John Jantsch (00:01.249)

So what if the reason so many small business owners feel quietly stuck, even when the numbers look fine, is not burnout or strategy, but the slow drift away from a clear answer to one question, what's the point? Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Tom Rath. He's the number one New York Times bestselling author whose books on strength, wellbeing, and contribution have sold more than 10,

million copies worldwide, including Strength Finders 2.0, Eat, Move, Sleep, which we did an episode on this show. Tom started his career at Gallup where he helped build the strengths-based tools used by millions of people. He's now the co-founder and CEO of CareerSight and his new book, What's the Point, is out now. And we're going to dig into why that question matters more than most of us want to admit. So Tom, welcome back to the show.

Tom Rath (00:55.406)

Good to see you again, John.

John Jantsch (00:57.215)

So how is everything that you've written about strengths and wellbeing and contribution kind of made this question, what's the point, something you need to spend a whole book on?

Tom Rath (01:08.758)

Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I realized in my own life and in teams and leaders and people that I'm working with that it's gotten so easy to just go through the motions in a given day because it's I mean, it's almost easier to just feel like you get to inbox zero and you respond to the things you're supposed to respond to your finish your day's tasks. You do your expense reports, you get home and then you catch up with some of your family members. You let a show play on Netflix, let the next one go and you just kind of

become a little more passive in terms of the way you're kind of going through days in life. And that's almost more enjoyable and easier to do sometimes. And so I think we need to, especially with all the automation and everything coming our way right now, we need to do a little bit better job. And at least I realized that I did of kind of shaking myself out of that routine and saying, are you dedicating some time to more creative pursuits? Are you building things? Are you investing more?

deliberate time in relationships and conversations with people that matter so that at the end of the day, you make sure that you reserved at least, I don't know, 20, 30 percent of your time at a minimum for doing things that might really matter a week from now or a year from now or maybe even a decade from now. asking what's the point, not as some broad philosophical sunny day once in a lifetime question, but more as a light for how you prioritize every hour within a day.

is what caught me and has really helped and worked pretty well.

John Jantsch (02:38.359)

Yeah, and I think that's true of many small business owners. mean, the crushing noise seems to take over. if you can, see lots of people advise this, if you can get in the habit of saying, what's like the one thing that if I did that today, that would move the needle instead of all this other garbage, which 80 % of is probably just busy work. So it's not, like you said, it's not just self-development. I mean, it's a very practical business tool, isn't

Tom Rath (03:06.338)

Yeah, and I think that one of the very just I'm always looking for those practical tips and tools from the research. But what I figured out is if you can try and restructure or reprioritize the order in which you do things in a given day so that you ensure that you're not going to go a day without working on some meaningful purposeful items that and that can just be having a 15 minute conversation with someone who works for you and really listening and closing your mouth and giving your device stowed away and investing in someone's development and then realizing that

That kind of is the point and that is the purpose. And that's not a waste of time because it's it's those kind of trust and relationships that really build speed and efficiency and creativity and innovation over time.

John Jantsch (03:47.447)

So many people, there's lots of stories of people being kind of woken up to this idea by something that happened. You've been very open about your own health journey. How is that, in fact, you're one of your last books. We talked about that on the show, but how much has your personal experience sit underneath this new book, you think?

Tom Rath (04:08.33)

It sits under this new book to a degree where, I mean, I probably realized much earlier on because I was told I had a debilitating genetic cancer syndrome when I was 15 that I needed to try and pack more life into those years than a lot of people think about pretty early on. But one of the things I realized when I worked on the book about health, Eat, Move, Sleep, that you mentioned was that even with all those big threats to my health and I had active tumors in my kidneys and pancreas and spine and all over,

That wasn't a very good motivator to skip the cheeseburger and french fries at lunch and to get a salad instead. that research I did on health kind of taught me that we all need better ways to just give ourselves short-term incentives throughout the day to do things that matter and that make a difference because just knowing that in the end the eulogy virtues will matter more than the resume virtues as David Brooks described it, that doesn't stick with me at least.

to change the priorities of what I'm doing within eight hours that I'm working in a day. But what can shift that is when I'm able to connect back an hour that I spend editing a draft with the difference that will make for someone who can read something faster without all the kind of extra bloated sentences and fluff and all the things around it and realizing that that is a part of why I'm doing what I'm doing. And so I think...

You know, one of the things is I started to work on this book that hit me. I hope at the right time is I was going to title the book around the word purpose. I think it was purpose unlocked or something like that. And I realized that right now we have a semantic challenge where when most of us hear the word purpose, we think of some big grand thing that's almost intimidating and it gives us anxiety when in reality we kind of need to learn to just make purpose a part of our toolbox that we.

John Jantsch (05:43.693)

Mm.

John Jantsch (05:53.675)

Right.

Tom Rath (06:02.904)

tap into and use every hour throughout a day essentially. And it can be something pretty pragmatic.

John Jantsch (06:08.661)

It's funny as I listen to you talk about the editing of the draft. had an editor that, that used to tell me, why are you doing all this throat clearing? You know, like get to the point. that's always stuck with me anytime I find myself running on. so you've spent a ton of time in, very large companies, lot of the research and, done at Gallup. I would say that.

Tom Rath (06:22.392)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (06:32.641)

this idea of what's the point. I'm not saying it's exclusive to small business owners, but I've worked with a lot of entrepreneurs. And I think that that question just almost haunts them a lot of times. Do you find that this work is maybe more appropriate for one audience or another?

Tom Rath (06:42.03)

Mm-hmm.

Tom Rath (06:50.594)

I think in smaller businesses that I've been a part of and startups, there's more of a natural and healthy tendency to be asking that question to say, well, what's the point of doing this or we're wasting time doing this. And as you get bigger and as more layers come in, it's a lot easier to have larger groups of people or teams or people on a team who are essentially sleepwalking through a lot of their days. And I think whether you're in a business, large or small,

One thing that's hit me as I've started to have more conversations about what's the point is that I really do think when you look at what AI and automation can and will do not three years from now, but six to 12 months from now, it's the places where people are just going through the motions and responding and doing routine eyes tasks that can easily be done by a machine that will be taken out most rapidly. So I, I've

I've learned more urgency about this question in the last six or 12 months is the tools that I use have gotten so much better. So I think it's going to become maybe a more qualifying and pressing question as well, because I would have been hesitant a year ago to tell people that they need to be builders or they need to be creative or they need to be initiating instead of responding, because I kind of saw that as the purview of some people and not others in my traditional world. But I don't...

John Jantsch (07:54.37)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (08:09.101)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (08:14.295)

Yeah.

Tom Rath (08:17.868)

I don't think that can be the case anymore because if you're just the responder, there's a cloud update coming for you.

John Jantsch (08:25.697)

that's going to do it better than you. That part of it, yeah.

Tom Rath (08:27.682)

Right. I I looked at when I got out of college, I was trying to be a McKinsey consultant or an Accenture consultant. And 99 % of what I was aspiring to do could be done better today by one of by a large language model. Right. It's wild.

John Jantsch (08:39.937)

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think AI is going to force the point of what's the point might be the only point, you know, really for people that can actually address that. You know, if you ask a lot of people starting a business, they would say the point is, well, make money to have status or the big one to have freedom. You know, the joke's on them on that one. But does your research suggest that the real answer is different?

Tom Rath (08:48.355)

Yeah.

Tom Rath (09:10.112)

Yes, all of the research that I've studied on well-being and positive psychology and kind of workplaces and life satisfaction over time would suggest that the more you treat and put financial status or raw income as kind of the outcome or dependent variable that matters in your life, the less likely you are to be satisfied in terms of where things come out at the end of your life because

There's that kind of hedonic treadmill that researchers talk about where you're always chasing another, whether it's you think another doubling income might make you twice as happy, but in reality that might get you 5 % and you spent twice as much time chasing it.

John Jantsch (09:53.453)

So we've spent a lot of years, last 10, 15 years, where engagement, employee engagement in particular, was a real big metric for employers to say, I'm being successful. Is there a gap between people who are addressing this, what's the point? Do they tend to be more engaged or do they tend to be less engaged or is there a gap that you can actually identify and measure?

Tom Rath (10:01.869)

Right.

Tom Rath (10:18.648)

I think it's kind of asking what's the point in moving with purpose is kind of a definitional component of engagement to me because it means that you're in tune with why you're doing what you're doing throughout the day. I think disengagement to just broadly kind of stereotype what that is, especially that active disengagement people talk about, is when you're either actively frustrated with your job or you're just kind of letting it pass by.

I'm more concerned about people in that sort of neutral state being blindsided as innovation starts to move at the clip it's moving at right now. So I mean, I hope that for friends and family members and people that I care about that we can kind of find ways to snap ourselves out of that and do things with a little bit more intent and purpose in a given day.

John Jantsch (11:12.823)

So many people spend a, I mean, if you throw out sleep, the time they spend at work certainly dominates a lot of how they spend their time. Is it important, do you believe, to have some connection to meaning? Like I'm making a difference, what I'm doing is making a difference in your work for you to really kind of have that what's the point answer?

Tom Rath (11:37.772)

I think so. don't, if there are things that you're doing in the span of a given day that when you really think about it, don't improve the lot in life of another human being or make them a little bit better off. So if you're working as a barista at Starbucks and you have a customer that comes in and she's having a real tough day or kids are dragging on or asking her questions and you take her from a day that's a negative five to neutral, that's a...

pretty big contribution that makes a difference and you need to step back and acknowledge that in the moment or ideally have a manager that acknowledges that and helps you to see it too, right? So I think that is if you're not making those connections and you're like if I'm spending an hour of my day responding to cold emails from people I don't even know or it's not making a difference, that's an hour that's taken away from a good conversation with someone who works for me.

or one of my kids at the end of the day that could be pretty meaningful. And so I think to kind of think about that trade-off in terms of how you allocate your hours has been really helpful too.

