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AI Can Create Content. It Can’t Create Thought Leadership

AI Can Create Content. It Can’t Create Thought Leadership written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch The Full Episode

Overview

What if the ideas you already have are worth more than any marketing campaign you could run? That’s the question at the center of this conversation with Peter Winick, founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage and co-author of The Thought Leadership Handbook: How the Experts Elevate Their Big Ideas and How You Can Too.

Winick breaks down the 5 thought leader avatars from his book, why activity isn’t the same as productivity, and how personal and systemic velocity work together to move ideas beyond 1 person’s reach. The conversation also covers where AI genuinely helps thought leaders, including how Winick’s team mined 650 podcast transcripts to write their book, and closes with the impact equation: simplicity, relevance, velocity, and share of audience. This episode is for consultants, authors, speakers, and business owners who want their ideas to travel further without depending entirely on their own bandwidth to carry them.

Guest Bio

Peter Winick is the founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage, a firm that helps experts and executives turn their ideas into a business. He co-hosts the Leveraging Thought Leadership podcast and has spent nearly 2 decades working with authors, speakers, and executives, including 3½ years building out training, development, and speaking business for Keith Ferrazzi following the launch of Never Eat Alone. Winick is the co-author of The Thought Leadership Handbook.

Key Takeaways

Most thought leaders are strong at their craft but rank marketing far down their list of natural strengths, which is exactly why a system for spreading ideas matters more than talent alone.
Activity is not productivity. Working harder or filling more hours does not automatically translate to more impact or revenue.
Ideas need both personal velocity, what you do yourself to spread them, and systemic velocity, the channels that carry your ideas without requiring your direct involvement.
Holding back your best frameworks to protect future client work tends to backfire. Sharing complete thinking builds trust and often leads to higher-value engagements, not fewer of them.
The impact equation, simplicity, relevance, velocity, and share of audience, offers a practical filter for deciding what ideas are worth pursuing and who they are for.

Great Moments

[00:01] – Jantsch opens with the core question of the episode: are your existing ideas worth more than any campaign you could run?
[02:20] – Winick unpacks the “thought leader on the run” avatar, the most common of his 5 archetypes.
[04:13] – Discussion of why ideas can’t speak for themselves, and the difference between personal and systemic velocity.
[13:09] – Winick describes mining 650 podcast transcripts, 2.3 million words, to identify patterns for the book.
[16:18] – Introduction of the impact equation: simplicity, relevance, velocity, and share of audience.

Memorable Quotes

“Activity is not productivity.” — Peter Winick
“You’re irrelevant to 99.99% of the people on this planet. And that’s an amazing thing.” — Peter Winick
“The best thing you can get is a fast no. A maybe is the worst thing in the world.” — John Jantsch
“It’s the most cost-effective net new client acquisition tool I’ve seen.” — Peter Winick, on thought leadership

Resources

The Thought Leadership Handbook: How the Experts Elevate Their Big Ideas and How You Can Too by Peter Winick and Bill Sherman
Thought Leadership Leverage
Leveraging Thought Leadership podcast (hosted by Peter Winick)
Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi
The Referral Engine by John Jantsch

Duct Tape Transcript

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John Jantsch (00:01.368)

So, what if the ideas you already have are worth more than any marketing campaign you could run? And what if the only reason they aren’t spreading is that you’ve never built a system to move them past your own reach? Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Peter Winnick.

He is the founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage, co-host the Leveraging Thought Leadership podcast. And we’re gonna talk about his new book that he co-authored, The Thought Leadership Handbook, How the Experts Elevate Their Big Ideas and How You Can Too. So Peter, welcome to the show.

Peter Winick (00:40.674)

Thanks for having me, John. Appreciate it.

John Jantsch (00:42.504)

So I had Keith Farazzi on this show. Believe it or not, I’ve been doing this show since two thousand and five. I had Keith on when Never Eat Alone came out, and I know you have a bit of history with him. may maybe let’s start there.

Peter Winick (00:55.48)

Yes.

Peter Winick (00:59.18)

Yeah. So I started working with Keith in two thousand five actually when we launched Never Eat Alone and I worked exclusively for Keith for three and a half years. So I was brought in to build out the training and development business and I took over the speaking business. and this is in the Stone Ages, you know, before so many so many things, but it was an amazing, amazing experience. He’s still a dear friend. And it it it really gave me the

John Jantsch (01:17.514)

Yeah.

Peter Winick (01:27.618)

the the the spark to say, you know what? why be monogamous? Right. Like there’s lots of other thought leaders out there that could use help because Keith, as you know, is an amazing, amazing marketer. Most thought leaders, when you put on a list of paper what they’re really great at, great at, marketing doesn’t come up in the top 100.

John Jantsch (01:32.62)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (01:39.117)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (01:45.761)

Yeah, I I can’t tell you how many people have have come to me with and and thought leaders have written a book and they’re like, What do I do to start marketing? And it’s like, Well, that was about a year ago. So you’re you’re absolutely right. So in the handbook, you you actually introduce five avatars. There’s one that’s probably the one that that I thought was most intriguing, thought leaders on the run. so unpack that one for us. That’s that’s kind of the

Peter Winick (01:54.957)

Yeah. Yeah, yeah yeah. Exactly.

Peter Winick (02:04.3)

Yes.

John Jantsch (02:14.998)

The person that’s too busy doing the work to even consider themselves a thought leader, maybe, huh?

Peter Winick (02:20.28)

Well, the thought leader on the run, when when you break it down by the percentages over the five avatar, is the one that shows up the most. Why? Because it’s it’s i it it it’s how they operate, right? So what does that mean? It means, you know, and and it’s not that it’s good or bad, it just is, right? That in order for them to get the idea out, primarily they need to be in the room or in the zoom. So they tend to live a lot in airports, right? They’re going from event to gig to gig to gig, and they put on the

John Jantsch (02:27.085)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (02:45.28)

Mm.

Yeah.

Peter Winick (02:49.698)

thought leader hat or the author hat or the keynote speaker hat more than they do the CEO hat. Right. So typically when they come to us, the issue is, hey, I love my life. I’m blessed. This is amazing. I get paid the big bucks to go to be in Miami on one day and, you know, Arizona on another day. But I’m a little tired, you know, I’d like to sleep in my own bed. And from an impact standpoint, how do I get these ideas out to more people in more ways? And how do I balance my portfolio?

So it so the revenue generated is not a function of how busy was I last week, last month, last quarter.

John Jantsch (03:25.761)

S so one of the things that you another phrase that stuck with me, ideas can’t speak for themselves. you know, I

I wrote a book on referrals. my second book was called The Referral Engine. And in a lot of ways, that that was the premise of that. It’s like a lot of I think a lot of thought leaders, a lot of business leaders think, hey, I do good work, people will talk about me. You know, they’ll talk about the great results, you know, as opposed to doing anything intentionally, you know, around sort of amplifying the fact that they are referral. So

How do you actually get people to start thinking in terms of like that that that ties to that ideas can’t speak for themselves? How do you get people to actually start spreading that idea that intentionally that that they are worth referring?

Peter Winick (04:13.41)

Yeah, so I think there’s two questions there. Let me let me I hear that as two different or or two slightly different things. Yeah, right, right. so the the one is there are the ideas piece is how do we get the ideas out to the most people, the most relevant people most often. So to me, that’s typically a function of format and and and all that, right? So, you know, a book is great, people don’t read. I mean that’s a general statement, but like a book is not

John Jantsch (04:18.114)

There’s pr usually there’s six questions, but that’s that just to

Peter Winick (04:43.234)

Today is not what a book was. Video is awesome, but if you’re reluctant to get on video, you’re missing opportunity. There’s short form, there’s long form, whatever. So I so one is where do your ideas live and how does that align to where the folks that you’re trying to reach and connect with consume that information? That’s the first piece. The other piece, in terms of the ideas not speaking for themselves, is what I would think about as velocity, right? So there’s personal velocity.

John Jantsch (04:45.241)

Yeah.

Peter Winick (05:10.252)

You and I are talking right now, so I can’t be talking to someone else right now. Or if I if I was, that would be pretty rude or whatever, right? So there’s a limit to that. So my personal velocity is how I choose to spend my time to get the word out and get the message out. Now, this is more velocity than you and I just having a conversation. Although we’ve done that, and that’s great. We’re recording this, it’s gonna on your podcast. You know, lots of people hear it. That’s pretty cool. The system velocity.

