In this forward-thinking episode, Wes Towers,Founder of Uplift 360, shares how to adapt lead generation when traditional channels dry up. If you struggle with inconsistent leads and outdated online tactics in stage 3, you won't want to miss it.

You will discover:

- Why search engines alone no longer deliver reliable leads at scale

- How to implement "search everywhere optimization" across multiple channels

- What value-first content builds trust and attracts clients faster

This episode is ideal for for Founders, Owners, and CEOs in stage 3 of The Founder's Evolution. Not sure which stage you're in? Find out for free in less than 10 minutes at https://www.scalearchitects.com/founders/quiz

Wes Towers helps founders and marketing leaders turn attention into trust and revenue. As founder of Uplift 360 in Australia, he builds simple, repeatable systems that make brands easy to find, trust, and choose. His Search Everywhere Optimisation process blends sharp positioning, conversion-focused websites, and an AI-assisted content engine that teams can run without burning out. Wes also coaches marketing managers in construction-related companies to scale faster online with clear messaging, smarter content, and clean measurement. He works with construction and trade businesses, as well as B2B firms that want practical wins over theory.

Want to learn more about Wes Towers work at Uplift 360? Check out his website at https://uplift360.com.au/

Connect with Wes Towers through his LinkedIN at https://www.linkedin.com/in/westowers/

Grab a copy of his book "The Simple Manifesto: Marketing principles to save you time, increase profit and create your dream business in a SNAP!" at https://www.amazon.com/Simple-Manifesto-Marketing-principles-increase/dp/0994367600

Mentioned in this episode:

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Founder's Quiz

Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again

to the Start scale and succeed podcast, the only podcast that

grows with you through all seven stages of your journey. As a

founder, I'm your host, Scott Ritzheimer, and today I want to

talk to the founder out there who's listening. Yes, just that

one of you. No, I'm kidding, those founders who are

listening, who find that it's getting harder and harder to get

new leads in the door. Something has changed, especially online,

over the last year or so, and it's not good if you're

wondering what that thing is, why it's affecting you, and what

you can do to move it from the threat column to becoming an

unfair advantage, you are absolutely in the right place,

because joining us, literally from the other side of the world

today is the one and only Wes Towers. Who helps founders and

marketing leaders turn attention into trust and revenue. As

founder of uplift 360 in Australia, he builds simple,

repeatable systems that make brands easy to find, trust and

choose. His search everywhere optimization process blends

sharp positioning, conversion focused websites and an AI

assisted content engine that teams can run without being

burnt out. Wes also coaches marketing managers in

construction related companies to scale faster online with

clear messaging, smarter content and clean measurement. He works

with the construction and trade businesses, as well as B to B

firms that went that want practical wins over just theory.

And he's here with us today. Wes Welcome to the show. I want to

talk about what's probably one of my least favorite buzzwords,

and that is SEO. So just so that we can clear the air here, tell

us what SEO is as it's traditionally understood, and

why that traditional understanding is causing so many

business owners to get less new leads, especially recently.

Yeah, I get it. SEO is almost a dirty one. It isn't

it. It's been around a long time now, and there's been a lot of

rogues playing in that space. I totally understand where you're

coming from. And firstly, it's a great privilege to speak to you

in person. I've been listening to a lot of your material, and

to speak in person is a real privilege. But SEO is search

engine optimization. It was attempt and an attempt, and it

still is an attempt, to show up in Google and the other search

engines as high as you could, so you'd have keywords so a phrase

someone might search for. And historically, it was pretty

archaic. It was service location, so plumber Melbourne,

for example. But now we understand people are searching

in full sentences, because we know Google and large language

models understand the context of full sentences, and everyone's

producing content at scale rapidly because they understand

all of these tools are looking for content to answer people's

needs. So it's a noisy space out there, and there's ways to cut

through the noise. There's ways to do it well, in ways that can

go horribly wrong and get you blacklisted and a whole bunch of

other stuff.

So as I understand it, to some extent,

SEO is dead, long live SEO. And so we're at a we're at a really

critical point here. And one of the things that you talk a lot

about is is not search engine optimization, but search

everywhere optimization. What's the difference between the two?

And why does it matter?

Yeah, so back in the day, and just, you know, a

couple of years ago, even before AI really took a hold of what

it's doing. If you needed a service, you would typically

jump on Google and search for it. But then we had the rise of

social media, so all of a sudden, people were looking for

companies and recommendations and referrals on social media.

