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John Jantsch (00:01.71)

So what if the press release isn't a relic of the pre-internet era, but actually one of the most underused tools a small business has right now, especially when AI can help write them, but there's a catch. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Mickie Kennedy. He's the founder of eReleases, a press release distribution service started back in 1998.

After watching small businesses get turned away from PR agencies, it charged a minimum of $20,000. He's since distributed over 150 press releases, more than 30,000 customers. And today we're going to talk about how to train AI to write press releases that journalists actually read and use. So Mickey, welcome to the show.

Mickie Kennedy (00:49.141)

Thanks for having me.

John Jantsch (00:50.872)

So I've been in this business over 30 years. And so certainly the press release and PR and media relations were a big component of marketing. Seems like when the web came along, they sort of lost a little bit of their use and usability. And I wonder how you've been in this game a long time as well. E-Release really came around.

kind of when the web was just starting. how have you seen the practice of PR in general and certainly the PR or the press release tool changed dramatically over the last couple of decades?

Mickie Kennedy (01:30.241)

So I think the biggest change I've seen is the proliferation of noise in the PR space. There is a lot of, I guess you'd call them syndication feeds where for $49 or $119 your press release gets replicated on a bunch of websites, but it's usually like a sub domain or a folder on the website. And if you go to the website and you do a search for your company, it won't show up.

John Jantsch (01:36.066)

Yeah, sure.

Mickie Kennedy (02:00.481)

So, you know, humans aren't actually seeing this and it's more of just a, I don't know, an ego lift. And it's gotten to the point that, you know, people don't recognize the opportunity of what a proper newswire is. In the US, it's largely a duopoly between Businesswire owned by Berkshire Hathaway and PR Newswire. And PR Newswire is the oldest and largest. And they also charge, they both charge

quite a bit being a duopoly, around $1,800 for a 600 WordPress release to go out nationally. That being said, all the releases that go out through e-releases go out nationally and it's probably about 25 % the cost of that. The caveat is you have to be a small business or entrepreneur. Basically the type of customer that PR Newswire sells team has no interest in pursuing. And that's sort of what I act as a co-op for small businesses and entrepreneurs. And we move about 30,

Let's see, right now we're moving about 10,000 press releases a year. Altogether, we've worked with over 30, I think right now around 32, 33,000 clients that we've helped. And so we're moving a lot of volume and as a result, we're really helping people. But you know, there are people who have used the other services, then they'll do a press release with us and they'll actually say, we had less impact with you. And I'm like, well, I see you got no earned media.

and you got no earned media with them. They're like, no, we got picked up by 200 links. And I'm like, where? And they're just the syndication links. And I'm like, nobody wrote an article about you. These are all the press release replicated on a bunch of syndication websites. And they, you know, it's just hard to, I find education has become the thing now where we try to get people to understand the opportunity.

John Jantsch (03:51.736)

Well, let's talk about that because in the old days, certainly the press release was a vehicle to get media coverage, even if you were just trying to get it in your town. Then when the web came along, it actually became as much or more of an SEO play than a PR play, right? Yeah, because unfortunately in the early days, those links buried 10 rows deep were getting picked up by the search engines.

Mickie Kennedy (04:07.861)

Yeah, people trying to game that.

John Jantsch (04:18.19)

Even though no people really saw them, they were getting indexed. And so they did actually have some value in that regard. But certainly the search engines now are onto the game and those days are certainly over. So talk a little bit about this idea of earned media versus owned media, because I think we're actually back in a window of time when earned media is probably going to become more important than it maybe ever was or certainly

Mickie Kennedy (04:21.909)

But right now.

John Jantsch (04:46.978)

more so than it's been in the last couple of decades.

Mickie Kennedy (04:49.685)

Right. I think with AI, people are looking for stuff and AI is leaning on credible sources. And believe me, when I tell you it's not this subdomain on a website that no one knows, it's, if you're in the waste management space and you've been picked up in Waste News, which is the industry standard publication, and they've written about you doing something exciting.

John Jantsch (05:03.459)

Right.

Mickie Kennedy (05:17.537)

the AI as well as the search engines are going to know that that's a very relevant publication. And as a result, you're going to stand out. you know, that let's just take that one as an example. I mentioned it because I had a client who did a press release about them where they build facilities for municipalities. And it's everything nuts and bolts from waste as well as recycling. And, you know, a city orders it.

And there's nothing else. They handle everything. They work with the contractors and they build out a complete facility. very, you know, there's nobody really doing that. And so, they sent that press release out. They got one article and waste news, magazine. It's like the perfect magazine, but it was just one article. They were contacted by, a city in Australia and, within six months they were under contract to build two facilities in Australia.

John Jantsch (06:06.136)

Mm-hmm.

Mickie Kennedy (06:15.297)

And it was I think over 30 or 40 million dollars from one article and so And you know, they'll continue to get leads and recognition for that and that's what happens with our media I tell you you know you appearing on a website that no one's looking at nothing is ever going to happen But when a journalist writes an article about you it's like an implied endorsement You know, it's someone has transformed the press release into a written article

John Jantsch (06:18.83)

Sure.

Mickie Kennedy (06:42.977)

You know, during the pandemic, we helped an initiative called the dining bond initiative to help restaurants that were closed during the pandemic. It was sort of like a volunteer effort. And if they you you nominated a favorite local restaurant, if they were able to contact them, you could give money that went directly to them back by dining bonds for like a gift certificate scenario. And it raised over $10 million in revenue, it got picked up in over 100 places. It got

You name it Wall Street Journal picked it up New York Times lots of food publications and I saw over 80 daily newspapers who picked it up and so it did extremely well and again that would never happen on these syndication sites, know, these were all individual articles that people wrote about and I think that you know what people are missing is You know, what's what's the magic sauce and its strategy, you know in this case it was a lot of unknown

John Jantsch (07:21.4)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (07:27.566)

100 %

Mickie Kennedy (07:40.279)

You know, we were sent home two weeks to flatten the curve and there was an uncertainty. And here was something that was potentially positive news, but it was also actionable. You know, we have, we are powerless, but we could give $50 to the favorite restaurant we go to for our anniversary every year and make sure we're helping them in some small way. And I think that that's

John Jantsch (07:59.896)

Well, that, I mean, I think that brings up a really good point because a lot of times when people think about promoting something, there is like, here's my new product, you know, press release. and you know, that's not very interesting, it's interesting to that person, but maybe nobody else. So how do you find those? mean, you know, the pandemic was kind of an interesting opportunity, but in, in, in the real world, every day of small business, how do you find that thing that, that, that nobody's covering or that

Mickie Kennedy (08:11.329)

No.

John Jantsch (08:27.33)

that's really unique inside your industry instead of just self-promotion.

Mickie Kennedy (08:31.798)

you have to, you know, sort of put your thinking cap on. You have to play the contrarian. You have to look at different angles. Do you have to think and talk to people? Like if we were at a trade show or conference, what are the things you'd want to ask people right now? Have you noticed that this is happening with your company or is it just mine? Those are the things that are ripe for bringing out because often these are industry blind spots that the industry is not reporting on yet.

but you've noticed this trend and now you're looking for verification from someone else. And if you can get that verification, they're like, yeah, I'm seeing that too. You can break that. And that puts you in control for getting that news out there. And I've had that work really well, especially for clients that traditionally aren't very newsworthy. There was a local carpet company in New Jersey and talking to them during a brainstorm, we asked who their biggest enemy was and they says the big box home improvement stores.

And not only are they our biggest enemy, they give consumers a really poor product and a poor experience. And this is why. And so we did a press release about that. And they got picked up in almost every floor trade publication. No one had discussed it ever before. And yet it was something that really excited everybody. And we continued to milk that cow for a few more weeks, talking about different ways of which this company

know, targets and markets against the big box of improvement stores and brings home the value of why having seasoned people install your carpet rather than Home Depot going down a list of saying, here's the list of people who have a certification for home improvement license in our state. And that's the only qualification that Home Depot and Lowe's uses. They,

John Jantsch (10:13.944)

That's a pretty good, like if people are looking for a hook, like find an enemy, right, in the industry, like find a bad guy to kind of rail against. That's a pretty proven practice, isn't it?

Mickie Kennedy (10:27.53)

And also, think putting the spotlight on a customer, you talk about a new product or service, you get greedy, and you want to put the spotlight on you. But often you're not the most interesting story. But if you had someone who beta tested your product or software, and they had an amazing outcome, sometimes putting the spotlight on them and saying, we have this new product or service, here's a company that used it three years in, they lost money every year, looks like they're going to be one of the casualties of these companies that

John Jantsch (10:31.276)

Yeah, yeah,

John Jantsch (10:39.534)

Right.

Mickie Kennedy (10:57.164)

fail in the first five years of business. And by using our software solution to write better invoices that are more profitable, they're now projected to have their first profit ever. And then you have a quote by them. And it's like that shows the stakes. And it makes it so much more intriguing and interesting for an audience. And a journalist is at the end of the day doesn't care about

John Jantsch (11:04.12)

Mm-hmm.

Mickie Kennedy (11:18.518)

whether this is going to make a strong article for you, but is it going to make an intriguing and interesting article that their audience is going to want to listen to or read? And that's the biggest metric. Sometimes I say, you have to take what you want, and that's the pill. And sometimes you've got to put it in cheese to get the journalist to swallow it. And what is that magic thing that you're going to do? And sometimes putting the spotlight on others, it's really just creating a compelling story arc. Because naturally,

John Jantsch (11:25.41)

Right. Right. Right.

Mickie Kennedy (11:47.863)

Journalists like to write in a story arc. It's something that we learn from children onward and having a product or service with a list of features doesn't yield much of a story. So what are the things that you can do to make the stakes higher and to put more of that story arc in there?

John Jantsch (12:05.102)

So another sort of casualty of PR practice was the fact that we could hit a button and send out 20 million. I get pitches every single day. like, who on the planet thought this was relevant to my audience? And so how do you kind of balance that? I mean, in a perfect world, I wrote this press release for you, journalist, in this publication in this city. I mean, how do you balance that?

with the fact that you're probably gonna need to send a few out to get a hit.

Mickie Kennedy (12:36.278)

Yeah. So I think that it's one of the cases where going over a newswire now is more important than ever. And it sucks that it's in a duopoly environment because it's expensive. But, you know, that being said, the newswire is very clean. And so if you go into your log in on PR newswire, you have an industry feed that you've signed up for, and you can actually tailor it to exclude, you know, press releases with certain keywords, make sure that you capture

John Jantsch (13:02.53)

Mm-hmm.

Mickie Kennedy (13:05.89)

and pin certain press releases that mentioned certain keywords that are really important to you. And so it's the opposite of their inbox. know, media databases have become prolific over the last 20 years. And, you know, if you're a golf club company who spent $10,000 for a yearly license, and you sent to 2400, you know, people who cover golf, and they all passed, you now start talking yourself into

Well, know, bankers and financial people like to play golf. So let's send it to financial analysts and reporters. And it's like, they'll never cover golf clubs. But you know, that's happening in every industry. People are talking themselves because it costs nothing to just hit a few keys and blast to everybody. And so I find that with everybody, but perhaps local media, email has become a really difficult way to reach journalists. And I think that the newswire

John Jantsch (13:46.35)

Yep, right.

Mickie Kennedy (14:00.382)

is a better way to reach them. You just have to make sure that, you know, when you're spending money to go over a newswire, even if it's a reduced price with us, that you're really playing with something that's strategic and you're not doing a press release that's like, hey, we hired Judy as the new HR associate or something like that. It's a meaningful press release. And so I tell people to really, you know, put a little bit of effort into the strategy behind the press release.

John Jantsch (14:19.416)

Right.

Mickie Kennedy (14:28.515)

you know, look for ways in which you can make a compelling story and help develop a story arc because almost anything that people do you can sort of play with it and elevate it and try to create nuances that brings out more of a story element.

John Jantsch (14:47.534)

So we mentioned AI and certainly, you know, if hitting the button to send has gotten easier, certainly writing the press release has gotten easier. In theory, you can do one prompt and tell it what your product is and what your company name is and voila, it'll put it in a press release format even for you. How do you actually write, how do you actually use the AI tools to write better press releases, ones that are going to get picked up? mean, what does that look like in practice?

Mickie Kennedy (15:15.267)

So I never let AI decide what to write on. I tell people the metric is about 97 % of press releases that even go through the newswire where people paid $1,700 plus to go out naturally. They do not generate earned media. So what I tell people to do is focus on the 3 % of press releases that do get picked up because there's patterns in there. The story arc is an important one.

John Jantsch (15:40.706)

Mm-hmm.

Mickie Kennedy (15:43.172)

you know, building in an industry survey or study, that's something anyone can do. Nobody owns an industry, you can do the legwork, get a survey in your industry, partner with a smaller independent trade association, not the big one, they'll often because it's a smaller independent one, they don't get a lot of love from the media. So they see it as a win win themselves. And I'd say more than two thirds of the time, they will cooperate with you to send that out to their members. And

you know, focus not on all the questions, but what was the most, uh, the biggest surprise or aha of that, uh, survey that you did and then focus on that, uh, as the press release. then ask AI, Hey, I've got this idea for a press release. Here's me. Here's my company. Do not write the press release. Give me the structure of what you feel would be the perfect press release on this subject. It'll probably write the press release anyways. And I go, okay.

I see you wrote the press release. Now give me just the structure. And then finally it gives you the structure and say, okay, give me eight headline options for this press release. And then if I find one that I really like, I'll get it. Otherwise we'll refine one. It's like number three comes closest, but I want to make sure that this is in there. And then I say, okay, now give me three opening paragraph options using this target headline. And it, this way takes longer. It might take.

John Jantsch (17:07.822)

Thanks

Mickie Kennedy (17:08.355)

I've the most has ever taken me to do a whole press release is 12 minutes. So you don't get it in 30 seconds. But if you take it top down, paragraph by paragraph, and then focus like, hey, I'm the second paragraph, I want to make sure I have a quote. And I want to say something very powerfully, you know, make sure active verbs are used, and that really stands out. And, you know, if you're comfortable,

John Jantsch (17:11.923)

Yeah.

Mickie Kennedy (17:33.88)

being a contrarian, you could even say you can make it a contrarian quote or something like that. like, let's say you did a survey of graphic designers and 80 % believe that they're gonna be replaced by AI in five years. could say, you could disagree with that and say, while this survey shows a lot of people are scared of the industry, I think this is a bit alarmist. And I do believe that those who don't know how to start incorporating AI into their graphic tools toolbox,

they're going to be at a huge disadvantage in the coming years. And you know, that you're not necessarily agreeing with what the survey said, but it makes you seem very thoughtful and rational. And, you know, those types of things. And then, you know, just going top down until you get what you will, you know, get it finished. AI is very good at writing the press release, but the ideas behind it, it's not very good at it'll, it'll make a press release, like you see out there. And you're like, this is as good as that one. Well, that one probably didn't.

John Jantsch (18:23.661)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (18:28.782)

Well, it's because it's read all the bad press releases, right? That's right. You know, one of the things I think people really under utilize is the deep research aspect of it. I mean, you can get to the point where you could go to just about any industry and ask it something like, what are generally accepted practices in this industry?

Mickie Kennedy (18:31.734)

Right. And it's like, yeah, you're right. It did as well as another bad press release that didn't get any media pickups. So,

John Jantsch (18:53.614)

that nobody is questioning. mean, questions like that can all of a sudden really spark some things that will be polarizing, controversial potentially. And that's really where the gems are, isn't it?

Mickie Kennedy (19:09.56)

Yeah, absolutely. mean, the research capability of AI is so good. And a lot of people also don't brainstorm with it. It's like, hey, what are some contrarian ideas that we could use for my industry and just brainstorm them. And maybe it gives you five or six, and you're sitting there saying, well, I would never feel comfortable saying that in my industry, but maybe number four.

is one that I could get behind and I wouldn't alienate my customer base. But being a contrarian is a really great way to stand out with the media because so many times everybody agrees in one direction. And as a result, stories get written that are one sided. And believe it or not, outside of politics, journalists like to be fair and balanced. So if you're the only one raising your hand and saying, hey, electric cars are bad for the environment, they're bad for right now,

you know, taking a lithium battery fire and getting it under control often involves 12 fire trucks and 50,000 gallons of water and and it burns to X amount of degree. Plus, we don't know what we're gonna do with these batteries at the end of the life. Maybe we could hit pause for a few years until we figure some things out before we embrace electric cars so strongly. And that way you stand the likelihood of every time they discuss this subject, you get plugged in as that rational contrarian viewpoint.

And that's a much easier place because less people are competing for that spot.

John Jantsch (20:40.75)

Well, Mickey, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by the Duck Tape Marketing Podcast. Where would you invite people to learn more about e-releases and connect with you?

Mickie Kennedy (20:49.902)

So our website's ereleases.com. I have a free masterclass where I teach people in less than an hour these strategic types of press releases that work, the 3 % of press releases that are actually working. And again, it's completely free and it's a great place for anybody to start. And that's at ereleases.com slash plan, P-L-A-N. And again, it's completely free and you can feel free to call or email my office or chat with us.

You know, we work with people all the time on their first real PR campaign and we're great at holding hands and sort of teaching people the way to do this. And I always tell people, this is something that anybody can do. You don't need to hire a PR firm. This is something that you can do yourself. It just takes a little bit of thought and effort, but it's a way in which I think a small business can sort of implement it and maybe do it quarterly or every other month, you know, find a cadence that works for you.

