Don Packett — Entrepreneur, Raconteur, Comedian, Audience Optimizer And Ruler Of His Own Free World

It's what's involved, like with you each and every Monday, and my special guest in studio this evening, I was going to say, is a man who needs no introduction, purely because I don't know how to introduce him, but I'm going to give it a best share, okay? He is the guy who likes to change stuff, and he's from a company called Missing Link. Don Packett. Hello, Don. Hey. It's good to have you here tonight. Thank you for having me. You guys have, and it's two of you that I'm aware of in the company at this. There were three of you, if you include Taryn, who's her nickname should be Supergirl. She really is. But it's you and Rich Mulholland, and you've got this company called Missing Link, and you do amazing things, and we're going to get into those amazing things. But before we do that, I want to get into finding out a little bit more about Don, because I got to tell you, you know, when you look on the website at the things you guys do and how the website's designed, I looked at that, and I thought these people are confused. That's crazy. I don't know. Weird, wacky, out there. I loved every bit of it. And we were just chatting off here, my fiancé is a graphic designer, she does instructional design as well.

And when I first looked at your website, a good many months ago, you've got to see what they're doing here. This stuff is amazing. So let's just talk about Don and then how on earth you got into where you are now doing what you do now, because there is, and I meant it when I said I didn't know how to introduce you because there's so many facets and so many things that you do personally, and that the company does. So let's go back in time and start off with a young Don. So the year was 1980. A young Don. So I grew up in Valcom, in the free state, and I, you know, we're talking earlier hindsight is 20/20. And you sort of realize the kinds of people that you connect with and connect yourself around were always people who are humorous, always people who saw the funny and lighter side of life, but also very importantly, I think, was the people who wanted to do different things and wanted to change things up. And I think I just kept that when I left Valcom and started exploring the wonderful world of Hao Teng and studied in Pretoria, I actually also studied a graphic design diploma. I know. I don't mean to brag. You're a lot better than a lot of graphic designers that I've heard of. Yeah.

They got a free copy of Photoshop and now they are a designer. Yeah. And then so that was just one part of it because I wanted to create video games when I left school. And when I started studying, I met this crazy guy through punk rock music, you know, growing up in Valcom, you are subject to the LPs of the now, that's what you call music two, three and four, and Dirty Dancing, thanks to my folks who are all amazing, and they built our home around music. And so music has always been a part of my life when I was studying, a very good friend of mine at the time took me to punk rock shows and I was just enamored by this music and this style of what people were doing and how they were operating. And one of these guys was quite vocal in the punk rock scene from a Joburg perspective was a guy called Richard and he ran around, we danced, we did some crazy things, he did kung fu in the middle of the dance floor while these guys are jumping up and down and playing music. Some people wouldn't call it music. I was going to say angry music perhaps, I've labeled it as angry music. Yeah, angry but profound because there was always a message behind it and everything was crystal clear and I love the idea of punk rock being something that was really saying things like they were, you know, everything else on the radio was talking about how love is amazing and how we need to all be connected and the world is your oyster and let's all join hands and be, you know, superb.

But punk rock actually spoke to me, everything is crap, we hate life and nothing works. Yeah, politicians are ludicrous and we should all just bury them in concrete caskets like Mugabe. So yeah, so Rich and I met through music and that was a solid foundation and over a period of time, I was working at another company, I was doing a bit of freelance work for him and then we eventually started working together and we started building a number of businesses so missing link is just one of the businesses that we operate in and it's been an amazing journey. Now, do you talk about punk music but I mean, do you play, do you play musical instruments at all? I used to, my father was in a band when he was growing up called Wrecked Angle, I don't know where he's from, my mom actually used to collect ticket money at the door and things like that so we always had music in the house, we had an amp and electric guitars and things so I used to play with the guitar, we had a piano in the house, I never really continued on the musical journey but it's always been a solid, solid part of my life. And then you moved on, I mean you did the graphic design thing but then you went into animation, you decided you'd quite like animation because normal graphic design is not difficult enough.

