marketingpodcast - Sydney Social Media Services

John Jantsch (00:00): This episode of the duct tape marketing podcast is brought to you by business made simple hosted by Donald Miller and brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network business made simple, takes the mystery out of growing your business. A long time, listeners will know that Donald Miller’s been on this show at least a couple times. There’s a recent episode. I wanna point out how to make money with your current products, man, such an important lesson about leveraging what you’ve already done to get more from it. Listen to business made simple wherever you get your podcasts.

John Jantsch (00:45): Hello and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Melissa Kwan. She is the co-founder and CEO of E webinar. She’s also spent 12 years in startups and built three successful companies without venture capital backing her previous startup a real estate tech company was acquired in 2019 as a revenue driven founder, specializing in sales and business development. She has learned how to build companies with very few resources, something a lot of folks listening can appreciate by automating what she could outsourcing whenever possible and inspiring talented people to join her team with shared focus and enthusiasm. So Melissa, welcome to the show.

Melissa Kwan (01:29): Thanks John, for having me.

John Jantsch (01:31): So I feel like I gave a little taste of it there, but I feel like we should just have you kind of say here’s been my entrepreneur journey. We’re gonna talk about your most current undertaking, but where have you been to get you to here?

Melissa Kwan (01:45): yeah. Great question. So I spent over 12 years in, in startups. UL runs my third company. My first two was in real estate tech. The last job that I quit was at SAP and then previous to that was in real estate. So I kind of just like put the two and two together and created software for real estate. First company was a product company towards agency and then the second company was a SAS product. It was like an open house sign in software. So having done so many live webinars, demos, onboarding trainings for a consistent five years, sometimes five back to back for my previous company, I had just dreamt of a product, a magical product that would do my job for me. Yeah. While I go and have fun. And that became E webinar after that company was sold in 2019.

John Jantsch (02:32): So, so let’s, I guess let’s ask the, you know, what is E webinar? Just give us the like really quick, you know, view of that so we can kind of break it down then a little from there.

Melissa Kwan (02:41): Yeah. So E webinar, the concept is simple. We save people from doing repetitive, boring webinars over and over again. So you can imagine sales, demos, pitches, onboarding, training, product updates, customer interviews, you know, things like that. Right? So you might be running them on zoom right now, or you might not be doing them because you don’t have a person to run them. We turn any video into an interactive webinar that you could set on a recurring schedule or join on demand. So people can consume that content whenever they want.

John Jantsch (03:09): Yeah. So webinars have certainly been around for, you know, ages, internet ages, I guess, you know, 15, 20 years peop marketers have been using them, certainly live, but recently eight, 10 years ago, it seems like this platform of going and signing up and sort of watching a live , but it’s recorded. You know, that, that technology, there are half a dozen, at least you probably know ’em all, you know, people that are doing that. What’s when people say, oh, how is this different than blah, blah, blah.

Melissa Kwan (03:40): Yeah. I mean, so first of all, we don’t do any live webinars. Yeah. Right. We don’t, there is no live audio. There’s no live video. Like enough people are solving this. Yeah. Like down to like Facebook live Instagram live, like everyone in the world is trying to solve this and it really solving it and doing a great job. So what we wanted to solve was the next phase of that. How do you scale a live webinar or a presentation that, you know, works for you? Yeah. Like if you’re doing, you know, a lead gen kinda customer interview type webinar, once a quarter, how, what kind of impact would that have on your business if you made that available every single day. So that’s really, that’s the space that we’re focusing on. And if you, if anyone that’s listening to this right now thinks to themselves, Hey, I’ve seen those before.

Melissa Kwan (04:25): Right. But it’s a little bit scammy. You’re right. And that’s why we exist. I was also in my previous life looking for something that would do this particular thing and everything I found was almost like designed to deceive consumers, to trick them into buying something or create false scarcity, which isn’t what sales and marketing is about. It’s not what branding is about. Right? It’s about delivering a beautiful professional, authentic experience that reflects your brand, but also an experience that allows your customer, your prospect, your attendee, to connect with you. It’s not a video on YouTube. A webinar is where you can go and engage and ask questions and get a response back. So what E webinar does differently is we made the investment to build an asynchronous chat system. Just like your Intercom, your Zend desk, any chat bubble that pops up on a website. When people ask you questions through chat, you can, if you’re there hop into respond live, but if you’re not there, it’s totally fine. Cuz when you respond later, they still get your response on email. And I would say no other automated webinar company had actually made that investment to build up that system.

John Jantsch (05:33): Yeah. I mean, there, there’s certainly a place for on demand because you know, you and I are talking it’s 10 o’clock at night for you when you’re talking. It’s uh, dunno what time it is here. Two o’clock for me. I mean, so the, there is a, you know, there is a need in the customer journey to allow people to get the information they want when they want it. So I think the case for having those makes a lot of sense, but the point that you also made is that so many of ’em are trying to fake their live and that there’s pre-canned chat and it says there’s 27 people on right now. and I think everybody realizes that’s all just a scam, but I think we put up with it because it’s like, well, everybody does it. So how did you take on that idea? Or did you just make a decision in the very beginning? We’re not going to be, you know, spammy or scammy like that.

Melissa Kwan (06:22): The thing is John, like the last thing I would want is to build a business that facilitates a behavior. Yeah. That’s the bottom line. Yeah. So very early on, we looked at all these players and we thought, okay, like there’s a reason why they have that because people ask for it, the customers ask for it. Yeah. But what I care about and what gives my business longevity is if your customer likes you, not, if you like me. Right. So in a sense, we’re building for the, a attendee, like that’s the first experience we’re building for. And it’s almost like kind of what Steve jobs does, right? He’s like, well, you can’t have this. It has to look like this. Even if you ask for this is the better experience you have to update your OS. And I think like when you’re specing a business or a product like this, you have to make those decisions to think what is the audience you wanna attract?

Melissa Kwan (07:09): Because the market’s big enough. Yeah. So we wanted to deliver a product with integrity first, which means we had to constantly not put in features and not build features that create that kind of fake scarcity. Right. So we have no simulated chat, no fake sales notifications, no fake counter. Everything is real. You can put in sales notification, but it’s based on your conversion pixel, there is a counter, but you could choose live or accumulative, but it’s real. Like everything’s real. And our chat is one on one between the attendee and the moderator, like none of that fake stuff. Right. So we just made a decision early on to say like, this is just not a business that like, we wanna track those kind of people. And we said like, we came to terms with the fact that it would take us longer to get off the ground. Cause we couldn’t, we wouldn’t be able to win people that already on the other platforms, but that’s okay. Yeah.

John Jantsch (07:59): Well I, let me push back there a little bit because I was on the other platform and I saw this as a, uh, you know, I was on those platforms because I wanted on demand and I just put up with the other stuff. Right? Yeah. But what I want to have with my customers is a long term relationship. Not a short time, I sold you something, uh, relationship. And I think that’s maybe why people put up with those is because they do work in a certain way, but not for the long term. And I think that what you’ve built is for somebody, in my opinion, is for somebody who views their relationship with their customers as a long term relationship, as opposed to I sold you something.

Melissa Kwan (08:38): Well, I would say because we delivered the product in this way. Yeah. Like it is, we mimicked our branding and how we want people to feel to MailChimp. Yeah. Yeah. Right. We wanna be fun. We wanna be a startup, but we wanna be established. Yeah. Right. We want to feel like this is a company they can trust. And that goes down to, you know, the product and integrity. Right. And the features that you have. So I would say like before this year, maybe last year, cuz we, the product’s been line for two years, you would not see companies like Zillow on automated webinars yeah. Or fresh works or catalyst. Right. Like none of those like real established companies would be on there. The people that have been leveraging, those are like a lot of solo entrepreneurs, a of coaches, a lot of like internet cash marketers, but like real companies have never automated what their webinars for this reason. Like they might have a gated landing page or they might have a video with CR YouTube, but that’s not a webinar experience.

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John Jantsch (10:17): I, I tell you that one of the features that, that I really love is because one of the things we really want is somebody not just sitting there mindlessly watching, or maybe like having your webinar in a different, you know, different screen while they’re working. And they’re just listening to it is the amount of engagement.

John Jantsch (10:32): One of the things that’s very built in is you have a lot of built in features and templates for getting people engaged, for finding out who they are for creating, you know, a reason for them to say more about the who they are and what they want and what they’re trying to accomplish. And I think that maybe some of the other platforms have that, but I think you’ve really cracked that part. And to me, not only getting rid of the stuff we’ve been calling kind of scammy, I think that to me is probably your best feature.

Melissa Kwan (11:00): Yeah. So we call them interactions, right? Yeah. Um, and I was, when I was coming out with this product, I was also thinking like, okay, let’s face it. Webinars are boring. Yeah. Right. It depends on like how fun it is and how engaging it is. A lot of times if depends on the speaker. Sure. And let’s face it like topic obviously. Yeah. And not, everyone’s a great speaker. And then during live webinar, there’s lots of interruptions. People ask questions, there’s housekeeping. Maybe your connection is bad. Like none of that happens on an automated webinar cause it’s based on a video. But I was thinking like, what is it that you could deliver then put out there that can get your, a attendee to stay till the end so they can take that action. Yeah. If they don’t stay till the end, even if you deliver your CTA, they’re never gonna see it.

Melissa Kwan (11:42): So we, we have these thing called interactions, which are like programmable polls, questions, resources, sales, alerts, you know, things that allow the, a attendee to participate right. In the experience with you. So it’s not like I come in and you’re talking at me for 45 minutes and I’m playing on my phone and you’re losing me to Instagram. Like when you ask me a question, something pops up and I’m actually able to engage with it. Maybe I can see the results and things like that. But on the host side, we actually gather all that data and we deliver it to you in a beautiful, actionable and understandable report. So you can actually see like where are people hitting a thumbs up? Because within any webinar you can hit a thumbs up. It’s more of a consumer experience. Where are people dropping off? Are they answering this question?

Melissa Kwan (12:26): So you can imagine in the past six months I’ve ran my demo. I don’t do live demos. It’s all in new webinar. Of course. All right. I ran it 1500 times. And my first question is, how did you hear about us? Yeah. And about 60 PE like 60% of people will answer that question. So from a marketing perspective, that is such valuable information. Yeah. And the more I run it, the better data I’m getting to, whether it’s helping my business or helping me make a better presentation. Next time, all of that is, is very useful.

John Jantsch (12:55): And I can say, this is not exactly scientific, but we have run this same webinar for many years. And you know, we’re always tweaking a little bit. I will say that our completion rate has significantly increased since moving to ewe R now I will give one caveat because of all the interaction we’ve actually changed how we’re presenting this information BA you know, because we’re, we feel like we have all these engagement tools now. that? Yeah. So, so it’s changed a little bit about how we’ve presented the information, but I can tell you that, you know, 35 ish percent higher rate of completion than using another platform.

Melissa Kwan (13:35): I mean, we have a customer that took the exact same video. Yeah. And put it into E webinar and their engagement and completion rate went up by 50%. Like they did nothing at all. So that’s why, like, we, we encourage people to just give it a try. I think that one of the biggest pushback we have is like, well, if it’s a video, then why don’t I just use YouTube? Yeah. Yeah. And it’s just the mindset of it, isn’t it? Yeah. Like, yeah, you get a registration page, you choose it time. There’s reminders, there’s follow ups. And then it starts at a certain time. Or you can watch it on demand. Like, I, I know earlier you said like there’s a place for, on demand for webinars particularly, but like, it’s so interesting how in our everyday lives, like as consumers we expect on demand video content.

Melissa Kwan (14:18): Yeah. Like when was the last time you didn’t watch something on apple TV or Netflix or Amazon, like I expect to go there and press play and watch it at my own time. However, for some reason, for B2B content, you have to come to my show right next Tuesday at 11, my time zone. So there’s a bit of a disconnect, right. So I think it’s not only like there’s a place for on demand and B2B content. I think it’s already here. And the people that understand that will be able to use that as a differentiator in their business.

John Jantsch (14:50): Yeah. That’s such a great point. I think again, it’s one of those things where we just get used to it. It’s like, well, that’s the way we get to, you know, consume this content. But a lot of behaviors, especially buying behaviors and things really do get influenced by the way that we behave every day in life. And just your example of the streaming, you know, programming, I mean like TV guide, what’s that right? I mean, I just go and I, yeah. You know, I watch the program when I feel like watching it. And I think that kind of behavior or habit that gets developed really should be something that we’re looking at and saying, that’s how everybody wants to shop now. Or that’s how everybody wants to get their content. Now.

Melissa Kwan (15:28): I mean, another great example is like texting, like who calls now? Like maybe your family member, you’re like, Hey, I’m outside or I’m downstairs. Or, you know, if you’re in your car, like maybe you’ll call on a headphone. And we have some people that are looking at E webinar. Maybe they’re moving from zoom, cuz they’re like just absolutely exhausted from running these live webinars and they just have to scale. But one of the questions they have for us is, well, if you don’t, if I can’t answer people right away or using my voice, are they gonna be mad at me? Like, does that mean worse? Does that mean worse customer service? Because I’m used to doing this live thing and I’m used to making people feel, feel special by calling out their name or answering the question. But my response is always just give it a try because I think your customers, like you’d be surprised at how your customers would prefer tech space and how much more manageable all that Q and a is. If it is text space

John Jantsch (16:28): To, to totally agree. And just going back to E webinar, another thing that I think people will enjoy, you talked about trying to make it fun. I think the interface itself is actually, um, easier to set up and easier to, to operate, uh, and get a webinar going than a lot of the other platforms as well. So you’ve think you’ve conquered a number of the things that competitors aren’t doing. I do wanna talk a little bit about just the business of building this as well. You know, from a text import first, I should have asked you in the beginning, are you an engineer or programmer yourself or

Melissa Kwan (16:57): No, I wish I, I wish, yeah. I wish I was an engineer cuz otherwise it would be feature complete by now. so nothing would be ever wrong with it.

John Jantsch (17:06): So, so what’s been the hardest part from a tech sample.

Melissa Kwan (17:10): Oh my gosh. Like I, it is a constant battle every day, but what is the hardest? I would say the one thing, I mean, of course the first thing is just scaling. Cuz as you build a business as like, you know, people start having a thousand people in a webinar. Yeah, yeah. Or you have two of those and now there’s 2000 people and everyone’s sending a chat. Right. And then, but you can’t test for that scenario until you get there. right. So the first six months was like acquiring these customers, but then what do you do? Yeah. What do you do when everyone has it on Wednesday or everyone has it on Tuesday. Right? So we’ve kind of solved that. But believe it or not, one of the most difficult things to solve is just the flexibility, like offering complete flexibility and scheduling and also the ability to track all of those things in a report, right?

Melissa Kwan (18:04): Like all the chat and all the interactivity, like we’ve worked that kind of stuff out. But right now, give, give you an example. People are asking for the ability to pause. So say I’m running a workshop. I wanna say, okay, I’m gonna let you pause for five minutes. You can finish this worksheet and then you can press play or it’s gonna start on its own. I still don’t understand this, but apparently it messes with the timeline of the video and then it messes with all the analytics. Yeah. so it’s just little things like that, that like me and you may never think about that. We’re very happy that they’re engineers for.

John Jantsch (18:36): So, so I was gonna ask you what your most requested feature is. New feature is, and that maybe you just revealed it.

Melissa Kwan (18:44): We have an ongoing wishlist of features, but definitely what you’re gonna see next is a full facelift of our attendee experience. So what we have right now is I think it’s two, three times better than what’s out there. But what you’re about to see is something that will be 10 times, 20 times better than what’s out there because we wanna really deliver an experience that’s less businessy, like less zoom and way more consumers. So what we’re taking inspiration from is not the webinar solutions that are out there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’re taking inspiration from like Twitch or gaming companies or you know, apple TV, like those kind of things and see like how people actually wanna consume interactive video because this is what it is, right. Call it in a webinar automation software, but it is interactive video. So how do people wanna engage and consume that content and feel like, you know, they learn something and that and feel delighted. Right. I think delighted is the word.

John Jantsch (19:47): So are you one of those people that I could say, you know, what’s the vision for this company three years from now? Or are you really still trying to, you know, wrestle with the momentum of the moment?

Melissa Kwan (19:58): The only thing I care about right now is getting to profitability. so as a business owner, you probably understand that. Yeah, absolutely. So I would love to not be, you know, burning money, but I just want, I wanna see maybe not even the three years, like, like next year, I really wanna see people’s mind shift away from like Mo moving away from doing repetitive live webinars and just understanding that there’s a better way. Yeah. Cause all it takes is a flip, right. Cause right now this is what, you know, you’ve been doing it for 10 years. Webinars is have actually been around for 20 years. Yeah. But there is a new way of doing things that is not just better for you. Right. Freeing up your time. So you can, you know, spend more with your friends and family, but it’s actually better for your customer. Yeah. To have access to that information when they can consume it. Like the average attendance rate for all of our customers is 65%. Yeah. And that is outrageous. Yeah.

John Jantsch (21:00): Well, and I think I love about it and I think people need to, you know, customer journey, we can design the most perfect customer journey. People are gonna go through ’em the way that they’re gonna go through them. And I think that’s what, you know, a lot of times, if they can go through three or four stages of the customer journey one night, because that’s what they were really , you know, amped up about. I think that, I think we, as marketers have to realize that we just have to offer that flexibility.

Melissa Kwan (21:24): Um, yeah. I mean, I’ll leave you with one stat that I love from trust radius. 87% of buyers prefer to do their own research sure. Through their buying journey. Yeah. And 57% already make a purchase without talking to a salesperson. Yeah. Yeah. So you can actually make transparency and access to content your differentiator. If your competitor is gating everything, making people book a call, not making their webinars on demand and making it just difficult for people to get the information they need to make a decision, then they’re gonna go somewhere else.

John Jantsch (22:02): Absolutely. Melissa advi tell us where people can find out more about the product and connect with you.

Melissa Kwan (22:11): Yeah. If you wanna connect with me, LinkedIn is best. So my name is Melissa K w a N. And check out E webinar. If you’re curious how it works, there is, uh, an on-demand demo of course, delivered through E webinar in a very meta way. And it’s exactly as it sounds, ewe.com.

John Jantsch (22:25): Awesome. Well, Melissa, it was great. You know, I’m a fan. I, you know, love the product itself and answered something we were looking for. So we were happy to find it. And hopefully we’ll appreciate you stopping by the, take some time on the duct tape marketing podcast. And hopefully we’ll run into you out there on the road one of these days.

Melissa Kwan (22:42): Thanks so much, John.

John Jantsch (22:43): 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.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 Duct Tape Marketing Podcast episode is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network and SEMRush.

HubSpot Podcast Network is the audio destination for business professionals seeking the best education and inspiration to grow a business.

Everybody’s online, but are they finding your website? Grab the online spotlight and your customers’ attention with Semrush. From Content and SEO to ads and social media, Semrush is your one-stop shop for online marketing. Build, manage, and measure campaigns —across all channels — faster and easier. Are you ready to take your business to the next level? Get seen. Get Semrush. Visit semrush.com/go to try it free for 7 days.

Did you miss our previous article…
https://www.sydneysocialmediaservices.com/?p=1414

July 15, 2022/by exposure

What It Means To Humanize A Brand (And How To Do It Well)

What It Means To Humanize A Brand (And How To Do It Well) written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Jacqueline Lieberman

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Jacqueline Lieberman. Jacqueline is the former Managing Partner and the Head of Strategy Story Worldwide and the current founder of BrandCrudo.

Key Takeaway:

Brands are people’s introduction to businesses and their way to interact with companies. The more human a brand is, the better that interaction is going to be. All of the beloved brands that are out there are the ones that behave like human beings. They have a conscience, a point of view, a soul, and a personality. In this episode, Jacqueline Lieberman discusses the work that she does with her clients and the ways in which she has helped many brands become more human.

Questions I ask Jacqueline Lieberman:

[1:04] One of the things you’re talking about often is making brands more human and putting purpose into practice – can you talk about taking it beyond the tagline?
[3:54] Some companies brand themselves in a way that has nothing to do with their product – like insurance companies for example. Is creating a brand personality an effective approach?
[5:36] How do brands address the fact that there are so many channels to reach consumers that are in a lot of ways out of their full control?
[8:26] What’s generally going on when a business calls in an outside brand strategist, what’s your process, and then what do you do to try to turn the ship?
[12:28] What role does internal politics play in bigger companies when it comes to branding?
[13:42] How often do you get the chance to go deeper than marketing?
[14:58] Do you have any examples where typical gaps happen and there’s no internal communication that is creating a bad experience?
[19:26] 2021 is still going to be a year where people are reeling from 2020. Is there a message of trends, behaviors, or things that people need to be aware of?

More About Jacqueline Lieberman:

Learn more about Jacqueline’s company: BrandCrudo
Jacqueline’s podcast: Uncooked

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 (00:01): 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 podcast. Hello,

John Jantsch (00:52): And welcome to another episode with the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Jacqueline Lieberman. She’s a former managing partner and the head of strategy for story worldwide and the current founder of brand kudo. So I guess we’re gonna talk about brands today. So Jacqueline, thanks for joining me.

