John (00:08): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Jennifer Watson. She’s a healer, high-performance coach and breakthrough speaker on a mission to help leaders heal and accelerate their deeper purpose of impact through their vital wellness, leadership genius and potent speaking. She does this through her company, Jennifer Watson, leadership. So Jennifer, welcome to the show.

Jennifer (00:34): Thank you so much for having me, John. It’s an honor to be here going into the holiday season and just honored to serve your community.

John (00:41): So you have, let’s see, not necessarily a typical background entrepreneurial background. So I always sometimes love to say, how’d you get here? What was your journey that led you to this being what you were meant to do today?

Jennifer (00:56): Absolutely. I started as a high level athlete. I was a two-time, All-American track and field athlete. Used to be pretty fast everyone, and go figure. I had my chair of injuries and I started getting interested in the wellness and physical therapy world because I had physical therapy. I went to doctors to help with injuries. And during that whole journey I was also struggling with depression and anxiety. And I started realizing as an athlete that wellness and fitness actually incorporated more than physical. It was mental, emotional, spiritual. And it started my journey toward not only healing myself and optimizing overall health, but understanding that health is mind, body, soul. And because of my thought process on how to engage health in a more powerful way, I started my own practice just a few years after I graduated from PT school because I felt that traditional way of health care, at least in the areas of true healing and optimizing even performance with Hilo athletes was missing some pieces.

(01:57): So my practice has always incorporated mind, body, soul optimization. And from there I just took it in the last four to five years into coaching and consulting and speaking because what I found is beyond my four brick walls of healing, people in leadership positions and executive and business leadership positions wanted this information. And I knew, listen, how can I accelerate this information more powerfully in the workforce? And that’s when I became a coach consultant. And now I get to also speak across the country on aspects of mental emotional wellness as well as really staying into performance and team productivity, no matter the environment that you can truly be successful and keep your health no matter what life gives you. And that’s just an honor for me to do throughout the years that I’ve had here.

John (02:47): So I’m envisioning you working on somebody’s knee and then chatting them up about leadership skills and it just blossomed from there. Is there a little truth to that?

Jennifer (02:59): It’s absolutely, it’s really interesting because a lot of people that came to me, John, were high performers, business leaders, executives that had physical issues but also had some anxiety and depression or had some performance and productivity issues with their team. So of course after working with them for a while, that’s when they started getting some of my expertise. I was leading teams and I was pretty good at it and giving them advice on that. So it was a natural bridge. Such a great question, John, because people ask me, how did you go into coaching, consulting, and speaking from your PT practice, brick and mortar, it was actually a very easy bridge to craft because what you just said, a lot of people were drawn to the type of work I did as high performing business leaders, and I got to just use my skills as a wellness provider and a leadership person because I was growing my own business. So the two got married together to really bring out the coaching, consulting and speaking, and no one’s ever asked me that. So thank you for asking.

John (03:53): I also, I’ve always said for years, I think a lot of people underestimate the physical aspect and maybe the sort of parallels to being an athlete to running a business. I mean, it is very physically demanding. There’s a lot of the, you need to have rest, you need to practice, you need to perform on game day. I just think there’s a lot of parallels. Do you feel like your background as an athlete really helped you kind of understand what was missing maybe in leaders and in entrepreneurial journeys?

Jennifer (04:22): It’s interesting. A lot of executives and leaders that are drawn to me are prior athletes. So it’s funny you should ask that question. And I will say this, I learned about leadership performing in different environments, in environments that were not maybe optimal for race performance in a powerful way. So I would agree with you, there’s a lot of things I learned in performance, mental edge mastery and leadership as an athlete. However, I want all of you to get this. What I also found is some things that were detrimental as an athlete that I had to learn to transition into different skill sets for myself and for the people that I work with to help leadership and performance in a different way. What I mean by that is this, John, and I think it needs to be very clear because a lot of high performers and athletes, former athletes see performing hard as pushing through, as getting through the hard stuff as at all costs of often health, just get it done and be successful.