John Jantsch (05:16.972)

Yeah.

Peter Winick (05:36.312)

Really thinks so personal velocity is pretty straightforward. What is it I, the thought leader, can do to get my ideas out on a on a consistent basis? The system velocity of what are the other ways it could go out that’s not dependent on me? Right. Me as the human, right? Me as the person. So there’s lots of other ways ideas get out in the universe. And are you in you know, are you choosing to participate in the right ones to meet your business objectives, which is your strategy?

John Jantsch (06:03.862)

Yeah, and and y you know, one of the challenges is there’s so many things we can do, so many things we’re told we should do. and so, you know, the I think one of the greatest skills possible is is developing focus and discipline, you know, to stay f just what you said, to stay focused on the few things maybe that you should do.

Peter Winick (06:09.465)

Yes.

Peter Winick (06:24.643)

Well, I would say yes end, right? So the yes end is the focus and discipline is great as long as you’re focused and disciplined on the right things in the right sequence to get the outcomes, which which is strategy, right? So that that to me, my clients and and you you know this better than I do, thought leaders that that we all know, they’re not lazy, right? They’re working really hard, they’re passionate, they’re evangelical in terms of what it is they’re doing. But you know, activity is not productivity.

And I think that’s a that’s a trap that a lot of thought leaders fall into. I’ll just get up, you know, I’ll I’ll work harder, do it faster, I’ll get twenty five hours in a twenty four hours day. And it’s like, Well, if you have ninety eight plates spinning in the air, you know, is that really good? You know, as opposed to like, you know, your point on the fewer, but it’s the right fewer. Yeah.

John Jantsch (07:09.548)

Well sure. Right. Yeah. That that was hopefully that was implied. so one of the things, one one common thing that I’ve heard over the years

whether they’re a thought leader or just a business owner, even, you know, that it’s like, I don’t want to tell how to do my secret thing that I do. but you know, but then they won’t need me. and, you know, I’ve I I know you take the opposite view of that and so do I. I mean, I’ve always felt like they don’t want to know how to do it. They want to know that I know how to do it. and so

Peter Winick (07:39.342)

Yeah, I mean, I think you know, there’s one word for that, and quite frankly, it’s stupid, right? So it it it it you know, like w when Stephen R. Covey wrote the seven habits, it wasn’t well, we’ll just publish five of them and you want the other two, you gotta send us some money. That’s just, you know, stupid, right? And I think the way it works is we put twenty years of models and methods and frameworks into the book. And exactly the argument you just made, but if you put it out there, why do they need you? More people will need us at a higher price point as a result of that.

John Jantsch (07:44.268)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (07:53.474)

Right.

John Jantsch (08:01.76)

Mm-hmm.

Peter Winick (08:08.675)

The subset of people that buy the book and read the book and do it yourself, that’s awesome. I love that. Like if we can help those folks, I never could have helped them. you know, they just can’t be clients right now. Now that might change down the road. And I think that’s really the the the piece. And you know, if you think about it from a keynoter standpoint, you and I have both seen fifty, hundred thousand dollar keynoters and you get their stuff on YouTube. So you’d say, well, why would I anybody pay to bring them in the room? Well, there’s a difference of of that’s a totally different experience than watching a YouTube video.

John Jantsch (08:18.86)

Yeah. Right. Yeah.

John Jantsch (08:40.02)

You you mentioned the thought leader on the run was maybe the most prevalent. Who who who do you think has the most unreal realized potential now? Is that the same group? Or is there is that a different avatar?

Peter Winick (08:53.507)

You know, that’s an interesting piece. I mean, I would say they all have potential because of the different things that we have available to us today. Right. whether that’s, you know, the technology, the AI, the learning, you as as a thought leader today, you know, 20 years ago we’re talking about this to, you know, two old dudes sitting here talking about 20 years ago. The typical model for a successful thought leader was to publish a book every 18 months.

John Jantsch (09:20.652)

Yeah. War it was it was it was very effective, as a matter of fact. Yeah. Yep, yep.

Peter Winick (09:20.813)

Right. That was the your publisher put the gun to your head eighteen months, eighteen month now.

And yeah, and it worked until it didn’t? No, it worked until it didn’t. Now the reality is it takes the average author two, two and a half years to write a book. How can you get one out in 18 months? There’s a negative math problem there. So new was a relative term, right? You know, so I think now there are more options, more choices, more ways to get your stuff out. I do think that there are a lot more impact and legacy executives, right? So these are folks that are have had

John Jantsch (09:37.43)

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Peter Winick (09:55.438)

Great success, typically commercially, whether they’re C-suite in a Fortune 1000 or they built up a business and sold the business, and they’re they’re at a stage in life where they’re like, you know, I’ve I’ve done the money thing, you know, checked all the boxes there. That’s all good. But what I’m really passionate now at this stage of life is X, whatever X is. And I want to do that. And I want to spend more time doing that. And I want to understand what that is. And the way I measure my success might not be, you know, dollars generated or number of keynotes, a number of books or whatever.

But how many people are starting think about my ideas? Are they being introduced as as as as part of the vernacular in in the business community or whatever communities I serve? There’s a lot of that going on now. Cause guess what? You know, the old days of retire sixty-two and be dead at sixty five, you didn’t have a lot of runway, right? Played shuffleboard for a couple of years and then good, you know, goodnight Charlie. Right now you got twenty, thirty years to figure out what you want to do.

John Jantsch (10:41.017)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (10:45.473)

Yeah. Yeah. And and it’s gonna be really painful twenty, thirty years if you don’t, right? I I think I think a lot of a lot of people are coming to that realization. Talk a I mean, I can’t like we’ve gone eleven minutes, this might be a record, and I haven’t mentioned AI yet. and talk about how I mean AI is just flooding the f flooding the thought leadership, you know, category, if you will. how does somebody actually

Peter Winick (10:50.927)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (11:12.225)

So so so to me, a thought leader, you know, originally was you had a framework, you had a couple of original ideas, you could put sixty seven thousand words, you know, into a document. But today anybody could do that in about in about half a day, right? So so what separates real thought leadership from just, I don’t know, semi smart sounding people?

Peter Winick (11:21.155)

Yeah. Hmm?

Peter Winick (11:33.069)

Yeah, I think, you know, you could fool some of the people. So I’ll tell you bad ways or or things that are not helpful to you, your brand, your growth as a thought leader to use AI and things that I’ve seen that are cool, creative, interesting, whatever. So bad ways are, you know, you could pick up a tool and say, Give me 40,000 word book on this, this, this, and this in the style of that, this and the other thing. And it’ll spit something out. Now, anybody, you know, y you know, with any

John Jantsch (11:37.229)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (11:44.141)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (11:57.143)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Peter Winick (12:01.934)

sort of IQ that’s in the three digits, we’ll look at that and go, There’s no there there. Right? Like there’s like there’s no there there. Right. There’s like, okay, that’s a lot of words on a page and

John Jantsch (12:10.327)

Yeah. Yeah, that that could have been a seven hundred word blog post.

Peter Winick (12:14.944)

Yeah, or or a podcast or or or or or a you know, whatever. So I think, you know, just because you can create a lot of stuff, now I think actually where you can create it, and you know this better than I as a marketer, content marketing, I think AI can do some really good stuff. From thought leadership, I think you have to say, okay, what is it good at and what is it not good at? So good at examples. I’ve seen lots of keynoters say, you know, I never spoke to this type of group before.

John Jantsch (12:31.566)

Yeah.

Peter Winick (12:40.75)

You know, newly minted IT professionals. Let me push my stuff through there and say, give me a few examples that would resonate most with this audience at this company today. So that’s research, right? I think for us, we did something that I think was kind of cool, but I’ll let you weigh in on that, right? The genesis of the book for us was a couple of years ago, I started playing around with with AI and chat and all that. Why? Because everybody else is doing. I’m like, I gotta play with this thing, right? And

John Jantsch (12:41.397)

Right. Yeah.

John Jantsch (12:47.107)

Yeah.

Peter Winick (13:09.934)

What I knew was we had a bunch of models and methods and frameworks. And I knew that that would never be a book, right? That would be an IKEA manual that nobody would read. Models, methods, frameworks. Like maybe there’s a subset of the universe that loves that stuff, my my dear friends, the engineers, but like that would not be something I would read, right? But I knew that we had this podcast. And at the time we had 650 episodes and we had transcripts. So I said, hmm, let me take 30 transcripts, and they were all categorized to a similar theme.

