two years ago, it might have been building a process within our organisation. Yeah, just, that’s what I actually really enjoy. And just trying to build what we’re trying to do now is something that I actually really enjoy. Some people look at it and go, you work too hard, or you’re doing too much. But a lot of the things that we do, sure, there’s some parts of every job that do feel like work. But then I always try and think about, if I can learn and meet people, and do what I’ve done this morning, gone out for a coffee and just learn and connect and share stories, I think that’s something that I really enjoy.

Adam: So people will be listening and be like, oh, who’s this guy, Jordan? So your business, you’re the owner and founder of Done By Nine. Talk to us about the name, for starters.

Jordan: Yeah, so we’re a strategic marketing company, and essentially there’s a couple of different ways. The name has kind of grown with us as we’ve gone. So it was one of those things in business where you do strike things a bit lucky. And I think, firstly, trying to figure out a name was one of the hardest things, and to get something that I was really happy with, that kind of encapsulated where I was at that moment, that I could also see potential growth with. So when we first came up with the name, this is me and my wife, and I was literally just kind of cutting my teeth in terms of the actual freelancing and starting to actually build a business.

Jordan: And it literally came to me based on the fact that a lot of the work that I was doing to build the business originally, because I was working full-time as well, was having to be done before nine, so in the mornings. And this also then worked into our family schedules, so that I could still go off and kind of support and take the kids to school and that type of thing. So that’s actually where it kind of came into, is Done By Nine, from there. But it’s kind of developed over that time as well, that a lot of our services that we provide our clients is being able to provide them support, especially in terms of their marketing, so that they can feel as though their marketing-related tasks are literally done by nine.

Jordan: They can check in. They can make sure it looks okay, and they can then go focus on what they do best, which is running their businesses. So we work with e-com businesses, founder-led e-com businesses, that they want to be designing their products. They want to be doing customer service. They don’t want to be stressing about whether a campaign is working well. So they can kind of check in on the campaigns, make sure it’s done, and then they go to the actual job for the day, which is running their business and things. So the name has evolved over time, based on personal experience, to then how we actually support clients as well.

Adam: Why is marketing important?

Jordan: Honestly, yeah, look, it’s like one of the fundamentals, really. Obviously, having a great product and a great service is very important, but then you’ve got to make sure that people actually know about it, and about what you can do, to be able to actually find new customers and be able to support new people. And I guess that’s one of my big things as well, especially with our businesses: trying to find the right people who have a pain point, or are searching for something that we can really help with. And one of our main missions, as the company has developed, is essentially trying to find clarity through the clutter. The marketing space is massively cluttered. There is so much information. AI is not helping that situation as well.

Jordan: There’s so much to try and take in, to try and think about. And I guess that’s one of our core things that we’re trying to do with clients, is just try to allow them to breathe, take a step back, and to get some clarity about what’s actually working, so they don’t have to be doing literally everything. I think a lot of our clients will just focus on, okay, marketing, that just means they’ve got to be on Facebook, or they’ve got to be doing this. And it’s just trying to challenge some of those norms around, okay, well, look, if your ideal client, or the people that you were serving, are not on Facebook, then no, you don’t need to be on Facebook. You need to be kind of where they are, and trying to connect with the people that way. So back to the original question, I think that, yeah, marketing is just a really key way of being able to connect with your potential audience, and try and help them, essentially, whether it’s with your product or your service. And obviously it’s a fundamental kind of part of business.

Adam: It feels like the space has changed a lot, and specifically probably over the last 15 years. Since you’ve been in business, and we’ll come on to the story that got you into that point later on, what have you seen change over the last kind of four, four and a half years?

Jordan: It’s been interesting. I feel even over the past four years, I feel as though we’re kind of going through a bit of a shift between marketers being very niched into what they kind of really focus on, whether it’s like paid search, or just SEO, or some other things like that. But I can kind of see that potentially looking at changing, with AI kind of coming in. And the fact that, I’m not saying everyone’s suddenly going to become like marketing unicorns, but AI is going to give some tools to be able to allow marketers to take on some other tasks that they might not have looked at previously. So there’s a great opportunity for marketers to try and increase their skill set, using tools like AI to be able to help them.

