Become Impossible to Ignore: Market Eminence with David Newman written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing
Overview
On this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, John Jantsch welcomes back David Newman—keynote speaker, bestselling author, and creator of The Selling Show podcast. David’s latest book, “Market Eminence: 22 Strategies to Build a Bold Personal Brand, Become a Business Celebrity, and Drive Unstoppable Growth,” dives into how experts, consultants, and CEOs can escape obscurity and become the obvious choice in their market. David explains why visibility, respect, and brand preference are now non-negotiable, how to develop a contrarian point of view, and why radical generosity of your best ideas is the real growth engine.
About the Guest
David Newman is a keynote speaker, bestselling author of “Do It! Marketing,” “Do It! Speaking,” and now “Market Eminence.” With over 600 speaking engagements and 30 years in the field, he helps CEOs, consultants, and expert service providers elevate their brand, attract ideal clients, and become impossible to ignore in noisy, AI-fueled markets.
- Website: doitmarketing.com
- Book Resources: marketeminence.com
- Podcast: The Selling Show
Actionable Insights
- The “obscurity tax” is doing great work in isolation—if your market doesn’t see you, know you, and prefer you, you’re paying it every day.
- Market eminence rests on three pillars:
- Visibility (being seen)
- Respect (deep understanding of your buyers’ pains, goals, and aspirations)
- Brand preference (differentiation + positioning so it feels risky to hire anyone else)
- Personal branding often focuses on “look at me”; market eminence focuses on elevating your market, industry, and stakeholders.
- Being contrarian and polarizing (in a values-aligned way) is essential to attract right-fit clients and repel bad fits.
- The three content types that still cut through the noise:
- How to think (insight, not instructions)
- What to believe / what not to believe
- How to get ready for what’s coming next
- A powerful exercise: identify what conventional wisdom in your industry is wrong, what harsh truths clients wish someone would say, and which strong points of view resonate with ideal clients but make insiders uncomfortable.
- Use AI as a thought partner for brainstorming contrarian headlines and positioning, not as your final output.
- Generosity is a growth strategy: give away client-facing content you’ve been paid for; prospects pay for implementation and applied insight, not information.
- Treat prospects like clients—share real value, not teasers—and you’ll get more (and better) clients.
Great Moments (with Timestamps)
- 01:37 – The Obscurity Tax
Why doing great work in the dark is the biggest cost most experts pay. - 02:40 – The Three Pillars of Market Eminence
Visibility, respect, and brand preference explained. - 03:12 – Market Eminence vs. Personal Branding
Why this isn’t about ego, but about impact. - 05:48 – Do You Need a Polarizing Point of View?
How to call out what’s missing, broken, or outdated in your industry. - 06:17 – Content that AI Can’t (Yet) Replace
How to think, what to believe, and how to get ready for what’s next. - 08:13 – Attracting Right-Fit Clients and Repelling the Wrong Ones
The “10-foot gate” mental model and why polarization is a feature, not a bug. - 11:19 – Internal vs. External Work of Market Eminence
Leadership decisions first, amplification tactics second. - 11:48 – The Contrarian Slant Exercise
Three questions to craft a point of view that puts you in the top 5% of your market. - 14:45 – Using ChatGPT as a Brainstorming Partner
A prompt to generate “crazy idea” headlines that attract ideal clients. - 19:09 – Radical Generosity and Giving Away Your Best Ideas
Why sharing paid content doesn’t hurt your business—it fuels it.
Insights
“The obscurity tax is the cost of doing great work in isolation. No one can buy from you if they don’t know you exist.”
“Personal branding is about elevating yourself; market eminence is about elevating your market, your industry, and the people you serve.”
“You don’t need to be the only one fixing what’s broken—but you do need to be one of the few willing to call it out.”
“Prospects aren’t paying you for information—they’re paying you for applied insight and implementation.”
“The more you treat prospects like clients, the more prospects you’ll turn into clients.”
John Jantsch (00:00.821)
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is David Newman. He's a keynote speaker, bestselling author, creator of the Selling Show podcast with over 600 speaking engagements and 30 years in the field. David works with CEOs, consultants, and expert service providers who are ready to elevate their brand and become impossible to ignore. He's been on this show to talk about do it marketing, do it speaking, maybe do it selling too. can't
or possibly today we're gonna talk about his latest book, Market Eminence, 22 Strategies to Build a Bold Personal Brand, Become a Business Celebrity and Drive Unstoppable Growth. That's a mouthful, welcome David.
