John Jantsch (00:01.249)

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

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

Tom Rath (00:55.406)

Good to see you again, John.

John Jantsch (00:57.215)

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

Tom Rath (01:08.758)

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

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

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

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

John Jantsch (02:38.359)

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

Tom Rath (03:06.338)

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

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

John Jantsch (03:47.447)

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

Tom Rath (04:08.33)

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

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

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

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

John Jantsch (05:43.693)

Mm.

John Jantsch (05:53.675)

Right.

Tom Rath (06:02.904)

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

John Jantsch (06:08.661)

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

Tom Rath (06:22.392)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (06:32.641)

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

Tom Rath (06:42.03)

Mm-hmm.

Tom Rath (06:50.594)

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

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

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

John Jantsch (07:54.37)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (08:09.101)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (08:14.295)

Yeah.

Tom Rath (08:17.868)

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

John Jantsch (08:25.697)

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

Tom Rath (08:27.682)

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

John Jantsch (08:39.937)

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

Tom Rath (08:48.355)

Yeah.

Tom Rath (09:10.112)

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

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

John Jantsch (09:53.453)

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

Tom Rath (10:01.869)

Right.

Tom Rath (10:18.648)

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

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

John Jantsch (11:12.823)

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

Tom Rath (11:37.772)

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

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

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

John Jantsch (12:40.223)

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

Tom Rath (12:43.768)

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

John Jantsch (12:50.529)

Yeah, Yeah, right.

John Jantsch (12:56.247)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (13:02.764)

Yeah.

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

Tom Rath (13:12.024)

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

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

John Jantsch (13:57.613)

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

Tom Rath (14:11.79)

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

John Jantsch (14:35.2)

Mm-hmm.

Tom Rath (14:40.918)

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

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

in the process as well.

John Jantsch (15:41.111)

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

Tom Rath (16:09.74)

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

John Jantsch (16:31.958)

Mm-hmm.

Tom Rath (16:37.408)

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

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

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

John Jantsch (17:45.463)

Yeah

Tom Rath (18:01.836)

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

John Jantsch (18:13.995)

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

Tom Rath (18:25.09)

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

John Jantsch (18:30.477)

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

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

Tom Rath (19:08.206)

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

John Jantsch (19:14.899)

yeah.

Tom Rath (19:38.028)

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

John Jantsch (19:52.299)

Yeah, entitled, that's another one.

Tom Rath (20:07.224)

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

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

John Jantsch (20:48.981)

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

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

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

Tom Rath (21:25.846)

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

John Jantsch (21:47.33)

Yeah.

Tom Rath (21:53.494)

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

John Jantsch (22:06.935)

Yeah, yeah.

Tom Rath (22:23.404)

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

personality traits and dispositions and interests and all that stuff.

John Jantsch (22:54.797)

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

Tom Rath (23:08.898)

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

John Jantsch (23:12.941)

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

Tom Rath (23:17.198)

All right.

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John Jantsch (00:03.01)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and no guest today. Again, some of you that have been following along may recall I am doing the seven steps to small business marketing success. This is actually episode number three, step number three. So you can check out in the show notes the past sessions as well if you're just trying to catch up. But today I want to talk about this re new reality. our businesses have

possibly become invisible to AI search. In fact, I want you to do this test.

John Jantsch (00:43.394)

Go to Chat CPT Perplexity Claude, take your pick, right? Type in three questions that your best customers look for or ask when they are looking for a business like yours. Not anything about your particular business, but the the problems they're trying to solve, the the issues that they have. something that they would ask before hiring somebody you. Now, we you can stop the episode right now and do that. I'll wait. but.

John Jantsch (01:16.44)

Describe what mu what you find. think about what you find. Is it nothing? Is it you? are you dominating? That would be awesome, of course. that's a new reality. and this isn't a future problem. This isn't coming. this is a current one. Now, a lot of local businesses are still showing up in in Google and Google Maps, and that's still important, but it's it's fading a bit, right? people, I don't know if it's right or not, but people go today and when they see those like.

