Contract Free PR Support

John Jantsch (00:01.038)

So some people walk into a room with more credentials, more data, more experience maybe, than anyone else there and still get ignored. Somebody else with less of all three changes minds instead. And the difference always comes down to who knew how to tell a better story. Hello and welcome to the Ductape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and my guest today is Don Yeager, a repeat guest, National Speaker’s Hall of Fame inductee, 13 time New York Times.

Best selling author and longtime associate editor at Sports Illustrated. And I can go on and on about all books about some of our famous sports sport sports stars. But well for for the purpose of this show, we’re gonna talk about his latest book, The Business of Storytelling, Inspire Action, Build Trust, and Drive Results Through Stories. So welcome back, Don.

Don Yaeger (00:38.984)

Just makes me sound old. Yeah.

Don Yaeger (00:53.778)

Hey, thanks, John. I always appreciate the opportunity to spend a little time with you.

John Jantsch (00:56.782)

Well, so let’s dive right into the book. you have some universal truths in this book. it’s kind of four f based al around that or structured around that. and this is the one that I this is the one I wanted to test. It says no formula governs a great story, but then you give us like 10 elements to build a great story. So how do you square those two things?

Don Yaeger (01:22.814)

But but the ten elements are not a formula. The formula is plus dot you know, you know, insert hero here, insert challenge there, and out comes transformation. these are elements that amount that allow a great story to come together. And I just I just know these elements to be true and they and you cannot really tell a great story without without covering that waterfront.

John Jantsch (01:30.37)

Yeah, yeah.

Right, right, right. Yeah.

John Jantsch (01:49.805)

Now you, occupational hazard, let’s call it that, you know, have interviewed thousands of people. you’ve heard thousands of stories, and some of your the people that you’ve chronicled books are amazing storytellers. so how do you translate that to the person that maybe, you know, certainly doesn’t have that background, but but maybe, you know, doesn’t have a communications team, you know, is really just kind of trying to

Be more authentic in a world of AI. I mean, how do you translate that to them?

Don Yaeger (02:23.069)

Well, first off, thanks for saying those words because I think that’s a real driver in all of it, right? I mean, I think there are so many people that think I’m gonna seed that s I’m gonna I’m gonna ask AI to tell my story for me. and the one thing I will promise you is that the one is that AI cannot tell your story for you. in fact if you lean into it, y you may or may not have any control about what your story shows up to be when when you’re when you’re suddenly introduced. AI

John Jantsch (02:25.358)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (02:33.869)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (02:49.422)

Sure.

Don Yaeger (02:53.179)

as we know, likes to make things up. But on top of that, it also has it has weaknesses that that remain and will probably always remain. The one thing AI can’t do is is is bring heart to the to the equation, right? obviously it’s very, very not very insightful of me to say, but that a computer can’t bring heart to the equation. But that’s what a great story does, right? A great story takes statistics and numbers and everything else and it and it and it wraps them

John Jantsch (02:56.27)

Yeah.

Don Yaeger (03:22.959)

in a heart and that ability to kind of humanize a good story belongs to us.

John Jantsch (03:32.633)

So you know, I think there are two ends of this because I have listeners that need to pull a story out of somebody. and certainly I have people that have a story they need to tell. particularly thinking about the person that needs to pull a story. when you start when you start interviewing somebody, you know

I’m I’m guessing there are some people that just get right to the heart of it. I’m sure there are also some people that put up a mask and it’s like here’s the story I w Okay Here’s the story I want you to hear. I mean, how do you actually get to the real story when when you or or do you just realize, hey, they’re not gonna tell me anything, I’m done.

Don Yaeger (03:58.942)

Most most put at the mask. Yeah. Right.

Don Yaeger (04:10.963)

So I don’t give up on it. one thing I one thing you know, if you do the right prep work, right? You’re listening to somebody, or you’re reading stories with someone’s interview involved. one thing that happens is you become really clear, like these are the stories they’re just used to telling, right? These are the ones that it’s like, you know, they they pull up pull a little cord and then you know, it just spews out. and at the end of the day, what I’m always trying to do is,

John Jantsch (04:12.323)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (04:27.66)

Yeah, right, right.

Yeah.

Don Yaeger (04:38.375)

be aware of those stories so that if they start going there, I can immediately kind of start to shift it in another direction. I do not want the story everybody else gets when they’re in conversation with John Jatch, right? I’m I’m looking for something that I can pull from you that that you may not have wanted to say when this conversation began. I have lots of experience doing that, but I think the real key is you have to know what you don’t want.

John Jantsch (04:57.975)

Mm.

Don Yaeger (05:06.619)

in order to really start beginning to drive people to where you hope to get. And so research is an enormous part of what I do when I’m trying to pull a good story from someone. I’ve

John Jantsch (05:20.492)

You you you are you gonna try to get me to cry, Don? Is that the is that the goal? So so let me push back just a moment because I mean you’re interviewing, you know, Deion Sanders, Walter Payton. there’s a lot out there about them. I mean, you can find all the stuff, but what about the CEO of a small, you know, private company? there’s not a lot maybe out there.

Don Yaeger (05:23.411)

I I i it will not be long, brother. I’m gonna have I’m gonna make that happen. So get ready. Get the tissues out. I will make it happen.

John Jantsch (05:49.154)

How do you do that research and prepare when there’s not much to know?

Don Yaeger (05:54.43)

So first off, I I would I would disagree with you that in today’s day and age, there is almost in today’s day and age, there are so many places you can go. I did I did an interview this morning or I I I was on with someone this morning in which I actually I shared with her, hey, you know, I saw in classmates, and you may not even know what classmates actually shows you the yearbooks of people you know, dating back a hundred years.

John Jantsch (05:56.866)

Okay. Well that’s true. You know what they ate for lunch, right? Yeah.

Right.

John Jantsch (06:17.452)

Mm-hmm. Sure.

Don Yaeger (06:24.407)

And I said, hey, I I was looking at Georgia Christian co Georgia Christian High School, where you graduated in 2005. I saw the the the yearbook and I noticed that you were not just a three-sport athlete, you were also a homecoming queen. And like she was blown away. It was an but it was a simple website. you know, that that’s not a difficult one to get to, not a difficult one to track. It wasn’t stalking. It’s a yearbook. The yearbooks are available in libraries.

John Jantsch (06:43.054)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (06:47.375)

Yeah.

Don Yaeger (06:52.639)

so she just understood that I had taken time to learn something about her, that sh that that she wasn’t she wasn’t even aware other people might know. And and it gave me an opportunity to talk about being a three sport athlete myself. And, you know, I was not homecoming queen, but I, you know, and then between that, suddenly we go from I know something about her, I’ve now connected to her because we both have something in common, and then it allows me to go into different places.

John Jantsch (07:09.113)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (07:14.521)

Yeah.

Don Yaeger (07:21.807)

in the interview process. So the idea of actually finding there are unique websites out there. Almost any one of these CEOs is on a charity board. There’s amazing things you’ll find about them in the charity board website that most people won’t go to look.

John Jantsch (07:31.533)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (07:36.333)

Yeah, they put per personal details down there sometimes, right? Yeah.

Don Yaeger (07:39.666)

Right. And about the things that they’ve done for the charity that might be really inspirational. And if I can know that, again, it’s very public knowledge. I’m not finding stuff that isn’t available to everyone else. I’m just doing it well enough that at the end of the day they they realize I’ve cared for them by check by learning about them.

John Jantsch (07:43.512)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (08:00.633)

So let’s get back to the to the to the book, but but one one more stop. Let’s unpack a little bit in your mind why storytelling is so effective. you know, the neuroscience actually even you know, behind it, not just as a tool, but but really as a as a you know, I mean just part of our human nature.

Don Yaeger (08:21.191)

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, think about it. It is the it is the the the one thing that’s been true over the history of mankind is that we relay knowledge through story. We relay history through story. We relay we build relationship through story. And I mean, you you go to the caves, you know, you you you walk into the crypts.

John Jantsch (08:32.857)

Yeah.

Don Yaeger (08:45.805)

And you you see things that that will blow your mind because you’ll understand that this was the way history was recorded. It’s just as true today. the way that I want you to to to understand me is through story. The way I hope I can relate to you is through story. And some people might argue that they don’t need to know how to do this, that it’s just a nice to have. I argue that it’s a it’s a it’s an imperative. In today’s day and age,

Revenue changes hand money changes hands over storytelling.

John Jantsch (09:23.449)

Well and j and just just the human connection. I mean, you know, obviously storytelling in the boardroom, storytelling, you know, on a on a you know, reporting, you know, call of the numbers and whatnot are factor, but just even like making a connection in a sales call. You know, my my dad you know, was an old kind of bag carrying salesperson and he’d walk in the office, first thing he did is like

There’s Walter Payton’s jersey, you got three kids, you got, you know, there’s Muhammad Ali. It’s like I know how to connect with you now because I’ll f I find that common thing and you know, it’s corny as it and contrived, maybe as it can sound, you know, it just it speeds up the process of connection so much. Yeah.

Don Yaeger (10:04.665)

Absolutely. And what happens? So, you know, sometimes we love to say people like to buy from people, you know, like them. People like people like them, right? So how do you make sure that they know that you’re like them? You understand who they are, and then you try to draw that point of connection. So it’s not just again, this it’s it’s funny. I started several years ago as I was really I I had been working for years to become known as a good storyteller.

John Jantsch (10:16.588)

Yeah, right, right, right.

John Jantsch (10:20.973)

Mm-hmm.

Don Yaeger (10:34.013)

Great storyteller. I’ve been fortunate. The likes of Simon Sinek, the likes of John Maxwell, people that I value greatly refer to me in that way, and that’s awesome. But one of the things I started asking people is: would you be better as a salesperson if you could tell better stories? Would you be a better leader if you could tell better stories? would you be a better parent if you could tell better stories? And the truth is.

John Jantsch (10:54.223)

Mm-hmm.

Don Yaeger (11:01.277)

There almost is there’s not a question I could ask you where you would say no. There is this is a skill that if mastered makes you better across the board.

John Jantsch (11:04.879)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (11:16.419)

So let’s get to I we we kind of flirted with them a little bit, but maybe you could pack, unpack, you don’t have to do do them all, but just the book is based on these universal truths. So maybe kind of cover the range of those and maybe you can pick I always like to to to ask authors to pick their favorite.

Don Yaeger (11:37.568)

well, the universal truths, there are four of them, and there are 10 elements. But four the four universal truths, the first one’s extra. I mean, it’s just the first one we would have to agree on between each other because I know it, I know you know it to be true. That’s that the best stories are always human. I could tell you a story about our productivity. I could tell you a story about how many more widgets we are producing today than we’ve ever produced before. But if I tell you

John Jantsch (11:41.177)

Right.

Don Yaeger (12:05.447)

How those widgets are changing lives for one family or for for for a for a user of our product or or how producing more widgets is making more of our employees wealthy enough to be able to rise to pull themselves out of poverty. If I can use if I can build the story around people, it always remains more memorable.

John Jantsch (12:31.555)

Well, I you know, just just go look at a dozen Google reviews of say like a I don’t know, a furnace company or something. And I will tell you that none of the five star reviews will say this is the best company. They will say rusty fixed our boiler. And he was, you know, he closed the door and he was so kind to my children. I mean, that’s I mean that that that proves your point, doesn’t it? I mean, that’s what people connected with.

Don Yaeger (12:46.536)

Yes.

Don Yaeger (12:50.803)

Right.

Right. And and it it is. It’s the every s every great story is human, right? That’s so that’s that’s first and foremost. The second of the universal truths is that it is the story behind the story that is the story. You know, many people think, I can I’m gonna tell you my story about my life and and often it’s very linear, but it’s the things that made that happen that that absolutely that’s the real story. The story is what what is what’s

John Jantsch (12:57.295)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (13:06.031)

Mm-hmm.

Don Yaeger (13:23.217)

behind the curtain. And so you have to start asking you the questions of, you know, why, what, how, who was involved in the, in the, in, in the, and as you’re telling the story and you start bringing some of those questions to the fore, you start finding the deeper story, the deeper story about why what you’re doing matters and who it matters to. the third of the universal truths is that we argue all the time that that there’s money in storytelling.

John Jantsch (13:52.322)

This is

Don Yaeger (13:52.926)

That is not and and there’s and and we use a number of examples, but one that I love is a couple of journalists, a couple of researchers several years ago decided to take on a project and they took, they bought a hundred items off eBay, right? Hundred chotkis, little things worth nothing. never paid more than never paid more than three dollars for a single item. then they distributed those hundred items to guys like you and me, right? Storytellers.

And so but they they they picked some really great ones. And and in the distribution, they asked each person to take their tchotchke and create a story about its significance to them as the seller. And then they put them back on the on on eBay, and while they spent $193.50 to start, they put them back on eBay, and the second go round, they they earned $8,000.

