John Jantsch (00:01.668)

So what if the reason so many leaders stay stuck is not that they're not working hard enough, but that they keep getting very good at solving the wrong problems. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Kevin D. St. Clergy. He's an entrepreneur, speaker, mentor, and author of Beyond Blind Blaming. Stop solving the wrong problems and instantly unlock results. After building and exiting his own company,

Kevin's focus is work on helping entrepreneurs and leaders uncover the hidden assumptions, mindset blocks, and false diagnoses that keep them stuck. So, Kevin, welcome to the show.

Kevin D. St.Clergy (00:42.382)

Thanks, John. Appreciate you having me.

John Jantsch (00:44.122)

So the term, I want to start with, as I often do, words out of the title, the term blind blaming is, doing a lot of work here. How would you define it? You know, I'm imagining one of my business owners listening to this, sitting at a stoplight right now, wondering why their numbers are flat. So for them, how would you define the term blind blaming?

Kevin D. St.Clergy (01:08.834)

Now I'll start with the story. It's the origin story that everybody likes. I'll be quick. But when I was 10 years old, I was a phenomenal baseball player at a batting average of five 50. And for those of you listening, five 50 is epic. It's great. and people noticed I was going to bat every other time I went to bat Babe Ruth and his hayday three 94, just to give you an example.

so my dad and I went to work. worked with me on my mindset. I mean, I was young, but I love baseball and, we had a buddy who was actually used to coach for the Dodgers who was helping me with my swing in the off season. We practiced every day. And the next season I stood up and I was ready, but something was different because I started swinging and missing. In fact, I missed every time I went to bat for the entire next season. I literally went from here to zero and you probably guess what I heard from the stands. Come on, kid, keep your head in the game, play to win this time. And then can probably really imagine what my dad would give me lectures on on the way home.

John Jantsch (01:50.298)

Yeah.

Kevin D. St.Clergy (01:56.552)

about how bad my attitude was and that's the biggest problem who by the way still thinks that's what it was back then even though he's read the book. But what we found was two weeks after I quit because I'd had enough of the abuse and eventually started blaming myself thinking I'm just not right for this game I quit baseball and I went to a fluke eye exam we figure out what the real problem was I just couldn't see the ball.

Doctor said, sorry, kids practically blind without glasses. And here's the real problem, the adults in my life for that two year stint never stopped blaming me for something that was completely out of my control. And that's what we call blind blaming. And I see it in business, I see it in relationships, I see it everywhere. We all go through it. So for people that are down on their business, they immediately start thinking of things like, well, it must be my marketing, which I know you've taught for years. And a lot of times it's not their marketing, they're just not answering the damn phone when people call.

John Jantsch (02:44.058)

Yeah. It's interesting how many times I've run into that, you know, that exact scenario. It's like, you know, we're just not getting enough leads and, we do call tracking and things like that. And we were like, yeah, you are. We've listened to the phone calls. You know, that's not really the issue, so how does, let's start there. Well, there's, mean, I can go a lot of directions, but since we went there, how like,

Kevin D. St.Clergy (02:56.929)

Yep.

Yeah.

John Jantsch (03:11.938)

If you're working with a client, you're working with a business and you can clearly see that they're blaming the wrong things for the results that you're bringing. mean, how do you circumvent that? How do you change direction with that? How do you help them recognize that they're looking at the wrong? And it's rampant. mean, perfectionism is an example of blind blaming, I think, a lot of times.

Kevin D. St.Clergy (03:31.766)

It's rampant. yeah.

Kevin D. St.Clergy (03:36.812)

Yeah. Well, the book's broken into three sections on purpose. It's awareness. So I'm finding that once people start reading about blind blaming, and they're more aware of it, then it starts to make sense.

John Jantsch (03:42.883)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (03:46.383)

Yeah.

Kevin D. St.Clergy (03:48.342)

Then we teach them the RCD method, which is how they get past blind blaming. It's very simple, but remember simple doesn't always mean easy, but it's simply reflect. RCD stands for reflect. Is there something else going on that I can't see? You've got to learn to ask yourself that question because if you keep solving the same problem over and over again and you're not getting any different results, that's where we lead to insanity. But that's what we go through as small business owners. And even when you get really big like we did with our agency, we had 450 clients with 900 locations, Sean. So I have plenty of scars of people like

I don't think your service is working. I'm really I'm showing 22 leads last month from your call tracking number Yeah, but we only scheduled two. I was like, well, that's not my fault That's blind blaming so But here's where I think people fall down because they'll get their team together and say what do you guys think it is? And they're all in that sphere of influence and everybody else says what must be marketing. It's certainly not us as salespeople It's got to be the marketing. I just don't have enough leads and the leads are generating their crap

So connect is the C stage. You have to connect with an outside source, a mentor, a coach. I like paid coaches. I've had one for 20 years. Just got a new one that's kind of up in the next level because I want to get the nine figures here pretty quick. So I've just needed a coach that's already there. And then I also have mastermind groups. Those are some of my favorite ways to learn. I know you've been part of them. I think you've led them in the past. And I think when you do that, these people can see what you can't see because they're outside of that sphere of influence. You're not tied down with your successes and your failures.

John Jantsch (05:11.29)

Yes, yes.

Kevin D. St.Clergy (05:12.181)

And finally, once you know what it is, this is where D comes in. You got to decide to do something different. In fact, it was pretty cool because.

I was a little worried about this in the chapter because it does use the F word and even Jack Canfield, he's only the second guy I read the book. He's like, man, I even love your effing part. And I'm like, my God, I just got Jack Canfield to say the F word on video, but it's MFD make an effing decision. Because once you know what it is, I see a lot of people are like, no, maybe not. Let's go back and review this again. Do something. And that's a great story. Cause when we came up with this, it was actually one of my clients. She was debating on whether to go with one or two loans to double her business. And she's like, Kevin, what do you think I should do? And I just told her straight up.

up, Kayla, I think you need to make an effing decision. But I didn't say effing. I've known her well enough. I helped her start a business seven years ago. And she's like, okay, okay, she comes back a month later. And I always like to start coaching calls off these days with what's going well. And she's like, Kevin, I'm MFDing all over the place. You changed my life. Even my husband's noticed and we're doing things. We got the loan. We bought the business. We've doubled the size. We're doing great. I'm like, MFD, what are you talking about? She's like, make an effing decision. What you told me to do on the last call. I'm doing it. And I was like, Kayla, do you mind if I use that in my book? Because I love that.

John Jantsch (06:16.378)

Hmm.

Kevin D. St.Clergy (06:18.018)

And that has turned out to be the biggest thing I was worried about has turned out to be the thing that people mentioned or remember the most. Cause they'll come up to my booth after a talk and say, man, I love the MFD part. You're right. I've got to make some decisions and make some mistakes.

John Jantsch (06:30.276)

So how you think about the entrepreneur, mean, there's more to get done in a day, every day, seemingly than they possibly can. So, you know, they get really wired for go, go, go, go. In some ways you're saying, wait a minute, slowing down is actually a more aggressive approach than, just constantly going at full tilt. How do you get people who recognize that, you know, that our part? Yeah. Yeah.

Kevin D. St.Clergy (06:55.968)

I do a schedule audit and I see do they like for me 5 to 5 30 a.m. I get up early I didn't used to because I worked in a bar all through grad school but now I get up and from 5 to 5 30 is my quiet time I grab a cup of coffee I do not look at a screen and I just journal and try to come up with ideas and I can see it on their calendar when they're working six days a week and trying to see customers or patients whoever you're working with because they keep losing people and they don't give them some they don't give themselves time to think

John Jantsch (07:16.312)

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (07:24.78)

Right. How do you get them to do that? How do you get them to do that? That's... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kevin D. St.Clergy (07:25.87)

And so I make them, well, I make them schedule the time. Just like yesterday, we had a client, I'm like, where's your admin time? He's like, well, I've got administrative assistant. I didn't mean for her, when are you working on your marketing? She's like, what do you mean? I'm like, wrong answer.

John Jantsch (07:39.226)

Yeah, yeah.

Kevin D. St.Clergy (07:41.934)

So at the end of the call, we had her physically book these two Fridays in a row that she was gonna take four hours to work on this. And she's so excited, because then she's like, well, what do I do? So we had to actually lay out what she needs to do. So first you gotta schedule the time. What gets scheduled gets done. Then you need a personal assistant to protect you from yourself, John. This is like Christina Cann, who I think you interacted with, she booked this.

John Jantsch (07:57.988)

day.

Kevin D. St.Clergy (08:04.909)

Christina's constantly protective for myself because I say hey booker there. No, that's your time to work on marketing for us to keep the company going I'll find another space for that person So a lot of times I'll find entrepreneurs who are just GSD getting us done and they're not focusing on time for themselves nor do they have a personal assistant and that's usually one of the first hires that I have people do when they're a solopreneur

John Jantsch (08:27.268)

Yeah. And, know, for years I've, I actually just blocked that time out every week, that I'm going to do, you know, cause there's a lot of things that you actually, you can't get done between, you know, podcast calls, right? I mean, there's, need that three hour ramp, if you're going to do it. And so I've, I've just had that on my calendar and, know, the nice thing is you can't schedule over it. You know, other people can't schedule over it.

Kevin D. St.Clergy (08:29.357)

.

Kevin D. St.Clergy (08:41.355)

Right. Yeah.

Kevin D. St.Clergy (08:51.757)

No, and I like, yeah, I agree. And I like having breaks. mean, Christina is really good about a 10 a.m. break from 10 to 10 30. That's my walk and my snack from 12 to one. I do take a lunch. I didn't used to take lunches. I worked through it. Just power through as a mistake. 30 minutes at three o'clock to three 30. And I usually wrap up my day between two and two and three o'clock these days because I start pretty early.

John Jantsch (09:06.967)

Yes.

John Jantsch (09:13.427)

Yeah, same here. So when you're working with a client, have you started to recognize specific patterns of language particularly that kind of tip you off that like, this one's in blind blaming mode?

Kevin D. St.Clergy (09:16.077)

.

Kevin D. St.Clergy (09:25.613)

Yeah, it's the stories they're telling themselves. And I'll give you a great example of somebody recently. She's like, I can't wait to work with you. She was really excited. It our first call. We had a great interview. And she's like, was like, what do you think your biggest challenge is? When we got to that point, she says, well, I'll never be as big as you, but my biggest problem is marketing. And I said, wait a minute, let's stop. Let's go back. It's not your marketing.

John Jantsch (09:27.45)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (09:43.988)

Hehehehehe

Kevin D. St.Clergy (09:50.036)

Why did you say you'll never be as big as me? She goes, because I just know it. I know I'm not going to be as big as you, you know, I'm like, okay, well, let's work on that. So we spent the first call working on mindset because our coaching program we called M3 mastery. It's mindset, margins, momentum. I just find if we build the business owner that builds the business, we've had a lot of success with that over the years. And a lot of times just giving them a way.

to dream bigger and think big makes a huge difference. We were at dinner a couple nights ago. I was on a big podcast, live podcast here in Austin with a bunch of people and one of the people was one of my customers and she had been invited too. And she's like, you know, before I met you, I just thought I'd be happy with just a million dollar a year business working, know, Monday through Friday, eight to five. And I never thought that I'd have a $3 million a year business working Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and taking Thursdays and Fridays completely off.

It wasn't until you taught me how to think bigger that made the big difference for me. So build the business owner that builds the business and start thinking big. I mean, that's why we're, you know, we had an eight figure exit. I want a hundred million dollar exit next. That's my next thing. So the bigger you think, the bigger you'll get.

John Jantsch (10:51.417)

if

John Jantsch (10:59.354)

So, let's go back to that marketing example. I totally agree with you. Walking that back to mindset certainly was the place to go. But we work with a lot of agencies and I mean, so I hear this story all the time. You deliver, results are still flat, everyone blames the agency. So you've probably heard that exact situation. How do you get people to walk that back? Because they're basically making that

Kevin D. St.Clergy (11:01.933)

you

Kevin D. St.Clergy (11:22.285)

.

John Jantsch (11:28.686)

decision, if you will, that blame based on what data they can see or what data they think they have and that data is we're not growing.

Kevin D. St.Clergy (11:32.066)

Yeah.

Kevin D. St.Clergy (11:39.342)

Yeah, so they, I mean, we call it the three fatal falls of blind blaming. So the first one, we have these cognitive biases, John, that you're well aware of, because I've been following you for years, and you've helped me a lot over my career, so I could say thank you in person, by the way. But.

John Jantsch (11:51.799)

You

Kevin D. St.Clergy (11:53.838)

I think the first fatal flaw is there's this thing called availability bias. And these cognitive biases are there to help us make decisions quicker and do things better and faster, but they can be getting away and hinder our success as well. And the first one is called availability bias, which means the first thing that pops into an entrepreneur's head about what's wrong with their marketing, that's it. It's got to be their agency and the people that have agencies that are working with customers. Cause I had a marketing agency for 17 years. I know the scars. I've got the deep wounds. For those of you who do choose to read the book, you'll see those wounds in the, in the book with some of my

examples. But once they do that then the next fatal flaw comes into play where it's confirmation bias. They become a treasure hunter to prove themselves right and they start looking for data to back that up. Well I'm definitely slow. It was my slowest month ever and I wasn't slow before I hired you guys so it's your fault.

And so then finally, you're too busy looking at the wrong problem, you can't focus on the right solutions. So that's the third fatal flaw. So what we do though is, especially for like agencies, when working with agencies, I just share with them what we did when we changed our whole model from just providing digital marketing services to a business growth company and started including coaching, because I was getting so frustrated and so angry of generating leads and then them not converting those leads to appointments. And so we created Front Desk Academy.

Then I was getting really frustrated because we were putting the leads in front of them and then they weren't closing them. And of course it's still our fault. Couldn't be them, it's not their sales process, not another sales training. I had a recent customer and she said this online out loud to everyone that when I mentioned that we really need to work on your sales process, she started crying. So it was, I was like, I didn't want to make you cry. I said, no, it's not you, you're right, I need to fix this. So.

I think what agencies need to do is they need to pivot a little bit and they need to start looking at the results that they get and what it really does. Because people, don't think people want to sign up for more marketing. They don't want to spend money on marketing. What they want is to make more money, grow their business and have more of an impact.

Kevin D. St.Clergy (13:47.534)

And that's the change we made in 2018. When we became a business development company that provided digital marketing services, and no matter what they did with us, we would help them grow. Because let's face it, you've done this, John, some marketing works, some doesn't. Some digital marketing takes months to get going. But what we did is we developed a business assessment to help them identify holes in their bucket, and then we helped them fill it. So weekly, we were coaching them for the first eight to 10 weeks they were on board with us, where a lot of people got a return on their investment before we even started their marketing, before it got going.

John Jantsch (14:17.412)

Yes.

Kevin D. St.Clergy (14:17.665)

That's when we quadrupled the size of our company. We did really well. We weren't even looking to sell. Our broker came to us and said, look, I think your business is worth this. And we started laughing. And then he got that. So it was kind of a blessed day. Anyway, I hope that answers your question in a good way.

John Jantsch (14:21.924)

Yes.

John Jantsch (14:29.242)

Yeah, no, absolutely. That's really where we've been for years. mean, the only thing when people engage us, it's not to do their marketing, it's to do what we call strategy first, which is a very set engagement that has set deliverables that we work on their business objectives first. We work on the founder and finding where they're getting in the way. and I tell you from a marketing standpoint, it changes the whole relationship too.

in day one not seen as a vendor. We're seen as a trusted advisor and all the other stuff we want to recommend, they're like bring it on because you've changed the relationship.

Kevin D. St.Clergy (15:01.046)

Yeah.

Kevin D. St.Clergy (15:09.279)

Yeah, and I love it. Yeah, because you've become a partner and when somebody comes in with a lower price, they're like, yeah, but I lose John and his team. That's what we learned. We just did it. The story is in my book as well. But yeah, I agree. And I love that you're doing that.

John Jantsch (15:13.433)

Yes.

John Jantsch (15:16.761)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (15:23.62)

So symptom fixing versus root cause thinking. How do you get people, most people are in symptom, you know, this hurts, you know, how do I fix it? How do you get people to start thinking way beyond the symptom to, you know, wellness, if you will, if we're going to use the analogy.

Kevin D. St.Clergy (15:41.174)

Yeah, so back to that. We teach them the process. We teach them how to move beyond blind blaming with making them aware that blind blaming exists and they're suffering from it. Then we take them through the RCD method, but a lot of times they don't really know how to dig a little deeper. So we've been really big on if we're working with coaches or agencies, helping them develop an assessment that does go deeper.

And then that's how we identify things. We have them take a small assessment that helps them step out of the box and take a look at the way they're doing things. For some reason, I mean, when I used to do it in person, it worked okay, but when they have them do the assessment and they see the results with the AI stuff we have today, it's made a huge difference. And they're like, man, I knew exactly when I went through this assessment what's really going on.

And now it just helps my coaching go a lot faster. Don't know why I'm not, I don't, it was just something that I learned to do at a conference and we started using it and then we started teaching our clients to do the same and they're seeing the same thing. So having an assessment that helps them step out of the box and look at the way they're doing things to identify some other things it can be is one of the first things. But a lot of times just if you're working with a good coach like yourself, who's got a lot of experience and you've seen the same mistakes that entrepreneurs make every other day when it comes to their marketing, we know.

