nadosi.com

Consumer Behavior Lab (00:00.365)

perfect.

John Jantsch (00:02.467)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Michael Aaron Flicker. He’s the founder and CEO of ZenoSci Ventures and co-founder of the Consumer Behavior Lab alongside renowned behavioral scientist Richard Schotton. The CBL’s mission is to explore how behavioral science can be applied to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of media and marketing. Michael Aaron and Richard’s book.

is what we’re going to talk about today, hacking the human mind, the behavioral science secrets behind 17 of the world’s best brands. So I go welcome the show.

Consumer Behavior Lab (00:42.191)

Thanks so much for having me, John. Excited to be here with you.

John Jantsch (00:44.909)

So let’s start, a lot of times I have to start with the title of a book. So what does it really mean to hack the human mind in the context of marketing and branding?

Consumer Behavior Lab (00:55.723)

So, so many books about behavioral science, about the academics of marketing start with the studies or start with the, with esoteric research. And we said, what if we turned it around? And what if we said some of the best brands in the world have insights into human psychology that they’re taking advantage of whether they know it or not. So let’s take those examples.

break them down, understand what they’re doing, and then explain some of the science behind it so that you can have confidence using it in your own business for your own brand. So we wanted to start with the brands rather than with the academic studies and make sure that we always ended it with, what? So what do I do with this knowledge so that I can apply it to the brands or the businesses that you’re running?

John Jantsch (01:48.579)

So you mentioned something I was curious about. said whether they know it or not. I mean, how often did you find that brands were like, what are you talking about? I mean, we just, it’s like, that’s why my mom said you should treat people. Is that not good?

Consumer Behavior Lab (02:00.014)

I think what we find is that great marketing strategists, great marketing creatives have an insight into human psychology in a way that many of us do not have. But we also found folks that are selling hot dogs on the street, those that are running florist shops on the corner market have those same insights because they’re this close to the consumer.

They’re next to the consumer, they’re selling every day. And so at both extremes in the vaulted agencies and brands of the world, and at the ground level, when you’re actually selling to people every day, you learn things about human psychology that get put into practice. so it was, so our, our, our belief is that most of the campaigns, most of the brands we looked at, they understood that they had access to something special.

We don’t think they knew many of the academic studies behind it that proved why it was likely to work.

John Jantsch (03:01.687)

Yeah. So in some ways you were validating something they had already discovered, but didn’t realize it was a secret. So were there any myths or best practices in quotes that you found that you could challenge head on or that you were even trying to challenge head on?

Consumer Behavior Lab (03:05.902)

It’s a nice way to say it.

Consumer Behavior Lab (03:20.375)

I don’t think we sought, we set out to challenge this, but one of the most common things we see marketers do is they have something they want to sell and then they start stacking the RTBs, the reasons to believe this thing goes faster and is quieter and by the way, it’ll clean your teeth while you do all those other things. And you know, we did not set out to debunk that, but we opened the book with a story about five guys.

which is, if you’re an American listener, one of America’s fastest growing, better burger chains. And that founder, Jerry Morrell, started with an insight that he was just walking along a Maryland boardwalk where he sees one company stall with a massive line when everybody else’s stalls were empty. And Thrasher’s fries on the Maryland boardwalk

John Jantsch (03:48.697)

Mm-hmm.

Consumer Behavior Lab (04:16.63)

had this massive line. And he got to thinking, is this stall that only sells one thing fries, doing something better than everybody else that sold burgers and milkshakes and sodas? And so anyway, that’s one of the founding beliefs of Five Guys. And even to today, $1.6 billion franchise, they don’t sell chicken, they don’t sell salads, they don’t sell ice cream, they only sell burgers and fries. And there’s some interesting academic

studies that back that up.

John Jantsch (04:47.213)

Yeah, yeah.

I can think just in my own experience of some kind of local places that only do like fried chicken or something. And they’re just, they’re kind of legendary because they, I think there’s something about the experience of that too. It’s like, we know why we’re going there. So let’s get into the lab work. mean, you, you and Richard are both, I mean, you have consumer behavior labs. So there is a little bit of laboratory work involved in that, right. In the research. How do you take insights?

Consumer Behavior Lab (05:15.55)

That’s right.

John Jantsch (05:19.006)

I don’t know, academic behavioral science and turn them into like real campaigns or product design.

Consumer Behavior Lab (05:26.528)

I think what we’re always looking for is that there’s an incredible wealth of knowledge happening in the universities that stops short of, so what do we do about it? And so it’s this goldmine of insights and goldmine of observations that gets validated. But then the question is, so what do you do? And so what we’ve been looking for is saying, well, we have high performing campaigns in the UK. They have something called.

John Jantsch (05:38.497)

Yeah, yeah.

Consumer Behavior Lab (05:55.786)

the IPA effectiveness database, is campaigns that are proven to drive sales. And there’s a lot of data supporting that. So you look at famously effective campaigns, and then you look at, what’s the academics that could help understand that. And there’s not always a match, but when you can find a match, you can mine the academics and you can match it to the effective work. Now we have a starting spot.

But if that match is just kind of a fun uncover, we don’t think that matters. Then we have to make sure you can apply it to a business or a brand that you might be working on. And then we feel we have some material that’s worthy of conversation.

John Jantsch (06:39.641)

Do you want to give me a couple of concrete, specific, detailed examples about, I don’t mean a whole campaign necessarily, but here’s one human behavior that we discovered you could impact this by doing it. Give us an example.

Consumer Behavior Lab (06:53.515)

So often as marketers, we get this idea that we can just paint in the picture of the mind of somebody, how amazing our brand or our product is, that they’re just going to buy it. And what the data tells us is that may be true, but how you paint it really matters. And a brand that we dissected in the book was Apple, but not all of Apple, specifically when Steve Jobs

reveals the iPod and he stands up in stage and he holds the iPod up and what he says is it’ll be a thousand songs in your pocket. And up until that point, everybody else was saying five gigabytes of storage, 128 kilobytes of this. And so what we got thinking was, well, what’s the science behind why a thousand songs in your pocket really connects with people?

And the study that we went to was in 1972, Ian Begg, Western Ontario University, recruits 25 students and he reads them 22 word phrases. Some phrases are impossible amount, rusty engine, flaming forest, and others are apparent fact, common fate. And when he asked the group to remember as many terms as they could, they can recall

just about 23%, just about one out of five. But here’s the observation that matters. They can only remember 9 % of the abstract words, like impossible amount, but 36 % of the concrete terms, like white horse. That’s a four-fold increase if they can picture it in their minds. And so what it teaches us is that great taglines, great phrases,

Conjure an image in your mind red bull. It gives you wings Eminem it melts in your mouth Not in your hand skittles taste the rainbow Maxwell’s house good to the last drop you can picture what I’m saying as you say it and that really can make the same idea much more sticky and much more concrete in the mind of the buyer

John Jantsch (09:09.594)

Great example. I was curious when I read the subtitle, did you choose 17 different, was there some sort of like psychological trick being played or hack being played by the number 17?

Consumer Behavior Lab (09:21.606)

the answer is yes. The answer is yes. And, you know, there’s, there’s a few things at play here, but the illusion of effort is something that Richard and I are really, are really interested in. And the basic psychological principle here is that by getting to a very specific number, it shows a lot more intentionality and a lot more purpose. We think if we had said 20 of the world’s best brands, know, we just roll right over it.

There’s some interesting science behind it, but that’s why. Yes, we’re trying to show specificity. We’re trying to show the effort that went into that. And we know that that has caught more people’s attention because of it.

John Jantsch (10:03.354)

Yeah, 3000 % increase as opposed to 3217. Way more believable, right?

Consumer Behavior Lab (10:09.916)

In our book, we dissect a brand Dyson. And I don’t know if everybody knows this is a famous vacuum cleaner. James Dyson is the inventor. And when he invents it, his first ad that he puts into the market was 5,127 prototypes to get to the world’s first bagless vacuum. He loves it so much in his autobiography. It’s the first line of his autobiography. Look at the effort to get that bagless vacuum. It’s just more believable.

John Jantsch (10:35.508)

the

Consumer Behavior Lab (10:39.721)

than if he had said 5200 prototypes.

John Jantsch (10:44.056)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. you, since you did profile and you, actually chose 17 brands, were there any like that really surprised you? mean, somebody doing something behaviorally significant or savvy that, that you didn’t expect.

Consumer Behavior Lab (11:00.714)

You know, I think there was one that had a big impact that I wouldn’t have originally thought. And it’s this concept that comes from Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize winner economics. 1993 Kahneman and his colleague, Donald Radelmeier come up with a study on colonoscopy patients. And here’s how the study goes. The colonoscopy patients are going through an actual procedure and every 60 seconds,

they register their pain level. At the end of the experience, they get two chances to give a retrospective rating. One right after the experience is over, and then another one a month later. And what you find is that those retrospective ratings do not correspond with the total pain level at all. In fact, the retrospective ratings, whether it was the hour after or a month later, coincide with two

critical moments, the peak intensity that happened during the experience and the final moment of the procedure. so Kahneman calls this the peak and rule. So that’s kind of interesting. Like this is where academic stops. But what does that mean for brands and marketers? There’s a LA hotel called the Magic Castle Hotel. It was featured in Chip and Dan Heath’s book, The Power of Moments. And the Magic Castle Hotel

has top 5 % of all TripAdvisor hotels in LA. 94 % of their reviews are very good or excellent, better than the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills. But what’s surprising about this hotel is it’s a 1950s motel. Gated decor, mediocre rooms, small swimming pool in the courtyard. But what have they done so well? And what does almost every review talk about? They have a popsicle hotline in the pool. And you pick up the phone.

John Jantsch (12:44.74)

Mm.

Consumer Behavior Lab (12:59.165)

day or night, and they will bring out on a silver platter as many popsicles as you’d like to eat. It’s a peak moment in a average hotel, and that makes everybody love going there, and everybody loves to dial the phone. So thinking about how you can use what would otherwise be a very hard to advertise LA motel and make it into an all-star in the city, you don’t have to redo everything.

John Jantsch (13:05.242)

Yeah,

Consumer Behavior Lab (13:26.736)

In fact, if you could just come up something that everybody loves, a lot more people will be endeared to you.

John Jantsch (13:32.858)

Well, and I suspect also one of the key ingredients is it’s kind of unexpected. Like, who does that? Right.

Consumer Behavior Lab (13:37.98)

I think you’re right. Yeah, I mean, I think that the point of the peak is that it stands apart from everything else. If they had just the softest pillows, somehow you think it might not make as much of a difference, but something fun and social in a courtyard surrounded by all these relatively uninspired rooms, it stands out.

John Jantsch (14:02.298)

Yeah. And I think the beauty of that message, I mean, obviously it’s a hotel, they’ve got a different application, but almost any business could do something like that, couldn’t they? mean, something that just really has somebody go, you got to see what these guys did.

Consumer Behavior Lab (14:16.416)

I think it can be a customer experience like that. It could also be, we had a guest on our podcast a few weeks ago and they were talking about, go every month they go to this shore town and when they get there, they always go to their favorite restaurant. And the favorite restaurant has flowers on some of the tables.

But whenever they come in, he brings over the flowers and places it on the table they sat at. And they say, now the table’s ready for you. It’s a small act. It’s intentional. He’s just using this little vase with three flowers sticking out of it. But it makes the person feel special. That’s a peak moment that requires no extra money, requires no grand strategy, but it does require intentionality and consistency. And that’s another example of how anybody can use it.

John Jantsch (14:50.68)

Yes.

John Jantsch (15:10.522)

All right, let’s go to the dark side, shall we? Understanding these things, what risk do we run in exploiting, manipulating, using them to not necessarily do what’s in the best interest perhaps of the customer?

Consumer Behavior Lab (15:13.286)

Yes.

Consumer Behavior Lab (15:30.951)

So we would say, first of all, that these insights into human behavior and human psychology are facts. And understanding them is first about understanding why we are naturally prone. We have a quote from Kahneman in the beginning of the book, thinking is to humans like swimming is to cats. They can do it, they just prefer not to.

Humans naturally want shortcuts. naturally want to think as little as possible to get to the decisions we need. first, understanding these is about understanding humanity and human psychology. Second, we write books for everybody to read so everybody can be aware of them. So we’re educating marketers about how they can use them for positive ends. And we want consumers to understand that these are

our natural leanings and inclinations that we got to be aware of. But yeah, for sure there’s ethics in behavioral science, like there’s ethics in marketing, like there’s ethics in AI. And we have to be aware that we’ve got to use these for ethical and moral purposes.

John Jantsch (16:43.07)

Years ago, had Dr. Childani on the show wrote influence, know, probably the earliest. Yeah, yeah. And, and he told me during that interview that he actually wrote the book, so people wouldn’t be exploited. And of course, you know, then, unfortunately, you know, people turned around and used a lot of what was in it, you know, in a way that wasn’t intended necessarily. So if a marketer is listening to this, and they want to hack their own campaign,

Consumer Behavior Lab (16:47.59)

a seminal book in our field. Yeah.

John Jantsch (17:12.154)

or customer journeys or whatever it is they’re working on. Are there certain habits or mindsets that they’re going to need to adopt? mean, where do they start?

Consumer Behavior Lab (17:20.678)

Yeah. So we would say that this is a field, behavioral science is a field that’s really blown out in Europe and in the United Kingdom. Here in America, it’s a much more nascent budding place. So if you’re interested in the approach of behavioral science and how it could prove marketing, lots of material online, lots available, of course, including our book.

But in order to get started, think you have to have an interest in the academics and the science that powers why we do what we do. If you’re a marketer that believes everything’s done on hunches or on gut instinct, it’s going to be hard to embrace this type of marketing because this is based on a belief that you can decode human behavior through science and through observation.

It’s not that you can guarantee what’s going to happen, but you can make your campaigns more likely to be successful if you use this science-backed thinking. So we’re increasing the probability that you’re going to have good outcomes in your marketing.

John Jantsch (18:33.754)

The flip side of that mindset though is measurement, mean, understanding, okay, this is our hunch, if this is our hypothesis based on research, how do we prove that we were right? And is that become a stumbling block for a lot of folks?

Consumer Behavior Lab (18:38.757)

you

Consumer Behavior Lab (18:52.269)

We would say that there’s a massive industry around consumer insights that has its place for some marketers, but for every marketer doing tests and seeing the outcomes, everybody can do. So if you are an e-commerce based or a web based, A-B tests are very easy to do. If you’re not, we would advocate for observational research.

John Jantsch (18:59.876)

Mm-hmm.

Consumer Behavior Lab (19:19.043)

do something and see what happens. And you could do that on a small scale and you can watch the outcomes and then you can continue to innovate or go down this path. So what we would say is, if you’re a small business owner, if you’re a solopreneur, use these tactics and then find ways to test them small and learn from those tests.

John Jantsch (19:42.01)

Mike Irwin, I appreciate you stopping by to talk about Hacking the Human Mind. Is there some place you’d invite people to connect with you?

Consumer Behavior Lab (19:48.866)

We have our website, the consumerbehaviorlab.com, where you can learn about the book, about the masterclass. And then we also have a podcast that’s been much shorter than John’s called Behavioral Science for Brands that we invite everybody to take a listen to.

John Jantsch (20:06.383)

Well, again, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Consumer Behavior Lab (20:11.791)

Thank you, John.

Adapting Agencies for the AI Era

Adapting Agencies for the AI Era written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Listen to the full episode:

Overview

On this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, John Jantsch interviews Brent Weaver, CEO of E2M Solutions—the leading provider of white label WordPress, SEO, content, and AI solutions for agencies. Brent shares his view from the front lines of agency evolution as AI, automation, and changing client expectations reshape the digital marketing landscape. They dive into the real impact of AI on agencies, the future of marketing leadership, the enduring value of strategy over tactics, and why human expertise still matters more than ever.

About the Guest

Brent Weaver is the CEO of E2M Solutions, a top white label provider of WordPress, SEO, content, and AI solutions for digital marketing agencies. With deep experience both running and supporting agencies, Brent is a recognized voice on AI, agency growth, and the new skills required to thrive in a fast-changing industry.

Actionable Insights

AI is rapidly raising the bar—not just for agencies, but for clients who now expect faster, better results and more transparency.
The white label model is evolving fast, with providers like E2M embracing “AI first” internal training, education, and even offering fractional AI services to agencies.
The hype of AI often exceeds reality—experiments abound, but many projects never deliver, so agencies and business owners must remain adaptable and strategic.
There’s still no “all-in-one” AI marketing operating system, but the industry is heading toward more integrated, seamless solutions.
SEO is far from dead; but marketers must get creative, focus on proprietary expertise, and optimize for both LLMs and Google—especially for local businesses.
Human leadership and strategy are more vital than ever. AI makes agencies more competitive, but also increases client expectations and the need for specialization and niche expertise.
The human element remains central: The future belongs to those who can combine AI tools with strategic thinking, EQ, and deep client understanding.
Agencies—and marketers—need to retool, learn continuously, and be ready to lead and manage, not just “do.”

Great Moments (with Timestamps)

01:10 – The Elephant in the Room: AI’s Impact on Agencies
Brent shares how AI is changing agency operations, results, and client expectations.
02:25 – White Labeling in the Age of AI
How E2M is retooling with “AI First Saturdays,” fractional AI services, and ongoing education.
04:46 – Will We Ever Get a True AI Marketing OS?
The reality (and limits) of current AI tools and what’s coming next.
06:18 – The Hype vs. Reality of AI Projects
Why many AI initiatives fail—and why experimentation is still worth it.
08:10 – Is SEO Dead?
Brent’s take on what’s changed, what still works, and how local and LLM optimization are evolving.
11:55 – Why Agencies Are Working Harder, Not Less
AI may automate, but competition, complexity, and client demands are rising.
13:31 – The Human Element and Future-Ready Skills
Why strategy, specialization, and leadership will define the next era of agency growth.
15:17 – AI Agents, Frictionless UX, and What’s Next
How AI will reshape customer journeys, jobs, and digital marketing roles.
18:17 – From Doing to Managing: Evolving Careers and Teams
The growing need for strategic thinkers, EQ, and continuous learning.

Insights

“AI has raised the bar for agencies and clients alike—faster, better results are expected, but human expertise is still at the center.”

“There’s no magic all-in-one AI solution yet, but those who combine tools with strategy and leadership will win.”

“SEO is evolving, not dying—marketers must focus on unique value, local search, and optimizing for new AI-driven experiences.”

“Agencies need to retool for an AI-first world, but the need for deep specialization, leadership, and EQ is greater than ever.”

“The future of digital marketing belongs to those who can marry the best of AI with strategy, creativity, and relentless learning.”

Duct Tape Transcript

John Jantsch (00:01.405)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Brent Weaver. He is the CEO of E2M Solutions, the leading provider of white label WordPress SEO content and AI solutions for digital marketing agencies. So guess what we’re going to talk about today? We’re going to talk about agencies and we’re going to talk about digital marketing. So Brent, welcome to the show.

Brent At E2M (00:28.728)

Great to be here. Thanks, John.

John Jantsch (00:30.427)

I did get the title right. Didn’t I? You’re the CEO currently. Yeah. Okay. I was.

Brent At E2M (00:34.446)

Yeah, yeah. Joined E2M in June of 2025. So I’m wrapping up my ninth week on duty. So it’s been a new adventure for me.

John Jantsch (00:40.198)

Yeah.

Ha ha ha.

John Jantsch (00:47.197)

Well, E2M is not new necessarily, so it worked with hundreds of agencies. Just in your time and what you’ve learned or from the folks there, what do you see as some of the biggest changes in the agency landscape right now? And I know it’s evolving rapidly, but I’m curious what you’re hearing because you pretty much talk to agencies all day long.

Brent At E2M (01:10.722)

Yeah. I mean, the obvious elephant in the room is artificial intelligence and what that’s doing both in terms of how agencies are run and also how they’re deploying services and also how clients are expecting, you know, what the clients are doing with AI as well. So it’s not just like the agency using it, but the clients are using it. So I think some expectations are changing and also speed to results is changing because a client might say, well, Hey, if I can just have AI do this in

three minutes, right? Like, why is it gonna take you three or four days and just kind of working on how to up level your level, know, what you’re doing for your clients in terms of results. mean, that bar has certainly been raising very, very quickly in terms of what expectations are. And so I think a lot of agencies are feeling a little bit of squeeze, but at the same time, they’re feeling a lot of excitement. So there’s that whole topic, yeah.

John Jantsch (02:00.833)

Well, so to tag, I was going to say to tag onto that though, of course, your primary function is to, in most cases, act as a white label support for that agency. So I’m curious, has the white label mode evolved? mean, how are you, because it’s affecting agencies. So how’s it then in turn affecting what a white label provider like yourself is doing?

Brent At E2M (02:25.614)

And we’ve really like planted a flag that we want to be an AI first agency. And so we are doing lots of internal, kind of retooling education. have a thing called AI for Saturday where our whole company comes in every first Saturday of the month. some of that time has been dedicated to education, working on projects kind of, you know, within the teams doing demo days, hackathons. and so we’re definitely taking AI very seriously. Our team’s taking AI very seriously.

we’re also doing fractional AI services for agencies. So actually going in and helping the agency implement AI solutions. And so I think it’s, you know, people want better results. They want them faster, right? It’s kind of like, you know, dealing with Amazon, right? Like people used to think, I ordered something on the internet. It’s okay that it takes seven to 10 days to show up, right? But in the post Amazon world, you’re like, well, like my kids, for example, they’re like, why I ordered this

30 minutes ago, why is it not already at the front door? I think some of that impatience is seeping its way into the business to business service model. And I also think some of that kind of what people expect in terms of a customer centric centered business, like Amazon will give you refunds on just about anything. think customers are expecting some of that for some of their agency customers, but you know, it’s certainly having a huge impact on the overall industry.

John Jantsch (03:40.967)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (03:49.917)

So, since you opened the AI can of worms, I’ll go there directly. You know, what I’m seeing a lot of people do is, you know, it’s like we’re in this wild west days still where there’s 473 tools. People are hacking this $20 a month thing together with this $20 a month thing. They’re talking about agents and what they can do. What I’m seeing on the business side, the small business side, it’s like, okay, I get it. I get it. We need to do AI.

but this is exhausting. And, you know, is, there ever going to be a day you think where some, a business owner can actually buy the full like marketing operating system that is AI run and installed in their business and not, you know, have to lean on their agency to do this and an SEO person to do that with AI to me. And again, I’m, just asking your opinion because it doesn’t exist today, but, but I feel like that’s where we’re going to go.

Brent At E2M (04:42.083)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (04:46.237)

There’s going to be the $5.99 a month solution that’s sort of an all in one as opposed to custom this and custom that and custom, you know, whatever.

Brent At E2M (04:56.494)

And perhaps, you know, I think John that the more I’ve gotten into AI personally and the more Like projects and use cases that I’ve seen it. It’s it’s like the more, you know The more you realize you don’t know and I certainly think that that’s true with AI and and we’re seeing a lot of people do some what I would almost consider to be magical things with AI but then there’s also this like

maybe they do something where they don’t really have the foundational skillset. They’re using a tool like lovable and they’re doing vibe coding and they build an application that gets to a certain point. And then the client says, well, hey, we actually need this for a business requirement thing to do this other thing. And then all of a sudden that other thing maybe isn’t possible within the vibe coding interface. And all of a sudden you have this thing that an agency has spent weeks on in terms of a vibe coding application build.

John Jantsch (05:27.292)

Yeah, yeah.

Brent At E2M (05:49.6)

And then the thing that they needed to do from a business case is not possible within the AI. And so then we’re hitting this wall and we have to go, my gosh, we’re going to have to completely, we have to build this new ground up without vibe coding in order to make the business case work. I there was a study that said that something like 40 to 60 % of enterprise AI projects, and I should probably have a source on this of them quoted, but 40 to 60 % of AI projects at the enterprise level are being abandoned or never seen the light of day.

John Jantsch (06:18.609)

Yes.

Brent At E2M (06:18.85)

and if we all know, from reading wall street, like how much money is being invested in AI, that means like over half of the investment that major corporations are making are, basically being thrown in the trash. And I I’m seeing that same level of kind of experimentation, happened at the agency level and also at the small business owner level. And so I think there’s still, gosh, there’s just so much learning that has to be done. And the upside though, is you find an AI, automation or

agentic workflow that, that works, it gets to a hundred percent. it can have game changing impact on the business, right? Like the ROI on it can be, you know, infinity. And so it’s certainly worth making these investments, but it doesn’t mean that every investment is going to pay off.

John Jantsch (06:51.869)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (06:57.223)

Peace.

Mm-hmm. Yes.

Yeah, I think one of the challenges in the the window that we’re in right now is, is in some cases, the hype of AI is actually outrunning the reality of it. And I think that a lot of people are like, we can fire everybody and do it all with AI. I mean, you see these people, you know, on Facebook ads, like, I have a $16 billion company and I only have two employees, you know, you’re like, you know,

Brent At E2M (07:13.848)

Sure.

