You're okay, love. Oh, gosh. I didn't sharpen what I couldn't control. Because today we're going to sharpen what you can control. Sorry. What's that? That's me clutching at straws. We'll clutch at this. You ready? I'm ready. Marcus Aurelius. Do you know him? I've heard of him. We're a little bit called Meditations.

Chasing what can't be done is madness, but the base person is unable to do anything else. Chasing what can't be done. Now listen, Jack, I you to sit there and buckle up. Buckle, I want to give you some home truths. Okay. I said to you once, I don't think we should do a newsletter. And what did you say to me? I said, think you're wrong. Why?

Because I think that actually doing a newsletter is so good for the environment. We haven't got an audience. We don't have an audience. So what do we do? We built an audience. Because what? We could control the building of said thing. Then we wrote ourselves a little book. We wrote a little book. Sales is Therapy. Sales is Therapy. Available in all good Barnes and Nobles waitress. But it was Journey, wasn't it? We wrote the book. We sent it out to a few publishers and they said, look, this is a very saturated market.

Very niche. What are you trying to do? Very niche, very niche, and a saturated market. And then what we thought was, well, that can't be in the road, can it? No. Well, we'll self publish. We'll get it ourselves. We'll have a seat at the table. I'm going to bring a table to my seat. And I met a guy the other week. Fascinating this guy. was like, I started a market agency and I couldn't get a studio to rent out for the work. wanted to. It was like

making video content and stuff. So I built my own studio, but in trying to build my own studio, no construction company would do it. So I had to start my own construction company to build the studio. So he's gradually ended up rather than like seeing these little holes as like, that's something I can't do. He's ended up just building a company that offers that thing. Then when he built the studio, he wanted to get all the gear in on loan or whatever it would be.

and no company would do it. So we just started his own lighting companies, sound company. So he's built this empire through basically being turned down and not turning away and going, I'll just start a business that does that. I'll just start another business that does that. And then he said to me, and Johnny Depp told me it was the best studio he'd ever been to. Wow. Johnny Depp has been in some places. Jonathan Depp knows his way around a few studios, you know what I mean.

So what do you think then about all that stuff I just said? Well, it was making me think about the story of you can't make yourself laugh. That's not what the audience want. They want the chemistry. They don't want the one man barbershop quartet over there. Do you know the story of Derek Sivers? How he made his money? If you don't know who Derek Sivers is. CD Baby? CD Baby. He was a musician and he wanted to sell his music online. He was like, well, there's no way to do this. This was way before like

PayPal and all these things. He was like, I'll do a bit of coding. So he created it and then he made this website and then his friend went, will you do that for me? So he did it. He said, right, I charge 50 bucks and then you can sell your CD online. And then someone else went, will you do that for me? And over time he started doing it and it grew into this business. He ended up selling it for millions of pounds. And then he's been on his own journey from that, but they solve genuine problems, don't they? And I think that that's where the best businesses come from. That you don't go into something of like

When you set up, have a meeting, you, the truth of that was you were a great salesperson, but actually you didn't want to work for anyone anymore. You didn't want a boss. So the best way to do that is how do I be a salesperson for multiple different companies so that I don't have one fixer boat. I don't have to go in and deal with the same schmuck every single day. I can just go and go from kind of boss to boss and have like that autonomy. And that's all a genuine problem. And that's what it is. So.

I think when you're a salesperson, understanding the problem that you solve, like there are so many shit solutions out there, let's be honest, that probably don't need to be there. Shoes.ai? Yeah, it's not worth it. No, it's not worth it. shoes. How am I going to wear them? How? They're on the megabyte. But AI shoes, yeah. But understanding what problem does this solve? Wallets for dogs. Wallets for dogs.

I always think about the analogy as well. If you're trying to define your ICP, I think of it as like pubs. pubs.ai. pubs.ai. If you were into classical music. Classical AI, I don't know. You're not very good at this business thing, you? Can't just put dot AI. I don't biz and tell. But if you're looking to like find where those people are, well you'd probably go and hang out at classical music concerts and you'd find those people.

If you're looking to find bikers, you probably go to a bikers bar. So think about what problem your product or service solves and where are your audience going to be hanging out? Where are they? What are they banging their head against the wall? What problems do they have? I'm going to give the people one here. And what are you going to tell them? If you're starting a market agency and you're like, where am I going to get my first client from? People spend a lot of marketing money and get very little results from exhibitions and events.

So go on that exhibitors list of people that are exhibiting at the event. They've got the 60,000 pound stand, 70 % of leads from events aren't followed up. And so you know that money that you're spending and that return you're not getting. Chuck it over here. I'll go one further. If you start a business, go on AI and say, are are the top, what are the top industries? What are the top 10 industries that marketing agencies work in?

and you'll see at the top. Shout out to the top 10 industries. You'll see e-commerce at the top. E-commerce, we'll put that in the bio. Avoid e-commerce. Avoid e-commerce.ai. Avoid e-commerce.ai. Well, I'm glad he's here today. I've been Jack Frimston. I've been Zach Thompson. Remember you will die. Chicane mushroom.