Why Peer Groups Accelerate Success

Why Peer Groups Accelerate Success written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Listen to the full episode:

Overview

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, John Jantsch interviews Victoria Downing, president of Remodelers Advantage—the leading peer group and business improvement resource for remodeling company owners. With over three decades of experience, Victoria explains how peer groups, professional training, and a focus on both profit and work-life balance have helped thousands of remodelers scale their businesses, lead more effectively, and create better lives for themselves and their teams. If you’re interested in how accountability, community, and structured learning can accelerate your growth—no matter your industry—this episode is packed with actionable insights.

About the Guest

Victoria Downing is the president of Remodelers Advantage, the premier peer group and business improvement organization for remodeling contractors. For more than 30 years, Victoria has helped remodelers across the US and Canada improve profitability, leadership, and work-life balance. She is a sought-after speaker, industry pioneer, and advocate for viewing your business as a tool for creating a great life—for yourself, your team, and your clients.

• Website: remodelersadvantage.com
• Summit: remodelerssummit.com
• Email: victoria@remodelersadvantage.com

Actionable Insights

• Your business should be a tool for creating the life you want—for both owners and employees—not just an engine for profit.
• Peer groups are powerful: non-competing companies from all over the country meet to share numbers, challenges, and best practices, creating deep accountability and real results.
• The most successful remodelers invest in their teams, using credits and resources for professional development, masterclasses, and specialized peer groups (production, design, finance, etc.).
• Many contractors start as technicians—great at the craft, but not always at the business skills (especially finance and delegation). Peer groups help bridge that gap.
• Clear, accurate financials are essential—the numbers tell the story and help owners decide what to focus on next.
• Growth comes from learning to delegate and letting go of control; owners who try to hold onto every decision become the bottleneck.
• Publicly sharing numbers and commitments with a peer group drives focus, accountability, and targeted improvement.
• Technology (from CRMs to project management to AI) is rapidly evolving—Remodelers Advantage helps companies share what works and stay ahead without pushing a single software.
• The peer group model is thriving in many industries; masterminding with other business owners cuts your learning curve in half and keeps you on the leading edge.
• Group dynamics matter—matching by size, style, and personality (using tools like DISC) creates high-functioning, supportive communities.

Great Moments (with Timestamps)

• 00:56 – What is Remodelers Advantage?
  Victoria explains the vision: building better lives through better businesses.
• 03:02 – The Power of Peer Groups
  How non-competing owners form deep accountability, learn, and grow together.
• 05:23 – Investing in the Team
  Specialized peer groups and credits for professional development boost performance and retention.
• 07:20 – The Technician’s Trap
  Why so many owners struggle with finance, delegation, and growth—and how peer groups help.
• 09:17 – Accountability and “Peer Pressure”
  How public commitments drive faster, more focused improvement.
• 11:38 – Adapting to Technology
  How Victoria’s team stays agnostic but ahead, sharing what’s working across the industry.
• 13:31 – Group Dynamics and the Role of DISC
  How careful placement and personality matching keep groups thriving.
• 16:21 – Real Results: 30% Revenue Growth, Complete Overhauls, and More
  Victoria shares a real-life member’s story of transformation.
• 18:13 – Peer Groups in Other Industries
  How masterminding accelerates learning and keeps Victoria sharp as a leader herself.
• 19:19 – What’s Next for Remodelers and the Industry
  How Victoria’s team helps members stay on top of trends and plan for the future.

Insights

“Your business is a tool to build the life you want. Start with your goals, then engineer your business to deliver them.”

“Peer groups aren’t just about sharing wins—they’re about accountability for the tough stuff, too. That’s where growth happens.”

“The most successful owners invest in their teams’ development. When your people get better, your business gets better.”

“Clear, accurate numbers are a must. If you can’t read your financials, you can’t steer your business.”

“Business management is business management—masterminding with peers cuts your learning curve in half, in any industry.”

Duct Tape Transcript

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John Jantsch (00:01.026)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is Jon Jantsch and my guest today is Victoria Downing. She's the president of Remodeler's Advantage. It's the leading peer group and business improvement resource for remodeling company's owners. For more than two decades, Victoria has helped thousands of remodelers improve profitability, leadership and work-life balance. Remodeler's Advantage has really been known as

probably the leading peer group network, certainly in the industry for training and for helping folks grow their businesses. I actually have a couple of clients over the years that have been in this group and it really led me to wanting to interview Victoria. So welcome to the show.

Victoria Downing (00:47.33)

Well, thank you for having me.

John Jantsch (00:48.984)

So I guess let's just start with kind of somebody said, so Victoria, what is Remidler's advantage? Maybe just kind of set the baseline for what the group is and does.

Victoria Downing (00:56.581)

Okay, the baseline, let's talk about the vision first, right? Our vision is to be the company that all remodelers turn to for a better life. We are all about looking at your business as a tool to help you build the life you want for yourself and for your employees while delivering a fantastic product to the community. So that's our focus when we deliver that in a lot of different ways.

John Jantsch (01:21.902)

Well, it's interesting to hear you say, because it, you know, I think I led in the bio, they're talking about making companies more profitable, but you kind of led with work life balance. Do you feel like that's those two are very, very intrinsically connected? Yeah.

Victoria Downing (01:36.349)

Absolutely. I mean, again, your business is a tool. So I always encourage our members, especially when they first come in, where are we trying to take you? What finances do you have to have to live your life now and into retirement and for your family and for college and all the stuff for your goals? How much money do you need to live that life? Well, that we back into that and say, OK, now how can we modify, manipulate this business to get you the funds you need? again, your employees, it's not about

just the owner being greedy and taking every penny, it's building a wonderful culture and future and lifestyle for the employees as well.

John Jantsch (02:15.704)

So the primary tool, guess, and correct me if I'm wrong on that, really is these peer groups. Talk a little bit about how that structure of bringing non-competing folks from all over the country together to really form a community.

Victoria Downing (02:33.775)

Well, I actually realized I have to update my bio because I've actually been doing this for since 1990. So for 35 years, I've been doing this. And it was, we started, started, I had a business partner at the time, Linda Case. She was very big in the industry for years and years and years. And I joined her then. And we would speak at trade shows and talk to a lot of people, write magazine columns and books and so on. And people started coming up to us saying, we're looking for the next level.

John Jantsch (02:40.334)

30, mean, yeah.

Victoria Downing (03:02.341)

We've been coming to trade shows and listening to the speakers for 10, 15 years. We want more. What can we do? So we started a peer group. It was fantastic. And we slowly just added people and added groups over the years till now. We have over 200 companies across the U S and Canada that altogether produce over a billion dollars in revenue annually. So that's a, they're representing a lot of renovations, a lot of remodeling.

John Jantsch (03:02.872)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (03:32.27)

So, I'll give you a softball question here, because I know the answer to this, but I want to hear you answer it. know, people that get coaching, that participate in peer groups, participate in their community, participate in their industry, tend to be the cream of the crop of an industry. I've just seen that across the board. How have you seen that play out with the RA groups?

Victoria Downing (03:47.033)

Yes.

Victoria Downing (03:52.537)

Well, it certainly is the case that we have a number of people. So let me back up a step. We have two different sort of levels of our round table peer groups. And peer groups makes up about a little bit more than half of our business in total with the others being master classes and events and consulting and coaching. So, but in round tables, there's the base membership and then we have the mentor membership. The mentors tend to be larger, more profitable.

and they tend to have been members of Round Tables for many years. I can't tell you how many people in the mentor levels have been with us for 15, 20 years. And they just keep coming because they know that they're always going to learn something. You know, and yes, is there some diminishing returns over from the first fire hose, those first five years to 20 years in? Certainly. But they know that they can still get the bits and pieces that'll make the difference between

John Jantsch (04:31.566)

You

Victoria Downing (04:49.613)

a good year and an exceptional year. So it really does play out that way.

John Jantsch (04:55.254)

And one of the things I've seen you do that, that I think of course, I'm sure evolved or people asked you for was that, you you, these are owners initially in a lot of the peer groups, but then you've started to put together all of your marketing people are in a peer group, you know, with them or all of your finance people are in a peer group. And how I've got to believe that, that that gets everybody talking the same language, you know, pulling the same direction. Have you, have you found that that, if nothing else is an amazing retention strategy as well.

Victoria Downing (05:08.911)

Yes.

Victoria Downing (05:23.909)

Yeah, yeah. You know, I mean, most of the people that are in those what we call tactical groups, there are people in positions in the companies. Most of those people are from member groups, but we do have some that are from outside the community. Right now we have nine groups for production managers, two groups for design managers, a group for CFOs. And then we also have a variety of what we call power meetings. We'll bring administrators and office managers together for two days of intensiveness.

John Jantsch (05:29.326)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (05:53.39)

Mm-hmm.

