🟡 Digital Marketing, Done Better! Smart50 List 2023 🚀 Father 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Skater 🛹 CEO || Knows Nothing About Football ⚽️ 🏉 || Knows how to accelerate your sales.

For over three decades, I've helped visionary businesses harness emerging technologies to create extraordinary growth. 

From the dawn of mobile phones to today's AI revolution, I've consistently turned technological disruption into competitive advantage for my clients.

My journey began in 1987 with the first wave of mobile technology. 

The Car Phone.

Since then, I've successfully navigated every major digital transformation - from the internet's emergence in 1996 (launching the World's first coin operated Internet Kiosk) to digital marketing's evolution in 2010, & now the AI revolution. 

Each wave has deepened my expertise in spotting opportunities others miss.

Today, I lead Sydney Digital Marketing Agency, established in 2014 and recognized among Australia's smartest businesses on the 2023 Smart50 list. 

We partner with medium & enterprise businesses to reduce their cost of customer acquisition and transform their marketing results through data-driven strategies that consistently deliver measurable ROI.

What sets me apart isn't just the depth of my experience - it's my ability to see around corners and guide businesses toward future opportunities while delivering results today.

📍 Partner Benefits:

→ Strategic Innovation: You gain access to cutting-edge marketing strategies tested across diverse industries. Our early adoption of AI & automation tools means you're always ahead of competitors.

→ Proven ROI Framework: Our proprietary approach combines data analytics with creative strategy, consistently delivering 3-5x return on marketing investment for our clients.

→ Risk Reduction: Leverage our 35+ years of experience navigating digital transformations. We've already learned the costly lessons so you don't have to.

→ Holistic Growth Focus: Unlike agencies that chase trending tactics, we build comprehensive strategies that align with your business goals, market position, & growth targets.

→ Future-Proofed Solutions: In a rapidly evolving digital landscape, we ensure your marketing infrastructure is built to adapt and scale, protecting your investment long-term.

The 3 things to know about me - outside of my professional bio 👇

1️⃣ I’ve been digital since dial up - 1996 ☎️

2️⃣ My son+daughter were born 18 yrs apart 🥰

3️⃣ At least once a year I take a 4 day silent retreat to disconnect from the crazy. 📵 🤐

Simon Gould ✪ CEO ✪ Sydney Digital Marketing Agency ✪

I've left.

It's been weeks now... and I'm never going back.

Ever.

If you're still using ChatGPT as your go-to AI... you are missing out.

To most of the general public, ChatGPT IS AI...but I simply do not trust Sam Altman and his motives.

 But that's for another post.

I've been using Claude since it launched around the same time as ChatGPT in late 2022.

I always felt it was the better "writer"  more nuanced, more considered, less like talking to a confident robot.

But then like most of us, I drank the OpenAI Kool-Aid for a few years. 

Then it was Perplexity.  Simply for its flexibility in choosing models, and it's still a great tool for research and search. Their Comet browser has actually been my default for about 5 months now.

But in the last 6 weeks, the leap in intelligence from Claude has simply blown my mind 🤯

Here's why you should seriously consider making the switch:

It thinks before it answers. Claude reasons through problems rather than just pattern-matching to the most likely response. When I'm working through strategy, positioning, or complex client problems -  that difference is enormous.

It writes like a human being. Not corporate-speak. Not a bulleted list of buzzwords dressed up as insight. Claude understands context, tone, and nuance in a way that still surprises me. For anyone in marketing or communications,  this alone is the game changer.

It pushes back. I actually want my AI to tell me when I'm wrong, or when my thinking has a gap. Claude does this. Respectfully. Intelligently. It makes the work better.

It's honest about what it doesn't know. No hallucinated statistics delivered with misplaced confidence. 
Claude is far more likely to say "I'm not certain" than to fabricate an answer that sounds plausible. In a business context, that matters enormously.

The agentic capabilities are trily next level. With Claude Code and its ability to reason across complex, multi-step tasks.
I'm now building automation frameworks for my agency that would have taken a developer weeks to spec out, let alone build. 

This is where I believe the real productivity revolution is happening right now.
I'm not saying ChatGPT doesn't have its place. 

