Nicole Smith

Welcome to Take Control with Nicole, as business owners we experience first hand the fine line between our personal and business lives. During our conversations, we will look at simple hints and tips to create time, reduce overwhelm, and help you to navigate through your journey to where you want to be. If you’re looking for smarter ways to work, and create space and time freedom in your day, then you’re in the right place. All right, let’s go.

Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Take Control with Nicole. Today I’m speaking with the fabulous Melissa Pepers all about business design. Everything Melissa does comes back to transformation. Melissa says that for as long as she has known herself, she has been obsessed with influence, you can find her wondering why a bug has turned left, or why empires rise and fall with equal intensity. Melissa followed this thread of curiosity throughout her career in design and strategy for the advertising industry. She worked on global brand accounts, and now she’s in her own fabulous business. Each time she discovers a new fundamental truth about transformation, a new question would arise until one day she found a methodology for unlocking unique business ideas as a way of bringing a better future to now. Well, hello, that was a fabulous introduction, if I do say so myself for reading it. But wow, I’m so excited

Melissa Pepers

Me too thank you for having me on. I’ve been really looking forward to our chat today as well. Like, I feel like there’s so many synergies between the kinds of things that we do like they connect so well together.

Nicole Smith

Yeah, I remember we first crossed virtual paths, I think in One Roof. And then again, over in the Business Chicks community. And yeah, I always love to discover people who are doing similar things to me. I know we’re not the same but similar.

Melissa Pepers

There’s like alignments there, which like isn’t the best. Yeah, exactly.

Nicole Smith

Well, let’s start with you. Tell us all about you, and your journey and your business and all the things.

Melissa Pepers

Yeah, it’s been a ride. I ended up being a really great place. But I couldn’t have imagined. It’s only like looking back that it all fits in a neat line. But that’s just because that’s how time, not that it felt like that at the time. I reckon, rewinding to like primary school, and just seeing what part of it was always in me, I just love when other kids would be playing all together a game, I would be hanging out, they’d be my friends, I’d be hanging out next to them. But instead of playing the game, I would be like inventing something that changed the game, or that enhanced the game or helped the game, whatever it was. So I think that interest in invention and change was always there. But when I left school, business design wasn’t really a thing at that point. It was something that CEOs technically did. But it wasn’t something that anyone was trained in or and it wasn’t an industry that people were doing. And so I came into it in a really slow way. Which was looking at a design career and strategy. I just had one question after another. And the first one was sort of like, oh, like the kind of the point of the work that we do as creatives doesn’t seem to actually be to sell stuff. It seems to be to change behaviour, and change things. And that was kind of where I was interested in. And then it was like, Well, why aren’t we taught that? That’s really the point of these communications. But we’re not we’re not taught any of that sort of side. And I was very, very, very lucky. And I remember this moment really vividly. In, I was working at Ogilvy and I was sitting in the audience, it was the first time I ever experienced what behavioural economics was, the only science that really heavily looks at persuasion, and not in like an evil scary way. But in a how can we understand how the brain actually leads us to making decisions that we don’t want to make or that aren’t in our best interest? And why does that work? And then how can we use that understanding to help us lead to better decisions? And it just like changed my whole world because it was kind of the question I’ve been asking. And then that led to like another set of questions around like a coming up with good ideas. But then how do I make people say yes to my idea, when I know that it would work for them. Because even if they could see it, they would say sort of they wouldn’t necessarily be on board. And that led to me learning about competitive strategy and business feasibility, and all these other anything that essentially could lead to someone having, if we think of all the ideas we have in a given day, not all of them are ones that we can use ourselves, but they probably would benefit someone else who didn’t have that skill set. Like we could walk past someone who had a business and you could probably see straight away with your expertise, all these different ways within and outside of your expertise as well that you could help them or that they could be transformed in a great way. And it really bothers me that there’s no way to really share those ideas in a way that would lead to the level of help that we can actually give one another as humans. So I really see that the biggest bottleneck to innovation is an idea actually being nurtured within our brain, and then leaving our brain. Because the other thing is we will often just forget good ideas or write them down, and then forget them or leave them there. Or we make an idea and along that way, there’s all these roadblocks that kind of reduce the quality of that idea or just kind of end up, end up making it sort of just a bit of a different version to something that already exists. And all of those things are kind of like, what I would see as my enemies in a world where ideas are very freely shared, and really able to get out there in the world in the best way. So for many, many hours, many, many weeks, for more than well over a decade now. I’ve been thinking about these kinds of things. And and using my skill set to work out ways to overcome them. Fast forward to now and this year has been like a very transformative in my own business. But I finally got to a point where my process felt quite repetitive. So even though everyone that was coming in was coming in to create some sort of unique business and some sort of unique idea. Each one would, it didn’t matter whether it’s business to business, business customers, small, medium, large, moving between those points, I found myself repeating myself, and I was like, I’m ready for my next stage now. I know a lot of your work comes in as well, Nicole and so I turned it into an online platform. And people, predominantly thought leaders come into this platform to use this process, to essentially, instead of just following just the speaking or writing route, usually when you are a thought leader, like always, you have a unique perspective of the world. And I believe everyone actually has that unique perspective why? You know, if we think of look at anything in your room, how could that be better? Or what what isn’t, you know, working about it? Or what’s great about it, and how could that be better as well, we all have perspectives on everything. And those perspectives are as unique sort of as a fingerprint. And with thought leaders in particular, who want to impact the world in some way. Yeah, it’s really powerful to share your message and start a movement. But what actually starts the movement and really spreads the impact is when people have some sort of action that they’re able to do. And even then with behavioural economics, you can want something and you can be really motivated and determined around it. But it doesn’t mean you’ll do the behaviour. So you might like want to be really healthy and fit. And that might be a huge priority and focus that maybe you think spent all of your time thinking about, but it doesn’t mean you actually make the actions that create that to happen. So it’s not as simple as wanting, or even understanding what the right things are. There’s this bridge between the strategy and the doing. And for me, of course, if people take strategy and don’t act on it, then it’s useless. It’s totally my work is literally useless.

