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John Jantsch (00:02.776)

So marketing output is way up everywhere, right? But results are kind of down. Phones are ringing less than they did two years ago. I wrote a book in the and 2010, and I think the answer to this challenge is sitting in that book that I wrote then. And I’ll explain why AI has made that book possibly more relevant than ever. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast.

This is John Jantsch. I’m doing a solo show. let’s title this AI Just Made Referrals, Your Most Important Channel. So let’s dig in. So as I said at the outset, AI has made competent marketing cheap, passable marketing. Everyone can produce decent content, email ads, I mean, in an afternoon. Now, what nobody says is everybody’s working harder than they did before because they’re trying to manage the machine now. But

Fact of the matter is everybody jumped in, everybody sounds the same now. You know, buyers can tell you, can’t really tell who’s good or not good anymore. the way that they search now, they’re depending and relying on the AI engines to actually give them recommendations. ad costs are doing two things. Ads are doing two things. used to be a really reliable channel. Now ad costs are soaring and their effectiveness is way down. I mean, we

We certainly are seeing that with many of our clients and we’re seeing it ourselves. But I think the biggest thing is that buyer behavior has changed, and I think that that is going to really make a a really shift in marketing from, you know, I talked about many, many years ago I created the marketing hourglass. The idea being that, you know, most people focus on the front half or the top half of that, no like trust, try.

that that you know, getting the phone to ring, getting leads generated. And I’ve said for many, many years that it’s the back half of that. When somebody buys, when they repeat, when they refer, you know, those are the stages of the buyer journey that we really need to be focused on today. it’s hard to get chosen today, with a lot of what’s going on, you know, the noise, the just the fact that, you know, if if AI

John Jantsch (02:23.727)

it doesn’t include you in the short list, you know, somebody may never come to your website or check you out. And so, you know, getting chosen has become more difficult. But what that really means, I think, is instead of doubling down on getting chosen, maybe double down on retention, on repeat business with those ideal clients, and and certainly on a systematic approach to referrals. The top half of the hourglass, you know, the lead generation part has gotten really cheap, but it’s gotten less effective. So

Again, as I said, the second half of the hourglass has become probably the most important element. You know, I told you in the intro that a book that I wrote in 2010. Most people certainly, if you were gonna ask a lot of people that follow me at all, they would say, well, Dark Tape Marketing’s your best book, right, or your best-selling book, or certainly the one you’re known for. I mean, it’s frankly, it’s the name of this podcast, it’s the name of of you know my website, it’s the name of my business, quite frankly. So

But however, the book that I wrote in twenty ten, The Referral Engine, Teaching Your Business to Market Itself, is is actually in terms of pure numbers my best selling book. And a lot of people wouldn’t wouldn’t know that. But I think it really it still sells well today. and I think what that really is a testament to is it’s evergreen. The idea of of referrals is evergreen. it doesn’t take Twitter necessarily to get to a referral. And I think that that’s really

At the foundation of this, because a referral is the most trusted lead in most cases. It’s a lead that comes to you expecting to pay a premium or at least not price sensitive because somebody has told them, somebody they trust already, even if it was in a review of somebody they didn’t know, talked about the fact that you solved that problem. That was proof. You were just saying it in your marketing. Somebody else said it about you. And I think that that.

really leads people because in a lot of cases people aren’t that they’re not completely price sensitive, especially for, you know, trying to solve a big expensive problem, but they’re risk averse. And so it it it lowers the risk. And because of that, they’re willing to pay more. because let’s face it, I mean, going with the low price leader, you know, involves a lot of risk. If that’s the only

John Jantsch (04:44.303)

decision or or that’s the only data point that that you’re using. And so I think a lot of people are okay with paying more if they can actually feel that that risk of a total failure. and and it’s not just money. I mean it’s it’s time, it’s energy, it’s what we’ve invested. You know, we we get pitched every single day, as I’m sure many of you do as well, on services that want to generate leads for us. And you know, a lot of the pitches or a lot of the value

Proposition pitch is that, hey, we’ll generate 10 appointments and if they aren’t good, you don’t pay a thing. Well, it really kind of belies the fact that you put a ton of energy, you put a ton of your reputation, you know, into getting some sort of cold outreach thing going. And if it flops, okay, you didn’t pay the service to do it, but now you’ve lost opportunity, you’ve lost time, maybe you’ve sullied your reputation in the process. And I think that a lot of people.

Don’t really talk about those types of costs when you know people are really pitching you. So here are three ideas from the book that I think matter the most now. people are wired to refer. I have said this for many, many years. Now it’s not everyone, but certainly a lot of people, if they’ve had a great experience, if they have something unexpected has happened to them along the way, they will talk about it. And so that’s what I mean we’re wired.

refer there there certainly are those people out there that are connectors i mean that’s they get a lot of juice from that idea of of being able to induce people but i think the real thing is if somebody’s had an exceptional experience they they are wired to talk about it most businesses that are doing anything halfway decent are getting some amount of referrals it’s you know it’s unpredictable it’s accidental you know it’s hope that that they get those and so

what this book, what the book introduced is the the idea that you need to create a system around it. It needs to be intentional. You need to have processes in place that actually make sure that you are taking advantage of your referability. I mean, this is not about tricking people into referring you. You’ve got to do that first half. You’ve got to have a referral service, you have to be referable. but once you are, then you have to amplify that referrability.

John Jantsch (07:08.587)

And I think that I I, you know, that’s point number three. I kind of stepped on stepped on it. But I mean, I think that’s really the the key there is no amount of systems or processes or great copy, you know, are necessarily going to generate referrals if you’re not referable. And a lot of that referrability comes down to being able to communicate what it is that you do that would be of value.

to the person, like what’s in it for them in a lot of ways. That’s always going to be a consideration, even if what’s in it for them is they just want to help their friend out, or maybe they just want to help you out. But they’ve got to understand what that value exchange is going to be, is going to contain. This is a piece a lot of people miss. I mean they miss this in marketing in general. Your value proposition or what you are going to do when you are referred has to be easy for them to understand and therefore easy

For them to explain. You put those two comp those two things together. a system where you are actually asking for referrals and then a way to actually teach somebody why they should refer you and how they should refer you. and you really are very far along the path. Now, there are many other things that you can build into this. You can build timing, you know, like when to ask for referrals, you know, especially with customers. there’s always going to be kind of

moments of truth when you want to ask for them. You can build tools. You know, having web pages, they they don’t necessarily have to be open to the general public, but when somebody wants to refer you, just say, hey, send your friend to this page. Make it really easy for them as well. And I and you know I’m gonna I’m gonna finish this with a a few just kind of steps that I think everybody should take. But we actually I want to tell you you know I love customer refer

Referrals, but I think the real hidden opportunity that most people don’t tap is in partner referrals. So other businesses that have your same ideal client as a client or prospect are are really the richest sources for referrals. And the reason I say that is because a a good customer might know two or three people, two or three businesses they could refer you to.

John Jantsch (09:28.223)

strategic partner business might have a hundred that they could refer you to over time. And so I think that that is is reason enough to really focus on that channel. And I think most people when they think of referrals, they just go after their customers. And again, they know how brilliant you are. It’s an obvious channel, but the real goal is if you could do develop a system to go after businesses that could refer you as well. So

for one example, many of you know Mike McAllowitz, author of Profit First. he also has a network that’s called the Prosper Network, where he actually helps businesses turn their businesses around and grow them and you know apply a lot of the the things from his books to those businesses. Well he

has you know seen that in many cases a lot of their clients stumble because marketing. They don’t have a strategic approach to marketing. They’ve hired agencies or they’ve hired people to to do their marketing. And just because not everybody takes a strategic approach, it just feels like kind of tactic of the week. So Mike has started bringing businesses to us to actually do a strategic audit.

on their business, a marketing audit on their business, and then make recommendations that frankly have turned into fractional CFO or CMO engagements. I think we’re working with three businesses of his with there’s another advisor group out there business advisor group that is starting to send us businesses. So we formalized this. I mean frankly it came about because of the relationship.

that I have with Mike as as many things do, but we’ve now formalized this. So we actually have an offering. We have a web page for it. We’re actually out there pitching, you know, other like EOS implementers and profit first professionals and fractional CFOs because they really are running up against the fact that marketing is is a is is always going to be a hurdle in trying to help a business grow and expand or exit. And so we can help them patch that.

John Jantsch (11:34.772)

And I think that a lot of it has to do with our approach. we are not just coming to them as a typical agency. I mean, our approach is more closely aligned with their business advising because we always start with strategy. But again, that’s really just an example of a way that you can structure one of those that can can really turn into a in some cases, you know, a very steady stream of of referrals.

John Jantsch (12:05.751)

Another kind of twist on the whole AI environment that we’re in.

John Jantsch (12:12.337)

testimonials, case studies, referrals, reviews, you know, all of these things have always been very important from a social proof standpoint. But increasingly what you’re seeing is people are turning to even the the search engines, which are now very powered by AI, or they’re turning to an actual AI model. and they’re putting very long like criteria. Here’s what I’m looking for. Well

Guess where a lot of those AI models are driving or or deriving, you know, the recommendations? They’re not necessarily like in the old days where it was like, well, you have the most authority, you’ve done the best SEOs, and now you’re going to win. They’re actually diving deep into voice of customer, what customers are saying in reviews, what they’re saying on social media sites, what they’re saying in Reddit. and they’re using that to compile who those are. So some of those businesses aren’t necessarily.

the biggest or the been around the longest or have the most you know spend in in marketing, a lot of cases they’re the ones that have really done a good job mining and amplifying what it is that their customers are actually saying about them. So machines are talking to machines now to make a referral, if you want to look at it that way. And so a lot of the energy that you might spend on building assets around referrals, on amplifying your case studies, on getting video testimonials, those are actually going to be

AI referral assets as well. So

Here’s your homework. Ask three AI assistants who they’d recommend for your category and compare that to what your customers say. That’s really where some of the gap’s going to be. So

John Jantsch (13:57.271)

Track, here’s another good exercise for you. Track the last 10 customer sources, like where they came from. and really think in terms of, you know, in the experience of onboarding, in the experience of getting that customer going, are there are there trackable moments or talkable moments where you could actually say, this is a place where we should start asking for a referral, for example. And then start thinking about who are those strategic partners out there.