John Jantsch (21:45.516)

Well again, I appreciate you taking a few moments and maybe we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Mickie Kennedy (21:50.735)

Sounds good. Thank you.

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Duct Tape Transcript

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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 (00:01.838)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and again, another solo show. No guest today. I'm doing the seven steps to small business marketing success. So if you haven't caught the past, I think I'm on episode four here. If you haven't caught the past three, go check them out at Duct Tape Marketing. but this is a series of seven podcasts. This is number four. Why more content is making you less visible? How's that for a topic?

So here's the AI content trap. most founders I talk to are really excited about AI content tools and frankly they should be nervous. and that is because the market is being flooded with generic, readable but forgettable content like crazy. and I think adding that pile doesn't help you, it kind of buries you. So

He here's the problem, and this and this has been the problem all along. Content or I'm AI didn't necessarily change this, it just made it worse in a lot of ways. most content that small business owners have produced, somebody convinced them to write a blog post every week. but it it's just kind of the idea of the week. It has no spine, there's no thought behind it. maybe the topic seemed interesting that week, but two years down the road later, it actually serves zero purpose. So

The thing about AI is it makes it easier to publish a lot of content, but that doesn't really fix this problem. It just amplifies the problem that the content was not that valuable or useful anyway. and I think that customers, prospects are definitely going to, they already are, recognizing AI content and and ignoring it, tuning it out completely. and and in s to some degree, that's actually hurting.

the brand when they see that that's what you're producing, that's all you're producing. So there are three principles when it comes to really content. less is more content, or at least the right content, I guess is probably a better way. I'm not necessarily saying you don't need content. I'm saying you need content to do a job and a very specific job. and that requires a couple principles. number one is picking pillars. So you want your content to actually

John Jantsch (02:26.158)

compound. and you want it to be around some things that make total sense to you. If you if you're an architect and you do residential work, you do hospitality work and you do commercial work, you want to actually start thinking in terms of what would what would be pillars of kind those three types of work that you do, those three types of use cases, those three types of probably buyers.

what would be the pillars that would actually drive those folks or or at least let those folks to understand you better? and and start developing topics around a collection of pillars as opposed to as opposed to just, hey, I'll write about this this week because it seems interesting, or because I can get a lot of engagement in social media over it because it's a hot topic. I I think.

again, there may be a case for that if you've got lots and lots of extra time, but you really want your content to do a job. So you want to pick three pillars at most, that that are really going to be anchored on your ideal client, or at least I should say your ideal client's problems. and every single one, every single piece of content should point to one of those. If you can't make it, if you can't tie it or have an angle that ties it to one of those, you shouldn't be doing it.

This is a discipline, quite frankly, because especially a lot of organizations that just tell junior marketers to create content without giving them those pillars. That's one of the best things you can do. If you have people in your organization producing content or an agency producing content for you, you should develop strategically as the founder, as the owner, you should develop what those three pillars are. and and again, that's a discipline that maybe starts with the founder sometimes, because

Sometimes the founder wants to write about the cool topic or the thing that hit them that that that week. if you're bored with a topic, you can use this as a three-year test, I'll call this. If you're bored with a topic in six months, it's not a pillar. It's a theme. Pillars are really what you're still the authority on, or what you're driving to be the authority on two, three, four years from now. Now you won't always get that right.

John Jantsch (04:49.748)

but it's sure it certainly should make sense to say, yeah, long term, this is going to be important for my ideal client and the problems they're trying to solve. And I think I think three is the sweet spot because it allows you to have a lot of range. it allows you to be seen as an authority, but it's a it doesn't get diluted. I mean, it forces you to make decisions about your content. All right, so that's the starting point, having that frame, those three pillars. next is.

And I've I've talked, I've written about this for years, but I talked about it in the last episode as well. You then want to organize that content under hub pages. so every one of your pillars gets a page that you're going to then start building more and more content on. So as you as you pick a theme or you pick a topic that goes or a subtopic that goes under one of those pillars, you start organizing them as pages. hub pages

Have so many uses. First off, it's the way to organize your content so that the search engines, AI understands that this is a broad topic, that you have with lots of authority, that there's lots of information here, that your expertise, that you have actually put your client case studies and real proof into this entire topic, which has a ton of value just from being foundable. Foundable? Findable. There we go.

but it also don't forget, human beings want to consume this content as well. Think about your sales team if you have one. These hub pages, excuse me, these hub pages really allow your sales team to be able to say, if you are, you know, thinking about buying a business and you need to understand what the tax implications of buying that business are, here's the entire topic around that that we have written on. So it allows

folks to to actually allows you to share and and you know have really a useful tool or or home that you can send people to that that demonstrates that you're a real expert. And here's the real beauty of and this is really kind of third third principle, which is repurposing. Once you have these pillars, once you build these pages,

John Jantsch (07:12.182)

Or once you start to build these hub pages, quite frankly, you don't have to wait till they're done. Once you start producing content that is focused and and and has a purpose around these pillars, then you can actually start leveraging every piece of that. in fact, we we actually what we will often do is we will work with a founder and we will just sit with them for an hour, maybe a couple of times.

and just ask them questions, let them talk about their products, their services, the problems, actual customer case studies, really develop a point of view about and a voice about what they do. and we're actually to able to take that video transcript and turn it into 50 to 100 pieces of content, including social media posts, over a period of time. And and it's really the easiest way today to leverage.

authoritative expertise, human content in the voice of the founder or the voice of of the technical expert that's going to talk about something that your business does. And and frankly, AI can't do that. and that that's really the beauty of then using these AI tools is once we have that authoritative content, we can actually easily use the AI tools then to repurpose that content. And I think that that's really the

that's really one of the best uses, quite frankly, of AI when it comes to content. So the the the next thing I want to talk about is that's really the foundation structure, right? You've got the the pillar pages or the pillar topics, I'm sorry, the hub pages for each of those pillar topics.

and then the the mechanism to repurpose a lot of that content. That's what we have to do today to make sure that we're putting it in places like LinkedIn and Reddit and all the places that that are that that are gonna send authority signals, you know, back about our content and about our business to the AI tools. But the missing ingredient for most businesses is a point of view.

John Jantsch (09:24.566)

So we're thinking in terms of this content that is certainly AI driven in a lot of cases, it's very generic, it's very balanced, it's very readable, it's a collection of what everybody else wrote. And frankly, it's forgettable because there's nothing that makes somebody stand up and say, Yeah, that's different. Why isn't anybody else in our industry saying that? Everybody else is saying the same thing. Or why are we actually doing this the same way that we've always done it?

How can we develop a point of view in our writing that that actually demonstrates that that we have some unique thinking? AI doesn't develop points of view very often. It develop, well, it develops the point of view of the collective mass, right? And so if you can actually think in terms of of you know, think in think in terms of of those people that, and I'm not suggesting this, but think in terms of those people that write very polarizing stuff. I mean, I

You know, a lot of the stuff that's gone on in politics of late, you know, is really people recognizing that writing something very polarizing repels a lot of people, but it also attracts a certain people who re are very attracted to that point of view. And I'm not suggesting that. I'm just saying use that as an example. That if you can develop a point of view about a position, something the customer hasn't heard before, something that no one else in the industry is saying, it doesn't have to be that controversial.

It just has to be different. And I will say that that asking the right questions of AI can actually help you start to develop some of that point of view. you don't necessarily have to lock yourself in a room and think, how can I, you know, what what's different? Looking at the average, having a conversation with an AI tool about what everybody in your industry is typically doing. I mean, literally asking you questions like, you know, what is a

what is a generally accepted best practice in our industry that no one is actually pushing back on? things like that can actually then start surface some of the ideas or at least surface some of your thinking about actually putting a point of view into your writing. So here's your here here are your next steps. I want you today to think about three content pillars.

John Jantsch (11:44.13)

That would make total sense for your ideal client that would address either segments or problems that your ideal clients are actually having. and then think in terms of and again, you can use it, AI tools are great for research to get your thinking going. But you know, plug those thoughts, those themes in or those pillars in and start asking and about questions about what would be all the subtopics, what would be a way to write the ultimate guide to this

particular pillar topic and you'll start to get some ideas. Hopefully you'll dismiss some of them. Hopefully you'll add to them. Hopefully you'll think about this idea of a point of view that you can bring to each of those topics that others aren't saying. And and a lot of times that point of view exists. You just believe it and believe that your customers will appreciate it and understand it and know it when they see it. and you're not actually surfacing it. And that's a real key difference. So

this today's podcast was really built on this new ebook that I produced called The Seven Steps to Small Business Marketing Success. You can pick it up for less than five dollars at dtm.world slash seven steps. If any of this is resonating, go get the whole thing. If you actually want to talk to one of our advisors about how we do some of the things I'm talking about today and we could do for a business like yours, it's just duct tapemarketing.com/slash consultation. So

Thanks for tuning in and hopefully we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

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John Jantsch (00:01.46)

What if the real growth constraint inside an agency is not lead generation or fulfillment, but the way client relationships are managed after the sale? Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. My guest is Taylor McMaster, founder of Dot & Company, a business built around helping digital marketing agencies improve client retention through better client account management.

Rather than focusing on campaigns or delivery, Taylor specializes in the client facing side of agency growth, onboarding, communication, meetings, project flow, and account management systems. She also hosts the happy clients podcast and her experience building dot and company is a specialized acquisition ready business gives her a unique perspective on retention, specialization, and creating an agency model that can grow beyond the founder. So welcome Taylor. So, you know, as I read that,

Taylor (00:51.554)

Thanks for having me, John.

John Jantsch (00:54.784)

We are talking about agencies here, but quite frankly, account management, there's lot of types of businesses that have that function or should have that function. Is there something that you saw really convinced you that that was really a core growth issue and not what most people focus on getting more clients?

Taylor (01:14.616)

Yeah, I would say in the beginning of starting Dot and Company, it was mainly a pain point for the agency owners that I knew. They were all working so hard on building their marketing funnels and getting leads on their calendar and closing those leads, but they didn't have the time or energy to think about keeping those clients around. And they knew in their heart that they needed somebody to do this job.

but they almost approached it as more of a butt in the seat. They were like, I just need to hire an account manager and then my days will be free and I won't have to talk to clients ever again. But they didn't realize that account management really is part of the whole picture. It's retaining your clients, keeping them around and in turn, that really affects your bottom line. yeah.

John Jantsch (02:02.612)

Yeah. And you know, there's another element to that too. I think it's easy to focus on retention, but like we retain our clients forever. mean, my longest running client is 22 years. And so we've been through a lot together. But we keep our clients for years. But where we sometimes struggle is our model is pretty much retainer based. So it's like, what can you afford to pay me for the rest of your life?

Taylor (02:13.229)

Wow.

Taylor (02:16.526)

Mmm.

Taylor (02:29.87)

Yeah

John Jantsch (02:30.048)

But then we find out like three or four years later, we're like, well, we need to actually charge more. And so how can client management, account managers, you know, actually be put in sort of the role of selling?

Taylor (02:44.642)

Yeah, yeah. Upselling is a huge part of our role. And the way I always look at it is as an account manager, I am responsible for the whole client experience. And so that is not just onboarding a client and managing their project. It's making sure I'm doing the best that I can for that client, because at the end of the day, I'm responsible for that relationship and keeping them around. And keeping them around means giving them the best outcome.

and making sure that we're helping them hit their business goals. And oftentimes when we as agency owners are working with a client, those business needs evolve and there's always something that is changing or we need to layer on top of something. And my job as the account manager is to be looking for those things or finding these opportunities that I can continue to help my client evolve. And we want to be a part of that. We don't want this client to outgrow us. We want to grow with that client. So that's a huge part of our role and responsibility.

John Jantsch (03:41.44)

That's almost a culture point, isn't it? I mean, because I think a lot of people are like, well, that's not my job. My job is to make sure that this stuff goes out the door. so it really has to be that, that almost need, I mean, that not almost, that needs to be part of the job description, doesn't it?

Taylor (03:46.56)

Absolutely.

Taylor (03:56.717)

Yes, it does. And I think you see this all the time, John, I'm sure, is in our industry, I find people are so siloed in their roles and they put a box around themselves. like, well, that's not my job. I'm not doing that. But what I have always, how I've always worked is I'm just a person who wants to get my fingers into everything. And I want to help with sales and I want to help with operations and all this stuff. the way we've kind of packaged up our account manager,

expectations within the role is that you need to want to help the other teams and help the business grow or else that's why are you here, right?

John Jantsch (04:36.596)

You mentioned the word expectations and I was going to bring that up. feel like anytime we've lost a client over the years, it's really been a mismatch in expectations. Our clients, we've basically said, look, the next 90 days, we're going to be doing strategy or whatever it is. And the client's like two weeks in, they're like, how come the phone's not ringing? How do you actually work on managing communication, expectations, trust throughout the process?

Taylor (04:55.395)

Mm-hmm.

Taylor (05:04.502)

Yeah. You know, it's, I wish I had a SOP for this, but really it's, my methodology is over communication, proactive communication. And to me, proactive communication is not just, hey, we're doing strategy for the next 90 days and then hoping that the client understands that. It is every day over communicating and making sure that we are on the same page over and over and over and over again.

John Jantsch (05:14.058)

Right. Right.

Taylor (05:31.565)

because that client doesn't know anything generally about what in the world you're doing. And even though you have sold them on this story of the outcomes that you're going to get them, they don't understand how we go from here to actually hitting those goals for my business. So we need to consistently reset expectations every day, whether we feel like we need to or not. So my methodology has always been,

we need to be proactively communicating with our clients. the biggest thing I see, and I see this even when I'm working with other businesses, is every day that goes by that I'm not communicated with, I think they're doing absolutely nothing, right? Like we're human beings, that's just how we work. And so if you're not constantly proactively updating them, reiterating the next steps, reiterating the expectations, that client thinks,

John Jantsch (06:16.702)

Right. Yeah.

Taylor (06:29.08)

Well, I just wasted another 10 grand.

John Jantsch (06:31.328)

Yeah, absolutely. So I will tell you, we have a very formalized onboarding process. We have a very different process in that one of the first things, most of the people we work with are our owners, founders, and we dig into their business objectives before we ever start talking about marketing. And one of things we've discovered early on, I mean, to me, it just made sense. It was logical. But one of the things we discovered very early on is most people don't do that. And having a formalized, structured

onboarding process is even a unique experience for a lot of folks. And what I've discovered is that's one of the secrets to our long-term retention is how a client starts with you is certainly going to determine a ton about how long they stay with you, what the relationship looks like, whether you become an advisor or a vendor.

Taylor (07:18.99)

Yeah, and I think that starts in the sales process too. know, we sometimes, you know, we'll struggle when working with agencies when their sales team is not setting the right expectations and we're not getting the information that we need to kind of pull that over the line. So what I love to do as an account manager is working directly with the sales team so that I understand what this client needs and wants right from the beginning so that

John Jantsch (07:21.596)

It does, 100%.

Taylor (07:47.157)

When I then take them on under my wing and I'm managing this relationship, I know the backstory and I'm not trying to catch up or just take their word on it. I want to know everything. So getting an account manager involved in that sales process is super helpful.

John Jantsch (07:53.119)

Yes.

John Jantsch (08:02.57)

Well, I tell you one of the things we learned a lot of time too, because when I started my agency and I've written a couple of books that were very popular, some people would be attracted to us, but they were really attracted to me. And so naturally I would close them and go, by the way, have you met Taylor? And one of the things that we discovered early on is bringing those folks that are going to work with them in, like you said, in that sales process, they don't feel like they're handed off anymore. They were like,

Taylor (08:13.23)

Mm-hmm.

Taylor (08:30.324)

Mm-hmm. Yes.

John Jantsch (08:31.11)

mean I get the team, you know, as opposed to, now I get the B team. And boy, it made such a huge difference.

Taylor (08:35.65)

Yes.

So John, I'm curious, when your account managers came into the sales process, were they on every sales call or how did you structure that?

John Jantsch (08:46.976)

Fortunately, most of our leads are inbound just because we've been around so long and a lot of stuff's out there. So we close, especially for strategy, most of the time in one call. so consequently, try to get those folks involved. I mean, it may be a second call, like now we're going to have a call for discovery as when we'll bring that and we'll definitely make sure that everybody's going to be involved.

is there so that they see what they're getting. And then we will also, you know, our first step always starts with something we call strategy first. So it's a very scripted, structured process and deliverable. And we actually have everybody on the team deliver a part of that to the client. And so they get a kind of a full blown experience, you know, within the first 30 days of everybody they're going to work with.

Taylor (09:37.75)

Awesome. That's really cool.

John Jantsch (09:40.221)

So

On that same topic, we actually have a network of over a hundred agencies that we work with and train and have licensed our methodology. And one of the struggles they quite often have is as they start to grow, it's like, I want to add account manager. But then they really have trouble letting go. It's like, okay, I hired an account manager or maybe even a lead consultant.

let's call them that. And yet that they still micromanage every element. And it's really, really tough. I hate to answer for you, but I have a feeling I know what your answer is going to be. How do people get to the point where they can feel like, okay, the client's getting the experience I would give them?