Brent At E2M (07:26.982)

They like show this big like screenshot of all their automation crazy I’ve replaced 64 employees right like maybe I don’t know I mean usually I find when you kind of double click on those things and you go in there’s there’s usually some smoke and mirrors around those things but I don’t want to like bash anybody that’s

John Jantsch (07:31.482)

You

John Jantsch (07:35.909)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (07:41.341)

Well, they’re 100 % there is. And I think that, you know, it’s like all things. It’s kind of like taking advantage of the craze is actually making the reality a lot worse and a lot harder for that business owner that just needs a couple things, you know, figured out to, you know, to make, to not even to replace people, you know, but to actually empower their people in ways to do better and more work. All right. So I’ll get off my soapbox on that one and move to, let’s talk about SEO.

Brent At E2M (08:06.993)

Hahaha.

John Jantsch (08:10.727)

you know, which is a tactic, of course, a channel, if you will, that, that you guys play in quite a bit. There’s that’s another one of those where there’s, you know, like, it would take me about two minutes to find somebody who, who today put on LinkedIn SEO is dead. And so, you know, how are you, how are you, by the way, it’s not, but how are you advising clients? How are you changing even your routine and working around the reality that a lot of top of funnel

Brent At E2M (08:10.819)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (08:40.679)

types of content that used to generate traffic has certainly gone away. We can debate whether or not it was that valuable anyway. But how are you evolving your model when you think about SEO practices?

Brent At E2M (08:54.414)

I mean, if there’s a piece of content that you could easily just ask, you know, chat, and you would get a great answer for that content, if that’s what you’re gonna be putting on your client’s website to help them grow their rank or grow their traffic from the LLMs and things like that, I mean, that’s certainly probably not gonna be a great strategy. And I think most people got that memo when they saw how much traffic decreased for…

John Jantsch (08:58.781)

Right.

Brent At E2M (09:19.566)

Those kind of common things right like how do I make great guacamole? Right is just going to be the user experience to ask that question on On chat is going to be far better than on a Google browser unless somebody has some type of proprietary ingredient or approach or they can actually build some intellectual property around it and kind of protect that unique recipe right in that case or they have a really great personality around

John Jantsch (09:36.199)

Yeah, right.

John Jantsch (09:42.727)

Mm-hmm.

Brent At E2M (09:47.054)

teaching people how to make guacamole or whatever, and they’re a great YouTuber, and there’s some type of thing that’s unique that AI cannot replicate that they can bring to the marketplace. So I do think marketers have to be a little bit more creative. There’s kind of a reinvention that’s going on. That being said, there’s also a ton of people that are now using LLMs to search for business recommendations, to search for services. And certainly there’s…

John Jantsch (10:09.307)

Yeah, 100%.

Brent At E2M (10:13.248)

a whole cottage industry. our, amount of SEO business that we’ve had has, has categorically gone up year over year, right? And that’s kind of in the post AI world. And a big thing on the, on the E2M team is how are we optimizing our clients’ websites and search strategy for the LLMs, right? Kind of the AEO strategies while we’re also using, you know, continuing to invest in Google. And I think Google, for instance, I I don’t know if search traffic, you know, the

John Jantsch (10:15.035)

the

John Jantsch (10:21.661)

Mm-hmm.

Brent At E2M (10:40.738)

The Google usage has necessarily gone down. mean, I think they’re still driving a lot of traffic to businesses. Google Local, massively important for businesses to be active, right? Especially if they’re a service business or they’re working locally or regionally, right? That’s something that I think the LLMs aren’t doing nearly as well as Google. And so there’s certainly still lots of blue oceans, I think, on the SEO side.

John Jantsch (10:47.132)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

John Jantsch (11:02.119)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (11:05.853)

Yeah, and I think you’re 100 % right. mean, I’m speaking in a conference next month of all remodeling contractors. And they’re all talking about like, what do need to be doing to change? And it’s like, hey, you know, show up in that map pack, do a better job of your reviews, you know, that, you know, answer, you know, have a lot of FAQs, you know, that answer questions that people would have about remodeling, because that the trust, I think, with the map pack, whether it’s deserved or not, you know, that the consumer has is going to, I think, give that

a life for a long time. And I don’t think you’re going to see the AI overviews for somebody that’s, I mean, you can go there and say, you know, in AI mode, you can say, what’s the best for modeling contractor in this town. And it will give you an opinion. But I think people still value the map pack and the proximity and all the things that come with it.

Brent At E2M (11:55.086)

You know, one thing I think there was this like undertone of like, is AI going to make agencies like obsolete or something? And, and it’s weird because like I’ve asked this to a lot of agency groups have been like, okay, in the post AI world, like who here is working less, right? And I asked people like raise their hands and like, nobody raised their hand. I’m like, okay, the, the right, they’re working more. They’re working way more. Right. It is weird. It’s a weird paradigm, right? Because you would think, Hey, artificial intelligence, the computer is going to do all the work for me.

John Jantsch (12:00.955)

Yeah, yeah, you bet.

John Jantsch (12:11.133)

It’s more. They’re all working more, in fact.

Brent At E2M (12:24.718)

You know, it’s like the logical outcome of that would be that we wouldn’t have to work as hard. And, you know, even though these tools do magical things, I don’t think they make finding leads and customers any easier. If anything, they’re just making it even more competitive. They’re giving advanced marketing tools to a lot larger group of people. And so it’s getting more competitive out there. And that means that businesses…

John Jantsch (12:42.993)

Yeah.

Brent At E2M (12:52.51)

still need agencies and specialists now more than ever. In fact, they need specialists that are specialized in specializations instead of specializations. And that was the other thing I was going to kind of bring as a theme is, is looked like knowing who your customer is, having niche expertise, you know, really knowing your market backwards and forwards, knowing your market better than your clients know their industry, I think is now more important than ever. You know, the idea of just being a general

John Jantsch (13:15.783)

Mm-hmm.

Brent At E2M (13:21.432)

Hey, I’m Brent, I’m the web guy, right? Like I don’t think that’s gonna fly in 2026 and beyond if it is even flying right now.

John Jantsch (13:24.401)

Yeah, right.

John Jantsch (13:31.293)

So let’s talk about the human element. think a lot of people are wringing their hands around. mean, every time you see these headlines that, you know, Microsoft says are 40 % of all jobs will go away by, you know, the next three years. I think you have a lot of people kind of wringing their hands around about like, is this going to destroy the world? know, if people, 40 % of people are out of jobs. How are…

I tell you what we see is I see a lot of people that are working more, as you said, and a lot of it’s because the consumer or the business owner behavior has changed a little bit in that they expect more. So that’s part of it. our mantra has always been strategy before tactics. We actually feel that if you develop a great marketing strategy, marketing becomes less complicated, but far more effective.

and, and so, you know, what I see is a whole lot of agencies that were, have always been delivering tactics are now just using AI to deliver a new set of tactics. and not still not thinking strategically. I think what Mark, what businesses are going to need in the future is marketing leadership and not marketing doers.

Brent At E2M (14:48.78)

Yeah. Yeah. mean, I think we’re running this event. It’s all about AI for agency owners. And I promise this is not just a direct plug for our event, but obviously it’s my duty to promote our event right now. But one of our attendees, and he’s kind of an AI first person, he registered for our event, right? Went in and purchased a ticket.

John Jantsch (14:50.845)

I should have posed that as a question, but it was really more of a statement.

Brent At E2M (15:17.166)

All using his chat GPT agent. So he literally just you know driving in the car Said hey Go buy a ticket to Vistara and his agent, know went and it takes screenshots and says hey This is what I’m doing along the way, but you know, he just kind of had to say yep Yep in the agent already has all of his information and it has all of the information that it needs in order to make that fill out the web forums and actually purchase a product and

It’s, it’s almost like every business from that perspective, every business’s website just became kind of the Amazon one click shopping experience. You know, if, we fast forward two, three years, if we all have these agents that have, you know, secure access to our banking details and to our PII and they know kind of our preferences. mean, what could you do if you can line up an experience that you know is going to meet the needs of a specific target audience? you know, you have.

very few barriers standing between you and them making a transaction, becoming a customer. And I think in that way, AI is going to be disrupting some of these workflows, some of these user interfaces, just as web professionals and digital agencies, how we view creating those experiences. And so I think that while AI is certainly going to destroy some number of jobs, whether it’s 40%, 20%, I don’t know what the number is.

John Jantsch (16:40.976)

This is…

Brent At E2M (16:42.646)

I trust Microsoft, they’re now worth $4 trillion. They must be doing something right. But I think for every job that it destroys, there’s going to be new jobs created. You know, if I was, if I lived in a Waymo city, I was just out in California. I rode in my first driverless taxi. Would I still have a car? I don’t know because I’m like, well, what if I just used Waymo to get everywhere I needed to go? And when I’m in the car, I’m going to work on

John Jantsch (16:45.309)

You

John Jantsch (16:52.625)

Yeah, I’m seeing that already, right.

Brent At E2M (17:10.094)

I’m going to be productive. I’m going to do work. I’m going to be calling, I’ll call 10 more agencies to see if they can come to my event. Right. So I do think that there’s like some things that are not super exciting in terms of jobs in the marketplace right now that likely are going to go away, right? Like data entry, data harvesting from the internet, you know, content editors, right? Like I can get a lot of my content. can dictate it to chat and

John Jantsch (17:28.943)

Mm-hmm. Just basic research. Yeah.

Brent At E2M (17:38.52)

gives me pretty good content. It even gives me some suggestions on how to evolve it and gives me different, know, hey, here’s a version for LinkedIn. Here’s a version for Facebook. Here’s a version for Instagram, right? Here’s a script that you can go and put, take a video and record, right? So things that I would have relied on three, four or five people before I can get done myself. And a lot of times I don’t think I was necessarily hiring those people. I just wasn’t doing it, right? I’d post maybe on one platform instead of four and I wouldn’t hire a social media person to do that.

John Jantsch (17:45.917)

All right. Yep.

Brent At E2M (18:07.022)

And so I think that some of these things are certainly going to destroy jobs, but you know, like what will my kids’ jobs be in 15, 20 years? I have no idea, but they’ll have something to do, I’m sure.

John Jantsch (18:07.867)

Yes.

John Jantsch (18:17.841)

Yeah. Yeah. I’m even seeing that in our organization. you know, people that, that really were good doers, good implementers, you know, we’re really pushing them to, know, they have to be more, they, whether they have employees under them or not, they have to really think more like leaders and think more like managers, who are going to optimize, you know, some of these tools, as opposed to, you know, writing the, every bit of social media content, they’re going to be, you know,

looked more as managers. And I think that that from a skill set standpoint, that’s, that’s probably not everybody’s sweet spot. I mean, there definitely are people that are just very good at give me an SOP and I’ll follow it. But I do think that from a career standpoint, you know, if you’re one of those people, you probably need to really start looking at how do I, know, how do I, my strategic thinking, my EQ skills, you know, over and above, you know, being able to, to manage a spreadsheet.

Brent At E2M (19:15.79)

And sometimes, you know, not to like be like capitalist or whatever, but like, think at some point, right, if people aren’t willing to move towards that opportunity voluntarily, they will, you know, maybe have to earn some, learn some hard lessons. And in those, some of those might be expensive lessons. think certainly as an entrepreneur, I’ve had to learn some expensive lessons when I didn’t pivot hard enough or, you know, change my business or change my mindset fast enough. And then you…

John Jantsch (19:32.327)

Yeah, Yeah.

Brent At E2M (19:43.51)

And then you’re like, was a hard lesson. I’m never going to do that again. So I think, you know, people don’t evolve right now and they don’t invest time. Like again, we’re doing these AI first Saturdays as a team. And at first people were like, I to come in on Saturday. we’re like, Hey, look, this is the reality. Like we’re all working an extra, an extra day right now to make sure that we can properly retool and learn enough about this tech because during the week, we’re all very focused on client work. We’re focusing on.

John Jantsch (19:46.097)

Right, Yeah.

John Jantsch (19:55.121)

Yeah, right.

Brent At E2M (20:11.758)

know, doing the day-to-day business. so, you know, we’ve, we’ve made that as a priority all the way up to our leadership team. Right. I mean, I’m waking up at four o’clock every Saturday, joining, joining the team and you know, working on AI stuff.

John Jantsch (20:25.713)

Well, Brent, we’ve frittered away a perfectly good 20 minutes here trying to help people talk people off the cliff a little bit. Is there some place you’d invite people to learn more about e2m’s solutions?

Brent At E2M (20:39.34)

Yeah, you can definitely check us out at e2msolutions.com. You can always email me brent at e2msolutions.com. We’re running an event called Vistara at the end of September, depending on when this episode airs, join vistara.com. So we’re doing two full days on artificial intelligence and agency growth. So, I mean, we’re, think this is such an important topic. We’re running a full two day event on this in Denver, Colorado. So if you’re interested, certainly reach out.

John Jantsch (21:01.319)

Yes.

John Jantsch (21:06.791)

Well, I’m just down the road. should probably come down and speak at the event. Well, let’s make, let’s, let’s make it happen then. All right. Awesome. Well, again, I appreciate you stopping by and hopefully we’ll see you soon out there on the road.

Brent At E2M (21:10.606)

I think so. I think so. should. Let’s make it happen.

Brent At E2M (21:20.942)

Thanks, John.

Why Inner Excellence Creates Outer Success

Why Inner Excellence Creates Outer Success written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Listen to the full episode:

Overview

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, John Jantsch interviews Jim Murphy, high-performance coach, speaker, and creator of the Inner Excellence Methodology. Jim has coached world-class athletes, Olympians, and business leaders, helping them master the inner game that leads to breakthrough results. He shares the story behind his book’s viral moment with NFL star AJ Brown, the practical spiritual approach to peak performance, and why detaching from outcomes is the secret to true excellence—on the field, in business, and in life.

About the Guest

Jim Murphy is a high-performance coach, author, and creator of the Inner Excellence Methodology. With a background as a professional athlete and decades of experience coaching Olympians, pro athletes, and top business leaders, Jim’s work blends science, spirituality, and practical tools for living—and performing—at your best. His book, “Inner Excellence: Train Your Mind for Extraordinary Performance and the Best Possible Life,” has sold over half a million copies and is available in more than 25 languages.

Website: interexcellence.com
Book: https://geni.us/innerexcellence
Retreats & Newsletter: VIP Newsletter Signup
Instagram: @interexcellence

Actionable Insights

Viral validation: Wide receiver AJ Brown’s sideline reading of “Inner Excellence” sparked global interest, taking the book from niche to worldwide bestseller.
Lasting results come from mastering your inner game—moving beyond tactics to focus on mindset, heart, and presence.
Detach from outcomes: The best performers focus on the process and personal growth, not just external results or wins.
Redefine success: Go beyond achievements and ask, “Who do I want to become? What do I truly value? How do I want to live?”
Freedom to fail is essential for high performance—joy, excitement, and learning are key to resilience and breakthrough.
Inner Excellence applies equally to athletes, business leaders, and entrepreneurs: the inner game is universal.
Daily practices for entrepreneurs and marketers: Learn and grow every day, give the best you have, be present and grateful, focus only on what you can control.
Embracing vulnerability and humility (accurate self-view, not over or under-inflated ego) leads to greater confidence, peace, and fearlessness.
Lasting change happens when you strip away “doing” and shift toward “being”—starting with speaking the truth and expanding beliefs about what’s possible.

Great Moments (with Timestamps)

01:30 – AJ Brown’s Sideline Reading Goes Viral
How an NFL star’s ritual turned “Inner Excellence” into a bestseller overnight.
04:37 – From Minor League Struggles to Mindset Breakthrough
Jim’s journey from pro baseball disappointment to coaching and creating his method.
06:41 – Letting Go of Outcome Control
A Ryder Cup client story and the power of trading “small lollipops” for a bigger vision of success.
09:11 – Fear of Failure and Redefining Success
Why baseball teaches resilience and how to focus on what truly matters.
10:49 – The Inner Game for Athletes and Executives
How mindset mastery is the same for business leaders as for pro athletes.
12:08 – Daily Practices for Entrepreneurs and Marketers
The four goals: Learn and grow, give your best, be present and grateful, focus on what you control.
14:21 – Vulnerability, Humility, and Embracing Failure
How accurate self-view and “letting go” drive real breakthroughs.
17:25 – Shifting from Doing to Being
Why speaking the truth and expanding your beliefs unlocks new levels of possibility.
18:46 – How Viral Success Changed (and Validated) the Work
Jim reflects on confidence, humility, and seeing himself as a messenger, not the “originator.”

Insights

“Detach from outcomes. Go for the whole candy store: fullness of life, not just small tangible wins.”

“Redefine success. Ask who you want to become, what you value, and how you want to live—not just what you want to achieve.”

“Freedom to fail and the joy of learning are essential for high performance—whether on the field or in business.”

“Humility is an accurate view of self—neither overinflated nor underinflated. Let go of ego, and you can be fearless.”

“The most important change is shifting from doing to being—stripping away what isn’t true and expanding what you believe is possible.”

Duct Tape Transcript

John Jantsch (00:00.773)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Jim Murphy. He’s a high performance coach, author, speaker, and the creator of the Inner Excellence Methodology. He’s coached world-class athletes, Olympians, and business leaders, helping them achieve breakthrough results by mastering their inner game. His own journey from minor league baseball player to elite coach led him to develop a practical spiritual approach to peak performance.

that goes beyond tactics and into mindset, heart, and presence. We’re going to talk about his book, Interpresence, or I’m sorry, Interexcellence, Train Your Mind for Extraordinary Performance and the Best Possible Life. So Jim, welcome to the show.

Jim (00:44.194)

Thanks, John.

John Jantsch (00:45.851)

Few years ago, I had Captain Sullivan on the show. You may recall he is the airline pilot that landed his airplane after taking off in New York City in the Hudson River. Do you remember that a few? Sully, right. And then I turned it into a movie. Of course he had a book. So I had to start that show, you know, as he said, well, I have, you know, I have to tell that story, you know, every time I now am asked to talk about, you know, how that went. So he certainly had the story down. Not nearly as dramatic, but.

Jim (00:57.336)

So weak.

John Jantsch (01:15.451)

You have a bit of an AJ Brown story. want to, I’m sure people are asking you and I’m sure you love telling it. You’re probably getting tired of telling it, but you want to tell us kind of your kind of moment happened. Gosh, what was that now? Eight, nine months ago.

Jim (01:30.254)

Yeah, John, I’m very grateful to tell it. So on January 12th, uh, AJ Brown was a, he’s a wide receiver for the Philadelphia Eagles. It’s a wild card game Packers versus the Eagles. Um, Sunday night football, the only NFL game on and, um, in middle of the game, he’s reading the football reading, reading inter excellence on the sidelines during the football game. And so the TV station zooms in on it’s like, what is AJ Brown doing? And then, oh my gosh, he was reading a book and Kevin Brown and

John Jantsch (01:37.051)

me.

John Jantsch (01:57.435)

you

Jim (01:59.81)

Tom Burkhart made a big deal about it afterwards. They asked him, what were you doing? Were you bored? Were you? He said, no, it’s a book that I read before I bring to every game. Read it before the game to get centered and read it after every drive to get re centered. My teammates call it the recipe. And so that was the first time I actually heard about him doing this. I saw a picture of him on social media of like a month earlier, but I had no context. didn’t know anything about it. And so I found out what the rest of the world.

that he was doing this at that time. And just an amazing thing for him to do to be true to himself, that find something that helps him be better at what he does and to be more fearless and show all of us that we all have time to read.

John Jantsch (02:40.687)

Well, and then of course the punchline, I suppose, what happened to you next?

Jim (02:48.424)

a few things, john, a few things. Yeah, my world changed a lot. The you know, the message that selfless is fearless, as you know, spread around the world now, love, wisdom and courage. And so the book had sold maybe seven or eight or 9000 copies in nine years. mean, sorry, 16 years, initially was was published in 2009 by McGraw Hill. And then I

John Jantsch (02:49.563)

Hehehehehe

Jim (03:18.329)

put out a revised edition self-published in 2018 or 2020. And then so that’s the book AJ Brown has been reading. And since then, it’s sold, I don’t know, close to half a million copies, I would say.

John Jantsch (03:32.123)

So, I’m curious, how did you print the books without that sort of immediate demand?

Jim (03:42.21)

Yeah, so it’s amazing how the world is now with Amazon and they print on demand. so if

John Jantsch (03:44.645)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (03:48.527)

Yeah, but they were able to print on that kind of demand. Yeah, yeah.

Jim (03:52.27)

Well, apparently they did run out at some point. So they’ve got print centers all over the world. And so there was a time when the demand was so high, it’s sold tens of thousands of copies every day for the first few weeks that they did run out at one point.

John Jantsch (04:09.435)

Yeah, that’s a crazy story. Well, good for you. know, frankly, I love to hear stories like that. Persons out there doing their work and you know, as a magical moment happened, I think we all deserve it. You start the book talking about your own struggles as a minor league player, the mindset, you know, performance anxiety, self doubt. Would you say that that was instrumental to you developing kind of your own framework?

Jim (04:37.78)

yeah, yeah, absolutely. My whole life since I was a little kid, I obsessed about being a superstar. I was going to play in the NFL like A.J. Brown or I was going to be in the NBA or Major League Baseball. And so when I got drafted by the Cubs, it was a dream come true. But I had a vision problem that was with me for my entire professional career. I played five years in the minors and then eventually had to retire because of it. And my identity was completely wrapped up in my role as a pro athlete. And when I lost it, I felt like I lost everything. And so

I got a job with him. asked got out asked to coach a high school baseball team in inner city Seattle and I had no interest in coaching but I took the job was driving a truck for FedEx and we went undefeated and I realized wow I love coaching. Who knew? And then so I went on this journey to become a pro baseball coach. I got went to grad school got a job with the Texas Rangers two weeks after graduation. So now I felt like I was somebody again and then I quit six months into the first season and so.

devastated again my identity, you know, I was somebody and I lost it and then somebody again I lost it and so I kind of got tired of this merry-go-round of feeling like I was someone and no one and end up leaving for the desert to go live a life of solitude to figure out what to do with my life and that’s where Interactionless was born. I spent five years full-time writing and researching how to have peace and confidence under the most pressure and what I found John was that that The path to having the most peace and confidence under the most pressure is the same path of building an extraordinary life

when filled with deep contentment, joy and confidence, independent of circumstance. It’s a wholehearted path where you understand what the human heart deeply needs and wants and how to get it.

John Jantsch (06:15.611)

So you started touching on this idea of your identity and you spend a lot of time or one of the core principles really is kind of this idea of letting go of the need to control the outcome, which is, you know, being very attached to the outcome. Can you, do you have a client story, executive athlete, I suppose you don’t want to name names, but where, you you help somebody kind of overcome that control of the outcome.

Jim (06:41.582)

Yeah, I’ll tell you. When I was at the Ryder Cup years ago, it’s one of the biggest events in golf pro golf. You have the team USA versus Team Europe. And one of the players top 10 in the world said Jim, I’m too attached to the results of my my performance. You know, I get too tense. What can I do? And I said, Well, imagine there’s a little kid who loves lollipops, and he’s got a lollipop and you want to take it from him, but you don’t want to struggle. Is there any way you could get him to give you the lollipop?

by volunteering it to give it to you. And he said, you know, I don’t know. And I said, well, what if you had a bigger lollipop and asked him to trade? And he said, he’d probably trade. What kid wouldn’t trade a small lollipop for a bigger one? I said, that’s what you need. Your lollipop is too small. Your lollipop is, I just want to get birdies and I want to win the tournament. And I, you know, I want to be successful. I want to get some tangible results. That’s way too small. First of all, you don’t even know if that’s good for you to get birdies and

Good results and have more success. Is that going to be good for you in the long run and your family? You don’t know what you need is to pursue fullness of life and develop yourself in that way, which we know is good for you where you feel fully alive and make that your your Pursuit go for the whole candy store. Don’t settle for these little these 10 these tangible things that you don’t even know if will make you happy let alone fulfilled

John Jantsch (08:06.651)

You talk a lot about fear. You identify a number of them. Um, one of them of which is true. don’t care what you’re doing. Fear of failure shows up in a lot of people’s lives when they pursue anything. Um, I’m curious. I’m a huge baseball fan. That’s, that’s my sport. Um, and you know, it’s very cliche to say, but I’ll say it anyway. You know, the best baseball players fail 70 % of the time, right? In the, in the, uh, hitting world. Um,

So, so how does, I mean, how do they get through that and you know, that, that idea of I’m, afraid to fail, but you know, and, what’s weird about it is 20 hits in a season might make the difference between being seen as a failure or being seen as, as a superstar. So, you know, how do you, how do you, how do, how did you, or how do you see baseball players in particular? This would apply to all athletes, I suppose, but I just.

