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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Newman (21:08): Yeah,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Jantsch (03:22): . So

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Laura Gassner Otting (15:23): Right?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Laura Gassner Otting (23:57): ,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Jantsch (00:00): This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Outbound Squad, hosted by Jason Bay, and brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. The audio destination for business professionals host Jason Bay, dives in with leading sales experts and top performing reps to share actionable tips and strategies to help you land more meetings with your ideal clients. In a recent episode called Quick Hacks to Personalize Your Outreach, he speaks with Ethan Parker about how to personalize your outreach in a more repeatable way. Something every single one of us has to do it. Listen to Outbound Squad, wherever you get your podcasts.

(00:49): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and I’m gonna do another solo show. If you listen to my last show, I started off by saying I wanna talk about a trend. I guess today I’m gonna talk about a really hot trend . It’s one that you’re hearing a ton about and so much so that I’ve been talking about it for a couple years, but the hype level on this trend has gotten so high that I wanna come in and do what hopefully you appreciate from me. Dear listener, , I wanna calm down some of the hype and talk about the real ways in which you can use this. You’ve probably guessed by now I’m talking about ai, artificial intelligence, this new set of tools, it’s been around for quite a while. In fact, I would suggest that whether you know it or not, you’re using AI every day.

(01:34): If you ever use Google Maps and it gets you to around traffic jams and gets you to where you’re going at the fastest route possible at that given time, that is a pretty common use of AI in our everyday life. Frankly, you know, the series and those kind of tools that are that, that have been around on iPhones are using ai, but a new generation of AI has jumped to the forefront. Something called GPT, which was essentially just a way to programmatically, systematically teach some AI tools, everything , all the content that’s out there, consuming it on certain topics, you know, up to a certain date. That’s the easy, simple way, probably to, and so what has happened is these tools have gotten smarter because they have, they’re basically just processing lots of language, lots of data. They can take that now and say, oh, okay, here’s how to write something based on that.

(02:27): Data tools have gotten better. Let’s face it. There’s no question. I think that while there are some tools like Jasper and Write, Sonic Market Muse that have been around for a while, I think the real game changer came when OpenAI ChatGPT, I’m sure you’ve, if you’re not using it, I’m sure you’ve heard people talk about it because it has really opened up the white hot topic of ai and it’s, you know, when that type of thing happens, you get so much chatter out there that it’s really hard to kind of cut through. I remember, this is going way back, so hang on cuz I’m gonna do a grandpa thing, almost internet grandpa. Anyway, you know when Twitter came around finally, I don’t know what year it was, 2008, 2009, it is. It’s like, if you’re not on Twitter, you know, you’re just like not cool.

(03:19): And I think that’s kind of where we are with AI to some degree, but let me just tell you, it is an amazing tool, not because it, well, if you’re a student out there, maybe it’s writing your essays, but as marketers, you’re not u going to use this tool today to create all of your content. You’re gonna use this today as a tool to get smarter about your customers, to get smarter about the industry, to get smarter about your competition, to create plans, content, no question. And to do a lot of mundane tasks, to get ideas, to get research. So that’s the way that, that, I’m not saying that we won’t get there one day where you just push a button and it’s writing, you know, your webpages for you. But what it’s doing right now, think of it right now as a a, a time saving efficiency tool that’s gonna save you some brain cells , quite frankly, because there are things that maybe if you sat around for a while, you’d brainstorm and you’d come up with a list of, you know, FAQs or something in your industry, but this is just gonna give you 20 of ’em.

(04:20): You’re gonna go, oh yeah, five of those are good. I didn’t have to use any brain power to get to those. So that’s how I tell people to really start thinking about it. Now, I wanna spend a little time talking about the process of using ai. So if you use a tool, the, you know, the, probably the reason ChatGPT has become so popular is because the interface is so easy to understand. If you use a tool, you know, essentially what you’re doing is you’re putting in what’s called a prompt. You’re telling it to create something based on something that you give it. Now you can give it a simple keyword phrase and it won’t really know what to do with that, but it’ll probably still spit something out. Or you can give, you can go as detail and deep as you want to tell exactly the tone that you want to write it in.

(05:07): First person to use statistics. I mean, those are all basically part of your prompts. So like many things, garbage in, garbage out. So if you put in a great prompt, if you keep refining your prompt to get to what you want, you’re probably going to get a lot better output. I’m gonna talk before we’re done today about what I would say is the top 10 ways you ought to be using these tools pretty much every single days, just from a use standpoint. Again, a lot of times I will start with kind of global ideas. You know, I wanna, I wanna start brainstorming a big idea. I’ll let it drill down to subcategories. You know, when I’m working with a client for, to create ideas, we definitely wanna plug in what are their strengths. You know, for example, I work with remodeling contractors. Well, you know, one, a very big remodeling contractor we work with is specializes in design build or design remodeler, because they have the designers and architect on staff.

