Darren Jamieson:
On this week’s episode of The Engaging Marketeer, I’m speaking to André Radmall. André is a therapist who has pivoted into a business coach, and he did that during 2020, when he also set up a podcast on pivoting, where he interviews people about how they pivoted from one career to another, or one aspect of life to another.
So, I’ll be speaking to André about how he uses his therapist training within business coaching, and how he markets himself in this new business landscape.
You’re a fellow podcast host with your own podcast, and it’s season two, I believe. Could you tell me a little bit about that and what prompted you to want to make that?
André Radmall:
Yeah. So it’s called the Pivot Points Podcast, and it’s on most platforms you’d expect podcasts to be on.
It’s called Pivot Points because I wanted to interview people who had been through some kind of change in their life, where normal life as they knew it was upended by something and changed. How did they get through it?
I started it around the time of the pandemic.
“Pivot” was like the word of the pandemic, wasn’t it?
Darren Jamieson:
Yeah.
André Radmall:
Pivoting, and also around the whole George Floyd episode as well. I did some interviews with people that zoned in on that a little bit, but it really included a whole variety of people: people in bands, some celebrities, some writers, some presenters, some business people as well.
So it was really across the board. I was fascinated by the different ways that people dealt with upheaval in their lives and change, including success.
It was really fascinating. One person I spoke to, their story was about how they were in the music industry. A chap called David Grant, who had a few hits in the 80s, I guess. Suddenly he was super successful and, of course, his management and his supporters, people around him, just wanted more of the same.
It was really challenging because how do you keep plugging that slot machine for the same thing to come out? It’s quite difficult, but also you can kind of lose sight of who you are in all of that as well.
So, yeah, it was really looking at change and, as you say, there are a couple of seasons out there now.
Darren Jamieson:
Yeah. You just get wrapped up in the demand, can’t you? Before you know it, you just feel burnout from that.
André Radmall:
Yeah. You start almost doing what other people might want you to do because it’s success for you and them. Everyone’s getting something from that format or that way of operating, but that’s not necessarily good for people as human beings.
Darren Jamieson:
In terms of the podcast itself, was that something that you started to help you with your own business, or was it completely a passion project on the side?
André Radmall:
I guess it was a bit of both, really. It was certainly a passion project. I really enjoyed the whole interview process and just hearing people’s stories, but it really fitted with my business as a coach and also as a therapist as well.
I was moving a bit more into coaching at that point. I was very interested in how people construct their life stories and how those stories can be changed. That’s probably been my central interest all the way through coaching and therapy.
Darren Jamieson:
So you yourself were pivoting at the time then?
André Radmall:
Yeah, I kind of was. I was moving more into the coaching world and I think it was probably a little bit after I did the podcast that I started working with corporates more, with a company called Enolla.
They were doing a lot of work in the area of diversity, inclusion and equity training packages. It was around that time that I started getting really interested in how organisations tell their story, I suppose, and how they operate in healthy or unhealthy ways.
Darren Jamieson:
How do you mean unhealthy ways?
André Radmall:
Well, I think that sometimes, just for example, thinking about whether people feel they belong in any kind of group, workplace or organisation, it seems pretty clear to me that if people don’t feel they belong, if they feel they’re just peripheral, they’re not really needed, not really appreciated, then they’re probably quite likely to disengage and become less enthusiastic about what they’re doing.
So I think it’s a simple word, belonging, but actually it has quite powerful effects if people are not feeling it.
Darren Jamieson:
How important do you think it is then for companies and business owners to understand that their employees need to feel that they belong and need to feel engaged within the business?
André Radmall:
I think it’s critical, actually, because I think it’s the secret sauce, perhaps, in business communities and systems: that those people working within it really feel this relates to their own passion, perhaps, or their own values and things that they’re really interested in doing.
They need to be able to bring their take on that to the table and have an audience. It doesn’t mean everyone gets to do everything they want to do all the time, because that would be chaos. But at least there’s a space in a business where people can bring their ideas, their passions, their interests and themselves, really, and find a place where they’re heard and they belong.
I think it’s really important.
Darren Jamieson:
So it’s more about being heard, do you think, rather than anything else?
André Radmall:
I do. I think people instinctively know if they’re not being listened to.
We’ve had a lot of corporate training, and I’m so aware of this as a therapist as well, which trains people to look like they’re listening, when they’re not actually listening at all.
So you get a lot of the nodding and, “Oh yeah. Tell me more. Interesting. Do go on,” but they’re thinking about what they’re having for lunch that day. They’re just not actually listening at all.
I think people do know that. So, yeah, I think listening is big.
Darren Jamieson:
I know there are a lot of people in business who think employees are typically motivated solely by money, so the more they earn, the more they’ll be motivated, and the more bonuses they get, the more they’ll be motivated. But they’re not, are they?
People are motivated by lots of different things, and some of the smallest, strangest little things, like just being told, “Well done,” if they’ve done well.