John Jantsch (14:52.354)

Yeah.

Don Yaeger (14:52.935)

Hundred ninety three turned into eight thousand dollars in four days because stories suddenly made this no longer was it a you know, a car key. It was the key to the most amazing vehicle I’ve ever owned in my life. And I had to sell the vehicle. I kept the key because it meant something to me. Now it’s now it’s at a place in my life where I I’d I’d love if you happen to be a fan of Maserati, I’d love for you to own this key so that you too anyway.

John Jantsch (15:21.744)

Well wait a minute though. That that made made me my first bubble, thought bubble that went off in my head is did the stories have to be true? Yeah, yeah.

Don Yaeger (15:21.863)

You get it, right? And if

Don Yaeger (15:30.449)

No, they did in this particular case, they actually note in each story this story was created for this item by author Doug Dorst or you know, whoever it is. And but they make it clear. Now, I argue that the good stories we want to tell have to be true. Right. Now, could there occasionally be some embellishment for the terms for the for the value of speeding something along? Yes. but you know, we’re not.

John Jantsch (15:37.168)

How funny. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (15:48.42)

Well of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (15:57.52)

Yeah.

Don Yaeger (16:00.146)

We’re we we are in the we’re in the process of developing true stories.

John Jantsch (16:05.785)

So I I’m not sure we got through all four truths, but I I I want to circle back to one thing. all the best stories, like you said, are human, but also they’re probably personal for some people. and I some people are it’s hard for them to tell them. They don’t think anybody wants to know that part. they’re afraid it’ll make them look bad. but but but my guess is sort of the deeper or the more deeply personal, the more

Probably engagement. Yeah.

Don Yaeger (16:37.649)

Without question, because well, a couple of things happen. Number one, there’s probably as you’re telling the story, there’s some piece of it that they have lived too, right? So in some way they are on the journey with you as you’re telling your story. But secondly, they get a chance to know they know something about you that they didn’t know when the conversation began. And in the process, a connection is built, right? And we and we’ve already discussed it a couple different times. commerce occurs when connection is built.

John Jantsch (16:52.75)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (17:06.265)

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Don Yaeger (17:07.313)

Right. And so if we can make sure that we are we’re finding ways to to become in relationship and sometimes my my ability to share my cancer journey, especially if I know that you’ve been on if you’ve had dealt with cancer, right? it will allow the two of us to w we we have that moment together. And and yes, a pr every great story has to have you in it in some way.

John Jantsch (17:37.391)

Yeah, and I think from a business standpoint too, you know, a lot of times when somebody encounters a business, all they see is, wow, this is a great business. but the story behind it is the struggle that actually made it. So I think has real value, doesn’t it? Yeah.

Don Yaeger (17:52.07)

Absolutely. It’s never you know, there are a lot of people like to look at you, me, people and say, wow, what how how incredible that success is. But that grinding that occurred 20 years ago when we were struggling to try to figure out how we were gonna pay that week’s that week’s grocery bill, that’s a that’s that’s it’s lost on most because we’re so busy assuming that everything has always been that way for John Jance or Don Yeager, right?

John Jantsch (18:11.471)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (18:21.199)

Right. So for particularly for a small business, do do you and I know you don’t necessarily consult on, you know, with small business owners in that way, but certainly the book covers information for them. do you is are there like three or four core stories that every business needs to have and be able to tell kind of at the drop of a hat?

Don Yaeger (18:43.603)

Completely. I would say number one, you know, we all would agree the origin story. You came together to solve, to, to, to, to cre to patch a hole in the universe. What was the whole? And what made you understand the whole? Like what was so so when I say the story behind the story, don’t tell me what you came along to solve. Tell me why you came along to solve it. what was it that made that happen? Number one. Number two,

John Jantsch (18:55.971)

Yeah.

Don Yaeger (19:11.789)

there’s always a great story about some customer whose life you changed by doing really well at what you do. Tell me the story about one of your customers. Number three, tell me the story about one of your employees, right? It this so many of these stories they don’t have to, they don’t have to be about you, the owner. They’re they’re often more effective if they’re about the people that you have been that have been part of the journey with you.

John Jantsch (19:16.345)

Mm.

John Jantsch (19:26.829)

Right.

Don Yaeger (19:39.752)

And if you could tell me the story about one of your employees and how one of the things I mean, I I did some work the other day for a company that regularly they do call centers, they’re working with people in life insurance, and they were so taken by trying to deal with a man who was struggling with the with the loss of his wife, and he was just trying to figure out what the policy looked like. the person on the on the phone just realized, you know what, I want to send something extra to this guy. And so went online to Harry and David, sent some pairs.

To the man. The man writes a note to the CEO of the insurance company and says, there’s no way she could have known this, but pears were my wife’s favorite fruit. And that your employee was able to do something like that. That’s a story the CEO now gets to tell. And it what it says is this is how we care for the people that we consider our policy holders, right? The people that are our stakeholders. And this is the freedom I give my employees to care for them.

John Jantsch (20:18.892)

Mm.

John Jantsch (20:26.008)

Yeah.

Don Yaeger (20:37.863)

There’s so much in that story that will make you attracted to his company, more so than one of the others, that it gives him a competitive advantage when he tells it.

John Jantsch (20:49.293)

Well and and certainly goes way beyond any kind of words on a website, you know, of we we care, we’re the carrying company, right? Trust us.

Don Yaeger (20:57.437)

We’re the carrying company. Let me give you our slogan and in fact let me show you the per the posters which which explain all of our core values, all twenty eight of our core values, right? none of which your employees can re can recite.

John Jantsch (21:10.925)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So a lot of small business owners, I I and and I wonder if you could just we could wrap this up with you just kind of giving them advice. don’t like to talk about themselves, don’t think they have a story. so how does if you were going to advise somebody whose job it was to create those core stories that the company should have, what do you think is the best way for them to get at that when there’s really not any ready access to it?

Don Yaeger (21:40.538)

So, I mean one of the things you might want to do is just literally there are lots of right now, there are lots of unemployed writers in the world, right? There are a lot of writers looking for jobs because newspapers are closing, magazines are closing. There are a lot of people who understand how to how to take stories and help them. So there’s plenty probably of access to talent. You can go to Fiverr and you can find all kinds of people. But more importantly, understand the story doesn’t have to be about you. If that’s your if that’s your place of discomfort, make the story about your customers.

John Jantsch (21:48.377)

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (22:04.397)

Yeah.

Don Yaeger (22:09.809)

Make that story about your employees. As I said, make that story about the moment that this that it became apparent that this company needed to exist. And yes, you might be included in the story, but it’s not about you. And if that’s a point of discomfort for you, there are plenty of ways to let the world know how special you are without pumping yourself up.

John Jantsch (22:34.637)

Well Don, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by is there some place you’d invite people to find out more about your work and certainly pick up a copy of the business of storytelling?

Don Yaeger (22:42.855)

Well, business storytelling is, as I love to say, available anywhere that that good books are sold. so if you go there and it’s not there, it’s not a good bookstore. but yeah, Amazon is a is a big is a big part of our our strategy. but they can also I’d love if they’re if they’re a friend of yours, reach out to me. I’m at Don Yeager dot com. And and I and I own all spellings of my last name so you can butcher it.

John Jantsch (22:50.219)

Yeah, yeah.

Don Yaeger (23:12.135)

And you will probably still end up at my website, but it’s Don Y-A-E-G-E-R dot com.

John Jantsch (23:17.143)

Yeah. Probably a lot of E’s before the A. Certainly. Well, and I would Well just like I own D D U C K marketing, as po a as well, ’cause a lot of people you still use that erroneously, so it directs to the right place. But and I would also encourage folks you know, if especially if you’re a fan of of good sports writing, certainly Don’s entire catalog.

Don Yaeger (23:20.049)

There is a lot of that.

And I own that site. I own that site too, by the way.

Don Yaeger (23:36.669)

Right. That’s right.

John Jantsch (23:46.228)

of of books would would have something for you there too. So well Don, it was great for you taking a moment to stop by and hopefully we’ll run into you again soon out there on the road.

Don Yaeger (23:54.362)

Always. Thanks, John.

John Jantsch (00:01.038)

So some people walk into a room with more credentials, more data, more experience maybe, than anyone else there and still get ignored. Somebody else with less of all three changes minds instead. And the difference always comes down to who knew how to tell a better story. Hello and welcome to the Ductape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and my guest today is Don Yeager, a repeat guest, National Speaker’s Hall of Fame inductee, 13 time New York Times.

Best selling author and longtime associate editor at Sports Illustrated. And I can go on and on about all books about some of our famous sports sport sports stars. But well for for the purpose of this show, we’re gonna talk about his latest book, The Business of Storytelling, Inspire Action, Build Trust, and Drive Results Through Stories. So welcome back, Don.

Don Yaeger (00:38.984)

Just makes me sound old. Yeah.

Don Yaeger (00:53.778)

Hey, thanks, John. I always appreciate the opportunity to spend a little time with you.

John Jantsch (00:56.782)

Well, so let’s dive right into the book. you have some universal truths in this book. it’s kind of four f based al around that or structured around that. and this is the one that I this is the one I wanted to test. It says no formula governs a great story, but then you give us like 10 elements to build a great story. So how do you square those two things?

Don Yaeger (01:22.814)

But but the ten elements are not a formula. The formula is plus dot you know, you know, insert hero here, insert challenge there, and out comes transformation. these are elements that amount that allow a great story to come together. And I just I just know these elements to be true and they and you cannot really tell a great story without without covering that waterfront.

John Jantsch (01:30.37)

Yeah, yeah.

Right, right, right. Yeah.

John Jantsch (01:49.805)

Now you, occupational hazard, let’s call it that, you know, have interviewed thousands of people. you’ve heard thousands of stories, and some of your the people that you’ve chronicled books are amazing storytellers. so how do you translate that to the person that maybe, you know, certainly doesn’t have that background, but but maybe, you know, doesn’t have a communications team, you know, is really just kind of trying to

Be more authentic in a world of AI. I mean, how do you translate that to them?

Don Yaeger (02:23.069)

Well, first off, thanks for saying those words because I think that’s a real driver in all of it, right? I mean, I think there are so many people that think I’m gonna seed that s I’m gonna I’m gonna ask AI to tell my story for me. and the one thing I will promise you is that the one is that AI cannot tell your story for you. in fact if you lean into it, y you may or may not have any control about what your story shows up to be when when you’re when you’re suddenly introduced. AI

John Jantsch (02:25.358)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (02:33.869)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (02:49.422)

Sure.

Don Yaeger (02:53.179)

as we know, likes to make things up. But on top of that, it also has it has weaknesses that that remain and will probably always remain. The one thing AI can’t do is is is bring heart to the to the equation, right? obviously it’s very, very not very insightful of me to say, but that a computer can’t bring heart to the equation. But that’s what a great story does, right? A great story takes statistics and numbers and everything else and it and it and it wraps them

John Jantsch (02:56.27)

Yeah.

Don Yaeger (03:22.959)

in a heart and that ability to kind of humanize a good story belongs to us.

John Jantsch (03:32.633)

So you know, I think there are two ends of this because I have listeners that need to pull a story out of somebody. and certainly I have people that have a story they need to tell. particularly thinking about the person that needs to pull a story. when you start when you start interviewing somebody, you know

I’m I’m guessing there are some people that just get right to the heart of it. I’m sure there are also some people that put up a mask and it’s like here’s the story I w Okay Here’s the story I want you to hear. I mean, how do you actually get to the real story when when you or or do you just realize, hey, they’re not gonna tell me anything, I’m done.

Don Yaeger (03:58.942)

Most most put at the mask. Yeah. Right.

Don Yaeger (04:10.963)

So I don’t give up on it. one thing I one thing you know, if you do the right prep work, right? You’re listening to somebody, or you’re reading stories with someone’s interview involved. one thing that happens is you become really clear, like these are the stories they’re just used to telling, right? These are the ones that it’s like, you know, they they pull up pull a little cord and then you know, it just spews out. and at the end of the day, what I’m always trying to do is,

John Jantsch (04:12.323)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (04:27.66)

Yeah, right, right.

Yeah.

Don Yaeger (04:38.375)

be aware of those stories so that if they start going there, I can immediately kind of start to shift it in another direction. I do not want the story everybody else gets when they’re in conversation with John Jatch, right? I’m I’m looking for something that I can pull from you that that you may not have wanted to say when this conversation began. I have lots of experience doing that, but I think the real key is you have to know what you don’t want.

John Jantsch (04:57.975)

Mm.

