Brad Eather (00:00)
Hello and welcome to the second season of the newly rebranded Business Creative Podcast, a show exploring creativity's role in sales, leadership and business. I'm your host, Brad Eather a marketing and communications consultant delivering strategic workshops that deliver a consistent message to your market. One of the biggest traps in business is being too good at what you do.
For many small business owners, the very skills that help build their company eventually becomes the bottleneck that stops it from growing. The secret sauce lives entirely in their own head. They might be excellent at what they do, but what they aren't excellent at is being teachers. They often struggle to delegate tasks because there's no blueprint to take them forward. My next guest argues that the path to true scale
isn't just hiring more people and hoping for the best, but it's building revenue architecture. Ken Thomas is a MBA qualified growth specialist and the founder of 10 club. He's spent years helping businesses move from the chaos of ad hoc closing to a structured system where marketing sales and customer success act as one cohesive flywheel
He calls this revenue independence. The point where a business generates revenue by choice rather than founder obligation.
Today, we're gonna look past the tech buzzwords to redefine what go-to strategy actually is, why it's essential for established businesses, not just startups, and how a documented playbook can turn a new hire into a top performer in just a matter of weeks. Welcome to the show, Ken.
Ken Thomas (01:44)
Thanks for having me, Brad. Appreciate the introduction. That's better than the introductions. I give myself when I'm meeting new people. I appreciate it. And thanks very much for the invitation.
Brad Eather (01:57)
No problems at all. Well, you're going to have an opportunity to introduce yourself now. You've lived the full cycle of selling from field sales to customer service. You've now got an MBA and you're building revenue engines for others. So how did you get here? Why are you the person sitting across from me today talking to me about go-to market?
Ken Thomas (02:19)
I get to know the Australian sales landscape and revenue generation.
I realised that my experience is quite unique in that the first decade of my career wasn't in sales. It was serving people because I went along the path of the management route at Woolworth Supermarkets, starting on registers and working my way up through management. But I never realised just how important those skills that I learned at the time were going to be for today, particularly about
serving your customer and understanding what they want and what their needs are. Also, the psychology of what makes people buy Anyway, went from there into field sales and Kimberly Clark. Initially, I didn't want to do the role. I never wanted to be in sales. never I'd spoken about this a few times to a number of people, but my impression of sales was the greasy.
real estate agent, Dodgy used car salesman and didn't realise that sales is just about solving the problem for the person in front of you. And when that switch flicked, everything changed for me. And went from Kimberly Clark to being the first sales hire at a high-end fabrication company before, completing my MBA and then shifting into FinTech.
and learning everything there was know about B2B payments. And having been across all of these different industries, I picked up a few things along the way that when I made the decision to start TenClub with a really core belief that founders just needed a little bit of help and in particular, actually getting deals across the line because they didn't have enough time.
And whilst when I started TenClub,
as that sort of outsourced closing business, more and more I realised that this was a systems problem, an architecture problem, not a follow-up problem at all. And so I started dabbling in building some basic elements of the sales system, sales engine for these businesses. And the more I started to do that,
the more I started to see these businesses succeed and start to grow. And it really turned for me when I built my first full blown playbook for a business and then saw the flow on effects from that. And That business in particular,
went from two to six salespeople, brought a new salesperson into the business who had no prior industry experience and they closed 18 deals in their first 10 weeks.
and they just followed the system. That's all they did. They understood, okay, we'd spent the time to understand the mission vision values of the business. We knew how they position themselves in market. They knew exactly who their target audience was and what their problems and pain points were. They knew exactly how to qualify and disqualify through the methodology that we put in place in the business. And then we set up the structure.
for how to do triage and then discovery.
Brad Eather (05:49)
we're gonna get into that bit of the how this process works in the future. But what I wanna do is bring it back for the moment and just talk about the go-to market misconceptions. Obviously there's a lot of hype around tech stacks, automation, AI. what are the misconceptions that you find most business owners
Ken Thomas (05:50)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
Brad Eather (06:12)
founders are actually having about what go to market actually means
Ken Thomas (06:17)
Yeah, firstly, the new tool will not solve your problem. I'm gonna just put that out there and make it really, really clear because you can have a CRM that's fully spec'd out. You can have all of the different automation tools, but if you don't know what you stand for as a business, where you're positioned in the market, the problem that you solve
and who's actually gonna buy.
tools are irrelevant, actually doesn't matter. So you've got to do that first. Now,
Brad Eather (06:49)
Yeah.
