nadosi.com

John Jantsch (00:01.187)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Amy Leneker. She is an optimistic, joy-seeking, recovering workaholic turned leadership consultant, speaker, and author. After 25 years of leadership, including more than a decade in C-suite, she left the traditional corporate life to help leaders and organizations break free from chronic stress and rediscover joy at work and life. So we’re going to talk about her.

New book called Cheers to Monday, the surprisingly simple method to lead and live with stress and more joy. Live with less stress. I probably shouldn’t leave that word out, should I? And more joy. So Amy, welcome to the show.

Amy Leneker (00:40.684)

Hahaha

Thanks for having me, it’s so good to see you.

John Jantsch (00:47.103)

So what does a recovering workaholic look like just so we can set the baseline? And maybe more importantly, when did you realize something’s gotta change?

Amy Leneker (00:58.284)

Yeah, thank you. So this is what a recovering workaholic looks like. And I didn’t realize it until I burnt out. And I burnt out in a really horrible, epic way. And that’s when I realized I had been working too much for too long. just that the way I was working wasn’t working. And so moving forward, I had to take a really different approach to my…

John Jantsch (01:01.272)

You

Amy Leneker (01:25.566)

the way I was balancing work and life was just, it was not sustainable. So now I call myself a recovering workaholic because I think that pull to overwork is one that so many people can relate to.

John Jantsch (01:38.617)

Well, and thus the title, right? The idea that some people really hate the thought of Monday, right? And so you’re kind of trying to change that. It’s funny, I remember a book a few years ago, I don’t know if, I don’t know really how big it was. I just remember the title stuck with me. It was called Stress for Success. And I think that, I think one of the core tenets of the book was if you didn’t have a little, you know, little stress in your life, you weren’t going to succeed. That’s a pretty common, whether it’s taught or not, that’s a pretty common conception, isn’t

Amy Leneker (01:44.426)

Yes!

Amy Leneker (01:54.792)

Amy Leneker (02:08.494)

Yes, and it’s true to a certain degree. So the problem is that there are good types of stress. It’s called eustress. It’s the kind of stress that makes you perform better. But that’s not always the kind of stress people are experiencing at work. This just happened to me recently where a leader had said almost what the premise of that book that you just described and said, well, stress is good. It’s good for me. It’s good for my team, but not when it moves into distress. That’s when our performance starts to go down.

So understanding the differences is really important.

John Jantsch (02:40.985)

So in Cheers to Money, you actually reveal a three-step method to transform stress. So you don’t have to give away the whole book, but maybe just kind of in your own words, what are the three steps?

Amy Leneker (02:53.058)

Sure, no, and I’d love to give it away. I think I’m a horrible businesswoman, but I’m a great coach.

John Jantsch (02:57.511)

Now, I just knew it would take a little too much time to do the whole three steps,

Amy Leneker (03:02.414)

Yeah, so really quickly you’ve got to see it. You’ve got to name everything contributing to stress at work. And then secondly, we sort it into five actionable categories. Most people think all work stress is the same, but it’s not. So we sort it into categories that you can actually do something with. And then in step three with solve, there is a matrix where depending on where your stressor is on that matrix, it gives you the next guiding step. So many folks just get stuck.

in overthinking or analysis paralysis. And so this is designed to take that away and to allow you to really.

John Jantsch (03:39.151)

So that first step, I think a lot of times people actually have trouble or don’t even realize the amount of stress they have in their life. There was a great, I always blow it, but there was a line in the Scarlet Letter that the main character, the terrible things that were going on in her life went away. And it was then that she realized, I didn’t realize the stress until it was removed. And then I felt like the unweighting.

Amy Leneker (04:07.531)

and

John Jantsch (04:09.241)

How do people actually dig in and find out what is causing stress?

Amy Leneker (04:13.718)

I think it’s really about the awareness and it’s about doing exactly what you just described of asking yourself those questions. The problem is that we are moving at a pace that is so fast right now, not just at work, but in the world that very few people, at least very few of the people I work with are taking the time to ask themselves that question. So it’s asking it of yourself. It’s creating time and space to do it on your team because the last thing we want to do is be surprised.

And I work with leaders all the time who are surprised by the sheer amount of stress that their teams have been carrying. And so to be able to figure that out before we’re in a crisis situation is ideal.

John Jantsch (04:56.343)

So let’s talk about teams. I know that we’ve been talking a little bit about leaders, but entire teams kind of feel that same stress. Could a group of people use this framework to, again, to say we could have a better team dynamic if we understood? And I know the short answer to that is yes, that they could.

Amy Leneker (05:23.363)

huh. Yeah.

John Jantsch (05:25.721)

How do you also give permission? Because I think a lot of times people just feel like, don’t want to admit I have this stress or I don’t want to admit I need help. So how do you use it in more of a group setting to get everybody to buy in?

Amy Leneker (05:39.254)

And it’s really one of my biggest hopes for the book. The way that it’s set up is that for each of the different ideas, there is an action item, whether you are a leader or an individual contributor, there’s an action if you’re on a team, and then there’s an action if you’re the entire organization. Because the challenge that I saw, not just in research, but in my own life, is that many leaders would read these books. And then leaders would go back into the team and try to do this thing, and the team had no idea what was happening, or they would push back against it.

So that’s exactly right. Someone take his library card away. So that’s not this book. This book is meant to be read by everyone because unfortunately stress is not an individual problem. It can’t be solved by one person doing something differently. It really is a group effort. And so that’s my biggest hope is that it’s not just about a person getting relief. It’s about entire organizations.

John Jantsch (06:08.687)

And they said, John read another book.

You

Amy Leneker (06:38.69)

feeling that relief of less stress and more joy.

John Jantsch (06:42.191)

So when you, and I think in your bio, I’m not sure if I read that point, but I you work with some very, very large companies, Fortune 100 type companies. What’s the most common pushback or resistance that you get when you come in and start talking about mental health and stress and joy?

Amy Leneker (07:00.066)

Well, it’s interesting. So there is, there’s two. So the biggest one is around time. We don’t have time. We don’t have time for this. The second one is around, it feels too touchy feely. I was working with a group of engineers recently. They’re not going to want to do any touchy feely stuff. Well, then you probably hired the wrong consultant first of all, but no, it actually went great. It was a great, it was a great thing. So what’s interesting to me though, is that so often I get calls when things are not going well.

And that’s true for most consultants. Nobody calls us just because they want to tell us the good news. just what we’re not. So usually by the time I’m brought in, stress is so high that it’s manifested in ways that are hurting the bottom line. It’s hurting what’s really important to the organization. And so those two main concern drivers are usually gone by the time that I’m.

John Jantsch (07:29.081)

Yeah. Sure.

We just want to just take it up one more notch, please.

John Jantsch (07:55.309)

So a great deal of your work is around this idea of a joy strategy to reduce stress.

Amy Leneker (08:00.578)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (08:03.289)

How does that differ from forced positivity?

Amy Leneker (08:07.242)

it is completely different. And I’m so glad that you asked because what we know, and we know this anecdotally, but I can actually back it up with data. led a national research study on the intersection of joy and stress in the modern workplace. And so we have data to back it up that toxic positivity grossly increases stress in organizations. so when, the hard thing,

John Jantsch (08:11.139)

you

Amy Leneker (08:31.926)

that I see with leaders. So many are well-intentioned, trying to do the right thing, but the toxic positivity, this forcing joy, this slap a smiley face sticker on it, it doesn’t just keep things where they are, it actually makes them worse. And so the two things are night and day, as far as I’m concerned and as far as what the research would say.

John Jantsch (08:53.967)

So, you know, most stress is probably caused and relieved by culture inside an organization. Would you say that’s a fairly accurate statement? So how does a workplace culture evolve, particularly if you’ve got employees that have been there a while, they’re pretty bought into this, it’s the way it is. Or maybe there’s even a fair amount of…

Amy Leneker (09:05.773)

Yes.

John Jantsch (09:21.071)

let’s say this gently, older generational leadership that says this is way it’s gonna be, how do you change, how do you evolve away from that hustle and burn?

Amy Leneker (09:30.989)

And I think that unfortunately the answer is not simple because I think sometimes the culture can change. There is actually a type of work stress called system stress, which is what you just described when the very systems that we operate within make our work harder. There’s also instances where it’s not going to change. And in those cases, that’s where as individuals, we have to do the cost benefit analysis of is this a place where I can be successful?

Can I be in this organ? Here’s a great example, John. So recently someone was telling me that they had landed their dream job. And she was describing how it was her dream job, but her boss didn’t listen to her. Her boss was shaming her in meetings. She was told she could take on this new project and then it was taken away from her. And I said, I’m a little confused because you say it’s your dream job, but everything you just described sounds like a nightmare to me.

John Jantsch (10:21.303)

Yeah

Amy Leneker (10:26.414)

And so even just that awareness of we name things one thing, but in reality, if there’s that much stress involved, it’s probably worth considering if it’s a good fit for you.

John Jantsch (10:39.343)

What do you, when you go into organizations, what have you found is the first thing that has to be repaired? I have an idea, but I’d love to hear your thought before somebody’s gonna accept, okay, yeah, we can make this change.

Amy Leneker (10:48.238)

Mm-hmm.

Amy Leneker (10:53.816)

Should we count to three and both say our answers to see if we have the right one? No, just kidding. So for me, it’s trust. Was that your guess? Yeah. When I work with organizations who are inviting me in, who want me to come work with them, if they’re not willing to do work on trust, then I decline the engagement because I cannot do work on stress if I can’t do work on trust. And organizations who don’t understand that, who aren’t willing to talk about that.

John Jantsch (10:55.887)

Okay, let’s go.

That’s what I was going to say! Ding ding ding ding ding!

Amy Leneker (11:22.42)

we’re not going to be a good match in terms of working together.

John Jantsch (11:27.535)

Where would this idea fit? mean, obviously most ideas like this have to come from the top, but what role would people operations or HR play in this?

Amy Leneker (11:40.303)

huge role and HR has a huge role, individuals also have a huge role and the only way it works is when everybody’s clear on what that role is. So we’ve done a lot of damage I believe in organizations where we’re telling people to take advantage of yoga on Wednesdays or leave early and get a massage. Like if self-care is a really good thing it’s not a stress strategy. You cannot self-care your way out of a toxic work environment and so to

John Jantsch (11:58.51)

you

Amy Leneker (12:07.979)

answer your question specifically about HR, there’s a huge role for HR in terms of is this a workplace that’s equitable? Is it fair? Are we ensuring we don’t have harassment, discrimination, retaliation, all of those things that create environments that you cannot unstress your way out of? And so I see HR as a really huge partner. I think some, and I say this because I’ve seen it happen, I think some go too far and try to delegate.

stress to HR. You can’t outsource it. You can’t hire me and outsource your stress. It really is an inside job. It’s the only way that it sticks. But HR is certainly a big piece of the puzzle.

John Jantsch (12:50.691)

So for somebody who’s listening to this, after they go buy your book, what’s one thing that you think, one practical change that a leader could say, okay, I’m gonna try this one thing and see what the impact is.

Amy Leneker (13:05.997)

Yeah. Yes, if they could only do one thing and they don’t even have to buy the book, though certainly again, terrible business woman. But if you only did one thing, it’s a really simple tool. Think of a stress ruler. So in your mind, picture a scale zero to 10 throughout the day, just check in how challenging is my stress.

And it’s just that simple, that little moment of awareness, whether you’re heading into a hard conversation or heading into a meeting with your team, just that moment of awareness where you can start to really understand where you are. You had asked earlier how I burn out. I would have no idea what my stress awareness was at that time. I had just tuned out to it. So if folks only did one thing, that’s what I would encourage them to do. Tune in and really figure out what that is for you.

John Jantsch (13:53.839)

So I’m sure in a sales conversation or when somebody’s inquiring about engaging your work, I’m sure the question of ROI comes up. so, A, how do you address that? Or B, do you actually have some statistics around retention and around productivity and around profitability?

Amy Leneker (14:02.893)

Yes.

Amy Leneker (14:14.455)

Yes, it comes up all the time. And I don’t know any consultants who don’t have to talk about what their ROI is. What usually happens the vast majority of time is I’m brought into an organization to work with a team, a specific team. Ideally, it’s the leadership team, because I love it when they go first, but that’s not often the case. But what happens inevitably is that three months down the road, six months down the road, folks are like, what’s going on? What’s happening to John’s team? What’s John doing over there?

And then suddenly I get a phone call from that person. So it usually is when other people in the organization see the tangible shift. This isn’t about showing up at work and being happy, though of course we want people to be happy. It’s about your work changes, your output changes, your absenteeism goes down, your productivity goes up. You actually start to see tangible changes.

when people are able to reengage, once that stress is lightened.

John Jantsch (15:14.169)

Talk a little bit about the generational differences. Certainly, I’m at the tail end of the baby boomers, so I hardly put myself quite in that group. But there was a kind hierarchical suck it up and your perk is you get paid for coming to work. That’s on one extreme. But then you certainly read a lot about Gen Z.

Amy Leneker (15:23.471)

Mm-hmm.

Amy Leneker (15:35.156)

Yeah. Uh-huh.

John Jantsch (15:43.535)

next generation, Gen AA, I guess we’re calling them, you know, that are really choosing work, not as a career, not as a job, but as, you know, as a part of their life fulfillment. So I would guess that to some degree, if you’re going to try to attract that workforce, this is an important topic, it?

Amy Leneker (16:04.077)

Yes, absolutely, because what you’re describing is really the culture of an organization. What are the expectations that I have? What are the behaviors that are in place? And we have different expectations. What I think is most important is to understand what we know from a systemic perspective. Like we can make generalizations about generations, but the most important thing leaders can do is to test those assumptions.

So rather than starting a new job and saying, John is of this generation, he must think this about joy, or he must think this about stress, using what we know from the data, using what we know from the research to inform those conversations, but then actually being curious, having enough trust between us that we can talk about that the way I’m doing something is actually causing you stress. So here’s a great example is that you can start to see differences in expectations of joy in generations.

So there are some who have more of an expectation that I am going to feel joyful at work. And others, I think about my dad. My dad never expected to feel joy, not just a day at work. He said to me, I never thought I would feel joy a minute at work. There was no expectation that I would ever feel joy at work. So again, not just a generational issue, but I can use that to inform conversations to see if that’s applying for other people too.

John Jantsch (17:12.559)

Yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (17:25.941)

So you’re only trying to help a billion people lead lives of stress. And I mean, that’s probably scratching the surface,

Amy Leneker (17:30.093)

Right, easy, Yes. Well, I hopefully helped you today so I can take one off that list. We’re gonna take off what?

John Jantsch (17:41.935)

So, all kidding aside, what does that future look

Amy Leneker (17:46.585)

What that looks like for me is that we are leading and living in a new way. This old compartmentalized way of thinking that how we are at work, we check ourselves, it’s not true because how we’re doing at work impacts how we’re doing at home and how we’re doing at home impacts how we’re doing at work. So my goal is that by creating healthier, happier workplaces, you’re not just making your work life better, you’re making your entire life better.

There was a recent study that showed 70 % of people who have gone through a recent divorce or a breakup attribute work stress as a key factor. And for Gen X, that number went up to 79. 79 % of people say that their work was a key factor in a divorce or a breakup. So we’ve got to do something different, not just for work, but for our families and our communities.

John Jantsch (18:43.577)

Well, that’s interesting because obviously there’s an entire body of work out there about this idea of work-life balance. But are you suggesting that a lot of people get it backwards?

Amy Leneker (18:49.954)

Yes.

Amy Leneker (18:54.145)

I am. And I have a training that is called work-life harmony, not balance. Because I think, especially for women, I think we’ve set ourselves up to fail. There is no way to achieve work-life balance. It just ends up in shame and blame and guilt and judgment. Work-life harmony is really different. Work-life harmony is how do I take these pieces of my life and put them in a way that’s going to be uniquely satisfactory to where I am in this season of my life.

John Jantsch (19:23.001)

Probably to date because your background is with larger corporations. We’ve talked a lot to that audience, I think. A lot of my listeners are entrepreneurs, very small businesses. How would you say that this relates to that?

Amy Leneker (19:27.108)

Mm-hmm.

Amy Leneker (19:37.123)

The skills are exactly the same. They are exactly the same. Whether you are in a boardroom at work or whether you are at happy hour with a friend or at the dinner table with your family, it’s the same conversation. The same conversation of where are we now? Where do we want to be? And is there a gap? Is there a gap in our stress? Is there a gap in the joy? And if there is, and I don’t, I’ve not yet participated in a conversation where there hasn’t been. I’m sure they’re out there. I’m sure, I’m sure they’re there somewhere.

John Jantsch (20:03.714)

you

Amy Leneker (20:06.735)

But if there’s a gap, then what are we going to do? Let’s come up with an agreement. Let’s come up with our plan of how we’re going to be very thoughtfully and intentionally doing something different. And in New Year’s a great time for these conversations. think there’s just something about when the calendar shifts that we have an opportunity to reflect on the old way versus a new way.

John Jantsch (20:28.269)

that you get to say we hired a new consultant and it’s her fault that we’re going through this now okay so let’s just let’s just get through it

Amy Leneker (20:30.863)

That’s true. Yes. Well, it’s funny you said that because I actually tell leaders to do that all the time. Leaders will say to me, you want me to ask my team if they’re stressed? I’m like, blame me. Say that you watch this podcast or you listen to this training. Blame me. Say that it’s weird. Say that it’s wacky. But I promise you, once you put that question out there, the data you get back is priceless.

John Jantsch (20:59.823)

So Amy, I appreciate you stopping by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Where would you invite people to connect with you, find out about your work, and obviously discover Cheers to Monday?

Amy Leneker (21:09.667)

Thank you, amyleniker.com. The book comes out March 24th, but it’s available everywhere. Amyleniker.com is the best way.

John Jantsch (21:17.775)

Well again, I appreciate you stopping by. Hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Amy Leneker (21:22.595)

Thanks, John.

John Jantsch (21:27.341)

Oops.

6 Marketing Trends You Need to Focus on in 2026

6 Marketing Trends You Need to Focus on in 2026 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch the full episode:

Episode Overview

In this solo episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, host John Jantsch shares six marketing trends he believes will shape 2026. Rather than speculative predictions, John focuses on developments that are already in motion and gaining momentum. He offers practical advice for businesses—especially local businesses—on how to leverage these trends for growth and visibility.

About the Host

John Jantsch is a marketing consultant, author, and creator of Duct Tape Marketing. With decades of experience helping small businesses grow, John is known for breaking down complex marketing concepts into actionable strategies. He hosts the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast to share insights, trends, and real-world advice for business owners and marketers.

Key Takeaways & Timestamped Highlights

00:00 – Introduction to the 2026 Trends

John sets expectations: these are not radical predictions, but important trends gaining traction that marketers should be preparing for.

01:30 – Trend #1: The Local Advantage Gets Louder

Local SEO and Google Business Profiles remain critical for local businesses. John emphasizes using your profile as a publishing platform—not just a directory listing—to enhance visibility in local search results. Ensure images, services, posts, reviews, and engagement are optimized. Local directories beyond Google can also influence local search signals.