André Radmall:
Oh yeah. I mean, I’m one of these people, actually. There’s this idea called love languages. It’s a bit of a funny phrase, really, but it’s the idea that people respond in different ways in terms of being encouraged.
Some people love words of encouragement, just hearing words being said. I would be one of those.
Being told, “Well done,” is rocket fuel for that person
It might get them through the next week just on that.
I think people do thrive on those simple things. Being called by your name, weirdly, when people have done studies on this, it seems that being seen, heard, recognised and called by your name is quite powerful for people’s sense of belonging, and a sense of, “Oh, I have a place here. I’m seen. I’m recognised. I’m respected.”
Of course money is a factor, a big factor, but if you have money without those things, I do wonder how long it becomes a satisfying place to work in.
Darren Jamieson:
Yeah. I think it’s the case that if you reward somebody with money, typically if they get a pay rise, they will essentially just spend that money up until the money they’ve got. Everybody lives to their means.
So that reward will only last for a month, effectively, before they’re now living to those means and that becomes the norm, and they don’t feel rewarded or valued again.
André Radmall:
Yeah. Those underlying, more psychological, relational issues are just not being addressed at all then.
Money and spending and acquiring nice things can probably cover that over for a while, but I’m not sure it would last long term.
Darren Jamieson:
So, as a therapist that’s moved into coaching, that must give you a real advantage over other business coaches, surely?
André Radmall:
I guess what I see is that my training was systemic, so I was very focused on how people relate in systems, whether it’s in families or businesses or smaller organisations.
So, yeah, I took that into coaching for sure. I’m just really fascinated with how people tick. I’ve always been interested in why we do the things we do, and half the time, why are we doing these things when we don’t even know why we’re doing them? What’s driving us?
So, yeah, I did pull all that across into coaching. But I think the thing that’s perhaps different about coaching is that, of course, it’s not like I’m giving people the answers. It’s not like that in therapy either. It’s maybe some tools for people to think about operating in a different way or taking another approach to something that’s got a bit stuck.
I suppose that’s common in both.
Darren Jamieson:
You’ve sort of answered it there, but I was looking to get into more specifics. How has the therapy background helped you dealing with specific clients, in terms of helping them get better within their business, or scale their business, or however you’re looking at helping them on a minutiae level?
André Radmall:
That’s a good question. I think sometimes coaching tries to go straight for the objectives and how to get to those objectives in quite an ABC sort of way. For sure, there’s a place for that, especially when time is short.
But in my experience, people’s feelings have to be taken into account as well. If somebody is struggling with something in work, or in their business, or in a leadership capacity, there needs to be some space for that struggle to be heard, for that struggle to be articulated and for the feelings to be heard as well.
I’m not a proponent of staying in the feelings all the time. I’m not a proponent of digging down into the unconscious too much, but I don’t think it serves us to just ignore it either.
I think it’s really important that people get in touch with their emotional state. I suppose this fits with emotional intelligence, in order to be in a better place to move forward with whatever the task is or the objective is.
Sometimes objectives that people set are really more like defensive reactions to things that are going on, which might be like firefighting a problem that’s going on in a team.
For example, if you’ve got a team that aren’t working together and are in conflict with each other, the quick response to that is to just disengage from each other, go into silos and not talk. Yes, it solves the problem in the very short term, but in terms of the productivity of that whole team going forward as a business, that’s going to really undermine their effectiveness.
So I think one of the ideas, which is a bit more of a coaching idea, that I really like is psychological safety: how you build environments where people feel it’s okay to have differences of opinion. It’s okay to even have conflict, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that that person’s integrity as a person has to be threatened and put under stress.
It’s more about what we’re doing rather than who we are. There’s a separation.
Darren Jamieson:
That’s almost like a counselling approach, really, isn’t it? A business is like a relationship, whether you’re doing it with your business partners, your staff, your boss or your managers. There’s give and take on both sides.
It’s understandable that you’re going to have differences of opinion. A lot of the time within a business, people treat that as absolutely the wrong thing to do. “How dare you have a difference of opinion with me? I’m telling you how this is going to be done, and this is how it should be done.”
But people need to realise there will be differences of opinion, and that’s not a bad thing. There are different ways to look at it.
André Radmall:
I think so. I actually think a lot of creativity can come from that. I would say in the business sphere that the teams that are the most creative are probably the ones who are able to knock ideas around, have differences of opinion, argue their corner, promote their ideas, but are able to listen to others as well.
I think one of the clearest examples of that is a writer’s room on a TV show.
Darren Jamieson:
I was just thinking the exact same thing, actually. I was thinking of Monty Python.
André Radmall:
Yeah, Monty Python or Friends would be another example. A lot of the big shows these days, either in the UK or America, will have whole writing teams.