Nicole Smith

Yeah, well, on this side of the microphone, I’m all about taking action and supporting my communities to take action, because you’ve hit the nail on the head there, we absorb all this information, we have all these ideas, we, you know, explore all these different things, and then they go a bit stalemate, you know, they’re going to be stuck, because we haven’t actually created the formula, the plan to take those little steps to actually make it a thing. And then once we’re there, it’s a thing, we can enjoy it. And we can keep evolving it. And we’ve got the space around us to think a bit bigger and in other ways and looking at things and ask the questions as well. I guess a big part of what you do is asking questions, and helping people to like pull those little threads of thoughts out.

Melissa Pepers

People often say it feels like you’ve decanted my whole brain and my whole like soul in that process, because it’s very, it starts internally, before it looks out in the world, where those opinions actually kind of come from. And then we really look at the ones of all of those perspectives, the ones that affect you the most, that really light you on fire in whatever emotions, you know, whatever matters to that individual the most. And two people with really similar skill sets and backgrounds. Like it’s completely different. It’s like it’s so wildly individual. And the idea for me is, I want to live in a, a world that’s created by these potential ideas, right? And that’s not the world that we’re in right now. patches of it can be like that at times. But if we look at how to change the world, a lot of it’s just waiting, like do we do we wait for a government to enact some sort of policy? Is that going to happen? Do we wait for something to get so bad that violence and war kind of come from that and try and change things there? Is that even good? Do we wait for someone else to come up with some sort of silver bullet scientific solution, or, you know, proprietary science to solve something? Or if we really look at when life has changed in really powerful ways. It’s been a business replaced with through its offering, service product doesn’t matter replaced some sort of ineffective system or not good as good as could be system not full potential, right? Replaced it with something else. And through the mass adoption of that life changed forever. So like business is really the easiest way to shape the future. And I think for thought leaders in particular, not so that it’s not extremely powerful, there’s obviously a clear role in speaking and in writing, but there’s even a more powerful role in creating a niche business that actually allows you to distribute some sort of offering, or multiple offerings that work together to literally create the future like my dream world, where I’d really love to go with business design where I’m now working towards quite fast is I’d love it if I had like a big think tank of people trained in my process, which allows us rapid ideation of ideas, and like a government or large company, or large NGO could come to us and say, we want the future of our area of influence, to look like this. And then essentially, my team plus, the wider world could become like a think tank, creating specifically the business concepts that would be needed to make that happen. And then if you’re going to start a new business, instead of going, should I be just another like one of these or one of these, we don’t need more people doing the same stuff. They could instead look at my platform that I’m building in the background and say, well, what do I want to do? What would light me up? And then if they can’t find it on there, they could use my process to create it for themselves sort of as well. So they’re, they’re kind of two parts. And like, imagine, imagine if everyone could make all the things or like the things you’re not going to make share them with someone else who is looking for that thing, because we don’t all have ideas about any topic, like there are plenty of topics, they don’t have ideas, but there’s other people out there that do you know, if we can connect all of that, yeah, exactly.

Nicole Smith

They may not be interested in all the things but they can see things in a different way. Like, very frequently with my clients, I’ll be on the call. And I can already see where we’re going. Like, I’ve looked at all their systems and their tech and they talking and how they like to operate. And I’m like, I know where we’re going. And I said, this is where we’re heading, and I get this blank look on the other side, they’re like, I can’t, like it’s, I got you, we’re gonna there, I can see how we’re getting there. So it’s a process we’ll go through, and we’ll get there. But, you know, if we have lots of blank looks, and like these people over here that are thinking in the bigger picture, and we’re not connecting the steps together. But when you do, oh how fabulous.

Melissa Pepers

It’s so good. Like, when you fill all of those gaps, or remove those road blocks, it’s kind of a bit of all of it, it’s wild, how much can change and how quickly and how satisfying it can be as well. And then, of course, the next step of getting things out there is making them actually execute efficiently and effectively, that they can actually honour that original idea. And that’s where my world turns into your world.

Nicole Smith

Yeah. That’s right. Yeah, making it super easy. So the doing stuff, the day to day operations just run so smoothly. So those changemakers but what did you call them?

Melissa Pepers

Oh, visionaries.

Nicole Smith

People with dreams. We all are, we all know where we’re heading. But we have that time to do that, to dedicate to that and think bigger. I’d love to talk a little bit more about business design, like what is it? For people who don’t know?

