Interview with Tim Jones, The Grow Good Guy

The Grow Good Guy

Can’t remember the first time I met Tim.

Which is odd because he’s a memorable kinda guy.

I think the reason I can’t pinpoint that first encounter is because Tim has mastered the art of being ubiquitous, or omni-present, to use a more aspirational term peddled by personal brand experts.

So, I’m living my life. No Tim.

Nec minute … Tim Jones popping up everywhere talking about B Corp and purpose, and generally being inspiring, energising … and very tall.

Hopefully, Tim won’t mind if I say for the first few years I knew him, I couldn’t quite work out what he did. It all sounded very meaningful, but also rather nebulous.

I now suspect this is because Tim too was feeling his way towards an understanding of his own purpose and the value he could bring to the table.

Tell you what though. Nothing’s nebulous about Tim these days.

The last 12 months the phenomenon that’s Tim Jones has been hitting his stride mcbigly. And it’s a bloody joy to see.

So, I asked him to share how his consultancy and coaching business has evolved over the five years since he set out as a baby freelancer.

We meet up for a yak at the Welder.

Tim bounces in looking offensively well, orders tea, and explains that he’s 20 days into the notorious #75HARD challenge. He’s exercising twice a day, drinking his body weight in water, and giving healthy eating gurus a run for their money.

Over the next hour we talk about how revenue is paramount if you want to create positive impact, not underestimating the value of what you know, niching until you’re uneasy, the power of a single focused offer, and why discipline is Tim’s Achilles heel.

Tell it like it is Tim.

Good as a competitive advantage

I've always struggled to nail what do I do and who I do it for. And I think a big part of the consultant's journey is trying to work this out.

My business is called Grow Good, and I help people and organisations achieve meaningful goals. I've struggled with niching down enough to be super specific on who I help.

I coach, train, consult, and speak on three topics: sales and business development, mindset, and purpose. And I work with two groups. I started out serving businesses making a positive social or environmental impact. About a year in, I added a second part to my business, connecting organisations to their purpose, so they can do more good in the world.

I only do sales training for businesses already doing good. Business development services are separate to the services I offer the businesses I call Evil Bastards Inc. These are profit-driven businesses who've woken up and gone: "We need to be slightly less Evil Bastards Inc. but we don't know where to start. Let's talk to someone like Tim who can help us understand the good we already do and how we can connect to do more good.”

If we can help impact driven businesses dominate their profit-driven competitors, being good becomes a competitive advantage. That puts pressure on businesses not doing as much good to raise their game.

Evil Bastards Inc. start going: "Hang on a minute, why are those guys beating us? Oh, it's because they're purpose driven, they're a B Corp, they look after their staff, and they're doing awesome things in the community. We need to start doing that, because it's becoming the new normal, and we need it to compete."

So, building up businesses doing good becomes a virtuous circle that creates a better world for more people. That’s my theory of change for the world.

Helping impact driven businesses grow revenue

I had a visual lesson on the importance of revenue for impact, when I was doing work at Kilmarnock Enterprises while Michelle Sharp was CEO. She shared a graph with two axes showing Kilmarnock’s revenue and social impact over time. As their revenue slowly declined, their impact declined too.

They got to a crossroads around 2012, when they lost the contract to make poppies for the RSA. They were deciding whether to shut up shop, but Michelle said: "No, we need to flip this round. We need to adopt a for profit mindset and do jobs that pay us really well." Following that shift, their revenue went through the roof and so did their impact, because the more resources you have, the more good you can do.

That's why I love the B Corp movement. If we can convince more for-profit businesses with resources to do good, we take the pressure off the not-for-profit system that typically has little resource but lots of heart.

I’m trying to bridge that gap between Evil Bastards Inc. and Do Good Inc. and show both parties they can learn a lot from each other. Because if not-for-profits and social enterprises had more of a business mindset and were more ruthless where they needed to be to take on Big Evil Bastards Inc., they'd make more impact.

Then on the flip side, I help profit-driven businesses integrate purpose into their activities. I help them understand the good they're already doing, explore the benefits that brings and look at how they could do more good, whilst also maintaining revenue. And successful purpose driven businesses can be great role models for this.

A world where every human thrives

We have the global resources to feed, house, and clothe everyone. But we choose not to.

In 1086, William the Conqueror sent monks all over England, categorised everything everybody owned and recorded it in the Domesday Book. We could pull that off in 1086. This year we landed on Mars. If we’re smart enough to do that, we can make sure every kid in New Zealand lives in a healthy house and goes to school well fed. You can't tell me we haven't got the data and smarts to solve our social problems today.

