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Testimonial (00:00): I was like, I found it. I found it. This is what I’ve been looking for. I can honestly say it has genuinely changed the way I run my business. It’s changed the results that I’m seeing. It’s changed my engagement with clients. It’s changed my engagement with the team. I couldn’t be happier. Honestly. It’s the best investment I ever made.

(01:03): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Tiffany Slowinski. She’s an entrepreneur and co-owner of three successful franchises with her husband. Jake is a mother of four. She draws inspiration from both her family and career through Team Spark Advisors. She uses data-driven insights to help businesses improve communication, productivity, and employee satisfaction. She holds a master’s in psychology from Columbia University, enhancing her experience in leadership and team dynamics. So Tiffany, welcome to the show.

Tiffany Slowinski (01:38): Thanks for having me, John.

John Jantsch (01:40): So did I read somewhere it says you have four kids. Do you have four girls? Did I

Tiffany Slowinski (01:44): Read that? Yes.

John Jantsch (01:46): So do I.

Tiffany Slowinski (01:47): Oh, that never happens.

John Jantsch (01:50): Mine are grown and having babies of their own now, but it was fundraising for girls, especially as a dad. I would always get questions like, oh, is that really hard on you? And truthfully, they were way harder on their mother than me.

Tiffany Slowinski (02:03): People are always like, wow, your poor husband. I’m like, I dunno what you want me to do about this right now.

John Jantsch (02:10): I got tired of it. But any rate, so you have and your husband have a lot of history in the franchise industry. In fact, you actually worked corporately for a franchise before getting, tell me a little bit about your franchise background. It seems like you’re very drawn to that model, so you must think it’s a positive model.

Tiffany Slowinski (02:30): Yeah, well, with franchises it’s like just do what you’re supposed to and it takes some of the guesswork out of it. Going into franchises was kind of the opposite of most people in that I opened our franchises with my husband. They’re magazines that we own and most people leave corporate America to open a franchise. I opened my franchise and our franchisor asked me to come work for them. So I went backwards and that was during the pandemic. And we had just recently opened our first franchise that year and we’re having a lot of early success. We were rookies of the year, fastest growing publication the company had seen up to that point. And so they wanted me to come to the corporate level and help do for everybody else what we’ve been able to do with ours, which unsurprisingly is not exactly how that works. You can’t just get everybody else to do what you do.

John Jantsch (03:37): So the Team Spark Advisors is primarily, you primarily use the Culture Index survey to work with folks. There are, I’m familiar with at least eight. There’s probably a hundred of those types of surveys out there. I’ve taken Strength Finders and Colby and some of the other ones that are out there. Is there something about Culture Index that you think makes it particularly effective for business?

Tiffany Slowinski (04:01): My original background with it was in my time working for our corporate franchise, we were clients of Culture Index. I was the end user and I had done all sorts of surveys, like you mentioned, our CEO was really big on that and I, psych background, I always found them somewhat interesting, but I was never so drawn to something as I was Culture Index. And for me it was kind of for a few reasons. One, it just pegged me and everybody around me that I worked with so accurately I’d never seen anything like it. Some of these other surveys we took, there’d be like half of us in the room would be like, oh, we have the same letters or we’re the same. But I’d be like, I don’t understand it. I don’t see it. I don’t think we’re similar, but this paper is saying it.

(04:50): This with Culture Index had a lot more depth to it. There were a lot more possibilities. It wasn’t just your detailed or your social, there was degrees of things and how those traits played together. The other piece is really what’s the differentiating factor? I talked to a lot of businesses. You were like, I’ve done a million of these things until I start talking to them and they’re like, oh, that’s different. I’m really a walk alongside you model. I’m a consultant. I’m not selling you a batch of surveys and saying, Hey, here’s information on your team. Good luck with that. I’ve trained you for an hour. I’m there every step of the way because you’ve got to learn how to actually put it into practice. Otherwise it’s not worth anything.

John Jantsch (05:30): I’ll put you on the spot a little bit. Hopefully you have one that you can pull up quickly. But do you have a business, a case study that you’ve actually worked with a business and they’ve gone through the work and done the work and listened to you and it’s completely changed the team dynamics?

Tiffany Slowinski (05:45): It changes beyond even team dynamics. It changes their revenue. It changes a lot of things because when you don’t have the right people in the right seats that can really drag down progress, can drag down everything. So when I work with a company, first thing I’m doing is going in and getting a baseline on the current employees because a lot of times it’s this whole like, okay, we think we’re good over there, just help us with the new people until you start working with them. And then it’s, oh, maybe we’re not as good here as we thought. And I wound up spending actually more time working with them on their existing teams than the new employees. They always think about the new employees is what they want, but the actuality is it’s really helping them define their existing teams. And I’ve seen this one company I’m working with, they moved people around a little bit. They made some changes that you would’ve thought, are people going to really accept what could feel like a demotion or when they’re going to work basically exploding in their brain every day and it’s not working. Nobody likes to go to work and fail. And that’s what it feels like sometimes for people to be in the wrong seats. John, the old adage, you take your best salesperson and you make ’em sales manager

(07:04): And they’re lousy

John Jantsch (07:05): And they fail.

Tiffany Slowinski (07:07): And that happens a lot. We take our best person and we’re like, okay, since they’re really good at doing the work, let’s make them the leader. And that is a completely different skillset. And you’re taking a person who’s really good at what they were doing and now are they kind of setting them up to fail?

John Jantsch (07:24): Yeah, I often find that there are definitely people that are good at doing the work, so to speak. I am a marketing agency so that do the execution really in a lot of cases don’t like to lead. People don’t like to delegate. They love the doing. And then there are people that they want to delegate everything. They want to have a team doing the things. And sometimes it’s very difficult because there’s work to be done, right? It is like, no, you do this and you do this and you do that. So is there any sort of, I don’t know the right trait or term for this. If somebody takes the culture index or one of these index type of tools, I mean, can you start to say, oh, you’re going to be better as a leader, you’re going to be better as X, or is that actually a mistake to maybe make those assumptions?

Tiffany Slowinski (08:14): It’s not a mistake. It’s helping putting people into the right roles. So I get it. You can’t necessarily take a person with no work experience at all their first job out of college and say, oh, you’re going to be the CEO O because you have the right traits. They still need experience.

(08:33): But if you are seeing early signs of we’ve got data here that supports this person will be good in leadership at some point you can help identify that early. And it doesn’t mean they get to skip all the steps, but it’s letting them know, Hey, we see potential in you. Hang tight. Yes, you have to learn the role. And I know that might kill you a little bit in the meantime, but if you work with us and do a good job, we could fast track you. So showing them the possibility of what the future could look like

John Jantsch (09:00): When you’re out there pitching this sometimes, and I’m sure you run up against some executives that are like, yeah, this is something we’re supposed to do, but it’s like the feel good stuff. Go ahead. What are some skeptical executives? I mean, how do you convince them the value of using a tool like this for both alignment and recruitment?

Tiffany Slowinski (09:22): So it’s really about aligning with the right partners. For me, there are visionary profiles and that’s kind of the fun of sometimes having the data people before I talk to them in that I don’t really have to pitch or convince them of anything. They realize there’s a problem and they’re proactive and they want to solve it. They know there’s people issues. I’ve yet to come across a company that says we’re 10 for 10 on every employee. It doesn’t happen.

Tiffany Slowinski (09:48): We

Tiffany Slowinski (09:48): Like to think we’re good at this, but let’s be honest, it’s really hard because people will present themselves a certain way in an interview process. Social people are four times more likely to be hired. Why they interview? Well, they have those skills. So a skeptic, I’m really not going to come into you. And then we’re probably not a good fit because unfortunately a skeptic at the frontline will sometimes continue to be a skeptic through the process and it winds up hindering things. We don’t get anywhere unless you come in with an open mind. I ask leadership, come in and come in with an open mind that we’re all going to hear things about ourselves we don’t like. There’s no perfect person. I’ve had to swallow some of my own pills about who I am and when you can embrace that and say, I’ve got these gifts and I’m going to work to those, rather than spending all my time worrying about like, oh, I’m low detail, I’m a disaster at organizing things, I knew that, right? So I can have an admin that does those things for me and not beat myself up with a fact. That’s not a strength of mine.

John Jantsch (10:55): Alright, so let’s throw the skeptical ones out because they’re too hard to work with, but there probably are some misconceptions that leaders have. What are some of the common ones that you encounter where people are either not seeing how to use this or seeing it as less than talk about some of the misconceptions that you encounter?

Tiffany Slowinski (11:15): So sometimes there’s a bit of an attitude of I just want to pay for something to fix this.

Tiffany Slowinski (11:21): Yeah.

Tiffany Slowinski (11:22): And I don’t want to have human involvement just go deal with the HR director and let them do this and it’s not going to work. I could take your money, but I’m going to tell you right now, a year from now, you’re going to say, that didn’t work and I’m not going to continue working with you because this is top down. If there’s not buy-in at the leadership level and there’s some work to be done

Tiffany Slowinski (11:47): At

Tiffany Slowinski (11:47): The leadership level, and these are busy people who have other things they need to do, but if they invest little bit of time upfront, this starts to become something that’s incorporated down. If we try to start this at a lower level, it’ll never infiltrate up. It’s too easy to go back to our ways. It’s too easy to say, well, this person has this great resume. I like them. They came from our biggest competitor. Just hire them and you will take my data and you will throw it in the garbage can because it doesn’t say what you want it to say. And so if you haven’t worked on this with me, you’re not going to have a belief in the product and you’re kind of wasting your money at that point.

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(13:31): So what are you waiting for? Fuel your growth. Boost revenue and save precious time by upgrading to active campaign today. Alright, let’s say an example internally, a team, a leader says, I’m going to have all my people take this. Even if they’re not trying to solve a problem, they just feel like, Hey, I’d like to understand each personality better. How would somebody, and again, I know you’re not looking at results, but how would somebody use the fact that they have that information now to adjust how they communicate, adjust how they lead, adjust how they delegate, even what have you seen people that really embrace this do?

Tiffany Slowinski (14:11): Yeah. So knowing who is working with them, that’s why it’s important to involve leadership of multiple levels because the CEO is not necessarily spending any amount of time with certain people in the company. So I’ve got to work with different levels of leadership, but you know that somebody is less likely to take initiative or is going to move a little bit slower. You can set deadlines, you can send reminders. You can say, I’m over my dead body, I’m set a reminder, but I’ll have my admin do that or I’ll have this other person do that. I know myself is not going to do that. Right? So in understanding how people work, you can modify yourself to a degree. If these are people that you value and that are doing a good job, there’s a certain amount of modification to your behaviors that you’re going to want to make.

(15:05): If this person is not doing a good job is costing the company money, you’re trying to turn yourself inside out to be able to work with them. Maybe this is not the right spot for them to be in because you have to think about, as a leader, how much can I change myself before going crazy as well to accommodate you for the right person. It might be worth it for the wrong person. You’re not going to want to spend your time doing that. Simple things, communication styles, somebody who wants all the information and asks all the questions and can be very irritating to someone who’s a little bit of a quicker mover, lower detail, good enough to move on. And those two people understanding that, okay, let me at least have some compassion when this person’s bombarding me with questions and not flip out. And on the flip side, knowing that person’s not going to take to this, so maybe I should just send three bullet points in an email and they’re going to be more likely to respond than trying to send them something that’s like 17 pages long.

John Jantsch (16:05): How much do you advise people to use this data? For example, we have everybody. We happen to use strength finders, and so we have everybody actually take it, but then we also have them share it with the entire team with the idea that, hey, here’s what really irritates me. Here’s how I like to work, that we get some of that stuff off. How important do you think it is that people are consistently reinforcing and sharing the styles of how I like to work and really making sure that hopefully uses that in a positive way. But do you find that by reinforcing it, bringing up all the time, sharing it actually makes it more useful? Or is it, do people feel more vulnerable doing that?

Tiffany Slowinski (16:53): So the important thing to note, there’s no wrong people. Anything that could be a positive, your greatest strength could also be your biggest weakness, right? It’s cliche, but it’s true. So there’s no person I’ve yet to come across him that has it all. They could be more equipped for certain roles that they’re going to be very ideal, but there’s no person who’s literally good at everything. So I do think that communication and keeping this front of mind is important because again, if you look at it once, oh, that’s so cool. John’s just like this. We have this in common, but in this way we’re different. You’re going to forget about it. And where does this really come up is when there’s a dispute or things aren’t getting done or falling through the cracks or you bringing in a new person to train and you’re realizing they’re getting trained the wrong way by constantly having this information out there and being reinforced and talking about it.

(17:48): There’s different logic is one that I look at, and that could be really hard for somebody to say, I’m lower logic. Nobody wants to think that about them. But they’re also some of the most passionate people who could be amazing presenters and cheerleaders in an organization. I mean, there’s a lot of good that comes from being emotional like that, but if you’ve got a low logic and a high logic person in an argument, they could be basically speaking a different language. They can’t relate to why are you so upset right now? And why are you so calm? That’s suspect, what do you just not care? And that can cause arguments. So you just even be able to understand their high logic. They’re going to be a little bit colder. That’s not a reflection on me that says something about them and not me. You can reason with them better and have a more productive conversation.

John Jantsch (18:41): You are in a unique position where you work with their spouse, so spouse and coworker. And there certainly are a lot of folks out there that are in that. And there are also a lot of entrepreneurs where one is very entrepreneurial, one is not at all, maybe stay at home or work in a corporate job. How often do you find that actually having couples participate in using a tool like this generates some interesting insights?

