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John Jantsch (00:00): Today's episode is brought to you in part by Success Story, hosted by Scott D Clary and brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network. Success Story is one of the most successful, useful podcasts in the world. They feature Q and A sessions with successful business leaders, keynote presentations and conversations on sales, marketing, business, startups and entrepreneurship. A recent episode had Terry Jones, the CEO of Travelocity and the chairman of kayak.com. Talking all about disrupting existing industries with technologies so much for us to, to think about and learn in that episode. So listen to this Success Story podcast, wherever you get your podcast.

John Jantsch (00:54): Hello, and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Kimberly A. Brown. She is a career in leadership development expert, a speaker and podcast host, whose mission is to empower women and people of color in the workplace. Her personal professional development company manifest yourself, provides in-person and virtual workshops, trainings, and coaching to professionals looking to lead a dynamic career and life. So Kimberly, welcome to the show.

Kimberly Brown (01:26): Thank you so much for having me.

John Jantsch (01:28): So we are just fi you and I are recording this in January of 2022. And upon when people listen, uh, to this, we are just finishing up national mentoring month and we are getting ready to enter black history months. So I feel like there's a bit of a, of crossroads for you for you because you do a lot of teaching around mentoring. And, and as I stated in your profile, you certainly, uh, work to help empower persons of color in the workplace. So maybe talk a little bit about kind of the crossroad of those crossroads of those two ideas or those two. No, definitely monthly celebrations.

Kimberly Brown (02:01): Yes. I'd even go as far as to say that, I feel like Q1, I think from mentoring month black history month and women's history month, they're probably some of my busiest month because when we think about when we take the intersection of mentoring studies show that women and people of color, one of the reasons why it's so hard for them to navigate the world of work sometimes is because lack of mentorship and sponsorship, not having those critical relationships in the place that help them move, how they need to move, whether it's having the knowledge of the particular industry or the insider information to help them move through or how to navigate tough conversations with their boss, or like Carla Harris says that person who's bringing their paper into the room when you're not invited to the room that you're eligible then for promotions or folks are having those conversations about you. I, I totally agree. There's so much intersection there with all three of these months in Q1. yeah. For a lot

John Jantsch (02:52): Of the work that I may be asking you a question that is obvious, but I'd love to hear your kind of take on it. Why do you, why do you suppose both women and persons of color, particularly women of color, you know, have that disadvantage? What, what, what what's sort of inherent in creating that disadvantage?

Kimberly Brown (03:08): So there are so many things I think we can obviously go down bias, unconscious and conscious bias in the workplace. We can talk about microaggressions. We can talk about racism. We can talk about out sexism. We can a hundred percent touch upon those things because those are all true and all valid. I think on the other side of that, I think that there's a notion, especially for people of color in the workplace, that you kind of, you put your head down and you just work hard and the opportunity will come. That's all you have to do in my book, I talk a lot about my father and he is a veteran. He worked his way up from a male sort all the way to postmaster general in the state of Connecticut. And he always told me, you know, Kimmy just like, put your head down, work hard and you'll get there.

Kimberly Brown (03:47): But there's an element of playing the game that I think is missing for a lot of women and people of color where they may not understand what is the game to be played and how do I play it in a way that is authentic and doesn feel, um, icky right in the workplace. Like sometimes you have to learn how to play those things. And especially if you are first gen or your parents haven't operated, or your cousins, your brothers, your sisters, haven't operated in some of these traditionally corporate atmospheres. You may have no idea. Yeah. How to play that game. And that's where mentorship and sponsorship is so crucial.

John Jantsch (04:20): So would you go as far as saying everyone needs a

Kimberly Brown (04:24): Mentor? Yes. A hundred per 110%. I think I break down four different key relationships that any professional needs in the workplace in my book. But when we talk about mentorship and I think I'm gonna touch on sponsorship too, because I think that sometimes people think that it's exactly the same thing, but it's a little D I think mentors of the folks who've been there done that they're able to help you in your role because they've most likely been in your role or they're in a role you'd like to be in. So they're literally showing you the ropes because it's what they've done. And that is crucial to anyone at all times, to have someone who's been there, done that who can show you the ropes, the next piece, I think that people also look for sponsors for is that connectivity connecting to different jobs, opportunities to people.

Kimberly Brown (05:07): And that's where the word sponsorships are to come into play and sponsors like Carla Harris says, she's a MD at, um, Morgan Stanley. That's the person who could bring your paper into the room. Or I explain to my clients and say, that is the person who can literally pick you up from where you are and bring you to where you rightfully belong, because they have power and influence. I separate those two things because not every mentor has power and influence. When you need to determine where power is. I ask my clients to think about, well, who makes the final decision? Who can you go to in your organization? And they get to say yes or no, and it's done. And if that person has to go to someone else or someone else or someone else, then they may have some power. But in an ideal world, you want the person who could say yes or no. If they say to hire you, they say to move you forward or to interview you, that person's influence is high enough where it's a no brainer.

John Jantsch (06:01): I think in some cases it's probably pretty easy to identify a sponsor in some organizations, but I would think harder to identify somebody who could actually truly be a mentor. So how do you, how do you advise people go about five? You know? Cause I, I think sometimes people will go, oh, this person has power. I'll just have them be my mentor. But there's a skillset probably that is involved in being a mentor that goes beyond, you know, the scope of your power. So how do you identify that mentor?

Kimberly Brown (06:31): So when you're thinking about finding a mentor, I think a there's finding someone who's doing something you'd like to do. Yeah. Where are they? Are they doing something that is of interest to you, a role that you'd like to have, but then I think you have to almost interview your mentors. Mm-hmm, not everyone is going to be a great fit for a multitude of reasons. When I'm coaching mentors on how to be great mentors. One of the things I say is like, you need to be accessible. How much time do you have, where you're able to give back to this person? What are you looking to help that person achieve to do? Are you open to holding them accountable for certain things? Or are you looking to kind of just, you know, have some good conversations, all of that is fine, but it's important for the mentor to understand what it is they want.

Kimberly Brown (07:13): And it's important for the mentee to ask for what they need. So when you have these coffee chat conversations, invite a few people to have a brief coffee, 15 to 20 minutes to get to know them and see if they even have the time. Now you don't necessarily have to say, will you be my mentor? Cause that sometimes can feel a little heavy, but you can ask, like, would you mind if I follow up with you periodically about my own career and ask for some insights and advice and do they have the time? And do you feel like it's that fit for you? The relationship should feel, I don't wanna use the word safe, but it should feel comfortable, yet challenging, comfortable, where you're open to really sharing whatever it is you need to share. But challenging in that they are open to challenging the ways that you look at things, how you wanna do things and you feel that those are beneficial to your own growth.

John Jantsch (08:04): It it's become pretty popular in leadership circles to talk about coaching as a skill of a leader, uh, how would you dis between mentoring and coaching?

Kimberly Brown (08:15): So coaching, the big difference is that it's teaching you a fundamental skill mentoring sometimes could be more advice. It could be just like having conversations that make you feel better, helping you navigate and make some quick decisions. But coaching is physically teaching you how to do something. A tangible example I'd give to someone is when I was in higher education. So I was in higher ed for almost 10 years. In the final stage of interviews, you always had to do a presentation. Once you got to more senior roles, I had mentors who would be able to coach me and literally have me walk through that presentation. Give me feedback, review my deck in the workplace. I'm someone who always struggles with Excel. I don't care how many YouTube videos you tell me to watch. I have people who will help me do that pivot table, help me look at the data and put it into a presentation that is tangible. Teaching me how to do something versus a mentor. You may call them more to talk about like talk you down off the cliff. When you feel like you've got all the nerves or they help you identify roles, but it's not super tangible. Now a mentor can be a coach, but not every coach can be a mentor in the same way the sponsorship goes too. Yeah.

John Jantsch (09:24): All right. So let's uh, flip the role to the mentor. We've been talking mostly about the mentee. I think I, I, what, what are some tips for somebody to be successful as a mentor, particularly? I'm sure there are a lot of people that are out there saying, I know I should do this. I know I can do this, but you know, it's like, I've never done it before.

Kimberly Brown (09:41): So I would challenge people to think that you may be doing it already. Right? Many people in the workplace place feel that their manager is their mentor. And that may be the case for some, as much as it may not be for some others. But if you're looking to be a mentor toward, as someone, I would first start to seek out opportunities where you are. So are you involved in professional associations? Are there any rising stars that you see in your workplace? That's something I always tell people to look for. Is there someone in your workplace where you're like, Ooh, I know that they will be the next me where I know that with a little, little tweaking here, I know I can help them. You can identify those folks that reach out and say, would you be open to me helping you in any way, shape or form?

Kimberly Brown (10:23): When I worked in corporate America, I was big on doing that. I just love to help people not make the mistakes that I did in all honesty. And if I saw someone who I knew I could help a little bit, I would just reach out and say, Hey, would you be willing to having some conversations? Is there any way I can help you in your career? But I think the biggest thing that I would share is that accessibility is that you need to make sure that your mentee has access to you in whatever medium feels great. Some people are good for a text or a phone call, some want to have a quarterly chat, but they need to have that access us in order to learn from you. So if you don't have the bandwidth to give access, it's a little bit harder to mentor.

Kimberly Brown (11:02): And then I would probably recommend that if your company has fireside chats or they have great employee resource groups where you're able to do a, a talk that may be a great way to give back, you may not be open to or have the accessibility to have a whole bunch of mentees and try to make sure you don't take on too many. I think when you're in certain roles, especially I've seen so frequently women of color, if there's not many women of color at certain levels in the organization, there's one of you in how many people who want access, determine what is the best way for you to be able to give back in a way that feels good for you, but isn't too overwhelming.

John Jantsch (11:38): So we've been talking about a lot of the benefits to the mentee. I mean, do you find that there are tangible benefits, particularly that person is thinking, oh, do I really have time to to devote to this, that mentor that might be thinking of that? Do you find that there are tangible benefits back to the mentor?

Kimberly Brown (11:54): I think we'd have to like clarify tangible, but I'd say that it's always great to get back in an organization. Sure. It's, it's a great way to get back to younger talent. It's a great way to pipeline talent. Great. For succession planning from an organization standpoint, you could say that, but I'd also just say in all honesty, it feels really good. Yeah. I tell my mentees, the only thing they have to give back to me is their success. Like, and not in a, like, you need to say that Kimberly Brown helped you get here. but in a you listened to the advice that I gave, you took the feedback and you executed at a high level and it helped you make your next move. That's honestly, the reason why I'm in career leadership, the first time I saw someone get a job as a direct result of my coaching, I was hooked absolutely positively hooked.

John Jantsch (12:40): Yeah. I guess, I guess one of the benefits that I'm just using my personal experience is that particularly when you get in a leadership role and people keep telling you that, like you're a big deal. , you know, sometimes you lose empathy for what it was like. Yes. You know, when you were trying to keeps you grounded. It does. It does. I really think that's one of the, probably one of the benefits that I've seen. Is there a format I know you've talked about, do you have the time, what does the person need, but is there a format for doing this on a practical sense that you've seen, worked about? So meeting like monthly meetings or just very informal, or just call me when you need, I mean, is there a format that I I'm sure differs with every person, but is there a format you've seen that kind of seems to work pretty well?

Kimberly Brown (13:21): That's a really, really great question. And I think it also differs between every single mentee and what their actual needs are. So I could see someone who is gunning for a promotion, right? They know that this is their year. They need to, to put all this work in to make sure they get promoted in the end of the year. It probably would be beneficial for that person to check in once a month, probably once a month, if there is a goal in mind. But I think the mentee and the mentor need to just really work out what that looks like, whether it's quarterly meetings, monthly meetings, depending upon the goals, making sure that there's a little bit of access. If there's something really timely, I know I've called of my mentors. Like, Hey, I just got this opportunity. I have no idea what to do.

Kimberly Brown (14:00): Can you hop on a call this week? So I think it's just having a little bit of flexibility, just defining what that means. If you're fortunate enough, some companies, um, or organizations have formal mentoring programs. So they might outline that for you, that you talk once a month, you have a private community where you can with each other. But if you are just, I'm kind of developing your own mentoring relationship, it's just figure out what works for you. But I would just say consistent cadence of meetings. So you know that you can hold the person accountable.

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John Jantsch (15:55): trick question, direct report. Be your mentor.

Kimberly Brown (15:58): Can your direct report? You mean like reverse mentoring?

John Jantsch (16:01): No, no, I, I guess I said that the wrong way. Can your boss be your mentor? I think so.

