Ant Hodges 0:00
I want to be honest with you about something before we go any further. I should have started this show a long time ago. I knew the message was right. I had 20 years of experience behind it, people I respect, people who built serious businesses have been telling me for years that I needed to be doing this, and I still held back. I played with podcasting, and I played with doing this kind of thing for a while. I procrastinated over whether it should be video and whether it should be audio, and even some of the ones that I tried, I just didn't have momentum, because something wasn't quite right in me. And you know what? It was fear, mostly the fear of stepping out from behind the work that I was doing and into the light. For two decades, I was the person making other people successful. I was good at it. I knew how to do that. I had an agency that I was running that did these things for clients, but this speaking directly, putting my own name on it, being the voice, rather than the strategist behind somebody else's voice, this felt different, exposed, more than anything else. What if the ideas were not useful? What if nobody cared? What if I cocked up and I made a mistake? You know? What shifted was not confidence. It was a question I couldn't shake. And there's been many times in my life where I've had coaches, mentors, people around me who've asked me questions that have shaken me to the core, if I genuinely believe that simplicity is the strategy that doing less of the right things is more powerful than doing everything averagely. Then who am I serving by keeping that to myself? So here we are not because the fear went away, because the reason to show up turned out to be bigger than the reason to hide. So let me ask you a question, what if doing less is actually the strategy? This is not episode one of this podcast. This is really me just bringing an introduction to what this is all about, because less, I believe, is the strategy. That's the name of the podcast. Less is the strategy. I want that to be a phrase that you think about and that you use in your work, in your life, because doing less isn't necessarily a bad thing. You know, I don't want you to think about doing less because you've run out of ideas, and not because doing less because you've given up and you want to be lazy, but doing less because you've worked out that most of what fills your week is not moving your business forward, it's Just keeping you busy. And busy and growing are not the same thing. My name is ant Hodges. I have 20 years in the digital marketing world. My agency helped grow over $76 million of client results. I've built agencies, I've built teams. I've written a book simplify the funnel. I've spoken on business stages, but in August 2023 I sat alone in a cafe in Porto. It was my go to place to be able to decompress, to think I looked at everything that I'd built, and I made the decision to walk away from most of it, not because it had failed, because it had stopped being worth what it was costing me, what came out of that decision, and everything I've learned before and since, is what this show is built on. I believe one thing above everything else when it comes to building a business, simplicity scales. Complexity fails. The businesses I see winning right now are not the ones doing the most. They're the ones who got ruthlessly clear about a small number of things that work and said no to everything else. That clarity is almost, as some people would say, an alignment. It's not a personality type, it's not a niche or revenue model. It's a decision to step in and be fully aligned, aligned to purpose, aligned to core. Calling aligned to your reason why every episode of this show is designed to help you make those decisions. To choose less is the strategy this show is for two kinds of people. If you're already doing seven figures or more, and things are working on paper, and somewhere along the line, the business seems to have felt like it's got heavy more offers, more team, more platforms, more complexity, and the result you're getting does not feel proportionate to what you're carrying. Then this show is for you, and if you're building toward that years in doing everything the advice says you should do watching others break through while you keep juggling too much with too little coming in, then this show is for you. In both cases, the answer will almost never be more it's clearer, simpler. And the distinction between those, between what is actually working and what just feels productive, is the whole game every week, one episode, one idea that actually matters. No list of 20 things to go and implement no overwhelm, just the right thing, clearly explained with something you can actually do with it. I want to bring real stories from real people who chose simplicity and found that everything that they've been chasing started to come towards them when they made that choice, when they said that less is the strategy. I want to bring to you the honest version of what it looks like to build a business on your own terms, including the parts still being worked out. Because I don't have it all worked out, I'm a few steps ahead of most people. I may be a few steps ahead of you, my friend, but we're here on this journey together. This podcast will be me and you. There won't be any interviews on this podcast. This will meet me just talking through the thoughts that have rocked my world over the years and that I can see could help you. If you want to go deeper right now, then my book is available at simplify the funnel.com. And I run a number of online and in person events that are all detailed over at simplify summits.com. Everything is about working together to help you to simplify. So welcome to less is the strategy. I'm glad that fear didn't win, and I'm doing this now. Please subscribe whatever channel that you're listening to right now. I'd love to hear your thoughts as we go through please do share podcast episodes that you listen to with others who you know need to hear this message, but fundamentally tune in each week to help simplify your way forward and to welcome in less is the strategy into your vocabulary, into your frame of reference, into your mindset, each and every single week in your business, less is the strategy. Let's go You. You.