John Jantsch (13:17.633)

Yeah. Yeah.

Peter Winick (13:37.071)

And I threw it into chat and I played with it for hours and hours and hours over a weekend. And what it taught me was one, my memory is terrible. Because if somebody asked me what were your favorite, most memorable things from the podcast you’ve done, I would answer a few. But if you asked me the same question a week later, I might answer differently, you know. but it gave me themes and it gave me patterns and it gave me things to look, look deeper on. So what I did was what every sort of ADD CEO does on a Monday morning, they call their much smarter.

process oriented analytical COO. And I said, Bill, Bill Sherman, hey, I got this idea. You know, we’ve like talked about writing a book. We don’t want to write a book, but like I played with Chad over the week and I I think we can knock this thing out in like, I don’t know, a month, maybe two, you know, and here’s why. And he did the hmm, mm-hmm, you know, almost like somewhere between a therapist and somebody knows you’ve gone off the deep end. And he said, well, maybe, which is the non-committal, let let’s go check it out. Well, fast forward, 650 episodes at the time was 2.3 million words.

John Jantsch (14:34.231)

Yeah. Right.

Peter Winick (14:34.52)

Right. So if the average business is 50,000, that’s a lot of books. And Bill was able to come up with some real tools to be able to pull those patterns. And then we always went back to the tapes, right? many times we go back to the thought leader and say, You might not remember this conversation. And actually, we sort of took it a little out of context, but I want to talk to you about this vignette here. You know, this little story that you told. Can we talk about that? Because we’re writing a book. That gave us brilliance. And and to answer your AI question,

John Jantsch (14:38.295)

Yeah.

Peter Winick (15:00.036)

That would have taken us years and and six grad level interns and they like pizza and beer and to get paid every Friday. So that to me was a a smart use of AI in terms for for us to get to the book where we wanted it to be. So it is a a a good book for those that we we wrote it for.

John Jantsch (15:18.743)

Yeah, I you know, I’ve never done that with my podcast. I’ve done, you know, about twenty two hundred episodes now. I probably sh I mean, I I probably should do do that. I mean, I’ve had guests on three and four times, you know, and and or more, you know. I think Seth’s been on five times, probably. And I’m you know, I’m sure there’s something in there that that would be really interesting. And I that’s my favorite use, frankly, of AI is is analysis. you know, I just it it

Peter Winick (15:25.37)

There might be a vignette in there or two.

Peter Winick (15:31.706)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (15:48.611)

It’s just so much richer than I would ever come up with, even if I spent, you know, a hundred hours on it. talk to me a little bit about one of the things that I know that that I mean, this was part of Keith’s you know framework. And I’m I’m sure you’ve built it into yours too, this idea of impact equation, you know, like getting getting into rooms that you know you maybe don’t know how you’re gonna get into. so talk a little bit about how that idea influences some of the thought leaders you work with.

Peter Winick (15:51.418)

Total.

Peter Winick (16:06.897)

Mm.

Peter Winick (16:18.991)

Yeah, so I think every thought leader wants their work to have impact. Right? They just do. Like what we’re not writing this for ourselves, although sometimes we are at a moment in time. But the impact equation it was a way for us to say, how do you do this? Like, cause Keith’s secret sauce is the power of developing relationships. That’s his secret sauce, right? And Never Italy and a lot of his other books were sort of what that looked like, and then he’s evolved into sort of some different thinking today. So we looked at the impact equation because equations are cool, right? Like

John Jantsch (16:22.895)

Yeah.

Peter Winick (16:48.869)

They just are. And said it here’s how it what it looks like. Number one idea is simplicity. You got to get it down to its molecular. Now that sounds obvious and easy, but ask an academic that spent 25 years as the top of their game or world class at whatever, tell me the gist of your work in two or three sentences. Most can’t do it because it’s been beaten out of them. It’s not how they’re trained. It’s not whatever. And if you can’t make it like simple, then it’s not accessible. So there’s no point there.

John Jantsch (16:49.496)

Mm-hmm.

Peter Winick (17:17.317)

The next is the relevance to the audience, right? So you might have something that’s really, really simple. But if you gave me the the the simplest way to knit a blanket, it has no relevance to me. I’m not someone that knits. Now, somebody else that might be, my God, that’s that’s a hack that I’ll use every day. But like what’s the relevance to me? And then the next is this the velocity. We talked about velocity before. What are you doing to get it out there? And then what is the share of audience? And I think the share of audience piece is interesting. You know, if this was a startup, we’d be talking about total addressable market.

John Jantsch (17:27.801)

Mm-hmm. Right.

Peter Winick (17:46.662)

But one of the most freeing things for me and that I try to share with my clients is guess what, John? You’re irrelevant to 99.99% of the people on this planet. And that’s an amazing thing, right? Because all you need to do now is say, what can I do to be as relevant as possible to that point one percent that matters most? And maybe it’s 95% or whatever. But like for the most part, you know, you’re irrelevant, right? I’m irrelevant. And the the beauty of that is I don’t have to spend my time chasing my tail.

Right. Like I know that I wanna talk to people like you. I don’t wanna be on a podcast for you know, I don’t know, stay at home moms in Iowa. Bless their little hearts. But like those aren’t my peeps.

John Jantsch (18:23.46)

Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s one of my favorite lines from Sandler. I had David on the show a couple of times, you know, over the years, was just he’s you know, the mo the best thing you can get is fast knows. you know, the idea of of the people are like the worst thing in the world is a maybe because now you gotta like worry about it for the the next six months and send eighty seven, you know, follow up emails and

Peter Winick (18:50.064)

Yeah, exactly.

John Jantsch (18:50.998)

you know, but for somebody to go, no, you’re not for me, you know, and obviously that’s in a sales environment, but but as a thought leader, clearly understanding who’s for you, who’s not for you, and communicating that. So people sort of self select whether or not they want to be in your universe, right? I mean, that’s part of the equation, isn’t it?

Peter Winick (19:07.355)

Yeah.

Yeah, and and you don’t want to be in the conversion business, right? If you have to spend a lot of your energy and effort, you know, it’s a great business model for the Mormons to work for them, but like it’s really expensive to try to convince someone that your way is a better way, that your way of thinking might help them. You could do a little bit of that, but if I gotta spend, like you said, you know, 10 phone calls trying to show you that my way is better than yours, why wouldn’t I talk to someone that’s already sort of absorbed some of my thinking and said, you know, I kind of dig what you say, and I think you could help me.

John Jantsch (19:12.558)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (19:17.834)

Yeah.

Peter Winick (19:38.021)

That’s just a better place for both of us to be.

John Jantsch (19:40.206)

Yeah, hundred percent. one of the I’ll I’ll ask you directly and and I think we’re be gonna be on the same page on this. what’s the biggest benefit of being seen as a thought leader? You know, even if it’s in a tiny pond, you know, of of your city of your city?

Peter Winick (19:56.464)

Yeah. Yeah. So I’ll tie this back to marketing because it’s what I believe, right? So we every one of us, I don’t care what business you’re in, whether it’s it’s it’s product, whether it’s services, professional services, selling consumer package, because we’re all being commoditized. That’s not a good thing, right? So if you’re being commoditized, what does that mean? Downward pricing pressure, lack of distinction between you and somebody else, this, that, and the other thing. So I believe, not for everyone, but

John Jantsch (20:11.694)

Yep. Yep. Yep.

Peter Winick (20:23.983)

Definitely high-tech, financial services, professional services, and and and many, many more, that thought leadership is the most cost-effective way to stand up from the competition, to show the world what you’re about, to put it out there. You can’t, you know, if I was going to come out with a new beverage, I could never outspend Coca-Cola. Just not going to happen. But you see these new beverages coming out now, for example, that are, you know, protein enriched or whatever, or probiotic or whatever. It’s like, okay, so if you’re going to put out a probiotic beverage, the first question I would have is.

What the hell is a probiotic beverage? That’s great leadership. Here’s what it is and why it might be beneficial to you, whatever. So I think take a step back and say, what could you put out there in the world to sh to punch above your weight, outshine your competition, and and you know, lead with your thinking. Because everything else that you do, if I’m an accountant, there’s a million other people that can do my taxes, right? If I’m a lawyer, plus or minus, you know, they’re all kind of the same. Consultant, like it’s just an agency. They’re all the same.

