f
Spotify
Amazon Music
Apple PodcastsIn this podcast episode, Founder & Host Dean Denny, discusses the importance of personal development and spirituality in entrepreneurship. He emphasizes that the success of a business is closely tied to the personal growth of its founder. Dean reflects on his own experiences with his business, Owendenny Digital, and shares the ups and downs he has faced over the past 3-5 years, including losing clients due to team members’ mistakes, learning from early mistakes, and finding success in targeting specific niches such as SaaS companies and AI-led service providers.
In this episode, you will learn:
- The importance of personal development and spirituality in the entrepreneurial journey.
- How the growth and success of a business is closely tied to the personal growth of its founder.
- Insights from Dean’s own experiences in building Owendenny Digital, including wins, losses, and lessons learned.
- The significance of making personal breakthroughs to overcome business challenges and reach the next stage of growth.
- The ups and downs of entrepreneurship and how to handle them with resilience.
- The long-term perspective in evaluating business growth and success.
- How Owendenny Digital grew from a one-man operation to a team with global presence.
- Lessons learned from mistakes and successes in SEO and direct response advertising strategies.
- Inspiration and insights on nourishing the heart and soul of the entrepreneur for sustained business growth.
Tune in now! Tune in and be inspired!
Timestamps:
[00:00:37] – Nourishing entrepreneurs’ hearts and souls.
[00:01:32] – Founder’s personal growth limits business.
[00:02:12] – Personal growth limits business success.
[00:02:47] – “Complete Entrepreneur: Long-Term Success”
[00:03:45] – Team’s journey: Hell to Dream.
[00:06:25] – “Pain is strength emerging: Embrace it.”
[00:08:38] – “Embrace failure, do the reps.”
[00:09:12] – “Push through for best version of you.”
[00:09:45] – Triumphing over adversity to succeed.
[00:10:18] – “Arm yourself with knowledge.”
[00:10:34] – “Keep pushing forward; persist.”
[00:10:49] – Grow business: Wake up and act!
[00:16:25] – Achieving the Dream: Sacrifice.
[00:16:58] – “Sacrifice to make it happen.”
[00:18:06] – “Persevere and Progress Steadily.”
[00:18:25] – Believe and keep going.
[00:19:10] – Strategies for business success.
Note: This podcast episode is available for free on Spotify, Apple Music, and the Owendenny.com/blog website.
—
Hey everyone. How are you going? It’s Dean here and welcome to Open Source Growth, the #1 source for Software Company Marketing, direct response advertising strategies and anything you need to blow your business up online. It’s all here. It’s all free. And it’s all accessible either via Spotify, apple music, or directly through our transcripts on the blog at Owendenny.com/blog.
Now. Uh, this, this podcast today, this one’s going to come directly from the heart and I’m starting to see my Saturday afternoon podcasts take on an entirely different direction and that direction is to nourish the heart and soul of the entrepreneur. And I think it’s important that despite this being a marketing podcast, that we fail that, well that we don’t fail to neglect the spiritual side of business and I don’t mean, um, you know, like banging crystals together or, you know, sleeping on pyramids or anything like that when it comes to spirituality, I’m not talking about the Wu wu but I’m talking about your soul and being able to become the best version of you and the personal development side of things.
You know, It’s really fascinating in business. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a small business or a large business, the business is 100% limited by the founder who runs it every single time and their own personal growth. And what I need to really emphasize here is that your business, where it is today is almost entirely due to the person you are or the person you are becoming and your business will hit a ceiling when you fail to evolve through and make those personal breakthroughs to the next stage. Like I know we hear guys like Tony Robbins or Brian Tracy, or Lez brown. Um, Ray DeLeo, any of those cats talk about, you know,
Uh, businesses being limited by your own personal growth. And it is entirely true. Like don’t get me wrong though. You know, some businesses maybe., maybe making massive revenues and the person’s never done any growth. They may be on a growth rocket, and that is entirely true. But. You know, In the long run, however.
It all aggregates out to who’s done the most work. Who’s become the most complete entrepreneur. And how are they handling the ups and downs of the entrepreneurial journey? And it’s, it’s one of those things that you can’t look at the short term, because the short term really doesn’t tell the true picture.