Cause I love it when people tell me like, well, I definitely need to rebuild my website. And I always ask why. Look, I had a digital marketing. My company's job was to produce some doubt so that you would switch to us. But I always instructed our practice advisors as we called them, cause we were in the medical field to ask them how many leads a month before you switch and come to us, how many leads a month are you going? And you can probably guess what we got, John. What do you mean?

John Jantsch (17:16.922)

One, two, yeah. Yeah, well, that's true.

Kevin D. St.Clergy (17:18.253)

I have no idea. No, most of time it was like, I don't know. I just know I need to switch because my business is down. And then sometimes we wouldn't let people come on board. like, listen, no offense. I'd love to earn your business, but you're getting like 30 leads a month from your current marketing company. I don't think you have a problem with this. And we used to secret shop their clinics before we'd get on the phone with them. I like, listen, your problem is your front desk. In fact, you know, when we said how much are your hearing aids, she said they can be as much as $7,000, but you probably won't need those. Great script.

No, they would hang up and go away. And I said, guess who scored worse on these secret shopper calls? Do you think it was the front desk or the owner? The owner. They're the worst. So anyway, that's, that's some of the things that we do is help them step out of the box and take a look at other things.

John Jantsch (17:52.922)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (18:00.1)

So, I mean, you're in the personal coaching mindset space. So you probably quite naturally get, mean, some of your engagements probably get personal pretty fast. and I think, what I think is interesting about that and where there's, see a lot of resistance, particularly from service providers. It's like, I'm just here to do this, you know? but what I've seen is that I think what people are craving now, just what you said, they don't want.

more marketing stuff. They don't, you know, they don't want to basically go, I mean, I can't tell you how many times I've talked to somebody and they've had like five agencies and they've all done the same thing. You know, it's like you're hiring them to do the same thing. You know, what did you, what did you expect? And, and what I think people are craving today more than ever is transformation. Um, and I think that we have a real opportunity as service providers or whatever we want to call it to actually go so much deeper and help them evolve.

Kevin D. St.Clergy (18:39.021)

yeah.

Kevin D. St.Clergy (18:42.519)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (18:58.552)

not just as a business, but as a person. And that's a space that I think is wide open, quite frankly, in the marketing world.

Kevin D. St.Clergy (19:05.229)

Yeah, I agree because we, as I said, we found that we in our big masterminds where we charge 25 and 50 grand a year. It's very interesting to me to go from a digital marketing company charge of $900 a month.

John Jantsch (19:15.63)

Yeah, right.

Kevin D. St.Clergy (19:17.549)

and having this, have you done for me today to 25 and 50 and then soon to be $100,000 level and have people go, I can't believe this, you changed my life. I can't wait for next year. Let's, they're re-upping. We have a 90 % up rate, re-up rate at the end of the year. It's fascinating to me because we changed the way we focus. We talked about that transformation and what's happened with other clients. So yeah, totally with you. And it's, it's just amazing to me. If we can get more agencies to focus on that transformation, John, uh, cause that's what we just trademarked heck out of this, but we call our program M3 Mastery from Trans

John Jantsch (19:34.852)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (19:39.46)

Peace.

Kevin D. St.Clergy (19:47.456)

transactional to transformational and that was my big lesson when we really focused on Getting some transformation in their business not just what we did or the service provide That would that made a huge difference and sometimes as you said We'd find that the owner has a health problem that when I am diagnosed for years Like just recently we had somebody who has a very large eight figure a year of business, but she was miserable I was like, long has it she been to the doctor? She's about 43. So she's getting up to you know in that age She's like, you know, I read your book and I've got an appointment

John Jantsch (19:49.38)

Nice.

John Jantsch (20:13.742)

Yeah, yeah.

Kevin D. St.Clergy (20:16.981)

And so she came back and she's like, my God, my testosterone is low and I had no idea. It's been that way for years. My doctor never run the test. And once we got that fixed, she exploded. Her team culture completely changed. Everything came into place where the coaching finally started working. Cause she was getting frustrated with me and I'm like, look, I think there's something else going on that you're missing. Let's go back to that assessment. Cause we look at five different areas. We look at their health, we look at their purpose. We look at their relationships, not necessarily their personal relationships with the people, how they react with people.

John Jantsch (20:22.468)

Hmm.

John Jantsch (20:32.985)

Hmph.

Kevin D. St.Clergy (20:46.895)

people at work and a few other things like a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset and then we make sure they have the right resources and usually in those five areas it's not about finding one thing in each area John it's about finding that one thing and for her it was low testosterone which is something that I went through a couple years ago so I put in the book.

John Jantsch (20:46.906)

Sure.

John Jantsch (21:00.396)

Yeah. Yeah, that's funny. Well, Kevin, I appreciate you taking a moment, a few moments to share with our audience. Is there someplace you'd invite people to find out more about your work and certainly get a copy of the book?

Kevin D. St.Clergy (21:12.011)

Yeah, you bet. Yes, sir. I always recommend people go to the website blindblaming.com.

We have for 15 bucks, have all four copies of the book that you can get plus a bunch of bonuses. It's just a great way to get in our funnel and you'll get invites to some of the challenges and things like that that we do as well. So blindblaming.com is the best place to go and just from the feedback I've got the last couple of years on the book, the book. You can listen to it whether it's audio, PDF, or if you're a book book person like I am because I'm older, you can get all four copies and I think it'll change your life.

John Jantsch (21:42.854)

I appreciate it. And again, hopefully we'll run into one of these days when we're out there on the road. In fact, I'm going to be in Austin.

Kevin D. St.Clergy (21:51.38)

great, I'd love to see you. Yeah, come up to the compound. We'd love to have you. So we got indoor golf, we got a garage, Mahal, we got a casino, we got a wine cellar. So we got some fun up here. Come see me.

John Jantsch (21:51.537)

maybe I'll stop by.

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John Jantsch (00:01.838)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and again, another solo show. No guest today. I'm doing the seven steps to small business marketing success. So if you haven't caught the past, I think I'm on episode four here. If you haven't caught the past three, go check them out at Duct Tape Marketing. but this is a series of seven podcasts. This is number four. Why more content is making you less visible? How's that for a topic?

So here's the AI content trap. most founders I talk to are really excited about AI content tools and frankly they should be nervous. and that is because the market is being flooded with generic, readable but forgettable content like crazy. and I think adding that pile doesn't help you, it kind of buries you. So

He here's the problem, and this and this has been the problem all along. Content or I'm AI didn't necessarily change this, it just made it worse in a lot of ways. most content that small business owners have produced, somebody convinced them to write a blog post every week. but it it's just kind of the idea of the week. It has no spine, there's no thought behind it. maybe the topic seemed interesting that week, but two years down the road later, it actually serves zero purpose. So

The thing about AI is it makes it easier to publish a lot of content, but that doesn't really fix this problem. It just amplifies the problem that the content was not that valuable or useful anyway. and I think that customers, prospects are definitely going to, they already are, recognizing AI content and and ignoring it, tuning it out completely. and and in s to some degree, that's actually hurting.

the brand when they see that that's what you're producing, that's all you're producing. So there are three principles when it comes to really content. less is more content, or at least the right content, I guess is probably a better way. I'm not necessarily saying you don't need content. I'm saying you need content to do a job and a very specific job. and that requires a couple principles. number one is picking pillars. So you want your content to actually

John Jantsch (02:26.158)

compound. and you want it to be around some things that make total sense to you. If you if you're an architect and you do residential work, you do hospitality work and you do commercial work, you want to actually start thinking in terms of what would what would be pillars of kind those three types of work that you do, those three types of use cases, those three types of probably buyers.

what would be the pillars that would actually drive those folks or or at least let those folks to understand you better? and and start developing topics around a collection of pillars as opposed to as opposed to just, hey, I'll write about this this week because it seems interesting, or because I can get a lot of engagement in social media over it because it's a hot topic. I I think.

again, there may be a case for that if you've got lots and lots of extra time, but you really want your content to do a job. So you want to pick three pillars at most, that that are really going to be anchored on your ideal client, or at least I should say your ideal client's problems. and every single one, every single piece of content should point to one of those. If you can't make it, if you can't tie it or have an angle that ties it to one of those, you shouldn't be doing it.

This is a discipline, quite frankly, because especially a lot of organizations that just tell junior marketers to create content without giving them those pillars. That's one of the best things you can do. If you have people in your organization producing content or an agency producing content for you, you should develop strategically as the founder, as the owner, you should develop what those three pillars are. and and again, that's a discipline that maybe starts with the founder sometimes, because

Sometimes the founder wants to write about the cool topic or the thing that hit them that that that week. if you're bored with a topic, you can use this as a three-year test, I'll call this. If you're bored with a topic in six months, it's not a pillar. It's a theme. Pillars are really what you're still the authority on, or what you're driving to be the authority on two, three, four years from now. Now you won't always get that right.

John Jantsch (04:49.748)

but it's sure it certainly should make sense to say, yeah, long term, this is going to be important for my ideal client and the problems they're trying to solve. And I think I think three is the sweet spot because it allows you to have a lot of range. it allows you to be seen as an authority, but it's a it doesn't get diluted. I mean, it forces you to make decisions about your content. All right, so that's the starting point, having that frame, those three pillars. next is.

And I've I've talked, I've written about this for years, but I talked about it in the last episode as well. You then want to organize that content under hub pages. so every one of your pillars gets a page that you're going to then start building more and more content on. So as you as you pick a theme or you pick a topic that goes or a subtopic that goes under one of those pillars, you start organizing them as pages. hub pages

Have so many uses. First off, it's the way to organize your content so that the search engines, AI understands that this is a broad topic, that you have with lots of authority, that there's lots of information here, that your expertise, that you have actually put your client case studies and real proof into this entire topic, which has a ton of value just from being foundable. Foundable? Findable. There we go.

but it also don't forget, human beings want to consume this content as well. Think about your sales team if you have one. These hub pages, excuse me, these hub pages really allow your sales team to be able to say, if you are, you know, thinking about buying a business and you need to understand what the tax implications of buying that business are, here's the entire topic around that that we have written on. So it allows

folks to to actually allows you to share and and you know have really a useful tool or or home that you can send people to that that demonstrates that you're a real expert. And here's the real beauty of and this is really kind of third third principle, which is repurposing. Once you have these pillars, once you build these pages,

John Jantsch (07:12.182)

Or once you start to build these hub pages, quite frankly, you don't have to wait till they're done. Once you start producing content that is focused and and and has a purpose around these pillars, then you can actually start leveraging every piece of that. in fact, we we actually what we will often do is we will work with a founder and we will just sit with them for an hour, maybe a couple of times.

and just ask them questions, let them talk about their products, their services, the problems, actual customer case studies, really develop a point of view about and a voice about what they do. and we're actually to able to take that video transcript and turn it into 50 to 100 pieces of content, including social media posts, over a period of time. And and it's really the easiest way today to leverage.

authoritative expertise, human content in the voice of the founder or the voice of of the technical expert that's going to talk about something that your business does. And and frankly, AI can't do that. and that that's really the beauty of then using these AI tools is once we have that authoritative content, we can actually easily use the AI tools then to repurpose that content. And I think that that's really the

that's really one of the best uses, quite frankly, of AI when it comes to content. So the the the next thing I want to talk about is that's really the foundation structure, right? You've got the the pillar pages or the pillar topics, I'm sorry, the hub pages for each of those pillar topics.

and then the the mechanism to repurpose a lot of that content. That's what we have to do today to make sure that we're putting it in places like LinkedIn and Reddit and all the places that that are that that are gonna send authority signals, you know, back about our content and about our business to the AI tools. But the missing ingredient for most businesses is a point of view.

John Jantsch (09:24.566)

So we're thinking in terms of this content that is certainly AI driven in a lot of cases, it's very generic, it's very balanced, it's very readable, it's a collection of what everybody else wrote. And frankly, it's forgettable because there's nothing that makes somebody stand up and say, Yeah, that's different. Why isn't anybody else in our industry saying that? Everybody else is saying the same thing. Or why are we actually doing this the same way that we've always done it?

How can we develop a point of view in our writing that that actually demonstrates that that we have some unique thinking? AI doesn't develop points of view very often. It develop, well, it develops the point of view of the collective mass, right? And so if you can actually think in terms of of you know, think in think in terms of of those people that, and I'm not suggesting this, but think in terms of those people that write very polarizing stuff. I mean, I

You know, a lot of the stuff that's gone on in politics of late, you know, is really people recognizing that writing something very polarizing repels a lot of people, but it also attracts a certain people who re are very attracted to that point of view. And I'm not suggesting that. I'm just saying use that as an example. That if you can develop a point of view about a position, something the customer hasn't heard before, something that no one else in the industry is saying, it doesn't have to be that controversial.

It just has to be different. And I will say that that asking the right questions of AI can actually help you start to develop some of that point of view. you don't necessarily have to lock yourself in a room and think, how can I, you know, what what's different? Looking at the average, having a conversation with an AI tool about what everybody in your industry is typically doing. I mean, literally asking you questions like, you know, what is a

what is a generally accepted best practice in our industry that no one is actually pushing back on? things like that can actually then start surface some of the ideas or at least surface some of your thinking about actually putting a point of view into your writing. So here's your here here are your next steps. I want you today to think about three content pillars.

John Jantsch (11:44.13)

That would make total sense for your ideal client that would address either segments or problems that your ideal clients are actually having. and then think in terms of and again, you can use it, AI tools are great for research to get your thinking going. But you know, plug those thoughts, those themes in or those pillars in and start asking and about questions about what would be all the subtopics, what would be a way to write the ultimate guide to this

particular pillar topic and you'll start to get some ideas. Hopefully you'll dismiss some of them. Hopefully you'll add to them. Hopefully you'll think about this idea of a point of view that you can bring to each of those topics that others aren't saying. And and a lot of times that point of view exists. You just believe it and believe that your customers will appreciate it and understand it and know it when they see it. and you're not actually surfacing it. And that's a real key difference. So

this today's podcast was really built on this new ebook that I produced called The Seven Steps to Small Business Marketing Success. You can pick it up for less than five dollars at dtm.world slash seven steps. If any of this is resonating, go get the whole thing. If you actually want to talk to one of our advisors about how we do some of the things I'm talking about today and we could do for a business like yours, it's just duct tapemarketing.com/slash consultation. So

Thanks for tuning in and hopefully we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

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John Jantsch (00:01.46)

What if the real growth constraint inside an agency is not lead generation or fulfillment, but the way client relationships are managed after the sale? Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. My guest is Taylor McMaster, founder of Dot & Company, a business built around helping digital marketing agencies improve client retention through better client account management.

Rather than focusing on campaigns or delivery, Taylor specializes in the client facing side of agency growth, onboarding, communication, meetings, project flow, and account management systems. She also hosts the happy clients podcast and her experience building dot and company is a specialized acquisition ready business gives her a unique perspective on retention, specialization, and creating an agency model that can grow beyond the founder. So welcome Taylor. So, you know, as I read that,

Taylor (00:51.554)

Thanks for having me, John.

John Jantsch (00:54.784)

We are talking about agencies here, but quite frankly, account management, there's lot of types of businesses that have that function or should have that function. Is there something that you saw really convinced you that that was really a core growth issue and not what most people focus on getting more clients?

Taylor (01:14.616)

Yeah, I would say in the beginning of starting Dot and Company, it was mainly a pain point for the agency owners that I knew. They were all working so hard on building their marketing funnels and getting leads on their calendar and closing those leads, but they didn't have the time or energy to think about keeping those clients around. And they knew in their heart that they needed somebody to do this job.

but they almost approached it as more of a butt in the seat. They were like, I just need to hire an account manager and then my days will be free and I won't have to talk to clients ever again. But they didn't realize that account management really is part of the whole picture. It's retaining your clients, keeping them around and in turn, that really affects your bottom line. yeah.

John Jantsch (02:02.612)

Yeah. And you know, there's another element to that too. I think it's easy to focus on retention, but like we retain our clients forever. mean, my longest running client is 22 years. And so we've been through a lot together. But we keep our clients for years. But where we sometimes struggle is our model is pretty much retainer based. So it's like, what can you afford to pay me for the rest of your life?

Taylor (02:13.229)

Wow.

Taylor (02:16.526)

Mmm.

Taylor (02:29.87)

Yeah

John Jantsch (02:30.048)

But then we find out like three or four years later, we're like, well, we need to actually charge more. And so how can client management, account managers, you know, actually be put in sort of the role of selling?

Taylor (02:44.642)

Yeah, yeah. Upselling is a huge part of our role. And the way I always look at it is as an account manager, I am responsible for the whole client experience. And so that is not just onboarding a client and managing their project. It's making sure I'm doing the best that I can for that client, because at the end of the day, I'm responsible for that relationship and keeping them around. And keeping them around means giving them the best outcome.

and making sure that we're helping them hit their business goals. And oftentimes when we as agency owners are working with a client, those business needs evolve and there's always something that is changing or we need to layer on top of something. And my job as the account manager is to be looking for those things or finding these opportunities that I can continue to help my client evolve. And we want to be a part of that. We don't want this client to outgrow us. We want to grow with that client. So that's a huge part of our role and responsibility.

John Jantsch (03:41.44)

That's almost a culture point, isn't it? I mean, because I think a lot of people are like, well, that's not my job. My job is to make sure that this stuff goes out the door. so it really has to be that, that almost need, I mean, that not almost, that needs to be part of the job description, doesn't it?

