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John Jantsch (00:00): This episode of the duct tape marketing podcast is brought to you by the MarTech podcast, hosted by Ben Shapiro and brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network with episodes you can listen to in under 30 minutes, the MarTech podcast shares stories from world class marketers who use tech technology to generate growth and achieve business and career success all on your lunch break. And if you dig around, you might just find a show by yours. Truly. Ben’s a great host. Actually, I would tell you, check out a recent show on blending humans, AI, and automation. Download the MarTech podcast wherever you get your.

New Speaker (00:40): podcast. Hello, welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jan and my guest today is Tricia Sciortino. She is the CEO and board member at belay host of the one next step podcast and author of rise up. And Leadwell how leveraging an assistance will change your life and maximize your time. So we’re gonna talk about virtual assistance and remote workers and part-time staff and all those good things. So Trisha, welcome through the show.

Tricia Sciortino (01:22): Hey, good morning. Welcome. Thanks for having me.

John Jantsch (01:25): You bet. So, so tell me what give me, I always like to ask entrepreneurs, what got you here? What have you done in your entrepreneurial journey that led you to starting the lake?

Tricia Sciortino (01:33): Wow. That’s a really big question to start off with John .

John Jantsch (01:37): Well, yeah, Don, don’t go back to second doing it

Tricia Sciortino (01:40): Well back in,

John Jantsch (01:41): In between.

Tricia Sciortino (01:42): Yeah. You know, it was a journey of, you know, I, I like to say happenstance almost in that when I graduated college, I got my degree in business and marketing. I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do with myself. And I, I at first was a mom and then I stumbled upon organically and accidentally, if you will, you know, kind of just took a first job out there, quickly rose through the ranks and realized leading people and leading an organization. Actually, I thrived in it. I loved it. I enjoyed it. And so when I came to belay back in 2010, when it was started, my journey started with me as a virtual assistant here at the organization, and then just continued to look to hold my skills really just wanted to lead people and lead teams and lead organizational excellence and operational excellence. And so that has just afforded me the opportunity to just year by year advance my career, to land me at the CEO position. Then again, you know, really honored to sit in that seat today.

John Jantsch (02:51): You know, it’s interesting leadership is actually one of the toughest things for a lot of CEOs. I mean, they, you know, especially founders or companies, you know, they knew how to do the thing they did had the vision for it. And leadership actually is something that they quite often have to learn. Do you feel like that, that your training maybe was in that and maybe your gift or is it in that has actually allowed you to Excel in the position?

Tricia Sciortino (03:15): Yeah. You know what I, I would, I, I think, you know, at a very early age, you know, in my young 20 year old, my young 20 year old self had a lot of great leadership mentors who believed in me and taught me and mentored me to be a great leader when it was small and almost when it was quiet and nobody was really paying attention. I was invested in and I really got kind of the bug for leadership. So I think I’ve invested in my professional development since then. And I’ve had people who’ve helped me along the way. So I feel like I’m first a leader more than I am. Anything else,

John Jantsch (03:50): Let let’s talk. As I promised about, you know, virtual assistance, remote work, I’ve actually, you know, I’ve been working virtually, I’ve done, you know, my team has been distributed for 10, 15 years. so it’s really something that’s been around for a while. But I, I think at one point it was almost thought of as like, oh yeah, certain kinds of businesses did that, but really very mainstream today that teams are being built with remote and, and even part-time and virtual staff. So I think,

Tricia Sciortino (04:16): Yeah, I mean, same as when we started bla 12 years ago, working remotely was not all too common. And really the thinking was there was only certain types of companies or industries or people that could even consider remote work. And I think, you know, the blessing and the curse out of 2020 is that a lot of, of industries and people who’ve never considered that there were things that they could do remotely. They didn’t have a choice, but to do them remotely. And so now, today is, is a new day and age where the remote work opportunities are endless. They’re boundless, there’s so many, we’ve seen so many organizations, big organizations, you know, the bank of Americas and those, and those types of organizations really saying, we’re not going back in office, remote work is here to stay. And so it’s been really interesting and very cool journey to watch that evolve over the last two years, even though some of us have known it’s possible, it’s been possible for many more years than that.

John Jantsch (05:19): Yeah. I mean, I think to go right along with that, the idea that we have to be in a physical space, an office together, you know, that I think a lot of companies for a decade or so have let that go, but a lot of to it and certainly accelerated that idea that remote work could be done without us looking over people’s shoulders. And

Tricia Sciortino (05:36): Yeah. And you think about, you know, you think about some of the traditional roles, like think of the role of a, you know, a traveling salesman, somebody who’s on the road sounding, and let’s be honest, that person who’s been doing that. I mean, you’re telling copiers back in, you know, the nineties, you were not in an office, you were on the road, you were out and about, right. So it has existed just not in a way that anybody thought about it would exist

John Jantsch (06:01): Today. Yeah. And that was my bonus. That was my promise career. And I think a lot to me seeing how he, you know, he did what he wanted, he had his own hours, he was able to come and go. I mean, he worked very hard, you know, travel a lot, you know, it, it seemed like a really nice lifestyle to me. And I think I probably had some, uh, subconscious, uh, impact on, on me choosing the career. Not,

Tricia Sciortino (06:21): Yeah, that makes sense.

John Jantsch (06:23): So if somebody came to us said, all right, we’re thinking about maybe, you know, we don’t wanna hire staff full time and bring them in, you know, what are some of the key roles that you’re just like, Hey, no business should be doing this, you know, with a staff member, they should outsource of certain, are there certain roles that you gravitate towards or that you just think have become obsolete to have a, a dedicated person doing in an organization?

Tricia Sciortino (06:45): Yeah. Well, and we’ve kind of done it with more than maybe most people are comfortable with, but some of the standouts are, are truly the ones that we wound up offering as an organization because we knew they were no brainers. You know, first and foremost is the virtual assistant. I mean, it’s, it’s what we’re known for. That’s, you know, every executive or leader could have, should have somebody working fractionally part-time, even if it’s 10 hours a week, 45 hours a month, or whatever that looks like supporting you as an executive or leader personally or professionally, and that person doesn’t need to be in the same space as you. So that, that one is the easy one. And then you think of things like bookkeeping, right? Everybody needs their books done. Everybody’s our accounts reconciled. Everybody needs your transaction details and your expense reporting taken care of. But do you need your bookkeeper or your in your office with no, I mean, you can email reports back and forth this great systems where you can share logins. And so bookkeeping is another one that as an executive and a leader, I don’t actually wanna know how to do bookkeeping. I just wanna work with somebody else who knows how to do bookkeeping. They don’t need to be on staff. I don’t need it full time. It’s very transactional. It’s an easy one. Especially small business startup, absolutely start with outsource bookkeeping support.

John Jantsch (08:08): Yeah. More than one, uh, small businesses got themselves in trouble because they can’t do their reporting. They can’t do payroll. They can’t do all the junk. It’s gotta be done and then come, you know, tax time, it’s, you know, it’s an absolute mess. And, uh, probably what they would pay a virtual birth keep for. They now are paying to their account to try to figure out their book.

Tricia Sciortino (08:27): Yes, yes, yes. And you know, and a book bookkeeper and accountant is, is two different things. And so you don’t need the accountant level of the month to month, day to day part of your business. Cause that’s a great opportunity to bring a bookkeeper in, to handle the day to day dispensing and things like that, that any business needs, regardless of what the business is.

John Jantsch (08:49): I have used a virtual bookkeeper for at least 15 years. And only because she was traveling through my city, didn’t meet one time, but otherwise it is all vendor. In fact, she lives in Mexico now.

Tricia Sciortino (09:00): Fabulous. Right. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, that’s another easy one. And then there are a lot of marketing component jobs, which, you know, speaks to, to you, your audience and right, right. And what you guys do. I mean, we, we outsourced almost every marketing role until we felt the need to bring it out full time over the course of the last 10 years. And so, and we still work with outsource social media management and execution, so that one’s a no brainer as well. Typically your small businesses, you don’t need full-time 40 hour week staff member, maybe managing your social media angle or your LinkedIn it’s, it’s probably when you’re small, a few good hours a week, great strategy and some good execution. That’s something that can be very part-time and fractional and outsourced to somebody outside of the organization until you hit critical mass. And you feel like maybe it’s time to bring that role inside.

John Jantsch (09:51): And now let’s hear from our sponsor, you know, as a business owner, you eventually realize you can’t do everything yourself, but hiring is complicated. And what if you only need part-time help your job is to be the visionary. But instead you spend countless hours on tasks that could be done easily and arguably better by someone else. And that’s where the powerful multiplying effects of delegation are mission critical. Our friends at BELAY can help. BELAY is an incredible organization, revolutionizing productivity with their virtual assistance bookkeepers website specialists and social media managers for growing organizations to help you get started. Belay is offering their latest ebook, delegate to elevate for free to all of my listeners. Now in this ebook, you’ll learn how to reclaim time to focus on what you can do by delegating to download your free copy. Just text tape to 5, 5, 1, 2, 3 that’s T a P E to 5, 5 1, 2, 3, accomplish more and juggle less with BELAY.

John Jantsch (11:02): So let’s talk a little bit deeper about the social media role, because I see a lot of business owners that they don’t like social media. They, they maybe come to it begrudgingly because they think, oh, everybody’s doing it so we better do it. And so they kind of advocate it. They go find somebody to post for, but you balance that. You mentioned the word strategy. I mean, where you’re actually doing something that’s effective, you know, that’s, that’s actually helping you advance towards your business goals without being involved in it.

Tricia Sciortino (11:28): Yeah. I think, you know, it’s a lot of vision casting and a lot of inspecting what you’re expecting. So, you know, that’s your social, media’s a great way to look at all of that is, you know, there’s, you really need to immerse that person into who are we trying to be to the public? Who do we say we are? What is the service we offer? Where is our ideal client, who is our ideal client? Where does our ideal client hang out, you know, understanding some of those core principles. And it’s a lot of testing and tuning, which I think a lot of people misunderstand when they get into social media as well. There’s a lot of tune and tone and voice. And you know, the algorithms are changing all the time. So things that worked for you today, they might not work in three to six months from now.

Tricia Sciortino (12:15): So having somebody constantly having eyeballs on your social media presence, we find very important now where that presence is, I think is unique to your organization. And what you’re offering is, you know, some organizations will thrive and Facebook is their community and they should just spend a lot of time and energy really honing what Facebook does for them. Others. It might be more Instagram, some it’s LinkedIn. So I’m thinking, you know, understanding where your, your audience is and what platforms are on is key. And then, you know, cast great vision and inspect, you know, let that social media manager create their vision and strategy. And then you add, edit and approve that strategy to go to execution. So it might be something you’re doing an hour a month versus, you know, an hour a day

John Jantsch (13:08): Or, or just not getting to

Tricia Sciortino (13:11): Or not doing it at all or not doing it, getting all. Yes.

John Jantsch (13:14): Yeah. So, so you started to describe an area I was gonna go into too, because I see a lot of people go, oh, for existent, you know, I could just pay somebody 10 hours a week to take all this off my plate. And then they get that person and they haven’t really thought through, they don’t know how to delegate they, they really don’t know how to use that resource. I mean, what are some of the mistakes you see? I guess that’s two part question. What are some of the mistakes you see when people do hire virtual, uh, workers, and then what are some of the best practices so that you actually get some efficiencies instead of cuz, cuz in some cases it’s two steps backwards first, right? yeah.

Tricia Sciortino (13:49): It’s absolutely to get

John Jantsch (13:49): Two steps back.

Tricia Sciortino (13:50): Yeah. I mean, you know, a big mistake we see is that people wait too long, right? So they wait until they are literally so up against a wall and everything is so out of order that for anybody to come in, it’s gonna take a minute for there, to there, to be this feeling of relief and order because you’ve waited too long. So I always say, yeah, you know, like most hires, but especially a virtual system assistant, you know, hire them sooner than you think you need them. It’s like anything else, proactive hiring is the best hiring we do. so regardless of the role, but the same for this role, you know, if you can forecast your business, you should be able to forecast your time. And if you can do that, then you know exactly when you need somebody. So bring a on student that you think that’s the first thing.

Tricia Sciortino (14:38): And then as far as where to deploy them, cuz there’s probably, we, we see a variety, I mean a ma a mass variety of opportunities on where a virtual assistant can help any or a leader, but it’s gonna be, what is that right thing for you? I mean, we typically organically go for, you know, the customary, if you will, calendar management and meeting planning, I mean, believe it or not, you spend more time emailing back and forth about when you’re gonna meet somebody and then sending out a meeting request and then change the meeting request and then put the links in the meeting request. And then following up to confirm the meeting, like, it sounds like no big deal. You do, you remove that for the 10 meetings a week you have, or whatever that looks like, and you’ve already saved time. Then you added things like email management, travel bookings, you know, hotels and flights.

Tricia Sciortino (15:31): If you travel at your work, you add in meeting notes. For me, meeting notes has been a game changer inside our organization. We have a virtual assistant sit in on every single meeting we have just to take notes and pull action items and then follow up with those action items to ensure they’ve actually gotten done because then guess what? I don’t have to, I don’t have to follow up on the action item that’s supposed to get done as the leader, my virtual assistant is taking notes, sharing them and then following up with those action items. So it’s even an extra layer of accountability if you will, in that case.

John Jantsch (16:07): Yeah. I think once people start letting go of those kinds of things, because I do think with, especially with leaders, a lot of times that, you know, my neat man, like a, or my travel, I mean, these are very personal neat maybe, but I think that, and so I think sometimes leaders have trouble giving those things. I’m thinking, oh, well, nobody can do it like me, but I think you’re absolutely right. Once you experience that there might actually be somebody that could do it better than you. Uh, it really gets a lot easier. Does it?

Tricia Sciortino (16:33): A absolutely. And, and that is truly the moment, the wake up moment, if you will, where you really do have to get to the place where you realize that somebody else can do this, maybe better than me or equal to me and even equal is a win because those hours you saved on that you are now dedicated to higher payoff items inside your business. You’re now that’s 10 hours a week. You now get to focus on growing your business, vision strategy, sales, Mar you know, areas of the business that are growth associated. You’re an entrepreneur versus areas of your business that are highly administrative. You probably can do those things, but the question is really, should you do those things?

John Jantsch (17:20): Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. So the, a question I get a lot of times is, you know, how do I find the right person? And so if I’m, let’s just say we’re the executive assistant, um, role right now? How does you know, how, how do you tell people to not just find, I mean, there are tons of plays you can find, how do you find the right person and how do you know it’s the right person? And how do you, you know, how do you dig deep enough to realize that person’s gonna work for you?

