Weekend Favs December 30

Weekend Favs December 30 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.

I don’t go into depth about the finds, but I encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one I took on the road.

• Synthesia – Synthesia is an AI video generation platform, that enables users to easily convert text into engaging videos in minutes, featuring natural-sounding AI voices available in over 120 languages. With a diverse library of more than 140 AI avatars, Synthesia adds a dynamic and personalized touch to video content. The platform is designed for simplicity, offering editing tools as straightforward as using a slide-deck, requiring no prior video editing experience.
• D-ID – D-ID introduces a groundbreaking innovation as the first app to facilitate face-to-face conversations with ChatGPT. This free web app revolutionizes the way we interact with AI by offering a unique video chat experience. D-ID allows users to engage in more natural, dynamic conversations with an AI, as if speaking with another person.
• Vimeo – Vimeo offers a comprehensive solution for video marketing, providing tools that cover every aspect of the process – from creation and editing to collaboration and analytics. It’s the ideal platform for businesses and creatives seeking to elevate their video marketing strategies. With Vimeo, users can craft high-quality videos, collaborate effortlessly with teams, and gain valuable insights through detailed analytics. This all-in-one platform streamlines the video marketing workflow, making it more efficient and impactful. Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or just starting out, Vimeo positions itself as the go-to destination for taking your video marketing to the next level.

These are my weekend favs; I would love to hear about some of yours – Tweet me @ducttape

If you want to check out more Weekend Favs you can find them here.

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Decoding the Top 5 Marketing Trends of 2024

Decoding the Top 5 Marketing Trends of 2024 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 going to talk about the top 5 marketing trends for 2024. We’re cutting through the noise to focus on practical strategies that are actually making a difference. This isn’t about chasing the next shiny object; it’s about understanding the shifts that matter to small and mid-sized businesses. We’ll dive into how these trends can help you connect more effectively with your audience and make a real impact in your marketing efforts and your business.

Key Takeaways:

Join me as we navigate what 2024 has in store, focusing on the implications of AI, video, and the future of consumer privacy just to name a few.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Artificial Intelligence (AI) has transitioned from being a trend to an integral part of daily operations.
• The search engine paradigm shift
• How integration of AI tools with video content creation is expected to enhance efficiency
• How the decreasing availability of third-party data and the growing importance of building trust to acquire first-party data
• How businesses need to go beyond automated solutions and provide personalized interactions to stand out in the competitive landscape.

These learning points offer insights into the evolving marketing landscape and provide a foundation for businesses to adapt and thrive in 2024 and beyond.

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Connect with John Jantsch on LinkedIn

 

Duct Tape Transcript

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John (00:08): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and no guest. Today I'm doing another solo show. Some of you may not like these. I get a lot of great feedback when it's just me. It gives me a chance to kind of break down some of my thinking, my opinions, quite frankly. And today is no different. I'm going to talk about trends for 2024. Now, before I get into any of my prognostication, that's a big word to use in the morning. Trends shows trend, post trend predictions are stupid. And the reason I say that is because a lot of times by the time you spot a trend, it's not really a trend anymore. It's happening or you're just taking guesses at stuff that you think should happen. There's so many over the years, there's so many things that people talked about.

(01:11): This is the next trend, and 10 years later we're still talking about it. I'm going to mention a couple things today that we've been talking about for a long time, and that's the thing about trends. I think that really make them difficult to identify with any clarity. I think it's really more a matter of acknowledging something that's coming maybe and saying, well, gosh, how could that impact me? And then going about your business, it reminds me of the 1926 novel by Ernest Hemmingway. The Sun Also Rises. There's a character in there and he asked, I think his name's Bill. Bill says to Mike, so how'd you go bankrupt? And he said, two ways. Gradually and suddenly. And I think that's the thing about trends is there's a lot of things that we've talked about for years. It's kind of the gradual it's coming. And then by the time it gets here, it's like, wow, that was fast.

(02:08): AI is a perfect example. I'm going to talk about ai. Of course, how could I not? But AI is a perfect example. It's actually been coming for probably close to 10 years, certainly just in the very guts of things. I mean, if you've ever used Google Maps to get somewhere that has used AI forever, Siri has used AI since its inception. Obviously it's gotten better, the technology's gotten better, but those things have been baked into things for a long time. And then chat, GPT comes along and all of a sudden it's the masses and sudden as a trend. So that's my table setting. Before I get into it, I'm going to talk about five things that I think will impact the agency world, will impact the marketing world for small to mid-size businesses as well. So the first one, as I already mentioned, is ai.

(03:05): It's certainly moved past trend, it's here. But there were a lot of things that came along that way. Social media, mobile marketing, even search quite frankly, all came along slowly and then suddenly they were here. And I think AI certainly fits into that category. I think it's going to be a little different. We talk about some of those other things like search and pay-per-click when it came along, and social media, we talk about those now as channels. And I think that the realization that we all need to understand on it with ai, we won't be talking about it as some trendy new thing. It's just going to be baked into everything. It's going to be how we go about our day. So for example, a lot of people are using it for content writing, which is absolutely a great use. We teach it. We hold bootcamps to teach people how to use it quickly and efficiently.

(03:59): But I also use it to take a spreadsheet and say, tell me what's in this. To summarize a document and say, give me the high spots to take a video and say, I recorded a video with a client, for example, a testimonial video and I have it. I could go through the transcript of that, but I take the transcript and say, give me three or four great sound bites. And it extracts from the already great content very efficiently. So I think that kind of usage is going to become just commonplace. We won't even think about it. We'll go to chat GBT or some other AI platform every single day to accomplish some of the tasks that we accomplish. We'll write SOPs that will allow people who have maybe no experience in the field that we're asking them to work in, and they'll be able to efficiently use some of these tools like any good research assistant might use in aiding somebody writing a book and aiding somebody who is trying to come up with a draft for some content.

(05:04): It's certainly going to filter in. I mean, right now there are people that play with Dolly and play with the other image creating tools, but that's going to get better and it's going to spill into video. There are platforms today, I'm not saying that they're there or perfect yet, but there are platforms today that you can actually train with some amount of your voice of you actually speaking and you actually on video and they will actually be able to take any transcript or text that script that you feed it and then create very synced up live looking videos. So those advances are going to just keep coming every single day. But I think the real power of many of the AI tools is just the efficiency and the time saving aspects of it will maybe someday get to the point where it can write better than a human being.

