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How to Attract Your Ideal Customers with the Right Brand Archetype

How to Attract Your Ideal Customers with the Right Brand Archetype written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast with Jane McCarthy

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, Sara Nay steps in as host to interview Jane McCarthy, a seasoned brand strategist and author of The Goddess Guide to Branding. Jane specializes in helping female entrepreneurs develop authentic, compelling brand identities through the power of goddess archetypes. Drawing from Carl Jung archetypes, she has created a branding framework that enables businesses to connect emotionally with their audience while maintaining a strong brand positioning.

During their conversation, Jane explained how businesses can use archetypes to craft an engaging brand storytelling strategy, ensuring their messaging resonates deeply with their ideal customers. She highlighted the importance of emotional branding, aligning a business’s core identity with the needs and desires of its audience. By embracing feminine branding strategies, companies can create a unique and relatable business identity that fosters trust and loyalty.

Sara’s discussion with Jane McCarthy provides valuable insights into brand development by blending business branding with powerful storytelling. By identifying the right archetype, businesses can position their brand more effectively, attract their ideal audience, and stand out in the marketplace.

Key Takeaways:

  • Brand archetypes enhance emotional connection – Using Carl Jung archetypes in branding creates a personality-driven approach that resonates with customers on a deeper level.
  • The right branding framework builds long-term credibility – A well-defined brand strategy helps businesses maintain consistency and authenticity, which strengthens customer trust.
  • Feminine branding can differentiate your business – Traditional archetypes often lean toward masculine traits, but embracing goddess archetypes allows brands to cultivate a more diverse and inclusive identity.
  • Personal branding plays a key role in business branding – Entrepreneurs who align their personal and business brand identities create a stronger, more authentic marketing presence.
  • Brand evolution should focus on amplifying strengths – Instead of completely rebranding, businesses should refine what customers already love about their brand to maintain loyalty while staying relevant.

Chapters:

  • [00:09] Introducing Jane McCarthy
  • [00:44] What are Goddess Archetypes?
  • [05:37] Identifying your Brand’s Goddess Archetype
  • [08:56] Using your Archetype to Find the Right Talent
  • [12:05] Brands That Embody Goddess Archetypes
  • [16:34] How to Approach Goddess Archetypes
  • [18:44] Figuring out the Heart of your Brand

More About Jane McCarthy: 

Check out Jane McCarthy’s Website

Connect with Jane McCarthy on LinkedIn

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

Want to elevate your marketing game? AdCritter pairs Connected TV ads with precise digital retargeting to drive real results. Discover how their full-funnel strategy can help your business grow smarter. Let them know Duct Tape Marketing sent you, and you’ll get a dollar-for-dollar match on your first campaign! Learn more at adcritter.com.



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Sara Nay (00:01.592)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is Sara Nay and today I’m stepping in as host for John Jantsch. And we’re actually doing a ladies takeover of the show because I have Jane McCarthy as my guest. Really excited to talk to you, Jane. Jane is a brand strategist who has worked with clients such as Sweet Tart, Southern California Edison and Pilot Pen. She is the author of the goddess guide to branding.

Helping female entrepreneurs create an abundant and authentic feminine brand. So welcome to the show, Jane.

Jane McCarthy (00:33.144)

Thank you, Sarah, I’m so happy to be here.

Sara Nay (00:36.792)

Well, let’s dive on in. One of the things that I know that you talk about a lot are the concept of goddess archetypes. And so for our listeners today, can you give me an overview as to what are goddess archetypes and how do they relate to brands and in business in general?

Jane McCarthy (00:52.684)

Yeah, so let’s start with archetype. Okay, so many of us are familiar with archetypes from Hollywood movies. Think about the hero of an action film or the outlaw of a Western. The comic who plays that role of giving a little bit of comic relief in a film. We are familiar with these characters. They play

they’re played by different actors, they wear different costumes, but at their essence, it’s a character we know, and that’s what’s considered an archetype. And this concept was developed by Carl Jung, who is one of the famous psychologists, psychoanalysts of the 20th century. And he developed a set of 12 archetypes that can be utilized as like base characters in the human experience. And if you think about,

Star Wars, that was a film that was really based on the knowledge of archetypes from Carl Jung. And in marketing, branding folks started to realize that we can use these characters to create a brand that feels like it has a personality people can actually connect with, a sense of humanity.

And so I, in my career as a brand strategist, and I’ve worked in advertising for over 15 years, have loved using archetypes. And I found that when I get to that central character with a business, we immediately understand the voice. We have a sense of the feel, even the colors and the symbols start to become clear. And so I’ve utilized Carl Jung’s archetypes throughout.

My my journey as as a brand strategist. However, one thing that I noticed is that a lot of those archetypes Tended to toward the masculine. So you have the hero you have the everyman is what it’s called in that system Which is like the guy next door and the explorer and there’s that that’s great but then the more feminine ones were

Jane McCarthy (03:08.556)

the lover and the caregiver. And I thought, wait a second, there are so many variations on the archetypal character from the feminine lens. And that led me to the work of Jean-Chenota Bolin, who is a Jungian analyst. And in the 1980s, she wrote this seminal book called, Goddesses and Every Woman. And she mapped the psyche of women along archetypal lines, utilizing the Greco-Roman goddess system.

Sara Nay (03:11.116)

Hehehe

Jane McCarthy (03:38.624)

and the goddesses. And I thought, this is an amazing source point to bring to branding and to say, let’s look at which goddess energy, if you want a more feminine energy brand, what goddess energy are you? And that’s how I got to the goddess archetypes for branding, which is like Athena, the free, the huntress, or Demeter, the love, the mother, or Maiden Persephone, the goddess of youth and magic and fantasy. And so,

It’s just been really fun to outline these. have eight goddess archetypes that you can utilize to inspire your brand based on this Jungian work.

Sara Nay (04:17.388)

Yeah, that’s great. And so you touch on a few of them, but can you quickly go over what are the eight different architects that you have identified?

Jane McCarthy (04:24.672)

Yeah, so Athena is the goddess of wisdom. She’s very much about education, working within the system to create credibility and legitimacy. She works toward justice. Another example is Hestia the sacred. She was the goddess of the hearth and she’s very much about like light and purity. So I associate her with healing.

And with products that are about wellness and about sacred space and quiet and almost, she’s almost the Zen kind of energy. And then we have Hera. She got a bad rap as being Zeus’s jealous, venomous wife. I think I see her as the regal energy and she’s the goddage of tradition and partnership. She is the queen energy. And…

you know, I rewrote her story a little bit for this book. So those are some examples of the goddesses and how much fun it is to work with mythic archetypes and then think about how that translates into brands today in contemporary life.

Sara Nay (05:40.526)

That’s great. So if someone is listening today and they’re working on their branding and they’re looking for clarity and direction, how would they go about identifying what goddess they might align with as a company?

Jane McCarthy (05:53.164)

Yeah, so if you look at this set of eight archetypes, you’re gonna see that there are dominant gifts that each goddess has. So for example, I mentioned Diana the Free, the goddess of the hunt. So she inspires adventuring, she inspires confidence, she inspires going out beyond the known. And so if you’re a brand that’s about

exploring new territories, then you can look to Diana to inspire you. So it’s a lot about what is the energy that you want to infuse your bandwidth and also the gift that you have. And so then another gift is Venus, the goddess of beauty and pleasure. And so if you’re bringing the energy of like pure joy, recreation,

Playfulness, then you can be a Venus archetype. So it’s thinking about the, you can think about the gifts that you want to bring to your customers through the brand experience. And that will bring you to your archetype, among others. I have a bunch of different exercises, but that’s one.

Sara Nay (07:09.228)

That’s one. It’s interesting to hear you talk through that, especially because I took the assessment that you have available on your website that I found and it identified myself as Diana the free and I’ve been at duct tape marketing for

about 14 years now and people have always looked at us as a marketing firm to be ahead, one step ahead of all the changes and evolution that’s happening in marketing. And so when I got that specific architect type, that aligned very nicely with what I’ve been in the position to do over the last 14 years.

Jane McCarthy (07:40.972)

love that. And I have to admit that I saw your quiz results and I saw that some folks at Duck Tape, a lot of you guys got Diana and I thought, okay, this is a team that’s aligned. And so yes, this is the goddess that is the innovative goddess and is one step ahead of the curve. And by the way, a lot of female founders have Diana as their core archetype. So you’re hitting on something too, which is a brand has

Sara Nay (07:45.004)

Yeah.

Sara Nay (07:53.024)

Yes.

Jane McCarthy (08:10.528)

an archetype, but then your person can have one. And of course, that’s what I took them from. I took them from a young analyst who was talking about people. And so we tend to all have one core archetype that defines our personality. I, for example, am a maiden Persephone. And so I’m all about imagination and feeling into possibility and

fantasy and myth, which actually makes sense for why I ended up doing what I’ve done here. But this can be very informative as we think about our own mission and our own purpose. And then if we are at the heart of our business and we’re the face of our business, like you are the host of this podcast, then who you are is going to inform the energy of the brand, the energy of the business that you’re driving. So who you are and your

Sara Nay (08:47.971)

Yeah.

Jane McCarthy (09:05.536)

your archetype is potentially linked, not always and doesn’t have to be, but potentially very linked to the archetype of your brand.

Sara Nay (09:13.9)

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And that’s actually a reason that I was interested in having my team take the assessment as well after I did, because, you know, I think we’ve established duct tape marketing as a brand over the years, but, one of the things that we’re always hiring for when we’re hiring new people are things, people that are up for change and up for a challenge and that want to be seen as leaders. So it wasn’t a surprise that we had.

a bunch of Diana’s on our team because of kind of what we’ve built as a brand and who we’ve hired for. And so I’m just curious in your experience, like this is all really important conversation for building the brand and putting yourself out there and resonating with clients. But in your experience, does it help with, you know, hiring and attracting the right type of candidates to join your team as well?

Jane McCarthy (09:56.226)

Well, I think this is a really intriguing idea. And I don’t have tremendous experience with team building based on archetypes, so I won’t make a objective statement. But I will tell you that I’m really interested in personality types in this whole world, and I have been for some time. And I was up at Esalen in Big Sur taking a workshop on Enneagram types.

Sara Nay (09:59.651)

Yeah.

Sara Nay (10:09.176)

Yeah.

Jane McCarthy (10:22.59)

And the Enneagram, I also mapped the Enneagram to the goddess archetypes and I utilized that system as well. And I remember talking with a guy who is a very successful CEO of a essential oils company. And he told me that when he was hiring, he did an Enneagram personality test on every applicant and he only hired number two, which is called the helper in the Enneagram system.

Sara Nay (10:50.275)

Mm-hmm.

Jane McCarthy (10:51.662)

for people who were gonna be working on the floor in stores. And he was just looking for that natural helping personality to be frontline, because we all know that if you have a brand or a business where you’re interacting with people in real life on the human level, that service experience is essential and you can have the right colors, you can have the right symbols, you can have the right products, but if everything falls down at the service level, that’s a disappointment. So I think…

Sara Nay (10:59.288)

Yeah.

Jane McCarthy (11:21.406)

I saw I saw I’ve had that anecdotal story of somebody who applied personality types to position in company effective.

Sara Nay (11:33.046)

Yeah, we’ve done a number of assessments over the years. So that’s why I was curious in relation to yours. well let’s dive into some, I love hearing about examples like the one you shared there. so, but can you identify any brands that you would say embody one specific type of architect and why and how they identify that.

Jane McCarthy (11:51.822)

Okay, yes, so since we’re talking about Diana the Free, we’ll just continue on that path. I think she’s a goddess, she’s the huntress, she’s running through the wilderness, she has no interest in cocktail parties on Olympus. And if you think about Wonder Woman and the Wonder Woman film from 2017 that was so great, her name is Diana. So this is Diana or the Athena archetype.

Sara Nay (11:55.906)

Yeah.

Jane McCarthy (12:19.694)

I interviewed for the book, The Goddess Guide to Branding, a CEO named Caitlin Bram. And she has started a hard cider company called Yonder, which is based in the Pacific Northwest. And they have a taproom now in Seattle. And then she has distribution throughout the region. And I think eventually she wants to go national. But her brand is called Yonder. And it’s all about the wild and wandering spirit.

of a yonder brand. And if you think about Diana as being this goddess of the wilderness, she has this wild and wandering spirit that’s about, that has to do with yonder. And on her can is a wolf howling at the moon. And she said, I can’t tell you how many people ask me for more merch that has this wolf. They just love this wolf. And so you could think apples, fall festival.

Sara Nay (12:51.331)

Mm-mm.

Sara Nay (13:09.688)

Mm-hmm.

Jane McCarthy (13:16.952)

that it’s not necessarily where you would go with a cider brand, but she went to a wild spirit, a wolf spirit, or in my case, in my book, a Diana spirit, in order to get at this adventuring spirit, first of all, so that people would think about trying something different, because most people are not familiar with hard cider, but also to deal with any issues around, think this cider is gonna be sweet.

Sara Nay (13:29.026)

Yeah.

Jane McCarthy (13:44.642)

Her products aren’t sweet. She focuses on making hard cider that tastes more like a cocktail. And so through her brand story, she combats any naysayers around, this is going to be sickly sweet. I don’t want to try it. So you can see how the wildness energy appeals to people on a visceral level. But then it also helps with tell the product story in a way that will be appealing. And that’s totally Diana. It’s about adventuring forward.

Sara Nay (13:50.701)

Yes.

Sara Nay (14:12.992)

Yeah, great. Can you give me another example? really love hearing, you know, use cases like you just did there. So can you talk through just one more example of a different brand? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jane McCarthy (14:18.154)

Yeah, yeah, let me talk another one. So I love talking about the women in the book because they’re so awesome and they have, you know, fairly new companies. And so another brand in the book is Alice Mushrooms and Alice Mushrooms makes functional mushroom chocolates. And so people are familiar with functional mushrooms. Some of some people take it in their tea. They put it in smoothies and

These ladies put, these founders put their, Lindsey Goodstein and Charlotte Wasserstein to be specific, put these chocolates, the functional mushrooms in chocolate and then in a beautiful tin that is meant to have, you’re meant to have one square a day. So the mechanism of giving you the functional thing is a delightful treat.

And that was the innovation is they were, sorry, it was Charlotte Cruz. We may have to, maybe I could just retake this. Is this okay? I don’t want to get their names wrong. I’m so sorry. Okay. Okay. So Alice Mushrooms is a functional mushroom chocolate brand and they deliver the goodness of functional mushrooms in a chocolate square.

Sara Nay (15:24.332)

Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Yep, go ahead. Yeah, go ahead. It’s okay.

Jane McCarthy (15:43.22)

And so you can take your daily dose of functional mushrooms through chocolate. And so then what they did with the brand, this is Charlotte Cruz and Lindsey Goodstein, these are the founders. They decided to use what I call a Maiden Persephone archetype. And so they took a functional mushroom chocolate and they made it delightful. They made it the energy of magical, fantastical, Alice in Wonderland world.

