John (00:00): Hey, this is John, and before we get started, I have a gift for you for being such an amazing listener. Everyone’s talking about AI these days, but most of it’s about tactics. We’ve created a series of prompts we use to create strategy, and you can have them for free. Just go to dtm.world/freeprompts and grab yours. Now. Let’s get started.

(00:29): Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Liz Elting. She’s the founder and c e o of the Elizabeth Elting Foundation is an entrepreneur, business leader. I didn’t know they threw this word in there for me. Lingo, file, philanthropist and feminist. Liz is the founder of TransPerfect World’s largest language solution company with over $1 billion in revenue and offices in more than 100 cities worldwide. We’re going to talk about her latest book, dream Big and Win, translating Passion Into Purpose and Creating a Billion Dollar Business. So Liz, welcome to the show.

Liz (01:08): Thank you so much, John. I’m so excited to be here.

John (01:12): So we’re going to get into the book, but I want to go back in time a little bit because it’s relevant, I think, to you writing the book. What led you to start TransPerfect?

Liz (01:21): Well, I had always loved language. I mean the English language and then languages. I had the opportunity to live in a number of foreign countries, Portugal when I was little, then Canada when I was 10 until college, and then I did my junior year in Spain and I worked in Venezuela, and I was able to study four languages, so Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Latin loved languages. Went to school, decided to major in languages and didn’t know what on earth I would do with it. That was the concern because I was very practical. But I ended up getting a job shortly after my internship in Venezuela, which was shortly after graduating from college. But I got a job at a translation company in the late eighties, and it at the time was the world’s largest. It was about 90 people, and I realized, wow, what a beautiful way to combine language and business and what a perfect way to do.

(02:13): So I was there for three years. First I was in production, and then I moved over to sales, and I thought, what a wonderful industry and what a necessary industry, but I think it can be done better. I saw a real gap between what clients needed and what was available in the industry. So went back to school, got my M B A from N Y U and had a very brief stint in finance. Felt like I had to try out finance just because I had my M B A from N Y U, and that’s what people from Y U did. 70% of majors went into were finance majors, and I tried it, tried it out. So briefly after six weeks I left and I thought, wow, I loved the translation industry, and I had a thought on how it could be done better and this finance is not for me. So with that, that’s kind of the moment I decided, okay, I’m going to start TransPerfect. And really with the goal being to build the world’s largest language solutions company. At the time, there were about 10,000 other companies. That’s what I did. But they were tiny. They were mom and pop.

John (03:15): Well, I was going to ask you that. You halfway answered it anyway, so I’ll let you really tee it up, but did you really started thinking, I can do this big giant thing, or was it just like, Hey, I can do this better?

Liz (03:26): Yeah, no, it is a great question because you never know how big you can make it. But I think what I thought was, as I said, there were 10,000 translation companies out there in 1992 when we started, but they were really companies that were started and run by translators who were enormously talented, but they were busy doing the translation work, so they couldn’t scale their companies. So I thought, if I’m going to do this, I want it to be different and better. And the biggest, I just figured if I’m going to not use that M B A and take the risk, I’m going to go for broke. And so that was certainly the goal.

John (04:05): I always love to ask entrepreneurs this question. A lot of times it’s because they can look in the rear view mirror now to answer this, but what were some of the hardest lessons that you learned or had to learn in growing? Obviously many people don’t get past a million dollars, let alone another zero on there. What were some of the hardest lessons?

Liz (04:23): So learned a lot of things. Did many, many things wrong. In the early days. We worked so hard on selling and just realized we had to sell. We needed to bring in revenue as quickly as possible. We didn’t have funding. So to some degree we were able to do that, and that was wonderful. We brought in business, so we needed to hire quickly, and we brought in some people who were excellent, and actually some who were amazing, and then some who weren’t so good. But what happened was we were working so hard on selling that we had too much work because we could only find people so quickly. Back then, in the early nineties or even the mid nineties, people didn’t want to work for a startup. We didn’t have the big name. We were this tiny company with a lot of work, crazy hours, and we were asking a lot of people and we thought, okay, well, we’ll just pay them a bonus.

(05:12): We’ll just pay them more money and they’ll pull that all nighter. But we had a lot of turnover in those days. We lost a lot of people because you can’t do that to people no matter how much you pay them. They need their life. And we learned quickly that we needed to scale carefully, make sure we were trying to grow, but we also needed to make sure we brought in the right people and then we gave them a reasonable situation. So we learned from that to basically set up shifts. We had what we called T one, T two and T three different shifts so that people were not working through the night. We also opened other offices in different time zones, and we had those time zones cover for the other time zone, and then finally comp days. But we found ways around it, but we had a lot of turnover in the early days because of the situation.

John (06:03): I think most businesses, especially if you grow rapidly, I mean you had never run a company of that size mean, so you were learning on the job. And I think that that’s an area that sinks a lot of businesses. I mean, the people management part is probably the hardest part when you grow rapidly, isn’t it?

Liz (06:20): Yeah. And I think it’s the hardest part no matter what, right? I mean, yes, when you grow rapidly, because in the end, I mean, we grew pretty quickly, but we did this for 26 years, or actually, I did this for 26. It didn’t feel so rapid at the time, but we couldn’t bring in good people. We couldn’t bring in people quickly enough who, and we didn’t figure out how to manage their hours. But you’re right. You’re right. When you’re growing quickly, it’s hard. But I think finding, developing and retaining great people is the hardest part of every business. I’m sure you hear that and you know that we hear it all the time. That is the hardest.

John (07:00): Well, and you were kind of pre-internet, a pre global economy mean, so you needed people all over the world, and they were not as easy to find as they are today. You didn’t have the marketplaces where you could find ’em. I’m curious, Wiley is your publisher on this book, right? Is that right? They

Liz (07:15): Are. Did

John (07:15): I remember? Yeah. So was there any wrestling over the title? And the reason I ask that is there’s some people that the thought of creating a billion dollar business just doesn’t even seem on the table. Did you have any, I’m just curious if you had any discussion with your editor on that title?

Liz (07:33): Yes, we did. Because I think you’re right. A lot of people think, well, that’s just out of the realm of possibility. Why would I even bother? And this book, certainly it’s for everybody. It’s for people who want to create million companies and 5 million companies and 10 million companies. So we did, but I think we put it on there ultimately because we wanted to show, you can do this. You can dream big, and I mean, dream very big, and you can create a billion dollar company. And I tried to share lessons I learned from what I did and the many things I did wrong, and you can get there. And it was to inspire people to realize they can reach for the stars and they could well make it. So that

John (08:17): Was idea, dream big and win and maybe make more money than you’re making today is probably not as inspirational, right? Right. So there are a lot of books that talk about dreaming big. I think one of the things I really like about your book is so few of them have the and win component because to some extent, it’s easy to dream big, isn’t it? So how do you take it beyond just the dream?

Liz (08:43): Right? And I’m so glad you said that because some people feel like they don’t want to talk about winning. Winning is a bad word, but for a lot of us, we’re very competitive, and if we’re doing it, we’re playing to win, and that’s who this is for. But the answer is it’s easy to dream. A dream without goals, with deadlines is just a wish, right? I mean, it’s all about goals with deadlines. And I talk a lot about that in the book about the daily goals. We had things like make 300 phone calls a day and send out 300 letters, and maybe now it would be emails, but every day and not letting the day pass without doing those things for an extended period of time. And I did it when I started the company and we had all of our salespeople doing it and held them to it.

(09:34): So that’s an example of goals with deadlines that we really had to adhere to. Another example is when we thought, okay, we’ve got to scale this to the next level. Basically we set out quarterly goals for when we’re going to open offices, and we said, okay, Q one, San Francisco, Q two Atlanta, Q three, Washington, DC Q four Chicago. And then we forced ourselves to do it. We didn’t give ourselves an out. And that sounds like that might be actually quite difficult, especially without funding, but we basically hired one person at a time. They needed to achieve certain sales goals, and then they could add a person and so on. But yes, I think goals with deadlines is the key, and that’s what a lot of people don’t want to do. But if you do that, I think it’s so key.

John (10:20): I think there’s a misconception out there with people who aren’t entrepreneurs that every entrepreneur is just this massive risk taker. I’d make the case that it’s actually riskier staying in a nine to five job for somebody. But talk a little bit about, I mean, because you took some big risks, talk a little bit about what you think the role or the balance or the importance of risk is.

Liz (10:43): Yes. No, you’re right. And I agree with you. It can be more of a risk if you’re working for someone else, because then you’re at their mercy. That’s right. Which boss you’re going to get. You don’t know what the boss is going to ask of you. You don’t know what’s going to happen going to happen to the company. Plenty of companies go out of business, they lay people off, whatever it is. So yes, whereas you can control your own destiny if you take what some people might consider the risk, and I agree with you, it’s not a risk. If by chance it doesn’t work out, you learned a lot along the way and then you can go start something new. Or if you really don’t want to, you can go back to corporate life. But I agree with you. I think it’s more of a risk not to.

John (11:26): I’m sure people that will read this book will say, okay, I should dream big, but what do I need to start the next Google? Or where do I find the idea for my big?

Liz (11:37): Yeah. And I love that question or that, yes, because I feel like you should not confuse being an inventor with being an entrepreneur or being an entrepreneur with being an inventor. Basically, you can be wildly successful creating something entirely new. And certainly that was what we did. As I mentioned, 10,000 other companies were already doing it, but the idea was to do it better and differently. And there are all kinds of ways to do that, whether it’s with more urgency slash faster, whether it’s with more of a service orientation, really spoiling the client, whether it’s with having a global presence, whether it’s creating a one-stop shop. I mean, there’s so many ways to do it. And I always think about how Steve Jobs did it with the iPhone. It was originally the Blackberry, which had some issues. The screen wasn’t too big. I mean, there were a number of issues, and he wanted it to be able to do a lot more than just have its email usage. So the point is, yes, I think it’s the better way to go because there’s so many things out there that are being done, but they’re not being done as well as they could. And it’s finding that hole, finding that problem to solve.

John (12:50): So every new wave of technology potentially presents challenges for established businesses. I would venture to say that the translation business is going through a bit of an evolution because of ai. So how would you advise people, in some cases, it’s going to gut their profit. In other cases, it’s going to make them have to pivot altogether. I mean, how did you look at that kind of changing world to pivot or think about how you had to change the company?

Liz (13:25): Just to mean, and you probably know this, but I did sell five years ago, but still,

John (13:31): Yeah, I was using that as an example. Oh,

Liz (13:33): Yes. No, no, absolutely. Because machine translation became a part of things during my time in the industry, and you’re absolutely right. So what we did is we tried to incorporate it in any way that it could be helpful. And it was whether it was machine translation, cat tools, and now it’s ai, and I’m sure they’re using it to their advantage and making it so that it is helpful. But the other piece of it that we did, and I recommend doing it, is constantly innovating. And sure, we did it with starting as a company that had almost no technology because in 1992, you could barely mode something. I mean, there was no technology. It was crazy. But then along the way, we really incorporated technology. But as far as other things, we started a litigation solutions division. We started a staffing solutions division. We created technology solutions.

(14:27): And I think the point there is you get the client base and you work with these big companies and you see what else they need, and then you see what the needs are out there as time goes on, and you just keep innovating for your client base. So we kept working with the same clients. I mean huge global companies, but they needed other things. And it’s anticipating the client’s needs before they know they have them. It’s constant innovation. And I think that’s what we did during those 26 years that I was with the company. But I think I’m sure that’s what they’re doing now and what every great entrepreneur and every great C e O is doing.

John (15:03): Yeah, I mean, no question. Easier to sell more to people who already trust you than to go out and find new companies or new business. Absolutely. As people might’ve noted in the intro, in your intro, the first part talks about your foundation. So was philanthropy always a hope, a goal or kind of a happy side effect of what happened in your mind?

Liz (15:26): I think it always was a goal. I learned early on that I wanted to help people. I liked helping people. I mean, I did volunteer work, a lot of us did. But during my years as an entrepreneur, I didn’t have time like any entrepreneur that you barely have time for your company and your family, and that’s it. So I did figure eventually when I had more time, I would focus on the issues and I saw issues. I saw issues with women and how they were treated, how marginalized populations were treated, or people from marginalized communities were treated, and then all kinds of other issues. And the longer I’ve been doing it, the more issues I’m seeing everything from heart disease to cancer to hunger to gun safety. So now I did think, okay, I had a plan early on, and I’ll tell you partly why I had a plan.

(16:22): One thing that happened to me when I was 14, it was kind of the big event of my life. It was life changing. I was hit by a car. I was walking across the street in Vermont, and I flipped over, had a fractured skull, was unconscious for three days. My parents didn’t think I was going to wake up. And then they were thinking, okay, well if she wakes up, she’s probably going to have severe brain damage. Not being able to be able to talk or not be able to walk or something or both. Anyway, after three days, I was fortunate I did come out of this coma, but there was someone else with the exact same injury. So I realized, oh my gosh, I’m the lucky one. I need to do something important here. I could have just as easily lost my life. And then of course, I was lucky with having parents who encouraged education and supported me through it, and being able to be an entrepreneur who hired amazing people. I mean, we in the end had an amazing team that really built our company. So I was one of the lucky ones. So now here I am trying to help people who don’t come from situations where they can get the education. So work a lot on financial aid or try to encourage people to be entrepreneurs or I’m trying to help in all the areas that I just am more good fortune with, and some people don’t have it. So that’s the idea.

John (17:40): So talk a little bit about, you started to mention this a little bit, but did you see being a woman doing what you did as an advantage or a disadvantage?

Liz (17:51): I think

John (17:51): I have four daughters, so that’s maybe why I posed the question that way, because I’d love your take. No,

Liz (17:57): Absolutely. I think the reason actually what prompted me to start the company that I left out, I was trying to move along my answer. I know people don’t have all day, but when I was at the other company, shortly after getting my M B A where I was trying out finance, I was the only woman. And first thing that happened is whenever the phone rang, all the guys would yell Liz phone, because I was the woman. And I quickly realized, okay, that atmosphere was not for me. It felt sexist there, it did. Now, that was many years ago, going through the years as an entrepreneur and as a C E O or Co c e O, yeah, it was tough in a lot of ways, being a woman, people assumed that my partner was the c e o when they first met us, when we just walked in, and I was his assistant because I was the woman.

(18:48): And then I felt like as we grew the company, I think it can be harder for women because when women are tough, they’re considered mean. Whereas when men are tough, they’re considered great leaders. I definitely felt some of that. And then I guess the other issue I saw is not so much that it affected me over time because I was in that leadership role, but other women that I saw at other companies, sometimes in our company, I think they weren’t always treated the way they should be. So I thought, okay, when I’m finished with this, I’m going to help them and support them because in many companies and in many parts of the world and in politics and throughout, it can be tougher for women. And so that’s why I’m focusing on it. And the wonderful thing for your daughters is this. In the nineties, we didn’t have a lot of groups, women’s group support.

(19:40): Now at companies, we ultimately had a women’s group at our company, we started one. There are so many amazing networking groups outside where women are supporting women and some wonderful men are supporting women too. And it’s much better, but we still have a ways to go. And I think as far as your daughters, one last thing is obviously they may find a terrific situation. There are wonderful companies out there, but I also think it’s great when women go and start their own companies and they can create their dream environment. And so I’m a huge proponent of that as well.

John (20:11): Well, I’ll brag a little bit. One of them has started and sold a company already, and then the other one is, one of my other ones is actually runs my company. So Oh

Liz (20:20): My gosh. Oh wow. So they’re entrepreneurs already

John (20:24): And very

Liz (20:24): Successful ones.

John (20:26): I love that

Liz (20:27): They don’t have to deal with these issues, or

John (20:30): Hopefully not, but Liz,

Liz (20:32): Wow, thank you. I said you had kids. I wasn’t imagining they were old enough to do that. You’re much two young

John (20:38): For them. I’ve got seven grandkids, so Oh my gosh.

Liz (20:41): You’ve accomplished a lot. Pretty more than I have.

John (20:43): Well, I wouldn’t go there, but, well, Liz, I appreciate you stopping by the show today. You want to tell people where they can maybe connect with you or find out more about your work, especially the foundation, and then clearly pick up a copy of Dream Big and Win.

Liz (20:57): Oh, thank you. Thank you so much, John. Yes, so my website is https://lizelting.com/, and my website is https://www.elizabetheltingfoundation.org . And then the book, dream Big and Win can be bought on Amazon. So dream Big and Win. Liz Elting, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or whatever your preferred retailer is. But yes, thank you so much, John. This was wonderful.

John (21:21): Well, I appreciate you taking a moment, and hopefully we’ll run into one of these days out there on the road.

Liz (21:26): Oh, that would be amazing. So great talking to you. And so great talking to everybody.

John Jantsch (00:05): Hey, this is John, and before we get started, I have a gift for you for being such an amazing listener. Everyone’s talking about AI these days, but most of it’s about tactics. We’ve created a series of prompts we use to create strategy, and you can have them for free. Just go to dtm.world/freeprompts and grab yours. Now, let’s get started.

(00:37): Welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Honoree Corder. She’s author of more than 50 books, a publishing consultant, TEDx speaker, and the founder of Indie Author University Honoree Passionately Turns aspiring non-fiction authors into bestselling and best earning authors. I like that. Second part, she’s also runs the Empire Builder’s Mastermind, and we’re going to talk about her most recent book, write Your First Nonfiction, A Primer for Aspiring Authors. So welcome to the show.

Honoree Corder (01:13): I’m delighted to be with you. Thank you for having me.

John Jantsch (01:16): Awesome. So 50 books. Sometimes I tell people I’ve written seven in There’re so impressed, but 50 is crazy. When did you write your first book?

Honoree Corder (01:24): 2004.

John Jantsch (01:26): 2004. Do you remember the title?

Honoree Corder (01:28): Yes. Tall Order? I do. Yes. You never forget your first one, right?

John Jantsch (01:32): That’s right. That’s absolutely true. It’s funny, and I don’t know if you’ve experienced this on yours, but some of my books from writing, turning in a manuscript to publishing and being out there in the world and doing interviews like this might’ve been 18 months and somebody would ask me very specifically about something on page 27. I was like, I don’t know.

Honoree Corder (01:50): That does happen. Someone will say, what are the seven things? And I think, well, I don’t know what they were when I wrote the book, but I’ll give you seven things right now and let’s see how it goes.

John Jantsch (01:59): So let’s dive into, I mean there definitely are, as the title or subtitle mentions, there are many aspiring authors. What’s the first question somebody should ask themselves if they’re thinking I should write a book?

Honoree Corder (02:11): What’s in it for me? Really? Not me but them.

John Jantsch (02:14): Okay, yeah. Okay.

Honoree Corder (02:16): What’s in it for me? For them to write a book? Nothing. What is in it for them to become an author? What do they want the book to do for them, for their business, for their life, for their brand? So that’s the very first question.

John Jantsch (02:29): So there would be some people, and again, I know you have a little different take because the fact that you actually even said best earning authors, because I think there’s a lot of people that would suggest, oh, you have to have something important to say before you should write a book. What’s your take on helping people understand a topic?

Honoree Corder (02:45): Well, that’s such a great question. The reason I start with what’s in it for them is because sometimes it’s helping them to clarify their message or clarify their thoughts or crystallize what their places in the world about a particular topic.

John Jantsch (03:00): And I think it is probably healthy to have a conversation. I think a lot of people probably, I’m guessing people that come to you sometimes have a misconception about how hard the process is, how many books they could possibly sell. And so really tying that to what’s the end game? I mean, because a lot of work and so having an end game that seems appealing is probably a really good idea, isn’t it?

Honoree Corder (03:21): Yes. Start with why, and then understanding what the book will do for them, but then also understanding the job of the book because the book is an asset. It’s supposed to be an asset in one way or another, either it is something that gives you credibility, boosts your brand, or helps people to understand your process, how you think, and whether you’re the right person for them to hire.

John Jantsch (03:43): To that point, most nonfiction books are written by business owners who have something at stake in what they’re writing about. How do you help them? I mean, anybody walking down the street who fits that qualification, would you say to them, you should have a book because it can help your business?

Honoree Corder (03:59): So the offhanded answer that I give all the time when someone says, who should write a book? I say, if you perceive yourself as an expert and you would like others to perceive you as an expert, and there is anyone else out there who says, well, I do that. I’m an estate planning attorney. I’m the best c p a in the world. The one thing that will differentiate you more than anything else is having a book. So if there’s anyone else who does what you do and you want to be perceived as an expert and you have the miles and the hair, the silver and the credentials to back it up, then having a book is going to be the thing that will leave no doubt in their minds.

John Jantsch (04:36): Yeah, it’s interesting. Over the years I’ve had people that I’m absolutely certain did not read my book, but the fact that it was out there and it was on lists of things where that’s all that mattered, but certainly I’ve also had people that have said, I read your book and it makes total sense. When can we start working together? It really can lead to many avenues. Would you say your books that you’ve written have played a role in your developing your author university and your TEDx invitations?

Honoree Corder (05:05): I think all of the opportunities that have come to me in the past 19 years are in one way or another tied to a book that I have written

(05:14): And make anything that I attempt to do easier up to and including here’s what I do for a living. And someone will say, oh, I’d like to talk to you about that. Do you have a business card? And I say, well, I don’t actually now have a business card. I stop printing them. But I used to say, well, I do have a business card, but I also have a book, and I know you know this as being an author. When you tell someone you have a book, their face lights up, you become the coolest kid in the room and you go from being an introvert who wishes they stayed home to having the topic of a conversation built in and some common ground with someone because they will generally say, oh, I’d love to read your book because I want to know more about this topic. Or what’s it like to be an author? How do I become an author? Right. There’s some sort of instant connection that you have with someone when you are an author and it’s

John Jantsch (06:00): Great. No question. Let’s maybe get into what you teach in this particular book. And I guess I’ll start by saying if somebody came to you and because essentially this book is a little bit of a consulting roadmap for how to do their own book. So if somebody came to you and said, I’m the best estate planning attorney and I want to write a book, where do you start with them? Do you give them an assignment or I’m guessing most of ’em don’t come to you with a manuscript.

