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Connect with John
https://theultimatemarketingengine.com/
https://ducttapemarketing.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ducttapemarketing/

Connect with Russ
https://russjohns.com/
https://thepiratesyndicate.com/
https://nextstepnext.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nextstepnext/

Audio digitally transcribed by Descript

Introduction: [00:00:00] Welcome to the #PirateBroadcast™, where we interview #interestingpeople doing #interestingthings. Where you can expand your connections, your community, #kindnessiscool and #smilesarefree. Let’s get this party started.

Russ Johns: [00:00:10] Hey, welcome aboard pirates. And thank you so much for joining us. If you're joining this broadcast in the future, if you're listening to another platform or whatever platform you choose to consume your content on, welcome aboard today. We have John Jantsch from Duct Tape marketing fame, and we're going to be talking about a new book that he's going to be releasing here shortly and just life in general. And some of the things that your business needs to know. In the marketing media and content creation world. So welcome, John, how are

John Jantsch: [00:00:44] you doing today? I'm just great. I'm in  mountain time zone, so while we're recording this, it's bright and early for me, at least.

Russ Johns: [00:00:50] I'm in Arizona, so it's Pacific standard time since we don't change.

John Jantsch: [00:00:55] Whatever that means, I don't know what time it is in Arizona ever.

Russ Johns: [00:00:58] Yeah. Right now it's Pacific standard time. And the reality is we're up and we're going, and we're starting the day. And one of the things that I want to make sure that I have at least highlight is I got to know you through your book, Duct Tape Marketing, and it was one of those adventures that just really, I thought it nailed it. It was very simple, clear, cut, concise. And I want to go back to the backstory and how you got into marketing, how you got into media and what was the seed that got planted in your life that got you down this path.

John Jantsch: [00:01:33] Well I won't go back to second grade or anything, but it is a long story. I've actually owned my own marketing consulting firm for a little over 30 years now. I got out of college, went to work for an ad agency for about five years and. After about five years thought any dummy can run a business. How hard could it be? So yeah, no plan at all. Of course I knew I could hustle work. And so that's pretty much what I did in the beginning. I hustled projects from friends, network people I knew, big projects, little projects, big companies, little companies, didn't really matter. Essentially making it up as I was going, but somewhere along the line, I landed a couple of small business clients that really  they didn't have marketing. They didn't have a marketing person, they saw me as their marketing department. It's trendy now to call it fractional CMO. I guess that's what, I guess that's what I was for them. But I also found it really tough. It was a hard model to price. It was like, they would take 60 hours a week if you'd give it to them because that's what they needed. And so in the traditional fashion,  they didn't have the same budgets or even attention span. I thought one day, what I need to do is create a way where I can walk into small businesses. I want to work with small businesses, but they're really frustrating. So I had to create a way where I could walk in and say, look, here's what I'm going to do. Here's what you're going to do. Here's the results we hope to get. By the way, here's what it costs. And boy, like the first three times that came out of my mouth, they said, where do I sign? And I was like maybe I'm onto something here because what I was trying to do was solve my frustration. And I think what I did is tapped into still what is today? One of the greatest frustrations with small businesses, it's actually as a small business owner, hard to buy marketing services and it's gotten harder. Everybody's selling the new thing, the new tactic, the idea of the week, a piece of the puzzle. And it's really frustrating and overwhelming for a small business owner who just wants to go out there and do the work that they love to do to figure this marketing stuff out. So this idea of somebody walking in saying, look, I'm going to install a marketing system and you're going to know what it costs was kind of music to their ears. That was really the basis of what I started writing about. Duct tape marketing came out in 2006. Can you believe that long ago? And it really, it was a distillation of this idea that marketing is a system that starts with strategy before tactics. And if you nail that part really the tactics that come along that are going to be new, the platforms that come along won't really matter so much, as long as you've got the right point of view about what you're trying to do. That writing that I was doing, the book itself startedtracking other independent marketing consultants and agencies. And today we have in addition to the writing that I do we have an agency that does work with small business clients installing the Duct Tape Marketing system. And I've got a network of about 150 independent marketing consultants and agencies around the world who license our methodology, and frankly, train and collaborate together as, as much as as anything. So we're installing the Duct Tape Marketing system on any given day and thousands of small businesses around the world now.