(05:22): And what happened is a lot of business leaders were tanked, were exhaust and overwhelmed, and I questioned that. I’m like, there’s got to be an easy way in the business leadership world to do things that you can actually be healthy and vital and actually still be a great business leader. So some of the things I took from being an athlete that you had to push through didn’t work in business. So the things I did extrapolate that were good as an athlete were powerful in leadership and performance. But one thing I really feel downloaded just to share with your audience is actually how the transition for me was different, becoming a leader that I had to get a different relationship with resilience, I had to get a different relationship with performance because if I kept up the whole athletic press on, don’t tell anyone, suck it up buttercup.

(06:08): That’s when I started self imploding to be quite frank in my health, in my relationships, Albany in my bottom line when I started shifting what performance meant to me and the relationship with it and shifting how I could shift that for my team and be a better leader in a healthier state is actually where my bottom line took off, where the productivity and performance of my team took off. So I did take powerful things from being an athlete, but the biggest caveat I would give the leaders now is be careful about the push push scenario. I’m not saying that’s not necessary once in a while, but I’ll say on average you need to be in a calmer flow state for you and your team to actually provide value and get things done effective on a time while keeping your health

John (06:52): Well. But one of the points there though, I think athletes are especially at a very high level where there’s millions of dollars on the line of their performance. I mean rest is as equally as important as practice nutrition is equally as important as weightlifting. And I think that a lot of leaders are starting to wake up to that whole, I got to take care of my body if I’m going to make it through this product launch or something. And I think that’s a really healthy thing that I think is finally starting to land and push out sort of the hustle hustle approach.

Jennifer (07:29): It’s interesting because people obviously probably like you, John, say, what are the top three things that you think leaders need, especially post to 2020, what do you think accelerates them? It makes them maybe above the rest, like go from good to great or even from average to good at a powerful rate. And I will say from a physical sense, sleep is hugely important. There’s so much research on this and I’m talking about sleep by the way, prior to midnight. You optimize more REM sleep and deep sleep when you’re getting more hours before midnight. And I would say it’s an active activity everyone. So that’s a number one. Number two, I’m going to go into a little bit later, but it has to do a little bit with nutrition. That’s a good thing that will help with all leaders. But a second middleman that I really want people to get, because people ask me this all the time, if you could pick just one thing, and I don’t think it’s just one thing ever, I don’t ever think, but if I had to pick one thing that would really help leaders be better leaders, help them accelerate their performance, their productivity, create good team culture and connectness in their team and make a lot of freaking money doing it, is this, everybody listen up.

(08:33): You have to learn to manage, refine and master your emotional state. It doesn’t matter if something external has triggered you into bad emotional state or something internal. A belief has put you in an emotional state, big or small, it does not matter Everyone, when you have emotions that you cannot harness to work for you instead of against you, you will lose hours perseverating in the emotion, perseverating in the belief and lose connection to your team and productivity. So I teach a lot of frameworks in my business and on my team as well as a lot of leaders in workshops and presentations on ways to master and harness no matter if it’s whatever it’s coming from. And you guys, that covers a lot of things from bottom lines to communication to losing staff at last minute to everything to maybe some personal stuff happening at home.

(09:27): And these templates really help people understand how to do that. When you do that, it game changes everything. And I see that leaders are understanding the value of that, especially since 2020. So I would say sleep is number one from a physical sense. Even over exercise, everyone, I’m a high level say that number one is sleep. Number two is the emotional regulation and mastery that I really, really want to delve into in the third. I can talk about in a second, but I’d love to answer any questions you have on that. But that’s a big one for a lot of leaders and teams.

John (10:00): Yeah, and I think a lot of it just becomes automatic response. I mean, there’s a lot of things that push our buttons throughout the day. And I do see this, and I know you talk a lot about meditation and pausing and mindfulness, which are all kind of practices to sort of bring all that back in, I think is the longer I stay in this, the more I realize how valuable that is. And I probably wouldn’t go as far as saying I control my emotions all the time, but I realize when I’m being acted on as opposed to me mindfully acting. And I think that becomes, that’s a tremendous skill for sure.

Jennifer (10:34): And the thing is, everyone, by the way, I can just give you kind of a tool right now just help gain traction on this. But there are some people that just have some core triggers that they just can’t get rid on their own. That’s why we have coaches and consultants to help people navigate through that. I mean, we’re human, everyone. And no matter how many tools we try on our own and download from our YouTube, there might be times that you need support and that’s okay. One thing that will help words are powerful, John, and what you said about trying to manage your emotions. I always say you guys shifting the words. So if you’re feeling depressed, angry, sad, frustrated, especially those I call ’em more the negative emotions or negative feelings, I always say change the words if you’re feeling angry, like I’m curious.

