Épisodes

  • Daniel Willis & Chris Hogan on Marketing Agency Life, AI & Mental Health

    Daniel Willis & Chris Hogan on Marketing Agency Life, AI & Mental Health
    Feb 1 2026

    Chris Hogan sits down with Daniel Willis, Chairman and CEO of Claxon agency, to tackle the real challenges facing agencies today—from shrinking budgets to the AI revolution.

    The State of Agency Land

    Dan doesn't sugarcoat it: times are tough. Marketing budgets have shrunk to 30-40% of what they were just two years ago, yet boards still expect the same level of growth. The result? Agencies are doing more work for less money, margins are being squeezed, and more agencies are closing their doors than he's seen in his seven years in the industry.

    AI: Threat or Opportunity?

    Both Chris and Dan believe AI is a game-changer, but not in the way many fear. Dan's philosophy is simple: "AI won't replace agencies, but agencies that use AI will replace agencies that don't." The key? Let humans do the creative thinking and ideation, then use AI as a tool to execute those ideas more efficiently. Claxon has been using AI to create campaigns for $20-30K that would've cost $80-150K traditionally—properly democratising high-quality creative work.

    Beyond the Business: Wisdom for Founders

    The conversation goes deep into what it takes to scale successfully:

    • Advisory boards over business coaches: Dan's not shy about his views here—he reckons most business coaches are a waste of money. Instead, he strongly advocates for building an advisory board of experienced people who genuinely want to give back. Claxon had a six-person advisory board when it had only four staff.
    • Mental health matters: Both blokes open up about their struggles. Dan shares his battle with severe anxiety and panic attacks that led to some dark times, whilst Chris talks about his own challenges with depression. Their message? Sort your mental health first, because without it, nothing else matters.
    • The power of silence: Dan champions taking time away from constant input—no podcasts, no music, just thinking time. Like fasting gives your body time to heal, mental quiet time lets your brain solve problems it couldn't tackle when distracted.
    • Knowing your strengths: Dan's candid about not being the best operator—his strengths are relationships, vision, and commercial strategy. The lesson? Hire people who are brilliant at what you're not.

    The Bottom Line

    Despite the challenges, both Chris and Dan reckon it's an incredibly exciting time to be in the agency game. Good humans and great agencies are more important now than ever. The key is embracing change, using AI as a tool (not a replacement), and, most importantly, doing it together rather than competing.

    Agencies aren't going anywhere—they're just evolving.
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    1 h et 6 min
  • Becoming a Key Person of Influence with Mike Clark - Get Fact Up Episode 111

    Becoming a Key Person of Influence with Mike Clark - Get Fact Up Episode 111
    Jan 29 2020
    Published Nov 11, 2019 VIDEO TRANSCRIPT Chris Hogan - Good day world, Chris Hogan coming to you from Burleigh Heads studio here at MeMedia, for episode 111 of Get Fact Up, and I have with me guest today Mike Clark, who is the Queensland state leader for the Key Person of Influence. And if you haven't heard of the Key Person of Influence, basically you might know of a guy by the name Dan Priestly, who's an Australian who moved offshore and developed a great programme called the Key Person of Influence, and wrote several books around it as well. So, Mike, welcome to the show. - Beautiful, welcomed to be here. Thanks for having me Chris. Chris Hogan - Mate so, how did you come to be here in Queensland running Key Person of Influence programme? - Do you want the short story or the long story? Chris Hogan - No Mike, well, yeah. No. - No, I mean, so Dan is the creator of Key Person of Influence. The methodology that effectively we stumbled across by the first sort of six years of my career and our career together, we spent a lot of time with people in business, who had a shit tonne of influence basically. People, I mean, you mentioned Richard Branson, so we used to put him on stage in the UK, people of that calibre and a few levels beneath. And then when you spend enough time with people who do business in that sort of capacity, you realise that the way they operate, the way they think, they think differently to a lot of different business, or normal business leaders do, everyday business leaders. So, basically from, you know, short story is with business with Dan here in Australia we had a, my first year of business had a pretty rapid success, taken a business from one mill to eleven million turnover, they couldn't sustain the growth, so we found ourselves jumping on a plane, going to the UK, and would master the art of running events which is how we gave this business so much growth, and then-- Chris Hogan - There were Triumph in events? - Yes, Triumph at events, that's right. And so then we found ourselves in the UK, launching a few speakers, promoting people, as I mentioned it, who had a lot of influence, financial crisis hit, our business fell apart , and we were given some sage advise by an organisation and a guy who's had a huge impact on our business, who just said listen, you're not building any intellectual property in your business, until you actually build intellectual property, you make some good money, you know, promoting other people's stuff through selling events, 'cause we were events and promotional organisation at the time. And he said until you actually develop your own intellectual property, you won't be able to build anything evaluation in your business. And that was the pivotal moment, because that was the moment then, when Dan sort of consolidated, you know, all these observations we'd seen from working with these influential business leaders, and figured out that there's five key pillars that they consistently applied, and he wrote a book about it. And so the premise was, what if we could show everyday business leaders who are struggling to stand out, how they can have greater influence by applying these five pillars. And then, that was 10 years ago, you know, jump forward, you know, we've now had 3000 people work with us and we've crossed 8 cities around the world, four continents, and I work with us over the 12-month journey, which we call an accelerator, and it just works, you know, it just really works, and I took that as my cue around that time, to step away, to grow a business that I scout across Europe. But I've reconnected with the guys after 2017, after I exited my business, birth of my second daughter was very difficult and challenging. Thankfully we made it through it, very grateful for that, but it shook me to my core, being away for 12 years, living in the UK, and I thought, you know what, time to come home. I started catching up with Dan a bit more frequently, and you know, pitched me an idea, he said, "have you seen your work team since you stepped away?". And I was like, "No I haven't, what's up?". And then so I just sort of checked-in, I was just blown away by the level of commitment that we have to just helping people implement. So we basically give away our ideas for free, get people to engage in those ideas, and they go, "Wow, that resonates.", and then, we pay for it, you know, and I believe businesses these day, they'd need to charge the implementation of the ideas. And so that's what the accelerate is about, and I spoke to a lot of people, like literally 100s of them before I decided to make that step, and the feedback that I got was just exceptional from hundreds of clients, and so I said, well, how about we hatch up a deal on our licence in intellectual property, to get back involved at the game, and so I've moved my family back 14 months ago, to now, basically we are, you know, a licenced intellectual property for the state of Queensland. So I'm working, ...
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    37 min
  • Ben Southall, Best Life Adventures - Get Fact Up Episode 106