Don Yaeger (05:06.619)

in order to really start beginning to drive people to where you hope to get. And so research is an enormous part of what I do when I’m trying to pull a good story from someone. I’ve

John Jantsch (05:20.492)

You you you are you gonna try to get me to cry, Don? Is that the is that the goal? So so let me push back just a moment because I mean you’re interviewing, you know, Deion Sanders, Walter Payton. there’s a lot out there about them. I mean, you can find all the stuff, but what about the CEO of a small, you know, private company? there’s not a lot maybe out there.

Don Yaeger (05:23.411)

I I i it will not be long, brother. I’m gonna have I’m gonna make that happen. So get ready. Get the tissues out. I will make it happen.

John Jantsch (05:49.154)

How do you do that research and prepare when there’s not much to know?

Don Yaeger (05:54.43)

So first off, I I would I would disagree with you that in today’s day and age, there is almost in today’s day and age, there are so many places you can go. I did I did an interview this morning or I I I was on with someone this morning in which I actually I shared with her, hey, you know, I saw in classmates, and you may not even know what classmates actually shows you the yearbooks of people you know, dating back a hundred years.

John Jantsch (05:56.866)

Okay. Well that’s true. You know what they ate for lunch, right? Yeah.

Right.

John Jantsch (06:17.452)

Mm-hmm. Sure.

Don Yaeger (06:24.407)

And I said, hey, I I was looking at Georgia Christian co Georgia Christian High School, where you graduated in 2005. I saw the the the yearbook and I noticed that you were not just a three-sport athlete, you were also a homecoming queen. And like she was blown away. It was an but it was a simple website. you know, that that’s not a difficult one to get to, not a difficult one to track. It wasn’t stalking. It’s a yearbook. The yearbooks are available in libraries.

John Jantsch (06:43.054)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (06:47.375)

Yeah.

Don Yaeger (06:52.639)

so she just understood that I had taken time to learn something about her, that sh that that she wasn’t she wasn’t even aware other people might know. And and it gave me an opportunity to talk about being a three sport athlete myself. And, you know, I was not homecoming queen, but I, you know, and then between that, suddenly we go from I know something about her, I’ve now connected to her because we both have something in common, and then it allows me to go into different places.

John Jantsch (07:09.113)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (07:14.521)

Yeah.

Don Yaeger (07:21.807)

in the interview process. So the idea of actually finding there are unique websites out there. Almost any one of these CEOs is on a charity board. There’s amazing things you’ll find about them in the charity board website that most people won’t go to look.

John Jantsch (07:31.533)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (07:36.333)

Yeah, they put per personal details down there sometimes, right? Yeah.

Don Yaeger (07:39.666)

Right. And about the things that they’ve done for the charity that might be really inspirational. And if I can know that, again, it’s very public knowledge. I’m not finding stuff that isn’t available to everyone else. I’m just doing it well enough that at the end of the day they they realize I’ve cared for them by check by learning about them.

John Jantsch (07:43.512)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (08:00.633)

So let’s get back to the to the to the book, but but one one more stop. Let’s unpack a little bit in your mind why storytelling is so effective. you know, the neuroscience actually even you know, behind it, not just as a tool, but but really as a as a you know, I mean just part of our human nature.

Don Yaeger (08:21.191)

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, think about it. It is the it is the the the one thing that’s been true over the history of mankind is that we relay knowledge through story. We relay history through story. We relay we build relationship through story. And I mean, you you go to the caves, you know, you you you walk into the crypts.

John Jantsch (08:32.857)

Yeah.

Don Yaeger (08:45.805)

And you you see things that that will blow your mind because you’ll understand that this was the way history was recorded. It’s just as true today. the way that I want you to to to understand me is through story. The way I hope I can relate to you is through story. And some people might argue that they don’t need to know how to do this, that it’s just a nice to have. I argue that it’s a it’s a it’s an imperative. In today’s day and age,

Revenue changes hand money changes hands over storytelling.

John Jantsch (09:23.449)

Well and j and just just the human connection. I mean, you know, obviously storytelling in the boardroom, storytelling, you know, on a on a you know, reporting, you know, call of the numbers and whatnot are factor, but just even like making a connection in a sales call. You know, my my dad you know, was an old kind of bag carrying salesperson and he’d walk in the office, first thing he did is like

There’s Walter Payton’s jersey, you got three kids, you got, you know, there’s Muhammad Ali. It’s like I know how to connect with you now because I’ll f I find that common thing and you know, it’s corny as it and contrived, maybe as it can sound, you know, it just it speeds up the process of connection so much. Yeah.

Don Yaeger (10:04.665)

Absolutely. And what happens? So, you know, sometimes we love to say people like to buy from people, you know, like them. People like people like them, right? So how do you make sure that they know that you’re like them? You understand who they are, and then you try to draw that point of connection. So it’s not just again, this it’s it’s funny. I started several years ago as I was really I I had been working for years to become known as a good storyteller.

John Jantsch (10:16.588)

Yeah, right, right, right.

John Jantsch (10:20.973)

Mm-hmm.

Don Yaeger (10:34.013)

Great storyteller. I’ve been fortunate. The likes of Simon Sinek, the likes of John Maxwell, people that I value greatly refer to me in that way, and that’s awesome. But one of the things I started asking people is: would you be better as a salesperson if you could tell better stories? Would you be a better leader if you could tell better stories? would you be a better parent if you could tell better stories? And the truth is.

John Jantsch (10:54.223)

Mm-hmm.

Don Yaeger (11:01.277)

There almost is there’s not a question I could ask you where you would say no. There is this is a skill that if mastered makes you better across the board.

John Jantsch (11:04.879)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (11:16.419)

So let’s get to I we we kind of flirted with them a little bit, but maybe you could pack, unpack, you don’t have to do do them all, but just the book is based on these universal truths. So maybe kind of cover the range of those and maybe you can pick I always like to to to ask authors to pick their favorite.

Don Yaeger (11:37.568)

well, the universal truths, there are four of them, and there are 10 elements. But four the four universal truths, the first one’s extra. I mean, it’s just the first one we would have to agree on between each other because I know it, I know you know it to be true. That’s that the best stories are always human. I could tell you a story about our productivity. I could tell you a story about how many more widgets we are producing today than we’ve ever produced before. But if I tell you

John Jantsch (11:41.177)

Right.

Don Yaeger (12:05.447)

How those widgets are changing lives for one family or for for for a for a user of our product or or how producing more widgets is making more of our employees wealthy enough to be able to rise to pull themselves out of poverty. If I can use if I can build the story around people, it always remains more memorable.

John Jantsch (12:31.555)

Well, I you know, just just go look at a dozen Google reviews of say like a I don’t know, a furnace company or something. And I will tell you that none of the five star reviews will say this is the best company. They will say rusty fixed our boiler. And he was, you know, he closed the door and he was so kind to my children. I mean, that’s I mean that that that proves your point, doesn’t it? I mean, that’s what people connected with.

Don Yaeger (12:46.536)

Yes.

Don Yaeger (12:50.803)

Right.

Right. And and it it is. It’s the every s every great story is human, right? That’s so that’s that’s first and foremost. The second of the universal truths is that it is the story behind the story that is the story. You know, many people think, I can I’m gonna tell you my story about my life and and often it’s very linear, but it’s the things that made that happen that that absolutely that’s the real story. The story is what what is what’s

John Jantsch (12:57.295)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (13:06.031)

Mm-hmm.

Don Yaeger (13:23.217)

behind the curtain. And so you have to start asking you the questions of, you know, why, what, how, who was involved in the, in the, in, in the, and as you’re telling the story and you start bringing some of those questions to the fore, you start finding the deeper story, the deeper story about why what you’re doing matters and who it matters to. the third of the universal truths is that we argue all the time that that there’s money in storytelling.

John Jantsch (13:52.322)

This is

Don Yaeger (13:52.926)

That is not and and there’s and and we use a number of examples, but one that I love is a couple of journalists, a couple of researchers several years ago decided to take on a project and they took, they bought a hundred items off eBay, right? Hundred chotkis, little things worth nothing. never paid more than never paid more than three dollars for a single item. then they distributed those hundred items to guys like you and me, right? Storytellers.

And so but they they they picked some really great ones. And and in the distribution, they asked each person to take their tchotchke and create a story about its significance to them as the seller. And then they put them back on the on on eBay, and while they spent $193.50 to start, they put them back on eBay, and the second go round, they they earned $8,000.

John Jantsch (14:52.354)

Yeah.

Don Yaeger (14:52.935)

Hundred ninety three turned into eight thousand dollars in four days because stories suddenly made this no longer was it a you know, a car key. It was the key to the most amazing vehicle I’ve ever owned in my life. And I had to sell the vehicle. I kept the key because it meant something to me. Now it’s now it’s at a place in my life where I I’d I’d love if you happen to be a fan of Maserati, I’d love for you to own this key so that you too anyway.

John Jantsch (15:21.744)

Well wait a minute though. That that made made me my first bubble, thought bubble that went off in my head is did the stories have to be true? Yeah, yeah.

Don Yaeger (15:21.863)

You get it, right? And if

Don Yaeger (15:30.449)

No, they did in this particular case, they actually note in each story this story was created for this item by author Doug Dorst or you know, whoever it is. And but they make it clear. Now, I argue that the good stories we want to tell have to be true. Right. Now, could there occasionally be some embellishment for the terms for the for the value of speeding something along? Yes. but you know, we’re not.

John Jantsch (15:37.168)

How funny. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (15:48.42)

Well of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (15:57.52)

Yeah.

Don Yaeger (16:00.146)

We’re we we are in the we’re in the process of developing true stories.

John Jantsch (16:05.785)

So I I’m not sure we got through all four truths, but I I I want to circle back to one thing. all the best stories, like you said, are human, but also they’re probably personal for some people. and I some people are it’s hard for them to tell them. They don’t think anybody wants to know that part. they’re afraid it’ll make them look bad. but but but my guess is sort of the deeper or the more deeply personal, the more

Probably engagement. Yeah.

Don Yaeger (16:37.649)

Without question, because well, a couple of things happen. Number one, there’s probably as you’re telling the story, there’s some piece of it that they have lived too, right? So in some way they are on the journey with you as you’re telling your story. But secondly, they get a chance to know they know something about you that they didn’t know when the conversation began. And in the process, a connection is built, right? And we and we’ve already discussed it a couple different times. commerce occurs when connection is built.

John Jantsch (16:52.75)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (17:06.265)

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Don Yaeger (17:07.313)

Right. And so if we can make sure that we are we’re finding ways to to become in relationship and sometimes my my ability to share my cancer journey, especially if I know that you’ve been on if you’ve had dealt with cancer, right? it will allow the two of us to w we we have that moment together. And and yes, a pr every great story has to have you in it in some way.

John Jantsch (17:37.391)

Yeah, and I think from a business standpoint too, you know, a lot of times when somebody encounters a business, all they see is, wow, this is a great business. but the story behind it is the struggle that actually made it. So I think has real value, doesn’t it? Yeah.

Don Yaeger (17:52.07)

Absolutely. It’s never you know, there are a lot of people like to look at you, me, people and say, wow, what how how incredible that success is. But that grinding that occurred 20 years ago when we were struggling to try to figure out how we were gonna pay that week’s that week’s grocery bill, that’s a that’s that’s it’s lost on most because we’re so busy assuming that everything has always been that way for John Jance or Don Yeager, right?

John Jantsch (18:11.471)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (18:21.199)

Right. So for particularly for a small business, do do you and I know you don’t necessarily consult on, you know, with small business owners in that way, but certainly the book covers information for them. do you is are there like three or four core stories that every business needs to have and be able to tell kind of at the drop of a hat?

Don Yaeger (18:43.603)

Completely. I would say number one, you know, we all would agree the origin story. You came together to solve, to, to, to, to cre to patch a hole in the universe. What was the whole? And what made you understand the whole? Like what was so so when I say the story behind the story, don’t tell me what you came along to solve. Tell me why you came along to solve it. what was it that made that happen? Number one. Number two,

John Jantsch (18:55.971)

Yeah.

Don Yaeger (19:11.789)

there’s always a great story about some customer whose life you changed by doing really well at what you do. Tell me the story about one of your customers. Number three, tell me the story about one of your employees, right? It this so many of these stories they don’t have to, they don’t have to be about you, the owner. They’re they’re often more effective if they’re about the people that you have been that have been part of the journey with you.

John Jantsch (19:16.345)

Mm.

John Jantsch (19:26.829)

Right.

Don Yaeger (19:39.752)

And if you could tell me the story about one of your employees and how one of the things I mean, I I did some work the other day for a company that regularly they do call centers, they’re working with people in life insurance, and they were so taken by trying to deal with a man who was struggling with the with the loss of his wife, and he was just trying to figure out what the policy looked like. the person on the on the phone just realized, you know what, I want to send something extra to this guy. And so went online to Harry and David, sent some pairs.

