Monthly Archives: May 2022

Weekend Favs May 28

Weekend Favs May 28 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.

I don’t go into depth about the finds, but I encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one that I took out there on the road.

  • Keyword Insights AI – is a fast and easy way to discover precisely what people are looking for online. Helping you to analyze the popularity and opportunity of keywords that are relevant to your business.
  • Community CXL – Marketing can be a difficult field to get into and one that is constantly changing. CXL helps new and expert marketers learn on the job with their community-driven education platform.
  • Uprise – Personalized online wealth management. Uprise recommends the best financial options for you based on your personal financial goals (credit cards, investment opportunities, loans, benefits) and helps to keep you on track with real human experts reviewing your portfolio.

These are my weekend favs; I would love to hear about some of yours – Tweet me @ducttape

How To Create Powerful, Uncopyable Experiences For Your Target Customer

How To Create Powerful, Uncopyable Experiences For Your Target Customer written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Steve Miller

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Steve Miller. Meetings & Conventions Magazine calls Steve Miller the Idea Man for his unconventional, edgy, no-spin approach to marketing and branding. He is the author of the Amazon #1 bestseller, “UNCOPYABLE: How to Create an Unfair Advantage Over Your Competition.” Steve’s speaking and consulting clients have ranged from entrepreneurs to Fortune 100 corporations, including Proctor & Gamble, Greystar Real Estate, Caterpillar, Boeing Airplane, Starbucks, Philips Electronics, and the prestigious TED Conference. We’re talking about his latest book — Stealing Genuis: The Seven Levels of Adaptive Innovation.

Key Takeaway:

Improvement is not innovation and innovation is essential if your aim is to survive in today’s business environment. Fixating on improvement in today’s world is a dangerous path—one that ultimately leads to commoditization and irrelevance. In this episode, I talk with author, Steve Miller, about innovating in today’s business world by creating powerful, uncopyable experiences for your target customer.

Questions I ask Steve Miller:

  • [2:34] What does ‘Stealing Genuis’ mean?
  • [6:29] What is adaptive innovation?
  • [9:39] How do you advise people?
  • [14:43] What are some of the ways to know if something innovative is going to be a big risk and not turn off customers?
  • [16:23] Do you have a couple of examples of companies that you think are just routinely good at innovation?
  • [19:06] Where can more people find out about you and your work?

More About Jack McGuinness:

Take The Marketing Assessment:

Like this show? Click on over and give us a review on iTunes, please!

John Jantsch (00:00): This episode of the duct tape marketing podcast is brought to you by the female startup club, hosted by Doone Roison, and brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network. If you’re looking for a new podcast, the female startup club shares tips, tactics and strategies from the world’s most successful female founders, entrepreneurs, and women in business to inspire you to take action and get what you want out of your career. One of my favorite episodes, who should be your first hire what’s your funding plan, Dr. Lisa Cravin shares her top advice from building spotlight oral. Listen to the female startup club, wherever you get your podcasts.

John Jantsch (00:49): Hello, and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch, my guest today’s Steve Miller meetings and conventions magazines calls him the idea, man, for his unconventional edgy, no spin approach to marketing and branding. He’s the author of the Amazon. Number one best seller UN copyable. How to create an unfair advantage over your competition. He speaks in, uh, his speaking and consulting clients have ranged from entrepreneurs to fortune 100 corporations, including Proctor and gamble, gray star, real estate, caterpillar, Boeing, airplane, Starbucks, Phillips electronics, and the prestigious Ted conference. Today. We’re gonna talk about his latest book, stealing genius, the seven levels of adaptive innovation. So

Steve Miller (01:38): God, thank you for that. When having me on to talk about this, this is great. I, you know, I mean, I think I’m pretty sure no, this is how authors work, right. But my book went to number one, which was for a brief period of time. okay. You and I both on top of it again sure. That I knocked you off the best seller list for like two or three days, you know, then you immediately just jumped right back.

John Jantsch (02:07): Well, that is good to know. And then listeners won’t won’t know this, but this is our second attempt at this interview because we had a technology glitch. And so Steve was kind of kind enough to come back. There’s I, and, and I, you know, if you were to listen to the other recording, just know that it would not be the exact same thing. I, I suspect because I never know what a questions I’m gonna ask. And I know Steve, has you

Steve Miller (02:29): No idea what Steve has no idea. I,

John Jantsch (02:34): So, so I do wanna start by unpacking the, just the ti the words or the, that you use in the title. So in two cases, the first one, stealing genius, maybe give us a definition of, of that

Steve Miller (02:45): Going well. This if, to try to unwrap it as quickly as possible that the Genesis of this is that too often, businesses doesn’t matter what size business you could be, a, a single person, entrepreneur, you know, or, you know, a fortune 500 company too often. They get fall into the trap of paying too much attention to the competition, too much attention to the world within their world. Okay. And as, as such, you see an awful lot of dare. I say, incestuous behavior among companies, you know, they copy each other. They might try to improve upon somebody else’s idea, but they kind, that’s kind of how they come up with their future plans for, oh, we’re just, we’re gonna get better than the competition. We’re gonna get better than the competition. Well, many years ago, my father, Ralph Miller and his cohort and crime bill Le of li jet, they got together and came up with this concept that they, they deemed the eight track tape player.

Steve Miller (03:54): Okay. So yes, my dad was part of that world. now the reason I bring that up is because while they were planning on building this product, ultimately after a lot of, of starts and stops and stuff like that in various locations, they ultimately ended up in Japan trying to build this product over there. Now this is back in the sixties. And when you think of the, when you think of made in Japan, back in the sixties, for the most part, it was kind, you know, they were known for those little umbrella straws, you know, things that would go into your drinks, you know, it would open and close. And they, and there was an American consultant who got in with Toyota and his name was w Edwards, ding and Deming was really the precursor or one of the guys that kind of got the total quality thing moving well.

Steve Miller (04:44): So, right. So my dad and bill Le knowing they had to build a quality product in Japan, they brought him in to be part of the team. So, and then my dad, who, now this, I don’t wanna get into a discussion with my dad, but he decides that the way to spend quality time with his young teenage son is to drag me along and fly me to go to hang with these guys, right? Oh, that was a blast. And, but one of the things I remember was that DMing was very, this guy was really a pound the table, kind of a guy, right. When he got really, and, and the thing that he got really big about was benchmarking. Okay. Because that’s essentially what we’re talking about. When we say that, that we, as companies tend to look at our competition, we tend to look within our world.

Steve Miller (05:41): We are benchmarking is what we’re doing. Okay. Now D ding called that intrinsic benchmarking where you were benchmarking in your industry, but he maintained that in order to think creatively, that was a mistake. You were not gonna come up with new ideas by just studying the competition. You were gonna come up with new ideas by going outside your world, outside of your natural, uh, environment and go study aliens. And he called it extrinsic benchmarking, and I call a call it stealing genius. So, so that’s where, that’s the Genesis of where it all came from. It all started hell of a long time ago.

John Jantsch (06:29): so, so, so let’s, uh, unpack this other term then. So stealing genius really essentially comes down to looking for ideas that you can apply to your business, your industry in maybe unusual places. So then it’s a matter of, and, and the book really then comes up with these seven levels of how to think about it, of adaptive innovation. So, so, and

Steve Miller (06:52): So an adaptive innovation is really a it’s, it’s really the how to do it of stealing genius is that you go out and, you know, like I say, I talk about seven different levels of, of Ben benchmarking, petty them. And you look for people, organizations, companies who are not part of your world. Right. And you go stuck. Geez, what are they really good at? Okay. And you look for the genius in those people, and then you ask yourself, okay, is that something I can actually steal? And that’s where you, you’re answering the question. Is that an innovative idea in my world that I can adapt? All right. Cause you know, I mean, you can go study, you know, companies and people in other industries and they’ll have great ideas, but you’ll never, you just won’t be able to figure out a way to use them.

Steve Miller (07:41): So it has to be an innovative idea that you can adapt back into your industry. So, so to just say, you know, as just a simple example, like if you are in the high tech industry right now, then I would be telling you, go out and study the food industry, go out and study, you know, reader, industry, go detail, go out and study, you know, some AIAN high tech is using it, right? So at restaurants, you know, and ask yourself, is there something out there that we can steal and bring back to high tech? And nobody’s UN copyable hard, nobody in high tech is approaching anything like that right now. And if you do it right, you can actually create a situation that, you know, from my previous book is, is hard to copy.

John Jantsch (08:25): And now let’s hear from a sponsor, look, you’ve worked hard to grow your business and finding CRM software. You can trust to help grow it even more. It isn’t easy, whether you’re starting out or scaling up, HubSpot is here to help your business grow better with a CRM platform that helps put your customers first. And it’s trusted by enterprises and entrepreneurs alike with easy to use marketing tools like drag and drop web page editors that require no custom code content strategy tools, where you can create topic clusters that automatically link supporting content back to your core pillar pages to ensure search engines can easily crawl your site and identify you as an expert on any given topic. HubSpot helps your business work smarter, not harder, learn how your business can grow better@hubspot.com. So, so one of the things that I think is probably difficult, I don’t think anybody listening so far is like, oh, that’s a dumb idea that, that, I mean, I think everybody pretty much agrees with yeah, that’s, we’ve all seen that in our lives. Maybe you’re in some business innovation where everybody was like, that’s brilliant, but they really just brought it from somebody else who was doing it. So how do you advise people? I mean, I sure the first question a lot of people ask is, well, where do I look? You know, how do I get started?

Steve Miller (09:47): Well, you know, and with the Lev, the seven levels, you know, I try to take it from like the easiest way to start, you know, do I want to innovate right. And up to the most complicated and the easiest way to start is, first of all, is ask yourself just a question. Like, like, okay, what do I wanna, what I’ll, I’ll use an example of, uh, of, um, let you know, trade shows, for example, you know, one of the, one of the biggest issues with trade shows that the, the producers of trade shows, you know, they have to go out and they’re finding exhibitors who are spending a lot of money to come in and buy these booth piles. Well, one of the biggest challenges for the build these booths and, and spend that money, and then they have to attract people to come to walk up and down the ERs is they want those people to walk every single aisle, right.

Steve Miller (10:35): Because they want them to get in, to go buy all those people who are spending money. So if you ask the question, how do we get people to walk the aisles? Right. Well, that’s so let’s say that’s the project. That’s, that’s the question. So you ask, now the question you ask yourself is okay, who to that is not in the trade show. World is really good at forcing people walk and, and the number one example, the biggest example of all are supermarkets. Okay. It’s the food industry, but supermarkets are brilliant. They are genius at forcing you to travel as many aisles as possible before they will let you out. okay. You get your cart. That’s right. And, and like, just like the simple question, where is the milk in the supermarket? It’s as far away from the front door as it possibly can be, because everybody’s gonna, everybody’s got milk on which means you have to go their list.

Steve Miller (11:44): Right? So, so they’re gonna make you go as far away as possible. And they’re, you know, up and down aisles or around the corner or some different stuff like that. So that is, and trade shows by default historically have always put the milk in the front of the front of the hall. When you go into a big trade show for the most part, the biggest exhibitors, the ones who are the destination ex they’re, like anchor stores at a mall. Okay. They are making, they let you walk in and boom, you walk right in. Well, smart trade shows that, and I’ve consulted for a number of really big, you know, the top put the milk in the back of the hall hop shows in, in, in the country. You know, you finally get them to understand, no, you, you they’re the milk, right. They’re still gonna get every single person into their booth, but, but the people have to travel to get to them. So that’s see, that’s an example of it’s where you start at that kind of level level one where you define, find the, define the objective, and then you go out and you ask yourself who is doing this. That is an alien in, in our world.

John Jantsch (12:54): Yeah. So I think that the key to that as I’m listening to you is it’s not just a matter of going out and saying, oh, that’s different. We could do that. It’s really, I think first you have to look inward, you know, what is our industry doing? What does everybody do? What does common practice and really start then saying, how can we, you know, Zig let’s go look for a Zig. That would make

Steve Miller (13:16): Sense. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we’ve all heard. And I use the term map, the experience. I mean, you know, the customer journey, I mean, everything like that, but you know, those of us that are the consult, you know, we have these conversations with our clients and we talk about all these things. And then what I do is as we map the experience of the customer and go through all the touch points that they might have, then what I do is I, I, one by one, we go through the touch points. So we say, okay, is this something that we can change? You know, or do we have to just keep doing it the same way everybody else is doing it right now, if it’s, you know, let’s ask ourselves that question, you know, how do we make somebody travel? You know? And that might be the big question, but you do it with every, you know, every opportunity that you have, you look for a way to ask the question, is this something that we can do differently?

Steve Miller (14:05): You know, now, but even when you say, well, you know, you know, we, we could go look at companies and oh, look what they’re doing. Well, that’s actually one of the levels. Okay. But mm-hmm, before you get to, before you get to the point where you just go look at a company and say, gee, what are they really good at that, you know, you kind of wanna go through these other levels. So you get in your mind and you get yourself thinking in terms of what do they do, great that I can steal and use back in my

John Jantsch (14:31): Work. So one of the things that I, you know, a lot of pushback from companies, why they don’t innovate is because will it work? Nobody else in our industry is doing it. You know, it’s almost like a fear to try. So what are some of the ways that, that somebody can, this is probably two questions, but first know how something know that something’s going to work is not gonna be a big risk. It’s not gonna turn their customers off.

Steve Miller (14:55): Well, I think the first thing to ask yourself is do people buy from you because you’re similar to the competition. and yeah.

John Jantsch (15:05): And yeah. And in fact, jump in, push back more. I would guess a lot of people would say, well, not necessarily because of that, but they have a certain expectation, you know, of how they’re gonna be treated, say in

Steve Miller (15:17): The industry life. I know if their expectation for you is the same as for everybody else, you know, then, then we run into the problem and you, and I both know where this ends up, this ends up with, you know, first of all, everybody’s product is quality. Everybody has high quality products today, everybody right. Says they have the best customer service on the planet. Everybody says that. Okay. Right. And if everybody has the best product and you know, and essentially in most industries there, it’s, they’re commoditizing now, you know, that’s the way technology is working. And the second thing is, if everybody says they have the best customer service, well, the customer, no, you know, the customer never buys similarity. The customer always finds a difference. And if they can’t find it between the product or the service, it comes down to price. And I I’m, I’m saying to people, if you wanna compete on price, then I’m not your consultant. no question about it.