I feel like baseball has more failure in it than any other sport. So, you know, how do, how do you, they deal with that?

Jim (09:11.534)

You got to redefine success to something that’s meaningful to you and then break it down into smaller components Specifically, how do I want to feel in my life? How do I want to live? Who do I want to become? Who am I meant to become? And What is my purpose? What do I value most if you’re not clear on those things then the default is I just need more success I need more base hits and But that’s too far out of your control. It’s just you

John Jantsch (09:37.115)

Mm-hmm.

Jim (09:40.844)

Now you’re just happy if you get hit, sad if you don’t, and stressed when you need it, and you’re never gonna be your best when you’re stressed. We need to have freedom to fail to be your best. There needs to be an element of joy and excitement to be your best. In order to have that joy and excitement, we need to focus on the reason why you want the base hit. Why do you want the base hit? Well, so I can have a good batting average. Why do I want that? So I can become an all-star. Why do you want that?

So I can make more money. What do you want that? Well, I want a great life. Really. I want a more comfortable life. Well, what is it that you really want? Is it just a $10 million house on the water? Is that what you want? Or is it what you think that will give you, which is great experiences and deep enriching relationships where you’re learning and growing and making a difference, where you feel fully alive? Is that what you okay? That’s what you want? Well, I’m going show you how to go for that directly and let everything else be added to you.

John Jantsch (10:33.932)

So we have been talking mostly about athletes, but you coach a lot of business leaders who are certainly not performing in the same way. Is it any different or is it really basically get down to the same bottom line?

Jim (10:49.582)

Exact same thing. I don’t teach people what to do, how to do their job. Unless it’s pro baseball, I might have had a few couple things there, but it doesn’t matter if you’re a CEO of Google or you’re a pro athlete or Olympic swimmer or anybody. It’s really how do you be fully engaged in the moment when you’re performing unattached to what you’re trying to do? How can you expand what you believe is possible? How can you perform with freedom and passion?

John Jantsch (10:58.361)

Yeah.

Jim (11:18.848)

unattached to what you’re trying to do. And that’s, that’s everything I’m telling you about is really clarifying these things that are most meaningful to you and, pursuing them.

John Jantsch (11:28.123)

So athletes today, I mean, obviously they’ve trained their body. mean, that’s kind of a lot. That’s, that’s what comes with the deal. Increasingly, you’re seeing sports psychologists. You know, you’re actually seeing people in the dugout, uh, that are, you know, mindset related. Business owners don’t necessarily, well, a lot of them don’t train their body like an athlete, even though they need to perform, but they certainly don’t have the same idea of training their mind. Are there exercise? I know there are exercises in your system. Uh, you want to talk a little bit about.

ones that are really geared towards entrepreneurs or even have a lot of marketers on this show that would help them train their mind.

Jim (12:08.684)

Yeah, well, with the InterEx Lancers, the number one goal every day is to learn and grow. If you want to be great at business, we need to be creative. We can’t be attached to the results and circumstances. We need to think clearly. We have to have a clear mind and unburdened heart. If you want to be great at anything, business included, we can’t be caught up in the past and future. so learn and grow every day is the number one goal. And then within that, we have four daily goals.

Give the best of what you have some days it’s not going to be good. Be present, be grateful, focus on your routines and only what you can control.

John Jantsch (12:46.575)

There certainly is, you talk openly about the spiritual elements of what you teach, presence, gratitude, acceptance, in addition to like performance metrics. Do you ever, especially with business leaders, do you ever get any skepticism, pushback that, just like give me the tools, give me the, you I don’t need that woo-woo stuff.

Jim (13:09.68)

yeah, yeah. Pro athletes, business leaders. Yeah, definitely. If you’re a high achiever, then you don’t want the woo woo. You want tangible results. You don’t want to mess around. You don’t want to waste your time. And I get it. The question is if something is really important to you, if this is the biggest year of your career, maybe your free agent or maybe you have a massive deal you’re working on or just trying to get a job and you need the money.

The more important it is to you, then the more important the process of how you live and what you do every day is, you know, then it’s more important. So the question is, what’s the best process for you to be your best every day? And that’s what InterEx is, is I present to you what I think, what I’ve learned is the best process for the majority of people to be fully engaged in the moment, heart, mind and body on a test and what they’re trying to do.

John Jantsch (14:02.297)

You talk about in the book embracing, excuse me, vulnerability and even failure in some cases. You want to talk a little bit about whether it’s on your own personal life or with the client where you’ve helped, we’re embracing that imperfection has kind of led to a breakthrough.

Jim (14:21.922)

Yeah, I define humility as an accurate view of self, not overinflated and not under inflated. And so

John Jantsch (14:25.563)

Right.

Jim (14:34.382)

pro athletes and most people they come to me because they’re underperforming and essentially they come to me wanting they’re obsessing about things that they want can’t control and then they just try harder and then the trying harder causes them to be more tense more anxious and worse performance and so then they just that causes more stress and then they feel like they need to become more needy and so it’s just this endless loop and so essentially

They’re coming to me for low level needs and desires. Become world number one. Be the best in the industry. That’s a low level need is, well, one, I call it low level because you don’t even know if it’s good for you, let alone gonna make you happy. Say you got a million followers or $10 million or $10 million house on the water. Is that gonna make you happy? You might think so and hopefully, but it may not. And so, but that’s people come to me because I’ve helped people achieve extraordinary success.

John Jantsch (15:09.275)

Mm-hmm.

Jim (15:32.438)

generally most people their first year together, they have the best year of their careers. It’s because we focus on developing themselves as people giving inner strength and inner peace, let everything else be added to them. So, this is the crucial thing.

John Jantsch (15:48.773)

So how do you balance the fact that, especially in the field that you’re working with, mean, that people are taught their entire lives to strive for excellence, to hustle, to work harder, to outwork everybody else. I how do you balance that? Because you’re not, I mean, they obviously have to have the skills they have to put into work, but you’re telling them something completely different than what society is probably pumping in.

Jim (16:14.998)

Yeah. Society says the only thing that matters is the results, bottom line, black and white, zero sum score. Like it’s either win or lose. There’s only only so many pieces to the pie. And I’m saying, we live in an unstable, unfair world that has a lot of, horrible things in it. And, if you don’t have a clear system, you’re going to get sucked into negativity and because of all the instability and even evil and violence.

So we need to have a clear system to make sure we’re focusing on who you can become and what’s possible in your life. And so, Inter Excellence is about developing the habits of thought and action every day where you can be fully engaged in the moment more often, unattached to the results of what you’re trying to do. And we do that by training your heart to love most what’s most empowering.

John Jantsch (17:03.493)

So I’m guessing a fair amount of people you work with need like you need to strip some stuff away, you know, because they come to you with being full on being doing. What’s kind of the first step to get somebody to shift their mindset from that, you know, away from doing and more towards, I guess you would call it being.

Jim (17:25.762)

how they speak. The first thing we do is we make sure that we’re speaking the truth. That’s Inter Excellence has nine disciplines and one of the disciplines is to speak the truth about the past to create possibilities in the future. So people come to me and they want to perform better. they’re, they often will talk to me about how they’re struggling with something. And, but the thing is your subconscious is what’s running your life and creating these beliefs that are limitations on what’s possible.

It’s really, really hard to outperform your beliefs, the subconscious comfort level with what you feel is possible in your life. And so, Inter-Excellence is largely about expanding what you believe is possible by getting yourself to see possibilities and feel it as if it’s real. And so we need to be able to come to edge of our feelings and beliefs and not resist those moments where we’re super uncomfortable.

John Jantsch (18:18.393)

Because your work went from being exposed to X amount of people to a much larger X, has that changed just because I’m guessing you’re getting a lot more feedback, you have more people reaching out to you saying, hey, I want a piece of you. Has that changed not you, but has that changed anything, how you think about your system, how you think about the work, or is it only validated?

Jim (18:46.894)

Oh yeah, it’s changed a lot. My life has changed a lot. Um, I think of what if I would have died January 11th or before, you know, I, the majority of the things in the book that I wrote 16 years ago are the same. And it was selling one to two copies a day before January 12th. And then, um, you know, now it’s like I said, it’s going to be in 26 or 27 languages and it’s sold half a million copies or whatever. And so, um,

John Jantsch (18:58.255)

Right.

Jim (19:14.646)

what’s changed is is well, I want to more definitely more confidence in the message. Like in the past, I you know, I believed in the message for sure. But there’s always a wonder like, why don’t more people? Why isn’t the book more popular? didn’t understand it. And so now it’s just kind of that’s really cool. But I don’t think of myself as as the originator of this.

John Jantsch (19:32.304)

Yeah.

Jim (19:41.876)

or even author. I’m just a lowly messenger. And so because it’s so extraordinary, everything that’s happened, it’s, I mean, it’s, there’s no way that I could say, I did this. And so the moment we start to think that I’m doing it and that I’m somebody because I’m doing these great things, then we start to get afraid of, what if I make mistakes? But when you can take yourself completely out of the picture,

John Jantsch (19:52.123)

Thanks

John Jantsch (20:06.521)

Yeah.

Jim (20:10.904)

there’s no concern for self, then you can be fearless. God’s given me this gift that I realized, you know, at the very most I’ve added maybe one or 2 % to anything good that’s happened in the last six months. And since I know that there’s no like, I’m somebody now. I know I’m nobody.

John Jantsch (20:30.873)

Yeah. Well, Jim, I appreciate you taking a moment to share with our listeners. Is there some place you would invite people to connect with you? Obviously the book’s available everywhere, but if people want to learn more about your coaching or just really, you know, anything, explore anything deeper from the book.

Jim (20:53.09)

Yeah, I would go to interexcellence.com and sign up for the newsletter. We have a VIP newsletter that talks about our retreats and workshops. We’ve got a retreat coming up in Mexico here very soon. and then social media, Instagram, InterExcellence, InterExcellence, Jim Murphy, and other social media outlets. You’ll find me.

Jim (21:16.28)

Thanks so much, John.

Marketing in the Era of Uber Trends

Marketing in the Era of Uber Trends written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Listen to the full episode:

Overview

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, John Jantsch interviews Michael Tchong, innovation expert, futurist, and founder of Uber Trends. Named “America’s most influential trend spotter” by Daily Telegraph, Michael has helped brands like Apple, Amex, and Mercedes-Benz anticipate seismic shifts in technology and consumer behavior. Michael breaks down the difference between fleeting fads and true “Uber Trends,” shares his process for pattern recognition and trend validation, and explains why transparency, instant gratification, and user experience are core forces reshaping marketing, business, and culture.

About the Guest

Michael Tchong is a renowned innovation expert, sought-after speaker, and the founder of Uber Trends. He’s been recognized as America’s top trend spotter and has guided Fortune 500 companies in anticipating and capitalizing on shifts that drive consumer behavior and technology. Michael is the author of “Ubertrends: How Trends and Innovation Are Transforming Our Future,” founder of the Uber Trends Academy, and a passionate advocate for leveraging deep trend insight for competitive advantage.

Website & Academy: ubertrends.com
Book: Ubertrends: How Trends and Innovation Are Transforming Our Future
Community: Uber Trends Academy (via Mighty Networks)

Actionable Insights

Uber Trends are massive, value-shifting waves that reshape society and spark dozens of subtrends—unlike shallow fads, they create lasting change.
Pattern recognition and connecting data “dots” is the key skill for trend spotting; analyzing headlines, reading research critically, and tagging patterns are daily habits for Michael.
Time compression, instant gratification, and “TBD” (too busy disorder) are core Uber Trends affecting everything from TikTok to retail hours—businesses must adapt to shorter attention spans and higher expectations.
User experience and transparency are essential for future-ready businesses; consumers demand seamless journeys, clear pricing, and visible customer support.
The explosion of martech and AI tools signals a “great martech displacement”—disruption is coming from nimble new players, not industry incumbents.
Marketers and business owners should focus on finding pain points tied to Uber Trends and build innovation around solving them (not just chasing the latest app or fad).
Trendspotting is a skill anyone can build: Read widely, analyze patterns, maintain a trend database, and be skeptical about research and survey data.
The future belongs to those who can connect systemic shifts to actionable business ideas—turning trend insight into competitive advantage.

Great Moments (with Timestamps)

01:09 – Uber Trends vs. Micro Trends
Michael explains his framework and why only a few shifts truly change society.
03:18 – What Makes an Uber Trend?
Massive, value-shifting, and “changes people,” not just culture.
04:42 – Pattern Recognition and Connecting the Dots
Why trend spotting is about data analysis and seeing the big picture.
08:31 – Turning Trends Into Business Innovation
How leaders can build around pain points and lasting shifts, not fads.
10:25 – The Great Martech Displacement
Why 40,000 new AI apps are disrupting traditional marketing tech stacks.
13:19 – User Experience as the Ultimate Differentiator
Why transparency, customer support, and frictionless journeys are the new competitive edge.
15:15 – Transparency, Pricing, and the Self-Led Buyer Journey
Marketing must adapt as buyers expect everything to be visible before talking to sales.
17:14 – Spotting Trends Early—and What Michael Missed
Reflections on time compression, instant gratification, and what’s next.
20:14 – Habits for Marketers Who Want to Spot Trends
Michael’s daily reading, trend database, and tips for separating signal from noise.

Insights

“Uber Trends are not fads—they’re massive, value-shifting waves that actually change people, not just society.”

“Pattern recognition is the heart of trend spotting. It’s about connecting the dots and seeing the big picture among all the noise.”

“Time compression, instant gratification, and higher expectations are pushing businesses to deliver user experiences that are fast, transparent, and frictionless.”

“The martech world is being disrupted—not by incumbents, but by nimble new AI players who understand the next wave.”

“Anyone can learn to spot trends—read widely, question research, maintain a database, and always look for actionable patterns you can build a business around.”

Duct Tape Transcript

John Jantsch (00:00.93)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Michael Tchong. He’s an innovation expert, sought after speaker and founder of Uber Trends. He’s recognized as America’s most influential trend spotter by Daily Telegraph. Michael has helped companies like Apple, American Express and Mercedes-Benz anticipate and capitalize on seismic shifts in consumer behavior and technology. He’s known for his energetic

presentations, uncanny predictions and unique frameworks for decoding the future. So, Michael, welcome to the show.

Michael Tchong (00:37.382)

thank you for having me, John. It’s a pleasure to be here, especially with someone who is in the digital marketing arena.

John Jantsch (00:44.59)

for many years before we had digital marketing in fact, but still in it. So as I read in your bio, you’ve been called America’s most influential trend spotter. So I’m wondering, do you have a kind of a personal process for identifying, know, real lasting trends versus kind of passing fads? you got a methodology that generally is on target?

Michael Tchong (01:09.197)

Well, I think that and I have a book called uber trends how trends and innovation are transforming our future I am really focused on my eight uber trends because they are what I consider to be value shift inducing trends most trends just skim the social surface so

Those eight uber trends, the digital lifestyle, the marriage of man and machine, generation ecstasy, been there, done that, voyeur orgasm, I like to watch. I know these are, you know, stand out waves that I believe repercuss through society, rippling across our social surface and creating many, sub trends in their wake. that now, so if a if I see a phenomenon that is

John Jantsch (01:44.334)

Yeah.

Michael Tchong (02:02.637)

tied to one of these trends, then I know it’s part of a lasting happening. think that that’s really how you have to look at it. So for example, you know, the experience if inflation, which is one of my Uber trends, is, of course, quite appropriate for Las Vegas, because we have so many.

John Jantsch (02:10.87)

Mmm. Okay.

John Jantsch (02:27.278)

Yeah

Michael Tchong (02:29.837)

of Meow Wolf, and now we have the Universal Horror Experience, and you’ve got the Sphere. These are all things that are aimed directly under the aegis of Generation XTC at an audience that’s become so bored and so immune to excitement because they want to move on to the next thing, just like, you know, been there, done that suggests.

John Jantsch (02:56.846)

Hehehe.

Michael Tchong (02:57.677)

that I look at those type of phenomena as a part of a lasting change in society.

John Jantsch (03:05.293)

So maybe I better back up a little bit. Let’s define first the concept of an Uber trend that obviously it’s central to your work. How do you define one? What makes it different from say a micro trend?

Michael Tchong (03:18.221)

Okay, an uber trend is a massive wave, think tsunami that cascades through society, leaving many sub trends in its wake. And what sets it apart, like I mentioned, unlike most trends, it does not skim the social surface, it actually changes people. So let me give you a perfect example of that. Time compression, the acceleration of life.

We are all suffering from TBD, too busy disorder, as Ellen DeGeneres coined it. We are all multitasking to save time. We’ve all become massively impatient. So the TikTok video view is now two seconds because everyone clicks off in 1.6 to 1.8 seconds. That is part and parcel.

John Jantsch (04:11.65)

Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Tchong (04:15.637)

of the time compression Uber trend. So when you see again, these snapshots in society, I connect the dots. We’re all inundated by data. And so what I tried to say is, look, this is all part and parcel of a phenomenon that has legs and that is something that you need to watch as a marketer, especially.

John Jantsch (04:42.092)

So I have been doing this show for coming up on 20 years. Actually, August 1st is my 20th anniversary of doing this show as a podcast. Prior to that, I actually did a radio show. And so I have interviewed many, many people. I interviewed John Nesbitt, who was the author of Megatrends. And so he was kind of the first person to talk trends, to me at least. I’m sure there have been others. your work been influenced by some of his early work?

Michael Tchong (04:52.801)

Wow.

Michael Tchong (05:02.422)

Yes.

Michael Tchong (05:06.198)

Yeah.

Michael Tchong (05:12.917)

Well, megatrends is what everybody will call it when I talk about Uber trends, right? But, you know, remember I’m a marketer by heart. Okay. That’s my background. I worked a shy day, you know? So when I decided on the Uber nomenclature way before Uber was cool, I was Uber cool. I adopted that as the name for my trends. And think about it.

John Jantsch (05:16.898)

Yes. Right,

Michael Tchong (05:42.901)

You’re a marketer. Think about the marketing perspective. You’ve got the seventies. You’ve got Alvin Toffler, Future Shock. Everyone talks about that. Then the eighties appears and you’ve got John Nesbit, Megatrends. Everyone talks about that. Then you get Fade Popcorn in the nineties and some people talk about it. Then you get Malcolm Gladwell in the two thousands who is more of a author, you know, someone who’s

John Jantsch (05:49.784)

Right.

John Jantsch (05:59.416)

Alright, the popcorn diaries, right? Yeah.

Michael Tchong (06:12.48)

Paints a great story, but I wouldn’t necessarily consider him to be a sublime trend watcher. I think he’s really more focused on creating these stories and, you know, 10,000 hours that you have to become before you become proficient at something. So there is a vacuum in my view and the vacuum that is currently being occupied by the likes of say a Rainier Avers at trend watching in the Netherlands.

John Jantsch (06:27.256)

Yeah, right, right.

John Jantsch (06:32.408)

Mm-hmm.

Michael Tchong (06:41.228)

And there’s a gentleman in Jeremy Gucci in Canada with Trend Hunter. me, yeah, and with all due respect, let me tell you something. Many of their 10,000 or so, 20,000 or so trend labels, most of those are fads.

John Jantsch (06:44.91)

Yeah. Jeremy’s been on this show. Yeah.

John Jantsch (07:07.448)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Michael Tchong (07:08.46)

Most of those are, know, a picture, a picture hook for your wall in the shape of a dagger. Who cares? I don’t. That may be good for a small business operator who’s looking for a creative idea, perhaps, but I am more interested in the systemic shifts in society. That is my difference.

John Jantsch (07:19.309)

You

Right.

Michael Tchong (07:37.932)

And so when you are looking for a value proposition as a marketer, how do I take an idea of an emerging trend and turn it into a you know, shape shifting business solution? That’s what I’m all about.

John Jantsch (07:55.35)

Yeah. mean, I mean, all the conversation around trends is really just kind of almost fun pop culture until you can do something with it. Right. And I think that that’s the, that’s the real rub is a lot of people can say, yeah, that, okay. I see that coming. Or maybe I don’t, or maybe that’s a big deal, but how do I capitalize on it? So, you know, how do you advise people you, I mentioned in your bio that you work with some, big name companies, how do you advise them to take something that

Michael Tchong (08:04.595)

Exactly.

Michael Tchong (08:15.36)

Right.

John Jantsch (08:24.13)

that maybe you’ve defined and you see coming and then say, hey, here’s how to prepare for it.

Michael Tchong (08:31.306)

Well, look, there is no real magic in anything that we do as business people. I always say you’ve got to pay attention to the details. So for example, in my presentations, I talk about the fact that, you know, everyone aspires to come up with a disruptive innovation. But Steve Jobs, with all the things that he did.

John Jantsch (08:53.774)

Sure.

Michael Tchong (09:00.182)

did not necessarily create anything new. When he took the iPod, he takes something that came out of Singapore, creative strategies. I’m not a creative strategist, but you know who I’m talking about. They already had an MP3 player, but he just did a best of breed. He put a five megabyte, which at the time was huge, of storage into a device. But the biggest innovation there was

John Jantsch (09:16.27)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (09:21.388)

Yeah, right, right.

Michael Tchong (09:27.958)

tying it to a music store so that you could automatically seamlessly download some music. So as a business person, when you’re looking at emerging trends and you’re seeing all the things that are happening in our current landscape, and there are many, okay, you have to then decide, okay, how do I build a business around that? So again, you take baby steps, you say,

John Jantsch (09:31.47)

Yeah, right.

Michael Tchong (09:56.921)

What is the pain point in society related to this emerging trend? What are people not able to do or accomplish in a simple fashion to get this to work for them? Especially in this day and age where, know, let’s go through some numbers here. You’re in digital marketing. You know as well as I, the Scott Brinker has that barometer.

John Jantsch (10:13.848)

the

Michael Tchong (10:25.9)

And in May, he said there were 15,400 or so digital marketing apps. And that took 31 years from the day that that first ad banner appeared on Hotwired, 1994, May 1994, till now, 31 years to get to 15,400 apps. Since the debut of OpenAI’s chat GPT, November 30th of 2022, we will never forget.

John Jantsch (10:32.748)

Mm-hmm.

Michael Tchong (10:55.596)

We now have almost 40,000 AI apps.

John Jantsch (11:02.892)

Yeah.

Michael Tchong (11:03.486)

Massive, massive, but what that does tell you is that there is a, and I call this trend the great martech displacement. Okay. Because in all my explorations, if you will, of the apps that are marketing related.

John Jantsch (11:14.158)

Mm-hmm.

Michael Tchong (11:29.032)

One of the things I noticed that, hey, you know what? There are almost no traditional players in all these articles that are talking about, you know, the digital sales representative and, know, GEO, which is now the new SEO, Generative AI, born engine optimization, is that these things are not occupied by the traditional player.

John Jantsch (11:35.384)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (11:41.709)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (11:47.49)

Mm-hmm.

Michael Tchong (11:58.78)

If I was a small business consultant and I was focused on what the next generation of my clients would be demanding, I would suggest that they start looking into what are these leading edge tools and build a business around.

John Jantsch (12:15.406)

Yeah, I actually think that it’ll be interesting. Some of the entrenched players, I think will try to get it in the space, I think that, I think there’s a, right now that the AI apps are, you know, there are 200 of them that somebody could use and at any given time, I think those are all going to get consolidated and eaten up by somebody who figures out how to create the AI operating system as kind of one deliverable package. And I think people will

You know, right now there’s a whole bunch of $20 a month tools. think there’s somebody’s going to come along and create the 599, you know, all in one package that I think, I think will, especially for small and midsize businesses.

Michael Tchong (12:51.455)

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Michael Tchong (12:55.363)

That’s what Elon Musk says he wants to do. There’s been talk about that super app for years now. I have not seen it. In 1992, I created the first incursion of what I consider a modularly upgradable CRM system. It was called Hello.

John Jantsch (12:57.998)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (13:03.49)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s because it’s hard.

John Jantsch (13:17.39)

Hmm. Huh.

Michael Tchong (13:19.145)

because I am focused on the user experience. That is what I believe is the number one thing you should be talking about when, in this new age, with everyone being hyper competitive, the customer experience is what sets you apart. So as a small business person, that is what I focus on. Transparency is the other thing that I highly advocate everybody pursue.

We are living in an era where that’s ruled by voyeurgasm. I like to watch UberTrend. And that is propelling that urge by society to be able to see more. It’s propelled by YouTube. You’ve got celebrity worship syndrome. You’ve got reality shows. know, everything has become transparent. We’re living in surveillance culture. You know, again, all of these are opportunities as they keep exploding.

to create businesses around and, you know, make sure you do that. So for example, in our business, in our software business, you know as well as I do, every developer out there hides their customer service email. They have no 800 toll free numbers. They try so desperately to make sure that no one can find them. There’s no street address. There’s nothing.

John Jantsch (14:34.136)

Ha ha.