Tiffany Slowinski (19:09): Just about every company I’m with within a day of meeting me, they are surveying their spouse and their children because all of a sudden it’s like, my wife, I really want to learn more about that, or My kids are driving me nuts. Let’s see what’s going on there. So it’s so common that even if you don’t necessarily work together, you work through life

(19:34): Together. And those roles can look a little different in a household than a business. But in my case, with my husband, some of this was so obvious, I’m super social. Off the charts, social, top 1% of humans walking the earth, he is low social. This will come of no surprise to either of us. We both know this about each other, but now when I’m dragging him to the 19th event of the weekend, he can look at me and he’ll say, Tiffany, I’m low social and this is draining my battery right now and I can’t just tell him to shut up anymore because the data says it. He’s right. So it is helped me to be, even though I always knew that I don’t think I ever understood the toll that me dragging him around would take. And so I’ve become much more cognizant of, okay, you can’t skip Christmas, but there’s certain things that maybe I don’t really need you by my side, it’s doing you no good. Let me let you sit this out because he’ll be a much happier human and he’ll be more productive at work on Monday if I let him skip out some barbecue on a Sunday afternoon that he doesn’t feel like being on. Anyway.

John Jantsch (20:46): So sort of along those lines, do you ever find that people either try successfully or unsuccessfully, so they go through this and somebody’s in a certain role and they’re really great at the role, but there’s an aspect of it that they’re going to need in order to progress and it’s just not there and the data shows it. Can you use a tool or would you even advise using a tool to help somebody improve in an area that is maybe not joyful to them, but important?

Tiffany Slowinski (21:16): Yeah. So it’s not to say that we can’t modify ourselves at all we can. And so through training, education, experience, wisdom, self-awareness, when I have people who are self-aware, they can more easily say, okay, I’m not exactly showing leadership traits here. In some ways, what can I do to work on that? I can see now exactly where that’s needed. But if they can’t acknowledge that in themselves, then you’re just banging your head against a wall. So there’s absolutely ways we can all improve. It just goes to ask how far, I had a business owner recently hopped on a call with him, and I was somewhat surprised, but he said to me, Tiffany, do you think I should keep running my own business?

(22:13): And it’s sort of unusual. I looked at his profile, I said, this scares the crap out of you every single day, doesn’t it? He’s like, yeah, I’m like, you don’t like this? He’s like, no. I’m like, yeah, you’re a really risk averse person. This is really uncomfortable for you. So he’s acknowledging that in himself, and if he’s even asked me that, okay, so some people could take my information and go, oh, this just says I’m a bad leader. I’m not going to pay attention to that. Or they could look at that information and go, okay, now what can I do about it? Who else is he going to bring into his company? Are there people who can help co-lead with him to take some of that pressure off so he could do what he’s good at, but still have other people there?

John Jantsch (22:51): It’s interesting. I have done well, I’ve done thousands of interviews, but I’ve done hundreds. That leadership is a big part of the conversation. And it’s amazing how often the idea of self-awareness comes up as being really, you can’t pass go and be a leader if you don’t have some level of self-awareness. I’m sure you have discovered that as well.

Tiffany Slowinski (23:15): Yeah. It’s integral, right? You can, again, have great traits, but if you don’t realize how you come off to others, that can be really challenging. I’m an extraordinarily low patience person, and so understanding now that I think before I speak, I’m a quick mover that there’s times I can come across as angry

(23:43): And I’m not really angry. I’m being direct and trying to get something done, but realizing the experience of the person on the other side is she’s mad at me. And it’s like, oh, I’ve had employees say that to me. You’re a little scary sometimes. I’m like me, right? But with experiences come, wow, that could be perceived as scary, and I don’t like hearing that about myself. And it’s very easy, again, to just say, I’m not scary. You’re crazy. But if people are telling me that, then I need to behave differently because my quest to get things done quickly can’t come at the cost of other people, feel like they can’t keep up, and that’s really what’s at play there. I just move very fast and seeing this data points and realizing they’re never going to move at my speed. Me expecting that it’s driving too hard, it’s creating too much friction. So I purposely modify myself to become more patient. Am I always perfect at it? No. But it’s only through awareness that I even try to put that in place.

John Jantsch (24:46): Absolutely. Well, Tiffany, I appreciate you stopping by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast to share a little bit. Is there someplace you might want to invite people to connect with you and find out more about your work?

Tiffany Slowinski (24:55): Absolutely. You can connect with me on LinkedIn, Tiffany Slosky, or you could go to my website, team spark advisors.com.

John Jantsch (25:03): Awesome. Well, again, I appreciate you stopping by, and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Weekend Favs October 12th

Weekend Favs October 12th written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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

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

- Tidio – An AI chatbot and live chat solution that helps marketers engage website visitors, automate customer support, and improve lead generation.
- Scalenut – AI-powered content research and writing platform that assists marketers with long-form SEO blog posts, content outlines, and topic research.
- CrAIyon – An AI image generation tool that helps marketers create custom visuals and creative assets based on text prompts for use in campaigns, social media, and branding.

These are my weekend favs; I would love to hear about some of yours – Connect with me on Linkedin!

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

Why Working Less is the Secret to Earning More With Alyson Caffrey

Why Working Less is the Secret to Earning More With Alyson Caffrey written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast with Alyson Caffrey

Coming in at number four of your favorite episodes lately: In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interviewed Alyson Caffrey, the founder of Operations Agency and the co-creator of the operations simplified framework, which is aimed at streamlining the backend operations for digital and creative agencies. She also authorizes The Sabbatical Method: How to Leverage Rest and Grow Your Business. With a wealth of experience in helping agency owners find a balance between their work and rest, Alyson sheds light on how the Sabbatical Method can revolutionize how marketing systems are handled.

Key Takeaway:

Working less to achieve more is a paradigm shift in the traditional hustle culture, especially among agency owners in the marketing realm. Alyson Caffrey joins me in elucidating how the Sabbatical Method is transforming the marketing systems landscape. We delve into the concept of “systematic rest,” an innovative approach to interspersing work with adequate rest to prevent burnout and enhance productivity and creativity significantly. By embracing the Sabbatical Method, agency owners are discovering a potent strategy to scale their business while reducing the hours they traditionally grind away, making the notion of working less to achieve more a reality.

Questions I ask Alyson Caffrey:

[00:45] How does rest contribute to business growth?
[02:31] Can you explain the framework you mentioned?
[03:43] Is a long sabbatical the goal of your method?
[05:44] How does your 90-day method alter established work habits?
[08:28] Do founders grasp your concepts both logically and emotionally?
[11:10] Can you explain the operation simplified hierarchy?
[14:37] What daily habits do you recommend for gradual improvement?
[18:54] How can one develop discipline in creating effective systems?
[21:54] How should these changes be planned in quarterly planning?
[24:37] Where can listeners connect with you or learn more?

More About Alyson Caffrey

Get Alyson’s book – The Sabbatical Method: How to Leverage Rest and Grow Your Business
Find out more about the Operations Agency
Connect with Alyson Caffrey on LinkedIn

Get Your Free AI Prompts To Build A Marketing Strategy:

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

Connect with John Jantsch on LinkedIn

Duct Tape Transcript

John Jantsch (00:08): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Alison Caffery. She streamlines the backend operations for digital and creative agencies, and she’s the founder of Operations Agency and the co-creator of the Operations Simplified Framework. We’re going to talk about her most recent book, the Sabbatical Method, how to Leverage Rest and Grow Your Business. Allison’s also the host of the Growing Pains podcast, so welcome to the show, Allison.

Alyson Caffrey (00:43): Thanks for having me, John. Appreciate it.

John Jantsch (00:46): Okay. I’m probably not the first person to say this, but REST is not often associated with growing a business, so tell me why it should be.

Alyson Caffrey (00:55): Yeah, that’s an awesome way to frame that question honestly. So I started thinking about the function of rest after I went on maternity leave with my first son. My business was three years old and it still needed me a lot. And I remember it being a really confronting experience because I thought to myself, well, how can I actually take some time off and also simultaneously grow my business? And I started just considering that growing a business is a high performance effort. We need to be able to put out a high performing output and we need to be able to be really consistent. We need to be really clear. We need to do the specific activities that are going to bring us the highest level result. And one of those activities actually is rest. If you think about someone summiting Everest or training for a marathon or doing anything in the physical high performing nature, rest is woven into every single training plan out there that exists. But for some reason, we as small business owners think that momentum and hustle and grinding and are going to be the answers to a lot of our problems, when in fact implementing rest actually can preserve the longevity of your business and really prevent against burnout, which has unfortunately become such a commonplace in the entrepreneurial spirit,

John Jantsch (02:15): Unfortunately. And I do think that there, unfortunately for good or bad, there are bad examples of everything. I think there’s a lot of bad examples of just what you talked about. The whole hustle and grind thing became kind of badge of honor for some people. I do think we’re going the other direction. Fortunately we’re going to get into the specifics, but maybe since we’re calling this a framework or a method, let’s kind of big picture, what is it in a nutshell?

Alyson Caffrey (02:42): Yeah, so the sabbatical method is kind of like hard 75 for business owners. It’s really supposed to serve two main purposes. First is to give you a hard stop and kind of a reset. If you’ve been really needing to take a rest from the business, if you feel like you’re at the edge of yourself, if you’re grinding and at full speed, this is supposed to be your permission because Alison Caffrey says there’s a return on investment for rest. This is your permission to take that time. Second is it’s a lifestyle. So after you finish hard 75, you’re not supposed to just start snacking on the Cheetos right away. You’re supposed to consider what can I take from this really challenging disciplined time and how can I weave it into my overall health and wellness in my personal life? And that’s what I want you to consider operationally in your business. How can I weave rest into the way that my business performs so that I can see more return on investment and more longevity overall? So that’s what the sabbatical method is in a nutshell.

John Jantsch (03:43): Alright, so the end goal then is to, I mean people think of a sabbatical, people leave the country, leave their business for three, six months. I mean, is that really the ultimate goal? However you define that?

Alyson Caffrey (03:57): It’s interesting. I get asked that all the time and the short answer is no, it’s not a traditional sabbatical. Sabbatical to me is just as simple as closing your computer at 6:00 PM if that’s what you’ve been struggling to do. Everybody needs to begin where they are. And just again, in any physical training plan, we don’t go out to run 26.2 miles on day one of our marathon training. We run one mile and then we get nice and rested, then we go out for maybe a two mile run the next day.

(04:26): That’s the same position I take with sabbatical planning. A lot of us think that sabbaticals are this Parisian six month, three month time off. And a lot of it feels really inaccessible to business owners and transparently, if you tried to do that at this point in some of our businesses, our business would just fall apart if we just kind of decided to go take this super long vacation. So what I tried to reposition the term of sabbatical is consistent and appropriate rest at different levels of the business. So that might mean closing the computer at 6:00 PM making sure that you’re not answering emails or doing specific client projects over the weekends. Making sure that you block in sometimes in your monthly cadence to review your overall goals and consider what are the systems I have in place for the business and how am I systematically going after what I want to achieve and how am I achieving results for clients? So those are kind of the different types of things I would consider as implementing rest into the business. And of course you can leverage these exact tools to build up to a three month sabbatical. That’s what I personally did to take my maternity leaves with my sons and I was able to take some really meaningful time off that really did shift the direction and clarify the purpose of a lot of the things we were doing in operations agency.

John Jantsch (05:44): So one of the book’s Promises is somewhere buried in there is that we’re going to do this in 90 days, right? We’re going to correct a lot of bad habits in 90 days. A lot of business owners, the way they work has taken them 20 years to get there. So how do you get the mindset shift? And maybe it’s just people, they get burned out enough, they’re like, I got to do something, and that alone is enough to make ’em create a difference. But what do you say to those people that really just kind of established this way to work for many years maybe?

Alyson Caffrey (06:16): Yeah. There’s kind of two things I think John that you’ve asked that are relevant to unpack here. First is that I know a lot of digital agency owners who really struggle to get themselves out of the day-to-Day operations of their business because they have a lot of industry expertise and a specific formula that lives right up here in the brain that they use to approach their client projects and really get some of the best results on projects. One of the things that I position in the book is really being dialed into that over a 90 day period is to understand what am I doing that is actually systematic things that I do day in and day out for every single project? And then what is maybe that 80 20 rule that we can identify that 80% is repeatable and about 20% of my involvement is actually custom.

(07:02): So I think that mindset first and foremost is one of the most challenging to overcome because it forces us to reconcile with the fact that although we do have about 20% of the secret sauce, a lot of what we’re doing actually is repeatable and actually can be delegated. So if you want to grow the business and you want to be disciplined about removing yourself, those two things are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they pair really well together. And the second really big thing that I think folks need to understand about running a business at large, I learned this actually from just my very recent years of becoming a mom. My oldest is three. And I think to myself, sometimes I say, look, I can outsource specific aspects of my parenting. I can outsource my child’s education to a teacher. I can outsource childcare to a daycare.

(07:48): I can outsource their physical education or fitness to a specific sports team or to a community of folks who could get that outcome. But at the end of the day, it relies on me to be the parent to raise a capable adult in that way. And I think a lot of us as business owners hear this zone of genius and stay in your specialties and all these things, but we forget that businesses actually need a really full spectrum and rich amount of skills that we actually need to develop if we want to see its success. So a lot of owners will say, well, I’m not a systems person. And I’m like, well, that’s what your business needs you to be right now that need you to be systematic if you want to grow it to the point that you desire.

John Jantsch (08:28): Well, you were certainly singing my tune. I mean, I’ve spent the last 20 years actually licensing my agency methodology to hundreds of agencies. And I will tell you that it is so freeing when people realize, oh, I can scope this and I don’t have to be the one doing all the work. But probably the biggest challenge for a lot of people is mindset. They actually draw their energy from doing the work or being the savior or being the one who can have the answer. And I think sometimes I think logically everybody gets what you’re just saying. I think sometimes emotionally it’s actually harder.

Alyson Caffrey (09:08): And it’s interesting, a lot of the things I focus on in the book and even with my team, actually just before I hopped on, we were crystallizing our quarterly plan for Q4. And one of the things I do actually to wrap that exercise, wait a minute, Q4

John Jantsch (09:21): Already started and you’re just now finally finishing your plan.

Alyson Caffrey (09:24): I’m finalizing it literally today. I was out with my mastermind planning last week, and it’s interesting because what we do is we finalize and put the bow on everything with a daily habit tracker.

