How to Massively Build Trust to Power Global Market Entry with John Birtwhistle

Mike (00:00.174)
John, thanks ever so much for joining me on Higgle.

John Birtwhistle (00:05.043)
Okay.

John Birtwhistle (00:21.908)
No worries.

Mike (00:29.784)
The BTB sells for podcasts. It's great to have you.

John Birtwhistle (00:32.659)
My pleasure, nice to be here. Thanks for having me.

Mike (00:35.239)
And you've had a very interesting trip recently over to South America, haven't you?

John Birtwhistle (00:40.021)
Yeah, have indeed. I went to Sao Paulo my second time there. Brazil is an incredible country and it's nice to go and see the offices out there. I got to visit a bit more of Sao Paulo. I think there's about 35 million people living in Sao Paulo, which is almost half the population of the UK or somewhere close to that.

Mike (00:52.237)
Hmm.

Mike (01:00.62)
Wow.

Mike (01:04.148)
my goodness. It's huge!

John Birtwhistle (01:08.297)
I think something that most, the most well known for within Sao Paulo but not worldwide is the amount of traffic. It takes absolutely ages to go anywhere. it's bad. If you want to go to the airport, you need to give yourself a good two and a half, three hours to get there. It's manic, especially when it rains because they've not got great, great, great way of drainage systems, certainly.

Mike (01:18.765)
Ha ha ha!

Mike (01:25.513)
my goodness.

Mike (01:32.001)
That's a good tourist trip for anyone that's going to South America. So at that point, could you just explain to the audience who are you, what do you do, and then something unusual about yourself.

John Birtwhistle (01:34.633)
Yes.

John Birtwhistle (01:43.957)
Yeah, no worries. So I'm John, John Vertwasol. I'm the UK COO for a business called F Camera, who are a Latin American technology and innovation digital consultancy. help companies find business value from their digital journey, essentially. And they've been around for 17 years, predominantly out of Latin America, and the last two or three years have ventured out into the wider world. Something

bit unusual about me. When I was 18, I was quite a long time ago now, so about 20 odd years ago, I went to go travelling around Greece and ended up in my first destination and didn't get any further than that because I a club 1830 holiday rep, which yeah, it's got both positive and negative connotations depending on how old you are and what you know about being an 1830s rep, but it was

Mike (02:30.579)
I would. Wow.

Mike (02:37.996)
Yes.

John Birtwhistle (02:41.139)
an incredible experience, my first foray into sales, guess, and being front line sales in that aspect. The first plane journey that landed from the UK was from Scotland. I remember they had to be diverted via Shipwell Airport in Amsterdam because the plane had caught fire inside because someone... The days you could bring on...

Mike (02:45.951)
Hmm.

John Birtwhistle (03:06.037)
lighters obviously many many years ago and that exploded apparently so by the time they got here I was handing out you know vouchers for food and it was like three o'clock in the morning and that was my first introduction to to repping so yeah

Mike (03:07.084)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mike (03:18.775)
Wow, excellent, and you've never looked back, yes. So let's kick off. So what do you see, or rather, why do you see the UK and Europe as attractive markets, growth markets for agencies?

John Birtwhistle (03:21.223)
Never look back. Never look back.

John Birtwhistle (03:35.413)
Yeah, it's a good question. I guess the word where I first start is the level of maturity that you have, it's certainly in the UK. I can only talk from UK technology consultancy perspective, but it's incredibly saturated. Let's be honest, there are lots and lots of huge organisations that brands that people are very well known of, but there are lots of smaller

you know, four, six, 10, 15 type businesses, very, very niche, very, very technical that have always been spawned out of what happened 10, 15 years ago when the government kind of changed into GDS and it spawned a lot of cool companies. But for other businesses coming to the UK and Europe, there's this kind of like almost appetite that this is the place to be. This is where all the amazing stuff happens.

And certainly if I can speak from from F camera and Latin America's perspective is that they've done incredible things out in Latin America. It's almost like the UK and Europe is where it's at. If we can do it there, then we're doing something we're doing something right. And, you know, we've spoken a lot about what makes what makes us different and.

Mike (04:51.927)
Hmm.