03:48 – Trend #2: Real Is the New Viral

Authenticity wins. AI-generated content increases noise, but real, human stories, behind-the-scenes content, and genuine client experiences cut through the clutter. Avoid stock photos and generic messaging; share what only you can share.

06:13 – Trend #3: Mischief as a Marketing Strategy

Creative, unexpected, and offline experiences can generate buzz. Think handwritten notes, spontaneous events, unconventional collaborations, or local street team activities. These experiences fuel word-of-mouth and online amplification.

07:43 – Trend #4: Retention Is the New Acquisition

Retention and lifecycle marketing unlock profit. Instead of allocating most budget to new customer acquisition, prioritize onboarding, upsells, referrals, and reactivation. Loyal customers are a key source of sustainable revenue.

10:11 – Trend #5: The Rise of Trust Brokers

Move beyond big influencers. Micro-influencers and niche creators—trust brokers—hold sway within tightly engaged communities. Build long-term, reciprocal relationships rather than one-off sponsored posts.

11:30 – Trend #6: Be the Answer

Search is evolving from keyword ranking to fulfilling user intent. Produce content that genuinely answers questions, solves problems, and assists your ideal customer. Useful content attracts engaged visitors rather than fleeting traffic.

Memorable Quotes from the Episode

“If everything from your organization starts to sound like it came from a robot, you’re going to have trouble standing out.”

“Retention isn’t just a marketing technique, it’s where the real money hides in most businesses.”

“Be the answer. Give people content that actually helps them solve problems.”

Actionable Strategies From the Episode

Audit and update your Google Business Profile this week—treat it as an active content channel.
Commit to publishing at least one piece of authentic, behind-the-scenes content weekly.
Brainstorm one unexpected offline marketing activity each quarter to spark word-of-mouth.
Evaluate your customer journey—identify retention opportunities and lifecycle touchpoints.
Identify 3–5 niche creators aligned with your audience and develop partnership ideas.
Create content that answers real customer questions rather than chasing search algorithms.

Connect with John Jantsch

Visit the Duct Tape Marketing website for additional resources, tools, and episode archives. Follow John on LinkedIn for daily insights into marketing strategy and trends.

AI Works Best as a Teammate, Not a Tool

AI Works Best as a Teammate, Not a Tool written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch the full episode:

Episode Overview

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, John Jantsch speaks with Lauren Esposito, Chief Marketing Officer at Asymbl. They explore how the meaning of “hybrid workforce” has changed in the age of AI, why digital labor should be treated like human teammates, and what organizational shifts are necessary to succeed in the future of work.

Guest Bio – Lauren Esposito

Lauren Esposito is the Chief Marketing Officer at Asymbl, a workforce orchestration company helping businesses scale hybrid teams made of human and digital labor. Previously, she led global brand and media strategy at Salesforce and holds an MBA from Butler University.

Key Takeaways

Hybrid Workforce Redefined: AI-powered digital workers are now part of the team—not just tools.
Digital Labor as Teammates: To get ROI, organizations must manage and coach digital workers like employees.
Organizational Shift: Success requires business and IT collaboration; leaders must take ownership of AI implementation.
Start Small: Begin where you already use tech, then scale use cases as trust and understanding grow.
Customer Trust Matters: Automations must reduce friction and preserve human connection options.

Great Moments (Time-Stamped)

00:43 – Asymbl’s mission: hybrid workforces with human + digital talent
01:35 – Rethinking what “hybrid” means in the age of AI
03:32 – The balance between fear and opportunity with AI
05:41 – Why business leaders must own AI success
10:27 – How to start implementing digital workers without disruption
13:41 – Marketing digital labor to stakeholders and customers
16:47 – Siloed data and the road to autonomous agents
19:51 – Predicting the future of hiring and hybrid teams

Quotes

“When treated like part of your team, digital labor delivers more ROI than just using AI tools.”

“Start small. You don’t have to redesign everything—just get one job off your plate and build from there.”

Connect with Lauren Esposito and Assemble

Website: Asymbl LinkedIn: Lauren Esposito

Duct Tape Transcript

John Jantsch (00:01.421)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Lauren Esposito. She’s a chief marketing officer at Asymbl, a leading global marketing strategies to drive brand growth. Before Assemble, she spent over a decade at Salesforce in senior leadership roles, including vice president of global brands and media and shaping brand strategy and audience engagement. Lauren holds an MBA from Butler University and combines strategic leadership with creative execution.

Elevator symbols market position. So, Lauren, welcome to the show.

Lauren Esposito (00:36.462)

Thank you, John. Excited to be here.

John Jantsch (00:38.367)

So I guess we ought to say you don’t have to give the full pitch, but let’s set the table. What’s a simple

Lauren Esposito (00:43.682)

Yeah, absolutely. So Assemble is a workforce orchestration company. And we bring together recruiting technology so you can hire your human workers, a digital labor advisory practice so you can onboard digital workers alongside them, and then really strong platform and technology expertise that brings it all together. And so essentially, we’re here to help businesses design, manage, and scale a hybrid workforce of both human and digital workers to drive more meaningful business impact.

John Jantsch (01:11.639)

You’ve practiced that. That was brilliant. So let’s, I’m glad you mentioned hybrid workforce, because that was going to be my first question. Pre-pandemic, maybe even somewhat before that, a hybrid workforce was some that worked from home and some that worked in the office. So how has that completely changed in the age of AI? The term hybrid workforce means something different now, doesn’t

Lauren Esposito (01:35.434)

Yes, definitely it does. mean, technology has been around for quite some time now, as well as our globalization and ability to work from anywhere. In this new frame, we kind of realized this term had new meaning in going through the AI explosion ourselves, right? As a small business with high growth, we were trying to implement a lot of these tools and technologies and agentic solutions.

And like many of us, we’re struggling with that. And we had a big aha moment when we realized it’s not just a tool or a piece of technology. If we think about this as a worker, like another part of our team, just like we would a new hire or an employee, we got so much more value and ROI out of it. So for us, that’s how we’re thinking about hybrid workforces too now. And so your digital labor.

John Jantsch (02:13.283)

Mm-hmm.

Lauren Esposito (02:25.868)

as a part of your workforce. It’s yes, the tools and technology, but it’s the way you implement and orchestrate that knowledge, that intelligence, that memory to get work done in the places you are.

John Jantsch (02:37.461)

Yeah, I see so many people that originally kind of latched onto AI tools as like, here’s just, here’s another tool to do things faster. And all they really were doing was moving one set of tactics to another bucket, so to speak. And in some cases working harder than ever, you know, rather than getting the efficiencies. So, you know, a lot of the talk around AI, you’re calling them digital workers, but you know, lot of people are still very much about, AI is going to replace people. And there’s a real risk and there’s a real fear. In fact, I

I read an article recently that said something like 93 % of workers use AI today and only about 27 % of them are admitting it. You know, because I think there’s this real fear that that’s going to wipe out the company. So you as somebody that’s trying to help people balance both of those, I mean, you’re bringing digital workers to places where humans work today. So how do you kind of balance that with, hey, this is going to be OK?

Lauren Esposito (03:32.407)

No, it’s a great question. I mean, full transparency had some of the similar feelings and thoughts myself. What I have experienced firsthand, though, I think is there are so many different AI solutions and tools offering features and functionality out there. And in these siloed ways, they’re far, far from replacing us, in my opinion, because

you know, humans are still very relational and the way that we transact still requires, right? Like strategic thinking, creative innovation, relationships, right? We’ve been promising in marketing for how long, you know, right message at the right time and the right channel. And we’re still hardly, you know what I mean? Delivering on that in a one-to-one way. And while I do think AI again, takes us a step closer to that, you know, it doesn’t speak with

emotion and empathy and compassion. doesn’t meet us, you know, from a design perspective there. So we really see it as a tool that’s elevating, you know, humans and employees into doing things that it feels more meaningful. I don’t have to be bogged down, you know, in data and in deep analysis or, you know, my research process can be elevated or some automations can be more trusted.

But there’s still a requirement for me to participate. And in this hybrid ecosystem, it really puts accountability on you as an individual to say, I’m going to build a digital worker to be a part of this team, just like I would an employee, I’m going to review, meet, coach, manage that individual, that worker. And so there’s really an intricate relationship in what we’ve seen that companies are getting success out of it. It can’t be a set it and forget it.

And AI can just do it on its own and it’s going to take over and replace us. Now, who’s to say where the technology goes and what that unlocks and the impact? Of course, there’s impact with any evolution, right, that we go through. But I’m choosing to remain an optimist in this one.

John Jantsch (05:41.781)

So if we’re gonna move from robots to teammates, which is what you’re suggesting, do there have to be some pretty big organizational shifts to make that real? I culturally, operationally, you’re gonna have a 30 minute one-on-one with your digital coworker. mean, how do organizations have to change to actually get a new mindset?

Lauren Esposito (05:44.674)

Hmm

Lauren Esposito (06:05.398)

I think it’s the best question you could have asked. Right now, a lot of organizations are seeing like, okay, it’s another tool of technology. My IT team is going to decide what right tools and technology are potentially the best for me, approve it, implement it, and set it up for me. The reality though is those configurations, implementations of those tools don’t often result in like really meaningful impact.

I’m sure you can get an outline or research, right? But they’re not really taking over jobs to be done and full outputs because it doesn’t have the memory and the context. So the biggest change is business leaders and right coming to the table to be a partner with IT and take accountability for the success of the AI. And what that means is, my IT department, you know, we just launched an SDR agent, you know, a couple months ago to help us right with our sales capacity. Our IT team.

didn’t have the experience to understand what a human SDR goes through, right, to drive high quality engagement and get results back. They needed us to come to the table and psychologically kind of map that out so that we could then say, well, what needs to be documented? What information? Where do we want to engage with that? You know, it’s not just in our CRM system, which is Salesforce. We also wanted to be notified in Slack when our SDR was closing the lead, right? Just like the rest of our sales team engages. So it’s thinking, you know, what,

What knowledge and information do they need? Where in the flow of work, right? Are they going to operate? And then yeah, you do need ongoing coaching. So that’s why we keep talking about as a part of your workforce strategy, because you’re, know, human employees don’t perform on day one. So you probably can’t expect your right digital workers to do that either. And it takes time to understand what you’ve provided to them. What are they capable of doing and not doing what

John Jantsch (07:45.591)

Yeah.

Lauren Esposito (07:55.734)

additional coaching and feedback might they need? What other information sources might they need to be connected to and so on? So we do have one-to-ones with our digital workers every week reviewing that output and optimization that we can feedback. But the cultural change for me was really when business leaders came to the table and realized like they’re fully responsible for this and IT is their partner and not the other way around.

John Jantsch (08:20.929)

Yeah, yeah, I’ve seen many people advise to don’t stick AI adoption in IT, you know, and forget it and say they’re gonna, you because it just won’t, it won’t work. On that same similar point, at least, I think a lot of people think, okay, I have a function to be done, I’m going to hire somebody for that, here’s going to be their job description. You know, okay, great, it’s gonna be a digital person, but you know, here’s the job description. So

Do they have to actually, do you believe that there needs to be different conversations about how work actually gets done? Who’s doing what? How roles are divided? This may be totally different than what we’ve done before because we’re dealing with a whole different flow and process.

Lauren Esposito (09:06.253)

Yeah, I mean, we’re so new to it that I think absolutely as we continue to iterate and learn and every business is different, right? We could all be using the same tools, but we still maintain competitive advantages because of the way we get work done, right? And the way that we think about our processes or the information and the individuality and uniqueness, right? That those employees bring. So similarly, you know, we did have to take a step back because

Conversationally, humans can exchange information, retain it, right? And act accordingly. And that’s not how digital workers do. You really have to document that. And that’s a new muscle, right? To really think about, well, how would I take that action? And what did I need to take that action? I needed access. I needed information. I needed maybe an approval, right? What have you. So it really is a reflection, you know, as much of like,

knowledge and information as process and, and efficiency that you want the beauty of it though. Because it does sound like a lot of work and it in upfront, I think it is right, start small, you don’t have to, to resolve your entire workforce and change your entire ways of doing things by any means, right? It’s just saying, hey, if I could get this one job to be done off my plate, it would free me up right to maybe take on some other so start there.

John Jantsch (10:13.027)

Yeah.

Lauren Esposito (10:27.631)

Start with where your technology investments already exist. Almost everyone has an AI application or solution for you. Build around what you know and play with it so you can learn. It’s there that then the aha moments happen and you can start to contextualize how vast this could go and prioritize your biggest use cases to drive value back for the business.

John Jantsch (10:51.619)

And how, I mean, what role does specialization play? Because again, you know, we’ve all worked in organizations where this is your job, but we also need you to take sales calls. And we also need you to design, you know, brochures. we, so now we can actually have five digital workers, right, that are very specialized in doing those tasks. So we have to think about the org chart differently, don’t we?

Lauren Esposito (11:03.918)

Yeah.

Absolutely. Yep. Yeah. There are so many shared, yeah, like actions, you know, across different functions, especially in small business, we all wear many hats.

And we’re kind of working on this idea and philosophy of digital twinning. So we’ve got an entire group of really seasoned and highly experts in our engineering department delivering value for our customers and solving some of their biggest business needs. Well, each of those engineers has different speciality and are called in for different things. So while the foundation of their digital twin

is similar in terms of what access it might have and what task it can perform and what information it has access to. The way they coach and manage it, right, varies. And so it also doesn’t have to be one-to-one. can now, I can partner, right, with my chief revenue officer, for example, on our SDR, you know, digital worker. And we both can kind of feed in.

and then they can expand much more easily and are much more adaptable than our human workforce. Right. So the benefit being, you know, capacity constraints are, you know, not fully removed, but, somewhat. and so you can think about that. Now the limitations I think of AI too, or just as if you’ve ever gone super deep, you know, in one of your chats, the more focused your engagement with a specific tool on a task, right. The more quality comes out of that. And that’s kind of the idea of like.

Lauren Esposito (12:40.735)

you might have to orchestrate multiple tools for different tasks, right, to accumulate what a worker is able to accomplish to drive an outcome. And that’s the, I think that’s a bigger shift than getting too lost in, who manages it and who’s this worker for? It’s really about just the collaboration to say, you know, here’s the outcomes we want to deliver and what, how do we best orchestrate the technology to help us do that?

John Jantsch (13:05.391)

your building’s

Lauren Esposito (13:07.388)

It’s not, you hear that? I’m here in Brooklyn and I live next to the fire department, so.

John Jantsch (13:08.879)

Hahaha

So you hear that multiple times a day, don’t you? So how are companies positioning this idea of hybrid workers as a way that kind of resonates with all the stakeholders that they might have to keep happy? Because again, we’re still seeing people have moved, but we’re still seeing fear, head in the sand, total adoption. mean, people are all over the place. So how are from a marketing perspective?

Lauren Esposito (13:14.892)

I do.

John Jantsch (13:41.155)

Because also, know, one of the stakeholders, big stakeholders, the customer. What does the customer think about the fact that a digital SDR is talking

Lauren Esposito (13:50.117)

No, a couple things inside of that. It’s so new that I don’t know that we’re seeing organizations adopt this yet. I am actually in the lab. We really came to market 90 days ago with this point of view, even a little bit more to start hitting it hard. And we were for sure ahead of the curve, but I’m seeing trends catch up to that. You’re seeing Salesforce talk about digital labor now. You’re seeing some of these big, you know, Accenture is starting to lean into this. I think.

John Jantsch (13:57.591)

Yeah.

Lauren Esposito (14:18.628)

The idea that we have to pivot who’s responsible for that investment and ongoing success is really big. the benefit too being once you kind of have that institutional knowledge.

it doesn’t go away, right? When your employees walk out the door, that can leave a gap in information on how things get done and set you back until you rehire. Here, you’re building that kind of brain, if you will, and that gets to stay with the business long term. So you’re retaining that, and that makes onboarding and future iterations there more successful. I do think we haven’t figured out where our consumer preference is yet.

you know, on how much we want to engage with it, right? I mean, I still call customer service and hit pound and zero over and over again, right? Until I can get a human on the line. And I imagine for many of us that might not change unless the experience really is so smooth, you know what I mean? That I’m getting exactly what I look for. you know, that’ll be an ebb and a flow, but I do believe that as humans, we’re always going to want an alternate path.

John Jantsch (15:07.747)

Yeah.

Lauren Esposito (15:30.448)

you know, into that human connection and relationship. And how do we as brands make sure that, you know, we think about that and give people choices and not just stick them, you know what I mean, in a workflow that they can’t get out of and being mindful of that consumer choice and empowerment, I think can build trust not only with your AI, right, or digital worker that they’re interfacing long term with you as the brand as well.

John Jantsch (15:41.251)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (15:54.115)

Yeah, think the way I look at it is automations have to be a convenience for the user and not add friction. A lot of early on people have said, oh, we don’t have to talk to people if we put this up here. And so I think that that’s how people experience it. But I think companies are looking, because there are definitely times when that’s more convenient. Scheduling an appointment, doing things I don’t need to get on the phone for that, that’s more convenient. That’s a great use of it. One of the things that

Early on, think a lot of people adopted AI and it was very much, hey, this is an assistant. And we’re moving now towards, at least the talk is, we’re moving now towards autonomous agents who will actually be able to not only take action but make decisions. How big is the problem of siloed data making that a reality?

Lauren Esposito (16:47.414)

I mean, incredibly, right? Large. The reality is you still have to educate and train any of these tools and digital workers. So you have to have the right data. I think that it’s a big mix between cleaning it and kind of pile it and starting fresh of what you have and figuring out how to add things into it. But

Eventually what I think is kind of interesting and an example here to put it in practicality, right? We have some digital workers who are like assistants, right? Instead of having like an executive assistant right now. And so every meeting that I record, right? That assistant has access to and it summarizes those insights and then it can propose recommendations, right? hey, you got to take these actions today, Lauren. You said these were your priorities or what have you for the week.

And every time I keep loading in more conversations, let’s say I’ve changed a decision in a meeting and we decided to pivot on a project or do this, that digital worker is retaining that knowledge as well. And so I do think that bringing our current data in is much more difficult than the data that maybe you can start fresh with and like I said, just start feeding at my meetings.

But once it’s structured in a way that can be read and found and orchestrated into that brain successfully, I do think that the action and the autonomous part of it is quite intriguing in certain capacities to help propose and potentially resolve blockers and things like that and code.

John Jantsch (18:28.045)

Well, I think it’s more fundamental than that. totally agree with you. here’s what my experience is, even with very large companies. CRM’s here, sales pipeline’s here, who we have to follow up in customer service tickets is here, and none of these talk to each other, which is really going to make the dream of the autonomous agent pretty tough.

Lauren Esposito (18:42.853)

Yep. Yep.

