TRANSCRIPT: Let’s Talk Content Marketing with Nestene Botha

Hendrik:

What’s at the heart of content marketing?

Why should I even do content marketing in the first place?

How do I get the best results from it?

If these are some of the questions you have, don’t take our word for it.

Let’s talk content marketing with industry professionals.

Discover its power and confront its challenges, so that you can stand out from your competition.

Join Ethan and Hendrik Baird from Baird Media and let’s talk content marketing.

Ethan:

I’ve got Nestene Botha in the house.

We’re going to be talking all about scaling through collaborating.

Before we get into the main topic, Nestene you maybe give us an introduction to who you are and what you do?

Nestene:

Yeah, sure.

No problem.

Hi Ethan.

It’s awesome to be here with you today.

Thank you so much for inviting me.

So, yeah, I’m Nestene Botha and I run Explore Protech Entrepreneurial Haven with my co-founder.

We’re basically creating an entrepreneurial accelerator to help entrepreneurs around the world.

Not just stay alive, but also thrive in these weird economic times that we’re in.

Ethan:

Let’s talk a bit about your career history before Protech, what were you doing before that?

And then, let’s talk about the development of Protech as well.

Nestene:

Sure, no problem.

So, before Explore Protech started, I was in corporate accounting.

I also worked as a teacher at Masters level at various universities throughout, South Africa.

I still train part-time at some of them. So, yeah.

My background is in chartered accounting.

Ethan:

So what made you decide to tart up Explore Protech?

Nestene:

So, when Explore Protech started, I was running my own accounting firm and Covid had basically just hit.

I was faced with the facts where we were suddenly in an economic time that was similar for me to the depression, the Great Depression.

So, I predicted that about 50 percent of my clients just weren’t going to make it.

Like I had to work on those figures, and I couldn’t realistically keep my accounting practice alive, if there was going to be the case.

So, I had to come up with a way to help more than 50% of them make it in this post Covid economy.

The way I did that was by teaming up with teamwork specialist, Peter Hingston.

And he basically showed me how to build a community, how to scale through collaboration, and how to create more opportunity for all of us, helping keep those clients alive.

Ethan:

I find that an interesting approach and, in retrospect, it should be an obvious one but like, oh, my clients are going to struggle.

How do I help my clients?

Instead of, I think a lot of other people might think, was how do I get different clients, how to get more clients?

Nestene:

The thing is getting new clients is not that easy, especially if half of the market is going to be struggling anyway.

So, it wasn’t just my clients. It was all small businesses around the world that was going to suffer a lot, all of a sudden. So, coming up with that solution just put It made the most sense.

Ethan:

 In business, some of our best clients are long-term ones, the ones you stick with for ages, you become friends, family with over time, because you form this bond.

And then actually being proactive to help them, just from like a business perspective, is a really good way to like really solidify them as your client, you know?

Why would they go to somebody else if you’re the one who literally helped them when the world was ending?

Nestene:

Exactly.

It’s exactly that.

So, it’s all about the relationship and strengthening that relationship.

And that’s basically what Explore Protech is.

It’s a place where you can strengthen relationships with the right people.

Ethan:

Yeah.

And I mean Hendrik and I, we’ve joined Explore Protech, Hendrik especially as our guy who does the face-to-face stuff.

We’ve dived completely straight in because we’ve tried a couple different, you know, networking groups, those kinds of places.

And a lot of them, you know, they’re great and all but what I like about Explore Protech is that it doesn’t just feel like this is a networking group, it more just feels like this is a business community of other like-minded business people.

We do networking, we do other stuff as well, and I really like that.

Nestene:

Thank you so much, Ethan.

And it’s been amazing having you and Hendrik on board.

That’s exactly it.

It’s about creating home for entrepreneurs.

So, during that first days when Covid had first hit, I think a lot of us were feeling very unsafe, insecure.

Not knowing what to do, how we going to get through this.

And that’s why we called it Explore Protech Entrepreneurial Haven.

It’s home, it’s a haven, a place where you can hide from, you know, whatever else is going on and where you can find help and where you can find home and where you can be protected and be able to move forward.

