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John Jantsch (00:01.24)

So, what if the same people that taught millions of businesses to build marketing funnels to generate inbound leads admitted maybe some of that’s dead because they’re the ones that killed it? Their own traffic dropped 80% almost overnight, but revenue kept climbing anyway. Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Kipp Bodnar. He’s the CMO at HubSpot.

Where he spent over 15 years since company had a little less than 10 million in revenue at that time. He also co-hosts the podcast Marketing Against the Green and serves on the board of Gusto and Similar Web. We’re gonna talk about his new book, co-written with Kieran Flanagan, as called Loop. Outlearn, outmarket, and outgrow. So Kip, welcome to the show.

Kipp Bodnar (00:50.602)

John, thanks so much for having me. Pleasure to be here.

John Jantsch (00:52.332)

So so so when I read your co-author’s name, I just immediately go into this Irish accent, which is terrible. But I’m I’m sh well, I’m afraid that people get very tired of that, but it’s just it’s such an Irish name. So I I mentioned the idea of HubSpot’s traffic numbers going down. was there a like a time period? I mean, HubSpot’s not loaned.

Kipp Bodnar (00:58.334)

I love it. Please. He he has a great Irish accent accent. Do the whole show in it if you want.

Kipp Bodnar (01:06.932)

completely.

John Jantsch (01:21.932)

A lot you guys had just done such a good Yeah, I was gonna say, you guys had just done such a good job of building a lot of organic traffic. was there like a day when somebody said, This is a problem. I mean we we actually we need to do something about this?

Kipp Bodnar (01:22.88)

Tons tons of people have.

Kipp Bodnar (01:36.821)

There’s a couple things. One before this all happened, we knew it was going to be a risk for the future. So we bought a company called The Hustle. We we diversified well well beyond the blog, but we lost 140 million visits over the course of a year. And so what happened was between the rise of AI and Google doing a bunch of algorithm updates, you saw a pretty dramatic. Like at the start of that, it wasn’t like you lose a little bit of visits and then it got

John Jantsch (02:04.216)

Yeah.

Kipp Bodnar (02:06.88)

gradually worse. It’s like it dropped off pretty good, pretty quickly. And it’s like, gosh, there has to be a better way. And if this is happening to us, I’m sure it’s happening to others and will like or will likely happen to others. And we need to get ahead of all of this.

John Jantsch (02:19.234)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (02:23.138)

Just from my own experience, our traffic is probably down 50% from its, you know, from its high. But we pr pretty quickly realized it was a lot of garbage traffic. you know, it yeah. Yeah. I mean, and you guys did, you know, you had the listicles. I mean, you had all the stuff that that drove eyeballs that probably wasn’t very high value traffic. So, you know, in some ways are we better off, you know, well, you know, not having to try to chase that.

Kipp Bodnar (02:32.116)

Lot of it was garbage traffic. It’s a key insight for everyone.

Kipp Bodnar (02:39.37)

Yeah, of course. Yeah.

Kipp Bodnar (02:54.354)

look, I think we’re better and worse off at the same time. I think I think the ability to bring people to a site that you owned and you controlled and you could really shape their interactions versus being more reliant on podcasts and YouTube and TikTok and reels and everything else that’s out there, you know, which you’re limited to those platforms and their guardrails and their rules, that’s probably the tough trade off.

John Jantsch (02:56.962)

Yeah, okay.

John Jantsch (03:03.79)

Right, right, right.

John Jantsch (03:12.374)

LinkedIn, even yeah.

Kipp Bodnar (03:21.834)

Are we better off for maybe not wasting as much time and effort on people who are never gonna buy our products? Also, probably a good thing. So I think like everything in life, there’s good and bad.

John Jantsch (03:28.472)

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So one of the things you talk about in the book is the idea of the marketing funnel being dead. what’s something that loop does that the funnel maybe structurally didn’t or couldn’t?

Kipp Bodnar (03:45.109)

Yeah, so if if I think about Loop, Loop is our framework for how you actually do marketing in this post AI world. And the reason for that, it you have to optimize for learning. AI, what it actually does is it enables you to scale your brains, your taste, all the things that make you and your company really good. And allows you to do a lot more, but you can also do a bunch of crap. And you can also fail to learn and compel in those lessons. So what Loop does is it gives you a playbook to

John Jantsch (04:01.762)

Yeah, yeah.

Kipp Bodnar (04:14.208)

Kind of do any marketing tactic or campaign that you want. And there’s kind of four simple steps to it. First is you work with AI to express your ideas and your and get them into content that’s really remarkable and personal to your audience because AI can bring all that context together, your customer interviews, what people are saying you about online, conversation your sales teams are having, and make that and turn all of that into really great content with you based on your insights and your perspective. Then

The other thing we found that AI is really good at is helping you tailor the second part of the framework to make that content deeply personal on an individual basis. Then AI has opened up new distribution channels, and that’s the third step amplification. Those are things like answer engine optimization, working with influencers. AI has transformed advertising. It’s made advertising far more scalable than I think it was in the pre-AI world. And the fourth step is evolve. The one thing that AI

John Jantsch (05:00.95)

Mm-hmm.

Kipp Bodnar (05:13.492)

has really does well that nobody’s really taken on yet is it helps you codify your learnings and put them into systems that keep getting smarter every time you use them. And so that’s what we set out to do. We wanted to answer the question, like every market I talk to is getting yelled at by their CEO. Well, why is our traffic down and how do we do AI in this AI world? Like what the heck do we do? And we wanted to, I wanted to write something that I could hand to anybody who asks me that question and give them a real concrete answer.

John Jantsch (05:43.117)

Yeah, in fact I I just started playing with it today. It may come out earlier in the week, but Claude just introduced a anthropic just introduced a skill builder that it basically just follows you around. It’s like, you know, if you’re gonna do a process, you’re gonna go on Slack for this, you’re gonna go here, you’re gonna go here, and it and then it’s like, okay, I’ll build a skill that does that. so that that idea of codifying is just getting easier and easier and easier, isn’t it?

Kipp Bodnar (05:53.92)

Mm-hmm.

Kipp Bodnar (06:09.539)

I i the thing it’s a perfect example.

John Jantsch (06:11.414)

Yeah. So you talk about something called a taste profile. I wonder if you could walk me through the solo entrepreneur, you know, who doesn’t have an entire marketing team, how do they build a taste profile?

Kipp Bodnar (06:15.243)

Yeah.

Kipp Bodnar (06:20.012)

Yeah.

Well, see, this is the fun part, is that the taste profile I think is most beneficial to like the small, small team or the solopreneur, right? Because all a taste profile is, is spending a few hours to make the decisions that you know, but haven’t like had the exercise to clarify all of them, so that you can actually then give those decisions to AI and AI knows what you want to achieve and has all the context around what you want to achieve. And so it’s essentially two parts. The first is

John Jantsch (06:31.362)

Yeah, yeah.

Kipp Bodnar (06:52.011)

Customer taste and might be a s we give you a list of questions to go have AI do research for you. Even so if you’re a solopreneur, you use those questions, you go do the research, and you kind of understand what the market and the customer thinks your category and how your product might fit into there. The second part of this is like brand taste. So like what do you think about? Like, why does your company exist? What does your product solve in the world? You know.

What do you what do you believe about the world that’s unique and differentiated? Like how do you think about your thought leadership? And we give you very specific questions to kind of go through and get to clarity on those. And then once you have all that together, you put that in any AI tool. I do it all the time. I’ll do a blank version and then I’ll do a taste profile version. And my taste profile version is always way better. I actually built like an independent grader to C. And I’m normally like a C with generic AI and like I’m an A with a taste profile. And it’s one simple thing that

It takes you a couple hours to do once and then you probably need to update it, you know, a couple of times a year, depending on how your your business changes.

John Jantsch (07:53.154)

Yeah, I mean we run across that all the time. You know, that that we because we’re the same way. We’re like, look, you gotta put all this stuff together. It’s a little work in the beginning, but it will save you so much time and and so much better output, right? In the end. and and people want to skip that. It’s like, I don’t want to sit down here and answer all these questions, but I’m yeah.

Kipp Bodnar (08:12.287)

It’s hard. You have to make the hard choices. You know, like that’s the like this is real marketing though. Marketing is the I I had David Epstein on the marketing Instagram podcast recently. And he’s like, Look, the people who are succeeding in this new world are brain first, tool second versus tool first, brain second, right? And that’s that’s what this is all about.

John Jantsch (08:27.35)

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s it’s another vote for a good liberal arts degree, isn’t it? So you talk about something in the book called the AI buyer sim. and you go as far as saying I think that it can predict customer reactions with ninety percent accuracy. first off, that’s amazing. we ought to all be using that right, but

Kipp Bodnar (08:34.277)

Yeah, g exactly right.

Kipp Bodnar (08:52.575)

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

John Jantsch (08:56.77)

What is the I’m I’m gonna go go the opposite side of you of of that idea. What is the risk of kind of relying on that type of data and being wrong?

Kipp Bodnar (09:08.289)

I like this question. here’s the risk. marketing, I I think of marketing as this interesting relationship. And it and I see everything in like frameworks and graphs and charts and two by twos. And the two by two here is like how predictable the results you’ll get from it, and then how high or what’s the magnitude of those results, right? And so when you’re trying to simulate your results and predict your results so that they’re really predictable, the risk of that.

John Jantsch (09:19.383)

Yep.

Kipp Bodnar (09:36.8)

Is that you’re gonna do what everybody else is doing. And when you do what everybody else is doing, you’re gonna get an average result. So you’re gonna get something that’s highly predictable, but the magnitude is gonna be kind of low or average. And so what you’re leaving on the table is like the crazy thing that might fail a bunch of times, but when it hits, hits really big. And that’s the biggest risk in taking taking that. And so you should use the taste profile for things that you know, or excuse me, you should use the BIOSIM for things you know, like kind of.

John Jantsch (09:46.926)

Mm-hmm.

Kipp Bodnar (10:03.861)

I know how this is gonna work. I I have this tried and true, but for new things I wanna go outside of that and really do some wild tests.

John Jantsch (10:12.685)

So one of the things that I think a lot of people are suffering from i is this, you know, even though organic traffic is way down, people are still producing, you know, stuff that AI sameness, I think you call it. A lot of people have called it that. so so what’s the sort of what’s the marker that says, no, this is actually above all of that? This is better quality, this is you know, this is done I mean, is it just the amount of time you spend, the amount of research, the amount of

Kipp Bodnar (10:25.58)

Yes.

Kipp Bodnar (10:35.671)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (10:41.429)

Citations, you know, I mean what is it that makes it get out of that sameness?

Kipp Bodnar (10:46.231)

So I think this is what’s interesting. Pre AI, you could just be prolific. Right? You could just, hey, I’m gonna outgrind, I’m going to write some stuff. The stuff doesn’t have to be great.

John Jantsch (10:50.859)

Yes. Right.

John Jantsch (10:55.795)

I remember I remember people I remember people asking me all the time when I’d talk about blogging, how many words does it have to be? You know, like like that was the yeah that was the marker.

Kipp Bodnar (11:04.233)

yeah, that was a that was a topic for years. Yeah. And and so, and now now it’s not good enough to be prolific. Like I call this kind of like the Taylor Swift problem. Like you have to be prolific like she is, but you also have to be great. Like the things you have to do have to be great. And you’re asking me the questions like what makes great content in a world where somebody can type something into a chat GPT, a Claude, and get any information they want. And what I what I found is that.

John Jantsch (11:17.761)

Yeah.

Kipp Bodnar (11:34.004)

It is the things that make your that are unique to you or your business. And so that is, do you have unique data? You I know you have unique customers, and those customers have unique stories. You yourself, if you’re a solopreneur, have a unique history and framing and life story that you have to bring to the table. There is there is a level of like research and rigor and putting things together in clever ways that people wouldn’t expect.

John Jantsch (11:39.521)

Yeah. Yeah it’s

Kipp Bodnar (12:02.975)

I think those are some of the key highlights that make if you just go around and pay attention to what you think is good and interesting, you’ll find that those are kind of the backbone of most of most of the things.

John Jantsch (12:14.377)

Yeah, I tell people all the time. It’s like, what’s the only thing what’s the thing that only you could write about? Nobody else in the world could. You know, and they they they start thinking about that and they’re like, okay, I could add that. Like you said, customer stories, you know, is is an easy one because everybody should everybody should have those. Yeah. So talk a little bit about you mentioned already, I think, answer engine optimization. how does that go beyond just writing FAQs?

Kipp Bodnar (12:18.761)

Yes. I love that.

Kipp Bodnar (12:28.927)

One hundred percent. Everybody has that.

Kipp Bodnar (12:37.718)

Yeah.

Kipp Bodnar (12:41.877)

Yeah, so answer engine optimization is a very interesting topic. It’s something that everybody’s obsessed with. Like, what does ChatGPT, G Google Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, what do all these things say about me and how do they talk about me? And the first thing you need to do is understand like how visible you are on those answer engines. So what’s your visibility? And that comes in two terms: mentions and citations. Mentions are just like, do they talk about you and do they talk about you positively or negatively?

John Jantsch (12:47.553)

Right.

John Jantsch (12:50.869)

Yeah.

Kipp Bodnar (13:11.105)

Then citations are like, do they link back back to you? And something you you you have to say. And you’re right that FAQ pages are one way to do that. The three most cited resources on Chat GPT and Claude, for example, though, and Gemini, for example, though, are YouTube, LinkedIn, and Reddit. So if you’re not involved in YouTube, LinkedIn, or Reddit, you’re probably less likely to get mentioned on the topics that are relevant to your business.

John Jantsch (13:13.877)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (13:32.577)

Yeah, yeah.

Kipp Bodnar (13:39.489)

The other thing you have to do for content you do own, like your website, it’s not just FAQs. The way I like to explain it is we spent the last 20 years writing for machines who were trying to parse information like humans. Right? It’s like you had all this deep meta description, keyword density, all these things. Now we have machines who act like exactly like humans. And so you need to write exactly like you’re writing to a human, but simple, plain spoken.

John Jantsch (13:58.348)

Right. Schema, yeah.

Kipp Bodnar (14:08.694)

non you know, non-jargon framed in easy chunked segments so that this machine who re who acts exactly like a human can pick those couple sentences up. Like if you go to our CRM page, right, there’s a what is the CRM box and it’s three sentences and it’s very in plain English explaining to you what a CRM is.

John Jantsch (14:30.197)

I think in your particular case, like all SaaS offerings, you know, there’s typically pricing, you know, has been on your pages forever. but but but for a lot of businesses, that’s a new idea, or just even the fact that, you know, their whole goal was to get somebody on a phone call so that they could then explain how everything worked. How how do we have to now start thinking about the fact that that the buyer journey is going to go a lot farther?

Kipp Bodnar (14:36.47)

Yeah. for for sure.

John Jantsch (14:57.356)

you know, bef maybe before we get that phone call and that we need to reveal a lot of information that maybe we wanted to hide because we didn’t want our competitors to have it.

