The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Braeden Rhys, CMO/Founder of AXIS Global & Sweet Release Agency on Digital Marketing, Media, Public Relations and Strategy

Episode Date: August 10, 2023

Braeden Rhys, CMO/Founder of AXIS Global & Sweet Release Agency on Digital Marketing, Media, Public Relations and Strategy Axisglobal.co Sweetrelease.agency

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com.

Welcome to Chris Voss Show. My family and friends. As always, the family that loves you but doesn't judge you. I haven't said that in a long time. That used to be a byline we used to use. The Chris Voss Show is a big family. And we sit down at this wonderful Thanksgiving feast that we serve up two to three times a day, five to ten times a week. And, yeah, for 14 years we've been sitting at the table with us and we

love you guys and the time you spend with us the chris voss show family that loves you doesn't judge you in fact i need to put that on the hat why didn't i want a uh that loves you but doesn't judge you there's no other family that does it the beautiful part is too there's no arguments over that dinner table about i don't know politics or how uh uncle how Uncle Joe lets everybody hugs a little too long. You know, we've all had that uncle. But it's just a beautiful, fun universe of brilliant minds that expand your intelligence and your IQ. And when you get to almost see the show, there's like a glow that comes off you. People tell me all the time, they're like, every way I go after watching the Chris Foss show, I have a little bit of glow.

That or I watched Oppenheimer, the movie. Anyway, enough nuclear things. That's the lead-in for the guilt and shaming of support the plugs. Give us a five-star review on iTunes. Goodreads.com, Fortress, Chris Foss. LinkedIn.com, Fortress, Chris Foss. YouTube.com, Fortress, Chris Foss. Damn it, you know where the rest of them are.

You've been here. Go for the show. We have an amazing gentleman on the show, and he's going to be talking to us about marketing and marketing and marketing and everything about marketing and taking your business to the next level. He's a business growth expert and has run multiple companies we'll get into for quite a long time, and his billing is quite extraordinary. He's the acclaimed multi-award winning entrepreneur and marketing mastermind according to the digital journal australia's top 100 entrepreneurs according to business news australia innovative mastermind recognized for creating and leading a multi-award

winning marketing and publicity agency by MarketWatch. Brayden Rees joins us on the show today. He's going to be talking about his two companies that he runs, Access Global and Sweet Release Agency. Welcome to the show. How are you? I'm doing well, Dan Under. Thanks for having me, Chris. It's great to be here. I've been watching your show for a while, and I'm like, you know what? Maybe I should get on there too.

You should. I mean, you've done so much already with your accolades we covered in the bio. Give us your.com. Where can people find you on the interwebs? Yeah, people can find me. If you struggle spelling the name, just go to sweetrelease.agency. If you're trying to find me on LinkedIn, it's Brayden Reese. Kind of pronounced like Reese's peanut butter cups, not rice,

if you're trying to work out how to spell it. Otherwise, you can also find me via Access Global, which is A-X-I-S dot global, which is the parent brand of all businesses and things I've created here in Australia. Otherwise, you can go to Braden Rees dot com, which is pretty simple. Might struggle with the spelling if you struggle to find me just type in access global co into google or type in sweet release agency and you'll eventually be directed to me um so i'm kind of hidden behind it all but you will find me there you go uh you're billed as a trailblazing marketing and public relations professional

uh as we mentioned before aust, Australian's top 100 entrepreneurs. You've got a portfolio of multi-award winning brands with your agency and all that good stuff. Tell us about both the brands that you run. Did you start them? Are they your creation? And how long have they been around, et cetera, et cetera? So, Access Global has been around since 2012. So, pretty much I started that off the back of being quite entrepreneurial, worked for

a few different companies and different agencies, hated it. I guess I was more vivacious than anyone in the agencies I worked for. I got shit done in half an hour. And they're like, well, we're billing the client nine hours so you need to you know inflate that timeline and so I got sick of doing that I'm like why am I screwing my clients over for an agency that just wants to make fucking money but yet doesn't respect the client and the quality of work so I decided to leave but in the process of leaving I had some really great relationships with clients and they were like well where, where you're going, we're coming. So I, you know, didn't steal them. They just followed me

because they loved me. So I started my own brand, but it was very, I guess, you know, in a bunker situation. It wasn't like it was front and center, Access Global. It was very much Braden Reese by himself trying to help all these businesses by himself without an agency. And so I kind of learned by sink and swim. Access Global, like I said, it's been around since 2012, pretty much following my marketing and PR and advertising education. I've done quite a bit of study and probably studied myself out of what people would say reasonable forms of employment, which kind of means now I'm stuck in what I do today, which I love.

