John Jantsch (00:00.11)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Lorenzo Johnson. He’s the Director of Revenue Management and a partner at Socially In, a leading US social media agency. He’s a specialist in social selling, helping B2B professionals and SMEs leverage LinkedIn to drive revenue. As a content creator for Madcraft and an instructor on LinkedIn learning, Lorenzo teaches thousands worldwide.

There’s courses on social selling. So Lorenzo, welcome to the show.

Lorenzo Johnson (00:33.467)

appreciate you and thanks for having me today, John. I’m very, very excited to be here.

John Jantsch (00:37.76)

Awesome. So did I say the name right socially in? I had to kind of stumble over that. There’s a lot of letters together.

Lorenzo Johnson (00:40.857)

You did. No, you said it correctly. You said it better than a lot of people when they call us and they say social lion and other things like that. So you hit it right on the head, John.

John Jantsch (00:50.345)

Awesome. So let’s start. We’re going to talk mostly about LinkedIn today. So let’s set the table going into 2026, which we’re there. What’s changed? What do we need to pay attention to? What’s gotten worse about better about just kind of give us the give us the lay of the land for 2026 on LinkedIn.

Lorenzo Johnson (00:52.507)

Yes, sir.

Lorenzo Johnson (01:11.483)

Well, there’s a few things that’s happening on LinkedIn that I think everyone should be excited about, not necessarily fearful about, but absolutely kind of thinking about what they’re going to be shifting and changing. And so I’ll kind of get right into one of the biggest things that’s happening. And it’s around this term AEO that everyone’s kind of talking about and always engine optimization and always everywhere optimization. know, you’re hearing all of these different types of names and LinkedIn is actually one of those social platforms that’s also starting to

be incorporated a little bit more into that. What we’re starting to actually see is that content is starting to be indexed when you start to get into search inquiries and search queries. Technical things like leveraging hashtags and things like that are actually starting to also come up in search functions and Google and things like that. That’s also with other platforms like Instagram and things like that. But again, I know we’re focusing historically or this conversation specifically on LinkedIn. So.

The first thing that you’re seeing is that with all and like all social, you’re starting to kind of see this integration between social search. These, these avenues that used to be very separated and segregated are really starting to kind of work together now. And so that’s the first thing that we’re seeing right now is that content, long form content, putting out some of that thought leadership type of content that used to be really good and really exciting on LinkedIn. It’s kind of been watered down when chat GBT made everyone an expert all of a sudden and things like that.

but we’re starting to see that start to come back. So that would say that’s one of the first things that we’re starting to see,

John Jantsch (02:40.96)

All right, so let’s dive into that with kind of this flood of very average, you know, AI content. How does somebody take their content and make it stand out?

Lorenzo Johnson (02:43.749)

Okay?

Lorenzo Johnson (02:52.505)

Well, one of the biggest things is doing stuff like this. It’s that video content. It’s that content that necessarily can’t be just crafted using some words and things like that. It’s having the ability to get into conversations like this, speak people able to see your voice. So video content is absolutely really starting to take off from a from a true feature standpoint. One other feature that we’re seeing is carousel post, those types of content engagement features that are keeping people on a post for a little bit longer.

John Jantsch (02:55.438)

Yeah. Yeah.

Lorenzo Johnson (03:20.707)

just like a video would do. We’re also starting to see that have a big impact. But of course, as you know, that is something that could be easily kind of manipulated from an AI standpoint. And I mean, let’s get the elephant out the room as well. You can also script videos and use AI to do all of those different types of things too. So unfortunately, it’s kind of leaking into everything that we’re doing. But I would say video.

by far is the best way to not only posit yourself as that thought leader, but really separate yourself from a lot of the newsletter style type posts out there that as soon as you start to read it, it’s so clear that people are just running it through a chat GPT prompt and not even a quality chat GPT prompt at that.

John Jantsch (03:58.35)

Yeah, actually, I’m not even here. This is an AI avatar speaking for me. So I’ve actually had people ask me if I wanted to be interviewed on their show by an AI avatar. I haven’t yet done one. I just I was like, not. It’s too experimental. So I think a lot of

Lorenzo Johnson (04:02.715)

It’ll get there soon. It’s crazy.

Lorenzo Johnson (04:16.943)

What’d you, how’d you respond to that? What were your thoughts on that?

Nah. Well, it’s interesting. just saw…

John Jantsch (04:26.85)

I was going to say, I think a lot of people look at LinkedIn and they just think, okay, what am I going to post? That’s like how the day starts, right? You really talk more about a LinkedIn blueprint. You want to kind of unpack what the pillars of that are.

Lorenzo Johnson (04:40.355)

Yeah, so I like to kind of break it down and for everyone who doesn’t know, there’s essentially four pillars that LinkedIn uses to define if a profile is being used correctly and if you’re doing those appropriate things. More commonly referred to as an SSI or the LinkedIn Social Selling Index Score. Those four pillars are four things. The first one is how are you building your professional brand? The second thing is, are you finding the right people? The third thing is, are you engaging with insights?

And the fourth, and I would argue absolutely the most important thing is, are you building trusted relationships? And so if you were to break all of those downs, they actually get into all of the day-to-day execution of what you should be doing on LinkedIn. So again, when you start talking about building your professional brand, what type of thought leadership are you actually putting out there? What type of value-based, what type of resource-driven type of posting content?

Are you getting out there and putting out there for people to have a reason to come back to your platform to start off with? Finding the right people. One of the things that we’re actually starting to see more is LinkedIn is actually penalizing your impressions and your reach. If your audience isn’t quality, here’s what I mean by that.

If LinkedIn is starting to get this feel and algorithmically that you’re just basically reaching out to everybody, mass, if you’re using automation tools, which a lot of people are doing to send out mass invites and different things like that. If you’re not actually commenting, engaging, endorsing with the people as they’re starting to come in, LinkedIn is actually going to start to lower your impressions. So that’s why you’ll see people that have.

10, 15,000 followers, but yet their posts are still only getting 10, 15 type of posts and things like that. They’re not truly finding and building up the right audience. know, LinkedIn, unlike other social platforms, it’s not a popularity contest. know, LinkedIn isn’t like, Hey, hey, John Lorenzo, I want you guys to have a hundred thousand people that are kind of all over the place. LinkedIn would rather you have 1000 people that are locked in. They come to your platform for insights. You’re engaging back and forth. They much rather have

Lorenzo Johnson (06:45.903)

that type of relationship building. Engaging with insights. Are you actually commenting, engaging on other people’s posts? Are you also engaging on other content that’s happening? Are you sharing other types of content, keeping people on the LinkedIn platforms and things like that? One of the other misconceptions and just basic things that people don’t do that I see all the time is, you know, people share and copy posts without even having something as simple as like a caption or copy on it.

John Jantsch (06:50.232)

Thank

Lorenzo Johnson (07:11.541)

Small little things like that make LinkedIn really feel are you truly engaging with insights? Are you truly using this platform appropriately? And then that last pillar is again is are you building trusted relationships? And I know that’s very hard to kind of quantify and kind of line item out. But simply what that basically means is are the individuals that you’re connected with and that are connecting with you, are you guys engaging back and forth?