Michael Tchong (14:44.413)

It is totally anathema to the wave of the future of transparency. Absolutely. So I go and preach to an audience that is totally hostile. They don’t want to hear that. And I say, look at your ketchup bottle. You will see that there is an 800 toll free number on your ketchup bottle. Why can’t you have that? If I have to pay you $50 a month.

John Jantsch (14:49.1)

Yeah, I agree with that, yeah.

John Jantsch (14:57.603)

Yeah.

Michael Tchong (15:13.759)

for your service.

John Jantsch (15:15.906)

Well, I’m, I’m actually, I tell you one trend that I’m seeing then that’s directly related to marketing is people, you know, because the buyer now has so much control over the journey and information and what they can find, you know, even creating short lists of, of, potential vendors that pricing is not going to be, I think, showing your pricing, revealing your pricing on your website as part of the customer journey before I ever have to talk to a salesperson.

I think is a trend that goes to this transparency, but also kind of, think goes to how people expect to buy today. They don’t want a salesperson to call them. They want to almost do a self-led journey, even for very high ticket items. I think that you’re going to see more and more marketers that are going to put everything on the table because they have no choice.

Michael Tchong (15:58.335)

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Michael Tchong (16:09.609)

Yeah, I hope so. know, I still the minute I run into any solution that has no pricing page, I go away, you know, and yeah, we’re a small business people. We all know we need to be diligent about our budgets and spending. So it is absolutely crucial that I know upfront that I have full pricing transparency and that I, like you said, don’t have to call somebody.

John Jantsch (16:11.086)

You

John Jantsch (16:19.788)

Right. Well, and I think you’re not alone. Yeah.

John Jantsch (16:35.47)

Well, or, or, or I was going to say, just, don’t want to waste my time to find out it’s 10 times more than I can afford, uh, you know, is the answer. So, so it’s like, I want to at least know what I’m getting into before I even want to have that conversation or waste my time. think that, you know, kind of goes to your short attention span, you know, nobody wants a sales call. I mean, we want to be able to just do it 24 seven when we feel like it. Are there any?

Michael Tchong (16:43.476)

Yes.

Michael Tchong (16:50.847)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Michael Tchong (16:59.239)

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

John Jantsch (17:02.594)

Are there any trends that you feel like you spotted early on and you’ve been able to take advantage of? And then I can give you the flip side. Are there any that you feel like you really missed?

Michael Tchong (17:14.991)

Well, I was talking about time compression back in the 90s. And so I, to me, society has been evolving at a speed. Then when I started to do research into it, I discovered that it really started way back as far as the forties, 1946, the discovery of the microwave oven, the discovery of

John Jantsch (17:19.714)

Yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (17:36.878)

Mm-hmm.

Michael Tchong (17:44.475)

of the Polaroid camera, these both introduced America to instant gratification. And now it’s become part and parcel of our culture. We all want to, you I love that Google finding, you know, the interest in results for open now have declined, have increased exponentially as opposed to store hours. Again,

John Jantsch (18:12.876)

Yeah, yeah,

Michael Tchong (18:13.712)

for the retailer, that’s good to know because really, you know, I don’t want to have to search through your whole website to find what you, if you are open now. I almost advocate that we go back to that. Remember those little banners that used to run on the websites in the nineties? They had a little neon chasing thing. That’s what we need on your retailing website, on the homepage, open now.

John Jantsch (18:32.119)

Yeah.

Michael Tchong (18:44.146)

I mean, to me, is a, you know, I mean, why do I have to dig it? Now, of course, Google is provided in its summary of results. Thank God. Because again, yeah, I mean, you know, not even that, that directory listing on the right of that business that has the hours and the website and all, mean, you know, that is all information that you as a marketer should have already provided upfront on your homepage.

John Jantsch (18:46.616)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (18:53.944)

Yeah, the AI overviews are definitely cutting into that kind of search.

John Jantsch (19:11.512)

Yep. Yep. Yep. Absolutely. Kind of reminds me, you were talking about the instant gratification. There was a movie, I never can remember the title of this, but the characters were teenagers and their mother had died and they found a camera that, film camera that she had taken some, obviously taken some pictures and they were like, let’s go get these, you know, developed, see what’s on it. So they take it in the store and he said, do you want the one hour service? And they were like, we have to wait an hour to get these pictures.

Michael Tchong (19:30.634)

Mm.

Michael Tchong (19:39.108)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (19:41.678)

I really, I find that to be one of the kind of the funniest moments to really sum up this. All right. So.

If a marketer wants to become a trend spotter themselves to some degree, are there any habits that you think that they need to start building around looking for those? is it simply a matter of read your book, Uber Trends, and then try to apply those to some process in their book or in their business?

Michael Tchong (20:14.186)

or join ubertrendsacademy, my school, where you will be learning a lot about trend watching. Essentially, it’s parsing a lot of information. It’s pattern recognition, okay? I I look at four to 500 headlines a day. I then categorize and database the articles.

John Jantsch (20:24.088)

Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Tchong (20:35.818)

They’re all stored now in an Airtable database. I have keyworded them. I track over 350 trends, most of them related to my Uber trends because I cannot track every trend known to man, you know, because that would be tens of thousands. But I am just looking at the ones that everyone talks about. So I’ve got about 350 of those. And then what you then do is it’s a relational database. So it’s categorized, it’s tagged. Trends can have

John Jantsch (20:46.606)

Sure.

Michael Tchong (21:05.466)

overlapping market impacts, so they have to be tagged. So if I were to say to you, okay, you want to become a trend watcher? Yeah, you can, absolutely. Read the New York Times, read the Wall Street Journal. They are the biggest providers of trend watching in America. Then BBC and perhaps, you know, Futurism, know, Wired.

I read TechCrunch every day, I read The Verge every day, and then I go into Google News and I look at what they provide me, and then people share a lot of information with me as well, so that helps. That’s my informal trend-watching army. So I get help, and I need it. There’s too much stuff to absorb, it’s impossible, right?

John Jantsch (21:59.554)

Yes, yes. Yes, yes.

Michael Tchong (22:02.793)

Yeah, you can definitely become a trend watcher. So you have to analyze the data. You have to spot patterns, and that’s the critical thing. You have to really understand the difference between a good survey and a bad survey. And most research is bad. OK? Let me give you that. So when you see.

John Jantsch (22:20.76)

Yeah.

Michael Tchong (22:25.322)

a statistic for example that says 43 % of kids would love to play video games on their watch. You then have to know that in traditional research we divide audiences into quintiles, which are approximate fifths. And the spectrum goes from the one end of the spectrum is people who do everything

And then the other end of the spectrum is the people who do nothing. All right. As I call them legally dead. And in that spectrum, what you will find, and it goes into those approximate fifths beautifully really, because the top two quintiles, 40 % want to play video games on their watch.

John Jantsch (23:00.525)

Hahaha.

John Jantsch (23:20.536)

Yes.

Michael Tchong (23:21.82)

And so that 43 % statistic tells me nothing. That only tells me, hmm, it’s representative of the market at large. So reading research is absolutely critical because that is, you know, when they say, you know, 20 % of people never use AI. Hey, it’s the bottom quintile. They never do anything.

John Jantsch (23:31.468)

Yes, yes, yes.

John Jantsch (23:46.53)

Yeah, Yeah. Yeah. That’s funny. Well, Michael, I appreciate you stopping by the duct tape marketing podcast. there some place you’d invite people to learn about you connect with you? Obviously, find out more about your uber trends group.

Michael Tchong (23:51.581)

You know? So…

Michael Tchong (24:06.762)

Yes, absolutely. So ubertrends.com, that is where the Academy is based and that is where you will find plenty of information about our community. I invite people to join it. It’s on Mighty Networks, which is a startup by Gina Biancini who started Ring, if you remember that from the, I’m sorry, Ning, Ning, not Ring, Ning, in another community platform. Yeah, Gina, Gina, oh, you get around, man, you know.

John Jantsch (24:25.72)

Yeah. Yeah. Ning, Ning. Yeah, yeah. Gina’s been on my shelf on this show. Yeah.

John Jantsch (24:36.357)

I do.

Michael Tchong (24:36.362)

So, yeah, so what we’re trying to create is a community of people that talk to one another, you know. I don’t know if you remember, but I was the founder of Iconocast. We were one of the preeminent digital marketing newsletters during the dot com boom. So we had 50,000 readers each week that were part of and parcel of a very hardcore community. That’s what we like to build again.

John Jantsch (24:53.602)

Yeah, I remember that. Yeah.

John Jantsch (25:03.99)

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

Michael Tchong (25:06.196)

All right.

Michael Tchong (25:11.186)

And by the way, this is a T-shirt that is part of my innovation crusade. It’s you call that innovation is the hashtag. It’s a laughing emoji because the reality is, as you well know, everyone talks about innovation, but it’s like teenage sex. No one does it. On that note. Take thanks. Thanks, John. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

John Jantsch (25:19.054)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (25:34.838)

Awesome. I appreciate it.

Why Peer Groups Accelerate Success

Why Peer Groups Accelerate Success written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Listen to the full episode:

Overview

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, John Jantsch interviews Victoria Downing, president of Remodelers Advantage—the leading peer group and business improvement resource for remodeling company owners. With over three decades of experience, Victoria explains how peer groups, professional training, and a focus on both profit and work-life balance have helped thousands of remodelers scale their businesses, lead more effectively, and create better lives for themselves and their teams. If you’re interested in how accountability, community, and structured learning can accelerate your growth—no matter your industry—this episode is packed with actionable insights.

About the Guest

Victoria Downing is the president of Remodelers Advantage, the premier peer group and business improvement organization for remodeling contractors. For more than 30 years, Victoria has helped remodelers across the US and Canada improve profitability, leadership, and work-life balance. She is a sought-after speaker, industry pioneer, and advocate for viewing your business as a tool for creating a great life—for yourself, your team, and your clients.

Actionable Insights

Your business should be a tool for creating the life you want—for both owners and employees—not just an engine for profit.
Peer groups are powerful: non-competing companies from all over the country meet to share numbers, challenges, and best practices, creating deep accountability and real results.
The most successful remodelers invest in their teams, using credits and resources for professional development, masterclasses, and specialized peer groups (production, design, finance, etc.).
Many contractors start as technicians—great at the craft, but not always at the business skills (especially finance and delegation). Peer groups help bridge that gap.
Clear, accurate financials are essential—the numbers tell the story and help owners decide what to focus on next.
Growth comes from learning to delegate and letting go of control; owners who try to hold onto every decision become the bottleneck.
Publicly sharing numbers and commitments with a peer group drives focus, accountability, and targeted improvement.
Technology (from CRMs to project management to AI) is rapidly evolving—Remodelers Advantage helps companies share what works and stay ahead without pushing a single software.
The peer group model is thriving in many industries; masterminding with other business owners cuts your learning curve in half and keeps you on the leading edge.
Group dynamics matter—matching by size, style, and personality (using tools like DISC) creates high-functioning, supportive communities.

Great Moments (with Timestamps)

00:56 – What is Remodelers Advantage?
Victoria explains the vision: building better lives through better businesses.
03:02 – The Power of Peer Groups
How non-competing owners form deep accountability, learn, and grow together.
05:23 – Investing in the Team
Specialized peer groups and credits for professional development boost performance and retention.
07:20 – The Technician’s Trap
Why so many owners struggle with finance, delegation, and growth—and how peer groups help.
09:17 – Accountability and “Peer Pressure”
How public commitments drive faster, more focused improvement.
11:38 – Adapting to Technology
How Victoria’s team stays agnostic but ahead, sharing what’s working across the industry.
13:31 – Group Dynamics and the Role of DISC
How careful placement and personality matching keep groups thriving.
16:21 – Real Results: 30% Revenue Growth, Complete Overhauls, and More
Victoria shares a real-life member’s story of transformation.
18:13 – Peer Groups in Other Industries
How masterminding accelerates learning and keeps Victoria sharp as a leader herself.
19:19 – What’s Next for Remodelers and the Industry
How Victoria’s team helps members stay on top of trends and plan for the future.

Insights

“Your business is a tool to build the life you want. Start with your goals, then engineer your business to deliver them.”

“Peer groups aren’t just about sharing wins—they’re about accountability for the tough stuff, too. That’s where growth happens.”

“The most successful owners invest in their teams’ development. When your people get better, your business gets better.”

“Clear, accurate numbers are a must. If you can’t read your financials, you can’t steer your business.”

“Business management is business management—masterminding with peers cuts your learning curve in half, in any industry.”

Duct Tape Transcript

John Jantsch (00:01.026)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is Jon Jantsch and my guest today is Victoria Downing. She’s the president of Remodeler’s Advantage. It’s the leading peer group and business improvement resource for remodeling company’s owners. For more than two decades, Victoria has helped thousands of remodelers improve profitability, leadership and work-life balance. Remodeler’s Advantage has really been known as

probably the leading peer group network, certainly in the industry for training and for helping folks grow their businesses. I actually have a couple of clients over the years that have been in this group and it really led me to wanting to interview Victoria. So welcome to the show.

Victoria Downing (00:47.33)

Well, thank you for having me.

John Jantsch (00:48.984)

So I guess let’s just start with kind of somebody said, so Victoria, what is Remidler’s advantage? Maybe just kind of set the baseline for what the group is and does.

Victoria Downing (00:56.581)

Okay, the baseline, let’s talk about the vision first, right? Our vision is to be the company that all remodelers turn to for a better life. We are all about looking at your business as a tool to help you build the life you want for yourself and for your employees while delivering a fantastic product to the community. So that’s our focus when we deliver that in a lot of different ways.

John Jantsch (01:21.902)

Well, it’s interesting to hear you say, because it, you know, I think I led in the bio, they’re talking about making companies more profitable, but you kind of led with work life balance. Do you feel like that’s those two are very, very intrinsically connected? Yeah.

Victoria Downing (01:36.349)

Absolutely. I mean, again, your business is a tool. So I always encourage our members, especially when they first come in, where are we trying to take you? What finances do you have to have to live your life now and into retirement and for your family and for college and all the stuff for your goals? How much money do you need to live that life? Well, that we back into that and say, OK, now how can we modify, manipulate this business to get you the funds you need? again, your employees, it’s not about

just the owner being greedy and taking every penny, it’s building a wonderful culture and future and lifestyle for the employees as well.

John Jantsch (02:15.704)

So the primary tool, guess, and correct me if I’m wrong on that, really is these peer groups. Talk a little bit about how that structure of bringing non-competing folks from all over the country together to really form a community.

Victoria Downing (02:33.775)

Well, I actually realized I have to update my bio because I’ve actually been doing this for since 1990. So for 35 years, I’ve been doing this. And it was, we started, started, I had a business partner at the time, Linda Case. She was very big in the industry for years and years and years. And I joined her then. And we would speak at trade shows and talk to a lot of people, write magazine columns and books and so on. And people started coming up to us saying, we’re looking for the next level.

John Jantsch (02:40.334)

30, mean, yeah.

Victoria Downing (03:02.341)

We’ve been coming to trade shows and listening to the speakers for 10, 15 years. We want more. What can we do? So we started a peer group. It was fantastic. And we slowly just added people and added groups over the years till now. We have over 200 companies across the U S and Canada that altogether produce over a billion dollars in revenue annually. So that’s a, they’re representing a lot of renovations, a lot of remodeling.

John Jantsch (03:02.872)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (03:32.27)

So, I’ll give you a softball question here, because I know the answer to this, but I want to hear you answer it. know, people that get coaching, that participate in peer groups, participate in their community, participate in their industry, tend to be the cream of the crop of an industry. I’ve just seen that across the board. How have you seen that play out with the RA groups?

Victoria Downing (03:47.033)

Yes.

Victoria Downing (03:52.537)

Well, it certainly is the case that we have a number of people. So let me back up a step. We have two different sort of levels of our round table peer groups. And peer groups makes up about a little bit more than half of our business in total with the others being master classes and events and consulting and coaching. So, but in round tables, there’s the base membership and then we have the mentor membership. The mentors tend to be larger, more profitable.

and they tend to have been members of Round Tables for many years. I can’t tell you how many people in the mentor levels have been with us for 15, 20 years. And they just keep coming because they know that they’re always going to learn something. You know, and yes, is there some diminishing returns over from the first fire hose, those first five years to 20 years in? Certainly. But they know that they can still get the bits and pieces that’ll make the difference between

John Jantsch (04:31.566)

You

Victoria Downing (04:49.613)

a good year and an exceptional year. So it really does play out that way.

John Jantsch (04:55.254)

And one of the things I’ve seen you do that, that I think of course, I’m sure evolved or people asked you for was that, you you, these are owners initially in a lot of the peer groups, but then you’ve started to put together all of your marketing people are in a peer group, you know, with them or all of your finance people are in a peer group. And how I’ve got to believe that, that that gets everybody talking the same language, you know, pulling the same direction. Have you, have you found that that, if nothing else is an amazing retention strategy as well.

Victoria Downing (05:08.911)

Yes.

Victoria Downing (05:23.909)

Yeah, yeah. You know, I mean, most of the people that are in those what we call tactical groups, there are people in positions in the companies. Most of those people are from member groups, but we do have some that are from outside the community. Right now we have nine groups for production managers, two groups for design managers, a group for CFOs. And then we also have a variety of what we call power meetings. We’ll bring administrators and office managers together for two days of intensiveness.

John Jantsch (05:29.326)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (05:53.39)

Mm-hmm.

Victoria Downing (05:53.539)

And that’s another way they pick up the language. But we have found that the companies that are the most successful, and again, I got to go back to some of our longer term members, they invest in their team, right? We can see it. The people who were buying masterclasses, investing in consulting and coaching and all this stuff had better returns than the rest. So what we did about four years ago, I guess it was right around COVID time.

John Jantsch (06:05.592)

Yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (06:16.856)

Yeah.

Victoria Downing (06:22.179)

We changed our membership to include what we call professional service credits. So people get, I don’t know, $5,000 worth of credits that they can use for all sorts of other trades. They can use it for production manager round table membership dues. So that we’re encouraging them to follow the lead of the best of the best and invest in their people with, you know, dollars that they have in their pocket from us.

John Jantsch (06:50.606)

So I’ve worked with a lot of remodeling contractors and every business to some extent, it has a lot of this where people got into business because they knew how to do something. I think remodeling contractors in some cases are the ultimate technicians. mean, they were the ones building the walls and putting in windows and things. And then also had to try to build a business. Do you find that in many cases that kind of technician mentality holds them back a little bit? It’s like, I know how to do all this stuff.

Victoria Downing (07:20.128)

Well, it does in a couple of ways. One of the things I’ve found is that when people come to us at the beginning of their relationship with us, that one of the things that is almost 100 % true is that their financial reporting is a mess. You can’t tell what’s going on. So if I’m telling them your business is a tool, well, I got to be able to read the story in that tool, right? I to be able to tell what’s going on. So we have to start by

John Jantsch (07:34.607)

Mmm, yeah.

Victoria Downing (07:46.447)

helping them organize and learn how to read and understand the information that’s in those reports. So then we can say, I always tell people the numbers tell the story. And if they are clear and accurate, the reports can almost tell you what your next move is gonna be. But you gotta have them in a format that we can read and that their peers can read and understand. So that’s one way that being a technician holds them back, because they haven’t had that business training. But another way,

happens a lot with the area of control. The companies that grow, and you know this as well as I do, it’s nothing new under the sun, but those companies that are able to delegate tend to be able to grow. If one of these owners has their fists around every decision that’s made in the company, it makes it very difficult to grow beyond yourself.

John Jantsch (08:20.536)

news.

You

John Jantsch (08:39.884)

Yeah. They become the, they become actually the bottleneck for, for, for growth, even though they claim that that’s what, what they ultimately want. How has, how have you seen also, I know one of the things that you do, I have a little advantage of hearing a little bit more about what, you do from a very tactical standpoint. You know, you make people bring their numbers, you know, they, they, know, in front of their peers have to say, here’s where we’re.

Victoria Downing (08:43.481)

Yes.

John Jantsch (09:08.728)

winning, here’s where we’re losing. How does that kind of peer pressure, or if for lack of a better term, actually help them grow?

Victoria Downing (09:10.371)

Right.

Victoria Downing (09:17.455)

Well, it’s that there are nine other company representatives from nine other companies sitting there and looking at them and they’re saying, well, here’s where you’re down, but look at this guy over here, he’s really high in that, let’s get you two together. Or this guy who’s doing really well in that area gives advice. So it not only helps them get ideas and strategies for improving the lower levels, but…

It also helps these owners figure out what to work on first. You know, there’s that whole thing about just picking the things that are the most important things to work on. And a lot of business owners get confused. They they see them the next shiny object. They take their eye off the ball. They’re not watching their pipeline. They’re not monitoring the financial statements to know what carpenter’s producing profitable jobs and which one’s losing jobs. All of that stuff.

These groups help them pinpoint. Every time a member leaves their peer group, they have two or three written commitments that they have to report back to their group who hold them accountable for achieving those commitments. And then they’ve got the whole team of the peer group, as well as the support staff of us. If they’re having challenges in meeting those commitments, we’ve got resources. One of the beauties, as you know,

in being in the business for as long as we’ve been in the business, that you have a pretty good network of people and resources that you can share and you can help. So we’ve got a lot of that at hand.

John Jantsch (10:52.002)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (10:58.946)

Let’s talk about technology a little bit. know, I mean, when I started my business, you’ve been in business as long as I have, you know, we didn’t have the web. Right. We didn’t have, yeah, exactly. And so obviously not only that kind of technology has changed, but even how you run, run their businesses. mean, everything from, you know, quoting to tracking, you know, some of the things that they do, know, inventorying. So, I mean, it’s all kind of technology driven today. How, how have.

Victoria Downing (11:07.257)

Yeah, I know. I can remember those days.

John Jantsch (11:28.386)

How have you been able to kind of keep up with that and not just keep up with it, but probably be seen as a leader in helping people adopt new technologies.

Victoria Downing (11:38.117)

Well, one of the things that happens is we try to stay a little bit agnostic on what technology they want to use. There are some outstanding project management softwares focused on the industry. There’s two major ones in our space right now. I listen to our members. I’m constantly reading. We receive information from them all day, every day. I get emails from every group. Every group has their own email thread.

John Jantsch (11:42.35)

Mm.

John Jantsch (11:48.302)

Maybe. Sure.

Victoria Downing (12:03.993)

and I get all those emails all the time. So I’m constantly reading about what’s working, what’s not working. Then I can reach out and ask questions and use that information to compile suggestions and share that information with the rest of the community. So I really relaxed. I mean, I don’t do estimates, right? But I pay attention to those who do and what’s working and what new things they’re finding. you know, so there’s, that’s a big, big one. The whole CRM sales management thing is a big one.

John Jantsch (12:04.129)

Hmm.

John Jantsch (12:25.422)

Yeah. Yeah.

Victoria Downing (12:32.737)

Recently, we had a members only webinar where we featured three of our members and how they use AI in their business. That was pretty fascinating. And now AI has taken over how marketing works and how all those searches and all that work. So we’re getting information on that and sharing it with our community as well. It’s just everywhere. It’s amazing.

John Jantsch (12:41.068)

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (12:53.826)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It is, it is evolving. You know, not obviously all my listeners are modeling contractors or in the home services business, but it was, so I really, again, it’s this peer group idea that I think is really fascinating. I’m curious, how do you manage some of the dynamics? mean, I’m sure you’ve had times where like people just weren’t getting along in the group or somebody shouldn’t be in that group or, know, somebody’s dominating that group or something. Again, I, I’m sure you’ve seen it all.

Victoria Downing (13:07.343)

Yes.

Victoria Downing (13:22.895)

Yes.

John Jantsch (13:23.819)

How do you kind of manage some of the dynamics of making sure that you’ve got a really gelled group?

Victoria Downing (13:31.183)

Well, right for the last probably six years, my colleague Steve Wheeler has been managing the roundtable groups and he is excellent at first of all placement. When we’re placing someone in a group, we have to start out by making sure there’s nothing competitive in the match. Then we try to match them up with similar volume levels and similar job sizes and similar business models, like are they using all subs?

John Jantsch (13:38.083)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (13:43.117)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (13:48.984)

Right. Right.

Victoria Downing (13:59.043)

or they have their own in-house labor, that sort of thing. And then we also look at a personality profile of each of the members that tells us how they like to give and receive information. We use DISC. All of our members take it. We use it internally. We use it for hiring. It’s all over the place. So that helps us also determine where to place people. So are you familiar with DISC at all? OK, so, you know, for example, it’s D, I, S, and C.

John Jantsch (14:05.944)

you

John Jantsch (14:12.023)

Hmm.

John Jantsch (14:23.425)

yeah, sure. Yes, I’m.

Victoria Downing (14:28.547)

The S people are slower to make decisions. They’re a little bit less outgoing. They like to do more one thing at a time. You get a whole group of S people. It’s pretty flippin’ quiet. So we gotta throw a D in there to ramp it up or throw an I in there to give it some jazz, you know? But we’re constantly monitoring that. And our members, first of all, it’s not a class. We’re not pablum feeding them.

