A “Moore-ish” law for marketing

A “Moore-ish” law for marketing written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing is quietly crossing a threshold.

Not because we can “make more content” with AI.

Because every time the cost of thinking drops, the amount of experimentation and personalization you can afford explodes. And that changes the shape of marketing from campaigns you launch to systems you operate.

I’ve spent decades teaching small businesses to stop chasing shiny tactics and install a marketing system that creates clarity and consistent growth. That “system-first” mindset is exactly what this moment demands, except now the system can learn faster than your team can type.

The “Moore-ish” Law of Marketing: When the Cost of Thinking Drops, Experimentation Explodes

Table of contents

  1. A “Moore-ish” law for marketing
  2. Three forces changing marketing right now
  3. What this means in the near term
    1. Content shifts from assets to streams
    2. Personalization shifts from segments to situations
    3. Agents start eating coordination work
  4. The role shift: from makers to operators of systems
  5. What to do right now: a near-term playbook
  6. How this fits the Duct Tape Marketing system
  7. FAQs

A “Moore-ish” law for marketing

Here’s the framing:

When the cost per marketing experiment keeps falling, the number of experiments you can afford rises dramatically.

If it gets 2x cheaper, or 2x faster, to generate, quality-check, and deploy a new variation, you do more of them. Over time, that pushes marketing from campaign-centric (big launches, big bets) to system-centric (continuous learning, continuous improvement).

The unlock is not “AI content.” It’s collapsed time-to-learning.

When time-to-learning collapses, the limiting factor shifts:

  • Not “can we produce it?”
  • But “can we measure what’s true and decide well?”

That is the big idea in one sentence:

Execution moves from human throughput to machine throughput, while humans move up the stack to judgment, strategy, constraints, narrative, offers, positioning, and ethics.

Three forces changing marketing right now

1) Cost per experiment is falling

The ability to create variations is no longer scarce. What is scarce is the ability to run clean tests, protect the brand, and decide.

2) Time-to-learning is collapsing

Shorter loops mean you can improve messaging, creative, and offers continuously instead of waiting for a quarterly campaign post-mortem.

3) Coordination work is becoming automatable

Most marketing teams spend more time coordinating work than creating leverage. As tools integrate into work apps, AI can draft, route, repurpose, tag, schedule, and execute multi-step workflows under human supervision.

What this means in the near term

1) Content shifts from assets to streams

The near-term change is simple to say and hard to implement:

Your team stops “shipping one landing page” or “one email sequence” or “one ad set.”

You ship:

  1. A message system
    Positioning, proof, objections, tone rules, prohibited claims, and brand constraints.
  2. A modular content library
    Claims, examples, stories, CTAs, offers, proof points, and objection-handling modules.
  3. A generation and QA pipeline
    A workflow that continuously produces variants, checks them, deploys them, measures performance, and feeds learnings back.

Role impact

  • Copywriter becomes editor-in-chief plus conversion strategist
    Owns voice, truth, persuasion, compliance, and performance feedback.
  • Designer becomes system designer
    Builds templates, components, motion rules, and brand constraints.
  • Content lead becomes content operations lead
    Owns workflow, governance, QA, and measurement loops.

2) Personalization shifts from segments to situations

Segmentation is still useful, but the economics are changing.

When personalization gets cheaper, you stop asking only:

  • “Which segment is this?”

And start asking:

  • “What situation are they in right now?”
  • “What job are they hiring us for?”
  • “What objection is active?”
  • “What constraint is binding: budget, time, risk, internal approval?”
  • “What is the next best step that fits their reality?”

Role impact

  • Campaign manager becomes journey architect
    Owns triggers, decisioning, orchestration, and next-best-action paths.
  • Marketing ops becomes decision ops
    Owns data quality, identity, measurement, guardrails, and evaluation standards.

If you want one practical takeaway: the “unit of personalization” is shifting from a persona to a moment.

3) Agents start eating coordination work

Most marketing teams spend more time coordinating work than creating leverage:

  • Creating briefs
  • Routing approvals
  • Repurposing content
  • Tagging and organizing assets
  • Scheduling and posting
  • Producing “version 14” of a variation
  • Summarizing results and sharing updates

As AI integrates with workplace tools, these coordination tasks can be automated or semi-automated with human checkpoints.

Role impact

A new role emerges, especially in teams that want scale without chaos:

Marketing agent wrangler
The person who builds repeatable agent workflows, monitors outputs, tunes prompts, sets permissions, and makes sure “automated” never means “unaccountable.”

The role shift: from makers to operators of systems

If change keeps accelerating, the safest career position is not “the fastest maker.”

It is:

The person who can design the system that produces outcomes repeatedly.

Here’s a simple mapping.

Roles that shrink (execution throughput)

  • “Write 20 posts”
  • “Make 30 ad variations”
  • “Draft 10 nurture emails”
  • “Create first-pass briefs”

These become machine-default, especially for first drafts and variant generation.

Roles that grow (judgment, leverage, trust)

  • Positioning and offer design
    What to say, to whom, and why it’s true.
  • Creative direction
    Taste, narrative, cohesion across channels.
  • Performance strategy
    What to test, what to stop, what to double down on.
  • Marketing operations and governance
    Permissions, QA, brand safety, compliance, evaluation.
  • Customer research synthesis
    Turning messy reality into usable direction.

What to do right now: a near-term playbook

If you want a practical playbook that fits this Moore-ish acceleration, focus on four builds.

1) Build a truth layer

Your team needs a single source of truth that answers:

  • What claims can we make?
  • What proof supports each claim?
  • What is disallowed legally, ethically, or brand-wise?
  • What language do we never use?
  • What industries, customer types, or outcomes require extra care?

This is how you prevent fast nonsense.

AI without a truth layer produces confident randomness. AI with a truth layer produces scalable clarity.

2) Standardize a production pipeline

A healthy pipeline looks like:

Brief → generate → fact-check → brand-check → legal-check (if needed) → deploy → measure → feed learnings back

Notice what’s missing: polish endlessly.

If the system is meant to stream variants, your job is not perfection. Your job is controlled learning.

3) Create an evaluation habit

The question is not “did AI write it?”

The question is:

Did it move the KPI while protecting the brand?

This is where many teams will break. If you cannot evaluate, you cannot scale.

At minimum, define:

  • Your primary KPI by channel
  • Your guardrail metrics (complaints, unsubscribes, refund rate, brand sentiment indicators)
  • Your decision cadence (daily for ads, weekly for emails, monthly for site and SEO)
  • Your stopping rules (when to kill a test quickly)
  • Your doubling rules (when to scale a winner)

4) Reskill around leverage

Train marketers to do the work that scales:

  • Design experiments
  • Write constraints
  • Critique outputs
  • Interpret results
  • Orchestrate tools and workflows
  • Document learnings so the system improves over time

Many teams will run more tests, but fail to compound the learning. The habit of documenting what worked and why becomes a strategic advantage.

How this fits the Duct Tape Marketing system

This moment does not replace strategy. It punishes teams who try to skip it.

Duct Tape Marketing has always been rooted in the idea that marketing is a system, not a pile of tactics, and that clarity beats chaos.

AI acceleration rewards that approach because:

  • A system gives you the message constraints that prevent garbage at scale.
  • A system gives you the customer journey structure that makes personalization meaningful.
  • A system gives you a measurement discipline so “more output” becomes “more learning,” not “more noise.”

Or said another way:

AI makes tactics cheaper. It also makes strategy more valuable.

If you want to future-proof, build the machine, but lead it with principles:

  • Strategy before tactics
  • Truth over hype
  • Consistency over novelty
  • Learning over launching

FAQs

1) Is this just about creating more content faster?

No. The advantage is not volume. The advantage is iteration, testing loops, and faster time-to-learning. Volume without evaluation just creates more waste.

2) What is the biggest risk as experimentation gets cheaper?

Scaling bad assumptions. If your truth layer is weak, you will publish confident errors, drift off-brand, and damage trust faster than ever.

3) What should small businesses do if they do not have a data science team?

Start simpler. Use AI to increase iteration on high-leverage assets where measurement is clear, like ads, landing pages, and email subject lines. Keep the loops tight and focus on one KPI per test.

4) How do we prevent brand inconsistency when AI is generating variants?

Operationalize brand constraints, not just guidelines. Build templates, component rules, disallowed language lists, and a review checklist that enforces your standards.

5) Do we need “agents” right now?

Not to start. Begin with a standardized pipeline and a truth layer. Agents become valuable when you have repeatable workflows worth automating, and clear checkpoints for approvals and measurement.

6) Which roles should we hire or promote for this shift?

Look for people who can design systems, run experiments, and make decisions with incomplete information. “Taste plus rigor” becomes a premium combination.

7) How does personalization change first for most teams?

You move from broad segments to situational messaging on the same core journey. Think objection-based variants, industry-context variants, and stage-of-awareness variants, all measured and refined continuously.

8) How do we know we are using AI in a way that drives growth, not just efficiency?

If your AI program only measures time saved, you are still in productivity mode. The shift is tying AI-enabled workflows to business outcomes, with clear accountability for impact.

Next step: If you share your context (agency serving SMBs, in-house B2B, local service business, SaaS, ecommerce), I’ll translate this into the three highest-leverage workflows to automate first, the roles to redesign, and the metrics that keep the machine honest.

Why Goals Fail and How to Change the Odds

Why Goals Fail and How to Change the Odds written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch the full episode:

 

Episode Overview

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, host John Jantsch sits down with award-winning strategy consultant, speaker, and author Kyle Austin Young to explore his decision-making and goal-achievement framework called probability hacking. Kyle explains why traditional goal pursuits rooted in hustle, mindset, and positive thinking fall short and how identifying and solving for potential risks can dramatically shift your odds of success.

Guest Bio

Kyle Austin Young is a strategy consultant, speaker, and writer helping high achievers accomplish meaningful goals through his probability hacking framework. He’s been featured in top publications and is the author of Success Is a Numbers Game: Achieve Bigger Goals by Changing the Odds.

Key Takeaways

  • Probability over Mindset: Success isn’t just about positivity—it’s about improving your odds.
  • Probability Hacking Framework: Define goals, identify prerequisites, anticipate what could go wrong, and solve creatively.
  • Success Diagrams: Visual tools to map out and de-risk goal pathways.
  • Multiplying Probabilities: Understand true odds by combining variables—not averaging them.
  • Resilience & Repetition: Trying multiple times can dramatically increase your likelihood of success.
  • Mindset Shift: Think negative—not to be pessimistic, but to preemptively solve issues.

Notable Moments (Time‑Stamped)

  • 00:01 – Introduction of Kyle Austin Young and today’s topic
  • 00:59 – Odds vs. mindset in goal-setting
  • 04:15 – Kyle’s story of landing a high-stakes job at age 21
  • 07:04 – Breakdown of the success diagram framework
  • 09:19 – Why averaging leads to false confidence
  • 11:57 – Miracle on Ice and the math of multiple attempts
  • 14:32 – Getting started with probability thinking
  • 15:41 – The four paths to success explained
  • 17:47 – Edison and the role of experimentation in resilience
  • 19:54 – Where to find Kyle and his book

Quotes

“What’s going to have to go right? And what could go wrong? That’s where your opportunity to change the odds lives.” — Kyle Austin Young

“Success is really about identifying what could derail you and finding creative ways to make those outcomes less likely.” — Kyle Austin Young

Connect with Kyle Austin Young

 



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John Jantsch (00:01.218)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Kyle Austin Young. He’s an award winning strategy consultant, speaker and writer who helps leaders, entrepreneurs and high achievers accomplish big, meaningful goals. His work centers on a unique decision-making and goal achievement framework that he calls probability hacking, a method designed to analyze and intentionally improve the odds of success in any pursuit. We’re going to talk about his newest book.

Success is a numbers game. Achieve bigger goals by changing the odds. So Kyle, welcome to the show.

Kyle Austin Young (00:37.348)

Thank you for having me. Honored to be here.

John Jantsch (00:39.278)

So I’m going to start with the premise that I’m sure you, I won’t be the first person to ask this question. I think a lot of times when people talk about goals, they think about hustle or mindset or heck even luck. You are saying it’s more about odds. What’s different in that shift?

Kyle Austin Young (00:59.15)

Yeah, let me give you sort of an example. Let’s say that we’ve set the goal of training to run a marathon. Let’s say that’s something that we’ve decided we want to accomplish and we hire a running coach and she says, I can get you ready in time, but you’re gonna have to do three things. I need you to eat, sleep, and train according to some specific regimens that I’m gonna create for you.

John Jantsch (01:02.872)

me

John Jantsch (01:14.829)

Mm-hmm.

Kyle Austin Young (01:16.334)

So let’s say that we know that one of these prerequisites is we’re to have to train according to some certain parameters. And so we identify some of the things that could go wrong, some of the things that might happen instead of what we want. And maybe we identify bad weather as something that could derail a training regimen. I’m currently preparing for a big wintery snowstorm. Let’s say that we identify injury as a potential risk, or maybe we identify that our kids might have a crisis that could overwhelm our schedule. So the question that I like to ask people is,

tell me how wanting to run a marathon is an antidote to any of those threats to our success. How does wanting to run a marathon change the weather? How does wanting to run a marathon prevent injury? How does wanting to run a marathon keep a crisis from happening in our kids’ lives? Certainly, we’re going to need a measure of commitment and hustle in order to be successful. But ultimately, what we’re going to really need is we need some creative solutions to the things that could keep us from getting what we want.

So I believe that we can understand probabilities similar to the way we’ve traditionally understood matter. It can’t be created or destroyed, but it can be transferred and rearranged. The odds of success, the odds that we want for our goal are currently hiding in our potential bad outcomes. When we identify what those things are and what we can do about them, we can tilt the odds in our favor.

John Jantsch (02:30.488)

So it’s all about quantum physics. Is that what you’re saying? So when you talk about moving matter around, was the first thought I had. Sure.

Kyle Austin Young (02:33.54)

Very little physics in the book. I don’t think I’ve ever taken a physics class.

Kyle Austin Young (02:40.418)

Well, I do think that there’s a lot of truth in the idea that a lot of people want to conjure good odds out of thin air. This idea that maybe I can wish myself into a better position. And I don’t think that’s true. I think that a lot of times when we’re pursuing a goal, we’re encouraged to think positive. Don’t worry about what could go wrong. If it’s meant to happen, it’ll happen. Just focus on the positive. I encourage people to do the exact opposite. I tell people to think negative. I tell people, for everything that has to go right in order for you to get what you want, identify the potential bad outcomes. Identify the things that could happen instead of what you want.

John Jantsch (02:55.8)

Thank

Kyle Austin Young (03:09.464)

and use your creativity to systematically de-risk your goals.

John Jantsch (03:13.826)

So in your bio, and I know in the book itself, you talk a lot about probability hacking. So let’s talk about what that is or how you define

Kyle Austin Young (03:22.916)

Yeah, I define probability hacking as doing exactly what we just did. It starts with getting an idea of what’s going to have to go right and then identifying what could go wrong and then looking for creative solutions. I’ll tell a different example. You know, when I first graduated from college, I wasn’t excited about the entry level positions that I was seeing. I wanted to try for something more ambitious. So I actually applied to become the product development director at a growing health organization. I was 21 years old. If hired, I was going to be managing people in their 50s, 60s, 70s, people with PhDs and master’s degrees.

a crazy thing to do, but I got an interview and I wanted to make the most of it. So even at that time, I did what I essentially do now for a living. I created what I call a success diagram. I only needed to get a job offer at that point. That was the only step left, but I looked at what are the potential bad outcomes that could happen instead of me getting that job offer. And so I identified three. And so I’m giving this example. You kind of had the quantum physics concern because there’s no numbers here. I’m just going to show you how we can do this at a story level. One of the risks I identified was they might not hire me because of how young I looked.

John Jantsch (04:15.054)

Bye.

Kyle Austin Young (04:21.54)

I might walk in and they take one look and say, he can’t lead this team. So one of the very practical things I did to combat that is I just grew a beard. I still have the beard today. It was something that made me look about 10 years older than I was. And I knew that if I could do that, it would maybe take the edge off of that concern a little bit. A second bad outcome that I identified, a potential bad outcome rather, was there might be concerns over my lack of experience, which were valid. I didn’t have a deep resume. I had just graduated from college. So what I did was I couldn’t lie. I wasn’t going to

John Jantsch (04:22.126)

Right.

Kyle Austin Young (04:49.54)

pretend that I had experience I didn’t have, but I wanted to show the quality of my thinking. So I actually typed up a plan for how I was going to turn this department around. It was so thick, I had to have it spiral bound. It was a book. And every person I went to and interviewed with, I gave them a copy of it. And the goal was when they would ask me questions about my past, I would just redirect it to be a conversation about the future. What experience do you have with whatever the case might be, product development? Great question. Here’s my plan for product development. Let’s talk about the vision that I have for this role if I’m given the opportunity.

The third potential bad outcome I identified was maybe they would be concerned that I couldn’t really get along with the existing team because there was just such a big generational gap. So I used a strategy that I’m still using today. It’s worked really well for me. I asked one of the people in the organization if the product development team had read any books recently as a group. She listed a few titles, I think it was three or four, and I went out and read every single one of them. And what that did is it gave me the ability to have conversations with the team that no other applicant could have. I understood their goals, I understood their jargon, I could make inside jokes.

John Jantsch (05:25.538)

Mm-hmm.