Kimberly Brown (16:05): yeah. I hundred percent think so. I think sometimes it can get a little bit tricky because one of the things, when I talk about the key relationships that you need in my book, I always say that you need internal and external to your company. Right? Right. So there's a level of vulnerability that may not be appropriate for your boss, because remember your boss is doing your performance, appraisal. They all those salary decisions. There may be some things there that it may be better for you to have an external mentor or at least someone who's external to your immediate team or department.

John Jantsch (16:36): All right. So you basically, we started out saying that everyone should have a mentor, but I suspect you have an opinion on the necessity, particularly for black professionals.

Kimberly Brown (16:47): I think it is more than mandatory. You need a mentor and you need a sponsor. Um, you need to have these Q relationships to help you navigate the world of work, to help you see blind spots. I, every professional you need insider information and by insider information, I mean the things that are happening behind the scenes in the workplace that you may not be privy to. And that's where mentorship and sponsorship and just good relationships in general really helps you. It's not enough to just do great work and put your head down the way we think it may be, but you, you gotta do a little, you gotta play the game, you gotta play the game. You need to have people in different places to give you all of the information that's needed so that you can have a much smoother process as you're navigating your career.

John Jantsch (17:29): Do you? And this is a tough question for me to, as an old white person to, to ask. So hopefully take it in the right, uh, spirit, but is, does the black professional have to navigate in a whole different way? I mean, do they, do they need to have a different plan?

John Jantsch (17:50): I think there needs to be a different level of awareness. And I first, let me just commend you. I appreciate you asking the question, asking the hard questions. Cause I think as non people of color in the workplace, we know that it's the majority, right? So we need people to be self aware and ask the right questions. I think that, yes, I think there are a hundred percent, some nuances, a hundred percent things that will come up in the workplace because microaggressions bias. Those things happen every day. I wish I could look at my own career and say that things have never happened, but it a hundred percent has, and it impacts how you navigate the world of work. So I think it's really crucial, um, that you have some of these things in place, but I think I'll take your question one step further and just also add that as we're talking about mentorship and sponsorship, not all of your mentors have to look like you. Yeah. I think there's a misconception sometimes that, okay, I'm a black woman. I need to have black women mentors. Yeah. That mentor who I talked about earlier, who also coached me for my deck. That was a white male. Yeah. Um, an older white male. Mind you, I think he's at least 30, 30 plus years older than me. Oh, I thought you were gonna say, I thought you were gonna call 30 older no, no, no, no.

Kimberly Brown (18:54): no, no, no. He was at least 30 plus years older than me and I credit my success in almost all of my interviews to that man to this day because he grilled me and fine tuned my decks and helped me almost more than any other person and then higher education as I was building my career. So I don't think all of your mentors have to look like you. I think it's great to have a well-rounded network, whether that's race, ethnicity, gender levels, even seniority levels of seniority you need at all to make sure that you have connections where they need to be, and you don't have as many blind spots.

John Jantsch (19:28): Well, I think we all benefit from diversity. I mean that really what you're kind of talking about. I mean that, that, yes, actually seeing people outside of your industry completely can have a whole different view of yes of now. Now having said that, did you, as a black professional feel an undue responsibility to help other black

Kimberly Brown (19:44): Professionals a hundred percent? Yeah. A hundred percent. When I think about myself navigate the world of work, I think, well, me back up a little bit more. So I am born and raised in a very small town in Connecticut where I was the only minority K through 12. There were no other black people ever in my grade and barely a handful in my town. So I'm very used to being the only in many situations. And I know that's not the case for everyone. I literally was raised that way for 18 plus years of my life. So it's, I'm used to that, but for many professionals they may not be. So I definitely feel a sense of responsibility to give back and to assist and to help people not fall into any pitfalls that happen. I think making the transition into the world of work we're talking about from college into you, your first job is one major transition where there's so many things, but then all there are, is a bunch of transitions after that.

Kimberly Brown (20:39): Like your first leadership role, your first C-suite role, moving to a new industry, all of these first, it's always great to mean. I'm someone where I'm always looking to see if I can help. I love finding those rising stars. And I know maybe some of my, my mentees are listening when I share this podcast, when it goes live, they know, and they'll be able to say like, yeah, Kimberly saw me at a call and heard me say something and immediately slacked me and said, Hey, we should have a coffee chat. I wanna know how I can support you. I've always been that person.

John Jantsch (21:02): Awesome. Well, Kimberly, thanks so much for stopping by the duct tape marketing podcast. You wanna tell people where they can find out more about your work and uh, perhaps pick up a copy of your book.

Kimberly Brown (21:12): Yes. So you can go to Kimberly B online.com. My name is also Kimberly B online of every single social media platform. You can find me and the name of my book is next move, best move, transitioning into a career love available, wherever books are sold.

John Jantsch (21:27): Awesome. Well again, uh, thanks for stopping by was such, uh, great to chat with you and hopefully we'll run into you one of these days when we're back out there on the road again. Yes, please.

John Jantsch (21:36): All right. So that wraps up another episode. I wanna thank you so much for tuning in and you know, we love those reviews and comments. And just generally tell me what you think also did you know that you could for the duct tape marketing system, our system to your clients, and build a complete marketing consulting coaching business, or maybe level up an agency with some additional services. That's right. Check out the duct tape marketing consultant network. You can find it at ducttapemarketing.com and just scroll down a little and find that offer our system to your client's tab.

John Jantsch (00:00): Today's episode is brought to you in part by Success Story, hosted by Scott D Clary and brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network. Success story is one of the most successful, useful podcasts in the world. They feature Q and a sessions with successful business leaders, keynote presentations and conversations on sales, marketing, business, startups and entrepreneurship. A recent episode had Terry Jones, the CEO of Travelocity and the chairman of of kayak.com. Talking all about disrupting existing industries with technologies so much for us to, to think about and learn in that episode. So listen to Success Story podcast, wherever you get your podcast.

John Jantsch (00:55): Hello, and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch and I'm doing another solo show. I know I've been doing a lot of these lately, but I get such great feedback and let's face it. I have a lot. I wanna say all right today. I want to not tell you a story. I wanna tell you about story all this month. I'm recording these in January of 2022. I'm talking about strategy. A lot of things that get seen as tactics need to have strategy behind them. So when I talk about core messaging and today I'm gonna talk about your core story. Ultimately, these play out, I suppose, as tactics when you use them, but the development of them and why you develop them. What you actually say in these to me is clearly strategy. So today I wanna talk about something.

John Jantsch (01:41): I call your core story script. So, you know, anybody who's listened to me talk, know that I talk about the idea of solving problems that people don't want, what we sell. They don't want us to tell a story about what we sell. They want to tell a story about them. They want us to tell a story about the problem that we solve for them. Now, the idea of storytelling, it's certainly not new. I, I've probably been talking about it in some fashion for 20 years. And, and at that point, maybe the idea was a little new. Now there's entire sections in bookstores on storytelling in business, or, or certainly in marketing, uh, you've even got, you know, the whole story brand and the, you know, the Jo Joe Campbell myth and star wars story formula inside of, of the hero's journey. I mean, these are all things that are thrown around and, and I just think they're kind of trendy ways of saying people don't care what we sell.

John Jantsch (02:34): They want their problem solved. So if you know the true problem that you solve for your client, then it's a matter of actually using a story to lead them to the logical conclusion that that, that you're at. So, all right, let's talk about the core story, uh, script, and maybe kind of break it down a little bit. Uh workshoppy if you've bought the ultimate marketing engine, by the way, some of what I talk about, some of the tools, uh, actually come with the book. So if you, uh, head on over to the ultimate marketing engine.com or you buy the book inside the book, you're gonna see a link to a resource site where any of the tools that I talk about in the book, you're, you're actually gonna be able to use, but course story's gonna have a lot of uses. I think a great place is a video on your homepage, certainly is a presentation in, in some sort of at an industry trade show or in an email in a, in a welcome sequence.

John Jantsch (03:29): For example, for new subscribers, it's just a great way to introduce yourself in every type of situation it'll have lengths. There'll be times when it's more appropriate to you, give more detail and other times where you're really just almost giving a talking logo. You'll find more about that in my first book, duct tape marketing, but here's the framework you're first gonna define the problem that exists today. Then you're gonna explain the outside forces, driving the problem, see a lot of the problems that our clients have. It's not really their F fault necessarily. There's a lot of things lined up against them. There's the enemy out there against them. Then you're gonna paint the picture of what the reader or listener's world would be like. Maybe just get them to imagine if I could get rid of this problem. What would that mean to me? Next step is you're going to explain that, Hey, you know what a solution does exist today.

John Jantsch (04:24): See, now that we have linked, now that we've defined the problem, now that we've made them understand that we understand we get them. Now you are going to actually get the invitation to say really, okay, how could I fix that? And then it's really a matter of, kind of the last element is to say, would you like that fixed, you know, the call action, uh, piece. All right, so let's break down each element. What is it? Five elements. Uh, we'll kind of talk a little bit about, give you some examples, uh, give you some ways to think about it. So the first one define the problem. Now, if you've done any research, if you've interviewed your clients, if you've looked at your Google reviews, you're probably gonna start seeing some of the things that people actually say about what, what your business does. And again, another plug for the book in the ultimate marketing, there's a whole chapter on how to define what that problem is.

John Jantsch (05:12): But for example, to me, or in my world, uh, as a marketing consultant, one of the biggest problems that I solve is that marketing is, or at least seems complex and it's changing every day. I mean, there's everybody trying to sell a piece of the puzzle. So that idea that is nearly impossible to know, you know, where to go, what return to get, who to trust. There's, you know, how do you have confidence in what everything you're doing in a lot of ways, me selling marketing strategy is not what I do. What I do is sell clarity and confidence and, uh, control in a lot of ways. And so understanding that allows me to then explain the outside forces, draw me driving the problem, right? It's not their fault.

John Jantsch (05:56): And now word from our sponsor: Wix E-commerce the industry leading e-commerce platform with future ready, customizable, robust solutions for merchants who mean business Wix e-commerce is the complete solution for entrepreneurs, omnichannel, retailers, and brands who wish to launch, run and scale their online stores successfully go to wix.com/e-commerce today and join over 700,000 active stores selling worldwide with w e-commerce in, in screenwriting talk, which a lot of this kind of idea of story.

John Jantsch (06:33): In fact, I, I recommend if, if you pick up some screen green writing books, uh, get kind of the formula down for some of these elements, um, you know, you might talk about revealing the forces of evil beyond their control that are conspiring to keep them in the dark. So I know that's kind of goofy when you think about it, but I think we need to help prospects and ideal customers realize that they're actually actually is an antagonist at play. Uh, again, for my agency, clients, that antagonist is often the fact that they did not get into business to be marketers yet right off the bat. They learned that nothing happens until they acquire customers. So marketing became job one, and they don't really like it. So many business owners hope to abdicate their market, getting to anyone that promises results. I mean, that's really why they get in trouble so often, even if they don't understand what those results are, how they're achieved, how they'd be measured.

John Jantsch (07:26): Now, this approach always causes problems. I hate to pick on SEO people, but I seem to do it all the time because SEO people add sales rep, web designers, social media experts, LinkedIn requests, automation, gurus buying for your, a business. I mean, these are the forces at evil, in many cases. And so talking about that, so in a way in this core story where people are like, yeah, that's right, that that actually is happening to me too. So explaining look, when you got into business to do what you love, what you were trained for, then you quickly found out that marketing, what you love was more complicated than just putting up a website. But with the advent of one new marketing platform after another, who can keep up, let alone know whom to trust, to guide you through the maze of marketing jargon and tactic of the week. So that was me being in my telling story voice. So that's the idea of, of really kind of explaining the, the antagonists. It, it helps it helps the reader go. Yeah, that's what I'm experiencing too. Now that you've got them really bummed out, or at least listening, then you get to go to paint the picture of the reader's world without the problem. I mean, this is your chance to describe what life would be like for your ideal customer. If they only understood how to make the problems go away.

John Jantsch (08:45): So if you know who your ideal customer is, and again, that's something that we cover in pretty much everything I've written, but if you know who your ideal customer is, you know, what their dreams are, you know, what their, their demons are, you know, what their desires are because you've worked with them. You've heard them talk about these time and time again. Then you can actually talk about, you know, what would it be like if that, you know, went away? So, so I'll give you an absurd example. Imagine logging into your email on Monday morning to find multiple requests for information and two signed agreements for new projects by noon, your marketing coordinator presents you with next month's editorial themes and promotional ideas. When you check your email later that day, you find a report from your marketing consultant that shows you've received 13 new glowing reviews, and that not only is your organic traffic up again, but also the conversion rate on your ads has doubled compared to this period last year, there's plenty of work left to do today, but now you've got a couple hours of uninterrupted time to work on that plan for a new client before Le for heading home to have dinner with the family.