No. You want to go and do animation. Right, yeah, so I dabbled with that and then got bored with that and then I started taking those internet videos that people were emailing to your Hotmail account in the late 90s with a 2 meg limit so you would download the video of a cat running into a wall or a guy wheeling and sort of falling on a racetrack and then edited those to music like Limp Biscuit and Lincoln Park and other things and my 21st birthday I wanted to film because I was getting excited with video and we had an old VHS video recorder that my brother owned and I didn't know how to use it, I didn't know how to get the footage of this old tape onto a computer so I went to Rich who had this company that I knew they did presentations and videos and stuff and I said, "Dude, well, how do I make this work?" Long story short, I created my 21st video into a music video, he then got me to do another video for one of his customers, a Christmas video while I was there and then over a period of time we just started working together and I worked at Mr. Link for a long while, left for a little bit, came back, Rich and I then started another company and then we joined another one and then we started another one and then another one and now we've got six different businesses that we are connected to and still having loads of fun.

But they all kind of do interlink, although in some strange ways maybe, but they do all interlink, are you still very into the video, are you into the production side still? No, so I'm totally outside from an operational perspective, I'm still very much a resource for all of the businesses but more recently I've taken a step out of missing Link running the business and more working on all six of the businesses together with all of the champions of the businesses, that's my role now, giving as much love to all of the businesses as possible. Which is fantastic because you've done that, you've just had such an exciting, colourful life from the bit I've been able to pick up. Nothing too bad though because I'm quite good at doing the cyberstalking thing and I haven't been able to dig up much dirt on you, which is all roots for that matter. But now we're talking missing Link because that's kind of what you guys are known for. Unfortunately it's the oldest and biggest business. Missing Link, now what does Missing Link do? So Missing Link is a presentation strategy and conference business, that's what we do. So any time anyone needs to deliver a message to a live audience, that's where we play.

So you're doing your annual results or your sales conference or you're creating a pitch, whether it's for new business, for investment, whatever that may be, whenever you are presenting to a group, that's where we play. So I could come to you and say listen, I'm going to be doing this presentation, I have no idea how to be in front of microphone number one, it terrifies me. Number two, my staff all fall asleep when I do presentations and I get accused of death by PowerPoint. Can you help? Is that where you come in? Yeah, yeah, and I love, love when people say death by PowerPoint because it's so, it's poor PowerPoint. I mean, why does it get all the bad rap? I mean, it's just, it's this tool. Okay. Okay, death by Prezi. Either way. It's actually, you know what it is, David, it's death by presenter, PowerPoint is just the tool. Blaming PowerPoint for a bad presentation is like blaming the pan for a bad meal. You know, so it's not the pan that messed it up, it's the chef. And so if you are presenting, the only person to blame is we've outsourced the blame to PowerPoint. But it's all about the presenter. So we talk about three phases of building a new presentation. A presentation is written before it is designed, before it is delivered.

If you don't write it correctly up front, trying to make it look pretty is like lipstick on a pig. It's never going to work. So often, I mean, we've heard this before, you know, people find us up, ah, we need to help do this. Just make it look pretty. Yes. Okay. All right. We can put puppies in and stuff like that. I'm not sure it's going to help. No, no. If the message is wrong up front, no, no design is going to fix that. So, so you would design the presentation for a customer. Yeah. And write it first. Yeah. Write it, design it. And then do you show them how to present it if they need to? 100%. So we do, we do coaching on individual presentations that we've created. And we also do training for people that we haven't created presentations for, but we train our methodology. Look, we've been doing this since 1997. So we've been able to refine and build and grow this methodology to something that is so easy to remember and to implement that. So we've been doing it for, for a number of people, not just for presentations we've created ourselves. All right. You also, you've, you've mentioned MCing that you've done before and that you, you do speaking as well. Is that of your own bet or, or do you, are you in inverted comm as a professional speaker who has a bureau?

I actually don't work with any specific bureaus. I have been booked by some and no, but I'm generally a, a solo agent and it's all attached to either gigs that we work on that we could potentially add value or adding talks MC to other events that we have been booked for both myself and Rich to do these, which is a lot of fun. We're going to get into the rest of the business because there's some fascinating stuff you do, but I'm going to tell you, getting onto your website, okay, it's a bit like going down the rabbit hole because then you want to know more and you want to look, I've, I've spent a long time just kind of bouncing all over the place on that website. One of the things that we were doing and we like to give value back though. So you need to listen. We're giving away three copies of a fantastic book written by Richard Mulholland. It's called boredom slayer, a speaker's guide to presenting like a pro. We might only give away two of these, I'm just saying, but we're giving away three. Yes, I know. I will always make sure I give you guys what I can. And it looks like a fantastic book and attached to this is a year subscription. Yep. To our online platform called talk draw. So talk draw is what we do is we take the books that you read and turn them into talks that you deliver.