John Birtwhistle (04:53.109)
The reality of situation is we are a business, or know, we're ultimately, we're a one-stop shop, but it's almost like, how can you position ourselves in terms of our culture, the types of people that Latin American people bring, their ability to speak the English language, or obviously Portugal, near shore though, they speak Portuguese. So that foreign into Europe is relatively straightforward, but they've got a great grasp of the English language. They've got fantastic.

universities, they've also got a real enterprise environment, know, they're bigger than Europe, you know, in terms of Brazil, which most people don't appreciate. A lot of it is covered by Amazon, which you have to take into account, but the scale is there. And Europe and the UK are just lots of things happening, you know, you've got in Germany, there's lots of payments, you we specialise in financial services and fintech and...

Certainly out of Germany, you've got lots of payment companies which have been spawned out of that area. In Portugal, you've got some purely huge e-commerce businesses. And yeah, it seems like in order for us to be on the kind tier one status that we need to have presence in those regions.

Mike (06:03.245)
Mmm.

Mike (06:07.007)
mean, the good thing is, is that people still see the UK and Europe as attractive regions to enter. Because obviously, you know, you could take a negative view and say, well, we've had Brexit and we've got inflation and interest rates are through the roof compared to where they were, you know, five, 10 years ago. So lots of uncertainty.

John Birtwhistle (06:11.901)
Yeah, I mean we...

John Birtwhistle (06:20.063)
Yep.

Absolutely. the taxes on businesses here are not that attractive compared to other regions. You've only got to look at some of big tech companies that are putting their head offices out in Ireland and the like. I think we did some research and we looked at some stuff that Gartner produced. And I think after the US, the UK still got the biggest in terms of consulting spend, I think it's about 103 billion pounds or something.

Mike (06:29.1)
Yeah.

John Birtwhistle (06:50.717)
And it's far outweighs other regions of world. You've then got the Netherlands and kind of Benelux regions and certainly Portugal, we went to first, was I think about three, three to five billion. So I think these are growing as well. in financial services where we're kind of focusing our efforts, that's growing about eight, nine percent year on year, even still, despite everything that's going on. So that coupled with...

Mike (07:13.047)
Wow.

Mike (07:16.877)
And that's across Europe.

John Birtwhistle (07:18.451)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, across Europe. Yeah, so it's a huge growth, but there's also a growth market within sustainability. being not just kind greenwashing, but actually how you how you as a business being in your supply chain, you're looking for ethical ways of doing things, whether that's the code that you're producing or the technology that you're choosing and or what are you doing as a business in order to try and do the right thing for the right reasons, not just because you feel that you have to. And so that's that's a huge, huge area of growth.

in retail e-commerce is still growing. Certainly within centralized Europe it's growing. I wouldn't say it's growing so much within the UK. Just from my experience of talking to friends in the industry, it's been a challenging market. But certainly within financial services or in fintech, you've got lots of cool companies coming about trying to do cool. I spoke to a business yesterday and they've developed this app to my

to utilize the open banking framework that basically looks at your spending and then gives you a personalized view of how sustainable your spending being depending on where you've bought your products. So yeah, it's quite some quite cool innovative technology out there, certainly.

Mike (08:29.205)
Alright, yeah yeah.

Mike (08:35.822)
And that's, I always think, you know, there's a habit certainly as Brits to downplay the environment and what's going on and that it's all a bit of a disaster at the moment. We're actually, you know, we're known as being innovators. We're known for having a highly creative talent base in the UK and it's still a vibrant place, but you know, it's not like it was 20, 30 years ago. So you've got to find your market now. It's much harder to find your opportunities.

John Birtwhistle (08:55.955)
Yeah. Yeah.

John Birtwhistle (09:05.299)
Yes, I would agree. think certainly from my experience in the last kind seven, seven to 12 months, those kind of key relationships that you've got with people, people are really keen to help those that they trust, whether it be from for recommendations or to give them pointers. I used to have an old boss who was being incredibly

Mike (09:21.003)
Yes.