John Jantsch (12:40.223)

Yeah, so the message is don't reply to email. Just let it pile up. That's... There you go.

Tom Rath (12:43.768)

Don't reply to pointless emails. And I would say save the responsive stuff for the end of the day if you can, or later in the day where make sure you pump the meaningful stuff in early on or it's gonna get away. We always say we'll have tomorrow and kind of take it from somebody with me with all these life threatening conditions, you don't. You never do the stuff you put off till tomorrow.

John Jantsch (12:50.529)

Yeah, Yeah, right.

John Jantsch (12:56.247)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (13:02.764)

Yeah.

You wrote a book called Life's Great Question. Is this an extension or does this push up against that idea?

Tom Rath (13:12.024)

Well, you know, it's interesting life's great question was kind of about the contribution and other orientation at a pretty high level. so, you know, as I tried to the first book I wrote 25 years ago was called How Full Is Your Bucket? And that was the most kind of just dead simple pragmatic thing, because you get the whole thing in the book's title. Every time you talk to somebody, it either fills their bucket or it takes from it. There's no neutral in between. And you can kind of apply the concept if you don't even read the book description.

Right? And that's, so that's what I was trying to get to with bringing some practice to purpose and meaning and these things that we all want and we think we want to get to in life. But how do you just do it in the next hour or on a Wednesday morning? Right.

John Jantsch (13:57.613)

Okay, so I don't think there's too many people listening, at least listening this long today, that would argue that this is a very important step, a meaningful step, and makes total sense. But how do get to it?

Tom Rath (14:11.79)

Well, I think you get to it by saying, when you step back and look at what we all do for a living, that you mentioned like kind of outcome. if I would argue the outcome is not making more money and the outcome is not more titles or a better title and the outcome is not more followers and some of those kinds of superficial things that you can chase endlessly forever, even if you have a billion dollars. So if you agree with that.

John Jantsch (14:35.2)

Mm-hmm.

Tom Rath (14:40.918)

And you say at the end of your life, I'd rather be a good dad, a good spouse, a good member of my community, someone who ran a business that mattered and a good manager and a good leader and a good mentor. If those are the things that matter, then you almost have an obligation to figure out how you build that into the way you execute your job and the way you lead people and what you're doing in life. And that's not something that you can just say. And it is because it is.

It's something that you have to pump into the conversations you have with the people who work for you, the people who look to you for leadership to spot what they're doing, to tell them where they make a difference. And that's been one of the most powerful strategies I've seen work in this regard is where you can turn that outward and help spot someone else doing something that's meaningful, spot one of their talents that they hadn't noticed. And if you just work on doing that in an outward manner, that's, it makes an immeasurable difference for other people and you kind of pick it up.

in the process as well.

John Jantsch (15:41.111)

So do you have, in this work, do you have a series of, know, sometimes it just takes exercises, you know, to form habits, because I do think a lot of this work is habit, just like you get into busy work and having too much to do is somewhat a habit. Do you have some techniques or practices that you've used to help people break those bad habits and maybe establish a habit that centers them back into this important question?

Tom Rath (16:09.74)

Yeah, you know, I think this is going to sound a little counterintuitive based on what we've been talking about, but I would say the first anchoring habit that I would recommend for anyone listening is to make sure that based on what time you need to wake up tomorrow morning, that you work back from that by eight or nine hours or how many hours you need in bed to get a good night's sleep. And you make sure you get a solid seven or eight, because that's the reset button on the video game that's our life. And then you get up the next morning.

John Jantsch (16:31.958)

Mm-hmm.

Tom Rath (16:37.408)

And you're going to have a lot more energy to say, how do I wake up and tackle things that are more meaningful and more purposeful early on and structure my day so that by 10 o'clock by noon, you ensure that you've had some of those meaningful conversations. You've worked on a project that might continue to make a difference for someone a year from now, or at least a week from now. And to structure your day so you kind of have the ebb and flow of energy and you're more active.

You get things done. have energizing conversations with people and to think about it that tactically. So how do I build the cadence and momentum of that of my day so that I have the opportunity to be my best? And then you allude to this too, where small business owners and leaders are often the very worst at making sure they put their own energy at the forefront and they end up kind of burning out, working longer hours than they probably should.

The small business owners, and I'm one of them, that have done that, I mean, there's this tendency to say, it's okay for me, even though I want my people to have wellbeing and to take a vacation where they're not responding and all that. That's not realistic. If you're doing that as a leader, it sets a tone that it's not socially acceptable for everyone else. So I think we all have to do a little evaluation in the mirror about...

John Jantsch (17:45.463)

Yeah

Tom Rath (18:01.836)

the expectation we're setting for the people in our business, the people we lead, and then do better job of modeling that as leaders as well. So that's another piece of the kind of practical step I'd encourage people to think about.

John Jantsch (18:13.995)

Yeah, I have kids that have worked in large corporations. It was kind of trendy a few years ago to have the unlimited vacation. Like, you don't have three weeks off vacation. And so consequently, nobody took vacation.

Tom Rath (18:25.09)

Yep. I've worked in places where it's unlimited vacation is no vacation and no time off. Yeah.

John Jantsch (18:30.477)

It's funny. So I don't know how much access you have to Gallup data anymore, but I'm sure at some point you had a lot of access to it. Would you, if you had to predict or maybe again, as I said, you've seen the data have the strengths finders outcomes changed dramatically as you people view work differently than maybe they did 15, 20 years ago. Do you, do you think that that like

what people value and even the traits that come up as their strengths would change based on this idea of focusing on the point.

Tom Rath (19:08.206)

You know, I never, in the time I was working on that, I never really saw a lot of variability in the actual traits or talents that were measured there because those were meant to kind of find things that were more enduring or consistent over time. But what I have seen in just longitudinal data and surveys of different generations and cohorts is that the generation entering the workforce today, they have a much higher want and need and threshold for

John Jantsch (19:14.899)

yeah.

Tom Rath (19:38.028)

doing work that they see as meaningful and serving a purpose and making a difference in their community. And to a lot of managers and leaders of my generation, they complained to me like, we have these very, they use the word needy. So sometimes there's a mismatch, right? Yeah, so it looks differently, but I think what you see traces of there is actually good and productive for society, in my opinion, where I think it's a good thing that

John Jantsch (19:52.299)

Yeah, entitled, that's another one.

Tom Rath (20:07.224)

people who are 25 expect to have a job that makes a difference in the world. And it's not like my grandfather or great grandfather's generation where the job was just a means to an end and it was okay if you didn't like it. And there was a whole different expectation there. And so I think that's, I'm surprised it's taken that long to evolve frankly from the industrial era. And we're still kind of coming, we're still recovering from that bad relationship or expectation.

to a degree, I think that's something that we can look forward to. I mean, it's, and people of that generation, they don't want to go be managers at a tobacco manufacturing company or whatever. I think that's good.

John Jantsch (20:48.981)

Yeah, yeah. You know, it's interesting. We use Strength Finder with all of...

We don't just do it once and say, check a box. We do it over a period of time. And one of things I will tell you that I have recognized is that people's, as they advance in maybe position or responsibility, their strengths change. And I think it has a lot to do with what they believe is their strength changes because their role changes. I know that doesn't have much to do with this book.

But I'm curious if you saw or have some insight about that idea.

Tom Rath (21:25.846)

No, it does. a big part of what I've been working on lately is trying to younger people in particular to see a much broader range of what's possible and what's out there in careers. Because by my estimation, most young people when they're asked to choose a major or spend four years studying something or pick a job, they've seen somewhere between two and five possible careers. And you'd need to see 50 just have a broad view of 50 % of the U.S. workforce. I've done the math on this. And so

John Jantsch (21:47.33)

Yeah.

Tom Rath (21:53.494)

we're kind of making huge life decisions with about 5 % aperture in our lens for what we can see out there. And so, I mean, as I get into this, it sounds really boring to say, but we don't know what we don't know. So if you haven't seen these things or you haven't seen these possibilities, it's really hard to answer an interest inventory or a personality assessment or a survey or anything else at all. I think a real fun part of life as we get older is

John Jantsch (22:06.935)

Yeah, yeah.

Tom Rath (22:23.404)

you get to bring in more experiences and have more inputs. And then you're better off at connecting some of those dots and saying, how can I take who I am and meet some new needs there in the world? And that's that's one thing I did write about in this current book is I think we've got to do a better job of not just saying here's who I am as a person, my self-awareness, but saying start with what the world needs, what your community needs, what your clients need, what your customers need, and then map back to how you can do that well based on who you are with your

personality traits and dispositions and interests and all that stuff.

John Jantsch (22:54.797)

Well, Tom, again, was a pleasure having you stop by the Duct Tape Marketing podcast. I wonder if there's some place you'd invite people to learn about your work, obviously pick up a copy of what's

Tom Rath (23:08.898)

Yeah, they can learn about all this stuff at tomrath.org. Thank you, John. I appreciate it.

John Jantsch (23:12.941)

All right, again, appreciate you stopping by me. We'll see you one of these days out there on the road.

Tom Rath (23:17.198)

All right.

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John Jantsch (00:02.122)

What are the reasons most businesses fail has nothing to do with their product, their market, or even funding and everything to do with the fact that the founder never learned how to Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Brian Will. He's a serial entrepreneur dropped out of high school, went on to build or co-build 10 companies across five different industries collectively worth over half a billion dollars at their peak.

He's the author of three books, including one we're going to talk about today. No, the psychology of sales and negotiations. So Brian, welcome to the show.

Brian (00:40.654)

John, I appreciate you having me today. It's gonna be fun.

John Jantsch (00:43.348)

So, start with the fact you dropped out of high school, built 10 companies. At what point did you realize that maybe this selling thing has a lot to do with my success?