(09:38): And the reason why I love habit trackers and focusing on activities inside of the business is because it does a great job of removing that emotional element to doing the work that is important to drive you forward. I think all of us can get pulled in to, how do I feel about this? Or I just don’t feel like it today, or You know what, it’s easier for me to just go back into web work because that’s where I’m comfortable and excited to contribute. But at the end of the day, if your business needs you to be in a different seat and it needs you to be doing different activities, identifying those at 30,000 feet inside of your quarterly plan and then really deciding every day to say, listen, I’m going to show up to this activity with no emotion as much as I possibly can come in and do the work. And if I really feel like I’m doing something that isn’t bringing me joy and bringing the business value, then we can reassess how that’s going. But if it’s driving the business forward in the way the direction that you’re wanting, that’s one of the quickest, most easily implementable things I have found that remove kind of that mindset, emotional element from approaching your daily work.

John Jantsch (10:51): So we’ve gotten halfway through the episode here, and I haven’t really brought up the hierarchy, which is really the foundation obviously of the book. The big idea is of course the sabbatical, but how you get there in stages, and again, I don’t know how you want to address that, if you just want to start riffing on that, but unpack the operation simplified hierarchy.

Alyson Caffrey (11:14): So the hierarchy really was birthed by really just considering operationally, what does a business need to survive and thrive? And I rooted it in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs because just like any human being, we’ve got some of the basic stuff that needs to happen like process creation and quarterly planning, really hitting those metrics, the habits, like I just said, that’s kind of the big foundation of how we want to operate. The next is really just defining a home and considering that if we’re going to invite team members to collaborate on key projects, what do those projects look like and how can I create repeatable, profitable projects at my agency? The third is really driven on metrics. So what measurables do we have in place to tell us what decisions we need to make next? And then how can we scale this thing? How do we invite a community and grow our reach and our impact and really scream from the rooftops now that we have this incredible backend well of procedures, what are our front end procedures for the growth side of the business in sales and marketing? And then finally, profit and prosper is kind of the tip of the pyramid there, which I actually say is custom. We want to be consistently putting profit back into the pockets of the owner and its key stakeholders, but we also want to help our clients and the people that are involved with our business really prosper in whatever way that we’ve outlined for them. And that looks different, right?

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Alyson Caffrey (13:42): I have some agency owners who really love to work the six months on, six months off schedule. They really love to be at home and working on their business and then take six months in Mexico, so that looks different. Their operations look a little bit different than somebody who really wants to create a strong full stack agency team. That’s just a very different model. So I consider those as kind of the foundational elements. Now, something really important that I did also really focus on inside of the book is that first and foremost, these aren’t achieved in sequence. I know so many business owners who have the sales and marketing stuff dialed in, they’ve got really incredible reach and impact and all of that in the marketplace, but then they actually super lack some of that repeatable project and profitability stuff. So it doesn’t mean that you need to focus on it in sequence. I do in the book because I feel like each and everyone builds on one another. And the second thing I will also mention is that it’s never done right. We’re always going to be doing this work just like your physical fitness. You don’t work to get a six pack and then eat Cheetos on day 31. It’s something that we are consistently working on and refining as the business is growing and as it’s breaking the processes that we currently have.

John Jantsch (14:59): And I think that’s a key point. Once you get safe fulfillment dialed in, then you have maybe more capacity. So that creates another problem. And so then you have to go revisit sales and marketing. I mean these levels, you’re just coming back to ’em. I mean, you’re revisiting ’em even once, as you say, you’ve got ’em dialed in. But I think there is a little bit of just Maslow talks about, I mean, you can’t even begin to think about profits if you don’t have the basics, right? I mean, there is some order of things that you have to get certain things done, but you’re right. I mean, nobody shows up in any perfect stage. We’re all one foot in each stage, I suppose, at some point.

Alyson Caffrey (15:40): Yeah, absolutely.

John Jantsch (15:42): You mentioned it already, but I had it on the list here to talk about because I do think that it’s crucial to making any of this happen and it’s habits, isn’t it? And so talk a little bit about the daily habits that you talk about, your daily five, I think it is habits, but then just what are some of the things that you’ve seen have really helped move people along because they’re doing 1% better each day kind of thing?

Alyson Caffrey (16:08): And I have to give a shout out to Atomic Habits by James Clear. That is one of my favorite books of all time. And if anybody listening has not read it, it’s worth a read and a reread perhaps every single year because as you grow as a professional and a human being, hearing that information again is just astronomically more valuable every single time you read it. So that’s definitely number one. A lot of my thinking around habits is formed from the expertise of James Clear and that specific book. I think one of the big things that I love to focus on when generating habits first and foremost, is understanding the difference between leading and lagging indicators. So habits really apply to the former, what habits can I keep that really will help me be the person or have the business or have whatever it is that I really want?

(16:54): That those lagging indicators are the outcomes. And I think a lot of folks think that habits are for people who are organized and systematic and have schedules and all of those things, but I’d like to kind of challenge how we think about habits because habits exist. They just do, and we need to reconcile sometimes the first step is really understanding that we do keep habits, but they might actually not be pushing us toward the things that we want, the people we want to be, the businesses we want to have, the lives we want to create.

John Jantsch (17:25): Bad habits are habits, right?

Alyson Caffrey (17:27): Exactly. But I think a lot of folks think habits and then they’re like, oh, you’re going to tell me some system or some hack about your calendar or whatever else. And really habits just are, they’re good, they’re bad, they’re whatever. And I can’t really get any more clear on that. I think a lot of folks need to begin with, okay, what are my habits currently and are they pushing me toward the thing I want? And I think taking a stock of those. So first and foremost, foundational habit kind of creation is to consider what do I literally want? And is every single habit that I keep in my day driving me toward that specific thing? And a lot of that is eliminating some of those things that one of my coaches actually calls it time assassins, and he says it’s like drinking alcohol, watching television, eating refined sugars, personal social media.

(18:15): Exactly. Things that literally just rip your time away. And I think a lot of us, as we start to consider, well, I don’t have enough time in the day to let’s just say serve 50 clients versus 20 clients who don’t have the time, the question then becomes is, am I not disciplined enough in developing the systems? Am I not disciplined enough in removing the things that aren’t serving me? And so I think starting there with really just being critical and assessing how you’re spending your time is wonderful. And then really, again, planning those habits at your quarterly planning. So just saying, Hey, listen, if I’m putting on this side of the equals sign the business, I want the life, I want the health level that I’d love to achieve the family life that I love, what does that look like? And then what habits do I need to keep daily?

(18:57): I was actually just doing this exercise with a client of mine, and he was telling me that he wanted 300 new leads into his pipeline every single month. And I told him, I said, well, with your current strategy on doing lots of one-to-one, I was like, you’re going to probably need to do about 900 reach outs every single month. And I was like, here’s what it literally looks like in your calendar and here are the habits you’d need to keep. I was like, do you think that this is sustainable? And he first immediately was like, no. And I was like, so this is actually why we don’t hit quarterly goals is because we set the goals and then we don’t literally create the habits day to day and ask ourselves, is this a life that I would want to live and get excited every single day to wake up and do? And if the answer is no, then we need to start to work backwards from there.

John Jantsch (19:46): Yeah, actually, somebody inadvertently showed me their calendar this week. That was the most scariest thing I’ve ever seen. Just they from about seven in the morning to seven at night had something every 15 minutes growth. I think it’s stage four maybe growth a lot of times happens to people and maybe people you’ve worked with, they’ve gotten some of this other clutter out of the way. And so growth happens and then another problem shows up, quality starts to fade. I mean, how do you constantly juggle those two things that are sometimes in opposition?

Alyson Caffrey (20:17): It’s interesting, I have an entire section in the book about this because that is by far with agency work. The biggest thing I’ve seen. So the chapter is called Classic Coca-Cola Quality. And I tell this story about how Coca-Cola launched this thing called New Coke, and it just failed. Epically failed. They tested it, they asked the market, they did all these things around launching this new product, and it was terrible. Folks actually started stocking up on Coca-Cola Classic because they petrified that it was going to go away. Then it’s either, I was joking about it, I was like, this is either the best marketing scheme ever, or it was just the biggest classic face plant for Coca-Cola to launch this new thing. And really what it came down to was the quality, right? It came down to, well, people preferred this over that and they thought that they were going in the direction of what people wanted, but ultimately they needed to listen to their people.

(21:13): And so what they did was they launched Coca-Cola Classic. So first and foremost, if you’re in a growth stage, keep asking your people for their feedback 100%. That is the best way that you will know and understand and just open up the conversation that, Hey, listen, we’re going through a growth period right now and I still really value your feedback and I want to make sure that you continue to get results, even if there are several missteps in your fulfillment process and you’re still working out some stuff because you’ve opened up that loop with your clients and because they know that it’s important to you that you hear from them, they’re going to be a little bit more understanding if there are a couple of missteps. So that’s number one. Just open up that and listen to your clients. Second thing is to make sure that we’re defining two types of quality.

(21:57): First is production quality. So that’s the timeline through which things are delivered. And the second is outcome, quality. So that’s ad spend. That’s specific outcomes that you are getting for your clients and quality levels there. So defining those metrics are going to be absolutely instrumental. And then just again, do that little equation, right? Consider to yourself, we have 20 clients right now where we can ship websites in about three weeks time at this level of quality, measurable. If we had 50, here’s what that would look like. The clearer you can get on those metrics, the easier it is to run possible resourcing scenarios, and you can kind of hedge these growth points and these friction points a little bit simpler.

John Jantsch (22:42): This is a scary idea for some people, but I’m always telling you have capacity ahead of demand, because that’s where I see people really get in trouble is like, oh crap, we just sold a whole bunch of more work. Let’s go fix it somehow, as opposed to, oh, we’ve got the capacity and our normal systems to deliver. Okay, last question. Last idea is profits and prosper. I dunno about you, but I’m just amazed at the businesses I’ve come across over the years. Were profits in particular just aren’t even part of the equation. It’s like, I want to get paid a job. And the idea of working profits into it, I don’t know if you’re familiar with Mike Al’s work profits first. That idea is just so foreign to people.

Alyson Caffrey (23:24): Yeah, I love Profit First and I think being disciplined in prioritizing profit, either in distribution to owner and key stakeholders or in early growth years, reinvesting into the business and the professional development of the leaders or both, right? If we’ve got the margins and they’re really is critical. I think it’s John Maxwell does Leader Lid. It’s like a really famous concept and he talks about that the leader or the organization will only grow to the capacity that the leader has professionally and personally developed. And I think if we leave out profits, not only are we doing our business a disservice because businesses exist to be profitable, we exist to make money and reinvest that money into growth and reinvest that money into our communities and into our families and all those things. Understanding that economically, it’s our job to be profitable, I think is first. Second is that we are going to do our business and our community and our teammates a disservice by not reinvesting our profits into our professional development, especially in those early years.

(24:28): And then creating a professional development budget as things start to get a little bit more sophisticated. I mean, hands down has been the absolute leader in why operations agency has been able to grow to the point that it is. And why I’ve been able to confidently lead and be able to get folks unstuck with their operations is because of the level of professional development that I’ve done over the years. And I think a lot of folks forget about that and they think, well, I’m just going to discount my prices and tough seasons and I’m just going to take this project or what have you. But being disciplined and saying, Nope, this is our pricing because this is our scoping and this is our profit margin, I promise. Well, sorry, I can’t make any financial promises probably on a podcast, but I will say that it has been my experience that the more I say no to projects that are hefty discounts or things that perhaps I’m not excited about or don’t fit into our model specifically, I have been rewarded tenfold on the other side with projects that are exactly in our wheelhouse, exactly in our scope, and exactly within the profits that we desire.

John Jantsch (25:29): And had you taken those less than desirable projects, that opportunity may not have come your way. I see that all the time. It’s like, I’m busy doing this work over here, so I can’t see the real thing, the opportunity that’s in front of me. So Alison, you want to tell people or invite people where they might connect with you, find out more about your work, obviously find out about how they can acquire the book.

Alyson Caffrey (25:50): Yeah, of course. Well, the book is on Amazon. I’m most active on Instagram, so you can follow us at Operations agency and if you DM me Duct Tape, I’ll send you my five best agency SOPs, absolutely no opt-in absolutely free. So that I think will be the really best way for folks to just see what the power of having really clear standard operating procedures looks like in your agency. And I have been totally victim in the past to not being able to actually see the results of something before I get a tiny taste. So I think that’ll be a great place to start.

John Jantsch (26:22): Awesome. Well, again, I appreciate you taking a moment to stop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, and hopefully we’ll run into you only these days out there on the road.

Alyson Caffrey (26:30): Thanks, John.

This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by:

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Weekend Favs October 5th

Weekend Favs October 5th written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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

- Automizy – AI-driven email marketing software that helps predict subject line performance and optimize email campaigns for better open rates.
- ZyraTalk – An AI chatbot that engages website visitors, answers questions and captures leads to increase conversion rates.
- Morphio – A marketing analytics and prediction tool that uses AI to monitor campaigns, identify anomalies, and recommend optimizations.

These are my weekend favs; I would love to hear about some of yours – Connect with me on Linkedin!

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

Fractional CMOs As Strategy Architects with Angelo Ponzi

Fractional CMOs As Strategy Architects with Angelo Ponzi written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

The Ducttape Marketing Podcast with Angelo Ponzi

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview(ed) Angelo Ponzi. This week, we´re going to be re-gifting you your favorite episodes! Angelo Ponzi is a marketing and branding strategist who works with small to middle-market companies as their Fractional CMO. His company, Craft, focuses on three strategic pillars for success: Insights, Brand, and Plan. These pillars are to develop effective and efficient programs for building enduring brands and sustainable business growth.

Key Takeaway:

Fractional CMOs, besides being a flexible and cost-effective solution for businesses, contribute to long-term growth through strategy development, messaging refinement, and navigating marketing challenges. Angelo highlights the importance of balancing new business endeavors with client service when operating one’s agency. Staying actively engaged in networking and marketing efforts is essential to remain present in the fractional CMO arena and seize potential opportunities.