Okay. And I'll explain that. When we come back. Excellent. I'd love you to do that. It's fantastic. My special guest in studio from the missing link and a bunch of other places. It's done packet. I haven't even talked about the rest of the things we're going to have to fit this all into an hour. We'll be back with Don what's involved this Monday night. My special guest in studio from the missing link done packet. There was a little bit of Martha and the muffins and echo beach on mix 93.8. Why? Cause ain't nothing like a muffin. I keep telling everybody, uh, love mine. I like the brand ones specifically more of a poppy seed myself. So you've, you've done a lot and clearly you guys have fun. I mean you, you have fun doing what you do. Um, but so not only that, but you MC now we've spoken a little bit about that. Um, and now comedy as well to your most is our concerts, your most recent, uh, uh, sort of, you know, foray into things outside of the norm because you've been doing it for a few years now. Yeah. And then age was actually a big year for me, I, um, emcee'd my first, uh, a big, um, uh, music festival. I started standup comedy. I started, um, properly emceeing corporate gigs. I did my first talk.

Yeah. It was a, it was a very big year. I decided, well, you know, a music festival isn't enough. Let me just add all these other things and then put an extra mandate on my plate to make people laugh for money. Yeah. So that was interesting. To me, there's, there's many things in this world that I would tackle and, and, but there's two absolute phobias that I have. The one is having to stand up in front of an audience and be funny on command. Yeah. And the other one is video, stick a camera in my face. I turn into a gibbering idiot. I mean, I do all of the, the show, we spoke about it, the show's podcasts, I do other podcast things. I emcee, you can give me 6,000 people, 60,000 people, no problem. Talk to them. I'm an absolute flipping love it. Stick a camera in front of my face, watch what I, I turn into this. Which is bizarre though, because often what people find difficult with the camera is there's no, there's no tactile feedback from an audience, you know, there's not this, there's people looking at you, but you do this for a living on a microphone to a hundred thousand people. Yeah. I'm used to that kind of thing. Weirdo. And then camera a little while ago, um, I interviewed a guy who's actually got his own podcast, Matt Brown.

Yes. The Matt Brown Show. Do you know Matt? Yeah. And then the next second there was cameras in the studio and lights and I spent, if you ever go and see it, I thought it's there somewhere on the interwebs, I'm, I'm embarrassed. I haven't had a look, but Matt assures me it is. I literally sit, sat that whole interview covering my face, kind of talking into the microphone going, don't focus on the two men with cameras. Um, and I was stupid enough to invite him back. He did the same thing. Right. Yeah. But, uh, yeah, but brilliant, brilliant. Matt certainly knows his stuff, his little kung fu, very nice. But there seems to be this, this, this trend now in South Africa of, of this creativity of this, having fun of us celebrating being South Africans amidst all the doom and gloom and everybody's leaving and every other country is better than this one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, there is this undercurrent of us coming into our own. Do you feel that? I mean, you deal with corporates all the time. Oh yeah. For sure. And one thing that we definitely do have is an absolute and constant, uh, energy and positive energy because, um, if you walk around moping and complaining, it's your choice. You know, it's often asked us actually at a meeting earlier, uh, we were talking about stuff and then people complained about this stuff and I love this line from a guy called Colin Brown.

He runs a, uh, a business called the happy sandpit to know Colin well, he's been on our show too. Yeah. Okay. So he talks about culture and one of Colin's favorite lines or my favorite lines of Colin is you deserve the people that you have, right? And it's the same as you deserve the people around you. It's your choice. So if you don't like it change, but so that's what I decided to keep people around me that are amazing and people do, I suppose because we like to push boundaries, people also call us on our bull. Um, uh, my wife, for example, she's, uh, my biggest critic, but that that's an amazing thing because if I, if I tell her a joke that I'm playing with and she laughs, I know it's going to be gold because she's, as she, she, she absolutely tells it how it is and makes me better. Yeah. She'd look at you and go, well, it's quite crap actually. Right. Exactly. But I, I have that with, with, with my fiance, she's sort of the grounding element cause you know, I'll, I'll get the whole thing and I'll do something well and I'll be strutting around like a peacock. And then she goes, listen, Donna, just only as good as the last like thing that you've done, everybody make like a shepherd, calm the flock down.

