John Jantsch (00:00): This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Outbound Squad, formerly Blissful Prospecting, hosted by Jason Bay. It’s brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Jason Bay is a leading sales expert and he talks with other leading sales experts to get you the information you need. I’ve recent episode, he talked about how much time you need to spend prospecting. Really, really eye-opening. Check it out. Uh, listen to the outbound squad, wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Liz Lathan. She’s a community design strategist, community enablement architect. I’ve got all kinds of terms here, pioneer of community as a service and creator of Return on Emotion, the quantifiable value of experiences. So I don’t even know where to start, but Liz, welcome to the show,

Liz Lathan (01:05): . You know, it’s fun when you get to make up all of your own. Exactly. Titles right,

John Jantsch (01:09): .

Liz Lathan (01:09): Exactly. Thanks for having me.

John Jantsch (01:11): So I read on one of your recent LinkedIn posts, I think it was, uh, community First Companies are growing 30% faster than product first companies. So there’s a lot to unpack there. First off, what’s a community first company in your definition?

Liz Lathan (01:25): Yeah, I mean I think when you look at the marketing funnel and the evolution of the marketing funnel, it’s how companies are evolving to engage their, not only their current customers, but their prospects too. So if you old days, product first funnel was awareness, consideration, purchase, get the product out there, let people know you have a solution to their problem and your product is it and go down the pipe. Then you move to the evolution of customer first marketing funnel where we have our buyer’s journey, discover, learn, try, buy, advocate, all that stuff. We believe that we’re now evolving to a community first way of doing the marketing funnel. And so we, the process we see in the funnel now is the top of funnel is the show. That could be a podcast, it could be a book, it could be a TikTok show, whatever it is.

(02:07): It’s your top of funnel using the people and the content from your community. And the next one down goes to the site. Where’s the place where people can actually find the people behind your community? So it’s not Lululemon’s Shop of Stuff, it’s Lululemon’s Events and Gathering and Slack channel and the place where they can connect with actual people. The next one is the series of gatherings because that’s what community’s all about. Whether it’s virtual or in-person, it does not matter, but you have to bring the people together. And then one we like to call the sounding board, which is the small five to seven people. That’s either your advisory board or their own advisory board. And you’re just mining them for trends and insights and they are your testimonials. They are the people helping you determine what content’s relevant. And then finally, our shareable moment is kind of the advocate part of the buyer’s journey is it’s a swag store or it’s content that you’ve created that they can share or those white papers. But the whole funnel is built on creating content, buy and for the community and re-shared by them. And it turns into actually a flywheel. Usually your flywheel and your funnel are totally different. This is one and the same. You just move ’em down the pipe and then it just spins it all up.

John Jantsch (03:11): So, so, so the topic, it’s funny, do you know Mark Schaffer than on the show before? Probably I, and he, he’s got a new book coming on January. He just pinged me today to be on this show and it’s called Belonging to the Brand, why Community is the Last Great Marketing Strategy. So I think this is a topic that’s not going away fast, is it?

Liz Lathan (03:29): I agree. You know, my major concern is that community is gonna become that useless word like experiential where no one has a real definition and it means something different to everyone and then it means nothing. Yeah. So I think it’s really important for us to kind of grab that bull by the horns and kind of define it right now.

John Jantsch (03:44): So as I listen to you talk about those ideas in the, in this journey or funnel as you were calling it, you know, how do you, I mean, does it matter what I sell? I mean, because I could see a very product oriented company having trouble wrapping their heads around this where I mean somebody like me, I mean this is what I’ve been doing for 15 years. , you know, because it’s the way for a professional service business certainly to thrive. But I think you’re suggesting this is anybody and everybody, isn’t it?

Liz Lathan (04:09): I really, we’ve been trying to poke holes in it and we’ve been getting a lot of feedback, our own sounding board and we haven’t found the holes yet. So I’m open to hearing where the problem is. But yes, from a professional services, from coaching to tax strategist, our own tax strategist is gonna starting to use this for our own services. We were contacted by a c PPG company recently and using that kind of community funnel to the, like the sounding board is the moms of kids will be eating the products and getting the feedback back. So it’s really just putting structure to the marketing with the community first. Because nobody trusts papa ads and you don’t even see emails anymore cuz they go into spam. And so those normal ways of marketing are kind of, they’re hards to do now. Whereas you always look at the reviews on Amazon, you always put it to Slack and find out what your community does. So if you can have the community marketing for you, we’ve always known that. But now there’s a process to it.

John Jantsch (05:00): And I think you hit on like the tax strategist. I think B2B companies in particular have probably been slower to come to this idea. Whereas b2c, I mean m and MS has had a, has a community, right? I mean I think a lot of B2C companies kind of get that. We have to get out there where the masses are. B2B companies I think are probably the greatest untapped opportunity right now.

Liz Lathan (05:22): I think so too. A lot of, I work a lot in the tech industry and so they, the history of a community has been an online forum or a Reddit sub thread or you know Right. Subreddit, something like that. User groups. Yeah. And so they throw a community manager at it that’s just throwing some questions in there and to engage the community, which is one way to do it. But I’m suggesting that’s one of the five. Yeah. And so the opportunity to broaden that and make community more of your business strategy and less of a simple marketing tactic. And I think it’s coming around, I think the problem that B2B is gonna have is actually executing it. Yeah. Because it’s hard to get approval or funding for a role that no one knows if it’s gonna have value yet. You kind of intrinsically know, but you don’t extrinsically know . Yeah. So that’s where we have this, the idea of community as a service, which is, you know, helping those companies map out a strategy, map out the monetization plan and either we help execute or we give them the full plan so that they can outsource the pieces they need to execute

John Jantsch (06:15): Well. And B2B companies that were naturally slower to come to say social media. And I think in a lot of ways, I’m not saying this is an outreach of social media, but I think people started realizing what was possible, you know, in community because of the public facing social media. Wouldn’t you say?

Liz Lathan (06:30): Absolutely. We’ve had lots of conversations on is social media community and I think social media enables community. Yeah. And can be top of funnel for community and can be bottom funnel, bottom of the funnel for real connection. But it’s, social media isn’t inherently community. Same with events. Events. A lot of event professionals are like, well my event is the community. Well it’s not the people or the community. The event was simply a vessel for that community to form and bond.

John Jantsch (06:53): So I know you write about some of the companies that are doing this well. So maybe you could share a couple examples of people that you think are really not just embracing this but doing it well.

Liz Lathan (07:04): Yeah, I think that, oh my gosh, there’s a lot of really good examples. They just quite haven’t quite put it into the structure. But you mentioned the whole variety of things. Think about Mr. Beast, you know, he’s like, what was he, he’s not a brand, he’s not a product, he’s not a service. What, what is this guy? He’s a philanthropist but he is also, I don’t even know what he is anymore. But his community is so rabid and he fits all of the pieces. I mean top of funnel. He clearly has a show. If you haven’t seen Mr. Bass, definitely go look at him. I think he’s one of the top YouTubers in existence. Mm-hmm. sponsors give him money, he spends it by giving it back to people and then he gets a gajillion views. And so that’s his top of funnel. But as you bring that down to the site, he has, if you Google not just the site where the show is, he’s a full philanthropic site.

(07:48): And so it’s all about the foundation and the people that he’s able to help by doing this big crazy ridiculous thing that he does. And then bring it to the series of gatherings. Look at Mr. Beas Burger, the fans, how many people showed up in Minneapolis to get a burger from his place? You know, they want to gather and they want to be a part of it. And he enables that through the next one down, that sounding board of inviting, picking subscribers to win an opportunity to go do something. And so it just again, fuels itself. People get to share. My friend was on that or he responded to my comment on YouTube like, but it’s, you know, a super weird way to think of community cuz it’s not a product or service, but it totally fits what’s happening.

John Jantsch (08:27): Well they, I do think, let’s bring it down a little more pedestrian in that because I think a lot of companies, you know, you mentioned your accountant, I love to pick on accountants that, you know, I think they see that and they say, well that’s fine. Somebody just wants to be a spectacle. You know, to get, I mean the, you know, the means justify the ends I guess. But I’m not doing that, you know, Absolut, so Absolutely. So how, what’s a more maybe relatable example or you know, way that somebody who is seen as much more of a conservative business and at least is shackled by that at the

Liz Lathan (08:54): Moment. Absolutely. Yeah. So when we talk through our accountant and the way that she can bring this to market, she has the email blasts, right? But that’s not top of funnel cause it only goes to people that are already on her list. Right? Right. But if she were to either have her own podcast or even a TikTok show where it’s you, what are some accounting tech tap, STR tax strategies that you need to know and keep that regularly going. Sure. Now she can be super top of funnel. She does not have to be the one to execute it, but imagine her every Monday she’s just gonna set up her phone and record a couple of little snippets of tips and then hire somebody to go do all the editing and put it on TikTok and make sure that it’s being engaged with. And so the site isn’t just where, how you can find out how you can work with her, but it’s a webinar that she’s gonna be doing or you know, a small gathering she’s doing in Atlanta, Georgia to bring people together to talk about these things. And so she can actually create community around what she’s doing. And now people, let me give you another example all with this. I just ran an event this weekend. We had 15 people together and the whole idea was just, we didn’t know what the process was gonna be. We didn’t know, sorry, we didn’t know what

John Jantsch (10:02): The can’t turn off your phone if you can’t find it. Right.

Liz Lathan (10:04): , it’s right. We didn’t know what the event agenda was gonna be. It was just 15 people getting together to talk about their challenges. 14 of these people said, you know, I actually am interested in taxes. And she ended up running an hour and a half long conversation around taxes and tax strategies and how entrepreneurs can think about this and left our little two day event with seven new clients. So there’s one gathering that brings it together just by her sharing her knowledge.

John Jantsch (10:27): Yeah, that’s, I’ve been teaching that exact tactic, I call it peer-to-peer networking. And it really, you just facilitated and show up and the magic happens if you’ve got, especially if you’ve got clients in the room, you know they’re gonna talk about how brilliant you are.

Liz Lathan (10:40): Yeah. And you know, all of us that have been in corporate for a while know that you think through an event strategy and a marketing strategy, where do I need to go and be? And that is borrowing real estate, right? You’re renting it on other people’s property. But when you can bring that into yourself and create your own community referrals is still how most of our small businesses grow.

John Jantsch (10:57): Yeah, and I love that too because, you know, it was 14, 15 people, but you know, again, that accounting is probably not looking for 373 new clients this month. Right. I mean they’re, they were in a great environment to spend great quality time and get what they needed out of it. It doesn’t always have to be the mass. Thousands of people does it.

Liz Lathan (11:17): That’s exactly right. And the CPG company that I mentioned, they have, you know, a niche unique product that they’re bringing to the us. They are not a big company. They do not have a lot of money. And they know that they can’t just try to get people by pouring all their money into Facebook ads. They really need to build a community. Like think of Liquid Death, the water. Have you heard of this? Yeah,

John Jantsch (11:34): Sure, sure. It’s what my kids drink it, let’s put it that way.

Liz Lathan (11:38): Yeah. There’s nothing unique about it except it’s water in a can with really cool marketing and branding. But if you go to their website and join their list, then they’re gonna send you a t-shirt. So now you’re gonna go advocate for them. And people, when you go to a concert and you’re drinking, you have a choice of a beer or liquid death, you and you, you need water, liquid death looks pretty darn cool. So again, bringing the community together to get excited about it.

John Jantsch (11:58): Yeah, it’s uh, it’s big with the skateboarding and mountain biking crowd

Liz Lathan (12:03): , we just wanna feel like you belong. Like you’re not the person with the water bottle. You wanna feel cool. And so again, it’s a sense of belonging, which is what community’s all about.

John Jantsch (12:10): Let me ask you a few things. Do you feel like you know what differentiates your business from every other business out there? Can you confidently charge a premium for what you offer? Are you working from a plan, a marketing roadmap that allows you to know precisely what to do next? Look, don’t worry if you can’t answer yes to any or all of these questions, you’re not alone. See marketers today get so focused on the tactic of the week, staring them right in the face that they forget to look at the big picture. The overarching strategy needed to consistently grow their business. Over the years I’ve worked with thousands of businesses helping them do just that. Create the perfect marketing strategy and plan that gives total clarity about what to do next. Confidence to charge ahead and charge more and complete control of the marketing tactics they choose.

(13:01): I would love to help you and your team do the same look to find out if our strategy first program is right for you, visit dtm.world/grow and request a free consultation. That’s dtm.world/grow. So somebody comes to you and says they listen to this show and they say, I gotta look this Liz person up. And they come to you and they say we gotta do this. I, you have like a series of questions that I think you published, but can I go through the process of how you’d work with somebody to help them identify? Cuz it’s not just, you know, it’s like when viral videos were like all the thing, everybody wanted to make a viral video, but why ? Right. For to what end? Right. And I think people probably are the same way. Some people run the risk of listening to this and saying, okay, R you’re right, I need a community. But there’s no, like how does this fit in with the objectives of the business ? So how do you kind of get somebody oriented, what, you know, you already mentioned kind of some of the journey, but what are some of the questions that would lead to you unearthing what their strategy ought to be?