Are you DMing them? Are you liking comments? Are you endorsing? What type of interaction are you seeing? Or are you just kind of posting a whole bunch of kind of stuff out there? So those are typically the four pillars that LinkedIn is typically looking at that guides and decides algorithmic reaches, impressions, and things like that.

John Jantsch (07:55.852)

You mentioned at the beginning of that something called SSI. Is there a tool that your social is selling? Is there a tool you can go and put your profile in and it’ll tell you how you’re doing?

Lorenzo Johnson (07:59.483)

Mm-hmm.

Lorenzo Johnson (08:06.095)

There absolutely is. There’s actually a link, John, that I could pop over to you. Please excuse it. But it’s something as simple as linkedin.com backslash, like SSI score or something. I could get you an actual link. But the really cool thing is, once you log in and you literally click that link, it’ll tell you not only what your overall score is, it will actually give you a rating for each of those pillars out of a 25%. As of right now, and this does change sometimes, each of those pillars is equally weighted, 25%.

John Jantsch (08:15.094)

Okay.

Lorenzo Johnson (08:34.34)

So you will be able to see your rating out of that 25%. Of course, the aggregate score will be what your total LinkedIn SSI score, which will be out of 100.

John Jantsch (08:44.056)

Okay, so a lot of times when I talk to LinkedIn people, you see people doing courses, the very first thing is always fix your profile, update your profile, make it stronger. So what are some tips that you would give people that would make a stronger kind of selling?

Lorenzo Johnson (08:52.569)

Yes. Yes.

Lorenzo Johnson (09:01.615)

The biggest tip that I can give you is you need to use, this is just an algorithmic feature of social. The more features that you actually use and execute, the more quote unquote love that they’ll give you. So for example, and know, John, this is a question for you. I’m just curious since we’re talking, do you by chance have like professional mode activated on your LinkedIn profile or do you even know what professional mode is?

John Jantsch (09:20.91)

I do have it activated, yes, yes.

Lorenzo Johnson (09:22.989)

Of course you do. And so you know that once you activated that there’s some really cool things that you were able to do for completely free by simply clicking that button, the ability to post a newsletter, the ability to actually create a microsite landing page that’s right there where you can have case studies, pitch decks, YouTube videos, all of those different types of things, as well as just a few other searching features that you also kind of get access to. it’s really important to make sure you’re leveraging those features because again,

Once algorithms see that, they say, okay, this is a profile that we should continue to start to get love. So that’s absolutely one of the biggest ones that I see people don’t optimize on their profile. You know, everyone has the cover photo, everyone has the profile pic and things like that, but those additional features, making sure you’re about us is properly used. All of those things really matter, but I will say professional dashboard activation is key, is key, is key right now.

John Jantsch (10:16.654)

So one of the things I know, everybody says this, everybody knows this, you know, want to follow people, you want to engage with people, you want to eventually turn those into conversations. I mean, that’s how we sell, right? I don’t see very many people doing that well. You know, they’re trying to get to the end game, you know, as quickly as possible. So, you know, somebody will connect with me and I’ll think, yeah, that seems like a reasonable person to connect. I’ll connect in the very first email or DM that I get is,

Lorenzo Johnson (10:23.951)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Lorenzo Johnson (10:31.578)

Mm-hmm.

Lorenzo Johnson (10:37.125)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (10:45.994)

an attempt to cause conversation, but it’ll be so silly. It’s like, so what are you most excited about in your business this year? And I’m like, stranger on the bus, just ask me that. It’s like, what? But people don’t seem to think that way. It’s like, want to get to that end game as fast as possible. How do you suggest, especially in a selling environment, that you actually create some

Lorenzo Johnson (10:49.071)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Lorenzo Johnson (11:13.295)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (11:15.435)

engagement but make it authentic.

Lorenzo Johnson (11:18.519)

It has to be, and this is something I tell every single person when they start talking about focusing on LinkedIn, if you go into LinkedIn saying that I need business over the next six months, you’re completely playing the wrong game. Your strategy is going to be off. And I can tell you right now, John, you are not going to get any of that business that you’re going to see. And then you’re going to come back and say, LinkedIn, such a terrible business development platform. my God, it’s so bad and things like that. I was just talking to another company and they did an analysis on how long it takes to do what’s called either social selling.

or account-based marketing, ABM. It is currently taking approximately 320 days from the time you start that campaign until the time that new business actually comes into the door. That assumes that for that entire 320 days, John, you did things the right way. You’re providing value-driven content. You’re providing educational type of content. You’re providing those things that make it so that when people are ready to buy,

Not only have you already created the awareness of your product, the why about your product, but it becomes a no brainer why they should at least consider you when they’re going through that process. And so that’s the biggest thing that I tell people is if you’re not prepared, number one, for this to be a long term game, you’re not playing the right game right here. And that’s unfortunate. What we’re seeing, John, is we’re seeing a bunch of people who have seen these automation tools and they’ve been told that, if you, if you send a thousand messages out by percentages, you have to be successful, right?

And unfortunately we’re seeing a lot of that and it just tires people out from people who are doing it the right way. And so unfortunately now going into 2026 value driven content and engagement strategies is going to be even more important than it was this year.

John Jantsch (12:57.55)

So what pieces of that, because I completely agree. mean, it’s obvious when somebody’s just doing cold outreach to you, you you’re a piece of meat at that point, you know, that they’re trying to communicate with. So, but there are places where I think there are some automation tools, some AI that can help the process. What are some of the tools, you know, for example, if you’ve got a post that really is blown up and you’re getting lots of comments and people are engaging with it.

Lorenzo Johnson (13:03.416)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (13:26.314)

Are there ways for you to maybe move those people to another conversation, say an email, or obviously as much thoughtful commenting on their comments has to be done by hand, but are there parts that can actually make that obvious hand work easier and faster?

Lorenzo Johnson (13:36.09)

Yeah.

Lorenzo Johnson (13:44.787)

There is. I’ll tell you two tools that we, again, I can only speak for our agency, things that we’re doing successfully. The first one is actually a tool called Apollo. Apollo is a tool that integrates not only directly into your LinkedIn, it could integrate into your CRM systems. We use HubSpot, for example, why that matters and why we love it. Apollo is simply an integration tool that if, I was on John’s LinkedIn profile right now and I had it pulled up, I could click on the Apollo integration. It would tell me numerous things.

It will tell me number one, your email, contact information, phone number, a lot of that information that you may not put in your LinkedIn profile because of the exact stuff that we just talked about. However, Apollo has the ability to do what’s called scrape all of that type of information, which I’m sure you’re familiar with. We love Apollo. The way that we leverage it is if you we leverage when we reach out and we do corporate pay outreach campaigns, individual outreach campaigns, as soon as you show any form of interest, any form of interest,

We’re immediately putting you into our email system and things like that. The reason I mentioned that tool is because a lot of people don’t have their business emails in LinkedIn anymore because of what we’re talking about right here. Apollo allows you to still get that information. And then of course, as you can imagine, John, if we have that phone number, you bet you’re going to get a phone call that at least says, Hey, we were talking about this. We were chatting about this. Does it make sense for us to have a conversation? So that’s the first tool that I really, really, really enjoy using.