Ethan:

Yeah. And entrepreneurship can be a really, really lonely road, especially post pandemic, when we were all just sitting by computers.

So having a group of people – what’s nice about is that you’re not trying to necessarily sell to them either.

I mean things might happen and business will come.

But it’s not like this pressure of like, I’m in this meeting, I have to sell x amount.

And if I don’t, this meeting was a failure.

Instead, it’s I’m in this meeting to meet people.

It’s almost impossible to fail, because I’m just here to meet people, to chat, to have fun.

Ethan:

Exactly.

So, everything we do, we always tell our tribe trying to make money with each other, not from each other.

So, I think that’s also kind of like a twist that we’ve brought in.

So, we didn’t start as a networking company. We literally started as a haven, as a community.

Networking is just one of the things that we created that our entrepreneurs can do in order to generate more business.

So, it’s one of the solutions we provide but we also do training.

We also provide visibility opportunities, collaboration, social type of opportunities, joint ventures things like that.

So yeah, it gets quite fun and that’s literally what we tell people, just come in but yourself, have as much fun with as possible.

It’s like you’re family and opportunity just naturally develops from there.

Ethan:

So let’s go into the main topic then, and this is a nice segue point, is about scaling through collaboration.

So from me and Hendrik’s perspective, I think we’re in that situation now where our capacity is almost already hit.

I have a day job, and Hendrik can only do so much during the day.

We both have very specific skills that, you know, aren’t every single skill we need in our business.

Hiring staff is risky, costs lot of money; there’s that kind of Catch-22 of need more clients to hire staff, need more staff to be able to get more clients.

So this idea that it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way, but instead we can collaborate to scale, is super interesting for us.

So let’s talk a little bit about that and kind of how you think people should be thinking about collaboration.

Nestene:

Sure. That’s one of my favourite topics of all time because when I was trying to scale my original business, which was the accounting firm, I literally almost bankrupted my business twice, because of hiring the wrong people.

I mean, I tried everything.

I outsourced, I had independent contractors, I had in-house staff, I had teams, I promoted people, had partnerships,  profit sharing, everything.

It just never wanted to work out the way I wanted it to work it out.

So, my whole thing was I build my business in about six months.

I built it to a 1 million and turnover company, which for me was a great achievement.

I mean I’ve never been an entrepreneur before, so that was amazing.

But getting past that 1-million-rand point was impossible for me, because we didn’t have the right people.

So that is what makes a community like Explore Protech so special, because that’s literally what we teach.

We pick people because they share certain values, and they have a certain amount of integrity.

Or they have like a lot of Integrity.

Those are the types of people you can now build collaborative relationships with, and you can use them to scale.

So, I’ll give you an example instead of, when we wanted to scale or get help in the business.

For the first time we didn’t hire people in, we didn’t get an outsourced person.

We didn’t get an independent contractor, we literally went to some of the people in our community and we were like, okay, so this is the opportunity we want to create for everyone in this space.

We’re willing to give you this amount of profit share. Are you in?

Are you going to help us do this?

And the thing is, because those people didn’t come in cold, we already had a relationship of like, six months to a year together.

We’ve already seen each other like, in action in entrepreneurship.

So we knew we could work together.

It wasn’t coming in cold, those relationships that don’t have to start from a cold place and it just, it works so well.

So, even these days when we were planning our next step or our next move, what we’re gonna do next, we have so many resources to invite into the party.

Because we have 75 people in our community that are like some of the best entrepreneurs in the world and we can literally just go to them and say, hey, I need help with this.

Would you like to help?

And we can set it up.

It doesn’t matter what you said up.

If it’s a profit -based, if it’s a joint venture, if it’s an outsourced agreement, it’s an energy exchange maybe.

There are different ways that you can save these things up.

But the reason why it works is because you’ve built relationships with those people.

You’re in the same community, everyone’s working towards the same goal.

It’s just for me, I don’t think there’s any other way of scaling successfully.

Like, for me, this is the way, it’s magical.

It’s amazing.