Liz Lathan (14:06): I think really figuring out where are you on your community journey? Do you already have customers or are you right Just starting out from the very beginning and you’ve written the book and you wanna just start from there. And so understanding your, I guess I would call it your community maturity level, right? If you already have a huge following, then that’s really easy. You just need to go put a wrapper around them and start doing something with them. But if you’re starting from scratch, then we can help identify the strategies. And some of the strategies could be paid strategies, but a genuine community is really more of starting with that sounding board. Can we maybe, you know, I talk about the funnel idea of those five things I brought to you, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to stop with, start with the top of funnel, right? You can start with the people that are already there. I have five friends who believe in me. Great, there’s your sounding board, let’s bring them together and start having conversations and then we can build the strategy around what happens next.

John Jantsch (15:00): So I think you’re right. If you have a current community, some of this is a leisure to refine. What about starting from scratch and attracting? I mean, are there elements that need to be there? I mean, I’m in marketing. If I started a marketing community right now, it would be pretty hard to cut through, you know, the clutter, right? So what are some elements that actually kind of ignite a community when you’re trying to get started?

Liz Lathan (15:24): Have you ever seen that TED talk where they have the guy at the music festival and is the

John Jantsch (15:29): Crazy goes over there? Yeah.

Liz Lathan (15:31): Yep. Exactly. So you have the leader who goes up there crazy dancing and then he’s just being weird and then a second person joins him and now the third person is like, oh, it’s okay to dance here. Oh, and then it becomes a movement. That’s the story of the TED Talk and everybody joins. That is the same thing with community. You get one or two people starting, they invite a friend, they invite a friend. You know, we used to call or we still call it viral ticketing when you buy something and then you go get your friends and you get a kickback, whatever. I mean the concepts aren’t wrong, it’s just using it in a more authentic way rather than a broad shotgun marketing approach way.

John Jantsch (16:06): So you talked a little bit about the, the show aspect. And I think a lot of people can really, I mean a podcast is a show, a live stream is a show I think about a lot of people can relate to those examples. But going with like your CPG company, you know, what are some ways that you’re seeing people take that literal idea of show and maybe broadening it?

Liz Lathan (16:26): Yeah, for that one it’s TikTok. So it’s how do you get something really funky and weird out there that’s gonna hit, you know? Mm-hmm and Viral doesn’t have to mean you get 3 million views on something. Viral is just big enough to start growing an audience and making sure that TikTok has a call to action. So you know, even in the comments or some way that you can do it so that you start to bring them into your community. Very few people that I’ve seen anyway, at least I don’t often watch a video and then follow the creator. I just keep, you know, sure. Scrolling through and watch something else. And so the follow isn’t the call to action, the follow is to start joining the community so you can do something more interesting. And maybe for the C B G company, it’s gonna be, if you sign up here, you’re gonna get a sample of our product. And so sampling might be the way to go for them because it’s new to the market. And so you can start building the community. Now you got a sample, would you join my sounding board? I’d love to get your feedback. What new flavors should we have? What should we change about it?

John Jantsch (17:20): So when, when you talk about gatherings, again, I think a lot of people might jump straight to like a big trade show or some, you know, something on that scale. But you know, I can’t tell you how many times over the years I’ve told uh, business owners, small business owners that maybe they ought to just bring their customers together for lunch percent and how like foreign that idea is . So I mean it really can be that simple, right?

Liz Lathan (17:43): And you don’t even have to have content. And in fact right now, after two and a half years of pandemic time, where we are are bombarded with content mm-hmm and I to get me to go to a top golf, to listen to your sales pitch, to then swing the Golf club is kinda like, eh, I’m gonna have dinner with my kids instead. But if you invite me to go to a splatter painting room and we’re just gonna be crazy and get messy and splatter paint everywhere and now you’re gonna follow up with me next week when my painting is dry and you know, get it to me and we can have that conversation, well that’s a little bit more interesting. And it does not, I mean that’s five people, 10 people bring ’em together for something doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. One of those splatter paint rooms is like 500 bucks for six people, you know? So yeah, like you’re saying, it’s, I think the more impact you can get from a smaller group, then that’s gonna start your share, you know, word of mouth, your community.

John Jantsch (18:34): You know, it’s interesting, I’ve noticed too, and I think this is maybe here to stay, but it’s certainly a pandemic driven, we’re also sick of Zoom, we’re also sick of being lectured at, you know, joining courses that you know, when watching videos. I’ve had a tremendous amount of positive feedback from varying people together with zero Agenda. Literally a let’s just get together, we’re all business owners or we’re all entrepreneurs, like what’s going on in your world? And it’s amazing how peop you, we get the best like feedback , you know, it was like, that was awesome. That was so great. You’re amazing. I was like, we didn’t do anything .

Liz Lathan (19:08): That’s literally what we do. We’ll show up with a stack of the large format, sticky notes, sharpie markers, we, it’s called a spontaneous think tank. And you put up there, what are all the challenges that you’re trying to solve right now? And then you have everybody go back across those challenges and write their name and phone number on ones that they’ve solved and can help each other with love that. And so it’s, this is how we love to format those events. The one we did this weekend, 15 people we started out with, first of all, you start out with a big shared moment. You have to have a shared experience. And so for us it’s the family style meal, but we did a nacho table night where you like cover the whole table in aluminum foil and chips and put all the things there. So everybody’s there eating with their hands. Pass me the jalapenos, like breaks down the walls immediately and then break out the sticky notes and sharpies and figure out what you’re gonna do this weekend. It was incredible.

John Jantsch (19:54): I can’t get past the health department moment there,

Liz Lathan (19:56): . There’s only 15 of us. We didn’t have to have Art .

John Jantsch (19:59): Alright, talk little bit more about this sounding board, you know, idea for anybody who’s not done, I mean it’s people I’ve read books over the years, you know, you shove an advisory board or an actual board, right? The companies have, how is this maybe different from any of those concepts?

Liz Lathan (20:13): I don’t think it is different. I think people just need to do it. You can even buy your sounding board, you know, join a mastermind group, be a part of a community that exists out there. It’s, if you don’t know anybody, you can get that way. Well you can ask some neighbors. It’s just having a few people outside of your normal day to day that you can ask real honest questions out and get real honest feedback of. And when we were first testing out this community as a service idea, we went to someone in our network and pitched it and he manages an incubator with very new startups and he was like, absolutely not. If any of my startups hired you for community as a a service, they’d be out of my incubator because they need to start their own community. There is no way I would let them hire that out. He goes, but I would absolutely bring you in and pay for a strategy session to help them identify how they should grow a community, what their priorities are. And then once they hit that tipping point that they do need support, now they can go bring it in. And like that wasn’t a perspective we’d heard before and it was very outside of what we heard. Although we wanted the negative cuz we haven’t found it yet. , it was hard to hear, but it was like, okay, this is, you just need more diverse perspectives.

John Jantsch (21:18): Yeah, absolutely. Well that’s a great place for me to ask where people can find out more about your work or connect with you and learn about the community as a service.

Liz Lathan (21:27): Absolutely. Community v community factory.com is the website and I am Liz Lathan with an N as in November on LinkedIn. I’d love to connect.

John Jantsch (21:36): Awesome. Well Liz, I appreciate you taking a moment to stop by the Duct Tape Marketing podcast and maybe we’ll run into you on these days out there on the road.

Liz Lathan (21:44): 100%. Thank you.

John Jantsch (21:49): Hey, and one final thing before you go. You know how I talk about marketing strategy, strategy before tactics? Well, sometimes it can be hard to understand where you stand in that, what needs to be done with regard to creating a marketing strategy. So we created a free tool for you. It’s called the Marketing Strategy Assessment. You can find it@marketingassessment.co, not.com, dot co. Check out our free marketing assessment and learn where you are with your strategy today. That’s just marketing assessment.co. I’d love to chat with you about the results that you get.

John Jantsch (00:00): This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Outbound Squad, formerly Blissful Prospecting, hosted by Jason Bay. It’s brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Jason Bay is a leading sales expert and he talks with other leading sales experts to get you the information you need. I’ve recent episode, he talked about how much time you need to spend prospecting. Really, really eye-opening. Check it out. Uh, listen to the outbound squad, wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Chance. My guest today is Mindy Weinstein. She’s a leading expert in digital marketing and has been named as one of the top women in the industry globally. She’s the founder of the digital marketing firm Market Mindshift, and author of a book we’re gonna talk about today, the Power of Scarcity, leveraging Urgency and Demand to Influence Customer Decisions. So Mindy, welcome to the show.

Dr. Mindy Weinstein (01:09): Thank you so much for having me.

John Jantsch (01:11): So in, you know, probably the premiere book on this topic, I’m sure you’re familiar with Robert Shield, Dini’s Influence. Yes. You know, he certainly lists scarcity as one of the factors and you start with scarcity as an influence factor for chapter one. So you wanna unpack that?

Dr. Mindy Weinstein (01:28): Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, so Dr. Chaldini, I actually, he endorsed the book. So he is definitely someone that I have talked with often. But what happened is I was researching and working on my PhD cuz that’s really how this all came about, was I was looking at the influence factors and what motivates consumers. And I came across scarcity and as I dug more into research, I realized that of all the different factors that cause us to make decisions, scarcity appears to be the most powerful because it’s actually primal. It’s something that our ancestors even dealt with with scarcity. And still today it’s, we get the same type of emotions and reactions, even if it’s a product that’s scarce. I’m not talking about like survival and all of those things, but actually,

John Jantsch (02:14): But that’s, but you’re saying that’s where it started, right? To some degree. Right. I mean it’s like, are we gonna have enough food to eat? You know, is there gonna be water or where we go where we’re going? So that’s probably where it started, right?

Dr. Mindy Weinstein (02:23): Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. And so that’s a thing our ancestors, you know, they, in the early days of humankind, you know, they were trying to survive by looking for scarce resources, you know, shelter, water, food. And then when you look at even just the empires that are ruled over the years, you know, the ones that had controls usually because they had control of food and water. And so we are hardwired to respond to scarcity.

John Jantsch (02:52): So I don’t know if Robert told you this story. He was actually on my show years ago and he actually said he wrote the book cuz he was tired of seeing people be influenced. Mm-hmm and it was more of a, it was supposed to be more of a consumer guide. , right? Yeah. to how to not be influenced and of course turned into one of the bibles for marketers to use to influence people. So h how do you deal with the idea that influence mm-hmm sometimes is used in a negative way.

Dr. Mindy Weinstein (03:18): Yes. And that was actually something that I had on my mind, you know, as I was working on this book is because I also don’t want there to be fake scarcity, you know, as people realize like, oh this is really powerful so I’m just gonna make everything limited quantity and everything’s selling out fast. And so I really warn against that in the book because you think about today’s day and age, I mean we can look up companies easily if someone’s not happy, they’re gonna post on social, they’re gonna post on review sites. So really doing anything that’s false, you know, in terms of marketing saying that something’s running out, it’s not, it backfires and it’s one of those, it’s harder to improve your reputation. So for me, like one of the things I look at with this book is I go back and forth cuz all of us, we’re all consumers too.

(04:04): You know, even being in business we’re consumers too. So I wear both hats is that I really want to educate people on both sides. So there are times that scarcity, you know, they couldn’t be really beneficial, you know, informing customers that yes, you know, this event, there’s only so many seats left. That was someone I had interviewed and he talked about these great events that he does and he said, we’ve gotten to the point that our members want to hear from us. You know, they wanna know if they’re running out cause they don’t wanna miss their chance. And so there’s a lot of benefit too. But yeah, definitely needs to be above board and ethical.

John Jantsch (04:36): Well, yeah, I mean how many Black Friday emails are we still getting today on Monday? Right? Saying the Black Friday sale, only one more day left. It’s like, wait, this is like Monday. Yeah,

Dr. Mindy Weinstein (04:45): Today’s Monday

John Jantsch (04:46): . So y the term FOMO has certainly become in the lexicon, you know, fear of missing out. Yes. Is social media of course I think amplified that because we could see what we were missing out so easily. Right on. Right. Um, you suggested it’s very motivated by another human behavior and that we are quite often more afraid of what we might lose than what we might gain in something. So, you know, how does that drive this, this idea of scarcity?

Dr. Mindy Weinstein (05:16): Yeah, so you know, fomo, like you said, we all know fomo, we’ve heard it, but it’s actually based on a deeper psychological theory known as loss aversion. Mm-hmm . And so as humans we are naturally more prone to feeling stronger about a potential loss than even we are a potential gain. And the example I like to give when, cuz a lot of times when I say that I have people go really like, but I get really excited when I get things. But if you think about this way, cuz we’ve all been in this situation where you might be walking on the sidewalk or in a parking lot and you find, let’s say a $20 bill, you’re like, you look around, there’s no one there. And you’re like, okay great, this is amazing. You’re excited, you put it in your pocket. But we’ve also all been in that situation where we’ve misplaced a $20 bill and that feeling that you have for losing that is actually a lot stronger than it is that feeling of excitement when you gain something. And so we’re just wired that way and that’s why FOMO is a thing, but it’s based on loss aversion.