(11:14): Okay, curious everyone, that’s a powerful word. It has a higher frequency to, I’m curious why I am feeling anger right now. And when you allow yourself to choose a different word, it actually calms the nervous system everybody. It’s really important to calm your nervous system, to get it on board to chill out so it’s open to its pollution or an idea or a reason in this case why you are angry. So when you choose different words, it already starts chilling out a little bit. I’m not saying a lot all the time depending on where the trigger’s coming from, if there’s trauma behind that, but a lot of times it’s at least going to chill you out. And then that’s what the brain does when it starts calming down the calm, parasympathetic state, the calm state of your nervous system. It’s in more optimal use of brain resources.

(11:59): It wants to create an opportunity and solution for you. It’s going to start looking for answers when you ask a question. So when you ask questions, I’m curious, why am I having anger right now? You’ll find how you start journaling, figure out from their why and then often the solution. So that can create some momentum, you guys, for you, there’s sometimes more depth, there’s more layers to that, especially there’s other team members involved. But it’s a great way to help you start mastering that and moving forward because you’re going to gain productivity, performance and ultimately your bottom line. So those are big things for emotional regulation. So we talked about sleep, we talked about emotional regulation. And the third thing really even before exercise, you guys also didn’t say exercise yet. That’s the fourth. The third is really nutrition. And by the way, I’m a big believer that it’s specific to each person.

(12:44): Metabolic rate, blood type, your past milk constraint. I’ve been a practitioner a long time. So specificity to your type of food plan is necessary to optimize your body and brain to feel vital that day. However, one thing I will say for every American across the board, and I’ll say every American, okay, we genetically modify a lot of different foods in this country for a variety of reasons. And the thing is that’s happening is we have a hard time digesting that colors, food colorings, all this. And one of the things we genetically modify the most are wheat flour, our carbohydrates. And the reason why that’s important for Americans to understand is Americans, 90% of us eat too many carbs, too many wheat products. And most of us in research show that we have a mild to severe allergen to the genetically modified wheat products in everybody.

(13:35): So a mild to severe like celiacs where you have more of an anaphylactic response. And the reason why that’s important, everybody, it puts inflammation in your entire body, your brain, your gut, your whole body. So you think if your brain’s a little plane, do you think you’re going to be able to be more clear on your message, articulate well during the day, write up an email effectively? No. Okay. So those three are going to be probably the biggest dominoes for you to start gaining traction as a powerful leader to stay in your vitality and create connectness and good productivity communication with your team, sleep anything before midnight, that’s going to be the big chunk for you guys. Number two, learning how to manage and emotionally regulate your system. Sometimes you need coaching consulting here, but at least trying to shift your words will open up Pandora’s box in the brain powerful way. And then third, looking at not necessarily eliminating, I don’t eat gluten wheat flour, which is gluten itself, but at least in modifying its usage, which can help calm down inflammation in the brain. And then fourth, we could go into a whole nother podcast is movement and exercise. But those things I believe are really big things that can help people from a general level to create traction as powerful leaders and then delving in more powerful. We need more coaching consulting beyond that. She

John (14:51): Might actually live a little longer too. I mean, what you just gave was really a good recipe for having a more enjoyable life period, right? A hundred

Jennifer (15:01): Percent about the quality of life. Don’t we all want that? The quality of life, longevity of life, right?

John (15:06): So if somebody came to you and said, look, I listened to this or I went to your website and I’m ready to turn things around, is there kind of a recipe for optimal health? Or you maybe said this already that everybody’s different, but there’s probably a few truths I guess that are going to show up on anybody’s recipe, aren’t they?

Jennifer (15:27): No, absolutely. This is number one, we’re just optimizing health. And again, everyone, leaders, this probably goes without saying, this is your vehicle that God gave you. We don’t treat it well hardly at all. It’s really interesting. It’s actually really brilliant just by the way we go on a whole nother podcast on this, the brilliance of the body to rise even with all the junk we inhale from pollution to the food, food to the less activity, to the toxic environment from social media, it’s amazing. Our body actually rises as powerful. It does. So just be thankful and grateful for that everybody. But if you want to optimize this to actually work for you, because this is the tool, this is the vehicle we’re using every day to show up, not just as John just said as leaders, but in our life as husbands, as fathers, as just wanting to enjoy life.