Honoree Corder (06:24): Most people do not come to me with a manuscript. They come to me with the knowing that they are author bound and they’re not sure. Do they take the train, the plane or the automobile to get there and what are the first steps? So I start them with initial questions, the first one you got, which is what’s in it for them? The second one is, what is the job of the book? And then we get into everything else. Question number three is, what do you want the reader to do as a result of reading your book? If they have no communication or conversation with you, this is not if they hire you, this is what’s their takeaway. In other words, don’t waste people’s time. In my humble opinion, don’t waste someone’s time just giving them a sales pitch for your estate planning, planning services. Tell them why they need an estate plan.

(07:07): Tell them how it’s going to protect them in their wealth and their heirs and give them some things they can do. If they never talk to you, how can they do some estate planning attorney’s going to send me an email and say, no, don’t have them Google how to write an estate plan, but what actions can they take on their own without you, there should be something in your book that allows someone to have their own transformation without the author involvement. Question number four is what do you want your reader to not do for this book? For write your first nonfiction book. I want aspiring authors to not write their book. I want them to write their book. I want them to fail to procrastinate. I want them to actually write their book. And then ultimately the fifth question is, what do you want the right reader to do? What do you want The person who reads your book and likes your message and likes what you have to say and likes your area of expertise? What’s the next step in their journey? What do you want them to do next? So those are the first five questions that I give them, and then I ask them to write down some of the common questions that they are asked as professionals.

John Jantsch (08:10): Do you immediately get into, because a book that like you just described, where maybe the ultimate goal is I want them to hire me as their estate planner since we started down that path. Yeah, let’s go. There probably doesn’t have to be a 400 page book, does it?

Honoree Corder (08:24): It does not, no.

John Jantsch (08:26): So how do you get them to start thinking about length, for example?

Honoree Corder (08:29): Well, I have the lawyer answer. So we’re talking about estate planning attorneys, right? So I’ll do the lawyer answer and the answer is, how long should a book be? Let depend, right? It depends on how long is it going to take you to fulfill the job that you’ve given the book, tell them what they need to be told, nothing more, nothing less. You don’t need to add in all sorts of things to make people feel good about reading a 300 page book because they won’t. As a matter of fact, this is only a hundred pages. It’s 15. I think this one is 21,000 words. It’s a fast read designed to empower someone to take action, to get out of procrastination and into action. If I wrote a 300 page book, I’m writing your first nonfiction book, probably it would just sit there. People would say, oh, I want to write a book. I’ll get that book and then I’m going to lovingly place it on my bedside table where it will sit and collect dust and I will lovingly move it to the long-term bookshelf, and then the next time I move, I will lovingly donate it to the library having never read it. And so that factors in to how long should the book be? The book should be long enough so that the person solves their problem, feels empowered to take action and is ready to move on to the next step. Once they’ve read

John Jantsch (09:38): The book. Don’t most attorneys need about 125 pages to talk about who they are. I’m just kidding. Sorry. That was unfair.

Honoree Corder (09:45): I’m not an attorney. I’m not offended at all.

John Jantsch (09:47): In fact, there’s kind of a trend towards smallish books I think with the idea that they’re not so overwhelming. I could read this on one plane ride. I think I’ve heard somebody say it. That’s an ideal length for many books because I do think there is an intimidation factor if somebody looks at a book and goes, oh man, I don’t know when I would ever get through this.

Honoree Corder (10:05): Yes, because time is everyone’s most precious asset. And when you look at a book, I immediately say, how long is this going to take me to read? And when am I going to be able to allocate that

John Jantsch (10:16): Time? I want to ask this question. So your answer isn’t duh, but a book needs to be organized. Well, I’ve worked with many editors that have rearranged things in my writing really with the idea of that’s not everybody’s power skill. How do you work with somebody about getting the right structure for a book that’s going to accomplish their goals and not just drone on about some topic until they bore people to death?

Honoree Corder (10:41): Well, so I think you’re asking, you’re not asking a Doug question. It does need to be well organized. But I think that one of the reasons people who want to write a book don’t write a book is because they get overwhelmed with where does everything go. You start from the perspective of what are the questions that I need to answer in this book? And then you think if I were answering how do I get to the grocery store from my house? I’d say, you go to the end of the driveway, you’d make a right, you’d make another right. And you’d go until you see the grocery store on your right, everything’s on the right. Apparently. That’s the logical way to give directions. There is a logical way to explain to your reader the contents of your book. However, worrying too much about that in the aspiring author in writing can really paralyze someone.

(11:29): And that’s unfortunate. You do not want to publish your book without the aid of your village. You need the people that are going to help you publish it. And if it is your first book, you probably want to developmental editor. You probably might even want a book doctor, someone who’s going to get in there with you and say, but I think chapter two would be better in chapter seven because I’d like you to lay a little bit more groundwork before you dive right into where’s the binder when you die? Let’s get into what goes into the binder first. Right. Let’s have you die at the end of the book with your estate plan as opposed to in the beginning. Right? Yeah.

John Jantsch (12:02): Makes total sense. So

Honoree Corder (12:03): Having people wrap some arms around the process with other people is actually gives you some peace because then you can just say, I feel like writing about this right now. I’m going to worry about where it goes in the book specifically later.

John Jantsch (12:17): Yeah. Do you help people through, because again, I have lots of clients that I’ve asked to write a blog post, 500, 700 words, and they’re paralyzed. And actually even in my own writing over the years, I’m actually, I write from a outline subheads all the way through to where if I do that part, I can write a couple thousand words almost in my sleep because it’s outlined for me already. Is that a process you would recommend for the person who, I mean even 21,000 words, for some people it’s going to sound like a huge mountain.

Honoree Corder (12:49): So first let’s reduce it to the ridiculous and just say 21,000 words was written, 250, 500 and a thousand words at a time. So if you’ve written three emails today, you’ve probably written five words and you didn’t think how many words were in that email. You didn’t get wrapped around the tree about the word count until you were putting it into the perspective of a book. So sometimes a book feels big bigger than what we can wrap our minds around, and so therefore we’re paralyzed. So the first thing is focus on writing that next bullet point. And to your point, when I’m writing a book, I take the questions that I want to answer in my book and I put them in a logical or linear order and then I break it down what are the points that I need to write about in order to answer this question and what’s the next point and what’s the next point and what’s the next point?

(13:39): And I take it one, I write in Pomodoro’s, 25 minute writing sprints. I write in Pomodoro’s. I’m not worried about 21,000 words or 50,000 words or 70,000 words I’m just focused on today and this 25 minutes that I have to write and this Pomodoro. And then I look, how many words did I write? 300, 500, a thousand. Okay, great. I’ll come back tomorrow and write some more. If you can reduce it to the ridiculous and not get so overwhelmed by it’s going to be a book, it’s going to be a big deal. It’s easier to get through it.

John Jantsch (14:11): Again, this is probably going to fall into the depends category because there isn’t any one way, but I could see some people going, oh yeah, I’m going to work on that when I have time here and I have time there. And next thing they know, six months have gone by and they’re still not through the book. Would you say that the most condensed you can make your at least first pass the better?

Honoree Corder (14:31): Yes. Give yourself a deadline and just work on it a little bit every day. You are not ever going to not to get a sabbatical to a beautiful island where I get to just write my manuscript, I have to fit it in. It’s my job, but it is my job to make sure that I carve out that time every day to put words up on the page. That’s the only way I get the books written.

John Jantsch (14:53): And I know a lot of people that give themselves like a thousand words a day and stop, that kind of thing. I wrote my first book, the bulk of my first book over three day weekends. I just locked. In fact, I did actually go to someplace where there was nobody there, a house that my in-laws owned. There was nobody there and locked myself away for three day weekends. But then I wrote the Self-Reliant Entrepreneur over, it’s a whole different type of book, but I would write a couple hundred words a day and I’m not sure which. I think the actual couple hundred words a day was more painful just

Honoree Corder (15:27): By a thousand paper cuts kind of thing.

John Jantsch (15:30): Exactly. As opposed to just go trudge through it. But everybody has to make it work for they. That’s right. So there are obviously many ways to get the book published once it is written. Do you find that going a traditional route is still a legitimate avenue for many people, particularly since self-publishing and hybrid publishing has become so much more flexible and so much more acceptable?

Honoree Corder (15:51): I think that all three paths are fantastic, and it just depends on the author and what their desired outcome is. Some people want to go the traditional route, they want someone else to handle all of the details. They want that validation. They want to know that they have climbed that mountain and someone who has a position at a publishing company and said, give you that stamp of approval. I think it’s becoming more and more challenging as publishing is changing. The hybrid model is not my favorite, so we’ll skip right over that. And I am a hundred percent indie published except I have many foreign translations, and those have all been brokered through traditional agency to other countries because I don’t have a line of sight. I don’t speak Lithuanian or Russian or German or French or Italian. So I’m very grateful that there is someone to handle that side of the business.

(16:40): And just as we record this, I’ve released an audio book traditionally with Podium Publishing, and they are the world’s largest producer of audio books, and they came to me and they published the bestselling book Formula and they’re publishing, write your first nonfiction book in audio, but I have a little traditional experience myself. We’ll see how it goes. I don’t have any objection to any one of those. My hope is that whichever way someone chooses, they think about the book as an asset that could work for them for 10 years and is published as professionally and profoundly as possible so that it does what they want it to do in their head. The most frustrating thing for me is hearing someone who’s bummed out or disappointed in what their book is, either because of how quickly they publish it and they didn’t know which boxes to check or they thought, oh, I’m just going to let an expert handle it. And then the expert didn’t do a great job for them, and so they’re just disappointed in the results of the book or the sales of the book, or the book isn’t doing what they wanted it to do.

John Jantsch (17:40): Yeah, so I’m glad you mentioned audiobook again, it’s become easier to do as well, and I would certainly think that you encourage people to go that route as well.

Honoree Corder (17:48): I do. It’s the fastest growing segment of publishing. It is so easy for someone to find the time to read a book because they can do it while they’re driving to and from work on the treadmill, walking their dog, cleaning their house. When you’re physically reading a book, that’s all you can do. You have to focus. But when you’re reading a book in audio form, the possibilities are endless on how you can consume that content

John Jantsch (18:12): At two times speed even.

Honoree Corder (18:14): Oh yes, two and three times.

John Jantsch (18:16): Some people need speed to sped up actually. It’s not efficiency, it’s just they should read faster. They should read. Enunciation

Honoree Corder (18:23): Is hard at speed.

John Jantsch (18:25): It is. Right. But I know certainly on my older books, there’s more audio books sold than the print books by far now for that edition. Anyway, so honor, I appreciate you taking a moment to stop by. Talk about your first nonfiction. You want to tell people where they could connect with you or find your work and your books.

Honoree Corder (18:42): Yeah, so my books are everywhere books are sold and my website is Honoreecorder.com. And I’m just delighted to meet you and have a conversation with you about books.

John Jantsch (18:51): Absolute pleasure. Appreciate you taking the time. Hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road. I would love it.

John Jantsch (00:00): Hey, this is John, and before we get started, I have a gift for you for being such an amazing listener. Everyone’s talking about AI these days, but most of it’s about tactics. We’ve created a series of prompts we use to create strategy, and you can have them for free. Just go to dtm.world/freeprompts and grab yours. Now. Let’s get started.

(00:30): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Lisa McCarthy. She’s the co-founder and CEO of the Fast Forward Group, a professional development and executive coaching company that has transformed the careers and lives of more than 100,000 professionals at leading companies around the world, such as Amazon, TikTok, Google, JP Morgan, Chase, Ford, and more. Lisa is designed a simple and immediately actionable system of power principles to help people achieve success and fulfillment in their whole lives. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today because that is the basis of her book. Fast Forward five Principles to Create the Life you Want in just one year. So Lisa, welcome to the show.

Lisa McCarthy (01:16): Thank you. Great to be here.

John Jantsch (01:19): So I’m sure everybody starts here. I’m going to have to start here. You put a timeline on somebody creating the life they want in one year. So tell me a little bit about the basis of that and where that comes from.

Lisa McCarthy (01:32): Yeah. Well, what we’ve found throughout our lives and careers is that people have a to-do list. They have goals, and it’s challenging, particularly when you’re working in a fast-paced, high pressure, constantly changing company to zoom out. And so we have a lot of ambition dreams that mostly we keep to ourselves, and if we do share them, they occur as a someday. And so our system recommends that people go one year out. And it’s funny because when we first started working and developing the curriculum, Facebook was one of our first clients and they were working on a weekly basis printing money at the time, and they said, we can’t go even a quarter out. We could only think till Friday. And we said, well, in order to get people thinking big and believing and seeing more possible, we have to go out one year. And some people will say, oh, should we go three years? And we say, you know what? One year you really are putting a line in the sand and there’s things to commit to. And even if you don’t get to them by the end of the year, even if you fail, it’s worth playing for versus it’s staying in your head as a someday.

John Jantsch (02:49): And I think that’s a timeline that’s probably, people can think, yeah, okay, a year, I can stick with that. But that’s also some immediacy because there are plenty of books out there that talk about three and five-year planning for businesses, and I’m kind of with you. It’s almost kind of like a wish at that point rather than a goal, isn’t it?

Lisa McCarthy (03:06): Yes, very much. I think a year is viable and it also brings a little pressure, which is a good thing, which is a good thing because when something’s bound in time, people feel more accountable. And in our system, we give a very rigorous approach to designing a vision one year out and stating as if it’s already happened, which is very different from goal setting. And we ask them to be vivid and specific and measurable, not I want to improve something or I want to be a better manager. It’s very specific and measurable. And then ask them, coach them to come back to the present and look at what are the next three steps I could take? So very different from my action or to-do list.

John Jantsch (03:56): Yeah. So you use the term power principle. I think most people understand at least the basic concept of a principle. What are you bringing to the table with this idea of a power principle?

Lisa McCarthy (04:06): Our system. So there’s so much in life that we cannot control. We can’t control the economy, we can’t control the weather, especially now, we can’t control a lot of things that are going to happen in our company that gets sent on down from the top and we can’t control other people, although we’ll keep trying. So the whole book is about where, what can I control? Where do I have the power to improve and change? Where can I take a hundred percent responsibility? So each of the power principles focus on giving people actionable tools and exercises to zoom out and take control of your life. A lot of people are just in the passenger versus the driver’s seat, and we always say, you had the power all along. It’s up to you to exercise it. So declare bold vision, then we move to choosing a new perspective. You can control your mindset, creating an action plan. You can control where you spend your time and energy, and then we move into communication, another thing you can control. So it’s all about control and power in a positive way, in a positive way, and taking responsibility for how your life looks.

John Jantsch (05:26): Let’s talk a little bit about that first one. You mentioned the idea declare a bold vision. I mean, I think, I don’t know, I’ve done several thousand interviews on my podcast over the years, a lot of books on leadership and that idea of a vision for a business is really common idea. You have a specific exercise for that. I’d love it if you could unpack maybe why you, because I think a lot of people accept this idea. A lot of people have trouble actually doing it, so I wonder if you could kind of unpack your exercise for that.

Lisa McCarthy (05:55): Yeah. Well, the exercise is for an individual. So a lot of times people are doing visions for their team or their company, and those can be very compelling. And this is about at an individual level, a year from today, what does extraordinary success look like? Really defining it. So it’s not about wordsmithing, a three page, excuse me, a three sentence essay, which always used to drive me crazy when I took courses like that. This is about, we’re going to give you seven questions, John, and you are going to step off the treadmill and you’re going to answer those questions. And these questions are not just about business goals, these questions are about your whole life. So as an example, the very first question is a year from today, what are you known for? People are typically not conscious of how they’re showing up and who they’re being, not only as a leader or as a professional, but as a sister, as a parent, as a friend, as a colleague.

(07:06): So very early in the book and our program, you’re going to raise your consciousness because most people, they’re not even thinking they’re just going sleeping. Then we have traditional business questions about what would extraordinary look like in terms of growth. We have all disciplines. So for engineers, it’s going to look different from salespeople, it’s going to look different from lawyers. But you really want to define not only outcomes that are predictable. We don’t want to play unpredictable. This whole process is about playing for bold, uncomfortable outcomes that you may not had to achieve. And if you think about corporate America, it’s not designed for that. People want to play it safe under promise, over deliver, get paid, get promoted. This is not that exercise, this is that exercise. Keep it to yourself. We recommend sharing some of the things with your manager because if you’re not letting your manager know a year from today, here’s where I want to be in terms of my career, don’t plan on moving.

(08:09): Your hard work is not going to, excuse me, get you promoted, right? You have to take ownership of your career. So you’re writing down bold, uncomfortable business outcomes. If you don’t feel uncomfortable, you’re not playing big enough but uncomfortable in a way that you’re not up at two in the morning, uncomfortable in a way that I would feel so proud a year from today to have myself and my team accomplish that. And then how do you bring that same level of boldness and rigor and discipline to your personal life and to your relationships? I mean, we’ve had people in the program say, I don’t think about the quality of my relationships. I want to stay married. I want to get together with my friends. But they’re not really thoughtful about who are the people that really matter. And in the end, at our funerals, they’re not going to talk about 25% business growth or market share.

(09:07): I mean, it’s all important. Work is fulfilling. And if you drop out, whether it’s culture, friendships, health, and when we work with people, they’re dropping out a lot of those things. I’ve had people in the program that they’ll sleep when they retire, they’ll spend time with their kids after the I P O. And so this is an opportunity to really believe fundamentally that I can succeed and excel at work and I have enough time to do what’s important. I can take time and invest in my wellbeing. I can make a list of the relationships that matter and pay attention. For most human beings, this is a breakthrough. They’re just not thinking like that. They’re not thinking whole life. And that’s really what sets this book apart from most of the things on the market.

John Jantsch (10:00): I want to dive into number two, choose a new perspective. You talk about reframe negative stories that hold you back. I don’t think anybody would disagree with that, but a lot of those negative stories that hold people back, they’ve had a lifetime of carrying those around. How do you flip the switch on that?

Lisa McCarthy (10:18): Yeah, that is for sure. First off, I’ll state that my partner and I are not therapists. We’re not PhDs in brain science. The book does have a lot of research in it. And what’s made the biggest difference is practicing this model on our own lives and then sharing it with people throughout the last decade. You’re absolutely right, there’s negative. First of all, if you’re walking through life thinking, I just crushed that presentation, I’m going to get promoted. I’m such a great parent, I’ve never looked better, keep going. But that’s not usually what people are saying, right? We’re saying negative. We have negative stories about ourselves, other people and the circumstances, and they really do hold us back. Now, why do people change? They change because they ultimately unpack the negative story and recognize the cost. So step one is, what is my negative perspective or story?

(11:21): What is the cost of that story? And then what’s another story I could choose? So as an example, and I’ll share one of my own, when I was back in corporate America, there was a reorg. There were many, but I got layered under someone that I was not a fan of, and I went home, and this was more temporal. It wasn’t something that I had for decades, and a lot of times people have those too. But I was very upset, very disappointed, and went off about it with my husband, how did this happen? And this is not fair and this is never going to work, and I’m giving you the very short version. But my overall story was like, this is a mistake and it’s never going to work. And then when my husband said, well, are you going to put together your resume? Are you ready to find another job?

(12:14): I said, absolutely not. I love my team, I love this company. I’m paid well. And he said, well, am I going to have to listen to this every night? Which was a fair question. And this was really self-coaching. Self-coaching, using the model, which everybody that reads this book can do. I certainly could have suffered for months and months complaining to my colleagues and complaining to my friends. But given I didn’t want to change the circumstances and leave the company, I brainstorm new perspectives, which is what our model helps you do. And I ultimately took on, I can learn from every manager. Now, did I believe it at the time? It wasn’t authentic, but I then said, okay, so this is my new perspective. What can I do? Well, I can have breakfast with him and get to know him as a human being. I can share in a very proactive way our business vision and strategy and get his coaching on various things.

(13:14): And ultimately, I did. I did. So it was really about completing the past and all this stuff. I had a story about him. I have big collecting evidence. That’s what we do as human beings. And then unfortunately, human beings often choose to be right versus happy. So that’s what the model really helps you with. If you have a negative perspective about other people, we’re so busy being right and righteous, and I always say in the program like, Tom is not getting fired because that’s what they’re hoping. So Tom or that team is not getting eliminated. So if you need Tom or that team to be successful, what’s another perspective you could take on? And then we have people in the program that have collected evidence for years that I’m not good with conflict. I’m not good speaking in large groups. I’m not strategic, whatever it might be.

(14:11): I’m not good with numbers collecting evidence throughout the years. And that’s what stopped them. Because if you believe something to be true, you’re not going to take any actions to change it. So this has been so game changing for people to try on a new perspective about themselves and about other people, even if they don’t believe it at first. It may not be authentic at first, but they’re willing to say, okay, the current lens I’m looking through is disempowering and there’s high cost to me, so let me just go for it. Take on this new perspective. And it’s been massively valued to people we’re constantly hearing back over the last decade, they’ve had a breakthrough in confidence, they’ve had a breakthrough in communication and in relationships, both professional and personal. You’re not quitting your family, this is your family.

John Jantsch (15:04): You do have to admit though, that you kind of wanted to punch your husband a little bit at the time.

Lisa McCarthy (15:09): Probably it wasn’t the best night of our marriage, but I wanted him just to listen, but it didn’t play out that way.