Kipp Bodnar (15:08.088)

So the reality is the interesting things, good and bad, about LLMs is they will give you an answer. Right? It will always give you an answer. So if somebody asks what your price is, one, if it had if there’s just no information on the internet about it, it will make something up. If there is information your customers are talking about it on Reddit or G2.com or some of these places, it’ll aggregate that. And what I have found is it’s often wrong.

John Jantsch (15:13.931)

You’re right. Yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (15:25.337)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (15:29.877)

Right, right,

John Jantsch (15:35.533)

Yeah. Yes, yes, yeah.

Kipp Bodnar (15:36.225)

And it’s often misanchors me. It’s like, I think this thing’s gonna be $50. And it turns out it’s $500. And like, wow, I was that I I don’t want that thing. I was expecting it was gonna cost a very different amount. So I look at this as like, you have to provide that information because if you don’t, you’re gonna have buyers who are gonna get an answer anyway, and it’s not an answer you want them to get. And so you’re gonna have to operate more transparently than I think that you want. And by the way.

I think that’s a good thing. I think you’re probably likely going to attract more people by doing that than by hiding it.

John Jantsch (16:06.636)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (16:12.373)

So one of the steps you mentioned was evolve. what does that look like day to day for a marketer?

Kipp Bodnar (16:15.286)

Yeah.

Kipp Bodnar (16:21.152)

Yeah, so the way I think about the evolution of marketing and what it means to evolve is like it used to be, let’s say I had a I have a Google AdWords campaign on. I maybe I’ve run a Google AdWords campaign, I run a weekly email campaign. It used to be, well, all right, like once a month, maybe once every couple weeks, I’ll look and see how that’s going. Right? And I’ll look and I’ll make make a few little tweaks. Now it’s like I can, you know, at HubSpot, we have our Breeze assistant, like our version of Claude inside HubSpot’s like,

You can ask any of it any of these insights anytime you want and get instant learnings and change much faster, right? And be like, not only do I can I get this information, I can get recommendations from this thing that’s really smart and knows my business, right? And then I can actually change way more rapidly. The other part of what Evolve means is you have some system. You run your business off systems. And in this AI world, there are

John Jantsch (16:59.393)

Yeah, yeah.

Kipp Bodnar (17:19.756)

You know, agents, there’s skills, there’s workflows. You can actually have AI update your systems based on what you learn. And that’s the big unlock. Before AI, you couldn’t do that. You would have to remember, I need to go make this change to my system based on this thing I learned. Exactly. It’s in eight places. my cousin Tim actually set this up for me, so I gotta wait till he’s back from vacation so that he can update it for me. Now you can just.

John Jantsch (17:28.095)

Mm. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (17:35.341)

And it and by the way, it’s in eight places.

Kipp Bodnar (17:47.523)

have it do it in the background and like run a recurring task. And that is transformative because we all know the power of compounding, right? Like you you do that, you add have an update a smart learning every week, you know, half a year in, you’re like getting massively better results.

John Jantsch (18:01.46)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. With with real data. All right, here’s the here’s the big question, you ready? Is is inbound marketing dead?

Kipp Bodnar (18:05.75)

With real data.

Kipp Bodnar (18:10.7)

I’m ready, please.

Kipp Bodnar (18:15.372)

I think inbound marketing as we know it is dead because it was predicated on a world where information was scarce. And and and and knowledge was scarce. Now knowledge is abundant and actions and attention are more scarce. And so I think the loop loop framework as well as all the work that everybody’s doing in the marketing world today is trying to go beyond that old world and help companies thrive in in this new one.

John Jantsch (18:25.025)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (18:43.936)

Did did you have to actually be the one to tell Brian and Dormash that that that finding?

Kipp Bodnar (18:47.032)

We had a we had a nice debate. You know, so the the loop book that that everybody’s gonna read on September twenty second started as like a ten page memo that I wrote. And the name of that memo was In Bell Marking is Dead. And it it wasn’t even called Loop at the time, but it was all the these observations that you and I are talking about. But this was, you know, eighteen months ago, you know, a long time ago.

John Jantsch (18:58.18)

okay.

John Jantsch (19:02.56)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (19:12.128)

Yeah, awesome. All right. So if a small business owner, this is always the hard question, actually. Small business owner reads reads the book. What’s the one page they should act on this week? You don’t have to cite a page number. As a as an author also, I I know when people ask me that, I’m like, I don’t know. I wrote that 18 months ago. But what’s the one concept? How’s that that they should act on this week?

Kipp Bodnar (19:16.002)

Yeah. Yeah, let’s do it.

Kipp Bodnar (19:26.206)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Kipp Bodnar (19:36.672)

Yeah, we talked about it earlier in the show. I think you should do fill out your taste profile. It’s it’s it’s it’s on it’s i early on in the book, because that way your your AI tools have all the context of you, your business, and your taste, and they will just make far better decisions. Even if you don’t know it, it will happen.

John Jantsch (19:58.112)

Do you one thing that we’ve we’ve found s like if I tell somebody you need to fill out your taste profile, they sit there and they go, I can’t answer all these. But if I actually ask them the questions, interview them, th all of a sudden they’ll talk for hours. so th that’s that’s a tip you might give people. Yeah. Yeah.

Kipp Bodnar (20:08.759)

Yes.

One hundred percent.

well first of all I love that and second of all if you’re listening to this show and you’re feeling that way, have a friend, have your spouse, have somebody just, you know, open the book, write down the questions separately and just record you. And then by the way, you can just upload that video to AI and you won’t have to ever type or write anything and it will take care of it all for you.

John Jantsch (20:25.004)

Yes, exactly.

John Jantsch (20:33.024)

Plus it sort of automatically gets your voice and tone and how you speak and all that kind of stuff. I love. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, Kip, I appreciate you taking a moment to stop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Is there some place you’d invite people to connect with you, find out more about Loop and everything else you’re up to?

Kipp Bodnar (20:35.724)

Yeah, exactly. That’s a that’s a great point.

Kipp Bodnar (20:49.0)

Yes. So you can obviously learn more about Hubswata Hubs dot com. You can find the book at loopmarketing dot com. And then for me, you can find me on Marketing Against the Grain, on YouTube and wherever you get your podcast.

John Jantsch (21:01.908)

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

Kipp Bodnar (21:06.462)

Awesome. Thanks, John. Appreciate you having me.

John Jantsch (00:01.24)

So, what if the same people that taught millions of businesses to build marketing funnels to generate inbound leads admitted maybe some of that’s dead because they’re the ones that killed it? Their own traffic dropped 80% almost overnight, but revenue kept climbing anyway. Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Kipp Bodnar. He’s the CMO at HubSpot.

Where he spent over 15 years since company had a little less than 10 million in revenue at that time. He also co-hosts the podcast Marketing Against the Green and serves on the board of Gusto and Similar Web. We’re gonna talk about his new book, co-written with Kieran Flanagan, as called Loop. Outlearn, outmarket, and outgrow. So Kip, welcome to the show.

Kipp Bodnar (00:50.602)

John, thanks so much for having me. Pleasure to be here.

John Jantsch (00:52.332)

So so so when I read your co-author’s name, I just immediately go into this Irish accent, which is terrible. But I’m I’m sh well, I’m afraid that people get very tired of that, but it’s just it’s such an Irish name. So I I mentioned the idea of HubSpot’s traffic numbers going down. was there a like a time period? I mean, HubSpot’s not loaned.

Kipp Bodnar (00:58.334)

I love it. Please. He he has a great Irish accent accent. Do the whole show in it if you want.

Kipp Bodnar (01:06.932)

completely.

John Jantsch (01:21.932)

A lot you guys had just done such a good Yeah, I was gonna say, you guys had just done such a good job of building a lot of organic traffic. was there like a day when somebody said, This is a problem. I mean we we actually we need to do something about this?

Kipp Bodnar (01:22.88)

Tons tons of people have.

Kipp Bodnar (01:36.821)

There’s a couple things. One before this all happened, we knew it was going to be a risk for the future. So we bought a company called The Hustle. We we diversified well well beyond the blog, but we lost 140 million visits over the course of a year. And so what happened was between the rise of AI and Google doing a bunch of algorithm updates, you saw a pretty dramatic. Like at the start of that, it wasn’t like you lose a little bit of visits and then it got

John Jantsch (02:04.216)

Yeah.

Kipp Bodnar (02:06.88)

gradually worse. It’s like it dropped off pretty good, pretty quickly. And it’s like, gosh, there has to be a better way. And if this is happening to us, I’m sure it’s happening to others and will like or will likely happen to others. And we need to get ahead of all of this.

John Jantsch (02:19.234)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (02:23.138)

Just from my own experience, our traffic is probably down 50% from its, you know, from its high. But we pr pretty quickly realized it was a lot of garbage traffic. you know, it yeah. Yeah. I mean, and you guys did, you know, you had the listicles. I mean, you had all the stuff that that drove eyeballs that probably wasn’t very high value traffic. So, you know, in some ways are we better off, you know, well, you know, not having to try to chase that.

Kipp Bodnar (02:32.116)

Lot of it was garbage traffic. It’s a key insight for everyone.

Kipp Bodnar (02:39.37)

Yeah, of course. Yeah.

Kipp Bodnar (02:54.354)

look, I think we’re better and worse off at the same time. I think I think the ability to bring people to a site that you owned and you controlled and you could really shape their interactions versus being more reliant on podcasts and YouTube and TikTok and reels and everything else that’s out there, you know, which you’re limited to those platforms and their guardrails and their rules, that’s probably the tough trade off.

John Jantsch (02:56.962)

Yeah, okay.

John Jantsch (03:03.79)

Right, right, right.

John Jantsch (03:12.374)

LinkedIn, even yeah.

Kipp Bodnar (03:21.834)

Are we better off for maybe not wasting as much time and effort on people who are never gonna buy our products? Also, probably a good thing. So I think like everything in life, there’s good and bad.

John Jantsch (03:28.472)

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So one of the things you talk about in the book is the idea of the marketing funnel being dead. what’s something that loop does that the funnel maybe structurally didn’t or couldn’t?

Kipp Bodnar (03:45.109)

Yeah, so if if I think about Loop, Loop is our framework for how you actually do marketing in this post AI world. And the reason for that, it you have to optimize for learning. AI, what it actually does is it enables you to scale your brains, your taste, all the things that make you and your company really good. And allows you to do a lot more, but you can also do a bunch of crap. And you can also fail to learn and compel in those lessons. So what Loop does is it gives you a playbook to

John Jantsch (04:01.762)

Yeah, yeah.

Kipp Bodnar (04:14.208)

Kind of do any marketing tactic or campaign that you want. And there’s kind of four simple steps to it. First is you work with AI to express your ideas and your and get them into content that’s really remarkable and personal to your audience because AI can bring all that context together, your customer interviews, what people are saying you about online, conversation your sales teams are having, and make that and turn all of that into really great content with you based on your insights and your perspective. Then

The other thing we found that AI is really good at is helping you tailor the second part of the framework to make that content deeply personal on an individual basis. Then AI has opened up new distribution channels, and that’s the third step amplification. Those are things like answer engine optimization, working with influencers. AI has transformed advertising. It’s made advertising far more scalable than I think it was in the pre-AI world. And the fourth step is evolve. The one thing that AI

John Jantsch (05:00.95)

Mm-hmm.

Kipp Bodnar (05:13.492)

has really does well that nobody’s really taken on yet is it helps you codify your learnings and put them into systems that keep getting smarter every time you use them. And so that’s what we set out to do. We wanted to answer the question, like every market I talk to is getting yelled at by their CEO. Well, why is our traffic down and how do we do AI in this AI world? Like what the heck do we do? And we wanted to, I wanted to write something that I could hand to anybody who asks me that question and give them a real concrete answer.

John Jantsch (05:43.117)

Yeah, in fact I I just started playing with it today. It may come out earlier in the week, but Claude just introduced a anthropic just introduced a skill builder that it basically just follows you around. It’s like, you know, if you’re gonna do a process, you’re gonna go on Slack for this, you’re gonna go here, you’re gonna go here, and it and then it’s like, okay, I’ll build a skill that does that. so that that idea of codifying is just getting easier and easier and easier, isn’t it?

Kipp Bodnar (05:53.92)

Mm-hmm.

Kipp Bodnar (06:09.539)

I i the thing it’s a perfect example.

John Jantsch (06:11.414)

Yeah. So you talk about something called a taste profile. I wonder if you could walk me through the solo entrepreneur, you know, who doesn’t have an entire marketing team, how do they build a taste profile?

Kipp Bodnar (06:15.243)

Yeah.

Kipp Bodnar (06:20.012)

Yeah.

Well, see, this is the fun part, is that the taste profile I think is most beneficial to like the small, small team or the solopreneur, right? Because all a taste profile is, is spending a few hours to make the decisions that you know, but haven’t like had the exercise to clarify all of them, so that you can actually then give those decisions to AI and AI knows what you want to achieve and has all the context around what you want to achieve. And so it’s essentially two parts. The first is

John Jantsch (06:31.362)

Yeah, yeah.

Kipp Bodnar (06:52.011)

Customer taste and might be a s we give you a list of questions to go have AI do research for you. Even so if you’re a solopreneur, you use those questions, you go do the research, and you kind of understand what the market and the customer thinks your category and how your product might fit into there. The second part of this is like brand taste. So like what do you think about? Like, why does your company exist? What does your product solve in the world? You know.

What do you what do you believe about the world that’s unique and differentiated? Like how do you think about your thought leadership? And we give you very specific questions to kind of go through and get to clarity on those. And then once you have all that together, you put that in any AI tool. I do it all the time. I’ll do a blank version and then I’ll do a taste profile version. And my taste profile version is always way better. I actually built like an independent grader to C. And I’m normally like a C with generic AI and like I’m an A with a taste profile. And it’s one simple thing that

It takes you a couple hours to do once and then you probably need to update it, you know, a couple of times a year, depending on how your your business changes.

John Jantsch (07:53.154)

Yeah, I mean we run across that all the time. You know, that that we because we’re the same way. We’re like, look, you gotta put all this stuff together. It’s a little work in the beginning, but it will save you so much time and and so much better output, right? In the end. and and people want to skip that. It’s like, I don’t want to sit down here and answer all these questions, but I’m yeah.

Kipp Bodnar (08:12.287)

It’s hard. You have to make the hard choices. You know, like that’s the like this is real marketing though. Marketing is the I I had David Epstein on the marketing Instagram podcast recently. And he’s like, Look, the people who are succeeding in this new world are brain first, tool second versus tool first, brain second, right? And that’s that’s what this is all about.

John Jantsch (08:27.35)

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s it’s another vote for a good liberal arts degree, isn’t it? So you talk about something in the book called the AI buyer sim. and you go as far as saying I think that it can predict customer reactions with ninety percent accuracy. first off, that’s amazing. we ought to all be using that right, but

Kipp Bodnar (08:34.277)

Yeah, g exactly right.

Kipp Bodnar (08:52.575)

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

John Jantsch (08:56.77)

What is the I’m I’m gonna go go the opposite side of you of of that idea. What is the risk of kind of relying on that type of data and being wrong?