Victoria Downing (05:53.539)

And that's another way they pick up the language. But we have found that the companies that are the most successful, and again, I got to go back to some of our longer term members, they invest in their team, right? We can see it. The people who were buying masterclasses, investing in consulting and coaching and all this stuff had better returns than the rest. So what we did about four years ago, I guess it was right around COVID time.

John Jantsch (06:05.592)

Yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (06:16.856)

Yeah.

Victoria Downing (06:22.179)

We changed our membership to include what we call professional service credits. So people get, I don't know, $5,000 worth of credits that they can use for all sorts of other trades. They can use it for production manager round table membership dues. So that we're encouraging them to follow the lead of the best of the best and invest in their people with, you know, dollars that they have in their pocket from us.

John Jantsch (06:50.606)

So I've worked with a lot of remodeling contractors and every business to some extent, it has a lot of this where people got into business because they knew how to do something. I think remodeling contractors in some cases are the ultimate technicians. mean, they were the ones building the walls and putting in windows and things. And then also had to try to build a business. Do you find that in many cases that kind of technician mentality holds them back a little bit? It's like, I know how to do all this stuff.

Victoria Downing (07:20.128)

Well, it does in a couple of ways. One of the things I've found is that when people come to us at the beginning of their relationship with us, that one of the things that is almost 100 % true is that their financial reporting is a mess. You can't tell what's going on. So if I'm telling them your business is a tool, well, I got to be able to read the story in that tool, right? I to be able to tell what's going on. So we have to start by

John Jantsch (07:34.607)

Mmm, yeah.

Victoria Downing (07:46.447)

helping them organize and learn how to read and understand the information that's in those reports. So then we can say, I always tell people the numbers tell the story. And if they are clear and accurate, the reports can almost tell you what your next move is gonna be. But you gotta have them in a format that we can read and that their peers can read and understand. So that's one way that being a technician holds them back, because they haven't had that business training. But another way,

happens a lot with the area of control. The companies that grow, and you know this as well as I do, it's nothing new under the sun, but those companies that are able to delegate tend to be able to grow. If one of these owners has their fists around every decision that's made in the company, it makes it very difficult to grow beyond yourself.

John Jantsch (08:20.536)

news.

You

John Jantsch (08:39.884)

Yeah. They become the, they become actually the bottleneck for, for, for growth, even though they claim that that's what, what they ultimately want. How has, how have you seen also, I know one of the things that you do, I have a little advantage of hearing a little bit more about what, you do from a very tactical standpoint. You know, you make people bring their numbers, you know, they, they, know, in front of their peers have to say, here's where we're.

Victoria Downing (08:43.481)

Yes.

John Jantsch (09:08.728)

winning, here's where we're losing. How does that kind of peer pressure, or if for lack of a better term, actually help them grow?

Victoria Downing (09:10.371)

Right.

Victoria Downing (09:17.455)

Well, it's that there are nine other company representatives from nine other companies sitting there and looking at them and they're saying, well, here's where you're down, but look at this guy over here, he's really high in that, let's get you two together. Or this guy who's doing really well in that area gives advice. So it not only helps them get ideas and strategies for improving the lower levels, but...

It also helps these owners figure out what to work on first. You know, there's that whole thing about just picking the things that are the most important things to work on. And a lot of business owners get confused. They they see them the next shiny object. They take their eye off the ball. They're not watching their pipeline. They're not monitoring the financial statements to know what carpenter's producing profitable jobs and which one's losing jobs. All of that stuff.

These groups help them pinpoint. Every time a member leaves their peer group, they have two or three written commitments that they have to report back to their group who hold them accountable for achieving those commitments. And then they've got the whole team of the peer group, as well as the support staff of us. If they're having challenges in meeting those commitments, we've got resources. One of the beauties, as you know,

in being in the business for as long as we've been in the business, that you have a pretty good network of people and resources that you can share and you can help. So we've got a lot of that at hand.

John Jantsch (10:52.002)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (10:58.946)

Let's talk about technology a little bit. know, I mean, when I started my business, you've been in business as long as I have, you know, we didn't have the web. Right. We didn't have, yeah, exactly. And so obviously not only that kind of technology has changed, but even how you run, run their businesses. mean, everything from, you know, quoting to tracking, you know, some of the things that they do, know, inventorying. So, I mean, it's all kind of technology driven today. How, how have.

Victoria Downing (11:07.257)

Yeah, I know. I can remember those days.

John Jantsch (11:28.386)

How have you been able to kind of keep up with that and not just keep up with it, but probably be seen as a leader in helping people adopt new technologies.

Victoria Downing (11:38.117)

Well, one of the things that happens is we try to stay a little bit agnostic on what technology they want to use. There are some outstanding project management softwares focused on the industry. There's two major ones in our space right now. I listen to our members. I'm constantly reading. We receive information from them all day, every day. I get emails from every group. Every group has their own email thread.

John Jantsch (11:42.35)

Mm.

John Jantsch (11:48.302)

Maybe. Sure.

Victoria Downing (12:03.993)

and I get all those emails all the time. So I'm constantly reading about what's working, what's not working. Then I can reach out and ask questions and use that information to compile suggestions and share that information with the rest of the community. So I really relaxed. I mean, I don't do estimates, right? But I pay attention to those who do and what's working and what new things they're finding. you know, so there's, that's a big, big one. The whole CRM sales management thing is a big one.

John Jantsch (12:04.129)

Hmm.

John Jantsch (12:25.422)

Yeah. Yeah.

Victoria Downing (12:32.737)

Recently, we had a members only webinar where we featured three of our members and how they use AI in their business. That was pretty fascinating. And now AI has taken over how marketing works and how all those searches and all that work. So we're getting information on that and sharing it with our community as well. It's just everywhere. It's amazing.

John Jantsch (12:41.068)

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (12:53.826)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It is, it is evolving. You know, not obviously all my listeners are modeling contractors or in the home services business, but it was, so I really, again, it's this peer group idea that I think is really fascinating. I'm curious, how do you manage some of the dynamics? mean, I'm sure you've had times where like people just weren't getting along in the group or somebody shouldn't be in that group or, know, somebody's dominating that group or something. Again, I, I'm sure you've seen it all.

Victoria Downing (13:07.343)

Yes.

Victoria Downing (13:22.895)

Yes.

John Jantsch (13:23.819)

How do you kind of manage some of the dynamics of making sure that you've got a really gelled group?

Victoria Downing (13:31.183)

Well, right for the last probably six years, my colleague Steve Wheeler has been managing the roundtable groups and he is excellent at first of all placement. When we're placing someone in a group, we have to start out by making sure there's nothing competitive in the match. Then we try to match them up with similar volume levels and similar job sizes and similar business models, like are they using all subs?

John Jantsch (13:38.083)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (13:43.117)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (13:48.984)

Right. Right.

Victoria Downing (13:59.043)

or they have their own in-house labor, that sort of thing. And then we also look at a personality profile of each of the members that tells us how they like to give and receive information. We use DISC. All of our members take it. We use it internally. We use it for hiring. It's all over the place. So that helps us also determine where to place people. So are you familiar with DISC at all? OK, so, you know, for example, it's D, I, S, and C.

John Jantsch (14:05.944)

you

John Jantsch (14:12.023)

Hmm.

John Jantsch (14:23.425)

yeah, sure. Yes, I'm.

Victoria Downing (14:28.547)

The S people are slower to make decisions. They're a little bit less outgoing. They like to do more one thing at a time. You get a whole group of S people. It's pretty flippin' quiet. So we gotta throw a D in there to ramp it up or throw an I in there to give it some jazz, you know? But we're constantly monitoring that. And our members, first of all, it's not a class. We're not pablum feeding them.

John Jantsch (14:39.699)

Hehehehehe

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (14:54.53)

Yeah, yeah.

Victoria Downing (14:54.671)

We're setting up an environment for them to use the resources we make available. Our mission statement is to light the path of greater success for motivated remodeling professionals. We don't do it for them. We show them the way. We give them the resources. We light the path. They have to do the work to get where they want to go. So we talk a lot about that. And that's part of the process. making a commitment.

So anyway, so this is a group of peers that need to be holding one another accountable. And overall for things like commitments, they do a pretty good job. Like, hey dude, you made the commitment, we didn't hear from you, you didn't ask for an extension, why are you coming here without your commitment done? That works pretty well. It's when they don't like someone or there's a personality conflict that then it gets a little bit dicey. It's awkward oftentimes to address that within the group.

So they'll go to their facilitator or they'll come to the staff and we'll help fix it or move somebody to a group that's a better fit. So we do that when they, because we have 25 owner groups, we can do that.

John Jantsch (16:05.218)

Yeah. Yeah. Do you have, and you don't need to name names here at all, but do you have some examples of businesses that you've just really seen grow and flourish, you know, by directly by being a part of a peer group? Yeah.