John Jantsch (09:50): All right. So sounds kind of magical, doesn't it? And that may be a really stupid example for, for your business. But the idea is to, to get somebody to see, gosh, what could my business, what could my life be without chaos, if that's really what they're experiencing, if that's really the problem that you're solving. So I know that example is over the top, but I think for the business owner, keeping struggling really to up, uh, to figure it all out and, and to reign in some sort of control, it actually sounds implausible. In fact, they, they can't imagine how they would get there. They wanna get there, but they can't imagine how they would get there. And that's kind of the point because now you get to say, well, would you like to know how to get there? It actually can happen. So those are the elements.

John Jantsch (10:41): Obviously, then you wanna talk about your solution. This is the part you probably get. All right, this is the part. Most people get. You wanna talk about your solution. You want to have a firm called action. Here is what you need to do to make that problem go away. So think about those elements that I just described, the five elements of, of the core story script. Maybe make an outline with those five I'll I'll I'll repeat 'em if you wanna grab a pen and hopefully you can do that. You're not driving down the highway, define the problem that exists today. Explain the outside forces, driving the problem. It's not your fault. Paint the picture of the reader's world in the future. Without that problem, explain the solution that exists today and then call the reader to action. So take out a blank piece of paper, write those five things down the, write those five elements down, give yourself some writing space between them, and then start to brainstorm about what would go in that story.

John Jantsch (11:39): Now it doesn't have to be a work of pros you're you, you you're welcome to struggle around and stumble around in this, but, but just get, get, start getting some of these statements, these phrases down it'll come as you start telling people as you record a video, as you need to tighten it up, but don't worry about that right now. Just blow it all out on onto a page or onto a document on, on a computer and just get it started, get, get the things coming out. If you've done some interviews with clients, maybe you've actually got some ideas of them saying what it is that you do of them saying how their world has been better. I mean, there's nothing better than, than somebody being able to say I have 69% increase in leads or 37%, uh, increase in revenue. I mean, that can actually go into painting the picture of what it could look like, uh, for somebody else.

John Jantsch (12:34): Now there's a heck of a lot of ways you can use this core story. You know, obviously for many people, it's gonna be the first thing that starts to establish some level of trust, but you certainly can use it, share bits of it really pretty much anywhere that you, that you put content. It could actually, you can take elements of it and use it for you. Email subject line. You can take elements and write entire blog posts about them. You can make this story 10 pages long and then cut it back to, you know, half a page for when you're just trying to put it into a document or trying to put it into, uh, uh, a webpage. So hopefully that helps with another element of your marketing strategy. Because again, this is a piece that you are going to use strategically to tell people.

John Jantsch (13:19): So when people ask you what you do for a living, you can actually define the problem for your ideal customer for making their world better. You can, you can say the whole thing in an elevator speech, typical elevator speech, uh, form, but you wanna make sure that you are using these elements. All right. So, as I said, this is, uh, straight out of the ultimate marketing engine. My latest book, five steps to ridiculously consistent growth of if this little nugget, this little 15 minutes that we spent together seems valuable to you. Then go get that book because I've built an entire workshop around every single one of these elements. And you get all the tools and forms. That's theultimatemarketingengine.com. All right, this is John signing off. Love to hear from you. Tell me, uh, what your favorite episode is. It's just [email protected] Take care.

John Jantsch (14:14): All right. That wraps up in the other episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. I wanna thank you so much for tuning in. Feel free to share this show. Feel free to give us reviews. You know, we love those things. Also, did you know that we had created training, marketing training for your team? If you've got employees, if you've got a staff member that wants to learn a marketing system, how to install the, that marketing system in your business, check it out. It's called the certified marketing manager program from duct tape marketing. You can find it at ducttapemarketing.com and just scroll down a little and find that tab that says training for your team.

John Jantsch (00:01): Hey duct tape marketing listener. We know you're always on the lookout for ways to more efficiently scale your business. That's why I'm so excited to chat about. I digress another show on the HubSpot podcast network. Troy Sandra is the host of I digress, talks all about how you can eliminate complexity, complications and confusion from your business equation and create clarity to streamline strategy solutions that achieve scalable and sustainable success. Check out episode 24, start there 14 minutes or so strategy is power. You know, I love that idea. So listen, learn and grow with I digress on the HubSpot podcast network at hubspot.com/podcast network. Hello, and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Mike Michalowicz He's a speaker and bestselling author, the creator of profit first, which is used by hundreds of thousands of companies across the globe to drive profit. And he's got a new book today called get different marketing that can't be ignored. So Mike, welcome to the show,

Mike Michalowicz (01:22): John, as always, is this cool hanging out with you? Thank you for having,

John Jantsch (01:26): I tell people this all the time, Mike, you and I have known each other a long time. You're like a little brother who has far surpassed me in terms of your impact.

Mike Michalowicz (01:33): I think the little brother part, for sure impact a question. I I'll never listen to you. And I know this story, but I don't know if listening to you. And I met for the first time face to face during a speaking tour with who knows, right? He may live and we did tour together and there was one day it was a professionally, perhaps one of the most impactful changing moments of my life was you said, you'd meet with me after one of the events, I was just talking about starting a membership organization. And it was the old pen and cocktail napkin paper, just writing down your thoughts. And I took it and earned it. I applied exactly what you told me and we grew proffers professionals. It was formed after the prototype. You laid out for duct tape, marketing and organization. You created

John Jantsch (02:22): Thank you. You took it and ran with it. You did a great job, obviously, and I admire your work. Do you talk about an arc of your books? Toilet paper entrepreneur was kind of like your first book to get out there, to write about what you'd been doing and your experience, but then it feels like you went on a pumpkin plan, profit first clockwork now even, you know, get different. Is there obviously I think you're targeting the same market, but are you saying, okay, for this book, I'm going to take on this aspect of business. Now, this aspect, and now this, and really tie do these all kind of tie together in that fashion.

Mike Michalowicz (02:55): They do. And they're all 30, the kind of formula behind it. So the overarching goal is to have a compendium of books for small business. I want to be the champion for, I call them the underdog entrepreneur, but the micro enterprise is a sub million dollar company. Like that's my piece. So I want to, when you're that size, it's very hard to get professional consultants to come in and invest in the amount of time and effort necessary to move that business forward. We just can't afford them. So I want to have the compendium of winning that business. One may have a marketing challenge. Business two may have a financial challenge. Maybe it's an efficiency challenge. So I'm trying to write all these books. The sequence they come out is based upon two things. First and foremost is reader impact. I'm blessed to be in contact with readers regularly.

Mike Michalowicz (03:43): Now it wasn't that way with my first couple of books, but now there's regular stream. So I can ask and survey and see, you know, what do people need now? And one of the common themes was I was hearing from people I depend on my clients refer me business. And actually they're mostly saying that a hundred percent of my leads come from client referrals, which is great. They recognize how good you are, but you can't throttle that you don't have control. How do you deliberately facilitate lead flow? So that was one thing. And the other thing is for me, is behind each book from your tutelage, I build an organization behind it. We found is that maybe 90% of the readers may 95% or the do it yourself, or if they want to read it and do it. But there is the faction that say, now that I know how to do it, I want to find the company that has this competency. So build the business. So I look for a partner early on now, and his name is Justin Wise. They have a marketing agency called the different company that they renamed a different company. And we've been working together on this project for two years. It's culminating a book and all the insights and practical applications of this process. And I also know that a portion of readers will say, I want to go a step further and work with the different company and this company that I co-created

John Jantsch (04:53): Awesome. So I guess that's some of the big idea. Why'd you write this book or this topic, and I know, and I also want to get into the research you did, but let's start with,

Mike Michalowicz (05:04): Yeah, I think there are extraordinary books out there. Duct tape marketing being one of the defining books, my opinion that show you the how to, and the marketing plans, the strategy, like here's what you do. And we need that. What I didn't find is many books focusing on the milliseconds of marketing, the cognitive behavior that happens from the prospect's standpoint. And so this book, one of the titles actually was going to be called the marketing milliseconds of how marketing happens in these fractional seconds. There's three key elements that happen within literally one 10th of a second. First is recognition of something, most stuff, the vast jury jury's ignored. So how do you get a ten second and retain attention? So we are subconsciously asking ourselves, should I stay engaged in this? Should I keep listening to podcasts? We just keep on asking ourselves as subconscious level and certain not serving. You're losing, you're dropping off. The last thing is subconsciously, should I take action with this? This is all happening in a flash of seconds. So this book is around managing those elements of mark.

John Jantsch (06:07): So I know that you are a bit of a, not necessarily scientific researcher, but you talked about, or you engaged a lot of people. You have a lot of conversations, you bring people in to try stuff in your laboratory, so to speak. Yeah. So what's the, describe the research that led you to some of the conclusions in this book.

Mike Michalowicz (06:23): Yeah. We, we have a room here at our office. Actually, when you come, maybe if we can spend a little time, I'll take you for a little tour, but we have a room. We call it the mad lab. It's our version of a lab. And what we do is we take existing marketing and we'll run tests on it against survey groups and audiences that don't, they're not told, you know, you're being tested. We're just asking, what do you, how do you respond to this and monitoring their behavior and looking for trends? And I'll give you one example. I like to pick on large companies, we were talking about that off-air arch company called Arthur Anderson, Arthur Anderson. There is one there's one called Anderson windows. It's also an Arthur Anderson Anderson window, which is pretty big. It's a pretty big franchise. And we had a marketing piece. We tested theirs and it failed the three key elements that identifying the book, differentiate to get attention, attract, to get engagement direct, to compel, to tell you when to do something and what this, this marketing was different.

Mike Michalowicz (07:19): They were sending out letters, handwritten letters saying, Hey, I'm your local rep or I'm the local business, or I'd love to do your windows. It was unique and different from the standard mail you get, but it didn't fail to attract because the owner was a guy named or is named Larry someone. But the hand script was a female's writing. It was very loopy. It was very clear. It wasn't him. It lost the authenticity. So we're read this and be like, this is a lie. This guy is marketing a lie. It's a shame that, that when we do marketing, many companies only do one element and they don't nail all of them. So our research of testing out other marketing, and then testing our own marketing techniques through our company, we had businesses do this. We found there's three kind of check boxes. You need to nail each time for marketing.

John Jantsch (08:06): So you use those terms of differentiated attract direct, uh, which conveniently spells out the dad method. And so should we take a few minutes and tell some dad jokes? It was, What did the fish say when he ran into a concrete wall?

Mike Michalowicz (08:22): Y, ah, okay. That's a good dad. Joke I got for you. When do you know a joke becomes a dad joke? I don't know when it becomes a parent.

John Jantsch (08:36): All right, there, you have it. Folks we're done here. And now let's hear a word from our sponsor. HubSpot CRM platform is easy to adopt and there are really two reasons. Two features that make this possible, that contact timeline and the mobile app and mobile keyboard HubSpot's timeline gives you the historical context. You need to get the work done and connect with customers because all of your customer data is in one place. It can serve as a single source of truth. In HubSpot, you can take an action, right from the contact timeline, make a call and roll a contact in the sequence, schedule a meeting. You've got it. And if you're on the go, you just use the mobile app to make it all happen and keep everything up to date. You don't have to spend a lot of time training your team. You can be sure that all the contact information is going into one system, making your team more efficient, look better adoption with a CRM leads to better data, richer insights, and a bigger impact on your customer experience. Learn more about how you can scale your company without scaling [email protected] All right. So obviously it's always fun for consultants and authors to come up with acronyms for things, but maybe unpack those a little bit. You balloon it to them in your story about the research, but just to make, maybe apply.

Mike Michalowicz (09:56): Yeah. So the three applications, first of all, most marketing fails because we are copying the behavior or the marketing method of our contemporaries, or

John Jantsch (10:08): This is what everybody in our industry, whenever else talks,

Mike Michalowicz (10:11): Right? But the consumer mind has this thing called the reticular formation. It's a part of our brain that achieves what's called habituation. Habituation is a way to avoid stimuli. That's not relevant. There's a reason. Sirens have changed on a police cars and ambulances. They used to be high, low, high, low. Now they chirp and they beep they do that because we've become so habituated. So familiar with it. We ignore it. People walked in front of a speeding. Ambulance had been killed by an ambulance. So what we need to do with our marketing is realize that consumers become habituated. And the only way to get recognized is to change the chirps and beeps when everyone else is going high, low classic mark example, you forgot the email that starts off with Hey friend. I don't know, John, if you got one of those in the first one I got, I was like, what is this?