John Jantsch (20:52.643)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (21:03.15)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (21:11.642)

Yeah, hundred percent, yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (21:18.882)

Yeah. Well and and they they might not be, but that’s the perception. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I will tell you, I I actually took it into the home services business. I had a remodeling contractor that I convinced to do this in two thousand early two thousands to be a thought leader. And now they char they’re they’re the largest in their in their community and they charge a premium. that’s that was really the answer. I I mean you said it in a number of ways, but

Peter Winick (21:24.101)

That’s which is more important, right. Yeah. And I think

John Jantsch (21:48.814)

Being the seen as the thought leader, you can charge a premium. People expect to pay a premium, you know, for you. So

Peter Winick (21:53.541)

Well, and it’s a it’s you know, at the end of the day, it’s just math. It’s it’s the most my experience, it’s the most cost effective net new client acquisition tool I’ve seen. Right. So I’ll give I’ll give you another example that was, you know, you gotta be smart. I think it was ten years ago, my math could be wrong, when Massachusetts was the first state to legalize gay marriage. Okay, that’s cool. So what does that mean? Well, there was a divorce lawyer that happened to be gay, and he said, geez, here’s what’s gonna happen in the next six, eighteen, twenty-four months. I could put a stake in that ground.

John Jantsch (22:10.649)

Mm.

Peter Winick (22:21.455)

And put out some thought leadership on the nuance of gay marriage because I’m gay, I’m a divorce attorney, so I’m I’ve got an advantage. Let me start putting this stuff out there because as they’re walking back down the aisle is probably not the time to handle my card. This will take some time. And and it did. Like you didn’t have to be a genius to figure out, you know, more people that weren’t able to get married got married. Yeah, it’s definitely a new category, right? And and when that time came.

John Jantsch (22:21.752)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (22:27.672)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (22:39.448)

Yeah, yeah. It’s a new c a n a new category of business, so to speak. Yeah, that’s that’s funny.

Peter Winick (22:48.015)

He was already putting articles out there and things out there or whatever that that market came to him as opposed to spending big bucks putting out, you know, billboards or whatever the divorce attorneys might do.

John Jantsch (22:52.59)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (22:58.33)

So so Peter, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by the the show. Is there some place you’d invite people to find out about your work and obviously the pick up a copy of the Thought Leadership Handbook?

Peter Winick (23:11.599)

Well, the Thought Leadership Handbook is, as they say, available wherever books are sold. So you can find them in the usual places. You could find me at our site, which is thoughtleadershipleverage dot com, and on, you know, all the typical socials.

John Jantsch (23:24.312)

Yeah, awesome. Well again, great catching up with you and I appreciate it and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Peter Winick (23:30.938)

I will. Thank you. Thanks, John. Thanks for having me.

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Your Marketing Probably Has All the Pieces. Here’s Why That’s Not Enough

Your Marketing Probably Has All the Pieces. Here’s Why That’s Not Enough written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Most founders who’ve been at this for a few years have pieces.

Some strategic clarity. A decent presence. Content running, mostly. Owned channels being built. Customer work happening somewhere.

The pieces are disconnected. Nobody owns the full picture. Different parts run on different rhythms. Reporting covers what each piece did in isolation, not whether the whole thing is moving.

That’s an assemblage. Assemblages are fragile in a specific way.

What makes an assemblage fragile

The founder gets pulled into client work for a month and it frays. A key person leaves and part of the picture walks out with them. A new tool shows up, gets bolted onto the existing structure, and the whole thing gets more complicated without getting more effective.

I use a simple test for this: if you got hit by a bus tomorrow, could anyone in your business run the marketing for 6 months? If the answer is no, the system isn’t installed. The assemblage is being held together by you.

A Marketing Operating System is the opposite. Integrated, documented, connected, running on a rhythm the business can maintain with or without the founder’s constant attention.

The four components

Integration

Strategy, messaging, the engines, and the Hourglass diagnostic all connect to each other. Nothing sits in isolation.

When the strategy updates, the messaging updates with it. When the Hourglass surfaces a gap at Trust, the Brand Engine responds with specific work. When the Growth Engine tests a new offer, the Customer Engine updates onboarding.

In practice: one source of truth for strategy and messaging, engines that are explicitly defined and visibly connected to that strategy, and a shared vocabulary the whole team uses. When any of those are missing, changing one thing doesn’t change the things connected to it. The system drifts.

Cadence

Most small businesses have emergencies and campaigns. Cadence is different.

What it looks like in practice: a 30-minute weekly review covering what shipped, what moved, what’s blocking. A 60 to 90-minute monthly performance review against the 3 engines. A half-day quarterly planning cycle. A full-day annual strategy refresh.

Cadence is unglamorous. It’s also the most reliable predictor of whether a Marketing Operating System survives or decays over time.

Measurement

Five to seven metrics connected to business outcomes. Brand Engine: presence health, content engagement, list growth. Growth Engine: inbound volume by channel, conversion by channel, owned vs paid ratio. Customer Engine: repeat rate, referral rate, customer lifetime value.

Reported consistently, in context, against a goal. A report that tells a story: what happened, why it matters, what we’re doing about it. Not 16 numbers in a spreadsheet that nobody changes a decision based on.

AI as a leverage layer

This is where AI actually belongs, and most advice on this is either too enthusiastic or too dismissive to be useful.

AI can’t make strategic judgments about your market, your customer, or your business. It can’t produce your point of view. The thinking is still your job.

Where it does belong: research, production, reformatting, analysis, and the communication mechanics layer (follow-up, scheduling, first drafts). Installed on top of a working system, AI compounds advantage. Installed in the absence of one, AI amplifies the confusion that’s already there.

That distinction is the one most founders aren’t being given clearly right now.

What it looks like when it’s working

A professional services firm I worked with did the Founder Portrait work, rebuilt around a single service line, installed Strategy First, built out presence, content, owned channels, and a Customer Engine, then ran the full system for 2 years.

Revenue up 60% on lower marketing spend than before. Paid acquisition dependence cut significantly. Meaningful recurring revenue from the Customer Engine. And the founder can step away for 2 weeks without the system breaking.

Because it’s no longer being held together by his attention.

That’s a Marketing Operating System.

One thing to do this week

Do the bus test honestly. Write down everything about your marketing that only you know. Who the real ICP is, because the document is out of date. What the actual priorities are, because the quarterly plan never got finalized. Which conversations are in progress.

Whatever ends up on that page is the gap between the assemblage and the system. That page is the first draft of the Marketing Operating System document.

The Marketing Operating System is the final step of a seven-step framework I’ve been refining for over 20 years. The full system, from the Founder Portrait through the MOS, is in my new ebook, “7 Steps to Small Business Marketing Success.” Get it at dtm.world/7steps.

The Back Half of the Hourglass Is Where Your Best Growth Lives

The Back Half of the Hourglass Is Where Your Best Growth Lives written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

The Marketing Hourglass has 7 stages: Know, Like, Trust, Try, Buy, Repeat, Refer.

Most small businesses have systems for the first five. They know how to get found, how to build some trust, how to close. Then the marketing ends.

Repeat and Refer, the back half, get left to chance. Good work, happy customers, and hope.

That’s expensive. And it leaves most of the growth on the table.

What a customer is actually worth

A customer who buys, comes back, and refers is worth between 3 and 10 times a customer who buys once. That ratio shows up in the data of almost every small business that tracks it.

And yet. Acquisition gets the meetings. Acquisition gets the budget. Customer experience gets the leftovers.

I worked with a landscape services business at about $4 million in revenue. Growing through Google ads, word of mouth, and one partnership. The owner knew he had loyal customers but had never systematized any of the customer work. Within 12 months of installing a Customer Engine, it accounted for roughly 45% of total new revenue, up from about 10%. Paid acquisition spend dropped by a third. Because the back half of the Hourglass was finally doing its job.

Four things the Customer Engine does

Onboarding

The first 90 days after a customer buys is where the relationship gets established. Most businesses treat it as operations: deliver the thing that was sold, move on.

A structured onboarding process does something different. It confirms the customer made the right decision. It surfaces anything that needs fixing before it becomes a problem. And it creates the natural moment to ask for a review, a referral, or both.

Most businesses skip the ask entirely. The onboarding sequence is what makes it feel natural instead of awkward.

Repeat engagement

What specifically brings your customers back? Most businesses rely on the customer remembering to return. The Customer Engine removes that dependency.