Lauren Esposito (18:50.371)

Yeah, well, I don’t know if it’s like, I mean, fully autonomous, sure, but we have our digital workers who are working across all of those systems. And I completely am trustworthy of its accuracy and what it’s sharing with me. So I do think we’ve made a huge leap forward. know, it’s the how much of that

do you really want it running your business too? How much creativity, innovate? You don’t want to set it and forget it. So I think that there’s this, yeah, there’s the evolution aspect of just the natural way that we do business and we grow and we change and we pivot and we stay fresh. How do we empower ourselves to keep that up while agents are taking on the right work at the right time?

John Jantsch (19:42.723)

Well, and I think what’s going to be the real hurdle is trust. You know, how much are we going to trust that agent to make purchases for us, you know, and for businesses, you know, to like, oh, inventory is at this level, go buy, you know. And I mean, when are we going to fully trust that, you know, that level? Last question for you. Looking out five years, you could say five months if you want, because who knows? But what’s the workplace going to look like? How’s it going to be fundamentally different from today?

Lauren Esposito (19:46.063)

Mm.

Lauren Esposito (19:51.557)

Yep.

Lauren Esposito (20:13.263)

Yeah, we hired a chief digital labor officer. I think, you know, not that everyone is going to go out and hire one of those, but I do think that we’re going to see new ways of thinking about how to get work done for sure, which will require an evolution in the way that we hire, we train, we onboard and we skill our workforce.

John Jantsch (20:18.433)

Okay.

Lauren Esposito (20:40.843)

at the end of the day, talent and individuals, you can run from technology, but the more that you adapt, right, you’re going to be better fit for where I think the market is headed. And then at a high level, it’ll, I personally think you’re going to be thinking about digital workers for jobs before you think about the way that you hire human workers. And then the roles that you hire those humans in are going to look different because they’re going to be overseeing digital teammates.

you know, not just, you know, individual contributors or people leaders of people. So I really think it’s going to be a hybrid.

John Jantsch (21:16.003)

Well, as I hear you talk about a chief digital worker officer, think that’s what you said, labor officer, where does that lead to HR? And where are people ops? Yeah.

Lauren Esposito (21:22.609)

labor officer, yeah.

Yeah, and a core partner, right? Because the people ops side of it is very relational. And for us, have digital recruiters and digital people, digital workers that are helping, but they come together to think about, okay, great, where are we going to be making our workforce investments? What does that look like? There’s still a cost to these digital workers, right? And consumption and access and licensing, just like you would. it becomes a…

you know, a conversation, you know, in talent and the right jobs to be done being done by the right individuals, but it’s very much a partnership. I’ve heard a couple of people talk, well, this chief people officer are going to go away. And now that they’re the chief AI officer. I mean, that would be a very disruptive and scary future. I think if we start abandoning, you know what I mean? Our people tend to be our highest commodity of differentiation and value to our customers.

John Jantsch (22:25.891)

Well, Lauren, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Is there anywhere you’d invite people to connect with you and learn more about Assemble?

Lauren Esposito (22:34.393)

Of course, thanks for having me, John. Folks can find Assemble at assemble.com. That’s A-S-Y-M-B-L.com or Lauren Esposito and you can find me on LinkedIn.

John Jantsch (22:45.603)

Again, appreciate you stopping by and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Lauren Esposito (22:50.266)

Appreciate it, John. Thank you.

Top 10 Duct Tape Marketing Podcast Episodes of 2025

Top 10 Duct Tape Marketing Podcast Episodes of 2025 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

As we close out 2025, I’ve been reflecting on the conversations, insights, and big ideas that shaped this year on the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. The pace of change in marketing hasn’t slowed for a second, and small businesses continue to reinvent, experiment, and build stronger connections with the people they serve. This year was filled with curiosity, innovation, and a whole lot of practical wisdom, and I was fortunate to sit down with guests who brought their best thinking to the table.

So I pulled together a collection of the episodes that really stood out. These were listener favorites that delivered serious value, sparked fresh thinking, and encouraged business owners to take action. If any of these slipped past you, now’s a great moment to dive in and catch up.

And if you’re looking for more great conversations, you can always explore the full library of episodes.

1. Todd Satterson- How Books Can Shape Success

Todd Sattersten (1)

Todd Sattersten is a publishing veteran and CEO of Bard Press. In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, Todd and I talk about his new book 100 Books for Work and Life, how he chose the top 100, and why intentional reading can shape your business and personal growth.

Biggest takeaway:

The right book at the right time can be transformational. Todd shares why great books challenge your thinking, offer clarity, and give you practical tools you can use right away.

2. Laura Ries– The Secret Weapon of Great Brands

Laura Ries

Laura Ries is a globally recognized branding strategist, bestselling author, and chairwoman of RIES. In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, Laura and I talk about her new book The Strategic Enemy and why every brand needs a clear enemy to create focus, contrast, and memorable positioning.

Biggest takeaway:

Brands win when they take a stand. Laura explains how defining a real enemy gives your brand energy, differentiation, and clarity. Whether it is an outdated process, a stale category, or “the way it has always been done,” the right enemy helps your brand break through and create meaning in the market.

3. John Jantsch– How to Stay Visible in the AI Search Era

In this solo episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I break down how search is changing and why traditional SEO is giving way to something bigger: search visibility. With AI search, zero click results, and evolving Google behavior, it is no longer just about ranking for keywords. It is about showing up wherever answers are being delivered.

Biggest takeaway:

Google has become an answer engine. To stay visible, your content needs to offer direct answers, demonstrate real experience and expertise, and appear across multiple touchpoints like snippets, FAQs, Google Business, and long-tail queries. Search visibility is now about trust, structure, and presence across the entire digital ecosystem.

4. Sara Nay– Empowering Small Business with AI & Strategy

Sara Nay (5)

Sara Nay is the CEO of Duct Tape Marketing and author of Unchained: Breaking Free From Broken Marketing Models. In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, Sara and I talk about why the traditional agency model no longer works and how her “anti-agency” approach helps small businesses take back ownership of their marketing through strategy, leadership, and smart use of AI.

Biggest takeaway:

Small businesses grow faster when they stop renting their marketing and start owning it. Sara explains how a strategy-first, AI-enabled model creates clarity, control, and sustainable growth, and why fractional CMOs and empowered teams are the future of modern marketing.

5. Rand Fishkin– The Zero-Click Internet: What It Means for Your Marketing Strategy

Rand Fishkin

Rand Fishkin is the co-founder and CEO of SparkToro and one of the most influential voices in SEO and digital marketing. In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, Rand and I talk about the rise of zero-click searches and how Google’s shift toward answering questions directly is changing the way businesses earn visibility online.

Biggest takeaway:

Zero-click is the new reality. With most searches ending without a website visit, Rand explains why brands must show up where their audiences already spend time, such as social platforms, communities, and Google’s own surfaces, rather than relying only on traditional organic traffic.

6. MichaelAaron Flicker– The Brain Science Behind Successful Marketing

Michael Aaron Flicker

MichaelAaron Flicker is the founder and CEO of XenoPsi Ventures and co-founder of the Consumer Behavior Lab. In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, MichaelAaron and I talk about his new book Hacking the Human Mind and how the world’s best brands use behavioral science to create memorable marketing, build loyalty, and shape customer decisions.

Biggest takeaway:

Great marketing works because it taps into human behavior. MichaelAaron explains why concrete messaging, peak moments, specificity, and real behavioral science principles make brands more persuasive and more memorable. When marketers understand how people think and decide, they can create smarter, more effective campaigns without relying on guesswork.

7. Rhea Allen– Why Branding Begins With Your Team Culture

Rhea Allen

Rhea Allen is the president and CEO of Pepper Shock Media and host of the Marketing Expedition Podcast. In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, Rhea and Sara Nay talk about how internal culture and external brand are deeply connected, why storytelling and authenticity matter, and how engaged teams drive both retention and marketing success.

Biggest takeaway:

Your brand starts with your people. Rhea explains how aligning HR and marketing, involving the team in core values, and sharing real stories creates stronger culture, more authentic marketing, and a brand that resonates inside and out.

8. Ernie Ross– Trust, Storytelling, and the Future of Brands

Ernie Ross

Ernie Ross is a global brand strategist, founder of Ross Rethink, and creator of the Intangence methodology. In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, Ernie and I talk about his new book Intangence and why the most powerful value in business comes from trust, meaning, and authentic human connection.

Biggest takeaway:

Meaning creates value. Ernie explains how brands that focus on purpose, emotion, and real human connection rise above feature-driven marketing. Trust, authenticity, and strong stories are what spark loyalty, resonance, and long-term success.

9. Manick Bhan– AI, Content Strategy, and Building a Brand That Lasts

Manick Bhan is the founder and CTO of Search Atlas, an advanced SEO and content marketing platform used by thousands of agencies and brands. In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, Manick and I talk about how search is evolving, why high-intent content matters, and how marketers can adapt as AI reshapes the way people discover and trust brands.

Biggest takeaway:

SEO is shifting from reporting to action. Manick explains why tools must help marketers make real improvements, not just gather data, and why brands that focus on quality content, topical authority, and strong community will thrive as AI-powered search changes how buyers convert.

10. Andy Crestodina– AI, Analytics & Content Strategy: The Future of Digital Marketing

Andy Crestodina

Andy Crestodina is the co-founder and CMO of Orbit Media Studios and a leading voice in content strategy, SEO, and analytics. In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, Andy and I talk about how AI is reshaping digital marketing while reinforcing the lasting importance of creativity, relationships, and high-quality content.

Biggest takeaway:

AI can improve performance, but human creativity still wins. Andy explains why strong points of view, original research, visual content, and platform-native publishing are becoming essential as SEO shifts and AI transforms how audiences discover and engage with brands.

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Is your favorite episode on the list? If not, we’d love to hear which one you enjoyed listening to the most!

For our podcast audience, we can’t thank you enough for your support over the years!

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Why Your Business Needs a Marketing Operating System

Why Your Business Needs a Marketing Operating System written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Listen to the full episode:

Episode Overview

In this solo episode, John Jantsch breaks down a major innovation in small business marketing: the Marketing Operating System. After decades of helping businesses grow with a strategy-first approach, John explains why it is no longer enough to just run campaigns or chase tactics.

He introduces the Marketing Pyramid, a strategic spine that aligns business strategy, brand development, customer experience, and team execution. You will learn about the 7 stages required to install a complete, repeatable, and scalable system that drives consistent results. From eliminating chaos to integrating AI, this episode gives you a roadmap to transform your marketing from random acts into a finely tuned system.

If your marketing feels disjointed or overly complex, this episode is your blueprint for clarity and structure.

Guest Bio

John Jantsch is a marketing consultant, speaker, and the bestselling author behind Duct Tape Marketing, The Referral Engine, and The Ultimate Marketing Engine. As the founder of the Duct Tape Marketing System, John has spent over 30 years helping small businesses implement simple, effective marketing strategies that actually work. His latest innovation, the Marketing Operating System, offers a new way for businesses to install a fully integrated marketing framework that scales.

Key Takeaways

Why marketing needs to operate like every other system in your business
The Marketing Pyramid: business, brand, growth, experience, tech, and team strategies
The 7 Stages of a Marketing Operating System
How to integrate AI into marketing workflows using structured playbooks
Why disconnected tactics kill momentum
The importance of rhythm, ownership, and optimization in modern marketing
How to build a system that drives accountability, visibility, and consistency

The 7 Stages of a Marketing Operating System

Strategy First Core – Foundation based on business goals, client journey, and strategic clarity
Campaign Builder System – Plan 90-day campaigns with a brand, growth, and experience engine
Workstream Engine – SOPs, OKRs, team roles, and execution rhythms
AI-Powered Marketing Hub – AI-integrated content, comms, and creative systems
Scorecards and Signals – A performance dashboard built on actionable data
Momentum Meetings – Monthly alignment and accountability sessions
Optimization Loop – Ongoing feedback, iteration, and system tuning

Timestamps

00:00 – Why this might be the last solo show of 2025
01:09 – What is a Marketing Operating System?
02:00 – The Marketing Pyramid: Strategy as the Spine
04:30 – Business, Brand, Growth, and Experience Strategies
06:56 – The 7 Stages of Building the System
09:21 – Integrating AI and building marketing playbooks
11:34 – Momentum meetings and continuous optimization
13:13 – What happens next and how to get started

Quotes

“Marketing should be a system, not a series of random acts.” – John Jantsch

“Disconnected tactics make it impossible to scale. Strategy brings clarity and confidence.” – John Jantsch

Duct Tape Transcript

John Jantsch (00:00.91)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and no guest today. I am going to do a solo show. Might be one of my last solo shows of 2025, depending upon when you’re listening to this. I’m going to call this, Why Your Business Needs a Marketing Operating System. So if you’ve been listening for any amount of time at all, you’ve certainly heard me say marketing is a system. It starts with strategy before tactics. I’ve been saying that for 30 years.

And in some ways, we have brought a systematic approach to marketing. Have we brought a system? Probably not always. It’s probably been more of a concept because we just really haven’t had the tools necessary to do it. But I believe we are approaching that point where we do have the actual tools to create a tangible, installable

marketing operating system in a business. I’m very excited about that. That’s really going to be the next chapter of duct tape marketing. If you will, we are going to go very heavily into that. What I think is a needed innovation in the market. I will still say that we encounter every single day businesses that feel chaotic, disconnected, even if they look outwardly like, yeah, they’re succeeding. They’re growing.

Internally, when you get in there, there’s a lot of things going on that nobody’s really sure of. There’s not a lot of planning. There’s certainly tactic of the week still going on. And every now and then you get lucky and some of that stuff works, but it certainly makes it difficult to scale a business in that way. And that’s really what I want to tackle today. Kind of the common pain points that we encounter. Random tactics, too many tools, inconsistent results, no clear message or direction. Boy, that one’s a killer.

A lot of businesses, when I talk about marketing as a system, maybe they have financial systems, they have hiring systems, have systems, whatever it is they make out the door. But then when it comes to marketing, it just feels like such a foreign concept. And I think it’s just a normal concept we’ve been taught to really think differently about. So before I get into the stages of the system, what the system might look like in your world or in any business’s world.

John Jantsch (02:19.95)

It has to be built on something that is strategic. And so we’ve been using for the last couple of years something I call the marketing pyramid. And it’s a framework to really, it’s really in a lot of ways the spine of the system. That it’s the structure that really informs kind of how we build it. And a lot of times when people talk about strategy, certainly when they talk about marketing strategy,

It’s like they do it in a vacuum. I mean, a lot of times when they’re talking about a marketing strategy, they’re really just talking about how are going to get business? And that’s a gross strategy, maybe, but that’s all. Here’s the idea behind the pyramid is that you need to build from the bottom up. And that first rung of the strategy pyramid begins with business strategy. I what is the vision, values, goals? What’s even the business model? mean, if you’re talking about, we need to grow 20 percent. Well, why? How?

Is that going to happen and so? That without a conversation about that or at least some analysis of that It’s very difficult for you to think in terms of like here’s gonna be our marketing strategy because your marketing strategy is supposed to Solve for the all of that right it’s like if these are our objectives of this is where we’re trying to go the marketing strategy is gonna just support that it’s not going to just be this thing that we operate and hope we get to where we’re going and inside of

the marketing strategy, there are really three layers. It’s not just about getting the phone to ring. It’s not just about getting leads. The first layer, well, the three layers are brand strategy, growth strategy, which I mentioned, and customer experience strategy. Those are all a combined whole really that go into a marketing strategy. And so many people leave out the first one and the third one. So that brand strategy is, you know, what’s your message? What’s your identity? What’s your positioning? What’s your proof?

You know, what do you want the market to be thinking about you out there? And do you have a defensible competitive difference that you can really go out there and understand who your ICP is, your ideal client profile, and understand who you’re competing with for that ideal client profile so that you can send the right message and really have a strong brand strategy. Now, after that, this is the part most people understand.

John Jantsch (04:40.654)

is the growth strategy and that’s really the offers, the channels of how you’re going to generate leads. Ultimately, how you’re going to convert leads as well. And then the third part that I see people quite often missing and not thinking about is the customer experience strategy. How are we going to retain customers? How are we going to generate referrals? How are we going to wow our customers?

so that they are out there actually talking about us and advocating for doing work with us. Those all need to just be planned things. So we need to build now, start building objectives around what we want to accomplish in each of those strategies. Now, if we’re going to build a true marketing operating system, one of the core pieces that this is going to be built on is a system strategy. So what’s our tool stack?

What are the processes? How do we create automation? Increasingly, what role is AI going to play in our creating systems? Because this is really how you get this repeatable system in place is by actually having a plan, having that business and marketing strategy that is then going to be executed by who’s doing things. And then of course, that’s the final tip of the pyramid, and that’s the team strategy. What are the roles? What’s the rhythm?

How is AI going to be integrated into your team? So that’s the spine. That’s ultimately what we want to have a plan for. And then we build the marketing operating system in stages to actually execute on that. There isn’t any way for me to put a pyramid down in structure in front of you and say, here, fill out all of this and we’ll have this. That’s the ultimate goal to actually have this completed marketing pyramid that’s going to be our guide.

but we’re going to build it in, and we’re going to build each of those pieces in stages. So, what are the seven stages? I like seven as a number. Seems like I’ve used a lot in the things that we’ve created. So, the first one is the strategy first core. This is something we’ve been doing for 25 years, and it’s still a crucial element. I don’t care what we’re developing, it’s a crucial element, always will be.

John Jantsch (06:56.302)

tools come, platforms come and go, AI is here this week, who knows what’s here next week, strategy, the strategy core, and fundamentally what we’re here to do as marketers, I don’t think will ever change. So we have to build that, we have to diagnose the gaps, we have to clarify the message, we have to define the client journey, and we have to tie those back, and really part of the first part before we’d ever get started is we would have an in-depth analysis.

with your help, of course, as the business owner on what the business strategy is. And quite frankly, that may be a discussion that we have to start because you’ve never really looked at a long term approach to your overall business strategy. So we may start there before we actually start or maybe as the discovery phase of the strategy first core. The second component then is what we call the campaign builder system. So I mean, this is where we’re going to plan.

you know what 90 day campaigns would look like. But we’re going to start here with building your brand engine and your growth engine and your customer experience engine because those are going to be the things that we’re going to launch really out there. We have to have those built in order to build campaigns. Stage number three, the third component is what we are calling the work stream engine. So this is where we’re going to assign roles, SOPs, rhythms for execution.

probably build OKRs, which is an objective key result tool that I think Google was, or people at Google were most noted for developing that. It’s great tool for actually breaking things down into small chunks so you can get to it. Then the next stage we’re gonna go to really is the AI powered marketing hub. I believe that, you know, a lot of people are still looking at AI as a tool or they’re looking at it as a

platform or as a way to do automation or as a way to do things faster and more efficiently, I ultimately believe that it’s going to be just baked into how we work as a company. let’s say you have Google Workspace or you have Microsoft Teams. Today, a lot of the communication across organizations, even outward communication, say via Gmail, things of that nature, is all just baked into those kind of

John Jantsch (09:21.304)

tools. mean, they basically are workplace tools that everybody uses in the organization. They all communicate with each other. They all collaborate. Well, AI is going to be baked in. Increasingly, it is being baked into those tools. But what we’re going to build is the AI marketing hub. So you’ll have playbooks now for how’s the newsletter going to be written? What are blog posts going to be? How are we going to do social? What are our ads going to look like? I believe we can use the AI tools to build a framework inside of an organization so that

no matter who’s operating the system inside the organization, they will actually have the playbooks to do it correctly and to use AI in a way that’s branded and in your voice and trained, but can also produce a lot of output that is part of the marketing plan.

