562 Simon Bowen

[00:00:00]

Why Clarity Drives Growth

Jeffrey Feldberg: Most founders aren't short on ideas. They are short on clarity. And when clarity is missing, the cost shows up everywhere. Sales conversations take longer. Teams misinterpret the strategy. Customers don't fully understand the value. The founder keeps repeating the same explanation. Growth slows, not because the business is weak, but because the thinking behind the business has not been made simple enough for others to buy, follow, and scale.

Meet Simon Bowen

Jeffrey Feldberg: Simon Bowen has spent more than two decades helping leaders in business, government, the military, and private enterprise turn complexity into clarity. Through the models method, Simon helps founders take the genius trapped inside their head and convert it into visual frameworks that teams can execute, customers understand, and markets value.

For a founder, this matters because if your team can't explain your value without you, you're still the bottleneck. If your customers don't [00:01:00] immediately understand why you matter, you're making sales harder than they need to be. And if a future buyer can't see the transferable value inside your business, you may be leaving enterprise value on the table.

Simon's work challenges a painful question most successful founders avoid. Is your company being held back by the market or your inability to clearly express the value you've already created?

This is a conversation about clarity, scale, founder bottlenecks, and turning hidden genius into visible enterprise value.

And before we start the episode, a quick word from our sponsor, Deep Wealth and the Deep Wealth Mastery Program. Here's Bill, a graduate, who says, the Deep Wealth Mastery Program has transformed the KPIs we're using to accelerate growth and profits.

Or how about Emry, who says, and I love this, and I quote, the Deep Wealth Mastery Program helped me create the right mindset for both growing my business and later my future exit. I now know what [00:02:00] questions to ask, what to do and what not to do, which is priceless. The team and I have found dangerous skeletons and gaps that we're now addressing due to the Deep Wealth program. Today, our actions have a massive ROI. 

Absolutely love that. 

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And I gotta tell you, as I hear these testimonials, this is exactly why I do what I do. My mission, the team's mission here at Deep Wealth, is to literally change the social fabric of society, one business owner at a time and one liquidity event at a time.

The Deep Wealth Mastery program, it's the only one based on a nine figure deal. And that deal, that was my deal. You know my story. [00:03:00] I said no to a seven figure offer. I created a system that we now call Deep Wealth Mastery and that's exactly what helped myself and my business partners welcome from a different buyer, a different offer, a nine figure deal.

So if you're interested in growing your profits, preparing for a future liquidity event, Whether that's three years away or 33 years away, and if you want to optimize your post exit life, Deep Wealth Mastery is for you. 

Please email success at deepwealth. com. Again, that's success, S U C C E S S at deepwealth. com. 

We'll send you all the information about the Deep Wealth Mastery Program, otherwise known as the Scale for Ultimate Sales System. Better yet, why not hop on a complimentary strategy call? We'll see where you are at your business and what's standing between you and your financial independence and your dreams.

So that's where you want to be. You want to be with other successful business owners, entrepreneurs, and founders, just like you, who are looking to create market disruptions, whether you're a startup, whether you've been in business for three or four decades, [00:04:00] whether you're manufacturing, whether you're a high tech, SaaS, low tech, whatever the case may be.

Come on in and network with other business owners, with other businesses, just like you, because they all want to lock in their financial freedom and enjoy both success and fulfillment. Again, the 90 day Deep Wealth Mastery Program, it has your name on it. All you need to do is take the next step. Please send an email to success at deepwealth. com. 

Podcast Welcome and Setup

Jeffrey Feldberg: Deep Wealth Nation, welcome to another episode of the Deep Wealth Podcast. Well, Deep Wealth Nation, let me ask you this. Look at where you are. Is that where you want to be? Are you confusing your activity and your hard work with possibly progress and success, and you're asking about, "Okay, what do I do?

Where do I start? How do I do it?" And if you're saying, "Yeah, Jeffrey, I want to learn more about that," you've come to the right place. We're gonna talk about the renaissance of wisdom. We have a very special guest in the House of Deep Wealth. You're gonna love what he's all about. I'm gonna put a plug in right there.

Simon, welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast. An absolute pleasure to have you with us. You're a fellow founder, you're a thought leader, you are [00:05:00] single-handedly changing the way leaders, whether you're a founder or in the C-suite, are running companies and looking at situations. But let me start with this.

There's always a story behind the story, so what's your story? What got you from where you were to where you are today? 

Simons Origin Story

Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow.

Simon Bowen: Well, first of all, thank you for having me on the podcast. I'm in Australia. I'm sitting in Perth in Western Australia at the moment, so probably the funny way I'm speaking. you know, it's interesting I grew up in small country towns in Western Australia, and when we say a small town in Australia, we're talking 400 and 500 people, it is small. Well, Australia is physically roughly the same size as the US, but we only have 27 million people, so there's a lot of empty space, right? and in these small towns, the businesses are the heartbeat of the community. If the one petrol station that you've got closes down, or the one shop that you've got closes down, or the one bank branch in town closes down, the town starts to die.

And, were either farmers or they had the business in the town. And, we'd go and buy [00:06:00] stuff at the shop, and they'd put it on the bill for Mum, and then she'd go down once a month and pay it. Like, that was the commercial world I grew up in, right? Which is a, an old-fashioned thing, but it really...

I just always had this sense that business was this powerful force for good in a community, right? It w- it's like a pillar of community. And so as I, went into the working world, my first working life was in electronics and electrics, designing components and things, and I think that's where the discipline emerged of, you know, you get an idea for a device that you want to create.

You, you have to create a circuit diagram first to be able to make that. It has to become a visual model on paper- before it can become the real thing that you see in the real world. So, so much of the way we operate in the world is, got an idea, we draw it, then it becomes reality. You know, You wouldn't go to a builder and say, "I've got an idea for a house.

Can you build it for me?" They'd say, "Well, w- we actually need plans. We need a [00:07:00] model of the house on paper, then I can build it." And so this whole idea of using visual models to explain complex things started to emerge. I had a a misdirection in career, thinking I wanted to be a teacher. I left the electronics industry, got my Bachelor of Education.

They put me in front of high school students who helped me to realize that I didn't have the vocational fortitude to do that for 40, to be around teenagers for 40 years. And so I, went into organizational development work, strategic planning, organizational design sales enablement marketing strategies large scale project management and things like that, and was an executive manager in one of Australia's largest companies, merged business units together ran sales divisions, across two states selling high ticket, complex industrial products, and really just found a love for sales and business and what it can do.[00:08:00]

Models for Complex Alignment

Simon Bowen: And so then eventually I started a management consulting business, and I would get hired. I forged a real reputation in Australia for being able to facilitate complex and contentious conversations.

So, for example, the government would come to me and say, "We're gonna put 200 people in a room together who are at war with each other over a topic.

you've got them for two hours. Can you get them to agree?" Or the Department of Defense would say we're gonna bring the Army, Navy, and Air Force together. They're deploying into a war zone, but they don't like each other, and we're sending civilian contractors with them to run accommodation and catering on the base.