But it means that no one will really hire me because I'm a little bit scary on paper. But the joy of what I get out of it is helping businesses transform and take an idea to something that's sustainable or successful in multitude of different industries. And that was tied to my education. So sink or swim, took a lot of projects on and I'm like, yeah, don't pay me.

If you get results, write me a big fat check and I'll be happy. And that's kind of how Axis grew. Sweet Release Agency is a completely different kettle of fish. So Axis being your restaurants, your hotels, your cafes, your car dealers, anything that you see or do on a daily basis mind you the the other brand i'm about to briefly explain you probably do that on a daily basis too uh but sweet release agency is a adult industry marketing and public relations firm um some people have a bit of a weird understanding of what that means people hear the word adult industry and they immediately jump to sex workers and porn.

But in essence, for me and how I would like to explain it, essentially, sweet release is for any sort of brand, product or service you're required to show ID for, or at least be an adult. In the US, 21 and over. In Australia, 18 plus. So if you're a nightclub, an alcohol brand, legalized cannabis, brands that you know are out there, but you might need to be considered an adult to partake in, that's Sweet Release. That's not to say we don't work with sex workers or only fans, performers or nightclubs that are stripping venues or gentlemen clubs, dating applications. We work with quite a large myriad of brands over there. But the point of difference, which I'm sure we'll dive into when we talk about how I got there, is that I have a background in

the adult sector. That's kind of where Sweet Release came from. So they're the two brands. Very different. They do the same thing. Of course, I am a marketing nerd. I'm an Aussie-Australian marketing geek per se, but both brands tackle very different industry sectors and in a very different way. There you go.

It's probably good to keep maybe two separate lanes, like you said, two different kettles and fish, so you have that. But with the explosion of only fans and different sites and and yeah i never thought about it that certain you know uh if you're a club or alcohol or different things along those lines you have to be careful you know with marketing and and all that good stuff so tell us a little bit about your origin story your hero story uh what sort of journey did you go on to uh get into marketing what led you down this road yeah see look i always thought i was a people person turns out i'm not um i am i am in part yeah look i thought i was a people person by way of um you

know faking it till you make it and it's really not my personality profile. But early on in my career, I thought, you know what, people industry, I'll go work in hotels. So I spent six years of my career managing hotel chains in Australia, working for companies like Accor and Starwood, for example, and climbed a ladder into management and hated it because I couldn't be authentic. I was very much restricted by, you know, this is what employees do. And I wanted to always go above and beyond for people and what they expected. But I couldn't because the restrictions in those businesses was very much, no, stick to the book. There's a ceiling on how far you can go.

So I thought I was a people person but not from that capacity. I then became interested in like guest relations and making experiences better for people. And I'm like, oh, that's a bit more marketing. What's that? So I decided I would throw my six figure salary away as a hotel manager and dive back into study. After spending four years to get there to become a general manager i you know went oh well fuck it it's not for me let's go do something more real um and decided to study marketing and pr and alongside that journey i had taken on more than i could chew and i was trying to build a portfolio and get taken seriously i I created a few brands. They crashed because I had nothing behind me to substantiate it. And I was like this, you know, big ego persona when I was very young,

around 18, 19, going, I'm a marketing wizard. You can book me. I'll do all your shit. People are like, who the fuck are you? So that didn't work too well. But alongside it, I was also working as a youth minister in, which is the sideline here, kind of how the whole marketing career took off. I spent several years in youth ministry working for a Pentecostal church in Australia. And I helped a lot of younger kids

embrace their identity because they're all questioning themselves and they feel more comfortable coming to me because I guess I have a bit more of an atmosphere than the ones that are just very book heavy. I'm very animated and creative and always have been. And I had a lot of kids questioning themselves, you know, it says Adam and Eve in the Bible, where's Adam and Steve? You know, where's Eve and Evelyn? So there was a problem where I felt like I was looking in the mirror. It was very much a young person coming up to me going, Brayden, I'm confused. I'm looking at the Bible. I don't feel that way. I don't know how to tell my parents. Can you help me work this out? So I helped so many kids do that and, you know, tell them that, you know,

Jesus loves you no matter what. You know, he loves everyone. You're all made in your image, which is what I truly believed. And I also believed at that point in my life that I could pray the gay away. If you haven't caught on, audience, I identify as a gay male. But back then I seriously thought from religious perspectives and the doctrine I was following that I could literally pray it away and then it would go.