Tricia Sciortino (17:47): Yeah. I mean, we have found success by using a, a multiple, a multi-layer interview process. If you will. I mean, a, a resume is a great start in knowing things to look for and what looks like a great resume is important, but when you’re past that point and you decided there’s handful of people you actually want to meet with, you know, we would recommend that multiple different people interview, not even just you. So do you have a cohort or a partner inside your business or is it your, what? I mean, whoever it may be, right? Somebody else having a second opinion going into an interview is important and then interviews are, you know, and should be looked at as skills assessments, you know, even in an interview, were they on time? Was there camera working? Were you interviewing on a webcam? Did, how were they, how did they show up you, there is different things.

Tricia Sciortino (18:40): You’re looking aside from the information you’re getting out of the questions back and forth. It is like really looking at the whole scenario, everything that led up to that interview and everything after that, did they send, send a thank you note, how is the grammar in that note? So looking at all those things and then having multiple people do that. And then what I would say is regardless of the world, there should be some type of skills, assessment opportunity. So is there something they can do, whether it’s a questionnaire that you send them, we, we will do that. We have 10 questions. Is there some type of sample work product you want them to mock up for you do a skills assessment, like for a virtual assistant, if they’re gonna do heavy calendar management, then give them a fo meeting to plan for you or whatever that may look like. Or I plan a trip for you and, and send you a trip by itinerary. So assessing a skill is a great opportunity because an interview is words and skills assessment is action.

John Jantsch (19:39): So, so one of the things that I have found in many years of working with dozens and dozens of, of virtual assistant or remote, uh, workers, is some of the best I’ve worked with actually come with their own processes and own systems that, that allow us to go, oh, that’s better than what we’re doing. Yes. Do you feel like that’s a part of the you to be looking for is somebody that, that actually has routines and processes and not is, and is not just looking for you to tell ’em what you do.

Tricia Sciortino (20:09): Yeah. I mean, to me, that’s, it is a big relief for a leader. If your virtual assistant is extremely proactive and organized. And so I always tell my assistant that my goal for her is for her to be ahead of me. And so that, and that usually means 60 to 90 days ahead of me. And so that means that for example, today I’m emailing my assistant about meetings. I’m having in August and she’s planning August meetings already. She’s sending me sample menus. She’s sending me meeting locations. She sent me flight options, you know, already, I haven’t even thought about August yet, but she’s very planned, very methodical and extremely proactive. So that is what makes it, you know, really helpful. Gives me peace of mind that I know for the next season of time. There’s nothing that’s gonna come by and blindside me side me.

John Jantsch (21:07): Yeah. Abso absolutely. Um, if, if, if somebody’s thinking about to listening to this or they’re thinking, well, gosh, this sounds like something I need to hear. What’s the process of working with belay?

Tricia Sciortino (21:19): Yeah. So it’s a fun process because John, we have a core value at belay and one of them is fun. The first thing you get, first thing I would say is you go to our website, which is belay solutions.com. We have a get started form that you would fill out that will get you in touch with one of our solutions consultants. Then you would have a conversation with one of our solutions consultants. Who’s really just gonna help you determine, do you need a virtual assistant? What are you looking for? What kind of virtual assistant, how many hours possibly, what are you trying to get off your plate once that’s figured out and you decided to join our team, you were then handed over to a client success consultant, which is your person for your duration at belay. They will take you through a discovery process and hone in on exactly the type of skill set and soft skills you’re looking for in this person to match you with whether it’s industry knowledge or application knowledge or specific time zone or products like you need somebody to use a Mac versus a PC.

Tricia Sciortino (22:18): They gather all that information. And then our placement team, we actually have a team of people whose job it is to find that right person for you do their search. We come back and present. We found your match. Then we have a kickoff call, which is all on, um, zoom. So your client success consultant to your new virtual assistant new, we have about ki a kickoff call. It’s about an hour or so long where we get, you know, we get everything started the transfer of information. We send training documents, so you can help onboard this person. And then your client success consultant will check in with you on your new VA weekly and then biweekly, and then monthly as your engagement continues to make sure that everybody’s getting the best value and use out of the relationship.

John Jantsch (23:05): Awesome. Well, you know, you know, I’m a fan. I mean, I’ve been doing, you know, this type of work and they’re hired, you know, we have a, any number of specific team members now that do specific things on earth. So I, I really think it is a tremendous way for pretty much any size organization to go. I appreciate you, uh, stopping by taking time to stop by the duct tape marketing podcast. And it’s belay solutions.com. Hopefully we’ll run it to you one these days out there on the road.

Tricia Sciortino (23:31): I hope so. Thanks John.

Speaker 3 (23:34): 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 .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.

This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network and BELAY.

HubSpot Podcast Network is the audio destination for business professionals who seek the best education and inspiration on how to grow a business.

BELAY is an incredible organization revolutionizing productivity with its virtual assistants, bookkeepers, website specialists, and social media managers for growing organizations. To help you get started, BELAY is offering its latest book, Delegate to Elevate, for free to all our listeners. In this ebook, learn how to reclaim time to focus on what only you can do by delegating. To download your free copy, click here to claim or text TAPE to 55123. Accomplish more and juggle less with BELAY.

June 9, 2022/by exposure

Why Call Tracking Metrics Matter To Your Marketing Efforts

Why Call Tracking Metrics Matter To Your Marketing Efforts written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Todd and Laure Fisher

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Todd and Laure Fisher. Husband and wife co-founders, Todd and Laure Fisher founded CallTrackingMetrics in 2011 in their basement and together have grown it into an Inc. 500-rated, top-ranked conversation analytics software serving over 30,000 businesses around the world.

Key Takeaway:

Today, it seems as though there’s a never-ending list of channels and ways in which your customers can communicate with you and your business. We often hear from small businesses that their marketing works, they just don’t know which part. And because of that, many businesses waste their time spinning their wheels on channels that aren’t bringing them business.

In this episode, I chat with Husband and wife co-founders of CallTrackingMetrics, Todd and Laure Fisher, about why call tracking metrics matter to your marketing efforts and how you can utilize it today to double down on what’s working for your business.

Questions I ask Todd and Laure Fisher:

[1:41] What led you to where we are today?
[2:15] How did the idea come about to create the company?
[4:02] What is call tracking and how do marketers use it today?
[7:08] What are some of the best uses for the various touchpoints with prospects and customers?
[11:26] The digital world is coming under a lot of scrutinies — so how are you prepping for that from a customer tracking perspective?
[14:02] Does your tool provide things like HIPAA compliance for people that are obviously in the medical area?
[14:35] How does call tracking play into personal segmentation?
[16:03] Do you think that being able to identify if somebody is a customer or somebody is not a customer could trigger different behavior?
[17:12] If someone was comparing you to other call tracking players out there, how would you say CallTrackingMetrics is different?
[18:27] How does a call tracking tool play into SMS marketing?
[19:49] Could you tell us more about CallTrackingMetrics?

More About Todd and Laure Fisher:

CallTrackingMetrics

Take The Marketing Assessment:

Marketingassessment.co

Like this show? Click on over and give us a review on iTunes, please!

Duct Tape Transcript

John Jantsch (00:00): This episode of the duct tape marketing podcast is brought to you by the female startup club, hosted by Doone Roison, and brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network. If you’re looking for a new podcast, the Female Startup Club shares tips, tactics and strategies from the world’s most successful female founders, entrepreneurs, and women in business to inspire you to take action and get what you want out of your career. One of my favorite episodes who should be your first hire, what’s your funding plan, Dr. Lisa Cravin shares her top advice from building spotlight oral. Listen to the female startup club, wherever you get your podcasts.

John Jantsch (00:48): Hello, and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guests today are Todd and Laure Fisher, their husband and wife co-founders of Call Tracking Metrics company. They found in 2011 in their basement, and together have grown it into an Inc 500 rated top ranked conversion analytics software serving over 30,000 businesses around the world. So Todd and Laure, I don’t often have multiple guests, so I’ll try to not fumble my questions to, to either, or you just take your turns. Whoever’s whoever wants to jump in next, go from there. So welcome to the show.

Laure Fisher (01:26): Thank you. Thanks for having us.

Todd Fisher (01:27): Yeah. Thank

John Jantsch (01:28): You. So, so I’d love to hear about your journey. You know, every entrepreneur has some unique, uh, journey that brought into this point. I do know in looking at a little bit of your background, you’re not software engineers, you didn’t grow up in, in that necessarily. Um, you came from other professions, so I’d love to hear what led you, uh, to where we are today.

Laure Fisher (01:46): Well, that Todd has a, his is more technical

Todd Fisher (01:49): I was gonna say, I have a technical software engineering background. Lori does not.

John Jantsch (01:53): Ah,

Todd Fisher (01:54): Okay. So, but that’s part of what I think made it work really well for the two of us. So Lori has a, a business background. I have a, an engineering background and so the two of us together, we can also kind of split what we focus on, uh, which I think also avoids conflict, uh, which is good.

John Jantsch (02:09): Oh, it absolutely awesome. You kind of have your strengths that you bring and your balance yeah. Was the idea to create the company one that you said, gosh, there’s this huge need out here and, and a gap in the market, we should create it. Or were you trying to do this in your own careers? And couldn’t find the right tool.

Todd Fisher (02:29): I think I’ll take that one, Laurie. So, so I think that it wasn’t sort of something we sought out to do. It was more of Laurie and I were both sort of running it. I’ll say I’ll call it a fledgling consulting company. We were trying to make things for our customers or provide AdWords support, SEO support. Okay. And a handful of them. I think two, we were very explicit and they would not take our business unless we could track and compound that with the fact that we were just coming out of that really nasty recession and, you know, still sort of, it was very raw, right. That, you know, people, after you finished a job for them, maybe we built a website and then they would be like, sorry, I can’t pay for, you know, that website cuz uh, we’re going outta business. So we dealt with a lot of that.

Todd Fisher (03:09): Right. And then, you know, so part of it was also like, Hey, the appeal of really sort of the appeal of having a, a, a software business that we could charge upfront. And we could also focus our energy instead of it being spread, you know, from one project to the next being completely unrelated from each other. Yeah, sure. There are things lessons you can carry forward, right. With what you, you know, suffered in, you know, learning for one customer to the next. Right. But it’s not, doesn’t compound as effectively as, Hey, it’s one software platform. Right. And we’re still kind of consulting, but we’re doing it in the context of one platform. So it’s has a much, it, it works better.

John Jantsch (03:47): Yeah. I’ve been throwing call tracking out here and, and call tracking metrics the name of your company, but we’re probably ought to back up just a little bit. And you know, a lot of listeners of course, are very savvy, understand what that is, or at least have experienced in some fashion, but maybe give an overview of, you know, what call tracking is and how, you know, marketers use it.

Todd Fisher (04:07): Sure. Yeah. Do you wanna take, do you wanna, I can. Okay. Uh, so, so call tracking, you know, the early days started out with here’s a phone number, put this phone number on your billboard and we’ll measure how many times that phone number is called. And that must mean that billboard is worth X, right. And it sort of evolved with Google ads to, you know, okay, now somebody clicked on an ad and if they made a phone call, can you tie that phone call back to that particular ad in a particular, but over time, I’d say the real value is that now we can help you answer the question of not just which phone number, uh, and which click, but was there a sale, right? Yeah. Was there meaningful conversion that occurred? And if there was, well, let’s make sure we can communicate that back to Facebook, Google, whatever ad platform you might be using.

Todd Fisher (04:53): Right. And to me, that’s more of the, the value story here. Right. And, um, and then the mere fact that we’re handling this phone call means that now we have a call recording, we have speech intelligence. Right. So we, we could say, Hey, somebody was pretty angry on that call. You might wanna work on that aspect of your business as well. Right. So it really kind of is interesting that it, you know, sort of all started with wanting to answer the simple question of how many people, how effective is this ad. Yeah. And it sort of trickles into all of the impacts that, that one ad and that led with all the customer interactions that occur right back to

John Jantsch (05:30): Yeah. And I, I think it really, it does kind of answer that like, uh, the phone companies used to talk about the, the last mile, you know, question was that there was a whole lot of data we had, but we couldn’t really understand. I mean, it allowed us to weed out stuff that just totally didn’t work, but we really couldn’t refine what was bringing us revenue necessarily. And I think that that’s, you know, for a lot of marketers, obviously, you know, the old joke kind of about, I, you know, some of my marketing works, I just dunno which, you know, part it. And I think a lot of marketers still take that approach of if I throw enough stuff out there and, you know, I think the thing that’s really missing from that approach, of course, you could be very successful and grow a business. But if you knew that 20%, that was really working, you just double, triple, quadruple down on that and you’d really have a business wouldn’t you

Laure Fisher (06:15): Mm-hmm mm-hmm mm-hmm I know. And now we started with it being about phone calls, but now it’s all these other communication channels. Right. Keep getting invented. Right. And so we’ve, we have to keep kind of weaving in all of these other channels and it really, it, you know, companies had all these different platforms for all these different channels. You know, they had like their email service, they had their, you know, text message platform. They had their chat platform. And now it’s really about bringing those all together so that you can see that journey all the way through all of the different, you know, mediums that people are communicating through.

John Jantsch (06:47): Yeah. Well, in forms even, I mean, I, we have clients that half half of their contacts, phones calls, and half of them are, you know, consultation form fills, you know, so I mean, being, you really do need, uh, to bring many of those things to together. You, you we’ve kind of talked about it, but maybe you could cite a few examples. I mean, the obvious one is, you know, are my ads working or paying, but what are some other uses or maybe what you would call best uses for, for this type of tracking?

Laure Fisher (07:14): I would say one thing is what’s happening on the phone calls is really interesting. A lot of, a lot of companies think they kind of, they know what’s happening on the calls because their team tells them. But when you actually hear the calls and listen to them in person, you know, you learn a lot. And then also you can use machine learning and to have, you know, a system like ours, listen to the calls in a way and scan them for patterns. So you could figure out, you know, what words keep getting mentioned in the call, you know, where does your salesperson have to say no, you know, we don’t do that. What are the trends that you’re seeing in terms of, you know, voice tones in their voice and when they might be getting angry. And there’s just so much you can learn from actually what’s happening in the call when you actually hear it directly in the call versus relying on interpretation from someone else telling you

John Jantsch (08:00): Well, and I would, I would also say, I mean, we have clients that most of their phone calls seem to come on Monday, Tuesday . And that really has some decision making, you know, about what we better have, you know, ready on Monday, Tuesday, right? Yeah.