John Jantsch (06:15): Well, and you hear a lot of marketers jokingly, half jokingly talk about the idea that, you know, you need to sell painkillers instead of vitamins, you know mm-hmm that people will try to get rid of pain or rid of something that, you know, is really nagging them at the moment rather than like taking the wellness path. Right. , you know, that maybe is a long term, you know, fix. So I mean is that a little bit of it too that drives some of the scarcity, you know, idea?

Dr. Mindy Weinstein (06:41): Yes. And it’s actually even, it’s, so it is that fear of loss, but it is, like you said, it’s more of that okay, this is a quick fix, right? I’m gonna buy this, I’m gonna feel better. But there’s also something that it compliments everything we’re talking about and it’s our anticipated regret. So what happens sometimes if we’re faced with, you know, like you’re talking about the Black Friday, you get a Black Friday text message and you’re looking at something and it does kind of interest you. Now you go through a, well, if I don’t buy this right, am I gonna regret it? And you start to anticipate how you’re gonna feel. And so that anticipated regret and the fear of loss, it really does motivate us then to take that quick action. But what’s very interesting is what we’ve found through research is that regret or anticipated regret of not taking action is actually short-lived. So we might feel like, you know this, we’re really gonna regret this, but you’re probably not , you know, come 24 hours even like maybe a couple hours later you’re like, okay, well I’m glad I didn’t buy that. So those are good reminders from a consumer point of view, but it’s also good to know that from the business perspective as well.

John Jantsch (07:43): So. So what are some examples that, that you’ve seen? I guess we could go both good and bad mm-hmm. uses of this idea of scarcity. I mean we’re all familiar with like the clock count, countdown clock Yes. And the limited seats and mm-hmm. , the, you know, you know the little thing that pops up. Like I just bought some concert tickets that said this show is selling really fast. Better get it, you know, today. So, you know, what are some examples, I suppose both good and bad uses. Yeah. Of tech tactics of scarcity.

Dr. Mindy Weinstein (08:12): Right? And so, you know, it’s important too to understand, I’m gonna give you examples, but there’s really four different types of scarcity. And that’s really important to understand as I’m going through the examples. So there’s time related scarcity. So that would be the countdown timer that you’re talking about. Right? Or the other thing though with time related are products that are only available a certain amount of time. Mm-hmm and I like to think about McDonald’s. I give that example all the time because everyone knows the Mac McRib, we all know the mc McRib, it came out recently, it was on a farewell tour. It had been on a farewell tour a few other times throughout the years . And so that’s only available a certain amount of time. So anything that’s a time restriction. So it could just be a limited time offering the pumpkin spice latte, peppermint bark at trader shows.

(08:55): You know, I think of all these things, but that’s really time related. But then you have also supply related. And that is really where there is a limited quantity. And it could be because of a supply shortage or an intentional restriction, right? So that’s where things like drops come into play. You know, like Nike will have a drop that’s limited or that’s supply related. And what that does is that really speaks to people who wanna be different and unique, have some self-expression, they don’t want what everyone else has. And then on top of that there’s limited edition, which is part of supply related. And that’s, I mean, I even went to the store and there was a limited edition Sprite for the holidays, like cranberry Sprite. So it’s any kind of twist but still elicits scarcity, all of these examples because it’s something that you can’t always get. And then finally there’s really demand related scarcity. And examples of those are anytime you have a wait list or you show something has been restocked mm-hmm. or you show that something is selling out, those are demand related scarcity. So all of the things that I think about scarcity, you know, sometimes it’s just a matter of how we word things or as a marketer, you know, it could be something we wanna create some fun and excitement with, like the mc, McRib, , you know, it could be lots of different ways to use it.

John Jantsch (10:09): And really, as I listen to you describe those different ways. I mean a lot of them have intentionality too, them mm-hmm. , don’t they? I mean, so like how many software companies launch? They don’t do it so much anymore. When it was a little more unique, some of the SaaS companies would launch with a wait list . Right? Even if there really was no, you know, reason . Yeah. For a wait list. It was the forced wait list that wanted you to get in, you know, more so. Right. Is that, I mean that’s obviously a clearly an example of a, of the wait listing, but is that also an intentional use? That’s actually probably false in one hand, but is driving an objective on the other hand.

Dr. Mindy Weinstein (10:50): So it, you know, that’s where it’s, you gotta be careful. So I mean, yes, it is something that you are creating, but it could be truly, I know some companies, if it’s a product especially that you’re gonna have a wait list. I think about the Ford Bronco. Mm-hmm. , there was another one I just read that’s like a two year wait list. I mean, so you have those BIV

John Jantsch (11:07): Issues, electric trucks, yeah.

Dr. Mindy Weinstein (11:08): Right. So with some of those, yeah, I mean it is gonna be manufactured scarcity. And I think consumers do know that in certain situations, but then it becomes more of like they’re now on the wait list. Or if it’s something where they can get an exclusive access or do you remember when Clubhouse came out? The app clubhouse? Mm-hmm. that was invite only. And so that was still actually scarcity because it was exclusive. Right? And that would fall under supply related because only, you know, you had to be special and be invited. And so those definitely fall into that. But they still elicit those feelings because from our brain and how it’s made up is that when we’re faced with something that’s harder to get, we are gonna focus on that. And we’re gonna also equate that with value. And so again, it’s just automatic. And we’ve even even seen that in brain scans.

John Jantsch (11:54): Let me ask you a few things. Do you feel like you know what differentiates your business from every other business out there? Can you confidently charge a premium for what you offer? Are you working from a plan, a marketing roadmap that allows you to know precisely what to do next? Look, don’t worry if you can’t answer yes to any or all of these questions, you’re not alone. See marketers today get so focused on the tactic of the week, staring them right in the face that they forget to look at the big picture. The overarching strategy needed to consistently grow their business. Over the years I’ve worked with thousands of businesses helping them do just that. Create the perfect marketing strategy and plan that gives total clarity about what to do next. Confidence to charge ahead and charge more and complete control of the marketing tactics they choose. I would love to help you and your team do the same. Look to find out if our strategy first program is right for you, visit dtm.world/grow and request a free consultation. That’s DTM world slash grow. So as a consumer, let’s kind of flip this around. I feel like we’ve been talking about marketers now as a consumer, you know, is there a way to, it’s like when you’re experiencing fomo, do this, you know, a way to kind of avoid making the impulses that often, you know, come from it.

Dr. Mindy Weinstein (13:19): Oh yes. And you know, one thing that I want to just admit right away is that, you know, I’m a researcher. I wrote, wrote this book, I’m a marketer, I’m all these things, but I’m a consumer and I still get caught up in it. So I’ll tell you some of the things that we know from research because scarcity’s that powerful. But what we know is that that again, that feeling that you’re gonna have the missing out, the first thing is recognizing that’s driving a decision. That’s the first, well that’s like all things recognize that you have a problem. No, recognize that there is some FOMO involved. And ask yourself, what is the motivation behind this purchase? Is it truly because I want it or is it because I’m fearful that I’ll miss out on something? That’s the first thing. And then the second thing, if it’s something that you can wait on, you know, wait 24 hours, that’s generally what I recommend.

(14:07): You know, don’t buy anything. Wait 24 hours the next day. If it’s truly still something you want, then that’s the time then to consider. Budget obviously comes into mind. But is this something worth buying? And then that other thing that I talked about, knowing that feeling is short-lived, that you’re not gonna continue to feel like you’re gonna miss out. Knowing that really equips you to make more like informed decisions. And actually, I think I said I had three, but I have a fourth one to throw in there. And this is just being an informed consumer. You know, there’s so much we know, there’s so much research and so much information you could find online. If you feel like, okay, this seems like a really good deal, don’t hit, hit the buy button right away. Look at what some of the prices have been previously for that product. Have there been been similar sales? Are there different places you can buy it? And that just helps equip you when you’re making those decisions.

John Jantsch (14:58): You know, flipping back to marketers, I mean, is there a point at which people start seeing the countdown clock and go, that’s bs. You know, that actually makes me not really a fan of your brand. I mean, even if maybe it’s, well let’s just assume it’s real, that there really is a countdown clock that you really are gonna stick to what you said. Still using those tactics. Uh, is there a risk of people who are just so sick of them now that it kind of tarnishes the brand even if it’s valid?

Dr. Mindy Weinstein (15:24): Yeah, so, and that’s a great question. You know, using is the same tactic too much. Yes it can backfire because people fatigue with that. And even, you know, companies that continue to offer the same coupons and same promotions, you start to value that product or service based on that discount versus what you would normally charge. And so your customers aren’t going to think of it as valuable. But when you use them periodically, they do help. Like I know one company, they are an e-bike company, so they sell mainly online and they do countdown timers just to show when the sale ends. So they’re already doing the sale. They just added that additional item on there. And talking to the ceo, he said, it’s amazing when we do that. He goes, sales increased by 40%. So it’s like people do know that and we all have a love-hate relationship with them.

(16:11): I know as customers, like we hate them, but then we’re still gonna buy during that time period too because we’re now competing with the clock. But it’s just a matter of not using the same, you know, app approach and tactic over and over again. And also knowing your audience because mm-hmm. like supply related is really good. Like I said, for people who wanna be unique, self-expression, things that are popular, high demand, those are people who wanna be part of a group, you know, and conform time related works for just about anything , you know, except for luxury items usually that doesn’t really speak to those buyers. Yeah. And so knowing a little bit about your audience really does help with that when you’re thinking about which tactic should I use and well at work and while people just be irritated or not.

John Jantsch (16:52): So, so let’s flip this around a little bit, and I think you’ve alluded to it some, but you know, for some people when everybody is having fomo mm-hmm. That’s when they want to like bail, right? So it’s like, what’s the punchline? The joke like this place is dead, everybody goes there now. And so, you know, how do you in some ways use scarcity as a like, you know, differentiator mm-hmm without it just becoming, you know, turning off your trues fans so to speak.

Dr. Mindy Weinstein (17:21): Right. Right. And that’s, I mean that’s a huge thing that luxury brands have had to deal with. You know, there was a case a while ago about Christian Dior and seeing that their colognes and perfumes were in grocery stores, you know, and that was a problem. And so it’s distribution is distribution issue. And so for brands, just going back, like to kind of just clarify a little bit more of what I found from research, you know, if you have a product or a, or really it’s a product, you know, that’s more conspicuous consumption. So something someone’s gonna wear and show off or carry around or you know, things, electronics usually fall into that. Well that is very much going to speak to those people who don’t wanna be like everyone else. And so you do have to keep that in mind. And it’s that balance between do restrict, you know, they restrict supplies, that’s why they do drops and things like that.

(18:12): But just knowing that’s who you’re going to be speaking to, you’re not gonna turn those people off by doing that cuz you’re actually gonna continue to draw them in because of that. But then going to like what you’re talking about, well if something becomes really popular and people wanna be different, well it depends what it is. Like there’s actually a jewelry company that I talked with the CEO O and that is still conspicuous consumption, but at the same time, this particular brand, very popular with celebrities. So then you have the whole consumer base who wanna be like this, you know these different people, right? And so they found that actually one of their biggest assets as a company was they were having a hard time staying in stock and so they were constantly restocking. Sure. And they were letting customers know. And when I talked to the founder of that company, she said that it was when we sent out an email and it just said restocked, you know, in the subject line and just sales, they already like sold out again . And so you, it again, it just, it so depends on the audience and the product, but some of that’s gonna come down to testing, you know, see what works and resonates with your customers.

John Jantsch (19:15): It’s interesting you mentioned the distribution element Dior, you know, one example that comes to mind and for me was Crispy Green Donuts. I don’t know you that Yes. Oh yes. You know, they were, they had like a cult following, I mean that people would go to the stores cuz the only place you could get ’em is stores. You’d watch him by the millions being made. Right. You know, and it was almost a partly experience and all of a sudden they were like, let’s sell ’em in gas stations and it kind of killed the brand, you know, frankly, I mean I probably still sell billions, you know that way. Six at a time. But you know, it killed the appeal of the brand so to speak.

Dr. Mindy Weinstein (19:48): And it was the experience too. I mean I remember going and if you’d wait in line, you could watch ’em go through the conveyor belt, right? It would give you your hot donut as you were there. And so yeah, lost a little bit of that, that Lester I guess you could say. Yeah.

John Jantsch (20:03): So Mindy, I appreciate stopping by the Duct Tape Marketing podcast. You want to tell people where they can find the power of scarcity and maybe connect with you in some other ways?

Dr. Mindy Weinstein (20:11): Yes. So I make it really easy. Just go to power of scarcity.com. That will take you to a page where it has my book. You could order it, but also has all my contact information there too. But that’s the best place. So power of scarcity.com.