Some of whom you might actually be working with already in some cases, that you could really start thinking about a formal program. If you want to learn more about our advisor program, how we’ve structured structured it to work with advisors, business advisors, it’s just dtm.world slash B A, like business advisors. So DTM.world slash business advisors. So

That’s all I have for today. hopefully this gets you thinking a little harder about the idea of referrals and what referrals where the the role that they’re going to play and do play, I think in this AI era is going to become increasingly significant. and I think just I guess just go buy my book. That would be that would be the easiest, fastest one. But actually, if you want us to design a system for you, if you wanna if you are a business advisor.

and you’d like to learn how we could work with your clients, those are all things that we’d love to do. just send us an email. All right, take care.

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

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

Catch The Full Episode

Overview

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

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

Guest Bio

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

Key Takeaways

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

Great Moments

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

Memorable Quotes

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

Resources

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

Duct Tape Transcript

John Jantsch (00:01.368)

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

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

Peter Winick (00:40.674)

Thanks for having me, John. Appreciate it.

John Jantsch (00:42.504)

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

Peter Winick (00:55.48)

Yes.

Peter Winick (00:59.18)

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

John Jantsch (01:17.514)

Yeah.

Peter Winick (01:27.618)

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

John Jantsch (01:32.62)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (01:39.117)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (01:45.761)

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

Peter Winick (01:54.957)

Yeah. Yeah, yeah yeah. Exactly.

Peter Winick (02:04.3)

Yes.

John Jantsch (02:14.998)

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

Peter Winick (02:20.28)

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

John Jantsch (02:27.085)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (02:45.28)

Mm.

Yeah.

Peter Winick (02:49.698)

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

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

John Jantsch (03:25.761)

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

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

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

Peter Winick (04:13.41)

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

John Jantsch (04:18.114)

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

Peter Winick (04:43.234)

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

John Jantsch (04:45.241)

Yeah.

Peter Winick (05:10.252)

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

John Jantsch (05:16.972)

Yeah.

Peter Winick (05:36.312)

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

John Jantsch (06:03.862)

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

Peter Winick (06:09.465)

Yes.

Peter Winick (06:24.643)

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

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

John Jantsch (07:09.548)

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

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

Peter Winick (07:39.342)

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

John Jantsch (07:44.268)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (07:53.474)

Right.

John Jantsch (08:01.76)

Mm-hmm.

Peter Winick (08:08.675)

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

John Jantsch (08:18.86)

Yeah. Right. Yeah.

John Jantsch (08:40.02)

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

Peter Winick (08:53.507)

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

John Jantsch (09:20.652)

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

Peter Winick (09:20.813)

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

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

John Jantsch (09:37.43)

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

Peter Winick (09:55.438)

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

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

John Jantsch (10:41.017)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (10:45.473)

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

Peter Winick (10:50.927)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (11:12.225)

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

Peter Winick (11:21.155)

Yeah. Hmm?

Peter Winick (11:33.069)

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

John Jantsch (11:37.229)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (11:44.141)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (11:57.143)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Peter Winick (12:01.934)

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

John Jantsch (12:10.327)

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

Peter Winick (12:14.944)

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

John Jantsch (12:31.566)

Yeah.

Peter Winick (12:40.75)

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

John Jantsch (12:41.397)

Right. Yeah.

John Jantsch (12:47.107)

Yeah.

Peter Winick (13:09.934)

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

John Jantsch (13:17.633)

Yeah. Yeah.

Peter Winick (13:37.071)

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

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

John Jantsch (14:34.231)

Yeah. Right.

Peter Winick (14:34.52)

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

John Jantsch (14:38.295)

Yeah.

Peter Winick (15:00.036)

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

John Jantsch (15:18.743)

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

Peter Winick (15:25.37)

There might be a vignette in there or two.

Peter Winick (15:31.706)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (15:48.611)

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

Peter Winick (15:51.418)

Total.

Peter Winick (16:06.897)

Mm.

Peter Winick (16:18.991)

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

John Jantsch (16:22.895)

Yeah.

Peter Winick (16:48.869)

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

John Jantsch (16:49.496)

Mm-hmm.

Peter Winick (17:17.317)

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

John Jantsch (17:27.801)

Mm-hmm. Right.

Peter Winick (17:46.662)

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

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

John Jantsch (18:23.46)

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

Peter Winick (18:50.064)

Yeah, exactly.

John Jantsch (18:50.998)

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

Peter Winick (19:07.355)

Yeah.

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

John Jantsch (19:12.558)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (19:17.834)

Yeah.

Peter Winick (19:38.021)

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

John Jantsch (19:40.206)

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

Peter Winick (19:56.464)

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

John Jantsch (20:11.694)

Yep. Yep. Yep.

Peter Winick (20:23.983)

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

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

John Jantsch (20:52.643)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (21:03.15)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (21:11.642)

Yeah, hundred percent, yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (21:18.882)

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

Peter Winick (21:24.101)

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

John Jantsch (21:48.814)

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

Peter Winick (21:53.541)

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

John Jantsch (22:10.649)

Mm.

Peter Winick (22:21.455)

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

John Jantsch (22:21.752)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (22:27.672)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (22:39.448)

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

Peter Winick (22:48.015)

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

John Jantsch (22:52.59)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (22:58.33)

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

Peter Winick (23:11.599)

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

John Jantsch (23:24.312)

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

Peter Winick (23:30.938)

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

The 4 Marketing Channels You Actually Control | 7 Steps to Small Business Marketing Success – Episode 5

The 4 Marketing Channels You Actually Control | 7 Steps to Small Business Marketing Success – Episode 5 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch the Full Episode:

Overview

john jantsch If your biggest marketing channel disappeared tomorrow, how long before your pipeline dried up? For most small business owners John talks to, the honest answer is 30 days or less. That fragility is the hidden cost of renting your pipeline instead of owning it, and it’s the focus of Step 5 in the Seven Steps to Small Business Marketing Success series.

In this solo episode, John draws the line between rented channels (paid ads, search traffic, social reach) and the assets you actually control. Rented channels can produce results fast, but the rules change, costs climb, and a single algorithm shift can erase a healthy-looking business overnight. Owned channels work differently. You decide who’s on your list and what reaches them.

John walks through the four channels every small business can own: email, referrals, strategic partnerships, and direct human relationships. He shares a simple owned-versus-rented audit you can run this week, plus why the human element only grows more valuable as AI takes over the routine work. This one is for small business owners, marketers, and consultants who want a pipeline that holds up when the platforms shift.

Host Bio

John Jantsch is the founder of Duct Tape Marketing and host of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. He is the author of several books on small business marketing strategy, including Duct Tape Marketing, The Referral Engine, and The Ultimate Marketing Engine. He helps small businesses build practical marketing systems that produce predictable growth.

Key Takeaways

Test your risk fast: if your biggest channel vanished tomorrow, count how many days before your pipeline dried up. For many owners, it’s 30 days or less.
Rented channels (paid and most earned media) can scale instantly, but costs rise, rules change, and you never control them.
Owned means control. You decide who’s on the list and what reaches them, with no platform getting a vote.
Run the audit: list every lead source that produced revenue in the last 12 months, then mark each one owned or rented. If rented tops half, that’s your next area of work.
Email is your most direct owned channel, but only when the list is qualified, nurtured, and built with permission. It’s a content channel first, a sales channel second.
Write every email as if it’s going to one person, not 20,000. Personal beats broadcast.
A real referral system has three parts: a specific ask, a specific moment, and an easy path. Most businesses only do the ask.
Strategic partnerships with non-competing businesses serving your same ideal client are the most underused lead source for small businesses.
As AI handles more routine work, double down on the human channels: networking, speaking, associations, and in-person participation.

Great Moments

[00:01] John opens Step 5 and poses the test: if your biggest channel disappeared tomorrow, how fast would your pipeline dry up?
[02:07] Renting versus owning explained, why the rental model is fragile, and the owned-versus-rented audit.
[04:30] Channel one: email, and why it still works after years of people declaring it dead.
[06:52] Email as your first layer of content, not just a sales tool.
[07:12] The mindset shift: write to one person, not a crowd.
[09:33] The three parts of a referral system, then why strategic partnerships are so underused.
[11:49] Channel four: direct relationships, and why the human element matters more in the AI era.

Memorable Quotes

“If your biggest channel disappeared tomorrow, how long before your pipeline would dry up? For most folks I meet, it’s 30 days or less.”
“If you own it, you control it. You decide who’s on it and what reaches them.”
“Referrals arrive pre-trusted. They close faster and they’re less price sensitive.”
“Non-competing businesses serving the same ideal client are the most underused lead source a small business can have.”
“The more AI becomes part of our lives and businesses, the more the human element matters.”

Duct Tape Transcript

John Jantsch (00:01.708)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and again, no guest. I’m doing this series of seven steps to small business marketing success. This is actually episode number five. So go to the show notes. You can find all the other episodes if you are behind on this. but I’m gonna dive into episode or step number five. and this one really talks about pipelines. Having a great, healthy pipeline is awesome, isn’t it? Unfortunately,

many people don’t own their pipeline. And this is going to be easy to test. I’m gonna really talk that’s what I’m gonna talk about today. But if if let me ask you this. If your biggest channel disappeared tomorrow, the platform shuts down, alg algorithms change, cost doubles. how long before your pipeline would dry up? be honest. most of the folks that I encounter 30 days or less. and that’s really risky, and that is the cost of

Renting versus owning your pipeline. And I I want to talk about a little bit about those terms. If you own it, that means you control it. you decide who’s on it, what reaches them. no platform’s really going to change that is going to to to really make that go away. That’s that’s the true idea of owning. So I mean, you own your website, you own your email list, you own your social media.

To some degree, although those are really controlled as well. So I want to get into some of the things that I believe if you want to truly own your pipeline, you have to actually own all the assets that drive your pipeline to the extent that you can. Now, when you hear marketers talk about owned media, earned media, paid media.

