Ep #187: Wes Towers: When Everything Breaks All At Once

Wes Towers didn’t just stumble; his whole world collapsed. A failed marriage, a business undervalued to nearly nothing, and nights spent sleeping under his desk — this was the reality he faced. Yet, in the middle of one of his darkest days, Wes wiped away tears, pulled himself together, and closed the biggest deal of his career. That moment became the start of an unexpected journey — one where pain transformed into power.

In this episode of the Business Growth Architect Show: Founders of the Future, Wes shares the raw truth of what it’s like to rebuild when everything falls apart. He opens up about discovering the power of vulnerability, the role of breathwork and plant medicine in facing his inner struggles, and how authenticity gave him an edge in business when AI was predicted to take it all away. His story is not polished—it’s real, unfiltered, and deeply human.

Everyone has a story. We all faced it, being broken, stuck, or unsure of how to move forward, Wes’s story is proof that our biggest breakdown can lead to our strongest breakthrough. His journey will inspire you to embrace your humanity, lean into authenticity, and turn challenges into advantages.

👉 Watch the full episode now and learn more about Wes’s work at uplift360.com.au.

Resources Mentioned:
Wes Towers: Uplift360 | LinkedIn | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube | TikTok 

_____________________
We appreciate you, thank you for listening. Let us know in the comments what resonated in this episode, we want to hear from you.

Leave a comment, like, share with one person who needs to hear the message our guest shared.

Take our QUIZ and find out what your talent is worth in this market: What's Your Talent Worth (http://WhatsYourTalentWorth.com)

Follow us on Instagram:
Check us out on Tik Tok:
Work With Us

Chapters

• 0:00 , Introduction of Business Growth Architect Show: Founders of the Future
• 0:38 Meet Wes Towers, SEO expert and founder of Uplift360
• 2:18 Wes Towers’ Vision That Changed Everything
• 4:14 When Divorce and Business Failure Hit at Once
• 6:40 Why Wes Stopped Hiding His Struggles
• 7:38 Why Wes Explored Alternatives Beyond Therapy
• 8:29 Wes Towers on Facing Divorce and Letting Go
• 9:55 Connecting Business With Who You Really Are
• 11:44 The Danger of Masking Pain
• 13:29 Why Authenticity Beats AI Every Time
• 15:55 Competitors, Flaws, and Differentiation
• 16:28 Standing Out by Doing Things Right
• 17:24 How Wes Towers Rebuilt His Life and Business
• 18:11 Why Focused on Joy Instead of Growth
• 18:56 Optimizing for Google, ChatGPT, and Beyond
• 22:09 Why AI Needs Your Voice to Work
• 23:33 Owning Your Space With a Blueprint
• 25:09 How Niching Helped You Stand Out
• 26:11 Why It’s Time to Be Human

Transcript

Wes Towers: 0:00

Yeah, look, it was horrendous time in my life. My marriage fell apart. It was as close to a full breakdown as you could possibly get. I was on the floor crying a blubbering mess under my desk. Five minutes, and I was able to gather myself up, put myself together, and close the biggest deal I'd ever closed. It felt like everything was broken and everything had to be rebuilt.

BEATE CHELETTE: 0:27

Today's guest hit rock bottom, everything, all at once, fell apart. Wes tell us about the moment when your whole life collapsed.

Wes Towers: 0:38

Yeah, look, it was a horrendous time in my life, around three years ago, my marriage fell apart, but that affected all aspects of my life and my business and everything. So it was something that I kind of knew was on the horizon, but when I found out what I discovered, it was still almost well. It was as close to a full breakdown as you could possibly get. And so I moved out and was sleeping under the desk at the office and all these sorts of things, and but I was still able to keep up the facade of everything being okay to a degree. So weirdly enough, when it really struck me was I was on the floor crying and blubbering mess under my desk, because everything was so fresh and new that then I realized I had a zoom call within five minutes or so, and I was able to gather myself up, put myself together, and close the biggest deal I'd ever closed. And initially I thought that was good, that I was able to compartmentalize the pain and the torment in my own life, and then put it aside and do business. But it was later that someone mentioned to me that that might not be so healthy. There might be things in deep down that you really got to deal with. And certainly that was the case. So it led to my journey in my personal life, but which also led to the biggest breakthroughs in my business as well.