Now we're talking to our phones, our chat, GBT to discuss our

specific needs and requirements. And so it's it really is

everywhere, YouTube and so on. There's just so many platforms

that we're using now to find a business. If we're looking to do

some sort of transaction, we're looking to purchase something,

we've got a need that needs to be fulfilled, and we're looking

at it in a whole bunch of other ways. So the techniques and

strategies have have to evolve, because information is at

people's fingertips, and you've got to be there when they're

looking for it.

So one of the things that that feels hard

about that Wes is that the idea of being everywhere all the

time, even if it's digital, and it sounds exhausting with you

know, if I'm a plumber and I'm good at plumbing, I don't want

to be sitting at my computer being everywhere all the time,

and it feels complicated. It feels overwhelming. It's like,

Hey, I didn't sign up for this. Tell us a little bit. You've

written a you've written the book on this, literally. But how

can, how can small business owners, in particular, service

professionals like the ones that you serve every day, again, like

we talked about in the intro, move it from the threat column

to the advantage column?

Yeah, I know it sounds everywhere. Is a lot of

places. It's overwhelming, for sure, and but the good news is

you don't need to do it all yourself, obviously, but you've,

you've got to be the one, if you're the founder of the

company, or the leader of the company setting the tone, you've

got to be the one with. A core, distinct and compelling message.

There's you can't be generic and bland anymore, because everybody

else can produce that kind of content. But once you're unique

and specific, you can be the known expert in the field in

which you play. And you've got to have that core message that's

really succinct and people can grasp it, so you can have team

publish on your behalf. Once you've got a core message that's

unique, it can be syndicated far and wide pretty fast. So it's

not it's not too much of a concern to publish the

information far and wide with the right tools. I mean, there's

lots of tools that will publish to social media on your behalf.

We use public most, mostly because it publishes to Google

as well, and Google like anything that's Google on your

business profile. So that's really helpful. But there's

bunch of other tools as well. There's tools to publish reels

and so on. You know, the AI driven tools, which will take a

long form video and repurpose it into a whole bunch of other

formats, so you can have it published lots of places. And

all the tools, because it's so so much more sophisticated than

they ever were. They're gleaning information for far and wide and

they're collating a set of ideas and thoughts around who you are

as a business, as a brand, and that's hopefully getting

mentioned when people are looking for you.

I love that you work, especially in the

professional services, especially in the trades,

because it's that group that I would imagine would say, What

the heck do you mean by a core message? I just want to fix

pipes. So what's that look like in the real world, Wes?

Yeah, well, that's you're touching on something

really important that you've got to tailor your message to the

audience. Now I'm speaking. Obviously I appreciate there's

probably a lot of consultants and coaches listening in. So

it's a different, different language that I'm using today

for you guys, as opposed to what I might be speaking to, you

know, a plumber who's on the tools and not really dialed into

marketing or anything like that. So just matching your message to

the target audience is a whole big part of what you what you

do. And as you say, We're quite niched into the trades

construction industry, because there is such a need, because

they're not, in my view, not served very well. And part of it

is because of that mismatch of how, how a digital agency like

ours might communicate to these people, and you never want to

alienate people with large, you know, language and acronyms and

all this stuff. What they want is leads. They want sales. They

want the phone calling. They typically will just say, Hey,

we're not getting enough phone calls. That's typically how they

might communicate their need. So it's about us communicating,

Hey, these are the things. These are the levers we might pull to

get that phone ringing. So, yeah, I think knowing your

message, knowing your target audience, communicating directly

to them, is where it's all at.

Yeah, in your book, you lay out your your snap

framework. I'm wondering if you could introduce that to us.

Know, we have a relatively short format here, but just kind of

give us an idea of of why that snap framework is so important

for understanding how to move forward in situations like this.