(06:02): So we wanna play to their strengths. So that’s gonna, we’re gonna definitely use that as a way to create a differentiator inside of tools like ChatGPT. All right, let me just spend the rest of our time together today giving you a list. I said 10, I’m, I’ll probably go more than that. I’m just going to throw out a list of the types of output that you should be getting out of ChatGPT or whatever tool you use. Again, shout out to Jasper is another great tool. Shout out to write Sonic, like the word write Sonic is a great tool, but you know, whatever tool you use, these are the types of things that, that you can do. It’s not just writing content. For example, something that we have specialized in the last decade or so is, you know, with our clients, we create something that are called HubPages.

(06:51): Blogs are totally out. Stop calling it a blog, stop putting blog in your, in your, uh, main navigation. Nobody cares. Nobody wants to read a blog. We want got good content, but we want it structured in a way we could find it. And frankly, the way most people see blogs is it’s kind of chronological content. You, you put in a blog post to today and you put in another one tomorrow and when you wrote yesterday is gone. And so what we do is we take all that great content and we structure it around the outline of a big hub topic. So again, for example, I use the remodeling contractor. If they remodel construction or uh, kitchens, you know, we might create the ultimate guide to remodeling your kitchen in whatever city that you’re in. That would be the starting point. And then we would actually use, you could use a tool.

(07:37): In fact, you could type that exact prompt in to ChatGPT and it will give you a outline. Here are all the major chunks. It’s, you know, planning, it’s budgeting, it’s design, it’s construction, it’s, you know, it’s choosing appliances. I mean, basically all the kind of subcategories that go into a kitchen, major kitchen remodel, and it creates the outline for you. It even suggests steps all the way down to, yeah, that would actually be a good blog post. Why remodel Your kitchen probably would come up in that outline. , you know, the benefits of it would probably come up in that outline and, and that would make a great blog topic. So what it does is it kind of gives you like, hey, here’s, you know, in instead of just like, what should we write on Monday? It gives you kind of the whole outline for like, Hey, we ought to be doing something in each of these categories for the next six months and we’ll create this page that, that will really be a great resource.

(08:30): Instead of just telling somebody, go read our blog and maybe you’ll find something I can, I, in fact, I’ve probably done shows on that topic. But if not just Google HubPages Duct Tape Marketing, you’ll get a very thorough description of what I’m talking about there. Another kind of fun use for this tool is wouldn’t it be great to know what your ideal customer lays awake in bed at night worrying about when it comes to making a purchase of whatever it is you sell ? Well, you can actually tell these tools something along the lines of, you know, create a list of the top 20 concerns that a homeowner might have when it comes to remodeling their kitchen. Use first person and be very dramatic in your answers. Oh, and as a bonus, go ahead and write the responses that a marketing company for this remodeling contractor might write.

(09:24): So that sounds like a lot that can all go in one prompt. And then you are going to get a, a list of course of not just concerns, but actually sad in the way that a homeowner might say, you know, to deal with noise and budget and on time and you know all the things that you should be then addressing in your marketing. Hey, marketing agency owners, you know, I can teach you the keys to doubling your business in just 90 days or your money back. Sound interesting. All you have to do is license our three step process that’s gonna allow you to make your competitors irrelevant, charge a premium for your services and scale perhaps without adding overhead. And here’s the best part. You can license this entire system for your agency by simply participating in an upcoming agency certification intensive look, why create the wheel?

(10:23): Use a set of tools that took us over 20 years to create. And you can have ’em today, check it out at dtm.world/certification. That’s dtm.world/certification. So you can use these tools not just to produce content, but to actually produce strategy. In fact, another strategic use. Take all of your Google reviews, you can just copy ’em, paste them in there, and tell the tool to actually go through the above reviews that you just pasted in and create a sentiment analysis, which is just another way of saying what are some of the key themes, , that keep coming up positive and negative? We can take core messages right out of those themes now. All right, let’s go to another step. Once it gives you that output and says, here are the three themes that keep coming up the most, here are the three problems people keep mentioning the most.

(11:20): You could take those in a continuation, put those in and say, okay, create a core marketing message addressing these themes that keep coming up. And so all of a sudden now it’s gonna get creative with you. So think in terms of research for strategy to do things much, much faster. Maybe to give some insights that you don’t have today. You could take three of your competitors and put them in there. And the same thing. What are people say about them that’s positive? What did they say about them that’s negative? You can create how-to, cause it certainly shines at that. Tell it to write a 1000 word article describing the five benefits of doing X, Y, and Z, and it will produce something that’s not bad. I, in fact, I kind of use the sole, the formula of, you know, 20 60, 20, like you give it 20% of the great ideas, let it spit out 60% of the content, and then you actually polish it the final 20%.