When I’m talking about renting, really that’s what paid media is. And to some degree earned media, which is great, the publication writes about you. some

John Jantsch (02:07.638)

search platform sends traffic to you. Yeah the social media platforms, you know, people follow you and you know on YouTube or something and and then click over to your website. Those are all things that you you kind of earn mentions. But again, those are really not under your control. I mean those are things that could theoretically go away tomorrow. YouTube changes their algorithm and you no longer get any traffic from it. so that’s why I want to focus on this idea of own. you know someone else

on in on most pipeline, rented pipeline, somebody else owns it, you pay for access to it, you play basically by their rules. and and the the beauty of that, of course, is that that can happen instantly. If you’re a new business and you go to Google AdWords and you open an account and you start advertising, I mean you can actually generate pipeline, you know, immediately. But as many people have experienced, that pipeline

Can get more and more expensive every single year, less and less profitable every single year. they change the rules, and all of a sudden you can’t talk about your product or service in the way that you want to in your ads. I mean, there are all kinds of things that that are there. and a business and and the challenge is this rental model is very fragile, but it can be invisible too, right? A business can look very healthy.

Be chugging along, but it’s 70% of their pipeline, 70% of their customer growth comes from rented channels. And all of a sudden, you know, they disappear overnight because something changed. So here’s a here’s an audit that I would tell you to do. You can do this live. lift up list every lead source that’s produced revenue for you in the last 12 months. And I know sometimes that’s hard to attribute where the revenue came from, but

Spend some time thinking about where your revenue comes from, what lead source, and start marking: is this owned? Is this rented? or you know, rented is the same as paid. you know, and and really kind of look at what’s the ratio. All right. So I want to talk now. Now that you’ve done that, I’m gonna talk about the the the four owned channels and why you need to really put more emphasis, probably.

John Jantsch (04:30.828)

need to put more emphasis on those and less on the rented ones. So the first one is email. I’ve been around for a very, very long time. We started, we started, I think, heavily using email right at the end of like in the 90s, 97, 98, 99, all of a sudden email became a thing. everybody was, you know, really adopting it. And I swear, you know, once people, once people learned the marketing

value of having an email connection with somebody. Of course they started abusing it. And that’s why a lot of people have then declared almost every year from about 2000 and well, let’s say 2004 or so when social media started cropping up that the email was dead. How many times have you heard that one, right? At least for 15 years. But it still works. It’s still one of the most valuable channels. and I

contend that it probably will remain. Now it it it has gotten harder to make effective. and that’s really more because people have abused it and because people have other options that that they’ve spent on. And you know, there’s so much spam and cold, you know, outreach that comes through those that have have actually made people, you know, not like email, if you will, but but a qualified email list that you have built over five years, direct, reliable,

owned is really one of the most efficient channels that you can have. But again, qualified, nurtured, not abused, members of that list can can be really one of the most valuable marketing assets that that a business has. key word again, qualified. people asked to be on it. It was not scraped, it was not bought, it was not added. this is

This is actually your first layer of content, if you think about it. The principles that make content work apply. Genuine point of view, useful, specific. So when you’re sending email out, that is part of your content plan, right? So genuine point of view, built on one of your core principles, built on one of your hub page, one of your

John Jantsch (06:52.0)

elements that you’re using in all of your marketing, all of your content. Ca email in a lot of ways is a content channel. It’s not necessarily a sales channel. It certainly can be. You can earn the right to sell very directly in email, but it is first and foremost, it is a content channel.

John Jantsch (07:12.278)

And again, you know, a lot of I think a lot of people, partly because of spam and things that have gone on, you know, feel like, you know, email doesn’t feel that exciting anymore, right? And I think that that’s a lot of times the edge. you know, the the the real and and again, I’m not talking about necessarily all the ways that people are using it and abusing it. I’m talking about the ways that you have the ability to have a direct conversation. And that and that’s you know, that’s probably one of

It’s one of things I forget all the time, but it’s probably one of the core principles of email is we feel like, okay, this email is going out to 20,000 people. So we’re writing it like it’s going out to 20,000 people. What if you wrote it like it was going out to one person? That you told a personal story, that you were vulnerable, that you shared a a a point of view that might not be accepted by everyone. That’s how you have to think about all of your writing.

You’re writing it to one person. Whether it’s a YouTube video, an email, a social media post, it’s not, hey guys, hey everyone listening. It’s hey, you one person, I wrote this directly for you, or at least you’re gonna feel like I wrote this directly for you. That’s how you make email, certainly a potent channel. I wrote an entire book about this second channel called the Referral Engine. and I’m

Happy to say that that book has remained evergreen because the referrals are not some hack that come about because of the next platform. They are genuinely earned if you actually focus intention on them. Obviously, you’ve got to do good work to get referrals. But after that, if you are intentional about how they are are created, referrals are they’re probably for most of us, they are the best leads. they already

arrive kind of pre-trusted. they close faster, they’re less price sensitive. They’re more likely to refer other people because that’s how they came to you. most small businesses, I think most small businesses, hopefully you do, receive some referrals, but they happen accidentally. that’s hope. That’s not a system. there are three parts to a an effective referral system. There is a specific ask, there is a specific moment.

John Jantsch (09:33.738)

And there is an easy path. So here’s what I would here is who I serve and I would like what I would like you to do. you do that at a moment when the client or the yes, the the client or the you know, the person, it’s the right time to ask them. It’s it’s the moment of truth, as I’ve called it before. And then you make it very easy for them. Most businesses are missing two and three. I mean, they think about like, yeah, okay, I I’m

Gonna go out and ask people for referrals, but I’m not gonna do it, I’m not gonna have it as a planned moment. I’m not gonna have it make sense, I’m not gonna actually make it really easy for them to do. You add those two pieces of it, and you know, right after the customer experiences something good, you make you make that ask land right then and you make it easy for them to do. Now, the the third channel is that you can own.

Is one that is a branch of referrals to some degree. not exactly. and that’s partnerships, strategic partnerships. I don’t know why more people don’t spend more time on this particular channel. non-competing businesses serving the same ideal client are are probably the most underutilized, underused lead source that any small business can have. And it’s it’s not even close. I built in the early days my entire following, my entire business.

My entire platform around these strategic partnerships because it was so easy for me to take the fact that I was early on producing content and others, people started realizing we need content, we need to educate, we need to bring our communities together. And all of a sudden I was a ready-to-tap source. And so they put me in front of their audiences. So the ideal client.

Every one of your ideal clients needs other professionals. every one of your ideal clients has other needs. If you’re in the home services business and you are an electrician, they also need a painter and a plumber and a roofer and a person to do landscaping. so if you could start to develop relationships with all the people that also serve your ideal client, and you can activate those relationships.

John Jantsch (11:49.54)

have them if if you have a podcast, have them on your podcast, you be on their podcast, write content for each other. There’s lots of ways that you can actually start developing these relationships so that these strategic partners then have a have a a real reason, but also your top of mind when it comes to referring you. And then the fourth one is is still just direct relationships. The more AI becomes invasive.

Is that the right word? In our lives and our businesses, the more human element is going to become important. So if you’re using AI to actually become more efficient and to free up time, take that extra time, take your team’s extra time and start doubling down on networking, on speaking, on associations, on in industry, in person industry participation. Spend more time doing those kinds of things because.

those still pay off and they they’re gonna pay off I think even more as people try to automate and and have you know robots theoretically doing their content. I I still don’t know that we’re ever gonna actually get to that point. But I think the real opportunity right now is to double down on the human content. So do that owned versus rented audit. Do it this week. if rented is more than half then really

The owned growth engine is really the work that you need to focus on. So this is step number five of the seven steps to small business marketing success. Hopefully you’re enjoying this series. You can go to our website at Duct Tape Marketing to find the rest of the episodes or the rest of the steps in this. and and obviously six steps six and seven are coming. These are all if you just want to get the ebook all in one shot.

It is dtm.world slash seven steps. you can get it for five bucks. if you want to actually talk to one of our consultants, it is duct tapemarketing.com consultation. So if these are making sense, that actually next step might make sense for you. Go grab the ebook or go grab a a strategy call with one of our advisors. All right. Thanks for tuning in, and hopefully we’ll see you one of these days out there on the road.

7 Steps to Small Business Marketing Success – Episode 4

7 Steps to Small Business Marketing Success – Episode 4 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch the Full Episode

Overview

Every founder I talk to is excited about AI content tools. Most of them should be a little nervous. The market is being flooded with content that reads fine and means nothing, and when you add to that pile, you do not rise above it. You disappear into it. In this solo episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, John Jantsch makes the case that more content is the fastest way to become less visible, and that the fix is not volume. It is content built to do a specific job.

The episode lays out a practical content strategy for small business owners who are tired of publishing for the sake of publishing. John walks through three principles: picking content pillars anchored on your ideal client’s problems, organizing everything under hub pages that signal authority to both buyers and AI, and repurposing authoritative founder content rather than mass-producing generic posts. He also names the ingredient most businesses skip entirely: a point of view.

This one is for small business owners, marketers, agencies, and consultants who want their content to compound over years instead of evaporating in a week. If you have ever written a blog post because the topic seemed interesting that week, this episode will change how you plan everything that comes next.

Guest Bio

John Jantsch is the founder of Duct Tape Marketing and the host of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. He is a marketing consultant, speaker, and author known for turning marketing strategy into a practical system small businesses can actually run. His books include Duct Tape Marketing, The Referral Engine, Duct Tape Selling, and The Ultimate Marketing Engine, the source of the 7 Steps framework featured in this series. Through Strategy First and the Marketing Operating System, John and his network of certified consultants help founders install strategy before tactics and build marketing that compounds over time. He works with business owners through fractional CMO engagements and shares field-tested, no-hype advice with the podcast audience each week.

Key Takeaways

More content is not the answer. AI has flooded the market with readable but forgettable material, and adding to it buries your brand instead of building it.
Content should do a job. If a piece cannot tie back to a clear pillar, you should not be producing it.
Pick three content pillars at most, anchored on your ideal client’s problems or buyer segments. Three gives you range without dilution.
Use the three-year test: if you would be bored with a topic in six months, it is a theme, not a pillar. Pillars are what you intend to own years from now.
Organize content under hub pages. One page per pillar where your proof, case studies, and expertise live together, so both search engines and buyers see real authority.
Hub pages serve your sales team too. They give you a credible place to send prospects who need the full picture on a topic.
Repurpose authoritative content. An hour of focused founder conversation can become 50 to 100 pieces of content in the founder’s real voice.
This is the best use of AI for content. Not to write the generic stuff, but to stretch the good stuff once you have captured it.
The missing ingredient is a point of view. AI returns the opinion of the collective mass. It cannot give you the thing only you believe.
A point of view does not have to be controversial. It just has to be different, and most founders already hold one they are simply not surfacing.

