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(01:14): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and my guest today is Josh Bernoff. He’s the bestselling author or ghostwriter of eight business books. He’s contributed to 50 book projects that have generated over 20 million for their authors. He’s formerly Senior Vice President of Idea Development at Forrester, where he spent 20 years analyzing technology and business. We’re gonna talk about his most recent book, Build a Better Business Book: How to Plan, Write, and Promote a Book That Matters. So Josh, welcome to the show.

Josh Bernoff (01:49): It’s great to be on. Good to talk to you.

John Jantsch (01:52): So I’ll just throw out like one really big question to start us off. Okay. And then we’ll hone in on, uh, things, you know, what are the essential elements that a business book needs to be good. How is that for, how is that for a big question, ?

Josh Bernoff (02:06): No, that’s exactly the right big question . And I’d say there are two things, one that everybody understands and one that people don’t understand. The thing that everybody knows you need is an idea. Yeah. That is, you need something that will solve a problem for a specific group of people, and it has to be a differentiated idea that is an idea that hasn’t been heard before. So that’s what people know. What people don’t recognize is that business books are made out of stories about people, stories about business people, about ordinary consumers, about people who have a problem. And you get insight from the way they solve that problem. And unless you’ve collected those stories and shared them in an interesting way, your book’s gonna be boring and it’s not gonna sell.

John Jantsch (02:49): Can a business book, like, I mean, a fiction book, you know, has a narrative and a plot and characters and we get to the end hopefully and go, oh, that was amazing. Can a business book have narrative similar to that? Or is it there just to do some nuts and bolts work?

Josh Bernoff (03:04): It has to have a narrative similar to that. Now we understand this, if you’re reading a business book that’s say a description of Elon Musk’s life or Right. You know, how Netflix was created as a company. But when you’re talking about a business book that solves a problem, there’s a natural order to it in the first chapter. We have to scare the crap out of you by getting you to see that there’s either a problem that you’re gonna have if you don’t follow the book or some opportunity you’re gonna miss out on. That’s the fear and greed options. Yeah. And then after that we described the parts of the solution. We show you how to implement that. We might show you some more detail about how it applies in different situations. This is a natural progression from you have a problem to the solution, to the problem, to the details of the solution. And that’s just as much a narrative as if narrative as if you were reading a novel.

John Jantsch (04:00): All right, let’s some people learn better from the negative. Let’s talk about some business books that are terrible. What are the, without naming names, what, what do they get wrong typically?

Josh Bernoff (04:10): So I don’t know if your listeners have had this experience. I have many times of the business book where you read chapter two and you’re like, gee, that sounds just like chapter one. And then you read chapter four and you’re like, oh my gosh, it’s just the same thing over and over again. Yeah. So there’s a word for what that book ought to be, which is a blog post . So if what you have is a blog post, write a blog post and you’ll save us all. A lot of trouble ideas that are worth writing a book about have to be big. That is, they need to affect a lot of people and they need to have consequences. They need to have elements to them. They need to have some subtlety to it that you need to figure out. And unless you have the ability to do that, you really should just write a blog post.

John Jantsch (04:58): Uh, there are two types of book business books. I read lots and lots of business books as I know you have as well. There are two types of business books that I really like. Some kind of stay in the big idea category. Mm-hmm. , Seth Godin’s books, I think are a great example of always a great idea that you, that he clearly believes in and that you can believe in, but not a whole lot of how to in them. And then there are other prescriptive books which are probably closer to what I write, you know, which is literally a retelling of what I do , you know, in, in the book. Are there different approaches that need to be taken for those two different kinds of books? And feel free to throw in, oh no, there’s four or five other categories too. ,

Josh Bernoff (05:36): Well, in the problem-solving kind of book, which is both of those are the big idea books and the how-to books are basically problem-solving kind of books. I think it’s a mistake to think of them as two different kinds. Okay. They’re really two ends of a continuum. Yeah. Right. So for example, the book I just wrote, right? Build a better business book here. This is a how-to book. There’s 24 chapters. There’s a chapter on covers. There’s a chapter on how to do research. Right. These are all very specific things that you have to learn how to do. If you look at the first book I wrote with Charlene Lee groundswell of posters behind me on the Wall. Yeah. That was a big idea book. And the big idea was that social media wasn’t a toy anymore, and people really need to learn how to take advantage of it. But even there we had to say, okay, if you’re gonna use social media for research purposes, here are the steps involved in that. Or if you’re gonna use social media for marketing, here are the steps involved in that. And unless you have some kind of prescription, then all you’re doing is basically throwing grenades and blowing things up. And while that can be entertaining, it’s not that helpful to people.

John Jantsch (06:43): All right. So I’m, I’m gonna go down the same path. There are two kinds of authors, I think and, and I think a lot of times they fall into maybe business models or how they think about business models. There’s obviously the Malcolm Gladwell giant big idea that’s gonna lead to giant big stages, maybe. Yeah. I wrote my first book, don’t tell my publisher this, but I wrote my first book to really be a platform for selling product and for, you know, bringing, uh, a licensing program, uh, to the world using that methodology. And that was really, the book was a piece, you know, as opposed to, I, in fact, for many years I didn’t even call myself an author necessarily.

Josh Bernoff (07:17): Mm-hmm. . Well, if you wrote a book and you published it, you’re an author, so please call yourself an author. But what people need, first of all, you’re not Malcolm Gladwell. I’m not Malcolm Gladwell. Very few people are Malcolm Gladwell. In fact, I have a section in the first chapter of my book about why you’re not Malcolm Gladwell . That’s funny. So for the rest of us, the success does not come from book sales. Right. That might be a nice little source of income. You might even not suppose you reach a thousand people, is that a failure? Yeah. If those are the right thousand people, that could be an enormous success. So the question is, how will that benefit you? And of course it should start by benefiting the people who read it, but then they’re gonna say, Hey, I should hire this guy. Or, oh, this company is worth looking at. Or this is a different way to look at the world. What vendors can help with it? Oh, look, he’s got one of those vendors he’s associated with. So there are lots of ways that, that you can benefit. I, I guess the simplest way to put it is a book is the largest possible lump of content marketing. Yeah. And just like any other content marketing, it attracts attention by being useful and then it translates into some sort of business for the author.

John Jantsch (08:32): Yeah. Yeah. Well, I, you know, fortunately out of some sort of dumb luck, I actually sold a lot of copies of Duct Tape Marketing as well as it being my kinda launching for a platform. So I kinda lucked into the best of both worlds. I guess l let’s talk about book proposals for a minute. You know, which is a typical organ that a lot of people would use to, uh, get a publisher interested in a book. Boy, that has changed in the last , uh, 20 years. Yeah. Uh, or, or so, um, do publishers care about ideas or do they care about platform? Um, or do you have to have both?

Josh Bernoff (09:05): Well, you have to have both. But platform’s more important, and that’s a shocking thing to say, right. But in the last 20 or 30 years, what I have seen is that some publishers like Wiley explicitly say, you have to prove to us that you can sell 10 or 12 20,000 books on your own. And the other publishers don’t say it quite so starkly, but they believe the same thing. Yeah. And that means, and they’re not gonna help you very much with the selling. You have to provide that yourself. So you need to have a podcast or a blog or regular appearance on CNN or a Forbes, you know, column or whatever. You need to have some sort of a platform to roll the book out. Now a person with a large platform and no ideas isn’t really very interesting, the publishers, because someone has to get something out of the book, but the, they look at the platform first and the idea second. Sadly, it’s true. Yeah.

John Jantsch (09:59): Yeah, yeah. And I think it’s become more true, quite frankly. You know, you mentioned definitely Wiley, for example, I’ve even seen some authors talk about, you know, they had to guarantee that they were gonna sell that . Yes, that’s true. It’s X number. So Yeah, they,

Josh Bernoff (10:14): I can’t resist pointing out here that there are alternatives now.

John Jantsch (10:17): Sure. Well,

Josh Bernoff (10:18): There are hybrid publishers

John Jantsch (10:19): Usually change, right? Yeah,

Josh Bernoff (10:21): Yeah, yeah. You can pay a hybrid publisher to publisher book. I’m this most recent book I did with a hybrid publisher, and I’m not saying that’s the only model. My previous book was done with a traditional publisher. Yeah. And you can even self-publish books on your own through the Amazon platform. And of course that makes a much less of an impact, but if you really gotta get your book out, you don’t need to go through a traditional publisher anymore.

John Jantsch (10:44): Well, I have a few, you know, folks in that, that I know well that have made a whole lot more money on their book by doing self-publishing because it sold really well and they kept 80%

Josh Bernoff (10:54): Phil Jones

John Jantsch (10:55): , Phil Jones is one first one came. Ok. Now,

Josh Bernoff (10:57): Now it’s, but it is hard to make your book catch fire. Yeah, yeah. If you’re doing it, you’re publishing it independently like that. Yeah. The, the traditional publishers have a certain amount of clout and distribution, and the hybrid publishers are helpful within that vein as well.

John Jantsch (11:13): Yeah. So my books are not heavily researched in the, you know, the idea that we had 3000 participants in some sort of study. I mean, my books are really kind of more, here’s my daily knowledge. I mean, here’s what I’ve learned working with ex clients. Is there, again, I don’t think there’s a better approach, but they’re quite different, aren’t they?

Josh Bernoff (11:34): Uh, you know what, you need something that proves that your book is right. Yeah. And I was sitting down and I thought of these ideas and I wrote them down as not sufficient

John Jantsch (11:45): , it might work.