Can you get them all to agree to a plan for how they're gonna do this?" Or, "We're gonna build a $1.4 billion sports stadium. Can you find out what all the stakeholders want and what all the sports fans wants, and turn it into a brief that the architects can tender against?" And, or, you know, BHP we've got seven mines that we're building, $2 billion each, and we need the project management community to get along and talk to each other."

And I found that I had an ability to do [00:09:00] that and it actually wasn't that complex. If you're dealing with a complex or contentious conversation If you just frustrate people for three quarters of the available time that you've got with them, and so if you've got 200 people in a room for two hours, if you just frustrate them collectively for 90 minutes, they the frustration actually builds a collective energy to get to some sort of outcome.

And frustrating 200 people is not that hard. You just listen to everyone equally and fairly, and that will frustrate everybody,

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah.

Simon Bowen: And then at the 90-minute mark, I found if I walked to a whiteboard and said to the room, "I think I can draw this," and I start to build a visual model of the concept and the context and what we're trying to do, and facilitate that model out of the room, they collectively, they've built a model together.

And so whilst they're in opposition to each other, the model occupies this space between people, and all of a sudden the model starts to carry the ego of the conversation. And eventually they reach a [00:10:00] point where they go, "Well, that's it. That model's actually what we should do." And it literally, that became the format from a strategy.

And I started thinking about this in the context of business, and, this work I was doing, I assumed everybody did this. I assumed everybody worked that way until one day someone said, "You should teach this thing you do." And I'm going, "Well, everyone does this." And they go, "No, they don't. Not like you."

You know? And we've since discovered that really no one's teaching... I didn't invent models, but I put choreography around them, and I put the facilitation process around them and things like that. So I started putting it into the context of companies and, whole lot of different thinking emerged out of that.

But the models became unbelievably powerful in the complex sale, because a complex sale is just trying to reach agreement with somebody on a complex and contentious issue contentious for them. And so the whole methodology emerged, and what I found was that there are two really [00:11:00] critical systems in a business that no one views as a system, and that is the system for thinking and the system for influence.

So a business is only as strong as the idea on which it's built, the quality of thinking behind it, and the quality of thinking of the leaders in the business. And then it's only as strong as its ability to influence the choices people make to support it. Staff to work hard, customers to buy, suppliers to serve.

banks to, fund, regulators to give license, and so on. If you have elevated thinking and accelerated influence, you can make almost anything happen in a business, and I started to realize that powerful visual models, and there's science behind this, there's science behind the models, but powerful visual models are a system for elevated thinking and accelerated influence that allow leaders, salespeople, parents, teachers, anyone with a complex conversation to share and reach agreement [00:12:00] on, can do that without ego, without false pressure of scarcity and urgency, and in a way that lets people just sink into the model and try it on and buy it.

So long explanation, but, I... It's this farm kid who probably got his belief about the importance of business in society from these little country towns, who then, carried that fascination with companies all the way through and discovered a way of being able to communicate complex things rapidly and without pressure through the use of visual models which really have some deep science behind them these days, if you study them.

and I think like a lot of founders in companies, the journey is eclectic for a lot of founders. I don't know if it's because we're a highly distractable group of people, or y- we just love to invent or, but I don't know about you, in your experience meeting lots of founders and even non-founders, but business leaders that are very [00:13:00] entrepreneurial, they often draw on a very eclectic past that creates a lens of perspective that changed everything about the company, that no one else brought to the table.

It's a fa- it's a fascinating thing. Yeah.

Jeffrey Feldberg: It's the two sides of a coin. It's the brilliance of a founder and how we think and operate, and sometimes it can be a curse if we don't put that in the right way. It's interesting, Simon. As preparing for today, I couldn't help but go back to Michelangelo and maybe saying, "Okay, what I do, Michelangelo what gives there, Jeffrey?"

And what's interesting is, 'cause I know you talk about a company's genius, but disorganization, misalignment, and to me, it's most companies are this block of marble And they put no thought into it. They take the hammer or the chisel and they start chiseling away. And you're coming away saying, "Okay, I'm looking at this block of marble," otherwise known as a company, and okay, how are the veins running?

What's unique about this particular block? And now let's put some thought behind that. And I know you have the different [00:14:00] terminology. You have your value model, the pre-frame, the genius model, all those kinds of things. But with that in mind, let me ask, it's somewhat of an unfair question in the sense that every situation, business, founder, or leader is different on his or her own unique path.

But is Pareto's law at work here, that fancy term for the 80/20 rule? Jeffrey, it's interesting. Regardless of the company's size or where they're at, I find that 80% of the challenges, otherwise known as opportunities, are really coming from the same 20% of areas or items over here that are throwing them off base.

Are there some common patterns that you're seeing?

Simon Bowen: Yeah. Yeah. 

Mechanics Magic and Genius

Simon Bowen: Yeah, there absolutely are, and, some of this is down to organizational design. I've spent decades in organizational design work as well. And let me paint a picture verbally. A company exists to serve a purpose, and if that was at, if that was written at the top of a page the purpose for a company there should be a commercial purpose, that it's there to actually deliver a commercial outcome.[00:15:00]

And some companies only have a commercial purpose, but the best companies also have a cause, some sort of meaningful crusade. The, I mean, that's the best mix. Charities have a cause, but no commercial purpose, and that is challenging. If a company's only got a commercial purpose, but no true cause, that is also challenging.

When you get both together, it's often articulated in vision and mission kind of statements.

the effect of that purpose is felt at the bottom of the page, where we might write the word impact. What's the impact that company has in the marketplace? So then from an organizational design perspective, that purpose is served through three channels.

The first one is the mechanics of the business. So this is structure, strategy, systems, the financial management dashboards standard operating procedures, et cetera, et cetera. The mechanics of the business, and the mechanics create consistency, and the consistency is what creates the experience the market [00:16:00] has.

So when a company has consistency, the market says, "Well, we can rely on them in terms of the impact they're trying to create. We can rely on them." Of course, there are patterns inside companies where there are gaps and failures. Entrepreneurs tend to hate systems. They're not great with standard operating procedures.

They're more creative and inventive than prescriptive and self-disciplined, if you like. And so- if a founder doesn't pretty quickly figure out who can lead the mechanics of the business for them, that ends up being a pretty big gap in a hurry. And the...

Who do you need to lead the mechanics of the business? Well, you need a mechanic. need someone who has technical skill and loves doing technical work, doing that stuff, right? The, so that's down the right-hand side of the page. On the far left-hand side of the page, to get from purpose to impact, we have the magic of the business.

Now, the magic of the business is the people. It- it's people that bring magic to a company, quite frankly, [00:17:00] and we tend to define that with values, and values turn into culture. But the world's been absorbed by, culture programs and everything else for the better part of 20 years, and culture has become an industry.

But culture is just the feature. The benefit is character. We do all that work to build an organization of character, and when the marketplace says, "That company has character," we can trust them to deliver the impact that we're looking for from them. So they're consistent, because they've got great mechanics.

We can rely on them. They, they have character because they've got a great culture. The people are magic, and therefore we can trust them. And that is also another area of challenge for companies, is that magic piece, and what we're seeing in the world today with AI is fascinating.