Brian (00:54.648)

You know, it's funny, John, the first company I did was landscaping and I only did it because I basically had no education and no job skills and I thought anybody could dig a hole and mow grass. Right. So that's what I did. And I did that for 10 years and that company did well until it didn't. That's my one of my favorite things and ended up losing everything. Almost went bankrupt, lost the house, the cars, made a couple of critical errors in business that I carried with me for the rest of my life.

John Jantsch (01:05.683)

Yeah, right.

Brian (01:23.81)

But what was interesting when I got out of the landscaping business is a buddy of mine, he said, hey, you should come sell insurance with me. Now, mind you, I'm thinking, you remember the movie Groundhog Day with Bill Murray? And you remember Ned, needle nose Ned, and every day he tries to get Bill and one day Bill just knocks him out in the street. That was my internal picture of an insurance salesman. And I did not see myself walking around with a briefcase and a hat, know, chasing people down on the street.

John Jantsch (01:34.856)

yeah. One of my, one of my favorites. Yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (01:46.048)

Yeah.

Brian (01:51.022)

And I told my friend, no, I'm not selling insurance. Never. I'm a landscaper to start with. So he bugged me and bugged me and six months goes by and he kept showing me big checks. And finally I said, all right, how do I sell insurance? And he said, give me $500. I'll give you some leads. I'll take you on one appointment and then I'll turn you loose. That's the worst way to train a salesperson. I got to tell you.

John Jantsch (02:13.642)

you

Brian (02:15.061)

So that's what we We went on one appointment. We went into this house. We came out. He goes, I just made $500. And I was like, my gosh, that's incredible. So I took these 20 leads and a week later I showed up at the office and I had sold 12 insurance policies. And the guy that owned the agency, I walked in, I put him on the table and he goes, what's that? I said, those are the insurance policies I sold this week. And he goes, how many leads did you get? And I said, I had 20. I said, is that not good enough? He goes, my God.

That's like top 1 % in the country. What did you do to sell those? I remember saying, I don't know. I just sold them. I had no idea, John, I could sell. I tell my kids all the time, you probably have talents you don't know yet. And one of the talents I did not know at the time was apparently I could sell. And within six weeks, I was producing 50 % of the revenue in this agency.

John Jantsch (02:58.421)

Mm.

Brian (03:08.587)

Six months later, I broke off. started my own agency. A year and a half later, I sold it to a venture capital firm. It was my first sale. And we turned it into a company that went public. I didn't know I could sell. I just could, and I don't know why. But then I turned it into a system of selling and sales management and training and wrote the book. And, you know, that's what I do.

John Jantsch (03:30.474)

Well, a lot of people suggest sales can be taught, but it's not a skill necessarily. But you kind of backed into it as like, had that skill. I don't even know what I was doing. So how do you kind of reconcile that with the idea that you're now taking people who maybe say, I don't have that skill and you're teaching them.

Brian (03:44.813)

I

Brian (03:52.654)

You know, it's interesting. Most salespeople fail for exactly the same reasons every single time. Number one, they talk too much. Number two, they act like a salesperson. If I can just get you to learn how to have a conversation with somebody and not act and sound like a salesperson. You know, a salesperson's their voice.

John Jantsch (04:02.442)

Yeah.

Brian (04:15.854)

goes up like an octave and they talk really fast and they're excited. Like, hey, John, how are you, man? I'm glad you came in today. And you're like, dude, you're a salesperson. Stop doing that. Right. And then if I asked you about a product, you have to give me a 20 minute dissertation on everything there is to know about everything about this product. And I don't care because we know that psychologically people only remember 30 % of what they hear anyway. So the more you talk, the less they hear. And then the more you talk, the less they want to listen to you. And now they just want to leave.

So if I can get you to number one, have a conversation instead of sell and number two, learn when to shut up, your safe's closing rates will go through the roof right out of the gate.

John Jantsch (04:55.776)

My father was kind of an old time salesperson. was a manufacturer's rep and he'd go into these towns and go around the square to the stores that were there. I used to go with him every now and then. I remember he was like, really, we got this great new product. I'm going to show this person today. He walks in and he's like, hey, we got this great new product. The guy's like, that is nice. Can I get 10 cases? Got out his pad, sat it down, came to pen.

and left. was like, well, you didn't even tell me about it. He was like, I took the order. And it just lasted with me forever. A lot of people talk themselves out of orders.

Brian (05:35.663)

Oh yeah. And the third thing is they talk too technical, right? I remember I was doing a project out in Seattle a year or so ago and I always, if it's a small sales team, I like to go out with the salespeople and listen. And I out with their top salesperson and he went in to see this customer and they were selling windows and he's like, yeah, and these windows have...

The Belgian slash and the six inch nails and they do this and this and the customers nod their head. And I stopped, said, hey John, can I ask you something? What is a Belgian slash and a six inch nails? That sounds like a band. And he goes, I don't know, I said, and he said something different. And I looked at the customer and I said, did you hear six inch nails? And they go, yeah, that's what we heard too. And if I hadn't stopped John and asked the question, they would have the whole time never known what he said, right?

John Jantsch (06:12.946)

You

John Jantsch (06:27.21)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brian (06:28.622)

So you can get too complicated and lose your client so easily. And I tell people, don't use tech talk. Talk at a fifth grade level. Stop due check-ins, know, pause for effect, just like I did right there. And, you know, there are a few things we can teach you to make you better. We may not be able to make you the best, but we can make you better.

John Jantsch (06:54.314)

So you start your, I think this is not your first book with this, the word no. Is there a story behind why you've kind of latched onto that?

Brian (07:04.874)

Yeah, because the most powerful word in the English language is no. Without a doubt. And that's on both sides of the sales process. can't tell. I've got so many stories about the word no. And the Genesis literally, believe it not, comes from Richard Branson. And he wrote a book. And one of the things in his book, he says, is if your first offer doesn't insult them, you've offered too much.

And no matter what, because if you're talking to somebody who's a negotiator, they're never going to offer you what you want. And if you're selling something, you're never going to sell it for, you know, never going to offer it for sale for what you actually want. So we already know right out of the gate, both sides are going to say no. Right. So we start with no. That's what we always start with. And every single negotiation starts with no. I'll give you a, I'll give you a funny example. I own some restaurants. I have a manager that works for me.

John Jantsch (07:36.629)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (07:54.186)

Thanks.

Brian (07:59.791)

And I was sitting in there with a general contractor one day and the manager comes up and he said, Hey, the electrician's here and he wants to fix the outlet and the lamp and he wants $1,200. I said, offer him 600. And the manager looked at me and goes, what do you mean? I said, go back. He's already here. He's either going to take my 600. He's going to go home. He goes, but it's 1200. said, listen to me, just go offer 600 and come back. He comes back. goes.

He'll do it for nine. I said, take the deal. Right. And the manager was like, I don't understand what just happened. And the person at the table goes, do you do all your negotiations that way? I said, yes, I do. Whatever you tell me, it's no.

John Jantsch (08:40.96)

Well, that's an interesting point because the word negotiation is in the title, but I think a lot of people think selling is, have this offer, I give it to you, you pay me or you don't pay me. That negotiation is really not even a part of the deal. It's like, do you want it or not? So, and what you're suggesting is it should be a part of every conversation or at least every transaction.

Brian (08:56.419)

Yes.

Brian (09:04.536)

So you've been to the mall, right, John? To a store, to buy a suit or pants or... Those people are technically salespeople, but they're not selling you anything. That's retail, right? Salespeople are true salespeople that are going out and trying to sell a product or a service, and those things are negotiable, period.

John Jantsch (09:13.524)

No, no.

John Jantsch (09:24.234)

So what do you say to that? A lot of times, mean, a lot of my listeners are, you know, they don't have sales teams. mean, the founder is selling out there. And a lot of times they got into the business because they were good at doing something like landscaping, for example. Right. So how do you turn that person, especially the person is like, I hate selling. How do you turn that person? mean, obviously one of the pieces of leverage you have is the fact that, well, if you don't sell, you're going to be out of business. But how do you turn that person into

Brian (09:43.672)

Yes.

John Jantsch (09:54.519)

you know, somebody who could successfully sell.

Brian (09:57.423)

So my first book, John, is called The Dropout Multi-Millionaire. And I talk a lot about this in that book. And we like to say that every successful company has four personalities. And I don't care if it's Apple Computer all the way down to the guy who just started his own business. You have an entrepreneur who's a big thinker, who's also usually a salesperson, but not always. You have the entrepreneur, you have the technician, you have the manager, and you have the salesperson, right? Most businesses...

John Jantsch (10:01.311)

Mm-hmm.

Brian (10:26.572)

are started by technicians and they're not salespeople. And as I like to say, my books are famous for Joe the plumber, right? Joe's a plumber, he works for XYZ Plumbing for 20 years. He goes out every day, they're paying him 50 bucks an hour. One morning, Joe wakes up and says, why am I charging 150 an hour? I'm only getting 50. I'm gonna start my own business and we're gonna call it Joe's Plumbing. So Joe starts Joe's Plumbing.

If Joe's plumbing fails, it will not be because Joe is not a good plumber. It will be because Joe is not a good salesperson or a manager, one of the two. But Joe thinks that all there is to business is the technician part, not understanding that he doesn't understand how business works. He doesn't understand how insurance works and payroll works and sales work and, you know, managing people. None of that. He doesn't get that. And so that's why most businesses fail is because they're started by technicians.

If you are a technician, understand that you don't know how to do sales, bring somebody in who does.

John Jantsch (11:28.938)

Yeah. No, no, no question. I think a lot of people jump out of, out of work and, decide to start a business and don't realize just there's a lot of moving parts. So, if somebody came to you, they were a newbie in, like a class or coaching or something you were doing, what, would be the basic principles kind of map out the basic principles that you would teach or that have really worked for you over the years?