Mike Michalowicz (10:56): I have a friend. That's call me a friend. Like this is so friendly. This friend, I actually read it. The second one, I was like, okay, the last one was actually smarmy marketing. Yeah. So this next one I skim through. I was like, I was marketing. I've never read a Hey friend since, cause I know it's marketing. I've become habituated to it. I don't put conscious thought to it. So the only way to break this pattern is to do what the people are doing because that will get past this gatekeeper to the mind. And I think that

John Jantsch (11:23): That really today, one of the key ingredients for getting kind of through the clutter is we have to do something that makes people talk about us. And you're right. That's the differentiator. A mutual friend, Jay Baer has a great book called talk triggers. That's really all about that idea of what can you do to get people talking? Everything else you do might be the same as everybody else. But you do this one thing,

Mike Michalowicz (11:45): One thing, it doesn't in some people get confused with outrageous, oh, I have to wear a clown costume. A clown costume will work. But if it's not congruent with your brand or who you are, it actually hurts you. So the next component, right? My,

John Jantsch (12:00): My attorney, my attorney shouldn't wear a clown suit. Is that what you're saying? Yeah.

Mike Michalowicz (12:05): With a squirting Daisy in your eye, Hey, sorry. Hey Joe, walk on the, because that attorney is not attractive. So the next component is this speaking to a need. I have a desire. Does it invoke curiosity? Does it entertain me? A clown actually could be perceived as a threat for some of us in this scenario. This is like a murderer. This is what a whack job does. So it has to be congruent with what your audience expects and needs. So what's attractive to them. And they're going to measure that very quickly. Differentiation gets attention, attraction, retains it. The last D stands for direct is to tell the audience now what to do with this knowledge and the key here is it needs to be reasonable. I think this is often overlooked. We have to give him specific, but it needs to be reasonable. If I'm selling a car as an example, and you're looking for a new car, I say, Hey, John, give me a hundred thousand dollars deposit.

Mike Michalowicz (12:51): We're gonna find your dream car like who are, you know, it's unreasonable. But if you walk on the lot and I say, Hey, John, would you give me my, your me, your cell number. I love to text you pictures of our inventory so you can find, and we can hone in on your dream car. That sounds reasonable. Also though, we've had our first transaction and now I can move us for the ultimate transaction, which is you buying a car and me collecting a commission. So the direct is to give a specific and explicit direction, but a reasonable and safe one for the customer. Okay.

John Jantsch (13:22): So I have heard you saying, of course this is in the book and this is not going to be good news for some people, but that better is not better. So that's going to be hard for some people swallow because I want to be the best at what I do and in my industry. And I think that you're going to say what's not bad to be better, but it's better to be different.

Mike Michalowicz (13:41): Yeah, it is very different and better is invisible. When you think about say, we have businesses that compete directly with each other, we both have cleaning companies and my clean company, I say, we will always answer the phone on two rings. You say our company will always answer the phone in one ring. You are unequivocably better. But the question is, does the customer care even notice most betters are actually invisible to the customer. It's the difference that get noticed if you're the only cleaning company that shows up in full bio hazard gear, that will be remarkable. And that's not a joke. That's what happened in the computer industry. My first business was doing computer systems and I was better than the competition. I had the certification to prove it. I had the response times to prove it. Then the company came in and they kicked my till Sunday. It was geek squad who dressed as geeks with the tape on their glasses, the flood pants. And because they were willing to put themselves out in a new and different light and they were talk worthy as Joe bear and Brinks too. They were remarkable. They dominate the industry. By the way, Robert Stevens founded a company. I believe now after their sale to best buy, they are at a $1 billion collective valuation, 1 billion. My company didn't sell for way less than that. I'll say it's sold for way less than that. So

John Jantsch (14:56): How do you, and you alluded to this, but I want to touch on it directly. I think when some people hear that we're different, they're like, okay, I'm going to be different for different sake. We're going to be the guys that wear purple shirts or to drive purple cars or something. And I think you address it with attractive. Does that matter? Yes. Okay. Somebody looks at it and goes, that's different. How do you, what's the filter for different? That matters.

Mike Michalowicz (15:19): Yeah. So if you are the business owner, the great thing is you are the filter. It's an amplification of who you naturally are. I'm a silly person. I like to be goofy. So you'll see my websites and all the work I do every time puts me out there. There's a silly component that is attractive, but I've got to be a little asterisk next to it. Next to that, to certain people, other people is repelling. They're like, who is this goofball or idiot, but it does magnetize a certain audience. So the truth is we gotta be true to ourselves. If I love, you know, purple rain I played every morning. When I start my day, I'm the purple guy lean into that because there's a community that is going to get you because you get it. It's the artificial difference that don't work. And I've had people that look at my website and said, wow, this was so different. As an example, I love it. I'm going to copy it. Is that okay? I'm going to go for it. It's who you are. It's not going to be attractive because there's going to be in congruency. You'll find who you are. You're the most professional, be more professional. If you're the most serious, be more serious, they'll be the more of you.

John Jantsch (16:21): You, you made a point that I don't think enough people, um, maybe would, would get just on what you said is it's actually okay to be polarizing. In fact, it might actually be a good thing. I'm not saying you want to go out there and be a jerk and have a whole bunch of people hate you. But the fact that you are very much upfront about here's who we are. And if that doesn't work for you, that's okay too, because we know there's people out there that this does work for. And I think probably the worst thing is just being as vanilla as possible and trying to appeal to Everett.

Mike Michalowicz (16:47): Oh, it's the worst. Yeah, don't be a jerk, but some people see you as a jerk, even though you're not being a jerk because you're being, you, you look at any presidential candidate. Any president has been an absolute jerk to 50% of the popular nation. Okay. Are you aware? And it's true for any organization. There's a community that is going to rail against you. I actually argue to leverage this, how it can be an ideology, some of your willingness, or it could be another represent representative in this community that just has a different ideology themselves and puts it out there. So I very much have a nemesis. And what this does is it rallies me to be more outspoken and more of myself to attract more of my audience, that the conflict between the two different approaches. And even though there's no overt conflict that this person does not know my name, I know their name, but it's not where we're in conflict. Our ideologies conflict, our Mar communities then are in conflict. This ideology is very light cigars with hundred dollar bills, make money and crush people. And my belief is embrace the community and use profits to be more an amplification and serve more. And those are different ideologies. And by having that conflict, both kind of fight each other and they both rally there's reasons why when presidents have very different opinions, approaches, there's more votes than ever the same can happen for our business.

John Jantsch (18:10): So you and I are in a growing club of authors putting out their books on September 21st, 2021. I've had you on, I've had Dory on, I've had chef hiking on the chefs, chefs releasing a book. The 21st Jonathan Fields is releasing a book on the 12th. And I think I'm trying to do my best to get everybody in the club on a, the, the podcast. So I think you've, you've checked you and I are recording this on the 20th. The book comes out on the 21st, but obviously go get it whenever you happen to listen to this. So tell people I know Mike, you always do on top of building campaign sites and communities. Quite frankly, you always tucked lots of goodies and extras and like behind the scenes stuff in your books too. So you want to tell people all about what you've got prepared for them. If they get a copy of get different. Thank you, John.

Mike Michalowicz (18:58): The site to go to is go get different.com. That's the site specific for this book? I think what's unique about it is I put resources on there that are all independent of book, including a hundred ways to immediately market your business differently. That costs nothing or cost very little, and you don't need the book to do it. You can get started so that go get different.com I'll show you you'll find case studies, stuff that we've done with other businesses that maybe you can interpret and using your own.

John Jantsch (19:23): You do also a great job with the audio book to, uh, to add some different content to that. One of the things that I've started doing recently, and I'll wrap this up, but is getting the audio book of a book I really get into. And I think, yeah, I really, I want to consume this book. I want to internalize it. I'll get the audio book and the print book. And sometimes I will actually listen and read at the same time. And I feel first off, I feel like I can go a lot faster, but I also feel like it just drives the point home. So that's my pitch. Go get Mike. So audio book and print book of get different, but it's go get different.com. So you and I are swapping a, I'm going to speak at your conference. You're going to speak at my conference coming up here this fall. And I had somebody actually asked me that they were like, why are we doing w I spoke at Ryan dices conference. So recently digital marketer and people are like, why don't you guys competitors? And I sometimes don't know how to respond because I'm on top of being friends, the world, the need for what we do is so immense that I can't imagine thinking of each other as competitors. And I think that's a lot of industries that are that way.

Mike Michalowicz (20:27): I love that because to me, I had a revelation. When I became an author. When I had a computer company, there was multiple people bidding. There was one person awarded the bid and you got it four years or sometimes a lifetime. It was very competitive. I wanted to destroy the competition as an author. There's no competition. It's contemporary. If someone discovers your book, John, your new one coming out, you know, directly marketing, I'm going to, if someone reads that and loves that book, what are they gonna do? They're gonna explore more books on marketing and it will only facilitate more reading. Yeah, it's the strangest environment for me at least. But the more successful your books are, the more successful my books are because all books get elevated. It really is the tide rising. All books go with the tide. Yeah. You find somebody who's got a shelf or two of marketing books and there'll be the easiest sale in the world for a marketing book, Zack, because they're constantly consuming. Mike, always great catching up with you. And I've been telling a lot of guests as I sign off. We'll hopefully we'll see each other in real life when we start getting back out there on the road. But you and I are going to do that soon. So I appreciate your friendship and support and congrats. So with another great book, I'll see you soon. My brother, my slightly older brother.

John Jantsch (21:39): All right. That wraps up another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. I want to thank you so much for tuning in. Feel free to share this show. Feel free to give us reviews. You know, we love those things. Also, did you know that we had created training, marketing training for your team? If you've got employees, if you've got a staff member that wants to learn a marketing system, how to install that marketing system in your business, check it out. It's called the certified marketing manager program from duct tape marketing. You can find it at duct tape, marketing.com and just scroll down a little and find that tab that says training for your team.

John Jantsch (00:00): Today's episode is brought to you in part by Success Story, hosted by Scott D. Clary and brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network. Success Story is one of the most successful, useful podcasts in the world. They feature Q and a sessions with successful business leaders, keynote presentations and conversations on sales, marketing, business, startups and entrepreneurship. A recent episode had Terry Jones, the CEO of Travelosity and the chairman of Kayak.com. Talking all about disrupting existing industries with technologies so much for us to, to think about and learn in that episode. So listen to the, a Success Story podcast, wherever you get your podcast.

John Jantsch (00:55): Hello, and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jansen. I'm cut. I'm gonna at you with a solo show this month. I'm recording this in the month of January of 2022. All this month, I'm doing shows or at least trying to do shows along the theme of strategy. I think first of the year is a great time to rethink or re reevaluate at least your marketing strategy. So I'm gonna introduce today one of my favorite strategy topics around content, and the reason I call this a strategy topic. I mean, a lot of people will look at content and think, well, that's really a tactic , but if you approach it strategically, it really becomes a big part of how you get your strategy communicated. I often talk about content as the voice of strategy. And I think that if you have a strategy in mind, what you're trying to accomplish a strategy is not just a tagline.

John Jantsch (01:56): I mean, it's, it's how you wanna be seen. It's how you want to be evaluated. It's what your brand stands for. And so then it's the things that you can get, you know, that kind of leadership. So what I wanna talk about is something that I have talked about before. Maybe you've, uh, seen me write about it or talk about it before, but it is a, a topic I call content hubs. So in effect, what I'm talking about is strategically choosing, structuring your or content optimizing it really for your ideal customers in a way that's not just the one off blog post. I mean, for many years, I extol the virtues, frankly like many marketers of, of blogging, you know, as a great content and SEO con tactic, really, you had to have it, but then everybody caught on and it kind of ruined a good thing.