Now, the fifth stage is actually, we’re calling it scorecards and signals. So this is gonna be your dashboard. It’s gonna be how you track performance without really getting into the vanity metrics. It’s gonna be, we’re gonna measure what matters, right? Now, this comes in the fifth stage, but frankly, we are using data throughout. I mean, when we are looking at an ICP, we’re looking at data. When we’re looking at core messaging, we’re looking at data. So…

Data becomes this fifth stage where we’re going to build the ultimate output tool, but we’re going to be baking data into the culture and the DNA of the organization. I think that that’s a real gap for lot of organizations. They don’t know what to measure. They aren’t measuring anything, or they’re measuring stuff that’s so complex it doesn’t really give any insight. And so we’re going to bake it into every stage, but then you’re going to have actually the dashboard as part of that.

One of the things that’s really important is this is not no system is set and forget it. We’ve got to tune it. We’ve got to maintain it. We’ve got to give it oil. All the metaphors you want to use there. And so we’re going to actually have what we call the momentum meeting. So it would be a very structured monthly check in that’s going to drive accountability and alignment and reassign ownership, reassign responsibility on what’s going on.

John Jantsch (11:34.688)

assess where you are on meeting your system output. And then the last piece, I think any good system, you’re basically building the thing and hoping you got it right. And so constant optimization is probably, many of you probably experienced that in your own business. mean, we’re every 90 days tweaking something or maybe.

changing direction almost in a large way or to some degree or in a new product offering or something. So there’s this constant feedback and review to refine and improve what’s working that we call the optimization loop.

Once we build that, what happens after that? It’s our belief that clear strategy is something that doesn’t change every month, but your marketing systems run consistently. Campaigns generate results, not noise. the key is inside the organization, think everybody knows what their role is. Everybody knows what their objectives are. Everybody has…

has visibility into what’s working, what’s not working. And I think that confidence across the team should really soar. Even if the team includes outside folks that are third party suppliers, partners, vendors, it really gives them confidence to know that there is a plan that they’re not just doing their one little part out there. So.

John Jantsch (13:13.922)

What’s next?

This is something that we are building now for clients. And it’s something that if it makes sense for you, we would love to show you this system.

Why Great Employees Don’t Always Make Great Managers

Why Great Employees Don’t Always Make Great Managers written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Listen to the full episode:

Episode Overview:

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, host John Jantsch talks with Ashley Herd — founder of Manager Method and former Head of HR at McKinsey — about what it really takes to be an effective, empathetic manager. Herd argues that many managers are “accidental”: promoted because they excelled individually, without any training for leadership. She shares her practical framework for building management skills, focusing on clear expectations, real communication, coaching over commanding, and leading in a way that supports people rather than burns them out.

Guest: Ashley Herd

Founder, Manager Method | Former Head of HR, McKinsey
Ashley Herd is the founder of Manager Method, a leadership-development firm dedicated to helping managers build confidence, support their teams, and deliver results — without sacrificing people’s well‑being. With experience in corporate sales, law, and HR, Ashley brings a unique “career quilt” perspective rooted in both strategy and empathy.

Key Takeaways:

Many managers are promoted for high performance, not leadership potential — and they often get no training.
Clear expectations aren’t just goals; they’re conversations about roles, impact, and support.
One-on-one meetings should go beyond status updates to explore challenges, growth, and engagement.
Feedback (positive and critical) should be delivered with empathy, not ego — using Herd’s “Pause → Consider → Act” model.
Great managers act like coaches, not bosses — empowering their teams to lead and grow.
Small actions — like explaining why you hired someone — can transform trust and motivation.

Notable Moments:

00:55 – Why promoting top performers can backfire without proper leadership training.
06:20 – Herd explains how to define and communicate truly “clear expectations.”
10:50 – The underestimated power of one-on-one meetings for trust and retention.
13:06 – Herd’s “Pause–Consider–Act” framework for giving effective feedback.
15:40 – The value of treating managers as coaches and culture builders.
20:16 – A simple tip: always tell new hires why they were chosen.

Memorable Quotes:

“A lot of managers don’t know what to do. They weren’t given any training — no guidance on how to coach, delegate, or handle people issues.”

“If you make time for a one-on-one and show up on time, it sends such a strong signal. That alone shows you care more than you think.”

Resources & Links:

The Manager Method – Book + Discussion Guide
ManagerMethod.com
Follow Ashley on LinkedIn

Duct Tape Transcript

John Jantsch (00:01.683)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duck Date Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Ashley Herd. She’s the founder of Manager Method and a former head of HR for McKinsey. She’s known for her practical real-world approach to leadership, helps managers build their skills they need to lead confidently, support their teams and get results without burning people out. We’re gonna talk about her new book, The Manager Method, a practical framework to lead, support and get.

So actually welcome to the show.

Ashley Herd (00:32.93)

Thank you so much, John. So glad to be here. Love the podcast.

John Jantsch (00:36.143)

So most of the managers I know become managers by accident. That’s a typical company. It’s like, you’re the best salesperson. You’re now the sales manager. what problems do you see that that dynamic kind of creates for organizations? mean, is there a better, more practical way to actually create managers?

Ashley Herd (01:02.158)

I think there is. mean, one is that’s often the case. In sales is the perfect example of that because it is the place where I think it can be the hardest mindset. Maybe marketing too, because it’s very creative. But when you have sales in particular, you’re super competitive, you’re used to be a number one. All of a sudden you’re promoted to sales manager, often because organizations think they’re great, they’ll teach everybody win-win. We’re going to turn everyone into little versions of them. Then all of sudden they become a manager.

John Jantsch (01:03.878)

me.

Ashley Herd (01:28.312)

They’re not used to sharing their tips. They don’t remember how they first got started. They’re coaching poor performers that they have no empathy for whatsoever. And now they’re dealing with time off issues, people issues, all of these people things. It often that win-win really quickly becomes a lose-lose. And so I do think it’s important for organizations to really think about career paths. mean, sales is one in particular. Now, I think you see plenty of individuals that have been an individual contributor in sales and have thrived in it.

or that have gone into a sales manager role and happily gone back into an individual contributor role. And so some of it is thinking about who really is interested in becoming a manager, but developing people and giving them the tools. mean, the first tale of Zoldyf’s time I see is people promoted just because they’re good at their job. The second is people promoted and then you don’t get any sort of resources and training to actually know how to coach and delegate, understand why those matter and how to do them and how to think about.

the people issues that all of sudden they’re popping up that you have no idea what to do with.

John Jantsch (02:28.595)

There’s a, I don’t know if you’re a baseball fan, but this is a really common thing in a lot of sports. The best managers were never the best players. They were usually like second string catcher that just like watched the game and saw every angle of the game. know, but the superstars actually didn’t make great managers because they were used to having everybody carry their bags for example. So does that dynamic kind of play out in sort of the manager in a business?

Ashley Herd (02:36.278)

Yes.

Ashley Herd (02:55.066)

It does. it’s the same when you see that with coaches. The other day I was just watching Packers Bills and so they said neither Josh Allen nor Aaron Rodgers. They hadn’t even as individual contributors, they hadn’t gotten D1 scholarships. So people can be developed over time and managers, absolutely see that. And so I think that absolutely resonates because one of the things that I say sometimes, one is if you’re thinking about becoming a manager, go in your local community Facebook group and just look at the discussions that go on and think,

what I want to manage those people in the workplace. And if you have some interest in it, then you’re probably set out to be a manager because you’re going to work with those different people dynamics. But the second is, what’s important to you? Is it your gold stars, your recognition, or is it about your teams? Because I actually think it’s really OK for a lot of people. They realize through this process how much individual recognition means to them. And that’s where it can be important to that

As a manager, you can really shift. And so all of a sudden giving people, giving other people kudos, talking about their names, a really easy trap for people is to think, well, if I start doing that, all of sudden I’m not needed. And they don’t realize that one of the best things that can happen is for senior leaders to know all different names of the people on your team. And they come first to mind rather than you because you’re creating those pathways and getting the results that matter and building those careers as well.

John Jantsch (04:20.947)

So this is ostensibly a marketing show, but I have anything that has to do with business, to me, relates to marketing. So I have a lot of leadership book authors. I have a lot of management book authors on this show. So when you set out to write this book, did you say to yourself, here’s the gap that I’m going to fill? Like, here’s what nobody else has figured out and written about?

Ashley Herd (04:41.582)

Well, of course I did, because everyone thinks that way, John. But what I saw, my path was a little unique. started in sales. I actually started, like when I talk about sales, I was in a very high pressure corporate sales role, cold calling CFOs to start with, long before I went into legal and HR. And so I have a sense of what it can be like working in some of those different functions. But what I saw frequently, whether sales or legal or HR, often it wasn’t

managers doing the wrong thing or saying the wrong thing necessarily. It was managers that didn’t know what to do. And so they weren’t giving feedback to their team members. They weren’t having conversations. They really weren’t. And so what I set out to do was really to help have a practical way to think about your team, think about results, but also give ideas of what to do and say in situations. That can be a lot easier for someone to take an example and put that into their own voice. And that’s the gap that I was really trying to fill with the manager method.

John Jantsch (05:39.709)

So I often say this about a lot of situations that the key to success is usually expectations. And you write in the book about the idea that clear expectations is one of the foundational elements. But that’s one of those things that you can say clear expectations. And that’s going to mean 100 things to 100 different people. And most of us probably just have our default. It’s like, well, yeah, I told them to get the job done.

wasn’t that clear? Right? So how do you help people kind of become, know, clearer when their kind of default personality is, doesn’t everybody get it?

Ashley Herd (06:21.326)

It’s great. mean, I clear expectations is very similar to strategic in these terms that people are told you need to do, especially as a manager, whether you’re hiring your first team member or you have a group. But clear expectations, I think it’s really important to break that down into a conversation. so ways I do that, and one resource that you’ll see on the site as part of the book, is to have that conversation with your teams of literally breaking it down. This is how your role plays into the overall organization. If you do well in it,

This is how it impacts others. And if you don’t, for some reason, this is how it impacts others as well. Now, clear expectations, this is whether you can quantify things. Like if you’re in sales, for example, like, OK, your book is, you you’re supposed to bring in 750K a year. And that’s where a lot of sales leaders in particular stop. They give you your goal, you move on with life. OK, now I’m going to scramble and do everything I can call every relative I’ve ever heard of to try to make that happen. But so the part of clear expectations is that conversation of

Here are things you can do. Here are tips from others. This is what you can figure out for yourself, and this is the support that you’ll have. It’s putting the layers beneath that. To say to someone, for example, if on Monday, okay, your goal is 15K this week to bring it in. And then it’s having the conversation and saying, what are you going to be doing on Tuesday? What’s Wednesday going to look like? And what about Thursday that can make that happen? What could possibly get in the way?

that could hurt that. What can you do to prevent that? And so it’s having some of those additional questions and conversation to really have it bring it to life rather than just saying the goal and having them figure out the what, where, how, why, and everything else in between.

John Jantsch (07:59.827)

And that kind of goes both ways though, right? I mean, it’s on that person who’s being told what the expectation is to say that’s not realistic, right? I mean, to have that dialogue. And I think that’s where sometimes, I know in my own experience where, you know, I’ve set what I thought were clear expectations, the person on the other side is saying that they can, wait, that’s gonna happen, but they don’t tell me. And so all of sudden, again, it’s like neither of us are meeting the right expectations. So.

Ashley Herd (08:19.917)

Yeah.

Ashley Herd (08:25.583)

Yeah, I think it’s true. And I’ve seen it in some ways, like when I was a lawyer, for example, people would say this and say, OK, we need we need this contract. We need this contract negotiated right now. Today we need it signed. I say, OK, well, this other side’s had it for about two months and you’re giving it to me. And again, what I can do is this is really important to move around or not. What also is in little teeny tiny print at the bottom that you don’t see, because like the CEO says it’s important. I’m like, OK, but we also want to have credibility. And so if all of a sudden we’re turning things around, it can make us look

whether it’s desperate or now this is something that’s not a priority, it’s being able to have those conversations. And for me, some of the best working environments, whether it’s a small team or large, is being able to have that two-way street and talk about what else is going on and not just saying yes and sacrificing your life to get it done.

John Jantsch (09:11.323)

So you just slipped in another career actually. How many careers have you had?

Ashley Herd (09:15.437)

Well, in the book, John, I call it a career quilt. mean, those that, especially those, you know, those that are that are working with your fractional CMO agency system and that, you people often and now more than ever, I do think are trying to figure out what do I want to do when I grow up, whether you are five years old or you are 75 years old and trying to figure those things out. And so, you know, I I had I probably thought for a while I would be a lawyer, but it was the things that I learned.

Right now, what I do is I post videos on social media because I have thick skin from cold calling CFOs. And so those comments don’t hurt me like they may not have if I didn’t get hung up on the phone by CFOs. so having that background of legal where things go wrong, sales of understanding revenue and the pressures people are under, NHR about really how to harness the power of people and importance on people’s work and life, those have led me to where I am today, my very unique career quilt.

John Jantsch (10:14.163)

So let’s get down to one of the, probably the biggies for lot of managers, the one-on-one meeting. And I hate to do this, but I’m just gonna use myself as like you’re a bad example for how to fix this. But a lot of my one-on-ones end up turning into status reports. It’s like, here’s all the stuff. where are we on this? Where are we this? And then there’s no time for like, what do you want out of your career?

you know, kind of conversation. how important is it that you have those separate meetings, that you have that one-on-one that really drives engagement?

Ashley Herd (10:50.607)

I think a one-on-one is really important to get work done. And it’s so much more important for your team member than you sometimes realize. What I see frequently in my very scientific comments on social media, if I do a video on one-on-ones, people will say, I don’t even know what that is. My manager never shows up to them. Or if they show up, they’re 25 minutes late to a 30 minute meeting. And so for team members, it actually really is a signal. If you as a manager, you make that time and you show up on time, barring emergency or on, it sends such a strong signal, just that.

John Jantsch (10:57.128)

Ashley Herd (11:20.143)

aspect alone because often your team members, especially if it’s really stretched out your one-on-one time, they may have 37 things on their list and they’re just dying to get through it. But it really is a balance. One thing that can help is having, whether it’s a shared agenda or a shared document between those. the status, because it is important to know where things are. But if you use that and it can take habits to get into it and use it both ways, so the employee is adding information and the manager is actually looking at it in advance.

then you can knock out a lot of that normal back and forth of where are things, what should we do next? And put that into more of the document, talk through any call out areas. But on the flip side, it would also feel super awkward every week to have your manager say, look, what do you want in your career? You’re like, well, I’ve had the same job for three and a half years and my answer’s the same that it’s been since, you know, since 2021. But is to think about having some of those questions. And that’s why I can help to say things like, what’s something that you could use some advice on?

John Jantsch (12:03.463)

Yeah, right.

Ashley Herd (12:18.739)

Or as a manager, here’s a decision I’m making. What are your, what are your, I’d love your takes on it. Because a lot of times when you get into leadership, you can feel really alone because outside of your organization, you might have a network, you might not. But if you talk to your team members and open up about your reality, the decisions you’re making, maybe if things you’re struggling with and get their thoughts, they’re likely to tell something at some point that you haven’t thought of before, but you’re also that’s, that can help with career development much more than a more forced conversation.

John Jantsch (12:49.373)

So, somewhat related feedback, both good and bad, that we should provide, hopefully we are providing. Do you have kind of a framework for the way to give honest feedback that doesn’t put people immediately on the defensive?

Ashley Herd (13:06.319)

So in the book, I actually have the framework, this pause, consider, act framework, a three-part framework for any decision as a manager. And what that means is pause to just, whether it’s taking a beat, one of the biggest issues I see as a manager is thinking you have to know all the answers and just going straight ahead and reacting in the moment. But sometimes it’s taking that pause. But also consider and act. And so frequently what I see of people not giving either more critical feedback or more positive,

The critical feedback is they don’t want to, it sounds so mean, it feels so awkward. In the consider aspect, can think, you know, that’s a lot about yourself. You’re, more worried about yourself and how you’ll be perceived. But think on the flip side, especially you may have, like, let’s say you have a team member and you’re like, they’ve been doing this for years. No one has told them this. Why, why would I say something now? But think to the flip side of this is someone that could have used this feedback years ago. If you can be the person that delivers that, that can change the course of the rest of their career.

and be the person that they really look to as a leader. so instead of focusing so much on how it feels, thinking about that person, what do you want? If they’re making mistakes, if they’re missing deadlines, how can you also ask questions to get their perspective? I mean, that’s a really important one before you go in. A lot of times people make assumptions, but thinking about the questions that you can ask that you maybe don’t know the information to, and then delivering that and telling people sometimes, especially if it’s someone that’s not used to hearing that feedback, or you can tell, you know, they kind of get emotional.

is saying to you, I’m giving this because I care about you in this job and your career. And it’s really important for me to work with you on things, not to come down at you, not to, not to beat you down, but to really build you up. And some of that is hearing perspectives from others. And there’s ways you can say that and people can always find their own voice. may be listeners that hear this, that think I would, I don’t know how it possibly says, say that. And that’s where even like AI tools can help to say, this is how I don’t normally talk so corny. How can I say this in a way that feels natural, but really shifting the focus from yourself to that.

person. And the other is, is positive feedback. I frequently hear and people don’t people more think about how hard it is to get critical feedback. But people don’t realize how rare it is for others to hear recognition at work. Or if you’re in a meeting and someone says something about a team member going and telling that team member or bringing them into that meeting. mean, those are the moments that that don’t happen enough that that really, really matter and you can make a real impact on that person’s job today and career.

John Jantsch (15:28.595)

It’s become, don’t know if fashionable is right word, you hear the word a lot, coach. Does a manager today need to think of themselves as more of coaching role or is that?

Ashley Herd (15:42.289)

I do. Well, I laugh because I worked at Young Brands, KFC, as part of my career. And they actually call bosses or managers coaches. That’s it. And so I’ll see that sometimes on social media. you remember it. And that’s more of a formalized way. But I do think so. And people can have different ways. I prefer the terms leaders or coaches to bosses or managers sometimes because it just changes the dynamic. I I think often, as you think about the org chart, the

The best leaders or coaches are the ones that focus on driving the performance of those that are beneath them on the org chart, so to speak. And if you flip that and think rather than managing people and controlling them, but really helping them have the ideas and have the performance and grow, and you can coach them into those opportunities, because they’re the ones that are actually going to do the work. mean, just like the baseball field, they’re going to be the ones hitting the home run and going around the bases or striking out every time. so using your

feedback and communication to impact that, I really think can have the most lasting impact and have more lasting results.