John Jantsch (15:18): Alright, let’s talk about, you talk a lot about, in the book about language and changing your language of action, you actually call it. Can you give me some examples of where you’ve coached people through, here’s the language you’re using today, here’s the language of action that you might consider.

Lisa McCarthy (15:35): Yeah, so one of the biggest pain points our participants face in their companies is meetings. And the reason this is such a pain point is because people are generally going back to back with phone calls and meetings. There’s very little preparation. People are winging it. They may spend more time preparing for a client meeting and they’ve never been trained in. How do you manage a conversation towards a desired outcome? Because if you think about it, most meetings have an agenda. This is what we’re going to cover, which has a lot of what we’d call in the stands we’re going to describe, we’re going to forecast, we’re going to explain all of those things can make a difference. And we’re coaching people to get on the field, okay, what do we do on the field? We start with the finish.

(16:33): How will this meeting be successful at the end? What is our desired outcome from this phone call or this team meeting? We’re not just here to cover and inform. As an example, if it’s an internal meeting, we’re out to, if I’m a manager, I’m out to have my team leave appreciating how their work contributes to the greater vision and leave with ideas that are going to ignite them and inspire them to work in a productive way that week versus covering stuff that’s boring where people are checked out and on their phones. And this really has helped our, for example, our sales teams, because often we get with sales teams and they have a long deck largely about themselves because they’re so excited about their products and they have a lot to say, and you got to reel that back because we always need to stand in the customer’s shoes and say, what do they care about?

(17:30): And why should they care about anything that we have to say? And so that’s a breakthrough for a lot of sales teams. Let’s start with their business, their priorities, their competition. What would be a breakthrough for them? How have we helped other clients address those challenges and how can we help you? So I’m riffing that like, oh, it’s so easy. But people aren’t doing that. They’re going in capability pitches or not going in with a plan at all, particularly with internal meetings. So we’re training people in managing conversations, and we even have a conversation planner in the book. So you can start from the finish and ensure that it is a conversation versus a presentation. A lot of people are getting into a meeting, they’re presenting, they’re trying to get through their slides, and then at the end with four minutes left, they’re saying any questions?

(18:26): And that question, any questions is the death toll. Nobody’s going to say anything. Nobody’s going to say anything. So part of the training is if I really want to get feedback, I need to say, Sam, what are your thoughts on this? Or open up a question. What are you thinking right now? How does this fit in with the rest of your strategy? Does this match up with what you’re seeing your people are saying? So you’re asking open-ended questions. And one of the most powerful plays in managing conversations is you ask the questions and then you stare at people and then they ultimately speak. A lot of people, if they’re so uncomfortable with silence that they just move into the next question and start talking. So part of this breakthrough in communication is listening, is pausing, is giving people a chance to think, but it’s always about starting with the finish.

(19:26): And while mostly in the book we focus on professional application of this, it’s super relevant with coaching, whether it’s at work or at home, right? Because if I want to need to give some constructive feedback, I want to start with the finish and say, how am I going to leave this person empowered to believe that I care and see how changing his or her behavior and mindset will be a value to them? And that’s not usually, we’re really not being thoughtful about what’s happening over there, what’s happening over there, even with your kids. My kids will go on and on about some complaint and then I will have them feel heard. Got it, got it, got it, got it. And even though I’m dying to give advice, I’m not going to do that. I’m going to ask them, well, what do you think you should do? How would you like it to look? And this is all in the book, what are the coaching questions to help people help themselves, which is very hard to do because we’re dying to help everyone.

John Jantsch (20:42): Plus I just want the damn answer.

Lisa McCarthy (20:44): Just tell me what to do, just tell me what to, and that’s a big challenge in management and at home, except for my husband. He doesn’t want to be told what to do. Yeah, he says that he doesn’t work for me.

John Jantsch (20:59): Lisa, I certainly appreciate you just taking some time to come by the Duct Tape Marketing podcast. Why don’t you tell me where you invite people, where they might connect with you, find obviously about your work, and pick up a copy of Fast Forward?

Lisa McCarthy (21:09): Sure. So our website is fastforwardgroup.net , and there’s a tab right there where you can tap on the book. We’re in presale right now, and order it at a variety of different places and you’ll get it in September or it will make a massive difference in your career and life, and that’s how to find out more.

John Jantsch (21:31): Well again, I appreciate you taking a moment to stop by and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Lisa McCarthy (21:36): Great. Thank you, John.

John Jantsch (00:00): Hey, this is John, and before we get started, I have a gift for you for being such an amazing listener. Everyone’s talking about AI these days, but most of it’s about tactics. We’ve created a series of prompts we use to create strategy, and you can have them for free. Just go to DTM world slash free prompts and grab yours. Now. Let’s get started.

(00:30): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Eduardo Briceño. He’s a global keynote speaker and facilitator who guides many of the world’s leading companies in developing cultures of learning and high performance. Earlier in his career, he was a co-founder and CEO of Mindset works, the first company to offer growth mindset development services. We’re going to talk about his new book, the Performance Paradox: Turning The Power of Mindset into Action. So Edar, welcome to the show.

Eduardo Briceño (01:04): Thank you, John. Thanks for having me here.

John Jantsch (01:06): You bet. So let’s start with the title. What is the paradox?

Eduardo Briceño (01:10): The performance paradox is the counterintuitive phenomenon that if we’re always performing, our performance suffers. So we actually achieve lower results if we’re only performing. And by performing, I mean focusing on doing things as best as we know how, trying to minimize mistakes, what we’re doing come game time. That’s what I mean by performing.

John Jantsch (01:37): So the paradox of that then is you’re saying that’s actually the counterintuitive thought is instead of just getting better and better, you actually have burnout or people they perform worse? Is that what you’re saying?

Eduardo Briceño (01:48): Yeah, we can have burnout, but at the very least, like you’re saying, we don’t get better. So what happens is to understand the idea. If we take it out of our context, let’s look at, for example, sports. If you take any sport, you’re in the game. Say for example, you’re playing tennis and you’re in a championship, you’re trying to win the game, you’re having trouble with a particular move, you’re going to avoid that move during that match because all you care about is winning and doing things as best as you know how. But then for the great athletes, the people who become fantastic at what they do after the game, they go to their coach and say, coach, I have to work on this thing. This thing that I wasn’t doing during the game, I wasn’t doing. Now I need to work on that. So that’s a very different activity, an area of attention and focus than when we do, when we’re performing and often in work and life, we just get wrapped up in our to-do list, just worried about getting things done, and that keeps us at our current level of effectiveness rather than finding opportunities to be more effective over time and achieve more.

John Jantsch (02:52): It’s interesting, I’ve heard athletes talk about that, particularly athletes that have become entrepreneurs talk about this idea that I only play once a week. I’m only on game time once a week. The rest of the time I’m working on stuff, I’m practicing. Entrepreneurs are like, it’s 24 7, I’m a game time, and it really does make a lot of sense.

Eduardo Briceño (03:12): And so well with athletes, they have kind of the privilege that they can spend a lot of time in practice focused only on performance and then that short amount of time where they’re performing or focused only on improvement most of the time, and then that short amount of time where they’re in game time, they can show us what they have learned, how good they are in our normal jobs and life, we need to be getting things done all the time or most of the time. So the opportunity for most of us is to get things done in a way that’s also going to lead to improvement. So that we have two goals as we do things. One is to get things done, but the other one is to figure out ways to do things better. So that means we have to not be doing the same thing in the same way every day, but we have to be trying new things, experimenting, listening to your podcast to get ideas about what to do differently, reading, soliciting feedback from customers or measuring what we do in terms of marketing to see what works better, doing AP tests all the time.

(04:12): So those are examples of how we can get things done in a way that’s also going to lead to improvement.

John Jantsch (04:19): When I listen to you talk about that, I mean that you’re really suggesting something that’s very structured. I mean, this is not like nap time would be right? It’s like every day at two o’clock we should have nap time, or every day at two o’clock we should have learning time. I mean, is that really the only way it’s going to get done? There’s always more to do in the performance category, right?

Eduardo Briceño (04:40): Yeah. So structures are so powerful and habits, I agree. So for example, a structure that a lot of teams have is a weekly meeting. And so at LinkedIn for example, they have a weekly meeting with their top 100 leaders, and when they started focusing on growth mindset and on improvement, what they did is they tweaked the agenda for the weekly meeting where there’s a section of that meeting where every week they talk about what somebody learned the prior week during that time, anybody is welcome to come and say, Hey, this is what I learned, this is what I’m going to do differently going forward. So their colleagues can benefit from that lesson as well. Or when we’re doing marketing, making sure we have ways to measure the effect of the different campaigns to see what works better and continuing to iterate from there. Absolutely, the structures and habits are critical or individually what we do every morning. And for me, being deliberate about what I’m trying to get better at and reminding myself of what that is every morning, the morning habit becomes effortless. I do it every morning, but then it prompts me to be looking for opportunities to improve in that area throughout the day.

John Jantsch (05:47): So you actually identify a couple zones when people are in their performance zone as when they’re in their learning zone and learning’s not just simply reading a book, is it?

Eduardo Briceño (05:57): No, absolutely. So I mean, it can be right? Learning can be reading a book or watching something or listening to something, but learning can also be integrated with performance. So there’s the learning zone, the performance zone, and then there’s, when we do the two together, often people have talked about that as learning by doing, but the reality is we don’t just learn by doing. If we just do something, it doesn’t actually lead to learning to, but we can learn while doing so that we can do things and get things done in a way that we’re going to be generating ideas, trying new things, measuring what works better and getting better over time as we get things done.

John Jantsch (06:36): So again, thinking about this structure, would you suggest that people actually need to identify, I don’t know if we call it zones, but time for learning and then further that, I mean, sometimes learning by doing means you have to be really bad at something or less productive maybe to find it a better way. So we also have to have permission for that. We

Eduardo Briceño (06:58): Absolutely, when the stakes are high and mistakes are very costly, we switch to our performance zone and that is appropriate and that we need to be doing that when the stakes are high, when there’s a very important customer that we’re meeting with or it’s a championship game, we want to be putting our best foot forward. So to your point, we want to identify what does my performance zone look like? When is that and when do I want to not focus on learning and when and how do I want to focus on learning? What strategies am I going to use? Who is going to help me learn? Well, who am I going to be soliciting feedback from and being deliberate about that and aligning with our colleagues on that. Because if you’re going into a meeting with a customer and you’re not clear on, are we just going to be performing, putting our best foot forward doing what works, which is appropriate sometimes, or are we going to be experimenting in a small way here and just getting on the same page, right? Yeah.

John Jantsch (07:50): Yeah. So the book is broken up into two major sections, targeting the individual as well as then the organization, because those two, especially in the workplace, those two are going to go hand in hand how successful the individual is. Might have something to do with how open the company is to this idea. But one of the tools, I’m a consultant as well, so I love a good metaphor and framework. One of the tools that you talk about for the individual is this idea of a growth propeller. I wonder if you could kind of unpack that one.

Eduardo Briceño (08:19): Yeah. So the growth propeller is something that helps us think about how we want to continue to evolve ourselves to be great learners and great performers, and really it can help us think about how we want to shape ourselves to be successful in any area of our lives. And so at the picture propeller with three blades at the center of it, we have our identity and our purpose. And the three blades are beliefs, habits, and community. So when it comes to our identity, it’s really important for us to see ourselves as a learner, as someone who is continuing to change. And over time, sometimes we want to think of ourselves as naturals, like we are gifted and we have something special around us, and that’s why we can do things very well. And then that doesn’t lead us to continue to want to learn and get even better over time.

(09:09): And when we struggle, we take that as evidence that we’re not good, and so we go do something else. So our identity of being a learner and continuing to change over time, we need a purpose, a reason that we care about for both putting effort into learning and effort into performing. So that’s like we can be tinkering with things that we care about, thinking about the contribution and the effect that we have on our colleagues and our customers so that it gives us a purpose, like the energy to put effort into both zones. And then I unpack some kind of key beliefs, habits, and aspects of our community that help us be more effective in both of those zones. For example, belief about transparency is really important. When we make our thinking visible to other people, then we can learn more because they can give us feedback on our thinking and they can learn more because we’re making our thinking visible to them.

(10:02): So that’s an example of a belief. What do we think about transparency and how do we use it in our lives in terms of habits, how we respond to mistakes is what I call a responsive habit, but how do we practically drive our growth and what are some proactive habits or something to think about? And our community is super important, the people around us, because the people around us, whether they see themselves as learners, whether they act like learners with us and in collaboration with us, that affects us a lot. So who are we working with and living with and how are we continuing to shape ourselves? And the way that we collaborate with each other is something to think about as well.

John Jantsch (10:42): So further on the community aspect, it feels a little bit like you’re saying. I mean if you work at a place and you like the place you work at, but your coworker community is not necessarily going to drive you to meet your goals in the learning capacity, I mean, is that something you should proactively be thinking about building who can I, even if it’s networking or mentors or something, who can I surround myself with? Not necessarily just my coworkers?

Eduardo Briceño (11:09): Absolutely. Yeah, we can think about what can I most influence or control or influence. So the thing that I can most control and influence is myself. So how do I perceive things? How do I behave? And then there’s the people who are close to us and we can try to influence them. We can try to share an idea or a video or an article with them and say, Hey, this resonated with me. What do you think about this? Do we want more of this in our team? And see if you can continue to shape the culture of your team in the way that you want. Sometimes teams will respond to that, sometimes they won’t. And we can work on continuing to get better in our ability to influence others. But to your point, we can look also beyond our team, whether it is our friends or other people in other departments or mentors, and get those relationships that will support us and help us learn and grow over time.

John Jantsch (12:03): Like book clubs, we have a Slack channel that people are constantly dropping in, Hey, here’s something I read, I think everybody would be really interested in. So those little things can actually, I’ve seen them have impact on the culture.

Eduardo Briceño (12:15): Absolutely.

John Jantsch (12:17): Alright, so the second half you talk about this idea of a learning organization. So I’m going to ask you a question that would probably take you 20 minutes to answer, but I guess the short form, I mean, how do I create a learning organization? What are some of the things an organization can do, especially if they haven’t been seeing themselves as such?

Eduardo Briceño (12:37): So one is to start exploring these ideas and thinking about are we a know-it-all organization that values people who behave like know-it-alls or the people who are most respected in a team, people who are sure that they have the right answer, or are they people who might know a lot, but they’re continuing to expand their understanding, they’re asking questions, they’re soliciting other people’s ideas and exploring really, what do we think about this idea of continuous growth and Olympic athletes continue to work even to get even better, even though they’re the best in the world? Do we want that type of culture? So the intention, do we want to create a learning organization? What does that mean? And then depending on where you are in the organization, your next steps might be different. If you’re an executive, you might want to think about your executive team and talk about with the executive team, what are your core values that maybe you want to refresh?

(13:35): How do you give guidance to the organization on what key behaviors those core values entail? Maybe soliciting some feedback from the organization in terms of what are the strengths of the organization and here’s what we’re thinking. What do you think about this? We love your feedback, but even if we’re in the middle of an organization or in the bottom of an organization, we’re just starting out our careers. We can influence our circle, like our team, even within an organization that might be call it a know-it-all organization, there are teams that can be great learning teams, and the culture really is a culture with the people that we have the closest relationships with. So we can create those islands of excellence and of deep relationships and collaboration, even if we work in an organization that has whatever culture,

John Jantsch (14:20): So many organizations pay is based on performance evaluation. Are you suggesting that we should add learning goals as part of how we would evaluate the effectiveness of a team member?

Eduardo Briceño (14:35): Well, so there’s the performance evaluation and it is completely reasonable to have bonuses and performance be based on performance and on outcomes. But we see over and over across organizations and industries that the people who figure out systems and habits to make the learning zone part of their everyday life perform better. So those people achieve higher performance, they achieve higher bonuses because they figure out ways to engage in the learning zone on a daily basis. And so in performance management, it’s an opportunity to have people reflect not only on their performance goals, but also on their learning goals. What do I want to get better at? How am I going to go about it? Who might help me along the way? What resources can I tap and think about, okay, for the last quarter or the last six months, I said I was going to get better at X in these ways. How did that go? Did I actually get better? Is that actually making an impact? And if we share those learning goals with our colleagues, our teams, then that can be very powerful because they can give us feedback that’s relevant to that thing that we’re interested in along the way.

John Jantsch (15:45): What have you seen, what characteristics or traits do you find an organization is either really is abundantly clear that they have those and so they can adopt this? Or the backwards way to ask that is what traits are missing in organizations that try to do this? Because for example, anytime somebody comes and says, oh, here’s our new initiative, we’re going to do X, but there’s no trust because you’ve said that a hundred times and we’ve never done X. It’s pretty tough. So I asked you a question and then I sort of answered it probably, but I’ll tee that up. What are the characteristics you think really have to exist? A learning

Eduardo Briceño (16:24): Organization? People feel that continuous growth is a default, that the organization believes that they can continue to grow and expand their skills and develop throughout the organization. And that there’s resources for them, right? There’s resources for them to grow, whether it’s mentorship or through some organizations might have even role playing or simulation rooms or all kinds of different structures. And so part of that is, and you alluded to this, is that people feel safe to take risks, to try new things, to solicit feedback, to say, Hey, I am not sure that meeting went great. I’m not feeling great about it. I would love your ideas about what I could do better next time. Or in this particular meeting, I’m going to be working on this specific thing. I would love for you to look for that so that after a meeting you can give me feedback on it or I can give you feedback if I saw something that I thought would be an opportunity for greater impact. So where people can have open and honest, transparent conversations, feeling that’s bringing them closer together, getting to know each other better, and they’re contributing to each other’s learning and performance.

John Jantsch (17:36): I suspect there are organizations that the culture is such that people would see that actually as a weakness to be asking for help, to be saying, oh, I want to learn this new thing, or maybe this job, my zone of genius, I’d like to work on this because I’d like to go here. I mean, that takes a level of trust and transparency that maybe doesn’t exist in a lot of organizations.

Eduardo Briceño (17:59): Yeah, I agree. I think it doesn’t exist in a lot of organizations, so we have to build that trust. And what we’re saying is not that people are not competent, and so they need to spend more time learning in these organizations. People are very competent, but they want to get even better. So when we’re hiring somebody, for example, we don’t want to hire somebody who has learned the skills that are needed for the job. And even the better, the skills are better, but then we want to grow from there. We want to go from good to great, from great to greater.

John Jantsch (18:32): Yeah. Have you seen incentive packages and recruiting approaches that really are rewarding that growth mentality?

Eduardo Briceño (18:39): Yeah. So first there’s, in recruiting, there’s the employer brand. When you communicate with the candidates, do you communicate that this is a company that really will support your growth? And once people who want to work hard and continuing to develop themselves in collaboration with others. So there’s that kind of employer branding. Then there’s the onboarding of how do you onboard people and teach them how do we learn in this organization? What resources, habits, and structures do we have to learn? And also using that as an opportunity to get these people with fresh eyes to give you feedback on what they see because we can learn so much from these new people who are just seeing things with fresh eyes. And then in terms of compensation, when we tie monetary rewards to learning, there can be some unintended consequences. So it’s better actually to elevate the purpose of the work and the satisfaction that comes from growth and from the higher performance from growth and leave the compensation tied to actually the performance and the results.

John Jantsch (19:46): Yeah, I’ve actually seen some people kind of gamify it where it might not be compensation, but it’ll be some sort of perks from the company store or something like that, really just to kind of keep it fresh and gamify a little.

Eduardo Briceño (20:00): Totally. One of the companies that I mentioned in the book, many companies, it’s named Clear Choice Dental Implants, and they have some awesome games where people learn with each other through games. They have gamified their learning pathways in the organization. So that, for example, if you are in the middle of a learning progression to continue progressing, you have to help somebody who is earlier in their progression, maybe by giving them feedback or observing them and giving them feedback or something like that. So yeah, those gamifications can be really fun.

John Jantsch (20:33): Awesome. Well, Eduardo, are you want to, again, appreciate you stopping by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. You want to tell people where they can connect with you and obviously find out more about the Performance paradox?

Eduardo Briceño (20:43): Sure. So my website is briceno.com. It’s my last name.com. I have a monthly newsletter. I am active on LinkedIn, and the book is available wherever books are sold. It’s the performance Paradox, turning the power of mindset into action. Thanks again, John, for having me today.

John Jantsch (20:59): I appreciate you taking the time, and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road in real life.

Eduardo Briceño (21:04): I look forward to it.

John Jantsch (00:00): Hey, this is John, and before we get started, I have a gift for you for being such an amazing listener. Everyone’s talking about AI these days, but most of it’s about tactics. We’ve created a series of prompts we use to create strategy, and you can have them for free. Just go to dtm.world/freeprompts and grab yours. Now. Let’s get started.

(00:30): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and my guest today is Dr. Kirstin Ferguson. She’s one of Australia’s most prominent leadership experts and a highly experienced business leader in her own right beginning her career as an officer in the Royal Australian Air Force. Kirstin has held roles that have included c e O of an international consulting firm and was appointed acting chair and deputy chair of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation by the Australian Prime Minister. We’re going to talk about her latest book, Heart and Head: The Art of Modern Leadership. So Kirstin, welcome to the show.

Kirstin Ferguson (01:13): Hi, lovely to be here. Great to meet you, John.

John Jantsch (01:16): So did you get to fly airplanes?

Kirstin Ferguson (01:20): Well, I did. I wasn’t air crew in the Air Force. I married a fighter pilot and I worked at a squadron, but that wasn’t my core role, but I certainly got to go off and I have a few flights.

John Jantsch (01:32): So with the term modern leadership, I mean, my first question I guess is how modern does leadership need to be? What has changed, let’s say in the last five years when it comes to leadership that it needs modernization?