John Birtwhistle (09:31.413)
had a kind of foresight when came to this kind of thing about he was always happy to share information, always happy to give and give and give because he knew at some point in life that would come back and I really tried to take on that and I didn't really quite

understand it at the time and but over the recent past certainly it's had a profound impact on on us being able to establish FCAMR in the UK and and how leveraging off those relationships can really get you introductions to places which you which you may not have have got previously just from a normal kind of sales approach.

Mike (10:05.933)
I mean, think, John, that's, I think, I think personally, it's a critical topic. I've been, yeah, very similarly, I was taught the trusted advisor model. You I was taught that basically you give on the basis that people are trustworthy until they prove themselves not to be. Yeah. And that stood me very well over the, over over many, many years. And I think increasingly now,

John Birtwhistle (10:22.611)
Yeah. Otherwise, yeah, yeah.

Mike (10:31.95)
Given what's gone on with the internet over the last 20 years, 25 years, given what's now happened with AI and obviously our concerns about trusted authority, trusted sources. Buyers now, it's getting, we know the buy market, the buy side. More stakeholders, so we know that definitely. Longer cycles, definitely. We know that often retainers are turning into projects. People are trying to manage their risk.

And there was some great work done by Matt Dixon and Ted McKenna, a book called Jolt. Back in the day, the Challenger Sale. So Matt Dixon and Brent Alemson wrote this great book called The Challenger Sale. And that was all about professional services challenging assumptions in the client's mind. And they wrote a book recently, Matt and wrote a book called Jolt. And Jolt was all about basically uncertainty.

And why do buyers now, why are they more concerned and why are they more reticent and what happens in that kind of buying cycle? And one of the things that they talk about is if a buyer sat there and they've got the status quo, and we're all taught salespeople, well, the status quo is your enemy. You've got to defeat the status quo and then they'll buy. Well, it's more complex than that now because one of the problems is it's not just the status quo, but if I do nothing,

John Birtwhistle (11:29.833)
Right, okay.

Mike (11:59.714)
and I live with the status quo and we don't get the outcome that we really want I'll probably get in trouble but I'm not gonna get fired if I hire someone to do something for me that's big and it goes wrong I will get fired so he's called it the fear of messing up which is right is like basically and you must see it in sales cycles I see it whereby it just all goes a bit quiet and people say I'm being ghosted no you're not being ghosted

John Birtwhistle (12:07.316)
Yeah.

John Birtwhistle (12:13.662)
Yes.

Okay. Yeah.

Mike (12:29.053)
something's happened in their environment and stakeholders have gone, maybe now's not the right time.

John Birtwhistle (12:34.665)
Yeah.

Yeah, when people are keen, they'll come back and engage with you regularly and not a decent cadence. You can feel it when people have gone quiet on you. I think a lot of the time people are reticent or they're fearful of disappointing one, but ultimately it's almost the fear of the unknown. I would much rather hear from a customer and say, you know what, we're not ready right now or we've gone with another suit. mean, that's fine. You know, that's no problem.

Mike (12:39.958)
Exactly.

Mike (12:45.868)
You can.

John Birtwhistle (13:06.453)
I'll always be keen to hear how we could have done better or why they chose someone else. even if things have quietened down for whatever reason, budgets have been changed or changing leadership or changing direction, that's fine. That's life. You get on with it and you move on.

Mike (13:24.301)
But you also maintain the relationship. Being this trusted advisor to me means, well, you're always there. No matter what decision they make, you need to be on the end of the phone because one day something will come along that is more relevant.

John Birtwhistle (13:26.439)
Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

John Birtwhistle (13:38.748)
Absolutely. I had an exact conversation yesterday with, so we're changing our credit card provider. It's not quite the same. We're changing our credit card provider as a business and we're getting this new financial system set up internally. So it has to integrate obviously with that to make it a seamless process. We don't want to try and automate as much as possible. We want to create efficiencies internally just as much we're talking to customers about doing it.

Mike (14:03.135)
Exactly. Yeah.

John Birtwhistle (14:07.861)
And originally I was told I need to go with this business type card. Okay, no problem. went through the process. And I then heard the next day that no, it needed to be a corporate one as opposed to business. I rang them up and I said, oh, I need to cancel this. And immediately they changed in terms of being helpful, happy. Oh yeah, brilliant. And as soon as I said no, even though I was being honest and being, we're still going with you, but we need this product versus this product.