But if you're a founder, a marketer, or anyone who uses AI to do serious work  I'd encourage you to spend a week with Claude and see what you've been missing.

The gap has widened. Significantly.

And I'm not going back.

Simon Gould ✪ Founder ✪ Chief Thinker ✪ Sydney Digital Marketing Agency

🏆Smart50 Lister. Founder. Father. Creator. Knows nothing about football ⚽️ 🏉 But knows your business is paying too much to acquire new clients. We fix that. So you can grow revenue, faster. ♻️ (B2B & B2C experts)

🧡  VP Recruit's New Website is Live | But Here's What We Did BEFORE We Designed Anything


Most businesses jump straight into redesigns – new look, modern feel, better images.

We start with three questions:

A – Who is your AUDIENCE, and what do they actually need?
B – What makes your BRAND genuinely different?
C – What are COMPETITORS doing, and how do you stand apart?

This is our ABC methodology. 

Strategy before design. 

Always.

Before redesigning and rebuilding your website, ask yourself:

→ Do you know exactly who you're trying to reach and what problem you're solving for them?
 → Can you articulate what makes you different (beyond "quality" and "service")?
 → Is your site structure built for user behaviour or just for looking modern?

For VP Recruit we mapped candidate vs. client journeys, identified decision triggers, and positioned labour hire as strategic partnership 🚫 not a commodity.

Then we designed and built.

The result? 

A website that doesn't just represent the business ⏩  it drives it forward.

Congrats to the VP Recruit team. We wish you the greatest success in growing your business. 

As always a massive shout out to the SDM team Jan, Cedric and Puneet Singh for the care and l💛 they put into their work 

And to businesses wondering if their website is performing or just existing – let's talk.

Sydney Digital Marketing Agency | ⭐️  Digital Marketing Designed To Power Your Business Revenue

Senior Partner Manager at Hootsuite | Enterprise Alliances with MarTech SaaS | Head of Sales & Marketing at MyRisk | Board Director | Author of "Connect & Act - Systematic Social Selling"

I spend my days working with boutique marketing agencies across Australia, New Zealand and Asia Pacific helping them build businesses that feel lighter, clearer and more scalable.

Agencies don’t struggle because of a lack of talent; they struggle because they’re carrying too much alone. That’s where I fit.

ActiveCampaign gives them the tooling. I help them build the engine, the rhythm and the confidence to grow.

After moving to Australia nearly a decade ago, I found myself drawn to the agency world — the conversations, the creativity, the honesty, the challenge of wearing ten hats at once.

One thread that runs through everything I do is the belief that business moves at the speed of human connection. It’s why I’ve created my #42coffees series: slowing down enough to hear people’s stories, understand their direction and find the right doors to open for them.

The same energy shows up in the in-person events I run across Asia Pacific. When people meet in real rooms, things shift: ideas get clearer, partnerships form faster and growth feels more human.

Since then I’ve supported partners at ActiveCampaign and beforehand at Hootsuite, GoTo, Noggin, KeepItSafe and across the broader MSP and MarTech landscape. The work is always a mix of:
→ partnerships (finding the right doors)
→ automation & lifecycle systems (removing friction)
→ Social Selling (building visibility without becoming someone you’re not)
→ productised services (so the business stops feeling heavy)

What I enjoy most is watching agency founders realise they don’t need to grow through burnout — they can grow through structure.

Moving to Australia was not a straight line. A layoff opened a moment of pause which became an inflection point. I studied leadership using the time to understand the emerging SaaS ecosystem. That allowed me to transfer my experience into a new market, build a partnership-focused identity from the ground up, and develop the human-connection mindset that defines how I work today.

I’m also a long-time writer with 28 books from travel guides to Social Selling and personal development. Writing helps me make sense of things and help others do the same.

Outside work, I serve as a Board Director of Sydney’s historic Castlereagh Boutique Hotel. It’s a role rooted in community, heritage and looking after something that matters — values I try to bring into my work with agencies as well.

If you’re a boutique marketing agency founder trying to shape the next stage of your business, I’d love to hear your story. Every agency journey starts differently and no one builds it alone.

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