Questions I ask Angelo Ponzi:

[01:12] How do you define the term Fractional CMO?
[02:02] What kind of business and what kind of challenges are they facing that you think makes an ideal fit for a fractional strategic marketing hire?
[03:34] If somebody hires a CMO, do they feel like they’re also hiring an implement mentor, or are they strictly separate functions?
[04:57] Are there ever some turf wars, even though you’re brought in to help them orchestrate better?
[06:25] Besides the cost component, what other things might you suggest about the fractional CMO model being a good idea for businesses?
[09:52] Are you finding much more recognition of the concept and the term, particularly for midsize business owners?
[11:04] What hard lessons have you learned as a Fractional CMO?
[13:05] How do you scale this model?
[18:03] Do you focus on the same thing frequently?

More About Angelo Ponzi:

Connect with Angelo on LinkedIn.
Angelo’s website.

If you enjoyed this episode, check out the Ultimate Guide to Scaling a Fractional CMO Business.

Duct Tape Transcript

(00:30): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and my guest today is Angelo Ponzi. He’s a marketing and branding strategist that works with small to mid-market companies as their fractional chief marketing officer, fractional CMO. His company Craft focuses on three strategic pillars for success, insights brand and plan to develop effective and efficient programs for building enduring brands and sustainable business growth. So Angela, welcome to the show,

Angelo Ponzi (01:03): John. Thank you very much. I really appreciate it.

John Jantsch (01:05): So I still think there’s a lot of confusion around it, like a lot of terms in marketing. So I’m just going to go ahead and say, if somebody says you, you’re a fractional CMO, what is that? How do you describe that? How do you define that term?

Angelo Ponzi (01:17): Yeah. Well, I think simply it’s a part-time outsource contract situation. So for me, fractional being that it’s not a short-term contract, it’s a long-term engagement where I’m going into the organization or depending on my remote client, where I’m engaged on a weekly basis, sometimes daily basis with them. And so think of me as the guy down the hallway, not the guy across the country. Yeah.

John Jantsch (01:48): So I mean, would you describe a business that you think is a typical great fit for that? I mean, most people are familiar with the C-Suite roles, a chief marketing officer inside of an organization, but what kind of business or what kind of challenge are they facing that you think makes an ideal fit for a fractional strategic marketing hire?

Angelo Ponzi (02:10): Sure. In most of the companies that I’ve dealt with, they have some kind of a marketing manager or a team in there. Typically, they tend to be a little more transactional in nature, just tactically oriented. And so I hear things like, our sales aren’t growing, our messaging is not correct. Our competition is eating our lunch. And so looking at those kinds of issues, so they can’t get to that next level with someone who’s more of a tactical transactional person. So they may start to think of a strategic person, however, a full-time CMO doesn’t necessarily come cheap. And so they wrestle with how do I get a senior person without having to have all that expense? And that’s typically what get engaged or when they’ll call me, because again, depending on the client, how much time I’m engaged, but I sit in that C-suite level and helping develop strategies and directions and messaging and competitive differentiators, and then drive those down into the people that actually execute.

John Jantsch (03:21): Do you get yourself in engagements where they’re like, Angelo, this is great, but who’s going to do all this? I mean, is there ever an expectation that you are going to do the work or that any strategic, if somebody hires A CMO, do they feel like they’re also hiring an implement mentor, or is it strictly separate functions?

Angelo Ponzi (03:43): Yeah, well, that’s always the dilemma for me. It’s my nature to tend to go across the line and start facilitating and doing, but I’m pretty clear upfront is what my purpose is. If someone calls me and says, look it, I need a website, I need a social media or digital campaign, my reaction is let’s talk about your messaging, your strategies, and if that’s not correct, I have to start to the left, right? I got to talk to your customers that look at the competition, examine the marketplace and work our way towards execution. So I like to refer to myself sometimes as an architect, I’m building that foundational strategy. And then once the plans are in place, then I will sometimes call myself a general contractor and therefore I’ll bring in outside people to execute or work with the internal teams. But I do cross the fence, but a lot of times they’re like, I’m not going to pay you to frankly write a blog. It’s too expensive.

John Jantsch (04:44): Yeah. So do you find internal teams, I hear this a lot. Do you find that sometimes there’s some turf? Like, wait a minute, I thought that’s what we did. Why are we bringing in this outside person doesn’t know our business? Is there ever some turf wars sometimes, even though you’re brought in maybe to help them orchestrate better?

Angelo Ponzi (05:03): I can honestly say, actually, I can honestly say it’s only happened maybe once or twice where I’ll spend, I’m thinking of a technology company. A couple of years ago they brought me in, the marketing person was out of college for a couple of years. He had his own vision. They brought me in, I revamped everything, redid all their messaging, their plans, and then here’s the plan to implement. And within three months, he was back doing what he wanted to do because they didn’t know how to really manage him. But I would say in most situations, I’m very collaborative, so it’s not my way or the highway. So I find that even after I leave, they’re implementing. I have a company in the streaming space that I helped them when they launched. That was five years ago. When I see him constantly, he’ll be the first to say, I’m still working on the strategies you gave us five years ago. And so that’s really rewarding. But yeah, that is always a challenge, right? Because not invented here, somebody wants to put their own mark on it.

John Jantsch (06:08): Yeah. I’m sure there are some cases, I’m going to assume there’s some cases you’ve run into where they’re considering hiring you versus considering hiring a full-time strategic hire. If you were trying to help somebody work through the pros and cons, besides the cost component, which is obviously a huge selling point on the fractional approach, what are some other things that you might suggest that why the fractional CMO model is a good idea for them?

Angelo Ponzi (06:39): Well, partially too. It’s really what does that strategic leader need to do and what is the long-term play with that leader? Are you going to have somebody who’s who can totally stay engaged throughout the time and do all the things that you need ’em to do, otherwise they start to gravitate into the tactical and then you don’t really need that. I have a current client where we’re looking, I’m filling the strategic leader role, and at the end of the day, they don’t need a full-time me, but they need more worker bees, if you will. And so my recommendation is keep me engaged. Of course, that’s what I would like, but instead of hiring someone like me full-time, take that money and then let’s invest in more people at the real marketing level that the tactical level that needed to get things done. I was brought in last year with a consumer products company that had a CMO.

(07:35): They let him go, and he called me and said, Hey, I’m thinking about hiring. I think I need a fractional. And then about three weeks later, he called me and said, no, you know what? I decided to go. And then three months later, he called me and said, I haven’t found anybody. I think my original idea was great, come in for 90 days, help me. And I was there for eight months before we brought in. I helped bring in my own replacement at that point in time. They really needed somebody there. And there was a situation where I was there three days a week, so I literally was in the office and spending the majority of my time working for that organization.

John Jantsch (08:12): Do you find that to me, one of the benefits I think too, is a lot of times you bring in that CMO, well, they’re going to say, we need to build a team internally. And so they start kind of down the traditional path of hiring, whereas I’m assuming that in many cases you kind of look at this and say, no, we just need this expertise to do this one thing, and then we can rent this to do this one thing. And I mean, you’re really able to put together a much more affordable approach for exactly what they need, aren’t you?

Angelo Ponzi (08:41): Yeah, no, absolutely. It’s current client, they had a digital firm primarily writing blogs, and I analyzed it, and every blog had to be rewritten. And after eight, nine months, you would’ve thought that they understood the business. So I tried to engage with them, and ultimately we ended up parting ways. But instead of hiring another firm just like them, I went out and found a content writer that for a fraction of the cost, I could have twice as many blogs for literally a third of the money that I was paying them already. And so that is one of the things I look at. To me, I always look at any client I work with is my business. I was fortunate to, over the years, I grew a couple of businesses, I was fortunate to sell them, and I understand that a dollar is a dollar, and if I have to watch it for me, I have to watch it for you. So it’s really about maximizing the talent and the dollars that we have.

John Jantsch (09:42): I have been doing this approach probably for 15 years, but didn’t use the term fractional CMO because it didn’t mean anything to a small mid-size business at the time. Are you finding there’s a much more recognition of the concept and the term when you go out and talk to particularly mid-size business owners?

Angelo Ponzi (10:00): Yeah, absolutely. And I’ll go back. I mean, I’m heading into my 10th year, and in those first three or four years, it was like, I don’t understand what a fractional is. Are you contract? Are you outsourced? What are you, right? So there was different terms floating around. I haven’t had anybody really recently say they don’t understand it. I just say, you’re renting my time basically during the course of the week. So I think it’s better understood. I’d even think some of the value of having someone like myself that clients find now versus because it’s a tough decision, do you spend that kind of money? I had a client the other day that, again, looking at bringing in more workers than strategic leaders, and he said to me, well, what if we could hire you? And I suppose my answer was, you can’t. It’s not what I want to do because I knew I would eventually, I would just be pulling my hair out because they don’t need someone full-time like me.

John Jantsch (11:00): So as you’ve grown this and scaled it yourself, are there some hard lessons learned that you might share to say these are some of the landmines that you might look for?

Angelo Ponzi (11:14): Well, I think first of all, for me, and unfortunately it was a very hard lesson. I had an opportunity back in maybe 17, I think it was, to go in as a fractional, but it was like an eight month contract. And I was like, this is great. The money was great. I was excited, and when the contract was over, I was sitting there. I have no business. I wasn’t doing any marketing, I wasn’t keeping the pipeline. So anybody out there listening, if you’re doing what I do or something even similar, having your own agency, I mean, it is a constant balance of doing new business while you’re servicing the clients. I personally now, I would say in the course of the week, I spend a full day throughout the week, but networking, doing my own marketing, doing stuff like this and just making sure that I’m staying ever present, because you just never know.

(12:09): I mean, I have one prospect that I pitched in February. He literally said, you’re hired, but there’s no contract yet. Now it’s August. I still think you’ll come around, but I’m on his time. He’s not on my time. So that’s probably the biggest lesson that I’ve learned and making sure that you have a point of view and you put yourself out there. I mean, I have a blogging program, a newsletter program. I do emails, I do LinkedIn, I do public speaking. I just want to be able to have content. It’s all content to me to refer

John Jantsch (12:44): People too. Absolutely. Yeah. We actually teach people how to start this model, and I tell them, especially when they’re just getting started, I said, the thing nobody tells you is about 50% of this job is selling, but that’s true of really any business. When you start it, that kind of leads to one of the challenges I see a lot of people, how do you scale this model? I mean, in the traditional sense, somebody’s A CMO, they jump out on their own. They go, I’m going to be a fractional CMO, and they end up selling a fourth of their time and basically saying, I’m fully employed. I’m getting paid well for my time, but I can’t really scale a business. Have you run into that? Have you addressed that?

Angelo Ponzi (13:25): Yeah, it’s a really interesting challenge. So before I formed my agency, for example, this was many years ago, I actually, they didn’t call it fractional, but I broke off as a consultant. And so I left an agency, decided to be a strategic planner for agencies, and then eventually I came to the conclusion after about three years, why am I doing this for you? Why don’t I do it for myself? And so I kind of scaled that. So in this particular model for me, I have identified other CMOs, fractional CMOs or VP leaders, if you will, that are out on their own that I can partner with. One of my biggest clients last year is actually a competitor, but I have a background in research. So they don’t do research. They don’t do really branding and messaging and positioning. They’re more kind of internal management. And so we compliment each other.

(14:28): So one of the things that I did to scale is I identified in my trading area who my competitors are. I’ve literally met with every one of ’em trying to figure out are we really competitors or can we work together? And I would say the majority of ’em I can work with. And so I’ve also identified in some of the other key areas. So I have a business analyst that works with me that I pretty much dominate. I have a data scientist that works with me. I have a brand strategist that actually I worked with for years, even in my own agency that happened to, I lost their job during covid and now works for me as kind of a behind the scenes. So I’ve been scaling by putting other people in place, frankly, to do some of the work that allows me to continue to devote some of my time to networking and building the business, but also when I have to be in front of a client,

John Jantsch (15:23): The mistake I see some people make is just like, you get 25% of my time, what do you want? And it’s like they’re dictating. There’s no scope in agencies. We’d scope things out. And I see a lot of people when they do these consulting things, they don’t do that. And so they’re sort of at the whim of a client who doesn’t really know what they need. And I think that’s a key change that I think can allow people to scale this.

Angelo Ponzi (15:51): Yeah, well, one of the things I did to get around that is I created an assessment that I give at the beginning of every engagement just to really try to understand where they think they are, where they really are, where they think they are, but also among the team, I look for alignment, internal alignment. And so that has allowed me to actually through the analysis to say, okay, here’s where we’ve got some real issues and some problems you want to be, I’m just going through this with a client now where when I joined them back in February, they had a $5 million goal for this year increase in revenue. Well, as I started to dig into the data, it’s like, where’d that number come from? Your average growth is only 8% over the last three years. How do you go from 8% frankly to a 37% increase?

(16:39): I don’t see how you’re getting there. So some number was picked out of the air. So trying to bring, creating strategies, now that’s giving me guidance as opposed to, what do you think? If I would’ve just said, okay, I’m going to support a 37% increase, which I did originally, and then eventually I’ve swung them back to say, okay, how are we going to get, maybe it’s 15%, not the eight, but the 15. And I literally just said this to one of my marketing managers today. There’s an endless amount of things to do in marketing. You’ve got a plan and you always go back to the plan and just if you got, you are unsure of your messaging or somebody in sales is pushing back on you, try to understand what’s happening with them. Go talk to them, go listen to a call. So I find that sometimes in that marketing manager role, they tend to go, oh, well, that was my assignment. I did it and now what do I do?

John Jantsch (17:34): Yeah. It’s interesting. I find that we spend as much time, especially early on telling people what not to do as opposed to what to do, because always this temptation to say, oh, there’s a new thing out there. We have to do it. As opposed to doing any of them, right?

Angelo Ponzi (17:51): Yeah, exactly.

John Jantsch (17:52): And that’s what I was going to ask you kind of halfway answered it anyway, but let’s say we get through the assessment. Obviously the assessment’s going to tell you maybe some direction, but do you typically focus on, do you find that you end up focusing on the same thing pretty frequently? What to fix first, so to speak?