Josh Bernoff (11:47): Yeah. And, you know, everyone does secondary research. This is basically going on the internet and finding quotes and studies and stuff. But you need some sort of primary research. But what you said, the, the, you know, the survey kind of research or data Look, I worked at Forrester. I actually created the program that they used to collect consumer data. That was wonderful to have all of that data. Yeah. But you can write a book that’s based on anecdotes. And if you’re telling the stories of, you know, Sarah, that that changed her marketing program, or Alvin who figured out a better way to, to track attribution, those stories are quite sufficient as primary research. You don’t necessarily need a huge amount of data.

John Jantsch (12:32): Yeah. I guess case studies would fall into that too. I mean, I know people love to see, oh, I’m a business kind of like that. And they did that. Oh, okay. That will work for me.

Josh Bernoff (12:41): Case studies are essential. In fact, I would say when I work with authors and we’re like at the beginning of the book process, the lack of case studies is the biggest problem that they have. So you want to be thinking right at the beginning, where am I gonna get the stories I’m gonna tell, where am I gonna find these interviews? If a book is, let’s say 14 chapters long, it should have 14 case studies in it.

John Jantsch (13:06): So you might even organize the book around what you

Josh Bernoff (13:09): Got. Is I you saying that? Well, I, one way to organize the book is to start every chapter with a story. Yeah. Yeah. It’s actually pretty common to do that. It fact, they’re No, they’re known as Malcolm’s after Malcolm Gladwell . Right. Who’s like the master of this. And people love that because they read it and they’re like, oh yeah, I’m having the same kind of problem that she had. Or Right. Oh man, he’s, he found an interesting way to solve that. I’m gonna learn from that. And I’ll tell you something. Once you tell one of those stories at the beginning of a chapter, whatever you say in the next three sentences, after that, people will believe no matter what it is.

John Jantsch (13:46): And now let’s hear from a sponsor. This episode is brought to you by Business Made Simple, hosted by Donald Miller, and brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals hosted by Donald Miller. Business Made Simple Takes the Mystery out of Growing Your Business. In a recent episode, they talked with my old pal, Seth Godin, where he explained the virtues and values in his book called The Song of Significance, A new manifesto for teams. Listen to business Made Simple. Wherever you get your podcasts.

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(15:06): You have, as I noted in your intro, been a ghostwriter on some projects. Mm-hmm. . What are some reasons somebody who has a good idea might use a, a ghostwriter?

Josh Bernoff (15:15): Well, it’s always a question of time. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It’s also a question of talent. Some people just don’t feel like they’re good writers. Yeah. But mostly it’s people who could write, but just don’t have the time to do it. And in the cases where I have ghostwritten books and I’ve done three, now they’re all situations where they were senior executives. Right. Very busy people. They had really interesting ideas and sometimes a lot of detail behind it, but they just wanted to hire somebody who would assemble that into a useful book. And what you read there was written on spec based on what the author, the person whose name on the cover asked for. They’ve just outsourced the writing. Just like you might outsource the graphics. Yeah. Or, uh, you know, a, a survey that you did,

John Jantsch (16:01): Let’s talk about editors. The, I think the common belief was that an editor was gonna make your book better. You know, certainly help you devise or get your ideas down. Mm-hmm. , and I’m not talking about copy editing, but you know, kind of big picture editing, it feels like, and this is coming from my experience, that, you know, the editor’s role has been to acquire a book, and that’s about it. And that that input, you know, in a business book, they’re not qualified to really give much input. Mm-hmm. ,

Josh Bernoff (16:26): It’s a question of how busy the people at these publishing houses are. So I, there’s a quote in my book from Holla Heinbach, who’s a, a very well known editor to Hartford Business who says, look, we expect the manuscript to come in ready to publish. Yeah. Um, so they don’t really have the resources to edit your book. Yeah. But that doesn’t mean you don’t need an editor. Most people who work on a good book will hire a developmental editor, and that’s someone whose job is to, to do the work of helping with the ideas, the sequence, the structure, the language, how the chapters are assembled, everything just so that you have a high quality piece of work that’s publishable.

John Jantsch (17:08): Yeah. This is gonna be a hard question to have a definitive answer, but I’m certain you have an opinion on . Yeah. What, what role does the design of the interior pages as well as the cover, play in the success of a book?

Josh Bernoff (17:23): Yeah. Well, let me divide those two. Yeah. Okay. Unless your book has got some sort of unusual elements to it, like, you know, a lot of sidebars or something like that, the interior design usually just as utilitarian and it doesn’t make that much difference. People need to tell when things are heading or subheading, but, but most books are pretty much interchangeable from that perspective.

John Jantsch (17:51): I’ve seen some poor font, I’ve seen some poor font.

Josh Bernoff (17:53): Oh, you can definitely make a mistake there, . If your book, if the, the body text in your book is in San Sarah, you’re making a big mistake. That’s a serious readability problem. Uh, I can’t resist mentioning here too that, that, you know, how do you tell when a book is poorly self-published? It’s the margins. It’s always the margins that are screwed up. You look at the book and you’re like, this doesn’t look. Yes. So the margins are like the dead giveaway, but you mentioned the covers. The cover is important. It’s just as you know, you wouldn’t go out and get married and just like grab a t-shirt off of the, you know, the hanger. You, you’re putting your best face forward there and a striking cover design together with a title that connects with it can really make a book much more recognizable. Yeah. But things are sort of backwards. People don’t buy a book because it has a great cover. They remember a book because it has a great cover, and then that becomes an iconic representation of how great that book was. They read it and then they associate that with a cover that they’re looking at.

John Jantsch (19:03): I, I know for myself, I’m, you know, walking through a bookstore back when we used to do that, used to do that. Yeah. A facing out, you know, book that had a compelling cover. It, it was a stopper, you know, it would be like, oh, I want to at least take a deeper look at that.

Josh Bernoff (19:17): Well, nowadays people are looking at the book on the screen Yeah. And it’s an inch tall.

John Jantsch (19:23): Yeah,

Josh Bernoff (19:23): Yeah, yeah. So the subtle little details of the design don’t become obvious until the person has had it shipped to their house.

John Jantsch (19:30): . Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very true. Let’s talk about another thing that’s become, I think a must audio. Mm-hmm. , if you’re gonna write a book count on doing audio or having audio done, uh, today, I would guess, huh?

Josh Bernoff (19:41): Yes. Audio, you cannot have a book that’s has a full measure of success unless there’s an audiobook to go along with it. Yeah. And people love to consume business books on audio while they’re exercising or commuting, you know, or on an airplane or whatever. So you really have to have that available to them. And in my book, I actually recommend that if the author has got any inclination at all, it’s great if you, the author can record the audiobook. Yeah. Because then your voice and your willingness to communicate the things that are important to you will come across effectively. And even if you know you have a scratchy voice or a nasal voice or something, most people can do a good job with that. Yeah. It’s just, that’s likely to take you 10 or 15 hours and not everybody’s willing to put the time in to do that.

John Jantsch (20:32): Yeah. Well, and, and, and if your goal is to build a community, to build a business around a platform, a larger platform around, I know I find it all the time. People are like, oh, now that I met you, you know, I can hear you in my head already, you know, because I listen to your books. Yeah. So it, it really is, you know, I think it’s a must for if you wanna do other things with the book as well.

Josh Bernoff (20:51): Yeah.

John Jantsch (20:52): Okay. We have exactly 30 seconds left. Let’s talk about promotion of the book . You know, I think a lot of writers, you know, write the book and go, okay, now how do I sell it? Promotion probably starts before that, doesn’t it?

Josh Bernoff (21:03): Yes. You need to plan the promotion. And the biggest mistake that authors make is to write the book and assume that people will find it, even if they don’t promote it. And I got a five step process positioning, what’s the question you answer? How are you gonna get reach? How are you gonna get people like the book to spread it? And how are you gonna get the timing focused? And right around the book launch, that’s P Q R S T, those are the five steps that I recommend people do to prepare for promotion in 30 seconds.

John Jantsch (21:32): , you know, and I was somewhat being facetious because I mean, I think a lot of people do realize that they think the hard part’s writing the book , you know, but you know, what you just outlined in 30 seconds really is an effective way to think about a book plan. Like you would’ve a marketing plan for anything, obviously. But really the best time to start is maybe before you even start writing the book, you know, start building that platform.

Josh Bernoff (21:53): Yeah. Well, people don’t realize, but in most book processes, there’s a period of three to six months when the book is in some sort of production and printing process, and you as the author, don’t have too much to do. That’s exactly when you work on the promotion planning, because the temptation is to sort of relax and say, oh, I’m done. And then the time comes to write and you’re like, oh, crap, I didn’t put anything in place.

John Jantsch (22:19): I’d tell you during Covid, it was 12 to 18 months for forcing some people to get to Yes, it’s true. Get the books out. And it’s like, well, I don’t even remember what I wrote . You know, how am I gonna promote it? Yeah. Well, Josh, it was, uh, great having you stop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. You wanna invite people to connect with you and obviously where they can pick up the book.

Josh Bernoff (22:37): Okay. So if people wanna reach me, you want to go to bernoff.com. That’s my website, B E R N O F F.com. I post a blog post there every single weekday, mostly about authors and their issues. And if people are interested in getting the new book, build a Better Business book, you can go to bernoff.com/books, or you can pick that up on Amazon or bookshop.org or wherever you’re used to shopping for books. And by the time this goes live, the audiobook will be available. It’s already available in print and as an ebook.

John Jantsch (23:11): Awesome. And you can tell how long somebody’s been online by the fact that they have their last name come as a website .