Melissa Pepers

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And if you’re listening, you probably don’t know what business design is and that’s fine. Because there’s only a few of us getting around and not like I’m yet to see someone that’s just focusing on a more small medium sort of business space as well. So essentially, if you, it’s a very much a systems thinking kind of process, what is the actual business concept model? And then in an ecosystem, how does that connect with everything it touches because businesses exist in complex environments, and that affects many, many different needs. It affects your customers needs, it affects your personal like lifestyle needs, your sense of satisfaction and purpose. It affects and is affected by the marketplace. Like there’s so many things and conventionally, in business coaching and business consulting, and like disclaimer, there is a massive space for this. I have coaches and consultants and I also have coaches and consultants in my programme it we’re not actually competitors, but it just helps. I think picture the role of business design more clearly. In coaching and consulting you really are looking at one or two, especially the most pressing business needs, usually the ones that that consultant has big expertise in, but the thing that business designers know, because we really sit at square one of business concepts, regardless of whether you exist or not. It’s just at square one, what is your foundation actually look like? If you think of the most difficult thing that you encounter in business, a business designer knows that nearly always there’s actually an unmet need and your actual foundations of your business. And that if you actually look at those problems over time, they’re all in one or two areas. That though that that business model just doesn’t satisfy and with business coaching and consulting sometimes the work will end up changing aspects of that foundation. But very often, it can also end up breaking other aspects of the foundation, if we don’t have already an understanding of how all these things fit together. Doesn’t mean that when you have that strong foundation, you don’t have challenges in business. But what it does mean is when you address those challenges, they are very, very, very rarely ones you couldn’t see coming. They happen in multiple different areas of business, and they’re actually a growth signal. It’s something that’s challenging, but it’s actually exciting because it like, oh, this means I’m growing, and your business actually tells you, hey, this is now where you need to focus. And then hey, this is now you need to focus and you actually just keep sort of following that. And then in addressing it, because you are really aware of all these other needs, and have them accounted for, addressing, because so often in business, I hear this, and I’d actually really love your perspective on this too. You have people that come up to you, and sort of say, there’s this real focus on structure, like you know, if I’m doing a lead magnet, should I do an ebook or a webinar, or or whatever it might be, there is just being focused on business equals structure. But actually business equals the impact or the type of change you’re trying to see in the world. And when you focus on what does that impact need, within awareness of all different systemic needs of a business at its foundation, you can essentially say, Oh, well, this particular structure will fit into this ecosystem the best while creating this impact the best. And then if there’s one or two, at that point, you literally just pick your personal preference, because you know, it doesn’t matter. But people don’t really know that it doesn’t matter. Because if they haven’t got those clear foundations, there isn’t the information there to decide either way. And I think a really beautiful aspect of business design, and kind of a weird one that maybe to a degree, you just have to experience it, for it to make sense. And I feel this in my business as I follow my process exactly, but essentially, myself and my clients, we use this language of like, it’s as though the business has intuition. It literally just keeps telling you this is where to focus, this is what you need to do this is how to do it best not in a way that feels like restrictive, like the choice of the varieties coming out of it. Because actually, all of your ideas and variety and choice and impact you’re trying to create in the world, when you get to focus nearly always on your business instead of in your business. That is actually what is informing your growth as well. And then your business just tells you the how of it. It just makes things a lot easier.

Nicole Smith

You can’t see on the podcast because you’re listening, but my cheeks are hurting because I’m smiling so much over this side of the camera. Internally I’m like, yes.

Melissa Pepers

I can see that there’s like, pleasure colour coming through.

Nicole Smith

My blush is just doubled in colour

Melissa Pepers

Because you’re the structure queen. So like you would say this too.

Nicole Smith

Exactly. And so I always when we talk about structure I talk about yes, it’s the foundations of your business. But it’s not concrete. It’s not there to be fixed and hard and stuck and urhh. What it actually is there to do is to create the space and the flexibility and the fluidity that you can move across with confidence, you know that your business is doing its business doing things right? And so that we can just work in and exactly what you said when transformational points. So transition points, like I know I’ve had them at the moment going through them right now as we’re on this call. And at first it feels a bit funnily just going off track, had a conversation this morning, with my group, and the word icky keeps coming up. And I describe that that icky feeling like oh, hang on, something’s not working here. What is it? Why am I feeling like this? Okay, take a step back. Give yourself the space to look at it. Great. And as soon as I’ve made that decision, for me personally, what happens is these other things happen.

Melissa Pepers

It’s weird, right? Yeah.

Nicole Smith

Exactly. And it’s a great experience.

Melissa Pepers

It’s like a weird, but exciting in the way that so there is actually a science behind this particular type of weirdness. And it’s only a controllable thing, even though it’s not a predictable thing. It’s a controllable thing by businesses the operating system. So you would have the systems and the structures that you’re creating. And mine is the actual foundations, and the process that we follow to create those foundations i.e business design. Yeah. So in systems design, and in systems science, the theory behind how systems work, any kind of system at all, essentially, just for anyone listening that’s like, what officially do you mean by system? Literally a bunch of nodes and relationships. So anything that has nodes and connections between those points. That’s a system. So picture like a network or like a brain with all those dots and the synapses between them. Think of a mind map, the circles and the relationships between them. Any of, they’re all examples of systems and you’ll notice they have dots and lines basically, connected in different ways, especially really, really effective systems that have beneficial relationships between those nodes have this phenomenon that is not really understood, but it’s highly desirable, known as an emergent property of the system as an example of why it’s not predictable, but it is incredible, the emergent property of the brain is consciousness. So like you wouldn’t if you weren’t creating a system of like the brain, or trying to emulate a brain, maybe artificial intelligence, or stem cell research or something like that you would be emulating the systems in the chemistry, etc. But at what point, at what level of systems and relationships or nodes and relationships that consciousness emerge, we don’t understand. But we know that the two are connected. Yeah, yeah, this weird thing you describe that you’re like, I don’t know when it’s going to come, or these weird opportunities that might come out of nowhere, or just the complete clarity that you like, this is absolutely, I just know, my business is telling me this is what I need to do next, and how, yeah, not only does it create a lot of ease, but that’s essentially an emergent property of the system, and only comes when all these different parts are working together. And that’s what business design really gives. But also the work that you do really gives the business both they’re both crucial layers and crucial systems. Yeah, the one systems at square one and the next systems that’s going two essentially, and the better they are together.

Nicole Smith

One of the first things I do with my new clients is tell me about your business. Tell me about the structure, like, where are we now? Where are we going? Like, who is in your team? What do they do? What do you do? What do you want to do? Like all of these questions that, you know, who do we work with? How do we work with? Yeah, absolutely. And they just naturally flow out. So I don’t know half the time what I asked, but it’s the stuff that I need to know, per client, which is so unique, everyone’s so unique. So that really is an informative part of what I do. Because I do not believe there is a cookie cutter off the shelf system like this, from what I do. Every business is so unique, the way they like to work, what tech they like to work, who’s in their team that how are they structured, where they’re growing, so being able to understand what you’re doing with businesses, so they have a really clear understanding, then can guide me really simply to go, okay, this part, this part, this part. Done off you go, have fun.