Victoria Downing (16:21.727)

Absolutely. So as a matter of fact, I got an email this week and I printed it out so that I could read you some of the things that they said. Every year or as somebody's been with us a year, I will reach out to them and ask them what are the changes, improvements that they have made since their time with Roundtables. So I did that with this particular company, which is a Canadian company. We have a number of Canadians in our community.

John Jantsch (16:37.698)

Mm-hmm.

Victoria Downing (16:47.439)

They sent me a list of 18 items that they have improved upon since they joined in one year. You know, I always tell people, like in our mission statement, we talk about greater success. I'll tell people, we know you're going to be successful, but this will cut your time in half. So just to give you a couple of things, revenue growth of 30 % on our rolling 12 month report, gross profit growth of 36%, complete company overhaul. We rebuilt every department in the company.

John Jantsch (16:50.702)

You

Victoria Downing (17:17.509)

We implemented the work in progress process and we meet monthly to review all key financials. We have 100 % better understanding of the financials, WIP, budgeting, et cetera. We've created department scorecards to track and manage KPIs and on and on and on and on. So then the owner goes on and he says,

RA, Remodeler's Advantage, has certainly opened my mind as to what's possible in this business. I feel we have a strong foundation to continue to build upon and our potential is just starting to be realized. We have a long way to go and RA is going to be an integral part in making that happen. That we get dozens of letters like that all the time.

John Jantsch (18:02.958)

You know, because you've been a pioneer in this particular business model, are you familiar and it's okay if you're not, but are you familiar with other industries or other groups similar to RA that you've run across?

Victoria Downing (18:13.871)

Well, funny you should ask, I belong to something called the Council of Masterminds, which is a peer group for companies that do peer groups. We think it's kind of meta, you know? So in that, we're all different industry verticals that we just came back from our meeting. We have peer groups for dentists, optometrists, computer service companies, insurance brokerages, and on and on. And there's about 12 of us that come to this. And I've been going to that meeting.

John Jantsch (18:19.48)

okay.

Okay. Yeah.

Victoria Downing (18:43.429)

twice a year for 20 years. So I am walking the talk and I come back with pages of notes, just like I do even from our peer groups. It's a different industry, but business management is business management is business management. So many ideas fit.

John Jantsch (18:59.416)

Yeah. Yeah. You know, I was thinking that I'm sure that a lot of your members kind of keep you, you know, like what's going on in the industry. What's the future look like? What's the technology changes? I'm sure you hear a lot of that from your members and that probably helps keep you abreast of things because you're hearing from kind of the cream of the crop. Yeah.

Victoria Downing (19:14.714)

Yes.

Victoria Downing (19:19.833)

Yes, yes, that does too. But again, we also follow all of the studies like the leading indicator of remodeling activity in Harvard and all of those things to try to stay on top. know, House just did a survey talking about what the future looks like for remodeling. We're having a session at the summit on looking forward and how to deal with the uncertainty now and what to expect as we go through the next several years. we try to compile all that information for our members and make it readily available.

John Jantsch (19:24.44)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (19:49.612)

Yeah, awesome. Well, Victoria, I appreciate you spending a few moments to share with my audience. Is there someplace you'd invite somebody to, whether they're in the industry or not, to learn more about what you do and connect with you?

Victoria Downing (20:04.837)

Well, I'd love them to visit our website, which is RemodelersAdvantage.com. I'd love to them to come to the summit, RemodelersSummit.com. And they can always write to me for more information. I'll steer them in the right direction. And my email is Victoria at RemodelersAdvantage.com.

John Jantsch (20:25.155)

Well, again, I appreciate you spending a few minutes with us and hopefully we'll see you one of these days out there on the road.

Victoria Downing (20:26.959)

Thank you.

Victoria Downing (20:31.139)

Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

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How to Own Your Small Business Marketing with Sara Nay

How to Own Your Small Business Marketing with Sara Nay written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Listen to the full episode:

Overview

In this second episode of a special series on her new book “Unchained,” Sara Nay returns to the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast to join John Jantsch in breaking down the shift from traditional agency dependency to a practical, strategy-first, AI-enabled in-house marketing model. Sara explains why the agency model is breaking down for both clients and agencies, the hidden costs of outsourcing without ownership, and why small businesses need to reclaim control of their marketing assets. Learn what it means to become an orchestrator (not just a doer), why asset ownership matters, and how AI is empowering teams for smarter, leaner growth.

About the Guest

Sara Nay is CEO of Duct Tape Marketing and author of “Unchained: Breaking Free from Broken Marketing Models.” With 15+ years in the field, Sara’s mission is to help small businesses and agency leaders break free from outdated marketing dependencies and build assets, teams, and systems that drive sustainable, long-term growth.

• Book: Unchained: Breaking Free From Broken Marketing Models
• Website: unchainedmodel.com
• LinkedIn: Sara Nay

 

Actionable Insights

• The traditional agency model is burning out: agencies are treated as “vendors/doers” and clients lose control over their own marketing.
• Outsourcing execution without understanding the strategy or owning the accounts leads to lost control, dependency, and costly vendor lock-in.
• Businesses should always own their digital accounts, ad assets, and AI systems, ensuring marketing investments build long-term value.
• Simplify marketing by narrowing focus to the channels that matter most—driven by a clear strategy and understanding of your target market.
• The role of the fractional CMO is evolving: today’s leaders must deliver strategy, execution, and build AI-enabled systems that are true business assets.
• AI is shifting marketers from “doers” to orchestrators—freeing up time for strategy, creativity, and higher-value thinking.
• Business leaders should future-proof their teams by helping them identify and elevate skills that can’t be replaced by AI.
• Strategy is not just for big companies; it’s the key to simplification, focus, and maximizing ROI for small businesses.

Great Moments (with Timestamps)

• 01:19 – Why the Agency Model is Breaking Down
  Sara explains why the traditional agency structure is burning out both agencies and clients.
• 03:22 – The Real Costs of Outsourcing Without Ownership
  The dangers of not owning your digital marketing assets and accounts.
• 06:00 – Simplification Through Strategy
  Why “do less, but do it brilliantly” is the new mantra for small business marketing.
• 09:51 – From Doer to Orchestrator: AI’s Role in Team Evolution
  How AI enables marketers to elevate from task execution to system orchestration and creative thinking.
• 12:15 – Can Anyone Become More Strategic?
  Sara discusses how leaders can help team members level up—plus her own journey from operator to strategist.
• 15:52 – Marketing as an Asset: What Ownership Looks Like
  The importance of owning strategy, execution, and digital assets for long-term business value.
• 18:59 – The Fractional CMO Plus Model
  How the “plus” means not just strategy, but management, execution, and building AI systems inside the business.

Insights

“If you ever want to leave the contractor, you basically are going to have to rebuild everything from scratch in your own account. Asset ownership matters.”

“AI isn’t just about replacing tasks—it’s about elevating your team to focus on strategy, creativity, and empathy.”

“Simplifying marketing isn’t about doing less for the sake of less—it’s about doing the right things brilliantly and with clear purpose.”

“The most important asset in your business is the marketing system you own and understand—not just what an outside vendor controls.”

“Fractional CMO Plus isn’t just part-time leadership; it’s strategy, execution, and building the marketing systems and assets that make your business more valuable.”

Duct Tape Transcript

Email Download New Tab

John Jantsch (00:00.792)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is Jon Jantsch. My guest today is Sarah Nay. She's the CEO of Duct Tape Marketing and the author of Unchained, Breaking Free from Broken Marketing Models. She spent over 15 years helping small businesses grow through a strategy-first marketing approach. This is actually part two of talking about her new book. You can go back. have it in the show notes. So we'll link all these shows together. I think we're going to end up doing three episodes on it.

In this episode, we're going to talk about the anti-agency shift, a practical blueprint for replacing dependency on vendors with in-house capability, lean AI enabled systems and strategic leadership. So Sarah, welcome back to the show.

Sara Nay (00:44.911)

Thank you. I'm still getting used to being called an author. It's new for me. It's a new title. It's exciting. Thank you.

John Jantsch (00:47.566)

Well, congratulations. So, this is part two of the book. So again, I remind you to go back and listen to what we talked about in the first part of the book. In the previous episode, we're up to about chapter five or so. And it's kind of a turning point in this part of the book where you talk about the old model fading, or not just fading, but that it's actually burning out. What's actually breaking down inside of

agencies right

Sara Nay (01:19.096)

Yeah. And so when I, we say the anti-agency model, I always like to reinforce it's, it's not that agencies are bad. It's that we love agencies and I feel like I have to keep saying that because there are people and I don't want to offend anyone. It's the model and how it's structured is what I see breaking apart. And so on the agency side, which we've lived ourselves, we've experienced all of this ourselves. There's always been a lot of issues in the way things are structured.

John Jantsch (01:24.238)

We love agencies.