I would be straight. I would be what I would consider back then normal. Even though I was telling these kids, you know, God loves you no matter what, be your best self, live your best life and helping them embrace whether they were a lesbian or a gay guy or whatever. And so that became slowly chipping away at me because I was suppressing a part of myself.

I was lying to myself. And that became a challenge. So I decided to leave the church. And in that moment, I had a really supportive family, still do to this day. They don't judge me for anything I've done. They, you know, I'm just lucky to have family that don't look at me and go, I can't believe you've done this with your life because I've had quite a colourful journey.

But I ended up leaving the church and diving into the gay scene of Sydney. So left the church, had no sense of belonging except for home, but in the real world, didn't really know who I was and dived into the gay scene. And I thought, well, you know what? You only live once. I kind of felt like one of those people that do Rumspringer when they leave Mormon communities and they get that one chance to get out there, experience the world and decide if they're going to come back. I seriously felt like i did the same thing i dived into the gay scene if i could lick it snort it fuck it or write it i did it um that sounds like a shirt i know i should i should put it on yeah uh but i literally if i could do it i did it and for six

months straight i did everything i went from being a nightclub manager to a bartender to a drag queen to an escort. Because I didn't really know where I fit. And I tried to fit in. And that was the biggest mistake of my life was trying to fit in again to another sub sector, which I tried so hard to do in the religious community, but I didn't. So moving to the queer community and trying to fit in, when you can have a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B, I eventually worked out who I was. But trying to fit in was a big mistake. So that's kind of where it took me with my marketing career, because I thought, well, I'm quite animated. I like the arts. I'm quite switched on. But in that process of learning my identity and becoming comfortable with my sexuality, I'm quite switched on. But in that process of learning my identity and becoming

comfortable with my sexuality, I met so many different people that were struggling with their marketing in the adult industry that were getting turned away by larger mainstream or, you know, everyday marketing and PR firms. And I couldn't understand why. I just see it as a product and a service. I don't see it as anything other than something, it's a business with a problem or a person with a problem that needs help to develop a strategy to grow their brand. And so I did my research. No one wanted to touch them.

So I said, well, fuck it, I'll do it. So Sweet Release Agency came out of that. Access Global shortly followed. But it was more so I was so passionate about identifying my sexuality and being comfortable with that and being comfortable with myself and understanding myself that I developed a way to attribute that back to an industry that I feel in some capacity saved my life. Because, yeah, in that moment of leaving church and then diving

into the adult industry if you kind of draw that parallel um they're very much two different worlds and i sense a belonging from being indoctrinated to be you know everyone's a family we all believe the same thing let's break bread together to going into the adult industry, everybody's fighting for their own life, doing their own thing. Everybody's out there creative. There's very little overlap with similarities between an escort and an adult business or a nightclub. So there's a lot of polarity in the adult industry.

And it was a very sink or swim experience. But I eventually found my tribe within that sector. And I definitely feel I owe part of my life to that industry because it did help me embrace my sexuality and my identity without going through that depressive phase of who am I. So, yeah, that's the part of the whole thing. And then you've turned it into a business. So there you go.

And then I turned it into a business. Exactly. And it's thriving and i get to help heaps of people in the adult industry we've just clocked over 5 000 clients internationally uh yeah so it's not what i expected if you asked me over a decade ago would i go from being a youth minister to a sex worker with a marketing and PR firm, I'd probably be like, nah, but you're clearly on something and I want stuff. But, yeah, it's an exciting journey. Well, everything is marketing when it really comes down to it, whether you're selling sex or whether you're, you know, selling Coca-Cola. It's all marketing. And it's usually all based around sex anyway when it comes down to it.