John Jantsch (20:25): Awesome. Well again, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by the podcast and uh, hopefully we’ll run into you in real life, one of these days out there on the road.

Dr. Mindy Weinstein (20:32): I would love that.

John Jantsch (20:33): Hey, and one final thing before you go. You know how I talk about marketing strategy, strategy before tactics? Well, sometimes it can be hard to understand where you stand in that, what needs to be done with regard to creating a marketing strategy. So we created a free tool for you. It’s called the Marketing Strategy Assessment. You can find it@ marketingassessment.co. Check out our free marketing assessment and learn where you are with your strategy today. That’s just marketingassessment.co. I’d love to chat with you about the results that you get.

John Jantsch (00:00): This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Outbound Squad, formerly Blissful Prospecting, hosted by Jason Bay. It’s brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Jason Bay is a leading sales expert, and he talks with other leading sales experts to get you the information you need. I have recent episode. He talked about how much time you need to spend prospecting. Really, really eye-opening. Check it out. Uh, listen to the outbound squad, wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Tom Peters. He is the co-author of In Search of Excellence, the book that changed the way the world does business and is often tagged as the best business book ever, 20 books. And 40 years later, Tom is still at the forefront of the management guru industry. He’s single-handedly invented, and he’s out with yet another co-authored book, uh, co-authored with Nancy Green, entitled Tom Peters Compact Guide to Excellence. So Tom, welcome back to the show.

Tom Peters (01:15): Thank you. Hey, pleasure to be back.

John Jantsch (01:17): So I don’t wanna gloss, gloss

Tom Peters (01:19): Over. My pleasure to be talking to you in Colorado where all my kids are. So there,

John Jantsch (01:22): It’s . I don’t wanna gloss over. I mentioned your co-author a lot of times, co-authors, you know, don’t get enough credit. Uh, Nancy Green is no slouch on her own, right? Is she

Tom Peters (01:32): understatement ? Uh, you, you did, you did not unfortunately get a copy of the book, but it’s an undersized book, and the book is it’s design. Uh, you know, it’s meant to be succinct. It’s meant to be, not really a closing statement, but something that can, it’s meant to be compact. Yes. And, you know, Nancy just did an incre, you know, she’s on everybody’s list of best designers on the planet, and, uh, an ama an amazing person. And I have no idea how the hell I got So lucky is to have her as a partner on this

John Jantsch (02:05): . Well, and I, I would, I do wanna get into that a little bit, um, at, at a another point. Uh, I wanna start with, um, your intro. You know, as I introduced you, your place in the management guru, uh, industry, you know, I’ve always looked at a lot of the work, and feel free to correct me if I’m wrong on this, , I’ve always looked at a lot of the work that you do. Uh, I mean, as introducing sort of subsets of the management, uh, guru industry, if we’re gonna keep calling it that, you know, excellence is something that, you know, you brought to the conversation, um, execution , um, you know, as, as certainly something you brought to conversation brand, you wow, extreme humanism. Um, it almost feels, uh, like when I see you come out with something, you’re zigging when other people are still zagging. So is that a fair ? Uh, I mean, do you spot trends or destroy them? , I guess.

Tom Peters (02:56): Uh, boy, I like to almost think the opposite, and I like to almost think it in search of excellence came outta McKinsey and Company. McKinsey believed that the world was strategy, strategy, strategy, strategy. Right. And we said, Hey, what about execution? What about people? And as far as I’m concerned, that’s what I started saying in 1979, and have not changed my tune in the least. I, I certainly agree with you that there’ve been, you know, many subsets along the way. Aah. The new book. I started focusing on design years ago. I started focusing on more women in leadership position years ago. Uh, those are, those are, but those are subset. It’s still people first. And why don’t you dummies Get it

John Jantsch (03:51): , uh,

Tom Peters (03:53): And you know, the the brand, the brand you thing, uh, which just had its 25th anniversary, by the way. Yep. That makes me sound like a genius today, . But the point was 25 years ago that when you went to work for Hewlett, what’s 25 years ago is 97, when you went to work for Hewlett Packard in 1997, you expected to be there for the next 40 years. And you didn’t have a name anymore. You were badged twenty seven hundred and thirty two, and you worked your butt off and you got promoted and you made more money and so on. But it was a lifetime thing. And when I started that writing, the lifetime employment thing was coming to an absolute end at a very high speed. And of course, today, that’s the oldest news in the world, right. . Uh, my big problem with Brand U, which is partially the fault of Fast Company who published it and used a, a box of Cheers magazine as the, uh, cheers, uh, soap as the background is people have translated Brand U into self-marketing. Yeah. And that’s 180 degrees off my point of brand U has become incredibly good at something that is useful to other people. Me as many relationships as you possibly can. Uh, it’s not about tuning your horn, it’s not about doing this or that or what have you. So that’s, that’s kind of made me sad though. You know, as I said, I’m probably somewhat responsible for it myself.

John Jantsch (05:31): So, so you weren’t really, uh, uh, giving a nod to, uh, the Instagram influencer, uh, culture that erupted, you know, with that

Tom Peters (05:39): Is precisely on the money. Exactly. Right. Yes. So I guess if I had foreseen it, I could be a multi-billionaire. We wouldn’t have to be bothering to have this conversation right now.

John Jantsch (05:50): . So you have written a book that I think is in excess of 900 pages, um, in your, uh, library. Uh, this book is not 900 pages . This is a very compact book. Is that part of the message?

Tom Peters (06:07): Yes, it is. Stripping stuff down to the essentials. The book should you be so inclined, which I’m not particularly keen on having you be, so you could read the thing in an hour. Uh, because fundamentally it is, uh, a series of quotes. It is the, you know, the the boiling down of the boiling down of the boiling down. And what my great hope is that you would, you’d be working with your colleagues, you’d look through the book, you’d pull two or three things out that kind of made sense for you, and then dig into them yourselves without me offering 3000 words of commentary. It’s, uh, it’s, it’s meant to be thought starters. It’s meant to be a bit provocative. Uh, you know, Richard Branson said, we used it as a, as an epigraph years ago. Uh, you shouldn’t do business unless you give the people who work for you enriching and rewarding lives. Uh, you know, that’s, that’s worthy of a, all of us sitting down and talking about it for the next day.

John Jantsch (07:24): Talk a little bit about, I mean, obviously you, you referenced this already. You have a book or a series of books on design specifically, um, is why was design such a crucial element of this book? Obviously the size is off, you know, a typical book. Uh, there are a lot of the graphics in this book. You had a great designer, one of the world’s best designers, you know, collaborate with you. Um, so why was design such a crucial element of the book itself? Well,

Tom Peters (07:51): Design, I’m gonna have to backtrack. Design became a big deal to me, I don’t know, 25 years ago or so. One of the biggest design companies is called I d O, right? And the guy who started I D O, David Kelly had a little organization called David Kelly Design, and his office in Palo Alto was two blocks from my office in Palo Alto. And so David was my teacher in a way, you know, I’m an engineer, engineers can’t even spell design if you spotted us the first five letters. And, and it was just a, it was just a realization, but particularly in an age where the finance guys run the companies and cost minimization is the holy grail. Mm-hmm. . And what I’m simply arguing, and you’ve argued this as loudly and longly almost as I have, is sort of what’s the point? Unless you’re delivering a product or a service that’s really a, that’s special, that’s a turn on that you can brag to your spouse and your kids about.

(09:03): That’s something that makes you smile. And that’s really my design point. It’s as simple as that, and complicated as that. And it is meant to be the enemy of, you know, these, these guys wrote a book that’s quoted in there called, oh my God, the, whatever, the three, the three, the three laws. It’s Deloitte and two guys. They took 25,000 companies. They boiled it down to 27 companies. And the three rules were revenue before cost, uh, I don’t know, quality before, whatever. But the, and then rule number three was there are no other rules. Hmm. And you know, what they found was that the best companies created great stuff. And yeah, again, as you know, and that’s a turn on for customers. It’s a turn on for our own employees. And, you know, excuse my language, I don’t know who our viewers are, but you know, what’s the point of busting your ass to make shit products or products like everybody else’s

John Jantsch (09:59): Products? Yeah. So in

Tom Peters (10:02): This book, this is a combination of that. Obviously this work, this work with Nancy is meant to be kinda the period at the end of the sentence or the exclamation mark at the end of the sentence.

John Jantsch (10:12): Well, one of the things that, that I know, you know, I know you’ve talked about it, it design great design, uh, helps you deliver a great message in a lot fewer words, doesn’t it?

Tom Peters (10:21): ab, absolutely. Yeah. You know, that’s, that, that’s, you know, aah, this book being the classic, the, the, the, it, it was funny, I worked with Nancy on my prior book and I was writing relative to this book, a special acknowledgement. And I thought, , that’s lunacy. She’s not a person to be specially acknowledged. She’s the co-author. Yeah. She’s the principal author. Because the message is the look, the feel, the taste, the touch, uh, and then a series of boiled down pieces of commentary on the inside. And that’s the ballgame. And you know, I think that’s obviously true. If you and I are running a restaurant, I think it’s true. If we’re writing a piece of software, I think that everything has the ability to be beautiful, thoughtful, excellent. Choose your set of words. And as I said, again, you know, why the hell bother to get up in the morning if that’s not your aspiration. I, I, I can’t imagine, I guess I can, maybe if I’d gotten listened more in my accounting course at Stanford a thousand years ago, , but I can’t imagine going home and bragging, oh my God, we got another eight of a cent outta that thing, you know, have gone up from, you know, 0.273 to 0.2 7, 3 2, oh my God, what a day. , that wouldn’t work for

John Jantsch (11:39): Me. Are you an agency owner, consultant or coach that works with business owners? Then I want to talk to you about adding a new revenue stream to your business that will completely change how you work with clients. For the first time ever, you can license and use the Duct Tape Marketing system and methodology in your business through an upcoming three day virtual workshop. Give us three days and you’ll walk away with a complete system that changes how you think about your agency’s growth. The Duct Tape Marketing System is a turnkey set of processes for installing a marketing system that starts with strategy and moves to long-term retainer implementation engagements. We’ve developed a system by successfully working with thousands of businesses. Now you can bring it to your agency and benefit from all the tools, templates, systems, and processes we’ve developed to find out when our next workshop is being held, visit DTM world slash workshop. That’s DTM world slash Workshop. I’m curious, as a, as, as a fellow author, uh, you, this book is essentially, um, a collection of curated, uh, quotes, um, broken up into 13 topics. I’m curious what your process was. Um, did you just have your notebook of favorite quotes and said, oh, I can apply this here, I can apply this here. Did you come up with the topics first and go looking for the quotes? I’m just curious what your process was.

Tom Peters (13:05): I read my prior book,

John Jantsch (13:07): .

Tom Peters (13:08): I, my prior book, which Nancy worked on was called Excellence Now Extreme Humanism. And she did a brilliant job of laying that one out too. But I really was to kick myself in the face a little bit. I really was going through it, and I think it’s quite a good book. And I thought, Tom, did we really need those 500 words of commentary from you? You know, you know, the, you’ve got a, you’ve got a terrific quote, like the Branson quote. Uh, it stands by itself, it makes a bold statement that stands out. Do we really need 400 words by Tom Peters to restate the obvious? And, you know, so I went through the book. I, and I ended up with, you know, about 125 things that stood out. And Nancy and I talked, and, you know, we ca we had, you know, we were, we were calling it in our initial, we called it, uh, uh, tl, R b at first, the Little Red Book , but you know, which, which it is, except you really don’t want Mao being your reference in life as one of the all time, you know, murderers. So, you know, we ch we changed it to this. But, uh, you know, as I say, it was, no, it was quotes I’ve used before. I’ve used ’em several times before. I used them in the prior book, and Nancy and I looked at it and say, this would be cool. Let’s see what we can do. And the translation of, let’s see what we could do was, you know, 99.99% Nancy Green and 1% me standing on the sidelines applauding .

(14:42): And I love the book. I mean, I would never say that about any of my other books, but I just love this thing. I love holding onto it. The, you know, Kous reviews, which is the big mother of all reviewers, called it an O Dart. Uh, and it, it is, it’s in part, and that’s kinda the message, it’s the internal message, uh, and it’s the external message.

John Jantsch (15:04): So you’ve talked about a little bit about some of the thoughts being provocative and making people stop. Um, frankly, I’ll just go with the, the first one, amateurs talk about strategy. Um, you know, that’s gonna have a lot of people scratching their heads. It’s like, wait a minute. I thought strategy before everything thing. Um, and you’re, you’re basically turning that idea on its head, aren’t you?