It’s when you look at it over. Uh, multiple decades or multiple years at a time. That’s when you start to see what’s truthfully going on. Now. Where I want to take this podcast today is that, you know, over the past, 3-5 years, you know Owendenny Digital has been a truly unique business in the sense that.
You know, It was 5+ years ago, just myself. Uh, it was just myself and a laptop and a dream. And now. The business has, you know, 10+ employees. We’ve got team members in New Zealand, in Sydney, in Australia, um, in the Philippines, in India. Uh, we’ve even got some members out in Africa as well. And of course, we’ve got Tim out in, um, New Zealand in Wanaka, living at living the dream, like.
I’m so proud of our team, but you know, Having this business go through its ups and downs and growing. It’s been like, hell. And.
You know, there’s been times when we have lost massive clients due to. Team members. Not properly doing their work and we’ve lost huge recurring revenues because of this. Um, we’ve lost a massive clients because we’ve made fatal flaws, um, and fatal mistakes. And we’ve learned from those mistakes very early on in our agency’s career.
Um, you know, we’ve had massive wins. We’ve we’ve struggled with SEO. We’re now starting to master SEO. Um, we’ve struggled with direct response advertising for our own agency. Then we’ve had some runaway campaigns we’ve targeted plumbers. We’ve targeted painters. We’ve targeted tradies. We’re now targeting software companies. We’re onto a winner with SaaS companies and AI-led SaaS companies and other software, uhm, related service providers, you know, like we’re starting to really find our straps, but. You know, every single time. Um, Every single time we step three steps forward. There will be a time when we step two steps backwards. And what I want to say to you on this podcast and give you the inspiration.
Um, he or the motivation? I’m not sure. With what the appropriate context here is, is that. You know, through your business, it’s all going to just come down to the number of reps you do. It’s like going to the gym. You know, if you want big biceps, you not only do you have to lift heavy things, you have to do it frequently and you have to build the intensity over time.
And you may lift, you may lift things with your arms in the incorrect way that may lead in injuries, but then you have to tweak your technique and then lifts lighter again. So then when you increase the weights, you get better and therefore you get better results. And it’s the same with business growth, software business growth, e-commerce business growth.
Agency business growth, fish and chip business growth. It doesn’t matter, but there’s this really fascinating expression that the Navy seals have. Um, you know, they’ve got a few, you know, one of my favorites was back in the day. Um, you know, pain is weakness, leaving the body. That was always, uh, an absolute banger, a rip snorter.
To throw down when you’re, you know, riding along on your bike and riding up a massive hill. Um, or, you know, you’re running up a hill or you’re doing something really, really tough, and you’re just trying to be like, yeah, embrace. Embrace the pain , yeah it’s awesome. But there’s this amazing one. And you see, and I think this is the most important of their quotes that just.
You hear Jocko, Willink and David Goggins spew out all the time. It’s that like, everybody wants to go to heaven, but no one’s willing to die. And, you know, you have to push through hell. In order to see what heaven looks like in the business world.
You know, I’m about to, you know, sit outside and smoke a glorious Cuban cigar. Um, I don’t encourage smoking, but it’s one of those things that I like to do maybe once a week or once a fortnight. Or even once a quarter to, you know, truly reflect. On, you know, the week or the day or the month or the quarter that I’ve had, what can I change? What did I really love? What, what am I so pumped about and what am I so excited about? And.
How can I embrace? Everything that’s happened in this month and reinvested into next month or quarter or week. To get more out of life and more out of my business. Some. Uh, relationships and, um, time with my dog or one of my friends, whatever. Right. Um,
And.
Like, all I want to say is that, you know, the better you get at dealing with this pain. Um, whether it be like a hiring pain or your dealing with, you know, investing all this money in marketing and you don’t seem to be going anywhere. Um, or you just keep on, you know, you just keep on plowing through rejection after rejection, after rejection phone call.
Look just believe me, it does get easier and it does get better because every single time you fail, that’s there’s nothing more information rich, than, you know, chipping your teeth on the concrete and failing. So. When it comes to doing the reps, don’t be afraid of failing because the failure. That.