BEATE CHELETTE: 2:05

What do you think the transformation challenge was like? Here you are. You run a successful business, and now one part of your business falls apart. What was the transformation challenge for you? What were you asked to do

Wes Towers: 2:18

so the aspect of being able to compartmentalize and hide who me was both a good thing and a terrible thing, because it was also the thing that was trapping me. So when I went to do the breath work was really transformational. I was convulsing in all sorts of things and but I saw some visions, which was really phenomenal. I saw a picture of Jesus, like this stereotypical what Jesus might look like, and the stereotypical Satan face, and it was merging from one to the other. And I realized, for me, it meant that it was kind of like understanding I have the capacities to be both and I am. I am both, and I have failures and flaws as a person. I have the potential to be good and bad and sometimes both, and it's kind of so the way I present myself to the world isn't necessarily the full picture. I think we all do that. So for me to just to even understand that internally, helped me. And I think I had to hit rock bottom to get to the point where I would, where I would delve into that and recognize my own flaws as a person.

BEATE CHELETTE: 3:33

I want to jump in here. Do you think that this had something to do with that you that you were putting up a mask and that, okay, so talk to us about this, because I think this part is really important to mention, is that we have this fake it till you make it mentality, yeah, which I don't think is necessarily a bad thing if you look at it from a creation perspective. But I think the fake it till you make it is oftentimes misconstrued as a pretend to be something that you are not, not, not, you know, live as if you are becoming this person that you are designing to be, which I think is a big difference. Where was that for you? What was that internal challenge?

Wes Towers: 4:14

Yeah, so well, so through the process of separation, divorce and everything, the a real tipping point for me was, everything's on the table, and you've got to because the business was going along, and it was moderately successful, I thought, but I got the business valuation, and he said, he sort of suggested the business wasn't worth much at all any, and he highlighted AI as a significant threat, it was becoming evident that it would take had the potential to take over jobs. So I realized I'd invested and spent all this time building a business which may not be worth what I thought it was, and just to realize everything that I. Built. So at this point, I've realized, okay, so my marriage has failed. So I failed in that aspect, and that has implications. And now my business is, is, maybe it's not as healthy as it what it could have been. And so my relationships, my business, everything was challenged. And so I had to re from that point of complete breakdown of who I thought I was, because as business people, I think we put our identities, at least to a degree, in what we're building as businesses, because we're so invested in it, obviously, and that's not good or bad. It's just that, just the reality, certainly for me, that it felt like everything was broken and everything had to be rebuilt. And so interestingly enough, AI didn't destroy my business as the business of value suggested it might. It was something that I could introduce into my business, and I don't think I would have done it to the degree I have if I didn't hit the rock bottom. So I mean, I've just come off. We report our financial years, mid year, so June, and it's just the strongest financial year we've ever had. So we had little incremental growth even from that point of breakdown, just to have a reality check and say, Hey, you're not as good as what you thought you were, and to adjust some things and turn what the business value I thought was a threat into an advantage. How did you

BEATE CHELETTE: 6:22

manage the emotional aspect? Because at this point, you know somebody's sitting there with a frying pan and giving you a good whipping over the head multiple times, right? So your relationship's fallen apart. Your business isn't what you think it is. What's your mental emotional state at this point? How do you how do you manage to get through that?

Wes Towers: 6:40

The first few things that I did was to build relationships around me. So I don't think it's something men do particularly well, is to build strong relationships where you can have you can be open. And I was, I was certainly like that. Historically, I was always fairly closed and never reveal personal hardships or anything like that. Just always speak positively and that kind of stuff, but things got so bad that was like that was broken. So I just made sure I built around me great friendships who could have open discussions that I could call

BEATE CHELETTE: 7:13

upon. You also mentioned one of the things that, of course, I'm very interested in is alternative medicines, plant medicine, and different types of journeys. How'd you how'd you come up with that? Because you, and forgive me, if I say that, you look like a pretty straight, straight laced kind of guy, you know? So how does somebody like you get into something like that? How does that happen?

Wes Towers: 7:38

Yeah, well, I was, I was fortunate in that I went to a psychologist who was really quite progressive. Now she didn't encourage plant medicine directly, because what I had may not be legal here, but it's moving that way. She encouraged me through the breath work, but I knew the clinic that I went to were pushing along the path of being a place where you the plant medicine will be available once it's here in Australia, it's kind of in this weird point where it's become legal to a degree, but there's no one facilitating it, because it's just complicated.

