This year Paid On Results decided to be one of the main sponsors of Think Visibility 9. This was quite an easy decision for us to make as every year Dom and his team have managed to build on the success of each conference. ThinkVis is a conference which stands out from others which we have attended in the past as it always seems to have the right balance of good quality speakers and fun.
In this virtual world in which we conduct our business, physical engagement (meeting people and chatting) is often overlooked. This is why as a network we like the opportunities presented to us at Think Visibility, and standing around Ten Yetis‘ Attention Grabber – an arcade crane machine – was not only a good ice breaker but entertaining: watching people trying their hardest to grab insignificant items (and failing) such as a space invaders poncho, an android soft toy and Lego bricks.
“Show me the Money!”
I don’t know if it was just me but I detected a bit of theme running through each of the sessions, a kind of new age Jerry Maguire. Dom was sharing his love and knowledge of starting a sweet shop and yes, to a certain degree “showing us the money”. A great tip which he provided us was in the form of customer psychology when raising the free delivery amount from £5 to £6 his average basket increased from £5 to £9 with no loss in sales volume!
“Show me the Money!”
Al Carlton was also showing me the money in his talk about his experiences of running a 7 figure website Coolest Gadgets . Al’s entertaining session was a motivational one where he offered some great advice on how to use social media, the pitfalls of using crowd sourcing sites like ffiver and a selection of quotes from industry guru’s and swamis. There were two I liked, “Embrace chaos and don’t be afraid to change. Even if means changing everything” and the other one I can’t repeat on this blog.
“Jump in my nightmare, the water’s warm!”
After lunch Paul Madden talked about how to spot shitty links and the nightmare (crowbar Jerry Maguire reference) scenario of these links linking to you. You’d think that this would be a session about the blindingly obvious but as any of the delegates who attended found out it was anything but that. One of Paul’s pertinent post Penguin, Panda pearls of wisdom was that it’s not enough to just disavow your links and file a reconsideration request – Google expect to see you suffer and want to see signs of your suffering, eg evidence of sending emails asking for link removals.
“I just want to be inspired”
Darren (Daz) Williams offered a very enthusiastic, entertaining and inspiring talk about how he and his partner Angela have built up hair extension company, Harland Corporation, from scratch to turning over £1.5 million pounds in just 7 years. Daz’s eye for an opportunity seems to be very acute as he told us of the time when he and Angela were in the States seeking financial investment from the largest hair extension company in the world. After turning down the investment offer – because they wanted too much equity- Daz saw on a sales chart on the boardroom wall that wigs were by far the biggest seller. So Daz and Angela went back to the UK and started selling wigs – genius!
“We live in a cynical world. A cynical world. And we work in a business of tough competitors. I love you. You… complete me.”
Although the above quote was never said by either of them, everything Dave and Becky Naylor said, suggested that their relationship is the reason behind their success. Dave and Becky told us of the story behind Bronco: how they met, set up the company, the challenges which they’ve had to overcome and their road map for the future. It was at this talk when I realised the similarities between what was being said and the concepts behind one of my favorite chic flick films (not a long list!) – Jerry Maguire.
The Naylor’s approach to their employees, the environment they work in and the people they do business with, all reinforced that the concept of success in business is not down to chasing the bottom line but to taking a holistic approach to running of it. Becky also told us of how their world was turned upside down when their son developed meningitis and the key to survival is speed – as a result I download this symptoms app to my phone which I encourage everyone to do.
If you take a moment to look through the photos taken by the ever present Steven Lilley aka sk8geek, you’ll be hard pushed to find a picture without a smile in it – this tells you everything you need to know about Think Visibility. See you all at the next one!
Some good round up blogs:
Becky Naylor Bursts Her Bubble
Koozai Round Up
Penguins and Pandas: Think Visibility 9
Old Dog New Tricks
Slides From Conference
Ten Yetis
Learn from the success and failures of a 7 figure site
Maximising your search potential
Digital Attribution – models and how to talk about attribution to a business
How to avoid the guest blogging smackdown
Content Outreach & Engagement