And if you go onto their website, when you use your cursor, little stardust follows your cursor. So the whole thing is delightful. And interestingly, in that category, a lot of the functional mushroom products are doing 70s psychedelia. So they really do like, and I love the Grateful Dead, but it’s kind of like tie-dye Grateful Dead energy. And so they completely did something different and they went to

Maiden Persephone energy, the goddess of delights and youth and sweetness. And they created a functional mushroom product that’s very feminine, very elevated. And so they found an archetype really inspired by Alice. And I would think of this as Maiden Persephone that differentiates them in market and appeals to people in a wholly different way compared to having a functional mushroom tea.

Sara Nay (17:10.488)

I love it. Thanks for sharing both of those examples. I’m gonna have to go check out their website and see the fairy dust. Now you intrigued me. My next question to you is let’s say someone’s listening today and they just overall like feel like their branding is tired. needs a do over, it needs a relook. How would you encourage them to approach this whole topic and just brand strategy in general?

Jane McCarthy (17:32.994)

Yeah, so I think this is a really intriguing thing to take on because what I want to caution is you never want to walk away too quickly from something that you’re known for. It takes time to establish credibility, legitimacy, and connection with customers. That takes a lot of time. So if you’ve been in market,

First, you want to look at what people love about you and really savor that and make sure that you build on that in a fresh way rather than throwing everything out. I’m always cautioning against a full reboot and I think an evolution and the word evolution is nice. And so then thinking about what people love about you and then what is the credible impact you can have on their life.

starting from there, I would then say, look to the archetype who delivers that and get really rooted in the meaning that you bring, get really clear about it, and then come up with all kinds of fun ways to do things new and different. That’s in the creative expression, right? That’s in the tactical imagination. But strategy-wise, don’t be too quick to walk away from what you’ve developed. Figure out what’s best.

about what you do, what people love about you, and then amplify that. And if you get the book, you can figure out which archetype you are. And I have a system for thinking about how to evolve. But that’s my big suggestion is don’t be too quick to walk away from what people love. Instead, come up with fresh ways to deliver on that.

Sara Nay (19:22.754)

That’s great. And one last question I was going to go to today. So I’m glad that you mentioned your book there. What can people expect if they do grab a copy of your book? What are they going to learn? Obviously learning what archetype makes the most sense for them, but what else can they get out of that book?

Jane McCarthy (19:37.472)

Yes, so figuring out your archetype is the first step. And in a lot of ways, it can unlock other keys to what I call your brand blueprint. But in the book, I walk you through this full set of exercises to get you to a complete brand blueprint. so for me, that’s not just the archetype, but we also share how you figure out the heart of your brand. So what is that core motivation, that driving energy,

Many of us who are into marketing are familiar with Simon Sinek’s idea of why, like why you’re doing this and what is that raw passion behind your business? So we get clear on that. And then the, what I call the gift. So what is the central emotion that you want your brand to help amplify in people? And so what is the takeaway feeling that they have?

after they’ve had an experience with your brand. So we wanna get clear on, once you know the feeling you wanna give people, you can come up with a million different ways of delivering on that feeling. But we wanna figure out what is that positive impact you wanna make at an emotional level. And then the style piece, which I think of both the iconic elements of your brand, so your colors, your symbols, the words, the voice, those are things that are true threat over time. And then we have a couple of…

exercises to start to think about how you then live that brand day by day, that brand identity day by day in terms of the dynamic actions. So what’s happening this month in the social media calendar, et cetera. So you leave with a complete brand blueprint that I think boils down the essentials of what makes a brand identity.

Sara Nay (21:26.582)

Yeah, that’s great. And a lot of those components are elements that John and I have been talking about the importance of marketing right now with everything that’s evolving. Like it’s becoming more and more important to connect with your clients on an emotional level and to tell the story of why and to represent the brand in a positive light. Like those things are gaining importance in marketing. So I’m glad that you touch on all of those in the book. If anyone wants to connect with you online, where can they find you Jane?

Jane McCarthy (21:53.464)

So I have a website, goddessoffice.com, and then I’m also on Substack, goddessoffice.substack.com, and I would love for you to reach out.

Sara Nay (22:04.438)

Awesome. Thanks so much for being on the show, Jane. really loved learning from you and speaking with you and thank you everyone for listening to the duct tape marketing podcast. We’ll see you next time.


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Storytelling Converts Better Than Sales Tactics Every Time

Storytelling Converts Better Than Sales Tactics Every Time written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast with David Garfinkel

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interviewed David Garfinkel, a copywriting expert and author of The Persuasion Story Code. David is widely regarded as one of the top authorities on persuasive communication, storytelling in marketing, and direct response marketing. His expertise lies in helping businesses, marketers, and entrepreneurs craft compelling messages that drive sales conversion and customer engagement through effective storytelling.

During our conversation, David shared why sales storytelling is a far more effective approach than traditional sales tactics. Instead of relying on hard-selling, businesses can use storytelling frameworks to build trust, rapport, and emotional connections with their audience. He also introduced the concept of “stories with a dollar sign,” explaining how the right storytelling tactics can increase audience engagement and ultimately lead to more conversions.

David Garfinkel’s insights on persuasive communication and sales storytelling reinforce why businesses should focus on crafting the right storytelling tactics rather than relying on outdated sales methods. By integrating compelling narratives into marketing strategies, companies can enhance audience engagement, build stronger connections, and drive business growth through authentic storytelling.

Key Takeaways:

  • Persuasion beats pushy sales tactics – People connect more with compelling narratives than with aggressive sales pitches.
  • Storytelling drives conversions – Using marketing copywriting with a strong storytelling framework can eliminate objections and move prospects closer to a sale.
  • Empathy in marketing matters – Stories that resonate with customers’ pain points help build trust and business storytelling strengthens brand loyalty.
  • Case study storytelling creates credibility – Demonstrating real-world success through case study storytelling reassures potential customers and removes doubts.
  • Marketing strategies must evolve – Businesses need to shift from old-school selling to persuasion techniques that make customers feel understood and valued.

Chapters:

  • [00:09] Introducing David Garfinkel
  • [00:54] Story Frameworks
  • [03:11] What are Persuasion Stories?
  • [05:22] How to Make a Conversational Story
  • [06:48] Merging Stories and CTAs
  • [09:09] Using Stories to Get Attention
  • [12:39] Mistakes in Storytelling
  • [13:28] Learning from Your Favorite Books
  • [15:30] AI in Storytelling
  • [18:51] Is There a Formula to Storytelling?

More About Matt McQueen: 

  • Check out David Garfinkel’s Website
  • Connect with David Garfinkel on LinkedIn

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

Want to elevate your marketing game? AdCritter pairs Connected TV ads with precise digital retargeting to drive real results. Discover how their full-funnel strategy can help your business grow smarter. Let them know Duct Tape Marketing sent you, and you’ll get a dollar-for-dollar match on your first campaign! Learn more at adcritter.com.

Cold Outreach Strategies That Actually Work in 2025

Cold Outreach Strategies That Actually Work in 2025 written by Jarret Redding read more at Duct Tape Marketing

The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast with Matthew McQueen

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interviewed Matthew McQueen, co-founder of Coldlytics, a company that specializes in research-based lead generation for cold outreach. Matthew has helped digital agencies and B2B businesses refine their cold email strategy, improve outbound sales, and increase client acquisition with targeted, high-quality prospecting lists.

During our conversation, Matthew shared actionable insights on how businesses can improve cold outreach by focusing on personalized, value-driven engagement rather than mass-email tactics. He explained why many cold email campaigns fail, how businesses can leverage AI in sales for better email personalization, and why smaller, highly targeted prospect lists lead to higher response rates.

Matthew’s approach to digital prospecting and B2B marketing is a game-changer for businesses looking to improve cold outreach results. By prioritizing high-quality data, personalization, and multi-channel engagement, companies can increase business growth and close more deals efficiently.

Key Takeaways:

  • Quality Over Quantity in Lead Generation – Instead of blasting thousands of emails, focus on a targeted lead generation strategy with high-intent prospects who are more likely to engage.
  • Personalization is Key – Generic cold emails don’t work. Use email personalization techniques such as referencing website data, industry involvement, or prior marketing activity to connect with potential clients.
  • AI and Automation Can Help—but Only If Used Right – Sales automation tools and AI in sales can improve efficiency, but they should enhance personalization, not replace human connection.
  • Multi-Touchpoint Outreach Works Best – Combining email marketing, direct marketing, LinkedIn engagement, and even phone calls creates an omnichannel approach that builds trust faster.
  • Success in Outbound Marketing Takes Testing – The best outbound marketing strategies involve constant testing and iteration—optimize email prospecting sequences and messaging for better conversion rates.
  • Smaller, More Qualified Lists Convert Better – Instead of sending mass emails to a broad audience, create a refined list of ideal prospects based on industry, company size, and digital marketing activity.

Chapters:

  • [00:09] Introduction to Matthew McQuinn
  • [00:54] Outreach with Intention and Value
  • [02:57] Targeting Your Cold Outreach
  • [07:18] How is AI Impacting Lead Generation?
  • [10:51] What Works to Generate Leads
  • [14:14] Brand, Privacy, and Effective Outreach
  • [16:44] Qualifying Leads
  • [21:10] The Most Effective Form of Outreach

More About Matt McQueen: 

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

Want to elevate your marketing game? AdCritter pairs Connected TV ads with precise digital retargeting to drive real results. Discover how their full-funnel strategy can help your business grow smarter. Let them know Duct Tape Marketing sent you, and you’ll get a dollar-for-dollar match on your first campaign! Learn more at adcritter.com.

The Framework That Transformed My Business (And Can Transform Yours Too)

The Framework That Transformed My Business (And Can Transform Yours Too) written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast with Nick Sonnenberg

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interviewed Nick Sonnenberg, founder of Leverage, a leading operational efficiency consultancy, and author of the bestselling book Come Up for Air. Nick is an expert in business efficiency, team productivity, and workplace systems. His CPR framework has transformed the way businesses operate by addressing common bottlenecks in communication, planning, and resources.

During our conversation, Nick shared his personal journey of overcoming chaos in his business, where rapid growth led to inefficiency and burnout. He explained how the CPR framework—focusing on Communication, Planning, and Resources—helps organizations streamline workflows, improve team collaboration, and maximize time management. By implementing this approach, businesses can achieve operational efficiency, reduce stress, and create sustainable systems that support long-term success.

Nick Sonnenberg’s CPR framework is a game-changer for business owners looking to improve team productivity, streamline workflows, and create a stress-free operational environment. Whether you’re an overwhelmed entrepreneur or a growing organization, adopting this framework can transform how you work and set you up for long-term success.

Key Takeaways:

  • The CPR Framework
    • Communication: Streamline internal communication by consolidating tools and reducing unnecessary back-and-forth. For example, task-related discussions should live in project management tools, not Slack or email.
    • Planning: Centralize task and project management in tools like Asana or Monday.com. This ensures everyone knows what needs to be done, by whom, and when.
    • Resources: Create a knowledge base or wiki where team members can self-serve answers to routine questions, reducing disruptions and improving efficiency.
  • Prioritize Return on Time (ROT)
    • Focus on tasks that yield the highest time savings for the least investment. This approach ensures that efforts are directed toward impactful improvements in business workflows and team productivity.
  • Systemize Early to Scale Effectively
    • Even solopreneurs should start implementing systems early to prepare for growth. Small, incremental changes to streamline processes can prevent chaos as the business scales.
  • The Importance of Documentation
    • Use tools like Loom to record processes and create step-by-step guides. Documenting workflows not only helps current employees but also reduces risks when onboarding new team members or transitioning roles.
  • Long-Term vs. Short-Term Thinking
    • Businesses focused on long-term efficiency see greater success than those chasing quick wins. Investing in operational efficiency and business systems now creates a stress-free and scalable environment in the future.

Chapters:

  • [00:09] Introducing Nick Sonnenberg
  • [00:44] How Nick Stopped Drowning in Work
  • [06:25] Prioritizing Where to Start
  • [07:46] Focusing on What Matters
  • [10:08] Investing in Implementing Change
  • [11:34] Solving Operational Efficiency Holistically
  • [12:48] Best Practices of CPR (Communication, Planning, and Resources)
  • [16:24] What Size Business is CPR for?
  • [18:14] Find Out More About Nick and His Work

More About Duncan Wardle: 

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

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Stop Killing Ideas! Use “Yes, And” Instead of “No, Because”

Stop Killing Ideas! Use “Yes, And” Instead of “No, Because” written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast with Duncan Wardle

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interviewed Duncan Wardle, former Head of Innovation and Creativity at Disney, who shared his strategies for embedding innovation and creativity into organizational culture. Duncan has spent decades fostering innovation in some of the world’s most iconic brands, including Disney Imagineering, Pixar, and Lucasfilm. His fresh approach emphasizes breaking free from traditional thinking, fostering playful leadership, and reframing challenges to create breakthrough solutions.

During our conversation, Duncan highlighted the power of replacing the dismissive “No, because” mindset with the collaborative “Yes, and” approach. This simple shift not only encourages creative thinking but also transforms individual ideas into collective solutions that are more likely to succeed. By fostering a culture of playful leadership, embedding innovation into the DNA of teams, and solving consumer pain points with reframing strategies, leaders can drive sustainable growth and cultivate organizational creativity.

Key Takeaways:

  • Adopt the “Yes, And” Mindset
    Replace “No, because” with “Yes, and” to foster collaborative brainstorming and build on ideas instead of shutting them down.
  • Reframe Challenges for Better Solutions
    Instead of asking, “How can we make more money?” reframe questions to solve consumer pain points, like Disney did with their Magic Band innovation.
  • Leverage Playfulness to Unlock Creativity
    Incorporate playful leadership techniques, such as short energizers and humor, to shift teams into a creative and problem-solving mindset.
  • Embed Innovation into Your Culture
    Avoid isolating creativity in specific teams—empower all employees to think innovatively as part of their roles.
  • Look Outside Your Industry for Inspiration
    Borrow ideas and technologies from other industries to inspire creative thinking and problem-solving.
  • Reclaim Imagination and Creativity
    Break free from the constraints of traditional education and encourage curiosity, intuition, and imagination in your workplace.

Chapters:

  • [00:09] Introduction to Duncan Wardle
  • [01:00] Defining Innovation and Embedding a Culture of Creativity
  • [03:12] Embracing Innate Creativity
  • [04:48] The Future of Employability
  • [09:38] Collaborative Brainstorming Exercise
  • [12:43] Unlocking Creativity through Playfulness and Collaboration
  • [17:01] River of Thinking and Innovation

More About Duncan Wardle: 

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

Want to elevate your marketing game? AdCritter pairs Connected TV ads with precise digital retargeting to drive real results. Discover how their full-funnel strategy can help your business grow smarter. Let them know Duct Tape Marketing sent you, and you’ll get a dollar-for-dollar match on your first campaign! Learn more at adcritter.com.