Companies need to make full use of AI, but they also need to be careful in the process that they don't destroy the magic of the business. Because, people... when push comes to shove, [00:18:00] people are gonna sue people, not AI. And when push comes to shove, people have appreciation for who stood next to them and by them.

And so, we're in interesting times. But I kept noticing this big gap down the middle, through the middle of the page, from purpose to impact, and I spent a lot of time thinking about, "What is that gap? Why if companies have done all this work on the mechanics and on the magic, why is there still m- so much misalignment inside companies," right?

And I was doing some work on a goldmine on an island off the northeast coast of Papua New Guinea where 80% of the workforce don't speak or read proper English. They speak and read Pidgin English. So we couldn't put normal standard operating procedures in place and things like that. I had to find a way of codifying what we needed people to do that they could work with, and I started to build a model, which I now call The Genius Model.

And what I realized I was searching for down the middle is what is- The company genius [00:19:00] here. what is the framework of the way this company thinks about what it does and how it goes about solving the customer's specific problem that makes it believable, that creates such a capability that makes it believable in terms of the impact?

They have character, so we can trust them. They have consistency, so we can rely on them. But they have this deep and profound capability because we can see how they think, and therefore I can believe them. And believability is the crisis of the current time because of AI. Trust is no longer the currency of the marketplace in sales.

Believability is the currency of the marketplace, and we all know this to be true because we all see videos on YouTube of a dog saving a baby, and we're amazed, and then we get into the chat and someone says, "It's AI, you idiot," no one knows what to believe anymore. And so I started to realize that companies have lots and lots of vision and mission workshops, and they do a lot of values [00:20:00] thinking and values work, and they document standard operating procedures.

But they never have a how we solve the problem kind of workshop. What is the true genius we bring to the marketplace? And I'll talk about what genius is in a minute. Why did people become obsessed about Apple? Because the true genius of Apple as a company was visible, and it was contained in Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.

So people became passionate about Apple because of the genius of the company, not because of the devices they made. It- the... We could ask the question, is Apple the same company today that it once was? Y- and it's possibly not. 

Genius Create Curate Integrate

Simon Bowen: So genius is three things. Genius is create, curate, and integrate. So the thing that starts genius in a company, and it often starts with the founder or an inventor or a key, early stage leader, who brings a certain history to the table of experience and expertise that allows them to create a [00:21:00] lens of perspective that is rare. A lens of perspective, not necessarily the technical solutions or the skills, but a lens of perspective that is rare, that allows them to see th- their clients' futures before the client does.

It allows them to see the green line that the clients could rise up to an amazing future, and allows them to see the red line that the clients could drift down to an undesirable future. And that lens of perspective that they've created allows them to see that future in a way that no one else does. It allows them to understand not just the known problem and not even the hidden problem the client's trying to keep from them, but also the unknown problem.

every customer has an ache that they can't put a finger on. anyone's ever had a back ache, sometimes you can get an ache in your body, but you can't actually tell the doctor where it is, and you can't really put a finger on what it is or when it started or and you can't make it [00:22:00] go away. That's actually the only problem customers want you to solve, but they can't name it. They can't point to it. They can't tell you what it is. And so founders often find this unknown problem, this ache, and they can build this, they can create this lens of perspective around it. And that's 20% of what company genius is.

You come back to the 80/20 rule, and that 20% changes everything. 80% of what most companies bring to the market is the same as everybody else. It's probably the same technology, it's probably the same manufacturing process, it's probably the same, raw materials, it's probably the same methodology, it's probably the same consulting approaches, probably...

If you're in a, if you're in a structured industry like design or architecture or engineering, you're using the same techniques But the lens of perspective that the founder brought to the table changes everything about the curated best practices that they're gonna tap into and use.

And so they do the work of curating best practice. And then real [00:23:00] genius is when they integrate that curated best practice and the lens of perspective into a single organized framework of thinking, where the customer looks at that and goes, "That makes more sense than anything else I've seen in the market."

Believability Beats Uniqueness

Simon Bowen: And so, you know, w- people are talking about... you know, for 20 years we've had the marketing world say, "Go to the market on your unique selling proposition. Go to the market and say, we have the only unique solution." But the data's really clear right now we're in a sea of uniqueness, and so uniqueness now is completely commoditized.

And indeed, when you hear someone say, "We've got a unique solution," I suspect a little bit of cynicism, sneaks in. And when a customer's confronted with four options all saying that they have the only unique solution, and they all sound pretty reasonable, we know statistically that 40 to 60% of the time the customer makes...

decides not to buy anything at all Why? Because the customer doesn't wanna make a mistake, [00:24:00] and if I can't differentiate between these four, I'll just do nothing. And so I'm saying to businesses these days, stop trying to claim uniqueness, and instead claim completeness of thinking. Be the person in the market that makes more sense than anybody else.

I've got this lens of perspective I've created based on my experience and expertise. I'm not trying to claim that I've come up with the only solution. What I, I can tell you is I've curated best practice, and it's different because of the perspective that I've got, and I've figured out how to integrate it into a whole for you, and it solves this specific problem that you specifically have that is an ache that you've never been able to name.

if you do that, selling starts to take care of itself. And so company genius is a process to find. It's a model. We build it as a model. We call it the genius model. Why do we build it as a model? Well, because, know, life is not linear and neither is solving problems. And so saying to a customer, "Here's [00:25:00] our process," is nowhere near as powerful as saying, "Here's my model, and we'll dive in and out of that model wherever we need to, 'cause it's an integrated whole to solve, your problem and take away the ache."

So I think the patterns that we keep seeing are imposter syndrome. Why does imposter syndrome happen? Because people are trying to claim the entire uniqueness of the solution, rather than saying, "I've curated some best practice." Think about the release from imposter syndrome when you go, "I've curated best practice through the lens of my perspective, and look at the results it gets, and I've built an integrated whole."

You're now no longer, misrepresenting anything. people are challenged to describe what they do because, they've had vision, mission, and value workshops, and they've written SOPs and workflows and processes, but no one's sat down and had a workshop on what and how, specifically, what's our thinking?

How do we solve this? so people, the big gap is that people just don't have a way of expressing [00:26:00] the true value of what they do, and there's still a big gap in a lot of organizations in terms of internal alignment of the team around exactly how they solve the customer's problems.

And when you get that middle thread of what's the model of thinking everything actually changes. there's some really interesting research out of NASA. They wanted to explore what is the single biggest contributor to a high-performing team in a challenging environment. So if you're gonna send four astronauts around the moon, what's the single most important- contributed to their success.

And it's not the skill level of the individuals, it's not teamwork, it's not leadership, although all those things are important. It's that they have a shared mental model of what they're gonna do and how they're gonna do it. That's fascinating. Think about an NFL team or an NBA team or a NHL team trying to take the field in the final, and they don't have a shared game plan, which is the mental model of what they're gonna do and how they're gonna win the game.

It would be impossible for them to [00:27:00] win. Sport, military aviation drill the mental model into the teams. In business, we don't. Sport trains 80% of the time, and training's often harder than the game, and they play 20% of the time. The game is the easiest thing they do. In business, we do the reverse.