Sara Nay (01:44.798)

One being that a lot of agencies are treated as vendors and doers. They get a lot of scope creep. There's a lot of burnout in the agency space. It's hard work. As an agency owner or leader, scaling with profitability has always been a challenge. There's a lot of issues when you are in the executor role as an agency. But also, this book is written for agencies, but also for small businesses, because there's a lot of issues on the small business side as well.

when they're over reliant on agencies for execution. So I'm not saying a small business should never execute, or outsource, but if they are outsourcing, they should still understand the strategy, they should understand what's happening, they should own the accounts or systems that are being executed within. And so it's more of a collaboration effort.

when you're working with outsourced vendors, then simply I'm paying this company and I have no idea what they're doing. And I don't know if we're getting results, but I keep paying them because I always have, which a lot of people unfortunately fall into that bucket.

John Jantsch (02:47.222)

Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. I mean, I've said for years that a lot of small businesses, it's actually beyond outsourcing. kind of abdicated, you know, it's like, don't, you know, you do that over there, like, cause I hate marketing even. mean, you hear that even in, and it's, it's a real shame because I mean, what do you, what do you, where have you seen, maybe they're not even hidden costs. Let's just say costs of outsourcing everything, or just as you said, basically,

Sara Nay (02:55.897)

Yep.

John Jantsch (03:15.886)

you know, throwing it to somebody and saying, I don't even know what they're doing over there. I just write the check every month. What are, what are the real costs of doing

Sara Nay (03:22.714)

You lose control, honestly, and you have no idea if your marketing is working or not. And so I was speaking to a prospect a while back and they were a home remodeling company, family business, really nice, great people. they were like, we are paying someone, I think it was around $10,000 a month for paid ads. And they're like, we don't know what they're doing, if it's working, some percent of that is going to their fees, some percent of that is going to spend.

John Jantsch (03:24.365)

Yeah.

Sara Nay (03:50.326)

And so we had a conversation. started asking him number of questions and I was like, well, can we look at your accounts to see, you know, what's happening in there? And they were like, the contractor owns the accounts. They're not ours. And so we had to have a conversation with them as to, if you ever want to leave the contractor, you basically are going to have to rebuild everything from scratch in your own account.

But the reason for doing that is because you're building an asset, paid ads is an asset, because the more you use it, the more you pay, the more you spend, the better it's gonna get over time as long as you're optimizing effectively. And so because they were trusting this contractor with their ads, they had no idea if they were getting return. And then basically they were tied to this contractor for life unless they wanted to start over from scratch again. So it's really the whole.

you know, a of businesses, lot of business owners get into business because they're passionate about something or they see an opportunity, but they ultimately then have to learn marketing in a lot of cases. And so if they don't have the time or the interest in even learning marketing, they often then just say, we'll find a contractor or agency or someone to do it. And then they're essentially putting all of their trust in someone else because they don't have the knowledge. And then they're just putting trust into someone else that hopefully is a good solution. But

Unfortunately, it's not always the case.

John Jantsch (05:12.802)

So, you know, over the years, marketing has gotten more complex. At least it feels that way for a lot of businesses. Certainly when digital came along and, you know, now let's throw AI into the mix. I think a lot of a lot of business owners are just thinking, look, it's so complex. I don't want to deal with it. I can't deal with it. Somebody help me. And unfortunately, you know, they're not always working with people that they have a lot of trust in. And I hate to say it, but

Sara Nay (05:29.839)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (05:41.912)

you some businesses kind of try to over make it overly complex because it's like, SEO is really hard. You don't understand it. You know, you need me to, know, to do it for you. how, how can you simplify? How can you begin to simplify a small business marketing without sacrificing results?

Sara Nay (05:46.701)

Yeah.

Sara Nay (05:50.287)

Yeah.

Sara Nay (06:00.762)

Yeah, absolutely. So we used to have on our website, I don't think we have it on there anymore, but we had something along the lines of do less, but do it brilliantly. And that always really resonated with me because a lot of small businesses are told that they need to be on this channel, on this channel, on this channel, doing this and this and this. And all of a sudden they sign up for all these accounts and they have no idea what's actually performing well and what's not. And so we always help people take a step back.

and actually map out the business strategy, the marketing strategy and the team strategy. And that is a great way to really simplify your marketing because you don't need to be on every single channel. You need to deeply understand your target market. Where do they hang out online? And that's where you should be directing your focus. And so oftentimes in small business with small teams, less channels, but doing them really well is the solution versus being spread too thin.

Also, thing I would say too is we've always on our team at Ducty Marketing, we've always hired people that we see as like trainers or leaders. That's some of our values that we're looking for. And so if you're thinking about working with an outsourced solution as a business owner, make sure you're looking for people that will come in and they'll talk strategy from the beginning and they'll ask you hard questions, business related questions from the beginning.

because that's someone that's really looking to understand what you're actually trying to accomplish and not just copying and pasting a campaign from someone else. And so you want to look for someone that's thinking strategically from the start, but also willing to teach you and educate you along the way. And so when we're working with clients as a fractional CMO, like we're creating the strategy, but then we're meeting with our clients on a very consistent basis. And we're not just saying,

Here's your monthly reports and metrics that look foreign to you. We're digesting them, we're talking about them, we're educating our clients with the idea of if they leave us one day, they're gonna be set up for better success, they're more educated, they can make better decisions moving forward in the future.

John Jantsch (07:52.737)

me.

John Jantsch (08:01.358)

Yeah, I think that's one of the, you know, the, the crimes of a lot of, uh, tactics sellers is they, you know, they have these tools that'll create automated reports, but you know, there's no insight into it. And most, you know, most business owners have no idea what they're looking at or why they should pay attention to, to one number or another. You know, you mentioned that, that idea of complexity or simplifying, you know, I think one of the major misconceptions of this idea of strategy, uh, before tactics for a lot of businesses is that they.

you know, a small business thinks, strategy, that's just for bigger, more complex businesses that need, you know, need more things. Well, it actually is the opposite. I think in that, I think it really simplifies them. Like here's, here's a narrower focus here. Here's what we do. Here's who we're after. mean, I think it actually does allow you to simplify what tactics you end up employing.

Sara Nay (08:52.064)

Yeah, I agree. It absolutely simplifies it. Also, I always tell people it gives purpose to your marketing. Without a strategy in place, you are playing the guessing game. And so when you take a step back and you identify your ideal client, your core message, your customer journey, like those are the three starting points. Then all of sudden you're thinking about growth priorities and execution calendar, but all of the decisions you're putting into the growth priorities and execution calendars

John Jantsch (08:55.214)

Right.

John Jantsch (09:15.256)

Peace.

Sara Nay (09:16.546)

are based on your ideal clients and the research you would have conducted. And so it simplifies and it gives purpose. So you're not creating random acts of marketing essentially.

John Jantsch (09:27.458)

Yeah. So a lot of the roles in marketing, both at the business owner level, and then also at the agency level, I think are really evolving as new technology and the changes in technology. You talk about this idea of moving the people inside of organizations need to move from being doers to more like orchestrators. What does that shift look like?

Sara Nay (09:51.167)

Yeah, it's a great question and topic I love talking about. So if you think about before AI, way back then, we had people on our team that their core role was content production. So if we had blog posts that we were writing for clients, they would do manual research, they would create an outline, they would do some more key word research, they would write the first draft.

John Jantsch (09:58.508)

last week.

Sara Nay (10:14.478)

They would edit it, they would optimize it from an SEO standpoint. They would do all of that stuff manual. So that's an example of a very doer situation. Now with the evolution of AI, we're able to elevate those people from doers to orchestrators where they're using AI systems below them to help with a lot of the heavy lifting. So they're using AI to help with keyword research, deep research, maybe even before writing any content.

John Jantsch (10:22.158)

Mm-hmm.

Sara Nay (10:40.758)

And then they're using AI systems to help write initial drafts. And then they're, they're editing as humans on the back end. And so it's still human AI human, but they're overseeing a system and set of processes instead of being in the weeds for everything. And so it's been interesting because it's shifting doers from like doing all of the stuff to really almost a management role. They're not managing people, but they're managing systems.

And so we've identified that with our team and also with our clients teams as well. And so really, when you think about it that way, you're thinking about how can AI elevate our team members, not to just make them be more productive or get a lot faster in the work that they're doing, which I think originally is where people were thinking with AI. It's more so how can we elevate our team to be able to spend more time being high level and creative and thinking like humans and being empathetic and understanding the big picture.

And so it's elevating, not just replacing time.

John Jantsch (11:40.396)

So one of the big questions I think that that brings is, you know, there are people that are really good at doing, there are people that are really good at crunching numbers. You know, there are people that are really good at strategic thinking. Does this mean, I mean, can everybody make this shift, you think, to thinking more strategically, to actually writing an article and then asking AI what's missing? You know, where are the gaps in this? I mean, that's strategic thinking rather than doer thinking. So do you believe that that

means a lot of organizations are going to have to put different people on the bus or can they level them up?