John Jantsch (16:15): Yeah. Well, there’ll always be somebody willing to go out of business faster.

Steve Miller (16:18): That’s right. Chase that to the bottom. That’s exactly right.

John Jantsch (16:21): do you have a couple examples of companies that you think are just routinely

Steve Miller (16:27): Good? Oh, well, you know, but the, and of course, yes, they they’re, they’re the obvious answers. Right. You know, the Disneys, you know, the, you know, the apples and, and groups like that. I mean, I love to look at companies that are not huge, that are doing things that are just wicked, you know, wicked different. I have a client who they build those, you know what, like if you go into a auto body shop or something, or a car auto shop and the technicians who are, and these guys are really good at what they do. Okay. And they own all of their own tools and they have those tools in a really nice toolbox. And it’s usually like this huge toolbox standing up really tall and it’s red. That’s exactly right. Yeah. And, and one of my clients who is one of the suppliers to that, they, you know, he wanted to, you know, we were fighting over like, okay, how do we separate?

Steve Miller (17:26): How do we separate? You know? And you know, you try to get ’em to, oh, you can change color. But really what we’re looking at is we’re looking at what can we offer people that nobody else is gonna offer? And, you know, and he said, you know, they’re all expensive. You know, at that level, they’re very expensive. So how do you prove value to a customer? Cause I always say where value is clear, the decision is easy. And so he came up with this concept of, of not just a lifetime guarantee, but he came up with a, with a concept of a 55 year guarantee. And what he did with that was by, by taking a specific number like that, instead of saying lifetime, cuz lifetime is kind of one of those things, people, banner, you know, bandy about, you know, all, all over the place he said for, he says, if you call me within 55 years, I will give you a brand new, you know, you know, case, or I’ll give you your money back.

Steve Miller (18:23): Okay. And then, and, but then he, you know, in the guarantee he also says, put, my kid is take, okay. We both know I’m not gonna be alive in 55 years. right. He’s actually taking a long taking over the business. And so my kid will be, you know, taking care of the, so, so what he’s doing is he’s just essentially, you know, a lifetime guarantee and he’ now spun it into language that people will remember. And that’s what we’re, that’s what we gotta be cognizant of is that people do business, you know, with people, they like, they know they trust and they remember, okay. And that’s the thing that it just for him, you know, it has separated from the crowd and man, and you know, and he is killing it.

John Jantsch (19:06): So Steve, tell me, tell people where they can find out more about obviously the book, a stealing genius or uneven.

Steve Miller (19:13): Well, you know, you can find out about him on Amazon,

John Jantsch (19:15): Find out more about your

Steve Miller (19:16): Work. You can absolutely do that. Yeah. But here’s what here’s, what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna, I’m gonna give a gift to everybody because I love giving out books. And so what I’m gonna suggest is go to the website, be copyable dot. No, I’m sorry. Whoops. Back up. I started to say wrong, no stealing genius.com/do tape. Okay. And if you go to that site right now, here’s what you do. You go buy stealing genius on Amazon. I don’t care put, if you buy the Kindle, it doesn’t bother me. Right. And then you go to that webpage and it asks you for your email address and you email address. And, and then I will follow up with you. And I will say, okay, now send me your mailing address. I will send you a free paperback copy of my book, UN copyable as my gift to you. And yes, I will even sign it because John, you and I both know how much more valuable that makes that book. Right. you know, don’t personalize,

John Jantsch (20:20): Absolutely RA raises the price of my books, uh, by 50 cents on eBay when people are selling at least.

Steve Miller (20:27): Yes. Is it? Cause personalization actually drops the value of the book.

John Jantsch (20:32): That’s right. That’s right. No, no longer re well Steve, thanks again for, uh, taking the time, stop by the duct tape marketing podcast. And hopefully we will run into you again soon when

Steve Miller (20:41): Hope so. Can’t wait. See your next book either. Thanks.

John Jantsch (20:43): Thanks Steve. Hey, and one final thing before you go, you know how I talk about marketing strategy strategy before tactics? Well, sometimes it can be hard to understand where you stand in that what needs to be done with regard to creating a marketing strategy. So we created a free tool for you. It’s called the marketing strategy assessment. You can find it@ marketingassessment.co not.com .co check out our free marketing assessment and learn where you are with your strategy today. That’s just marketingassessment.co I’d love to chat with you about the results that you get.

This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network.

HubSpot Podcast Network is the audio destination for business professionals who seek the best education and inspiration on how to grow a business.

 

Transforming Marketing With Artificial Intelligence

Transforming Marketing With Artificial Intelligence written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Paul Roetzer

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Paul Roetzer. Paul is the founder and CEO of Marketing AI Institute, and the founder of PR 20/20, HubSpot’s first partner agency. He is the author of The Marketing Performance Blueprint (Wiley, 2014) and The Marketing Agency Blueprint (Wiley, 2012); and the creator of the Marketing AI Conference (MAICON). As a speaker, Roetzer is focused on making AI approachable and actionable for marketers and business leaders. He’s also the co-author of a new book launching in June 2022 — Marketing Artificial Intelligence: AI, Marketing, and the Future of Business.

Key Takeaway:

AI is simply a system that can perform tasks that normally require human intelligence. The idea and purpose behind it are to drive digital transformation, evolve an organization, do smarter marketing, save time and money and produce better outputs.

In this episode, I talk with the founder of Marketing AI Institute, Paul Roetzer, about how AI is changing the game in marketing today and how to utilize AI in your marketing to be more efficient and effective in your organization.

Questions I ask Paul Roetzer:

  • [1:40] When somebody asks you, “What is AI?” — what’s the simple answer?
  • [2:47] Let’s start with the dystopian view. I’m sure you hear all the time that AI is taking over — where does that view intersect with reality?
  • [4:22] If your job is doing repetitive things, would you say someone in a role like that could be looking at getting replaced in the future?
  • [5:18] How will AI impact the marketing profession?
  • [7:21] What are some of the everyday uses of AI that people are experiencing and maybe don’t know it?
  • [10:07] What are the five things that every digital agency should be diving into that are going to give them some of the advantages of using AI?
  • [11:54] If you looked at these as efficiency tools alone, that would be a great start, wouldn’t it?
  • [12:25] Who are some companies that you think are using AI really well in their marketing or operations?
  • [13:39] What’s been the hard part of using AI for non-enterprise level organizations?
  • [15:02] Would AI help you serve your existing clients better?
  • [16:49] What ways are you seeing consumer behavior change?
  • [18:36] Where do you see AI being applied for more personal experiences in places like an email newsletter for example?
  • [20:25] What would you tell a group of folks that are just now getting into marketing where they should be putting their attention?
  • [21:56] Where are your favorite places to find AI tools?
  • [23:15] Where can people connect with you and find out more about your work and your book?

Like this show? Click on over and give us a review on iTunes, please!

John Jantsch (00:00): This episode of the duct tape marketing podcast is brought to you by the female startup club, hosted by Doone Roisin, and brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network. If you’re looking for a new podcast, the female startup club shares tips, tactics and strategies from the world’s most successful female founders, entrepreneurs, and women in business to inspire you to take action and get what you want out of your career. One of my favorite episodes who should be your first hire, what’s your funding plan, Dr. Lisa Cravin shares her top advice from building spotlight oral. Listen to the female startup club, wherever you get your podcasts.

John Jantsch (00:47): Hello, and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jan and my guest today’s Paul Roetzer. He’s the founder and CEO of marketing AI Institute, founder of PR 2020 HubSpot’s first partner, agency HubSpots and sponsor of this show. As many of you know, he’s also the author of the marketing performance blueprint, the marketing agency blueprint and creator of the marketing AI conference Macon. So guess what, we’re gonna talk about AI, but he’s also got a new book coming out co-author of marketing, artificial intelligence, AI marketing in the future of business. So Paul, welcome back.

Paul Roetzer (01:27): It’s so good to be back together, John. It’s good to see you.

John Jantsch (01:30): So, so we’ve been, we were laughing before we started the show. We’ve been talking about AI and now maybe for five or seven years, but I still think there’s a lot of, like, what is that, you know, is that Hollywood? Is that, is that sci-fi, you know, how do you, when somebody just asks you, what is AI? Is there a simple answer?

Paul Roetzer (01:44): The definition I always give is the science of making machine smart and actually comes from de SaaS. Who’s the co-founder and CEO of Google deep mind. And what I love about the simplicity of the definition is the software we use every day, as marketers, as consumers, the hardware we use the phones like your iPhone, they’re incapable of doing things on their own, unless they’re told how to do them. So machines being software and hardware with AI, those machines get human bilities to understand language, to generate language, to see, you know, with computer vision. And so that’s really what they’re doing, and they’re able to learn from data and get smarter on their own. And so we’ll talk, I’m sure we’ll talk about some use case, some examples. Yeah, but that’s the key is rather than just software, that’s all human rules based AI enables vendors to build software that learns and evolves and makes predictions and recommendations to you to augment what you’re capable of as a marketer.

John Jantsch (02:44): So let’s start with the dystopian view, sure, uh, of, of, you know, which I’m sure you hear all the time, right. That, you know, it’s taking over, there’s no thinking there’s no feeling, you know, like, you know, content marketers are, you know, like, yeah. I just put in a couple keywords and boom, I’ve got great content. You know, I don’t have to hire anybody anymore. Uh, where does that view intersect with reality?

Paul Roetzer (03:08): AI’s not that smart. So I think the key is there’s definitely this nature one, you think it’s abstract and it’s, it is just the sci-fi thing. You’re not actually using it. Two is it can seem overwhelming and highly technical. The reality is that AI isn’t that advanced today. What, what happens is it’s trying to do these very specific tasks at, at a very high level. And it’s normally applied to things that are repetitive and data driven for us as marketers, things that we don’t want to have to do a bunch of times anyway. Yeah. So you kind of look at these things in your daily life where it’s repetitive, there’s a defined process for it. That’s a lot of times where AI being applied, it’s augmenting what you do. It’s intelligently automating pieces of it is not taking your job away. It’s not replacing you as a writer. It’s just there to be an it’s easiest to think of it as an assistant. And so that’s in the book we go into like these different levels of intelligent automation, and we’re not going from zero to fully autonomous. We’re just trying to get that little bit of support from the machine.

John Jantsch (04:05): Yeah. And I think some people can make a case for it actually frees you to do the creative work. And I think the argument probably 25 years ago when robots came around was, oh, it’s taken, you know, these people’s jobs, but like, do you really wanna put that bolt in 3 million times? , you know, over the next two weeks, is that a really satisfying job? Right. So that’s a lot of what you’re saying is it takes the repetitive stuff out. And, and so clearly if, if you’re counting on having a job, that’s based on repetition, I mean, you’re probably, you probably are looking about at being replaced, aren’t you?

Paul Roetzer (04:36): Yeah. I mean, the way I explain it is if your job is simply to AB test landing pages that is fundamentally all you do 40 hours a week, then yes, it will replace you like you. That is not gonna be something humans need to do. If you are looking at data and trying to figure out audience targeting for media buying AI is really good at that. It’s really good at finding patterns and like being able to predict, you know, behaviors and outcomes. So it’s just tasks. But if your entire being is doing those repetitive tasks, then yes, it would be a good time to start looking for other areas where there’s uniquely human traits needed, like strategy, creativity, empathy, like those relationship building, those are machines not doing those things really. Yeah.

John Jantsch (05:17): So, so how, how are you talking to marketers specifically about the impact of this in their jobs? We, you kind of almost touched on it right there a little bit. Yeah. But how are, you know, how does it really, how will it, uh, impact the marketing

Paul Roetzer (05:31): Profession? So at a high level, we talk about this intelligent automation. We’re under the working assumption that within three to five years, at least 80% of what marketers do will be intelligently automated to some degree, meaning tools, software you’re using is going to have AI in them, but that’s not unlike your consumer life. So you don’t think about AI all the all day long, but every time you use Netflix and it’s recommending shows and movies, Spotify learns, you know, your music and predict shows, Google maps routing you from a to B in the, in the fastest way. Anytime you talk to a, a virtual assistant like a Google or Siri, all of that is AI. And so your life is made more convenient, more personalized by AI. And that’s, what’s gonna happen in business, whether you’re in advertising or email or communications or SEO, AI is going to be infused into the software and make it smarter. And in many cases, you’re not even gonna notice it or even care. Yeah. But we’re not there yet. And so what we tell marketers is you can get there now though, you can go find smarter tools to do what you do. It’s not about buying AI. It’s about buying smarter tech. You already buy this tech find tools that are getting better and making you better at your job.

John Jantsch (06:43): Yeah. And I think one of the, well, let me back up a little bit, cuz you, you alluded to a point I was gonna ask about is I think the AI’s been with us a lot longer than people realize and it’s in everyday stuff that we, you know, we don’t realize. I, I wrote my last book exclusively in, uh, Google, uh, docs at somewhere along two, three years ago, you know, they started adding AI to Google docs to where it’s actually, I could start writing a sentence and go, oh, I wasn’t gonna say that. But that’s pretty good. I mean, it would actually, you know, and I don’t know if it’s purely learning one to one with me or if it’s just saying, oh, people commonly finish sentences with this word that start that way. So, so talk a little bit about some of the really everyday uses you started talking a little bit about ’em, but going to some examples of everyday uses that people are experiencing AI and, and maybe don’t know it.

Paul Roetzer (07:35): Yeah. So the, we talk at a high level categorically and there’s, I think it’s chapter two of the book is, is broken into language, vision and prediction. And so it talks like these parent categories of different applications of AI. So language in particular is of interest to all marketers, right? And that is mainly around the understanding and generation of language. And so that’s like what you’re talking about Grammarly is a great example of AI embedded within a tool that many people use every day. Um, so zoom is another, like they use outer.ai to transcribe audio, right? So speech to text, text, text to speech is another one language generation with any, whether it’s video or audio or written. So like all these Twitter out there, like copy.ai and Jasper and hyper write. And you know, you hear all these names, you probably see the ads for, and what they’re doing is using a, the tool called G PT three or an underlining platform called G P T three, which is made by open AI.