Jordan: And that’s been one of the other big things that we’re seeing, is a lot of the media companies, if we’re talking Meta, Facebook and Instagram, LinkedIn, Google, obviously a lot of the tools that they’re providing still are on the same fundamentals, but the way that we use those tools to actually market are changing all the time. Meta have introduced what they call Advantage+, which is essentially their version of AI, where we’re not needing to give as much interest base. So back in the day, we’d bucket lots of different ad groups with different interests, and tell Facebook that we want people who are interested in this particular topic.

Jordan: But what we’re seeing more and more now is that we can peel those back, and use less ad groups, and focus more on creative, and making sure that the creative is really going to connect with our key audience, and making sure we know our key audience is still really clear. But letting Facebook and Google help us find those audiences, based on data that we can provide them. So our customer base that we have at the moment, the people that are going to our website right now, those type of things. Plus just with their, what we traditionally call lookalike audiences: how people are interacting with our campaigns, and allowing Facebook and Google to find people similar to those who are clicking and interacting with our ads, or going to our landing pages, and allowing them to do that. So the game is changing all the time.

Jordan: And yeah, I feel as though that’s one of the big fundamentals that we’re always kind of tackling, and just relying and testing, really, and making sure that the tools that Facebook are giving us, and the tools that Google give us, are still the right thing for you and your business, and making sure that the creative that you’re providing those tools connects with the audience as well, so you can actually see some results.

Adam: So there’s a famous saying, I can’t remember where it came from, I think it might have been Saatchi and Saatchi: 50% of advertising is going to work. It’s just working out which of the 50%. Do you feel that now, with the tools that exist, with the tracking of data and lead gens and click funnels and everything like that, do you feel that now is as good a time as any to actually understand your marketing spend?

Jordan: Yeah, definitely.

Adam: Dollar in, dollar out sort of situation?

Jordan: 100%. Well, yes and no. For some clients, it can actually be really tricky. As you may kind of be aware of, obviously the other big challenge that we face as marketers now is we’re moving into that cookie-less world, where it’s actually getting harder and harder to track the return on investment on certain things, based on a lot of privacy things, which is great for the industry, but also a challenge for us at the end of the day as well. So it’s around how we can navigate some of those challenges, and make sure that we are still getting a good return on investment. So that’s one of those key challenges that I think we are still facing.

Jordan: But, yeah, I think the fundamentals still remain the same, that we do need to get that understanding about how much return are we actually getting on spend. We measure the return on spend depending on the type of business that you’re working with, some of the internal business goals. E-commerce, obviously, a completely different game. Like e-commerce, you’re buying, I don’t know, a pair of shoes. You can kind of work out that return on ad spend much easier, obviously taking into account all the other costs that that business has.

Jordan: When as a service-based business, where we’ll have a look at the cost per lead, for example, and try and measure on that, but then it really does also come down to how well the after-lead process works in a business. So how effective is the sales team kind of working? The quality of leads that we’re handing on to the sales team, is that kind of the type of lead that they’re looking for? And making sure that, obviously, the cost per lead, the targets that you’ve set, so we can work out the cost in and out, is accurate. But just making sure that we’re actually handing leads on to the sales team, and not just treating them as leads, but treating these as humans, making sure that the humans are actually valuable to the business, and actual potential clients that that business can actually help, you know?

Adam: So just before we go for a song, people will be listening to this going, oh, I’m not really sure. Do I need to spend money on marketing? What’s the pain points where people should be listening to this and be like, actually, do you know what? Maybe now’s the time that I should be either re-looking at it, or looking at it for the first time.

Jordan: Yeah, it’s interesting. And I think, look, I had this conversation with a client last week, who we’d just started working with, and kind of, like, we have a strategy product that we work with clients on. And so it was just our first kind of deep-dive session with her. And she was always nervous about spending, had been told to just jump in and spend $100 a day, ridiculous money for a brand-new startup, on some campaigns, but she didn’t really have her ideal customer, no kind of business plan. So essentially what we’ve had to do is kind of peel it right back. And we’re trying to actually suggest to her that there are actually some things that you can do that just go, you don’t have to essentially spend on advertising right away.