Brian (11:39.33)

Yes.

Brian (11:55.342)

You mean a new business owner?

John Jantsch (11:56.754)

Yeah, who wants to get better at selling? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brian (12:00.374)

better at selling. Okay. So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to, and I hate to say this, but I'm going to go out with you on a couple of sales calls to find out what you're doing right and what you're doing wrong. And then we're going to develop a system for you to learn how to sell. So there in my book, we lay all these things out, but it's sick. It literally gets into the things we've already talked about, which is you need to bring your presentation down to a few words, not a five minute dissertation.

John Jantsch (12:27.114)

Hmm.

Brian (12:29.934)

You need to quit selling and just ask questions. That's one of the most powerful sales tools there is. If I can find out what you want, why you want it, when you want it, who else you've looked at buying it from and why you didn't buy it from them, you will tell me exactly how to close you. But that's a series of questions. If we want to get into, you know, high level sales, then we'll start talking about

learning who the other person is. You know, some people give and receive information differently, as I like to say. John, if you're an emotional person and you like you live on your emotions and what's going to feel good and do good. And I try to give you a bunch of data. You're going to your eyes are going to roll back in your head. If you're a data person and I can tell that very quickly when I first start talking to you and I start giving you all the emotional reasons why you should do something and you keep going, no, just give me the numbers. Right.

how you receive information, how you give information is how you receive it. I need to pick up that small thing and my sales tactic has to match how you receive information. And then my close ratios will go up. Matching that with not talking too much, asking a ton of questions and letting the person close themselves. These are things we teach that I would try to teach somebody. And then it's learning when to shut up. Like that's the huge one. Just stop talking.

John Jantsch (13:58.314)

So the point you make about reading, you know, how somebody wants to be sold, how they process information, how they learn. Doesn't that take a long time to really get good at? I know one of the things that they teach all the time is just what you talked about. Go in and probe, right? Ask questions, ask questions, ask questions. I don't really like that when somebody comes in and I feel like I'm being interviewed because I'm like, I don't really know you that well yet. I don't trust you necessarily. I'm not going to give you, you know, all this information you're asking me for. how do you...

How do you deal with kind of, I mean, how do you teach people to do that reading, you know, how somebody needs to be, and again, I'm, you know, years of experience, you probably learned it because you've seen everything, but how does that newer person who is really maybe feeling a little uncomfortable with this, like this new approach that they've been taught?

Brian (14:47.982)

Well, these things are gonna all be product specific. So let me just, let me give you one, right? I have a company that does window and door replacement. Okay? So when I walk up to the door, I'm like, hey John, how are you doing? I understand that you're looking to replace some windows today. Is that right? Yeah. But which ones are you looking to replace? Well, I'm thinking the ones on the front of the house. Why do you wanna replace those? I mean, why not all of them? Why just these? And you're gonna say, well, because...

John Jantsch (14:52.382)

Yeah. Right.

Brian (15:16.526)

I either want a bigger window or this one's fogging up or I need a double pane window. So these questions aren't really interviewing you as much as why are you wanting to replace these windows. And when you say, this one's leaking and this one's leaking and I don't want a double pane here or I want a bigger window, I'm like, okay, great. So you're looking at a double pane window, you want to do this and this. Have you shopped with anybody else? And you'll say yes or no. Do you have any idea what windows like this cost? And you're going to say, well, not really.

John Jantsch (15:19.786)

It's all the sun all day. Yeah.

John Jantsch (15:30.453)

Mm-hmm.

Brian (15:46.061)

And then I do what we call, we set the Delta, right? And I'll say, well, just to let you know up in advance, Windows costs, and I know this because I did this with a window company, Windows costs between 300 and a thousand dollars a piece to replace. 300 is going to get you a base level, a thousand is going to get you the Mac daddy. What range are you going to be in? I'm going to set the range. And the reason I set the range is because I don't want you to come in and say, I thought they were a hundred bucks and I just spent a half a day with you.

John Jantsch (16:08.874)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (16:14.922)

Yeah. All right.

Brian (16:16.27)

Right. I also want to try to I don't want to pitch you a thousand dollar window when you say my budget's 200 or if it's in my I never asked somebody a budget. I always give them a range. let them pick in the range. You want the cheapest at 300. You want me to talk about the thousand. Let's go in the middle. OK.

John Jantsch (16:23.882)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

John Jantsch (16:31.508)

Yeah, you know, people ask the budget question. I'm always, you know, what are you looking to spend? That's my favorite question. And I'm like, as little as possible. mean, I'm just trying. It is.

Brian (16:40.174)

Yeah, that's a terrible people don't ever ever ever ask somebody what their budget is and they go why I'm saying because they'll lie to you. They want I don't go into the car lot and say I'm really looking to spend $52,560. Right? I'm gonna lie to you because I think you're to take advantage of me. Now, if that same person says Windows costs between 300 and $800 a piece.

John Jantsch (16:54.898)

Right?

Brian (17:05.646)

Now you know you're not getting it for 200 bucks. You're gonna give me at least, you want me to start at 300, 500, 800, where do you wanna go? Because I could spend all day talking about Windows, but let's talk about what's important to you. And by the way, if we're gonna get into super high level sales, John, if they pick the 500 and we get to the end and they're not willing to commit, this is what we call the drop back and punt. I'll say, well, let me ask you something. To be very fair, I just told you all about the $500 Windows, and those may be what you want.

Would you have any interest in hearing about the $300 window? Because if you say yes, you could never afford the 500 in the first place.

John Jantsch (17:42.504)

Ha

So do you find that these principles that you teach doesn't really matter? The industry, B2B, B2C, doesn't really matter?

Brian (17:52.855)

It is what, look, people are people. I don't care if you are the CEO of IBM, you still go home and fight with your wife and your kids are throwing up on you and you know, you're just a person.

John Jantsch (18:03.914)

So you also wrote the Dropout Multi-Millionaire. What lesson from that book do you wish you'd learned 10 years earlier?

Brian (18:13.55)

You know, I spent my first 10, 15 years in business trying to do everything myself, trying to be the smartest guy in the room. Particularly when you get under pressure, too many entrepreneurs fall back into the red personality zone where they get very autocratic and you will do it my way and blah, blah, And it wasn't until I met my business partner, Steve, who was way more successful than me.

And that even took a year before I broke down and I said, you know what? I'm going to listen to you. And when I did that, we went from zero to we sold our company for $80 million three years later. You know, at some point you have to understand that there are smarter people than you as smart as you think you are. There are people that know more about certain things that you need to listen to.

Finding somebody who's been there and done that, who's willing to come in and help you and tell you, and then your ability to take that advice and listen to it is the difference between your success today or your failure tomorrow, 100%. And I didn't know that when I was young.

John Jantsch (19:28.126)

I think that's a great place to end it today. Brian, I appreciate you taking a moment to stop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Is there anywhere you invite people to connect with you and find out more about your work?

Brian (19:37.484)

Yeah, BrianWillMedia.com. BrianWillMedia.com. My books, my training, everything's on there. You can find everything you want to know.

John Jantsch (19:43.816)

Awesome. Well, again, I appreciate you stopping by and hopefully we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Brian (19:48.943)

Appreciate it, John. Thanks for having me.

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John Jantsch (00:01.55)

So what if the real risk for small business owners right now is hiding behind professional polish as a brand, while AI research decides which firms it trusts enough to recommend. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duck Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Megan Hargroder. She is the founder and CEO of Legends Legal Marketing, an agency that works exclusively with solo and small law firms.

She started in 2011 in a New Orleans studio apartment with four clients paying $500 a month and niched your way all the way down to lawyers and never looked back again. We're going to talk about her new book, Trust Is The Strategy. So, Megan, welcome to the show. So let's start with niching. Well, maybe we need to start with how you say it. Because you hear all kinds. Exactly.

Megan (00:45.785)

Thank you, John.

Megan (00:53.987)

That's Prince on the Rack.

John Jantsch (00:59.438)

You know, there's a lot of pundits out there certainly saying you've got to do it. And then there's others and I have a view probably slightly towards the other because I've seen a lot of people say, I think law firms would be awesome. I'm going to like go to that vertical. And then they work with two law firms and they realize maybe that's not who they want to work with. Just this example, obviously that doesn't apply to you, but then they have to start over again. So I'm curious.

Talk a little bit about the math of niching in your case and like what made you go that route, but then also what changed in your agency.

Megan (01:37.621)

It truly just really deep diving into the 80-20 rule and looking at my clients and seeing like, where was my least effort for my biggest profit? And then I layered on top of that, where am I feeling the most successful? And for me, that's where my feeling I can be the most successful for my clients. And when I started, no one was doing a good job at law firm marketing. Fine Law was the only company on the market. And so

John Jantsch (01:42.862)

Right.

John Jantsch (02:02.988)

Yeah.

Megan (02:07.169)

just doing an okay job meant that you were already ahead of the game. So I liked the idea of being able to definitively guarantee success, whereas other types of, I think people think it's more fun to work with like a boutique or a restaurant, you know, or I had a national candy brand at one point.

John Jantsch (02:10.478)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Megan (02:29.965)

I guess it's how you define fun. For me, fun is that I'm not working on the weekends or on the evenings and that I'm not doing an endless display of branding that someone's just unhappy with no matter what, right? Lawyers are not that picky. They care about one thing and one thing only, our client's calling me. And so once I felt like I cracked the code on that, I just went all in with lawyers and never looked back.

John Jantsch (02:35.074)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (02:42.754)

All right.

John Jantsch (02:57.454)

See, and that's the approach I tell people too. In a lot of ways, you didn't just go pick a niche, the niche found you, right? Because you had been working in it, you decided, hey, I can get a lot of results for I can provide a lot of value. It's another way of saying that for these folks and I enjoy doing it. So that to me is the proper way to do it. I just, I see a lot of people really just kind of go, where's the opportunity as opposed to what you experienced. So.