Kyle Austin Young (05:48.56)

There was a group interview where it was me and a bunch of people 20, 30 years older than me with a lot more experience trying to decide who was going to ultimately win the opportunity to lead this department. And one of the books that they read was called The Wuffy Factor. I don’t know if you remember that. was a book about how to, you remember the Wuffy? It was about how brands are in social capital. This was close to 15 years ago. And I remember being in that interview and I said, you know, I think this idea that we’re discussing could help us get a lot of Wuffy.

John Jantsch (05:57.934)

Right.

I remember saying that, yeah, yeah.

Kyle Austin Young (06:11.632)

And I remember looking around and these other applicants, their eyes are bugging out of their heads. What on earth did he just say? You know, is he feeling, okay, what does he mean? We’re going to get a lot of wealthy out of this. But the existing team members, they were all laughing and nodding along. They knew exactly what I was talking about. We were reading the same books. So when all was said and done, I got that job. At 21 years old, I became the product development director for a health organization. It dramatically accelerated my career, but it started with this idea of probability hacking. It started with getting clear on what I wanted and getting clear on what was going to have to go right. Then thinking negatively,

identifying the risks to my success and not resorting to desire as an antidote to uncertainty, but instead using my creativity to solve those problems.

John Jantsch (06:49.006)

So you gave very specific details and steps of what you did, but it sounded, it started to sound a bit like a framework, which I know you have in the book. So were those steps that you gave me a part of that framework? Do you want to outline what that framework is?

Kyle Austin Young (07:04.41)

Sure, I encourage people to start by creating what I call a success diagram. A success diagram is you write down what’s the goal, what do I want to accomplish? I do that at the top right of the page. And then to the left, I just try to list out everything that’s gonna have to go right in order for me to get what I want. So it might be run a marathon. And what I call critical points, the prerequisites to my success are eat according to the regimen my coach gives me, sleep according to the regimen she gives me, train according to the regimen she gives me. So now I have the path, I have the destination.

And then for each one of those things that has to go right, I try to identify the potential bad outcomes. These aren’t just things that could go wrong, they’re alternate outcomes to success. Things that would be so significant they would completely derail the goal if any of them were to come true. After I have those mapped out, I try to just assign a level of risk to each of them. Is this a low risk potential bad outcome, a medium risk, a high risk, so they know how to prioritize? And then probability hacking again is using our creativity to try to find solutions to that. If I’m concerned about

you know, inclement weather derailing my training routine, I might need a treadmill indoors or need to find some alternate exercises that can allow me to build my fitness on days when I can’t go for a run. If I’m concerned about scheduling issues, something happening at my kid’s school, then I might want to train first thing in the morning or I might want to buy an extra pair of running shoes to keep in the car so that I can train at a park if I need to, if my day gets derailed.

John Jantsch (08:20.034)

In a lot of ways, what I’m hearing you describe is, I mean, think there are a lot of people that have mapped out the plan to run the marathon. mean, you can buy books, entire books, will tell you exactly what to do on day one, day two. But what you’re saying a lot of people miss is integrating the whole, you know, of life. And I think in a lot of ways, you’re really just asking people to step back and you’re calling it what could go wrong. But what you’re really doing is saying, hey, you have to have a grasp of reality.

Kyle Austin Young (08:31.29)

Sure.

Kyle Austin Young (08:49.764)

I think you do have to have a grasp of reality. I think that when we consider these statistics that are floating around all the time, just how many people fail at their New Year’s resolutions, how this vast majority of mergers and acquisitions fail to create lasting value for shareholders, how many new businesses will ultimately fail in the first few years after their existence, we start to recognize that it’s because we haven’t stopped to consider the things that could go wrong. And I’ll demonstrate that with just a little bit of numbers. Let’s use that marathon example. There’s three things that have to go right. I need to eat, sleep, and train according to a certain regimen.

John Jantsch (08:51.307)

me

John Jantsch (08:57.139)

Mm-hmm. Right.

John Jantsch (09:13.763)

Mm-hmm.

Kyle Austin Young (09:19.14)

Well, let’s take some imaginary numbers and try to estimate how likely we are to accomplish each of those three things. Maybe we think it’s 70 % across the board. 70 % chance I’ll stick with the diet, 70 % chance I’ll sleep the way I’m supposed to, 70 % chance I’ll train the way I’m supposed to. What a lot of people do is they fall into a trap called averaging. If they feel good about the individual prerequisites, they feel good about the goal as a whole. That’s not actually logically sound, it’s not mathematically sound. What we have to do is multiply those numbers together to find our overall odds of success.

John Jantsch (09:45.261)

Yes.

Kyle Austin Young (09:47.204)

And if we do that, we find that even though we feel really good about each of these things, 70 % across the board, our overall odds of being ready on race day are only 34%. And that I believe explains a lot of the dysfunction in our world. Why are people failing at goals and wondering, how did this not go the way that I expected it to? I felt good about each individual step. Well, you averaged in your head. You didn’t take the time to understand what your overall odds were. And because of that, maybe you didn’t pay as much attention to your opportunity to change your odds as you could have. Maybe you didn’t get that grasp on reality exactly like what you said.

John Jantsch (10:14.926)

Thank

Kyle Austin Young (10:16.27)

and try to the odds in your favor.

John Jantsch (10:18.766)

Is there any, do you ever run the risk or do you find that people might, like if I sat down thought, oh, my odds of actually being prepared on race day is only in the 30 % range, is there any chance that I say, why bother?

Kyle Austin Young (10:32.538)

There could be, but if we’re taking the time to think negative and identify the bad outcomes that are dragging those odds down, then we can use our creativity and see if we can’t change those numbers, at least in how we understand them, to look like something that’s more optimistic. You if we are using our creativity to address the risk of bad weather when we need to train, or address the risk of injury, or address the risk of our schedule being sabotaged, then we can ultimately run the numbers again. And maybe by the time we’re done optimizing this plan,

John Jantsch (10:33.902)

Yeah

Kyle Austin Young (10:59.812)

we end up feeling like it’s 90 % across the board. That’s still not a 90 % chance of success, but I believe it’s in the 70s. It’s a lot better.

John Jantsch (11:05.166)

Yeah. So, so do you find that you have to help people reframe this idea of failure even?

Kyle Austin Young (11:14.426)

Give me an example of what you mean by that.

John Jantsch (11:16.844)

Well, I mean, in some ways you’re, as I listened to you talk about the steps, you’re, you’re, you’re not saying that’s failures of possibility, but that it’s part of the equation. and a lot of people, you know, would have, I think some people would, would struggle with that idea. I, I’m not saying what you’re talking about doesn’t make sense, but just the mindset that a lot of people have that might be hard to overcome.

Kyle Austin Young (11:41.37)

Sure.

Absolutely. Failure is going to be part of the equation. One of the things that I encourage people to consider in the book is the power of multiple attempts. If you’re chasing a goal that’s really unlikely, often one of the most reliable ways to ultimately succeed is to try more than one time. I tell the story of the miracle on ice in the first chapter of the book. I got to interview Jack O’Callaghan who played on that 1980 hockey team that beat the Soviet Union. And a lot of people consider that a miracle. It’s been called the greatest sporting event of the 20th century, I believe, by Sports Illustrated.

John Jantsch (11:57.518)

Right.

Kyle Austin Young (12:14.028)

And as an individual event, it was really miraculous. But when you recognize that over the course of this Olympic rivalry, the United States played the Soviets nine times and won two, that’s not that remarkable. Winning two times out of nine isn’t unheard of. So was it surprising that they won the game they won? Sure. But the odds told us that we would expect them to win some games. And that’s ultimately what they did. And what’s interesting is when I interviewed Jack, he told me that in the locker room before they went out to take the ice for that game,

John Jantsch (12:23.842)

Mm-hmm. Right.

John Jantsch (12:35.18)

Yeah.

Kyle Austin Young (12:42.244)

Coach Herb Brooks gives this speech and there’s a movie about it and the movie has some quotes that are really powerful. What Jack told me is he said he doesn’t remember the exact words that were spoken. But he says he remembers that when he left the locker room, they’re trudging down to take the ice. He says he remembers leaving with the idea that his coach believed if we played them 10 times, they might beat us nine times, but they’re not going to beat us tonight. And so there was an expectation that failure was going to be a part of that, but they had an opportunity for tonight to be the exception. And ultimately it was.

John Jantsch (13:10.446)

I remember vividly watching that in my dorm room in college. does this, like a marathon I would call a long-term goal, particularly for somebody who hasn’t run one, right? They should start early, right? Can this be applied to short-term decisions as well?

Kyle Austin Young (13:14.956)

Amazing. I missed it by a few years, but I’m jealous.

Kyle Austin Young (13:24.666)

Sure. Sure.

Kyle Austin Young (13:33.166)

absolutely. You know, in the context of me trying to get that job, I just did this as I headed into an interview. It was going to all take place in a day. When we have something that needs to go right, one of the best things we can do to help it go right is think about what could go wrong. Ultimately, that’s what’s dragging our probability down. If you think about flipping a coin, let’s say you need it to land on heads, you have a 50 % chance of success. Why? Why don’t you have a 100 % chance of success? Well, because it might land on tails, and there’s a 50 % chance of that happening. Now, I don’t know how to rig a coin to make it…

do what I want it to do. But in life, a lot of times we can rig it or we can re-rig it in our favor. We can try to take the risk out of the bad outcomes, bring those odds over to our side.

John Jantsch (14:11.448)

So if somebody hasn’t thought this way, what’s kind some of the first things you try to help people? And again, I don’t know if you actually consult on this or teach courses on this as well, but what are some of the first things you try to do to get people to start putting this way of thinking? Because I think a lot of times these things are just mindset. So what do you get them to start thinking this way? What are some of the first things?

Kyle Austin Young (14:32.784)

Well, in the book, I tell people that I think there are four paths to success. One of them is some people just get lucky. I tell the story of Norma Jean Doherty. She’s working at an aviation munitions factory in the war, and a photographer comes to take pictures for a military magazine to inspire the troops. He notices Norma Jean, thinks she’s really beautiful, says, can I take some pictures for you for magazines that don’t have anything to do with the military? And she said, sure. She ultimately finds a lot of success as a model and then goes on to star as an actress under the name Marilyn Monroe, has just this enormously successful career.

That is certainly a success story. Is it a success story we should reverse engineer though? If I meet a young woman who’s coming to me for training or coaching rather, can you tell me what I can do to become a successful Hollywood star? Would I say, well, the first thing you need to do is get a job at an aviation munitions factory and hope that someday a military photographer stops by and notices how pretty you are and says, can I take some pictures of you? No, that probably wouldn’t be a very reliable path to success. So some people succeed through luck. They succeed even though the odds are bad, simply because we expect unlikely events to happen sometimes.

Some people succeed, they don’t beat the odds, but they play them. We think about entrepreneurs, there are some really famous examples of people who heard that nine out of 10 businesses fail, and that was actually what inspired them to start 10 businesses or 15 businesses, was the belief that they were going to experience those predicted failures, but they would also experience the predicted successes. Some people succeed because they have advantages, they have areas of tremendous strength in their lives, and so they try to lean into those goals.

John Jantsch (15:41.314)

you

Kyle Austin Young (15:54.084)

That can often be something that’s really wise for us is asking the question, what are some goals that are pretty high probability goals for me right now that might bring bigger accomplishments within reach? One of the goals that I had for years was ultimately getting a book deal and hopefully getting a big advance and being able to publish that to a mass audience with a major publisher. At the time when I set that goal, it wasn’t really realistic for me, but I was able to pursue smaller goals that changed my odds. One of them was writing for major publications.

John Jantsch (16:01.42)

Mm-hmm.

Kyle Austin Young (16:21.04)

As you mentioned, I’ve written for sites like HBR, Fast Company, Psychology Today. But one of my favorite things and one of the reasons I was so excited to have the opportunity to come on is it’s an exciting full circle moment for me. When I first decided that I was going to try to write for some of these respected publications, get my voice out there and ultimately position myself for things like a book deal, the first site that took me was the Duct Tape Marketing Blog. It was in 2015. I remember I was in my grandmother’s house at the time. They were having a garage sale. I was helping out when I got the response. I couldn’t even tell you where I was sitting.

John Jantsch (16:31.63)

You

John Jantsch (16:42.292)

the

Kyle Austin Young (16:49.742)

and it was such an exciting thing. So it’s an honor to be with you here today. So that’s the third path of success is people making the most of areas where they have good odds. The fourth path is probability hacking, doing everything you can to tilt the odds in your favor.

John Jantsch (16:50.286)

you

John Jantsch (17:01.006)

So, you know, I was going to ask you about resilience. And then you kind of threw in that story about the entrepreneurs starting 10 businesses, but what, what connection do you think with the framework and just the whole mindset of resilience? What does it play?

Kyle Austin Young (17:17.774)

Well, it’s incredibly important if you’re going to especially be pursuing the path of repeated attempts. In the book, I tell the story of Thomas Edison. He’s in a race to try to get valuable patents surrounding the incandescent lamp. If he can get them, it’ll be something that’s transformational for his career. And what this race came down to is he and these other people were all trying to find a practical filament. They needed something that could glow hot enough to emit light without catching on fire and without snuffing out really quickly to the point where it wasn’t worth it. What Edison did that was different than these other people…

John Jantsch (17:23.0)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (17:29.709)

Mm-hmm.

Kyle Austin Young (17:47.376)

is he actually experimented with 6,000 different plant materials to find the one that worked best. He didn’t try to divine the right answer. He didn’t try to guess the right answer. The answer turned out to be, in his context, carbonized bamboo. And I don’t know about you. That would not have been my first guess. If you said, what are we going to use as a filament? I would have said, I bet it’s carbonized bamboo. That’s not where I would have started. It’s not where he started either. It took 6,000 attempts. But ultimately, he had a clear definition of success. He had a stopwatch, so to speak. And he was able to run more experiments than anyone else. And because of that,

John Jantsch (17:54.144)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (18:04.718)

the

Kyle Austin Young (18:15.364)

he found these unlikely answers. so resilience is a big part of that. Some of it comes from, we need to be confident that there is going to be a best answer out there. And in his case, it wasn’t, you know, it was comparative. He could be confident that one option out of the 6,000 would be the best out of the 6,000. And he liked his chance of creating a great product with a wider net when it came to ultimately trying to find the best filament than he did with somebody who’s only trying two or three things.

John Jantsch (18:27.982)

Thanks.

John Jantsch (18:41.526)

Yeah, and there’s obviously, I don’t know that it’s all true, but you hear these stories that people would ask him, gosh, aren’t you tired of failing so much? He said, no, I just have one more thing out of the way that I know is not the answer.

Kyle Austin Young (18:55.116)

He has a quote attributed to him that’s, to have a great idea, have a lot of them. And I think it’s that exact same mentality. It’s not about being the smartest person in the room necessarily. A lot of times it’s being the most generative. It’s being the person who’s the most prolific and who ultimately uncovers that unlikely good idea.

John Jantsch (18:58.936)

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (19:12.396)

Yeah. And, and, you know, there’s, there’s certainly a mentality out there. People want to, you know, take the easy path, get rich quick, you know, be famous, all the things that, people aspire to. And I don’t, you know, the, people that really get there, you know, they just show up and do the work every day for a long time. Sometimes.

Kyle Austin Young (19:29.614)

Well, it’s one of the dangers of reverse engineering, like I mentioned, you know, the Marilyn Monroe story, we kind of chuckle at that, but I think we’re doing similar things in our daily lives. We’ll find somebody who started a successful organization and turns out he drives a blue convertible. So I should buy a blue convertible because clearly that’s got to be playing a role in his success. What if he just got lucky? I’m not saying that they did, but we need to be really careful about what we reverse engineer because just because someone is seeing good results doesn’t mean that they got there through good decisions.

John Jantsch (19:31.874)

Yeah, yeah.

Right? Yeah.

John Jantsch (19:46.924)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (19:54.646)

Yeah. Well, and I think a lot of times we miss the 10 years before, before they blew up, right? Yeah, exactly. Well, Kyle, I appreciate you stopping by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Is there someplace you’d invite people to find out more about your work and to perhaps pick up success is a numbers game.

Kyle Austin Young (19:58.778)

Sure, yeah, that kind of quote that most overnight successes are 20 years in the making, sure.

Kyle Austin Young (20:14.0)

You can get a copy of the book pretty much anywhere, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, directly on the Penguin Random House website. Be honored if you did that. If you want to connect with me personally, I think we’ll probably put my website in the show notes, just kyleaustinyoung.com. But what I’d prefer you do, honestly, this was something that was just kind of an unexpected blessing of this journey, is I heard someone who was encouraging people to find them on LinkedIn, and I thought, that’s a strange thing to do. I’ll throw that idea out too. And that was many interviews ago, but it’s turned into one of just the best parts of this, is pretty much every day I wake up and someone has

John Jantsch (20:25.134)

Mm-hmm.

Kyle Austin Young (20:43.118)

sent me a message saying, I heard you here, I heard you there, can I ask you a question? It’s led to some really engaging conversations that I’ve really enjoyed, some fun opportunities for collaboration for me. So feel free to find me, Kyle Austin Young on LinkedIn. I’d love to hear from you.

John Jantsch (20:45.1)

Okay.

John Jantsch (20:56.618)

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

Kyle Austin Young (21:02.16)

That’d be great. Thanks.