Yes, they may have a showrunner who leads it, but often when you look at the credits, they’re not the ones who are always making the stories. There are lots of other people involved, but they’re having to work, just like a business, within a framework: this is what we’re here for, this is the objective, this is our value, and these are the things we’re going to press into.
Then once you get into the detail, all sorts of different ideas and voices can come into the mix. I think, for me, that’s one of the best examples because they’re always having differences of opinion. They’re always arguing. They’re always working things out fast as well.
But it’s super creative.
Darren Jamieson:
Yeah. I always remember John Cleese being interviewed about how they wrote the sketches for Monty Python and the films as well. It was something along the lines of: we got together as a group to write it. If one of us hated the idea, we probably wouldn’t do it. If two of us hated it, we definitely wouldn’t do it. But it was rare that we all loved it. There are certain scenes they all loved.
So it’s getting to know that not everybody is going to agree, but that’s okay. It’s that conglomerate, that working together, which gives you the best ideas.
André Radmall:
Yeah, I think so. I think that’s where creativity really lives as well, in different minds and different ideas coming together, bouncing off each other and creating some third thing that wasn’t there before.
That’s why I like working with teams, actually: seeing how often people dismiss some of the real skills they can bring to the table. They think, “Well, I’m not the funny one,” or, “I’m not the whatever.”
Actually, people can move positions as well. They don’t always have to be in the same role in a team. They can move around.
I watched a documentary about The Beatles, which was the last few days running up to their rooftop concert. It was amazing. They could all play each other’s instruments. I didn’t know that they could do that.
There are scenes where Ringo Starr is playing the keyboards, or George is playing the keyboards, and Paul’s on the drums. Okay, that maybe wasn’t their major thing that they did, but they were able to have that flexibility and move position, which I actually think is also quite helpful in a creative team as well.
Darren Jamieson:
There’s a famous quote from John Lennon where he was asked if Ringo Starr was the greatest drummer in the world: “He’s not even the greatest drummer in The Beatles.”
André Radmall:
I know. Paul was a pretty good drummer, actually, I think.
But it was that flexibility. I actually thought it was a very interesting film to watch, if people want to watch it, because it really shows how teamwork works. Yes, of course they would have had differences of opinion, but they really listened to each other.
If one of them had an idea, however half-baked it was, they would listen to it and try and work with it.
Darren Jamieson:
When you’re working with businesses like this, do you ever encounter resistance from either the owners, middle management or employees to this?
André Radmall:
Do I encourage resistance?
Darren Jamieson:
No, do you encounter resistance?
André Radmall:
Well, I think there’s generally resistance in any system to change anyway.
It also might depend a bit on where in the business you’re working, whether you’re working with senior leaders, or people in middle management, for example. I think the world looks a bit different depending on where you are in the structure.
But I do think people generally are, and this is human nature really, a bit resistant to things that are new or take them out of their comfort zone.
A lot of this is really making the argument that taking these kinds of approaches actually will affect the bottom line at the end of the day. It will affect productivity and profit.
So I think part of this kind of work with coaching within the business sphere is certainly to be cognisant of the importance that the profit margin is in view. But leading right into that is productivity. To me, that’s about how people are working together, how people are communicating, and then we’re back into that domain again of relationships and human systems.
I think resistance is sometimes due to fear. I would say fear is usually the cause of most resistance. What are people afraid of? They can be afraid that they’re going to look silly, that they’re not going to be able to do it, that they’re going to be embarrassed.
Sometimes people might have a narrative. I work with narratives, and the narrative may be, “Oh, this is all just woke nonsense.” I’m not saying that people have said this to me, but I think this sometimes is in the mix. “More woke nonsense. Do we need to do this? Let’s just get on with the real work.”
That can come up in terms of the whole system, I think. That’s why it’s quite important to be, without going too scientific on it, right- and left-brained at the same time. We’re thinking about things in a very hard-nosed, business, logical way, but also linking that to the more emotional, relational, emotional intelligence domains as well, because I think one without the other doesn’t usually work so well.
Darren Jamieson:
I imagine, in addition to the fact that we are all hardwired to resist change, there were obviously countless experiences throughout history where people have lost their jobs due to progression.
You have mechanical engineering and plants where robots came in and took over from humans, mining was replaced, and now, of course, we’ve got AI.
I imagine that you’ve worked with businesses where there is a serious fear that the more they accept change and progression, they’re going to be doing themselves out of work in exchange for a simple AI script that can do the job of 30 people.
André Radmall:
Yeah. What that leads to very quickly is almost existential questions about what are we here for?
If AI can do my job, what is it that I’m here for? This can really hit hard into people’s sense of who they are, their identity, their meaning. Particularly for people who lean into work as their source of meaning, if they’re confronting the possibility of that work not being there in a few years’ time because AI is doing it, what does that mean about who they are as a human being?
That’s a stress, and potentially an opportunity for people as well, to go, “Okay, let’s look at this from a human point of view.”