BEATE CHELETTE: 8:18

What was your what was a trigger event in that journey that you took that changed everything for you. Because typically, there is,

Wes Towers: 8:28

yeah, so I mean that vision that I had with to realize the good and the bad, the plant medicine I had the one time, and I have no like, I've never had any desire to do it again. I feel like it was something that I certainly wasn't recreational. It wasn't fun, but it was certainly revealing. And I saw lots of things, and I was really intentional about how I did it. I had a journal. I wrote everything down that I could and just a forgiving process as well. So forgiving my now ex wife for the things now in any relationship, in any marriage breakdown, there's pro usually, probably both parties have done things wrong, wrong along the way. So firstly, to recognize all the things that I probably did wrong, but also to forgive those things that were wronged against me, because I think I feel like there's, it was hard to move past the need for the feeling that for vindication, to say, you know, you want to, particularly when there's kids involved. So that was a big challenge, too.

BEATE CHELETTE: 9:36

So now you have this, this newfound knowledge, right? You are going through some traumatic experiences. You are trying to figure out how to how to continue with the business. So let's talk about the businesses through the shop. Talk. What is your business? What's the problem that you're solving for your clients?

Wes Towers: 9:55

Yeah. So Uplift 360 is the company here in Australia. So. We do websites and SEO Search everywhere. Optimization is what we're calling it now, because it's not just Google, but that the niche I moved into, even to a greater degree, was the construction and trades businesses, because I realized all well, the majority of our very best clients were kind of similar. They were kind of in the same space with construction, building, materials, those sorts of things. They've still got legacy clients outside of that. But moving forward, we've really niched in because that's what, that's who we serve the best. They're the happiest clients. So we're just so going after that a little bit more. And I think that whole the whole breakdown was just a time to reflect and say, Okay, what do I really want? And how do I build the business? So it's more authentically me. So I'm connecting with people that I naturally work well with and and so for me, I'm a really relational sort of person. So I thought, I'm going to do my own networking I've been to networking events before, but they were kind of structured and everything, but I'm more relaxed and relational. So I just did my own networking event down at the wine bar, which is near here, and just invited people, and business people, and a great caliber of people started coming and and just doing things that were healthy and helpful for me as a human, and connecting with the with the right

BEATE CHELETTE: 11:27

people. Would you say that this was the transformation that that you may had to undergo anyway? Is that it was to be more real first? Did you discover your humanity in that process in a different way.

Wes Towers: 11:42

Yeah, for sure, it's for the as you say, the mask is a good way to put it. So, I mean, you know, in deep down, internally, your flaws and failings and your mask it, I don't think you just mask it to everybody else. You kind of try and mask it to yourself, and then you've got internal conflict. Well, certainly for me. So the internal conflict, I wasn't very healthy at all. Through the marriage, I became really quite overweight, and I think a lot of that was just unhappiness with my myself, really. So I just started to do some healthy things. You know, go to the gym, eat eat healthier. But I think you're right. These things have never been more important, the human aspect, because AI is changing the way we work and the way we interface with the world, really. So it's got the capacity for us to think less, to be less human, which is the downside, but the upside is maybe it can force us to be more human, because it's the one differentiating point.

BEATE CHELETTE: 12:47

Let's talk about that. Yeah, I want, I want you to actually dive into that a little bit more, because you had said this when we were doing our prep for for our podcast interview, that you said the one thing that AI cannot replace is humanity. To me, it sounds like in your story, as you're sharing this is that you had first discovered your own humanity, and then as you recognized who you were and what you liked and disliked, you could add that to your business. Do you think this happens all the time to business owners that they don't know, what that secret, special humanity, source of themselves

Wes Towers: 13:28

is probably has, but it's probably heightened. So we do, as I say, search everywhere, optimization for we help clients in that and often speaking to them about their uniqueness, and that's often the humans aspect of who they are as personal brands, because businesses are led by people and they're and our businesses are usually a reflection of who we are as individuals, to a degree, the personality, The strengths and the weaknesses, but to understand what sets you apart in the world as a business and as an individual, leading the business is is really helpful. So in terms of like content. So producing content, lots of people are just jumping on chatGPT and and crunching out content, because it can help with marketing, but it's just the aggregate sum total of what everyone else is is saying, that's pulling everything in from what everyone else has said about a topic and streamlining it into a piece of piece of content. You write something in chatGPT, for example. But what is it can that you can add that's uniquely your, you and uniquely only you think a certain way, so they're the really interesting part. So it forces us to be more human, really. It forces us to be unique and set stand out, not to be like everybody else. So I

BEATE CHELETTE: 14:52

like this idea to look in chatGPT, and say, if this is the average of everybody else, how do I compare to that? And I'm actually finding that more people use chatGPT, the more vanilla it's getting. I am really shocked into the mediocracy of a lot of the stuff that it's now creating. And I wish there was a way to create a container, which I'm sure is going to be the next big thing on how to keep my information protected within my own framework, so that I don't have these mediocre outside pieces. But as it gets so diluted, what I'm hearing you say is that when you discovered who you were, it changed how you show up. What would you tell our audience now that is probably struggling with finding their positioning and being seen and heard in this nutcase perma whiplash market?