Ethan:

What I really love about that as well s that, obviously everybody has very specific strengths and then when you kind of running your own business, you’re typically forced to do things that aren’t your strong suit because you don’t have the resources, or you just maybe are too nervous to outsource it correctly.

So, you end up doing everything, all the team ends up doing everything. And the reality is, if I had my way, I would just be editing video and audio all day.

That’s it.

Like, I could just do that forever and I’ll be super happy with it, and I’m going to do it really well, because that’s my thing.

But now I’m an entrepreneur and now I have to do things like talk to clients, market, all these other things that like, you know, I can do but in an ideal world, couldn’t I just exchange all my energy with, like, producing amazing media for someone and then they can do some sales for me or any millions of combinations like that.

And I think that if all entrepreneurs had the ability to just do the thing that they were really good at while having the other aspects of the business handled or these other project handled, the rate at which they could scale would be so incredible, because they actually just doing the thing that actually wanted to do.

And it’s not just being good at it.

It’s also wanting to do it.

If you had a taught me that part of my business was you have to do cold calls, I would do you like one a week. Because it would be a hell of a job.

Do that one called call, probably mess that up and then I hate myself for the rest of the week.

That would be it.

If you told me that my core business involved producing a bunch of podcasts, I could do a bunch more of those because I want to do it, right?

So there’s also that aspect of the collaboration, is that like, it allows people to like, narrow down on the thing that they really love.

Nestene:

And it’s so valuable.

I mean, for example, me and Peter, we’re the creatives, the visionaries, we are so horrible at admin.

If I need to book my own meetings, I end up double booking us, there’s the chances of me double-booking, as if I’m booking, the meetings is like 90%.

But because of some of the joint venture projects, we’ve been involved in in the tribe, we’ve gotten to know some of the virtual assistants, and we’ve seen them in action.

So it’s so valuable, because then if you know you want to outsource cold calling, for example, you can just hire Janine.

That’s literally what she does for a living.

And it’s not just that we’ve seen her say that she does that for a living.

We’ve seen it in action because we’ve worked with her on a joint project.

That’s why it’s so important to do joint projects with people, where you literally come in and it’s exactly that – everyone does what they’re good at. 

And all of a sudden, everyone has like less work, we’re going five times faster and we’re all making money together.

That’s just the way to go.

Ethan:

There is also that huge amount of trust that you need to let go of, someone handing something in your business.

Like, last week, we sent out our camera guy and a director whom I hadn’t worked with yet, but Hendrik knows and trusts, to go do a video shoot for a client. and I must admit the whole time it was going on, while I was doing other stuff, I was in two minds.

On the one hand, it’s great that I don’t have to do this.

We’re scaling.

There would be a capacity limit if I had to do this every time.

But other hand, I’m really nervous because I know if I’m going to be there, I can at least feel like I’m in control.

But if I’m not and just trusting professionals to do their thing, it takes a bit of time to let go.

So, as you said, the other great thing about doing joint ventures and collaboration is that you can get a feel for someone, before you have to really take that risk of letting them into your business and potentially into your clients, talking directly to your clients.

Sometimes, as well, the huge amount of trust that you have to have for someone before you can let go to that degree, which you have to do, if you want to scale.

The whole point of running a business isn’t that you do everything.

Nestene:

No.

The whole point of having a business is that you get to set on the beach with margaritas.

Everyone else does everything that keeps you alive.

Ethan:

Exactly.

Otherwise, we’d be freelancers, right?

Nestene:

Yeah.

There’s also a difference between being a freelancer and just working remotely.

If you’d rather want to be an employee, just do that then.

But if you’re in business, might as well be in business properly, you know?

But that’s also exactly what you say.

That trust is so important and it’s very important not to let go and to trust someone fully until they’ve proven to you that you actually can.

They know what you want them to do, and they will do it properly.

And that’s again why these days I refuse to do business with anyone cold?

So, if they’re not in the community, I’m not hiring you.

If I haven’t seen you perform on a joint venture project where it’s like I’ll do this, you do that; this person does that and let’s just see how we work together – if I haven’t seen that, how am I supposed to know that I can trust you with this task?