Russ Johns: [00:04:27] Wow. That's inspirational because I've been in and out of the advertising for decades. And I started in outdoor advertising and the small business model is completely different. And like you said, one of the things that they struggle with is just making sure they have the right amount of support, making sure that they're not spending so much and not getting the results and how much do I need and what, where do I need to grow it? And content marketing comes out and then I need a blog and I need a website. And I know you've had this experience where we went through this process of, I don't need a website because that's not where my customers are. And then I don't need email because that's not what my customers are using. And now we're in this arena where I don't need social because that's not where my customers are. And so what do you think about that process or that mindset?

John Jantsch: [00:05:23] Yeah I've certainly faced it all because I really, we work with the traditional, real small businesses is what I like to call them. And certainly they are inherently behind the curve in the digital space. And so a lot of the reason I came up with Duct Tape marketing as a metaphor and a name is I want to  take the mystery out of, I want to take the hype out of it and just say, look, Twitter is stupid. You're right. But here is a way that you can use one aspect of it to help grow your business. What are the ways that you can use any of these new tools, any of these new platforms to enhance the relationships you already have? If you start looking at it that way instead of, oh, this is the new hot place for me to find 60 year olds, on Tik TOK or something.  It's that mindset that I've had. And I think if you keep that kind of mindset, you really can then use that as a lens to look at any new tool. As opposed to saying, oh, here's what everybody else is doing. I guess that's what I need to do or not do.

Russ Johns: [00:06:23] Yeah. Yeah.  I don't need to chase the next shiny tool. I need to make sure that the tools I'm using are doing what I need done.

John Jantsch: [00:06:30] We spend, I frankly Russ spend more time telling people what not to do than what to do because it really is easy to chase the shiny new thing and what I'd like them to do is actually figure out who their best clients are and figure out how to do more with it. And that doesn't require Tik TOK or clubhouse or whatever it is. And I'm not saying that those tools wouldn't necessarily apply to certain instances but the real focus ought to be on how can we do more with what we've already got? Because I guarantee you experience tells me it's the only reason I can speak so strongly to this point, that 20% of your clients would like to do 10 times amount of business with you. And 20% of those people would like to do a hundred times more business with you if you would figure out how to blow them away. And if you spent your time there figuring out how to create a better experience, figuring out how to actually help them go from where they are today, to where they want to be. You won't have to look for any new business.

Russ Johns: [00:07:24] So how can we think about this process? Because what you're talking about is really important, and I want to make sure that we share this. How do you convert the marketing efforts and attempt to convert that into a customer experience? Cause that's so important.

John Jantsch: [00:07:41] Yeah, absolutely. And everybody talks about it. Again, you're right. It's for some people, it seems to be a mystery. What you need to start with is first off you need to look at customer experience, like who is your ideal client? Who do you get most of your profit with?  Who has the right problem that you actually solve, nobody else? Who can you actually add value to? If you start looking at those A clients, what are the characteristics about them? Where are they? What problem are you solving for them? That's really step one for us. But then you have to think in terms of an entire customer journey, it was very fashionable, still pretty fashionable in marketing circles to talk about a marketing funnel. And the problem with that is of course is so focused on getting the click, on getting the eyeball, on getting the sale, and then done. And so for us, the marketing journey has always been an hourglass metaphor or shape. Yes, the funnel aspect of finding people, eventually getting some portion of those people filtered because of the right people getting them to have enough trust so that they're willing to get out their wallet and exchange money for what you're going to provide for. But then it becomes to try, buy, repeat, refer for us. So the second half is really where the funnel then, if you think about it upside down, expands again. And yeah, if you simply look at those,  I'll repeat them again, those seven stages of  know, like, trust, try buy, repeat, and refer, and you start filling up each of those stages with processes, with content for the right stage or for the right point or questions that they have at each of those stages. If you just start building your entire business, your entire marketing around filling those stages, you're going to create a much more complete customer journey. To your real question, once someone becomes a buyer. In that stage, what is the, what's the transaction look like first off? Is it pleasant? Because that's the first place people start dropping the ball. What's the new customer experience or orientation or onboarding or whatever you call it look like? What's the process to actually review results with them so that you can show them that they're actually getting the results. What's your communication rhythm look like? Probably the biggest complaint I hear with marketing companies is they do a good job of selling the thing, maybe they even do a good job of doing the work, but the client doesn't really know what's going on or they get these emailed reports that talk about how many hits that I've got. What does that mean or do for me and...