Paul Roetzer (08:27): And that is a language generation it’s using, what’s called a large language model to generate language in all these different disciplines. And so you can go in and give it a sample website and say, okay, write me ad copy, or write me social media shares based on this. And it’s doing it now. You’re not gonna grab it and hit publish. But as a social media pro or an ad person or a blog post writer, you’re going to take these almost as drafts and improve on them and then publish them. And so I think again, anywhere where you write, you’re seeing it all over and that’s gonna continue to become a part of your life. And then again, you just go disciplined by discipline, whether again, your communications, SEO, and just find ways where there’s repetitive processes, predictions being made or language being read or generated.

John Jantsch (09:13): Hey, eCommerce brands did you know, there’s an automated marketing platform. That’s 100% designed for your online business. It’s called drip. And it’s got all the data insights, segmentation, savvy, and email and SMS marketing tools. You need to connect with customers on a human level, make boatloads of sales and grow with Gusto. Try drip for 14 days, no credit card required and start turning emails into earnings. And SMS sends into ch CHS try drip free for 14 days. Just go to go.drip.com/ducttapemarketingpod. That’s go.drip.com/ducttape marketingpod.

John Jantsch (09:57): So if somebody came to you and said, yeah, we we’re an agency digital agency and we know about AI, but we haven’t really been aggressively or intentionally trying to bring it to our clients. Where would you say, well, here’s the starting point. Here are the five things that every digital agency should be diving into that it’s gonna give them AI or it’s at least gonna give ’em some advantages using AI.

Paul Roetzer (10:18): Yeah. So there’s two ways we teach it. It’s called the piloting. AI is that there’s a chapter dedicated to this, too. What I tell people is take a spreadsheet, make a list of all the activities, the tasks that you do individually, or as a team each week, each month make a comment that says how many hours a month you spend doing it, uh, what software you use for it and how much that software costs per month. So you’re basically getting a cost structure for each activity and then just apply of simple rating and says, well, how valuable would it be to intelligently automate this task? And so let’s say you’re a content strategist and you spend 10 hours a month on the editorial calendar, figuring out what to write, looking at past posts, trying to predict what work, what you should republish, what you should create new.

Paul Roetzer (10:58): Then that might be an area where you could say, wow, if AI could help me do this and cut it 80% of the time spent on it and be better at predicting, what’s gonna work. That would be huge for me as a content strategist. There you go, AI for content strategy, go Google it, find three tools that do it, go demo those tools. So I always tell people is start where you’re already spending time, where you can make a business case for the value it could create for you. And you’re gonna know real quickly whether it’s working or not. Cuz at the end of the day, AI is just designed to make you better at your job and make it cost less to do the job. And if it’s not doing that in improving performance, then it’s a waste of time.

John Jantsch (11:38): Yeah. I think that’s a really great point too, because I think a lot of people look at this and say, oh, we can do new things and maybe start by by just getting efficiencies. Yes. I mean you could probably generate a tremendous amount of profit to the bottom line by just get, I mean, everybody that, by getting more efficient. So if you looked at these as efficiency tools alone, that would be a great start, wouldn’t

Paul Roetzer (11:58): It? Yeah. And I know of companies that have, I have friends whose jobs and companies is to try and reduce the need for 15 new headcount down to five. Yeah. And they’re basically just looking at not, they’re not their job isn’t to fire people, but it is to say, as we scale, how do we do it without having to hire more? And so they’re looking at inefficiencies and work productivity and they’re finding things that AI can do to at least some degree without the need for human involvement or minimal human involvement,

John Jantsch (12:25): Who are some companies that you think are doing this really well. I mean that are maybe kind of ahead of the curve and, and it might just be in their own operations or in their own marketing.

Paul Roetzer (12:33): Yeah. Most of as big enterprises, they don’t talk about it much. But when you look at retail eCommerce or huge ones, just go to the top 10 eCommerce companies, top 10 retailers, um, CPG financial services. Those are healthcare. What you look for is companies and industries that have a lot of data and a, and a huge need for personalization. And there’s a really good chance they’ve been doing this stuff for five to 10 years, not if not in marketing and sales and service across other areas of the company. But I mean, just like Mike, my co-author just put one on LinkedIn last week about like 15 retailers that are doing awesome things with AI. And it was the obvious ones. Walmart Starbucks McDonald’s bought, bought AI com like they’re buying AI companies, they bought one to customize the drive through screen for you based on the weather data and based on behavioral data of like what people are ordering that day. So it actually tailors what you’re seeing. So I mean, it’s just, retail was a huge one that, yeah, there’s just tons on.

John Jantsch (13:29): So that’s why that pumpkin spice shows up that day. Huh?

Paul Roetzer (13:32): Yeah. Well if it’s in the middle of the summer. Yes. Because otherwise it just shows up in the winter, but yeah,

John Jantsch (13:38): That, yeah. So, so taking this back to non-enterprise yeah. Level companies, uh, which a great deal of our listeners are what’s the, what’s been the stumbling block. What’s been the hard part, you know, of doing this.

Paul Roetzer (13:53): So we asked that question in our state of the industry survey we did with drift, like what are the obstacles to adoption? Number one far and away with 70% of people said, lack of education and training. They just didn’t know where to go to get the information. And then in the 40 percentiles you had like lack of awareness, lack of team, right? Like talent, lack of strategy, lack of vision. My base assumption is the vast majority of marketers still have no idea what it is. So they can’t explain it to you. They, if like, let’s say you’re at a, you know, a 30 person agency and you listen to this and you’re like, this is kind of cool. And you’re gonna walk into the CEO’s office and say, I think we should start doing more AI. And the CEO says, why you’re gonna say, I don’t know, just, it sounds like we’re just really cool. Like

John Jantsch (14:32): Everybody else is.

Paul Roetzer (14:33): Yeah. If they really say, well, what would be the business case for it? What exactly is it like most marketers can’t give a basic definition and they don’t know the main use cases for it. So I think it, it is just a lack of understanding across the industry. That’s slowing adoption rates down,

John Jantsch (14:47): You know, I loved one of the filters. I think that you used for this, you know, when a lot of new social media platforms would come around and you know, clients would be saying, should we be doing that? You know, should we get on Twitter, this, you know, circa 2007 or something like that. Um, and, and I always did use the filter. Uh, would this help you serve your existing clients better? You know, if you make a case for that, then go all in and we’ll get crazy with it. But, and I think that’s probably a great starting place for looking at AI. Isn’t it?

Paul Roetzer (15:15): Yeah, no doubt. I, I actually published something recently that wasn’t in the book and it sort of came to me, uh, little later on, but the, what I think’s gonna end up happening is, and again, keep in mind, I owned an agency for 16 years before I sold it. Right. So I, I live in the agency world and we work with lots of companies. So SMBs all the way up to, you know, fortune 500 companies. Um, I think in the not too distant future, there’s three types of organizations. There’s AI native. So they don’t exist without AI, they’re in an industry and they find a smarter way to do that industry, do the products and services in that industry. And they build from day one as an AI company, then there’s AI emergent. Those are companies that exist today that look to the future and say, while there’s smarter ways to do product and services, marketing sales, and then there’s obsolete.

Paul Roetzer (15:58): And, and I don’t think there’s anything in between. So the way I look at it is AI is going to be so essential to the operations of every business. And so intertwined into the marketing sales and customer service, that if you don’t find ways to adapt and evolve, someone else is going to build a smarter version of, of your business. That is way more efficient than you are without AI. And over time, I’m not saying like three years from now, we’re all done. Like if you don’t evolve saying, but over the next decade, like it’s going, you’re just gonna become less and less relevant if you don’t find a way to become more efficient at what you do and deliver better results.

John Jantsch (16:34): Yeah. And I think some of that’s very consumer driven too. You know, one of the things people always point to is Amazon changed the game because consumers got used to yeah. The way what they got to experience there and everybody else had to up their game or, you know, get left behind. And you know, what ways are you seeing consumer behavior change? Because whether they know it or not, they’re being served this way.

Paul Roetzer (16:57): Yeah. I, I think the key for me is as consumers of consumer products, but also in our B2B world, you come to expect convenience and personalization. Like if I’m, let’s say I’m shopping for new social media management software and I’m the entrepreneur of a five person company, or a 20 person agent, whatever it is, there’s a good chance. I’m not doing that at 10:00 AM on a Thursday. There’s a much better chance I’m doing it at 10:00 PM on a Friday after my kids go to bed. And I finally have a minute to look at that thing. That’s not critical to my business, but is important to the future. So if I’m on a website for social media management software and it’s like call us between Monday and Friday from nine to five, and there’s no intelligent chat out there that actually helps me get what I’m looking for or understands that I’ve been on the site previously and kind of can predict my behavior and my intent, like I want personalization and convenience in my shopping experience, whether I’m on Amazon or I’m on some social media management software site. And so I think as consumers, we just come to expect convenience and personalization, and there is no way to do personalization at scale, without AI in the future. Like I’ve heard software CEOs talk about personalization as though AI, or as though it can happen without AI. It can’t, like, we’re not that good as humanist writing rules that apply to thousands of people.

John Jantsch (18:17): Right. Right, right, right. Right. So, so let’s talk about the relationship between AI and your data, because I think that’s what you’re really in a lot of ways where, where people are starting to personalize without AI is because I know customer X has bought this product and I can cookie him or her. And so then I can serve a more relevant, personal experience perhaps, or relevant email newsletter perhaps. But where does, where do you see AI then? You know, must be applied. You know, if we can use these JavaScripts and we can use our own data, you know, where does AI come into play with that scenario?

Paul Roetzer (18:55): Yeah. So data is the foundation of AI. It’s what it gives its predictive abilities, cuz that, that you almost every case AI is just making predictions about behaviors and outcomes. That’s what machine learning is. So you hear machine learning thrown around is like synonymous with AI. Sometimes it’s a subset of AI, but machine learning is all about the machine learning from data to improve its predictions and actions. And so that’s what the data does is it gives you the ability to actually build these predictive models about customer retention, customer growth, churn rates, lead scoring, to predict who’s likely to be a new customer. Who’s gonna open emails. Who’s gonna click on it’s all predictions. And so data is at the foundation of that. Now you can be a small business. You don’t have to have, you know, hundreds of thousands of records because what you can do is benefit from anonymized data. So if you’re a HubSpot customer, they have 150,000 customers over money. They have, they can anonymize all that data targeted like, okay, this is a lump of cohorts. That’s in this specific industry or this specific size company. And they can anonymize that data to improve your predictive ability. I’m not saying they’re doing that, but that’s what’s happening. MailChimp is a good example. Hundreds of millions of records. They can use all that anonymized data to predict when you should send your emails, who you send ’em to subject lines, you should use things like that.

John Jantsch (20:07): Yeah. So let’s, let’s end by talking a little bit about future careers. If you were talking and you probably get asked to, to a group of college students that were in marketing, uh, what would you be? I know when I talk to ’em, I, I tell, ’em look, forget all the stuff you’ve been learning. This is what you actually should be focusing on. You know, what are you, what would you tell, uh, a group of folks that are just now getting into marketing, where they should be putting their attention?

Paul Roetzer (20:31): One, I think it’s an incredible time to come into the profession because as you said so much of what got the rest of us, where we are, is going to evolve in the near future. yeah. And so the ideas to, to, to drive digital transformation, to evolve an organization, to, to do smarter marketing, that saves time and money and produces better outputs. It can come from the interns because a lot of executives don’t understand this stuff and they’re maybe even a bit intimidated by it because they don’t understand and they think it’s gonna be really hard to learn. So they just kind of avoid learning it, keep putting it off. Yeah. So I think that the people who take the initiative to go learn it and don’t go and try and sell AI and machine learning like you, if you walk into the CMOs office as an intern and say, I think we’re gonna, we do some machine learning.

Paul Roetzer (21:17): We could cut a hundred hours a month of productivity and like get outta my office. Like I . But if you go in and say, Hey, listen, I analyzed our email marketing activities and we spent a hundred hours last month doing these five things. I think there’s a way to shave 50% of the time off and actually produce twice as much quality work now. Oh, talk to me about that. What is that? Okay. Well there’s these two tools I’ve been testing and here’s what they do. You don’t ever even have to say AI. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, to go find smarter tools to do the thing and you identify opportunities to drive efficiency cuz you understand what it’s capable of doing.

John Jantsch (21:51): All right. I lied. I’m not gonna end yet. Tell me where tell me, tell me where, what are you can need to say? Well, here are my favorite places to find AI tools or here are a handful of my favorite AI tools, either one, either way. You want to answer that.

Paul Roetzer (22:03): So in, in the book, there’s 10 chapters in the middle that are piloting AI chapters and it’s AI for advertising AI for communications. Each of those chapters just follow the same pattern. It explains the opportunity with that category of marketing. It goes into tech and then it goes into sample use cases or vice versa, use cases and tech. So there’s about 70 different vendors featured in the book that are a good starting point on the marketing AI Institute blog. We regularly published lists of vendors across different categories and different things. Like we did 36 tools for AI co or for copywriting last week that, that sort of stuff. So yeah, we just follow along the newsletter or, you know, grab a copy of the book.

John Jantsch (22:39): And the, the fun thing is that like everybody’s copy of the book will be different. Right.

Paul Roetzer (22:44): That would be awesome.

John Jantsch (22:46):

Paul Roetzer (22:47): There, there are a lot of things we tried to do with AI to do the book, but personalized copies for everybody. I don’t think the publisher would’ve let me get away with

John Jantsch (22:56): That. No, no, that’s a tough one. So speaking of an industry that, uh, maybe needs to come into the future, sorry. Uh, sorry. I’m not picking on your publisher,

Paul Roetzer (23:04): But my publisher’s very open minded. I actually love what they’re thinking of. We’re doing some cool stuff with synthetic voice potentially. We may actually

John Jantsch (23:11): Do some stuff, so. Oh cool. Awesome. We’ll tell people, you’ve mentioned a few things, but if you wanna invite people where they could connect with you and obviously the book will be available everywhere.