In the West we're taught to work hard at school so we can grow up and earn lots of money. We're set on individualistic pathways at a young age, believing it's all about us. And it's the same with most businesses. As long as shareholders get their money, they’re doing well. Their only measure of success is, did we earn more this quarter than the quarter before?

We’re guilty of sins of omission rather than sins of commission. Most people don't know they can live in a more meaningful way because they haven’t been taught to live any other way.

Delivering the goods at a sales training for Canterbury Employers Chamber of Commerce

Using sales as a force for good

Unless you get a job in sales, you don't get sales training. So, impact driven businesses are often run by teams who don’t know how to sell. And when it comes to teaching profit-driven businesses about purpose it’s the same. When I run purpose workshops, I often get a couple of challenging questions from people struggling with the concepts. I say: “Yes, this is hard. But how many hours have you spent thinking about purpose in your life so far?”

In my previous life as a sales guy for orthopaedic equipment, my employer made a massive sales training investment in me. Their customers were hospitals and surgeons, and deals were worth millions of dollars. The sales team was bringing in so much revenue it was worth the business investing 20-30 grand a year on sales training for each person.

So, I take all those things I was taught and the skills and experience I developed in my sales career and use it as a force for good by passing it on to impact driven businesses.

Most sales training is hard-nosed and all about making money. But I understand that in a purpose driven business, it's about money and impact. There are times that a purpose driven business may decide not to work with a client because their values are not aligned. Whereas a revenue focused business would say: "Well, of course we're going to take their money. Why wouldn't we take their money?" I call my sales training, Sales with Soul, because we sell authentically, and we don't use gimmicky tricks.

After 20 years selling, I take my abilities for granted. It always surprises me when I share a simple tip I think everyone knows, and clients get all excited and go: "Oh, my word, that's a thing?" One of my biggest pieces of advice for anyone starting out is, don't underestimate the power of the knowledge in your head. Just because you know something doesn't mean everyone knows it. My big impediment early on was thinking no one would pay me to give them the information in my head. But that wasn't true.

Because of the lack of value I placed on my own knowledge, initially I was reticent to target big companies. But then I remembered when I used to work for Johnson & Johnson. They have 80,000 employees just in their medical division, but there was a frighteningly large number of shit salespeople in that organisation. So that gave me confidence.

The first big company I worked with was Meridian. I was doing group coaching at the time, and I mentioned my contract with Meridian on the group chat. And one of the guys was like: "Dude, do you realize you've just delivered training to the biggest company in New Zealand? I've just looked on the NZX and Meridian are ranked number one today." And I thought, holy fuck balls, I couldn’t have worked with a bigger company in New Zealand. I wasn’t scared after that, because I had great feedback from Meridian, and a nine out of 10 score from their people who did the training. So, I thought, wow, okay. I do know some stuff.

Every good content creator needs a ring light …

Sales tips from the master

In my sales training programme, the second session is all on mindset because that's where you win or lose the sales game. You learn to ask yourself am I mentally prepared? Am I aware of the limiting beliefs stopping me from ringing Meridian? Because your own internal BS will tell you: “No, don't do that, they'll think you're a dick”.

The first thing I do is help people reframe their concept of sales. Sales is not trying to sell something. It's helping another human solve a problem. People say: "I've never thought about it that way before. I've always thought sales is an icky thing I have to do to get money." And I say: “Well, no. As a purpose driven business, you've got a world saving idea. It's your duty to get it out there to as many people as you can.”

The other real a-ha moment is when people understand the power of practice.

Just do more sales.

I've been guilty of not selling enough in my business. I think to myself, I’ve built my website, I'm doing stuff on social media, I'll just sit here by the phone and away we go. But then I tell myself: “Tim. If you send 1,000 emails, you'll get more business. And then you get to choose who you work with, and maybe you can put your prices up.”

Understanding the value of practice is part of having the right mindset. I’ll ask in the first session: “How many of you have done sales training before today? None of you? Cool. Well, don’t expect to be great at something you've never invested any effort in straight away. Don't beat yourself up and say I’m rubbish at this. If you invest time and energy, you’ll get better.”

Building a practice and packaging expertise

There's a group in Australia called Thought Leaders run by a guy called Matt Church. I saw Matt give a keynote at a conference in 2005. It was a really cool talk. I thought that dude is awesome, he's having a fun time, and he's been paid to fly to Queenstown and give a 90-minute workshop. I've still got the handout he gave us because it was that good. Even back then I knew I wanted to do that too.