(06:04): I don't know that we'll ever get there because again, I always tell people that it can create great content, but it can't create context. It can't understand the context in which somebody might be consuming that content. And I think that's always going to be the element that a strategic marketer can certainly add to anything. Alright, let's move on to number two. Search. I think it's, again, it's one of those that has evolved gradually. I mean whatever Google wanted it to be, it became to a large degree, but it's gotten, I don't know if it's gotten better or not. It's certainly evolved in terms of the results that they show. And from an SEO standpoint, from a marketer's standpoint, certainly evolved in terms of how you get those results. But I think we're actually going to see in 2024 some pretty dramatic changes in really the whole paradigm of search and how search is done and how we get results and what results we're looking for.

(07:09): Things like answer engines are going to and optimizing free answer engines are going to happen. The fight is always going to be with Google because Google wants to show paid ads. I mean, that's where they make their money. They don't make any money in search. They make their money because they're able to show all those ads right along with search in a very contextual way. So are they going to kill the golden goose or is the golden goose going to be taken from them in a lot of ways without them, unless they respond in an entirely new way in which we get results, I think there will be ad free search engine opportunities. I think that there will be ways in which we can just similar to what you do in chat GPT today, that's not far off from the model I think of search, where you just go and put in, I'm going on a trip to blah blah blah and I want to visit these and I have five days and here's who's going to be in my group.

(08:11): And it's going to spit out an itinerary for you as opposed to just giving you what TripAdvisor says of the top 10 spots or to go visit because TripAdvisor is able to dominate the search results. Doesn't mean they're any good, but a lot of people rely on them. And so I think that that ability to create custom very detailed search is similar to what I think people experience in chat GPT today chat. GPT is not perfect. It's not real time. It doesn't have, it's terribly inaccurate. Its citations are bad, its data is bad. It sometimes says, well, here's an answer. I don't know where that came from. But I think the experience that people are having with that type of search query is certainly going to be what we expect. And I think you're going to see some sudden changes. We've had gradual changes and I think we're going to see some sudden changes in search number three, this is another funny one, video live streaming.

(09:20): They've been around now, well 20 years really live streaming maybe 10 years. People have used them in various ways, certainly promotionally. I mean you look at what's going on with the micro video snack video in places like TikTok and every other platform that copies them. And so it's not a matter of saying, oh, video's here, it's finally here now we should be using it. I mean, people have obviously been using it effectively for many, many years. The reason I put it on here as a trend is I believe that it is going to become, become the basis for how content is created. And what I mean by that is it will be video first for almost all content. And the reason I say that is because marrying it with some of the AI tools I think gives you the ability to get some amazing efficiencies out of a 10 minute video where you're explaining something.

(10:23): You can take that transcript and create a 3000 word blog post that is formatted exactly the way the current search engine crawling is looking for. You can take that video and cut it up into 27 TikTok type videos where it'll take out the ums, which I do frequently give you. So I think that while the trend itself of video is hardly a trend, but I believe we're going to see an explosion in the creation of video because it is the content first platform for lots of your video creation. There's no denying the trust factor that comes across in video. There's no denying that people like to consume video. Look at what happens in YouTube every single day. So I think it's been around, but I'm leaning into the trend, the idea of a video first in terms of its content. Alright, another one. See I'm going to say this.

(11:30): This doesn't sound like a broken record. Another one that's been around for quite some time data privacy and complying with data privacy. It's the whole reason we have Google Analytics four curse it all you want, but Google got tired of being fined by countries that had passed strict data privacy rules. Facebook is certainly moving towards it. Do you remember the days when you could have all these selects that really allowed you, I remember seeing in the early days of Facebook targeting somebody that was trying to target his wife because it was her birthday and he wanted her to be the only one in the audience that could actually see the ad that he placed. And he was able to get that granular that he was able to accomplish that. So the days of that granular level of targeting are certainly gone. And so we've been talking about this one for a long time.

(12:28): I mean GDPR, when was that passed five years ago? And you're not really hearing people talking about it. You certainly are hearing people give lip service to it. You're hearing people that are doing some just kind of basic compliance with it with privacy policies and terms of services and things like that that have become kind of standard fair. But I think that the adoption came about punitively, right? It is like if you don't adopt this, you're going to get slapped on the hand or worse. And that's never a really great motivator for most people. What's happening now certainly is that the ability to get third party data is just online, at least is going away. It's kind of funny, but again, I came into this world of marketing before we had online and digital and you still can today offline get some pretty incredible amount of data.

(13:32): You can buy list of people that live in a certain geography, make a certain income and have a certain disease, have been diagnosed with a certain disease that you want to target. That's a terrible example. But that's the kind of stuff you can get offline. So it'll be interesting to see if that level of privacy ever comes to the offline world, but it's certainly here in the digital world. Third party data is just going to get harder and harder to get. So what's the trend part of that? Obviously building enough trust to get first party data and that's the game we've been at forever, right? Enough trust that somebody will give you their email address and other information, maybe their phone number and their mailing address because they want to buy a product from you. That level of data collection and trust building to get that level of data collection I think is going to become the event.

(14:27): It's going to become more and more apparent that people that don't have that are not going to just be able to rely on bombing Facebook ads. Alright, the last one, not a trend at all, except aspects of it are, and this is one of those that has been with us forever. I'm just going to throw it out, it's customer experience, but it's one of those that I think the pandemic here, I'm here, I'm in end of 2023, still blaming the pandemic, but it's one of those that I think really elevated people's expectation when it comes to customer experience and frankly that's employee experience, that that's culture inside of organizations. I think those all go very much hand in hand. And I think we've seen a lot of rebellion almost with organizations that don't really get that. And customer experience means a lot of things. And that's probably the thing that's changed the most is what that actually means to people.

(15:28): It used to be solely that somebody answered the phone and that they were nice and that somebody was able to get a resolution to a problem that they had when somebody became a customer. It was a, if not joyful, it was at least a convenient experience. And I think that today there are a lot of companies that aren't doing that, even matching that level. I mean, try getting an insurance company on the phone. Try getting a rental car agency that you left your prized water bottle in their car. I know that's a very specific example. Try getting them on the phone, right? It's not going to happen. So there's a lot of people that are not doing it. So in a lot of ways what the digital presence has really done and AI bots have really done is they've given people one of two paths.

