Visual Models Expert Simon Bowen Illustrates How Showing Your Thinking Makes Your Agency Easier to Choose

The transcript below has been edited lightly for clarity, speaker identification, and proper names. The audio remains the authoritative version of the conversation.

 

Stephen Woessner [00:00:08 – 00:00:54]

Over the past decade, we’ve hosted more than 1,200 conversations with CEOs, bestselling authors, respected researchers, and agency leaders. And that body of work has generated nearly 1 million podcast downloads and YouTube views from listeners and viewers in more than 100 countries. 100 countries. And here’s the red thread running through the insights we’ve collected. Agencies that have built an authority position no longer struggle to be seen. Instead, they struggle to activate latent demand. Agency leaders have said to us, is exactly where we’re sitting right now, authority without demand. So welcome to the In Demand Agency Podcast presented by Predictive ROI.

Stephen Woessner [00:00:55 – 00:02:12]

Sparked by research from the Harvard Business Review, Edelman, Gallup, Agencycore, all showing that trust has moved upstream. In today’s marketplace, authority earns attention. Yes, but demand, demand is what turns attention into action. Each episode deconstructs the science of demand from behavioral psychology, decision-making research, and the cross-industry strategies behind why in how B2B buyers make their decisions. We interviewed the world’s leading behavioral scientists, agency network leaders, and strategists from industries far beyond ours— experts who are reshaping how demand works. I’m your host, Stephen Wessner, and in each episode, we’ll translate their insights directly into the agency world. And these conversations are now being heard by a community of over 30,000 agency owners and their teams. With me for today’s episode is Simon Bowen, founder and CEO of The Models Method and the creator of the Genius Model.

Stephen Woessner [00:02:12 – 00:03:04]

For nearly 3 decades, Simon has worked with leaders across government, Fortune 500 companies, the military, nonprofits, startups, and complex service businesses, helping them turn sophisticated thinking into visual models that people can understand, believe, and use. The Genius Model is now used in more than 30 countries in more than 8 languages. And here is why I was thrilled when Simon’s team reached out to us. We see it all the time, friends. An agency has done the hard work of building specialized expertise. The agency has the scar tissue and experience from serving clients in their niche. And way too quickly, they see a prospect’s problem that less experienced competitors don’t see. They don’t have the same insights.

Stephen Woessner [00:03:04 – 00:03:49]

But then the agency tries to communicate all of that through a long explanation, a list of deliverables, or a proposal That leaves the prospect to connect the dots. Simon has built his work around this direct challenge. It is not enough to tell people that you’re smart. Friends, you must show them your genius. So today, Simon and I are going to deconstruct how an agency can make its invisible expertise visible, how a model can create clarity and buyer safety Inside a biz dev conversation, what changes when a right-fit prospect can finally see how your agency thinks?

Simon Bowen [00:03:53 – 00:04:22]

What the customer’s actually buying is the thinking behind the big idea, because the big idea will almost certainly have to adapt over time. And so what’s the quality of thinking behind the big idea and your thinking? And for the agencies listening, your thinking is your product, not the actual thing you do. And then the second, in the system for influence, the ability to influence the choices people make to buy from you, work for you, serve you as suppliers, fund you as a bank, et cetera, et cetera. And I went on the hunt.

Stephen Woessner [00:04:25 – 00:04:33]

Simon, welcome to the In Demand Agency Podcast. I am absolutely honored and thrilled to have this conversation with you.

Simon Bowen [00:04:34 – 00:04:44]

Oh, thank you for having me. I’m delighted to be here. We’re practically on opposite sides of the world. And through the magic of technology, we’re having this great conversation today.

Stephen Woessner [00:04:44 – 00:05:25]

Amen to that. And friends, if you could have heard our green room chat, it was just totally energizing. And I can’t wait to bring some of that into conversation here. And I just want to give you a quick heads up. There are going to be probably some instances and opportunities here where Simon’s going to start drawing and so forth. And when that happens, not only will you hear probably Simon talk about, all right, I’m going to draw this thing. But then I will also remind you that this podcast, this episode is now part of our YouTube or YouTube channel as well, our Predictive ROI YouTube channel as well. So there are going to be some instances if you’re listening on audio, awesome, but then watching it on YouTube would also be very, very helpful too.

Stephen Woessner [00:05:25 – 00:05:34]

So Simon, thank you for being so kind, not only to share your insights and wisdom, but then also to draw it out for us too, so we can really get it cemented into place.

Simon Bowen [00:05:34 – 00:05:36]

Yeah. I’m looking forward to it. Can’t wait.

Stephen Woessner [00:05:37 – 00:06:24]

So you’ve described, as I was getting ready for our conversation, you’ve described before about maybe an instance or scenario, and I know that you’ll paint this picture better than me, but where you’ve walked into your groups, whether we’re talking about high-stakes environments like government or military or business, and there’s a wide variety of stakeholders and you’re taking in this information. And then whether you physically walk to a board or maybe like in a digital environment like this, and you start drawing it out and you start mapping the model and taking in the input and so forth and put it into a construct. Why do you think that that is a good way to start to develop maybe some— what’s the word that I’m looking for— consensus?

Simon Bowen [00:06:25 – 00:06:25]

Yeah.

Stephen Woessner [00:06:25 – 00:06:34]

And maybe people start thinking a little bit more about maybe bigger picture or maybe more tactically. Why is that a good way to sort of like bring people together visually?

Simon Bowen [00:06:35 – 00:07:29]

Well, you know, people go to war with their words and express opinion. And opinion is an interesting concept. You know, to form and hold onto an opinion, you need 2 things. The first thing you need is information, right? To form the opinion. But then to hold onto the opinion, you need a degree of ignorance. You have to remain ignorant of everything that is counter to your opinion. And so, you know, if you choose to hold onto a view that the world is flat, you actually have to ignore every bit of evidence to the contrary. And so opinions are flawed by at least 50%, because to hold onto your opinion, you have to actually choose ignorance around the evidence that counters that opinion.

Simon Bowen [00:07:29 – 00:08:37]

And so one of the problems with words only, A, it’s limited by the vocabulary of the least adept in the room. And if the least adept in the room actually holds a degree of political power or business power or purchasing power, that vocabulary is the one that limits your conversation and people go to war with their words, right? And so I would get hired by, say, the government and they’d say, we’re gonna put 200, you know, for 6 years I did all the stakeholder engagement for a $1.4 billion sports stadium here in Perth, in Western Australia. And my job was to find out what everybody wanted and get that into a brief for the architects to tender against. And that stadium became the world’s best sports stadium in 2018. when it opened, a 60,000-seat stadium and just one of the most celebrated pieces of public infrastructure here in Perth, which is rare when the government builds a bit of infrastructure that it gets celebrated. And so the government say, we’ve got 200 people we’re going to put in a room together who are at war with each other over an issue. You’ve got 2 hours to get them to agree. Excuse me.

Simon Bowen [00:08:37 – 00:09:15]

And I built a reputation for doing that. And, you know, it’s actually patently simple. If you just frustrate everybody for 3 quarters of the available time, and that’s also very easy to do, you just listen to everybody equally, right? Everybody wants to be heard more and louder than everybody else. But if you just listen to everybody equally, I’ll grab that idea, I’ll put it on a flip chart. I’ll grab that idea, I’ll put it on a flip chart. And then at 90 minutes, you walk to a flip chart or a whiteboard and go, you know, I think I can draw this. That Language. When we draw, you draw people in and think about drawing.

Simon Bowen [00:09:16 – 00:09:18]

What’s the first thing a child puts on paper?

Stephen Woessner [00:09:18 – 00:09:19]

A drawing.

Simon Bowen [00:09:19 – 00:10:09]

It’s not great. It’s almost indecipherable, but the parents lose their mind over it and frame it and put it behind glass and tell the child what the— that they’re a genius and everything else. We have deep emotional attachment to drawing. We in Australia, we have the oldest living population with our indigenous people. And for 60,000 years, they’ve been passing down their stories through cave art. You know, if we think about this in a modern context, I started my life in electronics and design. If you get an idea for something on one side, a device, right? And then the device is in the real world operating on the other side. What was the first physical appearance of that device in the real world? Right.

Simon Bowen [00:10:09 – 00:10:15]

It was a circuit diagram. The space between is all almost always a drawing.

Stephen Woessner [00:10:15 – 00:10:16]

Yeah.

Simon Bowen [00:10:16 – 00:10:54]

On CAD or on paper or whatever. So, you know, if you said, if you went to a builder and said, I’ve got a great idea for a house, would you build it for me? Builder would go, well, go and get an architect and give me a drawing. Right. And you know, when someone says, I grew up in the country in small, small towns in Western Australia, 800, 900 people and farming uncles. And, uh, and you know, if one of them said, go over to Pat’s place, you know, they’d draw a map in the dirt and kick it and then go, as you go through the top gate and the gate in the top paddock, make sure you shut it and everything else. And, but, but the map was drawn in the dirt. So, so much of our, so much of our communication through life came through drawing.

Stephen Woessner [00:10:55 – 00:10:55]

Actually.

Simon Bowen [00:10:56 – 00:11:24]

And, you know, I went on the hunt for the system for thinking and influence. So the 2 most important systems in business are the system for thinking and the system for influence. And they’re not viewed as systems, but indeed they are. The system for thinking says, what is the thinking behind the big idea you bring to market? You know, everyone, oh, I bring a big idea to market. Great. What the customer’s actually buying is the thinking behind the big idea.

Stephen Woessner [00:11:25 – 00:11:25]

Yep.

Simon Bowen [00:11:25 – 00:11:39]

Because the big idea will almost certainly have to adapt over time. And so what’s the quality of thinking behind the big idea and your thinking? And for the agencies listening, your thinking is your product.

Stephen Woessner [00:11:40 – 00:11:40]

Yep.

Simon Bowen [00:11:41 – 00:12:14]

Not the actual thing you do. Your thinking is your product. And then the second system, the system for influence, the ability to influence the choices people make to buy from you, work for you, serve you as suppliers. fund you as a bank, et cetera, et cetera. And I went on the hunt. Is there a system for thinking and influence? Because it’s certainly not language only. And I had this discovery that psychologically powerful visual models are actually a system for thinking and influence. We know the data.

Simon Bowen [00:12:15 – 00:12:21]

11% of the information from the world around us comes in through the auditory channel, 83% comes through the optic nerve.

Stephen Woessner [00:12:22 – 00:12:22]

Yep.