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Marketing Chaos Ends With a Real System

Marketing Chaos Ends With a Real System written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch the full episode:

Episode Overview

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, host John Jantsch and Sara Nay, CEO of Duct Tape Marketing and author of Unchained: Breaking Free from Broken Marketing Models, discuss why traditional marketing feels chaotic and how installing a structured marketing operating system can drive clarity, consistency, accountability, and long‑term growth. Nay breaks down the seven core components of the system—from strategy and campaign design to AI integration, measurement, meeting rhythms, and optimization. They also explore the differences between this system-based approach and typical agency engagements, practical ways teams can implement these ideas, and how this structure increases business equity.

Guest Bio

Sara Nay is the Chief Executive Officer of Duct Tape Marketing, a leading authority in systematic marketing approaches for small and mid-sized businesses. She is also the author of Unchained: Breaking Free from Broken Marketing Models, a book focused on rethinking how businesses build and scale marketing with strategy, systems, and measurement. With deep experience in marketing operations and strategic growth, Sara helps organizations transform chaotic marketing into predictable, measurable engines of growth.

Key Takeaways

  • Marketing Feels Like a Moving Target Because Tactics Proliferate
    Traditional marketing often jumps from tool to tool without strategy, creating confusion rather than results.
  • A Marketing Operating System Provides Structure
    Like financial or business operating systems, a marketing OS installs strategy, processes, scorecards, and rhythms that make marketing predictable and accountable.
  • Seven Core Components of the Marketing Operating System
    • Strategy First Core
    • Campaign Builder
    • Workstream Engine
    • AI Marketing Hub
    • Scorecard & Signals Dashboard
    • Momentum Meeting
    • Quarterly Optimization
  • Strategy Before Tactics Is Non-Negotiable
    Creating a differentiated strategy rooted in ideal clients and core messaging informs everything that follows.
  • AI Enhances People, It Doesn’t Replace Strategy
    AI tools are most effective when informed by strategy and integrated into documented processes.
  • Measurement and Culture Shift Drive Accountability
    Dashboards and structured meetings cultivate team ownership and goal alignment.
  • System Equals Equity
    Marketing systems not only improve performance but also increase the value of the business.

Time‑Stamped Great Moments

  • 00:01 – Introduction to Today’s Topic
  • 03:05 – Traditional Agencies vs. a Marketing Operating System
  • 05:23 – Strategy First Core Explained
  • 08:25 – Campaign Builder: From Strategy to Action
  • 09:15 – Workstream Engine: Process, Roles, and SOPs
  • 12:13 – AI Marketing Hub: Step Four
  • 15:02 – Scorecard & Signals Dashboard
  • 17:10 – Momentum Meetings: Rhythm and Accountability
  • 20:04 – Quarterly Optimization: Bigger Picture Learning
  • 22:32 – Engagement Models With Duct Tape Marketing
  • 25:26 – How to Book a Call: Clear Next Step

Quotes Worth Sharing

“Marketing feels like a moving target because there are just more tactics now — strategy gets lost in the noise.”

“Strategy shouldn’t sit in a Google Drive folder; it should drive action and measurable outcomes.”

“If you don’t have a good process in place, it doesn’t matter if you use AI to replace a crappy process.”

“Momentum meetings aren’t about tasks completed — they’re about how those activities moved the needle toward goals.”

“A marketing operating system increases the value in your business and solves short‑term pains too.”

Call to Action

If this episode resonated with you and you want to explore building or optimizing a marketing operating system for your business, book a conversation with Sara here.

Curious Leaders Build Stronger, Smarter Teams

Curious Leaders Build Stronger, Smarter Teams written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch the full episode:
 

Debra ClaryEpisode Overview

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, John Jantsch interviews Dr. Debra Clary, a leadership strategist, narrative scientist, and author of The Curiosity Curve: A Leader’s Guide to Growth and Transformation Through Bold Questions. With more than 30 years of experience across Fortune 50 companies, Debra shares her insights into how cultivating curiosity can drive performance, culture, and innovation at every level of leadership.

About Dr. Debra Clary

Dr. Debra Clary is a narrative scientist, executive coach, and leadership strategist with decades of experience at top organizations including Coca-Cola, Jack Daniels, and Humana. She holds a doctorate in Leadership and Organization Development and is the author of The Curiosity Curve. She is the founder of the Curiosity Curve Assessment and a leading voice on curiosity-driven leadership. Visit her at DebraClary.com.

Key Takeaways

  • Curiosity in leadership is measurable and can be developed over time.
  • The most effective leaders ask bold, open-ended questions instead of providing answers.
  • Curiosity drives engagement and productivity—especially among millennials.
  • Leadership that promotes curiosity helps organizations adapt, innovate, and thrive.
  • Culture change starts at the top—curious leaders model the behavior they want to see.

Great Moments & Timestamps

  • 00:00 – Intro and Dr. Clary’s corporate leadership background
  • 01:14 – How stand-up comedy shaped her speaking and leadership
  • 03:01 – Why adults ask fewer questions than toddlers
  • 04:06 – MIT research linking curiosity to team performance
  • 07:05 – Restructuring meetings to foster curiosity
  • 12:34 – Millennials’ disengagement and how curiosity solves it
  • 14:21 – One question that changed a major executive decision
  • 16:53 – What sparked her deep research into curiosity
  • 19:11 – Practical curiosity-building habits for leaders

Notable Quotes

“Leadership is about playing the long game, not the short game.” – Dr. Debra Clary

“Curiosity is not just a mindset—it’s a muscle that can be measured, taught, and strengthened.” – Dr. Debra Clary

Resources & Links



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John Jantsch (00:00.866)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Dr. Debra Clary. She’s a leadership strategist, narrative scientist, researcher, and executive coach with more than three decades of experience leading and transforming organizations, especially fortune 50 companies, including Frito-Lay, Coca-Cola, Jack Daniels, and Humana. She holds a doctorate in leadership and organization development from the George Washington university. And we’re going to talk about her latest book.

the curiosity curve of leaders guide to growth and transformation through bold questions. So Deborah, welcome to the show.

Debra Clary (00:37.905)

Thank you, John, for having me.

John Jantsch (00:39.906)

I love to explore people’s words and people’s bios. So what does a narrative scientist do?

Debra Clary (00:46.461)

Storyteller. You like it?

John Jantsch (00:47.822)

Well, I do, but where’s the science in that?

Debra Clary (00:55.916)

Well, there’s science in telling a story. There’s actually a formula on how you’re able to connect with people.

John Jantsch (01:04.98)

So you’ve had a, I only read a bit of your bio, but did I see somewhere that you were an aspiring standup comedian?

Debra Clary (01:14.392)

I actually started right out of school being a standup comic and my father came to one of my shows and after the show he said, well, I want to talk to you about it. And I thought, well, he’s going to say, look, you’re in business school, why are you doing this? And he said to me, I love you, but you’re not that funny.

John Jantsch (01:15.647)

You

John Jantsch (01:32.312)

Alright.

John Jantsch (01:38.183)

Debra Clary (01:39.421)

which was true. But it was great training ground for to be able to get on my feet and to talk to large audiences.

John Jantsch (01:47.862)

Yeah, I picked up on that because I there seemed to be a bit of a trend in the speaker world in the consultant world of doing like improv and stand up. And so I wonder if there’s really a real tie to that actually being a great training skill instead of just something fun to do.

Debra Clary (01:58.637)

Yes.

Debra Clary (02:05.393)

Absolutely. You probably have heard of Second City out of Chicago, right? Well, Second City actually has a division that goes into organizations and teaches leaders how to think on your feet, how to build other people up. And when I was at my last role, we brought them in several times to help us.

John Jantsch (02:09.696)

Sure, sure.

John Jantsch (02:15.735)

yeah, I’ve seen that.

John Jantsch (02:24.91)

Yeah, think like half of Saturday Night Live’s cast comes out Second City. Yeah. So let’s get to the book. Curiosity is a word that actually got my attention because I’ve often said that that’s my superpower is that what’s really kept me in the game. I’ve been doing this for 30 years. So much has changed, all this new technology. And I always tell people, I’m just always curious about how stuff works.

Debra Clary (02:31.72)

Yeah, it’s a great training ground.

John Jantsch (02:53.196)

You talk about it as more of a mindset rather than necessarily something we’re just born with. Would that be fair to say?

Debra Clary (03:01.483)

Well, it’s actually both in the sense that we come into the world knowing nothing other than we’re hungry or we’re cold. And as toddlers, we ask 298 questions a day. This is based on work by neuroscience out of London. But by the time we’re adults, we might ask five questions a day. And that might be, where are we going to dinner? Are we eating out? Are we eating in? Those types of things. And the reason is that we are taught to be

in curious. We are taught that children are to be seen and not heard. You know, don’t open Pandora’s box, curiosity killed the cat, all of those things that we’re taught to be in curious. And then we go into the university and we get a degree and then we come out and we’re working in that field. And then we’re being paid for that expertise. And by the way, we have time constraints. And so all of those things add into like what happened to us.

John Jantsch (03:55.725)

Yeah, right.

John Jantsch (03:59.756)

Yeah, yeah. Well, so if you’re going to call it a skill, is it measurable?

Debra Clary (04:06.059)

Yes. So when we originally did our research, I had commissioned a team of researchers out of MIT to study one thing for me. And that was, what is the relatedness between leadership performance and curiosity? And they said, well, we’re going to have to go deeper on that. I said, let’s start with that hypothesis. And when they came back and said, there’s a direct correlation between a leader’s level of curiosity and the performance of their team.

Then we started going deeper and we learned that curiosity can be learned, it can be taught. And so we created the curiosity curve assessment. So we can actually measure the current state of an individual, a team or an organization’s level of curiosity, because we know it can be improved.

John Jantsch (04:54.776)

So one of the things, especially with leaders, even worse the higher you go in leadership, is that there tends to be a mindset, not all, but with some of like, I have to have all the answers. That’s why I’m here, right? They look to me to have all the answers, right or wrong. I think they take that approach. Is that one of the biggest hurdles to at least acting curious?

Debra Clary (05:20.895)

Yes. So it’s an outdated model where leaders have to have all the answers. You know, most leaders arrive there because they’ve probably come out of those roles and they know, they know what to, you know, they become an expert in that, but now they’re in a leadership role. And if we, when, somebody comes in and has a problem, we are prone to tell them what to do, right? That’s efficient. And by the way, we need to have all the answers, but the

John Jantsch (05:46.478)

Right, yep.

Debra Clary (05:50.627)

best leaders are those that focus on the individual and not the problem. And so you’re asking them a series of questions that leads them to understanding how they can solve it on their own. You’re building their confidence and you’re building their critical thinking skills. So leadership is about playing the long game, not the short game.

John Jantsch (06:09.836)

Yeah, I mean, the phrase that comes to mind to me is instead of just giving people to fish, right? You’re going to teach them to fish by just stepping back and saying, I don’t know, what would you do? I mean, can you start that simple?

Debra Clary (06:15.788)

Yeah, that’s it.

Debra Clary (06:23.67)

Well, I probably would say something like, well, tell me what you’ve been thinking about, right? And get them to have a conversation. And then things like, are there other problems that are similar to this that you’ve solved and what worked in that situation, right? Is helping them dig deeper and understanding that they can solve it or together you can solve it. But I’m not going to give you the answer because I don’t have all the answers.

John Jantsch (06:28.546)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (06:50.062)

Do you have or do you at least, obviously every business, every situation is maybe a little different, but particularly in kind of a like status type of meeting, do you have a formula for how you should restructure that?

Debra Clary (07:05.142)

Yeah, and I actually write about that in my book, John. And it’s one about, you you set the agenda. And when you get your team together, you say, these are the things we’re going to cover. Is there anything that’s not on here that we want to make sure we cover? So you’re leaving it open to what else needs to happen. The other thing is, you in those meetings, encourage people to ask questions and encourage people to challenge what’s been said. Like get really comfortable with being challenged.

That’s when you have a culture of curiosity.

John Jantsch (07:38.742)

I mean, does it kind of change, not just change the way that the meeting goes and the way that people act, but does it have the potential to actually change the entire culture at an organization?

Debra Clary (07:51.203)

Absolutely, absolutely. So culture and leadership is synonymous. So goes the leader, so goes the culture. And so the work that I do is mostly around the senior executives, know, the C-suite, because I recognize that when you make change at the top, then you can see greater change throughout the organization. So if you want a curious culture, the C-suite needs to be modeling it.

John Jantsch (08:04.91)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (08:10.958)

Sure, right.

John Jantsch (08:17.57)

What are some of the misconceptions? I’m sure that curiosity to some people sounds like a pretty soft subject. So what are some of the things you have to really fight against when you say, this is really the secret?

Debra Clary (08:30.816)

Yeah, so when I started that way as being skeptical myself, I had the hypothesis that curiosity might be missing in the workplace, but it was a hypothesis. And as a scientist, I need data. So I brought the data together. when I’m talking with CEOs, someone has recommended me to a CEO and same thing like curiosity, come on. And then I say, I thought the same thing, you know, and having spent four decades navigating complex systems,

John Jantsch (08:34.936)

Okay. Yeah.

Debra Clary (08:59.446)

Yeah, I kind of have that doubt too, but now we have the data. And so I take them through the data and then you can start to see like their eyes are lighting up and they’re like, they’re starting to make connections. So for me, you know, I move forward with data.

John Jantsch (09:18.35)

So I find that curiosity takes empathy, takes self-awareness, takes compassion. And a lot, I’m sure you also have leaders like, don’t have time for that.

Debra Clary (09:18.903)

Mm.

Debra Clary (09:32.298)

Absolutely. And I would add something to your list of attributes. There is one around forgiveness. You know, when I’m asking myself questions and it’s, some might start off like, wow, you should have known differently or you should have done something different. And then I say forgiveness and I’ll say, okay, what would I do now? Like what’s my next move in order to either correct it or to build on something.

John Jantsch (09:33.038)

John Jantsch (09:54.68)

So, do you have a path for, because I suspect that it’s going to be habit forming too, right? I mean, it has to just almost be a reflex in certain situations, start curious, right? So, is there a training path that, you know, in the next 30 days, if you do these things, you know, you’ll become, it’ll become more habit forming?

Debra Clary (10:17.217)

Yeah, absolutely. even curiosity is a muscle. We all have it, but we’ve stopped using it. Maybe like our abdomen, you know, our stomach muscles there, we’ve, we’ve stopped using them and you can get them back. so when I’m working with executive teams, I start with the curiosity assessment. I like to know where, what’s our starting point, right? And so there are four factors that we measure on the curiosity curve. And when we get an understanding of

at the individual level, but at the team level, that’s when we can make real progress. But it does start with the intention of we want a culture of curiosity because we know it drives performance. So we’re anchoring around performance and the intention of creating this type of culture.

John Jantsch (11:06.488)

So are there a handful of bold questions that every leader should be asking their teams right now? I mean, are there any specific examples?

Debra Clary (11:17.945)

Yeah, you know, it certainly depends on the situation, but for a generic reason, I love questions that are like, what’s not being said, right? What might we be missing here? Does anyone have a different point of view? You know, really creating an environment where people know I’m asking questions because your opinion matters. Your point of view matters to me.

John Jantsch (11:43.599)

Of course, the other end of that though is you have to be willing to accept that the opinion might actually be good, bad, or indifferent. You have to actually be open to not just encouraging people to make suggestions, but actually seriously considering them and maybe even taking action.

Debra Clary (11:51.115)

Absolutely.

Debra Clary (12:00.715)

Absolutely. In the best environments I’ve been in, when somebody brings up something, it might not be quite right, but then somebody builds on it and somebody else builds on it, just like an improv. And then you’ve now have the collective thinking of that team. That’s the beauty of someone coming up with something and you might challenge it, you might build on it, but definitely you’re creating the culture of curiosity.

John Jantsch (12:09.9)

Yeah, right.

John Jantsch (12:25.548)

Yeah, and we’ve probably all been in situations where leader, you know, is not open to those. so everybody just everybody just shuts up, right? It’s like, bother? I’ve got a great idea, but why bother? Right.

Debra Clary (12:34.617)

That’s right. Absolutely. Well, you might be familiar with last year, Gallup put out their engagement report in the history of measuring engagement. They’ve never seen it so low. And particularly the millennials who make up 35 % of the workforce and they’re from the age of 29 to 40, they’re 65 % disengaged.

John Jantsch (12:46.705)

wow.

Debra Clary (12:57.293)

Now, why is this a problem? Well, the obvious one is because they’re not being productive. But the another one is this is the group of people that we would be developing to go into senior roles in the next decade. And they’re signaling to us, we’re not interested. So we brought together a group of millennials to do a focus group because we wanted to get underneath what’s going on. And, you know, the scientists asked it in a better way than I’m going to do it. But I like, what’s your source of unhappiness?

John Jantsch (13:25.518)

Mm-hmm.

Debra Clary (13:26.253)

what they said surprised us. They said, my leader doesn’t know me and doesn’t care to know me. And so the follow-up questions were like, they don’t know you’re like what you do personally, or like you have a dog or you like to run marathons. They go, no, no, they don’t know what I can contribute to the problem, know, solving the problem. I have most of the information, but I’m least consulted. Now that can be solved by leaders shifting the way in which they interact with their teams.

John Jantsch (13:32.75)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (13:50.529)

Mm-hmm.

Debra Clary (13:56.258)

It’s about asking questions of what do you think we should do? Do you have any experience that’s parallel to solving this problem? I would love to hear what you have to say.