Jacqueline Lieberman (01:11): Thanks for having me, John

John Jantsch (01:13): Pleasure. So I, I, I always like to get kind of to deeper than the tagline, shall we say when I talk to people about branding, one of the things that, that you are talking about is making brands more human, putting purpose into practice, and I’d love it. If you would take that beyond the tagline.

Jacqueline Lieberman (01:30): Oh, sure. Well, I mean, I think one of the things, one of my goals is really when I say I wanna make brands more human is when I think about brands, brands are really people’s introduction and their way to interact with companies. Mm-hmm so that’s what a brand is to people. So the more human that, that brand is the better that interaction’s going to be. So all the beloved brands that are out there, those are the ones that really just behave like a human being. They have a conscience, they have a point of view, right? They have a soul. So, so I think that’s, that’s what I try and help my clients to do,

John Jantsch (02:06): But they’re also probably telltale signs are also able to communicate that effectively and deliver on it effectively. And, and people experience that it’s not enough to just have that soul. Is it

Jacqueline Lieberman (02:16): Exactly? exactly. You have to practice what you preach and you can’t just say it, it cannot just be a nice phrase on the lobby wall. You actually have to walk the walk.

John Jantsch (02:26): So I work, I work with a lot of small business owners and have over the years. And if I mention the, the, you know, I sometimes call it the B word because they’re, they’re almost like, oh, well I don’t have a brand that’s that’s for big product companies. And my contention is every business has a brand because it’s, it’s really just the collective perception of the people that you come into contact with good, bad or indifferent. So, so where do you fall on, you know, companies kind of ignoring that idea?

Jacqueline Lieberman (02:52): Well, I mean, I think even, even those owners, their brands, their personal brands. Yeah. Yeah. Just walking around embodying. So, so even if it’s their company and just because they might have a, a business name doesn’t mean that they’re not a brand cuz they’re associated with, when they, when somebody hears the name of that company, somebody is going to have a gut feeling about that, that company. And so whether it’s the, the, person’s the founder’s name on the wall, or it happens to be a name that you just made up that has to resonate with people. And so you have to really pay attention to that and have some care and attention into branding, even if you’re small.

John Jantsch (03:33): So, so I want to get into some specifics, but I will tell you this time of year, a lot of people are watching, uh, football. I don’t know if you’re an NFL fan at all, but uh, playoff season, a lot of people are. And, and of course all the ads are insurance companies that are basically communicating a brand that has nothing to do with their product, progressive Geico, even state farm. It seems, seems to be the trend with insurance companies is, is create personality. So we don’t have to talk about products. People don’t really wanna buy anyway. So, so talk a little bit about that as an effective approach. And, and is it for everyone?

Jacqueline Lieberman (04:11): Well, I mean, I think so taking insurance, just for an example, I mean, so that’s, that’s a tough, that’s a tough market to be in. Right? Right. So talk about like a low interest category. We’re not talking about automobiles that people look forward to having that purchase when the, when the time comes. So, so taking that tact is, is smart for insurance because they have to associate their brand with something that’s positive because for insurance, the flip side of insurance is that you don’t wanna need it. So the flip side is that there’s some sort of disaster that has happened to you, so they wanna make it a positive feeling. And I think that that’s exactly why all of those brands are taking the T that they are. But that said, I think that that’s a lesson, a lot of brands can, can take. And it doesn’t matter. A lot of, as you mentioned before, oh, I’m a small business and I’m not a big brand, but I think it doesn’t matter what category you’re in. You can still create a brand around what you’re doing because that has to resonate with people. And that’s the only way that you’re going to be able to connect with people is, is by doing that

John Jantsch (05:17): Well. And I think particularly today there’s so many channels and ways to reach, uh, consumers that I think a lot of that’s happened. I, I, I think brands in a lot of cases, what going back 20, 30, 40 years ago, I know you weren’t around, but, but for some of my listeners, the brand was kind of the personality of your advertising in a lot of ways was, was the brand. But now you go on, you look at Google reviews and they talk about rusty, the technician that came to their house and did an amazing job. And all of a sudden that’s the brand. So how, how do, how do you suggest that brands? I, I wanna say deal, that’s probably the wrong word address. The fact that there are so many channels and, and so much of the, the brand in a lot of ways is certainly out of our control.

Jacqueline Lieberman (05:59): Yeah. And, and I think, well, I mean, I know that Marty Newmeyer, famous author of the brand gap, he, he basically says a brand is not what you say it is. It’s what, what everybody else says it is. And so that’s really, that’s really what a brand is. So in looking at those reviews and that’s the best social listening that a brand can do by the way is, uh, that’s the best consumer insight. But I think when looking at brands, I usually the, the quickest, one of the quick tools that I always give to, uh, any client and even on social me, my social media feeds is saying, if you think about a brand in terms of three spheres of like, think of a ven diagram of you have mind, you have heart, you have conscience. And it’s thinking about a brand as like in their mind, what’s their point of view in the conscience, what’s the soul.

Jacqueline Lieberman (06:50): How do you wanna be remembered? And the heart is what are your non-negotiable beliefs? So in saying those things, and, and when you’re talking about and how to deal with reviews, it’s the reviews fit under one of those things, right? Yeah. So, so it’s like, and how a branch should respond is really about that. So if you’re always thinking in the realm of that, you have kind of those three facets of the brand, it really dimensionalizes it. And it gives you latitude to dial things up or down as you need to. So you can still be agile and respond. So it doesn’t have to be just here’s the advertising line. It’s like, well, no, what’s our point of view about this, or no, how do we help these people who are having the same problem in these reviews? And so I think it’s just like an easy construct that people can really wrap their heads around. Even if they know nothing about branding or marketing. I just kind of give that to them as a, as a framework. And it starts to lead people, even non marketers down to a place of like, Hmm. How, how do I think about my brand as a conscience? Yeah. And

John Jantsch (07:52): So, yeah. So as you start getting into like, what would the brand do cluster, right. we can use that as a decision making. We need to get some of those little bands and put ’em

Jacqueline Lieberman (08:02): Exactly

John Jantsch (08:03): Say that. So, so when somebody calls you in, and I know that you, I, I, I know that it’s very common for, uh, brands to have a marketing agency that is really doing a lot of the tactics, a lot of the execution, and they will typically sometimes call in a, an outside or a third party brand, uh, strategist what’s generally going, uh, is about a five part question what’s generally going on when that happens. And then what’s your process then for adding or, or I think you used the word excavating as a, as a, as part of the process. So, so walk me through what’s going on when somebody finally does that. And then what do you do to try to turn the ship?

Jacqueline Lieberman (08:41): Yeah. Well, I mean, a lot of times, so unfortunately what happens is, and I don’t know why maybe you can tell me why, in your opinion, I’d love to hear what you think about it is. I don’t know why, but there’s when management, there seems to be a, a change in management. Yeah. And it doesn’t matter, uh, really what the level is, but it’s typically at the senior level, they feel like that they need to completely blow up the brand. Yeah. And start over and put their own point of view and their spin on it for the sake of doing something new and relevant. And I’m not saying that that being new and relevant and, and having a new marketing point of view is, is the wrong way to go. Because usually if there’s a change in leadership, there’s a need for that change. Yeah.

Jacqueline Lieberman (09:30): Yeah. But the, the part that I, that I always find so surprising is that they come in with no regard to the history of the brand, the origin story of the brand. So whether that origin was five years ago or 50 years ago, or a hundred years ago, it doesn’t matter. Every brand started for some reason, it was some somebody thought of it for a reason. There was a value there. So typically what happens is I’ve gotten called in now more, more than I can count for that scenario where there’s a change of a change. Of course, the rest of the team doesn’t agree. The senior management wants to go in one direction, but then there’s legacy people who feel like that they’re go, that it’s in their gut, that it doesn’t feel right. Yeah. And they need somebody, they need like a, a third party to come in to just kind of almost do brand therapy.

Jacqueline Lieberman (10:22): Yeah. To understand. So, so the excavate, the excavating part is me talking to the CEO or the CMO and finding out. So tell me exactly why is it that you think that this part of the brand needs to change. And very often those are the conversations that’s when I start pulling out really the reasons why, because the reasons that they’re articulating is actually not it at all. Yeah. Yeah. And so when I start going in and asking those questions, well, tell me why, and tell me a little bit more about that. And then I also will interview the, the other stakeholders, the people who perhaps have been on board for a while, and I start to kind of marry those two worlds together. And, and that’s really the beginning of the new brand foundation. So it doesn’t mean that we’re forgetting the origin story. And it doesn’t mean that all we’re talking about is legacy stuff. It just means that we’re creating a new foundation starting from a fresh place that has everybody’s input at the table. Does that make sense?

John Jantsch (11:22): And now a word from our sponsor technology is awesome. Isn’t it? I mean, I talk about all kinds of technology on this show all the time. Did you ever wish there was a way to get some of the technology, some of the apps that you work with every day to talk to each other? There’s just that one little thing you wanted to do well for over 10 years, I’ve been using a tool called Zapier. In fact, longtime listeners might remember the founder, Wade, uh, foster on this show doing an episode when they were just getting started. Now they’ve blown up and it is an amazing tool. We use it to get our spreadsheets, to talk to other spreadsheets, our forms, to talk, to spreadsheets, our forms, to talk to other forms, all kinds of magic. When it comes to our CRM tool, it’s really easy to get started. I mean, there’s no coding. I mean, there’s 4,000, I think apps that, that they now support and that can, you can get to talk to each other, look, see for yourself, why teams at air table, Dropbox, HubSpot Zend desks, thousands of other companies use Zapier every day to automate their business. And you can try it for free today. It’s that zapier.com/dtm that’s Zapier, which is Z a P I E r.com/dtm. Check it

John Jantsch (12:38): Out. Yeah, absolutely. But I, but you could see the, you could see the pressure, the internal pressure, the CMO just got fired. The new CMO is not going to make any headway by saying, we’re just gonna keep going down this path. Right. Exactly. They do have to bring in kind of their ownership home. This is sort of a weird question, but since we’re talking about bigger companies, what role does politics internally play in, in the mess that gets made?

Jacqueline Lieberman (13:02): Yeah, a lot. Uh, it’s a huge role. And I think, and a lot of, a lot of my role I end up playing is I am the facilitator and I’m bringing all of these worlds together in a way that allows them to all speak their mind right. In a safe place. And, and I’m the one. So if I’m the one that’s coming up with the insights and playing back, what I heard, then there isn’t, there, there are no enemies made because they can’t argue really with me. Right. Because it’s like, well, I’m saying, well, this is what I heard. Yeah. And so that’s, so I become like the facilitator, the therapist, the marriage counselor, bringing everybody together. But at the same point, I’m also constantly asking questions to mind. Well, why, and tell me more about that. And when you say your values are, you’re a trusted brand, by the way, everybody says they’re a trusted brand, but tell me exactly why you think that. So, so that’s really a lot of what my role is, is to help get away from those politics and just kind of ask the right questions.

John Jantsch (14:06): How often do you get the chance to go deeper than marketing? So into sales, into service, you know, into, you know, pretty much every facet because I that’s all part of the brand, whether people people say it or not. So how, how often do you get that opportunity?

Jacqueline Lieberman (14:22): Well, when I do workshops, I specifically ask for the attendees in the workshops to be all representatives from. And I ask for, give me somebody from sales, give me somebody from R and D, somebody who sits in customer service. I don’t want all marketing people in that room. Right. So I say, if we have to make this a, a two part process, then let’s do it. But I do not wanna have all marketing people in the room because, because to your point, a brand is made up of all different facets. It’s not just what the marketing team streams up. So I need to understand the points of view. And very often a lot of that insight comes from the people, not in the marketing department. It comes from the people on the front lines or the people who are thinking about the brand in different ways.

John Jantsch (15:06): Yeah. Referrals rarely happen because of good marketing

Jacqueline Lieberman (15:10):

John Jantsch (15:11): Right. And, and, and yet most businesses, a significant part of their business comes by way of referral. And that happens because somebody had a great experience. Yeah. Yeah. Not, not because they saw a fun ad. That’s true. So do you have, do you have any, I was gonna say examples that you don’t necessarily have to use, uh, concrete examples, but do you have any examples of where sort of typical gaps happen and, and it’s almost like there’s no internal communication and that’s creating a bad experience.

Jacqueline Lieberman (15:40): Yeah. Well, I mean, there’s, there’s one where there’s a, a human legacy founder person. Mm-hmm, , who’s either no longer with the company and the company is struggling with how to tell that story. So some struggle with, do we tell it at all, or some are struggling with, how do we tell it and then tell it in a new way? Yes. So there’s, so that’s, uh, that’s a typical problem that, that I tend to, to face with with clients. Another is they, they have a, a really great mission statement and all of the players are all kind of singing out of the same hymn books, so to speak, except they don’t know what to do with it. So they don’t know like they know why they’re there and they’re really jazzed about working there, but they don’t have like that, that statement that actually, because it, it tends to be a mission statement’s also very long, typically as opposed to like a purpose statement, which could be very condensed and piffy, and you can remember it.

Jacqueline Lieberman (16:40): So really the recall is really how people start to embody it in their everyday life. So if you can’t remember what your mission is, then it’s like, then it’s probably too long and wordy, right. And you probably need to revisit it. But the other part of it is taking that purpose into practice. And, and that really is going right down to, at the HR level of like, you need to put your purpose in your job postings, make sure you’re hiring the right culture. You need to put it in your performance reviews, that everybody needs to be accountable for living the purpose and embodying it in your everyday jobs. Because if, if, if you don’t bring it down to that level, then it really is just a nice statement in the lobby.

John Jantsch (17:24): Yeah. It’s interesting. I think there are growing consensus among, uh, organizations that internal communications is actually where branding maybe starts.

Jacqueline Lieberman (17:32): Yes.

John Jantsch (17:33): Completely. So, so talk to me a little bit about whether what you’ve seen or maybe how you sort of advise people on that.

Jacqueline Lieberman (17:41): Yeah. I mean, I think it’s it really, because, I mean, I think it’s the, it’s how people think about marketing. So people just think that marketing is this advertising box that you need to track in order to sell stuff. But at the same point, it’s really having a group of evangelists who believe in it inside mm-hmm . So that’s why, when I talk about I, I came from the world of brand storytelling and of course I, I believe in brand storytelling, but I also really started to think about, and, and started my consulting around brand truth because no one can argue with what’s true. So if you could really, really believe it and believe it on the inside, inside the walls, that’s how the marketing really starts because then people are excited to be at work. They feel well compensated. They feel well respected. And, and it doesn’t matter whether you are part of the marketing team, you are marketing for that company because you’re happy being there. Yeah. So you’re creating evangelists inside the walls, and that’s the first step of marketing right there.

John Jantsch (18:42): Well, and it’s, it’s, it’s painful almost to see these companies, that transparency is one of our core values. And then internally there’s no transparency going on. Cause I really think that’s, excuse me. I really think that’s the biggest disconnect is people sit around and come up with what should sound good rather than what, like you said, what is

Jacqueline Lieberman (19:01): Yeah, exactly. I mean, when it’s very, I mean, and I, I could see why it happens because businesses they’re myopically focused on the task at hand, right in front of them. And they’re trying to just get through what they need to get through, especially right now, everybody is, you know, having a hard time and in all different ways, but, but you have to at least be in the regular practice of going 30,000 feet once in a while, once a quarter, once a year, at least, and start to look at your brand from that level and say, how are we really living our purpose? Is it really trickling down? Is it something that we need to reevaluate? How are we creating this world for the consumer? That’s something that they wanna be in, as opposed to us just selling messages

John Jantsch (19:50): 2021 is still gonna be a year where I think people are reeling from 2020. And so is there a, is there a message of trends or behaviors or things that people need to be aware of or looking out for, or doing more of or doing less of, or is it still, is, is it really just a matter of, of be true and stay the course?

Jacqueline Lieberman (20:14): Well, I mean, well, it’s definitely be true and stay the course. I mean, for sure what the pandemic has highlighted, is it really highlighted the brands who did not, if they were not already purpose driven, it really highlighted the brands who were struggling with that. So it’s like, if you already know that and that’s already part of your marketing, then it’s, you’re ahead of the game. And the reason why is because consumers are really out there and they’re looking for, they’re looking for something like they’re looking for a little glimmer of hope and optimism, and that’s what brands and companies give each other. And so if you’re just giving PLA platitudes and you’re not really doing anything of substance, then consumers are really gonna look at that and they’re making their choices because of that. And, and I think the brands who are winning right now are the ones that are, are really doing things that are, that are real and not just marketing because they’re trying to just hang on and survive.

John Jantsch (21:13): Yeah. They’re, they’re meaningful in some way to their customers. Good way. Look at, so you have a podcast as well called people what they could expect if they tuned in.

Jacqueline Lieberman (21:25): Sure. Um, so I’ve been told that it’s, uh, NPR, like in terms of, in terms of the format and I, I like to have guests on who either have a great brand story to tell. So if it’s a new up and coming brand, or even a legacy brand, I like to have brands on who have an authentic story and beginning that they wanna share. And I try to dissect that in a way that I extract insights that really, if you are a planner, if you’re a creative designer, uh, account person, if you’re listening to it, you can apply those insights directly to your work. And that’s really what I’m trying to do is, is give people kind of like a marketing insights, 1 0 1 that if you need, if you have 20 minutes from your day and you wanna listen, but you can listen to that and extract and apply to your work.

John Jantsch (22:11): Awesome. So you wanna tell people where, uh, they can find out more about, uh, brand KU and, uh, your work. Sure.

Jacqueline Lieberman (22:18): Yeah. So you can go to dub, dub, dub, brand kudo.com and on there’s a link to UN uncooked we’re on apple, Spotify anywhere you, you know, get to podcast, but, but yeah, you can find everything there on brand kudo.com.

John Jantsch (22:32): Awesome. Well, Jacqueline there’s pleasure spending time with you this afternoon and hopefully, uh, we can run into each other when we’re back out there on the road someday.

Jacqueline Lieberman (22:39): Wouldn’t that be nice. that would be great. Thanks so much, John, for having me.

John Jantsch (22:44): 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 and Zapier.

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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July 1, 2022/by exposure

2 Out-Of-The-Box Ways To Generate Referrals

2 Out-Of-The-Box Ways To Generate Referrals written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with John Jantsch

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I’m doing the final part of a five-episode solo show series where I’m covering one of my favorite topics: referrals. You can catch the first episode, second episode, third episode, and fourth episode of the Referral Generation series here.

Key Takeaway:

In this episode, I’m wrapping up this Referral series and masterclass on Referral Generation. I cover the last two approaches that are particularly unique but have extremely potent potential: creating your own expert networking club and building a referral mastermind system. You can find the links to all 5 of the episodes below.

Topics I cover:

[1:38] The sixth approach is creating your own expert networking club
[2:59] Where strategic partners can fit into this idea
[3:25] An example success story from my newest book of how creating a networking group has worked extremely well for others
[4:51] Why creating a group like this is a commitment and a long-term strategy – it takes time for this approach to flourish
[7:43] The seventh approach is building a referral mastermind system
[8:39] Creating a monthly referral training for your clients
[9:26] Why this works particularly well if your clientele is B2B
[10:04] Teaching others how to generate more referrals leads to more referrals for your business – the law of reciprocity just happens

Resources I mention:

The full Referral Generation series:
- The first episode in this series: 7 Approaches To Help You Generate More Referrals
- The second episode in the series: 3 Types Of Referral Offers Every Business Needs
- The third episode in the series: Grow With Your Customers By Serving Their Ecosystem
- The fourth episode in the series: How To Build A Strategic Partner Network
The Ultimate Marketing Engine: 5 Steps to Ridiculously Consistent Growth
The Referral Engine: Teaching Your Business to Market Itself

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 podcast.

John Jantsch (00:52): Hello, and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch, and I’m doing another solo show. We’re gonna talk about referrals. This is a wrap up. This is session number five of me covering the seven grades of referral fuel. If you haven’t caught the other shows, you can find them @ ducttape.me slash duct tape in the show notes. Uh, we’ll link to all those shows. So you can kind of somehow put all five shows on referrals together. It kind of a, it equates almost to a masterclass on my thinking on the idea of referral generations. Hopefully you can check it out. Love to hear your feedback, love your reviews and testimonials, uh, on the show. All right, this is, uh, number six of seven. So I’m gonna cover two of them today. This one, and, and actually both of these kind of are a little bit, they’re not out there, but they’re certainly not practice every day, but I think for the, the right business, the right person that really takes this and runs with it.

John Jantsch (01:49): So both of these ideas could be extremely, extremely potent. All right. So I did number six is to create your own expert networking club. Many folks are familiar with organizations like BNI, you know, where people get together and, and join a network of non-competing businesses. And they think about, uh, you know, generating referrals, uh, you know, from, from, and with each other. And those can be great for the right businesses. Those can be great organizations. The only problem is, is, you know, you’re joining something that’s already established. You really don’t know who’s there. Uh, you don’t get to pick, you know, who’s there. And so it’s a potent idea, but what if you could control it completely? And what I mean by that is what would stop you from creating your own event? That was a regular, whether you call it a club or whatever you call, it is something that, that people would come to.