(12:18): And you might actually get some decent content written that way. You can take that content that it writes and say, okay, now give me a two minute YouTube video script based on this content. Franka. You can do that with actually any content you’ve written. Let’s see, you have some amazing content on your website already that was professionally handwritten, bespoke, just for you. You could take it to these tools and say, give me 25 uh, tweets based on this content. Give me a two minute video script based on this content. Repurpose this content for a LinkedIn article. And you are gonna get all those things that you could probably create all on your own. In fact, you could do a great job creating those on your own, but you’ve now saved yourself, I don’t know, five hours maybe to actually have it. And there are things that, that, that don’t require brain power.

(13:10): In fact, they just require somebody who understands how to do it. And these tools understand how I how to do it. Great example of that, writing metadata. So, you know, the titles and descriptions, you’ve probably heard every SEO person in the world talk about how important that is as an on page ranking factor. But it’s also, if you’ve got 10 blog posts, it’s also a bit mind numbing to create these tools. Not only create it, they create it in the way that Google wants to see it. They create it certainly SEO optimized. So even if you know how to do that, if you don’t really know how to do that, this is a great aid. But even if you know how to create something like that, this is a tool that will just save you an immense amount of time. I, I can tell you that, you know, companies that produce articles today, and this won’t be 100%, but a lot of companies that produce articles today, a lot of companies that do SEO work, a lot of people that do podcast transcripts, I mean those are all going to be produced by AI if they’re not mostly being produced by AI today.

(14:09): Google loves question and answers. FAQs have always been great content. There are certain types of people that they just want to go and find the one question they have and get it answered. So every single one of your service pages, if you offer different services or you offer different products or solutions, should, should have a list of FAQs, not just for the company in general. Yeah, maybe you have one of those that talks about how you work or about your process. But every one of your products and services should have cues. But you know, they take time, like everything they take brain power to, to produce. You can use these tools to get a head start on an, on what questions people are asking and the answers that obviously you’re gonna want to sprinkle your own magic on those, those answers, but it just allows you to do things much more efficiently. Do things that you’re probably not getting to today either because of cost or because of just time and you actually get it done quickly and rolled out. In fact, you know, just the very start of of keyword research, you know, just putting in a couple terms and letting a tool, an AI tool give you, I mean there are tools out there that do this, but the AI tool, since you’re using it can give you a list of, you know, the keyword word phrases that people are searching for companies or businesses like yours.

(15:25): You can tell the, you know, I already mentioned the idea of social posts. It’s great at writing four specific Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. I mean, one of the things that’s sort of banding about social media is has a way to differentiate themselves. Each platform now has their own way they wanna see content and what kind of content and what style of content works and what shape the images are. And so using a tool like this to actually write for specific platforms, just take some of the work out of that. You can actually, let’s say you, you wanna make sure that you’ve got a marketing assistant that’s writing content for email newsletter every month for social posts, every month for blog posts every month. You can tell these tools, you can give it the key themes and say create a monthly editorial calendar. If you’re an agency, you can certainly do that for a client and it, and you may not execute on the thing for 12 months.

(16:16): But if you’re an agency or a coach or a consultant and you’re able to show in a proposal to a client, here’s what 12 months would look like, a typical sort of proposed 12 months editorial would look like. It’s a great sales tool. You know, again, like do you execute on every single thing that’s on there, you know, nine months from now, maybe not, but it actually is a great differentiator and is very efficient to produce. Speaking of efficiency, one of the things I’ve learned about advertising or ads, digital ads is you can sit around in a room and guess all you want and some people are probably better at it than others. Which ad, which headline, which picture, which uh, description, which call to action is actually going to be the best. But experience tells me that the only real data that you can rely on is data that you test.

(17:06): So testing your headlines, testing hundreds of variations for ads is how you really get to the winners. Obviously you’ve gotta track and you’ve gotta analyze and you’ve gotta have, you know, your audience variables, right? I mean, there’s lots of variables, but I do know that when it comes to creating lots of variations that you can test, these tools are super fast at doing that. And sometimes you just have to have a lot of volume in order to start testing. So let me ask you this. If you’ve listened to this far, ping me, just send me a note, john@ducttapemarketing.com. Say, I would love it if you would actually demo kind of a working session on, you know, a ChatGPT type of tool. Be happy to do that. So just write that, send me a note, leave me a review. We always love those.

(17:53): Tell other people to subscribe. , what else can I ask you to do? All right, lots to learn. Lots more to come on this. This is actually going to evolve immensely. There will be so many ways that people find to use these tools, but there are very many practical ways that you should be using them today and hopefully this helped sort some of those out for you. All right, take care and hopefully we’ll run into you listener one of these days out there on the road.

(18:21): Hey, and one final thing before you go. You know how I talk about marketing strategy, strategy before tactics? Well, sometimes it can be hard to understand where you stand in that, what needs to be done with regard to creating a marketing strategy. So we created a free tool for you. It’s called the Marketing Strategy Assessment. You can find it @marketingassessment.co, not.com, dot co. Check out our free marketing assessment and learn where you are with your strategy today. That’s just marketingassessment.co I’d love to chat with you about the results that you get.