Laure Fisher (08:13): Yes, yeah. Yes. Like which agents are performing, you know, you see all sorts of interesting information about who answers their phone really quick and whose phone calls last forever, but the calls don’t seem to go that well, right. You know, you can see all sorts of interesting performance data and also understanding when you run an ad, how quickly do the phone calls happen. Right. So what should you be thinking about in terms of budgeting for advertising and how that translates into communications coming into to your call center?

John Jantsch (08:39): So, so we are, you know, my agency and the training that I do. I mean, we are big proponents of this for a lot of the reasons we’ve already talked about, but for those agencies out there listening, this is an amazing way for you to prove your worth. And I think a lot of people forget that, you know, they’re given reports with traffic on them and, you know, with, uh, keyword rankings and whatnot. But you know, when the client says, well, yeah, we’re not getting any more business. And then I go listen to five calls that just don’t get answered, or they go to voicemail or, you know, whatever it is. I mean, it’s pretty easy to say we’re doing our job , you know, but you’re not. But then O obviously, you know, the better scenario that is that, that, you know, you’re very, is very easy then to connect all the analytics together, to show, you know, this phone call was actually worth, you know, $12,473 this month, or, you know, or these group of phone calls. So it’s a great tool to, you know, to prove why you’re charging what you’re charging.

Laure Fisher (09:31): Yeah. It’s and it’s interesting. Cause a lot of times CU customers will say, they thought they’re surprised by some of the things that, you know, they might an ad, a particular ad channel might be driving. A lot of traffic might be driving a lot of phone calls. But when you look at like what types of phone calls is driving and what the long term value of those customers are, it’s surprising to people sometimes, you know, they yeah. Have all sorts of learnings around like organic versus paid and, you know, social media and what really is the value of that. So it allows them to just, you know, really kind of understand even further, like, was this really a good lead? You know, was this really worth it? You know, this channel that we invested in

John Jantsch (10:05): And now let’s hear from a sponsor, look, you’ve worked hard to grow your business and finding CRM software. You can trust to help grow it even more. It isn’t easy, whether you’re starting out or scaling up, HubSpot is here to help your business grow better with a CRM platform that helps put your customers first. And it’s trusted by enterprises and entrepreneurs alike with easy to use marketing tools like drag and drop web page editors that require no custom code content strategy tools, where you can create topic clusters that automatically link supporting content back to your core pillar pages to ensure search engines can easily crawl your site and identify you as an expert on any given topic. HubSpot helps your business work smarter, not harder, learn how your business can grow better @ hubspot.com.

John Jantsch (10:59): So a lot of channels, email specifically, and certainly on social, uh, media and Google’s making some adjustments about, you know, tracking has actually become an evil word in, in some service, right. See, except for, uh, mailing lists, you can, you know, you can buy a mailing list that, that has anything you want on it. send it to anybody you want for

Laure Fisher (11:20): Everybody lives, drive it over to their house. Yeah.

John Jantsch (11:23): You can know what diseases they have, what medications they’re taking. Right. But let’s get back to the, what we can talk about, you know, tracking in the, you know, in the email world in the digital world is coming under a lot of scrutiny. So how are you preparing for that? Or what do you have to say about, you know, the person that’s saying, oh, but we’re not supposed to track.

Todd Fisher (11:42): Yeah. I mean, I think that, you know, I think there’s a lot of misconceptions out there around this, but you know, it is what it is. You know, first of all, one of the things that we say is, Hey, listen, like we’re, it’s first party tracking. Not only that, but somebody clicked on this paid ad. That was a very expensive, uh, thing for that business to, to put out all the businesses really asking is to understand whether or not that expensive paid ad is having some value. Right. So that they can better focus their effort for the next time. Right. And so I, I, I really think that if, if you, you know, it can explain to somebody, Hey, you know, for example, we, we had a, I think it was like a lawyer who was explaining to me, he’s like, you know, my, my ads cost $50 a click.

Todd Fisher (12:19): Right. I was just like, wow. So he’s like, you absolutely need to, I don’t wanna know unless these are turning into phone calls sure. Is what he told me. That was our, one of our first customers. Yep. And I remember being like, okay, well, that’s, uh, really important. Let’s make sure we, you know, we can answer that question for you. So, you know, often I hear is, you know, you know, people go down, the path of tracking is evil and then they start dropping words like deep state and, you know, you know, you know, foreign actors and all this kind of stuff. And I’m like, well, wait a second. Who are we talking about here? Cause the plumber down the street, when you click on their ad, I think it’s gonna be okay. Right. So what are we actually doing there to prepare for that? So, so first of all, um, there’s things that are just happening, right? So Google, um, has been forced to change how they track Google ads, right? So there’s something called GBRA w braid and only just recently were the APIs available for us to actually pass those tokens back to Google for conversions. But you know, we work with Google’s ecosystem, we’ll collect those tokens and we’ll pass them to Google in, in response to conversion events. Yeah. What else

Laure Fisher (13:22): Also giving customers tools to manage the data that they collect. Yes. You know, so whatever provider they’re using, they need to have the tools to get rid of things they don’t need control so that they’re collecting just what they need, delete things they don’t need. So a lot of it, I find even with service providers, we use, you know, that it’s, it’s all about the cus us being able to control what it is that we’re collecting. Cause a lot of times people find that they’re collecting all this information. They don’t even need half of it. So get smart about, you know, what it is that you’re collecting. It’s true. Also when you look at GDPR compliance as well, that you really need to be able to justify what you’re collecting and, and have a good handle over how you’re securing it and how to get rid of it, you know, when you’re done with it.

John Jantsch (14:02): And does your tool provide, you know, things like HIPAA compliance, you know, for people that obviously in that medical area that one’s probably touchier than GDPR for a lot of people,

Todd Fisher (14:13): It’s funny. It is. Yeah. But in a different way, GDPR and and HIPAA kind of have different kind of edges to them. So, but we cater HIPAA both.

John Jantsch (14:21): Mm-hmm, one of the things that is becoming increasingly popular maybe because the technology is caught up to make it increasingly easier to do is segmenting customers and leads and people that are on your list already, not on your list already. How does call tracking play into that, maybe that kind of personal segmenting journey.

Todd Fisher (14:41): Um, so yeah, so, so we have a lot of a attribution that we can apply to the contact. So one of the things we do is when you make a phone call into our system, we actually create two records. It’s the, the call activity. And then if it’s not already created the contact record, and then as that user kind of interacts with you, we collect additional information on that contact record. And one of the, one of the big use cases, I like to kind of say, Hey, is, this is good, right? Um, is let’s say you’re driving and to get ahold of, you know, business X, Y, or Z, you know, unfortunately you did have to go through a rather complicated voice venue, right? Your first time you’ve ever called them. Right. Right. You had press one and you had to listen, press two and maybe listen, press four or something.

Todd Fisher (15:23): Now you’re finally talking to a person who’s really able to help you. Right. You’re in your car though. The kids are screaming in the back drive under a bridge and the call drops, right. This is like tragic situation. Right? Well, if, if that business had known who you were and in our system set up a rule that just said, Hey, if it’s within, let’s say 24 hours, skip all the voicemail stuff and just go directly to the, the, the last agent who you were talking to. Right. Well then imagine how much better this would be when like 10 seconds later you come outta the bridge or outta the tunnel and you call back and well, wow. You’re talking to the same person again. Right.

John Jantsch (16:03): What’s interesting. I think even just knowing that somebody is a customer or somebody is not a customer, you know, that just that designation could certainly trigger different behavior, couldn’t it?

Todd Fisher (16:15): Yes. Yeah. And that’s been a big part of our product is just helping to cater to those kinds of use cases where it’s a repeat call. It’s an, you know, we know that this person was inquiring about product X, Y, or Z, right. Cause of the lead form that they filled out. Yeah. So now instead of routing them to a general queue, maybe we’re gonna route ’em to a specialist queue. And so in this case, you know, you can say, Hey, you know, tracking really gave you a better experience. Right? Yeah. Maybe it took some of the frustration of your day out of your day. Right? Yeah. That’s the way I try to position it is, Hey, there’s lots of friction points here. You know, when you call that business, you really feel like entitled so that they should know everything about you. Well, that’s part of what tracking helps do, right. Is give you that kind of white glove treatment.

John Jantsch (16:56): Well, and, and I think the, the beauty of what you just said is if it’s working well, you didn’t even know it did it. Yes. And that, of course that’s the frustrating thing for somebody that sits there and codes all day. Right. that’s right. You know how hard it is to actually make it

Todd Fisher (17:11): . Yes.

John Jantsch (17:12): Yes. So, so if somebody was looking at you and there are other players out there that, that do call tracking and whatnot as well, and you know, what would you say, Hey, but here’s our, here’s how we’re different or here’s, you know, here’s our super feature that nobody else has.

Todd Fisher (17:25): Sure. Um, what do you think Laura? I mean, I think what we really do and shine in our space is that we really bring multiple facets of the space together in almost the hub fashion, where we have other, we, so in, in a way, I’d say we have competitors in many different industries because we kind of bring many different industries into one platform. And that’s really our specialty is that we’ve brought these things together. So you don’t have to say, I want my call tracking company. I want my contact center software. I want my CRM software, you know, you can kind of just pull them all together into one place and it integrates better this way. Right. I’d say in our space, we, we are friends with everyone because we integrate with everyone, but, but we can also provide the, the feature as well. So you kind of get choice in that way.

John Jantsch (18:08): You, you know, one channel, I guess, that we haven’t even talked about that I meant to, because so many businesses, some businesses are using for outbound marketing, but I don’t think that’s really the true use. A lot of businesses are using SMS as a true customer service tool. Your point is coming up or, you know, it’s time to reorder, you know, whatever to just kind of, and people are expecting that and appreciate the text that way. How does, how does a call tracking tool play into that? Well,

Laure Fisher (18:31): You can, you can tie text message campaigns to, you know, a person and their pattern of interaction. So, you know, maybe they have filled out a form that, you know, they’re interested in a certain product, they clicked on an ad. They’ve talked to someone, you know, about that phone call, what happened in the phone call. You can now target your text message information to them in a whole different way. Obviously you need to have permission to text them, but you’ve, you’re able to segment them right. And target the communication. The other thing that I think is really important in text messaging, a lot of people think about when, you know, the, the blast text blast. Right. But what I think is really interesting is the conversational texting where you can actually have just a one-on-one conversation, whether it’s for service or a sales interaction, the, you know, the people are so much more likely to respond to a text message and open a text message. And especially if it’s easy, you know, schedule, appointment via text, or, you know, have like, I actually have like a conversation with a salesperson via text without having get on the phone with ’em. So that I think is really interesting. And, and something, I think a lot of companies are just starting to kind of scratch the surface on, maybe they’ve done their like text blast with their promo codes and all of that, but really figuring out how do we create kind of meaningful interactions with customers over text messaging.

John Jantsch (19:43): Yeah, absolutely. So Todd, Lori, thanks for, so by the duct tape marketing podcast, uh, tell us a little more about call tracking. Tell us, give us kind of the 32nd commercial or anywhere you wanna send people to find out more specifically about call tracking metrics.

Laure Fisher (19:58): Yeah. I would go to call tracking metrics.com. That’s the best place to go. And you’ll see that we’ve got three different plans you can sign up right on our website. We have an amazing support team, amazing professional services team. That’ll help you implement the service as well. So, you know, definitely feel free to call our sales team, have a demo, or you can sign up right on the website and get started.

John Jantsch (20:18): Awesome. Well, again, thanks for sound by the duct tape marketing podcast, and hopefully we’ll run into you both, uh, somewhere out there on the road.

Laure Fisher (20:24): Thank you.

John Jantsch (20:36): One final. 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@marketingassessmentdotco.com.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.

This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network.

HubSpot Podcast Network is the audio destination for business professionals who seek the best education and inspiration on how to grow a business.

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https://www.sydneysocialmediaservices.com/?p=479

June 8, 2022/by exposure

Rethinking the Recruiting Journey

Rethinking the Recruiting Journey written by Shawna Salinger read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Small businesses need to rethink the way they are recruiting employees today. In good times, companies thrive by being in the right place at the right time. But in tough times, organizations grow by being important in the lives of their customers. The same is true for recruitment, retention, and the hiring journey.

Recruiting as a Marketing Function

Marketing is not a one-time event. It’s an ongoing process that requires commitment and patience. Ad buyers often think of marketing as a vending machine—you put some money in, and out pops customers—but that’s not how it works.

Recruiters do the same thing when they go to job boards like Monster or Indeed and just buy and run ads. You can’t just throw money at the problem; you have to build a repeatable system that lasts. That is how you build a full-proof recruiting system.

Fewer than 15% of all jobs advertised on popular job boards are filled by candidates who apply through those boards. (Empire Resume)
50% of candidates say they wouldn’t work for a company with a bad reputation, even for a pay increase. (Randstad)
79% of candidates use social media in their job search (Glassdoor)
92% of consumers will visit a brand’s website for reasons other than making a purchase. (Episerver)
71% of employees would accept a pay cut for a better work experience. (Hays Recruiting)
80% of employers think employees leave for more money, but 12% actually do. (Gallup)

These statistics show that people in the market for a job have very similar experiences to consumers looking for a product. Their search for a job is more than one event or one moment. It is composed of a complete end-to-end journey.

Example:

Someone might first see your ad on a job board, but they will also verify your online reviews, look through your social media accounts, and visit your website.

People aren’t candidates or consumers; they are both. People are just people and they can be marketed in the same way. So you need to take the systems you use to attract consumers to your brand and start using them to help you attract employees to work for you.

The MOST important thing to figure out if you want to GROW your business…

Rethinking the Customer & Employee Journey Workbook

Get Yours Today!

In this post, you will not read about “quick hacks you can do find people” or “easy fixes.” Instead, I will focus on the strategies behind your hiring process. These are the strategies you need to know, and this is what will help with your recruitment strategies in the long run.

Three Steps to the Perfect Recruiting Strategy

Narrow your Focus to the Top Ideal 20%
Promise to Solve a Problem
Create a Full End-to-end Journey

Narrow your recruitment focus to your top ideal 20%

I preach this to our clients to help them attract customers. It is vital that you fully understand who makes a completely ideal customer for your business. The same is true about who makes an ideal employee for your organization.

Consider the top 20% of your employees, and ask yourself: Who drives the most profit? Who is the most productive? Who is the most committed or satisfied in their work? Who has the most comments, reviews, or shoutouts? Then make a list of common traits that you see among these people.