Tom Peters (15:28): Well, don’t give me the credit, right. , the quote is, amateurs talk about strategy, professionals talk about logistics. , uh, there’s some question as to who the quote came from. When I first heard it, it was a quote that came from General Omar Bradley, who was the commander of all US troops, uh, at D-Day. And, you know, fundamentally it was, it was his point, you know, you can have the greatest strategy in the world, but if you’re landing on a messy beach with people shooting at you, it would be nice to know the ammunition was coming in directly behind you, . And it also was the point of in search of excellence, as I think I alluded to briefly, everything at McKinsey was strategy, strategy, strategy, strategy. And, you know, my colleague, co-author, the late, unfortunately, passed away this year, pop Waterman. And I said, there’s a lot more to life than this.

(16:25): And we knew these companies like Hewlett Packard, which of course is a bureaucratic monster now, but which was a fast growing large SME at the time. And they’ve got turned on employees. You know, we were only a few blocks away from Apple Computer turned on employees. They’re doing products that make you proud. Uh, and it’s not just a piece of paper called a plan. It’s not a strategy. It’s, it’s a way of life. I mean, the, the, the most kind of amusing part is my number one enemy at McKinsey and Company, in many respects was very senior guy by the name of Lou Gerstner. Lou left McKenzie Lou eventually became the c e o of b m when it was hurting and turned it around. Uh, and in a book that he wrote who says, elephants Can’t dance, I remember him saying, I always thought strategy first, planning first, and so on.

(17:20): And then I came to this God awful messed up place, and I came to realize it was culture first. It’s changing people’s views, their minds, their attitudes and and so on. So, you know, that’s, that’s really where, that’s where that comes from. Um, and, and I don’t know, I I just get off on the people who do the work and their full scale engagement, and I want to know where I’m going in a general fashion, but mainly I don’t want everybody to be turned on about doing the best damn job and the most innovative job and the most enjoyable job they can today. That’s execution.

John Jantsch (18:02): So words like culture, which you already mentioned, humanism. I mean, I think the, those ideas are getting a lot of play these days, especially when people are finding it hard to find staff , uh, for, for a lot of positions. Uh, where are people getting that wrong?

Tom Peters (18:21): Boy? No, there’s a good question. . Uh, you’ve focused on SMEs more than these giant monsters that, I mean, that’s another discussion, uh,

John Jantsch (18:34): That, that was my next question, actually, but go ahead.

Tom Peters (18:36): Yeah. What, what I was gonna say is, when you or I, with or without one too many beers or glasses of wine, talk about why every restaurant in town really annoys and, you know, and we start talking about the things that we could do if it was, if it was our restaurant and we could do these cool things that might have to do with look, feel, taste, touch, menu, think of the people we could, we’re, we’re, we’re I think where people get it, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a whole way of life. You don’t decide suddenly in the midst of the pandemic that you wanna be more at tra it’s Right. . That’s what I love about SMEs. You know, the, the one I wrote about, I guess my last two books is a company in Connecticut, Seymour, Connecticut, and it’s called Basement Systems Inc. And Larry Janesky is the founder, and can you imagine anything more boring in the world than a basement?

(19:34): Right? Well, what Larry’s company does is transform your moldy, damp, old basement into a, you know, into a family room, into a second bedroom, or whatever else it is. And he is built a hundred million dollar company, but it’s, it’s excitement around basements, it’s excitement around these sorts of, of things, which to me is the whole point. And I really believe, if you and I were incredibly excited about this restaurant, I think our enthusiasm would attract people to us. I really think people would be maybe not quite waiting in line, but you know, when, when we ca we can’t find, you know, maybe I’m naive though, at my age, I would hope that’s not the case. , when I hear we can’t find people, what I’m really hearing is you can’t create a magnet that people are desperate to come and work for. And and isn’t that your shtick? I mean, isn’t that the whole point of the SM e Yeah.

John Jantsch (20:30): Yeah.

Tom Peters (20:30): And SMEs create well over a hundred percent of all new jobs, by the way,

John Jantsch (20:36): . Yeah. I, I, I think I have read probably from you statistics, you know, because, because a lot of people think of management consulting as Fortune 500, you know, McKinsey territory, um, and really your books, quite frankly, um, I don’t think you always get credit for this, but I think your books are more applicable, applicable to companies who can do something about it. , um, and, and Mo we’re largely talking about SMEs, uh, there Yeah. Who can actually take what you’ve written and apply it.

Tom Peters (21:04): Well, and the statistics, alas, in some respects are, are on my side. Yes. , uh, the giant companies are all going downhill. It’s just a matter of what the speed is. There’s a quote from an economist that I think I used in this book, Paul Paul erd, and he said, I am often asked by people wanting to start a new company, what do I do next? And he said, buy a big one, a small company, buy a big one and just wait.

John Jantsch (21:32): , you

Tom Peters (21:33): Know, the, and the, and you know it, it’s a fact they’re all going downhill. I mean, the o the only, the only asterisk, which goes back to the beginning is I think if you and I are stuck in one of those monsters, and we have a group of 25 people working on something, I think you and I can in a way create our own small business within this giant bureaucratic monster. Right. You know, that’s what I, one of the people who was in search of excellence, uh, was a guy by the name of Ren McPherson, who, you know, worked for a big Midwestern tool company, and he became c e o of the company. He said, my secret was every little piece they gave me, I turned into a stellar organization and people wanted to work there, and it was making money. And finally they said, well, you know, we can’t stop him.

(22:19): I guess we might not give him the whole damn thing , but so it is possible to have a magical piece. You know, I, I wrote this book that I think is the most important one I ever wrote. Nobody bought it, really? But you can’t have everything . And it was when that brand new book came out, and it was called The Professional Service Firm 50. And the point was that all the staff jobs are being offshore, whether it’s training, whether it’s this, or whether it’s that. If you and I are running, uh, 15 person purchasing department, why can’t we make that into an incredibly sexy professional service firm providing incredible services to our mates in our company, doing outside business for profit? And I really believe that if people had read the book and taken it seriously, you would’ve had a hell of a lot less offshoring than we have subsequently had.

John Jantsch (23:14): Yeah. Cause again, rather than somebody looking at that as an asset of the company, it’s just a cost.

Tom Peters (23:19): Yeah. Just a cost. Just a cost. Yeah. I mean, for God’s sakes, it’s a, it’s a cost. And what’s your first name again? Oh, I’m

John Jantsch (23:26): Overhead . All right. Let me ask you, like,

Tom Peters (23:30): Is it a one, is it a wonder that if your overhead, it doesn’t necessarily enthu you to get outta bed an extra half hour early?

John Jantsch (23:37): All right, I wanna end our conversation today with like a, just an impossible question. Um, but you know, a lot of, you’ve been doing this for 40 years, you’ve seen change over 40 years. A lot of people are very fixated in like, the moment this recession or this global pandemic, you know, the change that’s going on right before our eyes. Right. But as you look at a 40 year kind of

Tom Peters (23:56): Arc, well, given the God awful political mess, the concerns we have about violence and so on, it’s a little bit difficult for me, uh, to be terribly optimistic at this point. Yeah. Uh, and particularly, you know, as, as we have this conversation, recession is being predicted as, as right around the corner, uh, I don’t necessarily see a generally upward trend. I really wish I did. Uh, you know, I the best you and you’re gonna, you res I’m gonna ask the question this time. You don’t get to do all this . Uh, I hope that you and I can be useful to people who look at what you’ve done or what I’ve done, and they transform their little tiny corner of the world, and I hope it infects more of the world. But I don’t have an ego that says that I’ve come up with a solution that, you know, solves all the planet’s problems. I just, just, you know, I said to somebody, if, if Tony Robbins comes into a room with a thousand people, he expects to change a thousand lives. If I come into a room with a thousand people and two people walk out an hour later and say, holy shit, we really ought to do this. I have had one good big fantastic day. I mean, don’t, don’t you feel the same

John Jantsch (25:27): Way? A absolutely one life changed . Absolutely.

Tom Peters (25:30): Yeah. One, one life changed as a, you know, what, what, what’s the, what’s the, I never really understood this. It’s a, there’s a, uh, someplace, I think it’s in Jerusalem, some places where a sing a tree is planted for you if you have saved a single life or helped a single life. And I’m getting that all wrong, and I’ll be shot out by people who know the real answer, . But the idea is, if, if you can help, you know, Mary or Sam say, holy smokes, I can really do this in a different way than I think both of us had a hell of a good day.

John Jantsch (26:02): All right. Uh, do you have a favorite quote from the book? Everybody asks you that I’m sure.

Tom Peters (26:09): Well, my favorite quote in the book comes from a movie director, Robert Altman. Mm-hmm. , uh, and this was from his acceptance speech, when he won a lifetime achievement award. He said the role of the director is to create a space where actors can become more than they have ever been before, more than they have ever dreamed of being. And I love that. And I think it is the essence of leadership in a restaurant in a four-person training department, or in Mr. Altman’s case when he’s, you know, creating some sort of a movie, create a place where people never, you know, the, uh, New York Times comments, David Brooks wrote, uh, an article some years ago, a couple years ago, what have you, and in it he contrasted what he called resume virtues and eulogy virtues, and the resume virtues, of course, the degrees you got the promotions, you got your net worth, whatever it was. The eulogy virtues obviously are what they say about you at your funeral. And, you know, and that’s all about your thoughtfulness, your caring, and so on. And so, my one liner for the average supervisor or the individual for that matter, how’s your eulogy virtue score score today? Mm-hmm. Who did you help? Who did you give a little bit of a hand to parentheses. And my stats say, by the way, over the long term, it’s the best way to grow, market share, make money.

John Jantsch (27:43): Right. Right, right, right. awesome. Tom, it was so great to visit with you again. Um, I’ve, I’d invite people to visit tom peters.com. Is there anywhere else? Obviously the books are available everywhere, but, uh, anywhere else you wanna send people to connect with you or learn more

Tom Peters (27:58): About? Well, I’m happy to have, you know, I, I hate to say it, I use Twitter, though. I’m not sure I will very, very much longer with Mr. Musk’s behavior. Uh, tom peters.com has pretty much everything I’ve done for the last 25 years, available for free for anybody. And, uh, love, love to have you come by sample. Uh, our interview will be@tompeters.com after you, you’ve put it up live for a while, so, uh, stop by, say hello, comment, whatever. It’s been a great oppor, I love great conversation. Well,

John Jantsch (28:31): Thank so

Tom Peters (28:32): Much and you doing your good work.

John Jantsch (28:33): I, I’ll keep

Tom Peters (28:34): Be on the crap. I’m saying I’m the old guy in this chair, , so you keep it up, my friend.

John Jantsch (28:38): Oh, I, I thank you so much for stopping by the Duct Tape, my marketing podcast, and hopefully we’ll run into you, uh, one of these days out there on the road.

Tom Peters (28:46): Okay, thanks.

John Jantsch (28:47): Hey, and one final thing before you go. You know how I talk about marketing strategy, strategy before tactics? Well, sometimes it can be hard to understand where you stand in that, what needs to be done with regard to creating a marketing strategy. So we created a free tool for you. It’s called the Marketing Strategy Assessment. You can find it @ marketingassessment.co. Co check out our free marketing assessment and learn where you are with your strategy today. That’s just marketingassessment.co. I’d love to chat with you about the results that you get.

John Jantsch (00:00): This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Outbound Squad, formerly Blissful Prospecting, hosted by Jason Bay. It’s brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Jason Bay is a leading sales expert and he talks with other leading sales experts to get you the information you need. I’ve recent episode, he talked about how much time you need to spend prospecting. Really, really eye opening. Check it out to listen to the outbound squad, wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Melanie Deziel. She’s a keynote speaker, award-winning branded content creator and the author of two books of the Content Fuel Framework, how to Generate Unlimited Story Ideas, and a new book we’re gonna talk about today. Prove it exactly how modern marketers Earn trust. So Melanie, welcome to the show.

Melanie Deziel (01:10): Hey, it’s good to be here.

John Jantsch (01:11): Your camera’s moving around. You’re bouncing around there.

Melanie Deziel (01:14): I know, I was so excited I bumped into it. .

John Jantsch (01:17): So I have to say this, not all listeners have ever done interviews or had podcasts guests, but you know, I’ve done thousands of them and I have to say your background info and topic sheet that you provided was one of the best ones I’ve ever seen, mainly because it gave me like all kinds of off topic stuff you stuff about you, stuff you didn’t wanna talk about. So we’re just gonna dive right into the stuff you don’t wanna talk about. Okay. .

Melanie Deziel (01:42): You know, I try, I always say I try to be the easiest guest to work with cuz I know it’s a lot of work to produce a podcast. You got a lot of homework you gotta do on the guests. So I feel like giving you all the links in the background kind of helps make that easier.

John Jantsch (01:54): Yeah. So now I’m just gonna, you put me on my soapbox now. So I’m also a guest on a lot of shows and I, you know, always hate those ones where somebody asks me to be a guest and then wants me to write the show for them. , you know, I’m sure you’ve done that same thing. I’m like, and I’m sure you know, you are a true journalist or journalist background and I, you know, I, that’s where I come from as well. And I think, you know, you’re supposed to write the interview , it’s called Journal. So I’m sorry where I’m wasting all of your time here. No. Talking about my pet peeves. So the subtitle of the book is exactly how modern marketers Earn Trust. So let’s just talk about trust first off, you know, where does that fit into the marketing journey today as an intentional action? I guess both from the buyer’s standpoint and maybe from the marketer’s point of view too.