Simon Bowen [00:12:22 – 00:12:57]

You know, if you say to somebody, tell me about your primary school, they picture the primary school in their head. They don’t get a stream of words running through their head. When we talk about imagination, imagine yourself in the future with great, with great branding presence in the marketplace. This is, let’s say this is a branding agency. and they’re saying to a potential client, imagine your future with great branding material in the marketplace that’s pulling exactly the right people to you, blah, blah, blah. You’ve just said, imagine yourself in the future image.

Stephen Woessner [00:12:58 – 00:12:58]

Yep.

Simon Bowen [00:12:59 – 00:13:35]

Image is the base, is the source code of imagination. And the brain is a meaning-making machine, but it does it in visuals. And so, you know, everyone understands visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. as the sensory perception coming in, but inside the brain, it’s an image-making machine. And so we construct in images and we understand in images. And so the system for thinking and influence done in imagery, and in my case, powerful visual models, because there’s a second dimension to models. Let me draw it for you if that’s okay. And they’ll be asking.

Simon Bowen [00:13:36 – 00:14:23]

It’s a really important concept for people to understand. If we imagine you communicate in words only, so it’s a 2 by 2 matrix and down in the bottom left quadrant is a red zone quadrant. The top left and the bottom right are yellow zone or amber zone, and the very top right is a green zone quadrant. And so, ’cause this is a 2 by 2 matrix, there’s a horizontal, there’s a vertical dimension. And at the bottom left corner, we’re communicating in words only, right? And at that level, people say, oh, I hear you. But actually it’s just more noise. I hear you and it’s more noise. And so we try to increase the vertical column, which is visual access.

Simon Bowen [00:14:23 – 00:14:49]

We want, if we can give people greater visual access to the thing we’re talking about, 83% of the world’s information comes in through the optic nerve. People say, whoa, now I can see it. Right. And what we see is always more interesting than what we hear. You know, I, I don’t know if you remember, but years ago, this team, um, boys soccer team got stuck in a cave in Thailand.

Stephen Woessner [00:14:50 – 00:14:50]

Yep.

Simon Bowen [00:14:50 – 00:14:52]

Mm-hmm. And they were trying to rescue them and everything.

Stephen Woessner [00:14:52 – 00:14:52]

Yep.

Simon Bowen [00:14:53 – 00:14:59]

I first heard that on the radio and I said, they, these boys walked into the cave and now the rain is gonna come. They’re worried about the cave flooding.

Stephen Woessner [00:14:59 – 00:15:00]

Right.

Simon Bowen [00:15:00 – 00:15:54]

And, and, and I’m thinking on the, when I heard it on the radio in the car driving to the city, I remember thinking, well, you walked in, walk out before the rain comes. Like, I don’t get it. And then on the news that night, I saw this, I saw the schematic of the cave and realized, okay, this is a bit serious right now. This got a whole lot more interesting. On the horizontal axis, if we shift from words only, and this is the key piece about models, right? If we give people structural access, structure, The brain is a sense-making machine. It wants to make sense of. And so I’m drawing a 2 by 2 matrix and expressing a kind of a complex idea at the moment, but it’s simple because it’s visible and it’s drawn and it’s got structure to it. Now, the reality is I just made this matrix up, but it’s sounding like it’s an official sort of thing because it’s got structure to it.

Simon Bowen [00:15:55 – 00:16:30]

So if I give people structural access, they say, oh, I get it. And that’s believable. And we live in a believability crisis today. Trust is no longer the only currency. Believability is a currency because is that video real? Who’d know? AI could have made it, right? And so, you know, if you’re an agency marketing and where you’re in a sales conversation, believability is your major problem, not trust. So let me position this for a while. I’m not saying trust’s not important, but I’m saying you don’t even get to go in and make the presentation if trust doesn’t exist.

Stephen Woessner [00:16:31 – 00:16:31]

Yep.

Simon Bowen [00:16:32 – 00:16:35]

Right. Trust gets you in the door. Believability gets you sold.

Stephen Woessner [00:16:36 – 00:16:36]

Yep.

Simon Bowen [00:16:37 – 00:17:35]

And so if you can’t offer structure or structural access to your thinking, it’s not believable, right? And words only don’t offer structural access. In fact, they can create chaos for people. And then if people can see what you are talking about and they have the structural access, you get into this top right corner, the green zone. I can see it and I get it. This thing becomes desirable. And then the other part about models that I put into the mix is this top right corner, what I call the super green zone. Imagine the structural access is 8 out of 10 or above, and the vis— the visual access is 8 out of 10 or above. So the performance zone right up here in the top right corner, because every sale is a form of performance art, quite frankly.

Simon Bowen [00:17:35 – 00:18:43]

And I studied stage magic and choreography to design How to walk through visual models using the structure of stage magic and choreography, which is the the the the the build up. So you take people on a journey in a paradigm they understand, and then in a nanosecond you collapse that paradigm and introduce the new paradigm in a way that they can’t ignore it or look away. Right? That’s what stage magic does—the reveal. and comedy, the punchline, right? And so choreography turns desirable into buyable. And you can’t, it’s almost impossible to achieve all of that in words only. And so, you know, a wall-to-wall presentation full of text, they’re gonna skim read it. But if a wall-to-wall proposal full of text actually has key visual models in there, as they’re skimming through it, what are they going to stop on?

Stephen Woessner [00:18:45 – 00:18:45]

Right?

Simon Bowen [00:18:45 – 00:18:48]

So how important is the paragraph under that visual model?

Stephen Woessner [00:18:48 – 00:19:10]

Well, and like you shared with me in the green room how— and I think that this— well, so I guess maybe this is a litmus test question for you. You said to me in the green room, Drawing slows people down. So then if they’re seeing the static image in a document, my assumption is that too would also slow them down, even though you’re not drawing it in real time.

Simon Bowen [00:19:10 – 00:19:30]

Oh, totally. Well, it actually slams them to a halt in your proposal. They will, if there’s, if, you know, if they pick up the, imagine a book, I, I do, I do a fair bit of work with authors. So, you know, Dan Martell’s Buy Back Your Time. Dan came to me and said, I just want to, you know, have a whole bunch of meetings with you and unpack my thinking into visual models because I’m going to write a book.

Stephen Woessner [00:19:30 – 00:19:31]

Okay.

Simon Bowen [00:19:31 – 00:20:14]

And we just started for his next book, which will come out eventually. But, and for Todd Herman with The Alter Ego Effect, that, you know, he said, Simon, I need a model in the book. And so we built the models. The buyback loop for Buyback for Time is from the modeling work that we did. Because every nonfiction book should have models in it, right? Because when people pick up a nonfiction book, they riffle the book to kind of get a sense. They look at the index, they look at the table of contents, If as they riffle through your book, they see a drawing of a model, they’re gonna stop. And when they stop, they will read what is above it and below it, right? And so, you know, a visual model gives you an opportunity to hit a home run with the copy that sits above and below that, right?

Stephen Woessner [00:20:14 – 00:20:14]

Yeah.

Simon Bowen [00:20:14 – 00:20:23]

And if the model itself is powerful and simple enough, to tell its own story. So it makes sense.

Stephen Woessner [00:20:23 – 00:20:24]

Yep.

Simon Bowen [00:20:25 – 00:20:44]

You, you know, that bit of real estate inside the proposal has just, has just earned its way. And then the other thing is if that proposal gets you the chance to go and make a presentation and then you go and draw that on a whiteboard, not click through on a PowerPoint.

Stephen Woessner [00:20:44 – 00:20:44]

Yeah.

Simon Bowen [00:20:44 – 00:21:05]

But literally go and draw it on the whiteboard. You’ve just set it up. I do actually know what I’m talking about and what I put into the proposal because I’m standing at a blank whiteboard and without notes, I’m reproducing the thinking I shared with you in the proposal. Right now they’re looking at someone whose thinking is the product.

Stephen Woessner [00:21:05 – 00:21:28]

Well, sure. Because as you went to your iPad to sketch that out, I could tell that that was not the first time that you had sketched out that model. Like the, this is part of your curriculum and teaching and so forth, the way that you did it so fluently and smoothly, I’m like, okay, he’s not making this up, which then leads to the lower right quadrant, the believability, right?

Simon Bowen [00:21:28 – 00:22:02]

Yeah, correct. It’s absolutely true. And, you know, one of the, an Australian shipbuilder, Austal Ships, they build, they’re the number one high-speed ferry building company in the world, but they’re building about 10% of the US Navy fleet. Now as well, they lent it to defense shipbuilding. But, you know, it takes about 18 months to sell a ferry that’s somewhere between $50 and $120 million. And, you know, the, the, you know, the, the salespeople are road warriors. They’re traveling around the world to do it. And so very technical and everything else.

Simon Bowen [00:22:03 – 00:22:17]

But with all of that technical work, the buyers of these vessels, are not buying technical work. They’re buying the ability to make money by ferrying—

Stephen Woessner [00:22:17 – 00:22:20]

The outcome. They’re buying the outcome of the ferry, right? Yeah.

Simon Bowen [00:22:20 – 00:22:42]

Right. Ferrying people, ferrying people and vehicles around. Right, right. And so what, what’s critical to them? Well, the performance of the vessel from a passenger comfort point of view. If people get sick, they won’t ride on that ferry, that company’s ferries. from a fuel economy point of view and speed to destination.

Stephen Woessner [00:22:43 – 00:22:43]

Yeah.

Simon Bowen [00:22:44 – 00:23:35]

And so if you go to a whiteboard and draw a very simple model that explains that, you know, it just simplifies everything. The technical argument won’t win you that deal, right? It’s, and so simplification is the, greatest form of sophistication we had, communication sophistication that we had. And there’s a real difference between simplification and dumbing down, right? And so simplification is that person, you know, in front of a buyer of a ferry could draw an iceberg, just a simple iceberg that sort of says, you know, when it comes to buying ferries, And, uh, people, you know, people want to buy a ferry.

Stephen Woessner [00:23:36 – 00:24:08]

And friends, we’re, we’re, uh, if, if you’re listening to this, that’s awesome. This is now this, uh, the, the In Demand Agency podcast is also, this is going to sound like a shameless plug and I’m sorry, but it is now available on YouTube as well. So I’m going to encourage you that if you’re listening now, great, in audio, awesome. Thank you. And then also You’ll want to make sure that you watch this episode on our YouTube channel too, because the visuals that Simon is sharing here are awesome. So Simon, sorry for the interruption, but I wanted to make sure that our audience knew that.