Great Moments

[00:01] John kicks off episode four of the seven-part solo series and frames the core idea: why more content is making you less visible.
[02:26] The first principle, picking pillars, and why your content needs to compound around your ideal client’s problems.
[04:49] The three-year test for separating a real pillar from a passing theme, plus how hub pages organize it all.
[07:12] The repurposing principle, including how an hour with a founder becomes 50 to 100 pieces of authoritative content.
[09:24] The missing ingredient most businesses skip: developing a genuine point of view in a sea of AI sameness.
[11:44] Your next steps and where to get the full Seven Steps ebook.

Memorable Quotes

“Adding to that pile doesn’t help you. It buries you.”
“If you’re bored with a topic in six months, it’s not a pillar. It’s a theme.”
“Every piece of content should point to one of those pillars. If you can’t tie it to one, you shouldn’t be doing it.”
“AI doesn’t develop points of view. It develops the point of view of the collective mass.”
“It doesn’t have to be controversial. It just has to be different.”

Resources

The Seven Steps to Small Business Marketing Success ebook (under five dollars): dtm.world/sevensteps
Talk to a Duct Tape Marketing advisor: ducttapemarketing.com/consultation

Duct Tape Transcript

John Jantsch (00:01.838)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and again, another solo show. No guest today. I’m doing the seven steps to small business marketing success. So if you haven’t caught the past, I think I’m on episode four here. If you haven’t caught the past three, go check them out at Duct Tape Marketing. but this is a series of seven podcasts. This is number four. Why more content is making you less visible? How’s that for a topic?

So here’s the AI content trap. most founders I talk to are really excited about AI content tools and frankly they should be nervous. and that is because the market is being flooded with generic, readable but forgettable content like crazy. and I think adding that pile doesn’t help you, it kind of buries you. So

He here’s the problem, and this and this has been the problem all along. Content or I’m AI didn’t necessarily change this, it just made it worse in a lot of ways. most content that small business owners have produced, somebody convinced them to write a blog post every week. but it it’s just kind of the idea of the week. It has no spine, there’s no thought behind it. maybe the topic seemed interesting that week, but two years down the road later, it actually serves zero purpose. So

The thing about AI is it makes it easier to publish a lot of content, but that doesn’t really fix this problem. It just amplifies the problem that the content was not that valuable or useful anyway. and I think that customers, prospects are definitely going to, they already are, recognizing AI content and and ignoring it, tuning it out completely. and and in s to some degree, that’s actually hurting.

the brand when they see that that’s what you’re producing, that’s all you’re producing. So there are three principles when it comes to really content. less is more content, or at least the right content, I guess is probably a better way. I’m not necessarily saying you don’t need content. I’m saying you need content to do a job and a very specific job. and that requires a couple principles. number one is picking pillars. So you want your content to actually

John Jantsch (02:26.158)

compound. and you want it to be around some things that make total sense to you. If you if you’re an architect and you do residential work, you do hospitality work and you do commercial work, you want to actually start thinking in terms of what would what would be pillars of kind those three types of work that you do, those three types of use cases, those three types of probably buyers.

what would be the pillars that would actually drive those folks or or at least let those folks to understand you better? and and start developing topics around a collection of pillars as opposed to as opposed to just, hey, I’ll write about this this week because it seems interesting, or because I can get a lot of engagement in social media over it because it’s a hot topic. I I think.

again, there may be a case for that if you’ve got lots and lots of extra time, but you really want your content to do a job. So you want to pick three pillars at most, that that are really going to be anchored on your ideal client, or at least I should say your ideal client’s problems. and every single one, every single piece of content should point to one of those. If you can’t make it, if you can’t tie it or have an angle that ties it to one of those, you shouldn’t be doing it.

This is a discipline, quite frankly, because especially a lot of organizations that just tell junior marketers to create content without giving them those pillars. That’s one of the best things you can do. If you have people in your organization producing content or an agency producing content for you, you should develop strategically as the founder, as the owner, you should develop what those three pillars are. and and again, that’s a discipline that maybe starts with the founder sometimes, because

Sometimes the founder wants to write about the cool topic or the thing that hit them that that that week. if you’re bored with a topic, you can use this as a three-year test, I’ll call this. If you’re bored with a topic in six months, it’s not a pillar. It’s a theme. Pillars are really what you’re still the authority on, or what you’re driving to be the authority on two, three, four years from now. Now you won’t always get that right.

John Jantsch (04:49.748)

but it’s sure it certainly should make sense to say, yeah, long term, this is going to be important for my ideal client and the problems they’re trying to solve. And I think I think three is the sweet spot because it allows you to have a lot of range. it allows you to be seen as an authority, but it’s a it doesn’t get diluted. I mean, it forces you to make decisions about your content. All right, so that’s the starting point, having that frame, those three pillars. next is.

And I’ve I’ve talked, I’ve written about this for years, but I talked about it in the last episode as well. You then want to organize that content under hub pages. so every one of your pillars gets a page that you’re going to then start building more and more content on. So as you as you pick a theme or you pick a topic that goes or a subtopic that goes under one of those pillars, you start organizing them as pages. hub pages

Have so many uses. First off, it’s the way to organize your content so that the search engines, AI understands that this is a broad topic, that you have with lots of authority, that there’s lots of information here, that your expertise, that you have actually put your client case studies and real proof into this entire topic, which has a ton of value just from being foundable. Foundable? Findable. There we go.

but it also don’t forget, human beings want to consume this content as well. Think about your sales team if you have one. These hub pages, excuse me, these hub pages really allow your sales team to be able to say, if you are, you know, thinking about buying a business and you need to understand what the tax implications of buying that business are, here’s the entire topic around that that we have written on. So it allows

folks to to actually allows you to share and and you know have really a useful tool or or home that you can send people to that that demonstrates that you’re a real expert. And here’s the real beauty of and this is really kind of third third principle, which is repurposing. Once you have these pillars, once you build these pages,

John Jantsch (07:12.182)

Or once you start to build these hub pages, quite frankly, you don’t have to wait till they’re done. Once you start producing content that is focused and and and has a purpose around these pillars, then you can actually start leveraging every piece of that. in fact, we we actually what we will often do is we will work with a founder and we will just sit with them for an hour, maybe a couple of times.

and just ask them questions, let them talk about their products, their services, the problems, actual customer case studies, really develop a point of view about and a voice about what they do. and we’re actually to able to take that video transcript and turn it into 50 to 100 pieces of content, including social media posts, over a period of time. And and it’s really the easiest way today to leverage.

authoritative expertise, human content in the voice of the founder or the voice of of the technical expert that’s going to talk about something that your business does. And and frankly, AI can’t do that. and that that’s really the beauty of then using these AI tools is once we have that authoritative content, we can actually easily use the AI tools then to repurpose that content. And I think that that’s really the

that’s really one of the best uses, quite frankly, of AI when it comes to content. So the the the next thing I want to talk about is that’s really the foundation structure, right? You’ve got the the pillar pages or the pillar topics, I’m sorry, the hub pages for each of those pillar topics.

and then the the mechanism to repurpose a lot of that content. That’s what we have to do today to make sure that we’re putting it in places like LinkedIn and Reddit and all the places that that are that that are gonna send authority signals, you know, back about our content and about our business to the AI tools. But the missing ingredient for most businesses is a point of view.

John Jantsch (09:24.566)

So we’re thinking in terms of this content that is certainly AI driven in a lot of cases, it’s very generic, it’s very balanced, it’s very readable, it’s a collection of what everybody else wrote. And frankly, it’s forgettable because there’s nothing that makes somebody stand up and say, Yeah, that’s different. Why isn’t anybody else in our industry saying that? Everybody else is saying the same thing. Or why are we actually doing this the same way that we’ve always done it?

How can we develop a point of view in our writing that that actually demonstrates that that we have some unique thinking? AI doesn’t develop points of view very often. It develop, well, it develops the point of view of the collective mass, right? And so if you can actually think in terms of of you know, think in think in terms of of those people that, and I’m not suggesting this, but think in terms of those people that write very polarizing stuff. I mean, I

You know, a lot of the stuff that’s gone on in politics of late, you know, is really people recognizing that writing something very polarizing repels a lot of people, but it also attracts a certain people who re are very attracted to that point of view. And I’m not suggesting that. I’m just saying use that as an example. That if you can develop a point of view about a position, something the customer hasn’t heard before, something that no one else in the industry is saying, it doesn’t have to be that controversial.

It just has to be different. And I will say that that asking the right questions of AI can actually help you start to develop some of that point of view. you don’t necessarily have to lock yourself in a room and think, how can I, you know, what what’s different? Looking at the average, having a conversation with an AI tool about what everybody in your industry is typically doing. I mean, literally asking you questions like, you know, what is a

what is a generally accepted best practice in our industry that no one is actually pushing back on? things like that can actually then start surface some of the ideas or at least surface some of your thinking about actually putting a point of view into your writing. So here’s your here here are your next steps. I want you today to think about three content pillars.

John Jantsch (11:44.13)

That would make total sense for your ideal client that would address either segments or problems that your ideal clients are actually having. and then think in terms of and again, you can use it, AI tools are great for research to get your thinking going. But you know, plug those thoughts, those themes in or those pillars in and start asking and about questions about what would be all the subtopics, what would be a way to write the ultimate guide to this

particular pillar topic and you’ll start to get some ideas. Hopefully you’ll dismiss some of them. Hopefully you’ll add to them. Hopefully you’ll think about this idea of a point of view that you can bring to each of those topics that others aren’t saying. And and a lot of times that point of view exists. You just believe it and believe that your customers will appreciate it and understand it and know it when they see it. and you’re not actually surfacing it. And that’s a real key difference. So

this today’s podcast was really built on this new ebook that I produced called The Seven Steps to Small Business Marketing Success. You can pick it up for less than five dollars at dtm.world slash seven steps. If any of this is resonating, go get the whole thing. If you actually want to talk to one of our advisors about how we do some of the things I’m talking about today and we could do for a business like yours, it’s just duct tapemarketing.com/slash consultation. So

Thanks for tuning in and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

7 Steps to Small Business Marketing Success – Episode 3

7 Steps to Small Business Marketing Success – Episode 3 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch the Full Episode

Overview

For 20 years, small business marketing came down to one question: can Google find you? That still matters. It is no longer the whole answer. Buyers now ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude very specific questions, get a short list of names back, and trust what they read. If your business is not on that list, you are invisible at the exact moment someone is ready to buy.