The second tool that we’ve been using, and full transparency, we’re just testing this, but I’m testing it because of something that we started initially in our conversation, and it’s that video seems to be opening up doors on LinkedIn. It’s actually a tool called Weasley. What it actually allows you to do is it actually allows you to create customized video outreach. So as opposed to doing this, hey, John, we’re in the same field type of conversation, it’s a more personalized video. Of course, you can do some customizations.

But the really cool thing it does is it actually will scroll the site and the LinkedIn profile of the person that you’re talking through. So not only can I say why, you know, I’m just calling, but I can say, hey, John, I was actually checking out your LinkedIn profile and look at what I saw. Here’s a post that you did this. I maybe would have done this a little different or here’s something that you did so great. I would lean into this and take it to the next level. And so we really love that because it combines everything we’re talking about video. So you can see my voice. You can hear me.

Lorenzo Johnson (16:04.571)

but it still is value driven. I’m not saying, hey, John, we talked to all of these different people. Do you want to set up a free consultation and things like that? It’s like, hey, look at your LinkedIn. This is what I saw. Look at your Facebook. Look at your website. Here are actionable things that we could potentially talk about if and when it makes sense and go from there. So I would say those are the two tools that we’ve been using this year that we absolutely plan on taking into 2026.

John Jantsch (16:29.23)

So speaking of tools, LinkedIn gets occasionally very nervous about tools that scrape its content. And we’ve all seen tools that get banned. And again, lot of it’s because people are being too aggressive with them, probably. So how do you kind of balance that idea that, I don’t know, are there legitimate ways to scrape? I don’t know if that’s the right term.

Lorenzo Johnson (16:35.235)

It does. It does.

Lorenzo Johnson (16:40.525)

Yeah, of course.

Lorenzo Johnson (16:53.499)

So no, no, no.

John Jantsch (16:55.24)

or if it’s really a matter of like, it’s only a matter of time before LinkedIn says, no, I don’t like

Lorenzo Johnson (17:00.335)

Now, so these tools are basically what are called black, gray, and white hat tools. Basically, all this simply means is that black hat tools are, LinkedIn says, absolutely not. Those are the things where you use them and you get caught. Not only is your profile being banned, it’s going to be hard to kind of get it back. Gray tools, which are the predominant use, like LinkedIn automation tools and things like that, those live in what we call that kind of gray area. They’re technically,

John Jantsch (17:06.648)

Mm-hmm.

Lorenzo Johnson (17:26.349)

not allowed to be used by LinkedIn. However, this year LinkedIn has basically said, as long as you follow these parameters, we’ll allow it to keep going. Biggest thing, for example, is a connection request limit. Moving forward, you can only send 100 connection requests per week unless you’re doing things the right way and stuff like that. As soon as you start to go over that, grey hat tools start to become out of the box. As long as tools are what are called more integrations and not necessarily scrapes,

Typically, LinkedIn is actually OK with that. We’re not seeing too many different things. For example, the tool Weasley that I’ve actually found is actually allowed to be integrated directly into your LinkedIn inbox through LinkedIn itself. It’s not even like a third party tool and things like Apollo that you have to use. So unfortunately, LinkedIn is always going to kind of always keep you in that gray area. Because again, at the end of the day, they don’t want people to come in and use a bunch of automation that ruins the experience.

which is what’s happened, John, over the past 18 months. LinkedIn has been not an ideal experience for C-level execs and hire. You open up your inbox and there’s 50 people a day that are providing zero value whatsoever. But there are tools that will at least allow you to make your life easy that LinkedIn doesn’t. So another one that we use that has never gotten banned is Phantom Buster. Phantom Buster allows you to scrape anything possible that you can think of, emails, contact information, post information. I mean, they have 100,

no exaggeration, probably 15 LinkedIn specific like scraping categories. We use that because again, it counts as an integration. It’s not actually integrating into the profile or anything like that. those would be three tools that we have seen that not had any issues. That’s typically minimum gray, if not in kind of that white hat type of space. And sorry to get so technical on that.

John Jantsch (19:12.026)

No, no, no, I think people need to hear that. What are some, you know, there’s basic measurement on…

Lorenzo Johnson (19:19.439)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (19:22.144)

engagement, new followers, you know, kind of thing. What are some ways to actually, other than like getting meetings or getting sales, what are some ways to measure your success, if you will, on LinkedIn?

Lorenzo Johnson (19:29.541)

Mm-hmm.

Lorenzo Johnson (19:35.055)

So one of the biggest things I actually am always looking at is I’m looking at views and impressions. That’s typically what’s defining my success. If I can get this in as many eyes as possible, like I’ve already mentioned, John, the conversion stuff will happen as time starts to go on and as you’re doing things appropriately. So I’m typically looking at views and then I’m looking at kind of that engagement rate per views. And then I’m basically saying the same thing we teach people to do. How do I optimize to create content more like that?

or less like that. If I’m seeing that every time I mention or tagging someone, it’s starting to work, well then I’d say, hey, let’s make sure that we’re putting longer form content. Let’s make sure we’re doing more of that. I typically personally am defining it by views and impressions. I want to get as many impressions as LinkedIn is going to allow me every single time.

John Jantsch (20:20.3)

Lorenzo, I appreciate you stopping by and catching us up on LinkedIn. Where would you invite people to connect with you and find out more about the work at Socially In?

Lorenzo Johnson (20:24.186)

Yes, sir.

Lorenzo Johnson (20:28.929)

Absolutely, please jump on to LinkedIn. It’s going to be Lorenzo Johnson. I’m one of the partners here at Socially In. Very excited to connect with you on there. And of course, John, I’ll get you that direct link to a profile. To find out more information about our agency, please just simply go to www.sociallyin.com. You’ll get an idea of not just the services that we provide. We have a wonderful case study section where you get to look at all the work that we’ve done, high quality, creative, and all of that good stuff as well. Look forward to having you all connect with me.

John Jantsch (20:55.982)

Awesome. Well again, appreciate you stopping by and maybe we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Lorenzo Johnson (21:02.053)

That sounds like a plan, John. Appreciate you for having me and thanks so much.

John Jantsch (00:00.767)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Joe Gagnon. He is the co-founder and CEO of Raynmaker, where he’s building the first AI native sales platform for small business, combining his interest in technology, leadership and human connection. Today we’re going to talk about how AI is reinventing sales as we know it for small business. So welcome to Show Joe.

Joe Gagnon (00:25.826)

John, thanks for having me on. Love this show that you have.

John Jantsch (00:27.797)

Well, thank you, thank you. So I guess let’s start with what needs to be reinvented. Why are we reinventing sales?

Joe Gagnon (00:36.494)

I’m not sure that particularly we’re inventing sales, but how we actually make sales happen. And, you know, I’ve been selling since I was 16 years old. So I think I learned the essence of the conversation, but more than anything, you know, why is someone looking to buy something and how do we make that happen? And so what happened, you know, as I got inspired over the past year about the Rainmaker idea was small business owners don’t start businesses with the idea that they want to sell people. They want to deliver their service.