Paul Roetzer (23:20): Yeah. And so marketing, I institute.com. You can get to the book site from there. There’s gonna be, uh, there’s a couple of free downloads that actually the piling AI workbook that we talked about of how to figure out what to start with, that’s gonna be a free download as part of the book. So you can go there and actually get that spreadsheet. And then there’s a guide that has about 30 sample questions to ask AI vendors. So to help you assess them, it it’s kind of a cool guide. So those will both be available there. So yeah, marketing institute.com is best and I’m really good on, uh, LinkedIn and Twitter. If you wanna reach out to me personally, I’m, I’m really responsive on both of those platforms. I am not a Instagram TikTok or Facebook guy. And if I’m missing anything else, I don’t really do those either too much.

John Jantsch (23:56): gotta stay focused. Right. Awesome. Paul, it was a great catch up for you. I appreciate your stopping by the duct tape marketing podcast. Hopefully you will see you, uh, soon, one of these days out there

Paul Roetzer (24:05): On the road. Thanks so much, John.

John Jantsch (24:06): Hey, and one final thing before you go, you know how I talk about marketing strategy strategy before tactics? Well, sometimes it can be hard to understand where you stand in that what needs to be done with regard to creating a marketing strategy. So we create a free tool for you. It’s called the marketing strategy assessment. You can find it @ marketingassessment.co not.com.co check out our free marketing assessment and learn where you are with your strategy today. That’s just marketingassessment.co I’d love to chat with you about the results that you get.

This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network and Drip.

HubSpot Podcast Network is the audio destination for business professionals who seek the best education and inspiration on how to grow a business.

 

Did you know there’s an automated marketing platform that’s 100% designed for your online business? It’s called Drip, and it’s got all the data insights, segmentation savvy, and email and SMS marketing tools you need to connect with customers on a human level, make boatloads of sales, and grow with gusto. Try Drip free for 14 days (no credit card required), and start turning emails into earnings and SMS sends into cha-chings.

Transforming The Dental Industry One Smile At A Time

Transforming The Dental Industry One Smile At A Time written by Sara Nay read more at Duct Tape Marketing

About the show:

The Agency Spark Podcast, hosted by Sara Nay, is a collection of short-form interviews from thought leaders in the marketing consultancy and agency space.

Each episode focuses on a single topic with actionable insights you can apply today.

Check out the new Spark Lab Consulting website here!

About this episode:

In this episode of the Agency Spark Podcast, Sara talks with Dr. Ingrid Murra on transforming the dental industry one smile at a time.

Dr. Ingrid Murra is the 48th Latin woman to secure over $1,000,000 Venture Capital funding in the history of the United States, a Harvard-trained orthodontist, and the founder & CEO of the orthodontic startup, Two Front.

Two Front has modernized orthodontic care by providing a trusted network of best-in-class orthodontists and by making care convenient with virtual visits – eliminating up to 95% of in-person Invisalign appointments.

More from Dr. Ingrid Murra:

 

 

This episode of the Agency Spark Podcast is brought to you by Termageddon, a Privacy Policy Generator. Any website collecting as little as an email address on a contact form should not only have a Privacy Policy but also have a strategy to keep it up to date when the laws change. Click here to learn more about how Termageddon can help protect your business and get 30% off your first year payment by using code DUCTTAPE at checkout.

Weekend Favs May 21

Weekend Favs May 21 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.

I don’t go into depth about the finds, but I encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one that I took out there on the road.

  • Agorapulse – is a powerful, unified social media management tool that combines publishing and scheduling tools with insights and analytics all in one place. Agorapluse’s customer support, value for money, and ease of use make it a stellar option for any small business.
  • nTask – This project management software combines the power of collaborative planning with a range of powerful project, task, and time management functions. nTask’s use of Kanban boards and Gantt Charts creates an easy-to-reference visual for teams and managers alike.
  • Trainual – A new-age training manual for remote teams. This unique employee onboarding software turns every process, policy, and SOP for every role and responsibility into a simple, powerful playbook. 

These are my weekend favs; I would love to hear about some of yours – Tweet me @ducttape

How To Build Great Leadership Teams

How To Build Great Leadership Teams written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Jack McGuinness

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Jack McGuinness. Jack is a management consultant with over 35 years of experience. After serving with the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division, he helped build a successful boutique management consulting firm where he served as COO for 13 years. In 2009, he co-founded a new firm, Relationship Impact, a consulting firm focused on working with CEOs to unleash the potential of their leadership teams. He has a new book called — Building Great Leadership Teams: A Practical Approach to Unleashing the Full Potential of your Teams.

Key Takeaway:

Leadership teams have an enormous impact on their organizations. Dysfunctional teams hold their organizations back but great leadership teams accelerate their health and productivity. In this episode, I talk with the co-founder of Relationship Impact, Jack McGuinness, about what a great leadership team looks like, how it feels to be part of one, and what it takes to build a great one.

Questions I ask Jack McGuinness:

  • [2:45] What is this book going to bring to the leadership genre?
  • [3:40] Why is being a leader such a challenge for entrepreneurs sometimes?
  • [7:31] How do you start looking at who should be on the team?
  • [10:47] When you see teams break down, what’s the single greatest factor in the demise?
  • [12:13] Do you think that it’s a good idea for teams to intentionally seek diversity?
  • [13:23] Is what you’re talking about just as much a retention and recruitment tool as it is a productivity tool?
  • [15:30] What is the leader’s job in a team?
  • [17:52] So if I’m a leader or I’m on a team, and I’m thinking I need to pick up this book, what am I going to find in the book?
  • [18:59] Where can people find out more about your book and your work?

More About Jack McGuinness:

Take The Marketing Assessment:

Like this show? Click on over and give us a review on iTunes, please!

John Jantsch (00:00): This episode of the duct tape marketing podcast is brought to you by the female startup club, hosted by Doone Roison, and brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network. If you’re looking for a new podcast, the female startup club shares tips, tactics and strategies from the world’s most successful female founders, entrepreneurs, and women in business to inspire you to take action and get what you want out of your career. One of my favorite episodes who should be your first hire, what’s your funding plan, Dr. Lisa Cravin shares her top advice from building spotlight oral. Listen to the female startup club, wherever you get your podcasts.

John Jantsch (00:49): Hello, and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Jack McGuinness. He is a management consultant with over 35 years in the business. After serving with the us Army’s 10th mountain division. He helped build a successful boutique management consulting firm where he served as the chief operating office served for 13 years in 2009. He co-founded a new firm with west point with his west point classmate called relationship impact a consulting firm focused on working with CEOs to unleash the potential of their leadership teams. And today we’re gonna talk about is newest book called building great leadership teams, a practical approach to unleashing the full potential of your teams. So Jack, welcome to the show.

Jack McGuinness (01:36): Thanks so much for having me, John. It’s good to see you again.

John Jantsch (01:39): So the 10th mountain division, did you learn to ski when you were, uh, yeah,

Jack McGuinness (01:43): No, it was roughly cold. I, we were, it was an upstate New York on the foot of lake Ontario or tip of lake Ontario. And it was people from the sixth infantry division used to come in for, for cold weather training. It was that cold, but it used to used to be in Colorado

John Jantsch (01:58): And, well, that’s what I was gonna say. That’s in fact, there’s a whole system of huts and things that they’ve kept up in the mountains and refurbished, and now you can, you know, cross country ski and hiked to ’em and, and ran ’em out in the winter. And, and I just BEC I’ve gone to a couple of them and I read a pretty fascinating account about the, that division’s, uh, role in world war II and heck pretty fascinating.

Jack McGuinness (02:18): Pretty fast. Yeah. In, in Italy, I think they have

John Jantsch (02:21): Yeah, exactly.

Jack McGuinness (02:21): A big role. Yeah. And they played a huge role in, in the first Gulf war too. Is that right? For sure. Yeah.

John Jantsch (02:28): So I have to start on the cynical side first from a questioning standpoint, there are a lot of leadership books of late. It seems like more and more of late for dysfunction of a team who moved my cheese, you know, turn the ship around. You can all these kind of pop titles that are out there. So I I’ll let you tell me why does a world need another leadership book? What, what is this book gonna bring to, to the genre if you will. That makes it significant.

Jack McGuinness (02:55): You know, I think the reason I actually wrote it, cause I agree with you. There’s a lot of good stuff out there too. It’s not just flaky stuff. There’s some flaky stuff too, but there’s some really good stuff out there. There’s not a lot on building leadership teams. There’s a lot on teams. There’s a lot on, you know, leadership in general, but on building leadership teams, not so much. And so that’s really why I, I, I, I felt like I had something to say after doing this for 14 years,

John Jantsch (03:25): You know, a lot of entrepreneurs, uh, start a business and with an idea and then it grows up and all of a sudden they find themselves being a manager leader right. Without maybe without any desire to be so yeah, but also, you know, kinda realizing that’s the only way to make this thing bigger. So why for particularly for that group of people, is this such a challenge?

Jack McGuinness (03:47): Yeah. So, so it’s, it is a challenge for them. No question about it for, for a lot of them, but it’s what, what I found is that it’s a challenge for those that have, you know, started in a managing training program and grown up the ranks in a mid-size company and building a leadership team is hard. And it’s, it’s, you can’t just throw a group of talented individual players that are good at their individual function, sales, marketing, CFO, operations, you can throw ’em together. And that’s what most firm companies do. And some have a lot of success with it. And others often struggle with the dysfunction that re results from not stepping back and really thinking through what does a leadership team need to be doing for this organization at this time in its journey?

John Jantsch (04:44): Well, I imagine one of the challenges is that as a comp, particularly as a company grows and they start having teams plural, it, it really, you know, it’s not like somebody sat out and said, let’s poof build a team, right? I mean, a team sort of assembles and doesn’t that make it, doesn’t that dynamic alone, make it difficult to have everybody get along. so much

Jack McGuinness (05:04): It does. It, it, it absolutely does. And that, and thus the premise behind the book is very much leadership teams are critical for the health and productivity about an organization, because everyone looks up to the leaders in the organization to see how well they’re working together and holding each other accountable, not so much how much they like each other, but how they’re holding each other accountable. Right. And in order to do that, well, you have to have a good structural foundation for your team, like blah, the blocking and tackling things that are elemental for, you know, running a meeting. Well, for example, a bit, you know, the most basic of things that often are, is not well done. And you have to really set up the right relational dynamics and just step back and say, Hey, look, all of us are different. We’ve all come from different places, journeys.

Jack McGuinness (06:00): And that’s great, but what do we need from each other at this particular juncture in this organization’s journey? And, and if you don’t step back and do that, you put structure in place that sometimes causes some relational strife, right? We’ll put, you know, and, and, and not necessarily intentionally even, but we’ll put structure in place like that. We’ll define roles. And we’ll assume that everyone knows what the marketing Del, you know, delivery focus folks are supposed to do. And the sales folks are supposed to do. And it’s the gray areas between those roles that gets teams in trouble and then bleeds down to the rest of the organization as well sometimes. And so it’s really that Def helping, you know, build the right structure and just talk about what the structure should look like. It, it, it, it saves so much pain on the back end because we’re not pointing fingers at as much at, at each other for stupid things. Look, people are gonna argue, people are gonna, you know, get into confrontations. And that’s a good thing if they’re fighting about the right stuff.

John Jantsch (07:17): So one of the very first steps, of course, which makes a ton of sense, but probably people don’t think about it enough is a lot of times we think in terms of, oh, we have to fill this function or this job on the team, as opposed to who would be the right person.

Jack McGuinness (07:31): That’s right.

John Jantsch (07:32): So, so how, you know, how do you, and I’m, I’m guessing it’s different for every company cuz every culture’s different, but you know, how do you start looking at who should be on the team?

Jack McGuinness (07:43): Well, of course, you know, the functional business unit leaders are, you know, are the natural, you know, people that people, you know, that CEOs point to. Right, right. And that’s fine. It’s a great starting point. The challenge is we have to step back and say, what are the unique capabilities that these individuals need to have to be a really good leadership team member? Things like the ability to think beyond today to, to think beyond today’s problem or the next three months and help the organization help the team think a little further out than that. And not, I’m not talking about a strategic planning effort. I’m talking about just the foresight necessary to how you know, what’s going on in my environment. That’s gonna, you know, gonna impact how we’re operating today. It’s things like managing complexity, you know, can do we have the ability to deal with all this stuff that comes with rising in an organization.

Jack McGuinness (08:43): And now I’m not just a functional player, but I have more things thrown at me, more discussions I’m having about broader issues. Can I take that, those things in and deal with the complexity and make sense of it and more importantly, help the folks under me make sense of it and perhaps more important than anything is, do I have the innate capability to have a, an organization focus or what we call a greater good focus rather than a functional focus. Right? And so we, we know that not every leader has those innate characteristics to start, right, but identifying that they need to have some development on those characteristics is very important and it’s a missed opportunity. We find often.

John Jantsch (09:29): And now let’s hear from our sponsor, you know, as a business owner, you eventually realize you can’t do everything yourself, but hiring is complicated. And what if you only need part-time help your job is to be the visionary. But instead you spend countless hours on tasks that could be done easily and arguably better by someone else. And that’s where the powerful multiplying effects of delegation are mission critical. Our friends at belay can help. Belay is an incredible organization, revolutionizing productivity with their virtual assistance bookkeepers website specialists and social media managers for growing organizations to help you get started. Belay is offering their latest ebook, delegate to elevate for free to all of my listeners. Now in this ebook, you’ll learn how to reclaim time to focus on what you can do by delegating to download your free copy. Just text tape to 5, 5, 1, 2, 3, that’s T a P E to 5, 5 1, 2, 3, accomplish more and juggle less with belay.

John Jantsch (10:40): I should just ask you this, but I know the answer to it already, but yeah, when you see teams break down, uh, what, what is the, what’s the single greatest factor?