The one thing that is distinct from AI is that sense of human connection and empathy and those emotional intelligence aspects. I have heard some business leaders, when they’re asked about AI, say, “Look, the thing is, we’ve got to really lean into what it is to be a human being and what it is to work together with other human beings,” because a lot of the data side of it is going to be taken care of in terms of AI.
So we need to major on almost the humanities, perhaps.
Darren Jamieson:
Of course, the real advantage with AI is it’s not supposed to be there to replace people’s jobs. It’s supposed to be there to make things easier for you, to make you more efficient, to make you better at doing what you do, to save time, to do the mundane tasks that are repetitive so you can concentrate on the important stuff.
Do you find a lot of businesses are adopting it properly for the way it should be, without fear?
André Radmall:
I’m not sure I’m across that enough to be able to answer that in terms of the whole global piece.
I would say my hunch, and it is only a hunch, is that businesses, particularly big global businesses, are maybe not so much threatened by AI, but looking to see how they can utilise it to dovetail into their work and make the work smarter.
Certainly at my level, I view AI as a really helpful assistant, a helper in doing some of that work that would take up time and energy and probably diminish my creativity because I’d be doing that grunt work.
So I think it’s actually quite releasing in that sense, into the more creative sphere.
Darren Jamieson:
Yeah, it’s the repetitive stuff, the follow-up stuff, like summarising a meeting you’ve had and emailing it to the client afterwards, or booking appointments into the calendar when they come through.
It’s all this stuff that we do that takes time, but you don’t need to be thinking to do it. If you’re not embracing it and your competitor is, they’re going to have more free time to do the creative marketing stuff that you haven’t got, and you’ll be left behind as a business.
André Radmall:
Yeah, I think that’s right. They’ll be utilising AI probably in that marketing package, in how they devise it and how they get to market quicker, because they’ve gone through the route a lot faster.
I think it’s a collaboration. It’s not an either/or.
Darren Jamieson:
Of course, the other angle would be what negative impact AI would have on a psychological front. If we’re using AI like a person, and we’re talking to it and it’s talking to us, that’s got to have an impact on someone’s mental health when they’re speaking to something that isn’t actually real.
André Radmall:
Yeah. There have been some cases of this where people have fallen in love with their AI, or got married to them, or whatever. There have been some cases where it’s gone really quite deep, and you can see how that could happen.
I’m also aware that in the domain of therapy or counselling, there’s a certain move towards using AI as a tool to help people with some sort of cognitive therapy and things like that, and maybe other forms of therapy too.
What do I think of it? I do think it’s not the same as a human-to-human relationship, and I don’t think it can replace a human-to-human relationship either. I don’t think it has that level of empathy.
I think AI can make the right noises, but it’s not actually feeling it. It’s learned to make the right noises. AI might well, in a conversation, go, “Oh, that sounds really difficult. Tell me more.” But behind it, there’s nothing behind it in terms of emotional empathy.
As human beings, we do need that, and I kind of think we know when it’s not there. But it is a blurry area now because…
AI is so personable in those sorts of interactions that it can feel like a friend
Darren Jamieson:
I’ve found this myself. It’s a known phenomenon that it will talk you up. If you suggest, say, “I’ve got an idea for a marketing campaign,” or, “I’ve got an idea for a book,” AI will tell you how great that idea is. It will tell you what a cracking idea that is, how you can do it and how it’s going to be brilliant.
So it’s almost like a sycophantic friend or a toxic relationship that’s setting you up for a fall. It’s the kind of thing that, if used in the wrong way, can be extremely dangerous.
André Radmall:
Yeah. I think at its very worst, it can supercharge a kind of narcissistic worldview.
The danger of that is when you clash up against reality and you bump up against someone saying, “No, that book idea is rubbish, actually,” it’s quite a long way to fall, because maybe you’ve already taken off with all this encouragement into thinking, “This is the next bestseller. It’ll be on the New York Times bestseller list next week.”
Then the first time you go to a publisher and they say, “This is absolute rubbish. We don’t want to touch it,” that can be really difficult. I think that’s problematic.
That goes back to the previous point a bit too, about working in teams and creativity and conflict, which is that…
I think we need that grit in the oyster to make the pearl
We need that difference.
Too much of it, of course, and then we get into unhelpful conflict that means people will shut down to defend themselves. But a certain degree of it, I think, is helpful.
To some extent, we have become a bit conflict-averse perhaps in our postmodern society. What that means is that we can easily, and of course this can be supercharged not just by AI but by social media as well, fall into silos where we only talk to people who agree with us.
Darren Jamieson:
Echo chambers.
André Radmall:
Echo chambers.
I guess that feels quite good. It can be quite encouraging, but it doesn’t really promote debate. It doesn’t really promote dialogue, and I think it’s dialogue that we need in order to create new solutions. Otherwise, we simply go around the same track over and over.
