John Jantsch (00:00): This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Creative Elements hosted by Jay Klaus. It’s brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. The audio destination for business professionals creative elements goes behind the scenes with today’s top creators. Through narrative interviews, Jay Klaus explores how creators like Tim Urban James Clear, Tory Dunlap and Cody Sanchez are building their audiences today. By learning how these creators make a living with their art and creativity, creative elements helps you gain the tools and confidence to do the same. In a recent episode, they talked with Kevin Perry about how he goes viral on every single platform. Listen to creative elements wherever you get your podcasts.

(00:52): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Henry Adaso, fueled by Coffee and Hip Hop. Henry is an award-winning marketing leader with over 15 years of experience, a former music journalist. He’s a natural storyteller and innovative marketer. He’s currently the head of marketing for CMEX USA and the author of three books, including his latest that we’re gonna talk about today, The Art of Messaging – Seven Principles of Remarkable Messages (Or How to Stand Out in a Noisy World). So, Henry, welcome to the show.

Henry Adaso (01:30): Thank you for having me, John.

John Jantsch (01:31): So going through your background, I feel like you have a very colorful journey to how you got to hear . You want to give us a little kind of what’s been your entrepreneurial journey? It kind of brought you to this point. I’d love to hear a little more about it.

Henry Adaso (01:46): Yeah, John, absolutely. Colorful is the right word. I call myself an accidental marketer because I didn’t know that I was going to end up in marketing when I was a young boy in high school. I was the kid who used to annoy all of his friends by making my own kind of handwritten newsletter and then forcing my friends to endure my newsletter. So I, I always thought I was going to become a publisher, but to somewhere along the line, I noticed that they were kicking publishers out of the building because of this thing called the internet. And so I pivoted to digital marketing, and what I quickly realized was that a lot of the same skills that I had developed writing my own book when I was a kid and writing newsletters translated to marketing because it’s ultimately about storytelling. And so today I work as a marketer and I love it.

John Jantsch (02:34): So, so, you know, messaging obviously is a key part, strategic element of marketing. I, I’m, I agree with you, but I’d love to hear your take on why you chose to call it the art of messaging. Why do you feel it it is elevated to the level of art?

Henry Adaso (02:52): That’s a great question. I think that people are intimidated by messaging it. It’s something that is often thought as a reserved for a select few copywriters, marketing gurus, great communicators. But it’s really an art. It’s an art in the science, but it’s primarily an art. And it can be taught, it can be learned. And what I realized looking at a lot of different brand messages is that they tend to have certain things in common. They have certain attributes in common. There’s a pattern that occurs. And if you study that pattern and try your best to recreate that in your product or service, if it works, it has to work. It’s not about something that doesn’t work. If you have a product that truly solves a problem, you can learn from the best brands on how to message in a way that truly resonates with your audience.

John Jantsch (03:45): Where, you know, if somebody comes to you and says, oh, we’ve got this company and we’ve got, you know, we’ve been around for X amount of years, and we just feel like we’re copying what everybody else in our industry does, I mean, where do you first send somebody to look for, like, where is your message? You know, like where is it hiding? You know, the secret sauce that’s gonna really make a difference.

Henry Adaso (04:04): There’s a great quote by Michelangelo that says, every block of stone has a sculpture in it, and it’s the job of the sculptor to find it. So every brand, no matter the industry, whether you’re B2B or B2C, there’s something that is interesting about your brand. And sometimes you may have to dig a little bit deeper, maybe do some research, talk to people who’ve been there a little bit longer. But you really have to try to understand the essence of your product or service or your brand. And that’s where I would begin. So for example, there’s a sock company called Bombas, and they sell socks, which, you know, could be consider the commodity, but they’re very successful because their product is tied to this idea that the, one of the most essential pieces of clothing that, that you really need is something that keeps you warm. So like socks, right? So every time you buy a pear, they gift one to, uh, somebody in need. So that’s a story, and that’s something that’s interesting that makes them, it kind of takes them beyond the idea of just being a soft company to now something bigger than that. And that’s really where you start. What is the essence of your brand? What is the thing that really makes you a little bit different from the others?

John Jantsch (05:17): You know, one of the things that I find is I think there are a lot of companies out there that they are unique. They are doing something different. Their customers, you know, stay with them because they are doing something different, but they still tend to talk about what they sell. How important is it to understand the problems? You’re, so you really solve for your customers, even if they’re the little things. I mean, I think that’s sometimes where people get caught up. They think of this messaging being this grand thing that’s gonna make us sound, you know, really important and amazing when their customers will say, well, yeah, but it’s, this is what you actually do for us. I mean, how important is it to understand the problems you’re solving?

Henry Adaso (05:58): I’m a marketer and I’ll be the first to admit, we love talking about ourselves. , we love talking about how great we are, how great the product is. It’s a very, it’s a comfortable space to be in to talk about how great the product is, but the customer is really interested in one thing. And that is, what can you do for me? So what we have to do is shift our messaging from a We Messages, which is focused on how many awards we’ve won, how great the company is, and shift it to a you messages, which is how do we talk about the customer? Every opportunity that we have, we need to be saying, let’s talk about you. What problems do you need solved? And the thing that resonates the most is if we can show the customer that there is a transformation on the other side of that conversation, on the other side of that interaction, we’re more likely to engage them and we’re more likely to be effective with our messaging.

John Jantsch (06:50): Yeah. And obviously with a Title seven principles, you know, we’re gonna break down a little bit of, of framework, but I’ll tell you a question I get all the time, and I’m sure you do as well when you talk about this topic, is the company that says you, you used bombass, you know, sells socks, which is a commodity. But you know, what if I sell just a really boring product, I don’t know, let’s say cement for example, know anybody who does any messaging for, you know, a product like that. I mean, how do you turn something kind of sexy maybe that just people don’t think is?

Henry Adaso (07:22): So I happen to know a thing or two about selling some given that’s primarily what we sell. And it, and I have to tell you, it’s one of the, just on, on the surface, it’s one of the most boring products. It’s literally just a gray powder, right? in, substitute the bags and it’ll look the same. So how do you make that interesting? A couple years ago we started this tradition, I’ll tell you a quick story. And we, at the end of the year, we would create a holiday newsletter and we would send out a holiday newsletter to our customers just as a, as an an expression of our gratitude for their business. Over the course of the year. The first time we did this, it was a very standard holiday newsletter. There was nothing special about it. It simply said, you know, happy holidays, it was beautifully designed, content was great, but we didn’t get much of a response.

(08:07): So we switched it up a little bit. And the next year what we did was we gathered all of our sales folks and we created this theme around football, and we had them hold up props. So footballs, helmets, trophies. And we also wrote in the newsletter, little fun facts about them. So this helped personalize our sales folks. And this newsletter had trading cards that you can tear out . And so if you’re a customer, you received this, it was, it’s not your usual cement newsletter, right? And then now you have something else to help you connect with that salesperson because they’re a person, right? That got a lot of great feedback from customers. The following year we did a similar theme, but this time with superheroes. And the same thing, dozens of customers wrote us asking for additional copies of our holiday newsletter, which is a marketing material, right? So, so here we are in a world where there’s so much noise and most customers are saying, I just get outta my inbox. I don’t wanna hear from you, but we have the reverse where they were saying, can you send me more copies of your marketing materials? All we did differently was tell a story. Mm-hmm. . And a story is something that always resonates. So I would say for something, someone who may be thinking, I have a boring product, I mean a niche space, just try to tell a story.

John Jantsch (09:28): Yeah. Yeah. So you, I have a framework that I think you probably refer to it as “best” because that’s what it’s spells, B E S T. So you wanna kinda unpack that. These are like the kind of some of the key elements. The good message has. You want to kind of go through that framework.

Henry Adaso (09:44): So I looked at about six years ago when I was working on the agency side, I looked at a, a lot of brands and they had, that had great me. And I started to study them to understand what they had in common, because I wanted to replicate that for my team. We had lots of clients that needed messaging. And what I realized was that all of them had these four attributes in common. They, it just kept coming up over. And the attributes are, they’re bold, remarkable, messaging is empathic, it’s specific, and it’s transformative. And so those four attributes spell out the word best, which makes it easier to remember. Mm-hmm. . And so a bold message is something that makes you stop and look. It’s something that earns your attention. It’s something that is engaging. And that’s the first question we have to ask is, in a noisy world, how do we make people stop and pay attention?

(10:42): An empathic message is simply something that incorporates a core human need in the messaging. So what is the emotional need that we’re solving for? Is it peace? Is it joy? Is it relief from pain? Is it I’ll help you make more money, spend more time with your family? What is that emotional driver? And then specificity is about understanding that nothing is for everyone. And we need to be clear about who the product is for and what it is as well. Because sometimes you’ll be driving and you see a billboard and you’re wondering what are they selling? Right? , at that point, you could have earned attention. So we have to be clear about what’s on offer and who it’s for. And then the last attribute transformation is really showing what the outcomes would be for the person. People don’t buy features and benefits. They buy the transformation. And so if you are, if you have something that helps people make more money, well the transformation is not that they’ll make more money, that might be a benefit. It’s what the money brings them. Mm-hmm. , it’s time with your family, it’s, Hey, maybe I’ll be able to pay off grandma’s mortgage or travel more. That is more likely to connect us.

John Jantsch (11:54): Hey, marketing agency owners, you know, I can teach you the keys to doubling your business in just 90 days or your money back. Sound interesting. All you have to do is license our three step process. It. It’s going to allow you to make your competitors irrelevant, charge a premium for your services and scale perhaps without adding overhead. And here’s the best part. You could license this entire system for your agency by simply participating in an upcoming agency certification intensive. Look, why create the wheel? Use a set of tools that took us over 20 years to create. And you could have ’em today. Check it out at dtm.world/certification. That’s DTM world slash certification.

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(13:30): So, you know, I’m imagining a group of folks sitting around saying, okay, yeah, this, that’s a really bold message. And we’re talking about like the transformation and you know, we spelled out exactly what we do, but then you take it out to the market and it’s like, I don’t get it. Right? I mean, how do you kind of test to the point where you’re like, yeah, this is, you know, how do you know? How do you know you’ve nailed it with, you know, the ideal client you’re trying to impact?

Henry Adaso (13:56): I encourage all marketers to take testing very seriously because the market knows best. And sometimes we will have, you may have a hunch or maybe you have some best practices based on experience, but when you test it, you might discover something different. So think testing is the first place I would go. And one easy way to test is through email marketing. So you could maybe test your headline and the way this works, most email platforms allow you to do this. You would have two different subject clients and then you would break your audience into two and send one subject line to one audience and the other to the other group. And you’ll study this over the course of two to four hours to see which subject line yields more opens. That’s how you pick a winner. So that’s one relatively affordable way to test. Uh, another one would be to run ads if you have, if you’re already running some ads, try different headlines and see which ones are generating more clicks.

John Jantsch (14:56): Yeah. Yeah. And increasingly, you know, some of these tools, particularly the tools that are trying to sell your ads, you know, will actually, you know, show you a winner. It’ll, you know, it’ll produce the winner for you because that’s the one that’s making them the most money. So consequently it’s the one they want to want you to land on.

Henry Adaso (15:13): Yes, yes, yes.

John Jantsch (15:15): How important is it for an organization to have kind of a central message or a core message? You know, something that really delivers the brand promise first. Obviously there’s messages for campaigns, for products, for divisions, for different types of clients, but how essential is it to have something that brings together, like, this is what we stand for?

Henry Adaso (15:35): Consistency is credibility. So it’s very important to be consistent with your messaging across all of your customer touchpoints within the organization. If you have sales and marketing and customer experience delivering different messages to the marketplace, that is a perfect recipe for market confusion, right? So we wanna mitigate that by creating a source of cohesion for our messaging. And this could be something as simple as having a value proposition matrix that is available to all of your touchpoints. What I propose in the book is a messaging menu. And so your messaging menu has different servings of your messaging, starting with the starters, which could be something like an elevator pitch or your smaller plates, which could be something like your social media posts or entrees as I call them, which are longer messages when you have a presentation, what is your messaging? But they’re all part of the same core message. They’re all part of your value proposition. And so over time, if you deliver the same message consistently, then it becomes clear what you stand for and what your brand is all about. And then when people are ready to make a purchasing decision, they know exactly to turn to you.

John Jantsch (16:54): So you have a couple, um, exercises, I guess you called it. Somebody could actually, again, as an organization, you know, go through the one, I might have this wrong, but the, is it messaging tower or is that how you refer to it?

Henry Adaso (17:05): Messaging tower. So the messaging tower. Tower, yes. So that that, that is a tool that allows you to extract the most effective messaging points, the most important attributes of your product or service. And the messaging tower essentially is saying that there is a hierarchy when it comes to messaging. So at the base of your messaging is going to be your features, and these are things like descriptive elements of your part. Mm-hmm. the service. So if we take a headphone for example, maybe it’s lightweight or the color or the base production, those are all features and they’re descriptive and features appeal to a technical audience. Then at in the middle of the tower, you have your benefits, which is what can it do for me? So for this sticking with the headphone example, it may be something like, hey, it’s portable or it has noise cancellation. So it allows me to have peace of mind when I’m on airplane. At the very top of your messaging tower is the transformation. And the transformation is the powerful why behind your product or service. It answers the question you,

John Jantsch (18:12): You’re just gonna look damn good. Right? Exactly. . So by talking about this in a hierarchy, I mean you’re kind of suggesting that like all these things, if you gotta have, you gotta understand the features and what, how those translate to benefit before you’re gonna get to correct. What may be the most important part, the transformation is that right?

Henry Adaso (18:32): Absolutely. Really the cream of the crop is the transformation. If you can get to the transformation, you have a better chance of connecting with your audience. The example that I always think about is Beats by Dr. Dre headphones. So I noticed that their messaging was, hear music the way your favorite artists hear music. Mm-hmm. . And that is a transformation because at the time there, there were no premium headphones that could do what Beats could do, so, so the messaging there was about you having that proxy experience to the celebrities that you like and look up to, right? Versus they didn’t talk about the features, they didn’t talk about the benefits, they simply went for the top of the messaging tower, which is a transformation. There are lots of brands that do this effectively and cite several examples in the book as well. But when you start, once you see this messaging tower, you start to see it all over the place. You see billboards that are doing this. You see commercials that are doing the same thing. That is the most powerful type of messaging, the messaging that says, Hey, here’s how your situation will be different after you buy this product or service. Great.

John Jantsch (19:41): Well, Henry, I wanna appre, I appreciate you taking a moment to stop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. You want to tell people where they can find your work, your book, uh, connect with you in any way that you’d invite them to do?

Henry Adaso (19:51): Absolutely. You can find me on my website, henryadaso.com or on LinkedIn. It’s going to be Henry Adaso or Instagram at @henryadaso as well. John, thank you so much for having

John Jantsch (20:02): Me. You bet. No, I’m, again, I appreciate you taking the time and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Henry Adaso (20:09): Look forward to meeting you in person. Thank you so much.

John Jantsch (20:12): Hey, and one final thing before you go. You know how I talk about marketing strategy, strategy before tactics? Well, sometimes it can be hard to understand where you stand in that, what needs to be done with regard to creating a marketing strategy. So we created a free tool for you. It’s called the Marketing Strategy Assessment. You can find it @marketingassessment.co, not.com, dot co. Check out our free marketing assessment and learn where you are with your strategy today. That’s just marketing assessment.co. I’d love to chat with you about the results that you get.

John Jantsch (00:00): This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Creative Elements hosted by Jay Klaus. It’s brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. The audio destination for business professionals creative elements goes behind the scenes with today’s top creators. Through narrative interviews, Jay Klaus explores how creators like Tim Urban James Clear, Tori Dunlap and Cody Sanchez are building their audiences today. By learning how these creators make a living with their art and creativity, creative elements helps you gain the tools and confidence to do the same. In a recent episode, they talked with Kevin Perry about how he goes viral on every single platform. Listen to creative elements wherever you get your podcasts.