The Thought Leaders model is to repurpose the same content in different modes. So, your book is an in-depth version of your keynote, you adapt that for your training and coaching programmes. You build a practice where your expertise is front and centre. Your goal is to build a good income without employing other people and without having to sell your business when you retire, because you earn enough money working a sustainable amount of time.

I was a general manager briefly. Having managed a team of 10, I never want to do that again. I don't want employees. I just brought an assistant on to do all my appointment booking and the admin stuff that’s not my genius. But that’s as big as I want my team to be.

For the next three months, I'm focused on rejigging my sales content. I'm going to offer three levels of sales support. At entry level will be DIY online learning for $2,000, with a free coaching call at the end to clarify any questions. The next level up will be live group coaching for six weeks for $3,500 where you’re part of a cohort of 10 people. And my premium offer will be bespoke team training in house. That bespoke offer will start at $10,000 for a team of 10. I’ll lead with that offer, but if businesses can’t afford that, I can offer them group coaching or online learning.

While I took the dog for a walk the other day, I was thinking there's 4,000 B Corps in the world. I could create a semi-automated sales email sequence for them in two weeks. Even if I only have a 0.75% conversion rate, that’s 30 new clients. If I trained 30 companies this year, that's $300,000 revenue. That would be my biggest year ever.

I've been doing James Kemp’s programme. One of his big things is you've got to niche. And if you think you've niched enough, you need to go again until you're uncomfortable that you may not get enough people to pay you money.

He also says, until you've got consistent revenue from one offer, don't diversify. You're just going to confuse your market. You'll have too many funnels, and too much going on. So, honing my sales offer has been my focus the last six months. And I really wish I’d known earlier on to niche the bejesus out of my business, have just one clear offer for one person, build my authority around that, get my testimonials, and then smash the sales out.

Difficult beginnings

I knew I wanted to run my own business, but I didn’t intend to start the way I did.

Six years ago, I was employed by a training company to coach their clients. My plan was to stay with them for two or three years, hone my training skills, look at what content was working, and start building up my own practice, before exiting.

It’s uncommon for training consultancies in NZ to employ coaches full time. Most companies bring you on as a contractor, and you get a cut of their fee. My employers had struggled with contractor availability, so they experimented with having coaches as employees, but it didn't work out and I was made redundant in 2015.

I thought, well, if I don't do my own thing now, I don't think I ever will. We’d just had our daughter and we had a mortgage. I knew if I took a job, I’d be trapped by the security. So, I went for it. But I hadn't built up enough financial reserves. If I were to start a business again, I'd build up a war chest of a year's income, or at least a few months’ buffer.

I'm quite proud of my revenue record, because since year one, I've consistently hit around $120,000 to $150,000. I've done all right. But this is where I've been a bit of a lazy sales guy. I was earning $150,000 in salary before. With a business, by the time you pay ACC, PAYE and all the rest of your business expenses, you may be making the same revenue but you’re paying more in outgoings. So, I need to earn more. Even $200,000 would be life changing.

Also, for the last five years, I've only ever had one-month revenue in my pipeline, because the way I was selling training and coaching was quite hit and miss. And that's stressful. It creates a scarcity mindset. You end up thinking of compromising or quitting. It's hard, particularly when you're asking yourself, am I doing the best for my family? Should I just go get a job because I was earning good money doing medical device sales. Now, I’m not sure if I can pay the mortgage next month.

So, my goal for this year is to make $300,000 with my sales training offer. I haven’t had that clarity before, and that's what James' course is great for.

Before, I was saying to potential clients: “I can help you with so many things”, but the response I was getting was: "I'm not really sure what you do." Whereas now I say: “I offer sales training. It’s a six-part program that covers these things and gives you these outcomes. Do you want it or not?” And enough people do want it.

I get a real buzz from teaching people. By teaching online, I can get more consistency in my revenue, increase the number of people I help, and make a higher value offer. For my six-part Sales with Soul training, my guarantee to you is if you don't double your investment over the six weeks, I'll work with you until you've doubled your investment.

Because I have a large network, I’m able to connect most people I coach with potential clients, and they typically get a deal out of it. I ensure clients get ROI. The last six months, the people I’m coaching are getting really great results and I’m realising I'm good at this.

On good luck and getting a few things right

I feel like I've done just enough to get by. I had some good luck at the beginning when I set up my business. When I left the training company a couple of businesses rang me and said, "Hey, just seen on LinkedIn that you've left. Can you still do training for us? We liked you."

I was also prolific in getting out to my network and letting them know I was out on my own and I could help them with sales. And a couple of mates said: "Yeah, actually, now you mention it, I need help with that." So, I got a three-month contract with one guy’s business that really got me out the door. And since then, it's just gone and gone.