(16:10): First and foremost. I don’t care if you’re a person that’s fit or a person that’s athletic, you don’t have to be get outside. The first thing I do in the morning all the time is get outside in the sun. Even if you don’t have a lot of sun in your area and it’s cloudy, it’s still indirectly getting sun from just being outside in the light. There’s so much that happens from vitamin D to actually grounding with the earth because we’re positively negatively charged. Being so is the earth. It helps pull us into a powerful state of calm state, a parasympathetic state for us to get ready for a day and optimize this. So get outside five minutes, you guys. I’m even saying three hours exercise, five minutes every day, get outside, put your head up in the sun and this is where you’re also going to second breathe.

(16:53): Okay? Breath is life. It’s not only necessary for all the interactions, it’s a catalyst for many things inside our body to happen autonomically, but it also is huge for stabilizing our nervous system, our brain to body to be in a calm state. Again, the reason why I keep saying this, everybody 90% of the day, our human beings are supposed to be in a calm, parasympathetic state is actually reversive that so many Americans and leaders are stressed out. But the reason why that’s important, research shows we need that for optimal brain and body to function. So that’s why they get outside. Now that you’ve been outside for five minutes, we start breathing you guys, there’s so many different types of breath work out there. I use Wim H method with some of my clients, depends on what your needs are with more performance based, trying to help with anxiety.

(17:40): But no matter what, just getting outside, taking 10 to 20 deep breaths starts that cycle, going to get you into a calmer state. Again, there’s more specifics. I teach to get more nichey. Depend what your needs are, but getting outside and breath is next. Third, the one thing that I always say you guys have to do is move. It doesn’t have to be exercise move. It could be dance for five minutes. It could be jumping jacks. It could just be you doing some burpees for five minutes. It could be you just walking your dog. The reason why that’s also important is it’s a triple kind of opportunity for you to not only get the blood flowing, okay, movement to the brain, the body get blood flowing. But guess what else it does. If you’re waking up with way, we talk about the beginning of all this emotions that don’t feel good.

(18:28): Emotions are energy. Just like food is energy. When you start moving, you actually start moving some of those negative anger, depression, anxiety, outside of your body. I’m not saying it’s going to be perfect, depends the layers of what’s going on there, but it can move it through you guys. I do this every morning. If I’m feeling anxious about something, I literally will jump up and down outside and it does move me into that calmer state because I’m moving energy that’s not good out of my body and I’m getting the circulation pump for the day. So get outside deep. And

John (19:03): It makes for some good Instagram posts too.

Jennifer (19:07): Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Those are biggest, those are probably the biggest three things, John. But then I would say is this connection is key. We’re relational beings and one thing that’s going to help us from a vitality of physical standpoint and also an emotional standpoint is get connected to people that are your tribe. It’s not just your team that’s in your business that’s on the same mission and mission that love it, but also the people outside. We always hear this that the five people that you’re on the most also influence you the most, right? But get around people that you feel good around. Everyone that works on your physical, emotional, mental wellbeing. Let alone all the things that can help you and mastermind and get the things that you want done in your business. So connection with people is the right people. Moving, really making sure that you’re doing some breath and getting outside. If I give any tools, will be the that I would give to people to start your day off. This is going to help you get to a higher frequency, calm the nervous system to be ready to go and perform no matter what is happening in your environment that day.

John (20:10): Well, I happen to be lucky enough to live in a national forest, so forest bathing is certainly something I do every single day. Well, Jennifer, I appreciate you taking a moment to stop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast anywhere you want to invite people to connect with you.

Jennifer (20:23): Absolutely. So I’m the most active on LinkedIn and Instagram. LinkedIn. I’m Jennifer Watson and then on Instagram it’s the Jennifer Watson and I do answer my own dms. So if you have any questions about this podcast or connecting with me more and learning more about what I do and how I can support you, connect with me there. I’d be more than happy to support you.

John (20:43): Awesome. Again, thanks for taking a moment to stop by and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days in Colorado. Soon.