(00:54): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Morra Aarons-Mele. She’s a host of The Anxious Achiever, a top-10 management podcast that helps people rethink the relationship between their mental health and their leadership. You might recall she was on this show for one of the best titles ever Hiding in the Bathroom . But she’s back with another book we’re gonna talk about today, The Anxious Achiever: Turn Your Biggest Fears Into Your Leadership Superpower. So, Morra, welcome back.

Morra Aarons-Mele (01:28): Thanks, John. It’s good

John Jantsch (01:29): To be back. So leadership and mental health, uh, in the same sentence, I mean, is juxtaposed even, are we talking about a bit of an oxymoron here?

Morra Aarons-Mele (01:38): No, we’re talking about,

John Jantsch (01:41): I mean, people don’t typically think about those two things I know is the whole point of what your, what your work is about. But, so help me kind of work this idea that, that you’re putting those two type topics together, you know, intentionally.

Morra Aarons-Mele (01:55): Yeah. I don’t think that there should be any false separation between the discussion of leadership and mental health or to that matter, mental illness. Yeah. You know, it’s a part of life at anyone’s part of life. They will probably experience mental ill health and hopefully mental wellness. Right. It’s, it’s exists along the spectrum and we all go through it, and it’s part of our leadership and how we show up. Sure.

John Jantsch (02:18): I don’t disagree at all, but the fact that you’re having to talk about normalizing this in the workplace, there’s a lot of really built up angst about it, isn’t there? I mean, just the, you know, go back a generation and you never talked about mental health issues, right. It’s like that was, you know, that was taboo. And so a lot of people are dealing with that baggage, right?

Morra Aarons-Mele (02:39): I, I think so. Even today, you know, we, um, we conflate mental illness or ANGs or depression with weakness, right? We, we conflate it with characteristics that seem to go against what we want our leaders to be and stand for mm-hmm. . And so of course there’s no incentive for leaders to talk about their mental health because everyone is afraid that they’ll be judged. Right,

John Jantsch (03:00): Right, right.

Morra Aarons-Mele (03:02): And that’s the kind of stigmas they’re trying to break.

John Jantsch (03:04): Yeah. And I think when we use the term mental health, you know, obviously people go a lot of places with that, you’re narrowed in on this idea of anxiousness, you know, which mm-hmm. again, you talked about a spectrum could be in this, not a little of nothing. And the point that you’re making is that this is like, this can be a strength, right? I mean that this idea that you’re an achiever doing this, so, you know, it hasn’t always been seen as a good thing. So how, what, what are you bringing to the conversation? You know, that’s gonna help people see that as No, that’s a strength of yours.

Morra Aarons-Mele (03:36): I hope people understand that leadership and anxiety go together because , when you’re leading, you’re going into the uncertain. Yeah. And a lot of anxiety is about facing the uncertain and the uncomfortable, even scary feelings that we have around that. You know, what leader is an anxious Yeah. And indeed, when we think of our, our greatest leaders before battle, when we read history, we understand that they were full of fears and deep, deep insecurities before battle. The key is moving through it and being able to go into battle.

John Jantsch (04:09): Don’t you think though, a lot of those leaders that you mentioned, you know, this insecurity came like after the fact, or at least admission of the insecurity came after the fact, but they felt like, no, I’ve gotta put on the, I’ve gotta put on the face, you know, and don’t you think a lot of leaders take that? Like, I, you know, even though I’m dying inside, you know, I can’t let that show .

Morra Aarons-Mele (04:28): Some do, some don’t. I mean, when you read histories, for example, of Abraham Lincoln, he walked around with great melancholy and anxiety, and he didn’t hide it. In fact, he built a team around him of people who could take care of him even in his lowest hours.

John Jantsch (04:44): Do you feel like there is more anxiety today? Maybe this is just a guess , but more anxiety today? And if so, what’s causing it? Or are people just more freely talking about it in it appears that there’s more?

Morra Aarons-Mele (04:59): It’s, I mean, it’s hard for me to know. I’m not a right, I’m not a data scientist, but I do think that when you look statistically, the numbers of people reporting anxiety and depression in this country are overwhelming. And certainly among our young people, we’ve been through a period which has been really damaging to our mental health. Yeah. And I don’t see much that is making our mental health shore up right now. Certainly on a global scale. And even just from a macroeconomic perspective, things are very, very uncertain and scary. And that’s when we get

John Jantsch (05:31): Anxious. I mean, and, and we talked about like what we’ve gone through, but even now, as we continue home, I mean, is that actually making the issue, uh, worse or sustaining the issue? Uh,

Morra Aarons-Mele (05:40): It’s hard to know, right? I mean, I think the, the jury definitely is not out there. I think for a lot of people working from home makes their anxiety feel better because they may have less social anxiety. Yeah. Right. There may be fewer instances. On the other hand, anxiety loves a communications vacuum. And when we’re all, and we’re communicating on slack and strictly in audio, we may have more anxiety because we’re not clear on what our counterpart wants. We may feel the need to control and we’re micromanaging more. So it’s hard to know, but I think there are pros and cons. Yeah.

John Jantsch (06:14): So obviously you spend a great deal of time in the book, not just explaining the people have these anxieties, but transforming them, you know, to being from a, from a what was maybe at one time a weakness, uh, to a strength. So what’s, what’s the process that somebody might, uh, go through? Because I, you know, I’ve spent 10 years, uh, meditating just to get rid of stress and anxiety. Uh, and now you’re telling me, bring it on.

Morra Aarons-Mele (06:37): No, look, I’m not telling you bring it on. I mean, if, if, if you found a way to dissipate it, amazing. Good for you. Um, you probably have a lot to teach

John Jantsch (06:46):

Morra Aarons-Mele (06:47): Because ultimately what you’re doing when you’re meditating is you’re sitting with thoughts and you’re just sitting with them. You’re observing them, you’re noticing them, but you’re not holding onto them.

John Jantsch (06:59): Right? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Morra Aarons-Mele (07:02): And what has that process taught you?

John Jantsch (07:04): Uh, that reality is far less scary than than, than, uh, the, the assumed, uh, reality, which I feel like is the creation of a lot of anxiety.

Morra Aarons-Mele (07:16): That’s right. Anxiety is all about the assumed reality , right. Anxiety is our brain’s threat appraisal system going into high gear. On the other hand, our brain may sense a real threat or it may not. Right. And so many of us, myself included, spend so much time anticipating threats Yeah. That we almost forget how to calm down. Right. And then along the way that anxiety becomes our activating energy, it becomes our oxygen. Yeah. It pushes us forward. And we can’t separate what’s anxiety and what is our true drive for excellence. And it can really, really have intense consequences. And so in the book, I do a lot of what you probably do as a meditator, noticing when your anxiety pops up in what circumstance, how your body feels.

John Jantsch (08:04): Yeah. It probably gets a bit habituated Right. Too. Like we stop mm-hmm. noticing it becomes of when X happens, Y is going to occur in my body or in my head, . Um, and, and so you’re right. I, the first step probably is actually witnessing it to some extent, right?

Morra Aarons-Mele (08:20): Yes. And anxiety’s tricky. I spoke with someone the other day and, and he said, you know, my anxiety shows up as vertigo, huh. And I was like, wow, that’s unexpected. You know, there’s a detective work process that you have to go through sometimes because we think that we know an anxiety hits and it’s that classic sort of fight or flight and our heart starts racing. Right. But always like that. Right. And, um, the thing that’s interesting about work is it gives us a lack. We can pick up a lot of patterns for our anxiety going off mm-hmm. if we pay attention

John Jantsch (08:49): Mm-hmm. . So do you have a framework, if we wanna call it that, to to, to that you’re actually can coach you through, you know, here’s, I didn’t know every individual’s front, but do you have, at least for how somebody might go through this transformation to turn it into, as you said, a I think a I think even superpower somewhere,

Morra Aarons-Mele (09:07): , I mean, in this book, I’m not a, I’m not a clinician or psychologist, but I draw on many different schools of psychology and research and you know, I mean, I think that the general consensus, like you said, is that when you feel like your anxiety is getting in the way, the first step is to notice it. Yeah. Really understand how it’s showing up, what it’s feeling like in your body, naming it, I’m anxious, I’m really anxious before this negotiation, what’s going on? And then doing the work to understand it, right? I mean, that is the work that we all do, but it can be really, really illustrative. And in the book, we look at everything from your childhood hurts mm-hmm. , those patterns that mo may go very, very deep to recent job experiences to, again, habits that you get stuck in. You know, so many of us get stuck in what I call thought traps. Mm-hmm. , right? Those negative instant thoughts. When we feel anxious specifically about something that we feel might shame us, our brain goes to a place of, I’m not worth it, I’m stupid, I’m gonna fail. Right? And that becomes a comfortable habit. Perfectionism is the same thing. And so it’s really about understanding and playing detective, and then trying to figure out what’s motivating the anxiety.

John Jantsch (10:19): Hey, marketing agency owners, you know, I can teach you the keys to doubling your business in just 90 days or your money back. Sound interesting. All you have to do is license our three step process that’s gonna allow you to make your competitors irrelevant, charge a premium for your services and scale perhaps without adding overhead. And here’s the best part. You can license this entire system for your agency by simply participating in an upcoming agency certification intensive look, why create the wheel? Use a set of tools that took us over 20 years to create. And you can have ’em today. Check it out at dtm.world/certification. That’s dtm.world/certification.

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(11:56): There was a book a few years ago, and I don’t remember if it was really even very good , but the title got my attention was called Stress for Success. And the main point that the author made was that if you’re not feeling a little stress, you know, you’re just not trying or you’re not pushing yourself enough. Um, I mean, is there any of that, um, thought, uh, process, uh, in anxious achiever?

Morra Aarons-Mele (12:21): Yeah. I mean, the neuroscience will will show that, right? I mean, we need anxiety. It keeps us alive. So if you are, um, faced with something that you really care about, that you feel might be a test, um, that you feel you really want to take a leap forward mm-hmm. , and there’s a risk of failure, of course you’re gonna feel anxious. You need to feel anxious.

John Jantsch (12:42): So what, what is the right word? But the, again, a lot of scientific research is really going in body connection. You know, what physical manifestations, you know, are, you know, are people experiencing because they are not managing the anxiety or the stress?

Morra Aarons-Mele (13:03): Well, we like to get into habits, right? Mm-hmm. . And, um, our brain creates habits as a way of hoping to dissipate the anxiety. So a lot of us, when we’re anxious, we may go into familiar behaviors, right? A lot of us may reach for a drink, we may reach for Netflix, we may reach for TikTok mm-hmm. , right? Mm-hmm. , we may exercise. Some of our coping mechanisms are what’s called adaptive. Mm-hmm. , they help us and some are maladaptive mm-hmm. at work. We also have anxiety habits. We may get into micromanaging. When you’re anxious, you feel out of control. It feels really good to try to reassert some control. And that could mean calling your team and bothering them . Right. It could be overwork. And so the important thing is to see how you’re reacting to the anxiety and ask yourself, is this really, is this serving me? And that’s where the mindfulness comes in again.

John Jantsch (13:56): Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Yeah. Is

Morra Aarons-Mele (13:57): This serving me? And sometimes you might say, yes, I am anxious right now. This is serving me.

John Jantsch (14:03): Yeah. So when it comes to, you talk about leadership and obviously typical leader, you know, manages people. So in some cases, teams or multiple teams. Are we at a point where, you know, a true leader now should be coaching around mental health, even though, you know, obviously not providing, you know, therapy, but somehow coaching or at least giving people opportunities to be coached around it.

Morra Aarons-Mele (14:30): I mean, this is a pretty controversial topic as you can imagine. Yeah. And it’s new, it’s really evolving, you know, in the field of workplace mental health. I, I say that, um, n no manager or colleague should ever feel like they need to be someone’s therapist. You know, that is not your job. There are a lot of programs that are helping, especially managers become conversant Yeah. In talking about mental health. Right. So that you can at least there. But you know, in part of the research for the book, and in my podcast I’ve interviewed many HR leaders and you know, their general consensus is your job as a manager is to listen and facilitate. So you wanna be someone who’s safe to listen to. You don’t need to solve an employee who’s having a mental health challenge. Right. That’s not your job. You can facilitate where they need to go next. Yeah. And I think that that is sort of maybe can help managers relax a little bit. It’s not your job to be the therapist.

John Jantsch (15:20): Many people in managerial positions are, you know, look a lot like me age-wise, um, and, uh, they are managing people who look a lot like my kids. Is there a a real challenge, you know, cross generationally? It’s

Morra Aarons-Mele (15:35): So funny, every time I say yes, I get people writing into me saying, no, it is not about generation. , you know, I think it’s really, really individual. Yeah. There are many people of certain ages who’ve been through a tremendous amount of therapy and their own healing journeys. Yeah. And another thing that’s interesting that I have heard anecdotally is that people who are, who have power tend to be more open and more willing to talk about things like mental health. Mm. And people in the start of their careers as well. It’s the people in the middle. Yeah. The people who are just holding on for dear life. Right.

John Jantsch (16:12): And this is just like another black marker possibly. Right. Well,

Morra Aarons-Mele (16:15): This is just something they just, they just feel overwhelmed by because they’re in the climbing phase of their career. They probably have a very busy home life.

John Jantsch (16:22): Yeah. Yeah. I have just anecdotally maybe millennials, maybe Gen Z, you know, tend to just be much more open about it. I mean, so the stigma appears to be gone of saying, you know, on, on Facebook, you know, my therapist said, you know, which Oh yeah. 20 years ago, you know, would’ve been somewhat, you know, it would’ve been with your girlfriend and a couple glasses of wine maybe. But that’s about it. Right. Um, so is that, is that just a social change or is that, you know, a positive change for, for good in, in the entire issue?

Morra Aarons-Mele (16:55): I think it’s hugely positive. I mean, I wish everyone could have a therapist. I think it’s a truly remarkable experience. And obviously there are a lot of barriers to getting good mental healthcare in this country. Yeah. Um, but I love, I love when people are open to talking about the road to self-awareness the same way they would as developing any other skill. Because what this comes down to is self-awareness as a leader. Yeah. And self-awareness is one of the most sought after an elusive leadership characteristics. Yeah.

John Jantsch (17:25): I’ve often said, I think it’s the, it’s the, you know, super powerful leadership. I think, you know, because that, you know, where people really, when when people struggle with that, you know, then they give people answers and they , you know, they try to hold on to power themselves and you know, not, you know, not give it out. I mean, the most self-aware leaders wanna rise everybody up and they want, you know, they wanna share, you know, with the team, which are all I think very positive, you know, types of things.

Morra Aarons-Mele (17:52): Yeah, yeah. For sure. So

John Jantsch (17:55): If, if, if somebody reads this book and they’re a leader and they say Morra, we’d love to work with you. Do you do any work inside of organizations? Um, because this is, this might be hr, has certainly might be leadership, it’s definitely culture side of organizations. So where would you go to help an organization that’s trying to maybe change the culture, not just an individual leader who’s trying to get better?

Morra Aarons-Mele (18:22): I mean, this is really about culture change, you know, and I think the good news is as leaders change, culture changes, I don’t think that this kind of reduction of stigma around mental health in the, in the workplace should be seen as a perk or a nice to have or something we’re doing for the Gen Zs to keep them happy.

John Jantsch (18:38): It’s an AppRight or something, right? . It

Morra Aarons-Mele (18:41): Is actually foundationally about working better mentally healthy workplaces Sure. Work better. Absolutely. Where people, you know, have boundaries and treat each other kindly and can have open communications. I mean, it’s kind of the, the shangrila that we’re all looking for. So all of this stuff is actually foundational to anything you’d learn in a basic leadership or seminar. Right.

John Jantsch (19:02): But as you just pointed out, particularly when it comes to culture, that’s not something that you put on a plaque. I mean that, you know, that’s gotta be, you know, that’s gotta be lived and it’s gotta be lived a lot and it’s gotta be repeated and um, you know, before people believe it. Especially if you’re trying to make a change. You know, I mean, I think that’s the hardest part. You know, you’ve grown to 200 people and you know, they have accepted the organizations a certain way. Um, you know, changing that, you know, is really difficult, isn’t it?