Jordan: And how I’d kind of always approach it is thinking around, okay, so as opposed to knowing about when to spend on a campaign, I’d be trying to challenge myself, and thinking about when do I want to invest more of my time into this, which obviously then connects back to cash in a business. But then, yeah, when is that time where you want to invest that time and effort to actually put a marketing strategy in place, to then get to the point where you can confidently actually put dollars behind advertising? And making sure that once you’ve tested the market, you know exactly who you’re talking to, your target audience, you can then confidently go to Meta or Google or whatever, knowing about where you acquire your customers, and you can confidently put money behind it, knowing that you’re not, I say this all the time, but you’re trying to avoid essentially donating to the Facebook Christmas party at the end of the year, because all that wasted ad spend, man, they’re going to lap it up. They still love it.

Jordan: But we’re going to make sure, as marketers and as business owners, that any dollar that you’re spending, that you’re really confident that you’re going to get some sort of return on. And then getting to that next stage of then being able to test and have a bit more extra advertising money to be able to test, because advertising is all about testing. There’s no set and forget. I kind of wish that there was a set and forget, and honestly, I’ll try and remind myself and our team and our clients that if there was a silver bullet to marketing, I probably wouldn’t be doing this right now, because I would have clocked it. I would be in my villa in Bali, living my life, because marketing would be clocked and we’d be done.

Jordan: So it’s always about testing, iterating, making sure that everything kind of is connecting with the audience. So that’s, again, a very long-winded answer too. It’s a real hard thing to decide about when to actually put money towards marketing. But if you’re not even investing your time or energy into a little bit of marketing right now, that’s essentially where I’d start, as opposed to just saying, oh, well, actually, I’ve got a spare couple of hundred dollars a day that I can put into marketing. 100%, I would be actually putting a strategy in place first, before giving that hard-earned cash away, you know?

Adam: It’s quite a science. And that’s why an organisation needs to work with somebody like yourself, that knows and understands the vertical, the nuances, what to do, what not to do. You mentioned the aspects of having a strategy, because otherwise you’re just throwing the proverbial at the wall.

Jordan: Yeah, definitely. And it’s amazing, like, no shade to some of the organisations that we’re lucky enough to work with, but some of them haven’t had fully developed customer personas, you know? We try and encourage businesses to literally have a persona where you can actually name that person. So you can say, look, we’re going to do this campaign for Peter, and we can refer back to Peter as to exactly who he was: that he was a 45-plus-year-old male that is consuming content on these particular platforms and in these magazines, and he’s, the things that help him convert to this type of messaging.

Jordan: So we can really pinpoint, and so we can really make sure that any content we’re doing for that person really is going to connect. Because I think that’s the other big trap that people fall into, especially as they start to think about marketing, is that everyone’s going to love what they do. And it’s just not true. We’re not all the big brands like Coca-Cola, that everyone needs to know about us, or the McDonald’s. We’ve got businesses that should have key audiences, and key people who either have a pain or a problem that you’re trying to solve, or a desire that you can fill for them. And we’ve got to find those people, and make sure that then your content, and what the business that you’re putting forward, connects with them, so that, yeah, they want to get your help, or they want to get your product.

Adam: Jordan, you were mentioning earlier about the radio show and how you got into that. I’d love to know the journey, the highs and the lows, from that point to kind of setting up and, yeah.

Jordan: Yeah, definitely. Look, I think, again, I think radio was a big part of a lot of the skills that I was able to develop, so I’ve always been really fortunate about the training and communication skills that we developed over that time.

Adam: What made you decide that that’s what you wanted to do?