Best remodeling contractor in SoSo City, and AI tells them three companies, they believe it. because they've ty typically typed in who do kitchens in older home homes who blah, blah, blah, blah. So it's a very specific type of search now. And the results that come up there are the ones that are winning. so are you coming up there or are your competitors coming up there? I mean, this is this is how research is being done today. and and I think

A lot of small businesses are still optimized for, I don't know, 2019. when all you needed to do, boy, if you showed up on that Google Maps or you showed up in in Google search, then that, you know, that was really all it took. I think this is an opportunity. I mean, I think the founders who act now still absolutely have the the opportunity. It's kind of like when we first went online, we first started blogging, all those kinds of things.

The opportunity now is to actually be first in AI search. So what's changed? for 20 years, as I said, you know, Google, can Google find you? I mean, in a lot of ways, we got lazy because that was the only question you really had to answer. it it still applies. It's just not the whole answer anymore. so what we have to do or or we have to think in terms of is not just

search results, keyword phrases, all the things that were thrown around by SEO folks so much. We have to be findable, we have to be credible, and we have to be retrievable. Those are three things I really want to talk about. And and it's not I I'm not here to talk about how to hack SEO or how to hack, you know, GEO or whatever new term they're gonna come up w with, you know, for for these various engines. It's really just more a matter of how

John Jantsch (03:39.276)

We have to get our story out the same way we always have. It's just sometimes you have to adapt to the new realities of of the buyer. I mean, and I think that's something that doesn't get said enough, is that we're not reacting to the new realities of AI or of Google. We're reacting to how people choose to buy today. And that's really if you keep that in mind, and you keep in mind what they have available to them, that's what we need to really respond to and not just.

Some new platform or some new tool or some new trend or some new hype. All right. So findable. there really is traditional search, social search, and now AI mediated. I don't know what we would call it, search. Those are the three kinds of search that we have to to respond to today. And again, most people have really just thought about one of those. So topic authority.

Think about that. It used to be keywords, right? We we wanted to have a page that that we optimized for you know three or four keywords that people would search and that the search engines would would actually be keyed on. and today it's really more about topic authority, a deep, rich topic authority.

That you can actually prove that you were an expert in, not that you can write about, but that you can actually prove you have the results, you have the case studies, you have the reviews, you have all the things that would human, real human beings would be saying about your business.

This is strategic. It's not technical. And I think a lot of times that's what we've done. We've kind of defaulted to the technical aspects. And frankly, a lot of SEO folks love that because technical is hard. Technical is easy to confuse. strategic is not so much, frankly. And I think that that's the the the part, while it's a mindset shift, I think that's the part that's the real opportunity for folks. So credible.

John Jantsch (05:42.23)

Is the second part. So findable, topic authority, credible. Does your site confirm that they're in the right place? And a lot of times again, I I could talk to I'm blue in the face about websites and and the brochure aspect of them as opposed to the practical aspect of them, but

John Jantsch (06:04.588)

Here's a here's a question I love to ask people. When's the last time you read actually read your homepage? that's what I find is quite often the case. We we'll start working for somebody and we'll have lots of suggestions about ways to improve their homepage. And they actually are like, I didn't even realize we said that, or we don't even offer that service anymore. so you most founders haven't done it in years. And I and I think that quite often we run across sites that reflect the reality of a business three years ago.

I I actually ran into somebody said they haven't updated, they haven't changed one thing on their website since 2019. We are in 2026 today. you know, that that I don't even want to start with how much has changed since 2019. but but clearly that site is not going to perform. and and the thing is, a lot of people get very focused on design. Design's really not going to solve the problem. Yes, the site has to look like somebody.

thinks it's going to look, or that they're used to how to navigate, you know, how it looks. But it's really more about deep proof of real work and and a connection so that when the buyer or potential buyer shows up, says, you get me, or I I feel heard, or you understand the problems that I'm trying to solve. All right. So then the last one is retrievable. So we've got findable, credible,

And retrievable. So this is probably kind of a new one for many people. AI builds its answers from whatever is publicly available on a website, like your website content, structured data, third-party presence, reviews, citations, right? And so all of those things have to be there if if your content is

Very thin, if it is missing structured data, if it's if there's weak external presence, meaning that that people aren't linking back to it, people aren't talking about it. AI can can either find you or really can't describe you with accuracy. And that's why we really want to start talking about, you know, real FAQs. Go read every one of those reviews that you have gotten. plug them into an AI tool and ask that to to analyze and summarize the reviews that you've gotten.