Ken Thomas (06:55)
Once you have that, then you can start looking at, okay, how can I automate things in the backend of my business to make us more efficient? And I suppose I've got a stress that go-to-market really starts with understanding the pain, knowing whether or not you're a distinct business that can have value pricing because you're playing in a blue ocean, or whether you're at a commodity business that's playing in a very competitive market.
with others where the margin structure of your business is gonna determine whether or not you win, then systemize so other can execute. For me, that's what go to market should be. It's not tools, it's not tech, it's not rev ops. It's how you actually take people along the journey to buy.
Brad Eather (07:42)
which is a sales process, right? Run me through just quickly how the types of businesses that you're working with, where are they at scaling wise?
Ken Thomas (07:44)
Yeah.
Yes, the majority of businesses that I'm working with right now, they're all, well, I've got one that's just ticked over a quarter million dollars of revenue, professional services, but founder is the one that needs to do delivery. we've built the playbook. They're now testing it and validating it with a view of bringing a sales resource into the business after restart. And we want to make sure that that process works. That's one example, bottom end of the scale. Other end of the scale, we've got
a global prop tech business that has sales resources all around the world. But the founder is still the primary salesperson. I mean, they generated 80 % of the logos for that business and they're still the best salesperson. So we're working on creating something that's repeatable and scalable so that new salespeople can come into the organisation and hit the ground running. So it's very broad.
But ultimately founder is the bottleneck. They're the best salesperson and others can't execute like them.
Brad Eather (08:50)
Yeah.
So I touched on that at the beginning, that the idea of the founder being the secret source, they're the ones that have the lived experience from day inception through to first customer acquisition through to next customer acquisition, close, close, close. They have the system in their head. They're not necessarily the ones to be able to teach that to somebody else. Maybe it's time restrictions. Is that where you've found your business?
evolving to is actually solving a process problem that lies in the founders head. And how do you get that out? Yeah.
Ken Thomas (09:34)
Yeah.
Well, it comes down to revenue independence. If the business is dependent on you as the primary source of revenue generation, you will never be out of scale. And I have a core belief that whilst you're in that startup scale up phase, and even as you push into mid market, right, some enterprises is applicable to as well, but
You have to capture the essence of the founder and how they grew the business.
and then document that as a process in a system with all of the extra knowledge and experience and expertise around what makes a good sales process. But at the heart of it is the essence of the founder. And that's what really moves the needle because typically a salesperson will come into an organisation, they will have either a black book of contacts that they can work through to try and sell, but there is a whole bunch of issues that potentially come with that.
And there's an expectation from the founder that they're a salesperson. They should just be able to sell, right? You and I both know you can be the world's best salesperson, but if you don't understand where the product or service sits in the market, who you're supposed to serve and how they buy, you're really gonna struggle. And so we've got to, we have to get that out and fix it and create those documented processes.
Brad Eather (11:02)
When you're talking about, like you mentioned the types of business and differentiating yourself in the market, right? And to me that speaks to a conversation about what's actually valuable to your customer.
Understanding the founder story in a way I feel like is translating what is actually valuable to the customer because that's the process. That's the process of sales of any sale. You start with a potential, you understand what they find valuable and then you're actually able to deliver on that value.
value, whether that's niching down in a specific industry or there's a million different ways you can go about it. But essentially it all just comes down to value. How do you think about uncovering from that founder story, what's actually valuable to their customers?
Ken Thomas (11:56)
Well, first and foremost, they need to speak to their customers and ask them the question of why they bought. Like that's always a great first place to start. If you truly understand what the pain point was, what the problem the customer was experiencing first, that's always the best place to start. The founders started the business because they had a core belief there was a problem in market that they had a particular way of solving.
And then they went and tested it and validated it in the market. The business would not have grown if there was no market validation.
So you've got to start there first, either through first with the customers directly that have already bought from the business. And then you want to go out to market and you want to retest the validation and see if there are others out there in market that that problem or that pain is still applicable to.
Brad Eather (12:54)
if that's your first step talking to customers and getting into the minds of the problems that they were having and the results that they get afterwards, talk me through the rest of the process. How do you document something from start to finish so that you can get a salesperson into the position where they're starting and getting results in 10 weeks?
