Outsmarting AI: Secrets to Human-Centered Marketing

Outsmarting AI: Secrets to Human-Centered Marketing written by Jarret Redding read more at Duct Tape Marketing

The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast with Mark Schaefer

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interviewed Mark Schaefer, futurist, bestselling author, and marketing strategist, about his new book Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World. Mark is a thought leader in digital and content marketing, and in this conversation, he explores the intersection of AI marketing and what it truly means to be human in an increasingly automated landscape.

We dive deep into why human-centered marketing is more essential than ever, how shared experiences and emotional marketing can outperform cold performance metrics, and why creative branding—especially the bold and unexpected kind—is the antidote to the AI-generated noise. If you’re wondering how your business can stand out in the age of AI and shifting consumer behavior, this conversation is for you.

Key Takeaways:

• Human-centered marketing is the competitive edge in the AI era. While AI marketing tools are powerful, they can’t replicate genuine human connection, emotional marketing, or brand experiences built around shared values and trust.
• Performance marketing has overshadowed the soul of branding. Mark challenges the overreliance on SEO, paid ads, and automation—urging marketers to reclaim storytelling, empathy, and creativity in their strategy.
• Experiential marketing is key to creating emotional resonance. Mark emphasizes the need for shared experiences—both online and offline—that tap into what he calls collective effervescence, a psychological state where people feel connected, inspired, and part of something bigger.
• Word-of-mouth marketing remains massively underutilized. Despite being one of the most trusted forms of promotion, most brands don’t budget for it. Building communities and customer advocacy should be a core part of any marketing strategy.
• In a world of sameness, be audacious. Whether it’s creative branding or marketing disruption, Mark argues that the brands who dare to be bold—sometimes even weird—win attention and loyalty. AI can’t replicate originality.
• Consumer behavior has shifted—and AI is influencing it. As consumers begin using AI to filter content and make decisions, marketers need to deliver clarity, brevity, and emotional depth. Attention is earned, not assumed.
• Start with wrong to spark innovation. One of Mark’s most memorable tips: disrupt your thinking by flipping assumptions. Instead of optimizing the old way, ask what would happen if you did the opposite.

Chapters:

• 00:09 Introducing Mark Schaefer
• 00:59 Where Do Humans Fit in an AI Dominated World?
• 04:09 A World Without Shared Experiences
• 07:00 How to Out-Human AI
• 09:44 Embracing Every Day Awe
• 13:08 How AI is Changing Consumer Behavior
• 17:25 Story of the Book Cover
• 19:17 Start with Wrong

Duct Tape Transcript

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John Jantsch (00:00.878)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Mark Schafer. He's a futurist and the bestselling author of several influential marketing books, including the content code known and marketing rebellion. He's a marketing strategy consultant to many of the world's leading brands and acclaimed keynote speaker and a college educator. His blog Grow is one of the most acclaimed marketing blogs globally and his podcast, The Marketing Companion,

is in the top 1 % of all business shows on iTunes. But we're going to talk about his latest book today, Audacious, How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World. So Mark, welcome back to the show. You've been on several times.

MARK SCHAEFER (00:45.314)

Several times almost a regular

John Jantsch (00:47.76)

So I like to start with the title a lot of times. mean, what was kind of the genesis of that for you? Or is there something going on in the world today that says we need to be more audacious?

MARK SCHAEFER (01:02.866)

Well, you know, when I, I never have a plan or a schedule to write a book. I only write a book when I see some problem going on that I get curious about. And the problem I see today is that we're trying to discern where do humans fit in this new AI dominant world.

And we have this technology that's nipping at the heels of our skill sets, in some cases nipping at the heels of our very careers. And so I really needed to unwind and unpack where are we going to fit, where are we going to thrive. So really the main idea of this book is to explore the

Parts and by the way, I mean, I'm not sugarcoating this saying Kumbaya. It's all gonna be great. I'm saying no, no Kumbaya You know, there's some serious things going on but there are some places that really are Uniquely human and it had been somewhat overlooked in the in the marketing

sphere in the marketing portfolio, I think we've become sort of intoxicated with performance marketing. And I mean, it's important. And I'm talking about SEO and ads and optimizing, you know, our content and our ad purchases. That's very, very important. But as we've kind of overcompensated with that, we've kind of forgot about the heart and soul of marketing.

which is this human connection. And so in the book, I look at things like word of mouth marketing, which we know is really important, but I would suggest almost nobody listening to this today has a line item on their budget for word of mouth marketing. I talk about experiential marketing and this idea of shared experiences, which are the, with this lonely.

MARK SCHAEFER (03:21.826)

depressed world saying we want more shared experiences and that again is a uniquely human thing and The overarching umbrella I guess is this word, you know audacious because if you're merely competent you're vulnerable competent is ignorable and Marketing really is is I have research in the book that shows in general how dull marketing and advertising

is and there is an opportunity to like shed that skin and really ignite something a little crazy because you know the bots are coming but we still own crazy.

John Jantsch (04:05.725)

You know, how much, again, I find myself blaming the pandemic for so many things on this show when I talk about changes. And, you know, there are societal changes that I think occurred during that period that, like I sit in a restaurant now waiting on my food to come and I watched the line and stream of people who come in and pick up their to-go order and run back to their car. And I,

MARK SCHAEFER (04:20.088)

Yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (04:32.676)

That came, I think, from the pandemic, a lot of that. But I also, you know, we talk about this need for human interaction, but you almost feel like people are actually withdrawing farther by choice.

MARK SCHAEFER (04:47.134)

I agree with you. think remote working is another sort of symptom of something that occurred with the pandemic. This idea of maybe more comfort with isolation. I think the other thing is that today, each of us can be our own independent media streaming channel. So we can experience our entire world.

by ourselves through earbuds. We can stream all the movies and TV and music and books that we love. And nobody else even has ever heard of the things that we're experiencing. And that's a key idea in this book that compared to when you and I were growing up as kids, we have a world without shared experiences. You know, when I was a kid, you had to save your money for a record album.

John Jantsch (05:24.897)

News.

MARK SCHAEFER (05:45.634)

And once you got that record album, people would come over to your house to listen to it. You'd play it over and over again. You'd sing the words, you know, on the, on the liner notes. If you wanted to see a movie, you had to find somebody that had a car. You climb in the car and then you'd have pizza afterwards. And the whole thing is a social experience that is absolutely missing from an entire generation today. And they're, they're, they're, they're crying out.

John Jantsch (05:59.824)

You

MARK SCHAEFER (06:14.52)

for shared experiences. And that's something that we can add in our marketing portfolio. When you bring people together in a meaningful way, and it doesn't have to be an activation, it could even be the way you hold meetings. If you bring people together in this meaningful way, it creates some sort of electric kind of experience.

It creates this thing called collective effervescence. It's this emotional contagion of awe. It's everyday awe of being with people and creating something new. And I think that is one of the most overlooked opportunities in marketing today.

John Jantsch (07:02.872)

One of the core ideas of the book is that we have to think about out humaning AI. Did I say that right? So how do we do that? I mean, it's not through IQ. So how do we do that?

MARK SCHAEFER (07:09.698)

Yeah.

MARK SCHAEFER (07:19.244)

Yeah. mean, isn't that weird that when you think about it, that this is the first time in history where a technology has come along and we can't take another class to transcend it. Right. I mean, we're not going to be smarter than AI. And so, you know, the idea behind the book is one of the biggest issues. Well, it's the biggest issue for any business today or any marketing

John Jantsch (07:30.384)

Right.

MARK SCHAEFER (07:49.038)

professional today is how is awareness. How do we stand out as the signal against the noise? And again, you know, AI is, is making that even worse because there it's like an endless infinite noise. So, so how, what can we do? And what I did, John, is I got to meet the greatest creatives in the world. And there's a story in the book is kind of like,

John Jantsch (08:00.95)

Just make a little noise.

MARK SCHAEFER (08:18.296)

how I started down this path and one door open and another door open. And it was just incredible gift, this amazing experience. And I got to learn what are the patterns? Is there something we can learn from their success that's scalable to every business? And what I found is that there is. So your marketing message, the story that you tell the world has three parts.