Taylor (03:46.56)

Absolutely.

Taylor (03:56.717)

Yes, it does. And I think you see this all the time, John, I'm sure, is in our industry, I find people are so siloed in their roles and they put a box around themselves. like, well, that's not my job. I'm not doing that. But what I have always, how I've always worked is I'm just a person who wants to get my fingers into everything. And I want to help with sales and I want to help with operations and all this stuff. the way we've kind of packaged up our account manager,

expectations within the role is that you need to want to help the other teams and help the business grow or else that's why are you here, right?

John Jantsch (04:36.596)

You mentioned the word expectations and I was going to bring that up. feel like anytime we've lost a client over the years, it's really been a mismatch in expectations. Our clients, we've basically said, look, the next 90 days, we're going to be doing strategy or whatever it is. And the client's like two weeks in, they're like, how come the phone's not ringing? How do you actually work on managing communication, expectations, trust throughout the process?

Taylor (04:55.395)

Mm-hmm.

Taylor (05:04.502)

Yeah. You know, it's, I wish I had a SOP for this, but really it's, my methodology is over communication, proactive communication. And to me, proactive communication is not just, hey, we're doing strategy for the next 90 days and then hoping that the client understands that. It is every day over communicating and making sure that we are on the same page over and over and over and over again.

John Jantsch (05:14.058)

Right. Right.

Taylor (05:31.565)

because that client doesn't know anything generally about what in the world you're doing. And even though you have sold them on this story of the outcomes that you're going to get them, they don't understand how we go from here to actually hitting those goals for my business. So we need to consistently reset expectations every day, whether we feel like we need to or not. So my methodology has always been,

we need to be proactively communicating with our clients. the biggest thing I see, and I see this even when I'm working with other businesses, is every day that goes by that I'm not communicated with, I think they're doing absolutely nothing, right? Like we're human beings, that's just how we work. And so if you're not constantly proactively updating them, reiterating the next steps, reiterating the expectations, that client thinks,

John Jantsch (06:16.702)

Right. Yeah.

Taylor (06:29.08)

Well, I just wasted another 10 grand.

John Jantsch (06:31.328)

Yeah, absolutely. So I will tell you, we have a very formalized onboarding process. We have a very different process in that one of the first things, most of the people we work with are our owners, founders, and we dig into their business objectives before we ever start talking about marketing. And one of things we've discovered early on, I mean, to me, it just made sense. It was logical. But one of the things we discovered very early on is most people don't do that. And having a formalized, structured

onboarding process is even a unique experience for a lot of folks. And what I've discovered is that's one of the secrets to our long-term retention is how a client starts with you is certainly going to determine a ton about how long they stay with you, what the relationship looks like, whether you become an advisor or a vendor.

Taylor (07:18.99)

Yeah, and I think that starts in the sales process too. know, we sometimes, you know, we'll struggle when working with agencies when their sales team is not setting the right expectations and we're not getting the information that we need to kind of pull that over the line. So what I love to do as an account manager is working directly with the sales team so that I understand what this client needs and wants right from the beginning so that

John Jantsch (07:21.596)

It does, 100%.

Taylor (07:47.157)

When I then take them on under my wing and I'm managing this relationship, I know the backstory and I'm not trying to catch up or just take their word on it. I want to know everything. So getting an account manager involved in that sales process is super helpful.

John Jantsch (07:53.119)

Yes.

John Jantsch (08:02.57)

Well, I tell you one of the things we learned a lot of time too, because when I started my agency and I've written a couple of books that were very popular, some people would be attracted to us, but they were really attracted to me. And so naturally I would close them and go, by the way, have you met Taylor? And one of the things that we discovered early on is bringing those folks that are going to work with them in, like you said, in that sales process, they don't feel like they're handed off anymore. They were like,

Taylor (08:13.23)

Mm-hmm.

Taylor (08:30.324)

Mm-hmm. Yes.

John Jantsch (08:31.11)

mean I get the team, you know, as opposed to, now I get the B team. And boy, it made such a huge difference.

Taylor (08:35.65)

Yes.

So John, I'm curious, when your account managers came into the sales process, were they on every sales call or how did you structure that?

John Jantsch (08:46.976)

Fortunately, most of our leads are inbound just because we've been around so long and a lot of stuff's out there. So we close, especially for strategy, most of the time in one call. so consequently, try to get those folks involved. I mean, it may be a second call, like now we're going to have a call for discovery as when we'll bring that and we'll definitely make sure that everybody's going to be involved.

is there so that they see what they're getting. And then we will also, you know, our first step always starts with something we call strategy first. So it's a very scripted, structured process and deliverable. And we actually have everybody on the team deliver a part of that to the client. And so they get a kind of a full blown experience, you know, within the first 30 days of everybody they're going to work with.

Taylor (09:37.75)

Awesome. That's really cool.

John Jantsch (09:40.221)

So

On that same topic, we actually have a network of over a hundred agencies that we work with and train and have licensed our methodology. And one of the struggles they quite often have is as they start to grow, it's like, I want to add account manager. But then they really have trouble letting go. It's like, okay, I hired an account manager or maybe even a lead consultant.

let's call them that. And yet that they still micromanage every element. And it's really, really tough. I hate to answer for you, but I have a feeling I know what your answer is going to be. How do people get to the point where they can feel like, okay, the client's getting the experience I would give them?

Taylor (10:27.916)

Yeah, I mean, I think it's totally valid to feel that way as an entrepreneur, a business owner. get it. You know, we've all gone through that where we have to pass over relationships because it's the only way that we can grow and scale a business, right? It's to not be on every Slack message and every Zoom call. But I think the biggest thing is obviously hiring the right people. That's just a no brainer. You know, you have to have the right people, but trust comes over time.

John Jantsch (10:34.868)

Right.

Taylor (10:56.596)

And it's not something that you have to rush into. And it's not something that has a 30 day expiry. You have to be at a client calls within 30 days. You can build that trust over time. Maybe it's a six month runway and the account manager comes in and they shadow and then they take over a little bit and a little bit more until clients go to them first instead of you and clients realize that.

know, Betty's getting back to them way faster. And even though you're still there and still in the background or maybe still on the strategy, Betty can still be there and do a great job. And so once you start to build that trust, then you get to a point where you're like, I shouldn't be here. I should not be in the account manager seat because Betty's doing a way better job. And then you can then go focus on more important things. But until you get to that pivot point where you're...

John Jantsch (11:29.024)

Yeah.

Taylor (11:46.809)

you're feeling really good about that account manager, for a lot of agency owners, you don't have to run away yet. You don't have to close your eyes and hope for the best. It can be a gradual thing. And so I think when you're thinking about hiring for an account manager, stop thinking about it as just a butt in the seat and stop thinking about somebody just replacing you, because nobody's going to replace you, but somebody can come in and support you and support your clients to give them a really great experience.

John Jantsch (12:04.777)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (12:09.13)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (12:15.616)

Well, and the other thing I would add to that certainly and why this is such a challenge for most of the agencies we work with is because they've actually never created a process. It's all here and it's all got and it's like, how can you get, expect somebody else to replicate that? You can't. And it's a ton of work to get from here to wherever you put it. But the payoff is huge. I don't do any sales calls. I don't do any client work.

Taylor (12:27.15)

Yeah.

Taylor (12:37.056)

Absolutely. Yep.

John Jantsch (12:44.956)

in our business. And I spend an inordinate amount of time innovating our processes is what I do. Part of these because I like it, but it is the most valuable work I can do. But it's tough to magically snap your fingers and get there. But that should be the goal, I think, for most of us.

Taylor (12:53.486)

Mmm.

Taylor (12:59.905)

Absolutely.

Taylor (13:08.044)

Yeah, and I think it depends on what your goals are, right? Whenever I'm chatting with agency owners, like, I need an account manager because I want to get out of the day at day to day, but really they don't. Like they actually don't want to, right? So, you know, a lot of the time it's understanding where you want your business to

John Jantsch (13:12.168)

Yeah, yes.

John Jantsch (13:20.126)

Yeah,

John Jantsch (13:27.252)

Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, I think that's, that's probably the challenge too. Cause you know, the founders are really bad at, you know, once they get to a point where like, I really kind of like to get in there and mess with WordPress and, you know, cause I really enjoy doing it, but it, mean, it's the lowest payoff work you could possibly do. Right. But, but it's so fun, you know? And so that's, that's a real challenge a lot of times.

Taylor (13:47.278)

But it's so fun.

John Jantsch (13:56.576)

How do you create, especially in today's world? I was meeting with a group of agencies in our network today and they were complaining a little bit about the fact that their work clients were actually taking their work and running it through chat GPT and saying, you know, is this good? Is this valid? You know, where are the mistakes in this? And I think that we're increasingly going to face that, right? Because everybody's advertising, you know, replace your agency for free.

you know, with all these AI tools. So how do we actually rise above that and, and not only create like this high touch experience, but really become this trusted advisor and, really not be seen as that vendor.

Taylor (14:42.156)

Yeah, I mean, it's we're we're in it right now, right? We're we're in the blender trying to figure out how things are going to shake out. I think the biggest thing that I see, especially coming from the account management side of things, people are going to crave this human experience more and more and more, but they're going to expect efficiency. They're going to expect more for their money. They're going to expect better results.

John Jantsch (14:45.738)

Yeah.

Taylor (15:10.326)

So I think even though we see all this noise about AI replacing my agency, I think that's not going to happen. I think it's just changing our expectations when we work with clients. And so I think the value is still there. I think we just need to shift to more really consultative, making sure that clients feel heard, they feel understood, and that we're a partner versus just somebody running their ads. And I think the...

the expectations of our clients are going to continue to evolve in the sense where they're going to demand us to take it all off their plate. Like what business owner wants to stay on ChatGBT all day, trying to figure out marketing, even if it's through ChatGBT. They don't have the time or energy or expertise to do that. So it's just really making sure that they understand the value of what you're doing.

John Jantsch (15:54.112)

They don't at all. Yeah.

John Jantsch (16:05.024)

And trust me, we don't want a client that wants to be on chat GPT all day. So what led you to kind of choose, I mean, you're in the agency space, but in kind of a narrow lane in the agency space, what made you decide to go there instead of the broader kind of agency?

Taylor (16:08.499)

No, we do not. No, we do not.

Taylor (16:22.924)

Yeah, really kind of boring, but it was just what I loved. I loved account management and I didn't love what I thought running an agency previously because I started running my own small agency and then pivoted into just doing account management. I think as that started, I started to realize that there was this blue ocean. There was this huge need in our industry for great account managers and done differently because we are fractional account managers.

John Jantsch (16:43.178)

Hmm.

Taylor (16:52.674)

what everyone else is doing in the industry is hiring full-time people. And so we were just doing things differently. And so as the business started to grow, I realized there was this, yeah, this huge opportunity to specialize and to create something really awesome and to be known for that. Being a general agency, just couldn't, I couldn't get excited about it. So yeah, it just kind of took off. And once I saw some traction and we started to get the demand,

John Jantsch (16:55.988)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (17:14.992)

A.S.

Taylor (17:22.786)

We just really went all in on the processes. Like you said, John, it was like where I spent all my time was like operationalizing everything from hiring to training to onboarding, offboarding, sales, everything was systematized and it paid off. Yeah.

John Jantsch (17:37.566)

Yeah. So, so talk to me a little bit about the fractional approach. We, we have gone both ways. mean, we, we actually provide fractional CMO services and we teach people how to do that. sometimes the disconnect is, you know, there, there's a lot of like, yeah, fractional, can save money. It'll be, you know, I don't need a full-time person, but you know, a lot of ways they still want a full-time person, right? They still want you in all their silly meetings, that, that, they have. So you do have to, obviously that's one of the

beauties of having a scope and a methodology. like, here's what I do. Here's what you get as opposed to what do need, right? But on the fractional account managers, do you find that there's a challenge in somebody being there fractionally or maybe doing a couple clients is really not going to be as motivated to be a team player, to want to do all the sort team building that really helps an agency. How do you kind of straddle that?

you know, that divide, especially since we're all distributed these days.

Taylor (18:37.836)

Yeah. Yeah. I would say the, when I started the business, was an, I was the account manager at DOT. So naturally I got to choose how I wanted it to look and feel. And for me, for me to be motivated working inside of these agencies, I needed to be a part of the team and a part of the culture. So early on I was going to the team events. I was flying in for the weekend. was doing the team calls and the cocktail hour and

John Jantsch (19:07.124)

Yes.

Taylor (19:07.502)

That really made me feel like a part of the team and it made me stick around for a really long time working in these agencies. And so as soon as we started to hire account managers and duplicate this model, we made sure that that was the expectation. We want these account managers to feel like a full-time team member. We want them in your Slack, in everything as if you hired them full-time. We want them to feel like that, not just for you, but for our account managers as well. want them to feel a part of the team.

we approached it very much so like, yes, we're fractional, but it feels full time because that's how I think it should be. Sure.

John Jantsch (19:45.504)

Okay, I'm going to throw you a softball. Are you a sports analogy person? Okay, but you get it, right? It's a bigger ball than a little ball. It's easier to hit, okay? So I can hire somebody for $20 an hour in the Philippines. Why don't I just do that?

Taylor (19:51.043)

I'm not, but I'll take it. Yeah.

Taylor (20:07.628)

Yeah, you definitely can. But the majority of the agencies we work with are looking for specialists. They're looking for people who they don't have to manage, they don't have to train, they don't have to worry if they know what they're doing. They want somebody ready to go. So essentially they need somebody to parachute in and save all their problems, fix the processes, keep their clients happy, and continue to grow and scale from there. So

John Jantsch (20:10.528)

You

Taylor (20:36.012)

We really approach ourselves as specialists. This is the last time you're ever gonna have to go and look for an account management solution because you're covered when you work with us.

John Jantsch (20:47.69)

So I'm curious, your business was acquired fairly recently. Looking back, is there a part of your company that you think made it more attractive? mean, revenue is always going to be a piece of it, but was there anything that you think made it more attractive to a buyer than the typical business?

Taylor (21:06.286)

A big piece was that I was removed from the day-to-day operations. Yeah, that was definitely attractive from a risk perspective too. You know, they didn't have to worry. Exactly, there you go. And then the second thing was specialized. So, you know, they were buying something that was very specific and had a very specific scope process, everything like

John Jantsch (21:09.908)

Yeah, sure. Yeah.

John Jantsch (21:17.79)

Like any dummy can run this business now, right?

John Jantsch (21:33.633)

And you're still involved in the business, though. Yeah, that was just part of the deal.

Taylor (21:37.078)

I am, I'm not involved. Yeah, I didn't have to stay on to be honest. It wasn't a requirement. I'm not involved in any of the operations. So you won't see me on a team call unless it's like high level. I'm more so a consultant strategist, you know, and I really wanna stay around and see.

John Jantsch (21:43.32)

okay.

John Jantsch (21:49.61)

Awesome. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah.

Taylor (22:02.388)

see the growth in DOT and also E2M, the company who bought us. I absolutely love them, what they're doing. So yeah, I'm excited to be a part of kind of this bigger picture now. Yeah.

John Jantsch (22:11.186)

Awesome. Well, I appreciate you taking a few moments to drop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Is there anywhere you'd invite people to connect with you, find out more about your work?

Taylor (22:18.848)

Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn all the time. So feel free to add me on LinkedIn and connect or check out our website dot and company dot co.

John Jantsch (22:27.88)

Awesome. again, I appreciate you taking a few moments and hopefully we'll run into you soon out there on the road.

Taylor (22:34.093)

We will. Thanks, John.

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John Jantsch (00:02.104)

What if the real barrier to building a thriving practice is not just talent or expertise, but the outdated rules we've accepted about how business development is supposed to work. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Deborah Farone. She's a founder of Farone Advisors and a longtime leader in legal business development and marketing. She previously held senior business development roles at major law firms and her new book.

Deborah Farone (00:13.368)

Thank you.

Deborah Farone (00:30.586)

you

John Jantsch (00:30.84)

breaking ground how successful women lawyers build thriving practices. That's what we're going to talk about today. Welcome, Debra.

Deborah Farone (00:36.858)

Thank you for having me, John.

John Jantsch (00:40.398)

So for listeners, we're not going to talk about legal stuff. We're not going to necessarily. I think a lot of the things that I was going to share today will apply to anybody, particularly in professional services, because really the business development is very, very similar. So you've spent many years, I suspect, helping firms think about business development. This book focuses specifically on women. Is there a gap that you saw that you think made this book necessary?

Deborah Farone (00:44.852)

Thank

Deborah Farone (01:08.794)

There was, you know, I think that most lawyers and most professionals develop business in very similar ways, but I felt that there were some women out there who either didn't have the role models because there are fewer women at the top of the organizations and law firms, or they didn't know how to have the skills to develop business. So that's why I really wanted to help them. But in doing the book, I realized that so much of what I was learning was applicable.

John Jantsch (01:15.746)

Right.

Deborah Farone (01:37.7)

to anyone who wanted to develop business. It's just my sample set happened to be women.

John Jantsch (01:43.214)

Yeah. So I think many people suffer from this, regardless of the industry, but certainly in professional services, I think it is more so. that people, don't even like the term sales, right? I mean, it feels salesy. It's all the bad things they associate with what they see it. But you certainly talk about, and I know that this is a thread running through the book, that it doesn't have to feel salesy. Why do you think so many...