Taylor (10:27.916)

Yeah, I mean, I think it's totally valid to feel that way as an entrepreneur, a business owner. get it. You know, we've all gone through that where we have to pass over relationships because it's the only way that we can grow and scale a business, right? It's to not be on every Slack message and every Zoom call. But I think the biggest thing is obviously hiring the right people. That's just a no brainer. You know, you have to have the right people, but trust comes over time.

John Jantsch (10:34.868)

Right.

Taylor (10:56.596)

And it's not something that you have to rush into. And it's not something that has a 30 day expiry. You have to be at a client calls within 30 days. You can build that trust over time. Maybe it's a six month runway and the account manager comes in and they shadow and then they take over a little bit and a little bit more until clients go to them first instead of you and clients realize that.

know, Betty's getting back to them way faster. And even though you're still there and still in the background or maybe still on the strategy, Betty can still be there and do a great job. And so once you start to build that trust, then you get to a point where you're like, I shouldn't be here. I should not be in the account manager seat because Betty's doing a way better job. And then you can then go focus on more important things. But until you get to that pivot point where you're...

John Jantsch (11:29.024)

Yeah.

Taylor (11:46.809)

you're feeling really good about that account manager, for a lot of agency owners, you don't have to run away yet. You don't have to close your eyes and hope for the best. It can be a gradual thing. And so I think when you're thinking about hiring for an account manager, stop thinking about it as just a butt in the seat and stop thinking about somebody just replacing you, because nobody's going to replace you, but somebody can come in and support you and support your clients to give them a really great experience.

John Jantsch (12:04.777)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (12:09.13)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (12:15.616)

Well, and the other thing I would add to that certainly and why this is such a challenge for most of the agencies we work with is because they've actually never created a process. It's all here and it's all got and it's like, how can you get, expect somebody else to replicate that? You can't. And it's a ton of work to get from here to wherever you put it. But the payoff is huge. I don't do any sales calls. I don't do any client work.

Taylor (12:27.15)

Yeah.

Taylor (12:37.056)

Absolutely. Yep.

John Jantsch (12:44.956)

in our business. And I spend an inordinate amount of time innovating our processes is what I do. Part of these because I like it, but it is the most valuable work I can do. But it's tough to magically snap your fingers and get there. But that should be the goal, I think, for most of us.

Taylor (12:53.486)

Mmm.

Taylor (12:59.905)

Absolutely.

Taylor (13:08.044)

Yeah, and I think it depends on what your goals are, right? Whenever I'm chatting with agency owners, like, I need an account manager because I want to get out of the day at day to day, but really they don't. Like they actually don't want to, right? So, you know, a lot of the time it's understanding where you want your business to

John Jantsch (13:12.168)

Yeah, yes.

John Jantsch (13:20.126)

Yeah,

John Jantsch (13:27.252)

Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, I think that's, that's probably the challenge too. Cause you know, the founders are really bad at, you know, once they get to a point where like, I really kind of like to get in there and mess with WordPress and, you know, cause I really enjoy doing it, but it, mean, it's the lowest payoff work you could possibly do. Right. But, but it's so fun, you know? And so that's, that's a real challenge a lot of times.

Taylor (13:47.278)

But it's so fun.

John Jantsch (13:56.576)

How do you create, especially in today's world? I was meeting with a group of agencies in our network today and they were complaining a little bit about the fact that their work clients were actually taking their work and running it through chat GPT and saying, you know, is this good? Is this valid? You know, where are the mistakes in this? And I think that we're increasingly going to face that, right? Because everybody's advertising, you know, replace your agency for free.

you know, with all these AI tools. So how do we actually rise above that and, and not only create like this high touch experience, but really become this trusted advisor and, really not be seen as that vendor.

Taylor (14:42.156)

Yeah, I mean, it's we're we're in it right now, right? We're we're in the blender trying to figure out how things are going to shake out. I think the biggest thing that I see, especially coming from the account management side of things, people are going to crave this human experience more and more and more, but they're going to expect efficiency. They're going to expect more for their money. They're going to expect better results.

John Jantsch (14:45.738)

Yeah.

Taylor (15:10.326)

So I think even though we see all this noise about AI replacing my agency, I think that's not going to happen. I think it's just changing our expectations when we work with clients. And so I think the value is still there. I think we just need to shift to more really consultative, making sure that clients feel heard, they feel understood, and that we're a partner versus just somebody running their ads. And I think the...

the expectations of our clients are going to continue to evolve in the sense where they're going to demand us to take it all off their plate. Like what business owner wants to stay on ChatGBT all day, trying to figure out marketing, even if it's through ChatGBT. They don't have the time or energy or expertise to do that. So it's just really making sure that they understand the value of what you're doing.

John Jantsch (15:54.112)

They don't at all. Yeah.

John Jantsch (16:05.024)

And trust me, we don't want a client that wants to be on chat GPT all day. So what led you to kind of choose, I mean, you're in the agency space, but in kind of a narrow lane in the agency space, what made you decide to go there instead of the broader kind of agency?

Taylor (16:08.499)

No, we do not. No, we do not.

Taylor (16:22.924)

Yeah, really kind of boring, but it was just what I loved. I loved account management and I didn't love what I thought running an agency previously because I started running my own small agency and then pivoted into just doing account management. I think as that started, I started to realize that there was this blue ocean. There was this huge need in our industry for great account managers and done differently because we are fractional account managers.

John Jantsch (16:43.178)

Hmm.

Taylor (16:52.674)

what everyone else is doing in the industry is hiring full-time people. And so we were just doing things differently. And so as the business started to grow, I realized there was this, yeah, this huge opportunity to specialize and to create something really awesome and to be known for that. Being a general agency, just couldn't, I couldn't get excited about it. So yeah, it just kind of took off. And once I saw some traction and we started to get the demand,

John Jantsch (16:55.988)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (17:14.992)

A.S.

Taylor (17:22.786)

We just really went all in on the processes. Like you said, John, it was like where I spent all my time was like operationalizing everything from hiring to training to onboarding, offboarding, sales, everything was systematized and it paid off. Yeah.

John Jantsch (17:37.566)

Yeah. So, so talk to me a little bit about the fractional approach. We, we have gone both ways. mean, we, we actually provide fractional CMO services and we teach people how to do that. sometimes the disconnect is, you know, there, there's a lot of like, yeah, fractional, can save money. It'll be, you know, I don't need a full-time person, but you know, a lot of ways they still want a full-time person, right? They still want you in all their silly meetings, that, that, they have. So you do have to, obviously that's one of the

beauties of having a scope and a methodology. like, here's what I do. Here's what you get as opposed to what do need, right? But on the fractional account managers, do you find that there's a challenge in somebody being there fractionally or maybe doing a couple clients is really not going to be as motivated to be a team player, to want to do all the sort team building that really helps an agency. How do you kind of straddle that?

you know, that divide, especially since we're all distributed these days.

Taylor (18:37.836)

Yeah. Yeah. I would say the, when I started the business, was an, I was the account manager at DOT. So naturally I got to choose how I wanted it to look and feel. And for me, for me to be motivated working inside of these agencies, I needed to be a part of the team and a part of the culture. So early on I was going to the team events. I was flying in for the weekend. was doing the team calls and the cocktail hour and

John Jantsch (19:07.124)

Yes.

Taylor (19:07.502)

That really made me feel like a part of the team and it made me stick around for a really long time working in these agencies. And so as soon as we started to hire account managers and duplicate this model, we made sure that that was the expectation. We want these account managers to feel like a full-time team member. We want them in your Slack, in everything as if you hired them full-time. We want them to feel like that, not just for you, but for our account managers as well. want them to feel a part of the team.

we approached it very much so like, yes, we're fractional, but it feels full time because that's how I think it should be. Sure.

John Jantsch (19:45.504)

Okay, I'm going to throw you a softball. Are you a sports analogy person? Okay, but you get it, right? It's a bigger ball than a little ball. It's easier to hit, okay? So I can hire somebody for $20 an hour in the Philippines. Why don't I just do that?

Taylor (19:51.043)

I'm not, but I'll take it. Yeah.

Taylor (20:07.628)

Yeah, you definitely can. But the majority of the agencies we work with are looking for specialists. They're looking for people who they don't have to manage, they don't have to train, they don't have to worry if they know what they're doing. They want somebody ready to go. So essentially they need somebody to parachute in and save all their problems, fix the processes, keep their clients happy, and continue to grow and scale from there. So

John Jantsch (20:10.528)

You

Taylor (20:36.012)

We really approach ourselves as specialists. This is the last time you're ever gonna have to go and look for an account management solution because you're covered when you work with us.

John Jantsch (20:47.69)

So I'm curious, your business was acquired fairly recently. Looking back, is there a part of your company that you think made it more attractive? mean, revenue is always going to be a piece of it, but was there anything that you think made it more attractive to a buyer than the typical business?

Taylor (21:06.286)

A big piece was that I was removed from the day-to-day operations. Yeah, that was definitely attractive from a risk perspective too. You know, they didn't have to worry. Exactly, there you go. And then the second thing was specialized. So, you know, they were buying something that was very specific and had a very specific scope process, everything like

John Jantsch (21:09.908)

Yeah, sure. Yeah.

John Jantsch (21:17.79)

Like any dummy can run this business now, right?

John Jantsch (21:33.633)

And you're still involved in the business, though. Yeah, that was just part of the deal.

Taylor (21:37.078)

I am, I'm not involved. Yeah, I didn't have to stay on to be honest. It wasn't a requirement. I'm not involved in any of the operations. So you won't see me on a team call unless it's like high level. I'm more so a consultant strategist, you know, and I really wanna stay around and see.

John Jantsch (21:43.32)

okay.

John Jantsch (21:49.61)

Awesome. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah.

Taylor (22:02.388)

see the growth in DOT and also E2M, the company who bought us. I absolutely love them, what they're doing. So yeah, I'm excited to be a part of kind of this bigger picture now. Yeah.

John Jantsch (22:11.186)

Awesome. Well, I appreciate you taking a few moments to drop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Is there anywhere you'd invite people to connect with you, find out more about your work?

Taylor (22:18.848)

Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn all the time. So feel free to add me on LinkedIn and connect or check out our website dot and company dot co.

John Jantsch (22:27.88)

Awesome. again, I appreciate you taking a few moments and hopefully we'll run into you soon out there on the road.

Taylor (22:34.093)

We will. Thanks, John.

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Duct Tape Transcript

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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 (00:01.848)

What if the reason your team can't have hard conversations with you, with each other, with clients isn't a communication problem, but a values problem hiding underneath one? Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duck Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Aiko Bethea. She's the founder and CEO of Rare Coaching and Consulting, an executive coach to Fortune 100 companies and nonprofits and the author.

of a book we're going to talk about today, Anchored, Aligned, Accountable, a framework for transcending bullshit and transforming our lives and work with a forward by Brene Brown. She's a former director of at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and a Dare to Lead certified facilitator. So Iko, welcome to the show.

Aiko (00:50.733)

Hi, thanks for having me, John.

John Jantsch (00:52.352)

So, you know, these books, they've become really popular now that have curse words in the title. You know, that's kind of a new thing. And then you put these, you know, you don't want to have the full word. So you put the little aster, or the, what do we call that? An asterisk in there. So how are we supposed to pronounce that when it has the asterisk in it? I just went, blew through it and said the real word, but I always find that funny.

Aiko (00:56.995)

Ha ha ha!

Aiko (01:05.953)

Asterisk. huh. You're right.

Aiko (01:15.257)

Well, one, I think you said it perfectly. When I'm with audiences, oftentimes maybe I'll say BS instead, but you were perfect.

John Jantsch (01:17.006)

Hahaha

John Jantsch (01:21.678)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you have worked with major institutions, Fortune 500 companies mentioned earlier, the Gates Foundation. Now you're working with businesses of all sizes, really. What did you see inside those bigger organizations that made you want to build a framework for something, I don't know, some people might see as unglamorous, like self leadership?

Aiko (01:46.979)

Yeah, I would say that the same thing I saw within organizations when I was supporting them with their culture reflected what I saw in the leaders at all levels. So not just the C-suite that I work with, but also folks who might be entry level. And it was this, what could have been built for them is knowing who they are and who they want to be as a leader.

versus always looking for external validation, second guessing themselves based on whichever way the wind was blowing. Is my boss glad today? Are they in a bad mood? Who do I need to be? Did I get an argument with my partner today? What is the news saying? I remember that voice of my grandmother that was saying X, and Z, but supporting them and getting right back to their own grounding of who is it that they want to be and to have that intrinsic motivation.

versus going any way which the wind blows and feeling insecure or unsupported.

John Jantsch (02:46.158)

When you, we already mentioned the BS in the subtitle, was there a pattern that you were actually naming when you chose that for your framing?

Aiko (02:56.341)

Absolutely. We say the framework itself is very simplistic. The framework for self leadership at home or at work is being anchored into your values, aligned in terms of your actions, aligning with those values, and then being accountable for whatever that impact might be as well. And I would say that just with that alone, it helps people to come back to the forefront. And I had to think about what gets in the way of somebody actually practicing this framework.

And it's what I call the BS. So they could be the things in terms of we all have a community or family of origin, this belief that you need to always be producing to earn your worth, a belief of perfectionism or scarcity, which is like, hey, there's only enough of juice to go around, right? Or here comes John being hired, so I need to either sabotage him or keep one upping him versus thinking there's enough of space for everyone.

And once I go into scarcity, it completely goes, it's like the cousin of catastrophizing. Because once I realize, man, John's a new guy on the block, he's gonna, there's only space for one of us. And I think, wow, you're doing so well and you're outshining me. Next thing I do is I see that I'm gonna be fired. I'm not gonna be able to pay my bills. We're gonna be homeless. It happens like in a second. So the BS is really all of these things that...

we default to and may not always even recognize where they're coming from, but they stop us from being able to be anchored, aligned, and accountable.

John Jantsch (04:28.718)

I love that talking about that because so many people, it's it's cliche, but it's from childhood, right? A lot of the stuff that we carry around. I have nine siblings, so there were 10 children in my family. And so I should have a scarcity mentality, right? But my mom was always, her big thing was up, there's always room for one more. There's always room for one more.

Aiko (04:40.126)

woah.

Aiko (04:48.471)

I love that, yes.

John Jantsch (04:49.0)

And, and, and I think that that just really, you know, I feel like I do have that, like, Hey, I have no competitors. There's like the world's this big place, you know? And so, so it is funny that we do carry that into however we show up.

Aiko (05:02.095)

And that's a beautiful gift that your mom gave you. That's a great gift.

John Jantsch (05:03.662)

So there's a, mean, you're talking about being anchored in values. think a lot of business owners would say, well, yeah, I bring my values to it. My business is all about what I believe and what I value. So what's the difference between having those values and actually, in your words, being anchored in?

Aiko (05:25.155)

Yeah, so I could probably show you better than I could tell you. So I start off with asking people just top two values, because once you get to four, five, and six, it's just dilution. So John, what would you say one of your top values is? What is your top two?

John Jantsch (05:38.51)

top values? Well, I kind of shared one of them, I think that abundance, you know, is that the world's an abundant place is certainly one of them. And then I would like to say also kindness that, you know, that that that's something that's hard to in practice when you're especially as a business owner, when you're forced with like people punching you, or it feels like it. But I would say those those are pretty high.

Aiko (06:04.269)

Yeah, yes. So when you're in an abundance in that value, what are you doing? You kind of told us a little bit, but just say a couple of actions.

John Jantsch (06:15.086)

One, as I said, know, really certainly not viewing in the business context, not viewing people as competitors, but really viewing people as as collaborators, know, partners more often, regardless of how the world might label them.

Aiko (06:30.957)

Lovely and then kindness. What does that look like? What are you doing?

John Jantsch (06:34.774)

Well, probably starts with words, know, really choosing words carefully and not, you know, not letting like the fact that I'm stressed out about a deadline or something of impact, how I maybe show up in a meeting before that or something.

Aiko (06:49.495)

Yes, so have this degree of intentionality about what you say and maybe there are these behaviors that sounds like you maybe even pause before you say or do something. So one of your. You do I want to let you know.

John Jantsch (06:58.582)

I sound like a really good person, don't I?

Aiko (07:04.597)

And if we go back to your question that you asked, you said, why does it get in the way in terms of people being able to be anchored in their values? And because your values are so lovely, I'm going to take a different turn on this of what could get in the way of that is that our values also have a shadow side, like when we over index on them. And so it might be, John, that there's somebody who, let's just say your business, you have somebody who is, you know, perpetually coming in late, leaving early.

John Jantsch (07:09.272)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (07:20.642)

Hmm.

Aiko (07:34.64)

something and your value is kindness so you want to you know you want to be able to not like be yelling you're being very intentional about the words you use etc and this is not the case for you because I know that you're a mature leader period but what might get in the way of somebody really being in that anchored in that value of kindness might be the shadow side where I'm not gonna give Bob the feedback might land really

John Jantsch (08:01.966)

Mm-hmm.

Aiko (08:03.821)

in a hard place because my value is kindness. And so I don't want to hurt him. I also don't want him to feel like there's not enough space or room at the table for him. So I might not live into truly what that value of kindness is, which you'll go to the impact. Your impact isn't likely that you want Bob to keep underperforming. And if you keep thinking about you'd be like, the impact is I want Bob to be able to do his best.