Create Three Lists

After identifying the common characteristics of your top 20% of employees, you’ll want to create three lists. The first two are: “nice to have” and “ideal to have.” What are some things you’ve found that are nice to have in an employee? And what are some ideal things? This information will help you create a culture fit.

Then take note of any experience or technical requirements needed. Try to only let this part sway your opinion if it is absolutely necessary.

This exercise will certainly help you determine who is an ideal fit for your organization. In addition, going through these motions will teach you how to market to your ideal candidate and give clarity on what to look for during the recruiting process.

Tip

When recruiting you should focus on creating diversity but aligning culture. Somebody who believes in your company’s mission has ideal behaviors that will better serve your organization. Which, in turn, will better serve your customers compared to all the experience, background, and technical training.

Promise to solve a problem

Nobody wants what you sell, they want their problem solved, period. The best candidates for employment usually have a job already, but they want to find a better one. They want to get out of an environment that is not right for them. So you need to market that your business solves the problems they have in their current role.

What is the problem that your organization solves for employees?

How can you find out what your company’s unique hiring proposition is? Or what problem can you solve? First, survey your current employees. Then build an employee branding strategy based on their answers.

Here is a list of sample questions to ask employees when recruiting;

Why did you come to work with us?
Why are you still working with us?
What factors were involved in your decision to work for us?
What do you like about working at this organization?
Is there anything you don’t like about working at this organization? If so, how can we fix it?

The information received from this type of interview will offer valuable insights and better prepare you for your hiring journey. Therefore, it is crucial to keep the employee survey anonymous in order to collect the most accurate and authentic answers.

Focus on your employee branding strategy

Take a look at your main marketing message. Does it focus on your product or the service your people provide? Customers experience brands through direct contact with employees. So, unless you are just flat out selling a product, your main marketing message should highlight the people in your organization and how they help your target audience solve a problem.

Then you will want to see what your customers are saying online about your employees. Mine online reviews or feedback surveys. Are there any employees that customers mention by name? What are those employees like, and what are they doing that customers love? Promote those people and promote what they do for your customers and your brand through social media, newsletters, and your site.

These actions will help you figure out the problem you solve for your employees and double down on it during your recruiting and hiring process. It will also show that you value and act on your employees’ feedback and appreciate their work through public and personal recognition.

All these things working together help you build a customer base that wants to do business with you, a dedicated staff that wants to work for your company, and new hires that want to join you.

Create an end-to-end journey

The cold, hard truth is that customers and employees don’t change companies; they change experiences. Your recruitment strategy should not be a one-time hiring event. You have to build a pipeline and create an end-to-end journey or a complete experience.

I use a model that depicts the end-to-end customer journey called the Marketing Hourglass. Customers first have to know about you, and then they need to decide if they like and trust you. Next, they actually buy from you. Then, if they have a good experience, they hopefully come back and buy again and maybe even refer you to others.

You can apply the overall customer journey strategy to the recruiting or hiring journey. Today, people learn about businesses through several different avenues, and it is not always a straight line. Many times, it is just the opposite. How people come to know, like, trust, and ultimately work for your company is inherently out of your direct control. As a result, you must be intentional about how your business shows up at each stage. Actively guiding the experience candidates have with your organization.

The stages of the recruiting journey hourglass are; know, like, trust, try, hire, retain, and refer.

Get Your Copy Today

The first three stages create employee relationships through awareness and relatability; know, like, and trust.

Know

This is where employer branding comes in. Is your organization referred to as a great place to work? And if so, are you talking about it?

Do you share that you are hiring on places other than job boards? Do you mention it on your social channels or during interviews?

Advertising and posting on job sites is an obvious way to attract candidates, but there is no reason to be on these sites if you do not have a clear path to conversion.

Like

When potential employees come to your site or social profiles to check you out, what story do they find? Do they see that you value your employees through your content? Who is the first point of contact in the hiring process? How fast is the follow-up? How easy do you make it for them to find out more?

Trust

At this stage, candidates want to know what other people say about your organization. Take stock of your social media mentions and online reviews. This is also a good opportunity to take control of the narrative and have your employees share their experiences with your target audience.

You must intentionally implement these steps as part of your brand’s marketing and recruiting strategy.

The following two stages are the bridge to long-term employee success: Try and Hire

It can be extremely costly to have a lot of employee turnover, especially short-lived employee turnover, not to mention bad for your business’s image and culture. So that is why it’s essential to get these stages right.

Try

Take a look at your application process. Does it attract the best candidates or just eliminate the ones applying? Are there long surveys, or is it a rigorous phone screen? Is follow-up more than a week after applying? Do you set clear expectations at every stage of the hiring process?

Hire

Don’t let your organization be a victim of hires-remorse. Have you evaluated your onboarding process? What does the training process look like? Don’t just put systems in place that check off boxes; put the effort in and make these experiences exceptional.

The main takeaway is to hire people with the same care that you put into customer acquisition. For example, you would not have an extensive pre-qualifying questionnaire for your customers or not follow up with them after they purchased, so you shouldn’t do that to your potential hires.

The last two stages are the keys to growing with your team: Retain and Refer.

Retain

Year after year, the number one reason employees leave companies is a lack of respect or investment in their personal development. Growing with and investing in your team is how you build a stable business.

Refer

If your employees trust the hiring process they went through, they are more likely to refer others for open positions. They are also more likely to refer people they know if there is an excellent incentive. The incentives for referral hiring should be creative and benefit both the referrer and the new hire to be effective.

People don’t change jobs they change bosses.

Solve for the issue of respect. What if we came to view our customers and employees more like members. Guide people from where they are to where they want to go.

What else can be impacted in your business by doing this?

Investing in your recruiting journey will bolster your mission, solidify the messages you share with your audience, help in sales and training, increase services and help grow your business. It will also help with your hiring process.

What can start doing today today?

Go through each Recruiting Journey Stage of the and ask yourself, “What am I currently doing to build a pipeline of people interested in my organization? How am I nurturing that process?”

I use this workbook every day with clients. It has all of the tools described in this post. It is also a great planning document that you can use to create your customer and your employee journey.

Get yours today!

June 7, 2022/by exposure

Transforming The Dental Industry One Smile At A Time

Transforming The Dental Industry One Smile At A Time written by Sara Nay read more at Duct Tape Marketing

About the show:

The Agency Spark Podcast, hosted by Sara Nay, is a collection of short-form interviews from thought leaders in the marketing consultancy and agency space.

Each episode focuses on a single topic with actionable insights you can apply today.

Check out the new Spark Lab Consulting website here!

About this episode:

In this episode of the Agency Spark Podcast, Sara talks with Dr. Ingrid Murra on transforming the dental industry one smile at a time.

Dr. Ingrid Murra is the 48th Latin woman to secure over $1,000,000 Venture Capital funding in the history of the United States, a Harvard-trained orthodontist, and the founder & CEO of the orthodontic startup, Two Front.

Two Front has modernized orthodontic care by providing a trusted network of best-in-class orthodontists and by making care convenient with virtual visits – eliminating up to 95% of in-person Invisalign appointments.

More from Dr. Ingrid Murra:

Two Front Website
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June 6, 2022/by exposure

Transforming Marketing With Artificial Intelligence

Transforming Marketing With Artificial Intelligence written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Paul Roetzer

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Paul Roetzer. Paul is the founder and CEO of Marketing AI Institute, and the founder of PR 20/20, HubSpot’s first partner agency. He is the author of The Marketing Performance Blueprint (Wiley, 2014) and The Marketing Agency Blueprint (Wiley, 2012); and the creator of the Marketing AI Conference (MAICON). As a speaker, Roetzer is focused on making AI approachable and actionable for marketers and business leaders. He’s also the co-author of a new book launching in June 2022 — Marketing Artificial Intelligence: AI, Marketing, and the Future of Business.

Key Takeaway:

AI is simply a system that can perform tasks that normally require human intelligence. The idea and purpose behind it are to drive digital transformation, evolve an organization, do smarter marketing, save time and money and produce better outputs.

In this episode, I talk with the founder of Marketing AI Institute, Paul Roetzer, about how AI is changing the game in marketing today and how to utilize AI in your marketing to be more efficient and effective in your organization.

Questions I ask Paul Roetzer:

[1:40] When somebody asks you, “What is AI?” — what’s the simple answer?
[2:47] Let’s start with the dystopian view. I’m sure you hear all the time that AI is taking over — where does that view intersect with reality?
[4:22] If your job is doing repetitive things, would you say someone in a role like that could be looking at getting replaced in the future?
[5:18] How will AI impact the marketing profession?
[7:21] What are some of the everyday uses of AI that people are experiencing and maybe don’t know it?
[10:07] What are the five things that every digital agency should be diving into that are going to give them some of the advantages of using AI?
[11:54] If you looked at these as efficiency tools alone, that would be a great start, wouldn’t it?
[12:25] Who are some companies that you think are using AI really well in their marketing or operations?
[13:39] What’s been the hard part of using AI for non-enterprise level organizations?
[15:02] Would AI help you serve your existing clients better?
[16:49] What ways are you seeing consumer behavior change?
[18:36] Where do you see AI being applied for more personal experiences in places like an email newsletter for example?
[20:25] What would you tell a group of folks that are just now getting into marketing where they should be putting their attention?
[21:56] Where are your favorite places to find AI tools?
[23:15] Where can people connect with you and find out more about your work and your book?

More About Paul Roetzer:

His new book — Marketing Artificial Intelligence: AI, Marketing, and the Future of Business
Marketing AI Institute
Connect on LinkedIn
Connect on Twitter

Take The Marketing Assessment:

Marketingassessment.co

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Duct Tape Transcript

John Jantsch (00:00): This episode of the duct tape marketing podcast is brought to you by the female startup club, hosted by Doone Roisin, and brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network. If you’re looking for a new podcast, the female startup club shares tips, tactics and strategies from the world’s most successful female founders, entrepreneurs, and women in business to inspire you to take action and get what you want out of your career. One of my favorite episodes who should be your first hire, what’s your funding plan, Dr. Lisa Cravin shares her top advice from building spotlight oral. Listen to the female startup club, wherever you get your podcasts.

John Jantsch (00:47): Hello, and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jan and my guest today’s Paul Roetzer. He’s the founder and CEO of marketing AI Institute, founder of PR 2020 HubSpot’s first partner, agency HubSpots and sponsor of this show. As many of you know, he’s also the author of the marketing performance blueprint, the marketing agency blueprint and creator of the marketing AI conference Macon. So guess what, we’re gonna talk about AI, but he’s also got a new book coming out co-author of marketing, artificial intelligence, AI marketing in the future of business. So Paul, welcome back.

Paul Roetzer (01:27): It’s so good to be back together, John. It’s good to see you.

John Jantsch (01:30): So, so we’ve been, we were laughing before we started the show. We’ve been talking about AI and now maybe for five or seven years, but I still think there’s a lot of, like, what is that, you know, is that Hollywood? Is that, is that sci-fi, you know, how do you, when somebody just asks you, what is AI? Is there a simple answer?

Paul Roetzer (01:44): The definition I always give is the science of making machine smart and actually comes from de SaaS. Who’s the co-founder and CEO of Google deep mind. And what I love about the simplicity of the definition is the software we use every day, as marketers, as consumers, the hardware we use the phones like your iPhone, they’re incapable of doing things on their own, unless they’re told how to do them. So machines being software and hardware with AI, those machines get human bilities to understand language, to generate language, to see, you know, with computer vision. And so that’s really what they’re doing, and they’re able to learn from data and get smarter on their own. And so we’ll talk, I’m sure we’ll talk about some use case, some examples. Yeah, but that’s the key is rather than just software, that’s all human rules based AI enables vendors to build software that learns and evolves and makes predictions and recommendations to you to augment what you’re capable of as a marketer.

John Jantsch (02:44): So let’s start with the dystopian view, sure, uh, of, of, you know, which I’m sure you hear all the time, right. That, you know, it’s taking over, there’s no thinking there’s no feeling, you know, like, you know, content marketers are, you know, like, yeah. I just put in a couple keywords and boom, I’ve got great content. You know, I don’t have to hire anybody anymore. Uh, where does that view intersect with reality?

Paul Roetzer (03:08): AI’s not that smart. So I think the key is there’s definitely this nature one, you think it’s abstract and it’s, it is just the sci-fi thing. You’re not actually using it. Two is it can seem overwhelming and highly technical. The reality is that AI isn’t that advanced today. What, what happens is it’s trying to do these very specific tasks at, at a very high level. And it’s normally applied to things that are repetitive and data driven for us as marketers, things that we don’t want to have to do a bunch of times anyway. Yeah. So you kind of look at these things in your daily life where it’s repetitive, there’s a defined process for it. That’s a lot of times where AI being applied, it’s augmenting what you do. It’s intelligently automating pieces of it is not taking your job away. It’s not replacing you as a writer. It’s just there to be an it’s easiest to think of it as an assistant. And so that’s in the book we go into like these different levels of intelligent automation, and we’re not going from zero to fully autonomous. We’re just trying to get that little bit of support from the machine.

John Jantsch (04:05): Yeah. And I think some people can make a case for it actually frees you to do the creative work. And I think the argument probably 25 years ago when robots came around was, oh, it’s taken, you know, these people’s jobs, but like, do you really wanna put that bolt in 3 million times? , you know, over the next two weeks, is that a really satisfying job? Right. So that’s a lot of what you’re saying is it takes the repetitive stuff out. And, and so clearly if, if you’re counting on having a job, that’s based on repetition, I mean, you’re probably, you probably are looking about at being replaced, aren’t you?

Paul Roetzer (04:36): Yeah. I mean, the way I explain it is if your job is simply to AB test landing pages that is fundamentally all you do 40 hours a week, then yes, it will replace you like you. That is not gonna be something humans need to do. If you are looking at data and trying to figure out audience targeting for media buying AI is really good at that. It’s really good at finding patterns and like being able to predict, you know, behaviors and outcomes. So it’s just tasks. But if your entire being is doing those repetitive tasks, then yes, it would be a good time to start looking for other areas where there’s uniquely human traits needed, like strategy, creativity, empathy, like those relationship building, those are machines not doing those things really. Yeah.