Simon Bowen [00:24:09 – 00:24:18]

So the iceberg is such a simple thing, but so ridiculously powerful. And I’ll talk about the structure of this afterwards because every agency should be using an iceberg to explain what they do.

Stephen Woessner [00:24:19 – 00:24:23]

Right. So you’ve taken the iceberg and you’ve cut it into thirds and Ferius at the top. Okay.

Simon Bowen [00:24:23 – 00:24:57]

So we’ve got above the waterline, right? Okay. And I’m trying to sell a ferry. And so I say to somebody, you know, we’re here to talk about you buying a ferry, but honestly talking about you buying a ferry is like the tip of the iceberg. And you know what you see above the water is only 10% of what’s really happening. We can throw as much wind and storm. This is all choreography, as much wind and storm as we like at the tip of the iceberg in one direction. The iceberg’s always moving in the direction of the base. And so talking about buying a ferry is a pretty shallow conversation.

Simon Bowen [00:24:58 – 00:25:16]

We could stay shallow or we could go deep with an arrow pointing to the bottom. What would you like to do? Let me stop there for a moment, pause the choreography and talk about what’s just happened. Yep. No one’s gonna say, well, I’m a fairly superficial individual, so let’s stay shallow. Right?

Stephen Woessner [00:25:17 – 00:25:17]

Right.

Simon Bowen [00:25:17 – 00:25:36]

And the surface is the transactional level. Yeah. And so the surface is where they’re trying to keep you to the lowest price possible. Like it, the, the buyer wants to try and keep it shallow because that might force you into a cheaper price. Right.

Stephen Woessner [00:25:36 – 00:25:41]

But in the, in the depth is where the business issues and challenges and all the meaty stuff lives.

Simon Bowen [00:25:41 – 00:25:52]

Yeah. And they also know that if I let you take me to the bottom, That’s gonna carry more dollar sign. So they’re fighting to stay shallow.

Stephen Woessner [00:25:52 – 00:25:52]

Yep.

Simon Bowen [00:25:53 – 00:26:27]

Just let me repeat that. Your buyer’s fighting to stay shallow subconsciously, cuz then they can compare you transactionally. And the shallow level is the known problem. They, they know the problem. You know the problem. They know you know the problem, and it’s okay for us to talk about it. So in my world, people say we need help with sales and the word sales would appear at the top, right? No problem. But the moment I go, you know, but talking about, just talking about buying ferries is a shallow conversation.

Simon Bowen [00:26:29 – 00:26:32]

I’ve just neutralized every competitor that just goes and talks about selling ferries.

Stephen Woessner [00:26:33 – 00:26:34]

Yep. You sure did.

Simon Bowen [00:26:34 – 00:26:44]

And called ’em shallow. Yep. Without actually saying anyone’s name or being confrontational about it or anything else. That the co— that part of the choreography’s pretty critical.

Stephen Woessner [00:26:46 – 00:26:46]

Yep.

Simon Bowen [00:26:46 – 00:27:22]

And then I say, so, you know, do you, do you wanna stay shallow or should we go deep? Oh no, no, I wanna go deep. Right. Well, really when it comes to fairies, it’s about 3 key outcomes. Now, below the waterline in the middle section of the iceberg is the hidden problem. So this is the problem that they understand. They know, you know it too, but we’re not allowed to talk about it. So the known problem for me is people say, we need help with selling. The hidden problem is we suck at selling.

Simon Bowen [00:27:23 – 00:27:33]

Can you fix the fact that we suck at selling? No one’s ever come to me and said, we suck at selling. Can you fix that? Yeah. They go, we’ve got, we’ve got, you know, we need help with selling. We’ve got a problem with selling, right? And so—

Stephen Woessner [00:27:33 – 00:27:39]

Our win rate is this and we really love it to be that. Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

Simon Bowen [00:27:39 – 00:28:23]

And so the wind and storm, they’re looking for us to, you know, they’re buying into throwing at the top of the iceberg and One Direction things like, you know, 101 closing techniques and, you know, tips, tools, and tech basically. So I might say to this ferry company, listen, sure, you’re gonna end up with a ferry, but we actually understand that as a ferry operator, there are 3 big outcomes that are critical for you. The first one is passenger comfort. If people get sick on your ferry and if the ferries aren’t enjoyable to ride on, it’s not just comfort, but if it’s not truly enjoyable, if it’s not a great experience, they don’t get back on your ferry again.

Stephen Woessner [00:28:23 – 00:28:23]

No.

Simon Bowen [00:28:24 – 00:28:39]

We also know that the performance of the ferry from a a fuel efficiency and operational point of view in terms of cost, cost of performance is where your margins are.

Stephen Woessner [00:28:40 – 00:28:40]

Yep.

Simon Bowen [00:28:41 – 00:29:10]

And then the third thing we understand is that speed to destination is as important for ferries as it is for airline. And so, you know, and, and the world will tell you, you can have 2, but you can’t have all 3 on a ferry. If you want performance and speed, the ride’s gonna be a little rougher, right? And if you want comfort and performance, it’s gonna be a little slower. And if you, you know, if you want comfort and speed, it’s gonna, you burn more fuel than it should.

Stephen Woessner [00:29:11 – 00:29:11]

Yep.

Simon Bowen [00:29:12 – 00:29:37]

But what if we could solve all 3? And they’ll go, wow, that would be cool. And But then what if I said, I get it, right? And as important as those 3 things are, what if wow is just a narcotic? And when you give someone wow, they’ve had a hit and now they’re looking for the next big hit. That’s what wow does.

Stephen Woessner [00:29:37 – 00:29:37]

You bet.

Simon Bowen [00:29:38 – 00:29:55]

Wow is a narcotic. And as important as these 3 things are, we believe that the great ferry operators around the world truly deserve an undeniable competitive advantage.

Stephen Woessner [00:29:57 – 00:29:59]

And so that’s the base of the iceberg.

Simon Bowen [00:29:59 – 00:30:12]

Yep. At the base. And, and we, this, I’ll explain what that is in a minute. Okay. And, and so, you know, what is it that you want? Do you, do, do you just want a ferry or do you want an undeniable competitive advantage? Oh, I like that.

Stephen Woessner [00:30:12 – 00:30:26]

So you’re, you’re creating you’re not only creating a juxtaposition between the two audibly, but you’re doing that visually. Like right now I see that there you, you’ve got in the middle, you’ve got the hidden problem, but, but you’re literally creating that visually too.

Simon Bowen [00:30:26 – 00:31:23]

Absolutely. And the tension between, right? And at the base they go, oh yeah. And that sound, oh, is the sound of internalization, right? Sure. And, and then what if I followed that up and said, and in order to, uh, help that undeniable competitive advantage. We have engaged actuaries and economists, and we have put together a bulletproof business case that we create for you when we design, because they build these ferries bespoke. When we design the ferry for you, we put together a bulletproof business case that you can take to the capital markets. to raise the capital for this ferry based on that ferry will become an undeniable, a business unit of its own right with an undeniable competitive advantage that it’s worth people investing in.

Stephen Woessner [00:31:24 – 00:31:24]

Really smart.

Simon Bowen [00:31:25 – 00:31:45]

How’s that sound? And they go, that’s so cool because what they’ve solved down the bottom is the unknown problem. And this is the unknown problem that companies that buy assets like that are struggling with. It’s not comfort, performance, and speed. It’s access to capital.

Stephen Woessner [00:31:46 – 00:31:48]

Oh, who’s gonna pay for it?

Simon Bowen [00:31:48 – 00:32:31]

Yeah. Who’s gonna pay for it? And they know, yeah, we gotta, we gotta, we need to buy another ferry. You know, our current, the current fleet are kind of getting old. We need to replace that one, but it’s $120 million and that money’s not coming out of our operating budget. So we’ve gotta go and raise capital for this. Now we, we’ve got 2 options, you know, the capital markets or just debt. You know, we go and borrow from the bank or something. But the unknown problem, what I call the ache, so they feel it but they can’t name it, is it’s not just about the operating performance of the ferry, it’s actually getting the thing in the first place.

Simon Bowen [00:32:32 – 00:32:39]

And so all of a sudden, this company that builds ferries isn’t really a ferry building company at all.

Stephen Woessner [00:32:40 – 00:32:40]

Yep.

Simon Bowen [00:32:41 – 00:33:09]

It’s, it’s, it’s, you know, it’s a, it, you know, it’s an asset creation company. And then what if I said at the base, as I’m making this pitch, and this has all been drawn on the whiteboard in front of them, this simple iceberg, I said, and beyond that, you know, putting the business case together for you, We’ll wrap into that business case the sale of your ferry at below what we know will be market cost at that time.

Stephen Woessner [00:33:12 – 00:33:12]

Wow.

Simon Bowen [00:33:12 – 00:33:47]

So we’ll build the business case around the worst-case scenario for the sale of your, of this ferry. Yeah. Into replacement of the new one, but you’ll sell it for more than that. But we haven’t overestimated its exit value. We will voluntarily underestimate that. Because we know how to build these ferries that give you an undeniable competitive advantage. And, you know, that company got told that a competitor had built a ferry that the clients said were performing better than theirs. And one of their company, one of their client companies were gonna buy it.

Simon Bowen [00:33:48 – 00:34:35]

So they went and hired a marine architect/engineer and gave him 2 the customer for 6 months just to ride around on that competitor’s ferry to find out if it really was performing better. And within days, that person had come back and sort of said, actually it is. And so they worked on it. And so this is the other side of it. Like when you make the promise, is the thinking behind the promise better than everything else in the marketplace? Your thinking is your product. So their thinking is the product. So when a competitor builds a better ferry, they want to get to ride on the better ferry so they can actually go and study the thinking behind it and then upgrade their own thinking. And the, you know, the product evolves.

Simon Bowen [00:34:35 – 00:34:44]

And so the, you know, every agency should be walking in, let’s make one up now. And it needs to be bespoke.

Stephen Woessner [00:34:45 – 00:35:11]

Okay. Just one second. This is so amazing. But this is also going to be a good place for us to take a quick break so, so our audience can kind of catch their breath. This is such a master’s class, Simon. So thank you very much. Let’s just take a quick break. So, friends, when we come back, we’re just going to do a quick debrief over the section that Simon just shared with us, and then we’re going to step into the model that he’s about to take us into.