Morra Aarons-Mele (19:32): It’s absolutely. I mean, that’s the thing we’re all working on. That’s why podcasts like ours exist. Yeah. Yeah. . But, you know, I’m not, I’m not saying that change has to start with a single person because we all live in systems, but I do think if you’re feeling anxious at work and it’s getting in your way it’s worth looking at. It will lead you to a path of discovery.

John Jantsch (19:51): Yeah. If nothing else, you’ll be happier. Right? ,

Morra Aarons-Mele (19:54): That’s, well, there you go. .

John Jantsch (19:56): Well, Morra, it was great having you back on the show. You wanna invite people where they can find, I know the book will be available everywhere, but, uh, where they might connect with you as well.

Morra Aarons-Mele (20:04): Absolutely. I’d love it if you listen to my podcast, The Anxious Achiever, wherever you get your podcast. And, um, if you have a question for me, reach out on LinkedIn and I’ll write back. Just send me a message.

John Jantsch (20:14): Awesome. Well, again, thanks for taking a few moments to stop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, and hopefully we’ll see you one of these days soon out there on the road.

(20:19): Thanks.

(20:20): Hey, and one final thing before you go. You know how I talk about marketing strategy strategy before Tex? Well, sometimes it can be hard to understand where you stand in that, what needs to be done with regard to creating a marketing strategy. So we created a free tool for you. It’s called the Marketing Strategy Assessment. You can find it @marketingassessment.co, not.com, dot co. Check out our free marketing assessment and learn where you are with your strategy today. That’s just marketing assessment.co. I’d love to chat with you about the results that you get.

John Jantsch (00:00): This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Creative Elements hosted by Jay Klaus. It’s brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. The audio destination for business professionals creative elements goes behind the scenes with today’s top creators. Through narrative interviews, Jay Klaus explores how creators like Tim Urban James Clear, Tory Dunlap and Cody Sanchez are building their audiences today. By learning how these creators make a living with their art and creativity, creative elements helps you gain the tools and confidence to do the same. In a recent episode, they talked with Kevin Perry about how he goes viral on every single platform. Listen to creative elements wherever you get your podcast.

(00:52): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and my guest today is Louis Gudema. He is a fractional CMO for B2B companies and mentors, startups at MIT. Previously, he founded and grew a marketing agency and pivoted into a SaaS company, growing it into one of the top three or four companies in the national market before a successful exit. The first edition of Bullseye Marketing was named one of the best marketing plan books of all time by book Authority. He also does a little side hustle as ghostwriter of business and marketing books. But we’re gonna talk today about the second edition of Bullseye Marketing. So Louis, welcome back to the show.

Louis Gudema (01:38): Hi, John. Great to be back. Good to see you

John Jantsch (01:41): Again. So every time I have an author on, oh by the way, I also should have should point out because I’m certain he’s listening that Douglas Burnett wrote the Forward for this new edition with the, uh, marketing book podcast. I, he tells me I’ve been on like six times. He’s better about that stuff than me keeping track of. But whenever I have second,

Louis Gudema (01:59): He’s telling me that you were, uh, very close neck and neck for his most, his champion for most

John Jantsch (02:04): Episode, his most episodes by one author. So I always ask second edition books, authors, why’d you write a Second Edition? What was needed? What’s new , you know what? Because obviously that it’s a lot of work to do and to update a book. So there had to be some compelling reason, I’m guessing, that you felt it needed an update.

Louis Gudema (02:25): Yeah, it turned out to be more work than I expected. So the reason I wrote, and Douglas was very encouraging, even two or three years ago, he was like, you should do a second edition. So I’ll have to ask him someday why he thought it needed improving . But first of all, the first edition was B2B and B2C, and this edition is exclusively B2B. And I, that’s really my expertise. That’s where I do, you know, almost all my work. That’s where most of my experience is. And so I really wanted to focus on that. One of the things, and I have two or three others I’ll quickly say, but one of the things is that I think B2B marketing especially lacks creativity compared to B2C. So I populate the book and tried to make a real effort to show how people, and give a lot of examples from a lot of companies of kind of really creative and excellent B2B marketing.

John Jantsch (03:13): Yeah. And I actually wanna dig in, dig into some of those differences a little bit. But uh, go ahead.

Louis Gudema (03:18): Yeah, so another thing is that I laid out in the first book that the three phases of the Bullseye Marketing approach, you know, and the first is to take advantage of your existing marketing assets for fast, inexpensive results. Secondly, use intent marketing. And thirdly, I called cast of white or net and I renamed it a more accurate scientific correct phase, which is build your brand and grow your mental availability. Because what I’ve learned between the two additions is much more of the research that it turned out really validated by bullseye approach and the real importance in the long term of the third phase of building mental availability. And I can explain what that is. Yes. And it’s something that in this era of short-termism that, that so many marketers are focused on, what can we do with this campaign? What can we do this quarter that they’ve, they miss out on the long-term growth that can be achieved through those phase three programs, which is equal to, or even greater than the, those short-term

John Jantsch (04:32): Programs. I, I was gonna bring up the phase approach cuz it’s one of the things I really liked from the first edition. I know it’s back in this and I think that I’ve been, you know, for many years talking about, you know, I call it the customer success track in my last book. That, you know, there are there certain things that have to be done first, can be done first. Maybe it’s the low hanging fruit or it’s the foundation, you know, but it’s then what’s the promise of what’s next and the promise of what’s next. And I think you maybe don’t call it the same thing, but I think there’s a little bit of that same idea. The long game, you know, goes on while the short game is played as well.

Louis Gudema (05:05): Yeah. And I realize, you know, the first edition I thought was kind of focused on people who weren’t really experienced marketers. And then it turned out some very experienced marketers like were saying this is really great and very helpful. And so there the first phase is both a foundation for success in the second and third phases, but it’s also, you know, in and of itself, it can produce a tremendous result just in three or six months.

John Jantsch (05:34): Yeah, yeah. Like here’s an idea, send an email occasionally to your 1,237 customers that haven’t heard from you. Right.

Louis Gudema (05:42): , well it, that was, so bullseye marketing grew originally from the fact that I was working with companies, you know, as a fractional CMO and things that were supposed to be like the best, you know, like inbound marketing or social media posts or other things, you know, they wouldn’t produce results in in three or six months. No. And I thought, well, what really does produce results? And that’s when, you know, bullseye Marketing grew out of that. And also from my experience as you know, I’m sure you’ve had work, I would start to work with the new client and I’d say, oh, how many email addresses, you know, do you have? And they’d say, oh, we have 12,000 or, you know, whatever the number might be, right? And I’d say, oh, how often do you, you know, email them? And they’d say, oh, around the holidays,

John Jantsch (06:31): ,

Louis Gudema (06:31): And, you know, email is marketing is such a tremendously powerful, you know, and almost free tool. And yet they weren’t taking advantage of it. And so that’s where the idea of the marketing assets that were kinda like money that people had in the shoebox under the bed, you know, and they just had to use it better.

John Jantsch (06:50): I had a client one time that, that we were doing a monthly newsletter and he was like, you know, that’s just a pain. Let’s just kill that. I just, you know, I don’t wanna do that anymore. And I was able to show him spikes in web traffic, spikes in conversions, , you know, every single time that thing went out. He was like, okay, I get it. I get it. . Yeah. So it’s awesome. Hey, you know, speaking of conversions, I also like your thinking on this. You know, a lot of times I have said before on stages that, you know, if you dropped me into your business and you said, look, you’ve got, you know, a couple weeks, what’s like the one area you would work on? And I always say it’s sales or conversion , you know, rate optimization. Cuz you, most of the time nobody really focuses on that. You like tweak the dial one half a percent and sometimes, and it can really drop to the bottom line. Can it, so you have, you talk a lot about conversion rate optimization. So tell me a little bit of your thinking on what you’ve seen when you’ve got people to focus on that.

Louis Gudema (07:46): Oh yeah, I mean it just makes a huge difference. You know, it, it’s just the idea is so simple is it’s way easier to double your conversion rate with the existing amount of traffic than it is to double the amount of traffic with the existing rate of conversion. And it, when you double your conversion rate, which you know can, it’s one of those, another one of those almost free things. Yeah. You know, you’re not only getting twice as many leads or sales or whatever your conversion is, you’re cutting the cost per conversion in half. And, and sometimes it’s, it’s really obvious stuff. Yeah. And so, you know, I I like to say that if you start to ramp up your marketing without first optimizing your for conversions, yeah. It’s like trying to full a buck fill a bucket that’s full of holes, you know, you’re just wasting a huge amount of your time and effort.

John Jantsch (08:42): Yeah. And I’ll throw one more variable in there. You get lead conversion cranked up, raise your prices , and you know, it may cut into conversions a little bit, but you know, it’s pure profit in many cases. So, you know, it’s worth the take worth taking a look at both of those, I think in a combination.

Louis Gudema (09:01): Yeah.

John Jantsch (09:03): Te tell me a little bit in your experience, um, the, what you see as the significant marketing differences between, you started already alluding a lot of B2B businesses, you know, the marketing’s very boring and because they feel like, oh, it has to be very professional or something. But talk about just the significant differences between B2B, not talking about like the tone or the messaging, but the, you know, the significant like channel differences even or approaches to, you know, a B2B marketer as opposed to a B2C marketer.

Louis Gudema (09:33): Well, and I’m gonna talk about the leading B2C companies, the p and gs and those Yeah. Right, right. Cause they, yeah, they do it so well. And there are some great B2B markers like Salesforce, you know, which really gets it also, and I give other examples in the book. But what they realize is that you have to build this idea, uh, of mental availability first of all. And that means that customers, it starts with the recognition that 95% of your market is not interested in buying from you today. Right? So it doesn’t matter what you say or what you offer, you know, they bought it six months ago, or they have a vendor they’re happy with or they, or it may be a, you know, if a, a firm has an accountant, a law firm, you know, some other, uh, service provider that they’re very happy with, they’re just got not gonna switch.

(10:28): If they bought a new crm, you know, two years ago, you know, they’d have to be really upset to switch, you know, and that’s true just of many things. The typical consumer insurance customer stays with the same company like Progressive or Geico for 11 or 12 years. And you know, and that’s the case in the B2B world too. So mental availability is building up awareness so that you are top of mind when they do want to actually buy something in your category. Because the short list is often very short. And one, sometimes just two companies, you know, I, I have in there a study in the book where someone, an analyst was surveyed their customers, their clients who had just bought new digital asset management systems. These are big enterprise expensive software system. A majority of the clients had looked at one vendor, they had done no competitive bake off at all.

(11:27): And I hear that all the time from small company, you know, companies that are selling to SMBs, you know, that they are, you know, someone hears good things about the MailChimp or about HubSpot or about Constant Contact and they’re like, they look at it, yeah, looks good, let’s go with it. And they don’t spend, you know, three months doing a competitive bake off. And if you aren’t, if you don’t haven’t built up that mental availability over the previous months and years, you don’t know about that opportunity. All the search marketing in the world and email marketing in the world will not make you aware of that opportunity cuz they’re just not gonna talk to anyone. They’ve already settled before they bought it. And so you wanna get yourself, and this is what, you know, this is why p and g and companies like that, you know, you look at the Today Show and they do their 15 second ads and it’s just to constantly be, you know, maintain that aware that mental availability, which is more than awareness, so that when you are ready to buy, when you are ready to switch, you are the one they’re thinking of.

John Jantsch (12:31): You know, I can already hear listeners saying, well, that’s great, p and g has billions, you know, somewhere, you know, how can I afford, you know, how can I invest in that type of, you know what, maybe people would’ve called brand marketing or something at one point. How can I invest in that when I really can’t measure it, you know, scientifically,

Louis Gudema (12:53): Well, I compare it, I like to make this comparison, John, brand marketing and building awareness is like exercise, you know, it’s well documented that people are healthier and live longer and live healthier, right. If they exercise, you know, five times a week, right. You know, half an hour a day, not a huge investment, but you know, if they do that they will be much healthier and live longer. And that’s like brand marketing. You know, it’s not with exercise where you can say, you know, last Tuesday I ran a 5K and that’s what made me healthy, or I got X return from it . Right. You know, it’s the doing it constantly over and over again at the same time, you know, in terms of medicine, you know, when you got an emergency, you get a, you know, chemotherapy, you get surgery, you get your covid shot, you know, those have great short-term effects. They may even save your life, but they don’t produce long-term health and wellness. And so you need ’em both. And what the researchers, what the studies show is that optimally you have a roughly 50 50 balance and spend between brand and lead generation.

John Jantsch (14:04): Yeah. And I can attest to the fact that having that long-term approach, whatever it is, however, you know, shows up, doesn’t, it’s not always running ads, you know, on the Today Show that having that brand mental availability, brand awareness out there actually makes your marketing your short-term marketing more effective. I have found. So in other words, you know, we’ve invested for years in inbound. That’s just part of what we do. I produce content, we’re on social media, I speak on stages, I do webinars. You know, those are all kind of things that in many cases are just kind of getting the name, keeping the name out there when we then decide there’s something we wanna promote and we put ads behind it. I can tell you anecdotally, but I, you know, probably could go do better than that, that we have people all the time saying, yeah, I read Tape Marketing eight years ago and then I saw your ad and it just reminded me how awesome it . You know, I mean, it, it, you know, I, again, I th I I think it’s really testament to the fact that they support each other. I think it’s not just like for the long term someday.

Louis Gudema (15:05): Oh, sure. So are you familiar with Gusto? The Oh, okay,

John Jantsch (15:08): Sure, sure. Actually, my, my, my daughter has done a lot of marketing with them or my daughter’s firm. Yeah.

Louis Gudema (15:14): Okay. So I quote the former CMO of Gusto, she was the CMO when they grew from 500 to 50,000 in customers. Yeah. So hugely successful. Now she’s the ceo. That’s what you get when you go from 500 to 50,000. You get to be CEO next time. Yeah. And of Mutiny a marketing AI firm. Ah, and she says that at Gusto, she found that whenever she turned off the brand marketing, six months later, their customer acquisition costs, their CAC went through the roof and their conversion rates tanked. And, you know, she tried it. She ran the, this experiment and other companies, Adidas found the same thing in B2C, you know, six or seven years ago, they said, oh, we’re just gonna do this, you know, digital lead gens, you know, online sales stuff, we don’t need the brand marketing. We’ll leave that to Nike. And after about three or four years, they said, oops, you know, they found out. So a lot of companies have found out in a lot of different industries that just exactly what you said, brand supports LeadGen, and you need ’em both, you know, hand in hand.

John Jantsch (16:30): This is a

Louis Gudema (16:30): Say, just one other thing, and they are fundamentally different. Yeah. Yeah. And you might even need different people or different agencies doing them because the brand is all about creative and emotion and characters and humor

John Jantsch (16:44): Message. Yeah. And

Louis Gudema (16:44): The lead gen is all about rational, 10% off sign up for our webinar conversion optimization stuff. So they are very different skills. And you may need different, you know, groups of people doing them.

John Jantsch (16:58): Hey, marketing agency owners, you know, I can teach you the keys to doubling your business in just 90 days or your money back. Sound interesting. All you have to do is license our three step process. It, it’s going to allow you to make your competitors irrelevant, charge a premium for your services and scale perhaps without adding overhead. And here’s the best part. You can license this entire system for your agency by simply participating in an upcoming agency certification intensive look, why create the wheel? Use a set of tools that took us over 20 years to create. And you can have ’em today. Check it out at dtm.world/certification. That’s DTM world slash certification.

(17:46): And now, word from our sponsor, are you ready to get out of spreadsheets? Look with HubSpot CRM, get realtime data at your fingertips so your teams stay in sync across the customer journey. Build better content, generate more conversions, and get the context you need to create amazing experiences for your teams and your customers at scale. All from one powerful platform. It’s why more than 150,000 companies already use HubSpot’s CRM to run their businesses better. Plus, HubSpot’s user-friendly interface sets you up for success from day one. So you can spend less time managing software and more time on what matters your customers. There’s no better time to get organized. Get started for free @hubspot.com today.

(18:35): If this next question were part of a drinking game and you had to drink every time somebody asks a question about this right now, if we all wouldn’t be getting much done, but where are you, where, what’s your take on AI in marketing these days?