(16:26): They've given them the ability to wall off any need for human interaction, right? It's like, here, talk to our bot. Go through, fill out this form, go through the phone tree to get to the answer that you want. So it's given people the ability to actually provide no service in a lot of ways, but it's also given people the ability to provide the level of experience that somebody wants. There are certain instances in which, I'll use an example of my eye doctor. When I am up for an annual exam, I can go to their website and I can make an appointment. I will get a notification when that appointment is coming, I'll go to the appointment. And there was no need. It was actually far more efficient for both parties to have that online scheduling. So there was really no need to have somebody answer a phone and say, oh, okay, well we'll get back to you like five times later.

(17:27): We finally get the appointment schedule. So it offers the ability when used correctly to offer a frictionless, very speedy, very convenient experience. And I think those are elements of an elevated customer experience that people want and expect today. Married then with true trust building value at every possible interaction. And I think that that is clear to me that if we're not reaching out to our existing customers and making sure that we are meeting their evolving needs, that we are helping them achieve the goals that they want to achieve, we are helping them with the transformation that they want to achieve. That's our job. Having an AI bot or having an FAQ section on our website, those are nice. Those are things that give people the speed and convenience that they want, but then we need to supplement that I think with what I used to call hugs and handshakes that we can do, even if it's done online, done via Zoom, done via one-to-one video on Loom.

(18:38): Those types of touches people are expecting. And the beauty of elevating your customer experience is that not everybody's doing it. So it is a brilliant way to stand out. Alright, that's it for my wrap up of the 2024 trends. Nothing too trendy in there. It's more a matter of recognizing that trends happen gradually and then suddenly. Alright, take care. I'd love to hear your feedback. If you've got any comments or thoughts on these trends you've got, anything you want to add? I'm just John at Duct Tape Marketing and of course we love those reviews and five stars that you give us in the various places that you listen to your, all right, take care. Hopefully we'll run into you one of these days soon out there on the road.

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Weekend Favs December 23

Weekend Favs December 23 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.

I don’t go into depth about the finds, but I encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one I took on the road.

• Shortform – Shortform goes beyond traditional book summaries, offering an expansive collection of the world’s best guides to over 1000 nonfiction books. It’s not just about condensing content; Shortform provides in-depth insights and key points, revealing a deeper understanding of the material that you won’t find anywhere else. Whether you’re looking to grasp complex concepts quickly or delve into the world’s most influential ideas, Shortform is the perfect tool for anyone eager to learn faster and get smarter. It’s an invaluable resource for those seeking to comprehend and apply the best ideas from top nonfiction books in their personal and professional lives.
• Mem – Mem redefines the note-taking experience with its smart notes app, designed for speed and simplicity. With Mem, jotting down notes is quick and intuitive, eliminating the need for time-consuming organization. Its unique feature allows you to simply ask Mem about your notes later, retrieving the information you need without sifting through files or folders. This app is perfect for anyone who wants to capture thoughts, ideas, or information on the go, with the assurance that they can easily access it whenever needed. Mem transforms the traditional note-taking process into a fluid, hassle-free experience.
• Lazy – Lazy.ai revolutionizes note-taking by enabling you to capture information at the speed of thought, without interrupting your workflow. With just one keyboard shortcut, this innovative tool allows you to take notes and save information instantly, eliminating the need to switch between apps. It’s designed for those who value efficiency, enabling seamless integration into your daily tasks and ensuring that your creative or professional flow remains uninterrupted. Whether it’s a sudden idea, an important detail, or a quick reminder, Lazy.ai ensures that capturing it is as effortless as the thought itself.

These are my weekend favs; I would love to hear about some of yours – Tweet me @ducttape

If you want to check out more Weekend Favs you can find them here.

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The Negativity Fast: How a Simple Practice Can Transform Your Life

The Negativity Fast: How a Simple Practice Can Transform Your Life written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast with John Jantsch

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interviewed Anthony Iannarino, a renowned expert in B2B sales, bestselling author, and advocate for positivity. With decades of experience generating millions in revenue, Anthony shared insights from his latest book, “The Negativity Fast: Proven Techniques to Increase Positivity, Reduce Fear, and Boost Success.”

Embark on a transformative journey as Anthony breaks down practical strategies to eliminate negativity, increase positivity, and redefine success. Explore the surprising intersection of sales expertise and self-help wisdom as Anthony discusses his unique perspective on personal development.

 

Key Takeaways

In this insightful episode, Anthony Iannarino, a luminary in B2B sales and bestselling author, unveils the transformative power of his Negativity Fast method. He explores the dynamic relationship between positivity and success, sharing a practical 30-day plan to detox from negativity. Anthony emphasizes the game-changing impact of gratitude, backed by science, on cognitive function and overall well-being. Delve into cognitive behavioral techniques and the A, B, C model for reshaping beliefs and cultivating a resilient mindset. Lastly, discover the profound effects of acts of kindness on personal well-being, as Anthony shares heartwarming stories from his own journey.

This episode serves as a holistic guide for individuals seeking to break free from negativity, enhance their mindset, and achieve unparalleled success.

 

Questions I ask Anthony Iannarino:

[00:41] Positivity Buffet or Negativity Fast, how best will you describe your approach?

[01:21] How does someone with your experience in Sales find themselves writing a self help book?

[04:53] Explain the relationship between ‘lying to ourselves’ and positivity?

[06:01] What are some of the most fulfilling practices in trying to cultivate positivity?

[07:38] What are some of your morning and evening positivity enhancing rituals ?

[10:39] How do you maintain a balance between the unpleasant things to be aware of and a positive mindset?

[12:19] Do you find it easier to NOT let daily disappointments affect your mood?

[14:44] What advice do you have for someone to begin a negativity fast?

[18:17] Where can people connect with you and obtain a copy of your book?

 

More About Anthony Iannarino:

• Connect with Anthony on LinkedIn
• Connect with Jennifer on Facebook
• Visit his Website

Get Your Free AI Prompts To Build A Marketing Strategy:

• Download now

 

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

Connect with John Jantsch on LinkedIn

 

Duct Tape Transcript

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John (00:08): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Anthony Iannarino. He is a renowned expert in B2B sales with decades of experience and a track record of generating tens of millions of dollars in revenue. He's also the bestselling author of five books, including one we're going to talk about today called The Negativity Fast Proven Techniques to Increase Positivity, reduce Fear, and Boost Success. So Anthony, welcome back to the show.