John Jantsch (14:39.699)

Hehehehehe

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (14:54.53)

Yeah, yeah.

Victoria Downing (14:54.671)

We’re setting up an environment for them to use the resources we make available. Our mission statement is to light the path of greater success for motivated remodeling professionals. We don’t do it for them. We show them the way. We give them the resources. We light the path. They have to do the work to get where they want to go. So we talk a lot about that. And that’s part of the process. making a commitment.

So anyway, so this is a group of peers that need to be holding one another accountable. And overall for things like commitments, they do a pretty good job. Like, hey dude, you made the commitment, we didn’t hear from you, you didn’t ask for an extension, why are you coming here without your commitment done? That works pretty well. It’s when they don’t like someone or there’s a personality conflict that then it gets a little bit dicey. It’s awkward oftentimes to address that within the group.

So they’ll go to their facilitator or they’ll come to the staff and we’ll help fix it or move somebody to a group that’s a better fit. So we do that when they, because we have 25 owner groups, we can do that.

John Jantsch (16:05.218)

Yeah. Yeah. Do you have, and you don’t need to name names here at all, but do you have some examples of businesses that you’ve just really seen grow and flourish, you know, by directly by being a part of a peer group? Yeah.

Victoria Downing (16:21.727)

Absolutely. So as a matter of fact, I got an email this week and I printed it out so that I could read you some of the things that they said. Every year or as somebody’s been with us a year, I will reach out to them and ask them what are the changes, improvements that they have made since their time with Roundtables. So I did that with this particular company, which is a Canadian company. We have a number of Canadians in our community.

John Jantsch (16:37.698)

Mm-hmm.

Victoria Downing (16:47.439)

They sent me a list of 18 items that they have improved upon since they joined in one year. You know, I always tell people, like in our mission statement, we talk about greater success. I’ll tell people, we know you’re going to be successful, but this will cut your time in half. So just to give you a couple of things, revenue growth of 30 % on our rolling 12 month report, gross profit growth of 36%, complete company overhaul. We rebuilt every department in the company.

John Jantsch (16:50.702)

You

Victoria Downing (17:17.509)

We implemented the work in progress process and we meet monthly to review all key financials. We have 100 % better understanding of the financials, WIP, budgeting, et cetera. We’ve created department scorecards to track and manage KPIs and on and on and on and on. So then the owner goes on and he says,

RA, Remodeler’s Advantage, has certainly opened my mind as to what’s possible in this business. I feel we have a strong foundation to continue to build upon and our potential is just starting to be realized. We have a long way to go and RA is going to be an integral part in making that happen. That we get dozens of letters like that all the time.

John Jantsch (18:02.958)

You know, because you’ve been a pioneer in this particular business model, are you familiar and it’s okay if you’re not, but are you familiar with other industries or other groups similar to RA that you’ve run across?

Victoria Downing (18:13.871)

Well, funny you should ask, I belong to something called the Council of Masterminds, which is a peer group for companies that do peer groups. We think it’s kind of meta, you know? So in that, we’re all different industry verticals that we just came back from our meeting. We have peer groups for dentists, optometrists, computer service companies, insurance brokerages, and on and on. And there’s about 12 of us that come to this. And I’ve been going to that meeting.

John Jantsch (18:19.48)

okay.

Okay. Yeah.

Victoria Downing (18:43.429)

twice a year for 20 years. So I am walking the talk and I come back with pages of notes, just like I do even from our peer groups. It’s a different industry, but business management is business management is business management. So many ideas fit.

John Jantsch (18:59.416)

Yeah. Yeah. You know, I was thinking that I’m sure that a lot of your members kind of keep you, you know, like what’s going on in the industry. What’s the future look like? What’s the technology changes? I’m sure you hear a lot of that from your members and that probably helps keep you abreast of things because you’re hearing from kind of the cream of the crop. Yeah.

Victoria Downing (19:14.714)

Yes.

Victoria Downing (19:19.833)

Yes, yes, that does too. But again, we also follow all of the studies like the leading indicator of remodeling activity in Harvard and all of those things to try to stay on top. know, House just did a survey talking about what the future looks like for remodeling. We’re having a session at the summit on looking forward and how to deal with the uncertainty now and what to expect as we go through the next several years. we try to compile all that information for our members and make it readily available.

John Jantsch (19:24.44)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (19:49.612)

Yeah, awesome. Well, Victoria, I appreciate you spending a few moments to share with my audience. Is there someplace you’d invite somebody to, whether they’re in the industry or not, to learn more about what you do and connect with you?

Victoria Downing (20:04.837)

Well, I’d love them to visit our website, which is RemodelersAdvantage.com. I’d love to them to come to the summit, RemodelersSummit.com. And they can always write to me for more information. I’ll steer them in the right direction. And my email is Victoria at RemodelersAdvantage.com.

John Jantsch (20:25.155)

Well, again, I appreciate you spending a few minutes with us and hopefully we’ll see you one of these days out there on the road.

Victoria Downing (20:26.959)

Thank you.

Victoria Downing (20:31.139)

Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

How to Own Your Small Business Marketing with Sara Nay

How to Own Your Small Business Marketing with Sara Nay written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Listen to the full episode:

Overview

In this second episode of a special series on her new book “Unchained,” Sara Nay returns to the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast to join John Jantsch in breaking down the shift from traditional agency dependency to a practical, strategy-first, AI-enabled in-house marketing model. Sara explains why the agency model is breaking down for both clients and agencies, the hidden costs of outsourcing without ownership, and why small businesses need to reclaim control of their marketing assets. Learn what it means to become an orchestrator (not just a doer), why asset ownership matters, and how AI is empowering teams for smarter, leaner growth.

About the Guest

Sara Nay is CEO of Duct Tape Marketing and author of “Unchained: Breaking Free from Broken Marketing Models.” With 15+ years in the field, Sara’s mission is to help small businesses and agency leaders break free from outdated marketing dependencies and build assets, teams, and systems that drive sustainable, long-term growth.

Book: Unchained: Breaking Free From Broken Marketing Models
Website: unchainedmodel.com
LinkedIn: Sara Nay

Actionable Insights

The traditional agency model is burning out: agencies are treated as “vendors/doers” and clients lose control over their own marketing.
Outsourcing execution without understanding the strategy or owning the accounts leads to lost control, dependency, and costly vendor lock-in.
Businesses should always own their digital accounts, ad assets, and AI systems, ensuring marketing investments build long-term value.
Simplify marketing by narrowing focus to the channels that matter most—driven by a clear strategy and understanding of your target market.
The role of the fractional CMO is evolving: today’s leaders must deliver strategy, execution, and build AI-enabled systems that are true business assets.
AI is shifting marketers from “doers” to orchestrators—freeing up time for strategy, creativity, and higher-value thinking.
Business leaders should future-proof their teams by helping them identify and elevate skills that can’t be replaced by AI.
Strategy is not just for big companies; it’s the key to simplification, focus, and maximizing ROI for small businesses.

Great Moments (with Timestamps)

01:19 – Why the Agency Model is Breaking Down
Sara explains why the traditional agency structure is burning out both agencies and clients.
03:22 – The Real Costs of Outsourcing Without Ownership
The dangers of not owning your digital marketing assets and accounts.
06:00 – Simplification Through Strategy
Why “do less, but do it brilliantly” is the new mantra for small business marketing.
09:51 – From Doer to Orchestrator: AI’s Role in Team Evolution
How AI enables marketers to elevate from task execution to system orchestration and creative thinking.
12:15 – Can Anyone Become More Strategic?
Sara discusses how leaders can help team members level up—plus her own journey from operator to strategist.
15:52 – Marketing as an Asset: What Ownership Looks Like
The importance of owning strategy, execution, and digital assets for long-term business value.
18:59 – The Fractional CMO Plus Model
How the “plus” means not just strategy, but management, execution, and building AI systems inside the business.

Insights

“If you ever want to leave the contractor, you basically are going to have to rebuild everything from scratch in your own account. Asset ownership matters.”

“AI isn’t just about replacing tasks—it’s about elevating your team to focus on strategy, creativity, and empathy.”

“Simplifying marketing isn’t about doing less for the sake of less—it’s about doing the right things brilliantly and with clear purpose.”

“The most important asset in your business is the marketing system you own and understand—not just what an outside vendor controls.”

“Fractional CMO Plus isn’t just part-time leadership; it’s strategy, execution, and building the marketing systems and assets that make your business more valuable.”

Duct Tape Transcript

John Jantsch (00:00.792)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is Jon Jantsch. My guest today is Sarah Nay. She’s the CEO of Duct Tape Marketing and the author of Unchained, Breaking Free from Broken Marketing Models. She spent over 15 years helping small businesses grow through a strategy-first marketing approach. This is actually part two of talking about her new book. You can go back. have it in the show notes. So we’ll link all these shows together. I think we’re going to end up doing three episodes on it.

In this episode, we’re going to talk about the anti-agency shift, a practical blueprint for replacing dependency on vendors with in-house capability, lean AI enabled systems and strategic leadership. So Sarah, welcome back to the show.

Sara Nay (00:44.911)

Thank you. I’m still getting used to being called an author. It’s new for me. It’s a new title. It’s exciting. Thank you.

John Jantsch (00:47.566)

Well, congratulations. So, this is part two of the book. So again, I remind you to go back and listen to what we talked about in the first part of the book. In the previous episode, we’re up to about chapter five or so. And it’s kind of a turning point in this part of the book where you talk about the old model fading, or not just fading, but that it’s actually burning out. What’s actually breaking down inside of

agencies right

Sara Nay (01:19.096)

Yeah. And so when I, we say the anti-agency model, I always like to reinforce it’s, it’s not that agencies are bad. It’s that we love agencies and I feel like I have to keep saying that because there are people and I don’t want to offend anyone. It’s the model and how it’s structured is what I see breaking apart. And so on the agency side, which we’ve lived ourselves, we’ve experienced all of this ourselves. There’s always been a lot of issues in the way things are structured.

John Jantsch (01:24.238)

We love agencies.

Sara Nay (01:44.798)

One being that a lot of agencies are treated as vendors and doers. They get a lot of scope creep. There’s a lot of burnout in the agency space. It’s hard work. As an agency owner or leader, scaling with profitability has always been a challenge. There’s a lot of issues when you are in the executor role as an agency. But also, this book is written for agencies, but also for small businesses, because there’s a lot of issues on the small business side as well.

when they’re over reliant on agencies for execution. So I’m not saying a small business should never execute, or outsource, but if they are outsourcing, they should still understand the strategy, they should understand what’s happening, they should own the accounts or systems that are being executed within. And so it’s more of a collaboration effort.

when you’re working with outsourced vendors, then simply I’m paying this company and I have no idea what they’re doing. And I don’t know if we’re getting results, but I keep paying them because I always have, which a lot of people unfortunately fall into that bucket.

John Jantsch (02:47.222)

Yeah. Yeah. It’s interesting. I mean, I’ve said for years that a lot of small businesses, it’s actually beyond outsourcing. kind of abdicated, you know, it’s like, don’t, you know, you do that over there, like, cause I hate marketing even. mean, you hear that even in, and it’s, it’s a real shame because I mean, what do you, what do you, where have you seen, maybe they’re not even hidden costs. Let’s just say costs of outsourcing everything, or just as you said, basically,

Sara Nay (02:55.897)

Yep.

John Jantsch (03:15.886)

you know, throwing it to somebody and saying, I don’t even know what they’re doing over there. I just write the check every month. What are, what are the real costs of doing

Sara Nay (03:22.714)

You lose control, honestly, and you have no idea if your marketing is working or not. And so I was speaking to a prospect a while back and they were a home remodeling company, family business, really nice, great people. they were like, we are paying someone, I think it was around $10,000 a month for paid ads. And they’re like, we don’t know what they’re doing, if it’s working, some percent of that is going to their fees, some percent of that is going to spend.

John Jantsch (03:24.365)

Yeah.

Sara Nay (03:50.326)

And so we had a conversation. started asking him number of questions and I was like, well, can we look at your accounts to see, you know, what’s happening in there? And they were like, the contractor owns the accounts. They’re not ours. And so we had to have a conversation with them as to, if you ever want to leave the contractor, you basically are going to have to rebuild everything from scratch in your own account.

But the reason for doing that is because you’re building an asset, paid ads is an asset, because the more you use it, the more you pay, the more you spend, the better it’s gonna get over time as long as you’re optimizing effectively. And so because they were trusting this contractor with their ads, they had no idea if they were getting return. And then basically they were tied to this contractor for life unless they wanted to start over from scratch again. So it’s really the whole.

you know, a of businesses, lot of business owners get into business because they’re passionate about something or they see an opportunity, but they ultimately then have to learn marketing in a lot of cases. And so if they don’t have the time or the interest in even learning marketing, they often then just say, we’ll find a contractor or agency or someone to do it. And then they’re essentially putting all of their trust in someone else because they don’t have the knowledge. And then they’re just putting trust into someone else that hopefully is a good solution. But

Unfortunately, it’s not always the case.

John Jantsch (05:12.802)

So, you know, over the years, marketing has gotten more complex. At least it feels that way for a lot of businesses. Certainly when digital came along and, you know, now let’s throw AI into the mix. I think a lot of a lot of business owners are just thinking, look, it’s so complex. I don’t want to deal with it. I can’t deal with it. Somebody help me. And unfortunately, you know, they’re not always working with people that they have a lot of trust in. And I hate to say it, but

Sara Nay (05:29.839)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (05:41.912)

you some businesses kind of try to over make it overly complex because it’s like, SEO is really hard. You don’t understand it. You know, you need me to, know, to do it for you. how, how can you simplify? How can you begin to simplify a small business marketing without sacrificing results?

Sara Nay (05:46.701)

Yeah.

Sara Nay (05:50.287)

Yeah.

Sara Nay (06:00.762)

Yeah, absolutely. So we used to have on our website, I don’t think we have it on there anymore, but we had something along the lines of do less, but do it brilliantly. And that always really resonated with me because a lot of small businesses are told that they need to be on this channel, on this channel, on this channel, doing this and this and this. And all of a sudden they sign up for all these accounts and they have no idea what’s actually performing well and what’s not. And so we always help people take a step back.

and actually map out the business strategy, the marketing strategy and the team strategy. And that is a great way to really simplify your marketing because you don’t need to be on every single channel. You need to deeply understand your target market. Where do they hang out online? And that’s where you should be directing your focus. And so oftentimes in small business with small teams, less channels, but doing them really well is the solution versus being spread too thin.

Also, thing I would say too is we’ve always on our team at Ducty Marketing, we’ve always hired people that we see as like trainers or leaders. That’s some of our values that we’re looking for. And so if you’re thinking about working with an outsourced solution as a business owner, make sure you’re looking for people that will come in and they’ll talk strategy from the beginning and they’ll ask you hard questions, business related questions from the beginning.

because that’s someone that’s really looking to understand what you’re actually trying to accomplish and not just copying and pasting a campaign from someone else. And so you want to look for someone that’s thinking strategically from the start, but also willing to teach you and educate you along the way. And so when we’re working with clients as a fractional CMO, like we’re creating the strategy, but then we’re meeting with our clients on a very consistent basis. And we’re not just saying,

Here’s your monthly reports and metrics that look foreign to you. We’re digesting them, we’re talking about them, we’re educating our clients with the idea of if they leave us one day, they’re gonna be set up for better success, they’re more educated, they can make better decisions moving forward in the future.

John Jantsch (07:52.737)

me.

John Jantsch (08:01.358)

Yeah, I think that’s one of the, you know, the, the crimes of a lot of, uh, tactics sellers is they, you know, they have these tools that’ll create automated reports, but you know, there’s no insight into it. And most, you know, most business owners have no idea what they’re looking at or why they should pay attention to, to one number or another. You know, you mentioned that, that idea of complexity or simplifying, you know, I think one of the major misconceptions of this idea of strategy, uh, before tactics for a lot of businesses is that they.

you know, a small business thinks, strategy, that’s just for bigger, more complex businesses that need, you know, need more things. Well, it actually is the opposite. I think in that, I think it really simplifies them. Like here’s, here’s a narrower focus here. Here’s what we do. Here’s who we’re after. mean, I think it actually does allow you to simplify what tactics you end up employing.

Sara Nay (08:52.064)

Yeah, I agree. It absolutely simplifies it. Also, I always tell people it gives purpose to your marketing. Without a strategy in place, you are playing the guessing game. And so when you take a step back and you identify your ideal client, your core message, your customer journey, like those are the three starting points. Then all of sudden you’re thinking about growth priorities and execution calendar, but all of the decisions you’re putting into the growth priorities and execution calendars

John Jantsch (08:55.214)

Right.

John Jantsch (09:15.256)

Peace.

Sara Nay (09:16.546)

are based on your ideal clients and the research you would have conducted. And so it simplifies and it gives purpose. So you’re not creating random acts of marketing essentially.

John Jantsch (09:27.458)

Yeah. So a lot of the roles in marketing, both at the business owner level, and then also at the agency level, I think are really evolving as new technology and the changes in technology. You talk about this idea of moving the people inside of organizations need to move from being doers to more like orchestrators. What does that shift look like?

Sara Nay (09:51.167)

Yeah, it’s a great question and topic I love talking about. So if you think about before AI, way back then, we had people on our team that their core role was content production. So if we had blog posts that we were writing for clients, they would do manual research, they would create an outline, they would do some more key word research, they would write the first draft.

John Jantsch (09:58.508)

last week.

Sara Nay (10:14.478)

They would edit it, they would optimize it from an SEO standpoint. They would do all of that stuff manual. So that’s an example of a very doer situation. Now with the evolution of AI, we’re able to elevate those people from doers to orchestrators where they’re using AI systems below them to help with a lot of the heavy lifting. So they’re using AI to help with keyword research, deep research, maybe even before writing any content.

John Jantsch (10:22.158)

Mm-hmm.

Sara Nay (10:40.758)

And then they’re using AI systems to help write initial drafts. And then they’re, they’re editing as humans on the back end. And so it’s still human AI human, but they’re overseeing a system and set of processes instead of being in the weeds for everything. And so it’s been interesting because it’s shifting doers from like doing all of the stuff to really almost a management role. They’re not managing people, but they’re managing systems.

And so we’ve identified that with our team and also with our clients teams as well. And so really, when you think about it that way, you’re thinking about how can AI elevate our team members, not to just make them be more productive or get a lot faster in the work that they’re doing, which I think originally is where people were thinking with AI. It’s more so how can we elevate our team to be able to spend more time being high level and creative and thinking like humans and being empathetic and understanding the big picture.

And so it’s elevating, not just replacing time.

John Jantsch (11:40.396)

So one of the big questions I think that that brings is, you know, there are people that are really good at doing, there are people that are really good at crunching numbers. You know, there are people that are really good at strategic thinking. Does this mean, I mean, can everybody make this shift, you think, to thinking more strategically, to actually writing an article and then asking AI what’s missing? You know, where are the gaps in this? I mean, that’s strategic thinking rather than doer thinking. So do you believe that that

means a lot of organizations are going to have to put different people on the bus or can they level them up?

Sara Nay (12:15.479)

I think it will be harder for some people, no questions asked. Some people are more strategic. Some people are give me a process and I’ll follow it. You know, not that strategic side of things. But I think as business leaders, our time is now to help our team level up as much as possible. Because if someone

is really great at certain tasks that AI is better at already. They’re not necessarily future-proofing their career. And so that’s why with our team, we’ve really thought about everyone individually as team members, and we’ve helped them analyze what they’re doing on a consistent basis and then identified where they should spend their focus and time moving forward. And I suggest everyone do that with their teams moving forward is…

analyze what skills they should focus on and where they need to elevate and then give them the support to be able to elevate and grow because there are certain things that we won’t be better at, we aren’t better at than AI is. so like research, for example, AI is way better research than I ever will be and ever want to be. And so if research is your thing, maybe think about how can you grow and evolve to continue to work alongside AI because that’s how you’ll become irreplaceable.

versus competing against AI.

John Jantsch (13:33.26)

Yeah, I mean, I think it’s definitely a career mindset shift. I also think that I think it can come from practice with practice, frankly. know, mean, sure, I’m used to doing it a certain way. Now with these tools, you know, it’s almost like I have a coworker is how I need to think about it. And I mean, even to the extent of I mean, I, sometimes hate how agreeable AI is.

Sara Nay (13:53.935)

Yeah.

Sara Nay (13:58.763)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (13:58.862)

You know, to the extent where you’re actually willing to go, no, tell me, tell it like it is, like challenge me on this. I think when you just, you kind of through practice, I think you can, you can actually get better. It’s basically just a process. It’s just a different process.

Sara Nay (14:03.405)

Yeah.

Sara Nay (14:13.838)

Yeah, yeah, I agree. And also you can move to be, you can learn to be more strategic as well. So if you’re listening to this and you feel like you’re an operator, an executor, your process and systems oriented, you’ve never really had that strategic side. I do think you can evolve and grow. So we’ve taken CliftonStrengths over the years. And when I first started at Duct Tape Marketing in 2010, we took one early on and I was like systems operator.

John Jantsch (14:34.243)

Right.

Sara Nay (14:39.81)

very far on that side of things. can’t remember all the language, but I was very much on that side of things. recently we took it a few years ago and I was more on the strategic side of things. And that’s just naturally how I’ve grown over my career. And so I do think you can also evolve as well if you don’t feel like you’re very strategic, put some things in place to free up some mental space to be more strategic. And I think you can grow that muscle as well.

John Jantsch (15:04.674)

Yeah, it’s interesting. Since I’ve known you all your life, I think that I can easily say this that, you know, it’s partly how you view yourself. You know, your role changed and you started viewing yourself differently, I suspect. And that probably led to some of the some of the answers in there. And I think that that, you really can look, mean, can we go as far as saying AI is a personal development tool? But I mean, it is forcing some personal development.

Sara Nay (15:09.56)

Yeah.

Sara Nay (15:29.241)

It’s okay.

John Jantsch (15:33.644)

I think for people to kind of adjust to how they’re going to live inside of that. Let’s move on to asset, the term asset. You frame marketing execution can and should be an asset inside of business, one that they own rather than rent is the term that you’ve used. What does owning execution look

Sara Nay (15:52.635)

Yeah. So we’ve talked a lot about some stories so far about people, but I would consider renting their marketing. So they were just completely relying on outsourced partners had no idea what they were doing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And so that’s an example of renting. Let’s go back to owning for a small business. It really comes down to understanding the strategy behind what’s being done. And then as the founder or CEO,

John Jantsch (16:02.846)

But unfortunately, they didn’t look at the lease that they signed, right?

Sara Nay (16:20.538)

working alongside a fractional CMO or a marketing leader or a marketing strategist or an advisor, internal or external, it doesn’t matter, but someone that can really lead the marketing department. And so you’re collaborating and working with that person. So you’re in the know, you’re aware of what’s being done and the why behind it and the metrics and what’s working and not. And so as a CEO or founder, you don’t have to be a CMO, but you need to have conversations with someone that’s leading your marketing on a regular basis.

And then from there is the execution piece. think with the evolution of AI, it has made it for the first time ever, a lot more affordable for small businesses to be able to handle execution. So before everyone just, or not everyone, but a lot of people would just outsource content creation, social, SEO, paid ads, because before you would really need roles within the business for each of those areas. But now with the evolution of AI, I think is if you have marketing,

people in your department that understand those different areas, you can layer AI systems below them and they can do more than they ever had before. But when I talk about owning, like I know it doesn’t always make sense to have in-house marketing team for small businesses. So I’m not saying that’s the only solution. I think it is a great solution now. But if you’re like, I don’t want to deal with managing team or hiring, the whole idea of owning then is

John Jantsch (17:24.258)

Yeah.

Sara Nay (17:45.816)

work with a fractional CMO then that is going to bring in their own team, but they’re collaborating and working with you. And so again, the whole thing is you own what’s being done. You understand what’s being done. And you also own your website and your paid accounts and all of the assets, your chat, GPT or whatever the AI tools that are being used. Like you should own those assets because ultimately if you are going to sell the business one day,

John Jantsch (18:05.751)

Yeah.

Sara Nay (18:13.282)

you need a marketing system that you own that’s getting results that would come with the sale because that’s going to obviously increase the value.

John Jantsch (18:21.548)

Yeah. And I’d push back a little bit. I mean, I think you do have to own the strategy. You have to understand why we’re doing what we’re doing, what we’re trying to accomplish, or otherwise the SEO firm and the paid ads firm, we’re just going to rip you off. And that’s, that’s where I think people really get in trouble. let’s, let’s finish up on this term, fractional CMO, that you’ve mentioned several times. It’s, you know, the term itself has been around, I don’t know, at least 10 years. but,

Sara Nay (18:25.903)

Yes.

Sara Nay (18:32.793)

Yeah.

Yep, absolutely.