Louis Gudema (18:49): Uh, I think it’s very new and I think it’s gonna have a huge impact. I actually was sitting, you know, I, until last month, I headed up a group in Boston that you’ve spoken to sales and marketing innovators. And we had a speaker today on AI in marketing, and he was making a point. So first, all the writing I see from AI today, I think is very bland and mm-hmm. Undistinguished. Yep. But who knows what it’ll be like in two or three years. But he was saying that, you know, what AI does is it brings in a huge amount of internet content and, you know, and then it generates new things from that. Now, LinkedIn itself, the LinkedIn B2B Institute says that 75% of the ads on LinkedIn are in a, and as we’ve been talking about, most B2B ads are not very good. So if you’re using an AI that’s taking in all the mediocre stuff that’s being done today and creating new things based on that, I don’t think that’s what you want. I, you know, and I think that to the degree that AI is valuable, marketers have to be better than AI or, or we won’t have jobs.

John Jantsch (20:01): Well, you know, at least what I’m telling people right now is it’s an efficiency tool. It’s a research tool. So, you know, you may ask it’s something and get 20 ideas where you would’ve thought of 10 or something. You know, I’m with you. I mean, it’s certainly not at the cut and paste stage by, by any means. Boy, I tell you, it does a good job of outlining things. It does a good job. Metadata is a perfect example. I mean, you know, for SEO purposes, keyword research for SEO purposes, it just speeds. You know, it gives us a lot of speed and efficiency in doing some of those routine tasks. And I think that’s how, if we use it that way and free up sort of those, the mental capacity, you know, to think strategically, I think it, it certainly has a place today.

Louis Gudema (20:44): Oh, for sure. Yeah. I mean, it’s great for brain, you know, brainstorming and you might get, you know, 15 or 20 ideas and you say, yeah, that one, you know that that might be a good topic. Although I heard, uh, I saw on Twitter, this guy at this agency said that they were doing a branding campaign and they asked Chad g p t and it came up with, you know, like 10 15. And then, so they immediately tossed all those out as being the obvious banal things. And their job then was to find the new innovative approach that something like ChatGPT wouldn’t come up with.

John Jantsch (21:22): Yeah. Yeah. We’ve been using it a lot for some strategic research too. You know, you develop a persona and then say, you know, what are the 20 concerns that, you know, this persona might have when buying X Service or considering X Service? And, you know, I have to say it, you know, it, it is probably the common stuff, but it just, you know, it’s, it create create in that particular case, it creates a nice framework for, you know, maybe we ought to be messaging around a few of these. Yeah. So let me shift gears a little bit. You are an author of a great book, bullseye Marketing, but you also write books with and for other folks, really, truly for, I suppose, as a ghostwriter, you, you wanna talk a little bit about your decision to do that? I find it difficult because it’s so much work to write a book. I can’t imagine writing somebody else’s book.

Louis Gudema (22:11): . Well, you know, they have to pay you to do it

John Jantsch (22:15): .

Louis Gudema (22:16): So I can help you on that part of it. So yeah, after I wrote Bullseye Marketing, I contacted a few publishers, and the thing is, I’ve been a, a ghostwriter, if you wanna call it that. Well, that’s for my entire career. Right, right. I’ve written for, you know, I’ve written for CEOs, I’ve written for clients, you know, campaigns, I’ve a hundred page manuals and videos and, you know, I’ve written for clients my entire career. So this is just a, a different form of writing.

John Jantsch (22:42): Different package, huh? Yeah. A different package. Yeah.

Louis Gudema (22:46): Yeah. And so I, I let a few publishers know, and last year one of them contacted me and said, yeah, we do need someone to write a marketing book. And it was an interesting topic. It was B2B, but it was not an area I had done a lot of work in. So it was kind of interesting. And I, I could learn the author and I got along very well. He liked, you know, what I wrote, and that helped us get along well. Right. . Um, so now in that case, I did not have a credit, and now I’m, you know, talking with a, another author who, where I would be a co-author on the book. So yeah, I am interested in doing that. And as I said, it’s kind of a, you know, it’s something I’ve done for a long time.

John Jantsch (23:28): Well, you know, ChatGPT, they’re, you know, just have it spin out books for you and then they’ll be very profitable. Right?

Louis Gudema (23:35): I think so , I think if I can just have ChatGPT write it all in the background, it’ll, you know, and I can do about 20 or 50 at a time.

John Jantsch (23:44): Yeah. , like who are some of those people? Patterson, James Patterson, that spins out, you know, like eight books a year. But I guess he’s, I guess he’s just hired an army of people that can work inside of his sort of framework model and write. Oh, is that what he does? Yeah. Yeah. Apparently. So that’s why he, that’s why he’s so prolific.

Louis Gudema (24:03): Well, Stephen King does is outrageously prolific with his novels. Yeah. I think he ha does something like, I, I read his book on writing. I think he has a goal of something like 2000 words a day.

John Jantsch (24:16): Oh, wow.

Louis Gudema (24:17): And so, you know, he sits down every morning, writes his 2000 words, and, you know, that’s,

John Jantsch (24:23): That’s how

Louis Gudema (24:24): You, he has another very

John Jantsch (24:25): Long, how to say that that’s how you get to eight, 800 pages. Right.

Louis Gudema (24:29): Yeah. .

John Jantsch (24:30): Although I will say Bullseye Marketing is no thin work there either. It’s, uh, I think you’re with the index, you’re over 400 pages and in that book and it’s really, you know, I don’t know if you see this as a compliment or not, but I think it’s a, I think it’d be an amazing textbook just because you cover so much ground and you do it in, I think in very practical ways.

Louis Gudema (24:49): Well, thank you. I have, I had a, a one reader in their Amazon review of the first edition called it an encyclopedia. Yeah, yeah. Of marketing. It’s, you know, when I kind of picked it up to do the second edition, I was like, this is ridiculously ambitious . But it’s funny you mentioned that cuz when Douglas Burett interviewed me, you know, five years ago on the Marketing Book podcast, he started off by saying, so I weighed this and it weighed 1.5 pounds. So I were you, it wasn’t what I thought was the most notable, but apparently it is longer than those

John Jantsch (25:28): Books on top of pages. You, I don’t know who, you know, Wedgewood Press got the paper from, but I just think it’s, I think it’s just a bulky, heavy book in general compared to a lot of other 400 page books. So it has something to do with the weight of the paper. I think even,

Louis Gudema (25:43): Well it’s got over a hundred full color illustrations.

John Jantsch (25:47): Well that too. Yeah. Did the first tradition, I’m forgetting, did the first tradition have color? Oh, okay.

Louis Gudema (25:52): And so, you know, wanted high quality paper.

John Jantsch (25:55): Yeah, yeah. Well you accomplished that. Well Lewis, thanks again for taking a moment to stop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. You wanna invite people to connect with you and find out more about Bullseye Marketing in its various forms.

Louis Gudema (26:07): Yeah, so, so the book will launch on May 2nd. I’m not sure when this will drop, but either, you know, right. Presumably

John Jantsch (26:17): It’s May 2nd, 2023 I should say. Cuz people listen to this show years later.

Louis Gudema (26:22): That’s true. May 2nd, 2023, the ebook can be advanced ordered, but the physical book for some reason cannot. But you can buy it May 2nd and you can connect with me on LinkedIn or Twitter or louisgudema@gmail and would love to, you know, communicate with any of your, uh, listeners.

John Jantsch (26:42): Awesome. Well, again, thanks for stopping by and hopefully we’ll run into you again soon. One of these days out there on the road, Lu. Thank you, John. Be well. Hey, and one final thing before you go. You know how I talk about marketing strategy, strategy before tactics? Well, sometimes it can be hard to understand where you stand in that, what needs to be done with regard to creating a marketing strategy. So we created a free tool for you. It’s called the Marketing Strategy Assessment. You can find it @marketingassessment.co, not.com, dot co. Check out our free marketing assessment and learn where you are with your strategy today. That’s just marketing assessment.co. I’d love to chat with you about the results that you get.

John Jantsch (00:00): This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Creative Elements hosted by Jay Klaus. It’s brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. The audio destination for business professionals creative elements goes behind the scenes with today’s top creators. Through narrative interviews, Jay Klaus explores how creators like Tim Urban James Clear, Tory Dunlap and Cody Sanchez are building their audiences today. By learning how these creators make a living with their art and creativity, creative elements helps you gain the tools and confidence to do the same. In a recent episode, they talked with Kevin Perry about how he goes viral on every single platform. Listen to creative elements wherever you get your podcasts.

(00:52): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duck Tape Marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Christina Inge. Just two decades of experience leading digital strategy and management and managing complex marketing technology projects. She specializes in articulating effective, efficient digital strategies for organizations using the latest channels to drive results. She’s the founder of Sleek Marketing, which offers hands-on education on digital marketing in the Boston area, and she’s also the author of a book we’re gonna talk about today, Marketing Metrics: Leverage Analytics and Data to Optimize Marketing Strategies. So Christina, welcome to the show.

Christina Inge (01:34): Thank you John for having me here.

John Jantsch (01:36): So here’s my first question. When you use metrics and strategies in the same subtitle title, most businesses I end up running up against don’t have a strategy, let alone a data-driven strategy. So, so how when you’re talking to somebody about this idea of a data-driven strategy, how do you bridge that gap if they really aren’t working from a strategic framework anyway?

Christina Inge (01:59): I think most people, even if they’re not working from a strategic framework, either believe that they are, yeah, , or know that they are not and wish to do so. I have yet to meet anybody who says, you know what? I hate strategy. I wanna just fly by the seat of my pants day in and day out. I’m sure they’re out there, but mercifully or unmercifully, I have not met them. . So the first thing is, there’s really not a lot of resistance to the idea of having a strategy. People don’t have one, but that’s all the more reason why they want to have a strategy and why they turn to data. Because if you don’t have a strategy right now, half the time, if not 70% of the time, you believe, rightfully so in most cases, that the reason you don’t have a strategy is because you don’t have enough. And data is really just information. Yeah. So most of the time people are like, yeah, I absolutely need a strategy and I need the data to develop that strategy. And datadriven strategy is like the buzzword of the moment. Sure. So people are for the most part on board with it, especially if they don’t currently have any kind of strategy at all.

John Jantsch (03:11): So, so you know, well, a lot of times when you work, what I hear you saying, I shouldn’t put words in your mouth, I’m gonna ask the question, is that a lot of people figure out what they’re gonna do and then say, let’s figure out how to measure it. And what you’re in some ways saying is, let’s look at what the data tells us to figure out what to do.

Christina Inge (03:29): Yes and no. So you should be always making data driven decisions. You should probably not be making decisions just based on gut feel or the mood of the moment. And I’m just, uh, swinging around here to be slightly less backlit, although I have that angelic look here going on. So you should be looking at the data to have it help you decide what to do. But you should also be conducting experiments. You should be doing ABM multivariate testing to test out hypotheses about what you should be doing. I’ll give you an example. So you can look at the data for what worked six months ago in a space like consumer, I don’t know, health and beauty, right? But what was on trend six months ago, what was on trend three months ago is not necessarily what’s on trend now. So if you go at that, go and look at that data and say, well, these particular influencers were really productive for us, or this kind of subject line in our emails or our marketing automation was very productive. It is not necessarily going to be the case right now. So I say, yeah, look at the data, but don’t just retroactively look at the data and then proactively predict forward. Well, predicting is a forward looking thing. Pride forward what you’re going to do, use that as a guide. But the past is only one of the many guides to what you should be doing. You should also be actively experimenting.

John Jantsch (04:55): One of the complaints of course, that I think people, uh, have today is there, you know, 20 years ago there was only so much you could measure today, lots of data, lots to be analyzed. So I mean, probably too much, right? In some cases. So how do we kind of get to what’s the important stuff?

Christina Inge (05:16): Anything that’s related to ROI is what you should focus on. I’m gonna say there’s three things you should be focusing on. One is anything related to roi, because at the end of the day, you’re either in the business of making money or if you’re a nonprofit, you’re in the business of serving a particular mission. And then your roi, it may not be monetary, but it’s gonna be there in elephants saved or disease cured or what have you. So you need to first and foremost say, am I doing things that help us meet our mission? Whether it’s shareholder value or saving elephants? Is this email campaign? Is this social media campaign, ad campaign, this combination of things, this customer, are any of these things helping us actually achieve that mission? And for that unique KPIs, key performance indicators that tell you, well, how will I know that we’re succeeding?

(06:07): So that’s the first thing, and I’ll get back to the issue of KPIs in a moment, but I wanted to also talk about, all right, what are the other two things that are help you narrow down to the metrics that matter? Not everything is gonna be a direct driver or even a quantifiable driver of roi. So for instance, if you have an outstanding, if you do a rebranding the way Campbell Soup recently did a rebranding, maybe more soup’s gonna fly off the shelves, maybe not. Maybe it’s gonna give them a little bit of a bump. But rebranding, people often don’t do it with the view towards all this is in and of itself, right? Going to cost people to stamped and buy my product. So you also want to measure consumer perception, your own positioning in the marketplace. And that takes it a step above ROI to the overall health of your branding your company.

(06:54): And then finally, if you wanna think about it as a Venn diagram where ROI is here, well may encompassing mo that mostly your brand health is here. Then the biggest circle of things you need to be measuring is your industry. You want to think about looking ahead to trends. Don’t forget, when you think about building a blue ocean strategy, one of the ways in which you can carve out a blue ocean for yourself. And if that’s not a mixed metaphor, I have no idea what, so we’re carving out an ocean and leveraging the ROI and running it up the flag pole. Oh my word. That’s way George jargon for a Monday afternoon is, which is when we’re recording this, but one of the ways in which you can create a blue ocean for yourself is by anticipating trends, right? Being ahead of the curve. Now, of course, the idea that there’s always a first mover advantage has been thoroughly debunked. In fact, that paper got retracted and cringe whenever anyone says first mover advantage. Cuz it’s not that simple. Sometimes there isn’t, sometimes there isn’t. But what you can’t afford to do in this world is be utterly oblivious to emerging trends. And instead simply being reactive or trying to be proactive, but only being proactive with a narrow time horizon. So time horizon A, look at your ROI of what you’re currently doing, time horizon B, look at the health of your brand and then the big time horizon start metricating overall industry trends.

John Jantsch (08:25): So on top of too much data, another thing that I hear quite often is this idea of attribution. How do I know exactly what did what, because the customer journey’s a little all over the place, . So are there some best practices in even assigning attribution or guessing or dividing attribution amongst channels?

Christina Inge (08:51): There’s again, three things there that I tell people to focus on. One is, on a tactical level, you want to have a tagging system in place. Mm-hmm. , like if you are not on a very basic level setting UTM parameters, or in some ways actually tracking all of your marketing efforts, start there, right? Gather that data. People will say, well, we can’t measure this or that because it’s on a third party. Yes, you can. Maybe not perfectly, but yes you can. So get the mechanics of measurement down. But a bigger challenge for a lot of people are the two other big things with attribution modeling. The first is simply having an attribution model and understanding what those are. A lot of times people have been doing analytics for quite some time, but they have no real clear idea of the differences between different attribution models like first touch, last touch.

(09:45): Mm-hmm. data driven of course, is very big for anybody using Google Analytics or many other platforms Right now we’re just gonna tell you what we think your attribution is and that’s fine. But you should still be able to manually set and explore different attribution models. So you instinctively understand how to map a customer journey and know the differences in attribution. If you attribute things to what we call first touch, which is the first interaction someone has last touch, last interaction, and so on and so forth, like equal credit to everything, those are really gonna give you dramatically different pictures of your customer journey.

John Jantsch (10:25): So, and Oh, go ahead. Oh, I was just gonna say, if you wanna finish that point, cuz I’m gonna move on to completely different,

Christina Inge (10:33): Oh well really quickly. The biggest part of customer journey mapping that people leave out is empathy. You want to have an ability to put yourself in your consumer’s shoes. It’s not just the data, it’s being smart about the data.

John Jantsch (10:48): Hmm. Say more about that. Okay. How, how are you, how do you end up being smart and build empathy back into the data?