Stephen Woessner [00:35:11 – 00:36:05]

So we’ll be back in just a minute. Hey, friends, I would like to share a free resource my Predictive ROI team built for you based on the insights and wisdom that Simon Bowen is sharing with you right now during this episode. If you go to predictiveROI.com/visible, you can download our free Visible Thinking Scorecard. It’s 5 questions. It will take you 3 minutes. And the scorecard will show you exactly where your expertise is easy for a prospect to see, where your prospect is still trying to connect the dots, and what your team needs to make visible before your agency becomes the easiest choice for them to make. We want your agency to move and close this gap from being admired to being chosen. Again, that’s predictiveROI.com/visible to get your free scorecard.

Stephen Woessner [00:36:07 – 00:36:46]

Okay, friends, just before the break, we are wrapping up the iceberg model and then Simon is going to take us into a new model here. And that’s where I said, hey, let’s just take a quick break. So I want to just do a very quick wrap-up to— I’ll call it kind of section 1 or that the iceberg piece. And then we’re going to step into the iceberg model. Excuse me, Simon. And then we’re going to step into the new one. So real quickly, again, if you’re not watching this on YouTube, please go to @PredictiveROI and then you’ll be able to see all the visuals in full transparency that Simon is walking through. I promise you, they’re incredibly compelling.

Stephen Woessner [00:36:47 – 00:37:37]

In fact, Simon, in full transparency, you’re giving me about 16 new ideas that we’re going to bake into our sales process here at Predictive and how we talk with prospective clients about Sprint and Atlas. I mean, you’re giving me amazing, amazing ideas. So thank you for that. Second, friends, is the episode that we just aired before Simon’s. Our guest was Don Jaeger, and we talked about the business of storytelling and the power of stories. And what you’re seeing here and also hearing from Simon is how to visualize those stories and how to visualize them in a model that ties into your methodology that makes you such an easier yes. I love how he was talking about in the quadrants, in how the upper right gets you in desirability.

Simon Bowen [00:37:37 – 00:37:37]

Yeah.

Stephen Woessner [00:37:38 – 00:38:36]

Right? We talk all the time in these conversations about if you want to get to the demand side of the ecosystem, you must create, yes, trust upstream, but you must create intrigue, curiosity, and desire. And then Simon just so astutely pointed out that when you’re in that upper end, you’re so much easier to say yes to. Okay? And so when you see these models, I want you to be able to kind of keep that thinking front and center. And then Lastly, and then I’ll be quiet so that Simon can take us into this new model, is the fact that what is so amazing that you’re doing here, Simon, is you’re bringing your prospect into an experience with you. Like, I love the iceberg from top to bottom, the juxtaposition. You nailed it when you said the tension and all of that, but you’re helping them lean in and experience this. It’s not a sales pitch any longer. It is an experience that you’re taking them on in the choreography and so forth is so easy to see.

Stephen Woessner [00:38:36 – 00:38:49]

This is absolutely amazing. So I just wanted to round out that first piece with those observations. Now I’ll be quiet for the second piece of our masterclass. So, so thank you. And please take us into the new model or the other model.

Simon Bowen [00:38:49 – 00:39:16]

Um, let’s, um, give me, give, give me an example. Let’s, let’s, let’s, let’s actually do this. Okay. Draw another iceberg and imagine, um, give me an example of an agency that we could kind of pretend we’re building this for. Okay. And, and we’ll see what comes up. So what type of an agency, you, you get to choose, um, would we say we’re gonna build this thing for?

Stephen Woessner [00:39:17 – 00:39:21]

Oh, okay. You mean like, like functionally what they do? Like what they would, hey, we say that you do.

Simon Bowen [00:39:21 – 00:39:23]

That’s pretty good. That’s pretty sound.

Stephen Woessner [00:39:23 – 00:39:55]

Okay. Um, so let’s say that it’s a, um, you know, many in our audience would define themselves as a full-service integrated advertising, marketing, and PR agency, which means we can do everything, Simon, from soup to nuts. And I’m not saying that sarcastically, but, but we believe there’s a better way to niche down and position yourself. But, and so that agency is going to describe themselves as a full-service Creative media agency. So you pretend to be the agency, right?

Simon Bowen [00:39:55 – 00:39:59]

And I’m, we’re riffing this now so that we, yeah. Who knows what’s gonna happen?

Stephen Woessner [00:40:00 – 00:40:01]

Live in real time.

Simon Bowen [00:40:01 – 00:40:19]

Live and in real time. But if you, once you learn how to use a model and you understand the structure of choreography, you can do this live, right? And so I might say, hey, Stephen, Um, what’s the biggest challenge for you at the moment with your, with your agency?

Stephen Woessner [00:40:20 – 00:40:41]

Yeah, thanks for asking that, Simon. So our biggest challenge is we just, we just don’t have enough at-bats with right-fit prospects. We can sell when we’re in the room, uh, but we just don’t have enough opportunities to have those types of conversations with prospects that we know we can help. We just don’t have enough of those conversations.

Simon Bowen [00:40:42 – 00:41:04]

Actually, I’m gonna reshape the role play. Okay. Let’s pretend I am the agency and you are the client, the potential client of the agency. Oh, that might be, that might be more useful to people. Right? So you are, you are a business that could be a client of an agency. Right. Okay. And I’m gonna, I’m gonna be that, what’d you say? Nuts to bolts.

Simon Bowen [00:41:04 – 00:41:06]

What’d you say?

Stephen Woessner [00:41:07 – 00:41:07]

Soup to nuts.

Simon Bowen [00:41:08 – 00:41:30]

Soup to nuts. I haven’t heard that before. Might not be an Australian thing. You’re a soup to nuts agency. Yeah. But I’m gonna be that agency, right? And you are the client of the agency. So, so Stephen, you know, like we can, we can talk about, we can talk about brand and marketing and everything else, but what’s your biggest challenge right now? Your biggest challenge that’s getting in the way of the business growing?

Stephen Woessner [00:41:31 – 00:42:15]

Okay. So, so Simon, You know, we’re a product manufacturer, right? We produce some really amazing things. They’re so awesome. They’re so amazing. They’re so well-engineered. They literally sell themselves. However, the struggle that we have, even though it’s so great, we get good feedback and all of that, is being able to get the information, to get this energy, this excitement and all of that out through our channels of distribution and in getting our go-to-market strategy to align with all of the enthusiasm that’s here at, you know, headquarters HQ about this new product. We’ve got big goals and I just don’t think that we’re getting it out there the way that we should be as fast as we should be.

Simon Bowen [00:42:16 – 00:42:40]

So does it, you know what, this feels a bit like an iceberg actually. You know, the bit of the iceberg that you see above the water is only about 10% of what’s really going on. And when you go and look at an iceberg in the Antarctic, which I’ve had the pleasure of doing, As you go past it in a zodiac, the tip of the iceberg looks huge. And then you realize just how much is going on below the waterline, right?

Stephen Woessner [00:42:40 – 00:42:40]

Yeah.

Simon Bowen [00:42:40 – 00:42:57]

And so all the power’s at the base. We can throw wind and storm at the tip of the iceberg in one direction, but all the power’s at the base. The iceber— the power of the iceberg is the base. And if you can’t see what’s below the waterline, you just assume what you see at the surface is all there is.

Stephen Woessner [00:42:57 – 00:43:16]

Right. Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. And it’s interesting you just mentioned that because we’ve, we hear from our dealers and distributors, installers and so forth, you know, our, again, our channels of distribution that they, that there’s aspects to the product that they just don’t get. And we’re like, how do you not get this?

Simon Bowen [00:43:17 – 00:43:43]

Yeah. And so, you know, if we call the tip of that iceberg reach, because one of the big words that people sort of understand in marketing is reach. You’ve gotta, you’ve gotta go wide. You know, width, you need everybody to know about you, right? Yeah. But width and reach, quite frankly, is a shallow conversation and we can stay shallow, Steven, or we can go deep and have the real conversation. Which of those 2 would you prefer to do right now?

Stephen Woessner [00:43:44 – 00:43:55]

Well, I think given our goals as we, you know, are kind of stepping out of Q3 and into Q4 and candidly getting ready for Q1 of ’27, I think we do need to go deep.

Simon Bowen [00:43:56 – 00:44:18]

Yeah. Okay. So if, if I ask you to think about this in terms of 3 big outcomes for you, that if you could make ’em happen, that, that you don’t seem to be able to make happen right now in term— in terms of, you know, generating leads and interest in what you do, what, what would, what would the 3 most important outcomes be for you right now?

Stephen Woessner [00:44:18 – 00:45:22]

Yeah, I think it’s the one And I don’t know if I’m going to phrase this quite right, but, but essentially creating some alignment within our sales team. I think there’s different sort of opinions and expectations, excitement levels, but I don’t think that we’re all singing from the same hymnal. I think then that is so important to have that alignment because if, if our internal team is not aligned, then how can we expect our, you know, exterior channels of distribution to be aligned? And so that’s the second piece is that making sure that our channels of distribution from, from when it rolls out the door here all the way then to the end customer, that we’re all in alignment. And then the third piece is, you know, yes, we, we manufacture X, but I think we’re in the business of, of producing or creating happy customers. And so we want to make sure that we delight our end users, that we can have a great go-to-market strategy. But at the end, if we’re not, if we’re not delighting that end user, That actually installs our product, then I think we’ve failed.

Simon Bowen [00:45:23 – 00:46:17]

So it would be fair for me to say that if, you know, below the surface, any sort of strategy that is created around your business from a marketing point of view, actually first and foremost, Nick, is to make the internal sale in your business. So is it fair for me to say that a marketing strategy, which a lot of agencies and companies view as an external activity should first and foremost be an internal activity for you to market backwards internally. So there is this really powerful, excited level of buy-in. Interesting words, right? We want to get everyone to buy in in an aligned way. So there’s this consistent, congruent, and psychologically powerful message coming from every member of the team. Everyone is a salesperson. Would that be a really Useful outcome of a marketing strategy.

Stephen Woessner [00:46:17 – 00:46:46]

Yeah. And I’m really glad that you said that actually, Simon, because what I should have said also with the alignment piece, the internal sale, like you mentioned, is the fact that, and I don’t think we’re dissimilar from other manufacturers or organizations, is the fact that, you know, marketing and sales alignment or sales and marketing alignment, depending upon sort of your lens, oftentimes there’s misalignment between marketing and sales and sometimes tension between those 2 disciplines inside our business. And so yes, I think you’re 100% right.

Simon Bowen [00:46:47 – 00:47:15]

So one of the things that we do as an agency is make sure that the internal sale’s made before any external marketing messages are created. So we actually work with our clients on the intermarketing first. Smart. And that’s, that’s a real point of difference. The second thing is distribution across your network of distributors. And if they don’t understand the real depth of thinking behind what you do, they will fail to deliver that with integrity to the marketplace.