Melanie Deziel (02:43): Yeah, so the reason we went with trust as the underpinning of the book is that we’re sort of looking at, you know, all the different KPIs that everybody is optimizing for. You know, whether you’re looking for sales or downloads or purchases, whatever the case may be, this realization that trust comes before any of those things, right? Like we don’t typically subscribe to accounts or you know, social profiles that we feel are maybe a little suspect. We don’t enter our card information on a website that we feel might not be trustworthy. We don’t hire and work with people that we don’t think we can, you know, can trust with our data or our business. And so it’s this realization that, you know, if trust comes first, then how can we optimize the other marketing activities that we’re doing? And you know, namely content being my background, how do we optimize that with the goal of earning trust in mind in a way that’s going to allow the rest of those KPIs to just kind of waterfall and come from that.

John Jantsch (03:37): Is there a sort of like a different height hurdle so to speak? I mean, if you’re selling a $59 product, couple reviews might do it, but if you’re selling a $10,000 coaching program for example, you know, isn’t trust like the most important element?

Melanie Deziel (03:54): So yeah, I think there’s, there’s a couple factors that go into it to create these different tiers. So the first one would be the price point, which you mentioned. Yeah, obviously, you know, I always say we all do a little bit more shopping around for expertise if we’re getting, you know, a medical procedure than we do for a loaf of bread, there’s, you know, there’s the price as well as the stakes, right? Some things are just the cost of making the wrong decision is so much higher. That’s true in like the B2B space. Any heavily regulated industry, you know, if you’re working in finance and insurance and technology, you know, there’s a big risk factor there. So we tend to see that trust becomes more important in, again, those high ticket purchases like a vehicle or you know, a house or something as well as a that that is really like the big important decisions in life that have potential major fallout.

(04:39): We definitely see that trust is gonna be even more important in those scenarios. But I mean I think honestly I do think it trickles down, at least on some level. I think we’ve probably all had the experience of you’re at like a discount store of some kind, a dollar store or something like that and you see a product on the shelf and you’re like, I know it’s clearly this is a knockoff of something that I usually buy, but I’m just not sure that’s gonna cut it, right? Like even though it’s maybe, you know, zip up plastic snack bags, you’re like, those just probably aren’t gonna stay shut, you know, or that tape is probably not gonna stick as well. So I think even in those small purchases, there’s that sort of unspoken quality of like, does this look trustworthy? Is this something I can believe?

John Jantsch (05:24): Yeah. You know what’s interesting I’ve found at least is, I mean every purchase involves some risk. Every decision to move forward involves some risk, right? And what I have found is trust us, two things, it lowers the risk for a lot of people, or at least in their mind, right? And when you lower the risk, you can actually raise the price because somebody’s like, oh, I know this one’s gonna work, I’ll pay more. I know this is gonna be a good experience, I’ll pay more. Or I trust that this will be a better experience, I’ll pay more. So do, do you find that there’s that direct correlation if something is more trustworthy, people are willing to pay more?

Melanie Deziel (05:57): A hundred percent. I think it depends too on what it is that they’re trusting you for. So one of the things we talk about in the book is like commitment claims where brands will claim to be sustainable or you know, they have a commitment to equal pay or the environment or you know, whatever they’re committed to on a values basis. And consumers are often like very often willing to pay more if they feel like they’re supporting a cause that’s important to them. It’s why you often see that the green or you know, lower carbon footprint or more sustainable recyclable, whatever it is, version of products tends to be a little more expensive. But because people feel like this is a value that’s important to me and I’m supporting that, I’m willing to make that extra payout. And I think we see that for a lot of different things, but particularly for commitment values where it’s like aligning my identity with something that this brand is committed to. Definitely willing to open the wallets there.

John Jantsch (06:51): You know, essentially the, if I wanna boil the book down to about, what’s it, five words, don’t tell it, show it. I mean it, you know, when people talk about trust, I mean it’s like, no, trust me Melanie, really, you can trust me, right? I mean that doesn’t go very far. So talk a little bit about that aspect of what you’re suggesting.

Melanie Deziel (07:09): Yeah, a hundred percent. Well that, that comes from the journalism background, which I’m sure that you were indoctrinated with that as well, right? We’re always told it’s not our job to tell the audience what to think or you know, what to do or how to feel about something. It’s our job to show them what’s going on and let them make a decision. So I feel like adopting that mindset from a marketing standpoint of saying, well, I could tell my audience that I deliver results. I could tell my audience that it’s a sustainable product. I could tell my audience all of these things, but how could I go one step further? How could I show them instead how can I demonstrate it? How can I, you know, corroborate that claim? How can I find additional ways to back it up so that it’s not just, you know, take my word for it because consumers don’t, they just don’t trust us. You know,

John Jantsch (07:55): You started to allude to this, but I’ll kind of bring out the numbers and let you walk through them. You in the book talk about three kinds of content that work well as evidence. So we’ve been talking about trust, but I guess before we get too much farther here, talk about the use of the word evidence as part of what you’re suggesting.

Melanie Deziel (08:16): Yeah, so we use, I use sort of like a light legal theme throughout. People have kind of sprinkled throughout because I think we’re all familiar with, you know, some of the catchphrases of like TV courtroom dramas and things like that. And you know, there’s always this like you’ve gotta bring the evidence, like where’s the evidence, right? Right. When you’re trying to convince a judge or jury, whoever that is, your consumers, you know, a buyer of something to make the decision you want them to make. So it is very similar to being sort of a lawyer in that, in that sense, right? And so the idea with evidence is we are making these claims and it’s our job to produce the evidence that helps our audience come to the right conclusion. You know, make the right verdict that they can trust us. And I think that mindset shift of thinking of yourself as that being your mission, like I have to win over a skeptical audience to, to pick the verdict that I think is right.

(09:04): I think that kind of mindset shift is helpful because it kind of just points you toward understanding, like I need to look for evidence in all the different places where it may be, you know, if you think of a courtroom drama, there’s always, you’ve got the human folks coming in, that’s the corroboration. You bring the demonstration, you know, photos or videos or you know, those kinds of things. And then you bring in experts who can educate the audience cuz what, you know, the average jury doesn’t know anything about blood spattered patterns or you know, whatever else, you know, evidence you’re bringing in.

John Jantsch (09:32): And they hope you don’t either, right?

Melanie Deziel (09:34): That’s true. Right. Well and hopefully, you know, hopefully none of our marketing involves blood spatter patterns, but hopefully the correlation is making sense there. That’s really what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to back up our claims with experts and witnesses. We’re trying to demonstrate all of that through stories and documentation and then we’re trying to educate the audience, you know, coach them and help them understand the information so that they can then come to that conclusion.

John Jantsch (09:57): Are you an agency owner, consultant or coach that works with business owners? Then I want to talk to you about adding a new revenue stream to your business that will completely change how you work with clients. For the first time ever, you can license and use the Duct Tape marketing system and methodology in your business through an upcoming three day virtual workshop. Give us three days and you’ll walk away with a complete system that changes how you think about your agency’s growth. The Duct Tape Marketing system is a turnkey set of processes for installing a marketing system that starts with strategy and moves to long-term retainer implementation engagements. We’ve developed this system by successfully working with thousands of businesses. Now you can bring it to your agency and benefit from all the tools, templates, systems and processes we’ve developed to find out when our next workshop is being held. Visit dtm.world/workshop. That’s dtm.world/workshop. So I got you, of course there I went down the evidence rabbit hold. So let’s circle back and say, what are the three types of con content then? That work is

Melanie Deziel (11:06): Evidence. Exactly. So that’s the corroboration piece that I just alluded to. So content that corroborates includes experts or witnesses. So experts are authorities on whatever it is that you’re claiming. So you know, if you’re making a sustainability claim for example, well then, I don’t know a researcher in that space or you know, if you’re talking about rainforest, maybe you know, someone who oversees the rainforest in that particular area could be an expert for that type of claim. Uh, witnesses, anytime you’re bringing in witnesses into your content, that’s gonna be the folks who have seen the truth of that claim themselves. So that could be past customers, could be, uh, testimonials from clients. It could be, you know, if the claim has to do with your employees or your commitment to the community or whatever else. Who are the people who can speak to the fact that those claims are true?

(11:51): And that mu again, much like in a courtroom courtroom, it’s your way of saying you don’t have to take my word for it. Take these folks word for it, right? I’ve got people to corroborate these claims. So that’s the first type. The second one is demonstration. So whereas a corroboration is sort of, you don’t take my word for it, you have these folks word demonstration is, you don’t have to take my word for it, see with your own eyes like you can see it yourself. The best sort of example to, to bring it to mind immediately is every infomercial or like, you know, direct QVC style product, right? Where they have like the side by side showing the two products doing what they do. And one is clearly better. You don’t have to believe me that this product, you know, has more suction and cleans your carpet better. You can see from the dirt left on the other carpet that ours does a better job, right? So,

John Jantsch (12:36): And Bo Bounty, I’m thinking of bounty towels like

Melanie Deziel (12:39): Go, you know, there’s none ready. Yeah. Or especially like cleaners of all kinds when it’s like, you know, the half of a stain treated with one thing and half with the other. So you know, that may not, that’s a little catchy. It might not be exactly what we want to do with our brand, but the sort of like a B2B equivalent is you often see a demo of a product, right? And that demo is saying, you know, we’re telling you this is easy to use, that it has a simple interface here, let’s walk through the product, let’s show you how simple it is. Or those comparison check mark grids we are all familiar with that are often on a pricing page, right? Here’s what you get with them and here’s many more check marks of what you get with us. So it’s really your way of saying, look, you don’t have to take our word for it, like we’re gonna show you, we’re gonna bring it to you in the form of stories and of some sort of documentation that proves our point.

John Jantsch (13:21): And then did we get the third one?

Melanie Deziel (13:23): The third one is education. Okay, so this one we again, we hinted at before, but the education pillar is this like acknowledgement that in many cases the audience that we are trying to convince doesn’t have enough information to make that conclusion at all. So in addition to corroborating our claims and demonstrating our claims, we probably need to provide education around those claims as well. So places where you wanna look out for this is anytime that you know, your buyer may not be your end user, right? So it may be some executive that’s signing off on use of a new software, but the engineers or the project managers, right, they’re gonna be the ones using it. So this executive may not know how convenient it is that you integrate with such and such product or that it has this feature or that. So you need to provide that education to help them understand why those claims are important.

(14:10): This is also true if you have like a first time buyer situation, love to give the example of like first time home buyers or you’re buying a wedding dress or you know, some sort of a hot tub maybe or a boat like someone probably hasn’t bought that before, doesn’t have much experience in purchasing that thing. And so they’re gonna need some context for this claim you’ve made that it’s, I don’t know that the paint is reflective, like is that good or bad? Like should it be reflective? Like how does one measure reflectiveness, right? So kind of you need to provide that background and education to allow them to make sense of your claims in the first place.

John Jantsch (14:45): So what are some simple ways that you see, I mean, for example, I see people on websites as seen in these publications or these, you know, brands that you have heard of. Are all of our customers, I mean are those, you know, do those fit into, you know, this prove it category

Melanie Deziel (15:03): A hundred percent. So that’s corroboration. And I do think that corroboration is often the easiest one for us to turn to. As long as you’re an established business, then you probably have corroboration that’s easily at your fingertips, you know, past clients or as you said, press mentions, you could do awards that you’ve won. You know, you can kind of bring in all of that outside proof to say, look, you know, we’re telling you we’re great and we’re telling you that, you know, this is a famous product, but hey look, we’ve been featured on all of these TV shows or in all of these newspapers. Um, this is something we see a lot with restaurants, you know, if they say like, reviewed in the New York Times or books often say like Wall Street Journal bestseller, right? That’s the corroboration. Like I’m telling you my book is good, but you don’t have to believe me cuz like the Wall Street Journal set. So, so those kinds of things can be really helpful. And again, I think most businesses, as long as it’s established and has some sort of history at all, has past clients or you know, employees or colleagues and partners that you could be calling on to provide some corroboration.

John Jantsch (15:59): And you also talk about certain types of claims that businesses make frequently make that just flat out need proof that nobody’s, it’s not gonna be a benefit claim. It’s not gonna do you any good if, unless you can show proof. What are a couple examples of claims that fit into that category?

Melanie Deziel (16:16): Yeah, so there’s a couple different categories of claims that like most businesses are making in some capacity. So a competence claim would be one of those, right? We’re all talking about how we do well at whatever it is we do, right? We’re pitching something, we’re gonna deliver these results, we’re gonna achieve this outcome, right? That’s a competence claim. I know what I’m doing. And those can often be really well corroborated, you know, again, by past clients or something similar. We also have comparison claims, which we kind of hinted at before. So this is like, how do we stack up to the competition or to other solutions that are available or to not doing anything at all. Like what is, what is our offer in comparison to the others and how do we perform? We talked about commitment claims a little bit early on, and that could be, again, commitment to your customers, commitment to your employees, commitment to a value or a cause.