    Ben Southall, Best Life Adventures - Get Fact Up Episode 106
    Jan 29 2020
    Published Dec 21, 2018 VIDEO TRANSCRIPT Chris Hogan - Good day world, Chris Hogan coming to you from Burleigh Heads here on the Gold Coast and I'm here with a special guest today Ben Southall, who you may know as the Caretaker of the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, won that competition. Was it The Best Job in the World in 2009? Ben Southall - Yeah, nearly 10 years ago now, so that was I suppose my introduction to Australia. That was back in the days when Tourism Queensland were trying to market the Great Barrier Reef to the world and I'd just gone around Africa in a Land Rover and run a website and a blog and that was the criteria they needed to do that job and 34,000 people later, I was the winner. Easy isn't it? Chris Hogan - So, hopefully you're not best known for that anymore because you've got some cool stuff coming up and you've been doing some really cool stuff ever since. So, bensouthall.com is pretty much the old placeholder for the old biography I guess in the life before now and now you have bestlifeadventures.com which is about to go live, probably go live by the time we actually launch this. Ben Southall - I've fingers crossed if it goes and be up by the end of the week, that's the plan. Chris Hogan - So, what is Best Life Adventures? Ben Southall - Okay, so I suppose the whole Best branding started nine years ago with The Best Job in the World and ever since then, we've tried to sort of encapsulate my passion for travel and adventure, sharing physical challenges in the great outdoors with, what started as a local audience, has become an international audience now. It started off at first, I suppose, a spawn of Best Life in the World was the Best Expedition in the World, which was for me getting in a kayak for four months retracing Captain Cook's route all the way up the east coast of Australia through the Great Barrier Reef all the way to Cooktown, that was a project for Tourism Queensland, so that was The Best Expedition in the World. And then in 2015 my wife Sophie and we drove from Singapore all the way back to London in my old Land Rover. That took a year, and we called that The Best Life in the World. And that was to go and find people on that journey who had smiles on their faces every single day, love what they did whether they were a taxi driver or a CEO of a company, what are the criterias in life that give people a smile on their face and make them want to get out of bed in the morning? That was The Best Life in the World. And we have these lovely theories about what it is. Whether it's family or friends or money or the best job. Whatever it is, what are those things that give people that recipe for life. And a lot of it will revolved around interaction with family and doing great things in the great outdoors. So every time I've come back from one of my various adventures, there always is at least one, maybe 10, maybe 50 people that say. I would love to go and do an adventure like that. What do I have to do to go and do it? So I knew there was this gap in the market. There was a niche there were people, they've got cash, they're time poor, they wanna go on these adventures. So why don't I start curating them, making it from scratch, making them left of centre for anything you're gonna get from a standard travel brochure and do the extremes of life and the extremes of the world because people like entrepreneurs are adventurous in their mindset, they love what they do, they love challenges, they love innovation. So I can find innovation in the adventure space, package it up, market it and take people out there, small bespoke groups of people, there's a gap in the market that means there's business opportunities there. And hence, Best Life Adventures was born. Chris Hogan - Fantastic, so one of the common things I see run through all of your adventures is building resilience. Ben Southall - Absolutely. Chris Hogan - Why is that so important and how does it transcend from going on a holiday or an adventure back into business? Does it actually, is there a crossover? Ben Southall - Well yeah, I mean we deal with a range of clients now. We deal with government clients, we deal with corporate clients, we deal with private groups and all of them, all the people that come on these seem to be people that want to achieve the most that they can out of life. They wanna prove to themselves that they can do the best that they can in their personal life and their business life and they can go out there and suck as much as they can out of this short limited time that we get on planet earth. They're people that wanna get up and do things. They're not people that lay in bed until 11 o'clock in the morning on the weekend, they're up at sunrise, they utilising their day. They're making the most out of it. They're building great friendships. And that sort of reflects from the personal development into the business world because what we're finding and I believe this is the truth is that...
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    25 min
  • Google My Business - Get Fact Up Episode 104