 



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John Jantsch (00:01.89)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Duncan Wardle. He’s the former head of innovation and creativity at Disney. Duncan played a pivotal role in fostering innovation across Imagineering, Lucasfilm, Marvel, Pixar, and Disney parks, crafting enchanting new storylines and experiences. He’s also the author of a book we’re going to talk about today, The Imagination Emporium.

Creative recipes for innovation. So Duncan, welcome to the show.

Duncan (00:34.324)

Thank you, thanks very much for having me.

John Jantsch (00:36.074)

So one of my viewers, listeners, not viewers, won’t be able to know this, but one of my favorite characters is Goofy. You’ve got him right there behind you.

Duncan (00:46.794)

Yeah, so yes, these are hand-painted. It’s not an illustration. Yeah, they were created a few years ago now.

John Jantsch (00:55.106)

Very, very cool. So there was a book I read right when I was getting started, actually, that was very influential on me. was written by Peter Drucker and one of the comments in there was that he said that the only two things in business that matter are marketing and innovation. Everything else is a cost. I think a lot of people quote that and I’ve heard that phrase many times, but I’m wondering, like,

If we asked 10 people what innovation actually was at a company, I think we would get maybe 11 or 12 definitions. So how do you frame the idea of innovation? mean, it’s very large concept.

Duncan (01:32.57)

Yeah, crystal clear. Creativity is the ability to have an idea. We can all do that. We do it every day. Innovation is the ability to get it done. The challenge for most of us is the more experience, the more expertise we have, the more reasons we know why the new idea won’t work. So we constantly shoot it down. I call it our river of thinking. And it’s very fast and very wide and very allowing you and me to make quick and informed decisions. But in the last four years, we’ve seen global pandemics.

John Jantsch (01:39.394)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nice.

Duncan (01:58.762)

We’ve seen Generation Z entering the workplace but doesn’t want to work for corporate America. We’ve got artificial intelligence entering the marketplace. And what was the fourth one? There’s four of them. Global pandemic, Generation Z entering the workplace, artificial intelligence. Doesn’t matter. The world’s changed, right? And it’s changed irrevocably. We can’t go back to thinking the way we thought four years ago. And so, you know, Disney, I tried four models of innovation. Model number one.

I hired somebody who knew what they were doing. I said, make me look good. That was an agency. And to a certain extent, they did. They were never around for execution. And they certainly weren’t going to show me how they did what they did, or they were worried I wouldn’t hire them again. Model number two, we’re creating an innovation team. Duncan will be in charge. What could possibly go wrong? Well, outside of legal, who does legal work? Outside of marketing, who does marketing work? Nobody. So when you create an innovation team, you subliminally just told everybody else you’re off the hook.

We tried an accelerator program which created some level of access enabling us to partner with some young tech startups and bring some new technology to market. But we had failed in our overall goal, which was set by the CEO of Disney, was how might we embed a culture of innovation and creativity into everybody’s DNA. So I set out to create a toolkit that has three principles. It takes the BS out of innovation and makes it less intimidating to normal, hardworking people.

Make creativity tangible for those people who are uncomfortable with ambiguity and gray. Fun, more importantly, make the process fun. Give people tools they choose to use when you and I are not around.

John Jantsch (03:31.062)

All right, so and I’m sure you hear this all the time. I know you’ll have a great answer for this, but what do do in those organizations or individuals who we know there are lots of them, but say, I’m just not creative. Yeah.

Duncan (03:44.488)

Yeah, I disagree. I’m sorry. Look, let me ask you question. When you were a small boy, what was your favorite toy?

John Jantsch (03:54.094)

Probably a stick.

Duncan (03:55.594)

See what why because the stick was your lightsaber. That’s why it was your wand It was anything you wanted it to be and we were all born creative with an amazing image when you were given a gift for a holiday and it came in an enormous box and it took you ages to take the toy out of the box what do you spend the rest of week playing with Yeah, the box right it was your rocket it was your force it was your cart It was anything you wanted to be till you went to the number one killer of creativity Education and the first thing your first grade teacher told you to do was don’t forget to color in between the lines

John Jantsch (04:10.798)

The fort.

John Jantsch (04:20.044)

Right.

Duncan (04:24.586)

Small children, they’re very curious. ask why, why, why, why, why again? Because they’re seeking the core consumer truth. They’re after the insight for innovation. If I were to survey 5,000 people and ask them why they go to Disney on holiday, the number one response I’ll get is we go for the new attractions. But that’s not strictly true, is it? So if I were to rely just on my data, I’d go spend $250 million on a capital investment strategy. But if I pause for a moment and I act childlike, not childish, and say, well, why do you go for the new attractions? Well, now I like the classics. Why do you like the classics? Well, I like it’s a small world.

Why do you like it? a small world. Why remember music? God, no, not the music. Why the music? Where’s my mum’s favourite ride we used to go every summer? Why is that important to you 20 years later? I’ll take my daughter now. Boom. There’s your insight for innovation. Call consumer truth. It’s got nothing to do with the capital investment strategy and everything to do with that person’s personal memory and nostalgia. But then we go to the number one killer of curiosity, education. And the next thing we’re taught to do is to stop asking why, because there’s only one right answer. Here comes artificial intelligence, right?

You think we used to laugh at the blue collar workers? Well, guess what? They’ll be laughing at the white collar workers now. But I’ve been working with Google on their DeepMind project, which is their AI project. And I asked the lead engineer what I said, how the hell am I going to compete with this? You know, what will be the most employable skill sets the next five to 10 years? And she said, that’s easy. The ones that will be the hardest for her to program into AI. I said, well, what are those? says, the ones with which you were born, imagination, creativity, curiosity, empathy, and intuition. But they’re drummed out of us by the time we’re 18.

That’s the challenge.

John Jantsch (05:51.81)

Yeah, Of course, having some handy set of plumbing skills will become very necessary too though, It is.

Duncan (06:00.52)

No seriously hands-on workers absolutely fine. look I set out here’s why people say why do you write a book. Let me ask you quite an honest question here. When you see a business book in an office physically where is the book?

John Jantsch (06:15.022)

laying on a desk.

Duncan (06:16.616)

Yeah, there you go. it’s on the coffee table. It’s on the bookshelf. I’m going to get to it tomorrow, but my boss needs this now, so I actually never read it. I have good intentions to read it, but I don’t. So I thought, OK, how do I make it more accessible to people who’ve got other things to do? I thought, what nonfiction book have I ever read where I could read one page today and know exactly what I was going to do and not worry about the rest of the book today? My mum’s cookbook. You want shepherd’s pie? You got to pay 67. So the contents page is designed for busy people. It says, have you ever been to a brainstorm where nothing ever happened?

Go to page 67. Don’t know how to find insights for innovation? Go to page 42. Work in a heavily regulated industry? Go to page 67. So it’s designed to be very accessible, but it’s also designed to appeal to what I call the three sensory learning styles. So let me ask you a question. May I ask you to close your eyes for just a moment?

How many days are there in September? I would ask you to keep your eyes closed and tell me how you knew, how you remembered, how you learned or what you could see with your eyes closed right now. Bingo, you can open your eyes. 30 % of the people will recite the rhyme. 30 days has September, blah, blah. No, it’s true. And so they just told me they learn by listening. They probably read a lot. It’s an auditory style. How do I know that? Because they were six when they learned it. How did they remember it? Because they heard it. Another 30%.

John Jantsch (07:07.502)

30.

John Jantsch (07:15.626)

see a calendar.

John Jantsch (07:21.856)

Yeah, yeah.

Duncan (07:33.502)

Put the knuckles together and start counting the knuckles. January, February, March, April, May, June, June. Those are kinesthetic learners. By the way, John, you were taught both, but you don’t remember either because that’s not your preferred learning style. You’re the majority of the audience. You learn by seeing. You represent 40 percent of the audience. So I thought, OK, how do I create a book that’s not a book? I want it to be a toolkit. I want it to be fun, but I want it to be purposeful. I want it to appeal to all three learning styles. So it has QR codes embedded with each chapter with Spotify playlists for auditory learners.

It has animated videos in each chapter where Duncan is now an animated character. I pop out of the book with a bunch of other characters I’ve created for the visual learners and teach you how to use the tools and for our kinesthetic learners starting, I think today, but maybe in a couple of days from now, the QR code on the back of the book will actually take you directly to the very first ever fully integrated artificial intelligence book.

Why? Because I’ve never done it before. That’s why. So you will be able to ask the book questions and through chat. It’ll answer you through WhatsApp. So you might say, how do I use the tool on page 67? And it’ll answer you. But you could also say, how do I use the tool on page 67 to develop a marketing campaign that’s more of a mercy to experience for my brand? And the book will answer you.

John Jantsch (08:50.158)

Who published this book?

Duncan (08:52.266)

You know what, Amplify

John Jantsch (08:54.798)

So I’ve written several books with major publishers and I’m envisioning the meeting where you described what this book was going to be like.

Duncan (09:04.2)

I kept telling the publisher, we thought, he said it’s a book. I said, hell no, it’s not. It’s a toolkit. By the way, I want to give it away for free. Needless to say, the publisher had other ideas. I still want to give it away for students because we are killing the most employable skill sets in the next decade.

John Jantsch (09:19.502)

Yeah. So if you’re going to work with an organization that, and again, I don’t know if that’s a service you offer consulting, but if you were going to work with an organization, I mean, what are some of the mindsets they would have, you would try to get them to change the habits you would get them to change that would really make this come to life?

Duncan (09:35.686)

Here’s the first one and this is particularly for leaders, right? Because again, the more experience we have, the more reasons we know why the new idea won’t work. So John, you and I have been tasked with coming up with an idea for a birthday party, for a Harry Potter birthday party. Are you familiar with Harry Potter?

John Jantsch (09:53.166)

I’m not a, yes, I’m familiar, but I’m not a junkie.

Duncan (09:59.378)

No, but have you seen a couple of films? OK, good. So I’m going to come at you with some ideas for a Harry Potter party. I’d like you to start each and every response with the following two words. No, because they’ll be the first two words you use and you’ll tell me why not. I was thinking of coming to your house, putting a sorting hat outside the front door, having all the good people get the Gryffindor party, but all the bad people get the Slytherin party.

John Jantsch (10:01.079)

I have.

John Jantsch (10:20.428)

No, because everybody just wants to play Quidditch.

Duncan (10:24.921)

right, I tell you what then, we’ll give everybody a broomstick and they can go running around the back garden looking like idiots and work the snitch to be acting on a drone.

John Jantsch (10:29.806)

No, because they can’t really fly.

Duncan (10:34.406)

Alright, fair point. I’ll tell you what then, let’s say that we’ll bring them all indoors and we’ll have a magic potions room where we can all drink something that turns us into something totally freaky.

John Jantsch (10:42.766)

no, because, there’s actually a giant animal in the back closet that would probably eat everyone.

Duncan (10:53.898)

Fair point. tell you what then, what if we just showed the movies? We’ll put them on your TV screen and we’ll serve butterbeer and No because, come on. So let me ask you question. When somebody’s constantly no becauseing you, how does that make you feel?

John Jantsch (11:00.14)

that’s perfect. No, because there might be somebody allergic to popcorn.

John Jantsch (11:13.432)

frustrated.

Duncan (11:14.364)

Okay, I would call it business as usual. Let me ask you a question. Do you think our idea was getting bigger as we were going or was it getting smaller? Which way was it headed?

John Jantsch (11:16.578)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (11:21.486)

It was, we were down to watching the movies. It was getting smaller.

Duncan (11:25.48)

Yeah, all right. Let’s start again. Are you familiar with Star Wars? OK, so I’m going to come at you with some Star Wars ideas. Unlike Harry Potter, where you started the response every single time with no, because this time I’d like you to start every single response with the words yes and and we’ll just build on it together. So I was thinking of coming to your house, getting into the kitchen, painting it black, turning it into the Death Star canteen and we could have a food and wine festival and half of the boo and tattoo.

John Jantsch (11:29.518)

Yes.

John Jantsch (11:50.632)

yeah, yes, and let’s add stormtroopers.

Duncan (11:53.462)

yes, and yeah, we can have a cosplay party. All the tall people could come as Darth Vader and all the little people would come dressed as Ewoks.

John Jantsch (11:55.993)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. And we’ve got to have Yoda, don’t we?

Duncan (12:03.121)

yes, and we can have the force. Everybody get a glow in the dark lightsaber full of their favorite alcoholic liquid.

John Jantsch (12:10.198)

Yes, and what about Darth Vader? Could he appear?

Duncan (12:14.362)

yes, and we could have Harrison Ford. We could bring back, yeah, or even the dead celebrities could come back via hologram and we could take them all on your corporate jet down to Disneyland to see the new galaxy’s edge.

John Jantsch (12:24.526)

Yes, and why not invite George Lucas?

Duncan (12:27.176)

Alright, so we’ll stop there. So a lot more laughter, a lot more energy. Most of us became Italian for the first time today, waving our arms. This time around, bigger or smaller.

John Jantsch (12:31.608)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (12:37.432)

Well, it kept getting much larger.

Duncan (12:39.434)

You can always take a big idea and value engineer it down. Pretty hard to turn a small one into a big one. Far more importantly, we work inside big organizations, we work inside small organizations, we have colleagues and constituents and clients to bring on board with our idea. By the time you and I just finished building the idea together, whose idea was it by the time we finished?

John Jantsch (12:58.145)

well was totally mine.

Duncan (12:59.53)

I would argue ours, John, thank you. So here’s the thing, two little magical words, yes and, have the power to turn a small idea into a big one really quickly. But far more importantly, have the power to transfer my idea, which never goes anywhere inside an organization, to our idea and accelerate its opportunity to get done. Just remind yourselves, I know you’re leaders, I know you’ve got responsibilities and quarterly results and deadlines. Just remind ourselves, we’re not green lighting this idea for execution today. We are merely green housing it together using yes.

If you take nothing away from listening to today’s podcast, don’t let the words know because be the first two words out of your mouth when somebody comes at you with a new idea. They have made genius two days from now, two weeks from now. You’ll never hear it. Your job as a leader is just that you’ll get to the know because but don’t start there. The other thing that I tried to teach is playfulness and I’ll tell you for why. Can I ask you to close your eyes? Where are you and what are you doing when you get your best ideas?

John Jantsch (13:47.405)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (13:59.438)

Definitely outside.