We play 80% of the time, and we train 20% of the time, and the training's never as hard as the game. And so, the mental models shift over time, and all I did was turn them into shared visual models so they're not just in people's heads. And it's like giving people the game plan. Here's how we take the field of play.

it's given rise to a bunch of other things that I say sometimes that are a little bit controversial. I'm known for saying that I don't agree with the idea of start with why. When you say that a conference room will take a deep breath in. What do you mean?

Well, there's one universal why when it comes to business. The only thing the customer cares about... Having a personal why is important, but the only why in my business that my clients care about is that I really want to solve their [00:28:00] specific problem, and I know how to do it. That's the only why. I- and then the next question they're gonna ask is, "Well, how do you do that, Simon?" And I'm going, "Well, I've got a model. I can show it to you. I can let you see how we think about this, and if that makes sense, we should do something together." So I probably rambled on a bit there, but Most companies don't have a marketing and sales problem, Jeffrey, they have a design problem. They act and done the design work.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah, it's fascinating. My goodness, there is so much to unpack there. As I take a step back though, you're actually taking me down the Deep Wealth Mindset Roadmap saying very similar things in different ways. Our Step 1 big picture, Simon, to your point is, what's a painful problem that it's still small enough, it's a blind spot, we call it an inflection point.

It's still small enough, it's not headlines yet, but it will be, that you can identify. And then Step 2, from your company's X-Factors, what makes my company unique? Better than the competition. [00:29:00] Everyone says, "Well, better service, better this, better that." It's all the same. So what am I world-class in? What am I unique that I can either apply to the Step 1 big picture problem that I found, or I can create new X-Factors?

And then Step 3, taking that to the market, to the future buyer, whether that's a buyer for the product or service or for the company. And what I love about that is if I zoom back out, it's what's the painful problem? And the analogy that I often like to give is nobody wants to go to the dentist until you've been up all night, you've have a huge pain in your mouth.

You're lining up at the dentist's office at 5:00 in the morning, even though they don't open up till 9:00 AM. You wanna be the first one seen. That's how painful the problem is with what you're doing. So let me take you back to something that, that you said, especially with AI, it's the headlines, it's changing life as we know it.

I love what you said that it's believability as the currency, but with AI, what's [00:30:00] believable now? So how can I as a founder, with some of the frameworks that you've been sharing, can you give an example as a founder of, okay, here's my company, what we're doing, this problem that we've identified, here's how we're believable, and we're gonna stand out from all the noise that you can get it and say, "Yeah, I know I have five choices, but this is the only choice I actually believe.

Let's go with it."

Simon Bowen: Yeah. there's answers at a few different levels to that. And I just wanna tag onto something you said as well, you know, the X-Factor. The X-Factor almost always is to do with the... how you think as a company. Almost everything else is replicable if you just put enough capital at it.

You can buy the same tech, you can... If you throw enough money at it, you can copy what most people do. You can't copy their thinking, not easily, right? And so the X-Factor often is in the thinking and influence system of the company. And you're right, the X-Factor changes everything else around it, right?

So that, that's a really deep thing for people to think about, and that ache, that problem, there are three types of value, and I haven't [00:31:00] been able to find anything in the world in companies that we work with that doesn't fit into one of these three types of value or a combination of them, and let's stick with the dentist.

The first type of value is you fix problems or pain. So someone goes to the dentist with a raging toothache, they're going to get that fixed. The second type of value is you prevent near-term risk. Now, that could be positive risk, the fear of missing out, or it could be negative risk, the risk of harm. But you prevent near-term risk, which is, "I've fixed your toothache, now we've gotta make sure you don't get another one.

Come and see me every six months." The third type of value is you improve something that is actually okay, but you make it- So much better. That's also two dimensions. You protect people from falling long-term into an irrecoverable position. the red line heading downwards.

And you open up the full possibility a much more expanded future, which is the green line heading up. That's the improve piece. And I haven't been able to find anything in the world that [00:32:00] isn't, a reflection of one or two or three of those. Someone doing crisis management with companies might be in fix and prevent and not do any improve.

But if you think about value, it's all... I can't think of anything that doesn't address one of those levels of value. And so that, ache, that problem, which isn't big today, but it's gonna be huge, but if you could actually bubble it to the surface, is, sits in, in the middle of that. 

Buyer Safety Through Transparency

Simon Bowen: And so how does a founder, in a world where believability is the crisis get people to, understand that they've got the goods, right?

I think the nemesis of disbelief is exactly the same mechanism that you have to use if you're dealing with a corporate psychopath. There's some really interesting study about the corporate psychopath, people who are subcriminal, but they behave like psychopaths in the workplace.

They bully people, they manipulate, they climb the ladder and everything else. There's a lot of research around this, right? What is the mechanism to manage that? It's the same [00:33:00] mechanism you use to tackle disbelief, and that mechanism is transparency. The more transparent you can make the conversation you're having with the client, which means the more buyer safety you build around them.

I coined this concept of buyer safety a few years ago. The way you market and sell should make the customer feel safer with you at every step of the way than they would with anyone else. At every step of the way. So every piece of marketing that you put out into the market, ask yourself, "Is that gonna make the customer feel safer because of our marketing or more at risk?"

When they raise their hand, and become a lead, does how we manage that lead make them feel safer or more at risk? When they come into our process as a lead and we try to set up a sales call or an appointment or whatever, are our mechanics and our mechanism so transparent, and do they feel like they still have control, that they feel safer with us than they do with anyone else they've dealt with?

53% of all customer loyalty is built during the buying [00:34:00] process. During the buying process. The number one product we all have in the marketplace is how we sell. That's their first product, 'cause they're experiencing how we marketed and sold to them. And if they don't feel safe in that process, we're just like everybody else.

But if we create real buyer safety and they go, "These are great people to deal with, and I can see how they think." That's great transparency. There's nothing being hidden. They make more sense than anyone else I've met. I think I can believe them. Now, let me flip to another level. 

Draw Live to Build Trust

Simon Bowen: We teach people to draw by hand.

When I speak at conferences, when I deliver a keynote at a conference, I'm walking around with my iPad in my hand connected wirelessly to the screen, and I just draw on blank pages on my iPad. I never use PowerPoint. I have no pre-made presentations. I'm just drawing on my iPad. And I'm always the most, positively scored speaker at conferences, and people are taking photos of my screens and everything else.

They don't ask for the slides, and because, audiences are trying to [00:35:00] get slides and they've all got all your IP. They don't ask for the slides 'cause I've drawn it all, right? But think about what happens when someone gets in front of an audience, speaks for 45 minutes or 90 minutes or whatever, and the entire presentation is drawn live in front of the audience on blank pages.

Does that person know what they're talking about? 100%, and it's a very organic process. And humans are analog creatures living in a digital world, and drawing is analog. When you draw people in. So if you're in an enterprise sales meeting with a C-suite, one of the most powerful things you can do from a believability point of view is walk to the whiteboard and draw the whole thing. I was invited to a, a meeting of company CEOs, and I had technology with me. I was I was gonna draw on my iPad. They didn't know I was gonna draw. They thought I'd be clicking through a PowerPoint, but they couldn't get the projector to work. And I said, "Don't worry about it. Just, can you find me a whiteboard?"