How are you supposed to know that I can trust you with this process?

Because you might not even know exactly what I want.

You know that trust and communication is so important.

So that’s why we have to practice collaboration.

No one has taught us. In school we didn’t have a subject called collaboration.

It’s like this big, massive secret that everyone has kept from us for so long and I’m just so happy that Peter helped me discover it because I’m, I never knew about this.

Ethan:

It’s one of those things that should be obvious, but isn’t, you know?

There’s like so many things in business that are that way.

Like last week we were discussing the power of building relationships.

And you said that it took you a while to realize, when you’re talking to someone, a potential client, you’re not trying to sell necessarily.

You’re trying to build a relationship first and then you sell. eels so opposite to the instinct of always be selling, got to hand out business cards, got to do the thing, got to constantly be pushing your brand message over and over again, when the reality is that it’s just not how the world works.

People are so flooded with advertising messages, that if you just another one of those, it’s just Gone with the Wind. You know?

Nestene:

 Yeah. Definitely.

In this day and age, you have to realize is there’s probably a million people doing exactly what you do, right?

So, the answer to differentiating yourself and getting people to go with you, is not in more advertising, more marketing, stronger sales people.

I’s literally in giving people a chance to experience what you can do for them.

Because if you were hiring someone, you would expect the same.

You would want to first see.

What are you and what do you do?

Okay great.

Can you show me how you do that?

Let’s work together a little bit.

Let’s exchange some energy.

And then, when we’re like dead certain, you know, I pay you x amount, I earn this amount.

Then we can work out the numbers, which is what I’m good at, the counting pot.

So literally now, for every decision, I know exactly how a person is going to perform, because I’ve seen it.

So that gives me so much power in terms of decision-making.

I can literally go, for every R250 that I pay Somerville, I know I’m going to make like a thousand rand.

If I give her this exact task to do and she does it exactly like she did before, and then it becomes like a no-brainer.

You know?  That’s business.

Ethan:

The weird thing also that rock my world feel a little bit, once I clicked it, is that you also don’t have to be the best.

I know this is going to sound weird. I’m not saying don’t be good, but there is literally always going to be someone who’s better than you at the thing that you do.

It’s just impossible. 

There’s 7 billion people on the planet.

The chances of you being the very best in something, you probably a millionaire at that point anyway, because if you’re at that level and you’re known for being at that level, then you don’t need more business, most likely.

But it’s a little bit freeing to know that. It’s not necessarily about being the absolute best possible podcast editor in the world.

It’s about building relationships, being good, consistently striving to be better, but really, it’s about the relationships.

Nestene:

It’s not about being the best. It’s about being friends with the best of the best.

That’s why Peter also told me, if you’re the smartest person in the room, there’s something wrong with the way that you selected the people in the room.

When you’re friends with a best of the best – and I struggled with that a little bit in the beginning.

Because I’m an overachiever, you know, if there’s one thing I know is, that I can work anyone under the table.

So I have the ability to be the best but I had to come to grips with, was that if I don’t have people around round me that are even better than me, then this is not scalable.

Then I just have a job.

I don’t have a business.

Ethan:

Yeah and also, someone being the best doesn’t necessarily mean that they are the most fun or enjoyable person to work with either, right?

I’d much rather work with someone who values me as a customer or, say if I pay someone to do something, I’d much rather work with someone who I know is going to value my time, is going to give me feedback, is going to explain to me how much everything’s going to cost and keep it that way; instead of somebody who’s like the best possible person but has shady business practices.

It’s not the only measure of how good you are, your technical ability at something.

It was a really hard lesson, because y field is very technical, it’s very easy to measure how good you are against other people.

Nestene:

I totally hear you, Ethan, and I think that’s also something that has been quite interesting to a lot of us in this network.

Do you know how much your ability to be the best improves when you’re actually friends with someone?

Because that makes you one to write them the bast copy in the world ever.

You understand them so well that you can know exactly what they need, exactly how to get it for them, and it’s like your goals are so aligned.

You can afford to put two hundred percent into every single job.