Josh Bernoff (23:17): I, I bought it from like a third cousin of mine in Chile , but that was in, that was a long time ago. Yeah.

John Jantsch (23:25): So I, I actually, when all my kids were born, I actually reserved the names, their names. You know, I, I don’t know if they’ve kept them or not, but yeah, you can tell how long somebody’s been online. All right, Josh, again, great having you stop by and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Josh Bernoff (23:41): All right. It’s been great to be here, and thanks for giving me the chance to speak with your

John Jantsch (23:44): Audience. Hey, and one final thing before you go. You know how I talk about marketing strategy, strategy before tactics? Well, sometimes it can be hard to understand where you stand in that, what needs to be done with regard to creating a marketing strategy. So we created a free tool for you. It’s called the Marketing Strategy Assessment. You can find it @marketingassessment.co, not.com, dot co. Check out our free marketing assessment and learn where you are with your strategy today. That’s just marketing assessment.co. I’d love to chat with you about the results that you get. Got.

John Jantsch (00:00): This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Nudge, hosted by Phil Agnew, and it’s brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. You ever noticed how the smallest changes can make the biggest impact on Nudge you learned simple evidence, back tips to help you kick bat habits, get a raise, and grow your business. In a recent episode, Phil tested a thousand dollars on some marketing principles, some work, some don’t. Uh, guest Nancy Har Hut, who’s been a guest of the show as well. And Phil put these principles to test in a set of real life experiments. You’ll learn what works and what doesn’t. Listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.

(00:52): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Mike Lenox. He is the Tayloe Murphy Professor of Business at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. He has served on the faculty at Duke and NYU and as a visiting professor at Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford. He holds a PhD from MIT in Technology Management and Policy. And we’re gonna talk about his new book Today Strategy in the Digital Age: Mastering Digital Transformation. So, Mike, that was a mouthful, but welcome to the show.

Mike Lenox (01:28): John. Thank you so much for having me.

John Jantsch (01:30): You spend a lot of time with textbooks. I think

Mike Lenox (01:32): , I do enjoy writing

John Jantsch (01:35): .

(01:36): So, uh, my first question is gonna sound like a silly question, but I think it’s, I think it’s legitimate based on all the conversations I have with people about strategy, um, and their, uh, confusion about what the term actually means. , uh, I thought I’d start there. Um, how do, how do you define strategy?

Mike Lenox (01:53): Oh, that’s an excellent question. You know, in our MBA classes, we always start with what, uh, we refer to as the strategist challenge. And so to me, the strategist challenge is about finding valuable positions at the intersection of three things. Uh, your values and mission as an organization, absolutely critical. That’s your north star, defining who you are and what you aspire to be, the opportunities that the market provides to you. So this is competition, it’s demand, it’s all those things that influence what is available to you. And then last but not least, your capabilities as an organization. And so the key for strategy is how do you identify and then achieve and protect those valuable competitive positions at the intersection of those three things.

John Jantsch (02:36): So it’s not really just a list of tactics, is that what you’re

Mike Lenox (02:39): Saying? Absolutely not, no. It’s about trying to figure out where to point, you know, where to point the ship.

John Jantsch (02:44): It’s kinda like how you’re gonna, you’re marketing the market, right? So again, in the title, uh, strategy in the digital age, how would you define the change or how somebody might look at digital strategy versus, I don’t know, regular strategy or ? Or has it really just become a, you know, such a significant component? It’s just part of the overall strategy.

Mike Lenox (03:10): I, I think that’s right. I mean, I think in many ways digital strategy is just strategy in the same way, digital marketing is really just marketing in this day and age. And I think one of the points, uh, that I make in the book is that the digital agents having impacts not only in those sectors that we might call technology sectors or technology companies, but it’s really pervasive. I am hard pressed to find an industry in a sector that is not being impacted by digital technologies. Now, one level strategy stays the same basis for kind of understanding markets and competition don’t fundamentally change just because we’re in this digital age. But there are certain ways in which the digital age is having maybe differential impacts than what we’ve seen in the past. And a lot of what the book is about is really trying to understand like, how fundamentally are these digital opportunities transforming those market opportunities?

John Jantsch (04:02): Yeah, and I, I, I have to admit, when I first saw the book and the title of the book, you know, in my mind, maybe it’s my own bias, you know, kinda leap to, oh, you know, we was talking about websites and social media, and, you know, all the digital stuff. But really as you started to allude to there, it’s really more about how digital technologies enable the creation of services and products and maybe an entire industries . So, so talk to me a little bit about, I mean, that’s a much bigger conversation, isn’t it?

Mike Lenox (04:30): Yeah. And the book, we, we talk about a number of kind of fundamental things that digitization is doing in a variety of industries. One, fundamentally changing the customer value proposition. Uh, now we find that you, you are constantly engaging your customers, collecting data, using that to refine the products and services that you’re offering. It has ways that fundamentally changes the operations and the ways you deliver value and creating opportunities to both increase value and simultaneously lower costs through various kind of efficiency opportunities. And then perhaps even more fundamental, we’re seeing things like what we call the de construction of the value chain. That what used to be more vertically integrated efforts by different companies are being picked apart by especially entrepreneurs coming in and taking various pieces of their value chain, again, leveraging digital. But really at the heart of it that, you know, we really kind of center most of the book on is this idea that data has really gained primacy. You know, people talk about data as the new oil in our economy here. And that the economics of data, especially the scalability of data and what that does for you, can really change again, the nature of competition within an industry.

John Jantsch (05:43): I’m gonna jump around a little bit here based since you opened that up. I mean, AI is essentially a technology that is massaging data . So, so what are some of the, let’s go on both sides of that. What are some of the opportunities, but then what are some of the threats?

Mike Lenox (05:59): Yeah, absolutely. Well, obviously generative AI in particular with ChatGPT is on everybody’s mind these days. But we should observe that AI is, it’s been around for a while. It has many different forms and is affecting many different things, including autonomy. It’s impacting, you know, the use of industrial processes, not just, you know, the fun, uh, language generators that we’ve been all playing with over the last few months here. I think it is quite disruptive and has a lot of potential in a lot of different directions. And again, I think it’s, you know, goes to maybe even the fundamental construction of some of our, some of our industries there. But it’s not just generative ai. You know, I point out blockchain is another one that gets a lot of excitement and buzz. If you listen to Mark Zuckerberg, the Metaverse is, you know, coming soon, the use of VR things like digital twins. There’s a whole host of kind of interesting applications and technologies that we’re seeing. And in many ways these are all kind of overlapping and intersecting in interesting ways that, again, forward thinking businesses are, are figuring out how to capitalize on.

John Jantsch (06:59): So, so the book does present a framework for somebody who is thinking, gosh, I need to get on board here. Talk to me a little bit about, you know, what would be a typical way, uh, that you would work with in an organization? Cuz I’m sure that, uh, I mean, there’s still people that cryptocurrency is like an unknown word to them, , but then there certainly are people that are as, you know, as the buzz around, say, ChatGPT comes, you know, there’s more and more people at least saying, I need to figure out what this is. How would you work with somebody to help them uncover where their opportunities might be or where they might actually be in real danger, Yeah. Of being disrupted.

Mike Lenox (07:35): Yeah. And I think, you know, uh, the one side, while I believe that we’re seeing disruption in many different ways, we also have to be careful of kind of a hype cycle, right? Yeah. That some of these technologies get ahead of themselves, now the world is ending to certain pundits, and then, you know, it never really comes forward. One of the things we talk about, or I talk about in the book is industry life cycles. You know, we have a long history of kind of studying how industry has evolved over time, and there’s patterns we can look at, uh, that help us understand when new technologies come about, how are they gonna play out. Um, so in the simplest case, you know, s curves, um, the simple idea that early in the stage of a technology, you might see a lot of investment, but not much improvement.

(08:16): But if it’s gonna be disruptive, you go through these exponential growth periods in which the technology, you know, really begins to improve and, and change the marketplace. And then eventually you get a kind of lessening of that impact as we kind of figure things out over time, that has huge impacts for, you know, entrepreneurial entry, how incumbent firms respond, being, uh, responsive to these kind of timing and trends. I, I think in this day and age, trying to always be on the cutting edge, know exactly what’s coming down the pipeline is a very hard task to do. And I think this is where the strategy piece comes in. I I always talk about, you know, strategy is never meant to be static. It’s not meant to be kind of set in stone and off you go. It’s a constant process of reflection where you have to be thinking about, all right, here’s the latest new thing, ChatGPT is out there, what are the impacts here? And to think through kind of the underlying economics of what is that gonna do to our market structure?

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(11:02): Ironically, you mentioned oil. I was going to, you, you were using it as a metaphor for data. Let’s take that industry on, you know, what’s the strategy for replacing an an old entrenched industry? I, I mean it’s, we’ve been talking about clean tech for a long time. Yeah. So, you know, what’s the approach for, and I know that you are passionate about climate change and have written, uh, some other works, uh, directly related to that. So what’s the strategy for, you know, that young startup to take on a really big entrenched industry that doesn’t want to go away?

Mike Lenox (11:36): Yeah, as you mentioned, this is another passion of mine. Another area, I’ve written some books, uh, and they do overlap. Actually. There are some things in advances of digital technology that could help us advance clean technology as well. You know, I think there’s a couple ways to answer your question. One, not to be too cute about it. What we often see when they see these massive disruptions and, and kind of major shifts in technology is often incumbent firms fail. They go out of business. And of course that’s not great advice to those incumbent firms. So what do you do? I think the key is trying to understand what capabilities you currently exist that you can transform to the new market opportunities that are emerging. Recognizing it’s really hard to just completely reinvent yourself. I run into a lot of companies who say, you know, they want to be the Google of X, you know, and they have this vision for who they’re gonna be.