John Jantsch (02:45): So it might be like a monthly breakfast that, you know, I’m, I’m in the marketing space. So I might, you know, create something the monthly marketing breakfast, and I would just invite people locally. You know, maybe they’d pay for breakfast, but they’d come and they’d hear for the price of breakfast. They’d hear, you know, some small business topic and it, you know, it doesn’t always have to be marketing in my case. Maybe I’d bring in some of my strategic partners. If you listen to last the, the last show on, on referrals, I talked extensively about strategic partners. So this would be a great opportunity for you to bring in those other professionals or folks that, that you work with and have them teach topics. So you’re not just doing all the heavy lifting, you’re really keeping it, uh, you’re really keeping it relevant, you know, keeping it, uh, potent for, you know, reason for people to come.

John Jantsch (03:33): Now, one example that that I’ve used actually in, in my book, the, the ultimate marketing engine was a woman who, you know, doesn’t, here’s my point. It doesn’t have to be related to your business. If there, if there’s a topic or a reason to bring people together, that’s going to be a value to them. Uh, it doesn’t directly have to be related to your business. So the profile or the woman that I profile in my book, uh, actually was a real estate agent, but she was pretty good at marketing and learned a lot of these new, you know, digital tactics and things. And so she thought, well, I’ll just reach out to entrepreneurs and see if they wanna have me. And, and other folks that I work with talk about marketing topics. And so she brought in entrepreneurs and businesses and, uh, around this topic of, of generally around the topic of marketing and they would meet, you know, monthly for breakfast started very small.

John Jantsch (04:19): I think the last time, uh, I talked to her, it was around two, 300 people would come to this thing. Well, she was not selling real estate. She wasn’t talking about real estate, you know, as any of this, but she was clearly the one who benefited from, Hey, you know, I’m your host, you know, I’m bringing this together. Here’s the next ex expert I’m bringing to you. So consequently, almost all of her business came when somebody, you know, who was in this club needed to buy or sell a house, guess who they thought of. So it really can just be a way for you to, uh, you know, to, to build some authority, to build some influence regardless of the industry, uh, that you’re in. Now. There’s a couple things that, that I think, make some sense on, if you’re gonna take this approach, you’re gonna have to commit to it.

John Jantsch (05:03): I mean, it’s something where you maybe go out and get, you know, your existing clients and the 10 of you, you know, meet for the first time and then you ask them to bring people. So it’s something that you’ll, you, you can’t just say, I’m gonna do this one day and, and have it just magically turn into this, uh, incredible thing. It’s gonna take an investment of time and energy and, and probably some resources in the beginning, but it could build to the point where it could be a, a significant revenue generator, uh, for your business. I think the people that have done this kind of thing, there’s another organization that I profiled the book called cadre, which is in the Washington, uh, DC area. And it was the same thing. It was a, a financial advisor who, you know, just got tired of going to the traditional networking things that everybody said you had to go do in order to, to, to meet people in that business.

John Jantsch (05:54): So he, he just started creating these monthly get togethers and he would bring in, you know, experts and authors and, you know, it was very, almost curated. You know, it grew to the point where it actually is. It actually became, he actually sold his financial, uh, planning practice and, and is doing this full time now is, is running this kind of networking club that, you know, people are very, very engaged in as, as members of this. So, you know, it, it really, it’s an idea that could be a very big idea, but even, even as a small size idea, I think it really can do a lot of very positive things for your business. Now, I know some of the, in addition, I mean, I think these things work probably the best when people can physically get together. But I think also creating some sort of platform in like meet up and, or event bright, or even LinkedIn and Facebook, you know, events and groups, you know, having something so people can kind of in between these, uh, get togethers communicate as well.

John Jantsch (06:50): But I think that, that, you know, creating that kind of thing, there are many, many businesses that that can benefit from that. Hey, eCommerce brands did, you know, there’s an automated marketing platform. That’s 100% designed for your online business. It’s called drip. And it’s got all the data insights, segmentation, savvy, and email and SMS marketing tools. You need to connect with customers on a human level, make boatloads of sales and grow with Gusto. Try drip for 14 days, no credit card required and start turning emails into earnings. And SMS sends into ch CHS try drip free for 14 days. Just go to go.drip.com/ducttape marketingpod. That’s go.drip.com/ducttapemarketingpod.

John Jantsch (07:42): All right. The seventh idea is something I call or a referral mastermind system. So the idea behind this, and this is, I think this can work for a lot of types of businesses, but any business that has clients, businesses has clients.

John Jantsch (08:00): I, I will have that caveat you’d need to be selling to businesses for this to work. One of the things that most of those businesses want is more business is more referrals now, regardless of what you do, obviously it’s very natural. I do. I’m a marketing consultant. So me going to, to clients and saying, let me teach you how to generate referrals for your business. I mean, that’s a very, very logical thing, but you don’t have to be, imagine that financial planner I talked about, and they let’s say they were working with businesses or law firm, it doesn’t really matter. You’re working with businesses. Well, all of those businesses, yes, they want what you do for them, but they also want more business . And so what if you created a kind of monthly referral training for your clients and, and this, and in effect, it’s not gonna really be this high level training in some ways, it’s, it’s really gonna be about you bringing them together to talk about and facilitate the, the idea of referral generation.

John Jantsch (08:58): Right? In fact, you could do this in one, on one or, or certainly in groups, you could create some sort of compensation or point system where, you know, people are, you’re teaching a referral topic, but you’re teaching them a referral topic each month. You’re, you’re getting them together to talk about how to generate more referrals, or maybe just effectively talking about what they did that month to, to generate referrals. Maybe in some cases they would actually refer each other. In fact, in a lot of instances where if you’re B, if your clientele is primarily B2B, that’s probably going to happen, but ultimately what’s gonna happen is they’re going to refer business to you. If you, if you help somebody get more referrals, it is just sort of a, a human law of human nature. I never can say that word reciprocity. There we go. You know, just happens.

John Jantsch (09:52): I mean, if you’re teaching somebody how to generate more referrals, they’re going to, to, to really reply and kind, and generally speaking, you know, you’re the financial planner or you’re the lawyer. Who’s actually not only doing the legal work that you are hired to do. You’re actually teaching them how to build their business. Who’s not gonna refer that business. Who’s not gonna wanna bring people into your, you know, your referral mastermind group. So this is something that, you know, I just wanna plant the seed for this idea, but I, you know, this would be very easy. If you’ve already got a client base, this would be very easy to put together. You just create, you know, you just talk about it as almost a networking group or, you know, a referral mastermind loosely. It’s gonna be about teaching referrals or facilitating, uh, referrals. You can pick up a book or two on, on the idea of referrals.

John Jantsch (10:42): The ultimate marketing engine comes to mind. I wrote another book called the referral engine, you know, pick up either one of those books and you’ll have a whole curriculum for what to teach in your, you know, if you, if you take this idea and you know, you spend a few, uh, your monthly meeting might look like you’re spending a, you know, a few minutes meeting and greeting, then people will just go around and share, Hey, here’s a success I had then maybe for 20 minutes, you teach a key lesson. Then a lot of times in mastermind groups, it’s very common to say, put somebody in a hot seat and say, well, here’s, you know, let’s talk about a challenge you’re having. And then obviously if there’s any way to share referrals in, you know, in that, you know, or somebody can say, Hey, here’s a referral I’m looking for.

John Jantsch (11:21): I, I think just these won’t have to be that structured. I, I, I believe in experience teaches me, has taught me that, you know, just bringing people together, even with a loose agenda is going to bear fruit. They’re going to find, uh, that valuable. So it’s, if that’s the case, it’s certainly gonna be worth the time that you invest in doing it. All right. So that’s my seven grades of referral fuel. Hopefully you’ve got some, uh, extra tips and ideas out of the, we’ll try to connect the whole series for you. There are actually five. This is number five of five. Hopefully you’ve had a chance to listen to the other four. If not, you can find them at ducttape.me/podcast. All right. Take care out there. And hopefully we’ll see you someday soon out there on the road.

John Jantsch (12:07): 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 and Drip.

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 know there’s an automated marketing platform that’s 100% designed for your online business? It’s called Drip, and it’s got all the data insights, segmentation savvy, and email and SMS marketing tools you need to connect with customers on a human level, make boatloads of sales, and grow with gusto. Try Drip free for 14 days (no credit card required), and start turning emails into earnings and SMS sends into cha-chings.

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https://www.sydneysocialmediaservices.com/?p=912

June 30, 2022/by exposure

The Strategy Behind Building A Thriving Online Community For Your Brand

The Strategy Behind Building A Thriving Online Community For Your Brand written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Jenny Weigle

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Jenny Weigle. Jenny has been creating, executing, and reviewing strategies for online communities for more than 10 years. She’s worked with more than 100 brands on various aspects of their community strategy and implementations, including launch, migration, programming, and planning.

Key Takeaway:

Community is one of those big buzzwords right now. So what even is community? Does your business need to have one? And what even is the benefit of building a community in the first place? Jenny Weigle has worked with more than 100 brands on aspects of their community strategy and implementations. In this episode, she’s breaking down why it’s so important today to build an online community of raving fans and customers for your business and the best ways to go about it.

Questions I ask Jenny Weigle:

[1:19] How would you define community and how is it different than my Facebook business profile or page?
[2:50] Do the people who join a community intend on engaging with many members or is it really because of the way the technology works?
[3:59] Who needs to be thinking about community — B2B brands or B2C brands?
[5:58] Does the way community is used change based upon its a small or enterprise-sized brand?
[7:02] What are some of the platforms for a community that works well for smaller businesses?
[8:51] What is some of the standard advice you give to brands on how to get engagement in a community they’re building?
[10:42] What are the benefits of a B2B company growing a community?
[12:41] Are there upsell opportunities in communities?
[13:20] What are the risks of having a community?
[14:13] How do you approach someone giving their honest opinion in a group or community that isn’t so flattering of your product?
[15:00] Should you be curating members for a community?
[16:13] What have you seen people do effectively to keep people active in a community through rewards?
[19:02] What are a few of your favorite communities that you think are doing it right?
[20:25] Where can people learn more about you and your work?

More About Jenny Weigle:

Her consulting practice — Jenny.community

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 (00:51): Hello, and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Jenny Weigle. She’s been creating, executing and reviewing strategies for online communities. For more than 10 years, she’s worked with more than 100 brands on various aspects of their community strategy and implementations, including launch migration, programming and planning. So we’re gonna talk about community today. So Jenny welcome.

Jenny Weigle (01:18): Thanks John. Great to be here.

John Jantsch (01:20): Should we start off by defining community? It seems like that’s one of those words that for the last 10 years, you know, really gets batted around means a lot of different things. Like, for example, how is community different than my Facebook profile or page?

Jenny Weigle (01:37): Yeah. So the types of communities I work on are peer to peer, usually customer communities. Yeah. So community is a buzzword right now for sure. It’s being utilized in a lot of different ways. So I’m really glad that you asked that to start this off, John and one of the differences between say, you know, the communities that I work with and the Facebook following that you might have. Right, right, right. Is that when you are putting things out on your Facebook page, it is a one to many conversation that’s happening, right. People have opted to like your page and follow you. They want to know when you’ve posted things. They want to hear what you have to say. They wanna know when you have updates when you’re announcing something. Right. Right. So one to many is a big and a critical factor around social media communities. Okay. Yeah. But the peer to peer communities that I work on are many to many meaning that at any time of the day, you know, someone can post a question, someone can post something and anyone else in the community can go and answer. And so it’s not reliant on a main account, like an Instagram even, or a Twitter for whoever runs the account. Yeah. To first say something to kick off a conversation, right. In these closed communities, one can be starting off a conversation at any time.

John Jantsch (02:50): So is that really a point of view difference or a technology difference? I mean, is that, you know, like, do people join a community like that intent on engaging with many members or is it really just because the way the technology works,

Jenny Weigle (03:03): Both actually. Yeah. There’s lots of reasons people join communities. Usually the ones that I work with people are joining because they have a shared interest with the purpose, the community or the members in it, or the brand that’s hosting it. They might need a quick response or quick answer to something. And the quickest way they’re gonna get that is actually joining the community versus calling a company’s social, uh, customer service line or submitting an email or so forth. Some people will do it for status because there are some communities where if you are active enough, you can start to get certain perks and so forth. Some people do it for a connection and belonging. They just wanna find other people who have shared interests as them. And, uh, but they’re usually the technology to host. These types of communities is very different than social media technology.

John Jantsch (03:47): So I think a lot of, I think there were certain types of organizations. There are certain types of brands where it just made sense. I mean, Pringles needed a community, right. Or being at, and M’s needs a community really, you know, more and more people are getting into it. So, I mean, is it really still a B to C thing? Is it a B to B thing now? You know, I guess the general question is like, who needs to be thinking community?

Jenny Weigle (04:11): Well, I think everyone should consider community. Yeah. But community is not necessarily for everyone. I think that’s what we’re you might be touching on there. John. And I agree with that statement, not every business or business owner should have community. Okay.

John Jantsch (04:25): But you did agree that Pringles needs one, right?

Jenny Weigle (04:27): I’m not, not so sure, but I heard that Wendy started one on discord. Yeah. No. B2B is actually one of the most popular areas of people starting community right now. In fact, that’s predominantly my clients right now. Okay. Are B2B communities B2C? Sometimes it’s a little more obvious what some of the community benefits are, but B2B is very active in thriving. There’s some companies doing great job, a great job out there of running their communities, really creating belonging, creating connection. Yeah. Creating unique incentives for the people who participate the most and recognizing those individuals. And there’s also this new wave of either solo entrepreneurs or small businesses that are starting communities. And there’s different kinds of technologies starting to appeal to them because obviously the small business owner is not gonna pay the same prices as an enterprise brand for some of these. Right. Right. And these are a lot of the software platforms that I work with that would be extremely pricey for many consultants, solopreneurs, small business owners. I can Dodge for that cause I am one. Yeah. So it’s really neat to see these newer platforms coming out that are at our, sorry, are at a lower price point and still serving up great features and functionality for a truly unique experience.

John Jantsch (05:37): I mean, in some ways, when you talk about like a consultant doing, you know, community, it really is in a lot of ways. It’s just, I see people who are it as a way to get to know people as a way to start it, to introduce what it would be like to work with them. You know, perhaps as a way to, to really build something that maybe turns into high masterminds and things like that. I mean, is that so different from, you know, a big brand, how a big brand uses it with their customers,

Jenny Weigle (06:05): Not so different in the overall purpose and goals there. Yeah. Yeah. I think a lot of what we’re trying to achieve are the same things. Unfortunately, these big brands have the, sometimes the means to hire large community teams so they can do a lot more with their communities and, you know, consultants, small business owners might just have themselves, maybe one or two other people who could help them on the community. And the thing is without someone dedicated toward nurturing the community and help make those connections and nurture the conversations, it will become as a dead zone. And it won’t be worth your time. And that’s, I guess one advantage that enterprise brands have over that is that they can hire somebody a hundred percent dedicated to that. Right. And we know like the work we do, we’re a hundred percent dedicated to every facet of our business. We can’t just focus in on one and stay on there.

John Jantsch (06:50): Yeah. And so the thus the 2 million dead Facebook groups that are out there. Right. exactly. So you, you hit on a couple things I was gonna ask about, I wanna double back to maybe giving you a chance you met, you said there are new technologies. What are some of the platforms that, that you like for that smaller price point or that, that smaller business?

Jenny Weigle (07:08): All right. Folks, get ready and write these down or replay because these are definitely some companies you will want to check out. First one disciple sometimes also called disciple media. I think they’re starting to go by disciple now, mighty networks, circle dot, so and tribe. And again, a lot of these are appealing to that individual business owner or small business team. And it is a really neat platform to all of them are new platforms. I’ve seen the UI. It’s beautiful. And it’s like I said, the price points are nowhere near what these enterprise brands are, are paying. And couple of these specialize in a cohort based experience. So if you’re offering any kind of teachings, masterminds classes that you also want a community to prepare and compliment that experience, or you want to welcome people into a community after they have completed it as kind of, you know, part of their graduation gift. Yeah. And yet you’re staying in touch with ’em. So some of these have the ability to do that. Also some of these platforms have the ability to offer paid communities. So if you were to start up a community and you wanna charge $5 a month, $50 a month, whatever’s gonna be right for your audience. They have the ability to do that as well.

John Jantsch (08:15): Yeah. And you mentioned the cohorts and things. I really think people are a little bit tired of the watch video training, you know, and the idea of having training or learning along with engagement of like-minded individuals. I think people are hungry for that. We’re kind of tired of zoom TV and so, you know, a little more personal engagement, I think is really, as I said, people are hungry for the second thing you touched on is it’s a lot of work. I think people, you know, the idea they hear of communities like, yeah, that sounds great. But if you aren’t in their creating conversation, responding to everything rewarding, as you said, the people that are that seem to be talking a lot. So how do you know, what are some of your, what are some of the advice you give or standard advice for first off, how you get engagement, but then how you need to be thinking about, you know, the, whether it’s hiring somebody or dedicating, you know, some staff time to,

Jenny Weigle (09:06): Well, if you’re going to try this world of community here, one of the things you can do right off the bat is try to see if you can get some volunteer moderators or volunteer hosts in there with you. So that you’re not the, always the one who has to kind of kick off the conversation and also see if some people there’s some people who want to also throw some virtual events for your community or help post in person events. So kind of getting this exclusive group together, maybe even giving them some extra perks for taking this on, right. That can take some of the work off of you. And then of course you’re managing a team and that still takes time. But I think it also says something really strong to the community when it’s not just you doing everything, but they see other community members are also helping to plan and organize events.

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John Jantsch (10:36): You’ve touched on a few of ’em, but maybe I’ll kind of tee it up and you can give your typical sales pitch for this. You know, what are the benefits of, you know, of a typical, you know, B2B company growing a community?

Jenny Weigle (10:48): Oh my gosh, there are a ton of benefits. Probably the easiest to calculate, right, right away is support and customer service needs. Right? Sure. You have one of your agents in there as a moderator handling any of those kinds of questions and, or actually not even handling, but in there to address anything, anyone can’t answer, but in a really successful B2B community, it’s your other community members who are answering the questions and that saves money on from customer service perspective for those costs. But then from a marketing perspective, you’ve also got, you know, you wanna create a, an area of loyal fans and of raving loyal fans, right? And when they start to connect to each other and start realizing these are connections that only could have been made through that one community, that’s pretty powerful. You can also start getting testimonials out of it.

Jenny Weigle (11:33): And depending on the kind of platforms you’re picking to have your community, these days, you can start to create some great SEO because the search engine’s favor, user generated timely and relevant content, which is all happening on communities. Let’s see. So that’s a benefits to customer, to customer service. That’s benefiting marketing from a customer success standpoint. You can keep track of how many of you know, your clients are active on the community and kind of, you know what they’re talking about, maybe they’re starting to ask questions about products they don’t own yet. So, you know, any good customer success professional would keep an eye on what their clients are talking about, especially if they might be able to spot upsell opportunities. Yeah. And if you’re on any kind of a product team at a B2B company, the community will not only help educate people on more features and functionality, cuz people are gonna be asking, how do I use this part? What’s a tip for using this area. So that’s gonna create awareness and adoption of further of your products. Yeah. But you can also set up kind of an idea area, you know, and let people pitch their ideas or you could propose a number of ideas, let people vote on them. So there’s just so many facets of a company, especially a B2B company that a community can benefit.

John Jantsch (12:41): Well, and you didn’t mention this explicitly and I’m sure that you have to be cautious of this, but certainly there’s upsell opportunities as well. Right? I mean, somebody that’s in it, you know, now learns about this higher level thing they can do.

Jenny Weigle (12:54): Exactly. And I’ve seen that happen with my clients before. Yeah. They have seen conversations happening amongst members. So these were not solicited by staff or anything. And people are talking about a newer product coming out and that opened a door for them to have some, you know, the relationship manager, contact them separately outside of the community and start to say, Hey, what kind of questions can I answer for you about this?

John Jantsch (13:17): Yeah. So let’s do the flip side of that. What are risks? What are risks of doing this? Obviously you can have all kinds of community rules and have moderators and whatnot, but at some point you really, people are gonna say what they’re gonna say.

Jenny Weigle (13:32): People are gonna say what they’re gonna say. And that’s why it’s very important to have community guidelines in place as well as moderation efforts happening. Yeah. Yeah. So the risks are that if you allow people to go off the community guidelines and start, and aren’t adhering to that, what you’re creating is an unsafe environment for the rest of everyone else. And you’re also diminishing the value of the community. It’s not the experience others signed up for. Right. If people can go on and break the guidelines and speak offensive, inappropriate things. Right. So yeah, that is a risk. And it’s also a risk. If you’re not tending enough to nurturing the community, that it could become a dead zone and it actually looks quite bad on you and your brand. Yeah. If people go to this and see that the last, you know, post was three months ago. Right. And no one’s really interacting.

John Jantsch (14:14): Yeah. Well I think what I was getting at a little more, because obviously you have the guidelines, you know, somebody breaks guidelines, you just like, see ya, but what about somebody giving their honest opinion? That’s not so flattering of your product or service.

Jenny Weigle (14:26): That’s always a tough decision for brands to have to come to. And I have clients that have done that a couple different ways. I have some clients that don’t allow any kind of competitor talk and I have some clients that are open to it and they do list some kind of limitations on what, when you’re, what you’re talking about. So some only allow people to pose questions, you know, some people will not allow an entire testimonial about another, another product. Yeah. Yeah. It’s it really just depends on what the community’s purpose is and, and yeah. And how the members will respond to what you’re putting out there as the guidelines.