John Jantsch (02:46): So now you still need content, but blogging really isn't enough to get your content seen. In fact, what I'm gonna suggest is you, you forget about blogging as a concept altogether. Yes. That's what people call it, but we're, we're really talking about content management so what if instead of creating blog posts, you used the blogging tool. I mean, I'm, you know, I'm a big fan of WordPress. You used that tool to create and manage content that benefits your prospects and customers. So tools like word spray, WordPress, and maybe Squarespace, uh, Wix. I mean, they're, they're all out there. Now. There are many, many tools now that you can, that, that you can use that are really referred to as content management systems or CMS. So the idea behind a hub page or hub content is that instead of just waking up and saying, uh, let's write a post about this or a post about that, that, that you curate a group of blog posts and structure them around a broad, but, but kind of singular topic.

John Jantsch (03:53): So in other words, you create a whole collection of information. That is the broad topic that has a lot to do with obviously your, your products and services, your, you know, your expertise. So the idea behind this is that you end up creating a page that it's almost like a table of contents for like a big guide, you know, or, or maybe an ebook, but what you're really doing is connecting blog posts together. Now, the first step really is to, is to think in terms of, you know, if you've been blogging, if you've been writing content, this is really not gonna be that tough. And in fact, you know, if you have been doing that, you know, this is, this is really a great way. Might have hundreds of blog posts, webinars, podcasts. You've shared lots of useful information, but now it's just kind of out there that, you know, that it's in the ether, but you know, what, if you took it all and organized it in a way that you could create a very useful relevant group of article.

John Jantsch (05:01): So you're really just bringing, in some ways you really might just be bringing order to the content chaos that you've created. So you help kind of create something that guides your visitor's experience. Let me give you an example. Now let's say you own a yoga studio. You could create a HubPage around various topics, such as, as nutrition for yoga dealing with, and recovering from injuries, pre and postnatal, yoga information, all different forms of yoga. I mean, these would all then be kind of organized so that somebody who's out there looking for topics or looking for information on yoga in this would actually come to this page because by the way, Google will like this page. Google will find it very relevant because what you've done is you've structured it. And the way that the web's actually supposed to work, that all of this useful content is, is all brought to one page, referenced at least on one page.

John Jantsch (06:01): And essentially what we're talking about is, is, you know, a major topic, some subtopics, and then a list of blog posts under each subtopic. So all of these individual links would link out to individual pages. So if you've written all these blog posts, in some cases, it's just a matter of, of organizing it. This is such a great way to, you may have to write new content, but this is such a great way to give old content a second life. I mean, if you put a lot of time and effort into creating content, that's meaningful and useful, but then you're just posting it. And it just goes into, you know, the, the sort of chronological order. It, it really gets buried. I mean, in the, in the archives and nobody sees it, but HubPages give you the opportunity to highlight your evergreen in content, the oldies, but goodies.

John Jantsch (06:54): I mean, most, most content that I've written about marketing still relevant today. But if I just leave it for people to find it, they're gonna find that one off post. But if they're finding my guides, my hub pages around topics that I know are of interest, all of a sudden they're gonna find an entire library of content. And this is really going to, it's gonna do a lot for you to, to gonna raise your status as an industry, uh, leader. It doesn't really matter what you do. If, if you know, we create these for remodeling, contractors and accountants alike. If people are looking today for your business, they're not just looking for a phone number. They're, they're really I, if, if you sell anything that is of any consequence of any, you know, dollar amount that is going to take a serious consideration by a prospect, then they're gonna want to dig in and find out what, you know, they're going to want to begin to develop a relationship and start to trust you because you're not only teaching them what to look for.

John Jantsch (07:55): You're teaching them what not to look for. You're teaching them perhaps where the pitfalls are and what they're looking for. And so you're really becoming a trusted guide in their eyes before they ever really pick up the phone and call you and Al word from our sponsor, w eCommerce, the industry leading eCommerce platform with future ready, customizable, robust solutions for merchants who mean Wix eCommerce is the complete solution for entrepreneurs, omnichannel, retailers, and brands who wish to launch, run and scale their online stores successfully go to wix.com/ecommerce today and join over 700,000 active stores selling worldwide with eCommerce,

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John Jantsch (09:33): All right. So how would you go about doing one of these hub pages? So here's the process think of this as kind of a mini workshop in creating hub pages? The very first thing is you're gonna pick a couple themes. And for example, I'm somebody who offers marketing consulting to small businesses, midsize businesses, right?

John Jantsch (09:53): So my ideal customers are attracted to really two big themes. Generally, they wanna learn how to market their business, but different market segments need different approaches. So we might create the ultimate guide to marketing your professional services business. And we might also create the ultimate guide to marketing your local business. Now, let me give you another example of how this type of, of approach works both from a usefulness standpoint and from an SEO standpoint, let's say I'm a painting contractor in Denver, Colorado. So I might create the ultimate guide to exterior painting in Denver. I mean, this is obviously gonna be something that, that somebody who owns a home in Denver might be looking for. So I'm going, I'm going to basically say, that's my, that's my broad theme for, or title, if you will, for the HubPage. And so now I'm just gonna say, okay, what would be good sub topics?

John Jantsch (10:59): So subtopics might be things like signs, your home needs, paint, exterior paint, make maintenance tips, how to prepare surfaces, common, exterior repairs, and so on. So you get the idea, you know, you almost create a table of contents. If you're thinking about, if it's called the ultimate guide, I do exterior painting. I might create a table of contents around that idea of different topics, like color trends, you know, how to find the best painting contractor. And then each of these subtopics might then have two or three blog posts. So the most popular paint colors in Denver or the Mac most popular stain colors in Denver might be topics that would go under my exterior color. Trans for example, now, as I said, you may actually have all of this content, or at least some of this content that that would allow you to start out with a broad topic, break it down into four or five, good subtopics, and then look for content, just audit all the content you've written and see if you actually have some content that would be suitable and useful for, uh, a page like this.

John Jantsch (12:13): Now, in many cases you will want to, um, quite likely update that content. So in, in some cases you may find that you've written something a number of years ago and that it needs refreshing. It needs updating, it needs some links change. So find the kind content, organize it for your HubPage, refresh it a little bit. Maybe you need some new pictures, some new links, and then make a list of the new content that you think you're going to need. So think of this like chapters and a table of com content a for, for a book or an ebook, but it's all going to live on one page age, and then it's going to link out to your 10, 12, 15, 20. It doesn't matter how many HubPage or I'm sorry, individual blog posts. And then all of those individual blog posts are going to link back to the guide as well.

John Jantsch (13:07): So this is really one of the keys that makes this idea. So potent is that, that you are structuring links that, that Google and the search engines follow. So they land on this HubPage and they instantly see that it links off to 20 other of your internal pages. And by the way, the, the, you can also link off to great other external resources. So like that painting contractor might, might link to, uh, some great articles on, uh, a page eight suppliers, uh, website as well. So all of a sudden, uh, Google's looking at this and it's clear that this is about painting in Denver. I mean, because there's so many references to it. There's so many co so many internal what blog posts that link back just to this page. And so that whole interlinking structure really gives this idea tons and tons of, of, of, of power.

John Jantsch (13:59): Now, uh, you might try this out for yourself, Google the term guide to the ultimate guide, to small, or to local marketing, the ultimate guide to local marketing. I think it is. And you'll find that a page that, that I have created under this structure, we'll sh generally show up in the couple of results. So, you know, it really give, it will give you a pretty good idea of how potent this idea or how potent this, um, concept is because, you know, that's a really, really sought after search term. And so to be able to show up high for that, I think really kind of gives some credence to this idea, but regardless of the industry that you are in this concept of the hub page, organizing your content around something that that's going to make a page that's very useful for a visitor, it's gonna make a page that Google loves.

John Jantsch (14:48): It's gonna make a page that people actually will share in bookmark. If they're doing deep research is really how you will, you know, just kind of destroy your competition when it comes to search engines. All right, that's it for today. I appreciate, uh, you tuning in, look for more shows around strategy. So this is a strategy that obviously unfold a lot of tactics, of course, but it's the ultimate planning that makes this happen. And the nice thing is once you do one of these, once you get the hang of doing one of these, there's nothing that, that says you can't do 2, 3, 4, and five of these. You know, if you have specific services that you offer that go to different target markets in particular, definitely are going to want to create one that supports all of your core, uh, service offerings. All right, that's it for hopefully, uh, you've enjoyed this show, please.

John Jantsch (15:41): Anytime. Write to me, John at duct tape, marketing.com. Love to hear your suggestions, ideas, and feedback.

John Jantsch (15:47): All right. That wraps up another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. I wanna thank you so much for tuning in, feel free to share this show. Feel free to give us reviews. You know, we love those things. Also, did you know that we had created training, marketing training for your team? If you've got employees, if you've got a staff member that wants to learn a marketing system, how to install that marketing system in your business, check it, it out it's called the certified marketing manager program from duct tape marketing. You can find it at ducttapemarketing.com and just scroll down a little and find that tab that says training for your team.

John Jantsch (00:00): Today's episode is brought to you in part by Success Story, hosted by Scott D. Clary and brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network. Success Story is one of the most successful, useful podcasts in the world. They feature Q and A sessions with successful business leaders, keynote presentations and conversations on sales, marketing, business, startups and entrepreneurship. A recent episode had Terry Jones, the CEO of Travelocity and the chairman of Kayak.com. Talking all about disrupting existing industries with technologies so much for us to, to think about and learn in that episode. So listen to this success story podcast, wherever you get your podcast.

John Jantsch (00:54): Hello, and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Jeffrey Shaw. He's an experienced speaker and small business consultant. Uh, he helped self-employed and small business owners gain control of their business and what otherwise seems like uncontrollable circumstances. Nobody feels that though really do they . He's also the author of a book called the self-employed life business and personal development strategies that creates sustainable success. So Jeffrey walked come

Jeffrey Shaw (01:22): To the show. Hey John, I'm so glad to be here with you. Thank you.

John Jantsch (01:25): So forgive me, but you were on for lingo weren't you, were you on?

Jeffrey Shaw (01:30): I don't think so. No, I don't. I don't think, I think this is my first time. And so this is a, this is a career milestone achieved.

John Jantsch (01:37): well, I'm sorry. I don't know how we didn't make that happen cuz I know we talked about it. So because uh, certainly, uh, the world rushes by doesn't it? It does

Jeffrey Shaw (01:46): Indeed. So

John Jantsch (01:47): Let's talk about this term. Self-employed mm-hmm I remembered when I was first starting, it actually was not a very positive, uh, term. In fact it was, you couldn't get a job, you went and applied for a mortgage and you had like this red X on your thing because you were self-employed and after all that was the riskiest thing you could be, but it's kind of changed, hasn't

Jeffrey Shaw (02:06): It? Well it's I love that you framed it that way because you know, I don't know if, if banking industry sees any more security in it, but I think it's really important that we, that we take ownership of the term self-employed in order to change that, because the fact matter is I don't think if we're self employ and truly identify as a small team, maybe even a, a business of one, we don't necessarily fall under the parameter of small business. And that's my biggest concern. Yeah. You know, we're often too small to get some of the benefits that say government financing might offer to a small business. And I think it's important. We take ownership of the self-employed. What, what I think has changed even more. So honestly, John is the, is kind of the, comparing it to the term entrepreneur. Yeah. I think entrepreneur nowadays means like, you know, you're in between jobs where, what I like about self-employed is that it, it describes the lifestyle and the business model. So I, I favor, I definitely favor that.

John Jantsch (03:03): Well, yeah. And we could break cuz I think people have defined each of these terms, but can I for a minute you said that about the mortgage, you know, thing, I, you know, I've owned my own corporation that for, you know, multimillion dollar corporation that employs people that, you know, has paid me a w two age for like 25 years in a row. And I still have to jump through hoops if I ever.

Jeffrey Shaw (03:22): Yeah, no, exactly. It's it's uh, yeah, the banking industry I've always felt that the banking industry should require coaching with small business loans in order to increase the rate of success, which in the long run would hopefully make us more bankable and I'll

John Jantsch (03:37): Stop ranting here. But I, I literally have had a banker or a mortgage person asked me why I had so much money in the bank. And I was like, well, I, I, I make more than I spent. Yeah. It's pretty simple. Really.

Jeffrey Shaw (03:51): That's awesome. Let's something many of us here

John Jantsch (03:56): Let's get well. And I IM, and I'm not saying that like as a bragging thing, but I'm just like, why would you be suspicious of that? Yeah,

Jeffrey Shaw (04:02): Exactly. Only a banker would be suspicious of that. That's what's great about it. Right. So,

John Jantsch (04:05): So let's do talk about these terms because, um, you know, self-employed small business entrepreneur, let's throw a freelancer in there. Let's throw gig worker in there. Let's throw pride hustler. I mean all of these kind of a nuance, meaning, I mean, we're what, what is self-employed because obviously you could be self-employed at and, and be an S Corp. Not have any employees. I mean, so what do you, what in your mind is self-employed what, what space are you trying to carve out? Yeah.