John Jantsch (08:25.382)

many times you that that will be the the absolute gold mine of the problems that you really solve. And then the flip side of that, the fears that a client or your your clients at least were really worried about in in in engaging a company like yours or or your competitors. And I think that that's where we have to start thinking about real content.

That addresses those things because that's what people are searching. They're going out there and saying, I want to find a contractor that won't destroy my home, that won't let my dog out. I mean, they're asking very specific things like that. And that's what AI is trying to surface. And all it does is goes out there and and reads a whole bunch of stuff. and and in fact, we're seeing that businesses that that write that real stuff, the voice of customer, really putting their reviews

Out there as like, here's the problems we solve. Maybe didn't even have a great search presence before because search was dominated by companies that knew how to hack the algorithm. But AI doesn't care about the what Google used to care about. it really cares about retrieving the data to very specific searches that people are making today. So, all right, here are three things that you need to build.

Your website has to be a selling tool, not a brochure. Hub pages, something I've talked about for many years. And the beauty is they become more important than ever. So I'm going to review review that. And then the last one is third party presence. And that's a part that many business owners, I won't say they neglect, but it's just the hard part in a lot of cases. It's the part that you don't control, that you don't own. And so you have to be very intentional about making it happen.

All right. So the website, a brochure describes a selling tool converts. That's the difference, right? And so there are really four things that I think have to be there. They are a priority. there is an order to them. your core message above the fold. Here's who we serve, here's how we solve their problem better than anyone ever thought about. Not here's what we do. your ideal client needs to be named. It's like we serve and we are the best.

John Jantsch (10:45.848)

Better than anyone at serving XYZ. Very specific. Identify segments, whatever it is, identify them so that when somebody arrives there, they're like, Okay, you you work with people like me.

Heart stop on what's next, right? Not a menu, not contact us. One frictionless action for the person who's ready. Schedule a consultation. Download this free assessment. get a quote. don't have a dozen ways that people can think about contacting you. Have very active, not passive, very active. Here is why you should contact us. Here's what you'll get when you schedule. Here is the the

you know, tool that you can use to download to solve your problem. Have a very specific call to action.

Probably what I see more than anything is that first one. The core message is is either buried, generic, or missing entirely. I can't tell you how many sites I still run across that above the fold, first thing somebody reads is a description of what your profession is, what your industry is. We are accountants in XYZ City. and that was a old SEO holdover. but what somebody wants to know is who you serve.

How you solve their problem, how you how you solve their problem like nobody else ever dreamed of doing. That's what they need to understand first. All right, hub pages. So this is, I mentioned already, topic authority. This is your topic authority unit, is a hub page. And so the idea is if you think about a book, you've got a large body of work that is organized around chapters. And that's really what a hub page is. So if you have a topic,

John Jantsch (12:34.478)

Home remodeling kitchens, for example. that's a topic that somebody who wants to remodel a kitchen is going out there and looking for information about. So if you had the page that says everything you need to know about remodeling, but again, that's gonna be broken up into getting ready to remodel. Should you remodel?

Design considerations, appliances, pre-construction, construction, after finishes. I mean, a whole category of subtopics. And so the idea behind a hub page is somebody arrives at that page, maybe they just want to know about wallpaper today. but they are remodeling a kitchen. So they find that page, and then there's a subtopic on you know wall finishes. And so they jump over to that, but then they jump back to the hub page.

So, if when they want to talk about appliances or kitchen countertops, for example. And so this is like the entire guide, the ultimate guide to remodeling your kitchen, has all these subtopics that are essentially blog posts that you link out to. So this, but this page becomes the collection or the structure of all of that topic. And so what that certainly tells the AIs, sells the search engines has for years.

