Adam Torres and Tim Dwyer discuss Tolemy.
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Show Notes:
Tolemy is an agency redefining growth for entrepreneurs and leaders with a revolutionary new approach that maps the mind, heart, and spirit of business. In this episode, Adam Torres interviews Tim Dwyer, Founder of Tolemy, explore Tim’s journey as an entrepreneur and Tolemy.
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About Tim Dwyer
Tim Dwyer is a seasoned business growth strategist with over 25 years of experience supporting private enterprises. Having worked with thousands of businesses, he specializes in helping leaders uncover their core assets and align them with purpose-driven business models. Tim believes that when individuals discover their true value and mission, they can build businesses that not only fulfill their personal visions but also serve their ideal clients effectively.
Known for delivering creative insights and using powerful analogies, Tim empowers entrepreneurs to recognize opportunities that lie right in front of them. His simple yet impactful frameworks have enabled countless businesses to connect, learn, and trade more effectively in their markets.
Tim is deeply committed to helping business leaders achieve true wealth, believing that the private sector has the power to transform industries and shape a better future. His purpose is to guide others on their journey to meaningful success, ultimately improving lives across generations.
About Tolemy
Tolemy is a growth agency specializing in strategy, brand design, and activation. With a strong focus on education, Tolemy guides entrepreneurs in designing, building, and activating business strategies rooted in their core assets. The agency is dedicated to empowering businesses to create meaningful, positive impacts within their communities and industries.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today I have Tim Dwyer on the line, and he is the founder over at Tolemi.
Tim, welcome to the show. Thanks, Adam. How are you? Oh man, I’m having all kinds of fun and I gotta say something to the audience just because I gotta let them know. So Tim, it was, he’s in Australia first off, but that’s not what to let you know. What to let you know is he’s been so gracious. I rescheduled him twice and I hate doing that.
And I was so thankful. He’s so, kind and courteous. I was like, man, it must be, I don’t know if it’s the Australia thing or what, but I, just wanna say I appreciate that, Tim. We try to. The content out over here, and we try to do our best. And you supplied an amazing topic today. So the ultimate 3D business map how integrating spirit, emotion, and logic can transform your business and life.
So first thing, first man, I just wanna say thank you again for the, leniency and on the rescheduling. And then let’s just dive in. So ultimate 3D business map. where’d you come up with that concept originally? Where’d that start from? Well, it actually started in the two thousands when Google Maps and other mapping systems came out into the marketplace, and I saw how the stress had been removed from people traveling from A to B.
Mm. And I thought, isn’t it really cool? And, and since we’ve been using Google Maps the world has opened up and it’s, freed up. And, back in 2008, I thought, whoa, hang on a minute. What if we created the Google Maps for business? I. Mm. And so since then I’ve been working out how to actually create a navigational system that actually works.
Mm. And what I found was that there’s three layers to it, of course. ’cause we’re human beings there. We’ve got the mind, which is the mathematics and the structures. Mm-hmm. And then we have. the emotions, which is also our compass. And then we have our spirit, which is our drive and our passion of what we are here to do.
Mm. Um, so what I then did is I went and looked through how to actually create a mapping system first on paper. And then how to put that into a system over the longer term so that people can self guide themselves on exactly what elements to work on in what order. Hmm. take me through the process.
What does this look like? by the way, for everybody listening at the end of this, I’ll give Tim the opportunity to leave websites or social media or contact information so that people can follow up on only so much we could do and, you know, 20 minute interview or so.
But take me through the process and what and how it works. Well, so the first thing is there’s two elements of business so that the objective of business is to create the maximum value with the most amount of leverage whilst having the most amount of fun. so I took that, that’s a great definition.
I’m not gonna claim, I’ve heard that the most, have the most amount of fun side of things from everyone. So that’s, I like your definition. Well, the whole thing is, it’s if, like they, they say if you follow your passion, you’ll never work a day in your life. And that’s what it’s all about. It’s about firstly coming up with a, like if you’re in the entrepreneurial space or you’re joining a business as a business leader mm-hmm.
It’s about going where you’re passionate about what lights you up. Mm-hmm. And if you follow what lights you up, then things actually become a lot easier. it’s not doing what people think you should do or, whatever. It’s like okay. I, I, I’m passionate about gaming online. So people will then move into a business that creates games online.
Mm-hmm. it’s just about following your passion to start off with. But when we take the definition of business, which is to create the maximum value with the most amount of leverage, that gives us an insight into the two axes. So there’s two axes to the map to start off with. The first one is, how do I maximize the value creation that I can put into the world?
Mm. So, so how do I do that? And then you can’t do that in a cocoon. You need to do that in relationship with people. Mm-hmm. So the map has two axis to it. How do I create value in relationship with people? Then the other third dimension of it is how do I energetically get energized , to actually go and implement everything that I’ve ever dreamed for.
Mm-hmm. So that’s the third dimension, which is how do I energize myself and clear the pathway to create the business or that I always wanted to create. They’re, they’re the main axes. where would you like me to go? ’cause I can go into brand, I can go into culture, I can go into relationships, I can go anywhere.