So, I know one of our other members, Steven Levy, built a very strong relationship with Steven Westwood.

Steven Westwood is a copywriter from the UK.

Steven Levy is the leadership coach from South Africa.

Steven Westwood basically overhaul Steven Levy’s entire website.

And Steven Levy was like, wow, he would never. ever hire any other copywriter ever again, because it was just so amazing.

It was like, Stephen Westwood knew exactly what he needed before he needed it.

He knew exactly who his target client was, and he did like the best job ever.

And because they already spoke on WhatsApp every single day, it’s like that idea, when you’re like, don’t worry, we have a doctor in the family.

Don’t worry, we have an attorney in the family.

Now, you don’t just have to have those people born into your family, you can add them to your family. T

hat is what’s so powerful.

Ethan:

We’ve all read it in the marketing books, we all know it, but I think it’s important to drill this down, about why we need to be building these relationships.

How often do you ask a friend for a recommendation?

And then when they give it to you, you just immediately go with that one?

Most of the time, right?

Like if you say, I need a web developer.

Nestene, you do business, you know some good web devs.

You’re going to recommend one that you like and then the person is most likely just going to go with that because they trust you, you trust them.

So it’s also about building up these networks of trust.

So that, you know, once you’ve collaborated with somebody and done a really amazing project with them, they can have the ability to very confidently recommend you.

Because it’s not a small thing to recommend somebody.

If I recommend ou a service and then you have a better experience, ow, I feel bad now, I did something wrong.

And now you also may be trust feel slightly little bit less because now you worry about my decision making.

People don’t make recommendations lightly.

They really don’t.

And we all know that word-of-mouth is still so incredibly important to getting new clients.

I think especially for small business, most people’s big-ticket clients that come in, a lot of those are still from word-of-mouth.

Nestene:

Yeah, for sure.

And in this day and age, then you literally you can, at your fingertips, you can go into Google and you can Google how many copywriters are in my area.

I want to have this done and they give you like this whole list of people that you can choose from.

I am much more likely to recommend someone that I have worked together within in a joint project or that has served me in some way.

Which is literally why I can’t understand why more entrepreneurs aren’t involved in joint projects.

You know, having fun, creating collaborations together, doesn’t have to be this massive thing with all these legal contracts.

Just do something together.

Have an event together or exchange a little bit of energy.

You know, I’ll do your podcast for a week, if you do my books for a week and we just try each other out.

Then once you’ve tried someone out, you can exactly know what to say to other people, to get them to actually use that person’s services.

Because you would have experienced it first-hand.

So for me, whatever you can do, whether you create a lead magnet you can give away, whether you have a call with someone and give them some coaching, whether you exchange energy, whether you’re involved in a joint project, whatever you can do to have people experience your services, you just have to do it, because word-of-mouth is still the most powerful marketing tool there is. A

nd what gets you word-of-mouth?

Effective word-of-mouth only comes from if someone has experienced what you can do, because then they can refer you.

Ethan:

Yeah. I mean I can give an example. It is weirdly enough, if it had happened like a week or two later, it would have been part of Explore Protech.

We got Marlon August, who is part of the community, we did an energy exchange with him.

So he did our entire wire frame for our new website, helped craft the whole brand message.

He has a podcast.

We went into his podcast and gave him a very detailed report about all the different things that needs improvement.

What he’s done well, etcetera.

We did an additional re-edit of one of his episodes and kind of ran him through our system. It was a really amazing experience for both of us.

Because it felt for me, like I was talking about earlier, like, I was exchanging podcast editing credits for website credits.

The thing I’m good at for the thing he’s good at, so I was building the website but editing a podcast, which felt really, really good.

So it didn’t feel like something else that I’ve been in the past, especially as a freelancer, which is spec, which is honestly, soul destroying.

It feels so bad.

Someone tells you, oh, you want to do some work for me?

Well, what about you do this free project first and then we’ll see how it goes.

Terrible.

But you’re so desperate has, especially if you’re new to the industry, that you do these things, but ultimately, they don’t really lead anywhere, because the kinds of people who do that aren’t ultimately the kinds of people that you want to be working with.