That this is an authoritative page on this topic that then has may it might have 10, 20, 30,000 words ultimately collected in a number of blog posts that are on subtopics. So it's it's probably more about it's not the it's not the content. Well, the content's important, but a huge part of it is the structure of the content. this is like a jumping off point for anybody who wants to know about that topic. And the AI tools as well as the search engines absolutely love that.

And the beauty from a practical small business owner standpoint is that's something you can structure, plan, take a year to build. It's like writing a book, as I said. it just has all of the topics organized on this one page. and you could start having case studies, you can start having look through all of your reviews, and somebody said about how clean you are, somebody said.

John Jantsch (14:48.154)

about your pricing. somebody said about your design. So you you all of a sudden can start organizing your reviews even around some of these topics. And that's that's what the AI tools want to see. That's what they they want to see, topic authority, topic expertise with real proof, not just 700 words that AI spun up, real proof that only you, you're the only ones who can actually talk about what that client got as a result. and so hub pages are

to me, really your secret weapon to dominate. We've done it for we've done them for many, many clients. And they rank have always ranked in SEO and they are always ranking now in AI searches because of the nature the the the real focus nature on a core topic. third party so AI doesn't just use your website.

I mean, really the search engines never did too. That's why p you hear people talk about backlinks and reviews and and getting other people in social media to talk about your products and services. That's always been important. So things like your Google Business profile, industry directories, reviews, mentions, citations across the web, those are all things that you do actually have a way to actively participate in. You don't control them necessarily, people write what they

want to write or going to write, say in reviews and mentions. But you do have the ability to optimize, to, to make sure that your information is correct in those directories. That you are your you you if you do searches in AI, you'll see there are certain directories and certain websites like Reddit and things that that some of the of of the AI tools actually rely on pretty heavily. And and those will change, evolve. They all, you know, they constantly are.

But you get a sense of some places maybe that you're not mentioned. Say how's, you know, again, going back to where I'm remodeling contractor, is a source that a lot of the AI tools depend on. It's an authoritative source. are you playing there? that that just gives you some some ideas on some third-party places. in a lot of ways, think about it as I think we've always thought about it as housekeeping.

John Jantsch (17:05.848)

To to be in those directories, to make sure that they were correct, that you didn't have the wrong phone number. A lot of people look at that as housekeeping. And I think today, in today's environment, it's it's more infrastructure. you know, it's something that you actually have to build, it's behind the scenes, it you know, it's not gonna pay off today. Long term thing that you need to to build as part of the infrastructure of your business. So if you didn't run that test, pause now and run that test.

Screenshot the baseline. Are your your competitors showing up at when you do a search that your customers were are likely asking? are you showing up? it just kind of gives you the picture of, you know, if you've ignored this, it gives you the picture of what you have to do. so that's really it today. I I will tell you that if if some of the things I talked about today, again, go get the free ebook. it's dtm.

world slash seven steps. I misspoke. We I think we're charging $4.99 for it tremendous amount of value. It's more of a workbook than an ebook. it'll give you lots of things to think about, lots of things to work on as well. So it's DTM.world seven steps. And if you just want to skip all of that and find out how working with us and and having us install strategy first in your business and then build a marketing operating system.

with you that you own that that can address the each of these seven steps, that is just duct tapemarketing.com slash consultation. So thanks for tuning in. next episode, episode step number five of seven is coming up. So thanks for tuning in. Hopefully we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

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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 (00:01.666)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and no guests today. I'm actually gonna do a bunch of solo shows. So I'm still gonna have a guest. So if you're listening in line, you will hear the occasional guests still. But I'm doing seven shows as a series. So if you wanna, I'll tag them all and I'll remind you this is episode number three of the seven. but I wrote an ebook about 20 years ago.

Called The Seven Steps of Small Business Marketing Success. It was extremely popular, downloaded hundreds of thousands of times. It was a talk that I gave dozens and dozens of times. Because it really took all of the issues that a lot of small business owners were experiencing with marketing and identified them, but also then put them in order to correct.