Russ Johns: [00:10:05] Please translate this for me.

John Jantsch: [00:10:07] Or just make it mean something that is a value. Is that a benefit? I don't know. Did that get me any business? I don't know. And so the companies that, that, that are really good at communicating, not only expectations, but results, that's part of the customer journey. And then of course having pre-built processes and campaigns. Here's what else we could do for you, or if nothing else, a process to discover what else we could possibly do for you. And then my favorite, in fact, I wrote an entire book about it having processes that that intentionally turn that love for you, into referrals or into advocacy as a final stage. So if you build that kind of complete end to end customer journey you are going to not only attract the right ideal customer, you are going to generate leads frankly from your complete customer journey.

Russ Johns: [00:10:56] I love that, and this isn't your first day at the rodeo you've had enough experience. You've had enough exposure to these  conversations, both on the business side and the agency side, because I know one of your models is helping a lot of agencies, owners improve their process and get this out and moving forward. And so I applaud you for that. I want to give a shout out to some of the individuals we've got joining us here, John, if you don't mind.

John Jantsch: [00:11:21] Of course not.

Russ Johns: [00:11:22] If you're joining us live and you have questions for John or you have questions or statements, or you want to shout out a few things, let us know. We have Marcia Reece, John was actually the originator of the original sidewalk chalk. So she's an awesome individual. She's actually on Amazon now, she's promoting a product that, that Staywell copper. And Hiett out of Houston, hi fellow pirates, especially Marcia. And Marcia says, I want to humbly thank all the #piratenation who reached out and kind message yesterday as I was released from Amazon prison. What a 10 month journey. Thanks to all of your encourage the support along the way. You're an amazing group. Thank you so much, Marcia. Really appreciate you and look forward to next steps. Cathi Spooner. Good morning, pirates. Marcia says right back at you Hiett one amazing pirate. Hiett says, congratulations now let's take it to the next level. Absolutely. Howard Kaufman, who is an awesome individual. He has the product ORL and it's an amazing mouth care product. The need to effectively map any marketing app back to your strategy, even if the concept and the execution are correct, you have to ask yourself.  Can you resource it too? So we all really all have busy lives and yes, HIett next level on steroids. Yes Sarathy is here. Thank you, sir. Cathi. Hi Russ and John, also everyone in this space. How is it going? It's going well. We got Elize in from South Africa. Good morning pirates. Happy Friday. Thank you so much for being here. Cathi Spooner says yes, taking notes. Great info for beginners. Absolutely. John is an absolute golden nugget of knowledge. And if you haven't purchased any of his books or any of his material, please go out and learn more about John. He's an individual that just has a wealth of knowledge that you can learn from. John, I want to talk about the next chapter. You're going to be releasing a new book here and  I want to make sure that we touch base on this before we get away too far on a subject.