Jordan: Do you know what? I took not the traditional route. I didn’t do university or anything. I left school, well, I finished school at Seventh Form, and decided to move to Auckland. I was still only 17 when I finished school, so Mum was a bit cautious about me moving to Auckland, so she made me go live with my nan and pop for a little bit, which was always an experience, flatting with Nan and Pop for a year. But I ended up getting just a job working at The Warehouse. And at that job at The Warehouse, this is how I first got into thinking about that communication style. We got the opportunity, me and my brother at the time were both working there, and they used to do in-store sales. And once they gave us a microphone, and gave us a rack of clothes, and said, we need to get rid of this. And we actually kind of turned it, this is at the Glenfield Warehouse out there, we actually kind of turned it into a bit of a show, a radio show, and it ended up doing really well.

Jordan: We were able to sell a lot of product for them every Saturday, which is the only real big shift that I did there, to the point where then they invested and gave us a second microphone. So me and my brother had two microphones going. We’d be at opposite ends of the store. They were giving us two racks. And so I would sell my things, and then say, oh, we’re just going to head down to the front of the store, where Ryan’s currently there, and he’s selling what goods. And then he would kind of pick it up, and it turned into, like, this thing. I literally don’t know if The Warehouse would allow this these days, but the manager at the time, he loved it, because they were selling all their clearance stock, and we made it like this thing where, yeah.

Jordan: And that’s essentially where then I would get a lot of people saying, oh, you’ve got the voice for radio, you should get into radio. And then I was like, actually, this is quite fun. So I applied and got into a course in Wellington, at the radio training school. I decided not to do the long two-year course in Christchurch, at the New Zealand Broadcasting School, because I just thought I just wanted to move a bit faster, and just thought I’d do a course and see if I enjoyed it. I did six months. It was just a six-month course. MediaWorks at the time were offering scholarships, and I was lucky enough to pass that course and win a scholarship with MediaWorks. They paid me a bit of cash and gave me a job, and that job happened to be working on the night show here in New Plymouth. And that’s when I relocated to New Plymouth, about 20 years ago.

Adam: So from there?

Jordan: And then from there, look, I think the interesting thing was, I worked in media for many years, and I was around that time where websites, Facebook, even podcasts started to develop, change. So a lot of my role was on air, and doing some of those stunts, as we mentioned before, but then during the day, focusing a lot on the local promotions, which would then come down to working on the local versions of the websites, and getting that content ready, and writing that content, and the Facebook page. And slowly that picked up, so I got a real interest in digital media.

Jordan: And when I was looking for a bit of a change, there was just an opportunity that presented itself with a local company, International Volunteer HQ, which I’d, funnily enough, actually been a customer of a few years prior to that. Me and my wife had done a couple of months volunteering in Kenya, and we lived in a Maasai village for two months through International Volunteer HQ. So at that time it was Dan Radcliff, and he had one or maybe two employees at the time, so a very small company. I can’t remember the exact number, but I think we were like volunteer number 114 or something of that business, and obviously they’ve had well over 10,000 now, so this is going well back.

Jordan: And yeah, luckily had known Dan through that experience, and there was a job that came up that was focused just on digital marketing, and I thought, actually, that could be really fun. Travel was something that me and my wife have always been very passionate about, and being able to work in the travel industry, in digital marketing, and marketing and digital products, just seemed like the dream job. And it was. And I ended up doing about six or seven years with International Volunteer HQ, which was fantastic, to work with someone like Dan as well. And also the marketing manager at the time was Alan Voruri, incredible. So it’s just the two of us, and we had, yeah, we had a great job.

Jordan: And essentially, part of that job was, Dan was really big on investing on our growth, because he could see that marketing and Google Ads was a big part of what he did. And he always said that that was one of the things that he invested in and learnt, back in the early days of that company, was Google Ads, because no one else was doing it. It really gave him a really good shot into that market. And so, he then was great at investing in us as a team, as a small team, to go to conferences and learn from people. So we would travel to San Diego and go to conferences there. Dan and I went to a trip in Seattle, for example, as well, and did a search engine conference. Went to London, did another search conference there. We were learning from some of the best people in the business. They were okay at taking punts on some people, consultants that would kind of get into the business to help with certain parts, and able to build relationships there.