Darren Jamieson:
Yeah. It just creates confirmation bias, doesn’t it? If you have an idea that you think, “Oh, I think this is a good idea,” you’ll Google for things that will back up that it’s a good idea. Sure enough, you’ll find it, because there’s always going to be stuff that backs that up.
Even if it’s factually incorrect, you’ll find stuff online that will back you up. So you’re getting confirmation bias.
It’s learning to ask the right questions so that you’re not phrasing it in such a way that AI says, “Oh, he wants me to tell him this is a great idea, so I’m going to tell him this is a great idea.” That’s just disastrous.
André Radmall:
Yeah. I think it’s asking the questions, and I think it’s also holding a space. I’m getting a bit psychological here, I think, but it’s holding a space where we can cope with not hearing what we want, or hearing something that we find a bit uncomfortable coming back at us. This probably is resilience.
Yes, it’s asking the question, but it’s also being prepared to hear an honest answer as well. That’s not easy to do if we’re living in a bit of a bubble the rest of the time, which is super encouraging and positive, good as that may be.
I guess I’m arguing for safe spaces to be there as well, where we can have a bit of a difference of point of view.
Darren Jamieson:
In terms of your business now that you’ve pivoted from therapy into business coaching, how do you find marketing that as a business? Because it’s a very different audience. It’s a very different type of client.
How have you approached clients or promoted yourself in the new stream that you’ve got going?
André Radmall:
It’s a good question. It’s something I’m working with at the moment as well.
I still do a little bit of therapy work, and I’m still open to that, but I have broadly speaking pivoted. Some of my work has come in through working with an organisation, a consultancy. That’s the usual thing of work comes in and then I deliver on that work.
But increasingly, recently and right now, I’m looking to promote myself more. I personally don’t find that very easy to do, if I’m honest.
I don’t know if it’s just me. I think content creators and coaches sometimes do find it a bit difficult to market themselves. I think I do. I’m quite good at doing the delivery. I’m quite good at doing the content. Marketing feels like another thing.
I have had PRs working with me in the past, so I’ve had quite a lot of visibility in terms of, for example, being quoted in articles in the press or getting onto the radio. But when it comes to business, finding business and finding clients, I do find that a bit more difficult.
So I don’t think I’ve got the whole answer to that question, really. It’s something I’m grappling with at the moment.
Over the course of my work, I’ve done workshops and short courses, and I’m looking to do some webinars in the summer as well. All of these things are increasingly acting as a funnel, with fees attached, to bring in business.
Darren Jamieson:
There are a number of challenges that business coaches typically face when marketing themselves. One of them is that a lot of business coaches don’t like to call themselves business coaches. They’ll have different terminology. Some of them really hate the term business coach, which from a search perspective is bad, because your target client is looking for a business coach. If you’re not using that as a phrase or as a name, it makes it difficult.
Another angle is that, for a lot of business coaches, who they work with is confidential. So you can’t then give examples of, “I worked with XYZ company. They were struggling with this problem in their business, and afterwards they solved this problem and increased their turnover by X amount,” because they don’t want to tell anybody they were struggling with their business.
So you’ve got difficulty from that level as well. Does this sound familiar to you? Judging by the nodding, it does.
André Radmall:
Yeah. Of course, I’m very familiar with the confidentiality issue. That’s absolutely true from a therapy point of view, and I think in terms of coaching in businesses as well, because the reason they’re bringing you in is because there’s something that needs addressing that they wouldn’t necessarily want to have all over the media.
Darren Jamieson:
They wouldn’t even like to give a word-of-mouth recommendation to one of their other businesses or suppliers or clients. “Oh, we were struggling with our business, but André helped us out,” because they’ll never admit that. That’s the problem.
André Radmall:
No. On my website, I do refer to people that I’ve worked with or places I’ve been, like the BBC. I’ve been on the BBC a few times, but you can’t really go any further into it because of exactly those reasons. It is a confidentiality issue, really.
But you’re right. How do you prove that you’re good or that you’re selling something that’s really worthwhile? That is certainly a challenge.
Darren Jamieson:
Well, the podcast is a big step. You’ve got that, and that’s out there promoting you. You’re using that to surreptitiously, subtly and skilfully weave in what you do with the people you’re speaking to.
How much are you doing on LinkedIn, for example, in terms of video and advice on a regular basis, or even on TikTok?
André Radmall:
I’m starting on LinkedIn to do that. It kind of goes in waves.
A couple of years ago I had a book out, which is still out, and it really is in this area as well. It’s called Get Unstuck, and it’s about how if we change our narratives, we can change our lives.
Although that would definitely relate to business, it would also relate to individual life coaching, I suppose. I’m just coming back into that phase again of taking things from the book that have, to some extent, been out there, but using that as content with some of my newer ideas.
Speaking to camera, I quite like doing that, but I’m just getting going with that now on things like LinkedIn.
Darren Jamieson:
So you’ve not done it much then in terms of actually creating a content schedule and saying, “Right, I’m going to do that Monday, Wednesday and Friday?”