Maintenance plans, seasonal offers, anniversary touchpoints, check-ins anchored to natural moments in the customer’s life. The landscape business introduced seasonal maintenance plans and converted about 40% of project customers. Recurring revenue went from essentially zero to a meaningful line.

That happened because they asked.

The referral system

Same 3 parts as the Growth Engine: a specific ask, at the right moment, with an easy path for the referrer. All 3 matter. Most businesses have none of them.

The right moment is right after something good, while the experience is still fresh. The landscape business built this properly. Referred customers went from about 10% of new work to 25% within 6 months. That’s a system, not luck.

Reactivation

A one-time outreach to every customer from the prior 3 years who hasn’t purchased anything new. Simple, direct, personal note from the founder.

The landscape business converted about 8% of that list into some form of re-engagement within 90 days.

Reactivation is probably the highest ROI marketing move available to most small businesses. Almost nobody does it, mostly because it feels like admitting you lost touch. Reframe it: it’s a welcome reconnection, and customers respond to it that way.

What the Customer Engine actually powers

This is the part most founders miss. The Customer Engine doesn’t just produce direct revenue from existing customers. It feeds every other engine you have.

The Trust stage needs customer stories. The Customer Engine produces them. The Refer stage needs actual referring behavior. The Customer Engine systematizes it. The content engine needs real situations and wins. The Customer Engine surfaces them.

Under-investing in the Customer Engine under-powers everything else. Fixing it lifts the whole system, not just retention.

One thing to do this week

Write your referral system in one sentence.

If it turns into a paragraph of caveats, or “we don’t really have one,” that’s your answer. And it tells you exactly where to start.

The Customer Engine is step 6 of a seven-step system I’ve been refining for over 20 years. The full framework is in my new ebook, “7 Steps to Small Business Marketing Success.” Get it at dtm.world/7steps.

You’re Renting Your Lead Flow. Here’s What That’s Actually Costing You.

You’re Renting Your Lead Flow. Here’s What That’s Actually Costing You. written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

If your largest paid channel disappeared tomorrow, platform shuts down, algorithm changes, cost doubles, your pipeline is gone inside 30 days.

If that’s true, you don’t have a Growth Engine. You have a rented pipeline.

This is the situation most founders are in. Paid ads on two or three platforms. Paid social. Maybe a paid directory. When the credit card stops, the leads stop. The business has revenue but no predictability. It has a dependency.

Owned vs rented

An owned channel is one you control. You decide who’s on it, what reaches them, when. No platform change can touch it.

A rented channel is one someone else controls. You pay for access. You play by their rules. When the rules change or the price goes up, you adjust or you disappear.

The difference compounds over time. A business that builds owned channels for 5 years has compounding value. A business that rents for 5 years has 5 years of expenses. Same spend, completely different position.

The four owned channels

Email

Email has been declared dead roughly once a year for 15 years and keeps working anyway.

A founder who builds a qualified email list over 5 years has direct, reliable, owned access to their audience at zero marginal cost per send. No paid channel comes close to that math.

The list has to be qualified, built from people who asked to be on it. It has to be used consistently. And it has to be treated as a content surface, not a sales channel. The same principles that make content work apply here: genuine point of view, useful, specific.

Most businesses underuse email because it feels unfashionable. That unfashionability is the tell. The channels that feel unfashionable and still work are the ones smart operators quietly compound in.

Referral systems

Referred prospects arrive pre-trusted. They close faster, they’re less price sensitive, and they’re more likely to refer others. Most small businesses have no referral system. They have referrals that happen accidentally.

A real referral system has 3 parts: a specific ask, made at a specific moment, with a specific easy path for the referrer to take. All 3 are necessary. Most businesses are missing at least 2.

The ask needs to be made. Customers don’t refer unless asked because it’s not obvious to them that you want referrals. The moment matters: right after a customer experiences something good is when the ask lands. And the path needs to be easy enough that referring requires almost no effort.

Partnerships

Non-competing businesses that serve the same ideal client are the most underused lead source in small business marketing.

An accounting firm’s ideal client also needs a business lawyer, a financial planner, a banker, an insurance broker. Each of those providers has a list of the same customers. Two or three real partnerships beat 20 casual ones.

A structured partnership has named partners, defined criteria, a regular rhythm of contact, and a way to track what’s being exchanged. Partnerships are work. They compound once they’re real.

Direct relationships

Networking, speaking, association involvement, in-person participation. The oldest channel in the book, and it still produces the highest-intent leads in most categories.

A prospect who hears the founder speak at an industry event arrives at the buying conversation miles ahead of where a paid lead arrives. The trust is largely pre-built.

Direct relationships don’t scale the way email or content scale. They scale with founder effort. Founders who invest in them consistently find that the Growth Engine runs mostly on relationships 2 years in.

Where paid actually belongs

Paid works when it amplifies something already working. If the content is converting organically, paid can extend its reach. If the messaging is landing, paid can get it in front of people it otherwise wouldn’t reach.

Without those foundations, paid produces expensive activity that doesn’t convert. Every founder has seen that at least once.

The healthy ratio for most small businesses: roughly two-thirds of new customer flow from owned channels, one-third from paid amplification. A business running the opposite ratio is fragile, even if the current economics look fine.

One thing to do this week

List every lead source that produced revenue in the last 12 months. Mark each one owned or rented. Count the ratio.

If rented is more than half, the Growth Engine is the priority. Start with the owned channel closest to working but undeveloped. That’s usually email or referral.

The Growth Engine is step 5 of a seven-step system I’ve been refining for over 20 years. The full framework is in my new ebook, “7 Steps to Small Business Marketing Success.” Get it at dtm.world/7steps.

Why Producing More Content Is Making Some Businesses Invisible

Why Producing More Content Is Making Some Businesses Invisible written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

An accounting firm at about $2.5 million in revenue came to me after publishing a monthly blog post for 3 years. Mostly tax updates and compliance news. Traffic was flat. Inbound inquiries were rare. They were thinking about hiring an agency to triple their output.

The right move was the opposite: publish less, go deeper, commit to 3 content pillars.

I see this pattern constantly. Founders who aren’t getting results from content assume the problem is volume. So they add more posts, more channels, more tools. And they get the same results, faster.

Producing more generic content doesn’t fix a content problem. It amplifies it.

The actual problem

Most small business content doesn’t have a job. It’s a series of posts with no spine underneath. Topics that seemed interesting that week. Updates that felt like they should be covered. Technically useful stuff that adds up to nothing.

In a market where AI is generating generic content at industrial scale, being part of the noise layer is bad for your brand. The customers worth winning have started to recognize it and tune out.

Content that actually works does one thing: it earns trust before the customer has to talk to you. It signals that you understand their situation, you’ve thought about it seriously, and you have something specific to say.

Pillars, not posts

Pick 3 content pillars anchored to your ideal client’s real problems. Every piece of content you publish goes to one of them.

I know how this sounds. Organization. A content calendar thing. It’s actually the hardest strategic decision most founders avoid making.

Most businesses publish what the founder was thinking about that week. After a few years you have a body of work with no accumulated weight. A prospect can’t tell what you’re actually expert in.

Three pillars held over 2 or 3 years produces a different result. The body of work has shape. The depth on each pillar becomes visible, and that visibility is what earns trust.

Three is the right number. Two is too narrow. Four dilutes. Three works.

Each pillar has to pass 3 tests: anchored to a real customer problem, an area where you have genuine depth, and one you can publish against for 3 years without getting bored. If it won’t survive that last test, it’s a topic, not a pillar.

Hubs, not archives

Content organized under hub pages compounds over time. Content organized as a reverse-chronological blog buries your best work within weeks.

The reverse-chronological blog is an artifact from when blogs were journals. It made sense then. When content is meant to be a long-term asset serving both readers and AI retrieval systems, it doesn’t.

Under hub pages, your best work stays discoverable and accumulates authority. When you publish something new, link it to the appropriate hub and update the hub to reference it. Over time the hub becomes a genuine knowledge center. The blog archive becomes a graveyard.

Repurposing, not more production

The founders who win on content get maximum leverage out of each substantial piece. Volume isn’t the advantage.

The model: one substantial piece per week or two, repurposed into 8 to 10 smaller assets. A podcast episode becomes a hub page article, a few LinkedIn posts, one email to the list, a short video. A long article becomes an email series, a handful of social posts, eventually a book chapter.

This is where AI actually earns its keep. Taking original thinking and adapting it across formats is something AI does well. Producing original thinking from scratch isn’t. Keep the thinking yours. Use AI for the reformatting.