Angelo Ponzi (18:10): Actually, no, because they have, it’s like our sales aren’t growing or we’re not achieving, or we think we have an issue. And I have found that if I can execute my assessment in the process that I do, I can uncover things that they’re not thinking about. Good case in point, this was last year working with a manufacturing rep organization, been around for 70 plus years. And so in talking to them and say, our clients love us, they’re mechanical engineers, they know us. We’ve been, we’re a focus. We’re always included, but I got them to agree to let me talk to their customers. Originally it was like, wow, I don’t waste your time. What we found is that they were right. Everybody knows them, everybody includes them. However, their primary customers were about ready to retire. The new generation of engineers had no idea who they were or knew them, but they were now thinking about environmental products and sustainability products, not the gas guzzlers, if you will, that are being put out. And so all of a sudden we identified a potential opportunity that they would’ve never seen until it happened. So now they were able to get ahead of it. So it’s that kind of stuff that we get to uncover, but that wasn’t one, that wasn’t something they told me to go do. That was just something that came, cream of the cop came rising up and we able to tackle it.

John Jantsch (19:41): Yeah, I have had so many insights over the years by talking to people’s customers. I mean, they know very little about why their customers buy from them sometimes. It’s pretty amazing, isn’t it? Or they make assumptions that are wrong

Angelo Ponzi (19:53): Or what the salespeople tell ’em. Right? Right. There’s a question I always like to ask is I ask the clients, do you think your clients are buying, are aware of all the products and services you sell? And almost always they say no. And to me it’s like, well then what are you doing to educate them? You could be leaving a lot of money on the table if they just knew more. And then we find out I asked those questions on the flip side, and almost across the board, the client will say, now I don’t really understand all the stuff they sell. I only know this. So right there, there’s a gap, right. So anyway,

John Jantsch (20:30): It’s fine. Yeah, that’s actually some easy money sometimes, isn’t it? Well, Angela, I appreciate you taking a moment to stop by. You want to invite people to connect with you anywhere or find out more about your work.

Angelo Ponzi (20:39): Sure. That would be great. The best place, of course, is to go to LinkedIn. You can connect with me there. That’s the easiest. Also, all my contact info is there. As far as my website, I actually encourage people to sign up. I do publish a newsletter through LinkedIn every couple of weeks, and so do that. And that’s the best way to find out more about me.

John Jantsch (20:59): Awesome. Well, again, I appreciate you taking a few moments out of your day, and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Angelo Ponzi (21:05): Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. I really appreciate the opportunity.

How to Translate Your Passion Into Your Purpose with Liz Elting

How to Translate Your Passion Into Your Purpose with Liz Elting written by Tosin Jerugba read more at Duct Tape Marketing

The Ducttape Marketing Podcast with Liz Elting

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview(ed) Liz Elting. This week, we´re going to be re-gifting you your favorite episodes! Liz is the co-founder and CEO of the award-winning TransPerfect. TransPerfect is the world’s largest provider of language and business solutions, boasting over $1.1 billion in revenue and offices in over 100 cities around the globe. Additionally, she founded the Elizabeth Elting Foundation, a non-profit organization created to break down systemic barriers and foster systemic change for women and other underserved communities.

She has been named one of Forbes’ Richest Self-Made Women every year since the list’s inception. She is the author of the upcoming book DREAM BIG AND WIN: Translating Passion into Purpose and Creating a Billion-Dollar Business and a contributor at Forbes and SWAAY. Relisten and Enjoy!

Key Takeaway:

Almost any dream can become a reality with the right mindset and strategies. Learn how setting goals with deadlines, embracing constant innovation, and empowering women can lead to billion-dollar success. Liz’s journey from starting TransPerfect to her philanthropic endeavors is an inspiring roadmap for aspiring entrepreneurs and leaders. Dream big, take action, and win!

Questions I ask Liz Elting:

(01:12): What motivated you to establish TransPerfect, and how does that tie into why you wrote your book?
(04:05): What were some of the most challenging lessons you had to learn as you grew your company?
(08:17): How would someone take it beyond just the dream into reality?
(10:20): How do you balance or weigh the importance of taking risks?
(11:26): What advice do you have for those aspiring to launch the next Google? Where can they find big ideas?
(12:50): How have you adapted TransPerfect to meet changing global trends? How can others do this?
(15:03): Was philanthropy a goal or a happy side effect of your success?
(17:40): Do you see being a woman in your field as an advantage or disadvantage? How has it shaped your experience?

More About Liz Elting:

Liz’s book: DREAM BIG AND WIN: Translating Passion Into Purpose and Creating a Billion-Dollar Business
More about the Elizabeth Elting Foundation
Liz’s website
Connect with Liz on LinkedIn

Get Your Free AI Prompts To Build A Marketing Strategy:

Download now

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

Duct Tape Transcript

(00:29): Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Liz Elting. She’s the founder and c e o of the Elizabeth Elting Foundation is an entrepreneur, business leader. I didn’t know they threw this word in there for me. Lingo, file, philanthropist and feminist. Liz is the founder of TransPerfect World’s largest language solution company with over $1 billion in revenue and offices in more than 100 cities worldwide. We’re going to talk about her latest book, dream Big and Win, translating Passion Into Purpose and Creating a Billion Dollar Business. So Liz, welcome to the show.

Liz (01:08): Thank you so much, John. I’m so excited to be here.

John (01:12): So we’re going to get into the book, but I want to go back in time a little bit because it’s relevant, I think, to you writing the book. What led you to start TransPerfect?

Liz (01:21): Well, I had always loved language. I mean the English language and then languages. I had the opportunity to live in a number of foreign countries, Portugal when I was little, then Canada when I was 10 until college, and then I did my junior year in Spain and I worked in Venezuela, and I was able to study four languages, so Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Latin loved languages. Went to school, decided to major in languages and didn’t know what on earth I would do with it. That was the concern because I was very practical. But I ended up getting a job shortly after my internship in Venezuela, which was shortly after graduating from college. But I got a job at a translation company in the late eighties, and it at the time was the world’s largest. It was about 90 people, and I realized, wow, what a beautiful way to combine language and business and what a perfect way to do.

(02:13): So I was there for three years. First I was in production, and then I moved over to sales, and I thought, what a wonderful industry and what a necessary industry, but I think it can be done better. I saw a real gap between what clients needed and what was available in the industry. So went back to school, got my M B A from N Y U and had a very brief stint in finance. Felt like I had to try out finance just because I had my M B A from N Y U, and that’s what people from Y U did. 70% of majors went into were finance majors, and I tried it, tried it out. So briefly after six weeks I left and I thought, wow, I loved the translation industry, and I had a thought on how it could be done better and this finance is not for me. So with that, that’s kind of the moment I decided, okay, I’m going to start TransPerfect. And really with the goal being to build the world’s largest language solutions company. At the time, there were about 10,000 other companies. That’s what I did. But they were tiny. They were mom and pop.

John (03:15): Well, I was going to ask you that. You halfway answered it anyway, so I’ll let you really tee it up, but did you really started thinking, I can do this big giant thing, or was it just like, Hey, I can do this better?

Liz (03:26): Yeah, no, it is a great question because you never know how big you can make it. But I think what I thought was, as I said, there were 10,000 translation companies out there in 1992 when we started, but they were really companies that were started and run by translators who were enormously talented, but they were busy doing the translation work, so they couldn’t scale their companies. So I thought, if I’m going to do this, I want it to be different and better. And the biggest, I just figured if I’m going to not use that M B A and take the risk, I’m going to go for broke. And so that was certainly the goal.

John (04:05): I always love to ask entrepreneurs this question. A lot of times it’s because they can look in the rear view mirror now to answer this, but what were some of the hardest lessons that you learned or had to learn in growing? Obviously many people don’t get past a million dollars, let alone another zero on there. What were some of the hardest lessons?

Liz (04:23): So learned a lot of things. Did many, many things wrong. In the early days. We worked so hard on selling and just realized we had to sell. We needed to bring in revenue as quickly as possible. We didn’t have funding. So to some degree we were able to do that, and that was wonderful. We brought in business, so we needed to hire quickly, and we brought in some people who were excellent, and actually some who were amazing, and then some who weren’t so good. But what happened was we were working so hard on selling that we had too much work because we could only find people so quickly. Back then, in the early nineties or even the mid nineties, people didn’t want to work for a startup. We didn’t have the big name. We were this tiny company with a lot of work, crazy hours, and we were asking a lot of people and we thought, okay, well, we’ll just pay them a bonus.

(05:12): We’ll just pay them more money and they’ll pull that all nighter. But we had a lot of turnover in those days. We lost a lot of people because you can’t do that to people no matter how much you pay them. They need their life. And we learned quickly that we needed to scale carefully, make sure we were trying to grow, but we also needed to make sure we brought in the right people and then we gave them a reasonable situation. So we learned from that to basically set up shifts. We had what we called T one, T two and T three different shifts so that people were not working through the night. We also opened other offices in different time zones, and we had those time zones cover for the other time zone, and then finally comp days. But we found ways around it, but we had a lot of turnover in the early days because of the situation.

John (06:03): I think most businesses, especially if you grow rapidly, I mean you had never run a company of that size mean, so you were learning on the job. And I think that that’s an area that sinks a lot of businesses. I mean, the people management part is probably the hardest part when you grow rapidly, isn’t it?

Liz (06:20): Yeah. And I think it’s the hardest part no matter what, right? I mean, yes, when you grow rapidly, because in the end, I mean, we grew pretty quickly, but we did this for 26 years, or actually, I did this for 26. It didn’t feel so rapid at the time, but we couldn’t bring in good people. We couldn’t bring in people quickly enough who, and we didn’t figure out how to manage their hours. But you’re right. You’re right. When you’re growing quickly, it’s hard. But I think finding, developing and retaining great people is the hardest part of every business. I’m sure you hear that and you know that we hear it all the time. That is the hardest.

John (07:00): Well, and you were kind of pre-internet, a pre global economy mean, so you needed people all over the world, and they were not as easy to find as they are today. You didn’t have the marketplaces where you could find ’em. I’m curious, Wiley is your publisher on this book, right? Is that right? They

Liz (07:15): Are. Did

John (07:15): I remember? Yeah. So was there any wrestling over the title? And the reason I ask that is there’s some people that the thought of creating a billion dollar business just doesn’t even seem on the table. Did you have any, I’m just curious if you had any discussion with your editor on that title?

Liz (07:33): Yes, we did. Because I think you’re right. A lot of people think, well, that’s just out of the realm of possibility. Why would I even bother? And this book, certainly it’s for everybody. It’s for people who want to create million companies and 5 million companies and 10 million companies. So we did, but I think we put it on there ultimately because we wanted to show, you can do this. You can dream big, and I mean, dream very big, and you can create a billion dollar company. And I tried to share lessons I learned from what I did and the many things I did wrong, and you can get there. And it was to inspire people to realize they can reach for the stars and they could well make it. So that

John (08:17): Was idea, dream big and win and maybe make more money than you’re making today is probably not as inspirational, right? Right. So there are a lot of books that talk about dreaming big. I think one of the things I really like about your book is so few of them have the and win component because to some extent, it’s easy to dream big, isn’t it? So how do you take it beyond just the dream?

Liz (08:43): Right? And I’m so glad you said that because some people feel like they don’t want to talk about winning. Winning is a bad word, but for a lot of us, we’re very competitive, and if we’re doing it, we’re playing to win, and that’s who this is for. But the answer is it’s easy to dream. A dream without goals, with deadlines is just a wish, right? I mean, it’s all about goals with deadlines. And I talk a lot about that in the book about the daily goals. We had things like make 300 phone calls a day and send out 300 letters, and maybe now it would be emails, but every day and not letting the day pass without doing those things for an extended period of time. And I did it when I started the company and we had all of our salespeople doing it and held them to it.

(09:34): So that’s an example of goals with deadlines that we really had to adhere to. Another example is when we thought, okay, we’ve got to scale this to the next level. Basically we set out quarterly goals for when we’re going to open offices, and we said, okay, Q one, San Francisco, Q two Atlanta, Q three, Washington, DC Q four Chicago. And then we forced ourselves to do it. We didn’t give ourselves an out. And that sounds like that might be actually quite difficult, especially without funding, but we basically hired one person at a time. They needed to achieve certain sales goals, and then they could add a person and so on. But yes, I think goals with deadlines is the key, and that’s what a lot of people don’t want to do. But if you do that, I think it’s so key.

John (10:20): I think there’s a misconception out there with people who aren’t entrepreneurs that every entrepreneur is just this massive risk taker. I’d make the case that it’s actually riskier staying in a nine to five job for somebody. But talk a little bit about, I mean, because you took some big risks, talk a little bit about what you think the role or the balance or the importance of risk is.

Liz (10:43): Yes. No, you’re right. And I agree with you. It can be more of a risk if you’re working for someone else, because then you’re at their mercy. That’s right. Which boss you’re going to get. You don’t know what the boss is going to ask of you. You don’t know what’s going to happen going to happen to the company. Plenty of companies go out of business, they lay people off, whatever it is. So yes, whereas you can control your own destiny if you take what some people might consider the risk, and I agree with you, it’s not a risk. If by chance it doesn’t work out, you learned a lot along the way and then you can go start something new. Or if you really don’t want to, you can go back to corporate life. But I agree with you. I think it’s more of a risk not to.

John (11:26): I’m sure people that will read this book will say, okay, I should dream big, but what do I need to start the next Google? Or where do I find the idea for my big?

Liz (11:37): Yeah. And I love that question or that, yes, because I feel like you should not confuse being an inventor with being an entrepreneur or being an entrepreneur with being an inventor. Basically, you can be wildly successful creating something entirely new. And certainly that was what we did. As I mentioned, 10,000 other companies were already doing it, but the idea was to do it better and differently. And there are all kinds of ways to do that, whether it’s with more urgency slash faster, whether it’s with more of a service orientation, really spoiling the client, whether it’s with having a global presence, whether it’s creating a one-stop shop. I mean, there’s so many ways to do it. And I always think about how Steve Jobs did it with the iPhone. It was originally the Blackberry, which had some issues. The screen wasn’t too big. I mean, there were a number of issues, and he wanted it to be able to do a lot more than just have its email usage. So the point is, yes, I think it’s the better way to go because there’s so many things out there that are being done, but they’re not being done as well as they could. And it’s finding that hole, finding that problem to solve.