Melissa Pepers

Absolutely. And actually working backwards. This is kind of the I guess, emotional pathway that my career followed. Because when I was in design and strategy, we would be asking these big companies, all the questions that you asked if anyone’s listening in like any kind of design, execution systems, building operations, or marketing function, we are each other’s people. Because essentially, all the questions, who is your audience, what are your goals, you’re asking about all the different needs of business. And it’s very rare, especially in the smaller business space that doesn’t have access to business design, that all of those pieces are known with deep clarity and connected to one another in mutually beneficial ways. But check this out. So when I was first, I didn’t know that I was going to apply the methodology in this way. And I wouldn’t even call myself a business designer at that point yet. But when I was doing brand design, and that sort of strategy component. So many, not only were so many of these questions, sort of unanswered, but it was this frustrating thing of like, well don’t you have like, why don’t you have these answers? And that really got me to build the methodology and the skill sets that, I was just following gaps at that point, and one question after another, but when it all came together and started coming together to this system, essentially, I reckon 90%, if not more of the technical hour to hour workers in an ad agency. So you designers, marketers, everyone I just listed before, the overwhelming majority of their work is changes to the systems.

Nicole Smith

Oh yeah, absolutely yep.

Melissa Pepers

After my process, we would do brands that hit the nail on the head, in one round.

Nicole Smith

Yeah. It’s amazing, isn’t it? Clarity it’s clarity.

Melissa Pepers

When you have clarity.

Nicole Smith

Yeah you don’t have to guess. There’s no guessing. When you’ve done that you know, invested that time to understand the foundations, you know, talk about foundations in my point of view, but you’re the foundations of your actual business, who we are, why we’re doing it, who we are as an individual, not only as a business in the small business space, when you go to someone like a designer, or a copywriter, or someone like me, it’s fabulous, because you don’t have to do the time and thinking, you already know you’re already ahead of the game.

Melissa Pepers

And you get the best results out of you as well. Because it’s not just less changes. It’s the first round is incredibly effective, because you’re like, well, okay, I know all the limitations that these systems need and all the opportunities and you’ll be still asking your question going through your strategy process that’s essential to translate that across, but then there’s that like, you can go fully creative. If you’re like, well, this is the goal. This is all the things I need to know to get to that goal. It like it just squeezes potential out once again, to the point like this is one I’ve only been, I only got through two on the waitlist this week. I highly encourage anyone to sign up for it, I’ll tell you the link for the show notes. But it’s an AI called DALLE,  D A L L E. You can sign up, it’s free. And this artificial intelligence is there’s multiple things the AI does, but dalle in particular text natural language. So you putting in a written request, like you might talk to another person to describe an image that you want made, and it will create quite high quality images, like it’s insane. Like, I’ve put it on my feet at the moment for Instagram, because it’s just wild that I put in my brand rules and my business, like my competitive advantage, all essentially all the business design keywords. But to describe a sentence, so I had the business design stuff, then I had the object of what we’re actually trying to do, which is I wanted to show like, you know, a female person with glasses doing it, you’re trying to describe myself enough. And then the crystal ball, which is a part of my brand rules. And then yeah, and the style, and all the results were so on brand. And there was like illustrated, it was photography, 3d rendering, knitted in wool of these visuals, I started like it’s so much fun, go in there, and but it’s really good quality, and it’s gonna get even better quality like so soon. But the fact that I could, in one sentence describe my business with such clarity that an artificial intelligence could deliver me completely on brand images first time around. That’s like amazing, that’s what you want.

Nicole Smith

It’s scary, isn’t it? The old technology, what i’s gonna, scary and exciting at the same time.

Melissa Pepers

They actually have because there’s a lot of like implications of that, that’s a whole other tangent, the company have risks. And like all different kinds of charters that are really interesting to read, if you’re wanting to explore that side around, like in building coded bias, and stereotypes and systems and all those kinds of things. Yeah, they’re very ethical and considered in their approach, which I really personally appreciate, too. But like, it’s so much fun to play with as well. And I put in like silly things to just say, they actually encourage you to put in like impossible things to see what the AI creates. Like, I think one example they have there is like, I don’t know, it was like an avocado chair. And it was this like a photo. It’s, it’s amazing. It’s like a photo of this stylish modern chair. But it’s also an avocado with a little centre of the avocado pillow. It’s adorable.

Nicole Smith

It is amazing. Like I you know, tech is always evolving and becoming smarter, right. And being able to use a system like that, how fun. And being curious and playful, is so important, right? Being able to just let yourself have a go and just test it out, see if it fits or not. Yeah. So what I found in small business and working with small businesses, this exact thing that you’re supporting people on, sometimes is pushed to the side, because we’re so focused on growing this business of however many figures and we want to you know, that’s another topic again, business has to look like this. And we must mark it like this. And this is how you because you’re in this industry, happy to talk to your people. How would you encourage, I guess, people to take a moment to reflect back and invest some time on the start the foundation?

Melissa Pepers

So I think it’s a great like, I imagined the Industry Super finance with the alternative examples, because business design, it certainly has quick wins, but its real richness is revealed over the long haul. Definitely, it’s been that case for me as well, some aspects of the way I design business involves I call it like a vision quest is the analogy. And most businesses end up doing what I call like moving in circles. Because the only compass that helps them measure growth is usually financial, which is actually just one need of the business, not all of them. And in my process, we create a business model that meets all of the needs. But the compass for growth is actually around the core, most emotional, deep purpose, creating impact at the very core of it. And we actually get, we actually create a metric around that. And the metric can shift slightly and does shift slightly over time, but only in a way that makes it more and more detailed. It’s not like a fundamental pivot or replacement, when you’re focusing on growing this metric. So you have goals and things around it as well. But it’s just it’s just a number that forever is increasing, and every so fun to see. Because every time it increases, that’s your impact in the world actually changing things. And because your business meets all of these needs, and is how you create that impact every time that number increases. So too does your bank account grow? Yeah, so it’s like such a powerful instead of just looking at like revenue and all of those sorts of aspects and you end up you know, physically burning out because your needs aren’t met, or in these feast and famine cycles because you haven’t considered the marketplaces needs or any number of problems that can come from only focusing on one variable. But essentially what happens if you think of your vision as a A horizon in the distance, essentially, the future aspect of that vision is a bit fuzzy. And that’s fine. It doesn’t need to be fully resolved in detail. In fact, it’s kind of better that, you know, it isn’t, I