John Jantsch (16:47.283)

I’ll you, I don’t know where I learned this, but years ago, somebody told me to just try this next time somebody comes to you as a manager with, what should I do in this situation? And I just said, I don’t know, what would you do? And it’s just like amazing, because they have the answer, but they want you to give it to them or something, I don’t know, but that one thing alone has changed how I manage completely, it’s the simplest thing in world.

Ashley Herd (17:03.95)

Yeah.

Ashley Herd (17:15.056)

It’s simplest thing, it doesn’t, it really doesn’t, it doesn’t happen. It truly doesn’t happen enough in the, in the flip to that, to one thing to know is, is if you’re senior to them, sometimes people will get, will get irritated and they’ll say, well, you’re my, you’re the boss. You make more than me. You should decide. Yeah. Just tell me I don’t want to make another decision. Well, I don’t either. Well, you know, so we’ll both just sit here, but we’re stand here. But, but, but I think saying, you know, I, like, I’d love to hear it. And I’m happy to give my input and it’s for you, but.

John Jantsch (17:28.977)

Yeah. Or just tell me what to do. I don’t want to think.

Ashley Herd (17:44.463)

I want you to feel like you can try new things and have ideas. we may not adopt every one, but it’s really important that you feel like you can share those because the most unhealthy cultures I’ve seen, especially when you have a group meetings, is people that will not speak up. If you have a CYA culture where people are more afraid of getting in trouble or saying the wrong thing because they’ve personally seen people get ridiculed or seen others, there’s plenty that think that you have to have that really hard culture.

John Jantsch (18:09.693)

No.

Ashley Herd (18:14.437)

But that really impacts how people feel today, impacts how they work tomorrow and how many days and years thereafter that they want to stay with your organization. And so I think giving people that room, think that’s, love, I’m all about those really simple, simple, but powerful tips.

John Jantsch (18:30.141)

So are there any myths or let’s just say one? Is there one myth that you’d say that’s commonly taught all the time? And I want to debunk that with this book.

Ashley Herd (18:40.571)

Well, one, I talk about the role of HR. So I’m a little different than I was a lawyer and then I went into HR. You sometimes see the flip, but what I frequently see is HR is not your friend. And on one hand, I’ll say that I agree with that. I agree with that myth. But part of that is because HR in an organization, especially if you’re growing and having that support, they shouldn’t be your enemy. If you have any function in your organization that people only go to or only think about when things are going wrong.

John Jantsch (18:42.995)

Yeah.

Ashley Herd (19:09.211)

then that’s really a symptom of an unproductive and unhealthy culture overall. And so if you can flip it and think about everyone in your organization of how they can support other people. so HR individuals who are often thought of as like, get the pay right and get people’s paperwork set up. But if you can take HR and have HR help people, whether it’s managers, whether it’s team members on your team, help them to work better and learn how to communicate and they can really drive that.

That can take a lot of pressure off you, no matter what your role is in the organization, and just create a completely different culture.

John Jantsch (19:42.439)

bet you the HR folks would like that too, right? Because they’re seeing it’s like you go to them because of administrative paperwork or because your exit interview or like nothing pleasant, right? It’s like, you’re going to the principal’s office.

Ashley Herd (19:54.99)

It is, it is, it is, John. It’s, you know, it’s, we’re trying to show we’re not all, we’re not all, we’re not all scary.

John Jantsch (20:02.867)

So the book is full of templates, scripts. Is there one you want to just tease out there to say, like go grab this either from the book or on your website and hear the steps that you ought to follow and why they matter?

Ashley Herd (20:16.571)

Yeah, one thing is if you’re looking for resources, especially if you have a group of managers or even non-managers on your team, you’re trying to have a quick development exercise. On the website, so managermethod.com slash book, we’ll have a book discussion guide so you can use that for conversations with your team. And one thing I’ll tease in that is, one tip is to think about is if you’re hiring someone, if you brought on a team member, or even if someone’s been there for a while.

Did you tell them why they got the role and what uniquely made them stand out? Or did they just get their offer letter and paperwork? Because taking that pause to tell somebody, really, is what we saw in you, why we’re so excited to have you join. Specifically, not just we’re excited to have you join, but this is why. That can help change dramatically how they are from day one and every day after. And again, if you haven’t hired anybody in your while, I promise you, it is not too late in the book we talk about how you can say that no matter…

how much time has passed since they started, even if you’ve worked together for decades.

John Jantsch (21:13.757)

That’s interesting because it does kind of set like, this is my identity here. You know, kind of, so I think that’s really cool. So actually I appreciate you taking a few minutes to stop by the Duck Tape Marketing Podcast. Is there anywhere else you invite people to find out more about you and your work?

Ashley Herd (21:29.509)

Yeah, you can go to managermethod.com. You can find me across social media at manager manager method. You can find me on LinkedIn Ashley H E R D.

John Jantsch (21:40.179)

Again, appreciate you stopping by and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Ashley Herd (21:44.892)

Thanks so much, John.

Using AI to Convert More Leads and Save Time

Using AI to Convert More Leads and Save Time written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Listen to the full episode:

Overview

On this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, John Jantsch interviews Joe Gagnon, co-founder and CEO of Raynmaker, an AI-native sales platform built specifically for small businesses. Joe shares how AI can take over the hardest part of running a small business—consistent, reliable selling—without sacrificing trust or human connection. They discuss AI-powered call handling, 24/7 coverage, better customer conversations, and why this technology may finally give small business owners their lives back.

About the Guest

Joe Gagnon is the co-founder and CEO of Raynmaker, where he’s building the first AI-native sales platform for small business. A longtime technology and customer experience leader, Joe is focused on combining AI, workflow, and human-centered design to help small business owners sell more, work less, and deliver better customer experiences.

Website: raynmaker.ai
LinkedIn: Joe Gagnon

Actionable Insights

Small business owners didn’t start a business to “do sales.” Most want to deliver their craft and end up overwhelmed by lead follow-up, quoting, and closing.
AI-native doesn’t mean “all AI, all the time.” Rainmaker uses AI for the conversational and learning components, but most of the platform is sales workflow and data integration.
Pricing is designed to replace headcount, not add to it. At roughly $500–$1,000/month, it aims to be cheaper than hiring a person to answer phones—while covering 24/7/365.
Trust comes from better answers, not just a human voice. Customers call because they want fast, clear information and reassurance. If AI can deliver that, many callers are satisfied.
AI can improve sales and support together. Customers don’t separate “sales” from “support” when they dial; Rainmaker can handle both flows through the same number.
AI conversations can be brand-tuned. The system can be trained on the owner’s voice, tone, and brand language, and adjusted for accent, gender, and style.
Learning over time is the real superpower. Call transcripts and patterns can surface common objections, effective responses, regional differences, and new opportunities.
“Outbound” can be redefined around customer timing. Instead of cold calls, think call-backs on forms, instant responses when interest is high, and follow-up on the customer’s schedule.
This tech is about giving owners their life back. Less after-hours selling, fewer missed calls, and more predictable revenue.

Great Moments (with Timestamps)

00:21 – Why Reinvent Sales for Small Business?
How owners end up trapped doing sales they never wanted to do.
02:21 – What “AI-Native Sales Platform” Really Means
Joe explains AI components vs. workflow and why it matters.
03:54 – Leveling the Playing Field for Small Business
Giving small firms big-company sales capability at a fraction of the cost.
05:47 – Automation vs. Authenticity
Balancing AI automation with trust, empathy, and real answers.
08:11 – When AI Support Actually Feels Better Than Humans
Why customers just want fast, relevant help—no matter who (or what) delivers it.
11:15 – Learning from Every Call
Using transcripts and models to improve responses and spot patterns over time.
12:32 – Sales Use Cases: Inbound, Scheduling, and Payments
How AI can handle the full sales flow, not just FAQs.
14:46 – Will Customers Prefer Talking to AI First?
Exploring a future where AI handles Q&A before any human gets involved.
17:31 – First Steps for Overwhelmed Small Business Owners
Phased adoption: answering/summary, then scheduling, payments, and full integration.
19:30 – Why This Tech Might Be the “Car After the Horse and Buggy”
Framing AI as the next major productivity leap for small businesses.

Insights

“Most small business owners didn’t start their business to sell—they started it to serve. Sales just got in the way.”

“If the AI gives you better, faster answers than a human, the customer doesn’t really care what’s behind the curtain.”

“We’re not trying to manipulate buyers; we’re trying to inform them so they can make better decisions.”

“The dream is: no more answering the phone at midnight, no more selling from the sidelines at your kid’s game.”

“Technology should remove friction and extend your capabilities—not make life more complicated.”

“_

Duct Tape Transcript

John Jantsch (00:00.767)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Joe Gagnon. He is the co-founder and CEO of Raynmaker, where he’s building the first AI native sales platform for small business, combining his interest in technology, leadership and human connection. Today we’re going to talk about how AI is reinventing sales as we know it for small business. So welcome to Show Joe.

Joe Gagnon (00:25.826)

John, thanks for having me on. Love this show that you have.

John Jantsch (00:27.797)

Well, thank you, thank you. So I guess let’s start with what needs to be reinvented. Why are we reinventing sales?

Joe Gagnon (00:36.494)

I’m not sure that particularly we’re inventing sales, but how we actually make sales happen. And, you know, I’ve been selling since I was 16 years old. So I think I learned the essence of the conversation, but more than anything, you know, why is someone looking to buy something and how do we make that happen? And so what happened, you know, as I got inspired over the past year about the Rainmaker idea was small business owners don’t start businesses with the idea that they want to sell people. They want to deliver their service.

Home services, mow the lawn, clean the house, don’t know, walk the dog, whatever it might be. And then they start this business and they sell usually this early adopter, already want their service in their local community. And then they have to find like, oh my God, I gotta buy some leaves and I gotta talk to these people. Then I gotta convert them. Then I gotta turn them into customers. They’re doing this while they may be driving in their pickup truck to the next customer and it just gets harder and harder for them to actually have a life when they…

stepped into this idea of like American my own business make this work and now they’re stuck in the stock at the hardest part, which is the part that we wanted to focus on, is so we’re reinventing in the context of how a small business owner operates their business.

John Jantsch (01:52.437)

Yeah, it’s funny. I talked to many, many business owners of all, you know, every industry you can imagine. And if they’ve been in business for a couple of years, at least they realize now that 50 % of job is selling or getting sales. And as you said, a lot of them just want to swing a hammer. And so it really does make it tough. We use the phrase and I think this is straight out of your bio, AI native sales platform. What does that mean? I guess, and maybe describe it in the context of Marine Bank.

Joe Gagnon (02:02.924)

Yes.

Joe Gagnon (02:07.939)

Yes.

Joe Gagnon (02:15.518)

Mmm.

Joe Gagnon (02:21.824)

man, it’s like a good question. like, hasn’t AI sort of been around for 30 years, right? mean, you know, MIT and Marvin Minsky and the rest of the boys up there.

John Jantsch (02:30.559)

Well, just even our driving directions, things like that people don’t realize have been very powered by AI. We’ve been using that for a decade.

Joe Gagnon (02:35.542)

Yes. So the models that underlie the idea have been around for a long time. We’ve evolved to this thing called the large language model, which is giving more access to sort of regular people in terms of this token-based conversational creation in real time. So AI native for us is the parts of the workflow where we want to leverage AI

algorithms and technology, but the whole system itself, mean, we probably use 30 % is this AI part, 70 % is a workflow. It’s a sales workflow, it’s a data integration problem. But in the part of the conversational dialogue, yeah, there’s native AI where we’re going back and forth between our own LLM as everyone would call it or what an open AI might look like. But we’re also using

broader context of AI to mean machine learning as well. So the ability to leverage mathematical models to look for insights, to be able to bring out derivative perspectives that you wouldn’t have been able to do with just a normal database. So that’s the AI native part of what we’re doing.

John Jantsch (03:54.517)

So a lot of small business owners don’t have the budget or just don’t really have the wherewithal to put together an operations team, BDRs, closers, whatever all the roles would be. But in a lot of ways, is this leveling the playing field a little bit for that smaller company?

Joe Gagnon (03:57.902)

you

Joe Gagnon (04:10.99)

That’s the hope. know, there’s a language that everyone started using, which is like democratize capability, access to systems and all of that. I think that the fundamental thesis that we took to this was actually literally to say, what would the small business owner need and what could they invest to make this kind of transformation happen? Because actually, if this works, I think we give them their life back. They’re not sitting at the soccer game with their phone connected to their ear. They’re not driving and texting in their pickup truck or whatever vehicle they might have.

John Jantsch (04:16.053)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (04:39.977)

Yeah.

Joe Gagnon (04:40.174)

that our price point, you know, on the low end, it’s $500 a month, on the high end, it’s $1,000 a month. This is less than hiring a person to answer the phones. We can cover you 24 by 7 by 365, learning off of your dialogue, your brand, your voice, and leveraging our sales expertise, our workflow, our database, and the combination of which should allow that business owner to grow as much as they want.

They don’t have to look. mean, some business owners have told me in the past, look, I don’t want more business than I have today, but I just want it to be predictable. I don’t want the ups and downs. I’m spending so much money on leads. I don’t even know what I’m buying. And so we’re trying to get this to where that American dream is not so daunting. And actually that I mean, look at John, I can’t believe how many people want to start their own business. What are they thinking? But maybe we could actually make that

know, emotional journey better and turn it into something that doesn’t dominate their life.

John Jantsch (05:47.113)

One of the, I think, fastest ways to erode trust in marketing is when things feel very automated, very inauthentic. We all get the AI spam now. How do you kind of balance that? Automation’s great when it reduces friction. It’s bad when it kills relationships.

Joe Gagnon (05:57.624)

Yeah.

Joe Gagnon (06:09.538)

I think it’s a great question and there’s a balancing act that we’re going to have to play over the next year. I think if we were a year from now, we’d be really hard pressed to find the difference between a voice generated by AI or a person’s voice. So we’re not far away from that. Our thesis is this, the consumer is making a phone call because they want more information and because the website didn’t provide it, the product didn’t provide it, or they just have some emotional support that they want. And so,

To the degree that we can give them better, even if it is a little bit robotic, or you can notice it’s an AI, but if they can give you what you need, like, think about this example, you know, we have a lot of pest control customers, someone’s gonna spray for mosquitoes in the backyard, and the parents, and gosh, I got kids and a dog, I’m wondering, is this safe? They just wanna ask that question. They would probably love to get the owner, but it’s unlikely.

So what if someone sounds enough like the owner and knows it enough to be relatable and answer the question effectively, not just in a marketing way, the depth of, hey, this is organic. Here’s how to think about it. Here’s what we’ve heard from other customers. Here’s things to consider. And so I keep believing that what the consumer is looking for is just more better information when they need it. And this is the starting point. Now,

Probably everyone won’t adopt this within a year because they will be skeptical. And as they experience it more and more, it’ll get better. Look, I’ve run call center businesses in the past. What I’ve heard more than anything is I don’t want to talk to people who, well, I can’t even talk to them because you have an IVR. Number two, when I talk to them, they don’t know anything. Number three, I can barely understand them, right? That’s the experience to date. We think we can leapfrog over that by bringing this brand context.

and a voice that we can understand that’s available whenever we want. Because imagine midnight on a Saturday, you just want to ask that question like you can’t do that today.

John Jantsch (08:11.069)

I would totally agree with you. I don’t think we care what the technology is as long as we get what we want. And I have interacted, I’m sure we all have, with customer support bots now that are there in every software. And when they’re just maddening, it’s a terrible experience. But I’ve also got a couple of software platforms I interact with a lot, and I get the answers I want.

Joe Gagnon (08:18.03)

Mm.

John Jantsch (08:40.661)

And to me, then I’m like, I don’t need to talk to somebody in support because I got what I wanted.

Joe Gagnon (08:48.14)

Yeah. You know, it’s interesting also, like what we see the integration of sales and support coming together. Like the customer doesn’t think about those differently. And often they call the sales line because they’ll answer and they ask the support. So.

John Jantsch (08:59.689)

Yeah, right. You might spend money with us. Of course we’re going to answer.

Joe Gagnon (09:05.006)

Yeah, so we want to like say, hey, it doesn’t matter. Call the same phone number and bring your sales opportunity or your complaint. I think about this, even in the non-small business area, we’ve been talking to some pizza chains. Like you order your pizza, it’s great. Hey, it came with no pepperoni. I want to call back the same number and get it resolved rather than send an email or try to call the store. We can get that resolved. I think the integration from John, I’ve been working on customer stuff for 30 years.

I think it’s the first time we might be able to, for the first time, really delight a customer because we’re going to work and live the way they do, not the way my business says, I can’t answer the phone now. It’s too expensive to do this. I’m to put technology in the way because it’s just too expensive. We’re going to try and normalize the expense of this and the experience so that it becomes magical. we’re going to, you’ll see on our website soon, we’re going to put up numbers people can call and try.

and see what it sounds like. And they’ll experience it and they’ll be like, well, maybe this is what the future could be like. Because imagine if it is.

John Jantsch (10:11.081)

I tell you a couple of markets I’d like you to target credit card companies and airlines. Could you get them on board?

Joe Gagnon (10:18.882)

You know, my God, I fly a lot and I sort of wonder, you but you know this, like it’s the same as your cable company. I call them up and try and get something like you can’t, you can’t even figure it out. I think this is one of the areas where AI will advance the ball. And because this is under the owner control, it doesn’t have to turn into a marketing vehicle.

They don’t really care about that. They just want predictability and they want their life back. And if we can deliver that for them, you know, this one feels like probably one of the most sort of beneficial systems I could have worked on.

John Jantsch (10:59.913)

Yeah, well, and you’re absolutely right. Those IVR systems from the past, I they basically had a tree of options. If you didn’t fit into one of those options, you were kind of out of luck. Whereas AI can essentially have infinite options for what you’re after.

Joe Gagnon (11:15.406)

Yeah. And I think the other thing is that we learn as we go. So you get all these transcripts, you start to see a pattern. So imagine someone had 50 locations. Well, they never saw the data pattern across all of that. In the future, we can run this into our large language model and ask questions like what worked, what didn’t work, where the objections, how do we handle objections in the future? How could we nurture this customer better? We can learn.

John Jantsch (11:22.644)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (11:42.655)

Well, or even more, like, in this part of town, they care about this. In this part of town, they care about that. And it’s like personalized to the store level.

Joe Gagnon (11:49.034)

yes!

Yeah, we have found one thing that we thought people would like personalized, and then they changed their mind. So regional accents, for example. So we had a customer who said, we would love a Southern accent. And we put it in there like, no, we actually didn’t really want that. That was too much. So they said, how about that Midwestern one? Female versus male. But we can regionalize, and we can make it feel to the brand more than you could.

We know this, we would love to be able to hire people and have them be experts day one and have them get better all the time. Sadly, that doesn’t happen, but we can do that actually with AI.