Duncan (14:01.768)

OK, so you can open your eyes. I’ve done this with up to 20,000 people. You’re here. Shower, bathroom, jogging, walking, driving, commuting, gym. Do you know how many people say at work? Nobody. Not one person ever writes down at work. Well, why not? Close your eyes again. Picture that last argument you were in. Bit of a shouting match. You’re angry at them. They’re angry at you. Now you turn to walk away from that argument. You’re 10, 20, 30 seconds away. You’re about a minute away from the argument and…

John Jantsch (14:12.142)

the

Duncan (14:30.026)

What just popped into your brain totally spontaneously the second you turned to walk away from that argument? What was it? Well, you should have said the killer one-liner, that one perfect, beautiful lie. You wish you’d choose to the argument, but you didn’t, did you? No, never did. Why not? Because when we’re in an argument, our brain is moving at a thousand miles an hour defending ourselves. When we’re at work, we’re doing emails and presentations and reports and we hear ourselves say, the number one barrier to innovation, I don’t have time to think. And when you say, don’t have time to think, you’re in the brain state science calls beta.

John Jantsch (14:34.702)

what I should have said.

Nope.

Duncan (14:58.57)

where the door between conscious and subconscious brain is firmly closed. When that door is closed, you only have access to your conscious brain. That is 13 % of the capacity of your brain. 87 % of the capacity of your brain is your subconscious brain. Every creative problem you’ve ever solved, every innovation you’ve seen is back here to serve as unrelated stimulus. But when the door is shut, you don’t have access to it. So how do I move you from there metaphorically and place you back in the shower where it is when you have your best ideas? You can still make an informed decision.

But still have a big idea that brain state is known as alpha. I call it amazing alpha. The best brain state for creativity at work. How do I get you there? By being playful. What do I do? I run an energizer. Well, what’s that? It’s a 60 second exercise. What am I doing? I’m making you laugh. Why am I making you laugh? Because the moment I hear laughter, I know that I’ve just opened the door between your conscious and subconscious brain. When we ask who are the most creative people you’ve ever met, everybody always says children. And I always hear people say, we don’t have the resources. You say,

Who are the most creative people? Children. how much money they got? none. Now, I don’t expect people to be playful every minute of every day. Life would be great fun, but we wouldn’t get much work done. I do expect you, particularly as leaders, to be playful at the right time.

John Jantsch (16:07.18)

Yeah, you know, I read something recently about this idea of why children, you know, are able to have just such rich imaginations and such creativity. and it, well, the person concluded that, that actually, you know, young children, particularly, are halfway in a fantasy world, you know, and, we sort of the school and everything sort of beats that out of them says, no, this is reality. But, but it’s an interesting thought that,

Duncan (16:16.778)

I haven’t gone to school yet.

John Jantsch (16:34.778)

They’re able to be so creative because they really live between reality and fantasy.

Duncan (16:39.922)

Yeah, very true. Very true. No, it’s true. Education is killing the most employable skill sets of the next decade. The future of education is gaming. Education will not exist as it exists today. Why? Because it deserves to die. Why? Because your children are learning the same thing I learned at school but I went in the 70s. That’s why.

John Jantsch (16:47.694)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (16:56.483)

Yeah. Yeah. Multiplication tables are not going to be really a necessary skill, are they? So I want to talk a little more about, you mentioned it briefly, but I think there’s a lot more to this idea of river of thinking. Can you kind of talk about that metaphor and how it both informs and gets in the way?

Duncan (17:12.38)

Yeah, we all got stuck in it. You know, I worked at Disney for 30 years and I was helping Lucas, Lucas Films, Marvel and Pixar have new ideas. But the challenge is when you’re talking to anybody who’s worked in one particular line of business for a long time is they become so entrenched in what I call their river of thinking. So let me explain how that or the danger of a river of thinking. You and I are going to go into business together and we’re going to open a car wash. Tell me if you were three or four essential ingredients we must have in our car wash.

John Jantsch (17:41.454)

customers, water, employees.

Duncan (17:42.718)

What else?

What else?

Employees, customers, employees and water. OK, you and I are actually, are venture capitalists. We’ve been invited to open a brand new franchise of auto spas. Who are a spa? Now close your eyes. What would you what have you seen in the spa? What would you like to see in your spa? What could we have in the spa?

John Jantsch (18:06.926)

Great music. Very, very comfortable, fancy chairs.

Duncan (18:08.714)

Okay, what else?

Duncan (18:13.94)

Okay.

Duncan (18:18.442)

What else have you seen? There we go. So you can open your eyes. I said car wash straight into your river of thinking, right? Water brushes, so vacuum dryer. I said auto spa, which is about the same product. We’ve got masseuses, we’ve got many pedis. So this tool is brilliant. Walt Disney created it. He said we will not have any customers in our park. We will only have guests. We will not have any employees. We’ll only have cast members. And with that simple re-expression of the relationship between the customer and the employees, the cast member, the guests.

John Jantsch (18:18.774)

Aromas aromas. Yeah

John Jantsch (18:25.32)

Yeah.

Duncan (18:47.514)

everybody got out of their river of thinking created this culture of hospitality. Our river of thinking is this, how might we make more money? How might we make our quarterly results? If we continue to ask that question, we’d put the gate price up at Walt Disney World by three percent, you’d have complained and we’d have made our quarterly results. You don’t get to iterate in a post pandemic world. You innovate or you die. So instead of asking the question we ask ourselves every day, because that’s our river of thinking, how might we make more money? We reversed the challenge and said,

How might we solve the biggest consumer pain point? Everybody knew what it was. It was called standing line. And I said, what if there were no lines? Didn’t know how to solve it at the time. And we looked outside of our industry for an insight for innovation. Most of the insights for innovation come from looking outside of your industry. It’s called Where Else? It’s in the book. And we noticed there was a very small pharmacy in Tokyo, Japan, using RFID technology to enable people not to stand in line. Welcome to the world of Disney’s Magic Band. Does it come in red or gray in the mail?

Of it does. Why? Because you’re like, right, the Star Wars edition. Does it come with matching merchandise? Of course it does. This is my room key today. I don’t check in or check out of a Disney Resort Hotel. It’s my theme park tickets, my reservations for my character meet and greets and my rides. Now it’s morphing towards the phone. I can pull for merchandise and have it sent to my hotel room or house, depending on how many times I touch it. I can order my food through my smartphone, walk into the restaurant when I want to walk in, sit at the table I want to sit at. The food comes fresh to me. Had we started by saying, how might we make more money? Yeah, we’d have made 3%.

but by reversing the challenge and asking how might we solve and getting out of our river of thinking, say, how might we solve the biggest consumer pain point? The average guest at Walt Disney World today has two hours free time they didn’t have six years ago each and every day. What does that result in? Record intent to recommend, record intent to return and record revenues. What do people do with their free time in Disney parks? They spend a bucket load of money.

John Jantsch (20:29.58)

Yeah. All right. Buy more stuff. Absolutely. Well, Duncan, this has been a fascinating interview. I’m not sure if you interviewed me or I interviewed you, but nonetheless, I think the listeners will be the better for it. I really appreciate you taking a moment to stop by. there someplace you’d invite people to find out more about your work and the imagination?

Duncan (20:40.906)

you

Duncan (20:54.228)

Well, they can normally find me in the Lammon Flag pub in Covent Garden, but if I’m not there, they could go to the imagination emporium dot com or Duncan Wardle.

John Jantsch (21:01.762)

Well, again, I appreciate you taking a moment to share and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road. Likewise.

Duncan (21:07.388)

Nice to meet you.


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The Secret to Smarter, Focused Productivity

The Secret to Smarter, Focused Productivity written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast with Tommy Mello

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interviewed Jay Papasan, a bestselling author, VP of strategic content at Keller Williams Realty International, and co-creator of The One Thing. Jay has dedicated his career to helping individuals and businesses achieve extraordinary results by simplifying priorities and mastering the art of focus. His expertise spans habit formation, goal setting, and purposeful decision-making, all aimed at fostering clarity and productivity in a world filled with distractions.

During our conversation, Jay shared powerful insights from his book and personal experiences, highlighting how small shifts in mindset and behavior can lead to transformational outcomes. From adopting effective morning habits to aligning decisions with core values, Jay broke down actionable strategies to help you navigate competing priorities, improve time management, and achieve sustainable business growth.

Key Takeaways:

  • Focus on the One Thing That Matters Most
    Instead of juggling multiple priorities, identify and commit to the one task or goal that will make everything else easier or unnecessary.
  • Embrace the 66-Day Challenge for Habit Formation
    Research shows it takes an average of 66 days to form lasting habits. Commit to this timeframe to develop successful habits that align with your goals.
  • Start Your Day with Morning Habits That Boost Clarity
    Before picking up your phone, review your goals for the day. This simple shift ensures you prioritize what matters most over distractions.
  • Simplify to Achieve Business Growth
    Focus on fewer initiatives executed at a higher level to improve team productivity and accountability, leading to sustainable success.
  • Align Decisions With Core Values
    Use your core values as a filter for decision-making. If a choice doesn’t align with your top priorities, it’s a clear “no.”
  • Make Productivity Accessible to All
    Writing and communicating at a simple, clear level—like the fifth-grade reading standard Jay uses—ensures your message resonates with a wider audience.
  • Leverage Strategic Planning for Long-Term Success
    Build a one-page business plan with clear goals and initiatives. Simplicity fosters clarity and alignment across teams.
  • Purposeful Living Creates Work-Life Balance
    By focusing on meaningful goals and eliminating unnecessary tasks, you can achieve a balance that supports both personal and professional success.

Chapters:

  • [00:00] Opening
  • [00:09] Welcoming Jay Papasan
  • [01:44] The Longevity and Impact of The One Thing
  • [06:34] Understanding the Concept of The One Thing and Applying Core Values
  • [12:03] Impactful Habits for Personal and Professional Success
  • [17:43] Evolution and Offerings of The One Thing Training Company

More About Jay Papasan: 

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John Jantsch (00:00.92)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duck Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jay, and my guest today is Jay Papasan. He’s a bestselling author and VP of strategic content for Keller Williams Realty International. He’s also the CEO of the One Thing Training Company, productive and co-owner of the Papasan Property Group in Austin, Texas. He’s co-authored several bestselling books, including one we’re going to talk a little bit about today, The One Thing.

Surprisingly simple truth about extraordinary results. So Jay, welcome to the show.

Jay Papasan (00:31.209)

Hey, thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

John Jantsch (00:33.61)

So I do want to ask about your title. What does a VP of strategic content do?

Jay Papasan (00:40.412)

It’s not what you think. I actually transitioned roles. was running three big departments and then got to focus again around the things I love. And when I was running our big marketing team here for about three years, if you’ve ever run a marketing team, you get lots of cold DMS on LinkedIn and everywhere else. So I was like, okay, I’m going to come up with something that is anti-marketing. So I like strategy. I love creating content. So I just made up a title.

John Jantsch (00:41.987)

You

Jay Papasan (01:09.332)

It doesn’t really mean anything. I don’t think there’s a lot of them out there. So I don’t get many cold DMs, so I consider it a success.

John Jantsch (01:16.654)

Yeah, well, I just assumed that it meant you made up all the content ideas and then told other people to do them.

Jay Papasan (01:24.172)

That is some of what I do. So I’m a part of five podcasts. I help create them. And I do some editorial direction, which is in my past, I was an editor. But I also put my fingers on the keyboards for our books and newsletters.

John Jantsch (01:25.486)

Hahaha

John Jantsch (01:41.067)

So the one thing, book, I read, did come out 11 years ago, 12 years ago? I read it when it came out.

Jay Papasan (01:47.468)

It came out April 1st, 2013, so 11 years ago.

John Jantsch (01:50.22)

Yeah, okay. Still sells year in, year out tons, has sold millions, translated into many languages. Is there anything that you would put your finger on? I mean, it’s one thing for a book to be really popular, but to remain that popular. Is there anything that you’ve identified that you think keeps it in selling year in, out?

Jay Papasan (02:10.412)

I’m a book nerd and my publisher is an engineer. So we probably overthink this to be honest. So Gary was very clear he wanted to write a timeless book. And I’ve had writing professors point out like you can’t use words like Kleenex and Frisbee because nobody will know what they mean in a hundred years. That’s a tissue. That’s a throwing disc. And strangely this guy who started an upstart real estate company thought the same way. So we did set out to write

a book that was more timeless than timely, which is counterintuitive in publishing. It’s very accessible. I ran the whole book through a program called the Hemingway app, and it’s written at a fifth grade reading level. And I had read research that the bestselling authors of all time write at a very surprisingly low grade level, like Hemingway fourth grade. And I’ve trained myself, if I’m honest, I don’t publish anything that’s higher than a sixth grade reading level.

John Jantsch (02:51.182)

Yes.

Jay Papasan (03:08.544)

because we want the widest possible audience to find it accessible and it’s not work to read. And then I do think that we got a little bit of timing. That would be the other big one. We showed up, our book showed up right when smartphones were really everywhere. Our kids had them, they had them in schools and we had so many opportunities to connect and also obligations to do. People didn’t know how to sort through their priorities. And here we are with the book called The One Thing.

John Jantsch (03:13.827)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (03:37.613)

Yes.

Jay Papasan (03:37.76)

which kind of promised we can kind of help you simplify and focus.

John Jantsch (03:41.654)

Yeah. So a movie that shows up in the book early on of Jack Parlin’s kind of the famous Curly character, say, what’s the secret of life? One thing. What, if any, that impact?

Jay Papasan (03:55.98)

And I think about him on stage at the Oscars, like at age 85 doing one-handed pushups too. Like that’s my memory of that guy. He was legit.

John Jantsch (04:01.11)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What if any role or impact did that have in your thinking?

Jay Papasan (04:11.08)

It was a sideways thing. Gary and I had come up with the idea of the book in 2008. We spent about four and a half years researching and writing it with the team. And we had never actually threw that in, in the mix. But when we were starting to get clued to the finish line and teach it and socialize it, everybody kept coming up and going, well, it’s this all came from city slickers, right? And we’re like, no. So we actually went back and very late in the process added it to the book because

John Jantsch (04:12.781)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (04:33.614)

Yeah

Jay Papasan (04:39.966)

It was just an expectation. If the book is called The One Thing, that movie was so big, everyone expected it to be connected, so we did. And it’s perfect. I I can’t believe that wasn’t the connection.

John Jantsch (04:41.816)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (04:48.418)

Yeah.

Yeah, so surely somebody has stopped you at some point and said, but Jay, what’s the one thing?

Jay Papasan (04:59.148)

All the time, right? And that’s honestly what we do in our training company. We do try to help people figure out what matters most. a friend of ours, Sean Blanc, he was sharing with me, like lot of times he works with busy entrepreneurs and he goes, they look up one day and realize that 93 % of their success comes down to two hours a week. It’s just hard to believe that that could be so important those two hours.

John Jantsch (05:02.006)

Yeah.

Jay Papasan (05:29.036)

Thank

John Jantsch (05:29.474)

Yeah. You know, I wonder, I’ve often, in fact, I wrote about this years ago, so more than one dude, I guess. If somebody just said, look, I’m just going to start working 20 hours a week. That’s just all the time I got. Cause I got this other thing, whatever it is. Would they be any less productive? I wonder.