John (00:08): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is Jon Jantsch. My guest today is Frank Cowell. He is a speaker, bestselling author and entrepreneur, currently serves as the chief revenue boss at Revenue Ranch. He works regularly with business owners and executives who are looking to grow faster, and he’s also the author of Building Your Digital Utopia, which details the concept he pioneered to help brands create digital experiences that systematically accelerate growth. So Frank, welcome to the show.

Frank (00:40): Hey, Jon, thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.

John (00:42): So a couple things I want to get in a little bit into your, I love always to hear people’s entrepreneur during like, how’d you get here? Right? But I want to focus on one thing. Revenue Ranch is your company. You’ve given yourself the title Chief Revenue Boss. Does that imply automatically what you think is the most important role for you currently in that business, or is that just what needed to be filled?

Frank (01:06): I think for me, the play on the Revenue Ranch aspects, so Boss is a common term on a ranch, and then revenue tying into the company name. Ultimately it’s my job to create direction for the company, but in this chapter of my life, after having exited an agency, this business is less about growing a massive team of people and more so about working with agency owners as they try to navigate this journey of being an agency owner. So I help guide them on that journey and we put a program together to make that happen. So Chief Revenue Boss is more so just a tie into the company name and that kind of ranch theming.

John (01:49): I guess what I was getting at a little bit is I see a lot of business owners, let’s call them rather than CEOs, who really think revenue and vision and maybe culture are my only real jobs because they’re so down in the weeds doing everything else, and I think it almost feels like a luxury if you get to a point in your business where you can say, look, these are the only three things that I need to focus on because they’re the only three things that matter necessarily to scaling.

Frank (02:18): What’s interesting about the CEO role is the CEO is responsible for what I call true North, and it sounds simple, but it’s a massive decision to make regarding what goes into creating true North. And then, oh, by the way, making sure that the decisions within the company and how you align the team so that they all are inspired by, they’re clear on true North, and they also make decisions about True North. That’s a very big deal, even though it sounds simple on paper. And then ultimately, if we look at the KPIs, if you will, of the other functions in the business, the major functions, those aren’t directly the responsibility of the CEO, but indirectly they are. If you were to go to the shareholders or the board, they don’t really care that there’s a head of marketing responsible for active lead generation that ultimately is going to fall on the CEO’s shoulders as to why the company isn’t growing at a respectable rate. So it’s kind of a yin and yang thing there.

John (03:19): Yeah, no, I actually agree with you. I think that a lot of people, it’s easy to explain the concept and a lot of books do of True North, it’s probably the hardest thing to actually get around to getting right, and I think that’s where people are really struggling. Give us a little bit of a snippet of your journey to how you got here. You talked about owning an agency already, and obviously we know what you’re doing today, but it’s always kind of fun, I think, to go through what molded you to this place.

Frank (03:47): Yeah, so I’ve always been a salesperson at heart ever since I was a kid. I was in love with this idea of product and creating a business and selling things and moving something into a market and satisfying the market. Even as a kid, I would order these products that I was responsible for selling and my parents would be like, what did you just commit to this? Hundreds of dollars of stuff that’s in our house now that you have to go and sell. I was like 12 years old, and so I’ve just always been that way, and if we fast forward, along comes the information superhighway. That’s what we called it back then, the internet, the worldwide web, we called it the Information superhighway, and there was a big theme back then of the information Superhighway is coming. That was the big message out there, and none of us really knew what that was.

(04:38): Well, me being very curious, I started dabbling and trying to figure out what is this thing? And it wasn’t long before I said I could probably sell stuff on this thing, and that’s when I launched my first web page through my America online web space, and I paid some guy 50 bucks to do it. I found him on America online, and at the time, 50 bucks, I had to ask my wife for $50. I said, Hey, is it okay if I spend $50? That was a big deal to me back then. And so she said, sure, I believe in all your crazy wacky ideas. So I got this thing uploaded and I was selling some information products, and then I decided I wanted to change it, and I was like, oh, this guy’s going to want 50 bucks again. And then I thought to myself, Frank Computers and back in junior high, you did a certain amount of programming that you learned, I could probably figure this out.