Business professionals, sales professionals really resist this.

Deborah Farone (02:15.674)

think most of them went to school to learn a profession, whether it was to learn to be an accountant or a consultant. No one ever said you were going to have to go into sales. So it sounds like all of a sudden they have to have this new way of thinking. I really don't think that's the case. In fact, most of the successful people that I've worked with, whether they're consultants or lawyers, don't find themselves asking for the business. They never really say, can I have that business from you? They very often

John Jantsch (02:19.608)

Yeah, you're right.

Deborah Farone (02:44.492)

let people know what they've done. They offer to help. They use words like, I support you? But they're not in sales mode. I think they really do want to help these potential clients. And so that comes through. And I believe you need to be more authentic than you do a salesperson when you're trying to build a practice.

John Jantsch (03:08.238)

Well, think there's a lot of things that certainly I've learned in selling professional services. That idea of give value, provide value, provide support, and eventually that business will come around. But when you tell that person that is just getting started out there and they're like, that's great. I'm all for the long game and for investing, but I need to eat. So how do you kind of thread that?

Deborah Farone (03:36.206)

think it's important to have relationships and I really try to get young professionals to concentrate on that. And even if they don't have a big budget in a firm, get your senior people to come and train the younger ones. Give them the war stories of how you've won clients or how you've met people that have developed business. think that that's very important. And I think even for people that are still in school to start thinking about your network and your network isn't just

John Jantsch (03:50.21)

Yeah.

Deborah Farone (04:05.486)

the people that you go to class with. It's who you met at your summer jobs, right? It's the people in your first job who work in ancillary positions. They might not be a consultant if you're a consultant or an accountant if you're an accountant, but they're the people that you've met. And those folks become part of your network. And I think we're seeing with sales what we often see with job hunting that those contacts that end up hiring us are not necessarily that

first degree circle of people we know, but very often it's the people that they know. So it's important to have a large diverse network of contacts out there.

John Jantsch (04:46.424)

Yeah, I tell, I wrote a book on referrals actually. And I always tell people, you know, not everybody's your prospect, but everybody knows your prospect. You know, at least one of them, right? Yeah. So you did a lot of conversations, had a lot of interviews, focused on a lot of successful women rainmakers. Did you see that there are patterns that show up that are maybe different in how men and women build trust, visibility, and opportunity?

Deborah Farone (04:49.338)

Thanks.

Deborah Farone (04:55.29)

It's true.

John Jantsch (05:16.684)

A follow-up question you can answer, is one better at it? Are those different approaches serve one? So let's go back to the first question, since I butchered that. What patterns did you see showing up in particularly how women build trust, visibility, and opportunity?

Deborah Farone (05:24.346)

You

Deborah Farone (05:28.058)

Thank you.

Well, I wasn't so much studying men versus women as I was just looking at this group of women, but I do find that they like relationship building, that that's something that comes naturally to them. And what I did find that is maybe true with men as well is that you need to be authentic in your marketing approach and how you develop business, that there is not a one size fits all. Not everyone fits into one of four categories.

John Jantsch (05:36.238)

Right, right.

Deborah Farone (06:02.52)

I think we all find our own way of doing it based on our personality, what works for us. And so people like Susan, I and D Baker McKenzie, who I spoke to for the book, loves exercise. She loves being outdoors. And so she invites her clients and her colleagues and contacts whenever they're in town to go with her on a hike. That's not going to work for everyone. But she doesn't like this idea of having the formal cocktail party and inviting people she knows. So.

John Jantsch (06:17.998)

Mm-hmm.

Deborah Farone (06:31.393)

I think it's a matter of finding what works for you because that's going to be what you want to repeat. And also that's what your clients are going to see that you enjoy. And clients can tell if you're taking them golfing, but you really don't like golf.

John Jantsch (06:45.506)

Yeah. So I think that you just hit on really the secret is finding what works for you and being yourself rather than looking at like, this is how everybody in our industry does it, or this is how everybody in our firm does it. You really will be more successful doing something that works for you, which is probably going to be something that you also enjoy. Would that be, yeah.

Deborah Farone (07:06.903)

Yes, and I try with the people that I know and I'm sure you do too. You know, want to really get to know them and figure out what are their proclivities? You what are they like? I worked with someone who was a classical musician and she loves the opera. And so she lives in Milan and what she does is she takes her clients and their spouses and families to see a short opera and then for a wonderful dinner.

because she enjoys it and they can tell they know that when she's taking them that they're having a good time and so is she. And so I think that that's really important is figuring out what it is that you enjoy. What's the best way for you to develop business and it might not be the same way as the person next door.

John Jantsch (07:35.927)

Yeah, right.

John Jantsch (07:53.358)

So what do you say to that client maybe that you're working with that, you know, I think a lot of people think in terms of to be successful business development, you have to be that outgoing, charismatic, you know, networking, you know, kind of person. What do you tell that person who's like, that's just not me? You know, I don't feel comfortable doing that. You know, how am I going to succeed?

Deborah Farone (08:09.688)

Yeah.

Deborah Farone (08:13.923)

Right, think, know, well, first of all, I tell people don't take giant leaps, take baby steps. And that's the best thing to do so that if you're not used to talking about yourself and your practice, do it with a family member, you know, then do it with a colleague, then do it with an associate at your firm, and then eventually you can do it with the client. So I think, you know, Jeff Klein, who's a well-known lawyer in New York said marketing is muscle. And I think it's true, you get better and better at it.

John Jantsch (08:19.362)

Nice.

John Jantsch (08:25.368)

me.

John Jantsch (08:40.952)

Yes.

Deborah Farone (08:42.393)

But I also don't think that you need to be out having lunch every day with people if that's not your thing. You know, I love coffee. I mean, I love any kind of coffee, right? So I love meeting people for coffee. It's perfect. I don't have to think about what I'm eating. I don't have to think about any variables. I'm happy at a Starbucks or a fancy hotel for coffee. And that's what I love. You know, so I do coffee meetings.

John Jantsch (08:53.016)

Thank

Deborah Farone (09:09.677)

But other people find their ways. And I think you have to do what feels authentic to you.

John Jantsch (09:16.91)

So what, and maybe you don't keep track of this kind of thing, circling back a little bit to the gender aspect of your work, what's the percentage of women in leadership in the legal industry, you think?

Deborah Farone (09:31.129)

It's very low. mean, we have less than I think 30 % or maybe around 30 % that are actually partners. And if you look at the American Lawyer 100, the top firms, fewer than 25 % are being led by women. And so you have a real issue with diversity on all levels, and even fewer are women or people of color. And so it's a real issue when you talk about looking for role models.

John Jantsch (09:32.547)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (10:00.588)

Yeah.

Deborah Farone (10:00.91)

I think professionals, particularly lawyers, like to look at role models because they're interested in precedent. They want to know what has the other person done that's been successful. And if they don't see people who look like them in those roles, it's a lot harder to figure out how they're going to get there.

John Jantsch (10:09.614)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (10:18.734)

Do you feel like that system, if you will, still quietly works against women then? When it comes to business development, mean, particularly.

Deborah Farone (10:26.033)

I do. Yeah, I think women and minorities have a tougher time because there are not those role models. I think there are other issues at play like unconscious bias. But, you know, my focus really is on business development. And I feel that, you know, if we can teach people how to develop business, whether they're in the professions or even if they're in something like advertising.

If you have the ability to sell yourself and to develop business, it gives you so much more ability to write your own script and to do what you want because you're going to have more advantages as far as rising within an organization if you're a business developer that we've seen. And you can also kind of develop the clients that you want to develop and develop the practice that appeals to you. And that's great. That gives you a sense of independence that you wouldn't have otherwise.

John Jantsch (11:08.491)

Yes, yes.

Deborah Farone (11:21.483)

So that's really what I want to encourage people to do.

John Jantsch (11:24.846)

You can probably take that on the road to another firm as well as within your own firm.

Deborah Farone (11:27.449)

You can. Absolutely. It allows you freedom. It's a type of currency, isn't it? You know, that you have that capability.

John Jantsch (11:34.892)

Yeah. Yeah.

So we've been talking about applying this to law, but for consultants, agency owners, other experts, what do you think your book could teach them about building practice around relationships rather than self-promotion?

Deborah Farone (11:53.405)

well, I think the authenticity issue is very big. Also trust, I cover how you build trust. And it seems to be three elements. It's expertise, it's the authenticity piece, and it's empathy. And I go into a lot of detail about that because I think being yourself amongst your clients is not something we're trained to do necessarily. But I try to show people examples of folks who have done that.

and why they've been successful. And clients want to work with people who are believable, who come across as humans. I told you when we got on the call that I might have a coughing attack. I don't pretend to be perfect. And I think people like people more when they are themselves and they admit that they're fallible. And so there are lots of different things for other professionals, I think, to learn from these lessons.

And the other really is to develop a niche. think developing a niche is so vital regardless of what you're doing in the world because figuring out what you really enjoy and then figuring out if you think of it as a Venn diagram, what makes economic sense or sense for the firm that you're with. Finding where those overlap is just a vital part of being able to market yourself.

John Jantsch (12:54.679)

Hmm.

John Jantsch (13:15.662)

And then going very good and deep and becoming an expert at that thing, right?

Deborah Farone (13:20.632)

Right, absolutely. But I think we all have a tendency to jump into the tactics before we do the strategy. And I really would recommend that people think about the strategy and how they want to be known and what they want to do before they take an immediate jump into giving lots of speaking engagements or marketing themselves.

John Jantsch (13:27.779)

Yes.

John Jantsch (13:40.15)

Yeah. So most professional service firms expect partners to grow the practice. So where do you see the firms themselves getting it wrong in terms of not really equipping those, you know, just saying, go out there and do it.

Deborah Farone (13:56.131)

Yeah, I think they need to train people. I think training has to start when someone is very young in business. I think you can train an older person. You can teach them new tricks. But what happens is, and we see this in so many professions, if you're not training them when they're associates or when they just start, not only are they losing whatever seven or eight years of building good habits about business development and marketing and relationship building,

But they're losing those contacts that they could have made. So they've not been trained, they don't have the contacts. All of sudden you make them partner and you say, okay, it's time, go develop business. And it's much harder at that point.

John Jantsch (14:37.998)

All right.

Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. So is there anything in the interviews that you did, particularly with the women, that kind of challenged some of your own assumptions about business development, even about leadership?

Deborah Farone (14:57.728)

think finding that there were cultural differences, there were more cultural differences than I thought there would be around the world. So I spoke with women in Botswana. I spoke with women in Milan and Paris and Asia. And there are differences that I think I just see generally as a difference with culture, whether it's men or women. But in parts of Asia, you would never be direct and say, I want to do

Business with you I want to work with you unless if you really do know someone very well and the same is true with even portions of Italy and Europe. You know London is more like America as far as you can be a little bit more direct. But Latin America is also different and that they want to take time and get to know you and so I think the cultural differences were were really interesting I was aware that there might be some but.

John Jantsch (15:49.006)

Mm-hmm.

Deborah Farone (15:55.657)

the ones that I heard about just reinforced how important it is, especially if you're going to another country, that there are to be cultural differences. And even if you're going to another firm, another company that you're trying to sell, you have to just be very empathetic and really understand the culture of that company. So that was reinforced.

John Jantsch (16:19.864)

So if, and I'm sure you've been brought in from time to time to work with somebody who's really good at what they do, sort of hesitant to put themselves out there. Do you always, I mean, is there a first step that you say, well, just do this, it won't kill you, this'll get you started?

Deborah Farone (16:35.352)

I think so much of it is getting to know someone because everyone's going to have their quirks. And so while I do work for large companies and large firms, I will take on about eight coaching clients a year. And I really need to start with getting to know what they do, what they love, what they hate about work, all of those things. And then we can figure out where they want to go. But I really do believe that that's strategic.

John Jantsch (16:39.726)

Yeah.

Deborah Farone (17:04.344)

part has to come before they start selling themselves. And very often the selling themselves part starts with how they sell themselves internally at their company. Are they making the right contacts? And are they helping other people? And are they creating a good reputation for themselves? Those things matter so much and they're so easy to overlook.

John Jantsch (17:15.278)

That's a point,

John Jantsch (17:30.722)

Yeah, that's interesting point. I'm sure that when people, especially young associates inside of professional service firm, especially a larger firm, part of the job is start your networking here, right? mean, go meet these partners or go ask somebody how they got to where they got and find a mentor maybe even. that's all part of that's business development, frankly, isn't it?

Deborah Farone (17:54.648)

It is and you know I spoke I guess maybe two or three weeks ago at Columbia Law School and I said to the law students it's really important that you know everyone in this room because one of you is going to be the next Sam Altman or one of you might be the head of an architecture firm or a law firm you just don't know and so it really needs to start at that level it needs to kind of

John Jantsch (18:00.92)

Thanks.

John Jantsch (18:07.276)

Yeah.

Deborah Farone (18:21.451)

reach people who are still trying to figure out what they want to do. Develop a network, think about who is in your network, and make sure that you're empathetic to what they're going through.

John Jantsch (18:28.781)

Yes.

John Jantsch (18:33.294)

It's funny, when I started my business some 30 years ago, all my first clients were people I went to high school and college with. So, all right, you wrote Breaking Ground. What do you hope firms and individuals, professionals will do differently as a result of reading?

Deborah Farone (18:40.573)

I'm not surprised. That's great.

Deborah Farone (18:51.029)

I think one, start training people early. Don't wait until they become a partner at their firm. And also realize that everyone develops business in a different way and can develop business in a different way. So have room for people to do it authentically. Give them a budget, give them some guardrails of what they can and can't do if you need to, but allow them to find a way to develop business that's right for them.

So I think those are two things that I would start with.

John Jantsch (19:24.014)

Well, Deborah, I appreciate you saying that by the DuckTait marketing podcast. Is there somewhere you'd invite people to find out more about breaking ground and certainly to connect with you?

Deborah Farone (19:25.833)

It's particularly.

Deborah Farone (19:32.865)

Absolutely. Well, breaking ground, they can easily order through Amazon or through my website. There's some links for discount codes and things like that. And my website is deborahferrone.com. And most of the time I live on LinkedIn. I guess if you can say, where do you live as far as social media, I'm on LinkedIn at Deborah Breitman-Ferrone.

John Jantsch (19:50.19)

Great.

John Jantsch (19:55.694)

Again, I appreciate you stop by and maybe we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Deborah Farone (20:01.053)

John, thank you so much. It was fun speaking with you.

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John Jantsch (00:02.129)

What are the biggest threat from AI? Isn't that it replaces your job. It's that it exposes the parts of you that were never fully developed in the first place. Sound interesting? Stay tuned. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duck Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Derek Reddall. He's a true time bestselling author and transformational leader who has spent over 25 years helping people unlock what he calls their emergent

potential, the idea that everything you need to become is already inside you waiting for the right conditions. We're going to talk about his new book, A Whole New Human, 10 Ways We Must Evolve to Survive in the AI Age. There we go. Got it right. Derek, welcome to the show.

Derek (00:48.558)

Thank you, John. It's an honor and pleasure to be here.

John Jantsch (00:50.981)

So we're not, some tells me we're not gonna talk about prompt engineering, at least not right off the bat, are we?

Derek (00:55.374)

Maybe how we have to prompt the AI within us, but not more than the AI outside of us, yes.

John Jantsch (00:59.783)

Right.

So for 25 years, your teaching has started with this idea of emergence. There's a lot of people on here that maybe that's the first time they've heard that word applied particularly to self-development or self-improvement. You want to give us kind of what you mean by that?

Derek (01:21.304)

Sure, I mean obviously in science there's an understanding of the emergent property of things and you know that something emerges that is more than or different than the sum of the initial parts etc. you know oxygen and what is it hydrogen comes together to make water so you get water as an emergent property and so that's one way to think about emergence and what I speak of it it's more about an experience I actually had

after a near death experience where I saw this and I began to see that, you know, in every living thing, it begins with a seed. There's a pattern. There's a pattern behind everything that is alive. And whether it's the acorn, the oak is already there in the acorn. And even from a quantum physics standpoint or a platonic form standpoint, the oak, the idea of the oak is a pattern in the field.

as a part of the superposition. So we can get scientific about it or not, but the bottom line is the oak tree is already there and it's there in potential. It's there in a pattern and the mechanics of its fulfillment are there. It's simply waiting for the right conditions. When the conditions are a match to the pattern within anything, that potential emerges naturally. And when I saw that

not just theoretically, but experienced it and began to consider there was a pattern in me. There was a seed pattern planted in the soil of my soul or whatever and began to ask what that was, you know. And this really brings us back to the Oracle of Delphi and the OG success self-help guru when she said, know thyself or aristocraties said an unexamined life is not worth living.

the fundamental pattern of knowing what I'm really made of and made for and learning what are the right questions to ask. And then to say, okay, this is what I am like a gardener with a seed going, what are there for the right conditions for that seed to thrive? And I began to cultivate the inner and outer conditions that were a match to the pattern that I was discovering within me. And I went from broke

John Jantsch (03:36.999)

Mm.

you

Derek (03:43.385)

broken, literally suicidal in a one-room apartment, living on macaroni and cheese, no kidding, got very good at mac and cheese though, I could make it in a lot of ways. Within the first 12 months, I ended up launching my life's work, growing my business into six and then multiple six figures, falling in love. My whole life began to emerge or unfold.