Jeffrey Shaw (04:31): So to me, it's what the space I'm trying to carve out is to also recognize the lifestyle, right? Because being self-employed is, is unique in so many. And it's what the it's those problems that I want the book to address, you know, so some of those problems are for one, you know, the old adage in business that it's business, don't take it personal that does not apply when you're, self-employed, it's all personal. And it's such an integration. Not only do you take things personally, there's an integration like what's going on in your personal life will affect your performance at work and vice versa. Of course, then there's also, uh, you know, which has been kind of my personal favorite. How often when you're, self-employed you're accused of being all over the place, right? The problem is one of the core challenges of being self-employed is that, you know, there's no, there's no MBA program for being self-employed.

Jeffrey Shaw (05:21): So we then have to go all over the place to find the different parts of what we need. Right. We hire coaches for our mindsets. We hire, we, we, we buy courses and we attend conferences and webinars and we hire specialists and for every different part of our business, and then whether others accuse us or we accuse ourselves of being all over the place. So one of the really core shoes I want this book to address is trying to get everything together. There's personal development. I mean, I've got over a thousand hours of training as a coach. So I'm throwing a lot of myself into this book as a coach and 36 years of business experience, entirely being self-employed so that people can have right. Sized business strategies, because so much of what we see in the world just isn't meant for our size business or our philosophies. Yeah.

John Jantsch (06:07): I was gonna say, because, because sometimes people equate size with choice or not choice. And I think that the idea here with the self-employed life might be that people are actually, there's an intention about, you know, not just saying, oh, here's what everybody else does. I'm gonna run off and, you know, chase revenue and then have, you know, 10 head count and all that. But then it's actually a decision to, to use this as a tool to give yourself the life that, that you choose.

Jeffrey Shaw (06:32): Right. And you know, it exactly, it is a tool. I mean, for one thing, I've always said every business decision I've ever made has been based on how I wanna live first. Right. I live in Miami now five years, a little over five years, I've been here, complete lifestyle choice, which actually wasn't pre-planned I just came down for three months and never left, you know, but it's, you know, I can, I, I will adapt my business to fit how I want just as I did when I was a single dad for a number of years, you know what I, you, you, you recognize the lifestyle you're gonna live. So it is, it's a tool. What, the other thing I think that's really shifting John, is that there is a huge movement of people that are going into owning their own business. Self-employment in later years, you know, midlife, we could call it and whether it's by choice or by force, you know, now we're looking at the highest unemployment rate we've had since the great depression.

Jeffrey Shaw (07:22): That means the rate of self employment is also going to go up. So, but I also think there's choice. I think there's a lot of people that are sitting in their corporate jobs, getting that steady paycheck, but also feeling like, you know, this is not making the happy. And if we haven't learned in the last year, that time is that life is short. When are you gonna learn it? So I think we have a different level of maturity of people come becoming self-employed. And with that coms, the ability to wanna to integrate your personal life. And that's why I think self-employment is a, is a model. And as a term is so important because it's about giving people control to live their lives and their businesses integrated.

John Jantsch (08:01): Yeah. And it's interesting, the fastest growing segment of, of whatever we call them, self-employed individuals, you know, is 50 plus. And I think that,

Jeffrey Shaw (08:08): And the most successful, right. With the actual statistically, the most successful businesses self-employed are 47 and over. Yeah. And yet we somehow give all the credit to the 20 year olds hustling, but they're not the ones succeeding.

John Jantsch (08:21): Yeah. Yeah. Well, hopefully we've learned a little, you know, in, in that time, but also I think it speaks to, you know, you get, you get whatever you get, your career started, you have a couple kids, you have a mortgage, you know, and all of a sudden, you know, a lot of ways you're making decisions based on those commitments. And I think a lot of people have come to conclusion, Hey, now it's my turn. You know, I'm gonna do my, you know, a man woman or, you know, in between, you know, it's

Jeffrey Shaw (08:44): Yeah. I work harder now than I probably ever did more hours, but because you know, it's the whole work balance, the work cut life balance thing is a complete misnomer. I mean, I don't like the word balance in there. I'll go for midlife. I'll go for work, life integration, but not balance because it's never in balance, but it, it feels okay when you're, when it's your empowered choice. And the fact matter is I work more now than I did when my kids were younger or even at home, I have nobody at home anymore because I can, but when I have kids at home, you know, you, you're trying to make sure you have time for everybody. So I, I don't mind work the longer hours I do now and working harder toward getting this next iteration of my life off the ground, because I've got the power to do it. I've got the freedom to make those decisions.

John Jantsch (09:24): I've been using internal for a long time. So it's that work life rhythm, uh, because you're right. It's never, you know, you're never gonna have the perfect wheel, you know, in balance, but the fact that you are paying attention to what all those elements are that that have to be in rhythm, you know, it does allow you to, cause sometimes you just gotta put, you know, you, you write books, I I've written books. And a lot of times I have to put way too much analysis on, you know, finishing that writing project then I'd like to, but I know that, I know that the other part of the, the rhythm is there and we'll get back in sync.

Jeffrey Shaw (09:55): I, yeah. And I love that use the term rhythm. Cause I think that also reflects the rhythm of life. You know, it, it reflects how at what stage of life that we want to live a certain way and put a certain amount of effort in. So I, I love that.

John Jantsch (10:07): And now word from our sponsor Wix, e-commerce the industry leading e-commerce platform with future ready, customizable, robust solutions for merchants who mean business W's e-commerce is the complete solution for entrepreneurs, omnichannel, retailers, and brands who wish to launch, run and scale their online stores successfully go to wix.com/e-commerce today and join over 700,000 active stores selling worldwide with w e-commerce. So one of the things you started talking about was this amount, amount of personal development that you've done. And I, I really think that, you know, I've been sort of jokingly saying that, you know, owning your own business is one of the best personal development programs ever created. Cause if you don't, you know, it's over,

Jeffrey Shaw (10:54): a hundred percent

John Jantsch (10:56): As you mentioned. I mean, lot of it's just, you gotta figure out, you know, I didn't take any classes on finance or accounting or anything. You've gotta figure a lot of that stuff out. Obviously it doesn't mean you have to do it all, but you have to know enough about it to understand how all of that works in your strategy. So what, what's your approach to personal development? You know, mm-hmm and you can speak to your own experience and then maybe some of the folks that you work with

Jeffrey Shaw (11:18): In coaching. Yeah. Well, to your point, I agree. I mean, I've always said being in business for yourself is, is personal development on steroids. But I look at, first of all, I'm always careful to use the word personal development. Cause I look at this as a forward moving progre, positive progression, not self help, right? It's the self-help as its own category. But you know, I look at it as personal development, how we develop. And I think, you know, for me personally, I, I can honest as in, I've been in business since I was 20 years old, I, I became a professional photographer at 20. I grew up very lower middle class. I went up serving the wealthiest families in, in the country as their family photographer. That is a personal journey story. Unlike one, I could even wrap up in a, in a 20 minute conversation because it's everything.

Jeffrey Shaw (12:02): I mean, it was, it was a constant series of being pushed outside of my comfort zone. I literally became a photographer because it was the most reclusive career I could come up with as it involved a dark room back in the day. And you always had a piece of equipment between me and the world and, and as an innately shy person. And particularly at that point in my life, that was the perfect career. The, the ultimate, you know, the joke of it was though that I was good at it. So next thing I knew I was being thrown into center stage, if you will, literally, even as a speaker, I, uh, to talk about what I was good at. So for me, it is, has undoubtedly been a personal development journey. What I think is really interesting about the personal development component of self-employment is that it comes in both directions.

Jeffrey Shaw (12:47): So on one hand, I look at it as capacity. This is a very big thing for me to big cornerstone, to the book that an anchor of the book, which I is a quote by Jim Rowan, which I say all the time, which is your level of success is rare, will rarely exceed your level of personal development. So I look at it as capacity, the more success you want, the more you have to develop yourself to increase the capacity of what you're capable of, what you can handle and what, what abundance and success is waiting for you. So you have to increase the capacity by constantly developing yourself in the process of doing that and simply being in business. You're also encountering everything at a faster pace. So your buttons are being pushed more often. Your challenges are being put in front of you at a much more rapid pace than if you're punching a clock. So there's personal development coming at you in both directions in one direction, you're leveraging personal development to increase your capacity for success. And on the other hand, your buttons are being pushed to grow at a faster pace than I think any other existence in, in business can offer. So

John Jantsch (13:52): In you're working with small business owners as self-employed folks that you work with, you know, where, where what's the Achilles heel. I mean, where do you see people commonly kind of fall down? They, you know, it's kinda like they get their idea out there. Hey, this is gonna work. And then sort of like phase three,

Jeffrey Shaw (14:08): The wheels come off. Yeah, literally, I, I mean, you know, when my previous book lingo was all about working with your ideal customers and identifying them, attracting them and identifying, and I know immediately I have an ideal customer in front of me or a client in front of me when they, they contact me and they say, one of two things, I'm all over the place, or I'm a hot mess. basically the same thing. Right? And that is the Achilles heel, because like I said, one of the corner cornerstone problems is that we end running all over the place. We wind up, especially nowadays we hire, which is a good thing. We hire specialists for every different part of our business, right? We hire the email marketing specialists, the social media specialists, even the Instagram part of social media. We hire all these specialists. And as the, you know, self-employed owner, that's a lot to manage and we end up wind up.

Jeffrey Shaw (14:57): We end up feeling like we're pulled in so many different directions that we, we lose the integration of our business. And that is the, the heart of my book. The self-employed life is introducing what I call the self ecosystem. Mm-hmm , which is an all in one integrated system. And here's why John, here's why I believe this is so important because life is unpredictable. The world is unpredictable. Being in business is a roller coaster. The only way we can give ourselves the best shot at success is controlling the environment. We that up for the results we want. We can't control everything else around us, but I do believe we can have a lot of control over the environment. We set up that we have the right person to develop the right business strategies, even the right daily practices to keep us on track. If we get everything in place, you know, success is almost guaranteed. And if it isn't, you gave it best shot. So, so

John Jantsch (15:53): Just maybe unpack this ecosystem a little more because I, I, I think as I hear, listen to you, describe it, it, it, it's almost like a plan or a strategy for, you know, making

Jeffrey Shaw (16:02): This a holistic journey. Yeah. It's my, my, the advanced readers of the book was amazing. How many of them come back and thought that this was auto autobiographical, which was never my intent. Like, I didn't write a, I wasn't my intention to write a book about me. It was a book in service to the people I care about, which was self ILO business owners. But undoubtedly there's, this is, you know, as I've said to others and I you're, you're a serial author. How many books are you on by the way, number seven, I lost track, oh gosh, I, well, this is number two for me, but I, I aspire to, to hit seven. And, you know, in some ways I wonder if this isn't my legacy book, to be honest with you, because everything is in there. Everything I've learned in 36 years and everything, I've, I'm a masterful observer, if nothing else.

Jeffrey Shaw (16:50): And I think that's the root of why I became a photographer that shy kid watched everybody else around him, became a photographer to observe everybody else. So I, I, if I, I have no, I have no degree from university, but I have a really strong degree of life because I'm a masterful observer. So that's how I run my business. And that's how now I support others, but I've taken all those observations. And my biggest observation in business, particularly for self-employed business owners is that if you think about it, like an ecosystem, just like in nature, if one part of that ecosystem is off, it can destroy the whole thing. Right? Right. If the water temperatures to a warm, the coral reef dies, and that is the primary problems for self-employed business owners. What, what I see most often is they're running like a hamster on a wheel applying a lot of action, because that's what we've been told to do, hustle it out.

Jeffrey Shaw (17:46): Grit grind apply a lot of action. The reason why so many small business owners feel like they're working really hard, but hardly getting ahead is because they haven't done the personal development work to raise the capacity. So they're, they are literally in figuratively hitting their head against the ceiling. They're putting their efforts into a container that's not big enough, even if that container is their own mindset. That, and then on the other side of it, which is also a core problem, is if you've got things rolling is sustainable. Do you have those daily habits, affirmations and clear intentions to keep it going? And if, if not, that's when you start experiencing the ups and downs, like we have these surges of success and we come off a cliff, we have another surgery come off the cliff and we wonder, are we gonna survive the dip? right. That's the goal. Just start to survive the dip where we need to level that out. You know, as I, when I was writing the book, I said, my goal was to give people strategies to control the chaos and the ability to manage what they can't control. Yeah.