Stephen Woessner [00:47:17 – 00:47:43]

Well, okay. So interesting. So glad that you brought this up is because we don’t own those channels of distribution, right? They, they, they, so in a very real sense, we’re competing for the mindshare inside our channels of distribution because they represent and install lots of different manufacturers, not necessarily competitors, but we’re still competing for their mindshare of what makes our product introduction more important than company XYZ’s product introduction.

Simon Bowen [00:47:43 – 00:48:05]

Absolutely. So as an agency, we understand that once we’ve made the internal sale, if we can’t get your distribution network to buy into the message with a degree of integrity, we’re definitely not going to get the market to buy into it. So once we’ve made the internal sale, extracted the messaging out of that, we test it on your distribution network.

Stephen Woessner [00:48:05 – 00:48:05]

Okay.

Simon Bowen [00:48:06 – 00:48:46]

We market to your distribution network as a market test, and then that allows us to take it to the market itself. And we, it’s interesting, there’s really clear data that says 53% of a customer’s loyalty is formed during the buying process. So your marketing and selling is the single biggest contributor to customer loyalty. And so the customer experience has to start with your marketing. So then we go out and create experience-based marketing rather than brand-based marketing. Wow. Does that make some sense to you?

Stephen Woessner [00:48:46 – 00:49:11]

It does. It does make some sense. And I actually haven’t heard the 53% before. And as I heard you say that, I thought, well, that makes sense. That, you know, that is such an opportunity to show the alignment, demonstrate the alignment, demonstrate product-market fit, or not product-market fit, but I guess product fit against the business issues and challenges. So the 53% makes a lot of sense.

Simon Bowen [00:49:12 – 00:49:32]

Well, it comes out of the original Challenger Sales work. Yeah. And also the Jolt Effect. Yeah. And then recently, you know, the SenseMaker work and things like that. It’s a real number. And so, you know, if those 3 things were happening for you, how would that feel?

Stephen Woessner [00:49:35 – 00:49:37]

I think the iceberg would feel lighter.

Simon Bowen [00:49:39 – 00:49:46]

It would, right? And yet as important as those 3 things are, it isn’t just about those 3 outcomes at all, is it?

Stephen Woessner [00:49:47 – 00:49:47]

No.

Simon Bowen [00:49:48 – 00:49:49]

Well, what is it about then, Steven?

Stephen Woessner [00:49:51 – 00:50:00]

I think that the Well, myself and my partners, you know, we created this business because we wanted to have some impact.

Simon Bowen [00:50:00 – 00:50:01]

Yes.

Stephen Woessner [00:50:01 – 00:50:44]

And not just, you know, in the markets that we serve. There are several nonprofits that are really important to us. There are some mission-driven organizations that we want to be able to support bigger, deeper, and more exciting ways. It takes profit to be able to do that. And so when, yes, absolutely, we want to delight our customers and so forth. And then the bigger mission for us is to be able to support those causes. And then also too, if we’re doing the things like you just mentioned at the middle of the iceberg, I feel like that gives us some sort of maybe, hopefully a sustainable advantage in the marketplace. And that gives us greater reputation, excuse me, for excellence.

Stephen Woessner [00:50:44 – 00:50:46]

And it just makes the whole thing work.

Simon Bowen [00:50:46 – 00:51:28]

Yeah. So for us at ABC Agency, as important as those 3 things in the iceberg actually are, we think that mission-driven entrepreneurs and companies like yours, and that tends to be who we work with, the people that think it, you know, it’s something that matters at the base of the iceberg to be profitable, to be sustainable, to be, you know, economically durable. What, what you, what we have to create at the base of the iceberg is a position that we believe you truly deserve. And that position is you deserve to have your brilliance on show.

Stephen Woessner [00:51:28 – 00:51:29]

Hmm.

Simon Bowen [00:51:30 – 00:52:06]

This isn’t about how do we put a marketing strategy together? This is actually about how do we put your brilliance on show? And do you just want more marketing reach and strategy, or would you like a way of making sure your brilliance is on show at every level internally through the distribution channels into the marketplace as an experience that the customer has so that when they hear from you, they know that there truly is genius underneath this. The thinking behind it is where the real brilliance is, and I can see it. How would that feel?

Stephen Woessner [00:52:06 – 00:52:44]

Yeah, that would feel fantastic. And friends, so stepping out of the role play here for a second, uh, and I really hope that you will go to YouTube to watch this visualization that Simon just did. It’s absolutely brilliant. Absolutely brilliant, Simon, how you’ve taken it from the top of the iceberg all the way down and how you’re also pulling in the emotionality of what I just shared with you about the Um, uh, the purpose-driven or the mission-driven and all of that. And, and though you tied it into a brilliance on show, that is exceptional, my friend.

Simon Bowen [00:52:45 – 00:52:49]

Thank you for that. It’s— I’ve worked with agencies, so I have some sense of—

Stephen Woessner [00:52:49 – 00:52:50]

A time or two.

Simon Bowen [00:52:51 – 00:53:14]

But, um, but what, what I want people to understand with this is, and the reason I thought it’d be handy to role-play, right? Yeah. We’re not presenting models, we’re facilitating a conversation. I’d actually say to people, stop selling and start facilitating, right? And when someone helps you build the model, it’s hard for them to disagree with it once it’s finished, right?

Stephen Woessner [00:53:14 – 00:53:14]

Yeah.

Simon Bowen [00:53:15 – 00:53:39]

And it, it, there’s a few key moves in here. Now, I, I, I, I wouldn’t suggest every agency listening to this just goes and uses that iceberg. What they need to do is build their own iceberg that is particular to them. ‘Cause we’re all, we’re all, you know, predictable ROI is really interesting. We are all, all of us work in the world of prediction capability.

Stephen Woessner [00:53:40 – 00:53:40]

Yep.

Simon Bowen [00:53:41 – 00:54:19]

So actually what all of us are doing is saying to the customer, this is, this is your circumstance today and this is your future. And we know that people say they can’t predict the future, but we actually can. We know that there’s a, we know that there is a green zone future for you where everything’s fantastic, or a red zone future for you where things are pretty horrible. And the pathway to the future is not a straight line. The pathway down to the red zone is a curve and it accelerates away and down as time goes on. And that happens if you just drift. And the pathway up to the green zone accelerates up and away. And that happens when you make decisions and take action.

Simon Bowen [00:54:20 – 00:55:12]

So the difference between winning and losing is the difference between drift and decision. And yet right now you might feel like there’s a big gap between where you want to be and where you are, but right now in this moment, you’re as close to that green line as you’re ever going to be. And now is the time to make the move to get on the green line and drive it. And we happen to have a way, and this is where we’d ask people to join the Draw Their Genius model. We actually happen to have a model, a framework, a mechanism that we’ve built that is street-tested and proven that will jump into the green line and drive the curve. And that mechanism will deliver the base of the iceberg, whatever the base of the iceberg is for the agency that’s doing the talking. And because all of us do 2 things, everybody that works in knowledge work is doing 2 things. The first, everybody wants to be made safe.

Simon Bowen [00:55:13 – 00:55:36]

No one wants to behave safely. Like they won’t drive too fast or drink or smoke or whatever, but everyone wants to be made safe. They want somebody else to be responsible for their safety, right? And which equates to, I want you to protect me from that red line, even though I’m gonna drift along and, you know, not do what I need to do. I want you to protect me from that red line. So that’s the first thing everyone’s buying. Please protect me, make me safe.

Stephen Woessner [00:55:36 – 00:55:36]

Okay.

Simon Bowen [00:55:37 – 00:56:04]

The second thing everybody’s buying is I wanna win, which means I want a better than average result. Like if an agency went to a prospect and said, you know what, we can promise you an average result, that is not gonna make the sale. Right. Everybody wants to win. They’re the 2 things everybody’s buying. Yeah. Make me safe and help me win. And make me safe is protect me from this red line heading downwards into the future.

Simon Bowen [00:56:04 – 00:56:29]

Yeah. And put me on the green line heading upwards into the future so I can win. And so everybody’s actually selling their customer the future, which means we need to have prediction capability. We need to be able to say, if I deliver that iceberg to you, will that put you on the green line? And they go, yeah, I reckon it would. Okay, well let’s do that then. Why don’t I do—

Stephen Woessner [00:56:29 – 00:56:35]

And if they, and if they say no, it won’t, then that opens up a whole nother piece of conversation about why it missed.

Simon Bowen [00:56:36 – 00:57:00]

Exactly right. Let’s get into some more diagnosis. But once we reach a point where they, if I do that, would it put you on the green line? Yeah, it would. And what if I knew what the gates were that we had to close along that green line so that, ’cause no one falls off the green line. This is all choreography. They just behave their way off the green line. We gotta shut the gates behind you and we know what those gates are. Do you wanna buy the green line from me?

Stephen Woessner [00:57:01 – 00:57:45]

Here’s why I think this is future. Here’s why I think this is so amazing, Simon. Can we go back to your iceberg? Just the— okay. So why I think this is— well, and I guess really both of these are so amazing is because typically, and of course I’m casting a wide swath here. And so friends, if you don’t do this at your agency, please don’t feel offended by what I’m about to say. But it is so common for an agency to say, Oh, what? But we have this process, Simon. Then it starts with discovery, and then we do research, and then we do some creative, and then we put it out on the market and do some testing. Then we evaluate that, and then we make some adjustments, and then we do this rinse and repeat, and it’s just this beautiful circle and so forth.

Stephen Woessner [00:57:45 – 00:58:09]

And that’s what they think is the methodology. What you are pointing out here is such a better way to describe, because before you get into to that piece, you’re getting and developing all of this buy-in through this choreography. It’s masterful. And then on the next piece where— so, is it the future model that you just connected? Is that what you call this one, the future model?

Simon Bowen [00:58:10 – 00:58:10]

Yeah.

Stephen Woessner [00:58:10 – 00:58:39]

Okay. So, friends, I really hope that you will go to YouTube to watch this because it is brilliant how not only Simon mapped out the future piece with the different arcs, the red down drift, that’s bad. And then green up, that’s good future state. But then he actually inserted some of the models into one, the Genius model, then also the iceberg, and then the gates along. That is so great because at each of those gates, then it gives you opportunity to get buy-in. Am I tracking with you, Simon?