Because that person wasn't selling it anymore, obviously not getting the commission or whatever it was in the background, immediately they changed. And I felt myself internalise, change towards them and be like, hold on a minute, you're the same business, you're the same company, I just need a different product. But because of the way you have been reacted now, I'm never ever going to engage with you as an individual ever again.

Mike (14:56.257)
Exactly.

John Birtwhistle (14:59.605)
Whereas if that person had been like, yeah, okay, I completely understand. Here's the person you need to speak to, then it would all been great. But yeah.

Mike (15:06.637)
Absolutely. It trusts a really funny thing. It takes a long time to build and it takes seconds to lose.

John Birtwhistle (15:14.14)
Yeah, absolutely. I think there was, I can't remember what the actual stat was, but suddenly you have a bad experience, you tell like five people, when you have a good one, you might tell one. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike (15:20.385)
Yeah, exactly right. Yeah. And we rely on that. In services businesses, we rely on people who we never know it happens, but they say good things about us when we're not around.

John Birtwhistle (15:27.892)
Yeah.

John Birtwhistle (15:32.115)
Yeah, absolutely, yeah, very much so.

Mike (15:36.041)
And the 11 touchpoints in terms of customer buying has never been more true.

John Birtwhistle (15:40.925)
Yeah, we spoke about that previously. mean, that's something that, you know, we're obviously coming to a new market as a very well-established organization. And, you know, we've been around, as I mentioned before, 17 years. We're up to close to hundred million dollar revenue as an organization. We have got enterprise-level customers in Latin America who are, you know, world-renowned international businesses.

But ultimately here we are a complete unknown entity. We've got a couple of really incredible customers and we've recently just won a huge household name, which is fantastic. But ultimately we're on an unknown. And when we're looking at going through and re-designing our complete global go-to-market marketing strategy. And the reason that is, is purely off the basis, the stuff that worked before in Latin America,

Mike (16:12.139)
Hmm.

John Birtwhistle (16:37.621)
is not necessarily transferable to different regions. How do people absorb content? they absorb it differently? In terms of how they want to hear things, where are going for these kind trusted relationships? And the reason I bring this up is that the talk on 11 touch points is that my kind of approach to marketing from that regard is it's very, very difficult to put a return on investment of one specific activity because there might have been 10 others

Mike (16:40.737)
John Birtwhistle (17:07.919)
surrounding that, have meant that this, this final one has meant that they want to engage or they, you know what, John, I heard from her from you talk on the B2B sales club, I saw you at the fifth event and this is the fifth time we've come across you now. I'm actually open now as having that conversation. And you know, we're, we know we're bringing a different, a different style. We're almost going to be quite disruptive in the UK for the UK market and the European market. Reason being is that we're able to offer, you know, really

Mike (17:08.895)
Exactly.

Mike (17:12.545)
Yep.

Mike (17:17.377)
Exactly.

Mike (17:22.786)
Yeah.

John Birtwhistle (17:39.244)
unique offerings at a price point which is incredibly attractive. know, you've had the ad for, know, ultimately we were able to, we were able to offer offshoring capabilities from a professional services perspective. And we are about two thirds cheaper than what you get from an onshore model.

And then you have they're almost like this apathy, well, if you're that cheap, can you be any good? And so it's my kind of job and the team in the UK is about, so it's almost storytelling, saying that, yes, it might be this price, but this price still dictates that you're gonna get the same value. We're gonna get to the outcome just as quickly as a tier one provider in the UK, but we're gonna provide you with a service which is probably way above and beyond what you've got at price point, is incredible. And you've had...

Mike (18:13.026)
Yes.

John Birtwhistle (18:33.639)
subcontinent outsourcing, has had its positive and negative connotations, depending on how it's managed and how that's worked with. You've gone to Eastern Europe, which has had huge levels of success. But with that success, those rates and prices are now coming up. And Latin America almost feels like the kind of next frontier for businesses seeking innovation and growth. And it's our job to say that, know, Brazil, Latin America, Mexico, know, Colombia, they're not

Yeah, this is I think I've spoken to so many people and I always ask them what they know about Brazil. And more often than not, it comes back up. Beach, the football team, Christ the Redeemer and Havana flip flops. They're not necessarily they're not necessarily known for enterprise scale technology solutions. But the reality is they are in some aspects way more advanced than they are here. I mean, certainly from a financial services perspective. Due to the the economic environment in Brazil, certainly.