Kirstin Ferguson (01:46): Oh gosh, how much has the world changed in five years? It’s incredible. And I think this whole idea of what I’ve written about head and heart, the art of modern leadership, it’s really around understanding that those old models that we all grew up with, seeing leaders who felt they needed to have all the answers, and that being a leader meant that you had a solution for problems that you were able to navigate through really difficult situations. All of that remains true, but so too does being prepared to rethink what you thought you knew and being prepared to be vulnerable and not have all the answers. And I think that’s what leading with your head and your heart is all about. And the art of modern leadership is knowing what’s needed and when.

John Jantsch (02:31): So is there a shift that you think has gone on in the workplace that makes this a very practical, I mean, I can see some people saying, okay, we have to change some things, but why? I mean, some people we’re going to get into the head part and the hard part specifically, and I think some people have always been wired that way, but what is sort of the practical reason why people need to be looking at a new approach?

Kirstin Ferguson (02:54): I think expectations have absolutely changed, and we can see that even about the debate with work from home, suddenly you have employees saying, actually, I quite enjoyed working from home. I don’t want to do the commute and I’m productive, and they’re speaking up about it. People are speaking up about social issues, wanting their organizations to be actively campaigning and CEOs being vocal about those kinds of challenges. So I think expectations have changed, and no longer do we want those leaders who are just treating work as something that we have to do. And here it is, and I don’t care what you think about it. And so leaders who don’t incorporate others into their decision-making or put people at the center suddenly look like dinosaurs and they stick out. And I think we’re reading in the press every day about leaders that are still that old school and now shareholders and investors are saying, it doesn’t actually matter how much you might know the industry or your connections or whatever it might be, that technical skill we used to promote on you now equally need to be able to lead people and bring them behind you with a vision and a purpose.

John Jantsch (04:07): Would you say that this is a generational shift or is this really just culturally, every generation or every age, every decade group, whatever you want to call them, is also demanding this?

Kirstin Ferguson (04:20): I think all generations. I mean definitely you’re hearing it loudly from millennials and that generation who frankly aren’t prepared to take it anymore. They’re finding ways to quit the traditional workforce and work in a gig economy or whatever it might be to avoid having to work with these kinds of leaders. So yes, definitely that generation, but I think even older generations who are wanting some flexibility with how they work with people who instead of retiring fully, are saying, well, why can’t I do some work from home a few days a week? So I think there’s a real shift in working to live, not living to work and wanting to find leaders who are able to be flexible with that.

John Jantsch (05:06): One of the things you talk about a lot in this book that, and I think this is growing also, it used to be a leader had to have a title. You were a director, you were this or you were that, and you kind of talk about, Hey, maybe everybody’s a leader.

Kirstin Ferguson (05:22): Yeah, well, I firmly believe they are. Now, don’t get me wrong, not everyone is the c e O or the president. Clearly that would lead to chaos. But I think in our own lives, in our families, we are leaders at our local sporting club, whatever it might be, we are leading. I used the story I saw during the pandemic of a supermarket checkout operator who had to deal with a really difficult customer in that moment. She handled herself brilliantly, and she was leading in that moment, yet under the old models and definitions of leadership, she would’ve been the most junior person in organization. And I think once we start to recognize that we are leading in all aspects of our life, then we realize that every moment is actually an opportunity to leave an impact with others. And if we are formal leaders with those titles, reminding people that we lead that they too are leaders in their life is really important too.

John Jantsch (06:20): And that’s probably a cultural shift inside of a lot of organizations. It used to be kind of the top down approach. And I think that actually making that an expectation, like that person you mentioned as the example in a lot of organizations, they were like, sorry, it’s not my job. And I think that what you’re suggesting is that we can actually empower people to make leadership type decisions, right?

Kirstin Ferguson (06:44): Yeah, exactly. And I think we are having people make decisions, so people make decisions every single day. The way the words we use, the actions we role model, the behaviors we demonstrate, all of those are leadership decisions and moments. And I think for most of us in a really busy lives, we often miss those moments. We miss the opportunity to have an impact. And if you think back, John, to all of the leaders in your life who have had both a positive and negative influence on you, it’s all been moments. You can think back to moments when a leader made you feel really small or undermined you or you don’t forget those moments. But I guess it’s harder to look in the mirror and recognize when we are impacting others on those moments as well.

John Jantsch (07:34): I was going to get to that, but since you mentioned moments, I’ll jump to it. As I read that part, I was thinking as a parent, same thing as a teacher, same thing, right? There are these moments. So there I feel like that puts a heap of responsibility on a leader to think they’re always watching every moment. It’s like, how do you know the core moments? How do you

Kirstin Ferguson (07:56): Deal? Yeah. So whether you like it or not, I mean, I’m a parent as well, whether you like it or not, our kids are always watching. So it’s not as though you can just say to them, Hey, can you just give me a break for a week? I’d like to just not have to be responsible for you and the impact I have on you, none of that is reality. So I think the more we recognize that it’s not so much an overwhelming weight of pressure, it’s simply being aware and being mindful of the fact that those moments matter and they’re happening every day. You may as well be conscious of them.

John Jantsch (08:35): No, I don’t agree with you. It’s exhausting. I’m just teasing.

Kirstin Ferguson (08:40): It sure is.

John Jantsch (08:42): So we’ve gone on for almost half the show and haven’t really talked about Head and Heart, which is the title of the book. So kind of explain a little bit what you mean by head and heart. I think most people have an idea, but I’d love to hear from you,

Kirstin Ferguson (08:56): And I mean, I’m glad most people have an idea because the idea is it’s a metaphor we’ve all heard of and used before. It’s obviously not literal. However, research shows that actually the way you think about your head and your heart impacts your performance. And so what I wanted to do is research, well, what are the attributes of these modern leaders that stand out on the world stage and locally, and those leaders that we all know who just seem so different to who we’ve been led by in the past, but yet who seems so right for now. So I’m an adjunct professor at one of our universities and and researched what those attributes are. And so leading with the head is around curiosity, wisdom, which is around making decisions and gathering data and evidence. It’s around capability, which is growth mindset, which many of your listeners would be aware of, and importantly, perspective.

(09:49): And that was the attribute found to be the most highly correlated with being a modern leader. And it’s in layman’s terms, reading a room and understanding the environment you’re leading in, but importantly also see who’s missing from that room and what’s going on outside of the room as well. So they’re the four attributes of leading with the head. The four of leading with the heart are around humility, self-awareness of the impact we’re having on others, empathy. And so being able to put yourself in other shoes and then courage, speaking up for what you believe in. Now, all eight of those attributes, often at qualities we’ve all got, everyone has those to some degree, but not everyone brings them to work. And so leading with your head is what we’ve been rewarded for at school and at college and in our jobs. We get promoted from being capable and making decisions. Yet I’m arguing that modern leaders are also able to excel at those heart attributes as well, and that it’s those leaders who know what’s needed when that will succeed best in today’s world.

John Jantsch (11:02): Okay, because everybody wants one answer. What’s the most important?

Kirstin Ferguson (11:06): Yeah. Well, as I said, of the data shows that perspective is definitely the one that’s most highly correlated. So if you were to score highly, and I should say for all listeners, go and visit head heart leader.com, head heart leader.com, totally free. You can go and self-assess your own head heart leadership, and you’ll get a personalized report. But what you want is to score highly in perspective, because that means you’re more likely to score high in the others as well. And perspective was linked most highly or correlated with empathy. So having the two that balance head and heart is really helpful. And it’s all about reading a room.

John Jantsch (11:50): So I will tell you, I did no research, but I’m going to tell you from my perspective, what I think I see in a lot of leaders is without self-awareness, you can’t really pass go. I mean, you’re not going to work on any of this stuff or even realize that you’re deficient in it without that. At least accept bit that I have to Yeah, it is. Yeah, it’s, it’s me.

Kirstin Ferguson (12:12): So how do you,

John Jantsch (12:14): Go ahead.

Kirstin Ferguson (12:15): Yeah, self-awareness is clearly incredibly important. I’m not going to argue it’s more important, but there was one question out of the 24 that people can do if they do their head heart scale, that came from the self-awareness attribute. And that is about knowing your limitations. So of all the questions, if you don’t know your limitations, then you’re likely to think you are the smartest person in the room. You’re likely to think you’re always right. All of those attributes of leaders that we don’t want to see.

John Jantsch (12:48): Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I guess what I was saying is it’s not necessarily the most important in my view, but it definitely, it’s almost like you can’t really start on the others without some level of it. Totally.

Kirstin Ferguson (13:00): And I notice that with people who come and hear me speak and who buy the book, it’s all the people who are already aware that they want to be a better leader. The dinosaurs we’re trying to get to, they don’t tend to think they need it.

John Jantsch (13:12): I don’t need all that happy crap. So how do you suggest, and I know that in addition to the leader scale, you talked about you also have some elements of an action plan, but how do you suggest somebody, I mean, these are great words, but for a lot of people they’re just words. How do you go to work on building these core attributes?

Kirstin Ferguson (13:38): Well, of course, luckily if you buy the book, then we can deal with all of them in detail about the action plan. But the most important thing that people need to do, and it comes back to your comment about self-awareness, is to have a team of people around them who will give them feedback. We are our own worst judges of how we’re actually going. And there’s some data that shows that 95% of us think we’re self-aware. Only 10 to 15% of people we work with would agree. Now that terrifies me, John. So that is reflective that most of us think, but everyone else has a different perspective. So I think being able to give and receive feedback really well and hear it without getting defensive is an incredibly important skill. So if you’re going to start anywhere, that’s where I would start.

John Jantsch (14:27): So particularly, and I could be wrong on this, it’s probably both camps, but particularly in matters of the heart, it feels to me like remote work has made that so much harder and not just work from home, but a lot of people are building entire distributed teams from the start. And it feels like some of the things that seem to translate better in person maybe are lost or much more difficult and remote. How do you suggest that people adapt to that with some of these more, I used to call ’em handshakes and hugs. It’s like the handshake was kind of the head part where the hug part was something that you obviously did more from a heart place, a lot harder to do all of this across video.

Kirstin Ferguson (15:12): So I have a different perspective, John. I think there’s just different ways. Not everyone was getting handshakes or wanted hugs even before Covid. And I think as long as we’ve had multinational corporations and large companies, we haven’t worked in the same offices as everyone that we’ve worked with. I think the onus is on leaders to work a bit harder. I do think you have to find ways to make those moments matter, to be interested and focused on what’s going on in the lives of the people that you’re leading. That might be on the other side of the world, but I think if we say that it has to be a physical co-location, then that’s really quite limiting in thinking about how you connect with people.

John Jantsch (15:59): No, and I would never suggest that frankly, my company’s been distributed for 15 years. Half of my, I have people that our entire relationship is a video

Kirstin Ferguson (16:10): Screen. Exactly.

John Jantsch (16:11): But I would also say that you have to be far more like the moments you talked about. They just don’t happen as often. So you have to be far more,

Kirstin Ferguson (16:21): And that’s exactly what I’m saying. You actually have to work harder. It’s harder work. Yes, it’s, but it’s not impossible. And I think the payoff for those who want to work remote, remembering it’s not for everyone. I know with my husband, he loves going into the office. He loves talking to people and catching up over lunch and doing all those things, and it’s good for him. So that’s how he works. But whereas I’m more than happy to work from home and catch up with people intentionally online. But if you’ve got people like me, then we need to find ways to make those connection times. And it’s really just now this shift we talked about at the beginning of not treating everyone exactly the same. We’ve now really got to understand the people we lead and what motivates them, what drives them, and how they work best.

John Jantsch (17:10): Yeah. You talk about one of the, I don’t know, I’ll call it responsibilities of a modern leader, is to see their role also as building a family tree of leaders. And I love that idea. So talk a little bit about how you address that idea.

Kirstin Ferguson (17:28): Yeah. Well, I mean it’s really being, again, conscious that you are there to develop the next generation of leaders. So if you are so fortunate to be running your own business or at the top of the tree, that formal tree, then really succession and making sure that the people coming up behind you are better than you, and that is not something that you should be fearful of, but C is your main job. And so for me, that’s what building a Family Tree of Leaders is about. It’s all about those opportunities that if you’re in a meeting and you are doing all the talking as a leader and you’re giving all the solutions and coming up with all the answers, then you’re not using that moment as a coaching opportunity to really ask great questions. So every single opportunity to build leaders in others and leadership in others, I think needs to be taken by those of us who have been around a while.

John Jantsch (18:24): Yeah, I think you’re also telling people that you don’t have to use your brain, so I’ll wait and I’ll tell you what to do, which is very disempowering, but it also means you as a leader are going to have to come up with all the ideas.

Kirstin Ferguson (18:37): Exactly.

John Jantsch (18:39): I have worked with many entrepreneurs over the years, so not somebody who’s been hired to do a certain role, who maybe is years of management experience. A lot of times entrepreneurs when they’re building an organization, it is on the fly. I mean, it’s the first time they’ve ever done half of these things. And I think that for them books like this, or really taking time to reflect on building that skill is even more important because in many cases, they’ve never had an example to go by. So how would you suggest somebody like that who is really, everything they’re doing in many ways is just being done on gut? How do they start addressing more what you would probably call normal leadership practices? How do they acquire those?

Kirstin Ferguson (19:32): Well, I don’t know a person that hasn’t worked for a bad leader. So not only have they not seen good leadership, they’ve actually seen actively terrible leadership ideas and traits. And I think we learn as much from that as we do from working with good leaders. So if you are feeling alone and you’re the only one who gets it, my advice is it can be very frustrating trying to change someone else. You can’t do that. You can only look after yourself. And if what you are doing is working in your context and the feedback you’re getting confirms that, then keep going, keep being you and leading in the way that is working for you. I think it’s important to be aware that style, however it works, might not work in the next place. And that’s perspective that’s leading and understanding your environment and adapting. You mentioned at the beginning, I started my career in the military. I then went into law firms with lawyers. I then went and led a group of psychologists, and so every time I had to completely adapt the way that I led, but I brought tools from each of those roles. But understanding and really reading the room is critically important. So my advice would be get feedback. That’s the only way you’re going to know and to recalibrate if you need to.

John Jantsch (20:52): And occasionally listen. I bet.

Kirstin Ferguson (20:55): Always listen, always.

John Jantsch (20:58): Well, Kirstin, I appreciate you taking a moment to drop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Do you want to invite people where they might connect with you or certainly find more about your work and about head and heart?

Kirstin Ferguson (21:08): Absolutely. So if they visit head heart leader.com, you can do the scale, get onto Amazon, the books available to order now. It’s out very shortly. Perhaps when you’re listening, it will be out. So jump onto Amazon and my website is Kirstin ferguson.com. K I R S T I N ferguson.com. Can’t wait to hear from your listeners.

John Jantsch (21:31): Kirstin, don’t call me Kristen Ferguson. Right?

Kirstin Ferguson (21:36): Gets everyone.

John Jantsch (21:37): It does get everyone. So again, thanks for dropping by and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days when I’m in your hemisphere.

Kirstin Ferguson (21:46): Look forward to it. Thanks, John.

John Jantsch (00:00): Hey, this is John, and before we get started, I have a gift for you for being such an amazing listener. Everyone’s talking about AI these days, but most of it’s about tactics. We’ve created a series of prompts we use to create strategy, and you can have them for free. Just go to dtm.world/freeprompts and grab yours. Now. Let’s get started.

(00:30): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and my guest today is Angelo Ponzi. He’s a marketing and branding strategist that works with small to mid-market companies as their fractional chief marketing officer, fractional CMO. His company Craft focuses on three strategic pillars for success, insights brand and plan to develop effective and efficient programs for building enduring brands and sustainable business growth. So Angela, welcome to the show,

Angelo Ponzi (01:03): John. Thank you very much. I really appreciate it.

John Jantsch (01:05): So I still think there’s a lot of confusion around it, like a lot of terms in marketing. So I’m just going to go ahead and say, if somebody says you, you’re a fractional CMO, what is that? How do you describe that? How do you define that term?

Angelo Ponzi (01:17): Yeah. Well, I think simply it’s a part-time outsource contract situation. So for me, fractional being that it’s not a short-term contract, it’s a long-term engagement where I’m going into the organization or depending on my remote client, where I’m engaged on a weekly basis, sometimes daily basis with them. And so think of me as the guy down the hallway, not the guy across the country. Yeah.

John Jantsch (01:48): So I mean, would you describe a business that you think is a typical great fit for that? I mean, most people are familiar with the C-Suite roles, a chief marketing officer inside of an organization, but what kind of business or what kind of challenge are they facing that you think makes an ideal fit for a fractional strategic marketing hire?

Angelo Ponzi (02:10): Sure. In most of the companies that I’ve dealt with, they have some kind of a marketing manager or a team in there. Typically, they tend to be a little more transactional in nature, just tactically oriented. And so I hear things like, our sales aren’t growing, our messaging is not correct. Our competition is eating our lunch. And so looking at those kinds of issues, so they can’t get to that next level with someone who’s more of a tactical transactional person. So they may start to think of a strategic person, however, a full-time CMO doesn’t necessarily come cheap. And so they wrestle with how do I get a senior person without having to have all that expense? And that’s typically what get engaged or when they’ll call me, because again, depending on the client, how much time I’m engaged, but I sit in that C-suite level and helping develop strategies and directions and messaging and competitive differentiators, and then drive those down into the people that actually execute.

John Jantsch (03:21): Do you get yourself in engagements where they’re like, Angelo, this is great, but who’s going to do all this? I mean, is there ever an expectation that you are going to do the work or that any strategic, if somebody hires A CMO, do they feel like they’re also hiring an implement mentor, or is it strictly separate functions?

Angelo Ponzi (03:43): Yeah, well, that’s always the dilemma for me. It’s my nature to tend to go across the line and start facilitating and doing, but I’m pretty clear upfront is what my purpose is. If someone calls me and says, look it, I need a website, I need a social media or digital campaign, my reaction is let’s talk about your messaging, your strategies, and if that’s not correct, I have to start to the left, right? I got to talk to your customers that look at the competition, examine the marketplace and work our way towards execution. So I like to refer to myself sometimes as an architect, I’m building that foundational strategy. And then once the plans are in place, then I will sometimes call myself a general contractor and therefore I’ll bring in outside people to execute or work with the internal teams. But I do cross the fence, but a lot of times they’re like, I’m not going to pay you to frankly write a blog. It’s too expensive.

John Jantsch (04:44): Yeah. So do you find internal teams, I hear this a lot. Do you find that sometimes there’s some turf? Like, wait a minute, I thought that’s what we did. Why are we bringing in this outside person doesn’t know our business? Is there ever some turf wars sometimes, even though you’re brought in maybe to help them orchestrate better?

Angelo Ponzi (05:03): I can honestly say, actually, I can honestly say it’s only happened maybe once or twice where I’ll spend, I’m thinking of a technology company. A couple of years ago they brought me in, the marketing person was out of college for a couple of years. He had his own vision. They brought me in, I revamped everything, redid all their messaging, their plans, and then here’s the plan to implement. And within three months, he was back doing what he wanted to do because they didn’t know how to really manage him. But I would say in most situations, I’m very collaborative, so it’s not my way or the highway. So I find that even after I leave, they’re implementing. I have a company in the streaming space that I helped them when they launched. That was five years ago. When I see him constantly, he’ll be the first to say, I’m still working on the strategies you gave us five years ago. And so that’s really rewarding. But yeah, that is always a challenge, right? Because not invented here, somebody wants to put their own mark on it.

John Jantsch (06:08): Yeah. I’m sure there are some cases, I’m going to assume there’s some cases you’ve run into where they’re considering hiring you versus considering hiring a full-time strategic hire. If you were trying to help somebody work through the pros and cons, besides the cost component, which is obviously a huge selling point on the fractional approach, what are some other things that you might suggest that why the fractional CMO model is a good idea for them?

Angelo Ponzi (06:39): Well, partially too. It’s really what does that strategic leader need to do and what is the long-term play with that leader? Are you going to have somebody who’s who can totally stay engaged throughout the time and do all the things that you need ’em to do, otherwise they start to gravitate into the tactical and then you don’t really need that. I have a current client where we’re looking, I’m filling the strategic leader role, and at the end of the day, they don’t need a full-time me, but they need more worker bees, if you will. And so my recommendation is keep me engaged. Of course, that’s what I would like, but instead of hiring someone like me full-time, take that money and then let’s invest in more people at the real marketing level that the tactical level that needed to get things done. I was brought in last year with a consumer products company that had a CMO.

(07:35): They let him go, and he called me and said, Hey, I’m thinking about hiring. I think I need a fractional. And then about three weeks later, he called me and said, no, you know what? I decided to go. And then three months later, he called me and said, I haven’t found anybody. I think my original idea was great, come in for 90 days, help me. And I was there for eight months before we brought in. I helped bring in my own replacement at that point in time. They really needed somebody there. And there was a situation where I was there three days a week, so I literally was in the office and spending the majority of my time working for that organization.

John Jantsch (08:12): Do you find that to me, one of the benefits I think too, is a lot of times you bring in that CMO, well, they’re going to say, we need to build a team internally. And so they start kind of down the traditional path of hiring, whereas I’m assuming that in many cases you kind of look at this and say, no, we just need this expertise to do this one thing, and then we can rent this to do this one thing. And I mean, you’re really able to put together a much more affordable approach for exactly what they need, aren’t you?

Angelo Ponzi (08:41): Yeah, no, absolutely. It’s current client, they had a digital firm primarily writing blogs, and I analyzed it, and every blog had to be rewritten. And after eight, nine months, you would’ve thought that they understood the business. So I tried to engage with them, and ultimately we ended up parting ways. But instead of hiring another firm just like them, I went out and found a content writer that for a fraction of the cost, I could have twice as many blogs for literally a third of the money that I was paying them already. And so that is one of the things I look at. To me, I always look at any client I work with is my business. I was fortunate to, over the years, I grew a couple of businesses, I was fortunate to sell them, and I understand that a dollar is a dollar, and if I have to watch it for me, I have to watch it for you. So it’s really about maximizing the talent and the dollars that we have.

