IAM1015- Growth Marketer Helps Businesses Grow on an International Scale

Gareth is an award-winning Growth Marketer and over the last 14 years has helped businesses grow on an international scale. He has worked with Fortune 250 companies and bootstrapped startups. Gareth has a passion for the work he delivers and always puts himself in the customer's shoes. Gareth is the CEO and Founder of Got Legs Digital, the first Ethical Marketing Agency in the UK, helping both businesses and communities to Get Legs. “You can get everything you want in life if you just help enough people get what they want first”.

• CEO Hack: (i) Listening to audiobooks and actively participating in the book (ii) Screen recording the stuff you're doing and talking through it
• CEO Nugget: In business, it's all about the small steps in the right direction
• CEO Defined: Captain of the ship

Website: https://gotlegsdigital.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gotlegsdigital/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gareth-bain/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/gotlegsdigital
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLzfPCNILyjUThcNPtKE-vQ

Full Interview:

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Transcription

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00:13 -Intro

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:40 – Gresham Harkless

Hello, Hello, Hello. This is Gresh from the I Am CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Gareth Bain of GotLegs Digital. Gareth, it's awesome having you on the show.

00:49 – Gareth Bain

It's great to be on the show. Thanks very much, Christian.

00:52 – Gresham Harkless

Definitely super excited to have you on Gareth. And before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Gareth so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. And Gareth is an award-winning growth marketer and over the last 14 years has helped businesses grow on an international scale. He has worked with Fortune 250 companies and bootstrap startups. Gareth has a passion for the work he delivers and always puts himself in the customer's shoes. Gareth is the CEO and founder of GotLegs Digital, the first ethical marketing agency in the UK, helping both businesses and communities to get legs. You can't get everything you want in life if you just, you can get everything you want in life if you help enough people get what they want first. Gareth, great to have you on this show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM  CEO community?

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01:34 – Gareth Bain

Absolutely, let's do this.

01:35 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, let's do it then. So to kind of kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit. Hear a little bit more on how you got started, what I like to call your CEO story.

01:44 – Gareth Bain

Yeah, no, Perfect. Okay, so the CEO story kind of started. I'll give you the short version. You can tell by my accent that I am speaking a bit funny. I'm not local. I'm from South Africa. So I left South Africa probably about 7 years ago and I moved to the United Kingdom. No job in hand, slept on the floor, you know, and did what I had to to get the jobs. As mentioned earlier, I kind of went into big business, you know, Fortune 250s. I worked for some amazing companies, but I didn't feel like I was getting my hands dirty. You know, I needed to get my hands dirty. So I left big business and I joined Brutestrap startup where one day you're the T guy, then you're the IT guy, then you're the head of marketing, you know, doing everything and I really rolled my sleeves up and I enjoyed it.

But you learn everything. I got to a stage where I was kind of in this role and I was speaking to agencies that were pitching marketing services to us and I felt that I kind of knew more than they did and I kind of felt that I  knew that the more like the trends and I just felt that this marketing industry is so there's a lot of cowboys out there and you never know if it's right or wrong. So I was feeling that businesses were being taken a bit of advantage of by just not knowing what was going on and I felt that it was my purpose to kind of start this business called Got Legs Digital and get out there and help with an ethical marketing approach to helping businesses.

And yeah, that's kind of what I started. The name Got Legs has an interesting meaning it's a commercial side and a philanthropic side. We help businesses get legs, grow, get back up on their feet, you know, traffic. And then the philanthropic side of it comes into that every client that we work with, we donate prosthetic legs to amputee survivors throughout Africa. So that's the ethical approach to the business as well. So, it's been a really enjoyable and fulfilling ride so far. So I'm really looking forward to what the future has in store.

03:41 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, well, I definitely appreciate you for bringing that down so much. And Karen, hearing the transition from the big 250s, as you kind of talked about, working at and not being able to kind of roll up your sleeves and have all that type of experience and maneuvering and translating to the startups and how that gave you that opportunity to really, as you said, roll up your sleeves, wear a different hat, so to speak, and get to kind of see the business from so many different vantage points, I imagine.

But I love that, you know, you talked about, you know, creating that digital agency, you know, with that the ethics in mind, because I think the first time that we connected, We talked a little bit about that, how a lot of the clients sometimes don't know, you know, right from wrong. And a lot of times people will take advantage of them. So I definitely commend you for really doing that and having that as a foundational principle. And of course, all the philanthropic things you're doing in addition as well.

04:32 – Gareth Bain

Yeah, it's funny, whenever we talk to business owners, we go, we like to work ourselves out of a job. You know, people look at marketing as an expense. So we try and build an asset into a business and then step away from it. So it frees up their time and educates them at the same time so that they don't get taken advantage of.