David Newman (00:31.127)
I think so.
David Newman (00:46.648)
Thank you, John. Great to be back with you.
John Jantsch (00:49.587)
I found myself wanting to say marketing eminence. one of my last books, don't ask me why, but it's called The Ultimate Marketing Engine. And everybody kept saying the...
David Newman (01:03.342)
Yeah.
John Jantsch (01:10.078)
The mark that's it the ultimate marketing machine everybody I'd go on podcasts and every single one of them did it So funny, so glad to have you back
In the subtitle, is the word obscurity in the subtitle? No, but you talk a lot about obscurity being, I think in the beginning of the book, the biggest tax that most of us are paying. What's the obscurity tax and how can we avoid it?
David Newman (01:30.072)
Yes.
That's right.
David Newman (01:37.08)
So the obscurity tax is doing great work in isolation, basically dancing in the dark. So the question really for most folks watching and listening is how in the world do we get noticed? How do we get noticed? Our products, our services, our company in this crazy, super noisy AI fueled marketplace. And the answer is really three building blocks. Together they make up market eminence. But one is absolutely visibility.
So to answer your question, we need to get seen, right? That's basically no one buys products or services or expertise, sight unseen. So job number one is to get seen. Beyond that and above that, we also need to earn respect in the marketplace. And the way that we earn respect is by understanding our prospects to such a degree that they start to respect our insight and our intimacy.
with their pains, problems, heartaches, headaches, challenges, gaps, goals, aspirations, dreams, all that good stuff. And then the third component of this is brand preference. And that's simply a combination of differentiation and positioning. So it becomes risky, dangerous, and dumb to hire anyone else. And once those three components are dialed in, you are in the top 5 % of your market. And that's what the whole market eminence theme is about.
John Jantsch (03:03.647)
So as I listen to you describe that, and I know you have an answer to this, so I want to give you the opportunity to answer. How does that differ from, say, personal?
David Newman (03:12.728)
So fantastic question. And personal branding is not new. you know, frankly, many of the ideas I talk about in the book are not new. Combining them in this way around visibility, credibility, brand preference, differentiation, articulation, distinction, and doing this level of personal branding, not to bring glory to yourself. That's the key.
Personal branding is about, okay, let's put a whole bunch of stuff onto you and your company and your persona so that you're all of a sudden shiny and glitzy and wonderful. This is about rising to the top of your market so that you can impact more people, so you can help more people. So I look at personal branding as sort of the evil twin of market eminence, that personal branding is raising yourself up
Market eminence is raising your market up or raising your industry or your target demographic, raising them up. And when I say that, John, by the way, it's not just prospects. A lot of people think, well, this is a marketing strategy or it's a sales strategy. It's for prospects. This is for any stakeholder that you want to influence. This is that you have people that you want to come work for you, people that you want to have invest with you, people that you want to have bring you on their podcast. So media sources, media outlets.
This is partners, this is possible acquirers. If you want your company eventually to be bought and you're building a saleable asset, all of those people are watching what you're doing in the marketplace. And if it's all about me, me, me, me, me, right, that's the old school kind of personal branding 101, that is not attractive to any of those stakeholders. If you're looking to change the market, if you're looking to change the rules, if you're looking to
impact the trajectory of the future of all of those stakeholders and your industry and your target market that people notice and that come from is totally different than personal brand.
John Jantsch (05:22.101)
So in a lot of fields, I'm in marketing. Marketing is very competitive. There's lots of us out there. Do you have to have, you believe, and unfortunately the market perceives that, hey, you all do about the same thing. It's like, do I like you better than the other person? That's maybe my decision, right? So do you have to have some sort of polarizing, like here's what's broken in the world and I'm the only one that's fixing it.
David Newman (05:36.12)
Yes. yes.
David Newman (05:48.748)
Well, first part, yes, second part, no. Second part, we're getting into like narcissistic sociopath territory that I'm the only one that can fix it. However, you can certainly be one of the few people who sees it. But yes, to answer your question on a macro level with tremendous 1000 % enthusiasm, this is about being contrarian. This is about shifting beliefs. This is about going against the grain and calling out what is missing, funky, broken, and sad.
John Jantsch (05:53.589)
you
John Jantsch (06:00.585)
Yeah.