Christina Inge (10:55): Well, the nice thing is that there’s a couple of tools out there, and in case anybody’s wondering what the movement is over my shoulder here is I’m being photo bombed by my dog, . Hi Kelly. Say hello to the people. Yeah. So we are one of the favorite tools that I like to use. I am shocked by the number of people who don’t start every marketing effort with personas. People will talk about these great groups of customers they have like, oh, millennials for instance. And I often use this example, in fact, I’ve used it in other podcasts. So I’m, I wish I had something completely original to share with you, John, but it’s a favorite analogy that I like to use. I will, when I do this, when I do my class at Harvard for instance, or at Northeastern, I’ll put four pictures up first I’ll say, okay, do you wanna reach, let’s say teenage girls, parents with large numbers of kids, people who travel with their pets and LGBTQ millennials and everyone’s like it.

(11:52): Totally. And then I put up a picture of a teenage girl and it’s Joan of Arc, and I put up a picture of a person with a lot of kids and it’s Genghis Khan . And then the guy traveling with a bunch of pets is Hannibal crossing the Alps with his elephants and the LGBTQ millennial is Alexander the Great and I say, are any of these folks gonna buy your gum or your frozen dinner service? No. But what would they all buy? Oh, armor. Yes, they would buy armor or I don’t know, catapults or whatever the heck you needed. I don’t know what Hannibal needed to cross the LPs, but I dare say armor was part of it. Swords spears, they’re in the market for those products. And so one of the things that happens when you don’t have personas is that you lump people together by demographics or by a specific buying behavior that may ha be no indicator of who they are.

(12:45): Because I tell you right now, Joan of Arc is not buying your car insurance from you or your lip B and try selling anything to Genghis Khan. Mm-hmm . So the point here, being an A persona is a really good way to take that vague abstraction of your, you know, millennials with two kids or whatever, and actually think long and hard about whether you’re sell, whether they’re buying what you’re selling. The next thing that I really love to do, it’s called an empathy map. I don’t know if you’ve used one of those in the past, or I’m sure several of the listeners have love empathy maps. There’s some really great templates out there, but they help you dig into how is your consumer feeling in the moment? Yeah. What do they,

John Jantsch (13:29): What are they seeing? What are they hearing? What are they saying? Right? Right. Exactly. Yep.

Christina Inge (13:34): And that takes that persona who is still a two-dimensional figure, and you are right there with them and you’re understanding what they need. Like, gosh darn, I wish I had a catapult at this moment.

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(15:23): So what role, because you do consulting, what role do consultants have in really bringing data more to the forefront with their customers? So a lot of marketing firms out there, yep. Say, oh, you want a website or you want leads, you know, we’ll get you that. But they’re not really, they’re certainly not leading or pushing a client to be more data-centric.

Christina Inge (15:44): Think the role that consultants plays a vital one, because we’re often perceived as more objective. And I would say arguably we often are, and that helps us look at the data without knowing so much of the backstory that we aren’t willing to consider certain things. So going back to my favorite analogy, if you’ve been trying to sell pet beds and you’re not selling them and you think, oh, we need to redesign the pet bed, and I come in with my crew and we say, no, the reason that your pet beds aren’t selling is because your target customer has an elephant, we are the ones willing to speak to the quote, literally or figuratively, usually figuratively elephant in the room, right? And say, okay, the fundamental assumptions here are wrong. We can do that from place of emotional safety. That’s part of it. I think the other vital role customers play is again, that fresh perception, which comes down to the fact that we can conduct data audits or other inventories or even just questions asked about what kind of data are you collecting and identify gaps that people have learned to live with.

(16:51): I mean, I’m a lifelong Bostonian and I can tell you that when people come to town, they’re often absolutely shocked about how much we live with potholes. We’ve gotten used to it, we take it for granted. Oh yeah, the streets are filled with potholes, whatever. And it takes an outsider to say, wait a minute, the streets are filled with potholes. Now mind you, I can’t go out and fill those potholes. So it’s, the analogy falls apart, but the point here being, it often takes that external perception to tell you what’s actually happening beyond just sort of puncturing those common assumptions, which people often desperately want you to question, but you are also actually asking, well where’s the state of com coming from? That’s very

John Jantsch (17:36): Valuable. All right, so I’m gonna, we don’t have all the time that it will take for you to answer this next question , but I’d just

Christina Inge (17:43): Like to

John Jantsch (17:44): , I’d just like to you to weigh in on the changes in privacy. Certainly tracking, certainly the data we get. You know, obviously everybody’s familiar with, you know, the Facebook, you know, tracking that’s gone or behavioral, you know, attribution that have gone away. Where do you see that, whether we know where it’s going or not, what do you see that businesses need to be doing? Because, you know, it’s not as easy to get some of the data that we used to get,

Christina Inge (18:10): You know, don’t, I can actually answer this pretty quickly because I would say it’s two things. One is double down on your own first party data, right? Make sure that you’re doing data audits, making sure your data is ethically collected. In other words, it’s fully opted in and make sure it’s clean. I guarantee you most people’s data is not as clean as they’d like. It’s kind of like your refrigerator, your fridge is never as clean as you’d like. Neither is your data. The other thing you want to do is start going old school, in my opinion, which is figuring out what are the proxies for the data that you can no longer collect. I mean, even Google is using predictive modeling to fill in the gaps that are resulting from people opting into integrated privacy protection, whether it’s legally mandated or not. What I mean by that is I’ve been in marketing long enough that I remember when you had to target people by the magazines they read and those kinds of targeting where you’re targeting people by a self-evident, self-selected and self-identified interest are not bad. And we have to get back to thinking like that. To go back to my analogy, if you are trying to figure out what you can sell to Hannibal Alexander, the Great Joan of Arc and Genus Khan, if you were forget their age, forget their other demographics, if you were targeting all of the, the readers of, or Facebook, well I’m that old that I actually refer to Facebook, Facebook fans or Instagram fan fans of Catapult monthly

John Jantsch (19:41): .

Christina Inge (19:42): You would be getting your target audience and you’d be doing it in a much less invasive way because you’re partnering up with media outlets that have already reached people. It doesn’t matter who they are, it doesn’t matter what they are, what matters is what they want to buy from you or what cause they want to support or activity they want to engage in. Go where it’s self-evident that the crowd you’re gonna find does that, that data is out there and that data tends not to be as tightly regulated, nor is it as ethically questionable. So

John Jantsch (20:12): Go back, yeah, you, you know, everybody’s locking down on the online data, but you can buy a lot of data. You know, I can buy a mailing list of just as you said, people that read a certain magazine that have maybe a certain ailment. It is pretty, pretty crazy. And so I, I mean, I, I think what you’re suggesting too is app pending customer data with some of that, uh, external data might be a way to build, uh, a richer profile or persona.

Christina Inge (20:37): I, I have my own moral reservations about when and if you should be doing a pending, you can certainly do that and it will get you a lot of that data, but if you don’t feel comfortable, so a pending customer data would mean I’ve got a list of 20,000 of my customers and then I go to a data broker and I find out how many of these people are into canoeing, right? Or chain mail or whatever. That may still be something your consumer doesn’t want you to do about them, but if you, again, partner up with folks who have already found your audience because they self evidently need to congregate around a certain media property that I think everyone feels comfortable with. But you know, that’s a line you have to decide yourself organizationally, append is an option, but so can partnerships, so can good old fashioned advertising or media partnerships or inf more contemporary influencer partnerships can be a way of getting around that data privacy as well in a way that’s maybe a little bit more comfortable.

John Jantsch (21:35): You and I are recording this in March of 2023, Google Analytics, which is a, I would suggest a core tracking piece of data gathering by July of 2023 is changing its model completely and certainly its interface completely. Do you, what are you telling people about GA4 today?

Christina Inge (21:55): I actually am quoting my friend Chris Penn on this one. Chris is telling people that you should already be on GA4. If you are on uni, you know, if you’re on Universal Analytics that’s going away and you’re gonna lose your historical data because you are gonna be stuck with switching over in, I don’t know, July or whenever you’re gonna be forced to do. So you could do it maybe even now, but you’re already then, but you July it’s going away. So I don’t know if you’re planning on doing it anytime soon, but do it as soon as possible. Switch over so that you’ve got that historical data. Because what’s wonderful about GA4 is its predictive modeling. It’s gonna predict your, for instance, your most likely converters and it’s gonna need a nice rich data set to do that. So the longer you wait, the slower you’re going to be able to realize the great benefits of it and it’s gonna, you, you know, the learning curve, you just have to accept it and learn how to use this new platform and you’re gonna be happy you did.

John Jantsch (22:53): Yeah, I’ve been telling people you had to learn GA3 , so it’s just, you’re used to it. But we actually did that, we actually put the tags on all of our client sites probably a year ago. So we’ve been collecting that data, but we don’t have many of ’em that want to, you know, use the interface until they have to. But we’ve at least been collecting that data. So yeah, you definitely, and and you know, the myth that they might just push it back for six months, I think is people better probably stop listening to because they have no incentive to push it back. It, it is a free tool that they’re getting sued for using right now. So I guarantee it’s gonna happen on July 1st. That’s my permission.

Christina Inge (23:29): Even if it gets pushed back, you’re, you have nothing to lose because you’re still collecting the data.

John Jantsch (23:35): Yep.

Christina Inge (23:37): And that’s the point. So, no,

John Jantsch (23:39): You’re doing great. So Christina, thanks so much for stopping by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. You wanna tell people where they can find certainly marketing metrics, but really even connect with you and your work?

Christina Inge (23:48): Absolutely. So you can find my book Marketing Metrics on Amazon and it’s, I believe the Kindle version is currently, I had a nice little discount as well of I think 20%. But don’t quote me because you, I don’t know when you’re gonna be listening to this. If you want to find out more about me, you can go to my, the website of the agency that I founded here in Boston in 2014. We are in our ninth year in going strong. And that’s thoughtlight.net thought as in thinking light as in light bulb, T H O U G H T L I G H t.net. And you can reach out to me there, you can find out a little bit more about our services or even order the book. And I personally answer all emails that are addressed to, Hey you.

John Jantsch (24:34): Awesome . So Christina, again, thanks for stopping by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Christina Inge (24:42): Thank you. Have a great day, John.

John Jantsch (24:44): Hey, and one final thing before you go. You know how I talk about marketing strategy strategy before tactics? Well, sometimes it can be hard to understand where you stand in that, what needs to be done with regard to creating a marketing strategy. So we created a free tool for you. It’s called the Marketing Strategy Assessment. You can find it @marketingassessment.co, not.com, dot co. Check out our free marketing assessment and learn where you are with your strategy today. That’s just marketing assessment.co. I’d love to chat with you about the results that you get.

John Jantsch (00:00): This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Creative Elements hosted by Jay Klaus. It’s brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. The audio destination for business professionals creative elements goes behind the scenes with today’s top creators. Through narrative interviews, Jay Klaus explores how creators like Tim Urban James Clear, Tory Dunlap and Cody Sanchez are building their audiences today. By learning how these creators make a living with their art and creativity, creative elements helps you gain the tools and confidence to do the same. In a recent episode, they talked with Kevin Perry about how he goes viral on every single platform. Listen to creative elements wherever you get your podcast.

(00:52): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and my guest today is David Newman. He is the author of the business best seller, doit Marketing and his new book, doit Selling. He’s the founder of the Doit MBA Mentoring program and the host of the Selling show, a top-rated business podcast with over 300 episodes, I think I maybe even was on once. It helps professionals twice, right? Health professionals, service sellers, land better clients, bigger deals, and higher fees. And that is what we’re gonna talk about today. Welcome back to the show, David.

David Newman (01:28): Hey John. Thank you. It’s great to be here.

John Jantsch (01:30): So the name of your new book, Do it! Selling: 77 Instant Action Ideas to Land Better Clients, bigger Deals and Hire Fees. So when people hear the word selling , uh, you know, I often tell people, entrepreneurs that you know, half 50% of your job, probably at least in the beginning, is gonna be selling . Um, and yet most people, kind of, many people at least despise the word. Why do you suppose that is?

David Newman (02:02): I think it’s two things. I think it’s the way that we have been sold to mm-hmm as prospects, right? Because every entrepreneur wears the salesperson hat, like you said. And we also, in real life we’re also prospects and buyers of all kinds of things, right? And it’s also the way that they’ve been taught to sell by some of these big sort of franchise training organizations that have been doing this for 20, 30 years. And unfortunately doing it 20, 30 years, probably the wrong way. That sales is manipulative and pushy and there are scripts and you have to apply pressure and all of these things. So you take those two things together and it’s no surprise that most independent professionals certainly just hate sales. They hate it a lot. Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (02:50): , I mean, some would just tell you that I don’t necessarily hate it cuz I know I have, you know, I’ve gotten over, I know I have to do it to survive. But most people will still tell you they find it kind of the hardest work they have to do. I mean, what do you suppose that is?

David Newman (03:06): I think they’re looking at it as different than the delivery work. So as, let’s say you’re an accountant and you love accounting, you’re a consultant and you love consulting, you’re a coach and you love coaching. If you look at the diagnostic process, once a client hands you a check, once a client hands you a credit card, you’re asking all kinds of questions, you’re digging, you’re probing, you’re uncovering, you really want to help them. Imagine if we just reframed the sales conversation as you’re very first delivery conversation. So there’s no pressure, there’s nothing to hide, there’s nothing to prove, and you’re just having a human to human conversation about their situation and seeing if you can help them or not. So part of that also is our mindset that we cannot go after prospects like a hungry dog going after a piece of meat . So whether you need the business desperately, you need the business not at all or somewhere in between.

(04:07): We have to remain detached. And I like to reframe, and this is in the do it selling book. One of the first chapters is about reframing the word sales with two other words, invitation and conversation. And most people like invitations cuz usually there’s a party of some kind or bourbon or cookies or barbecue or something fun. And most people are also not afraid of a conversation. So a conversation is where you get to make new friends a conversation is where you get to learn things. A conversation is where you get to exchange ideas. If we reframed the sales process and each sales conversation as simply an invitation to a conversation, I think it would be a get a lot easier. And I think folks would realize they’re probably better at it than they think.

John Jantsch (04:54): Yeah, yeah. I think you’re absolutely right. Most, if most people realize that’s what it was, , um, they wouldn’t necessarily be afraid of it. Right. So I think you already answered this, but I was gonna ask you, you know, are there certain skills traits, personality traits, you know, things that make somebody better than somebody else at sell?

David Newman (05:15): Sure. Well, I think it’s not personality traits because someone argue, oh, you’re a born salesperson, John, you’re just great at sales and you somehow have the sales gene, or you had sales DNA from the time you were a small little tiny baby . I think the two skills that we need to cultivate, which every good trusted advisor has is to be strategically dumb and perpetually curious. Hmm. So all the things that, you know, whether you’ve worked with 10 clients or a thousand clients, you might think, oh, I know all the typical problems, I know all the typical questions, I know all the typical stuck points. I’m not gonna waste time asking this one prospect if they suffer that particular symptom or problem or condition. But I’ll tell you, you gotta be strategically dumb. Pretend that every client is your first client. Every prospect is your first prospect.

(06:08): And start asking questions from that place of being strategically dumb and perpetually curious. Perpetually curious by the way, means never take the first answer at face value. Mm-hmm . So I also talk about this in the doit selling book that we are so concerned with. Two things that we should not be concerned at all about. Number one, sounding smart. Number two being liked. If you are in a sales conversation and you’re very concerned about sounding smart and being liked, where’s your focus? Your focus is on you. If you are committed to being strategically dumb and perpetually curious, meaning asking lots of follow up questions, really digging and probing and uncovering and finding the symptom behind the symptom and the problem behind the problem, then the focus is 100% where it belongs, which is on your prospect.

John Jantsch (07:00): Let’s, let’s talk a little bit about stages of selling. You know, it’s just like a, any kind of customer journey. You know, people’s questions and objectives, you know, change in each other’s stages. So like prospecting, you know, is a common thing. I mean, we sometimes have to go out there and find people who might wanna listen to us, right? And then obviously the conversation can change to like, how’s this gonna work for me? All the way through the, well maybe before that trust building , you know, to, how’s this gonna work for me? How do you break down kind of the set journey or stages of selling?