(17:01): Those often need quite a bit of evidence, even more so than some of the others. Again, because it’s so tied to identity. If someone is, you know, they pride themselves on, you know, equal rights or you know, pay equality or sustainability, like this is something that feels core to their identity and the level of betrayal that comes when, you know, we’ve all seen the fallout, the PR scandals when supposedly in favor of a particular cause and it comes out that the truth is not so. So those claims definitely need a lot of proof. The others would be convenience, which I think convenience claims are actually some of the easiest to prove when we’re talking about convenience claims. That’s things like speed, ease of use, affordability, because most convenience claims can be quantified, which makes them really easy to measure, measure and really easy to prove, right?

(17:50): It either costs less or it costs more. Like there’s a number there, right? It’s very objective, you know, it’s either faster than that or it has a slower timestamp. Like that’s pretty objective. So convenience claims tend to be, tend to be pretty, pretty easy to prove. But on the other end of the spectrum, I think our connection claims and connection is really about the, it’s the relationship side of things. That’s, you know, the, you’re not a number, you’re a name the Olive Garda when you’re here, you’re family, right? That that idea that they have a deep connection either to their customers or to the, the local community is another common one. Like our connection with our community. So those are often a little bit harder to prove if only because there’s no officially recognized connection scale that I’m aware of, right? So it’s more of more subjective in many cases. And that means you have to rely more on corroboration and storytelling of that connection to try to

John Jantsch (18:41): Prove it out. My father-in-law’s favorite restaurant was Olive Garden, and I can just tell you that I went to Olive Garden a lot more than I care to and I didn’t feel like family there. Sorry.

Melanie Deziel (18:50): Oh no, .

John Jantsch (18:53): All right. What about throwaway claims get pitched by the number one XYZ award-winning this and leading X globally all the time. To me, I don’t know, maybe there is some proof behind them, but they just feel like throwaways to me.

Melanie Deziel (19:09): So that’s exactly that, that is a claim without proof and that’s what we are trying to avoid. And that’s honestly, I feel like that’s the trap, right? Because it’s very easy, particularly if you’re, you know, you’re writing copy, it’s easy to get carried away and just start throwing adjectives left and right, you know, best, greatest, whatever. But it creates exactly that feeling that you’re talking about. It’s that feeling of like says who according to who. Like how do I know that? And I think that’s a natural skepticism that we’ve seen. It’s increasing every year just getting higher and higher because of the amount of throwaway claims like that that have no proof whatsoever. People have to default to skepticism. Yeah. And I think it, it is really an opportunity for marketers that wanna stand out and kind of be a step above that to proactively be providing proof of those claims so that you’re not giving people that sort of icky, you know, taste in your mouth leftover .

John Jantsch (19:59): So what about, I work with a lot of startups and they don’t have any case studies, they don’t have any testimonials, they really don’t have any verifiable evidence that what they do, you know, provides the result that they’re promising. How do they kinda walk that line?

Melanie Deziel (20:16): Yeah, so one of the things I think is that even if you feel like you don’t have personally like case studies that you can call on, there were almost always tangential or related case studies. So I’ll give you an example, a start that my husband and I founded a late last year is helping small businesses. It was a group buying service marketplace for small businesses. Now that sort of thing didn’t exist. So to your point, we couldn’t say here’s some successful examples. We were trying to build it. Um, however we could point to the fact that, you know, know associations have for a long time offered discounts to their members that a lot of membership, you know, perks are really just combining the buying power of their membership and negotiating discounts in response. We could point to GPOs group purchasing organizations as an example of this sort of model that worked and pull experts and studies and case studies from those spaces that sort of support the need for, you know, where the gap is. And I think a lot of startups can do something similar. You know, you’re telling stories of people who have not had success because your solution didn’t exist, or people who would’ve had success had your solution existed. Or people in similar industries who can say, I wish that this existed for XYZ industry as well. I think that kind of corroboration can actually be super powerful because it’s showing the white space

John Jantsch (21:32): And that business is called the convoy. Where can people find that? Your grape buying

Melanie Deziel (21:36): Business? The convoy.com. So if you’re a small business independent business freelancer, the convoy.com offers you free of charge discounts on products and services that you need to run your business, just trying to support those small businesses that keep our country running.

John Jantsch (21:50): So I appreciate you stopping by the Duct Tape Marketing podcast again to talk about, prove it. You wanna tell people, I know they can find the book anywhere, but you wanna tell anywhere else you want, invite people to connect with you?

Melanie Deziel (22:01): Yeah, well, hey, I always say my home base is my website, story fuel.co. so.co story Fuel is where you’ll find information about all the books where you could buy ’em, how to work with me. You could find my social links if you wanna connect with me online somewhere, and you’ll find all that@storyfuel.com.

John Jantsch (22:17): Do you get tripped up on the.co versus uh.com? I had had one website that I really wanted the url and so I bought the CO and every time I went there, I typed in.com. No matter

Melanie Deziel (22:28): What, no, I, I don’t because it’s been so long at this point. But yeah, it is always tough. You know, sometimes at this point in the internet, a lot of the good URLs are taken. You’ve gotta innovate a little bit.

John Jantsch (22:39): abs. Absolutely. Well Mallows, great catching up with you again and hopefully we will see you one of these days soon again out there on the road.

Melanie Deziel (22:46): Hope so. Thanks for letting me share my story.

John Jantsch (22:48): Hey, and one final thing before you go. You know how I talk about marketing strategy, strategy before tactics? Well, sometimes it can be hard to understand where you stand in that, what needs to be done with regard to creating a marketing strategy. So we created a free tool for you. It’s called the Marketing Strategy Assessment. You can find it@ marketingassessment.co. Check out our free marketing assessment and learn where you are with your strategy today. That’s just marketing assessment.co. I’d love to chat with you about the results that you get.

John Jantsch (00:00): This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Marketing Against the Grain, hosted by Kip Bodner and Keion Flanigan is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Look, if you wanna know what’s happening now in marketing, what’s ahead and how you can stay ahead of the game, this is the podcast for you, host and HubSpot’s, CMO and SVP of Marketing. Kip and Keion share their marketing expertise unfiltered in the details of truth and like nobody tells it. In fact, a recent episode, they titled Half Baked Marketing Ideas They Got Down In the Weeds, talked about some outside of the box campaigns with real businesses. Listen to marketing, its grain wherever you get your podcast.

(00:54): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Martha McSally. McSally is a compelling example of overcoming adversity and fear to achieve extraordinary feats losing her dad at the age 12. In surviving sexual abuse and assault, she persevered to become the first woman in US history to fly a fighter jet in combat and command a fighter squadron in combat. Martha deploys six times to the Middle East and Afghanistan flying 325 combat hours in the A 10 attack plane ironing the Bronze Star and six air medals. She’s also a former United States representative and a former United States Senator from Arizona. She’s also the author of a book, dare to Fly, simple Lessons in Never Giving Up. So Martha, welcome to the show.

Martha McSally (01:47): Thanks for having me on,

John Jantsch (01:48): John. So I, in preparation for this, I read an article in popular Mechanics that said, why the A 10 Thunderbolt is such a badass plane . So tell us why it is such a badass fund. Because that was the plane, in fact, I think affectionately referred to as the warthog is a plane that you flew.

Martha McSally (02:07): It is, it is such a badass plane. And I picked it, I had a choice of all the fighters F 15 and F 16, F 15 E, F 11, and a 10. And I picked it. I know your audio listeners won’t be able to see this, but here’s the A 10, it’s a single seat. It’s extremely survivable. It’s got look at all these weapon pylons on there. It was built around this gun and people can look it up on the internet, but this is a 30 millimeter bullet. There’s 1,174 rounds of this just for preference point. This is a smart water one liter bottle. So, um, it’s entire mission is close air support. And so it was actually built to go after Soviet tanks. Initially the intent was being like right there on the front line and the close air support mission is troops are in close combat with the bad guys.

(02:53): The risk of fracture side is high, often on the move, you know, very complex, confusing circumstances on the ground and they’re calling for air cover to help ’em. So it was built to be extremely heavy in firepower. Also a very survivable, I mean we can lose all our electrics, all our hydraulics, one engine and have literally holes in the plane and still be able to fly back to friendly territory. It’s a bit of a metaphor I think, of my life , but like really taking a hit and you know, just continuing to survive and it’s just an incredible, you know, just the mission. I mean we often would take off in Afghanistan. I was commanding my squadron over there. We were providing 24 hour coverage to the troops on the ground. We would often take off on a routine combat mission, which is like an oxymoron. We would have maps of the entire country of Afghanistan and you would have some American troops under fire got ambushed. They need help. So we would be given a radio frequency, a grid coordinate and a call sign and told, go help these guys now. And that’s, you know, we would just have to figure it out and help these guys survive to live, to fight another day and get home to their family. So it’s an incredible mission. I’m super honored to have flown it and commanded a squadron.

John Jantsch (04:05): Well I don’t wanna geek out on this too much, but I’m just envisioning like how do you instruct somebody how to fly a plane with one seat?

Martha McSally (04:12): It’s a great question. So when I went through training, there were also no simulators and there were no two seat models. So your first flight is solo. Now we were all pilots. So we had gone through a year of, you know, training that everybody goes through just to earn their pilot wings, which is just, you know, the essentials of being a pilot. And then we go through another introductory course to be a fighter pilot. Technically we’re attack pilots, but we’re kind of grouped into fighter pilots. And then you show up, I’m not kidding, they give you a, you know, a binder like, you know, multiple three, four inches thick, all the systems of the airplane, all the procedures, all the contingencies. You basically need to know how to build the plane and deal with anything. And then you take a lot of tests, academics, you then, you know, go through different procedures of dealing with engine fire on takeoff and you have to be able to, you know, say exactly what you’re going to do.

(05:06): But I mean, we’re the superpower, when we went through the training, there was no simulator. So we would sit in these little cockpits that were like mock cockpits, but the switches didn’t work, the plane wasn’t flying and you just had to show that you could, you know, turn the right engine off if the fires on the left engine. And then later on in my time flying the A 10, I was an instructor pilot. So you then are, I’m using my hands here, but you know, your audio listeners can’t see this. But then picture your taxiing out with your instructor pilot next to you and you know, then fly on their wing and what they call a chase position. So mm-hmm , when you become an instructor pilot, you flying your plane has to be kind of like people, you know, you think about when you drive to work and you almost, it’s almost autonomic like it’s just happening.

(05:48): You’re like, how did I get here? Cause you’ve done it so many times. You can’t be using a lot of conscious energy on you flying your plane as an instructor. You’ve just gotta do it. And then you’re monitoring what, what the student’s doing and providing feedback to them. But we used to joke, there’s a lot of gallows humor in the military cuz what we do is obviously extremely dangerous. We’d be like, look, if something goes wrong, you got the rest of your life to figure out how to, you know, which may be just an hour or so, you know, depending on the situation.

John Jantsch (06:16): Yeah. I’m curious what drove you to join the Air Force?

Martha McSally (06:20): Well, you know, I grew up a youngest of five kids in a upper middle class family. And, you know, super blessed to have stability and my dad came from tough circumstances and served in the Navy and used his GI bill get a good education. He was very driven to make a better life for us kids. And he very suddenly passed away when I was 12. And it just, it really rocked my world. Tough age anyway. And now my mom went back to, you know, single mom, five kids, went back to school and back to work. And so I was just trying to find my path. My dad, before he passed away had was in between heart attacks in the hospital and I got to visit with him. And among the things we talked about, he told me to make him proud. And then he, you know, he passed the next day and it just, it was a really difficult time.

(07:05): And so I was sort of driven to do something meaningful with my life. I wouldn’t have called it that at the time, but, you know, make your father proud, you know, after he died. And dealing with the grief though, and the, just the challenges with all that. But I was looking for an opportunity to get a good education, not saddle my mom with debt. You know, I was a little rebellious. I was trying to channel my energy into something positive and, you know, you pay back in service. I thought the challenge would be good for me. Again, I wouldn’t have used these words as a 17 year old, but I mean, anybody who’s got 17 year old kids, you know what I’m talking about. Like, I had no idea what I was doing. I just decided to go to the Air Force Academy. I wanted to be a doctor.

(07:44): I didn’t wanna fly. I was motion sick. And I mean off I went totally clueless as to what I was really getting into. And when I got there, I found out I was in the ninth class with women at the Air Force Academy. And I found out that just because I was a woman, it was against the law at the time for women to be fighter pilots, . And I, again, I had no desire to fly, but when I heard that, it just pissed me off and I channeled my rebellious spirit and I was like, well, that’s exactly what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna be the person one fighter pilot. And everybody laughed at me, but I just kept this dream in my heart and you know, just kept living where I was planted and I was like, this is what I’m gonna do someday. And it took 10 years and I didn’t have anything to do with the change, but I was in the right place at the right time when the, when the doors opened.