I mean, you're sexier if you drink Coca-Cola and, you know, it's all marketing and it's all usually all based around sex anyway when it comes down to it i mean you're sexier if you drink coca-cola and you know every they're all fashion designed to make you look sexier so that you can have more sex i mean sex sells what's what's is that the old uh adage in the business it does and that's they're funny going back just quickly on that point it works in the mainstream arena it doesn't work in the adult arena so so even though i was immersed in the adult side of things i knew that sex sold making things sexy and attractive like selling cars for example usually car ads in modern car ads is always a hot chick driving a hot rod and you're like yeah i want the car because it comes with the girl but

it doesn't unfortunately but the ad makes you believe that that's the lifestyle you're going to have. But in the adult sector, if you're promoting a sex toy, you don't necessarily want to see the sex toy in action before you purchase it. So you wouldn't really find it sexy watching someone insert something where you want to put it, but, you know, it's not your body. So there is this weird divide between the two where i never thought about this but now i'm thinking about it you know sex doesn't sell sex but the person does so people

fall in love with brands look at apple for example apple looks at ways to integrate its brand into everyday life sex workers are the same way it's all about buying the narrative of that particular provider or it's the brand that you fall in love with if you're trying to toss up between Adam and Eve sex toys in the US or Love Honey in the UK. So you're buying a brand and a feeling. You're definitely buying a feeling. You're definitely buying a feeling.

There you go. Totally. That's the joke of the show. So talk to us about some of the things that both of the companies do. I know there's some SEO here, retail marketing. Tell us about some of that and how you help clients. And what are some of the things that when clients come to you, they're really struggling with these days and you help them overcome?

Totally. We've accessed global because it is everything except the adult industry, that one there is very much oriented towards helping businesses reach their potential. And that's focusing on areas such as taking a small business that has an idea or got stuck along the way and then working on their business plan

and their strategy to then obviously build their brand. And that covers areas such as everything from to then obviously build their brand and that covers areas such as um everything from digital so creating a brand and identity because obviously like i said just before uh people buy an experience or a story and just having a pretty logo doesn't mean that people are going to go oh yeah i like that they want to know what you stand for and your values and and ultimately your why so when we look at branding, that's what we're looking at. We're looking at how do we create your why in your story.

Many clients, though, come to us for the digital side of things because in this day and age, everything's going digital. We've got a podcast, video cast show like Chris Voss, for example. Oh, there you go. There you go, see? So you've got your podcast show and that's online. So a lot of clients are now moving in this online direction but because it's moving so quickly keeping up with the changes in the industry and

the trends and working out what social media platform to be on and how to make the best use of email marketing to communicate with their customers and build loyalty and retention they're things that clients come to us for on a regular basis because they know they want to grow their business, but they don't necessarily know how. And then when we look at their business plan or we look at their particular goals, we're like, okay, you need a little bit of this and a little bit of that. So it's sometimes it's SEO and social. Sometimes it's a revamped business strategy from where to go. And other times it actually is a restructure of a business,

which we now focus on a lot, only because Access Global is now moving into more of a legal and accounting arena. Since I started it, it was very marketing and brand, just myself. Now there's a team of 12 working for me and with me. And we all look at different aspects of branding and business. So now it's more aligned with taking a business from start

to finish. Potentially there might be a buyout. There might be businesses looking to sell their business to another company to make a profit. We help businesses go from start to finish at Axis. That's essentially what we do. Very strategy heavy. But then once we get that right, we know we can, you know, failing to plan is planning to fail in the marketing world. So very much having that strategy and then lead with the creative once we know we've got a system that works. And we manage that from start to finish so clients don't have to worry about it. Sweet release, very much different. Sweet release is marketing, branding and PR.

It's where adult businesses and adult entertainers can increase more sales, focus on generating more fans, and build global exposure. In an industry that has very little support internationally, there's very small places and opportunities for businesses and entertainers to leverage their career or build their portfolio because Facebook and Instagram don't like adult businesses and adult entertainers. The rules are getting tighter, which means there's less places to advertise.

So we help businesses and entertainers navigate that. And I guess our core ethos is the fact that because I spent some time in the adult industry for over a decade as a sex worker myself, who's now retired, but spent that decade identifying myself and becoming who I am today. The team I've assembled are a team of sex workers that are CPAs and lawyers, marketers and branders that are still in the industry or retired, but have a background in multiple factors worldwide. And essentially, most of our clients, again, come to us for the digital, but a lot of them come to us for the publicity because we tend to find that an adult entertainer, there's a shelf life,

there is an expectancy of age in the adult industry. Once they hit 30, it's kind of like, okay, you've expired. Unless you're a name, then you'll continue going. I guess I've expired, eh? Expired a long time ago. Yeah, it's like, oh, shit, I'm over the age of 30. I hope to change careers. It's time to go and get a job at Costco.