And so we would have to look at the impact, and you're like, well, if I don't say anything, I'm actually not moving into my value. So that critical self-awareness and curiosity would take you to, wow, actually my value would tell me that I need to give him this feedback. And that's the kindest I could be. Because I want the impact to be that he is able to show up and do his best work. But that shadow side can sometimes deter us from truly being in that value. And instead, we're deflecting

John Jantsch (08:36.493)

Yeah.

Aiko (09:01.101)

or going over indexing in other ways. So that's the other side of it.

John Jantsch (09:06.552)

Well, that's really interesting. talk about that kind of flip side of it, because I will say that I've learned through trial and error that sometimes that kindness can show up in the negative and that I hate confrontation. And sometimes confrontation is necessary, but I avoid confrontation sometimes. that's an instance where it actually having maybe that self-awareness is

Really an important understanding, isn't

Aiko (09:37.968)

Absolutely and you're drilling and peeling back on that value. It's still the value of kindness, but you realize wow kindness means being able to have this impact. Helping Bob to be the best he can and helping you to be able to be honest and authentic versus just sparing somebody's feeling and actually I'm trying to avoid conflict. So that's how values we can live into them by being so clear about it and being clear of the impact.

John Jantsch (09:46.914)

Yeah, yeah.

Aiko (10:04.267)

Usually people don't get to that next point of the check and balance, is, but am I having the impact I want? Wait, I'm not in alignment.

John Jantsch (10:10.413)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I already let the self-awareness term out of the bag. I swear every leadership book that's ever been written, I've had a lot of leadership authors on here. I mean, I can't think of one leadership book that didn't start with the need for self-awareness. If you're going to be a leader, you have to realize all the ways that you're sabotaging yourself or all the behaviors that aren't coming across like you think they are. So how...

I mean, when you work with somebody who is clearly not seeing what's obvious, you know, in a lot of cases, I mean, how do you get a business owner who believes they're in alignment to actually see where the gap is?

Aiko (10:53.551)

Yeah, usually, and there are my coaching practices, I really do go in knowing that and believing that my clients are completely resourceful. I don't need to tell them or direct them what to do. As a matter of fact, me telling them isn't going to help them. Otherwise, they just read an HBR article and do what it says, right? So the idea is that intrinsic innovation so that they are living into who they want to be. So first we'd start with what impact do they want to have?

And what does that impact look like? And if the impact is not correlating, we know there's this motivation now like, well, we've got to do something different. So they can notice what is actually happening in real time and name it. People don't give me feedback. When I ask for ideas, they don't give them to me.

When I actually try to have transparent conversations, people are quiet in the room. They always agree with me. And they're like, but I want people to bring some tension and to be able to give me certain feedback. OK, so you're not getting the behavior you want or the impact. What are you actually doing? How do you want it to be? How are you going to actually get that from people? What could be getting in the way? And then they might learn, wow, I found out in practically getting feedback or observing what I do is that

when you know Beth actually tries to raise her hand or say something I talk over her or I say my idea first and everyone kind of falls in. All I help them to pause to note what are they noticing how do they want it to be and now what do you need to do to get there and why is this even important to you and that's usually when it goes to not only desired impact but what are your values and who do you want to be right.

John Jantsch (12:38.69)

Yeah, and I do think sometimes people, they can identify is the symptoms, so to speak, and not necessarily the root cause, right?

Aiko (12:46.223)

Absolutely, and that's why that working backwards is so important because sometimes just like when you say people to ask people how do you want it to be? They may not even be able to tell you but they're able to say this is what I don't like and this is what I don't want and we can work from there.

John Jantsch (13:01.688)

So one of the true, I think, challenges, but also I think necessary skills for leaders that manage individuals is accountability. In other words, somebody knowing what's expected of them, but then you're holding them to that. But unfortunately, I see it turns a lot of times into like, did you meet your numbers? Like that's the old accountability measure. How do you get people to take it kind of beyond that or actually turn it into what it should be?

Aiko (13:31.0)

Yeah, we asked them, there's a lot of different techniques we use and oftentimes in the book I talk about this thing about looking forward, looking back, looking around, and I use the example of parenting. I think about how do I want it to be and so with my kids I think about what's the relationship I want to have with them 20 years from now, 30 years from now, and am I actually nurturing and exuding the behaviors that would lead to that.

John Jantsch (13:44.333)

Mm-hmm.

Aiko (13:56.836)

where I'm not having kids who are estranged from me, but they actually want me to be around them. And I've curved a lot of things I do in raising my voice to make sure that one, I'm a soft place to land. I'm a transparent, honest place to land. And I'm accountable for.

the ways that I am communicating with them or the impact I have with them. And I'm listening, et cetera. So with a business owner or something, I would want them to think about how do you want it to be X number of years from now? And it's not going to just be, oh, I want my numbers to be here, X, Y, and Z. They want to have some type of impact in their personal life, with their employees. What type of culture do you want? And all of those things go to the how and not just the what. Not just the numbers.

but also how do I want it to be in the organization? How do I even want to feel every morning when I know I'm going into X place? And that helps them to think about behaviors and not just this transactional component of the bottom line and the numbers.

John Jantsch (14:57.326)

You have likely had to navigate some rooms differently than me. You're an attorney, you're a senior leader, you are a woman, you're a woman of color. What did navigating in that way, the challenges that you uniquely faced, what did that bring you to today?

Aiko (15:17.251)

Well, a couple of things. One, and thank you for asking that question, John. It helps me to notice people in the room who might normally be treated as invisible or not seen because I've been on that receiving side going to argue a case as a first year attorney and people presuming that I'm the paralegal. And so I know what some of the assumptions can be and how we can jump to conclusions and it can be demoralizing for people.

John Jantsch (15:36.009)

Yeah.

Aiko (15:43.16)

And it also makes us lose a degree of connection. And that means when I go into a room, can often, I'm often thinking about who has the least amount of power in this room and how could I actually have an impact on people that I don't want to have. So I check my stories. I check, you know, what in the room is going to accommodate people. I realized that me just coming into the room and saying, Hey Beth, team, I want you all to be fully honest with me and transparent.

without me actually naming also that I understand what the risks could be and why that might be scary for you. But I want you to trust that because of X, Y, and Z, this is what I'll do instead. So I might tell somebody, I know that you may feel like you're the only person who X, but I need to hear your voice. And I tell them what that value proposition is and getting this different innovation or different rigor, how it serves all of us and that I will not be throwing you under the bus for X, and Z and recognizing that vulnerability.

John Jantsch (16:12.535)

Thanks

Aiko (16:42.353)

is different for everyone. That also means when you're on a team full of women. So one of the examples I give in the book is about a PTA meeting and there's only one male father who comes to the meeting and they're all women and there's like you know 60 women and they start with the PTA president actually saying well as always there are no dads here no men and it's the women leading the work and where does that leave him? He knows now his voice probably isn't gonna matter. I need to tiptoe.

John Jantsch (16:56.014)

You

Aiko (17:11.617)

and somebody else, another mother comes and apologizes and says, you know what, that shouldn't have been said. I want you to understand the context of why that was said, but it shouldn't have been. And you have as much to add here as everybody else. And I want to hear your voice. So that proactive closing the gap when you recognize who might have more to lose or a larger risk in the room and proactively addressing it.

John Jantsch (17:38.744)

So the term psychological safety seems to be one of those that is really in the boardrooms or in the leadership circles, certainly as part of culture. A lot of my listeners, five and six person organizations, how do they kind of practically teach that to their leaders? What is a version of that look like for them?

Aiko (18:02.755)

Yeah, think probably often modeling it. And when I talk about the terms of safe space, brave space, and psychologically safe space, I say that none of those actually own the idea of power and identity, et cetera. So I'm also a business owner.

I am aware that, wow, they feel like they're talking to the CEO. And this is somebody who who hires and fires. So this idea of one inviting not only critical thoughts or feedbacks that is critical of me in my decisions, but then when people give it to me, that's what's most important is how do I respond? So the idea of just the spirit of gratitude, recognizing, I know that may have felt risky for you to share that with me, but it was so important that I hear that because of X, Y, and Z.

So holding myself, one, as somebody who's going to invite it, and then holding myself accountable when someone says, hey, that didn't land, blah, blah, blah, blah, and saying, man, you know what? Even if I don't agree, I'll say, let me think about it, because I might be missing something. And I'm going to come back, and can we talk about it again?

So they know I've thought with it, I get a chance to sit with it and I can circle back and say, you know what, I got that wrong. And I'm so glad that you told me that. Or I might say, I'm really glad you told me that, but I don't know if I completely agree. So let's talk about this a little bit more. But I want them to feel heard, not to have punishment or judgment because they've said something that brings some tension or rigor. And to hold myself accountable first and foremost in the moment.

John Jantsch (19:40.366)

Yeah, I've actually heard many times that some of the healthiest teams are teams that actually can have healthy arguments or healthy conflict. It's not personal. It's just like, I know I have permission to say that's BS, right? So for a person listening to this, and we've been primarily focused on teams, but there's certainly client relationships that a lot of people have that this applies to. So for the person listening to this and they think, something's really off with that, can't really name it.

Where would you point that person first if they came to you and just with that sort of said something's off with my relationships. I can't really name it. What should I do first?

Aiko (20:19.575)

with my relationships with my clients.

John Jantsch (20:21.786)

clients with my team, maybe, you know, again, lot of it, I mean, parenting, you know, we've been talking about that. I mean, a lot of times it really all applies.

Aiko (20:31.001)

Yeah, so we dig in at that point and we ask, you know, what is it that you're noticing or you're feeling? And sometimes people say, I don't even know, I just feel like the vibe is off. And yeah, so I'll say, well, how do you want to feel? And then they can go back to whatever the moment is. I want to feel like, I don't know, lighter. I want to feel like they can talk to me and I can talk to them. Whatever it is, they can start envisioning that.

John Jantsch (20:40.642)

Right, right, right. That's what mean. I can't name it.

Mm-hmm.

Aiko (21:00.719)

And then I might say, well, what do you feel is getting in the way of that now? Now they're starting to diagnose what it could be. They may be like, I don't know. Well, actually, X, Y, and Z, there was this weird moment where blah, blah, blah. And then we start seeing behaviors and moments. And what were you doing? What was happening? If you wanted to get to X, this delta of I want to feel lighter, I want to feel, what does that mean you might need to do differently?

And sometimes it may not be in that scenario with that person. And we go all the way back and say, tell me about a relationship that you feel like you're in flow with and in sync and you love this relationship. And we go through where the components and characteristics of it. What do you all do? What do you not do? And then we can go back to this other one as a delta and say, OK, is any of that replicated here?

You know what, as a matter of fact, we don't. When I see John, it's high and by and there's nothing else. And then we realize, wow, having that interpersonal connection is important. Or John has never told me anything that was critical of me. It's like he always agrees. So now I realize I have to go and have a conversation and say, hey, I really want you to be able to tell me things that are difficult so I can be better. But those are ways you can diagnose it by contrast and compare.

John Jantsch (22:17.128)

Awesome. Well, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Is there anywhere you would invite people to connect with you and find out more about your work as well as pick up a copy of Anchored, Aligned, and Accountable?

Aiko (22:29.837)

Yeah, there's a few places on Instagram they can find us on at rare rare underscore coach or on LinkedIn under my name. I go with the and also our website rare coaching net.

John Jantsch (22:43.286)

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

Aiko (22:48.506)

Thank you for having me, John.

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John Jantsch (00:02.19)

So what if every time you hired too fast, launched a new channel or added a service line, you were making a bet that your business actually wasn't prepared to win. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duck Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jance and my guest today is Mark Roberge. He's the co-founder of Stage Two Capital, founding chief revenue officer at HubSpot and the author of a book we're going to talk about today, The Science of Scaling.

Mark helped grow HubSpot from zero to IPO and then brought what he had learned into Harvard Business School where he taught founders how to grow without blowing up what they built. His framework gives business owners a way to use evidence rather than instinct or outside pressure to decide when they've truly earned the right to scale. So Mark, welcome to the show.

Mark Roberge (00:53.259)

Thanks, John. That's not my copy and I love it. Seriously, I love how you put it.

John Jantsch (00:59.105)

Awesome. good. Well, you know, we were talking before we got started, you and I met some 20 years ago when HubSpot was a nascent business. think maybe the first conference there were 500 people, something of that neighborhood.

Mark Roberge (01:04.916)

Yeah.

Mark Roberge (01:11.393)

Yeah, I was like in a Marriott in Cambridge. I have like, I remember specifically a couple of things about you. I think you were the most famous one of our early partners. I think I remember my last in-person chat with you was in some steakhouse in like South Boston or something. Cause I remember two people came up to you and asked for your autograph and you were like super humble about it. And I'm like, oh my gosh, this is crazy.

John Jantsch (01:21.271)

Ha ha ha!

John Jantsch (01:27.438)

You

John Jantsch (01:35.288)

Well, I'm glad I wasn't a jerk. That's for sure. Awesome. Well, let's get into your book a little bit. So I mentioned HubSpot, Harvard, now you back companies as a VC. Did something you learned or showed up across all three of those roles kind of make you say, I need to write this book?

Mark Roberge (01:37.365)

Hahaha

Mark Roberge (01:54.207)

Yeah. Yeah. It's like, it's kind of funny that we can unpack as much as you want, but in reflecting the last 20 years of my life professionally, I've given up on having a plan because I never intended to go into sales. I never applied for HubSpot. I never applied or intended to be a professor at Harvard. I never intended to start a venture capital firm.

And I never intended to write either the sales acceleration formula 12 years ago or the scientist's killing last year. These were all things that like people were like, would you be willing to do this? So they did, they do just like show up and the way that this one, as both books unfolded was a, like you, I am blessed with the opportunity to do a number of keynotes every year. and I, for the big ones like saster, I tended to try to do something fairly original for the year.

So I've, you every year I do something original. So I've given like 20 to 25 brand new speeches over the last decade. And this one was just like a pattern I saw after like eight years of being out of HubSpot as an independent board member, as a professor, as an advisor, as an investor, in why companies, the few that went IPO and billion dollar valuations versus the ones that went bankrupt was just this.

really non-strategic, non-rigorous perspective on when to scale and how fast. And half do it too early, too fast. Half of them wait too long and go too slow. It's more about going the optimal time. I started speaking about it and I'm like, it's ridiculous how many classes and rigorous frameworks we have on accounting for and accruing revenue, but not on scaling revenue. And it just went viral and kept speaking about it, kept writing about it. And then Stanford was like, hey, can you write this up?

And here we have it.

John Jantsch (03:47.128)

So the term, you kind of alluded to it, but I'll say it directly, earn the right to scale. It does a lot of work in your framework and your talk. So what does a business owner actually have to prove or do to prove that's true? Like, when do they know I have the right to scale?

Mark Roberge (04:04.286)

Yeah, it's kind of interesting how it unfolds right now. I I've done this with like tractor companies in Brazil and pharmaceutical companies in Japan, but mostly with software companies in Silicon Valley. And it's kind of funny how it's decided. Like the decision on when to scale is usually when someone hands you a fat check, which doesn't sound that strategic.

And so I try to unpack it as two steps that are sequential. One is product market fit and the other is go to market fit. And usually you're like product market fit, like duh, product market fit, duh. But like, what is product market fit? You know, I think a lot of people will say I'm ready to scale when I have product market fit, which I think is a great answer. But then when I ask them what product market fit is,

I get a lot of different answers, most of which are about a certain revenue number, a certain customer number, a certain number of inbound leads. And then I'm like, well, okay, cool. Let's say that you have 200 customers or like 500 inbound leads and everyone's buying, but like people stop using the product. Do you have product market fit? And they're like, okay, no, but

I'll just start, I'll just listen to them and build the product to appease their needs. And I'll be like, okay, well, how will you know when you've achieved it? And they'll be like, when they keep using the product and don't churn. And I'm like, exactly. So like that, that's like the first kind of like pivot mentally for folks is I encourage you to define product market fit, not as a revenue acquisition.

metric, but as a revenue and customer retention metric. And the book talks about how to extract that long-term lagging indicator back to something that you can evaluate in the first week of a customer being with you. Okay, so that's step one, product market fit. And then if you think about it, once you've achieved product market fit, all that means is that when you sign up 10 more customers, they're gonna see value that you promised and stick around.

John Jantsch (06:00.866)

Yes.

Mark Roberge (06:25.372)

It doesn't mean that you've proven that you can acquire and serve them profitably. And that's what go-to-market fit is. And it's measured by UNEconomics. So that's really the, probably the simplest way to describe the work is these two sequences of product market fit and go-to-market fit as measured by retention in the first one and positive UNEconomics in the second.

John Jantsch (06:29.506)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (06:46.018)

Well, since we're defining terms, we probably better step back because I bet you if I asked 100 people, 10 people, 100 people sounds like too much work. If I asked 10 people what the word scale means, we'd probably get a bunch of definitions, more leads, more staff, more tools, but how do you define it?

Mark Roberge (06:59.21)

Sure. Sure.

Mark Roberge (07:07.528)

Yeah. So once you are ready to scale the way and that to your point, yeah, that can mean a lot of things. It could mean how do we scale our culture? How do we scale our engineering team? How do we scale our office space? Blah, blah. First off, I'm, I should be more clear that I'm talking about scaling the revenue. And to your point, scaling revenue, the inputs to that vary quite a bit by business by business. if you're a consumer business, you may just have to spend more on marketing. Something that you know a lot about Joan. if you're a B2B.