Ken Thomas (13:13)
Right, okay, so again, it comes back to starting with mission vision values, right? And then knowing what either makes the business better if they're playing in the commodity space or makes them distinct if they're playing in the blue ocean value space. Once you've got that, then you need to know, okay, this is the ideal client profile. If it's a B2B, this is the business that buys.
And then the persona, so who's the decision maker, who's the champion. Now, whether that's B2B or B2C, you need to have that really clearly defined. And I just don't mean like manufacturers. I wanna deal with manufacturers, cool. Okay, what kind of manufacturers? Where are they? How big is the business? How many employees have they got? What is the specific pain point or problem that you were solving for them? And why do they need it solved?
Brad Eather (14:05)
Mm.
Ken Thomas (14:05)
Like get really granular about who that ICP is and then who that persona is. The managing director, for example, who works 70 hours a week, doesn't have an assistant and is caught up with paperwork. Like have it really clearly defined about who they are. Cause then you know, and you can test whether or not their pain point is valid and whether it actually exists when you then go out to market.
Brad Eather (14:30)
Mm.
Ken Thomas (14:32)
to validate your assumptions, right? I would also add just before that is you wanna understand your competitive landscape really well too. So who are you directly competing against? Who are you indirectly competing against? And then understand what are the forces that are affecting the market. Now I could go into so much depth and detail about this, but I won't in the interests of brevity, but you gotta do those things first.
Brad Eather (14:40)
Yeah.
Ken Thomas (15:00)
Once you're out in market, you wanna test and validate that pain point. There's a few different ways you can do it. So again, you're thinking about what are the jobs to be done for this ICP persona, Clayton Christensen. Now you could also look at some different examples. So like Daniel Priestley, the whole waitlist concept, absolutely brilliant. I love it. If you're creating a new product, great way to test it. Like Kickstarter, Tesla, $1,000 deposits. It's that same principle.
of push something out, spend a little bit of money on ads and see what comes back. So that's one way to do it. Another way to do it is by gaining permission to market and cataloging the actual market that exists. Now, Adam Mandarovic from Close Circuit Selling is massive about this and there's a very good reason for it. An old mentor of mine who was involved in sales training organizations back in the 80s, he was like the primary sales consultant for KBR and Halliburton.
The very first lesson he taught me was he sat down and he mapped out four quadrants of you need to know where your market sits from your total addressable market. Where is everyone? Are they buying now? Are they buying soon? Are they buying later or are they never going to buy?
Brad Eather (16:19)
I'm just going to stop you there. Cause one of the things that I think,
The sales role in particular gets confused with is you put someone down there and they're meant to be doing sales activity, stopping for a second and going back to the basics and assessing the market conditions. On the one hand could be perceived as a
ineffectual. it's not something that is actually moving the needle because it's not sales activity. How do you address that mindset where you go hang on a second when you just stop and go back to the beginning and figure out what's actually happening here rather than just calling calling calling and being productive.
Ken Thomas (17:04)
What do the best military leaders who've lived over thousands of years do first before they make a decision? They assess the battlefield. They assess the terrain. They understand the conditions. It is literally no different if you are going to market as a business. You need to understand the market. You need to understand the individuals who are in it and the businesses who are in it and whether or not
there's an opportunity for them to buy your product or service. So for me, someone that says, you've just got to get head down, bum up and you just got to get at it. Yes, there is a time for that, but you need to understand who you're to talk to first before you get in it. It's the old adage again, like the two bulls, the two lions sitting on top of the hill wanting to go down to the herd, right? Like it's first principles thinking and it's kind of been lost.
over the years of thinking that activity means more leads, more activity means more sales. No, the right activity at the right time to the right business individual means more sales. And you need to know exactly who you want to talk to and when to talk to them in order for that to happen, which means you have to have cataloged the market. You have to know who's buying now, who's buying soon, who's buying later.
who's never buying. And for me, the best way to do that from a B2B sales perspective is over the phone. It's a call, permission to market, deliver something of value, give first, and then once you've given, you get the opportunity to ask those questions, to gather market intelligence. And like I'm putting more specific frameworks around this again.