Sara Nay (12:15.479)

I think it will be harder for some people, no questions asked. Some people are more strategic. Some people are give me a process and I'll follow it. You know, not that strategic side of things. But I think as business leaders, our time is now to help our team level up as much as possible. Because if someone

is really great at certain tasks that AI is better at already. They're not necessarily future-proofing their career. And so that's why with our team, we've really thought about everyone individually as team members, and we've helped them analyze what they're doing on a consistent basis and then identified where they should spend their focus and time moving forward. And I suggest everyone do that with their teams moving forward is...

analyze what skills they should focus on and where they need to elevate and then give them the support to be able to elevate and grow because there are certain things that we won't be better at, we aren't better at than AI is. so like research, for example, AI is way better research than I ever will be and ever want to be. And so if research is your thing, maybe think about how can you grow and evolve to continue to work alongside AI because that's how you'll become irreplaceable.

versus competing against AI.

John Jantsch (13:33.26)

Yeah, I mean, I think it's definitely a career mindset shift. I also think that I think it can come from practice with practice, frankly. know, mean, sure, I'm used to doing it a certain way. Now with these tools, you know, it's almost like I have a coworker is how I need to think about it. And I mean, even to the extent of I mean, I, sometimes hate how agreeable AI is.

Sara Nay (13:53.935)

Yeah.

Sara Nay (13:58.763)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (13:58.862)

You know, to the extent where you're actually willing to go, no, tell me, tell it like it is, like challenge me on this. I think when you just, you kind of through practice, I think you can, you can actually get better. It's basically just a process. It's just a different process.

Sara Nay (14:03.405)

Yeah.

Sara Nay (14:13.838)

Yeah, yeah, I agree. And also you can move to be, you can learn to be more strategic as well. So if you're listening to this and you feel like you're an operator, an executor, your process and systems oriented, you've never really had that strategic side. I do think you can evolve and grow. So we've taken CliftonStrengths over the years. And when I first started at Duct Tape Marketing in 2010, we took one early on and I was like systems operator.

John Jantsch (14:34.243)

Right.

Sara Nay (14:39.81)

very far on that side of things. can't remember all the language, but I was very much on that side of things. recently we took it a few years ago and I was more on the strategic side of things. And that's just naturally how I've grown over my career. And so I do think you can also evolve as well if you don't feel like you're very strategic, put some things in place to free up some mental space to be more strategic. And I think you can grow that muscle as well.

John Jantsch (15:04.674)

Yeah, it's interesting. Since I've known you all your life, I think that I can easily say this that, you know, it's partly how you view yourself. You know, your role changed and you started viewing yourself differently, I suspect. And that probably led to some of the some of the answers in there. And I think that that, you really can look, mean, can we go as far as saying AI is a personal development tool? But I mean, it is forcing some personal development.

Sara Nay (15:09.56)

Yeah.

Sara Nay (15:29.241)

It's okay.

John Jantsch (15:33.644)

I think for people to kind of adjust to how they're going to live inside of that. Let's move on to asset, the term asset. You frame marketing execution can and should be an asset inside of business, one that they own rather than rent is the term that you've used. What does owning execution look

Sara Nay (15:52.635)

Yeah. So we've talked a lot about some stories so far about people, but I would consider renting their marketing. So they were just completely relying on outsourced partners had no idea what they were doing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And so that's an example of renting. Let's go back to owning for a small business. It really comes down to understanding the strategy behind what's being done. And then as the founder or CEO,

John Jantsch (16:02.846)

But unfortunately, they didn't look at the lease that they signed, right?

Sara Nay (16:20.538)

working alongside a fractional CMO or a marketing leader or a marketing strategist or an advisor, internal or external, it doesn't matter, but someone that can really lead the marketing department. And so you're collaborating and working with that person. So you're in the know, you're aware of what's being done and the why behind it and the metrics and what's working and not. And so as a CEO or founder, you don't have to be a CMO, but you need to have conversations with someone that's leading your marketing on a regular basis.

And then from there is the execution piece. think with the evolution of AI, it has made it for the first time ever, a lot more affordable for small businesses to be able to handle execution. So before everyone just, or not everyone, but a lot of people would just outsource content creation, social, SEO, paid ads, because before you would really need roles within the business for each of those areas. But now with the evolution of AI, I think is if you have marketing,

people in your department that understand those different areas, you can layer AI systems below them and they can do more than they ever had before. But when I talk about owning, like I know it doesn't always make sense to have in-house marketing team for small businesses. So I'm not saying that's the only solution. I think it is a great solution now. But if you're like, I don't want to deal with managing team or hiring, the whole idea of owning then is

John Jantsch (17:24.258)

Yeah.

Sara Nay (17:45.816)

work with a fractional CMO then that is going to bring in their own team, but they're collaborating and working with you. And so again, the whole thing is you own what's being done. You understand what's being done. And you also own your website and your paid accounts and all of the assets, your chat, GPT or whatever the AI tools that are being used. Like you should own those assets because ultimately if you are going to sell the business one day,

John Jantsch (18:05.751)

Yeah.

Sara Nay (18:13.282)

you need a marketing system that you own that's getting results that would come with the sale because that's going to obviously increase the value.

John Jantsch (18:21.548)

Yeah. And I'd push back a little bit. I mean, I think you do have to own the strategy. You have to understand why we're doing what we're doing, what we're trying to accomplish, or otherwise the SEO firm and the paid ads firm, we're just going to rip you off. And that's, that's where I think people really get in trouble. let's, let's finish up on this term, fractional CMO, that you've mentioned several times. It's, you know, the term itself has been around, I don't know, at least 10 years. but,

Sara Nay (18:25.903)

Yes.

Sara Nay (18:32.793)

Yeah.

Yep, absolutely.

John Jantsch (18:45.166)

We have kind of coined a new phrase, I'd like to say, of the fractional CMO plus or FCMO plus. Give us a little distinction between that and the traditional kind of fractional sell a fourth of my time, you know, kind of role.

Sara Nay (18:59.322)

Yeah. And so you just identified like the traditional role is, you know, you get a fourth of my time and I come in and I advise that's kind of in a very quick nutshell. What a lot of people think of fractional for us, when we work with clients, we come in as a fractional CMO, we create the overall strategy, but we have fractional CMO plus because it doesn't end there. From there, we're then able to manage internal marketing teams to up level them.

So marketing plus that, or we're able to bring our team in to help with the execution as well. So really what we're doing is we're combining the agency side of things that we've always done with the fractional CMO side of things. And so we're bringing strategy plus execution. And really the role of the fractional CMO is creating the strategy, working alongside the CEO.

managing all of really the marketing department in a sense, really owning the metrics and communicating those to the CEO and then also owning the budget as well.

John Jantsch (20:00.12)

Well, and increasingly building AI systems and tools inside of business. So again, it does kind of give them something tangible to own. Well, Sarah, I appreciate you stopping by for part two of the Unchained series. You want to tell people where they can find, connect with you and find more about the book Unchained or any of the work that you do as a fractional CMO.

Sara Nay (20:23.308)

Of course. So the book is unchainedmodel.com is the website. It also is going to be available on Amazon starting August 13th. Not sure when this will go live, but it's going to be there on August 13th. Yes, it will still be there. And then obviously our website, stucktapemarketing.com and LinkedIn is a great platform to connect with me as well.

John Jantsch (20:34.946)

Well, it'll live for a long time on the, on the ether in the ether. So, yep. Yep.

John Jantsch (20:45.942)

Awesome. Well, again, appreciate you. Stop by and hopefully we'll see you out there on the road someday soon.

Sara Nay (20:52.314)

Thanks everyone.

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Why Branding Begins With Your Team Culture

Why Branding Begins With Your Team Culture written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Listen to the full episode:

Overview

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, guest host Sara Nay talks with Rhea (“Ray”) Allen, president and CEO of Pepper Shock Media and host of the Marketing Expedition Podcast. Rhea shares her expertise on how small businesses can intentionally connect their internal culture and external brand, why storytelling and authenticity matter more than ever, and how team engagement drives both retention and marketing success. The conversation covers practical ways to align HR and marketing, build buy-in for core values, and keep company culture vibrant—whether you’re working in person or virtually.

About the Guest

Rhea Allen is the president and CEO of Pepper Shock Media, an award-winning agency known for its innovative approach to branding, culture, and storytelling. As host of the Marketing Expedition Podcast, Ray draws on decades of experience helping businesses grow from the inside out. She’s a sought-after speaker, business builder, and advocate for blending human connection with effective marketing.