John Jantsch (08:28): So this book has a lot of stories from your life, obviously. But you wouldn’t call it a memoir, would you?

Martha McSally (08:34): No. Uhuh look, I’m, I’m at halftime here, you know, . And so I don’t, it’s not an autobiography. I just feel like I’ve had some unique experiences and you know, the reader may never fly in a a 10 jet. That’s not the point. The point is, what lessons did I learn that apply to the reader, right? And, you know, I’m doing keynote speaking engagements as well. Like, these lessons apply to all of us as humans. How do we overcome our fear? I didn’t, I wasn’t born with the kind of courage to fly in combat. I had to make decisions along the way. The term I use is choose to do things af afraid. Courage is a choice in my view. And you then build your confidence and your capabilities and then you grow and expand and then you create a muscle memory for like an athlete of courage instead of a muscle memory of fear.

(09:22): So that’s just one example. You know, if nuggets I, you know, share from the unique journeys I’ve had, obviously people can, you see cool stories of flying in combat and different things in my journey, but it’s not about me. It’s about what does that mean for you, the reader? And how can you soar through turbulence and difficult times and persevere to achieve your dreams and never give up and find different creative ways in order to, you know, be whatever you wanna be in life. And so I share with humor a little self-deprecation going on there. Some of these little nuggets along the way on things like, you know, courage and perseverance and agility and overcoming adversity and things like that.

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(11:03): So you’ve broken the book, the chapters really are essential lessons you already talked about. Make someone proud. You know, that’s one of, one of the lessons here was probably my favorite and it kind of reminded me of my father, um, don’t walk by the problem. It feels like that has sort of a military in there. My dad was an army officer and he would always say, look, if you see something that needs fixing, fix it. If it doesn’t paint it . And it just felt very sort of military to me. So talk a little bit about don’t walk by the problem, how that’s,

Martha McSally (11:30): Uh, for sure that’s part of the, one of the values that I learned, you know, in my family. But then in the military where if you see something that’s wrong, what are you gonna do about it? Don’t be a bystander. There’s a lot of people just like, well that’s not my problem, but just don’t walk by that problem. You know, much to the frustration of people who have served with me and loved ones in my life. I can’t walk by a problem, you know, I can’t. And whether that is, you know, in the book I tell the story of my eight year battle with the Pentagon over this stupid policy they had that was totally denigrating to our women serving in Saudi Arabia. They had to, basically, they were treated like Saudi women, which is essentially property, you know, at the time. And, you know, couldn’t drive, sit in the backseat of the car where a burka essentially, you know, black Muslim gown and headscarf.

(12:16): And it, I just thought it was wrong. It didn’t apply to me, but I just felt this conviction that it needed to be fixed. And I was in a unique position as an officer, as a, you know, pioneering fighter pilot where I had the ear of people and I just felt like it was part of my responsibility to try and bring about this change. I never would’ve imagined it was an eight year battle. I tell the story, you know, in the book, but you know, in the end, put my career on the line, filed a lawsuit against the Secretary of Defense, Martha McSally versus Donald Rumsfeld. Not a great career move, but my oath of offices to the Constitution when I raised my right hand. It’s not to stupid, you know, policies of the people over me. And so I pull out of that this lesson of like, don’t walk by a problem.

(12:59): If you see something’s wrong, do something about it. Do your homework. By the way, those of us who are change Adrians and entrepreneurs, we often kind of wanna just rail against it, but we may not even know what we’re talking about. So you gotta really do a little research, do some fact finding. What if you’re a Colby person? You gotta have those fact finding skills and be creative about how you bring about the change. Find some wingman and allies and just don’t ever give up. And you one person, you can make a difference in your community, in the country and whatever it is you’re in your company, whatever it is you feel like might need to be fixed, just don’t walk by it. Don’t be a bystander.

John Jantsch (13:36): So you mentioned wingman already. I was gonna say that the book is, has plenty of metaphors that I’ve taken from that are easy like takeoffs and you know, wingman and whatnot. So, so talk about a little bit about the wingman because you have a perspective in there. I mean, I think everybody thinks about I need a wingman. Yeah, but I think you have a perspective about the wingman actually being, you know, being a good wingman as well. Wingman. So I think that, I think a lot of people miss that aspect.

Martha McSally (14:02): Yes. Right. The wingman mentality is, even though we do fly the plane by ourselves, we never fly into combat solo. We always have someone on our wing, either one or even more. We could be flying in a four ship. And the whole mentality of a wingman, which is great in life, is we have what’s called mutual support for each other. We back each other up, we have each other’s backs. If I’m talking to the guy, I’m a controller on the ground, I’m looking at my map I may be getting shot at. So my wingman’s job is to keep his or her head on a swivel and to call out any threats. I actually give authority to my wingman to tell, you know, bulldog one break left flares missile launch north, and I will do what my wingman tells me to do. I don’t say again like, I don’t know, did you mean left or right?

(14:47): Cause by that time the missile hits you, right? So you don’t just gain that authority overnight, obviously you have to build that trust and have a, that trusted environment to literally put each, you know, put our lives in each other’s hands. But this is for life, you know, asking yourself, who are your wing men in life? And they can be mentors. For me, some of my wing men were women who flew planes in World War ii. They were amazing examples for me during my journey when I really didn’t have anyone who had similar experiences to me. And so they can be people who have gone before you and you don’t have to reinvent, you know, something. They can share their wisdom with you. They can be your peers, they can be again, in life. This can be your loved one, your spouse, you know, like your dog for crying out loud.

(15:32): There’s very wingman in your life, right? That are actually, you know, helping you to keep perspective, right? To keep things, keep yourself kind of centered. Again, making good decisions and not running yourself down. But then also as you mentioned, who are you a wingman to, right? Who’s relying on you or who could be relying on you, but maybe you’re not offering yourself to be available, you know, as a wingman to provide that kind of support in business, in life and community. You know, who needs you right now? Like you have a lot to offer. And who might it be? Is it someone in your neighborhood that maybe you haven’t even got to know who’s just got a diagnosis for something that you’ve actually been through already? Like maybe you can help them in that way. Is it a young entrepreneur, you know, who’s doing a startup and you’ve learned a lot of lessons along the way and so you take that time to bring up that next generation. It takes time for sure, but we need wingman and we need to be wingman. So I think it’s an important question to ask.

John Jantsch (16:30): You’re the first woman to do X as we’ve mentioned several times, I imagine any first woman, any first person to do X experiences a tremendous amount of gender based discrimination. You talk about it in the book Yeah. In some pretty ugly ways that you experienced it. So is it right to ask, what did you learn from that? What do you wanna share? What do you want other people to learn from your experience?

Martha McSally (16:54): Well, let me first say I am so grateful for the opportunities that I had to serve my country in uniform. I’m grateful for my experiences in the Air Force. I was just tremendous to be able to serve with amazing people. The vast majority of people I serve with were, were incredible people who are putting their lives on the line and are a part of teams doing incredible things to keep our country safe. There were some real challenges in breaking barriers. And honestly, it started at the top, you know, we had a chief of staff of the Air Force who at the time the law was being debated whether it should change who was testifying before Congress saying you’d rather pick a less qualified man over a more qualified woman. And so this is the leader. And so then, you know, Congress appealed the law and then the Secretary of Defense changed the policy, took like a couple more years, but he had to decide whether he was gonna resign or implement it.

(17:48): But when you, you start, leaders create the culture, right? Leaders create kind of the opportunity of what kind of values and behavior is going to be okay or not gonna be okay. So, you know, it started obviously with him given license to maybe people who, I honestly, I think there’s a lot of insecurity. Again, the vast majority of guys, they, especially the ones who had daughters by the way, you know, they were like, look, if you can fly the jet and you can shoot the gun. Like just, we need people to be able to do their job. This isn’t about whether you have ovaries or not, if, you know, if you’ve seen Top Gun, you know, obviously there’s exaggerations there, but it is a bit of a, you know, it’s a, it’s a justing environment, right? With just the, you know, the dynamics within a fighter squadron.

(18:30): So I went in eyes wide open. I knew what I was breaking through. I knew it was going to be lonely. I knew it was gonna be difficult there. I did experience along the way, you know, just hostility and harassment and assault that wasn’t associated with that. That was, you know, but there are ex, you know, lots of experiences, unfortunately, of women and men experiencing sexual assault in society and in the military. It shouldn’t be tolerated. I’m not alone in having those experiences. I share them, not so people will feel bad for me, but so that people will see these awful things can happen to you, but they don’t define you. And in fact, I think they propelled me and had me grow and I became stronger actually through this adversity. Not that I would wish it on anyone, but it propelled me to, you know, stand my ground on like that berka battle in Saudi Arabia.

(19:17): I think some of my awful experiences like, no, don’t tell me to put on a beca like not even me or any do that. So I, you know, I feel like I made a decision where adversity, I was gonna, I had to heal through difficult. I’m not trying to undermine, you know, going through trauma. I had my own journey there. But I always looked at it like, this is an opportunity for me to grow and to make me stronger and to propel me on a path, not just to survive in spite of it, but in fact because of it, you know, it equips me even more. So, you know, again, I share those lessons. A lot of people have been through some type of trauma or adversity, men and women who are listening. And I just wanna encourage you like, turn the flashlight on. Be honest about it.

(19:58): It’s, you’re potentially still like limping because of what you went through. Maybe you’re just running from it. I, when I, you know, give speeches, I talk about like reduce the drag on your plane, you know, we, it’s gonna, it takes energy out of you. If you are in a place of anger or unforgiveness towards something awful that happened to you, you gotta free yourself from that. That’s about you. It’s not about any perpetrator not to excuse behavior, but you know, your perpetrator’s not thinking about you. So why you, you know, wasting today thinking about them and letting them continue to hold you back. So I talk about these types of things in a way that I hope really equips people to find their own freedom.

John Jantsch (20:32): If somebody reads your book or hears you speak, what, what for you would be a home run for them to take away with?

Martha McSally (20:39): Well, for the home run would be that whatever is holding them back in life, whether it’s their fears, whether it’s they had a dream and they found some obstacles and it stopped them and they felt like giving up. Or they had people telling them you can’t do something that you know in your heart you wanna do, or you’ve been through adversity that is impacted you in a negative way that’s holding you back. That there’s some nugget in there from the experiences I share and practical takeaways that I share, that you would find a path of freedom that you would say you’d find new people to listen to. It could tell you that you can fulfill your dreams and be what you want in life. And that’s all aspects, that’s business. You know, career, that’s personal relationship or your dreams are. Don’t take no for an answer. Don’t let, don’t let any of those things hold you back. And you’re clear for takeoff, the sky is truly your limits.

John Jantsch (21:30): So you inspire audiences and your book inspires audiences. Where do you get your inspiration these days?

Martha McSally (21:36): Well, I’ve been inspired from so many people that have helped me along the way for sure. I try to continue to be around people that are doing amazing things in their own lives that continue to push me so that I can grow and learn. I never stop growing. If you’re not growing, you’re dying. And so I look for that, like spiritually, emotionally. I mean, I’m a voracious reader, you know, leaders are readers. So I’m constantly looking for what do I, you know, what else can I learn? What inspires me? And I’m sure you’ve seen this, John, you go down a rabbit hole where you didn’t, you know, you might read one book that then makes you look into a topic a little bit more. And so just being open for inspiration, divine inspiration and inspiration that comes through others and every single day, waking up with that approach of what’s gonna happen today, that’s gonna be amazing. Some difficult things may happen, but I’m gonna learn something from everything. And you know, I’m certainly not perfect in the execution of this by any stretch, but I really try to surround myself with people and listen to people who are inspiring me and pushing me and then I continue to grow for the next chapters.

John Jantsch (22:43): Well, I want to thank you for stopping by the Duct Tape Marketing podcast. You wanna invite people to connect with you. Obviously your book will be, is available anywhere you buy books, but uh, any anywhere else you wanna share?

Martha McSally (22:53): Yes, social media. I’m at Martha McSally. I was Dare to Fly Simple Lessons and Never Giving Up. My website is martha mcsally.com. If you wanna, you know, book me to come be a keynote speaker. Be honored to be your wigman for you and your team and look forward to hearing from everybody. Thanks for the opportunity to share a little bit today, John.

John Jantsch (23:11): Well, thanks again, Martha for stopping by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast and hopefully we’ll run into you again soon. No one of these days out there on the road.

Martha McSally (23:17): Absolutely. Take care.

John Jantsch (23:19): Hey, and one final thing before you go. You know how I talk about marketing strategy, strategy before tactics? Well, sometimes it can be hard to understand where you stand in that, what needs to be done with regard to creating a marketing strategy. So we created a free tool for you. It’s called the Marketing Strategy Assessment. You can find it @ marketingassessment.co.. Check out our free marketing assessment and learn where you are with your strategy today. That’s just marketing assessment.co. I’d love to chat with you about the results that you get.