The point of view problem

The market is full of AI-produced content that reads like AI-produced content. Generic, balanced, readable, forgettable.

The content that still earns attention, gets remembered, and gets shared has a point of view. It takes a position. It says something the customer hasn’t heard, or says something familiar in a way that makes it land differently.

AI can’t produce a real point of view because it’s averaging the existing corpus. Your specific perspective isn’t in there.

Use AI to produce. The thinking is still your job.

Content without a point of view was dismissible in 2020. It’s invisible in 2026.

One thing to do this week

Name your 3 content pillars on one page. If you can’t narrow to 3, the narrowing is the work. Three is not a formatting choice. It’s the strategic constraint that forces real decisions.

Content strategy is step 4 of a seven-step system I’ve been refining for over 20 years. The full framework is in my new ebook, “7 Steps to Small Business Marketing Success.” Get it at dtm.world/7steps.

The New Kind of Invisible: AI Can’t Find Your Business

The New Kind of Invisible: AI Can’t Find Your Business written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Try this right now. Open ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Claude. Type three questions your best customer would ask before hiring someone like you.

Does your business show up?

I’ve run this test with dozens of small business owners in the last year. Most of them disappear completely. Some show up but get described in ways that would make a prospect walk the other direction. A handful get it right.

The ones who get it right aren’t doing anything exotic. They’ve just built a presence that works the way presence has to work now, which is different from how it worked five years ago.

Presence used to have one job

For the first 20 years of the commercial web, presence meant one thing: Google could find you. Get the SEO right, show up in search, done.

That’s still necessary. It’s just not sufficient anymore.

A working presence in 2026 has to pass three tests, and most small businesses are failing at least one of them without realizing it.

Job 1: Findable

Can the right customer, searching for the right thing, actually find you? The mechanics have shifted. Less about keywords stuffed into pages, more about genuine topical authority built over time. But the test is the same.

Here’s the part most people miss: findable now means findable in three places. Traditional search (Google, Bing). Social search (people searching inside platforms). And AI-mediated search, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google’s AI Overviews, and the vertical AI tools your customers are quietly starting to use for research. Each one pulls from different signals. Build for only one and you’ve got gaps.

Job 2: Credible

When a prospect lands on your site, does the site do its job? Does it speak to their situation in their language? Does it show real proof that you’ve done this work for people like them?

I see beautiful websites every week that fail this test completely. Design isn’t the problem. Most of them look great. The problem is there’s nothing there. Generic copy, stock photos, and a contact form. A plain site with deep, specific proof of real work outperforms a polished site with nothing behind it every time.

Job 3: Retrievable

This is the new one, and it’s the one catching businesses off guard.

When an AI assistant answers a question your customer asks, “who should I hire to do X in Y city” or “what should I look for in a contractor for Z,” does your business come up? And when it does, is the description accurate?

AI systems build their answers from whatever you’ve put out publicly. Thin website. Generic content. Missing structured data. Weak third-party presence. The AI either won’t find you or won’t know how to describe you. Being un-retrievable is just the new version of being un-findable. The customer moves on and you never know it happened.

Three things to fix first

Your website

Most small business websites are expensive brochures. They describe the business but don’t sell it. Four things fix most of them: a clear core message above the fold, the ideal client named in their own language, specific proof material, and one obvious next step. Not “contact us.” One low-friction action for the person who’s ready to move.

Hub pages

A hub page is a deep, authoritative page built around one specific topic: a core service, a core customer problem, a category you want to own. Not a blog post. A real resource that earns its place as the best answer on that topic.

Search engines rank them. AI systems cite them. And they give your content something to cluster around instead of floating independently. If your site doesn’t have hub pages, you’re competing on a level playing field with everyone else in your category. Hub pages tilt that field.

Your presence beyond the site

AI doesn’t build its picture of your business from your website alone. It pulls from your Google Business Profile, industry directories, third-party reviews, and mentions across the web. Most small businesses treat this as low-priority busywork. It’s actually the scaffolding holding everything together.

A business with a solid website and strong third-party presence will beat a business with a great website and weak external presence in AI-generated answers. Every time.

Do the test today

Open an AI assistant. Type three questions your ideal customer might ask before hiring someone in your category. Screenshot what comes back.

That’s your baseline. That’s what your prospects are seeing right now. It tells you exactly where to start.

Online presence is one of the seven steps in the framework I’ve been refining for over 20 years. The full system is in my new ebook, “7 Steps to Small Business Marketing Success.” Get it at dtm.world/7steps.

The Reason Your Marketing Feels Broken (And Why More Tactics Won’t Fix It)

The Reason Your Marketing Feels Broken (And Why More Tactics Won’t Fix It) written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

I’ve given this diagnosis so many times it has a name: Random Acts of Marketing.SEO aimed at one audience. Paid ads targeting another. The website describes the business differently than the founder does in a sales call. The content sounds like it came from a different company than the pitch deck. Everything is technically running. Nothing is working together.

This is the most common condition in small business marketing. And it’s almost never caused by lack of effort or thin budgets. It’s caused by the absence of a strategic foundation the tactics can actually build on.

What founders mistake for strategy

Most founders with a tactics problem think they have a strategy. They almost never do.

What they have is a list of tactics they’re running, opinions about each one, and a history of what did and didn’t work. That’s not a strategy. A strategy is a coherent answer to three questions:

Who exactly are we for? What do we do that the alternatives don’t? What’s the one sentence that ties those two things together?

Without those answers, the tactics underneath can’t compound. They just take turns failing.

Strategy First: the three pieces

The strategic foundation has three parts. All three have to exist. Any one of them alone isn’t enough.

The ideal client

A persona isn’t an ideal client. A demographic isn’t an ideal client. “Small business owners between 35 and 55 who value quality” is a description, not a strategy.

An ideal client is a specific type of customer, in a specific situation, whose problem you’re uniquely positioned to solve better than the real alternatives they’re actually considering.

Here’s what specificity looks like in practice: a home services company whose ideal client is “owners of 20-plus-year-old homes in zip codes where houses sell for over $800,000, who’ve lived there more than 3 years and are thinking about aging in place.” That’s a strategy. Every downstream decision, where they advertise, what their photos show, how they price, what they stop offering, can align to that specific person.

The riches are in the niches. That was true when I wrote the original Duct Tape Marketing. It’s more true now. In a market where AI makes it trivially easy to produce generic content for generic audiences, the only marketing that gets through is the marketing clearly made for someone specific.

Differentiation

Two mistakes come up constantly. Claiming differentiation that isn’t actually different (quality, service, experience: every business claims these). And describing differentiation against the wrong competitor.

Your customer is rarely choosing between you and the obvious direct competitor. They’re choosing between you and doing nothing, a different category of solution, or doing it themselves. Your differentiation has to land against that actual set of alternatives.

Differentiation is also a commitment. If you claim to be the firm that does the deepest strategic work before any execution, you can’t also take an emergency project on Monday and deliver by Friday. The claim requires you to turn down certain work. That’s the real test: does your differentiation require you to say no to something?

The core message

One sentence. In the customer’s language. Describes who you’re for and why they’re in the right place.

It has to pass 3 tests. Clear (a smart 12-year-old should understand who you serve and what you do). Different (it can’t be lifted and pasted onto a competitor’s site without anyone noticing). Credible (the customer believes it).

Clever is a tagline. The core message is clear. They can be the same thing. They usually aren’t.

The Marketing Hourglass

Strategy First also gives you the diagnostic lens you’ll use for everything that comes next: the Marketing Hourglass.

Most people were taught to think about the customer journey as a funnel. Leads in the top, customers out the bottom. It’s useful for a narrow slice of the work and dangerously incomplete for the whole picture.

Real growth for small businesses happens inside an hourglass, because the most valuable customer activity happens after the sale. The 7 stages: Know, Like, Trust, Try, Buy, Repeat, Refer. The hourglass widens again after Buy. That’s the part most small businesses ignore, and it’s where the highest-value growth actually lives.

The diagnostic is simple: find the stage where things are leaking and fix it before you build anything new on top.

One thing to do this week

Write your core message. One sentence. Customer’s language. Run it through the 3 tests: clear, different, credible.

If it can’t pass all three, that’s the strategy work. Everything else waits until it does.

This is step two of a seven-step system I’ve been refining for over 20 years. The full framework is in my new ebook, “7 Steps to Small Business Marketing Success.” Get it at dtm.world/7steps.