John Jantsch (03:49.095)

you

Derek (04:09.824)

And what I saw was that before that, I'd been a self-help person trying to improve myself, you know, for years and years and years. And I found that most of our efforts to fix change, heal and improve ourself is a form of resistance against what is naturally trying to emerge. We end up creating conditions that are oppositional to what is really in us. So that's in a nutshell or in an acorn shell.

John Jantsch (04:30.289)

Yes.

John Jantsch (04:38.009)

You

Derek (04:39.128)

basically where the idea of emergence, I read a book on it called Emergence.

John Jantsch (04:41.223)

So we're all just waiting around for the right squirrel to bury us in the dirt? that it? That's right.

Derek (04:46.698)

Exactly. Squirrels are farmers of the forest, right? And they luckily don't have good memory because they forget about 80 % of where they buried it or something. And then we get oak trees as a result. Exactly.

John Jantsch (04:57.511)

So I've had a lot of guests on here, obviously. AI is a topic of certainly the last 18 months or so. And it's typically about tools and tactics. What's the different argument you are making when it comes to AI?

Derek (05:03.192)

for sure. Yes.

Derek (05:07.682)

Yes.

Derek (05:11.724)

Yeah, I mean, obviously I think it's an important thing. We should learn AI. should master the tools. You should know how to use them. Just like you can use internet and use a phone because you won't be replaced immediately by AI. You'll be replaced by somebody who's really good at it. And, but you are going to be replaced one way or the other. So you want to make sure you replace yourself with AI rather than being replaced by it. But basically the approach is, you know, I've spent 25 years, I started off in tech. I was a computer nerd. I built programs.

John Jantsch (05:24.58)

Mm-hmm.

Derek (05:41.357)

I watched war games. thought it was a great idea to build a program to hack into the government and start global thermonuclear war. Don't ask me why. And so I was, and then I got into the brain and was going to be a neuroscientist. And then I had this opening spiritually, whatever you want to call it near death. And I became more interested in consciousness and the deeper dimensions of us. But what I saw is that I've been practicing the inner technologies and

that we have to understand that AI is an expression and a prosthetic of our capacity for intelligence. And from the Tower of Babel to Chatch-EPT, we're still just building these outer tools. And that's OK. But with every new technology, we outsource a little bit of ourselves. And so on the one level, the very real danger, and it's already happening. MIT has studies about this.

John Jantsch (06:30.8)

Mm-hmm.

Derek (06:38.094)

that we're outsourcing the thing that makes us us, the ability to think, to think for ourself, to think deeply, the ability to create, to communicate, to connect, et cetera. And as you outsource something, if you study the technology history, you atrophy that capacity. Exactly, exactly. I don't even remember where I am right now. It's only been a few minutes. No, and so I don't have my GPS to see where I'm going.

John Jantsch (06:55.514)

Can't remember my phone number.

you

Derek (07:05.302)

And so in like GPS, our spatial cognition, our mapping capacity, all these things, and it's important to understand that cognition is not just linear, it's layered. And so as one cognitive ability starts to collapse or atrophy, there's a cascading effect. so we see this over, and I talk about this in my book, kind of the history of industrial revolutions and the unfoldment of technology.

and the outsourcing and where we're heading in a trajectory is to become like the characters in the movie WALL-E that are basically these slabs on a conveyor belt staring at screens with no more agency and no more even concern with what's happening outside in the world. That's not science fiction. There's already a lot of people sitting in their basement just like those characters. And it's especially dangerous with men who need to have

John Jantsch (07:51.441)

Yeah.

Derek (08:02.121)

utility and usefulness and if they don't, they become self-destructive or destructive in the world and that's also happening now. And the second big piece is it will do everything a human can do better, faster, cheaper. And so the big existential question of our times has to be if that's the case, what's a human for? And there is an answer to that, and we'll talk about.

John Jantsch (08:28.603)

Well, you do lay out some ways that we need to evolve or that you suggest we need to evolve. So for the person that's like, yeah, well, my job is my boss tells me I got to go in and get this work done. Here's the tools I use. it's an occupational hazard, right, that I'm doing this. So what are some of the ways that you teach people to counteract that?

Derek (08:33.315)

Yes.

Derek (08:52.451)

Yeah, when you say counteract that, you mean use the AI tools? And you're basically training the AI.

John Jantsch (08:55.993)

Yeah, just the fact that I'm there on front of that computer screen all day long using these tools, you know, because that's my job. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Derek (09:00.951)

All that, right. That you're becoming like a WALL-E character potentially. Well, yeah, you know, just using the tools, the danger again, yes, we're using these tools and the danger with AI first and foremost is you have to make sure you use the tool to become a better version of yourself. Not like when we started to use power tool, you know, like the plow and all these different things or the automobile.

They got us somewhere faster. They made us more productive, but we didn't have to walk anymore. We didn't have to use our muscles anymore. And you can study the increase of disease by the fact that we don't have to move anymore. so, so we had to build other industries like gyms and exercise and running clubs to do the things. And that's okay. But as we start to outsource our cognition of these things, we just have to make sure, first of all, we are

John Jantsch (09:36.261)

Yeah. All right.

Derek (10:00.483)

doing hard and challenging things on a regular daily basis, because you were evolved and adapted to be chased by tigers and to chase wooly mammoths. And if you're not chasing and being chased a little bit every day, you're going to get fat and sick and cognitively decline much faster. But the great news is you can use AI to strengthen you. You can, and I talk about that with each evolution. I mean, the first evolution is AI is going to think for you.

think for yourself. So we have to deepen our ability. Right now, this is already happening with kids, happening with students. They're hitting a button, they're producing an essay, and over a semester their cognition is falling off a cliff. And already kids cannot read handwriting. They're losing that cognitive ability, let alone do it. So we have to make sure, and you can, and I show people how, to use it to know yourself better.

to use it to become a better writer, a better communicator, a better creator, a better and a deeper thinker. And again, thinking is what got us out of the trees on the savanna and up into the stars. And if we keep giving it to AI, there will come a day not too far in the future, we literally won't have the ability and we will be forced to bow before our AI overlord. That's not a science fiction trope.

So we have to use it to think deeply. If you're writing a paper or doing research, do the first amount yourself. Write the first draft. Make your head hurt a little bit every day thinking as an example. There's other examples, because it's also showing up in communication. Write that first draft of the email. Really try to communicate with that person. Have a real conversation with a human being every day.

You know, these are skills that aren't just nice to have. You know, they call them soft skills, but they're really very hard. But these kinds of skills also will make you more human, more creative, more intuitive, more alive, and it will make you irreplaceable. Because your lived wisdom, your lived experience, your internal technology, that's the one thing AI can't do.

John Jantsch (12:14.801)

Right.

Derek (12:24.727)

AI will do everything else. But if you can embed that in your work, your words, your world, now you become valuable. The moat of the future is an authentic human being. Everything else will be commoditized.

John Jantsch (12:39.953)

Well, I believe that, and I've kind of made the case for saying, think the people that are thriving in this right now are people that came from more liberal arts backgrounds instead of like a technical training to do a thing because taste and discernment I think are going to be what's left. Yeah.

Derek (12:49.903)

Correct. Correct. Correct.

Correct. Bingo, bingo, bingo, bingo. Yeah. Taste and discernment and everybody has it. They just haven't necessarily developed it. And you know, you have a lived experience. Your greatest wisdom will come from your greatest wounds. Your deepest purpose will come from all the pain and the problems you've worked through. And it builds a story and it builds a perspective that only you have, which creates taste, which creates, you know, real embodied wisdom and

John Jantsch (13:04.444)

Yeah, yeah.

Derek (13:24.685)

That is the new Prada and the new Gucci of the brave new world. Because again, AI will do everything that, you know, we're going to see more businesses started than ever before in history until business loses all meaning. We're going to see more books published, more songs produced, more websites, more apps until it's a tsunami that makes everybody want to tune out and look away and become apathetic. But then there'll be those individuals

who get to know themselves, excavate and harvest the wisdom of their life, have real taste, real point of view, real wisdom, and then use AI to scale wisdom, to scale authentic taste, to scale a singular perspective, to actually scale and magnify an algorithm only they have.

Those are the individuals that are going to become a signal in the noise.

John Jantsch (14:25.095)

So let's talk a little bit. So the emergence model says the answer is already in you, or maybe is. How does a business owner who's listening to this and maybe stuck at a revenue plateau, I mean, how did they apply that idea?

Derek (14:38.317)

Yeah, well, you know, there's different reasons why you're stuck at a revenue plateau. Some, mean, you are the biggest bottleneck usually, but sometimes depending on the business, there's, there's just different things. What got us to where we are, isn't going to, at a certain point, isn't going to get us to the next level. What got you to a hundred thousand won't get you to a million, won't get you to five, won't get you to 10 or 15, et cetera, et cetera, depending. And that's the same thing even in not just business, but I know this is business, but you know, you all have relationships too.

What got you to the first year in your relationship is not going to get you to your five, et cetera. It's something about you that has to change a new model, a new paradigm, somewhere where you have to either delegate or outsource or dig deeper. And, you know, the biggest challenge with, with businesses and it's going to be that now is, you know, it's the Kodak experience, the blockbuster experience, the businesses that were in denial, that we're holding onto an old model.

John Jantsch (15:34.459)

Mm-hmm.

Derek (15:36.515)

because it worked and it was still working up to the moment it wasn't. And so we have to be willing to create, creative destruction on ourselves, but not just on our business, but really, you know, this is, this is what could be one of the, it's the biggest existential crisis we're going to face, but it's also, I think one of the greatest opportunities to become the people we're meant to be and to have a whole new Renaissance. So you have to, again, understand that

John Jantsch (15:39.717)

Yes.

Derek (16:02.575)

There's a guy that just launched, started a, just built a billion dollar business. He didn't know anything about the business he built. He used AI and he built a team of agents, but he had a perspective and he tapped into a current zeitgeist. So he had a bit of wisdom and intelligence to identify that, which is what a great entrepreneurial creative mind does. And then he was able to scale it and build a billion dollar business. I think he just hired his brother cause he was getting lonely.

So they're gonna see a lot of the potential for that. But that required somebody to have a couple things that were human, which is a perspective, a bit of intuition, a lot of courage, some grit, the willingness to work hard. And the problem is once you build something, especially nowadays, again, that's gonna be completely competed away, that particular margin.

John Jantsch (16:56.977)

Yeah, right.

Derek (16:58.543)

The worst thing he ever did was have a New York Times article told about him because everybody's now aiming their arrows at him. what's that?

John Jantsch (17:06.503)

Is that 11 Labs, I'm guessing? Is that the company called 11 Labs? Is that who it was? Oh, okay. Yeah. Oh, okay.

Derek (17:12.067)

No, 11 Labs is something else. I think that's got more than one person. This was all about Ozempic and stuff. He just sold Ozempic, but he's not a doctor. He just was a middleman, built a billion dollar business. I think he did it in like a year. But so there's a lot of opportunity if you're creative and entrepreneurial and you're willing to trust your taste, your intuition and perspective. And of course AI can help you there. But when you understand, just follow the logic that

John Jantsch (17:20.401)

Yeah. Funny.

Derek (17:40.021)

Everything is going to be commodified because AI is just units of cognition and intelligence and it can do everything a human can do. And with embodied humanoids, it'll include the physical. You just have to keep going down the stack or up the stack or whatever and ask, well, what's left? And you want to go where the puck's going, not where it already is. And, and like I said, you're going to, you're going to, unless you have the chips.

or the capex, the money, or the energy, the only thing that's left is the humanity of it all. And if you're a company or a person, the most authentic, unique, bold, willingness to be and be creative and intuitive and also be very flexible, know, like all of those things that are natural state as children and as people until we calcify around something.

John Jantsch (18:10.417)

Mm-hmm.

Derek (18:38.369)

or a business, if it has a founder energy, keeps evolving and then it gets, it loses that and then it calcifies. So we have to get back to that and that will become again, the new moat is to be that flexible.

John Jantsch (18:51.911)

So for a lot of folks, business owners, particularly, who feel like, I'm running as fast as I can to keep up with the AI race, right? So what's the first kind of inner shift that you'd encourage them to make instead?

Derek (19:00.227)

Which is the wrong race.

Derek (19:06.179)

Yeah, again, I understand you want to learn the tools. You want to try to become as AI native as you possibly can as fast as you can, because if you don't, you will be competed out of existence. And you may have a moat for now and some things, the moats will last longer because of regulations and different things like that. And just, you might have a really good brand. And so you'll have loyalty up to a point until they can get the same thing for half the cost or less. So you have some time, but, but, but again, what's you got to think about?

Community, real humanity, real authenticity. Yes, people want stuff cheaper and faster and better. There's no doubt about it. Amazon built Amazon over that. But ultimately we have, you have to ask, what is it about me or the thing I do that is truly irreplaceable? And you, and you have to start to really be looking at, and what's interesting is you'll find

The way you built your business in the beginning often had a lot more for most, a lot, a lot more of that humanity in it, a lot more of that touch. And we're going to have to, it's like what I call a handcrafted humanity. We have to return to that. What people, what's going to be a differentiator. It's why like on YouTube, the people that are the most successful now are the live streamers because it's live.

John Jantsch (20:13.927)

Thanks

John Jantsch (20:33.307)

Mm-hmm.

Derek (20:33.443)

because it's in depth, because people feel like they can trust you, they know you versus all of the AI slop and the highly polished and produced stuff. So something that feels real and authentic and raw and live is going to win above all the polished stuff over and over and over again. So this is the kind of thing we have to start thinking about. Again, if you look back to your roots,

A lot of the ways you lived and the things you valued and the things you did are what made you successful. Then you started building a machine and it became all about scaling the machine instead of scaling the original core and heart of why you were doing it in the first place. Get back to the story. Get back to the humanity. Get back to the community. Get back to real connection. That's going to be most fundamental.

John Jantsch (21:27.203)

Awesome. Well, Derek, I appreciate you taking a few moments to drop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Where would you invite people to connect with you and find out more about your work?

Derek (21:34.275)

Yeah, I mean, they can certainly get my book, obviously on Amazon or wherever books are sold or any of the books, whole new human. They can also go to Derek Rydell, legendary life on YouTube, lots and lots of videos or my website, Derek Rydell D E R E K R Y D A L L. And there's lots of free trainings and support. And then there's my podcast emergence, millions of downloads there. And there's, there's more of this deep dive conversation for sure.

John Jantsch (22:01.287)

Awesome. Great. Again, I appreciate you taking a moment to stop by and hopefully we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Derek (22:06.839)

Likewise, John, thank you so much. been a pleasure.

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John Jantsch (00:01.39)

So what if the reason smart entrepreneurs still feel anxious about money has less to do with math and more to do with the habits quietly running their lives? 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 bestselling author, entrepreneur, and long time champion for helping business owners take back control of their time, money, and energy. He's the author of many books, Profit First, Clockwork,

fix this next all in, but today we're gonna talk about his latest, the money habit, the worry-free way to financial independence. So Mike, welcome back to the show.

Mike Michalowicz (00:41.31)

John is amazing. You know, we've known each other, I think, 17 years. We're almost approaching 20 years of knowing each other. Isn't that amazing? Yeah.

John Jantsch (00:47.586)

Wow, dang. I got sneakers older than that though. That's nothing.

Mike Michalowicz (00:53.29)

Those Chuck E. T's that you wear. I love those things.

John Jantsch (00:55.854)

So, all right, you're back with another book about money. The Profit First book is pretty much legendary. mean, you've sold six gazillion and have lots of people practicing that. And you brought that to a lot of entrepreneurs. But why are you going back to the well on a more personal book now to help individuals? And I'm assuming there's a lot of cross-ups.

Mike Michalowicz (01:24.618)

There's a lot crossover and it originally started off with helping the entrepreneur, but there's another larger community that it's now serving and I'm focusing on or paying more attention to. But the entrepreneur, I found John is some folks deployed profit first or in some other ways move their business forward so that the business was highly profitable. But their lifestyle started gobbling away at the business and they weren't managing the numbers at home. And therefore, the home leached off the business.

And I also saw the reverse. I've seen some people prepare for retirement, future, and then they start an entrepreneurial endeavor and it doesn't do well. It struggles and leeches off the home and both collapse. So I had the awareness like, if you're not nailing numbers at both sides, the business and the home front, you're screwed. And then I realized this was the biggest aha. I got a call from a business owner that was doing profit first.

And he said his employees are coming to him asking for raises, seeing if they can get in advance. And he goes, I want to accommodate that. By a certain point, the business will no longer be sustainable. They need help managing their money because most people believe that the solution to financial struggle is more money. And the reality is the solution of financial struggle is authority and control over money. And then more money helps, but you need to assert that control first. And that's why I the book.

John Jantsch (02:45.794)

Yeah, and it's interesting, but I mean, you even in the subtitle, have worry free. mean, so there's stress and behavior issues. people grow up with real, you know, I grew up not wealthy at all, lower middle class. I have nine siblings and so money was always an issue. so I kept, you know, my parents really struggled to spend any money because it was like, we got to buy milk or we're going to do this.

And so I think a lot of people like that kind of grow up almost with a unhealthy relationship with money. I mean, it's like the last thing they want to even talk about.