Home services, mow the lawn, clean the house, don’t know, walk the dog, whatever it might be. And then they start this business and they sell usually this early adopter, already want their service in their local community. And then they have to find like, oh my God, I gotta buy some leaves and I gotta talk to these people. Then I gotta convert them. Then I gotta turn them into customers. They’re doing this while they may be driving in their pickup truck to the next customer and it just gets harder and harder for them to actually have a life when they…

stepped into this idea of like American my own business make this work and now they’re stuck in the stock at the hardest part, which is the part that we wanted to focus on, is so we’re reinventing in the context of how a small business owner operates their business.

John Jantsch (01:52.437)

Yeah, it’s funny. I talked to many, many business owners of all, you know, every industry you can imagine. And if they’ve been in business for a couple of years, at least they realize now that 50 % of job is selling or getting sales. And as you said, a lot of them just want to swing a hammer. And so it really does make it tough. We use the phrase and I think this is straight out of your bio, AI native sales platform. What does that mean? I guess, and maybe describe it in the context of Marine Bank.

Joe Gagnon (02:02.924)

Yes.

Joe Gagnon (02:07.939)

Yes.

Joe Gagnon (02:15.518)

Mmm.

Joe Gagnon (02:21.824)

man, it’s like a good question. like, hasn’t AI sort of been around for 30 years, right? mean, you know, MIT and Marvin Minsky and the rest of the boys up there.

John Jantsch (02:30.559)

Well, just even our driving directions, things like that people don’t realize have been very powered by AI. We’ve been using that for a decade.

Joe Gagnon (02:35.542)

Yes. So the models that underlie the idea have been around for a long time. We’ve evolved to this thing called the large language model, which is giving more access to sort of regular people in terms of this token-based conversational creation in real time. So AI native for us is the parts of the workflow where we want to leverage AI

algorithms and technology, but the whole system itself, mean, we probably use 30 % is this AI part, 70 % is a workflow. It’s a sales workflow, it’s a data integration problem. But in the part of the conversational dialogue, yeah, there’s native AI where we’re going back and forth between our own LLM as everyone would call it or what an open AI might look like. But we’re also using

broader context of AI to mean machine learning as well. So the ability to leverage mathematical models to look for insights, to be able to bring out derivative perspectives that you wouldn’t have been able to do with just a normal database. So that’s the AI native part of what we’re doing.

John Jantsch (03:54.517)

So a lot of small business owners don’t have the budget or just don’t really have the wherewithal to put together an operations team, BDRs, closers, whatever all the roles would be. But in a lot of ways, is this leveling the playing field a little bit for that smaller company?

Joe Gagnon (03:57.902)

you

Joe Gagnon (04:10.99)

That’s the hope. know, there’s a language that everyone started using, which is like democratize capability, access to systems and all of that. I think that the fundamental thesis that we took to this was actually literally to say, what would the small business owner need and what could they invest to make this kind of transformation happen? Because actually, if this works, I think we give them their life back. They’re not sitting at the soccer game with their phone connected to their ear. They’re not driving and texting in their pickup truck or whatever vehicle they might have.

John Jantsch (04:16.053)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (04:39.977)

Yeah.

Joe Gagnon (04:40.174)

that our price point, you know, on the low end, it’s $500 a month, on the high end, it’s $1,000 a month. This is less than hiring a person to answer the phones. We can cover you 24 by 7 by 365, learning off of your dialogue, your brand, your voice, and leveraging our sales expertise, our workflow, our database, and the combination of which should allow that business owner to grow as much as they want.

They don’t have to look. mean, some business owners have told me in the past, look, I don’t want more business than I have today, but I just want it to be predictable. I don’t want the ups and downs. I’m spending so much money on leads. I don’t even know what I’m buying. And so we’re trying to get this to where that American dream is not so daunting. And actually that I mean, look at John, I can’t believe how many people want to start their own business. What are they thinking? But maybe we could actually make that

know, emotional journey better and turn it into something that doesn’t dominate their life.

John Jantsch (05:47.113)

One of the, I think, fastest ways to erode trust in marketing is when things feel very automated, very inauthentic. We all get the AI spam now. How do you kind of balance that? Automation’s great when it reduces friction. It’s bad when it kills relationships.

Joe Gagnon (05:57.624)

Yeah.

Joe Gagnon (06:09.538)

I think it’s a great question and there’s a balancing act that we’re going to have to play over the next year. I think if we were a year from now, we’d be really hard pressed to find the difference between a voice generated by AI or a person’s voice. So we’re not far away from that. Our thesis is this, the consumer is making a phone call because they want more information and because the website didn’t provide it, the product didn’t provide it, or they just have some emotional support that they want. And so,

To the degree that we can give them better, even if it is a little bit robotic, or you can notice it’s an AI, but if they can give you what you need, like, think about this example, you know, we have a lot of pest control customers, someone’s gonna spray for mosquitoes in the backyard, and the parents, and gosh, I got kids and a dog, I’m wondering, is this safe? They just wanna ask that question. They would probably love to get the owner, but it’s unlikely.

So what if someone sounds enough like the owner and knows it enough to be relatable and answer the question effectively, not just in a marketing way, the depth of, hey, this is organic. Here’s how to think about it. Here’s what we’ve heard from other customers. Here’s things to consider. And so I keep believing that what the consumer is looking for is just more better information when they need it. And this is the starting point. Now,

Probably everyone won’t adopt this within a year because they will be skeptical. And as they experience it more and more, it’ll get better. Look, I’ve run call center businesses in the past. What I’ve heard more than anything is I don’t want to talk to people who, well, I can’t even talk to them because you have an IVR. Number two, when I talk to them, they don’t know anything. Number three, I can barely understand them, right? That’s the experience to date. We think we can leapfrog over that by bringing this brand context.

and a voice that we can understand that’s available whenever we want. Because imagine midnight on a Saturday, you just want to ask that question like you can’t do that today.

John Jantsch (08:11.069)

I would totally agree with you. I don’t think we care what the technology is as long as we get what we want. And I have interacted, I’m sure we all have, with customer support bots now that are there in every software. And when they’re just maddening, it’s a terrible experience. But I’ve also got a couple of software platforms I interact with a lot, and I get the answers I want.

Joe Gagnon (08:18.03)

Mm.

John Jantsch (08:40.661)

And to me, then I’m like, I don’t need to talk to somebody in support because I got what I wanted.

Joe Gagnon (08:48.14)

Yeah. You know, it’s interesting also, like what we see the integration of sales and support coming together. Like the customer doesn’t think about those differently. And often they call the sales line because they’ll answer and they ask the support. So.

John Jantsch (08:59.689)

Yeah, right. You might spend money with us. Of course we’re going to answer.

Joe Gagnon (09:05.006)

Yeah, so we want to like say, hey, it doesn’t matter. Call the same phone number and bring your sales opportunity or your complaint. I think about this, even in the non-small business area, we’ve been talking to some pizza chains. Like you order your pizza, it’s great. Hey, it came with no pepperoni. I want to call back the same number and get it resolved rather than send an email or try to call the store. We can get that resolved. I think the integration from John, I’ve been working on customer stuff for 30 years.

I think it’s the first time we might be able to, for the first time, really delight a customer because we’re going to work and live the way they do, not the way my business says, I can’t answer the phone now. It’s too expensive to do this. I’m to put technology in the way because it’s just too expensive. We’re going to try and normalize the expense of this and the experience so that it becomes magical. we’re going to, you’ll see on our website soon, we’re going to put up numbers people can call and try.

and see what it sounds like. And they’ll experience it and they’ll be like, well, maybe this is what the future could be like. Because imagine if it is.