In this solo episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast (Step 3 of the Seven Steps of Small Business Marketing Success), John Jantsch walks through the new reality of AI search visibility and why it is a current problem, not a future one. He breaks it into three things every business has to get right: findable, credible, and retrievable. That means building real topic authority instead of stuffing keywords, turning your website into a selling tool instead of a brochure, using hub pages to own a topic, and treating your third-party presence as infrastructure rather than housekeeping.

This one is for small business owners, marketers, and consultants who suspect their website is stuck in 2019 and want a strategic, non-technical way to get found first. John also shares a simple test you can run in 60 seconds to see exactly where you stand against your competitors.

Guest Bio

John Jantsch is the founder of Duct Tape Marketing and the host of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. He is a marketing consultant, speaker, and author known for turning marketing strategy into a practical system small businesses can actually run. His books include Duct Tape Marketing, The Referral Engine, Duct Tape Selling, and The Ultimate Marketing Engine, the source of the Seven Steps framework featured in this series. Through Strategy First and the Marketing Operating System, John and his network of certified consultants help founders install strategy before tactics and build marketing that compounds over time. He works with business owners through fractional CMO engagements and shares field-tested, no-hype advice with the podcast audience each week.

Key Takeaways

Run the test: open an AI tool and ask the three questions your best customers ask before they hire someone like you. See if you show up, your competitors show up, or nobody does.
AI search is a current reality, not a future one. Many businesses are still optimized for 2019, when ranking in Google Maps or search was the whole game.
Three things matter now: be findable, be credible, be retrievable.
Findable means topic authority you can prove with case studies, reviews, and real results, not a page built around three or four keywords.
Credible means a homepage that makes the right buyer feel understood in seconds. Most founders have not read their own homepage in years.
Retrievable means AI can actually read and describe you, which depends on real content, structured data, reviews, citations, and mentions across the web.
Your website should be a selling tool, not a brochure. A brochure describes. A selling tool converts.
Lead with a core message above the fold: who you serve and how you solve their problem better than anyone, not a description of your industry.
Hub pages are your topic authority unit. Build one deep, organized guide on a core topic, linked to subtopic posts, and both AI and search engines reward it.
Treat directories, reviews, and third-party mentions as infrastructure you build over time, not one-time housekeeping.

Great Moments

[00:43] The 60-second test: ask an AI tool the three questions your customers ask, then describe what you find.
[01:16] Why this is a current problem and a real opportunity for founders who act now.
[03:39] The framework: findable, credible, and retrievable, and why it is strategic rather than technical.
[05:42] Credible: does your site confirm the visitor is in the right place?
[06:04] When did you last actually read your homepage?
[08:25] Mining your reviews for the real problems you solve and the fears buyers carry.
[10:45] Your core message above the fold and naming your ideal client.
[12:34] Hub pages explained, using the kitchen remodel example.
[14:48] Organizing reviews around topics as real proof only you can offer.
[17:05] Run the test, screenshot your baseline, and where to go next.

Memorable Quotes

“We are not reacting to the new realities of AI or Google. We are reacting to how people choose to buy today.”
“A brochure describes. A selling tool converts.”
“When is the last time you actually read your homepage?”
“This is strategic. It is not technical. A lot of SEO folks love technical because technical is hard to confuse people with.”
“A lot of people look at directories as housekeeping. Today it is more like infrastructure.”

Duct Tape Transcript

John Jantsch (00:03.01)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and no guest today. Again, some of you that have been following along may recall I am doing the seven steps to small business marketing success. This is actually episode number three, step number three. So you can check out in the show notes the past sessions as well if you’re just trying to catch up. But today I want to talk about this re new reality. our businesses have

possibly become invisible to AI search. In fact, I want you to do this test.

John Jantsch (00:43.394)

Go to Chat CPT Perplexity Claude, take your pick, right? Type in three questions that your best customers look for or ask when they are looking for a business like yours. Not anything about your particular business, but the the problems they’re trying to solve, the the issues that they have. something that they would ask before hiring somebody you. Now, we you can stop the episode right now and do that. I’ll wait. but.

John Jantsch (01:16.44)

Describe what mu what you find. think about what you find. Is it nothing? Is it you? are you dominating? That would be awesome, of course. that’s a new reality. and this isn’t a future problem. This isn’t coming. this is a current one. Now, a lot of local businesses are still showing up in in Google and Google Maps, and that’s still important, but it’s it’s fading a bit, right? people, I don’t know if it’s right or not, but people go today and when they see those like.

Best remodeling contractor in SoSo City, and AI tells them three companies, they believe it. because they’ve ty typically typed in who do kitchens in older home homes who blah, blah, blah, blah. So it’s a very specific type of search now. And the results that come up there are the ones that are winning. so are you coming up there or are your competitors coming up there? I mean, this is this is how research is being done today. and and I think

A lot of small businesses are still optimized for, I don’t know, 2019. when all you needed to do, boy, if you showed up on that Google Maps or you showed up in in Google search, then that, you know, that was really all it took. I think this is an opportunity. I mean, I think the founders who act now still absolutely have the the opportunity. It’s kind of like when we first went online, we first started blogging, all those kinds of things.

The opportunity now is to actually be first in AI search. So what’s changed? for 20 years, as I said, you know, Google, can Google find you? I mean, in a lot of ways, we got lazy because that was the only question you really had to answer. it it still applies. It’s just not the whole answer anymore. so what we have to do or or we have to think in terms of is not just

search results, keyword phrases, all the things that were thrown around by SEO folks so much. We have to be findable, we have to be credible, and we have to be retrievable. Those are three things I really want to talk about. And and it’s not I I’m not here to talk about how to hack SEO or how to hack, you know, GEO or whatever new term they’re gonna come up w with, you know, for for these various engines. It’s really just more a matter of how

John Jantsch (03:39.276)

We have to get our story out the same way we always have. It’s just sometimes you have to adapt to the new realities of of the buyer. I mean, and I think that’s something that doesn’t get said enough, is that we’re not reacting to the new realities of AI or of Google. We’re reacting to how people choose to buy today. And that’s really if you keep that in mind, and you keep in mind what they have available to them, that’s what we need to really respond to and not just.

Some new platform or some new tool or some new trend or some new hype. All right. So findable. there really is traditional search, social search, and now AI mediated. I don’t know what we would call it, search. Those are the three kinds of search that we have to to respond to today. And again, most people have really just thought about one of those. So topic authority.

Think about that. It used to be keywords, right? We we wanted to have a page that that we optimized for you know three or four keywords that people would search and that the search engines would would actually be keyed on. and today it’s really more about topic authority, a deep, rich topic authority.

That you can actually prove that you were an expert in, not that you can write about, but that you can actually prove you have the results, you have the case studies, you have the reviews, you have all the things that would human, real human beings would be saying about your business.

This is strategic. It’s not technical. And I think a lot of times that’s what we’ve done. We’ve kind of defaulted to the technical aspects. And frankly, a lot of SEO folks love that because technical is hard. Technical is easy to confuse. strategic is not so much, frankly. And I think that that’s the the the part, while it’s a mindset shift, I think that’s the part that’s the real opportunity for folks. So credible.

John Jantsch (05:42.23)

Is the second part. So findable, topic authority, credible. Does your site confirm that they’re in the right place? And a lot of times again, I I could talk to I’m blue in the face about websites and and the brochure aspect of them as opposed to the practical aspect of them, but

John Jantsch (06:04.588)

Here’s a here’s a question I love to ask people. When’s the last time you read actually read your homepage? that’s what I find is quite often the case. We we’ll start working for somebody and we’ll have lots of suggestions about ways to improve their homepage. And they actually are like, I didn’t even realize we said that, or we don’t even offer that service anymore. so you most founders haven’t done it in years. And I and I think that quite often we run across sites that reflect the reality of a business three years ago.

I I actually ran into somebody said they haven’t updated, they haven’t changed one thing on their website since 2019. We are in 2026 today. you know, that that I don’t even want to start with how much has changed since 2019. but but clearly that site is not going to perform. and and the thing is, a lot of people get very focused on design. Design’s really not going to solve the problem. Yes, the site has to look like somebody.

thinks it’s going to look, or that they’re used to how to navigate, you know, how it looks. But it’s really more about deep proof of real work and and a connection so that when the buyer or potential buyer shows up, says, you get me, or I I feel heard, or you understand the problems that I’m trying to solve. All right. So then the last one is retrievable. So we’ve got findable, credible,

And retrievable. So this is probably kind of a new one for many people. AI builds its answers from whatever is publicly available on a website, like your website content, structured data, third-party presence, reviews, citations, right? And so all of those things have to be there if if your content is

Very thin, if it is missing structured data, if it’s if there’s weak external presence, meaning that that people aren’t linking back to it, people aren’t talking about it. AI can can either find you or really can’t describe you with accuracy. And that’s why we really want to start talking about, you know, real FAQs. Go read every one of those reviews that you have gotten. plug them into an AI tool and ask that to to analyze and summarize the reviews that you’ve gotten.

John Jantsch (08:25.382)

many times you that that will be the the absolute gold mine of the problems that you really solve. And then the flip side of that, the fears that a client or your your clients at least were really worried about in in in engaging a company like yours or or your competitors. And I think that that’s where we have to start thinking about real content.

That addresses those things because that’s what people are searching. They’re going out there and saying, I want to find a contractor that won’t destroy my home, that won’t let my dog out. I mean, they’re asking very specific things like that. And that’s what AI is trying to surface. And all it does is goes out there and and reads a whole bunch of stuff. and and in fact, we’re seeing that businesses that that write that real stuff, the voice of customer, really putting their reviews

Out there as like, here’s the problems we solve. Maybe didn’t even have a great search presence before because search was dominated by companies that knew how to hack the algorithm. But AI doesn’t care about the what Google used to care about. it really cares about retrieving the data to very specific searches that people are making today. So, all right, here are three things that you need to build.

Your website has to be a selling tool, not a brochure. Hub pages, something I’ve talked about for many years. And the beauty is they become more important than ever. So I’m going to review review that. And then the last one is third party presence. And that’s a part that many business owners, I won’t say they neglect, but it’s just the hard part in a lot of cases. It’s the part that you don’t control, that you don’t own. And so you have to be very intentional about making it happen.