Mike Michalowicz (03:25.706)

There's no question there's generational financial trauma and we are programmed. There was an article that broke from USA Today. I think it was in August of 2025 that really shocked me awake and it said financial worry has become a part time job. And it went on to explain that for the typical American that we are worrying about some kind of financial consequence for hours a day on average.

John Jantsch (03:29.475)

Yeah.

Mike Michalowicz (03:54.618)

And that's devastating because it eats away at us, not just emotionally, but physically. mostly, yeah, you're distracted at work. So your productivity declines. It becomes to some degree a vicious cycle. So what we have to do is we have to learn to make not make do with what we got. We have to assert control over what we've currently got first. And then we start building from there.

John Jantsch (04:01.09)

Yeah, you don't sleep. mean, yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (04:21.654)

Would it be safe to just call the money habit basically profit first for personal finances or am I missing something?

Mike Michalowicz (04:29.49)

I was missing something actually, because originally that's what I wanted to call it. was profit first personal. And then I realized this is a radically different book. So when I started interviewing people, the biggest difference is that the majority of income earners or not entrepreneurs have a predictable income or no income. So you're humming along and maybe get a little raises over time incrementally. And then someone else can turn off the switch and all of a it stops and you start up again.

John Jantsch (04:32.577)

Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Michalowicz (04:55.698)

an entrepreneur's trajectory is much more volatile up and down. You have a banner year and you're walking on water and then you have a devastating period after that. Prop first was designed to work for volatility. The money habit is designed to work with potential predict more predictability, but also understanding that the climb won't be as fast and hopefully the decline won't be as fast either as entrepreneurs expect. So I had to integrate that.

and how to work with different income levels. The average American earns $50,000 a year. So this book is designed to work on the average or serve the average income earner and people can earn more and people can earn less. And why designed is as your income changes, we need to change ratios for what we're addressing. If you own less than the average earner in the US,

You're going to focus more on the essentials of living food shelter. If you are earning more than the average, you may be able to orient more toward future dreams, some aspirational things you have.

But the other thing is a lot of people come in with different mindsets. Some people are recovering from debt. Other people are preparing for future events. Classically was retirement, but now it could be just activating funds like taking the family on a two year sabbatical. That that is like a mini retirement before you officially retire. And there's other goals. So I call these seasons. And so the book speaks to.

John Jantsch (06:14.147)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (06:19.084)

Hmm.

Mike Michalowicz (06:20.744)

tiered income levels, more predictable income levels, but what to do when you lose your income. And it speaks to the season that you are in currently. And that's not in profit first.

John Jantsch (06:32.78)

So there are other mentors books out there, Dave Ramsey comes to mind and it's like, pay off your debt. Don't get a latte, just have discipline. mean, are you essentially saying that but just in a nicer way?

Mike Michalowicz (06:40.958)

Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Michalowicz (06:46.57)

No, I first let me start by saying Dave Ramsey's work has been personally transformative for me. I love it. Yet this is not a translation of that or an expansion of it. It's a different perspective. For most people, discipline becomes a form of one of two things will trigger retaliation. So depravation discipline becomes deprivation. Deprivation becomes retaliation.

It's classic in diets, like don't eat anything with sugar and we don't until it's all you think about, right? And you retaliate. The other scenario, which is far less frequent is the Scrooge mentality. When you go into deprivation, there's a certain point that says that your identity shifts enough you say, I will never spend money. Then why are you earning money? And so there's people who have accumulated a lot of money and it's all about the fear of losing that money. So they live like paupers. So I found deprivation works for very few.

John Jantsch (07:14.584)

Yeah, that's all you can think about.

John Jantsch (07:36.046)

Yeah.

Mike Michalowicz (07:40.712)

So this system is nothing like, in this case, Dave Ramsey system. What it does is it's based upon what I call behavioral intercepts. Commitment devices is the technical term in behavioral psychology. Understand your current natural path of behavior instead of trying to change how you behave, deprivation, these external spreadsheets or apps or whatever. Instead, look at what you're naturally doing and put commitment devices in that pathway that assure that you will get what you want. And the beautiful part is

You don't need to change yourself. Just keep doing what you're doing with a system that directs the outcome that you desire.

John Jantsch (08:16.974)

So in Profit First, to be one of the things that you introduced that, you know, I hate to like go, well, duh. But for a lot of people, you know, everybody goes like, pay yourself first, have, you know, put away for taxes. I mean, everybody gets that, but you created the bucket or envelope system for that, which was basically just what they should be doing, but you kind of enabled it and put it in front of them. And all of a it was like, no, it became a habit. Is that...

Mike Michalowicz (08:28.018)

Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Michalowicz (08:39.39)

Correct.

John Jantsch (08:45.134)

The same thing that you're talking about in a lot of ways that that that it's habits It's not like I'm never gonna spend this it's I'm gonna have a set of habits that are gonna serve my objective

Mike Michalowicz (08:54.984)

Yeah, so I've deployed established systems. In fact, the envelope system goes back to biblical times. It's in actually all the religious, significant religious books and manuals. Tithing is a concept or prepaying and allocating for an intention before you quote benefit from it. And other systems like pay yourself first. That's the same idea is reserving money for an intention first. The envelope system is carving money up.

What I did was I modernized it by realizing the path that most people follow. So it's funny. I just did a presentation to a large group and I surveyed the audience. said, what's the most common money app today? And I heard rocket money because it's advertised so aggressively. heard, it's spreadsheet. I heard why NAB you need a budget, which is a great system.

John Jantsch (09:40.302)

Yeah.

Mike Michalowicz (09:45.226)

I okay, I said, what do you log into most to manage your money? And the response was my bank. said, your bank then is your app. The most used app in the world is our bank account. And for many people in that room, they were logging in daily or multiple times a day to see how much money you have.

John Jantsch (09:55.266)

Yeah.

Mike Michalowicz (10:04.456)

So what I did was I said, okay, there's established systems out there that work, but why aren't we all using them? Because we know they work because they don't, we don't stumble over them. They're not forced down our gullet. So that's I realized this needs to be done at the bank level. And that's why it's there.

John Jantsch (10:19.662)

So you mentioned the word budget in talking about one of the apps, but you, you, you kind of take it to task a little bit, right? I mean, that as, as far as why budgeting failed for the traditional person.

Mike Michalowicz (10:32.947)

Yeah, yeah.

This is the money habit is a real time budget. So when you spend a dollar from an account, so let me just kind of set the stage. We understand we have multiple accounts at our bank and ultimately you can get very specific, but you could have more generic ones like my essentials needs my my lattes out or whatever people like to talk about. And that's the wants. These are the mean luxuries and so forth. But you can be very specific. My wife and I have a mortgage account, for example, and we allocate money to that account every day.

John Jantsch (11:00.578)

Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Michalowicz (11:04.584)

Well, what happens is it's a real time budget. So when I log into my bank account, if the money is there, I know exactly how much is there. Once the money gets transferred over to pay my mortgage or I go out and have that latte or whatever it is, I only use debit cards. I will see that money instantly withdrawn and next time I log in, I know what's truly available. So it's living with you at a real time. I do want to add one little asterisk. I say I only use debit cards. I only use debit cards linked to those accounts.

I do still use credit cards. think credit cards can be a valuable tool when managed right. So I'm not rejecting.

John Jantsch (11:32.44)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (11:39.086)

Yeah, those airline points. mean, I love them. All right. So, talk a little bit about that idea. You hinted at it, but first people don't know the idea of separating money by purpose. know, instead of, so you are literally talking about, instead of like, here's my checking account, it's here's my aid accounts that are separated by purpose and I'm making allocations, which probably freaks some banks out. I mean, it's hard to open an account in some banks.

Mike Michalowicz (11:41.438)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (12:08.302)

So I know you've also developed some banking relationships too.

Mike Michalowicz (12:12.828)

I do. And we have a website called money habit bank calm. So you can find a

banks that support this. There's one bank in particular that's really aggressive. It's called Dream First. And when I say aggressive, they're actively supporting this and love it. And they focus on personal finances. But if you go to moneyhabitbank.com, that's the site. Yeah, some banks will resist it. Here's the irony is when people use Profit First, and this is a derivative of Profit First, it's not total.

Totally new. Prefers, we have over 1.1 million deployments of it. So we have a lot of case studies under our belt. Money habit is now starting to get some serious momentum. have, we think about 10,000 books in circulation. It's kind of hard to measure, but so the deployments are coming in, actually the emails are coming in actively of what we ask people, when did you set it up? us, tell me. And what we're finding is,

Some banks say, why are you saying all these accounts when you do in person, but when you're online, that friction's gone away. You just click and you click and you click and click. And it's surprising how many banks, particularly regional small banks, will do no fee, no balance necessary accounts. So do it online. You won't experience that.

John Jantsch (13:14.51)

That's true.

Mike Michalowicz (13:27.114)

But I also suggest you start off slow. think setting up eight accounts or five or ten, whatever you want, is a little overwhelming. You can actually start the money habit with just one account. And I call it the worry or wonder account. And it's real simple. Whatever is the most frequent financial concern that you have for some people, it's like

Can I cover the rent or the mortgage for other people's like, Hey, can I pay groceries today? Can I afford that? And for some people, and it seems pretty common is retirement. Like do I have enough money to retire? Whatever is the thing that comes to you most frequently or the first thing that pops your mind, set that account. And let's just for easy sake, say it's mortgage. And let's just say is $4,000 a month, which ironically is pretty close to my darn mortgage, but it's 4,000 bucks and say I get paid once a week.

John Jantsch (13:50.007)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (14:06.862)

You

Mike Michalowicz (14:10.758)

Every week I'm going to allocate $1,000 to the mortgage account to assure I cover the nut. Now what's interesting is that starts alleviating some of worry because I'm always worried if I can pay the mortgage. Now I know with confidence, but the magic isn't there. The magic's in the remainder because what you start seeing is, I only have XYZ available for the rest of my lifestyle. It starts bringing subconscious kind of

John Jantsch (14:29.827)

Yeah, right.

Mike Michalowicz (14:34.94)

reaction to conscious consideration. And that's the goal of the money habit. And that's where financial independence happens. When you assert authority and control over money as opposed to it having control over you.

John Jantsch (14:45.912)

So we've kind of touched on this, but how do you begin repairing people's, you know, that have kind of this guilt and this fear and avoidance over money? Do you feel like just equipping them with this tools enough or is that going to take some deeper work?

Mike Michalowicz (15:03.742)

Yeah, for me, my wife and I took some deeper work, we came from very different perspectives. She grew up in absolute abject poverty. I grew up in middle middle middle class to upper middle class. So the whole perception was radically different. And it would cause

frustration and arguments between us. What happened was I asserted the control over money and my wife would then ask me, hey, Mike, can I go out with my friends or do I this available? And I either say yes or no, almost like a parent child relationship. The beauty of the system is it's just numbers, man, they're in front of you, you face it and you have to consider it. So when you do this by yourself, or you do it with a partner, which many people do, it gives you absolute clarity and you start teeming against it or with it.

The other thing is to start slow because if you come from a money trauma situation, it's quite appropriate to be very skeptical if this is going to work. So just start with that one account. See how it serves you. See the emotions it brings about with the awareness it brings about. Then try another account and then another account. But it's so interesting with this absolute clarity. I often find out that people are very capable because of the system. The last thing I want to share on the subject is I was at this event

And someone's like, yeah, it was like 700 people in the room. There's one guy, he grabs a microphone and goes, yeah. He goes, really interesting system. He goes like, you're already good with money because I suck with money. I'm not good with money. This isn't going to work for me. I said, hold on. In that question, you said something that's not true. I'm not good with money. I've never been good with money. I found systems that are really good with money. And so I'm perceived to be good with money, but it's because of the system. So it's very capable of working with people that aren't good with money. That's not the goal.

John Jantsch (16:29.613)

Ha!

John Jantsch (16:48.91)

I'm going to allow you to be very self-serving with this question. If somebody's got profit first, heck, maybe they're even a quasi-practitioner, do they need this book too to apply to their personal situation?

Mike Michalowicz (16:55.422)

Can you borrow a few bucks you won't borrow $1,000.

Mike Michalowicz (17:11.338)

The big question is maybe, or the answer is maybe I should say, I'm surprised how many people struggle to translate profit first to another application because a lot of us just want to follow the script. And if you're the type of person, and most of us are, I'm that type of person, I want to the prescription, then the money habit will help you because it addresses the nuances of lifestyle and income in a home, which is different than a business.

At the same time is some people have translated this on their own. That's actually how this kind of came about. I got a call from an entrepreneur who said, hey, I'm doing this in my house and it's working for me, but my employees are struggling. Can you help my employees? And that's when I realized I needed to adjust the book a little bit. for in John, in your case to support me, get the book. Just get the book.

John Jantsch (18:00.11)

That's really all I wanted you to say, So, all right, for the business owner listening right now, feels very profitable on paper, but maybe anxious in real life because that's a little bit of what you're describing. And maybe that's just the common state for entrepreneurs, right? You're always like, when's the shoe going to drop? You know, no matter how good it's going, right? Or how well it's going. So, where should they start?

Mike Michalowicz (18:03.37)

You

Mike Michalowicz (18:22.376)

Yeah, my god. Yeah.

John Jantsch (18:29.031)

Because probably the first step is like, how do we relieve some of that anxiety? So where should they start?

Mike Michalowicz (18:36.535)

with their business? Yeah.

John Jantsch (18:38.092)

Yeah, or really with this concept and you know, this week, like, you know, I've got this like anxiety in my business. Or, I mean, I feel pretty good about my business. It's going pretty well, but I've got this anxiety on the other side of my life. Where should I start?

Mike Michalowicz (18:41.086)

This concept, yeah.

Mike Michalowicz (18:49.257)

Yeah.

Mike Michalowicz (18:54.844)

One of my colleagues, name's Erin Moser, said something great. We had an event and we're on stage and someone asked a similar question and she said, she looked around, she goes, if in doubt, add an account. And that's become like a mantra. And when there's concern about something, create an account that addresses that concern. For many business owners that don't have profit first in their business or they're not using the money habit at their home,

John Jantsch (19:06.986)

funny.

Mike Michalowicz (19:19.812)

it's runway is the biggest concern. Like I don't know if the other shoe is going to drop and what to do. So in that case, we often set up a profit account to ensure they're profitable. We also set up an account we call it the vault and the vault is a reserve to cover expenses for your business. Should the other shoe drop for an extended period of time months. So in our case, it's a year. That's how vaulty I am. We've ensured that our salary for every employee is covered for one year in a specific account. and the other shoe has dropped.

So, it was so interesting is when the shoe drops for us, there was a lawsuit that was ridiculous and cause off guard. there was a slowdown in business. You know, there's all these things that happen when those things happen, without having some kind of cushion or runway, we become highly reactive. That's where people do desperate things. But since we had that, we were able to move through those steps very methodically and recover to an amplitude.

John Jantsch (20:10.734)

Sure.

John Jantsch (20:18.207)

I'm curious, in some of your other work you have created a licensing or a network of folks that are practitioners of what the book preaches. Is that in the works for this on a personal level?

Mike Michalowicz (20:29.898)

It is it is money habit mentors and we have 40 certified mentors already. so money habit mentors dot coms, the website is actually part of our profit first professionals because these these programs, the money habit and profit first run so in parallel. That's the umbrella organization managing it.

John Jantsch (20:42.563)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (20:48.118)

Nice. Awesome. Well, Mike, I appreciate you taking a moment to stop by. Is there any place in particular you invite people to learn more about the money habit and connect with you?

Mike Michalowicz (20:56.168)

Yeah, if you if you want to learn about the book and learn about me, it's Mike motorbike dot com. No one gets public. How low it's got to be clear motorbike like the motorcycle. Some people confuse it with some other stuff. But Mike motorbike dot com. All the resources, the books, even pictures of me and you together at events are on that site.

John Jantsch (21:12.972)

No way. Awesome. Mike again, it's always great to catch up with you and hopefully we'll run into you one of these days soon out there on the road.

Mike Michalowicz (21:19.839)

That would be good. Thanks, John.

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John Jantsch (00:02.19)

So what if every time you hired too fast, launched a new channel or added a service line, you were making a bet that your business actually wasn't prepared to win. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duck Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jance and my guest today is Mark Roberge. He's the co-founder of Stage Two Capital, founding chief revenue officer at HubSpot and the author of a book we're going to talk about today, The Science of Scaling.

Mark helped grow HubSpot from zero to IPO and then brought what he had learned into Harvard Business School where he taught founders how to grow without blowing up what they built. His framework gives business owners a way to use evidence rather than instinct or outside pressure to decide when they've truly earned the right to scale. So Mark, welcome to the show.

Mark Roberge (00:53.259)

Thanks, John. That's not my copy and I love it. Seriously, I love how you put it.

John Jantsch (00:59.105)

Awesome. good. Well, you know, we were talking before we got started, you and I met some 20 years ago when HubSpot was a nascent business. think maybe the first conference there were 500 people, something of that neighborhood.

Mark Roberge (01:04.916)

Yeah.

Mark Roberge (01:11.393)

Yeah, I was like in a Marriott in Cambridge. I have like, I remember specifically a couple of things about you. I think you were the most famous one of our early partners. I think I remember my last in-person chat with you was in some steakhouse in like South Boston or something. Cause I remember two people came up to you and asked for your autograph and you were like super humble about it. And I'm like, oh my gosh, this is crazy.