John Jantsch (15:00): Talk to me a little bit about curation. Should you be curating members, you know, for a community? So, so what I mean by that is that, you know, you talked about, I mean, people want to go to a place where they’re gonna be with peers or where they’re, if it is in a B2B community, they’re gonna wanna be able to get answers from people that are having the same problems they’re having. Maybe because they’re a big company as opposed to a little company. I mean, so, so should you be doing that or to so that you really can have everybody going, wow, everybody’s here, you know, is on the same page or does that run the risk of stifling?

Jenny Weigle (15:32): It runs the risk of the community, not growing as quickly as some people might want it to. But I will say that when I’ve seen people do that, they do get, you know, I guess the right kind of member in there, you know, to engage now, I’ve been invited to be part of many online communities. Some of them I’ve had to fill out a quick form and you know, then it said, we’ll consider your membership. And I actually like that because I like it when a community team or individual takes the time to ask the right questions and ensure that I’m gonna be the right kind of person to come in here and try to connect with the others. And if I’m not, I could really throw off the whole vibe and the whole, just everything happening, all the good Juju happening in the community. Yeah,

John Jantsch (16:12): Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Talk a little bit about rewards. What have you seen people do to effectively other than acknowledgement or, you know, elevating somebody to being a moderator, you know, what have people have done to, to keep people active by rewarding them?

Jenny Weigle (16:27): Well, COVID changed a lot of the coolest rewards I’ll say, because I’ll say some of the coolest rewards I’ve seen are people who are part of a super user or ambassador type program of a community, meaning that they have proven that they are the most active. I’ve seen them get invited to entire weekend conferences just for that group. So a small intimate experience, the brand is flying you out. They want you to come together. You know, they’ve got some gifts for you, some ways to wine and dine you. I mean, that is quite the, I’ve seen community members called up on stage at a customer conference, recognized in front of all the company and all of the attendees and their peers, fellow customers. I have seen some really unique pieces of swag given out only to people who hold a certain status in community. Yeah.

Jenny Weigle (17:09): So there’s lot of, lots of different things. I’ve seen certain permissions given in a community that other people can’t do, maybe such as, uh, having a certain kind of avatar or the ability to record some video addresses to their audience and so forth. Mm-hmm yeah. There’s, I’ve seen it all across the board and it’s just so critical to have some kind of incentive, not everyone’s gonna be able to do that level, but even if your incentive is offering 30 minutes with your CEO or 30 minutes of with you, John in your own communities, I’m sure people would find that extremely appealing.

John Jantsch (17:40): All right. So switch gear a little bit. What if I’m out there listening to this in there and I’m thinking to myself, I think I would wanna be one of those community manager people. What does that role look like? Or how does somebody train to be that? Or is it just, you gotta be like a certain personality

Jenny Weigle (17:56): Oh, no, but there’s all kinds of personalities involved in this field. That’s, what’s so exciting about it, but there are some roles that I think would make an easier transition than others. So if you have worked on social media communities, there’s a lot of similarities. You would need to adapt to some new technologies, but you’d be a great candidate. If you’ve ever been a customer success manager, you’d be an ideal candidate because I know customer success professionals out there. When you’re in your position at your company, you have to have connections with all kinds of different departments, cuz your customers can be asking questions that really over here, over there everywhere. Right? So usually I think customer service professionals have their hands and connections in many parts of the company and you would make a good community professional. If so, because community managers also need to have touch points everywhere. And also if you’ve ever been a program manager of any kind, that’s also a makes for a great background and some foundational skills to contribute to a community manager. But I’ve also people seeing people come from teaching engineering roles. It’s really neat to see all the kinds of people coming into this field now.

John Jantsch (18:58): Awesome. So maybe as we close out here, you could tell me a few of your favorite communities that you think are doing it right. That, that you know, are fun or however you wanna talk about ’em.

Jenny Weigle (19:10): Yeah. So on the B2B side, I have to give it up for Intuit. They have a couple of different communities within their brands. They’ve got a turbo community, QuickBooks and accountants community, and they’ve also done a really great job of integrating the community into their products. So if you’re using a turbo product and you have a question, when you type in your question, one of your results might show up as a question and answer that came out of the community. So really nice tie in with their product there. And also they’ve just got very passionate group of members, a wonderful community team, running things. And on the B2C side, I’ve gotta give it up for my former client, Sephora athletic, gosh, they’re all doing some really fun, unique things on the B2C side. Awesome. So check out, just Google those names with community next to it and you’ll find out what they’re up to.

John Jantsch (20:00): Yeah. And I’m, I actually am a member of the REI community and I can say, you know, one of the beauties of that one is it’s most, it’s where people who people can collect that have similar interests, you know, and I think that’s one of the themes on a lot of really strong communities is, you know, it’s, you know, you’re gonna go there and you’re, you’re gonna be talking to somebody who likes the outdoors, uh,

Jenny Weigle (20:18): For example. Exactly. And I’m glad to hear you say that about the community. Cause I know that is what they’re hoping their members are getting out of it. Yeah. So that’s great to hear.

John Jantsch (20:26): So Jenny tell people where they can find out more about your work and some of what you’re up to

Jenny Weigle (20:30): My consulting practice is called jenny.community. So just type jenny.community into your web browser. And you’ll learn a little bit more about me as well as where you can find me on social.

John Jantsch (20:39): Awesome. Well, thanks for taking some time to drop by the duct tape marketing podcast. And hopefully we’ll run into, I usually end the show by saying, run into you out there on the road someday, but maybe I should say run into you in one of these communities someday.

Jenny Weigle (20:50): that’s a good one new ending. I like it.

John Jantsch (20:53): 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.

June 24, 2022/by exposure

The Key To Writing A Must-Read

The Key To Writing A Must-Read written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with AJ Harper

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview AJ Harper. AJ is an editor and publishing strategist who helps authors write foundational books that enable them to build readership, grow their brand and make a significant impact on the world. As ghostwriter and as developmental editor, she has worked with newbies to New York Times bestselling authors with millions of books sold. AJ is writing partner to business author, Mike Michalowicz. Together they’ve written nine books, including Profit First, The Pumpkin Plan, Fix This Next, and their latest, Get Different. She has her own book now called — Write a Must-Read: Craft a Book That Changes Lives—Including Your Own.

Key Takeaway:

How do you write a book that readers rave about? The answer to that question follows a simple, yet powerful philosophy: Reader First. When you learn how to put your reader first at every stage of book development, writing, and editing, you can create the connection and trust required to transform their lives. In this episode, AJ Harper shares her proven methods and frameworks she has used for nearly two decades to write and edit perennial bestsellers. It’s not the easy way or the fast way; it’s the effective way. The payoff for doing this important work: a must-read book, and a massive readership who serve as ambassadors for your message and your brand.

Questions I ask AJ Harper:

[2:04] Why is the idea that a book is like a business card and everyone needs one a silly concept?
[3:58] Is there a system to writing a good book?
[6:32] Can you unpack the concept of transformational reader sequence from your book?
[7:44] How do you get someone to trust you in the book that you’re writing?
[11:01] What role do credentials play when you don’t really have them?
[13:00] What makes a book transformational?
[14:00] How do you apply the idea of “Shitty first drafts”?
[16:35] Are you a fan of self-publishing or traditional publishing?
[18:11] What’s the route in self-publishing?
[19:33] The editing process for connection is probably the hardest part — how do you do that as an editor?
[21:23] I find that I don’t have the crispest grammar as an editor may want, so where’s the fine line with that kind of stuff while trying to remain authentic?
[23:18] Could you share with people how they can work with you and the course that you mentioned?

More About AJ Harper:

Her book — Write a Must-Read: Craft a Book That Changes Lives—Including Your Own
Top 3 Book Workshop
Her self-directed course: Test Drive Your Content — Use code DUCTTAPE to get 50% off your course

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 podcast.

John Jantsch (00:51): Hello, welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is a J Harper. She’s an editor and publishing strategist who helps authors write foundational books that enable them to build readership, grow their brand and make a significant impact on the world. As a ghost writer in a developmental that’s easier said than read editor. She has worked with newbies to New York times bestselling authors with millions of books sold. AJ is a writing partner to my good friend business author. Mike MCOW ITZ together. They’ve written nine books, including many that we’ve talked about on this show. Profit first pumpkin plan, fix this next and the latest get different. She’s got her own book now called write a must read craft a book that changes lives including your own. So AJ, welcome to the show.

AJ Harper (01:42): Thank you so much for having me.

John Jantsch (01:45): So you must be a bit of a Saint to spend that much time with Mike MCZ that’s all I’m gonna say.

AJ Harper (01:51): He is like a brother to me, maybe the brother who plays pranks on you a little bit,

John Jantsch (01:56): But yeah. Yeah. One of these days off air, I’ll tell you the prank he played on me. It’s not quite ready for prime time on the show. One of the things that when we get into talking about books, you know, it seems like the last decade or so the common wisdom is every business person needs a book. It’s like an expanded business card. And I was so happy to hear you debunk that. I’d let you kind of riff on why that idea is kind of silly.

AJ Harper (02:20): Well, I mean, number one, what do we do with business cards? We toss them out. I mean, I think there’s a, the rare person who saves them, collates them response to them in the system. Right. But even our best intentions, you know, at events we lose them. We forget them. I think that the danger in saying better business card is that it immediately lowers the standards yeah. For the book. And then it’s just from there, it’s just a long stream of cutting corners that only ends in disappointment. And I define disappointment as no one’s reading it. No, one’s talking about it. Very few people are buying it.

John Jantsch (02:55): Yeah. It’s a really crappy business card. Right. You know, I think, I can’t remember who responded to this. I was asking somebody else who helps people publish books? I said, you know, what’s the number one thing, you know, or number one reason, you know, to write a book and he said, you know, kind of flippantly, but kind of serious, you know, have something to say and I think that’s probably the place to start, isn’t it?

AJ Harper (03:16): Yeah. And I, you know, the type of books I help people write are prescriptive nonfiction or personal and professional development. So I would add a piece to that, which is have someone you wanna help.

John Jantsch (03:27): Yeah. Right, right, right. Yeah. Solve, solving a problem. right.

AJ Harper (03:31): Yeah. And also caring about their reader experience. I think that’s the differentiator. We tend to focus solely on the things we wanna say, and we need to focus on the experience. We wanna give readers.

John Jantsch (03:44): Now I know a lot of people out there think, okay, I just need to sit down, lock my way, self away for, you know, a month or a week or a long weekend or something and just start writing. But you have a very systematic approach to writing a book. And I obviously we can unpack it, but let’s start there. I mean, is there a system to writing a good book

AJ Harper (04:02): There is, and it’s not, you know, it’s a system I developed as a ghost writer out of necessity because I started with no system. So I had to figure it out and piece it together over time. But yeah, the main challenge with sitting down and just writing whatever comes to mind is you’re, you know, you’re gonna end up losing most of that. You don’t have the clarity. Yeah. Anytime that someone came to me with a manuscript to review as an editor, or maybe to revamp as a ghost writer, it was usually because they didn’t have a clear idea of three things, right. Which is exactly who their reader is in terms of hearts and minds and a transformational core message and a promise they could deliver. They couldn’t really articulate it. So you have to get that clarity first, before you start writing.

John Jantsch (04:54): And you know, it’s funny, I’ve been saying this for years and I was gonna, you know, when you talk about the ideal reader and core message and promise to solve a problem, I mean, that’s exactly what we do in marketing. yeah. I mean, that’s what we should do. And I think that’s, the parallels are really there. Aren’t they? I mean, in a lot of ways, we’re trying to gain a customer that customer may be a reader, but we wanna retain that customer, get ’em through the book, you know, we want, and I love the word that you use over and over again. We wanna make a transformation in their lives and books certainly can do that. I fortunately, I’ve written a couple books that people tell me frequently that this changed their life. This changed their marketing. And I think that, you know, it was pure luck probably on my part, but I think that really is, should be the goal, you know, rather than, oh, I wanna build my business by having a book,

AJ Harper (05:36): But see, I don’t think it was luck because you just talked about how these are the things that you know, how to do in marketing anyways. So you applied those same principles. Right? So that doesn’t sound like luck to me, it sounds like craft. And I think part of the problem is I know part of the problem is that we identify a reader, but then we don’t think about the reader again. It’s like, okay, that’s step one. And writing a book, here’s my reader. Right. And then past ideation, we’re not really thinking about them anymore. Now we’re just writing the book that solves their problem, which is great. I’m not saying that’s bad. I’m just saying that we need to keep the reader on the page. Yeah. So the reason people are telling you, your books changed my life is because they actually read them and they applied the things you asked them to apply, but you can’t get people to do that. If you don’t write a book that connects with them, respects their experience and delivers on the promise,

John Jantsch (06:31): You, you have something in this book that I really love. And it’s early on in the book that you call the transformation, transformational reader sequence, I think is the full thing. I’m gonna mess that up, but you know what I’m getting at. Yeah. And I think that’s, that’s like the customer journey, you know, it’s that we do in marketing. And I really love seeing that because I think people need to think that through don’t they, so maybe take a minute or two and unpack that idea.

AJ Harper (06:55): Sure. Well, I mean the first part’s easy people buy your book because you have a problem they can solve and they will read your book because they see themselves on the page. They’ll move, you’ll move through the process as they begin to trust you. And eventually you’re getting into where they believe in, you believe in them. And so that’s why they’re actually gonna do the things that you ask them to do. And finally they believe in you and that’s when they tell everybody about it. So it’s, you have to help them, you know? Yes, you have, they have to relate to the problem you’re solving, but they need to see themselves on the first page mm-hmm and all the way through. And then they need to begin to trust you and feel that you think that they can do it. That’s a key element in Mike Macow its’ books, by the way. Yeah. And it’s all intentional.

John Jantsch (07:44): So to me, I think the hardest part, I think people can write a good book that has a lot of action steps and you know, a lot of really useful things to do. I think the hardest part that you just described there is that trust element that, that actually gets somebody to say, okay, I’m gonna do that. I don’t know if it’ll work or not for me, but I trust you. So I’m gonna try it. Mm-hmm I, to me, that’s always the hardest part. So how do you build that in?

AJ Harper (08:09): Well, you get the first part right. First, which is helping them feel seen. So no, one’s gonna trust you if they think you don’t get me, you don’t understand me. You don’t know my life. Yeah. And so that’s number one, but then it’s also being transparent, I think is one of the keys I see with my students and my clients. So often they’re afraid to show how they make the sauce. Yeah. And they’re afraid to show when they don’t know something mm-hmm or when they aren’t sure about something. Yeah. And so if they’re just honest with the reader, I also wonder if this is gonna work or I tried this five times, maybe you will have a different experience. I’m not the expert. I’m just a person who try, you know, just being open about the reality rather than trying to be more than they are. I think it’s just cuz they’re afraid of how their book will be received at the core is of every afraid author is just a feeling who’s gonna read this thing.

John Jantsch (09:08): Yeah, no, go ahead. I’m sorry.

AJ Harper (09:10): Tip. I would give about building trust is, you know, do need social proof mm-hmm so you can get that through stories, anecdotes. You can also bring in statistics if you need to. But I do think storytelling builds trust. Yeah. Especially when it’s carefully constructed to show that what you’re saying is true or that your promise can is possible, et cetera.

John Jantsch (09:32): So obviously this comes off more so in, in Mike’s audio books probably than on the written page, but he has a level of sort of self deprecating humor that I think is his one of his tools for building trust. Isn’t it?

AJ Harper (09:45): Yeah. That’s all intentional by the

John Jantsch (09:47): Way. Yeah. No, absolutely. I mean, it’s partly who he is too, but, but obviously he’s taken advantage of it.

AJ Harper (09:52): None of nothing about him is disingenuine and he’s no, absolutely 100% who he is on the page off the page. But it is the reason that we do share stories where he shows, where he screwed up, where he was a goofball where he wasn’t sure of himself is that it endears him to his audience and then they feel okay he’s it’s not just, he sees me, but he’s all, I’m one. He’s one of us.

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John Jantsch (11:01): So let’s talk a little bit about credentials. You know, a lot of things, you know, you hear people talk about, you know, I, I feel like I’m a, you know, a fake, I don’t, you know, I’ve got this idea. I’ve helped a couple people, but like, can I really write a book about it? I mean, what obviously great credentials can aid, you know, somebody’s wanting to pick up the book, support the book, but what role does credentials play when you don’t really have them?

AJ Harper (11:26): That is a great question. And I think it depends on your topic and your genre. If you are trying to write a book, that’s gonna appeal to, if you’re say writing for C-suite or you’re writing an academic you book, you have to have credentials. Yeah. And you may need a co-writer in that case, you could get somebody who has the credentials, but if you’re not, then you know, it’s as simple as number one, make sure your content works. So, you know, it’s not enough to say everybody has a story and everybody can write a book. Right, right, right. No, you need to make yes. And let’s actually see if this content lands and works for people other than you. And I think there’s simple ways to do test drives little boot camps, workshops speaking. Yeah. All sorts of things to see, I think this works, but can other people do it? And then the second piece would be just like I said earlier, being transparent and honest. So I’m not 15 steps ahead of you. I’m two steps. Yeah. But this is the view I can show you from here. And then you’re being honest. Yeah. And they know that they can take that with a grain of salt.

John Jantsch (12:33): Yeah. And that idea of doing things ahead of the writing. I think a lot of people, mistake I see people make is they write the book and then they come to me and say, how can I market this? And I’m like, well, you should have been doing that two years ago. And that idea of building community, doing workshops, doing free clinics, whatever it is, mm-hmm to where you’re getting that feedback. You’re testing stuff out. You’re seeing what works, but you’ve also, you’re also building a little bit of hunger for this product when it, when it comes out. Here’s the big question. What makes a book transformational?

AJ Harper (13:03): Well, really, it’s just as simple as delivering on the promise. That’s your chief goal as an author. So decide first you have to decide can, what is the promise that will speak to my reader? Yeah. That they want, then can I deliver on it within the pages of the book? Not someday. So this is where a lot of authors make a mistake. Well, eventually you might get this thing but it’s about, okay, I’m turning the last page. Now I’m different in some way. And it doesn’t have to be a major difference, but there need to experience a shift. So it’s asking yourself, what can I deliver? But then also on the flip side, maybe challenging yourself to say, okay, I really do wanna deliver this thing. What else could I do within the confines of the book to make that happen and thereby you up level the content. Yeah. But as, as long as your book is designed to deliver, which includes keeping the reader immersed on the page, that’s part of that. Then that makes a book transformational.

John Jantsch (14:03): So there’s a book that I suspect you have read. That is one of my favorite books. And I, you pulled a little ti tidbit out of it when you were talking about rough drafts and that’s Anne Lamont’s bird by bird.

AJ Harper (14:13): Yeah. Classic .

John Jantsch (14:16): I actually saw her about 10 years ago and like was a, you know, a reading and signing for one of her books. And I had a first edition of bird by birds and she signed it for me. So

AJ Harper (14:25): Nice.

John Jantsch (14:26): I was very happy about that. Shitty first drafts. The, it just I’ll just let you go from there. You know, what, how do you apply that idea?

AJ Harper (14:34): So that’s interesting. I do talk about in my book. So she gifted us with the shitty first draft, which frees us from thinking it has to be perfect. But what I’ve discovered in all my years of teaching authors is that actually they don’t really believe it like sounds good and it makes them excited and they try, but in the back of their mind, they think one of two things, they either think I’m gonna be the exception to the rule and my draft is gonna be less shitty.

John Jantsch (15:02): Yeah,

AJ Harper (15:02): Yeah. Yeah. So they’re frustrated with themselves and they get locked in that battle or they think surely she doesn’t mean this shitty

John Jantsch (15:14):

AJ Harper (15:14): And so, and then they get locked in that battle. And so the problem is they don’t really know the definition. Yeah. It’s almost like they can believe they can’t believe it could be as bad as their draft is and you’re a writer. So, you know? Yes. It can yes, it can. There’s that beginning spot. It’s just a mess.

John Jantsch (15:34): Yeah. I mean, I came to this probably, but you know, I write now almost like journaling. I don’t edit at all. I mean, I used to like write a sentence and go, oh, I could say this better, you know? And then you got nowhere. Right? And so now I try to see how fast almost I can write, you know, a thousand words or whatever. Then I generally put it away. And then I come back to it the next day. And it’s either really good or it’s really bad.

AJ Harper (15:56): See, you have the benefit of having written many books. And I think that part of the challenge, if you’re a new author, is that you think that the people who are successful or at least have written a lot of books, know something you don’t know or are more talented, all it really is that you’re more comfortable with the creative process. Yeah. So, you know, I’m gonna work this out in editing cuz that’s where a good idea becomes a great book editing. So, you know, and you know that it’s gonna work out eventually and you don’t know how many drafts it will be, but a new person isn’t familiar with the process. And so not only does it seem daunting, but they just don’t know what to expect.

John Jantsch (16:36): Yeah. Let me, I wanna come back to editing, but I wanna segue through self-publishing versus traditional publishing. Okay. Because that’s where I think editing really has to be discussed based on the path you go there, are you a fan of one or the other, do you think it depends.

