John Jantsch (00:01.651)

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

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

Jon Benson (00:29.9)

Yeah.

Jon Benson (00:47.212)

Hey, John. Thanks for having me.

John Jantsch (00:49.585)

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

Jon Benson (00:55.202)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. yeah.

Jon Benson (01:02.04)

Mm-hmm.

Jon Benson (01:16.216)

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

John Jantsch (01:18.537)

20 years, okay.

Jon Benson (01:39.886)

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

John Jantsch (02:01.939)

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

Jon Benson (02:10.663)

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

John Jantsch (02:12.947)

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

Jon Benson (02:24.748)

Yeah.

Jon Benson (02:34.478)

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

John Jantsch (02:39.731)

Mm.

Jon Benson (03:03.22)

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

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

John Jantsch (03:55.283)

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

Jon Benson (04:00.942)

It's

Jon Benson (04:08.494)

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

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

John Jantsch (04:56.529)

okay. Not BNSM like I butchered it, okay?

Jon Benson (05:06.35)

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

John Jantsch (05:14.729)

Sure, yeah.

Jon Benson (05:32.663)

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

John Jantsch (06:02.549)

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

Jon Benson (06:06.094)

Mm-hmm.

Jon Benson (06:10.316)

Mm. Yep.

yeah.

Jon Benson (06:21.806)

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

John Jantsch (06:24.157)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jon Benson (06:51.022)

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

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

John Jantsch (07:20.456)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (07:48.413)

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

Jon Benson (07:56.174)

Mm-hmm.

Jon Benson (08:01.113)

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

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

John Jantsch (08:46.077)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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

Jon Benson (08:54.831)

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Jon Benson (09:11.983)

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

John Jantsch (09:19.719)

Yeah, yeah,

Jon Benson (09:40.336)

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

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

John Jantsch (10:35.294)

Yeah, yeah.

Jon Benson (10:39.043)

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

John Jantsch (10:46.665)

Right.

Jon Benson (11:06.487)

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

John Jantsch (11:14.739)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (11:25.885)

Mm.

Jon Benson (11:35.681)

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

John Jantsch (11:40.457)

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

Jon Benson (11:58.348)

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

John Jantsch (12:05.639)

Yeah. Yeah.

Jon Benson (12:27.481)

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

John Jantsch (12:39.091)

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

Jon Benson (12:57.314)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah.

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

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

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

Jon Benson (14:26.768)

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

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

John Jantsch (15:01.011)

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

Jon Benson (15:07.088)

Mm-hmm.

Jon Benson (15:15.087)

Right.

Jon Benson (15:26.992)

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

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

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

John Jantsch (16:37.907)

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

Jon Benson (16:43.12)

Mm-hmm.

Jon Benson (16:55.346)

yeah.

Jon Benson (17:01.796)

Right.

Right.

John Jantsch (17:07.503)

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

Jon Benson (17:10.072)

Mm-mm. Mm-hmm.

Jon Benson (17:20.24)

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

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

John Jantsch (17:58.441)

All right.

Jon Benson (18:16.913)

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

John Jantsch (18:23.251)

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

Jon Benson (18:40.579)

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

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

John Jantsch (19:08.713)

Mm.

John Jantsch (19:15.774)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (19:29.822)

me

Jon Benson (19:33.774)

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

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

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

John Jantsch (20:33.415)

Mm-hmm.

Jon Benson (20:58.491)

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

John Jantsch (21:06.473)

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

Jon Benson (21:15.471)

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

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

John Jantsch (21:53.481)

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

Jon Benson (21:57.125)

Yeah, definitely. Yeah.

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Thank you, John. I appreciate the time.

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John Jantsch (00:01.582)

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

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

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

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

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

John Jantsch (02:20.718)

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

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

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

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

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

John Jantsch (04:40.174)

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

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

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

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

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

John Jantsch (07:05.646)

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

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

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

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

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

John Jantsch (09:19.384)

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

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

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

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

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

John Jantsch (11:29.986)

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

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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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John Jantsch (00:00.977)

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

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

Jess (00:57.162)

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

John Jantsch (01:06.471)

Well, how old is oldest child?

Jess (01:09.07)

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

John Jantsch (01:10.219)

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

Jess (01:23.01)

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

John Jantsch (01:37.127)

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

Jess (01:52.492)

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

John Jantsch (02:03.301)

You're welcome.

Jess (02:22.416)

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

John Jantsch (02:25.969)

Mm-hmm.

Jess (02:49.238)

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

John Jantsch (02:52.903)

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

Jess (02:58.658)

Both can be true.

John Jantsch (03:18.247)

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

Jess (03:38.796)

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

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

John Jantsch (04:09.223)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (04:35.62)

Mm-hmm.

Jess (04:37.206)

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

John Jantsch (04:49.884)

Right.

John Jantsch (05:03.995)

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

Jess (05:21.486)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Exactly.

John Jantsch (05:33.605)

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

Jess (05:36.056)

Right.

Jess (05:40.301)

Yep.

John Jantsch (06:03.245)

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

Jess (06:09.826)

So.

Jess (06:14.668)

Yeah, right, exactly.

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

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

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

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

John Jantsch (07:57.968)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (08:01.807)

Yeah, yeah. So.

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

Jess (08:16.354)

Yeah.

Jess (08:26.094)

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

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

John Jantsch (08:57.093)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (09:14.097)

Mm-hmm.

Jess (09:25.458)

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

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

John Jantsch (10:04.813)

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

Jess (10:16.76)

Mm-hmm.

Jess (10:24.288)

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

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

John Jantsch (11:03.6)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (11:18.439)

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

Jess (11:21.184)

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

Jess (11:36.566)

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

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

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

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

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

Jess (13:57.782)

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

John Jantsch (14:06.543)

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

Jess (14:13.241)

yeah.

Jess (14:16.759)

Yeah.

Jess (14:21.431)

Yeah.

Jess (14:29.102)

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

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

John Jantsch (15:05.511)

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

Jess (15:12.204)

Mmm.

Jess (15:16.428)

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

John Jantsch (15:21.095)

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

Jess (15:26.946)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jess (15:36.909)

Yep.

Jess (15:40.534)

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

John Jantsch (15:48.903)

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

Jess (16:02.766)

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

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

John Jantsch (16:35.121)

Yeah.

Jess (17:01.112)

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

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

John Jantsch (17:35.911)

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

Jess (17:42.158)

Mm-hmm.

Jess (17:49.738)

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

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

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

John Jantsch (18:49.735)

Try out some new material.

John Jantsch (18:58.801)

Right. Right.

John Jantsch (19:06.119)

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

Jess (19:11.288)

Mm-hmm. Totally.

Jess (19:16.736)

Yeah, absolutely.

Jess (19:22.742)

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

John Jantsch (19:25.637)

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

John Jantsch (19:41.009)

Yeah, it's funny.

John Jantsch (19:46.172)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (19:52.977)

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

Jess (20:13.901)

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

John Jantsch (20:20.217)

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

Jess (20:40.238)

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

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

John Jantsch (21:20.485)

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

Jess (21:23.777)

Yeah.

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

John Jantsch (21:46.853)

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

Jess (21:52.672)

Yeah, thanks, John.

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