Mike (19:19.552)
Exactly.

John Birtwhistle (19:33.481)
they started from scratch. So they implemented open banking, I think second behind the UK, and they have just absolutely taken that on board and have done some incredible pieces of work, which translate here. And when people see those case studies, they're like, wow, that's, that has real relevance. And you're able to do that and get the delivery at a price that is incredibly attractive. yeah.

Mike (19:56.686)
That combination, John, it? mean, having been a buyer, I've got some authority to say in B2B selling and buying, I can't think of a time when I only bought on price. If someone said, I'm just really cheap. Exactly. And I think your story here is very relevant, which is if it was just, well, we're the lowest cost producer, the quality is a bit average, then you're like, well, that's not going to work.

John Birtwhistle (20:12.607)
No, that's yeah, you're not, you're not off. No, no.

John Birtwhistle (20:23.305)
Yeah. No, absolutely not.

Mike (20:25.537)
But if you've got innovation and you're driving innovation in a region which is huge, complex, and has lots of big enterprises in it, and delivering really innovative, leading edge technical solutions to solve big business problems, and it comes at a price point which is a half or two thirds of onshore, well, now there's a discussion.

John Birtwhistle (20:38.825)
Yeah. Yeah.

John Birtwhistle (20:49.661)
Exactly. And that's the conversations that we're having. in terms of what the kind of our biggest challenge is building that level of credibility and building it quickly. You know, so, you know, which is why we're going through this global marketing marketing strategy to say, okay, right. The people we want to be selling to that will value the work that we've done. Where are these people hanging out? You know, what

what mediums of press they're reading, what are they listening to, where are they going to say, do you know what, is a real, I trust these people, even though I've never necessarily heard of them. Because we can back up what we're saying by the case that we've got, you know, our founder, Fabio, he, um,

He's incredibly well regarded, he's like a rock star in Latin America, in the tech world. He was the third ever Microsoft Global MVP for Visual Studio. He's an incredibly gifted human being. his kind of philosophy, the work that we've done manifests itself and will stand up against anybody here.

And we just happen to be very, very competitive. as you mentioned, you mentioned something earlier on about the kind of procurement and buying cycle, the ability for managers or leaders to sign off budgets has come down from where it was five, 10 years ago. And everyone's looking to try and get here at a cost which is better than they got the previous year, whilst getting the same value, getting it quickly, and et cetera, cetera.

Mike (22:11.117)
They have.

John Birtwhistle (22:24.201)
And I think it feels like all of these facets are coming together to a meeting at the same time. And we feel like we're in a very, very strong position to be able to offer this. And there's not that many other companies, certainly from technology consultancies that have come from that part of the world, Latin America, and come to the UK. You've got some two major players who have done incredibly well. it shows that it can work.

And I know ultimately our goal is to be the number one in the next three to five years of everyone would think of our business when they're looking for this type of solution.

Mike (23:02.541)
So if you look, John, at kind of business development, you know, much broader than just your business, but if you looked at business development strategies and tactics that work when you're entering a new geographic territory, what have you learned that, I mean, you'll be learning all the time because it'll evolve, but what have you kind of gone, hmm, tried that, that hasn't worked, tried this, that seems quite successful. What do you think are the big strands?

John Birtwhistle (23:19.102)
Yeah.

John Birtwhistle (23:28.821)
Yeah. I'll try and start on the most successful ones because they're the ones that are the nice ones to talk about. I mean, and the reality is the most successful conversations that we've had and that have come to actual fruition are through trusted relationships and partnerships. So to give a real life example, there is one particular business.

Mike (23:29.759)
of how you develop new business when you're entering a new market.

Exactly, that'd be good.