Jordan: And so using that experience then got me to the point where I had a lot of different knowledge, and a lot of different key contacts around the world, and we had some great knowledge. And then I started getting itchy feet, thinking about myself and how I could build up my personal brand. So I started doing a little bit of freelancing, just as I mentioned before. And then obviously COVID hit, which was a massive impact on that business, on International Volunteer HQ. Luckily they’ve bounced back, and they’re doing amazing things now. But at the time, it was around January 2020 when they’d announced that there were going to be some changes to the team, and they essentially were looking for people to volunteer to leave with a package, so that we could allow people who weren’t thinking of leaving the opportunity to stay in the role that they were in. So that was kind of the cue that me and my wife decided, at the time, which, looking back, were we nuts? Most likely, because my wife was also expecting our fourth child. So the child was due.

Adam: So what were the conversations that you were having between the two of you?

Jordan: Because we took it as an opportunity, that it was, obviously at the time, a redundancy payout. And so I kind of took it as, okay, so this is what we’re going to get, this is our expenses. I had two people that I was kind of doing a little bit of freelance work with, and I kind of thought to myself, we’ve got this type of run rate, so we’ve got however many weeks that we can pay the mortgage, that we’re going to give this a real good shot and just do it. So it was, yeah, again, I think it was just a real punt, and we just saw it as an opportunity. Little did we know that it was going to change the landscape of digital marketing the way that it did, but it did, for the best. So it was a good punt.

Jordan: But again, like a lot of people say, obviously it was luck, in terms of us entering the market at that time, but I think it was also having just, willing to take the punt, and willing to give it a crack. And so, within leaving that business, I left pretty swiftly, which was obviously really difficult, because I’d spent a lot of time there, made some great connections, a fantastic team, which we still keep in touch with now. So it was really tough to leave the business, but also at the same time, I had to just brush myself off and just get straight into doing what I was doing.

Jordan: And it’s actually from there I was able to, again, lucky that I was able to work with some of the connections that I’ve built up over the years within the local media and everything. So I was able to get myself in front of business people, especially once lockdown started. And I think that’s actually where we first connected. Well, not that we met in person for years, but we first connected on a Zoom call during that lockdown, as I was a guest on a, what was it, through the Chamber of Commerce or Venture Taranaki, one of the two.

Adam: Yeah. So back then, I just remember, I’d been here, I think I got here probably about the time that you took redundancy, I just kind of went into service, and was doing stuff for the IOD and the Chamber and the Council and Icehouse. So just picking up on that, then, the aspects of kind of like your network, and the people that you’d built in the years gone by: did you ever imagine how important those people would be when kind of setting up on your own?

Jordan: No, not really. And I think, yeah, personal brand has obviously always been something that’s been at the forefront. And I guess that has come from my days in radio, where to ever progress in that industry, in the local media industry, was based on your own personality. And this is why some of the local greats, like Barney, Brent Proctor, who you may not know, because obviously it’s before your time, but he had a long-standing show on Classic Hits, and he’d built that brand up. It wasn’t Classic Hits, or the morning show, it was literally Barney. And so that really was a good lesson, in terms of where personal branding, and trying to build ourselves up as people…

Adam: Let me pick up on that. So what needs to happen for it to go, take that situation with Barney, what needs to happen for it to go from being the show or the business to then an individual, which has got a following, and has got almost its own personal brand? Is there things that you need to do intentionally, or does it just happen organically?

Jordan: Look, I think it’s intentional. I think it’s just making sure that you’re kind of getting yourself out there. I’m terrible, also. I’m much more comfortable doing what we’re doing now, talking on radio, talking on camera. I am a terrible networker, as far as I see it, and people sometimes say that that’s the opposite, but I find it really uncomfortable, and it’s one of those skills that I’m always trying to develop and change. So what I’ve tried to do is just really double down on the things that I know that I can do well, which is communicate, in a padded room like we’re in now, or in front of a camera, because it’s what I really was trained to do.