To the man. The man writes a note to the CEO of the insurance company and says, there’s no way she could have known this, but pears were my wife’s favorite fruit. And that your employee was able to do something like that. That’s a story the CEO now gets to tell. And it what it says is this is how we care for the people that we consider our policy holders, right? The people that are our stakeholders. And this is the freedom I give my employees to care for them.

John Jantsch (20:18.892)

Mm.

John Jantsch (20:26.008)

Yeah.

Don Yaeger (20:37.863)

There’s so much in that story that will make you attracted to his company, more so than one of the others, that it gives him a competitive advantage when he tells it.

John Jantsch (20:49.293)

Well and and certainly goes way beyond any kind of words on a website, you know, of we we care, we’re the carrying company, right? Trust us.

Don Yaeger (20:57.437)

We’re the carrying company. Let me give you our slogan and in fact let me show you the per the posters which which explain all of our core values, all twenty eight of our core values, right? none of which your employees can re can recite.

John Jantsch (21:10.925)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So a lot of small business owners, I I and and I wonder if you could just we could wrap this up with you just kind of giving them advice. don’t like to talk about themselves, don’t think they have a story. so how does if you were going to advise somebody whose job it was to create those core stories that the company should have, what do you think is the best way for them to get at that when there’s really not any ready access to it?

Don Yaeger (21:40.538)

So, I mean one of the things you might want to do is just literally there are lots of right now, there are lots of unemployed writers in the world, right? There are a lot of writers looking for jobs because newspapers are closing, magazines are closing. There are a lot of people who understand how to how to take stories and help them. So there’s plenty probably of access to talent. You can go to Fiverr and you can find all kinds of people. But more importantly, understand the story doesn’t have to be about you. If that’s your if that’s your place of discomfort, make the story about your customers.

John Jantsch (21:48.377)

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (22:04.397)

Yeah.

Don Yaeger (22:09.809)

Make that story about your employees. As I said, make that story about the moment that this that it became apparent that this company needed to exist. And yes, you might be included in the story, but it’s not about you. And if that’s a point of discomfort for you, there are plenty of ways to let the world know how special you are without pumping yourself up.

John Jantsch (22:34.637)

Well Don, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by is there some place you’d invite people to find out more about your work and certainly pick up a copy of the business of storytelling?

Don Yaeger (22:42.855)

Well, business storytelling is, as I love to say, available anywhere that that good books are sold. so if you go there and it’s not there, it’s not a good bookstore. but yeah, Amazon is a is a big is a big part of our our strategy. but they can also I’d love if they’re if they’re a friend of yours, reach out to me. I’m at Don Yeager dot com. And and I and I own all spellings of my last name so you can butcher it.

John Jantsch (22:50.219)

Yeah, yeah.

Don Yaeger (23:12.135)

And you will probably still end up at my website, but it’s Don Y-A-E-G-E-R dot com.

John Jantsch (23:17.143)

Yeah. Probably a lot of E’s before the A. Certainly. Well, and I would Well just like I own D D U C K marketing, as po a as well, ’cause a lot of people you still use that erroneously, so it directs to the right place. But and I would also encourage folks you know, if especially if you’re a fan of of good sports writing, certainly Don’s entire catalog.

Don Yaeger (23:20.049)

There is a lot of that.

And I own that site. I own that site too, by the way.

Don Yaeger (23:36.669)

Right. That’s right.

John Jantsch (23:46.228)

of of books would would have something for you there too. So well Don, it was great for you taking a moment to stop by and hopefully we’ll run into you again soon out there on the road.

Don Yaeger (23:54.362)

Always. Thanks, John.

John Jantsch (00:01.122)

So most consultants build a business around what they’re good at. A smaller number build one that they can actually sell. The difference between those two paths shows up probably pretty quickly, long before anyone’s shopping for a buyer, that is. And usually it’s invisible to the person living it. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, my guest today. I have two guests: Beth.

Mazza and Victoria Sivrais. They’re serial entrepreneurs, collective moms of nine, who built and exited two successful professional service firms that advise SP leaders through make or break decisions, equal parts, boardroom powerhouses, and chaos managers. They’re now on a mission to help 10,000 women build seven-figure businesses. So, Beth and Victoria, welcome to the show.

Beth (00:50.765)

Thanks. We’re happy to be here, John. Thank you. No.

Victoria Sivrais (00:51.513)

Thanks so much.

John Jantsch (00:52.834)

Did did I butcher either one of your names? I ch I I hopefully not. Good, good, good. Awesome. Well, so I have to start by telling you that I have nine siblings, if that counts for anything. So so so I do I do have a sense of and there was only f 14 years between the ten of us, so I do have a sense of a little bit of what you guys are going through. Right. I only have four kids of my own, but but the the ten ten f

Victoria Sivrais (00:56.239)

You got it. I’m impressed.

Beth (01:03.416)

Hmm.

Victoria Sivrais (01:04.303)

Really?

Beth (01:12.05)

Whoa. So you kept chaos.

Victoria Sivrais (01:13.187)

That’s incredible.

Beth (01:19.289)

So do I.

John Jantsch (01:21.304)

10 member family was quite something. So let’s jump into I I want to start with this may feel like a challenge, but I I know you guys have the answer to this. but I want to start with this sort of disconnect for me. As I read your bio and you know, S P five hundred, you know, make or break decisions. and then I look at the the title of the book, which I actually I forgot I forgot wasn’t in the in the bio, so I’ll

Beth (01:25.293)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (01:50.999)

Read it out right now. entrepreneur like a mother. Build a company that buys your freedom and not one that owns your life. And, you know, that sounds a little more like a lifestyle business book that maybe is different from you know what what I read in your bios. So help our listeners understand where where where I’m getting that wrong.

Beth (02:13.767)

yeah, that no, that’s a fair question. So two things. One is side hustles don’t give you financial freedom. They don’t pay for your kids’ college. They don’t pay for your house. They don’t pay for you to retire at the age as we did. So our number one premise behind this book is you gotta build a business where you get financial freedom. And you can do that if you choose the right business model and you set some of the right barriers from day one of your business. And

John Jantsch (02:22.221)

Right.

Beth (02:40.801)

Literally the entire book is about when we did that successfully, which we did a lot, and when we did that unsuccessfully, which also was a lot.

John Jantsch (02:48.44)

Sure, sure. Well, that’s the only way you learn one from the other, right? so so a lot of what you talk about is the idea of of building your your first business, planning to sell it. and I think a lot of people, I I I can’t imagine there are too many people that that’s not the dream. however, you know, you get sort of stuck in the day-to-day and it’s like, no, I’m just trying to pay the bills or pay myself, and it turns into a job, not a business even. So how did you

How did you make that decision? What did you do that changed, you know, how you went to business that that you know, in into business that that really made that happen for you?

Victoria Sivrais (03:26.979)

Yeah. So I I think from our perspective, sales became the center of everything we did from day one. So I think when you are trying to create a lifestyle business or one that just kind of is a replacement to your corporate salary, I think there is a a slowness of it sometimes. Maybe take your time. It was never our mentality. From day one, it is

How can you get more clients? How can you build our brand? And how can you expand to a point where you have a scalable business that then becomes attractive to a buyer? So I think that that was number one. Now, where I what I personally fell short, somewhere in the middle of that, was I couldn’t give up control about some of the more mundane tasks that were necessary to run the b business forward. So I was lucky enough to have a business partner.

John Jantsch (04:13.133)

Mm.

Victoria Sivrais (04:20.205)

That was, hey, it’s time to, it’s time to take invoicing off your plate. It’s time to take HR. It’s time to hire the HR manager. It’s time to hire someone that can actually run the office on a day to day basis. And that is, I think, what became the difference of we were creating a lifestyle business to a scalable business that that we could sell one day.

John Jantsch (04:44.782)

Well, and I think you aptly refer to that as a kitchen cabinet idea, or at least that that to have like, you know, a champion, a compensator, and a connector. is that something that can be one person that has three personalities? Does that definitely need to be outside people? you know, that like I have this skill set, you have that skill set. is that something you decide from day really early on? Or when you decided you wanted to change this business at least?

Beth (05:07.971)

Yeah, I think

I think there’s no way we as moms, unless we had a cabinet, could do this, right? Cause we needed cheerleading, we needed like people to pick up our kids when we were our flight was delayed. But then we also needed really, really big thinkers. We built a software product. Like we needed a big software guy that we didn’t know anything about. So we did it very methodically, which is how we’ve we’ve written it in Hunterprel Like a Mother. Three types, champions, connectors, compensators, and we built it.

Over a few years, and we did as much asking of favors as we did giving of favors, and we paid it as much for it as possible. But I mean, two members of our kitchen cabinet, one saved us from signing a very bad deal to sell our company, two did. And at least two to three of them made the introductions for the clients that paid us a lot of money, especially in a post-COVID world where those were not coming very quickly.

John Jantsch (05:43.053)

Mm-hmm.

Beth (06:09.781)

So it’s it is a long term, it is many people that you keep up with, that you spend twenty minutes a day with with, but it’s also what you do from day one of the business. You’re always thinking about building that.

John Jantsch (06:23.446)

D do you think that that you had or do you think that it takes a different sort of investment mindset in in the business than most people have? Cause again, a lot of people get in, they get a client and then they want the next client and then it’s like, you know, we’re we’re just trying to keep this thing going, you know, hustle work. Did did you have a different investment mentality than that?

Victoria Sivrais (06:45.019)

a hundred percent we did. So, like, I mean, yes, it was about building clients in and building revenues in the early days. but it then became how are we gonna have an expense structure? Cause our our goal from the get-go was to run 30% margins, which is very attractive in a professional services business. And so our investments what were centered around

not only driving growth at the top line, but maintaining and expanding that margin that was, you know, break even in the early days to to the the goal of the 30% margin. So like as a result, like our power move three is make the money moves that matter. And that is all about the financial non negotiables, not only personally as a as a woman raising a family and building a business, but also within the business, what are you willing to do?

John Jantsch (07:24.567)

Yeah.

Victoria Sivrais (07:36.586)

Achieve your goals. So, like a couple of our goals were we only paid out at net 45 to our vendors, but we were pretty slavish to collecting it net 30. So we had a nice cash cushion in between. You know, we never had our expense line go above our retained revenues because half of our business was project revenues, but we never took that expense structure over our retained revenues. So we knew we had the flexibility for investment in later, and we only took on debt.

John Jantsch (07:57.654)

Mm.

Victoria Sivrais (08:05.291)

if we knew we had an identif identifiable return on that investment. It was just those were three of our non-negotiables that we always had.

Beth (08:14.423)

And the one other thing we did is we invested in sales and marketing. When we were two people, we were putting 10% of what we made into sales and marketing. We put out really good thought leadership that we wanted SP 500, 1,000 CEOs to read. We figured out real early we could not get it read if we just sent them emails. And we invested in marketing. We were very early on SEO. We did all that to get the marketing out to make sure that.

the influencer to the CEO or the CEO himself saw our thought leadership, which as a really small firm, we had some really big bills, but that was a total investment. And we by the time we sold 50% of our business came from that effort. Come there were calls in from that effort.

John Jantsch (08:59.172)

Okay.

S so so in the eight minutes and or nine minutes now and four seconds we’ve been talking, you’ve actually demonstrated more business savvy than most people have, let’s face it. So what how do you translate that in your book to somebody who maybe hasn’t you know, really some of the things you’re throwing out hasn’t even considered?

Victoria Sivrais (09:22.509)

You you know, we we put it in the framework of these five power moves. And honestly, we really, we really, I people would say we dumbed it down. We didn’t. We actually brought it down to a level that we needed when we were learning ourselves. And we tried to be as explicit and as prescriptive as we possibly can. So, like power move one is all about whether or not it’s a passion project or actually a really viable business idea. So we start with what is your total addressable math.

Market, how do you figure out what your total addressable market is? And how do you figure out how you’re going to capture a portion of that that makes it a seven-figure business? Then we start to talk about, you know, build the network with your kitchen cabinet. Like where, you know, most entrepreneurs tend to be control freaks, a, you know, type A people that think they’re great at everything. The skinny is you’re not. So like figure out what you’re not good at and figure out where you can kind of support that.

John Jantsch (10:09.646)

Sure.

Victoria Sivrais (10:18.713)

Then we talk about the money moves that matter. Then we talk about, which is honestly a favorite of both of ours, is respect the pivot. Like understand that when things aren’t going the right way, you gotta be able to dodge and weave as quickly as you possibly can. And then the last piece is really once you have a business that is moving, now how do you scale it? And I think that those are the pieces. And again, depending on where you’re at in your business, you can pick up in any one of those places.

And I think that that is the beauty of this framework that we’ve created, is that you can jump in wherever you’re at with your business.

Beth (10:52.621)

I mean, this this book is intentionally so prescriptive. You literally have your pen and you’re writing this stuff down. There are worksheets, there are questions. We give our real world examples. Times we did great things and terrible things, and it’s all in there so that not only do you know what to do, but you can also feel better that two idiots figured out a way to make it work too.