John Jantsch (09:42): I have been doing this approach probably for 15 years, but didn’t use the term fractional CMO because it didn’t mean anything to a small mid-size business at the time. Are you finding there’s a much more recognition of the concept and the term when you go out and talk to particularly mid-size business owners?

Angelo Ponzi (10:00): Yeah, absolutely. And I’ll go back. I mean, I’m heading into my 10th year, and in those first three or four years, it was like, I don’t understand what a fractional is. Are you contract? Are you outsourced? What are you, right? So there was different terms floating around. I haven’t had anybody really recently say they don’t understand it. I just say, you’re renting my time basically during the course of the week. So I think it’s better understood. I’d even think some of the value of having someone like myself that clients find now versus because it’s a tough decision, do you spend that kind of money? I had a client the other day that, again, looking at bringing in more workers than strategic leaders, and he said to me, well, what if we could hire you? And I suppose my answer was, you can’t. It’s not what I want to do because I knew I would eventually, I would just be pulling my hair out because they don’t need someone full-time like me.

John Jantsch (11:00): So as you’ve grown this and scaled it yourself, are there some hard lessons learned that you might share to say these are some of the landmines that you might look for?

Angelo Ponzi (11:14): Well, I think first of all, for me, and unfortunately it was a very hard lesson. I had an opportunity back in maybe 17, I think it was, to go in as a fractional, but it was like an eight month contract. And I was like, this is great. The money was great. I was excited, and when the contract was over, I was sitting there. I have no business. I wasn’t doing any marketing, I wasn’t keeping the pipeline. So anybody out there listening, if you’re doing what I do or something even similar, having your own agency, I mean, it is a constant balance of doing new business while you’re servicing the clients. I personally now, I would say in the course of the week, I spend a full day throughout the week, but networking, doing my own marketing, doing stuff like this and just making sure that I’m staying ever present, because you just never know.

(12:09): I mean, I have one prospect that I pitched in February. He literally said, you’re hired, but there’s no contract yet. Now it’s August. I still think you’ll come around, but I’m on his time. He’s not on my time. So that’s probably the biggest lesson that I’ve learned and making sure that you have a point of view and you put yourself out there. I mean, I have a blogging program, a newsletter program. I do emails, I do LinkedIn, I do public speaking. I just want to be able to have content. It’s all content to me to refer

John Jantsch (12:44): People too. Absolutely. Yeah. We actually teach people how to start this model, and I tell them, especially when they’re just getting started, I said, the thing nobody tells you is about 50% of this job is selling, but that’s true of really any business. When you start it, that kind of leads to one of the challenges I see a lot of people, how do you scale this model? I mean, in the traditional sense, somebody’s A CMO, they jump out on their own. They go, I’m going to be a fractional CMO, and they end up selling a fourth of their time and basically saying, I’m fully employed. I’m getting paid well for my time, but I can’t really scale a business. Have you run into that? Have you addressed that?

Angelo Ponzi (13:25): Yeah, it’s a really interesting challenge. So before I formed my agency, for example, this was many years ago, I actually, they didn’t call it fractional, but I broke off as a consultant. And so I left an agency, decided to be a strategic planner for agencies, and then eventually I came to the conclusion after about three years, why am I doing this for you? Why don’t I do it for myself? And so I kind of scaled that. So in this particular model for me, I have identified other CMOs, fractional CMOs or VP leaders, if you will, that are out on their own that I can partner with. One of my biggest clients last year is actually a competitor, but I have a background in research. So they don’t do research. They don’t do really branding and messaging and positioning. They’re more kind of internal management. And so we compliment each other.

(14:28): So one of the things that I did to scale is I identified in my trading area who my competitors are. I’ve literally met with every one of ’em trying to figure out are we really competitors or can we work together? And I would say the majority of ’em I can work with. And so I’ve also identified in some of the other key areas. So I have a business analyst that works with me that I pretty much dominate. I have a data scientist that works with me. I have a brand strategist that actually I worked with for years, even in my own agency that happened to, I lost their job during covid and now works for me as kind of a behind the scenes. So I’ve been scaling by putting other people in place, frankly, to do some of the work that allows me to continue to devote some of my time to networking and building the business, but also when I have to be in front of a client,

John Jantsch (15:23): The mistake I see some people make is just like, you get 25% of my time, what do you want? And it’s like they’re dictating. There’s no scope in agencies. We’d scope things out. And I see a lot of people when they do these consulting things, they don’t do that. And so they’re sort of at the whim of a client who doesn’t really know what they need. And I think that’s a key change that I think can allow people to scale this.

Angelo Ponzi (15:51): Yeah, well, one of the things I did to get around that is I created an assessment that I give at the beginning of every engagement just to really try to understand where they think they are, where they really are, where they think they are, but also among the team, I look for alignment, internal alignment. And so that has allowed me to actually through the analysis to say, okay, here’s where we’ve got some real issues and some problems you want to be, I’m just going through this with a client now where when I joined them back in February, they had a $5 million goal for this year increase in revenue. Well, as I started to dig into the data, it’s like, where’d that number come from? Your average growth is only 8% over the last three years. How do you go from 8% frankly to a 37% increase?

(16:39): I don’t see how you’re getting there. So some number was picked out of the air. So trying to bring, creating strategies, now that’s giving me guidance as opposed to, what do you think? If I would’ve just said, okay, I’m going to support a 37% increase, which I did originally, and then eventually I’ve swung them back to say, okay, how are we going to get, maybe it’s 15%, not the eight, but the 15. And I literally just said this to one of my marketing managers today. There’s an endless amount of things to do in marketing. You’ve got a plan and you always go back to the plan and just if you got, you are unsure of your messaging or somebody in sales is pushing back on you, try to understand what’s happening with them. Go talk to them, go listen to a call. So I find that sometimes in that marketing manager role, they tend to go, oh, well, that was my assignment. I did it and now what do I do?

John Jantsch (17:34): Yeah. It’s interesting. I find that we spend as much time, especially early on telling people what not to do as opposed to what to do, because always this temptation to say, oh, there’s a new thing out there. We have to do it. As opposed to doing any of them, right?

Angelo Ponzi (17:51): Yeah, exactly.

John Jantsch (17:52): And that’s what I was going to ask you kind of halfway answered it anyway, but let’s say we get through the assessment. Obviously the assessment’s going to tell you maybe some direction, but do you typically focus on, do you find that you end up focusing on the same thing pretty frequently? What to fix first, so to speak?

Angelo Ponzi (18:10): Actually, no, because they have, it’s like our sales aren’t growing or we’re not achieving, or we think we have an issue. And I have found that if I can execute my assessment in the process that I do, I can uncover things that they’re not thinking about. Good case in point, this was last year working with a manufacturing rep organization, been around for 70 plus years. And so in talking to them and say, our clients love us, they’re mechanical engineers, they know us. We’ve been, we’re a focus. We’re always included, but I got them to agree to let me talk to their customers. Originally it was like, wow, I don’t waste your time. What we found is that they were right. Everybody knows them, everybody includes them. However, their primary customers were about ready to retire. The new generation of engineers had no idea who they were or knew them, but they were now thinking about environmental products and sustainability products, not the gas guzzlers, if you will, that are being put out. And so all of a sudden we identified a potential opportunity that they would’ve never seen until it happened. So now they were able to get ahead of it. So it’s that kind of stuff that we get to uncover, but that wasn’t one, that wasn’t something they told me to go do. That was just something that came, cream of the cop came rising up and we able to tackle it.

John Jantsch (19:41): Yeah, I have had so many insights over the years by talking to people’s customers. I mean, they know very little about why their customers buy from them sometimes. It’s pretty amazing, isn’t it? Or they make assumptions that are wrong

Angelo Ponzi (19:53): Or what the salespeople tell ’em. Right? Right. There’s a question I always like to ask is I ask the clients, do you think your clients are buying, are aware of all the products and services you sell? And almost always they say no. And to me it’s like, well then what are you doing to educate them? You could be leaving a lot of money on the table if they just knew more. And then we find out I asked those questions on the flip side, and almost across the board, the client will say, now I don’t really understand all the stuff they sell. I only know this. So right there, there’s a gap, right. So anyway,

John Jantsch (20:30): It’s fine. Yeah, that’s actually some easy money sometimes, isn’t it? Well, Angela, I appreciate you taking a moment to stop by. You want to invite people to connect with you anywhere or find out more about your work.

Angelo Ponzi (20:39): Sure. That would be great. The best place, of course, is to go to LinkedIn. You can connect with me there. That’s the easiest. Also, all my contact info is there. As far as my website, I actually encourage people to sign up. I do publish a newsletter through LinkedIn every couple of weeks, and so do that. And that’s the best way to find out more about me.

John Jantsch (20:59): Awesome. Well, again, I appreciate you taking a few moments out of your day, and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Angelo Ponzi (21:05): Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. I really appreciate the opportunity.

John Jantsch (00:00): Hey, this is John, and before we get started, I have a gift for you for being such an amazing listener. Everyone’s talking about AI these days, but most of it’s about tactics. We’ve created a series of prompts we use to create strategy, and you can have them for free. Just go to DTM world slash free prompts and grab yours. Now. Let’s get started.

(00:30): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and my guest today is Dr. Sabrina Starling, the business psychologist. She’s an international bestselling author of How to Hire the Best and the four-week vacation. She’s the founder of tapthepotential.com and host of the Profit by Design podcast. She and her team coach entrepreneurs to take their lives back from their businesses and their own a mission to disrupt hustle culture by sending 10,000 entrepreneurs on a four-week vacation in the next 10 years. So big, hairy, audacious goal as she stated. Sabrina, welcome to the show.

Dr. Sabrina Starling (01:11): Thank you, John. I’m delighted to be back here with you.

John Jantsch (01:14): So let’s talk about this four-week vacation. What’s the idea behind that? Well, I mean, I think a lot of entrepreneurs probably think that idea is crazy. They don’t get four-weeks, maybe in two years strung together, but you’re talking about four consecutive weeks. I’m going to leave my business and it’s going to run itself.

Dr. Sabrina Starling (01:32): Yes. So this comes from the coaching that I’ve done with entrepreneurs over the last 17 or 18 years, and one of the awarenesses that I had is when they were reaching out for coaching, they initially seemed to have a work-life balance problem. Like my perception was these are workaholics, they don’t know how to stop. And yes, there’s a handful of us that are workaholics, but that’s not the real issue. The real issue is the systems and the lack of A players, the ability to hire a players in the business that keep the business owner from being able to take that vacation. Well, as a psychologist, I’ve seen a lot of business owners dealing with burnout, and I see how hard working 60, 70, 80 hours a week just grinding it out and seeing the impact that has. And we tell ourselves when we’re doing that, I’m doing it to get to this point.

(02:27): When I get that new team member hired, it’ll all be better. And the reality is that day never comes. And so if we don’t get in front of the bus and stop the bus and say, I need to take a break, I need a vacation. And the idea behind a four-week vacation, what really became clear to me around that is that means you have a team and you have systems in place and that business can run without you, which is very important if you ever want to transition. And I say if you ever want to transition, when you transition the business, when you sell it or you want to retire and someone else on your team is going to step in and run it, and if you get these things in place now you can enjoy your life. And that’s really all of us go into entrepreneurship for freedom.

(03:16): And a lot of it is we want time freedom. We want to be able to call our own shots and make our own choices. And then the irony when we get into business, we feel like we have less freedom and we also feel like no one else around us understands because they think we’re the business owner, we can run our schedule however we want, and we feel like, no, we’re at the mercy of every other person on this planet as the business owner. So the four-way vacation is all about really taking care of the entrepreneur.

John Jantsch (03:44): Do you feel like sometimes there’s always more to do than you can get done in a day, but do you feel like sometimes there’s a perception, the business, it’s almost like if I’m not working 40 hours a week, I’m cheating, I’m not doing this right. I mean, is part of that pressure there?

Dr. Sabrina Starling (03:59): Absolutely. I mean, our culture in the United States is a grinded out culture. It’s not just entrepreneurship that has the hustle grinded out mentality. When I started my business, I decided to become a coach instead of working in another business. And I wanted to have my own business because I was raising children and I wanted to be able to be available for them. So I decided I’m going to run my business on 25 hours a week, and I’ve made it work all these years. I’ve been able to grow the business doing that, but I kept it a secret For many years, I didn’t reveal to my clients that I was working 25 hours a week because they were all working 60, 70 hours a week. And I was afraid they would say to me, you don’t have a real business, Dr. Sabrina, you don’t understand, because a lot of ’em were men, a lot of ’em were in construction. And so I just kept it quiet and I’ve, in the last five years, I’ve started talking about that everywhere because I realized we all want someone to tell us it’s okay. It is okay to work less than 40 hours a week, and it’s really cool if you can.

John Jantsch (05:03): So you just went on a four-week vacation. You were telling me before we started, you just got back after about, I’m thinking of you’re very motivated, very driven person. You’ve built a wonderful business. After about two and a half weeks, you start saying, what am I going to do now for another week and a half?

Dr. Sabrina Starling (05:21): That actually happened about three and a half weeks in. I had two days left on my fourth vacation. I was like, okay, I’m bored. I am bored. And I think it’s because I have done multiple four-week vacations and I’ve really developed over the years, my interests away from the business. But I think the first time as business owners, when we take four-week vacations, we do have that feeling within a day of what do I do with myself? We’re not used to having hobbies. I know you play the guitar, you do woodworking, you have a rich life. I mean, where you live is a beautiful area. You have a very rich life away from the business. And what I find is the bigger we make our lives away from the business, the easier it is to put these healthy boundaries in place in our businesses.

John Jantsch (06:12): Yeah, I know I don’t suffer from this anymore, but early on in my business, I would go on vacation. I would be very, even if it was just a week long vacation, first couple days I was very fidgety. But then you start settling in and it’s like, eh, it’s going to all be fine. Michael Gerber, who was an original mentor of mine, wrote the E-Myth. I’m sure listeners are familiar with that. He actually wrote the Forward to Duct Tape. Marketing told me once, he said, if your business can’t operate without you, it’s worthless. And I think that’s pretty strong medicine, isn’t it?

Dr. Sabrina Starling (06:43): It is, and it’s exactly true. And as I wrote the four-week vacation book, I had a number of family members of business owners comment to me, I wish my husband or I wish my wife would’ve read this because they thought we were going to retire and then go travel and have all those things that we put off. And for whatever reason, they had a health reason. Some of ’em had passed away very early in life, much earlier than they should have, but it was because of the stress, I believe. And so when we think about there’s all kinds of reasons that we want our business to have value without us, and one of them, one of the most important ones is what happens to our family if we just drop dead in the business? And all those years of all this hard work that we’ve done, there’s no value in the business if it can’t run without the business owner. So the family is left without being able to really benefit from that. But then there’s your team members as well. If the business can’t carry on without you, then you have a whole bunch of people who’ve lost their jobs now and their families are impacted.

John Jantsch (07:49): So you mentioned already that you’ve really grown your business working 25 hours a week When I started for a number of years now, have not done much on Fridays and don’t have schedule any appointments. I’ve done that forever. And when you start doing that, you start realizing how much time you’re actually wasting in the business. I found because it was like, no, I got to sit here until five o’clock. And so you go, chase, check Facebook one more time or something. I bet you most people could actually condense what they do that is valuable down to a couple hours every day. You actually, in fact, where is it the $10,000 an hour activity you want to, I think that relates to what I’m suggesting, isn’t

Dr. Sabrina Starling (08:33): It? Absolutely. This is exactly it, and I will share that. When my first daughter went off to kindergarten, I thought, oh my gosh, I have all this extra time now in school all day. And then I was frittering my time away. I was on social media and it was worthless. So one of my big awarenesses when I started my business and I had an infant at home and I had these 25 hours a week to work, I had a huge meltdown in my laundry room just crying and blubbering. I had just dropped her off at daycare, but she had thrown up overnight. And so I had to come home and instead of working, I had to launder all the bedding and everything. And I thought, there’s just not enough time and I can’t get it all done. And I had this epiphany come over me around, okay, Sabrina, if you can only get one thing done today that’s going to move the needle forward in your business, what are you going to do?

(09:23): Because you only have a few hours to do this in. And I don’t know what my answer was that day, but it was like this huge clarity and I have run my business every day forward with that question. And it’s made me realize that we have high value activities in the business that grow our business and that add value. And if we’re intentional to do those every day, and you know what? I don’t get high value activities done every single day, but I make sure once a week, five to six hours has been high value, $10,000 an hour activity time. And my awareness around the $10,000 an hour time came from reading the book 80 20 by Perry Marshall, and recognizing that 20% of what we do in a given day or given week leads to 80% of the results that we get. And I started looking at what is it that we entrepreneurs do that’s worth $10 an hour versus a hundred dollars an hour versus $10,000 an hour?

(10:22): And I created a chart around this based on Perry Marshall’s work, and I share that Anybody who wants to get it, we’ll send it to ’em. You can go to tap the potential.com/ten k. And having this chart in front of you is so powerful because it’s a reminder that if you are not doing the $10,000 an hour activities in the business, no one else is. And when we business owners struggle to pay ourselves appropriately, I think one of the hard questions we need to ask ourselves is, when was the last time I did a $10,000 an hour activity? Because we’re not growing. If we’re stuck doing the a hundred dollars an hour, $500 an hour or $10 an hour activities, that’s the reason the business isn’t growing. That’s the reason we’re not identifying how to add value and create the margin that we need to pay ourselves appropriately.

John Jantsch (11:15): So when somebody comes to you, and I’ll back up a minute. I had Dan Martel on this show recently and he wrote a great book called Buy Back Your Time. And he said, if you don’t have an administrative assistant or executive assistant or whatever you call them, then you are it, right? Because doing that work. And I was like, yeah, that’s pretty hard to swallow, but it’s true. So if somebody comes to you and they’re like, okay, I get it. This idea of four we vacation sounds really awesome, but couldn’t happen today, where do they start?

Dr. Sabrina Starling (11:46): So this is a really good question because when we hear four-week vacation, I think most of us feel like that’s so pie in the sky, I can’t even imagine. And it starts with the small steps forward, taken in a consistent direction that lead to big change over time. When I started my four-week vacation journey, I felt like I gave myself 18 months and I thought, that’s going to be really hard. I can’t imagine doing it. And we were a very small team at the time, but once we get clear, this is what I want, this is meaningful to me, then it’s easier to start seeing how we have to trust that the how will show up. And so I recommend, look at the longest you’ve been able to be away from the business, fully unplugged. And if that’s zero days, because in the research I’m doing with entrepreneurs, we hear that a lot like that’s zero days, Dr.

(12:40): Sabrina, then walk one day and tell your team you’re completely out of pocket and you got to unplug or start with unplugging in the evenings. Like you go home at a set time and put your phone in a drawer and just be present with yourself and your family. That’s the first small step. And then build from there and really pay attention to, well, what actually fell through the cracks. When I was unplugged time, and again, we hear, I can’t believe my team handled everything. When I went on this four-week vacation, this was the first one I had done in 18 months. We had two team members who were newer on the team who’d never experienced it. So I thought, and I had been training them, so I thought they’re going to need me. I don’t know, we better set up some, somebody else needs to jump in and train them while I’m out.

(13:31): They stepped up in huge ways. And it showed me that I had been telling myself a story in my head about how much they needed me. So we have to watch this with ourselves and the stories we tell. So try a day, try two days, try a week and see what actually falls through the cracks. Ask your team for their input on where they needed support and you weren’t there. And then look at can you create a system or do you need to hire and start taking those things off your plate? And the most important thing, whether it’s a day off or a week off or four-weeks off, whatever you delegated before you took that time off, do not take it back when you come back.

John Jantsch (14:16): Team you just talked about too. Yeah, and I think what might be missed in that, what you just described there is we sort of disempowered the team sometimes by feeling like we have to give them all the direction, but giving a chance to let them figure it out, they’ll actually be more empowered by that, won’t they?

Dr. Sabrina Starling (14:34): Yes, they will. And if we take it back, it’s very disempowering for them. So when I came back, I asked my newer team members that I’ve been running a meeting with every week, what did they do with that time that we were meeting and how would they like to revamp this meeting going? And they worked on strategy, they mapped things out, things that I wasn’t even aware needed to be mapped out or laid out. They had done that and they said, going forward, we’d much rather use this rather than just going over our basic numbers. I mean, we’ll obviously do that, but we’d much rather use this meeting for strategy with you, Dr. Sabrina. I’m like, yes, because if I have team members who want to think strategically, they’re thinking about $10,000 an hour activities from their seat. And that adds a lot of value to the business.

John Jantsch (15:23): One of the mistakes I’m sure you’ve come across all the time, I’ve certainly seen it, is a lot of times, particularly when people are maybe just getting started, they fail to invest in their team or they try to hire the cheapest help that they can find. And ultimately what you’re saying is the real key to this is you’ve got to have that leadership team or whatever you call ’em of a players. I mean, this is not going to happen until there’s people that can do the selling and the things that you thought only you could do. So how do you help people kind of change that mindset? And obviously I know you have a whole program around developing a-players, but first one is probably to change that mindset, isn’t it?