John Jantsch (05:17): So, so how, how are you talking to marketers specifically about the impact of this in their jobs? We, you kind of almost touched on it right there a little bit. Yeah. But how are, you know, how does it really, how will it, uh, impact the marketing

Paul Roetzer (05:31): Profession? So at a high level, we talk about this intelligent automation. We’re under the working assumption that within three to five years, at least 80% of what marketers do will be intelligently automated to some degree, meaning tools, software you’re using is going to have AI in them, but that’s not unlike your consumer life. So you don’t think about AI all the all day long, but every time you use Netflix and it’s recommending shows and movies, Spotify learns, you know, your music and predict shows, Google maps routing you from a to B in the, in the fastest way. Anytime you talk to a, a virtual assistant like a Google or Siri, all of that is AI. And so your life is made more convenient, more personalized by AI. And that’s, what’s gonna happen in business, whether you’re in advertising or email or communications or SEO, AI is going to be infused into the software and make it smarter. And in many cases, you’re not even gonna notice it or even care. Yeah. But we’re not there yet. And so what we tell marketers is you can get there now though, you can go find smarter tools to do what you do. It’s not about buying AI. It’s about buying smarter tech. You already buy this tech find tools that are getting better and making you better at your job.

John Jantsch (06:43): Yeah. And I think one of the, well, let me back up a little bit, cuz you, you alluded to a point I was gonna ask about is I think the AI’s been with us a lot longer than people realize and it’s in everyday stuff that we, you know, we don’t realize. I, I wrote my last book exclusively in, uh, Google, uh, docs at somewhere along two, three years ago, you know, they started adding AI to Google docs to where it’s actually, I could start writing a sentence and go, oh, I wasn’t gonna say that. But that’s pretty good. I mean, it would actually, you know, and I don’t know if it’s purely learning one to one with me or if it’s just saying, oh, people commonly finish sentences with this word that start that way. So, so talk a little bit about some of the really everyday uses you started talking a little bit about ’em, but going to some examples of everyday uses that people are experiencing AI and, and maybe don’t know it.

Paul Roetzer (07:35): Yeah. So the, we talk at a high level categorically and there’s, I think it’s chapter two of the book is, is broken into language, vision and prediction. And so it talks like these parent categories of different applications of AI. So language in particular is of interest to all marketers, right? And that is mainly around the understanding and generation of language. And so that’s like what you’re talking about Grammarly is a great example of AI embedded within a tool that many people use every day. Um, so zoom is another, like they use outer.ai to transcribe audio, right? So speech to text, text, text to speech is another one language generation with any, whether it’s video or audio or written. So like all these Twitter out there, like copy.ai and Jasper and hyper write. And you know, you hear all these names, you probably see the ads for, and what they’re doing is using a, the tool called G PT three or an underlining platform called G P T three, which is made by open AI.

Paul Roetzer (08:27): And that is a language generation it’s using, what’s called a large language model to generate language in all these different disciplines. And so you can go in and give it a sample website and say, okay, write me ad copy, or write me social media shares based on this. And it’s doing it now. You’re not gonna grab it and hit publish. But as a social media pro or an ad person or a blog post writer, you’re going to take these almost as drafts and improve on them and then publish them. And so I think again, anywhere where you write, you’re seeing it all over and that’s gonna continue to become a part of your life. And then again, you just go disciplined by discipline, whether again, your communications, SEO, and just find ways where there’s repetitive processes, predictions being made or language being read or generated.

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John Jantsch (09:57): So if somebody came to you and said, yeah, we we’re an agency digital agency and we know about AI, but we haven’t really been aggressively or intentionally trying to bring it to our clients. Where would you say, well, here’s the starting point. Here are the five things that every digital agency should be diving into that it’s gonna give them AI or it’s at least gonna give ’em some advantages using AI.

Paul Roetzer (10:18): Yeah. So there’s two ways we teach it. It’s called the piloting. AI is that there’s a chapter dedicated to this, too. What I tell people is take a spreadsheet, make a list of all the activities, the tasks that you do individually, or as a team each week, each month make a comment that says how many hours a month you spend doing it, uh, what software you use for it and how much that software costs per month. So you’re basically getting a cost structure for each activity and then just apply of simple rating and says, well, how valuable would it be to intelligently automate this task? And so let’s say you’re a content strategist and you spend 10 hours a month on the editorial calendar, figuring out what to write, looking at past posts, trying to predict what work, what you should republish, what you should create new.

Paul Roetzer (10:58): Then that might be an area where you could say, wow, if AI could help me do this and cut it 80% of the time spent on it and be better at predicting, what’s gonna work. That would be huge for me as a content strategist. There you go, AI for content strategy, go Google it, find three tools that do it, go demo those tools. So I always tell people is start where you’re already spending time, where you can make a business case for the value it could create for you. And you’re gonna know real quickly whether it’s working or not. Cuz at the end of the day, AI is just designed to make you better at your job and make it cost less to do the job. And if it’s not doing that in improving performance, then it’s a waste of time.

John Jantsch (11:38): Yeah. I think that’s a really great point too, because I think a lot of people look at this and say, oh, we can do new things and maybe start by by just getting efficiencies. Yes. I mean you could probably generate a tremendous amount of profit to the bottom line by just get, I mean, everybody that, by getting more efficient. So if you looked at these as efficiency tools alone, that would be a great start, wouldn’t

Paul Roetzer (11:58): It? Yeah. And I know of companies that have, I have friends whose jobs and companies is to try and reduce the need for 15 new headcount down to five. Yeah. And they’re basically just looking at not, they’re not their job isn’t to fire people, but it is to say, as we scale, how do we do it without having to hire more? And so they’re looking at inefficiencies and work productivity and they’re finding things that AI can do to at least some degree without the need for human involvement or minimal human involvement,

John Jantsch (12:25): Who are some companies that you think are doing this really well. I mean that are maybe kind of ahead of the curve and, and it might just be in their own operations or in their own marketing.

Paul Roetzer (12:33): Yeah. Most of as big enterprises, they don’t talk about it much. But when you look at retail eCommerce or huge ones, just go to the top 10 eCommerce companies, top 10 retailers, um, CPG financial services. Those are healthcare. What you look for is companies and industries that have a lot of data and a, and a huge need for personalization. And there’s a really good chance they’ve been doing this stuff for five to 10 years, not if not in marketing and sales and service across other areas of the company. But I mean, just like Mike, my co-author just put one on LinkedIn last week about like 15 retailers that are doing awesome things with AI. And it was the obvious ones. Walmart Starbucks McDonald’s bought, bought AI com like they’re buying AI companies, they bought one to customize the drive through screen for you based on the weather data and based on behavioral data of like what people are ordering that day. So it actually tailors what you’re seeing. So I mean, it’s just, retail was a huge one that, yeah, there’s just tons on.

John Jantsch (13:29): So that’s why that pumpkin spice shows up that day. Huh?

Paul Roetzer (13:32): Yeah. Well if it’s in the middle of the summer. Yes. Because otherwise it just shows up in the winter, but yeah,

John Jantsch (13:38): That, yeah. So, so taking this back to non-enterprise yeah. Level companies, uh, which a great deal of our listeners are what’s the, what’s been the stumbling block. What’s been the hard part, you know, of doing this.

Paul Roetzer (13:53): So we asked that question in our state of the industry survey we did with drift, like what are the obstacles to adoption? Number one far and away with 70% of people said, lack of education and training. They just didn’t know where to go to get the information. And then in the 40 percentiles you had like lack of awareness, lack of team, right? Like talent, lack of strategy, lack of vision. My base assumption is the vast majority of marketers still have no idea what it is. So they can’t explain it to you. They, if like, let’s say you’re at a, you know, a 30 person agency and you listen to this and you’re like, this is kind of cool. And you’re gonna walk into the CEO’s office and say, I think we should start doing more AI. And the CEO says, why you’re gonna say, I don’t know, just, it sounds like we’re just really cool. Like

John Jantsch (14:32): Everybody else is.

Paul Roetzer (14:33): Yeah. If they really say, well, what would be the business case for it? What exactly is it like most marketers can’t give a basic definition and they don’t know the main use cases for it. So I think it, it is just a lack of understanding across the industry. That’s slowing adoption rates down,

John Jantsch (14:47): You know, I loved one of the filters. I think that you used for this, you know, when a lot of new social media platforms would come around and you know, clients would be saying, should we be doing that? You know, should we get on Twitter, this, you know, circa 2007 or something like that. Um, and, and I always did use the filter. Uh, would this help you serve your existing clients better? You know, if you make a case for that, then go all in and we’ll get crazy with it. But, and I think that’s probably a great starting place for looking at AI. Isn’t it?

Paul Roetzer (15:15): Yeah, no doubt. I, I actually published something recently that wasn’t in the book and it sort of came to me, uh, little later on, but the, what I think’s gonna end up happening is, and again, keep in mind, I owned an agency for 16 years before I sold it. Right. So I, I live in the agency world and we work with lots of companies. So SMBs all the way up to, you know, fortune 500 companies. Um, I think in the not too distant future, there’s three types of organizations. There’s AI native. So they don’t exist without AI, they’re in an industry and they find a smarter way to do that industry, do the products and services in that industry. And they build from day one as an AI company, then there’s AI emergent. Those are companies that exist today that look to the future and say, while there’s smarter ways to do product and services, marketing sales, and then there’s obsolete.

Paul Roetzer (15:58): And, and I don’t think there’s anything in between. So the way I look at it is AI is going to be so essential to the operations of every business. And so intertwined into the marketing sales and customer service, that if you don’t find ways to adapt and evolve, someone else is going to build a smarter version of, of your business. That is way more efficient than you are without AI. And over time, I’m not saying like three years from now, we’re all done. Like if you don’t evolve saying, but over the next decade, like it’s going, you’re just gonna become less and less relevant if you don’t find a way to become more efficient at what you do and deliver better results.

John Jantsch (16:34): Yeah. And I think some of that’s very consumer driven too. You know, one of the things people always point to is Amazon changed the game because consumers got used to yeah. The way what they got to experience there and everybody else had to up their game or, you know, get left behind. And you know, what ways are you seeing consumer behavior change? Because whether they know it or not, they’re being served this way.

Paul Roetzer (16:57): Yeah. I, I think the key for me is as consumers of consumer products, but also in our B2B world, you come to expect convenience and personalization. Like if I’m, let’s say I’m shopping for new social media management software and I’m the entrepreneur of a five person company, or a 20 person agent, whatever it is, there’s a good chance. I’m not doing that at 10:00 AM on a Thursday. There’s a much better chance I’m doing it at 10:00 PM on a Friday after my kids go to bed. And I finally have a minute to look at that thing. That’s not critical to my business, but is important to the future. So if I’m on a website for social media management software and it’s like call us between Monday and Friday from nine to five, and there’s no intelligent chat out there that actually helps me get what I’m looking for or understands that I’ve been on the site previously and kind of can predict my behavior and my intent, like I want personalization and convenience in my shopping experience, whether I’m on Amazon or I’m on some social media management software site. And so I think as consumers, we just come to expect convenience and personalization, and there is no way to do personalization at scale, without AI in the future. Like I’ve heard software CEOs talk about personalization as though AI, or as though it can happen without AI. It can’t, like, we’re not that good as humanist writing rules that apply to thousands of people.

John Jantsch (18:17): Right. Right, right, right. Right. So, so let’s talk about the relationship between AI and your data, because I think that’s what you’re really in a lot of ways where, where people are starting to personalize without AI is because I know customer X has bought this product and I can cookie him or her. And so then I can serve a more relevant, personal experience perhaps, or relevant email newsletter perhaps. But where does, where do you see AI then? You know, must be applied. You know, if we can use these JavaScripts and we can use our own data, you know, where does AI come into play with that scenario?

Paul Roetzer (18:55): Yeah. So data is the foundation of AI. It’s what it gives its predictive abilities, cuz that, that you almost every case AI is just making predictions about behaviors and outcomes. That’s what machine learning is. So you hear machine learning thrown around is like synonymous with AI. Sometimes it’s a subset of AI, but machine learning is all about the machine learning from data to improve its predictions and actions. And so that’s what the data does is it gives you the ability to actually build these predictive models about customer retention, customer growth, churn rates, lead scoring, to predict who’s likely to be a new customer. Who’s gonna open emails. Who’s gonna click on it’s all predictions. And so data is at the foundation of that. Now you can be a small business. You don’t have to have, you know, hundreds of thousands of records because what you can do is benefit from anonymized data. So if you’re a HubSpot customer, they have 150,000 customers over money. They have, they can anonymize all that data targeted like, okay, this is a lump of cohorts. That’s in this specific industry or this specific size company. And they can anonymize that data to improve your predictive ability. I’m not saying they’re doing that, but that’s what’s happening. MailChimp is a good example. Hundreds of millions of records. They can use all that anonymized data to predict when you should send your emails, who you send ’em to subject lines, you should use things like that.

John Jantsch (20:07): Yeah. So let’s, let’s end by talking a little bit about future careers. If you were talking and you probably get asked to, to a group of college students that were in marketing, uh, what would you be? I know when I talk to ’em, I, I tell, ’em look, forget all the stuff you’ve been learning. This is what you actually should be focusing on. You know, what are you, what would you tell, uh, a group of folks that are just now getting into marketing, where they should be putting their attention?

Paul Roetzer (20:31): One, I think it’s an incredible time to come into the profession because as you said so much of what got the rest of us, where we are, is going to evolve in the near future. yeah. And so the ideas to, to, to drive digital transformation, to evolve an organization, to, to do smarter marketing, that saves time and money and produces better outputs. It can come from the interns because a lot of executives don’t understand this stuff and they’re maybe even a bit intimidated by it because they don’t understand and they think it’s gonna be really hard to learn. So they just kind of avoid learning it, keep putting it off. Yeah. So I think that the people who take the initiative to go learn it and don’t go and try and sell AI and machine learning like you, if you walk into the CMOs office as an intern and say, I think we’re gonna, we do some machine learning.

Paul Roetzer (21:17): We could cut a hundred hours a month of productivity and like get outta my office. Like I . But if you go in and say, Hey, listen, I analyzed our email marketing activities and we spent a hundred hours last month doing these five things. I think there’s a way to shave 50% of the time off and actually produce twice as much quality work now. Oh, talk to me about that. What is that? Okay. Well there’s these two tools I’ve been testing and here’s what they do. You don’t ever even have to say AI. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, to go find smarter tools to do the thing and you identify opportunities to drive efficiency cuz you understand what it’s capable of doing.

John Jantsch (21:51): All right. I lied. I’m not gonna end yet. Tell me where tell me, tell me where, what are you can need to say? Well, here are my favorite places to find AI tools or here are a handful of my favorite AI tools, either one, either way. You want to answer that.