Simon Bowen [00:58:39 – 00:59:06]

Yeah, absolutely. And it’s an interesting thing. You know, we, business, is debt times width at the top. Okay. And so much focus in an AI-driven online world has been on width. Yep. Like how far can you reach? But this is a multiplication formula. And so if one of these drops to zero, the whole thing drops to zero.

Stephen Woessner [00:59:07 – 00:59:07]

Of course.

Simon Bowen [00:59:08 – 01:00:14]

And we don’t have enough deep thinking in business. We don’t have enough pause You know, the purchase is made in the pause. The processing of the customer’s thinking is made in the pause, and even the value you bring to the market is in the pause, right? And so if you don’t allow time for deep thinking, you, you, you’re generally selling either from the waterline or halfway through the iceberg, which means you are commoditized like everybody else. Oh, see, if somebody can go to ChatGPT or Claude and ask it the questions and get the same answers you’ve given to them on the proposal and in the formal presentation, then you’ve brought no value. You need to bring something from below the waterline, deep down in the iceberg that they don’t understand. And what that really means, and let me kind of put a little bow on this again, if we think about software, software has source code. Source code is the human-readable layer that’s written in a form that humans can read. That gets filtered through machine code, turning it into ones and zeros, which humans can’t read.

Simon Bowen [01:00:15 – 01:00:56]

And then that turns it into a graphical user interface, which humans can read again. And that has the modules attached. Now the software user only interfaces with the graphical user interface and they judge the software by the graphical user interface. They have no idea whether it’s good source code or not. And one of the problems with vibe coding, by the way, is it often produces junk source code with a lot of additional overhead in it that’s not necessary. If you think about a company in the same way, the graphical user interface at the top is your marketing and your sales.

Stephen Woessner [01:00:57 – 01:00:57]

Yep.

Simon Bowen [01:00:57 – 01:01:37]

That’s the graphical user interface that the user judges you by. That’s the bit they can see. That’s why that 53% is so important. And then you have your delivery systems, which is effectively the machine code of your company, your delivery mechanisms. Now, when people say, oh, what we do is, you know, we do a study, we collect data, like, which is process thinking and it’s linear. Life is not linear. And so the, neither is the customer. So as soon as you force the customer into a linear sequence, you’re going, As opposed to a model where you can dip in and out of different parts of it.

Simon Bowen [01:01:38 – 01:01:50]

As soon as you force ’em into a linear process, you’ve broken the natural organic nature of a human who is an analog being trying to live in a digital world. Linear is, linear is digital.

Stephen Woessner [01:01:50 – 01:01:50]

Yeah.

Simon Bowen [01:01:50 – 01:02:28]

And you’re going step 1, step 2, step 3, step 4. And this analog being called a human is looking at step 5 going, well, that’s the one we keep messing up. I’m not interested in 1, 2, and 3, but we’re pretty good at step 7 actually, or I think we are. So, you know, this, cuz life is not linear. So your delivery system is in fact your machine code. And you know, when a lot of agencies go and go, here’s our process, you’re really just sharing your machine code with them, which they don’t understand any. It doesn’t mean anything to them. You are showing them your ones and zeros and they don’t care.

Simon Bowen [01:02:28 – 01:02:52]

Right. Now, what they do want to know though, is that your thinking, in our language, what we call company genius, is solid. So no matter what happens, the thinking behind this is going to get us there. And I call that the company source code. Your thinking is your source code. Now imagine what would happen if you took the source code away from a piece of software.

Stephen Woessner [01:02:53 – 01:02:53]

Yep.

Simon Bowen [01:02:53 – 01:03:27]

Whole thing collapses. Yep. So why do we think we can go to market and try and win business without having a way of letting people see our thinking? Let me, let me, letting people see our thinking, not hear it, but see it. And so that’s what things like the Genius Model. The Genius Model’s the flagship model. We really haven’t talked about that today, and it’s a bigger model. And most of our work with companies is unpacking their Genius Model and then the suite of models that sit around it. So like the iceberg, and the futures model come from the genius model.

Simon Bowen [01:03:27 – 01:04:29]

And that then says we have true genius as an agency that other agencies don’t have. We have a lens of perspective that we look at the world through that allows us— so geniuses create, curate, and integrate. So we have a lens of perspective that comes from our wisdom, our character, and our capability, our story that gives us a created original perspective on you and the challenges you have, and we know we can help you. And then that lens of perspective allows you to look at everything in the market that’s available and then curate best practice based on congruence and relevance and turn that into a solution, becomes the Genius Model. And then, but people need simplification and completeness of thinking. And so we integrate that into a framework so complex stuff can be explained in 7 to 10 minutes. And they look at it and go, wow, that’s actually pretty amazing. Your thinking behind this is amazing.

Simon Bowen [01:04:29 – 01:04:46]

Yeah. So whatever your solutions are, we know that that’s gonna work. Create, curate, integrate is, is, and that’s the source code. And if you can’t demonstrate your thinking in a way that they can see it, yeah, then you are commoditized. You may as well be an AI large language model, quite frankly.

Stephen Woessner [01:04:48 – 01:05:26]

This is so good. And I can’t believe we’ve been at this for like well over an hour and I feel like we’re just still scratching the surface. So I know we need to come in for a landing, but I sure hope that you’re going to accept my invitation to come back for an encore because this has been so good. So if I can ask you to bring us in for a landing on a piece here, I’m going to tie into the source code to see if I’m tracking with your connection here, because about 30 minutes ago, 40 minutes ago, you said, like, when we get this right, this transitions from selling the thing, it turns you into an asset creation company.

Simon Bowen [01:05:27 – 01:05:27]

Yeah.

Stephen Woessner [01:05:28 – 01:05:36]

So is that a link into the thinking, the source code? Is that a link to you then become the asset creation company?

Simon Bowen [01:05:38 – 01:05:48]

Well, you become the asset creation company for your clients because you’ve put the effort into the biggest asset you have inside your own business, which is your thinking.

Stephen Woessner [01:05:48 – 01:05:49]

The thinking.

Simon Bowen [01:05:49 – 01:06:48]

Your IP, right? And when it’s interesting, Steve, and we, you know, we work with companies all around the world, whether they’re, you know, a company that designs and manufactures components to submarine construction or our sole practice lawyer or advisor of some form, you know, construction, engineering, mining, technology, and all the services, we, you know, almost every industry. And yet no matter how big those companies are, and some of them are billion-dollar multinational companies, when we get the right people in the room, which usually are the original thinkers, Mm-hmm. And we start unpacking this, it’s pretty staggering. No, I’d say 100% of the time because I can’t remember when this hasn’t been the case. But just for plausibility, let’s say 95% of the time, this is the first time they’ve had a conversation about what their company genius actually is.

Stephen Woessner [01:06:48 – 01:06:49]

Of course.

Simon Bowen [01:06:49 – 01:07:39]

It’s often the first time they’ve had a conversation about what is the really deep thinking that we bring to the market that allows us prediction capability, allows us to see around corners, that equip us to promise the customer the green line. And no matter what happens in the world, no matter what changes, it’s our thinking that is our asset. And, you know, it would get enshrined as IP, but IP undersells it. You know, so, you know, you know, when you, you’re working with a client and they say something and something pops into your head that you’ve never said before, but it’s absolutely earth-shattering for them. and it shifts everything on its axis for them. And in that moment, their world changed. And you are thinking, well, I need to get outta this meeting real fast ’cause I need to write that down so I say it again. Yeah.

Simon Bowen [01:07:39 – 01:08:09]

You know, ’cause you are a bit surprised about where it came from. That’s company genius in play, right? And because it happens like that, it’s never codified. So we, you know, we create standard operating procedures, we document the processes, we We build organizational charts and structures and we write down the values of the company and the vision and the mission statement and everything else. But the thing between vision and mission and impact in the marketplace is how you think.

Stephen Woessner [01:08:10 – 01:08:10]

Yep.

Simon Bowen [01:08:10 – 01:09:39]

And that’s never codified into any sort of format. So we codified into the Genius Model. And you know, when I speak at conferences, I often say I don’t agree with Simon Sinek, and that causes a palpable intake of oxygen in the room, right? How could you argue with start with why? And, you know, Simon Sinek said, people don’t buy what you do until they know why you do it. I think a more accurate statement would’ve been, people don’t buy what you do until they know that they are the reason why you do it. Like the universal why for every company is the customer. All the customer, the only why the customer cares about is them. The only why I care about is me, that you are there For me, right? And once I know that, the next question, the very next question I’m gonna ask is, how can you help me? And I’m really asking you, how will your thinking help me compared to everybody else? And so why gets you heard, but how gets you chosen? And if you can’t articulate how you think about the customer and the problem, the ache that they have, if you can’t articulate the ache they could never articulate for themselves, again, you may as well be a large language model, right? But 95% of the companies we’ve worked with around the world have not articulated and codified in a tangible form that you can show to people the how. So imagine what happens in a company if you have a team manifesto, and at the center of that manifesto is your genius model.

Simon Bowen [01:09:39 – 01:09:46]

This is how we think about this as a company and solve the problem for the customer. And every product and service that we have falls out underneath that.

Stephen Woessner [01:09:46 – 01:09:46]

Yeah.

Simon Bowen [01:09:46 – 01:10:27]

That’s game-changing. It connects vision and mission to impact on the ground. And it’s yet, I mean, when I started doing this work, I was shocked at the fact that it just wasn’t codified. And then that’s when I shifted from the general management consultancy I was doing and doubled down on, I’m just gonna go hard on the notion of company genius. And I thought, others would be doing this. And as I’ve discovered since then, it’s sort of been a bit revolutionary. So it doesn’t matter what the company’s been. And I’ve sat with really large companies that have wrestled, you know, where the founder’s long gone, right? And they’re doing an archaeological dig into the original thinking that created this.

Simon Bowen [01:10:27 – 01:10:36]

I can do an archaeological dig back into the lenses, the lenses of creative original thinking of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.

Stephen Woessner [01:10:36 – 01:10:37]

Mm-hmm.

Simon Bowen [01:10:37 – 01:11:01]

And both their lenses actually come from childhood. And when you look at the overlap of those 2 lenses, you can see exactly why Apple was Apple. And any, anytime they drift from that lens, Apple ceases to be Apple. It’s not the same company it was today. You know, they’re launching a new iPhone, which is a flip phone saying it’s a revolution in the smartphone market. Really though?

Stephen Woessner [01:11:02 – 01:11:03]

Yeah.

Simon Bowen [01:11:04 – 01:11:16]

Steve Jobs would never have done a product launch showing something that has a feature that was incorporated by the competition more than 8 years ago and say, this is a revolution in the iPhone market.