John Jantsch (07:15.094)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (07:21.92)

Okay.

Mark Roberge (07:37.513)

sometimes you have to scale fancy outside salespeople if you're selling like rockets to governments. And sometimes you do it through PLG. And again, it's more of like a marketing exercise. So I really talk about scaling the revenue and the principles, apply, whether you're doing it through pure marketing or through, through sales head count. let's for simplicity, let's just talk about scaling through sales head count and the

Big pothole that people make there is even if they follow the guidance of like, let's achieve product market fit first and then go to market fit, and it could take a day, it could take a week, it could take a month, it could take a year, whatever, and now we're ready to scale, they raise money and then they have a target for the year and they hire like 27 reps the next week.

even though they only have one on the team today. And there's just no appreciation of the new capabilities that are needed to hire and onboard and manage 27 reps. Like just like, let's take one piece of it, which is let's kind of pontificate that the hiring quality might be correlated to the number of interview screens we do, qualified interview screens to the hire. If I do,

two interview screens and make a hire, I'm probably not gonna make as good of a hire as if I did 10 interview screens and make a hire. So if we're trying to do 10 and we're making 27 hires, that's 270 qualified interview screens. Where are we getting those candidates? Who's doing the interviews? Nevermind, where's the demand gen gonna come from? Who's gonna ramp them? What about the managers? It's just too driven from a Google Sheet or Excel, and so the simple pivot philosophically is,

Don't think about it as putting the annual plan together and hiring all those reps on January 2nd. Think about it as establishing a hiring pace every month or every quarter. 10 reps a month, boom, boom, boom. As opposed to like 37 at the beginning of the year.

John Jantsch (09:51.791)

So there's all kinds of horror stories of companies that blew up because they grew too fast. Would you say that they scaled too fast or they didn't scale fast enough?

Mark Roberge (09:57.47)

Yes.

Mark Roberge (10:04.928)

Both. have, like I said, it's about half and half. I mean, I would say like the classic examples out there, like an old school one is Groupon, which I think if you look at it from this lens, never really had product market fit. they just like, the promise was like, if you're a Chinese restaurant and give these coupons away, you'll get new customers, but it was really just the existing customers. And then maybe like WeWork never really had go-to-market fit. And that was pretty famously documented story.

John Jantsch (10:21.486)

There's Buzz. There's Buzz.

Mark Roberge (10:35.36)

The ones that didn't scale fast enough, we just don't know, right? Cause they're like, I can name some in our portfolio or people I've worked with over the years, but the reason why we don't know them is cause they just sat there and they were like, they had something, but the co-founders just like wanted to just go too slow and continue to do founder selling and wanted to run a profitable business when it needed to be a blitz scale business. And there's nothing wrong with running a profitable business. just, if you're trying to win in the AI customer support,

John Jantsch (10:38.702)

Yeah, yeah.

Mark Roberge (11:05.258)

category today, you can't be profitable right now. Like there's just certain blitz scale risk that you have in your category that needs to dictate how fast or slow you go.

John Jantsch (11:06.638)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (11:16.056)

So one of the key elements in science of scaling is evidence over instinct. So if I don't have a giant data team, and I know AI is actually solving some of this right now, but what does evidence actually look like at a startup or smaller business level?

Mark Roberge (11:29.768)

Mm-hmm. Yes.

Mark Roberge (11:40.117)

Yeah, I mean, you don't, you definitely don't need like a sophisticated data science team. You don't even need AI agents doing this stuff. Let me just give you like a really simple example. So we talked about product market fit is where I'm, I'm proposing to everyone that it's more about customer value and retention as opposed to customer acquisition. And obviously you need to acquire customers to eventually make them valuable. So it's an input to it.

John Jantsch (11:48.526)

Okay, all right.

Mark Roberge (12:08.34)

The retention is a lagging indicator. So we needed to find a leading indicator of retention. We can't wait a year to know if we have product market fit. I need to know like the week after I acquired the customer or the month after. And so what the book and the work I've been doing with companies for last decade is to help them define their leading indicator of retention. What is it that we can observe in the first month of a customer's experience with you, your product, your service, whatever.

that if we see that, they'll be with you forever. And if we don't, they'll probably churn. And so like, I frame it as P percent of customers do e-event every tee time. Okay, so that sounds like the programmers on the audience are like loving this right now. The history majors are like totally lost, right? So like, just to bring that to life, Slack, 80 % of customers send 2000 team messages every month. HubSpot, 80 % of customers use five or more features in the platform every month, right?

John Jantsch (12:53.55)

You

Mark Roberge (13:08.564)

These are things that can be measured in the first month to give us insight. If we're at 80%, we probably have product market fit. If we have 10%, we definitely don't. I don't need a data scientist to evaluate that. Okay, so these are not overly complicated, like PhD math type things.

John Jantsch (13:20.174)

So.

John Jantsch (13:29.922)

One of the things I've been preaching for 20 years is that when we talk about the customer journey, that retention and advocacy and all the things that come after somebody becomes a customer are part of the customer journey or should be part of the customer journey. And for so many people, it's let's get a customer. And I think what you're really certainly hammering home here is this idea that you're not going to scale without retention and without

Mark Roberge (13:44.234)

Yes!

John Jantsch (13:59.382)

know, referrals or whatever you call it. Yeah.

Mark Roberge (14:01.984)

Spot on. mean, when I hear people like you say this, the conviction continues to escalate, right? Because it's like, another way to say what John is saying here is, let's just talk really tactically. Do not let the dashboards and sales funnels in your CRM end at closed one. That is like literally step four of seven, right? Like let's just like really step back, like very, very like basic, like.

John Jantsch (14:20.468)

Yeah.

Mark Roberge (14:31.654)

know, opportunity stage one is, you know, business, like discovery call and like business and you know, metrics definition. Step two is product validation, demo, blah, blah. Step three is closed one. Step four is set up. Step five is regular engagement. Step six is retention. That's the funnel.

John Jantsch (14:52.558)

He

John Jantsch (14:59.438)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I actually refer to it, have been referring to it as the hourglass, you know, with the idea being that, the funnel, right, but then it goes back out again. Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Roberge (15:06.26)

Totally. And expands. Exactly, because you expand more and like lot of people like winning by design with Jaco and like that's just a great way, the bow tie. A lot of people like it's a really good way to think about it because that usage, it represents that the usage and should grow.

John Jantsch (15:16.589)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (15:23.576)

So you were at Harvard and name a dozen schools, Stanford, that a lot of people go to those because they've got a big idea or they wanna have a big idea. They wanna turn out the next Google. I'm sure you encountered many founders or would be founders in those environments. What would you like if you were, I'm sure you did this in your class environment.

tell them they're gonna get wrong or how would you coach them of how you think they're thinking about it incorrectly?

Mark Roberge (15:58.009)

I mean, there's a lot to that. I think we covered a lot of them related to the work in terms of like, you know, being more precise around having the business fundamentals in place to be prepared to scale and how you go about scaling. I would say,

I guess I'll add two more to it that come up a lot, one that's related to revenue development to some degree and one that it really isn't. The one I'll mention is having a plan for a moat. And I would say like, when I ask people what their long-term defensibility will be, they often tell me about a feature.

John Jantsch (16:31.992)

Yes.

Mark Roberge (16:45.468)

And when I asked them if they are correct and they start crushing it and start winning, and then the competition realizes it, how long will it take them for them to build that feature? And they say six months. And I say, that's not long-term defensibility. So, so you really have to like, you don't have to prove it on day one. Cause oftentimes it might take something that you have to kind of take one of those design big start small approaches to it.

John Jantsch (17:02.58)

Hehehehe

Mark Roberge (17:14.464)

but you really need to have a vision around if you are right, there will be lots of copycats and the incumbents will try to take you out and you need to make sure that you win there. The other one, unless you want to talk about that, John, I have one more that I can throw out that's pretty popular. Yeah, yeah, the other one that's interesting, I think it was a study done at London School of Economics where they looked at like, I don't know, 5,000 seed funded businesses like 15 years ago and.

John Jantsch (17:22.637)

Yeah.

Yeah.

John Jantsch (17:31.17)

Yeah, yeah, go for it.

Mark Roberge (17:43.282)

and tried to evaluate the commonalities for those that like exited at, you know, very strong exit. The number one correlation was the founder's ability to up level the executive team around them as they went through the various phases of growth. And it's like, it's so pronounced in my journey with some of these folks. It's like, it's so hard to do too. Like it's so hard for like a founder to like stare someone in the eyes who've been there in the trenches with them from day one for three years.

and be able to communicate that they are over their head and that the business needs someone ready for the next stage. How you deliver that, how you recognize it, how you have the guts to say it, how you like move through that and still feel like a human and still feel like that person has been made whole. Like that's such a difficult skill to build, but that there's so much correlation with successful founders and CEOs and in

developing and executing that skill.

John Jantsch (18:43.372)

Well, and let's take it up one level. Many times the business outgrows the founder, right? So they may be having that conversation with themselves, right? Yeah.

Mark Roberge (18:48.714)

Sure. It's very rare that they're there. Totally. Yeah. And that lots of times the board has to manage that. think we, we went from an, like a culture or like a tactic around that. would say in the eighties and nineties when venture capital was much smaller and startups were, it just, was a much smaller portion of the economy. VCs were notorious for investing in these young technicians and then

fire in them. And I think in the early 2000s, venture took a different approach. They didn't want to get a reputation for firing CEOs. So they did what I call the Sheryl Sandberg, which is to like bring in the, the operator, but keep the CEO, which is good. think that's great. think a lot of times that CEO can sort of graduate up to being a

face to the organization, a driver of the culture, a person to be in key meetings with customers, to be on the road, but like don't have to be or nor qualified to be like the day-to-day operators, hence like today's COO president role. So, but yeah, sometimes founders, they're like not willing to let go. And I have to be like, I have to be like, do you even understand that you have graduated to an era and scale that every CEO

John Jantsch (20:00.782)

Yes, yes.

Mark Roberge (20:15.519)

founder dreams of, we're basically offering to pay for someone to do all the work that you hate and have you just do the work you love, which is product vision, talking to customers and talking to the market. So it's like, it takes a little reframing, you know.

John Jantsch (20:17.56)

Yeah, that's right.

John Jantsch (20:23.598)

You

John Jantsch (20:33.16)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you, I think your PR people mentioned this, they're donating the proceeds to the book to McLean Hospital for Mental Health Research. Is there an intentional connection of the subject of scaling to mental health?

Mark Roberge (20:42.014)

Yeah.

Mark Roberge (20:48.113)

my gosh. Huge. Well, not so much. It's very light. It's more of an intentional connection to the author. and it's just something as you've experienced, John, it like you get up, you get up in the morning and do these things three times more aggressively when you have a cause like this around you. And there's two personal reasons and thank you for providing a platform to talk about them. The first one is mental health has played an enormous piece in my own life.

John Jantsch (20:55.992)

Yeah.

Mark Roberge (21:18.259)

I have been a caregiver, a direct caregiver to many loved ones and I've been a patient. And I can stand here and say this because I've been blessed with certain resume wins that society values and I can be braver than most. And I'm sure by saying that some people may be hesitant to work with me. And I just think we need to fight that stigma more. Like we've come a long way in a generation, but

Even to this day, I think a lot of people will be interviewing a candidate and find out they survived cancer 10 years ago and it will elevate their perception of them versus if they found out that they overcame a serious mental illness, they may have some concern and both are just a disease. They're often genetic. So that's part of the personal driver. And the second one is I think in this moment in tech, there's a hundred times more capital talent.

John Jantsch (22:02.03)

Yes.

John Jantsch (22:07.308)

Yes.

Mark Roberge (22:17.009)

an effort going into building AI and next to nothing in helping society adapt to the world that about to become. And I think we as technicians need to change that. We can't delegate this to Washington or economists. They're just not close enough to it. And we just need to like really diversify our efforts away from just building and profiting toward

John Jantsch (22:25.347)

Yes.

Mark Roberge (22:44.265)

helping society adapt to this new world. like with every tech revolution, we ended up better as a society, but there are scars along the way. It happened with the internet. They're about to be really bad with AI if we don't do anything. So I think we all need to find a little thing to do. And right now that's my little thing to do.

John Jantsch (22:51.734)

Yes.

John Jantsch (22:59.914)

Awesome. Well, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Any way you'd invite people to connect with you, find out more about your work as well as your latest book.

Mark Roberge (23:11.315)

Yeah, I'm all over. mean, LinkedIn is probably where I'm most at. I'm trying to hang out on TikTok more, John, just to like, because I need to like talk to these 22 year old founders as well, which is awesome. So I'm trying to find where they are. But I'm mostly on LinkedIn if folks want to go on there and collaborate.

John Jantsch (23:25.55)

Well again, I appreciate you stopping by and hopefully we'll run into you someday in a steakhouse in South Boston. I don't know how much that'll be worth to you, if you got a pen, I'll do it. All right. Thanks, Mark.

Mark Roberge (23:32.305)

I'd love it and maybe I'll ask for your autograph, John.

Mark Roberge (23:42.578)

All right, it's great to see you. Thank you.

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John Jantsch (00:00.977)

So what if the most underused marketing channel for a small business owner isn't a new platform or a bigger ad budget, but the founder standing up and telling their own story from a stage? Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Jess Ekstrom. Entrepreneur speaker, mom of two and founder of Mike Drop Workshop, where she helps women step into their voice and become confident speakers. Started her first company.

Headbands of Hope. Longtime listeners may recall we talked about that so many years ago on this show. At the time she was a broke college student, built her entire marketing engine by begging professors to let her speak for five minutes in class. That scrappy beginning turned into a career as a Forbes top rated speaker and two time bestselling authors. She's also the host of the Amplify podcast. So Jess, welcome back.

Jess (00:57.162)

It is good to be back. We're going to have to do a fact check on how many years ago I was on this show, but I know two kids and a new business later. Here we are.

John Jantsch (01:06.471)

Well, how old is oldest child?

Jess (01:09.07)

three. But it was long before that. It was long before that.

John Jantsch (01:10.219)

okay. It was, yeah, I was gonna say, I thought that was gonna be arch. Well, I'll go back and research it. So let's talk, we don't have to go back and relive the headbands of hope, although are you still doing anything with that? Okay, okay, cool.

Jess (01:23.01)

Yep. It got acquired, which was really exciting. Yeah, very exciting. And it was great for me to be able to fully step into my drop workshop and let new people in. And it's doing great.

John Jantsch (01:37.127)

So when, at what point did you realize that speaking was, you know, a lot of people talk about it as free marketing and certainly a lot of people want to be highly paid speakers. When did you just decide, hey, that's really a great way, I mean, that's a marketing channel all by itself.

Jess (01:52.492)

I remember the first email I got from Marshall University that said, what is your fee to come speak to our students? And I had to ask about a dozen people what they meant because I was like, what are they talking about? A fee? I pay? I was so confused. I didn't even realize that this was a channel for income because it had been such a good channel for advertising for me. And one of the things that I teach now in my drop to a lot of founders,

John Jantsch (02:03.301)

You're welcome.

Jess (02:22.416)

is the difference between an elevator pitch and a keynote. You know, an elevator pitch is around what you're selling, you know, the problem you're solving. But a keynote is around the story of your startup and making that story transferable to someone else. and then the keynote becomes the product. So it's not about selling your product through the keynote. It's about raising awareness for it, but most importantly,

John Jantsch (02:25.969)

Mm-hmm.

Jess (02:49.238)

sharing the story in a way that inspires someone to do something about it.

John Jantsch (02:52.903)

So maybe there's not either or, you maybe just tell people both can be true. certainly, well, I haven't asked the question yet. Here are two things. Because I have a lot of people that, there are a lot of people that want to be speakers and they start out at a low fee and maybe they work up, I don't know, let's say $10,000 for a keynote. But then.

Jess (02:58.658)

Both can be true.

John Jantsch (03:18.247)

There were other speakers, myself included, when I was getting started that if I got in a room of 50 prospects, I would come away with $100,000 worth of business. I didn't care about being paid because I knew the opportunity to get in that room was more important than what I might make as a speaker. How do you balance those? And again, like I said, can both be true.

Jess (03:38.796)

I think that there are two different lanes that you have to decide what you want to run in. The keynote is your product, which means it's not about selling a product. It's about delivering a keynote. And then the other lane is called lead gen speaking or selling from stage, which means you get no fee, which is exactly what you're talking about, John, but you have free rein to sell from the stage. And in that case, whatever money you make in the back of the room becomes your fee for being there.

But I am a big advocate for the keynote being the product. And in my drop workshop, I teach people a framework called moment to meaning, where you share a moment, a lived experience, and then what's the takeaway for the audience. Your moment can be a story in your business. It can be for me, you know, I told the story probably on your podcast, losing money to a fraudulent manufacturer, starting my business, Headbands of Hope.

John Jantsch (04:09.223)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (04:35.62)

Mm-hmm.

Jess (04:37.206)

And then the meaning is, you know, failures don't have to be the end. It can be, you know, just a pivot in your story. But now I'm not going up there selling headbands of hope, but now everybody knows about it. And so I don't necessarily think that you have to choose between being a lead gen speaker and a keynote speaker. I think use the story of your company in your keynote and that way it becomes a both and.