It's the story, the narrative, it's where we tell it, and it's who tells it. Now, what if we disrupted one of those things? We would be doing something that AI isn't really thinking about right now. mean, AI is looking at the whole world and kind of giving you the best average answer of everything that's happened in the past. But if you disrupt it,

John Jantsch (09:06.874)

Trying to average it.

MARK SCHAEFER (09:15.808)

and do something unexpected. Now you are moving toward a path where you're going to stand out. And so the book is full of case studies, full of prompts, big companies, small companies, big budgets, no budgets, nonprofits. So there's something in there for everybody to sort of like explore these patterns and apply it.

to a business or an organization of any size.

John Jantsch (09:47.536)

Give me an example, if you can think of one off the top of your head, of how a company or a brand can really embrace this idea of everyday awe.

MARK SCHAEFER (09:56.91)

every day off. Well, the example that I think is most relevant and personal to me, and I think this would be relevant to anybody, is so I hold a marketing retreat every year called The Uprising. And the problem I solve with this is, as you know, I used to this event called Social Slam. You were there. And I mean, I was having 600, 700 people

John Jantsch (10:21.486)

Mm-hmm. Yep.

MARK SCHAEFER (10:27.03)

And it was just a blur and it was stressful and I didn't like it. So I created this new event some years later. It's limited to 30 people. So it's intimate. And we're talking about our relevance in the future of marketing. Now I put my heart and soul into this and I think I did a good job. But when I got the feedback of the event, people told me something completely unexpected. They said this

was life-changing. I thought, what? What? Life-changing? mean, isn't that a little heavy? But I heard this over and over again. And I never really had an explanation until I connected the dots with this idea of collective effervescence. So in this group, these 30 people, we hike together in the woods. We eat together, gourmet food, and we

Actually, it's shared family style, right? We create every single moment is created to heighten interaction, to build on ideas. And as I read this idea of collective effervescence, I got this from this book called Awe by social psychologist, Dacher Keltner. And all of a sudden, OK, wait a minute.

That's the difference. It's this intimacy. It's this emotional contagion that's happening at my event that makes it unlike anything else. And so my marketing plan is add more awe. So it's like, how do I do it even better? How do I create even more of these magical moments that create

you know, new ideas and epiphanies in the people that are there. Just the pure joy of listening to music or, you know, singing together or something like that. you know, what, what can I do to even add more off? That's the marketing plan for my event. And so I challenge people in the book, you know, think about what you can do with your customer interactions, with your meetings.

MARK SCHAEFER (12:55.084)

With customer events, what if your marketing plan was add more off? How would that change the dynamic and make you into something different, something conversational, something unmissable, which is what we need to do today?

John Jantsch (13:13.552)

And the lesson of course for that is, I that's the brand people want to gravitate towards, right? And I think that one of the things that, you know, everybody talks about this platform or this new tool or this new technology and how marketing has changed. But I've felt for the last 10 years, the way people buy has changed more. And that that's what we ought to be paying more attention to. And I think that that's going to even be

More relevant, you know, because they're able, you know, think about how they could cut through all of the noise. Like they can take our 50 page ebook and say, give me the four. They can consume with AI as well as we can produce with AI. I think that that gives them even more leverage to only interact with brands that as you say, create every day off.

MARK SCHAEFER (14:02.242)

Yeah. And that's an extraordinary point that is quite profound, John, is that, you know, a lot of the conversations out there, a lot of the content out there is about how AI is changing our business and changing our workflow. It's creating a lot of new tools to perhaps unleash creativity. But we also need to be thinking about exactly what you're saying is that AI is also changing consumer behavior.

It's changing how it's going to consume our content. It's going to change how people make decisions. Because generally speaking, people don't want to do the work. They're averse to deep thinking. And so they're going to abdicate that in many cases to AI. I think the idea of truth is going to be sort of mixed up. And we may be turning AI to AI.

John Jantsch (14:31.472)

100%.

John Jantsch (14:47.172)

Yeah.

MARK SCHAEFER (15:00.846)

you know, to truth. So I think that's a very, it's a big idea and certainly a worthy conversation about how AI is going to be.

John Jantsch (15:09.102)

Well, why don't we just collaborate on another book, Mark, you and I will write that book. Well, let's write that book.

MARK SCHAEFER (15:12.494)

We should, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's do it. Let's do it.

John Jantsch (15:16.752)

Well, I saw some research the other day and they were talking about, just a year ago, you know, how people were using AI, you know, what, what, what was the biggest use case, right? So producing content stuff you'd, you'd think, and that already in 2025, the fastest growing way that people are using AI is as a companion. yeah. And therapy. so, so that behavior that you're talking about is happening and it will drive so much.

MARK SCHAEFER (15:26.786)

Yeah. Yeah.

MARK SCHAEFER (15:36.504)

Therapy. Yeah. Yeah.

MARK SCHAEFER (15:43.116)

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that I saw that same study and it was sort of jaw dropping. And it's funny because the day after I saw that study, I did a podcast episode with one of my co-hosts and it was kind of a strange episode about how do you keep working? How do you keep leading a business when you're suffering? And so my co-hosts

John Jantsch (15:51.407)

Yeah.

MARK SCHAEFER (16:13.142)

relies on AI as a therapist. She's actually built like custom GPTs to encourage her and counsel her when she's suffering. I thought, wow, that is something else. I mean, that is really, I mean, okay, well, it's working for her.

John Jantsch (16:34.8)

Well, you know, the right AI bot's probably got a lot of licenses.

MARK SCHAEFER (16:43.256)

Well, and again, this also points to, again, the changes in consumer behavior, because think about it, there's also this emerging preference for AI, let's call synthetic relationships. And I think this research about the therapy is sort of a leading indicator of that.

John Jantsch (17:02.746)

Bye.

MARK SCHAEFER (17:10.208)

is that you can be in a relationship with this entity that always tells you the right thing. There's no compromise. You don't really have to work on the relationship. you know, wow, I mean, what are the implications of that going to be?

John Jantsch (17:17.296)

Yeah,

John Jantsch (17:25.808)

Yeah. Or worse always tells you what you want to hear, which is, becomes an enabler rather than a therapist. So, so there are many, many ideas in this book that, uh, that we're not going to get to, um, because I want to veer off to like a really goofy thing that you did. Um, and, and that's the cover. Um, so, so talk a little bit. mean, it, it's obviously very on brand with the book, but, but.

MARK SCHAEFER (17:29.592)

Yeah.

MARK SCHAEFER (17:33.974)

Yeah. Yeah.

MARK SCHAEFER (17:47.687)

right.

John Jantsch (17:54.011)

explain the concept behind the cover.

MARK SCHAEFER (17:56.802)

Well, this is a first in the world book and I'm very proud of it actually because it sort of demonstrates the ideas in the book. And it demonstrates it in a powerful way because if you think about books have been published the same way for 200 years, it's almost impossible to disrupt a book. Believe me, I've tried. so this book, the cover of the book is a QR code. And what we did is,

John Jantsch (18:02.542)

Right.

John Jantsch (18:27.248)

For the video audience.

MARK SCHAEFER (18:27.306)

I uploaded. yeah, awesome. I uploaded the the book to a eye and uploaded some sort of generic art samples and a is generating. Abstract art interpretations of the stories in the book. So when you hover over the cover, it creates new covers endlessly.

based on the stories in the book. And we're actually updating it every week. So there's more and more stories that are possibilities for the cover. And people love it. It is different. And if you think about it, it's disrupted the story. It's disrupted where the story is told. It's disrupting who's telling the story. It's not even a human. And I'm getting feedback, that even children love

playing with the pictures on the book. So, yeah, so I'm very proud of that. And yeah, thanks for mentioning it.

John Jantsch (19:35.296)

You bet. let's wrap up today with like, if I'm listening to this and I'm thinking I need to do, I need to disrupt the narrative. What are like, what's like the, you know, everybody wants the, me the one thing I have to do. What's the one, two, three steps somebody ought to be doing right now to say, how do get ready for this?

MARK SCHAEFER (19:43.086)

Yeah.

MARK SCHAEFER (19:56.302)

Well, the one constant I saw in a lot of the creative thinking behind it is to start with wrong. And if you just sort of like think about iterating or changing a little bit, it doesn't really lead to creative thinking. And some of the best creative thinking comes from, let's flip the script and just look at what if everything was just wrong?