(05:31): So I cracked open a text editor, and lo and behold, I saw the words on the screen that I wanted to change. I changed it, saved it, uploaded it, and my mind was forever blown. I was like, oh my gosh, the power I now possess. So that led me on a journey to teaching myself how to program. I started programming in flat file databases using a language called Perl. Back then we’re talking, this was the late nineties, by the way, and so when it comes to the internet, I’m an old guy, and so that led me into creating my own content management system, and then I launched a web design shop, and then that eventually morphed into a branding agency and creative agency, and I went through that whole journey, did M&A type stuff, and then last year I exited my agency. So yeah, it kind of was a roundabout way of this sales marketing career that was underpinned by my desire to build things and deliver things to a market.

John (06:29): Yeah, it’s funny, I started my agency over 30 years ago, so yeah, pre-internet as well. But I always tell people the only thing I was sure of is I could hustle work, and I think a lot of entrepreneurs kind of have that bug, and sometimes it could be a weakness, right? We don’t stay focused because we’re able to do that. Talk a little bit about,

Frank (06:48): That’s such a point, John, such a

John (06:49): Great point, and we can come back to that. I want to talk about the book Building Your Digital Utopia. You talked about this idea of creating an experience that systematically accelerate growth. So kind of unpack that idea for us.

Frank (07:01): Well, I’m a systems guy. I’m a frameworks guy. Everything I do, I want to put a system around. I want to put a framework around, I want to put an ABC 1, 2, 3, so much so to where my wife sometimes is like, oh my gosh, there’s a right way to do everything, isn’t there, Frank? Because that’s just how I view everything. There’s a ABC 1 23 when it came to my agency experience and what we were doing for clients, which was essentially inbound marketing, content marketing. I wanted to create a way for our clients to understand the complexity of content marketing. Now to marketers that might be listening, we might think, oh, it’s easy to understand, but we also have to remember the people that buy what we have to offer, let’s say content marketing, it’s not so easy for them to understand and they don’t understand the strategic aspects of it.

(07:46): So I wrote a book that intended to teach the strategic aspects to get a business owner, a business executive, to understand what good inbound slash content marketing looked like. And oh, by the way, the underpinning, the big theme of that was relationships, that we can actually build relationships in a digital format. We have to just take that relationship psychology and apply it to the content. And so once you do that and you overlay that idea of relationship psychology, you now have specific types of content you need at various stages. And it’s not just so, it’s not enough to say, oh, awareness, decision, consideration, that’s not enough to say that we actually have to understand the psychology of meeting the psychological need at that place. And so that’s what we attempted to do was apply that psychology to that process and it works really well because now we can teach people, business executives a strategic understanding of content and digital marketing.

John (08:48): Yeah, 15, 20 years ago we were talking about content is king. You remember everybody was saying that and then it became air, frankly, and I think today we’ve risen it to the strategic level. You don’t talk about content as a blog post or as a content management system. It’s actually how are we going to use it to be the voice of strategy is how we talk about it, because I think it’s become that important, but it’s also, it’s complex. It’s changing, it’s getting harder. There’s so much garbage out there that I think I understand the confusion, right, and I’m sure you see it too. Yeah.

Frank (09:23): I think when, and this is Go ahead,

John (09:25): Finish that point.

Frank (09:27): I was going to say, I think when businesses don’t, I’m going to bring back something I mentioned at the top of the conversation, and we’ll get into it too. When we talk about the number one thing that I think CEOs are responsible for, especially in agencies, but what a lot of businesses lack what’s called a true north. And when you don’t have a true north, it affects everything. So specifically we’re talking about content marketing. Well, guess what? That’s why you’re going to produce a bunch of stuff for SEO and you’re going to produce a bunch of stuff for social and it’s all over the place. And then people wonder why it’s not getting traction. Well, because to get traction with marketing, this was true yesterday, and it’s so true today. To get traction, you need longevity. The problem is if you don’t have a true north, you will constantly be changing directions and you will never have the longevity required to get momentum going. And that’s actually the key word that drives everything I do right now with my clients and my methodology. It’s this idea of momentum. It’s the only magic elixir that ever truly exists in business and in life, and you could actually harness it.