All right. So the website, a brochure describes a selling tool converts. That’s the difference, right? And so there are really four things that I think have to be there. They are a priority. there is an order to them. your core message above the fold. Here’s who we serve, here’s how we solve their problem better than anyone ever thought about. Not here’s what we do. your ideal client needs to be named. It’s like we serve and we are the best.

John Jantsch (10:45.848)

Better than anyone at serving XYZ. Very specific. Identify segments, whatever it is, identify them so that when somebody arrives there, they’re like, Okay, you you work with people like me.

Heart stop on what’s next, right? Not a menu, not contact us. One frictionless action for the person who’s ready. Schedule a consultation. Download this free assessment. get a quote. don’t have a dozen ways that people can think about contacting you. Have very active, not passive, very active. Here is why you should contact us. Here’s what you’ll get when you schedule. Here is the the

you know, tool that you can use to download to solve your problem. Have a very specific call to action.

Probably what I see more than anything is that first one. The core message is is either buried, generic, or missing entirely. I can’t tell you how many sites I still run across that above the fold, first thing somebody reads is a description of what your profession is, what your industry is. We are accountants in XYZ City. and that was a old SEO holdover. but what somebody wants to know is who you serve.

How you solve their problem, how you how you solve their problem like nobody else ever dreamed of doing. That’s what they need to understand first. All right, hub pages. So this is, I mentioned already, topic authority. This is your topic authority unit, is a hub page. And so the idea is if you think about a book, you’ve got a large body of work that is organized around chapters. And that’s really what a hub page is. So if you have a topic,

John Jantsch (12:34.478)

Home remodeling kitchens, for example. that’s a topic that somebody who wants to remodel a kitchen is going out there and looking for information about. So if you had the page that says everything you need to know about remodeling, but again, that’s gonna be broken up into getting ready to remodel. Should you remodel?

Design considerations, appliances, pre-construction, construction, after finishes. I mean, a whole category of subtopics. And so the idea behind a hub page is somebody arrives at that page, maybe they just want to know about wallpaper today. but they are remodeling a kitchen. So they find that page, and then there’s a subtopic on you know wall finishes. And so they jump over to that, but then they jump back to the hub page.

So, if when they want to talk about appliances or kitchen countertops, for example. And so this is like the entire guide, the ultimate guide to remodeling your kitchen, has all these subtopics that are essentially blog posts that you link out to. So this, but this page becomes the collection or the structure of all of that topic. And so what that certainly tells the AIs, sells the search engines has for years.

That this is an authoritative page on this topic that then has may it might have 10, 20, 30,000 words ultimately collected in a number of blog posts that are on subtopics. So it’s it’s probably more about it’s not the it’s not the content. Well, the content’s important, but a huge part of it is the structure of the content. this is like a jumping off point for anybody who wants to know about that topic. And the AI tools as well as the search engines absolutely love that.

And the beauty from a practical small business owner standpoint is that’s something you can structure, plan, take a year to build. It’s like writing a book, as I said. it just has all of the topics organized on this one page. and you could start having case studies, you can start having look through all of your reviews, and somebody said about how clean you are, somebody said.

John Jantsch (14:48.154)

about your pricing. somebody said about your design. So you you all of a sudden can start organizing your reviews even around some of these topics. And that’s that’s what the AI tools want to see. That’s what they they want to see, topic authority, topic expertise with real proof, not just 700 words that AI spun up, real proof that only you, you’re the only ones who can actually talk about what that client got as a result. and so hub pages are

to me, really your secret weapon to dominate. We’ve done it for we’ve done them for many, many clients. And they rank have always ranked in SEO and they are always ranking now in AI searches because of the nature the the the real focus nature on a core topic. third party so AI doesn’t just use your website.

I mean, really the search engines never did too. That’s why p you hear people talk about backlinks and reviews and and getting other people in social media to talk about your products and services. That’s always been important. So things like your Google Business profile, industry directories, reviews, mentions, citations across the web, those are all things that you do actually have a way to actively participate in. You don’t control them necessarily, people write what they

want to write or going to write, say in reviews and mentions. But you do have the ability to optimize, to, to make sure that your information is correct in those directories. That you are your you you if you do searches in AI, you’ll see there are certain directories and certain websites like Reddit and things that that some of the of of the AI tools actually rely on pretty heavily. And and those will change, evolve. They all, you know, they constantly are.

But you get a sense of some places maybe that you’re not mentioned. Say how’s, you know, again, going back to where I’m remodeling contractor, is a source that a lot of the AI tools depend on. It’s an authoritative source. are you playing there? that that just gives you some some ideas on some third-party places. in a lot of ways, think about it as I think we’ve always thought about it as housekeeping.

John Jantsch (17:05.848)

To to be in those directories, to make sure that they were correct, that you didn’t have the wrong phone number. A lot of people look at that as housekeeping. And I think today, in today’s environment, it’s it’s more infrastructure. you know, it’s something that you actually have to build, it’s behind the scenes, it you know, it’s not gonna pay off today. Long term thing that you need to to build as part of the infrastructure of your business. So if you didn’t run that test, pause now and run that test.

Screenshot the baseline. Are your your competitors showing up at when you do a search that your customers were are likely asking? are you showing up? it just kind of gives you the picture of, you know, if you’ve ignored this, it gives you the picture of what you have to do. so that’s really it today. I I will tell you that if if some of the things I talked about today, again, go get the free ebook. it’s dtm.

world slash seven steps. I misspoke. We I think we’re charging $4.99 for it tremendous amount of value. It’s more of a workbook than an ebook. it’ll give you lots of things to think about, lots of things to work on as well. So it’s DTM.world seven steps. And if you just want to skip all of that and find out how working with us and and having us install strategy first in your business and then build a marketing operating system.

with you that you own that that can address the each of these seven steps, that is just duct tapemarketing.com slash consultation. So thanks for tuning in. next episode, episode step number five of seven is coming up. So thanks for tuning in. Hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Living the Agency Reality From Every Side

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

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

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

Featuring insights from Sara Nay, CEO of Duct Tape Marketing

It starts with a sick feeling.

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

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

The answer is to build a strategy first.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Channel selection follows strategy. It does not precede it.

The two things you need before you pick any channel

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

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

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

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

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

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

Map the customer journey before you map the tactics

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

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

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

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

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

Tactics without tracking are just busy work

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

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

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

How to stand out when everything feels like noise

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

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

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

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

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

Low-budget marketing that actually works

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

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

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

Frequently asked questions

What should I do first when referrals dry up?

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

Should I run paid ads when referrals stop?

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

How do I get referrals to come back naturally?

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

What is the Marketing Hourglass?

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

How should small businesses use AI in their marketing?

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

Ready to build your marketing strategy before your next tactic?

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

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

Marketing Strategy for Businesses That Have Outgrown More Tactics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What a Small Business Marketing Strategy Actually Looks Like

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to Build That Foundation Faster Than You Think

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

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

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

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

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

Questions I Get Asked About This

Is this only for businesses that are struggling with marketing?

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

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

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

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

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

The Bottom Line

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

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

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

Why the Traditional Agency Model Is Broken and What Comes Next

Why the Traditional Agency Model Is Broken and What Comes Next written by Sara Nay read more at Duct Tape Marketing

The traditional agency model is no longer built for today’s small businesses. In this article, Sara Nay explains the anti-agency model and how strategy-first marketing, fractional leadership, and AI can help businesses own their marketing instead of outsourcing it blindly.

Table of Contents

What I Mean by the Anti-Agency Model

AI Changed the Rules Whether We Like It or Not

Timeless Marketing Principles Still Matter

The Real Danger of AI-First Thinking

Why Fractional Marketing Leadership Matters More Than Ever

What This Means for Agencies

Two Steps You Can Take This Week to Start Owning Your Marketing

AI Is Not About Replacing People. It Is About Elevating Them.

Final Thought

For the last 15 years, I have lived inside the agency world.

I have been an intern, a community manager, an account manager, a fractional CMO, and now the CEO of Duct Tape Marketing. I have seen this industry from nearly every angle. Inside the work, inside the relationships, and inside the pressure that agencies and clients both feel.

Here is the truth I could not ignore anymore.

The traditional agency model is broken.

Not because agencies are bad.
Not because marketers do not care.
But because the model itself no longer serves small businesses or the agencies trying to support them.

That realization is what led me to write Unchained: Breaking Free from Broken Marketing Models and to articulate what I call the anti-agency model.

Let me explain what I mean and why this moment matters more than ever.

Living the Agency Reality From Every Side

Over the years, I experienced the same challenges many agency owners quietly struggle with.

Constant scope creep
Difficulty scaling profitably
Burnout among team members
High client expectations with limited clarity
Pressure to do more faster and cheaper

At the same time, I have spent years on the sales side of our business talking with hundreds of small business owners. I heard the same frustrations over and over again.

“Marketing does not work.”
“I am paying an agency, but I do not know what I am getting.”
“I feel disconnected from my own marketing.”

Both sides were frustrated, and neither side was wrong.

The system simply was not designed for the reality we are in now.

What I Mean by the Anti-Agency Model

Let me be clear. This is not anti-agency.

We are an agency. We have been one for over 30 years. I love agencies and believe they play a critical role.

What I am against is a model where agencies:

Hoard execution
Operate as black boxes
Replace ownership with dependency
Compete on volume instead of leadership

The anti-agency model is anti that approach.

It is a strategy-first, AI-enabled approach that helps small businesses stop renting their marketing and start owning it, while agencies evolve into leadership partners instead of outsourced task machines.

AI Changed the Rules Whether We Like It or Not

Before AI, it made sense for agencies to own execution.

Content
Social
SEO
Ads
Email

Small businesses simply did not have the resources or tools to handle that work internally.

That is no longer true.

AI has fundamentally changed what is possible for small teams. Today, small businesses can:

Keep execution closer to home
Operate with leaner internal teams
Use AI systems to handle heavy lifting
Focus human effort on thinking, judgment, and leadership

Here is the key.

AI does not replace strategy. It makes strategy more important.

Timeless Marketing Principles Still Matter

One thing has not changed, despite all the technology.

Marketing fundamentals still matter.

In Unchained, I spend a lot of time reinforcing timeless principles, including:

1. Deep Ideal Client Understanding

AI without clarity just creates noise.

If you do not deeply understand your client’s fears, motivations, and what keeps them up at night, AI will happily produce generic content that sounds like everyone else.