John Jantsch (12:32.636)

So talk about some very specific use cases that a small business owner, I mean, are people using this for outbound or is this all really kind of inbound customer service support?

Joe Gagnon (12:39.533)

Hmm.

Joe Gagnon (12:45.312)

Yeah, so this is a good question because we’re going to reframe this idea of outbound. Like why does outbound happen? Outbound is typically a sales process, right? But that’s because the customer can’t talk to you when they want to talk to you. So we’re going to redefine outbound in the following way. If you come and fill out a form, you should be able to talk to someone at that point. You should be able to schedule when you want to hear from someone. You should not be throwing your name out into the ether hoping that someday someone actually gets back to you.

When they inbound or this outbound, you never answer who wants to answer from what call might even look like spam. So one, we want to make it work to the prospect or this potential customer’s timeframe and interest level. This is starting first as a sales platform, which is someone has demonstrated some interest. Maybe they got a Google lead or they got a web form filled out or something to that effect. And they want to reach out to us.

When they call the company phone number, it would ring into our AI and the AI would have that dialogue with the person. They’d go through the conversation, hopefully overcome any objections. And then they’d say, would you like to go forward with the sale? If they say yes, then we do auto scheduling into a calendar. We take payment and then we summarize that data for the owner and update the CRM system. So that’s the first use case really is sales inbound.

John Jantsch (14:17.34)

So do you think that one of the things we’ve really witnessed over the last few years is people are going, because they can, farther down the journey before they ever pick up a phone or contact their business. So much research we can do. A lot of people are putting pricing or least calculators on it so that somebody can actually almost be ready to buy before they even raise their hand. Do you see, and I think a lot of that has to do with you start to talk about, people don’t want to talk to a salesperson. They don’t want to be sold. It’s a hassle.

Joe Gagnon (14:38.915)

Yes.

John Jantsch (14:46.015)

to like schedule an appointment and then meet it. So do you see this actually becoming a tool that people will say, I’ll talk to the AI bot before a human, because I can get the information and I don’t feel like the AI bot’s not gonna pressure me to do something.

Joe Gagnon (15:03.638)

Yeah, you know, so that’s a great question, John. So when we started the company, the first thing I did was write our manifesto, you know, what do we believe in? But the second thing that I wrote was our brain maker constitution. And that constitution is a set of responsibilities we want to uphold, which is we are here to inform the customer on behalf of the owner. We’re not here to manipulate. We want to make them make a better decision. We believe that when they do, they’ll buy more. And so

We actually want the AI to be more about informing. And if it gets the person to the place where they want to buy, they should be able to do that easily. But it’s OK if they use it as a place to get knowledge and to learn about the brand and about the products. It is not meant to manipulate and try all of those sales tactics that a person would do. And we can actually program it that way. That’s why we wrote the Constitution.

John Jantsch (15:52.684)

Yeah. Yeah. Well, what I’m getting at is, mean, imagine doing like a webinar or something. And then typically the CTA is like, know, schedule with one of our advisors, right? Well, now imagine if you say schedule with our AI, it’ll answer all your questions. You won’t have to know anything or do anything. It’s not going to try to sell you anything. It’ll just answer your questions. And then if you want to move forward, you can schedule as a human. Do you see a day where that exists?

Joe Gagnon (15:58.414)

Mm-hmm.

Yep. Yeah.

Yeah, yes.

Joe Gagnon (16:18.542)

I think the first part for sure, but I don’t know that you’ll ever need to talk to the human because this should be as good, but we can do the two-step process. And look, I think it’s up to the owner. If they want to provide information and we want to provide information on their behalf. The reason they might not do it now is they’re like, well, every time I talk to you, I should close you. It costs me more to talk to you another time. But the way we sell our platform, it doesn’t matter if we talk to you one, three or five times. We’re there to help that person make a decision.

John Jantsch (16:23.285)

You

Yeah.

Joe Gagnon (16:47.842)

This comes back to my sales experience. My most effective selling has always been when I have a more informed consumer or buyer. They buy better. it’s when a salesperson, that’s right, but when a salesperson tries to manipulate, you often don’t get to the outcomes you want. So we’re really rethinking this entire buying relationship with this process.

John Jantsch (16:58.242)

price goes down the list a lot of things.

John Jantsch (17:13.705)

Yeah, interesting. So if a small business owners listen to this and they’re like, this is all overwhelming. I don’t, you know, I know I need to get into this, but like how, what are some of the first steps that they need? And some of them are going to be mindset, right? Before technology maybe.

Joe Gagnon (17:24.494)

Yeah.

Joe Gagnon (17:31.085)

Yeah.

Yeah, I wouldn’t, this is like a funny way to say, but you know, we have three versions of our platform. The first is the anytime agent that’ll just actually do the answering for you 24 by seven or off hours or weekend, but just take the call and summarize it for you. It’s a way to say, I wonder how my customers interact. Then we can move into scheduling or payment and then on the full way to the full blown solution with integration and so on.

So part of it is maybe you need to explore what it would be like. The second is, you know, to listen in and hear what calls are like and get an experience and say, wow, maybe that’s not so bad. I think the third thing is to start to look at, you know, what the constraints are that you’re going to have into your growth plan. Do you want to make a commitment to hiring people? Do you want to spend that additional capital?

or would you like to put in a learning system? And so I do think that it’s a bit of a step back to say, how do I want to run the business going forward? Do I have the capability or do I want to get back to the reason why I started this? So yeah, it is a bit of soul searching, but at the end of the day, I think if you go back to why you start a small business, it’s because you want to get the product that you believe in in the hands of a lot of people.

and the sales part gets in the way. And I’ve never met a small business owner who says, the reason I want to start the business is because I want to sell. And so I think that it’ll become more normal. we’ve been going to a lot of trade shows. We do presentations. We have a booth. People are just like, are going beyond just curious now. They’re like, I really should be considering this, shouldn’t I? Now in every technology adoption curve, got

Joe Gagnon (19:17.964)

early adopters, early majority, late majority laggards. There’s some people who will never do this. And amen, that’s fine. But if you want this to work the way you want, then it’s probably worth looking at.

John Jantsch (19:30.438)

Yeah, I mean, I’ve been doing this long enough that there were people that swore they would never ever have a website. you know, we come a long way, don’t we? So, Joe, I appreciate you stopping by and introducing us to the tool. Where would you invite people to find out more, connect with you?

Joe Gagnon (19:36.204)

Right. Exactly, right.

Joe Gagnon (19:51.468)

Yeah, you know, Rainmaker with a Y, R-A-Y-N-M-A-K-E-R dot A-I. That’s our website. Now I’m on LinkedIn, Joe Gagnon. You can always check me out there. I have some fun things that I’ve done in my life that’ll tell you a little bit why I started this and what I believe in. And, you know, appreciate, John, you having us on. We really are committed to

sort of democratizing this capability at a price point that makes it easy for a small business owner so that they can sort of, you know, lean into this American dream and, you know, perform maybe better than they ever thought was possible. That’s what the idea behind technology is, right? This isn’t supposed to make it hard or scary, just make it better. And let’s, we’re going to hold ourselves to that.

John Jantsch (20:37.621)

Yeah, I’m 100 % on board with technology that removes friction, that allows me to do something the way I want to do. I’m all for it. And I think it frees us up to do the human parts that technology will hopefully never be able to do.

Joe Gagnon (20:54.188)

Yeah, I, yeah, well, boy, I’m sure we could have a whole nother podcast on this, but you know, I don’t believe that there’s some big bad AI in the future. You know, we are going to use this to our productive benefit. We’re early, right? We’re still early in this journey. There’s a lot of noise around it, but as we bring out applications like we’re working on, I think people are going to start to say, wow, this actually can be very productive for us. So we’re excited about that.

John Jantsch (20:55.317)

You

John Jantsch (21:12.201)

Yep.

John Jantsch (21:22.67)

Yeah, and I think also, just like all technologies, the more people experience it and have a good experience, there would be less resistance, because they’re like, OK, that change wasn’t so hard. That’s right.

Joe Gagnon (21:28.184)

Hmm.

Joe Gagnon (21:34.446)

That’s right. We’ve lived through many of them, right, John? mean, everyone knows those back and says that, you know, we weren’t going to leave the horse and buggy and came to a car and now we can’t live without it. I do think this one is really fascinating because it extends us maybe another order of magnitude than we could have otherwise. And we’re so committed on this price point because

you know, in small business, we understand that these are tight margins and, you know, we want to make this very accessible to people. And, you know, there’s 30 million small businesses in the U.S., probably 10 million who could be in our target profile. We could get hundreds of thousands doing this, then wow, we’d all do better because it’s the lifeblood of the economy really at end of the day.

John Jantsch (22:12.905)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (22:21.267)

Yep. Well again, appreciate you taking a moment to stop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast and hopefully we’ll run into you on these days out there on the road,

Joe Gagnon (22:28.664)

Thanks, John. Appreciate it.

Become Impossible to Ignore: Market Eminence with David Newman

Become Impossible to Ignore: Market Eminence with David Newman written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Listen to the full episode:

Overview

On this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, John Jantsch welcomes back David Newman—keynote speaker, bestselling author, and creator of The Selling Show podcast. David’s latest book, “Market Eminence: 22 Strategies to Build a Bold Personal Brand, Become a Business Celebrity, and Drive Unstoppable Growth,” dives into how experts, consultants, and CEOs can escape obscurity and become the obvious choice in their market. David explains why visibility, respect, and brand preference are now non-negotiable, how to develop a contrarian point of view, and why radical generosity of your best ideas is the real growth engine.

About the Guest

David Newman is a keynote speaker, bestselling author of “Do It! Marketing,” “Do It! Speaking,” and now “Market Eminence.” With over 600 speaking engagements and 30 years in the field, he helps CEOs, consultants, and expert service providers elevate their brand, attract ideal clients, and become impossible to ignore in noisy, AI-fueled markets.

Website: doitmarketing.com
Book Resources: marketeminence.com
Podcast: The Selling Show

Actionable Insights

The “obscurity tax” is doing great work in isolation—if your market doesn’t see you, know you, and prefer you, you’re paying it every day.
Market eminence rests on three pillars:
- Visibility (being seen)
- Respect (deep understanding of your buyers’ pains, goals, and aspirations)
- Brand preference (differentiation + positioning so it feels risky to hire anyone else)
Personal branding often focuses on “look at me”; market eminence focuses on elevating your market, industry, and stakeholders.
Being contrarian and polarizing (in a values-aligned way) is essential to attract right-fit clients and repel bad fits.
The three content types that still cut through the noise:
- How to think (insight, not instructions)
- What to believe / what not to believe
- How to get ready for what’s coming next
A powerful exercise: identify what conventional wisdom in your industry is wrong, what harsh truths clients wish someone would say, and which strong points of view resonate with ideal clients but make insiders uncomfortable.
Use AI as a thought partner for brainstorming contrarian headlines and positioning, not as your final output.
Generosity is a growth strategy: give away client-facing content you’ve been paid for; prospects pay for implementation and applied insight, not information.
Treat prospects like clients—share real value, not teasers—and you’ll get more (and better) clients.

Great Moments (with Timestamps)

01:37 – The Obscurity Tax
Why doing great work in the dark is the biggest cost most experts pay.
02:40 – The Three Pillars of Market Eminence
Visibility, respect, and brand preference explained.
03:12 – Market Eminence vs. Personal Branding
Why this isn’t about ego, but about impact.
05:48 – Do You Need a Polarizing Point of View?
How to call out what’s missing, broken, or outdated in your industry.
06:17 – Content that AI Can’t (Yet) Replace
How to think, what to believe, and how to get ready for what’s next.
08:13 – Attracting Right-Fit Clients and Repelling the Wrong Ones
The “10-foot gate” mental model and why polarization is a feature, not a bug.
11:19 – Internal vs. External Work of Market Eminence
Leadership decisions first, amplification tactics second.
11:48 – The Contrarian Slant Exercise
Three questions to craft a point of view that puts you in the top 5% of your market.
14:45 – Using ChatGPT as a Brainstorming Partner
A prompt to generate “crazy idea” headlines that attract ideal clients.
19:09 – Radical Generosity and Giving Away Your Best Ideas
Why sharing paid content doesn’t hurt your business—it fuels it.

Insights

“The obscurity tax is the cost of doing great work in isolation. No one can buy from you if they don’t know you exist.”

“Personal branding is about elevating yourself; market eminence is about elevating your market, your industry, and the people you serve.”

“You don’t need to be the only one fixing what’s broken—but you do need to be one of the few willing to call it out.”

“Prospects aren’t paying you for information—they’re paying you for applied insight and implementation.”

“The more you treat prospects like clients, the more prospects you’ll turn into clients.”

Duct Tape Transcript

John Jantsch (00:00.821)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is David Newman. He’s a keynote speaker, bestselling author, creator of the Selling Show podcast with over 600 speaking engagements and 30 years in the field. David works with CEOs, consultants, and expert service providers who are ready to elevate their brand and become impossible to ignore. He’s been on this show to talk about do it marketing, do it speaking, maybe do it selling too. can’t

or possibly today we’re gonna talk about his latest book, Market Eminence, 22 Strategies to Build a Bold Personal Brand, Become a Business Celebrity and Drive Unstoppable Growth. That’s a mouthful, welcome David.

David Newman (00:31.127)

I think so.

David Newman (00:46.648)

Thank you, John. Great to be back with you.

John Jantsch (00:49.587)

I found myself wanting to say marketing eminence. one of my last books, don’t ask me why, but it’s called The Ultimate Marketing Engine. And everybody kept saying the…

David Newman (01:03.342)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (01:10.078)

The mark that’s it the ultimate marketing machine everybody I’d go on podcasts and every single one of them did it So funny, so glad to have you back

In the subtitle, is the word obscurity in the subtitle? No, but you talk a lot about obscurity being, I think in the beginning of the book, the biggest tax that most of us are paying. What’s the obscurity tax and how can we avoid it?

David Newman (01:30.072)

Yes.

That’s right.

David Newman (01:37.08)

So the obscurity tax is doing great work in isolation, basically dancing in the dark. So the question really for most folks watching and listening is how in the world do we get noticed? How do we get noticed? Our products, our services, our company in this crazy, super noisy AI fueled marketplace. And the answer is really three building blocks. Together they make up market eminence. But one is absolutely visibility.

So to answer your question, we need to get seen, right? That’s basically no one buys products or services or expertise, sight unseen. So job number one is to get seen. Beyond that and above that, we also need to earn respect in the marketplace. And the way that we earn respect is by understanding our prospects to such a degree that they start to respect our insight and our intimacy.

with their pains, problems, heartaches, headaches, challenges, gaps, goals, aspirations, dreams, all that good stuff. And then the third component of this is brand preference. And that’s simply a combination of differentiation and positioning. So it becomes risky, dangerous, and dumb to hire anyone else. And once those three components are dialed in, you are in the top 5 % of your market. And that’s what the whole market eminence theme is about.

John Jantsch (03:03.647)

So as I listen to you describe that, and I know you have an answer to this, so I want to give you the opportunity to answer. How does that differ from, say, personal?

David Newman (03:12.728)

So fantastic question. And personal branding is not new. you know, frankly, many of the ideas I talk about in the book are not new. Combining them in this way around visibility, credibility, brand preference, differentiation, articulation, distinction, and doing this level of personal branding, not to bring glory to yourself. That’s the key.

Personal branding is about, okay, let’s put a whole bunch of stuff onto you and your company and your persona so that you’re all of a sudden shiny and glitzy and wonderful. This is about rising to the top of your market so that you can impact more people, so you can help more people. So I look at personal branding as sort of the evil twin of market eminence, that personal branding is raising yourself up

Market eminence is raising your market up or raising your industry or your target demographic, raising them up. And when I say that, John, by the way, it’s not just prospects. A lot of people think, well, this is a marketing strategy or it’s a sales strategy. It’s for prospects. This is for any stakeholder that you want to influence. This is that you have people that you want to come work for you, people that you want to have invest with you, people that you want to have bring you on their podcast. So media sources, media outlets.

This is partners, this is possible acquirers. If you want your company eventually to be bought and you’re building a saleable asset, all of those people are watching what you’re doing in the marketplace. And if it’s all about me, me, me, me, me, right, that’s the old school kind of personal branding 101, that is not attractive to any of those stakeholders. If you’re looking to change the market, if you’re looking to change the rules, if you’re looking to

impact the trajectory of the future of all of those stakeholders and your industry and your target market that people notice and that come from is totally different than personal brand.

John Jantsch (05:22.101)

So in a lot of fields, I’m in marketing. Marketing is very competitive. There’s lots of us out there. Do you have to have, you believe, and unfortunately the market perceives that, hey, you all do about the same thing. It’s like, do I like you better than the other person? That’s maybe my decision, right? So do you have to have some sort of polarizing, like here’s what’s broken in the world and I’m the only one that’s fixing it.

David Newman (05:36.12)

Yes. yes.

David Newman (05:48.748)

Well, first part, yes, second part, no. Second part, we’re getting into like narcissistic sociopath territory that I’m the only one that can fix it. However, you can certainly be one of the few people who sees it. But yes, to answer your question on a macro level with tremendous 1000 % enthusiasm, this is about being contrarian. This is about shifting beliefs. This is about going against the grain and calling out what is missing, funky, broken, and sad.

John Jantsch (05:53.589)

you

John Jantsch (06:00.585)

Yeah.

David Newman (06:17.344)

in your industry, with your industry practices, with the way things are commonly done. So one of the ways that we raise visibility is not just putting out content. This is very, very important. Content has been commoditized. AI can do content way better than any one of us. And the world does not need more content in the age of chat, GPT, et cetera. So what are humans good at?

What are humans gonna be visible for, at least for the near term, until AI takes over the world and the robots kill all of us? But until then, it’s three different kinds of content. Number one is how to think. So it’s not how-to information. How-to information has been commoditized. How to think information is about insight, high level strategic advisory insights. The second kind of content to share is what to believe.

what to believe and more importantly, what not to believe. So separating the signal from the noise, separating the myths from the truths, separating the, also separating the myths from the half truths, separating the outdated way of doing things from the current future focused way of doing things. And then the third component of the kind of content that we should be sharing is how to get ready for what’s coming next. Because high level people of any kind, corporate people, entrepreneurial people,

They hate being blindsided, they hate being ambushed, they hate being surprised by something they could have seen coming down the pike and they just somehow missed it. So if we can focus our visibility strategies in those three areas, number one, how to think, not how to, but how to think. Number two, what to believe and what not to believe. Number three, how to get ready for what’s coming next.

that will also elevate and separate you from all the noise out there.

John Jantsch (08:13.621)

So one of the things when you were describing kind of big picture was this idea of attracting right fit clients. what are some ways, I mean, I work with people all the time that they do have a differentiator, but they’re still attracting the wrong people. So what are some of the real kind of surefire ways that you help people attract that right fit client?

David Newman (08:19.437)

yes.

David Newman (08:28.877)

Yes.