And I just drew screen after screen off the whiteboard, and I got so much business out of that. And the feedback on that [00:36:00] was, it was just He knows his stuff, right? So he's believable 'cause he can produce it almost out of nothing. So, someone in sales needs to be able to deliver the first product, which is let me step you through some robust thinking, some completeness of thinking in a highly transparent way that keeps you safe and is done in a way that actually only a human in a room watching the nuances of posture and behavior and everything else possibly could.

Facilitation Over Selling

Simon Bowen: And then the last thing I'd add to this is the art of facilitation. Stop trying to sell and learn the art of facilitation. So selling is the process of pushing your idea towards somebody, knocking down their objections until they have none left, and then trying to get them to make a decision. Facilitation is the process of pulling everything out of people. The word educate comes from the Latin word educare, which means to draw out [00:37:00] of, and facilitation is the process of creating a space that pulls collective thinking out of a group full of people, and there's plenty of information about how to be a great facilitator.

Visual models are natural instruments of facilitation, and so as soon as you start to facilitate people, they're having an experience with you that feels real. And so, I have a glass board where I'm standing behind a glass screen and the camera's on the other side of the glass, and I start talking and at a certain point I'll just pick up a marker and start drawing a model, and it's appearing in the air in front of me.

It's really hard to... people look at that and they go, "Well, we know that's not AI," at one point I put one of these on social media and people were going, "Oh, he's flipped it, post-edit. He's flipped the film," or "He's, got the camera shooting back into a mirror," because the text would be reversed and everything else.

And they go, "No he's, he's writing with his left hand. That's a wedding ring that he's got on," and thought this would be fun, there's a, an old trick in teaching that allows [00:38:00] you to write backward really effectively on, on a flip chart, and so I set up to do this.

I had the flip chart behind me, glass in front of me. I have a ring on both hands, so you can't tell which one's my wedding ring. And I started doing the talk, turned around, writing on the flip chart, but I'm actually writing in reverse on fl- on the flip chart, because I'd set myself up to be able to do that.

And then turned around and started talking again, and then went to the glass board and drew on the glass board, and the internet lost its mind. They're going, "Well, in at least one of those circumstances, he's writing backwards," right? 

Analog Humanity in AI Age

Simon Bowen: Believability means you gotta show up as human, creative, curious, flawed, but highly transparent, in a way that allows you to operate in an analog fashion with analog people who are trying to live in a digital world. AI's almost made it uncool to be analog, yeah, you should keep a journal and look at this, we've got this fantastic digital journal you can take on your phone. Well, there's something about writing [00:39:00] in a book, so, a, just a collection of thought stream coming as you ask me that question.

But the more you bring a prospect into a model of thinking, the more they sink into it, the more they're trying it on, the more believable it becomes. Here's the ultra hack. Things become more believable when the customer can try the outfit on and see themselves in the mirror. And so find a way to present what you do.

I do it with models, You do it, with the process you've got. 

Make Buyers the Hero

Simon Bowen: Find a way to present what you do that lets the customer try it on and look at themselves in the mirror. Make the client the hero and Stop trying to be their hero, make them the hero instead, and just be the sense maker.

Be the sage. Every hero has a sage, and so many people are selling to the customer to be the hero to the customer. Make the customer the hero and, watch believability climb. Does that make sense?

Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow, makes so much sense. It's interesting. 

Trust Built Before Purchase

Jeffrey Feldberg: Let's go back to some of the many gems of wisdom that you shared. You said a founder doesn't win [00:40:00] because we're going in front of everyone saying, "Oh yeah, we're different." Everybody says that. You're saying a founder will win when I can show you here's how we think or here's how we solve or here's how we're gonna reduce the risk or here's how, and this is key, I'm gonna make you feel safer even before you do anything with us.

And

Simon Bowen: Yep.

Jeffrey Feldberg: 53% of that trust or having someone become a raving fan is not post-sale. It's before they even buy, which I absolutely love and it goes back to that saying, who would you rather do business with? With a friend or a stranger? And just about everyone I know says friend, and what's underneath that is, well, a friend is someone I trust.

That's why they're a friend. And so- we're getting that loyalty from, "Okay, I'm gonna make you feel safe and different." So I love how you're positioning that, which is in fact a different way of thinking. And so for a founder in Deep Wealth Nation who's listening to us, and Simon, with what I'm about to [00:41:00] ask, there's not enough time to go into this.

Th-this could be not just an episode, it'd be the entire series. But we've established, and we'll take you at your word, I'm trusting you. Look at that. 53% of customer loyalty, we'll take that at face value, is built during the buying process. So...

Simon Bowen: mean, I can give you the source of that. That comes out of some Gartner research and they'll... People will find that in the early, about the 2012 Challenger Sale material. So 9% Of customer loyalty is based on price, and so people say our market only buys on price. That's not true.

9% is based on price. I think about 19% is based on brand, 19% is based on quality, 53% is based on the buying experience. it's robust research. Sorry,

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah, no, lo-love that. And so with all that said, though, and we'll pull a Ronald Reagan here. We're gonna trust, and we can always verify after the

fact. One whole thing called the internet that helps us do that potentially, or going into the research papers. So if I'm a founder in Deep Wealth Nation, I'm asking, "Okay, Simon, yeah, I hear you.

It makes sense." Here's the [00:42:00] how question. How do I change the way that I sell so prospects are feeling safer every step of the way? What would be some low-hanging fruit that you can share some examples of, "Okay, Jeffrey, yeah, here's how in this instance you can change it up to have someone feel safer"?

Design Buyer Safety Systems

Simon Bowen: Our method is to do the design work inside your company first. Build the models, codify your genius, right? One of the biggest areas of misalignment and conflict inside most companies is between the sales team and the fulfillment team,

Jeffrey Feldberg: Sure.

Simon Bowen: where the fulfillment team is saying, "Can you stop them from making promises we don't deliver?"

And the sales team are saying, "Can you get them to make something we can actually sell?" Right? And so that's a design problem. What's the thinking of the company? Build the models. And then it's about how you deploy those models into the organization and instill them.

And I want to hit something that, that I said earlier that, that I want to go back to in terms of how you can do this make it happen. But buyer safety is not an accidental process. Buyer safety [00:43:00] is a design, process in how you market and sell. 

Five Levels of Safety

Simon Bowen: There is a buyer safety funnel that, five levels of safety that the customer is looking for.

in the open market they're seeking safety in anonymity. They want to find out everything about you without you even knowing they exist. Safety in anonymity. and the number one job of your LinkedIn page is to provide that. The entire job of LinkedIn is to give them safety in anonymity.

They can find out all about you. Your website is giving them safety in anonymity. So think about the information you have in the world, and does it allow your potential buyer to think they have completeness of thinking. They seem to make more sense than anyone else I'm hearing, and I can find out plenty about them, and they don't even need to know I exist.