Jordan: So that’s essentially what I did, is tried to double down on those skills that I had, and then tried to use some of those connections that I had, but using my communication skills as a way to try and convince people to allow me to do a Zoom webinar and be in front of Taranaki business owners, who were suddenly thrust into the digital world. And I was able to offer just a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel, that then really was then turned, me disappearing on a Zoom, into, this is also the business that we kind of have behind, which was a very young business, like literally months into its infancy. And to be able to then have an opportunity to come across like we were this big business was great, but obviously we used just my experience and my kind of story to be able to help propel that.

Adam: What was the point when you realised, actually, I’ve got a business? So this has gone from being a consultant to maybe a lifestyle business.

Jordan: Yeah, it took about probably 11 months of real hard graft. And obviously, again, it’s hard graft, but everyone had a hard year. My wife was running a hair salon at the time, so she was shut for a lot of that year. So everyone had a really tough year, but we just pushed really hard. I think we also used that opportunity to just try, and, obviously especially during the lockdown time, we had, looking back, essentially a little bit of a gift, in terms of being able to have all the family in the one spot, which was hard to deal with, but also it was a gift, because we weren’t having to drive around doing all the after-school activities. So I was able to kind of lock my way into a room somewhere, and just try and put on noise-cancelling headphones, just to really try and focus, and really try and make this work and figure it out, and have that time without having to be, I’ve got to go and run off and do the school run now, and things like that.

Jordan: So we worked together, me and my wife worked together, on trying to use that time as wisely as possible, also knowing that we had a limit before the cash was going to run out. So that was the other thing, going back to your question earlier about investing in marketing: obviously, we didn’t have money to invest in marketing. I had to use social media, use video, use these Zoom calls, to be able to help build the business. And it was literally probably 10 months down the line, I think, from memory, around December or January, probably January the following year, is when we knew we had a business. Was when I was like, actually, we should get an employee. And that’s when it felt like we had, like, a real business, because it was getting too difficult to manage, and I was like, hold on, this is a great problem.

Adam: And you’re now up to eight.

Jordan: Yeah. So over the time, we’re up to a team of eight, which is great. And that was also the real challenging thing, was also finding people that were willing to take a punt on us. And really lucky with the people that have taken a punt on us, so from our very first employee.

Adam: So, out of interest, how many of those eight have come from the network and the connections you built up over the time, either directly or via somebody else?

Jordan: The first employee, she actually came to us from TSB Bank. So for us to get someone who’d come from a corporate marketing role there was amazing. And look, I’d met her a few times, but I definitely didn’t know her. So I think that was just great, to be able to put the feelers out and just find someone who was willing to take a punt on a new business, which was amazing. And I know that, because she’s gone off to start her family, which is amazing, and still keep in touch with her and her partner, who’s a local lawyer. And I remember having those conversations, and even just her seeing us out in the market, and doing what we were doing, and wanting to be a part of that journey, was really key. And then even some of the other team members that joined shortly after that, that are still with us now, that kind of saw something. I don’t know still what it is, something that they liked about what we were doing, and how we were kind of portraying things. I’ve always tried to challenge the market, try to challenge how we communicate our story, and so maybe that’s connected with people, which has been really cool.

Adam: How does a marketing company market themselves?

Jordan: Yeah, honestly, there’s, I think I’ve actually got a podcast with that name, because essentially, I know we’ve touched on a little bit already, just around personal branding. I still think that’s one of the key things that has really helped us. But the biggest thing that has been a game changer for us as a business, that I don’t see a lot of other businesses doing, even in our space, but even outside the space, is using the power of video. It has been one of those keys. And I don’t think that you need to overthink the video. If I have a look back through some of the embarrassing videos of how we kicked off the business, the embarrassing branding that I used, like, very fortunate to have a design team now on our team, and they are incredible designers, that will look back on some of the things that I’d built back on Canva, back when we were first kicking off, that I just needed to do to be able to create a brand. It’s embarrassing to look back on now, but it’s all part of that journey. And so I honestly think, looking back at those videos, and the way that we communicated, was one of the differentiating points.

Adam: Is it better to have videos that you look back and kind of are embarrassing than have none?