David Newman (08:34.552)

So I think you really have to double down on being polarizing and divisive. And unfortunately in this climate, when I use the words like divisive and polarizing, everyone goes to politics, red versus blue, your guy versus my guy. It is not about that. It is about alignment with your vision, with your values, with what you stand for, what you stand against. So…

John Jantsch (08:44.18)

you

John Jantsch (08:48.564)

Yeah.

David Newman (09:01.878)

When I’m either speaking or working with a group on this, this is exactly the moment, John, where I get pushed back and they say, well, so wait a second, we’re going to upset some people. We’re going to get some flack for this. We might not be liked. We might, we might get some negative press on this. And I said, well, I want you to think about this. Think about what if I came to with an offer and the offer is I am going to set up a 10 foot, 10 foot tall gate.

John Jantsch (09:14.439)

Okay.

David Newman (09:31.35)

around your business. The only people that we admit through this gate are your best fit. Prospects, clients, partners, investors, media sources, acquirers, that’s all we let in. The gate automatically repels and keeps out all the terrible fits. The people you’d never want to do business with, the people that you would never want to partner with, the people that you would never take their money as an investor. And I sometimes go as far, John, as I say, okay, you know what?

Let’s put on the whiteboard. Let’s right now put on the whiteboard all the characteristics of your worst clients, your worst hires, your worst partners. And they say, lack of integrity, lack of ethics, didn’t do the work. They come in late, they leave early, right? They’re clock punchers. I said, okay, well, let’s look at this list on the board now. How do you feel about keeping all those people out of your company and out of your world forever? And then their shoulders suddenly just melt and they go, huh.

That would be great. I say, OK, welcome to market eminence. That’s exactly what it’s designed to do, that the perfect fits are hyper magnetized and the terrible fits want to go anywhere else but anywhere near you.

John Jantsch (10:44.841)

You know, it’s funny how often people have no prob, like if you ask them, who’s an ideal client for you, they kind of stumble around a little bit, but they have no problem telling you who they don’t want, right? It is pretty amazing. So a couple, and again, the subtitle of the book, 22 Strategies. I do, we were kind of kidding off air. I was going to have you list them all, but I would love to hear a couple. mean, I know you talk about speaking, publishing, podcasting.

David Newman (10:54.19)

That’s right. That’s right.

David Newman (11:10.648)

Sure.

John Jantsch (11:12.681)

some of the things we’re doing. So I’d love to hear a few of the strategies that you really think are kind of core to this approach.

David Newman (11:19.828)

Absolutely. let me me separate out there’s sort of two halves to the to the to the Apple, so to speak. The first half is the internal work that we need to do around making some leadership level decisions about who we are and who we’re not and what we stand for and what we stand against and so forth. And that’s really the bulk of the book is how to process that how to smartly engage with that level of thinking. The second half of the Apple is OK, now we have that.

John Jantsch (11:34.665)

Mm-hmm.

David Newman (11:48.93)

How do we amplify that? How do we magnify that and project that into the marketplace so that every pebble that we drop in the lake, the ripples start getting bigger and bigger. We start reaching more people, impacting more people and helping more people. So I’ll give you a couple from part one and a couple from part two. The easiest thing that people listening right now can do is one of the chapters is about your slant, your contrarian slant.

So think about three questions. So number one, what conventional wisdom do you secretly think is completely wrong, but you’ve never publicly challenged? So maybe within the four walls of your company, you’re like, my God, we’re not doing that again. That’s terrible. That never works, et cetera. But you’ve never said it publicly. So what conventional wisdom do you secretly think is completely wrong, but if you’ve never ranted and raved against it? Number two,

What harsh truth about your industry are clients desperate for someone to finally acknowledge openly? What are some of the elephants in the room in your business, in your industry with your target market when it comes to your category of product or service? And then number three, the third part of contrarian slant is what strong point of view do you already have that you already hold and believe truly that makes industry insiders uncomfortable but resonates

deeply and powerfully with your ideal clients. So if you just literally sit down for an afternoon, grab a legal pad, spend 20 minutes really digging into each of those three parts, you will end with a 60 minute block of time with a contrarian slant that’s gonna put you in the top 5 % of your industry if you were to amplify it, magnify it, et cetera. And I even have a chat GPT prompt. I know it’s gonna be tough for people to…

listener watch, but here’s the chat GPT prompt if people want to work a little bit on this on their own. And you’re going to take the flavor of this. can record, transcribe, whatever. Here’s what it sounds like. Using everything you know about my, my, our methodology, training and tools, give me a series of 10 contrarian quote crazy idea headlines I can use to convey my true distinction.

David Newman (14:14.892)

differentiation and point of view. This should be polarizing, this is still in the prompt, this should be polarizing in that it strongly attracts the right clients and strongly repels the wrong clients. And then you’ll get some initial output and then you can start the conversation, right? Make number seven even crazier, tone down number eight, bring more examples to number three. You will have such a fantastic time and no one’s brave enough to do this, John.

It sounds super simple, but most people are scared out of their minds to even take this one baby step. I hope that folks listening and watching are not the scaredy cats.

John Jantsch (14:45.492)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (14:54.281)

Yeah, and I was going to mention, I’m glad you did mention that, because AI is tremendous at that kind of brainstorming, as long as you look at it as kind of a thought partner and not like, you’re not looking for the output, you’re looking for the discussion as much as anything. I was at a conference one time and we just, we mentioned this idea, we’ve been kind of just kicking around this idea that business owners are really tired of agencies, or at least

David Newman (15:00.909)

Yes.

David Newman (15:07.202)

Yes.

John Jantsch (15:22.803)

what traditional agencies have done or not done for them. And so we just kind of jokingly, half jokingly mentioned to somebody, yeah, we’re promoting the anti-agency model. And literally three or four business owners said, we need to talk. So it’s a little bit of what you’re talking about. We did it kind of tongue in cheek, but it really, I mean, you got immediate feedback that that idea really piqued a challenge they were

David Newman (15:26.53)

yes.

David Newman (15:32.835)

Nice.

David Newman (15:48.354)

That’s right. And that is, you know why that’s great, John, all the reasons that you said, obviously, but it immediately telegraphs just with that moniker, un-agency, right? That we are against something that has been traditionally seen as the solution to fix this problem. You don’t want an agency, you want the un-agency, like the uncola back in the 70s and 80s. That was 7-Up’s claim to fame.

John Jantsch (15:58.591)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (16:10.431)

Yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (16:15.443)

What do you find when, especially talking to CEOs, marketers are probably a little more open to this kind of idea of finding a difference. Particularly when you work with CEOs, what’s kind of the biggest mindset block that you have to get them past with this idea of market eminence?

David Newman (16:22.168)

Go young!

David Newman (16:35.33)

I think it really is that exercise that I mentioned a little bit ago about we’re gonna piss some people off, yes. We are gonna have some conflict, we might get some hate mail around this, yes. People who thought they liked us and respected us would suddenly turn us off and unsubscribe and go away, yes. But trust me, all the right people are gonna unsubscribe. All the right people are gonna go away.

John Jantsch (16:38.591)

Yeah. Yeah.

David Newman (17:03.318)

all the right people are not gonna come back to work for you or invest with you or buy from you. know, really figuring out, figuring out what is the game that we’re playing, right? So sometimes this results in niching down. Sometimes this results in opening things up to an adjacent industry that might be a little bit more, a little bit less risk averse, a little bit more.

you know, modern thinking. So people that work with old school industries sometimes realize, well, that’s not who we are anymore. And I’m sorry, I stepped on your line there.

John Jantsch (17:33.841)

let’s just face it, they have more money.

John Jantsch (17:41.865)

No, I was just going to say, let’s face it, you’re going there because they have more money.

David Newman (17:46.53)

Yes, yes, that could be true. That could be true. Funny story from a CMO standpoint. I have a friend who’s a serial CMO. He doesn’t intend to be fractional, but that’s how it ends up, because he gets fired every 18 months. He works with banks. And I said to him, I said, what is it with you and changing jobs? He says, David, I have the worst job in the world. I’m a marketer in banking. So they’re so risk averse. They want the bank presidents and CEOs

They want to look like each other. And then they wonder why are we stuck in this rate war? Why are people leaving us for an extra quarter percentage down the street? It’s because you’re totally commoditizing yourself by choice.

John Jantsch (18:31.145)

Yeah, I always find that really interesting that, you know, with industries are like, no, we don’t do that in our industry. And it’s like, then that’s an opportunity is what that is. So so funny.

David Newman (18:41.11)

Amen.

John Jantsch (18:46.481)

You mentioned the slant and I did want to, think you had two other gravity and generosity. We talked about gravity attracting right fit, but we haven’t really talked about this idea of generosity. And that’s one that I, you know, I really want to hit on because you know, this radical sharing of everything of expertise, because a lot of people have a, have a mindset that like I’m the expert. I don’t share. They pay me to share. So talk a little about that.

David Newman (18:51.638)

Yes, yes. sure.

David Newman (18:57.964)

Yes.

David Newman (19:03.565)

Yes.

David Newman (19:09.838)

Correct.

I’ll expand even further on that, John. They say, I can’t share that. That’s how I make the big bucks or that’s our secret sauce. That’s our recipe. I would just point out to folks, if you go online to your favorite online bookseller, walk into your favorite independent bookstore, you will find two giant sections. One is the health and weight loss section. The other is the financial and money management section. You hundreds of books and you know, hundreds more published every year.

John Jantsch (19:18.057)

Right.

David Newman (19:42.442)

If it was in a book, we would all be tall, rich, thin, sexy, and have a full head of hair. Clearly, I can read all the books I want. This ain’t coming back up here. So I want, I would challenge people that the best kind of generosity that you can give into the marketplace, whether it is in written format, audio format, podcast, webinar, I want you to take client facing content. Everyone clutch your pearls. I hope you’re sitting down.

Take client facing content that you’ve been paid for and make that into a giveaway. Make that into a lead magnet. Make that into a special report. Do a webinar on that for free for your target market and watch what happens because people are not paying you for information. We’ve already talked about this in a couple of ways, right? The information is not in the books. AI can crank out endless information way faster and bigger and better than any of us.

John Jantsch (20:31.711)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

David Newman (20:39.67)

What they’re paying for is applied insight and implementation of the ideas. If they could do it on their own, they already would have. So they’re not gonna download your report. They’re not gonna come to your webinar. They’re not gonna watch your video series. But I’ll tell you, the more that you treat prospects like clients, the more prospects you will get.

John Jantsch (20:46.259)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (21:04.181)

It’s funny, I used to always say, especially 10, 15 years ago, people really didn’t share, because we didn’t have all these vehicles to share, right? Now it’s become really common practice. But I used to always tell people, they don’t want to know how to do it. They want to know that you know how to do it. And that’s really what you’re giving away, is that.

David Newman (21:20.174)

That’s right.

David Newman (21:23.851)

Absolutely right.

John Jantsch (21:25.653)

So David, I appreciate you stopping by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Where would you invite people to connect with you, of course, and then find out more about Market

David Newman (21:35.118)

Sure, so the best place to connect with me, my main website is DoItMarketing and everything related to the book as far as there’s all kinds of free trainings and downloads and videos and resources and worksheets that are connected to this market eminence idea that we’ve been talking about, that is at marketeminence.com.

John Jantsch (21:54.005)

Again, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

David Newman (22:00.512)

Such a pleasure, John. Thank you.

10 Questions That Reveal the Truth About Your Agency

10 Questions That Reveal the Truth About Your Agency written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch the full episode:

Overview

On this solo episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, John Jantsch lays out the 10 questions every small business owner should ask before hiring—or continuing to pay—a marketing partner. After decades of seeing business owners overpay for underperformance, John shares a practical checklist you can use to weed out smoke-and-mirrors agencies, avoid being held hostage by your own assets, and find true marketing leadership instead of task-doers. If you’re tired of vague reports, long-term contracts, and unclear results, this episode gives you a clear, no-nonsense framework.

About the Host

John Jantsch is a marketing consultant, speaker, and author of several best-selling books including Duct Tape Marketing and The Ultimate Marketing Engine. As the founder of Duct Tape Marketing, he helps small and mid-sized businesses build simple, effective, and scalable marketing systems.

Website: ducttapemarketing.com
Podcast Archive: Duct Tape Marketing Podcast

Actionable Insights

John walks through 10 key questions and what to watch for in the answers:

Who owns my marketing assets and accounts?
You should own your website, ad accounts, data, and tools—no exceptions. Agencies should have access, not ownership.
How do you define success, and how often will we review it?
Avoid vanity metrics. Push for clear definitions around leads, conversions, and revenue, plus a regular review cadence where they translate metrics into insight.
How do you connect tactics to strategy?
“Tactics = strategy” is a red flag. Look for a framework or system that starts with strategy and then maps to campaigns and tasks.
What happens if I want to end the contract?
Watch for long-term lock-ins, hidden fees, and non-compete-style clauses. Month-to-month or flexible arrangements signal confidence and transparency.
Who will I actually work with day to day?
Don’t get sold by the senior strategist and then handed off blindly. Ask to meet the team you’ll work with and understand their roles and experience.
How do you report on results, and can I see a sample?
Ask for a sample report and look for narrative, interpretation, and recommendations—not just raw numbers or tool exports.
How are you using AI, and what is still human-led?
You’re not trying to avoid AI; you want to know how it’s used to support strategy, operations, and performance while keeping your brand voice, judgment, and expertise human-led.
How will you collaborate with my team (and other partners)?
Good partners integrate with your internal resources and existing vendors, not operate as a disconnected black box.
What is your process for creating strategy before you execute?
Look for a clear discovery and strategy process: ideal client, core message, differentiation, customer journey—before they start pitching tactics.
What will you teach me along the way?
You don’t need to become a marketer, but you do need a partner who educates and empowers you to make better decisions—not one who keeps you in the dark.

Great Moments (with Timestamps)

00:01 – Why This Episode Exists
John’s frustration with business owners getting ripped off by marketing partners.
02:06 – Question #1: Who Owns the Accounts?
Why ownership of websites, ad accounts, and data is non-negotiable.
03:20 – Question #2: How Do You Define Success?
Moving beyond vanity metrics to real business outcomes.
04:28 – Question #3: Tactics vs. Strategy
The danger of “magic behind the scenes” without a framework.
05:40 – Question #4: Ending the Contract
How to spot traps in long-term agreements.
06:37 – Questions #5–7: Team, Reporting, and AI
Who does the work, how results are shared, and how AI fits into modern marketing.
08:40 – Question #9: Strategy Before Execution
Why understanding your ideal client, message, and journey must come first.
10:54 – Question #10: Will You Teach Me?
The difference between abdication and empowered collaboration.

Insights

“If an agency owns your website or ad accounts, they’re not a partner—you’re renting your own marketing.”

“Vanity metrics are worthless unless someone can tell you what they mean and what you should do next.”

“Anyone can sell you tactics. You want someone who connects strategy to execution and outcomes.”

“The best marketing partners educate you, integrate with your team, and make you smarter and more in control—not more dependent.”

4 Pillars for Social Selling

4 Pillars for Social Selling written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Listen to the full episode:

Overview

On this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, John Jantsch interviews Lorenzo Johnson, Director of Revenue Management and partner at Socially In, a leading US-based social media agency. As a LinkedIn Learning instructor and expert in B2B social selling, Lorenzo unpacks what’s changed on LinkedIn heading into 2026: from the rise of video and carousel posts to algorithm shifts, authentic engagement, and practical uses of AI. Discover how to optimize your profile, build real relationships, and avoid the common pitfalls that hold most sellers and brands back on LinkedIn today.

About the Guest

Lorenzo Johnson is the Director of Revenue Management and a partner at Socially In. He’s a B2B social selling strategist, LinkedIn Learning instructor, and content creator for Madcraft. Lorenzo has helped thousands of professionals and organizations drive revenue on LinkedIn through practical, authentic, and modern tactics.

Actionable Insights

Video and carousel posts are the best way to stand out from the flood of average AI-generated content on LinkedIn in 2026.
Social search is merging with traditional search—hashtags, long-form posts, and engagement matter for discoverability on and off LinkedIn.
Your Social Selling Index (SSI) score is built on four pillars: building your brand, finding the right people, engaging with insights, and building trusted relationships.
LinkedIn’s algorithm penalizes mass outreach, low-quality networks, and shallow engagement—focus on quality over quantity.
Use all profile features (professional mode, microsites, newsletters) to get more algorithmic “love.”
Social selling is a long game: expect 300+ days from first connection to closed deal if you’re doing it right.
Automation and AI can help with research, outreach, and follow-up, but don’t shortcut real engagement—be careful with scraping and gray hat tools.
Measure success by impressions, views, and engagement rate—not just meetings booked or sales closed.
Quality engagement, DMs, and real conversation trump cold outreach every time.

Great Moments (with Timestamps)

01:11 – LinkedIn’s 2026 Landscape
Always Engine Optimization (AEO), search integration, and the new content game.
02:52 – How to Beat the AI Flood
Why video, carousels, and true insights win over “prompted” content.
04:40 – The Four Pillars of LinkedIn Success
SSI explained: brand, audience, insights, and trusted relationships.
08:06 – Tools & Features for a Strong Profile
Why professional mode and new features matter for reach.
10:16 – Relationship Building, Not Just Outreach
Why real engagement is the only way to win in social selling.
12:57 – Where AI and Automation Help (and Hurt)
Tools for scale vs. the risk of bans, and finding the “gray hat” balance.
19:22 – What Metrics Matter Most
How to track what’s really working in your social selling strategy.

Insights

“If you approach LinkedIn for quick wins, you’re playing the wrong game—social selling is about long-term relationship building.”

“Use every feature LinkedIn offers—profiles that leverage newsletters, video, and professional mode get algorithmic priority.”

“The best outreach is rooted in value: personalized video, insightful comments, and real conversation—not mass DMs.”

“Quality impressions and engagement are leading indicators of future sales—don’t just measure meetings or bookings.”

Duct Tape Transcript

John Jantsch (00:00.11)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Lorenzo Johnson. He’s the Director of Revenue Management and a partner at Socially In, a leading US social media agency. He’s a specialist in social selling, helping B2B professionals and SMEs leverage LinkedIn to drive revenue. As a content creator for Madcraft and an instructor on LinkedIn learning, Lorenzo teaches thousands worldwide.

There’s courses on social selling. So Lorenzo, welcome to the show.

Lorenzo Johnson (00:33.467)

appreciate you and thanks for having me today, John. I’m very, very excited to be here.

John Jantsch (00:37.76)

Awesome. So did I say the name right socially in? I had to kind of stumble over that. There’s a lot of letters together.

Lorenzo Johnson (00:40.857)

You did. No, you said it correctly. You said it better than a lot of people when they call us and they say social lion and other things like that. So you hit it right on the head, John.

John Jantsch (00:50.345)

Awesome. So let’s start. We’re going to talk mostly about LinkedIn today. So let’s set the table going into 2026, which we’re there. What’s changed? What do we need to pay attention to? What’s gotten worse about better about just kind of give us the give us the lay of the land for 2026 on LinkedIn.