Information rich, emotionally weighted. Um, That emotionally weighted. How do I say it? Events in your life will serve you. So, so, well, if you just keep going. So.
If you are struggling with your marketing right now, or if you’re struggling with your sales or your team members and whatever. Believe me, you just have to push through it. There’s no easy way to put it. Because when you do push through the howl and you, you feel like your heart’s getting ripped out or you’re waking up and tossing it over and turning over in the middle of the night with a cold sweat.
You know, these are the challenges the universe is providing you with. To become the best version of you. Just look at those guys, like the Elon Musks of the world or the Jeff Bezos’s or the. Oh, the Hoff Ramon’s or whatever. Right. These guys have overcome insurmountable challenges like. Some massive, massive challenges and had to grow to the highest of their abilities to become the people that they are today. And look at them now. The most successful businessmen on the planet are those who rise to challenges and push. Push push and push through. By becoming the best version of themselves. You can have game experience, which is super valuable. You can also front load yourself with all the information you need. So when you get challenged in the game,
That you can draw on your own resources. You can have mentors. But again, the key thing here is get yourself in the game, experience the failure. Get back onto the plate. Swing again, change your approach, change your strategy and just keep on going. You have to keep pushing forward because your business growth won’t happen on its own accord.
You know, There are so many gurus out there in the marketing space, which make it to be, make it look so easy just to grow your business. Oh yeah. Just. It’s to include my system. I’m going to book you 30 calls guaranteed. Like.
For goodness sakes, you need to wake up and knock it. Sweet. W swindled by these bright, shiny objects. There are principles at play. There are you. Strategies and there’s there’s mindsets and there’s, um, you know, understanding the human condition. There are so, so many things at play. You don’t want to get stuck just….
Obsessing over the next bright, shiny object. You know, we all call it bright, shiny object syndrome nowadays. And like, if you keep on obsessing or looking for that quick hit, you’re going to fall. Into a very predictable pattern of oh bright, shiny object syndrome. Try this for a bit and then game over. It’s not going to work out for you.
But what happens if you just stuck to the fundamentals instead? You could just be making you 20 sales calls a day, tracking the data every single day. Running 20 to a hundred dollars worth of Facebook ad traffic trying to generate 20 or so marketing qualified leads. Every single day using those 20. So marketing qualified leads and pumping them through a nurturing sequence to get them onto a sales call. You could be optimizing that sales sequence every single week by evaluating the HubSpot CRM data.
Then you could be tweaking the calendar pages to get more people on the sales calls. You could then tweak the script. You could then figure out what’s the best approach to selling your system. And guess what? All of a sudden, you know, the things that work start working for you because the grass is never greener.
On the other side, the grass is only greener where you water it. And through that. Experience of pushing through the reps. You’ll get really good at these things. Believe it or not. We sucked a creating content up until last year until I made the best hire in my marketing agency’s career. Other than my wife, of course, can’t say that.
Um, but, and so we brought Kathleen on in our team. Our organic marketing sucked because it relied too heavily upon me. And I was too busy, fulfilling in this business. Now we have Kathleen in the business and we’ve got a bigger team and we’ve got Hannah writing copy and Tim developing strategy and Sam working on campaign strategy and running media, um, and Kartik and doing the conversion tracking. We have, um, you know, Harry and Amie doing the landing pages and the web development.
Like the only thing that was getting in the way was me. But. Now that we’ve got an organic content marketing engine, we’re tweaking it. Some of our original podcasts were awful. Some of our original posts to. Facebook. We’re just completely terrible. Uh, but you know, it’s through this iterative process that you get better at these things.
You know, it’s through this Edward of processes that you start ranking for high intent, commercial and transactional terms. For your business, which leads to people, booking sales appointments. Like clockwork that you don’t even have to pay for the traffic all free on organic SEO or you start getting more people listening to your podcast. All of a sudden a hundred people have listened to your podcast of all time. It’s amazing. There are a thousand, then 10,000, then a hundred thousand. All of a sudden you’ve got 10,000 subscribers.
It’s all a process you have to keep going. You have to keep failing and pushing. But. What I am saying here is that don’t just think that this is a massive rah, rah talk all just about getting you. To do more. I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying, keep going, test and measure. See what works. See what doesn’t and change your approach again, again and again.