John Jantsch (04:49.884)

Right.

John Jantsch (05:03.995)

Yeah, you know, it's funny, I do remember early on, I certainly took that very much that approach of I'm just here to deliver lots of value teach you guys lots of stuff. Hopefully it's awesome. And I remember early on a couple times where people come up to me say, like, what do you actually do? You know, how could I actually hire you? And I thought, maybe I somehow need to work that in more than just I'm just here to teach you stuff. So so how do you kind of balance that? I

Jess (05:21.486)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Exactly.

John Jantsch (05:33.605)

I never call it selling from the stage because I didn't have like a $500 course that they could go back there and buy. It was really more that at some point, in fact, I had a speaking engagement that early on in my career, I'm sure I wasn't paid for it. And a gentleman came up and said, I really liked what you said. Can you come talk to us? And that was in 2004. They still the client today. So millions of dollars worth of business from that client came from.

Jess (05:36.056)

Right.

Jess (05:40.301)

Yep.

John Jantsch (06:03.245)

him actually coming up to me and saying, I like what you had to say, but like, how do I hire you? So how do you balance kind of that, you know, that you do want people to know that you can help them solve the problem you just described?

Jess (06:09.826)

So.

Jess (06:14.668)

Yeah, right, exactly.

I think alongside with using how you help people as an anecdote in your keynote as a way to get a point across, are, you know, with I work with coaches, they can say, when I coach people on this topic, I tell them this. Or if you're a podcaster, and you want to promote your podcasts, but without being like, scan this QR code and listen to my podcast and leave a review, you can say here's some really interesting guests I've had on my podcast.

And here's what they said. And it's continuing to further the value that you're delivering to the audience without selling them something. But one kind of hack I will give to that, John, you can still use your keynote as an audience building technique that still delivers value in a way where you're delivering them the notes or the recap or the slide deck from your presentation.

in exchange for an email. So when I speak right before my conclusion, I tell them that they can scan a QR code and it's going to send the slide deck to them so that they have it, they can remember it, it's going to give them discussion questions to bring back to their team. But that is also where they're now in my orbit. Now I can also, they want to hear what I'm doing. The next email I send will probably be about mic drop workshop or my book or my podcast.

And so there are ways that you can use that time on stage to just get people into your orbit in a way that provides value. I've tested a lot of different lead magnets from the stage. The slides or the notes convert higher than anything else that I've done.

John Jantsch (07:57.968)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (08:01.807)

Yeah, yeah. So.

How do you also balance? mean, there's a lot of people that look at speaking and think that's also kind of a very, you know, statusy thing, right? I'm doing a keynote here. You see people on LinkedIn all the time talking about the status thing. But what's the difference between wanting to be on the stage and actually having something worth saying from it?

Jess (08:16.354)

Yeah.

Jess (08:26.094)

Such a good question. And I would say most of the women that I work with lean towards the what do I have to say? And how I teach this, this is actually a concept I gave in my TED talk last year that has done really well. So I'll share it here. It's usually when you have that imposter syndrome coming from

what I call a spotlight mindset. Spotlight speakers go up there, spotlights on them. How do I look? How do I sound? They're concerned with public perception. They want to appear impressive. What does everyone think of me? If a spotlight asks, what does everyone think of me? Then the other kind of speaker is a lighthouse, is, what does everyone need of me? You go up there with, I'm going to solve a problem. Where are they at now? Where are they hoping to go? How can I help? And so when you switch from like, how do I be admired?

John Jantsch (08:57.093)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (09:14.097)

Mm-hmm.

Jess (09:25.458)

how can I be helpful? All the sudden speaking is less of a flashy opportunity and more of a impactful moment for you. And the irony is, is that you become better for it, your keynote gets better, my nerves got better. When I stopped going up there trying to be impressive. Instead, I would do my research on the

audience. Okay. This is accountants. What are accountants experiencing in 2026? What are their, what keeps them up at night? Okay. Now that I know where they're at, I can help where they want to go. So I think that shift can help people a lot.

John Jantsch (10:04.813)

you know, what's interesting is, you mentioned it, but I felt this, for sure. You know, a lot of people talk about being afraid of public speaking, you know, and a lot of it's that mentality of I'm on stage, everybody's looking at me. but when it's, what am I here to give? yeah, all of a sudden the stress kind of melts away. least that's been my experience. Yeah. Yeah.

Jess (10:16.76)

Mm-hmm.

Jess (10:24.288)

Yeah. The more you give the less nervous you'll be. And to be real, that sometimes means not looking good. I think sometimes when we speak from a place of a lighthouse, we want to share all the wins that we've had as a business owner. look at this thing I did. I'm on the today show. I sold millions of copies, blah, blah, blah. I did that. It didn't land. I didn't get booked from it. When I started to share moments that went wrong and what I did about it.

That's when the rubber started meeting the road because it wasn't about making me look good. had to admit, yeah, I wired $10,000 to a fraudulent manufacturer. That, that sucked. But here's what I did. That's when I think things started to get noticed. So also just getting out of your head that you have to paint yourself as the hero and paint yourself in the best light. No one wants to learn from someone who's always been at the top. We need the arc.

John Jantsch (11:03.6)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (11:18.439)

No questions, because it's true. Nobody's always been at the top. So it's a lie. So do you have a specific framework that you teach for building a talk that really kind of lands?

Jess (11:21.184)

Mm-hmm. No, true. Yeah, they want to root for you.

Jess (11:36.566)

Yeah. I would say start with the aftermath. Before you think about what you want to say, think about what you want to stay. Like, what do you want to stay in the room after you leave? And so I give, we call it a transformation promise. After people hear you speak, what do want them to do? What do you want them to believe? What do you want them to think? What do you want them to feel?

And then once you have that transformation promise, maybe it's after people hear me speak, I'll give like my example. I speak about motivation and how to create motivation that lasts. So after people hear me speak, I want their whole team to be intrinsically motivated to create lasting motivation. Now I have a North star. Now I have the outcome in mind that I can build my keynote around. So then you work backwards. Well, what are the things that people need to understand in order to create motivation that lasts?

Well, they need to know the science behind motivation, how our brain works. They need to know how to be intrinsically motivated instead of extrinsically validated. They need to know how to define their success. So then I start going down the list of what's a checklist that someone needs to understand in order to arrive at that transformation? And then of course, fill those with, well, when did I learn this? What's the story I can answer here? What's a data point?

But I think one of the most important things you can do as a speaker is to simplify, not complicate. I think the spotlight speakers in us want to sound fancy and want to words and stuff that just is hard to understand. And I think one of the most misconceptions about speaking is to be revelatory and groundbreaking and novel. But the best speakers out there,

are reminding people of something they once knew that maybe they forgot. mean, James clear, like simple habits stack up Mel Robbins, you know, and her like, just go for it with her five second rule. Shonda Rhimes, just say yes. None of these things are new. None of these things are groundbreaking, but they saw a path to own it and put their context and their spin on it. So I would say,

Jess (13:57.782)

work backwards, create a transformation promise, and then stop making people think too hard.

John Jantsch (14:06.543)

It's funny, I remember again, early on in my career of speaking, I'd think, how am I gonna talk for 45 minutes? I need 247 slides in order to fill that 45 minutes, right? And then you find yourself just rushing through. And now the same talk, 10 or 12 slides that you actually live in the moment with the people is a lot.

Jess (14:13.241)

yeah.

Jess (14:16.759)

Yeah.

Jess (14:21.431)

Yeah.

Jess (14:29.102)

totally. It's daunting. That's why it's kind of like, you know, if you're a runner or something, it's like instead of running a marathon and thinking 26.2 miles, it's like, how do you break it into five races of five? And so breaking your talk into smaller talks in that way, because now it's pretty variable. I don't know if you've gotten this, but I get asked to speak for an hour, which typically was a norm. And now it'll be like 45 minutes, 30 minutes.

50. So that way you can just plus or minus some of these microtox within it instead of having to start over every time.

John Jantsch (15:05.511)

Yeah, actually, I had the opposite happen one time. One time somebody didn't show, and so they said, can you fill 90 minutes? And by the way, you're on in about half an hour.

Jess (15:12.204)

Mmm.

Jess (15:16.428)

Yes, that is, you gotta be ready to go at any time, but you did it.

John Jantsch (15:21.095)

So you work with a lot of women. don't know if it's predominantly, but you work with a lot of women. And women have their own brand of head trash, I think, around some of this topic that men don't seem to suffer from sometimes. We don't have imposter syndrome because we think everybody's... That we've arrived all the time, right? So...

Jess (15:26.946)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jess (15:36.909)

Yep.

Jess (15:40.534)

Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah. Why not? Why? Of course someone should listen to me. Yeah.

John Jantsch (15:48.903)

You've built multiple companies, you're a mom of two, you work with a lot of folks who have ambition. Do you see that, what are the places where they're quietly kind of sabotaging their balance, you know, before they even notice?

Jess (16:02.766)

That's great question. I think that they have this facade or like this false sense of a finish line that exists somewhere that is never there. Well, in order for me to be a speaker, I have to reach this amount of revenue or I have to have this amount of status or I have to have this many followers or I need to have this accolade. I see that all the time.

People are like, well, I can't pitch myself to speak because my website isn't live yet. I'm like, you have a LinkedIn. Go for it. And so I think it's, can be comforting to people to, and myself included to say, well, I can't do that yet because I don't have this. It's not, I'm not saying never, but I'm saying this. And I would say that pitching yourself and becoming a speaker is less about this.

John Jantsch (16:35.121)

Yeah.

Jess (17:01.112)

false finish line of being an expert in something and more about being excitedly curious about a topic and willing to put in the work. It doesn't mean that there is like some number or something out there that you have to hit in order to be qualified to pitch yourself. It's like, what are you curious enough about? What's been a theme in your life? What have people asked you for advice on that you're willing to put in the work? Put a keynote together, further your research around it every week and

Put your name out there for opportunities. That's probably the number one thing I would say.

John Jantsch (17:35.911)

So do you specifically try to coach people? Because you've mentioned this several times, your keynote. Is that your thing that you're always working on? And if somebody asks you to speak, that's what you're going to tell them? You're not like, what do you need? But it's like, no, here's what I do.

Jess (17:42.158)

Mm-hmm.

Jess (17:49.738)

Yes. So this, I'm so glad you brought this up because this is another, again, I call it a trap. That sounds like a lot, but mistakes. Sometimes I see speakers come into is they think by being dynamic and being able to speak about 20 different things, it's helping them as a speaker when it's actually hurting them. People want your greatest hit. Like I call it being a cheesecake factory speaker where you go. It's like, no one wants

Alfredo sushi and you know, a burger. It's what is your chef's special? What's the thing that you're really good at? And so tell them what you deliver and how it's going to help them. Don't necessarily ask them what they need and create a talk around that. Doesn't mean you can't find ways to customize your talk to that audience. But if you're starting from scratch, every single time you speak, one, it's a lot more work for you. And two, it's a lot less benefit to them because they are not getting something proven.

Like no one wants to be your trial run at this. Do the reps. Yeah, yeah, get good at it. And they want something that's like, yeah, I've given this talk at Coca-Cola. I've given this talk at Chick-fil-A. You know, I've given this talk here. So build one signature talk. That's what I would recommend.

John Jantsch (18:49.735)

Try out some new material.

John Jantsch (18:58.801)

Right. Right.

John Jantsch (19:06.119)

And I think from a practical reality, you'll just get better at it. You'll see where people laugh. You'll see where people get really engaged. And all of a sudden it's like, okay, I can make that better at that moment. And so as opposed to like, have to figure out the structure of this thing.

Jess (19:11.288)

Mm-hmm. Totally.

Jess (19:16.736)

Yeah, absolutely.

Jess (19:22.742)

Absolutely. mean, you can always keep iterating and always should be iterating. think a keynote is a living and breathing thing. Like I'm never done with a keynote. It's, I'm always editing and improving, but I would say if you're not willing to stick with it for three to five years, then don't do it. I see so many speakers that like every year are changing their thing that they're known for. I'm like, you're not given anyone time to associate your name with a solution.

John Jantsch (19:25.637)

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

John Jantsch (19:41.009)

Yeah, it's funny.

John Jantsch (19:46.172)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (19:52.977)

funny, I'm sure comedians experience this all the time, but I've always puzzled how like same talk, different parts are funny one time and they're not at all to the audience the next time. Same with like, you know, some bit that's supposed to be really touching and like, it doesn't look like anybody got it. I just always, there's no question that really, I just always find that really odd. So.

Jess (20:13.901)

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

John Jantsch (20:20.217)

I appreciate just you stopping by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Is there some place you'd invite people to, who want to do more speaking, who want to actually learn how to do it right? What would be the next step for them? What would be the first step I should say for them? And then also how can they find out more about working with you?

Jess (20:40.238)

I would say if you want to start speaking, ask yourself, I actually said this to someone today, so I'll say it here. Imagine I gave you money to buy a billboard in your town and or on your local highway. And it was up to you to put whatever phrase or slogan that you wanted to on that billboard.

what would be the thing that you would put on that billboard? Like what is like a mantra, a theme, like something that you keep coming back to that helps people. And so if you wanna just get started, I would think about like, what would you put on an empty billboard and start there? And then you also...

John Jantsch (21:20.485)

All it comes to mind to me is eat more chicken, but that's already taken, so sorry.

Jess (21:23.777)

Yeah.

That's a place to start, John. And then you have the greatest test group of all time with social media, like test, test, and test again. And then if you want help with that, you can come to us at micdropworkshop.com or follow us anywhere. I'm also on LinkedIn, Jess Ekstrom, where you can find me.

John Jantsch (21:46.853)

Awesome. Well, again, appreciate you taking a moment to stop by and hopefully we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Jess (21:52.672)

Yeah, thanks, John.

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Duct Tape Transcript

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John Jantsch (00:01.651)

So what if the real opportunity with AI is not replacing human creativity but expanding it by turning entrepreneurs into better editors, directors, and decision makers? Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duck Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Jon Benson. He's a copywriter, entrepreneur, and AI pioneer best known for creating the video sales letter, one of those terms that people just use like it's been around forever.

A format that shapes modern digital marketing. is long centered on ethical persuasion and authentic connection. And more recently, he developed BNSN, an AI platform trained on high converting campaigns for small businesses. So John, welcome to the show.

Jon Benson (00:29.9)

Yeah.

Jon Benson (00:47.212)

Hey, John. Thanks for having me.

John Jantsch (00:49.585)

So let's, I assume you have to do this a little bit of your time when you go on shows like this, but the term VSL, you know, is kind of entered the, the marketing vernacular. Talk to me a little bit about, I've been doing this for 30 years. That was probably 12, 15 years ago, really, when that kind of burst on the scene as an innovation. You want to talk a little bit about what that's done to your trajectory, I suppose.

Jon Benson (00:55.202)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. yeah.

Jon Benson (01:02.04)

Mm-hmm.

Jon Benson (01:16.216)

Yeah, believe it or not, it's 20 years old this year. So 2006. Yeah. Yeah. Crazy. It's, mean, it was, it, yeah, everything changed that the, day that happened, the 30 days later, everything changed from my offer that I did it for, you know, we went from like struggling onto my second book that I wrote in, in fitness and then went to a million dollars.

John Jantsch (01:18.537)

20 years, okay.

Jon Benson (01:39.886)

a week and a month rather in traffic cost, you people buying that kind of money and going up to even higher than that. So it was crazy. And then, and then all of people started calling me and asking me to write VSLs for them. And I'm not, I wasn't a copywriter. that's not, never been my claim to fame until after this happened. And then I had to get good at writing copy. So that's what happened.

John Jantsch (02:01.939)

That's funny. So you said you had written a book about gym ownership? Is that what you said?

Jon Benson (02:10.663)

I've written six books in fitness, so weight loss, fitness, bodybuilding, yeah, so that whole thing has been a passion.

John Jantsch (02:12.947)

Fitness, fitness, okay. Okay, so are you one of those people that that was your passion and you just had to learn how to do marketing? And so this whole idea of studying persuasion and conversion and innovation, is that something that was really just picked up because you're like, I better get good at that?

Jon Benson (02:24.748)

Yeah.

Jon Benson (02:34.478)

It was picked up specifically for copywriting, yes, but I studied persuasion in college. Actually, I was studying MLP in college. I was fascinated by how you can basically get people to listen to you and hear what you're actually trying to communicate and motivate them to make changes based on things that you believe at least are good for them. So you're not trying to manipulate them. You're just trying to motivate them. And I was always into like, how can I motivate and connect with people deeper? So I studied the MLP back then, way back then.

John Jantsch (02:39.731)

Mm.

Jon Benson (03:03.22)

and mail order course from, from Bandler. And that got me into Tony Robbins and that led me into even deeper persuasion issues. And, and just was always really fascinated by it. And that led to me being into the advertising world. And that would, that led eventually to writing a book with it. Yeah. I actually would have the book thing came about because I'd always been passionate about, bodybuilding and fitness and things like that growing up and athlete. I was an athlete most of my life. And then

ended up sedentary and got ended up obese in my late 20s and early 30s. I had 50 inch waist and had a heart attack at 38. So I was like, it was like a train wreck of health. And that got me back into it. So that's the Fit Over 40 book was written based on that, on turning that around. And then I interviewed a bunch of other people because I didn't think I was enough for a book. So I did 52 people that did the same.