And then it's like, okay, got it back. Okay. Fine. It's a good thing. It's a good thing. For sure. Because otherwise my ego would probably run riot. No, absolutely. And I would have, you know, very little, there'd be lots of fluff and candy, but very little substance. So, uh, I always get encouraged to go for the substance side of things. So, so you've, you, you do comedy what, okay, willingly, which is still scary to me, but you do that. Do you have regular gigs to people or is this something that is an offshoot of what you do? Yeah. So comedy helps dictate a number of other things that I do. So from speaking to MC to training to facilitation to, you know, strategic stuff, whatever that is, all of those different entities have different mandates, but they help assist the next one. So if I speak, the, every talk helps me develop something better for MC and every MC I do help me develop something better for training and training helps me develop something better for comedy. And then it slowly goes around and everything helps each other because they're, they're similar frames, but you just have different mandates. Because one of the fascinating things that you guys do and I've seen mentioned and I've heard talk of is the whole concept and everybody's going, Oh, it's new.

It's revolutionary storytelling. Yay. We missed everybody. It is so old and so primal, but storytelling and entertainment. If you entertain people with your stories, do you find that, that, that storytelling entertainment thing just makes everything stick so much better? Well, so stories help if they are contextual, right? An allergies, metaphors that help sell whatever idea you're trying to deliver. And I'm bringing it back to presentation perspective because people talk about go tell a story and then you'll win them over. They're like, wow, what rubbish. It's not about a story. It's about the right story to get them into the right frame of mind. And then you move into why you're actually there because anytime you deliver a presentation, you're there to change minds. It's the only reason to, you know, to spend the time and resources. So if you're not getting them contextually there using a relevant story, then you need to not only just tell a story, you need to sell a story. And that's putting them into the picture as the hero of the story. And that's completely different. And we're not just telling stories, we're selling the biggest story. You see now, for a little while there, it's been about a month, two months.

I was so proud of myself because one of the things that we do in a new venture that we've just started, which is the Persuasion Academy, is I called it and I thought I'd coined it called storytelling. Right. Apparently not. No, we're a team here. Back to the drawing board. We should chat more about this, Mr. Woods. But we know you, we've talked about the presentation and you guys really, okay, I don't think presentation does it justice because I mean, I've seen some of the stuff you guys have done and then it's art and it's crazy and it's zany and it can be serious. But I mean, it's not something that, you know, you go onto Fiverr and go, can you like to make me a PowerPoint presentation, please? Thank you. There's your five US dollars. I guess you get what you pay for, but I mean, you guys really do top notch stuff. So how many people actually work under the umbrella of missing link at the moment? So we have about 25 people that work and that's split between our presentation team, our training team, our facilitation team, which is 21 tanks and our video team as well. So we also use video collateral as part of presentations to help deliver messages. Oftentimes you don't have to spend 10, 15 minutes trying to get a message across.

You can bring that together in a succinct video that can be added as value to your presentation as well. So we work on a number of things. Again, you know, we were talking about this earlier. Our job is to activate audiences. So is yours from a radio perspective. Ours is to help our presenters activate their audiences. Not about them actually. People want to stand up and be amazing on stage and while you can be amazing, any presentation is measured on not well how well it's understood, but I'm sorry, not how well it is articulated, but how well it is understood. Yeah. And that's all about the audience. And you know what? I had a sort of encounter this weekend, which is one of those rare encounters that you have and suddenly you walk away from and you go, it's actually, it is all worth it. A guy came up to me at Mixfest and I was talking to somebody, I was introduced to guys, David Watts, you do the business show on a Monday night. And I'm like, yeah. And he goes, listen, I'm a heavy metal dude. I'm a creative. And he was typical heavy metal. I'm a creative. He goes, normally business shows are crap. And I'm thinking, oh, here we go, I'm going to get clamped into now at the bar on how to do my show.