Nicole Smith

can’t see that far. Literally, my eyesight is not that,

Melissa Pepers

it just feels very natural to us to describe horizons in that way, maybe others listening can see more detail than us. Like, a little bit further back from the horizon, you have the city skyline. And then you have where you are right now. And when your impact and the change that you want to see in the world, how you want that world to be shifted, and businesses your vehicle to do that, it’s very much the future as aspect of my business designer. So it’s like you’re on a highway ride out there. And one important thing, of course, is to not take too many detours along the way. But if you’ve got a highway, you know exactly your type of impact, and everything is working towards you to get to that point. And your business is telling you exactly what turns and things to take along the way. And you’ve got competitive advantage that makes it so clear that you’re 10 times better than any alternative out there because you’re doing something that replaces what isn’t working. And you express that clearly through brand strategy, because business and brand training should be created together, different brands strategy to what brand strategists do, I have brand strategist in my course, as well. But essentially, like I said, this is the business aspect of brand strategy, so that you can get everything you need. But if you have all of that, while you get to where you want to be so much faster. And I used to not take my ID used to do my entire own process myself. And then one day, I was like, all these things that I need, I had the foundations, but I wasn’t following the growth aspect of it. And I was like, all these problems I have, I literally know it’s my job to know something. So why don’t I do? Why don’t I benefit from my own skill set? This is a paradigm shift.

Nicole Smith

So common, right? What is it you you’re a builder and your house is never finished? Right? It’s because we’re always looking out and looking at our clients, and not not taking that opportunity to look at, you know, number one over this way, right towards yourself in the mirror, and apply those strategies and those techniques and those tools that you’re talking about in your sleep, because you’re outside out.

Melissa Pepers

And the means you’re really faster being able to do it as well. So like I made this commitment, there’s a huge personal paradigm shift at that time. And I was like, I want to benefit from my own skill set. And from now on, I’m going to do my full process exactly as I recommend it completely. At that point, most of the vision was felt very distant that it felt like all horizon and kind of a blank desert sort of in between. And then when I started following this process, and I had a baby within this time as well, I was on maternity leave, but within two years from that moment, and that was two years from that moment, which I think just explains how extraordinary this is if especially if growth is what you want, and doing a certain way is what you want. I am now at a point where this month I’m trying to raise $100,000 to get to that end vision where I have a team building this app, building the marketplace, building all of these ideas to change the future. And I reckon, if all works out well, like essentially, it’s literally just finance a build and some beta testing. Say that, like it’s a small thing in between me and this fully resolved vision. And of course, there’ll be a new horizon on the other side of that. But essentially, within two years, despite all those other factors, and I like I took full time off work to be with my baby. And essentially, I could be in that spot within two years, maybe even faster.

Nicole Smith

Yeah. It’s that direction, right? You know where you’re heading instead of, I think when we start as well, I know, for me, my journey is I knew I wanted to do a thing, right? I knew I was good at the thing. But it didn’t quite know how I was doing the thing, if that makes sense. Right? So I try and I started just before COVID as well, January 2020. Right had my first client signed up, ready to go for 12 month agreement and then COVID hit and bang door. Everything just went. Yeah, that time that little those first few months of lockdown lucky and whatever we want to call it. I had that time to reflect and have a little bit of direction. Now those I’ve had lots of iterations up until now, in the last six months, everything’s solidifying, I think I made that decision. I’m like, I know who I want to work with. Now I know how I want to talk, I know who I am. And I know that I’m good at what I do and that my clients are gonna benefit from working from me. So it was like that resolve moment of okay, I can see where we’re heading now.

Melissa Pepers

It’s amazing. And imagine if you could get to that point in three months. Yeah, like that’s what my process does. And it’s to a point where That’s basically every time I’m like, I haven’t, especially since the shift, I haven’t seen anyone following my process in that two year period. So interesting. That’s the same period as when I started following things exactly who most of us are into extreme mental shifts there. But I haven’t seen someone not get to that point that they wanting to get to within two years. And within three months for the clarity, like that is refreshing. Doesn’t have to be like, What is it, the easy road takes you to the same destination not to say it’s always easy, definitely not. But with foundational stuff, you don’t have to keep going back to the foundations. And when you don’t have the foundation, it’s very spaghetti on a wall, you’re doing one thing after another, and maybe you will get really lucky. But I think that’s very few people that hit on that by accident, if you look at the pandemic, how many businesses closed, and if you look at the hardest affected industries, they accidentally had happened upon business design type benefits in their business models. And it was like, there’s a high relationship, but it also gives you a lot of resilience, I think as well. But like, it doesn’t have to be confusing. You don’t have to do one thing, after another to get to where you want to be. There’s a faster way there and it’s much more set like you, you get to do more of what you want. And what you are enjoying, you know,

Nicole Smith

Hey, they’re just interrupting this episode to share with you a guide that you are going to want to explore. Are you a click up user at the moment? Or have you been sitting on the fence and hearing me talk about it each and every week? And just wondering, what is the next step to tech? Well, I’ve created a guide that’s going to support you on your journey to really design your click up spaces, be able to create those and then connect them into the way that your business operates each and every day, my community have told me that this guide has been a game changer in the way that they really look at their clickup workspaces, and operate each and every day. And you can access it as well. So pop on over to my website, the artisans.com.au backslash freebies, and access the action takers guide to click up, how fabulous that you know, you’re ready to evolve your clickup journey, you’re ready to move from where you are right now, to where you have always known you want to be reached out, let me know I love to hear all about your journey and click up. So I look forward to hearing from you soon. My whole world is is it easy. Not from a lazy point of view, it’s not a lazy view, it’s okay, this feels easy. This is good. We’re going to repeat that because it feels easy. And it’s easy, you don’t think about it, then because it just naturally happens. I would love you to share a little bit about the angle of the aspect of persuasion, and how people you know, engage with businesses and all those sorts of things I know that you mentioned right at the start of the conversation, I was really interested.