David Newman (06:17.344)
in your industry, with your industry practices, with the way things are commonly done. So one of the ways that we raise visibility is not just putting out content. This is very, very important. Content has been commoditized. AI can do content way better than any one of us. And the world does not need more content in the age of chat, GPT, et cetera. So what are humans good at?
What are humans gonna be visible for, at least for the near term, until AI takes over the world and the robots kill all of us? But until then, it's three different kinds of content. Number one is how to think. So it's not how-to information. How-to information has been commoditized. How to think information is about insight, high level strategic advisory insights. The second kind of content to share is what to believe.
what to believe and more importantly, what not to believe. So separating the signal from the noise, separating the myths from the truths, separating the, also separating the myths from the half truths, separating the outdated way of doing things from the current future focused way of doing things. And then the third component of the kind of content that we should be sharing is how to get ready for what's coming next. Because high level people of any kind, corporate people, entrepreneurial people,
They hate being blindsided, they hate being ambushed, they hate being surprised by something they could have seen coming down the pike and they just somehow missed it. So if we can focus our visibility strategies in those three areas, number one, how to think, not how to, but how to think. Number two, what to believe and what not to believe. Number three, how to get ready for what's coming next.
that will also elevate and separate you from all the noise out there.
John Jantsch (08:13.621)
So one of the things when you were describing kind of big picture was this idea of attracting right fit clients. what are some ways, I mean, I work with people all the time that they do have a differentiator, but they're still attracting the wrong people. So what are some of the real kind of surefire ways that you help people attract that right fit client?
David Newman (08:19.437)
yes.
David Newman (08:28.877)
Yes.
David Newman (08:34.552)
So I think you really have to double down on being polarizing and divisive. And unfortunately in this climate, when I use the words like divisive and polarizing, everyone goes to politics, red versus blue, your guy versus my guy. It is not about that. It is about alignment with your vision, with your values, with what you stand for, what you stand against. So...
John Jantsch (08:44.18)
you
John Jantsch (08:48.564)
Yeah.
David Newman (09:01.878)
When I'm either speaking or working with a group on this, this is exactly the moment, John, where I get pushed back and they say, well, so wait a second, we're going to upset some people. We're going to get some flack for this. We might not be liked. We might, we might get some negative press on this. And I said, well, I want you to think about this. Think about what if I came to with an offer and the offer is I am going to set up a 10 foot, 10 foot tall gate.
John Jantsch (09:14.439)
Okay.
David Newman (09:31.35)
around your business. The only people that we admit through this gate are your best fit. Prospects, clients, partners, investors, media sources, acquirers, that's all we let in. The gate automatically repels and keeps out all the terrible fits. The people you'd never want to do business with, the people that you would never want to partner with, the people that you would never take their money as an investor. And I sometimes go as far, John, as I say, okay, you know what?
Let's put on the whiteboard. Let's right now put on the whiteboard all the characteristics of your worst clients, your worst hires, your worst partners. And they say, lack of integrity, lack of ethics, didn't do the work. They come in late, they leave early, right? They're clock punchers. I said, okay, well, let's look at this list on the board now. How do you feel about keeping all those people out of your company and out of your world forever? And then their shoulders suddenly just melt and they go, huh.
That would be great. I say, OK, welcome to market eminence. That's exactly what it's designed to do, that the perfect fits are hyper magnetized and the terrible fits want to go anywhere else but anywhere near you.
John Jantsch (10:44.841)
You know, it's funny how often people have no prob, like if you ask them, who's an ideal client for you, they kind of stumble around a little bit, but they have no problem telling you who they don't want, right? It is pretty amazing. So a couple, and again, the subtitle of the book, 22 Strategies. I do, we were kind of kidding off air. I was going to have you list them all, but I would love to hear a couple. mean, I know you talk about speaking, publishing, podcasting.
David Newman (10:54.19)
That's right. That's right.
David Newman (11:10.648)
Sure.
John Jantsch (11:12.681)
some of the things we're doing. So I'd love to hear a few of the strategies that you really think are kind of core to this approach.
David Newman (11:19.828)
Absolutely. let me me separate out there's sort of two halves to the to the to the Apple, so to speak. The first half is the internal work that we need to do around making some leadership level decisions about who we are and who we're not and what we stand for and what we stand against and so forth. And that's really the bulk of the book is how to process that how to smartly engage with that level of thinking. The second half of the Apple is OK, now we have that.