And Adam Mandarovitch has been really good, because my initial thought process around cold calling wasn't as well formed as that. It was more that every cold call, you have to learn something. That was my initial perception, because again, my old mentor had said, you must gather intelligence on every call. If you are not gathering intelligence on every call, it's wasted. And an old sales leader of mine had the exact same premise. Mind you,
Brad Eather (19:11)
Yeah. Yeah.
Ken Thomas (19:28)
they believed in a one core close, which they could do because they were exceptionally skilled at doing it. But at the start, they would always gather intelligence, always without fail. So I just think it's something that's really been missed, especially now when you think of how people are really pushing against AI DMs, AI emails that are either personalised but they're not
really, like there's clear signs that it's not personalised. Or alternatively, they just blanket crap. Probably the only way to put it. It's just here's the same generic email to the same to every single person in market. And we'll see which three percent come back. Not considering the 40 percent of the market, who not only have you just turned off, they're going to be such loud detractors of what you're doing that they're going to influence the other part of the market into potentially never buying.
Brad Eather (20:10)
Yeah.
Ken Thomas (20:25)
So we just fail to bring things back to first principles and think about we want more sales. More activity equals more sales. More activity at the right time to the right person equals more sales.
Brad Eather (20:40)
So what I'm sort of understanding is almost bringing it back to the beginning when you were talking about your experience as a, a customer service person is calling and understanding the market because you can actually help and have a help focus first rather than a close focus mindset. Because if you're, you mentioned giving first and asking permission.
That mindset then allows you into the room where you can actually now position your product, help them because you've gathered the Intel and prove that you can actually help. Is that a fair assessment?
Ken Thomas (21:23)
Yeah,
absolutely. And I actually think there's a number of salespeople that don't spend enough time looking at brand positioning and marketing strategy because they think it's a waste of time. mean, geez, this book in particular outlines so many of those first principles that we just discussed about you need to get permission from the market.
Brad Eather (21:37)
Mm.
Ken Thomas (21:50)
and then you create a promise around the problem that you solve and then you have to deliver on that promise. And everything revolves around that. I'll then add another thing in. So John Dean, JD from Sales Director Central, I always learn something when I chat to this guy, but made a really good point to me recently that customers buy when they're ready.
And every salesperson needs to understand that you can create urgency and you can try and force people to buy, but inevitably none of that matters because they'll buy when they're ready. So it's your job as brand, as marketing, as sales, even then customer success, right? If you're dealing with renewals, expansion, et cetera, to make sure that you are enabling that person
to understand the pain that they're in and the problem that they have and how you can solve it. Because they'll only buy when it gets to a certain point where they realize this is too much, I have to fix this. I've got a great, one of my favourite analogies for this is having a bike and you're riding a bike and the chain comes off. Really annoying, you put the chain back on, but whatever, it's fine. The fifth time the chain comes off when you're riding the bike,
you're probably gonna go and get the bike serviced and continue on your way. But it's the one time where the chain comes off the bike and you get flung off and you get injured or hurt. That's when you say, enough's enough, I'm getting a new bike.
And we sort of forget the psychology of buying when we're setting up brand positioning or we're setting up marketing strategy or we're executing sales.
Brad Eather (23:42)
forget about behaviors almost like rather than yeah, human behaviors at the core will be influenced when and why they're motivated to do something. Yeah. I'm interested in having a quick chat. yourself and me, obviously being small businesses really have to get targeted around this stuff because the amount of
Ken Thomas (23:44)
Yeah!
Brad Eather (24:09)
things that we have to do on a daily basis, whether it's, you know, the whole suite of a business solution, is limits our time to do outreach. So when we do it, needs to be explicitly, we know what we're doing and why. Tell me a little bit about just your experience as a business owner and how that's influenced your thinking about
the sales role within the business context.
Ken Thomas (24:34)
So.
Every time I talk about this concept to small business owners and I mention that calling should be their primary channel, they immediately throw their hands up in the air and said, I'm not calling anyone. I hate it when people call me. Yeah, but that's because you think that they're calling to sell you something that you don't need.
Brad Eather (24:59)
Mmm.
Ken Thomas (25:00)
And they then decide they're gonna take the easy way out and send sloppy messages via LinkedIn, which I admittedly I get all the time But I don't have time to interact with people one-on-one like that because I've got to focus on
Brad Eather (25:16)
Mm.