Kipp Bodnar (09:08.289)

I like this question. here’s the risk. marketing, I I think of marketing as this interesting relationship. And it and I see everything in like frameworks and graphs and charts and two by twos. And the two by two here is like how predictable the results you’ll get from it, and then how high or what’s the magnitude of those results, right? And so when you’re trying to simulate your results and predict your results so that they’re really predictable, the risk of that.

John Jantsch (09:19.383)

Yep.

Kipp Bodnar (09:36.8)

Is that you’re gonna do what everybody else is doing. And when you do what everybody else is doing, you’re gonna get an average result. So you’re gonna get something that’s highly predictable, but the magnitude is gonna be kind of low or average. And so what you’re leaving on the table is like the crazy thing that might fail a bunch of times, but when it hits, hits really big. And that’s the biggest risk in taking taking that. And so you should use the taste profile for things that you know, or excuse me, you should use the BIOSIM for things you know, like kind of.

John Jantsch (09:46.926)

Mm-hmm.

Kipp Bodnar (10:03.861)

I know how this is gonna work. I I have this tried and true, but for new things I wanna go outside of that and really do some wild tests.

John Jantsch (10:12.685)

So one of the things that I think a lot of people are suffering from i is this, you know, even though organic traffic is way down, people are still producing, you know, stuff that AI sameness, I think you call it. A lot of people have called it that. so so what’s the sort of what’s the marker that says, no, this is actually above all of that? This is better quality, this is you know, this is done I mean, is it just the amount of time you spend, the amount of research, the amount of

Kipp Bodnar (10:25.58)

Yes.

Kipp Bodnar (10:35.671)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (10:41.429)

Citations, you know, I mean what is it that makes it get out of that sameness?

Kipp Bodnar (10:46.231)

So I think this is what’s interesting. Pre AI, you could just be prolific. Right? You could just, hey, I’m gonna outgrind, I’m going to write some stuff. The stuff doesn’t have to be great.

John Jantsch (10:50.859)

Yes. Right.

John Jantsch (10:55.795)

I remember I remember people I remember people asking me all the time when I’d talk about blogging, how many words does it have to be? You know, like like that was the yeah that was the marker.

Kipp Bodnar (11:04.233)

yeah, that was a that was a topic for years. Yeah. And and so, and now now it’s not good enough to be prolific. Like I call this kind of like the Taylor Swift problem. Like you have to be prolific like she is, but you also have to be great. Like the things you have to do have to be great. And you’re asking me the questions like what makes great content in a world where somebody can type something into a chat GPT, a Claude, and get any information they want. And what I what I found is that.

John Jantsch (11:17.761)

Yeah.

Kipp Bodnar (11:34.004)

It is the things that make your that are unique to you or your business. And so that is, do you have unique data? You I know you have unique customers, and those customers have unique stories. You yourself, if you’re a solopreneur, have a unique history and framing and life story that you have to bring to the table. There is there is a level of like research and rigor and putting things together in clever ways that people wouldn’t expect.

John Jantsch (11:39.521)

Yeah. Yeah it’s

Kipp Bodnar (12:02.975)

I think those are some of the key highlights that make if you just go around and pay attention to what you think is good and interesting, you’ll find that those are kind of the backbone of most of most of the things.

John Jantsch (12:14.377)

Yeah, I tell people all the time. It’s like, what’s the only thing what’s the thing that only you could write about? Nobody else in the world could. You know, and they they they start thinking about that and they’re like, okay, I could add that. Like you said, customer stories, you know, is is an easy one because everybody should everybody should have those. Yeah. So talk a little bit about you mentioned already, I think, answer engine optimization. how does that go beyond just writing FAQs?

Kipp Bodnar (12:18.761)

Yes. I love that.

Kipp Bodnar (12:28.927)

One hundred percent. Everybody has that.

Kipp Bodnar (12:37.718)

Yeah.

Kipp Bodnar (12:41.877)

Yeah, so answer engine optimization is a very interesting topic. It’s something that everybody’s obsessed with. Like, what does ChatGPT, G Google Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, what do all these things say about me and how do they talk about me? And the first thing you need to do is understand like how visible you are on those answer engines. So what’s your visibility? And that comes in two terms: mentions and citations. Mentions are just like, do they talk about you and do they talk about you positively or negatively?

John Jantsch (12:47.553)

Right.

John Jantsch (12:50.869)

Yeah.

Kipp Bodnar (13:11.105)

Then citations are like, do they link back back to you? And something you you you have to say. And you’re right that FAQ pages are one way to do that. The three most cited resources on Chat GPT and Claude, for example, though, and Gemini, for example, though, are YouTube, LinkedIn, and Reddit. So if you’re not involved in YouTube, LinkedIn, or Reddit, you’re probably less likely to get mentioned on the topics that are relevant to your business.

John Jantsch (13:13.877)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (13:32.577)

Yeah, yeah.

Kipp Bodnar (13:39.489)

The other thing you have to do for content you do own, like your website, it’s not just FAQs. The way I like to explain it is we spent the last 20 years writing for machines who were trying to parse information like humans. Right? It’s like you had all this deep meta description, keyword density, all these things. Now we have machines who act like exactly like humans. And so you need to write exactly like you’re writing to a human, but simple, plain spoken.

John Jantsch (13:58.348)

Right. Schema, yeah.

Kipp Bodnar (14:08.694)

non you know, non-jargon framed in easy chunked segments so that this machine who re who acts exactly like a human can pick those couple sentences up. Like if you go to our CRM page, right, there’s a what is the CRM box and it’s three sentences and it’s very in plain English explaining to you what a CRM is.

John Jantsch (14:30.197)

I think in your particular case, like all SaaS offerings, you know, there’s typically pricing, you know, has been on your pages forever. but but but for a lot of businesses, that’s a new idea, or just even the fact that, you know, their whole goal was to get somebody on a phone call so that they could then explain how everything worked. How how do we have to now start thinking about the fact that that the buyer journey is going to go a lot farther?

Kipp Bodnar (14:36.47)

Yeah. for for sure.

John Jantsch (14:57.356)

you know, bef maybe before we get that phone call and that we need to reveal a lot of information that maybe we wanted to hide because we didn’t want our competitors to have it.

Kipp Bodnar (15:08.088)

So the reality is the interesting things, good and bad, about LLMs is they will give you an answer. Right? It will always give you an answer. So if somebody asks what your price is, one, if it had if there’s just no information on the internet about it, it will make something up. If there is information your customers are talking about it on Reddit or G2.com or some of these places, it’ll aggregate that. And what I have found is it’s often wrong.

John Jantsch (15:13.931)

You’re right. Yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (15:25.337)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (15:29.877)

Right, right,

John Jantsch (15:35.533)

Yeah. Yes, yes, yeah.

Kipp Bodnar (15:36.225)

And it’s often misanchors me. It’s like, I think this thing’s gonna be $50. And it turns out it’s $500. And like, wow, I was that I I don’t want that thing. I was expecting it was gonna cost a very different amount. So I look at this as like, you have to provide that information because if you don’t, you’re gonna have buyers who are gonna get an answer anyway, and it’s not an answer you want them to get. And so you’re gonna have to operate more transparently than I think that you want. And by the way.

I think that’s a good thing. I think you’re probably likely going to attract more people by doing that than by hiding it.

John Jantsch (16:06.636)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (16:12.373)

So one of the steps you mentioned was evolve. what does that look like day to day for a marketer?

Kipp Bodnar (16:15.286)

Yeah.

Kipp Bodnar (16:21.152)

Yeah, so the way I think about the evolution of marketing and what it means to evolve is like it used to be, let’s say I had a I have a Google AdWords campaign on. I maybe I’ve run a Google AdWords campaign, I run a weekly email campaign. It used to be, well, all right, like once a month, maybe once every couple weeks, I’ll look and see how that’s going. Right? And I’ll look and I’ll make make a few little tweaks. Now it’s like I can, you know, at HubSpot, we have our Breeze assistant, like our version of Claude inside HubSpot’s like,

You can ask any of it any of these insights anytime you want and get instant learnings and change much faster, right? And be like, not only do I can I get this information, I can get recommendations from this thing that’s really smart and knows my business, right? And then I can actually change way more rapidly. The other part of what Evolve means is you have some system. You run your business off systems. And in this AI world, there are

John Jantsch (16:59.393)

Yeah, yeah.

Kipp Bodnar (17:19.756)

You know, agents, there’s skills, there’s workflows. You can actually have AI update your systems based on what you learn. And that’s the big unlock. Before AI, you couldn’t do that. You would have to remember, I need to go make this change to my system based on this thing I learned. Exactly. It’s in eight places. my cousin Tim actually set this up for me, so I gotta wait till he’s back from vacation so that he can update it for me. Now you can just.

John Jantsch (17:28.095)

Mm. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (17:35.341)

And it and by the way, it’s in eight places.

Kipp Bodnar (17:47.523)

have it do it in the background and like run a recurring task. And that is transformative because we all know the power of compounding, right? Like you you do that, you add have an update a smart learning every week, you know, half a year in, you’re like getting massively better results.

John Jantsch (18:01.46)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. With with real data. All right, here’s the here’s the big question, you ready? Is is inbound marketing dead?

Kipp Bodnar (18:05.75)

With real data.

Kipp Bodnar (18:10.7)

I’m ready, please.

Kipp Bodnar (18:15.372)

I think inbound marketing as we know it is dead because it was predicated on a world where information was scarce. And and and and knowledge was scarce. Now knowledge is abundant and actions and attention are more scarce. And so I think the loop loop framework as well as all the work that everybody’s doing in the marketing world today is trying to go beyond that old world and help companies thrive in in this new one.

John Jantsch (18:25.025)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (18:43.936)

Did did you have to actually be the one to tell Brian and Dormash that that that finding?

Kipp Bodnar (18:47.032)

We had a we had a nice debate. You know, so the the loop book that that everybody’s gonna read on September twenty second started as like a ten page memo that I wrote. And the name of that memo was In Bell Marking is Dead. And it it wasn’t even called Loop at the time, but it was all the these observations that you and I are talking about. But this was, you know, eighteen months ago, you know, a long time ago.

John Jantsch (18:58.18)

okay.

John Jantsch (19:02.56)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (19:12.128)

Yeah, awesome. All right. So if a small business owner, this is always the hard question, actually. Small business owner reads reads the book. What’s the one page they should act on this week? You don’t have to cite a page number. As a as an author also, I I know when people ask me that, I’m like, I don’t know. I wrote that 18 months ago. But what’s the one concept? How’s that that they should act on this week?

Kipp Bodnar (19:16.002)

Yeah. Yeah, let’s do it.

Kipp Bodnar (19:26.206)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Kipp Bodnar (19:36.672)

Yeah, we talked about it earlier in the show. I think you should do fill out your taste profile. It’s it’s it’s it’s on it’s i early on in the book, because that way your your AI tools have all the context of you, your business, and your taste, and they will just make far better decisions. Even if you don’t know it, it will happen.

John Jantsch (19:58.112)

Do you one thing that we’ve we’ve found s like if I tell somebody you need to fill out your taste profile, they sit there and they go, I can’t answer all these. But if I actually ask them the questions, interview them, th all of a sudden they’ll talk for hours. so th that’s that’s a tip you might give people. Yeah. Yeah.

Kipp Bodnar (20:08.759)

Yes.

One hundred percent.

well first of all I love that and second of all if you’re listening to this show and you’re feeling that way, have a friend, have your spouse, have somebody just, you know, open the book, write down the questions separately and just record you. And then by the way, you can just upload that video to AI and you won’t have to ever type or write anything and it will take care of it all for you.

John Jantsch (20:25.004)

Yes, exactly.

John Jantsch (20:33.024)

Plus it sort of automatically gets your voice and tone and how you speak and all that kind of stuff. I love. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, Kip, I appreciate you taking a moment to stop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Is there some place you’d invite people to connect with you, find out more about Loop and everything else you’re up to?

Kipp Bodnar (20:35.724)

Yeah, exactly. That’s a that’s a great point.

Kipp Bodnar (20:49.0)

Yes. So you can obviously learn more about Hubswata Hubs dot com. You can find the book at loopmarketing dot com. And then for me, you can find me on Marketing Against the Grain, on YouTube and wherever you get your podcast.

John Jantsch (21:01.908)

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

Kipp Bodnar (21:06.462)

Awesome. Thanks, John. Appreciate you having me.

Sara Nay (00:01.474)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is your host, Sara Nay, stepping in for John Jantsch. Today, my guest is Heidi Ellsworth, who is a nationally recognized leader in the roofing and business building industries, serving as president of the coffee shop, an award-winning group of digital platforms. With more than 30 years of experience in roofing in sales, marketing, and business development, she has played a pivotal role in advancing how the industry connects, communicates, and

Rose. Welcome to the show, Heidi.

Heidi J. Ellsworth (00:33.167)

Thank you so much. That was such a nice introduction. Thank you.

Sara Nay (00:36.59)

I’m excited you’re here. and so let’s dive on in. Let’s get to the point. so you started in roofing I believe in nineteen ninety-three. So you’ve been in the industry for quite some time now. And over the years you ended up building one of the most influential media and community platforms. So I’m curious what caused you to see a need for building a platform like you’ve built?

Heidi J. Ellsworth (00:46.12)

Yes. Yeah.

Heidi J. Ellsworth (00:59.979)

you know what it it actually started when I was really young. My dad was a general contractor. And as kids, we’d be in the back of the car and we’d be driving someplace. And my dad would point out everything, every job that he had done, right? Every job, every house, every roof, every light pole. And as I grew older and, you know, worked with him in the business as a teenager, and then watched him as I started my marketing communications, I realized how

Much he would have appreciated to have someone put together a case study for him to tell his story, to share his successes, you know, more than just pointing them out to your kids and spouse. And that really stuck with me. And I wanted to be able to tell the stories of the amazing small businesses and in my case, craftsmen and women who build.

America, right? Who build and we we’re just not America who build everywhere. and so that that inspired me. And my business partner, Vicky Sharples, had actually started Roofer’s Coffee Shop back in 2002. And when she asked me to join her full time, I helped her launch it in 2002, but then sh I joined her full time in 2015. And it gave me that opportunity, that opportunity to do something I’d really kind of thought about for many years before I

Actually started full time with the coffee shops.

Sara Nay (02:27.566)

I love that story and and we actually have some in common because John Jance is my father and he actually founded Duct Tape Marketing and so I grew up watching you know the impact that he was making in small businesses’ lives and it really inspired me to kind of follow along on on the path that he laid.

Heidi J. Ellsworth (02:43.512)

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. My my kids actually work for me now. And nothing that, you know, I probably much like you, they came to me and they said, you know, we just we’re interested and we love what you’re doing. And so they they will also tell that story about their grandpa. So it’s yeah, it’s I love family businesses.

Sara Nay (02:48.073)

nice.

Sara Nay (03:04.822)

Yeah, it’s amazing they came to you. I I came to my dad about 16 years ago and was like, I need a job. But it worked out. I’m still around 16 years later. Yeah. Awesome. Well, one of the things that I know you talk about obviously is marketing, and that’s a lot of what we focus on as well. And a lot of people, when they think about marketing, they think, you know, I just need more leads or I need to run ads or I need a website in place. But you and I both know that it’s a lot deeper than that. So I know you talk a lot about

Heidi J. Ellsworth (03:08.81)

Yeah, it worked out obviously very well.