David Newman (07:34): Well, so the demarcation, and I’m sure you get this question a lot of course as well, it’s like, well when does marketing stop? Yes. And when does selling begin? And certainly for independent professionals, that is a very, it’s a very smooth continuum. So you might think that you’re in a marketing conversation, but you’re actually in the sales conversation. If they express interest, if they have urgency, if they have really desire to fix this problem, sometimes you’re in a sales conversation and it turns out, you know what, they don’t have a need, they don’t have an urgency and it’s just a nice marketing conversation. That person may or may not come back later. But I look at the demarcation point, marketing is everything that happens to get the initial face-to-face, zoom to zoom, voice to voice conversation. Once you’re in that conversation, that literally is the beginning of the sales process.

(08:28): And depending on what we’re selling and how complicated it is or how expensive it is, you might be able to have a one or two call sales process. There might be five steps, six steps, seven steps. We sort of lay this out in the book that somewhere between three and seven steps or three and seven touchpoints is most of the sales conversations that folks that we work with end up with. We’re not selling satellites, we’re not selling complicated manufacturing. Technology is no such thing as a six month or a 12 month sales process for small and solo business owners. It’s just a question of can we get the information and can we share the information to build a level of certainty with that prospect that we can really solve their problem? And that starts with understanding and that starts with listening. And that starts with really probing and questioning to a deep level.

(09:22): I think a lot of folks make the mistake with sales conversations first. Sales conversations specifically. They keep it too polite, they keep it too surface level and then they leave it sort of open-ended saying, well great talking to you John, and you know, you know, call me back if you’ve made a decision or let me know when you’re ready. And they just circle off into the sunset, never to be heard from again. So I think having some discipline and having some linkages in that sales process, because as salespeople, when we put our salesperson hat on, it’s really a leadership role. So we need to set the guardrails and the boundaries of how this sales conversation is gonna go and one of the the key principles that will help people right away, never leave one sales conversation without booking the next sales conversation on the prospect’s calendar so that you’re always getting forward momentum.

John Jantsch (10:20): So you talked a little bit about the training that people have received over the years for good or bad. I mean things like overcoming objectives, closing, you know, or kind of common things that are taught in this. Do they still have a place into Do it! Selling?

David Newman (10:36): Well, so let me answer both the way that we have the sales conversation. There’s a sales conversation roadmap that’s in the book. It’s really meant to prevent objections in the first place. Usually an objection is some sort of surprise. So

John Jantsch (10:51): People say, I don’t have enough info. Yeah,

David Newman (10:53): Yeah, exactly. And they think that when they have a closing problem, it’s something that they screwed up at the end. Usually it’s something they’ve screwed up at the beginning or maybe in the middle. But if you’re not closing enough sales, you’re probably not opening the relationship the right way. You’re not having the initial sales conversations that would really diffuse and, and almost melt away all the typical sales objections. No time, no money, gotta check with my boss, gotta check with my wife. It’s not in the budget. We’re already using someone else. I mean, these are all the standard objections. If we’re asking questions about these things early and often, we will surface these obstacles and we’ll be much more prepared to discuss them and dissolve them as the sales process moves forward. As far as closing, I think a really human to human sales conversation leads to the prospect closing themselves, right?

(11:52): So here are the closing questions that are at the back of the book. And these are, I think our listeners will find these so tricky and so manipulative and so difficult. Here they are. . Well, John, does this sound like something that you’d like to do? John, what do you think about moving forward? John, does what we talked about so far makes sense, John, is this something that you’d like to do? It’s like, oh my God, he’s having a, like, this is like a waiter. Imagine you have a beautiful seven course meal. The waiter comes up to you at the end and says, Mr. Jan, would you like coffee? Would you like dessert? You’re not likely to throw down your fork and go, I can’t believe the sales pressure. What is going on? How dare you ask if I want coffee, if I want dessert. No one gets upset with those two closing questions.

(12:40): Why? Because they’re a natural extension of everything that has come before. So if we learn to have really strong opening sales conversations, surface the issues, get to the question behind the question, the issue behind the issue, the obstacle behind the obstacle, and then it comes time to, hey, we’ve had the value conversation before, the price conversation. I know what I’m solving, I know what I’m fixing, I know what I’m getting and I know what the investment’s gonna be. Would you like to move forward? Does this sound like something you’d like to do? Where would you like to go from here? These are all closing questions that let the fish jump into the boat.

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(14:56): So you mentioned price. That’s clearly an area that people get very nervous about a lot of times when they get asked that. In fact, I, you know, I work with a lot of professionals, consultants and it’s the area that trips ’em up the most. I mean they’ve, you know, I urge them to double their fees . And they say, well I could never get that. So, you know, how do you teach people to, to really kind of overcome that fear of price, which is a fear of rejection, a fear of like, I’m not gonna get the work. But you know, we’re given it away a lot of times by underpricing. And that’s really a function of just not having the right posture, isn’t it?

David Newman (15:33): Yes, absolutely. So I totally agree with you. Just like you, I encourage everyone listening to double your prices right now. , wait a minute, wait a, so let me write that down. Double my prices. The reason that this is important is, and I want to address some of those objections too. I’m gonna price myself out of the market, right? Well if you’re struggling, if you’re a consultant, you’re a coach, you’re a trusted advisor and you’re having a hard time selling at your current price, when you double your price, you will totally price yourself out of the broke market and you’ll start to price yourself into the premium market. And I sometimes ask prospects and clients the same question. I say, do you think over the course of your career, is it possible that you might have lost a couple of deals because you were too cheap?

(16:26): Yep. And almost without fail, they start telling me a story. Oh my gosh, I was talking to this company last year and I lost the deal and I went back to the buyer cuz we had a good relationship. And I said, what was up with that? Like what, you know, what decision criteria made you choose someone else? And the buyer says, well, you know, the price was just so low, it made us nervous. It made the c e o nervous, it made the team nervous it, it made me nervous that I really didn’t think you could solve my problem. And there’s always a story like that. So literally when you price yourself out of one market, or the common objection that we hear is, well my clients would never pay that . I’m gonna agree with you . They wouldn’t because you’re prospecting to the wrong clients. Right?

John Jantsch (17:12): Yeah, 100%. I mean it is, I, you know, I’ve seen it time and time again where somebody, they, it’s almost like what you described, like the person thought it was too cheap, it couldn’t possibly get the result, but you also just, you know, you double your fees and you just, you’re gonna have different, you’re gonna have conversations with different people and that’s, you know, that’s the real key. So, but it’s hard, you know, you’re thinking, can I take $10 today before I get the $20? You know, so it, it keeps people trapped it, you work with a lot of professional services folks. Are there unique aspects of, you know, that type of sale that you think need to exist where they might need not need to exist in a, what I would call a more transactional sale?

David Newman (17:57): Yes, absolutely. Well I think most trusted advisors, unlike selling widgets or unlike selling products, we are the product. Yeah. So we take the sales process and we take rejection very personally. , I think this is something where we need to reframe the mindset and the value that you’re delivering is where we need to focus the conversation. Not, I’m a great consultant, I’m a great attorney, I’m a great coach, I’m a great accountant. Of course you’re great. That’s table stakes these days. Wants to hire someone who is reassuringly expensive and has certainty that they can really solve the problem. Cuz they’ve solved this hundreds or thousands of times before. But because we are the product, when we’re in a professional services sale, and again John, I’m sure you’ve worked with these folks that are coming outta corporate, they’re like the top salesperson for at and t and they can sell corporate cell phone contracts till the cows come home.

(18:54): Now they’re a consultant and it’s like, John, I’m selling myself. It’s completely different what happened? Like I didn’t know this was gonna be different. And it’s completely different because we are now selling a personal transformation where the client wants to go from situation A to situation B. They want to either fix the problem or achieve a new higher level outcome. And we are the bridge, right? We are the conduit, we are the catalyst from where they are to where they want to go. That’s why, for example, all of the things that you teach about, you know what? You’re not the celebrity. The system is the celebrity. The methodology is proven and it works. And that’s why, you know, that’s why that level of certainty, cuz people really want two things at the end of the day, prospects, they want to know that you have a system, that you’re not winging it, you’re not making this up as you go along.

(19:48): And they want certainty that they will get to the outcome that you’re being hired for. So if you can anchor yourself in asking questions and having conversations about what they really want, what they’re trying to fix, what they’re trying to solve, and what are the radiant consequences. So the consequences of the consequences. What if you get this right? What if you get this wrong? Sometimes I’ll even, and this is also in the book as far as the detective questions and the go negative questions. What if you don’t do anything? What if this just continues going the way it’s going for the next six months? Uh, and at any point in a calendar year, you can also ask a prospect, well I’m curious if you look back over the last 12 months, what if your next 12 months looked exactly like your last 12 months with this problem, with this situation? Oh my god, that’s unacceptable. No, we have to fix this. So we’re uncovering just by questioning, we’re uncovering urgency and priority and the values through which they’re gonna make this buying decision. And you absolutely have to do that. Otherwise, you know, we’re pitching instead of asking and listening and so many times with a professional services sale, we actually listen our way into the sale. We do not talk ourselves into a sale.

John Jantsch (21:03): Yeah. I can’t tell you how many times the best question you can ask is, tell me more about that.

David Newman (21:08): Yeah,

John Jantsch (21:08): and then just shut up. Right? And you know your point earlier about a lot of times they will sell themselves by just repeatedly. Tell me more about that, tell me more about that. And then finally they dig themselves in such a hole that you know, they’ve, you know, they clearly are like, you’re right , I need to fix this. Well, last question I wanna talk about, I’m that newish salesperson, or maybe my company doesn’t really provide pipeline. How do I go out there and start kind of knocking on doors without cold calling? I mean, how do I go out there and start? And I shouldn’t put words in your mouth. Maybe you’re gonna say cold call, but I mean, how do I start building some opportunities?

David Newman (21:43): Yeah, so fantastic question and I do wanna address this issue of cold email, cold LinkedIn, cold calling. There’s a huge difference between cold outreach versus initial conversation. People equate those two things where they will say, well John, I don’t like marketing because I really hate cold calls. It’s like there’s a million other things that you could be and should be doing besides randomly cold calling strangers. But let’s talk about initial outreach. What makes initial outreach immediately warm, even if the person’s never heard of you and there’s no preexisting relationship. It is three things. Number one, research. Literally spending 15 minutes researching that prospect, researching their company, going on LinkedIn, going on their website, going to their media page, seeing the press releases, seeing what they’re up again, seeing what they’re working on. So that’s the research and then coming on their radar with something that is immediately relevant to what’s happening today.

(22:41): So research and relevance takes cold outreach and makes it warm. So if someone were to, let’s say someone, and we get this on LinkedIn all the time cuz LinkedIn’s become a horrible vortex of spam. But let’s say out of my LinkedIn messages, I get the following, Hey David, I see that you’ve written two previous books and your brand new book Do it selling just came out. We’re an A and I’m totally making this up. You know, we’re an Amazon sales agency and we make sure that established authors who are launching a book get a really strong foothold with their initial book sales. Would that be worth a chat? That’s the message. So now I both, we’ve met both criteria. They’ve done their research on me. It only takes about 10 minutes to find that out about me or John or a, any one of your prospects, right? They’ve done the research, Hey, I see that you’re doing this right now at this moment in time. And then I’m not pushing myself on them. I’m simply asking, would that be worth a short chat? Now in my situation, and I think every author that’s launching a new book, I would talk to that person. Yeah. Is a cold call or is that intelligent prospecting? Right? Right. It’s intelligent prospecting because of the research and the relevance.

John Jantsch (23:52): Yeah. And you know, it’s quite obvious when somebody is, you know, attempting to do those things, but they’re, you know, completely inauthentic in doing it. So you know, everybody’s gotten the message, you know, oh, personalize it. But you can see when it’s done cut and paste style, you know, as opposed to taking the time. And it really, you know, as you mentioned, LinkedIn particularly has become so, so bad. I can’t remember the last time I actually accepted an invitation to connect, you know, because of how poor they were. But it’s easy to stand out there now because there’s so much garbage.

David Newman (24:26): the bar. You are so right. The bar is low, my friends, good news for everyone listening. The bar is low. All you have to be is be a better human. This is one of my early sales mentors. Maybe I’ll just leave this final comment for folks to think about. I was very committed early on to be a better salesperson. This sales mentor says to me, David, don’t worry about being a better salesperson. Be a better person and you’ll sell more.

John Jantsch (24:51): Yeah, yeah. Makes ton of sense. I mean, we wanna buy from people that we can develop a relationship. We can like, so tell people where they can find out. I know the book is available, going to be available anywhere you buy books, but where would you like to send people to get more information? I know you have some resources too that, uh, that they can acquire. Yes. Basically to connect with you as well.

David Newman (25:10): Absolutely. So doit selling.com is the global headquarters of the Duet Selling Empire. You can grab the book, like John said, you can download some companion resources, tools, video training that will help you implement the ideas in the book. And everything is waiting for you @doitselling.com.

John Jantsch (25:31): Awesome. Well, David, it was always a pleasure to have you drop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast and hopefully we will run into you soon, one of these days out there on the road.

David Newman (25:40): I appreciate you, my friend. Thanks for having me on.

John Jantsch (25:42): Hey, and one final thing before you go. You know how I talk about marketing strategy, strategy before tactics? Well, sometimes it can be hard to understand where you stand in that, what needs to be done with regard to creating a marketing strategy. So we created a free tool for you. It’s called the Marketing Strategy Assessment. You can find it @marketingassessment.co not.com. Co. check out our free marketing assessment and learn where you are with your strategy today. That’s just marketing assessment.co. I’d love to chat with you about the results that you get.

John Jantsch (00:00): This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Creative Elements hosted by Jay Klaus. It’s brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. The audio destination for business professionals creative elements goes behind the scenes with today’s top creators. Through narrative interviews, Jay Klaus explores how creators like Tim Urban James Clear, Tori Dunlap and Cody Sanchez are building their audiences today. By learning how these creators make a living with their art and creativity, creative elements helps you gain the tools and confidence to do the same. In a recent episode, they talked with Kevin Perry about how he goes viral on every single platform. Listen to creative elements wherever you get your podcasts.

(00:52): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and my guest today is Laura Gassner Otting. She is the author of Limitless. You may recall she was on the show previously. She’s got a new book out coming out, I should say, Wonderhell, why Success doesn’t feel like it should and what to do about it. So Laura, welcome to the show.

Laura Gassner Otting (01:16): Hey, John, it’s so good to be back.

John Jantsch (01:19): So I know we’re gonna dig into this, but let’s just talk a little bit about pitching this idea and this title to a publisher. , it must have actually been a little hard for them to understand what you were trying to accomplish.

Laura Gassner Otting (01:33): Yeah, you know, as you know, I wrote Limitless with Idea Press, which is a hybrid publisher and did not have any expectation of anything happening with that. I just wanted to write it because when I was speaking on stages, I noticed people who were making real money had books. So I was like, I gotta get me one of them. Yeah. So I wrote Limitless with a hybrid publisher, and then I was like, well, that actually was a Washington Post bestseller, and I was in the Today Show, good Morning America and all these amazing things. I’m gonna go get one of those big five New York houses, I’m gonna do it. And then I called a bunch of the big five New York houses and a bunch of the agents who sell books to the big houses, and they were like, yeah, you’re nobody. I don’t get this idea.

(02:12): The title’s a little, I don’t know, edgy, I’m not so sure. Like I could sell it, but maybe not to one of the big houses. And then I had a conversation with Amy Cuddy, who you, who I’m sure you know also mm-hmm. . And she basically said, listen, people go with big houses because they need credibility, they want speaking events, and they wanna make a list. And she’s like, you’ve got that. So it’s a terrible business model for you. So as a serial entrepreneur, of course I heard those words, my ears perked up and I was like, you know what? I idea press was great. I had a terrific experience, I’m just gonna go back and do it myself again. And so, you know, Rohit at Idea Press, not only was he not questioning the book title when I first wrote the Facebook screen right after Limitless came out and I was like, oh my God, I didn’t expect it. But also in this moment I realized that I made for more, I’m not, I don’t know where I am, but I’m on this plane and I’m 1200 miles from where I’m going and 1200 miles from you know, where I need to be. And I, the space of minute right now is Wonderhell. And Rohit actually commented on that Facebook page, not for Nothing, but that would make a great title of your next book,

John Jantsch (03:22): . So

Laura Gassner Otting (03:22): It really always should have been at home with Id press in the first place, .