Jack McGuinness (10:51): Oh, it’s the, the greatest factor is the inability to have tough conversations about or productive conversations about the most important things that they’re facing, not about trivial crap focus on what’s most important. And what that means is that we have to disagree with each other sometimes because we come at things in from different perspectives and the

John Jantsch (11:15): It’s, it’s tough to, it’s tough to disagree if you don’t trust. I mean, that’s what I was really,

Jack McGuinness (11:19): You know, so, and so the relational dynamics here are really important is do we trust each other enough where we can have those tough conversations without being judged, without being shut down without having my colleague go talk to the CEO after the meeting and tell ’em how, what a stupid idea it was. And then ultimately, you know, we’ve never really gotten to this, but we aspire every team we work with. We, our aspiration is that they are able to hold each other accountable without just the power accountability in their room. Now that’s a heavy lift. That’s a hard thing to get to for any team, but when you can move towards and move the needle towards it and even be spastic as you’re getting towards it, that progress really helps build the fibers amongst the team members.

John Jantsch (12:11): Do you think that it’s a good idea for teams to intentionally seek diversity? And I’m not just necessarily talking about race or ethnicity, but I mean, diversity of ideas, diversity of backgrounds. I mean, do you think that plays a role or does that make it harder?

Jack McGuinness (12:26): I, I, it makes it harder. It makes it harder for sure. No question about it, but it it’s absolutely crucial. Like we, we see often CEOs that will hire people or promote people that are just like them. Right. You know, she grew up in the organization very similar to I did and a sales role and then went to a marketing role and she’s got a very, you know, people oriented approach to her. So I’m gonna put, I’m gonna bring her up and that’s great, but not everyone can have the same or shouldn’t have the same way of thinking. Look, it happens. And, and that’s fine, but you have to compensate for it. You have to ask yourself questions. Like, what are we missing here? Because we all think about this the same way. Right, right. It’s just, it’s the step back type of things you have to do.

John Jantsch (13:20): So the hiring environment, even retention environment right now of employees is, is as we, we all know is, you know, a much top talked about topic in the news. So how do you, I mean, is what you’re talking about is much a retention tool and a recruitment tool as it is a productivity tool.

Jack McGuinness (13:40): Well, I think, you know, there’s no question about it because a look, the CEO’s job is a big one and it doesn’t matter what size of the organization. Obviously it gets more complex and more, you know, as the bigger you get and the more span of control you have, but the CEO’s job is really to create the conditions for his or her team to build a productive and healthy organization. And those things are always, not always, but often in conflict with each other. And, you know, and, and it’s a hard job, but when you do that, well, the downstream effects on the people that are mid-level managers and below is dramatic because they’re like, look, the leadership, team’s not perfect, but man are, they are really, they got our backs and they’re pushing us. They’re pushing whole, I’m working with a bank right now started by a construction guy about 17 years ago.

Jack McGuinness (14:46): And it’s, you know, it’s grown like crazy. The, this is a great place to work and it’s not perfect. There’s chaos. They, you know, they attack problems with, with vigor and it leaves a trail of dust behind them sometimes, but they’re able to repair because the intentions are there that they’re trying to build something really cool. And while they’re doing it, they do take care of their people. It might be after the fact, but they do take care of their people. And, uh, I think that balance of PR product productivity and health is really important.

John Jantsch (15:22): Most teams of some sort of a, maybe it’s a rotating, but it’s an appointed leader. W would the analogy of a sports team kind of be the same where the, the leader of a team’s job really is maybe more like a coach? Or let me just ask you directly, what is the leader’s job of a team?

Jack McGuinness (15:40): Yeah. I mean, ultimately, um, ultimately, and if you, if you go back to the, the, my aspiration, our aspiration of the teams, we work with that they hold each other accountable. When you’re working towards that CEOs naturally evolved to be being more coaching oriented than directing oriented and much more oriented to be working with the, their leadership team to set the picture, to set the foundation, to identify what the most important priorities are, and then let people go now, again, that’s a Nirvana state too, you know, no question about it, but if you’re aspiring to get to something like that, much more likely to have greater success. So the CEO, you know, we started this thing again 14 years ago and our aspiration was like, you know, teams are really leadership teams are so important that it shouldn’t matter what the CEO’s role is on a team.

Jack McGuinness (16:45): And boy were we abused of that, that notion, you know, it’s critical, it’s absolutely critical the role they play. They have to model a whole bunch of stuff like the values that are espoused, the, you know, the, how the, he, or she wants the team to operate. And they have to have a strong role in set in, in establishing directing direction. And sometimes they have to play a heavy hand role, but most often what they have to do is push back when the lobbying happens. And I know that sounds like a trivial issue, but we see it all the time. Like you’ll have a great meaning, see, meeting a seemingly great meeting about an important issue. And then the CEOs getting calls, getting knocks on his door, telling him or her why those ideas were such bad ideas and why these ideas are good ones. And so, and the ability to say, Hey, wait a minute, we had this conversation, go talk to Jerry, go talk to Bob, go talk to Sue and figure this stuff out, and then let’s have a conversation about it, but I need you guys to figure this stuff out. Yeah.

John Jantsch (17:50): So if I’m, uh, a leader or I’m on a team, maybe even, and I’m thinking, I need to pick up this book, what am I gonna, is there a road? Is what am I gonna find in the book? Is it gonna be a roadmap, you know, start here, do then do this UN unpack it in the two yeah. Two minutes or so we have

Jack McGuinness (18:06): A few things it’s it really does. I think it does a pretty good job of talking about why a leadership team is so important in the impact it has on an organization. Number two, it talks, um, a lot about the structural and relational foundation necessary to build a good team mm-hmm and then it get, it does provide a bit of a roadmap on what are the things you need to do to either repair or to build. And, you know, I’m pretty proud of that. Part of it. It’s pretty practical. There are a lot of other books out there there that are, that I believe are really good and inspired me in the work that I do. But I think what we did was got into another level of how do you do this? Yeah. And why is it so important?

John Jantsch (18:55): Much, much needed. So tell people where they can find, uh, the book and find out more about your work, Jack.

Jack McGuinness (19:00): Yeah. So, so relationship impact.com is my website for my firm, but, uh, great leadership team. book.com is the books, companion website that I stole from you. I stole the model and this is my first book. So I’ve never done this before. And I was like, wow, I gotta get one of those companion sites.

John Jantsch (19:23): awesome. Well, jacket was great catching up with you. And, uh, hopefully, uh, we can run into each other one of these, uh, days out there on the road. Next time you’re visiting your son in, in Colorado.

Jack McGuinness (19:33): I will do that, John. No, no question, Matt, thank you so much for, for the opportunity. I appreciate it.

John Jantsch (19:38): Hey, and one final thing before you go, you know how I talk about marketing strategy strategy before tactics? Well, sometimes it can be hard to understand where you stand in that what needs to be done with regard to creating a marketing strategy. So we created a free tool for you. It’s called the marketing strategy assessment. You can find it @ marketingassessment.co not – dot com – .co check out our free marketing assessment and learn where you are with your strategy today. That’s just marketingassessment.co I’d love to chat with you about the results that you get.

This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network and BELAY.

HubSpot Podcast Network is the audio destination for business professionals who seek the best education and inspiration on how to grow a business.

BELAY is an incredible organization revolutionizing productivity with its virtual assistants, bookkeepers, website specialists, and social media managers for growing organizations. To help you get started, BELAY is offering its latest book, Delegate to Elevate, for free to all our listeners. In this ebook, learn how to reclaim time to focus on what only you can do by delegating. To download your free copy, click here to claim or text TAPE to 55123. Accomplish more and juggle less with BELAY.

Why Great Leadership Starts With Open Hearted Conversations

Why Great Leadership Starts With Open Hearted Conversations written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Edward Sullivan

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Edward Sullivan. Edward has been coaching and advising start-up founders, Fortune 10 executives, and heads of state for over 15 years. His clients include executives from Google, Salesforce, Slack, and dozens of other fast-growth companies. He holds an MBA from Wharton and an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School. Edward is CEO & President of the renowned executive coaching consultancy, Velocity. He also has a new book launching on June 21, 2022, called — Leading With Heart: 5 Conversations That Unlock Creativity, Purpose, and Results.

Key Takeaway:

Right now, workplaces are struggling to build high-morale and connected cultures. How do you retain and inspire your team? By leading with heart and sparking authentic conversation.

After thousands of hours of interviews and coaching sessions with leaders of many of the world’s most prominent firms, authors John Baird and Edward Sullivan found that top leaders don’t adhere to simple formulas and performance hacks. Instead, they discovered that these leaders help people unlock their creativity, purpose, and results by having conversations that make them feel productive, safe, and appreciated. In this episode, I talk with Edward Sullivan about why great leadership starts with open-hearted conversation.

Questions I ask Edward Sullivan:

  • [1:33] What’s the opposite of leading with heart?
  • [1:53] Is leading with ego how a lot of people have been taught or led?
  • [2:40] What does it take for someone to say that they are a leader?
  • [3:58] You did some pretty exhaustive research to come to the conclusions you did in your new book — could you explain your research process?
  • [5:24] Would you say that the great resignation is a bit of an indictment on leadership?
  • [7:23] It’s challenging to be a leader until you clean up your own house, and I think that starts with self-awareness — do you agree with that and if so, how do you balance that?
  • [9:14] What are the five questions that you talk about in the book?
  • [10:31] How do you start creating a culture of this openness if it has existed before?
  • [11:51] Is there an approach that works better in the workplace when it comes to the setting in which you talk about these questions?
  • [13:13] How do we actually help people understand what their needs are and what their fears are?
  • [14:20] How could you bring this work in earlier into an organization for say a new hire?
  • [16:03] This work is more than the five conversations, it’s daily consistent work — could you talk a little bit about the tools you give folks inside of their organization to use to help with this?
  • [17:57] What’s the balance of being able to use the framework and use it appropriately?
  • [20:29] Can you repair trust?
  • [21:19] Where can people find out more about your work?

More About Edward Sullivan:

Take The Marketing Assessment:

Like this show? Click on over and give us a review on iTunes, please!

John Jantsch (00:00): This episode of the duct tape marketing podcast is brought to you by the female startup club, hosted by dune Roen, and brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network. If you’re looking for a new podcast, the female startup club shares tips, tactics and strategies from the world’s most successful female founders, entrepreneurs, and women in business to inspire you to take action and get what you want out of your career. One of my favorite episodes who should be your first hire, what’s your funding plan? Dr. Lisa Keven shares her top advice from building spotlight oral. Listen to the female startup club, wherever you get your podcasts.

John Jantsch (00:49): Hello, and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Edward Sullivan. He’s been coaching in advising startup founders, fortune 10 executives and heads of state for over 15 years. His clients include executives from Google, Salesforce, slack, and dozens of other fast growth companies. He holds an MBA from Wharton and an M PA from the Harvard Kennedy school. He’s a CEO and president of the renowned executive coaching consultancy velocity. And he’s also the co-author of a book. We’re gonna talk about today leading with heart five conversations that unlock creativity, purpose, and results. So Edward, welcome to the show.

Edward Sullivan (01:31): Thanks so much great to be here.

John Jantsch (01:33): So let’s start with leading with heart as opposed to leading with what’s the opposite.

Edward Sullivan (01:41): Well, leading with heart is when you’re being open and curious, and I guess it’s leading with fear leading with ego is how a lot of people go about it, unfortunately.

John Jantsch (01:50): Yeah. And in your research, of course, I’m, I’m guessing that unfortunately that’s how a lot of people were taught or that’s how a lot of people have been led. Isn’t it?

Edward Sullivan (01:57): Well, you know, I think a lot of people when they don’t know better, yeah. They go back to maybe what they saw when they were coming up. And I think a lot of leaders today came up in the eighties and nineties and a lot of high pressure environments. And they were led by people who led by fear, who led with ego and they’ve learned to do the same. So our research indicated that the leaders who actually get the best results out of their employees lead with heart. And we explored that in the book,

John Jantsch (02:28): You know, a lot of entrepreneurs maybe didn’t go through any kind of formal leadership program or were mentored or . I mean, they just started a business and like, poof, now you have to lead people, right? I mean, what does it, what does it take for that person to start saying, oh, I’m a leader now, what do I do? Yeah,

Edward Sullivan (02:45): You’re right. A lot of our, our clients come to us because they’re really good developers. They’re good engineers, right? They’re good product designers. And they built something. People liked it. And now suddenly they have to build a company around it and they never took that class at school. You know, the how to lead people class. And the first in instinct is to try to control everything. Yeah. When you’re the founder, this is your baby. You know, you wanna control everything from the font to the color, to the, how people talk about it, to potential customers. And we’ve learned that people need a little bit more freedom than that. They need to feel some, some sense of owner. Should they need to be able to show up as themselves at work. And it’s really incumbent upon leaders of these firms to give people that freedom and give people that support. So they do feel themselves.

John Jantsch (03:37): Yeah. And I tell you just personal experience as a leader, it’s exhausting trying to hold onto everything. You’re trying to think you have all the answers. Right. And so I, I think it could be very freeing once people go, oh, they actually did it better. Or nobody died here. Right. I mean, so exactly it really. So, so tell me, I mean, leadership books, that’s a huge category of books, probably growing every year. You did some pretty exhaustive research to come to the conclusions you came to. You wanna explain that research process a little bit?

Edward Sullivan (04:05): Sure, sure. So my business partner and I are practitioners, we’re executive coaches. We run velocity, it’s a firm with 25 coaches around the world. We’ve got hundreds of clients. And over our combined 40 years of, uh, working with top executives, we were kind of performing the research on along the way. Right. We didn’t even know it. So our research process was actually going back through our notes, going back through files and saying, what is it that really ties all these great leaders together? What’s that common? We’re not journalists, we’re not researchers by trade. We’re more practitioners who backed into doing some research about this. And we found that there are five core conversations that great leaders are having, that enable them to lead with heart that enable them to have these connected conversations. And they’re conversations that we’re not used to having in the office. Yeah. Right. Because they’re about what do we need as people? What do we need to feel creative and resourceful? What fears might be holding us back, right. It’s about what are the, uh, desires that we have that really motivate us, but can also derail us if we take them a little bit too far,

John Jantsch (05:10): We also talked about, I was just gonna say, I wanna unpack those each or the five conversations I, I kind of wanted to, I wanted to frame it a little bit though, in, in what’s what’s very topical right now is, you know, we’re calling it all kinds of things, a great resignation and whatnot. I mean, is that a bit of a, is that a bit of a, an indictment on leadership? I mean, are people leaving because they’re not getting these things or because they’re not getting, you know, even basic respect.