I I think the opportunity is this. If you look at most markets today, they're just dull. They're waiting to be disrupted. Every car commercial is the same. know, pizza, know, pizza is supposed to be fun and creative and the celebration. What's the most creative thing going on in pizza? In America, we have this ad, nobody out pizzas the hut. What in the world does that mean? Can't you do better than that? So look at, start with wrong.

That's where we got this US brand, Liquid Death. The number one lesson I ever learned in marketing class, never associate your brand with death, right? I mean, I encourage you to go to YouTube and Google some of their ads. They're shocking. They make you cringe. I actually was going to show an ad, one of their ads at a conference and it was turned down. They said, we can't show that. And it's a public ad.

John Jantsch (21:25.626)

Yeah.

MARK SCHAEFER (21:25.718)

Now, the guy who started that was not obsessed with water. He was obsessed with this idea of disrupting the market. And almost every market can be disrupted today because it's so boring, especially in B2B. So that would be one idea. But the book is filled with so many ideas. But that was definitely a common theme I heard in my research.

John Jantsch (21:46.735)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (21:53.87)

Yeah, yeah, I laugh. My kids love like, you know, their refrigerators are full of liquid death. I'm like.

MARK SCHAEFER (21:59.918)

It's just water!

John Jantsch (22:02.946)

Water! But I will say, you know, I mean, the message there is, you know, it's the brand. It's a connection to the brand. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, Mark, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Is there anywhere you'd invite people to connect with you and find out more about Audacious?

MARK SCHAEFER (22:12.814)

Fastest growing beverage brand in America. Yeah.

MARK SCHAEFER (22:26.282)

easy to find me. All you have to remember is businesses grow. That is my website. You can find my blog, my podcast, and my social media connections and the book we talked about today, Audacious, How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World.

John Jantsch (22:43.726)

Yeah, and it's Schaeffer with one A, two Es and one F. I mean, I have to look it up every time. I'm sorry. There's so many ways to spell Schaeffer.

MARK SCHAEFER (22:48.844)

Yeah. Well, the other day I was checking into a hotel. I said, name is Mark with a K. She said, your name is Cark?

MARK SCHAEFER (23:01.72)

So nobody can sell Mark, let alone Schaefer. So don't confuse him, John. Just go to Businesses Grow.

John Jantsch (23:08.088)

Okay. All right. Awesome. Again, it's so great to see you, my friend, and hopefully we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

MARK SCHAEFER (23:15.31)

Thank you, John.

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How to Think Strategically About AI Tools

How to Think Strategically About AI Tools written by Jarret Redding read more at Duct Tape Marketing

The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast with Dan Sanchez

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interviewed Dan Sanchez, an AI marketer, consultant, and the creator behind AI-Driven Marketer. Dan has a deep passion for exploring how artificial intelligence can be used not just for automation, but as a co-pilot in crafting better strategies, solving complex business challenges, and enhancing marketing productivity.

During our conversation, Dan shared powerful insights on how AI is transforming the role of marketers and why approaching AI with a clear strategic mindset is more essential than ever. We explored the pitfalls of chasing the newest shiny tool and instead emphasized focusing on core business problems where AI can truly add value. Whether you’re overwhelmed by the flood of new tools or just starting out, Dan’s advice is rooted in the philosophy of strategy before technology—an ethos that’s been central to Duct Tape Marketing for over two decades.

Dan’s grounded approach to integrating artificial intelligence into marketing underscores the importance of being intentional and strategic. Rather than seeing AI as a threat or a gimmick, marketers can embrace it as a powerful tool to elevate their impact and performance.

Key Takeaways:

• Start with strategy, not tools. Focus on identifying bottlenecks in your business processes before selecting any AI tools.

• Use AI as a thinking partner. Tools like ChatGPT can enhance strategic thinking, not just content creation.

• Go deep, not wide. Master one tool—like ChatGPT or Claude—instead of juggling a dozen, to get real value from AI in marketing.

• Deep research is underutilized. Tools that simulate 20–40 hours of human research can drastically improve marketing strategy and productivity.

• AI can reshape problem-solving. Learn to prompt AI effectively to assist with everything from competitive analysis to content ideation.

• Stay focused, not overwhelmed. You don’t need to be an early adopter of every tool—start with meaningful experiments and scale from there.

• AI will shift marketing roles. Embracing AI skills will be key to thriving in the future of marketing and business growth.

Chapters:

• 00:09 Introducing Dan Sanchez
• 01:57 Approaching AI Strategically
• 04:04 Creating New Things with AI
• 06:36 Evolution of AI Prompting
• 08:50 Humans Changing Role in Marketing
• 11:38 Developing Skills vs Delegating Tasks
• 13:51 AI Agents Affect on Marketing
• 17:50 Advice on Using Deep Research

More About Dan Sanchez: 

• Check out Dan Sanchez’s Website
• Connect with Dan Sanchez on LinkedIn

Duct Tape Transcript

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Sara Nay (00:01.468)

Hello and welcome to the duct tape marketing podcast. This is your host, Sara and a today I'm stepping in for John Jance and I have a guest on the show, Dan Sanchez. So Dan is an AI marketer, consultant and creator with a passion of diving into the latest tech innovations. He specializes in developing cutting edge marketing strategies that leverage AI to enhance customer engagement and drive business growth. So welcome to the show, Dan.

Danchez (00:27.64)

Thanks for having me on, Sarah.

Sara Nay (00:28.978)

Of course, I'm excited to talk to you today. We first connected on LinkedIn because you had been posting about AI and thinking strategically about AI and speaking to marketers directly, which all of that resonates with me. But when I reached out to you, I was commenting about one of your posts and I'm just curious, do you remember what you said in response to my initial message to you? No, I put you on the spot.

Danchez (00:48.364)

I don't. If we're talking about the comments, I'm like, I don't know. I comment, I mean, I'm dropping 200 comments a day or a week on LinkedIn. And so they all blur together sometimes and I'm like, I don't know what I said, when I said it.

Sara Nay (00:56.36)

I'm sure.

No worries. Well, I sent you a direct message and you talked about how duct tape marketing was one of the initial blogs that you were following back when RSS feeds were a thing.

Danchez (01:02.882)

or the direct message. Yes, no.

That's right. It was Copy Blogger, Duct Tape Marketing, and Seth Godin were the three. I was transitioning from graphic design to being a marketer, and a marketing kind of mentor to me. He's like, hey, back when RSS was a thing too, he's like, go to create a Google feed account and subscribe to these three blogs. You need to read them every day. And so I did for a very long time.

Sara Nay (01:29.33)

I love it. just brought that up because I think it's very interesting. Like you've obviously been in the marketing space for a while now talking about RSS and original blogs. And now today the focus of this conversation is going to be all about AI. And so it's just interesting to think about the evolution that we've had over the last several years and the pace of the evolution that we're going through right now with all things AI. Well, great.

And that's what I want to dive into deeper. I've noticed through your posts and the content that you're putting out, you're talking a lot about approaching AI strategically to avoid overwhelm. at Duct Tape Marketing, we've been saying strategy before tactics for 20 years now. At this point, we're saying strategy before technology because you need to have a solid strategy in place. But I would love to open that up to you. How are you advising because it can be overwhelming with all the tools that are being developed and all the

the stuff that's being put out there on AI. So how do you advise people to approach the world of AI strategically?

Danchez (02:24.27)

You know, there's a couple different approaches, but it's funny because I just got a DM yesterday and it was like, hey man, heard you did a talk on the 25 new tools for AI in your session recently. What tools should I use? And I was like, I don't know, what problems are you facing? It's kind of like that whole strategy thing. It's kind of like, well, there's lots of tools. They can do lots of stuff. And there's some general purpose tools that can cover a lot of different things.

Sara Nay (02:44.892)

Yeah.

Danchez (02:51.822)

But what's the core obstacle you're running into your business with right now? Where's the choke point for your systems? What's causing you pain on a daily or weekly basis? Because those are the things I want to look for first as a consultant and see how AI might be able to help that. It's funny because a lot of times people actually don't need AI, they just need clarity and a strategic focus set. But I do find that AI is changing the game because it's allowing us

Sara Nay (03:00.774)

Yeah.