Then the next level, as the funnel narrows- Is safety in numbers. Now they might go, "Look, it's okay for you to know I exist, but I wanna be in numbers. So I'm happy to be on your [00:44:00] database, I'm happy to receive your newsletter. I'm happy, for you to be pushing out content to me because I'm just one of maybe thousands in the database, and that's okay.

I feel safe still." But I know that you know I exist, and I know I'm getting some more specific information that makes even more sense for me because it's, now you're using some targeted communication. And then they need to raise their hand. They need to raise their hand and say, "Well, I think I do actually wanna talk to you."

But what they want is safety in process, and this is often overlooked, but what is the mechanism? What is the sequence that somebody goes through when they're gonna end up in a conversation with one of your salespeople, right? And how well-planned and how thorough is that? And do they have to repeat their story to two different people?

Like intel hasn't been shared inside the organization. There's no excuse for salespeople in enterprise selling definitely, but in most forms of selling, [00:45:00] to go into a sales conversation with a customer today without a one-page cheat sheet generated by AI that tells them everything they need to know about that customer.

I mean, the idea of ask the customer information to find out about them is obsolete. Because you can find out everything you need to find out about a customer before you get to the call, and then you can just focus on the ache with them. I mean, if I put in someone's LinkedIn profile, their Facebook profile, their Instagram profile, I put their website in or the URL in, I put in the email communications we might have had with each other as we're trying to set up the meeting or the call, with a well-designed AI tool that I've built to give me a one-page call sheet that lays out the ache that they'd likely to have, where my most probable starting position would be, et cetera, et cetera.

If I'm not doing that, that's just lazy selling. They should have safety in process. They feel like they're in control of the [00:46:00] process. And then the fourth level of safety is safety and privacy. People need to take a beat. People wanna be, "Oh, I need to talk about that with my business partner," or I wanna talk about that with my spouse.

I just want a second to think about it." But we're still sitting on the old, you know, '50s and '60s foot in the door sales strategies, "I'm gonna close you in one call." If you're doing high ticket sales for tens of thousands of dollars, let's say, is it reasonable to expect a customer to make that decision on one call?

Is that even reasonable? And is it safe? And the answer is no, because none of us would do it. If a salesperson brought a car out to you that you're gonna spend $100,000 on and they said, "I've brought the car out, I'll show it to you, you can do a test drive and I want you to make a decision at the end of the test drive," you wouldn't do it.

So why do we think that's okay? It's not safe. And so they need safety and privacy, but we need to keep them moving us through at the same time. And then the last level of safety is safety in commitment. They've got to reach the point where committing to you is the absolutely safest thing for them to [00:47:00] do.

Train Sales Like Athletes

Simon Bowen: And then, great practice and training. Elite sport train 80% of the time and it's always harder than the game. And then they play 20% of the time and that's the most fun. We should be training salespeople 80% of the time and it should be way harder than the game.

When you're doing role plays with your sales team, don't get them to role play with each other. Hire actors and get them to come in and play all sorts of different kind of clients. They love doing that stuff. It's not someone your salespeople know. It's a real environment. Don't break the sale.

Do it in front of a room full of people so there's pressure on the salesperson to be able to move through this sales conversation. Equip them with choreography, not scripting, but choreography for the sales dialogue. Why would you want to put salespeople in front of a room full of people doing a role play with an actor who might have been given the job to play the part of a really tough client or prospect?

Because they're in [00:48:00] sales and sales is a full contact sport and the people you want in sales are the people that run at the hard sale, not run away from it. And 80% in people in sales are running away from the difficult sale, not running towards it. And, the training should be the hardest thing you do.

If you took a salesperson, put him in front of five actors who all played the part of really tough customers, going out and seeing a real customer's gonna be fun, right? So we just apply the principles of elite performance that we get out of sport and the military and everything else and we don't do it.

We don't... You know, oftentimes we put metrics in front of people. They're not hitting their numbers and we say, "You got to get those numbers by the end of the month," and we walk off. One of the big gaps actually is often sales leadership. And so- it's a range of things.

Hard bake buyer safety into your actual mechanisms and processes. M- make the training of your team harder than the game. Find the people that wanna run towards the hard sale, not away from it. Build transparency into the conversations you're [00:49:00] having, and equip your team with great choreography that allows them to share how you think with the customer in real time so that they make more sense than anybody else.

i- there's a ton of stuff that we could talk about, but, there's just some thoughts.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Absolutely couldn't agree more with what you're saying. And Deep Wealth Nation, I want you to think about the time that you had to do a presentation. Two instances. Let's do a quick thought experiment. One, you had plenty of time to prepare. You, the team, the family, they asked you the tough questions ahead of time.

You went through different scenarios. You showed up versus the time you simply showed up. You're in a rush You didn't have time to prepare, and when you didn't prepare, you're showing up on stage and you're probably saying, "I hope nobody asks a question because I'm not so comfortable answering it." Versus when you're prepared, you're showing up, "Wow, I hope people are asking questions.

Let me at 'em. I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna answer the questions." So I love how, hey, don't just role play, get some actors. Make it really tough because the 80% of practice versus the 20% in the real deal when we're out [00:50:00] there will show up prepared and confident, and that just exudes through. 

Prep Beats Gift of Gab

Jeffrey Feldberg: And Simon, you and I were talking offline how in this digital world it's so easy not to be in person.

When we are in person though, there's that spark, that magic. I can pick up even more so of what's going on because the science studies show, and I may be off base in this a little bit, not much, within milliseconds before I ever say a word, somebody's already judged me. For better or for worse, that may be true or not true, but perception's the reality.

Simon Bowen: Well, I think people are acquiring that ability on non in-person experiences as well, and remote experiences. I think people are getting a pretty good radar now did chat write that email to me or did you? I think people have... the radar is up. And, what you're saying is absolutely true.

We have the old adage you and I are old enough to remember, terminology in sales like the gift of the gab. not true. The... What that really is saying is, goes out unprepared and wings it, [00:51:00] right? Improvisational theater is very structured.

The great improv performers have a whole lot of frameworks underneath them.

They've got shared models of how they're gonna operate when they're throwing each other the cues and things like that. Sure the, piece is improvised, but they've got a lot of practice and frameworks underneath them. It's like a great musician that can pick up an instrument and all of a sudden just start playing along with a band.

It's because they've got a ton of structure and learnt time underneath them, which means that what looks like it's thrown together and is brilliant is actually them, putting to work the preparation that they've done. And sales is one of those areas where we just do not put the prep in with our teams.

You know? If they're not in front of a customer, they're not making money. What if the conversion rate tripled because you spent more time with them in practice than the time they spent out? And no one ever [00:52:00] revisits the deals they don't make.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah.

Simon Bowen: You know, Someone goes out they're in the field, they're selling all day, they close two in 10.

none of them really go back and talk to the other eight and find out why they didn't buy, there's a bunch of other stuff that we could talk about, but shooting from the hip is seldom a good strategy, 

Jeffrey Feldberg: You think? And it's interesting because one of the things that you're saying, especially when I just was going in sales, Simon, I was terrible. One thing that I did have, my grandmother, bless her soul, always said, "Jeffrey, if you don't ask, you'll never know." So when I didn't get the deal, I would reach out very politely afterwards, "Simon, I completely understand you're not gonna move forward with us, and I respect that.