(12:25): And my quick response is often Google’s gonna be the Google of X. They’re better positioned than you are to, you know, occupy that position. So while we call it, you know, starting where I began with the strategist challenge, the reason it’s a challenge is understanding that as the market shifts and those opportunities maybe moved from where they historically been, how do you evolve your capabilities? And I say evolve because again, you can’t just reinvent wholesale typically to where the market goes. So using your example for oil, I’m doubtful that the oil companies and fossil fuel companies will transform into clean energy companies just simply because they’re just radically different. They’re not even different technology, they’re different marketplaces in many cases here, but there are opportunities for them and maybe in some cases leveraging digital technology to improve their operations. Sure. Do better at exploration and extraction, you know, increase efficiencies, maybe reduce some of their direct environmental impact they have from, uh, from extracting fossil fuels. So again, there’s a role for digital, there’s a role for even clean with those companies, but I don’t expect them to all become digitally, you know, AI companies tomorrow for any, you know, any reason.

John Jantsch (13:34): But at some point, you know, a lot of entrenched industries, you know, hang on because it’s so expensive to change or because they have to, you know, gut the cash cow in order to change, but at some point, you know, they get, they get replaced. So, you know, how does a, and again, I’m not dreaming the oil companies are going away anytime soon, but you know, how does a company that might example I love to use is the classified for newspapers? You know, they, that was the cash cow for newspapers. Yeah. The classified ads. Right. And they closed their eyes to Craigslist and, you know, that business went away and where they could have owned it, you know, they could have, you know, they could have transformed at a moment, but it would’ve literally meant throwing money out the window. Yeah. Which, you know, nobody had the appetite to do. So how does a company who sees maybe sees this coming, you know, how do they, you know, brace for the impact that’s not gonna be that positive.

Mike Lenox (14:28): Yeah. And I think this, you know, problems of incumbency, if you will, are very common, right? And I have so many examples that I share with companies that I work with of, of the failed attempts. And I’m always asked the question of where are the successes? And, and in fact, they’re few and far between. They are harder to find those companies who can radically transform themselves in the face of some of these trends that we’re seeing. Yeah. I go back to again, this notion that you have to build your strategy off of at least some elements of your current capabilities. Mm-hmm. , what can you bring to the marketplace that provides value in this digitally transforming world? The other thing the book spends a lot of time on, and I have different frameworks that help, uh, businesses think through, gets back to this, where is the position that you can best occupy and, and appropriate some value for your, you know, shareholders and for your stakeholders in this evolving, um, marketplace here?

(15:21): And it might be somewhat different than where you’ve occupied in the past. It might not be exactly how you envisioned yourself to start off with, just give you two examples of companies who used to play in the smartphone market. Blackberry and Qualcomm, , both of them made different decisions, right? One, Qualcomm moved upstream and became more of an innovator with patents and the like, that provide some of the core technology for, you know, your smartphones and the like. And then Blackberry recognizing that their old handset model wasn’t going to work, moved into digital security, cybersecurity protection, and the like. So again, it was kind of a reflection that the marketplace was changing. They needed to shift their capabilities to a kind of a new position, a new part of the value chain where they could actually continue to, uh, survive and thrive.

John Jantsch (16:08): So I’m with you. I think the media, particularly new technologies, likes to, you know, kind of say, oh, here’s the scariest scenario. But there really are, I mean, there are some social implications, some policy, some governing, you know, some regulations, antitrust, um, you know, when you start talking about the Googles and the Metas of the world, um, you know, where does that fit into, you know, the sort of enthusiastic rush to all things digital?

Mike Lenox (16:36): Yeah, I, we, I have a whole chapter basically on these kind of broader societal issues with tech. And I think from a company standpoint, my main point is you need to be thoughtful and proactive about this. You know, going back to data and the primacy of data mm-hmm. , you know, what do you feel comfortable and not comfortable doing with user data, critical question that every company needs to address, uh, when it comes to ai, what types of decisions are you willing to an essence seed to the ai? And where do you feel that’s not appropriate? Um, one of the things I talk about in the book that I’m borrowing from colleagues of mine at the University of Toronto is this idea that what AI does for you at the end of the day is give you really good predictions, right? But predictions are only half of what you need. You also need judgment on top of that. And so to the extent that AI is lowering the cost of the prediction, a complimentary like judgment actually becomes even more valuable in that world. And so companies really need to be thoughtful about, again, what do they feel comfortable with and where are their opportunities for them to kind of layer on that higher order judgment to what these machines in essence can do for you.

John Jantsch (17:47): Yeah. I’ve actually, I’ve late been, I don’t, at least the technology I’m working with, I don’t feel like it’s artificial intelligence. I kind of switch it around and say it’s ia, it’s informed automation, right? Is is kind of what I feel like it, at least for our uses in the marketing industry currently. Give me, I, and you already kind of alluded to the fact that this was a hard one to, to do, but I I was gonna ask you for some examples of companies that you think are at least doing, maybe they haven’t, like hit some big home run, you know, here, but, or at least approaching the thoughtfulness of this in, in a way that you think is appropriate.

Mike Lenox (18:24): Well, I’ll give you a historical example that has arguably transformed themselves two, maybe three times as someone like ibm, right? You know, who, who, who went from originally making business machines to making computers, to them being more of a software and services company who tried to embrace AI and the, like

John Jantsch (18:42): Early on with Watson really was kind of one of the original, uh, models, wasn’t it? Yeah. Yeah,

Mike Lenox (18:48): Yeah. Exactly. And we can debate whether they’re, you know, well positioned now moving forward, right? Uh, but again, they’ve done a fairly good job kind of repositioning themselves, uh, over the years. Yeah.

John Jantsch (18:58): Awesome. Well, Mike, I appreciate you showing up and spending a little time, uh, uh, with my listeners on the Duct Tape Marketing podcast. You wanna tell people where certainly they can get a copy of strategy in the digital age or connect with you in any way that you wanna invite them.

Mike Lenox (19:12): Yeah, absolutely. Of course, you can get it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble or any really online, uh, retailers. The book is coming out from Stanford University Press, uh, so you can of course look forward from them as well. Uh, and then on a personal note, I’m, I’m easy to reach at just simply michaellenox.com, uh, just one n in Lenox there. Uh, and, and that’s another way you can engage and, and connect with me.

John Jantsch (19:33): Awesome. Well, again, thanks for taking a little time out of your day and, uh, hopefully we’ll run it into you one of these days out there on the road.

Mike Lenox (19:39): Well, thank you so much for having me, John.

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(01:04): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Mary Sheehan. She’s an accomplished product marketing leader with deep experience held marketing leadership roles at Adobe, Google, Google, you know who I’m talking about, and many startups. She is also the co-creator of a new course with Reforge and hosts, the popular Women in Product Marketing podcast. And we’re gonna talk about her new book today, the Pocket Guide to Product Launches: Get Confident, Go to Market and Win. So Mary, welcome to the show.

Mary Sheehan (01:40): Thanks, John. So good to be here.

John Jantsch (01:42): So let’s give the listeners a little bit of context for why you’re qualified to write a book about product launches. Tell me a little bit about your product launch history, maybe like your greatest hit or anything you wanna share.

Mary Sheehan (01:54): Absolutely. Yeah, that’s a great question. So I have done product marketing, which is really known for product launches for about 15 years now. Run over 250 launches and I’ve done product launches at companies like Google and Adobe, and several startups that you mentioned, as well as in a lot of consulting for series A and series B companies. So yeah, I’ve launched a lot of advertising technology products in my day and recently I joined the Adobe Lightroom product marketing team leading that up. And we just had a big launch for a product called Dinos with that. So yes, I’ve done a lot of launches in the B2B and consumer space, so thought I’d write a book, .

John Jantsch (02:36): Okay, so awesome. So let’s start off on the negative. Where do people get this wrong?

Mary Sheehan (02:40): ? Oh boy. Yeah, well launches, there is a whole section on where you can go wrong and what you can do about it, right? But I think the biggest challenge is actually getting the timing right. So especially when you’re working at a tech company, often there are cultural differences between the product and edge team and the marketing team. And in order to get those humming together in perfect alignment, it’s quite an undertaking. So I think that is a really hard part about just figuring out when you’re gonna launch, sticking to the timeline so you can make the biggest impact. That’s what I see as a big challenge.

John Jantsch (03:15): Who knew? Who knew timing was a cultural issue? . So we’ll revisit that again. So what, I guess why, you know, what compelled you other than you’ve got this deep experience and you wanted to share it. I mean, is there something that wasn’t being said in the product launch space that you really wanted to get into this book?

Mary Sheehan (03:36): Yeah, so at the time when I started writing this, I really felt like product marketing was kind of this learn on the job type type of mentality. There wasn’t a lot of content out there about product marketing. So after leading a team for the very first time, I realized, wow, if they didn’t have a Mary to share this experience, they would’ve been creating things, you know, from scratch, really reinventing the wheel. So I saw a real market need that, you know, hey, people are trying to run their first product launch, whether you’re a product marketer, a product manager, or founder of a small business, why not just make it easy and give you the templates and everything to get started? And so the idea of this book is really kind of modeled after a Harvard Business Review guide where you can just take it in a weekend or in a few hours and also have a bunch of templates so you can get started. I just felt really felt like with a, with the right tools and frameworks, you can do this and it can be a lot easier than just trying to figure it out on your own.