So over time that became less relevant. however, the fundamentals of marketing have not changed. So for 2026, I completely updated this. And so there is a brand new version of the seven steps of small business marketing success. And I'll tell you how you can get a copy of it. It's more workbook, I think than than ebook. Certainly it has great information in it for you, but but it also asks you to do some things, to think about some things, to take action on things. So

I've really been referring to it as more of a workbook. So this is episode number one, which is step number one, and something I call the the founder portrait, why clarity comes before strategy. So quite often marketing fails upstream, if you will, you know, in the tactics, when they're being done, how they're being done. but

The founder is often the variable that nobody talks about. And that's what this episode's really about. You know, I've had this conversation many, many times with founders. they want to hire a new agency, build a new website, do new campaign. Six months later, nothing's really changed. so the first question I always ask is: I mean, when did you last look at your business? Honestly, when did you last look at your relationship with

John Jantsch (02:19.084)

that business, honestly. And and frankly, that doesn't sound like a marketing question, but it really is at the heart of a marketing question or or really at the heart of the challenge with marketing that a lot of small business owners face. So and what happens is, you know, a founder starts a business, they start growing successfully, maybe 10 years in, business feels okay.

but it doesn't feel the same. It doesn't feel right. kind of it it it's maybe drifted a little bit from you know, what they thought it was going to be. And and you know, it's funny with drift, it it goes very slowly and then all at once you find yourself somewhere that that you didn't think you wanted to be. And and a lot of that has to do with the fact that as a business grows, you know, decisions and how decisions are made actually.

needs to change also. And I think that that what I've discovered is that's one of the toughest ones. Maybe you're hiring people to do tasks that you used to do, but the decisions for how they're held accountable, the decisions for what it is that you do now as the founder, you know, is a thing that really never changed. and and this isn't really a th this definitely is not a story about failure because a lot of times it's just it's that thing you just can't identify. Things seem to be going okay, but you just can't if identify, you know, the the

The position that you're in. So here's what I want you to do. And and if you want to, if you need to stop this, I hate to tell you to stop it because I I want you to come back, but if you need to stop this, go grab a pen and paper, or a pencil, even and paper, and come back here. Cause I'm gonna ask you to give some thought to four pretty intense questions. but but and you may not know the answers to them, but I want to get you thinking.

about them because I think that they can actually unlock some things that maybe you haven't been able to identify in your marketing. All right, so I'll pause. You can pause now. Go get that paper or if it's right there. And we're back, right? Okay, you're back with your pen and paper. All right. So here are the four questions. Number one, and you can pause this to answer the questions and come back and and I'll read the the the other questions as well.

John Jantsch (04:44.534)

What's actually working in your business and how do you know? This can be a pretty broad question, but I am certainly talking about marketing for the most part. you know, the there's a difference between activity, you know, like what we're doing a bunch of and what's working. and I think a lot of times we conflate activity with with what's working. So working means it's produces revenue.

it or it reduces your cost to acquire a customer. I mean, a lot of times everything else is just activity. All right. So that's number one. What's actually working and how do you know?

John Jantsch (05:27.436)

Okay, number two.

And this is this is where it starts getting a little interesting for you. What are you doing out of habit, guilt, or maybe even optimism that you should stop? Now, maybe nobody's ever asked you that, maybe you've never even thought about that idea, but boy, especially out of habit. Things that we just do because, hey, we've always done them, or everybody in our industry has always done them that way.

John Jantsch (06:01.312)

So as you think about this, think about all the elements of your business. is there a service line that never quite worked, but you can't give up on? You know, a channel that that that you've been on since 2021 and haven't really considered. I think I think naming it is is quite frankly is the hard part. to really dig in and think, you know, are we on TikTok because everybody said we should be, but we hate it and we don't know if we're getting anything out of

So naming it, I think sometimes then gives you the permission to stop doing it. And a lot of times effective marketing or marketing strategy starts with figuring out the things that you're doing today that you should stop doing. Okay, answer question two, and we'll move on to three.