John (12:50): So every new wave of technology potentially presents challenges for established businesses. I would venture to say that the translation business is going through a bit of an evolution because of ai. So how would you advise people, in some cases, it’s going to gut their profit. In other cases, it’s going to make them have to pivot altogether. I mean, how did you look at that kind of changing world to pivot or think about how you had to change the company?

Liz (13:25): Just to mean, and you probably know this, but I did sell five years ago, but still,

John (13:31): Yeah, I was using that as an example. Oh,

Liz (13:33): Yes. No, no, absolutely. Because machine translation became a part of things during my time in the industry, and you’re absolutely right. So what we did is we tried to incorporate it in any way that it could be helpful. And it was whether it was machine translation, cat tools, and now it’s ai, and I’m sure they’re using it to their advantage and making it so that it is helpful. But the other piece of it that we did, and I recommend doing it, is constantly innovating. And sure, we did it with starting as a company that had almost no technology because in 1992, you could barely mode something. I mean, there was no technology. It was crazy. But then along the way, we really incorporated technology. But as far as other things, we started a litigation solutions division. We started a staffing solutions division. We created technology solutions.

(14:27): And I think the point there is you get the client base and you work with these big companies and you see what else they need, and then you see what the needs are out there as time goes on, and you just keep innovating for your client base. So we kept working with the same clients. I mean huge global companies, but they needed other things. And it’s anticipating the client’s needs before they know they have them. It’s constant innovation. And I think that’s what we did during those 26 years that I was with the company. But I think I’m sure that’s what they’re doing now and what every great entrepreneur and every great C e O is doing.

John (15:03): Yeah, I mean, no question. Easier to sell more to people who already trust you than to go out and find new companies or new business. Absolutely. As people might’ve noted in the intro, in your intro, the first part talks about your foundation. So was philanthropy always a hope, a goal or kind of a happy side effect of what happened in your mind?

Liz (15:26): I think it always was a goal. I learned early on that I wanted to help people. I liked helping people. I mean, I did volunteer work, a lot of us did. But during my years as an entrepreneur, I didn’t have time like any entrepreneur that you barely have time for your company and your family, and that’s it. So I did figure eventually when I had more time, I would focus on the issues and I saw issues. I saw issues with women and how they were treated, how marginalized populations were treated, or people from marginalized communities were treated, and then all kinds of other issues. And the longer I’ve been doing it, the more issues I’m seeing everything from heart disease to cancer to hunger to gun safety. So now I did think, okay, I had a plan early on, and I’ll tell you partly why I had a plan.

(16:22): One thing that happened to me when I was 14, it was kind of the big event of my life. It was life changing. I was hit by a car. I was walking across the street in Vermont, and I flipped over, had a fractured skull, was unconscious for three days. My parents didn’t think I was going to wake up. And then they were thinking, okay, well if she wakes up, she’s probably going to have severe brain damage. Not being able to be able to talk or not be able to walk or something or both. Anyway, after three days, I was fortunate I did come out of this coma, but there was someone else with the exact same injury. So I realized, oh my gosh, I’m the lucky one. I need to do something important here. I could have just as easily lost my life. And then of course, I was lucky with having parents who encouraged education and supported me through it, and being able to be an entrepreneur who hired amazing people. I mean, we in the end had an amazing team that really built our company. So I was one of the lucky ones. So now here I am trying to help people who don’t come from situations where they can get the education. So work a lot on financial aid or try to encourage people to be entrepreneurs or I’m trying to help in all the areas that I just am more good fortune with, and some people don’t have it. So that’s the idea.

John (17:40): So talk a little bit about, you started to mention this a little bit, but did you see being a woman doing what you did as an advantage or a disadvantage?

Liz (17:51): I think

John (17:51): I have four daughters, so that’s maybe why I posed the question that way, because I’d love your take. No,

Liz (17:57): Absolutely. I think the reason actually what prompted me to start the company that I left out, I was trying to move along my answer. I know people don’t have all day, but when I was at the other company, shortly after getting my M B A where I was trying out finance, I was the only woman. And first thing that happened is whenever the phone rang, all the guys would yell Liz phone, because I was the woman. And I quickly realized, okay, that atmosphere was not for me. It felt sexist there, it did. Now, that was many years ago, going through the years as an entrepreneur and as a C E O or Co c e O, yeah, it was tough in a lot of ways, being a woman, people assumed that my partner was the c e o when they first met us, when we just walked in, and I was his assistant because I was the woman.

(18:48): And then I felt like as we grew the company, I think it can be harder for women because when women are tough, they’re considered mean. Whereas when men are tough, they’re considered great leaders. I definitely felt some of that. And then I guess the other issue I saw is not so much that it affected me over time because I was in that leadership role, but other women that I saw at other companies, sometimes in our company, I think they weren’t always treated the way they should be. So I thought, okay, when I’m finished with this, I’m going to help them and support them because in many companies and in many parts of the world and in politics and throughout, it can be tougher for women. And so that’s why I’m focusing on it. And the wonderful thing for your daughters is this. In the nineties, we didn’t have a lot of groups, women’s group support.

(19:40): Now at companies, we ultimately had a women’s group at our company, we started one. There are so many amazing networking groups outside where women are supporting women and some wonderful men are supporting women too. And it’s much better, but we still have a ways to go. And I think as far as your daughters, one last thing is obviously they may find a terrific situation. There are wonderful companies out there, but I also think it’s great when women go and start their own companies and they can create their dream environment. And so I’m a huge proponent of that as well.

John (20:11): Well, I’ll brag a little bit. One of them has started and sold a company already, and then the other one is, one of my other ones is actually runs my company. So Oh

Liz (20:20): My gosh. Oh wow. So they’re entrepreneurs already

John (20:24): And very

Liz (20:24): Successful ones.

John (20:26): I love that

Liz (20:27): They don’t have to deal with these issues, or

John (20:30): Hopefully not, but Liz,

Liz (20:32): Wow, thank you. I said you had kids. I wasn’t imagining they were old enough to do that. You’re much two young

John (20:38): For them. I’ve got seven grandkids, so Oh my gosh.

Liz (20:41): You’ve accomplished a lot. Pretty more than I have.

John (20:43): Well, I wouldn’t go there, but, well, Liz, I appreciate you stopping by the show today. You want to tell people where they can maybe connect with you or find out more about your work, especially the foundation, and then clearly pick up a copy of Dream Big and Win.

Liz (20:57): Oh, thank you. Thank you so much, John. Yes, so my website is https://lizelting.com/, and my website is https://www.elizabetheltingfoundation.org . And then the book, dream Big and Win can be bought on Amazon. So dream Big and Win. Liz Elting, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or whatever your preferred retailer is. But yes, thank you so much, John. This was wonderful.

John (21:21): Well, I appreciate you taking a moment, and hopefully we’ll run into one of these days out there on the road.

Liz (21:26): Oh, that would be amazing. So great talking to you. And so great talking to everybody.

Weekend Favs September 28th

Weekend Favs September 28th written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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

AdCreative.ai – Generates high-converting ad creatives using AI, tailored to your audience preferences, for platforms like Facebook and Google.
Ocoya – Combines content creation, AI copywriting, and scheduling, allowing marketers to streamline the entire social media content lifecycle in one tool.
Mutiny – Uses AI to personalize website content for each visitor, increasing conversion rates by automatically tailoring the messaging based on visitor data and behavior.

These are my weekend favs; I would love to hear about some of yours – Connect with me on Linkedin!

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

Gain Client’s Trust by ensuring Cybersecurity

Gain Client’s Trust by ensuring Cybersecurity written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast with Zach Kromkowski

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interviewed Zach Kromkowski, co-founder of Sention, about the importance of cybersecurity for small businesses and marketing firms.

Zach’s cybersecurity journey began with a passion for problem-solving and a talent for turning ideas into reality. Blending intelligence, tenacity, and a love for community education, he simplifies cybersecurity through webinars, workshops, and consultations, helping MSPs and enterprises easily enhance their security.

We discuss best practices for system hardening, managing security in a distributed workforce, and the significance of password management and compliance standards. The conversation also touches on the risks AI poses in cybersecurity and the necessity of implementing two-factor authentication and VPNs. Zach emphasizes that adequate security doesn’t require a large budget and offers practical steps businesses can take to enhance their security posture.

Key Takeaways

Cybersecurity is crucial for marketing firms and small businesses.
System hardening can be done without a large budget.
Managing security in a distributed workforce requires clear policies.
Google Workspace users should regularly review linked accounts.
Password managers are essential for secure password storage.
Two-factor authentication (2FA) is a must for all software.
SOC 2 compliance is a common standard for businesses.
AI poses unique risks in cybersecurity that need to be addressed.
Adding layers of security can deter potential attacks.
Educating employees about security risks builds trust.

Chapters

[00:00] Introduction to Cybersecurity and Marketing

[02:00] Best Practices for Small Businesses

[04:59] Managing Security in a Distributed Workforce

[07:59] Enhancing Security with Google Workspace

[10:58] Password Management Best Practices

[13:58] The Role of VPNs in Security

[16:59] Understanding Compliance Standards

[18:10] AI Risks in Cybersecurity

[21:52] Conclusion and Resources

More About Zach Kromkowski:

Add Zach Kromkowski on LinkedIn
Check out his Website
Subscribe to his YouTube channel

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

This episode of The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by:

Try ActiveCampaign free for 14 days with our special offer. Exclusive to new customers—upgrade and grow your business with ActiveCampaign today!

Duct Tape Transcript

John Jantsch (00:00): I was like, I found it. I found it. This is what I’ve been looking for. I can honestly say it has genuinely changed the way I run my business. It’s changed the results that I’m seeing. It’s changed my engagement with clients. It’s changed my engagement with the team. I couldn’t be happier. Honestly. It’s the best investment I ever made.

(00:16): What you just heard was a testimonial from a recent graduate of the Duct Tape Marketing certification intensive program for fractional CMOs marketing agencies and consultants just like them. You could choose our system to move from vendor to trusted advisor, attract only ideal clients, and confidently present your strategies to build monthly recurring revenue. Visit DTM world slash scale to book your free advisory call and learn more. It’s time to transform your approach. Book your call today, DTM world slash scale. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Zach Kromkowski. I was so worried about the last name that I’ve messed up. You

Zack Kromkowski (01:15): Overthought the last name and you got the first name. No worries.

John Jantsch (01:19): Kromkowski. Here we go. He is a force in cybersecurity driven to make system hardening both effective and accessible. Co-founder of Ion, he and his team developed an innovative platform that automates hardening for workstation servers and browsers to CIS standards, streamlining compliance and security. So we’re going to talk about security cybersecurity, I suppose more specifically. So this is a topic that is not necessarily marketing very related to what we do as marketers, very related to what we do as business owners. So Zach, welcome to the show.

Zack Kromkowski (01:54): Yeah, thank you for having me on. And I mean, you kicked off right there, John. Why is this relatable to marketing firms and owners? I mean, our little pre-session banter, it’s like us marketing firms, and when we work with clients, they’re telling us a lot of their ip. They’re telling us their brand, their image. All of these details is how bad actors might be able to create a more targeted phishing email or a more targeted, more persuasive email that isn’t real. So even though we’re talking about security on a marketing podcast, it’s all related. So I really appreciate the pre-show banter we had, John.

John Jantsch (02:30): Yeah, well, and not to mention, I mean, we have clients that their cousin’s, ex-boyfriend set up all of their passwords on things and they just have ’em on a spreadsheet and they give ’em to us. And as a marketing agency, in some ways that makes life easier because I’ve got all the keys, right? But it’s also should be very scary to anybody that is taking that data. So let’s kind of back up and can you give us some best practices on the typical small business we can get into? The agency maybe is a little different, but the typical small business, what are some of the things they need to be doing as just routine practices? Not because the sky’s falling, just but because lots of things happen, right? You’ve got bad actors, but you’ve also got disgruntled employees. Maybe you’ve got lots of things that can happen in the world because stuff happens. So let’s kind of start there. What are the basics?

Zack Kromkowski (03:26): Yeah, I mean, there’s risk to anything. Again, in that pre-show we talked about as Duct Tape Marketing, you have your own third party vendors. What can I do to protect myself? And you shared a little bit about that. So

(03:37): Talking to those basics, there’s a misconception with security that you have to invest hundreds, thousands of dollars just to have security. And I’ll be the first vendor to admit, you don’t need to spend a ton of money on security. There are things you can do specifically called system hardening. So this is one of the first things, in my opinion, any business owner, any SMB can really focus on. This is a concept of understanding. Where are your assets? Where are your computers? Where is your server? Maybe you have one, maybe you don’t. Where are your computers? And the next step of saying how are they configured? What software is installed on this computer? How can I configure that new software to be more secure? So talking about some of these easy examples, something every small business owner I talk to always and my parents, right? My family, for example, they want to save their passwords to the browser. This is universally just accepted. This is what everyone does. But the browser, the Google, the Microsoft Edge, these are not security first browser password storage methods. There are literally companies that dedicate their entire business model just to saving the password. So that’s like bit warden LastPass.

John Jantsch (04:58): And

Zack Kromkowski (04:58): When I talk about hardening, you can’t write a policy and say, Hey employees, I don’t want any of you to save your password to the browser and expect them to do that. When I talk about hardening, we literally remove the ability to save a password to the browser. That way that policy is enforced and happens by nature. There’s no way around it. So that’s one aspect of hardening, John.

John Jantsch (05:22): Yeah. Awesome. So what about, I guess, outstanding on that same topic. What about the fact that in my particular case, there is no server, there is no central office. In a lot of cases, people are using their own devices to connect to many of the assets. So how does somebody who has a distributed workforce, is that going to be different or are we really just going to run a much higher risk?