John Jantsch (18:49): And I, I certainly see that expand and contract all the time with businesses.

Jeffrey Shaw (18:54): So, so what are some of the traits and

John Jantsch (18:55): Habits that you've seen, that, that you can identify that, that you think really serve people trying to do this balance and build this

Jeffrey Shaw (19:01): Ecosystem? Yeah, so, and their habits of sustainability and, and I have for the, the, I have a three month small business code coaching program. And I start off by offering an assessment and everyone shows weakness in the same area, which are these daily habits. And yet everyone also identifies as what they know they need the most, like, I know I should do that. And if I did that, it would help, you know, my, my position in business, but I don't have time for it. Right. So the ones that, that couple that I have found to be really solid one is how one sets their intentions. Now I am, you know, I can get as woo woo. As anybody, but only to the degree it's actually gonna benefit me. I mean, I, I have taken ownership of the hashtag woowoo in your wallet. Sure. Because that's how I feel about it.

Jeffrey Shaw (19:50): Right. I feel I want direct application intentions, work, intentions, work, sciences proof they work. The problem is I think most people go about their intentions incorrectly. And the way I teach intentions is to get very clear on what you want go from and what you want to go to. So I provide my clients, but they, from to format, I want to go from this to that. That's the intention, not mixed up with a bunch of pretty words. And that make it sound a lot more like kumbaya around the fire. Just get that clear. I want to go from this to that. Right. That to, so that's one practice getting very clear in your intentions. I think it is powerful to have one statement of affirmation, right? As our, I think we have a mutual friend BR Mansour, and he speaks to it as speak it into existence.

Jeffrey Shaw (20:38): Right? What's that one thing that you wanna speak into existence. And then lastly, uh, a practice that I, that I show in this book, and it's the only repeated item from the, my previous book, cuz it's that good? , it's what I call a what's going right. Journal. And this has been my one practice I can stick to. And by the way, John, I mean, I'll be in full disclosure, you know, after I've had my morning Chi tea and I've walked my dog and all that, I'm talking to about 15 minutes that I devote, right. This is not 45 minutes cause no self-employed person has that kind of time. 15 minutes. Right. So I, I meditate for, I meditate for 10 minutes and then five for five minutes, I do what I call a what's going right. Journal, which is writing down. What's going right in my life. Now that can sound a lot like a gratitude journal, but here's the difference. Gratitude is too broad for me. I I'm grateful for a lot of things in life. I wanna get really clear. And I think we all need to get clear on what's going right when we start acknowledging more of what's going, right. It starts re reprogramming our brain from negativity to positivity. Yeah. I love

John Jantsch (21:43): That. So, so I wanna touch on one, uh, subject. Uh, sometimes most of times people consider self employed and so they need to be similar, but certainly there are a lot of self-employed people that come, even if it's just managing freelancers, you know, it feels like you have a team or a staff now I, it's probably the, the aspect of business that I hear from most self-employed people is the hardest for them. It's the people it's other people it's it's do I hire people? Do I need to hire people? If I use freelancers, how do I keep them, you know, accountable? I mean, what are, what are some of your, uh, thoughts on self-employed, uh, individuals and the fact that, you know, leveraging the work of others might be the, the true way to success.

Jeffrey Shaw (22:23): Yeah. I, I think there's again, talking about capacity, right? Uh, another way of looking at is when we hit a ceiling in business, we can't go to that next level and be scalable until we hire the people. And in a logical sense, and John, I'd be curious if this is your, be your experience. But I see when a lot of businesses sitting around the 200 to $250,000 gross year and not breaking through it, it almost always seems to be, they, they haven't hired people. yeah, yeah. Right. At that particular stage, that's usually the, the, the Achilles heel. So on one hand, we need to hire people, even if it is on a freelance basis or contractors, subcontractors, in order for our business to be scalable, I will also agree that it's often not an innate. I found it extremely difficult to start. Cause I, I just wasn't prepared.

Jeffrey Shaw (23:15): I was prepared to be self-employed I wasn't prepared to be an employer. Right. What I have learned that has helped me a lot is I, I put a lot of effort. I look at it almost as ideal customers, but in this case, ideal coworkers, I put a lot of effort into being on the same page as the people I collaborate with and then leave them alone. I'm a creative by nature as a photographer and nothing creates, kills creativity more than control, trying to control them. Yeah. So I hire really good people and then just leave them alone and trust. I'll tell you why I have something I always said to every single person I've ever worked with is I want them to know first and foremost, there's no gray area with me. I think I'm a hundred percent wrong. Right. I think I'm sure I'm confident.

Jeffrey Shaw (23:59): I'm a hundred percent. Right. But I ain't equally open to being wrong at the same time. but I don't know how to come across. Like, well, I might be right. This might be a good idea. I don't know how to do that. I come across as, oh man, this is the best idea ever. Oh no, your ideas better. Like I will switch like that and be okay with that. So I also just let my employees know anybody. I work with that that's, that's the way I'm coming from. And if they know that ahead of time, we work well together.

John Jantsch (24:24): Yeah. And I think that one of the things people discover is if you don't give people that freedom, then they just, then they wait for you to tell 'em what to do. And so then you now you're not really delegating

Jeffrey Shaw (24:33): Anything correct. Well said, well said.

John Jantsch (24:36): So you also, in addition to the book, uh, which comes out in, uh, may of 20, 21, you also have a summit, uh, that you're going to learn, uh, in, if people are listening to this prior to April 20, 21, at some point to that was going on. You wanna share a little bit about that? Yeah. Or just where people can find out

Jeffrey Shaw (24:51): More about you. Right. And this might be the biggest undertaken I've, I've taken. I was excited about the book, but I'm actually more excited about the summit. And, you know, John, I think a lot of the speakers on the summit are people, you know, there's 10 amazing speakers and many of which I think, you know, and as you know, I, I called probably what might I called in on what might be my one and only favorite card right. Literally contacted the 10 most awesome, best, highest paid speakers. I know and said, Hey, would you do this for free? Because I wanna make a difference in the world. And what will me up to needing to do this honestly, is, is unemployment rate. Like I wrote this book initially intended for people who were already self-employed and giving them a better way to be self-employed.

Jeffrey Shaw (25:34): But then I realized the scores of people that are now unemployed. And I started realizing this cuz of LinkedIn. Like I I've never considered LinkedIn my place being, being self-employed. But to tell you what, every time I share a self-employed on LinkedIn, it goes crazy. And I'm like, oh, okay. I think it's because a lot of people sit there unemployed. So the place to find out about that is, uh, self-employed summit.com. Um, the other tool that we're working on, which I'm really excited about, I think will help anybody starting out is, uh, a self assessment tool. And you can get that at self-assessment dot com, excuse me, self-employed assessment.com. Self-employed assessment.com. And that's a great, it's a discovery tool so that you could know your starting point as to what your strengths and weaknesses are in the ecosystem so that you can then figure out your next action steps. Awesome.

John Jantsch (26:22): Well, Jeffrey, thanks for some by the duct tape marketing podcast. And, uh, hopefully, uh, when we all get back out, down on the road again, we and run into each other in real life.

Jeffrey Shaw (26:30): I hope so. And we look forward to it.

John Jantsch (26:32): All right. That wraps up another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. I wanna thank you so much for tuning in, feel free to share this show, feel free to give us reviews. You know, we love those things. Also, did you know that we had created training, marketing training for your team? If you've got employees, if you've got a staff member that wants to learn a marketing system, how to install that marketing system in your business, check it out. It's called the certified marketing manager program from duct tape marketing. You can find it at ducttapemarketing.com and just scroll down a little and find that tab that says training for your team.

John Jantsch (00:00): Today's episode is brought to you in part by Success Story, hosted by Scott D. Clary and brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network. Success story is one of the most successful, useful podcasts in the world. They feature Q and A sessions with successful business leaders, keynote presentations and conversations on sales, marketing, business, startups and entrepreneurship. A recent episode had Terry Jones, the CEO of Travelocity and the chairman of of kayak.com. Talking all about disrupting existing industries with technologies so much for us to, to think about and learn in that episode. So listen to this success story podcast, wherever you get your podcast.

John Jantsch (00:55): Hello, and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Kindra Hall. She's the president and chief storytelling officer at stellar collective, a consulting firm focused on the strategic application of storytelling to today's communication challenges. She's the author of the wall street journal bestselling book stories that stick released in 2019. And she's out within new book called "Choose Your Story, Change Your Life, silence your inner critic and rewrite your life from the inside out. So Kendra, welcome to the show,

Kindra Hall (01:33): John, thank you so much for having me thrilled to be

John Jantsch (01:35): Here. So storytelling is it's. I was gonna say, it's having a moment. It's having like a decade. The, you know, when I started my business, maybe you could find one book on storytelling and now there's like whole sections in bookstores, but I was really, uh, pleased to see that you've kind of got a pretty big twist on the idea of storytelling. I mean really more about your life in some ways. Yeah,

Kindra Hall (01:58): I think that, you know, there are, of course, and, and my first book is all about stories in business and, and why they're so important and how to tell them, but it became really clear to me over the past several years, having the opportunity to meet readers or speak to live audiences, that there was another really important story. And perhaps the most important, one of all, not necessarily the stories we tell outwardly, but the stories we're telling inwardly and to ourselves.

John Jantsch (02:29): Yeah. One, one of the challenges that I think anytime something becomes a hot trend, you know, or a hot business technique, you know, people start manufacturing stories because it's a good way to like, get your message across or to influence people. And I think it's kind kind of muddy, uh, the pond a little bit. Hasn't it?

Kindra Hall (02:47): Mm-hmm mm-hmm I would say so. I mean, I, it, it's always really funny to me when people say that, you know, storytelling is had, or I had a peer of mine say, well, yeah, your storytelling is just so obvious. And, and I, I wanna say, you know, it, it, hasn't always been obvious, which is the reason, you know, which is the reason that, that I wanted to start sharing about it in the first place, but you're right. Anytime something becomes a buzzword, we really lose track of, of what it is and, and what it can be and, and what it should be and how we can use it. So the same has happened with stories. Well, so,

John Jantsch (03:29): So I wanna pick on one word in particular in the title, because you know, a lot of people are, write your story, create your story, but you actually pick the word choose. So what do you mean? What do you mean by

Kindra Hall (03:39): Choose? It was, I'm glad you bring that up because there was some discussion about the title, choose your story, change your life is the title. And there was some talk of, yeah, write your story, create your story, uh, change your story. Change. Your life was one that kept coming up. But for me, the most important thing here is that we can't, you know, change your story, change your life. The reality is, and, and you mentioned it earlier, we can't make up stories. We can't change or erase the stories that have happened to us. The experiences that we've had, the, the hardships, the challenges, whatever those are, this isn't about. Well, forget about those. This is about acknowledging that it there and our ability, our, our great benefit that we can choose to focus and retell ourselves better stories. The stories in our lives that serve us, that motivate us to, to move forward that pull us off the cat out, or encourage us to take the risk that we really should take. So choose was a very important word, a nod to the agency and ownership we have,

John Jantsch (04:51): How different is this? When people say, oh, you know, this head trash is stopping you from doing stuff, or mm-hmm, , you know, you're just in your head about this, and that's why you're stuck. I mean, how different is it from those kinds of ideas?

Kindra Hall (05:04): Well, I would say, I mean, this, this sentiment, I suppose, at its most basic level is true. I am saying that, and it is true. There there's a lot of conversations happening in our own minds that, that are completely automated. A SUBC is that we're almost entirely unaware of. So, so in that way, it's the same, how it's different is it's important to take a look at the neuroscience and humans as inner storytellers.

John Jantsch (05:35): So you mentioned the idea of it being unconscious. Um, so how do you find these? I mean, it's, it's kinda like that white noise it's going until somebody turns it off. You didn't even know it was going on. So, so like

Kindra Hall (05:46): How do you find them? Well, and that's, that is absolutely the first step. So if these are subconscious and the other thing that we should know is that we are, we have a natural built in negativity bias. So not only are these stories, not only is our brain drawing on experiences where maybe something went wrong, or someone made fun of us, or we, you know, we didn't, we didn't win get, we didn't take the, or we took the game winning shot and didn't make it in the net or whatever. See, you could see it struggled with that because it's a sports analogy and that I'm, I'm like net, well, there are multiple sports that use net. So that was, but you can see. So, so we, we have these, our, our brain has this desire to keep us safe. And so it's saying, Ooh, don't, don't go too far.