John Jantsch (06:51.948)

Where is your business actually making money versus where are you pretending it is? Pretending might feel like a strong word, but I do think a lot of times we just assume you know that might be a better word, that that certain elements or certain things that we're doing are actually making money for the business. And every now and then, especially if you're one of those business owners like me, that you know, the the finance part of the business is something that I just

Feel like we hire a bookkeeper and they take care of it. I don't really study it. But if you're ignoring that element of your business and you're not really seeing where profit is, you're not really tracking the inputs like labor that go into things, quite often we can convince ourselves or kid ourselves that something's making money because it's generating revenue. And revenue and profit are certainly not the same thing. So

John Jantsch (07:50.424)

Some of the things that we stick to and continue to do are because we like them, or because we like doing them, or because we feel good about them, or because we've always done them. You start doing this math on your PL or really digging into expenses, and you start realizing we should stop focusing on this. And I I'll tell you one of the areas, one of the areas that I always find.

this is true for a lot of businesses, is that we're focused on the wrong client, or we've taken clients because maybe it was slow that month and and it wasn't a good fit. We're losing money on that. We should just stop doing that altogether. We should stop offering that service altogether because even though we can attract clients, it's actually holding us back. It's actually costing us an opportunity to actually be able to grow the business or scale the business because.

we won't let go of that because for fear of the fact that well gosh we're gonna take a you know a hundred thousand dollar hit or something if we quit doing that line of business. When more often than not, that's what's gonna lead to the twenty, thirty, forty percent growth in in the really profitable business. All right. So that was question three.

Question four is quite possibly the hardest for some because we've stopped thinking about this. What do we actually want this business to give us? What do you, in your particular case, want this business to give you? Now, most marketing work completely skips this category. And I think that you know, a lot of times when we work with business owners, and that's why I'm asking these questions, because this is how we start a strategy first engagement.

Is getting into this founder's portrait, as I like to call it. because a lot of decisions are made because they are to grow revenue or because you saw somebody else doing their marketing a certain way. And and they're not necessarily based in, well, this is actually what I want this business to give me. I just want to do meaningful work. I want to have a certain exit, I want to have a certain lifestyle. And if we're not

John Jantsch (09:59.04)

making decisions based on that quite often we'll we'll make decisions for the wrong reasons. they won't be bad decisions necessarily, but they'll just be made for the wrong reason. So there's a difference between I think how you would actually view marketing in general based on that. And and if if if you don't know the answers to that question to number four, really no marketing strategy is going to serve you, or you'll get lucky, I guess.

if it does. All right. So I hope you took some time. If not, please go back and listen to this. when you're at a place where that you can actually give some thought to those questions and actually record your thoughts on those questions because you'll get a lot clearer if you do. So what we're trying to do is create what what we call the founder's portrait. So this is not a document that you would ever share. it's just the ground you stand on. It's like, okay.

It it's the filter. you know, without it, I think everything downstream, everything you ask people to do sort of inherits the blur, if you will, that that's created. with it, I think, who you attract as an IC I see you know a a core client, who you attract

From from a messaging standpoint, the channels that you go on. I mean, everything gets built on something that I think is real because of this founder's portrait. So this process might take you an hour. One blank page, four questions, no team, no advisors, no AI. Don't use AI to answer these questions. and and don't try to turn this into a plan. see where it takes you. See if it opens up questions for you. see if it

is challenging in a way that makes you rethink everything about your business. And again, maybe you've got the answer, maybe you've got clarity, but quite frankly, that can actually be just as potent knowing that can be just as impotent or just as potent as as as actually coming up with a plan because of it. So one of the things I'd ask you to do if you're up for this challenge is if you answer these questions. I'd love it if you would

John Jantsch (12:19.176)

just email. It's just John at Duct Tape Marketing. email me your thoughts on question number four. I would love to collect some of those. I I'd I'd really love to see, you know, what you want the business to give you. I want to see really personal responses. And I and certainly I will reply. There's no wrong answer, so I'm not gonna tell you, no, you need to redo this. but I'd love to hear what you're thinking. I'd love to hear how deep that you got.

in those. So that's all I have for day. for today. I will tell you if you want to get a copy of the ebook that I referenced, this is step number one. I'm going to do seven episodes based on obviously a a session on each step. is it's DTM.world. So that's DTM like duct tape marketing dot world slash seven steps. is five bucks. just so you have some skin in the game. But I think you will find

the workbook aspect of this. lots of great information, but also lots of great action steps and things to to ask you to do. So take care and hopefully we will 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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