When Referrals Stop, Do This Before Touching a Single Marketing Tactic

When Referrals Stop, Do This Before Touching a Single Marketing Tactic written by Shawna Salinger read more at Duct Tape Marketing

When Referrals Dry Up: What Small Businesses Should Do Before Touching a Single Marketing Tactic

Featuring insights from Sara Nay, CEO of Duct Tape Marketing

It starts with a sick feeling.

You built your business on referrals. Good work led to good word of mouth and for years, that was enough. Then you look up and realise it has been months since a new one came in. When referrals dry up for a small business, there is often nothing else in place. No ads. No content strategy. No real pipeline. Just the hope the phone will ring.

Sara Nay, CEO of Duct Tape Marketing, knows this scenario well. She sees it constantly across the small businesses she works with. And she has a direct message for anyone in that position: the answer is not to start running ads next week.

The answer is to build a strategy first.

Sara Nay’s segment begins at 13:04. Full episode on Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Edge.

Why referrals dry up and what most small businesses do wrong next

Growing through referrals is actually a good sign. It means clients like you, trust your work, and talk about you. Sara is the first to say so.

“It’s great that you’ve been able to grow based on referrals,” she says. “That shows that you provide a good service and clients are happy. That’s checkbox one.”

But referrals are not a marketing strategy. They are a single, uncontrollable channel. When they slow down, businesses with nothing else in place have nothing to fall back on.

The instinct when referrals dry up is to grab the nearest tactic. Run some paid ads. Start posting on LinkedIn. Hire someone to do SEO. Sara says that instinct is understandable but almost always wrong.

“Instead of just going okay, we’re now going to do paid ads,” she explains, “it’s taking a step back and saying: who are our clients? Where do they hang out online? How do they make buying decisions? What keeps them up at night?”

Channel selection follows strategy. It does not precede it.

The two things you need before you pick any channel

Sara is clear about what has to come before any channel decision. Two things.

First, a real picture of your ideal client. Not just their job title. Where do they spend time online? How do they make buying decisions? What keeps them up at night? What problems are they trying to solve?

Second, messaging that gives people a reason to care, not just a list of what you sell.

“You really need to understand those two things first before you can decide what channel or how you’re going to approach the channel moving forward,” Sara says.

This is the foundation of what Duct Tape Marketing calls Strategy First. It is a structured 30-day process that produces a complete marketing strategy before any tactics start. Duct Tape Marketing has built their client work on it for over 30 years, and Sara argues it is more important now than ever. The current positioning at DTM says it plainly: strategy before technology.

Technology, AI tools, platforms, none of them become valuable until a clear strategic direction is in place. The tools should follow the strategy, not the other way around.

Map the customer journey before you map the tactics

Once you know who you are serving and what to say to them, the next step is understanding how people move through a relationship with your business.

Duct Tape Marketing uses the Marketing Hourglass. It is a customer journey model John Jantsch first laid out in his book Duct Tape Marketing, and Sara still uses it with every client. The seven stages are Know, Like, Trust, Try, Buy, Repeat, and Refer.

Think of it as a complete loop rather than a one-way funnel. The goal is not just to get someone in at the top. It is to move them through every stage and bring them back again.

Sara explains why this matters in practice: “You can sit down and analyze what are we doing in each of these stages. Where are gaps? Where are opportunities to improve? And if you can really nail moving someone through each of those stages as they interact with your business, they’re going to become repeat customers and then they’re also going to just naturally refer you.”

A well-mapped customer journey does not just improve retention. It restarts referral flow naturally. When referrals dry up for a small business, this audit is often where the answer lives.

Tactics without tracking are just busy work

Sara sees a pattern constantly. A new client walks in running five or six marketing activities. When she asks what is working, they have no idea. They never set a goal before they started.

“It’s not enough just to create your list of tactics at the end of strategy,” she says. “You need to say, if we’re going to do these things for the next 90 days, what’s the definition of success and how are we going to track that? Because that information is going to help guide if you should keep doing things or if you should shift.”

Set a goal for each tactic before you start, then track it over 90 days. Hitting the goal, keep it. Not hitting it, stop or adjust. That is a system. Running activity without measurement is just spending time.

How to stand out when everything feels like noise

The marketing environment right now is loud. AI-generated cold outreach fills inboxes and LinkedIn messages. New platforms launch weekly. Every vendor promises a lead generation system.

Sara says she barely checks her LinkedIn messages anymore because so much of what arrives is automated pitch after pitch.

“It is harder to get people’s attention and it is harder to stand out,” she says. “But if you approach marketing with a more authentic human feel to it and not just trying to scale with AI, there is opportunity for people to see your authentic selves.”

Her take on AI is precise. Use it, but put a human on both ends. Lead with your own insight, stories, and direction. Let AI help shape and scale that into content. Then edit and refine the output yourself.

“Human on the front end, AI in the middle, human on the back end. That’s where it can be powerful,” she says. “It helps elevate you and your skill set and not replace your creativity.”

Low-budget marketing that actually works

If you have a few hundred dollars a month and no marketing infrastructure, Sara has a clear point of view on where to start.

Content repurposing. Record short videos on specific topics your audience needs to know about. Use those videos as the source material for social clips, email newsletters, and blog posts. AI makes the repurposing faster, but the original thinking has to come from you.
Direct personal outreach. Build a list of people in your ideal target market and reach out to them as a human. Call them. Send a personal message. When every inbox is full of automated pitches, a real call or personal message stands out immediately.
Podcast guesting. Getting onto someone else’s podcast costs nothing but your time. It puts you in front of their audience and builds authority in a format people actually trust.

None of these require a big budget. They require clarity about who you are talking to and the discipline to show up consistently. That clarity, as Sara would say, comes from strategy first.

Frequently asked questions

What should I do first when referrals dry up?

Do not start with a channel. Start with your ideal client profile. Define who they are, where they spend time, how they make decisions, and what message will resonate with them. Only then does channel selection make sense. Sara Nay of Duct Tape Marketing also recommends auditing your customer journey using the Marketing Hourglass to find where existing client relationships are breaking down.

Should I run paid ads when referrals stop?

Not until you have a strategy foundation in place. Paid ads without a clear ideal client profile and resonant messaging will waste budget. Build those first, then decide whether paid ads are the right channel for where your clients actually spend time.

How do I get referrals to come back naturally?

Map your customer journey using the Marketing Hourglass. Look at what you are doing at the Know, Like, Trust, Try, Buy, Repeat, and Refer stages. Gaps in the Repeat and Refer stages often explain why referrals have dried up. Fixing those gaps creates the conditions for referrals to restart without actively asking for them.

What is the Marketing Hourglass?

The Marketing Hourglass is a customer journey model created by John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing. It maps seven stages: Know, Like, Trust, Try, Buy, Repeat, and Refer. Unlike a traditional funnel, it continues past the first sale into retention and referral. Duct Tape Marketing uses it as an audit tool to identify gaps and set marketing priorities.

How should small businesses use AI in their marketing?

Sara Nay’s framework: human on the front end, AI in the middle, human on the back end. Bring your own insight, stories, and direction. Let AI help shape and scale that into content. Then edit and refine the output. The goal is to use AI to elevate your thinking, not replace it.

Ready to build your marketing strategy before your next tactic?

Duct Tape Marketing works with small businesses to create a complete marketing strategy through a structured 30-day engagement called Strategy First. You leave with a full plan you can run with internally or have us execute as your fractional CMO.

Visit ducttapemarketing.com/strategy-first or connect with Sara Nay on LinkedIn.

Marketing Strategy for Businesses That Have Outgrown More Tactics

Marketing Strategy for Businesses That Have Outgrown More Tactics written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Strategy for Small Business: Why Clarity Beats More Tactics Every Time

Most small businesses aren’t short on marketing activity. They’re short on the clarity that would let them do less of it. After working with hundreds of small businesses on their marketing strategy over 30 years, I’ve seen the same pattern: scattered tactics, inconsistent messaging, and a team that’s busy but not aligned. The problem isn’t effort. It’s the absence of a strategy.

You Don’t Have a Marketing Problem. You Have a Clarity Problem.

Most business owners I know are working harder than ever. More channels. More platforms. New AI tools to figure out every other week. The promise of AI, by the way, was that it was supposed to make all this easier. Ask most owners how that’s going, and they’ll tell you they’re working harder just keeping up.

That’s not a tools problem. That’s a strategy problem.