John Birtwhistle (23:55.893)
they turn over 60 odd billion pounds, so dollars, sorry, they're not a small company. We've got a trusted working relationship with them in Latin America. And a Sunday night, our founder was messaging, was talking to their CEO in Latin America and said, oh, we're setting up in the UK. I don't know if there's anything going on, maybe you have a chat, anyhow. Sunday night, I get a message, very late Sunday.

cc'ing in the CEO of Europe of this business who messaged me on a Sunday and was like, be great to me. And I was like, blummin' heck. I mean, if I reached out to this gentleman or this person, sorry, as me from F Camera UK, he'd be like, who the heck are you? Like, go away. Like, wouldn't even entertain it. Yeah.

Mike (24:45.069)
You wouldn't even get past... No, I mean the one second rule of delete would have happened

John Birtwhistle (24:51.325)
Yeah, exactly. it came from someone that he trusted. He felt that he didn't need to message me. And then we went back and forward and it just so happened that he...

Mike (24:56.682)
Exactly.

John Birtwhistle (25:05.013)
lived and worked very very close to me and we actually met face to face these meetings do happen still face to face and it was it quite a novel and novel experience to be perfectly honest and and he said you know what makes you different and I said I need to you know I'll be honest with you we are like many other businesses but what I can tell you is the people that you're going to be engaging with

Mike (25:08.023)
Right.

Mike (25:12.033)
Yeah, absolutely.

John Birtwhistle (25:27.573)
want to make a difference. And that's how we are going to position ourselves for you. Because you could go to any other big company or competitor of ours and get a very, very similar service. But because we are so driven to make the UK and Europe a success, we will be an incredible partner for you. And that's now leading to lots of other work. And that process we replicated.

four times so far in the last seven months to come to success all through trusted engagements because that's what's going to get you in the door.

Where I've also seen in some good engagement is through having a clear message and a clear purpose in terms of what your go-to-market is. What are you talking about constantly? What are you going to be a subject matter expert in? What do you know or knowledge around this particular subject? How is that going to have an impact or benefit or a problem that you know that the customers you're talking to are going through based on the other customers that you've been engaging with?

Mike (26:32.192)
Exactly.

John Birtwhistle (26:32.853)
That's had some real impact in terms of conversations. Then it's about storytelling. Yeah, you do need a point of view, certainly. Where I've seen not working, which I haven't done a lot because it's not effective, is just blanket messages or blanket LinkedIn introductions, whatever they may be. Those people will only ever come back if there is something in that message which...

Mike (26:37.121)
and having a point of view. You need a point of view.

Mike (26:52.406)
Exactly.

John Birtwhistle (27:00.302)
at that particular moment spikes their interest.

Mike (27:03.053)
Yeah. And let's remember here, John, you're selling into enterprises. So anyone out there that's listening is sure, if you're selling a £200, $200 audio mixing amp that I'm looking at now in B2B, because you're selling to another business, sure, mass outreach might work. It's possible. But someone that's going to spend half a million dollars

John Birtwhistle (27:26.195)
Yeah. Yeah.

John Birtwhistle (27:31.337)
Yes. On an idea. Yeah.

Mike (27:32.106)
on a technology program, on an idea that's gonna transform their business. What? You think LinkedIn, I'm gonna message cold outreach, it's ludicrous. Because if you and me with the budget holders on the buy side, we'd be like, I got a message from this person, I don't know who they are, they say they do all this amazing stuff, I thought I'd invite them in. You'd be like, are you mad Mike?

John Birtwhistle (27:53.173)
I don't know who the company is. Yeah. Nah. No. No. It's just not gonna happen. No. No. And that can be effective on scale. As you said previously, there are some industries where that is incredibly effective way of doing things. But certainly in the space that we're in.

Mike (28:01.515)
Are you crazy? It's not gonna happen. It's not gonna happen.

John Birtwhistle (28:20.821)
where you can leverage trusted relationships is the number one way to go really. I have made a conscious, I go back to the boss because I was in that business for 17 years and he was always encouraging me to build up a network of people, to build up a trusted circle of individuals. Yeah.

Mike (28:25.911)
Definitely.

Mike (28:42.219)
It's taken me years, John. Like you, it's taken me years to do that.