Melissa Pepers

Absolutely. So in my methodology, there’s four elements. And this pertains to two of them. And there’s each of the four parts of the methodology that inform their like values, but their skills instead of just values. And there’s two aspects behavioural economics and trend analysis that really lie behind this. If we think of like a magnet, every business has these deep qualities underneath them that repel and attract an audience. But they happen on both an individual level, that’s where the behavioural economics comes in, but also on a collective level. So whilst you can’t necessarily predict what a specific person will do, on an individual occasion, in an individual context, you can know that if you have this understanding of your business, and your customer and things behind, you can pretty much predict it to the point where about 70 to 80% of the time, this would be the case, once we’ve got a critical kind of mass of people, and all businesses have them and they repel and attract. So pretty much all decision making really is subconscious. And it’s driven by bias and emotion. And then we rationalise afterwards, even for multimillion dollar decisions that might affect everything that you also are thinking about consciously and rationally as well. But ultimately, the final call comes from emotion. And you can think about this in your own business as well. But fully getting it right is like once again, it’s highway versus slowly kind of getting closer and closer. But you really want to understand, essentially your offering, especially when it’s tailored and clear. And you know what kind of impact is being provided but you’re offering is just a strategy for someone to achieve something. When you have a competitive offering. It doesn’t mean like zeros and like taking money away from other people or anything like that. It just means that you are clearly effective as a solution and more effect active than anything else, ideally doing something unique. So if you think of your target audience as a bubble, I consider a separate group inside the middle of that bubble, which I call a wallet out audience. And they are someone who not everyone in your target audience will reflect this. But what happens to this specific group affect everything about your business communications, and this is a group that your solution is the number one strategy for them, not just for the need, but it’s actually a priority in their life, that need is also a priority in their life. Yeah, and not everyone your target market, or even your wallet out market will always be in that moment in a lifecycle. But what you really want to understand is a specific moment in their lives, that you in business design, it’s everything you really want to understand, why does this person and what’s happening in their world? And specifically, what emotion? Are they calling in? More off? And are they repelled by? And they’re often a relationship? Like if someone is calling in dignity, they might be repelled by shame? Yeah. And in your communications, you want to understand what kind of shame what kind of dignity, because they’re not all the same. And you want to actually embody the emotion they want to attract, without increasing the worry of the repelling qualities. Yeah. So as an example, and this just makes it really, really, really obvious what I’m talking about. But actually, it has this level of emotional strength. For every single business, you just either know or you don’t imagine you are in the dreadfully unfortunate situation of having haemorrhoids, you go, you’re recommended perhaps by your doctor, or maybe you just do some Googling, because you don’t want anyone to know and you end up at the pharmacy. And the product for you is Aner. Soul, do you want to whip that one out of your handbag and tell your friends all about it, even if you need it? No. And part of that is because of the naming of that product. Part of it is the context. Once again, all the needs of business sits in, there’s a crossover between those needs and your customer, those needs and your personal interest and impact in the world. And the sweet spot in the middle of those three should actually be a communications arise, but they should really embody that emotion. And so you really want to understand what are the emotions repelling and driving because they completely change the way that people talk about your product, when you’re not there. Whether or not people buy or engage with touch points about your product, whether or not you’re there, you know, so your business can sell without you or even, you know, with you there. And when you have that all in place, and automated with a beautiful system, like one of the your creations you can sell at scale without having to be there, but in a way where people and your impact is able to spread. So once again, it’s about removing those roadblocks. Because it’s not just Roblox impact spread. They’re also the same roadblocks in business design, if you will connected all the needs together, they’re the same roadblocks that are stopping your growth. Yeah. And like, they’re those hidden behaviours, they drive every specific process for how to work out exactly what they are as close as can be known at the time, and then making sure you say in the right language as well, just as an example, once you get to the right emotion. There’s also this point where the way we think about it as a practitioner, even if we’re in our own target market, and maybe we once needed that or still do need that thing. We now think about it in a very different way. And we’ve forgotten it’s called the Dunning Kruger effect, we’ve forgotten what it was like to not have the solution. And to not what it was like when we didn’t know how the solution worked and all the nitty gritty, and there’s a language shift in that time. Yeah. And essentially, as an example, for a client of mine, she helps people typically burnt out corporates into their spiritual journey for the first time hopefully preventing them from actually getting burnt out and sick. But usually the burnout happens and then the spiritual journey begins. And she will talk all about fear because behaviours that lead to burnout with fear driven and she knew that, etc, from her process, so to talk all about fear, but her corporate High Flyer audience at that specific role at that moment, they didn’t think of themselves as scared people they thought of themselves as stress people. And she shifted that messaging she even shifted where she appeared. So instead of being at like, like wellness podcast talking about spirituality and fear, she suddenly was on a podcast about productivity and adrenal fatigue, talking about stress and that relationship with spirituality. And like you can just hear like, it’s so obvious how, why that

Nicole Smith

would work. I’ve just gone through a bit of a journey as well. I’ve worked with the fabulous Kathy Rast on all of my languaging words and say maybe three, four months ago I started to naturally just, it just became the way I worded things it can never get right. What I noticed is on my email list, I started to lose people. And there was a period of sort of three, four weeks it was that recalibration. Obviously, the way that I was talking was no not needed for them at the moment.

Melissa Pepers

They weren’t actually in that lifecycle or your target market. Yeah, that’s right.

Nicole Smith

Yeah. And you know, that moment when as much as I’m like, yes, if you go out you do your journey, your, the time the

Melissa Pepers

rejection in there as well, even if, even if it makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, I feel that deeply.