But revenue has been inconsistent. I see massive peaks and troughs. December, January and February in New Zealand are not great for training, because most organisations are gearing up for leave, on leave, or recovering from leave. But I’ve never really analysed my sales data to look for other patterns. It's probably something I should do. That's one of my weaknesses, I'm not a detail person. That, and lack of discipline, are my two weak points.

My lack of discipline is a reaction against my school, which was very structured, followed by seven years in the British Army reserve forces. Then when I was selling medical devices, I didn't know what my week was going to be like. I’d have something planned, but I’d get a call from a surgeon saying: "My patient's on the table, can you come to the hospital right now?” I had this 10-year hiatus from discipline and got used to not having a plan, because I never knew what was going to happen. And I’ve a natural proclivity to just wing it.

As a result, structure and attention to detail are not my thing. I was coaching a client earlier today, and at the end of the call she asked: "Do you know any good project management tools?" I said: “You’re asking the wrong person. For one project, I’ll have a spreadsheet, a Trello board, four notebooks, and some Post-its. And at some point, I'll bring them all together. It’s chaos. Hold on tight. But it's going to be fun.”

I’ve done a few things right. I made use of my network. I’ve grown my network. I did a lot of research on sales training when I first started because I wanted to be sure that I was an expert. I knew my sales stuff, but I went on other people's training, I read every blog and downloaded every e-book, to find out if other coaches were teaching things that I didn't know. I wanted to know that my teaching was bulletproof. Now I'm confident I know all the tricks, and I’m across all the content topics I need to teach.

You’ll often hear the expression that to be a consultant, you only need to know one more thing than your customer. But I want to be better than that. Having depth of knowledge helps you see everything contextually. And that only comes with time, experience, and really knowing your topic.

The most successful marketing for me has been video content and live events because they convey my personality and energy.

A friend once said: "Mate, you're a Kiwi Tony Robbins. You're six foot four, and 110 kilos. You don't understand how you dominate a room. I’d never thought of it like that but he’s right. When I'm standing in front of a room of people, I'm quite a big unit, I’m energetic and I use humour to push people, and that personality is what people are buying.

I get a lot of bookings because people see me speaking or coaching. The lady who booked me for the workshop I did this morning was at an event I ran six months ago.

That’s how I won the Meridian contract. Two Meridian people saw me teaching sales for start-ups at a start-up accelerator. When I got in touch with them, they said: "We've seen you deliver. You're a good trainer and your content’s good. Let's have a meeting.

Delivering five tips for purpose fuelled performance at LinkedIn Local Christchurch

Lessons learned the hard way

I think there was a part of me at the beginning that thought, I'm my own boss, I can do what I want. But you can't. Lack of discipline equals no results. That’s one thing I've had to grapple with. I've got better recently. I structure my week. I do all that stuff I railed against.

Studies show that people who are conscientious and have a high IQ typically outperform everyone else. It’s not that surprising really. If you’re smart and you do what you say you're going to do in a disciplined manner, you'll go places. If you're ill-disciplined and a bit dense, you're just throwing shit at the wall, hoping something sticks.

It’s ironic that a guy who teaches sales disciplines can be so unstructured. But that's often the way isn't it? Sometimes you can be better at teaching other people what they need to do than you are at doing it for yourself.

The second thing I’ve learned the hard way, is follow James’s advice and niche hard. I’m still pursuing two niches, but I’m focusing on my sales niche because my strongest skillset is teaching sales. The pragmatic part of me knows I should stop doing my purpose work, but it’s my calling. So, I teach sales with purpose, which is quite unique.

The third thing is it’s important to really simplify your services and productise your content. I had an opportunity a couple of years ago to work with a large client in Australia. I sent them through my brochure, which had 20 training topics. The feedback I got back was they became confused, and weren't sure what I offered, because there was too much choice.

A six-week sales programme is digestible and doable. These are the six basic things that you need to know to be a great salesperson. If you nail these, you're going to smash it. I help people with their sales basics first. Then, because I know lots about sales, I can also create several six-week advanced sales courses as upsells to keep people coming back.

I also chunk my content down into 90-minute blocks because that’s achievable. Half-day or full day training is too much, people can't concentrate for that long anymore. But 90-minutes jam packed with tips and tricks is fun.

My final piece of advice is do more sales. If you think you've done enough, double it.

Work with Tim

Tim helps purpose driven organisations become better at sales, because the more revenue you make, the most positive impact you can have in the world.

Check his exceptional mahi out at growgood.co or connect with him over on the old LinkedIn.

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