Jordan: Yeah, 100%. At the time, well, and it’s even now, I’ll do a lot of the videos that we do just on my mobile. Obviously we’ll invest in getting a videographer through to take certain videos of certain things, but a lot of the stuff I’ll do now is just on the mobile phone, and there’s editing tools that make things so much easier to be able to actually do yourself. It’s just making sure that you set aside that time to do it. There’s tools that I use. One that I’ll share is called Descript, and essentially we can upload video, record straight into this tool. It’ll write out a transcript for you.

Jordan: You can edit the video based on manipulating the transcript. So if there’s a sentence that I don’t think needs to be in the final video, you can literally just highlight that in the transcript, hit delete, and it’ll edit the video at the same time. So for anyone who doesn’t know how to edit a video, everyone knows how to edit a Word document. So being able to use those type of tools, oh my God, it’s like a game changer, and it just makes using video so much easier. So that’s, honestly, video has been one of the keys. I think we’ve always invested a little bit in marketing.

Adam: Let me just pick up. So has the video driven opportunities to you, or has somebody been in the mix and looking at it, and then the video is the thing that’s pushed them over?

Jordan: Both, I think. I’ve used them as key now. And I know that it’s getting quite saturated with using video across advertising now, but I still think that if you can connect with the right audience with the right messaging, it’s still really powerful. And then on our website, we’ve always had videos right on the homepage of the website that explains who we are, what we do. And I’ve found that, A, it’s good to get that exposure. And I won’t go too much into detail also about why I use video on social media and campaigns, because also the data that a video holds is incredible. So we can say to Facebook, people that watch that first video for 25% of the entire video, so they stop their scroll for 15 seconds, say, I want to serve them this next ad, to get them down the funnel. So there’s so much power in using video on these platforms, because obviously that’s where the privacy goes out the window. Because if someone’s stopping their scroll, looking at your video on Facebook, we’re collecting that data, Facebook’s collecting it, so we can use that as marketers. So that’s one of the other big ones.

Jordan: But then the other big key that I found with video is that I’ve never seen myself as a salesperson, and the sales process is so much easier when you jump on a call, or you first meet someone, who feels as though they already know you, because they’ve watched all your videos. So when you sit down with a coffee with someone, you just feel that they’re so much more relaxed, because it’s like they know you. When we jump on a call, they just get straight into sharing their problems, knowing that you know what you’re talking about, because you’ve taken that time to share that stuff online. I used to have my mother complain at me for saying, I think you give away too much stuff on your videos. Which I always, as a rebuttal, it’s essentially, I think we should be trying to help each other more, and giving away that type of thing, because it helps with building our trust and authority across our market, which is the core principles that even Google uses to quantify.

Adam: I’ve been a massive advocate of video over the years, and I always used to say, people, if you’re interested in working with me in any of the things that I do, go and have a look at some of my videos, have a look at the testimonials on my LinkedIn page, because what other people say about me is more important than what I’m going to tell you. And that will give you an idea, and if you still want to have a conversation, great. And what for me has happened is, like you said, you go into a different conversation. They’ve qualified themselves in. And I don’t like wasting time, and I’d much rather be speaking to people that want to engage in, there’s a connection and a value set, rather than just going through the motions and trying to compete on price, because that’s not the market. It feels the right time to ask: who, for you, is a target client and customer, and who is not?

Jordan: We’ve adjusted over the years, based on starting from a freelance. And in those first year or two, we were stoked to have companies that would come to us and want to engage and work with us. But over the years, we’ve seen, and we’re trying to challenge as much as we can in terms of the industry, so we focus purely on strategy first. And all of our clients will come through, we have a set strategy deep-dive process that we go through, that takes around six weeks, to start working with a client. And there’s a couple of reasons we do it. A, because we need to help. A lot of clients will come to us with no idea about what to do with their marketing, or they’re at the point where they have a marketing team that just need a bit of direction and a bit of hand-holding to get them in the right spot. So taking them through that process is important for them, but also for us. I need to be able to say to this client that any recommendations that we provide them is based on our in-depth knowledge of how it works. Otherwise I…

Jordan: …marketing, the customer, the landing pages it’s being sent to, so we’re never going to get good results on that. So that’s where our target customer has shifted, that we’re looking for people, and we work with people and organisations, that need a strategy, and they’re focused on long-term marketing goals, as opposed to quick wins. And so that comes down to, also, we work with service-based businesses, there’s a large range of different types of businesses, but the primary thing comes down to how much they’re willing to invest in the process of building a marketing strategy that’s going to perform for years to come.