John Jantsch (11:34.665)
Mm-hmm.
David Newman (11:48.93)
How do we amplify that? How do we magnify that and project that into the marketplace so that every pebble that we drop in the lake, the ripples start getting bigger and bigger. We start reaching more people, impacting more people and helping more people. So I'll give you a couple from part one and a couple from part two. The easiest thing that people listening right now can do is one of the chapters is about your slant, your contrarian slant.
So think about three questions. So number one, what conventional wisdom do you secretly think is completely wrong, but you've never publicly challenged? So maybe within the four walls of your company, you're like, my God, we're not doing that again. That's terrible. That never works, et cetera. But you've never said it publicly. So what conventional wisdom do you secretly think is completely wrong, but if you've never ranted and raved against it? Number two,
What harsh truth about your industry are clients desperate for someone to finally acknowledge openly? What are some of the elephants in the room in your business, in your industry with your target market when it comes to your category of product or service? And then number three, the third part of contrarian slant is what strong point of view do you already have that you already hold and believe truly that makes industry insiders uncomfortable but resonates
deeply and powerfully with your ideal clients. So if you just literally sit down for an afternoon, grab a legal pad, spend 20 minutes really digging into each of those three parts, you will end with a 60 minute block of time with a contrarian slant that's gonna put you in the top 5 % of your industry if you were to amplify it, magnify it, et cetera. And I even have a chat GPT prompt. I know it's gonna be tough for people to...
listener watch, but here's the chat GPT prompt if people want to work a little bit on this on their own. And you're going to take the flavor of this. can record, transcribe, whatever. Here's what it sounds like. Using everything you know about my, my, our methodology, training and tools, give me a series of 10 contrarian quote crazy idea headlines I can use to convey my true distinction.
David Newman (14:14.892)
differentiation and point of view. This should be polarizing, this is still in the prompt, this should be polarizing in that it strongly attracts the right clients and strongly repels the wrong clients. And then you'll get some initial output and then you can start the conversation, right? Make number seven even crazier, tone down number eight, bring more examples to number three. You will have such a fantastic time and no one's brave enough to do this, John.
It sounds super simple, but most people are scared out of their minds to even take this one baby step. I hope that folks listening and watching are not the scaredy cats.
John Jantsch (14:45.492)
Yeah.
John Jantsch (14:54.281)
Yeah, and I was going to mention, I'm glad you did mention that, because AI is tremendous at that kind of brainstorming, as long as you look at it as kind of a thought partner and not like, you're not looking for the output, you're looking for the discussion as much as anything. I was at a conference one time and we just, we mentioned this idea, we've been kind of just kicking around this idea that business owners are really tired of agencies, or at least
David Newman (15:00.909)
Yes.
David Newman (15:07.202)
Yes.
John Jantsch (15:22.803)
what traditional agencies have done or not done for them. And so we just kind of jokingly, half jokingly mentioned to somebody, yeah, we're promoting the anti-agency model. And literally three or four business owners said, we need to talk. So it's a little bit of what you're talking about. We did it kind of tongue in cheek, but it really, I mean, you got immediate feedback that that idea really piqued a challenge they were
David Newman (15:26.53)
yes.
David Newman (15:32.835)
Nice.
David Newman (15:48.354)
That's right. And that is, you know why that's great, John, all the reasons that you said, obviously, but it immediately telegraphs just with that moniker, un-agency, right? That we are against something that has been traditionally seen as the solution to fix this problem. You don't want an agency, you want the un-agency, like the uncola back in the 70s and 80s. That was 7-Up's claim to fame.
John Jantsch (15:58.591)
Yeah.
John Jantsch (16:10.431)
Yeah. Yeah.
John Jantsch (16:15.443)
What do you find when, especially talking to CEOs, marketers are probably a little more open to this kind of idea of finding a difference. Particularly when you work with CEOs, what's kind of the biggest mindset block that you have to get them past with this idea of market eminence?
David Newman (16:22.168)
Go young!
David Newman (16:35.33)
I think it really is that exercise that I mentioned a little bit ago about we're gonna piss some people off, yes. We are gonna have some conflict, we might get some hate mail around this, yes. People who thought they liked us and respected us would suddenly turn us off and unsubscribe and go away, yes. But trust me, all the right people are gonna unsubscribe. All the right people are gonna go away.
John Jantsch (16:38.591)
Yeah. Yeah.