André Radmall:
No, I haven’t. Not on those sorts of platforms. I’ve done quite a bit of writing, as I say, for magazines, media, newspapers and so forth. But in my experience, that’s not what really brings work in. It kind of just raises profile.
Darren Jamieson:
It’s credibility, isn’t it?
André Radmall:
Credibility. I can refer back to it as well now. I’ve been in The Independent and Metro and those sorts of things, but in and of itself, that’s not a work generator necessarily.
Darren Jamieson:
One thing I would recommend doing would be to create a schedule for what you’re going to do in terms of social media, because all of your target clients are going to be on LinkedIn.
A lot of people dismiss TikTok because they think, “It’s just kids dancing,” but TikTok has one of the scarily most accurate algorithms you’re ever going to see on a social media platform. Whatever you are interested in, TikTok will learn it very quickly and give you the content that’s relevant to you.
From a coaching perspective, if you’re creating a talking-head-to-camera video, you want to be using it on TikTok, LinkedIn and YouTube Shorts as well, because YouTube Shorts has a massive reach.
If you do that on a regular basis, maybe three times a week, you don’t have to record them three times a week. You can do the whole lot in half a day. You said you’re going to do a webinar, and you’ve done talks, keynote talks and training. You can break all of that down into maybe 15, 20, 30 videos, all maybe two minutes in length each, and those can go out for the next two to three months.
That’s the ideal way to funnel people back into your business.
You mentioned you’ve got the book as well. Are you using that to promote yourself?
André Radmall:
That’s what I would start from, really. I’d begin with promoting from the book because that’s probably my unique selling point as well, which is that I’m interested in the narratives that people get stuck in, often in organisations, but also individually as well.
That’s also quite a strong therapeutic idea.
Darren Jamieson:
But do you use the book as a lead generator for potential clients?
André Radmall:
I don’t think I’ve used it as much as I could, that’s for certain. How would you do that?
Darren Jamieson:
A common way would be, from each one of the videos that you record, you would have some sort of call to action at the end. It could be, for example, “I’ve written a book on this. This is going to help you with this. Download a free copy from here.”
Then you create a landing page where they can download a PDF of the book. The landing page could also have the buy link for Amazon, if it’s on Amazon, so they can buy it from there if they want a paper copy.
When people come into your funnel and maybe you have a sales call with them, or a consultation call, you could then send them a copy of the book afterwards, a physical copy, so they have that.
That’s something we do with clients here. We’ve got a book that we wrote. It’s on Amazon. It retails for about two quid because Amazon are selling it really, really cheap. It’s actually cheaper for us to buy it from Amazon and send it directly to the client than it is to get it from the publisher, which is weird.
We then get that and send it to the client once they’ve signed up for a website, for example. So it’s used as a marketing tool to get them onto other services.
Loads of people have books, but it’s what they do with them. Most people just make the book, it’s on Amazon, and that’s it. They think it’s going to sell and drive people into them, but it won’t. Most people will find that it won’t. You need to physically use it as a tool.
If you run a webinar, everyone that signs up for the webinar, you send them a free copy of the book. If you run a face-to-face workshop, you give out copies of the book at the workshop. Factor it into the price of the workshop if you want to do it that way.
André Radmall:
Yeah. Presumably it can be automated as well. I’m thinking when people want to book in a consultation to try out, “What would this be like, to talk to André?” That’s all very automatable, isn’t it?
Darren Jamieson:
Yeah. The whole thing could be set up using a landing page and Calendly, and the digital copy of the book can go out using something like Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, GoHighLevel or ClickFunnels, whatever you use for that.
They could have a video consultation with you, which is pre-recorded, or it could go directly into your calendar for a one-to-one consultation. They’re always better because you’ve got a better chance of signing up clients if you do that than with a video. It’s much higher conversion. But, of course, it depends on your time.
André Radmall:
I’m asking you the questions now. Would you put a call to action in all the video content?
Darren Jamieson:
Yes, I would, but not necessarily the same type of call to action.
From our perspective, for example, we wouldn’t put in a call to action of “Book a consultation with us” at the end of every video, because it’s too salesy, too much in your face.
But the call to action could be as simple as asking a question in the video or asking a question in the post that solicits comments. “What would your opinion be on this problem within a business?” or, “What would you do to solve this problem?” Get people to engage that way. That’s a call to action.
Your call to action to sign up, or your call to action to book a consultation, might be once every three or four videos.
André Radmall:
Yeah, that makes sense. That’s certainly where I’m at at the moment: just finding the audience and the clients to come in for coaching. That could also be groups or organisations and businesses as well, not just individuals.
Darren Jamieson:
You mean to go into a business and work with all of their team?
André Radmall:
Yeah, exactly that. That’s certainly doable from my point of view.