Wes Towers: 15:55

Yeah, that's a, that's a really interesting question. So we're often, I'm often talking to clients about this very thing, maybe in that not those same words. One of the things I is often a door unlocking of their mind is to ask them, what is it that frustrates you about your industry? What are all the other company, all your competitors, doing wrong? What are you doing different to them? What's, what are the flaws in your industry?

BEATE CHELETTE: 16:21

Yeah, what's the what's the irritation, what's the itch you can scratch? Yeah. Okay, go ahead, yeah.

Wes Towers: 16:28

So if there's something that really frustrates you in your industry, so we're working with lots of construction trades, those sorts of things here in Australia, I don't know about everywhere, but trades are notorious for turning up late or leaving a mess, those sorts of things. So if, if I'm speaking to someone in a trade and they say, I just really can't stand lateness. So okay, well, this is a, this is an important thing, because it's, it's unique, and it's a frustration for the end customers as well. So just opening up those frustrations, because what whatever irritates you the most, it probably drives you as well. And you know, the opportunities to be different in the in the marketplace, and it's going to be different for every person as well.

BEATE CHELETTE: 17:13

Yeah, I love that. Do you think that this emotional and spiritual pain that you were experiencing turned into the fuel of the work that you do right now?

Wes Towers: 17:24

Yeah, definitely, it would have, for sure. So the things that I struggled through personally to my own identity, personally and who I was, because everything was torn apart, I had to think about who I was and rebuild myself. And off the back of that I rebuilt my own business, but some of those key questions I had to ask myself are the things I'm asking from a business context of clients just to so they can unpack who they are, to differentiate and be set apart in the world that's becoming increasingly bland, really, if You just leave the AI to do the work

BEATE CHELETTE: 18:02

for you. Did you expect that this journey is going to turn out this way? Or did or what part of this surprised you, if any?

Wes Towers: 18:11

Yeah, so I didn't expect to for the business. So I didn't look at it from a business growth perspective. I just looked at the reshaping of how I show up was really about just being happy, just doing things that I enjoyed doing. So the surprising part was, business grew phenomenally easily, the strongest financial year that we've ever had, and I wasn't pursuing, well, I wasn't pursuing business growth. I was just pursuing happiness and

BEATE CHELETTE: 18:46

personal and personal growth. Yes, for somebody who is now listening to this interview and says, Well, the guy's an SEO guy. You haven't even talked about that, what do we tell them? What should they do?

Wes Towers: 18:56

Yeah, so there's search everywhere. Optimization is the thing everyone's interested about, I mean, there's lots of letters being thrown around of how we repackage what was once SEO. So SEO banks previously search engine optimization, so ranking as highly as you can in Google, because you rank highly in traditionally, you have 10 links changed over the course of time, but links and people would visit your website, and then hopefully they'd make an inquiry or a booking or whatever. But now everyone's sort of using the internet differently, so people might search for me. I use chat GPT all the time, so people aren't even just searching the same way, either. So previously, you'd search for the product or service and the location. So plumber Melbourne. So I mean, I mean in Victoria, in Melbourne. So, but now everyone kind of realizes the machine understands a full sentence, so you might search for an entire sentence, but precisely what you need and want. So you. Instead of plumber Melbourne, it might be searching for a plumber who can fix particular brand of toda toilets, yeah, whatever it is, and, and, and the location. So you need to optimize, not just for Google, but for chat GPT, and all the other AI platforms. But it's all kind of the same. All this information is being pulled from online, really. So to have your information published in the areas you can control, firstly, so your website is a is an area you control, because it's your space. So you've got to get that right as a foundational, key pillar of what you're doing online, but also other noisier places like social media. So obviously, publishing in social media is helpful, but anywhere you can get published better than that, the areas you can control better than that is if you're doing something remarkable and people are talking about it. So if you get mentioned back historically, you kind of, you needed a backlink. So a link from another website to yours, and it sort of built authority and trust, and Google say, oh, people are linking to this site. It must be credible. Let's, let's boost up the ranking if it was a reputable link. Now they you don't even need the backlink. You just need the brand mentioned, because the platforms can read the content, understand the context, understand who's being spoken of in relationship to whatever the topic is. So just being mentioned in media and other people's platforms is really a key thing. So doing things remarkable is obviously ideal, but still to get the strong foundations of your own website right, so you've got your core messaging in there. Your uniqueness is never been more important, because anyone can publish heaps of content, but that those aspects that set you apart are the key. So we're doing supporting people with that content as well, from a search engine, search everywhere, optimization standpoint as well,

BEATE CHELETTE: 21:59

I think that the way this is happening is really changing. So what you're telling me is that the quality really matters.