John (10:38): It’s my pleasure to welcome a new sponsor to the podcast. Our friends at Active Campaign Active Campaign helps small teams power big businesses with the must have platform for marketing automation. We’ve been using Active Campaign for years here at Duct Tape Marketing to power our subscription forms, email newsletters and sales funnel drip campaigns. Active Campaign is that rare platform that’s affordable, easy to use, and capable of handling even the most complex marketing automation needs, and they make it easy to switch. They provide every new customer with one-on-one personal training and free migrations from your current marketing automation or email marketing provider. You can try Active Campaign for free for 14 days and there’s no credit card required. Just visit activecampaign.com slash duct tape. That’s right. Duct Tape Marketing podcast listeners who sign up via that link will also receive 15% off an annual plan if purchased by December 31st, 2023. That’s active campaign.com/ducttape. Now, this offer is limited to new active campaign customers only. So what are you waiting for? Fuel your growth, boost revenue and save precious time by upgrading to active campaign today.

Frank (11:54): Yeah,

John (11:54): Let’s talk a little bit, I think you call it momentum management even. So let’s talk a little bit about that concept. Again, unpack that a little bit so that, I mean, I think people conceptually can get that, but how do you apply that in a real world, in a business?

Frank (12:10): Yeah, simply put, momentum again is the only magic elixir that really exists. It’s this magical thing that’s infectious that when you start harnessing momentum, everyone gets caught up in it, everyone gets excited, and you have people working together towards a common cause. Without momentum, things start to feel stale and stagnant. And as agencies, we know that is awful in the agency space because our people, which is essentially the product, when they start feeling stale and stagnant and the business isn’t going somewhere, they’re easily distracted by other opportunities. There are many other organizations willing to woo our talent. So we have to create momentum. So how do we do that? The way we do that simply put is by making sure that we obsessively work on the right things in the right order, and disproportionately deploy time, money, and resources against those things. So there’s a few things to define that and get there.

(13:10): I’ve already mentioned true north quite a bit, and I’ll go back to that. It’s really critical that you as the agency leader or any business owner that you e established a true north for the business. Well, the true north, what is it? The true north basically says this is who we’re for. This is what we do in the world. This is the transformation we bring and this is the mission we’re on to get there. It needs to be so sharp, it could metaphorically cut. Meaning when you come across opportunities, it’s either going to cut yes or cut no, and it’s going to be very black and white. The problem with most businesses, they’re not willing to make that sharp of a business strategy decision. So they end up taking some things over here, some things over there, some things right there, and then before you know it, you don’t have the focus.

(13:58): So the true north needs to be something that is razor sharp. Again, I like to tell my clients it should metaphorically cut. If you touch, it cuts you. It’s that sharp. And then your job as the owner is to make sure that all plans align to true North. All people that you hire align to true North, and all the day-to-Day behaviors and decisions align to true North. So that’s number one. We must have a true north, right? So we’re talking about things like vision, mission, values, how you articulate the brand, and then how you define what I call the boulder in the business. And the boulder in the business is the number one strategic imperative that you have to accomplish in the next one to three years. So that’s your true north. So if we start there, if we don’t have that, then gaining momentum is going to be really difficult.

(14:43): And then I can go on to a couple of more points if you want, but yeah, let’s do it. Are we good? Okay, so we’ve got true north. The next thing we need to do is is that we need to uncover the number one blocker towards True North, and we need to analyze that number one blocker on a consistent basis. I like to say in nighty day cycles or quarterly cycles. So what is our number one blocker towards True North? Now, I talk about there being seven core capabilities in every business. One is True. North two is exceptional execution. We’ve got world-class offering systematic sales process, actively generation, empowered work experience, and cash and profit optimization. Those, by the way, align with job titles, but I don’t use the job titles. Those are the seven capabilities. So what you have to do as a business owner is you have to regularly understand of those seven capabilities, which one is our number one blocker to growth.

(15:41): And you as a business owner must know that at any given point in time, and once you define your number one blocker to growth, then what you’re going to do is the third thing is you’re going to chip away at that blocker in nighty day or quarterly cycles. So the plans you come up with aren’t to boil the ocean, aren’t to get rid of that blocker to growth in one plan, your objective is what can we accomplish in this quarter to chip away at it and understand that growth getting to a place of big success is a journey, and it’s about success stacking those little wins quarter after quarter. So what happens when you do that? Well, you gain momentum because not only are you chipping away at the blocker, which frees up and makes your company spend faster, but you’re creating a culture of winning with your team. And when your team feels like winners, they start to get caught up in the excitement and enthusiasm of it. So those are the three things that I would say as know your true north, know your number one blocker to growth, and then in quarterly cycles relentlessly execute, chipping away at it in small chunks, quarter after quarter.