John Jantsch (03:55.283)

So I'm curious, this is a question, unfortunately, I feel like I'm asking almost every guest these days, but how has AI changed that element of copywriting for good or bad?

Jon Benson (04:00.942)

It's

Jon Benson (04:08.494)

So my goal with AI and copywriting, I've been doing copywriting software since 2010. So this is going to date me a lot, but in AI, in early nascent AI in 2017 and working with early LLMs in 2019. So very, very, very early into this thing and trying to convince everybody, this was the thing that we wanted to do. And the reason why is because I was, I had these courses that I would teach people how to write VSOs and I knew how hard it was for me to learn all the copywriting in and outs and

and develop my own style, which I did. And I said, well, what, what if I could have software that would do it for them? And the average business owner doesn't have time to do that. They just want the copy that converts. So I've seen it from 15 years away going, I know this is going to happen eventually. And so we decided that the software is pronounced Benson. That's not my last name. It's just my last name without the vowels. And, and yeah, yeah, but it's, cool that you can spell it out. That's all right. and so we did Benson originally, it was going to be called,

John Jantsch (04:56.529)

okay. Not BNSM like I butchered it, okay?

Jon Benson (05:06.35)

It was going to, because it was the first AI to actually write a long form VSL. And I was working with, with Jasper at the time they were called Jarvis, but I was the first guy in the copywriter to train anything on an LLM. And they ended up with a 62nd VSL out of all the training. I think, yeah, I think we can do this in a different way. And we ended up being, you know, having a 7,000 word VSL come out of our AI and it sounded like a real VSL.

John Jantsch (05:14.729)

Sure, yeah.

Jon Benson (05:32.663)

It didn't sound like chat, GBT, it didn't sound like Claude, it sounded like a real VSL. And so that was our claim to fame. And since then we just, of course got, we were very early into the agentic phase. So we've just gotten better and better at that. And so my goal was to replace myself. That's what I wanted to do. I wanted to say, if I can, if I can use this to write a VSL, which I have, sells pages for my own stuff, which I have, then I know that it's going to be good enough to, for prime time. And that was the, that was the goal to do. yeah.

John Jantsch (06:02.549)

So talk to, obviously we've got more to explore in AI, but talk to me a little bit about the VSL itself. mean, it has become very mainstream. I mean, you hear people talk about it, whether they know what it is or not. They talk about it as part of their funnel, you know, today. So is it overdone? I mean, is it over?

Jon Benson (06:06.094)

Mm-hmm.

Jon Benson (06:10.316)

Mm. Yep.

yeah.

Jon Benson (06:21.806)

Yeah, every year I hear that I've heard that for 20 years. So it literally 20 years. So the first year I came out with it and said, Oh, it's already and then Ryan Dias, who's a good friend of mine made the mistake of saying when he came out and promoted his own little mini VSO course and he later gave me credit for which was really nice of him and everything. But he said, Oh, sales letters are dead. You'll never do another sales. And I'm like, dude, I've never said that, you know, I think everything works if you let it and VSO is just happened to keep on working and they just ask, ask Agora.

John Jantsch (06:24.157)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jon Benson (06:51.022)

They work. I mean, yeah, they work. They work really well and now people are using BSLs in feed So you've got the meta ads that are basically short BSLs that use the same psychology Just compressed into five two to five minutes. So we've been doing that for 15 years as well So yeah, and then they go to a longer BSL So they they still work just as sales pages work just as webinars can work everything can work It just depends on what you're wanting to sell and how you're and how you approach it But the words are the consistent thing

So if the words aren't there, if the words don't reflect an actual human underneath it, people sense it a mile away, which was our goal with Benson was to create humanized AI. How do we do this? How do we create AI that doesn't sound robotic? It doesn't sound like, you know, chat GPT writing an email, it's asking a rhetorical question. And the very first sentence, you know, this kind of really bad AI copy that we see all the time. How do we do this and actually sound like a real A-list copywriter? And that was, that's been our focus for three and a half years now.

John Jantsch (07:20.456)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (07:48.413)

You know, initially the large innovation was that it was not a talking head on video. It was the words. Is that a key component of it?

Jon Benson (07:56.174)

Mm-hmm.

Jon Benson (08:01.113)

You know, it depends on what you're trying to sell. We have seen split tests with video beating words only, and we've seen words only beat video. It really depends on what it is. And what works today, a year from now, will be something you want to reverse. So for a while there was like my friend Craig who writes for Golden Hippo, and he's done amazingly well building a billion dollar company from, he's an amazing writer. But he was one of the first guys working with Gundry to do a lot of video.

on the front end of a VSL, but talking to him behind the scenes, so to say, we know that it's still like a Google Doc and the words are everything. So he slaves over the words, man, getting the words just right. So all the video in the world is not gonna save you if your words suck. It just isn't gonna happen. So the words are still the most important.

John Jantsch (08:46.077)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So one of the knocks on AI, of course, is it's made it very easy for people to create really crappy content. you see it all the time now, right? It's like volumes of really bad content. So why can't people create better content? What's the mistake they're making? Is it simply just a matter of being lazy?

Jon Benson (08:54.831)

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Jon Benson (09:11.983)

No, it's the matter of the LLMs or the in our case, it's the agents not knowing you. And this is where it gets a little bit a little bit hairy for people, because there has to be an element of your personality that's OK to be known. as the same thing would be true if you went and hired me as a copywriter. Like I would ask you if you had an offer and you wanted to whatever your offer would be. I would start asking you lots of questions that you probably don't think is related to your offer.

John Jantsch (09:19.719)

Yeah, yeah,

Jon Benson (09:40.336)

Now I'm not talking about like when asking all these really intensive personal questions, but I want to know what your values are. I want to know where you stand. Who do you want to attract as customers? What are you against? What are you not just what the, what the product does? Cause the product or the offer, whatever it does, I that's, that's not that difficult. Um, what's difficult is to make that story resonate with people that will automatically hear and go, Oh, that sounds like something that I can automatically relate to. And that's what a really good copy. does. We don't try to sell people that are

not interested or just completely need to go from a level one to a level five awareness, that's really not what we wanna do. We wanna target people that are already there, because you got plenty of people like that, but if you write, if you go into a chat or clod or whatever and you say, write me an email or write me an ad or rep me a VSO, and they don't know who you are, they don't have a good feel of your words, feel of your personality, it's gonna write stuff that's schlocky, because it's trained on the internet. So if you just think about this for a moment, and everyone listening to me will get this,

John Jantsch (10:35.294)

Yeah, yeah.

Jon Benson (10:39.043)

It's like, can you imagine training anyone to do anything by telling them, go read the internet and get back to me tomorrow? That's what we've done with LLMs, right? It's like, well, that's going to give you a lot of knowledge, but most of it sucks. mean, so most of what's out there in copy is terrible. So it's learning models have been terrible. So that's why specialty AI is like ours and in our, in our industry, you have to have it to where the people that know what they're doing actually trained individual.

John Jantsch (10:46.665)

Right.

Jon Benson (11:06.487)

in our cases, agents that use not one LLM, but a dozen, you know, can use as many as we need one model rather, but you know, doesn't whatever models are we know are going to be the best ones for the right tasks. So that takes that. And then what we do is a little different. We ask people to go through an assessment to figure out what are their values? Where do they stand? Who are the people they want to attract? And how do they want their their words to appear? So we take care of the persuasion element, but also we see that with the words and phrases that

John Jantsch (11:14.739)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (11:25.885)

Mm.

Jon Benson (11:35.681)

are closer to who they are as a person. So it starts feeling more human. It's important.

John Jantsch (11:40.457)

Yeah, it's interesting. know as we've worked with clients, you know, a lot of them have a fairly large body of work of them talking about things, explaining their products, being who they are. And that element, you know, allows you to build that voice or that brand. But then there is a technical framework element to it as well, isn't it?

Jon Benson (11:58.348)

yeah, totally. mean, if you go too far outside that framework, you're going to lose a lot of the things that we already know work so well, persuasion wise. So the goal is not to try to convince somebody of something, it's to compel them to take action on what they already hold valuable. So all you're doing is aligning your offer with what they already hold to be valuable. And that's the skill of copywriting. that's something that AI is, I think, obviously I'm biased.

John Jantsch (12:05.639)

Yeah. Yeah.

Jon Benson (12:27.481)

So I'm gonna say we're kind of the exception, but AI in general has gotten a little better at this. I'd like to think we've led some of the way in that, to getting to where there's more of that human element involved.

John Jantsch (12:39.091)

So talk a little bit about that because there's certainly a lot of people, creatives in particular, that have felt like they have this special sauce, this special talent to create that content, to create beauty, to create things. And maybe AI has kind of taken that. I mean, it's eventually going to get good at doing video and graphics and things. So where is the human element, know, remain?

Jon Benson (12:57.314)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah.

So think of it as like, I look at it as the difference between using a hammer and using a jackhammer or something that's a powered hammer, right? It's a pneumonic hammer or whatever they call those automatic hammers. So you've got an automatic hammer and there's a skill to hitting a nail with a hammer, right? The question is, as a carpenter, is that really what you want to be known for is I strike a nail head perfectly with a hammer every single time.

Or if you could have that done for you instantaneously with something that just tapped it in, what would you do with the time that you have left now? You would probably spend that doing the creative portion of things and like, I can do this, I can build this. And this is what the same thing is true of AI and copywriters. It's like, we're not trying to put people out of business. We're giving them the ultimate power tools. So a lot of the grunt work, a lot of the research, a lot of the structure you don't have to worry about. Then you can go in and finesse it.

and everything sounds so much better when you do that. We want people to do that. there's still a knowledge factor that I think that copywriters need to have. And sure, some people do use tools like Vinson. They just don't think about it. They click a few buttons and they go, because it works. But the copywriters, they want to put their signature on it. And this just gives you the ultimate way of doing that. It's like hiring the best ghostwriter you can think of. So if I hired a copywriter to write something for me and they sent it back and I read it, went, wow, that's just freaking fantastic.

Jon Benson (14:26.768)

then I could find these little bitty things in there that I only know or that I primarily know. And then I'm gonna go, oh, you I'm gonna change this over here. And then I might find a creative thing that he said or she said that I wouldn't have thought of. And that now becomes a campaign. My mind goes, oh, wow, I didn't think about that. I can turn this into a campaign. Well, that's not AI, that's me, right? So if the AI wrote it or a human wrote it, wouldn't matter. And so that's what we do that's a little different because we coach people live once a week so that we can help inspire them to.

Use the words that are coming out and how can we use it to help market their business more effectively.

John Jantsch (15:01.011)

So I think one of the areas that obviously is a breakthrough is in testing. Obviously, any copywriter worth their salt is like, I think this is good, but let's test it, right? And now we can test 200 versions for not much more time than it took us to create that one beautiful one. What do you think that that is going to ultimately do in terms of people's effectiveness?

Jon Benson (15:07.088)

Mm-hmm.

Jon Benson (15:15.087)

Right.

Jon Benson (15:26.992)

If people knew what the guys that are making hundreds of millions of dollars at this stuff do, if you knew the amount of testing that went into it, most people would just give up. would stop. I'll give you an example. I have a good friend of mine that is the top of their industry on meta and they flew out to meet the actual real meta heads of ads because there's the ones that they give people and there were ones that give these people.

You know, they give them $100,000 to spend just to play with just because we want to see what your new creative team can do. They will run 800 ads at a time in any given month. They're running 800 versions of an ad. So there's just no way to do that effectively without AI. that's when they were the early adopters to this. Now they can run those kinds of things. And it's like, they can figure out what works and guess what? One or two might scale or three. It's, it's, doesn't matter how good the writers are.

It's like some hook, some angle may work and that angle if it works can just skyrocket a business. So I think it's one of the best things about AI is the ability to split test leads of a sales letter or VSL, the split test, obviously campaigns and then add campaigns and things like that. It's very helpful.

John Jantsch (16:37.907)

So you've spent a lot of time building a reputation about ethical persuasion, but it's not a very far leap to go to things that are maybe not that ethical, right? To go from just what you talked about as getting people to do something that they want to do or that's good for them and they just, they need to hear it, to manipulation. So, and I feel like

Jon Benson (16:43.12)

Mm-hmm.

Jon Benson (16:55.346)

yeah.

Jon Benson (17:01.796)

Right.

Right.

John Jantsch (17:07.503)

AI doesn't really care in some cases. how do you, what are the guard rails that you really use to kind of stay within what, you you talked about beliefs, your beliefs.

Jon Benson (17:10.072)

Mm-mm. Mm-hmm.

Jon Benson (17:20.24)

Yeah, well the guardrails I use that we actually that's a technical term and we use specific guardrails in our agents that are that when somebody sets up Benson correctly, we use it's called a buyer alignment profile that we have people go through. In fact, I'm going to give it to your listeners for free that could go through that and get their buyer alignment, which is a 15 page report of the words and phrases you should use and not use. And that exactly fits that bill of that sets up guardrails. It's like use this because I value X, Y and Z. What do the words of I

value X, Y, and Z translate to in copywriting lingo? Because it doesn't mean like if I value freedom, you don't want to use like, hey, since you love freedom as much as I do, then you're going to love so and so shoes. That doesn't make any sense, right? And so it's just too hamfisted and heavy handed and all that stuff. So what phrases do people that love freedom as a core value? What usage would they use and what would they never say? And it's what they would never say that the Garbrills of that. So in other words, that prevents the

John Jantsch (17:58.441)

All right.

Jon Benson (18:16.913)

AI from going over the balcony, so to say, when it comes down to overly persuasive language.

John Jantsch (18:23.251)

So for some of the folks that you've worked with, you've probably started to catalog kind some of the biggest mistakes people are doing, making right now using AI. Where do you see people really need to make a shift to make AI more effective for them?

Jon Benson (18:40.579)

it's it to stop thinking of AI as the answer and start thinking of it as a tool is a huge step in the right direction. Also to train whatever AI you're using. Ours is built to be trained, so it's copy paste kind of thing. But if you're going to use Claude or chat GPT or whatever, you need to be able to train it with who you are, what your values are, how what words or phrases to use, what not to use. And you'll find that the memory on this is pretty short. So.

unless you know what you're doing and then we can get into things like instances of open claw and the clawed code and all that stuff. That's very technical and most people don't want to go down that rabbit hole. mean, our guys go down that rabbit hole because we're kind of geeky when it comes to that. But most people want just the best answers that they can without having to become a software engineer. so to do that, yeah, it's a lot of knowledge. It's a lot of like time to say, here's who I am.

John Jantsch (19:08.713)

Mm.

John Jantsch (19:15.774)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (19:29.822)

me

Jon Benson (19:33.774)

And here's what I want you to do. Now, you can do that to a limited degree in chat and cloud and tools like that. You can do it to a huge degree in our tool because we built it to do that. And that's super important to get the language patterns down. But also, and this is the last thing I'll say, but this is true of copywriting in general. So when people used to hire me, because I don't write copy anymore. I'm solely focused on Benson. when people used to hire me, it was very expensive. I was like.

the probably the most expensive guy in the world for like five or 10 years. And they're certainly one of the most expensive guys in the world. And they would hire me and I would give them a first draft of something like usually a BSL or a sales letter. And they would say, this doesn't sound like me. go, yeah, I know. It's because you suck. Yeah, you don't want to sound like yourself, man. You really don't. it's and it's like, I, I mean, that in kind of a funny way. It's like you're the copy they were writing was just terrible.

And so they were trying to make their terrible copy kind of polish, you know, a poly put, put lipstick on a pig's episode. So you can't do that. You have to like be able to understand some basic persuasion and then work in. And this is what I didn't do when I was a pro when I was writing early days of copywriting work in their values. I figured this out later in my career. It's like, I can work in their value statements and figure out what the words are. But that was just tons of research. We'd charge like 15, 20 grand just to do the research to figure out like

John Jantsch (20:33.415)

Mm-hmm.

Jon Benson (20:58.491)

What are the words we should use and shouldn't use and phrases and all that stuff. And unless somebody came along that was like an identical client, we'd have to do that all the time. Now it's automatic, which is fantastic.

John Jantsch (21:06.473)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, John, I appreciate you dropping by the duct tape marketing podcast. Is there someplace you mentioned that you had a gift you wanted to invite people? And obviously I'd love to know where they can find out more about Benson.

Jon Benson (21:15.471)

Yeah. Yeah. Sure. If you go to free buyer profile.com, that's free buyer profile.com. You can take our buyer alignment profile, which will test to figure out your core values, help you figure them out. We use a lot of different standardized testing models in these questions. And in about 10 to 15 minutes, we'll get you a report.

that you can use in your marketing that will tell you words and phrases that you should think about using and words and phrases you should definitely avoid. will give you all the NLP, all the magic sauce while still sounding like you and will also help elucidate what you already hold valuable and the people that

John Jantsch (21:53.481)

Great tool for training any AI tool, suspect, that you're going to use. Awesome. Well, again, I appreciate you dropping by. It's freebuyerprofile.com and hopefully we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road,

Jon Benson (21:57.125)

Yeah, definitely. Yeah.

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Thank you, John. I appreciate the time.