More for myself going forward, where did I drop the ball? Did I do something or not do something? And I'm not gonna keep on following up with you. I just want to hear that honest feedback from you so I can improve for the next time. It won't help with you, it'll help with others." And more times than not, people were putting everything on the table.

"Well, Jeffrey, here's what was really going on," [00:53:00] or this or that, and it was hard to hear. I had to check the ego at the door, but it made so much of a difference going forward. And so what I love what you're hearing is for the buyer's safety when we're going out there... And by the way, this applies whether I'm looking to acquire a new customer or get an investor in the business or sell the business.

What I'm hearing you say is, okay, firstly, do I have enough public information that someone can learn all about me, my services, my company in complete anonymity of not having to know what's going on with a phone call or anything else? And then once they do that, they have the confidence, okay, sure, I'll give you my name and email address, but I also know I'm likely one of thousands that's there, so I'm having safety in numbers.

And then I'm getting perhaps some information. It's expected. Okay, I gave my email address, I gave my name, I'm gonna get some marketing outreach. Okay, now I'm evaluating the emails or the videos or the case studies or whatever you're sending, and that gives me the confidence to then raise my hand and say, [00:54:00] "Okay, you know what?

I have some questions. Let's have a conversation." But here's something key, where AI on the one hand can be a foe, and here it's a friend. Through AI, through perhaps I notice on your website you have a five-minute questionnaire. It's not even five minutes. Between that, perhaps on the emails, you're throwing all that in and the public information out there that we're developing a profile that goes back to what you said originally of what's Jeffrey's painful problem?

Not what's a painful problem, but what's the one problem, or here at Deep Wealth we say, "What's the one problem that's keeping you up at night from a business perspective?" And once you've identified that, when we do speak, it's like I've known you my entire life and I'm saying, "Wow, finally someone gets it.

I'm not having to repeat myself 500 times." And then once we're doing that, I love what you're saying of, okay, we've gone through that part, but we're still going because I'm gonna give them safety and privacy. Okay, Jeffrey, think about this. Take your time. Speak to [00:55:00] whomever. Sleep on it, as the saying goes.

And then they're coming back. Okay, not only do they understand me, not only do they have that track record, I check them out They didn't pressure me, and I had time to think about it. Yeah, maybe I had some nudges along the way, but I expect that. I feel safe with these people. Maybe even you have some kind of a guarantee with what they're buying or a service, whatever the case may be, but this is the real deal.

They're not just after the money. They want to make sure that I'm happy. So I love that safety first approach.

Sleep On It Close

Simon Bowen: Well, think about the difference in a call for a customer if the person who's selling to them... I'm not an advocate of trying to hide the sale. I'm not an advocate of playing games and saying, "Oh, this is a strategy call or a discovery call." No, this is a sales conversation. We're talking about whether we're gonna work together or not.

But imagine the shift in dynamic if the salesperson then says, what I'd really like you to do now is sleep on this overnight. I don't you to rush the decision,

because The most important thing is that you make the right decision for you, whether we work together or not." [00:56:00] What's happening in your head, Jeffrey, if you were the customer, the prospect, and I just said that to you?

What's actually going on in your head now?

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah, it's-- goes back to another saying we hear at Deep Wealth, "The one who wins the negotiation is the one who cares the least." And so I'm walking away saying, "Okay, Simon doesn't need my business to pay the rent." Clearly, whether I choose to do something or not do something, Simon has a lot of business, and whether I sign on the dotted line or I don't, he's confident in what he's doing.

So I'm walking away saying, "Oh, isn't that interesting? I'm not feeling that sleazy sales high tactic pressure. Buy now or else, Jeffrey. Otherwise, the price is gonna be tripled or quadrupled." And it's okay. I feel like a human that Simon's saying, "Jeffrey, I trust you enough that if this is right, great, and if it's not, that's okay 

Simon Bowen: Yeah. And I'm not saying leave it passive. you know, I'm saying I think you should sleep on this overnight. I'll reach out tomorrow and follow up with you. 

Four Signals of Safety

Simon Bowen: But there's four things I wanna put into people's [00:57:00] minds that if once the customer recognizes these, the dynamic changes. When the customer reaches a moment where they're able to say, " Jeffrey, you get it. You really get it. You get the problem. You get the bigger picture. You, You just get it. Jeffrey, you get me. I feel like I've known you forever, 'cause you did a bit of work. You did a bit of heavy lifting. You've done some research. You've put the intel together. didn't just turn up on the call and start asking me generic questions that sort of indicate that you haven't done any prep.

No, you get me. You get it, and you get me." The third thing is, "Jeffrey, it looks like you've got it. It looks like you've got the solution for this. It looks like you've got the thinking for this." And then the fourth thing is, " Jeffrey, I can tell that if I do actually engage with you, you've got me. You've got me.

You've got my back." Because all I'm looking for is someone to help me be the hero in my own story. So you get it, you get me, you've got it, and you got [00:58:00] me. Now, if everybody thinks about how they're positioning their sales, stories and conversations and process and flow, with those four things in mind, you're gonna build a ton of buyer safety, and it takes all the- False scarcity and urgency, and therefore the pressure that a lot of customers feel out of the sale, right?

And so if I'm saying, "Hey, Jeffrey, I'm very familiar with what's going on in this space. And, you know, we do have a completely thought through way of approaching this. I can tell from what you've shared with me today that this is really important to you for these reasons.

So I get it, I've got it, and I get you. I want you to know too that if we take you on as a client, we are all in on that. We have your back. We wanna protect you from the red line heading down, and we wanna give you the full possibility of the green line heading up. So what I need you to do, Jeffrey, is be confident in your own decision to go with this.

I'd love you to sleep on this overnight. And if there's anything that I've talked about with you that actually scares you a little bit, you're not sure that you could actually do your [00:59:00] part, we should address that. If there's something you're... I haven't been clear about, if somewhere along the conversation I've missed the mark on something, I'd love you to share that with me so that we can close that loop as well.

And so, whether we work together or not, what I'd love us to do tomorrow is just reconnect with you having had the chance to sit on this and breathe on it just for a bit and reach a point where you are either completely confident and certain that we're gonna solve this problem together or it's not right for you.

Is that fair?" Think about where that lands.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah, no, for sure. And you're using another F word, fair, and it's depotation. You notice how Simon's not laissez-faire, a different kind of fair of, "Okay, what will be will be. If you get back to me, get back to me." You're also putting some timelines in place, but in a very gentle way. "Hey, Jeffrey, I see you. I hear you.

I get you." And what you're not saying, but it's coming through loud and clear, "I also know that you're busy. Life is busy. So while this is still top of mind, sleep on it. Take the [01:00:00] night. Tomorrow let's pick this up. And tomorrow, this is not gonna go on forever. Tomorrow either we'll find a way that this can work for you or we won't, and then we'll either go on our path together or on a different path.