I am interested in teams particularly. I’m interested in leadership as well, and how leadership operates, because it feels to me like a very interpersonal skill.
Darren Jamieson:
Oh, absolutely. There are so many people who run businesses who have no idea about leadership, because…
There’s a huge difference between being a boss and being a leader
Very few people take the training. There are some people who were born with it, but that’s very rare. Often, you’ll end up running a business because that’s the business you started and you’re good at doing that.
You then grow it and employ staff, and you’ve got no idea how to manage staff. You’ve got no idea how to lead and inspire people. You just think, “Shout at them and tell them this is what I want them to do, and that’s going to work for me,” and it doesn’t.
They don’t take the training. They don’t take any sort of consultation on how to do this, and ultimately it fails. There are very few good leaders and very few people who are trained as leaders.
So if that’s something that you work with, helping people become leaders, helping bosses become leaders, that’s a great avenue.
André Radmall:
Yeah. I’ve already spotted this, particularly in founders, when you get one or two friends who get together and found a business. It’s all great when it’s small and exciting, and then they blow up. It just becomes huge or really successful.
When success comes and they’re having to hire other people, it can really be challenging because now it’s not just a few mates. It’s, “Oh, we’ve got different departments here. We’ve got different people to manage. How do we do this?” That transition into scaling up.
Darren Jamieson:
From leadership, I’ve found a lot over the years that people who set up businesses with friends often have the same skills, and that’s a problem.
I’ve seen so many web design agencies that have set up with two friends who are web designers. They both love making websites. They’re both good at making websites, but neither of them is particularly good at the procedures, the processes, the administration, the client follow-up, the networking, the sales or the accounting.
They just want to make websites, and it never works. They need those complementary skills, and so few people have that when they set up businesses like that.
André Radmall:
Yeah. The challenge seems to often be how to communicate as a leader, rather than just somebody who expects people to fall into your skill set, when your skill set is not enough anyway. You need the other skill sets, but how do you manage them when it’s outside your own bubble that you’ve been operating in?
I think that’s really challenging.
Darren Jamieson:
So it’s helping founders become leaders.
André Radmall:
Yeah, I like it. I’m going to write that down. Helping founders become leaders.
Darren Jamieson:
There you go. There’s the title of your webinar.
André Radmall:
That’s great, isn’t it?
Darren Jamieson:
I’ll expect to see it launched, and I’ll be on it. I look forward to that.
André Radmall:
I think that is so common. I see that in the creative field as well. People get really excited about a project, then they move into production or something, but they’ve no idea about how the money works.
Darren Jamieson:
No. It’s because we just love doing the do. We love building websites, building apps, creating art projects, whatever it may be. But the money, the systems, the admin, the sales — useless.
André Radmall:
Yeah. I think that’s people skills in all of that, because you could even have those people in place. This is what we find with diversity training, actually. You could have diversity. You could have the accountant. You could have the marketeer. You could have them all there.
But if you don’t know how to actually include them and cause that to be a team that’s moving in a particular direction with vision, it’s just going to fall apart. It’s going to fall into silos again.
Darren Jamieson:
It’s kind of like being a football manager. You need to recruit the right people, because if you recruit the wrong people, it’s going to be disastrous. One bad apple can ruin everything.
André Radmall:
Yeah. It’s that thing of how people complement in a team, rather than just the star player.
Darren Jamieson:
If you’re really into your football, it’s like Newcastle United back in the 90s when they were so close to winning the Premier League. They brought in Faustino Asprilla, who was a world-class player, but it just didn’t complement the team. They fell off and lost to United.
No one could have seen that coming because what a player he was.
André Radmall:
Yeah. I’m of an age where I remember Arsène Wenger, and I come from that part of London, which was very Arsenal as well. He was very cerebral about it perhaps, but he certainly thought about how everybody complemented each other.
Darren Jamieson:
Yeah. Well, there are loads of memes about Arsène Wenger still going now, that a player he signed as a junior and put out on loan, and like 20 years later scored a goal which knocked Tottenham out, and it’s like, “Arsène Wenger 4D chess. He saw that. He planned it.”
André Radmall:
Yeah. That might be crediting him with too much, maybe.
Darren Jamieson:
It’s funny though.
André Radmall:
It is. It’s the stories we tell, isn’t it? The stories we tell about people.
But yeah, I am interested in that whole area. How do founders become leaders? That’s a good strapline.
Darren Jamieson:
In terms of running a webinar then, that’s a good thing for business coaches to do. I’ve seen a lot of coaches that do that, but it’s what you do with them after you get them on the webinar, and how you get them to convert.
What’s the call to action at the end? Depending on the type of client or the type of business you would have on the webinar, it would depend on what you want to do with them. Often, you would book them onto a face-to-face consultation afterwards, which you could advertise as a free consultation call.
André Radmall:
Yeah. I think the way I would envisage it going is, in the first webinar that I do, it will be quite a lot of individuals probably, maybe some people from companies and organisations, or representing them. But I think it’ll be individual conversations that then might lead into doing work with organisations subsequently, perhaps.