John Jantsch (03:27): So I should have you describe it because somebody’s gonna have to get into the book to understand. But I’d love to hear your thinking on the sort of the visual amusement park theme that you Yes. Kind of build the book around. So, so first you’re probably better describe it.

Laura Gassner Otting (03:41): Okay, so John, you know those moments where you’ve accomplished something, you could have sold your first business, or maybe you just sold your first contract, your first consulting crowd contract, your first two ballistic whatever. And in that moment you were like, that’s amazing, it’s exciting, it’s humbling, it’s wonderful. Yes. But also you see this vision of yourself like, maybe I could sell another one, or maybe I could build something even bigger, or maybe I could do even more. And I’m not sure. But wow, there’s a possibility out there. There’s a potential that I see in myself that I didn’t even know existed last week, last month, last year. And suddenly it’s not just wonderful, but it’s also anxiety-provoking, it’s stress-inducing, it’s identity questioning. It’s kind of hell. So it’s wonderful, but it’s also hell, it’s Wonderhell and Wonderhell, dear listeners, is where the burden of your potential walks in and goes, Hey man, what you got for me? What are you gonna do with this newfound potential? And that’s when we have to make that decision of who we are. And I mean, you know, anybody who’s ever been in business, been an entrepreneur, you know, done something for themselves, recognizes this moment when you’re like, yay. Oh hmm huh . And then it all settles on your shoulders.

John Jantsch (05:01): So how did you come to the visual though? That I was getting at the amusement park, the theme

Laura Gassner Otting (05:06): Park? Yes. Yes. So I was actually talking to RAAF Har Fu, who is a great friend of mine who she wrote Hustle and Float. And we were having this conversation and I’m like, you know, like we all think success is gonna be so much fun, it’s gonna be so amazing, it’s gonna be easy, it’s gonna be exciting. And then we get there and it’s actually harder than we thought. It actually kind of sucks because in that moment, if you have this bigger, this bigger hunger, this faster pace, and you wanna go, but should you, what does that mean? What is it gonna feel like? What are the sacrifices? What’s the opportunity? How do we figure it out? And she’s like, it’s kind of like an amusement park. Like you think it’s gonna be super fun and then you’re sitting in line, you know it’s three o’clock in the afternoon and it’s hot and your sunburned and that corn dog in your stomach is like threatening to go out one end or the other.

(05:50): When you get on that rollercoaster and you’re like, I thought this was gonna be fun, everyone told me it’s gonna be fun. Why isn’t it fun? She’s like, you do it and make it an amusement park because, and they have like a map like you are here and just like an amusement park, you can like pick which town you wanna go to in a different order. So in the book there’s Imposter Town, there’s Dotsville, there’s Burnout City, and in each one of the towns there are the five rides. So the 15 rides in total that represent the tsunami of emotions that are gonna come at you in all of these moments. And just like an amusement park, you can walk through the book in any order that you want in those rides, depending on where in the journey you are.

John Jantsch (06:30): So let’s visit Imposter Town. The first one, I struggle with this one because I never felt like an imposter. I see people posting these things on Facebook all the time of having imposter syndrome and I just don’t get it because I mean, all we’re really doing is learning as how I viewed as like, yeah, I haven’t done this before, but I’m not an imposter. I’m learning how to do it. Is how I always viewed that. So when people really talk about all the stress of imposter syndrome, I just, I help me understand that. I don’t get it.

Laura Gassner Otting (07:02): Well, you’re one of the rare people who don’t have imposter syndrome. I mean, when I, when the reason that I wrote this book is when Limitless came out and you know more than three people, my mother, my father, and my sister bought it, I suddenly was like, oh wow, that’s pretty cool. And I had this stress that I wanted to do more, be bigger, create something that was worthy of this potential that I saw out there. And, and so I talked to a lot of people who were further ahead of me in the path, right? Like I think everybody should have a mentor who’s further ahead of them on the actual path they wanna walk on, as opposed to all these like, I’m gonna run a mastermind type people , right? It’s like, I wanna have t-shirts printed out there like, before you tell me what to do, show me what you’ve done in the back.

(07:43): It’s like hashtag give me the p and l, right? Like I wanna know. And what was interesting is that I talked to Olympic medalists, startup unicorns, I talked to Glass ceiling shatters, I talked to people who ran big banks and then, you know, were running $2 billion companies and every one of them at every age and every stage had this moment where they were like, well I did that, but can I do the next thing? I don’t know. What if people find me out? What if I don’t belong? What if I’m not good enough in that moment? And so you’re one of the rare people, but I think it’s because, and I’ve known you long enough to know this, that you do see everything as this learning opportunity. And that’s a gift. You know, there is a voice inside of our head whenever we’re uncertain that goes, oh my God, you haven’t done this before.

(08:27): And the way to get rid of the imposter syndrome is to change how we think about, you know, that voice, right? How do we think about that voice and turn it into an, oh my gosh, you haven’t done this before. Which gives us the opportunity to say, we don’t need to be perfect, but instead we just need to be learning at every step of the way. Because of course you’re an imposter. I mean like what, what great news, right? Like think, just think about the term imposter syndrome. You’re an imposter. There’s something wrong with you y it’s a syndrome, you’re sick, , maybe you should sit down, right? Like it’s actually kind of an offensive term, but I wanna be in rooms where I’m an imposter because it means that I’ve never been in that room before. Because yeah, who wants to do the same puzzle over and over? Like we should all strive to be imposters. How lucky is that?

John Jantsch (09:16): Yeah. And I guess that’s May, it’s just maybe semantics, but I just, I have insatiable curiosity and so I want to go to see new things. And if I don’t know how they work, then the, I get very excited to find out how they work

Laura Gassner Otting (09:29): . Absolutely, absolutely. And you know, and here’s the thing, you have enough confidence in the successes you’ve had to date that you can say, I know I’ve had successes in these areas, which means that even though I don’t know stuff in those areas, I think I can probably figure it out, right? There’s a story I tell about Dory Clark, again, another mutual friend who decided she wanted to completely change her. She, her career, she wants to go into figuring out how to score Broadway musicals. It’s like her side passion. Cuz you know, Dori has enough brains for, you know, 15 different careers at once. And when she walked into this room, all the other people were like, well, I’ve scored 16 musicals and I’ve got, you know, when Emmy from you know, on Broadway and she’s like, I’ve written three songs, . But it didn’t stop her, even though she felt like an imposter. She’s still in that moment said, I have confidence from other things that I’ve done in, you know, my leadership and my, in my thinking and my entrepreneurship work that I know that I, even though I haven’t done this yet, I know that I have the skills to be able to get better at this thing.

John Jantsch (10:30): Yeah, yeah, you’re absolutely right about that. I mean, just even having experience and staying in the game long enough, you realize, oh, this is how this is gonna turn out. Just like endure ,

Laura Gassner Otting (10:40): Right? Yes. Well it’s funny, a lot of times like my, I’ve got two, you know, an 18 year old and a 20 year old, so their friends sometimes come to me for their advice and they’re like, how do you know so much? And I’m like, I’m just old , I’ve just been in the game a long time.

John Jantsch (10:56): So probably my favorite, if I can have a favorite ride in your book is the Ferris Wheel. Hmm. Unpack that one for me.

Laura Gassner Otting (11:04): So the Ferris wheel is also one of my favorites. In fact, I’m pitching that to Good Morning America for the, like, we’re gonna do one ride for the book launch. And here’s what I like about the Ferris wheel. Whenever we accomplish something, our view of ourselves changes, but we also find ourselves rising to new heights or to a different latitude. And in that, you know, new latitude, we, we have a different view of the world, we have a different view of the world and we have a different view of the people that are in it. And so there are a lot of people in our lives who are like, Hmm, I don’t know, do you think you should do that? And maybe you’re flying too close to the sun, and who do you think you are? And you know, we run into them in the coffee shop and they’re like, oh, I don’t know, that seems too scary. You shouldn’t do that. Well, what they really mean is, I’m too scared, I shouldn’t do that. But we had these people who have been in our lives because they’ve always been in our lives and they may not be the people who should continue in our lives going forward just like that. We had

John Jantsch (11:59): Wait, but they’re my family.

Laura Gassner Otting (12:00): Well, and it’s very funny because I talk about this a lot and I’m like, there are people who love you and they don’t want you get hurt. Right? Right. So like the last time I lived in the same house as my parents, I was 17 years old and I used to put the, I used to put the milk back in the refrigerator empty, but I would, and the car back in the garage empty, right? But the stereo turned up on full. And when I, throughout my career would tell them things like, I’m gonna drop out of law school to join this presidential campaign, or I’m gonna leave the White House to go like do executive search, or I’m gonna leave this big firm to start my own business, or I’m gonna sell that business and I don’t know, write a book. They were like, what are you doing?

(12:36): Are you sure you should do that? I’m not so sure, because the last time they knew me on a day-to-day basis, I didn’t have a frontal lobe , right? . So they wanna give me advice because they love me and that’s fine, they can stay in my life, they can be at the amusement park, but they don’t, they’re not gonna be in the car with me heading back up to the Ferris wheel. And so I think there are people in our lives who love us, there are people in our lives who are jealous of us, the ones who only see our rise through the lens of their own stagnation, smiles in the front and knives in the back. And then there are the people who are just afraid, or maybe they’re giving us bad advice because they’re giving us advice from where they’ve been, which isn’t where we’re going. And I’m not saying we have to like, you know, cut all ties and get rid of them. There is a part in the book where I do talk about the benefit of burning bridges when it is time to do that. But I think it’s a matter of deciding who gets to give you sort of close contact advice and who you just sort of like, that’s great, thanks. I’ll keep it in mind. See you later, , then you keep moving on.

John Jantsch (13:36): Speaking of bad advice, one that I have railed a against for some time now. Hustle porn.

Laura Gassner Otting (13:43): Oh yes, . Oh yes. You know, the thing that I loved most about your self-reliant entrepreneur book was that it just, it was this moment where you just sort of stop every day and you read the passage and you just kind of reflect and it, that book is like, it is the opposite of hustle porn to me in so many ways, and I just loved it. And when we think about hustle porn, it’s this like bigger, better, faster, more like great. Like, you know, you got the job, when are you gonna get the promotion? You got the promotion. When are you got the corner office? You got the corner office, when are you kicking off the boss at the window and taking his job? Right? So I think that, I mean, look, I will speak as a woman. I think that we can have it all.

(14:25): But I think that there are lots of opportunities, at least you know, for me and my life, and this may be with you, with kids, with grandkids, where there may be moments where you’re like, you know, I could hustle really hard for this work right now and make more money, but I’m making enough in this moment. So maybe I’ll throttle back the work part and I’ll throttle up the parent part. Right? Or maybe you wanna like travel around the world. You know, I, I could have put this book out a year ago, but my eldest was going off to college and I thought, you know, this book’s kind of evergreen, but he’s not, and maybe this is the moment where I wanna spend a little more time just kind of just being around and not being on my office clothes with my face and a computer the whole time. And so I think we have to think about, you know, do we wanna ride the rollercoaster or do we wanna just be on the merry-go-round right now because that’s okay, we’re just gonna keep coming back around.

John Jantsch (15:16): Yeah, I think the trap, you know, of the hustle porn as you’re calling it too, is that it assumes everybody should want the same thing,

Laura Gassner Otting (15:23): Right?

John Jantsch (15:24): , right? Right. And I think that’s, you know, where people really get off track. It’s like, I can’t have it all, but wait a minute, do I really even want it all

Laura Gassner Otting (15:31): Or how do I define All right? I mean, as you know and limitless, I talk a lot about this where, you know, I learned in 20 years of executive search that you know, there are eight motivating factors that will pretty much convince anybody at any time as a head hunter to talk to me. And there are things like, what’s the mission of the organization and will I be inspired by the leader and how big is the impact? How many, what kinds of skills am I gonna learn? How prestigious will it look on my resume? How much money am I gonna make, right? There’s all sorts of things like that. But every one of us will, will put that list in a different order. We prioritize that list differently. And so there are moments in my life where I put money at the top and there are moments in my life where I put money somewhere in the middle, right?

(16:10): It’s going to change. So like mm-hmm there, every one of us has two numbers. We have a like, what’s the want to make number and what’s the need to make numbers? Like the need to make numbers. Like what’s the, what are you, what’s the base number that you gotta make to pay your bills, right? Whatever those bills are. And then what’s the want to make numbers is like, okay, so you wanna take two vacations a year, do you wanna go camping or you wanna stay at the four Seasons, right? Like what does that look like? And in between those two numbers are the puts and takes of what else you wanna sacrifice in our life. So you know, your all is gonna be very different than my all, but also each of our all is also different at different ages and different stages. So I would argue that probably 10 years ago what you wanted was different than what you want now and 10 years from now it’ll be different. And so this idea of hustle porn that like you gotta drive the Ferrari and you know, wear the Hugo Boss suit and you gotta have the like model on your arm and you like, I don’t know, that’s not that interesting to me .

(17:05): But it might be very interesting for some of your listeners and that’s awesome, right? For some people success is the cherry red rot Maserati. For some people success is curing cancer, right? It’s some, for some people success is just having dinner with your family every night. Like every one of us is gonna define it differently. And the great thing about it is that we’re all right.

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(18:33): All from one powerful platform. It’s why more than 150,000 companies already use HubSpot’s CRM to run their businesses better. Plus, HubSpot’s user friendly interface sets you up for success from day one. So you can spend less time managing software and more time on what matters your customers. There’s no better time to get organized. Get started for free @hubspot.com today. So you mentioned my book, the Self-Reliant Entrepreneur. I actually wrote that book at a time when I just really wanted to do something different. And one of the entries in there, I started by saying that, you know, everyone wants to tell you how to get to the top of the mountain, but no one tells you how to get back down. And I read a very interesting statistic that more people die descending Everest than ascending. And I think that, I think this book speaks a little bit to the heart of that. You know, everybody’s like trying so hard to get to the top of this thing and then when they get there they’re like, no, I wanna be back there . And I really think that, you know, for what it’s worth, I’m not sure there’s a question in what I just stated there, , but I think that’s a lot of what your book is about. The idea that success doesn’t feel like it should because the destination doesn’t feel like it should.

Laura Gassner Otting (19:47): Well, and I think it’s also because the destination continues to change. So you know, when we say I’ll be happy when I have success, that defines success as a finite place, as an end point. But what I learned in writing this book is that in fact, success is just a way point. It’s a portal to what else we can do. So you know, when you are climbing a mountain, if you’re at the base of the mountain and you look at the top of the mountain and you’re like, I wanna go there, cool. But then you get halfway up the mountain and you look at one of those pretty vistas and maybe you’re stopping for your little picnic lunch and you look out and what do you see? You see the top of your mountain, but all the other mountains in the distance. So suddenly the view changes.

(20:25): So then you’re like, maybe I wanna go even further. How much food do I have? How much sunlight is left? How much water do I have? So suddenly you have to figure out, well what is my new definition? And so my book, I’m not trying to say like, you should always keep going and it should always be more and more that I’m saying. There may be moments where you say, actually I don’t wanna go there. I’ve now seen enough, I saw a pretty view, I’m gonna go down. Or maybe it changes. But uh, what, what I had always thought growing up that when I was successful, I’d be successful period. And everything would be easy and I’d be all done like easy money, everything’s great. But I was totally shocked to find out that at every moment, every stage where I had success, it never got easier.

(21:06): It actually got harder. And so when I sat down to talk to those hundred people, I talked about it earlier, I was like, one of them has to have an answer. One of ’em has to have a way for me to get through this. And what I learned was that on the other side of this Wonderhell is just the next one and the next one. And if we’re lucky, the next one after that. And it’s all about renegotiating our relationship with the emotions that we have towards it. So for example, it’s not I’m an imposter, but it’s wow, what an opportunity to learn.