Megan (03:23.151)

Yeah, and I see my clients do that too with when they're choosing their niche for law, they'll be like, where's the, think this is the best opportunity. Then they'll go all in and they'll be like, I actually really hate doing criminal defense or I really hate, you know, expungements or whatever the thing is. So I do agree with you. It's better to start general and try a whole bunch of things and then just pick your path going from there.

John Jantsch (03:34.83)

Right? Right?

John Jantsch (03:46.382)

Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, I started in, the, uh, kind the initial question to open the show, talking about this idea of, you know, polish, you know, being, um, you know, something. And in fact, you, you actually tell lawyers the riskiest thing they can do right now is to keep playing it safe. Um, and I completely agree with you, you know, the human element is, is more important than ever. Um, however, I've also worked with a lot of attorneys over the year and

polish is like a big part of their mask. So how do you kind of balance that?

Megan (04:20.364)

Well, you use the right word. Polish is part of the mask that they wear, right? And it's not just for clients, it's for their peers. Lawyers are very concerned what their peers think of them. And so what you end up getting is polished and professional, which I'm going to use quotation marks around, because all that that actually translates to is generic content, generic messaging. So.

John Jantsch (04:24.715)

Yeah

Megan (04:44.3)

So it's not resonating with anyone, right? Maybe it's not turning anyone off or offending anyone, but it's also not making anyone love you. And that happens a lot on your website homepage, but like the big spot that I see it be really problematic for lawyers is their biographies. And so they'll have this really safe, I call it a professional obituary that lists their accomplishments, where they went to law school, all the things that people don't actually care about.

John Jantsch (05:01.614)

You

John Jantsch (05:07.278)

You

Yeah, yeah.

Megan (05:13.538)

when they hire lawyers.

John Jantsch (05:15.95)

Yeah, the, um, I, something I used to do when I first got started at trying to make this point, uh, regardless of the type of business. So let's say it was a remodeling contractor. I would just go find 10 remodeling contractor websites, copy the first thing that I saw on their website. And then I'd show it to the client and say, first off, do you know who any of these people are? And by the way, you're on here too. Do know who you are? And it was so easy for them to go, Oh crap, we're all saying the same thing, which is sort of nothing.

Megan (05:45.103)

And that's the whole thing. If you're not saying anything. And so a lot of like what I try to push my clients to do is, well, first of all, you want to build authority. They love that. Everyone's on board with building authority. We've got our awards. We've got our badges. We've got our testimonials. Great. We're on board with that. But the next part is that you have to build a component of empathy with.

John Jantsch (05:46.69)

Yeah.

Megan (06:09.484)

these people who don't know you, right? If you're hiring a lawyer, you have a problem that you need a professional to solve for you. You don't know this person, you don't trust, people don't trust lawyers. Building trust online is like the hardest thing you can do. So you have to give people something. You have to let them know you understand their problem. And you also have to share something about yourself so that they feel like, this is a human, again, that I can connect with.

John Jantsch (06:20.739)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (06:37.09)

So trust is in actually in the title of the book. Do you, I don't think anybody would argue that that's an important ingredient. The harder part is defined like how do you build that? You know, you can't just write, trust me, you know, on your website, right? So how do you get people to start saying, these are the things that build trust.

Megan (06:58.626)

think telling a story first and foremost. So using your website to tell someone a story and your homepage should actually not be your story. It should be their story. Right? So if I'm facing chapter seven bankruptcy, what am I going through right now? That's the story that the homepage should say and I should be able to see myself in there if I'm a client. And then the biography telling the story of the actual attorney. Why are you doing this? You know, aside from money? What made you pick

John Jantsch (07:11.178)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Megan (07:28.206)

Chapter seven bankruptcy as your niche that you want to help people through. How can I trust you to do this? And so there's elements within the story where you want to show examples of how you've solved the problem before outlining people you've helped outlining, you know, using a story within story component and then maybe even your own story. So like we have criminal defense lawyers who at one point in their lives had found themselves on the wrong side of the law, right? And

It's really hard to get people to open up about that when they're trying to look super polished and professional. But guess what? Those are the stories that get them clients. And once they actually take the leap of like putting that vulnerability out there, people call and they say, I'm hiring you because you, don't feel like you're going to judge me because you were in my shoes once before.

John Jantsch (07:57.56)

Yeah.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, right.

John Jantsch (08:08.301)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (08:17.612)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I would guess that in some cases you can have quick wins, but you know, the trust game is also a long-term game. So how do you get people on board with that who are saying, hey, Megan, make the phone.

Megan (08:34.616)

Well, the phone will ring through other methods as well. You've got your search strategy, your paid search strategy, you've got your LLM strategy, and then you can do organic and paid search work. So that's the component. But the foundation has to be there. The website itself has to build trust, or you're paying for traffic to go there, and it's not doing anything. And really, the big hurdle for newer

John Jantsch (08:35.704)

BLEH

Gosh.

John Jantsch (08:48.216)

Yeah.

Megan (09:01.858)

businesses is building up those reviews because nothing builds trust like reviews and not just any review, not just a five star review, not just highly recommend did a great job because LLMs are reading reviews, but they're reading them. They're not just quantifying the five stars. They're reading them and they're seeing the keywords used within that. And they're seeing, this is a detailed.

John Jantsch (09:05.016)

Yes.

John Jantsch (09:17.954)

Yeah.

Megan (09:28.974)

example of a problem that was solved by this person and that's the same problem this person is talking to me about so I'm gonna match them with that so the actual skipping ahead the actual like quality of the Google reviews is the biggest thing that we work with our clients to build up and it's not easy right especially in in cases with like criminal defense where clients don't want to leave a review about

John Jantsch (09:45.56)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (09:51.522)

Yeah.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Megan (09:57.219)

how you helped them get out of their DUI. So that's, to me, the hardest part is building substantial reviews. It's doable, but it's difficult. The organic SEO is a waiting game and the paid search is a fast game.

John Jantsch (10:13.51)

yeah, you know, probably the first hurdle you're experiencing is a lot of lawyers don't want to ask for reviews, right? I mean, it's like, no, we did what they pay this for. You know, that should be enough. Right. I mean, so, so that's probably the first hurdle. you know, it's interesting. You mentioned that about Google reviews. We have been doing it for years, but AI let's face it has made it easier, you know, to take seven, 800 reviews, dump them into a tool to analyze them. And all of a sudden, you know, the, the, the, law, the lawyer is saying, you know, we have.

X amount of credentials or whatever they say. And the reviews repeatedly say, know what? They call us back immediately. Right. And that's like the message. And it is amazing that when, as a marketer, when I can show a client that says, this is not me making this up. You know, this is your actual customers talking. You know, it's a much easier sell.

Megan (11:05.07)

And the LLMs are making that faster, right? So people aren't having to go through all of those reviews. And some people will still go to the Google reviews and go through all of them themselves. But that really is one of the biggest definers of trust for any local business really is gonna see that as their biggest definition of trust is going to be their actual online reviews. And Google reviews are the most important. I know people...

John Jantsch (11:13.408)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (11:20.718)

Yeah. Yeah, yeah it is.

John Jantsch (11:32.782)

Three.

Megan (11:33.431)

is on Facebook, people still use Yelp. So those things are still factors and get pulled in. know the Amazon Alexa, for example, is connecting Yelp. yes. Exactly. Yeah. So yeah, so so those are still really important too. And I feel like Yelp gets overlooked a lot because Google is still going to be your most valuable. So if you could only get one review, you get it on Google.

John Jantsch (11:43.262)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, and Microsoft uses BitFerBing. Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (11:54.722)

Yeah, yeah.

Megan (12:00.291)

but then if you can layer in that second tier where you ask someone, hey, can you please also just copy paste this on the Yelp page? Here's the link and make it really, really easy for them to duplicate that in another spot, then you're really winning.

John Jantsch (12:00.643)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (12:15.35)

So where we stand today, this will change certainly, but people still have a very, or I think have a higher level trust, whether they should or not, of those three AI recommendations than they do or did of all the ads and everything else that showed up on the homepage. So what are you doing or how are you helping your law firms get recommended directly in that space that is right now, at least, very highly trusted?

Megan (12:44.271)

Okay, well, the biggest way that we're doing it is a secret, but I'll tell you some other ways that are not secrets. Because everyone's trying to crack this code right now, right? And there's not definitive things. Eventually there will be a little bit more information, like when Google does its algorithm changes and we can do all this, but there's not that transparency yet with LLM. So we're kind of all trying little things to see what works. But.

John Jantsch (12:51.288)

Okay.

Sure. Right, right.

Megan (13:13.045)

I would say for law firms specifically, the more niche your website and your content, the better because people are asking specifically, people are not just saying, I need a lawyer, right? They're saying, I need a lawyer who does this, right? And we're not seeing the same success with, for example, the high volume, like personal injury lawyers, right?

John Jantsch (13:26.67)

They're explaining their entire situation, right? Yeah. Right, right.

John Jantsch (13:39.584)

Mm-hmm.

Megan (13:40.815)

because most solo and small firms have been priced out of that bracket already. And so the authority has been built up. I think we'll start to see a little bit of a shift there away from the larger firms as far as recommendations. But things like divorce, child custody, bankruptcy, expungements, DUIs, those types of things.

John Jantsch (13:46.414)

Yeah. Yeah.

Megan (14:09.684)

If you go in really, really specific and you're hyper-targeting and those are the articles you're publishing, and then you're also posting the social media content, it's looking at LinkedIn, it's looking at... One tip I would say too is using videos on LinkedIn. Videos on LinkedIn is playing really nicely into LLM recommendations is one thing that we've noticed. So I would say building as a business, building your authority.