• Website: peppershock.com
• Podcast: Marketing Expedition Podcast
• LinkedIn: Rhea Allen

Actionable Insights

• Culture and brand are inseparable—your brand begins on the inside, with your team’s experience and values.
• Aligning HR and marketing ensures a consistent, authentic brand both internally and externally.
• Involving the whole team in defining values and sharing stories builds lasting buy-in and engagement.
• Storytelling—both within the team and with customers—is a powerful tool for passing along culture and creating brand advocates.
• Authentic, “human” content and behind-the-scenes glimpses outperform stock images and generic AI content, especially on social media.
• Retention, happiness, and engagement are the best ROI for culture investments—happy campers create happy customers.
• In-person and virtual teams both need intentional rituals, questions, and fun to keep culture thriving.
• Volunteer work, team lunches, and shared experiences (even camping!) can strengthen bonds and reinforce culture.
• Company culture is always evolving—leaders must actively participate and continuously nurture it.

Great Moments (with Timestamps)

• 01:04 – Culture Starts with Brand, from the Inside Out
  Rhea explains how employee experience shapes external brand and customer perception.
• 01:55 – Hiring and Values Alignment
  Sara shares how leading with mission, vision, and values in hiring supports both retention and brand.
• 03:26 – Culture & Brand Camp: Breaking Down Silos
  How Pepper Shock Media brings HR and marketing together for shared ownership of culture.
• 05:24 – Team-Defined Values and Storytelling
  Why involving the whole team in crafting values creates buy-in and lasting culture.
• 06:02 – Sharing Values Through Stories
  Practical exercises for bringing values to life and onboarding new team members.
• 07:19 – Bringing Stories into Marketing
  Rhea explains how customer and team stories drive authenticity in external branding.
• 08:29 – Authenticity as a Differentiator in the Age of AI
  Why human, imperfect content outperforms polished, automated posts.
• 12:28 – What’s the ROI of Fun?
  Both guests discuss why investing in culture pays off in retention, happiness, and productivity.
• 13:03 – Rituals that Build Culture (Lunches, Questions, Celebrations)
  Rhea shares Pepper Shock’s traditions for team bonding and knowledge sharing.
• 16:21 – Volunteerism, Camping, and Culture Beyond the Office
  The value of shared experiences outside of work—whether in person or remote.
• 19:39 – Action Steps for Leaders
  Rhea’s advice: Culture will exist with or without you—actively guide it and keep your campers happy!

Pulled Quotes

“Culture and brand go hand in hand. Your brand starts from the inside out—with the experiences your team and customers have.”
— Rhea Allen

“Happy campers create happy customers. Retention, joy, and team engagement are the ROI of investing in culture.”
— Rhea Allen

Duct Tape Transcript

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Sara Nay (00:01.635)

Welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is your host, Sarah Nay. And today I'm stepping in for John Jantsch and I am joined by Rhea Allen. So Rhea Allen is the president and CEO of Pepper Shock Media, host of the Marketing Edition Podcast and a business owner who knows what it's like to build a brand from the ground up. So welcome to the show, Ray. I'm glad you're here.

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (00:23.064)

Well thank you so much for having me, Sarah. This is exciting.

Sara Nay (00:26.145)

I know and fun backstory, right? And I met online through a different group and actually figured out that we're both in Idaho about 25 minutes away from each other. And I haven't met a ton of business owners online from Idaho. So it was really exciting to connect with you, right?

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (00:42.03)

We had to go global to come local, right? Yeah.

Sara Nay (00:45.015)

Exactly. Exactly. Well, let's dive on in. We're going to focus on the topic really of branding and culture today, because that's one of your specialties as I know. And so I've heard you say before, culture and brand go hand in hand. And so can you break down what does that mean exactly to small business owners?

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (01:04.268)

Well, what I always try to emphasize most is that your culture starts with your brand from the inside out. And sometimes culture can't necessarily be controllable. It's what it is, the experience that both your employees and the people who come to you for that experience of what you serve and in an agency setting, culture is so important because it is our brand. It's who we are and how we represent what we do.

And when we work with other companies that want to understand how they can continue to build and grow their culture in a positive way, in the way that they would like to see their brand exuded into the world, whether it's recruiting new employees or new customers, and retention is always a huge part of it. So that's why I say culture and branding go hand in hand together for sure.

Sara Nay (01:55.718)

Yeah, and it's great. I love that thought process. And what I've been doing for years at Duct Tape Marketing is whenever we hire someone new for a role within our company, we always start with the job description and we lead with here's our mission, here's our vision, here's our values. And so I want someone to read through all of that first on the job description. Then I'll get to here's the role and the tasks and all the other details because

I want someone to be aligned culturally, like that to me is one of the most important things because as you said, it helps people stick around for a long time and also represent our brand in the way we want to be represented. And then, you know, when we're going through the interview process, our first interview is always based on values. And so one of the things we're always trying to hire for is growth minded people because in the marketing space, it's always continuing and evolving.

And so I'm asking questions to identify if they're growth minded and then asking them skills specific questions. So that's just one of the ways that we've leaned into making culture and hiring aligned with our brand long term.

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (02:58.446)

Absolutely, and we do a variety of things, but one of the things that we set up is we call it culture and brand camp. So this one time at brand camp, we go through a process and it really is about aligning the HR roles and the marketing roles together so that they're not siloed and they're working together to create the culture and brand that they really want to be.

Sara Nay (03:06.276)

nice.

I love it.

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (03:26.688)

known for and have that experience that they want people to walk away from and, feel the feelings that you want when you're in that process and going through that process. So, we go through culture and brand camp and, do a number of exercises to work together, to understand both internal and external messaging. And when everyone's singing from the same sheet of music and saying similar terminology and, able to articulate that in a way that is, is.

Sara Nay (03:45.962)

Yeah.

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (03:55.636)

mindful of how they all can own it and have ownership in their, their own branding and how other people are going to perceive them because of the way that they have been able to articulate it and what experiences they want to have. and so going through that process and doing some team building exercises and some branding exercises and, bringing the two sort of areas that are sometimes really siloed in companies and they don't always come together and work together.

but then when we bring them together and they are in that mode of like, we, we are in control of our own culture and we are in control of our brand that we have out there. So, it's a, it's a fun exercise to go through and do that with companies to, to, have them walk through those processes together and have that experience of their own together as well.

Sara Nay (04:31.906)

Yeah, I love that. And I think that gets, I'm assuming it gets buy-in from the whole team and support behind the whole team. One of the things that we did fairly recently is we used to have values that John and I are, our founder identified as like our core values.

and we kind of made those up on our own and then we would like tell the team about them. We're like, that doesn't feel right. And so we did a session as a team where we had everyone identify like what they wanted the values to be. And we then collaborated and crafted our core values together. And to me, that was so much more of a rewarding but also buy-in experience for the team because they were part of the process versus being here's our values, go live by these ultimately. Yeah, go do this.

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (05:24.888)

Yeah. Now go do this. Yeah. And whenever you can include the team into that decision making process, they have so much more ownership in it. And to take it even a step further, having them tell stories around those values that you've selected and where maybe there's a, an example of something that occurred because of that value. And then having them tell you about a time when, now give me, give me an example of one of the values that you and your team came up with Sarah.

Sara Nay (05:48.59)

Yeah.

Sara Nay (05:53.093)

Well, one of them is growth minded, like always being leaders and innovators and ahead of the game. So it's that whole idea of just like growth and always learning and evolving.

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (06:02.35)

So one of the activities that you can do just as an icebreaker to get people in the mode, um, anyone who cares to share, tell me about a time where this value came through. What was the occurrence? What happened that you had this growth minded mentality or somebody else can share about somebody else on the team. And now storytelling becomes this a part of the culture, right? We know back in ancient history that storytelling was.

how culture was being able to get passed along to generation to generation. have the hieroglyphs on the walls that were drawn. so storytelling is such a huge part of culture, no matter what kind of culture we're talking about, whether it's company culture or if it's your indigenous people and the culture, the stories that are being told is the way that that continues to happen. And it's really great for new people coming in to hear those stories when something has happened.

Sara Nay (06:55.14)

Yeah.

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (06:57.71)

And, you can exemplify it and also makes people feel really good when they have an opportunity to share about others and in circumstance that occurred, that can help continue those stories.

Sara Nay (07:09.218)

Yeah, I love it. And so a lot of what you're talking about there is like storytelling as a team, as a culture. Do you take any of that storytelling and bring it, you know, as a marketing or a branding initiative as well?

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (07:19.95)

Absolutely. And where it really can shine through is when you now involve your customers and they have testimonials and you can have them share a story about the circumstances or experiences that they've had with people that they've interacted with on your team. So we know it's all about the people sometimes more than anything else, the people that work with you. And, and so when you can bring that full circle and then you have stories that you can tell of, of the values that also shown through with your

your customers, your clients, then it really does start from the inside out.

Sara Nay (07:54.819)

Yeah, I love it. A lot of what's happening in the marketing space specifically right now is a lot of people are putting out a lot of content at scale because of the evolution of AI. And so one of the things that I'm seeing growing and importance is storytelling and being more human, but also being authentic and maybe even making some mistakes in the stuff you're putting out there because it just feels everything feels so polished right now. So can you touch on

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (08:04.44)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (08:15.758)

Mm-hmm.