Lorenzo Johnson (00:52.507)

Yes, sir.

Lorenzo Johnson (01:11.483)

Well, there’s a few things that’s happening on LinkedIn that I think everyone should be excited about, not necessarily fearful about, but absolutely kind of thinking about what they’re going to be shifting and changing. And so I’ll kind of get right into one of the biggest things that’s happening. And it’s around this term AEO that everyone’s kind of talking about and always engine optimization and always everywhere optimization. know, you’re hearing all of these different types of names and LinkedIn is actually one of those social platforms that’s also starting to

be incorporated a little bit more into that. What we’re starting to actually see is that content is starting to be indexed when you start to get into search inquiries and search queries. Technical things like leveraging hashtags and things like that are actually starting to also come up in search functions and Google and things like that. That’s also with other platforms like Instagram and things like that. But again, I know we’re focusing historically or this conversation specifically on LinkedIn. So.

The first thing that you’re seeing is that with all and like all social, you’re starting to kind of see this integration between social search. These, these avenues that used to be very separated and segregated are really starting to kind of work together now. And so that’s the first thing that we’re seeing right now is that content, long form content, putting out some of that thought leadership type of content that used to be really good and really exciting on LinkedIn. It’s kind of been watered down when chat GBT made everyone an expert all of a sudden and things like that.

but we’re starting to see that start to come back. So that would say that’s one of the first things that we’re starting to see,

John Jantsch (02:40.96)

All right, so let’s dive into that with kind of this flood of very average, you know, AI content. How does somebody take their content and make it stand out?

Lorenzo Johnson (02:43.749)

Okay?

Lorenzo Johnson (02:52.505)

Well, one of the biggest things is doing stuff like this. It’s that video content. It’s that content that necessarily can’t be just crafted using some words and things like that. It’s having the ability to get into conversations like this, speak people able to see your voice. So video content is absolutely really starting to take off from a from a true feature standpoint. One other feature that we’re seeing is carousel post, those types of content engagement features that are keeping people on a post for a little bit longer.

John Jantsch (02:55.438)

Yeah. Yeah.

Lorenzo Johnson (03:20.707)

just like a video would do. We’re also starting to see that have a big impact. But of course, as you know, that is something that could be easily kind of manipulated from an AI standpoint. And I mean, let’s get the elephant out the room as well. You can also script videos and use AI to do all of those different types of things too. So unfortunately, it’s kind of leaking into everything that we’re doing. But I would say video.

by far is the best way to not only posit yourself as that thought leader, but really separate yourself from a lot of the newsletter style type posts out there that as soon as you start to read it, it’s so clear that people are just running it through a chat GPT prompt and not even a quality chat GPT prompt at that.

John Jantsch (03:58.35)

Yeah, actually, I’m not even here. This is an AI avatar speaking for me. So I’ve actually had people ask me if I wanted to be interviewed on their show by an AI avatar. I haven’t yet done one. I just I was like, not. It’s too experimental. So I think a lot of

Lorenzo Johnson (04:02.715)

It’ll get there soon. It’s crazy.

Lorenzo Johnson (04:16.943)

What’d you, how’d you respond to that? What were your thoughts on that?

Nah. Well, it’s interesting. just saw…

John Jantsch (04:26.85)

I was going to say, I think a lot of people look at LinkedIn and they just think, okay, what am I going to post? That’s like how the day starts, right? You really talk more about a LinkedIn blueprint. You want to kind of unpack what the pillars of that are.

Lorenzo Johnson (04:40.355)

Yeah, so I like to kind of break it down and for everyone who doesn’t know, there’s essentially four pillars that LinkedIn uses to define if a profile is being used correctly and if you’re doing those appropriate things. More commonly referred to as an SSI or the LinkedIn Social Selling Index Score. Those four pillars are four things. The first one is how are you building your professional brand? The second thing is, are you finding the right people? The third thing is, are you engaging with insights?

And the fourth, and I would argue absolutely the most important thing is, are you building trusted relationships? And so if you were to break all of those downs, they actually get into all of the day-to-day execution of what you should be doing on LinkedIn. So again, when you start talking about building your professional brand, what type of thought leadership are you actually putting out there? What type of value-based, what type of resource-driven type of posting content?

Are you getting out there and putting out there for people to have a reason to come back to your platform to start off with? Finding the right people. One of the things that we’re actually starting to see more is LinkedIn is actually penalizing your impressions and your reach. If your audience isn’t quality, here’s what I mean by that.

If LinkedIn is starting to get this feel and algorithmically that you’re just basically reaching out to everybody, mass, if you’re using automation tools, which a lot of people are doing to send out mass invites and different things like that. If you’re not actually commenting, engaging, endorsing with the people as they’re starting to come in, LinkedIn is actually going to start to lower your impressions. So that’s why you’ll see people that have.

10, 15,000 followers, but yet their posts are still only getting 10, 15 type of posts and things like that. They’re not truly finding and building up the right audience. know, LinkedIn, unlike other social platforms, it’s not a popularity contest. know, LinkedIn isn’t like, Hey, hey, John Lorenzo, I want you guys to have a hundred thousand people that are kind of all over the place. LinkedIn would rather you have 1000 people that are locked in. They come to your platform for insights. You’re engaging back and forth. They much rather have

Lorenzo Johnson (06:45.903)

that type of relationship building. Engaging with insights. Are you actually commenting, engaging on other people’s posts? Are you also engaging on other content that’s happening? Are you sharing other types of content, keeping people on the LinkedIn platforms and things like that? One of the other misconceptions and just basic things that people don’t do that I see all the time is, you know, people share and copy posts without even having something as simple as like a caption or copy on it.

John Jantsch (06:50.232)

Thank

Lorenzo Johnson (07:11.541)

Small little things like that make LinkedIn really feel are you truly engaging with insights? Are you truly using this platform appropriately? And then that last pillar is again is are you building trusted relationships? And I know that’s very hard to kind of quantify and kind of line item out. But simply what that basically means is are the individuals that you’re connected with and that are connecting with you, are you guys engaging back and forth?

Are you DMing them? Are you liking comments? Are you endorsing? What type of interaction are you seeing? Or are you just kind of posting a whole bunch of kind of stuff out there? So those are typically the four pillars that LinkedIn is typically looking at that guides and decides algorithmic reaches, impressions, and things like that.

John Jantsch (07:55.852)

You mentioned at the beginning of that something called SSI. Is there a tool that your social is selling? Is there a tool you can go and put your profile in and it’ll tell you how you’re doing?

Lorenzo Johnson (07:59.483)

Mm-hmm.

Lorenzo Johnson (08:06.095)

There absolutely is. There’s actually a link, John, that I could pop over to you. Please excuse it. But it’s something as simple as linkedin.com backslash, like SSI score or something. I could get you an actual link. But the really cool thing is, once you log in and you literally click that link, it’ll tell you not only what your overall score is, it will actually give you a rating for each of those pillars out of a 25%. As of right now, and this does change sometimes, each of those pillars is equally weighted, 25%.

John Jantsch (08:15.094)

Okay.

Lorenzo Johnson (08:34.34)

So you will be able to see your rating out of that 25%. Of course, the aggregate score will be what your total LinkedIn SSI score, which will be out of 100.

John Jantsch (08:44.056)

Okay, so a lot of times when I talk to LinkedIn people, you see people doing courses, the very first thing is always fix your profile, update your profile, make it stronger. So what are some tips that you would give people that would make a stronger kind of selling?

Lorenzo Johnson (08:52.569)

Yes. Yes.

Lorenzo Johnson (09:01.615)

The biggest tip that I can give you is you need to use, this is just an algorithmic feature of social. The more features that you actually use and execute, the more quote unquote love that they’ll give you. So for example, and know, John, this is a question for you. I’m just curious since we’re talking, do you by chance have like professional mode activated on your LinkedIn profile or do you even know what professional mode is?

John Jantsch (09:20.91)

I do have it activated, yes, yes.

Lorenzo Johnson (09:22.989)

Of course you do. And so you know that once you activated that there’s some really cool things that you were able to do for completely free by simply clicking that button, the ability to post a newsletter, the ability to actually create a microsite landing page that’s right there where you can have case studies, pitch decks, YouTube videos, all of those different types of things, as well as just a few other searching features that you also kind of get access to. it’s really important to make sure you’re leveraging those features because again,

Once algorithms see that, they say, okay, this is a profile that we should continue to start to get love. So that’s absolutely one of the biggest ones that I see people don’t optimize on their profile. You know, everyone has the cover photo, everyone has the profile pic and things like that, but those additional features, making sure you’re about us is properly used. All of those things really matter, but I will say professional dashboard activation is key, is key, is key right now.

John Jantsch (10:16.654)

So one of the things I know, everybody says this, everybody knows this, you know, want to follow people, you want to engage with people, you want to eventually turn those into conversations. I mean, that’s how we sell, right? I don’t see very many people doing that well. You know, they’re trying to get to the end game, you know, as quickly as possible. So, you know, somebody will connect with me and I’ll think, yeah, that seems like a reasonable person to connect. I’ll connect in the very first email or DM that I get is,

Lorenzo Johnson (10:23.951)

Mm-hmm.

Lorenzo Johnson (10:31.578)

Mm-hmm.

Lorenzo Johnson (10:37.125)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (10:45.994)

an attempt to cause conversation, but it’ll be so silly. It’s like, so what are you most excited about in your business this year? And I’m like, stranger on the bus, just ask me that. It’s like, what? But people don’t seem to think that way. It’s like, want to get to that end game as fast as possible. How do you suggest, especially in a selling environment, that you actually create some

Lorenzo Johnson (10:49.071)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Lorenzo Johnson (11:13.295)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (11:15.435)

engagement but make it authentic.

Lorenzo Johnson (11:18.519)

It has to be, and this is something I tell every single person when they start talking about focusing on LinkedIn, if you go into LinkedIn saying that I need business over the next six months, you’re completely playing the wrong game. Your strategy is going to be off. And I can tell you right now, John, you are not going to get any of that business that you’re going to see. And then you’re going to come back and say, LinkedIn, such a terrible business development platform. my God, it’s so bad and things like that. I was just talking to another company and they did an analysis on how long it takes to do what’s called either social selling.

or account-based marketing, ABM. It is currently taking approximately 320 days from the time you start that campaign until the time that new business actually comes into the door. That assumes that for that entire 320 days, John, you did things the right way. You’re providing value-driven content. You’re providing educational type of content. You’re providing those things that make it so that when people are ready to buy,

Not only have you already created the awareness of your product, the why about your product, but it becomes a no brainer why they should at least consider you when they’re going through that process. And so that’s the biggest thing that I tell people is if you’re not prepared, number one, for this to be a long term game, you’re not playing the right game right here. And that’s unfortunate. What we’re seeing, John, is we’re seeing a bunch of people who have seen these automation tools and they’ve been told that, if you, if you send a thousand messages out by percentages, you have to be successful, right?

And unfortunately we’re seeing a lot of that and it just tires people out from people who are doing it the right way. And so unfortunately now going into 2026 value driven content and engagement strategies is going to be even more important than it was this year.

John Jantsch (12:57.55)

So what pieces of that, because I completely agree. mean, it’s obvious when somebody’s just doing cold outreach to you, you you’re a piece of meat at that point, you know, that they’re trying to communicate with. So, but there are places where I think there are some automation tools, some AI that can help the process. What are some of the tools, you know, for example, if you’ve got a post that really is blown up and you’re getting lots of comments and people are engaging with it.

Lorenzo Johnson (13:03.416)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (13:26.314)

Are there ways for you to maybe move those people to another conversation, say an email, or obviously as much thoughtful commenting on their comments has to be done by hand, but are there parts that can actually make that obvious hand work easier and faster?

Lorenzo Johnson (13:36.09)

Yeah.

Lorenzo Johnson (13:44.787)

There is. I’ll tell you two tools that we, again, I can only speak for our agency, things that we’re doing successfully. The first one is actually a tool called Apollo. Apollo is a tool that integrates not only directly into your LinkedIn, it could integrate into your CRM systems. We use HubSpot, for example, why that matters and why we love it. Apollo is simply an integration tool that if, I was on John’s LinkedIn profile right now and I had it pulled up, I could click on the Apollo integration. It would tell me numerous things.

It will tell me number one, your email, contact information, phone number, a lot of that information that you may not put in your LinkedIn profile because of the exact stuff that we just talked about. However, Apollo has the ability to do what’s called scrape all of that type of information, which I’m sure you’re familiar with. We love Apollo. The way that we leverage it is if you we leverage when we reach out and we do corporate pay outreach campaigns, individual outreach campaigns, as soon as you show any form of interest, any form of interest,

We’re immediately putting you into our email system and things like that. The reason I mentioned that tool is because a lot of people don’t have their business emails in LinkedIn anymore because of what we’re talking about right here. Apollo allows you to still get that information. And then of course, as you can imagine, John, if we have that phone number, you bet you’re going to get a phone call that at least says, Hey, we were talking about this. We were chatting about this. Does it make sense for us to have a conversation? So that’s the first tool that I really, really, really enjoy using.

The second tool that we’ve been using, and full transparency, we’re just testing this, but I’m testing it because of something that we started initially in our conversation, and it’s that video seems to be opening up doors on LinkedIn. It’s actually a tool called Weasley. What it actually allows you to do is it actually allows you to create customized video outreach. So as opposed to doing this, hey, John, we’re in the same field type of conversation, it’s a more personalized video. Of course, you can do some customizations.

But the really cool thing it does is it actually will scroll the site and the LinkedIn profile of the person that you’re talking through. So not only can I say why, you know, I’m just calling, but I can say, hey, John, I was actually checking out your LinkedIn profile and look at what I saw. Here’s a post that you did this. I maybe would have done this a little different or here’s something that you did so great. I would lean into this and take it to the next level. And so we really love that because it combines everything we’re talking about video. So you can see my voice. You can hear me.

Lorenzo Johnson (16:04.571)

but it still is value driven. I’m not saying, hey, John, we talked to all of these different people. Do you want to set up a free consultation and things like that? It’s like, hey, look at your LinkedIn. This is what I saw. Look at your Facebook. Look at your website. Here are actionable things that we could potentially talk about if and when it makes sense and go from there. So I would say those are the two tools that we’ve been using this year that we absolutely plan on taking into 2026.

John Jantsch (16:29.23)

So speaking of tools, LinkedIn gets occasionally very nervous about tools that scrape its content. And we’ve all seen tools that get banned. And again, lot of it’s because people are being too aggressive with them, probably. So how do you kind of balance that idea that, I don’t know, are there legitimate ways to scrape? I don’t know if that’s the right term.

Lorenzo Johnson (16:35.235)

It does. It does.

Lorenzo Johnson (16:40.525)

Yeah, of course.

Lorenzo Johnson (16:53.499)

So no, no, no.

John Jantsch (16:55.24)

or if it’s really a matter of like, it’s only a matter of time before LinkedIn says, no, I don’t like

Lorenzo Johnson (17:00.335)

Now, so these tools are basically what are called black, gray, and white hat tools. Basically, all this simply means is that black hat tools are, LinkedIn says, absolutely not. Those are the things where you use them and you get caught. Not only is your profile being banned, it’s going to be hard to kind of get it back. Gray tools, which are the predominant use, like LinkedIn automation tools and things like that, those live in what we call that kind of gray area. They’re technically,

John Jantsch (17:06.648)

Mm-hmm.

Lorenzo Johnson (17:26.349)

not allowed to be used by LinkedIn. However, this year LinkedIn has basically said, as long as you follow these parameters, we’ll allow it to keep going. Biggest thing, for example, is a connection request limit. Moving forward, you can only send 100 connection requests per week unless you’re doing things the right way and stuff like that. As soon as you start to go over that, grey hat tools start to become out of the box. As long as tools are what are called more integrations and not necessarily scrapes,

Typically, LinkedIn is actually OK with that. We’re not seeing too many different things. For example, the tool Weasley that I’ve actually found is actually allowed to be integrated directly into your LinkedIn inbox through LinkedIn itself. It’s not even like a third party tool and things like Apollo that you have to use. So unfortunately, LinkedIn is always going to kind of always keep you in that gray area. Because again, at the end of the day, they don’t want people to come in and use a bunch of automation that ruins the experience.

which is what’s happened, John, over the past 18 months. LinkedIn has been not an ideal experience for C-level execs and hire. You open up your inbox and there’s 50 people a day that are providing zero value whatsoever. But there are tools that will at least allow you to make your life easy that LinkedIn doesn’t. So another one that we use that has never gotten banned is Phantom Buster. Phantom Buster allows you to scrape anything possible that you can think of, emails, contact information, post information. I mean, they have 100,

no exaggeration, probably 15 LinkedIn specific like scraping categories. We use that because again, it counts as an integration. It’s not actually integrating into the profile or anything like that. those would be three tools that we have seen that not had any issues. That’s typically minimum gray, if not in kind of that white hat type of space. And sorry to get so technical on that.

John Jantsch (19:12.026)

No, no, no, I think people need to hear that. What are some, you know, there’s basic measurement on…

Lorenzo Johnson (19:19.439)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (19:22.144)

engagement, new followers, you know, kind of thing. What are some ways to actually, other than like getting meetings or getting sales, what are some ways to measure your success, if you will, on LinkedIn?

Lorenzo Johnson (19:29.541)

Mm-hmm.

Lorenzo Johnson (19:35.055)

So one of the biggest things I actually am always looking at is I’m looking at views and impressions. That’s typically what’s defining my success. If I can get this in as many eyes as possible, like I’ve already mentioned, John, the conversion stuff will happen as time starts to go on and as you’re doing things appropriately. So I’m typically looking at views and then I’m looking at kind of that engagement rate per views. And then I’m basically saying the same thing we teach people to do. How do I optimize to create content more like that?

or less like that. If I’m seeing that every time I mention or tagging someone, it’s starting to work, well then I’d say, hey, let’s make sure that we’re putting longer form content. Let’s make sure we’re doing more of that. I typically personally am defining it by views and impressions. I want to get as many impressions as LinkedIn is going to allow me every single time.

John Jantsch (20:20.3)

Lorenzo, I appreciate you stopping by and catching us up on LinkedIn. Where would you invite people to connect with you and find out more about the work at Socially In?

Lorenzo Johnson (20:24.186)

Yes, sir.

Lorenzo Johnson (20:28.929)

Absolutely, please jump on to LinkedIn. It’s going to be Lorenzo Johnson. I’m one of the partners here at Socially In. Very excited to connect with you on there. And of course, John, I’ll get you that direct link to a profile. To find out more information about our agency, please just simply go to www.sociallyin.com. You’ll get an idea of not just the services that we provide. We have a wonderful case study section where you get to look at all the work that we’ve done, high quality, creative, and all of that good stuff as well. Look forward to having you all connect with me.

John Jantsch (20:55.982)

Awesome. Well again, appreciate you stopping by and maybe we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Lorenzo Johnson (21:02.053)

That sounds like a plan, John. Appreciate you for having me and thanks so much.