John Jantsch (01:21.271)

Ha ha ha!

John Jantsch (01:27.438)

You

John Jantsch (01:35.288)

Well, I'm glad I wasn't a jerk. That's for sure. Awesome. Well, let's get into your book a little bit. So I mentioned HubSpot, Harvard, now you back companies as a VC. Did something you learned or showed up across all three of those roles kind of make you say, I need to write this book?

Mark Roberge (01:37.365)

Hahaha

Mark Roberge (01:54.207)

Yeah. Yeah. It's like, it's kind of funny that we can unpack as much as you want, but in reflecting the last 20 years of my life professionally, I've given up on having a plan because I never intended to go into sales. I never applied for HubSpot. I never applied or intended to be a professor at Harvard. I never intended to start a venture capital firm.

And I never intended to write either the sales acceleration formula 12 years ago or the scientist's killing last year. These were all things that like people were like, would you be willing to do this? So they did, they do just like show up and the way that this one, as both books unfolded was a, like you, I am blessed with the opportunity to do a number of keynotes every year. and I, for the big ones like saster, I tended to try to do something fairly original for the year.

So I've, you every year I do something original. So I've given like 20 to 25 brand new speeches over the last decade. And this one was just like a pattern I saw after like eight years of being out of HubSpot as an independent board member, as a professor, as an advisor, as an investor, in why companies, the few that went IPO and billion dollar valuations versus the ones that went bankrupt was just this.

really non-strategic, non-rigorous perspective on when to scale and how fast. And half do it too early, too fast. Half of them wait too long and go too slow. It's more about going the optimal time. I started speaking about it and I'm like, it's ridiculous how many classes and rigorous frameworks we have on accounting for and accruing revenue, but not on scaling revenue. And it just went viral and kept speaking about it, kept writing about it. And then Stanford was like, hey, can you write this up?

And here we have it.

John Jantsch (03:47.128)

So the term, you kind of alluded to it, but I'll say it directly, earn the right to scale. It does a lot of work in your framework and your talk. So what does a business owner actually have to prove or do to prove that's true? Like, when do they know I have the right to scale?

Mark Roberge (04:04.286)

Yeah, it's kind of interesting how it unfolds right now. I I've done this with like tractor companies in Brazil and pharmaceutical companies in Japan, but mostly with software companies in Silicon Valley. And it's kind of funny how it's decided. Like the decision on when to scale is usually when someone hands you a fat check, which doesn't sound that strategic.

And so I try to unpack it as two steps that are sequential. One is product market fit and the other is go to market fit. And usually you're like product market fit, like duh, product market fit, duh. But like, what is product market fit? You know, I think a lot of people will say I'm ready to scale when I have product market fit, which I think is a great answer. But then when I ask them what product market fit is,

I get a lot of different answers, most of which are about a certain revenue number, a certain customer number, a certain number of inbound leads. And then I'm like, well, okay, cool. Let's say that you have 200 customers or like 500 inbound leads and everyone's buying, but like people stop using the product. Do you have product market fit? And they're like, okay, no, but

I'll just start, I'll just listen to them and build the product to appease their needs. And I'll be like, okay, well, how will you know when you've achieved it? And they'll be like, when they keep using the product and don't churn. And I'm like, exactly. So like that, that's like the first kind of like pivot mentally for folks is I encourage you to define product market fit, not as a revenue acquisition.

metric, but as a revenue and customer retention metric. And the book talks about how to extract that long-term lagging indicator back to something that you can evaluate in the first week of a customer being with you. Okay, so that's step one, product market fit. And then if you think about it, once you've achieved product market fit, all that means is that when you sign up 10 more customers, they're gonna see value that you promised and stick around.

John Jantsch (06:00.866)

Yes.

Mark Roberge (06:25.372)

It doesn't mean that you've proven that you can acquire and serve them profitably. And that's what go-to-market fit is. And it's measured by UNEconomics. So that's really the, probably the simplest way to describe the work is these two sequences of product market fit and go-to-market fit as measured by retention in the first one and positive UNEconomics in the second.

John Jantsch (06:29.506)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (06:46.018)

Well, since we're defining terms, we probably better step back because I bet you if I asked 100 people, 10 people, 100 people sounds like too much work. If I asked 10 people what the word scale means, we'd probably get a bunch of definitions, more leads, more staff, more tools, but how do you define it?

Mark Roberge (06:59.21)

Sure. Sure.

Mark Roberge (07:07.528)

Yeah. So once you are ready to scale the way and that to your point, yeah, that can mean a lot of things. It could mean how do we scale our culture? How do we scale our engineering team? How do we scale our office space? Blah, blah. First off, I'm, I should be more clear that I'm talking about scaling the revenue. And to your point, scaling revenue, the inputs to that vary quite a bit by business by business. if you're a consumer business, you may just have to spend more on marketing. Something that you know a lot about Joan. if you're a B2B.

John Jantsch (07:15.094)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (07:21.92)

Okay.

Mark Roberge (07:37.513)

sometimes you have to scale fancy outside salespeople if you're selling like rockets to governments. And sometimes you do it through PLG. And again, it's more of like a marketing exercise. So I really talk about scaling the revenue and the principles, apply, whether you're doing it through pure marketing or through, through sales head count. let's for simplicity, let's just talk about scaling through sales head count and the

Big pothole that people make there is even if they follow the guidance of like, let's achieve product market fit first and then go to market fit, and it could take a day, it could take a week, it could take a month, it could take a year, whatever, and now we're ready to scale, they raise money and then they have a target for the year and they hire like 27 reps the next week.

even though they only have one on the team today. And there's just no appreciation of the new capabilities that are needed to hire and onboard and manage 27 reps. Like just like, let's take one piece of it, which is let's kind of pontificate that the hiring quality might be correlated to the number of interview screens we do, qualified interview screens to the hire. If I do,

two interview screens and make a hire, I'm probably not gonna make as good of a hire as if I did 10 interview screens and make a hire. So if we're trying to do 10 and we're making 27 hires, that's 270 qualified interview screens. Where are we getting those candidates? Who's doing the interviews? Nevermind, where's the demand gen gonna come from? Who's gonna ramp them? What about the managers? It's just too driven from a Google Sheet or Excel, and so the simple pivot philosophically is,

Don't think about it as putting the annual plan together and hiring all those reps on January 2nd. Think about it as establishing a hiring pace every month or every quarter. 10 reps a month, boom, boom, boom. As opposed to like 37 at the beginning of the year.

John Jantsch (09:51.791)

So there's all kinds of horror stories of companies that blew up because they grew too fast. Would you say that they scaled too fast or they didn't scale fast enough?

Mark Roberge (09:57.47)

Yes.

Mark Roberge (10:04.928)

Both. have, like I said, it's about half and half. I mean, I would say like the classic examples out there, like an old school one is Groupon, which I think if you look at it from this lens, never really had product market fit. they just like, the promise was like, if you're a Chinese restaurant and give these coupons away, you'll get new customers, but it was really just the existing customers. And then maybe like WeWork never really had go-to-market fit. And that was pretty famously documented story.

John Jantsch (10:21.486)

There's Buzz. There's Buzz.

Mark Roberge (10:35.36)

The ones that didn't scale fast enough, we just don't know, right? Cause they're like, I can name some in our portfolio or people I've worked with over the years, but the reason why we don't know them is cause they just sat there and they were like, they had something, but the co-founders just like wanted to just go too slow and continue to do founder selling and wanted to run a profitable business when it needed to be a blitz scale business. And there's nothing wrong with running a profitable business. just, if you're trying to win in the AI customer support,

John Jantsch (10:38.702)

Yeah, yeah.

Mark Roberge (11:05.258)

category today, you can't be profitable right now. Like there's just certain blitz scale risk that you have in your category that needs to dictate how fast or slow you go.

John Jantsch (11:06.638)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (11:16.056)

So one of the key elements in science of scaling is evidence over instinct. So if I don't have a giant data team, and I know AI is actually solving some of this right now, but what does evidence actually look like at a startup or smaller business level?

Mark Roberge (11:29.768)

Mm-hmm. Yes.

Mark Roberge (11:40.117)

Yeah, I mean, you don't, you definitely don't need like a sophisticated data science team. You don't even need AI agents doing this stuff. Let me just give you like a really simple example. So we talked about product market fit is where I'm, I'm proposing to everyone that it's more about customer value and retention as opposed to customer acquisition. And obviously you need to acquire customers to eventually make them valuable. So it's an input to it.

John Jantsch (11:48.526)

Okay, all right.

Mark Roberge (12:08.34)

The retention is a lagging indicator. So we needed to find a leading indicator of retention. We can't wait a year to know if we have product market fit. I need to know like the week after I acquired the customer or the month after. And so what the book and the work I've been doing with companies for last decade is to help them define their leading indicator of retention. What is it that we can observe in the first month of a customer's experience with you, your product, your service, whatever.

that if we see that, they'll be with you forever. And if we don't, they'll probably churn. And so like, I frame it as P percent of customers do e-event every tee time. Okay, so that sounds like the programmers on the audience are like loving this right now. The history majors are like totally lost, right? So like, just to bring that to life, Slack, 80 % of customers send 2000 team messages every month. HubSpot, 80 % of customers use five or more features in the platform every month, right?

John Jantsch (12:53.55)

You

Mark Roberge (13:08.564)

These are things that can be measured in the first month to give us insight. If we're at 80%, we probably have product market fit. If we have 10%, we definitely don't. I don't need a data scientist to evaluate that. Okay, so these are not overly complicated, like PhD math type things.

John Jantsch (13:20.174)

So.

John Jantsch (13:29.922)

One of the things I've been preaching for 20 years is that when we talk about the customer journey, that retention and advocacy and all the things that come after somebody becomes a customer are part of the customer journey or should be part of the customer journey. And for so many people, it's let's get a customer. And I think what you're really certainly hammering home here is this idea that you're not going to scale without retention and without

Mark Roberge (13:44.234)

Yes!

John Jantsch (13:59.382)

know, referrals or whatever you call it. Yeah.

Mark Roberge (14:01.984)

Spot on. mean, when I hear people like you say this, the conviction continues to escalate, right? Because it's like, another way to say what John is saying here is, let's just talk really tactically. Do not let the dashboards and sales funnels in your CRM end at closed one. That is like literally step four of seven, right? Like let's just like really step back, like very, very like basic, like.

John Jantsch (14:20.468)

Yeah.

Mark Roberge (14:31.654)

know, opportunity stage one is, you know, business, like discovery call and like business and you know, metrics definition. Step two is product validation, demo, blah, blah. Step three is closed one. Step four is set up. Step five is regular engagement. Step six is retention. That's the funnel.

John Jantsch (14:52.558)

He

John Jantsch (14:59.438)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I actually refer to it, have been referring to it as the hourglass, you know, with the idea being that, the funnel, right, but then it goes back out again. Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Roberge (15:06.26)

Totally. And expands. Exactly, because you expand more and like lot of people like winning by design with Jaco and like that's just a great way, the bow tie. A lot of people like it's a really good way to think about it because that usage, it represents that the usage and should grow.

John Jantsch (15:16.589)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (15:23.576)

So you were at Harvard and name a dozen schools, Stanford, that a lot of people go to those because they've got a big idea or they wanna have a big idea. They wanna turn out the next Google. I'm sure you encountered many founders or would be founders in those environments. What would you like if you were, I'm sure you did this in your class environment.

tell them they're gonna get wrong or how would you coach them of how you think they're thinking about it incorrectly?

Mark Roberge (15:58.009)

I mean, there's a lot to that. I think we covered a lot of them related to the work in terms of like, you know, being more precise around having the business fundamentals in place to be prepared to scale and how you go about scaling. I would say,

I guess I'll add two more to it that come up a lot, one that's related to revenue development to some degree and one that it really isn't. The one I'll mention is having a plan for a moat. And I would say like, when I ask people what their long-term defensibility will be, they often tell me about a feature.

John Jantsch (16:31.992)

Yes.

Mark Roberge (16:45.468)

And when I asked them if they are correct and they start crushing it and start winning, and then the competition realizes it, how long will it take them for them to build that feature? And they say six months. And I say, that's not long-term defensibility. So, so you really have to like, you don't have to prove it on day one. Cause oftentimes it might take something that you have to kind of take one of those design big start small approaches to it.

John Jantsch (17:02.58)

Hehehehe

Mark Roberge (17:14.464)

but you really need to have a vision around if you are right, there will be lots of copycats and the incumbents will try to take you out and you need to make sure that you win there. The other one, unless you want to talk about that, John, I have one more that I can throw out that's pretty popular. Yeah, yeah, the other one that's interesting, I think it was a study done at London School of Economics where they looked at like, I don't know, 5,000 seed funded businesses like 15 years ago and.

John Jantsch (17:22.637)

Yeah.

Yeah.

John Jantsch (17:31.17)

Yeah, yeah, go for it.

Mark Roberge (17:43.282)

and tried to evaluate the commonalities for those that like exited at, you know, very strong exit. The number one correlation was the founder's ability to up level the executive team around them as they went through the various phases of growth. And it's like, it's so pronounced in my journey with some of these folks. It's like, it's so hard to do too. Like it's so hard for like a founder to like stare someone in the eyes who've been there in the trenches with them from day one for three years.

and be able to communicate that they are over their head and that the business needs someone ready for the next stage. How you deliver that, how you recognize it, how you have the guts to say it, how you like move through that and still feel like a human and still feel like that person has been made whole. Like that's such a difficult skill to build, but that there's so much correlation with successful founders and CEOs and in

developing and executing that skill.

John Jantsch (18:43.372)

Well, and let's take it up one level. Many times the business outgrows the founder, right? So they may be having that conversation with themselves, right? Yeah.

Mark Roberge (18:48.714)

Sure. It's very rare that they're there. Totally. Yeah. And that lots of times the board has to manage that. think we, we went from an, like a culture or like a tactic around that. would say in the eighties and nineties when venture capital was much smaller and startups were, it just, was a much smaller portion of the economy. VCs were notorious for investing in these young technicians and then

fire in them. And I think in the early 2000s, venture took a different approach. They didn't want to get a reputation for firing CEOs. So they did what I call the Sheryl Sandberg, which is to like bring in the, the operator, but keep the CEO, which is good. think that's great. think a lot of times that CEO can sort of graduate up to being a

face to the organization, a driver of the culture, a person to be in key meetings with customers, to be on the road, but like don't have to be or nor qualified to be like the day-to-day operators, hence like today's COO president role. So, but yeah, sometimes founders, they're like not willing to let go. And I have to be like, I have to be like, do you even understand that you have graduated to an era and scale that every CEO

John Jantsch (20:00.782)

Yes, yes.

Mark Roberge (20:15.519)

founder dreams of, we're basically offering to pay for someone to do all the work that you hate and have you just do the work you love, which is product vision, talking to customers and talking to the market. So it's like, it takes a little reframing, you know.

John Jantsch (20:17.56)

Yeah, that's right.

John Jantsch (20:23.598)

You

John Jantsch (20:33.16)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you, I think your PR people mentioned this, they're donating the proceeds to the book to McLean Hospital for Mental Health Research. Is there an intentional connection of the subject of scaling to mental health?

Mark Roberge (20:42.014)

Yeah.

Mark Roberge (20:48.113)

my gosh. Huge. Well, not so much. It's very light. It's more of an intentional connection to the author. and it's just something as you've experienced, John, it like you get up, you get up in the morning and do these things three times more aggressively when you have a cause like this around you. And there's two personal reasons and thank you for providing a platform to talk about them. The first one is mental health has played an enormous piece in my own life.

John Jantsch (20:55.992)

Yeah.

Mark Roberge (21:18.259)

I have been a caregiver, a direct caregiver to many loved ones and I've been a patient. And I can stand here and say this because I've been blessed with certain resume wins that society values and I can be braver than most. And I'm sure by saying that some people may be hesitant to work with me. And I just think we need to fight that stigma more. Like we've come a long way in a generation, but

Even to this day, I think a lot of people will be interviewing a candidate and find out they survived cancer 10 years ago and it will elevate their perception of them versus if they found out that they overcame a serious mental illness, they may have some concern and both are just a disease. They're often genetic. So that's part of the personal driver. And the second one is I think in this moment in tech, there's a hundred times more capital talent.

John Jantsch (22:02.03)

Yes.

John Jantsch (22:07.308)

Yes.

Mark Roberge (22:17.009)

an effort going into building AI and next to nothing in helping society adapt to the world that about to become. And I think we as technicians need to change that. We can't delegate this to Washington or economists. They're just not close enough to it. And we just need to like really diversify our efforts away from just building and profiting toward

John Jantsch (22:25.347)

Yes.

Mark Roberge (22:44.265)

helping society adapt to this new world. like with every tech revolution, we ended up better as a society, but there are scars along the way. It happened with the internet. They're about to be really bad with AI if we don't do anything. So I think we all need to find a little thing to do. And right now that's my little thing to do.

John Jantsch (22:51.734)

Yes.

John Jantsch (22:59.914)

Awesome. Well, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Any way you'd invite people to connect with you, find out more about your work as well as your latest book.

Mark Roberge (23:11.315)

Yeah, I'm all over. mean, LinkedIn is probably where I'm most at. I'm trying to hang out on TikTok more, John, just to like, because I need to like talk to these 22 year old founders as well, which is awesome. So I'm trying to find where they are. But I'm mostly on LinkedIn if folks want to go on there and collaborate.