John Jantsch (11:15.98)

All right, so you can smack me for this question if you want, later at least. is could can men read this book.

Beth (11:24.397)

My God. Do you know how many female mavericks are men? Like we never talk about that. So many of them are men.

Victoria Sivrais (11:24.409)

Hundred percent. I mean a hundred percent. I mean

Victoria Sivrais (11:32.976)

Can we also talk about that between the two of us, we have six brothers? Like we are the two women and a lot of men in our life. And so like it’s not meant. We wrote it in the idea, because I think a lot of times women, particularly women who want to be mothers, are told that they can either be a business owner or they can be a mother. And the point is, is you can do both. Like we’re sick of that myth and we’re trying to break the break the glass on that myth.

John Jantsch (11:38.131)

Ha ha

Beth (11:39.811)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (11:50.304)

Mm-hmm. Right.

Victoria Sivrais (11:59.746)

Men doing the same thing, and especially now, men versus like when my parents were growing up and you know there was no mom out in the workplace, like dads are just as involved with the kids versus where they used to be. And so, like, my husband is a hundred percent partner of mine. He is, I mean, we were just negotiating who’s picking up kids this afternoon because I had this podcast. So, like, I mean, those business owners, well, and even honestly.

John Jantsch (12:08.579)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (12:17.411)

Yeah. Right.

Victoria Sivrais (12:26.667)

ambitious men and women within corporate America. I think there’s a lot of pieces that you can take out of this, particularly around the the building of the kitchen cabin and respecting a pivot. Like those are just clear things that help you drive your business forward, whether or not corporate or entrepreneur.

Beth (12:44.771)

But men should pay full price for it. Women think it’s just men should pay just for everything you put us through through the generations.

John Jantsch (12:45.197)

So yeah. Hey, I think it’s fair. so there one concept you talk about is expertise dependent businesses versus system dependent businesses. talk a little bit about what that looks like and why that’s an important concept.

Victoria Sivrais (12:46.873)

For sure. We’ll give the ladies a discount. Yeah.

Beth (12:54.819)

Ha ha.

Beth (13:10.029)

Yeah, I think this is a big one. We as women, we only want to do the things that we’re best at. So we tend to, I think, begin expertise driven businesses, which is what Victoria and I did as well. But expertise driven businesses, unless you are in like some amazing area where you can charge 50,000 an hour, you are maxed, right? You are maxed how much you can make. And and you’re you’re also giving up like so much of your life in in being the go to person.

What we learned, because we scaled twice, right? And so we we learned a lot, is unless you can put your expertise into some kind of a system, and then you can hire, retain, train, support, empower a team of people that can do almost what you can do, you can’t scale. It doesn’t matter if you have AI, it doesn’t matter what you have, you cannot scale. You have high-profile people that want to talk to a human being that’s competent. So

We really learned in that second business. And some of that was driven by our own employees saying, You’re not even giving us a shot on goal. You’re not even letting us get a shot to talk to a CEO. You haven’t trained us. And we both really stepped back and we really invested there. And we turned out selling the company with seven or eight people that could do what we did. They all got a small piece of the business. They all have great careers. But I mean, that was a big investment from us. So, like if you want to be bigger, you want

John Jantsch (14:17.439)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (14:30.819)

Yeah. Yeah.

Beth (14:34.273)

Your kids not to have college debt, you’ve got to figure out a system driven business.

John Jantsch (14:38.967)

Yeah, I am. you know, I w we work with a lot of business owners and I mean the the one thing I counsel them on all the time is, you know, until you’re no longer the rainmaker, you know, you’re stuck. And I think that’s really to me, that’s the really the big one. If you know if that’s if you’re the only person that can sell the big deal, then you’re you’re never gonna get out of this thing. So what one of the things that I read that

Victoria Sivrais (14:44.319)

Mm.

Victoria Sivrais (14:50.115)

No

Victoria Sivrais (15:00.367)

Agreed.

John Jantsch (15:05.495)

the seventy-five percent of your cash w went into cold outreach from day one. that’s almost taboo for like consulting, you know, type businesses. It’s like, no, you build your network of trust and you get referrals. And so so talk a little bit about that math for a high touch advisory firm.

Victoria Sivrais (15:24.023)

I mean, you d we call it in the book, we call it caveman marketing. Cause I mean, it really was. I mean, it was a numbers game in the beginning, in terms of the cold outreach. For every ten calls we made, we got one meeting, you know, or every a hundred calls we made, we got 10 meetings, we got one close. Like it just it was what it was. What I think we did very interestingly to support that was not just the cold calling. It was up front, we made a ton of investment in that thought leadership that Beth talked about a little bit ago, which was

John Jantsch (15:28.099)

Yeah.

Victoria Sivrais (15:53.302)

Not cold emails selling our services. It was it was expanding and sharing our expertise around areas that mattered to the C-suite and the board of directors of these large public companies. And we never asked for anything from it. We honestly just would share as much as they listen to it. And honestly, in in COVID is where it really, really took off because you know, that March date, March 16th.

All of our public companies just stopped paying us. All of our huge pipeline just stopped responding to us. No one knew. We were working a hundred hours a week trying to assuage all the concerns on Wall Street that every public company was going belly up. Like we didn’t have anything to do except for just kind of maintain our client base. So in our spare time, which we had so much of it, we just wrote about what was happening out in the market. And we just kept on sending out

John Jantsch (16:24.319)

Mm-hmm. Right.

John Jantsch (16:44.046)

Mm.

John Jantsch (16:48.771)

Yeah.

Victoria Sivrais (16:49.775)

Thought leadership after thought leadership, we did really basic roundups of by industry, how people are talking about financial position, cash on hand, investments, all of those things. And that drove our SEO, which became us the number one ranking in both our core business, which was investor relations, and our growth business, which was ESG communications consulting. And so when the world started to slowly open back up that summer.

John Jantsch (17:04.441)

Yeah.

Victoria Sivrais (17:17.827)

They said, okay, there’s all these mandates that we have to do. Who should we call? you know, those ladies that never stop emailing us about all the things that are happening. And it opened the floodgates. And so it didn’t stop us from our cold outreach. We still did that. But when we got there, we had built such great brand recognition that they picked up the phone when we called.

John Jantsch (17:24.431)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (17:36.11)

Yeah.

All while homeschooling at the same time, right?

Victoria Sivrais (17:41.347)

For sure. For sure. My

Beth (17:42.027)

okay, we can’t. We’re like BTSD. I mean. But I mean, the one thing I want to add on to that is that SEO was super expensive. We invested a lot. AI is not the ability to be found on AI is a different game. And we always talk about, my God, how much higher would our margins have been if we have AI and figured it out?

Victoria Sivrais (17:48.868)

Bye.

John Jantsch (17:54.201)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (18:07.874)

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no question. Did

Victoria Sivrais (18:09.081)

Totally.

Beth (18:11.021)

And you can be so super localized with AI too that it’s for smaller or very localized businesses too.

John Jantsch (18:15.616)

Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. I’m curious, did either one of you have entrepreneurial upbringings?

Beth (18:22.393)

We both did. My we both did. My my dad is a serial entrepreneur, my biggest supporter. Both my brothers are entrepreneurs, Victoria.

Victoria Sivrais (18:23.855)

You got.

John Jantsch (18:24.97)

Yeah.

Victoria Sivrais (18:34.425)

Yep, my dad’s an entrepreneur and and his dad, who I actually never had the luxury of meeting, had I can’t even count the number of businesses that they’ve told me he’s had. And my brothers followed in the same footstep too. So like it it is there. So maybe it is a little bit in our blood.

Beth (18:50.719)

And like at my family dinner is if you had to admit that you worked for someone else, everyone was like, For shame, you know, so you didn’t have that.

John Jantsch (18:56.586)

Yeah. So I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by and and share some of the insights here. But if somebody’s listening runs a business whether alone or they have a team, what would be the first thing you call them power moves? What would be maybe the first power move you would say? Obviously you don’t know who these businesses are or what they’re doing, but but what do you typically find like this is the first hole to plug?

Beth (19:23.223)

It’s always the money moves. It’s always that we look at the PL and go, what are you paying an executive coach for? Or if you increased your prices five percent, my God, this would change your take. So we want it to be softer than that, but God, it’s always that make the money moves that matter.

Victoria Sivrais (19:24.918)

Always.

Victoria Sivrais (19:41.027)

I mean, we talk to business owners all the time, and almost I would say one out of every four, they’re telling me, yeah, we’re I’m making a ton of money. Like blah, blah, blah. Okay. So less your expenses, how much are you taking home? well, nothing. And okay. So you’re not actually making money. Like, I mean, it is pretty basic like that, I think. And honest to God, like in the early days of Claremont.

John Jantsch (19:58.499)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (20:02.606)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Victoria Sivrais (20:09.943)

it was something that I didn’t know. Like it like pure cash I knew a profit and loss statement, but pure cash management about paying a vendor after you’ve been paid by your clients. It never had occurred to me, to be honest. Like I I figured I just want to stay on top of my bills. Like there are real basics of of building Yeah, totally.

John Jantsch (20:22.478)

Right.

John Jantsch (20:28.354)

Yeah, it’s it’s check checkbook finance. Right. Yeah, that’s funny.

Beth (20:32.899)

Yeah.

Victoria Sivrais (20:35.011)

So I mean it’s so I I go back to the that the money moves that matter every day of the week. And I think secondarily the building the kitchen cabinet, knowing what you’re good at and what you’re not, and how to supplement where your weakness is is critically important too.

John Jantsch (20:39.822)

Yeah, yeah, awesome.

John Jantsch (20:51.232)

Awesome. Well again, Beth Victoria, I appreciate you stopping by and talking about Entrepreneur Like a Mother. is there anywhere you would invite people to connect with you, find out more about the book?

Beth (21:02.583)

Yeah, for sure. So it is available for pre order on Amazon. But if you go through female mavericks dot com, you actually get the course as well, which is pretty cool. And if you only have ten minute increments or ten minutes of tolerance for us a day, that’s another way to do it.

John Jantsch (21:15.246)

Mm-hmm.

Victoria Sivrais (21:17.325)

And we’ll share a code for a ten percent discount on the book as well as the code through our website.

John Jantsch (21:22.158)

Okay, awesome. We’ll do that quickly ’cause we’re gonna publish the show and it within gosh to get it out around launch time, depending upon when you guys are listening to this show. It comes out in September, but it will be available after September twenty second. We’ll have a link in the show notes as well. So again, appreciate it and hopefully we’ll run into you one or both of you somewhere out there on the road.

Victoria Sivrais (21:30.884)

Yeah.

Beth (21:44.675)

Thanks, John. Bye.

Victoria Sivrais (21:44.717)

Awesome. Thank you so much, John.

John Jantsch (00:01.122)

So most consultants build a business around what they’re good at. A smaller number build one that they can actually sell. The difference between those two paths shows up probably pretty quickly, long before anyone’s shopping for a buyer, that is. And usually it’s invisible to the person living it. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, my guest today. I have two guests: Beth.

Mazza and Victoria Sivrais. They’re serial entrepreneurs, collective moms of nine, who built and exited two successful professional service firms that advise SP leaders through make or break decisions, equal parts, boardroom powerhouses, and chaos managers. They’re now on a mission to help 10,000 women build seven-figure businesses. So, Beth and Victoria, welcome to the show.

Beth (00:50.765)

Thanks. We’re happy to be here, John. Thank you. No.

Victoria Sivrais (00:51.513)

Thanks so much.

John Jantsch (00:52.834)

Did did I butcher either one of your names? I ch I I hopefully not. Good, good, good. Awesome. Well, so I have to start by telling you that I have nine siblings, if that counts for anything. So so so I do I do have a sense of and there was only f 14 years between the ten of us, so I do have a sense of a little bit of what you guys are going through. Right. I only have four kids of my own, but but the the ten ten f

Victoria Sivrais (00:56.239)

You got it. I’m impressed.

Beth (01:03.416)

Hmm.

Victoria Sivrais (01:04.303)

Really?

Beth (01:12.05)

Whoa. So you kept chaos.

Victoria Sivrais (01:13.187)

That’s incredible.

Beth (01:19.289)

So do I.

John Jantsch (01:21.304)

10 member family was quite something. So let’s jump into I I want to start with this may feel like a challenge, but I I know you guys have the answer to this. but I want to start with this sort of disconnect for me. As I read your bio and you know, S P five hundred, you know, make or break decisions. and then I look at the the title of the book, which I actually I forgot I forgot wasn’t in the in the bio, so I’ll

Beth (01:25.293)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (01:50.999)

Read it out right now. entrepreneur like a mother. Build a company that buys your freedom and not one that owns your life. And, you know, that sounds a little more like a lifestyle business book that maybe is different from you know what what I read in your bios. So help our listeners understand where where where I’m getting that wrong.