I wanna go into the, to the faster side of things. So when you understand your business growth cycle like this concept of scaling, a lot of people are taught, a lot of business owners, a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of executives that listen to this show. And you know, a lot of people talk about the scaling side of things.
Like how does, how does that piece play into this? So businesses that grow the fastest are brand led. So they lead with the brand, which is leading with spirit, or it’s leading with the purpose of the business. Right? So that becomes the guiding star. So if you break business down, there’s, there’s a couple of layers.
So there’s the brand layer, which is not branding, it’s actually what the brand stands for and it’s promise. Mm-hmm. There’s the product layer which sits underneath the brand, and that’s where the business model starts Then there’s the channels of how you go to market. Then there’s the sales campaigns, then there’s the infrastructure that supports the growth, and then there’s the culture that supports the infrastructure that supports all the strategy.
So having those layers is incredibly important. Now, in business, most businesses are self-funded, so they go out and they have an idea and they go sell the idea. And then they create the, their initial success. And then from that they’ll then look at other, how they go to market and get more business.
And that’s through channels. And then they’ll go into looking at what products that they can add on to what it is that they’re doing already. Yeah. And then they’ll go over to brand to find out that their brand no longer suits the product, the channel, or the sales. So then they have to do a brand refresh.
So, so what I show businesses how to do is how to do brand first. So how do you start with brand and you design the business from the outside in. So you design it from brand. Then you go, what are all the different product lines that can fit under that brand? Interesting. And then what’s the sort of channels that I can go put those products into?
And then what’s the sales campaign do I put in place? Mm. Now when you do that. you speed up business growth by six times. Wow. Because you’re not doing, you’re not doing one next logical, next logical, next logical. You’re starting with the end in mind and then you’re back filling. Mm. Now, so it’s much, much quicker.
Now once we do, a design and get a business really rocking and rolling and understanding how the brand works and the products and all that sort of stuff works. The most important thing is then getting the infrastructure and then implementing from the inside out. Mm-hmm. Now the infrastructure is incredibly important.
So here’s some stats for you. So businesses, there’s less than five businesses get past 10 people. Hmm. So they tend, they don’t get, they don’t grow past 10 people, and that’s contractors as well as employees. Mm. Now the reason for that is because they need to build the first layer of management skill, and businesses don’t know that they can get caught at between five and 10 people.
Interesting. They, they get caught in a unprofitable zone, especially if they’re not brand led. If they’re brand led, they’ll go through that unprofitable zone quite quickly. Mm. Then businesses, there’s less than 2% of businesses go past 20 people. Mm-hmm. And that’s a cultural issue that sits in a business.
So there’s, these markers all the way along that if you know what the marker is, you can pre-build what skill you need to take you to the next gate or take it to the next size of business. Now culture is really important, but at between 15 and 25 people, because the founder is no longer doing all the re you know, the employment.
Mm-hmm. And as a result of that, they need cultural agreements in place so that when people come in, they know how to show up and behave. They don’t bring any of their pre-conditioning of bad habits into the business, so to speak. Mm-hmm. So, cultural agreements at between 15 and 25 people is incredibly important, but once businesses have that in place, they’ve got the management in place.
Mm-hmm. Then they can scale through to 40, 50, 60 people. Once you, you’re past 2020 people, the scalability of a business increases tenfold. And businesses, then they can then set a really nice pathway to extend their product lines past 20 people, and they can grow incredibly quickly. But again, people get stuck at 60 people because there’s another, there’s another pain point there.
But the thing is get getting the foundations right first. Mm-hmm. So step one, brand led. Step two, get your infrastructure right. Where do you think, and I know there’s gonna be a lot of variations of, answers to this question, but I know certain themes tend to arise ’cause you’ve worked with a lot of people.
Where do people get this part wrong? Like, where do they, like, where do they get stuck? Like with the scaling side of things, like, and let, let’s stick with the earlier, ’cause I know you mentioned multiple, you know sizes of businesses. Let’s go to that. I think the first step where people don’t go over 20, or was it 30?
Let’s stay with that. Well. Yeah. They, they, they, the first one is getting over 10. Right? So that’s where most businesses fall to. That’s 95% of businesses globally. So then let’s focus on that one then. Let’s, for, for the sake of this conversation, ’cause I know you, I know there’s different sets for each one, but over 10, where do people fail on that side?
They don’t do capacity modeling. Mm-hmm. So they don’t, they don’t replan their growth. So capacity modeling looks at, well, how many resources do I need to sell my products and services? Mm-hmm. How many resources do I need to be able to deliver against the promises that I’m putting out into the marketplace?
Mm-hmm. How many resources do I need to service and support the growth? Mm-hmm. Now, when we model it out say I’m starting out my own consulting business, for instance, right? Mm-hmm. There’s me doing, I’m doing all of them. I’m doing the sales, I’m doing the servicing, I’m doing the support. I’m doing the whole lot, right?
Mm-hmm. So then I bring on a support person. Then I might bring on a couple of other delivery people to take on the overflow. And then I start growing. And then if, I’m the only one doing the sales still mm-hmm. And then there’s a whole lot of other people doing the delivery, what happens is I then do the sales, pass the delivery in.