John Jantsch (04:33): So when people think products, they think, you know, physical box, you know, prototype. But what about information products? I mean a lot of people launch things that are not, you know, tangible physical things. I mean, would the framework, does the framework still apply kind of to any type of launch?

Mary Sheehan (04:50): It applies to any type of launch, yes. And a lot of my experience is not with the, you know, not with something you can hold in your hand. It’s a technology that you’re reading about. Yeah. Or even something like a white paper or an ebook. So this can really work for anything that you are launching.

John Jantsch (05:10): Why don’t we start with, and we can maybe get into a couple of different, but kind of quickly, like what are the sections, you know, what are the steps involved in? It’s like first you do this, then you do this, kind of maybe give us the outline.

Mary Sheehan (05:22): Yeah, absolutely. So the first thing that I like to do is just get the plan. You know, get everything in order, you know, look at the checklist, look at the things that you need to accomplish. And the first piece of that plan to really fill in is around strategic readiness. So no matter what your product is, you really need to understand who you are launching to, what your target market really is, and really understand that audience really well. You need to align the team that’s helping you. Maybe it’s just you, but aligning anyone that’s gonna help you with any content creation and set some goals. You know, I really think that without goal setting, you’re really not, what’s the point of what you’re doing and what’s the point of what you’re launching? So after that, creating a plan and strategic readiness section, it’s about thinking about how you are actually going to bring this to market with the positioning and messaging as well as what we call the channels that you are going to be marketing to and making sure that really aligns back to your customers, your target customers. And then finally just executing it, getting that timing right and getting that message really out there.

John Jantsch (06:24): So maybe this, maybe you’re gonna say, well that’s not really a part of the launch, but what about actually getting the product right? , which is probably goes before the launching, but certainly has implications, right, ?

Mary Sheehan (06:38): Yeah, absolutely. So no, I do think in the role of product marketing, it’s really important to make sure that you have the right product. And actually one of the questions I ask up front in the book is, should you be launching this? Are you ready? Do you solve a problem? What is your financial target and model for this? So I do think that there is, you know, a huge effort that goes into the beginning of this, whether, and sometimes launching is actually about launching, so you can test and get that feedback. So you might launch something as an alpha or an mvp, minimum viable product. So you can really understand that.

John Jantsch (07:14): Yeah, so I, I have launched many products myself, they’ve all been information products, courses, things like that. Cool. And I’ve had some real winners and some real losers. And one of the things years ago I learned that if I actually developed my product with my customers, like do you really want this? Does this make sense? , does this solve a problem? What, you know, what role does a customer, you know, existing customer base play? I mean, how involved should they be in just what you said? Is there really in for this?

Mary Sheehan (07:45): Oh, 100% agree with that. And I, if I look back on any of my launch fails, it’s totally been that we’ve either missed the mark on their customer or we moved so fast that we just left them in the dust and didn’t think about it. So I totally agree with that. And so I do think that there should be a really considerable effort in understanding if this product has product market fit. And you do that by talking to customers, by understanding, you know, if this is something that they would actually buy and use, getting them to really invest in user testing. You know, is this something, you know, what is it about the experience that you’re bringing them in on? Is there anything confusing about it? So yeah, one chapter is actually all about getting to know your customer and scrappy ways that you can research and connect with them so you can make sure that you’re not only launching the right product, but talking about it in the right way too.

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(09:57): So one of the dangers in that sometimes is they don’t know, you know, what their prob, you know how to that this is gonna solve a problem or what their problem actually is. You know, the cliche comment, you know, Henry Ford said, if I ask people what they wanted, they said a faster horse. So , how do you know, how do you bring innovative things to market that people don’t know they need yet?

Mary Sheehan (10:20): Yeah, that’s such a good question and I think that we’re coming up against this really with Gen AI. You know, it’s so many things that are out here that weren’t here six months ago. Like I would never have known I needed text to edit to get these beautiful images. So I think prototyping in kind of early phases is so important. And what I think is even more important though, is understanding what their challenges are, right? And so they might not be able to articulate to you what they want in terms of a new product, but they can tell you what their pain points are. So you can watch their user workflows, you can actually go, you know, see them where they are and see, you know, whatever type of product it is, if it’s at the consumer space, go to their house, see how they’re actually doing different things, what they’re eating, how they’re cooking, or you know, in the tech space, how they’re using their technology. Are they using it on their phone? Are they using it on their desktop? So understanding their challenges I think can be a way better way to actually say, okay, this is a need. They don’t know what will fix this necessarily or they’re doing this crazy work around. But we do understand that’s a core challenge that we can solve.

John Jantsch (11:20): Yeah, I, I love to tell people nobody wants what we sell. They want the problem solved. . Exactly. If those, if you could connect those two, they’re great, but otherwise, you know, they don’t want it. What if I get it wrong? Unfortunately, I can’t think of a great example right now. Maybe you can in your history, but of people that went out and said, here it is, blah, blah, blah, and the market said, well I don’t get it, or that’s, I don’t need that, but I need this. And they pivot. So with the actual product, I mean, any thoughts on, you know, how to, you know, to maybe even build that in like that could be a possibility. Know how would you address that?

Mary Sheehan (11:55): Yeah, oh, and I always say, if you haven’t had a major launch fail, you probably haven’t been doing it long enough , so even right, right. Best plans you’re gonna, that’s gonna happen. So I would say fail fast. I mean, admit it, you know, and I think what, this is what’s so important, like I mentioned about goal setting, having those goals and starting to track that so you’re not just, you know, launching it and saying, okay, great pop the champagne, we’re done here. Really tracking and seeing if you’re hitting those metrics and if you’re not, what is going wrong? And really trying to identify that so quickly. So one, one launch fail example I had was, um, we went to market with a product, had tested it with this user group. It was amazing feedback. And when we went to market, we actually realized no one was buying it because we’d only been talking to the users, not the decision maker. And it did not fit into the decision maker’s stack at all. So, you know, it took us a little bit of time to figure that out. But once we did, we basically pulled it and decided we needed to go a totally different track and it morphed into something else that, you know, our actual buyer would purchase as part of their marketing set. Yeah. So a admit it, move on, figure out how to fix it, and sometimes that’s maybe repositioning or you know, it could be in any number of things that you need to fix.

John Jantsch (13:09): Yeah. And one of the things you, and this is probably particularly true of smaller organizations, you know, it’s a lot of times I think larger organizations have their goals all mapped out and they have like , you know, what’s next and what’s next. But I think the point you make there is launch is just the beginning in some ways and not the end, but it sort of implies that. But the, you know, some of the biggest gains that I’ve experienced is to actually pay attention to not only who is buying, but how they were using it and then what they needed next. And it really, you know, and of course I’d already sold to them, so selling them more was gonna be even easier. So, you know, you kind of alluded to that, but it’s not just metrics of like, is this selling or not? It’s how do you build onto it?

Mary Sheehan (13:53): Yeah, absolutely. I think tracking sentiment, how they’re using it, what they, you can improve on, how you can iterate from here is great to be able to kind of map that in as part of your process. Yeah, I kind of think about the product launch process. It’s on the cover of my book, it’s a mountain , the at the peak is the launch, but on the other side you’re descending down that mountain, but there’s still a lot of work to be done and a lot of things to really figure out until you, you maybe find that idea for the next launch.

John Jantsch (14:19): Well, and to carry that metaphor a little farther, I live in the mountains and you know, one of the things that happens when you climb, a lot of times you’re like, oh, there’s the top. And then you get close and it’s like, oh, that was a false peak , there’s a much higher climb, you know, to continue. And I think a l I, that’s how I use that metaphor all the time for business. Cuz you know, j just when you think you’ve made, it’s like, oh no, there’s, you know, there’s the next peak. Yeah. Or the real peak.

Mary Sheehan (14:42): Yes. My wallpaper here shows that as .

John Jantsch (14:45): Yeah. So, so you said that this was in some ways the, when I asked you about how, you know how to get this wrong, you said timing and team and you have a whole section on that, although it’s the last section, but talk a little bit about the timing aspect and what you mean by that. Because it’s not just like, oh, fourth quarter is the best time to launch. I mean it’s more complex than that, right?

Mary Sheehan (15:10): Yeah, definitely. So yeah, one aspect of it, of course is like what is the best time to launch seasonality wise or when, not in the middle of summer where everyone’s on vacation and won’t hear, you know, anything about this. But that’s one aspect of it. But the more important aspect of it is product readiness and marketing and aligning that. So sometimes, you know, a tech company’s product managers and engineering teams are used to just shipping things whenever it’s ready. But when you partner really closely with marketing, it becomes a conversation about making sure that you’re amplifying all of your resources together at the same time to make that big splash. So that might include having new advertising creatives, a whole new website, refresh events, you know, all these kind of things that if you partner together really well. So that means that the product can’t go early, which happens a lot and it also can’t go late or otherwise you don’t have anything to talk about at the big event. So actually

John Jantsch (16:03): Two weeks after the trade show, right? Yeah. .

Mary Sheehan (16:06): Yeah. Not gonna be, yeah, if you’re launching at CS and you don’t have anything to launch with, that’s not gonna apply. So actually connecting those dots is pretty complicated and making sure that you have milestones along the way and really tight team communication is a way that I found that has made it more successful.

John Jantsch (16:23): So in larger organizations like Google or Adobe, I mean, is there a head of the product launch that is really trying to bring all of those together?

Mary Sheehan (16:31): I think at any size company there should be a point person. So whether it’s the product marketer or the product manager or even the founder, if it’s, you know, if you’re a small team, I think that there should be one person that’s sort of manning the entire end-to-end. But obviously there’s so many partners, you know, depending on the complexity of the launch that help and kind of assist. But I’ve always found one point person to be best.