But yeah, call to action, as you say.
Darren Jamieson:
Again, all of that can be automated as well, of course, in terms of the process.
At the end of the webinar, you want to give somebody a landing page that they go to, and you want to make it as easy as possible for them to get to it. So you’d either share the link they can click on, or you would use something like Bitly or TinyURL so they can see it and click on it.
If you give them mybusinessconsultingwebsite.com/go-here, they’re not going to do it. So, short as possible for them to go through, and then Calendly or something similar.
Calendly is free if you’ve just got one calendar you’re linking to. They book in that way, it goes straight into your calendar, sends them a confirmation sequence, and then that goes into something like ActiveCampaign or Mailchimp. Then that’s a follow-up sequence as well to warm them up.
Just because somebody has signed up for it doesn’t mean they’re going to turn up. Equally, just because someone has signed up for your webinar doesn’t mean they’re going to turn up. Typically, I’ve found the show-up rate from signups to showing up to a webinar is about 34%.
You want to keep contacting them with emails once they sign up for the webinar, to make sure they get communication from you and they’re more likely to show up. You can also use automations like Mailchimp or ActiveCampaign to send them text messages to remind them. Calendly does that, for example. It sends text messages.
André Radmall:
Picking your brains a bit here, would you charge for an initial webinar? Would you make that a free entry point and then follow up?
Darren Jamieson:
You can do it either way, to be honest with you. I’ve seen most people typically do a webinar free because you want the most people on it.
Until they’ve encountered you on a professional level, which a webinar would be, they don’t know who you are. They need to experience your expertise, get the benefit of what you can offer them and what you can give them before they’re going to part with cash for it.
So I typically would do it like that.
André Radmall:
I think the other beauty of that kind of approach is I can foresee doing different webinars on very specific, discrete topics as well.
Darren Jamieson:
100%. The more niche you can make it, the better.
André Radmall:
Yeah. The more niche.
Darren Jamieson:
Dealing with AI within your business, or dealing with employees having relationships within your business. The more specific it is, the more tailored you can do the follow-up, the course or the consultation you’re going to sell afterwards. The more likely it is to work.
Whereas if it was just, “Grow and scale your business,” everybody has done that. It’s not going to work that way.
André Radmall:
Yeah. I’m thinking one webinar, one topic, one focus, followed by something like maybe a short course or individual consultations. Sounds like a plan to me.
Darren Jamieson:
Sounds good.
André Radmall:
Thank you there. It may be helpful for other people to hear as well.
Darren Jamieson:
I’m sure it will. This is a tried and tested method. It works superbly well. We’ve used it ourselves, so yeah, it definitely works.
Would you believe we are pretty much out of time?
André Radmall:
Amazing. That’s like a flash.
Darren Jamieson:
For anyone listening to this who is thinking, “I love the sound of this. I’d love to learn more. I’d love to find out more about this webinar you’re going to run,” what’s the best way for people to reach out to you?
André Radmall:
People can get me at my website, andreradmall.com. That’s all one word: A-N-D-R-E R-A-D-M-A-L-L dot com.
I’m also on Instagram, André Radmall; LinkedIn, the same; and Facebook, the same. So you can reach me through those channels.
Darren Jamieson:
Excellent. I will put the links for all of those — the Instagram, the Facebook, the LinkedIn and the website — below the podcast.
So if you’re watching on YouTube, it’ll be in the description. If you’re listening on iTunes, Spotify or Audible, it’ll be in the show notes below the podcast. You can go down there, click on any of those and get in touch with André straight away.
André, thank you very much for being a guest on The Engaging Marketeer.
André Radmall:
It’s been an absolute pleasure. Thanks for having me.
More About André
André Radmall is a business coach, therapist, speaker and podcast host who specialises in helping individuals, founders and organisations navigate change, leadership and personal growth. With a background in therapy and systemic coaching, André works with businesses to improve communication, psychological safety and team dynamics, helping leaders build healthier and more effective workplaces.
He is also the host of the Pivot Points Podcast, where he interviews guests about major turning points in their lives and careers, and the author of Get Unstuck, a book exploring how changing the stories we tell ourselves can transform the way we live and work.
You can connect with André here:
Website: https://www.andreradmall.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andr%C3%A9-radmall-12373544/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/andre.radmall
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreradmall/
Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/author/B09B2GHK7B/
About your host:
Darren has worked within digital marketing since the last century, and was the first in-house web designer for video games retailer GAME in the UK, known as Electronics Boutique in the States. After co-founding his own agency, Engage Web, in 2009, Darren has worked with clients around the world, including Australia, Canada and the USA.
iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/engaging-marketeer/id1612454837
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrenjamieson/
Engaging Marketeer: https://engagingmarketeer.com
Engage Web: https://www.engageweb.co.uk