Nicole Smith

But it was, it was a great realisation, because I then made the connection, that Okay, so these humans that have been with me for the longest time, however long their, their experience was, I am shifting, I’m becoming more clear and directed and how I’m communicating. And I’m not salesy at all, just, that’s not a thing. I’m just me, and I loved doing so people attract. But yeah, it was just a really interesting, what you’re talking about there is understanding who we’re talking to, and where they are, and how they are feeling at the moment that they are ready to come and engage with you and your service.

Melissa Pepers

Cuz it’s that, um, it’s called Narrative transport theory in behavioural science. But essentially, there’s this, the best persuasion is so simple, it makes so much sense. But essentially, you just meet people where they are, and then bring them to a you want to be step by step.

Nicole Smith

Yeah, that works really well. Step by step. It’s one of my package, it’s

Melissa Pepers

so good, it makes sense. So beautiful, especially because when people are taking the steps, like my process, whilst you’re, you’re moving through it, and creating all those foundations, etc. The next thing you need to do I call in the vision quest, when the or any fantasy story when the character is like packing their bags about to leave on their adventure I get on that highway. It’s like what the highway is built? Because you know, what it needs? Makes it makes all the difference. Yeah, that’s

Nicole Smith

right. It’s just connecting all the pieces together and making it clear with yourself as well. So knowing okay, I know it’s a thing. What is the thing for me, and let’s make it a thing in your world. Lots of things going on. I think we could just keep chatting. But we got to wrap it up. Because

Melissa Pepers

otherwise, people want to keep listening and we have to be where they’re at.

Nicole Smith

Right? Okay. So is there anything else you’d love to add? Before we jump into our questions etheric?

Melissa Pepers

I think that was so beautiful. And I’m going to be thinking on lots of the things that you’ve suggested and the things that have come up as well, I think probably for like a month from now.

Nicole Smith

It’d be great conversations, I think. And I’ve said this on the podcast recordings in the past, they come up at the exact right moment for when we’re looking to explore something else. And I’m very privileged to have this space because I get these beautiful humans like yourself coming in.

Melissa Pepers

Like it’s I think it’s super, super, super underrated, not by everyone, but it’s really underrated. How much skill it takes to hold space in conversation, and to allow the conversation to flow. Like that’s a deliberate strategic process to allow it to flow in all these beautiful ways that you can get so much out of a conversation, because many conversations you can listen to, that don’t have all of those, like beautiful effects as well. Like, you’re great.

Nicole Smith

I do love it. It’s my like, again, the take the donor thing, right? Yeah. See, the space? Okay, let’s do this. Three questions. All right, you ready? Can we up? Okay, what is your go to app that creates ease in your day? Now you can have more than one

Melissa Pepers

yeah, there’s there’s more than one. But the one that really came to my mind, like instantly that was top of mind was notion. So my business design portal I built it’s like what a business plan should be that’s not dry. but is instead fun, but it just creates, we were talking a lot about how the structure tells you what it needs. Because I’ve set my business up on notion in this way. It makes my day so much faster and easier. Because it kind of automates the or like structurally has inbuilt the hard parts I’ve had. You have to work them out once when you’re doing the foundations and tweak them a little bit strategy reviews. But honestly, that’s quite easy. But like having that all in place. And on notion has just meant like someone will come and ask me say I’m working with a creative and they’re going to build something for me or like marketing or sales will you sale. So that’s an example that’s happening right now this week. And they said to me, where it was like where is your customer hanging out, like, at this time when they’re more interested in receiving like a sales message? And I was like, okay, notion boom, that’s here. This is the exact answer, and I know that that answer is not only correct, but I could also then explain why that was the location And that meant my salesperson was able to go, Hey, here’s three other locations where those people also hang out that I didn’t know about. And so it was like, how fast is that compared to having to go? Maybe to try and do a survey? Or, hey, customers, where are you and then half the half the time that’s leading, you know, leading questions you might put like face and you might only give them certain options that aren’t true. Whereas this is completely unique. You know, so that yeah, notion definitely, but also love brain FM. Yeah, okay. Or I’m, like paying member of brain FM. And I find so for me, especially a lot of the work I really love doing, but also a lot of the work in my day now is deep flow, deep focus type work. And the faster I can get into creative flow, the more productive I am. So jumping into brain FM that allows me to just slip right into that zone really quickly. And the music isn’t music, I would even like really? It’s so weird. But you literally next three seconds later, I don’t hear it. Yeah, because I’m in Emmerich. That’s that creates a lot of ease for me for sure.

Nicole Smith

So good. Well, two points. central location is for your core business stuff, it’s talking to convert it over here is exactly how I encourage my clients to operate everywhere you are when you have an idea.

Melissa Pepers

Yeah, that’s where your business should be.

Nicole Smith

Right? I’ve had a vein of him, I don’t use it. Personally, my normal choice of music is some form of jazz. If it’s gypsy caravan jazz, or cafe jam, or whatever it is, yeah, I’m always got that playing on in the background. It’s starting to flow into my reels as well.

Nicole Smith

Okay, might know this, but online paper hybrid to do lists lover,

Melissa Pepers

I’m a hybrid. So it depends, I’ve got part of my thesis is like, there are different types of lists that involve action at different times. So think of that horizon thing. Again, there’s a horizon list, it’s pretty vague, it’s got some stuff you’d like to check out, but don’t need now. There’s the city skyline list. And there’s the sort of the big picture of what’s happening right now list, and they’re all online. But then in a given week, I’m a very tactile person, like my, my most dominant and for me, the easiest way to think learn, strategize, create is all from movement in the body. And I need to move for paper for me, it’s not that essentially writing allows me to physically move more than typing. And so having a write my daily to do list down, I probably could literally just throw it in the bin right after, because the same information is actually on the digital screen. But being able to actually physically move for me. I don’t know just, I don’t know, works really well. It helps me, like embody, I guess my to do is

Nicole Smith

kind of looking at like, you know, when you’re going through a thought or brain thought. And it’s internal, and kind of sits there until it’s external. And yeah, it

Melissa Pepers

goes from implicit to explicit. Yeah, someone’s

Nicole Smith

witnessed it, you know, or even just no one’s witnessed. This room’s witnessed it. That’s the thing now, and I think I can see that with the writing of the days as well. I

Melissa Pepers

think that’s also I didn’t say that. But I think that is also part of my process as well. Like there’s something tangible and real, it’s moved from thought to practice the liminal space between thought and action, I guess.