John Jantsch (13:56.364)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (14:07.34)

So I’m curious in your doing this work, has there been, of course, everybody wants the home run, right? Has there been like a single question that changed the outcome of an initiative that you’ve been a part

Debra Clary (14:21.461)

It was in an executive meeting and the organization, I was a part of this organization and they were moving into a new territory, a new discipline, if you will. So they were in an insurance company that now was going into actually delivering care. And the people that were in that room were used to the insurance company, a transactional company.

And we had one individual that was starting up this division who came from that discipline and they were, they were arguing about the way in which it could get done. And I realized they weren’t even using the same definition for what it meant. So I pause and I said, everyone, let’s take a second here. know, Brian, can you describe, define what your, what is the meaning of that word? And then I did for the other individual, they weren’t even talking about the same thing.

Now it’s just each of them were trying to present their case. So while, know, why we needed to invest in this or why we needed to pull back on this. And I realized we’re not even trying to solve the same problem. That was an, that was an, an opener. And that, you know, that comes for me, just I’m listening to what they’re saying and realizing they’re not, they’re not trying to solve the same problem.

John Jantsch (15:27.862)

You

John Jantsch (15:38.886)

Sometimes being the outsider is the only way you can actually hear that because you’re like, don’t know what you guys are talking about. So let’s flip that around then. Can you share maybe a moment when a lack of curiosity was clearly causing setbacks?

Debra Clary (15:46.349)

Yeah, absolutely.

Debra Clary (15:58.654)

And we see that every day in organizations in the sense that, you know, leaders feel, mean, first off, have, you know, huge revenue goals to hear clear objectives to hit, and they have time constraints on that. And what I see playing in and out every day is that leaders just go to do directing and not exploring.

John Jantsch (16:00.568)

Gosh.

Debra Clary (16:25.195)

and because they think it’s the most efficient way. And it probably is efficient in the short term, but not in the long term, right? And what happens is people begin to shut down and no longer offer opinions because it doesn’t matter anyway.

John Jantsch (16:41.528)

So was there a moment for you, Mayer, that you could describe where you decided it’s so clear curiosity is the missing piece? mean, was it the data that kind of flipped the switch for you?

Debra Clary (16:53.689)

Well, my hypothesis started in it was in a two week time period, three things happened to me that I think was like just a message coming to me to explore this. One was I was in Rome and I was sitting next to an Italian man and he said, you’re American. I go, yeah. He said, I got the best American joke for you. What do you get when you ask an American a question? You get an answer.

John Jantsch (17:15.756)

Ha ha.

Debra Clary (17:20.173)

Right now I was a polite American. nodded, but I didn’t get the joke. Right. Then I went back to work. sitting next to my CEO in the boardroom and he is watching and listening to someone present and he quietly says to me, do you think curiosity can be learned or is it innate? And at the end of that week, Gallup released their report around low engagement. And it was there that I just became.

John Jantsch (17:20.366)

You

Debra Clary (17:45.186)

you know, profoundly sad, but also clearer on, I think I want to go do more research on curiosity. And so I did a little bit of literature search, and then I realized there’s not enough data for me to actually go out into the world and tell people this is the greatest thing. This is, this will solve all your problems. And that’s where it came from. He is just in that short window of hearing what’s missing in America or what’s missing in organizations.

John Jantsch (18:13.144)

So I’m curious, is there a question that you maybe wake up and ask yourself every day that sort of starts your curiosity journey?

Debra Clary (18:23.437)

Well, I start off with this, just this notion of, you know, abundance flows to me, like great things are going to happen to me. I start off with that mindset because when I wake up, I’m typically negative. Something has hit me or something from yesterday and I have to say to myself, no, I have the mindset of, have this amazing opportunity to share with people the power of curiosity. And so that’s how I start my day with the mindset of I may have an opportunity to impact others.

John Jantsch (18:54.114)

So talking to leaders, is there a practice again? Because I’m sure what happens to a lot of them is you get going, you got this meeting, you’re just like the pace picks up all day long. Is there any kind of curiosity practice that every leader could adopt or should adopt that would really get them in the right frame of mind?

Debra Clary (19:11.245)

Yeah, it’s about, I have a couple of suggestions. One is, know, listen more than you talk. So that means you’re asking good questions and then you’re the key is you’re listening. The next thing is, is when somebody asks you a question, say, I don’t know, or I might know, but I’d love to have a conversation about it in the sense of what you’re inviting people in.

You’re saying I’m vulnerable, I don’t have all the answers, but together maybe we can explore this. And that’s where I begin with my leadership and when I’m working with my teams and then the teams that are in organizations.

John Jantsch (19:51.116)

Awesome. And the curiosity curve assessment is, I assume, is found on your website. And anybody can take that? Yeah.

Debra Clary (19:57.422)

You can find it on my website, as well as you can find it in my book, which is found on amazon.com. It’s called the curiosity curve.

John Jantsch (20:05.902)

Awesome. Well, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by. Is there any where else you’d invite people to connect with you or again, find out more about the resources you have to offer? I think it’s just deborahclary.com. Is that right?

Debra Clary (20:18.925)

DebraClary.com and on my website I have multiple articles that have been published in the last year all around the topic of curiosity and how curiosity will save us.

John Jantsch (20:28.942)

Well, there’s a banner for you. Again, Deborah, I appreciate you stopping by and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Debra Clary (20:36.929)

All right, thank you, John.


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AI and the Future of Marketing: Strategy, Human Value, and the CMO Role

AI and the Future of Marketing: Strategy, Human Value, and the CMO Role written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch the full episode: 

Peter BeneiEpisode Overview

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, host John Jantsch is joined by Peter Benei, marketing leader and co‑founder of AI Ready CMO. They explore how artificial intelligence is reshaping marketing beyond tools, why strategic thinking and human judgment will matter more than ever, and how marketers and organizations need to adapt. Peter shares his grounded perspective on what AI will replace, what it won’t, and how roles like CMO are evolving in an AI‑driven landscape.

Guest Bio

Peter Benei is a seasoned marketing strategist with over 20 years of experience serving as CMO for tech scale‑ups and startups. He co‑founded AI Ready CMO, a platform and newsletter helping marketing leaders adopt AI through strategic frameworks, case studies, and community learning. His approach focuses on practical adoption of AI, emphasizing strategy and human judgment over hype.

Key Takeaways

  • AI Is Not Just Another Tool: AI’s impact is broader than previous marketing innovations—it changes operational workflows and organizational models.
  • What AI Will Change and What It Won’t: Content production will be automated, but human oversight, taste, and strategic judgment remain crucial.
  • Evolving Roles: CMOs will function as orchestrators of AI-enhanced workflows. Routine content roles may be replaced or reshaped.
  • Education in the AI Era: Liberal arts degrees and soft skills could gain renewed value for critical thinking and creativity.
  • Tool Consolidation: Major platforms like Google and Microsoft may absorb many single-purpose AI tools. Custom tool-building is easier than ever.

Great Moments (Timestamped)

  • 00:38 — AI vs Past Marketing Innovations
  • 03:08 — Strategic vs Hype‑Driven AI Adoption
  • 06:50 — What Will Change in Marketing Production
  • 08:56 — Human Skills That Remain Vital
  • 11:18 — New Resource Requirements in Marketing
  • 12:17 — Hiring for Judgment and Taste
  • 17:22 — The CMO of the Future
  • 20:04 — Consolidation of AI Tools
  • 22:45 — Example: AI‑Built Content Repurposing App

Inspiring Quotes

“Production of marketing materials will either be fully automated or come with a minimal barrier to entry.”

“Human in the loop—our judgment, empathy, and taste—will matter for a couple of years at least.”

“A CMO’s role is becoming more like an orchestrator of workflows where people work together with AI.”

“Within a year or two, most standalone AI tools will be extinct or absorbed into major platforms.”

Resources

Subscribe to the daily newsletter at AIReadyCMO.com for actionable insights on AI in marketing.

Sponsored by:

Duct Tape Marketing Strategy First Certification: For consultants, agencies, and fractional CMOs ready to lead with strategy.
Join our 3-day live Duct Tape Marketing Certification and license the proven Strategy First system, tools, and frameworks used for 30 years.
Get 1:1 support and join a community of serious marketers.
Learn more at dtm.world/certify



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John Jantsch (00:01.442)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Peter Benei. He is a marketing leader and strategist with 20 plus years of experience as a CMO for tech scale-ups and startups. He co-founded AI Ready CMO, a platform and newsletter focused on helping marketing leaders adopt AI strategically, not just tool by tool, but through frameworks, case studies and community learning.

Peter Benei (00:01.57)

Thanks.

John Jantsch (00:30.39)

So guess what we’re going to talk about today? AI. Peter, welcome to the show.

Peter Benei (00:34.634)

Welcome and thanks for inviting me.

John Jantsch (00:38.028)

So given that you and I were just talking off air, you know, I’ve got 30 plus years, you’ve got 20 plus years, how in your mind has, does AI or the advent of AI different than say, websites and social media and search, you know, that kind of came along as tool? Would you say that it’s just another flavor or is it fundamentally different?

Peter Benei (00:43.341)

Yeah.

Peter Benei (01:04.052)

both, I guess. I had my own agency as well. Jesus, 20 years ago. and it was a social media agency. So at that time it was like, so Facebook business pages just got introduced and everyone was talking about the clue train manifesto markets are conversations and you know, this kind of stuff, social media, web two. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the market or Brian Solis.

John Jantsch (01:05.879)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (01:19.584)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (01:24.384)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Peter Benei (01:33.262)

Yeah, he was just about talking about the conversational prism and I don’t know. So everyone was talking about like, know, social media is a thing. And we had this agency, which was a social media agency. But again, that was a new thing. I don’t really think that the whole AI, whatever it is right now is…

John Jantsch (01:33.432)

Of course, yeah, Brian’s been on the show.

Peter Benei (02:02.4)

is new in a sense of tools and technology for marketers. These are just things that we need to learn and adapt to in general sense, like we did for, I don’t know, Facebook business pages at that time or, I don’t know, Squarespace websites. you can drag and drop websites again now. That’s interesting. Although I think the business model for agencies and marketing teams will be fundamentally changed

John Jantsch (02:22.53)

Yeah.

Peter Benei (02:32.184)

because of this new AI tool, AI capabilities, AI agent, whatever, AI. And I think that will be interesting to see. again, agencies also changed and marketing teams also changed 10, five, 20 years ago. So I think we just need to be familiar and open to adapt to this new change. So I don’t…

John Jantsch (03:00.31)

Well…

Peter Benei (03:01.078)

dramatize or strategize or panic around this. You just need to adapt.

John Jantsch (03:08.056)

Yeah, it’s funny. There was a period of time where you had social media marketing agencies and digital marketing agencies, right? It was just like, oh no, we’re this flavor. And now it’s just like, no, it’s all just marketing. Right. So what are the things you write about a lot? And, and I, you know, I’m a subscriber to your newsletter and I really, there are a lot of people out there writing about AI hype, you know, like look at what this thing could do. But I think you guys have take a very,

Peter Benei (03:12.206)

Hmm?

Peter Benei (03:19.693)

Yes.

Peter Benei (03:25.944)

Thank you.

John Jantsch (03:35.352)

Like you said, not necessarily a dramatic hype approach, a very almost stand back approach of saying, look, we have to remain strategic. Human beings have a role, but maybe it’s changed. And so I really appreciate that take. So let’s get in a little bit to the changing, like the AI plus strategy, you know, plus humans approach, because there’s certainly a lot of hand wringing right now around all these jobs that are going to be wiped out.

What are people going to do? So what do you, let’s just divide it. What do you think is going to go away that these tools actually do better than humans? And what do you think is going to actually stay and perhaps not for a long time be replaced by humans or by machines.

Peter Benei (04:05.486)

Thanks.

Peter Benei (04:21.922)

No, that’s a tempting and also interesting question. One thing that I want to reflect quickly, the focus on non-hype bullshit and sorry for calling that way, non-hype framing of this whole entire new trend was also personal choice of ours with the newsletter, but also a strategic choice as well.

Obviously everyone is hyping around this whole thing. we are personally, we are getting a little bit older, I guess. And we are just not interested in the, the, in the defocusing of our audiences. So we made the conscious decision to kind of like stand still and observe a little bit more with a strategic eye. So that’s one thing. Second.

John Jantsch (05:09.921)

Mm-hmm.

Peter Benei (05:18.232)

To your question, I would love to have an answer, but I’m not afraid to say that I don’t know. think during these times that are changing, it’s really hard to know what will happen. And we are just migrating, by the way, the news that are to another platform. And I had to reread the old stuff that we wrote. When I say old, like half a year ago.

John Jantsch (05:37.858)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (05:47.832)

All right.

Peter Benei (05:48.174)

And that will be a context to your answer, by the way. And I just read what we’d wrote like half a year ago and everything was so beginning at that stage still. Everything changed so fast within a couple of months. New tools came out, new concepts introduced to the public. And I’m not talking about like agents, like more like, know.

John Jantsch (06:04.375)

Mm-hmm.

Peter Benei (06:14.818)

working together with AI, human in the loop, and these kind of stuff. It’s so hard to predict because within this small time frame, everything has changed. I think what we can do to answer this question, and sorry for it, it takes a little bit longer, is that to nail down the basics that we think that it will be changing. And I think there are a couple of things that will change. And one that I’m…

almost 100 % sure it will change is that production of marketing materials and like marketing production in a sense, like content production, shall we say, will be either fully automated or it will not come with a high barrier of entry. It doesn’t have a high barrier of entry right now either, but it will have like a minimum barrier of entry with AI.

John Jantsch (06:54.614)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Peter Benei (07:14.254)

That means a lot for agencies, by the way, for marketing teams, because we create, mean, like 80 % of our work as marketers are creating content. Now, if the content creation is almost automated by AI, what do we do? Right? That’s the question. Now I don’t have the answer, but I’m sure that we won’t create that much and that amount of content within our workload and work time.

Second, AI is getting perfect or better, shall we say. It’s always, know, tomorrow’s AI is 10x better than today’s AI. But it’s still not perfect. And the reason why it’s not perfect is that it still needs the human, us, to course, supervise, review, edit, whatever. So I think the…

human in the loop or human in the addition working with the AI, it will matter for now, for a couple of years at least. And third, we need to think that if production is not our job anymore, but we still need it, then where do we need it? And I think that’s the answer for your question here, that we need to be able to form strategies.

And what is the strategy, by the way, understanding the client need with empathy and suggest process to achieve the goals. are goals and that’s it. Pretty much that’s the bare bones, simple strategy. How do we produce more? sorry. How do we produce better content? Because production wise, it will be automated, but it still has to be good. We need taste.

John Jantsch (08:56.45)

Right.

John Jantsch (09:09.698)

Right.

Peter Benei (09:11.106)

We need quality, we need judgment, we review supervision. And how do we work better with AI is that if we understand the workflows and the processes as a kind of like operator of the entire show. So I think strategy, like empathy, taste and operational efficiency or workflow knowledge should be…

and will be important for marketers. And I’m safe to say these.

John Jantsch (09:44.822)

Yeah, you, you. Well, and I think you raise a real, I think at least right now, one of the differentiators, the barrier to produce, to producing, quantity is gone. however, I think the barrier to producing quality is still a real differentiator.

Peter Benei (10:03.042)

Yeah. Yeah, I agree. agree. And it just, know, AI just like highlighted how not many of us have taste and how not many of us can produce great content and how most of the content that we’ve used so far anyway was, well, wouldn’t say garbage, but like, you know, mediocre. And I think it’s super important to…

to highlight that previously you needed resources to produce high quality content. So if you wanted to do a Super Bowl level advertising, you needed DDB or or or whoever big agency. If you wanted to do a global media campaign, you needed a media agency or an insane marketing budget to go with that.

John Jantsch (10:37.901)

Yes.

Peter Benei (11:02.638)

If you wanted to produce a content library of whatever you have, like 100 eBooks or shit, you need 10, 50, whatever, copywriters or marketers to do that. Similarly happening in other industries. So if you wanted to do the new John Wick movie, you needed a Hollywood studio and so on. can go on and on.

John Jantsch (11:18.338)

Thanks.

Peter Benei (11:33.184)

Now you don’t need these resources. You need a laptop and an idea and I don’t know, hundred dollars for API credits. And pretty much that’s it. That’s it. That’s all you need. And judgment and taste and strategic mindset. And, know, these kinds of stuff that are human in innate human values and abilities, which AI cannot produce.

John Jantsch (11:36.205)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (12:02.658)

Well, so that begs the question then, if we are going to still have humans involved, do we need different humans? A lot of us. If we built an organization, say, to produce stuff, you know, the copywriters, the graphic designers, that their whole output was the stuff, do we now need to hire for taste and for judgment and for brand intuition?

Peter Benei (12:17.602)

Mm-hmm.

Peter Benei (12:27.83)

I yes. I’m not the person who will tell you otherwise. And I’m also not the person who is in the business who helps you to do that. But if I would be in the business, I would immediately start some sort of like a training company or anything around that that helps people who have like basic skills through studies. Like, I don’t know.

John Jantsch (12:28.92)

the

Peter Benei (12:57.806)

creative arts or whatever, and upgrading them to be able to use those skills in a refined manner for multiple purposes. In our case, marketing. So yeah, people and companies should hire Prudence.

John Jantsch (12:59.661)

Right.

John Jantsch (13:13.496)

And I think I’ve actually seen on your website, aren’t you producing some courses or some master classes or something around those? Yeah, yeah, okay.