Beth (02:13.767)

yeah, that no, that’s a fair question. So two things. One is side hustles don’t give you financial freedom. They don’t pay for your kids’ college. They don’t pay for your house. They don’t pay for you to retire at the age as we did. So our number one premise behind this book is you gotta build a business where you get financial freedom. And you can do that if you choose the right business model and you set some of the right barriers from day one of your business. And

John Jantsch (02:22.221)

Right.

Beth (02:40.801)

Literally the entire book is about when we did that successfully, which we did a lot, and when we did that unsuccessfully, which also was a lot.

John Jantsch (02:48.44)

Sure, sure. Well, that’s the only way you learn one from the other, right? so so a lot of what you talk about is the idea of of building your your first business, planning to sell it. and I think a lot of people, I I I can’t imagine there are too many people that that’s not the dream. however, you know, you get sort of stuck in the day-to-day and it’s like, no, I’m just trying to pay the bills or pay myself, and it turns into a job, not a business even. So how did you

How did you make that decision? What did you do that changed, you know, how you went to business that that you know, in into business that that really made that happen for you?

Victoria Sivrais (03:26.979)

Yeah. So I I think from our perspective, sales became the center of everything we did from day one. So I think when you are trying to create a lifestyle business or one that just kind of is a replacement to your corporate salary, I think there is a a slowness of it sometimes. Maybe take your time. It was never our mentality. From day one, it is

How can you get more clients? How can you build our brand? And how can you expand to a point where you have a scalable business that then becomes attractive to a buyer? So I think that that was number one. Now, where I what I personally fell short, somewhere in the middle of that, was I couldn’t give up control about some of the more mundane tasks that were necessary to run the b business forward. So I was lucky enough to have a business partner.

John Jantsch (04:13.133)

Mm.

Victoria Sivrais (04:20.205)

That was, hey, it’s time to, it’s time to take invoicing off your plate. It’s time to take HR. It’s time to hire the HR manager. It’s time to hire someone that can actually run the office on a day to day basis. And that is, I think, what became the difference of we were creating a lifestyle business to a scalable business that that we could sell one day.

John Jantsch (04:44.782)

Well, and I think you aptly refer to that as a kitchen cabinet idea, or at least that that to have like, you know, a champion, a compensator, and a connector. is that something that can be one person that has three personalities? Does that definitely need to be outside people? you know, that like I have this skill set, you have that skill set. is that something you decide from day really early on? Or when you decided you wanted to change this business at least?

Beth (05:07.971)

Yeah, I think

I think there’s no way we as moms, unless we had a cabinet, could do this, right? Cause we needed cheerleading, we needed like people to pick up our kids when we were our flight was delayed. But then we also needed really, really big thinkers. We built a software product. Like we needed a big software guy that we didn’t know anything about. So we did it very methodically, which is how we’ve we’ve written it in Hunterprel Like a Mother. Three types, champions, connectors, compensators, and we built it.

Over a few years, and we did as much asking of favors as we did giving of favors, and we paid it as much for it as possible. But I mean, two members of our kitchen cabinet, one saved us from signing a very bad deal to sell our company, two did. And at least two to three of them made the introductions for the clients that paid us a lot of money, especially in a post-COVID world where those were not coming very quickly.

John Jantsch (05:43.053)

Mm-hmm.

Beth (06:09.781)

So it’s it is a long term, it is many people that you keep up with, that you spend twenty minutes a day with with, but it’s also what you do from day one of the business. You’re always thinking about building that.

John Jantsch (06:23.446)

D do you think that that you had or do you think that it takes a different sort of investment mindset in in the business than most people have? Cause again, a lot of people get in, they get a client and then they want the next client and then it’s like, you know, we’re we’re just trying to keep this thing going, you know, hustle work. Did did you have a different investment mentality than that?

Victoria Sivrais (06:45.019)

a hundred percent we did. So, like, I mean, yes, it was about building clients in and building revenues in the early days. but it then became how are we gonna have an expense structure? Cause our our goal from the get-go was to run 30% margins, which is very attractive in a professional services business. And so our investments what were centered around

not only driving growth at the top line, but maintaining and expanding that margin that was, you know, break even in the early days to to the the goal of the 30% margin. So like as a result, like our power move three is make the money moves that matter. And that is all about the financial non negotiables, not only personally as a as a woman raising a family and building a business, but also within the business, what are you willing to do?

John Jantsch (07:24.567)

Yeah.

Victoria Sivrais (07:36.586)

Achieve your goals. So, like a couple of our goals were we only paid out at net 45 to our vendors, but we were pretty slavish to collecting it net 30. So we had a nice cash cushion in between. You know, we never had our expense line go above our retained revenues because half of our business was project revenues, but we never took that expense structure over our retained revenues. So we knew we had the flexibility for investment in later, and we only took on debt.

John Jantsch (07:57.654)

Mm.

Victoria Sivrais (08:05.291)

if we knew we had an identif identifiable return on that investment. It was just those were three of our non-negotiables that we always had.

Beth (08:14.423)

And the one other thing we did is we invested in sales and marketing. When we were two people, we were putting 10% of what we made into sales and marketing. We put out really good thought leadership that we wanted SP 500, 1,000 CEOs to read. We figured out real early we could not get it read if we just sent them emails. And we invested in marketing. We were very early on SEO. We did all that to get the marketing out to make sure that.

the influencer to the CEO or the CEO himself saw our thought leadership, which as a really small firm, we had some really big bills, but that was a total investment. And we by the time we sold 50% of our business came from that effort. Come there were calls in from that effort.

John Jantsch (08:59.172)

Okay.

S so so in the eight minutes and or nine minutes now and four seconds we’ve been talking, you’ve actually demonstrated more business savvy than most people have, let’s face it. So what how do you translate that in your book to somebody who maybe hasn’t you know, really some of the things you’re throwing out hasn’t even considered?

Victoria Sivrais (09:22.509)

You you know, we we put it in the framework of these five power moves. And honestly, we really, we really, I people would say we dumbed it down. We didn’t. We actually brought it down to a level that we needed when we were learning ourselves. And we tried to be as explicit and as prescriptive as we possibly can. So, like power move one is all about whether or not it’s a passion project or actually a really viable business idea. So we start with what is your total addressable math.

Market, how do you figure out what your total addressable market is? And how do you figure out how you’re going to capture a portion of that that makes it a seven-figure business? Then we start to talk about, you know, build the network with your kitchen cabinet. Like where, you know, most entrepreneurs tend to be control freaks, a, you know, type A people that think they’re great at everything. The skinny is you’re not. So like figure out what you’re not good at and figure out where you can kind of support that.

John Jantsch (10:09.646)

Sure.

Victoria Sivrais (10:18.713)

Then we talk about the money moves that matter. Then we talk about, which is honestly a favorite of both of ours, is respect the pivot. Like understand that when things aren’t going the right way, you gotta be able to dodge and weave as quickly as you possibly can. And then the last piece is really once you have a business that is moving, now how do you scale it? And I think that those are the pieces. And again, depending on where you’re at in your business, you can pick up in any one of those places.

And I think that that is the beauty of this framework that we’ve created, is that you can jump in wherever you’re at with your business.

Beth (10:52.621)

I mean, this this book is intentionally so prescriptive. You literally have your pen and you’re writing this stuff down. There are worksheets, there are questions. We give our real world examples. Times we did great things and terrible things, and it’s all in there so that not only do you know what to do, but you can also feel better that two idiots figured out a way to make it work too.

John Jantsch (11:15.98)

All right, so you can smack me for this question if you want, later at least. is could can men read this book.

Beth (11:24.397)

My God. Do you know how many female mavericks are men? Like we never talk about that. So many of them are men.

Victoria Sivrais (11:24.409)

Hundred percent. I mean a hundred percent. I mean

Victoria Sivrais (11:32.976)

Can we also talk about that between the two of us, we have six brothers? Like we are the two women and a lot of men in our life. And so like it’s not meant. We wrote it in the idea, because I think a lot of times women, particularly women who want to be mothers, are told that they can either be a business owner or they can be a mother. And the point is, is you can do both. Like we’re sick of that myth and we’re trying to break the break the glass on that myth.

John Jantsch (11:38.131)

Ha ha

Beth (11:39.811)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (11:50.304)

Mm-hmm. Right.

Victoria Sivrais (11:59.746)

Men doing the same thing, and especially now, men versus like when my parents were growing up and you know there was no mom out in the workplace, like dads are just as involved with the kids versus where they used to be. And so, like, my husband is a hundred percent partner of mine. He is, I mean, we were just negotiating who’s picking up kids this afternoon because I had this podcast. So, like, I mean, those business owners, well, and even honestly.

John Jantsch (12:08.579)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (12:17.411)

Yeah. Right.

Victoria Sivrais (12:26.667)

ambitious men and women within corporate America. I think there’s a lot of pieces that you can take out of this, particularly around the the building of the kitchen cabin and respecting a pivot. Like those are just clear things that help you drive your business forward, whether or not corporate or entrepreneur.

Beth (12:44.771)

But men should pay full price for it. Women think it’s just men should pay just for everything you put us through through the generations.

John Jantsch (12:45.197)

So yeah. Hey, I think it’s fair. so there one concept you talk about is expertise dependent businesses versus system dependent businesses. talk a little bit about what that looks like and why that’s an important concept.

Victoria Sivrais (12:46.873)

For sure. We’ll give the ladies a discount. Yeah.

Beth (12:54.819)

Ha ha.

Beth (13:10.029)

Yeah, I think this is a big one. We as women, we only want to do the things that we’re best at. So we tend to, I think, begin expertise driven businesses, which is what Victoria and I did as well. But expertise driven businesses, unless you are in like some amazing area where you can charge 50,000 an hour, you are maxed, right? You are maxed how much you can make. And and you’re you’re also giving up like so much of your life in in being the go to person.

What we learned, because we scaled twice, right? And so we we learned a lot, is unless you can put your expertise into some kind of a system, and then you can hire, retain, train, support, empower a team of people that can do almost what you can do, you can’t scale. It doesn’t matter if you have AI, it doesn’t matter what you have, you cannot scale. You have high-profile people that want to talk to a human being that’s competent. So

We really learned in that second business. And some of that was driven by our own employees saying, You’re not even giving us a shot on goal. You’re not even letting us get a shot to talk to a CEO. You haven’t trained us. And we both really stepped back and we really invested there. And we turned out selling the company with seven or eight people that could do what we did. They all got a small piece of the business. They all have great careers. But I mean, that was a big investment from us. So, like if you want to be bigger, you want

John Jantsch (14:17.439)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (14:30.819)

Yeah. Yeah.

Beth (14:34.273)

Your kids not to have college debt, you’ve got to figure out a system driven business.

John Jantsch (14:38.967)

Yeah, I am. you know, I w we work with a lot of business owners and I mean the the one thing I counsel them on all the time is, you know, until you’re no longer the rainmaker, you know, you’re stuck. And I think that’s really to me, that’s the really the big one. If you know if that’s if you’re the only person that can sell the big deal, then you’re you’re never gonna get out of this thing. So what one of the things that I read that

Victoria Sivrais (14:44.319)

Mm.

Victoria Sivrais (14:50.115)

No

Victoria Sivrais (15:00.367)

Agreed.

John Jantsch (15:05.495)

the seventy-five percent of your cash w went into cold outreach from day one. that’s almost taboo for like consulting, you know, type businesses. It’s like, no, you build your network of trust and you get referrals. And so so talk a little bit about that math for a high touch advisory firm.

Victoria Sivrais (15:24.023)

I mean, you d we call it in the book, we call it caveman marketing. Cause I mean, it really was. I mean, it was a numbers game in the beginning, in terms of the cold outreach. For every ten calls we made, we got one meeting, you know, or every a hundred calls we made, we got 10 meetings, we got one close. Like it just it was what it was. What I think we did very interestingly to support that was not just the cold calling. It was up front, we made a ton of investment in that thought leadership that Beth talked about a little bit ago, which was

John Jantsch (15:28.099)

Yeah.

Victoria Sivrais (15:53.302)

Not cold emails selling our services. It was it was expanding and sharing our expertise around areas that mattered to the C-suite and the board of directors of these large public companies. And we never asked for anything from it. We honestly just would share as much as they listen to it. And honestly, in in COVID is where it really, really took off because you know, that March date, March 16th.

All of our public companies just stopped paying us. All of our huge pipeline just stopped responding to us. No one knew. We were working a hundred hours a week trying to assuage all the concerns on Wall Street that every public company was going belly up. Like we didn’t have anything to do except for just kind of maintain our client base. So in our spare time, which we had so much of it, we just wrote about what was happening out in the market. And we just kept on sending out

John Jantsch (16:24.319)

Mm-hmm. Right.