Edward Sullivan (05:36): I mean, that is exactly right. And research has been done recently that showed that we think people are leaving because they want more freedom or they want more money. They want more equity, but 10 times more important is that they’re leaving toxic work cultures. Yeah. Right. They feel burned out. They feel unappreciated. They feel unseen. Obviously doing all of our work over zoom. Hasn’t helped much in the last couple of years. Right. But there are things that leaders can be doing to create this, these connections with people, even over zoom. And they’re simply not doing them. We get on a call and we say, great, what do we have to talk about today? Let’s do our work. Okay. Enough. And then we get off the call as quickly as possible. Right? Yeah. We’re not creating that connective tissue anymore. And that’s what people are missing.

John Jantsch (06:22): Yeah. I, uh, we have a client that, you know, like a lot of people are trying to hire people and, and trying everything, you know, running ads in all the places. And, you know, we just, we actually we’re testing ads and they add that. We ran that today for two years now has been by far and away the winner, it just, the, the title just says respect wow. And then it says, are you getting, you know, are you getting the respect you deserve in your current career? And I, we can’t beat that ad you know, so it really does say something doesn’t

Edward Sullivan (06:50): I’m gonna write that one down here

John Jantsch (06:52): Do, go for it. So, so you started to unpack the five conversations and you talked about, you used words, like what people need, the fears that are holding them back. We’re gonna get to the P word purpose eventually. Yeah. Here’s the thing that not enough people say is that I don’t think you can do those things as a leader until you clean up your own house. I mean, you get rid of your own fears. You get, you understand your own purpose. Right. And I think a lot of books try to a lot of books, try to say, here’s the roadmap, you know, but not enough say, uh, self, it starts with self-awareness. So, you know, how do you balance that, that thought? Or maybe you disagree with it?

Edward Sullivan (07:27): No, don’t I, I don’t disagree at all. I fatally agree. Yeah. In fact, we, we call the book basically a, a 250 page coaching conversation with one of us, right. With both of us, because really in Le in reading the book, we’re asking you these questions, you need to do all the work yourself. Yeah. And be comfortable answering these questions yourself with your employees, to be able to have those conversations. You can’t just go into it into a room with someone and say like, what are you afraid of? right. that doesn’t really make someone want to open up. But if you start the conversation and say, you know, I don’t know about you, but I’ve been feeling a little bit triggered into some fear recently. There’s a lot of uncertainty in the market. Things are happening abroad where, you know, we’re the country, the world’s at war right now. Yeah. Um, times of uncertainty make me feel a little uncertain, make me feel fearful. What’s coming up for you. Right? Yeah. Suddenly the leader has opened up themselves, created that vulnerability, the V word, right? Yeah. That allows other people to feel comfortable being vulnerable as well.

John Jantsch (08:30): Hey, e-commerce brands, did you know, there’s an automated marketing platform. That’s 100% designed for your online business. It’s called drip. And it’s got all the data insights, segmentation, savvy, and email and SMS marketing tools. You need to connect with customers on a human level, make boatloads of sales and grow with Gusto. Try drip for 14 days, no credit card required and start turning emails into earnings. And SMS sends into ch Chans, try drip free for 14 days. Just go to go.drip.com/ducttapemarketingpod. That’s go.drip.com/ducttapemarketingpod.

John Jantsch (09:15): So let’s, let’s just pretend that the person that’s reading this book has, uh, dealt with that themselves. You know, just give me maybe gimme the 32nd. Here are the five, and then we can kind of come back and go, well, how do you do that?

Edward Sullivan (09:27): Yeah. Yeah. So the five questions that we found in our research and you’ve, you’ve outlined them as well are around needs. What do you need to be resourceful and creative? Yeah. Fears, what fears might be holding you back desires. And this is like, what do you really want out of life? And how could those core desires potentially derail you? We also talk a lot about gifts. What are the gifts you have that are unrealized or unexpressed in this current role? And then once we’ve had those four conversations, we’re ready to have the conversation around purpose.

John Jantsch (10:00): Yeah. O obviously I shouldn’t say obviously in many cases, uh, people have had that relationship. Maybe somebody’s been there for a long time. I mean, they just know each other they’ve unpacked over the years, but a lot of times somebody’s just, you know, managing somebody, they do, they get their 30 minutes a week, you know, with them. I mean, how do you really start getting into areas that maybe both parties are uncomfortable with, but probably the, you know, the superior, you know, perhaps seen as the superiors less uncomfortable with, I mean, you know, how do you start? How do you start creating a culture, I guess, of this openness that has maybe if it hasn’t existed.

Edward Sullivan (10:37): Yeah. You know, we talk a lot about culture and our work and in the book and it is, it is a great challenge. And it’s also an incredible opportunity. Yeah. Um, if you have a culture that’s really shut down where people don’t share anything about their personal lives coming out suddenly and talking about everything you’re fearful of yeah. Will be, will come as a shock, right? Yeah. You need to build up some, some trust there, right? Yeah. You need to approach some of these topics slowly. You need to build an environment of safety where people feel like we’re starting to connect to human beings as opposed to colleagues. And that feels pretty cool. Right. And it’s that connecting that, learning about each other, where you come from, what have you done, what’s going on at home? Do you have siblings, all those basic questions that we kind of take for granted with our friends, we often don’t know anything aside from like the names of spouses and maybe the names of children with our, our colleagues. Right? Yeah. We start having those baseline conversations, then we can go, go a few layers deeper. Yeah. We can start getting into what are you really? Maybe what you’re fearful of. Right. It builds upon itself. Yeah.

John Jantsch (11:40): Yeah. Trust is what we’re talking about. Really trust .

Edward Sullivan (11:43): Yeah. I mean, yeah. It all comes down to trust when people say like, what’s the two second summary of this book, it’s how to build trust in a work environment. Exactly.

John Jantsch (11:51): So, so do you advocate making, you know, like a lot of people will hear this and they’ll go, okay. Uh, we got 25 minutes, I’m gonna spend five minutes asking you about yourself and then we’re gonna get into it. I mean, is that the approach or do you actually want to have like, let’s have a company lunch once a month and we’re not gonna talk about work. I mean, which approach is better

Edward Sullivan (12:13): In your, uh, it’s actually both, right? Yeah. You need that regular drip of like connecting, uh, just like, Hey, what’s been going on. Yeah. And as opposed to just like the cursory what’d you do this weekend, right. We also want people to be giving the giving each other, some praise. Yeah. Like, so we start in our company, we start all of our meetings with shout outs. Mm-hmm and we say like, does anyone have anything great to say on anyone else on the call? You know? And it’s like, I really wanna thank Mike for, you know, in this meeting we had last week, he did this. That was great. Public praise makes people feel good. Yeah. We don’t get enough of it. Right? Yeah. We might get praise, um, privately or over email, but you really wanna be sharing that praise in real time. And as, as much as you can in front of other people,

John Jantsch (12:59): How much of the work, like, I, I, I would venture to say that if we filled a room up with 50 people and said, please explain your purpose, you know, about, yeah. Two of them, you know, could come up with anything that they thought really resonated. So how do we actually help people understand what their needs are, what their fears are, because I think that’s a lot of the challenges they don’t know. We could ask somebody, what, what are your fears? But they don’t know.

Edward Sullivan (13:26): They don’t know you’re right. You know, we try to explore some different themes in the book of needs that we’ve seen. Our clients have fears. We’ve seen our clients have to give people a language, but it’s really through the conversation that we start exploring. I don’t even know what I might be fearful of. Yeah. Right. You know, do I get to say that I’m fearful in this office environment hate to say it, but like men especially are trained to be fearless. They can’t show any fear and to work in a, in, in a, in a tough work environment, women then show up and think that they can’t show any fear either. And it’s this creates this really negative feedback system. So we’re trying to break that by saying, it’s actually, it’s not just okay to have these conversations. It’s better if you do right. You actually get better results. If you’re able to talk about these things and have that connection,

John Jantsch (14:20): How, how could you bring this work earlier, uh, into somebody? So somebody joins an organization. Could this be part of the hiring process to some degree, or is it just too hard to do that? Because there’s no relationship because you know, when you start talking about people’s desires and gifts, mm-hmm

Edward Sullivan (14:36): ,

John Jantsch (14:37): That might actually direct the path , you know, that, that they would go or the role that they would fill, you know, how could you do this without, you know, the relationship part? Or can you,

Edward Sullivan (14:47): Yeah. I mean, some environments, some organizations have a culture where as soon as you walk in the door, you feel at ease. Yeah. You feel relaxed. You can tell people genuinely like each other. Yeah. Right. And in those companies, and we, we, we’re lucky enough to advise a handful of ’em that are like that you sit down for the interview and you already feel at ease with this person. You already it’s like, we, we we’ve been friends for a long time. Right? Yeah. So the people who are just coming in are almost inculturated into this idea of it’s cool to just be yourself. It’s cool to show up as you are and bring your gifts to the table, bring your needs and fears to the table and we’ll work with that. Right. Cause it’s very human to have needs. It’s human to have other environments you walk in and it feels cold. It feels like, you know, they’re giving you like an intimidation interview. I don’t know if you’ve ever had ever interviewed at McKinsey, like they’re famous for the intimidation interview where they try to see how you respond when someone’s almost really rude to you in an interview situation because the client might be rude to you someday. Yeah. Yeah. That’s fine. And all, but how about have that conversation about, you need to steal up and be ready for people to be an asshole towards you rather than just be that way towards them in the interview.

John Jantsch (16:04): So talk a little bit about some of the tools, because obviously you do this work with organizations, you teach people, you give them tools to, to train the, you know, folks inside their organization. So talk a little bit about the work, I guess that is that, you know, that’s more than just, you know, five conversations it’s daily work.

Edward Sullivan (16:22): Right. Right. I mean, our work is predominantly one on one conversations, like coaching conversations. And then we facilitate a lot of conversations for our clients. So you might, uh, not be surprised that right now with everyone starting to go back to the office and COVID feels like it’s mostly over, everybody wants to have a team offsite. So we’re just completely booked out through the summer in dozens of team offsite for people who wanna have these conversations. Right. They’re they wanna buy the book and have everyone that will have a workshop about the book or they just wanna get together and have a joyful experience of learning about each other. They’re they learned half of our employees. No one’s even met before. Cause we hired them in the middle of COVID. Yeah. What’s your name? You know, don’t tell me what you need yet. Just tell me what your name is. and in, in those facilitated experiences that we engage with clients, that’s where the real work happens, right? Yeah. It’s one thing to like play the games and do the trust falls and these kinds of things. It’s another thing to have a facilitated, really hard open conversation that gets people cracked wide open and gets them sharing things that they never thought they’d be able to share, let alone, I mean, with their friends, let alone in an office environment and suddenly it feels very natural.

John Jantsch (17:39): I suspect one of the tricks to this work is that, you know, even though you’ve got a nice tidy framework, you know, people are, people are all different. Sure. Some people respond differently. Some people love to talk about how they feel. some people, some people that’s like the worst thing that could, you know, that could be involved in the day. Exactly. So, you know how what’s the art or what’s the balance of being able to use the framework, but use it appropriately, I guess. Yeah.

Edward Sullivan (18:07): I mean, the important thing with all of this work is to start where people are, right. We can’t have forced vulnerability. Yeah. You know, people need to feel safe. It needs to feel natural. And it should often, it often comes after the leader has created an opening for it. You know, the leader who calls a meeting and says, great, everyone’s gonna share their most painful childhood story. starting with you. Right. Doesn’t really work. Yeah. Right. But if over time we’re building rapport, we’re making people feel safe. And the leader is the one who is handing out praise, making people feel good, making them feel psychologically safe. Yeah. Right. And that’s definitely a term of art in that when people give feedback, when they have ideas, when they push back against the conversation and what we’re doing, and the leader says, that’s really interesting. Tell me more. Yeah. You know, so really creates

John Jantsch (19:04): So really in a lot of ways, you’re, it’s not, there’s actually a risk in proclaiming. This is how we’re gonna do it or mandating, this is what we’re gonna do now, as opposed to just doing it.

Edward Sullivan (19:13): Yeah. Sometimes you just do it. Yeah. And you say, there’s no obligation to join the conversation. There’s no obligation to share something. You don’t feel comfortable sharing, but we’ve learned in this organization, whether it’s through the book or through it’s following the research that teams and organizations that share what’s really going on for them. Yeah. Build trust. And then ultimately have more honest conversations about the work itself. Yeah. Right. It’s this virtuous cycle. If you tell me what’s really going on for you and I build trust, then when I push back against you on an idea when we’re debating, you know, we’re really trying to get to the truth of the matter. Or we’re trying to get to the best idea. If I can’t push back against you, we might ship a flawed product. Right. I mean the, the, the challenger exploded because a scientist wasn’t able to say, oh, this O ring might be bad. Right. Things go wrong because people don’t feel safe pushing back. And I

John Jantsch (20:09): Think this

Edward Sullivan (20:10): Whole artist is about up in the build that safety.

John Jantsch (20:14): Yeah. I was gonna say, I think you make a really great point. I mean, some of the best organizations are ones where people feel, uh, enough trust that they can argue that they can, you know, debate things like that. Yeah. Yeah. As opposed to feeling like, oh, well doesn’t matter, you know, , I’m just gonna go. Exactly. Can you repair trust? Do you think? Because I’m thinking there are a lot of organizations out there that they just were, the leader was being who they were being and, you know, woke up one day and realize this isn’t working, you know, is that something that you can repair or is it again, just one of those things where you’ve gotta demonstrate through your actions, that things have changed,

Edward Sullivan (20:49): You know, they say trust comes in on two feet and leaves on a horse. Yeah. Right. So it is something that is earned slowly and can easily be destroyed. That said humans are naturally forgiving people. Right. We can always earn trust back. We just have to do the work. Yeah. And we have to be consistent.