Heidi J. Ellsworth (03:32.184)

Yes.

Sara Nay (03:34.316)

A combination of like online communities, directories, networking and content. So why does that combination work so well in trades or just small business in general?

Heidi J. Ellsworth (03:45.039)

Yeah, you know, I think it honestly has worked for decades, right? The the idea that you build trust with your customers and that you’re authentic, that you help them guide them in making good decisions for their whether it’s their home or their business or whatever, that it’s it’s more than just a sales call. It’s a relationship, it’s it’s consulting on what makes what is a win for everyone involved.

and that’s always been the case, I feel, in in in with successful small businesses, with successful businesses, period. That’s always it’s about trust, it’s about your brand, it’s about your culture, all those kind of things. Well, now let’s throw in technology and what has happened the last, you know, five years, but really the last year when we’re talking about AI and the things are changing the landscape, is that it has created

This transparency that wasn’t there before. I mean, when I started and when I was first mark helping contractors and small businesses, because I worked with a number of small businesses doing their marketing too. it was about, well, should you name your company with starting with an A so you can be at the beginning of the yellow pages section. And it was about being part of, but it was still a part of being that little league team of doing all those things. Today, your whole life.

Your whole business is out there online. And so if you do not have a consistent message, a consistent brand, really authentic real story to tell and to share, it’s gonna come out and people are going to see it. So what we started in 2002, Vicky and I, with online articles and directories, and then grew it, you know, starting 2015 really into a multimedia platform with podcasts and webinars. Today.

ha has created this rich, rich environment for AI to search, to find content, to be able to see real stories. And so we are encouraging small businesses, all businesses, in and right now we serve the roofing industry, the coatings industry, the metal industry, and the outdoor living industries to get their directories up.

Heidi J. Ellsworth (06:08.622)

Get their art give their articles, do podcasts with us, just like we’re doing right now. All of this feeds that AI need for information. And we really, like you do, work with them to really tell their story and make sure that there’s a consistency between their website and between what they’re putting on our site so that as people are finding things online, whether that’s AI or real people.

Sara Nay (06:21.464)

Yeah.

Heidi J. Ellsworth (06:36.308)

they’re finding consistency so they can build that trust in that brand. So it’s just a different way, but it’s even more important today than it’s ever been, I think.

Sara Nay (06:44.578)

Yeah, that’s great. And a lot of times when we’re working with businesses, we’re we’re helping them diversify like what they’re doing from a marketing perspective. And so you mentioned a few things like the directories and communities and content and credibility online, but are you also advising people to focus on offline efforts as well? And what does that look like?

Heidi J. Ellsworth (07:04.92)

Yeah, big time. offline is being involved in your community, giving back through charitable activities, doing that sign at the little league field. but here’s the difference. And and I don’t know if you’ve seen this, Sarah, in all the different folks you work with, but I can tell you in the construction industry, we have a number of very humble, very humble business owners who are like, Yeah, I donate, I I re-roof people’s homes every day. I

I helped build the little league dugout. I I’m not gonna tell anyone because you know we’re not supposed to. We’re just supposed to do good deeds. And so the conversation we have now is do those good deeds, but it’s okay to talk about it. It’s okay because other people, other small businesses will see what you’re doing and they will follow. So it amplifies the good deed and it also helps your marketing. It’s cause marketing is so important.

Sara Nay (07:50.094)

Yeah.

Heidi J. Ellsworth (08:02.232)

And then I also am very much about networking. You know, it’s marketing is about networking also. So if you’re talking about off-grid, whether you’re online or you’re going being a part of an association, being part of your chamber of commerce, being, you know, that is also marketing because you are taking the time to be there, to give back, to help with your community. So we encourage all of that, but we encourage them to talk about it, to share it.

Sara Nay (08:26.392)

Yeah. Yeah, that’s great. I always think about marketing as, you know, going out there and focusing on your online presence, obviously, but also then having conversations with people is a big part of marketing and people don’t always think about it that way. But it’s as you said, it’s, you know, donating, it’s attending events, it’s having conversations, it’s networking, it’s finding strategic partnerships. Like that should always be a conversation, regardless of what industry you’re in. It should always be a focus while you’re also building all out your online presence to support those efforts as well.

Heidi J. Ellsworth (08:45.91)

Exactly.

Heidi J. Ellsworth (08:55.32)

Right. We always say people do business with people, right? They they they want to know who they’re doing business with. They want and and I know that’s a little muddier in today’s world when you think of Amazon and some of these things. I I really don’t know who’s on the other side of that screen, but on a local small business basis, people want to be with people and they wanna know you and they wanna know who you are and they want to feel good about buying from you and trust.

Sara Nay (08:55.638)

Ultimately.

Sara Nay (08:59.415)

Yeah, exactly.

Sara Nay (09:22.238)

Yeah. Absolutely. And I would argue that’s becoming more important in the age of AI right now. But going back to the content piece, because we have been preaching content, content, content for years. But what if someone’s listening and they’re like, Okay, I get it. I need to be producing content, but I don’t know how to get started. How what would you advise on how to get started with content production that’s representing a business?

Heidi J. Ellsworth (09:45.113)

Yeah, I tell you what, it’s easier than it’s ever been. It’s much easier than when I was doing it when I started out in my career. but I I just said this on a call earlier today. Transcripts are gold. If you want, if you’re looking for gold out there, transcripts are gold. So taking your phone and recording your thoughts, recording conversations, thought leadership conversations. Obviously, you have to be careful of privacy and all that stuff, but and then

Sara Nay (09:59.119)

Mm.

Heidi J. Ellsworth (10:15.118)

videos on your phone, taking videos, having those, you know, referrals or talking to the your customers about what they like, what was successful, why they’re happy. And then taking those videos or those audio tracks, turning them into transcripts, and forgive me, Sarah, I’m sure there’s gonna be a few people out there who are gonna be like, no, don’t say it. Put it into AI. Put it into AI.

Sara Nay (10:39.5)

Yeah.

Heidi J. Ellsworth (10:43.514)

put it into AI because it’s a tool. It’s a tool to be used. Now, here’s where people go sideways with AI and building content. And that is they don’t read what comes out, right? So it’s it’s just like if you’re putting something in and cooking it and making something and you never taste it, and you just put it out on the table and it’s terrible. That’s exactly what will happen with AI. You can put all the ingredients in, your thoughts, what you’re doing, everything, you put it all in.

It bakes it and comes out. If you don’t take the time to read it, to edit it, to change it, to make sure it fits exactly who you are, then it’s not a very good tool. So that’s what I’m like. Capture the thoughts up front, make it easy, use it as a tool to run through and then edit, edit, edit, and read it. That is so incredibly important. But it’s just, it’s created an opportunity. I mean, and there’s

That’s just writing, right? But I mean, there’s also a lot of programs out there that will help with video editing. There is, you know, that phone is the best tool you have. Although Sarah, this morning I was on with a contractor who does metal roofing and he just got his metaglasses and he’s blowing it up on social media with the videos the job site and talking to his customers. And he singing its praise, loves it.

Sara Nay (11:55.554)

No.

Sara Nay (12:03.352)

That’s amazing.

Yeah. Yeah, that’s amazing. I feel like those glasses would take some of the pressure off. You almost forget that you’re recording ultimately. ‘Cause they’re just on your face.

Heidi J. Ellsworth (12:12.12)

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And he says it’s so easy. And then there’s software to edit those, you know, say pull me a clip. yeah. So it it I think it’s easier than ever, but you have to not be afraid and you have to check your work. I can only say that like 10 million times because I believe it so strongly.

Sara Nay (12:30.658)

Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, I know I you actually interviewed me on a podcast yesterday. So we reversed roles and we talked a lot on that podcast about the customer journey. and so so far today we’ve talked about a lot of things that people can be doing to get awareness when it comes to getting in front of people. but how do you see like the customer journey changing in the age of AI?

Heidi J. Ellsworth (12:36.611)

Yes.

Heidi J. Ellsworth (12:52.866)

Yeah, I think it’s become even more important. I think you have to stay in touch with your customers. You need to have the touch points along the way to make sure that they’re getting what they need, that you’re delivering what you promised, that they’re happy. the the communication’s a little bit easier because of automation. So you can automate a lot of your messaging that goes the touch points, you can automate and making sure they’re getting communication they need to have a good customer experience. But

That one on one, I think will never go away. You s you still need that touch point with your customers. And I mean, it depend there’s so many small businesses on so many different levels, but it’s obviously if it’s retail, it’s little bit easier to have that face to face. But in construction, law, all those other things, making sure you s stay in touch in that customer journey. and I I would say at the very beginning, there’s nothing more important than listening.

Listening and understanding the needs and the pain of your customer and how you can solve it and then deliver.

Sara Nay (13:58.947)

Yeah, exactly. I think that’s so key, like especially in like the sales process I’ve been sold to so many times over the years where it’s like, did you even listen to what I was saying or are you just going through your script to like pitch what you think I need, even though I just told you that’s not what I need? And so I think it is really key to listen and ask the questions and stay curious. But you also made another great point in the customer journey. There’s also a lot of businesses that focus like

Heidi J. Ellsworth (14:06.778)

Yeah.

Sara Nay (14:21.816)

primarily on marketing and just getting more and more and more people in the door. But then like once people become customers, they kind of like forget about them and they don’t really communicate well. Like I’ve signed up for services and products over the years and it’s like, okay, I paid this money, what’s next? It’s crickets. Like what can I expect? And so I just think like it’s sad, but communicating with your clients and customers after sale can go such a far way. And often a lot of businesses forget about that piece because they’re so focused on leads, leads, leads.

Heidi J. Ellsworth (14:30.01)

Right.

Heidi J. Ellsworth (14:50.713)

Mm-hmm.

Sara Nay (14:50.796)

And so from your perspective, like any advice there on how to like how to nurture people and take care of people more after they actually become customers?

Heidi J. Ellsworth (14:57.241)

Yeah.

Yeah I think a lot of times you gotta think about yourself as a customer. As a customer, what do I want and what do I wanna do? And if I have a great experience, how many people am I gonna tell? And I I I that to your point is that’s the best way to generate leads or to generate people coming to you. You know, that they heard, Yes, we love these guys, they are so great, they did all of this for us. You you gotta go see them. I had a a chiropractor in

lady in town who was just so phenomenal. And I told one person who told another person and they told another person. I mean, and everybody keeps coming back, going, Thank you, she’s so amazing. and so I think yes, new leads are important and branding and having your name out there so that when someone does hear your, you know, or someone has a need, they’ve seen you, they’ve heard about you from the community.

And that’s really that’s the ultimate lead generation. But I really feel with lead generation today, too many people just want that instant lead and ’cause because Google has kind of trained them that way. Those are they take a lot more time and usually are not nearly as qualified.

Sara Nay (16:03.586)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Sara Nay (16:11.842)

Yeah, absolutely. I mean referrals are the most, I feel like, the easiest can to convert when it comes to leads because there’s already a lot of that trust built in. but I’m curious in your work, have you helped different businesses build out referral programs or is it more just built on in sp like helping people feel great where they want to refer ultimately the companies they’re working with? What’s your approach there?

Heidi J. Ellsworth (16:18.521)

Yeah.

Heidi J. Ellsworth (16:33.4)

I yeah, I’ve worked with a lot of different companies who have done it. I mean, in construction, it’s all about referrals, right? I mean, in fact, some some folks they don’t even do marketing, and now we say that’s not a good idea either, because you need that full schedule around it. But I’ve worked with people helping to put together, I mean, I’ve worked for contractors, small businesses that where we put together referral programs, how we’re going to communicate that. And that starts all the way.

you know, you your sales team needs to understand it. And then you need to be consistent and talking to people and finding out. But you can put together a lot of referral programs. You can give a lot of gift cards away. You can do all those kind of things. But if you don’t have stellar work and great communications, people won’t care about a gift card. So I I believe in referral programs, but I really believe in delivering the what people need and then and then following through.

Sara Nay (17:26.147)

Yes.

Sara Nay (17:30.498)

Yeah, absolutely. And your chiropractor example sets the table for that exactly. I mean, I have a person that’s done our taxes for years, and I think everyone I know he also does their taxes. And it’s just because he’s done a great job and he communicates well and he’s on time and he’s responsive and we can rely on them. Like it’s all those things that you want. And once you find someone like that, like literally the next time someone’s like, Who does your taxes? I’m more than willing to refer them because I’ve had a good experience. And so I think that really highlights

Heidi J. Ellsworth (17:38.938)

Yeah, exactly.

Heidi J. Ellsworth (17:48.547)

Yeah.

Sara Nay (17:58.255)

Regardless what industry you’re in, like yes, as we were saying, I do think referral programs have a place. But as long as you’re nurturing people throughout the whole experience and you’re delivering on what you promise, they’re just gonna refer you naturally as well, which is a win all.

Heidi J. Ellsworth (18:12.672)

Exactly. Exactly. And I I use myself a lot as my own focus group, right? I’m like, how do I want to be treated? What is is a gift card gonna really make that big of a difference to me? No, really good service is gonna make a big difference to me. And so now and knowing that I’m there’s a lot of people who have different opinions and so you need to ask and talk to a lot of people. But if you kind of start at home and build that out, treat others like you wanna be treated.

Sara Nay (18:37.346)

Yeah, absolutely. Love it. Well, thank you. We are coming towards the end of our show. So I always like to ask a couple questions as we get towards the end. based on what we discussed today, is there one tip or one thing that you want to leave the audience with before we go?

Heidi J. Ellsworth (18:54.098)

Yes, I would say get to know your and purely selfish here, but get to know your online resources. Get to know the people behind those. sign up for podcasts, sign up for send in articles, get your directories. there’s really nothing more important right now for your online presence, which is a part of your bigger marketing plan than that. And so if anybody has questions and they want to see what we have done at Roofers Coffee Shop.

It’s easy. Heidi at Roofers Coffee Shop dot com. I’m more than happy to answer any questions.

Sara Nay (19:26.67)

Awesome. And then one final quick question I like to ask because I’m a bit of a book nerd. Are you reading anything right now that you would recommend or have you read anything lately?

Heidi J. Ellsworth (19:31.343)

Yeah.

Heidi J. Ellsworth (19:36.182)

Yes, I’m kind of a I’m really big into sci science fiction and fantasy and stuff like that. So Onyx Storm is one of the ones that I just finished and I can’t wait for the fourth book. So yeah.

Sara Nay (19:44.609)

Awesome.

Awesome. Love it. All right. Well you already shouted out there where people can connect you with you online. anywhere else that you want to connect online?

Heidi J. Ellsworth (19:56.93)

yeah, roofers coffee shop dot com. That’s our oldest and our first brand. And so you’ll see a lot of different things there. If you’re looking for a roofer, go to askaroofer.com. And as a homeowner or a business owner, if you’re looking for you know help to pick that roof and get something great, askaroofer.com has all kinds of resources and you can ask and find a con a contractor. And that’s also part of our platform.