John Birtwhistle (28:45.333)
Yeah, yeah, and I was a bit reticent to do that because I felt, what am I offering these people? What's the point in having this conversation? I felt very nervous about just speaking to somebody for the sake of speaking to them. I was just like, do they really want to talk to me? And it was only after I left that business that I understood why that was.

And then as a result of that, I've tried to reengage a lot of my old network, because the people that I dealt with 10 years ago are now in positions of seniority and have an influence on buying and certainly they have a navigation into other areas. So that's been incredibly effective. I've become a lot more involved in

Mike (29:16.15)
Exactly.

Mike (29:26.477)
But just on that point, John, simple things like, yeah, because someone listening would be going, well, if they're 20 years behind you and me, well, how do I start making those relationships and trusted relationships? Simple things, the simplest of things work often, which is, for example, I'm a bit of a magpie for market research reports. So I find interesting reports about marketing agencies and brand growth. Well, I find a report and I'll summarize it.

because it's an open report, I'll summarize it using an AI tool, and then I'll send the summary to my kind of contact that I'm building a relationship with, just saying, I thought this might be interesting and helpful. I've given you a summary because the report's 30 pages long. Hope that helps. Something as simple as that to a busy person's day. Yeah.

John Birtwhistle (30:15.157)
Yeah.

is invaluable. Yeah. And it goes back to what you mentioned earlier about giving things and not expecting anything in return. It harkens back. And I've got a real life example yesterday of I was helping out an AI startup come to Latin America because they've got an incredible AI product that's

recognizes your speech to make sure it's for authentic authentication purposes and they're looking to come to Latin America so I've some introductions to some people that I know there and the person who's been helping us facilitate that I saw that she had some connections into a company that we would really be able to offer value for so I asked the question I said you know if you can make this introduction

Mike (31:06.805)
be great. Yeah.

John Birtwhistle (31:07.027)
that would be great and she was more than happy to do so because of the effort that I'd done previously for her and her colleagues. Yeah.

Mike (31:11.583)
Exactly. Simple reciprocity. Without asking, they think, well, John's been really helpful. Of course I'll help. What can I do? Absolutely. So.

John Birtwhistle (31:21.301)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You'd be surprised how many people out there are willing to help for free. And I've been involved in some groups now, which I was always a apathy before about, you know, what do they do in there? They don't actually do anything. But there's some ones we've been invited to recently, which are incredibly valuable. A, for sharing information, for getting insights, for comparing notes, for, you know...

Mike (31:29.004)
Yes.

John Birtwhistle (31:49.109)
for getting some little bit nuggets of information. And then just people in there being very humble and being like, do you know what, I need some help on this. Has anyone been through this before? And the amount of responses that you get and then you can spin that off into little groups is incredibly useful.

Mike (32:06.729)
I probably get two or three requests a week from people who I've got to know who are just saying, I've got this problem with the procurement person on the client side. This is happening. What do you think? And I just like, yeah, fine. know, it's a half an hour. I think about it. Yeah, I think about it half an hour. Give them a response. Hope that was helpful. But that generation of goodwill, that they know lots of people who might have problems that I can help solve.

John Birtwhistle (32:09.598)
Right.

John Birtwhistle (32:17.587)
Yeah. Yeah, because some would have lived it. Some would have been it.

John Birtwhistle (32:34.377)
Yeah, yeah.

Mike (32:35.019)
and they might say nice things about me to their friends.

John Birtwhistle (32:37.365)
Yeah, absolutely. think also, you mentioned previously about someone 20 years ago, what can they do? It can be quite daunting, I think, when you're first coming into this kind of world of, how can I make a difference? What can I do? you you look at, I think if I take myself back to then, I was just like, wow, what do I really know? And I think I was a little bit...

bit nervous about this, someone really, are they really going to believe what I'm saying? know, it's, and as I've certainly got older, you become a lot more resilient to the fact that if someone is not interested, that's okay. It doesn't matter. Go on, move on to the next person. You'll hone your pitch and you'll hone your knowledge. And something that my brother did actually, which always astounded me was that

Mike (33:07.479)
Yep. Yeah.

Mike (33:23.777)
You will.