John Jantsch (16:55): So do product people hate marketing people? Is that what you’re saying?

Mary Sheehan (16:58): No, I think that you can, to be best friends, I think sometimes you walk in the door and product people are like, who’s this marketing person? But I think showing that you have, you’re trying to help each other, you’re trying to actually work towards the same goals. And that’s how, that’s, you know, this podcast could be about making product managers your best friends. , that’s my goal too. .

John Jantsch (17:20): So we have focused a little bit on larger organizations. A lot of listeners to this show are small business owners, founders, maybe solopreneurs in some cases. How would this, how would you suggest that this book applies to them?

Mary Sheehan (17:35): Yeah, absolutely. And I have several people that have reached out to me that have small businesses that have said that this has really helped them. And I think that, you know, at the heart of it, it’s going to be the same thing. You’re going to have a plan, you’re gonna try to understand who your customer is in, you know, deepest way as possible, and then you’re gonna execute on that plan. So what this actually provides is a way of thinking about that and a way of constructing a framework to input all the things that you know about your audience, where you can reach them and how to do it in the most cost effective way. So it’s really about just thinking, hey, maybe you’re not gonna do a huge trade show event, right? But maybe you’re gonna make flyers or maybe you’re gonna have a smaller event where you have a booth or maybe you’re gonna go do, you know, a big launch at grocery stores if you’re selling cpg. Good. So depending on, you know, what type of product it is, just, you know, really thinking about that end-to-end attorney for your customer and where it makes sense.

John Jantsch (18:30): You know, in, in a lot of ways, as I listen to you explain that, I mean, you really could take this framework and apply it to some sort of internal initiative too, right? I mean, let’s say we’re going to like switch from, I don’t know, one CRM to another or something like that. I’m, I mean, you still want to have a plan, you still want to get the buy-in from the people that are gonna use it. , you still wanna get feedback. I mean it really is, we’re not, I mean I think it’s more universal than just a product launch, so to speak.

Mary Sheehan (18:57): I totally agree. And sometimes when I’m doing bigger projects at work, if I’m like, you know what this is, I need to just think about this as a launch and it kinda all makes sense. So

John Jantsch (19:06): Yeah, and it’s kinda like journey mapping almost. It’s like what are all the, you know, stages, you know, what are people feeling at this stage, what they need to hear, you know, to go to this next stage. So it, I think there’s a lot of applications just in a, as a general business framework.

Mary Sheehan (19:19): Absolutely.

John Jantsch (19:21): So you may have already answered this, but I like to leave people with, you know, what’s the hardest part about launching a product?

Mary Sheehan (19:29): So I think the hardest part about launching is nailing the timing and nailing the customer message. And so I think that, you know, putting some thought into both of those, you will be a lot better suited to launch than you’re just winging it.

John Jantsch (19:46): Yeah. Well Mary, I wanna thank you for stopping by the Duct Tape Marketing podcast. Where do you wanna invite people to connect with you? Certainly to pick up the pocket guide to product launches.

Mary Sheehan (19:56): Thank you. Yeah, you can find me on Twitter @marysheehanpmm or on LinkedIn. And the book is called A Pocket Guide to Product Launches. It’s available anywhere you buy books, Amazon, particularly . And I also have a podcast too, like you mentioned called Women in Product Marketing, if you’re interested in hearing more.

John Jantsch (20:15): And your current work is really around consulting with folks on product launches. Is that,

Mary Sheehan (20:21): Yeah, so currently I’m working full-time at Adobe and so I’m running product on

John Jantsch (20:25): Oh you still,

Mary Sheehan (20:26): Okay. Yeah. And the, I have taken a little bit of a backseat of consulting nowadays, but more, you know, happy to have a conversation with anyone that’s interested.

John Jantsch (20:35): Okay, well what’s the top secret not yet announced except for on this show product coming from Adobe.

Mary Sheehan (20:42): I can’t say a word John, but look out , there’s some great things coming. ,

John Jantsch (20:47): Awesome. Buy Adobe stock. That’s my advice. So, so thanks again for taking a few moments to stop by the podcast and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there as soon on the road.

Mary Sheehan (20:56): Sounds great, Sean, thanks so much.

John Jantsch (20:57): Hey, and one final thing before you go. You know how I talk about marketing strategy, strategy before tactics? Well, sometimes it can be hard to understand where you stand in that, what needs to be done with regard to creating a marketing strategy. So we created a free tool for you. It’s called the Marketing Strategy Assessment. You can find it @marketingassessment.co, not.com, dot co. Check out our free marketing assessment and learn where you are with your strategy today. That’s just marketing assessment.co. I’d love to chat with you about the results that you get.

John Jantsch (00:00): This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Nudge, hosted by Phil Agnew, and it’s brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. You ever noticed how the smallest changes can make the biggest impact on Nudge you learned simple evidence, back tips to help you kick bat habits, get a raise, and grow your business. In a recent episode, Phil tested a thousand dollars on some marketing principles, some work, some don’t. Uh, guest Nancy Har Hut, who’s been a guest of the show as well. And Phil put these principles to test in a set of real life experiments. You’ll learn what works and what doesn’t. Listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.

(00:52): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Kate Volman. She’s the CEO of Floyd Coaching. With over 20 years of experience in developing and leading life-changing programs for entrepreneurs and leaders, she has a passion for helping people grow. And today we’re gonna talk about her new book Do What You Love: A Guide to Living Your Creative Life Without Leaving Your Job. So Kate, welcome to the show.

Kate Volman (01:22): Thank you so much for having me, John. Such a pleasure to be here.

John Jantsch (01:26): So I wanna start with what I see as a bit of a twist. I think the Do What You Love mantra has certainly been out there for quite some time, but this idea of l without leaving your job, you know, I think most books are like, no, go for it. Like , you know, you can do this. And so, so talk to me a little bit about why you built that caveat, if you will, into this book.

Kate Volman (01:48): Yeah, so it’s so funny that is your first question because I spent so much time thinking about this book and how is it different than all these other books that are basically saying, go out and live your dreams and do your thing . And what I’ve discovered over the many years that I’ve had in coaching so many people, and obviously in the work that I get to do at Floyd Coaching, so many of the clients that we have, they have a full-time role. And when we are coaching them, I un what we get, what uncover what is uncovered is they are unsatisfied for a number of different reasons. They think it’s work. They think that they need to kind of cha change their entire life and go do something completely different. When really when we dig deep, it’s like they’ve given up playing the guitar, they used to sing, they love to dance, they wanna create videos, maybe they wanna start a blog or a side hustle, and they feel as though they, it is all or nothing. They, they either have to leave their job and figure it out, or they have to stay there and be miserable. No, you get to live your creative life and do, and pursue your creative passions and stay in a role if should you choose to.

John Jantsch (02:56): You know, it’s interesting, I could see a lot, I could see a, of employers, I think this mindset’s changing, but certainly a lot of employers that would say, no, I want, you know, I want, I want you all in, you know, to your job that this is like, this is your, you know, everything, your growth, all of your extra reading, everything should be , you know, focused here. And you could make a case for saying, I, I would guess if somebody, you know, for a lot of people jobs, I got bills to pay and I, you know, I’m trying to, you know, raise my children and send them to college. So having actually that creative outlet in some ways I would suggest to employers might actually make for a better employee if they actually encouraged it. Absolutely.

Kate Volman (03:34): Right. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I mean, that’s so much of what I talk about in the book is when we, if we’re, if that’s all we’re focused on is busy, yeah. And we’re sometimes the best ideas come from when we’re out in the garden or we’re taking a walk. There’s so much data and research that shows we have to get out of our work environment sometimes. And it’s those things that bring you so much joy. And what’s so beautiful is when you start to pursue your creativity and some of those passion projects, all of you become more engaged. You become more engaged in your personal life, which then in turn you become more engaged in your professional life. So you automatically not only are becoming a better team member, you’re becoming a better parent and spouse, significant other friend, coworker, teammate, all of these things simply because you’re getting so much energy out of those creative pursuits. And it’s just a beautiful thing to watch. I mean, Matthew Kelly wrote the Dream Manager, and that’s the basic concept of the book. Your organization can only be the best version of itself to the extent that your people are becoming better versions of themselves. And when we are encouraging our team members to explore their creative passions, all of that stuff is gonna be infused into the other areas of their lives, including their business. Yeah.

John Jantsch (04:48): And I think sometimes personal development is missing in a lot of, you know, certainly in job descriptions, but in actually a lot of workplaces. You know, one of the things that I think is great about being an entrepreneur, owning your own business, I think it’s probably the greatest personal development program ever created . I mean, because you have to evolve as a person or you’re gonna die, you know, as an entrepreneur. And that’s not necessarily true. You know, when here’s your paycheck, you know, show up nine to five. So I think a lot of people that are in careers, you know, their personal development sometimes suffers unless they’re in a workplace with a culture that really develops it.

Kate Volman (05:22): Yeah, I think it’s important as leaders, I mean, as leaders, our number one role is to help our people grow. And how do you do that? Of course, you want them to get better in their role, and you wanna provide that kind of development and training so that they get better in the role that they’re in and the tasks they need to do, but then also encouraging them to explore those other passions, those other things that really light them up and really bring joy to their life. Yeah.

John Jantsch (05:45): We, I didn’t want to, I wasn’t gonna spend this much time on this, but I think it’s a fascinating conversation. I mean, do you think that actually as a leader of a team or of an organization that you really should be trying to like find out what are those passions and, you know, is there a way that we could actually participate in you, you know, realizing some of those, I mean, is that crossing the line or is that something that you think would be a healthy, you know, business relationship?