Kindra Hall (06:36): Remember this, this, oh, go to don't step out over here, remember this, this, this. And so the key really is to find opportunities a, to be aware that that's what's happening and B find opportunities to pause this automation. So you can even be, have an opportunity or have the possibility of changing it or choosing a better story. So, so I would recommend anytime, you know, anytime you are procrastinating there's and, and I give there's, there's several examples in there, but one that I think is a true sign. Anytime you are procrastinating to do something that, you know, you should do. For example, I have got this email, John, I'm embarrassed to say it. I've got this email that I'm to send and, you know, launching a book it's important to, to rally all the people, to get all the support that you can. And there's this one email from this one person who said, blatantly email me and tell me when you want me to post about your book on my blog, but I just cannot bring myself to send this email.

Kindra Hall (07:39): And, and I, and I, I know it's there because that procrastination is telling me that there's a story there, that there, there are stories there that are holding me back. And as I think about it, it's stories about me making sure that I get the email perfect and all the stories in my life where perfection was rewarded. And I'm nervous that I won't the email perfect, there's this, you know, there are the stories of being rejected of other times. I was maybe going above, you know, like reaching a little bit higher than I should. And, and so all these stories are keeping me stuck in this place and not sending this email. So anytime. And, and I just realized that that that's what was happening earlier today, cuz I was procrastinating their stories there. So now I've gotta start choosing a better story to tell myself so that I write the email and hit send, and I'm gonna do it by the end of the day. Okay.

John Jantsch (08:32): So, so let me, let me go back to what you just said. I mean that that's really the art, right? So you witnessed the story mm-hmm and then you, you choose a better story. I mean that's in the essence is

Kindra Hall (08:43): What you're saying is mm-hmm that's absolutely. That's like what is a story that I can tell myself? So what I will do, I'm doing it right here for you now is think about the times that I just, and we we've all had these instances where we, we were just like on a whim, we're like, you know what, I'm just gonna email the person and see what happens. Right. And something really good. I had a, I know a guy who on a whim emailed Anthony Bourdain and they ended up doing huge projects together. I mean, right. Like so, but, and I have my own own stories in my life where an email just changed everything. So going back and thinking even about three of those retelling myself, those stories already as I'm sitting here, I mean, I'm focused on what we're talking about here, but I'm thinking about some of those stories and I just wanna send the email. Right. It makes it so much easier. Let's

John Jantsch (09:32): Let's just do it live. I'll pause the recording and you just on that email.

Kindra Hall (09:36): I know I really should. No, I really don't. Please hold me to it that I do it at the end of this. Right. Okay. But that's, that's the difference? That's the difference? Right. There is three stories about emails that went really great, that weren't perfect, that were sent on a wimp and I'm ready to take that action

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John Jantsch (10:27): So there is a term I not necessarily heard this. I think it's very clever. And I think again, it's a, it's a piece of, of choose your story and this, this idea, I think we've kind of been talking about self storytelling mm-hmm

Kindra Hall (10:39): yeah. And a, you know, in all of the, in the moment, the decade long moment that storytelling has been having most of the time, we're thinking about outward stories and in particular, in business it's brand stories, it's marketing. Um, but the self story is, is you can only be so good. You'll only get so far at being able to tell outward stories. If you aren't in, if you weren't super aware of the stories that are going on in own head.

John Jantsch (11:19): So I'm imagining you get like your arms around this, like, oh my goodness, here's why I'm doing this, you know, kind of thing. So do, do you actually, is there sort of a muscle that you create now that you're like, oh, I could recognize that and laugh at it. You know, now, I mean, do you, is that sort of the eventual

Kindra Hall (11:35): Goal? That's and it is the eventual goal and that is eventually what happens now. We are still human, right? Like I wrote, I wish I could say I wrote this book and now have no problems whatsoever with myself stories, but I just gave you a couple of examples of where even I struggle. However, I think it's that reduction in time wasted, stuck in old stories. Yeah. And yeah, as soon as you can, you can now say to yourself, and that's my hope is people read this and I've seen it happen, uh, with people who I've taken through this process is it's much easier now for them to say, hold on, there's a story there. And not many people have expressed it in this way, but I love that you did, and kind of laugh at it and say, Ugh, look how ridiculous this is. Look at how ridiculous these stories are that I tell myself that are keeping me from doing the thing I really wanna do.

John Jantsch (12:30): So the book is in several parts. And so maybe like any good framework, kind of give the, the framework, you know, come the story, the storytelling process hacking your essential stories or the mm-hmm are the, are the, the titles of the parts. So maybe, maybe you give us a glimpse into what we're gonna find in those three separate parts and how they go

Kindra Hall (12:50): Together. Yep. So the first part is, is abolishing a baseline for understanding why this even matters. And it goes into the neuroscience of storytelling and you know, maybe outward storytelling is a skill you wanna work on. It's good for pitches. It's good for interviews, but the reality is you are an excellent storyteller inside your own head. No, again, we're not always telling ourselves the best stories, but that first part really sets the scene for what self storytelling is and why it matters so much and gives a little background on how we really can fulfill the promise of changing your life by choosing better stories. The second part of the book is a really important part to me and the at is the method, the path forward, how do we actually do this? Because as you said, there's, there's a lot of different ways to say it.

Kindra Hall (13:43): My daughter came home one day from school and said, mama, listen to this quote, whether you think you can, or you think you can't you're right. She just thought, I mean, I'm sure she thought her teacher came up with that quote, but it's, you know, we, we hear different versions of this and we have our entire lives, but I wanted to lay out a plan for, okay. So you're suspicious that stories are holding you back. What do you do about it? Four steps, really simple, really effective. And then the third part of the book is touches on the five, five key areas of life and explores how self storytelling can show up in each one of those areas. So business and career, lots of stories with business and career money and finances. I don't think there is anything more storied than money. There is health and wellbeing, love and relationships and family, and so five chapters. So, you know, and you can pick whatever, whatever area of your life you're thinking is you're most affected by your stories that you could start there.

John Jantsch (14:48): You know, one of my favorite examples I love to use and, and I see this all the time is, you know, you can take somebody, an entrepreneur totally successful by everybody's measure finances, you know, all the things they seem like they really got it going on. And yet they go back to a family reunion and they're like that little dopey kid that has not achieved anything. Exactly. And it's like, I think that's such a, such an of, you know, how you know that self storytelling, you know, doesn't allow us to break free sometimes.

Kindra Hall (15:17): Yeah. I had a conversation just over the holidays with some relatives. We, we ended up having our holiday plans, got a little upended, but so is the case. It'll make a good story to tell someday, or it already does now, but even in a, a conversation over FaceTime with relatives, I realized, oh my goodness, they're, they've handed down stories to me that I've willingly accepted and have never fully evaluated. And actually I think they're starting to reek some havoc on my life. Now, again, it is not my relatives fault. They're, they're getting stories handed down to them and stories handed down to them. I bet I could trace it. I bet I could trace them back six, seven generations, but I get to choose again. I get to choose what the stories I want to tell myself are, and now being aware of, wow, that's where that's coming from. I feel like I have a, a good baseline for where to move forward.

John Jantsch (16:16): So in some ways is the, is the ultimate goal. I hate, I hate to use the word affirmations, but I'm feeling affirmations come out of this a little bit. I mean, is the, is the ultimate goal in some ways to have built up a series of, I mean, you're calling them stories, but you know, they might be a informations that you tell yourself in this situation, you know, this is what I need to believe, or this is what I need to convince myself.

Kindra Hall (16:39): You and I have the same struggle with the word affirmations. And I, and I, I mean, I've used affirmations before and to, to great success. However, um, if this is more or the person who has used affirmations and is still stuck, right? Like an, an example I gave in the book, it would be like if the Titanic pulled up alongside the iceberg and lit a match and was like, well, now our problems are solved. And affirmation is like lighting a match. And it's only the beginning of the big iceberg of stories that were up against. And so our, and this again goes into the storytelling aspect of us as humans. But, but we remember things in story form, which also means then we can recall those stories and use those stories. So like, if you're, if there's an action you want to take, you're having a hard time getting there, just saying, I am strong.

Kindra Hall (17:38): I am capable. I mean, who knows if that's gonna get the job done, but again, if you tell yourself the stories of maybe it's an exercise situation and you're like, you really need to, I really need to work out today. How many times do we say that a day? I mean, it's early January and it's still . I really need to work out however, and you could say, I am a healthy person who is committed to my body or whatever affirmation you wanna say. Is that going to get you to put your shoes on and go for a run? I, I don't know. However, if you were to tell yourself a few stories of times in your life, where you felt your best, where you looked great at a wedding, or you showed up at the family reunion and were like a new person, just revisiting the emotion, even the details from that story, that experience will make it almost real again. And that is what will motivate you to put on the shoes and go for a run. It makes it a whole lot easier.

John Jantsch (18:40): So one of the stories, I think a lot of us tell ourselves is that other people's stories are crap. . So what impact do you think this could have of on us being more accepting of other people's stories?

Kindra Hall (18:52): I think this could be everything. I think that when you start to open the door into you as a human made up of so many stories, and some of them are there because you put them there, some of them, somebody else put there, some of them are there, your will, some of the, you know, like they, once you get an awareness of the power, your stories have, it is really difficult to look at another person and not think to yourself. I wonder what stories they're carrying and the compassion that you feel for yourself when start to realize all these different stories and what you're up against transfers to another person with the additional insight that if you can barely get ahold of what stories you are dealing with, how can you ever expect to understand and fully process the stories of someone else? So I think that there is such, and it's one of the things I'm most excited about is that for no, for nothing else to, to start to see other people and their stories with a more compassionate eye.

John Jantsch (20:07): All right. So now I've got my library built up. Is there a, a ritual, a routine? I mean, how do I install and like activate 'em like, you know, do I, when I start to tell myself bad story, I like wiggle my left ear. I mean, what's yeah. You know, how do, how do you, you know, cause it's so easy to just slip back into your I your, your reaction, right? Mm-hmm as opposed to something that's healthier. So how do you, how do you activate install and

Kindra Hall (20:29): Activate? I would say that it's, it's, it's like, anytime you're trying to, to start a new habit at first, it takes brute force, right? Like it takes, maybe you write the stories down and you read them to yourself every morning. I've had people who they know that they're triggered by certain situations. So maybe it's a meeting when a meeting comes in with their boss or on the calendar, they tell themselves the stories before they go into the meeting. But it does take, I mean, essentially what you're trying to do is rewire the way that your brain talks to itself. And, and that does take practice that takes practice and effort at first. However, the good news is, is after you do that for a while, eventually the brain acquiesces and that becomes, that becomes the default. It just takes some work. Yeah.

John Jantsch (21:22): Success is a great teacher too. Right? Exactly. You have success a few times. You're like, oh, that

Kindra Hall (21:27): Work. And then you start to become, yeah, exactly. And when you can start to see, oh, this is happening. And then you start to become more aware of the good stories that are happening around you. So something happens that supports your belief in yourself or your, the belief that you, your positive belief, not your limiting belief. You say, ah, I'm collecting this story and I'm gonna use this. And so you start doing it in real time. Um, and that adds just another layer of imagine if you're walking around in your life, looking for the great stories, what the difference, just that alone. Right. Makes

John Jantsch (22:03): Yeah. It changes your awareness completely. Mm-hmm so Kendra tell people where they can find out more about your work and, and obviously

Kindra Hall (22:10): Get a copy of the book. Yeah. So my work is you can find [email protected] I'm on social media, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and the book is wherever books are sold. So Barnes and noble, Amazon, you can go to bookshop.org and, um, buy it from a local book story. If you'd like to do that, there that's a great way to support a local bookshop. But yeah. Awesome.

John Jantsch (22:34): Well, appreciate you stopping by the duct tape marketing podcast and, uh, hopefully we'll run into each other one of these days out there

Kindra Hall (22:40): On the road. I love that. Great to be here, John. Thanks for having me.

John Jantsch (22:46): All right. So that wraps up another episode. I wanna thank you so much, much for tuning in and you know, we love those reviews and comments. And just generally tell me what you think also did you know that you could offer the duct tape marketing system, our system to your clients and build a complete marketing consulting coaching business, or maybe level up an agency with some additional services that's right. That check out the duct tape marketing consultant network. You can find it at ducttapemarketing.com and just scroll down a little and find that offer our system to your client's tab.