Jay Papasan (05:47.936)

think if they’re committed to a big goal, they’d be more productive. So like, I don’t know, I’ve written about the power of constraints and my wife launched her career just as soon as our youngest child was being dropped off for daycare. And she said, I will only sell between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. because I’m going to be there for drop off and I’m going to be there for pickup. And she was rookie of the year and sold like 85 homes. And it’s not so much.

John Jantsch (05:51.095)

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

John Jantsch (06:12.344)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jay Papasan (06:16.18)

What she did, what she did is what all successful real estate salespeople do. It’s all the stuff that she chose not to do. She wasn’t hanging out at the water cooler. So I think of it like the day before vacation miracle, right? The day before vacation, you are a very productive individual and it’s not because of what you’re doing. You’re doing the right stuff. It’s you’re not doing any of the nonsense.

John Jantsch (06:23.192)

Yeah, right. Yeah.

John Jantsch (06:37.74)

Yeah, yeah. On April 14th, everybody has time to get their last minute tax preparation done, So what are some of the kind of common, especially in a book that is seemingly simple, it’s not a large book, 150 pages, something like that. What are some of the common misperceptions when people hear that this simple concept?

Jay Papasan (06:43.116)

Yeah, you got it.

Jay Papasan (07:03.444)

You know, when they hear the one thing, I think they think only one thing. And I think that really stops a lot of people in their tracks. I mean, maybe it sells a lot of books because they’re like, well, I want to know what that is. But the reality is we want people to understand it in a given moment, right? This week, this month, this hour, you should be clear about what your number one priority is. And so if you you pick up the US edition of the book, it’s white hardcover.

John Jantsch (07:05.698)

Yeah, right. Yeah.

John Jantsch (07:26.232)

Yeah.

Jay Papasan (07:31.946)

We never put testimonials on the back. We never did any of the traditional stuff. We always had a question because we were very clear that what was the one thing we wanted people to do when they put down this book? We wanted them ask, like, what’s my one thing? And we wanted to make the book into a, like I’ve heard from people who flip the cover around on their bookshelf so that they were always staring at the question just to remind themselves, am I acting in my priorities or am I messing around right now?

John Jantsch (07:44.994)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (07:59.81)

So there’s a huge body of work talking about core values in a business and finding your why and your purpose. I’ve had a lot of people go through those exercises and, and, and end up saying, well, now what, what do I do with that? do you feel like you’ve sort of crossed that bridge?

Jay Papasan (08:12.993)

Yeah.

Jay Papasan (08:18.888)

Yeah, I mean, when we were preparing to talk, like I shared, one of the things that since the book came out, I think I’ve gotten really good at is making decisions based on my core values. And core values isn’t actually in the book. We talk about purpose. And I’ve taught the book, I don’t know, four or 500 times now, corporate and private audiences. And everybody kind of struggles with this idea of what’s my purpose, what’s my mission. And a lot of times they’ll pull together a statement

John Jantsch (08:32.398)

Yeah, yeah.

Jay Papasan (08:47.616)

that doesn’t feel wholly authentic because it’s too weighty. I’ve found that core values is a gateway drug and I could give you the long story, but I won’t. What we teach people to do is identify what are your top three core values. And when you have a big decision, it should be a nine out of 10 on all three if possible, but certainly on number one. And mine are impact, family and abundance.

John Jantsch (08:49.816)

Yeah. Yeah.

Jay Papasan (09:11.872)

And we teach people like, I know what family means. It’s not just my immediate family. It’s my friends and partners. It’s the people I treat like family. And I mean, I actually got some of this from a fellow named Stu McLaren, who’s big in our space. He sold his first business because of this realization from reading our book and essentialism. So if you see my phone and I’ll hold it up for the people watching, I’ve got my core values as my screen saver.

John Jantsch (09:19.96)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (09:37.986)

Mm-hmm.

Jay Papasan (09:39.732)

I’ve read that you see your phone screen 87 times a day. I’ve got them on my one page goal sheet. I’ve got them front and center with my coach. So what I’ve tried to do is make it impossible for me to forget the things I’ve decided are important to me so that I can try to let my decisions be informed by them. But how do we make it practical? Is it a nine out of 10?

John Jantsch (10:03.928)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jay Papasan (10:06.09)

Or is it a five out of 10? Like that should tell you something. That’s not a heck yes, that’s a heck no.

John Jantsch (10:12.672)

So I’m sure that in your teaching, somebody says, okay, here’s the process, or you teach, here’s the process for identifying your one thing in a sea of competing priorities. Is there a process?

Jay Papasan (10:29.142)

There is. what I thought, I was worried. Gary, you know, he’s the self-made billionaire. He was the coach of all the top people in our industry for so long. He had more faith in it than I did because he’d lived it longer. But when someone asked the focusing question, what’s the one thing I can do such that by doing it, everything else will be easier, unnecessary? It’s a mouthful, but it’s a big question. I even asked him, I said, what if people don’t know the answer? He goes, you might be surprised.

John Jantsch (10:30.094)

Ha

Jay Papasan (10:58.342)

And having taught this to probably 10,000 people, I’ll tell you 98 % of people know what their one thing is, and they just are too busy to stop to ask the question. And usually they’ll tell you they feel guilty for not doing it. They’re walking around with a bad case of the shoulds. I know I should be doing this. I know I should be doing this. What they don’t have is a framework for them to live their intentions. And so we tried to help them have a simple framework.

for identifying that thing, which most people can, but then how do I put it on my calendar and live my schedule?

John Jantsch (11:32.366)

Yeah. Yeah. So, so that gets us to habits. This is a lot about habits, right? Because I think, I think a lot of times people can have a, they can go to a weekend workshop or whatever, have the aha, you know, but just like everything, if I say I’m going to lose weight, well, there’s some habits I’m going to have to change or develop, right? So what have you found have been the habits that people need to change or develop to really bring this to life?

Jay Papasan (11:49.707)

Yeah.

Jay Papasan (11:57.878)

So in our research, we discovered that as near as we can tell factually, takes 66 days on average to form a habit. That was a discovery because we walked into it thinking it was 21 or 30 days. And so it takes longer than people think. But we’ve done, actually trademarked 66 day challenge just for the fun of it. And every year we lead three or four cohorts. So I’ve actually got good data on the habits that people have found most impactful. So I’ll share with you.

John Jantsch (12:21.57)

Huh. Yeah.

Jay Papasan (12:27.306)

I’m writing about it in a few weeks, but I’ll give you the sneak peek. The most impactful habit we ever did as a group cohort was getting people to look at their goals before they picked up their phone. And I underestimated it, I’ll be honest. But when you know what you’ve actually said yes to, it becomes a lot easier to say no to everything else. And almost everyone you know and I know, within 10 minutes of getting up, they’re on their phone.

John Jantsch (12:39.458)

Mm.

John Jantsch (12:50.21)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (12:56.707)

Yeah.

Jay Papasan (12:57.236)

and they’re usually on social media, email or text. And those are places that other people’s priorities live. And so we had the highest reported overall halo effect when people just took five minutes in the morning to look at their goals before they went about their business. They did more work, they did it earlier, they were more focused, less distracted, like weird stuff, like fewer dirty dishes. So…

John Jantsch (13:22.626)

Ha

Jay Papasan (13:23.584)

There you go. I mean, I could go through habit after habit that has impacted me, but in terms of the ones that we’ve measured, that’s been by far the most successful.

John Jantsch (13:32.674)

Yeah. And I think it makes a ton of sense because especially, well, anybody, but I’ve been an entrepreneur all my life. So I’ll use my example. mean, we just, from the minute you get in front of your computer, you’re pulled in a thousand directions. it feels like, and so you’re right, just the simple habit of reminding yourself, yeah, I said I was going to do that. is, is so I could see the power.

Jay Papasan (13:45.632)

Yeah.

Jay Papasan (13:55.318)

think I heard John Maxwell say this, so this is not a J original. He just said, some yeses are bigger than others. When you said, do, you knew that you were saying no to everybody else. And he’s like, I just remember thinking, wow, we need more clear yeses in our life so that we can say no.

John Jantsch (13:58.285)

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

John Jantsch (14:06.636)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (14:15.414)

So obviously this concept applies to any human being, right? Any individual. But what have you seen the impact it’s made on business leaders in kind of growing or scaling or changing their company, making it more sustainable, all those kinds of goals?

Jay Papasan (14:32.776)

There’s been a couple of things I’ve seen in sales teams. What I’ve seen them do is instead of going big goals, big action, they’ve actually gotten a little bit clear about being a little bit more precise about what they’re going to do to hit the goal. So they tend to do fewer things at a higher level. And one team, I remember at a huge biomedical company went from the bottom quartile to the top three in two quarters, and they focused on one product and one customer.

And they just used the book and they just said, how simple can we make it? And the challenge why people don’t like to do that is that when there’s complexity, people have places to hide. If you say you’re just going to do one thing, it’s yes or no, did you do it? And that’s a huge amount of accountability. So one, I’ve found people grow their revenue by simplifying their sales funnels hugely. And the other one from a team is

John Jantsch (15:11.681)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (15:15.372)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (15:24.248)

Yes, yes, yes.

Jay Papasan (15:27.574)

We teach people to do a very simple business plan. Everything’s on one page and it’s got to be like 12 point type, no cheating. And if it’s that simple, like one goal, three big initiatives, everybody kind of knows what their role is. And so we found two things like the power of focus and the power of clarity in business are very underrated.

John Jantsch (15:50.734)

100%. Do you find, I know you probably have worked with people that have been very successful that get at some point get to a place where they’re like, okay, I’ve done a lot of things. What’s next? So is that then a different reframing of the one thing or is it just a, okay, I just need to sit down and re-strategize.

Jay Papasan (16:12.652)

I think that we have seasons in our life. I do think that, you know, I know that something I read about millennials say that they’ll have as many as like 14 careers in their life. And I’ve been at the same place for 24 years and my dad was at the same place for 25. Gary’s been doing the same thing for 45. But if I actually step back, I’ve gone through phases about every seven years. And the one constant for me has been books.

John Jantsch (16:24.257)

just look at LinkedIn. It’s crazy.

John Jantsch (16:37.048)

Yeah, yeah.

Jay Papasan (16:41.568)

That has been the through line of my life. So there is a theme, but what I’ve been doing around it has evolved and changed. So I’m open to that. Like, I don’t think that just because that’s your one thing that you’re a prisoner to it. But what I do find is that if you can make peace with the boredom of success, which most people struggle with, their one thing will open up so many doors to things they didn’t expect. So I don’t know. Like I don’t.

John Jantsch (16:55.096)

Yeah.

Jay Papasan (17:08.81)

I think that we can always ask the question, has my one thing changed?

John Jantsch (17:12.238)

Yeah. Well, the world’s changed around us, right? Every, every five years. So we better be at least checking in, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So, I know you have the, read it in the bio, the name of it, let me get it right. The one thing training company. do people show, is that something that people buy from you custom or do you have routine? Like I can show up and we’ll do this three day thing. How does that work?

Jay Papasan (17:14.634)

Yeah!

Jay Papasan (17:17.992)

Nimble. Yeah with AI and everything like now, especially as writers. I my goodness

Jay Papasan (17:41.066)

You know, it’s evolving. When I took over, think we had 24 SKUs. And I remember sitting down at a mastermind and someone said, dude, your first job is to one thing, you’re one thing business. I was like, yeah, I heard you. and we’ve simplified and now we have basically one model for like what people come to us for is I want to either run my life or my business using these principles. So I worked with our head coach, got named Jordan Fried. He’s been my coach for the last few years. We built out our training program.

John Jantsch (17:45.738)

huh.

John Jantsch (17:51.026)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (18:03.651)

Yeah.

Jay Papasan (18:10.624)

Here’s where we start, here’s where we finish, and here’s how we keep going. And we now just kind of offer that in different formats. Do you want to do a group coaching model? Do you want us to come to your company and teach it? Do you want us to do one-on-one coaching? Right? We have different ways we deliver fundamentally our one thing process. It’s a little different for big businesses. We have some Fortune 50 companies, and there’s a lot more rules with them, that’s for sure. But we do…

John Jantsch (18:31.48)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (18:39.074)

Yeah.

Jay Papasan (18:40.32)

We fundamentally today teach people how to lead themselves and lead their teams using these principles and we offer it in different mediums. That would be the simplest way I could explain it. And we just get leads on the website. Right now we don’t even do cold outreach.

John Jantsch (18:57.73)

How much of a competitive advantage or competitive asset do you believe the one thing is for Keller Williams?

Jay Papasan (19:07.35)

We’ve got two signature books. So what’s weird, the one thing has sold 3.6 million copies in all editions now. It’ll be 3.7 in the next few months. Our first book we co-wrote together and we published it in 2003, it was called The Millionaire Real Estate Agent. That sold 1.6. In an industry at that time of about 800,000, today it’s over a million. Both of them are perennial.

John Jantsch (19:33.157)

Yeah.

Jay Papasan (19:37.106)

sellers. They’re not always on the bestseller list anymore. But I do believe when people say, look up and say, you wrote the book on X, it provides a certain amount of thought leadership. It’s very hard to measure. You know this with PR and marketing, but the exposure, I have to think every time someone walked through an airport, they saw Gary Keller’s name on a bestselling book that has to provide a certain amount of authority. And I can tell you, I talked to

John Jantsch (19:52.568)

Sure, sure.

Jay Papasan (20:05.696)

the people who run our franchises, and I just always ask the question, how many of you had someone show up to join your team without you recruiting them because they read a book? And there’s usually always about 10 % of the room will raise their hands. So it attracts talent, it provides thought leadership. I can’t measure it, but I know that we grew about 40 % year over year for six years after the first book came out.

John Jantsch (20:17.826)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (20:31.468)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think there’s no question. There’s some attribution there. Well, Jay, I. Yeah, no, no question. Absolutely. I mean, I have a similar story when my first book came out. No question. Again, I appreciate you taking a moment to stop by the Ductate Marketing podcast. mean, it’s really amazing to that you think of the legacy that this book certainly is created for you and.

Jay Papasan (20:36.032)

I think it’s a great reason for business people to write books.

Yeah.

Jay Papasan (20:59.85)

It’s funny. I feel the same way about you. Like you’re on like my special shelf with Al Ries and Trout and Seth Godin. Like you’re in the hallowed halls of marketing writers for me. So I’m kind of sitting here and thinking, wow, I’m so lucky to be on your podcast. So thank you for having me. I’m serious about that.

John Jantsch (21:06.958)

You

John Jantsch (21:14.414)

I

Well, I appreciate that, Jay. And again, I appreciate you taking a few moments and hopefully we’ll run into you again soon one of these days out there on the road.

Jay Papasan (21:24.566)

can’t wait.