Stephen Woessner [01:11:17 – 01:11:17]

Yeah.

Simon Bowen [01:11:17 – 01:11:42]

It just wouldn’t have happened, you know, because of his lens. And so it’s codifying your genius and creating the source code of the business, depth times width. And if you don’t have the depth, So let’s say, you know, width is 1, but depth is 0.5. It’s only halfway down through the iceberg. You can’t have, you can’t, you can’t have 100%.

Stephen Woessner [01:11:42 – 01:11:46]

No, it’s, it’s still, it’s still pretty shallow with that math. Yeah. Yeah.

Simon Bowen [01:11:46 – 01:11:56]

And, and so, you know, we, we’ve become great at, at width because of, you know, everybody can write copy using AI, but boy, it’s commoditized and it’s pretty junky.

Stephen Woessner [01:11:56 – 01:12:16]

Well, it’s funny you said that actually, because Scott McCain was our guest in episode 7 a few episodes ago, and he said, you know, if you are average, AI will help you scale average and you’ll be more average. You’ll be, you’ll do more stuff at scale, but it will just be more of average.

Simon Bowen [01:12:16 – 01:12:46]

Yeah. Yep. And AI is consuming from the top down. Yeah. And so you’ve gotta find that bit that is you that AI could never consume. Here’s a few things. AI probably will never consume accountability. It can’t be, it’s a machine, right? And so when things go pear-shaped or the customer’s struggling with something, they want a human to make them safe, not a machine.

Simon Bowen [01:12:47 – 01:12:53]

And so, you know, if you show up as highly accountable, AI does not bring character and conscience to the table.

Stephen Woessner [01:12:54 – 01:12:54]

Yeah.

Simon Bowen [01:12:54 – 01:13:30]

Right. It doesn’t even bring kindness to the table. It brings flattery, but it does not bring kindness to the table. It doesn’t bring compassion and care. At the moment, it’s struggling a bit with context, but it’ll take context eventually. So there are things that people are going in knowledge-based work, They’re gonna have to figure out how they can own. And those things are always at the depth. And the challenge that agencies are gonna face going forward is the world will demand that you keep going deeper and deeper and deeper and not shallower and shallower and shallower.

Simon Bowen [01:13:30 – 01:13:38]

But now here’s a big concern I have as I watch. I did some work. Oh, you’re right. We’ve been gone a while. I did some work.

Stephen Woessner [01:13:39 – 01:13:43]

Everyone, Simon just glanced at his clock outta the corner of his eye.

Simon Bowen [01:13:45 – 01:14:04]

Oh, fun. We were engaging somebody to do some stuff for us and they wrote something and I said, I don’t want anything that looks like it was written by AI. And they said, oh no, I wrote that myself. And I said, well, you write like AI if you really didn’t use AI.

Stephen Woessner [01:14:05 – 01:14:05]

Yeah.

Simon Bowen [01:14:05 – 01:14:36]

You are already writing like AI with your own writing, like you’ve lost your own writing style. And so did you really not use AI? Well, I wrote it first and then I put it into AI and got AI to tidy it up. And I go, well, now it’s become commoditized. So, but humans are losing some of their ability to think deeply. But in knowledge-based work, your competitive edge is in the depth of your thinking, not the width of your thinking.

Stephen Woessner [01:14:37 – 01:14:38]

Amen to that.

Simon Bowen [01:14:38 – 01:14:48]

You know, and if we lose the depth, we lose our— the differentiation in the marketplace is in the depth every single time.

Stephen Woessner [01:14:50 – 01:15:10]

Well, like in the green room, you had asked me essentially sort of the thesis of this episode, or excuse me, not episode, but of the podcast. And we chatted about a few things, but ultimately I said, We want to help our audience close the gap between being admired and then being chosen.

Simon Bowen [01:15:11 – 01:15:12]

Yeah.

Stephen Woessner [01:15:13 – 01:15:45]

And I think what you shared with us in this depth, depth, using your words, depth of curriculum and instruction and instructional design and curriculum that you shared with us, if our audience takes and applies the wisdom and insights that you shared, You’ve given them the opportunity to move from being admired to ultimately being chosen. And then you showed them the path along the way in between those 2 left and right sides to be able to do that. This is amazing, Simon.

Simon Bowen [01:15:46 – 01:16:20]

Well, it, it, you know, it’s, um, uh, let me, let me help wrap it up by throwing a challenge out. Okay. Okay. Everybody, don’t any, don’t any of you call yourself a thought leader again. Thought leader is a corrupt term and it’s a corrupt term because there are people on LinkedIn calling themselves thought leaders and only 2 people looked at their post. To be a thought leader, you need 2 things. Yeah. You need original thinking, which is depth, and you need followers.

Simon Bowen [01:16:21 – 01:16:47]

Now, if you have deep original thinking but no followers, you are a great thinker, almost a philosopher. Mm-hmm. But if you, and if you have followers but no depth of thinking, you’re an influencer. Mm-hmm. Right. So thought leadership is kind of a corrupt idea and it’s also viewed fairly cynically. I mean, I don’t know about you, but every time I hear someone call themselves a thought leader, I go, oh sure. Because true thought leaders never actually call themselves thought leaders.

Stephen Woessner [01:16:48 – 01:16:48]

Yep.

Simon Bowen [01:16:49 – 01:17:15]

And thought leaders and companies are trying to position themselves saying we have a unique solution. But again, there’s more data that, that, you know, well over 50% of sales are lost to no purchase at all. The customer just doesn’t make a decision because Company A says I’m unique. Company B says I’m unique. Company C says I’m unique. The buyer goes, well, they all sound pretty plausible and I can’t choose, so I won’t choose any of them. Right? Yep. The customer doesn’t want uniqueness.

Simon Bowen [01:17:16 – 01:17:18]

They want completeness of thinking.

Stephen Woessner [01:17:19 – 01:17:29]

I’m so glad that you just said that about not choosing any of them, because I think it was Gartner. Maybe actually, no, I take that back. You mentioned the Jolt study before, which came out of—

Simon Bowen [01:17:29 – 01:17:30]

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Stephen Woessner [01:17:30 – 01:17:51]

The Jolt Effect, excuse me, which the basis of that book was a study by the researchers who wrote the book. And then it was a little snippet was published in the Harvard Business Review back in 2022. But they found that between 40 and 60% of B2B buying decisions ended in no decision because of exactly what you’re talking about.

Simon Bowen [01:17:51 – 01:18:07]

Yeah, because the buyer’s not confident about making a decision. Right. So, and so, and then they, they went on with that and they talked about you need to sell in a sense-making way. Yeah. And then I, I’ve kind of extended that work and gone, well, actually you, what you actually have to be is the sense maker, not the thought leader.

Stephen Woessner [01:18:08 – 01:18:08]

Yes.

Simon Bowen [01:18:08 – 01:18:48]

And so the, the, the customer looks at you and goes, I feel safer with you than I do with everybody else. So buyer safety. I feel like I can win. with you and you make more sense than everybody else. I don’t want a thought leader. I want the person that just makes more sense than everybody else. And what that means is you are demonstrating completeness of thinking, not uniqueness. If I’ve gotta have, if, if I’ve gotta have brain surgery, I, I don’t want, I don’t want the neurosurgeon who says, by the way, I’ve, I’ve studied most of the work and I’ve, I’ve, I’ve mastered most of the technique, And I’m using most of the available equipment.

Simon Bowen [01:18:50 – 01:19:04]

I want the one that has all of it, has completeness of thinking. Like I’ve looked at every piece of equipment available. Yeah. I’ve studied all of the technique. You know, I had cataract surgery about 8 years ago, right? And so the lenses in your eyes are replaced.

Stephen Woessner [01:19:04 – 01:19:05]

Yeah.

Simon Bowen [01:19:05 – 01:19:20]

The ophthalmologist said, so here’s what’s gonna happen, Simon. We’re gonna cut a little slot in the side of the eye. I’m gonna go in with a laser, smash up your lens. You’re awake while this is happening. It’ll be like fireworks. We’ll suck that out. You’ll go blind for a couple of seconds. I’m gonna pop the rolled up prosthetic lens in.

Simon Bowen [01:19:20 – 01:19:43]

It’ll flip open and then you’ll be able to see again. And we’ll put a long lens in your right eye, a short lens in the left eye. You’ll never wear glasses again. ‘Cause I was wearing trifocals at the time. How’s that sound? And I went, I didn’t hear anything after smash up my lens. And he laughed and he said, that’s my pitch. That’s what I do every time. And I said, well, how many of these have you done? Yeah.

Simon Bowen [01:19:43 – 01:19:59]

And he said, it’s not, he said, he stopped laughing. He got real serious. Yeah. This is choreography. And he went, that’s not the right question. And I went, wow. Well, what’s the right question? He said, the right question you should ask any surgeon is how many of these did you do last week?

Stephen Woessner [01:19:59 – 01:20:00]

Oh, wow.

Simon Bowen [01:20:02 – 01:20:25]

And I said, how many did you do last week? He said, 15. I do, I do 500 a year and I’ve done 5,000. And I haven’t had a mistake. And in that moment, he demonstrated completeness of thinking and capability, not uniqueness, right? He’s not sending me, there’s a fantastic new technique for replacing the lenses in your eyes. We go in through the front.

Stephen Woessner [01:20:26 – 01:20:26]

Yeah.

Simon Bowen [01:20:26 – 01:20:56]

Yeah. Like, and we drill ’em out. We don’t smash ’em out with the, you know, no, I want the dude with the completeness of thinking. You bet. That means depth, and that means you need to keep thinking deeper than AI, right? And keep thinking deeper than the rest of the market. Demonstrate completeness of thinking and you become the sense maker. And when you make more sense than everybody else, they feel safer with you than they would with everybody else. And they feel like you are their best shot at winning.

Simon Bowen [01:20:56 – 01:20:58]

Conversion starts to take care of itself.

Stephen Woessner [01:20:59 – 01:21:26]

This is so good. I love how you just brought us in for a landing around demonstrating completeness. Completeness of thinking. That is so like, as you’re saying that, I’m thinking, yes, absolutely. We want to move from being admired to being chosen. Yes, we’re going to demonstrate and then ideally visually demonstrate our completeness of thinking, which is what all of your models that you shared with us help then communicate to the prospective client.