AJ Harper (16:49): I think that the mistake we make is that we try to decide which one is better without considering our own priorities and where we are. Right. I think an author needs to decide, okay, what are my goals? What are my resources? And what is my timeline? Yeah. And then a fourth consideration would be how much control do I wanna have?

John Jantsch (17:07): Yeah. Yeah. And including after the fact.

AJ Harper (17:10): Yes, exactly. so once you’ve decided, this is what matters to me, then choose a path that fits it. And if that doesn’t work, you can always do plan B or C.

John Jantsch (17:18): Yeah. So all of my books have been traditionally published. That just was the route that I ended up going. So my role was I’d write the book, turn into manuscript. The editor who had generally acquired the book would say, this chapter needs to go over here or this big chunk doesn’t make any sense and send it back to me. Then I would rewrite that, you know, that part of it. And then maybe there would be one more round of that, but then it would go to somebody who’s just looking for crap laying here that shouldn’t be , you know, you said it this way, that way you said it this way, that way. And then finally it would go to somebody who would just find all the commas and the, you know, dangling part of simples and you know, whatever other kind of stuff they find. But how that that’s part of, I guess the benefit of going a traditional route doesn’t mean that they’re actually good at, you know, at that. But I think a lot of people think that an editor just gets the manuscript in like mates marks and you know, things and they’re done. What’s the route in self-publishing?

AJ Harper (18:14): Well, this is the challenge. So many years ago, when self-publishing became more accessible and affordable, everybody was excited and you can get more out there. There are no gatekeepers. Yay. But the problem is you can’t abandon all those traditional publishing quality standards that or quality controls that you’re talking about. Yeah. The developmental or substantive editor. That’s what you’re talking about. That first person is the person who helps you make sure the book works. And if you skip that person, then the book suffers for it. But the problem is a lot of people just don’t know, they have no idea that is an editor they need. And I don’t think that the self-publishing industry is very forthright about the fact that they need it. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t blame them. It’s the most expensive kind of editing to pay for and it takes so longest. So if you’re focused on speed and, and low cost, you’re not gonna say, Hey, you need this editor. Yeah. But you do need that editor and you can get it your own if you’re self publishing. Yeah. There are many people who do that freelance. Yep. So it’s, if there’s no reason why you can’t get that person to come in and help you.

John Jantsch (19:19): So one of the things you talk about in the editing process is editing for connection. And I think that is probably the hardest, because that requires a level of understanding what I do, what I’m trying to get across, who I’m getting it across to. How do you do that as an editor who you’re a ghostwriter? I mean, a lot of what you’re doing is extracting somebody’s mind and then putting it on the page. I mean, to me that seems like a daunting process of understanding somebody’s, you know, voice understanding somebody’s, you know, mind and then, you know, editing for that, you know, that final reader having said all that now I’m gonna really confuse you. Maybe that’s actually better done by somebody else.

AJ Harper (20:06): Maybe it’s better. What, well, I

John Jantsch (20:07): Didn’t hear the last part. Well, I guess what I was saying is, you know, my biases that we, you know, that part only I can do, right. Because I know who I’m, you know, and yet I think that’s a, an absolutely essential part. And I’m wondering if maybe that distance that an editor or a ghostwriter might have, would actually be beneficial.

AJ Harper (20:27): I don’t know. I mean, I only, I co-write with Mike still, but I don’t ghost write anymore. And haven’t for about five, six years at the time, you know, I often had an editor, right. So I’m the ghost. And then there was another editor. So I was been, but I really do believe that it’s the author, whether they’re using a ghost or not, that needs to go in and make sure that it connects to their reader. Yeah. Because they know their reader and the editor doesn’t, and this is something that comes up a lot since we’re talking about Mike in his books where the editor might say, Hey, I, you know, I don’t think you need so many stories or I don’t think you need to repeat this piece of encouragement. And Mike and I will go back and say, well, actually the reader does actually need this here because this is their, what matters to them. And this is what we hear about from readers. Yeah. And they’re, it doesn’t mean you’re always pushing back, but to have knowledge of what matters to your reader helps you in that editing process.

John Jantsch (21:23): Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I do know when I’ve had things written articles, I’ve written all my own books, but I’ve had a lot of articles written by other people that, that were going to be, you know, ghost written. And quite often the thing I find myself saying, well, I would never say it like that because I feel like my voice, my, who I am, you know, my personality wouldn’t use certain words. Wouldn’t use maybe crisp as crisp of grammar as you know, an editor might, might want, I mean, words defined on that kind of stuff. Cuz there’s some times I’ve said stuff. People are like, well that’s clumsy. I’m like, well, yeah, I’m clumsy.

AJ Harper (21:56): Well then you should write it at clumsy. I mean, you don’t want everything to be completely incorrect in terms of grammar, but it is, you need to be authentic. You need to be yourself on and off the page. And I think you’re right to say, it should sound like me. The thing about ghost writing is it’s actually a really special skill. And just because you say, I don’t need to take credit for that and I will work for hire, doesn’t actually make you a legit ghost is a ghost. Has to be able to assume the personality. Yeah. So, you know, I could write anything and you wouldn’t know if it Mike wrote it or I did. Yeah. Yeah. You would not be able to tell. Yeah. And that was one of my great skills with whomever I’ve written for people that were complete opposite of Mike . Yeah. And I still, but that was just a skill that I had learned to do as a playwright. That’s the connection is I wrote characters, so I was just really good. I just have a good ear, but you know, this is why I stopped doing it and started writing or rather coaching and teaching authors. So they could do it themselves because then at least their voice is authentic.

John Jantsch (23:00): Yeah. That’s interesting that you mentioned, I didn’t know you had playwright history because I often feel like that idea of creating personas is, is very much what you’re doing. You know, mm-hmm as the voice, you know, which is really right out of the theater, even though as a marketers have, co-oped it, that’s a great segue to tell us about your workshops. And you mentioned that you even had a course that you could share with folks as well, that they could get a little taste of working with you.

AJ Harper (23:26): Sure. Yeah. So I do teach a 14 week workshop to 15 students at a time it’s very small, twice a year. It’s called top three book workshop. And it’s basically to write that must read book that becomes a book on someone’s top three list of FAS. And I just walk people through the whole process. It’s very hands on. There’s a lot of editing happening and developmental work and publishing, but mostly it’s about creating a home for an author who actually wants to write something great versus an author who’s trying to can’t find any place to go except to maybe some sort of 90 day program. So yeah. Yeah. And that, that was important to me. So it’s a small group. I do have a standalone course. Self-directed called test drive your content. And today I’m giving you a special code for your listeners, which is duct tape to get 50% off that course. And we did actually happen to talk about test driving. So it actually walks you through what are all your benefits of test driving? Yeah. Including building demand, as you said, but also specifically, how do you do a test drive so that you can really hear if it’s working and you can process the feedback to make changes, but also how can you use that to get anecdotes, endorsements, stories, that sort of thing. So it’s seven videos that walk you through that whole process.

John Jantsch (24:46): And that’s found where,

AJ Harper (24:48): Oh, I’m sorry. That’s found@ajharper.com. AJ

John Jantsch (24:51): Harper. Okay. So we’ll have those in the show notes. See, I, I think anybody who develops a product course, whatever they ought to be doing that with people you get so much great insight I’ve over the years done things where I haven’t gotten any feedback and I put it out there and people are like, we didn’t want this. So , you know, it just really stops you from, I think having those complete disasters when you are finding out what people really need and what they resonate with. Didn’t

AJ Harper (25:14): I think it also, if you aren’t sure if you understand your reader very well. Yeah. It can also help you get to know them better through those interactions. Yeah.

John Jantsch (25:24): AJ, thanks so much for stopping by the duct tape marketing podcast. And hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

AJ Harper (25:30): Thank you for having me.

John Jantsch (25:32): 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 and Drip.

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…
https://www.sydneysocialmediaservices.com/?p=755

June 23, 2022/by exposure

How To Grow Your Business Like A Weed

How To Grow Your Business Like A Weed written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Stu Heinecke

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Stu Heinecke. Stu is a bestselling business author, marketer, and Wall Street Journal cartoonist. His first book, How to Get a Meeting with Anyone, introduced the concept of Contact Marketing and was named one of the top 64 sales books of all time. His latest release, How to Grow Your Business Like a Weed, lays out a complete model for explosive business growth, based on the strategies, attributes, and tools weeds use to grow, expand, dominate and defend their turf. He is a twice-nominated hall of fame marketer, Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center author-in-residence, and was named the “Father of Contact Marketing” by the American Marketing Association. He lives on a beautiful island in Puget Sound, Washington.

Key Takeaway:

Anyone can grow their business into something resilient and unstoppable — just like weeds do. In this episode, best-selling author, Stu Heinecke, shares his model for business growth by using the successful strategies that ordinary weeds use to spread and prosper in almost any situation. We dive into the weed-based attributes you can use to get the job done quickly and effectively and increase your market share, prominence, and customer base.

Questions I ask Stu Heinecke:

[1:46] Why did you want to use the analogy of a weed and what was your thought process behind it?
[3:14] Why is a weed different than a prize-winning flower?
[4:27] The big premise of using the weed metaphor is really to tap into what you’re calling a weed mindset — can you unpack that idea for us?
[5:32] What are the unfair advantages that you think adopting this weed mindset gives a business?
[7:39] Can you break down the weed model for us?
[14:17] How do you apply this model to taking that next step and getting to the next level with your business?
[17:41] How do you win a weed award?
[19:27] Where can people buy your book and learn more about your work?

More About Stu Heinecke:

His book — How to Grow Your Business Like a Weed: A Complete Strategy for Unstoppable Growth
StuHeinecke.com

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 (00:52): Hello, and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Stu Heineke. He’s the best selling business author marketer and wall street journal cartoonist his first book, how to get a meeting with anyone, introduce concept of contact marketing was named one of the top 64 sales books of all time. We’re gonna talk about his latest book, how to grow your business like OED, which lays out a model for explosive business growth, based on the strategies, attributes, and tools weeds used to grow and expand, dominate, and defend their turfs. So Stu, welcome to the show.

Stu Heinecke (01:35): Thank you so much. What a, what a pleasure. And as I’m listening to it, I’m thinking, what the hell is he talking? Right? what must this guy be talking about?

John Jantsch (01:46): Well, I’m certain that the first question that many people have given our sort of negative view, typically negative view of weeds is like, wait a minute. You know, that’s like how to smell like a skunk, isn’t it? I mean, why, you know, why do I wanna used the analogy of weed? So help helps first go there.

Stu Heinecke (02:05): Sure. Well, you know, by the way I think the first thing they think of is you mean this kind of weed, the kind of weed you smoke? Nope. It’s not that good. That’s not what we’re talking about, but yeah. I mean, well, we all know what it means to grow like a weed. So the fact is that all of this whole logic is already built into our experience. We know what it looks like. We know what it means to grow like a weed. We also know what it looks like because we see it every spring and actually not just through, through the spring, but you see what they do all the way through the summer. And you see that they, you know, while blood of the plants have maybe a single season of growth dandelions, for example, just keep doing it. They keep running that process over and over again. So they, they are always running these unfair advantages, which is kind of a big part of the whole strategy of weed strategy.

John Jantsch (02:50): You know, it’s funny. I, I really I’m. I love all plants. I love all animals. I love trees so, you know, a lot of times I kinda laugh and say, weeds are just flowers with bad PR firms. I mean, it’s like what? I know why we call some things weeds, but their nature of taking over. And for whatever reason, they don’t look like what we want our yard to look like or something, but you know, who gets to call something a weed? I mean, why is a weed different than a prize winning flower?

Stu Heinecke (03:19): Well, you know, I guess the fact is that, well, if you look at let’s, it’s full of contradictions because if you look at, let’s say the state flower of California, it is a weed, you know, it’s the California poppy. So there are beautiful. I don’t think it’s really necessarily a function of beauty, but just are they, are they doing things that we don’t want them to do? Are they showing up or they’re not invited? And so dandelions are probably the great ex example. Everyone experiences them. And you, if you have lawns, you see them show up in your lawn. And by the way, if you see one, then you see you look up and you see hundreds of them. So they’re really, they’re tough to deal with they’re formidable. And so I guess wheat is probably just, I don’t know, just a, a nasty name for a plant. It’s a plant that some gardeners say is just a plant outta place, but that’s true only to a certain point because there are some weeds that seem like they’ve come from another planet. They’re just incredibly aggressive and noxious and we don’t really want them around.

John Jantsch (04:19): Yeah. And they’ll take out native species and things like that, that, you know, because of their ability to grow and spread talk a little bit, of course, the, you know, the big premise of the book or a big premise of using the weed metaphor is really to tap into what you’re calling the weed mindset. So maybe unpack that idea for us.

Stu Heinecke (04:38): Sure. Well, you know, you would, if you think about weed having a mindset, but first of all, to have a mindset, I guess you probably should have a brain and weeds don’t have brains. So how could that even be possible? But if you watch weeds at all, if you see what they do, if you see how they operate, then you can certainly, you can certainly see that there is some presence there that looks like a mindset because they’re aggressive and resilient and adaptive. And when you, when they’re owed down, they go right back to work building right back up again, they don’t stop. And, and so they have really admirable qualities that I guess in our experience are expressed as mindset. So that’s where the mindset, the weed mindset comes from.

John Jantsch (05:19): So one of the things I’ve talked about a long time is that having a real point of differentiation, one that matters to the client can be a way to almost make your make competition irrelevant. You call it an unfair advantage. So, you know, what are the unfair advantages that, that you think this MI weed mindset or adopting this weed mindset gives a business?

Stu Heinecke (05:40): Well, I would say that for if we’re well, so really the weeds model goes beyond just mindset, but it’s leveraging a fierce mindset and unfair advantages against collective scale and running it against a process. But I would say really, if you’re using any element of wheat strategy, you’re already creating unfair advantages for yourself. And when we’re looking at, let’s say the, let’s say the situation of many small businesses, the ones that have no unfair advantages are not gonna survive. So you have to have right. And I guess we could call them a lot of other things though. Certainly one is a differentiator. So, and one of the wall street journal cartoonists that helps me. When my cartoons show up in the journal, they reach an audience of a little over 2 million readers. That’s really, you know, no one’s, how is anyone gonna compete with that as a way to cause people to become aware of you and maybe, you know, say, well, you know what I know about Stew’s use of weeds, cuz I use weeds to help sales teams break through.

Stu Heinecke (06:34): It’s sort of like my day job. So when I get to have my, my, my, you know, my, my cartoon show up like that, then it’s just an advantage that is really tough to, to me. But an advantage could be a location. It could be, it could be a partner that you have. We’re gonna start up a, a new, a new award based on the book called the total wheat award. And my new partner in this is the NASDAQ entrepreneurial center. That’s an unfair advantage. So it’s all sorts of all manners of, of unfair advantages from ways to get a lot more, a lot more ER, to help with getting exposure, kind of like this is a seed pod strategy that we’re executing right here, but you’re my seed pod, essentially. I’m reaching your audience and you’re multiplying the, the reach of my seeds of these impressions that I get to create from the book and from interviews and talking about the book. And it goes all the way down through, through thorn strategy and segmentation strategy and Roset and vying and soil and root strategies. All of these are levels of strategies that help us gain unfair advantages.

John Jantsch (07:40): So I think you kind of were just doing it there, but I’m gonna ask you to kind of back up and say, and hopefully you can do justice in a couple minutes, you know, the weed model itself. I think you were ticking off elements of it there, but maybe kind of put it together for us.

Stu Heinecke (07:55): Yeah, well, so there are eight levels of strategy in that weed split in the weeds model, which is an acronym for weed inspired enterprise expansion and domination strategies. So that’s, that’s what it is. It’s an acronym, but what it really is standing for are eight levels of strategy. So the, and it really corresponds with the pieces of the, or elements of the weed plants themselves. So there’s seed strategy, which is analogous to anything that causes people to become aware of you and, and form the intent to transact with you. Hearing me on your podcast might hap that might cause people to say, I want to go buy the book or maybe I don’t, what else? I dunno, I’d like to have stew consult with me or something else. I don’t know, but, and seed pod strategy, seed pods. We see those. And for example, dandy lines, those geo geodesic domes of seeds are held up in the air and those seeds are so magnificently mobile. I mean, they just, they fly all over the place. They probe every possible opportunity to take roots. So holding them up in the air like that actually gives them a greater chance to travel and spread. So, and then,

John Jantsch (08:56): And get a couple, like get a couple five year olds and pull a few of those out and blow ’em too. That really makes a big

Stu Heinecke (09:02): Blow that’s true. They love, they look their kind of seat buds with stove, but then thorn strategy is interesting because that’s using all legal protections, for example, to protect your IP and really you’re turf, you’re really protecting your turf and the weeds do that. And we certainly need to do that in business as well, but not all of us do that or are oriented in that way. And then there’s segmentation strategy, which might, we could probably talk the rest of the, our time together on segmentation strategy because that’s, that is the, when you go out and you find a weed in your yard, you might have found some of these that you’ll pull on it. And all you get is you get a handful of stuff, but you didn’t get the plant. You certainly didn’t pull it up by the roots. And so that’s actually a defensive strategy it’s there to prevent, or let’s say mitigate loss.

Stu Heinecke (09:46): Well in business, we have the same things happening. We have disruptions that occur all the time. One of those that that occurs, every was just a regular cycle of years is recessions. And a lot of us are still caught UN unguarded for recessions. We just sort of dread when they show up and we don’t really have much of a much of a much of a strategy for dealing it. But what if you’re dealing with those things, there are ways to mitigate them. And that’s, we’re gonna be doing that probably soon if the press is correct, because they’re sort of beating the drum about recession again. And anyway, there are strategies to deal with that. And then roses strategies. Really. I put that into the model because I wanted Rose’s are those that well, in the example of dandelions, that radial fan of leaves that spreads out across the lawn, if you come over it with a, it seems like they evolved just to duck the mowers.

Stu Heinecke (10:38): It’s not really where it came from, but what they’re really doing is they’re covering the ground and they are denying the critical resources that plants around them need of the grass around them, needs to grow and really just to live so sunlight and water. And so how can we create those kinds of, it’s really about cultivating unfair advantages, looking for those and finding new ones that we can add. A lot of times we can add those by the partnerships and associations that we create and let’s mine strategies. So borrowing the infrastructure of others to, to gain dominant access to the sort of warm sunshine of sales and, and all the things that we’re looking for, just sales and exposure and so forth. And then finally, there’s root strategy in the plant. It’s the seed of all life force, but in business, it’s all of the, it’s where all of the value of the business is sort of stored and curated and maximized.

Stu Heinecke (11:28): So there are strategies for doing that. And then finally soil strategy. So seeds are rather, yeah, well at the weeds, they don’t get to, they don’t get to change the soil quality that they’re in. They just sort of, they just, wherever they land, they make a go of it. But we have the ability to change the substrate in which we grow our businesses. So the cultures within our businesses and with outside of our businesses, our communities and movements are really interesting. If we can grab hold of or start movements, those are amazing things to help change the sort of soil strategy or the conditions for us to grow in. So that’s the model of that’s the weeds model for creating unfair advantages.

John Jantsch (12:07): And now a word from our sponsor technology is awesome. Isn’t it? I mean, I talk about all kinds of technology on this show all the time. Did you ever wish there was a way to get some of the technology, some of the apps that you work with every day to talk to each other? There’s just that one little thing you wanted to do well for over 10 years, I’ve been using a tool called Zapier. In fact, longtime listeners might remember the founder, Wade, uh, foster on this show doing an episode when they were just getting started. Now they’ve blown up and it is an amazing tool. We use it to get our spreadsheets, to talk to other spreadsheets, our forms, to talk to spreadsheets, our forms, to talk to other forms, all kinds of magic. When it comes to our CRM tool, it’s really easy to get started.

John Jantsch (12:54): I mean, there’s no coding. I mean, there’s 4,000, I think apps that, that they now support and that can, you can get to talk to each other, look, see for yourself, why teams at air table Dropbox, HubSpot, Zen desks, thousands of other companies use Zapier every day to automate their business. And you can try it for free today. It’s at zapier.com/dtm that’s Zapier, which is Z a P I E r.com/dtm. Check it out.

John Jantsch (13:24): Yeah, it’s funny. You’ll be driving down the road and there’ll be, you know, a, a weed growing up, you know, between cracks and in pavement and, and things like that. I think it really kind of points to the tenacious nature of ’em. But when I hear you talk about the soil, I’m think I’m thinking very much in terms of like creating community and creating value for clients that they want to go out and, and refer you as the idea of soil, isn’t it?

Stu Heinecke (13:47): Yeah, absolutely. Yes. It’s all those cuz all of those create conditions that are much more favorable for our growth.

John Jantsch (13:56): So how then do we take that model? And if somebody goes through their business today and says, oh, I’m, you know, I can add this or I could add this or I could be better at this one. And so we get maybe our weed strategy put together, you know, what’s whatever, what many people wanna do then is really scale, grow that business beyond them or grow that business certainly from beyond where it is to today. So how do you apply this then to, to taking that next step, going to the next level with the business?