Paul Roetzer (22:03): So in, in the book, there’s 10 chapters in the middle that are piloting AI chapters and it’s AI for advertising AI for communications. Each of those chapters just follow the same pattern. It explains the opportunity with that category of marketing. It goes into tech and then it goes into sample use cases or vice versa, use cases and tech. So there’s about 70 different vendors featured in the book that are a good starting point on the marketing AI Institute blog. We regularly published lists of vendors across different categories and different things. Like we did 36 tools for AI co or for copywriting last week that, that sort of stuff. So yeah, we just follow along the newsletter or, you know, grab a copy of the book.

John Jantsch (22:39): And the, the fun thing is that like everybody’s copy of the book will be different. Right.

Paul Roetzer (22:44): That would be awesome.

John Jantsch (22:46):

Paul Roetzer (22:47): There, there are a lot of things we tried to do with AI to do the book, but personalized copies for everybody. I don’t think the publisher would’ve let me get away with

John Jantsch (22:56): That. No, no, that’s a tough one. So speaking of an industry that, uh, maybe needs to come into the future, sorry. Uh, sorry. I’m not picking on your publisher,

Paul Roetzer (23:04): But my publisher’s very open minded. I actually love what they’re thinking of. We’re doing some cool stuff with synthetic voice potentially. We may actually

John Jantsch (23:11): Do some stuff, so. Oh cool. Awesome. We’ll tell people, you’ve mentioned a few things, but if you wanna invite people where they could connect with you and obviously the book will be available everywhere.

Paul Roetzer (23:20): Yeah. And so marketing, I institute.com. You can get to the book site from there. There’s gonna be, uh, there’s a couple of free downloads that actually the piling AI workbook that we talked about of how to figure out what to start with, that’s gonna be a free download as part of the book. So you can go there and actually get that spreadsheet. And then there’s a guide that has about 30 sample questions to ask AI vendors. So to help you assess them, it it’s kind of a cool guide. So those will both be available there. So yeah, marketing institute.com is best and I’m really good on, uh, LinkedIn and Twitter. If you wanna reach out to me personally, I’m, I’m really responsive on both of those platforms. I am not a Instagram TikTok or Facebook guy. And if I’m missing anything else, I don’t really do those either too much.

John Jantsch (23:56): gotta stay focused. Right. Awesome. Paul, it was a great catch up for you. I appreciate your stopping by the duct tape marketing podcast. Hopefully you will see you, uh, soon, one of these days out there

Paul Roetzer (24:05): On the road. Thanks so much, John.

John Jantsch (24:06): 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 create a free tool for you. It’s called the marketing strategy assessment. You can find it @ marketingassessment.co not.com.co check out our free marketing assessment and learn where you are with your strategy today. That’s just marketingassessment.co I’d love to chat with you about the results that you get.

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June 6, 2022/by exposure

How To Create Powerful, Uncopyable Experiences For Your Target Customer

How To Create Powerful, Uncopyable Experiences For Your Target Customer written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Steve Miller

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Steve Miller. Meetings & Conventions Magazine calls Steve Miller the Idea Man for his unconventional, edgy, no-spin approach to marketing and branding. He is the author of the Amazon #1 bestseller, “UNCOPYABLE: How to Create an Unfair Advantage Over Your Competition.” Steve’s speaking and consulting clients have ranged from entrepreneurs to Fortune 100 corporations, including Proctor & Gamble, Greystar Real Estate, Caterpillar, Boeing Airplane, Starbucks, Philips Electronics, and the prestigious TED Conference. We’re talking about his latest book — Stealing Genuis: The Seven Levels of Adaptive Innovation.

Key Takeaway:

Improvement is not innovation and innovation is essential if your aim is to survive in today’s business environment. Fixating on improvement in today’s world is a dangerous path—one that ultimately leads to commoditization and irrelevance. In this episode, I talk with author, Steve Miller, about innovating in today’s business world by creating powerful, uncopyable experiences for your target customer.

Questions I ask Steve Miller:

[2:34] What does ‘Stealing Genuis’ mean?
[6:29] What is adaptive innovation?
[9:39] How do you advise people?
[14:43] What are some of the ways to know if something innovative is going to be a big risk and not turn off customers?
[16:23] Do you have a couple of examples of companies that you think are just routinely good at innovation?
[19:06] Where can more people find out about you and your work?

More About Jack McGuinness:

Get a copy of his book — Stealing Genuis: The Seven Levels of Adaptive Innovation

Take The Marketing Assessment:

Marketingassessment.co

Like this show? Click on over and give us a review on iTunes, please!

Duct Tape Transcript

John Jantsch (00:00): This episode of the duct tape marketing podcast is brought to you by the female startup club, hosted by Doone Roison, and brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network. If you’re looking for a new podcast, the female startup club shares tips, tactics and strategies from the world’s most successful female founders, entrepreneurs, and women in business to inspire you to take action and get what you want out of your career. One of my favorite episodes, who should be your first hire what’s your funding plan, Dr. Lisa Cravin shares her top advice from building spotlight oral. Listen to the female startup club, wherever you get your podcasts.

John Jantsch (00:49): Hello, and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch, my guest today’s Steve Miller meetings and conventions magazines calls him the idea, man, for his unconventional edgy, no spin approach to marketing and branding. He’s the author of the Amazon. Number one best seller UN copyable. How to create an unfair advantage over your competition. He speaks in, uh, his speaking and consulting clients have ranged from entrepreneurs to fortune 100 corporations, including Proctor and gamble, gray star, real estate, caterpillar, Boeing, airplane, Starbucks, Phillips electronics, and the prestigious Ted conference. Today. We’re gonna talk about his latest book, stealing genius, the seven levels of adaptive innovation. So

Steve Miller (01:38): God, thank you for that. When having me on to talk about this, this is great. I, you know, I mean, I think I’m pretty sure no, this is how authors work, right. But my book went to number one, which was for a brief period of time. okay. You and I both on top of it again sure. That I knocked you off the best seller list for like two or three days, you know, then you immediately just jumped right back.

John Jantsch (02:07): Well, that is good to know. And then listeners won’t won’t know this, but this is our second attempt at this interview because we had a technology glitch. And so Steve was kind of kind enough to come back. There’s I, and, and I, you know, if you were to listen to the other recording, just know that it would not be the exact same thing. I, I suspect because I never know what a questions I’m gonna ask. And I know Steve, has you

Steve Miller (02:29): No idea what Steve has no idea. I,

John Jantsch (02:34): So, so I do wanna start by unpacking the, just the ti the words or the, that you use in the title. So in two cases, the first one, stealing genius, maybe give us a definition of, of that

Steve Miller (02:45): Going well. This if, to try to unwrap it as quickly as possible that the Genesis of this is that too often, businesses doesn’t matter what size business you could be, a, a single person, entrepreneur, you know, or, you know, a fortune 500 company too often. They get fall into the trap of paying too much attention to the competition, too much attention to the world within their world. Okay. And as, as such, you see an awful lot of dare. I say, incestuous behavior among companies, you know, they copy each other. They might try to improve upon somebody else’s idea, but they kind, that’s kind of how they come up with their future plans for, oh, we’re just, we’re gonna get better than the competition. We’re gonna get better than the competition. Well, many years ago, my father, Ralph Miller and his cohort and crime bill Le of li jet, they got together and came up with this concept that they, they deemed the eight track tape player.

Steve Miller (03:54): Okay. So yes, my dad was part of that world. now the reason I bring that up is because while they were planning on building this product, ultimately after a lot of, of starts and stops and stuff like that in various locations, they ultimately ended up in Japan trying to build this product over there. Now this is back in the sixties. And when you think of the, when you think of made in Japan, back in the sixties, for the most part, it was kind, you know, they were known for those little umbrella straws, you know, things that would go into your drinks, you know, it would open and close. And they, and there was an American consultant who got in with Toyota and his name was w Edwards, ding and Deming was really the precursor or one of the guys that kind of got the total quality thing moving well.

Steve Miller (04:44): So, right. So my dad and bill Le knowing they had to build a quality product in Japan, they brought him in to be part of the team. So, and then my dad, who, now this, I don’t wanna get into a discussion with my dad, but he decides that the way to spend quality time with his young teenage son is to drag me along and fly me to go to hang with these guys, right? Oh, that was a blast. And, but one of the things I remember was that DMing was very, this guy was really a pound the table, kind of a guy, right. When he got really, and, and the thing that he got really big about was benchmarking. Okay. Because that’s essentially what we’re talking about. When we say that, that we, as companies tend to look at our competition, we tend to look within our world.

Steve Miller (05:41): We are benchmarking is what we’re doing. Okay. Now D ding called that intrinsic benchmarking where you were benchmarking in your industry, but he maintained that in order to think creatively, that was a mistake. You were not gonna come up with new ideas by just studying the competition. You were gonna come up with new ideas by going outside your world, outside of your natural, uh, environment and go study aliens. And he called it extrinsic benchmarking, and I call a call it stealing genius. So, so that’s where, that’s the Genesis of where it all came from. It all started hell of a long time ago.

John Jantsch (06:29): so, so, so let’s, uh, unpack this other term then. So stealing genius really essentially comes down to looking for ideas that you can apply to your business, your industry in maybe unusual places. So then it’s a matter of, and, and the book really then comes up with these seven levels of how to think about it, of adaptive innovation. So, so, and

Steve Miller (06:52): So an adaptive innovation is really a it’s, it’s really the how to do it of stealing genius is that you go out and, you know, like I say, I talk about seven different levels of, of Ben benchmarking, petty them. And you look for people, organizations, companies who are not part of your world. Right. And you go stuck. Geez, what are they really good at? Okay. And you look for the genius in those people, and then you ask yourself, okay, is that something I can actually steal? And that’s where you, you’re answering the question. Is that an innovative idea in my world that I can adapt? All right. Cause you know, I mean, you can go study, you know, companies and people in other industries and they’ll have great ideas, but you’ll never, you just won’t be able to figure out a way to use them.

Steve Miller (07:41): So it has to be an innovative idea that you can adapt back into your industry. So, so to just say, you know, as just a simple example, like if you are in the high tech industry right now, then I would be telling you, go out and study the food industry, go out and study, you know, reader, industry, go detail, go out and study, you know, some AIAN high tech is using it, right? So at restaurants, you know, and ask yourself, is there something out there that we can steal and bring back to high tech? And nobody’s UN copyable hard, nobody in high tech is approaching anything like that right now. And if you do it right, you can actually create a situation that, you know, from my previous book is, is hard to copy.

John Jantsch (08:25): And now let’s hear from a sponsor, look, you’ve worked hard to grow your business and finding CRM software. You can trust to help grow it even more. It isn’t easy, whether you’re starting out or scaling up, HubSpot is here to help your business grow better with a CRM platform that helps put your customers first. And it’s trusted by enterprises and entrepreneurs alike with easy to use marketing tools like drag and drop web page editors that require no custom code content strategy tools, where you can create topic clusters that automatically link supporting content back to your core pillar pages to ensure search engines can easily crawl your site and identify you as an expert on any given topic. HubSpot helps your business work smarter, not harder, learn how your business can grow better@hubspot.com. So, so one of the things that I think is probably difficult, I don’t think anybody listening so far is like, oh, that’s a dumb idea that, that, I mean, I think everybody pretty much agrees with yeah, that’s, we’ve all seen that in our lives. Maybe you’re in some business innovation where everybody was like, that’s brilliant, but they really just brought it from somebody else who was doing it. So how do you advise people? I mean, I sure the first question a lot of people ask is, well, where do I look? You know, how do I get started?

Steve Miller (09:47): Well, you know, and with the Lev, the seven levels, you know, I try to take it from like the easiest way to start, you know, do I want to innovate right. And up to the most complicated and the easiest way to start is, first of all, is ask yourself just a question. Like, like, okay, what do I wanna, what I’ll, I’ll use an example of, uh, of, um, let you know, trade shows, for example, you know, one of the, one of the biggest issues with trade shows that the, the producers of trade shows, you know, they have to go out and they’re finding exhibitors who are spending a lot of money to come in and buy these booth piles. Well, one of the biggest challenges for the build these booths and, and spend that money, and then they have to attract people to come to walk up and down the ERs is they want those people to walk every single aisle, right.

Steve Miller (10:35): Because they want them to get in, to go buy all those people who are spending money. So if you ask the question, how do we get people to walk the aisles? Right. Well, that’s so let’s say that’s the project. That’s, that’s the question. So you ask, now the question you ask yourself is okay, who to that is not in the trade show. World is really good at forcing people walk and, and the number one example, the biggest example of all are supermarkets. Okay. It’s the food industry, but supermarkets are brilliant. They are genius at forcing you to travel as many aisles as possible before they will let you out. okay. You get your cart. That’s right. And, and like, just like the simple question, where is the milk in the supermarket? It’s as far away from the front door as it possibly can be, because everybody’s gonna, everybody’s got milk on which means you have to go their list.

Steve Miller (11:44): Right? So, so they’re gonna make you go as far away as possible. And they’re, you know, up and down aisles or around the corner or some different stuff like that. So that is, and trade shows by default historically have always put the milk in the front of the front of the hall. When you go into a big trade show for the most part, the biggest exhibitors, the ones who are the destination ex they’re, like anchor stores at a mall. Okay. They are making, they let you walk in and boom, you walk right in. Well, smart trade shows that, and I’ve consulted for a number of really big, you know, the top put the milk in the back of the hall hop shows in, in, in the country. You know, you finally get them to understand, no, you, you they’re the milk, right. They’re still gonna get every single person into their booth, but, but the people have to travel to get to them. So that’s see, that’s an example of it’s where you start at that kind of level level one where you define, find the, define the objective, and then you go out and you ask yourself who is doing this. That is an alien in, in our world.

John Jantsch (12:54): Yeah. So I think that the key to that as I’m listening to you is it’s not just a matter of going out and saying, oh, that’s different. We could do that. It’s really, I think first you have to look inward, you know, what is our industry doing? What does everybody do? What does common practice and really start then saying, how can we, you know, Zig let’s go look for a Zig. That would make

Steve Miller (13:16): Sense. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we’ve all heard. And I use the term map, the experience. I mean, you know, the customer journey, I mean, everything like that, but you know, those of us that are the consult, you know, we have these conversations with our clients and we talk about all these things. And then what I do is as we map the experience of the customer and go through all the touch points that they might have, then what I do is I, I, one by one, we go through the touch points. So we say, okay, is this something that we can change? You know, or do we have to just keep doing it the same way everybody else is doing it right now, if it’s, you know, let’s ask ourselves that question, you know, how do we make somebody travel? You know? And that might be the big question, but you do it with every, you know, every opportunity that you have, you look for a way to ask the question, is this something that we can do differently?