John Jantsch (18:45.166)

We have kind of coined a new phrase, I’d like to say, of the fractional CMO plus or FCMO plus. Give us a little distinction between that and the traditional kind of fractional sell a fourth of my time, you know, kind of role.

Sara Nay (18:59.322)

Yeah. And so you just identified like the traditional role is, you know, you get a fourth of my time and I come in and I advise that’s kind of in a very quick nutshell. What a lot of people think of fractional for us, when we work with clients, we come in as a fractional CMO, we create the overall strategy, but we have fractional CMO plus because it doesn’t end there. From there, we’re then able to manage internal marketing teams to up level them.

So marketing plus that, or we’re able to bring our team in to help with the execution as well. So really what we’re doing is we’re combining the agency side of things that we’ve always done with the fractional CMO side of things. And so we’re bringing strategy plus execution. And really the role of the fractional CMO is creating the strategy, working alongside the CEO.

managing all of really the marketing department in a sense, really owning the metrics and communicating those to the CEO and then also owning the budget as well.

John Jantsch (20:00.12)

Well, and increasingly building AI systems and tools inside of business. So again, it does kind of give them something tangible to own. Well, Sarah, I appreciate you stopping by for part two of the Unchained series. You want to tell people where they can find, connect with you and find more about the book Unchained or any of the work that you do as a fractional CMO.

Sara Nay (20:23.308)

Of course. So the book is unchainedmodel.com is the website. It also is going to be available on Amazon starting August 13th. Not sure when this will go live, but it’s going to be there on August 13th. Yes, it will still be there. And then obviously our website, stucktapemarketing.com and LinkedIn is a great platform to connect with me as well.

John Jantsch (20:34.946)

Well, it’ll live for a long time on the, on the ether in the ether. So, yep. Yep.

John Jantsch (20:45.942)

Awesome. Well, again, appreciate you. Stop by and hopefully we’ll see you out there on the road someday soon.

Sara Nay (20:52.314)

Thanks everyone.

Why Branding Begins With Your Team Culture

Why Branding Begins With Your Team Culture written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Listen to the full episode:

Overview

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, guest host Sara Nay talks with Rhea (“Ray”) Allen, president and CEO of Pepper Shock Media and host of the Marketing Expedition Podcast. Rhea shares her expertise on how small businesses can intentionally connect their internal culture and external brand, why storytelling and authenticity matter more than ever, and how team engagement drives both retention and marketing success. The conversation covers practical ways to align HR and marketing, build buy-in for core values, and keep company culture vibrant—whether you’re working in person or virtually.

About the Guest

Rhea Allen is the president and CEO of Pepper Shock Media, an award-winning agency known for its innovative approach to branding, culture, and storytelling. As host of the Marketing Expedition Podcast, Ray draws on decades of experience helping businesses grow from the inside out. She’s a sought-after speaker, business builder, and advocate for blending human connection with effective marketing.

Actionable Insights

Culture and brand are inseparable—your brand begins on the inside, with your team’s experience and values.
Aligning HR and marketing ensures a consistent, authentic brand both internally and externally.
Involving the whole team in defining values and sharing stories builds lasting buy-in and engagement.
Storytelling—both within the team and with customers—is a powerful tool for passing along culture and creating brand advocates.
Authentic, “human” content and behind-the-scenes glimpses outperform stock images and generic AI content, especially on social media.
Retention, happiness, and engagement are the best ROI for culture investments—happy campers create happy customers.
In-person and virtual teams both need intentional rituals, questions, and fun to keep culture thriving.
Volunteer work, team lunches, and shared experiences (even camping!) can strengthen bonds and reinforce culture.
Company culture is always evolving—leaders must actively participate and continuously nurture it.

Great Moments (with Timestamps)

01:04 – Culture Starts with Brand, from the Inside Out
Rhea explains how employee experience shapes external brand and customer perception.
01:55 – Hiring and Values Alignment
Sara shares how leading with mission, vision, and values in hiring supports both retention and brand.
03:26 – Culture & Brand Camp: Breaking Down Silos
How Pepper Shock Media brings HR and marketing together for shared ownership of culture.
05:24 – Team-Defined Values and Storytelling
Why involving the whole team in crafting values creates buy-in and lasting culture.
06:02 – Sharing Values Through Stories
Practical exercises for bringing values to life and onboarding new team members.
07:19 – Bringing Stories into Marketing
Rhea explains how customer and team stories drive authenticity in external branding.
08:29 – Authenticity as a Differentiator in the Age of AI
Why human, imperfect content outperforms polished, automated posts.
12:28 – What’s the ROI of Fun?
Both guests discuss why investing in culture pays off in retention, happiness, and productivity.
13:03 – Rituals that Build Culture (Lunches, Questions, Celebrations)
Rhea shares Pepper Shock’s traditions for team bonding and knowledge sharing.
16:21 – Volunteerism, Camping, and Culture Beyond the Office
The value of shared experiences outside of work—whether in person or remote.
19:39 – Action Steps for Leaders
Rhea’s advice: Culture will exist with or without you—actively guide it and keep your campers happy!

Pulled Quotes

“Culture and brand go hand in hand. Your brand starts from the inside out—with the experiences your team and customers have.”
— Rhea Allen

“Happy campers create happy customers. Retention, joy, and team engagement are the ROI of investing in culture.”
— Rhea Allen

Duct Tape Transcript

Sara Nay (00:01.635)

Welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is your host, Sarah Nay. And today I’m stepping in for John Jantsch and I am joined by Rhea Allen. So Rhea Allen is the president and CEO of Pepper Shock Media, host of the Marketing Edition Podcast and a business owner who knows what it’s like to build a brand from the ground up. So welcome to the show, Ray. I’m glad you’re here.

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (00:23.064)

Well thank you so much for having me, Sarah. This is exciting.

Sara Nay (00:26.145)

I know and fun backstory, right? And I met online through a different group and actually figured out that we’re both in Idaho about 25 minutes away from each other. And I haven’t met a ton of business owners online from Idaho. So it was really exciting to connect with you, right?

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (00:42.03)

We had to go global to come local, right? Yeah.

Sara Nay (00:45.015)

Exactly. Exactly. Well, let’s dive on in. We’re going to focus on the topic really of branding and culture today, because that’s one of your specialties as I know. And so I’ve heard you say before, culture and brand go hand in hand. And so can you break down what does that mean exactly to small business owners?

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (01:04.268)

Well, what I always try to emphasize most is that your culture starts with your brand from the inside out. And sometimes culture can’t necessarily be controllable. It’s what it is, the experience that both your employees and the people who come to you for that experience of what you serve and in an agency setting, culture is so important because it is our brand. It’s who we are and how we represent what we do.

And when we work with other companies that want to understand how they can continue to build and grow their culture in a positive way, in the way that they would like to see their brand exuded into the world, whether it’s recruiting new employees or new customers, and retention is always a huge part of it. So that’s why I say culture and branding go hand in hand together for sure.

Sara Nay (01:55.718)

Yeah, and it’s great. I love that thought process. And what I’ve been doing for years at Duct Tape Marketing is whenever we hire someone new for a role within our company, we always start with the job description and we lead with here’s our mission, here’s our vision, here’s our values. And so I want someone to read through all of that first on the job description. Then I’ll get to here’s the role and the tasks and all the other details because

I want someone to be aligned culturally, like that to me is one of the most important things because as you said, it helps people stick around for a long time and also represent our brand in the way we want to be represented. And then, you know, when we’re going through the interview process, our first interview is always based on values. And so one of the things we’re always trying to hire for is growth minded people because in the marketing space, it’s always continuing and evolving.

And so I’m asking questions to identify if they’re growth minded and then asking them skills specific questions. So that’s just one of the ways that we’ve leaned into making culture and hiring aligned with our brand long term.

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (02:58.446)

Absolutely, and we do a variety of things, but one of the things that we set up is we call it culture and brand camp. So this one time at brand camp, we go through a process and it really is about aligning the HR roles and the marketing roles together so that they’re not siloed and they’re working together to create the culture and brand that they really want to be.

Sara Nay (03:06.276)

nice.

I love it.

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (03:26.688)

known for and have that experience that they want people to walk away from and, feel the feelings that you want when you’re in that process and going through that process. So, we go through culture and brand camp and, do a number of exercises to work together, to understand both internal and external messaging. And when everyone’s singing from the same sheet of music and saying similar terminology and, able to articulate that in a way that is, is.

Sara Nay (03:45.962)

Yeah.

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (03:55.636)

mindful of how they all can own it and have ownership in their, their own branding and how other people are going to perceive them because of the way that they have been able to articulate it and what experiences they want to have. and so going through that process and doing some team building exercises and some branding exercises and, bringing the two sort of areas that are sometimes really siloed in companies and they don’t always come together and work together.

but then when we bring them together and they are in that mode of like, we, we are in control of our own culture and we are in control of our brand that we have out there. So, it’s a, it’s a fun exercise to go through and do that with companies to, to, have them walk through those processes together and have that experience of their own together as well.

Sara Nay (04:31.906)

Yeah, I love that. And I think that gets, I’m assuming it gets buy-in from the whole team and support behind the whole team. One of the things that we did fairly recently is we used to have values that John and I are, our founder identified as like our core values.

and we kind of made those up on our own and then we would like tell the team about them. We’re like, that doesn’t feel right. And so we did a session as a team where we had everyone identify like what they wanted the values to be. And we then collaborated and crafted our core values together. And to me, that was so much more of a rewarding but also buy-in experience for the team because they were part of the process versus being here’s our values, go live by these ultimately. Yeah, go do this.

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (05:24.888)

Yeah. Now go do this. Yeah. And whenever you can include the team into that decision making process, they have so much more ownership in it. And to take it even a step further, having them tell stories around those values that you’ve selected and where maybe there’s a, an example of something that occurred because of that value. And then having them tell you about a time when, now give me, give me an example of one of the values that you and your team came up with Sarah.

Sara Nay (05:48.59)

Yeah.

Sara Nay (05:53.093)

Well, one of them is growth minded, like always being leaders and innovators and ahead of the game. So it’s that whole idea of just like growth and always learning and evolving.

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (06:02.35)

So one of the activities that you can do just as an icebreaker to get people in the mode, um, anyone who cares to share, tell me about a time where this value came through. What was the occurrence? What happened that you had this growth minded mentality or somebody else can share about somebody else on the team. And now storytelling becomes this a part of the culture, right? We know back in ancient history that storytelling was.

how culture was being able to get passed along to generation to generation. have the hieroglyphs on the walls that were drawn. so storytelling is such a huge part of culture, no matter what kind of culture we’re talking about, whether it’s company culture or if it’s your indigenous people and the culture, the stories that are being told is the way that that continues to happen. And it’s really great for new people coming in to hear those stories when something has happened.

Sara Nay (06:55.14)

Yeah.

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (06:57.71)

And, you can exemplify it and also makes people feel really good when they have an opportunity to share about others and in circumstance that occurred, that can help continue those stories.

Sara Nay (07:09.218)

Yeah, I love it. And so a lot of what you’re talking about there is like storytelling as a team, as a culture. Do you take any of that storytelling and bring it, you know, as a marketing or a branding initiative as well?

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (07:19.95)

Absolutely. And where it really can shine through is when you now involve your customers and they have testimonials and you can have them share a story about the circumstances or experiences that they’ve had with people that they’ve interacted with on your team. So we know it’s all about the people sometimes more than anything else, the people that work with you. And, and so when you can bring that full circle and then you have stories that you can tell of, of the values that also shown through with your

your customers, your clients, then it really does start from the inside out.

Sara Nay (07:54.819)

Yeah, I love it. A lot of what’s happening in the marketing space specifically right now is a lot of people are putting out a lot of content at scale because of the evolution of AI. And so one of the things that I’m seeing growing and importance is storytelling and being more human, but also being authentic and maybe even making some mistakes in the stuff you’re putting out there because it just feels everything feels so polished right now. So can you touch on

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (08:04.44)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (08:15.758)

Mm-hmm.

Sara Nay (08:24.746)

Do you see storytelling and authenticity growing in importance these days as well?

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (08:29.548)

Absolutely. In fact, I just did a panel discussion, and actually it was HR, the HR, sorry, public relations and then, advertising coming together. So mine was all about personal branding and, I created an acronym of keeping it real. so real, obviously, you know, being authentic and having that realness about you. Right. And then, being able to.

Sara Nay (08:48.494)

Nice.

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (08:57.086)

extend that to others and have and share that consistently. And then of course, authenticity and then leveraging your network to be able to share that with others and showing up and keeping it real. yeah, authenticity is definitely, I think more valued than some of the AI that really at Nausium comes out. That’s just not real, right? I mean, it’s, it’s artificial. It’s artificial intelligence. So

Sara Nay (09:08.793)

Yeah.

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (09:22.882)

Having your own spin on your own words sometimes really does help with the content that’s coming out. And I see that that’s a shift. Everyone was kind of, we’re going to use AI to replace the people, the human touch of what we’re putting out there. And I really think that you can tell somewhat now. And I mean, it’s getting really good where you can’t necessarily, and it’s trying to write in your voice. But there’s still some quirkiness about the AI.

still say it takes HI to use AI, so human intelligence. Yeah.

Sara Nay (09:54.626)

Yes, it does. I love it. Yeah. And I think that’s what I’m experiencing on LinkedIn specifically, just because I spend a lot of time there. I’m not saying it’s not having anywhere else, but like on LinkedIn, there’s just a lot of generic content being published right now. And so I’ve, you know, shifted to try to be more authentic and more human. And so I’ve shared posts recently that like I shared a post last week or so ago that was like my desk.

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (10:08.15)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Sara Nay (10:20.705)

and it was my kids, had decorated my desk just because and that’s just, it’s getting like that human content is getting so much more traction because people are like, that feels more unique and more personal than this other post that anyone could have written.

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (10:32.76)

Yep. Well, and it’s true. I mean, you can just take a look at, you know, the history of what you’ve posted. you, if we post pictures of our actual team and not just stock images or, know, if we do behind the scenes from video shoots that we’re doing, or if we, you know, show real people in action, we get so much more engagement and traction and follows than we do if it’s just a stock image or an inanimate, you know, object. And I love

Sara Nay (10:56.77)

Yeah.

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (11:00.332)

Being able to showcase our people. again, it’s about the culture and showing what we’re doing and, and the volunteer activities that they’re about, or, know, showing, showing when they were little and, know, kind of what became of them and, and, know, just, fun things like that. There are so much more, I think engaging and authentic and real.

Sara Nay (11:18.702)

Yeah, I agree. And kind of a funny story on that. posted a new book coming out and I posted a JPEG of the cover and luckily it hasn’t gone to print yet, but someone pointed out that there was a typo on the cover. But her response to me was like so kind. She sent me a direct message and she was like, you know what I love about this? It shows that you’re human and you’re not just using AI for this content.

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (11:29.561)

no!

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (11:37.698)

Yeah.

Sara Nay (11:40.875)

And so she actually was like very kind, but she like appreciated a little bit of an error because everything is feeling very polished at this point. And so I thought that was kind of funny.

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (11:46.582)

Mm-hmm, right? Nice. Well, I’m glad that you were able to get that. I was like, there’s always something, and you’ve been so closely tied to it, you’re always gonna overlook something. There’s always gonna be something.

Sara Nay (11:54.851)

I know, I was like.

Sara Nay (12:00.683)

Yeah, always. like three people on my team looked at it, but still we missed it. yeah, I talk a lot about, because when I’m training marketing agencies, building and scaling a business and hiring team, I talk a lot about what we do for building culture. And so a lot of that is like, we do show and tell on Slack every Wednesday and we do happy Fridays and we have team meetings where it’s just kind of fun. And so I talk about all that stuff. And sometimes I get the question of,

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (12:04.534)

Of course. That’s how it works, of course.

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (12:21.036)

Yeah.

Sara Nay (12:28.887)

What’s the ROI for all of that? Like you’re paying people to do these fun things. And so I’m curious, what would be your answer to a question like

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (12:30.83)

Mm-hmm.

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (12:36.718)

my gosh. well, first of all, if you don’t have a little bit of fun and incorporate the human aspect of living and working together all the time, and we spend more time with our work coworkers than we do with our spouses. Well, not in my case, cause I work with my spouse, but a lot of times, like, you know, if you look at how much time is spent with the people that you are, you know, with every day, it’s your coworkers. So I feel like if you are just,

Sara Nay (12:52.003)

Yeah

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (13:03.478)

robotic in what you’re doing and not engaging and not being, you know, that team player or having being a part of the culture, you’re going to make life miserable for yourself. Right. And so I feel like having time that you can naturally and be okay with spending some of that. It is an ROI in your, you know, you’re investing in your people and you’re investing in them wanting to stay, right. Can that retention. And we know that when somebody leaves a company, it takes

just twice as much or even more to replace them. And then all of the, knowledge that they’ve, that has just been left behind because they’ve left the company. So you want to do the things that are going to help retain those people. And, know, we, we spend time. We, we also do once a month. Now we do, we used to do it every week, which is a little, little, okay. I get it. You know, but now we do, so originally started out as Friday fun lunch, but then people take Fridays off. so, you know, some, some, some of us do, you know, summer Fridays off.

Sara Nay (13:55.076)

Thanks.

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (14:03.176)

and have the four day work week fine. So then we moved it to Wednesdays. So then it become lunch instead of funch. So Friday, fun lunch, and then lunch. And now everybody is only, I mean, all of us are all in the office on Mondays. So now it’s munch. And so we, once a month go, we celebrate work anniversaries where I like to call workversaries or birthdays or something that we’re celebrating. And we actually came up with some things that we always go through. it’s,

Sara Nay (14:08.835)

I love it.

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (14:32.334)

successes and frustrations, celebrations and appreciations, new technologies, or book or blog reports, or any, you know, anybody that’s reading a book, tell us a little bit about it or a blog or something, you know, new technology, something like that. And then a question of the day. And so we always come up with a random question, you know, what’s your favorite cereal as a kid, or what was your favorite cartoon to watch or, you know, who are you rooting for, for the Super Bowl? Right. I mean, so, so we always come up with something fun.

Sara Nay (14:50.003)

Thanks.

Sara Nay (14:58.965)

Yeah, yeah.

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (15:01.542)

And, we all participate and, you know, successes and frustrations. you know, if we’re in a public place, we are careful about our frustrations, but, but it’s important to acknowledge, you know, big successes, big wins all the time. And also if there is something, you know, that is frustrating people, I want to hear about it. And it’s a safe space to be able to share that if there is some sort of frustration or something that needs to be acknowledged. and then we can talk about it, but, then of course, celebrations, appreciations, and then.

Sara Nay (15:10.275)

Yeah.

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (15:29.92)

The new technology book or blog reports is helpful because if people are learning about new things that are coming up or new tools or maybe a client wants to investigate a new tool or there’s a new Adobe plugin or who knows what, we’re talking about it and sharing that and it’s purposeful and intentional so that we can make sure that we cover those things. It’s a fun thing to do. The other thing that we do every year, and this is one of the questions I ask when I hire people.

Sara Nay (15:44.696)

Yeah.

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (15:58.062)

is if they like to go camping or not, or if they’re a glamper or like, absolutely not. Because every year all of us with our spouses, our, you know, kids, pets, everybody, we go camping together, um, as a bit one big, huge pepper shock family. And, um, if you’re not a camper, you’re probably not going to really appreciate the culture that we’ve built. I mean, it’s not mandatory. I mean, you know, it has happened, but.

Sara Nay (16:00.72)

No.

Sara Nay (16:17.744)

Yeah.

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (16:21.742)

Um, it’s, it’s really important to us because we love the outdoors and especially here in Idaho, we have all the seasons and it’s definitely, you know, we live here on purpose. can do work anywhere. Uh, but we purposely choose to, have, you know, Idaho is our back, you know, our back door. So, um, that’s a really important part of our culture to, to enjoy hiking and, know, those types of things. so, um, it’s, it’s fun and people look forward to it. It’s, know, what are we going to do this year? What are we, you know,

Are we gonna go rafting? Are we gonna go hiking? What are we doing? And so it’s something fun and it’s always been a part of our culture since we started and it’s definitely something that we really enjoy. So yeah, there’s definitely things we do. The other things that we do, Kristy helps, our graphic designer, we do volunteer time together and we’ve boxed food up at the food bank.

next week we’re going to go to, there’s a local place called the Idaho Botanical Garden. So we’re going to get our horticulture on and bring our favorite planting tool. And we’re going to go help the landscapers and do some fun things there, but it’s just a part of the culture. And yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s otherwise paid time, but, you know, I want them to be involved in the community. want us to feel and come together as a team and doing some things that are not your typical.

Sara Nay (17:23.742)

Nice.

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (17:42.89)

average workday all the time is really enriching for our people. So we want to continue to do that.

Sara Nay (17:49.492)

Yeah, that’s great. And that’s how I mean, I answered that question as well. When people ask about ROI, it’s you’re going to retain people longer, they’re going to be happier, you’re going to enjoy work more. And to me, that’s like the best kind of ROI you can get. So I think that’s great. And I love your examples, because a lot of what you shared are in person opportunities, because you work in person where I run a virtual company. And so we’re trying to do some of that stuff virtually, which is really interesting as well.

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (18:00.364)

Absolutely.

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (18:08.174)

Mm-hmm.

Sara Nay (18:13.482)

And so we do things like I mentioned, like the show and tell on Slack, that’s just like such a small thing. And all we do is we ask a random question every single Wednesday at a scheduled time. And then people answer the question. But when you’re remote, you don’t get time to, know, what’s your favorite movie? What’d you do this weekend? What’d you, know, you don’t have time for like all of those things. And so that question, then, you know, someone might ask, what’s your favorite movie? And then like three people are like, my gosh, that’s my favorite movie. I can recite every line. And now they have this like bond that they wouldn’t have had.

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (18:26.338)

Mm-hmm.

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (18:40.814)

Mm-hmm.

Sara Nay (18:42.05)

just through work meetings and going through the motions. Cool.

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (18:44.526)

Yeah, I know during pandemic, we definitely all worked remote and I even had a couple of people move out of state to go live out their homes and with their families. And I can relate to trying to keep the company culture alive through zoom. And, you know, there’s different things that, that we, we did. we, we played, pandemic reindeer games, came up with some fun things for them to do some trivia things and things like that, but.

Sara Nay (19:08.034)

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (19:13.282)

Yeah, I mean, it’s important to keep your team together even if they’re not in the same room or same building. Yeah, for sure.

Sara Nay (19:18.208)

Yeah, those pandemic times were weird times, weren’t they? Well, we talked a about a lot of great stuff today when it relates to culture and branding. If anyone’s just kind of feeling stuck on this topic, how they actually create a culture and how they tie it to their branding, are there any final thoughts or any action items you would share with them?

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (19:22.056)

Yeah

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (19:39.086)

Yeah, absolutely. I think the important thing to remember is that culture is gonna be there whether you help guide it or not. The culture can be what you wanna mold it and grow it into or it’s going to become something that you have no control over if you don’t participate in the culture that you want your company to have. And so I think if you can identify

that there might be some needs in the areas of bridging the gaps between the different departments that come together and how they can work together to help build the culture that you want between HR and marketing and ops and all of the different areas that you have in a company. How can you make it to where everyone is singing from the same sheet of music and it’s all in tune, right? You all have the same goals in mind together that they build together.

just recognizing that there is a need for that and it’s an ongoing thing. It’s not an overnight like, well I did a company picnic. I’m good for a while. No, no, Yeah. You’ve got to continuously build it, continuously grow it, and do things to continue to, to have your employees engaged. And I always say, if you’ve got happy campers.

Sara Nay (20:43.167)

Check that box.

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (20:57.846)

Right? You’re going to have happy customers. so keep your campers happy. And you know, at Culture and Brand Camp, that’s one thing we focus on is happy campers then creates happy customers.

Sara Nay (20:58.023)

Mm-hmm. Yes.

Sara Nay (21:09.525)

I love it. Well, thank you for sharing all your insights. Lots of good stuff in this episode. If people want to continue to learn from you, where can they connect with you online?

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (21:18.408)

so couple of different places. of course, the marketing expedition podcast is free to listen to on pretty much every podcast platform. And then, which is powered by pepper shock media, our company, and, you can visit pepper shock.com and we’re on all the social platforms, LinkedIn, all of that. So, you can find me in Ray is R H E a Alan a L L E N. So Ray Allen.

And I would look forward to chatting with anybody that would like to talk about their company culture and branding.

Sara Nay (21:51.073)

Thank you so much Ray for being here and thank you everyone for listening to the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Again, this is your host, Sarenée, and we will see you next time.

Rhea (“Ray”) Allen (22:00.792)

Thank you.

Should You Hire a Fractional CMO? Here’s Who It’s For (and Who It’s Not For)

Should You Hire a Fractional CMO? Here’s Who It’s For (and Who It’s Not For) written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

After working with thousands of business owners over the last three decades, I can tell you one thing with certainty: the marketing leader you hire, or don’t hire, can make or break your growth.