John Jantsch (10:11.081)

I tell you a couple of markets I’d like you to target credit card companies and airlines. Could you get them on board?

Joe Gagnon (10:18.882)

You know, my God, I fly a lot and I sort of wonder, you but you know this, like it’s the same as your cable company. I call them up and try and get something like you can’t, you can’t even figure it out. I think this is one of the areas where AI will advance the ball. And because this is under the owner control, it doesn’t have to turn into a marketing vehicle.

They don’t really care about that. They just want predictability and they want their life back. And if we can deliver that for them, you know, this one feels like probably one of the most sort of beneficial systems I could have worked on.

John Jantsch (10:59.913)

Yeah, well, and you’re absolutely right. Those IVR systems from the past, I they basically had a tree of options. If you didn’t fit into one of those options, you were kind of out of luck. Whereas AI can essentially have infinite options for what you’re after.

Joe Gagnon (11:15.406)

Yeah. And I think the other thing is that we learn as we go. So you get all these transcripts, you start to see a pattern. So imagine someone had 50 locations. Well, they never saw the data pattern across all of that. In the future, we can run this into our large language model and ask questions like what worked, what didn’t work, where the objections, how do we handle objections in the future? How could we nurture this customer better? We can learn.

John Jantsch (11:22.644)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (11:42.655)

Well, or even more, like, in this part of town, they care about this. In this part of town, they care about that. And it’s like personalized to the store level.

Joe Gagnon (11:49.034)

yes!

Yeah, we have found one thing that we thought people would like personalized, and then they changed their mind. So regional accents, for example. So we had a customer who said, we would love a Southern accent. And we put it in there like, no, we actually didn’t really want that. That was too much. So they said, how about that Midwestern one? Female versus male. But we can regionalize, and we can make it feel to the brand more than you could.

We know this, we would love to be able to hire people and have them be experts day one and have them get better all the time. Sadly, that doesn’t happen, but we can do that actually with AI.

John Jantsch (12:32.636)

So talk about some very specific use cases that a small business owner, I mean, are people using this for outbound or is this all really kind of inbound customer service support?

Joe Gagnon (12:39.533)

Hmm.

Joe Gagnon (12:45.312)

Yeah, so this is a good question because we’re going to reframe this idea of outbound. Like why does outbound happen? Outbound is typically a sales process, right? But that’s because the customer can’t talk to you when they want to talk to you. So we’re going to redefine outbound in the following way. If you come and fill out a form, you should be able to talk to someone at that point. You should be able to schedule when you want to hear from someone. You should not be throwing your name out into the ether hoping that someday someone actually gets back to you.

When they inbound or this outbound, you never answer who wants to answer from what call might even look like spam. So one, we want to make it work to the prospect or this potential customer’s timeframe and interest level. This is starting first as a sales platform, which is someone has demonstrated some interest. Maybe they got a Google lead or they got a web form filled out or something to that effect. And they want to reach out to us.

When they call the company phone number, it would ring into our AI and the AI would have that dialogue with the person. They’d go through the conversation, hopefully overcome any objections. And then they’d say, would you like to go forward with the sale? If they say yes, then we do auto scheduling into a calendar. We take payment and then we summarize that data for the owner and update the CRM system. So that’s the first use case really is sales inbound.

John Jantsch (14:17.34)

So do you think that one of the things we’ve really witnessed over the last few years is people are going, because they can, farther down the journey before they ever pick up a phone or contact their business. So much research we can do. A lot of people are putting pricing or least calculators on it so that somebody can actually almost be ready to buy before they even raise their hand. Do you see, and I think a lot of that has to do with you start to talk about, people don’t want to talk to a salesperson. They don’t want to be sold. It’s a hassle.

Joe Gagnon (14:38.915)

Yes.

John Jantsch (14:46.015)

to like schedule an appointment and then meet it. So do you see this actually becoming a tool that people will say, I’ll talk to the AI bot before a human, because I can get the information and I don’t feel like the AI bot’s not gonna pressure me to do something.

Joe Gagnon (15:03.638)

Yeah, you know, so that’s a great question, John. So when we started the company, the first thing I did was write our manifesto, you know, what do we believe in? But the second thing that I wrote was our brain maker constitution. And that constitution is a set of responsibilities we want to uphold, which is we are here to inform the customer on behalf of the owner. We’re not here to manipulate. We want to make them make a better decision. We believe that when they do, they’ll buy more. And so

We actually want the AI to be more about informing. And if it gets the person to the place where they want to buy, they should be able to do that easily. But it’s OK if they use it as a place to get knowledge and to learn about the brand and about the products. It is not meant to manipulate and try all of those sales tactics that a person would do. And we can actually program it that way. That’s why we wrote the Constitution.

John Jantsch (15:52.684)

Yeah. Yeah. Well, what I’m getting at is, mean, imagine doing like a webinar or something. And then typically the CTA is like, know, schedule with one of our advisors, right? Well, now imagine if you say schedule with our AI, it’ll answer all your questions. You won’t have to know anything or do anything. It’s not going to try to sell you anything. It’ll just answer your questions. And then if you want to move forward, you can schedule as a human. Do you see a day where that exists?

Joe Gagnon (15:58.414)

Mm-hmm.

Yep. Yeah.

Yeah, yes.

Joe Gagnon (16:18.542)

I think the first part for sure, but I don’t know that you’ll ever need to talk to the human because this should be as good, but we can do the two-step process. And look, I think it’s up to the owner. If they want to provide information and we want to provide information on their behalf. The reason they might not do it now is they’re like, well, every time I talk to you, I should close you. It costs me more to talk to you another time. But the way we sell our platform, it doesn’t matter if we talk to you one, three or five times. We’re there to help that person make a decision.

John Jantsch (16:23.285)

You

Yeah.

Joe Gagnon (16:47.842)

This comes back to my sales experience. My most effective selling has always been when I have a more informed consumer or buyer. They buy better. it’s when a salesperson, that’s right, but when a salesperson tries to manipulate, you often don’t get to the outcomes you want. So we’re really rethinking this entire buying relationship with this process.

John Jantsch (16:58.242)

price goes down the list a lot of things.

John Jantsch (17:13.705)

Yeah, interesting. So if a small business owners listen to this and they’re like, this is all overwhelming. I don’t, you know, I know I need to get into this, but like how, what are some of the first steps that they need? And some of them are going to be mindset, right? Before technology maybe.

Joe Gagnon (17:24.494)

Yeah.

Joe Gagnon (17:31.085)

Yeah.

Yeah, I wouldn’t, this is like a funny way to say, but you know, we have three versions of our platform. The first is the anytime agent that’ll just actually do the answering for you 24 by seven or off hours or weekend, but just take the call and summarize it for you. It’s a way to say, I wonder how my customers interact. Then we can move into scheduling or payment and then on the full way to the full blown solution with integration and so on.