And he goes, your show, he says, is absolutely brilliant. I love it. And I love the guests you get on. And I just, that's better. And I hesitate to say this in case the boss is listening, but that is worth more than any money. Oh, 100%. It really is when, when you know that somebody, what I'm putting out somebody else likes. And I've always said, if I can, if I can sort of, you know, pop off this mortal coil, knowing that I've, I've sort of touched one person's life for the better, if I've done something that's been a catalyst, my job is done. You guys are very much the same in terms of that, that outlook. Absolutely. Look, when, when we walk into presentation, you see people on their phones while their leader is presenting, it kills my soul just a little bit. And, you know, we see it a lot. So my soul is generally quite killed. Who's tattered? Yeah. Because it happens too often. Why? Because the guys aren't delivering what is relevant to the audience. You know, they're, they're adding too much content, too much stuff that doesn't make sense for the audience at that point in time. So our job is to make sure again, if that audience isn't activated, it's time to, time to change it. So let's talk about Slaying Boredom.

Right. So the book is called Boredom Slayer Presentation Training Series, is called Boredom Slayers, because we want to kill boredom. Boredom is the, is the, is the solid killer of progress. It's a, listen, I'm just paging through it now because I actually, this is, I've just seen the, the actual book now. It's brilliant. I mean, and you've, you've broken it down really, really nicely. It's, I feel maybe we've given too much. Listen, I'm having a look through this thing now. Okay. What are you waiting for? The mic ain't going to grab itself. Yeah. Look, we work on the principle that if knowledge followed action, we'd all have, if action followed knowledge, we'd all have six packs. So there's knowledge out there. There's a lot of stuff, but people still need help and still need guidance, which is why we're, we're still in business. Okay. So Boredom Slayer, a speakers guide to presenting like a pro, we've got three copies of this to give away tonight, we'll be giving it away sometime between now and seven o'clock. And you're going to have to, you see, normally, normally I'm quite mean and then I say to somebody else, you do all the hard work of getting it to the listeners. I'll do this one.

Okay. I'll get it to the listeners. Look at you. Thank you, sir. Look at me taking one for the team. Always said I was a gentleman. I take my way to my old ones. Okay. So let's take some more messages coming in right now. Love your show, David. I wish my brother could meet this donger. I think they would get on like a house on fire. My brother is a designer and 3D animator as well as a fabulous speaker and drama guy even did a bit of a stint at mix loving the show tonight. That's from Kerry. Oh, there we go. Maybe I must meet your brother, a designer and 3D animator. This is one of those things with designing and the stuff that you guys do, like the animations, the 3D stuff. You kind of, I want to do, I did a little bit of that last year, but another incarnation of my company, I had producers and videographers and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and you think to yourself, these aren't difficult, can it be? So I went and decided I was going to learn how to do this myself and then also to build websites myself. I can tell you it's very difficult, especially when you're my age and you have to teach this old dog some serious new tricks, but listen, I think that what you guys are doing just in terms of that is fantastic.

But now let's get onto the tank side of the business. Can we do that? Yeah, absolutely. All right. When we come back, we're going to be talking, it's called how many tanks? 21 tanks. 21 tanks. There's got to be a story there and we're going to find out why. My special guest in studio, the guy who likes to change things from the Missing Link done packet. So we figured out what the Missing Link is and what you guys do there, which is brilliant. I was reading you something, says, "Always great to hear about the Missing Link, guys. I follow Richard's posts and YouTube broadcasts. He makes more sense than any speaker on the planet. Cuts to the chase and calls it like it is. Not to mention they have the funkiest office on the planet. Keep it up, both Missing Link and David Watts. Funkiest office." Yes, sir. And that's how I initially managed to get hold of you guys is actually through Colin. And we were chatting to him and we were chatting culture and everything. And you guys are one of the examples he uses of a company that has a really cool culture. Yeah. And his tours. Yeah. Does he take tours there as well? So do I have to book a tour with Colin to get to see the Funkiest Offices ever?