John Jantsch (16:44.046)

Mm.

John Jantsch (16:48.771)

Yeah.

Victoria Sivrais (16:49.775)

Thought leadership after thought leadership, we did really basic roundups of by industry, how people are talking about financial position, cash on hand, investments, all of those things. And that drove our SEO, which became us the number one ranking in both our core business, which was investor relations, and our growth business, which was ESG communications consulting. And so when the world started to slowly open back up that summer.

John Jantsch (17:04.441)

Yeah.

Victoria Sivrais (17:17.827)

They said, okay, there’s all these mandates that we have to do. Who should we call? you know, those ladies that never stop emailing us about all the things that are happening. And it opened the floodgates. And so it didn’t stop us from our cold outreach. We still did that. But when we got there, we had built such great brand recognition that they picked up the phone when we called.

John Jantsch (17:24.431)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (17:36.11)

Yeah.

All while homeschooling at the same time, right?

Victoria Sivrais (17:41.347)

For sure. For sure. My

Beth (17:42.027)

okay, we can’t. We’re like BTSD. I mean. But I mean, the one thing I want to add on to that is that SEO was super expensive. We invested a lot. AI is not the ability to be found on AI is a different game. And we always talk about, my God, how much higher would our margins have been if we have AI and figured it out?

Victoria Sivrais (17:48.868)

Bye.

John Jantsch (17:54.201)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (18:07.874)

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no question. Did

Victoria Sivrais (18:09.081)

Totally.

Beth (18:11.021)

And you can be so super localized with AI too that it’s for smaller or very localized businesses too.

John Jantsch (18:15.616)

Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. I’m curious, did either one of you have entrepreneurial upbringings?

Beth (18:22.393)

We both did. My we both did. My my dad is a serial entrepreneur, my biggest supporter. Both my brothers are entrepreneurs, Victoria.

Victoria Sivrais (18:23.855)

You got.

John Jantsch (18:24.97)

Yeah.

Victoria Sivrais (18:34.425)

Yep, my dad’s an entrepreneur and and his dad, who I actually never had the luxury of meeting, had I can’t even count the number of businesses that they’ve told me he’s had. And my brothers followed in the same footstep too. So like it it is there. So maybe it is a little bit in our blood.

Beth (18:50.719)

And like at my family dinner is if you had to admit that you worked for someone else, everyone was like, For shame, you know, so you didn’t have that.

John Jantsch (18:56.586)

Yeah. So I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by and and share some of the insights here. But if somebody’s listening runs a business whether alone or they have a team, what would be the first thing you call them power moves? What would be maybe the first power move you would say? Obviously you don’t know who these businesses are or what they’re doing, but but what do you typically find like this is the first hole to plug?

Beth (19:23.223)

It’s always the money moves. It’s always that we look at the PL and go, what are you paying an executive coach for? Or if you increased your prices five percent, my God, this would change your take. So we want it to be softer than that, but God, it’s always that make the money moves that matter.

Victoria Sivrais (19:24.918)

Always.

Victoria Sivrais (19:41.027)

I mean, we talk to business owners all the time, and almost I would say one out of every four, they’re telling me, yeah, we’re I’m making a ton of money. Like blah, blah, blah. Okay. So less your expenses, how much are you taking home? well, nothing. And okay. So you’re not actually making money. Like, I mean, it is pretty basic like that, I think. And honest to God, like in the early days of Claremont.

John Jantsch (19:58.499)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (20:02.606)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Victoria Sivrais (20:09.943)

it was something that I didn’t know. Like it like pure cash I knew a profit and loss statement, but pure cash management about paying a vendor after you’ve been paid by your clients. It never had occurred to me, to be honest. Like I I figured I just want to stay on top of my bills. Like there are real basics of of building Yeah, totally.

John Jantsch (20:22.478)

Right.

John Jantsch (20:28.354)

Yeah, it’s it’s check checkbook finance. Right. Yeah, that’s funny.

Beth (20:32.899)

Yeah.

Victoria Sivrais (20:35.011)

So I mean it’s so I I go back to the that the money moves that matter every day of the week. And I think secondarily the building the kitchen cabinet, knowing what you’re good at and what you’re not, and how to supplement where your weakness is is critically important too.

John Jantsch (20:39.822)

Yeah, yeah, awesome.

John Jantsch (20:51.232)

Awesome. Well again, Beth Victoria, I appreciate you stopping by and talking about Entrepreneur Like a Mother. is there anywhere you would invite people to connect with you, find out more about the book?

Beth (21:02.583)

Yeah, for sure. So it is available for pre order on Amazon. But if you go through female mavericks dot com, you actually get the course as well, which is pretty cool. And if you only have ten minute increments or ten minutes of tolerance for us a day, that’s another way to do it.

John Jantsch (21:15.246)

Mm-hmm.

Victoria Sivrais (21:17.325)

And we’ll share a code for a ten percent discount on the book as well as the code through our website.

John Jantsch (21:22.158)

Okay, awesome. We’ll do that quickly ’cause we’re gonna publish the show and it within gosh to get it out around launch time, depending upon when you guys are listening to this show. It comes out in September, but it will be available after September twenty second. We’ll have a link in the show notes as well. So again, appreciate it and hopefully we’ll run into you one or both of you somewhere out there on the road.

Victoria Sivrais (21:30.884)

Yeah.

Beth (21:44.675)

Thanks, John. Bye.

Victoria Sivrais (21:44.717)

Awesome. Thank you so much, John.

John Jantsch (00:01.122)

So most consultants build a business around what they’re good at. A smaller number build one that they can actually sell. The difference between those two paths shows up probably pretty quickly, long before anyone’s shopping for a buyer, that is. And usually it’s invisible to the person living it. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, my guest today. I have two guests: Beth.

Mazza and Victoria Sivrais. They’re serial entrepreneurs, collective moms of nine, who built and exited two successful professional service firms that advise SP leaders through make or break decisions, equal parts, boardroom powerhouses, and chaos managers. They’re now on a mission to help 10,000 women build seven-figure businesses. So, Beth and Victoria, welcome to the show.

Beth (00:50.765)

Thanks. We’re happy to be here, John. Thank you. No.

Victoria Sivrais (00:51.513)

Thanks so much.

John Jantsch (00:52.834)

Did did I butcher either one of your names? I ch I I hopefully not. Good, good, good. Awesome. Well, so I have to start by telling you that I have nine siblings, if that counts for anything. So so so I do I do have a sense of and there was only f 14 years between the ten of us, so I do have a sense of a little bit of what you guys are going through. Right. I only have four kids of my own, but but the the ten ten f

Victoria Sivrais (00:56.239)

You got it. I’m impressed.

Beth (01:03.416)

Hmm.

Victoria Sivrais (01:04.303)

Really?

Beth (01:12.05)

Whoa. So you kept chaos.

Victoria Sivrais (01:13.187)

That’s incredible.

Beth (01:19.289)

So do I.

John Jantsch (01:21.304)

10 member family was quite something. So let’s jump into I I want to start with this may feel like a challenge, but I I know you guys have the answer to this. but I want to start with this sort of disconnect for me. As I read your bio and you know, S P five hundred, you know, make or break decisions. and then I look at the the title of the book, which I actually I forgot I forgot wasn’t in the in the bio, so I’ll

Beth (01:25.293)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (01:50.999)

Read it out right now. entrepreneur like a mother. Build a company that buys your freedom and not one that owns your life. And, you know, that sounds a little more like a lifestyle business book that maybe is different from you know what what I read in your bios. So help our listeners understand where where where I’m getting that wrong.

Beth (02:13.767)

yeah, that no, that’s a fair question. So two things. One is side hustles don’t give you financial freedom. They don’t pay for your kids’ college. They don’t pay for your house. They don’t pay for you to retire at the age as we did. So our number one premise behind this book is you gotta build a business where you get financial freedom. And you can do that if you choose the right business model and you set some of the right barriers from day one of your business. And

John Jantsch (02:22.221)

Right.

Beth (02:40.801)

Literally the entire book is about when we did that successfully, which we did a lot, and when we did that unsuccessfully, which also was a lot.

John Jantsch (02:48.44)

Sure, sure. Well, that’s the only way you learn one from the other, right? so so a lot of what you talk about is the idea of of building your your first business, planning to sell it. and I think a lot of people, I I I can’t imagine there are too many people that that’s not the dream. however, you know, you get sort of stuck in the day-to-day and it’s like, no, I’m just trying to pay the bills or pay myself, and it turns into a job, not a business even. So how did you

How did you make that decision? What did you do that changed, you know, how you went to business that that you know, in into business that that really made that happen for you?

Victoria Sivrais (03:26.979)

Yeah. So I I think from our perspective, sales became the center of everything we did from day one. So I think when you are trying to create a lifestyle business or one that just kind of is a replacement to your corporate salary, I think there is a a slowness of it sometimes. Maybe take your time. It was never our mentality. From day one, it is

How can you get more clients? How can you build our brand? And how can you expand to a point where you have a scalable business that then becomes attractive to a buyer? So I think that that was number one. Now, where I what I personally fell short, somewhere in the middle of that, was I couldn’t give up control about some of the more mundane tasks that were necessary to run the b business forward. So I was lucky enough to have a business partner.

John Jantsch (04:13.133)

Mm.

Victoria Sivrais (04:20.205)

That was, hey, it’s time to, it’s time to take invoicing off your plate. It’s time to take HR. It’s time to hire the HR manager. It’s time to hire someone that can actually run the office on a day to day basis. And that is, I think, what became the difference of we were creating a lifestyle business to a scalable business that that we could sell one day.

John Jantsch (04:44.782)

Well, and I think you aptly refer to that as a kitchen cabinet idea, or at least that that to have like, you know, a champion, a compensator, and a connector. is that something that can be one person that has three personalities? Does that definitely need to be outside people? you know, that like I have this skill set, you have that skill set. is that something you decide from day really early on? Or when you decided you wanted to change this business at least?

Beth (05:07.971)

Yeah, I think

I think there’s no way we as moms, unless we had a cabinet, could do this, right? Cause we needed cheerleading, we needed like people to pick up our kids when we were our flight was delayed. But then we also needed really, really big thinkers. We built a software product. Like we needed a big software guy that we didn’t know anything about. So we did it very methodically, which is how we’ve we’ve written it in Hunterprel Like a Mother. Three types, champions, connectors, compensators, and we built it.

Over a few years, and we did as much asking of favors as we did giving of favors, and we paid it as much for it as possible. But I mean, two members of our kitchen cabinet, one saved us from signing a very bad deal to sell our company, two did. And at least two to three of them made the introductions for the clients that paid us a lot of money, especially in a post-COVID world where those were not coming very quickly.

John Jantsch (05:43.053)

Mm-hmm.

Beth (06:09.781)

So it’s it is a long term, it is many people that you keep up with, that you spend twenty minutes a day with with, but it’s also what you do from day one of the business. You’re always thinking about building that.

John Jantsch (06:23.446)

D do you think that that you had or do you think that it takes a different sort of investment mindset in in the business than most people have? Cause again, a lot of people get in, they get a client and then they want the next client and then it’s like, you know, we’re we’re just trying to keep this thing going, you know, hustle work. Did did you have a different investment mentality than that?

Victoria Sivrais (06:45.019)

a hundred percent we did. So, like, I mean, yes, it was about building clients in and building revenues in the early days. but it then became how are we gonna have an expense structure? Cause our our goal from the get-go was to run 30% margins, which is very attractive in a professional services business. And so our investments what were centered around

not only driving growth at the top line, but maintaining and expanding that margin that was, you know, break even in the early days to to the the goal of the 30% margin. So like as a result, like our power move three is make the money moves that matter. And that is all about the financial non negotiables, not only personally as a as a woman raising a family and building a business, but also within the business, what are you willing to do?

John Jantsch (07:24.567)

Yeah.

Victoria Sivrais (07:36.586)

Achieve your goals. So, like a couple of our goals were we only paid out at net 45 to our vendors, but we were pretty slavish to collecting it net 30. So we had a nice cash cushion in between. You know, we never had our expense line go above our retained revenues because half of our business was project revenues, but we never took that expense structure over our retained revenues. So we knew we had the flexibility for investment in later, and we only took on debt.

John Jantsch (07:57.654)

Mm.

Victoria Sivrais (08:05.291)

if we knew we had an identif identifiable return on that investment. It was just those were three of our non-negotiables that we always had.

Beth (08:14.423)

And the one other thing we did is we invested in sales and marketing. When we were two people, we were putting 10% of what we made into sales and marketing. We put out really good thought leadership that we wanted SP 500, 1,000 CEOs to read. We figured out real early we could not get it read if we just sent them emails. And we invested in marketing. We were very early on SEO. We did all that to get the marketing out to make sure that.

the influencer to the CEO or the CEO himself saw our thought leadership, which as a really small firm, we had some really big bills, but that was a total investment. And we by the time we sold 50% of our business came from that effort. Come there were calls in from that effort.