Stu Heinecke (14:22): Well, I think in fact, one of the first things that we can do to grow our businesses, I, we gotta be looking at them and making sure they’re VI, if there’s something that’s not viable about it, fix it, but assuming everything is viable and you’ve got a great concept. Then one of the first things we can do to grow our business is to root out one to one leverage and then jump to either multichannel or collective scale. That’s for the ultimate is collective scale. I should explain what that is though. Yeah. We’re sure. From just from early childhood, we’re all taught to become self-reliant and sort of self-sufficient I guess that sort of happens when we, I, the first time we played musical chairs and you got left without a chair, you say, well, wait a minute, where’s my chair. You know, I’m not gonna let that happen again.

Stu Heinecke (15:03): And I think that maybe it’s maybe that’s the first time we get, it’s get it instilled in our heads that we’re in a competitive world and you need to be proactive and you need to get things done. You need to be able to rely on yourself to get things done. So that continues when we’re told then to go to school and get good grades, study hard, then you’ll get into a great college. And from there, you’ll get a great job, maybe a really well paying job, but here’s the problem. The, all of that is wonderful. We need to be self-reliant. And I would say that the entrepreneurs around us are probably some of the most self-reliant people there are, but, but we can’t do it alone. And that’s the big realization we, and, and I think probably the more self-reliant and the mortality, the more easily you learn things, the harder it is for you to learn, to let go and say, well, some of the stuff I’ve just gotta let go of this and let somebody who’s either better ranted toward it or better at it than I am.

Stu Heinecke (15:56): I just let them do it for me so that I can move on to other things. And I would say one of the big telltale signs is if you labor is directly involved in your deliverables, you are at one to one leverage. And, or, and let’s say, if you discover that it’s really hard to take a vacation because the bus, the business stops because you’re not there, that’s one to one leverage and you need to root that out really quickly. So you do that, I think by jumping to multichannel leverage. And that really means just forming partnerships with, with people who could bring you to, to other to new clients, let’s say, or open up new sales channels. I was inviting you to, to, to join a group that I started a group of authors. And I guess in a way that’s multichannel leverage because we get together, we formulate ideas, we bring things together and, and you know, that that’s the way we’ve gotta, we’ve gotta find ways to collaborate with people as much as possible. I guess that’s really the, one of the big messages of we is that the more we collaborate, the stronger we become.

John Jantsch (16:55): So with an example of that, say a consultant or coach who is doing a lot of that, one to one work would be building a course or bringing, building a community or doing group work, or having, as you said, strategic partners who are going to, you know, send business his or her way. I mean, is that at a very simple example? What we’re talking about?

Stu Heinecke (17:14): Yeah. Yeah. I think so. I think productizing what you do as a consultant mm-hmm and turning that into a course is a great way to do that because once you’ve built it, and of course you’re promoting it, but other people could promote it, you can go on vacation, you can make money while you sleep. All those wonderful things that happen when you’re not right. That when you’re not the factory and you shouldn’t be the factory. Yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (17:35): All right. So here’s the burning question. And I’m certain people are listening right now and on the edge of their seats, how do you win a weed award?

Stu Heinecke (17:44): you have to be, I was actually a total weed award, but you have to be

John Jantsch (17:50): Total word

Stu Heinecke (17:50): Would. Yeah. You have to be absolutely audacious in, in the way that you, that you approach your market and create unfair advantages and create scale. And you obviously, you need to be an example to the rest of us, but an example of weed, like growth.

John Jantsch (18:06): Yeah. So I’ve been, uh, doing interviews, you know, for years. And over the last few years, one of the things I’ve seen is title explosion in the Csuite, you know, you’ve got your chief people officer, you’ve got your chief revenue officer, and now I think you are probably going to introduce the chief weed officer.

Stu Heinecke (18:24): I am. I’m proposing one more. That’s right. the chief weed officer. I don’t know if you do know Dan Walch.

John Jantsch (18:30): I do. Yeah. I do know Dan. Yeah. He’s been on the show before he

Stu Heinecke (18:33): Has. Yeah. Dan he’s been amazing guy. He’s he has the bloggy conversations. I think he has a book out by the same name, but, and he is a turnaround specialist. Anyway, I interviewed him for the book and he, he gave a quote, by the way, the book has all these I’m so proud of these quotes at the beginning of the book, because they were, when I looked to research for the book, there were no positive quotes about weeds. So everybody I was interviewing, I was asking them, could you share some sort of like, now that we’ve talked about weeds as a positive, what thoughts come to mind? Yeah. And so Dan said, if you don’t have a chief weed officer, you lose . That was his quote

John Jantsch (19:07): .

Stu Heinecke (19:09): Um, and yeah, I think that there will be chief weed officers. I don’t know if they’ll be called that maybe they’ll be called chief strategy officers or weed strategy officers, but there will be people who will be responsible for growth of the company, through the execution of weed strategy that we can watch all around us.

John Jantsch (19:27): Yeah. Awesome. Let’s do I appreciate you taking time to stop by the duct tape marketing podcast. You wanna tell people where they can find out more about your work and obviously pick up a copy of the book.

Stu Heinecke (19:36): Sure. Well, you can buy the book anywhere, anywhere books are sold. Now it, it launches of course, June 1st, but that actually, well, yeah. Can I start that over? Yeah, of course do it. Okay. Yeah. You can buy the book anywhere that books are sold. Amazon, of course, and Barnes and noble bam and all that. Perhaps the airport soon you can come and visit me at my author site. That’s Stu henick.com. And when you come there, then you, one of the things you might wanna do is join my weed, my, my weed boot camp, sorry, my boot, my weed mindset boot camp. And you can join that from, from my site as well. So, yeah. And LinkedIn mention that, that you heard John and my, and myself talking on the, on the duct tape podcast, duct tape marketing podcast, and I will be happy to connect with you there.

John Jantsch (20:24): Awesome. Well, we’ll have all those links in the show notes as well, and Stu congrats on the new book. And again, appreciate you taking the time out to, to share with our listeners. And hopefully we’ll run into you again. Soon. One of these days out there on the road,

Stu Heinecke (20:37): I would love that, John. Thanks for having me on the show.

John Jantsch (20:39): Hey, and one final thing before you go, you know how I talk about marketing strategy strategy before tactics? Well, sometimes it 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 and Zapier.

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…
https://www.sydneysocialmediaservices.com/?p=634

June 17, 2022/by exposure

The Evolution Of The Podcast

The Evolution Of The Podcast written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Todd Cochrane

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Todd Cochrane. Todd is the CEO of Blubrry Podcasting – a podcast media company that represents 105,000 Audio and Video podcasters in which his company provides advertising opportunities, media distribution/hosting, podcast media statistics, and other services. He is a podcast advertising specialist, and he founded the Tech Podcast Network in 2004.

Key Takeaway:

Podcasting and the podcast industry have changed over the years in many ways like the way podcasts are produced, how more easily accessible it is to start your own, and how the monetization of podcasts works today are just a few examples. In this episode, I talk with Todd Cochrane, the CEO of Blubrry a podcast media company, about how the podcast and audio content has changed over the years and where it stands today.

Questions I ask Todd Cochrane:

[2:07] What shows are you hosting today?
[2:54] What does the podcast media company look like today, and what was your idea for starting it?
[4:32] Is that was that the initial vision was to just make it easier to get those shows syndicated?
[5:48] Do you think podcasting is the hottest advertising medium going on today?
[7:06] Would you say that we are almost at a point where we need to redefine what a podcast is?
[8:09] What’s your take on the distinction between audio and video and what people consume most today?
[12:02] What are your current feelings about the technology that you’re using?
[15:48] Could you talk a little bit about the opportunities you think are out there with this form of advertising?
[19:01] Do you think podcasting is going to go in the direction of subscriptions and paying for content like other mediums have?
[20:55] Is there anything coming for Blubrry that people might not know about yet?

More About Todd Cochrane:

Blubrry
His podcast — Geek News Central

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 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 podcast.

John Jantsch (00:50): Hello, and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Todd Cochrane. He is the CEO of Blubrry podcasting, a podcast media company that represents 105,000 audio and video podcasters in which his company provides advertising opportunities, media distribution, hosting, pod, media stats, and other services. He’s a podcast advertising specialist and also founded the tech podcast network way back in the dinosaur days of podcasting 2004. So Todd, welcome to the show.

Todd Cochrane (01:28): Hey, thanks for having me. And I think as we talk just a little bit, as we got started, you started in 2005. So you’re right there with me.

John Jantsch (01:35): I did, I did indeed. And those were the good old days cuz you know what, so I always, I can go down a rabbit hole really fast on this, but you know what a lot of people don’t realize is not only was it hard to produce shows, it was hard to listen to them or to get somebody to listen to ’em right. They had to actually have their own technology. So I’m certainly glad that we are where we are today.

Todd Cochrane (01:57): I am too. And it’s, you know, no longer having to connect a device to a computer just to get the sync. Right? Yeah. It’s nice to have it automatically happen.

John Jantsch (02:07): So tell me about what shows you’re producing or not producing, but shows you are hosting today.

Todd Cochrane (02:14): Well, personally I still have my personal show geek, new central. That was the one they started in 2004. It just hit over 1600 episodes. Then I do a, co-host a show with matter of fact, Rob Greenley from Lipson competitor, it’s called the new media show. I say, we can get a PhD in podcasting by listen to that show matter fact, we just finished recording of that about 30 minutes ago. And then we do an internal team podcast called podcast insider. But yeah, so a lot of, you know, still doing a lot of active shows, but it’s really the day to day grunge of, you know, running a company and building, you know, building a business and keeping podcasters snapping.

John Jantsch (02:51): So I gave a little insight into the, what the podcast media company looks like today. What was the idea for starting it? And what was your initial vision?

Todd Cochrane (03:02): You know, it’s, it was one of those things where, when I started my podcast, my wife had given me an ultimatum to make money in the first two years. She didn’t say to want another boat anchor. And I solved that in June of oh five by securing GoDaddy, as a sponsor of the show. And the first round, I really didn’t know what to charge and that kind of worked itself out. But in the second call where they’re getting ready to sign a contract for a year, the gal asked me, Chris Redinger said to me from Godad. She said, do you know how the podcasts would like to advertise GoDaddy? And I said, yeah, I’ve got some tech shows that might be interested. And that really kind of set the Genesis point of the idea of raw voice, which is the parent company of Blubrry podcasting. And remarkably. I went on my podcast the next episode. So I’m looking for a lawyer looking for MBA programmer and a graphics developer. I’ve got a business idea and we’re gonna have a call and free conference call do com in 10 days to be there. If that’s you. And on that call, it was a lawyer, an MBA and a graphics developer and the graphics developer, new programmer got him on the phone. We formed the company over the phone, just absolutely insane how that company started. We didn’t meet each other for the first six months.

John Jantsch (04:20): well, as I recall, I, and you and I were talking about it. I was probably a fairly early on user, as I recall it, it was primarily a WordPress plugin and then hosting came later and obviously advertising network came later. Is that, was that the initial vision was to just make it easier to get those shows syndicated.

Todd Cochrane (04:39): Yeah, the first, really the sequence was we had the advertising piece in place. We started ramping up real quick with shows with advertising. We built the stats platform so we could measure this stuff. So we weren’t overbilling the vendors. The plugin happened because another plugin started that we were using was being abandoned. The person that was updating it wasn’t being paid update anymore. So we developed our own plugin and that kind of really led the Genesis of everything else. And the plugin really kind of been like that candy at the end of the, you know, when you’re in checkout, you know, that piece that you would grab and it really led to everything else that Blubrry does today.

John Jantsch (05:18): Yeah. Yeah. So people are probably already tired of hearing old folks reminisce about the old days. So , let’s talk about how that’s evolved now. Not just Blubrry, but just, you know, podcasting in general. Yeah. I always tell people they’re, you know, the really early days people got into it, but then social media came along and that was shinier and it seemed like podcast kind of went in the background and then a or apple decided to put the app on the iPhone as a native. And all of a sudden, everybody was like, what are these podcast things again, to the point now where, you know, it’s probably the hottest advertising, medium going, isn’t

Todd Cochrane (05:53): It. Right. You know, and there was this definitely a series of inflection points, you know, it was, you know, the inclusion of iTunes, it was the iPhone, it was the inclusion of the app delivered with a phone. And then obviously listeners got more interest in podcasting when serial came around and had this, we had this huge inflection, true crime shows. So really I think, you know, it’s been this long steady climb and now the space is just, you know, it’s, uh, the indie podcasters, some of ’em are kind of concerned, but you know, with all this commercial investment that’s happened. Yeah. I think that all ships rise together. So I think that there’s plenty of room for anyone that wants to create content out there or use it as a business funnel or whatever their goal may be.

John Jantsch (06:36): Yeah. I, you know, I was gonna ask about that, how you think, like, where are we now, you know, in, in the word podcast, right. When blogs first started, they were really almost typically an individual’s journal almost. And people interacted with them and there, you know, comments were a big part of them and you know, they’ve really changed now. Even the blogging software is really referred to as just content management, mm-hmm software systems. I mean, podcasts in some ways started around that individual host of the show. Would you say that we are almost at a point where, you know, we need to redefine what a podcast is?

Todd Cochrane (07:12): You know, there’s been a lot of talk about it, you know, if in the pure sense, so, you know, it still requires an RSSV deliver a show to these syndication points, but the average listener doesn’t care. They don’t care if they listen on Spotify or watch on YouTube or consume, they, it really podcasts are consume and anywhere I’ve had this saying for a long time, they say, I don’t care where they listen, as long as they listen. Yeah. But I want to be every place that they are. So I think in that instant, you know, podcasts are many things to many people, but you know, I’m kind of old school. So I still believe in the, you know, you still need to have an RSS feed to deliver the show, which causes most people’s eyes, still the glaze over. But it really is that mechanism that keeps the space open and from being locked down and gatekeepers coming into place and making rules, it’s still an open ecosystem. So I think from that aspect, even with the commercial investment of the podcasting space is a medium is very secure and will continue to grow.

John Jantsch (08:09): Yeah. Let’s talk audio versus video. Is that a distinction? I seemed like video V cast. I think they, people were calling them at one point, kinda had a point where they were popular. Now it seems like everybody’s doing some audio, some video. Of course the technology has helped that, but the portability of audio, I think is still what makes it so attractive to me.

Todd Cochrane (08:32): Yeah. I think still people have more time to listen than they do to watch. I know that I do. Yeah. But at the same point, I think the video piece of it is more of a, well, I started doing video 10 years ago doing live video for my shows. And I did it purely out of selfishness because I do a solo show. So I was, I was doing it eight o’clock in the evening in Hawaii and you know, it was kind of boring. So I was using it as a way to get a little interactivity from the audience when I was doing the show and it kind of just turned into this thing, but that’s really most my main reason. And I think that’s way a lot of podcasters think about it now too, is some people like to watch some people like to listen, but I still, my show still 70, 30, 70% listen, 30% watch why they watch me. I still don’t understand. But it’s, it’s kind of the way it is.

John Jantsch (09:24): Yeah. I, I do. I mean, I think it’s like, it’s like when my books would come out, you know, there would be some part of the audience who’s like, I’m gonna get it when the audiobook comes out. I was like, well just go buy it now. But there’re just some people that, that’s what they’d rather do. And there’s no question that, you know, enough people have seen you on video now that you could probably go to a conference and people go, oh, I’ve seen that person. And so it certainly the medium, I think, itself has different uses and you’re gonna, people are gonna consume different ways,

Todd Cochrane (09:57): You know? But in all honesty, I’ve had more surprise interactions from people hearing my voice. So it’s like walking in O’Hare a couple weeks ago, someone heard my voice and they turned and they said, oh, you’re are you Todd? And I’m like, yeah. Which show do you listen to? You know? So it’s, so I think when, and also the audio piece is more intimate. We’re truly, we’re truly in there, you know, those that are listening right now, we’re we’re in your head. yeah. You know, we’re I call it the earballs we’re right in their ears. Yeah. So it’s, I think it’s a different experience when we watch YouTube, which most of us do, you know, we can be distracted. And I think in podcasting we’re able to hold audience’s attention span a lot longer. So I think that’s why the medium has been for better word. So intimate.

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John Jantsch (11:28): Yeah. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a YouTube video opened in another tab and all I’m doing is listening to it. right. Cause I’m multitasking. Yeah. Mm-hmm no question. What are some of the most exciting things in how the technology is involved? Evolved? As far as youre concerned, we were, again, we were laughing, you know, before we got started here about the early days of recording on, you know, handheld devices and phones that we’d plug into and you know, you and I were recording this on a platform that that’s actually just web based. And you know, once we’re done recording, it’ll upload the two recording, you know, separated tracks. I mean, there’s just some really great advancements. What are, what’s your current feeling about the technology that you’re using?

Todd Cochrane (12:06): Well, I think you hit the nail on the head. It’s riversides wild. Some of these platforms that allow us, we don’t have to have this big tech setup. I, you know, I’ve got literally $30,000 worth of gear in this room that I don’t need anymore. Yeah. Because of the way the space has changed and the technology being able to see who you’re interviewing or being interviewed and have that interaction is a huge difference. In the early days, all we really kind of had to really listen for those visual cues and we often would step on each other just because there wasn’t that visual component. So I think that’s a big change. Obviously. They’ve got lots of great software out there now for editing. Uh, I’ve always been an Adobe edition type of guy. And matter of fact, I don’t edit. So I’m one of the few that actually don’t, but it’s, but I wouldn’t be a podcaster if I all these years, if I would’ve had to have edited because it just takes too much time. But yeah. That’s why they’ve got people out there doing those types of services now. But that’s another thing too, is there’s a service for everything, right? There’s BAS there’s people that do transcripts there’s people that will do your editing, posting the whole nine yards. It’s gonna, you’re gonna have to write a check, but you can use your time wisely.

John Jantsch (13:19): I’m I saw, I got a pitch from an, an AI service that was promoting themselves as you, all you did was put in the guest or something about the guest and they would create a list of questions for the guests. Interesting. You know, based on just go out there and just like find, you know, your footprint and go, here’s what the, here’s what you ought ask this guest. And I was like, wow, , you know, we’re, I wonder we’re gonna even do the interviews at some point. , you know?

Todd Cochrane (13:43): Yeah. Pretty crazy. And you know, and I think too, the thing that’s about podcasting that like this interview, you had a little background on me already, so you didn’t have to do too much research, but I think there’s a lot of folks that spend a lot of time researching their guests. And some of those best interviews are, is when a Podcaster’s able to dig out that nugget, you know? Right. They get deep in a conversation that may not have happened. Otherwise,

John Jantsch (14:11): Can I get up on a soapbox and complain about something? And I’m sure you get this too, but nothing drives me crazy faster than when somebody asks me to be on their show. And I agree. And then they send me to a six page form to basically write the interview for them. I just like, you know, it, this is, I guess I grew up, you know, in a PR background mm-hmm and this feels like journalism to me. Right. And somebody else writing the article, I’ll let you riff on that if you want to.

Todd Cochrane (14:37): You know, and it’s even funny because I hired a service to help me get more interviews. And they asked me to write the top six questions. I’d like to be asked. I’m like, I don’t even wanna do that because , every interview is gonna be wash RINs repeat because some guests are host are lazy and I’ve been lucky. People have only pulled from that a couple of times. But yeah, when I do guest interviews, I don’t want any prep. I want the conversation to happen free flow. I think that’s when you really get into the good stuff. Now you have to do your homework a little bit to kind of figure out what you’re gonna talk about. But I, I think that

John Jantsch (15:13): That’s the job.

Todd Cochrane (15:14): Yeah.

John Jantsch (15:14): absolutely. Let’s talk about advertising and podcasts. My first advertiser was at and T I just kind of dropped out of the sky and it was a really big deal for me at the time. Sure. And you know, fortunately I’m currently sponsored as a member of the HubSpot network. So, you know, the money is definitely out there. And I know a lot of small four or 500, you know, a month download folks are now finding, you know, opportunities to get, you know, advertisers for shows like that. So maybe talk a little bit about cuz I know obviously you play in that world substantially with Blubrry. So talk maybe a little bit about the opportunities you think are out there and maybe just the state of, you know, this form of advertising.

Todd Cochrane (15:55): Sure. In the space today, 50% of podcasters are using podcasts for non monetization reasons they’re using for funnel business, building authority, building, they have a different goal, but the other 50% are looking and hoping to monetize. Currently today only three to 4% of podcasts are actually fully monetized. So it leads a whole bunch of people on the sidelines. So five years ago, I would say that programmatic advertising probably would not have been effective because there just wasn’t enough movement in the space and enough trust. But now programmatic has got to the point where even the smallest shows can get some advertising and it may not be, it may take their spouse or partner to dinner money. Some people will make car payment money. Some people will make house payment money, but there is gonna be an opportunity here in the very new future for all shows to be able to monetize at one level.

Todd Cochrane (16:46): Now, obviously the host read endorsement stuff, which is the core of the space continues to rule and pays the highest C cam rates. Matter of fact, my sponsor GoDaddy, which I’ve had since 2005, it’s remarkable. They’ve been with me this entire time. Those are completely host, endorsed episodes baked in forever. But then again, my show gets, my tech show is 96 hours. It’s achieved nearly 90% of its lifetime download. So it doesn’t have a long tail. So it doesn’t matter. But I think that from an advertising perspective, you know, niche, real niche content is and high Val niche, high value content can drive a lot of dollars, but if you’re not super niche, then you need to big build big and the bigger the audience, the more potential for revenue. I think there’s lots of ways to skin a cat. Now there’s Patreon. You can, or just a simple PayPal link, which I’ve used for years to raise money for a show and get support. I think though a lot of podcasters get really wrapped around the ax. So early on about trying to make money too. Yeah. And but I think when a show gets the substantial size and stability and consistency, I think there’s lots of opportunities to make money. Yeah. Across a variety of fronts.