And then scale what works. But at the same time, what you need to do as well is just read all the information. You can get your hands on, around being great, or making your business great in this particular area, figure out what you need to do from an SEO perspective. So your business ranks effectively on Google, get your direct response advertising efforts dialed in.
So you’re generating marketing, qualified leads or sales qualified leads or selling people on exciting offers. Get your sales game down, pat. So people. Feel comfortable with you and they trust you. And they know that what you’re gonna be able to provide them is exactly what they want. Remember sales, all it is.
Is a transfer of energy. A lot of the time. Get your, get your management right, get your processes, right. Get your systems, right. Keep testing and tweaking in all sorts of crazy stuff. Because it’s going to help you in the long run.
’cause guys, you know, If it was easy, everyone would have a business. Everybody would be a millionaire. Everyone would be rolling around or Ferrari’s and big yachties and, you know, smoking cigars like Andrew Tate thinking it was the sickest shit in the world. But believe me, it’s not easy. And that’s why.
This whole entrepreneur successful human being thing is so appealing because people recognize how difficult it can be. So, if that is the dream, if that is what you want or your unique form of. You know, whether it be the American dream or the Dean Denny dream or the John Smith dream or my wife Hannah Gardner dream.
You know, you’ve got to know what your dream is and then do what you are willing to do. Like whether it be sacrifice or, you know, Put get carve time out of your day when things are uncomfortable to just show up and make it happen for yourself. Like. You need to, you know, be willing to sacrifice, to get this business to grow or, you know, to get your team to work or get your systems to work.
So. In all, this is a, um, Alright. I hope this has been a value to you because. Um, this is, this is encouraging message for you. If you are struggling with your business or you are having a down day that you just need to keep going, keep pushing one step in front of the other. Think of the analogy of your inner boat and you’re sailing across the Atlantic ocean and you’re trying to get to America and it’s foggy all the way. You know, the crazy thing about fog and storms and stuff like that is that you can’t see more than like 500 meters, but you can always see about five meters in front of the boat.
And the fact of the matter is that from where you are today to where you want to go. They will be no clear, direct, easy path. It will be a matter of trial and error and using the best form of foundations principles and scalable strategies to get you there. But believe me. It’s about putting one in front of the other.
Taking, you know, scraping yourself off the concrete and moving forward. Taking three steps forward, two steps back and hedging. They’re showing up every day. It’s going to happen for you. It’s just a map. I can’t tell you when your success will happen for you. But if you keep discipline and you keep going and you keep doing what you need to do.
Believe me it’ll happen a lot sooner than you think it happened a lot sooner for me. And. I tell you what if I didn’t keep going? I wouldn’t be here to have this message with you today. Well to share this message with you today. So again, guys, I thank you. So, so much for tuning in. This has been a damn right. Pleasure to share this 20 minutes with you.
This is a podcast. That’s all about reps. It’s about pushing through business growth. Hell. And using the very best marketing sales and systems strategies that you can implement today in your business to succeed. So. Pardon me, my dog is starting to make some noise outside. ZOE.
I’m going to leave it there. Thank you so much for tuning into open-source growth. My name is Dean Denny. I wish you farewell. Please stay well, be safe. And I’ll talk to you in a, and we’ll speak when we speak, I guess, love you all catch you soon.
CONNECT WITH US:
Connect with Dean Denny, host of Open Source Growth and Director at Owendenny Digital
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/deanowendenny/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deandenny/
Owendenny Digital, Australia’s #1 SaaS Marketing Agency
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/owendennydigital/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/owendennydigital
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/owendenny/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@owendennydigital
Website: https://www.owendenny.com
WORK WITH OWENDENNY:
Two options:
1 – If you *already* know you need an expert to help you build predictable and scalable customer acquisition solutions to scale your MRR. To get started, book a Free Growth Diagnostic using the link below and let us show you how we can help.
Get Your Free Growth Diagnostic
2 – If you *do not yet know* if you would benefit from our services, book a FREE 10-min chat with Dean directly and let’s talk about your business.
Have a friendly 10-minute chat with Dean
We look forward to hearing from you!