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Building a $220M Empire: The Power of Training and Branding

Building a $220M Empire: The Power of Training and Branding written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast with Tommy Mello

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interviewed Tommy Mello, a visionary entrepreneur and founder of a $220 million home services business operating across 20 states. As the author of Elevate: Build a Business Where Everybody Wins and host of The Home Service Expert podcast, Tommy has dedicated his career to helping others achieve business success by focusing on recruiting top talent, optimizing branding strategies, and delivering exceptional customer experiences.

During our conversation, Tommy shared his journey of scaling a business from a small operation to an industry leader in the home services space. He emphasized the importance of investing in training, aligning core values, and leveraging performance pay systems to build a thriving team and long-term customer loyalty.

Key Takeaways:

  • Recruit Like You Market: Tommy treats recruiting like a marketing campaign, creating a continuous pipeline of A-plus talent. He focuses on identifying the right candidates by defining the ideal “avatar” for each role and using targeted ads to attract them.
  • Performance Pay Drives Results: Transitioning to performance-based pay not only motivates employees but also improves KPIs like booking rates, conversion rates, and customer satisfaction, driving both team and business success.
  • Branding is More Than a Logo: Tommy’s brand overhaul, including visually striking vehicle wraps and a unified brand voice across email, billboards, and yard signs, elevated his company’s visibility and customer trust.
  • Optimize the Call Center: A well-trained call center is critical. By focusing on empathy, responsiveness, and problem-solving, his team converts more leads into loyal customers, maximizing ROI on marketing investments.
  • Blue-Collar Jobs Are the Future: With skilled labor shortages increasing, Tommy sees a bright future for tradespeople, emphasizing the financial and personal rewards of working in the home services sector.

Chapters:

  • [00:00] Who is Tommy Mello?
  • [02:14] Optimizing Recruitment and Service Quality
  • [04:05] Branding Goes Beyond Your Logo
  • [07:26] Motivating Employees to Perform
  • [12:37] Recruiting vs. Creating A-Players
  • [15:52] Using Marketing to Recruit

More About Tommy Mello: 

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

Want to elevate your marketing game? AdCritter pairs Connected TV ads with precise digital retargeting to drive real results. Discover how their full-funnel strategy can help your business grow smarter. Let them know Duct Tape Marketing sent you, and you’ll get a dollar-for-dollar match on your first campaign! Learn more at adcritter.com.

 



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John Jantsch (00:01.24)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duck Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Tommy Mello. He’s a driven entrepreneur who’s built a 220 million home services business with over 700 employees across 20 states. He’s also the founder of Home Service Expert, where he’s dedicated to helping fellow entrepreneurs achieve the same level of success. He’s also the host of a popular Home Service Expert podcast and the author of

Elevate, build a business where everybody wins. So Tommy, welcome to the show.

Tommy Mello (00:35.662)

Thank you. Really excited to be here.

John Jantsch (00:37.004)

So I got looking back at this, think this is at least your second appearance on the show. And I got looking back and the last time you were on the show, it was 2020. were in the throes of, or maybe just starting to come out of the pandemic. And the home services business was really kind of crazy at that point. A lot of folks were in turmoil. A lot of folks were really having trouble finding skilled labor. So.

Fast forward to 2024, what’s the state of the industry today?

Tommy Mello (01:08.962)

Never been better. You know, we were deemed essential during COVID. And the fact is, there’s always this teeter totter. You need more leads or you need more great people. I learned in 2017 how to build my own technicians. So right now we graduate from my training school right next door, about 50 technicians a month. But it’s kind of, I view recruiting like marketing.

John Jantsch (01:11.608)

Yeah, right.

John Jantsch (01:19.032)

Right.

Tommy Mello (01:36.506)

You got to really define who your avatar is and make sure it’s the right person because if you’re not converting leads getting the right reviews getting the right opportunity job averages You know people are always like I need more leads and I’m like well You must be booking every phone call. You must be converting every Booked call to a paid customer and they’re like, well, what do you mean? And I’m like, well your marketing dollars are going to waste because your call centers Not working out very well. Your technicians are not converting very well. You don’t have a rehash program. So

I’m kind of jumping around here a little bit, but the most important thing is you got the right people showing up to the right leads. And you should be ranking your leads and ranking the people showing up to the leads.

John Jantsch (02:11.202)

Okay.

John Jantsch (02:17.282)

Yeah. So, it’s interesting because I think a lot of business owners, doesn’t matter what industry, kind of think of hiring as an event. I need people. I’ll go out and hire some people. I’ll run some ads. I’ll hire some people. And the way you’re talking about it is more like we would think of traditional marketing. You’ve got to know who that ideal customer is. You’ve got to have the right message. You’ve got to constantly build pipeline to get those folks. And I think of a lot of businesses treated recruitment that way.

They’d find a lot more success rather than just always firefighting.

Tommy Mello (02:52.122)

Can tell you this What if I told you like I want you to the old Pareto 80-20 rule what I’d love people to do is look at their top 20 % I said what if they were able to multiply that by five so that what that means is They take the top 20 % of their working staff and either you got to train them up or out to get into that 20 percentile and Unfortunately when you’re a small business

John Jantsch (02:58.776)

Right, right.

John Jantsch (03:15.918)

Mm-hmm.

Tommy Mello (03:21.582)

like I was for a decade, longer than that actually. I didn’t know what good was. And you know what I used to tell people, John, I used to tell people, if you got a garage, you’re my client. And I’ve quickly, over the last, I’d say seven years, realized that not everybody with a garage door is my client. The people that are price shopping, you could only have three things. My dad taught me this. You could have the cheapest, the best quality, or on your timeline.

You can never give all three. It’s impossible to give all three. So I decided a decade ago, I’m not going to be the cheapest. I’m going get out there today when they need me the most and I’m going to do a quality job with a drug tested background, trustworthy person that can be alone with your wife and kids. And that’s what we’ve done. And I think to be the cheapest is a race to the bottom.

John Jantsch (04:11.726)

Yeah. You got to throw all that other stuff out. Right. So you, you talk about in your writing and, and when we talked before, you know, about kind of struggling a little bit before you kind of turned the corner and, and, you know, figured out how to really scale was that, there any, were there any kind of pivotal moments or pivotal things that really made you, you know, you feel like, you know, kind of made the light bulb come on and, know, really lead to success.

Tommy Mello (04:41.112)

Yeah, this right here, I know not everybody’s watching, but the way my trucks were branded, this was my original truck. It was just a white truck with stenciling on it. Then I got a better wrap that was pretty good. And then I got this one that’s absolutely phenomenal. And this other, the brand new wrap I got, and this had to be about five years ago. It was done by Dan Ancinelli from Kick Charge.

And it doesn’t have a lot of logos like the BBB and Yelp and Angie’s List on it. It doesn’t have anything. It doesn’t even have a phone number on it. It’s a billboard. People can only read five words as they’re driving by. So anybody that puts these 18 words on there and says, you know, call now to get your appointment and this QR code, they’re driving by. So once you get your brand dialed in and now my signature on my email looks like my catalog.

John Jantsch (05:10.02)

Yeah.

Tommy Mello (05:33.626)

Looks like my website, looks like my yard signs, looks like my billboards. And then I’ve got a jingle that’s the same everywhere. So that was a big piece of it. I think people don’t understand a part of marketing is your brand. And brand is, you know, some people take them and they differentiate them a little bit, but I think it starts with your brand. And what is your core values and what do you stand for? What can you prove you’re known for? Like you can’t say I’m the best. You can say out of the last thousand jobs, 998.

Started on time and two of them got rectified within 48 hours and those are facts and your kpi should be driven towards the consumer Obviously your financial department’s going to have kpis like what’s your conversion rate and average ticket or what you know balancing income statement and all a lot of great Data about what’s good for us, but we need to start thinking about what’s good for our clients and The biggest thing i’ve Is most companies i’ve invested in most companies that i’ve coached

I find most of their opportunity in their call center, where their leads are coming into. My mom used to answer phones for me, John, and she, sometimes I felt like she was having phone sex. She’s never, I don’t think had phone sex, but she’d be like, my God, honey, I am so sorry. It was like crazy. She’d be like apologizing and empathy and just, honey, I am so, we’re gonna get this fixed. I’m gonna send out my best technician. This is like 15 years ago.

John Jantsch (07:01.624)

Ha

Tommy Mello (07:01.914)

I show up to these houses John and the people would give me a hug and they’d be like this is the best company I’ve ever talked to like Whoever that lady was she would never say she’s my mother, but she brag about me She’s I’m gonna send out our best technician this guy. He’s a handsome devil and shit, she never says she’s my mom and I show up and there was putty in my hands like the client would say whatever you guys say to do We’re gonna do it. We’ve never heard of anybody take a call like that

And so I think the contact center, there’s a lot of opportunities. And that’s operational, right? But marketing needs to go through all the way through to where I collect the cash. And even after I get the review and we do business to get in the future. And I think people miss that.

John Jantsch (07:45.604)

You know, I listen to you talk about, mean, obviously your mom was very invested in the success of the business, in your success personally. How do you get employees to feel like, I’m an essential part. mean, a lot of times people answer the phone, they’re like, hey, I’m just putting in my time. You know, I don’t get to see that profit necessarily. mean, you know, all the things people can delude themselves with. So how do you get people, you know, everybody bought in it? Cause I know that’s been a big part of what you’ve really preached.

in terms of really building a company culture.

Tommy Mello (08:19.514)

There’s a simple phrase called what’s in it for them. And I’m not into tenure. I’m not in an hourly pay. I’m in a performance pay. And if you set the guidelines and it’s fair and it’s distinguishable, meaning that it’s not based on somebody’s opinion, performance pay, what’ll happen? And I want to be very careful here for your listeners. If you switch to performance pay, you’ll probably lose 80 % of your staff because they’d like to get paid hourly.

They love to get paid, you know, come and do my job and be done. But when you come up with ways to say what’s in it for them, how can I have them win more? And look, everybody’s like, how do you even start that? Well, you just take your historical data. Like this person’s booking 62%. At first, you got to know KPIs and have data accuracy. There’s got to be some type of data compliance to make sure that it’s accurate. And see, if I got them up, like right now we’ll do 300 million, right, next year. For every percent we increase,

John Jantsch (09:14.328)

Mm-hmm.

Tommy Mello (09:16.346)

The booking rate, that’s $3 million of revenue to the company. At 20%, that’s an extra $600,000 to the EBITDA. And so I’m a mathematical guy, right? So I’m always doing math and coming up with formulas and saying, does this get the right behavior I’m shooting for? And if I share some of it with them, the company and, you know, I win really big, but I allow them to feel like they’re winning really big too in comparison. Because if you’re making $17 an hour, I can pay people $45 an hour.

and still be winning. And how easy is it, do you think, for me to recruit A-plus players when I can pay that much? It’s like taking candy from a baby. It’s like, why would he pay that much? Well, he’s getting people to set him up for success. And that’s so important. It’s just smiling on the phone and empathy and really caring. And you know, I heard this from a buddy of mine. He said, if you ever go to the Four Seasons, you’ll notice that they hire people that genuinely

John Jantsch (09:52.973)

Right.

Tommy Mello (10:16.238)

Genuinely do care like they don’t just say hey, how are you today sir? Nice to see you. See you later They say listen is there anything I can do to make your stay better I’ll tell you this I got to stay it for seasons and in the past They might tell you a story to say it was so magical for me and my family After that day I knew I wanted to work here and my goal is to make sure that this is the best experience you ever have to look you in the eyes They’ll walk you to the bathroom if you ask for a question

John Jantsch (10:17.763)

Yeah.

Tommy Mello (10:43.108)

They’ll open up a restaurant that’s closed to make you something themselves that they have the opportunity to do that. And that’s what I think is that we talk so much about marketing, about making the phone ring. And I talk about stacking the deck on the other side by recruiting A plus people on your team.

John Jantsch (10:59.214)

Talk a little bit about that concept of recruiting versus creating, you know, A plus team. Obviously, if somebody is already a proven superstar salesperson, they’re, you’re going to pay for it, right? You know, to recruit them perhaps. Whereas I know you spend a lot of time and energy actually training and teaching and creating A players. Talk a little bit about that, the difference between those two ideas.

Tommy Mello (11:28.288)

I do think there’s certain things that look for I hire for personality. So I contact tonality. Can you tell a great story to you smile a lot when I take you and your wife or husband out to dinner. But I find that you guys get along well because if there’s problems at home there’s more likely going to be problems when you come to work because you’re trying to kind of put yourself out of a fire that you just got into at home. But what we do is we train train train train train we role play.

John Jantsch (11:32.664)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (11:50.532)

You

Tommy Mello (11:56.174)

And we just focus on these attributes of like believe in yourself. The first thing you need to do is believe in yourself. And that’s what eye contact tonality smiling is, is believing in yourself. And I’m not Starbucks. I can’t hire people to save them, to start looking through their lens differently. It’s so hard to do that. It takes years. It takes years. Sometimes people go into the military, very unorganized, come out very, very organized, but that takes sometimes four to eight years. So I try to find the right canvas.

And then I try to teach these things like the words we use. We never say, this is how much it costs. We say the investment would be this. It is an investment. It’s the number one ROI on your home. The number one investment more than your kitchens or bathrooms is your garage. Remodel magazine six years in a row, an unbiased third party. So we teach them the words to say, we monitor this. We’ve got systems that record the whole conversation in the garage with the client. That’s for the client’s best interest, but it’s also to coach.

We say kneel down when you’re doing when you’re presenting you don’t want to be above the customer because you make them feel inferior There’s a lot of things that we try to do and when I played football We did two a days we practiced ten times a week to play one game So in business, why shouldn’t we do the same thing or should we go after you train? You’re just gonna go practice on the customer’s house forever And I don’t know about you, but I like nice things that last I’ve gone with the cheapest

to fix my house when I did a remodel in 2012. I’ll never go at the best price again. Because I had to redo the roof after five years. I’m on my third AC unit. I just want the best. I don’t want to have to worry about it. think homeowners are smart. They’re like, you know what? What’s the… And what if you had a magic moment where you said, you know what I care about the most? I care that my kids could go to school. And I care that my wife makes it to work on time. Because that’s what we miss today.

So you called the best option. This is to keep the kids coming to school on time and make sure your wife gets to work. And there’s these magic moments and you title the estimates exactly what the client cares about. And you title it, this is the one that’ll give you the best investment for moving in five years and making sure you’re graduate or last. Because they say, I’m gonna move in five years. So you say, listen, we don’t need you to do the Taj Mahal. Out of the five options, let’s do number four.

John Jantsch (14:03.428)

you

John Jantsch (14:27.62)

I actually recently put in two new garage door openers and it’s been a while since I had replaced one and they’ve gotten a lot more technical. There’s a heck of lot of bells and whistles in those things. mean, the price range is, you know, three, four X. You you can buy the cheapest one to the Taj Mahal. It’s gotten a lot more sophisticated, hasn’t it?