Ken Thomas (25:19)
my own business development for my business. And I know that most businesses need to focus on, if you consider outreach, marketing and partnerships, referrals, right? Networking as a channel, three channels that all businesses have the opportunity to generate leads in. Unless you're B2C, the outreach is a little bit different, but B2B, right?
If you're not executing two of those, you are leaving yourself open. So a lot of businesses, they will do the partnerships, referrals, networking. And for me, that's still my primary channel. Just has been, it's the nature of how I work. And I spend a lot of time focusing on that. I also spend a lot of time on marketing and positioning and my brand, because I know that
I can deliver a lot of value that way. And there comes a time when someone sees that value and goes, actually, I want to have a conversation with Ken When it comes to outbound leads.
Brad Eather (26:18)
Mm.
Ken Thomas (26:29)
I don't do it as much as I probably could or should, but I know that I don't have the capacity to execute if I went down that path. I just don't because my time is a finite resource. So I've chosen those two. Now, for me, if you're not doing referrals, networking partnerships, which is rare, if you're just doing marketing,
Brad Eather (26:37)
Yeah. Yeah.
Mm.
Ken Thomas (26:51)
you need to find something else to generate leads for your business. If you're just doing outbound, now that's going to get you the fastest results, but it's time intensive and massively time intensive as a business owner. So this is where if you've got systems and processes to help you put that in place, it makes a huge difference.
Brad Eather (27:05)
massively.
Ken Thomas (27:14)
And the business owner, you just have to get super clear on which channels are gonna work for you and go really double down on what's working for you. So if it is just purely, if you're just generating word of mouth referrals, do networking or generate partnerships, get a couple of sources from that one channel. If you're doing marketing, how many sources can you get from that one channel?
can't just rely on one, you can never just rely on one thing. You leave yourself open.
Brad Eather (27:44)
I like how you've, I agree, but I like how you've delineated that into three different topics. You've got marketing, partnerships and referral and outbound. I personally, as a business owner, view the communications that I do on LinkedIn as continuing the conversation. So like having that presence in market, gives you the twofold advantage of being able to
conversations that you're already having with people in a public forum and also bring people in. I want to take it from the top of funnel and refocus it back on the discovery phase. I'm wondering if you've got a strong opinion about
the importance of discovery, the nature of discovery, how AI has changed it and where the focus is, where the focus on discovery should now be headed towards.
Ken Thomas (28:39)
Yeah, I am really big on the need for human connection, AI is great if you need a form filled out or...
Brad Eather (28:45)
Mm-hmm.
Ken Thomas (28:51)
if you need generic answers to generic questions. So like if you're calling up a gym, for example, and you just need to know opening times and all these kinds of things, it's fine. But if you're really trying to understand whether or not someone's just interested in your product or service or actually qualified, that needs to be a person that's doing it. And I'll hang my hat on that. Look.
There may come a time where AI is able to have those discussions, but right now, where we see in 2026, it's just not ready. And I've tested a few different solutions and none of them have cut the mustard for me at all. They don't even close. So it's still got to be the human. Now, when it comes to discovery, again, core belief, it is the most important part of your sales process. Discovery informs everything and it comes in two parts. It comes in triage.
Brad Eather (29:29)
Mm.
Ken Thomas (29:45)
So that first initial five to 10 minute conversation where you make a go or no go decision on the lead based on very clear questions that literally anyone in your business can ask and get the answers for before you progress into full blown discovery. Use the example before and I'll use it again because I love analogies, but you're the nurse in the emergency room, that person doing trials, the nurse in the emergency room. You come in.
Brad Eather (30:07)
Mmm.
Ken Thomas (30:15)
Can you breathe? Where does it hurt? Like all these really simple basic questions that get asked to determine whether or not you see a doctor now, whether you see a doctor later, or whether you can just go home. Every business needs to have that. Every business where you understand based on some qualifying criteria, the go and the no go decision. Once you get past that,
Brad Eather (30:18)
Yeah.
Ken Thomas (30:41)
discovery, if you do that well, and truly do it well. Funnel someone down from understanding their motivations, understanding where they sit and what their situation looks like. I'm gonna use, I'm kind of using Spiced here, but you can apply any methodology to it really. Like what pain and problem have they got? What's the impact you can have on their business? When's the critical event? Who's involved in the decision process and what does it actually look like?