Peter Benei (13:21.302)

Yeah, we do some workshops. We do some workshops, but we are not a training company. So, so we didn’t within AI ready CMO, if you like pave to go to get a paid member, you obviously have access to some sort of like a workshop training program and some studies, but we are not a training.

John Jantsch (13:26.551)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (13:40.994)

Right, right. Yeah, okay. So, would you… If somebody was, I don’t know, maybe coming out of school now or maybe trying to change careers or something, are there some roles or functions that you would say, hey, you should spend your time up-leveling your skills in this area?

Peter Benei (13:42.924)

And I don’t want to be a training company.

Peter Benei (13:52.334)

Hmm?

Peter Benei (14:03.608)

So I’m 44. That will be a long shot, I’m 44 and many of my friends have kids who are like 15 or 10 or 15 or 20 sometimes. And they all talk about the same thing. I like full honesty.

John Jantsch (14:30.84)

Mm-hmm.

Peter Benei (14:33.39)

They talk about what will these kids will do in five to 10 years, what kind of careers they will pursue and so on and so on. They are families. So I usually talk with the dads, obviously, and they are talking about, I need to send my kid to a university or college or whatever. I live in Europe, so I don’t know, they send it to Vienna or something. And how…

How should I pick which university they should go in and so on and so on? How should I help them? And they are clueless. And usually the close to good answer that I see, and again, this is a personal opinion, so treat it as is, usually the ones that are sending their kids to some sort of like art, history,

John Jantsch (15:10.776)

Mm-hmm.

Right.

John Jantsch (15:31.512)

Mm-hmm.

Peter Benei (15:32.782)

Literally something around these like soft things, which we call soft skills or soft studies.

John Jantsch (15:37.376)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (15:41.495)

Mm-hmm.

Peter Benei (15:44.692)

I wouldn’t send my kid to engineering school right now. I wouldn’t send my kid to learn that become a developer or a lawyer or not even a doctor probably. I don’t think that these, I mean, these professions will exist obviously, but it will have a really huge competition that only the finest one will succeed or will be needed.

but if you have like a general arts degree or something around that, know usually, you know, treated as totally useless. I have one by the way. but still, so I studied history and sociology pretty much useless, I guess, but still. and I think these, these studies might be something that can be valuable because they, they teach you the basics of.

John Jantsch (16:22.922)

Right?

Peter Benei (16:43.64)

how to read, how to judge aesthetic things, and how to think critically, yes. How to think in context, so like historical context, let’s say. And I think these baseline knowledge skills, let’s say, I wouldn’t call them skills, but these things will be in, yes.

John Jantsch (16:49.89)

I to think critically.

John Jantsch (17:08.704)

It’s exposure really more than anything else, right? Yeah.

Peter Benei (17:11.746)

These will be inherently valuable than knowing the latest legal, whatever it is.

John Jantsch (17:14.274)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (17:19.308)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, which can be, yeah, queued up. How about CMOs? Are you, do you see that role going away? Do you see it, you know, changing inside of organizations to where it will not only look different, but it will have a different function?

Peter Benei (17:22.541)

Yes.

Peter Benei (17:38.232)

So we preach at AERA, the CMO is that the CMO role is becoming more like an orchestrator who is leading and creating these environments of workflows where people work together with AI and AI automation. And from the marketing org chart, like, know, junior, mid-manager, specialist.

John Jantsch (17:47.81)

Mm-hmm.

Peter Benei (18:07.128)

head off whatever and see. I do think that the CMO role will be the last one who will fall. Juniors probably will have the hardest time, especially, and also mid managers and specialists, because some of them need to pivot into something else because AI will just simply eat their field of expertise there.

but those people who are able to manage not just people, but workflows together. mixing the soft skills with, I wouldn’t say engineering level skills of workflow engineering, but more like, you know, operational level. I think these people will be valuable and these people will be the CMOs I think. But if you were a CMO and only created the marketing budget and.

John Jantsch (18:53.516)

Mm-hmm.

Peter Benei (19:06.306)

delegated the tasks and that’s it. Yeah, you probably will have a harder time in the upcoming years and you need to learn workflow efficiency, operational level execute and you know, these kinds of Or if you are on the other side, more like an operational person, you probably need to learn a little bit more soft skills and judgment and taste and you know, these kinds of stuff that we talked about so far.

John Jantsch (19:35.124)

So I want end on one kind of, there’s a bit of been a bit of a rant for me and I’m curious where you land on this. I think a lot of people were jumping at, my AI tool stack is these 17 tools because they all do one thing really well. And I think what I’ve said all along is I think the Googles and the Microsofts of the world are going to basically figure out how to build all of those best of class tools into their

Peter Benei (19:41.774)

Please.

Peter Benei (19:51.342)

Hmm.

Peter Benei (20:03.448)

Agree.

John Jantsch (20:04.696)

into their work tool that you buy for one price or that you’re already buying that now is just $10 more a month. And they will really kind of wipe out a lot of these one-off tools. I’m curious what you think of that.

Peter Benei (20:10.926)

I agree.

Peter Benei (20:18.094)

100%. I mean, this will be a hard argument because I 100 % agree with you. I can share you two examples. Two examples and one explanation on why people think that. I mean, especially, know, C level people and decision makers, they love throwing resources on problems. So yeah, they have like a tool.

John Jantsch (20:43.352)

Mm-hmm.

Peter Benei (20:48.174)

abundance, and they, and they buy shiny new tools every day. that’s fine. We understand it’s obviously not the right call. and even, even they don’t, they know it usually. and the two examples are, are simple ones. One, you actually mentioned off of air that you read the latest article that we, that we published. I mean, it’s not rocket science judge, just a Claude Cowork, came out.

John Jantsch (21:16.941)

Yes.

Peter Benei (21:18.282)

A funny thing, by the way, did Claude did it. mean, the Anthropic team did it with Claude code within half, one and a half a week. And no line of code were written by any engineers, all AI. So the learning there is that most of the tools will be irrelevant because startups

John Jantsch (21:29.848)

Mm.

John Jantsch (21:34.934)

Yes.

Peter Benei (21:45.674)

And AI tools just die every day because new tools will come out. Also don’t forget that the big ones, Google and the others, they have infinite resources, like infinite. They have infinite training data and AI lives on data. So just like one simple AI feature added to Google ads, let’s say.

We’ll probably kill 90 % of the AI tools out there right now overnight.

John Jantsch (22:20.972)

Well, they also, know, one thing people underestimate, they also have all the hardware.

Peter Benei (22:25.216)

And also the hardware. Well, in a sense business, that hardware doesn’t really matter that much, more like the data, but yeah, the hardware is important too. And the second thing is that, well, I’m really proud of it because it happened today. So sorry for sharing it with everyone right now on this podcast, but I built a content repurposing application. You literally, it does…

John Jantsch (22:26.584)

So it doesn’t cost them anything.

John Jantsch (22:35.49)

Yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (22:45.208)

You

Peter Benei (22:54.956)

A simple thing, you give an RSS feed to the application, in our case, our newsletter. We are only two people. So we don’t have social media managers and stuff. And because most of the content that we do is news-driven, so every day we publish something new. We cannot batch write stuff pre-time. So we only know the content on the same day.

and we need to share it on X and everywhere. And we spend a lot of time to repurposing this type of content, even if we use AI. So this app actually takes everything that we have, new posts, and repurpose it on different platforms. It self-learns, it does everything. It’s fully automated, it’s amazing. It has a UX, everything.

and I built it under an hour while I having breakfast at my kitchen table. I’m not kidding. And I don’t know how to code at all. Like I never coded a single line of code ever. And I will probably never will. Claude did it. just why prompting it. So the reason why I’m telling this, thing is that it’s so easy to build up something new now.

John Jantsch (23:58.336)

Yeah.

Peter Benei (24:21.134)

even for personal use that you probably end up and that’s like a wild guess and more like a futurism. But I might guess that within a year or two, we don’t really even have like small sasses for most companies. People just, you know, ramp up their own applications for their own computer, for their own personal use, for their own agency, for their own clients within an hour.

John Jantsch (24:21.186)

Yeah. Right.

Peter Benei (24:50.508)

works fine just for them.

John Jantsch (24:53.016)

Yes. Yes, yes.

Peter Benei (24:54.382)

So it’s interesting. So short answer to your question. mean, don’t really bother subscribing to 20-something AI tools. Probably 95 % of them will be extinct within a year or two and substitute by Gemini or other Google products or whatever. Or second answer, build your own.

John Jantsch (25:05.237)

Alright.

John Jantsch (25:21.632)

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I’m curious. And again, you don’t have to answer this. can end on this. But I suspect that Google will build a cowork clone, you know, because you think of all the people have all of their stuff on Google Drive, and not just to be able to say, here, go consume all this. You’ve got to believe that’s coming. Well, Peter, I appreciate you.

Peter Benei (25:31.853)

Yeah.

Peter Benei (25:41.25)

Yes. And by the way, it’s interesting. Sorry, last sentence. I have to rant about Microsoft a little. It’s so interesting that you have all the documents on SharePoints and all the knowledge documents and stuff, and copilot is still. So it’s so weird. Anyway, sorry.

John Jantsch (25:46.794)

No, yeah, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (26:01.909)

huh. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

No, no, no, it has that typical Microsoft feel will land there. So Peter, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by. Is there some place you’d invite people to find out more about AI ready CMO?

Peter Benei (26:12.909)

Yeah.

Peter Benei (26:17.719)

Always.

Peter Benei (26:22.84)

Well, you just said it, AIReadyCMO.com. It’s free to subscribe. We share daily updates, daily intelligence. Every day it lands the one thing that you need to know about AI in marketing in your email box. Simple.

John Jantsch (26:25.954)

Yep, awesome.

John Jantsch (26:36.748)

Yeah, it is a newsletter that I read every day. appreciate it, All right, great. Well, appreciate you stopping by and hopefully maybe one of these days we’ll run into you on the road.

Peter Benei (26:42.476)

Thank you.

Peter Benei (26:50.358)

and anytime. Thank you very much for inviting me.

John Jantsch (26:51.797)

us.


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The Marketing Operating System: Why Strategy Alone Isn’t Enough Anymore

The Marketing Operating System: Why Strategy Alone Isn’t Enough Anymore written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

How to Move From Random Acts of Marketing to a Scalable, Predictable Growth System

Table of Contents

Introduction: Strategy Isn’t the Problem

For years, we’ve said it: Marketing is a system.

Most business owners nod in agreement. But very few actually treat it like one.

Instead, what we often find is this: campaigns are built in isolation, tools get added reactively, teams stay busy — but results stay unpredictable.

The problem isn’t strategy. It’s the lack of a system to run that strategy.

When Marketing Lacks a System, Everything Feels Harder

If your marketing feels disorganized, reactive, or overly dependent on a few high-performers to hold it together, you’re not alone. That’s not a marketing problem. It’s a systems problem.

Here’s what it looks like in the wild:

  • Priorities change week to week
  • Campaigns launch at the last minute
  • Results are hard to explain or scale
  • Tools and platforms aren’t integrated
  • Leadership doesn’t know what to invest in next

Even successful businesses experience this behind the scenes. Growth may be happening, but it’s fragile. It depends on effort and intuition, not structure.

Why Strategy Alone Falls Short

Most businesses have some kind of strategy — or at least a slide deck with one.

But strategy doesn’t:

  • Set monthly and quarterly priorities
  • Assign ownership across people and teams
  • Decide what gets launched — and what doesn’t
  • Convert insight into repeatable execution

Without a system, strategy becomes a one-time conversation instead of an ongoing guide.

What Is a Marketing Operating System?

A Marketing Operating System (MOS) is not software. It’s not a campaign calendar. And it’s not a tech stack.

It’s a structured approach for running marketing — all year long.

A solid MOS answers five essential questions:

  1. What matters most right now?
  2. Who owns what?
  3. How does work flow?
  4. How do we measure progress?
  5. How do we decide what to change next?

When these questions are consistently answered, marketing stops being reactive and starts compounding.

Want to find out if the MOS is right for your business? Book a strategy call

The 5 Core Components of a Marketing Operating System

Let’s break down what a functional, scalable MOS actually includes.

1. Strategy First

Every strong system starts with a clear direction. That means defining:

  • Your ideal client
  • Your positioning and point of differentiation
  • A short list of strategic priorities
  • The complete customer journey

This becomes your filter. Without it, your team defaults to what’s urgent — not what’s important.

2. Campaign Planning & Prioritization

Campaigns shouldn’t be surprises.

An MOS creates a predictable campaign rhythm that:

  • Ties directly to strategy
  • Sequences campaigns intentionally
  • Aligns outcomes with business goals
  • Gets planned quarterly, not in a rush

This creates calm, not chaos.

3. Roles, Workflows & Operating Rhythm

Without clearly defined responsibilities and workflows, marketing turns into guesswork — or worse, heroic efforts.

A true operating system outlines:

  • Who owns which parts of the engine
  • How tasks move from idea to execution
  • Where decisions are made
  • How internal teams and external partners collaborate

With this in place, marketing becomes scalable and sustainable.

4. Measurement That Informs Decisions

A healthy MOS doesn’t track everything — it tracks the right things.

Focus on:

  • A handful of critical KPIs
  • Signals that guide smart decisions
  • Regular (but not obsessive) review cycles

The goal isn’t to prove activity — it’s to enable better investment of time, money, and energy.

5. A Consistent Leadership Cadence

Systems don’t run themselves. Someone has to steer.

A Marketing Operating System needs a clear owner who:

  • Sets priorities
  • Makes tradeoffs
  • Interprets metrics
  • Guides iteration and improvement

Without this leadership layer, systems degrade and decision fatigue creeps in.

Why AI Makes This More Urgent — Not Less

AI has revolutionized how fast we can create and execute marketing tactics.

But AI can’t tell you what should be done.

And without a system, it can actually make the chaos worse — more content, more ideas, more busy work.

Within a Marketing Operating System, AI becomes leverage.

Outside of one, it’s just noise.

What Changes When You Install a Marketing Operating System

When you commit to running marketing as a system, things get noticeably better:

  • Strategy gets activated — not just documented
  • Campaigns align to real business goals
  • Teams know what to do and why it matters
  • Tools and data connect into workflows
  • Leadership finally sees the full picture

You stop reacting and start building momentum.

The shift isn’t about doing more — it’s about doing the right things with less friction.

This Is a Leadership Conversation

If marketing still feels like a recurring problem to solve, this is your moment to reframe the question.

Don’t ask:
“What should we do next?”

Ask:
“How should marketing operate inside our business?”

That shift leads to structure.
Structure leads to momentum.
Momentum leads to sustainable growth.

Conclusion: Less Friction, More Momentum

Marketing doesn’t fail because people aren’t trying.

It fails because it wasn’t designed to function well in the first place.

Installing a Marketing Operating System won’t eliminate the work.

But it will eliminate unnecessary confusion, misalignment, and wasted energy.

And that’s what makes marketing a driver of growth — not a source of stress.

Want to find out if the MOS is right for your business? Book a strategy call

FAQs: Marketing Operating System for Small Business

Q: What exactly is a Marketing Operating System?
A: It’s a structured approach to running marketing across your business. It connects your strategy to daily execution, planning, measurement, and leadership rhythm.

Q: Do I need special software to build this?
A: No. This is about process, not platforms. Tools support the system, but they don’t create it.

Q: How long does it take to install a Marketing Operating System?
A: Most businesses can establish the foundation in 30–60 days with the right guidance and ownership.

Q: Is this just for big companies with large teams?
A: Absolutely not. In fact, smaller businesses benefit most — because it reduces the chaos and helps small teams do more with less.

Q: How does this work with AI tools like ChatGPT or Jasper?
A: AI can amplify your system — but only if you have one. A MOS gives you the strategic and operational clarity to use AI effectively, instead of just generating more content.

How to Build a Complete Marketing Strategy That Drives Results: The Duct Tape Marketing Engine Framework

How to Build a Complete Marketing Strategy That Drives Results: The Duct Tape Marketing Engine Framework written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

A Practical Guide to Building Your Brand, Attracting Ideal Customers, and Creating Remarkable Customer Experiences

Table of Contents

Introduction: Why Most Marketing Fails

Most small business marketing fails not because of a lack of effort, but because of a lack of alignment. Random tactics replace intentional strategy, and the result is wasted time, money, and momentum.

At Duct Tape Marketing, we fix that with a simple yet powerful framework: the Strategy Pyramid, anchored by three strategic elements—Brand, Growth, and Customer Experience (CX). These aren’t buzzwords. They’re the backbone of a complete, cohesive marketing system.

The Duct Tape Strategy Pyramid

What is it? A strategic framework that aligns your entire marketing effort with the full customer journey from awareness to advocacy.

The Three Strategic Layers:

  • Brand Strategy: Who you are, who you serve, what you stand for.
  • Growth Strategy: How you generate demand and convert it into revenue.
  • Customer Experience Strategy: How you create remarkable, repeatable experiences that turn buyers into raving fans.

To bring these to life, we build three engines in your Marketing Operating System (MOS):

  • Brand Engine
  • Growth Engine
  • CX Engine

These engines make strategy actionable.

Engine 1: Building a Value-Aligned Brand Engine

Your Brand Engine defines how your business shows up in the world. It’s not just about logos or color palettes (though those matter). It’s about values, messaging, tone, and emotional resonance.

Key Components:

  • Ideal Client Focus: Know who you’re for and who you’re not for.
  • Brand Positioning Statement: Clearly state the transformation you deliver: “We help [ideal client] get [core result] by [unique mechanism].”
  • Core Message Framework: Anchor your brand in story and proof.
  • Voice, Tone, and Visual Identity: Consistent, compelling, and aligned with your values.
  • Value-Aligned Personas: Build messages that resonate emotionally.