Tommy Mello (14:51.352)

Yeah, now you know, that’s the deal. They got the my queue. The the opener’s got a brain. And the brain will tell you know we’ve we’ve worked out a pretty good opportunity with the manufacturer that will know if you got a problem before you do and will just come out. We guarantee one hour service that if something it’s got this thing called a force adjustment, so if it comes down on something or comes off track, will know about it. And.

John Jantsch (14:54.936)

Yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (15:11.736)

Yeah. Yeah.

Tommy Mello (15:17.464)

That’s gotta be nice for you because before you know that you got a problem or showing up saying let us look at everything and make sure everything’s okay.

John Jantsch (15:24.324)

Yeah. My favorite attribute is I know when the door opens. And so, you know, I’ll be in here and I have my office in my house and my wife will go grocery shopping. I know it’s time to go down there and get the groceries out of the car. I don’t even have to hear it. Talk a little bit about skilled labor. mean, people, you know, people aren’t coming out of high school today thinking I want to go be a carpenter or, you know, whatever electrician.

Tommy Mello (15:38.36)

Yeah, that was great.

John Jantsch (15:53.39)

nearly enough, I think, to meet the demand. So what have you done to, really kind of shore up that you hire for, like you say, you know, personality or fit, but they still have to be able to install something. They still have to be able to fix something. What are you doing to kind of shore up that, that end of it?

Tommy Mello (16:11.874)

Well, we spend 12 % of our revenue on marketing, okay? So if we do 25 million, we’re spending a few million dollars a month in marketing. So we’re in Val Pak, all over website optimization, we, Clipper Magazine, the newspaper, PFP Deals, Angie, every lead aggregator out there, we’re on TV, radio, billboards. The idea is why not put the recruiting ad into some of these?

And say, at A1 Graduates, you’ve always known us for great service, blah, blah, blah, blah. Now we’re looking for more. You want to do two in one. You want to do the marketing and the recruiting in the same message. And then you want to have this massive funnel that chops, chops, chops, chops. Every time it chops down to this smaller amount, it’s refining, refining, refining, refining. Here’s what I do know. Artificial intelligence and robotics are not going to replace

Garage doors HVAC plumbing electrical roofing anytime soon. No one’s gonna come out with a robot and install windows But I’ll tell you what this camera stuff we’re working on the the drones and the different things They’re all gonna be AI AI is gonna fix everything left brain AI is like handling here soon Development coding everybody said hey go into coding go into coding. Well AI is gonna fit you’re not gonna have a job So these blue collar things that were shit on for a long time Like man, it was embarrassing if you were H a

John Jantsch (17:17.166)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (17:31.299)

You

Tommy Mello (17:39.194)

I do. a plumber. Now it’s like you’re beating your chair. You’re like, I’m a plumber, baby. It’s like our day. This is our time. And I think the word’s getting out there. Like the average plumber is 49 years old. And now you got this amazing amount of people going, look, I don’t think I was cut out to go to college and go into debt for $200,000 because I don’t really know if I want to go into economics or accounting. And I don’t know if my future, what the future holds there. So I do know that

John Jantsch (17:42.82)

Yeah.

Tommy Mello (18:09.238)

No one’s going to be fixing anything on the home at least for a decade. I don’t think this robot’s going to be coming out and doing it for a while. So I think people are starting to understand that and they’re starting to say, I don’t want to go into debt. We pay to train you. You come to work for A1, you’re to get paid a very healthy living to get trained. then if you can’t make two grand a week, shame on you your first year. If you can’t make three grand a week on year two, shame on you.

We’re going to give you the tools. pay for the tools. We’re to give you a brand new van. We’re going to give you training. We’re going to give you role play. We’re going to make you, you know, we’re going to give you a flexible schedule. We’re going to make sure your wife and kids are bought in. It’s typically a man going out to do the work. We’ve hired over 20 female technicians. Unfortunately, it’s a harder job on the body than most realize, but it’s a really rewarding job. And I think the more we can share the stories, we’ve got a full-time dream manager. Their job is to help people dream.

John Jantsch (19:06.02)

Hmm.

Tommy Mello (19:09.21)

What do you want out of life? Do you want to go on that big vacation? Do you want to buy a home or a second home or a third home? What does that mean needs to happen? Well, it means these need to be your KPIs. And when I talk to you, I just say, listen, you ever you told me you want to take your kids to Disney World First Class, let’s skip all the lines. Do you realize if we just if you had a little bit higher conversion rate and I’ll show you exactly what you need to do to do that, that you would make that happen this year? So you talk about

What’s in it for them again? they don’t care that, hey, Tommy sits down with them and he wants to make more money to the bottom line and you’re gonna be on a performance improvement plan. No one cares about that. They care about like, what about me? What about my family? What about the people I care about? Like, I took a chance working for you. Why don’t you teach me more? But you gotta remind them. You gotta remind them about their why and what it means to their life in the future. And hopefully you’ll hire the right people that have plans. Because some people go through life

I just say I’m okay being mediocre.

John Jantsch (20:11.268)

Well, Tommy, run out of time, but I appreciate again, you stopping by. Very inspirational as always. I appreciate you taking a moment to stop by the Duck Tape Marketing Podcast. there some place you want to invite people to find out more about? I know you’ve got a variety of different interests and things you’re involved in, but what’s the best way for people to find out more about what you’re doing?

Tommy Mello (20:32.514)

Yeah, if you just go to Tommy mellow, there’s no w at the end of my name. So Tommy e l l o dot com. You see all my social media, my books, everything’s there. And if you go to Tommy mellow dot com for slash shop, you can do a shop tour. I don’t charge anything. If you ever get find yourself in Phoenix or want to come out here. It’s a great experience. It’s a way to pay it forward like everybody did for me when when I was coming up in the home service home improvement space.

It’s a way for me to brag on the team and it’s a way for me to help you because I do believe that if you help people it comes back tenfold. I think that Zig Zayler said you could have anything you want in life if you help enough people get what they want. And I’m a true believer of that. I really am. So if anybody needs anything reach out to me. I got 80 ways from Sunday to reach me. I’ve got a full-time team, a massive team these days that make sure that it gets that I’m aware of the comments and questions. So

I appreciate this podcast and I’m looking forward to having you on.

John Jantsch (21:34.583)

Likewise, we’re gonna record back to back today. again, thank you for taking a few moments to share with our audience and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Tommy Mello (21:44.42)

Sounds great, appreciate you.


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How the Right Creators Can Transform Your B2B Marketing

How the Right Creators Can Transform Your B2B Marketing written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast with Nick Bennett

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interviewed Nick Bennett, a pioneering expert in B2B influencer marketing who’s reshaping how companies approach digital marketing strategies. As a co-founder of TACK and author of B2B Influencer Marketing: Work With Creators to Generate Authentic and Effective Marketing, Bennett reveals the transformative power of authentic creator partnerships in today’s competitive business landscape.

The conversation uncovers a critical shift in B2B marketing: moving from traditional, corporate-driven approaches to a more human-centric, creator-powered strategy that drives real business results. Bennett’s insights demonstrate how the right creators can become powerful catalysts for brand awareness, lead generation, and revenue growth.

Key Takeaways:

  • Micro-Influencers Matter: The sweet spot for B2B influencers is 10,000 to 50,000 followers
  • Authentic Partnerships Are Everything: Partnerships should be collaborative, not transactional
  • Strategic Influencer Marketing Drives Real Results: Integrate influencer strategies into broader marketing efforts
  • The Creator Economy is Transforming B2B Marketing: Leverage subject matter experts who have credible industry voice
  • Technology Enables Smarter Influencer Strategies: Focus on mastering AI tools rather than fearing them

Chapters:

  • [01:02] Who is Nick Bennett?
  • [01:40] Defining Influencer Marketing in B2B vs B2C
  • [03:51] Best Practices for B2B Marketing and Influencer Integration
  • [06:48] Challenges and Misconceptions in B2B Influencer Marketing
  • [08:48] Successful Product Launch with Influencer Program
  • [11:34] Effectiveness and Authenticity in Influencer Partnerships
  • [15:23] Navigating Global Influencer Marketing
  • [18:47] Niche Focus and Controversial Content for Engagement

More About Nick Bennett: 

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

Nobody does data better than Oracle. Train your AI models at twice the speed and less than half of the cost of other clouds. If you want to do more and spend less, take a free test drive at Oracle.

 



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John Jantsch (00:01.17)

Welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Nick Bennett. He’s a co-founder of TACK, a media network and go-to-market firm, helping businesses convert demand into revenue through their people-first GTM model. With over a decade of experience in B2B tech industry, Nick specializes in crafting innovative go-to-market strategies. He’s also the author of a book we’re going to talk about today.

John Jantsch (00:28.25)

B2B influencer marketing, work with creators to generate authentic and effective marketing. So, Nick, welcome to the show.

Nick Bennett (00:36.198)

Thank you so much for having me. Excited to be here.

John Jantsch (00:38.69)

So let’s define influencer marketing. I suspect that people would have different definitions of what that means or perceptions of what that is. How do you describe it when you tell somebody about your book and they say, what’s influencer marketing?

Nick Bennett (00:42.748)

.

Nick Bennett (00:53.2)

Yeah, so I think in B2B, it’s a little bit different than B2C. I think that’s the first thing that we have to tackle. But in B2B specifically, I think an influencer is someone who holds authority or credibility within a specific industry. So they could be a subject matter expert, they could be a creator, they could be a practitioner. There are people who share valuable insights. They have a loyal, engaged following of an audience on different social media platforms.

John Jantsch (00:56.474)

Yes. Yeah.

John Jantsch (01:19.302)

So I think a lot of people, especially when you talk about in the B2C world, naturally think of Peyton Manning, Kim Kardashian, I don’t know, some of the folks that show up that way. But really, I’m guessing in the B2B space, it might be somebody you’ve never heard of, but 1,000 people think that he or she knows everything. mean, is that kind of micro audience pretty significant?

Nick Bennett (01:43.484)

Absolutely. Yeah. And I think that’s the big thing in B2B. It’s not the million person follower counts that matter. It’s that kind of like 10,000 to 50,000 follower range. That is like the sweet spot in B2B.

John Jantsch (01:58.19)

In fact, would you go as far as saying, I know this is a blanket statement, so there’s holes in it, but would you go as far as saying that traditional celebrity endorsements really are not going to work in B2B?

Nick Bennett (02:10.414)

absolutely. I’ve

Nick Bennett (02:11.554)

seen B2B companies try to specifically at events and it just hasn’t worked, which is why I think so many people are turning to working with creators. And I should mention there is a difference between creators and influences. So everyone can become a creator. You and I are both creators, but not every creator has influence. in B2B, you shouldn’t self-dub yourself in influence. So just like B2C, people can do that because it’s just what is known, but there’s such a misunderstanding of

Nick Bennett (02:38.714)

what a creator and what an influencer is in B2B. And that’s everything that I’ve been trying to battle for the last couple of years.

John Jantsch (02:45.744)

Yeah, it’s really more than to get somebody excited. Like you bring to your CMO, we need to do influencer marketing in all sense. Like, no, you know, that’s not for us, right?

Nick Bennett (02:54.908)

Exactly.

John Jantsch (02:57.327)

So what are some of the best practices or strategies that B2B marketers should employ?

Nick Bennett (03:02.362)

Yeah, well, I think it’s figuring out what are the outcomes that you want to achieve. And so when you think about, know, hey, I’m going to deploy this as a tactic because it’s interesting. Creators and influencers can be used as its own channel, but it can also be used as a tactic within other channels that you’re already running, like events and social and things like that. So I think it’s understanding what are, what does success mean for us?

Nick Bennett (03:29.742)

in aligning your goals around that. So when I think of like, what are the core KPIs of what success actually means, it could be engagement metrics. So again, if you’re going to go on LinkedIn, for example, and partner with people to drive brand awareness, you care about the likes, the comments, the shares, how many people are driving traffic to my website. If you care about reaching impressions, hey, I’m trying to get into manufacturing, tech for manufacturing. It’s like, I care about

Nick Bennett (03:58.588)

the size of the audience reach within that specific industry. Then you’ve got the lead gen side, which is like, all right, number of inquiries, signups, pipeline growth. Like you could use that for a PLG motion. And then revenue impact. Are you directly or influencing sales as someone that is promoting a service? Cause it’s not like B2C where it’s like, Hey, go buy this, you know, $20 hair straightener. It’s, Hey,

Nick Bennett (04:22.298)

you don’t go buy this $50,000 piece of tech that you’re going to use in your stack. It’s a big difference. And so a lot of people, unfortunately, are promoting stuff and they’re not using it. And so you build trust with your audience and then you promote stuff and they believe you. And it just leaves a lot of people disappointed. So when I look to partner with brands or I’m working to build programs,

Nick Bennett (04:46.3)

you have to use the product. I’m not saying you have to use it for years, but you can’t just go into a partnership without using the product.

John Jantsch (04:54.064)

So you mentioned different metrics, so there would be different objectives possibly, right? I mean, somebody might want to create awareness. like, I’m going to sponsor this podcast so people start hearing about us. Or I’m going to sponsor this techie webinar because I want to create demand. mean, would that be a true statement?

Nick Bennett (05:16.056)

Absolutely. And I think it’s a great way when you can figure out, multiple, it’s, you don’t want to silo things. So when you can make it part of a larger part of your integrated strategy, makes sense. I’ll give you good example of that. I had an old podcast called the anonymous market and it’s no longer going, but Google actually used to sponsor that podcast. And I was like, all right, why would Google want to sponsor my podcast? You know, it’s, it was Google cloud and we ended up integrating it into a lot of different pieces. So there was the podcast, there was the social media aspect.

John Jantsch (05:39.12)

Yeah.

Nick Bennett (05:45.808)

There was actually webinars. So it was a much more than like, hey, we just want to sponsor the podcast to get more awareness out there. Like they don’t need the awareness. They were trying to tap into specific audiences in certain parts of the, the U S actually.

John Jantsch (06:00.048)

Yeah, yeah. So what have you found are some of the challenges or limitations of B2B? So we talked a little bit about best practices, but what are some of the realities in some of the limitations for B2B companies?

Nick Bennett (06:15.3)

I think a lot of people just still don’t know how this works or how that you should be operating or building a program from this. Like so, so often I talk to CMOs and founders and they’re like, I want to do influence of marketing. And I’m just like, okay, like, what do you want to do? And they’re just like, I don’t know. I want to do a LinkedIn post. Now the issue is you’re going to go partner with say five people, do a LinkedIn post. You’re going to get some hype that, that day. Maybe you’re launching on product taunts or you’re doing new product, whatever it is. The issue is.

Nick Bennett (06:43.77)

a lot of brands don’t do anything with that content after they have that lightning strike for that one day. And then everything goes away because just like, just like real life social media, like all that stuff disappears in about 24 hours. And so then what, and I think that’s the biggest issue is so many CMOs and marketing leaders are disappointed in their spend because they’re like, it’s not, it’s not impacting sales. It’s not impacting, you know, signups. And it’s just like, you can’t just do a one-off thing and think it’s going to change the world here. This is something that

Nick Bennett (07:13.402)

It has to become a program and it has to be bought in from the top down and be part of your integrated strategy.