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John Jantsch (00:02.129)

What are the biggest threat from AI? Isn't that it replaces your job. It's that it exposes the parts of you that were never fully developed in the first place. Sound interesting? Stay tuned. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duck Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Derek Reddall. He's a true time bestselling author and transformational leader who has spent over 25 years helping people unlock what he calls their emergent

potential, the idea that everything you need to become is already inside you waiting for the right conditions. We're going to talk about his new book, A Whole New Human, 10 Ways We Must Evolve to Survive in the AI Age. There we go. Got it right. Derek, welcome to the show.

Derek (00:48.558)

Thank you, John. It's an honor and pleasure to be here.

John Jantsch (00:50.981)

So we're not, some tells me we're not gonna talk about prompt engineering, at least not right off the bat, are we?

Derek (00:55.374)

Maybe how we have to prompt the AI within us, but not more than the AI outside of us, yes.

John Jantsch (00:59.783)

Right.

So for 25 years, your teaching has started with this idea of emergence. There's a lot of people on here that maybe that's the first time they've heard that word applied particularly to self-development or self-improvement. You want to give us kind of what you mean by that?

Derek (01:21.304)

Sure, I mean obviously in science there's an understanding of the emergent property of things and you know that something emerges that is more than or different than the sum of the initial parts etc. you know oxygen and what is it hydrogen comes together to make water so you get water as an emergent property and so that's one way to think about emergence and what I speak of it it's more about an experience I actually had

after a near death experience where I saw this and I began to see that, you know, in every living thing, it begins with a seed. There's a pattern. There's a pattern behind everything that is alive. And whether it's the acorn, the oak is already there in the acorn. And even from a quantum physics standpoint or a platonic form standpoint, the oak, the idea of the oak is a pattern in the field.

as a part of the superposition. So we can get scientific about it or not, but the bottom line is the oak tree is already there and it's there in potential. It's there in a pattern and the mechanics of its fulfillment are there. It's simply waiting for the right conditions. When the conditions are a match to the pattern within anything, that potential emerges naturally. And when I saw that

not just theoretically, but experienced it and began to consider there was a pattern in me. There was a seed pattern planted in the soil of my soul or whatever and began to ask what that was, you know. And this really brings us back to the Oracle of Delphi and the OG success self-help guru when she said, know thyself or aristocraties said an unexamined life is not worth living.

the fundamental pattern of knowing what I'm really made of and made for and learning what are the right questions to ask. And then to say, okay, this is what I am like a gardener with a seed going, what are there for the right conditions for that seed to thrive? And I began to cultivate the inner and outer conditions that were a match to the pattern that I was discovering within me. And I went from broke

John Jantsch (03:36.999)

Mm.

you

Derek (03:43.385)

broken, literally suicidal in a one-room apartment, living on macaroni and cheese, no kidding, got very good at mac and cheese though, I could make it in a lot of ways. Within the first 12 months, I ended up launching my life's work, growing my business into six and then multiple six figures, falling in love. My whole life began to emerge or unfold.

John Jantsch (03:49.095)

you

Derek (04:09.824)

And what I saw was that before that, I'd been a self-help person trying to improve myself, you know, for years and years and years. And I found that most of our efforts to fix change, heal and improve ourself is a form of resistance against what is naturally trying to emerge. We end up creating conditions that are oppositional to what is really in us. So that's in a nutshell or in an acorn shell.

John Jantsch (04:30.289)

Yes.

John Jantsch (04:38.009)

You

Derek (04:39.128)

basically where the idea of emergence, I read a book on it called Emergence.

John Jantsch (04:41.223)

So we're all just waiting around for the right squirrel to bury us in the dirt? that it? That's right.

Derek (04:46.698)

Exactly. Squirrels are farmers of the forest, right? And they luckily don't have good memory because they forget about 80 % of where they buried it or something. And then we get oak trees as a result. Exactly.

John Jantsch (04:57.511)

So I've had a lot of guests on here, obviously. AI is a topic of certainly the last 18 months or so. And it's typically about tools and tactics. What's the different argument you are making when it comes to AI?

Derek (05:03.192)

for sure. Yes.

Derek (05:07.682)

Yes.

Derek (05:11.724)

Yeah, I mean, obviously I think it's an important thing. We should learn AI. should master the tools. You should know how to use them. Just like you can use internet and use a phone because you won't be replaced immediately by AI. You'll be replaced by somebody who's really good at it. And, but you are going to be replaced one way or the other. So you want to make sure you replace yourself with AI rather than being replaced by it. But basically the approach is, you know, I've spent 25 years, I started off in tech. I was a computer nerd. I built programs.

John Jantsch (05:24.58)

Mm-hmm.

Derek (05:41.357)

I watched war games. thought it was a great idea to build a program to hack into the government and start global thermonuclear war. Don't ask me why. And so I was, and then I got into the brain and was going to be a neuroscientist. And then I had this opening spiritually, whatever you want to call it near death. And I became more interested in consciousness and the deeper dimensions of us. But what I saw is that I've been practicing the inner technologies and

that we have to understand that AI is an expression and a prosthetic of our capacity for intelligence. And from the Tower of Babel to Chatch-EPT, we're still just building these outer tools. And that's OK. But with every new technology, we outsource a little bit of ourselves. And so on the one level, the very real danger, and it's already happening. MIT has studies about this.

John Jantsch (06:30.8)

Mm-hmm.

Derek (06:38.094)

that we're outsourcing the thing that makes us us, the ability to think, to think for ourself, to think deeply, the ability to create, to communicate, to connect, et cetera. And as you outsource something, if you study the technology history, you atrophy that capacity. Exactly, exactly. I don't even remember where I am right now. It's only been a few minutes. No, and so I don't have my GPS to see where I'm going.

John Jantsch (06:55.514)

Can't remember my phone number.

you

Derek (07:05.302)

And so in like GPS, our spatial cognition, our mapping capacity, all these things, and it's important to understand that cognition is not just linear, it's layered. And so as one cognitive ability starts to collapse or atrophy, there's a cascading effect. so we see this over, and I talk about this in my book, kind of the history of industrial revolutions and the unfoldment of technology.

and the outsourcing and where we're heading in a trajectory is to become like the characters in the movie WALL-E that are basically these slabs on a conveyor belt staring at screens with no more agency and no more even concern with what's happening outside in the world. That's not science fiction. There's already a lot of people sitting in their basement just like those characters. And it's especially dangerous with men who need to have

John Jantsch (07:51.441)

Yeah.

Derek (08:02.121)

utility and usefulness and if they don't, they become self-destructive or destructive in the world and that's also happening now. And the second big piece is it will do everything a human can do better, faster, cheaper. And so the big existential question of our times has to be if that's the case, what's a human for? And there is an answer to that, and we'll talk about.

John Jantsch (08:28.603)

Well, you do lay out some ways that we need to evolve or that you suggest we need to evolve. So for the person that's like, yeah, well, my job is my boss tells me I got to go in and get this work done. Here's the tools I use. it's an occupational hazard, right, that I'm doing this. So what are some of the ways that you teach people to counteract that?

Derek (08:33.315)

Yes.

Derek (08:52.451)

Yeah, when you say counteract that, you mean use the AI tools? And you're basically training the AI.

John Jantsch (08:55.993)

Yeah, just the fact that I'm there on front of that computer screen all day long using these tools, you know, because that's my job. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Derek (09:00.951)

All that, right. That you're becoming like a WALL-E character potentially. Well, yeah, you know, just using the tools, the danger again, yes, we're using these tools and the danger with AI first and foremost is you have to make sure you use the tool to become a better version of yourself. Not like when we started to use power tool, you know, like the plow and all these different things or the automobile.

They got us somewhere faster. They made us more productive, but we didn't have to walk anymore. We didn't have to use our muscles anymore. And you can study the increase of disease by the fact that we don't have to move anymore. so, so we had to build other industries like gyms and exercise and running clubs to do the things. And that's okay. But as we start to outsource our cognition of these things, we just have to make sure, first of all, we are

John Jantsch (09:36.261)

Yeah. All right.

Derek (10:00.483)

doing hard and challenging things on a regular daily basis, because you were evolved and adapted to be chased by tigers and to chase wooly mammoths. And if you're not chasing and being chased a little bit every day, you're going to get fat and sick and cognitively decline much faster. But the great news is you can use AI to strengthen you. You can, and I talk about that with each evolution. I mean, the first evolution is AI is going to think for you.

think for yourself. So we have to deepen our ability. Right now, this is already happening with kids, happening with students. They're hitting a button, they're producing an essay, and over a semester their cognition is falling off a cliff. And already kids cannot read handwriting. They're losing that cognitive ability, let alone do it. So we have to make sure, and you can, and I show people how, to use it to know yourself better.

to use it to become a better writer, a better communicator, a better creator, a better and a deeper thinker. And again, thinking is what got us out of the trees on the savanna and up into the stars. And if we keep giving it to AI, there will come a day not too far in the future, we literally won't have the ability and we will be forced to bow before our AI overlord. That's not a science fiction trope.

So we have to use it to think deeply. If you're writing a paper or doing research, do the first amount yourself. Write the first draft. Make your head hurt a little bit every day thinking as an example. There's other examples, because it's also showing up in communication. Write that first draft of the email. Really try to communicate with that person. Have a real conversation with a human being every day.

You know, these are skills that aren't just nice to have. You know, they call them soft skills, but they're really very hard. But these kinds of skills also will make you more human, more creative, more intuitive, more alive, and it will make you irreplaceable. Because your lived wisdom, your lived experience, your internal technology, that's the one thing AI can't do.

John Jantsch (12:14.801)

Right.

Derek (12:24.727)

AI will do everything else. But if you can embed that in your work, your words, your world, now you become valuable. The moat of the future is an authentic human being. Everything else will be commoditized.

John Jantsch (12:39.953)

Well, I believe that, and I've kind of made the case for saying, think the people that are thriving in this right now are people that came from more liberal arts backgrounds instead of like a technical training to do a thing because taste and discernment I think are going to be what's left. Yeah.

Derek (12:49.903)

Correct. Correct. Correct.

Correct. Bingo, bingo, bingo, bingo. Yeah. Taste and discernment and everybody has it. They just haven't necessarily developed it. And you know, you have a lived experience. Your greatest wisdom will come from your greatest wounds. Your deepest purpose will come from all the pain and the problems you've worked through. And it builds a story and it builds a perspective that only you have, which creates taste, which creates, you know, real embodied wisdom and

John Jantsch (13:04.444)

Yeah, yeah.

Derek (13:24.685)

That is the new Prada and the new Gucci of the brave new world. Because again, AI will do everything that, you know, we're going to see more businesses started than ever before in history until business loses all meaning. We're going to see more books published, more songs produced, more websites, more apps until it's a tsunami that makes everybody want to tune out and look away and become apathetic. But then there'll be those individuals

who get to know themselves, excavate and harvest the wisdom of their life, have real taste, real point of view, real wisdom, and then use AI to scale wisdom, to scale authentic taste, to scale a singular perspective, to actually scale and magnify an algorithm only they have.

Those are the individuals that are going to become a signal in the noise.

John Jantsch (14:25.095)

So let's talk a little bit. So the emergence model says the answer is already in you, or maybe is. How does a business owner who's listening to this and maybe stuck at a revenue plateau, I mean, how did they apply that idea?

Derek (14:38.317)

Yeah, well, you know, there's different reasons why you're stuck at a revenue plateau. Some, mean, you are the biggest bottleneck usually, but sometimes depending on the business, there's, there's just different things. What got us to where we are, isn't going to, at a certain point, isn't going to get us to the next level. What got you to a hundred thousand won't get you to a million, won't get you to five, won't get you to 10 or 15, et cetera, et cetera, depending. And that's the same thing even in not just business, but I know this is business, but you know, you all have relationships too.

What got you to the first year in your relationship is not going to get you to your five, et cetera. It's something about you that has to change a new model, a new paradigm, somewhere where you have to either delegate or outsource or dig deeper. And, you know, the biggest challenge with, with businesses and it's going to be that now is, you know, it's the Kodak experience, the blockbuster experience, the businesses that were in denial, that we're holding onto an old model.

John Jantsch (15:34.459)

Mm-hmm.

Derek (15:36.515)

because it worked and it was still working up to the moment it wasn't. And so we have to be willing to create, creative destruction on ourselves, but not just on our business, but really, you know, this is, this is what could be one of the, it's the biggest existential crisis we're going to face, but it's also, I think one of the greatest opportunities to become the people we're meant to be and to have a whole new Renaissance. So you have to, again, understand that

John Jantsch (15:39.717)

Yes.

Derek (16:02.575)

There's a guy that just launched, started a, just built a billion dollar business. He didn't know anything about the business he built. He used AI and he built a team of agents, but he had a perspective and he tapped into a current zeitgeist. So he had a bit of wisdom and intelligence to identify that, which is what a great entrepreneurial creative mind does. And then he was able to scale it and build a billion dollar business. I think he just hired his brother cause he was getting lonely.

So they're gonna see a lot of the potential for that. But that required somebody to have a couple things that were human, which is a perspective, a bit of intuition, a lot of courage, some grit, the willingness to work hard. And the problem is once you build something, especially nowadays, again, that's gonna be completely competed away, that particular margin.

John Jantsch (16:56.977)

Yeah, right.

Derek (16:58.543)

The worst thing he ever did was have a New York Times article told about him because everybody's now aiming their arrows at him. what's that?

John Jantsch (17:06.503)

Is that 11 Labs, I'm guessing? Is that the company called 11 Labs? Is that who it was? Oh, okay. Yeah. Oh, okay.

Derek (17:12.067)

No, 11 Labs is something else. I think that's got more than one person. This was all about Ozempic and stuff. He just sold Ozempic, but he's not a doctor. He just was a middleman, built a billion dollar business. I think he did it in like a year. But so there's a lot of opportunity if you're creative and entrepreneurial and you're willing to trust your taste, your intuition and perspective. And of course AI can help you there. But when you understand, just follow the logic that

John Jantsch (17:20.401)

Yeah. Funny.

Derek (17:40.021)

Everything is going to be commodified because AI is just units of cognition and intelligence and it can do everything a human can do. And with embodied humanoids, it'll include the physical. You just have to keep going down the stack or up the stack or whatever and ask, well, what's left? And you want to go where the puck's going, not where it already is. And, and like I said, you're going to, you're going to, unless you have the chips.

or the capex, the money, or the energy, the only thing that's left is the humanity of it all. And if you're a company or a person, the most authentic, unique, bold, willingness to be and be creative and intuitive and also be very flexible, know, like all of those things that are natural state as children and as people until we calcify around something.

John Jantsch (18:10.417)

Mm-hmm.

Derek (18:38.369)

or a business, if it has a founder energy, keeps evolving and then it gets, it loses that and then it calcifies. So we have to get back to that and that will become again, the new moat is to be that flexible.

John Jantsch (18:51.911)

So for a lot of folks, business owners, particularly, who feel like, I'm running as fast as I can to keep up with the AI race, right? So what's the first kind of inner shift that you'd encourage them to make instead?

Derek (19:00.227)

Which is the wrong race.

Derek (19:06.179)

Yeah, again, I understand you want to learn the tools. You want to try to become as AI native as you possibly can as fast as you can, because if you don't, you will be competed out of existence. And you may have a moat for now and some things, the moats will last longer because of regulations and different things like that. And just, you might have a really good brand. And so you'll have loyalty up to a point until they can get the same thing for half the cost or less. So you have some time, but, but, but again, what's you got to think about?

Community, real humanity, real authenticity. Yes, people want stuff cheaper and faster and better. There's no doubt about it. Amazon built Amazon over that. But ultimately we have, you have to ask, what is it about me or the thing I do that is truly irreplaceable? And you, and you have to start to really be looking at, and what's interesting is you'll find

The way you built your business in the beginning often had a lot more for most, a lot, a lot more of that humanity in it, a lot more of that touch. And we're going to have to, it's like what I call a handcrafted humanity. We have to return to that. What people, what's going to be a differentiator. It's why like on YouTube, the people that are the most successful now are the live streamers because it's live.

John Jantsch (20:13.927)

Thanks

John Jantsch (20:33.307)

Mm-hmm.

Derek (20:33.443)

because it's in depth, because people feel like they can trust you, they know you versus all of the AI slop and the highly polished and produced stuff. So something that feels real and authentic and raw and live is going to win above all the polished stuff over and over and over again. So this is the kind of thing we have to start thinking about. Again, if you look back to your roots,

A lot of the ways you lived and the things you valued and the things you did are what made you successful. Then you started building a machine and it became all about scaling the machine instead of scaling the original core and heart of why you were doing it in the first place. Get back to the story. Get back to the humanity. Get back to the community. Get back to real connection. That's going to be most fundamental.

John Jantsch (21:27.203)

Awesome. Well, Derek, I appreciate you taking a few moments to drop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Where would you invite people to connect with you and find out more about your work?

Derek (21:34.275)

Yeah, I mean, they can certainly get my book, obviously on Amazon or wherever books are sold or any of the books, whole new human. They can also go to Derek Rydell, legendary life on YouTube, lots and lots of videos or my website, Derek Rydell D E R E K R Y D A L L. And there's lots of free trainings and support. And then there's my podcast emergence, millions of downloads there. And there's, there's more of this deep dive conversation for sure.

John Jantsch (22:01.287)

Awesome. Great. 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.

Derek (22:06.839)

Likewise, John, thank you so much. been a pleasure.

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