John Jantsch (14:34.702)

Hmm.

Megan (14:39.394)

through LinkedIn is really good. Most people overlook that as a marketing tool because they think of it more like a B2B kind of thing. And a lot of lawyers are targeting people, but the LLMs are paying attention to what you post on LinkedIn.

John Jantsch (14:55.426)

So you've worked with a lot of firms over 15 years. Some have been very successful. I'm sure some have not seen the light and grown the way they'd like to. What would you say, what are some of the core differences of those firms that make steady progress versus ones that just kind of either plateau or burn out?

Megan (15:14.434)

The ones that are the most successful are the ones that stay the course with starting niche and then building. The places we've seen problems happen and where we've seen things tank out is when someone starts in one place and they wanna make a strong pivot. So we built up a really successful traffic ticket lawyer, for example. And then he decided, let's add on criminal defense. Okay, that's relevant, we can add that on.

John Jantsch (15:20.312)

Yes.

Megan (15:43.012)

And then he decided, let's change the whole website and turn it into personal injury and let's remove all of these practice areas. And I was like, your search will tank, right? You are the go-to guy for these things already. You can't play this PI ball game that everyone has already invested so much in right now without paid search, just organically. And he's like, I don't care. Like make the switch. It's going to work out.

John Jantsch (15:48.29)

No.

Yeah, yeah.

Megan (16:13.229)

And then three months later, he's like, why are my numbers down? And I'm like, are you kidding me? Are you kidding me right now? This is not gonna work out between us. I think we need to break up. So that's kind of the example of just like, I always tell people if you're gonna hire marketers, make sure you hire marketers you trust and then trust them, right? Because at the end of the day, like my job is to make your goals a reality and to hit your bottom.

John Jantsch (16:31.714)

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Megan (16:40.783)

So I'm not steering you in a direction away from making money. That's not beneficial towards me. So when you get to a place where you're not trusting your marketing team and you're fighting against them, that's a sign that things are gonna probably break down pretty soon.

John Jantsch (16:55.47)

Yeah. You know, I can't tell you how many business owners that I've worked with over the years that I've had to tell them, you know, the problem's not your marketing issue. And believe it or not, some of them know it and some of them actually appreciate that message. And so they're like, what do do about that? it's, yeah, exactly. So if.

Megan (17:03.919)

Mm-hmm.

Megan (17:14.113)

Yeah, it takes a third party often to hop in there and be like, bro, listen.

John Jantsch (17:24.064)

If somebody's listening right now, small firm runs a small business. Maybe they're not going to write a book this year, but what's a couple of things that they could do that you think they could see kind of immediate process progress if they did it once a week, know, twice a week, whatever. What are some activities you've seen that have really compounded?

Megan (17:47.248)

I would say once a week, go online and claim a profile on some kind of directory. Hit the big ones first, get AVO, get your super lawyers, all those kinds of things, Better Business Bureau, anywhere online that lists professionals, make sure you have a profile and fill it out completely. And if you do that once a week, you will see impact from it. That would be my top.

John Jantsch (17:51.182)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (18:13.938)

I'll give you my top one that I tell a lot of business owners is go out and get on other people's podcasts. Quite frankly, because, you know, talk about trust signals and great links and great SEO and great content that you can share and cut up and do things with. I think it's, to me, it's the perfect, it's really the perfect sort of marketing tactic that a lot of people can do pretty easily in a lot of cases.

Megan (18:36.035)

And it takes pushing though. Like I'm doing this right now because my PR person, Paige has set me up on all of these podcasts. Cause she's like, you have to do it. Like even as a marketer, I'm like, I don't do I, do I really? But again, now, now I'm flooding the internet when you Google my name, there's all of this content now. So she was right. So I think that's a really good tip too.

John Jantsch (18:38.412)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (18:45.976)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (18:49.94)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (18:55.67)

Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, you know, the, thing that I tell people all the time is it's an amazing backlink. mean, I, you know, I have a very high authority backlink that you're going to get, but also I'm very incentivized to promote this show. and so that's the other thing, you know, a lot of guest posts and things, they just get buried in things, but you most podcasts hosts are promoting their shows. So, I tell people all the time, just go out and do it. There's so many ways that you can reuse that content too.

Megan (19:24.131)

Yep.

John Jantsch (19:25.262)

All right. So Megan, I appreciate you stopping by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Can you give me your best news anchor voice?

Megan (19:37.827)

to close it out.

John Jantsch (19:37.934)

to close this out and to tell people where they can find out more about your work and maybe pick up your book.

Megan (19:47.085)

Okay, well, reporting live from Duct Tape Podcast, this is Megan Hargirter with Legends Legal Marketing. You can find me at legendslegalmarketing.com. You can also shoot me an email at meganatlegendslegalmarketing.com. If you wanna chat or if you wanna copy of my book, I'll just mail you one. Send me an email.

John Jantsch (20:06.72)

Awesome. I didn't tell you guys, the, as a past career for Megan that I read in her bio. So I had to set her up there again. I appreciate you taking a moment to stop by and hopefully we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Megan (20:14.767)

you

Megan (20:20.942)

Absolutely. Thank you, John.

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John Jantsch (00:02.104)

What if the real barrier to building a thriving practice is not just talent or expertise, but the outdated rules we've accepted about how business development is supposed to work. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Deborah Farone. She's a founder of Farone Advisors and a longtime leader in legal business development and marketing. She previously held senior business development roles at major law firms and her new book.

Deborah Farone (00:13.368)

Thank you.

Deborah Farone (00:30.586)

you

John Jantsch (00:30.84)

breaking ground how successful women lawyers build thriving practices. That's what we're going to talk about today. Welcome, Debra.

Deborah Farone (00:36.858)

Thank you for having me, John.

John Jantsch (00:40.398)

So for listeners, we're not going to talk about legal stuff. We're not going to necessarily. I think a lot of the things that I was going to share today will apply to anybody, particularly in professional services, because really the business development is very, very similar. So you've spent many years, I suspect, helping firms think about business development. This book focuses specifically on women. Is there a gap that you saw that you think made this book necessary?

Deborah Farone (00:44.852)

Thank

Deborah Farone (01:08.794)

There was, you know, I think that most lawyers and most professionals develop business in very similar ways, but I felt that there were some women out there who either didn't have the role models because there are fewer women at the top of the organizations and law firms, or they didn't know how to have the skills to develop business. So that's why I really wanted to help them. But in doing the book, I realized that so much of what I was learning was applicable.

John Jantsch (01:15.746)

Right.

Deborah Farone (01:37.7)

to anyone who wanted to develop business. It's just my sample set happened to be women.

John Jantsch (01:43.214)

Yeah. So I think many people suffer from this, regardless of the industry, but certainly in professional services, I think it is more so. that people, don't even like the term sales, right? I mean, it feels salesy. It's all the bad things they associate with what they see it. But you certainly talk about, and I know that this is a thread running through the book, that it doesn't have to feel salesy. Why do you think so many...

Business professionals, sales professionals really resist this.

Deborah Farone (02:15.674)

think most of them went to school to learn a profession, whether it was to learn to be an accountant or a consultant. No one ever said you were going to have to go into sales. So it sounds like all of a sudden they have to have this new way of thinking. I really don't think that's the case. In fact, most of the successful people that I've worked with, whether they're consultants or lawyers, don't find themselves asking for the business. They never really say, can I have that business from you? They very often

John Jantsch (02:19.608)

Yeah, you're right.

Deborah Farone (02:44.492)

let people know what they've done. They offer to help. They use words like, I support you? But they're not in sales mode. I think they really do want to help these potential clients. And so that comes through. And I believe you need to be more authentic than you do a salesperson when you're trying to build a practice.

John Jantsch (03:08.238)

Well, think there's a lot of things that certainly I've learned in selling professional services. That idea of give value, provide value, provide support, and eventually that business will come around. But when you tell that person that is just getting started out there and they're like, that's great. I'm all for the long game and for investing, but I need to eat. So how do you kind of thread that?

Deborah Farone (03:36.206)

think it's important to have relationships and I really try to get young professionals to concentrate on that. And even if they don't have a big budget in a firm, get your senior people to come and train the younger ones. Give them the war stories of how you've won clients or how you've met people that have developed business. think that that's very important. And I think even for people that are still in school to start thinking about your network and your network isn't just

John Jantsch (03:50.21)

Yeah.

Deborah Farone (04:05.486)

the people that you go to class with. It's who you met at your summer jobs, right? It's the people in your first job who work in ancillary positions. They might not be a consultant if you're a consultant or an accountant if you're an accountant, but they're the people that you've met. And those folks become part of your network. And I think we're seeing with sales what we often see with job hunting that those contacts that end up hiring us are not necessarily that

first degree circle of people we know, but very often it's the people that they know. So it's important to have a large diverse network of contacts out there.

John Jantsch (04:46.424)

Yeah, I tell, I wrote a book on referrals actually. And I always tell people, you know, not everybody's your prospect, but everybody knows your prospect. You know, at least one of them, right? Yeah. So you did a lot of conversations, had a lot of interviews, focused on a lot of successful women rainmakers. Did you see that there are patterns that show up that are maybe different in how men and women build trust, visibility, and opportunity?

Deborah Farone (04:49.338)

Thanks.

Deborah Farone (04:55.29)

It's true.

John Jantsch (05:16.684)

A follow-up question you can answer, is one better at it? Are those different approaches serve one? So let's go back to the first question, since I butchered that. What patterns did you see showing up in particularly how women build trust, visibility, and opportunity?

Deborah Farone (05:24.346)

You

Deborah Farone (05:28.058)

Thank you.