So part of it is maybe you need to explore what it would be like. The second is, you know, to listen in and hear what calls are like and get an experience and say, wow, maybe that’s not so bad. I think the third thing is to start to look at, you know, what the constraints are that you’re going to have into your growth plan. Do you want to make a commitment to hiring people? Do you want to spend that additional capital?

or would you like to put in a learning system? And so I do think that it’s a bit of a step back to say, how do I want to run the business going forward? Do I have the capability or do I want to get back to the reason why I started this? So yeah, it is a bit of soul searching, but at the end of the day, I think if you go back to why you start a small business, it’s because you want to get the product that you believe in in the hands of a lot of people.

and the sales part gets in the way. And I’ve never met a small business owner who says, the reason I want to start the business is because I want to sell. And so I think that it’ll become more normal. we’ve been going to a lot of trade shows. We do presentations. We have a booth. People are just like, are going beyond just curious now. They’re like, I really should be considering this, shouldn’t I? Now in every technology adoption curve, got

Joe Gagnon (19:17.964)

early adopters, early majority, late majority laggards. There’s some people who will never do this. And amen, that’s fine. But if you want this to work the way you want, then it’s probably worth looking at.

John Jantsch (19:30.438)

Yeah, I mean, I’ve been doing this long enough that there were people that swore they would never ever have a website. you know, we come a long way, don’t we? So, Joe, I appreciate you stopping by and introducing us to the tool. Where would you invite people to find out more, connect with you?

Joe Gagnon (19:36.204)

Right. Exactly, right.

Joe Gagnon (19:51.468)

Yeah, you know, Rainmaker with a Y, R-A-Y-N-M-A-K-E-R dot A-I. That’s our website. Now I’m on LinkedIn, Joe Gagnon. You can always check me out there. I have some fun things that I’ve done in my life that’ll tell you a little bit why I started this and what I believe in. And, you know, appreciate, John, you having us on. We really are committed to

sort of democratizing this capability at a price point that makes it easy for a small business owner so that they can sort of, you know, lean into this American dream and, you know, perform maybe better than they ever thought was possible. That’s what the idea behind technology is, right? This isn’t supposed to make it hard or scary, just make it better. And let’s, we’re going to hold ourselves to that.

John Jantsch (20:37.621)

Yeah, I’m 100 % on board with technology that removes friction, that allows me to do something the way I want to do. I’m all for it. And I think it frees us up to do the human parts that technology will hopefully never be able to do.

Joe Gagnon (20:54.188)

Yeah, I, yeah, well, boy, I’m sure we could have a whole nother podcast on this, but you know, I don’t believe that there’s some big bad AI in the future. You know, we are going to use this to our productive benefit. We’re early, right? We’re still early in this journey. There’s a lot of noise around it, but as we bring out applications like we’re working on, I think people are going to start to say, wow, this actually can be very productive for us. So we’re excited about that.

John Jantsch (20:55.317)

You

John Jantsch (21:12.201)

Yep.

John Jantsch (21:22.67)

Yeah, and I think also, just like all technologies, the more people experience it and have a good experience, there would be less resistance, because they’re like, OK, that change wasn’t so hard. That’s right.

Joe Gagnon (21:28.184)

Hmm.

Joe Gagnon (21:34.446)

That’s right. We’ve lived through many of them, right, John? mean, everyone knows those back and says that, you know, we weren’t going to leave the horse and buggy and came to a car and now we can’t live without it. I do think this one is really fascinating because it extends us maybe another order of magnitude than we could have otherwise. And we’re so committed on this price point because

you know, in small business, we understand that these are tight margins and, you know, we want to make this very accessible to people. And, you know, there’s 30 million small businesses in the U.S., probably 10 million who could be in our target profile. We could get hundreds of thousands doing this, then wow, we’d all do better because it’s the lifeblood of the economy really at end of the day.

John Jantsch (22:12.905)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (22:21.267)

Yep. Well again, appreciate you taking a moment to stop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast and hopefully we’ll run into you on these days out there on the road,

Joe Gagnon (22:28.664)

Thanks, John. Appreciate it.

John Jantsch (00:00.821)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is David Newman. He’s a keynote speaker, bestselling author, creator of the Selling Show podcast with over 600 speaking engagements and 30 years in the field. David works with CEOs, consultants, and expert service providers who are ready to elevate their brand and become impossible to ignore. He’s been on this show to talk about do it marketing, do it speaking, maybe do it selling too. can’t

or possibly today we’re gonna talk about his latest book, Market Eminence, 22 Strategies to Build a Bold Personal Brand, Become a Business Celebrity and Drive Unstoppable Growth. That’s a mouthful, welcome David.

David Newman (00:31.127)

I think so.

David Newman (00:46.648)

Thank you, John. Great to be back with you.

John Jantsch (00:49.587)

I found myself wanting to say marketing eminence. one of my last books, don’t ask me why, but it’s called The Ultimate Marketing Engine. And everybody kept saying the…

David Newman (01:03.342)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (01:10.078)

The mark that’s it the ultimate marketing machine everybody I’d go on podcasts and every single one of them did it So funny, so glad to have you back

In the subtitle, is the word obscurity in the subtitle? No, but you talk a lot about obscurity being, I think in the beginning of the book, the biggest tax that most of us are paying. What’s the obscurity tax and how can we avoid it?

David Newman (01:30.072)

Yes.

That’s right.

David Newman (01:37.08)

So the obscurity tax is doing great work in isolation, basically dancing in the dark. So the question really for most folks watching and listening is how in the world do we get noticed? How do we get noticed? Our products, our services, our company in this crazy, super noisy AI fueled marketplace. And the answer is really three building blocks. Together they make up market eminence. But one is absolutely visibility.

So to answer your question, we need to get seen, right? That’s basically no one buys products or services or expertise, sight unseen. So job number one is to get seen. Beyond that and above that, we also need to earn respect in the marketplace. And the way that we earn respect is by understanding our prospects to such a degree that they start to respect our insight and our intimacy.

with their pains, problems, heartaches, headaches, challenges, gaps, goals, aspirations, dreams, all that good stuff. And then the third component of this is brand preference. And that’s simply a combination of differentiation and positioning. So it becomes risky, dangerous, and dumb to hire anyone else. And once those three components are dialed in, you are in the top 5 % of your market. And that’s what the whole market eminence theme is about.

John Jantsch (03:03.647)

So as I listen to you describe that, and I know you have an answer to this, so I want to give you the opportunity to answer. How does that differ from, say, personal?

David Newman (03:12.728)

So fantastic question. And personal branding is not new. you know, frankly, many of the ideas I talk about in the book are not new. Combining them in this way around visibility, credibility, brand preference, differentiation, articulation, distinction, and doing this level of personal branding, not to bring glory to yourself. That’s the key.

Personal branding is about, okay, let’s put a whole bunch of stuff onto you and your company and your persona so that you’re all of a sudden shiny and glitzy and wonderful. This is about rising to the top of your market so that you can impact more people, so you can help more people. So I look at personal branding as sort of the evil twin of market eminence, that personal branding is raising yourself up

Market eminence is raising your market up or raising your industry or your target demographic, raising them up. And when I say that, John, by the way, it’s not just prospects. A lot of people think, well, this is a marketing strategy or it’s a sales strategy. It’s for prospects. This is for any stakeholder that you want to influence. This is that you have people that you want to come work for you, people that you want to have invest with you, people that you want to have bring you on their podcast. So media sources, media outlets.