No, you can just rock up. Can we just rock up? Absolutely. Oh, fantastic. Okay. So 21 tanks. Yes. How do we go from the Missing Link to 21 tanks? So in 2008, prior to that, we were being asked by a number of our customers at a Missing Link perspective to join them in brainstorms, help them solve problems, but had really nothing to do with presentations or conferences. It was help us with this culture plan that we're putting together or help us create a new product for X, you know, LSM or whatever it is, but it had nothing to do with Missing Link. They just kept on asking us to join them because they really lacked our perspective and, you know, because we're pushing boundaries, changing things up. And so we would leave these brainstorms feeling very proud of ourselves and chests held high. And, you know, we've changed the face of insurance, but it really didn't help us at all. So we decided to create a business on the side that didn't want to mess with the Missing Link niche of presentation strategy and start to sell something that, you know, everyone can understand, which is perspective. And that's what we sold. We started with one product called a thunk perspective lab. You know, thunk these sound and idea makes when it smacks you in the ass.

And that's what we did. And we started running facilitated paid for brainstorms for our customers, selling not only our perspective, but perspective of brain trust members that we had in our group of connections and relationships. So smart people helping other people solve small problems, which I think is brilliant. And when you talk about, you know, these these problem solving things, it's one of the one of the big challenges I've always had, because as I've said to you, I've done training for other companies, my mates who we do a lot of training for the Sales Institute, some of my own stuff. I'm always worried because we go in there, okay, you deliver your two day training. It is epic. The people love it. What you're sharing with them is revolutionary and life changing. You get fantastic marks on the feedback sheet. And then what? Okay, because I've and I've seen this. I've seen these and also in inverted commas motivational speakers, they they all get on chairs and they stand up and they shout Yes, you can and also it's a weird one. And for that 30 or 45 minutes of the conference, yeah, it's a pickup. Yeah, yes, we can do it. You know, it's a strong cup of coffee. Yeah. And then Monday comes and you back to the same old, same old.

And this has always been my concern is how do you make change stick? Copyright D Watts 2019 making change stick. How do you do that? Because you know, to me, it's I feel sorry. Number one for the people that we sharing the training with. And number two, I see my next guest must be here. That must be Derek. I left the door open. This is how we do things here we very wherever it's very informal here. We leave the doors open. I like to come in and I say hello to them on air, you know, we don't take it. But going back to what I was saying is, you know, I walk out of there and I think, you know what? This is great stuff. It's cutting edge stuff. And if you use it, it will work. But how do you get to encourage people enough to want to use it? Because a lot of times, I just did a training at another company, they call me back again. All right. And I go, okay, so the last time we covered that, how did that work out for you? Well, for the first week or two was brilliant. And then, well, we kind of slipped back because they have jobs and they've got things that they need to do and KPIs that are measured against, you know, we're adding extra things to which which they're not really motivated to do.

And that that single motivation that you gave that nice little shot of caffeine was incredible for a week or two, but it does fade. So what do we do? I mean, is this something that you guys take into account as well? So absolutely. The thing is, David, the leaders in businesses need to be measured on this, though. So we get a lot of people coming to us and we want our teams to be better. And I always tell leaders of businesses that you have to continue to drive, continue to work with your people, grow your, multiply your people. So that they can, they're want to grow and be better because if they're growing and they're being better and that's attached to whatever plans, behaviors, drive strategy we put into place, then then that makes for a better business. But if you're not involved, if you're not motivated, if you're not responsible and accountable for your team, what a waste of what are we all doing here? Yeah. But this is what, and I get frustrated and sometimes I want to take some of these guys and go save your money because what you're doing now is not going to last long term because all you're doing is you're looking to tick it off and go, yeah, okay. We've paid for training and then we can push the guys out and go, but you went on training last week.

What the hell are you doing? Exactly. Top down, I think. Yeah. No, no, it has to be. But it's also continual and leaders need to be a part of it. So part of what I was doing when I was running Massilig was speaking to the team every three weeks. So every two weeks seems a bit too often. Every month seems a bit too formulaic. Every three weeks is sort of changes the energy a little bit. And every three weeks I spoke to them about a different kind of a topic. Someone goes either on my mind, someone goes on the mind of or the minds of the team or the country, whatever that may be. And then we discuss that. So I literally spend you book an hour with the team and spend 10 to 15 minutes speaking about some sort of a topic, setting the scene and then discussing around that, putting a forward focus in place for that week or the next three weeks. So that the next time you then review that and you go, how did that work? What happened? Whether it's working with the customer, whether it's working with things at home, bloody setting goals, right, and new daily resolutions, whatever that may be, something to keep people working together and keep motivated because then we have to keep on working together on it.