Strategy comes first. Then you train your tools.

2. Core Messaging and Differentiation

Your messaging, what makes you you, must be defined before automation enters the picture.

Otherwise, AI accelerates inconsistency instead of clarity.

The foundations have not changed.
The way we use them has.

The Real Danger of AI-First Thinking

The biggest mistake I see right now is businesses jumping straight into tools.

AI amplifies whatever already exists.
If you have chaos, it amplifies chaos.
If you lack clarity, it multiplies confusion.

That is why we now say:

Strategy before tactics.
Strategy before technology.

Ask these questions first.

What is the business trying to accomplish?
What role should marketing play?
How should the team be structured?
Where does AI actually help us move faster without losing direction?

Only then do tools make sense.

Why Fractional Marketing Leadership Matters More Than Ever

Most small businesses were never able to afford a traditional marketing org chart.

A CMO
Plus channel specialists
Plus support staff

AI changes that equation.

Today, the most effective structure looks like this.

Fractional marketing leadership responsible for strategy, budget, direction, and metrics
A lean internal team
AI systems supporting execution underneath

This allows founders to stay in their zone of genius. Selling, leading, and growing. Not becoming accidental CMOs.

And no, the title does not matter.
Call it a fractional CMO, marketing leader, strategist, or advisor.

What matters is that someone is leading marketing strategically, not just taking orders or doing tasks.

What This Means for Agencies

If you are an agency reading this, here is the hard truth.

Execution-only services are becoming a race to the bottom.

AI will continue to get better.
Small businesses will continue to bring more execution in-house.
Margins will continue to compress.

The opportunity is not to compete against AI.

The opportunity is to lead strategy, elevate humans, design systems, guide internal teams, and work with AI instead of against it.

Agencies that evolve into leadership partners will thrive.
Those that do not will struggle to stay relevant.

Two Steps You Can Take This Week to Start Owning Your Marketing

If you are a business owner and this feels overwhelming, start here.

1. Revisit the Marketing Strategy Pyramid

Clarify your business goals, your marketing strategy, and your team structure.

Do this before tools. Do this before tactics.

2. Audit Your Current Relationships

Ask yourself:

Do we have visibility into what is happening?
Do we understand why we are doing what we are doing?
Are we in control, or are we in the dark?

Ownership starts with clarity.

AI Is Not About Replacing People. It Is About Elevating Them.

One of the most powerful exercises we have done internally is asking our team to identify:

Human-led skills
AI-assisted skills
Tasks that could be fully automated

Not to squeeze more output, but to help people focus on work that matters more.

That is how businesses, and careers, get future-proofed.

Final Thought

This moment is not about choosing between humans and AI.

It is about choosing between ownership and dependency.

The businesses that win will not be the ones chasing every tool.
They will be the ones leading with strategy, clarity, and intention.

That is what Unchained is really about.

If you want to learn more, visit unchainedmodel.com or connect with me on LinkedIn.

Sara Nay is the CEO of Duct Tape Marketing and the author of Unchained: Breaking Free from Broken Marketing Models. With more than 15 years of experience in the agency world, she has worked in nearly every role, from intern to fractional CMO, giving her a rare, full-spectrum view of what works and what no longer does in modern marketing. Sara is a leading voice in strategy-first marketing and the evolution of the agency model, helping small businesses and agencies stop renting their marketing and start owning it through clear strategy, strong leadership, and practical use of AI.

10 Questions Small Business Owners Should Ask Before Hiring a Marketing Agency

10 Questions Small Business Owners Should Ask Before Hiring a Marketing Agency written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Listen to the full episode:

Overview

In her first ever solo episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, Sara Nay—CEO of Duct Tape Marketing and author of “Unchained: Breaking Free from Broken Marketing Models”—shares the questions every small business owner should ask before hiring an agency, consultant, or freelancer. Drawing from her 16 years of experience, Sara highlights real-world horror stories and arms business owners (and agencies!) with the keys to transparency, ownership, and collaboration. If you want to avoid getting stuck with expensive, opaque, or unproductive marketing partnerships, this episode is packed with the practical, empowering guidance you need.

About the Host

Sara Nay is CEO of Duct Tape Marketing, host of the Agency Spark Podcast, and author of “Unchain: Breaking Free from Broken Marketing Models.” She helps small businesses and agencies build ownership, transparency, and strategic clarity into every marketing engagement.

LinkedIn: Sara Nay
Book: Unchained: Breaking Free from Broken Marketing Models
Duct Tape Marketing: ducttapemarketing.com

Actionable Insights

Small business owners are too often locked into expensive, long-term marketing contracts—with little clarity on results or account ownership.
Always ask: Who owns my marketing assets and accounts? (Spoiler: It should be you, not the agency.)
Demand transparency in reporting, regular reviews, and ongoing education—don’t settle for reports you don’t understand.
Insist on strategy before tactics; don’t hire a vendor who just wants to “do SEO” or “run ads” without understanding your business.
Avoid long-term contracts and “handcuff” clauses; month-to-month and clear exit paths are healthiest for all sides.
Meet the real team you’ll work with—not just a charismatic salesperson. Ask to speak with the actual day-to-day contacts.
Ask how agencies use AI and what remains human-led; look for “AI + human” answers, not “AI instead of human.”
Ensure your team stays informed and involved; agencies should empower, not gatekeep.
Ask for a sample report, a clear plan for strategy, and specific examples of what the agency will teach you along the way.
The best agencies leave you better educated, more empowered, and with true ownership—never dependent or in the dark.

Great Moments (with Timestamps)

00:01 – Why Small Businesses Get Stuck with Bad Agencies
Real-life stories of businesses trapped by contracts, lost assets, and confusing reports.
04:16 – The 10 Essential Questions to Ask Before Hiring an Agency
Sara’s practical checklist for choosing the right partners.
06:45 – You Must Own Your Assets
Why account ownership is non-negotiable for small businesses.
08:42 – Strategy Before Tactics (Always!)
How to connect tactics to your bigger business goals and avoid wasted spend.
10:53 – The Danger of Long-Term Contracts
Why month-to-month is the gold standard in today’s marketing landscape.
13:20 – AI, Human Touch, and the Future of Agency Work
What to look for in agencies navigating the new marketing tech landscape.
15:38 – Involvement, Education, and True Collaboration
How agencies should keep you informed, empowered, and ready to grow.

Insights

“You should always own your website, accounts, and assets—never let an agency hold them hostage.”

“Great agencies start with strategy, not just tactics—they want to understand your business, not just sell you what’s in their toolkit.”

“Transparency, collaboration, and education are non-negotiables—if you’re not getting them, find a better partner.”

“Marketing is complicated, but you shouldn’t be kept in the dark. The best agencies leave you smarter, more empowered, and in control.”

Duct Tape Transcript

Sara Nay (00:01.218)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duck Tape Marketing Podcast. This is your host, Sara Nay, taking over for John Jantsch today as host and also doing my first ever solo podcast because I am fired up about a specific topic right now.

So to give you a little bit of backstory, about a week ago on LinkedIn, I posted a couple stories of conversations that I had had with small business owners recently. And I led the post saying that I am sad and mad and fired up all at the same time. And so the conversations I had with two separate business owners, the first one was with a small business owner who has been paying an SEO company $8,000 a month and is locked into

three-year contract with him. On top of that, he had no idea if he was getting any results from the efforts and he didn’t know how to get out of the contract because he signed this three-year commitment.

Another story that I told on LinkedIn was another conversation I had with a different business owner, and he has been paying $10,000 a month for Google Ads to an agency. But the issue is the agency owns the Google Ads account, and on top of that, he doesn’t have access to it, and he has no idea how much of the money that he’s paying every month is going towards the agency’s management fees or the actual ads.

In both of these scenarios, the business owners were receiving reports from the agencies every month. They had no idea what the reports actually mean. It looked like foreign language to them. And so they’re spending money on marketing. They’re not really getting a return and they’re locked into these situations, both a bit stuck. The SEO scenario, he’s stuck because he signed a three year contract. The Google ads scenario, he’s stuck because this agency owns

Sara Nay (02:00.457)

his ads accounts. And so these stories fire me up. I’ve been speaking with, interacting with small businesses for about 16 years at Duct Tape Marketing and I wish that these were unique stories but unfortunately I hear things like this all of the time. And I think it comes from two different areas. think there’s, marketing is hard, it’s complex. A lot of people get into business because they’re passionate about something or they see an opportunity and all of sudden they need to start

understanding and learning marketing because that’s how you spread the word about your business. And so there’s a lot of people in the small business space as business owners that haven’t been properly educated about marketing and so they don’t really understand how to go about or purchase marketing from partners that are out there.

There’s also unfortunately some agencies that I believe take advantage of small business owners. I actually wrote a whole book on the topic. It’s called Unchained Breaking Free from Broken Marketing Models. We’ll add a link to the show notes. But I believe the best path forward for small businesses is the path where they’re owning their marketing and they’re collaborating with partners to actually get the work done moving forward. So as I said, fired up on this topic, I’m here to educate small

small businesses on how to ask the right questions when it comes to hiring an agency or a fractional CMO or a consultant. And I’m also here, if you’re an agency fractional CMO or consultant listening to this episode as well, I encourage you to write down these list of questions and answer them honestly to see where you stand on these items. Because I believe again, the best path forward is transparency and collaboration, working together, empowering small businesses.

versus keeping what we do behind the scenes in secret. And so with all of that being said, I wanna dive in as a follow up to my initial LinkedIn post, I did a second post that was essentially 10 questions to ask as part of the sales process to the agency that you’re considering hiring. And so these questions are very focused on understanding the type of partnership you’re getting into. And so I wanna make that very clear. There are other questions you should ask

Sara Nay (04:16.377)

top of this except like such as their work experience and speaking to referrals and reading different case studies and all of that stuff this these ten questions are very focused on understanding the partnership that you’re getting into so if you’re a small business listening to this write these down the next time you’re considering hiring an agency a consultant a fractional CMO a contractor a freelancer ask these questions so you’re better prepared to Understand what the relationship will look like moving forward so the first question and in some cases

I would argue is the most important is who owns the market my marketing assets and accounts and so this one is very important because I’ve heard so many stories over the years of marketing agencies owning the accounts on behalf of their clients and so they’re building these assets that their client is basically handcuffed to this agency moving forward and so the scenario I said in the opening with the example of the person spending $10,000 a month

Google ads, the agency owned the account. And so when they parted ways, the small business basically lost their Google ads setup because they had to start from scratch over again. So that’s one scenario. Another scenario I hear very often, unfortunately, is a agency basically builds a website for the client and they own the website, the URL, hosting, all of the things. And so now all of sudden the small business is tied to this agency until they

part ways and then they essentially have to rebuild this website from scratch when I would argue a website in a lot of cases is one of the most important assets when it comes to small business marketing. And so you absolutely should be asking this question when you’re considering working with an agency or outsourced solution. It’s who’s going to own the accounts and their answer should be you. You small business owner will own the accounts and we will give you, or you can give

us access to the accounts as managers or whatever the setup would be and then when we part ways you kick us out and you continue to own this asset that we would have spent all of this time building together. So that should always be the answer I believe is you should own your website, you should own your paid accounts, you should own technology and tools, AI platforms that people are bringing in. Like you should be the owner as the small business and the agency should be granted access to your account.