Yeah, and the curious thing was, the book was

written before AI, but it's since that has occurred. It's

even more important, in my view. So snap standpoint, non non

conformist approach, position. So the first two are more the

way you think about your business and the messaging and

so on. And the latter two are more practical. But standpoint,

you've really got to have, as I said before, something that you

believe in solidly and and stick by it. So your standpoint non

conformist, it really is helpful if you've got something distinct

that you believe, that nobody else believes in your industry,

or a process or a way in which you frame the work in which you

do, which is completely different to the others. There

might be only a couple of little key points, but those key points

and other things that you should be sharing because they really

do set you apart. It might repel some people, and other people

will be drawn to you, but that's perfectly fine. If it's

repelling the wrong people, it's sort of filtering them through,

so the right people are approaching you, standpoint, non

conformist approach. So how you go about getting this message

out there? We speak about everywhere is a lot of places,

but it might be some platforms that are better suited to your

business and brand than others. So focusing your attention on

those things, this is your approach of getting your message

to the market and and looking at the other tools syndicate your

message to them, yes, but don't spend too much time on the areas

which are probably not your core audience, for example, if you're

dealing with an older audience, maybe Tik Tok isn't your thing,

you know, or if it's a B to B, maybe LinkedIn is more

appropriate. These sorts of things, making decisions to

tailor your content around the priority platforms and then just

syndicate it to the others, because it's it's quick and

easy. Don't tailor it too much for them, because it's a waste,

right? Yeah, and, and the position, yeah. So getting it

all, getting it all aligned. So they kind of, I kind of, talked

about position as well there. So just getting it all aligned, so

you've got you stand out in the marketplace. Because, man, it is

noisy out there. We're seeing content produced, and we don't

even know if anyone's ever read it. You know, people are using

tools that just publish content after content to try and attract

Google's attention to large language models, you know. And

videos, we've seen videos that look super realistic like it

looks like the it's kind of cool, because you see videos of

long past people, and it's fun, but that's scary too, because

what, as marketers, we realize, hey, well, you can't believe

what you see. You can't believe what you read. You've got to

find a way to cut through that noise and be build trust and

authority in the space that you're working in.

I want to drill in on the non conformist

one, because there's something that I see a lot of my clients

really, really pride themselves on the quality of their work,

right? They don't cut corners. And if I were to say, Hey,

what's your nonconformist approach? Many of them would

say, well, like we're committed to quality. And when they say

that, they're thinking of all the horror stories of the other

people who do what they do. But I think what fails to translate

sometimes is that everyone says that they have quality, and so

you're not actually being non conformist in in the eyes of the

people who are listening. So how do you get a message like that

to break through when you really are offering next level quality

or something like that? But everyone says that they are.

Yeah, they're the generic things that we all

believe. We all believe we created, we do quality work, and

we really care for our clients, and we really care for our

customers, and all these things that are kind of generic and

bland, the way I like to draw it out of the founder is to have a

bitching session. I don't know if we can say that on this, but

a session, a venting session, is maybe a better way of looking at

it, where they put on the table everything that's their

frustrations in the industry, what everybody else is doing

wrong. This is a behind closed doors conversation. It would be

never public, because that's not the way you want to frame your

business. But they find it far easier to have that venting

discussion, because, you know, they know what's what the other

competitors are doing wrong, and then it's our job to think about

all those negative things, and what's the inverse opposite of

that? That's probably going to reveal what's unique and really

distinctive. It's hard for us to see in our own businesses what

those key distinctions are, because we're so close to it.

Could someone be drawn out of us if we have those discussions?

Yeah, I love that.

I love that for two reasons. One, I could

not agree more. There's a lot of things that you know better than

anybody else inside your business, but knowing how to

communicate about your business by yourself in isolation is not

one of them. That's a really hard thing to figure out by

yourself. But two, I really like this idea of tapping into what

we're angry about. I think a lot of folks overlook that. Anger is

kind of a bad thing. You don't want to be angry, but it's

actually really, really helpful in identifying our values and

what's really important to us. So I love that kind of flip it

on its head approach, and I think it's really powerful. Wes

there's a question that I have for you. It's the same question

I ask all my guests. I'm very interested to see what you'd

have to say, but the question is this? What is the biggest secret

you wish wasn't a secret at all. What's that one thing you wish

everybody watching and listening today knew?

Yeah, well, it ties into what we're just speaking

about. You haven't got to be loved by everybody. You know we

market as if we have to appeal to everybody. You don't. You

only need to appeal to your ideal clients. And so it just

becomes a more simple message once, once you figure that out.

Yeah, that's so good, so good. It's but it's

scary, right? Like, the idea that we would push someone away

is something that that's really a challenge to get past, but it

is powerful. And I think to your point, it's harder and harder to

be seen if you're not willing to do that. There's just too much

noise out there. Today Wes you've got a book out. I'd love

to give us the 32nd bit on the book, where folks can find it,

and also, where can they connect with you and find out more about

the work you do. 0

Yeah, the book, I can hold it up for the video.

Watches their simple manifesto. So that's physical book and

digital on all the all the places you would typically find,

curiously enough, it sold mostly the ebook the digital version

for many years. It's been around around a while now, but lately

it's been more the physical book. So there's something going

on in the world where people like the tactile thing. I think

something's going on anyway, but that's the book to find me.

Uplift 360 dot com.au, you can book a strategy call with me

there.

Fantastic. Well, Wes thanks for being on

the show. It was a real privilege. It was a real

privilege having you here with us today. I love this idea of

search everywhere. Optimization. I think it's powerful. I think

you're onto something, and I know it was helpful for some

folks listening. For those of you who are watching and

listening, I hope you know your time and attention mean the

world to us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as

I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.