And then you can really determine whether or not this lead is truly qualified for a pitch, for a demo, for an evaluation, for a stakeholder meeting, because small business owners and even scale-ups, they don't have time to invest in people who are just interested. It's the biggest mistake I see, hands down. Being interested, a prospect being interested, does not equal being qualified.
Brad Eather (31:29)
Mmm.
Ken Thomas (31:37)
People wonder why they get ghosted. They didn't do triage. They didn't do discovery properly. That fundamentally is why they get ghosted. Not anything else. Once you've done all of that work to know who you serve and who you need to speak to, once they come into your sales process, that's why. That is why they get ghosted. You didn't do triage, you didn't do discovery. You didn't qualify them properly. Simple as that.
Brad Eather (31:43)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Ken Thomas (32:04)
don't even need to go into more detail about it because it is actually that simple. Your proposal isn't the thing that's gonna like win you the deal unless you're an RFP, RFQ situation, right? Where the proposal is everything. But mind you, there's work you should be doing in the front end to make sure that they know exactly who you are, what you're about, what you stand for and why you help them before they even get the proposal in their hands. But if you're not RFP, RFQ kind of business,
Brad Eather (32:07)
Yeah.
Ken Thomas (32:33)
The proposal can be a five line email. If you've done your discovery process correctly.
Brad Eather (32:36)
Mm.
I like how you, I like how you phrased the two parts to discovery because I think there is, it's almost two different skill sets. if you're armed with those discovery questions,
You can find leads anywhere. You could be at a networking event. You could be at a party. Just ask a couple of questions. go, Hey, we should talk about this further and then bring them into the triage. Whereas I think a lot of people, mean, again, it comes down to not knowing your market. If you haven't got those questions defined, you're setting people up for failure big time. ⁓
Ken Thomas (33:11)
Yeah. Yeah. I'll say, Brad,
just one thing I probably would add very quickly, because it is important. I mention that triage can be done by literally or should be able to be done by anyone in your business. But if you don't have that resource and you're the founder, you have to do all of the selling. You are the only person, really, unless you've got a BDM specifically to do just sales that can combine triage and the discovery into one conversation.
Brad Eather (33:20)
Mm.
Yeah.
Ken Thomas (33:38)
Otherwise
it needs to be two separate ones.
Brad Eather (33:41)
Yeah.
Ken Thomas (33:43)
Just have to make that distinction.
Brad Eather (33:44)
That's a good point.
Look, we're coming to the end of the conversation and we've got a great grasp of what you're talking about when it comes to go to market where you see the gaps, how you close them from your experience reflecting on your own personal journey, the things that you've learned. What's your definition of creativity?
Ken Thomas (34:06)
Yes, I love this question, Brad, because I'm gonna give you a lengthy answer. So when you're a child, you just make stuff. Like my son comes back every day from kinder and he's got a drawing or painting of some sort. He's just making stuff. He's just putting things together with no concept that what he's doing is in its essence, creativity.
Brad Eather (34:12)
Good.
Mm.
Mm.
Ken Thomas (34:35)
When
I was in primary school, I used to write little books and had no idea that that was being creative. And I'd actually told myself, in particular, throughout my teenage years, because as a aspiring shredder, right, I was really good at playing other songs, but no good at creating my own. Or at least in my opinion, I was no good at creating my
Brad Eather (34:53)
Yeah, likewise.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Ken Thomas (35:06)
And so
I said to myself, I'm not creative. And I lived that experience for a very, very long period of time. I could copy something, but not create anything. When I did my MBA, one of the very first courses was design thinking. And Terry Balter, the professor who took that class in the very first session, really made everyone realize that
Every single person on this planet is creative and they just don't realise it. Because at its core, like my son, going to kinder, makes stuff like me in primary school, writing little books. The art of making something is creativity. That's it. So for me, if you make something, anything, that's creative. Because even if you're just following the recipe from a book,
Brad Eather (35:35)
Mmm.
Mm.
Mm.
Ken Thomas (36:02)
to make a meal, you're gonna have your own unique spin on it. I guarantee you the meal that you make will be completely different from the meal that I make, even following the same recipe, because we have our own touch, our own flavour, our own essence that goes into it. So everyone's creative, you just have to realise it.
Brad Eather (36:14)
Yeah.
How do you think that that served you navigating your own business journey?