Danchez (03:20.982)

not only to automate and do things faster or even better, but it's helping us think better and more strategically if you kind of know how to use it as a co-pilot. So that's the first thing I'm kind of trying to help people understand is like this thing becomes a very good strategy thinking partner. Even if you can kind of, you just kind of have to give it a start. It's not going to proactively come after you and be like, Hey, so what's your plan for this? Hey, what's your strategy? Hey, what were you thinking here? But if you proactively ask it for feedback,

Sara Nay (03:26.93)

Mm.

Danchez (03:48.608)

or for considerations or ask questions that it can ask you and then give you feedback on, it's amazing how much more strategically you can think when you start using AI as a co-pilot.

Sara Nay (04:00.528)

Yeah, absolutely. And that was one of my early aha moments with AI is at first I was just using it or thinking about it as like a content creation tool. was thinking of it as something that like helps take stuff off my plate. But when I shifted to thinking of it as a thought partner and started using it in my strategic thinking and planning, like that's where my view on what AI can do completely changed. And I know you have a story that you talk about one of your early on experiences with chat, GBT, I think you call it your Mediterranean ice cream moment. Do you mind explaining what that experience was for you?

Danchez (04:26.838)

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it's when ChatGPT first came out. I'd been a huge skeptic of AI before ChatGPT came out. I'd seen some of the early pre-ChatGPT stuff like Jarvis, which was using its 2.5 API ChatGPTs back then. It was like a copywriting tool and I was like, okay, it's starting to get things. But when ChatGPT launched, it woke everybody up, including me. And I remember sitting there and being like, well, is this thing just really good at regurgitating?

You know, is it like, because remember before we had like Drift, you know, an AI chat bot and we had Intercom and like they were all pretty bad. None of them were good. So I was like, you know, can this come up with original ideas? Most original ideas are usually a combining of two different things that don't normally come together. And humans do it all the time to come up with new ideas. So was like, well, let's find something that doesn't exist on the internet and just ask for it to create something. So I figured recipes would be hard because I'm like, well, that's a whole different dimension. It's got to understand taste and

recipe and how things come together in order to form new flavors. That's pretty tough. And then I went searching, I'm like, what's a recipe that doesn't exist? So I just picked out two random flavors. I was like ice cream Mediterranean. I went and Google searched it. Could not find it. And then search and said, hey, make me a recipe for Mediterranean ice cream. And it punched out a bunch of ingredients. was like, you know what? This would actually work. And that's when I realized, I'm like, it has the ability to come up with new things.

If you're willing to guide it direct it and that changed everything for me because that was the missing piece That's what to me made it artificial intelligence is it was able to actually think through and come up with a very Kind of elaborate thing because making recipes is kind of hard if you're not pretty familiar with it And that was that was a big unlock for me

Sara Nay (06:07.035)

Yeah.

Sara Nay (06:10.812)

Did you try the recipe? Did you actually taste the ice cream?

Danchez (06:13.125)

No, no, no, I did not make the ice cream, but I remember looking at the ingredient list and thinking like that was workable. I wonder what else this can do. And then I moved on and started knocking out other ones, but that was the first big one. I was like, ah, this isn't just delivering something back. This isn't just summarizing what it's found. You can mash up new things with this together.

Sara Nay (06:19.3)

Yeah.

Sara Nay (06:32.038)

Yeah, that's great. Recently we have these big bushes in our backyard and they've been bothering us for years, but not enough to actually do something about it. And we finally decided to rip them out. And before like, I would have had to like go to gardening stores and figure out what to plant and like talk to a number of people and spend all this time like designing. But instead I took a picture and I put it into chat GPT and I asked like, you know, we're in Boise, Idaho and this full sun and all the things that I needed to know.

Danchez (06:57.485)

Yeah.

Sara Nay (07:00.254)

And I ended up like designing this whole space of plants to put in that, in that place. And while I was going through that experience, I had an aha moment of like my role, like problem solving has completely changed. Like how I go about problem solving is different because now what I need to get really good at is prompting AI to help me solve problems and to push it for like further and to redirect things versus before, you know, I was going out and doing all that stuff manually.

And so that was an example of just like an aha moment of like how I solve problems is completely different than it used to be.

Danchez (07:34.734)

you actually don't need to learn how to prompt AI as much as you'd think anymore. The AI models before you did because it was a little squirrely. Kind of like if you've done AI video right now, currently that is very squirrely, right? You try to prompt it and it's like, it's all over the place and the characters are disappearing and reappear and you're like, my gosh, I got to really hone this thing and get what I want. But it was like that in the beginning. Like it couldn't go that far without going off the rails in some way back in like 3.5 and early for chat GPT-4.

Sara Nay (07:43.196)

Yeah.

Danchez (08:03.182)

But nowadays it's gotten so good at anticipating what you want that I just talk to it like it's a person. I'm like, Hey, chat, you put interesting question for you. My dishwasher is not working and I've already tried to troubleshoot it through some YouTube videos, but it's just not working. here's, here's what I'm seeing. And here's what's happening. It's turning on, but it's flooding with water, but things aren't getting cleaned. I don't hear it running and it'll just start asking you questions and you just have.

Sara Nay (08:09.777)

Yeah.

Danchez (08:28.652)

dialogue with it, almost like it's an expert in your pocket. You can call up any time. And I was using the voice model as talking to it. but I find I'm doing it with like that all the time, whether I'm assessing my own strategic position in the market, whether I'm just asking to come up with a LinkedIn post. I'm just talking to it like it's an assistant that I just need to give us enough context in order to carry out the task.

Sara Nay (08:34.311)

Yeah.

Sara Nay (08:49.904)

Yeah, that's a great point. I've definitely seen it's improved drastically over the last year, I would say, in terms of not having to engineer as much with the prompting. I'm curious, we haven't shifted too much into the conversation of marketers. And so there's lot of unknown in a lot of industries, but marketing is obviously being deeply impacted. And you had a great LinkedIn post that went out this week that I saw about AI tools are potentially going to replace humans in the future. And so I would just love to hear your take on

To the marketers that are listening to this, what do they need to be thinking of moving forward in their roles as marketers? Is there an opportunity to evolve and shift? Or what do you recommend for those that are feeling a little bit uncertain about the industry that we're in right now?

Danchez (09:33.036)

There is a lot of uncertainty. And I tried to think about the uncertainty in scenario planning methods, where it's like, OK, let's say it is like we're going to lose 90 % of marketing jobs. You're like, well, who are the 10 % that do have jobs? And what do I need to be in that 10 %? So I think about it like that. But I think about on the other side, let's say this is going to be like every other technology revolution. Well, there's going to be a whole ton of new jobs that exist.

Sara Nay (09:34.695)

Yeah.

Danchez (10:01.09)

What's gonna be in those new jobs? Well, they're probably all gonna be AI driven. So in either scenario, it's probably going to be who's me to become AI driven, right? And it's probably gonna land somewhere in between. It's probably not gonna be like this glorious thing. There's probably gonna be good, there's gonna be bad, there's gonna be some loss on some side. I did recently post because a lot of people, there's been this trending topic on LinkedIn that I really had an epiphany. like, you know, it's not gonna be all that.

Kind of like this idea that like human first is going to be the one that powers it. Like AI frees us up to do the more human things. And I'm like, that be true. There will certainly be a place where a lot of companies lean into being more human, more service oriented. And those will be great and they'll win. There will be a whole nother set of businesses that win from just being more fully automated because somehow through AI, they create systems that deliver more value at just a much lower price. And you know what people, a lot of people will do that.

Like it used to be that you'd have a tax filer help you file your taxes and almost everybody's using TurboTax now, right? Unless you have a company in some kind of more complicated tax situation and you are hiring a CPA, but I'd still be even a little nervous to be a CPA right now, unless you're like a really good one, you know? So I think a lot of businesses will be automated and there'll be people that go into the whole all human thing and the cost difference between the two will probably be pretty dramatic, but there will be a lot of ways to win. But I think...

Sara Nay (10:57.607)

Yeah.

Sara Nay (11:11.824)

Yeah. Yeah.

Danchez (11:25.89)

What will help the most is trying to figure out what different paths will happen in the future and then finding the common denominator around them. The common denominator I'm seeing is that AI skills are going to be a big piece of it.