Deliverables:

  • Brand Guidelines
  • Messaging Framework
  • Visual Identity Refresh
  • Brand Style Board

Engine 2: Installing a Growth Engine That Converts

The Growth Engine is a repeatable system for attracting and converting value-aligned leads. The focus is on clarity and consistency—not chasing the latest tactic.

Key Components:

  • Lead Sources: SEO, referrals, partnerships, ads. Pick a primary channel.
  • Offers That Convert: Lead magnets, tripwires, consultations mapped to the buyer journey.
  • Conversion Paths: A defined path from awareness to sale (e.g., content → email → consult).
  • Follow-Up Systems: Email sequences, retargeting, outreach, automated, and human.
  • Measurement Dashboard: Track leads, CPL, conversion rates, and sales velocity.

Deliverables:

  • Offer Suite
  • Funnel Maps
  • Lead Nurture Sequences
  • Follow-Up SOPs

Engine 3: Delivering a Customer Experience Engine That Wows

Your CX Engine is how you deliver on your promises and turn customers into advocates. The first 100 days are critical—and we help you map that journey with purpose.

Key Stages of the CX Engine:

  • Welcome & Affirm – Reduce buyer’s remorse, reassure the decision.
  • Onboard & Activate – Get early wins, build confidence.
  • Deliver & Accomplish – Help them experience real results.
  • Deepen & Adopt – Provide ongoing support and insights.
  • Convert to Advocate – Capture reviews and referrals.
  • Sustain & Retain – Keep delivering value to reduce churn.

Supporting Tools:

  • First 100 Days Playbook
  • CX SOPs
  • Review and Referral System

Connecting the Engines to Campaign Execution

Once your engines are defined, campaigns become strategic execution, not isolated tactics.

The Campaign Builder System connects every campaign to:

  • A priority offer (from your Growth Engine)
  • A clear message (from your Brand Engine)
  • A remarkable delivery plan (from your CX Engine)

This is how you create marketing that works.

Action Plan: What We Could Build With You in the First 90 Days

If you’re a small business owner, you don’t need more marketing noise; you need a system that works. That’s what we install in your first 90 days.

Here’s what that looks like if we build it for you:

Days 1–30: Strategy First

  • Clarify your ideal client and what truly sets you apart
  • Define your core message and top 3 strategic priorities
  • Map the customer journey from first contact to advocacy

Days 31–60: Engine Builder Phase

  • Brand Engine: Establish positioning, tone, and a value-aligned messaging framework
  • Growth Engine: Identify primary lead channels, offers, and content assets
  • Customer Experience Engine: Design your first 100 days and review/referral system

Days 61–90: Campaign Design & Readiness

  • Select and define your priority offer(s)
  • Build a campaign plan tied to your engines
  • Prepare your content assets, calendar, and delivery system

By the end of 90 days, you have the roadmap for a complete Marketing Operating System: strategy-led, engine-driven, and ready to scale.

Ready to Stop Guessing and Start Growing?

If you’re tired of marketing that feels random and reactive, it’s time to install a system that actually works.

Let us build your Brand, Growth, and CX Engines—and turn your strategy into action.

Schedule a Discovery Call Today

We’ll walk you through how it works, what to expect, and whether it’s the right fit for your business.

FAQs: Answering Small Business Owners’ Top Questions

Q: I’ve tried marketing plans before—what makes this different?
A: Most plans are disjointed. Ours starts with strategy, then builds engines that create real momentum across your brand, lead generation, and customer experience.

Q: How long does it take to build all three engines?
A: Most businesses can define and activate their engines in 4–6 weeks, with early wins in the first 30 days.

Q: Do I need a big team to make this work?
A: Not at all. This system is built to scale with the resources you have today—whether you’re a solo owner or have a small marketing team.

Q: What if my messaging isn’t clear yet?
A: That’s exactly why we start with Brand Strategy. You’ll develop a clear positioning and message before you run another campaign.

Ready to Build Your Engines?

If you’re tired of disjointed marketing, the Duct Tape Marketing Engine Framework gives you a practical way to install a complete, aligned system that grows your business from strategy to execution.

Let’s build your brand, growth, and CX engines—one step at a time.

How to Capture Attention Without Clickbait

How to Capture Attention Without Clickbait written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch the full episode:

 

Carmine GalloEpisode Overview

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, host John Jantsch welcomes back bestselling author, keynote speaker, and communication expert Carmine Gallo to discuss his latest audio-original book, Viral Voices: From TED Talks to TikTok. Carmine shares powerful insights into how persuasive communication principles, rooted in ancient rhetoric and modern neuroscience, can help anyone break through the noise in today’s fast-paced digital world. Whether you’re a marketer, entrepreneur, or aspiring thought leader, this episode unpacks why storytelling, structure, and a strong hook are more essential than ever.

Guest Bio

Carmine Gallo is a renowned communication coach, author, and former journalist. As president of Gallo Communications Group, he helps business leaders, entrepreneurs, and changemakers craft compelling messages. His previous bestsellers include Talk Like TED and The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs. His latest project, Viral Voices, is an audio-first book produced with Macmillan Audio that explores the art of persuasion in the era of digital content. Carmine contributes to Forbes and is a frequent speaker on communication strategy.

Key Takeaways

  • Why Audio-Originals Matter: Carmine explains the power of creating a book specifically designed for audio, blending performance, storytelling, and neuroscience for a richer experience.
  • The Neuroscience of Attention: From movement on screen to sentence structure, learn what actually hooks attention based on how our brains are wired.
  • The Timeless Power of Storytelling: Discover how ancient principles from Aristotle’s three-act structure to the hero’s journey still shape today’s most engaging content.
  • AI vs. Human Creativity: Why AI struggles with creativity and why human imagination and emotional storytelling remain irreplaceable.
  • Practical Tips for Marketers: How to structure your message, craft irresistible hooks, and use contrast and simplicity to persuade effectively on any platform.

Great Moments in the Episode

  • (01:22) – Why Carmine chose to make Viral Voices an audio-first book
  • (03:41) – The JFK speech breakdown: what makes a phrase “sticky”
  • (04:43) – Why the rules of persuasion haven’t changed, even if the platforms have
  • (06:14) – The ancient origins and modern power of storytelling
  • (08:03) – How Mr. Beast and Sahil Bloom use Aristotle’s three-act structure
  • (10:29) – Nvidia’s origin story: How Jensen Huang hooks an audience
  • (12:21) – Why movement grabs attention and what marketers can learn from neuroscience
  • (16:48) – AI can’t think different: What makes human communication irreplaceable
  • (20:13) – Richard Branson’s balloon crash: Why failure makes a better story

Notable Quotes

“If you learn the ancient art of persuasion, you’ll be able to stand out in the digital world, whether it’s TikTok, a TED Talk, or PowerPoint.”

“AI optimizes for correct grammar. Humans optimize for meaning.”

Where to Listen

Viral Voices is available on Spotify and major audiobook platforms.

Connect with Carmine Gallo



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John Jantsch (00:00.856)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duck Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Carmine Gallo. He is an American author, communication coach, keynote speaker, and former journalist news anchor with decades of experience helping leaders communicate ideas that stick. He is the president of Gallo Communications Group and a contributor to places like Forbes Leadership Council, or channel, I should say.

He’s been on the show for some of his previous books. I think it was talk like Ted, at least. And today we’re going to talk about his newest book, Viral Voices from Ted Talks to TikTok, Persuasive Communication Skills for the Digital Age. So welcome, Carmen.

Carmine Gallo (00:29.527)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Carmine Gallo (00:43.19)

John, thank you. Congratulations on the success of your podcast and Duct Tape Marketing. Glad to see you’re still going strong since we last spoke about Talk Like Ted, which was a few years back.

John Jantsch (00:53.134)

Yeah. I thought you were going to say congratulations on like making it this long, you know, but, uh, but, uh, yeah, no, I’ve, I’ve, uh, I started my show in 2005. I just really thought it was going to be a cool medium. And, uh, so it, it, it is probably one of the longer running, you know, business marketing shows. So that’s why I’ve, you know, I people that I’ve had out on five, six times, you know, because they’ve written books, that many books over that period of time. So one of things I want to hit first is, um, this is an

Carmine Gallo (00:57.512)

Yeah.

Carmine Gallo (01:05.156)

Mm-mm.

John Jantsch (01:22.636)

what you’re calling an audio original book. And I think that’s kind of fascinating because it, know, most people just write a book and then the publisher says, well, let’s get that in a different format and make it audio. I will say that it’s come a long way. You know, now people are making them a little more performance based and their sound effects and things like that. But why’d you choose to go this route?

Carmine Gallo (01:47.16)

Isn’t it fascinating because you know me, I love to learn new things, experiment with new platforms. And so Viral Voices is what’s called an audiobook original that I wrote and produced in partnership with Macmillan Audio, which is a giant New York based publishing audiobook publisher. Unlike a traditional audiobook, which is in most cases a printed book read aloud,

John Jantsch (01:48.515)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (01:57.464)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (02:05.72)

Right, sure.

John Jantsch (02:14.167)

Mm-hmm.

Carmine Gallo (02:14.352)

And unlike what you do, which is an ongoing podcast, an audio original is 10 to 12 episodes on a specific topic written and produced entirely from scratch for the audio listener on Spotify and wherever people get their audio books. I think you’ll appreciate this, John, through exclusive interviews that I was able to conduct, but also using archived audio.

and archived speeches and history, I have the flexibility and the creativity to really dive deeper into advanced communication tactics like storytelling or vocal delivery or frankly the art and the science of persuasion. So for example, I was just thinking about this recently. I got to use archival sound of John F. Kennedy’s famous line in his inaugural speech, ask not

what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. Then we cut to neuroscientists who I interviewed, who explain why that line sticks. Why is it sticky? Why is it one of the most memorable lines of the 20th century? Because of things like contrast, placing two opposing ideas back to back, symmetry. Both parts of the line are exactly the same in terms of syllables. Things like

John Jantsch (03:24.558)

Yeah.

Carmine Gallo (03:41.248)

replacing long words with short words, et cetera. So how does that apply to today? Well, if you think about AI, for example, what is the most common expression that you’ve heard recently on AI? And I bet you’ve heard this before. AI won’t replace you. Someone who uses AI will. John, it’s the same sentence. That is an example of contrast.

John Jantsch (04:00.238)

I’ve said it. I’ve said it.

Yeah,

Carmine Gallo (04:11.029)

And so you’ve said it, I’ve said it. I’ve heard Mark Cuban say it. I’ve heard Sam Altman say it. But again, what’s fascinating to me about this whole journey that I’ve been on over the last couple of years is that you can learn, if you learn the ancient art of persuasion, the ancient art, you’ll be able to stand out in the digital world, whether it’s on TikTok or a Ted stage or using PowerPoint, again, digital.

Because the tools of communication have changed, the human brain has not. Understand the fundamental science behind persuasion and you’ll be able to adapt to any new platform.

John Jantsch (04:43.874)

Yes.

John Jantsch (04:50.978)

Yeah, I mean

let’s go how far you want to go back caveman Aristotle. mean, they’re they’re known for actually persuasion. And you know, as you said, I mean, that’s really what they were capable of doing. And I do think, especially people that came up in the digital age, I think that a lot of marketers are like, no, the tools are it it changes everything. And it really is true. mean, fundamentally, we’ve got to get somebody who has a need to trust us enough to give them give us their money. I mean, that’s it, right?

Carmine Gallo (05:20.203)

Okay, here’s something I’ll tell all the marketers today. What’s the buzzword in marketing today? Storytelling. Well, I interviewed Yuval Noah Harari, a historian and an author of one of the most famous non-fiction books in the world, Sapiens. And he said that storytelling was a fundamental component of how our species became the apex predator, the dominant species of the world.

John Jantsch (05:35.534)

Mm-hmm.

Carmine Gallo (05:48.482)

because we had the unique ability to tell stories that encourage a large group of people to cooperate with one another. So folks, you did not invent storytelling. This goes back hundreds of thousands of years. But what’s fascinating to me is when I get to interview influencers and content creators who may not even know all that history.

John Jantsch (05:58.242)

Yeah.

Carmine Gallo (06:14.093)

but they’re still using the same tactics of storytelling that we’ve known about through hundreds of thousands of years. That’s interesting to me.

John Jantsch (06:22.786)

Yeah, mean, storytelling evolved before there was a written language. So there was no way to write down a story. It was passed from person elder to the next person. And I think you’re absolutely 100 % right. What are some of the best communicators? I know you talk a lot about Obama in the book, I think. Yeah.

Carmine Gallo (06:47.521)

Yeah, a little, yeah. I do a little bit because I interviewed Obama’s former speech writer. So it’s more about the words, why they use certain words. Yeah.

John Jantsch (06:53.562)

Yeah, yeah, Yeah, so what do they do that’s sort of radically different than, you know, especially marketers who are just tying in the hot cup product?

Carmine Gallo (07:04.915)

right now, especially, it’s really important that not only do you study great communicators of the past, but also take a look at the content creators and the influencers and digital marketers who do seem to get it right. And they’re creating really interesting, creative, and compelling video. Mr. Beast. Mr. Beast is a perfect example.

John Jantsch (07:12.716)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (07:28.905)

Mr. Beast, mean.

Carmine Gallo (07:34.188)

Gary Vaynerchuk often talks about the importance of telling a story. But here’s the interesting part. If you go back throughout history, you’ll know, and you know this, but not everybody does, John. This whole idea of having a storytelling structure, storytelling structure like the three acts structure goes back to Aristotle, all famous Hollywood films, nearly all of them fall into the three act structure. And that is set up, conflict, resolution. Here’s the status quo.

John Jantsch (07:38.327)

Yeah.

Carmine Gallo (08:03.617)

Here’s the world in which the hero lives in the ordinary world. Here’s the problem they face and here’s how they are going to resolve the problem and everybody lives happily ever after. Well, I started interviewing people who had a former career like Sahil Bloom is one of the guests who I’ve interviewed. Sahil Bloom was a finance guy on Wall Street and then created a newsletter and now has quite a popular and strong following on Instagram.

where he explains these complex financial topics in ways that people can understand. So I said, me through the structure. Mr. Beast has a similar structure. Here’s the way the world exists today. Here’s the status quo. Here’s what you’ve been doing. Here’s why if you continue to do what you’ve been doing, you’re gonna fall behind. And here’s the solution that you’ve been searching for. That’s how you get people hooked on a video. Hooked, that’s the other word they use.

John Jantsch (08:59.682)

Yeah.

Carmine Gallo (09:01.707)

All good content creators use the word hook. How am I going to hook you? More often than not, they are talking about the three act structure. Often not even knowing that it’s the three act structure that goes back to Aristotle. So I think if you understand storytelling, not just the buzzword, you can’t just say, well, tell a story. No, be deliberate about what that means. What does it mean to tell a story? What does it mean to have a structure?

By following these simple structures, you’ll be able to adapt into almost any means, especially on social media. You can create a short form video that’s perfectly adapted to the three act structure. But you need to understand the structure first, which is why I have one episode that’s just on the three act structure. I have another episode that talks about scenes within three act structure. And I’ll use people like Jensen Huang.

Jensen Wong may not be his household name, but Nvidia sure is. He’s the CEO and founder of Nvidia. Listen to his interviews, John. It’s quite fascinating. He always talks about starting at Denny’s. When people ask him about Nvidia and the founding of Nvidia and how it was created, he doesn’t start by talking about, it’s the first $5 trillion company and here are all the chips that we make that power the AI world.

John Jantsch (10:03.918)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (10:13.358)

Mm.

Carmine Gallo (10:29.813)

Instead, he said, it all started at Denny’s, where me and a handful of, you know, and a couple of other friends met at the diner over pancakes and coffee. And we came up with this idea that eventually became Nvidia. But he repeats it in almost every interview. That to me is a hero’s journey. He’s not starting from the conclusion. He’s starting from the beginning. Where does the origin, the spark start? And you know this.

John Jantsch (10:47.043)

Yeah.

Carmine Gallo (10:59.955)

and all, most of the people listening to this know it better than average. If a story starts with humble beginnings, it’s more interesting on that arc. And that arc, by the way, at Nvidia has a lot of ups and downs too. And he takes people through this arc until today. That to me, that tells me he’s a storyteller. It makes people more interesting and engaging.

as marketers or speakers if you understand how to tell a powerful story.

John Jantsch (11:30.712)

So you mentioned the idea of a hook. And I think a lot of people use that in a lot of ways it’s become so important because attention is so fleeting. And so the idea of a hook is it’s like, give me three seconds. You got three seconds to tell me why I should listen to this, right? How, unfortunately that sometimes leads to clickbait and to, you know, to really abuse of that idea. So how do you use that effectively?

Carmine Gallo (11:44.099)

Mm-hmm.

Carmine Gallo (11:52.097)

Hmm? Sure.

Carmine Gallo (11:57.56)

First of all, it’s not new. I asked all these questions of neuroscientists and people who actually do a lot of brain research. None of this is new. John, do you know how nowadays people say movement? If you’re doing something on TikTok, it’ll stop the scroll. So you’ll have women putting on makeup while they’re talking, right? Yeah, they’re walking.

John Jantsch (11:59.618)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (12:05.453)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (12:15.896)

Sure.

or just even walking while they’re holding their camera, right? Yeah.