Simon Bowen [01:21:26 – 01:21:54]

Well, if you can’t, and I suppose this is the last challenging thought to put in front of people, If you can’t both show and tell, you know, when kids are in school, in primary school, they’re told to bring something in for show and tell. They’re not told to just tell. And so if you can’t show and tell your thinking, then perhaps your thinking’s not complete because you haven’t completed the visual interpretation of that.

Stephen Woessner [01:21:56 – 01:22:30]

This has been so amazing. And I promise I was not being patronizing when I said, I’m going to invite you back for an encore. And I sure hope that you’re going to say yes. Because this was exceptional. Honest to goodness, a little, uh, sort of factoid here. I have recorded, uh, Simon, um, well over 1,200 episodes. I have never, ever, ever one time in all of the episodes that I’ve ever recorded with a guest have we ever gone for 90-plus minutes. This has been Exceptional.

Stephen Woessner [01:22:31 – 01:23:08]

Thank you. Thank you. This has been exceptional, and I am so eager to learn more from you. This has really been amazing. So, so, uh, as we come in for a landing here, um, I’m so grateful for your time, your generosity, and sharing your expertise. Once in, in sort of the format of the episode, uh, friends, uh, in case you happen to be listening to this for the first time, or this is, this is new, I’m going to say goodbye to Simon and then please stay with me, friends, because we’re going to do a little bit of a debrief here on some of my biggest takeaways. And there are a ton. Simon, not joking, lots of notes right here.

Stephen Woessner [01:23:08 – 01:23:18]

Okay. So this has been absolutely exceptional. So thank you again for having your team reach out. Thank you for saying yes. This has been an absolute pleasure to have you here.

Simon Bowen [01:23:18 – 01:23:21]

It’s been a joy. I’ve really, really had fun.

Stephen Woessner [01:23:24 – 01:24:13]

Hi again, friends. I hope you enjoyed the conversation with Simon as much as I did. Holy bananas. He turned that into a masterclass on like how to visualize your thinking. So you close the gap from being admired. So if we think back to episode 1, uh, here in the podcast, I walked you through and we drew out and sketched What we call the authority-demand ecosystem. So the left side being authority and the right side being demand and the trust bridge connecting those 2 in between. And, and so what he shared with us closes that gap from being admired, the left side, the authority side of the ecosystem, all the way over then to the right side, the demand side.

Stephen Woessner [01:24:13 – 01:25:00]

Because when you visualize your thinking, You make your agency much easier for your prospects to choose, and that’s what we want for you. We want you to go from being admired—wow, this agency’s smart—to chosen—wow, we can’t live without them. So before we close out and say goodbye, I took some time to organize and recap my my biggest takeaways. There’s four of them. My biggest takeaways from my time with Simon and. When you compare my list with yours, we might have some of the same takeaways that are so awesome, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you and I have different takeaways, and I would welcome the opportunity to learn from you. So if you wouldn’t mind sharing, I would be delighted to read what you have. Okay, so here we go.

Stephen Woessner [01:25:02 – 01:25:53]

Takeaway number 1, your thinking is the product. When he said that during our conversation, I was like, And here’s why. Many agencies show their prospect the steps in the process, and it typically sounds like this, friends. Uh, we do discovery, and then we do research, and then we do strategy, and then we do some creative, and then it’s the testing, and finally optimization, and we wrap it all up in our 360-degree approach. All useful steps, no doubt. But it’s also easy to ignore because it doesn’t highlight your thinking. It doesn’t visualize your smarts. So Simon compared that process to sort of the machine code inside, you know, sitting or sitting inside like a piece of software.

Stephen Woessner [01:25:54 – 01:26:52]

Your prospect does not want to inspect your ones and zeros. Your prospect wants to understand your deeper logic. Your thinking, your smarts, so that when situations change, they can see how you’re going to adapt and modify and how you’re still going to help them accomplish their goals. So again, Simon said it really plainly, your thinking is your product. And that thinking is your agency’s source code. But if the prospect can’t see it, and they can’t learn from you as you share it with them, the most valuable part of your expertise remains invisible. Okay, so takeaway number 2, a visual needs structure before it can create believability. So you may, you may remember Simon using what he called the quadrant.

Stephen Woessner [01:26:52 – 01:28:13]

It was that 2 by 2 quadrant. To separate visual access from what he calls structural access. So, and then he defined both of those. So he called visual access—that’s where you help your prospects say, “Ah, yeah, I see it.” And then structural access helps your prospects say, “Ah, now I get it.” And when both of those are present, your prospect can see the relationships; they can follow. Your logic and then understand why your recommendation makes sense for their business, for the business issues and challenges they’re hoping that you’re going to be able to solve. And that is wildly different from dropping some sort of polished diagram or flowchart or whatever into a proposal. A useful model, in Simon’s opinion, in a useful model or a useful model, excuse me, Blows your prospect down. It also shows your command of the material, and when your team can stand, when they can go up to a blank whiteboard and draw out their thinking without notes, and you’re demonstrating, and you’re working it out live, you’re showing that your agency sees the problem, sees the business issues, sees the challenges.

Stephen Woessner [01:28:15 – 01:28:55]

And you’re giving them visible, complete thinking. And when you do that, it makes your expertise easier to believe and then makes your agency easier to choose. Okay. Takeaway number 3, stop presenting the answer. Instead, facilitate the discovery. So you may recall during the conversation Simon and I did This impromptu off-the-cuff role play. Um, and, and so he, he asked me at the break, when we took a break, he said, hey, would you be game to— and I’m like, sure, that sounds awesome. And, and so we did.

Stephen Woessner [01:28:55 – 01:29:21]

Uh, there was no— you could probably tell there was no rehearsal at all, but it was a whole lot of fun when we worked through the iceberg model. And it really illustrated this lesson that he was trying to teach so Beautifully, like facilitate the discovery. So at the surface, above the waterline, at the surface, that is the known problem. Your prospect wants a website. They want a campaign. They want a brand. They want this. They want that.

Stephen Woessner [01:29:21 – 01:30:09]

They want more app ads. This is also, if you’re not careful, above the waterline is where your agency can be easily compared against everyone else who’s knocking on your prospect’s door. But beneath the waterline, that is the hidden business problem. And at the base, the base of the iceberg, that’s where the pain is. That’s where the ache is, as well as the pain equals then when we solve that pain, we also then deliver the prospect that outcome that they wanted. The business issue and challenge, it is at the bottom of the iceberg. And when we solve it, They get the business outcome that they really know that they want. They might not be able to name it yet, but through this discovery process, you’re going to help them find it.

Stephen Woessner [01:30:10 – 01:30:49]

So Simon didn’t tell me, as we were working through that, he didn’t tell me what belonged at each level. And you heard him asking me a ton of questions during our role play. And then he listened. He let me share what my thoughts were in that scenario. And then he expertly reflected that language back to me. And he also gave me some space, you know, in order to make some adjustments and correct the iceberg, correct the model as we built the iceberg together. So Simon’s instruction during that section was pretty direct. And that was, Stephen, you gotta stop selling.

Stephen Woessner [01:30:49 – 01:31:37]

You stop selling here. Instead, you start facilitating. Because when your prospects, friends, when they help you build the model and you’re facilitating that conversation, the conversation becomes something the prospect experiences with you, not something your agency presents to them. And that, my friends, that is the trust bridge being built in real time alongside one of your prospects, right? You are helping them move from authority over to demand. Excuse me. You’re helping them build the trust bridge and you’re helping them walk across the trust bridge with you. That was such a fun role play. Only bananas.

Stephen Woessner [01:31:38 – 01:32:10]

It was a little nerve-wracking too, but it was a lot of fun. It was so great. And a great example of how to do it with excellence. And of course, that’s Simon. All right, so let’s start to think about coming in for a landing here. Let’s do— let’s walk through takeaway number 4, and then we’ll close out and say goodbye. So here’s takeaway number 4: make the future believable. So Simon used what he calls the futures model, and that’s the one with the horizontal line, then the curve up and the curve down.

Stephen Woessner [01:32:10 – 01:32:42]

The curve up is the one with green— in green. The curve down is the one In red, the curve up is decision. The curve down is no decision or drift. And he used that to map, you know, today’s state. And then the upward curve essentially is, this is where you’d like to be. And then the downward curve, like I said, was the drift. It’s the distance between the current state and then the future state. And his language was, again, here, pretty direct.

Stephen Woessner [01:32:42 – 01:33:15]

The difference between Winning and losing. So I’m quoting Simon here. The difference between winning and losing is the difference between drift and decision. So a right-fit prospect is looking for 2 things from you and your team, friends. One, make me safe. Your prospect is maybe not directly saying that to you, but you’re probably picking that up in their language or body language. And maybe even their decision-making process. They want you to make them safe.

Stephen Woessner [01:33:16 – 01:34:31]

And number 2 is, help me win. So your agency needs to show the consequences of staying on the current path. This is not guilt-laden, but there are consequences with the status quo. The future the prospect wants instead, curving up decision, and then the gates that must close along the way. How do How does your process, your methodology help close those gates along the way, helping them feel secure as they’re making that climb? And this is where an in-demand agency separates itself from everyone else. Yes, authority earns attention and that is awesome, but proof builds belief and then demand activates when your prospect can see a credible path From their problem today to tomorrow being better. The outcomes that you’re going to deliver— the outcomes, excuse me, that you are going to deliver. Is tomorrow going to be better than today because we hired your agency? And in the belief that you and your team are the right ones to make that path real, that’s how you make yourself easy to be chosen.

Stephen Woessner [01:34:31 – 01:35:24]

So Here’s my challenge to you. Before your next biz dev conversation, use our free Visible Thinking scorecard that we built based on Simon’s expertise and what he shared during this conversation. And you can go to predictiveROI.com/visible, predictiveROI.com/visible, and download it. It’s 5 questions, should take you about 3 minutes, and your leadership team can score your agency across Those five dimensions, those five questions. Then find the lowest scoring dimension and choose one recurring prospect conversation. Draw that relationship. So show that surface problem, the deeper issue, the desired future, and the path between them. One conversation, one model, one week to practice it, right? Because your agency does not need to become easier to choose by claiming.

Stephen Woessner [01:35:25 – 01:36:03]

That’s not how you do it, by claiming that your thinking is different. You become easier to choose by making the completeness of your thinking visible. That’s how you do it. And Simon just walked you through 3 very powerful visual models that you can take and apply to make that happen. Friends, thanks very much for spending your time with Simon and me today. We all have the same 86,400 seconds in a day, and I am grateful always that you chose to spend some of your time with Simon and me today. Until next week, onward with gusto.