Sara Nay (20:21.056)

Awesome. All right. Thank you so much, Heidi, for being here today. I really enjoyed our conversation. And thank you all for listening to the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. We’ll see you next time.

John Jantsch (00:01.806)

So nine out of ten clients say their agency makes them more likely to succeed. I guess that’s the good news, right? four out of those ten are also planning to cut back on their relationship within a year. We’ll talk more about that. So, hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Brian Gerstner. He’s the co-founder of Agency Core, an organization that does independent research study.

They surveyed over five hundred and seventy-nine agency leaders and four hundred of their own clients in twenty twenty six. he is also the president of White Label IQ, a ninety person team that works exclusively with agencies, spent more than twenty years in the business. We’re gonna talk about that research. So, Brian, welcome to the show.

Brian Gerstner (00:50.782)

It’s a pleasure. How are you, John?

John Jantsch (00:53.104)

awesome. So you know, there’s a lot of organizations out there. You’ve been in the business twenty years, a lot of organizations out there doing producing data. Is there something that you’re trying to learn or you like initially started this to try to learn that maybe nobody else is ev is measuring?

Brian Gerstner (01:09.034)

Well, it it was really about looking inside of agencies. You know, in in all the time I’ve been, you know, working inside of agencies, it it’s really a bubble. Like you’re doing everything you can to the best you can and you’re not really exactly sure how other peers are are successful or what they’re doing. So we wanted agency core to really take a look inside of agencies so that people could see how people are being successful, what kind of retention, where they’re focusing, what kind of products they’re selling, what

John Jantsch (01:25.91)

Yes.

Brian Gerstner (01:39.144)

And at the end of the day, truly, the study is an attitudinal study. So it’s not about the specific mechanics, but it has a lot to do with like the overlying attitudes that people have and how those attitudes really reflect how successful they are and what they’re doing.

John Jantsch (01:50.925)

Yes.

John Jantsch (01:56.813)

Yeah, you know, we work with a lot of agencies. And I I tell you, I’ve been doing it that for twenty years as well. And it it, you know, you say attitude, I’ve been using the w the word mindset, you know, because I think there definitely is a there’s a bigger shift going on right now, it feels like, than ever, you know, before since I’ve been in this. And a lot of it is they just have to wrap their heads around a whole different way of going to market, even, or at least that’s what we’re seeing. Y your study actually

does kind of sort agencies into a couple groups that I would call maybe mindset. You know, has a lot to do with those groups. One called the confident differentiator. That was maybe my my favorite. what is a what does a confident differentiator do day to day that puts them in that segment?

Brian Gerstner (02:43.785)

Yeah, so it it it’s a classic story, right? We’ve all heard about niching down. but the key in that attitudinal s segment is that we see these are people who have taken a position. It’s not just, you know, sitting down with your team, you know, talking like, here’s who we are, here’s what we do. But it’s really about, you know, spending the time going out speaking, writing, creating content around it.

John Jantsch (02:50.016)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (02:58.05)

Yeah.

Brian Gerstner (03:11.805)

you know, turning down clients that don’t really fit that core focus that you’re providing. So they’re they’re creating that classic true differentiation that, you know, we all talk about in Seek, but when we I think as we look at the study and things we might touch on is the statistically the people who are in that particular segment are doing way better. I mean, you know, even as we talk about differentiation, we’re seeing the numbers really start to create a huge gap.

John Jantsch (03:15.35)

Yeah.

Brian Gerstner (03:41.063)

And how those individuals are much more successful and competent.

John Jantsch (03:46.176)

And and not just revenue, profit, probably, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Gerstner (03:49.258)

Well, I mean, we’re we’re not really talking about products specifically, but like things like how relevant is my agency? How much of a concern is do I have about being able to justify the fees that I’m providing? You know, is AI you know, how much how much of a threat is AI to my business model? Those individuals are reporting, you know, much more confidence around those types of areas. So we’re not specifically talking about profit, but once again

John Jantsch (03:57.045)

okay.

Brian Gerstner (04:19.401)

The the attitude here.

John Jantsch (04:19.734)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So so I you know, we encounter, I mean, th this idea of, you know, find a niche has been around a long time. I think a lot of people have gone down that path maybe incorrectly. in other words, saying, We’re gonna just work with Dennis starting tomorrow. and and and and and then find, you know, six months in that they don’t really Dennis isn’t a good market or you know, whatever the

Brian Gerstner (04:37.502)

I need a

John Jantsch (04:47.17)

Not picking on dentists, just you know, it’s more the the approach. So so what does your sir survey say about that kind of hesitation of like, I don’t wanna turn other you know, other stuff away.

Brian Gerstner (04:58.901)

So this is more me speaking as agency owner and just kind of in there. I you know, if someone comes up to you and in your heart you know you can help them and they have a big bag of money in their hands, my goodness, take it. You know? being able to niche down is really an a function of you know, are you demonstrating an authority? And at the end of the day, are other people

John Jantsch (05:11.436)

Yeah yeah. Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

Brian Gerstner (05:28.199)

saying, hey, they’re really good at this, because we can talk about ourselves all we want, but the moment other people start saying, Hey, these particular people have a great reputation in this one particular area, that’s that that’s when you know you’re you’re truly, you know, establishing that that confident differentiating positions.

John Jantsch (05:31.404)

Yes.

John Jantsch (05:49.343)

So one of the I see this all the time. 13 to 16% of agency owners say they’re fully executed on the strategies they name as their top priorities. what’s up with that?

Brian Gerstner (06:01.141)

So that’s wild. I you know, we I know being a college kid in in the business is like common, you know, like we’re we’re horrible at doing our own marketing, but we do it for others all the time. what I I for me that statistic stands out greatly because there’s so much change in the market with AI and just the way things are changing, you know, and the fact that you know, if you’re using a cloud, I’m using open AI.

John Jantsch (06:09.538)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (06:13.026)

Yeah.

Brian Gerstner (06:31.731)

we’re all kind of the same agency at the end of the day if we’re not really standing on a particular reputation or authority. So when we look at 13% only executing it, what what blows my mind is when there’s so much change happening and we know like a lot of the you know actual deliverable work that we do is being commoditized more rapidly than ever before.

John Jantsch (06:38.531)

Yeah.

Brian Gerstner (06:58.247)

I look at it and it just blows my mind. We’ve got to be able to do better. I mean, our our business are our business models might fail for those who are sitting there and rely on the complexity of marketing, you know, being able to execute because it’s too technical. I mean that that the tide’s going out and AI has really eroded that area. So unless we’re really showing authority and a true understanding of our clients,

John Jantsch (07:12.888)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (07:19.224)

Yeah.

Brian Gerstner (07:26.921)

we’re not going to be able to be competitive. And what wh I really like gives me a lot of hope about this is once again, it’s about the fundamentals of marketing are still so true.

John Jantsch (07:35.69)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Always they haven’t changed no matter what the platform, right? S so that statistic I cited at the opening that nine out of ten you know, f feel like their agency is more likely to make them succeed, only four out of ten, but four yeah, four out of ten plan to reduce the relationship. So walk me through both of those numbers. I mean, how can they both be true at the same time?

Brian Gerstner (07:40.707)

yeah.

Brian Gerstner (07:56.502)

Well, so I think what it really looks at is just as I said, you know, the tide is moving out on certain types of work. So when we look at the nine out of ten as far as end clients, and that’s the specific statistic came out of the agency edge research through AMI. it is, you know, we’re still incredibly relevant. Clients know they need an agency, they need an expert, they need authority in a position and that, you know.

John Jantsch (08:14.966)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Gerstner (08:25.841)

it is more likely that their initiatives will will be successful if they have the right people at the table with them. You know, it’s just knowing that like we’re still incredibly relevant. Okay. But when you look at the certain end clients like decreasing their spend, you know, we’re all seeing it, whether it’s like producing brochures, writing content, you know, AI is doing it excessively well, you know, and for a lot of clients, good is enough for certain types of work.

John Jantsch (08:37.386)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (08:46.485)

Right.

John Jantsch (08:55.532)

Yeah, yeah.

Brian Gerstner (08:55.951)

when I I bridge the two together, it is the fact that the agency can show up, provide strategy, provide greater, higher levels of confidence and judgment and direction. And with that in place and, you know, as an end client, access to a lot of these tools that are more affordable than ever before, they’re moving faster. So I look at that statistic and I say,

There are certain types of engagements that we’re used to doing and providing deliverables that are now commoditized that are absolutely we’re gonna lose we’re gonna lose ground on those. But the it’s the strategy work, it’s the judgment and direction that the nine out of ten comes from.

John Jantsch (09:36.012)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (09:40.61)

Yeah, yeah. Well, and that’s you know, I’ve been preaching the this line, strategy before tactics, for, you know, at least thirty years. And and I mean it’s you know, it it’s absolutely gonna be, I think, the only space left. In fact, one of the things I think has happened is is AI has actually opened up a marketing leadership gap. and I think really exposed it. It’s always been there with small to mid sized businesses, but I think AI is

really exposing the lack of leadership in marketing. And I think that I how do you feel agents I believe that agencies can rush into that gap, you know, and stop worrying about, you know, SEO tactics. but how do you get an agency that’s, you know, that’s got 20 people sitting around that their job is to like do reports and do do the stuff we give to clients and get them start thinking more about leaders. I know you didn’t research this, but but I’m curious what your thoughts are on

Brian Gerstner (10:37.823)

So there’s two thoughts and one is just very awakening. Like that agency you just described, the the truth is revenue is gonna make that decision for them. Right. and on the other side, I do believe that you know it is a lot about you know, the questions that your clients are gonna ask us. I can tell you over the past year or two, how our clients have started to engage us has been very different.

John Jantsch (10:42.134)

Yes.

John Jantsch (10:47.701)

Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (11:07.628)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Gerstner (11:07.859)

You know, from you know, asking about deliverables and the more technical service offerings to showing up and going, How do we do this? Should we do this? And it is once again fundamentals, right? If we’re focused on our clients and we’re looking at the questions they’re answering and we understand the problems and pain that they’re having, naturally there should be a progression. If we’re stuck and focused on the deliverable, I mean, that is a core thing. Like if you’re not client focused or client centric, then you’re gonna you’re gonna miss that transition.

To some degree. but I think the decision’s gonna get made for you, good or bad.

John Jantsch (11:39.49)

You Yeah. You you identified another another segment you call the AI opportunity embracers and and we certainly are seeing that out there that people are rushing in saying, there’s money to be made in this new frontier. but I’m also seeing a lot of them already going, We can’t really get any clients just pitching that because they can do it themselves for twenty bucks a month, right?

Brian Gerstner (12:01.725)

yeah.

Brian Gerstner (12:05.653)

Well well, I mean, my agency is very heavily in this area also because we do a tremendous amount of development work and we do a tremendous amount of like work that is being affected by AI. So like in this, like we have we have a people problem. The the adoption is really difficult to really, you know, to get with people, to get people to truly know how to leverage it. And when we look at this particular segment, a lot of the problem is

John Jantsch (12:10.029)

Sure. Mm-hmm.

Brian Gerstner (12:35.199)

People are moving into AI aggressively because it is new, there is a lot of opportunity, and honestly, right now AI itself is enough of a buzzword that you can hang your hat on it. What I can tell you though, right exactly.

John Jantsch (12:47.277)

Sure. It’s like when social media came around. There were all these social media social media marketing agencies.

Brian Gerstner (12:52.521)

Yeah. From being in the business long enough, I can tell you that this opportun the the whole, you know, AI being your differentiator, like that is gonna disappear really quick. It’s already table stakes. when you look at it, end clients already understand that we’re using it. They just want us to do it responsibly. So this particular segment, the real the people who are chasing AI going, AI is the answer. there there is there is still plenty of opportunity in this area. The big concern is

John Jantsch (13:03.629)

Sure, sure.

John Jantsch (13:08.331)

Yep. Yep.

Brian Gerstner (13:23.061)

People are running really fast, but where are you going? You know, there there’s a reason the compass was invented before the clock. It’s because it’s more important to know where you’re going. So the big fear in this area is that you’re moving really fast and you’re gonna end up somewhere where there’s not going to be enough ground to live on.

John Jantsch (13:30.273)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (13:41.441)

Yeah, look at all the hundred thousand dollar stalled AI projects that a lot of corporations launched.

Brian Gerstner (13:45.781)

Yeah, we’ve had funny we we have our own graveyard. We have our own graveyard, but we’re learning from every one of it. I call this you know, this is definitely education.

John Jantsch (13:54.19)

So so what’s the research say about pricing? pricing models that you know, are clients saying, Hey, you need to do this for you need to charge me fifty percent less because you’re using AI to do it?

Brian Gerstner (14:07.893)

we’re not really seeing that. We’re seeing that not only are marketing budgets in general in the industry still increasing, but we are seeing that end clients are saying that they are willing to not only not decrease, but they’re willing to pay more for higher levels of expertise in a specific area. We have seen where like I think twenty-nine percent of end clients are saying that they expect to reduce fees because of AI.

John Jantsch (14:27.741)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Brian Gerstner (14:36.575)

But once again, I’m bringing this back to that concept of commoditization, where certain types of deliverables absolutely do not have the pricing power that they used to. So if you do, just like the confident differentiators, if you have a level of authority, absolutely the end clients are more willing to pay for it more and more ever before. So when you look at that statistic about agencies themselves saying, like, what was it? Only 25% believe

John Jantsch (14:43.234)

Yeah.

Brian Gerstner (15:05.585)

AI strategy is a differentiating factor in selection, I’m saying like this isn’t gonna last forever, but hey agencies, here is a giant window. There’s a door open right now. And if you can aggressively take take advantage of this, it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity.

John Jantsch (15:17.735)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (15:26.743)

Well and I tell you one of the things we’ve seen o over the years is coming in the strategy door i is a far better relationship to with the client than coming in the vendor do this thing door. and I I think that so, you know, we we our our clients have been with us for many, many years and I think it has to do with the fact that we start them all with strategy. you know, as of before we ever start talking about fixing all the stuff they want fixed.

Brian Gerstner (15:52.471)

And I know like there’s a lot of agencies I work with just don’t feel comfortable, don’t feel like they have the pricing power or that at the end of the day they say, Hey, my clients don’t want it.

John Jantsch (15:57.526)

Right. Yeah.

John Jantsch (16:02.273)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brian Gerstner (16:04.924)

That’s hard. I I I I get it. I I get how that’s the conversation, but like there just as you said, like the agency that’s producing reports, like, you know, if you focus down, if you niche in, if you if you lean into an area, it is an investment. It’s hard. Growth is painful. But as you do that, you are able to show up in a more significant way. You can charge more, your clients will spend more. And there is still a lot of power in the generalist. I’m not saying like niching down doesn’t mean

John Jantsch (16:07.275)

Yeah.

Brian Gerstner (16:33.834)

You have to choose an industry. You can choose a region. You can tre choose an attitude. You can choose strategy. But then you do have something to hang your hat on. I think people get caught up in niching down means I have to work with dentists all the time. That I I I don’t believe that’s true at all. But it does mean that you have to have focus and you can’t be all over the place. The the general’s position will erode. and even those that are very successful, I think they’ll find out that like there there is

John Jantsch (16:40.962)

Right.