Zack Kromkowski (05:50): So this is another good follow up. It’s this concept of risk and being able to communicate this as a marketing or that owner is really important because if you can educate and talk towards your risk, it’s going to build more trust. And this trust, if I’m outsourcing my marketing as cion, I have to trust the person that I want to work with. So let’s say there is a distributor distributed network, BYOD devices. It’s my personal computer and my work computer. What can we do? One of the things, and I’ll stay on the topic of browsers, browser security, browser hardening is very important. You can write a policy to say, Hey, for work, you have to use the Google Chrome browser for personal use. The other one, the Edge, the Firefox. Or if you want to set up a Google workspace, if you have a little bit of budget to invest, you can create a Google Chrome profile and you configure the profile to have company standards and then the personal one they manage on their own. There is a level of risk to that decision because they still have access to the other profile. Worst case scenario, that profile is compromised and they find a way to get to the other one. But you at least have that segmentation to add an additional barrier to that bad actor. So when I talk about hardening, again, the key thing is here not to have default settings. If your settings are in defaults, a bad actor will know what the settings are before they get there.

(07:25): So if we can change some of those settings and create even the smallest barrier for that bad actor to have to invest 10 minutes instead of 30 seconds, they might just bypass you and go to the next target. They may not even try to hack you anymore.

John Jantsch (07:40): Yeah, a great example of that, not necessarily on a server, but many of our clients are on WordPress.

Zack Kromkowski (07:45): And

John Jantsch (07:47): Just a simple thing like changing the page name of the admin login does that same thing because they’re out there knowing that 90% of the sites out there, it’s admin, wpa, admin. And so if they’re not going to find that in the one second bot search, they’re probably going to move on. So

Zack Kromkowski (08:05): That is a really good example. And we talk about WordPress, but we can also talk about Microsoft in the same respect. So there’s also an administrator account on the workstation, on the laptop itself, and that admin account, I mean, we could talk about Fortinet firewalls, right? The password and newsrooms, if we just take that five minutes to change these default choices, it adds an extra layer of effort. And this is by most intensive purposes, the most important takeaway from the show is by adding layers of difficulty, even just one layer makes you a target that they probably won’t want to hit.

John Jantsch (08:42): Because you see a lot of these things are obviously being done by bots in a lot of cases. So the bots just told, ping this and so it’ll move on.

Zack Kromkowski (08:51): Exactly. That’s exactly right, John. That is a perfect way to say it.

John Jantsch (08:55): So what about many people? I don’t know what the percentages are these days, but a lot of, especially virtual companies have turned to Google Workspace as really a lot of their internal storage, their email, their calendars. What are some best practices for that? I know super admins have some security things they can set up. So what are some best practices to make sure that even if it’s not the most secure thing, you can make it more secure?

Zack Kromkowski (09:24): Absolutely. So this is going to go into more piss. You’re a Google House, you want to use single sign on, you just want to click sign on with Google, that’s great. But we do that so often. We’re just signing up for this free trial of that. It builds up so much. So my recommendation here would be one, look at Google had a recent update. My CISO is extremely excited, but you can actually see now all of the accounts that are linked to your single sign-on,

John Jantsch (09:54): And

Zack Kromkowski (09:54): You can easily remove that from having access, because again, this is looking at the layers of security. If your single account is unfortunately compromised, now they have access to everything

John Jantsch (10:07): And

Zack Kromkowski (10:07): Even things you don’t use or don’t need anymore. So doing that asset inventory review allows you to reduce your tax surface and reduce the things that have access. And let’s talk about the flip side of that. If that third party company, the one you did use single sign on to sign on with, and you don’t even need it anymore, they get compromised now, they can leverage that to attack you because you still are authenticated. You still have the permissions because you never removed it. So that first most important best practice would be to review what you currently have available via that single sign on.

John Jantsch (10:44): It’s my pleasure to welcome a new sponsor to the podcast. Our friends at ActiveCampaign. ActiveCampaign helps small teams power big businesses with the must have platform for intelligent marketing automation. We’ve been using ActiveCampaign for years here at Duct Tape Marketing to power our subscription forms, email newsletters and sales funnel drip campaigns. ActiveCampaign is that rare platform that’s affordable, easy to use, and capable of handling even the most complex marketing automation needs. And they make it easy to switch. They provide every new customer with one-on-one personal training and free migrations from your current marketing automation or email marketing provider. You can try ActiveCampaign for free for 14 days and there’s no credit card required. Just visit activecampaign.com/duct tape. That’s right, duct Tape Marketing podcast listeners who sign up via that link. We’ll also receive 15% off an annual plan if purchased by March 31st, 2024. That’s activecampaign.com/duct tape. Now, this offer is limited to new active campaign customers only. So what are you waiting for? Fuel your growth, boost revenue and save precious time by upgrading to ActiveCampaign today. What about users? Are there policies that you should have all of your users adhering to?

Zack Kromkowski (12:05): This is a good one. So this goes towards disabled browser password manager. So that one example is the most relatable to everyone because everyone knows what a password is. Everyone knows how to save a password. I’ll go high level on this, but there’s an organization, it’s a free nonprofit. It’s called Center for Internet Security, CIS, and they have free downloadable PDFs on how to configure your Google Chrome, how to configure your Microsoft Edge. And that setting, I gave the example of with passwords, that’s about one setting out of a hundred some different settings.

(12:41): So another example is when executing a download, you have to explicitly say, download it to this folder, right? It makes you do one extra click because for that fish, without that in place, that fish, you click automatically done with the extra layer. Now the user says, okay, I’m going to click this. Oh, now it wants to trigger a download. That’s not behavior I expected. And it allows your employee, it allows your clients, it allows you to take an extra second to say, is this what I thought would happen? And maybe that extra second prevents the worst from happening.

John Jantsch (13:21): A little bit about password management as it relates to certainly to Google, but then you also mentioned some of the password managers out there. Are there best practices for password management in general?

Zack Kromkowski (13:31): Yeah, so this one’s good. So two FA, I’ll say this on every single episode I go on. For any field password managers are critical. Save your passwords there, but let’s talk about getting into the password manager. This has to be the most unique password because you can’t put it in their password manager. You can’t, if you don’t know this password, you can’t sign into it to figure out what it is, right? So you need to know that password, and that is something you should treat like your social security number, whether you have it written down and put into a safe, or you just have it memorized, which memorizes, of course, the best practice. But making sure this has at least 20 different characters. And when I say characters, I’m referring to letters, numbers, and symbols. Those are the things that make a strong password. And because this is a password you use nowhere else, it’s a single password. This is actually not something I would recommend to rotate or change. This is just your forever password

John Jantsch (14:29): Until

Zack Kromkowski (14:30): Your safe gets broken into, until you get an alert saying possible password compromise. You never have to rotate this password. This is your single source of truth to get into your password manager. And yeah, on top of that, I’ll say it one more time. The two FA, every piece of software, everything that you have access to always go through and just see, Hey, in the setting section or the security and option section, do they have a two a option available? Do you want me to go a little bit deeper into why that’s important, John?

John Jantsch (15:01): No, but I do want to explain, not everybody knows the acronym two FA. So two factor authentication. So we’ve all got some, all the financial folks have gone to almost forcing that. So you log in and then it says, all right, we’re not sure this is you. We’re going to text you a code, or you need to use an authenticator or something. So basically it’s just a second hoop, if you will, to somebody could have your phone, they can have your password, so they could authenticate it, but it just adds an extra hoop for somebody that’s out there in some far away island that’s trying to hack into your stuff.

Zack Kromkowski (15:38): And I think that’s a great point, and I’m glad you called me out for that. I do my best to speak all of my acronyms. It’s alphabet soup in the security world. But

(15:48): This is a cool thing, and relating it again, back to the marketing departments and marketing teams and doing sales, right? If you were trying to sell ION or a security company, Hey, I want to do your marketing. I need all of this brand information, I need all of your value props, I need whatever, to build the perfect messaging. If one question I would probably ask, Hey, how are you storing this? Right? So marketing departments may want to take half a step into enabling their sales team to say, Hey, if it ever makes sense, feel free to let the prospect know, Hey, we secure our data this way. We have managed browsers, we do use two FA. If a marketing firm said that to me and leaned into MySpace as a security vendor, I’d be impressed. I’d be like, Hey, maybe they’re not experts, but they took that half a step to at least try to appeal to what I care about, and that would mean a lot to me.

John Jantsch (16:42): So here’s my other topic. I’m going to throw this one in here. This might just mix up the soup a little bit, but where do you stand on VPNs? So again, since we’re all over the world and all doing, we’re all logging into Google to do X, should we all be using virtual private networks that mask our ips?

Zack Kromkowski (17:01): Yeah, I mean, this again, goes towards that BYOD. If you are an enterprise who can only access certain things via the on-premise domain, you have to be connected. You have to be onsite in order to obtain certain information, you’re going to be inherently required to have A VPN. Now, the debate kind of comes in, okay, we can only access the data onsite. We have no one remote. Do we really need a VPN? In that case, you probably don’t. I mean, more is always better, but in that case, it’s probably overkill. If everyone is already working on site, the computers never leave the business, everything has to be done there. There’s not a lot of value because the data’s never leaving that secure built environment. Now, to your point, a lot of people are B-O-I-O-D. We’re all remote nowadays. So yeah, they really do become that backbone to say, if I don’t lock out some of that business data and require A VPN in order to reach it, anyone can reach it,

John Jantsch (18:08): Right?

Zack Kromkowski (18:09): So it’s going to depend on your business model, your business setup. But yeah, VPNs are critical for those remote environments. But if you are on site, probably not necessary.

John Jantsch (18:21): So you talked about if somebody was wanting to do your marketing, if I went to a company and they were asking, in fact, we’ve had this happen before where people have an IT company that they work with and they’re like, Hey, here’s our checklist of security standards. Do you meet them? So is there kind of a, I wouldn’t call it the gold standard, but maybe even a minimum standard that if I went to them and just said, oh yeah, we are BXYC compliant. Is there one sort of compliance level that say a small business should strive towards?

Zack Kromkowski (18:54): So there’s an easy answer that comes to mind here, and that’s going to be SOC two compliance, which is maybe what you’re leaning towards.

John Jantsch (19:00): And

Zack Kromkowski (19:00): It’s definitely one of the most common and most understood compliances to me. And it would mean something to me. It would definitely say, well, they at least did that. That means they care about it To some extent, the follow-up question. And if you do take the approach of getting a SOC two, which yes, that’s a good approach. ION has one, right? We’re doing all this, but be able to say, not only do we have one, this is what we got it for. So that’s the very unique thing with SOC two. I can get a SOC two on the ION website, but the ION solution itself has no security certification. So if you intend to take the approach of leading or injecting at some point during the sales conversation as a marketing firm, hey, we have our SOC two, be sure to be ready for that follow-up question and say, what’s your SOC two for?

John Jantsch (19:52): Because

Zack Kromkowski (19:52): That is something that we would ask if anyone ever said that to us.

John Jantsch (19:56): And I believe that’s SOC two, right? It is,

Zack Kromkowski (19:59): Yep. And I think it’s the Roman numerals two is usually how it’s, yep.

John Jantsch (20:03): Alright, if people want to look that up. We’re 18 minutes and 38 seconds into this recording. Let’s talk about ai. Oh boy. So does ai, where are the risks, I suppose, posed by AI that we need to at least be thinking about?

Zack Kromkowski (20:19): So risk especially in the relation to marketing and the business field that you cater to. John, you are a goldmine to a bad actor. Why? We talked about this a little bit at the start, but you have multiple companies, brand multiple companies, points of context, multiple companies, just image if an ai, if you were to be compromised, and I already heard you have your layers of security, so kudos to you on being able to talk towards that very good conversation. But let’s talk about if worst case scenario you were compromised that AI can now ingest hundreds of companies, unique branding, colors, branding, verbiage, branding, everything, and it takes that data and then can target the next business your customer. You have a similar risk profile to a managed service provider. So a managed service provider will typically manage the IT and security and has more access. So they can be a direct point of breach, they can take advantage of things, but you’re the next layer. You’re the layer still hugely valuable to an ai because that AI now is tailoring, its messaging, becoming you talking to that end client. And it’s going to be hard to tell the difference, John. I mean, that’s the end of the day. Our AI are becoming so trained and so tailored. If we inject it with the appropriate information, which marketing firms already have, how are your clients going to know the difference?

John Jantsch (21:51): I actually saw somebody post, and again, there are definitely a lot of people out there trying to lead with the fear factor, but some of it’s real. And they were suggesting that if you got a phone call from somebody and your boss, your spouse, and they were asking you for something that you thought was a little odd, but it sure sounded like them, that level of fake is going to be out there and that people were actually talking about having your own sort of password with each other.

Zack Kromkowski (22:22): I love the stories. So when we call partners and sometimes they don’t always have our number saved, and a lot of, I mean just you guys, we’re all in marketing here, right? We’ve done the cold calls, we’ve done the customer calls, and they may not recognize the number. Some security companies will take an edgier take to this and have a little AI recording or AI interface to almost annoy the person on the other line. They simply pretend to be a real person, but you’re actually talking to a computer the whole time, and that’s just one piece of ai. Now, you take that kind of a comedy scenario that satire like, oh, it was just used for goofy, but you actually allow it to now make outgoing calls, make those outgoing fakes. Having that key password phrase makes a difference. I think my biggest point here is, Hey, can you remind me what, so-and-so’s story was right? Doing something personal that an AI probably doesn’t know. And I’m going to be honest, I’ve had to do that. Hey, this conversation has been going for 45 seconds. I haven’t felt anything real out of it. I’m going to put a very personal question here to see how it responds, and sure enough, it couldn’t, it just went back to the replay loop.

John Jantsch (23:37): Yeah. Wow. So Zach, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. We obviously a wide range of topics. It probably just stirred up more questions than answers. Happy to come back, but you want to invite people where they might want to connect with you and maybe find out more about some of the things we talked about if they have some concerns.