Dr. Sabrina Starling (16:00): It’s to change the mindset that if you’re in the middle and all the decisions run through you, you’re going to lose your A-players because they feel very disempowered. But I think a lot of times what I hear from entrepreneurs is, I don’t know that I can afford to hire an A-player. And I actually would argue that you can’t afford not to hire an A player because you may pay them, say you pay them $10 an hour more. But the reality is that A players will be 900 to 1200% more productive than warm body team members. So like your C players. And so you may pay them $10 an hour more, but if you need fewer A players, because you don’t have C players anymore, you have A players, your payroll is actually reduced significantly. And those A players will help you create systems. Those A players step up, they’re natural problem solvers and they’re good communicators. They don’t necessarily need to be extroverted. Not every A player’s extroverted, but they like to communicate and support each other as team members. And that is the best thing for you, the business owner, because when you’re out and they don’t know what to do, they don’t know how to handle something, they go to other people on the team and they ask for help.

John Jantsch (17:17): And I think another thing too, a lot of times people just jump to, oh, I need to have somebody whose resume says they were five years as X, Y, Z. And I think a lot of times if you get the right person and you’re committed to investing in their growth, you’ll grow a players, right?

Dr. Sabrina Starling (17:33): Yes. So an example that I like to think about is when I started my business, John, I knew nothing about marketing, nothing about sales, but I’m an A player. I learned Duct Tape Marketing was one of the first books that I read to learn. And our A players will do that. So let go of the belief that you need to hire for a lot of experience and really hire the people who are hungry and motivated, and then look to align what they’re doing with their personal strengths. And in the interview process, you can identify strengths by just asking them what are the things you love to do that come easy to you that other people seem to struggle with? And they’ll just, they’ll tell you, here’s the things, and they’re easy for me. I don’t know why other people have trouble with this, but come easy to me and make sure that those strengths align with the results that you need from them.

(18:27): And then knowing what you know about what you learned how to do in the business, have confidence that you can break it down and train them. And you are going to be much better off when you do that because it opens up a much broader pool of candidates for you. And as you create these systems to train, you’re not at the mercy of one team member. And if that one critical team member leaves, oh my gosh, what are you going to do? You have a system to train the next person and it works and you can refine the system the second time around.

John Jantsch (19:00): So we’ve been talking about some of the various things that you do from a coaching standpoint, maybe unpack when somebody comes to you and the stated goal is that they’re going to go on a four-week vacation. What are all the avenues, how you impact their business?

Dr. Sabrina Starling (19:18): So we utilize the the potential solution with our clients coming in. Most of the clients who come in are established businesses. The business has been around for a while, and the business owner is recognizing, despite my best efforts, I can’t take time off. I can’t be away. This isn’t working. Or they’re realizing they’re not profitable, or it’s a combination of I’m not profitable and I’m tied to the business. So we work on designing the business to be sustainably profitable. Every decision going forward needs to be based on does this add profit to the business or does it take away, once we have it designed to be sustainably profitable, then we look at niching down with a clearly defined sweet spot. A lot of established businesses are what I call overweight businesses. And that means that when you’re starting out in business, you say yes to every opportunity that comes your way because you need to get revenue coming in the door, but then you don’t have a real sweet spot anymore and your spread really thin and your team is too.

(20:18): And so I think our businesses need to go on a diet at least once a year, and we need to look at where are our best opportunities? What are we going to stop doing? And really focus on the top clients. And I know you teach a lot of this yourself, John, but it makes your marketing easier. It simplifies the business considerably. So that’s where we see a lot of stress come off for business owners. And then we start talking about innovation, which is again, paying attention to what your clients tell you they want the most and how they see you as unique and different, incorporating that in what you do, which allows you to charge more and create more margin. And then we focus on hiring the best, building your lean and mighty team around that sweet spot. And then the final step is to learn how to network to continually attract A players so that you never run out of team members. Because now that you have a sweet spot and you’re innovating and you have a players on your team, you better be ready. Your business is going to grow, and you’re going to need a lot of A players, but in the meantime, more and more is coming off your plate and you’re taking your life back. So our goal is, I mean, yes, I want lots of entrepreneurs taking forward vacations, but ultimately our goal is that you get your life back on a daily basis in your business.

John Jantsch (21:34): Awesome. Sabrina, always great to catch up with you. I appreciate you stopping by the show. You want to tell people where they can connect with you and find out more about your work?

Dr. Sabrina Starling (21:42): Absolutely. So I mentioned you can get the how to make your time worth $10,000 an hour download in the PDF chart of $10,000 an hour activities. Just go to tapthepotential.com/10K and you can learn more about us obviously at Tap, the Potential I record Weekly on the Profit by Design podcast and share tips, tools, and strategies to help you design a sustainably profitable business that gives you your life back. And I just want to share as a fellow podcaster, those of you who get benefit out of Duct Tape Marketing, please leave a review on whatever platform you’re listening because that’s how other people find great podcasts like Duct Tape Marketing and podcasting is a labor of love. John is putting out tremendous content. So please leave him a review.

John Jantsch (22:35): Well, I appreciate that, Sabrina. So again, thanks for taking a moment and hopefully we’ll run into you soon out there on the road.

Dr. Sabrina Starling (22:41): Okay, thank you, John.

John Jantsch (00:00): Hey, this is John, and before we get started, I have a gift for you for being such an amazing listener. Everyone’s talking about AI these days, but most of it’s about tactics. We’ve created a series of prompts we use to create strategy, and you can have them for free. Just go to dtm.world/freeprompts and grab yours. Now. Let’s get started.

(00:30): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast. This is John Jansen. My guest today is Lloyed Lobo. He’s an entrepreneur, podcast host and community builder. He is the co-founder of Boast.ai where he leveraged a community-led growth model to bootstrap the company. He’s also the co-founder of Traction a community empowering over 100,000 innovators through connections, content, and capital. We’re going to talk about his book, which is titled From Grassroots to Greatness, 13 Rules to Build Iconic Brands With Community LED Growth. So welcome to the show, Lloyed.

Lloyed Lobo (01:10): Thank you for hosting me, big fan and I’m excited. It’s like you watch those people, listen to those people and then eventually have the opportunity to do something with them and you feel honored. It’s like this celebrity moment here.

John Jantsch (01:25): Well, I’ve been doing this for a long time, so hopefully you have heard a little bit of it. So if those of you that watch the video clips, I know those of you listening won’t, but I love your hat. They’re hard to forget your last name. Lobo,

Lloyed Lobo (01:38): A great entrepreneur once told me that you got to do things to stand out, right? It’s all about standing out. And if you look at Mr. Beast, actually one of the things he did does is stand out is one of the biggest influencers now on the planet. I mean, he does things like cure a thousand blind people or gave a homeless guy $20,000, started a free car dealership. The thing is, those who are afraid to be a little eccentric, a little authentic and a little different, often blend in with the rest. And if you are just like everyone else, it’s hard to become an iconic brand.

John Jantsch (02:15): I mean, it’s not for everybody, but there’s no question pissing some people off occasionally is one way to get noticed. Like I said, it’s not for everybody, but it certainly works.

Lloyed Lobo (02:25): The story with the hat was I used to have Lobo hat and I’d wear it everywhere, and when we sold 50% of the company or majority of the company and I transitioned to the board, I ended up depressed because I’m like, I left my baby. I built my baby on this company. It’s funny because for a founder, no matter how good the financial outcome, leaving a company you started that you sacrificed your family for is like fraught with mental health issues. And a friend of mine gave me this hat as a joke. I wore it in the podcast. It’s stuck now where I go to the gym. People are like, Hey, you’re that guy from LinkedIn or I went to an art gallery. Oh, we see our content on LinkedIn, so it stuck.

John Jantsch (03:01): That’s funny. So let’s get into the book from Grassroots to Greatness. This sometimes comes off as a lame question, but a lot of times the answer is brilliant. Was there some problem you were trying to solve that said, I have to write this book?

Lloyed Lobo (03:13): Definitely. So my journey throughout my life has had one common thread, and that is community. So my parents grew up in the slums in Mumbai where they made a movie on it, slum Dog millionaire. And anytime I visit my grandparents who had 10 kids, I’d ask them like, you barely have place in here for your kids. Why do you have this random person here? And he said, he would always say the only way to create abundance in life is to help others without expecting anything in return. Today, of course, these kids are in the slum, they’re all well off. But then when I was eight or nine years old, the Gulf Warhead, I was born in Kuwait and security had lapsed, came together to rescue the country. Every building became a sub-community, right? What is community? Put your hands and say, I have a problem, or I have an aspiration.

(04:01): You find other people and they come together. And the way that effort was coordinated, because there were no cell phones, there was no internet at the time, you’d go down the building with concern faces and somebody would say, Hey, I’ll organize security. I’ll guard the building from this time to this time, all organized food and supplies and water, and that word of mouth spread from building to building and eventually evacuated us to safety. Then another time was when we were bootstrapping both. We had no money, we literally had no marketing team. Marketing was like me, and we bootstrapped this business to 10 million in revenue through building this traction community where we’re bringing our ICP, our audience together around their aspiration and their goals. This community of practice, in fact, our investors who bought half the company, the growth equity firm, they came to attraction community event.

(04:51): And through my entrepreneurial journey where it’s like something’s working, something’s not something’s great. One day it’s great, one day it’s like I’m failing, I’m falling. And so when things were going great after two failures and did an events company where the founder ran off with all the profits and then boast was a struggle, bootstrapping, and as soon as we started to make money at boast, we lost a twin. We were expecting twins. One passed the other was born four months or so early and spend that time in the incubator and we relied, my wife and I relied on this community called Fish’s mom’s group to bring us some sanity in terms of hope and how other people who were in that situation dealt with it. When we were looking at other babies pass away in the nicu, and then finally when we sold a majority of both stepped out of the day-to-day, I ended up depressed.

(05:41): I felt I lost my identity. I was the face of this company, became overweight, became insufferable, and the Peloton community is what saved me and brought my mental health to stability. And so when I sat here saying I could do anything with my time, I can be anywhere, what should I do? I said, I think I need to write about the impact of community to the world and pay homage to the community that’s given me so much. From the slums to truly the slum dog millionaire journey, which was fueled by the community. And I truly believe this, yesterday’s innovation always becomes today’s option and tomorrow’s commodity. If you look at the Gs, you couldn’t get ahold of it. Then it became an option in the car today, there’s CarPlay, you don’t even need it. It’s commodity. But if you build a community, you won’t become a commodity. A perfect example is Apple. They don’t have the best features, but they fall in love with their customers and sell that aspiration. They’re not nitpicking on, we have this many megapixels camera, they’re talking about the aspiration. So that was very important to me to share that journey.

John Jantsch (06:49): So we’ve always had community. If you think about the one you described in Kuwait, and then churches have always been communities, schools have always been communities, but I think they’ve really come to the forefront with the fact that we can have community now anywhere. We don’t have to be in a physical place. There are those that are suggesting that advertising and some of the traditional marketing ways are really become less effective and maybe even not work at all at some point. And that community is in some ways sort of the last frontier. Would you support to that idea, that notion that you think it’s going to really be the way that everybody has to market?

Lloyed Lobo (07:26): I truly believe that I embody it because if you think about it, marketing is taking up, look at 2023 because we went through this boom tech boom and then the interest rates went up and so-called recession. Marketing is taking a bloodbath in 2023. It costs twice as much to generate the same results from the same marketing tactics. TikTok, Facebook, all the CPMs are up. The spend is way off whack, and businesses are spending less and less of marketing because even with generative ai, what you’re seeing is you’re seeing sameness in content people now people are generating content through generative ai. Consumers are tired of this clickbait, this spam, these popups, these ads sharing personal data to access crappy white papers seeing the same thing over and over. But if you look at some of the best, most iconic brands, Harley Davidson being a perfect example, they almost went bankrupt in the eighties.

(08:21): They rebuilt the company on the ethos of community wasn’t a marketing strategy, it was a company strategy. Employees went out and started writer clubs, employees become writers, became employees. It had oversight from the president, and that community organized the Save Harley campaign. Today they organize breast cancer awareness campaigns. There’s a purpose behind it, and I think if you have a great purpose that goes beyond your product or service, you’ll build an everlasting sustainable community. And I like that you brought religion. My mom’s a very devout Catholic, and so as a part of my research, I was researching religions as well as brands. And when you look at every iconic brand or religion or cult has this path, they start with an audience and when they bring that audience together, it becomes a community. Now, when the community comes together to create impact, it becomes a movement.

(09:16): And when the movement has unwavering faith in its purpose, it becomes a religion or cult. Everything from Christianity to CrossFit follows that pattern. You see a lot of influencers today on LinkedIn, on TikTok and whatnot, they think they have communities don’t. The influencer is gone, the community is gone because it’s not a community, it’s an audience. It’s a one-way communication. So how do you bring them together to talk to each other without you being in the room is a community. And then when that community creates impact or products or whatever it is, it becomes a movement. And that’s what Harley did. They were coming together to create awareness. Mr. Beast, great community, it’s going to be everlasting because his community has come together to donate $20 million to evacuate the oceans of 30 million pounds of plastic. All of these things, those are purposes that go beyond the brand, and I think that is really important

John Jantsch (10:17): As a community. You look at some of the communities that are out there and they are counter to something, right? I mean, Harley Davidson really preaches the idea that free spirit writers we’re kind of counter to something else that’s out there in society. And I think most community, I mean you could even say Peloton is an example, that there is a so-called enemy, if you will. Would you say that’s a strong component of building a community, is that there has to be something to rally around or against?

Lloyed Lobo (10:47): It has to be an aspiration, a goal, or some challenge, right? And it’s funny, as I interviewed maybe a thousand or so community leaders, entrepreneurs, innovators, and one thing I found very common actually, I found a number of things that were common, but the one thing was very key driving force is they’re driven by some spite or anger to change the status quo, to prove the naysayers wrong, to do things a different way than it’s currently being done. And in many ways you say happy people don’t drive change, but people who have a spike towards something will drive that change.

John Jantsch (11:28): Yeah. So the book, as I read in the subtitle, has 13 rules. I’m curious if you want to share, visit a couple of rules, but before that, maybe a lot of times when people you researched a thousand or did a thousand interviews, how’d you get it down to 13 and why are those the most important? And then again, maybe share a few.

Lloyed Lobo (11:48): Definitely. So I asked the same set of questions is like, why did you get started? How did you bring people together? How did you seed it in the beginning? How did you continue to grow and scale it? How do you retain them? And then how do you make money? I think one of the most important things is there’s a lot of focus on metrics, and I think metrics is important, but we get caught up in these sort of acronyms and these buzzwords, but really it’s all about asking the right questions, right? It’s as simple as that, and that is what metrics are to me. It’s like if you’re looking for an answer, ask the right questions and make sure you ask the same questions because then you’ll get the answers you’re looking for. And you can find patterns if you ask some, it’s like AB testing and marketing, right?

(12:33): If you change three things, you don’t know what drove the results, but if you ask the same thing over and over again, you’ll get the answer, you’ll get a pattern, you’ll be able to see a pattern. So that was the key thing. So a couple of rules that I’d love to share, right? One is a framework which is a play on Daniel Pink’s Amp, which you may have heard of. And so when I looked at these communities, I found AMP was great, but to build a thriving sustainable culture community, there were six common traits that these companies, these cultures, these community had, and I called it camper, which sounds cheesy, but I say if you have proactively instituted camper in your company, your community, your culture, you’ll build capi campers. Camper stands for connection, autonomy, mastery, purpose, which is from Danielle Pink. And then energy and recognition with connection.

(13:23): What I found is that these communities, they foster genuine bonds and build bridges. When people feel connected, it empowers them to support one another and grow Peloton is a great example. Turns out sweating and working out together even virtually leads to a great sense of comradery. The other one is autonomy. Nobody wants to feel micromanaged. When people have the space to make their own decisions, they take ownership and drive innovation. A great example of that community was the Basecamp community. This company is a project management tool that invented Ruby on Rails. Ruby on Rails has spawned thousands upon thousands of startups as a framework, as an infrastructure to build products on. And that autonomy not only is a part of the community, but how they run the company, and it’s helped them achieve tens of millions in profit with only 80 employees working 40 hours a week, and no investors, their competitors have thousands of employees and hundreds of millions in funding.

(14:21): So that was the second piece. Mastery, of course, everyone wants to get better and better at what they do and become experts in their field. Purpose is a key one. I truly believe there’s no good or bad people. There’s shades of gray. Everyone is well intentioned. It’s just life happens. You want to give, you want to create impact, but taxes and mortgage and kids doesn’t give you the opportunity to do that. But when you attach with a great purpose, even if you contribute a small portion, you feel like you’re part of the whole thing. There was an urban legend with President Kennedy walking NASA at midnight, and he sees a janitor sweeping the floor and he asked, what are you doing at this hour? And the janitor says, sir, I’m putting a man on the moon. That is what great purposes. When it goes down to the person with the lowest position, they feel Patagonia is a fantastic example of purpose.

(15:17): They promote this environmental stewardship, but not only encouraging their employees to volunteer for these initiatives, they lead by example. They donate a big chunk of their profits to nature preservation. Then the fifth one is energy creating this atmosphere of enthusiasm, passion, and positive vibe. When your culture is full of lively energy, it sparks inspiration. I mean, you can ask yourself how many times have you been in an environment where they have connection, where there is autonomy, there’s mastery, and there’s a great sense of purpose, but the energy is a drag, it’s dry, and you’re like, I just want to get out of here. You watch presentations and we are with great people around the room, but you’re falling asleep because there’s so energy is really important because community is a marathon of the heart and mind, right? People are giving their time. Oftentimes they’re not paid like volunteers and whatnot.

(16:12): How do you keep them excited? Energy is really important to do that. And the last one is recognition. They proactively acknowledge and appreciate the efforts of others. When you celebrate efforts, no matter how big or small, and just say thank you to people or give them things to appreciate them, they keep coming back for more. And we’re in 2023 where job loss has been at an all time high, yet people have opportunities, right? I could go and drive an Uber and then part-time do DoorDash and then be on five or Upwork and make a hundred thousand dollars to support my lifestyle. Why do I join a company and do a nine to five? There has to be in addition to all of those things, if I’m not recognized, then I’m out of here, right? A lot of companies fail to proactively recognize their people. If you treat people with love and help them grow, they’ll treat your business, your community, your culture with love, and your company will grow.

(17:04): So those were six common traits I found. So the first thing was figure out how this fits because the last thing you want to do, and as I talked to more and more people in 2023, they asked me, oh, how do I start a community and when will I start making money? So if you don’t start with the thought of how do I give and how can I give without expecting anything in return? And if you’re looking to monetize on day one, then you may as well not do community. Invest in ads, invest in cold calling. There’s tons of direct response marketing you can do. Community is a long-term sustainable business strategy, and that’s why I say start with this ethos of community, which is camper connection, autonomy, mastery, purpose, energy recognition. If you don’t have that in your D n A, people will find it to be contrived and it’ll be short-lived, right?

(17:52): You won’t sustain it for the long Atlassian, the company work 40 billion. Their community organizes 5,000 events a year. I asked their chief revenue officer, how do you do attribution on this community? He’s like, I can’t, don’t care. It takes care of itself. The company’s growing, the product proliferating. I’m not going to nickel and dime on how it makes money. I know it takes care of itself. Or you ask Gainsight, the company was acquired for a billion. They created the customer success community a category. You ask Nick. Nick is like c e o and head of community, or even Brian Chesky at Airbnb. He’s c e o and head of community. You can’t do attribution with community. That’s the thing. It’s pretty hard because somebody comes to an event, they may pass on your details to somebody else on the team who goes and downloads a white paper.

(18:39): Those details go to an S D R who cold call, and then the deal gets done and get attributed to S D R, and then it says, oh, community did nothing, right? So that multi-touch is hard. So I think starting with that camper is really important. The second thing is figuring out the type of community you want to build. There are three kinds of communities, community of practice where you bring people together to educate them, to teach them something. I’m an engineer. My first job, I wanted to go into entrepreneurship. So I asked somebody, what’s the best skill I could learn? They said sales and marketing. So I started cold calling for a tech company and then transitioned my way into running G T M operations. But everything I learned about sales and marketing was from HubSpot’s inbound marketing content because nobody was talking about digital marketing.

(19:23): And guess what? Years later when I had the money and the position to buy a tool, I bought HubSpot. I was part of that community. So community of practice is that teaching people to become better versions of themselves about a craft community of product is turning your customers into evangelists. So teaching them about your product. And the last one is community of play. Bringing people together around fun. Right? Now, if your company doesn’t have a product market fit, you’re new, you barely have any customers, you don’t have high retention, there’s no point in building a community of product because nobody’s going to want to be sold to. You want to sell the aspiration, the goal that your product is driving. So why do people buy HubSpot? Because they want to generate more leads. They want to become better marketers. So teach them to become better marketers is what HubSpot gets.

(20:17): So that’s the second thing. The third thing is crucial is nail your niche. Figure out your ideal customer profile. What are their pains, their goals, their aspirations? Where do they eat, breed, drink, sleep, figure out their circle of influence. Who do they fund? Meaning what other services and tools they pay for? This will give you a list of potential partners. Who do they follow? Meaning who are the influencers they watch and listen to? So this will give you the list of people if you’re hosting events or podcasts or to invite, and then what do they frequent? Meaning events, magazines, blogs, they read, so you could distribute your content there. So that is the third thing. The fourth thing is start creating an audience. You can either curate content, like summarize content from experts in your niche or be the expert for your niche yourself or do a mix.

(21:07): But you start by, once you understand your I C P, you can write down a hundred, 200 burning questions and that’ll give you content ideas. You can even think about, if I had to write the ultimate guide to X, Y, Z, what would be the chapters and sub chapters and topics? And then from there, start creating content. Even something like this, we do an interview like this. You can turn it into an interactive interview. You can turn it into a YouTube video. You can post the audio to podcast. You can turn it into short form, clips the text into LinkedIn posts. You can turn in an ebook, you can turn the summary into a weekly newsletter. So it gives you content, multiple distribution channels, and you start building this audience. And once you start building this audience, then bring them together. One thing I found in this research is the value of senses.