John Jantsch (16:47.275)

Yeah, yep, yep, yep. Yeah.

John Jantsch (16:54.625)

Yep. Yeah.

Brian Gerstner (17:02.612)

there is some commonality between who they’re getting business with, whether it’s like the size of the in the SMB, whether it’s the region, whether it’s the tactical approaches, there is typically a common thread in there that has allowed them to be successful that they’re maybe just not focusing on.

John Jantsch (17:07.33)

yeah.

John Jantsch (17:13.644)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (17:19.369)

Yeah, I mean we’ve done that before with clients, you know, make it well let’s show me, you know, show me your thousand clients and we whittle it down and like eighty percent of their business is coming from this twenty percent band. you know, happens all the time.

Brian Gerstner (17:30.506)

What? Yeah. You just don’t see it ’cause you’re so in it a lot of times.

John Jantsch (17:35.147)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we’ve talked about the the the the confident differentiators and and maybe the the outliers, the the opportunity seekers. Who what does the data show about these people that are like where do we go? I just feel pressure. I don’t know what direction to go.

Brian Gerstner (17:54.059)

Right. i it’s a hard place to be because obviously and I think when we look in that, like sixteen percent of that segment was very open about just like, you know, closing it down and moving on. a lot of it is because you know, to be in this industry you have to have like some some s significant moxie to show up every day. Like someone’s moving your cheese every day, every hour. And you know, for a lot of people that that’s why this industry is so exciting too. But

John Jantsch (18:05.899)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (18:13.719)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (18:22.711)

Yeah, yeah.

Brian Gerstner (18:24.714)

This is, you know, where we’ve been used to like, you know, weathering the storm, whether it’s you know, the pandemic or the two thousand eight housing or you know, just the politics that are running through. this is not a storm. This is a new climate. So for those that have weathered many, many storms, I know there there are some people who are just like, you know, like I’m tired. ’cause it does there’s there’s a lot of investment.

John Jantsch (18:42.156)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (18:50.133)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brian Gerstner (18:54.622)

I I will have to say though, John, like, you know, as I’ve been talking to people, even like a year, year and a half ago, the conversation was a lot about are we relevant? Like with AI coming, who’s gonna need us? What are we gonna do? I will tell you just in the course of one year, the conversation has changed dramatically. We are relevant. I will tell you that right now. And so, you know, for all those folks, it’s like, you know, stick around, you know, follow the data, talk to peers, you know, you’ll

John Jantsch (19:03.819)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (19:11.917)

Yep. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Gerstner (19:23.878)

And I I do think that you know once again we we just need to become acclimated. It is a new climate, you know. As we start to learn more and we start to get more comfortable, things get cleared, there’s less uncertainty than there was before. And for those folks, you know, the statistics just show that it’s a big change and it’s a difficult change. And but

John Jantsch (19:32.993)

Yeah, yeah.

Brian Gerstner (19:49.738)

There’s still probably more opportunity than ever before if you can take the time to to see it.

John Jantsch (19:56.556)

Yeah. that that’s absolutely the message I’ve been trying to to give to folks as well, because I’ve I’m feeling it. the demand hasn’t slowed down at all. It’s just they’re asking different questions. exactly. Yeah, yeah. Well Brett

Brian Gerstner (20:07.146)

They really are. Yeah. And the the pressure you’re putting on your own team are very different. You know, it is you have to retrain your entire team a lot of times.

John Jantsch (20:13.484)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (20:17.183)

Yeah, you know that’s a I don’t want to go down too much of a rabbit hole here ’cause this could be a whole nother show. in that I think that’s one of the s that’s one of the challenges that a lot of agencies are are facing is the people that they attracted and hired and trained are are probably not as relevant for the work that needs to be done now. In a lot of cases, yeah.

Brian Gerstner (20:31.914)

Okay.

Brian Gerstner (20:36.086)

Right. Yeah, and one last statistic, but like even in this, I don’t have the exact numbers, but even though there’s been a tremendous amount of attrition, when we talk to agencies, hiring has become significantly harder. So think about that. There’s been a lot of attrition, the market is full of more people, but yet it’s even more difficult to hire.

John Jantsch (20:50.177)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (21:01.363)

Yeah, and I I told you we could go down a whole rabbit hole here. What we’ve experienced is that to be successful, you’re gonna have to hire you’re gonna have to hire a different you’re not gonna hire a doer. You’re gonna have to hire a strategic thinker who can actually become a leader in your organization because I think the doers, you know, we can outsource, right, Brian?

Brian Gerstner (21:05.137)

Okay. Well,

Brian Gerstner (21:23.924)

Yeah, I mean, yeah.

John Jantsch (21:28.173)

Exactly. So so I appreciate you stopping by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Is there some place you’d invite people to to get the research? First off, I know you have that hosted and and then obviously find out more about white label IQ.

Brian Gerstner (21:41.771)

Yep. So absolutely go to agencycore.org. everything is completely ungated. You can download all the data, all the visualizations, all the studies, executive studies. It’s all there for everybody. No gating, no emails required. But you know, sign up and we’ll keep you informed. for us, you know, whitelik.com, absolutely. Also, Brian Gershner, look me up on LinkedIn, I’m pretty active.

John Jantsch (22:07.469)

Awesome. Well again, I appreciate you stopping by. Maybe we’ll run into you one of these days just up the highway there.

Brian Gerstner (22:12.692)

Right. Appreciate it, John.

John Jantsch (00:01.806)

So nine out of ten clients say their agency makes them more likely to succeed. I guess that’s the good news, right? four out of those ten are also planning to cut back on their relationship within a year. We’ll talk more about that. So, hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Brian Gerstner. He’s the co-founder of Agency Core, an organization that does independent research study.

They surveyed over five hundred and seventy-nine agency leaders and four hundred of their own clients in twenty twenty six. he is also the president of White Label IQ, a ninety person team that works exclusively with agencies, spent more than twenty years in the business. We’re gonna talk about that research. So, Brian, welcome to the show.

Brian Gerstner (00:50.782)

It’s a pleasure. How are you, John?

John Jantsch (00:53.104)

awesome. So you know, there’s a lot of organizations out there. You’ve been in the business twenty years, a lot of organizations out there doing producing data. Is there something that you’re trying to learn or you like initially started this to try to learn that maybe nobody else is ev is measuring?

Brian Gerstner (01:09.034)

Well, it it was really about looking inside of agencies. You know, in in all the time I’ve been, you know, working inside of agencies, it it’s really a bubble. Like you’re doing everything you can to the best you can and you’re not really exactly sure how other peers are are successful or what they’re doing. So we wanted agency core to really take a look inside of agencies so that people could see how people are being successful, what kind of retention, where they’re focusing, what kind of products they’re selling, what

John Jantsch (01:25.91)

Yes.

Brian Gerstner (01:39.144)

And at the end of the day, truly, the study is an attitudinal study. So it’s not about the specific mechanics, but it has a lot to do with like the overlying attitudes that people have and how those attitudes really reflect how successful they are and what they’re doing.

John Jantsch (01:50.925)

Yes.

John Jantsch (01:56.813)

Yeah, you know, we work with a lot of agencies. And I I tell you, I’ve been doing it that for twenty years as well. And it it, you know, you say attitude, I’ve been using the w the word mindset, you know, because I think there definitely is a there’s a bigger shift going on right now, it feels like, than ever, you know, before since I’ve been in this. And a lot of it is they just have to wrap their heads around a whole different way of going to market, even, or at least that’s what we’re seeing. Y your study actually

does kind of sort agencies into a couple groups that I would call maybe mindset. You know, has a lot to do with those groups. One called the confident differentiator. That was maybe my my favorite. what is a what does a confident differentiator do day to day that puts them in that segment?

Brian Gerstner (02:43.785)

Yeah, so it it it’s a classic story, right? We’ve all heard about niching down. but the key in that attitudinal s segment is that we see these are people who have taken a position. It’s not just, you know, sitting down with your team, you know, talking like, here’s who we are, here’s what we do. But it’s really about, you know, spending the time going out speaking, writing, creating content around it.

John Jantsch (02:50.016)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (02:58.05)

Yeah.

Brian Gerstner (03:11.805)

you know, turning down clients that don’t really fit that core focus that you’re providing. So they’re they’re creating that classic true differentiation that, you know, we all talk about in Seek, but when we I think as we look at the study and things we might touch on is the statistically the people who are in that particular segment are doing way better. I mean, you know, even as we talk about differentiation, we’re seeing the numbers really start to create a huge gap.

John Jantsch (03:15.35)

Yeah.

Brian Gerstner (03:41.063)

And how those individuals are much more successful and competent.

John Jantsch (03:46.176)

And and not just revenue, profit, probably, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Gerstner (03:49.258)

Well, I mean, we’re we’re not really talking about products specifically, but like things like how relevant is my agency? How much of a concern is do I have about being able to justify the fees that I’m providing? You know, is AI you know, how much how much of a threat is AI to my business model? Those individuals are reporting, you know, much more confidence around those types of areas. So we’re not specifically talking about profit, but once again

John Jantsch (03:57.045)

okay.

Brian Gerstner (04:19.401)

The the attitude here.

John Jantsch (04:19.734)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So so I you know, we encounter, I mean, th this idea of, you know, find a niche has been around a long time. I think a lot of people have gone down that path maybe incorrectly. in other words, saying, We’re gonna just work with Dennis starting tomorrow. and and and and and then find, you know, six months in that they don’t really Dennis isn’t a good market or you know, whatever the

Brian Gerstner (04:37.502)

I need a

John Jantsch (04:47.17)

Not picking on dentists, just you know, it’s more the the approach. So so what does your sir survey say about that kind of hesitation of like, I don’t wanna turn other you know, other stuff away.

Brian Gerstner (04:58.901)

So this is more me speaking as agency owner and just kind of in there. I you know, if someone comes up to you and in your heart you know you can help them and they have a big bag of money in their hands, my goodness, take it. You know? being able to niche down is really an a function of you know, are you demonstrating an authority? And at the end of the day, are other people

John Jantsch (05:11.436)

Yeah yeah. Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

Brian Gerstner (05:28.199)

saying, hey, they’re really good at this, because we can talk about ourselves all we want, but the moment other people start saying, Hey, these particular people have a great reputation in this one particular area, that’s that that’s when you know you’re you’re truly, you know, establishing that that confident differentiating positions.

John Jantsch (05:31.404)

Yes.

John Jantsch (05:49.343)

So one of the I see this all the time. 13 to 16% of agency owners say they’re fully executed on the strategies they name as their top priorities. what’s up with that?

Brian Gerstner (06:01.141)

So that’s wild. I you know, we I know being a college kid in in the business is like common, you know, like we’re we’re horrible at doing our own marketing, but we do it for others all the time. what I I for me that statistic stands out greatly because there’s so much change in the market with AI and just the way things are changing, you know, and the fact that you know, if you’re using a cloud, I’m using open AI.

John Jantsch (06:09.538)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (06:13.026)

Yeah.

Brian Gerstner (06:31.731)

we’re all kind of the same agency at the end of the day if we’re not really standing on a particular reputation or authority. So when we look at 13% only executing it, what what blows my mind is when there’s so much change happening and we know like a lot of the you know actual deliverable work that we do is being commoditized more rapidly than ever before.

John Jantsch (06:38.531)

Yeah.

Brian Gerstner (06:58.247)

I look at it and it just blows my mind. We’ve got to be able to do better. I mean, our our business are our business models might fail for those who are sitting there and rely on the complexity of marketing, you know, being able to execute because it’s too technical. I mean that that the tide’s going out and AI has really eroded that area. So unless we’re really showing authority and a true understanding of our clients,

John Jantsch (07:12.888)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (07:19.224)

Yeah.

Brian Gerstner (07:26.921)

we’re not going to be able to be competitive. And what wh I really like gives me a lot of hope about this is once again, it’s about the fundamentals of marketing are still so true.

John Jantsch (07:35.69)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Always they haven’t changed no matter what the platform, right? S so that statistic I cited at the opening that nine out of ten you know, f feel like their agency is more likely to make them succeed, only four out of ten, but four yeah, four out of ten plan to reduce the relationship. So walk me through both of those numbers. I mean, how can they both be true at the same time?

Brian Gerstner (07:40.707)

yeah.

Brian Gerstner (07:56.502)

Well, so I think what it really looks at is just as I said, you know, the tide is moving out on certain types of work. So when we look at the nine out of ten as far as end clients, and that’s the specific statistic came out of the agency edge research through AMI. it is, you know, we’re still incredibly relevant. Clients know they need an agency, they need an expert, they need authority in a position and that, you know.

John Jantsch (08:14.966)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Gerstner (08:25.841)

it is more likely that their initiatives will will be successful if they have the right people at the table with them. You know, it’s just knowing that like we’re still incredibly relevant. Okay. But when you look at the certain end clients like decreasing their spend, you know, we’re all seeing it, whether it’s like producing brochures, writing content, you know, AI is doing it excessively well, you know, and for a lot of clients, good is enough for certain types of work.

John Jantsch (08:37.386)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (08:46.485)

Right.

John Jantsch (08:55.532)

Yeah, yeah.

Brian Gerstner (08:55.951)

when I I bridge the two together, it is the fact that the agency can show up, provide strategy, provide greater, higher levels of confidence and judgment and direction. And with that in place and, you know, as an end client, access to a lot of these tools that are more affordable than ever before, they’re moving faster. So I look at that statistic and I say,

There are certain types of engagements that we’re used to doing and providing deliverables that are now commoditized that are absolutely we’re gonna lose we’re gonna lose ground on those. But the it’s the strategy work, it’s the judgment and direction that the nine out of ten comes from.

John Jantsch (09:36.012)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (09:40.61)

Yeah, yeah. Well, and that’s you know, I’ve been preaching the this line, strategy before tactics, for, you know, at least thirty years. And and I mean it’s you know, it it’s absolutely gonna be, I think, the only space left. In fact, one of the things I think has happened is is AI has actually opened up a marketing leadership gap. and I think really exposed it. It’s always been there with small to mid sized businesses, but I think AI is

really exposing the lack of leadership in marketing. And I think that I how do you feel agents I believe that agencies can rush into that gap, you know, and stop worrying about, you know, SEO tactics. but how do you get an agency that’s, you know, that’s got 20 people sitting around that their job is to like do reports and do do the stuff we give to clients and get them start thinking more about leaders. I know you didn’t research this, but but I’m curious what your thoughts are on

Brian Gerstner (10:37.823)

So there’s two thoughts and one is just very awakening. Like that agency you just described, the the truth is revenue is gonna make that decision for them. Right. and on the other side, I do believe that you know it is a lot about you know, the questions that your clients are gonna ask us. I can tell you over the past year or two, how our clients have started to engage us has been very different.

John Jantsch (10:42.134)

Yes.