Anthony (00:39): Thanks for having me back. It's good to see you again.

John (00:41): So I got a kick out of Seth's comment on the top that this book actually called the Positivity Buffet. So what gives, is it positivity buffet or is it negativity fast?

Anthony (00:55): It's negativity fast until Seth says it's the positivity buffet and then it's the positivity Buffet. Just one of my favorite people and a great mentor for me. Yeah,

John (01:07): Kind to endorse my first book back in 2007. So he's been a long time friend and mentor of mine as well. So you're a sales guy. I mean, can I call you that?

Anthony (01:18): Yeah.

John (01:21): What's a sales guy doing? Writing. What kind of feels like a self-help book?

Anthony (01:25): It's a self-help book. And you know what? My friends that put it under sales and selling and management, and I had to ask them to put the self-help on there. So I went to a Barnes and Noble to see if they had it, and they're like, why is that in business? It should be in personal development. And I'm like, I didn't have anything to do with it. It's a publisher, right? And

John (01:44): The

Anthony (01:45): Publisher decided what they were going to do. This has been a passion of me for a long time. I went to college when I was 26 after having two brain surgeries, I decided I should do something with what was left in my brain. So I went to college political science, all you do is argue with people instead of political science. That's all you do. It's just constant back and forth. Then I went to law school, which was even more political than school, and I ended up being angry about politics and geopolitics and all the ways I wanted the world to look better than it does right now. And eventually I realized you're really angry. And I had one of my professors who said, you just have to let go of all this, which is the worst advice ever. How do you just let go? I don't know how you do it.

(02:37): I'd say it to do it in this book, but I don't know how to tell you how to do it. And I decided that I was going to do 30 days getting rid of all of the negative sources in my life. So any cable news that's all gone. Am radio's gone, everything's gone. I got rid of all of it. I liked it so much, I did it 60 more days and then I did it 30 more days. And in that last 30 days, I realized not only do you have to get rid of the negative things, those negative sources, but you also have to replace it with something positive. So for me that was Les Brown Zigs, Anthony Robbins, Steven Covey, like anybody who was just positive and future oriented. That's all I listened to for 30 days. And now I just have never gone back. So I'm now much happier. I'm not political, I'm what I'm calling post political because it's just hard with all this divisiveness. So I'm not a divisive guy. So I think that the better way to do it is to try not to spend a lot of time with politics.

John (03:42): So I mean, in a lot of ways what you just described there was your fast, right? And that I'm guessing is obviously is what you're prescribing as a path for many people to at least give a try.

Anthony (03:57): And I have to tell you that there's 11 chapters before we get to the fast. And most of them I will tell you, is me explaining to you that you make yourself negative. And that's a hard thing for people to understand. So the complaining that you do, that's all you. And I wish I would've known this earlier when I was doing the research on this book. I cited everything in the book, but if you are a chronic complainer, your hippocampus in your brain will start to shrink and you will not be as good of a thinker as you are and you'll have trouble solving your own problems. Who knows? That kind of thing. I wish I would've known it. It was not in the book, I got it right after that. But it's us making ourselves angry and unhappy by what we say to ourselves most of the time.

John (04:51): And one of the things to tee another one of those up, you talk about how we lie to ourselves, unpack that idea.

Anthony (04:58): My younger brother is a comedian and he's always unhappy driving from Ohio to Florida, and then I'll spend months down there. And he believed that everybody had road rage because they were trying to get in front of him. And people drive poorly in Florida for sure. I know they're the worst. But one day somebody was trying to cut in front of him and he looked at the guy's face and he thought, this guy's too far away from a rest stop and he really needs to get to a rest stop. And I said, now how would you know that? And he goes, it happens to me all the time. And because it's happened to him now he has the empathy for this other person. And I said, all you did was lie to yourself. You don't know that guy wasn't road rage or I don't know. But he decided that's what he was going to do. He's a lot happier. He just lets everybody go. And that was him making himself miserable for 20 years and now just dropping it just like that. I wasn't prepared to have to put him in my book, but I thought that was a really good addition.

John (06:01): So you talked about how the first few chapters, I think it's the first 10 or so, talk about the negative things that we do. But then obviously you get into some things like gratitude, I mean habits or practices that you talked about eliminating, but then filling. So what are some of the best filling, if you will, practices

Anthony (06:22): Gratitude's the top of the heap? I mean, there's nothing even like it. In fact, as I was writing this book and I was studying gratitude, the claims on gratitude are so many and so outrageous. You look at it and you go, it can't be true. You will have better cognitive functioning, you will have less inflammation in your body. You will have less of a risk of having a heart attack. You will have less anxiety, stress, depression, all of these things. And you're reading all these and you're going, how much work does gratitude do? It does so much work and you don't know that until you start to look at all the claims. And so I decided, well, I will cite that. And then my editor said, no, cite everything. So every claim in the book is backed by science. I read all the papers. I did my best to distill it and make it a fun book that you're going to enjoy even though it's got some science in it, but it's not a science book. So it's not a hard book to read. And everything in it is really practical and tactical. I think that's what I want to write. I want to write something that you can read it and say, I could do that and that would help most people feel better.

John (07:38): So I think a lot of what you're talking about, I've used the word habit, I think already you get into habits, better habits as opposed to the bad habits of waking up and reading CN or whatever. So do you have some rituals or habits yourself that you pretty much say every morning or every evening, I'm going to do X, Y, Z?

Anthony (07:58): Yeah, I'll tell you the best one on gratitude. So for anybody that's listening to this and you want to have less stress, less anxiety, and to feel a lot better, this comes from the person that we call the father of positive psychology. So Martin Seligman and Seligman is a wonderful writer. And one thing in the book called Hope Circuit, which is a really good book, he describes a study that they did and they called it Three Blessings and Three Blessings. All you have to do is at the end of your day, don't do the gratitude journal in the morning. You do it at the end of the day and you write down the three good things that happened to you and why those things went well for you. And you do that according to Seligman for two weeks and for at least six months people have less anxiety, less stress, and less depression.

(08:52): He says in the Hope Circuit that he believes that this is more powerful than pharmaceuticals or psychoanalysis and these are the things that are not taught to us. I mean, you probably just heard this three blessings for the first time would've been nice to know this maybe in seventh grade or eighth grade or when you're a teenager and you're really grouchy all the time, you're really negative through that period of time. But I've done this for a long time and I will say, I'll give you one piece of advice. If you want to do this, get a journal and write it down. Write down the three blessings every single day, whatever went good. And then in about a month go back and just start reading those entries and you'll start to think a lot of good things happen to me, like every day good things happen to me. And because you're writing it down and you've got this record of having all these good things happen, it can start changing how you feel about things in other ways.