John Jantsch (18:00): Yeah. I always, I, I, you know, I guess because it was so much work in the early days, you know, I always told people, I, you know, I’d do it if I had one listener and no, nobody because of the people I got to talk to that yeah. That was really, to me, the reason for doing it. Yeah. And you know, the, everything else sort of turned into a happy accident of consistency, I guess. Yeah. But, but that I that’s, you know, I would do it again for that very reason.

Todd Cochrane (18:22): Yeah. I think for me too, is authority was one of the first things I was trying to build authority. And then second was my wife forced the monetization piece on me. She wanted me to get monetized and, and really, it was fun. You know, I had a lot of fun doing the show and the action with the audience. So I have always told my audience when it quits being fun. I’m done, but it’s so far, it’s still fun. I guess that’s a rhyme. But

John Jantsch (18:47): So let me ask you what you think about, you know, some other mediums, you know, of advertising has really waned because people have other ways to, you know, to get around it. I mean, to not, you know, all the, all out of the streaming shows and things, now people are paying for that subscription. So do you think podcasting is gonna go that way? The paid model where I pay to subscribe? So I don’t, or maybe one of the benefits is so I don’t have to listen to ads is that I know there are people out there doing it, but is that, do you see that being the substantial way that people monetize?

Todd Cochrane (19:16): I think it’s a key of scale there. I think you have to be big enough to do that because only a small, you know, it’s just like clicking on banners, only a percentage. You’re gonna click on a banner. So I, you know, if you can get 10% of your audience to convert, to paid and build an audience that could be significant ongoing revenue every month. Yeah. But I think, again, it’s a economy of scale. You have to build an audience to be big enough to be able to, I think it’s a combination of both is good, you know, and I have played with that model before and for my show, it didn’t work. So I have a purely a, you know, an ad driven plus if you feel like it throw me a, you know, throw me a cup of coffee type of thing within the show, but it’s a, I think it’s really up to the podcaster, what they wanna try.

Todd Cochrane (20:04): But again, I think for the premium to pay a premium with no ads, I think there’s several models that would probably work better. Number one, if you’re part of a network yeah. And the network does it, and you get a share of that revenue from the network based upon your volume, that could be a potential or number two, again, you decide it’s worth your time to put that out. That separate show. Cuz it’s what you gotta do. Also if you’re on PayPal or not PayPal, if you’re on Patreon and you put it on some type of reward, that’s maybe an extra episode for a contribution every month, what happens if only five people contribute, then you’re locked in to doing work. Yeah. Yeah. So I think it’s a lot easier to produce a second show without an ad, but then again, you may have to pay for a service, the managing of it to have people be able access that. So I, it’s a way of time and money I think.

John Jantsch (20:54): Yeah. So anything coming for Blubrry that, that you wanna talk about that, that people may not know about yet?

Todd Cochrane (21:01): Well, you know, we just spent two years completely rebuilding the platform. Yeah. And it was getting along in the tooth. So we spent the time during COVID and uh, to really put spit and Polish on it and knock the walls down. And we’ve added some stuff to our stats that are really knocking peoples socks off and one’s called a retention graph or giving them information about when people are dropping out, when they’re actively listening to the show. It’s been huge so far. Yeah. That to the bigger pieces, what we’re really focused on is helping shows grow. It’s the thing I keep hearing day in and day out from podcasters is how do I grow? How do I grow? So my team is focused on providing data and analysis stuff that they can look at at a glance that says, okay, here’s where I’m slipping or here’s where I’m doing well.

Todd Cochrane (21:43): Or this episode did good and why, or this episode had a drop off and you know what happened there. So we’re trying to get folks info that they can easily look at without having to be a PhD and data analytics to figure out what’s going on. So that’s kind of our goal is to help podcasters grow, cuz be honest with you, that’s the end game, you know, as well as I do a growing an audience can be a challenge. And it’s oftentimes the grind of doing it for a long time. That’s right. People are not that patient anymore, you know, and they want quick results, but it’s still, you have to, you know, sit in front of the mic and do show after show on a regular basis to really build that big audience. If you’re an Oprah, you know, you come with an audience, but if you’re, you know, you may be authority in your town or your city, but maybe you’re not in the next state. So it’s one of those things where you just have to build.

John Jantsch (22:35): So I’m gonna give you the opportunity to once again, spell Blubrry cuz I bet you’ve done it 6 billion times with that little, with that little quirk.

Todd Cochrane (22:47): Yeah. It’s easy. It’s Blubrry without the E’s cuz we couldn’t afford the E’s so if you wanna spell blueberry the way you normally would spell a blueberry, you just drop the E’s @ blubrry.com.

John Jantsch (23:00): Awesome. Well Todd, it was great having you stop by the, uh, the duct tape marketing podcast in terms of podcasts. You’re certainly the podcasting industry. You’re a legend in the industry. So it was really great getting to spend some time with you and have you drop by the show and hopefully we’ll run into each other one of these days out there on the road.

Todd Cochrane (23:17): Absolutely appreciate it. And congratulations for your 17 years. That’s an accomplishment in itself as well.

John Jantsch (23:23): Well, thanks so much.

Todd Cochrane (23:25): Thank you, sir.

John Jantsch (23:25): 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 ssessment.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 Drip.

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…
https://www.sydneysocialmediaservices.com/?p=611

June 16, 2022/by exposure

How To Build Great Leadership Teams

How To Build Great Leadership Teams written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Jack McGuinness

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Jack McGuinness. Jack is a management consultant with over 35 years of experience. After serving with the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division, he helped build a successful boutique management consulting firm where he served as COO for 13 years. In 2009, he co-founded a new firm, Relationship Impact, a consulting firm focused on working with CEOs to unleash the potential of their leadership teams. He has a new book called — Building Great Leadership Teams: A Practical Approach to Unleashing the Full Potential of your Teams.

Key Takeaway:

Leadership teams have an enormous impact on their organizations. Dysfunctional teams hold their organizations back but great leadership teams accelerate their health and productivity. In this episode, I talk with the co-founder of Relationship Impact, Jack McGuinness, about what a great leadership team looks like, how it feels to be part of one, and what it takes to build a great one.

Questions I ask Jack McGuinness:

[2:45] What is this book going to bring to the leadership genre?
[3:40] Why is being a leader such a challenge for entrepreneurs sometimes?
[7:31] How do you start looking at who should be on the team?
[10:47] When you see teams break down, what’s the single greatest factor in the demise?
[12:13] Do you think that it’s a good idea for teams to intentionally seek diversity?
[13:23] Is what you’re talking about just as much a retention and recruitment tool as it is a productivity tool?
[15:30] What is the leader’s job in a team?
[17:52] So if I’m a leader or I’m on a team, and I’m thinking I need to pick up this book, what am I going to find in the book?
[18:59] Where can people find out more about your book and your work?

More About Jack McGuinness:

Relationship Impact
More about his book — Building Great Leadership Teams

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 and my guest today is Jack McGuinness. He is a management consultant with over 35 years in the business. After serving with the us Army’s 10th mountain division. He helped build a successful boutique management consulting firm where he served as the chief operating office served for 13 years in 2009. He co-founded a new firm with west point with his west point classmate called relationship impact a consulting firm focused on working with CEOs to unleash the potential of their leadership teams. And today we’re gonna talk about is newest book called building great leadership teams, a practical approach to unleashing the full potential of your teams. So Jack, welcome to the show.

Jack McGuinness (01:36): Thanks so much for having me, John. It’s good to see you again.

John Jantsch (01:39): So the 10th mountain division, did you learn to ski when you were, uh, yeah,

Jack McGuinness (01:43): No, it was roughly cold. I, we were, it was an upstate New York on the foot of lake Ontario or tip of lake Ontario. And it was people from the sixth infantry division used to come in for, for cold weather training. It was that cold, but it used to used to be in Colorado

John Jantsch (01:58): And, well, that’s what I was gonna say. That’s in fact, there’s a whole system of huts and things that they’ve kept up in the mountains and refurbished, and now you can, you know, cross country ski and hiked to ’em and, and ran ’em out in the winter. And, and I just BEC I’ve gone to a couple of them and I read a pretty fascinating account about the, that division’s, uh, role in world war II and heck pretty fascinating.

Jack McGuinness (02:18): Pretty fast. Yeah. In, in Italy, I think they have

John Jantsch (02:21): Yeah, exactly.

Jack McGuinness (02:21): A big role. Yeah. And they played a huge role in, in the first Gulf war too. Is that right? For sure. Yeah.

John Jantsch (02:28): So I have to start on the cynical side first from a questioning standpoint, there are a lot of leadership books of late. It seems like more and more of late for dysfunction of a team who moved my cheese, you know, turn the ship around. You can all these kind of pop titles that are out there. So I I’ll let you tell me why does a world need another leadership book? What, what is this book gonna bring to, to the genre if you will. That makes it significant.

Jack McGuinness (02:55): You know, I think the reason I actually wrote it, cause I agree with you. There’s a lot of good stuff out there too. It’s not just flaky stuff. There’s some flaky stuff too, but there’s some really good stuff out there. There’s not a lot on building leadership teams. There’s a lot on teams. There’s a lot on, you know, leadership in general, but on building leadership teams, not so much. And so that’s really why I, I, I, I felt like I had something to say after doing this for 14 years,

John Jantsch (03:25): You know, a lot of entrepreneurs, uh, start a business and with an idea and then it grows up and all of a sudden they find themselves being a manager leader right. Without maybe without any desire to be so yeah, but also, you know, kinda realizing that’s the only way to make this thing bigger. So why for particularly for that group of people, is this such a challenge?

Jack McGuinness (03:47): Yeah. So, so it’s, it is a challenge for them. No question about it for, for a lot of them, but it’s what, what I found is that it’s a challenge for those that have, you know, started in a managing training program and grown up the ranks in a mid-size company and building a leadership team is hard. And it’s, it’s, you can’t just throw a group of talented individual players that are good at their individual function, sales, marketing, CFO, operations, you can throw ’em together. And that’s what most firm companies do. And some have a lot of success with it. And others often struggle with the dysfunction that re results from not stepping back and really thinking through what does a leadership team need to be doing for this organization at this time in its journey?

John Jantsch (04:44): Well, I imagine one of the challenges is that as a comp, particularly as a company grows and they start having teams plural, it, it really, you know, it’s not like somebody sat out and said, let’s poof build a team, right? I mean, a team sort of assembles and doesn’t that make it, doesn’t that dynamic alone, make it difficult to have everybody get along. so much

Jack McGuinness (05:04): It does. It, it, it absolutely does. And that, and thus the premise behind the book is very much leadership teams are critical for the health and productivity about an organization, because everyone looks up to the leaders in the organization to see how well they’re working together and holding each other accountable, not so much how much they like each other, but how they’re holding each other accountable. Right. And in order to do that, well, you have to have a good structural foundation for your team, like blah, the blocking and tackling things that are elemental for, you know, running a meeting. Well, for example, a bit, you know, the most basic of things that often are, is not well done. And you have to really set up the right relational dynamics and just step back and say, Hey, look, all of us are different. We’ve all come from different places, journeys.

Jack McGuinness (06:00): And that’s great, but what do we need from each other at this particular juncture in this organization’s journey? And, and if you don’t step back and do that, you put structure in place that sometimes causes some relational strife, right? We’ll put, you know, and, and, and not necessarily intentionally even, but we’ll put structure in place like that. We’ll define roles. And we’ll assume that everyone knows what the marketing Del, you know, delivery focus folks are supposed to do. And the sales folks are supposed to do. And it’s the gray areas between those roles that gets teams in trouble and then bleeds down to the rest of the organization as well sometimes. And so it’s really that Def helping, you know, build the right structure and just talk about what the structure should look like. It, it, it, it saves so much pain on the back end because we’re not pointing fingers at as much at, at each other for stupid things. Look, people are gonna argue, people are gonna, you know, get into confrontations. And that’s a good thing if they’re fighting about the right stuff.

John Jantsch (07:17): So one of the very first steps, of course, which makes a ton of sense, but probably people don’t think about it enough is a lot of times we think in terms of, oh, we have to fill this function or this job on the team, as opposed to who would be the right person.

Jack McGuinness (07:31): That’s right.

John Jantsch (07:32): So, so how, you know, how do you, and I’m, I’m guessing it’s different for every company cuz every culture’s different, but you know, how do you start looking at who should be on the team?

Jack McGuinness (07:43): Well, of course, you know, the functional business unit leaders are, you know, are the natural, you know, people that people, you know, that CEOs point to. Right, right. And that’s fine. It’s a great starting point. The challenge is we have to step back and say, what are the unique capabilities that these individuals need to have to be a really good leadership team member? Things like the ability to think beyond today to, to think beyond today’s problem or the next three months and help the organization help the team think a little further out than that. And not, I’m not talking about a strategic planning effort. I’m talking about just the foresight necessary to how you know, what’s going on in my environment. That’s gonna, you know, gonna impact how we’re operating today. It’s things like managing complexity, you know, can do we have the ability to deal with all this stuff that comes with rising in an organization.

Jack McGuinness (08:43): And now I’m not just a functional player, but I have more things thrown at me, more discussions I’m having about broader issues. Can I take that, those things in and deal with the complexity and make sense of it and more importantly, help the folks under me make sense of it and perhaps more important than anything is, do I have the innate capability to have a, an organization focus or what we call a greater good focus rather than a functional focus. Right? And so we, we know that not every leader has those innate characteristics to start, right, but identifying that they need to have some development on those characteristics is very important and it’s a missed opportunity. We find often.

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John Jantsch (10:40): I should just ask you this, but I know the answer to it already, but yeah, when you see teams break down, uh, what, what is the, what’s the single greatest factor?

Jack McGuinness (10:51): Oh, it’s the, the greatest factor is the inability to have tough conversations about or productive conversations about the most important things that they’re facing, not about trivial crap focus on what’s most important. And what that means is that we have to disagree with each other sometimes because we come at things in from different perspectives and the

John Jantsch (11:15): It’s, it’s tough to, it’s tough to disagree if you don’t trust. I mean, that’s what I was really,

Jack McGuinness (11:19): You know, so, and so the relational dynamics here are really important is do we trust each other enough where we can have those tough conversations without being judged, without being shut down without having my colleague go talk to the CEO after the meeting and tell ’em how, what a stupid idea it was. And then ultimately, you know, we’ve never really gotten to this, but we aspire every team we work with. We, our aspiration is that they are able to hold each other accountable without just the power accountability in their room. Now that’s a heavy lift. That’s a hard thing to get to for any team, but when you can move towards and move the needle towards it and even be spastic as you’re getting towards it, that progress really helps build the fibers amongst the team members.

John Jantsch (12:11): Do you think that it’s a good idea for teams to intentionally seek diversity? And I’m not just necessarily talking about race or ethnicity, but I mean, diversity of ideas, diversity of backgrounds. I mean, do you think that plays a role or does that make it harder?

Jack McGuinness (12:26): I, I, it makes it harder. It makes it harder for sure. No question about it, but it it’s absolutely crucial. Like we, we see often CEOs that will hire people or promote people that are just like them. Right. You know, she grew up in the organization very similar to I did and a sales role and then went to a marketing role and she’s got a very, you know, people oriented approach to her. So I’m gonna put, I’m gonna bring her up and that’s great, but not everyone can have the same or shouldn’t have the same way of thinking. Look, it happens. And, and that’s fine, but you have to compensate for it. You have to ask yourself questions. Like, what are we missing here? Because we all think about this the same way. Right, right. It’s just, it’s the step back type of things you have to do.

John Jantsch (13:20): So the hiring environment, even retention environment right now of employees is, is as we, we all know is, you know, a much top talked about topic in the news. So how do you, I mean, is what you’re talking about is much a retention tool and a recruitment tool as it is a productivity tool.

Jack McGuinness (13:40): Well, I think, you know, there’s no question about it because a look, the CEO’s job is a big one and it doesn’t matter what size of the organization. Obviously it gets more complex and more, you know, as the bigger you get and the more span of control you have, but the CEO’s job is really to create the conditions for his or her team to build a productive and healthy organization. And those things are always, not always, but often in conflict with each other. And, you know, and, and it’s a hard job, but when you do that, well, the downstream effects on the people that are mid-level managers and below is dramatic because they’re like, look, the leadership, team’s not perfect, but man are, they are really, they got our backs and they’re pushing us. They’re pushing whole, I’m working with a bank right now started by a construction guy about 17 years ago.

Jack McGuinness (14:46): And it’s, you know, it’s grown like crazy. The, this is a great place to work and it’s not perfect. There’s chaos. They, you know, they attack problems with, with vigor and it leaves a trail of dust behind them sometimes, but they’re able to repair because the intentions are there that they’re trying to build something really cool. And while they’re doing it, they do take care of their people. It might be after the fact, but they do take care of their people. And, uh, I think that balance of PR product productivity and health is really important.

John Jantsch (15:22): Most teams of some sort of a, maybe it’s a rotating, but it’s an appointed leader. W would the analogy of a sports team kind of be the same where the, the leader of a team’s job really is maybe more like a coach? Or let me just ask you directly, what is the leader’s job of a team?

Jack McGuinness (15:40): Yeah. I mean, ultimately, um, ultimately, and if you, if you go back to the, the, my aspiration, our aspiration of the teams, we work with that they hold each other accountable. When you’re working towards that CEOs naturally evolved to be being more coaching oriented than directing oriented and much more oriented to be working with the, their leadership team to set the picture, to set the foundation, to identify what the most important priorities are, and then let people go now, again, that’s a Nirvana state too, you know, no question about it, but if you’re aspiring to get to something like that, much more likely to have greater success. So the CEO, you know, we started this thing again 14 years ago and our aspiration was like, you know, teams are really leadership teams are so important that it shouldn’t matter what the CEO’s role is on a team.

Jack McGuinness (16:45): And boy were we abused of that, that notion, you know, it’s critical, it’s absolutely critical the role they play. They have to model a whole bunch of stuff like the values that are espoused, the, you know, the, how the, he, or she wants the team to operate. And they have to have a strong role in set in, in establishing directing direction. And sometimes they have to play a heavy hand role, but most often what they have to do is push back when the lobbying happens. And I know that sounds like a trivial issue, but we see it all the time. Like you’ll have a great meaning, see, meeting a seemingly great meeting about an important issue. And then the CEOs getting calls, getting knocks on his door, telling him or her why those ideas were such bad ideas and why these ideas are good ones. And so, and the ability to say, Hey, wait a minute, we had this conversation, go talk to Jerry, go talk to Bob, go talk to Sue and figure this stuff out, and then let’s have a conversation about it, but I need you guys to figure this stuff out. Yeah.

John Jantsch (17:50): So if I’m, uh, a leader or I’m on a team, maybe even, and I’m thinking, I need to pick up this book, what am I gonna, is there a road? Is what am I gonna find in the book? Is it gonna be a roadmap, you know, start here, do then do this UN unpack it in the two yeah. Two minutes or so we have

Jack McGuinness (18:06): A few things it’s it really does. I think it does a pretty good job of talking about why a leadership team is so important in the impact it has on an organization. Number two, it talks, um, a lot about the structural and relational foundation necessary to build a good team mm-hmm and then it get, it does provide a bit of a roadmap on what are the things you need to do to either repair or to build. And, you know, I’m pretty proud of that. Part of it. It’s pretty practical. There are a lot of other books out there there that are, that I believe are really good and inspired me in the work that I do. But I think what we did was got into another level of how do you do this? Yeah. And why is it so important?

John Jantsch (18:55): Much, much needed. So tell people where they can find, uh, the book and find out more about your work, Jack.

Jack McGuinness (19:00): Yeah. So, so relationship impact.com is my website for my firm, but, uh, great leadership team. book.com is the books, companion website that I stole from you. I stole the model and this is my first book. So I’ve never done this before. And I was like, wow, I gotta get one of those companion sites.

John Jantsch (19:23): awesome. Well, jacket was great catching up with you. And, uh, hopefully, uh, we can run into each other one of these, uh, days out there on the road. Next time you’re visiting your son in, in Colorado.

Jack McGuinness (19:33): I will do that, John. No, no question, Matt, thank you so much for, for the opportunity. I appreciate it.

John Jantsch (19:38): 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 – dot 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 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 11, 2022/by exposure

Why Great Leadership Starts With Open Hearted Conversations

Why Great Leadership Starts With Open Hearted Conversations written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Edward Sullivan

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Edward Sullivan. Edward has been coaching and advising start-up founders, Fortune 10 executives, and heads of state for over 15 years. His clients include executives from Google, Salesforce, Slack, and dozens of other fast-growth companies. He holds an MBA from Wharton and an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School. Edward is CEO & President of the renowned executive coaching consultancy, Velocity. He also has a new book launching on June 21, 2022, called — Leading With Heart: 5 Conversations That Unlock Creativity, Purpose, and Results.