Wes Towers: 22:08

Yeah, for sure, yeah, the quality of your own voice. So one of the key things where we're getting done foundationally with the content writing that we we help people with is to get the style guide their voice captured. So everything that that's produced and AI assisted, obviously, it's produced in their voice, and it's got the nuance of what's important to them that I think that's where people trip up. They just jump straight to trying to, trying to get a piece of content together, but doing those foundational, key aspects of their own unique voice, and how their style guide of the writing, but the key messages so that's laced through everything that's published is really important.

BEATE CHELETTE: 22:54

Do you set up like a dictionary type thing, a verbiage for a style guide? Because one of the things that we very adamant about. So we do, you know, it's a blueprint. It's the five star success blueprints. Everything that we do is a blueprint. It's not a framework. We try to consistently refer to things in the same way. How can somebody kind of flush these key components out? Because I do think that's really a very simple way to get your unique uniqueness out in the world, is to have what we call a signature growth system, and then within the system have a consistent language. How do you help people to figure that out?

Wes Towers: 23:33

That's really important. The way I look at it is even your processes and systems, if they act almost like brand. If you can come up with a phrase that defines your unique process and you become known for that, that's magic, because you get known for that particular process, or whatever it is, anytime someone's looking for it, you own that space. It's almost like a hashtag. You know, people used to create all that. Still do create hashtags and try to own that thing, but it doesn't just live inside social media anymore. If you can be known for a particular packaged whatever it is, that's powerful, and I think that's aligned with what the way you do that the blueprints, I think that's really cool,

BEATE CHELETTE: 24:19

yeah, and that's what we teach our clients, because I do agree with you. I do not agree with the notion of more is better, even though, and Alex hermosi and a lot of the big internet marketers have gotten to where they go by just like blowing up the market with all this content. But unless you put a million dollars out a month in that kind of messaging, you're going to have a real problem. So then the flip side of it would be quality and the clarity of the message with which you show up and the conviction that you actually. Leave into what you're saying, what you're saying yourself, anything else that you want to add? Or do you feel like we got a good little package here that we can give our audience?

Wes Towers: 25:09

Yeah, I think that, hopefully that's helpful for the audience. I think, as you were just saying, it's really difficult to take on some of the big players if you're trying to do everything, but if you can get really specific and niched, or niche, however you want to call it, then you can own that little piece of territory, because it's it's aligned really deeply with who you are. I think that's the key

BEATE CHELETTE: 25:34

beautiful I love it. And so now, as we wrap this up, we covered a lot today, we talked about your own spiritual I don't want to say awakening, but really a transformation, journey to figuring out who you were, outside of what you did and outside your marriage. We talked about how you stepped into finding your own authentic voice and as a result of it, and how the business really, really changed. What part of your story do you think is the greatest gift?

Wes Towers: 26:08

Yeah, I think the well, hopefully, the vulnerability of being human is, I think now is the right time to be vulnerable and to connect with other people and and to know we're all flawed. We're not AI bots, we've got personalities and we've got strengths and weaknesses, and I think there's a real beauty in that. So just to just to own your strengths and your weaknesses, I think is a really powerful position to be in.

BEATE CHELETTE: 26:38

Yeah, and I really appreciate that you were open to go to the places that I'm sure are very painful for many people to even think about going because to admit that we're not perfect, and to own our own flaws, and to recognize that both sides are required for us to be a human is a challenge for most people. So I want to thank you very much for

Wes Towers: 27:07

that. Thank you. It's good to talk about it, and that's

BEATE CHELETTE: 27:11

it for us, for today. Thank you so much for listening to or watching this episode of the Business Growth Architect Show, founders of the future. And if you heard something in here today that you feel a friend or colleague or somebody you care about should hear please do share this episode, and with that, I say goodbye, and until next time, that's it for this episode of the Business Growth Architect Show, founders of the future. If you're done playing small and ready to build the future on your terms, subscribe, share and help us reach more Trailblazers like you, and if you're serious about creating, growing and scaling a business that's aligned with who you are, schedule your uncovery session at uncoverysession.com. Lead with vision. Move with purpose. Create your future.