John Jantsch (21:11): Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Lots of work for lots of us to do so, Edward, thanks for, so by the duct tape marketing, uh, podcast, you wanna tell people where they can find out more about your work or anything else you wanna share.

Edward Sullivan (21:22): Absolutely. The book is@leadingwithheartbook.com and thank you so much for the opportunity.

John Jantsch (21:29): Yeah. Well, again, as, as I said, thanks for stopping by, and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Edward Sullivan (21:34): Hope so. Thank you much.

John Jantsch (21:37): Hey, and one final thing before you go, you know how I talk about marketing strategy strategy before tactics? Well, sometimes it can be hard to understand where you stand in that what needs to be done with regard to creating a marketing strategy. So we created a free tool for you. It’s called the marketing strategy assessment. You can find it @ marketingassessment.co not dot com, dot co .check out our free marketing assessment and learn where you are with your strategy today. That’s just marketingassessment.co I’d love to chat with you about the results that you get.

This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network and Drip.

HubSpot Podcast Network is the audio destination for business professionals who seek the best education and inspiration on how to grow a business.

 

Did you know there’s an automated marketing platform that’s 100% designed for your online business? It’s called Drip, and it’s got all the data insights, segmentation savvy, and email and SMS marketing tools you need to connect with customers on a human level, make boatloads of sales, and grow with gusto. Try Drip free for 14 days (no credit card required), and start turning emails into earnings and SMS sends into cha-chings.

Why Connection Is The Ultimate Source Of Healing In All Areas Of Life

Why Connection Is The Ultimate Source Of Healing In All Areas Of Life written by Sara Nay read more at Duct Tape Marketing

About the show:

The Agency Spark Podcast, hosted by Sara Nay, is a collection of short-form interviews from thought leaders in the marketing consultancy and agency space. Each episode focuses on a single topic with actionable insights you can apply today. Check out the new Spark Lab Consulting website here!

About this episode:

In this episode of the Agency Spark Podcast, Sara talks with Dr. Fred Moss on why connection is the ultimate source of healing in all areas of life.

Dr. Fred Moss, MD is the foremost expert on delivering your True Voice into the world so that it can heal. Your voice matters. Your voice can heal.

Dr. Fred has been actively practicing in the mental health field internationally for over 40 years, and as a psychiatrist, has been an unwavering stand for the transformation of the prevailing, disempowering conversation that encompasses the industry globally.  He is a firm believer that conversation, communication, creativity, and human connection are ultimately at the source of all healing of all conditions in all fields.

Along with being a highly successful restorative/transformational coach, his signature technology, True Voice Podcasting is for people who are ready to take their lives back by speaking their authentic message into the world. TVP is designed to guide people from all walks of life, who are ready to rediscover the confidence and courage necessary to bring their full and real humanity back into all areas of their life.

Dr. Fred’s conversations and talks are designed to be thought-provoking and compelling and leave audiences refreshed and revitalized, with a new sense of what it really means to be a human being.

More from Dr. Fred Moss:

 

 

This episode of the Agency Spark Podcast is brought to you by Termageddon, a Privacy Policy Generator. Any website collecting as little as an email address on a contact form should not only have a Privacy Policy but also have a strategy to keep it up to date when the laws change. Click here to learn more about how Termageddon can help protect your business and get 30% off your first year payment by using code DUCTTAPE at checkout.

Weekend Favs May 14

Weekend Favs May 14 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.

I don’t go into depth about the finds, but I encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one that I took out there on the road.

This week’s featured tools will help you better manage the information you receive. We’ve selected some of our favorite services that will allow you to customize how you consume the news, notifications, and emails.

  • Charlie News – Charlie is a news app that helps you stay informed with the important news from around the world. Charlie delivers news stories in a calm and measured way; giving you all the information you need without being overwhelmed.
  • Leave Me Alone App – Leave me alone is a simple tool that removes the hassle of unsubscribing from unwanted mail and compiles all of your subscription emails into one place, so you can quickly see what you want to keep or toss out!
  • Acapela – Gives you a clutter-free way to manage your work notifications. It connects the work and personal apps you use every day and gives you a high-level view of all your notifications.

These are my weekend favs; I would love to hear about some of yours – Tweet me @ducttape

Using Personalization Data To Reshape Your Customer Experience

Using Personalization Data To Reshape Your Customer Experience written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Brennan Dunn

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Brennan Dunn. Brennan is the Co-founder of RightMessage, writes weekly at Create & Sell, and wrapping up a new book on personalized marketing.

Key Takeaway:

The internet has changed the way we do business. It’s given your company access to a global customer base. But that doesn’t mean consumers are all the same. Their location, economy, and finances can influence how consumers engage with your business. So how does a virtual business replicate the vital in-person experience? With technology. Brennan Dunn is the co-founder of RightMessage, a software company that helps you uncover who’s on your website, what they do, and what they’re looking for from you. In this episode, we talk about how we can leverage personalized data to improve the customer experience and increase revenue for your business.

Questions I ask Brennan Dunn:

  • [1:21] Could you tell me about your book and what inspired you to write it?
  • [2:09] What has your journey looked like?
  • [4:44] When RightMessage came to be, were you just working with JavaScript coding?
  • [5:44] How does the idea of personalization play into the customer journey?
  • [13:56] How does the technology of RightMessage work?
  • [18:59] Do you have any data to back up the willingness people have to give you more information when you share how it will benefit them?
  • [22:15] How does RightMessage use the data it collects to personalize the website for each visitor?
  • [24:09] Does RightMessage work with the various page builders that are out there now?
  • [24:51] Where can more people connect with you and learn more about RightMessage?

More About Brennan Dunn:

Take The Marketing Assessment:

Like this show? Click on over and give us a review on iTunes, please!

John Jantsch (00:00): This episode of the duct tape marketing podcast is brought to you by the female startup club, hosted by Doone Roison, and brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network. If you’re looking for a new podcast, the female startup club shares tips, tactics and strategies from the world’s most successful female founders, entrepreneurs, and women in business to inspire you to take action and get what you want out of your career. One of my favorite episodes who should be your first hire, what’s your funding plan, Dr. Lisa Cravin shares her top advice from building spotlight oral. Listen to the female startup club, wherever you get your podcast. Hello, and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast.

John Jantsch (00:51): This is John chance and my guest today is Brennan Dunn. He’s a co-founder of right founder of write message. He writes a weekly at create and sell, and he’s working on a new book, all about personalized marketing, which by the way, is what we’re gonna talk about today. So Brennan, welcome to the show.

Brennan Dunn (01:11): Yeah. Thanks for having you, John.

John Jantsch (01:13): So tell me about the book. Is it, is this one of these things where you get some spare time and you go right on it for a while, or is it, is its publication imminent?

Brennan Dunn (01:22): It’s somewhere in between. I’ve gotten much more structured than I was early on. So I am, I do have dedicated writing blocks that I try to keep. Yeah. And the, the finish line is coming up. So I’m aiming for about a midjune finalization, if you will, the manuscript and, uh, we’ll go

John Jantsch (01:36): From there. So, so as I said, we’re gonna talk about personalized marketing. So personalization in your emails and, you know, in your segmentation and your website, of course, and, and the technology there, you know, now, you know, makes that to something that if you put a little effort is really simple to do, I would suggest it’s probably becoming necessary to do I think, in the environment we’re in. But before we get into that, I’d love to hear a little bit about your journey because you and I have spoken briefly, we were at a, a conference, uh, together recently, and I kind of got the sense that you’ve got your hands in a few things, or at least have had your hands in a few things, you know, leading up to right. Message.

Brennan Dunn (02:15): Yeah. Yeah. So about a decade and, and change ago, I used to run a web agency. So that kind of got my experience with, or that, that built up my experience with kind of needing to sell big ticket projects, built that up to 11 people. And I think the, the big core thing that I, the big takeaway I got from that experience was how important things like dropping relevant examples were. And if somebody’s a technical person talking technical with em, if they’re just a marketing person, not talking technical, for instance, and, and so on. So I did that for a while. I got bit by the software bug, we were building apps for other people I wanted to build my own. So I built a little, a software company called plan scope. And in 2011, sold that in 20 15, 20 16, somewhere around then, right at the end of the year.

Brennan Dunn (03:00): And then I kind of started up or kind of came serious about this company called double year freelancing, which is the thing that I frankly did the best at with all these things. And that’s now a community of, well north, almost about 60,000 freelancers and agencies. And it was fun. Like we, you know, I did conferences, I had a podcast, I did the whole like bunches of courses, ebook, like info product, kind of Emporium there. And that’s really got where I got my start with personalization because as we started to get kind of broader in terms of our audience, we had copywriters, we had marketers, we had designers, developers, and really every Stripe of freelancer you could think of. Right. And the developer me thought, well, what if a copywriter is on a sales page? And they see copywriter testimonials, and what if a developer sees developer testimonials and, you know, that kind of opened up this Pandora’s box that I’ve been, uh, continuing to open ever since on what’s possible, given who somebody is, what their relationship is with you.

Brennan Dunn (04:03): So are they new on your website? They just appeared from Google or are they your most, you know, die hard customer? What kind of work do they do? What stage of their business are they at? And yeah, that, that kinda led me to eventually getting approached by a few key investors saying, we see what you’ve been doing on your own site. Can you extract that technology into a product that we can pay for? And they were willing to kind of fund the development of that. So that’s how right message came to be. And that was about 20 17, 20 18, right around then that we kind of launched it.

John Jantsch (04:36): So at the time, were you just doing that with JavaScript coding or something? Or how were you making that happen?

Brennan Dunn (04:42): Yeah, so what I was doing is back then, I was using, I switched from infusion soft, which is now keep to drip back then. Sure. And drip had a really nice JavaScript library that you could put on your website that would allow you, if you knew how to write JavaScript to query and say, Hey, is the current person on my website? Are they on my list? And if so, how are they tagged and what custom fields do they have? So it was really just a matter of writing, a lot of, yeah, custom JavaScript where I’d say, okay, if they’re a subscriber and they’re tagged customer, let’s show this thing instead of that thing. And, and it just became a lot of, kind of very brittle, very manual coding, right. Which really lent itself to building a web-based interface to set it all up.

John Jantsch (05:28): So I was gonna ask you what the biggest mistake you see marketers making today, I’m really just teeing up the non personalization, or just treating everybody that visits the website, just as you said, as the same person with the same desires, the same, you know, method of buying the same journey, all those. So let’s talk a little bit about, you know, that idea of the customer journey. Mm-hmm , I think that’s something I spend a lot of time talking about the stages of and how people make, you know, decisions today. In fact, I, you know, frequently say the thing that’s changed the most in marketing is how people choose to become customers. You know, not necessarily, you know, the platforms and the technology. So how does this role, I mean, thinking in terms of how people buy today, they go, they visit, they see if they like you, they see if they trust, you know, they dig deeper. Mm-hmm . I mean, how does the idea of personalization play into the customer journey for you?

Brennan Dunn (06:19): I think for me, and, and what I typically recommend, a lot of people do, especially those of us who are trying to do kind of email first, where right. You know, instead of pushing somebody to buy or trying to get them on our list and then over time, build up trust and then get them to buy later. I think the thing that as being on the consumer end, always frustrates me is if I’m on an email list of a brand, let’s say, and I get their, you know, their latest email and drives me me back to their website, then I’m hit with a giant popup asking for my email address. Not only is it a bit annoying because you know, they presumably know that since they just E you know, they just email me , but a marketer me thinks that’s a missed opportunity. I mean, that, that’s a perfect opportunity to say, Hey, you’re on my list.

Brennan Dunn (07:03): You’re kind of already a little further down the funnel. Why not present a product, an entry level product you haven’t yet bought. And then if they’ve bought that entry level thing, let’s now put onsite called actions for maybe the more premium product or right. You know, the, the, the crazy mastermind in Cabo, San Lucas, five figure thing, if you’re the super customer, right. Like, I mean, that’s the kind of thing that I think a lot of us, I think are doing that over email with campaigns that are saying like, you know, for different cohorts of subscribers, we wanna send different marketing messages. But I think considering that most of us are bringing people back to the website, whether it be to listen to the latest podcast episode or to read at the latest blog post, or just to look at a sales page. I think having that interplay back and forth is something that most of us should be doing. It’s just, it’s one of these things that it’s a little challenging to figure out how to do, which is one of the things I’ve been trying to help ease.

John Jantsch (07:56): Yeah. I think a real obvious use case. You talk about the popups that, you know, version one, everybody saw it every time , you know, it’s like, get outta here, get outta the way. So we were constantly just slapping him away. Then they got a little smarter, oh, you’ve been here before your, in the last two weeks. So I’m not gonna show it to you, but like you said, the ultimate is I know everything, or I know a great deal about you and our relationship already. So I may have one of eight things that I would show you, obviously that’s next level, isn’t it?

Brennan Dunn (08:28): Yeah. Yeah. And doing that, but also doing, um, more horizontal things, like, depending on maybe the industry somebody’s in or the job role that they’re in, or their goal, maybe offering different products or different recommendations to them showing different messages. I already mentioned the testimonial example of yeah. Depending on somebody’s kind of business, they run, what kind of case studies and testimonials should they see even things like one of the, one of the most rewarding, if you will. Things that I tested that that has worked consistently is I have, for one of my courses, a free email course that feeds people to the paid course. Yeah. And what I did is I simply asked people when they joined the free course, which of the following three things are you trying to solve with this course? Cause the course is on pricing and the three options would be, I want to get an idea of how to price in general, I went to start pricing on value, or I went to learn how to write proposals better.

Brennan Dunn (09:18): And those were kind of the three things I uncovered were why people kept joining the email course. So all I simply did was I said, well, okay. They tell me this upfront, what I’ll do is when the email course completes and I then start to pitch the paid thing, the paid thing relates to the email core, the free course. Yeah. So let’s just say, if they said they’re struggling with proposals, make the focus of the course and why they buy it to help you with proposals. Right. Yeah. Right. And it’s things like that I think are kind of a no brainer when you think it through. I mean, it’s any, anything like if I was trying to sell you over the phone on something I would, and, and you said, you know, you, you signaled something to me that allowed me to mentally segment you into this is John’s pain point. You, I, a good salesperson is gonna right. Keep playing off that. Right. So it’s the same, same thing just in a more scalable, um, more high volume, medium, if you will.