John Jantsch: [00:13:33] Sure. In September of 2021, so those of you live, obviously it's available for pre-order or whenever you're listening to this, if it's after September, 2021, it'll be available anywhere you buy books. I actually, for those of you on camera, if I can do this, it's so hard over backwards, but up here in the this little blue book is the what authors call advanced reader copies that the publisher puts out. So I do have at least a visual for you. It's called the Ultimate Marketing Engine Five Steps to Ridiculously Consistent Growth. This book in some ways is a little bit of a compilation of my 30 years of work, but also an evolution of Duct Tape Marketing, The Referral Engine, SEO for Growth, some of my other books. It's really an evolution of my thinking brought into it. I will say that I signed the contract for this book with my publisher Harper Collins in March of 2020. Anybody remember... and I was like, oh boy, what am I going to write about now? And I certainly didn't want to write. How to market in the time of COVID. Nobody wants that book. But question that what I saw going on then colored some of what ended up in this book. One of the things that really struck me amongst my clients, some were in tough shape just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, the wrong industry. But I also saw a lot of my clients during this period and it wasn't just because the demand for what they did happen to take a fortunate uptick. It was that they got closer to their customers. Their customers wanted them to survive. And  this has always been true. But I think the pandemic and the tough times of 2020 really shown a very bright light on the companies that really thrive are ones  that mean something in the lives of their customers. And that idea really informed a lot of what's in this book. Probably the most innovative new ideas  in this book is something that I accidentally have been working on for 30 years. I didn't realize, but I'm such a systems thinker that everything I do is systems. But I'm introducing something I call the customer success track, and it's something that I've developed over the years that we had so many customers that, that came to us as we started talking about early on.  Website was non-existent or, it was a one-page site. They had no content, SEO was something that they didn't understand or had paid a bunch of money for and got nothing for it. And so a lot of businesses that we work with come to us in what I call foundational stage.  They have those foundational needs from their marketing, particularly when it comes to the digital landscape. But as we worked with somebody, then it was time for lead generation because now we fixed those gaps and then it was time to scale and take it to the next level. And I realized over time and trial and error that we had stages that we worked with businesses and in those stages had certainly characteristics. Those stages had their own challenges when they were in that stage. If you don't have a website, it's very hard today to generate leads particularly for local businesses. And that if we could move somebody from stage one to stage two, that there was a promise that went along with that we could now generate business in advertising would now be effective, for example. And so in order to do that systematically and repeatably, we developed then milestones and tasks for each stage. And so we were able to say, do they have this? Have they done this? Yes or no? If the answer is no, here's the task. And what I came to realize as I transfer that sort of knowledge to a whole network of consultants, is that really any business can do that. What if we built our business to think of our customers more as members. And I don't mean a membership model.  That can be a good model, but I'm talking more about the point of view that our whole goal is to not create a transaction, but is to create a transformation that we figure out where our business is, where our customers are today and where they want to be. And we built our entire business. We build this customer success track, but we also build our new offerings. We build all of our ways in which we work with our customers based on that being our mission. And what I've found is that companies that can embrace this idea, it completely became a strategy for, yes, it became a great tactic internally, but it also became their mission. It became how they trained. It became how they documented systems. It became how they hired actually were for people that had that mindset. And so I really think that there's a lot of marketing tactics in this book, but if I can get the world to embrace this idea as customers, as members I think the world of small business is going to be a much more joyful place.

Russ Johns: [00:17:53] I think I love that idea, that concept, because once you have, ...it's like Kevin Kelly's a thousand true fans concept. It's really about how you can get people together in a community. And I'm a huge fan of community, #piratenation you see some of the people that have joined here and it's really about how can I serve the individuals in this community to the best of my ability with the products I have, the services I deliver and some of the things that I can help them solve in their world. And I think it's so important for business owners to think about what problem do I solve and how do I communicate that? Because as a marketing individual, you know what it's like, okay. Nail your niche, nail your message, make sure that you're communicating to the right people with the right message. So the expectations are in place and that's not always, it's simple, but not easy. And as marketers, we have to learn how to market ourselves and business owners across all levels have to learn that part process.

John Jantsch: [00:18:56] One of the entire steps of this book, it's five steps. One of the steps is all about figuring out the problem you really solve because I sell essentially, when it comes down to it, I sell marketing strategy, but nobodyever wakes up and says, I think I need some marketing strategy today, I'm going to call John. What I really sell is I'm tired of overwhelmed. I'm tired of not knowing what works. I'm tired of every time the phone rings, people are asking for a deal. I'm tired of why my competitors show up in the Google three-pack and I don't.  Those are the problems I solve. And by the way, I solve it with marketing strategy, but nobody wants marketing strategy. They want their problem solved.