John (09:49): And I think that's particularly, it's powerful for everyone, but I know a lot of entrepreneurs beat themselves up because they haven't achieved where they want to go. And I think a lot of that stress is just what you mentioned. They don't turn around and go, but look how far we've come. And I think that what you're talking about is celebrating the little wins because unfortunately, the only thing that seems to stick with us is how I failed today. Right. So great practice. You talked about some of the things you kept out of your life, you learned some things that I'm on social media only because it's a channel for marketing for us, but it's a terrible, I mean it can cause a lot of negativity. You mentioned politics, I mean, heaven forbid that it just seems like the last 10 years have just gotten worse and worse. I mean, how do we keep away from some of the stuff that, I mean there's nothing wrong with, or I should say there are some potential positive things about being informed. So how do you balance that? You're not saying stick your head in the sand, but I'm going to ignore all of that stuff out there when there is actually a level of news that maybe you should be aware of.

Anthony (11:03): I like The Economist because it's not trying to divide Americans into two tribes. So I like that because British and they're not so divisive as we are here. Anyway, the other thing I would tell you is that my wife is always unhappy with me because she'll say, did you see that story today? And I didn't get to see it. And when people say, how do you just leave all that stuff out? And what do you know when something happens? How are you going to know? All the negative people are going to tell you, you don't have to wait very long. They'll tell you something bad happened though. They can't wait to tell you that. And most of those things I can't do anything about. And I have an awareness, but I don't have an attachment to it. So being aware is one thing being attached, and that's a very different sort of problem for people to have.

John (11:54): You found that over time, because I think some of the practices you're talking about, I feel like they're cumulative. Would you say that's somewhat true that you start practicing gratitude and things, it just starts working on other parts of you, but let's face it, that big sale that you thought you were going to get didn't come through kind of a bummer moment of the day. Do you find that you have more ability to maybe snap back out of that kind of change your state instead of letting it dictate your day?

Anthony (12:22): It's either a loss or it's a lesson. I mean, so that's what a sales guy would say, but I'm desensitized to the word no or to losing a deal because after you do it for 37 years, you are pretty desensitized. So I would tell you over time, if you just look at a loss and you say, what did I learn? How could it make me more effective in the future? It's a hundred percent worth trying to do with that. Instead of saying, well, I lost this and there's no way for her to cover, I've lost deals plenty of times. I'll tell you, it took me seven years to win PetSmart, seven years. And I had my peers saying, why don't you give up? And I'm like, because I don't get a commission check. If I give up, I have to keep going. The woman who kept me out let me in one day, and I was talking to the senior leader and I had seven years with 2 million a year from PetSmart. So just keep playing the game. If you're an entrepreneur, I mean, I know that you've seen all of the cartoons of the path to success as an entrepreneur. It's all over the map, right? So you get some progress, you go back. That's just how any good pursuit actually goes. It doesn't ever just go a straight line, you won. Nope. That's rare, right? I would say,

John (13:45): Oh, absolutely. In fact, I've been at this game for a long time and one of the things you realize over time, and I think that's why entrepreneurs are kind of a strange breed of resilience over time, I think you start to realize, you start seeing, I didn't get that deal because I was meant to get this deal. And actually that deal would've been a bad deal. I think you start seeing examples of that happening and go, oh, maybe I shouldn't sweat what I thought was a loss at the moment because something's going to happen. But that takes time, that takes experience

Anthony (14:16): Of those clients that you're describing. I know those. And when they say we might not be a good fit for each other, you're like, how fast can I get out of here? I'm ready to go now.

John (14:27): Alright, so because it's, and maybe it's the last chapter, let me double check, but I think it's the last chapter, the fast itself for the last bit that we have left here, kind of if somebody is listening and thinks, okay, obviously we want them to get the book so they get the full detail, but to give us a little taste of how somebody would get started, what a negativity fast would look like that you describe in

Anthony (14:50): That chapter, in that final chapter, what I would want you to do is to start to say, what are the kinds of things that trigger me? And you're really triggering yourself when you do that, but it's worth knowing that this isn't something that bothers me. I'm too connected to politics or whatever else they're connected to that's negative. I would say you make a list of those things. I will tell you though, don't start with people. That's exactly the wrong way to do this. The people come at the end, which people do I need to spend less time with? But don't do that at the beginning because you want to take care of the things that are really about you and what you do. And I'll just give you a quick story. Albert Ellis is the guy that created CB Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, very powerful stuff. I actually did it at one time to help get rid of some of my anger and it worked perfectly.

(15:46): But Albert Ellison would say that you have an A, B and a C. The A is the activating event, and then the B is your belief about it. And then the C is the consequences on how you respond to that. And my brother, all they do is they switch the belief and if you switch the belief that it's not road rage, that person's trying to get a prescription home to their young sick kid or something. And you can lie to yourself like that all the time. You're mostly lying to yourself about the triggers. Anyway, so you might as well get around that. And if I could say just one other thing that I would want to share. The thing that seems to be the most popular in this book is my love for being a bail bondsman for dogs. So I go to the Humane Society at the end of every year, and I buy all the dogs.

(16:37): That's normally about nine dogs. I do not take these dogs home. I would be divorced immediately if I brought another dog into the house. They take the money and they're happy. And the last time I was there, they said, would you just let us keep the money because we're going to have some difficult dogs that need training? I said, you could use the money however you want. They said, well, you take a picture with this pit bull, big pit bull. Very not aggressive in a mean way, but just really wanted attention. So I took a picture with them and they put it on their website and it went on to Facebook. And some woman read this that said, this angel came in and bought these dogs. I didn't think of it like that, but I thought was a bond Spellman. So the woman came in the next day and she bought all of the cats.

(17:24): I don't know, that's like 46,000 cats in a humane society. She bought all of them. And then two of my friends saw this and they said, you mean we can buy the dogs and we don't have to take 'em? And I'm like, of course you can just go in. And so they went in and bought four or more dogs, just gave them the money. If you really want to feel good, if you're really negative, if you really just don't feel good, go do something for somebody else because you will disappear and you will be there just for that person and you'll feel so good. It's called Helpers High. Don't even need a medical card to do it. You could just go out and help somebody, a homeless person, go to a pantry, do whatever you could do, but that will make you feel so much better just like this. You can't be in both of those states at the same time.