But instead of doing that, it is a proper energy exchange.

Marlon put a huge amount of effort into our wire frame.

We put a huge amount of effort into his podcast.

Everybody left happy and now I know, if somebody wants to build a brand message, I know who I’m going to recommend them to, because they did ours and we were very happy with it.

Nestene:

Absolutely amazing.

I just love that story.

That is literally everything that collaboration is about.

It’s just multiplied by the amount of people that you exchange energy with.

Marlon is such a special person.

Actually, the first thing that he did when he joined Explore Protech was, he was like, I love this community so much. Let me just help you guys.

I will build a wireframe for your website.

And he put us through all of his services, because he knew at that point, we couldn’t afford it in normal capital, but we could afford it in social capital.

So he literally just helped us so much.

And in return, we started marketing him to the whole world because we were like, yeah, he did it for us.

I mean, go look at our website.

It’s fantastic, isn’t it?

Yeah, so and that got him so many referrals, which is again, you know exactly what you’re saying, exchanging referral credits, which we’re good at, for website credits, which we’re really bad at, but he’s fantastic at it.

So yeah, there’s so many different ways to collaborate.

I just love it.

Ethan:

And you can’t buy it referrals.

Truly, I think people are selling actual referrals aren’t really selling anything because the reality is, if you are referring someone to someone else, there’s a huge amount of trust, and you can’t just buy trust like that, you have to really earn it.

Nestene:

Exactly!

These people can see in your eyes if you’re like, guys.

It’s Ethan is like the best podcast producer in the whole entire world, and you don’t say anything else, they can see in your eyes like you’re not that confident.

Maybe you’re just saying that because, I don’t know, because you’re selling referrals, or you’re part of a forced referral network.

But if you’re like, guys, like oh my goodness, Ethan just did our podcast, and it is so amazing and like the service was so excellent.

And the quality is just like – I would never do another podcasting episode by myself ever again.  listen to it and then let him do your podcasts as well. 

It’s two different things.

Ethan:

Okay. So, I think that wraps up our main discussion.

I think now would be a good time to chat a bit about if somebody isn’t part of Explore Protech, it’s a selective group.

You can’t just hop on in.

But if there are people interested in finding out more, maybe scheduling a date with you guys, how does that work?

Nestene:

So, literally you can just take our booking link and book yourself a call into our calendars.

Me and Peter will welcome you with open arms.

And then we’ll put you through the dating the tribe process, which is a process where you get to check out the tribe, see what we have to offer, meet some of the people, see if you gel them, and then they get to do the same.

And then at the end of the week, if we both agree and we want to make it official, then we invite you into our community.

Ethan:

And as somebody who’s part of the dating process, I can tell you it honestly feels very cool to not just get in immediately.

There’s something really nice about the fact that it’s like, you can come, you can look, but like, you’re not in until you’re in.

And the reason for that, is because you’re truly cultivating a very curated community.

And there’s such a diverse array of people and business owners and stuff.

So, I don’t think people need to worry about, oh, is my industry going to fit in?

It’s more about what are your values.

What are your morals?

How are you culturally?

If you’re a good person, you should be fine.

Nestene:

I love that so much, Ethan. And that’s exactly it.

If you’re a a good person, if you’re fun, authentic, and caring, and growth minded, then our community is for you.

And that’s also the thing, we build relationships with actual people.

So, Ethan, you can tell me tomorrow: Listen I’m not doing podcasts anymore.

I decided I’m going to sell plants now and we’ll be like, you know what, plants is the new thing.

We’re going to help you build this freaking plant business because we’re friends.

Ethan:

Exactly.

So if you’re coming, they’re looking to pitch your heart out, then maybe go somewhere else.

If you’re coming to meet a community of people, then this is the best for you.

Nestene:

Thank you so much, Ethan.

That’s absolutely stunning.

Hendrik:

If you want to join the conversation, find Ethan and Hendrik on LinkedIn.

Also visit the Baird Media website to look at the range of content services we provide.

You will find all the links in the podcast description. This has been a Baird Media production.