John Jantsch (10:13): Well, and I think that that approach of narrowing, you know, the focus, because I think a lot of times what we do as marketers is we default to, well, here are the five things we know are the reasons people buy this. So we’re gonna tell you those are all the benefits. Yeah, exactly. You know, so then consequently, we’re like, well, one of those matters to me, the other’s just like more clutter that I have to read about. And now I’m just confused. Yeah. And I think that idea of being able to zero in on something, they told you, I mean, they basically said here’s how to sell me. Right. right.

Brennan Dunn (10:42): Yeah, exactly. And, and I mean, this plays out, I think in a lot of more impactful ways, like I mentioned, the first software company that I sold, it was a project management tool called plan scope. So think of task management, normal kind of stuff like that time tracking. And I, I sold to freelancers and agencies cuz really the only difference with an agency was they had multiple seats and every functionally was the same thing. But I remember I, I got on a call. This is, would’ve been like 2013. So you know, quite a while ago in internet time, at least I, I got on a call with an agency owner and I was talking with them and I was showing them our website and kind of figuring out like what was holding them back from moving forward. And their objection was anything that works for a freelancer couldn’t work for our agency.

Brennan Dunn (11:24): And you know, it was kind of this weird. I struggled at the time as the person who knew the product inside out thinking the only logistic differences is maybe some things on the reporting end, but also the fact that there’s like multiple contributors and stuff to a, you know, a, a project rather than a single contributor. But it just kind of, it floored me thinking like, is this a very, is this a common shared thing? You know, that there’s this bias of teams think solo people don’t have anything in common with them. Yeah. And maybe convert vice versa. So anyway, that was a, uh, for me that would’ve been like a prime. I, I was even thinking at the time maybe I spin off like plan scope, premium or plan scope pro.com make it completely separate marketing site, make it all about agencies. And just say, if you’re an agency, you go to this site. Yeah. This lead magnet, whatever freelancers, get that one. But really the, I think the beauty of personalization is you can have the same products. You can have the same marketing site, you can have the same marketing and you just kind of dynamically alter bits and pieces. So you can get around those core objections in a and really elegant way.

John Jantsch (12:31): Yeah. And I think one of the things that I, I hear a lot of times, you know, sales people complaining that I got multiple stakeholders to sell, you know, the sales manager cares about vastly different things than the CEO does. And so I think that idea of job title, you know yeah. In your database is really crucial because I mean, case studies you could deliver that are different. I mean every benefits, all of your messaging can be different. Yeah. And sell those multiple stakeholders came.

Brennan Dunn (12:57): Yeah.

John Jantsch (12:59): And now let’s hear from a sponsor, look, you’ve worked hard to grow your business and finding CRM software. You can trust to help grow it even more. It isn’t easy, whether you’re starting out or scaling up, HubSpot is here to help your business grow better with a CRM platform that helps put your customers first. And it’s stresses by enterprises and entrepreneurs alike with easy to use marketing tools like drag and drop web page editors that require no custom code content strategy tools where you can create topic clusters that automatically link supporting content back to your core pillar pages to ensure search engines can easily crawl your site and identify you as an expert on any given topic. HubSpot helps your business work smarter, not harder, learn how your business can grow better @ hubspot.com.

John Jantsch (13:54): We’ve already talked about a lot of the ways I think people can use this. Tell, tell me a little bit about the technology. I mean, how, how, without getting to a level that you have to be a coder to understand what you’re saying, you know, how does this work?

Brennan Dunn (14:06): Yeah. So what, we’re the way we’ve modeled. This is you integrate with your email database. So that could be, you know, convert kit, HubSpot, drip, whatever. Yep. Active campaign, different things like that. And the, the way we look at it is that should that record about somebody. So Brennan’s record in John’s active campaign database is the single source of truth about what we know about Brennan. So presumably you segment me when I buy from you, you know, Stripe does its thing. You then tag me as a customer. You, I buy something else. I get another tag and so on. So it’s really just extending that to say, well, can we also sync up to that record attributes about, you know, industry chal current focus, whatever it might be. And then what we do is we say when one of two things happens, if somebody opts into your list, we basically kind of do a little think of it as a bit of a hijack, if you will saying, okay, a record was just added to active campaign for this browser.

Brennan Dunn (15:12): So when it comes back active, campaign’s gonna say, Hey, we created a record and its internal ID is 1, 2, 3, and then all right message says is great. We’re gonna drop a cookie on the browser saying this is active campaign record 1, 2, 3. So then from that on out until they clear their cookies, we just query and say, what do we know about 1, 2, 3, and, and get back that, that data. So then we can pull that data down, but also push shade up. So if we learn something new about this person, like they change their focus or they change industries, that data can then be synced to that single source of truth. So what we’re basically creating a bridge, if you will, between the website and a specific record in your email database and then pulling data down and pushing data up and we pull data down and we can say, when this data’s present, so when they’re tagged customer, don’t show the sign up form at the top of the website and the hero show, the upgrade button or something.

Brennan Dunn (16:07): Yeah. Right. And being able to do interesting stuff like that. And that’s really what we’re trying to do is we’re, we’re trying to really help people. And it’s difficult because it’s a bit of a challenge strategically to think it all through, but we’re trying to help people create more holistic end, end ex and end experiences where, you know, you’re getting personalized emails, you’re getting emails that are targeting just customers. But then when you go back to the site, you’re not treating, you’re not being treated as an anonymous person. You’re being treated as that customer too.

John Jantsch (16:33): You know, CRM, maintenance and updating is, you know, is the bane of a lot of people’s existence. And to some degree, you know, this is automating a great deal of that. Mm-hmm for people. I mean, it’s making your CRM smarter without you having to do a lot of effort once you get it in place. I think,

Brennan Dunn (16:48): Yeah. It’s just feeding. I mean, you obviously need to set up the different surveys right. And quizzes or whatever else, but yeah. It’s enriching. And I like to think of it as, especially those of us who are focus focused on low touch email stuff. Yeah. So you’ve got the lead magnet, the most we know about most of our people on our list is their first name and email address. Yeah. That’s pretty much it, which again, isn’t the end of the world. But I think if you can find out a bit more about why is they downloaded the lead magnet and what are they currently struggling with and what best describes their situation. And obviously the questions change depending on the business, the underlying business and stuff. Um, yeah. I mean a good example that we, that we like to reference a lot is we have a customer that’s in the health and fitness space and they do what you would expect, which is they ask like, what are your current goals?

Brennan Dunn (17:35): Do you wanna build muscle lose, you know, lose fat, whatever. And they’re able to then just dial in on both the products offered, but also the stories told over their marketing emails to just resonate better. I mean, it allows us to, I think all of us know that niche websites typically outperform generic. And the reason for that is they just, they had their messaging dialed in to one, one type of person with one type of need. And, um, but there’s no reason you need a niche, the entire business. Right. You know, it, it can be done. It’s like when I used to write proposals for my agency, we did web mobile apps for all different types of companies. When I wrote a proposal, I was effectively nicheing down our business to fit their unique need. And that’s all we’re talking about doing is just a, a way of doing that kind of dynamically.

John Jantsch (18:21): You know, what’s interesting about this, you know, you’ve, we’ve all gone to that, uh, to get that free download and presented with, you know, 18 fields of data that they want. And we’re reluctant to fill that in because I, I, I feel typically we don’t trust that company enough yet or, you know, whatever it is that we want to really give them that much information. Plus I think it, it feels like I’m giving you this information for your benefit. Right. And one of the things I like about this approach of asking people, I think it’s very easy to get a lot more data because it’s positioned or you can position it as, Hey, this is, this is so I can send you the right stuff. You know, this is so you get only what you care about. And I think that positioning really dramatically changes, you know, how much willingness people have to give you and trust that you develop. But I’m wondering if you have any data to back that up.

Brennan Dunn (19:14): I do. Yeah. So we used to be really pushing people. And I think you and I talked about this kind of recently where we used to push people to do a lot of upfront data collection. So pre optin get industry job role, all that stuff. Right. We’ve and the calculus was always, well, if we got more data about somebody could then show them a personalized optin. So if I knew you were in this industry with this problem, instead of join my newsletter, I can say, join my newsletter, you know, focused on helping, you know, marketing coaches with X, you know what I mean? Like just being able to make that really dialed in. And, and there’s some like that can sometimes work better, but if it’s tricky, so what I recommend most people do at this point is get that data post optin. So do your usual normal optin stuff.

Brennan Dunn (20:02): And then I like using the confirmation page. So the thank you page that usually says, Hey, thanks, go check your email goodbye. Instead, use that as an opportunity to say, Hey, so, you know, thanks for joining. If you can spare a minute or two, I’d love to just find out a bit more about how I can make sure you get exactly the content you need and nothing more. So this is something that, you know, we do, I do, but also many of our customers do. And on average, we’re getting usually it’s about 80 to 85% of all new opt-ins end up going through that process. I mean, assuming it’s not a thousand questions, if it’s, you know, four or five things that are multiple choice questions, most people are willing to kind of click through that because you’re positioning it as exactly that you’re not doing this to say we wanna put together a, a slide deck to investors showing the composition of our audience, give us data.

Brennan Dunn (20:51): Instead it’s positioned as if I can find out why you’re here and what you need. I can reduce the amount of noise I send you. Yeah. I can make sure that I’m giving you exactly what you need. And people tend to agree with that and like that. So, yeah, I mean, we’re, I’m getting four outta five people who join giving me more than just a name and email. I know in my case what their current email marketing objective is, what email provider they use. If they have one, how comfortable they are with it, what they’ve done with it, if they haven’t, why haven’t they signed up yet? So for me, I’m like, well, I can go and say, send an email right now to everyone on my list, who does not use an email marketing platform and maybe they’ve struggled. Maybe they haven’t done it cuz they’re not sure which one. Yeah. Well, I just came up with this great, uh, review video I put together and I really pushed the affiliate thing that I, you know, for the platform I, I recommend. And that’s how I could target that for, right. Yeah. So I can do like so many interesting things once you have, uh, that data in your database.

John Jantsch (21:49): Yeah. So, so let’s wrap up on, uh, the idea of creating personalized messages on your website. I think a lot of what we’ve talked about implies that I’ve got that data. So now I can send better email, but a lot of us out there myself included have segments, different, unique segments that we sell mm-hmm and wouldn’t it be amazing if on the homepage , you know, when they came there, they saw case studies and testimonials that were only related or were specifically related to that segment. And so talk a little bit about the idea that using this tool and using this data that we collect, we can actually now have the website say different stuff.

Brennan Dunn (22:25): Yeah. So the way, the way we do it with the right message is we allow you to quickly like click on a headline. So what you could do is you could go into our tool within the tool, go to your homepage, let’s say, and then click on the headline, like, you know, your main headline mm-hmm and then toggle between all the different segments you’ve defined. So if you’ve defined, um, segment a segment B and segment C, you could say go to a, change the headline to a B change this, click on this picture, change it to the picture of the Panda for people in a change it to, you know, change this, change that. And it’s really just kind of very, if you’ve ever used a tool like Optimizly or VWO, it’s very similar in that respect where it’s point and click. So that that’s how we’ve designed that.

Brennan Dunn (23:07): But what I usually tell people is even if they don’t want to go that far one easy fix, it’s not the most elegant fix, but it’s an easy fix would be, let’s say you’re promoting a new product or course, and duplicate your sales page like two or three times and make those tweaks. And then just within your email platform, when you’re writing the emails, have some conditions, let’s say if they’re in this segment, point them to landing page a. If they’re in this segment, go to line page B and, and obviously it’s not the nicest way of doing it, especially when you consider that one benefit of a platform like right messages, we can do multivariate personalization. So you can say, you know, these benefits are here because they’re in this job role, this headlines, because they’re in this industry, this testimonial is because they’re struggling with this pain point and that can yield. If you just do simple math, it can yield, you know, 10 industries, times 10 job roles. You already have to have a hundred variations, which would be untenable if you were to duplicate it a hundred times. Yeah,

John Jantsch (24:08): Yeah, yeah. And is it, does it work with the various page builders that are out there now because you you’re just putting in blocks of HTML or something

Brennan Dunn (24:15): That’s right. So all we’re doing the easiest way to think about it is we’re effectively, post-procesing the page. So you put our script on the site. What we do is your page builder sends up the wire the final page. And we’re just saying, even though the server says, we should be showing the headline that says ABCs, we see their tech customers. So before they even see the page, we’re gonna change it out to X, Y, Z. So it’s just a, kind of a, the benefit there for us is it’s, it’s agnostic in terms of what you put it on, it’ll work on anything that allows you to just run our JavaScript on

John Jantsch (24:46): It. Yeah. Awesome. Well, Brendan, thanks for taking time to stop by the duct tape marketing podcast. You, you wanna send people obviously we’ll have a link to right message. But do you want anywhere else you wanna send people to connect with you?

Brennan Dunn (24:57): Yeah. I mean the, the, you know, besides right message. I, I do write weekly, like you mentioned, at create and sell.co and there, I just write about everything from, you know, tagging versus custom fields to what I’ve talked about recently.

John Jantsch (25:11): A lot of email stuff,

Brennan Dunn (25:13): Just email, like, you know, should you have design emails versus simple text? Yeah. I mean just a lot of emailing, things like that.

John Jantsch (25:19): Awesome. Well, again, uh, thanks for sub by and hopefully, uh, we’ll run into you, uh, one of these days again, out there on the road.

Brennan Dunn (25:26): Absolutely. Thanks John. Hey,

John Jantsch (25:28): And one final thing before you go, you know how I talk about marketing strategy strategy before tactics? Well, sometimes it can be hard to understand where you stand in that what needs to be done with regard to creating a marketing strategy. So we created a free tool for you. It’s called the marketing strategy assessment. You can find it @ marketingassessment.co not dot com.check out our free marketing assessment and learn where you are with your strategy today. That’s just marketingassessment.co I’d love to chat with you about the results that you get.

This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network.

HubSpot Podcast Network is the audio destination for business professionals who seek the best education and inspiration on how to grow a business.