TL;DR

A Fractional CMO can be a game-changer for businesses with clear growth objectives, leadership buy-in, and a team ready to execute. If you lack goals, expect quick fixes, or resist change, it’s not the right time. This post explains exactly who should, and who shouldn’t, hire one, plus real-world case studies from Duct Tape Marketing clients.

What is a Fractional CMO, Really?

A Fractional CMO isn’t just a consultant with a fancier title. They’re a part-time, senior-level marketing leader who takes responsibility for your marketing strategy, integrates it with your overall business plan, and ensures it gets implemented.

Typical Responsibilities:

Developing a Strategic Marketing Plan – Aligning marketing with sales, customer experience, and growth goals.
Leading the Marketing Team – Coordinating in-house staff, freelancers, and agencies.
Installing a Marketing System – Using the Duct Tape Marketing System to replace “random acts of marketing” with a repeatable, measurable process.
Measuring and Optimizing – Tracking key metrics to ensure results.

It’s like renting the leadership of a $200,000-a-year CMO without the full-time salary, benefits, and overhead.

The Pros of Hiring a Fractional CMO

Strategic Clarity – A focused plan tied directly to your business goals.
Cost Efficiency – Executive expertise at a fraction of the cost.
Proven Frameworks – The Duct Tape Marketing System is a battle-tested roadmap.
Accountability – One person responsible for marketing outcomes.
Objectivity – An external perspective unclouded by internal politics.

The Cons (and Cautions)

Not a Magic Wand – Won’t fix a broken business model.
Requires Buy-In – Without leadership support, plans stall.
Dependent on Execution – Your team still needs to implement.
Limited Hours – Not in-office daily; requires proactive communication.

It’s For You If…

You Have Clear Growth Objectives – Expansion goals, revenue targets, or new markets in mind.
You Have (or Will Build) an Execution Team – Employees, contractors, or agencies ready to act.
You Value Strategic Leadership – Marketing has a seat at the leadership table.
You’re Ready to Commit – Willing to follow the plan and invest in resources.
You’ve Outgrown DIY Marketing – Need structure and scalability.

It’s Not For You If…

No Clear Goals – Without a defined destination, strategy won’t help.
Looking for a Quick Fix – This is about building systems, not instant wins.
No Execution Capacity – A plan without implementers is wasted.
Resistant to Change – Leadership must be open to new approaches.
In Survival Mode – Prioritize immediate sales before strategy.

Case Study: Schloegel Design Remodel

Schloegel Design Remodel, a respected Kansas City remodeling firm, had strong brand recognition but lacked a cohesive marketing strategy. As their Fractional CMO, we:

Defined their ideal client profile and created a core message of difference
Mapped the customer journey from first contact to referral
Aligned SEO, content, social media, and email under one strategy and made them the dominant player in search and AI overviews
Created referral and review workflows that continue to build trust with search engines and AI bots

Result: Predictable, high-quality leads, better conversion rates, a confident internal marketing team, and staggering year-over-year growth.

The Bottom Line

Hiring a Fractional CMO is not a band-aid. It’s a commitment to strategic marketing leadership. Paired with the Duct Tape Marketing System, it gives you a proven framework for consistent growth. It can be one of your smartest investments if you’re ready, with goals, a team, and leadership buy-in.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does a Fractional CMO cost?

Costs vary widely based on scope, but most small to mid-sized businesses invest between $5,000 and $15,000 per month for a Fractional CMO’s services.

How is a Fractional CMO different from a marketing consultant?

Consultants provide advice and recommendations. A Fractional CMO provides leadership, creates strategy, and ensures execution happens.

How long should I commit to a Fractional CMO engagement?

While some short-term engagements exist, 12 months is ideal to see strategy, execution, and measurable results.

Can a Fractional CMO work with my existing marketing team?

Yes. In fact, the best results happen when a Fractional CMO leads and strengthens your current team rather than replacing them.

How to Decide If You Should Hire a Fractional CMO

Define Your Growth Goals – Be clear on revenue targets, market expansion, or product launches.
Assess Your Team – Ensure you have, or can build, the execution capacity for the strategy.
Evaluate Leadership Buy-In – Confirm that marketing will have support at the leadership level.
Determine Your Budget – Plan for the Fractional CMO’s cost and implementation resources.
Commit to a Timeline – Be prepared for a 12-month+ commitment for meaningful results.

The Secret Weapon of Great Brands

The Secret Weapon of Great Brands written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Listen to the full episode:

Overview

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, John Jantsch interviews Laura Ries, globally recognized branding strategist, bestselling author, and president of Ries & Ries. Laura shares insights from her new book, “The Strategic Enemy: How to Build and Position a Brand Worth Fighting For.” The conversation explores why brands need a focused enemy, how to find and define it, and how legendary brands—from Liquid Death to Tesla—win by creating real contrast and bold positioning. Laura breaks down her proven framework for entrepreneurs and established businesses alike, showing why focus, differentiation, and a compelling “enemy” are the keys to winning the battle for the mind.

About the Guest

Laura Ries is a globally recognized branding strategist, bestselling author, and president of Ries & Ries. Together with her father, Al Ries, Laura has helped Fortune 500s and ambitious startups win through bold, focused brand positioning. She’s a sought-after speaker, trusted advisor, and author of “The Strategic Enemy,” a book that helps brands of any size build a message—and a business—worth fighting for.

Actionable Insights

A strategic enemy isn’t just a competitor; it’s a problem, category, or alternative that provides contrast and focus.
Brands without focus have no enemy—and without an enemy, they lack meaning and energy in the market.
The enemy can be a product feature (plastic bottles), an outdated process (taxis), or simply “the way it’s always been done.”
Great positioning starts with knowing who you are for—and who you are not for.
Legendary brands like Liquid Death, Uber, Oatly, and Tesla win by breaking category conventions and boldly defining what they’re against.
The first step for any brand: narrow your focus, say “no” to what you’re not, and stake out a clear enemy to create differentiation.
Entrepreneurs and challengers have an edge—they can outmaneuver larger brands by focusing on a single idea and exploiting big company weaknesses.
Visual hammers and clear metaphors make positioning “stick” (think: Liquid Death, White Claw, or even the Duct Tape Marketing brand itself).
Beware of “foe enemies”—don’t invent rivals that aren’t real. Your enemy must be genuine, tangible, and tied to customer pain or desire.
Big brands can stay relevant by launching new brands to attack new categories (instead of extending old ones).

Great Moments (with Timestamps)

02:39 – Strategic Enemy vs. Competitor
Laura explains why brands need a contrast, not just a list of rivals.
03:08 – Liquid Death, Uber, and the Power of Defining the Enemy
How bold brands win by naming and attacking what they’re against.
04:36 – The Enemy as Problem, Not Just a Company
Positioning can be about fighting a pain or outdated alternative.
05:57 – Why Brands Without Focus Lack Energy
The risk of trying to be everything to everyone.
07:55 – Focus First: Who You’re For, and Who You’re Not
The role of clarity and saying “no” in setting up your enemy.
08:53 – Category Over Brand: Why Tesla and Red Bull Won
How owning a category and pioneering a new idea creates leadership.
12:14 – Entrepreneur Advantage: The Power of Courage and Focus
Why challengers can outmaneuver incumbents with sharper positioning.
16:22 – Multiple Brands Beat Line Extensions
Big brands should create new brands to fight new battles.
18:04 – Subcategories and Visual Hammers
Why new subcategories (like hard seltzer or nonalcoholic beer) and visual metaphors drive market momentum.
20:31 – The Danger of “Foe Enemies”
Laura cautions against inventing fake rivals—your enemy must be real.
22:29 – Making Positioning Visual and Memorable
The power of metaphors, visual hammers, and simple storytelling.

Pulled Quotes

“Brands without enemies are brands without energy. Focus first, then pick the enemy that brings your brand to life.”
— Laura Ries

“Legendary brands win by creating real contrast—fighting a problem, a category, or the ‘way it’s always been done.’”
— Laura Ries

Duct Tape Transcript

John Jantsch (00:01.144)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Laura Ries. She’s a globally recognized branding strategist, bestselling author and president of Reiss and Reiss, the firm she runs with her father, legendary positioning pioneer Al Reiss. Laura’s guided Fortune 500 companies and fast growing startups alike on how to win the battle in the mind through bold, focused brand positioning. We’re going to talk today about her latest book,

the strategic enemy, how to build and position a brand worth fighting for. So Laura, welcome back to the show.

Laura Ries (00:37.082)

Well, thanks so much. It’s a pleasure to be here. And to see you again.

John Jantsch (00:40.586)

Likewise. And you know, there are very few people I can say this to, but you know, when I was just getting started, father’s book was very instrumental read for me as well. I’m sure you’ve heard that more than once.

Laura Ries (00:55.45)

and it was a very instrumental book for me as well. It’s what got me here, got me interested in falling in love with positioning. so it’s such a pleasure to have had the chance to work with him for so many years.

John Jantsch (01:09.13)

And as you and I have talked before, my daughter actually is our CEO and has worked with me for 15 years. it’s kind of that, you know, it’s funny people who maybe haven’t done that before, you know, have a lot of questions about like, how does that work? So I’m curious for you. I mean, for us, it’s been great. We have a great personal relationship. don’t take that. I mean, we do take it into business because I trust her at a level that I don’t think I would ever trust anyone else in business.

and things of that nature, you know, doesn’t, some of the drama that people are used to, just, we’ve never experienced it as that. I get the sense that you’re probably in that same boat.

Laura Ries (01:48.6)

Yeah, no, you do have that long-term trust and you’re in it for the long haul for your family, you hope. And so that longevity and history and all that you bring into it. But yeah, you do have to love what you do. I think that’s the most important thing. I love positioning. wasn’t that I just, my dad was cool, right? But I also really enjoyed, I loved learning from him. And then of course, I enjoyed to teach him a few tricks as well too.

John Jantsch (02:03.853)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (02:09.23)

you

John Jantsch (02:15.874)

Yeah, of course you wouldn’t stick around if I wouldn’t think if you loved it. It’s a grind. be. So you got to have some passion for it. So let’s jump right into the book. One of my first questions, I think I know, well, I know the answer to this, but I want you to clarify. How would you differentiate between a strategic enemy and say a competitor?

Laura Ries (02:39.652)

companies have lots of competitors. Right? So that’s the reality. But a strategic enemy is strategic in terms of it’s very important in your strategy. It’s always important to understand the enemy. But like I said, there’s many, but you want to pick that one. And the most important thing is you want to show what the contrast is. And so that is, for example, you have Liquid Death, right? One of the hottest new water brands. They pick not other water brands, but

John Jantsch (02:41.506)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (03:04.663)

Right.

Laura Ries (03:08.634)

Plastic water bottles as the enemy death to plastics is their slogan So they said no to something they didn’t offer it in plastic and they very pointedly said that you know We are killing the earth with plastic aluminum is much more infinitely recyclable and sadly We don’t even recycle much plastic anymore even though they can be so very important message and of course they have

brilliant snazzy marketing along with it, but it is backed by something very specific, very tangible, and very much a difference from the enemy that they have set up. Another is, for example, Uber. The original name was ubercab.com, if you remember back in the day.

John Jantsch (03:45.449)

funny. No, I actually don’t know that I knew that one.

Laura Ries (03:49.262)

Yeah, no, I didn’t either, but you know, I do my research on these books. if you have a name like Uber cab, how can taxis be the enemy? The strongest thing to rally consumers for your cause is not so much to say, you know, come with us, we’re great, but let’s fight somebody else. Let’s fight those taxi cabs out there and we have a better way. Our way is that new category, which is always the best way to build a brand. And that was, you know, Uber with the ride sharing.

John Jantsch (03:51.502)

Right.

John Jantsch (04:07.661)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (04:18.124)

You know, it’s really interesting because I’m sure most people’s minds go to the enemy being like, you know, the, people that beat you out, you know, for, whatever, you know, work that you get. And as I listened to you to this, it’s probably in some ways the enemy can just be a problem that your ideal client is facing. Right.

Laura Ries (04:36.314)

Absolutely. like I say, it’s not evil corp is the enemy, right? That it’s a really big bad guy or thing or something out there. It is, yeah, two things, either a problem that you’re going to solve or just the alternative. There’s not just one way to do something. mean, think about mouthwash. Listerine, it’s medicine breath is what Scope said because they were selling good tasting mouthwash. But, know, Listerine, the fact that taste you hate twice a day, I mean, that

John Jantsch (04:40.526)

Right.

Laura Ries (05:04.505)

Talk to the efficacy. mean, it was very strong. That’s what was killing all the germs. So there’s two sides of every coin. And that’s the important part of strategy and of thinking about positioning in a way that it’s not just what we are, but what is the contrasting alternative that puts us in a better light? And there’s always multiple ways to look at things. I mean, some people like regular cow’s milk. It’s delicious. But then you have Oatly coming in with, wow, no cow, and selling, you know, this is milk for humans, you know, made from oats.

John Jantsch (05:34.904)

So it’s, it’s all, well, I shouldn’t say it almost. is, I mean, you’re a really key point of this book is you’re saying that brands need to actually maybe go looking for this enemy, find it, right? I mean, not necessarily make it up, but like without it, you even go as far as what was your statement or your brands without enemies or brands without energy that, that, that we actually need to go find this thing, right?

Laura Ries (05:49.818)

That’s right.

Laura Ries (05:57.518)

without meaning and here’s the biggest problem is most companies aren’t focused enough to have an enemy. They do too many things in too many markets and try to appeal to too many people. When you do that, you don’t have a focus and without a focus, you don’t have an enemy. So sometimes the first thing is looking at yourself and saying, what can we say no to? If you say no to something that tends to put you in a direction where you can find an enemy. What did Southwest do? They said no to first class being the coach class only.

John Jantsch (06:16.92)

Yeah.

Laura Ries (06:26.99)

that was, you know, they had more affordable seating. They also made the whole, you know, theme of the airline being about fun and games and they, you know, the stewardesses and airline attendants would make jokes and crack jokes. But, you know, you can’t crack jokes if you got a first class and a curtain and then us back in the coach, right? So that focus can very much help you define what your identity is and position against what that, you know, enemy you have put out there. And, companies too often get in trouble because

John Jantsch (06:45.006)

You

Laura Ries (06:56.332)

What is Southwest doing today? They’re adding first class and premium seating. All of that is going to undermine the bags don’t fly. And here’s the thing, seat assignments, I’m all for. That’s going to get rid of the chaos. But bags not flying free, that was something that they could anchor their brand on and say, everybody else is charging for bags, but here bags fly free. And listen.

John Jantsch (06:58.647)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (07:02.254)

Charging for bags.

Laura Ries (07:21.71)

That has an operational efficiency too, because if the bags fly free, people will check them. And then you could board the plane. Otherwise, everyone’s carrying all their bags on with them and that slows down everything. So it is very sad when companies lose their focus and we’re trying to fight that fight to help them stay focused.

John Jantsch (07:26.606)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (07:40.952)

So sounds like I hear you saying that really the first step too is that as you said, you’ve got to know who you are first before you can go out there and find the enemy maybe. But in a lot of ways, it probably starts with narrowing your focus, right? Here’s who we’re for. So here’s who we’re not for. It’s probably step one, isn’t it?

Laura Ries (07:55.801)

Absolutely.

That’s right. Yeah, it’s a balance between knowing who you are, what you can say no to. But at the end of the day, focus has always been the key critical element of positioning itself. And the enemy is line extension, going in too many directions, diluting what your brand is. And when companies do focus, then they can make use of that strategic enemy. And it’s creating the contrast of the peak

people can better understand because listen, people don’t have time. We’ve got to make these communications very simple, very clear so that people understand and also understand the choice. For example, you’ve got edible arrangements, which now goes by edible, which I don’t always shorten your name because edible today has a very different connotation. That’s not what they’re selling. There you go. That’s not what they’re selling.

John Jantsch (08:48.11)

I live in Colorado and it’s, you know, it’s…

Laura Ries (08:53.418)

They are selling edible fruit arrangements, which has a fantastic strategic enemy. Why buy flowers that will die, right? When you can send a delicious edible bouquet. But edible arrangements as a name is very, very strong. But again, it’s the category that really matters because people care more about the category than they do about brands. I hate to tell you.

But while they speak in brands, we think, people love a Tesla. No, they don’t love the Tesla brand. It’s the category that they dominate, which is EV electric vehicles, the category that is booming right now. And people still buy them despite what they think of Elon Musk and all of his shenanigans. But very strong brand that did absolutely do many of the things we preach about, being first in pioneering a category and only focusing on EVs, which here’s the problem.

Originally, this was a tiny market. The major automobile makers, they thought it was niche and they ignored it for many, many years. And that allowed Tesla to get in, not so much build the market initially, but build the mind of the consumer that Tesla was the car that stood for it. So, you can take advantage of the big companies are slow on these things. Another one was Red Bull. Coca-Cola ignored Red Bull for years until after 10 years, it was a hundred million dollars and they woke up and said, oops,

But when they competed late, you know, it was too late to the game. Full throttle, tab energy, all of the others they try to launch were big losers. The brand that pioneers it, particularly when they do it with a good name, a good strategy, and a strong message, you know, it gives you wings if you didn’t know.

John Jantsch (10:21.816)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (10:32.878)

A lot of those big companies just go out and buy the competition that’s nipping at their heels.

Laura Ries (10:38.874)

Well, that’s not a bad idea. if you’ve got the money, I mean, today, what has Coca-Cola done? They can’t launch their, they even tried Coca-Cola energy, if you could believe that. But they have made, you know, they put a stake into Monster, which is the only brand that has successfully competed against Red Bull. And today, it’s a very strong leader globally in the energy drink market. How did they do it? They didn’t copy Red Bull. They didn’t try to be better. They came at a 16 ounce can. Now, is that better? Who knows? It’s different.

John Jantsch (10:46.54)

Ha ha.

John Jantsch (11:04.28)

Yeah.

Laura Ries (11:06.81)

And it’s visually different and not only that they combined it with a great name a simple visual hammer the green claw They’ve got you know monster motocross and truck events and all sorts of things They’ve they’ve utilized that strategy to unify their anchor as to what they stand for against their competitor Red Bull But how do you compete with that? Well, the big number three today is Celsius They’re hot in the energy drink market by not going the masculine male approach as you know what?

mostly Red Bull and Monster have done, but it’s a more unisex, fitness friendly, no sugar, and they’ve taken on a very good chunk of the market by going and being different.

John Jantsch (11:49.166)

So we’re talking about big brands essentially right now, but you’ve developed a framework that is really quarter the book. Do you want to kind of walk us through some of the steps? And like, have you walked into a company and let’s put the big brands aside? You walked into a company that is kind of trying to make their way now and trying to, know, what are kind of some of the steps you would take somebody through? And again, obviously I didn’t give you a type of company or anything, but typically.

Laura Ries (12:14.186)

No, well, I mean, you’ve got tons of examples and listen, I love working with entrepreneurs. I mean, that is actually the most exciting. They have such creative new ideas and potential. And not only that, most importantly, they have the courage and the balls to really do something different, something that the big companies usually don’t have. For example, in the moist toilet paper market, the early pioneers were, know, cottonel fresh wipes, which never really went anywhere because it had a, you

It was cottonel, Kleenex, fresh wipes, something or other. They were trying to position a dual, you need two things, you need wet and dry, which never really resonated until one guy was living in a post-college apartment with a bunch of dudes eating, as he says, lots of burritos, drinking late nights, and they needed some heavy duty cleaning up in the bathroom. So on his weekly trip to Costco, he picked up the usual, baby wipes and a bunch of other stuff that the guys like to use, and he said, wait a minute,

John Jantsch (12:51.982)

Yeah. Yeah.

Laura Ries (13:12.974)

Why isn’t there a company that makes a product I want to use that’s meant for me and my guy friends and cleans up like a baby wipe does, but is also flushable and environmentally friendly? And he did that. He just pioneered that category. It’s called Dude Wipes. It has over $350 million a year, but it was just a guy with an idea. But first and foremost, he saw a problem, right? It didn’t create the category, but he said everyone is not doing it in the right way. They’re not focused and they’re not strongly

John Jantsch (13:36.034)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Laura Ries (13:42.97)

calling out an enemy. I Cottonelle can’t say, you know, dry toilet paper sucks, but Dude Wipes can. Dude Wipes says, you’re wasting your time with that. You’re just smearing it around. I mean, they say all sorts of crazy things, but a very powerful message by narrowing the focus, by taking on the enemy. And, you know, going in with entrepreneurs, it is so exciting because you can really take on the big guys.

John Jantsch (13:50.03)

Right, right. Yeah

John Jantsch (14:08.835)

Yeah.

Laura Ries (14:09.058)

You don’t have to be a big guy because you leverage where they’re weak and in every strength there is always some kind of weakness. Even in Amazon, if you can believe it, a bunch of entrepreneurs launched Shopify and they said, you know, Amazon is not really serving the merchants, right? They’re all about the customer and they do such a great job on that. But they’re kind of given the short shaft to the merchant. So, know, Shopify is the merchant hero. They’re setting it up so merchants can have their own stores.

John Jantsch (14:26.7)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right.

Laura Ries (14:37.976)

making it totally seamless, easy to do, giving them all the tools, support they need, and they’ve been a very strong competitor to helping companies sell their goods on the internet.

John Jantsch (14:48.616)

And of course their connected network has now made them even more powerful.

Laura Ries (14:52.186)

It took time, literally it was just a bunch of guys who tried to sell their own website and said, instead of, was it surfing stuff? I can’t remember. But instead of selling this, mean, they gave that up quick and said, we’re just gonna sell the software, the backbone of this. And they added incrementally all the other things and bells and whistles that went along with it. But it’s that key one idea.

John Jantsch (14:56.77)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (15:07.308)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Laura Ries (15:16.762)

Airbnb was the same way. mean, it was, you know, a bunch of guys living in San Francisco that said, wait a minute, you know, it hot periods of conferences, it’s impossible and very costly to get a hotel. Why don’t we put some air mattresses in our living room? We’re going to call it air bread and breakfast and rent out the room. And, you know, today they are they are taking on hotels in a big way.

John Jantsch (15:35.15)

funny.

John Jantsch (15:40.686)

Oh yeah. Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. In fact, you’re seeing some hotels actually now try to get into that business a little bit, you know, to, instead of just having their rooms, you know, actually buying houses and things to, get into that business. Yeah. Yeah.

Laura Ries (15:53.302)

Is that the right idea? Because listen, I’ve stayed in an Airbnb, I’ve stayed in a hotel, there’s advantages to hotels. I kind of like the fresh towels and the very clean sheets and the service that goes along with it. I mean, there’s no one way to do something. Instead of thinking about how can we copy Airbnb, how can we make hotels a better deal? And celebrate what is a very nice experience in a hotel.

John Jantsch (16:09.581)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (16:13.102)

Sure.

Yeah, yeah,

Laura Ries (16:22.66)

Here’s the other thing. The best thing you can do as a big company or when you get to that size, if you’re an entrepreneur listening, is multiple brands. Give birth to your own enemy is a better strategy. Not trying to put one brand on many things, instead having multiple brands. And you see even great examples. So Mike’s Hard Lemonade was a big, big success at the turn of the century.

John Jantsch (16:44.386)

Yep.

Laura Ries (16:46.87)

As kids were turning away, young drinking adults were turning away from beer and other things. They enjoyed the Mike’s Hard Lemonade. But as a few years went by, we realized it had just as much sugar as a Coke almost and a ton of calories and we all were cutting carbs. So what did they do? Instead of line extending Mike’s into, well, they also did that honestly, into Mike’s Light Lemonade, they launched White Claw.

John Jantsch (17:00.194)

Yeah.

Laura Ries (17:15.994)

the first hard seltzer and this is the typhoon of seltzers of billions of dollars. And listen, it doesn’t even taste very good, but it is a new category. And as a hard seltzer, that again, naming the category is incredibly important. Zima, mean, you’re as old as I am, you know it, remember Zima, they didn’t know what it was. What was it?

John Jantsch (17:16.035)

Mm.

John Jantsch (17:26.626)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (17:35.884)

Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do.

Laura Ries (17:41.562)

I mean, it was similar to, you know, again, what White Claw is selling, but, they didn’t quite name the category and explain to us what it is. And when we don’t know what something is, doesn’t always taste very good. And that was one of the experiences of the Zemas.

John Jantsch (17:44.77)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (17:57.72)

Yeah, that seltzer category is probably booming like beer, my craft beer was at one point.

Laura Ries (18:04.428)

Absolutely. And not only that, there’s a huge, there’s always opportunity out there, which is what makes marketing and business and entrepreneur so exciting. You think, like, I never thought there could be another water brand. I mean, how many hundreds of water brands? And then came Liquid Death. And you thought like beer, how many beer brands? But have you heard of this athletic brewing?