Kate Volman (06:08): Oh my gosh, absolutely. Oh yes. Those are conversations that should be had all the time. So one of the things that I think is so beautiful, so I run, uh, Floyd Coaching, which was founded by Matthew Kelly, who again wrote the Dream Manager. And in that, in that the whole idea of asking your team members about their dreams, right? Right. Like, what are the dreams that you have for your life? And you start to see them become more engaged. And then what’s so great is, as a leader, when you know what their dreams are, you’re getting to know them a little bit more. You get to know their mindset, and you get to encourage them to pursue those dreams. And when they do that, think about the relationship that you’re building with that person, right? Oh, John cares about me as a human being, not just that I come into work and do this job.

(06:50): And in the book he shares the 12 areas of dreams. We have dreams in all areas, professional, phy, physical material, psychological character, and we have creative dreams, and we lose sight of those. It’s kind of easy in business, right? We have professional dreams, we wanna get promoted, and we have financial dreams, and we all know about those. And so those are ones that we think about our material dreams. Those are ones kind of in our face all the time. But when we think about these other areas, like our character dreams, your legacy dreams, your creative dreams, and the creative one, I have to say, most of our clients have such a hard time putting the, those, filling that box up, because we’ve stopped feeling like we can be creative. And I believe that we are all artists, like you are the artist of your life. And so, yes, as a leader, we need to know what our people care about. When we know what our people care about, we can lead them better. We can coach them better. We know what drives them, we know what’s motivated, what’s motivating them, and we can build better relationships with not only that person, but within the entire team.

John Jantsch (07:53): Yeah. I, I suspect part of what holds people back is the very narrow definition of creativity. Meaning I have to have a paintbrush in my hand, you know? Yes. Or I’m not, you know, creating art. I mean, I think most people, if they really reflect on what their day looks like, they are creatively making decisions all day long. , you know, and I think that’s expanding that, you know, I think helps people. The book is essentially outlined or set up around seven myths that you must hear from time to time when you encourage people to, you know, to follow this dream. And so let’s just kind of, we don’t have to cover ’em all, maybe we will see how far we get, but obviously by the book, you get the full display of the myth. But let’s just, I’ll just kind of tee it up and you kind of talk about how this shows up in some of the folks that you work with. So the first one is people just feel like, I got a job, I got, you know, that’s crazy. It’s not possible . So, you know, how do you bat that myth down?

Kate Volman (08:46): Yeah, I mean, myth number one is not possible. I mean, we think about, we go through life, and especially as we get older and things get a little more challenging, we have things that get thrown in our direction, right? We, it used to be more carefree living, and now we have kids and bills and all the things that we need to do. And so we actually have this mindset sometimes of it’s not possible. Like, it’s not possible for me to make money and go to and have a job and do these things and also pursue my creativity. Like, it just, it’s not possible. If we don’t believe it’s possible, then we’re not gonna be encouraged to take any steps towards making it happen.

John Jantsch (09:22): All right. Number two, I’m gonna debate a little bit. You’re not good enough, , your dream. My dream is to be a left-handed major league pitcher. And first off, I’m not left-handed. And secondly, you know, my fast ball is very hittable, so I just don’t know. But again, I’ll tee that one up. You’re not good enough,

Kate Volman (09:41): , okay? So you’re not good enough. Now, this is in the sense of pursuing your passions, right? So maybe you’re not good enough to become the NBA player that you want to become, but you are good enough to play basketball to go out with your friends, to go hang out, to get in the league, to, you know, to, and that if you really love something so much, you’re doing it for fun, you’re doing it for the joy of it, right? Yeah. So, so that myth is really around, I see so many people stop themselves from starting the podcast or writing the book because they think, oh, my ideas don’t matter, I’m not good enough yet, they’re waiting for the right, they’re waiting for the time where they’re feeling like, yep, here I am, I have everything in place, and I am enough. When really you’re enough exactly as you are right now, and whatever those creative pursuits are that you’re interested in going after, hey, go for it. You’re not gonna be like, you’re not gonna have a John Jan podcast where it’s, you know, he’s done so many and he is, and he’s at a very different level. But you’re good enough to start your own podcast right now.

John Jantsch (10:45): Yeah, I mean, there’s a whole lot of teachings mo mostly Eastern teachings, about how valuable it is to actually be a beginner at something and to, you know, to experience the fact that you’re not good at something is because you will eventually get there. Cuz you know, this whole talk about do what you love and the money will follow, you know, all of that. I think that there’s a little bit of misleading information in that sometimes there has to be a demand for what you love and there, you know, things like that. But I also think that when people get good at stuff, like, there’s things that I didn’t love in the beginning that I love now, because I’m kind of good at ’em. And, you know, had I just said, oh, I’m not gonna be a writer, or I’m not gonna be a speaker, you know, because I’m not good at ’em, you, you know, or because I don’t really think I love it, you know, now, and obviously those have been, you know, huge parts of my business and my growth.

Kate Volman (11:34): Yeah, I mean, I, and look, the, the, it’s part of what the myth is, right? I mean, one of the, well, myth number four is you need a reason. We’re kind of skipping, we skipped over myth number three, but you need a reason. And one of the reasons why I put this one in there is because of what you just said, which is, oh, do what you love and the money will follow. So that’s not the book’s about, we’re not talking about like making this your career. We’re talking about you. You don’t need a reason to pursue your creativity. If you love to write, I love, I started writing and or writing poetry. I never was really into poetry. Do I wanna be a poet for a living? No, but you never know if I start writing poetry now, what’s, what is my poetry gonna look like 10 years from now if I practice it every day simply for the joy of it?

(12:19): Now, how does it make me a better leader? Makes me a better leader? Because poetry is so interesting. You have to find things that are fascinating to put ideas together and make something work. And that’s what you do in business. It also helps in my writing, this helped me write the book studying poetry and what that was like. And I wanted it to feel like a very good flow moving book, which is a lot of what poetry is. And so this is why it’s not about the money. Now, obviously, if somebody wants to start a podcast and make money, for sure, be more strategic about it. But we’re talking about two different things. Yep. This is why I have that caveat of, without leaving your job, do you, if you want to one day leave your job, the myths in this book will still help you with that goal down the line. But you know, it’s really giving people permission to explore their creativity a little bit more than they are used to.

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(14:59): Well, and I wonder how many people that started like that, oh, I’m not gonna be a poet, or I’m not gonna write music, or, you know, whatever it is. And then all of a sudden, like three years later, th they’re rocking it. It is like that’s what they decided they were meant to do. And now they’ve actually, you know, instead of putting it off because they needed a reason, , they just did it. And who knows? It turned into something that there wasn’t the intention, but it turned into something. So we did skip over. You need permission. And I think that that’s an interesting one because there’s a lot of people we think need, we need permission from. I mean, you think about all of our roles and responsibilities in life and a lot of, you know, right or wrong, we probably assign the need for permission to all of those responsibilities that we have.

Kate Volman (15:47): Yeah. We feel like it’s almost like we, we wanna get picked, right? Like we want somebody to reach out to us and say, Hey, you should start a podcast, or you should go pursue that creative project. Or you should go try out for the play when no, you, we need to give ourselves permission cause nobody else is gonna do that for us, right? Like, we have to give ourselves permission to start creating. And then what you just said is when you start putting yourself out there and when you start giving yourself that permission, that’s when other people might find you. They might wanna collaborate with you, they might find your content and really find it interesting and want to do something with you. But when we’re waiting for permission, we’re gonna be waiting a long time. If we’re waiting for somebody to call us up and say, Hey here, do the thing you keep saying you want to do

John Jantsch (16:34): Well. And sadly, you know, as part of the human condition, there are people out there that maybe don’t want us to grow that way or to That’s right. Succeed that way. And so, you know, sometimes you’ve gotta just like bust through that too. There’s not enough time. I mean, I’m sure that one probably oughta be number one, probably to tell you true because I’m sure a lot of people would say that now a lot of those same people fill their lives up with time wasting. But, and I’m sure that’s part of your myth busting, but what do you tell people when they say, I got this and I got that. I don’t have time.

Kate Volman (17:04): Yeah, I mean, you hit the nail on the head. It’s, I used to run this workshop of called Inspired Action and uh, it was a group, it was a mastermind group, it was specifically for women, eight to 10 women. And this one was so fun cuz we, this section, we, we would always have a good laugh because what did we do? I had them do this exercise where they had time wasters and time enhancers, right? Like we both know both of those different things in our lives. And those time wasters are the things that have just over the years gotten even harder to get over, which cuz of social media, we scroll on social media, we do online shopping for things we don’t need. We do all of these things that waste so much of our time when really we should be investing in our time differently.

(17:47): And so I always find it so fascinating how we all say we need more time. Yet when something is truly important to you, you figure out how to make it work. You figure out how you’re gonna squeeze in five minutes here, 10 minutes there. And that’s another piece is I think that oftentimes people say people, especially when they talk about writing a book, they think, oh, I need 10 hours a day I need, or four hours or two hours a day. Yeah, no, you can literally, Hey, if you have 10 minutes, great. If you have 30 minutes, great. And what usually happens is when you give yourself that tiny little block of time to start writing or pursuing something, you’ll notice you’ll stay there a little bit longer. Yeah. When, because you’re realizing that, oh my gosh, I actually really do enjoy this. I actually am now excited to finish writing the book or the article or whatever it is. And so we have to really identify what are those time wasters and what are those time enhancers? And then figure out how do you limit or get rid of some of those time wass because hey, we all do them. We’ve all spent a little too much time scrolling on social media when we could be doing something else that we would feel much better about at the end of whatever amount, length of time that is.