Carmine Gallo (12:21.613)

You’re walking talk, right. Well, guess what? John Medina, a famous molecular biologist who’s been studying the brain for some four decades told me, Carmine, that’s not surprising because movement captures your attention. It’s evolutionary. If something is moving, it could be a threat. Therefore, you focus on it. That’s the hook. They’re calling it a hook, but the point has always been the same.

John Jantsch (12:38.328)

Yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (12:45.058)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (12:49.122)

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Carmine Gallo (12:51.491)

People want to know almost immediately. Now, let’s separate this from the movement. I don’t want to get too confusing, but the hook is absolutely right. Whether it’s three seconds or seven seconds, there’s a lot of questions about that research as well. So don’t just say it’s three seconds or seven. No one really knows what it is, but it sounds good. Sort of like the 10,000, you know 10,000 steps.

John Jantsch (13:03.647)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (13:10.028)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (13:17.006)

Well, I’ve always… Right.

Carmine Gallo (13:21.123)

Doesn’t necessarily, it’s more like 7,300 steps, but 10,000 sounds better. Okay, so let’s go with three or seven seconds. I’ve talked to neuroscientists who say this is not surprising because within the first few seconds of meeting somebody new, the brain is asking questions. Who is this person? Should I trust this person, friend or foe? And the other question it’s asking is, should I consume energy listening?

John Jantsch (13:27.65)

me.

John Jantsch (13:37.57)

Yes. Yeah.

John Jantsch (13:45.154)

Yeah.

Carmine Gallo (13:50.862)

to this person. Of course, hook. That’s a good point. Look, I don’t care if you start within three seconds or seven seconds, but I think the point is well established. Grab people’s attention early. You’re not writing a mystery novel where you have to save the whodunit for the end. Grab people’s attention early.

John Jantsch (13:52.79)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (14:09.242)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Character development needs to be later. Right. You know, I’ve always said, cause a lot of times people say, how long should my video be? And I think this is the same, the true of the hook is your hook can be as long as it is not boring, as it is entertaining, as it is addressing the problem that I’m trying to fix. mean, so I think that’s how you have to look at it is people tune out cause they’re like, this isn’t for me.

Carmine Gallo (14:33.795)

Exactly. People don’t tune out because it’s an hour long podcast. They tune out because it’s boring. And I think you bring up a good point. I actually like podcasts like yours that are more like 20 minutes, because frankly, it is hard to keep people’s attention for more than 10 to 20 minutes. So you’d have to be really good, have an enormously compelling guest or topic.

John Jantsch (14:36.59)

Heck no. Right.

John Jantsch (14:47.714)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (14:53.55)

Yeah, that is.

Carmine Gallo (15:02.787)

But most people in general, and this is something else that’s well established in the science literature, will tune out of a presentation, no matter how interesting it is, after about 10 to 20 minutes. So again, why go on for an hour? If you’re giving a PowerPoint presentation to your boss, to a team, and they give you 45 minutes, don’t take 45 minutes. Deliver it in 15 minutes.

wait for the Q &A and if everybody gets done in 25 minutes, they’ll be much happier because they got some time back during their day.

John Jantsch (15:33.996)

Yeah, you’re hero. So from the neuroscience, were there any surprising insights that particularly are ones that most leaders overlook when they’re trying to be persuasive?

Carmine Gallo (15:48.17)

Yeah, there were so many. One of the reasons why I really enjoy doing this whole project is because I learned a lot of things I didn’t know. And I’m obsessed with this. I’ve been studying storytelling and communication skills and writing about it for more than 20 years, for about two decades now. I’m obsessed with it. I thought I knew a lot. There are a lot of things that I did not know, especially when it comes to the neuroscience of AI.

John Jantsch (15:49.742)

Come

John Jantsch (16:11.822)

you

Carmine Gallo (16:18.667)

And I think this is key. well, the reason why I didn’t know is because it is new. Most people don’t know this stuff. And if anyone ever tells you that they’re an AI expert and they know exactly how to crack the algorithm, don’t believe it. Don’t believe it. Because no one really does know. It changes every day. But the neuroscientists will tell you that here’s the interesting thing about AI.

John Jantsch (16:23.854)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (16:34.117)

Yeah. Well, it’s also changes every day too, so.

Carmine Gallo (16:48.291)

AI, as most of you know, most of your listeners know, does not have imagination. So set aside that whole argument about is it conscious? Is it sentient? Is it emotional? Is it human? No. No, they say. Most scientists, most neuroscientists, kind of, you know, they dismiss all that talk because they know what’s different. But here’s what they taught me.

John Jantsch (16:56.43)

you

John Jantsch (17:04.714)

Is it even intelligence? Right?

John Jantsch (17:14.946)

Yeah.

Carmine Gallo (17:18.527)

And here’s a great example. I have this in the Viral Voices audiobook. Did you know that if Steve Jobs had asked ChatGPT to come up with an ad campaign for Apple, it would not have written, think different, and then connect think different to real people like Albert Einstein and Nelson Mandela like the now famous Apple ad.

And so I asked some AI experts or people who study AI or work for chat, GBT and open AI, why? Why would it have not come up with something like Steve Jobs did? And they said, because that’s too creative. AI, here’s what I was told. AI optimizes for correct grammar. Humans optimize for meaning. So think different works.

John Jantsch (18:02.604)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (18:09.837)

Yeah.

Carmine Gallo (18:14.999)

precisely because it breaks the rules. And that catches people’s attention because people like rule breakers, like Steve Jobs. It’s really fascinating, John. But if you start delegating everything to AI and not using it simply as a great tool to speed up content creation, to analyze, to research, to help you improve, if you start delegating too much, you lose your authentic human voice.

John Jantsch (18:23.758)

Yeah.

Carmine Gallo (18:44.631)

And then everything becomes AI slop. You you’ve heard of that term, right? AI generated content. So I think to survive, to thrive, especially in marketing today, you’ve got to stand out. You’ve got to be distinct. How? Be uniquely human and celebrate and amplify your uniquely human voice.

John Jantsch (18:44.845)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (18:48.396)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (19:01.197)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (19:07.886)

So in these books, this is a terribly unfair question, but in these books where people do lot of interviews with people, I always like to say, who is your favorite or most enjoyable interview?

Carmine Gallo (19:18.519)

Yeah. Richard Branson. I have Richard Branson in this audio book too. Richard Branson loves storytelling and of my, and you know, he’s, he’s just a fun guy. He’s really down to earth for being a guy who’s worth billions of dollars and who created Virgin. But he told me the funniest story that I have in this audio book. And that’s what I liked about audio books. I could actually talk to people and you get to hear their voice, not just.

John Jantsch (19:22.496)

Okay.

John Jantsch (19:29.666)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (19:38.092)

Right, right.

John Jantsch (19:45.536)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Carmine Gallo (19:48.483)

printed quote. And so Richard Branson told me that, yeah, it’s very important to grab attention through the stories you tell. And he was talking about marketing and all that. And he said that when his, tried to, he was on a hot air balloon and he was trying to break the transatlantic record for crossing the Atlantic in a hot air balloon. And the first time it crashed, it crashed off the coast of Ireland. And it was, you know,

John Jantsch (19:56.43)

you

Carmine Gallo (20:13.858)

pretty dramatic. And so I’ve got some news footage, archival news footage from the scene. They almost lost their lives. I mean, it was pretty, it was very serious. But then Richard Branson, and only the way Branson can, said, actually it turned out to be a better story than if I had succeeded because we crashed into the Atlantic. And he goes, and if you take a look at the news footage, the last thing you see going down is a big hot air balloon with Virgin on it. And he said,

John Jantsch (20:17.495)

Mm.

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (20:30.606)

Sure.

John Jantsch (20:38.126)

Virgin.

Carmine Gallo (20:43.18)

Carmine, a good story is not always a straight success story. You need tension, you need the mistakes and failures along the way. Brilliant, brilliant, but he was looking at it from a marketing perspective, he said, it was a much better story.

John Jantsch (20:47.054)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (20:54.691)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (20:59.854)

Well, Carl, and I appreciate you stopping by the duct tape marketing podcast. Where would you invite people to connect with you, learn about your work and maybe even find a copy of Viral Voices?

Carmine Gallo (21:11.618)

It’s a viral voices will be available on Spotify and any place you get your podcast. And if you’d like to know more about me or simply contact me, if you can remember a good Italian name like Carmine Gallo, I’m very easy to find on the internet. You can go to carminegallo.com or connect with me on LinkedIn. I love that platform as well.

John Jantsch (21:23.265)

you

John Jantsch (21:30.42)

I remember my parents did not drink much, but if they drank, it was Gallo wine. Awesome. Well, well again, thanks for stopping by and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Carmine Gallo (21:36.226)

There’s a lot better wine these days, but I appreciate it. But I like my wine too.

Carmine Gallo (21:50.092)

You bet. Thanks, John.


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You Can’t Self-Care Your Way Out of a Toxic Workplace

You Can’t Self-Care Your Way Out of a Toxic Workplace written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch the full episode:

 

 

Amy LenekerEpisode Overview

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, John Jantsch interviews leadership consultant, speaker, and author Amy Leneker about her new book Cheers to Monday: The Surprisingly Simple Method to Lead and Live with Less Stress and More Joy. Amy shares her journey from burnout and chronic overwork to a leadership philosophy centered on stress transformation, joy strategy, and healthier workplace dynamics. Together they explore stress awareness, stress categorization, team culture, toxic positivity, work-life harmony, and practical leadership actions that can reduce stress and increase engagement and performance.

Guest Bio – Amy Leneker

Amy Leneker is a leadership consultant, keynote speaker, and author focused on helping leaders and organizations break free from chronic stress and create more meaningful, joyful work environments. After 25 years in leadership, including over a decade in the C-suite, Amy stepped away from traditional corporate life following a major burnout. She now guides leaders on how to recognize and transform stress and build cultures that support wellbeing and performance. Her forthcoming book, Cheers to Monday, offers a practical three-step framework to understand and solve work stress while fostering more joy at work and in life.

Key Takeaways

  • Recognize and Name Stress (00:58–02:40): Amy discusses how burnout forced her to realize she had normalized unsustainable work patterns. Awareness is the first step toward change.
  • Distinguish Between Eustress and Distress (02:08–03:02): Not all stress is harmful. Eustress can enhance performance, but distress—prolonged, unmanaged stress—undermines wellbeing and productivity.
  • Three-Step Stress Transformation Framework (02:53–03:39):
    • See it: Identify all stressors.
    • Sort it: Categorize stress into five actionable groups.
    • Solve it: Use a matrix to determine next steps and avoid analysis paralysis.
  • Teams Can Use the Framework Collectively (04:56–06:08): The approach is not limited to individuals or leaders. Teams and entire organizations can apply the method to improve shared dynamics.
  • Overcoming Resistance to Talking About Stress (07:00–07:29): Pushback often centers on time concerns and discomfort with emotional topics. Yet ignoring stress often continues until it hurts performance.
  • Joy Strategy vs. Toxic Positivity (08:03–08:53): True joy strategy is not forced positivity. Toxic positivity increases stress because it dismisses real challenges instead of addressing them constructively.
  • Culture and Systemic Stress (09:05–10:39): Organizational culture and systems can generate stress. Leaders and individuals must assess whether environments are conducive to wellbeing.
  • Trust as a Foundation for Change (10:48–11:27): Amy emphasizes that trust is essential before work on stress can be effective. Without trust, stress interventions do not work.
  • Role of HR and Individual Leaders (11:40–12:50): HR plays a critical role in addressing systemic issues like fairness, equity, harassment, and discrimination. However, stress cannot be outsourced to HR alone—it requires collective ownership.
  • One Practical Leader Action – Stress Ruler (13:05–13:53): Leaders can begin with a simple stress check: rating stress levels throughout the day on a scale of 0 to 10 to build self-awareness.
  • ROI of Reducing Stress (14:02–15:14): Reducing stress leads to measurable improvements. These include increased productivity, lower absenteeism, better engagement, and visible changes across the organization.
  • Generational Expectations of Work and Joy (15:23–17:12): Different generations have varied expectations of work and joy. Leaders should avoid assumptions and instead have open conversations with team members.
  • Work-Life Harmony vs. Balance (18:49–19:23): Amy prefers “work-life harmony,” which focuses on satisfaction across life domains rather than striving for a perfect but unrealistic balance.
  • Applicability to Small Businesses and Entrepreneurs (19:27–20:06): Stress and joy conversations apply universally. Whether in a corporate boardroom or a small business, the underlying dynamics are the same.

Great Moments (Time-Stamped)

  • 00:58 – Amy describes realizing she was a recovering workaholic only after burnout
  • 02:53 – The three steps of Amy’s stress transformation framework clearly explained
  • 05:39 – How teams can use the stress method together to improve dynamics
  • 08:31 – Distinguishing joy strategy from toxic positivity
  • 10:48 – Why trust must be addressed before stress can be reduced
  • 13:05 – The simple “stress ruler” tool any leader can start using immediately
  • 18:49 – How “work-life harmony” differs from traditional balance

Pulled Quotes

  • “You have to see it, sort it, and then solve it—because thinking alone will not get you out of analysis paralysis.”
  • “Stress is not all the same. Most people think it is, but once you categorize it, you can actually do something about it.”
  • “Toxic positivity does not just keep things where they are. It actually makes stress worse.”
  • “You cannot self-care your way out of a toxic work environment.”
  • “Trust is the foundation. If an organization is not willing to do work on trust, I decline the engagement.”
  • “Work-life harmony is not about perfect balance. It is about what feels satisfactory for you in this season of life.”

Where to Connect with Amy Leneker

  • Website: amyleneker.com
  • Book Release: Cheers to Monday releases March 24 and is available wherever books are sold.

 



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John Jantsch (00:01.187)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Amy Leneker. She is an optimistic, joy-seeking, recovering workaholic turned leadership consultant, speaker, and author. After 25 years of leadership, including more than a decade in C-suite, she left the traditional corporate life to help leaders and organizations break free from chronic stress and rediscover joy at work and life. So we’re going to talk about her.

New book called Cheers to Monday, the surprisingly simple method to lead and live with stress and more joy. Live with less stress. I probably shouldn’t leave that word out, should I? And more joy. So Amy, welcome to the show.

Amy Leneker (00:40.684)

Hahaha

Thanks for having me, it’s so good to see you.

John Jantsch (00:47.103)

So what does a recovering workaholic look like just so we can set the baseline? And maybe more importantly, when did you realize something’s gotta change?

Amy Leneker (00:58.284)

Yeah, thank you. So this is what a recovering workaholic looks like. And I didn’t realize it until I burnt out. And I burnt out in a really horrible, epic way. And that’s when I realized I had been working too much for too long. just that the way I was working wasn’t working. And so moving forward, I had to take a really different approach to my…

John Jantsch (01:01.272)

You

Amy Leneker (01:25.566)

the way I was balancing work and life was just, it was not sustainable. So now I call myself a recovering workaholic because I think that pull to overwork is one that so many people can relate to.

John Jantsch (01:38.617)

Well, and thus the title, right? The idea that some people really hate the thought of Monday, right? And so you’re kind of trying to change that. It’s funny, I remember a book a few years ago, I don’t know if, I don’t know really how big it was. I just remember the title stuck with me. It was called Stress for Success. And I think that, I think one of the core tenets of the book was if you didn’t have a little, you know, little stress in your life, you weren’t going to succeed. That’s a pretty common, whether it’s taught or not, that’s a pretty common conception, isn’t

Amy Leneker (01:44.426)

Yes!

Amy Leneker (01:54.792)

Amy Leneker (02:08.494)

Yes, and it’s true to a certain degree. So the problem is that there are good types of stress. It’s called eustress. It’s the kind of stress that makes you perform better. But that’s not always the kind of stress people are experiencing at work. This just happened to me recently where a leader had said almost what the premise of that book that you just described and said, well, stress is good. It’s good for me. It’s good for my team, but not when it moves into distress. That’s when our performance starts to go down.

So understanding the differences is really important.

John Jantsch (02:40.985)

So in Cheers to Money, you actually reveal a three-step method to transform stress. So you don’t have to give away the whole book, but maybe just kind of in your own words, what are the three steps?

Amy Leneker (02:53.058)

Sure, no, and I’d love to give it away. I think I’m a horrible businesswoman, but I’m a great coach.

John Jantsch (02:57.511)

Now, I just knew it would take a little too much time to do the whole three steps,

Amy Leneker (03:02.414)

Yeah, so really quickly you’ve got to see it. You’ve got to name everything contributing to stress at work. And then secondly, we sort it into five actionable categories. Most people think all work stress is the same, but it’s not. So we sort it into categories that you can actually do something with. And then in step three with solve, there is a matrix where depending on where your stressor is on that matrix, it gives you the next guiding step. So many folks just get stuck.

in overthinking or analysis paralysis. And so this is designed to take that away and to allow you to really.

John Jantsch (03:39.151)

So that first step, I think a lot of times people actually have trouble or don’t even realize the amount of stress they have in their life. There was a great, I always blow it, but there was a line in the Scarlet Letter that the main character, the terrible things that were going on in her life went away. And it was then that she realized, I didn’t realize the stress until it was removed. And then I felt like the unweighting.

Amy Leneker (04:07.531)

and

John Jantsch (04:09.241)

How do people actually dig in and find out what is causing stress?