This is the hottest new thing. It’s beer without alcohol. What fun is that? But anyway, there’s a big trend into drinking less. And do you really want to drink a Heineken Zero or a Bud Zero? I mean, come on. But this new brand owns the category and celebrates it and says, you know, live an athletic lifestyle.

John Jantsch (18:39.918)

You

Laura Ries (18:47.466)

no hangovers. And one of the things they did as an important part of the strategy is they knew they needed credibility, that this was something that was not just non-alcoholic. mean, there was O’Doul’s and kind of other brands out there, but it was a good tasting quality beer. And so they aggressively entered it into competitions. And that drove a lot of the PR. In fact, one of the competitions, they beat beer with alcohol. And they have just a great way of talking about it.

John Jantsch (18:59.159)

Mm-hmm, right.

John Jantsch (19:05.998)

Mmm.

John Jantsch (19:11.426)

Yeah.

Laura Ries (19:16.442)

pointing out that enemy which is, know, why bother with the alcohol? Why not live for a better tomorrow?

John Jantsch (19:21.91)

Well, it’s interesting because they created a subcategory, non-alcoholic beer that tastes good, because I think the category was there’s non-alcoholic beer, right? That was the category. So if they got lumped into that category, they probably weren’t going to go anywhere. They’re not going to fight. didn’t has their brush, probably. So I think they kind of…

Laura Ries (19:29.338)

That’s right. Yeah.

Laura Ries (19:37.562)

No. Yeah, not being a line extension and not trying to look like a beer. The other thing they did that was very brilliant and visuals matter, visuals are incredibly important. Athletic only comes in cans. All of the other brands, of course they offer it, but they promote the glass because they feel it looks premium and it does.

But athletic, I mean, what’s their position? mean, athletic lifestyles, you can’t bring gas, a glass bottle on a camping trip or a boat. need the can. And the can in bright pastel colors was a distinctive difference that also communicated how different they were than all the other products.

John Jantsch (20:05.752)

Right, right, yeah.

John Jantsch (20:16.012)

Yeah. So I want to end with a, know, because I think a lot of people listening right now are getting very fired up about their who, how they’re going to go out there and create their enemy. What’s the risk of creating you call foe enemies? I mean, just kind of like making them up.

Laura Ries (20:23.322)

I hope so.

Laura Ries (20:31.802)

you can’t make them up. Of course they do. course they… No, the rivalry has to be real. But it doesn’t have to be something, for example, I’ve got a phone case, it’s called Flaunt. What’s their big difference? It’s a square case.

John Jantsch (20:33.166)

But certainly people try, right? I mean, it’s like, it’s like, here’s our rivalry, but it’s like, they really? Yeah, yeah.

Laura Ries (20:53.562)

And that’s an instantly visible difference, but they promote that as you know, they’re they’re positioning their difference, you know, what makes them great and I love a square case. It looks cool. It’s fun. I stick my iPhone in there. But yeah, that absolutely it has to be not just you know, claiming a boogeyman out there as the enemy but something that that is real. That’s a tangible problem a tangible enemy and there’s always more than ways

John Jantsch (20:53.964)

Yeah.

Laura Ries (21:18.358)

more than one way to do something. mean, sometimes you want the very best, right? A high price can be a benefit, but sometimes, you know, also the ease of and the shopping experience, for example, going to Costco. People love Costco. Even the Kirkland brand is rising, right? Because people are saying they’re making a statement and the companies focus on producing very high quality and also, you know, the ease of not over, you know, there’s only 4,000 items. It really makes it much easier to choose when there’s

John Jantsch (21:33.88)

Yeah.

Laura Ries (21:46.82)

fewer things to choose from.

John Jantsch (21:48.046)

That’s funny because, course, not every brand, not every everybody’s going to like every brand. I don’t like Costco. I think it’s a terrible shopping experience. I go in there and I can’t find anything.

Laura Ries (21:54.901)

See you.

Laura Ries (21:58.97)

Well, you know they do that on purpose because they want you to wander the aisles and see I love the discovery of it But that’s the point there is no one and here’s the problem Most companies like Kmart, right? They’re trying to appeal to everyone They want people that you know want the the bulk kind of Costco They want people that want the simple shopping or they try to be everything It’s much better to take a very narrow stance and not worry if it doesn’t appeal to everybody

John Jantsch (22:05.068)

Yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (22:27.062)

I did love a good blue light special though. You got to admit that was amazing.

Laura Ries (22:29.018)

It was a visual idea. See, if you can give your strategy some way to visualize it, it makes it much more powerful. mean, think about duct tape. I mean, what a great way to communicate something that’s instantly understand in the mind. We know what we do with duct tape. We know how great duct tape is. It can fix anything. what a, know, using metaphors like that are a great way to do branding.

John Jantsch (22:41.112)

Right?

John Jantsch (22:47.288)

Yep. Yeah.

John Jantsch (22:55.382)

Awesome. Well, Laura, I appreciate you taking a few moments to drop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Where would you invite people to connect with you and find out more, certainly about strategic enemy, but also your courses and the things that you do around it?

Laura Ries (23:01.274)

Absolutely. Well, of course you can visit us online at reese.com and that’s r i e s dot com. We’ve got strategicenemy.com and I’ve just launched a sub stack. Yay. Exciting newsletters. I’ve got even the Reese hotline where companies are calling in. Well, it’s fake. Don’t tell anybody, but I pretend like companies are coming in and I give them really great advice. So check out those videos, check out my book and let’s do positioning together and nail those strategic enemies.

John Jantsch (23:23.118)

You

John Jantsch (23:34.211)

Well, again, appreciate you stopping by and hopefully we’ll run into you on these days soon out there on the road.

Laura Ries (23:38.852)

Absolutely.

Empowering Small Business with AI & Strategy

Empowering Small Business with AI & Strategy written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Listen to the full episode:

Overview

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, John Jantsch interviews Sara Nay, CEO of Duct Tape Marketing and author of “Unchained.” Drawing on over 15 years of experience in every agency role—from intern to CEO—Sara explains why the traditional marketing agency model is broken for both clients and agencies. She introduces the “anti-agency” approach: a practical, strategy-first, AI-enabled model designed to help small businesses own their marketing instead of renting it. The discussion covers timeless principles, the new role of the fractional CMO, how to leverage AI for impact (not just efficiency), and the steps any business can take to reclaim control and clarity.

About the Guest

Sara Nay is the CEO of Duct Tape Marketing and author of “Unchained.” With two decades of hands-on experience, Sara is a leading voice in strategy-first marketing systems for small businesses. She has helped hundreds of entrepreneurs and agencies design sustainable, scalable growth through a blend of foundational principles and forward-thinking technology. Sara is a sought-after speaker and advocate for empowering business owners to take back ownership of their marketing.

Website: unchainedmodel.com
LinkedIn: Sara Nay

Actionable Insights

The traditional agency model struggles with client demands, scope creep, profitability, and talent retention—especially as AI transforms execution.
The “anti-agency” model empowers small businesses to stop renting their marketing and start owning it, with strategy and leadership at the center.
Timeless marketing principles (ideal client, deep messaging, strategy before tactics) are more important than ever in the AI era.
Rushing into AI tools without strategy amplifies chaos and inconsistency—start with business and marketing goals, then select and train the right tools.
Fractional CMOs offer small businesses affordable, high-level leadership, managing strategy, budget, and metrics while leveraging lean teams and AI systems.
Owning your marketing brings control, clarity, and the ability to scale—CEOs should focus on their “zone of genius” and let marketing leaders orchestrate execution.
Agencies must shift from execution services to strategic leadership and AI-empowered team enablement to remain relevant.
Every business can start reclaiming ownership by auditing team structure, clarifying partnerships, and aligning technology to strategy.
AI should be used to elevate human talent, not replace it—future-proof your team and business by identifying high-impact skills and integrating AI support.

Great Moments (with Timestamps)

01:06 – Why the Traditional Agency Model is Broken
Sara shares her experience across agency roles and the pain points that inspired “Unchained.”
03:02 – Defining the Anti-Agency Model
How AI and strategy are turning the old agency/client relationship upside down.
04:59 – Timeless Marketing Principles in the Age of AI
Why ideal client profiles and deep messaging still matter most.
07:07 – The Dangers of Jumping Into AI Without Strategy
Sara explains how “amplified chaos” is the real risk for small businesses.
08:55 – The New Org Chart: Fractional CMOs and AI-Powered Teams
How small businesses can afford leadership and execution at scale.
11:05 – From Renting to Owning Your Marketing
The mindset and structural shifts required for true business growth and clarity.
14:26 – How Agencies Must Evolve to Stay Relevant
Why leadership, strategy, and AI team enablement are the future of agency services.
16:06 – Practical Steps for Taking Ownership This Week
Sara’s advice for businesses ready to move from chaos to control.
18:08 – Elevating Your Team With AI
How to future-proof your people and business by blending skills and technology.

Pulled Quotes

“Stop renting your marketing and start owning it. With the right strategy, small businesses can take back control and scale with confidence.”
— Sara Nay

“AI should be used to elevate your team—not replace them. Future-proof your business by blending technology with high-impact human skills.”
— Sara Nay

Duct Tape Transcript

John Jantsch (00:00.866)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Sara Nay. Sara is the CEO of Duct Tape Marketing, where she spent over 15 years helping small businesses build strategy-first marketing systems that actually work. Now being my daughter, Sarah has lived the small business reality from every angle as a teenager, as a team member, as a fractional CMO, and now as the CEO. In her new book,

Unchained, she makes the case that traditional agency model is broken, both for the clients and agencies and lays out a practical AI enabled strategy first approach she calls the anti-agency model. We’re going to touch on that. Permission helps small business owners stop renting their marketing and start owning it. Unchained, breaking free from broken marketing models. So Sarah, welcome to the show.

Sara Nay (00:53.858)

Thanks for having me on.

John Jantsch (00:55.778)

So you and I have been talking about marketing models for a long time. Was there a time when you kind of said, you know what, the agency model is broken and I got to create something different?

Sara Nay (01:06.455)

Yeah, I mean, as you mentioned in the introduction, I’ve been part of the agency space for about 15 years. And in that journey, I’ve moved from intern to community manager, account manager, fractional CMO for our clients among other roles. And so I’ve really been in all the different areas of the agency space. And throughout that journey, there’s definitely been times where I’ve noticed things that didn’t quite feel right in the agency space. And even further than that,

there have been several moments over the last 15 years where I’ve been burnt out and on the brink of saying, does this make sense to pursue even more, even further? And so I’ve lived a lot of challenges along the way and there’s no secret in the challenges I’ve seen. think a lot of people experience this in the agency space. And so starting on that side, on the agency side of things, there’s challenges with meeting client demands and managing scope creep and scaling and maintaining profitability and

retaining great talent and those are a lot of the things that I’ve heard from other agency owners struggling with, but I’ve also experienced it myself. Also in my roles, I’ve been on in the sales side of our business for a while now. So I’ve spoken with hundreds of small business owners who have worked with different agencies or outsourced solutions over those years. And I have heard all of their stories of

things along the lines of marketing doesn’t work or I’m paying this agency for X and I have no idea if I’m getting results or if anything’s happening with my marketing efforts. And so there’s been a lot of this going on for years in the agency space. But I think it’s becoming more more heightened now with the evolution of AI.

John Jantsch (02:49.518)

So you actually use the term anti-agency model. Now know you’re not an agency hater. so, so what makes this anti or, and not just a better agency.

Sara Nay (03:02.379)

Yeah. So the whole play with the anti-agency model, as you identified, like obviously we’re not anti-agency. We’re an agency ourselves. We have been for 31 years. We love agencies. And so I do keep, I keep explaining that because I don’t want people to think this book is against agencies, but what it’s with the anti-agency, what it’s saying is the model is broken essentially for some of the points that I had highlighted just a second ago. So it’s anti-agency model specifically.

And so the way we have been doing and functioning for years as agencies were being forced in some ways to evolve because of the evolution of AI. so previously to AI, it made sense for agencies to hold onto things like marketing, execution, content, social, SEO, paid ads, all of the execution elements. But with the evolution of AI, I believe small businesses are able to take some of that stuff in-house.

They still need strategic leadership and direction, but they now have an opportunity to stay a little bit more lean with their in-house marketing team by layering in AI systems below them to help with the heavy lifting of execution. And so that’s the whole idea of stop renting your marketing and taking back ownership of your marketing. You still need strategy. You still need direction. You still need leadership.

But now you can build a marketing department or team that is a bit leaner because they’re overseeing orchestration of marketing, which is done by AI systems.

John Jantsch (04:39.086)

So one of the things you and I talk about a lot, cause I say it all the time is I, you know, I’ve been doing this 30 years and while a lot of new shiny things have come along, the fundamentals of marketing have not really changed or what we’re here to do as marketers has not really changed that much. What timeless principles do you think from, our system? As you know, it’s still worked today.

Sara Nay (04:59.085)

Yeah. And so that’s the second really section of the book we get into the timeless after the intro and all of that, we get into the timeless principles. And so some of the things that I touch on there are things like target market, identifying your clients on a very deep level. I think that’s becoming even more and more important with the evolution of AI, because what I see is a lot of small businesses bringing in something like a chat, GBT or a clod or whatever their tool of choices. And they’ll start just like,

creating content and so it’s all over the place. It’s not consistent. It’s not on on brand. And so in your original book duct tape marketing, you talked a lot about identifying your ideal client on a deep level, understanding them emotionally, what keeps them up at night, what drives them. And so with the evolution of AI, you still need to understand your clients on a very deep level. But then if you’re going to bring in an AI tool, you then need to train the chat, you’d be to your tool of your choice that you bring in.

on that information. So when you’re creating content moving forward, you’re creating content that speaks to your ideal client on a deep level and isn’t just generic. Another timeless foundational principle is core messaging. We talk a lot about that over the years. So identifying your core message or we’ve talked a lot about talking logo as well. And so that’s really identifying what makes you unique, but also what messaging resonates with that ideal client.

That is still incredibly important today, but it’s also important to take that messaging and train your AI tools of choice on that messaging as well. So again, you’re not creating generic content, you’re creating content that speaks to your ideal clients with the messaging you’ve identified is really important. And so those foundations are still the same, but the way we’re using them is evolving a bit because of the technology that’s now available.

John Jantsch (06:48.733)

So, you know, we’ve, we’re all seeing people run into AI and just like, look what it can do, makes life faster, better, cheaper. Um, where do you think the danger of this, that like eyes wide open, you know, jump in and start using the tools? What do you think the danger of that is for many small businesses?

Sara Nay (07:07.987)

It complicates things that causes confusion. causes inconsistency. It causes noise. It amplifies the chaos that’s already there. It causes so many issues for the internal team or the team using the program, but also for the clients and prospects that you’re putting out content to as well. And so it’s causing confusion in both of those areas. And so a lot of what I encourage small businesses to do is take a step back.

John Jantsch (07:12.916)

amplifies the chaos that’s already there, right? Yeah.

Sara Nay (07:33.767)

And if you’ve been following duct tape marketing for any period of time, you’ve heard us say strategy before tactics. But it’s now strategy before tactics and technology is the conversation we’re having with clients. And so if you’re thinking about, okay, we need to be using AI tools instead of just diving into tools first, take a step back and answer some very important questions as to what’s the business actually trying to accomplish? What’s the marketing strategy look like based on that?

What’s the team strategy or what’s our current team structure look like? And then you can say, okay, what tools can help us accomplish our goals? And then once you identify what the tools are, you then need to train the tools on your strategy that you would have created to then get to the point where you’re ready to execute on them efficiently. So don’t dive into tools, take a step back, create the strategy, and then answer the question of what tools are gonna help us get from where we are today to where we’re trying to go.

John Jantsch (08:30.936)

So, you know, the fractional CMO plus concept is a big part of our model. what do you tell that small business owner that’s got kind of a smaller budget and it’s thinking, I really just need somebody to do stuff rather than like, you know, I can’t really afford or I, or maybe I’m not big enough to even think about the idea of having fractional leadership. What do you say to that business as to why they need to maybe change their mindset?

Sara Nay (08:55.403)

Yeah, I mean, think, again, I keep going back to AI, but it’s causing small business owners or small businesses an opportunity that we haven’t had before. so, you previously, let’s think of traditional marketing org chart. You would have a CMO in a company and then you would have a lot of different executors under them, essentially. So you’d have like a paid specialist, an email marketing specialist, a social, you know, all of the different channels and categories. That’s never really been feasible to small businesses because

they wouldn’t even have a budget for a CMO, let alone all the other people that are involved in that story. And so I think the best opportunity that small businesses have is right now in terms of the org chart, because you can bring in a fractional CMO. So you’re not paying a full-time salary. You’re paying a set fee every single month. That fractional CMO is then tasked with creating the overall strategy, managing the budget, owning the metrics.

overseeing all of the marketing department essentially. And then under that fractional CMO, believe instead of, I don’t know if we’re quite there yet, but the direction I believe we’re going is instead of having a specialist in all the different channels, small businesses can have marketing executors that are familiar enough in writing great copy and understanding social media, but they’re really systems oriented and technology first people.

where you can bring in AI systems below them to help them execute at a higher level than they’ve ever been before. And so now you’re getting a marketing org chart with all of these different roles that you previously probably couldn’t even think about affording as a small business.

John Jantsch (10:35.832)

So going back to the theme of renting, mean, the opposite of renting is owning. and so to a large degree, you know, what you’re describing there is kind of that path towards owning your, your marketing, you know, as a business, as opposed to maybe it wasn’t even renting. was abdicating like going here, you do it. I don’t care what you’re doing over there, but how does that change the business owners mindset in terms of.

Sara Nay (10:54.124)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (11:05.262)

people in terms of structure, in terms of process, if they’re actually, you know, now they’re going to have those people in their organization or they’re going to have those functions in their organization. Who manages that? How do they hire for that? Are they, are they bringing in more overhead that makes sense for their business if they’re going to start thinking that way, or is this the ultimate path to, truly scaling a business?

Sara Nay (11:16.557)

It obviously depends on the business situation, revenue size, long-term growth goals. And so there’s a lot of factors that I would need to consider to answer that specifically. But for me, if you’re a small business and you’re looking to scale up,

when you’re doing a certain level of revenue, you’ve been in business for a few years, let’s say you’ve passed the 1 million revenue mark, I think it’s time to start considering you need marketing leadership of some extent. And so when small businesses scale up to a certain point, if they haven’t looked for marketing leadership, the CEO becomes the CMO and they either have marketing experience or they learn marketing. And now it’s this necessary evil that

they’re having to spend a lot of their time on where they never wanted to become a CMO in the first place. And so if you’re scaling up and you have high growth goals, looking for someone like a fractional CMO, I think makes a lot of sense because the whole idea is as the CEO or founder, you stay in your zone of genius. You stay focused on the why behind you building the business in the first place. then you… In selling, yeah.

John Jantsch (12:34.798)

or in selling, you know, stuff that actually is going to make money for the business rather than you having to figure out how to manage the technology.

Sara Nay (12:46.121)

Exactly. And then you bring in a fractional CMO or a marketing leader of some extent that then is tasked with what you identified earlier in terms of managing team, bringing in partners or hiring full-time team, running the technology, building the systems and processes, running the budget and the metrics. so the fractional CMO is really tasked with leading the marketing department and working alongside you to help you reach the specific business goals that you would have laid out.

John Jantsch (13:15.566)

You know, if somebody, whoever you’re working with is going to bring you strategy first, you know, as the first step, it doesn’t really matter what you call that person, right? What their role is, right? I mean, it’s really more the idea of thinking strategy first, isn’t

Sara Nay (13:21.901)

Yeah.

Sara Nay (13:31.137)

Yeah, absolutely. And so we’ll throw out all different terms. I mean, we talk a lot about fractional CMO, but if that feels like too elevated of a term, know, marketing leader, marketing strategist, marketing advisor, you know, the point is what they’re doing. They’re, leading the marketing initiatives and not just being an order taker.

John Jantsch (13:51.672)

So let’s flip to agencies that are listening, because I know we have agencies listening as well. How do they have to shift their mindset to really stay relevant? mean, I think in some agency, you look at some of these agencies that are providing SEO and content and social media, that’s their package, right, of done for you services. There might be a time in the very near future where that’s just not that relevant.

Sara Nay (14:19.372)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (14:19.423)

or people aren’t going to be willing to pay what you need to run a profitable business. So how do agencies need to shift their mindset?

Sara Nay (14:26.705)

Yeah, and there’s been a lot of stuff coming out there that I’ve seen on LinkedIn and different articles about how many agencies are going to shut down in the next few years. I think a lot of that stuff’s hard to predict, but I do think if you just keep offering execution, it’s a race to the bottom in a lot of cases because small businesses, even if they’re not doing it that effectively yet, they are bringing in AI solutions to cut costs in certain areas. And I think that marketing execution is one of those.

areas. And so, you know, I think if agencies keep offering execution as their core services, it’s going to be very challenging in the next few years moving forward, because AI is becoming more sophisticated. So you’re basically competing against AI in that scenario versus if agencies shift their offering and they step more into this leadership role, where they’re, you know, focusing on strategy.

they’re elevating team, it can be their own team or it can be internal team, but they’re elevating humans essentially with AI systems below them. Then they’re working alongside AI versus competing against it.

John Jantsch (15:35.64)

So if I’m a small business owner listening and.

Obviously picking up and reading the book is going to be step one. But what are a couple steps towards taking this ownership mentality that somebody could start this week? If you’re stuck in the old kind of way of thinking, here are a couple things you can do this week to start changing your mindset or maybe even changing your marketing.

Sara Nay (16:06.165)

Yeah, of course. There’s two things that come to mind right off the bat. One of the first things, and I talk about this in the book as well, is the marketing strategy pyramid. We talk a lot about it at Duck Tape Marketing, but it’s really taking a step back and answering some business strategic questions first. So really analyzing what are your business goals? What are your objectives? What’s your revenue? Where are you growing towards? What are your mission, vision, values? And so really analyzing some of those things.

And then thinking through what is your marketing strategy to help you move in the right direction. And then thinking through what is your team strategy. So you have to have those two bottom layers of the pyramid first to then think about team. But, know, to the question of how can businesses take back ownership when you’re analyzing your team structure, think through like, these internal roles? Are we relying on outsourced vendors? If we’re relying on outside outsourced vendors or solutions.

Do we have clarity and confidence and control or ownership as to what they are doing or are we kind of left in the dark? I if you’re left in the dark through some of your partnerships, that’s when it’s time to analyze, does it make sense to continue on with this partnership or is there a way where we can get more ownership and control? So that’s where I would start is kind of going back to the basics there and analyzing your current structure, your current relationships, your current team.

and making sure that you have clarity in what everyone is doing.

John Jantsch (17:35.672)

So I’m going to go a little in the weeds here on AI, mainly because it’s on everybody’s mind right now. There are a lot of some of these agencies that we’re talking about are shifting their whole model to being calling themselves AI agencies, where they want to come in and show you how to put in agents and how to automated this and automated that. How do you think small businesses should be looking at?

Sara Nay (17:51.703)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (18:02.806)

I mean, I don’t think we have to convince them that it’s not going away, but how do you think they should be looking at getting the most out of AI as really the end to end solution or the end to end assistant at this point that it can be rather than just looking at it as, here’s how I can automate stuff and or worse yet, here’s how I can fire people and do more with less.

Sara Nay (18:08.909)

Yeah, a big part of that I think is doing an analysis of who’s currently on your team and you’re not asking the question.

How can we get more work out of them or how can we get them to move faster or be more productive? What you’re answering is how can we elevate them to make more of an impact? And so one of the exercises that we’ve done with our team fairly recently, and this is also in the book as well, is we had everyone on our team analyze what skills are they doing on a regular basis. And then we basically had them identify what are human-led skills that they should continue to focus on, things that light them up, that they love.

And then we also had them identify what skills can be AI assisted and what skills and tasks could be executed by AI. And so we went through that exercise so people could essentially analyze their roles and think about how they could future proof their careers moving forward. And so I think that’s a really great exercise for anyone listening as a business leader or for your whole entire team is you should all be thinking about how can we future proof the business as a whole.

And that’s a lot of what you and I talk about when we talk about shifting our model in a new direction. But you also need to be considering everyone on your team. How can you help them elevate with AI instead of be replaced by it? And then how can you help them continue to grow and focus on the skills that are becoming more important because of the evolution of AI?

John Jantsch (19:54.414)

talking with Sarah Ney, the author of Unchained. Sarah, I appreciate you spending a few moments to talk about Unchained. Is there a place that you’d invite people to go to find out more about the work you do, of course, but then also the new book?

Sara Nay (20:08.269)

Absolutely, so unchainedmodel.com is the book’s website, so love for you to check that out and also connect with me on LinkedIn. Again, my name is Sarah Ney.

John Jantsch (20:18.23)

Awesome, well again, I appreciate you stopping by. Hopefully we’ll see you one of these days soon out there on the

Sara Nay (20:24.589)

Thank you.