This is partners, this is possible acquirers. If you want your company eventually to be bought and you’re building a saleable asset, all of those people are watching what you’re doing in the marketplace. And if it’s all about me, me, me, me, me, right, that’s the old school kind of personal branding 101, that is not attractive to any of those stakeholders. If you’re looking to change the market, if you’re looking to change the rules, if you’re looking to

impact the trajectory of the future of all of those stakeholders and your industry and your target market that people notice and that come from is totally different than personal brand.

John Jantsch (05:22.101)

So in a lot of fields, I’m in marketing. Marketing is very competitive. There’s lots of us out there. Do you have to have, you believe, and unfortunately the market perceives that, hey, you all do about the same thing. It’s like, do I like you better than the other person? That’s maybe my decision, right? So do you have to have some sort of polarizing, like here’s what’s broken in the world and I’m the only one that’s fixing it.

David Newman (05:36.12)

Yes. yes.

David Newman (05:48.748)

Well, first part, yes, second part, no. Second part, we’re getting into like narcissistic sociopath territory that I’m the only one that can fix it. However, you can certainly be one of the few people who sees it. But yes, to answer your question on a macro level with tremendous 1000 % enthusiasm, this is about being contrarian. This is about shifting beliefs. This is about going against the grain and calling out what is missing, funky, broken, and sad.

John Jantsch (05:53.589)

you

John Jantsch (06:00.585)

Yeah.

David Newman (06:17.344)

in your industry, with your industry practices, with the way things are commonly done. So one of the ways that we raise visibility is not just putting out content. This is very, very important. Content has been commoditized. AI can do content way better than any one of us. And the world does not need more content in the age of chat, GPT, et cetera. So what are humans good at?

What are humans gonna be visible for, at least for the near term, until AI takes over the world and the robots kill all of us? But until then, it’s three different kinds of content. Number one is how to think. So it’s not how-to information. How-to information has been commoditized. How to think information is about insight, high level strategic advisory insights. The second kind of content to share is what to believe.

what to believe and more importantly, what not to believe. So separating the signal from the noise, separating the myths from the truths, separating the, also separating the myths from the half truths, separating the outdated way of doing things from the current future focused way of doing things. And then the third component of the kind of content that we should be sharing is how to get ready for what’s coming next. Because high level people of any kind, corporate people, entrepreneurial people,

They hate being blindsided, they hate being ambushed, they hate being surprised by something they could have seen coming down the pike and they just somehow missed it. So if we can focus our visibility strategies in those three areas, number one, how to think, not how to, but how to think. Number two, what to believe and what not to believe. Number three, how to get ready for what’s coming next.

that will also elevate and separate you from all the noise out there.

John Jantsch (08:13.621)

So one of the things when you were describing kind of big picture was this idea of attracting right fit clients. what are some ways, I mean, I work with people all the time that they do have a differentiator, but they’re still attracting the wrong people. So what are some of the real kind of surefire ways that you help people attract that right fit client?

David Newman (08:19.437)

yes.

David Newman (08:28.877)

Yes.

David Newman (08:34.552)

So I think you really have to double down on being polarizing and divisive. And unfortunately in this climate, when I use the words like divisive and polarizing, everyone goes to politics, red versus blue, your guy versus my guy. It is not about that. It is about alignment with your vision, with your values, with what you stand for, what you stand against. So…

John Jantsch (08:44.18)

you

John Jantsch (08:48.564)

Yeah.

David Newman (09:01.878)

When I’m either speaking or working with a group on this, this is exactly the moment, John, where I get pushed back and they say, well, so wait a second, we’re going to upset some people. We’re going to get some flack for this. We might not be liked. We might, we might get some negative press on this. And I said, well, I want you to think about this. Think about what if I came to with an offer and the offer is I am going to set up a 10 foot, 10 foot tall gate.

John Jantsch (09:14.439)

Okay.

David Newman (09:31.35)

around your business. The only people that we admit through this gate are your best fit. Prospects, clients, partners, investors, media sources, acquirers, that’s all we let in. The gate automatically repels and keeps out all the terrible fits. The people you’d never want to do business with, the people that you would never want to partner with, the people that you would never take their money as an investor. And I sometimes go as far, John, as I say, okay, you know what?

Let’s put on the whiteboard. Let’s right now put on the whiteboard all the characteristics of your worst clients, your worst hires, your worst partners. And they say, lack of integrity, lack of ethics, didn’t do the work. They come in late, they leave early, right? They’re clock punchers. I said, okay, well, let’s look at this list on the board now. How do you feel about keeping all those people out of your company and out of your world forever? And then their shoulders suddenly just melt and they go, huh.

That would be great. I say, OK, welcome to market eminence. That’s exactly what it’s designed to do, that the perfect fits are hyper magnetized and the terrible fits want to go anywhere else but anywhere near you.

John Jantsch (10:44.841)

You know, it’s funny how often people have no prob, like if you ask them, who’s an ideal client for you, they kind of stumble around a little bit, but they have no problem telling you who they don’t want, right? It is pretty amazing. So a couple, and again, the subtitle of the book, 22 Strategies. I do, we were kind of kidding off air. I was going to have you list them all, but I would love to hear a couple. mean, I know you talk about speaking, publishing, podcasting.

David Newman (10:54.19)

That’s right. That’s right.

David Newman (11:10.648)

Sure.

John Jantsch (11:12.681)

some of the things we’re doing. So I’d love to hear a few of the strategies that you really think are kind of core to this approach.

David Newman (11:19.828)

Absolutely. let me me separate out there’s sort of two halves to the to the to the Apple, so to speak. The first half is the internal work that we need to do around making some leadership level decisions about who we are and who we’re not and what we stand for and what we stand against and so forth. And that’s really the bulk of the book is how to process that how to smartly engage with that level of thinking. The second half of the Apple is OK, now we have that.

John Jantsch (11:34.665)

Mm-hmm.

David Newman (11:48.93)

How do we amplify that? How do we magnify that and project that into the marketplace so that every pebble that we drop in the lake, the ripples start getting bigger and bigger. We start reaching more people, impacting more people and helping more people. So I’ll give you a couple from part one and a couple from part two. The easiest thing that people listening right now can do is one of the chapters is about your slant, your contrarian slant.

So think about three questions. So number one, what conventional wisdom do you secretly think is completely wrong, but you’ve never publicly challenged? So maybe within the four walls of your company, you’re like, my God, we’re not doing that again. That’s terrible. That never works, et cetera. But you’ve never said it publicly. So what conventional wisdom do you secretly think is completely wrong, but if you’ve never ranted and raved against it? Number two,

What harsh truth about your industry are clients desperate for someone to finally acknowledge openly? What are some of the elephants in the room in your business, in your industry with your target market when it comes to your category of product or service? And then number three, the third part of contrarian slant is what strong point of view do you already have that you already hold and believe truly that makes industry insiders uncomfortable but resonates

deeply and powerfully with your ideal clients. So if you just literally sit down for an afternoon, grab a legal pad, spend 20 minutes really digging into each of those three parts, you will end with a 60 minute block of time with a contrarian slant that’s gonna put you in the top 5 % of your industry if you were to amplify it, magnify it, et cetera. And I even have a chat GPT prompt. I know it’s gonna be tough for people to…

listener watch, but here’s the chat GPT prompt if people want to work a little bit on this on their own. And you’re going to take the flavor of this. can record, transcribe, whatever. Here’s what it sounds like. Using everything you know about my, my, our methodology, training and tools, give me a series of 10 contrarian quote crazy idea headlines I can use to convey my true distinction.