Steve Miller (14:05): You know, now, but even when you say, well, you know, you know, we, we could go look at companies and oh, look what they’re doing. Well, that’s actually one of the levels. Okay. But mm-hmm, before you get to, before you get to the point where you just go look at a company and say, gee, what are they really good at that, you know, you kind of wanna go through these other levels. So you get in your mind and you get yourself thinking in terms of what do they do, great that I can steal and use back in my

John Jantsch (14:31): Work. So one of the things that I, you know, a lot of pushback from companies, why they don’t innovate is because will it work? Nobody else in our industry is doing it. You know, it’s almost like a fear to try. So what are some of the ways that, that somebody can, this is probably two questions, but first know how something know that something’s going to work is not gonna be a big risk. It’s not gonna turn their customers off.

Steve Miller (14:55): Well, I think the first thing to ask yourself is do people buy from you because you’re similar to the competition. and yeah.

John Jantsch (15:05): And yeah. And in fact, jump in, push back more. I would guess a lot of people would say, well, not necessarily because of that, but they have a certain expectation, you know, of how they’re gonna be treated, say in

Steve Miller (15:17): The industry life. I know if their expectation for you is the same as for everybody else, you know, then, then we run into the problem and you, and I both know where this ends up, this ends up with, you know, first of all, everybody’s product is quality. Everybody has high quality products today, everybody right. Says they have the best customer service on the planet. Everybody says that. Okay. Right. And if everybody has the best product and you know, and essentially in most industries there, it’s, they’re commoditizing now, you know, that’s the way technology is working. And the second thing is, if everybody says they have the best customer service, well, the customer, no, you know, the customer never buys similarity. The customer always finds a difference. And if they can’t find it between the product or the service, it comes down to price. And I I’m, I’m saying to people, if you wanna compete on price, then I’m not your consultant. no question about it.

John Jantsch (16:15): Yeah. Well, there’ll always be somebody willing to go out of business faster.

Steve Miller (16:18): That’s right. Chase that to the bottom. That’s exactly right.

John Jantsch (16:21): do you have a couple examples of companies that you think are just routinely

Steve Miller (16:27): Good? Oh, well, you know, but the, and of course, yes, they they’re, they’re the obvious answers. Right. You know, the Disneys, you know, the, you know, the apples and, and groups like that. I mean, I love to look at companies that are not huge, that are doing things that are just wicked, you know, wicked different. I have a client who they build those, you know what, like if you go into a auto body shop or something, or a car auto shop and the technicians who are, and these guys are really good at what they do. Okay. And they own all of their own tools and they have those tools in a really nice toolbox. And it’s usually like this huge toolbox standing up really tall and it’s red. That’s exactly right. Yeah. And, and one of my clients who is one of the suppliers to that, they, you know, he wanted to, you know, we were fighting over like, okay, how do we separate?

Steve Miller (17:26): How do we separate? You know? And you know, you try to get ’em to, oh, you can change color. But really what we’re looking at is we’re looking at what can we offer people that nobody else is gonna offer? And, you know, and he said, you know, they’re all expensive. You know, at that level, they’re very expensive. So how do you prove value to a customer? Cause I always say where value is clear, the decision is easy. And so he came up with this concept of, of not just a lifetime guarantee, but he came up with a, with a concept of a 55 year guarantee. And what he did with that was by, by taking a specific number like that, instead of saying lifetime, cuz lifetime is kind of one of those things, people, banner, you know, bandy about, you know, all, all over the place he said for, he says, if you call me within 55 years, I will give you a brand new, you know, you know, case, or I’ll give you your money back.

Steve Miller (18:23): Okay. And then, and, but then he, you know, in the guarantee he also says, put, my kid is take, okay. We both know I’m not gonna be alive in 55 years. right. He’s actually taking a long taking over the business. And so my kid will be, you know, taking care of the, so, so what he’s doing is he’s just essentially, you know, a lifetime guarantee and he’ now spun it into language that people will remember. And that’s what we’re, that’s what we gotta be cognizant of is that people do business, you know, with people, they like, they know they trust and they remember, okay. And that’s the thing that it just for him, you know, it has separated from the crowd and man, and you know, and he is killing it.

John Jantsch (19:06): So Steve, tell me, tell people where they can find out more about obviously the book, a stealing genius or uneven.

Steve Miller (19:13): Well, you know, you can find out about him on Amazon,

John Jantsch (19:15): Find out more about your

Steve Miller (19:16): Work. You can absolutely do that. Yeah. But here’s what here’s, what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna, I’m gonna give a gift to everybody because I love giving out books. And so what I’m gonna suggest is go to the website, be copyable dot. No, I’m sorry. Whoops. Back up. I started to say wrong, no stealing genius.com/do tape. Okay. And if you go to that site right now, here’s what you do. You go buy stealing genius on Amazon. I don’t care put, if you buy the Kindle, it doesn’t bother me. Right. And then you go to that webpage and it asks you for your email address and you email address. And, and then I will follow up with you. And I will say, okay, now send me your mailing address. I will send you a free paperback copy of my book, UN copyable as my gift to you. And yes, I will even sign it because John, you and I both know how much more valuable that makes that book. Right. you know, don’t personalize,

John Jantsch (20:20): Absolutely RA raises the price of my books, uh, by 50 cents on eBay when people are selling at least.

Steve Miller (20:27): Yes. Is it? Cause personalization actually drops the value of the book.

John Jantsch (20:32): That’s right. That’s right. No, no longer re well Steve, thanks again for, uh, taking the time, stop by the duct tape marketing podcast. And hopefully we will run into you again soon when

Steve Miller (20:41): Hope so. Can’t wait. See your next book either. Thanks.

John Jantsch (20:43): Thanks Steve. 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 .co check out our free marketing assessment and learn where you are with your strategy today. That’s just marketingassessment.co I’d love to chat with you about the results that you get.

This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network.

HubSpot Podcast Network is the audio destination for business professionals who seek the best education and inspiration on how to grow a business.

Did you miss our previous article…
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June 6, 2022/by exposure

Building A LinkedIn Profile For Business Success

Building A LinkedIn Profile For Business Success written by Sara Nay read more at Duct Tape Marketing

About the show:

The Agency Spark Podcast, hosted by Sara Nay, is a collection of short-form interviews from thought leaders in the marketing consultancy and agency space. Each episode focuses on a single topic with actionable insights you can apply today. Check out the new Spark Lab Consulting website here!

About this episode:

In this episode of the Agency Spark Podcast, Sara talks with Daniel Alfon on building a LinkedIn profile for business success.

French-born, trilingual Israeli (English, French and Hebrew), Daniel Alfon was one of the first to open a LinkedIn account in early 2004.

Since then, he published his book “Build a LinkedIn Profile for Business Success”, spoke across virtual and physical stages in 3 continents, and helped thousands of entrepreneurs and consultants grow their business.

The Adventures Of The World’s Greatest Negotiator

The Adventures Of The World’s Greatest Negotiator written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Rich Cohen

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Rich Cohen. Rich is the New York Times-bestselling author of several books of Tough Jews, Monsters, Sweet and Low. He is the co-creator of the HBO series Vinyl, and a contributing editor at Rolling Stone. Rich has a new book called – The Adventures of Herbie Cohen: World’s Greatest Negotiator.

Key Takeaway:

Herbie Cohen is known for many things like – being the World’s Greatest Negotiator, dealmaker, risk-taker, adviser to presidents and corporations, hostage and arms negotiator, lesson giver and justice seeker, author of the how-to business classic You Can Negotiate Anything, and of course, Rich Cohen’s father. In this episode, I talk with Rich Cohen about his latest book that honors his dad and the biggest lessons he’s shared with him throughout his life – The Adventures of Herbie Cohen: World’s Greatest Negotiator.

Questions I ask Rich Cohen:

[1:35] Your father was probably best known as the author of ‘You Can Negotiate Anything’. Would you say that’s why you’re a writer?
[2:19] You’ve written about a lot of topics – why write about this topic now?
[3:17] Some of the stories in the book were from the ’50s and ’60s – how did you collect these stories in such detail?
[4:33] So were you a Dodgers fan then?
[5:32] I’m going to go down a rabbit hole here – what’s your favorite baseball book?
[6:30] Have you written for TV at all?
[7:55] So who were some of his contemporaries in that space?
[9:40] My audience is primarily business owners and marketers. So what’s the business application of this book in your mind?
[12:01] If somebody were to come to you and ask you to list out five or six key negotiation lessons, what would those be?
[15:08] Would you say there is one or two of your favorite stories you’ve told them a hundred times and people still want to come back to them?
[18:11] You’ve mentioned Larry King a number of times, did he go to school with your dad?
[21:02] Where can people connect with you and get a copy of your book?

More About Rich Cohen:

His new book — The Adventures of Herbie Cohen: World’s Greatest Negotiator
Connect on Twitter

Take The Marketing Assessment:

Marketingassessment.co

Like this show? Click on over and give us a review on iTunes, please!

Duct Tape Transcript

John Jantsch (00:00): This episode of the duct tape marketing podcast is brought to you by the MarTech podcast, hosted by Ben Shapiro and brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network with episodes you can listen to in under 30 minutes, the MarTech podcast shares stories from world class marketers who use technology to generate growth and achieve business and career success all on your lunch break. And if you dig around, you might just find a show by yours. Truly. Ben’s a great host. Actually, I would tell you, check out a recent show on blending humans, AI, and automation. Download the MarTech podcast wherever you get your.

John Jantsch (00:41): podcast. Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Rich Cohen. He is a New York times bestselling author of numerous books, including tough Jews monsters, the Chicago Cubs and peewees. Just to name a few, he’s a co-creator of the HBO series vinyl and a contributing editor at rolling stone. We’re gonna talk about his new book today. The adventures of herbi Cohen, the world’s greatest negotiators. So rich, welcome to the show.

Rich Cohen (01:21): Ah, thanks for having me.

John Jantsch (01:23): So, so you are a writer. Um, you’ve written, I, I, my intro didn’t do justice. It would’ve taken a long time to list all, all of your books and all of your contributions, this latest book about your father. He was probably best known as, as also an author of the how-to classic. You can negotiate anything. Is, is that why you’re a writer?

Rich Cohen (01:42): Probably. I mean, the, the main thing, my father, isn’t really a writer. He’s really a storyteller and kind of a philosopher and a business kind of guy, but storytelling was always a big thing with him and in my family and sort of to keep everybody’s attention. You had to tell basically a funny story. So I remember when I first got outta college, I got this job at the new Yorker almost by luck. And there was a story that the, the bio was that the writer is somebody who here who thinks being funny is more important than anything, even warm human relationships. And I realized this is a place for me.

John Jantsch (02:19): so, so you’ve written all about a lot of topics. Why, why now? Right about this topic?

Rich Cohen (02:25): Well, I always write about my father, tough Jew starts with my father and his friend sitting around a diner in Beverly Hills, talking about Jewish gangsters and peewees, which is my life as a youth hockey parent, losing my mind. I started with a epigraph for my father, which is from you can negotiate anything at a big part of this new book, which is the secret to life is to care, but not that much. So I think my father’s philosophy and his general outlook is a big part of my life. And a couple years ago, I was writing a story for audible, Amazon. Mm-hmm, just something about him. And it felt so natural and so fun to write about him, that I just thought, this is what I should be doing. And this is probably what I should have been doing all along.

John Jantsch (03:07): So, as I read some of the stories, I mean, it was really as though you were there, but some of these stories were from the, like the fifties and sixties, you were not there. probably in some of the war stories and things. How did you collect these stories in such detail?

Rich Cohen (03:21): Well, the stories about Bensonhurst and his gang, the warriors and Larry King and Sandy Cofax and all those guys, right? That was like my mythology. I grew up with that, like instead of Bible stories and there was always lessons in him. And when I was a kid, Larry King had this incredible radio show on every night from midnight to 5:00 AM. And he would tell, I would lie in bed at night and he would tell these stories and then I’d meet him and I’d ask him about ’em. That’s how I got those stories in the army. A lot of the stories about my dad’s time, coaching basketball, right. And he actually saved the reporting, cuz it was, he was coached the league that consisted of guys who were division one college basketball players. Who’d been drafted into the army during the Korean war. And my father saved all the coverage from stars and strikes mm-hmm , which had a lot of photos of these games. Yeah. And it was, you know, very romantic to me to see it, but was interesting. When I looked at how my father was very successful, coaching basketball, it’s just the same exact way he conducted himself in negotiation, which is, he always tried to sort of do something unusual, control the timing, you know, control the floor. It was interesting cuz you see this one through line that goes from the time he’s 10, 11 years old in Brooklyn, all the way till now.

John Jantsch (04:34): So, so were you a Dodgers fan then?

Rich Cohen (04:36): I was a Cubs fan. I grew up in Chicago and it’s a very funny thing where my father playing sort of says he was a Dodgers fan. He grew up in Brooklyn. He was really a Yankees fan. And he says, the reason he was a Yankees fan is the first game he ever went to. The first in person was babe Ruth Day, which is when he was like 11 years old at Yankee stadium when babe Ruth was dying of cancer. And um, my father took me to my first game, which was Wrigley field, which he loved because he said he reminded him of evets field. Yeah. Was after the game where the Cubs had a big lead and then the Cincinnati reds came back from behind and crushed him. He said, I wanna tell you something I’m being very serious right now. Don’t be a Cubs fan. A Cubs fan will have a bad life. Cubs fan will accept losing as the natural state of affairs in the world. Do yourself. He a favorite.

John Jantsch (05:23): He was a prophet in other words.

Rich Cohen (05:25): Yeah. But then they won in 2016. So it did happen. Finally. I just had to wait till I was 50 years old.

John Jantsch (05:31): So what’s your, I’ve got to go down a rabbit to hold here. What’s your favorite baseball book?

Rich Cohen (05:36): My favorite baseball book. There’s this book called? I think the glory of their times. You know that book. I don’t my shelf cuz I know that I have it. There’s a lot of great. I like the Roger Conn book, the boys of summer. I like all summer.

John Jantsch (05:47): I’ve got boys of summer written down here cuz I frankly, I, I assumed that was gonna be a Dodge. This

Rich Cohen (05:52): Book, the glory of their times is an oral history of guys that played early. Yeah. Like in the dead ball era and their lives are so wild, you know, like they would jump a freight train to get the spring training and stuff. And that is a unique book.