That's why I took up the podcast. Or McDonald's. I got too old for the adult industry. But yeah, that's our clients. So they'll come to us to develop marketing plans, PR plans, sit on a phone call with them, look at things in a different light and try and develop a strategy for them. But a lot of performers that want to get out of the industry, they might have spent a few years on Naked News, for example, in Toronto.

And we have worked with a few of them and they want to pivot. They're like, I've always been the Naked News anchor. I now want to position myself as a thought leader. How do I do that? How do I get out of this industry by not leaving it and quitting because I hated it. I loved it. It shaped who I am, but how do I use that in the mainstream arena? And so we try and find angles to pivot and position entertainers as thought leaders, whether it's sexual health, wellness, relationship advice, it's looking at areas of their career and finding a new way for them to build their brand. So that way it becomes sustainable. And then with businesses, it's again, the digital space. Adult businesses struggle a lot.

Like I said, social media, not an option. And the rules are getting tighter. So looking at different ways to advertise online, not just Pornhub or RedTube or any of those sites you might be checking on your lunch break at work or when you get home. Never heard of them. Neither have I. I just Googled them. But, you know, that's what we help them do.

We find their audience, we find a way to resonate with their audience in different ways and using different areas of marketing that a lot of them just aren't familiar with uh seo constantly changes people are like what the hell is that and we have to explain and go into a lot of detail i'm not doing that on this interview because it's so involved um but let's just say that search engines and social and digital, for every other business other than the adult sector, you've got a guidebook to follow. In the adult industry, it is legally ratified and restricted, which means that constantly myself and my team have to look

into laws and read legislation and read the fine print in a different perspective and go, okay, is this going to stop or prevent our client from growing in the adult industry? Because the rules aren't written for the adult sector. If you look at Google ads or search engines, it never talks about the adult industry. It never says what the restrictions are. It just says, if you're an adult business, no, it doesn't specify exactly what you can and can't do. And so our clients struggle to navigate that, which is why they come to us because we've spent the last 10 years refining that and still have to, every country has a different rule and things change. What I can in the us i can't do in australia what i can do in europe i can't do in singapore so it's very it's it's disconnected so that's what we help our clients navigate as best we can and things change rapidly so we might start a plan today and then have to can it and start again the next day but that's what we help our clients do there

you go uh so branding consultancy digital marketing strategy website design public relations management recruitment graphic design multimedia seo and events uh how big does uh you know somebody's out there listening in the audience for either of your companies how big do they need to be uh Do they need to have a certain sales evaluation or be around for a while? Or can they go from? No, not at all. We take on startups right through to large-scale companies. We've got clients that have $10 million a month budgets.

We've got clients that have, that's not paying us. That's just their company budgets. But I wish. But, you know, we have small clients that are paying you know anyway a couple hundred to a couple thousand a month and they might be a startup that just needs a strategy and someone to hold their hand and walk them through the process um and depending on the size of the business we like to break things into smaller parts so rather than go okay i'm a new business. I need a marketing firm. What do I do? We don't just go, okay, well, you need this, this, this, this, and this. Here's a package,

take it or leave it. This is how much it is. And then the client's like, I can't afford that. I'm a startup. So we're like, okay, we get it. Cause when I started my companies, we were a startup. So I get that you need to break it into smaller pieces and scalability for growth is more important than just hitting the ground running and putting a whole bunch of money into everything and hoping that the spaghetti sticks. It's not a feasible strategy for a startup. So what we tend to do is look at the big picture. What's your end goal? How are we going to get there? Break it into smaller parts, three, six or 12 month duration.