And either way, that's fine. Take the time, sleep on it." And so it's really combining the best of both. It's really not speaking with a salesperson. It's like I'm speaking with a family member or a friend, and it's that human side of it. So- Simon, all of that said, we're gonna go into wrap-up mode. Very sadly, we're gonna go into wrap-up mode.

Before we do go into wrap-up mode, let me ask the second to last question. Is there a question that you and I haven't yet covered, or an important message or theme or topic that you want to share with Deep Wealth Nation before we go into wrap-up?

Simon Bowen: a great question. 

Make Selling Noble

Simon Bowen: I... Language is limited. And I'm partly on a mission to, change the vocabulary of business. It's a part of what I'm trying to do by, getting people to make their communication more transparent, [01:01:00] more visible in the marketplace, both with team and with prospects.

Because I think, you know, if business is most powerful force for good in the world, selling should be the most noble thing we do.

And so the message I'd love to share with people is think about how you make selling the most noble thing your company does. If it's the first product they experience, how do you make sure it's the most amazing product that they experience?

That you share it with them in a way that engages, triggers curiosity, it's visual, it's visible, it's tangible, they can hold onto it, they can pick it up, turn it over, look underneath. It's highly transparent. They feel safe all the way through. Figure out how to make selling the most noble thing your organization does.

And watch the change that occurs, not just in the conversion, but in what I call the three market certainties. Revenue certainty, that people do just wanna buy off you. Client certainty, the sale immediately turns into delivery that's gonna produce client results. And market certainty, [01:02:00] reputation that swirls around you about who you are, not what you do, because of how you conducted the process.

Make selling the most noble thing you do.

Jeffrey Feldberg: That's a terrific thought and actually a great segue as we go into wrap-up mode here now. And it's a tradition, Simon, here on the Deep Wealth Podcast. It's my privilege and honor, I ask each and every guest the same question. It's a fun question. 

Back to the Future Wisdom

Jeffrey Feldberg: When you think of the movie Back to the Future, you have that magical DeLorean car that will take you to any point in time.

So now, Simon, this is the fun part. You look outside your window, not only is the DeLorean car curbside, the door is open and it's waiting for you to hop on in, which you do. You're now gonna go to any point in time. Perhaps it's Simon as a young child or a teenager. What are you telling your younger self in terms of life lessons or life wisdom or, "Hey Simon, do this, but don't do that"?

What would it sound like?

Simon Bowen: It's a great question. I think I'd actually go back to my roughly 10-year-old self living in those little country towns to [01:03:00] remind myself that the lessons on community that I'm receiving in those towns, it takes a village to raise a child. That is true in small country towns. It's like it's amplified. It's true, but it's really amplified because everybody knows you. if you're down there ringing the church bell at nine o'clock at night, someone's gonna grab you and take you home, and put you in front of your parents and go, "Look what we caught him doing."

Do you know what I mean? It's like, it's there's life lessons, and also, you know, you're a good boy for coming down and getting the bread for your mum. Here, take some lollies, kind of thing. I'd go back to my 10-year-old self and just somehow let him understand that the life lessons he's receiving about community may be the most important lessons he's gonna learn in life.

And everything that he does will lean on those in every instance, no matter what he's doing, what skill set he's executing, what work he's doing, what setting he's in. How to be a contributing and [01:04:00] positive influence in a community, and particularly for the next generations coming through, are the great life lessons.

And, you know, you're young, you just wanna go down the creek and catch tadpoles, and get muddy and dirty. You don't realize it, but, I think that's where so much of who I am came from. But, you know, it took, decades to figure that out. I'd love to go back to the 10-year-old and go, " these are the real life lessons, boy."

Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow. That is so powerful of really as you're sharing this when, when it comes to community, and by the way, community, it could be multiple communities, but it's the same best practice that we're still applying to all this. It could be the business community, inside my company community, my local community, but it's really mastering how to be both a contributor and a positive influence in that community, especially today.

Being that you're gonna be the exception in a good way, not the rule, you'll stand out,

Simon Bowen: And the world's screaming [01:05:00] for it.

Jeffrey Feldberg: than ever. Absolutely. 

Where to Find Simon

Jeffrey Feldberg: And so let me ask you this. For someone in Deep Wealth Nation, this is just the tip of the iceberg. They want to learn more. They want to figure out, "Okay, we've got this great company.

We're the world's best-kept secret. Let's change that. Let's make it so it's not two out of 10 sales or demos that we're closing. It's eight or nine that we're figuring out what's going on with that." Where's the best place online for someone to reach out to you, have a conversation about more?

Simon Bowen: Our website is modelsmethod.com. I do a 20-minute teaching every month, a live teaching every month. I literally have a timer going on Zoom. It's a countdown timer, and then I teach a topic in 20 minutes using models. But also, I do monitor my own emails 'cause I like to talk to people.

I like to communicate to people. So people, can just email me direct , to Simon [at] modelsmethod [dot] com They could reference Deep Wealth. And if they've got any questions, they want to follow up on anything I've said today even. So modelsmethod.com and Simon [01:06:00] [at] modelsmethod [dot[ com.

And when they go to the website, they can, join our notification list for the 20-minute teaching that we send out to let them know what the next topic is and all that sort of thing. There's plenty of material out there. They can find me on LinkedIn. Post regularly to LinkedIn. I'm a- very active in LinkedIn, so there's, there's, lots of places.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And depultation, great news. It doesn't get any easier. It's all in the show notes. It's a point and click. And look, Simon is asking us to trust him, but he's taking the example. He trusts us, and he's given us his email. Take him up on that offer. Reach out to him directly. Have that conversation. See where it'll take you.

Well, Simon, congratulations. It's official. This is a wrap. And as we love to say here at Deep Wealth, may you continue to thrive and prosper while you remain healthy and safe. Thank you so much.

Simon Bowen: Yeah. Thank you so much.

Subscribe and Final Thanks

Jeffrey Feldberg: So there you have it, Deep Wealth Nation. 

What did you think? 

So with all that said and as we wrap it up, I have another question for you.

Actually, it's more of a personal favor. 

Did you find this episode helpful? 

Have you found other episodes of the Deep Wealth Podcast [01:07:00] empowering and a game changer for your journey? 

And if you said yes, and I really hope you did, I have a small but really meaningful way that you can actually help us out and keep these episodes coming to you.

Are you ready for it? 

The dramatic pause. I'll just wait a moment. Drumroll, please. Subscribe. Please subscribe to the Deep Wealth podcast on your favorite podcast channel. When you subscribe to the Deep Wealth Podcast, you're saving yourself time. Every episode automatically comes to you, and I want you to know that we meticulously craft Every one of our episodes to have impactful strategies, stories, expert insights that are designed to help you grow your profits, increase the value of your business, and yes, even optimize your post exit life and your life right now, whatever you want that to look like.

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So all that said. Thank you so much for listening. And remember your wealth isn't just about the money in the bank. It's about the depth of your journey and the impact that you're creating. So let's continue this journey together. And from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for listening to this episode.

And as we love to say here at Deep Wealth, may you continue to thrive and prosper while you remain healthy and safe. 

Thank you so much. 

God bless.