John (18:12): Yeah. Awesome. Well, Anthony, it was great catching up with you and hearing about the negativity fast. Is there anywhere you'd invite somebody to connect with you or learn more about the book itself?

Anthony (18:22): LinkedIn's a good place to connect with me. And then I think if you go to the negativityfast.com, that'll take you to a page and you can also find it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

John (18:34): Awesome. Well, great book. Appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by, and hopefully we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

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Service Revolution: The Art of Turning Expertise into Scalable Products

Service Revolution: The Art of Turning Expertise into Scalable Products 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  unravel the intricacies of service marketing and dive into a groundbreaking approach that transforms expertise into scalable products. The discussion revolves around the revolutionary concept of productizing services and its profound impact on agency growth.

Key Takeaways:

Discover the game-changing strategy of productizing services, revolutionizing scalability, and enhancing profitability. From simplifying communication and shortening sales cycles to delivering a superior customer experience, learn how to navigate challenges and unlock unparalleled success in your service business.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• The evolution of service marketing
• How to scale with clarity
• How to achieve profitability beyond expectations
• The customer-centric approach
• How to overcome diverse challenges

Join me in this episode as we embark on a journey to revolutionize service marketing, unlocking the potential to turn expertise into scalable products. Listen now to gain a competitive edge and elevate your service business to new heights.

 

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John (00:03): That's right. It's just me. I got a topic I want to talk about. This is a topic that maybe I haven't talked so directly about, but in a lot of ways it's been a big part of my work. It's something that I've talked about for years, but I want to hit it head on today. And that's if you are a service provider. I want to talk about the idea of productizing your service. So what do I mean by that? What I mean is creating service offerings that you can describe, explain price deliver almost as though they were a product I have for years delivered something we call Strategy First, and it is essentially our approach to developing strategy. So it is a service that we offer to business owners and we have dialed that in so thoroughly. Frankly, it was actually the genesis of Duct Tape Marketing of me creating the approach to Duct Tape Marketing was that I was a little frustrated going out and essentially delivering my marketing services in not a one-off fashion, but in a custom fashion almost whatever somebody needed.

(01:15): That's what we designed a proposal around. That's what we delivered. That's how I priced it. And a lot of agencies do that. You can build a nice business doing that. But I was frustrated because I just felt like I was working more and making less as I grew that. So I created this productized approach. I called a marketing system, and we all the way down to exactly what happens when a client signs on to all the way through the way they're onboarded. Everything we deliver in the final is really packaged up in a way that I can call it a product. That's why we gave it a brand name. So that's the idea behind a productized service. Now, I used an example of marketing, frankly. Accounting can have productized services, legal services can be productized, any kind of consulting can and in my view should be productized.

(02:07): There are some, I think some glaring benefits to why you might want to do this. The first one I started talking about is scalability. It is very difficult to scale an offering that is made up every time that is new for every customer. That is, and here's my favorite word, bespoke. It's very difficult to scale that because in a lot of ways it takes the enormous experience and let's call it brainpower of the person who can be that nimble and deliver every single time. Now, there's probably a place out there in the world for completely customized versions of service delivery, and in fact, we do it in the right circumstances. But for the most part, if you want to scale a service business, you have to create something that is very easy to message, that is very easy to explain. And frankly, when it comes to scale is easy to actually delegate and hire people and to train people how to deliver that package.

(03:13): And that's much harder to do if essentially everybody's making it up every single time they go out and work with a new client. So to me, that scalability is probably the leading benefit of doing this. I already mentioned this a little bit, but the sales process gets so much simpler Instead of, okay, what do you need? Okay, we'll put together a proposal. Okay, we'll refine their proposal. We'll make it fit to the budget that you have. When you're able to walk in and say, here's what I'm going to do, here's what you're going to do. Here are the results we hope to get from this approach. And by the way, here's what it costs. Shortens the sales cycle, which to me is a great thing. You get a yes or a no, but it also makes it very easy for you to explain exactly what somebody's getting.

(04:01): I mean, that's one of the most valuable things you can have in a sailing situation is something that's very simple to explain. Somebody can get it. They can see on one sheet of paper, here's what we're going to do. It also will lead to much higher profit margins. And one of the reasons for that is that when you're constantly having to figure out how to serve a client, have to write proposals, how to create whatever the deliverable calls for based on the scope of their proposal, there's a lot of learning that goes into that. And if you can create a repeatable process, you will get better at delivering value because you've done it before. You will get faster at delivering value because you've done it many times now. And consequently, those two things alone will lead to much higher profitability. But the final piece that I think a lot of people underestimate is when you've got something that you can actually show somebody, here's a proven process to get you results, it is very simple to explain to them exactly what they're going to get.

(05:15): You can also charge a premium. So you've got really that profitability working two ways for you. You can generally charge more for a name branded service offering that you can now deliver very affordably or much quicker, or you can delegate to work to people that are at a much less experienced than you. It just leads to a much more profitable, and here's the final reason to do it. And frankly, if all those other reasons weren't enough, the final benefit or reason for doing this is that it's a better customer experience. I know that everybody, I mean, everybody we talk to, it's like, no, I want want something that's tailored just to my needs. Well, on the surface, that sounds really great, but you rather have something that I've actually worked on for years and refined and evolved and seeing what works and seeing what doesn't work.

(06:12): I can deliver. You can deliver much greater value by having a proven process. Now it takes time to prove that, to refine it. I mean, we've been doing this for 25 years and it's evolved every single year for us as well. So to me, the product itself, because we have focused on here's what you get, here's what it costs, has gotten much, much better. Now, are there challenges in productizing? Some of what you'll run up against is just what I mentioned. People want a custom approach. They don't want cookie cutter. They feel like if it's not created just for them that there's something less. And so it really becomes important for you to not only create that productized approach, but be able to communicate very effectively the value, what's in it for them. I think when people start to realize that by creating a repeatable system, you give people not only the option of getting a better end service, but you also get far better at delivering it.