Ken Thomas (36:31)
Way better now, way better because I realised that especially when I build these playbooks and then we draw a line in the sand, we build the playbook, then we test it and validate it and change it, that that is my outlet for creativity and creating content on LinkedIn, testing things, is this gonna work? Did I have fun making this? Right? Did I get lost in time?
Brad Eather (36:33)
Mmm.
Yeah.
Ken Thomas (37:01)
Did I get in flow doing this? Yeah, there are times where I've gotten in complete flow in my day, just making something that has to do with the business. And I love it, it brings me joy. And it's something that I'd never considered before Terry Balter really planted that seed in my head when I started my MBA.
Brad Eather (37:24)
One of the things that I love about creativity and your definition aligns with this perfectly is that it leaves open room for reinterpretation. Nothing's fixed. It can always be improved. It could always change in some way. And having a clear focus or strategy within a structured framework like the one that you've presented today, but still having the creative ability to
test and trial and figure out how to do things better is something that I think a lot of people get bogged down in. The system is the system and cannot be improved. Whereas thinking a little bit laterally can open up a completely new trajectory.
Ken Thomas (38:10)
Yeah, of course you can. Everything can be improved until you're getting the outcome that you desire. And probably the best example I can think of that, David Ogilvie, right? Talking about everything was a Jaguar ad. I think it was Jaguar. They ran the exact same ad in a magazine for 20 years because they tested, validated, tried all these different things until they found what worked. And then when they finally found what worked, they stuck with it.
Brad Eather (38:16)
Mm.
Ken Thomas (38:39)
until it didn't work anymore and then there was no ego about it, you just, okay, we need to make something new and then you test and you validate and you create. Like everything is always changing. We're always having to iterate and there's nothing wrong with accepting that something can always be better.
Brad Eather (39:01)
Mm.
Ken Thomas (39:03)
But as soon as you get the outcome, that's when you can stop, keep going with the outcome. And then once you're not getting the outcome, start again, change it, test it. It's okay, you can do that.
Brad Eather (39:16)
I think that is for me, at least the essence of strategy is, is having the overall vision and then being able to adapt as you work through the vision. Yeah. Can.
Ken Thomas (39:27)
Hmm. Strategy is
one of the most creative things that someone can do, It really is.
Brad Eather (39:33)
Yeah.
I think so. And the nature of this podcast is really challenging some of these assumptions within the corporate landscape that creativity is not something that lives in the office. Whereas as you've outlined, creativity really has potential for everyone to work through their roles, their life, self-improvement, anything.
Ken Thomas (39:54)
Well, I'll say, Brad, if you're working in a mid-market corporate business and you have an idea or a concept for how something could be improved or be better, as long as you're not hurting anyone or causing adverse effects with this, right? Like you're not causing privacy problems and all those kinds of things, just go and do it. I was able to change the way a previous business that I worked in changed the way they basically went to market.
Brad Eather (40:08)
Mm.
Yeah.
Ken Thomas (40:25)
with small businesses because I just said, I think this is the way to do it. I'm going to go do it. And then made my own proof of concept and like, wow, this is really working. We need to make this happen. Like just go and do it. Don't sit back there and wait and think, I'm not allowed to do it. Go and do it. Get proof of concept, proof of value, and then make it happen. Like it doesn't matter what environment you're in. You can still have that creative
Brad Eather (40:25)
Yeah.
Mm.
Mm.
Yeah.
Ken Thomas (40:55)
approach and be able to bring your own taste and flair to things, no matter what size of organisation you're in, just the way you go about it and navigate the different things that makes the difference. It's a great thing about being an entrepreneur, right? You've got no one telling you what you can't, you can be creative about everything and anything. You haven't got the restrictions, which is why I love it. I'm sure that's the same for you. You can just go and do and see what happens. But if you're in an organisation,
Brad Eather (40:55)
Mm.
Mm.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Ken Thomas (41:23)
Just go and do it. Make it happen. Be creative.
Brad Eather (41:26)
Ken it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you today on the newly branded Business Creative podcast. Where can people get in touch with you?
Ken Thomas (41:35)
Yeah, LinkedIn is always the best channel for me. So check me out there. Also on Instagram and TikTok is Ken Grosref. Looking forward to, as you would put it, continuing the conversation there.
Brad Eather (41:45)
No worries, give him a cold call. Go for it. Alright mate, thanks for the chat.
Ken Thomas (41:46)
you
Thanks Brad, cheers.