John Jantsch (10:47.701)

Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (11:07.628)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Gerstner (11:07.859)

You know, from you know, asking about deliverables and the more technical service offerings to showing up and going, How do we do this? Should we do this? And it is once again fundamentals, right? If we’re focused on our clients and we’re looking at the questions they’re answering and we understand the problems and pain that they’re having, naturally there should be a progression. If we’re stuck and focused on the deliverable, I mean, that is a core thing. Like if you’re not client focused or client centric, then you’re gonna you’re gonna miss that transition.

To some degree. but I think the decision’s gonna get made for you, good or bad.

John Jantsch (11:39.49)

You Yeah. You you identified another another segment you call the AI opportunity embracers and and we certainly are seeing that out there that people are rushing in saying, there’s money to be made in this new frontier. but I’m also seeing a lot of them already going, We can’t really get any clients just pitching that because they can do it themselves for twenty bucks a month, right?

Brian Gerstner (12:01.725)

yeah.

Brian Gerstner (12:05.653)

Well well, I mean, my agency is very heavily in this area also because we do a tremendous amount of development work and we do a tremendous amount of like work that is being affected by AI. So like in this, like we have we have a people problem. The the adoption is really difficult to really, you know, to get with people, to get people to truly know how to leverage it. And when we look at this particular segment, a lot of the problem is

John Jantsch (12:10.029)

Sure. Mm-hmm.

Brian Gerstner (12:35.199)

People are moving into AI aggressively because it is new, there is a lot of opportunity, and honestly, right now AI itself is enough of a buzzword that you can hang your hat on it. What I can tell you though, right exactly.

John Jantsch (12:47.277)

Sure. It’s like when social media came around. There were all these social media social media marketing agencies.

Brian Gerstner (12:52.521)

Yeah. From being in the business long enough, I can tell you that this opportun the the whole, you know, AI being your differentiator, like that is gonna disappear really quick. It’s already table stakes. when you look at it, end clients already understand that we’re using it. They just want us to do it responsibly. So this particular segment, the real the people who are chasing AI going, AI is the answer. there there is there is still plenty of opportunity in this area. The big concern is

John Jantsch (13:03.629)

Sure, sure.

John Jantsch (13:08.331)

Yep. Yep.

Brian Gerstner (13:23.061)

People are running really fast, but where are you going? You know, there there’s a reason the compass was invented before the clock. It’s because it’s more important to know where you’re going. So the big fear in this area is that you’re moving really fast and you’re gonna end up somewhere where there’s not going to be enough ground to live on.

John Jantsch (13:30.273)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (13:41.441)

Yeah, look at all the hundred thousand dollar stalled AI projects that a lot of corporations launched.

Brian Gerstner (13:45.781)

Yeah, we’ve had funny we we have our own graveyard. We have our own graveyard, but we’re learning from every one of it. I call this you know, this is definitely education.

John Jantsch (13:54.19)

So so what’s the research say about pricing? pricing models that you know, are clients saying, Hey, you need to do this for you need to charge me fifty percent less because you’re using AI to do it?

Brian Gerstner (14:07.893)

we’re not really seeing that. We’re seeing that not only are marketing budgets in general in the industry still increasing, but we are seeing that end clients are saying that they are willing to not only not decrease, but they’re willing to pay more for higher levels of expertise in a specific area. We have seen where like I think twenty-nine percent of end clients are saying that they expect to reduce fees because of AI.

John Jantsch (14:27.741)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Brian Gerstner (14:36.575)

But once again, I’m bringing this back to that concept of commoditization, where certain types of deliverables absolutely do not have the pricing power that they used to. So if you do, just like the confident differentiators, if you have a level of authority, absolutely the end clients are more willing to pay for it more and more ever before. So when you look at that statistic about agencies themselves saying, like, what was it? Only 25% believe

John Jantsch (14:43.234)

Yeah.

Brian Gerstner (15:05.585)

AI strategy is a differentiating factor in selection, I’m saying like this isn’t gonna last forever, but hey agencies, here is a giant window. There’s a door open right now. And if you can aggressively take take advantage of this, it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity.

John Jantsch (15:17.735)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (15:26.743)

Well and I tell you one of the things we’ve seen o over the years is coming in the strategy door i is a far better relationship to with the client than coming in the vendor do this thing door. and I I think that so, you know, we we our our clients have been with us for many, many years and I think it has to do with the fact that we start them all with strategy. you know, as of before we ever start talking about fixing all the stuff they want fixed.

Brian Gerstner (15:52.471)

And I know like there’s a lot of agencies I work with just don’t feel comfortable, don’t feel like they have the pricing power or that at the end of the day they say, Hey, my clients don’t want it.

John Jantsch (15:57.526)

Right. Yeah.

John Jantsch (16:02.273)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brian Gerstner (16:04.924)

That’s hard. I I I I get it. I I get how that’s the conversation, but like there just as you said, like the agency that’s producing reports, like, you know, if you focus down, if you niche in, if you if you lean into an area, it is an investment. It’s hard. Growth is painful. But as you do that, you are able to show up in a more significant way. You can charge more, your clients will spend more. And there is still a lot of power in the generalist. I’m not saying like niching down doesn’t mean

John Jantsch (16:07.275)

Yeah.

Brian Gerstner (16:33.834)

You have to choose an industry. You can choose a region. You can tre choose an attitude. You can choose strategy. But then you do have something to hang your hat on. I think people get caught up in niching down means I have to work with dentists all the time. That I I I don’t believe that’s true at all. But it does mean that you have to have focus and you can’t be all over the place. The the general’s position will erode. and even those that are very successful, I think they’ll find out that like there there is

John Jantsch (16:40.962)

Right.

John Jantsch (16:47.275)

Yeah, yep, yep, yep. Yeah.

John Jantsch (16:54.625)

Yep. Yeah.

Brian Gerstner (17:02.612)

there is some commonality between who they’re getting business with, whether it’s like the size of the in the SMB, whether it’s the region, whether it’s the tactical approaches, there is typically a common thread in there that has allowed them to be successful that they’re maybe just not focusing on.

John Jantsch (17:07.33)

yeah.

John Jantsch (17:13.644)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (17:19.369)

Yeah, I mean we’ve done that before with clients, you know, make it well let’s show me, you know, show me your thousand clients and we whittle it down and like eighty percent of their business is coming from this twenty percent band. you know, happens all the time.

Brian Gerstner (17:30.506)

What? Yeah. You just don’t see it ’cause you’re so in it a lot of times.

John Jantsch (17:35.147)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we’ve talked about the the the the confident differentiators and and maybe the the outliers, the the opportunity seekers. Who what does the data show about these people that are like where do we go? I just feel pressure. I don’t know what direction to go.

Brian Gerstner (17:54.059)

Right. i it’s a hard place to be because obviously and I think when we look in that, like sixteen percent of that segment was very open about just like, you know, closing it down and moving on. a lot of it is because you know, to be in this industry you have to have like some some s significant moxie to show up every day. Like someone’s moving your cheese every day, every hour. And you know, for a lot of people that that’s why this industry is so exciting too. But

John Jantsch (18:05.899)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (18:13.719)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (18:22.711)

Yeah, yeah.

Brian Gerstner (18:24.714)

This is, you know, where we’ve been used to like, you know, weathering the storm, whether it’s you know, the pandemic or the two thousand eight housing or you know, just the politics that are running through. this is not a storm. This is a new climate. So for those that have weathered many, many storms, I know there there are some people who are just like, you know, like I’m tired. ’cause it does there’s there’s a lot of investment.

John Jantsch (18:42.156)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (18:50.133)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brian Gerstner (18:54.622)

I I will have to say though, John, like, you know, as I’ve been talking to people, even like a year, year and a half ago, the conversation was a lot about are we relevant? Like with AI coming, who’s gonna need us? What are we gonna do? I will tell you just in the course of one year, the conversation has changed dramatically. We are relevant. I will tell you that right now. And so, you know, for all those folks, it’s like, you know, stick around, you know, follow the data, talk to peers, you know, you’ll

John Jantsch (19:03.819)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (19:11.917)

Yep. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Gerstner (19:23.878)

And I I do think that you know once again we we just need to become acclimated. It is a new climate, you know. As we start to learn more and we start to get more comfortable, things get cleared, there’s less uncertainty than there was before. And for those folks, you know, the statistics just show that it’s a big change and it’s a difficult change. And but

John Jantsch (19:32.993)

Yeah, yeah.

Brian Gerstner (19:49.738)

There’s still probably more opportunity than ever before if you can take the time to to see it.

John Jantsch (19:56.556)

Yeah. that that’s absolutely the message I’ve been trying to to give to folks as well, because I’ve I’m feeling it. the demand hasn’t slowed down at all. It’s just they’re asking different questions. exactly. Yeah, yeah. Well Brett

Brian Gerstner (20:07.146)

They really are. Yeah. And the the pressure you’re putting on your own team are very different. You know, it is you have to retrain your entire team a lot of times.

John Jantsch (20:13.484)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (20:17.183)

Yeah, you know that’s a I don’t want to go down too much of a rabbit hole here ’cause this could be a whole nother show. in that I think that’s one of the s that’s one of the challenges that a lot of agencies are are facing is the people that they attracted and hired and trained are are probably not as relevant for the work that needs to be done now. In a lot of cases, yeah.

Brian Gerstner (20:31.914)

Okay.

Brian Gerstner (20:36.086)

Right. Yeah, and one last statistic, but like even in this, I don’t have the exact numbers, but even though there’s been a tremendous amount of attrition, when we talk to agencies, hiring has become significantly harder. So think about that. There’s been a lot of attrition, the market is full of more people, but yet it’s even more difficult to hire.

John Jantsch (20:50.177)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (21:01.363)

Yeah, and I I told you we could go down a whole rabbit hole here. What we’ve experienced is that to be successful, you’re gonna have to hire you’re gonna have to hire a different you’re not gonna hire a doer. You’re gonna have to hire a strategic thinker who can actually become a leader in your organization because I think the doers, you know, we can outsource, right, Brian?

Brian Gerstner (21:05.137)

Okay. Well,

Brian Gerstner (21:23.924)

Yeah, I mean, yeah.

John Jantsch (21:28.173)

Exactly. So so I appreciate you stopping by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Is there some place you’d invite people to to get the research? First off, I know you have that hosted and and then obviously find out more about white label IQ.

Brian Gerstner (21:41.771)

Yep. So absolutely go to agencycore.org. everything is completely ungated. You can download all the data, all the visualizations, all the studies, executive studies. It’s all there for everybody. No gating, no emails required. But you know, sign up and we’ll keep you informed. for us, you know, whitelik.com, absolutely. Also, Brian Gershner, look me up on LinkedIn, I’m pretty active.

John Jantsch (22:07.469)

Awesome. Well again, I appreciate you stopping by. Maybe we’ll run into you one of these days just up the highway there.

Brian Gerstner (22:12.692)

Right. Appreciate it, John.

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.

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.

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.

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.

John Jantsch (00:01.768)

So what if being the CEO of your own agency is the trap that most founders mistake for the finish line? Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duck Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Jason Swank. He’s the founder of Agency Mastery, host of the Smart Agency Masterclass Podcast and author of a book we’re going to talk about today, Operator to Owner. He’s built and sold his own digital agency after working with brands like AT &T, Hitachi, and LegalZoom.

And today he advises seven and eight figure agency founders on building businesses that run without them. Jason, welcome to the show.

Jason Swenk (00:37.918)

Thanks for having me, John.

John Jantsch (00:40.484)

So you built and sold your own agency before any of really the consulting work that you do now. When did you kind of come to the realization that maybe, and maybe this didn’t occur for you, the agency owned you more than you owned it. Did you ever have that moment?

Jason Swenk (00:59.394)

yeah. A bunch of times. mean, I can’t even count that many times. So the one that I remember that is the whole purpose behind, you know, writing the book was I kept coming home every night and I was just completely exhausted, miserable. We were probably at that time, I think around 2 million in top line revenue. So we weren’t small, but we weren’t, we weren’t big either.

John Jantsch (01:25.372)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right.

Jason Swenk (01:27.32)

but everything was on my shoulders. And my wife said, why don’t you go get a job and shut it down? And so I took a job interview with NASCAR and they asked me two questions, not to race, I would have taken that job, but they said, what do you want to do every day? And what do you never want to do again? And those two questions changed everything for me.

John Jantsch (01:53.0)

So.

I think a lot of people wrestle with the first one. I don’t think enough people wrestle with the second part of that. so they stay stuck in the second one, which keeps them from doing the first one, right? mean, so go ahead, yeah. Well, I was gonna ask a question about the book at least and your work, you’ve identified these five stages that you need to climb through. You wanna unpack that?

Jason Swenk (02:12.76)

Well, they… Go on.

John Jantsch (02:25.508)

a little bit, you don’t have to do every stage what it means, but just kind of give us the framework.

Jason Swenk (02:27.843)

Go.

Yep. So as founders, we all start off as operators where we’re doing everything. Okay. So then what happens is we’re having fun and we concentrate on sales and then operations takes a hit. And then we focus on operations and then sales takes a hit. And this, it’s, it’s this roller coaster ride. And then what happens is we go, we want to grow and I don’t want to be doing everything. So what you start to do and you’re working 80 hours a week as an operator, right? If not more.

John Jantsch (02:59.398)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jason Swenk (03:00.984)

And we’ve all done it and we all have to go through all these roles, right? And so then you transition to a manager. But the problem is we suck at managing people. We are horrible at managing people. And so we hire the wrong people. We don’t have systems for them. So now we’re stuck doing the same amount of work that we were doing before, plus managing them, plus probably even doing their work. So now we’re paying them.

John Jantsch (03:12.676)

Yeah.

Jason Swenk (03:28.886)

and doing more work. It doesn’t make any sense. Have you gone through that?

John Jantsch (03:32.892)

Yeah, yeah, well, absolutely. mean, I, you know, like many of folks you’ve worked with over the years had, did everything myself. I was a one person shop. I’ve been doing this 30 years now. So I did finally figure it out. And, you know, we have a CEO. I, you know, I’m the chief innovation officer, which is code for I can do anything I want. And so, but it took a long time to get there. And it took a lot of, a lot of, you know, I think the hardest part was,

I like doing the work that an agency does. I’m pretty good at it and I enjoy it. And in a lot of ways, even when it is no longer profitable for that person to do that work, that’s the hardest part of giving it up is it’s not even so much like I don’t trust other people. It’s like, what about me? What am I going to do?

Jason Swenk (04:24.618)

So that’s what I call the rubber band effect. And I’ve gone through it too, right? So when I sold my first agency, I only reached the fourth level, which is CEO. But when I reached that level, and I’ll talk about the other levels too in a second, but when I reached that level, I only had to work like 20 hours a week. And so mentally going from 80 hours a week to 40 hours a week to 20 hours a week, and I would go into a creative meeting. No Jay, I’m good.

John Jantsch (04:26.887)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (04:38.524)

Yeah, yeah.

Jason Swenk (04:53.922)

go into marketing me, no, we’re good. And I was like, they don’t need me anymore. So what do we need to do? We need to get in there and mess stuff up so we feel important again. And it’s, and the whole book is really about, it’s not about who you need to hire, it’s about who you need to become and the identity shift that you go through because look, we all go through it and some go through it faster than others. But if I can like, when I was writing this book,

John Jantsch (04:55.377)

You

Jason Swenk (05:21.484)

It was really kind of like writing it to my sons if they ever wanted to go into business. Like, here’s all the stuff that you’re going to be going through. Just know, like, if I’m not here, here’s what you need to do.