When you don’t have a clear strategy, every new platform looks like an opportunity and every new tactic looks like the fix. You say yes to everything because you don’t have a filter for knowing what to say no to. Teams get busy. Vendors get busy. Nobody is coordinating. And the messaging starts to drift in five different directions at once.

I’ve seen this at every level. Businesses with five people doing marketing. Businesses with five outside vendors all working on the same brand. All moving. None of it quite connecting.

The fix isn’t a better tactic. It’s the clarity to know what you’re actually trying to do, who you’re doing it for, and why someone should choose you.

What a Small Business Marketing Strategy Actually Looks Like

Here’s where a lot of people get tripped up. They hear “marketing strategy for small business” and assume it means more planning, more documents, more time before anything happens. That’s not what I’m talking about.

Clarity starts with a single honest question: do you know exactly who your ideal client is, and do you know why they’d choose you over every other option they have?

I worked with a business owner a couple of years ago. Solid seven-year-old business, good local reputation, decent revenue. But the marketing never quite landed. He’d tried ads. Tried SEO. Had a consultant in for a while. Still felt like running in place.

When we sat down, the problem was obvious. He had tactics. What he didn’t have was a clear picture of who he was actually for. His messaging was written to appeal to everyone, which meant it resonated with nobody.

We got specific about his ideal client: who gets the most out of this, values the work, pays well, comes back, and sends referrals? Who is specifically not that person? Once he could answer those questions clearly, everything else simplified fast. The messaging changed. The channels narrowed. The conversations started to feel different.

That’s what strategy does. It’s not about doing more. It’s about knowing what matters, and having the confidence to ignore the rest. You can see this play out in our client case studies.

The Part That Doesn’t Get Talked About Enough: Team Alignment

Even when a business owner has clarity, the team often doesn’t. And that’s where a lot of good strategy dies.

I walk into businesses regularly where the founder has a clear sense of direction but the team is working from their own assumptions. The vendors are doing the same. Nobody is comparing notes. The result is inconsistent messaging, wasted effort, and a growing frustration that marketing “just isn’t working.”

That’s not a brand problem. That’s an alignment problem.

And alignment doesn’t come from circulating a PDF after the fact. It comes from building the strategy together.

When the whole team is in the room for the process of defining the ideal client, sharpening the message, and setting priorities, they own it. They understand why decisions were made. They can defend those decisions to a vendor or a prospect. That shared language is worth more than the document itself.

How to Build That Foundation Faster Than You Think

In the past, the kind of strategy work I’m describing took 30 to 45 days. And it was worth it. Clients came out the other side with more clarity than they’d had in years. Relief was usually the word that came up most.

But I kept asking myself whether we could deliver the same depth faster.

Turns out, we can. With the AI research tools we’ve gotten good at, we can do the front-end analysis of your industry, your existing marketing, and the competitive landscape before we ever show up. Which means the day itself is all signal, no setup.

We call it Strategy First in a Day. One focused day with your key team in the room. We build the ideal client profile, sharpen the positioning, tighten the messaging, and set the priorities for the next 90 days. Same outputs as the full engagement. One day instead of 45.

It works especially well for businesses in the one to 25 million dollar range: ones that have proven they can get clients but feel the growing complexity that comes with real traction. The ad hoc approach got you here. It won’t get you to the next level.

Questions I Get Asked About This

Is this only for businesses that are struggling with marketing?

Not at all. Some of the businesses that benefit most are growing well but feel the friction. Revenue is up, but the messaging is inconsistent. The team keeps restarting conversations that should already have answers. Strategy First in a Day works best when there’s real traction and you’re ready to make the marketing match where the business actually is.

What does my team walk away with at the end of the day?

A complete strategic foundation: your ideal client profile, your core message, your positioning relative to the competition, and a 90-day priority roadmap. Some businesses hand that to their internal team and run with it. Others move into ongoing fractional marketing leadership. Either way, the work is done in the room, not assigned as homework.

How is this different from a workshop or a consulting engagement?

Workshops give you frameworks. Consulting engagements give you recommendations. Strategy First in a Day gives you the actual deliverables, built with your team, that day. The distinction matters. When everyone in the room builds the strategy together, they understand it, they own it, and they can actually use it. That’s different from being handed someone else’s conclusions.

The Bottom Line

Growth that feels messy usually isn’t a marketing execution problem. It’s a clarity problem. And clarity isn’t something you stumble into by adding more tactics.

It starts with knowing who you’re for, why they’d choose you, and what matters most right now. Everything else follows from that.

If you want to see what building that foundation looks like in a single focused day with your whole team, head to dtm.world/oneday. That’s where we’ve laid out exactly how Strategy First in a Day works, who it’s built for, and what you walk away with.

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

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

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

Introduction: Strategy Isn’t the Problem

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

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

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

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

When Marketing Lacks a System, Everything Feels Harder

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

Here’s what it looks like in the wild:

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

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

Why Strategy Alone Falls Short

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

But strategy doesn’t:

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

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

What Is a Marketing Operating System?

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

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

A solid MOS answers five essential questions:

What matters most right now?
Who owns what?
How does work flow?
How do we measure progress?
How do we decide what to change next?

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

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

The 5 Core Components of a Marketing Operating System

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

1. Strategy First

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

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

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

2. Campaign Planning & Prioritization

Campaigns shouldn’t be surprises.

An MOS creates a predictable campaign rhythm that:

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

This creates calm, not chaos.

3. Roles, Workflows & Operating Rhythm

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

A true operating system outlines:

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

With this in place, marketing becomes scalable and sustainable.

4. Measurement That Informs Decisions

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

Focus on:

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

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

5. A Consistent Leadership Cadence

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

A Marketing Operating System needs a clear owner who:

Sets priorities
Makes tradeoffs
Interprets metrics
Guides iteration and improvement

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

Why AI Makes This More Urgent — Not Less

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

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

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

Within a Marketing Operating System, AI becomes leverage.

Outside of one, it’s just noise.

What Changes When You Install a Marketing Operating System

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

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

You stop reacting and start building momentum.

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

This Is a Leadership Conversation

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

Don’t ask:
“What should we do next?”

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

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

Conclusion: Less Friction, More Momentum

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

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

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

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

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

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

FAQs: Marketing Operating System for Small Business

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

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

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

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

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

Catch The Full Episode

Overview

Guest Bio

Key Takeaways

Great Moments

Memorable Quotes

Resources

Sign up to receive email updates

What makes an assemblage fragile

The four components

Integration

Cadence

Measurement

AI as a leverage layer

What it looks like when it’s working

One thing to do this week

What a customer is actually worth

Four things the Customer Engine does

Onboarding

Repeat engagement

The referral system

Reactivation

What the Customer Engine actually powers

One thing to do this week

Owned vs rented

The four owned channels

Email

Referral systems

Partnerships

Direct relationships

Where paid actually belongs

One thing to do this week

The actual problem

Pillars, not posts

Hubs, not archives

Repurposing, not more production

The point of view problem

One thing to do this week

Presence used to have one job

Job 1: Findable

Job 2: Credible

Job 3: Retrievable

Three things to fix first

Your website

Hub pages

Your presence beyond the site

Do the test today

What founders mistake for strategy

Strategy First: the three pieces

The ideal client

Differentiation

The core message

The Marketing Hourglass

One thing to do this week

When Referrals Dry Up: What Small Businesses Should Do Before Touching a Single Marketing Tactic

Why referrals dry up and what most small businesses do wrong next

The two things you need before you pick any channel

Map the customer journey before you map the tactics

Tactics without tracking are just busy work

How to stand out when everything feels like noise

Low-budget marketing that actually works

Frequently asked questions

What should I do first when referrals dry up?

Should I run paid ads when referrals stop?

How do I get referrals to come back naturally?

What is the Marketing Hourglass?

How should small businesses use AI in their marketing?

Marketing Strategy for Small Business: Why Clarity Beats More Tactics Every Time

You Don’t Have a Marketing Problem. You Have a Clarity Problem.

What a Small Business Marketing Strategy Actually Looks Like

The Part That Doesn’t Get Talked About Enough: Team Alignment

How to Build That Foundation Faster Than You Think

Questions I Get Asked About This

Is this only for businesses that are struggling with marketing?

What does my team walk away with at the end of the day?

How is this different from a workshop or a consulting engagement?

The Bottom Line

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

Table of Contents

Introduction: Strategy Isn’t the Problem