John Jantsch (18:54): Well, and I think, you know, there’s a name for this theory, but just that, you know, we’re gonna fill up the space that we have and we’re either gonna fill it up with doing something we love or we’re gonna fill it up doing something stupid , you know? But you know, I, a few years ago I just decided to stop doing much on Fridays from a work standpoint. And I’m, every bit is productive, you know, it’s like, wait a minute, whole, like one out of five days, I’m no longer working or taking your appointments and I’m still getting as much done. What happened? You know, , I mean

Kate Volman (19:22): Exactly. .

John Jantsch (19:24): So Exactly. It has to be perfect. This is a great one because I’m an am an amateur woodworker, and I, you know, I wa I try to build furniture and I watch what other people do and I, you know, I always tell my wife, oh, I couldn’t get this part right, she’s not perfect. And she’s like, is that why you built it? And she’s like, no, . But there is a little bit of that, right? It’s like, I can’t, I don’t want to be no good .

Kate Volman (19:50): I know. Yeah. We don’t, we, I mean me because mediocre work is not the end result, right? We don’t want to be mediocre at anything, but everyone has to start somewhere and Right. Like, I love why I love when somebody has somebody online who I’ve followed for years and years. I’m like, oh my gosh, they’ve accomplished so many things. And we look up to those people and then we go back to maybe their first blog or their first podcast or YouTube video, you’re like, oh, they were really not that great. Right? But after so many repetitions of doing it. And so it has to be perfect. We all, I, for a lot of, especially very driven type A individuals, we have this like perfectionism complex and we can te we know that perfect doesn’t exist, right? We can say that and have that conversation, yet we’re still striving for it.

(20:38): We’re like, no, we could get it perfect. And this is a challenge for us and it stops us from actually starting. And so in the book, I actually talk about the passion loop. So we have this passion loop where we have this idea of this passion or creative pursuit that we have, and then we say, I wanna do that. Like I, I actually wanna do that. And then we make these excuses, right? Like we immediately think I wanna do that. And then we make excuses and then we don’t do anything about it. And one of those excuses is like, I’m not ready, I’ve, it’s, I’m not a, there’s not enough time. It has to be perfect. All those things. And then what happens like a week later, a month later, we have that same idea again. Like, Ooh, I wanna start that podcast, I’m gonna do it.

(21:21): Excuses. And we’re stuck in this passion loop, huh? When really how to get out of the passion loop. The simplest way to get out of the passion loop is take the first step. Like that is all you have to do is take one step, even when you’re scared, even when you d don’t think, you know, you take that one next step to towards that patching project. And what’s so awesome is that when you’re, when you do that, all of these things br when you’re breaking through that passion loop, you start to uncover new opportunities, new passions, new relationships, new skills, confidence, all of this stuff. And so unless we’re doing the work and showing up every day, we’re never gonna get better. We’re never gonna go be able to, I mean we’ll never attain perfect, right? Yeah. But we’re never gonna even get better. And so this idea of, hey, it’s okay to be mediocre, it’s okay to have, you know, my first podcast isn’t gonna be stellar if you love it and you’re putting all, every single bit of energy and passion that you have and you know it’s the best that it can be right now.

(22:21): Yeah, that’s amazing. Put it out into the world. I’ve never met an author that said my, I would never change anything from the books that I’ve written. They’ve all said to me, when your book is out into the world, you read it and you’re like, oh, why did I say that? I should have done this. I could have done that. It’s the same thing with all of our work. Yeah.

John Jantsch (22:38): Plus’s, the feedback you get, you know, people actually do tell you how to make it better. kids. Yes. . So y you know what’s what, as I listen to you talk about that loop, you know, there’s a part missing out of that is then regret starts dropping. You know, because like, uh, I’ve told myself a hundred times I’m gonna do this and on 99 times I haven’t done it. And so then you’re like, well see I’m a loser . You know? So it’s like a vicious cycle, isn’t it?

Kate Volman (23:05): Yeah. . Yeah. And it’s like, that’s the thing, that’s why we gotta break out of that passion loop as whenever we’re dealing with these myths. It’s just, yeah. Hey, we gotta go for it.

John Jantsch (23:15): So inspirational strike is the seventh myth, and I’ll just let you tee that one out.

Kate Volman (23:22): Okay. So what’s so funny about this myth is this is, I was so excited to write this chapter and it was probably the hardest one to write cuz I was like, there’s so many things about this inspiration will strike. Because I think so many of us, we feel as though we’re gonna have this epiphany moment of, and I talk about muses in the book and I’m like, oh, I love this idea of muses and we think they’re gonna come fluttering down from the sky and pour magic pixie dust on us. And all of a sudden we’re gonna feel like writing or we’re gonna feel like recording something, or we’re gonna feel like getting up and playing guitar even though we love guitar. When really when we get home from the office or a long day, sometimes we just, you know, we think I just wanna veja on the couch, right?

(24:04): But what’s so interesting is that, so inspiration doesn’t just strike out of the blue. Yeah. It strikes when you actually start doing the thing. So when you start playing the guitar or when you start writing, like, I know so many writers, so especially when I started writing the book, I studied so many incredible writers like Anne Lamont and Stephen King, and I was reading and Margaret Atwood and I was so fascinated by the creative process and how they talk about writing and how so many writers actually don’t love to write like they say, I love to have written. And it’s like you have to sit down and write. So when you sit down and do the work and you start that project, that’s when inspiration comes. Like, on the days I didn’t feel like writing, I gave myself this goal of writing at least 250 words every day, right?

(24:51): So I sat behind my computer at least 250 words and some days it was 250 and I was like, I’m done. But most days it was 250 words and I was like, oh, well now I’m into it. Now I’m excited to like play around with this. And so inspiration came after I did the work, like after we started working. And so that’s what this chapter is all about. And I share this one story about Stephen King cuz his book on writing, I love it. He talks about how the muse, he’s like, yeah, there is a muse. He’s, and he describes him as he’s a basement kind of guy and he, and you have to go down into the basement and he’s there and he’s kind of waiting for you to show, he waits for you to show up and do the work. And only by going down into that basement and being with that muse and he’s just sitting over there smoking his cigar and looking at his bowling trophies, he said, you gotta do the work. And then all of a sudden the muse will show up. And so the muse sh finds you when you are working. So the inspiration won’t just come to you. No one’s gonna grab you off the couch and tell you to go after your dreams. You have to start. And when you start you’ll uncover, oh my gosh, I am now excited about this. And that’s when the inspiration comes from doing the work.

John Jantsch (25:58): You mentioned Anne Lamont, her chapter, shitty First drafts, you know, is a similar idea there of many times. I was the same way. It’s like, if I don’t get this, whatever is blocking me out on a page, you know, I’m never gonna get going. And that’s true for me. It even playing the guitar, which I happen to do as well, getting started is always, I don’t ever feel like doing it. And then once I pick it up, you know, I, well I might keep doing this for a while. So it is getting the getting started. So I think that is, if you’re gonna give anybody practical advice, you know, the getting started is the most important thing because then it, you know, then it’ll roll from there. But the most doubt and fear and pressure that you’ll feel is the moment, you know, when you’re thinking about, you know, starting.

Kate Volman (26:44): Yeah, absolutely. And you know, one other thing that I talk about in the book is creative friends and the importance of having creative friends. And I look at creative friends as people that not only do they support you in your work, but they are also creating, they are out there, they are trying, they are dealing with these same myths because we need those people in our lives to help support us as we grow. I mean, look, I look at John as one of my creative friends. You’re out there, you’re doing all this stuff, you’re never gonna put me down for creating, even if what I do is not perfect. Cause you’re like, Hey, at least you’re doing it right. Like you’re doing it. You’re out there, you’re gonna get better. And so we all need that. And I think so many times we are, when we’re surrounded by others that aren’t pursuing their dreams and their passions, we can get stuck in into some of these myths.

(27:32): Especially number one, it’s not possible. So when we’re building our network of creative friends that are out there, they’re in the trenches, they’re putting stuff out, they’re being vulnerable, they’re putting in the work. Even when it’s hard, they show up every single day, even when they don’t feel like it. This is, we need more of those people in our lives. So it encourages us to keep going and it encourages us to keep creating, keep sharing, and just keep pursuing the things that we know are meant for us. Like your creative pursuits are inside of you for a reason. They’re not going anywhere like they’re there to stay. And so it’s up to us to feed them.

John Jantsch (28:07): Yeah, absolutely. Well, Kate, we are out of time, but thank you so much for stopping by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. You want to, where would you invite people to connect with you, find out more about to coaching and obviously the book, do What you love?

Kate Volman (28:19): Yeah, the quickest, easiest way is just go to katevolman.com. You can find all my social channels on there and would love to hear from any of you about the book and what you have going on. And of course you are creative, so go create something.

John Jantsch (28:33): Awesome. Well thanks for taking a moment out. Hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days soon out there on the road again, Kate.

Kate Volman (28:39): I hope so. Thanks so much, John. Hey,

John Jantsch (28:41): And one final thing before you go. You know how I talk about marketing strategy, strategy before tactics? Well, sometimes it can be hard to understand where you stand in that, what needs to be done with regard to creating a marketing strategy. So we created a free tool for you. It’s called the Marketing Strategy Assessment. You can find it @marketingassessment.co, not.com, dot co. Check out our free marketing assessment and learn where you are with your strategy today. That’s just marketing assessment.co. I’d love to chat with you about the results that you get.