(21:55): It was told to be my Jonathan Yaffe, the founder of any road, is that anytime you incorporate more than two senses, you start to build stronger connections. We’re sound in sight. If we were in person, we’d be taste, touch, and smell. And this is what Red Bull does. And these high energy brand, they bring people together in person. Surprisingly even Yelp scaled a lot of their community through in-person events. And you look at a lot of these online products that you think, but a lot of their early activities were bringing people together in person because it builds bonds, comradery when you’re engaging multiple senses. If you were in person now, probably this would extend for hours on end. We probably know each other personally. So that is really important to start bringing people together in person. And then the last one, there’s a lot more tips, but these were some of the crucial ones is do it with consistency.

(22:45): Anything worth doing is a long slog. We started traction by doing meetups and pizza nights. 10 people showed up the first time, then 20, then word spread, but we never stopped. And one day 200 people showed up to this co-working space and the GM of the co-working space is like, guys, this is not a meetup. This is a full blown conference. Now that evolved into the Traction Conference, and today we’ve had C-Suite from Uber to HubSpot to Shopify show up. But you got to do small. And then one day it hits. And even our subscriber base was small and we kept doing it. The pandemic hit, we freaked out. We had to cancel a conference. We had 50 some odd speakers. So I reached out to all the speakers and said, Hey, instead of doing a virtual conference, which I don’t have the fortitude to do it, I can’t sit through a two day virtual summit.

(23:36): What if I interviewed you every week for an hour and made it a live virtual one hour live summit and we’ll turn the recording into YouTube, the audio into podcast. They’re like, love it. It eventually ended up being twice a week and subscriber base went from thousands in two years, 120,000, just that cadence. And it’s funny, we were, when we sold half the company to growth equity firm, they’re like, what is this inflection point here? Your revenues just went up like this in those two years to like 10 million and you have no marketing team or spend. And I showed another thing about the number of webinars and events we were doing, because the word spreads, hundreds of people start joining. First it’s tens, then the word eventually spreads and you get the social proof of the speakers. Of course the brander of the speakers and the audience, the other people who are coming. And more and more and more people show up and you build that cadence. But most people just stop. They stop after the 10th thing. Magic doesn’t happen at number 10. Magic maybe happens at a hundred. And there are stats like from YouTube, even some of the best content creators have seen, I’m not talking about shorts, but I’m talking about long form videos that they had to create a hundred videos before they saw meaningful traction. That just does, consistency is the magic ingredient that leads to overnight success.

John Jantsch (25:04): It’s almost its own algorithm. So Lloyed, I appreciate you stopping by the Duct Tape Marketing podcast. You want to share where people can connect with you and maybe find out a little more about from Grassroots to Greatness?

Lloyed Lobo (25:16): Definitely. So I’m active on LinkedIn. Follow me, I post one to three times a week and generally content around entrepreneurship, bootstrapping, community mental health. So do follow me there. My mom made it weird for me growing up by putting an E in my name, it’s Lloyed, but she put an E in there and I was bullied as a kid a lot. And one day I asked her, why did you put this E in there? Why did you have to make me different? And she’s like, I always dreamed of you becoming an entrepreneur. When I was living in the slum in India, I wanted my child to be an entrepreneur. And I said, if he ever became an entrepreneur, he would want to trademark his name. And if I put an E in there, that would allow him to do that. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but in terms of that philosophy there, but that was the story. So Lloyed Lobo on LinkedIn.

John Jantsch (26:04): Yeah, it’s a great story. And I must admit, when I was looking at my show notes, I was like, Hey, is that right? So it worked. It worked. And the U R L was probably available, of course.

Lloyed Lobo (26:15): Definitely. The funny thing is Lloyed Lobo without the E is not available with the E, some software developer has. So I’m on LinkedIn with that. lloyedlobo.com, fromgrassrootstogreatness.com. And then if you want to tune into my podcast, it’s Traction on YouTube, traction by Lloyed Lobo on YouTube or traction on Spotify. Thank you so much. This has been fantastic, John, big fan.

John Jantsch (26:41): Thanks. Now again, I appreciate you taking the time and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Lloyed Lobo (26:46): Definitely. Where are you today, by the way?

John Jantsch (26:48): I am in the mountains west of Denver.

Lloyed Lobo (26:52): Oh, cool. I was just in Denver last week for a boast board meeting, and now I’m in Dubai. I spent half my time in Dubai and half in San Francisco. A

John Jantsch (27:00): Lot of air miles.

Lloyed Lobo (27:02): A lot of air miles. Awesome. Have a good one.

John Jantsch (00:00): Hey, marketing agency owners, you know, I can teach you the keys to doubling your business in just 90 days or your money back. Sound interesting? All you have to do is license our three step process that it’s gonna allow you to make your competitors irrelevant, charge a premium for your services and scale perhaps without adding overhead. And here’s the best part. You could license this entire system for your agency by simply participating in an upcoming agency certification intensive look, why create the wheel? Use a set of tools that took us over 20 years to create. And you could have ’em today. Check it out at dtm.world/certification. That’s dtm.world/certification.

(00:55): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Jennifer Wallace. She’s a freelance print and television journalist who began her career at 60 Minutes, and she’s a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. We’re gonna talk about we new book Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic and What We Can Do About It. So Jennifer, welcome to the show.

Jennifer Wallace (01:22): Thanks for having me.

John Jantsch (01:24): So I always like to, this is a big topic. It’s an important topic. I always like to start with like, why’d you want to tackle this topic? ?

Jennifer Wallace (01:33): Yes. So, yeah, it, it, I have three teenagers of my own. I’ve been a journalist for 20, 30 years, but I know what it takes to write a book. And so I’ve been very reluctant to invest in a book until 2019 when the varsity blue scandal hit. I don’t know if you remember that, but Sure, sure. Parents from the East coast and the West Coast went to jail for conspiracy to bribe their way in their kids away into a, a highly selective college. And so I thought to myself, how did we get to a place where parents were now willing to go to jail to get their kid into a school? And I wasn’t buying the narrative that parents just wanted status and they just wanted the bumper sticker. I knew there was something deeper, and I also had my own three kids who were nearing high school age. So I wanted to know, what, where should I be focusing my parental energies? What’s the best way to secure a a, a fulfilling successful midlife for my kids? What can I do now to kind of put those roots in that could come to fruition throughout their lives?

John Jantsch (02:44): So as a trained journalist, you actually did research. Not every author does . Talk a little bit about it because obviously psychiatry, psychologists, I mean, there’s a whole range of research subjects involved in this. Curious how you tackled that.

Jennifer Wallace (03:01): Yeah, so I wanted to make sure, so I’m raising my kids in Manhattan, and I wanted to make sure that the anxieties I was feeling, uh, in my own, you know, children’s childhood and that I was seeing in my community among the parents, that it wasn’t just an east coast thing or a west coast thing. Mm-hmm. I wanted to know if these anxieties were being felt around the country. And the anxieties that I’m talking about are the feeling that as parents, we are responsible for launching our kids into a, a successful future. And so I teamed up with a researcher at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and, uh, we surveyed 6,500 parents throughout the country, which was an extraordinary sample size. We were hoping to get a sample size of a thousand, but within a few days, uh, 6,500 parents had filled it out.

(03:48): And what I found was that the anxieties and, and fears I was feeling were also being felt in Alaska, in Maine, in Washington state, in Jackson, Wyoming, in Cleveland, Ohio, in Florida, in Texas. It was everywhere. So this was, you know, uh, if you want, I could read you a couple of questions. I asked these parents because I found it so fascinating. I asked them on a scale from one to four how much they agreed or disagreed with this statement. I feel responsible for my children’s achievement and success. 75% of parents felt responsible. And then I’ll read you one last one. I wish today’s childhood was less stressful for my kids. 87% of parents agreed with that statement. So I wanted, uh, to get, I wanted to kind of dig in and get to the roots of these, um, fears and anxieties and this intense pressure that’s on parents today.

John Jantsch (04:45): Okay. So there, there’s a lot of things that have changed generationally, but do you buy the idea that every generation has felt that to some extent? I mean, I’d like to hope my parents thought that a little bit . I certainly, you know, felt it about my kids. And obviously now my kids have kids. Isn’t that just something every parent feels?

Jennifer Wallace (05:05): I think it is something every parent feels, but I think when I was growing up, for example, just in the seventies and early eighties, life was generally more affordable. Housing was more affordable. Sure. Healthcare was more affordable, higher education was more affordable. Parents could be reasonably assured that their kids can make some wrong turns and still wind up. Okay. And over the generations we’ve seen that, that kids for the most part have been able to replicate their childhoods, if not do better. We are now looking at the first generation that is not doing as well as their parents. And parents are feeling these macroeconomic pressures that are in our environment, the steep inequality, the crush of the middle class. And they’re nervous. And I think they have reason to be

John Jantsch (05:49): So, so it’s not just that the parents are crazy, um, are crazier. Now what you’re saying is that the, the children of today, uh, millennials, you know, even now are not affording houses. And, uh, even though they’re making far more than, you know, baby boomers did when they came, uh, outta college. They’re, it’s a whole new set of circumstances.

Jennifer Wallace (06:10): Exactly.

John Jantsch (06:12): So how much you, besides say, you know, you talk to a lot of folks in interviews and you talk about, you know, things like, and these are maybe symptoms, right? Of the circumstances. Loneliness is an all time high. And how much of a crazy sort of reset did Covid cause?

Jennifer Wallace (06:32): Well, covid, I, so two things I think happened in Covid. I think it, if we’re talking about youth today, yeah. It, particularly the population that I studied for this book, I, I looked at the top 25% of household income. So this is, you know, parents who could generally choose where they live and what was happening in these communities, in these upper middle class communities. Things slowed down. Parents weren’t traveling for work anymore, kids weren’t doing those extracurricular activities. They were sitting together at the table as a family. And I think for a minute, kids, well, the researchers not just, I think this, but the researchers who studied this population at the start of covid the first month or so, despite the fears and the anxieties, kids were doing fairly well in be because they were feeling the support system. Mm-hmm. of their families. Um, and then as time wore on, the anxiety started to increase.

(07:30): Oh my gosh. What happens to the internships? What happens when, um, you know, when uh, acts and SATs become optional? What does that do? How do I now make my kids stand out? And so where I thought, I’m in the early days of Covid, I thought maybe I won’t have to write this book. Actually, I think the need is even greater. And what I’m finding coming out of Covid is that the anxiety and the depression and the loneliness that kids were feeling became exacerbated. Mm-hmm. . And so while I thought in 2019 when I sold this book, it might be a hard sell to tell parents to widen their definition of success. I think parents are seeing what’s working and what’s not working, and they’re scared. Mental health concerns top the list of parent anxieties today. And I think parents and including me, we’re looking for answers.

John Jantsch (08:22): You spent a great deal of this book talking about something you call mattering. So I think we probably ought to go into what you mean by that and what the implications are of not mattering. Yeah. Is that the way to say the opposite of that ?

Jennifer Wallace (08:37): Yeah. So I went for the book. I went in search of healthy strivers. I wanted to know what, if anything, these healthy achievers had in common. And

John Jantsch (08:46): I, so maybe you ought to define that. What a help. I mean, what is that

Jennifer Wallace (08:49): Achiever? So the way that I defined it, and I worked with a researcher at Baylor who helped me with this, was kids who were doing well. Despite the pressures by doing well, I meant that their parents, their peers, teachers at their school identified them as doing well as kids who were able to bounce back from disappointment, who had a good support system and often had a sense of purpose to what they were doing. What these healthy achievers had in common was a high level of mattering. And mattering is this idea of feeling valued for who we are at our core, by our families, by our friends, by our community. And also being dependent on to add meaningful value back to parents, to friends, to the community. So the kids who were doing a high level of mattering had this, um, kids who had this high level of mattering.

(09:45): It was like a protective shield. They still experienced step backs and failures, but they were able to bounce back from them because it wasn’t an indictment of who they were. They already felt valued. And the kids who were doing the worst felt like their mattering, their value was contingent on their performance. That I only matter when mattering has been around since the 1980s. It was originally conceptualized by Mars Rosenberg who brought us self-esteem. And what he found was that kids who had a high, a healthy level of self-esteem enjoyed a high level of mattering. They felt important and significant to their families. And mattering matters, not just in adolescents, but really throughout our lives. Mattering at midlife, mattering in retirement.

John Jantsch (10:28): Hey, marketing agency owners, you know, I can teach you the keys to doubling your business in just 90 days or your money back. Sound interesting. All you have to do is license our three step process that it’s gonna allow you to make your competitors irrelevant, charge a premium for your services and scale perhaps without adding overhead. And here’s the best part. You can license this entire system for your agency by simply participating in an upcoming agency certification intensive look, why create the wheel? Use a set of tools that took us over 20 years to create. And you can have ’em today. Check it out at dtm.world/certification. That’s dtm.world/certification.

(11:14): Alright, so I wanted to find this question. How has writing this book changed your parenting?

Jennifer Wallace (11:22): Oh my gosh. In so many ways. In so many ways. I feel so lucky that I had access to the greatest researchers on achievement and, you know, living a life of wellbeing and meaning. And so what I do now, I no longer solve. I have three teenagers. I do not solve for their happiness at home, which I used to do. I now solve for their mattering. So when they’re not acting like themselves, when they’re feeling down or anxious or off, I think, are they not feeling valued by the family? Are they not feeling valued by their peers? Are they not being dependent on to add value? Because a lot of kids in these high performing schools spend a lot of time building their resumes and hearing from their parents perhaps that they matter, but they lack social proof. And I think as parents, when we don’t give our kids the social proof that they matter, we make them more vulnerable to life’s ups and downs.

(12:20): But if a child, for example, oh, how’s a way to give a child social proof that they matter chores, meaningful chores at home? What are ways that your child, and I’ve thought about this in my own home, what are meaningful ways that my kids can give back to our family to improve our family wellbeing? Well, uh, two have become tech experts for me. They kind of go on off and on depending on who’s in the house. Um, my daughter, you know, uh, my older son was, uh, tasked with bringing my younger son to school, even on days that he might have off or a free period, he still had to go in early to take his brother. He was dependent on, we relied on him to keep the family functioning. Before I would go on reporting trips for this book, my daughter would, I have a bad reputation with tech at home.

(13:07): So my daughter would check my carry-on to make sure that I had all of my chargers, that my laptop was charged, that I had a battery, and the battery was charged for my recording device on my phone. So they, we in our home, we have figured out, we also have something that we leave on the refrigerator called family matters. And these are things that we’re trying to wrestle with as a family that we need solving. Like for example, one family matter was, you know, we have a closet really close to our front door, but for some reason the shoes never went in the closet. And instead they would just pile up in front of the front door. And I would trip every time my guests would trip coming in. And so a family matter was like, what could we do in our home to make the entry into our home a little smoother for ourselves and our guests? And so my son said, well, here’s why we don’t put our shoes in there because nobody organizes and they just throw their shoes in and then when you’re running late, you can’t grab your shoes. So he researched it and he found this shoe rack on Amazon that could easily put our shoes out and now the shoes go away because we solved it and he solved it. So,

John Jantsch (14:13): Alright. So how much of this idea of matter, because that, what you just described is obviously in the crush of parenting can be hard, but it’s just a good parenting skill, you know, to make people realize they matter for what they, you know, care about. But there’s a whole lot of parents driving children to believe that they will only matter if, and you know, I think some of the stress that a lot of kids feel is like, I don’t really wanna be a doctor , but that’s the only way I’m gonna matter. So how much of that mattering is mattering for your parents? And I’m gonna have a question in here somewhere, but do you see what I’m getting at

Jennifer Wallace (14:54): ? Well, I do. And I, so I did the 6,500 parent survey and I surveyed 500 young adults and I asked them about when they felt valued and appreciated by their parents, and 70% of them reported we had respon 500 respondents, ages 18 to 3570% of them said that they felt like they mattered more to their parents, that they were more valued and appreciated when they were doing well in school. Mm-hmm. , 50% of them thought they were more loved and 25% of them said they thought that a lot, the highest measure that our survey. So one in four kids thought their parents loved them more when they achieved. Yes. That was very hard to read as a parent. Yeah. Yeah. And I think we love, there’s no parent I met in doing this book that did not love their child unconditionally. Not one I’ve yet to meet one that says, oh no, they only matter when they get straight a’s .

(15:49): But what our kids are hearing in the messages, in the subtle messages we are sending them, is that they matter most when they’re doing well. And so what I would say to parents, if you think that, you know, if you’re wondering what are the messages that you’re sending in your house, Tina Payne Bryson, who’s a psychoanalyst, gave me four questions to ask to kind of take that temperature once she said, take a look at your child’s calendar. How are they spending their time outside of school? Take a look at how you spend money as it relates to your child. Number three, what? Take note of what you ask your child about every day. Mm-hmm. . And number four, notice what you argue with your child about. When you look at those four things, it will show you the message you are sending to your kids and how it can be interpreted as contingent mattering, contingent love.

John Jantsch (16:42): So a lot of things have changed, of course, in parenting technology is, you know, I hear from young parents now is, you know, is really the bane of their existence. Various forms. Social media can be thrown into that at, you know, what role do those, like seeing other people strive, you know, now because everybody wants to talk on Instagram about all their successes and things. How much competition, you know, striving creates some of this stress?

Jennifer Wallace (17:08): Oh, I think it has exacerbated it. So I don’t believe this, that the, I don’t believe social media and technology is the root, but I think it’s a magnifier and an accelerant. So I think the, the root of the anxiety and the loneliness and the depression, we are seeing this huge rise is this unmet need to matter for who we are at our core. And social media and technology just exacerbate that.

John Jantsch (17:34): How far can you take this? Trying to use the right words here. Where’s the healthy balance? Because some achievement is not all bad. . Oh my, this is totally, and so there would be a way to interpret this as just let ’em be kids. But where’s the balance? How do you find

Jennifer Wallace (17:50): Those? Not my message. Yeah. That’s definitely not my message. This is not an anti ambition, anti achievement book because I, I’m highly ambitious. I’m just ambitious for more than my work success. I’m in mm-hmm. , I’m ambitious as a wife. I wanna have a great marriage. I’m ambitious as a friend. I wanna have deep, meaningful friendships. I’m ambitious with my hobbies. I wanna be okay on the tennis court. So I want for our kids to, to be ambitious for more than just their work. But work is important if it, because it feeds us. And so I want kids to understand why their, you know, why they’re striving, what is it all for? It is not just to be better than other people, it’s to, as one school puts it that I interviewed, that I visited, not to be better than others, but to be better for others. Teaching kids how to connect achievement to making a greater impact on the world. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. I certainly don’t want a generation of anti ambitious kids that soci our society can’t take that. We need healthy ambition. And what I wanna give in our kids with this book is, uh, a way to motivate them with a healthy kind of fuel that will sustain them. Not a dirty fuel that will break them down. Yes.

John Jantsch (19:06): So, I know you don’t go into this in the book, a lot of my audience are business owners, entrepreneurs, they’re in toxic cultures inside of organizations. So really a lot of the work that you write about this could really apply to a workplace, couldn’t it?

Jennifer Wallace (19:19): Absolutely. I wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal in December about the power of mattering at work. The surgeon general names mattering as one of the key pillars to workplace wellbeing and mattering at work is, you know, a way to retain people. Yeah. It’s a way to encourage high performance. It’s, yeah, we need to humanize the workplace and mattering. What’s so great about the framework of mattering is that it’s intuitive and it’s actionable. Right? Mattering is about recognizing other people’s accomplishments, telling them why they matter to the organization. Get just slowing down enough to recognize them and treat them with dignity. That’s what mattering is.

John Jantsch (20:05): So now that we’re almost done, I’m gonna say, what do we do about this ? Yes. We spend a lot of time defining the problem. What’s the solution?

Jennifer Wallace (20:15): The solution is to bring back mattering. I mean, the way we are raising our kids today is so different than the way we raised them when you were growing up or when I was growing up. I mean, success was part of a child a, a childhood, but we weren’t defined by our successes or our failures, the way too many children are today. So I think the solution is at home to make your home a haven from the pressures and to lead with mattering and to lead with at every chance. Telling your kid, showing your kid that you value them for who they are at their core. Get a PhD in your child, find out what uniquely makes them tick. What are their strengths? One way to, one place to go. You could visit the mattering movement.com, which is, uh, nonprofit I co-founded that gives tools to parents and teachers and educators on how to foster cultures of mattering for young people.

John Jantsch (21:10): Awesome. Well, Jennifer, I appreciate you taking some time to stop by the Duct Tape Marketing podcast. You want to find out or you wanna share with people where they might connect with you and, uh, obviously find out more about Never Enough.

Jennifer Wallace (21:22): Oh, I’d love that. So you could head over to my website, jenniferbwallace.com, and I’m not sure when this is airing, but the book is coming out August 22nd, and lots of goodies and pre-orders. If this is running before then,

John Jantsch (21:35): Well th this’ll run probably around then, but also, you know, live out there on the podcast webs forever. So hopefully people will take some time to listen to this important topic and check out the book. And again, as I said, I appreciate you stopping by for a moment and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Jennifer Wallace (21:53): Excellent. Thank you so much.

John Jantsch (21:56): Hey, and one final thing before you go. You know how I talk about marketing strategy, strategy before tactics? Well, sometimes it can be hard to understand where you stand in that, what needs to be done with regard to creating a marketing strategy. So we created a free tool for you. It’s called the Marketing Strategy Assessment. You can find it @marketingassessment.co, not.com.co. Check out our free marketing assessment and learn where you are with your strategy today. That’s just marketing assessment.co. I’d love to chat with you about the results that you get.