You know, we talk about team building and people walking across the river holding hands in Kumbaya. That doesn't make a team. Right. It needs to be output based, output based team building, strategic facilitation, whatever that may be. Things need to work and tactics need to be put into place to measure that. But then also leaders have to step up and continue to speak to people. And I think this is a critical thing. Are you a proponent of the follow ups or the coaching that takes place after your initial intervention? Because so many companies miss that at the moment. We offer it and we go, you're paying this much for the training, for goodness sake. In terms of the bigger picture, the coaching aspect of it is minimal. Let us get on a call with you guys once every two weeks, once a month, whatever the case, they just, you've done the training. Go away now. For sure. But those are people who don't care. Yeah. Bottom line. And it's very frustrating. Our job is to continue to drive, to keep motivating those individuals, those leaders, to actually care and then to act accordingly. That's what leadership is. And so I'm a big proponent myself of the continual coaching, the continual learning, helping people grow.

Well that's the thing, because I've seen so many people in jobs and I mean, I'm an employable and probably a terminal entrepreneur, because to me a job stands for just over broke. And yeah, to develop that passion, you know, and I've had, I've had in my business, it's not huge stuff, but I always, you know, to me, if you can instill that passion for learning and exploring and wanting to know more. And sometimes, you know, to me, I always used to say to him, it's a lot easier. Look at butts and in the butts sometimes, but it's a lot easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. If you firmly believe in something, do it. What is the worst that can happen? Sometimes I shouldn't say that because that's why I've gotten myself into a lot of, David, can you do the following? Yeah. How difficult can it be? What's the worst that can happen? Of course I can make your website. Yes. Of course I can do that. Yes, I know exactly how to, absolutely I can shoot an inglorious technicolor. No idea what I'm doing. Anyway, so. Fake it till you make it right. And this is I suppose how a lot of small businesses that turn into big businesses, entrepreneurial minded individuals get things done and grow is because you say yes, it's a beautiful delusional self belief and then you make it happen.

And that's, that's where the exciting bit is, man. That's why I'm always so excited because there's always stuff to work out. There's always problems to solve. There's always people to work with who are going to create some amazing things. And stuff to learn. I mean, to me, learning is an absolute privilege. For sure. You know, you know, a lot of people go, no, I did that at Varsity, did that at school, that whole learning thing. I'm done with it now. But for me, I'm fascinated every single morning I get up, I'm like, what's happened overnight? What is there that I can learn? What extra? What did I not finish yesterday? What can I do? So you guys take that into the companies with with the 21 tanks, you didn't tell them the origin of the name. So the name actually, so it's a tank. So we wanted something that was a bit bold, we are tagline is weapons of mass construction. And 21 is 21 days to create a new habit we wanted to build at the time when we were creating these these the strategy documents after the Thunk Perspective Labs was the strategy dots that had at least a month plan to get things off the ground sort of as a as a kickstart as a little fire up the up the proverbial so that's where the where the where the name came from.

Fantastic. Okay, so now we've talked about that. What is talk draw? Talk draw is, as I mentioned earlier, it's it's a platform where we take the books that you read. So business books that have lessons, whether you're talking about the challenges sale, you're talking about extreme ownership, you're talking about radical candor, books that you read to try and learn for yourself and then apply that to your teams, we take those and we turn them into talks that you can deliver to your teams. So often the time is so I don't know how often you read business books, but more often than not people read business books, they finish them and then there's so much to try and deliver to try and share with your team, you don't know where to start. So they just give a bit of a highlight reel and then that's it what we've done because as a presentation business, we've taken the content of books and turn them into talks that leaders of teams, not just leaders of businesses, any team can then deliver that talk and showcase the value and the big ideas of these books and then use that as frameworks to be able to deliver that through the team. So regardless if I'm a sales manager, if I'm running a team of any description, this would be an ideal platform 100%.