Amy Leneker (04:13.718)

I think it’s really about the awareness and it’s about doing exactly what you just described of asking yourself those questions. The problem is that we are moving at a pace that is so fast right now, not just at work, but in the world that very few people, at least very few of the people I work with are taking the time to ask themselves that question. So it’s asking it of yourself. It’s creating time and space to do it on your team because the last thing we want to do is be surprised.

And I work with leaders all the time who are surprised by the sheer amount of stress that their teams have been carrying. And so to be able to figure that out before we’re in a crisis situation is ideal.

John Jantsch (04:56.343)

So let’s talk about teams. I know that we’ve been talking a little bit about leaders, but entire teams kind of feel that same stress. Could a group of people use this framework to, again, to say we could have a better team dynamic if we understood? And I know the short answer to that is yes, that they could.

Amy Leneker (05:23.363)

huh. Yeah.

John Jantsch (05:25.721)

How do you also give permission? Because I think a lot of times people just feel like, don’t want to admit I have this stress or I don’t want to admit I need help. So how do you use it in more of a group setting to get everybody to buy in?

Amy Leneker (05:39.254)

And it’s really one of my biggest hopes for the book. The way that it’s set up is that for each of the different ideas, there is an action item, whether you are a leader or an individual contributor, there’s an action if you’re on a team, and then there’s an action if you’re the entire organization. Because the challenge that I saw, not just in research, but in my own life, is that many leaders would read these books. And then leaders would go back into the team and try to do this thing, and the team had no idea what was happening, or they would push back against it.

So that’s exactly right. Someone take his library card away. So that’s not this book. This book is meant to be read by everyone because unfortunately stress is not an individual problem. It can’t be solved by one person doing something differently. It really is a group effort. And so that’s my biggest hope is that it’s not just about a person getting relief. It’s about entire organizations.

John Jantsch (06:08.687)

And they said, John read another book.

You

Amy Leneker (06:38.69)

feeling that relief of less stress and more joy.

John Jantsch (06:42.191)

So when you, and I think in your bio, I’m not sure if I read that point, but I you work with some very, very large companies, Fortune 100 type companies. What’s the most common pushback or resistance that you get when you come in and start talking about mental health and stress and joy?

Amy Leneker (07:00.066)

Well, it’s interesting. So there is, there’s two. So the biggest one is around time. We don’t have time. We don’t have time for this. The second one is around, it feels too touchy feely. I was working with a group of engineers recently. They’re not going to want to do any touchy feely stuff. Well, then you probably hired the wrong consultant first of all, but no, it actually went great. It was a great, it was a great thing. So what’s interesting to me though, is that so often I get calls when things are not going well.

And that’s true for most consultants. Nobody calls us just because they want to tell us the good news. just what we’re not. So usually by the time I’m brought in, stress is so high that it’s manifested in ways that are hurting the bottom line. It’s hurting what’s really important to the organization. And so those two main concern drivers are usually gone by the time that I’m.

John Jantsch (07:29.081)

Yeah. Sure.

We just want to just take it up one more notch, please.

John Jantsch (07:55.309)

So a great deal of your work is around this idea of a joy strategy to reduce stress.

Amy Leneker (08:00.578)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (08:03.289)

How does that differ from forced positivity?

Amy Leneker (08:07.242)

it is completely different. And I’m so glad that you asked because what we know, and we know this anecdotally, but I can actually back it up with data. led a national research study on the intersection of joy and stress in the modern workplace. And so we have data to back it up that toxic positivity grossly increases stress in organizations. so when, the hard thing,

John Jantsch (08:11.139)

you

Amy Leneker (08:31.926)

that I see with leaders. So many are well-intentioned, trying to do the right thing, but the toxic positivity, this forcing joy, this slap a smiley face sticker on it, it doesn’t just keep things where they are, it actually makes them worse. And so the two things are night and day, as far as I’m concerned and as far as what the research would say.

John Jantsch (08:53.967)

So, you know, most stress is probably caused and relieved by culture inside an organization. Would you say that’s a fairly accurate statement? So how does a workplace culture evolve, particularly if you’ve got employees that have been there a while, they’re pretty bought into this, it’s the way it is. Or maybe there’s even a fair amount of…

Amy Leneker (09:05.773)

Yes.

John Jantsch (09:21.071)

let’s say this gently, older generational leadership that says this is way it’s gonna be, how do you change, how do you evolve away from that hustle and burn?

Amy Leneker (09:30.989)

And I think that unfortunately the answer is not simple because I think sometimes the culture can change. There is actually a type of work stress called system stress, which is what you just described when the very systems that we operate within make our work harder. There’s also instances where it’s not going to change. And in those cases, that’s where as individuals, we have to do the cost benefit analysis of is this a place where I can be successful?

Can I be in this organ? Here’s a great example, John. So recently someone was telling me that they had landed their dream job. And she was describing how it was her dream job, but her boss didn’t listen to her. Her boss was shaming her in meetings. She was told she could take on this new project and then it was taken away from her. And I said, I’m a little confused because you say it’s your dream job, but everything you just described sounds like a nightmare to me.

John Jantsch (10:21.303)

Yeah

Amy Leneker (10:26.414)

And so even just that awareness of we name things one thing, but in reality, if there’s that much stress involved, it’s probably worth considering if it’s a good fit for you.

John Jantsch (10:39.343)

What do you, when you go into organizations, what have you found is the first thing that has to be repaired? I have an idea, but I’d love to hear your thought before somebody’s gonna accept, okay, yeah, we can make this change.

Amy Leneker (10:48.238)

Mm-hmm.

Amy Leneker (10:53.816)

Should we count to three and both say our answers to see if we have the right one? No, just kidding. So for me, it’s trust. Was that your guess? Yeah. When I work with organizations who are inviting me in, who want me to come work with them, if they’re not willing to do work on trust, then I decline the engagement because I cannot do work on stress if I can’t do work on trust. And organizations who don’t understand that, who aren’t willing to talk about that.

John Jantsch (10:55.887)

Okay, let’s go.

That’s what I was going to say! Ding ding ding ding ding!

Amy Leneker (11:22.42)

we’re not going to be a good match in terms of working together.

John Jantsch (11:27.535)

Where would this idea fit? mean, obviously most ideas like this have to come from the top, but what role would people operations or HR play in this?

Amy Leneker (11:40.303)

huge role and HR has a huge role, individuals also have a huge role and the only way it works is when everybody’s clear on what that role is. So we’ve done a lot of damage I believe in organizations where we’re telling people to take advantage of yoga on Wednesdays or leave early and get a massage. Like if self-care is a really good thing it’s not a stress strategy. You cannot self-care your way out of a toxic work environment and so to

John Jantsch (11:58.51)

you

Amy Leneker (12:07.979)

answer your question specifically about HR, there’s a huge role for HR in terms of is this a workplace that’s equitable? Is it fair? Are we ensuring we don’t have harassment, discrimination, retaliation, all of those things that create environments that you cannot unstress your way out of? And so I see HR as a really huge partner. I think some, and I say this because I’ve seen it happen, I think some go too far and try to delegate.

stress to HR. You can’t outsource it. You can’t hire me and outsource your stress. It really is an inside job. It’s the only way that it sticks. But HR is certainly a big piece of the puzzle.

John Jantsch (12:50.691)

So for somebody who’s listening to this, after they go buy your book, what’s one thing that you think, one practical change that a leader could say, okay, I’m gonna try this one thing and see what the impact is.

Amy Leneker (13:05.997)

Yeah. Yes, if they could only do one thing and they don’t even have to buy the book, though certainly again, terrible business woman. But if you only did one thing, it’s a really simple tool. Think of a stress ruler. So in your mind, picture a scale zero to 10 throughout the day, just check in how challenging is my stress.

And it’s just that simple, that little moment of awareness, whether you’re heading into a hard conversation or heading into a meeting with your team, just that moment of awareness where you can start to really understand where you are. You had asked earlier how I burn out. I would have no idea what my stress awareness was at that time. I had just tuned out to it. So if folks only did one thing, that’s what I would encourage them to do. Tune in and really figure out what that is for you.

John Jantsch (13:53.839)

So I’m sure in a sales conversation or when somebody’s inquiring about engaging your work, I’m sure the question of ROI comes up. so, A, how do you address that? Or B, do you actually have some statistics around retention and around productivity and around profitability?

Amy Leneker (14:02.893)

Yes.

Amy Leneker (14:14.455)

Yes, it comes up all the time. And I don’t know any consultants who don’t have to talk about what their ROI is. What usually happens the vast majority of time is I’m brought into an organization to work with a team, a specific team. Ideally, it’s the leadership team, because I love it when they go first, but that’s not often the case. But what happens inevitably is that three months down the road, six months down the road, folks are like, what’s going on? What’s happening to John’s team? What’s John doing over there?

And then suddenly I get a phone call from that person. So it usually is when other people in the organization see the tangible shift. This isn’t about showing up at work and being happy, though of course we want people to be happy. It’s about your work changes, your output changes, your absenteeism goes down, your productivity goes up. You actually start to see tangible changes.

when people are able to reengage, once that stress is lightened.

John Jantsch (15:14.169)

Talk a little bit about the generational differences. Certainly, I’m at the tail end of the baby boomers, so I hardly put myself quite in that group. But there was a kind hierarchical suck it up and your perk is you get paid for coming to work. That’s on one extreme. But then you certainly read a lot about Gen Z.

Amy Leneker (15:23.471)

Mm-hmm.

Amy Leneker (15:35.156)

Yeah. Uh-huh.

John Jantsch (15:43.535)

next generation, Gen AA, I guess we’re calling them, you know, that are really choosing work, not as a career, not as a job, but as, you know, as a part of their life fulfillment. So I would guess that to some degree, if you’re going to try to attract that workforce, this is an important topic, it?

Amy Leneker (16:04.077)

Yes, absolutely, because what you’re describing is really the culture of an organization. What are the expectations that I have? What are the behaviors that are in place? And we have different expectations. What I think is most important is to understand what we know from a systemic perspective. Like we can make generalizations about generations, but the most important thing leaders can do is to test those assumptions.

So rather than starting a new job and saying, John is of this generation, he must think this about joy, or he must think this about stress, using what we know from the data, using what we know from the research to inform those conversations, but then actually being curious, having enough trust between us that we can talk about that the way I’m doing something is actually causing you stress. So here’s a great example is that you can start to see differences in expectations of joy in generations.

So there are some who have more of an expectation that I am going to feel joyful at work. And others, I think about my dad. My dad never expected to feel joy, not just a day at work. He said to me, I never thought I would feel joy a minute at work. There was no expectation that I would ever feel joy at work. So again, not just a generational issue, but I can use that to inform conversations to see if that’s applying for other people too.

John Jantsch (17:12.559)

Yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (17:25.941)

So you’re only trying to help a billion people lead lives of stress. And I mean, that’s probably scratching the surface,

Amy Leneker (17:30.093)

Right, easy, Yes. Well, I hopefully helped you today so I can take one off that list. We’re gonna take off what?

John Jantsch (17:41.935)

So, all kidding aside, what does that future look

Amy Leneker (17:46.585)

What that looks like for me is that we are leading and living in a new way. This old compartmentalized way of thinking that how we are at work, we check ourselves, it’s not true because how we’re doing at work impacts how we’re doing at home and how we’re doing at home impacts how we’re doing at work. So my goal is that by creating healthier, happier workplaces, you’re not just making your work life better, you’re making your entire life better.

There was a recent study that showed 70 % of people who have gone through a recent divorce or a breakup attribute work stress as a key factor. And for Gen X, that number went up to 79. 79 % of people say that their work was a key factor in a divorce or a breakup. So we’ve got to do something different, not just for work, but for our families and our communities.

John Jantsch (18:43.577)

Well, that’s interesting because obviously there’s an entire body of work out there about this idea of work-life balance. But are you suggesting that a lot of people get it backwards?

Amy Leneker (18:49.954)

Yes.

Amy Leneker (18:54.145)

I am. And I have a training that is called work-life harmony, not balance. Because I think, especially for women, I think we’ve set ourselves up to fail. There is no way to achieve work-life balance. It just ends up in shame and blame and guilt and judgment. Work-life harmony is really different. Work-life harmony is how do I take these pieces of my life and put them in a way that’s going to be uniquely satisfactory to where I am in this season of my life.

John Jantsch (19:23.001)

Probably to date because your background is with larger corporations. We’ve talked a lot to that audience, I think. A lot of my listeners are entrepreneurs, very small businesses. How would you say that this relates to that?

Amy Leneker (19:27.108)

Mm-hmm.

Amy Leneker (19:37.123)

The skills are exactly the same. They are exactly the same. Whether you are in a boardroom at work or whether you are at happy hour with a friend or at the dinner table with your family, it’s the same conversation. The same conversation of where are we now? Where do we want to be? And is there a gap? Is there a gap in our stress? Is there a gap in the joy? And if there is, and I don’t, I’ve not yet participated in a conversation where there hasn’t been. I’m sure they’re out there. I’m sure, I’m sure they’re there somewhere.

John Jantsch (20:03.714)

you

Amy Leneker (20:06.735)

But if there’s a gap, then what are we going to do? Let’s come up with an agreement. Let’s come up with our plan of how we’re going to be very thoughtfully and intentionally doing something different. And in New Year’s a great time for these conversations. think there’s just something about when the calendar shifts that we have an opportunity to reflect on the old way versus a new way.

John Jantsch (20:28.269)

that you get to say we hired a new consultant and it’s her fault that we’re going through this now okay so let’s just let’s just get through it

Amy Leneker (20:30.863)

That’s true. Yes. Well, it’s funny you said that because I actually tell leaders to do that all the time. Leaders will say to me, you want me to ask my team if they’re stressed? I’m like, blame me. Say that you watch this podcast or you listen to this training. Blame me. Say that it’s weird. Say that it’s wacky. But I promise you, once you put that question out there, the data you get back is priceless.

John Jantsch (20:59.823)

So Amy, I appreciate you stopping by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Where would you invite people to connect with you, find out about your work, and obviously discover Cheers to Monday?

Amy Leneker (21:09.667)

Thank you, amyleniker.com. The book comes out March 24th, but it’s available everywhere. Amyleniker.com is the best way.

John Jantsch (21:17.775)

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

Amy Leneker (21:22.595)

Thanks, John.

John Jantsch (21:27.341)

Oops.


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6 Marketing Trends You Need to Focus on in 2026

6 Marketing Trends You Need to Focus on in 2026 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch the full episode:

john jantsch (1)Episode Overview

In this solo episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, host John Jantsch shares six marketing trends he believes will shape 2026. Rather than speculative predictions, John focuses on developments that are already in motion and gaining momentum. He offers practical advice for businesses—especially local businesses—on how to leverage these trends for growth and visibility.

About the Host

John Jantsch is a marketing consultant, author, and creator of Duct Tape Marketing. With decades of experience helping small businesses grow, John is known for breaking down complex marketing concepts into actionable strategies. He hosts the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast to share insights, trends, and real-world advice for business owners and marketers.

Key Takeaways & Timestamped Highlights

00:00 – Introduction to the 2026 Trends

John sets expectations: these are not radical predictions, but important trends gaining traction that marketers should be preparing for.

01:30 – Trend #1: The Local Advantage Gets Louder

Local SEO and Google Business Profiles remain critical for local businesses. John emphasizes using your profile as a publishing platform—not just a directory listing—to enhance visibility in local search results. Ensure images, services, posts, reviews, and engagement are optimized. Local directories beyond Google can also influence local search signals.

03:48 – Trend #2: Real Is the New Viral

Authenticity wins. AI-generated content increases noise, but real, human stories, behind-the-scenes content, and genuine client experiences cut through the clutter. Avoid stock photos and generic messaging; share what only you can share.

06:13 – Trend #3: Mischief as a Marketing Strategy

Creative, unexpected, and offline experiences can generate buzz. Think handwritten notes, spontaneous events, unconventional collaborations, or local street team activities. These experiences fuel word-of-mouth and online amplification.

07:43 – Trend #4: Retention Is the New Acquisition

Retention and lifecycle marketing unlock profit. Instead of allocating most budget to new customer acquisition, prioritize onboarding, upsells, referrals, and reactivation. Loyal customers are a key source of sustainable revenue.

10:11 – Trend #5: The Rise of Trust Brokers

Move beyond big influencers. Micro-influencers and niche creators—trust brokers—hold sway within tightly engaged communities. Build long-term, reciprocal relationships rather than one-off sponsored posts.

11:30 – Trend #6: Be the Answer

Search is evolving from keyword ranking to fulfilling user intent. Produce content that genuinely answers questions, solves problems, and assists your ideal customer. Useful content attracts engaged visitors rather than fleeting traffic.

Memorable Quotes from the Episode

“If everything from your organization starts to sound like it came from a robot, you’re going to have trouble standing out.”

“Retention isn’t just a marketing technique, it’s where the real money hides in most businesses.”

“Be the answer. Give people content that actually helps them solve problems.”

Actionable Strategies From the Episode

  • Audit and update your Google Business Profile this week—treat it as an active content channel.
  • Commit to publishing at least one piece of authentic, behind-the-scenes content weekly.
  • Brainstorm one unexpected offline marketing activity each quarter to spark word-of-mouth.
  • Evaluate your customer journey—identify retention opportunities and lifecycle touchpoints.
  • Identify 3–5 niche creators aligned with your audience and develop partnership ideas.
  • Create content that answers real customer questions rather than chasing search algorithms.

Connect with John Jantsch

Visit the Duct Tape Marketing website for additional resources, tools, and episode archives. Follow John on LinkedIn for daily insights into marketing strategy and trends.