And then in that timeline, work out what services are really going to get you there or at least generate sales and brand awareness so you've got more visibility. And then we add on other stuff as we go if the client wants to. So it's more about flexibility. We're more about building a relationship with our clients and maintaining that relationship rather than just go here's what we're going to do and you have no import i'm i'm very much a firm believer in in collaborative approaches to marketing and pr we get a lot of clients that have worked with other agencies before that they are used to being

told what to do and they just say yes yes yes and then they come to us with negative experiences from that and say look i don't i don't want to work that way because we got no results and i just assumed they did the work and then 6-12 months pass and they don't get what they pay for or you know it's not what they expected so i'm very much about realistic expectations realistic budgets, and collaboration, which is key, I guess, in a relationship just as much as it is in business. So their success is our success. And that's kind of how we look at every relationship. And sometimes we have to say no, because the clients come to us with completely unrealistic expectations of a

budget of a dollar. And, you know, they want the whole enchilada. Maybe as big as Coca-Cola for a dollar. Yeah, I want to be this and I've only got this. And sometimes we have to have that harsh conversation and go, look, here's the business plan template. Here's a marketing plan template. Go away and do your homework. Then come back to us when you've realized that that's a bit too

much for you at this early stage uh we try and do it politely but sometimes they don't take no for an answer so we have to really rub their nose in it but i'd rather guide them towards success just as much as i've found in my career and with my companies then go and tell them the wrong shit which they end up stuck with a brand or a business they hate, or in a relationship with a firm that tells them what they want to hear, and then doesn't deliver, which I am definitely not in that category. I'm very much color spade a spade. So yeah, fair's fair. Yeah, definitely. So let me ask you this, because I used to get this a lot in marketing from people, especially with the dawn of the social media era.

They're like, you know, why do I need to pay a marketing expert to do this? Like, why can't I just hire Joe, my Gen Z son, who, you know, he does TikTok pretty well. Why can't I just hire him to do it? What are the downsides of, you know, different things like that? Or, you know, and the upsides of paying a firm like yours, firms like yours, where, you know, they know what to do. What's the downside and upside there? Because some people say that a lot. They're like, you know, I can do this myself.

Why do I need to pay anybody? We get asked that quite a bit, and I totally get it. I have family involved in my business today. Back when I started, I was a firm believer on not involving family, so there's no arguments because it can get tedious, right? So you have a disagreement, they're involved in your business, and then something goes wrong, and you're like, oh, well, you fucked it up, and then it becomes a war.

And then you don't have any family anymore because you pissed them off and you fired them. You fired everybody. So I'm lucky to have my parents are in the accounting and I guess strategy department with my business. So I'm shit at numbers and maths. I'm good at stats with marketing stuff, but I'm not so good with billing and invoicing and that sort of stuff.

So I give it to them. But that keeps my mind focused on conversations like this that I do have with my clients about why I shouldn't hire a family and why I should hire a professional. Now, I'm not going to tell people on this podcast to just not, you know, ignore the elephant in the room and not use ChatGPT, for example. In actual fact, you know, in actual fact, you could type a lot of shit into that software and it will give you some general guidance. But what it won't do and what family

can't do if they're not, you know, qualified and know all the red tape or the holes that they could fall into along the way and what ChatGPT doesn't do is it doesn't use critical thinking. Now, marketing and PR people are critical thinkers. We analyze what we look like. Even today, I analyzed what this would look like, what jewelry to wear, what necklace would go with this air pod on that side and took off gold jewelry. Wow. You dress yourself for the show?

Exactly. Yeah, yeah. I'm going to demand this from all damn guests. Dress appropriately for the show or else. Exactly. You don't want shit lighting or shit wardrobe. The shit's online forever.

I thought about this fashion that I brought to the show too. I like that. You stand out, you've got the white beard and the white hat. It's working for you. There you go. It looks very truckerish. Yeah, yeah. It looks like I'm a trucker at a trailer show or trailer park show. Yeah, I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

Okay, well, thank you. Thank you. I'll tell that to anybody who tries to correct me. Thank you. I appreciate that. You're welcome. But, yeah, on family, I would always advise that hiring a professional, what you're getting is a strategy that works.

And it's a tried and tested approach. So when you hire someone that knows what they're doing, there's less room for error. Although we do get clients that look at us and go, oh, I don't believe in your strategy. It's not going to work. It's like, well, if you push back on that and something falls over, I'm not going to wear the liability for that because I know that what we do works um so our clients tend to listen because they've got proof there's some you know there's some weight there behind what we say so we've got stats on clients in multiple industries we know what works we know what doesn't and sometimes people that are good at social media

don't they're good at the creative they know they've got to post two times a day they don't know what time specifically but they know how to put shit online. Doesn't mean they know what works. They might have got a few likes a few times with one hashtag when you might need 10 hashtags, for example. So it's always good to hire a professional, even if you just hire them for strategy. And then you go on, you know, outsource all the creative to some person on Fiverr. Like I'm not someone that's going to say, look,