Gresham Harkless:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think the word that kind of comes to mind when I hear that is that empowerment piece. And I think so many times people, they want to control, and you hear this a lot in digital services, definitely marketing, but also in IT, like kind of holding the company hostage to some degree, because they need you to be able to do whatever it is that they're hoping to accomplish. But I love that ethics approach. I love that empowerment approach that you have in the foundation of your business.

05:17 – Gareth Bain

Yeah, and then that's definitely something that we try and own for the assets that we do for businesses. As I mentioned, people look at marketing as an expense. You can spend on a Google ad or a Facebook or a billboard or something like that. And if you can build data into your business, if you can build an asset, if you build a machine and then understand the intricate workings of how this works, then hand it back to people. I think people then appreciate that a lot more. Sometimes there is time pressure and they don't necessarily want that, which is fine, because then what we do is teach them how to recruit someone at a junior level.

But we've used the assets to leverage this at a senior level so that they can take advantage of that strategy and that implementation and all these things. And then we step back and then we just kind of monitor from a, from a quarterly basis to help them as and if required. And I think a lot of people appreciate that you know, they're in charge of their marketing, but they've kind of got like a little consultant, a little expert on there on their shoulder here that's going, yeah, this is right, this is not, but not on the retainer type of approach.

06:22 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and it allows them to again, you know, feel empowered, but also to empower the people that are around them to be able to succeed those people that they're able to recruit and to bring on. And so I know you touch a little bit upon how you work with your clients, could you drill down a little bit more upon that and tell us a little bit more about how that process works?

06:40 – Gareth Bain

Yeah, so it's a bit weird. I've never really wanted to specialize in my career. I mean, I've been in marketing now and digital marketing for the last 14 years, but I've never wanted to be like, I'm a Google expert or a Facebook expert, LinkedIn. So I've got a background in PR, I've got a background in brand, social, and stuff. So I've got quite a holistic and broad approach to marketing. So kind of what we do is we're not channel specific. We look at the best approach that a business needs to take. So again, for a business owner that doesn't really know what they need, if they go out to a Facebook agency, like you what's need Facebook ads, go to Google, you need Google ads, whereas we got that approach that like, this is best for you.

So what we do into businesses is it's, it's we got 3 little words. It's innovating, automate, and grow. Okay, we go in there and we look at innovation on how we can make and improve the system that they've got at the moment. Then we automate that system so that we can kind of leverage things. We've got data that back in there, and then we help the business to grow and put that system in place. And then we do that across multiple platforms. So again, standard above-the-line advertising, offline PR brand.

we pull that all together and create again a series of marketing funnels with data and re-engineering and emails and things like that. So we don't specialize in one particular thing. It's more the system and this machine that we build so that businesses can understand a bit more about their customer. Oh, I know my average customer has 6 touch points that they have with me before they buy. Or my customers over here are warm and these ones are hot. My sales team should speak to these ones rather than the cold ones. And that's what we have pulled into businesses.

08:31 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So would you consider that to be what I call your secret sauce, the thing you feel kind of sets you apart and makes it unique? Is it that piece or is it, of course, the foundation of your business as we kind of talked about before that sets you apart?

08:43 – Gareth Bain

Yeah, I mean, I like to think that it's more the philanthropic, the ethical marketing, the 2 standpoint there. I'm not sure why businesses aren't doing this at the moment. I think from my standpoint, yeah, we are all here to make money. I think there's enough money to go around. If we help enough people get what they want, we'll get what we want. So it's very much like, if you can get a portion of your income that can maybe donate it to a charitable deed or a good deed or community that's in need, we're uplifting everyone. We're uplifting a society. And there's less strain on the government for that.

So we're really trying to push that element but then also at the same time, we're just trying to teach ethical marketing principles out there. So you could say in some areas, we're trying to create an industry need and take that industry need into a more ethical approach. Again, a lot of the industry, SEO specifically, there's a lot of shady stuff that goes on, black hat, white hat, you know, with SEO stuff. How do we take the ethical approach that businesses know, right, these guys or this industry or these companies are ethical in their approach?

09:56 – Gresham Harkless

I wanted to switch gears a little bit. And I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

10:07 – Gareth Bain

Good question. We all love hacks. I think I've got 2. And these have kind of revolutionized how I see things. The first one, my little hack is I used to read books, you know, and I just found books were getting too long to get through a book. So I moved on to audible books. But the 1 thing that I found, I was listening to audiobooks at like 1.5 speed and 2 speed and it goes in and out, goes in and out your ears and you just don't take it. So now what I do is I make sure that whenever I'm reading the books I open my notes section in my phone and I'm actively participating in the book, you know. Anything that's important I jot it down.