Nicole Smith

Okay. Now, what would you do if you created more space in your world?

Melissa Pepers

This is a great question, because I just did this, when I into the middle of May, is when I moved from this, where I was able to bring my platform to scale and my process to scale and unlocked. Like, to really have a wonderful experience. And to continue to nurture its growth and innovation, I only have to do like, really a few hours a week on it amazing. I choose to work more in my business, because there’s all these other things I’m trying to, you know, build the bigger vision. But essentially, there’s also a few learnings in creating all that space. So one, if you’re thinking about it, whoa, do it. Like, I’m a mama, I did it not just because of where I was in the roadmap, but I’m setting up like email flows. I also wish I had met you before, because it’s so slow to do it myself. And stressful. But setting that all up has just given me so much time and you can choose how you spend that time in any way. But that is the thing I’m most mindful of now is it’s really easy to just fill it. And I’m really mindful of protecting the space. So I like having blank spaces that are that feel because I think there’s something that feels free about seeing nothing in a certain section of your calendar. And but it’s still how I choose to fill that blank space. I’m still very mindful about what feels good, as well as new stuff that needs to happen. But then I also have spaces that are filled in, but other things like rest, overflow, work, all of those things to happen. And then little part of that that’s in turning points as well, I call it like ideal month where you literally bring out you imagine like your future business vision of where you’re trying to get to this is after your three months, where you’re like, Okay, once everything’s like launched and out that’s changing. At that point, how do I bring all the pieces together to actually grow the way that I want to grow? And also live the lifestyle that I want to live? And just see like, how does it actually fit together, because you might need to go back and tweak some, your business foundation to make your lifestyle need work. And then I’ve got like, everything just in there, including rests like morning yoga, and other things I want to do in my life, like learning Arabic, and that kind of thing, like, time for the things that are really important to me. And I think just having I call it like a structural boundary to like, embed a fixed spot in a calendar for something and try and stick to it as well. But then, yeah, protecting those free spaces with your interpersonal boundaries as well, that has meant that my last from maybe a couple weeks after the launch, when the launch phase had ended, too. Now, I’ve been able to rest a lot, which has been really nice. As well as creating. Yeah, it’s just good.

Nicole Smith

It’s good, isn’t it? I talk about that as well, with my clients being able to actually look at, you know, I call it designing your day. But really, it’s not just your day, it’s the day and beyond, right, like, how do you actually want to be living and working and playing and resting and all

Melissa Pepers

and just by thinking about it? What is often the first time like just seeing the pieces and like doing a bit of Tetris with it? Often that is just enough. Yeah. I mean, I always and I didn’t realise that these fit together visually.

Nicole Smith

I can visually see it. It’s a thing. Yeah, exactly. Even putting,

Melissa Pepers

like, on the business time. Yeah, time to work on creative projects to give you variety, all those things that you need or that your business needs as well. It needs those needs. But just putting them there. And then it’s like, I’m up to that day. And I find that I look forward to things so much, because I’m like, Oh, now I get to do you. For me. This afternoon is like a trend research. I can insight and mapping kind of free ideation process. Like that’s so fun. I can’t wait.

Nicole Smith

Isn’t it like, you know, for me, I’ve had another iteration recently of it. And I now only work with my All That Jazz clients and my step by step clients on Tuesday and Thursday, and there’s two sessions on each of those days. That’s it, like and that’s that’s the way that it’s structured, because I know that I will deliver my best and be my best human with that structure built in there.

Melissa Pepers

And like how much they must get from that correct from having you in that state, where you’re like, excited, you’ve got all the energy and you get to just pour into them and their business like that’s

Nicole Smith

where when I get to just come from tone it down a little bit because I can get quite excited about. Yeah, but you’re right. It’s the space has been created for you as my client in the in those days. So amazing. Good stuff. Thank you so much. Thank you when you tell us all the things.

Melissa Pepers

Yeah, absolutely. So I hang out predominantly on Instagram, like, you can just literally send me a DM or I share all this kind of stuff all the time. Like the Delhi Instagram AI. But essentially, my handle is Bombo au sol BONB Au. Au, if you see the crystal ball and all the magic look and stuff. That’s me. And then you’ll see from there, like website, if you wanted to learn some specifics about turning points. So maybe if you’re listening to this point, business design can help you and it can help you in three months, so probably have a look. Yeah,

Nicole Smith

pop on a bad puff on it just had a look.

Melissa Pepers

Yeah, it’s so true.

Nicole Smith

Oh, that’s amazing. Well, all of those details, as always, are going to be in the show notes at any of the other links that you want to share with us, Melissa. Oh, I’ll pop those

Melissa Pepers

in there. I’ll find that quote. That’s what I’m gonna do.

Nicole Smith

Awesome. That’d be great. Thank you again for joining me today. Thank you so much. My pleasure. And for everybody else who’s out there. Have a wonderful rest of your day and enjoy creating space and time freedom by now. Well, there we go. Thank you so much for joining me today. It’s been such a pleasure having you on board. Have we connected on social jazz? If not, please come on over. Say hi, I’m on all the platforms at the artisan solutions. So I’d really look forward to seeing you over there. And if you enjoy today’s episode, don’t forget to tag me and I’d love it if you could leave a review. And of course share this with others so others can come and join us next time. All right, then everyone have a fabulous rest of the week. And until next time see you then