John Jantsch (07:20.814)

Yeah, and really, you know, I’ve heard a lot of people talk about, know, especially in B2B, that you’re not looking at this as an endorsement. It’s more of a partnership, right?

Nick Bennett (07:29.436)

And you nailed that word partnership because that’s still what people still aren’t sure. just like, I want to do a one-off thing. It’s very transactional. And one of the things that I work on in championing it as well is people first. it’s like, okay, people first, the core of what people first actually means is partner driven, ecosystem driven. so creators and influencers play a big piece of that.

Nick Bennett (07:53.542)

But it’s still, there’s so much education that still has to be done because we’re very much in the early adopter phase, at least in tech for B2B.

John Jantsch (08:02.534)

So I’ll put you on the spot a little bit. Can you think of a, could you give an example of what, you know, what a typical successful campaign like this would look like? mean, pick whatever medium or you don’t have to even name names. You can even just kind of give us a, you know, a fake case study.

Nick Bennett (08:19.386)

Yeah, no, no, I have a real one I can use for sure. So we actually partnered with a company called Path Factory. They’re in the of kind of content repository world, but they were building an AI product, know, surprise, everyone’s building an AI product. And it was like an, exactly. And it was an AI chat bot. And so they were launching that, but they had to launch it.

John Jantsch (08:21.669)

Okay.

John Jantsch (08:34.086)

Even if they aren’t.

Nick Bennett (08:44.302)

literally in a two week window because they were acquiring another company and they needed like they needed this product to fit in here before they announced the acquisition of that company. So they came to us and one of the things they said, you hey, we need you to build the whole brand narrative positioning messaging, but we also want you to build an influencer program to be able to get the awareness out there because it was kind of like a PLG play. So it was part PLG, like they needed the signups, but they also needed the awareness piece of it.

John Jantsch (08:48.848)

Mm.

Nick Bennett (09:13.764)

And within a week, I was able to get them about 15 people. were like, listen, I have a $5,000 budget on what we can spend on paying these creators to create LinkedIn posts. was solely LinkedIn. And I went out, found these people, got their approval, built this entire program. We went live and it was one of their most successful launches that they’ve had. And it’s actually still going really, really well. And now they’ve actually adopted an entire.

Nick Bennett (09:39.63)

influencer program and they’re hiring an actual person to like manage this all for them now. But we did the whole thing in two weeks from like start to finish and it was like, I don’t recommend anyone do that. with what we had to do, I’m very happy with the results.

John Jantsch (09:48.688)

Yes.

John Jantsch (09:52.72)

Yeah, right.

John Jantsch (09:58.726)

So one of the challenges probably is fit, AT &T sponsored my, I’m just gonna say this, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say it, AT &T sponsored my podcast for about a year and I wasn’t really a fan of AT &T, frankly. I probably wasn’t a great fit. I mean, I didn’t do anything to tarnish the brand or anything, but I didn’t have any passion for it. How much of that do you believe needs to be there?

John Jantsch (10:28.518)

Does somebody need to be a champion or does somebody need to, or is it basically, if they’re going to pay me, I’ll say what they need me to say.

Nick Bennett (10:36.444)

Well, the issue is there’s so many people that are now under the mindset where, if they’re going to pay me, I didn’t realize I could get paid for this type of stuff, which is, which is hurting a lot of the original people that have been doing this like me and others. Exactly. And that’s the issue because then it’s, it’s false advertising because you don’t use the product. You’re promoting it. I’m going to go buy that. And then I’m going to be mad that, you know, Joe told me to go buy this and now it’s a terrible product, but

John Jantsch (10:44.024)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (10:48.624)

Yeah, they were just like, I love this product. You should see it. Right.

John Jantsch (11:01.168)

Right?

Nick Bennett (11:04.9)

In my mind, and what I tell everyone that I work with, and even in the book, it’s like, you have to believe in the mission. Maybe it’s not the mission of the company, but the mission of the category. Because if you’re not a believer of the category and what you’re looking to solve, then you’re never going to be bought into anything. And like I said, you have to use the product. Because as a marketer myself, I don’t partner with any brand where they won’t let me use the product. And I want to see how I can fit it into my regular life.

John Jantsch (11:28.974)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Nick Bennett (11:32.132)

I did just one recently with this company called Tango, small company, but they basically, what they do is they help you create, you know, SOPs for different. Yeah. And fantastic product. And so like, I started using it because I’m just a two person business and we have worked with a lot of contractors and I started to map out all these things. I was like, wow, this is fantastic. And I feel like it comes across so more human, so more authentic in the content that you create when you can actually use it.

John Jantsch (11:38.66)

Yeah, yeah, I’m familiar with it, yeah, Yep.

John Jantsch (11:58.192)

Yeah, yeah, no, I agree 100%. In the early days of influencer marketing, it was, know, people were used to controlling the message, right? And so in the early days, people were very freaked out by the fact that, somebody else is gonna, who’s not an employee is gonna talk about us and we’re gonna pay him. You know, how much risk or exposure, you know, do people still feel is a part of this?

Nick Bennett (12:07.1)

Thank

Nick Bennett (12:22.448)

I don’t think there’s much anymore. Every brand that I’ve worked with and talked to, they have ultimately write a refusal on like, does the content go live or not? But they are lessening the guardrails and they say, listen, I want you to bring your creative freedom. That’s why we’re paying to work with you. We don’t wanna dictate what you should write because that’s not human. so every…

Nick Bennett (12:46.384)

I’m working on one right now where I’m going through and I’m kind of thinking about it and I sent it to the brand and they were like, well, we want you to spin it more like this. And I was just like, no, that’s not how this works because you’re trying to dictate my point of view, which is that that’s not how I feel. And so we actually ended up ending the partnership because they were trying to put words in my mouth a little bit and I didn’t want those words to come out.

John Jantsch (13:05.851)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (13:10.01)

Yeah. Yeah. I personally, we do a lot of sponsors on this show and I personally like it when a brand says, here’s the talking points, but we want you to say it like you would say it as opposed to read this script. I, and personally, I know for a fact, comes off more authentic when I just make it up. Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Bennett (13:29.756)

100%. I’m the same way. I feel like

Nick Bennett (13:31.787)

it’s it’s so much more conversational versus like, you robotic. It’s like, it’s just like, you know, AI has made content creation so easy today. It’s so easy to spot on social media what’s written with AI and not. So we don’t, we don’t need that when people are, you know, doing podcasts, webinars, things like that.

John Jantsch (13:44.358)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (13:50.372)

Yeah. Yeah. Especially the comments on LinkedIn. Those are painful. What about the international market? I know that, you again, sometimes, you know, you’re in your little bubble, you know, who the people in your space are, you know, you start going out globally. How do you find those? How do you connect? You know, maybe in some cases, you know, you’ve got obviously language, you know, issues or not issues, but challenges. So how, you know, how do you, how do brands kind of

Nick Bennett (13:52.86)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (14:20.154)

manage that if that’s goal.

Nick Bennett (14:23.534)

Yeah, I think it’s something they’re still trying to figure out. There’s one brand in particular called Cognizm. They’re like a data provider in the UK, and they do influencer marketing really, really well. They’ve been doing it for like seven years. Fantastic job. They have an entire program. But they were running into a similar issue where they were like, it’s hard to find people globally if you’re based in another part of the world. And it’s just like, what if you know…

John Jantsch (14:30.704)

Mm-hmm.

Nick Bennett (14:49.936)

The way I talk about something is not the same way that you talk about something. How do you get that to come across in a different tone? but marketplaces have made it really easy to, find people to partner with. And that was something that was always lacking in B2B and B2C. You could go find influencer marketing, you know, marketplaces like, Hey, I want to find someone that talks about AI and tech. Boom. Here’s a hundred people that I could go partner with through this platform. Now B2B hasn’t really had that up until about.

Nick Bennett (15:19.67)

six months or eight months ago. So many have tried, but they couldn’t figure out how to monetize that. And now a few brands have created these marketplaces where they play matchmaker. And they pair, regardless of where you are in the world, you with different types of creators based on the filters that you want. And I’ve been waiting for this for so long because outside of that, you just had to go on LinkedIn or X and find these people and just send them a cold message.

Nick Bennett (15:46.714)

And these platforms have made it a lot easier to facilitate the outreach, to facilitate the campaign actually happening, the reporting, all of that stuff.

John Jantsch (15:56.304)

So let’s flip it around a little bit. I’ve been talking mostly about how businesses would use this. But if I’m a content creator and I think, hey, I want to get in on this influencer action, how do I get myself identified as a potential influencer?

Nick Bennett (16:09.946)

You just got to show up every single day. So I’ve been creating LinkedIn on LinkedIn now for five years, every single day. think most I’ve taken a couple of weeks off over the last five years, mostly around the holidays or if I went on vacation, but I have showed up every single day and it’s repetition, it’s consistency. think that all pays off. Like you don’t have to have the biggest number of followers. I only have like 53,000 followers, but I have an engaged audience of people that actually care what I have to say.

John Jantsch (16:15.002)

Right. Yeah.

Nick Bennett (16:39.308)

And again, what I’ve said has changed over those five years. When I started five years ago, I was a field marketer. was an event marketer for early stage tech companies in-house doing my thing. And I would talk about that. Then I started talking about account-based marketing and customer marketing. And then about a year and a half ago, went out on my own with my partner, who was my former CMO at our last company. And now we champion everything around People First and the creator economy and things like that. But again,

Nick Bennett (17:07.312)

I’ve got to a point where it doesn’t matter what I write or what I have to say. There’s going to be people that support me. I could say the sky is blue and it’s going to be still people that support me even though that adds no value, but it’s because I’ve done it so consistently over the last five years.

John Jantsch (17:21.69)

Yeah, so you’ve got to move beyond hobby, amateur, to GoPro. Would you say that it’s probably useful to pick a niche or to pick a point of view or to pick a very specific topic so that you can, you you may not have a million followers, but for people who do X, you you’re it.

Nick Bennett (17:25.198)

Yes.

Nick Bennett (17:44.38)

It’s a loaded question because there’s going to be people that will debate both sides of it. I personally will say yes, because for me, as a field marketer and event marketer originally starting, that was my niche and it was so impactful the amount of DMs I got from people that was like, hey, I can relate. Thank you. Now, there is some people that say, you don’t need to just talk about whatever you want.

John Jantsch (17:48.42)

Yeah, yeah.

Nick Bennett (18:08.92)

It’s again, going back to AI, AI has made it so easy to create content. You’re not going to stand out if you just talk about random stuff and you’re just starting out. You have to have a strong POV and you have to stand for something. And if you don’t stand for something and cannot kind of add your own spin to it, you’re just going to get lost in all those other people that just, you know, throwing up posts every once in a while.

John Jantsch (18:29.54)

Yeah, yeah, there’s no question. mean, you, you, you see it all the time. The people who have the most reactions, positive and negative, you know, are saying stuff that’s kind of polarizing. Right.

Nick Bennett (18:39.324)

Yeah, it’s

Nick Bennett (18:40.524)

you know, there’s there’s this guy out there. You know, he’s he’s fantastic person Adam Robinson He’s the founder of our RB to be and he always puts controversial stuff on LinkedIn and like he’ll start like LinkedIn like Beefs with people it’s so so interesting. Like there’s so many like LinkedIn beefs now but like he is very controversial and like there’s people that will go off like negatively in his stuff and positive but

John Jantsch (18:55.493)

Yeah.

Nick Bennett (19:05.68)

He gets so much engagement on every single one of his posts because people know like, Adam’s gonna post something that is gonna like set some people off.

John Jantsch (19:14.842)

Yeah, that’s funny. I often sometimes this can come off as a lame question, but I often like to kind of wrap up interviews with talking about giving you an opportunity to talk about like what’s next? What’s coming? You know, for what’s the future look like?

Nick Bennett (19:28.764)

Yeah, you know, honestly, I should say, you know, I had no intention of ever writing a book when the publisher reached out and was like, hey, you want to write a book? This was a year and a half ago. And I was like, not really. And they convinced me to do it. And I missed so many deadlines. I have three small kids. I have a six year old and 19 month old twin girls. And so I was like,

John Jantsch (19:46.296)

wow.

Nick Bennett (19:50.148)

yeah, you know, I’ll do it. And then I missed multiple deadlines. They canceled the book on me twice. They’re like, you’re not taking this seriously enough. was like, well, hold on. I never wanted to write the book. You guys stepped on trying to push me to do this. And so finally, you know, we’re here and it’s out. like, I will never write another book, at least not like a published book, maybe self-published. they are like, are on you like hawks. And for me, like, you know, tack and just everything that we’re working on, like,

John Jantsch (19:58.798)

Yeah.

Nick Bennett (20:19.888)

I’ll continue to champion the creator economy, but like the broader umbrella of that is people first and how do we get people to think about the company first mindset, which was like the old school way of doing things and moving to more of a human way, which again, creators and influencers plays a huge piece in, but that’ll be everything that kind of, you at least for the next couple of years that I continue to push forward.

John Jantsch (20:43.408)

Well, and I think we’re, you know, I’ve been talking a lot about, think we’ve been, you know, we see change every year, but I think the pace of change increases every year. And I think AI has just thrown gasoline on that, certainly. And so I think that what you’re talking about is I think we’re going to see, I’ve been doing this 30 years, and I think we’re going to see a return to that, you know, people, I mean, that’s, you know, all the control is going to the buyer.

John Jantsch (21:11.59)

in the marketing world and I think that the human connection is going to be more important than ever.

Nick Bennett (21:17.18)

100%. Well, and one more piece to that is like, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t use AI. I use AI every day. Now, it’s going to be, know, so many people, marketers are afraid that AI is going to take their job. No, it’s going to be the marketers that learn how to master AI to use it to do the tasks that they don’t want to do. That’s who’s going to take your job.

John Jantsch (21:34.726)

That’s right.

John Jantsch (21:36.407)

Yeah, yeah. That’s what I tell people all the time. It’s not AI. It’s another marketer who’s just as strategic as you that’s using it. Yeah, absolutely. Well, Nick, I appreciate you taking a moment to stop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Is there somewhere you’d invite people to connect with you and find a copy of B2B Influencer Market?

Nick Bennett (21:38.48)

you

Nick Bennett (21:44.323)

Exactly.

Nick Bennett (21:57.338)

Yeah, connect with me on LinkedIn. I post a lot about it there. I have a bunch of links where you can find it on Amazon, Kogan Page, Barnes and Noble, all those websites. So find me on LinkedIn, DM me. Always happy to chat with new people and appreciate you having me.

John Jantsch (22:14.298)

You bet. Again, thanks for taking a few moments and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Nick Bennett (22:19.898)

Absolutely.


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