Zack Kromkowski (23:58): Yeah. So my name again, Zach Kowski. I’m very active on LinkedIn. You can find that at security, Zach as the profile name. But the big thing I want to shout out here is you don’t need a security budget to do security activities. The things I talked about today is knowing what software you have, knowing what hardware you have, and then changing settings. If you’re overwhelmed and don’t know what these settings do, we have free documentation across YouTube and our resource hub to say, this setting does that. This setting does that. And you can take advantage of this a hundred percent free offering to do some of these steps without paying anything. Now, if you do want to do this at a mass scale, ion automates all of this. That’s the plug. But there’s a lot of free steps you can do without even investing a dollar.

John Jantsch (24:46): Awesome. Well, again, I appreciate you stopping by and hopefully we run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Picture This! Marketing in [just] three Elements

Picture This! Marketing in [just] three Elements written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast with John Jantsch

In this episode, I discuss my framework for creating a one-page marketing strategy called the Duct Tape Marketing Snapshot. The framework is divided into 3 core elements: brand strategy, growth strategy, and customer strategy. Within each component, I ADRE, such as mission, vision, values, ideal client definition, unique value proposition, marketing channels, lead capture, lead nurture, trust-building, lead conversion, customer onboarding, customer experience, customer retention, customer expansion, customer referrals, and partner referrals.

Key Takeaways

The Duct Tape Marketing Snapshot is a one-page framework for creating a marketing strategy.
The framework is divided into three core elements: brand strategy, growth strategy, and customer strategy.
Each element has several components that must be addressed to create a comprehensive marketing strategy.
The framework helps businesses simplify and organize their marketing strategy.

Chapters

[00:00] Introduction to the Duct Tape Marketing Snapshot
[02:24] The Three Core Elements of a Marketing Strategy
[03:15] Addressing the Key Components of Brand Strategy
[05:36] Building a Growth Strategy: From Awareness to Lead Conversion
[09:48] Mapping the Customer Journey in the Customer Strategy

This episode was brought to you by:

This episode of The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by:

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Duct Tape Transcript

John Jantsch (00:16): What you just heard was a testimonial from a recent graduate of the Duct Tape Marketing certification intensive program for fractional CMOs marketing agencies and consultants just like them. You could choose our system to move from vendor to trusted advisor, attract only ideal clients, and confidently present your strategies to build monthly recurring revenue. Visit DTM world slash scale to book your free advisory call and learn more. It’s time to transform your approach. Book your call today, DTM world slash scale. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John janz and no guest today. I’m doing a solo show. I want to talk about something that I’ve been working on maybe for 15 years, but I finally got around to actually creating a framework that I would call as my version of taking marketing strategy and putting it onto one page.

(01:25): One page that really gives you the ability to capture all the essential elements of your marketing strategy. So certainly to use as an internal document, but I think it’s a great tool to also use as a creative brief or as a way to explain to somebody your business that you’re maybe trying to get to do some marketing work for you. Now, there’s a lot of research that goes into the various elements of this, but a lot of times we do marketing strategy and we spend days, months, weeks developing it, putting it into a document, and then that document goes into a drawer somewhere because it’s 40 pages or something. And so what I wanted to do was create something that could be something that you would come back and it would be the overview, if you will, that one-on-one page that you could share with people.

(02:12): You could print out, you could hang up, you could do lots of things with, I call it the Duct Tape Marketing Snapshot. And I want to go over the various elements in that. And I’ll also invite you, if you would like us to do this with you, go through an exercise with you. If you’d like to just see a copy of it, you can always reach me, reach out to me at john@ducttapemarketing.com and just put in the subject line marketing snapshot and I’ll send it out or we’ll discuss how this might apply to your business. But essentially what the snapshot does is it is broken up into, and those of you that are watching the video version of this in places like YouTube, we’ll see a graphic right now, which is the actual form itself that we created called the Marketing Snapshot. Those of you that I said will actually have it there if you want to go to the show notes as well, those of you that are just listening, otherwise, I will do my best to describe it as visually as possible.

(03:07): So essentially it’s broken up into three core elements, which are really the three core elements that I think a marketing strategy has to address. And that is your brand strategy, your growth strategy, and then your customer strategy. And this is really following the customer journey, if you will. It’s how people become aware of your brand. It’s certainly how you grow and turn them into customers and then what you do after they become customers. So it is a way for us to really address all the key areas and make sure that we’re not leaving something out. And I think that’s one of the things that’s the hardest about talking about marketing strategy to folks, is that it’s very confusing what it is. So I’ve tried to simplify it. I think marketers make marketing overly complex. So I’ve tried to simplify marketing strategy into those three buckets.

(03:53): Brand strategy, growth strategy and customer strategy. Alright. And then within those, there’s a total of 16 elements that we want to address. And these are things that they’re not going to be new to you necessarily, but I think that organizing them, I should say in this fashion, hopefully will give new light to how they apply to your business. So under the brand strategy, I mean we’re going to make considerations like mission, vision, values there. What’s the brand personality? I mean, how do you want to be perceived by your ideal clients by the market? What are some ways that you’re going to ensure consistency and messaging and visuals and customer interactions really across all the channels? Those are things that have to be part of your brand strategy, but clearly defining who your ideal client is. Certainly a component of it, and not just the demographics, but really what they believe, what they fear, the value that they’re looking for, how they like to buy, where they find their information.

(04:50): Those are all parts of that definition. I lean very heavily on this concept of core message. That is another key component of this idea and that is not the message that says who you are or what you do, but the message that clearly defines your unique value proposition, the promise to solve your ideal client’s greatest, greatest problem. That’s what we want to see in a core message. It is certainly useful to write down your mission, your why, really defining the underlying purpose of the values that are driving your business. I think that belongs in brand strategy certainly, and that belongs in something that any tool that you’re going to use to communicate your business and what it stands for. Certainly being able to share that publicly is great. And then the last piece I put in brand strategy is a consideration of what are the primary marketing channels that we are going to use to reach our ideal client?

(05:47): And I believe that this belongs in brand strategy because a lot of our reaching there is going to be just to create awareness, is going to be to build trust, and we want to make sure that we’re at least making a consideration about what are the most important channels for us to pursue and by comparison, what are the ones we should be leaving out of the mix? And I think that’s just having that consideration can be very helpful. Alright, now we move to the next category or the next big row or section in this, and that’s growth strategy. This is essentially how you plan to scale and grow your business. We’ve got the brand locked down. We know who we’re targeting. We know the message that we’re going to use to attract them and where we’re going to use that message. So now we need to say, okay, how do we create awareness for the brand?

(06:38): How do we attract new prospects? How do we get people to know about us? You’ll see in this tool that I heavily sprinkle in our concept of the customer journey called the marketing Hourglass. And its seven stages of know, like, trust, try, buy, repeat and refer. Awareness is all about quite often getting people to know you and consequently, hopefully to what you’re doing or what they see. And then ultimately to get them to trust you enough to want to go deep enough to find out if you can actually solve their specific problems and challenges. So after awareness plan, we have lead captures. So once somebody finds out about you and they start coming and visiting and maybe you’ve invited them through your social channels to work with you or to get some new, to get a checklist or to get an ebook or to get some content, then what’s your lead capture plan?

(07:30): How are we going to actually start capturing those leads so that we can continue to market to them or maybe a better way continue to build trust so that they want to go deeper. We have something on there called the brand love plan, and this is really just an admission that we need to intentionally think in how we’re going to foster a deep connection between our brand and our customers. I mean, what are some of the things that we can do to create advocates to create exceptional value, to create exceptional experiences? Having a thought about, wow, how are we going to wow people when they start to come in and surprise them and delight them? AI might be the most important new computer technology ever. It’s storming every industry and literally billions of dollars are being invested. So buckle up. The problem is that AI needs a lot of speed and processing power.

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(09:21): So let’s consider that for ourselves. The lead nurture plan is the next element on here under brand love and that’s really what are we going to do to build trust and relationships really with the leads until they’re ready to buy. I mean, it is a journey. A lot of times people talk about how much marketing has changed and granted it’s changed a lot, but the thing that’s really changed the most is how people can buy now, how they choose the options they have available to them. And so a great deal of building trust enough to charge a premium to be seen as the obvious go-to is a lot about what you do in nurturing. Then we intentionally have, I think for a lot of businesses, trust is probably the most important element. It’s often not looked at as an intentional one, but what are we going to do to establish even the credibility and trust with an audience enough for somebody who is now looking at us deeply to say, okay, I’m going to exchange my money with you.

(10:20): And to me, the trust category to a lot of points, a lot of businesses that actually charge a premium that if you’ve ever paid more to get something because you trusted the result would be there, you trusted the brand was going to be there. Many of us have done that. Many of us have paid more and are willing to pay more when we trust that we will get the result from who we’re working with. So what are the ways that we’re going to build trust? Testimonials, case studies guarantees, transparent business practices, even who we associate with social proof. I mean, those are all things that are part of really the overarching marketing plan. That’s why they show up here on the snapshot. So the last two pieces in, or the last piece I should say in the growth plan is then your lead conversion plan.

(11:06): I mean, how are we going to convert those nurtured leads into paying customers? We need to have an actual process that can be taught that’s certainly aligned with what the customer needs, but then also aligns with the core message that we’re communicating that creates the buying experience itself is often where referrals and repeat business happen because even if we get a result for somebody, but the experience of getting there was not that great, we’re going to lose a lot of trust. And so what is our lead conversion plan that not only results in us converting a higher number of leads, but it’s also something we can scale, that we can start teaching to others. I think that’s where a lot of businesses really struggle is when the founder has been really good at selling and they end up being trapped because they’re the only ones who can sell because they’re really not even sure how they do it or why they do it and why they’re so successful at it.

(12:01): So when it comes time to hiring a sales team, they really flounder because there is no real process. So great to have at least a process. It doesn’t have to be the most perfect one. You’re always going to be refining it, trying to make it better. But if you don’t start with at least here is our process or our plan for lead conversion, you’re going to struggle. Alright, now we’re going to go to the third stage, which is the customer strategy. So this is where we’re going to map out the journey of everything that’s going to happen or that we hope happen once somebody becomes a customer. So we’re going to start with new customer onboarding plan. What’s the way that we’re going to create the most positive first experience for a new customer? So these are onboarding orientation. It’s amazing how often people don’t give this some thought and every new customer is brought in, has different expectations, a different experience, and it really dilutes the brand.

(12:59): So we’re going to map out what’s going to happen when somebody says yes when they become a new customer. It’s obviously going to be different for every business, but having a plan allows you to again, delegate and scale because everybody learns the plan and how to deliver the same experience, but it also really creates consistency in working with your business. And I think that a lot of times customers really crave that consistency and that’s part of the experience. Knowing what to expect and having it delivered as promised is really a great part of the experience. Speaking of experience, that’s the next one. What is going to be our overarching customer experience plan? So how are we going to ensure a consistently positive experience throughout the journey? So really mapping out everything we want to do. But this is also the place where getting feedback from existing customers to look for ways to continuously approve, having SOPs as part of the experience.

(13:56): We talked about the new customer, but certainly the ongoing fulfillment as well. The next two components of really are kind of the repeat bucket and that is your customer retention plan. What are we going to do to keep customers engaged, keep them coming back, retain them, sell them more. Maybe sell them other products, maybe sell them on another tier or layer of products and services. So really having tactics in place that are going to focus on, certainly measure, but focus on customer retention and things like loyalty programs and check-ins and just ongoing continuing education. That should be part of your plan. Don’t just wait for customers to call you and say, I need something. You should have a way that keeps you top of mind, keeps them coming back, keeps you in front of them in a way that allows you to introduce how you discover frankly, and then introduce how you can do more with them.

(14:51): And then what’s your customer expansion plan? How can you take your existing customers and increase the lifetime value, increase what you’re doing for them? One of the things I’ve discovered over the years is that about 20% of my customers would, and I’m not saying I’ve nailed this, about 20% of my customers would do five, 10 times the business they’re currently doing with me. If I intentionally take the time to discover what else they need, discover how else I can add value, discover how else I can solve more problems, bigger problems for them, there won’t be your entire customer base, but we all know that it is much easier to do more business with somebody you’ve already established trust with than it is to really jump or make people jump through all the hoops to become a new customer. Alright, the last two elements, your customer referral plan.

(15:45): I wrote an entire book called the referral Engine on this topic. It’s one that I’m very passionate about turning satisfied customers into brand advocates. You essentially through a referral are borrowing trust. How many times you’ve done this yourself? Somebody you said, boy, I need to find somebody to do X. Somebody says, Hey, don’t look any further. They solved this problem for me, or here’s how they did it. They’re awesome. The end of the sales journey, we stop. We call ’em up and say, when can you start? So that borrowed trust, that removal of risk is what makes referrals such a potent, we all know this, right? You all know it is such a potent channel. So having a plan to intentionally generate referrals from customers is how you really amplify your referability. You’re not going to get referrals unless you deserve them, but certainly once you deserve them, you have to really amplify that.

(16:41): And then the last piece of this is, it’s another element of referrals, but what I call the partner referral plan. So these are strategic partners. These are non-competing businesses that also serve your ideal client, that you could actually add value to their client base, add value to their business, to their offerings by working together in some fashion. That really gives them an incentive to put you in front of their audience. The right customer might have two or three referrals that they could give you, which is awesome, but the right strategic partner might actually fill your pipeline because they’ve got hundreds of potential folks that they could put you in front of. All right, so that’s it. That is the marketing snapshot. You can find it in the show notes. Or if you want to just reach out to me at john@ducttapemarketing.com, I’m happy to talk to you about how we could do that for your business as part of the strategy first process.

(17:38): Or if you just want to see a copy of the Marketing snapshot yourself, we’re happy to make it available to you in one way, shape, or form or another. So that’s it. Thanks for tuning in today. We love those reviews. If you give ’em it to Spotify or Apple or Google or wherever it is you get your podcasts, I’d love to hear from you. So if you just want to say hi, it’s also just John at Duct Tape Marketing. All right, take care, and hopefully we’ll see you one of these days soon out there on the road.