Well, I wasn't so much studying men versus women as I was just looking at this group of women, but I do find that they like relationship building, that that's something that comes naturally to them. And what I did find that is maybe true with men as well is that you need to be authentic in your marketing approach and how you develop business, that there is not a one size fits all. Not everyone fits into one of four categories.

John Jantsch (05:36.238)

Right, right.

Deborah Farone (06:02.52)

I think we all find our own way of doing it based on our personality, what works for us. And so people like Susan, I and D Baker McKenzie, who I spoke to for the book, loves exercise. She loves being outdoors. And so she invites her clients and her colleagues and contacts whenever they're in town to go with her on a hike. That's not going to work for everyone. But she doesn't like this idea of having the formal cocktail party and inviting people she knows. So.

John Jantsch (06:17.998)

Mm-hmm.

Deborah Farone (06:31.393)

I think it's a matter of finding what works for you because that's going to be what you want to repeat. And also that's what your clients are going to see that you enjoy. And clients can tell if you're taking them golfing, but you really don't like golf.

John Jantsch (06:45.506)

Yeah. So I think that you just hit on really the secret is finding what works for you and being yourself rather than looking at like, this is how everybody in our industry does it, or this is how everybody in our firm does it. You really will be more successful doing something that works for you, which is probably going to be something that you also enjoy. Would that be, yeah.

Deborah Farone (07:06.903)

Yes, and I try with the people that I know and I'm sure you do too. You know, want to really get to know them and figure out what are their proclivities? You what are they like? I worked with someone who was a classical musician and she loves the opera. And so she lives in Milan and what she does is she takes her clients and their spouses and families to see a short opera and then for a wonderful dinner.

because she enjoys it and they can tell they know that when she's taking them that they're having a good time and so is she. And so I think that that's really important is figuring out what it is that you enjoy. What's the best way for you to develop business and it might not be the same way as the person next door.

John Jantsch (07:35.927)

Yeah, right.

John Jantsch (07:53.358)

So what do you say to that client maybe that you're working with that, you know, I think a lot of people think in terms of to be successful business development, you have to be that outgoing, charismatic, you know, networking, you know, kind of person. What do you tell that person who's like, that's just not me? You know, I don't feel comfortable doing that. You know, how am I going to succeed?

Deborah Farone (08:09.688)

Yeah.

Deborah Farone (08:13.923)

Right, think, know, well, first of all, I tell people don't take giant leaps, take baby steps. And that's the best thing to do so that if you're not used to talking about yourself and your practice, do it with a family member, you know, then do it with a colleague, then do it with an associate at your firm, and then eventually you can do it with the client. So I think, you know, Jeff Klein, who's a well-known lawyer in New York said marketing is muscle. And I think it's true, you get better and better at it.

John Jantsch (08:19.362)

Nice.

John Jantsch (08:25.368)

me.

John Jantsch (08:40.952)

Yes.

Deborah Farone (08:42.393)

But I also don't think that you need to be out having lunch every day with people if that's not your thing. You know, I love coffee. I mean, I love any kind of coffee, right? So I love meeting people for coffee. It's perfect. I don't have to think about what I'm eating. I don't have to think about any variables. I'm happy at a Starbucks or a fancy hotel for coffee. And that's what I love. You know, so I do coffee meetings.

John Jantsch (08:53.016)

Thank

Deborah Farone (09:09.677)

But other people find their ways. And I think you have to do what feels authentic to you.

John Jantsch (09:16.91)

So what, and maybe you don't keep track of this kind of thing, circling back a little bit to the gender aspect of your work, what's the percentage of women in leadership in the legal industry, you think?

Deborah Farone (09:31.129)

It's very low. mean, we have less than I think 30 % or maybe around 30 % that are actually partners. And if you look at the American Lawyer 100, the top firms, fewer than 25 % are being led by women. And so you have a real issue with diversity on all levels, and even fewer are women or people of color. And so it's a real issue when you talk about looking for role models.

John Jantsch (09:32.547)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (10:00.588)

Yeah.

Deborah Farone (10:00.91)

I think professionals, particularly lawyers, like to look at role models because they're interested in precedent. They want to know what has the other person done that's been successful. And if they don't see people who look like them in those roles, it's a lot harder to figure out how they're going to get there.

John Jantsch (10:09.614)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (10:18.734)

Do you feel like that system, if you will, still quietly works against women then? When it comes to business development, mean, particularly.

Deborah Farone (10:26.033)

I do. Yeah, I think women and minorities have a tougher time because there are not those role models. I think there are other issues at play like unconscious bias. But, you know, my focus really is on business development. And I feel that, you know, if we can teach people how to develop business, whether they're in the professions or even if they're in something like advertising.

If you have the ability to sell yourself and to develop business, it gives you so much more ability to write your own script and to do what you want because you're going to have more advantages as far as rising within an organization if you're a business developer that we've seen. And you can also kind of develop the clients that you want to develop and develop the practice that appeals to you. And that's great. That gives you a sense of independence that you wouldn't have otherwise.

John Jantsch (11:08.491)

Yes, yes.

Deborah Farone (11:21.483)

So that's really what I want to encourage people to do.

John Jantsch (11:24.846)

You can probably take that on the road to another firm as well as within your own firm.

Deborah Farone (11:27.449)

You can. Absolutely. It allows you freedom. It's a type of currency, isn't it? You know, that you have that capability.

John Jantsch (11:34.892)

Yeah. Yeah.

So we've been talking about applying this to law, but for consultants, agency owners, other experts, what do you think your book could teach them about building practice around relationships rather than self-promotion?

Deborah Farone (11:53.405)

well, I think the authenticity issue is very big. Also trust, I cover how you build trust. And it seems to be three elements. It's expertise, it's the authenticity piece, and it's empathy. And I go into a lot of detail about that because I think being yourself amongst your clients is not something we're trained to do necessarily. But I try to show people examples of folks who have done that.

and why they've been successful. And clients want to work with people who are believable, who come across as humans. I told you when we got on the call that I might have a coughing attack. I don't pretend to be perfect. And I think people like people more when they are themselves and they admit that they're fallible. And so there are lots of different things for other professionals, I think, to learn from these lessons.

And the other really is to develop a niche. think developing a niche is so vital regardless of what you're doing in the world because figuring out what you really enjoy and then figuring out if you think of it as a Venn diagram, what makes economic sense or sense for the firm that you're with. Finding where those overlap is just a vital part of being able to market yourself.

John Jantsch (12:54.679)

Hmm.

John Jantsch (13:15.662)

And then going very good and deep and becoming an expert at that thing, right?

Deborah Farone (13:20.632)

Right, absolutely. But I think we all have a tendency to jump into the tactics before we do the strategy. And I really would recommend that people think about the strategy and how they want to be known and what they want to do before they take an immediate jump into giving lots of speaking engagements or marketing themselves.

John Jantsch (13:27.779)

Yes.

John Jantsch (13:40.15)

Yeah. So most professional service firms expect partners to grow the practice. So where do you see the firms themselves getting it wrong in terms of not really equipping those, you know, just saying, go out there and do it.

Deborah Farone (13:56.131)

Yeah, I think they need to train people. I think training has to start when someone is very young in business. I think you can train an older person. You can teach them new tricks. But what happens is, and we see this in so many professions, if you're not training them when they're associates or when they just start, not only are they losing whatever seven or eight years of building good habits about business development and marketing and relationship building,

But they're losing those contacts that they could have made. So they've not been trained, they don't have the contacts. All of sudden you make them partner and you say, okay, it's time, go develop business. And it's much harder at that point.

John Jantsch (14:37.998)

All right.

Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. So is there anything in the interviews that you did, particularly with the women, that kind of challenged some of your own assumptions about business development, even about leadership?

Deborah Farone (14:57.728)

think finding that there were cultural differences, there were more cultural differences than I thought there would be around the world. So I spoke with women in Botswana. I spoke with women in Milan and Paris and Asia. And there are differences that I think I just see generally as a difference with culture, whether it's men or women. But in parts of Asia, you would never be direct and say, I want to do

Business with you I want to work with you unless if you really do know someone very well and the same is true with even portions of Italy and Europe. You know London is more like America as far as you can be a little bit more direct. But Latin America is also different and that they want to take time and get to know you and so I think the cultural differences were were really interesting I was aware that there might be some but.

John Jantsch (15:49.006)

Mm-hmm.

Deborah Farone (15:55.657)

the ones that I heard about just reinforced how important it is, especially if you're going to another country, that there are to be cultural differences. And even if you're going to another firm, another company that you're trying to sell, you have to just be very empathetic and really understand the culture of that company. So that was reinforced.

John Jantsch (16:19.864)

So if, and I'm sure you've been brought in from time to time to work with somebody who's really good at what they do, sort of hesitant to put themselves out there. Do you always, I mean, is there a first step that you say, well, just do this, it won't kill you, this'll get you started?

Deborah Farone (16:35.352)

I think so much of it is getting to know someone because everyone's going to have their quirks. And so while I do work for large companies and large firms, I will take on about eight coaching clients a year. And I really need to start with getting to know what they do, what they love, what they hate about work, all of those things. And then we can figure out where they want to go. But I really do believe that that's strategic.

John Jantsch (16:39.726)

Yeah.

Deborah Farone (17:04.344)

part has to come before they start selling themselves. And very often the selling themselves part starts with how they sell themselves internally at their company. Are they making the right contacts? And are they helping other people? And are they creating a good reputation for themselves? Those things matter so much and they're so easy to overlook.

John Jantsch (17:15.278)

That's a point,

John Jantsch (17:30.722)

Yeah, that's interesting point. I'm sure that when people, especially young associates inside of professional service firm, especially a larger firm, part of the job is start your networking here, right? mean, go meet these partners or go ask somebody how they got to where they got and find a mentor maybe even. that's all part of that's business development, frankly, isn't it?