Russ Johns: [00:19:32] Yeah, just solve my problem so I can focus on what I do best. Let me stay in my genius zone, so I don't have to deal with this other stuff.

John Jantsch: [00:19:39] Yeah. And sometimes it's just simply a matter of anybody who can articulate the problem. Cause a lot of times, a lot of times people come to me and their problem that they say is, I just want more customers. But what they really want.... Certainly they want more customers, but what the real challenge is, they just have no clarity about message. They have no control of their marketing. They have no confidence on should I do this? Or should I do that? We solve those things. We articulate that's actually what you're feeling. And that's, what's partly leading you to not having enough customers and all of a sudden, it's I want to work with you.

Russ Johns: [00:20:10] Yeah. Yeah. And  even if there's 10 people that can do the exact same thing, the person that can articulate it and have the right connection with the individual usually gets the opportunities to do that.

John Jantsch: [00:20:24] That's because the other nine are saying we're the biggest, longest running oldest, most synergetic, solution for your problem. And it's what's my problem.

Russ Johns: [00:20:33] Let's define the problem. First. Wendy says  in our business of the entertainment industry, building audiences, is now as much about how we deliver as now, how much we inspire them to support each other. Any thoughts about building up customers that we never directly meet?

John Jantsch: [00:20:52] If you want to take that Russ or you want me to take on that.

Russ Johns: [00:20:56] Go ahead, John.

John Jantsch: [00:20:57] Why don't you ever meet. There's lots of ways to meet people today. But I have clients that I've had for years in other countries that I just I have not physically sat in a room with them. But one of the things that we do and I'm a big proponent of, I have a whole, the in step five, which is essentially about referrals in the book. I list lots of ways for building community. And one of the simplest ways is how can you bring them in. Could you bring your customers together who have in many cases have similar challenges, similar problems that they're trying to solve, even if they're in different industries. If they're business owners they're gonna have some more problems. Put together round tables with them and facilitate discussions about, pick a topic. This week, or this month, we're going to talk about how you've addressed hiring, whatever the topic might be. It doesn't have to be related to your products and services by the way. And what you're going to do is  I have a network of consults and we bring them together all the time community. I'm doing training all the time. And I will say that when we bring people together and no matter how many times I say something, if one of their peers actually says it too, it's brilliant. And any of that that you can do so that they realize I'm not alone. I have the same challenges. Oh, wait, this is how you challenged it. Or this is how you faced it. Why don't we get together and hold each other accountable next week for solving that. It's community building one-on-one but man, does it work.

Russ Johns: [00:22:15] Yeah. And Wendy, she's in the film industry. So international film and TV audiences are hard to wrap our arms around. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think still for myself, this is, maybe the person with the hammer is always looking for the nail.  Maybe it's just the idea of, for me it's community, it's building the community around your subject, whatever subject that is, build an audience around the idea. And the effort that you're going through to solve a problem or announce a product, or, even a film, you build a community that allows you to get the buzz out there, make sure that people know about it. Make sure that more people know about it. And there's always this idea of viral and which is very short term, quick flash in the pan kind of thing for small business owners. That's not necessarily where they want to go. They want to go consistent. I want the same business. Cause if you all of a sudden had 150 new customers next week in your business, some businesses wouldn't survive that. So we've got to be cautious about what we do,

John Jantsch: [00:23:18] There's another one final point on the whole community thing. It just makes your customers so much stickier. We have my network of consultants.  Basically  in the first year, we train them everything I know, give them all the systems, we give them all the tools, but they stick around for nine, 10 years now because they get so connected to each other. They definitely stay for the people. And I think there's an element of that in any way that you can bring people together.

Russ Johns: [00:23:40] Yeah. I love that idea. I have been focusing recently on lead generation because so many times, and I'm sure that it's one of the steps in your book. I think you just mentioned step five is.

John Jantsch: [00:23:54] It's really about referrals and community. Yeah.