David Newman (14:14.892)

differentiation and point of view. This should be polarizing, this is still in the prompt, this should be polarizing in that it strongly attracts the right clients and strongly repels the wrong clients. And then you’ll get some initial output and then you can start the conversation, right? Make number seven even crazier, tone down number eight, bring more examples to number three. You will have such a fantastic time and no one’s brave enough to do this, John.

It sounds super simple, but most people are scared out of their minds to even take this one baby step. I hope that folks listening and watching are not the scaredy cats.

John Jantsch (14:45.492)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (14:54.281)

Yeah, and I was going to mention, I’m glad you did mention that, because AI is tremendous at that kind of brainstorming, as long as you look at it as kind of a thought partner and not like, you’re not looking for the output, you’re looking for the discussion as much as anything. I was at a conference one time and we just, we mentioned this idea, we’ve been kind of just kicking around this idea that business owners are really tired of agencies, or at least

David Newman (15:00.909)

Yes.

David Newman (15:07.202)

Yes.

John Jantsch (15:22.803)

what traditional agencies have done or not done for them. And so we just kind of jokingly, half jokingly mentioned to somebody, yeah, we’re promoting the anti-agency model. And literally three or four business owners said, we need to talk. So it’s a little bit of what you’re talking about. We did it kind of tongue in cheek, but it really, I mean, you got immediate feedback that that idea really piqued a challenge they were

David Newman (15:26.53)

yes.

David Newman (15:32.835)

Nice.

David Newman (15:48.354)

That’s right. And that is, you know why that’s great, John, all the reasons that you said, obviously, but it immediately telegraphs just with that moniker, un-agency, right? That we are against something that has been traditionally seen as the solution to fix this problem. You don’t want an agency, you want the un-agency, like the uncola back in the 70s and 80s. That was 7-Up’s claim to fame.

John Jantsch (15:58.591)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (16:10.431)

Yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (16:15.443)

What do you find when, especially talking to CEOs, marketers are probably a little more open to this kind of idea of finding a difference. Particularly when you work with CEOs, what’s kind of the biggest mindset block that you have to get them past with this idea of market eminence?

David Newman (16:22.168)

Go young!

David Newman (16:35.33)

I think it really is that exercise that I mentioned a little bit ago about we’re gonna piss some people off, yes. We are gonna have some conflict, we might get some hate mail around this, yes. People who thought they liked us and respected us would suddenly turn us off and unsubscribe and go away, yes. But trust me, all the right people are gonna unsubscribe. All the right people are gonna go away.

John Jantsch (16:38.591)

Yeah. Yeah.

David Newman (17:03.318)

all the right people are not gonna come back to work for you or invest with you or buy from you. know, really figuring out, figuring out what is the game that we’re playing, right? So sometimes this results in niching down. Sometimes this results in opening things up to an adjacent industry that might be a little bit more, a little bit less risk averse, a little bit more.

you know, modern thinking. So people that work with old school industries sometimes realize, well, that’s not who we are anymore. And I’m sorry, I stepped on your line there.

John Jantsch (17:33.841)

let’s just face it, they have more money.

John Jantsch (17:41.865)

No, I was just going to say, let’s face it, you’re going there because they have more money.

David Newman (17:46.53)

Yes, yes, that could be true. That could be true. Funny story from a CMO standpoint. I have a friend who’s a serial CMO. He doesn’t intend to be fractional, but that’s how it ends up, because he gets fired every 18 months. He works with banks. And I said to him, I said, what is it with you and changing jobs? He says, David, I have the worst job in the world. I’m a marketer in banking. So they’re so risk averse. They want the bank presidents and CEOs

They want to look like each other. And then they wonder why are we stuck in this rate war? Why are people leaving us for an extra quarter percentage down the street? It’s because you’re totally commoditizing yourself by choice.

John Jantsch (18:31.145)

Yeah, I always find that really interesting that, you know, with industries are like, no, we don’t do that in our industry. And it’s like, then that’s an opportunity is what that is. So so funny.

David Newman (18:41.11)

Amen.

John Jantsch (18:46.481)

You mentioned the slant and I did want to, think you had two other gravity and generosity. We talked about gravity attracting right fit, but we haven’t really talked about this idea of generosity. And that’s one that I, you know, I really want to hit on because you know, this radical sharing of everything of expertise, because a lot of people have a, have a mindset that like I’m the expert. I don’t share. They pay me to share. So talk a little about that.

David Newman (18:51.638)

Yes, yes. sure.

David Newman (18:57.964)

Yes.

David Newman (19:03.565)

Yes.

David Newman (19:09.838)

Correct.

I’ll expand even further on that, John. They say, I can’t share that. That’s how I make the big bucks or that’s our secret sauce. That’s our recipe. I would just point out to folks, if you go online to your favorite online bookseller, walk into your favorite independent bookstore, you will find two giant sections. One is the health and weight loss section. The other is the financial and money management section. You hundreds of books and you know, hundreds more published every year.

John Jantsch (19:18.057)

Right.

David Newman (19:42.442)

If it was in a book, we would all be tall, rich, thin, sexy, and have a full head of hair. Clearly, I can read all the books I want. This ain’t coming back up here. So I want, I would challenge people that the best kind of generosity that you can give into the marketplace, whether it is in written format, audio format, podcast, webinar, I want you to take client facing content. Everyone clutch your pearls. I hope you’re sitting down.

Take client facing content that you’ve been paid for and make that into a giveaway. Make that into a lead magnet. Make that into a special report. Do a webinar on that for free for your target market and watch what happens because people are not paying you for information. We’ve already talked about this in a couple of ways, right? The information is not in the books. AI can crank out endless information way faster and bigger and better than any of us.

John Jantsch (20:31.711)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

David Newman (20:39.67)

What they’re paying for is applied insight and implementation of the ideas. If they could do it on their own, they already would have. So they’re not gonna download your report. They’re not gonna come to your webinar. They’re not gonna watch your video series. But I’ll tell you, the more that you treat prospects like clients, the more prospects you will get.

John Jantsch (20:46.259)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (21:04.181)

It’s funny, I used to always say, especially 10, 15 years ago, people really didn’t share, because we didn’t have all these vehicles to share, right? Now it’s become really common practice. But I used to always tell people, they don’t want to know how to do it. They want to know that you know how to do it. And that’s really what you’re giving away, is that.

David Newman (21:20.174)

That’s right.

David Newman (21:23.851)

Absolutely right.

John Jantsch (21:25.653)

So David, I appreciate you stopping by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Where would you invite people to connect with you, of course, and then find out more about Market

David Newman (21:35.118)

Sure, so the best place to connect with me, my main website is DoItMarketing and everything related to the book as far as there’s all kinds of free trainings and downloads and videos and resources and worksheets that are connected to this market eminence idea that we’ve been talking about, that is at marketeminence.com.

John Jantsch (21:54.005)

Again, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

David Newman (22:00.512)

Such a pleasure, John. Thank you.