Sara Nay (08:24.746)

Do you see storytelling and authenticity growing in importance these days as well?

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (08:29.548)

Absolutely. In fact, I just did a panel discussion, and actually it was HR, the HR, sorry, public relations and then, advertising coming together. So mine was all about personal branding and, I created an acronym of keeping it real. so real, obviously, you know, being authentic and having that realness about you. Right. And then, being able to.

Sara Nay (08:48.494)

Nice.

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (08:57.086)

extend that to others and have and share that consistently. And then of course, authenticity and then leveraging your network to be able to share that with others and showing up and keeping it real. yeah, authenticity is definitely, I think more valued than some of the AI that really at Nausium comes out. That's just not real, right? I mean, it's, it's artificial. It's artificial intelligence. So

Sara Nay (09:08.793)

Yeah.

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (09:22.882)

Having your own spin on your own words sometimes really does help with the content that's coming out. And I see that that's a shift. Everyone was kind of, we're going to use AI to replace the people, the human touch of what we're putting out there. And I really think that you can tell somewhat now. And I mean, it's getting really good where you can't necessarily, and it's trying to write in your voice. But there's still some quirkiness about the AI.

still say it takes HI to use AI, so human intelligence. Yeah.

Sara Nay (09:54.626)

Yes, it does. I love it. Yeah. And I think that's what I'm experiencing on LinkedIn specifically, just because I spend a lot of time there. I'm not saying it's not having anywhere else, but like on LinkedIn, there's just a lot of generic content being published right now. And so I've, you know, shifted to try to be more authentic and more human. And so I've shared posts recently that like I shared a post last week or so ago that was like my desk.

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (10:08.15)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Sara Nay (10:20.705)

and it was my kids, had decorated my desk just because and that's just, it's getting like that human content is getting so much more traction because people are like, that feels more unique and more personal than this other post that anyone could have written.

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (10:32.76)

Yep. Well, and it's true. I mean, you can just take a look at, you know, the history of what you've posted. you, if we post pictures of our actual team and not just stock images or, know, if we do behind the scenes from video shoots that we're doing, or if we, you know, show real people in action, we get so much more engagement and traction and follows than we do if it's just a stock image or an inanimate, you know, object. And I love

Sara Nay (10:56.77)

Yeah.

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (11:00.332)

Being able to showcase our people. again, it's about the culture and showing what we're doing and, and the volunteer activities that they're about, or, know, showing, showing when they were little and, know, kind of what became of them and, and, know, just, fun things like that. There are so much more, I think engaging and authentic and real.

Sara Nay (11:18.702)

Yeah, I agree. And kind of a funny story on that. posted a new book coming out and I posted a JPEG of the cover and luckily it hasn't gone to print yet, but someone pointed out that there was a typo on the cover. But her response to me was like so kind. She sent me a direct message and she was like, you know what I love about this? It shows that you're human and you're not just using AI for this content.

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (11:29.561)

no!

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (11:37.698)

Yeah.

Sara Nay (11:40.875)

And so she actually was like very kind, but she like appreciated a little bit of an error because everything is feeling very polished at this point. And so I thought that was kind of funny.

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (11:46.582)

Mm-hmm, right? Nice. Well, I'm glad that you were able to get that. I was like, there's always something, and you've been so closely tied to it, you're always gonna overlook something. There's always gonna be something.

Sara Nay (11:54.851)

I know, I was like.

Sara Nay (12:00.683)

Yeah, always. like three people on my team looked at it, but still we missed it. yeah, I talk a lot about, because when I'm training marketing agencies, building and scaling a business and hiring team, I talk a lot about what we do for building culture. And so a lot of that is like, we do show and tell on Slack every Wednesday and we do happy Fridays and we have team meetings where it's just kind of fun. And so I talk about all that stuff. And sometimes I get the question of,

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (12:04.534)

Of course. That's how it works, of course.

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (12:21.036)

Yeah.

Sara Nay (12:28.887)

What's the ROI for all of that? Like you're paying people to do these fun things. And so I'm curious, what would be your answer to a question like

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (12:30.83)

Mm-hmm.

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (12:36.718)

my gosh. well, first of all, if you don't have a little bit of fun and incorporate the human aspect of living and working together all the time, and we spend more time with our work coworkers than we do with our spouses. Well, not in my case, cause I work with my spouse, but a lot of times, like, you know, if you look at how much time is spent with the people that you are, you know, with every day, it's your coworkers. So I feel like if you are just,

Sara Nay (12:52.003)

Yeah

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (13:03.478)

robotic in what you're doing and not engaging and not being, you know, that team player or having being a part of the culture, you're going to make life miserable for yourself. Right. And so I feel like having time that you can naturally and be okay with spending some of that. It is an ROI in your, you know, you're investing in your people and you're investing in them wanting to stay, right. Can that retention. And we know that when somebody leaves a company, it takes

just twice as much or even more to replace them. And then all of the, knowledge that they've, that has just been left behind because they've left the company. So you want to do the things that are going to help retain those people. And, know, we, we spend time. We, we also do once a month. Now we do, we used to do it every week, which is a little, little, okay. I get it. You know, but now we do, so originally started out as Friday fun lunch, but then people take Fridays off. so, you know, some, some, some of us do, you know, summer Fridays off.

Sara Nay (13:55.076)

Thanks.

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (14:03.176)

and have the four day work week fine. So then we moved it to Wednesdays. So then it become lunch instead of funch. So Friday, fun lunch, and then lunch. And now everybody is only, I mean, all of us are all in the office on Mondays. So now it's munch. And so we, once a month go, we celebrate work anniversaries where I like to call workversaries or birthdays or something that we're celebrating. And we actually came up with some things that we always go through. it's,

Sara Nay (14:08.835)

I love it.

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (14:32.334)

successes and frustrations, celebrations and appreciations, new technologies, or book or blog reports, or any, you know, anybody that's reading a book, tell us a little bit about it or a blog or something, you know, new technology, something like that. And then a question of the day. And so we always come up with a random question, you know, what's your favorite cereal as a kid, or what was your favorite cartoon to watch or, you know, who are you rooting for, for the Super Bowl? Right. I mean, so, so we always come up with something fun.

Sara Nay (14:50.003)

Thanks.

Sara Nay (14:58.965)

Yeah, yeah.

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (15:01.542)

And, we all participate and, you know, successes and frustrations. you know, if we're in a public place, we are careful about our frustrations, but, but it's important to acknowledge, you know, big successes, big wins all the time. And also if there is something, you know, that is frustrating people, I want to hear about it. And it's a safe space to be able to share that if there is some sort of frustration or something that needs to be acknowledged. and then we can talk about it, but, then of course, celebrations, appreciations, and then.

Sara Nay (15:10.275)

Yeah.

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (15:29.92)

The new technology book or blog reports is helpful because if people are learning about new things that are coming up or new tools or maybe a client wants to investigate a new tool or there's a new Adobe plugin or who knows what, we're talking about it and sharing that and it's purposeful and intentional so that we can make sure that we cover those things. It's a fun thing to do. The other thing that we do every year, and this is one of the questions I ask when I hire people.

Sara Nay (15:44.696)

Yeah.

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (15:58.062)

is if they like to go camping or not, or if they're a glamper or like, absolutely not. Because every year all of us with our spouses, our, you know, kids, pets, everybody, we go camping together, um, as a bit one big, huge pepper shock family. And, um, if you're not a camper, you're probably not going to really appreciate the culture that we've built. I mean, it's not mandatory. I mean, you know, it has happened, but.

Sara Nay (16:00.72)

No.

Sara Nay (16:17.744)

Yeah.

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (16:21.742)

Um, it's, it's really important to us because we love the outdoors and especially here in Idaho, we have all the seasons and it's definitely, you know, we live here on purpose. can do work anywhere. Uh, but we purposely choose to, have, you know, Idaho is our back, you know, our back door. So, um, that's a really important part of our culture to, to enjoy hiking and, know, those types of things. so, um, it's, it's fun and people look forward to it. It's, know, what are we going to do this year? What are we, you know,

Are we gonna go rafting? Are we gonna go hiking? What are we doing? And so it's something fun and it's always been a part of our culture since we started and it's definitely something that we really enjoy. So yeah, there's definitely things we do. The other things that we do, Kristy helps, our graphic designer, we do volunteer time together and we've boxed food up at the food bank.

next week we're going to go to, there's a local place called the Idaho Botanical Garden. So we're going to get our horticulture on and bring our favorite planting tool. And we're going to go help the landscapers and do some fun things there, but it's just a part of the culture. And yeah, I mean, it's, it's otherwise paid time, but, you know, I want them to be involved in the community. want us to feel and come together as a team and doing some things that are not your typical.

Sara Nay (17:23.742)

Nice.

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (17:42.89)

average workday all the time is really enriching for our people. So we want to continue to do that.