    Google My Business - Get Fact Up Episode 104
    Jan 29 2020

    Published Nov 2, 2018
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    15 min
  • Mitch Cator CEO of Sabre Digital - Get Fact Up Episode 101

    Mitch Cator CEO of Sabre Digital - Get Fact Up Episode 101
    Jan 29 2020

    Published Nov 2, 2018

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    9 min
  • Kane Sajdak Director of Bits It - Get Fact Up Episode 100

    Kane Sajdak Director of Bits It - Get Fact Up Episode 100
    Jan 29 2020

    Published Nov 2, 2018
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    3 min
  • Ethical Investing - Get Fact Up Episode 97

    Ethical Investing - Get Fact Up Episode 97
    Jan 29 2020

    Published Oct 24, 2018
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    25 min
  • Content Removal Experts: Internet Removals - Get Fact Up Episode 84

    Content Removal Experts: Internet Removals - Get Fact Up Episode 84
    Jan 29 2020
    Published Apr 19, 2018 Chris: G'day world, Chris Hogan coming to you live from MeMedia studio here at Burleigh Heads and I have with me today our usual suspect, Andrew Groat and a guest, Brendon McAlpine from Internet Removals. How are you going Brendon? Brendon: Good morning, thank you for having me, I'm great. Chris: How are you going, Andrew? Andrew: Yeah good. Chris: Awesome, so today we've invited Brendon in because Internet Removals is a company that we believe every business out there needs help from and one of those reasons is because it's all well and good you marketers like us, driving traffic to websites and pages and improving conversions and all the rest of it but it's no good if your reputation is sub-par. Brendon: Correct. Chris: So, Brendon, do you want to tell us a little bit about Internet Removals? Brendon: So, hard to believe, but I am an online content removalist, we help businesses remove content from the internet, quite simply. When you have a negative online footprint, the misdirection's horrendous in the sense you could spend hundreds of dollars, thousands of dollars getting directed to website, on Google, we're talking about Google's platform, but it's just bombarded with some negative content from the past or new or for whatever reason. And it's our business to help people let the right platforms know that the content is either misleading, untrue, false, defamation and getting the content down. Google Reviews is a platform that I don't think anyone want to be on sometimes, it's not initiated by the company in themselves, it's just you get an email saying, "Yeah, "let's become Google Reviews." but unfortunately it opens up a can of worms in a sense, simple as a customer not getting her dog cut correctly and they've got a platform to just put a barrage of negative reviews and you're measured on it unfortunately with Google Stars. People, their online footprint's pretty important, it has to be now more than ever. So yeah, that's what we do, remove content from the internet for corporate as well as public and public's more the bad side of the internet in the sense of image-based abuse as well as revenge porn unfortunately that's where you've lost content between yourself and a partner and they post it online, we do our best to let the people know to get it down quick. Chris: What was that term? Brendon: Revenge porn? Chris: I've never heard that one. Brendon: Oh wow it's big Andrew: Yeah it's huge. Brendon: Yeah it's a name now that's, I mean the government's spending millions of dollars on different commissions to recognise it and to get it prosecuted as domestic violence, which it is. As you know, domestic violence isn't just measured by fists and that sort of stuff, it's the mental abuse. Chris: Yeah, it's cyberbullying. Brendon: Yeah, look we've been doing it six years, so we've been at the coalface if not the leader in a sense, getting content down and recognising it but now new laws are coming out and people are starting to recognise that it is abuse and that's as simple as breaking up with someone and sending a barrage of messages threatening them, saying, "I'm going to post this stuff of you," we monitor it and then if it goes online we do everything we can as quick possible to get it down. Yeah that's the nasty side of it unfortunately but in businesses you've just got to look at your footprint and see if there's a problem. Chris: What have we likened having bad reviews to before? Andrew: It's similar to if you had a physical business and you had a whole bunch of people protesting out the front you wouldn't get an awful lot of people through the door and this is basically the digital version of that, the online version of that. And what I found was interesting, what you were saying before is that a great deal of the reviews and stuff, the negative reviews are bogus. Brendon: Yeah, a lot, most of them, I mean you can see it in the review, companies engage us to find out what the problem is and where it stemmed from as well as to remove it, put all our means possible to get the content down. And I've seen cases where, I'll give you an example of a real estate agency had a rental property with a person and that person obviously had a-- whatever happened between the person renting it from the real estate went pear shaped. Which is normal. And in Queensland property laws are pretty strict, you know, there's guidelines on how to do things but either way that person that was renting it didn't like what happened, had all the right procedures in moving them out, they weren't paying rent or whatever but decided to take their grievances online so they found out the person who owned the property had a business. Barraged it, put a massive amount of content on there, where they could, Google Reviews, saying stuff that was really relating to their business but they had no identity with them, they didn't know these people he just wanted-- he was calculated and said, "This is how I'm ...
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    23 min