Sara Nay (11:39.952)

Yeah, absolutely. I heard someone talk recently about if you're a marketer, really anyone in a role is basically writing down everything that you're working on on a regular basis and then doing a bit of audit on that work saying, like, is this increasing in value because of AI? Is this decreasing in value because of AI or is this staying consistent moving forward? And so if you thought about anything like that, auditing your time and your skill sets to see what you should continue to leverage and grow on versus maybe start delegating the different tools and solutions.

Danchez (12:09.336)

For me, it's probably a little harder because I'm an AI educator. like I, I, for my job, I literally get to waste some time experimenting and using these things so that I can report on whether it's actually helpful or not. I find the process of auditing on a regular basis to be pretty burdensome. I'm like, like, I wish I would just like audit my days more. In fact, I've even thought about going into making a project in chat GPT to be like,

Sara Nay (12:12.294)

Yeah.

Sara Nay (12:28.144)

Yeah. Yeah.

Danchez (12:36.642)

here's what I thought I would get done, here's what I didn't get done, here's some extra stuff and just dictate into it real quick to kind of keep like a daily journal and kind of a little bit of a coach. It's gotten way better at that recently. But it's, I don't know, I don't think I would do that. I think on larger projects, I think it's really helpful, especially if you can bring some of that data back into AI because it's learning now and can remember things across different chats now and it will get better over time. I think that will become a strategic advantage. But yeah, I...

for anything new in businesses, you do have to start small and kind of test your way there. I will say it is probably like, there's enough effort and a momentum in society going towards AI, especially with businesses right now that I promise it's worth at least just going deep into chat GPT. It's the main one. And I heard somebody say even recently like, like I know chat GPT, but like I want to go beyond beginner. And I'm like, no, like trust me, all the pros are using chat GPT too.

Sara Nay (13:08.764)

Yeah.

Sara Nay (13:29.308)

Hmm.

Danchez (13:31.958)

Like if anything, they're only spending more time in that tool because they're finding it more and increasingly valuable. Just don't waste time learning all the tools. Like literally learn that one. And then if you have time and you have a need, start learning some of the other ones. But time spent learning how to leverage Chat GPT specifically. And if you like Claude, go with Claude or Jim and I. Like pick one of the main ones and then just hone in that one craft in order to make the most of it.

Sara Nay (13:58.074)

Yeah, that's how my brain works with it all as well. Like I've gone all in on chat, GBT, and that's where I typically live every day. but I know other people out there, they're like, I use this for this, this for this. And I'm like, how do you have time for all of those things? Like I have to go deep in one to actually be able to use it to some of its potential versus, know, going through all the different tools. So I think that's great advice. I'm curious, I'm part of a mastermind and AI mastermind. And were talking last week about how

Danchez (14:09.442)

Yeah, I don't know.

Sara Nay (14:24.614)

websites and marketing in general is going to have to shift because of the AI agents world. Where right now we're designing websites for humans and ads for humans and eventually, you know, it might be agents going to these different websites to make buying decisions for their people. And so have you thought or talked much about how marketing might shift in the next, I would say six months to a year with the idea of agents becoming more of a thing or more of a focus?

Danchez (14:52.13)

Yeah, I've thought about it a lot. I don't think it's going to change much in the next six months. AI agents, in my opinion, they're just not a thing right now for the most part. we're calling, what most agents are, or what are labeled as agents, they're not agents. There's a few exceptions, and I'll talk about those in a second, but most agents are what I'm calling intelligent automation. They are just automated sequences, like we had before with marketing automation, know, like the little drag and drop builders. They're just that.

Sara Nay (15:00.455)

Yeah.

Sara Nay (15:13.906)

Mm.

Sara Nay (15:18.257)

Yep.

Danchez (15:20.086)

with one of the modules being ChatGBT. That's it. Some of them are slightly more sophisticated because you're giving a little bit of autonomy to AI to choose between a few different tools and maybe it's not injecting a prompt, it's actually got access to a database. that's starting to feel more agentic, but it's not like this fully autonomous thing that can go out shopping for us. It's just not. Now there's some precursor tools out there that you're like, that's definitely agent-ish.

but they're not good yet. OpenAI has operator baked into chat GPT. You gotta pay the $200 a month license to get access to it. It doesn't work well. Manus is the big one people are talking about from China. It also doesn't work well. There's just too many holes in the system. It maxes out too often because the server space isn't ready. The memory isn't ready. We have all the ingredients to make agents right now, but we're still...

The cost of compute needs to come down a little bit. The context window needs to go up a little bit. We need to be able to give it more access to more things. know, all these, there's a lot of talk right now about giving it access to like, Google just launched its agent to agent framework so that it can interface, different tools can interface. Agents can work with other agents from other tools. You know, like these kinds of standards and models have to be developed to create the infrastructure for it to happen. Right now, it's not happening. The one agent that I've seen that is actually good,

It's agentic and it's worth, it's like one of the most underutilized AI features out there right now is deep research. It is going and doing a lot of work. And I love it. The more I use it, the more I fall in love with it. If you're a chat GPT user now, you're paying for plus and you're not using all 10 of the instances of that you get every single month. You haven't figured it out yet. I promise the best advice I give is like upgrade just for one month, upgrade to the $200 a month one. So you can get 120 instances of it.

Sara Nay (16:49.744)

Yes.

Danchez (17:12.462)

and just throw everything you can at it, practice at it. You get 120 of them, like throw away things at it and just try it. It's different than using chat GPT because it's going and doing like 20 to 40 hours worth of human work for you, which means you kind of, like I said, prompting wasn't good a minute ago, but for deep research, prompting actually is more strategic because it's less of a prompt and more of like a mini project charter if you think about it.

Sara Nay (17:18.545)

Yeah.

Sara Nay (17:36.294)

Mm-hmm.

Danchez (17:37.676)

you kind of need to put some barriers on like where you want it to go, what you want it to do, what you want it to accomplish, where you want it to not go before you give it 40 hours of work. Even though it's doing it in 20 minutes, you got to remember these reports are so sophisticated. You're like, that would have taken a human a long time. But that's the most agentic thing that I've seen out there. That's remarkably good right now.

Sara Nay (17:46.649)

Yeah, yeah.

Sara Nay (18:00.004)

Yeah, I use deep research a lot for things like competitive research if we're working with a client or if I'm creating a new presentation and I want some data to like back it up, I'll have it create initial research to put together that. I'm curious, do you have any other examples of how people might start wrapping their head around using deep research?

Danchez (18:18.796)

out a few. There's one prompt that I fell in love with and it went like super viral on LinkedIn. It's like my most viral post to date was a deep research prompt and it's really useful. So it is, I will give it to you to script out. I'm not going to read the whole thing because it's kind of long, but I'll give it to you. You can put it in the show notes, okay? But it's essentially a prompt that goes and collects all the questions your audience is asking about your expertise, okay? And it goes and searches Reddit.

Quora, forums, and social to go and find them all and then organize them into categories and then rank stack them so that you can get at a glance, what are the most frequently asked questions your audience is asking about the thing that you do or the thing that you sell, whatever category that is. And that's just so helpful to see. And it actually like not only rank stacks it, but actually gives you a header for each one and then put bullet points of the exact how they're wording the questions with the link to the source so you can spot check it.

It's so helpful because as a content marketer, it's a lot of things are still done by content, right? Like that's like my planning path. I don't, I used to have to just have a lot of conversations on social or put out polls or just talk to a lot of customers. Now I can just extract it from the internet in 15 minutes and have a pretty dang good path of like what I need to be talking about on social or on podcasts or blogs.

Sara Nay (19:42.226)

That's amazing. It was a great example. We've, this isn't a deep research thing, but it's chat GPT thing. We've started recording a lot of our sales calls and that's just been really great content to put into GPT as well to analyze not only from a, can our sales team be doing better, but also a marketing content perspective, because now we're capturing exactly, as you said, exactly how prospects phrase certain pain points and things they're struggling with. And then we're able to create marketing content that speaks directly to them moving forward.

So I love that example. All right, Dan. Yeah, give me one more. Give me one more.