Sara Nay (06:45.903)

so you can kick them out when you part ways. Another question, number two on the list is how will you measure success and how often will we review it? And so again, in the opening, I shared those two stories of the person paying for SEO services and the other one paying for Google Ads. They were getting a report that looked like foreign language every single month and they have no idea what it means. And so that doesn’t help anyone, ultimately.

And so when you’re asking an agency that you’re considering to work with, how will you measure success and how often will we review it? You wanna see that they’re measuring success for certain things on a daily basis, some on a weekly basis, some on a monthly basis. Maybe they’re diving into certain metrics on a quarterly basis. It really just depends on what all you’re tracking in terms of the cadence. But you wanna…

have an agency that you’re working with that has a clear plan for measuring what they’re going to measure, how they’re going to measure it, how they’re going to report on it, how they’re going to analyze it, how they’re going to use it to drive their decisions. And then how often will we review it is really important as well because I’ve heard so many stories about companies just sending this report that they don’t understand and that’s all the reporting that they get. I believe that you should be speaking with your agency or your fractional CMO or whoever you’re outsourcing or delegating or working

with for marketing, you should be meeting with them on a regular basis to talk through the specific metrics that you agree to track together. And then you should be using those metrics to then guide your quarterly marketing planning moving forward. And so it’s really important to determine what to measure, how it’s going to measure, agree on a communication cadence, and then look to the agency to be educating you on what the metrics mean and why they’re important and how they’re deriving decisions moving forward.

Thank

Sara Nay (08:42.165)

Question number three, how do you connect tactics to strategy? So I actually was just speaking to a new client of ours and he told me yesterday that he believes he’s wasted about $100,000 on bringing in marketers to execute on tactics. And the reason he believed none of that was successful was because he didn’t have a proper strategy in place. And so I absolutely agree with him in that scenario. There have been so many stories.

that I’ve heard over the years where someone will pitch, you need email marketing, or you need paid advertising, or you need SEO work, because that’s what we know. And so they’ll bring in an agency to do just those things, but the agency hasn’t taken the time to learn the business or what they’re trying to accomplish or where they’re trying to go or who their ideal clients are or what message resonates with them. And so they’re skipping through all of that because they’re staying in their lane of tactics that they’re comfortable with without understanding

understanding what the overall strategy is for the specific business and why that specific tactic will help reach their goal. So if you’ve been following along with Duct Tape Marketing, we’ve been saying strategy before tactics for as long as we’ve been in business. And so this one really is very, very important to me. Okay, number four. What happens if I want to end the contract?

Actually, on my LinkedIn post, someone commented, based on that one specifically, that he had an agency send him a contract that basically said, after we end our agreement, you can’t work with any other similar solutions for a two-year period.

That’s insane to me. And so with that, think, you know, 12 month contracts even is long because marketing is evolving. It’s shifting. It’s changing for our clients. We are only planning out a quarter at a time. So three months at a time because we need to understand what’s working, what’s not working, what’s shifting, what’s changing, how SEO is evolving. And so locking people into longer contracts, I just think it’s hard on both the agency to predict, but also the small business owners.

Sara Nay (10:53.513)

because if they’re not happy, they’re gonna be locked into this long term, spending money, wasting money, where they could have shifted to a different solution. So as long as we’ve been in business at Duct Tape Marketing, we have always done month to month contracts in our consulting engagements, and I think that’s absolutely what you should be asking for and looking for in any agency work moving forward. Number five, who will I actually work with on the day to day?

also heard a lot of stories over the years of I had this incredible sales call with this agency and I was so impressed and this person had all of this experience and they sold me into this engagement and I got locked into a six month contract, let’s say, and then all of a sudden I was working with an intern level marketer and so I was sold on this thought leadership, this viewpoint and then I was handed something completely different. And so think it’s really important as part of the sales process is if you’re talking to someone, it’s am I gonna work with

in strategy and retainer or I’m gonna work with other people on the team. If so, who are those other people? How long have they been with you? What is their experience? And also, can I talk to them if you want? I think that’s a good, fair follow-up question. Can I speak to the people that I’ll be working with as well? So get to know who your main point of contacts are gonna be in the beginning of the engagement throughout the full engagement moving forward.

Number six for questions is how do you report on results and can I see a sample? This one’s also important. I highlighted the importance of reporting earlier on another question, but hopefully they answered that if you’re interviewing them successfully. They talked you through it. They’re gonna educate. They’re gonna simplify. They’re gonna work together. They’re gonna collaborate on reporting, but then ask for an example of the reporting. And so if they are saying it’s gonna be simple and easy to understand, the next step

is okay great, show me what your reporting looks like for a current client and hopefully then they’re willing to then show an example reporting for a client, stripping out any identifying information, but then also they’re able to talk you through what it looks like and why and how they put it together and the reasoning behind certain things. So that’s a great follow-up question to that reporting one earlier. Number seven, how do I integrate AI and what is still human led?

Sara Nay (13:20.045)

And so I think this is a really important question. I am all about AI when it comes to elevating humans. And so I think that all marketing agencies should be bringing in different forms of AI to help elevate and improve the work that they’re doing.

but not to just replace themselves or just to work faster ultimately. And so we offer for all of our clients when we get started, we offer a package called Strategy First. So 30 to 45 day engagement consists of a ton of research and putting together a marketing strategy and plan. As part of that, we use AI to give us more information than we ever had before. So for example, one of the steps in that is doing competitive research. Before we used to have to

out and look at, do all of the work manually. And so we could only get, you know, as much information as we could spend on that component. But now we still do work manually. We still go out and we look at the competitors websites and social profiles and what they’re in, content upgrades and all the stuff we can find online. But we’re also able to pull a deep research report in a tool like chat GPT that gives us pages and pages of research on their competitors in a much more detailed way than we ever have before.

And so in that scenario, we are using humans to analyze the competitors, but we’re using AI to give us more information to be able to make better decisions moving forward. And so you wanna look for those types of answers when you’re asking agencies how are they using AI. You wanna understand that they’re using AI because they should be. If they’re fearing it, they’re being left behind. But you also wanna make sure that they’re using AI with the human plus AI reprogramming.

approach, not just the replacing humans with AI approach, or you will end up not getting great results, I believe, over time because the value is elevating our work we can do with AI below us. Number eight, how do you ensure my team stays involved and informed? And so a bit of a red flag, would say here is if someone says, we’ll just handle all of your marketing, your SEO and your ads, and we’ll just, you know, we’ll send you a report and you just

Sara Nay (15:38.24)

focus on your business and your growth and you’re gonna have all these leads come in. I don’t think that’s gonna be a great scenario. What you wanna hear here is we are going to involve you in the process. We are going to educate you along the way. We are gonna learn as much from you as possible on the front end and able to do our work on the back end. We are going to work on mastering your tone of voice and your style and we are gonna master your thought leadership perspective. So you are

able to focus on where you should be in your business in the CEO seat or whatever it might be, but it’s gonna take some time for us to get up to speed. We are gonna learn, we’re gonna involve you in your team, we’re gonna collaborate with you, we’re gonna educate you along the way versus, oh, we’re just gonna do our special magic work over here and you all stay over here. That doesn’t necessarily work. Number nine on the list, we’re getting there. What’s your process for creating strategy before execute?

This one is probably the nearest to my heart. It’s something that we’ve again been teaching strategy before tactics for years. I truly believe that every

Marketing plan should start with a deep strategy dive and so we have something called the marketing strategy pyramid The foundation is the business strategy if you’re bringing in a marketing agency They should take some time on the front end to understand your business What is your mission your vision your values your current revenue your growth goals? Do you want to sell one day? They need to be understanding those things deeply so then they can work on the middle part of our pyramid, which is the marketing strategy

component because the marketing strategy needs to guide the business where the business is trying to go. Once a marketing strategy is mapped out, then in our pyramid we have a system strategy and a team strategy. And so I fully believe that when working with an agency or a marketer of any kind, they should come in, understand the business strategy, create the marketing strategy, analyze the team. Then you can say, okay, here’s what we should be doing from

Sara Nay (17:49.632)

from a marketing perspective and now here’s who we can have to help. so strategy before execution all day every day. And then last question and one of my favorites as well, I like all these questions I guess, is what will you teach me along the way? And so there…

I think as I said earlier beginning in this episode, I think some of the challenges in the small business space is marketing is complicated, it’s evolving, there’s a lack of education. People don’t get into business to become marketers, but they are forced to in a lot of ways. And so if you’re bringing in an agency, a fractional CMO, a consultant, a freelancer, if you’re bringing in anyone, you should be asking, what will you teach me along the way? Because their job in my view is to educate clients, to set clients

up for success to be able to make better marketing decisions moving forward. You’ve all heard it, leave it better than you found it. That’s how we approach all of our engagements. come in, we educate, we empower, we uplift, we give our clients ownership because my goal is, let’s say we part ways in the future because maybe you’re hiring someone in-house, you’re in a much better spot from an educational empowerment standpoint than you ever have before. So that is my list of tips.

I am passionate about this topic I could go on and on but I appreciate you listening to again my first ever solo episode on the duct tape marketing podcast Again, I wrote a book called unchain breaking free from broken marketing models It’s all about taking ownership instead of renting your marketing So if any of this resonated with you today recommend grabbing a copy of that book My name is Sarah nay, you can find me on LinkedIn as well. I would love to connect with you there Thank you so much for listening

and we will see you next time.