John Birtwhistle (33:30.633)
Even when he was young going through university and then starting out in his first job, he wasn't the one that was reading CEM on the tube. He was reading The Economist and reading things of value so that when he was having engaging conversations with his seniors, he could add something to those things or he could certainly understand what was going on. That would be one of my biggest tips for someone who was 20 years ago. Immerse yourself in information that has relevance to the sector.

Mike (33:39.639)
Right.

Mike (33:43.595)
Hmm.

Mike (33:52.897)
Yes.

John Birtwhistle (33:56.319)
with it, it's easy to get into your phone playing Candy Crush or whatever, whatever, scrolling an Instagram, whatever it may be, it's easy to do that. But if you spend those five, 10 minutes reading some relevant information about your industry, you'd be surprised how that goes into your level of consciousness and you can recall things.

Mike (34:15.767)
Yeah.

John Birtwhistle (34:16.917)
at a moment's notice and people are like, oh right, where did you hear that? Oh, I read it in The Economist. I mean, you say, if you say that, know, as a 20 year old or 22 year old just coming to university, you're like, oh really? Wow, okay, fair enough. You can pay the subscription fee. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike (34:21.196)
Yeah.

Yes, exactly. Yeah, exactly. And that's how you form point of view by bringing together lots of disparate information and then having a point of view. John, we're at 30 minutes, so I think we need to wrap up. So it's been fantastic having you as a guest. Thank you ever so much for joining me. If you were giving like just like one or two tips to people out there who were listening about

John Birtwhistle (34:40.637)
okay.

Mike (34:53.026)
basically business development, especially entering into new geographic territories. What's your kind of big takeaway about how would you approach that for kind of bigger deal sizes?

John Birtwhistle (35:02.749)
Yeah, I would be my my biggest my biggest tip would be don't be scared have have that that knowledge of the background and use that as like almost like a power play so I know I know what I'm talking about

I don't have confidence to do this and practice. Practice people around you. People hate doing role plays and what have you. Practice. The more you practice, the better you're to get. There's the 10,000 hour book and all that kind of jazz that goes on there. Practice and practice. And it's OK for people to say no. People aren't, regardless of how amazing your pitch might be or how amazing your business is or how amazing your product is, some people just won't want it. And that's OK. And just keep moving forward and don't let it you dragged down because that's certainly happened to me in the past.

and you can really be all encompassing and then it ruins the next time you make that call. Whereas you just, you go forward and to mention what you said previously, something to offer, some of the value that's gonna make their life that bit easier and that bit better. And you recommended someone to me and I'm gonna misquote them completely, it's about...

Mike (35:56.279)
Yeah.

Mike (36:05.709)
Yeah.

Mike (36:09.418)
Exactly.

John Birtwhistle (36:15.305)
The cell is about what you leave them? What is it? The afters. There you go, the afters. Yeah, yeah. The afters. And when you said that to me, I obviously followed him and looked it up. And that's really resonated with me. I really, really like that. And I try and take that forward. yeah.

Mike (36:17.407)
Right, the afters. It's the afters. I think Andy Bounds is his name. It's the afters. It's all about the afters.

Mike (36:34.121)
I love it. And for people listening, look up Andy was on one of my episodes earlier on and it's about the afters. Go find out what the afters means in selling. It's brilliant.

John Birtwhistle (36:43.731)
Yeah, that's really, really powerful. Yeah, thanks so much.

Mike (36:47.137)
John, it's been amazing. Thanks ever so much for joining me. Where can people find out more about you?

John Birtwhistle (36:51.829)
Yeah, LinkedIn. John Birt was still, I'm not telling you the actual URL is, yeah, LinkedIn on there. Yeah, please feel free to reach out. I'm happy to talk to anybody, have any conversations. I'm always willing to share any knowledge that I have. My background is is kind of COO operational efficiencies and automation. And now I'm moving back into.

to kind of, you know, executing our go-to-market strategy. So I've got a lot of varied and varied knowledge and a lot of scars from things that haven't worked out. yeah. No worries. My pleasure. Lovely to speak. Cheers, Mike.

Mike (37:28.61)
John, thanks ever so much. Thank you. Cheers now, and you. And we're out.