But as I’m passing the delivery in, I’ve gotta then look at everyone else’s quality. Mm-hmm. And then I see that their quality’s not as good as mine. So I then step in Yeah. And start doing more of the delivery again. And whilst I’m doing that, I’m not going and doing sales. And so therefore my revenue goes up and down, up and down, up and down.
Mm-hmm. And I then find that got inconsistent profits. Mm. Now that happens in every, every type of business that can happen in the consulting. That can happen in a product delivery business. It doesn’t matter the business type. Yeah. It’s about mapping out what your business looks like at between 10 and 15.
Let’s just pick the number 12. Mm-hmm. What does it look like there? And then you build and you put in the activities and what you need to be doing on a daily basis for each resource. So it’s the resource planning and the capacity planning that is the problem. Mm. And that to me, that’s definitely not a natural skillset.
When you think about if somebody, when they just decided they had this idea, they started, it was just them, they didn’t have any clients. Let’s just pick a service business, right? Like they didn’t have any clients. They went out on their own. They got their first client. Now they’re, you know, they’re selling a couple more and now they got.
More, and they’re, thinking between, like hiring those first couple of people and just understanding that that’s gonna take immediately away from what they, you know, what they have or what’s coming in. Now there’re gonna be expenses you add, and it’s not guaranteed you’re gonna make those sales.
So you’re climbing, you’re climbing, and then you’re like, okay, it’s a, you’re on this rollercoaster. and it’s all push, push, push, push, push. I’ve gotta go push out there, I’ve gotta get out there. Yeah. And, and when it’s sales led and not brand led, it, makes it even trickier because you can’t charge enough.
So if you lead with brand and you lead with a, a really solid product ecosystem mm-hmm. You can not generally charge more and you can generate greater margin. Mm. Now here’s a number that I use. So the revenue per person number is critical for growth. So say you’re a consulting company, you want it to be over $200,000 revenue per person.
Mm-hmm. If you’re a product delivery company, it’s the gross margin. So you take up the cost of the, product cost. Right. But, it’s looking at that revenue per person. You want it to be as high as possible when you’re going through these growth, because the higher it is, the more margin you’ve got and the better people you can employ.
Mm-hmm. So when we are sales led and we are tight on money and we are cost conscious mm-hmm. We will tend to not employ the best people. We’ll employ the people we can afford. Mm. So the first step is get your margins up as high as you possibly can. Mm-hmm. Then look for the best people that can be trained up quickly so that therefore you don’t have to do step back into delivery or step back into the factory or step back into doing that piece of work.
So you’ve gotta be able to employ people better than you. Mm-hmm. Who can be specialists in delivery, or specialist in sales, or specialist in SU support. But they’re all, self-guided, self-motivated people. And then when you do that, then you don’t have to manage the people. What you do is you do the capacity management or capacity modeling.
Mm-hmm. And then you put in a self-managed business. Yeah. ’cause everyone’s clear. Well, Tim, I gotta tell you, man, this has been great. We’ve only talked about one segment, that one to 10 in depth. I know there’s, you, talked about everything in this particular interview of that, those challenges that people are gonna be facing when they, you know, hit that 60, you know, employee marks.
So every, it sounds like there’s hurdles all the way up up the chain of scaling. That being said, only so much we cover in this one. who gets the most value out of working with you and your team? Like what kind of businesses, what kind of organizations are you working with?
Because I also want you to leave any contact information or any, website, social media, things like that, whatever you wanna leave so people can follow up. But I also wanna make sure that the right people in my audience follow up. So who gets the most value outta working with you and your team?
Well, I mean, it’s quite broad. So I run programs where multiple people come on board. And that’s up to the 20 people mark. Yep. So that’s for the mass, the masses, so to speak, or the, the majority of businesses out there. Yeah. So I do do that and then. For the larger businesses, we do do one-on-one coaching and consulting.
the main thing that we do right up the very front, it doesn’t matter the size of business you can be a, single operator or you can be a hundred plus or even a thousand plus people. Mm-hmm. The methodology is actually the methodology. Mm-hmm. So doing the brand, and it just means that how do we deliver it?
Is it one-on-one or is it one. One in group formats? Yeah. I personally like the group formats because people get to connect and learn again with each other and it makes a lot more fun. And the fun bit is we gamify everything. Ah, so we, we we play games. And so by playing games we learn and we, have fun whilst we’re actually leveraging our business.
Mm-hmm. Wonderful. How do people follow up? If they just go to, if they go to tolemy.com mm-hmm. T-O-L-E-M y.com. We’ve got a website there that they, there’s a, a application form if they want to get in touch. Or I’m on LinkedIn of course, so it’s Tim Dwyer in Brisbane. And just look up Tmy and you’ll see me there.
And yeah, just reach out if you want. If you want some help, let us know. All right. And for everybody watching, just so you know, we’ll definitely put those links in the show notes so you can reach out and connect with Tim and his team. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet, hit that subscribe or follow button.
This is a daily show. Each and every day we’re bringing you new content, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way on your journey as well. So again, hit that subscribe or follow button. And Tim, thanks again for coming on the show. You are welcome. Thank you, Adam.