(07:18): There's just so much more value in it for them. So I think that the messaging really has to be about that is a lot of times people focus on, well, we can deliver this better, or we just get, we've got this down so that we have a very fulfillment engine that is very productized. It's very systemized. But the key of course, is helping that buyer, that customer, that client understand why that is so much more valuable to them. So how do you get started doing something like this? Because one of the challenges I think a lot of people have in productizing, if you will, is that they're serving such a diverse market. It's very hard to actually create one or two or three things, packages, products, if you will, for all of the services that they might be able to offer. So it does help if you can narrow your focus first off.

(08:10): So I'm not necessarily saying a niche, maybe it is for you, but at the very least, who are the top 20% of your customers? What do they need today? What are the problems that you're solving for them? Could you actually create or think in terms of creating a package just for them? You've got to standardize the offering. It's not enough to just say, oh, this is this and it costs this. You've got to work on even the promotional materials need to standardize. Here's what you get. Here are the benefits of this. Here's why this approach works. So just even creating marketing materials for it, you have to standardize, but then you have to start writing SOPs. You have to actually map out, whether you call it a fulfillment engine or whatever you call it, you have to map out when this happens, then this happens.

(09:00): So at the global level, you have to at least have the little boxes and arrows that point to that. But then each one of those boxes, particularly critical steps, you need to maybe create an entire training process or SOP around. And I know that this can sound like, well, it is time consuming and it sounds like it because it's, but ultimately, if you spend several weeks even creating this repeatable system that then can serve you for years and that you can delegate and you can scale your business and you can be more profitable, probably the best couple of weeks that you've ever spent in terms of working on your business after you productize it, then it's field testing. I mean, you could sit in a lab all day long and create what you think is the most brilliant approach to delivering your services in a productized manner.

(09:51): Just go out there and start doing it. Start telling people, maybe give 'em option A, B, and C, but this is what I'm going to do. This is what you're going to do. Here are the results we hope to get, and here's what it costs. Do you want it or not? And start fulfilling it. You're not going to refine this thing until you've done it dozens of times. And that just takes practice. It takes experimenting, it takes trial and error. It takes listening to the feedback that you get from your customers. It takes really evaluating, are you getting them the result? Are you getting them a better result than they could have gotten somewhere else? So how do you market this productized service? Well, if you think about it, it is the same as marketing a product. In a lot of ways. People have to understand what it is.

(10:35): They have to understand what's in it for them. It has to address a problem that they're trying to solve. I mean, those are all things that really any good marketing does. But I think it's probably important for you if you're going to productize. It's very important for you to, I think it's very helpful if you give things a name, give it a brand, create collateral around it that shows somebody exactly what they are going to get, and then focus a great deal of your marketing. It's the same for any professional services on trust building, on explaining not just the components, not just selling the components. In fact, in some ways, the productized approach doesn't really even become an issue until somebody starts saying, how will this work for me? And then you're able to give them the very specific way it could work for them.

(11:21): But all of your marketing education, even though you have a productized approach, is going to be around educating on the problems that this productized approach solves. I always make the joke that I sell a marketing strategy. Nobody ever wakes up and says, I'm going to go buy some marketing strategy today. But they do wake up and wonder why they're competing on price. They do wake up and wonder why they can't fill their pipeline. They do wake up and wonder why their competitors are always ranking ahead of them in search engines. And to a large degree, those are all problems that an effective marketing strategy can solve. So even though we're productizing the service offerings as a way to scale, as a way to be more profitable, as a way to more easily help people understand the value they're getting, we still have to build trust.

(12:11): We still have to create a customer journey that turns us into the trusted advisor and the productized approach happens just to be a delivery mechanism for how we get them, the results and how we communicate the results, and frankly, how we differentiate. So many people are in the marketing world, I'm sure in your whatever service world that you are in, so many people are just selling the idea of the week, are selling, the tactic of the week are going to clients and saying, what do you need? Sure, we can do that. And so this proven process driven way to deliver value in a way that's very easy to understand is also a great different in a world of service offerings. Alright, that's it for today. Always love to hear your comments and feedback. And if you're on one of those services like iTunes or Spotify, make sure that you give us a review, a glowing review, of course. But we hope you like the show and hopefully we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

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Mastering Marketing Strategy: Simplify Your Success with These 5 Key Questions

Mastering Marketing Strategy: Simplify Your Success with These 5 Key Questions 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 dive into the complexities of marketing strategy. I break down marketing strategy into five essential questions that you need to be able to answer if you want to be effective in your marketing efforts. This approach helps you focus on what’s important, saving time and improving effectiveness.

Key Takeaways:

From understanding the need for a clear objective in guiding your marketing, to choosing the right platforms that resonate with your ideal client, this episode emphasizes the importance of focused efforts.

An effective plan that aligns with your motivations and meets the needs of your ideal client is key. Developing the necessary capabilities is vital for successful execution, and measuring success with defined KPIs fosters continuous improvement.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• The real essence of a marketing strategy.
• Five key questions to make your strategy more effective.
• Tips to align your marketing with your business goals.
• How to choose marketing actions that yield better results.

Join me in this episode as we clear the confusion in marketing by answering five critical questions, setting the stage for unmatched success in your marketing strategy.

 

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John (00:08): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, no guest. Today. I'm going to do a solo show. So the whole basis of this show is the large confusion that I have seen around this idea of marketing strategy. What is a marketing strategy? This is, boy, I tell you, if I would ask 10 people, I would get 10 different definitions. If I were to ask Google, I'd get 10 different definitions. I think for a lot of people, this is a needlessly complex idea, but it's also a terribly misunderstood idea. So today what I want to do is simplify this idea by boiling the entire thing down to answering five questions. Now, I'm not saying each of the answers to these questions are just going to pop off your tongue that you're going to know exactly what these are, but these are the questions you need to be able to answer.

(01:12): And once you can, they become really the guiding light for your entire business activity or certainly your marketing activity. In fact, one of the benefits of having a solid marketing strategy around these five questions is that it really helps filter out what you shouldn't be doing. And I think for a lot of business owners that can actually be more stressful than trying to decide what to do. So this gives you the filter to say yes to this, no to this. Is this helping us answer one of our questions? No. Is this helping us answer one of our questions? Yes, than let's add that. And I think that that's for a lot of folks. I think a lot of the confusion around this idea of marketing strategy is that there's so many things that can be done that maybe you want to do, but what a good solid marketing strategy allows you to do is focus on what should be done in order for you to go where you're trying to go.