John Jantsch (00:00): Hey, marketing agency owners, you know, I can teach you the keys to doubling your business in just 90 days or your money back. Sound interesting? All you have to do is license our three step process that it’s gonna allow you to make your competitors irrelevant, charge a premium for your services and scale perhaps without adding overhead. And here’s the best part. You can license this entire system for your agency by simply participating in an upcoming agency certification intensive. Look, why create the wheel? Use a set of tools that took us over 20 years to create. And you can have ’em today. Check it out at dtm.world/certification. That’s dtm.world/certification.

(00:55): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Mike Volkin. He is a serial entrepreneur, speaker, marketing consultant, fractional chief marketing officer, army veteran, and author of seven books. In addition, he has built and sold six of his own companies. And as a marketing leader, he specializes in helping businesses scale, particularly ones that help people, animals, and or the environment. So lots to unpack there. Welcome to the show, Mike. Yeah,

Mike Volkin (01:26): Yeah, thanks very much. It sounds like I have a productive life, but it’s not that exciting sometimes. But yeah.

John Jantsch (01:32): So, so let’s talk a little bit about, I’m gonna ask you about the chief marketing officer role. ’cause the fractional CMO role is something I wanna focus on. But tell me a little bit about the experience of building and selling six companies. I’m sure there’s a whole lot of people that you consult with that would like to do that as well.

Mike Volkin (01:49): Yeah, I think that what’s makes me a more complete marketer is being able to do something like that. But I’m always, I’ve always been the kind of like guy that’s had ideas in my head and I’m never short of execution. So, you know, I give things a try. I see what they stick. Some of them don’t. I, I said I built and sold six companies. Doesn’t mean I’ve only started six companies. A lot of ’em, I get to the finish line. I spent one time, I spent over 60,000 bringing a, a company to the starting lines to where I was gonna launch it. And I didn’t like the looks of it and I never launched it. You know, sometimes that happens, but sometimes it works out and you get to build a value, which is really fun. And you get to find buyers and then sell ’em off for a good chunk of money. So,

John Jantsch (02:24): So, so tell me also a little bit about other then, it’s a nice way to kind of have a niche people, animals in the environment Yeah. You list as a specific focus.

Mike Volkin (02:35): Yeah. I’ve listed . I, I’ve worked with a lot of companies, put it that way over, I’d say at least 600 by now over my 20 plus year career. Either doing strategy work from a marketing perspective or, or doing marketing leadership work. But you know, I’ve, overall that experience, I’ve learned that the companies that I’m most passionate about working with are companies that help people, animals, the, or the environment. It’s not to say I don’t like working with other companies. I like a lot of different types of industries and business models, but the ones that I most enjoy working with are ones that actually help people, animals of the environment. So that’s kind of my niche that I’ve developed.

John Jantsch (03:08): Yeah, so, so I guess that’s another way of saying you won’t work with, uh, companies that hurt people, animals in the environment. Right? That’s

Mike Volkin (03:14): Right. You know, I, I was contacted the other day about a, you know, from a company that does beef jerk and I’m like, you know what, I’m a vegetarian. I don’t wanna help you sell beef Turkey, . So I kind of turned them down, but I told ’em the reason why. So,

John Jantsch (03:24): Yeah. Yeah. O over long time ago, I had a cigarette company actually contacted me. Oh, that was kinda the same way. . Yeah. But it, it was a big company too. It was tempting, but yeah.

Mike Volkin (03:35): Yeah. As a marketer you can put your foot down ’cause you’re gonna help these companies grow and develop the culture and you kind of gotta be passionate a little bit about the service or the product that they’re offering, you know?

John Jantsch (03:44): Yeah, absolutely. So I started, in your intro, I talked about the idea that, uh, you are a fractional chief marketing officer, A CMO. If somebody comes to you, you, like, they’ve read your buy on, they say, Mike, what is that fractional chief marketing officer thing? How do you kind of neatly define that?

Mike Volkin (04:00): Yeah, it’s a tough one. The way I usually say it is that I work with companies that can’t afford or don’t have the ability to obtain a full-time chief marketing officer, which is often sometimes 300,000 plus a year. So I’m able to segment my day into six parts, so to speak, and one company gets one of those parts and I can work with four to six companies at any given time.

John Jantsch (04:24): Yeah, and to your point too, I think there’s a lot of companies that just don’t need the a full-time. That’s true, right? I mean, they need strategic input. They need somebody that’s guiding them, but that person doesn’t have to sit at a desk all day.

Mike Volkin (04:35): I know. Yeah. I know. A lot of times I talk myself out of a job because a company will just need me when they go to market to create the strategy, get some marketing processes going, and then they fire me or have me train a, a mid-level marketer to do what I executed and set up. You know,

John Jantsch (04:49): You’ve been doing this for a while, as have I, have you seen a change in the marketplace for accepting that, that idea? Very, we have leaned into the positioning a lot harder the last few years, even though we’ve always been doing it because it seems like small, mid-size businesses not only get the need for strategy, but I think the whole fractional employee, if you will, is really caught on, hasn’t it? Yeah.

Mike Volkin (05:11): Yeah. It’s been steadily growing ever since I’ve been doing it for like the last 10 years. In fact, when I was first doing it, I was calling it a part-time CMO because the word fractional wasn’t even around. And then covid hit, and then everybody got used to doing rero remote work and freelance work started getting really popular, even though it was popular beforehand. And now kind of fractional. CMO is just kind of a name, names stake. Yeah. I mean it’s not just CMO work, it’s fractional executive work C levels of all types. So it’s just, yeah.

John Jantsch (05:40): Yeah. I, yeah, the fractional C F O I think is probably been around longer than any other role because, you know, a lot of organizations, they need somebody to do their taxes, do their bookkeeping, but you know, they also need a little strategic advice on that, but rarely need a C F O O. What I’ve seen a lot in the last couple years also is a lot of organizations, I think, you know, let’s keep blaming stuff on the pandemic. Why don’t we, you know, kind of got caught without a strategy. You know, the market was good. They rose with , you know, the market. And then they realized, you know, we don’t have any way to stand out, you know, in the market or way to differentiate ourselves with our customers. So it seems like there’s hunger for this thing that we call strategy. Now, would you, have you seen that as well?

Mike Volkin (06:22): Yeah, absolutely. In fact, the, you know, a lot of people, obviously companies went under or had struggled with the pandemic, but my business was great as a fractional. CMO companies came to me saying, Hey, either one, we never paid attention to marketing before. And now’s our chance to kind of retool and start to strategize. And the other part is, you know, you know, let’s get creative, you know, help. Let’s hire you to help me get creative and let’s do something outta the box here. So I had some fun projects during covid and worked with companies I probably never would’ve normally. So I actually, I don’t wanna say I enjoyed the pandemic ’cause that’s not good to say, but from a fractional CMO standpoint, it was pretty beneficial for me. Y

John Jantsch (06:57): Yeah. And, and I think that will continue. I, we also had a lot of CMOs jump out of companies and decide they didn’t wanna work for ’em anymore. And so I think there’s more people hanging the fractional shingle out there, if you will. Yeah. Would, would you say there’s a, I don’t know if it’s size or industry, but would you say that there are companies that get to a certain point that need this role, maybe more than others?

Mike Volkin (07:22): I would say every size company needs a fractional cmo, but they’re certainly companies that are pre-revenue, or probably the ones that most needed are the ones that didn’t think they needed a marketing senior marketing leader. They got the marketing like, wait, our sales aren’t really what is expected and our, there’s the product market fit really isn’t there. Let’s hire somebody senior to figure out what’s going on. Uh, because a lot of entrepreneurs, as you know, have big goals. They’ll come to meet time and time again saying, we got a billion dollar idea, and this is gonna be massive and take equity in the company and this and that. But it rarely works out like that. Right. and not everybody’s a unicorn, or they wouldn’t be called unicorns. But, you know, even larger companies, I’ve worked with larger companies, it’s not common, but they might say, you know, our marketing director needs a fresh look at things, or we need you to keep tabs on our managers or something. So from a larger company perspective, I’m more into the project management and consulting from a, from an advice standpoint, from a a smaller to mid-size company. I come in as a fractional CMO with a strategy perspective to develop something and some strategy and some processes in the company. So my roles are vary depending on the size of the company. Yeah.

John Jantsch (08:30): You, you, you know, another type of company that I’ve seen over the years quite often is that company that is very founder sales driven. They grew nicely, 10, 15, $20 million company, but they plateaued because they don’t have that senior team at all. Or se uh, senior marketing person. I think this fractional CMO is very attractive to them as well, because they may be ready for a CMO, but the typically the founder has no idea what to tell the CMO to do, or if they’re doing a good job. And I, so I think that hold, doesn’t that hold ’em back? Sometimes it’s like, I’m not gonna hire that senior marketing person because, well, I don’t know what they’re, I don’t get marketing.

Mike Volkin (09:10): That’s the typical way a company grows, right? So they go to market, they have a very tight budget, you know, they do the lean business model thing, and they hire the minimum that they need to get a lot done. People wear a lot of hats. They might even have a marketing department with nobody actually specifically dedicated to marketing with any specific marketing skills. And then they realize they need the strategy. That’s my sweet spot. When I have a company that has data coming in, they have customers, they have, you know, things that I can look at and grab onto to create a strategy. And then that’s when things really start to take off. When they have processes, they know who they need to hire or need to upskill, and they really need my services at that point. So generally, my sweet spot is somewhere around 250,000 in revenue to 3 million in revenue is when companies decide I wanna scale, but I don’t have the team to do it. Or the strategy.

John Jantsch (09:55): Yeah. Yeah. And even in that range that you mentioned, I mean, you have different problems at $2 million than you did at 250,000 probably as well. And so if you’ve never dealt with those problems, even having an outside perspective is, is pretty important, isn’t it?

Mike Volkin (10:09): It’s always important. You know, one of the key freelancers that I hire for a lot of my projects or my clients that I work with are the marketers. Because yeah, marketing is so fast. It’s not, you know, back in the sixties it was like, here’s the yellow pages and let’s get listed. And that was marketing. Now it’s like, and even lately, it’s like, you gotta be on top of these AI programs and what they’re doing and their capabilities. It’s all these different specialties and marketing should just, I mean, there’s hundreds of ’em. It’s, you can niche down to anything now,

John Jantsch (10:34): Hey, marketing agency owners, you know, I can teach you the keys to doubling your business in just 90 days or your money back. Sound interesting. All you have to do is license our three step process that it’s gonna allow you to make your competitors irrelevant, charge a premium for your services and scale perhaps without adding overhead. And here’s the best part. You can license this entire system for your agency by simply participating in an upcoming agency certification intensive look, why create the wheel? Use a set of tools that took us over 20 years to create. And you can have ’em today, check it out at dtm.world/certification. That’s dtm.world/certification

(11:20): So if somebody asks you to come in and, you know, it’s like a typical thing. We need marketing or we need marketing help, we’re not really sure. Like our website’s not working. I mean, it’s always like some little tactic thing, right? Yeah. And you know, you’ve been doing this for 10 minutes, you realize no, that , they have a whole strategic problem. Where do you focus or how do you get them to realize? ’cause nobody ever wakes up and says, I need strategy, better go buy some strategy. Right? So how do you get them to realize that all their problems link back to being a strategic problem?

Mike Volkin (11:51): Yeah, that’s a really good question. So the, probably the most popular thing that I do when I first come into a company is I, I give ’em an audit. I just go through not just marketing, but every piece of data I can get ahold of. You know, even if they gimme financial statements, P and ls, whatever, I’ll, I’ll look at everything I can to get an overall glimpse of how data’s coming into the company, how it comes outta the company, and then I’ll look at the resources and especially the staff. You know, I wrote a, I wrote a book called The Business Success Formula, and it’s literally a formula on how to create business success. And the heavily, the most heavily weighted elements of that formula is the staff. It’s 50% more valuable or heavily weighted than any other, uh, formula, part of the formula.

(12:29): But typically what happens is, I’ll, I’ll give an audit. And then the thing about clients is they come to you and they don’t know what they need. They don’t know what they don’t know. So they might come to you with a problem and say, Hey, we need strategy. And I’ll say, wait, you’re not ready to scale yet. You don’t need a strategy. You need to fix some stuff first. So I go in and I, I tell them, usually there’s a clear communication problem with the way they’re portraying their products or their service on their website. It’s not hitting, right? It’s not resonating. Conversion rates are low, bounce rates are high. All those key performance indicators that indicate that you’re just not ready yet to scale. You need to refine some things. So typically what I do is I start with their website and their marketing materials and I refine the messaging. And that usually alone gives ’em a good 15, 20% boost in revenue and conversions right off the bat. ’cause a lot of companies don’t really think too hard about that kind of stuff until they realize there’s a plateau.

John Jantsch (13:18): Yeah, yeah. Their message is, here’s what we do, here’s what we sell. Right. ,

Mike Volkin (13:23): And then also the testing is really big too. I mean, that’s how Uber and the, these companies that just exploded to a billion dollar valuation, they just tested every little minutia of their company. So AB testing is big too. I’ll ask ’em, you know, what have you tried for your calls to action? What have you tried for your different menu options on your pricing plans? And they just don’t, they just threw stuff up. They never really did any research on their pricing, and they just thought, you know, that’s this, the price, it’s gonna be a hundred dollars a month. But they never really did any research or surveys or anything. So there’s that element to it.

John Jantsch (13:49): Yeah. Or, or worse yet, we find a lot of people just like, well, this is what everybody charges in, you know, free in our market, so we’ll just be competitors charge. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, all right. You mentioned, you know, here’s when I talk to people that, that decide to be fractional CMOs, one of the real challenges to the business model is you’re really just selling your time. I mean, or that can be one of the challenges is, is, you know, you’ve mentioned that there’s six companies that get a six to me. I mean, you may be highly paid for your time, but how do you scale a business like that? Or is it in your mind not really possible

Mike Volkin (14:26): To a certain point? The way I scale it is I have a, I’m not an agency, but I have a close-knit group of freelancers, depending on the skillset that I keep near and dear to my heart that I know do good work and deliver good value. And I don’t need a quote unquote babysit them too much. Like I know, right? Right. If I give them a task with very little effort or instructions, they’re gonna complete it. So I have about 20 to 30 of those people in my pocket. So when I create a strategy, I tell the team, listen, if you don’t have anybody staff that can do this, I have people on staff now I have my fee, my hourly fee, but if you want me to manage them and work with them to deliver the product, like I will charge more for that.

(15:00): So that’s the way I scale it, is I’ll either upcharge the freelancers that I recommend just because of I’m working with them and I’m managing them. So other than the hourly fee, I also charge that. And I also make a, a good amount of money from referrals too. Like if I can’t, I don’t fit every client that wants me to work with them. So I’ll say, listen, I know someone I used to work with, he’s great. Give him a call, he’s gonna work with your company, and then I’ll take a 10% cut or whatever from that freelancer I refer to. So

John Jantsch (15:26): Yeah. One of the things that we’ve been teaching for years is a repeatable system. As you mentioned, a lot of times people, they’ve had no strategic direction, so they don’t really need A CMO. They need what A CMO would’ve developed for them. Mm-hmm. , and then obviously somebody to orchestrate the implementation as you do. One of the things that I’ve found is, and you know, a lot of people will shoot me for this comment, but , you know, eight mo 80% of the companies out there need about 80% of the same thing, . And so I believe that there is a way to actually build a repeatable system for strategy development and then teach it to like account manager, you know, level folks rather than somebody that’s got 25 years of experience. Do you, does that sound like heresy to you?

Mike Volkin (16:07): No, because you’re actually speaking my language. This week I’m actually launching a business where it’s gonna be the first ever AI generated marketing strategy. So I’ve been working on it for quite some time, but, uh, it’s literally gives a company, and it’s just for marketing agencies. I’m not rolling it out to everybody. So a marketing agency would come, they answer 16 or so questions about their clients, and it would spit out a three month marketing strategy for them based on the answers. So, you know, not to plug myself, but it’s called your marketing expert.ai and it’s gonna be launched this Friday. So I’ve been working on it for a long time. So yes, I do think that strategy is yeah, repeatable. However, the, even I’ll be at my AI marketing strategy, it’s not gonna get you 100% there. There’s little nuances about every company and culture and the, the experience, the staff and like you just AI can’t do, no matter how good AI is gonna get that, you need to be able to get in there that last 10% and customize it.

John Jantsch (16:57): Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, I’ve been, obviously all marketers are, you know, talking about AI today and Yeah. You know, I tell people, I think the best that you can expect from it right now is it’s just an informed assistant. Mm-hmm. , it can do a lot of the legwork for you. You can do a lot of research for you, you can give you ideas to expand your thinking, but it, in the end, like you said, the first 10% and the last 10% are all you.

Mike Volkin (17:21): Yeah. AI is certainly not replacing anything. Um, but it certainly does help and the potential there for something more, you know, more development. Obviously ChatGPT 4 is awesome, but, you know, I think a lot of clients that come to me thinking that AI could solve their problems, and it’s really just more of a, a helpful tool to save money. It does cut down some of my time. Like if I need to, sure. You know, copyright a script or something real quick, I’ll throw it in the chat G B T before I hire a writer and I’ll hire the writer, look at it and review it type of thing. So it has certainly built some important processes in some businesses, but it’s certainly not replacing anything at least just yet. But it certainly will in the near future.

John Jantsch (17:56): One of my favorite content uses is, you know, you write a really great, you know, piece of content and then just let AI turn it into 18 formats. That’s right. So, so the writing’s good. The writing is yours, it’s original, it’s on point, you know, but then it takes that and gives you all the uses cut up. Yeah. Talk a little bit about, you mentioned this early on that you end up, because of your background, you’re able to actually kind of put your spin on some areas that people would think, well, that’s outside of marketing. I, you know, I tell people all the time, I think everything a business does is marketing, you know, , how they send out their invoices, you know, they’re hiring, I mean, their people obviously are, you know, are going to, you know, be a part of marketing or a part of the brand, you know, like it or not. How, how aggressively do you just say, Hey, we have to look at all these areas, or is it really a, because it could be, you know, it could be a really big rabbit hole to go down too sometimes for folks, but how important for you is it to address kind of the whole, you know, ecosystem of the business and how it impacts marketing?

Mike Volkin (18:55): Yeah, that’s a good question. So typically, I mean, there’s no less than three dozen different types of inbound marketing tactics and outbound, right? So, right. You can’t do them all at once or you’re gonna be spread too thin. So you have to look from a CMO standpoint, you have to look at the budget and also the resources. Like you can have the, a huge budget, but have no staff really to be able to execute it. So you have to balance that in with the, the strategy work you’re doing. But typically what I like to do is I like to have two, maybe three different marketing channels that a company is gonna perfect where they can say, I put in $10,000 in this marketing strategy and I got $40,000 r o i once you could do that repeatedly, then we move on to a different channel.

(19:32): And depending on your skills of your staff, we, it depends what, what channel we select, you know? I mean, if, if nobody likes to speak in front of a camera, I’m not gonna be selecting a YouTube strategy for you. Right? So, you know, that’s the kind of artwork that I don’t think AI is ever gonna be able to pick up, but that I come in as a CMO and I have to look at from both sides to say, okay, do we have the staff and resources, and then what channel do we pick based on that? So that’s the way I usually approach that. And I don’t usually have them do more than three different types of inbound marketing at once.

John Jantsch (20:00): So, so, so what about some of the areas that fall outside of that? So, I mean, we’ve all seen this, you, you know, you’re generating leads, they’re converting leads, and then, you know, service drops the ball and they’re going out the back door, you know, it’s like, oh, it’s marketing’s fault. You know, we’re not growing , right? Yeah. I mean, so how do you know, how do you stay disconnected or do you, you know, from that area that maybe isn’t seen as marketing?

Mike Volkin (20:25): Well, marketing, that’s a good question. Marketing and sales is always almost presented as one and the same for a company. Sure. Especially if it’s a sales led company. But honestly, before I ever launch a marketing campaign, I used to not, but now I do. I always look at the sales process, I’ll look at the sales conversions and I’ll, this guy isn’t cutting it, or this team isn’t cutting it, or they’re, they’re doing the wrong thing on the, on the calls to the clients. But ultimately you have to be able to, your scope of work, when you outline what needs to be done with the client, it has to clearly outline what marketing is and what sales is like. I just had a client the other day who wants me to hop on some, um, sales calls, and I’m like, I’ve never done that in my entire life. That’s not what marketing is. You just have to explain to ’em this is what marketing is and this is what sales is. And it’s different with every company. Sales isn’t necessarily sales from one company to the next. So in my contract that I send out to my clients, I have a, a long bulleted list of things that I do. And then I also have a, a list of things I don’t do in regards to sales, like taking phone calls from clients and customers.

John Jantsch (21:22): Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, Mike, you wanna tell, again, I appreciate you taking a few moments to drop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. You wanna tell people where they might connect with you and find out more about your work? Yeah,

Mike Volkin (21:31): Thanks. Always available for speaking gigs. mikevolkin.com, m i k e v o l k i n.com. And if you’re a marketing agency, you want some marketing strategy, my new website, yourmarketingexpert.ai.

John Jantsch (21:43): Awesome. Again, appreciate you stopping by the show and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road, Mike.

Mike Volkin (21:48): Alright, thanks so much, John. Talk to you soon. Hey,

John Jantsch (21:50): And one final thing before you go. You know how I talk about marketing strategy, strategy before tactics? Well, sometimes it can be hard to understand where you stand in that, what needs to be done with regard to creating a marketing strategy. So we created a free tool for you. It’s called the Marketing Strategy Assessment. You can find it @marketingassessment.co, not.com.co. Check out our free marketing assessment and learn where you are with your strategy today. That’s just marketingassessment.co. I’d love to chat with you about the results that you get.