Danchez (20:13.922)

I got one more for deep research, unless you want to wrap up. Because the deep research prompts are a little bit more sophisticated, something I've started doing is if I want to use a deep research prompt to dive deep, and maybe I'm thinking about launching a new product, or I'm about to do something big, and I don't want to just do it willy nilly, I want to have a substantial conversation with AI about it, I will start it off in 4.0, just talk about, hey, this is what I want to accomplish. Help me build a prompt that would do really well in Chet GPT's deep research.

ask me some questions. This takes time. I'll tell it generally what I'm going after. It'll ask me some questions, get clarity. It'll craft the prompt. Then I'll switch it to the O1 Pro model within that same window or the O1 thinking model. And then on deep research, I'm like, hey, that prompt above, go and do your thing. It's like, because it's already crafted the prompt for me. Then it'll go do the deep research, come back with the refindings. I'll read it and switch it back to 4.0 or maybe even a different thinking model.

Sara Nay (21:02.556)

Go do it. Yeah.

Danchez (21:12.238)

depending on what you're going after, and then have a conversation about the research and pick it apart. But now it's got this like big research report in there that then you can have a conversation with AI to be like, okay, well, it looks like this, like, what do you think? And then you can have a conversation and dialogue about the research, which is kind of a fun way to do it is chat GPT, deep research, and then going back to talking to chat GPT about it after the deep research report.

Sara Nay (21:15.952)

Yeah.

Sara Nay (21:36.508)

Yeah, that's really interesting because you're using it in that sense in that example as a research assistant with the deep research. And then you're going into more of the thought partner co-pilot mode when you're going into conversation. Very cool. Well, thanks, Dan. Is there anything else that you want to share before we part ways today in terms of anything on the topic of AI overwhelm and strategic thinking?

Danchez (21:43.02)

back into copilot mode. Yeah.

Danchez (21:57.294)

For anybody that's listening to this and thinking they're behind on the AI train, you're not behind. It's still very, very early. I promise. I've just got back from a conference just two weeks ago. People were asking all kinds of questions and I could tell just from the types of questions and their hunger they had that this is still extremely early. Like it is not too late. I know the hype has been crazy over the last two years, but as far as marketers actually using it in a meaningful way on a weekly or daily basis, very few. So.

It generally pays to be early on these trends, but don't be overwhelmed with trying everything. Just taking some of the things we've talked about in this episode and practicing it and finding use cases that are meaningful for you. Again, look for those daily or weekly things you use all the time and start experimenting with AI and count it and write it off as like education time rather than, I wasn't as productive as I was hoping it would be. Your first couple of swings at it are just going to take time. It took us all time to learn how to Google. It took us all time to learn how to actually write our first blog post.

It'll take you time with AI, but it's early and putting in the reps now will pay dividends later.

Sara Nay (23:00.402)

Yeah, that's great advice. I always like to think we're all learning together right now on this. We're all learning together. Well, where can people connect with you online, Dan?

Danchez (23:04.12)

That's right.

Danchez (23:08.648)

You can find my podcast wherever podcasts are, AIDrivenMarketer.com. Sorry, it's anywhere you search AIDrivenMarketer.com on any podcast app. It's also on YouTube. It's a video podcast. And LinkedIn at LinkedIn.com slash ian slash digital marketing Dan is my most active social network.

Sara Nay (23:27.026)

Awesome. Thank you so much for being here, Dan, and thank you all for listening to another episode of the Duck Tape Marketing Podcast. We will see you next time.

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Build Trust by Saying What Others Won’t

Build Trust by Saying What Others Won’t written by Jarret Redding read more at Duct Tape Marketing

The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast with Marcus Sheridan

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interviewed Marcus Sheridan, renowned speaker, author of They Ask, You Answer, and a leading voice in the world of content marketing and business transparency. Marcus built the most visited swimming pool website in the world and has delivered over 750 keynotes, including TEDx appearances. His revolutionary marketing strategy focuses on one central idea: businesses that earn trust win, and they do it by saying what others won’t.

During our conversation, Marcus unpacked core principles from his latest book, Endless Customers, including how to dominate your market by becoming a known and trusted brand. We explored how customer trust, video marketing, and self-service tools aren’t just trends—they’re necessities in today’s AI-influenced digital landscape. From debunking lazy content tactics to reimagining how businesses present pricing, Marcus delivers actionable insights that challenge conventional wisdom and demand transparency at every level of the buyer journey.

If your inbound marketing feels stale or your SEO strategies are falling flat, it might be time to rethink what you’re willing to say. As Marcus says, “The rule breakers become the rule makers.”

Key Takeaways:

• Trust is the Ultimate Marketing Strategy: Brands that openly address customer questions—especially around pricing, problems, and comparisons—earn customer trust and outperform competitors.
• The New Rules of SEO: As AI marketing tools rise and Google becomes less reliable, companies must focus on creating value-driven content and video that educates, differentiates, and converts.
• Video Content is King: A single, thoughtful video can be repurposed across your website, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook—maximizing content reach and sales conversion.
• Media Company Mindset: Businesses must think like media companies—capturing attention across platforms and repurposing content for ongoing impact.
• Self-Service Tools Drive Conversions: Tools like self-scheduling software and pricing estimators not only empower buyers but can double conversion rates by offering more control and transparency.
• Embrace Transparent Selling Techniques: The most successful businesses aren’t afraid to discuss costs, risks, and trade-offs. Honest content builds long-term loyalty.
• Content Repurposing Boosts Efficiency: One piece of content—especially in video format—can fuel multiple channels, reducing workload while expanding visibility.
• AI Can Amplify Content Strategy: Rather than fearing AI, smart businesses use it to generate customer questions, create outlines, and brainstorm unique, value-driven content ideas.

Chapters:

• [00:09] Introducing Marcus Sheridan
• [02:10] Building a Known and Trusted Brand
• [06:18] Thinking Like a Media Company
• [11:20] Using AI to Help With Promotion
• [15:25] Mitigating Risk for Customers
• [20:05] Controlling the Conversation

More About Marcus Sheridan: 

• Check out Marcus Sheridan’s Website
• Connect with Marcus Sheridan on LinkedIn
• Read Endless Customers: A Proven System to Build Trust, Drive Sales, and Become the Market Leader by Marcus Sheridan

Duct Tape Transcript

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John Jantsch (00:00.93)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Shane Murphy-Reuter. He's the president and go-to-market. I guess you just call that GTM, don't you? At Calendly, the platform helping individuals, teams, and organizations create better meeting experiences by simplifying complex scheduling. He's focused on driving brand awareness and demand by ensuring alignment between sales.

marketing and CX. So Shane, welcome to the show.

Shane Murphy-Reuter (00:32.607)

Great to be here. Yes, we shorten it to GTM, but call it whatever you want. Yeah, no, it's awesome to be your big fan of the show. So great to talk.

John Jantsch (00:41.07)

Thank you. So I'm going to talk about, I'm going to ask this question in the context of Calendly, but I think that this applies really to a lot of businesses out there. I Calendly started as a small idea of a technology for scheduling, just scheduling. And it's certainly grown to something much bigger. That's something that I think happens to a lot of companies you want to talk a little bit about. I know you're

You haven't been there from the beginning, but you want to talk a little bit about the evolution of that thinking in Calendly?

Shane Murphy-Reuter (01:13.087)

Yeah, of course. Well, I've actually only been at Calendly now, I think four months. I like to write it down, know, the expectations are lower. And so, yeah, I haven't seen the journey from inside, but actually I've known Tope for, who's the CEO of Calendly for about five or six years. You know, I've been very much watching it from the sidelines. And I would say also, if you look at my background, the companies that I tend to join are at a very similar stage to Calendly where

they've invented some new technology to solve some sort of pain point for a customer type and then have that exponential growth when they sort of like crack the market a little bit to get that product market fit. And then they start to think about, where maybe growth is starting to slow a little bit in that original market and where to go from here. And I think Calendly has been on that journey. Originally,

John Jantsch (01:51.778)

Mm-hmm.

Shane Murphy-Reuter (02:03.561)

we solved just that scheduling problem, that one problem around how do two people schedule meetings together. And it's been very, very successful. But now the question is, well, how do you extend from here? And I think a lot of companies get that wrong, frankly. Like think there's broadly two paths, right? You either take the technology that you've built and apply it to different markets.

John Jantsch (02:28.077)

Yes.