Deborah Farone (17:54.648)

It is and you know I spoke I guess maybe two or three weeks ago at Columbia Law School and I said to the law students it's really important that you know everyone in this room because one of you is going to be the next Sam Altman or one of you might be the head of an architecture firm or a law firm you just don't know and so it really needs to start at that level it needs to kind of

John Jantsch (18:00.92)

Thanks.

John Jantsch (18:07.276)

Yeah.

Deborah Farone (18:21.451)

reach people who are still trying to figure out what they want to do. Develop a network, think about who is in your network, and make sure that you're empathetic to what they're going through.

John Jantsch (18:28.781)

Yes.

John Jantsch (18:33.294)

It's funny, when I started my business some 30 years ago, all my first clients were people I went to high school and college with. So, all right, you wrote Breaking Ground. What do you hope firms and individuals, professionals will do differently as a result of reading?

Deborah Farone (18:40.573)

I'm not surprised. That's great.

Deborah Farone (18:51.029)

I think one, start training people early. Don't wait until they become a partner at their firm. And also realize that everyone develops business in a different way and can develop business in a different way. So have room for people to do it authentically. Give them a budget, give them some guardrails of what they can and can't do if you need to, but allow them to find a way to develop business that's right for them.

So I think those are two things that I would start with.

John Jantsch (19:24.014)

Well, Deborah, I appreciate you saying that by the DuckTait marketing podcast. Is there somewhere you'd invite people to find out more about breaking ground and certainly to connect with you?

Deborah Farone (19:25.833)

It's particularly.

Deborah Farone (19:32.865)

Absolutely. Well, breaking ground, they can easily order through Amazon or through my website. There's some links for discount codes and things like that. And my website is deborahferrone.com. And most of the time I live on LinkedIn. I guess if you can say, where do you live as far as social media, I'm on LinkedIn at Deborah Breitman-Ferrone.

John Jantsch (19:50.19)

Great.

John Jantsch (19:55.694)

Again, I appreciate you stop by and maybe we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Deborah Farone (20:01.053)

John, thank you so much. It was fun speaking with you.

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John Jantsch (00:01.582)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and another solo show. I'm just going to ramble at you for a bit. Again, I'd love to hear your feedback. I get feedback from lot of folks that they enjoy these shows where I just kind of share some things that I have in mind. I'm just going to start off with no shocker here. I'm going to talk about strategy.

Talk about strategy before tactics. I'm going to talk about marketing as a system. These are things that if you've been listening for, I don't know, even a couple of weeks, but let alone a couple of years, you have heard me say repeatedly something I've written about in pretty much every one of my books. And it's a challenge or a problem that I haven't cracked yet. I haven't gotten the entire world, even the marketing world, to really come fully on board. But I will tell you this.

I've worked with hundreds now of business owners and I have seen the impact when they will step back and look at their business from a strategic point of view and certainly their marketing from a strategic point of view and really proceed to develop the tactics that they are going to develop around that strategy first. Nobody's short on marketing activity. I mean, there's more to do from a marketing standpoint. There seems to be.

more every day, that we can get into more channels, more platforms, more tactics that we can get into every day. So that's not really the challenge. The real challenge is that they're short on the clarity that actually might let them do less. Right. I mean, they're doing a lot of things. Maybe you're doing a lot of things that feel like marketing or under the heading of marketing. but those things don't always connect. so.

My experience is there's a great deal of inconsistent messaging, shifting priorities, right? It's like, well, let's try this this month. Teams, vendors, not allowed, not aligned, I'm sorry. I've come into a lot of organizations. have five, six people, there are five, six companies even doing stuff, but they're not actually even coordinating with each other, which I certainly find rather difficult to imagine. Money gets wasted, time gets wasted. You burn your people out.

John Jantsch (02:20.718)

Let's face it, the promise of AI is it was supposed to automate all this stuff. And I keep talking to people to say they're working harder because they're now trying to figure out all this new stuff. so growth gets really harder to do when we're really just, it's like we're running on the hamster wheel. I've said I've worked with hundreds of businesses over the years and I have many, many examples of case studies where we have doubled, tripled quad.

quadrupled. We'd work with them for years and we've double tripled, quadrupled their business. But it really started with a pretty significant change. We did strategy first. We helped them identify who was an ideal client, who is an ideal client for the business. And maybe more importantly, who's not. Because most businesses are content to say, hey, I do X service, X product, and anybody who has money is my ideal client. And not only is that

inaccurate, it's really costing a lot of growth because we are accepting or chasing the wrong clients. We're not actually being very narrow in our messaging to say, here's who we can help and here's the value we deliver to help those folks. So it really creates a lot of lost opportunity, even if you feel like, well, you we got a client out of it. It wasn't the right client or it was a not a profitable engagement. Certainly that happens all the time.

Probably the biggest thing that I find from no strategy is there's no real point of differentiation. There's no message that clearly communicates to somebody. Here's what we do and we do it better than anyone else. In fact, we've got proof that we do that thing better than anyone else that ever thought about. And when you get that, when you clarify that message, says, here's who we're for. And your ideal client reads that message and says,

Finally, you're talking about me, aren't you? As I said, this is something that we have done for many, many years. It's not new. I mean, it's continued to evolve, but it's continued to be something that we've licensed now to well over 400 agencies and consultancies who also get the power of this systemized approach that we've been able to create to develop strategy. But today I want to tell you about a new way that we are going to deliver it. And this may have some

John Jantsch (04:40.174)

some appeal. the past, ideally it took 30 to 45 days, quite frankly, to do this because we do a lot of in-depth research. We actually interview your clients as part of it and really then develop the messaging, develop the ICP, develop the customer journey, develop the priorities that are going to be really the next 90 days worth of work to kind of restructure the foundation and really get the business

pointed in the right direction. while businesses that understand the idea of investing in strategy sometimes would grumble about 30 to 45 days, it's like, why can't we do it now? But once they were through the process, there's no question the value that they received and they gush about the value they received. They gush about, it's not just, I mean, in 30 to 45 days of doing strategy first, all of sudden the phone's not ringing.

off the hook now with new business, but all of a the team has some clarity. Certainly the founder and the owner has some clarity about, here's why things haven't been working. Here's why we're spinning our wheels. Here's how we have to actually get very clear about who we serve and who we don't serve. that frankly, just having that has a tremendous amount of value.

frankly relieves a ton of stress for the business owner. But what we decided is, or asked ourself or challenged ourselves is, how can we do that faster? How could we actually deliver strategy first in a day? That is something that I'm introducing today. That is something we're going to lean in very heavily because I believe there are some distinct advantages to actually compressing

that time. have the ability, let's face it, we have the ability with a lot of the AI tools that we've mastered to actually do the research, to actually do the analysis in a way that allows us to do this in a much faster timeframe. But here's probably the biggest, I think, advantage to doing this. Quite often we would do this over a series of meetings that were required. Two weeks maybe would go between those meetings and quite often

John Jantsch (07:05.646)

It would really just be the founder. But imagine if we could come into your business, especially if you have a team, and we could bring everybody that you thought needed to be in that room, in that room for an entire focused day. Now we will certainly do a lot of work on the front end. We're not just going to show up and say, tell me about your business. We are going to do a lot of

work on the front end, the research that we can do on your industry and on your specific business and what we see out there that you've been doing in marketing already. But then we are going to spend a very focused day with you and your team creating what I would say is as much an experience as it is a strategic.

exercise or strategic engagement. This is not a workshop, this is not consulting. This is actually with your team building the components that we know will really kind of launch your business or launch your marketing in a much more effective way. So as I said, we do tons of prep ahead of time to get the context. And then we need all of your key decision makers or frankly, people that are doing stuff on behalf of your business in the name of marketing.

to be in the room, people that you wanna level up, people that you wanna actually experience as a group, what it's like or what it means to develop marketing strategy and to have the discussion around that. frankly, it's going to be as much a learning experience for them as it will be a deliverable for the business itself. So we're gonna identify where there's friction, we're gonna identify

the business objectives that you need to go, we're going to define that ideal customer and customer journey. We're going to tighten your positioning. We're going to actually create and sharpen messaging and really set the priorities for the next quarter or next two quarters as a big part of this. thing, some of the other advantages of have the output in this fashion in one focused day is that yes, you're going to get a clear strategic foundation. You're going to actually understand your business

John Jantsch (09:19.384)

probably better than you ever have. You're going to have a shared language. Some of the tools that we're going to give you and in part during this are going to be tools that you'll now be able to continue to work with with your team. And it won't just be, you went off to another thing and read a book and brought it back to the business. Everybody's going to be on the same page. And you're going to have a roadmap, a very practical roadmap in the short term for the next 90 days. And I think that this focus

The lack of delay, the lack of overthinking, mean, getting people aligned, I think it's going to have tremendous value. Now, this won't be for everybody. Ideally, is strategy in this fashion actually works better for a business in a one to $25 million range, for example. I mean, you've got traction, but you've also got growing complexity. And so it's time to professionalize your marketing in a way.

You know, the ad hoc marketing is just not going to really cut it anymore. Maybe you've already started to feel that. And you've got teams or people or even outside vendors that really need more alignment instead of more activity necessarily.

If your growth feels messy, the problem may not be effort. Usually isn't actually effort. In fact, you're probably working harder than ever. It's the absence of a shared strategy inside the business. And that's really what Strategy First was completely designed to solve. And Strategy First today, I believe solves that in a very unique kind of shared experience way. So.

If you want to learn more about this, if this kind of lights you up a little bit, we have a page. You can go read all about the very specifics. It's just dtm.world slash one day, all one word, one day. DTM is like duct tape marketing. So it's dtm.world slash one day. Love to come to your business, learn about how we can build this for you and really kind of have your marketing take off, not.

John Jantsch (11:29.986)

just this quarter, but really in a one day experience. So take care. Thanks for tuning in and hopefully we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

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