cut corners where you can't cut corners. I would never say to a client, look, do it all with us if you have a budget of nothing. If you prepare to invest in a plan that works and that's what gives you the ability to grow your business and then you choose to use cheaper service providers that can do the creative or you jump on canvas and canva and you learn how to do that yourself great i'm not going to charge you for shit you can do

yourself so i am all about that balance between what you can do versus what you need professionals to do um and hiring us gives you that as i guess it's my my come to there is really you're paying for a strategy and you're paying for a system that works um and yeah okay every business is different but between access and sweet release we've worked with pretty much every industry like i said including the adult sector and we know the i guess the tipping points of how far you can push something before you either hambridge sales or you lose customer value or interest in your product or your brand. So they're the things you're paying for. You're paying for expertise that are quite in-depth

and backed by research and proof, and then you're paying for professional guidance around it. But definitely, if you can do it yourself, do it yourself. And if you want to use ChatGPT to write some blog blog articles just type it in there and it'll spit it out the problem you'll have though is it'll never be tailored specifically to your business and sometimes it will miss the mark on who your customers are yeah and so you end up with regurgitated stuff that everybody else has been typing into that software to then put online so there is this risk of just spitting out words out of that software, which is great.

It's great to kind of develop an idea and ask it a question and go, oh, I didn't think of that, and then do some further research yourself. I wouldn't rely on software like that to do your whole business plan and to do all your marketing. It doesn't give you the nuances you need and the research you need at this early stage in its development for an AI software to build your business to a successful and sustainable level. It'll give you baseline knowledge. And sometimes

you need the depth in that to really know if it's going to work. It just spits out, do this, do this, do this, do this. But it doesn't say the risk associated with doing um everything so you're paying for strategy in a brain essentially when you hire professionals in in any sector plus thousands of hours i mean you guys been around for 10 plus years yeah you put you know so much learning into this education and and you know speed and value uh uh of being able to access quality data. You know, you can shotgun stuff, but you can blow a lot of money wasting on stuff. You know, I've done advertising campaigns where you're just like, well, there just went a boatload of money out the back door that, you know,

I guess we didn't need that. That failed miserably. Nice try. Yeah. You know, I mean, you can do all the uh what you call it or you uh trial and error that gets expensive after a while and it's sometimes it's better calling a professional so uh brayton how can people reach out to you and uh and and and talk to you about potentially doing business with you yeah so we've accessed global people can can head to www.axis.global.com.

Sorry, I'm giving you the wrong domain name there, aren't I? It is accessglobal.co. We were purchasing that domain yesterday. That's why it's in my head. We were trying to buy it. That's why it's in my head. Accessglobal.co. So A-X-I-S global.co is our domain name for mainstream.

For Sweet Release Agency, it's Sweet Release, as it sounds, like sweet as in a lolly and release as in to let go, but for a completely different reason in the adult industry, if you get what I mean, dot agency. And if you're trying to find me online, just try and smash your keyboard with Braden Rees. You'll eventually get the spelling right. Otherwise, it might be on this podcast somewhere.

There you go. There'll be links on the Chris Varshow. Yeah, yeah. And you'll be able to find me there and you'll be able to reach me directly. If you go through the two businesses, it'll go through my sales team and business development consultants. If you go directly to me, it'll land in my inbox and you'll eventually get to the top of the inbox and I'll reply. But they're the best ways to reach me or stalk me on LinkedIn. I'm always up for adding a new connection.

Well, it's been wonderful and insightful and fun to have you on. Thank you very much for coming on the show. No worries. Thanks for having me, Chris. It's a pleasure. Hopefully we've shared some knowledge today with the listeners that, you know, that they go, oh, I learned something here. Or they want to reach out to me, even better yeah reach out and check them out and all that good stuff build a better business you know being an entrepreneur uh that you know you need all you need all hands on deck especially with what goes on online and you know so many different places

linkedin youtube twitter so many different places the average facebook and and you've got to know the rules if you know facebook banned you if you don't know the rules and all that stuff going on. So thank you very much for coming to the show. We really appreciate it. Nice. Thanks for having me. There you go. And thanks to my audience for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com for just Chris Foss. YouTube.com for just

Chris Foss. Give us five-star reviews over there on iTunes and LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, you know, all the damn places places for the Chris Foss Show. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time.