John Jantsch (08:59.172)

Okay.

S so so in the eight minutes and or nine minutes now and four seconds we’ve been talking, you’ve actually demonstrated more business savvy than most people have, let’s face it. So what how do you translate that in your book to somebody who maybe hasn’t you know, really some of the things you’re throwing out hasn’t even considered?

Victoria Sivrais (09:22.509)

You you know, we we put it in the framework of these five power moves. And honestly, we really, we really, I people would say we dumbed it down. We didn’t. We actually brought it down to a level that we needed when we were learning ourselves. And we tried to be as explicit and as prescriptive as we possibly can. So, like power move one is all about whether or not it’s a passion project or actually a really viable business idea. So we start with what is your total addressable math.

Market, how do you figure out what your total addressable market is? And how do you figure out how you’re going to capture a portion of that that makes it a seven-figure business? Then we start to talk about, you know, build the network with your kitchen cabinet. Like where, you know, most entrepreneurs tend to be control freaks, a, you know, type A people that think they’re great at everything. The skinny is you’re not. So like figure out what you’re not good at and figure out where you can kind of support that.

John Jantsch (10:09.646)

Sure.

Victoria Sivrais (10:18.713)

Then we talk about the money moves that matter. Then we talk about, which is honestly a favorite of both of ours, is respect the pivot. Like understand that when things aren’t going the right way, you gotta be able to dodge and weave as quickly as you possibly can. And then the last piece is really once you have a business that is moving, now how do you scale it? And I think that those are the pieces. And again, depending on where you’re at in your business, you can pick up in any one of those places.

And I think that that is the beauty of this framework that we’ve created, is that you can jump in wherever you’re at with your business.

Beth (10:52.621)

I mean, this this book is intentionally so prescriptive. You literally have your pen and you’re writing this stuff down. There are worksheets, there are questions. We give our real world examples. Times we did great things and terrible things, and it’s all in there so that not only do you know what to do, but you can also feel better that two idiots figured out a way to make it work too.

John Jantsch (11:15.98)

All right, so you can smack me for this question if you want, later at least. is could can men read this book.

Beth (11:24.397)

My God. Do you know how many female mavericks are men? Like we never talk about that. So many of them are men.

Victoria Sivrais (11:24.409)

Hundred percent. I mean a hundred percent. I mean

Victoria Sivrais (11:32.976)

Can we also talk about that between the two of us, we have six brothers? Like we are the two women and a lot of men in our life. And so like it’s not meant. We wrote it in the idea, because I think a lot of times women, particularly women who want to be mothers, are told that they can either be a business owner or they can be a mother. And the point is, is you can do both. Like we’re sick of that myth and we’re trying to break the break the glass on that myth.

John Jantsch (11:38.131)

Ha ha

Beth (11:39.811)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (11:50.304)

Mm-hmm. Right.

Victoria Sivrais (11:59.746)

Men doing the same thing, and especially now, men versus like when my parents were growing up and you know there was no mom out in the workplace, like dads are just as involved with the kids versus where they used to be. And so, like, my husband is a hundred percent partner of mine. He is, I mean, we were just negotiating who’s picking up kids this afternoon because I had this podcast. So, like, I mean, those business owners, well, and even honestly.

John Jantsch (12:08.579)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (12:17.411)

Yeah. Right.

Victoria Sivrais (12:26.667)

ambitious men and women within corporate America. I think there’s a lot of pieces that you can take out of this, particularly around the the building of the kitchen cabin and respecting a pivot. Like those are just clear things that help you drive your business forward, whether or not corporate or entrepreneur.

Beth (12:44.771)

But men should pay full price for it. Women think it’s just men should pay just for everything you put us through through the generations.

John Jantsch (12:45.197)

So yeah. Hey, I think it’s fair. so there one concept you talk about is expertise dependent businesses versus system dependent businesses. talk a little bit about what that looks like and why that’s an important concept.

Victoria Sivrais (12:46.873)

For sure. We’ll give the ladies a discount. Yeah.

Beth (12:54.819)

Ha ha.

Beth (13:10.029)

Yeah, I think this is a big one. We as women, we only want to do the things that we’re best at. So we tend to, I think, begin expertise driven businesses, which is what Victoria and I did as well. But expertise driven businesses, unless you are in like some amazing area where you can charge 50,000 an hour, you are maxed, right? You are maxed how much you can make. And and you’re you’re also giving up like so much of your life in in being the go to person.

What we learned, because we scaled twice, right? And so we we learned a lot, is unless you can put your expertise into some kind of a system, and then you can hire, retain, train, support, empower a team of people that can do almost what you can do, you can’t scale. It doesn’t matter if you have AI, it doesn’t matter what you have, you cannot scale. You have high-profile people that want to talk to a human being that’s competent. So

We really learned in that second business. And some of that was driven by our own employees saying, You’re not even giving us a shot on goal. You’re not even letting us get a shot to talk to a CEO. You haven’t trained us. And we both really stepped back and we really invested there. And we turned out selling the company with seven or eight people that could do what we did. They all got a small piece of the business. They all have great careers. But I mean, that was a big investment from us. So, like if you want to be bigger, you want

John Jantsch (14:17.439)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (14:30.819)

Yeah. Yeah.

Beth (14:34.273)

Your kids not to have college debt, you’ve got to figure out a system driven business.

John Jantsch (14:38.967)

Yeah, I am. you know, I w we work with a lot of business owners and I mean the the one thing I counsel them on all the time is, you know, until you’re no longer the rainmaker, you know, you’re stuck. And I think that’s really to me, that’s the really the big one. If you know if that’s if you’re the only person that can sell the big deal, then you’re you’re never gonna get out of this thing. So what one of the things that I read that

Victoria Sivrais (14:44.319)

Mm.

Victoria Sivrais (14:50.115)

No

Victoria Sivrais (15:00.367)

Agreed.

John Jantsch (15:05.495)

the seventy-five percent of your cash w went into cold outreach from day one. that’s almost taboo for like consulting, you know, type businesses. It’s like, no, you build your network of trust and you get referrals. And so so talk a little bit about that math for a high touch advisory firm.

Victoria Sivrais (15:24.023)

I mean, you d we call it in the book, we call it caveman marketing. Cause I mean, it really was. I mean, it was a numbers game in the beginning, in terms of the cold outreach. For every ten calls we made, we got one meeting, you know, or every a hundred calls we made, we got 10 meetings, we got one close. Like it just it was what it was. What I think we did very interestingly to support that was not just the cold calling. It was up front, we made a ton of investment in that thought leadership that Beth talked about a little bit ago, which was

John Jantsch (15:28.099)

Yeah.

Victoria Sivrais (15:53.302)

Not cold emails selling our services. It was it was expanding and sharing our expertise around areas that mattered to the C-suite and the board of directors of these large public companies. And we never asked for anything from it. We honestly just would share as much as they listen to it. And honestly, in in COVID is where it really, really took off because you know, that March date, March 16th.

All of our public companies just stopped paying us. All of our huge pipeline just stopped responding to us. No one knew. We were working a hundred hours a week trying to assuage all the concerns on Wall Street that every public company was going belly up. Like we didn’t have anything to do except for just kind of maintain our client base. So in our spare time, which we had so much of it, we just wrote about what was happening out in the market. And we just kept on sending out

John Jantsch (16:24.319)

Mm-hmm. Right.

John Jantsch (16:44.046)

Mm.

John Jantsch (16:48.771)

Yeah.

Victoria Sivrais (16:49.775)

Thought leadership after thought leadership, we did really basic roundups of by industry, how people are talking about financial position, cash on hand, investments, all of those things. And that drove our SEO, which became us the number one ranking in both our core business, which was investor relations, and our growth business, which was ESG communications consulting. And so when the world started to slowly open back up that summer.

John Jantsch (17:04.441)

Yeah.

Victoria Sivrais (17:17.827)

They said, okay, there’s all these mandates that we have to do. Who should we call? you know, those ladies that never stop emailing us about all the things that are happening. And it opened the floodgates. And so it didn’t stop us from our cold outreach. We still did that. But when we got there, we had built such great brand recognition that they picked up the phone when we called.

John Jantsch (17:24.431)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (17:36.11)

Yeah.

All while homeschooling at the same time, right?

Victoria Sivrais (17:41.347)

For sure. For sure. My

Beth (17:42.027)

okay, we can’t. We’re like BTSD. I mean. But I mean, the one thing I want to add on to that is that SEO was super expensive. We invested a lot. AI is not the ability to be found on AI is a different game. And we always talk about, my God, how much higher would our margins have been if we have AI and figured it out?

Victoria Sivrais (17:48.868)

Bye.

John Jantsch (17:54.201)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (18:07.874)

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no question. Did

Victoria Sivrais (18:09.081)

Totally.

Beth (18:11.021)

And you can be so super localized with AI too that it’s for smaller or very localized businesses too.

John Jantsch (18:15.616)

Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. I’m curious, did either one of you have entrepreneurial upbringings?

Beth (18:22.393)

We both did. My we both did. My my dad is a serial entrepreneur, my biggest supporter. Both my brothers are entrepreneurs, Victoria.

Victoria Sivrais (18:23.855)

You got.

John Jantsch (18:24.97)

Yeah.

Victoria Sivrais (18:34.425)

Yep, my dad’s an entrepreneur and and his dad, who I actually never had the luxury of meeting, had I can’t even count the number of businesses that they’ve told me he’s had. And my brothers followed in the same footstep too. So like it it is there. So maybe it is a little bit in our blood.

Beth (18:50.719)

And like at my family dinner is if you had to admit that you worked for someone else, everyone was like, For shame, you know, so you didn’t have that.

John Jantsch (18:56.586)

Yeah. So I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by and and share some of the insights here. But if somebody’s listening runs a business whether alone or they have a team, what would be the first thing you call them power moves? What would be maybe the first power move you would say? Obviously you don’t know who these businesses are or what they’re doing, but but what do you typically find like this is the first hole to plug?

Beth (19:23.223)

It’s always the money moves. It’s always that we look at the PL and go, what are you paying an executive coach for? Or if you increased your prices five percent, my God, this would change your take. So we want it to be softer than that, but God, it’s always that make the money moves that matter.

Victoria Sivrais (19:24.918)

Always.

Victoria Sivrais (19:41.027)

I mean, we talk to business owners all the time, and almost I would say one out of every four, they’re telling me, yeah, we’re I’m making a ton of money. Like blah, blah, blah. Okay. So less your expenses, how much are you taking home? well, nothing. And okay. So you’re not actually making money. Like, I mean, it is pretty basic like that, I think. And honest to God, like in the early days of Claremont.

John Jantsch (19:58.499)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (20:02.606)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Victoria Sivrais (20:09.943)

it was something that I didn’t know. Like it like pure cash I knew a profit and loss statement, but pure cash management about paying a vendor after you’ve been paid by your clients. It never had occurred to me, to be honest. Like I I figured I just want to stay on top of my bills. Like there are real basics of of building Yeah, totally.

John Jantsch (20:22.478)

Right.

John Jantsch (20:28.354)

Yeah, it’s it’s check checkbook finance. Right. Yeah, that’s funny.

Beth (20:32.899)

Yeah.

Victoria Sivrais (20:35.011)

So I mean it’s so I I go back to the that the money moves that matter every day of the week. And I think secondarily the building the kitchen cabinet, knowing what you’re good at and what you’re not, and how to supplement where your weakness is is critically important too.

John Jantsch (20:39.822)

Yeah, yeah, awesome.

John Jantsch (20:51.232)

Awesome. Well again, Beth Victoria, I appreciate you stopping by and talking about Entrepreneur Like a Mother. is there anywhere you would invite people to connect with you, find out more about the book?

Beth (21:02.583)

Yeah, for sure. So it is available for pre order on Amazon. But if you go through female mavericks dot com, you actually get the course as well, which is pretty cool. And if you only have ten minute increments or ten minutes of tolerance for us a day, that’s another way to do it.

John Jantsch (21:15.246)

Mm-hmm.

Victoria Sivrais (21:17.325)

And we’ll share a code for a ten percent discount on the book as well as the code through our website.

John Jantsch (21:22.158)

Okay, awesome. We’ll do that quickly ’cause we’re gonna publish the show and it within gosh to get it out around launch time, depending upon when you guys are listening to this show. It comes out in September, but it will be available after September twenty second. We’ll have a link in the show notes as well. So again, appreciate it and hopefully we’ll run into you one or both of you somewhere out there on the road.

Victoria Sivrais (21:30.884)

Yeah.

Beth (21:44.675)

Thanks, John. Bye.

Victoria Sivrais (21:44.717)

Awesome. Thank you so much, John.

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.