John Jantsch (21:34): So there is a bit of a, even though it might be cyclical, there is a bit of a sort of path through this book. And so I won’t be the last one to ask you this question, where are you on the path

Laura Gassner Otting (21:45): ? You know?

John Jantsch (21:46): And the reason I asked you though is because you start the book out actually with some sort of raw sharing of your experiences in those like places. And so I wonder like how is, where are you in this and how you feel like you’re progressing?

Laura Gassner Otting (22:03): You know, I’ve wrote the book as this idea that you are in Imposter Town and then maybe you’re in Burn Dotsville and then maybe you end up in Burnout City and then as soon as you figure out how to get through that, you’re right back to Imposter Town again. But I gotta say, I think I might be a little bit in all of them right now, , and I’ll tell you why the book comes out in a couple of weeks. And the process of putting out a book as you know, is a lot of, there’s a lot of hurry, hurry. You’ve gotta like put everything together, put all the collateral together, start sending it out. You ask people to pre-order it and then you sit there and you wait and you’re like, did anybody buy it today? Does anyone like it? You get an email from somebody that says, I read your book and you’re like, should I open it?

(22:42): I’m not sure I’m scared. I you, you know, like, I don’t know. And then, you know, you’ll get these great reviews for the most part. Sometimes you get a like, yeah, it didn’t work for me, right? But I’m, I’ve been getting these amazing emails and at the same time as I’m getting amazing emails from some of my early readers from my newsletter list, I’m also pitching, you know, good Morning America and the D Today Show and all the big shows and I’m like, oh please like me. So, you know, I feel I’m full of doubt. I’m perennially exhausted, but I’m also excited about it. And I, no matter how many times I walk out on the set of a national TV show, I’m still like, oh my God, is this the time I’m gonna barf like ? So, but I’m also, even though there’s the hell in that, it’s also so incredibly exciting and wonderful. So, you know, I’m just in Wonderhell about Wonderhell.

John Jantsch (23:33): So as Omnis as the title sounds, I find that you come full circle towards the end and you basically, you basically explain Zen Buddhist philosophy. So yes, so there is a happy place in in coming full circle to adopting beginner’s mind, which is probably in some ways you should have saved us all kinds of time. And put that in the first chapter

Laura Gassner Otting (23:57): ,

John Jantsch (23:59): Because it’s the best piece of advice. ,

Laura Gassner Otting (24:02): Well, I don’t know, maybe I’m saving it for last. Maybe I should just written a pamphlet and not a book . I’m not sure I’m, I think that, I think that, I think that probably hit you because that’s where you are in your journey, right? Yeah. So I think that everybody reading the book, like, I mean I just, I had a reader who actually I had something on a newsletter list who sent me an email and she’s like, look, I love you, I love reading your newsletter. I’ve been on your list for four years. I read it every single week. And I loved Limitless, but I don’t think, I don’t think Wonderhell’s for me cause I’m not sure I’ve had that kind of success yet. And I sent her, I was like, you know what? I’m like, gimme your address, I’m gonna send you an early book.

(24:37): And I did. And she sent me an email last week and she’s like, okay, I have to admit I was wrong, , I was wrong. And it’s not just about people who’ve already had success, it’s people who know that they’re made for more. And she’s like, and everything in the first chapter about feeling like, I don’t belong and I’m an imposter. She’s like, I feel like you were sitting on my couch talking to me. So I think everybody reading the book well, a chapter that resonates with them more, right? Yeah. Than others. But you know, in terms of like the Zen Buddhist philosophy, yeah, I mean that’s the thing, each time we think we’ve gotten there, every ceiling is just tomorrow’s floor, which is kind of amazing to think about, right? Yeah. What an opportunity that gives us every single time. And you know, to further into the Buddhist philosophy, there’s a storytelling, the conclusion about running a marathon.

(25:24): And in that marathon where I’m like, oh my God, I’m working as hard as I possibly can to finish this marathon in like five hours. Like it is hard. I’m exhausted, everything hurts. I’m chasing in all the wrong places, even though I don’t know if it’s only right places to Cha . And I get like, I get like halfway through the marathon and a friend of mine’s like basically tells me that the winner has just finished the race and it’s 92 degrees and I’m so hot, I don’t even know my own name. And all I can think of is I’m only halfway through . And later what I realized was, even though I was working as hard as I possibly could, like I could see myself finishing a marathon, first marathon ever. He cheated around my shoulder, meddle around my neck like I’m a superhero. I had to work as hard as I possibly could.

(26:05): I was at the very depth of my pain cave to get there. What I realized was, you know what the winner probably was too. And his pain cave and my pain cave probably felt exactly the same. His was just far deeper than mine. , he could just, his was much more impressive. But like going a hundred percent is still going a hundred percent and it probably still feels the same way. And so that, you know, that idea that, you know, pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. Like you have that choice in it. And so you know, there, yes, it is scary and is difficult when things get harder when you find success, that’s the hell. But also what an opportunity to live into the wonder.

John Jantsch (26:45): Well I think many people are gonna read this book and just as you said, they’ll find a chapter that really resonates where they are at the moment. But I also think that one of the reassuring things about this book is you’re gonna have help. A whole lot of people say, oh, that’s why I’m feeling how I’m feeling right now. Yes. And that will be reassuring I think very much

Laura Gassner Otting (27:01): For, yeah, because you know, none of us can complain like, oh boohoo things are going well. Like, who wants to hear about that? Right? . So I’ve had so many people that are like, yes, I, there’s finally a word for this feeling that I’ve had. Thank you. I feel so seen .

John Jantsch (27:17): Well Laura, thanks so much for taking Moment to Stop by the Duct Tape Marketing podcast. I know wonder how it’ll be available pretty much anywhere people buy books, you want to invite people anywhere else to connect with you?

Laura Gassner Otting (27:28): Yeah, so you can find me @lauragassnerotting.com and I’m on all the socials @heylgo, so people can find me there and wonderhell.com is where you can pre-order the book right now.

John Jantsch (27:39): Awesome. Again, thanks for taking the moment to stop by the show and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days soon out there on the road.

Laura Gassner Otting (27:46): Thanks so much.

John Jantsch (27:46): Hey, and one final thing before you go. You know how I talk about marketing strategy, strategy before tactics? Well, sometimes it can be hard to understand where you stand in that, what needs to be done with regard to creating a marketing strategy. So we created a free tool for you. It’s called the Marketing Strategy Assessment. You can find it @marketingassessment.co not.com. Co check out our free marketing assessment and learn where you are with your strategy today. That’s just marketing assessment.co. I’d love to chat with you about the results that you get.

John Jantsch (00:01): This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Creative Elements hosted by Jay Klaus. It’s brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. The audio destination for business professionals creative elements goes behind the scenes with today’s top creators. Through narrative interviews, Jay Klaus explores how creators like Tim Urban, James Clear, Tori Dunlap and Cody Sanchez are building their audiences today. By learning how these creators make a living with their art and creativity, creative elements helps you gain the tools and confidence to do the same. In a recent episode, they talked with Kevin Perry about how he goes viral on every single platform. Listen to creative elements wherever you get your podcasts.

(00:53): Hello, welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and I’m going to do a solo show. It’s been a while since I’ve done one. So there’s a couple topics I want to get off my chest. So I might do a couple shows in a row. Who knows? This first topic I wanna talk about today is a trend, I guess definitely a trend that I’m seeing, and it applies to anybody in the marketing consulting agency world as well as frankly to anyone who owns a business in terms of how to get your marketing done, how to think about your marketing more strategically, and that’s the trend of what I will call the fractional CMO, Chief Marketing Officer. This idea of fractional whatever, titles, accountants, fractional management consultants, fractional hiring consultants. I think that this idea has really taken on a life of its own recently, probably like so many things here in the beginning of 2023, very influenced by the pandemic.

(02:01): But what I’ve seen is many, many business owners over the years really are looking for a marketing agency, a marketing consultant, somebody to get the tactical things done. They quite frankly, rarely hire unless they’re from a marketing background. They rarely hire strategic marketing folks internally because quite frankly, when you bring somebody in at a really high level to do marketing in your business as an employee, and you’re the owner of that business and don’t feel like you know that much about marketing or how to direct really a strategic marketing, dare I say, CMO type of role in your business, it can be a little intimidating. And I’ve experienced that over the years. A lot of times I’ve been hired, my firm’s been hired because, you know, there’s something easier about saying, Hey, this isn’t working out. You know, it’s not an employee, it’s, it’s a vendor almost.

(02:49): And so they can part ways, but I think what’s happened over the last few years is people have dramatically increased their understanding and and desire to really start with strategy. I mean, I’ve been my kind of my mantra for 20 years strategy before tactics. But I think a, I think people are finally getting it right, . And so this idea that they would hire a a a C-suite type of role where the implication is that that person’s going to be strategic, that person’s not gonna write copy necessarily or do social media posts. They’re going to really develop the grand plan for, you know, how you’re gonna go from where you’re today to where you want to be, certainly from a marketing standpoint, but they’re gonna get involved in the dollars and cents of it, the objectives overall for the organization, maybe a little deeper relationship then you would think of your traditional marketing agency.

(03:41): But we are finding that, uh, both business owners are, are really embracing this idea of hiring, you know, us or somebody as a fractional CMO. And certainly a lot of consultants, agencies, coach, implementers, you know, I’m finding are really drawn to this idea of maybe having a handful of clients that they are very deeply involved with and, you know, have a seat at the table , you know, for making or helping make big decisions. And obviously orchestrating the tactics to implementation. Maybe in some cases the team that’s already been assembled. So just the textbook definition, what is a fractional CMO? It’s a marketing strategist brought into an organization on a part-time basis to help set strategic direction and orchestrate marketing implementation using internal and external resources. So I spent the last 10 minutes just talking about what , what I just described there. But, but again, this role, this idea really has a lot of, I think a lot of appeal to business owners because it is a necessary piece that I think that, that you can acquire, or at least the idea you can acquire for much less.

(04:53): I mean, look at Google trends if you ever do that. The term fractional CMO is definitely on the rise. And I think a lot of it has to do with, I think people are tired of the tactic of the week of no real direction. Um, you know, everybody says they want customers, but, but a lot of the CEO’s, business owners that I talk to, what they really need is some clarity first, and the confidence that they’re making the right decisions and some control over their marketing. And I think that that’s a, that’s a big part of what you get by at least taking this strategy approach and, and by bringing in somebody that is very strategic to help you get those customers. And you know, the, the role of a typical CMO in an organization is strategic planning, brand management, you know, obviously the marketing campaigns, analyzing data, helping develop and use a budget and, and maybe even managing team players.

(05:43): And frankly, what most people do is they hire somebody just to do marketing campaigns and all those other things are left by the, the wayside. The reason I think this model works and why business owners should be really addressing it, looking at it, understanding it better, and certainly agency folks or consultants ought to be positioning themselves this way because typical, or I should say the average salary for a chief marketing officer, according to salary.com, this last year was between 208,000-375,000. And that really doesn’t include any kind of implementation or, you know, other people that you might hire to, to actually supplement that typical, average fractional CMO probably costs somebody 60 to $75,000 a year, plus a lot of the implementation now is done kind of on demand. It doesn’t, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you are going to hire those people as full-time people.

(06:38): You’re gonna, your CMO, fractional CMOs gonna bring them in as needed, you know, from a consultant or an agency standpoint, you know, if you do the math on, on what the average is, you know, you working with five or six clients that can be at the top, the absolute top of the CMO chain. So, you know, it really works for both parties as far as I’m concerned. Hey, marketing agency owners, you know, I can teach you the keys to doubling your business in just 90 days or your money back. Sound interesting. All you have to do is license our three step process that’s going to allow you to make your competitors irrelevant, charge a premium for your services and scale perhaps without adding overhead. And here’s the best part. You can license this entire system for your agency by simply participating in an upcoming agency certification intensive look, why create the wheel?

(07:33): Use a set of tools that took us over 20 years to create. And you can have ’em today. Check it out at dtm.world/certification. That’s dtm.world/certification. And now, word from our sponsor, are you ready to get out of spreadsheets? Look with HubSpot crm, get realtime data at your fingertips so your teams stay in sync across the customer journey, build better content, generate more conversions, and get the context you need to create amazing experiences for your teams and your customers at scale. All from one powerful platform. It’s why more than 150,000 companies already use HubSpot’s CRM to run their businesses better. Plus, HubSpot’s user-friendly interface sets you up for success from day one so you can spend less time managing software and more time on what matters your customers. There’s no better time to get organized. Get started for free @hubspot.com today.

(08:37): And so what the typical sort of agency project based path looks like. You know, you put out free content as a marketer, you get a sales meeting as a business owner, you, you then ask for a proposal project gets worked on, or maybe a handful of projects get worked on, and then, you know, everybody starts over again. And, you know, I think the fractional CMO approach is more that the very first thing you do for 30, 60 days is that you’re going to actually develop strategy first. And, and what that’s going to mean is you’re going to really drill into the ideal client. Who is the ideal client you should be attracting, you know, what is the core difference that your business makes out there in the market? And it’s not what you sell , it’s the problems that you solve for your ideal customers. You know, what is your customer journey look like? What should it look like?

(09:23): What could it look like? What’s a, what’s a content or editorial content approach going to look like? What are the near term priorities that you need to be looking at? I mean, those stopping and taking the time to develop that allows you to then month by month, look at, look, here’s what we’re doing this quarter, the next quarter, the next quarter. Because we’re, we’re going to evolve our marketing. It’s going to grow. We’re not going to simply just throw, you know, another tactic at everything and see if it works. Some of these concepts, the, the idea of developing strategy, in fact, we have a, we have a set, I’ve done th a strategy as I’ve described it here, probably in the neighborhood of a thousand times with businesses. I have taught hundreds of agencies and consultants how to do our product, if you will, called Strategy First.

(10:12): It’s really how we start every engagement. And as far as I’m concerned, if you are buying marketing services, you should actually be engaging somebody who is going to demand that you do strategy first. And as a consultant agency, that ought to be the way that in my mind, that you lead with every engagement strategy has become more important, quite frankly, than ever. It is the way that you not only differentiate your business, it is the way that you actually charge a premium for what you do, because you are able to understand how to guide the perfect customer journey. You’ve heard me talk about things like the marketing hourglass for, you know, years, our, our approach to the customer journey. That that has seven stages, no, like trust, try by repeat and refer. Just understanding what you need to move people through those stages that are essentially marketing, sales, and service or success is how you build long-term growth, focusing intentionally, focusing on those stages.

(11:14): This is a tool that I’ve seen it change dramatically change businesses in the way they view marketing. But then secondly, this approach to marketing, uh, hiring a fractional CMO who is going to become a senior. They, they’re not, you’re not gonna pay them as such. They’re not going to be there on-premise every day, but you can view them as a senior strategic hire in your organization. Even if you have people doing various marketing tasks, is an absolute game changer for most of the businesses that, that really can address or engage or embrace this idea. So that’s all I had for today. I wanted to introduce this idea of fractional CMO. Whether you are a business owner who doesn’t understand why marketing’s not working the way it should , or you are a coach or a consultant who doesn’t understand, you know, why you’re always getting beat up on price and getting tired of just doing, you know, the tactics that are demanded of you lead with strategy and that will change completely change the relationship you have with your clients.

(12:16): So if you’re either one of those a business owner or somebody who is in marketing consulting world, and you want to see how this fractional CMO model could change your business, just visit duct tape marketing.com. You’ll see at the very top there, you’ll pick your flavor. I’m a business owner, or I’m an agency that wants to license this fractional CMO approach. We’d love to talk with either one of you. Have an amazing day, week, month, quarter whenever you’re listening to this, and thanks for tuning in to the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast.

(12:51): Hey, and one final thing before you go. You know how I talk about marketing strategy, strategy before tactics? Well, sometimes it can be hard to understand where you stand in that, what needs to be done with regard to creating a marketing strategy. So we created a free tool for you. It’s called the Marketing Strategy Assessment. You can find it @marketingassessment.co not.com. Co check out our free marketing assessment and learn where you are with your strategy today. That’s just marketing assessment.co. I’d love to chat with you about the results that you get.