Shane Murphy-Reuter (02:28.409)

Or you take a target market or a customer segment that you have strength with with your original product and then extend the product offerings that you provide to those customers. And certainly, Canley's strategy from here and hopefully very, very soon we'll be launching our second major, major product is to really extend the products that we offer within a certain target market because we just believe there's massive opportunity there to like.

solve other points in the relationship management lifecycle for our customers. it's been, yeah, I've been here four months, but I think that the account is on like a pretty, classic journey that I've seen a lot of companies go through.

John Jantsch (03:07.394)

Do you, do you feel like you are on the journey to define a category or you have defined a category? You mentioned relationship management. I don't know that people would have applied what, what Cowan Lee initially started doing to that term. mean, do feel like you're, you're categorizing, you know, a new way of working.

Shane Murphy-Reuter (03:24.641)

It's a great question. think scheduling, our original product, we created the category, right? We are now basically the Kleenex for scheduling, which is amazing. I think the challenge though with it is different categories of different towns, right? Different total addressable markets. And I think for scheduling, it is a relatively narrow use case, right? Like it's, while it's extremely important for our customers, it's narrow, but we have this incredible hook into the customer.

John Jantsch (03:28.034)

Yeah. Right.

Shane Murphy-Reuter (03:54.753)

How can we add more? And to be fair, I think for a go-forward strategy, we think about relationship management software more generally. No, I think the new areas that we'll go into are existing categories like, I don't want to give up our product roadmap, but you can imagine the types of other relationship management softwares that are out there, like the CRMs, et cetera. I think where our unique advantage is really in the customer types that we'll go in service. And I think that we can

if we can build the software with hyper focus on kind of these SMBs and solopreneurs, I think that we can have great success relative to the incumbents that are in the market. So to answer the question more directly, I think we've done this category creation thing with scheduling and we'll continue to hopefully dominate that market. From here though, I think it's more about innovating within how we deliver in existing categories.

John Jantsch (04:52.974)

I'm sure you maybe talk about this in closed door meetings, maybe worry about it even sometimes, but how does a company like Calendar, especially in the early days when you essentially created a product that had a certain set of features and the Microsofts, the Googles of the world could easily squash that. You know, one day wake up and say, we're going to do that. How do you kind of ward off that? do you worry about, again, I know you've grown to the point where,

You probably have more market share in scheduling than some of the big people that, you know, that could have done that. But do you ever sit around and worry about, Hey, we have to create more features or get more hooks in, so that we're not just this one trick pony that gets squashed.

Shane Murphy-Reuter (05:36.421)

Yeah, that's a great question. And for sure, I think if you look at it from the outside, you may imagine that something like scheduling is very, very easy to replicate. And I think this is where this hyper focus on your most fervent customers is so important. If you talk to the majority of our customers, their time is their money. A lot of them actually sell their time. If you're a coach,

John Jantsch (06:03.032)

Sure.

Shane Murphy-Reuter (06:03.263)

you know, your therapist, et cetera. And then others are, if you're in sales, like your time is how you get out there. And therefore an incredible scheduling experience is really important. So for sure, there are many competitors out there, lots of competitors, but because they just don't have that hyper focus like we do around the true intricacies of the details of the problem set of our customers, they have not been able to compete. And for what it's worth,

When we look at our data, for sure we're hearing a little bit more about other competitors popping up as you would expect as any company scales. But in reality, it's not impacted our business in the way that I think from the outside in you would expect. And so we actually think that we have a better opportunity to disrupt other incumbents than the other way around, given just how critically important this is for our customers. They're not going to go and buy a slightly less

John Jantsch (06:53.304)

Yeah.

Shane Murphy-Reuter (07:01.419)

good product, they're just not gonna do it, they want the best.

John Jantsch (07:04.962)

One of the things I've seen software companies do as they they grew is like, let's take on this and this and let's do email and let's do the CRM part of it. And it makes a lot of sense, right? It's like, I've got this end to end product, but then they make compromises in every single category because it's very hard to have the one thing that fits all. mean, is there any danger you think in trying for somebody to actually start trying to take market share by adding

you know, more product that's already out there and actually diluting what they're good at.

Shane Murphy-Reuter (07:37.345)

is an absolute risk and one that you need to be extremely careful of. So every company I've worked at as we've gone on this multi-product journey, there is a constant debate around how much resource should you put into continuing to improve your core product versus how much should you put into new innovative areas. So it is a debate and we will never stop innovating on our core of scheduling. I do think though, as you think about like,

the product areas that you move into, the question has to be, what's your unique advantage to win there? And I don't like, I've seen companies just sort of go, we're just going to go in there, we're going to build in and say, well, okay, well, you really thought about the strategy and it can't just be like a price thing, right? That's not enough. And I think typically that unique advantage tends to come from, as I said before, one either is some sort of technology advantage that you have.

John Jantsch (08:12.792)

Yeah.

Shane Murphy-Reuter (08:33.375)

I'll give an example of Webflow where I worked last. Webflow's unique technology advantage was that built a way for you to manipulate code in a visual environment. Very easy for them to take that technology and move it beyond just building websites into how you build other types of technology. They have a technology advantage they can apply to different markets. For Calendly, think the reason Calendly has been so successful are two things. One,

I do think that we have a unique penetration within a type of customer that I mentioned before, that we really understand and can, as we go into these new areas, make sure that we're addressing their unique needs for a new product. like cars, right, before it used to be Model T, any color you want as long as it's black, which is fine when you've got a technology advantage like Henry Ford had. He had a technology advantage, so you mass market it.

John Jantsch (09:24.27)

you

Shane Murphy-Reuter (09:30.205)

Now that's crazy because that technology advantage no longer exists. You have every million type of car for different types of very specific segments of the market. And so as we think about our go for product strategy, think some of it, I wouldn't say we necessarily have a technology advantage, but I think that we have a data advantage in being so hooked so clearly into the customer's most important thing, which is their time and the data around that.

And then we have a unique advantage, I think, in making sure that when we build those new product areas, they're beautifully connected and integrated with scheduling and that we build for that segment. And we don't try and build the Model T, we try and build a very, very, very tailored experience for the customer set that we know that we have the greatest right to win in. And for what it's worth, we also believe that the incumbents in the relationship management software market have left that market behind. And so I think there's a...

great opportunity for us to win. But back to the original question, yes, of course we need to balance and make sure that we're not under-investing in our core. I use the phrase internally at companies that if you kill the cash cow, nobody gets milk. And so, yeah, you want to make sure that the core business, which is for us scheduling, continues to, we continue innovating.

John Jantsch (10:55.394)

One of the things that's really tempting as companies grow to the size that Connolly has now, I mean, some of your original customers clicked on a button, signed up. It was just them in their house doing scheduling and it worked for them. It was awesome. It was easy, no friction. And now you're starting to have enterprise con. That security and adoption and uptime and all these kinds of things really have to be sold.

How do you message first off? Let's let we can talk about operationally as well, but how do you message to such distinctly different sales channels?

Shane Murphy-Reuter (11:38.185)

Yeah, it's a great question. I think about this through two different lenses. The first one is obviously the who you're going after. And for what it's worth, typically in enterprise companies, particularly for a company like Calendly, the user within that company tends to test it out first. And the user is the person that has that problem. So a salesperson within an enterprise company will go, this is really painful scheduling.

John Jantsch (12:00.429)

Mm.

Shane Murphy-Reuter (12:06.625)

I've heard by Cano, you'll go check it out and they'll come in through our PLG funnel, our self-serve funnel. And there, how you sell to them and the message for them is extremely similar as the message to a solopreneur and SMB because they are the user, they have this actual direct pain of the product solves. And so I think that when, in a lot of ways that is consistent. Now, of course, if you've got that person in your funnel, right, who is the user within an enterprise,

Your job now is to use other channels to go and directly target the procurement team, the security team, the actual economic buyer with very targeted messaging. This is typically through a sales team. We can also be using things like account-based marketing to go do that so that you bring your enterprise value proposition to them. And this is classic in SaaS. This is why if you go to most SaaS websites, unless they are purely focused on the enterprise market,

the homepage will be very directed at the end user, and they will have an enterprise section which tells the full enterprise value proposition. And the price in the packaging, most of the packages are designed for the actual users, and they've got an enterprise package designed for those other people that you're trying to sell to. I think it's about, and finding the balance of that depends on your business and the degree to which it's like your opportunities in the enterprise versus in the SMB.