John Jantsch (06:05): Joe, are you familiar? Joe PO Naski the, the writer sports illustrator I think is his last gig, but he he’s got a book called the baseball 100 and he covers a lot of those guys and it, they are some pretty neat stories,

Rich Cohen (06:15): But see it’s so Brooklyn stories and my dad, all of it seems like it was like Paul bunion stories. It happened. Right. in such an exotic different time. Yeah. Yeah. When there was the big baseball team in Chicago was in rock, was in Rockford. I think, you know where the first pro it’s just interesting.

John Jantsch (06:30): So, so do you write for TV at all? Or have you?

Rich Cohen (06:34): I have.

John Jantsch (06:35): And the reason I, uh, say that is because the book kind of reads like episodes of a sitcom I think would make a great sitcom

Rich Cohen (06:43): Originally cuz my father has all these great stories. Yeah. And originally I just wanted to do it like a hundred chapters. Each one is separate scenes. But then as I started to write them, I realized there was actually a bigger story, which is a story of his life. Yeah. But so I did see it originally episodically and kind of funny with his lessons. Right. Cause my father, when he’d tells stories far follows a very ASOP fables like structure, which is question story moral, you know? So, but then I realize his life is the big story. So I always think of when I write it’s like, I dunno if you know those Chuck close paintings or all these made up of little tiny pictures, but when you step back all the little pictures that up to one big picture, that’s kind of what the effect I’m going for.

John Jantsch (07:25): Your parents owned a business. Is that right? They were entrepreneurs as

Rich Cohen (07:28): Well. They owned my father’s business. My, the business was my father with power negotiations. My, my father’s the guy who sort of popularized win-win I believe which he’d taken from game theory where he, he taught at the university of Michigan and he worked on game theory. And, but my mother came up with the company logo, which was, I can’t do it cuz I’m one person buts, two people shaking hands at their thumbs like that. Yeah. Yeah. So it was a little cheesy, but very effective, a little cheesy goes a long way in America. It’s good.

John Jantsch (07:55): So, so who were some of his contemporaries then in that space? Zig Zigler or somebody and was in that space, right? Yeah.

Rich Cohen (08:05): But the, the people, I remember the people who were around when like one of the things he did was he worked for the FBI. He trained their people and he, and he, sorry, there’s like, I can just hear my kids just got home from school. There’s a whole hub up. He trained their people and there was a guy named Walt sire and together they created the behavioral sciences unit because his whole thing was, he used to quote this thing from Arthur Miller to understand the price. You have to understand the player. And if you’re negotiating with somebody and you don’t know what is valuable to them or what they’re like, you can’t really offer them something or pressure them with something that’s valuable. Now he’s really, as far as marketing goes, he’s like, he always said to me, that life is 90% marketing always said that to me. And he always said that he’d rather have a piece of crap product

Rich Cohen (08:55): With a genius to sell it. Then a masterpiece with an idiot selling it. and that’s something I always remember, you know? So, and he taught me little things. I think he taught like a little lesson. He taught me, which I think is kind of like marketing and is I would turn papers in at school. And I would say to the teacher always, and my father found this. I don’t think this is very good. You’re probably gonna hate it. But here it is. And I’d get a bad grade. And my father said, no, people are very suggestible. You say, I think this is great. It’s a work genius. You’re gonna love it. And you get a good grade so that’s like a little thing that he taught me that I live by all the time.

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John Jantsch (09:32): So if somebody, I mean, because obviously the subtitle world’s greatest negotiator hints at some business advice, my audience is primarily business owners, marketers. So what would be your pitch to them of, you know, what’s the business application? Because again, it, this book is very entertaining. it? The stories are great. You’re a great storyteller or retailer, but what’s the flat out business application in

Rich Cohen (09:57): Your mind? Well, my father really worked in the business world. You know, he started out at Sears, he’s the executive suite of Sears and he was a advisor mostly to fortune 500 companies and trained their executives and negotiated their deals. And he has a philosophy of business, which is summed up by the secret to successes to care. But not that much approaching life is a game remaining, detached, not becoming fixated on a particular outcome, looking for a win-win deal. Not because it makes you a better person, but as he would say, people will support something that they’re part of creating. So you want to bring people in and create solutions together. But his whole training of me was about business. So like my grandfather, on the other side, my grandpa Ben Eisenstadt invented the sugar packet and then invented sweet and low, which is still a privately owned company.

Rich Cohen (10:46): He created out of his diner in Brooklyn and I saw the whole life of that business. So I feel like all my books are in away business books, all of them. So like this is a new book. Like one of my more successful books has been, was the fish that ate the whale about this guy, Samuel Zim Murray, who took over United fruit, started out as a fruit Petr. And I wrote a book about chess records, which was, you know, these are all guys that live kind of, by the way, my father believed, which is give the market something, it doesn’t know. It wants, you know, fill in niche that you don’t even know exists as, uh, what chess records did, which invented rock and roll is first you, uh, invent the product and then you invent the market, you know, so, and I really saw with sweet and low cause you saw it in the pharmaceutical industry, which is first invent the pharmaceutical and then figure out what you can possibly sell it to cure. And one of my favorite stories, I always tell my kids is the, uh, history of Viagra because it’s such a backwards way to come up with a product. But, you know, so I felt like I always kind of understood that about building a business and what happens mostly because I lived through that with my father and read all this stuff.

John Jantsch (11:53): So if somebody were gonna say, there are, there are many books on negotiation, this is, uh, probably the, the most unique one. Well, one of the more unique ones on negotiation, if, if somebody were going to come to you and say, you know, list out five or six, you know, key negotiation lessons, what would those be from the book?

Rich Cohen (12:10): From my book?

John Jantsch (12:11): Yeah.

Rich Cohen (12:12): Uh, okay. The first is approach an every negotiation like it’s a game and the, the key is to care, but not that much. Second is don’t. My father is always worst person to negotiate for is yourself because you care too much. Don’t become emotionally involved. It’s not personal. Yeah. It doesn’t matter. Okay. Another is, don’t become fixated on a particular outcome. People have a single goal in mind and try to reach that goal, but things change and you might come out with something different or something better. Two is try to make your opponent part of the solution because people will support things that they create. You see that in Congress where you get these 50 to zero votes and the thing falls apart because half the people in power are against it and want it to fail. You have to want both sides to want it to succeed.

John Jantsch (13:05): It’s an interesting example to bring up though, because it feels like it doesn’t really matter anymore in that they, you know, that maybe what people are fixated on is win, lose rather than, uh, win, win.

Rich Cohen (13:17): Well, the thing, one thing that my father said is he was supposed to write a second book and my mom would say, you’ve already missed a deadline. and he’d go, when what happened? And she goes nothing. Then he goes, then that really isn’t a deadline. and that’s like a big thing about his, which is I used to quote Jimmy Walker. Who’d been the mayor of New York, like in the twenties, who said, as long as you get there before it’s over, you’re not late.

Rich Cohen (13:38): you know, so basically this idea that there are these certain rules that are arbitrarily created. And one thing he said almost says like a mathematical formula is things that are, the product of a negotiation are negotiable. So people get very intimidated by authority and they think they can’t negotiate something. As he would say about the sticker price in Sears, it looks like it was put there by God. So you can’t question it when you realize it’s just a few people in a room randomly selecting this price almost you realize itself was ran, was negotiated so you can negotiate it. And one of his key lessons I stupidly left out when I gave you my list was one of his big things is realizing that you have power when dealing with what seemed like more powerful people or institutions. And he always said power is based on perception. If you think you got it, even if you don’t got it. And that’s the key to his whole thing, which is people have power. You can always make a move. There’s always another decision to make. And like he said, as long as you get there before it’s over, you’re not late. Some can still be salvaged and done. And he saw all that, like, you know, a game.

John Jantsch (14:48): So , I’m trying to, well, I guess I was gonna ask you this. People ask me this I’ve write books too. People ask me this all the time. I wrote a book that had 366 separate stories. So, you know, the logical question always was, what’s your favorite? Yours? I lose track of what are you? 50, 60? How many? 57, 58 what’s would you say there’s one or two that are you that really are your favorite stories that people you’ve told ’em a hundred times and, and people still want to come back to them.

Rich Cohen (15:17): Well, I’ll have to, I’ll tell you two very quickly. One is a famous story, which is the Moo story, which Larry King claimed was when my father learned to negotiate, which is a kid that they went to school with had gone to Arizona, cuz he had tuberculosis mm-hmm and the cousin was supposed to shut down the house, go to the school and get his records, transferred for a school in Arizona. And my father said, you don’t have to go to the school to the cousin. They were gonna walk this kid. His name is Mao. He said, uh, we will tell the school, save you a trip. And then my father said, I got a great idea of how to make some money and we can go to coing island and celebrate. Instead of saying MAOS in Arizona, it would say, ma is dead. collect money for his funeral w reefa.

Rich Cohen (15:57): And it was a whole long story. But ultimately in the end, after a year, I just say that it ends up with a giant fiasco, with a bunch of sitting there for the Gill Mermelstein Mao’s real name, Memorial award. The first winner of which is my father, Larry and another guy. And Mao comes back to school that day. And my father jumps up on stage and yells go home Mao, you’re dead. You’re dead. Mao go home. And they sit with the principal and the principal says you’re suspended. You’re expelled. You’re done. And my father goes, hold on, you’re being a little hasty here. Cuz he looked at it from his side. He said, you’re right. What we did was horrible and we’re expelled and we’re done. But if you go through it, this like you’re planning to, we’re not gonna go to school anymore, but you’re never gonna work in New York city again. And he explained to him what would happen to him and why it wasn’t in his interest to expel them from school. And that was when he was in eighth grade. My father and Larry always said that was when he became a negotiator. And the other second story I’m telling him very quick, here is no

John Jantsch (16:56): That’s good.

Rich Cohen (16:57): One thing my father believes in is the difference between the what and the how, right? That’s a big thing in his life, which is there’s what you do or what you say and how you do or how you say it. We used to go to this terrible restaurant all the time in the town I grew up in and finally said, why do we go to the worst restaurant in town? He goes because they always give us the booth. That’s a difference between the what and the how. And when I was a kid, my father took me to buy my first used car and he wanted to show me how to negotiate. He created this big list of criteria of the car we should get. And the car he decided I should get was a Toyota Corolla with 70,000 miles or less on it. That’s the car he thought I should afford and I should buy.

Rich Cohen (17:37): So he looked and we finally found this car and I said, this is it. This is the car. And he said, no, no, I don’t like this car. And I said, what are you talking about? It meets all your criteria. And he goes, did you see all the writing and on the car, on the driver’s side and cursive, it said Barry. And on the drive and on the passenger side, it said Billy, and on the hood of the car, it said, Chuck, that was like the name of the car itself. And I said, so what we’ll have it repainted. He said, you’re missing the point a schmuck own this car. and that was the what and a half.

John Jantsch (18:10): So, so you’ve mentioned Larry King a number of times. And were they, did they go to school together? Is that where they met?

Rich Cohen (18:17): They met together. They, yeah, Larry’s father died. Larry was like a, in my light, like an, an uncle almost Larry’s father died when he was a kid in a heart attack. And Larry kind of grew up at my parents, my grandparents’ house and Larry and my father first met when they were nine. I think they both got in trouble at school and they were assigned to be crossing guards and they were together. And my father said, Larry said, this is a terrible job. It’s a waste of time. They don’t need a crossing guard here. My father said, I disagree. This job has a lot of power and importance. This is like, if you think you got power, you got it. And they argued. And my father to prove his point took the stop sign that you held, went out and just stopped traffic for like five minutes. There was instantly a huge giant traffic jam in Benson or Brooklyn fights breaking out on the sidewalks car talking. And they said they had their sash ceremony ripped off their jackets, but that’s their meeting and then they were, you know, they remained, Larry was a big part of my life from I, I worked for his show, used to work for his show was, you know, very interesting.

John Jantsch (19:19): I, I bring that up primarily, uh, because it, I knew it would’ve, Elit a good story, but also to talk about the acknowledgement for Ellen Cohen, who never understand Larry ,

Rich Cohen (19:29): That’s one of my, my father’s problems with this book. He thought I should not have done it that way. but the fact is, uh, Larry’s a big part of this book and my mom would always say, can’t stand Larry because they, they knew each other, their whole lives, since my mother was 18 years old. But when my father got around Larry, my father acted like he was 10 years old. right. And my mom sort of felt like a third wheel and this is even when she’s like 60 years old. Right, right, right. So, and I, and by the way, it wasn’t just her. I had the same experience. Their favorite thing to do together was to go to a BA, he liked to go to a baseball game, like five hours before the game and watch batting practice. So, and they would get P passes and they’d get out on the field, which wasn’t hard to do.

Rich Cohen (20:07): There was nobody there empty stadiums. And I was with them once and they saw a player that they really liked from the fifties. And they both got all giddy and ran off to talk to him. And batting practice was being thrown by Rick Ziff who played for the Cubs. Yeah. And Rick Ziff, I never don’t know Rick. I mean, he knew him as a fan and he comes up to me and he goes, did your dad just ditch you? Because he had a chance to meet a celebrity. And I was like, yeah, that’s what happens when he gets around Larry. But that’s, that was my mom’s main problem with him. And also he’d always get into trouble with Larry. They’d go out and do stuff and get in all kinds of trouble. And yeah, it’s, it’s almost like Ralph and, uh, Ralph Cramton and Norton those do

John Jantsch (20:45): Together. Yeah. It’s funny how people do, you know, even, like you said, at 60 revert to kind of their childhood, uh, selves, when they, you know, get together with, you know, old high school friends and things

Rich Cohen (20:54):

John Jantsch (20:55): Well, rich, thanks so much for taking a moment to stop by the duct tape marketing podcast and talk about, uh, the adventures of herbi Cohen. You wanna tell people where they can connect with you. Obviously the books are available, uh, wherever you buy

Rich Cohen (21:06): Books. Well, you can write me on social media. You can write me on Twitter, or I have a website that links up to an email for me, which is author rich cohen.com. And the Twitter is, I think it’s rich Cohen, 2003, cuz that’s the year I peaked and then, uh, you can buy the book on Amazon.

John Jantsch (21:23): Awesome. Again, thanks for stopping by. And hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Rich Cohen (21:28): I’ll see you in golden. Yeah.

John Jantsch (21:29): Thanks rich.

Rich Cohen (21:30): Get a course.

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