So now I have a whole catalog of books in my phone that I have the the top 20 or the top 10 notes from that book that I can always refer back to as I go back, which is really, really changed how I've been able to grasp information. It's been really great. And I suppose the second little hack that I've done is we've all found ourselves right in these long emails when you're briefing in changes or you're trying to get something in there and it's like over here, then click this. I found screen recording on the stuff that you're doing and just talking through it saves up so much time, saves up so much confusion, so much. So this little hack has been amazing with drawing up SOPs, briefing and changes for design works, creating, just adding formats, and stuff like that. And it's just so simple. And it saved me so much time. So those would be my definite two hacks.

11:41 – Gresham Harkless

I love that, Garrett. And I want to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something if you were to hop into a time machine, you would tell yourself or potentially you might tell a client as well.

11:53 – Gareth Bain

Yeah. I think with society at the way it is at the moment, everyone sees the Instagram pictures of, you know, what success looks like and LinkedIn, what success looks like, but they don't see the below, you know, the iceberg, you don't see the tip of the iceberg. So yeah, if I had to live like a little nugget or a little bit of future advice to myself or another client it's not about those overnight successes you know in business it's about you know that small compound effect small steps in the right direction day in and day out, it helps you move the needle. If you get those big wins, that's amazing.

But you know, taking the right steps in small steps in the right direction every day is what's kind of changed my focus, you know, especially when we start out in business, we all think, oh, I'm gonna open a business, I'm gonna be a millionaire, I'm gonna retire by 35, blah, blah, blah, you know, all these dreams that you get sold. And, you know, it's not about that. It's about working up, it's about working smarter, being consistent, you know, giving the best you can every day, always trying to be the best person you can be consistent. You know, it's very easy to get an A on that math test that you do but to get a consistent A, that takes effort. That takes, you know, dedication and that dedication, that drive that we need as CEOs and business owners.

13:17 – Gresham Harkless

I want to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Gareth, what does being a CEO mean to you?

13:27 – Gareth Bain

I think being a CEO is kind of like the captain of the ship. You need to be able to be on the deck and looking out far into the future with the vision and knowing where you're leading this vessel, knowing where you are now, where you need to be. But you also need to have the ability to go down below deck and speak with the team that is running the show and have that oversight and respect that you can take this vessel, this team in that direction. So for me being the captain, it's being able to kind of motivate a team, but having the direction of where you need to be taking them, that's important. So yeah, that's, I think for me is my, I always see myself as a little, the only little captain of my ship here.

14:12 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I absolutely love that. I appreciate you for giving that visual because I think you're absolutely right. You wanna see what's kind of coming before you. But as we kind of talked about, even in your CEO story, you wanna make sure that you understand each of the different aspects of the ship too, and can be able to kind of create that culture, that company culture, so to speak, so that people are able to be successful and understand how all those things intertwine into the mission and vision that we ultimately hope to have. So Garrett, truly appreciate that definition. I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is just pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best they can get ahold of you and find out about all the awesome things that you're working on.

14:49 – Gareth Bain

Yeah, no, perfect. Cool. Thanks. Well, I mean, it's been a pleasure being on here just to any, any kind of aspiring CEO or business owner that's out there, you know, just, just keep doing what you're doing, you know, waking up in those early mornings, putting on the graph in, just do what you're doing. You're moving yourself incrementally in the right direction. Never give up. Just keep pushing at it. You'll have those days when you get knocked down.

Just pick yourself up, you know, and just carry on doing it. That's what makes a good CEO, a good businessman. Yeah. If anyone wants to get hold of me or find out a bit more information about what we're doing, and what we're up to, feel free to have a look on our websites. It's www.gotlegsdigital.com. Or you can go onto, as I say, our Facebook and LinkedIn pages and find us there and we're always very active. So yeah, looking forward to kind of meet and chatting and participating with other like-minded CEOs.

15:43 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. Well, Gary, I truly appreciate you for part second with us, giving us all this knowledge and information We will have the links and information that show notes as well too so that everybody can follow up with you click through and connect With Gareth and all the awesome things his team is doing What I truly appreciate is the reminder of getting one better And I love the impact that you're making. I love the reminder of that. We can do that within our businesses and organizations as well. If we're able to kind of get 1% better every single day. And if we have that as kind of like our carrot, I guess you could say in front of us, then we can definitely reach some type of success. So I appreciate you for doing that. Appreciate you for reminding us of that. And I hope you have a great rest of the day.

16:20 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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