Key Takeaway:

Right now, workplaces are struggling to build high-morale and connected cultures. How do you retain and inspire your team? By leading with heart and sparking authentic conversation.

After thousands of hours of interviews and coaching sessions with leaders of many of the world’s most prominent firms, authors John Baird and Edward Sullivan found that top leaders don’t adhere to simple formulas and performance hacks. Instead, they discovered that these leaders help people unlock their creativity, purpose, and results by having conversations that make them feel productive, safe, and appreciated. In this episode, I talk with Edward Sullivan about why great leadership starts with open-hearted conversation.

Questions I ask Edward Sullivan:

[1:33] What’s the opposite of leading with heart?
[1:53] Is leading with ego how a lot of people have been taught or led?
[2:40] What does it take for someone to say that they are a leader?
[3:58] You did some pretty exhaustive research to come to the conclusions you did in your new book — could you explain your research process?
[5:24] Would you say that the great resignation is a bit of an indictment on leadership?
[7:23] It’s challenging to be a leader until you clean up your own house, and I think that starts with self-awareness — do you agree with that and if so, how do you balance that?
[9:14] What are the five questions that you talk about in the book?
[10:31] How do you start creating a culture of this openness if it has existed before?
[11:51] Is there an approach that works better in the workplace when it comes to the setting in which you talk about these questions?
[13:13] How do we actually help people understand what their needs are and what their fears are?
[14:20] How could you bring this work in earlier into an organization for say a new hire?
[16:03] This work is more than the five conversations, it’s daily consistent work — could you talk a little bit about the tools you give folks inside of their organization to use to help with this?
[17:57] What’s the balance of being able to use the framework and use it appropriately?
[20:29] Can you repair trust?
[21:19] Where can people find out more about your work?

More About Edward Sullivan:

Leadingwithheartbook.com

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 dune Roen, 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 Keven 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 and my guest today is Edward Sullivan. He’s been coaching in advising startup founders, fortune 10 executives and heads of state for over 15 years. His clients include executives from Google, Salesforce, slack, and dozens of other fast growth companies. He holds an MBA from Wharton and an M PA from the Harvard Kennedy school. He’s a CEO and president of the renowned executive coaching consultancy velocity. And he’s also the co-author of a book. We’re gonna talk about today leading with heart five conversations that unlock creativity, purpose, and results. So Edward, welcome to the show.

Edward Sullivan (01:31): Thanks so much great to be here.

John Jantsch (01:33): So let’s start with leading with heart as opposed to leading with what’s the opposite.

Edward Sullivan (01:41): Well, leading with heart is when you’re being open and curious, and I guess it’s leading with fear leading with ego is how a lot of people go about it, unfortunately.

John Jantsch (01:50): Yeah. And in your research, of course, I’m, I’m guessing that unfortunately that’s how a lot of people were taught or that’s how a lot of people have been led. Isn’t it?

Edward Sullivan (01:57): Well, you know, I think a lot of people when they don’t know better, yeah. They go back to maybe what they saw when they were coming up. And I think a lot of leaders today came up in the eighties and nineties and a lot of high pressure environments. And they were led by people who led by fear, who led with ego and they’ve learned to do the same. So our research indicated that the leaders who actually get the best results out of their employees lead with heart. And we explored that in the book,

John Jantsch (02:28): You know, a lot of entrepreneurs maybe didn’t go through any kind of formal leadership program or were mentored or . I mean, they just started a business and like, poof, now you have to lead people, right? I mean, what does it, what does it take for that person to start saying, oh, I’m a leader now, what do I do? Yeah,

Edward Sullivan (02:45): You’re right. A lot of our, our clients come to us because they’re really good developers. They’re good engineers, right? They’re good product designers. And they built something. People liked it. And now suddenly they have to build a company around it and they never took that class at school. You know, the how to lead people class. And the first in instinct is to try to control everything. Yeah. When you’re the founder, this is your baby. You know, you wanna control everything from the font to the color, to the, how people talk about it, to potential customers. And we’ve learned that people need a little bit more freedom than that. They need to feel some, some sense of owner. Should they need to be able to show up as themselves at work. And it’s really incumbent upon leaders of these firms to give people that freedom and give people that support. So they do feel themselves.

John Jantsch (03:37): Yeah. And I tell you just personal experience as a leader, it’s exhausting trying to hold onto everything. You’re trying to think you have all the answers. Right. And so I, I think it could be very freeing once people go, oh, they actually did it better. Or nobody died here. Right. I mean, so exactly it really. So, so tell me, I mean, leadership books, that’s a huge category of books, probably growing every year. You did some pretty exhaustive research to come to the conclusions you came to. You wanna explain that research process a little bit?

Edward Sullivan (04:05): Sure, sure. So my business partner and I are practitioners, we’re executive coaches. We run velocity, it’s a firm with 25 coaches around the world. We’ve got hundreds of clients. And over our combined 40 years of, uh, working with top executives, we were kind of performing the research on along the way. Right. We didn’t even know it. So our research process was actually going back through our notes, going back through files and saying, what is it that really ties all these great leaders together? What’s that common? We’re not journalists, we’re not researchers by trade. We’re more practitioners who backed into doing some research about this. And we found that there are five core conversations that great leaders are having, that enable them to lead with heart that enable them to have these connected conversations. And they’re conversations that we’re not used to having in the office. Yeah. Right. Because they’re about what do we need as people? What do we need to feel creative and resourceful? What fears might be holding us back, right. It’s about what are the, uh, desires that we have that really motivate us, but can also derail us if we take them a little bit too far,

John Jantsch (05:10): We also talked about, I was just gonna say, I wanna unpack those each or the five conversations I, I kind of wanted to, I wanted to frame it a little bit though, in, in what’s what’s very topical right now is, you know, we’re calling it all kinds of things, a great resignation and whatnot. I mean, is that a bit of a, is that a bit of a, an indictment on leadership? I mean, are people leaving because they’re not getting these things or because they’re not getting, you know, even basic respect.

Edward Sullivan (05:36): I mean, that is exactly right. And research has been done recently that showed that we think people are leaving because they want more freedom or they want more money. They want more equity, but 10 times more important is that they’re leaving toxic work cultures. Yeah. Right. They feel burned out. They feel unappreciated. They feel unseen. Obviously doing all of our work over zoom. Hasn’t helped much in the last couple of years. Right. But there are things that leaders can be doing to create this, these connections with people, even over zoom. And they’re simply not doing them. We get on a call and we say, great, what do we have to talk about today? Let’s do our work. Okay. Enough. And then we get off the call as quickly as possible. Right? Yeah. We’re not creating that connective tissue anymore. And that’s what people are missing.

John Jantsch (06:22): Yeah. I, uh, we have a client that, you know, like a lot of people are trying to hire people and, and trying everything, you know, running ads in all the places. And, you know, we just, we actually we’re testing ads and they add that. We ran that today for two years now has been by far and away the winner, it just, the, the title just says respect wow. And then it says, are you getting, you know, are you getting the respect you deserve in your current career? And I, we can’t beat that ad you know, so it really does say something doesn’t

Edward Sullivan (06:50): I’m gonna write that one down here

John Jantsch (06:52): Do, go for it. So, so you started to unpack the five conversations and you talked about, you used words, like what people need, the fears that are holding them back. We’re gonna get to the P word purpose eventually. Yeah. Here’s the thing that not enough people say is that I don’t think you can do those things as a leader until you clean up your own house. I mean, you get rid of your own fears. You get, you understand your own purpose. Right. And I think a lot of books try to a lot of books, try to say, here’s the roadmap, you know, but not enough say, uh, self, it starts with self-awareness. So, you know, how do you balance that, that thought? Or maybe you disagree with it?

Edward Sullivan (07:27): No, don’t I, I don’t disagree at all. I fatally agree. Yeah. In fact, we, we call the book basically a, a 250 page coaching conversation with one of us, right. With both of us, because really in Le in reading the book, we’re asking you these questions, you need to do all the work yourself. Yeah. And be comfortable answering these questions yourself with your employees, to be able to have those conversations. You can’t just go into it into a room with someone and say like, what are you afraid of? right. that doesn’t really make someone want to open up. But if you start the conversation and say, you know, I don’t know about you, but I’ve been feeling a little bit triggered into some fear recently. There’s a lot of uncertainty in the market. Things are happening abroad where, you know, we’re the country, the world’s at war right now. Yeah. Um, times of uncertainty make me feel a little uncertain, make me feel fearful. What’s coming up for you. Right? Yeah. Suddenly the leader has opened up themselves, created that vulnerability, the V word, right? Yeah. That allows other people to feel comfortable being vulnerable as well.

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John Jantsch (09:15): So let’s, let’s just pretend that the person that’s reading this book has, uh, dealt with that themselves. You know, just give me maybe gimme the 32nd. Here are the five, and then we can kind of come back and go, well, how do you do that?

Edward Sullivan (09:27): Yeah. Yeah. So the five questions that we found in our research and you’ve, you’ve outlined them as well are around needs. What do you need to be resourceful and creative? Yeah. Fears, what fears might be holding you back desires. And this is like, what do you really want out of life? And how could those core desires potentially derail you? We also talk a lot about gifts. What are the gifts you have that are unrealized or unexpressed in this current role? And then once we’ve had those four conversations, we’re ready to have the conversation around purpose.

John Jantsch (10:00): Yeah. O obviously I shouldn’t say obviously in many cases, uh, people have had that relationship. Maybe somebody’s been there for a long time. I mean, they just know each other they’ve unpacked over the years, but a lot of times somebody’s just, you know, managing somebody, they do, they get their 30 minutes a week, you know, with them. I mean, how do you really start getting into areas that maybe both parties are uncomfortable with, but probably the, you know, the superior, you know, perhaps seen as the superiors less uncomfortable with, I mean, you know, how do you start? How do you start creating a culture, I guess, of this openness that has maybe if it hasn’t existed.

Edward Sullivan (10:37): Yeah. You know, we talk a lot about culture and our work and in the book and it is, it is a great challenge. And it’s also an incredible opportunity. Yeah. Um, if you have a culture that’s really shut down where people don’t share anything about their personal lives coming out suddenly and talking about everything you’re fearful of yeah. Will be, will come as a shock, right? Yeah. You need to build up some, some trust there, right? Yeah. You need to approach some of these topics slowly. You need to build an environment of safety where people feel like we’re starting to connect to human beings as opposed to colleagues. And that feels pretty cool. Right. And it’s that connecting that, learning about each other, where you come from, what have you done, what’s going on at home? Do you have siblings, all those basic questions that we kind of take for granted with our friends, we often don’t know anything aside from like the names of spouses and maybe the names of children with our, our colleagues. Right? Yeah. We start having those baseline conversations, then we can go, go a few layers deeper. Yeah. We can start getting into what are you really? Maybe what you’re fearful of. Right. It builds upon itself. Yeah.

John Jantsch (11:40): Yeah. Trust is what we’re talking about. Really trust .

Edward Sullivan (11:43): Yeah. I mean, yeah. It all comes down to trust when people say like, what’s the two second summary of this book, it’s how to build trust in a work environment. Exactly.

John Jantsch (11:51): So, so do you advocate making, you know, like a lot of people will hear this and they’ll go, okay. Uh, we got 25 minutes, I’m gonna spend five minutes asking you about yourself and then we’re gonna get into it. I mean, is that the approach or do you actually want to have like, let’s have a company lunch once a month and we’re not gonna talk about work. I mean, which approach is better

Edward Sullivan (12:13): In your, uh, it’s actually both, right? Yeah. You need that regular drip of like connecting, uh, just like, Hey, what’s been going on. Yeah. And as opposed to just like the cursory what’d you do this weekend, right. We also want people to be giving the giving each other, some praise. Yeah. Like, so we start in our company, we start all of our meetings with shout outs. Mm-hmm and we say like, does anyone have anything great to say on anyone else on the call? You know? And it’s like, I really wanna thank Mike for, you know, in this meeting we had last week, he did this. That was great. Public praise makes people feel good. Yeah. We don’t get enough of it. Right? Yeah. We might get praise, um, privately or over email, but you really wanna be sharing that praise in real time. And as, as much as you can in front of other people,

John Jantsch (12:59): How much of the work, like, I, I, I would venture to say that if we filled a room up with 50 people and said, please explain your purpose, you know, about, yeah. Two of them, you know, could come up with anything that they thought really resonated. So how do we actually help people understand what their needs are, what their fears are, because I think that’s a lot of the challenges they don’t know. We could ask somebody, what, what are your fears? But they don’t know.

Edward Sullivan (13:26): They don’t know you’re right. You know, we try to explore some different themes in the book of needs that we’ve seen. Our clients have fears. We’ve seen our clients have to give people a language, but it’s really through the conversation that we start exploring. I don’t even know what I might be fearful of. Yeah. Right. You know, do I get to say that I’m fearful in this office environment hate to say it, but like men especially are trained to be fearless. They can’t show any fear and to work in a, in, in a, in a tough work environment, women then show up and think that they can’t show any fear either. And it’s this creates this really negative feedback system. So we’re trying to break that by saying, it’s actually, it’s not just okay to have these conversations. It’s better if you do right. You actually get better results. If you’re able to talk about these things and have that connection,

John Jantsch (14:20): How, how could you bring this work earlier, uh, into somebody? So somebody joins an organization. Could this be part of the hiring process to some degree, or is it just too hard to do that? Because there’s no relationship because you know, when you start talking about people’s desires and gifts, mm-hmm

Edward Sullivan (14:36): ,

John Jantsch (14:37): That might actually direct the path , you know, that, that they would go or the role that they would fill, you know, how could you do this without, you know, the relationship part? Or can you,

Edward Sullivan (14:47): Yeah. I mean, some environments, some organizations have a culture where as soon as you walk in the door, you feel at ease. Yeah. You feel relaxed. You can tell people genuinely like each other. Yeah. Right. And in those companies, and we, we, we’re lucky enough to advise a handful of ’em that are like that you sit down for the interview and you already feel at ease with this person. You already it’s like, we, we we’ve been friends for a long time. Right? Yeah. So the people who are just coming in are almost inculturated into this idea of it’s cool to just be yourself. It’s cool to show up as you are and bring your gifts to the table, bring your needs and fears to the table and we’ll work with that. Right. Cause it’s very human to have needs. It’s human to have other environments you walk in and it feels cold. It feels like, you know, they’re giving you like an intimidation interview. I don’t know if you’ve ever had ever interviewed at McKinsey, like they’re famous for the intimidation interview where they try to see how you respond when someone’s almost really rude to you in an interview situation because the client might be rude to you someday. Yeah. Yeah. That’s fine. And all, but how about have that conversation about, you need to steal up and be ready for people to be an asshole towards you rather than just be that way towards them in the interview.

John Jantsch (16:04): So talk a little bit about some of the tools, because obviously you do this work with organizations, you teach people, you give them tools to, to train the, you know, folks inside their organization. So talk a little bit about the work, I guess that is that, you know, that’s more than just, you know, five conversations it’s daily work.

Edward Sullivan (16:22): Right. Right. I mean, our work is predominantly one on one conversations, like coaching conversations. And then we facilitate a lot of conversations for our clients. So you might, uh, not be surprised that right now with everyone starting to go back to the office and COVID feels like it’s mostly over, everybody wants to have a team offsite. So we’re just completely booked out through the summer in dozens of team offsite for people who wanna have these conversations. Right. They’re they wanna buy the book and have everyone that will have a workshop about the book or they just wanna get together and have a joyful experience of learning about each other. They’re they learned half of our employees. No one’s even met before. Cause we hired them in the middle of COVID. Yeah. What’s your name? You know, don’t tell me what you need yet. Just tell me what your name is. and in, in those facilitated experiences that we engage with clients, that’s where the real work happens, right? Yeah. It’s one thing to like play the games and do the trust falls and these kinds of things. It’s another thing to have a facilitated, really hard open conversation that gets people cracked wide open and gets them sharing things that they never thought they’d be able to share, let alone, I mean, with their friends, let alone in an office environment and suddenly it feels very natural.

John Jantsch (17:39): I suspect one of the tricks to this work is that, you know, even though you’ve got a nice tidy framework, you know, people are, people are all different. Sure. Some people respond differently. Some people love to talk about how they feel. some people, some people that’s like the worst thing that could, you know, that could be involved in the day. Exactly. So, you know how what’s the art or what’s the balance of being able to use the framework, but use it appropriately, I guess. Yeah.

Edward Sullivan (18:07): I mean, the important thing with all of this work is to start where people are, right. We can’t have forced vulnerability. Yeah. You know, people need to feel safe. It needs to feel natural. And it should often, it often comes after the leader has created an opening for it. You know, the leader who calls a meeting and says, great, everyone’s gonna share their most painful childhood story. starting with you. Right. Doesn’t really work. Yeah. Right. But if over time we’re building rapport, we’re making people feel safe. And the leader is the one who is handing out praise, making people feel good, making them feel psychologically safe. Yeah. Right. And that’s definitely a term of art in that when people give feedback, when they have ideas, when they push back against the conversation and what we’re doing, and the leader says, that’s really interesting. Tell me more. Yeah. You know, so really creates

John Jantsch (19:04): So really in a lot of ways, you’re, it’s not, there’s actually a risk in proclaiming. This is how we’re gonna do it or mandating, this is what we’re gonna do now, as opposed to just doing it.

Edward Sullivan (19:13): Yeah. Sometimes you just do it. Yeah. And you say, there’s no obligation to join the conversation. There’s no obligation to share something. You don’t feel comfortable sharing, but we’ve learned in this organization, whether it’s through the book or through it’s following the research that teams and organizations that share what’s really going on for them. Yeah. Build trust. And then ultimately have more honest conversations about the work itself. Yeah. Right. It’s this virtuous cycle. If you tell me what’s really going on for you and I build trust, then when I push back against you on an idea when we’re debating, you know, we’re really trying to get to the truth of the matter. Or we’re trying to get to the best idea. If I can’t push back against you, we might ship a flawed product. Right. I mean the, the, the challenger exploded because a scientist wasn’t able to say, oh, this O ring might be bad. Right. Things go wrong because people don’t feel safe pushing back. And I

John Jantsch (20:09): Think this

Edward Sullivan (20:10): Whole artist is about up in the build that safety.

John Jantsch (20:14): Yeah. I was gonna say, I think you make a really great point. I mean, some of the best organizations are ones where people feel, uh, enough trust that they can argue that they can, you know, debate things like that. Yeah. Yeah. As opposed to feeling like, oh, well doesn’t matter, you know, , I’m just gonna go. Exactly. Can you repair trust? Do you think? Because I’m thinking there are a lot of organizations out there that they just were, the leader was being who they were being and, you know, woke up one day and realize this isn’t working, you know, is that something that you can repair or is it again, just one of those things where you’ve gotta demonstrate through your actions, that things have changed,

Edward Sullivan (20:49): You know, they say trust comes in on two feet and leaves on a horse. Yeah. Right. So it is something that is earned slowly and can easily be destroyed. That said humans are naturally forgiving people. Right. We can always earn trust back. We just have to do the work. Yeah. And we have to be consistent.

John Jantsch (21:11): Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Lots of work for lots of us to do so, Edward, thanks for, so by the duct tape marketing, uh, podcast, you wanna tell people where they can find out more about your work or anything else you wanna share.

Edward Sullivan (21:22): Absolutely. The book is@leadingwithheartbook.com and thank you so much for the opportunity.

John Jantsch (21:29): Yeah. Well, again, as, as I said, thanks for stopping by, and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Edward Sullivan (21:34): Hope so. Thank you much.

John Jantsch (21:37): 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 dot com, dot 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 and Drip.

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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June 10, 2022/by exposure

How Leveraging A Virtual Assistant Will Change Your Life

How Leveraging A Virtual Assistant Will Change Your Life written by Kyndall Ramirez read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Tricia Sciortino

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Tricia Sciortino. Tricia is the CEO and Board Member at BELAY, Co-Host of the One Next Step Podcast, and Author of Rise Up & Lead Well: How Leveraging An Assistant Will Change Your Life & Maximize Your Time.

Key Takeaway:

Today is a new day and age where the remote work opportunities are endless. In this episode, I talk with Tricia Sciortino, the CEO and Board Member at BELAY, about how incredibly powerful it can be to outsource elements of your business to a virtual assistant. We dive into what mistakes most people make when hiring virtual workers and what best practices to follow to work most effectively.

Questions I ask Tricia Sciortino:

[1:28] What has your entrepreneurial journey looked like?
[3:04] Do you feel like your training has helped you excel in the position?
[3:50] Remote work has become very mainstream today, hasn’t it?
[6:30] If someone came to you who didn’t want to hire full-time staff, what are some of the key roles that you should outsource?
[11:02] How do business owners balance outsourcing social media with a virtual assistant?
[13:34] What are some of the mistakes you see when people hire virtual workers and what are some of the best practices that bring forth more efficiencies?
[17:21] How do you find the right person, and how do you dig deep enough to realize this person is going to work well for you?
[19:58] Do you think that something you should be looking for when hiring an executive assistant or virtual worker is someone who has routines and processes already put in place?
[21:08] If someone is interested in working with BELAY, what’s the process?

More About Tricia Sciortino:

BELAY Solutions

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 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.

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