John Jantsch (13:08.675)

Mm-hmm.

Shane Murphy-Reuter (13:33.409)

So I think you needed to do both, but I think my key point there is that even in the enterprises, are where you're to get the adoption is getting a end user to love it because they end up becoming what we call in the, in sort of go to market, the champion. They're going in, Hey boss, we've got to use this thing. Here's how much time it will save me. If you don't get the champion, if you don't get that user to care, the

John Jantsch (13:50.894)

Sure.

Shane Murphy-Reuter (13:59.883)

Procurement team, the security team, they don't give a shit. Oops, sorry, shouldn't have said it. They don't care. And so I think that's the key thing that I think oftentimes people miss.

John Jantsch (14:09.402)

So is part of what you've been brought to do is build a sales team or is there already a sales team that's on the ground?

Shane Murphy-Reuter (14:17.457)

Yeah, we already had a sales team. when I joined, Cal and Lee had already gone on the journey to build an enterprise product offering an enterprise sort of package and team. think what I'm trying to do is blend the self-serve and sales experience in a more natural way. So again, a lesson that I've had at pretty much every single company I've worked for in B2B has had a combination of self-serve or product-led growth and sales led growth.

And typically speaking, they tend to be pretty siloed on islands. And so what happens is you either have this experience for the customer that's fully self-serve, maybe a reactive support team, but pretty much self-serve. And then if you're willing to buy the enterprise package, now you go through this like really human intensive experience. The SDR goes to the AE, goes to the account management team with implementation. And it's like, it makes actually no sense if you think about it from first principles, why it would be such a

binary distinction between the two. And so I think a lot of companies are now realizing, you know, things like velocity sales or, you know, much more softer touch sales to still support the customer, but also get out of the way if they want to just like adopt and use. And so the team had already started to do some of that work, but it's a lot of what I think about day in day out is how to blend the two in a more natural way.

John Jantsch (15:37.496)

Yeah.

Just get rid of a few of the acronyms, that would help, right? So have you found, and this may be a tough question for you to answer, you may not want to answer this, but have you found that the role that you've been brought into play is new and has that required a mindset shift because of the way the company's grown, because of the company culture? Again, you don't have to talk specifically about your experience as much as...

Shane Murphy-Reuter (15:45.353)

yeah.

John Jantsch (16:10.242)

I'm sure other companies have experienced those kind of growing pains too.

Shane Murphy-Reuter (16:14.465)

Yeah, it's a great question. Like I think what a lot of companies are starting to realize is, and in my experience is that particularly technology companies are founded by technologists. And so a lot of the time they start self-serve, right? They go, well, we can just set up a signup link and people can just buy it. And then at some point a board member, somebody said, hey, you've got a bunch of larger customers here. You need to build an enterprise offering. They go and hire a head of sales from some enterprise company.

John Jantsch (16:25.612)

Yeah.

Shane Murphy-Reuter (16:42.591)

And that person brings a playbook and drops this like very classic sales experience on top of the self-serve base, creating this sort of siloed nature in this kind of like a, and so I think a lot of companies, there's probably been about 10 years of evolution of that happening. A lot of companies have started to really feel the pain of those things being so disconnected. And so it is becoming more common.

John Jantsch (16:54.082)

Mm-hmm.

Shane Murphy-Reuter (17:10.305)

to bring in a person running all of go-to-market, particularly in companies where they have both experiences in their business for all the reasons that I described because in the traditional model of having maybe a CMO who runs the self-serve side and a CRO or head of sales who runs the sales side, that traditional model actually beds in the fact that these two things are on a silo. And so...

John Jantsch (17:35.054)

Sure.

Shane Murphy-Reuter (17:37.205)

I do think that it's increasingly happening that whether it's they just use the term CRO, it's your tone, all of it, or a president of GoToMarket like I am, a lot more companies are doing it now.

John Jantsch (17:50.982)

I'm going to get you in trouble here probably. But do you think that the way that salespeople are incentivized really actually exacerbates that problem?

Shane Murphy-Reuter (18:02.387)

It's a really great question. actually remember listening to Bill Macias on a podcast who was the, he was head of CMO at Slack. I think he was at Zendesk, like kind of a goat in the industry. He talked about, I think it was at Slack bringing in for the sales team that part of their compensation was linked also to a customer satisfaction of the sales process. And so anyway, I just thought I'd share that. But yes, I do think that there is a, there is a.

I think in the more enterprise end of sales, having incentivization to ensure that, you know, the sales team do a good job of maximizing the revenue potential is important. So like, if I'm not incentivized, what I'll do is I'll say, yeah, okay, well, maybe I'll maximize the discount that I give, or I'll say, I won't try and bother some multi-product sell. I'll just say, just get them in and on this one product. And so in certain instances, you do want incentives for the sales team to

John Jantsch (18:50.968)

Yeah, yeah.

Shane Murphy-Reuter (19:01.761)

push for the largest value sell as possible and incentivization around with commission structures, et cetera, can be important there. And so, for example, at Calendly, our enterprise sales team absolutely are commission-based and I think that's the right approach. In a more velocity sales model that I mentioned before where it might be lighter touch, you're semi-helping the customer like a support, right? You're answering questions, you're doing somewhat of a value sell but not the full thing.

you, you, do think that you want to be very careful not to have like a traditional model. And so for example, I currently, we don't write their more salaries. And so I think you just need to apply the right incentive structure based on what, what are you trying to incentivize these people to do? And, and, and so I do think that there is a place for it as I mentioned, but maybe not across the board on a sales team.

John Jantsch (19:58.75)

All right. Let's end today on a product question. I think this might be a record. think we're 20 minutes in exactly. And I'm the first mention of AI. So how is AI going to impact the product from what you know so far?

Shane Murphy-Reuter (20:16.935)

Yeah, that's a great question. I mentioned that we believe this is an opportunity to innovate in the relationship management software space for SMBs and solopreneurs, know, the smaller companies. One of the reasons that up until now, it's been difficult to build this type of software for those customers is that typically those software types of software need like an army of operations people to set them up and manage them like

If you talk to companies, have Salesforce or Marketo or any of these, there's like, there's like job boards of like, you know, kind of, all these ops to manage these tools. And so if you're at SMB, that's really challenging, right? The beautiful thing is that we're going to start entering the space just as AI is getting to the point where they can start automating a bunch of the, used to be, take a lot of operational, time and effort. And so.

John Jantsch (20:45.314)

Yeah.

Shane Murphy-Reuter (21:12.033)

You can imagine a world where like, you know, today, a CRM, even in most cases, still looks like one of these sort of like databases, right? Line items of people or whatever. Exactly. Right. And why does that exist? Because it was a record keeper. It was just a database, right? In the world of AI, that all happens automatically. Now a CRM or relation management software can be actually about surfacing the insights and actions of things that can truly lead to you creating better relationships. And so I think.

John Jantsch (21:18.722)

Yeah, it's just a relational database, right?

John Jantsch (21:25.422)

the

Shane Murphy-Reuter (21:41.601)

I think it's a beautiful time for any company that we start thinking about innovating into a new space because you have a blank sheet of paper to define the way you interact with this product in an AI first way, which I think the incumbents are going to really struggle with. And that's why a lot of the incumbents are doing the co-pilot thing, right? We've got this chunky, hard to use software. So how we use AI will give you a clip.

John Jantsch (22:00.589)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (22:04.162)

Right.

button.

Shane Murphy-Reuter (22:10.517)

to help you to figure out how to use a really hard software. Well, the other way you could do it is actually design it from first principles in a way that's really easy to use. And so anyway, we think that there's a huge opportunity there. And for sure, our product roadmap from here is like AI first. And we are trying to think about everything from that lens.

John Jantsch (22:28.142)

Yeah.

Well, Shane, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Is there anywhere you'd want to invite people to connect with you? I know obviously Calendly is where they can find out about the product, but anywhere you like to hang out?

Shane Murphy-Reuter (22:45.117)

LinkedIn is the best one. I used to be in other places, but I think we can safely point people to LinkedIn for now.

John Jantsch (22:51.692)

Yeah, awesome. Again, appreciate you stopping by and hopefully we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Shane Murphy-Reuter (22:56.893)

Thanks so much, John. It was a pleasure.

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