Russ Johns: [00:23:56] And  I'm a fan of video, of course. And I've been in different areas of marketing and podcasting and media and content creation primarily, and it's really evolved and continued to expand. And I think if you just focus on a couple of key elements, that's where you can really shine and niche down and provide the best possible outcome for business owners. And like you said, it's all in the way that you solve their problem and communicate what the problem actually is.

John Jantsch: [00:24:27] And keep talking to them. A couple of the ways that, that we find, I've done dozens of really solid core message strategies with clients by interviewing them. Because they know the problem you solve more than, probably in fact another thing that we do now rely heavily on the last five years or so it's become a great resource. Is Google reviews. If you're one of those businesses and pretty much every industry is today. That is getting or should be getting the reviews. A lot of times the actual content, the actual words, you're happy customers there that are leaving five star reviews in many cases voluntarily add to Google. Sometimes there's some great phrases. In there that you should be using, if not for your core message, I would contend that it should be above the fold. We show up when we say we're going to, we clean up the jobs site, every time that kind of stuff should be on your website, above the fold, but they're also going to start articulating what they got, that they didn't get other places. And those can be great email, subject lines that can be great blog, post topics. So really mine those reviews and make it a habit of talking to your customers. Asking them what they, what you do that others don't do and don't let them stop it. You provide good service because that doesn't add much value. Ask them to tell you a time when you provided good stuff, the materials are always handy. Yeah. A story about what good service looks like to them. And listen intently for those kinds of emotional words that, that come up. That's what you should be. That's what you should be communicating to those people who first meet you.

Russ Johns: [00:25:56] I'm going through that process right now. I'm developing a program, John, that I want to help more business owners. Make better connections using video. And so going through that and articulating what the problem is not everybody sees it as a problem. In articulating and defining w what problem I'm solving or helping them solve and generating a process in the system. Cause I love systems as well. I'm right there with you.  It's not an easy process.

John Jantsch: [00:26:26] No, it's not and sometimes we get very focused on, we know the benefits of this. And so we're selling here's what this will do for you, which is it's human nature for anything, especially something we've developed with  a program, hours, years, of putting yourself into that kind of thing. And what you have to do is, what's the problem people have with me networking with connecting, what's that costing them, those kinds of things. And then you can find a way to slide your solution into solving that problem as opposed to making the assumption about of course, this is great. Everybody needs video because of blah, blah, blah. They're not listening at that point.

Russ Johns: [00:26:59] John, thank you so much for joining us today. I just want to make sure that people know how to connect and receive your information. Your book is going to be out in September, so go out and pre-order, where's the best place that they can connect with you.

John Jantsch: [00:27:14] Yeah, so if you don't mind, since you asked people to pre-order, I'll give them an incentive for doing so. I've created a free companion course. So it's six videos and worksheets that actually go along with the book. So even prior to getting the book, you can actually start doing doing some work. And if you pre-order the book, so obviously before September, you can get that companion course for free right away. To do that, just go to the ultimatemarketingengine.com/course, and it'll give you instructions on how to pre-order, but then also how to come back and claim and enroll in your free course as well. But if you just want to find out what I'm doing, I have a podcast, newsletter, lots of blog posts. It's just ducttapemarketing.com.

Russ Johns: [00:27:55] That's awesome. Thank you so much for thanks for joining us. We can talk about this all day, John, and nerd out on marketing, but I know that you have things to do, and hopefully you'll get on a bike this weekend.

John Jantsch: [00:28:06] I actually am going fishing tomorrow. Fly fishing is another bad habit I've picked up since moving to Colorado. And probably a bike ride Sunday or Monday, for sure.

Russ Johns: [00:28:15] Awesome. Awesome. Thank you everyone for joining us. If you found this content or at least a slice of it vauable, please like, comment, share, subscribe to YouTube or any other social media that you're on. And also. Share the podcast out. This is a valuable piece of information. John shares nuggets of knowledge. His book is coming out. We want to put a lot of effort into supporting John and the pirates here and the community. And as always, we do this because #kindnessiscool, #smilesarefree and we want you to #enjoytheday.

Take care. Don't go away.

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