Adam: What I love about what you’ve just said there is that it’s important, and I sense this is because of your value set, is that we’re not going to just be a transactional relationship. Actually, we want to build a rapport, we want to really understand your business and your organisation, so that we’re able to deliver against what it is we need to do.

Jordan: I know that there’s other companies similar to ours that are able to do a transactional basis, and look after ads, and that’s fine. And look, I’m sure they get fantastic iggs results. But for us, what I can see, that we get the best value out of our clients, is building long-term relationships, that they can rely on us to be able to provide them with in-depth support around changes in algorithms, or AI enhancements, or, I’ve read this thing online, what does this mean for us in our business? And we’re able to come back and either challenge them and say, well, look, actually we need to change our strategy based on this, or, actually, you need to calm down on this, it’s not going to affect you as much, because remember, we’ve got this. So it’s just really working and building those strategic partner with these organisations, and that’s primarily how we work.

Adam: What’s the future hold for you in the business?

Jordan: We are in a really…

Jordan: …growing more than what I could imagine, so very fortunate. We’ve got a fantastic team that we’re really fortunate to have behind us as well. And look, I think we’re just going to carry on looking for new growth opportunities. We’ve got a great network of people in Melbourne, great network of businesses that we work with. We’ve got a great network of businesses that we work with across the entire country, obviously great support network here. And I think one of the big fundamentals that we need to always be focusing on, as a local Taranaki business, is supporting Taranaki initiatives as much as possible. Hence why we are a member of New Plymouth Partners and Govett-Brewster Foundation. We support those organisations, and making sure that we stay really grounded. But also, I can just see massive opportunity for small Taranaki businesses to make, like, waves internationally and across the country. There’s nothing stopping us.

Adam: How can people find you?

Jordan: Website is probably the best way, donebynine.com. Otherwise, a lot of people connect with me on LinkedIn. I love finding new people on LinkedIn, so please search for me, find me, connect. And yeah, I’d love to chat. As we mentioned earlier, Adam, like, learning and meeting people is key. I buckle when it comes to big networking events, but one on one, yeah, I love to learn stories and kind of learn from people.

Adam: And your drink of choice is a flat white.

Jordan: Yeah. Well, today was, well, that was a big part of our story, was actually coffee. Back in the day, was Done By Nine, a lot of our stuff was driven around this. One, I picked on one thing, and it was coffee. And we still get it to this day, where people will come to us, essentially saying, I know you’re a big coffee drinker, because we did a lot of our marketing…

Adam: …have. You have needed it, with four kids.

Jordan: Yeah, exactly. And the other big change in my coffee preference was, we spent a lot of time in the States over the past few months, because I…

Jordan: …proof and stock. That’s our daily. I go to the garage with Tane and Adriana every day, and my wife, we’ve got an account there as well, which makes it really dangerous. So that’s the everyday occurrence.

Adam: Well, it’s also a business expense as well.

Jordan: That’s true.

Adam: Favourite beach?

Jordan: Favourite beach would have to be, I’d say, we try and camp there each year with the kids, and spend a time on the beach. We try and spend as much time on the beach as possible. But favourite New Zealand beach has to be out there, just with the campground, with the town, everything. And then if we’re going even further, we spend a lot of time in Mexico in January, and there are some beautiful beaches. The one that we were staying in was called Sayulita. If you’re ever travelling over that place, go over there, then head up to San Pancho, Lo de Marcos. Beautiful.

Adam: Feels like there should be a podcast on your trips to Mexico.