John Jantsch (23:25.55)

Well again, I appreciate you stopping by and hopefully we'll run into you someday in a steakhouse in South Boston. I don't know how much that'll be worth to you, if you got a pen, I'll do it. All right. Thanks, Mark.

Mark Roberge (23:32.305)

I'd love it and maybe I'll ask for your autograph, John.

Mark Roberge (23:42.578)

All right, it's great to see you. Thank you.

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John Jantsch (00:01.184)

What if the very thing most adults dismiss as frivolous is actually the key to better ideas, deeper connection and more resilient work? Hello and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Piera Ghilardi. You know, I'm going to do that over again because I practiced that and I got it wrong. So yeah, Ghilardi, like gelato or something.

Piera Gelardi (00:23.822)

It's like hair gel, it's gel already. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, like gelato, exactly.

John Jantsch (00:31.636)

Yeah. Okay. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantz and my guest today is Piera Jalardi. She's an entrepreneur, speaker and co-founder of Refinery29, whose new book, The Playful Way, argues that play is not a distraction from meaningful work and life, but a practical mindset that can help us navigate creativity, change, relationships, and even adversity.

with more curiosity and possibilities. So, Piero, welcome to the show.

Piera Gelardi (01:03.886)

Thanks for having me. Let's play.

John Jantsch (01:05.546)

So I'm sure one of the first questions that you get asked all the time is, because so many of us, especially people of my generation, it's like, you didn't get to play it till you got your homework done. And so how, or when for you, I should actually ask it that way. Cause you argue that it's not something that we earn, that it's actually something that enhances how we work. When did that become true for you?

Piera Gelardi (01:30.776)

So I was fortunate to grow up in a really playful family and to have parents who were playful while they navigated growing businesses, having families, dealing with illness and loss. And so I got to see how playfulness could, and the curiosity and creativity that comes with playfulness could actually weave into every aspect of our life. So playfulness was something that was sort of baked into me. But then of course, like most adults, I rubbed up against

know, teachers that wanted me to do things a certain, you know, straight line way, wanted me to, to, you know, sit still and go from point A to point B. I went into workplaces that also expected a certain degree of seriousness and, you know, seriousness in terms of rigidity. And so I did definitely rubbed up against places that, you know, told me that play and playfulness was something frivolous with something that we do, you know, after our homework is done, after our hard work is done.

But what I found in my life and in my work was that integrating play created the best results. It created the most innovative ideas, the best relationships, and the most resilience for me to work through the problems that came up.

John Jantsch (02:44.028)

Is, I believe you a hundred percent and totally agree with it. Is there any research that you've done or that you've studied that kind of backs this up scientifically as well?

Piera Gelardi (02:54.466)

Yeah, there's a lot of research about the power of play. also there's research about play deprivation, which is something that I experienced in a period of work where I was trying to present in a serious way. So I packed up my playfulness and tried to kind of show up in a way that was zipped up in my serious suit, basically. And

Play deprivation leads to us being less resilient, having less of a solutions minded attitude, having less of a big perspective on what there is in life. And so we end up not having that intrinsic motivation that helps us to drive us forward, that helps us to feel, to find joy and excitement in our day to day, to find connection with each other. There's also a lot of science also around like the neuroscience of.

sort of that playful experimental mindset and how when we try something new, you know, these neural pathways are reshaping our brain. So when we're in that play state, we're in a much more open-minded experimental framework where we can actually learn and grow versus getting really stuck and being set back by failure, which is when we're in that perfectionistic, serious mindset, we're trying to control the outcome. We're trying to, you know,

get it exactly right, we tend to be less open-minded, we tend to not be able to deal with the change, the uncertainty, the setbacks in the same sort of pliable, resilient way that we can when we're in that playful mindset.

John Jantsch (04:32.893)

So, I think a lot of business owners, we've come a long way, I think a lot of business owners get the idea of doing creative exercises, kind of opens up dialogue and different things. But when you use the word play, do you sometimes get pushback because people have a bias about, that's goofing around, that's not serious, that's not who we are? mean, so does the word play itself actually cause some issues for you?

Piera Gelardi (04:57.676)

Yeah, there's definitely a lot of anti-play sentiment because we sort of associate play with one mode of play, but there's a lot of ways to be playful. So we sort of think of, and in the book I have these eight archetypes of play. So I think the one that people most associate with play is the joyful gesture, right? That's like the class clown. That's the one that, you know, making things light, that's bringing humor.

John Jantsch (05:00.661)

Yeah.

Piera Gelardi (05:22.594)

And that person actually can be so powerful in diffusing tension and helping to relieve stress and helping us to laugh so that we can actually get to a solution faster. But they're definitely the one that people feel is, I think it's the most controversial in the workplace. And though they really are powerful and there's also a lot of research about the power of humor in problem solving, in stress relief.

in relationship building. But there's so but there's that's only one way of being playful, right? That being humorous, being light, there's, you know, curiosity is a huge element of play. So there's the curious question that someone that asks a lot of questions that's intellectually going down these rabbit holes, and they're really powerful to have in the workplace, because they help you to think differently by introducing, you know, introducing questions and new ways of thinking.

There is the visionary dreamer. That's the person that is, you know, we might think of them as having their head in the clouds, right? They're often the negative side as they're seen as the dreamer, the unrealistic one, but they're also the one that's looking beyond what is immediately in front of us. They're not trying to just replicate the same thing over and over again. They're really opening up possibility in new ways. So there are lot of different ways to be playful. And so I think

One thing that I'm trying to do is educate people about these different modes of play so that we can understand how to value them and how to bring them into the workplace in different ways.

John Jantsch (06:57.184)

So I imagine a lot of people, one of the use cases a lot of people probably can relate to is the idea of team building. You there's nothing sort of, you let your guard down, you're vulnerable, you do something that's not you necessarily, you don't think it's you and team building. But talk to me a little bit about innovation because I'm guessing that that's a place where this really shines as well because, know, innovation takes meaning.

You can't fail. can't make a mistake. And you know, I think that that's probably inherent in some play, isn't it?

Piera Gelardi (07:32.172)

Yeah. So I think of it sort of, there's the pressured way and there's the playful way. And the pressured way is when we're trying to control the outcome. We are rigid. We might feel like tight in our body. and that is often like when we're really zipped up tight in our serious suit and we're very, very afraid of failure. the playful way is when we have that curiosity to us, when we're looking at a problem from multiple different angles.

John Jantsch (07:36.746)

Mm-hmm.

Piera Gelardi (08:01.218)

we're floating unexpected ideas. And it allows us to really find these innovative ways to move forward. And so, yeah, play is the, mean, the most effective brands and companies integrate some sort of play into what they do. The companies that are the most innovative know that that's how you create experiences that people feel. That's how you go outside of the cookie cutter idea.

Often when we go in that pressured way, we're just replicating past, you know, past success or replic or copying other people's formats. We're not creating something new. And when you think about a kid, right, like they're looking at a cardboard box and they're seeing that it can be a pirate ship. can be, you know, it can be a spaceship. It's a closet. It's all these different things. And that's divergent thinking. And of course that's, you know, we might not think that's a very practical example in the workplace, but

If you're looking at a problem, you want someone that can think about all the different ways you could go about it. And so what play does is it opens up our minds to that divergent thinking. And that's where the big solutions, the big unlocks come from.

John Jantsch (09:12.118)

So I imagine, I'm just guessing, that you have a series of exercises that you could bring to people and say, OK, for the next 10 minutes, we're going to do X, Y, and Z. Can you showcase a couple of things that you find to be really effective at getting people to do whatever behavior it is the company's trying to support?

Piera Gelardi (09:32.662)

Yeah. So a couple of really simple ones, you know, that I, I did a lot at Refinery29 were, one is actually a physical shake break. which, you know, can be controversial in the workplace because people feel really self-conscious and, know, it can be hard to get people to move, but honestly, I found it to be so effective because so often you're going into a meeting, right? And you're holding onto whatever frustrating conversation you had, or you're still thinking about.

you know, how you're going to deal with the thing on your to-do list. Also, there can be a power dynamic, like often when people were coming into my office, have a meeting with me, you know, I'm the boss, they're feeling, you know, nervous about like, are they going to say the right thing? And so as the leader, I think it's really important to be the one that's making a fool of yourself to a certain extent, you know, doesn't have to be huge, but you, yeah, you need to be vulnerable. You need to be the one that shows that it's okay to play.

John Jantsch (10:25.398)

Lead by example.

Piera Gelardi (10:33.541)

because that's the only way to get people to do it. I would, when people would come into my office, I would say, okay, we're gonna do a 30 second shake break. I would do this improv exercise called crazy eights where you shake, you count down from eight, like shaking your one arm, the other arm, one arm, one leg, the other leg. And what would happen is, know, it was like I'm...

I'm being silly, so then everyone else is following suit. And at the end, no one's cool. No one is serious. And we all kind of have let our guard down. It evens the playing field. It opens us up. It allows us to create a certain space where ideas can flow a little bit more easily. I'm also a big fan of just simple curiosity questions. So these can be, you know, these can be.

really silly and just unexpected or they can you know, they can be on topic but introducing questions that force people to You know think in a new way I think is a really simple and sort of low stakes way to bring play in Another one is imagination. So a question I loved to float to my team was what would what would need to be true for this to happen?

Because so often we're sort of stuck on a problem. We're stuck on the old ways of doing things. We're stuck on the obstacles. So sometimes, yeah, why it won't work. So sometimes asking a question like that, like what would need to be true in order for us to do this is a great way to open up that possibility, that possibility thinking.

John Jantsch (11:58.186)

Yeah, right. Why it won't work.

John Jantsch (12:17.12)

Talk to me a little bit about Refinery29. I know the book is kind of drawn from some of your experiences there, but talk a little bit about what Refinery29 does.

Piera Gelardi (12:28.194)

Yeah, so Refinery29 is a global media company focused on 360 degrees of a woman's life. So everything from health and wellness to beauty, fashion. we started as a, we basically essentially started as a blog and we grew into a company that was doing experience, these huge experiential events across the US and internationally doing video film.

John Jantsch (12:39.99)

Mmm.

Piera Gelardi (12:56.942)

all kinds of different media outlets. So yeah, it started, you know, it started, I started it when I was 24 and it was this small niche thing and it grew into a company that had a hundred million dollars in revenue and 500 employees globally.

John Jantsch (13:00.67)

And so.

John Jantsch (13:15.274)

So did some of the work that shows up in the book, did it come from those experiences and from how you kept those playful and energetic?

Piera Gelardi (13:25.612)

Yeah, so the book is full of stories from a lot of different moments in my life. But some of the ones are from my time at Refinery29, the problems that we solved and the innovation that we unlocked through bringing play into the workplace.

John Jantsch (13:44.032)

So I'm sure there's a fine line. mean, people may listen to this, read the book and go, you're right, we need to bring more play in. How do you make it part of the culture and not a gimmick? We've all seen that. The CEO goes off to a conference and listens to a workshop and the next thing you know, for five minutes we're doing this now. So how do you bring it in as something?

that has value, that's not forced, that's not gimmicky, not performative.

Piera Gelardi (14:14.99)

Yeah, that's so critical. think so often companies when they want to integrate play, they sort of do that forced fun. The moment that employees feel is forced fun, right? And it's a one-off thing. In the book, I really talk about how play is something, you we think of play as sort of this time out or this thing that we do as a reward for hard work, but play is the most effective when it is integrated into the day-to-day in small moments. So I think...

One is understanding the different modes of play and starting to understand within your team what the different archetypes of play that people are so that you can really leverage those and you can understand, you know, what is going to light those, light those people up. you know, a curious questor who's, who's following those intellectual threads and curiosity is going to be, you know, going to light up from something really different from a mover and shaker that's more someone who finds

who finds play in their physical body through movement. So there's very different modes of play. So I think the first thing is understanding within the team, what are the different play strengths that people have? What are the powers of play that you have that you're working with? The next is to, I do this thing called plork, which is how do we fuse play and work in small moments? So that can be really small. can be, you know,

John Jantsch (15:15.595)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (15:35.722)

Mm.

Piera Gelardi (15:41.55)

introducing a curiosity question at the beginning of a meeting. can be renaming meeting invites with something that's a little bit more whimsical. So it doesn't feel like an anxiety attack when you see your calendar. It's these little moments that you commit to and you brainstorm as a team. So you think about, okay, once you understand these powers of play that the team has, how can you integrate those day to day in small ways?

John Jantsch (15:52.352)

Right.

Thank

Piera Gelardi (16:11.554)

what are those play plus work moments that become part of the culture so that you are really integrating it and finding those moments of connection, creativity, curiosity in the day to day versus just putting a play bandaid on like at that one offset.

John Jantsch (16:29.352)

Right. Yeah. It's interesting. I hadn't really thought of people having play personalities, but it sounds like that's a bit what you're describing. So we've talked mostly about internal team and culture. How could people use this in a marketing sense? So in other words, be more playful in their public, you know, what they're putting out there to be perceived as, you know, a fun and playful company.

Piera Gelardi (16:34.861)

Yeah.

Piera Gelardi (16:56.002)

Yeah, I think in terms of bringing it into a marketing context, it's really about how can we do something different? How can we bring an experimental mindset to how we market? I tend to find that when we think of things as an experiment, and again, there's this neuroscience around this, but when we think of something as an experiment, we open up a lot more possibility and we stop.

John Jantsch (17:09.206)

Mm-hmm.

Piera Gelardi (17:24.13)

having it stops feeling so high stakes that we can't fail that we can't try new things. So I think one thing is, you know, thinking about what are the experiments that we want to run here? What's something that would be interesting to try? You know, can we try it in a can we try it in a small way? And then build off of that. That was something we did a lot of refinery. We were constantly experimenting. So we'd say

You know, for example, we did this huge experiential event called 29 rooms that went to seven cities, hundreds of thousands of people came through. but it started from just one event where we said, you know, we're noticing this behavior of how people are using Instagram. And so why don't we do, why don't we do something in our photo studio at the office where we invite photographers to come in, we give them all kinds of props, access to models and access to clothes and let them, you know,

express their creativity and tag us. And so that was the experiment, was just doing that. So it was a very low stakes, low cost experiment. And we saw this huge Instagram sharing that came from this one office event. And so then we said, okay, do we do that again and make it a little bit bigger? So then we did it in partnership with.

museum in New York, we brought in a fashion brand to provide the looks and we tried it again and we again saw this huge like exponential return from it. And then, you know, then it was like the next piece, okay, like let's pop up an event. It was a smaller scale event. Again, saw huge success. And so that was when we decided to take the gamble and put on this huge, this huge event where we brought in brands, celebrities, you know, it was like, and that that became something that was

huge, we were hugely known for and that became really copied. was on every, you know, every brand was referencing it and trying to replicate the 29 rooms, you know, effect. So, but it came from that experimental mindset of saying, okay, what if we tried this and what's the smallest, what's the smallest way we can try it within our resources to see if this has legs.

John Jantsch (19:18.901)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (19:31.638)

All right, now that you've written the book and it's, upon when people are listening to this, it's going to be out there for public consumption. Is there anything that you hope, especially adults, relearn about themselves by considering this topic?

Piera Gelardi (19:50.306)

Yeah, I think in adulthood, through the course of having the strict teacher that tells you to sit still, having the boss that shuts down your humorous aside, there's through feeling the weight of responsibility and thinking that play is antithetical to being the responsible adult. There's all these moments where we start to shut down our playfulness. And as a result, we lose that curiosity.

we lose that resilience and we lose the flexibility that play brings into our lives. And that makes us lose touch with ourselves really. It makes us like lose touch with our true essence. when we think about our relationships too, right? Like what are the things that you remember the most about your friends, your family? It's often these inside jokes, these silly moments, these playful pieces.

And so when we start to become that very serious adult, we start to shut down what really makes us authentic, what makes us connect authentically and what makes us come alive. So, you know, in adulthood, starting to reconnect with that playful spirit, you know, even just in small ways, I tell people, go back to the lost and found. Like think about your childhood and what made you lose track of the hours, what completely immersed you.

and see if there's something in there that you want to re-explore. So, you know, maybe it was dancing when you were a kid and you want to like think about going to a dance class again, or maybe it was beach combing and you were just like, loved looking at, you know, looking for sea glass on the beach. You know, is there, do you want to go for a walk in your neighborhood and see if you can, you know, turn it into a wonder wander and find, you know, these moments of delight. So re-engaging, like starting in small ways, but just.

being open to the fact that playfulness is going to unlock a lot of richness and joy and aliveness in your life. So it's really worthwhile to pursue it. Play is not the opposite of seriousness. It's what makes seriousness bearable. It's what makes you find joy in the day to day and the mundane.

John Jantsch (22:09.178)

Well, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by the podcast. Where would you invite people to find out more about your work? Find out where they can pick up a copy of the book.

Piera Gelardi (22:19.522)

Yeah, so they can pick up the book, The Playful Way. It's at all major booksellers starting April 7th. And you can find me on Instagram and Stub Stack at Pierrealuisa and my website, pieragillardi.com.

John Jantsch (22:33.878)

Awesome. Well, again, Pierre, I appreciate you stopping by and hopefully we're running into you one of these days out there on the road.

Piera Gelardi (22:38.646)

Yeah, thanks so much. Thanks for playing.

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