John Jantsch (05:25.576)

Mmm.

John Jantsch (05:32.936)

Yeah. You know, you mentioned this identity thing and we, you know, we work with a lot of agencies as well. On top of having our own agency, we have a network, you know, similar to some of the work I think you do with agency owners. And what we’re finding is right now they’re going through not just a sort of an existential identity crisis right now because of what’s going on with AI and

the changing attitudes of the buyer and what their expectations are. I so I think a lot of, I don’t know if they all have the answers, but certainly a lot of agencies right now are asking some pretty hard questions like what business are we really in? And I think that’s really got to add to this kind of owner doubt or owner dependency, doesn’t it?

Jason Swenk (06:20.738)

Well, the thing that I realized and what everybody else needs to realize is this. So when you get to the different level and you want to stay there, you have to realize that the agency needs you for something different now. It doesn’t need you for what you used to do. And so when you can get to the CEO stage where you’re steering the ship and you’re protecting culture, you’re investing in the things, right? And building better leaders, that’s your main goal as a CEO.

John Jantsch (06:47.485)

Mm-hmm.

Jason Swenk (06:49.646)

I’ll give you a story that will explain this like that. The other day, we were trying to make our podcast more efficient using AI and creating some AI agents. so Stacey and I jumped on a call on a Zoom and I started building it in front of her. I basically did it where it does everything. And then I realized, go, if I build this all for her, she is getting robbed.

John Jantsch (07:00.538)

Mm-hmm. Right.

John Jantsch (07:08.605)

Thanks.

Jason Swenk (07:18.656)

And just because I’m experimenting with AI or if we’re using, you know, for our sales team, we’ll use AI agents and all that kind of stuff. I need to train them. So I literally hit delete right in front of her. said, I want to, I want to show you it’s possible. Now I want you to go do it. And it’s the mentality that I’ve always thought about is I can give fish to my team or I can teach them to fish. And that’s what we need to do.

John Jantsch (07:29.893)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (07:43.58)

Well, and I think, and I think really when it comes to AI particularly, that’s the skill they need to have because otherwise they’re just gonna get replaced. I mean, they’re not going to have a purpose, I think. And so I think that’s great. I do wanna go back to the stages, a little bit of progression because each one has its own challenge to get out of, right? But I will say that for me, when it finally felt like it was a possibility,

was when I finally had somebody who could actually sell and land the big client, you know, that wasn’t asking for me anymore. And it was really until that happened, I didn’t feel like I could be free of, you know, running the business.

Jason Swenk (08:29.358)

Yeah. So that’s when you get to a place where it’s the third stage, an architect, we, where you design a system, but a lot of agencies have you seen where businesses, what they’ll do is they have no clue. They, they know how to program and do something really cool, right? Like I’m an accidental agency owner. I designed a website, making fun of one of my friends called in shit and it looked like in sync. And I was off to the races. So I didn’t even know what the invoice was. I didn’t know all this stuff in 99 when I created it.

John Jantsch (08:34.834)

Yes.

John Jantsch (08:45.704)

This is

John Jantsch (08:50.92)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Swenk (08:59.18)

had to figure it out. And so we were reacting to it. And so what a lot of people do is they hire a salesperson with no systems, no agenda, no outcome. It’s like going to chat GBT and say, create me a website and all you do is get garbage, right? You give it no context, no system. And so when I was able to give them context and D I’m curious what you think on this. when you hired your salesperson,

John Jantsch (09:12.456)

Yeah, right.

John Jantsch (09:17.416)

Okay.

Jason Swenk (09:28.918)

It probably took you a while to hire a salesperson that did with me. And I tried to think back, why was that? Why was I the best salesperson? was because I knew all the stories.

John Jantsch (09:40.454)

Yeah, right, right, right, Yeah, and.

Jason Swenk (09:43.138)

All I had to do is share the stories in the system. Voila.

John Jantsch (09:47.91)

Yeah. Well, and frankly, accidentally, that’s what I did. I, was a long time employee, you know, who was doing the work, you know, who was really good at serving the client who then, you know, knew all the stories and was able to, and hung around long enough, was able to really, you know, the fact it was kind of humorous, you know, I’d listened in on the calls and I was like, you heard me say that one time, didn’t you? You know, and it was just,

you know, almost like playing back what I, you know, the kind of the anecdotes that I had done, but she also had her own stories. And I think, I think you’re absolutely right. It’s really hard to hire that person that’s been so-called classically trained as a salesperson, you know, and expect them to be very productive. And, you know, you probably get these pitches. mean, we get them all the time of, you know, people wanting to come and generate leads for us and wanting to, you know, close deals for us. And it’s like, I wouldn’t want the leads you would generate, but it’s.

Jason Swenk (10:41.838)

No, no, not at all. Yeah.

John Jantsch (10:43.368)

But it’s like an epidemic. must be the most lucrative business going right now is generating agency leads, because there’s sure a lot of people pitching me on it.

Jason Swenk (10:55.47)

There was a certain individual that would be nameless that had a course that taught all these people how to travel the world and do it. And it’s the same pitch over and over again.

John Jantsch (11:05.736)

So, I know a lot of business owners, and this is not just agencies, I this is just business owners in general, is have kind of this, I’m going to call it a false assumption, that if they’re not doing the work, if they’re not hanging on to and checking the work and, you know, there every moment, that it’s not going to be done as well as they could do it. How do you get people passed up? Because obviously that’s a constraint that is going to keep you from going anywhere.

Jason Swenk (11:34.799)

So you have to kind of throw your team into the deep end without floaties. And I was telling our group of our community last week when I was speaking to them, I said, you got to be okay with fender benders, but avoid the train wrecks where you have to let them know where we’re going. What do you expect from them? I always people that report to me, they can manage themself.

John Jantsch (11:38.982)

Right? Yeah.

John Jantsch (11:53.032)

Yeah.

Jason Swenk (12:04.195)

That’s the key. And I have systems in place to allow them to make decisions without coming to me because when you’re the operator or the manager, you’re the bottleneck. And especially with AI, AI enhances everything. So now you have even more work, which you would think you wouldn’t. But if you don’t create these decision layers and these systems in place and you create that as an architect,

John Jantsch (12:05.64)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (12:23.29)

Isn’t that funny?

Jason Swenk (12:32.921)

The other thing too about all these roles, Like, obviously we have architect CEO and then owner, which everybody thinks they’re the owner of the agency, but really come on, the agency owns your ass.

John Jantsch (12:38.268)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (12:42.6)

Yeah, 2 % of the time you’re the owner.

Jason Swenk (12:46.147)

That’s right. You start an agency to leave the nine to five to start a 24 by seven. Like, doesn’t make any sense.

John Jantsch (12:55.762)

Yeah, yeah. I can’t remember. think it was, you’re probably familiar with Michael Gerber’s work on the E-Myth, but I think I remember hearing him say one time that, you know, I went into business so I could be free, know, free to work any eight hours a week I choose. That’s really kind of what it is.

Jason Swenk (13:13.903)

That’s right. Well, well, in my goal, and we always used to, mean, you’ve been in the agency world a while. And so I was on the tech side for a long time. We always used to tell people joking around that we have support 24 seven, 24 days out of the month, seven months out of the year. And so that’s, that’s the goal to work, right?

John Jantsch (13:34.536)

Absolutely.

I’m curious where you land because I get this question all the time. You know, lot of people that are starting a consulting or fractional CMO practice and they’re like, I need to niche. I just haven’t figured out what my niche is. I’m curious where you land on there. My view is it’s really hard to pick a niche unless you’ve got like deep history in it or experience in it. And like, what if you pick the wrong one? You know, because you’ve been told you have to pick one. I’m curious where you are.

Jason Swenk (14:08.271)

So I had a member, man, we were screaming at him for years and years to pick a niche, okay? They picked a niche and they picked conferences. I was like, man, that’s great. Like conferences spend a ton of money. The issue was six months prior or six months later, COVID happened.

John Jantsch (14:31.688)

Yeah, yeah.

Jason Swenk (14:34.595)

Right? So he had to pivot and he pivoted to cybersecurity and now crushes it. Now, so here’s my deal on picking a niche though. I do believe that you need to pick one, but it takes people a long time because like you said, how do I know which to pick? I treat it like a Vegas buffet. If you’ve ever been to Vegas and the buffets, right? Like you got, you try it out everything.

John Jantsch (14:39.037)

Mm.

John Jantsch (14:55.954)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jason Swenk (15:00.131)

And then you’re like, man, I really like these crab legs. I don’t like the prime rib over here. And then like, anytime you go back, you’re like crushing those crab legs, if you’re anything like me. And so the question that I always tell people in picking a niche is not who do you work with the most clients or who are the most profitable ones? I always say, if you had to be paid on performance only, who would you do it for and what would you do for them?

John Jantsch (15:11.464)

You

John Jantsch (15:27.112)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jason Swenk (15:29.913)

So now you’re setting yourself up for success and then you can start understanding the client’s biggest challenges, their struggles. But here’s the key, you don’t have to fire all your other clients. You can take on work outside of it. You’re just marketing to that niche. That’s my stand on it.

John Jantsch (15:43.496)

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think mine’s very, very similar to that. I always tell people, it find you, you know, as opposed to the one I have a problem with is the people that have been told you have to pick a niche. So they just go out there and say, well, here’s where I think I could. Yeah. You know, and, and three months later they have to start over again because they’ve got everything set up for dentists and they hate dentists now. So it really, you know, I think we’re, we’re in sync on that.

Jason Swenk (15:57.199)

drama.

John Jantsch (16:11.514)

All right, so once a founder has made it all the way to owner, what’s their week look like now? Day to day.

Jason Swenk (16:19.725)

You can do anything you want. The business does not depend on you. All you have to do is be accessible to the leadership team for when they have things that may come up, they wanna bounce off you. So like one of the example I use in the book is Tony Robbins. He is an owner of a thousand companies. He cannot, even if he owned five companies, he could not be the CEO of five companies, right? Then you’re dividing.

John Jantsch (16:44.252)

Right.

All right.

Jason Swenk (16:49.579)

it’s just not fair or even an architect or whatever it is. And most people don’t reach the owner realm other than stocks. Like I was able to reach that when we started another agency, but, that was great. And they would just come to me like I was on the board. Okay, cool. Like here’s what, what I would do, but it’s not fulfilling. So you got to make sure you do other stuff. Like when, when I sold my agency for the first time, I was really depressed because I sold my baby.

John Jantsch (16:57.042)

Yes.

Jason Swenk (17:18.191)

I didn’t have any sense of purpose. actually went to a Tony Robbins event, walked on that stupid fire, all that kind of stuff. He saved me. No, just kidding. like, I didn’t have a sense of purpose because my identity was being an agency owner versus being creative, innovative, all the other things that I could contribute to other things.

John Jantsch (17:22.088)

Nice.

Ha ha ha ha ha.

John Jantsch (17:34.012)

me

John Jantsch (17:38.748)

All right.

I’m curious, is there one thing that you held on to too long? And I guess the flip side of that is what changed when you finally were able to let go of it.

Jason Swenk (17:52.643)

So I held onto sales for too long. And then I even competed with my sales team, which is unfair because like, like I’m going to give away a good lead. Right. And, and I was always a competitive person, right? Like I paid, you know, tennis through college. So I was, I will crush anybody. Right. Like it was just that that’s my mentality. And so I held onto that too long.

John Jantsch (17:55.206)

Yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (18:07.848)

Yeah.

Jason Swenk (18:20.465)

You know, I was, yeah.

John Jantsch (18:20.518)

That’s, that’s, I did the exact same thing, probably, but also it is hard, think a lot of times, especially, mean, you, you’re a public figure. I’ve written books that have sold well. And so people come to us and I mean, my close rates like 99%, you know, because, because I’m just like, you want sure. I don’t know how we do anything here, but you’re talking to me.

Jason Swenk (18:45.903)

We’re not selling them, right? They’ve already sold.

John Jantsch (18:50.16)

Right. And so it is, you do kind of get a rush of that and it’s hard to, hard to let go of that. So I was probably in that same boat.

Jason Swenk (18:57.263)

And I just had to realize I had to put my effort into building a better team and really coaching them, not managing them. Going back to what I was saying before is like, how can I build a better leader where they can build better systems and become the architect? And even these five roles that I described, it could be an employee right now. It could be anybody. And so it’s just, we all need to evolve.

John Jantsch (19:02.876)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (19:20.486)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jason Swenk (19:25.709)

especially now more than before, more than ever. If you’re not evolving, you’re not doing anything.

John Jantsch (19:28.968)

You cannot sit still. No. Yep. All right. So for the agency owner listening, I know they’re playing out there that are listening to the show and the business depends on them too much. They know that. What’s one move they can make in the next 30 days to really kind of start this climate of yours.

Jason Swenk (19:46.969)

Well, it depends on what role they’re at. So let’s say they’re at the operator. Well, they need to figure out who do they, what role do you need to get away from that you’re not good at? So if I’m really good at sales, I need to hire a project manager, but I need a project manager that can manage themselves. Right? And just be honest with them, say, look, I suck at process. I need you to be able to create this. Now, if they’re at a manager,

John Jantsch (19:57.414)

Mm-hmm.

Jason Swenk (20:14.543)

It goes back to like, you need to evolve to an architect. So you need to start removing being the bottleneck. And how do I build a system or a layer of systems so people can make better decisions without coming to me? Right? That’s really it. Then if you’re an architect, how do you start building people that can architect the systems that you’re already building? And then if you’re a CEO, you know, and that’s one thing I want to tell everybody.

Some people may only want to reach architect and that’s perfectly fine. You don’t have to go all the way up to the top. And wherever you’re at now is just the starting point. And just to enjoy the journey, when I look back at the first agency, some of the stuff that I was like, I can’t wait to get rid of this. Those were the things I remember the most. Burning the midnight oil with the team and creating the sites and programming this and all that kind of stuff. That was really cool looking back.

John Jantsch (21:04.067)

If you

Jason Swenk (21:12.941)

Now you can’t maintain that for a long time, but it was pretty.

John Jantsch (21:16.321)

Yeah. Well, Jason, I appreciate you stopping by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Is there some place you’d invite people to connect with you, learn about operator to owner, and find out more about your work?

Jason Swenk (21:27.619)

Yeah, yeah, if you go to operator2onerevolution.com, you can get a link to get the book as well as there’s a diagnostics, diagnostic, if I can say that right, that will tell you what stage you’re at. Because a lot of people think they’re at a different stage and they’ll implement different strategies and then it won’t work. So make sure you go to operator2onerevolution.com and you can check it out, it’s free.

John Jantsch (21:55.024)

Well again, appreciate you taking a few moments and maybe we’ll run into you one of these days out there in western Colorado.

Jason Swenk (22:01.571)

I hope so.

John Jantsch (22:03.292)

Awesome.