John (16:54): As I listened to you described that one, how often the number one blocker for people is they don’t have a true north, right?

Frank (17:02): It’s interesting enough, John, it’s actually if we put those in the right order, a lot of people might say, well, I don’t need strategy at this point in time or company’s small. It’s like, well, could you spend just a handful of weeks getting together with the few people you have and agree on what the strategy is? We’re not talking about spending months or years on this, but could you get together and just create some clarity around where you folks are going? Because if you can’t do that, you’re going to continue to spin your wheels.

John (17:32): So one of the things I’m seeing in the agency world is, and we’re picking on the agencies it sounds like, because we both serve a lot of agencies, but this is business in general, is just that they see what everybody else is doing out there. It’s like this is how it’s always been done, and I see a whole lot of pressure right now on marketing tactics, price pressure on marketing tactics today, and a lot of agencies going, we are just throwing bodies at stuff, but we’re making less and working more. So I’m curious if you see that same mentality out there, but also what do we need to be doing or how do we need to be looking at things differently if we are going to scale in a world where technology is constantly changing and creating a lot of pressure on price or on profit?

Frank (18:17): Yeah. Again, I’m going to be redundant here, but I go back to true North. I think about there’s two agency relationships in particular that come to mind for me in one relationship. In this one agency I know of, they made the decision to get really sharp on their true north, and they stuck to it and they relentlessly executed against it. The other agency who by the way, was bigger than this other agency has stagnated because they did everything else, but they didn’t have the courage to make the decisions about True North because they had this fear of missing out. So what ends up happening is they’re not magnetic to anyone audience, but because they’re kind of there for many audiences, now, why is this the answer to the thing that you just brought up? The reason it’s the answer is because as tactics shift, and let’s say we have these massive shifts like AI coming in with content, and how does that affect SEO and how does that affect content marketing?

(19:21): These massive shifts coming in. When you own an audience and you own a particular problem, then you are the one that has the voice within that community to start having conversation with them about how they’re going to leverage this technology or if it’s even applicable at all. When you have that kind of intimate knowledge about that audience, it’s okay that you may not have the answer, but you have the audience and you have the conversations there, and you have the relationships to go back to that audience and say, why don’t we do a roundtable? Why don’t we do a forum where we talk about the disruption that’s happening with this new technology? I’m not claiming to have the answers, but I do know your industry and I do know your problems, and I do know what we have to get you to where you’re wanting to go from a strategic standpoint.

(20:11): When you have that kind of intimacy, the tactical problems come and go. As you know, there will be another massive shift in the future, and there will be another one that will always happen. When you have that intimate knowledge of a given market and you understand them better than anyone else, and you’ve put in the work to develop the relationships in that market, you can then go to them and not claim to have the answers. And that’s really the big revelation. You don’t have to have the answers of knowing what to do with the technology, but you do have to have the relationships with an audience that’s greater than your competitors, so that way you can bring that question to that audience and have a round table discussion and start to create insights and ideas about what that industry can do with the new tech.

John (20:59): Such a great way to build such a great way to build trust too, with that audience doing exactly what you described. Well, Frank, we have run out of time somehow. I wanted to get to stepping away from your agency, which I know we could do a whole show on. So maybe we’ll have you back to cover just that one topic, but I’d invite you to invite people to connect with you or where you’d like to connect or find out more about the work you’re doing there at Revenue Range.

Frank (21:23): Yeah, I think the biggest thing I can do for listeners, because we talk so much about momentum and figuring out which area is your number one blocker and what you should do about it, that probably the best thing I could do is direct people to an online tool that I developed where people can go through and answer some questions about their business, and it will help uncover your exact blocker to growth. So if you just go to Growthmomentumroadmap.com Growthmomentumroadmap.com, you’ll have access to a tool where we’ll walk you through exactly what your number one blocker to growth is, and it’ll give you a roadmap on what to do about that.

John (22:01): Yeah, and we’ll have that link in the show notes as well. Well, frankly, again, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.