Sara Nay (17:49.492)

Yeah, that's great. And that's how I mean, I answered that question as well. When people ask about ROI, it's you're going to retain people longer, they're going to be happier, you're going to enjoy work more. And to me, that's like the best kind of ROI you can get. So I think that's great. And I love your examples, because a lot of what you shared are in person opportunities, because you work in person where I run a virtual company. And so we're trying to do some of that stuff virtually, which is really interesting as well.

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (18:00.364)

Absolutely.

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (18:08.174)

Mm-hmm.

Sara Nay (18:13.482)

And so we do things like I mentioned, like the show and tell on Slack, that's just like such a small thing. And all we do is we ask a random question every single Wednesday at a scheduled time. And then people answer the question. But when you're remote, you don't get time to, know, what's your favorite movie? What'd you do this weekend? What'd you, know, you don't have time for like all of those things. And so that question, then, you know, someone might ask, what's your favorite movie? And then like three people are like, my gosh, that's my favorite movie. I can recite every line. And now they have this like bond that they wouldn't have had.

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (18:26.338)

Mm-hmm.

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (18:40.814)

Mm-hmm.

Sara Nay (18:42.05)

just through work meetings and going through the motions. Cool.

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (18:44.526)

Yeah, I know during pandemic, we definitely all worked remote and I even had a couple of people move out of state to go live out their homes and with their families. And I can relate to trying to keep the company culture alive through zoom. And, you know, there's different things that, that we, we did. we, we played, pandemic reindeer games, came up with some fun things for them to do some trivia things and things like that, but.

Sara Nay (19:08.034)

Ha

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (19:13.282)

Yeah, I mean, it's important to keep your team together even if they're not in the same room or same building. Yeah, for sure.

Sara Nay (19:18.208)

Yeah, those pandemic times were weird times, weren't they? Well, we talked a about a lot of great stuff today when it relates to culture and branding. If anyone's just kind of feeling stuck on this topic, how they actually create a culture and how they tie it to their branding, are there any final thoughts or any action items you would share with them?

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (19:22.056)

Yeah

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (19:39.086)

Yeah, absolutely. I think the important thing to remember is that culture is gonna be there whether you help guide it or not. The culture can be what you wanna mold it and grow it into or it's going to become something that you have no control over if you don't participate in the culture that you want your company to have. And so I think if you can identify

that there might be some needs in the areas of bridging the gaps between the different departments that come together and how they can work together to help build the culture that you want between HR and marketing and ops and all of the different areas that you have in a company. How can you make it to where everyone is singing from the same sheet of music and it's all in tune, right? You all have the same goals in mind together that they build together.

just recognizing that there is a need for that and it's an ongoing thing. It's not an overnight like, well I did a company picnic. I'm good for a while. No, no, Yeah. You've got to continuously build it, continuously grow it, and do things to continue to, to have your employees engaged. And I always say, if you've got happy campers.

Sara Nay (20:43.167)

Check that box.

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (20:57.846)

Right? You're going to have happy customers. so keep your campers happy. And you know, at Culture and Brand Camp, that's one thing we focus on is happy campers then creates happy customers.

Sara Nay (20:58.023)

Mm-hmm. Yes.

Sara Nay (21:09.525)

I love it. Well, thank you for sharing all your insights. Lots of good stuff in this episode. If people want to continue to learn from you, where can they connect with you online?

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (21:18.408)

so couple of different places. of course, the marketing expedition podcast is free to listen to on pretty much every podcast platform. And then, which is powered by pepper shock media, our company, and, you can visit pepper shock.com and we're on all the social platforms, LinkedIn, all of that. So, you can find me in Ray is R H E a Alan a L L E N. So Ray Allen.

And I would look forward to chatting with anybody that would like to talk about their company culture and branding.

Sara Nay (21:51.073)

Thank you so much Ray for being here and thank you everyone for listening to the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Again, this is your host, Sarenée, and we will see you next time.

Rhea ("Ray") Allen (22:00.792)

Thank you.

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Should You Hire a Fractional CMO? Here’s Who It’s For (and Who It’s Not For)

Should You Hire a Fractional CMO? Here’s Who It’s For (and Who It’s Not For) written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

After working with thousands of business owners over the last three decades, I can tell you one thing with certainty: the marketing leader you hire, or don’t hire, can make or break your growth.

TL;DR

A Fractional CMO can be a game-changer for businesses with clear growth objectives, leadership buy-in, and a team ready to execute. If you lack goals, expect quick fixes, or resist change, it’s not the right time. This post explains exactly who should, and who shouldn’t, hire one, plus real-world case studies from Duct Tape Marketing clients.

Table of Contents

• What is a Fractional CMO, Really?
• The Pros of Hiring a Fractional CMO
• The Cons (and Cautions)
• It’s For You If…
• It’s Not For You If…
• Case Study: Schloegel Design Remodel
• The Bottom Line
• FAQ

What is a Fractional CMO, Really?

A Fractional CMO isn’t just a consultant with a fancier title. They’re a part-time, senior-level marketing leader who takes responsibility for your marketing strategy, integrates it with your overall business plan, and ensures it gets implemented.

Typical Responsibilities:

• Developing a Strategic Marketing Plan – Aligning marketing with sales, customer experience, and growth goals.
• Leading the Marketing Team – Coordinating in-house staff, freelancers, and agencies.
• Installing a Marketing System – Using the Duct Tape Marketing System to replace “random acts of marketing” with a repeatable, measurable process.
• Measuring and Optimizing – Tracking key metrics to ensure results.

It’s like renting the leadership of a $200,000-a-year CMO without the full-time salary, benefits, and overhead.

The Pros of Hiring a Fractional CMO

• Strategic Clarity – A focused plan tied directly to your business goals.
• Cost Efficiency – Executive expertise at a fraction of the cost.
• Proven Frameworks – The Duct Tape Marketing System is a battle-tested roadmap.
• Accountability – One person responsible for marketing outcomes.
• Objectivity – An external perspective unclouded by internal politics.

The Cons (and Cautions)

• Not a Magic Wand – Won’t fix a broken business model.
• Requires Buy-In – Without leadership support, plans stall.
• Dependent on Execution – Your team still needs to implement.
• Limited Hours – Not in-office daily; requires proactive communication.

It’s For You If…

• You Have Clear Growth Objectives – Expansion goals, revenue targets, or new markets in mind.
• You Have (or Will Build) an Execution Team – Employees, contractors, or agencies ready to act.
• You Value Strategic Leadership – Marketing has a seat at the leadership table.
• You’re Ready to Commit – Willing to follow the plan and invest in resources.
• You’ve Outgrown DIY Marketing – Need structure and scalability.

It’s Not For You If…

• No Clear Goals – Without a defined destination, strategy won’t help.
• Looking for a Quick Fix – This is about building systems, not instant wins.
• No Execution Capacity – A plan without implementers is wasted.
• Resistant to Change – Leadership must be open to new approaches.
• In Survival Mode – Prioritize immediate sales before strategy.

Case Study: Schloegel Design Remodel

Schloegel Design Remodel, a respected Kansas City remodeling firm, had strong brand recognition but lacked a cohesive marketing strategy. As their Fractional CMO, we:

• Defined their ideal client profile and created a core message of difference
• Mapped the customer journey from first contact to referral
• Aligned SEO, content, social media, and email under one strategy and made them the dominant player in search and AI overviews
• Created referral and review workflows that continue to build trust with search engines and AI bots

Result: Predictable, high-quality leads, better conversion rates, a confident internal marketing team, and staggering year-over-year growth.

The Bottom Line

Hiring a Fractional CMO is not a band-aid. It’s a commitment to strategic marketing leadership. Paired with the Duct Tape Marketing System, it gives you a proven framework for consistent growth. It can be one of your smartest investments if you’re ready, with goals, a team, and leadership buy-in.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does a Fractional CMO cost?

Costs vary widely based on scope, but most small to mid-sized businesses invest between $5,000 and $15,000 per month for a Fractional CMO’s services.

How is a Fractional CMO different from a marketing consultant?

Consultants provide advice and recommendations. A Fractional CMO provides leadership, creates strategy, and ensures execution happens.

How long should I commit to a Fractional CMO engagement?

While some short-term engagements exist, 12 months is ideal to see strategy, execution, and measurable results.

Can a Fractional CMO work with my existing marketing team?

Yes. In fact, the best results happen when a Fractional CMO leads and strengthens your current team rather than replacing them.

How to Decide If You Should Hire a Fractional CMO

1. Define Your Growth Goals – Be clear on revenue targets, market expansion, or product launches.
2. Assess Your Team – Ensure you have, or can build, the execution capacity for the strategy.
3. Evaluate Leadership Buy-In – Confirm that marketing will have support at the leadership level.
4. Determine Your Budget – Plan for the Fractional CMO’s cost and implementation resources.
5. Commit to a Timeline – Be prepared for a 12-month+ commitment for meaningful results.

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