David Newman (17:03.318)
all the right people are not gonna come back to work for you or invest with you or buy from you. know, really figuring out, figuring out what is the game that we're playing, right? So sometimes this results in niching down. Sometimes this results in opening things up to an adjacent industry that might be a little bit more, a little bit less risk averse, a little bit more.
you know, modern thinking. So people that work with old school industries sometimes realize, well, that's not who we are anymore. And I'm sorry, I stepped on your line there.
John Jantsch (17:33.841)
let's just face it, they have more money.
John Jantsch (17:41.865)
No, I was just going to say, let's face it, you're going there because they have more money.
David Newman (17:46.53)
Yes, yes, that could be true. That could be true. Funny story from a CMO standpoint. I have a friend who's a serial CMO. He doesn't intend to be fractional, but that's how it ends up, because he gets fired every 18 months. He works with banks. And I said to him, I said, what is it with you and changing jobs? He says, David, I have the worst job in the world. I'm a marketer in banking. So they're so risk averse. They want the bank presidents and CEOs
They want to look like each other. And then they wonder why are we stuck in this rate war? Why are people leaving us for an extra quarter percentage down the street? It's because you're totally commoditizing yourself by choice.
John Jantsch (18:31.145)
Yeah, I always find that really interesting that, you know, with industries are like, no, we don't do that in our industry. And it's like, then that's an opportunity is what that is. So so funny.
David Newman (18:41.11)
Amen.
John Jantsch (18:46.481)
You mentioned the slant and I did want to, think you had two other gravity and generosity. We talked about gravity attracting right fit, but we haven't really talked about this idea of generosity. And that's one that I, you know, I really want to hit on because you know, this radical sharing of everything of expertise, because a lot of people have a, have a mindset that like I'm the expert. I don't share. They pay me to share. So talk a little about that.
David Newman (18:51.638)
Yes, yes. sure.
David Newman (18:57.964)
Yes.
David Newman (19:03.565)
Yes.
David Newman (19:09.838)
Correct.
I'll expand even further on that, John. They say, I can't share that. That's how I make the big bucks or that's our secret sauce. That's our recipe. I would just point out to folks, if you go online to your favorite online bookseller, walk into your favorite independent bookstore, you will find two giant sections. One is the health and weight loss section. The other is the financial and money management section. You hundreds of books and you know, hundreds more published every year.
John Jantsch (19:18.057)
Right.
David Newman (19:42.442)
If it was in a book, we would all be tall, rich, thin, sexy, and have a full head of hair. Clearly, I can read all the books I want. This ain't coming back up here. So I want, I would challenge people that the best kind of generosity that you can give into the marketplace, whether it is in written format, audio format, podcast, webinar, I want you to take client facing content. Everyone clutch your pearls. I hope you're sitting down.
Take client facing content that you've been paid for and make that into a giveaway. Make that into a lead magnet. Make that into a special report. Do a webinar on that for free for your target market and watch what happens because people are not paying you for information. We've already talked about this in a couple of ways, right? The information is not in the books. AI can crank out endless information way faster and bigger and better than any of us.
John Jantsch (20:31.711)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
David Newman (20:39.67)
What they're paying for is applied insight and implementation of the ideas. If they could do it on their own, they already would have. So they're not gonna download your report. They're not gonna come to your webinar. They're not gonna watch your video series. But I'll tell you, the more that you treat prospects like clients, the more prospects you will get.
John Jantsch (20:46.259)
Yeah.
John Jantsch (21:04.181)
It's funny, I used to always say, especially 10, 15 years ago, people really didn't share, because we didn't have all these vehicles to share, right? Now it's become really common practice. But I used to always tell people, they don't want to know how to do it. They want to know that you know how to do it. And that's really what you're giving away, is that.
David Newman (21:20.174)
That's right.
David Newman (21:23.851)
Absolutely right.
John Jantsch (21:25.653)
So David, I appreciate you stopping by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Where would you invite people to connect with you, of course, and then find out more about Market
David Newman (21:35.118)
Sure, so the best place to connect with me, my main website is DoItMarketing and everything related to the book as far as there's all kinds of free trainings and downloads and videos and resources and worksheets that are connected to this market eminence idea that we've been talking about, that is at marketeminence.com.
John Jantsch (21:54.005)
Again, I 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.
David Newman (22:00.512)
Such a pleasure, John. Thank you.
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