So how does it normally work? I know we're giving away a year subscription, but normally, normally it's an annual subscription for individuals, we also have an enterprise model that is user-based and then that's obviously a different kind of a revenue model, there's also platforms that we're building right now for bespoke content for individuals, so you don't only get the existing content, but there's also bespoke content that is built business specific, but that is for me that is, I mean I love all six businesses, but it is really one of them that I feel quite close to because it's helping turn managers into leaders. The difference between a manager and a leader is the ability to communicate and if we're making people speak better, to lead loud, like that is a great, great place to be. Okay, so now we've covered, see there's not enough time, we've covered like two parts of the business, maybe three parts of the business. One missing link, 21 tanks and talk draw. Yeah, there's three more. Okay, so. Quickly. Yes, thousand foot overview. Right, so the other one is called the sales department. The sales department is outsourced professional sales management, like small to medium sized enterprises will outsource their finances to an accounting firm, that you have maybe an accountant one day a week for example.

We do this from a sales management perspective. If you want to hire a sales manager worth his or her salt as a small business, it costs a lot of money. Okay. So what we do is we have built that into a platform where you have a sales manager that is outsourced, that manages your team one day a week in house and then out of the business the rest of the rest of the week and that's how we operate and it's been phenomenal. I think that's brilliant. In fact, there's a couple of instances where I've seen people asking for just such a thing is we've got a sales team, I'm the owner, I can't really run the sales team, but I can't afford a sales manager. So David, so why we started this business was we were suffering from that problem because I was having to run the sales team or Rich was having to run the sales team, but we're supposed to be doing other things, we're supposed to be in the face of the business, working with customers. I mean, and also what do I know about the science of sales? Because it is a science, there's structure behind it. To me, selling is sitting across a table, solving a problem for somebody that's selling. When sales starts with the prospecting all the way through to the follow up and there's different weightings, forecasts, you've got weighted pipelines, I mean, there's a lot of stuff, but luckily we got smart people involved to build all of that and there's a partner in the business, Sean, who is doing some amazing stuff.

Okay, so next. So that's the one. Then we have firing squads, a firing squad is based out of Cape Town, it is a hyper targeted lead generation business, outbound lead generation through email, working across the globe, but based out of Cape Town and also phenomenal. So if you're wanting to get more meetings, more business, more leads, and get all the prospecting done for you through a set of criteria that you decide on, that's all done for you and it's automated. So once you've signed up, you've done the bits there, I just get the leads and I have to go and see them. Correct. It all runs through your mail, it looks like it's been sent from you, everything is clear, there's a campaign that runs, you've got whether you want to do three, four, five, six emails over a period of time, it's all structured. There's again, in that as well, prospecting and lead generation, it's a science. And luckily Jason Bagley based in Cape Town, he's got it waxed. I think it's absolutely fantastic what you do. Okay, so we've got three books to give away. Listen, I'll tell you what I'm going to do, all right? Because if we do it through WhatsApp now, I guarantee you some of them are going to get lost. So email me, all you got to do is email me in the subject line, okay?

Don Packett comes, he is the guy who likes to change things from which company? So just say they're in the subject line, you know, whatever it is, what's involved. And then I will choose three people, the station will get, I'll pass on the info to the station, the station will get hold of you guys, and they will send you the books. How do we, how are we going to organize the subscription? You just send us the three people and we'll send it up from there. Okay, so if you'd want to win one of those three copies, just drop me a mail, David@whatsinvolved, W-A-T-T-S-I-N-V-O-L-V-E-D dot C-O dot Z-A, David@whatsinvolved dot C-O dot Z-A. And I'll get all of those details and make sure that we get across to you and get those books across to you. Thank you so much for these gifts, it's a wonderful thing. Sometimes a lot, sometimes people go, you're a bit pushy when it comes to getting guests on the radio station wanting value and to give away stuff and like, yeah, you guys were in. Like one, two, three. Totally. And can we, within a couple of minutes, I have to meet Taryn because I mean, she is literally superwoman. I mean, she just coordinates and organizes and gets back and she's definitely on the ball.

Yeah. Yeah. So I often tell people she can leap tall buildings in a single bound and be able to wrangle diaries and get things done. Like no one's business. So Taryn is phenomenal. And she herds cats as a part-time hobby. Correct. She is absolutely brilliant. Don, we're out of time, mate. That sucks. It sucks. We're going to have to get you back here. Next time, maybe we must bring Richard in as well. I mean, that's double the hilarity and double the fun. Oh, it'll be a nightmare. We need you back. But one of those good nightmares that you wake up feeling kind of nice. Yes, we need you back. It's that simple. Super.