(02:13): So let's start with the questions. And this I think is a, you could make this, and there are plenty of folks out there pitching the idea of a one page this and a one page that you can make this a one page document if you like. So I suggest if you're not driving in your car or running on a treadmill or something while you're listening to this, I suggest that you make note of these five questions because I think that they can be a way for you to start maybe understanding what a marketing strategy is, but further how you would actually use it in your business. Because again, it's one thing to define something in academic terms and quite a different thing to create a tool that you can actually use and build upon. So here we go. First question, this is the biggie. What is our objective?

(03:04): I mean, what is our purpose? What's our motivating aspiration? What are we trying to do? What are we trying to win? I know that was more than one question, but some variation of that. The answer to that idea, here's how we intend to compete, here's how we intend to really grab market share. I mean, that motivating aspiration has to be a big part of where you start. And I will tell you from a down in the weeds detail standpoint, this comes across from messaging. We spend a significant amount of time with the folks that we work with working on what I call a core message. But a core message is not your nice to have thing you put on your business card thing that you put on the back of your invoices. A core message is your motivating aspiration. Here is how we intend to compete.

(03:54): Here is how we want to be seen in the market. We want to be seen as the high price leader. We want to be seen as the incredible experience. We want to be seen as the expensive but worth it. I mean, those are the motivating aspirations that come out of a core message that clearly communicates how you intend to compete. So that's number one. Number two, where do we need to be seen? This I think is really tough for a lot of folks because there's a lot of places you can be seen today. In fact, there's probably been a new one introduced since I've been recording this. And I think that that's, of course the problem is that we scatter ourselves everywhere because we don't want to be missed on TikTok or we don't want to be missed on this platform or whatever the new platform of the day is.

(04:44): And consequently, we spread ourselves so thin that we can't really make any impact on any single channel. So where do we need to be seen is largely maybe completely driven by who do we need to see us? Who is our ideal client? We understand clearly who makes an ideal client for our business, who does not. Some people call it personas, whatever you want to call it, understanding the exact person or business that you need to attract the exact problem that you solve for that very specific business. That goes largely into this. Where do we need to be seen? So I like to call this one platform. This is really driven by your channels that you say, look, our ideal client is here, and so we need to dominate. We need to have so much energy around these, maybe two or three, maybe it's content, maybe it's SEL, maybe it's LinkedIn, but we're going to focus a great deal of our efforts.

(05:49): Whatever those efforts are on those channels, on that platform, that's going to be our platform. So that again, does a lot weeding out where you don't need to be seen. And sometimes you might need to be seen there, but the reality is you, I mean, you can't make an impact. You don't have enough resources. You have time constraints, you have budget constraints. So you want to focus on where can we make the greatest impact based on what we have? That's our platform. Alright? Now that we have, I mean we've got message, we've got ideal client, we've got kind of the channels that we're going to go into. Now it's simply a matter of let's create the plan. What tactics, systems, campaigns do we need to put in place that we believe will allow us to be seen and to communicate the message of the problem that we solve for a very specific person in a very specific way.

(06:45): So that's number three. What tactic systems and campaigns must be in place. Some people call that a marketing plan, but so many people skip straight to that. What tactics do we need and miss this? What's our objective? Where do we need to be seen and by whom? And those are core elements that come into deciding then what tactics that you need. Once we have those, and again, this is we're trying to attract, maybe it's a new message for us, maybe it's new positioning that you've developed. Maybe you're narrowed your focus on an ideal client. And now we've come up with the tactics that we believe are the best case. Like our plan is we're going to dominate content. SEO, we're going to dominate on Facebook ads, maybe driving people to that content. I mean, that's what comes around the plan. But now we need to look back or step back and say, well, what new capabilities are needed for us to execute this plan at the highest level?

(07:47): Doesn't mean you have to do it today, but you have to realize what are we missing? It might be people, some people generate a whole bunch of leads and realize we don't have a great sales process, or we don't have a sales process at all, or we don't have a sales team at all. So if you are going to execute at the highest level on your plan, what people, what new offer, what new product perhaps, what constraints do we actually need to get rid of in many cases to execute on a marketing plan, the founder of the business needs to get out of certain aspects of what they're doing. So it might be, if we're going to do a new marketing plan, we're going to grow this business and scale this business. Maybe a constraint is that the founder or the CEO or whoever you have in charge of marketing is doing too many admin type of tasks.

(08:37): So those may not on surface feel like marketing tactics, but in many cases, if we're going to execute on this plan, the process for doing so, that's number four. The process needs to be set up and planned. It may not happen today, but you need to say, look, our next hire needs to be X if we're going to execute on this plan, or we need a better offer, or we need new services and products if we're going to execute on this plan. So there is a linear order to the answering these questions, but also then addressing them. And then number four, how will we win? How do we know we're winning? What does winning look like, right? So our objective, our motivating aspiration was to be X. How will we know if we're making progress in that? So simply code for metrics. So we have to measure, we have to first identify what if we're going to meet our objective, what are the milestones?

(09:40): What are the key performance indicators that are going to suggest we're actually making progress? And certainly, what does winning maybe in the one year, three year look like? It might be revenue, might be new, customers might be profit, might be, heck, it might be reviews, it might be referrals. I mean, there can be many, many things that become a part of that measurement of winning, but we have to actually identify them and then start tracking them and start watching them. You've all heard the cliches, what get measured gets improved or something along those lines. It's true. I've seen it over the years in my business when I didn't measure. Sometimes good things happen, sometimes bad things happen. When I did measure, we always, if something bad was happening, if something wasn't working, we always had the ability to jump in and say, why? Where's the constraint?

(10:33): What's broken? What's not working? Where are people getting stuck? And those are things that clearly then allow you to build some momentum. So lemme just recap, what is our objective? What's our motivating aspiration? That to me comes from message. Where do we need to be seen? What's our platform in a large degree that is driven by who are we trying to attract? Who is our ideal client? What tactics, systems, campaigns, once we put in place, that essentially is the plan. Again, so many people skip to that, but that's step number three. What new capabilities are needed? That's the process. So people offer product solving constraints. And then finally, how will we win? What does winning look like? That's the metrics. So there you go. Answer those five questions, message, platform, plan, process, metrics, and you've got a solid marketing strategy that you can then go ahead and execute on that plan at the highest level. Hopefully this was helpful. I'd love to hear any of your thoughts always on this idea of marketing strategy. Just remember strategy before tactics and you will win.

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