John Jantsch (00:00): Hey, duct tape marketing listener? We know you're always on the lookout for ways to more efficiently scale your business. That's why I'm so excited to chat about. I digress another show on the HubSpot podcast network. Troy Sandra is the host of, I digress, talks all about how you can eliminate complexity, complications and confusion from your business equation and create clarity to streamline strategy solutions that achieve scalable and sustainable success. Check out episode 24, start there 14 minutes or so strategy is power. You know, I love that idea. So listen, learn and grow with I digress on the HubSpot podcast network at hubspot.com/podcast network.

Douglas Burdett (00:56): Hello, and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. My name is Douglas Burdett, and I'm very honored to be guest hosting for John Jantsch on this episode, like you I'm Melissa in to the duct tape marketing podcast. I'm also the host of the marketing book podcast, where each week I interview authors of best-selling marketing and sales books. And today I'm going to be doing that as I interview the author of a book that I have read and strongly recommend. The book is the ultimate marketing engine five steps to ridiculously consistent growth. And the author is a gentleman who is no stranger to this show. His name is John Jantz. Now I'm going to introduce John Jans properly because he never does it for himself. He's just that kind of Midwestern guy doesn't want to talk about himself, but here we go. John Jantz is a marketing consultant, speaker, podcaster, and author.

Douglas Burdett (01:45): His other books include duct tape marketing, the referral engine, the commitment engine, duct tape, selling SEO for growth and the self-reliant entrepreneur. He's also the founder of the duct tape marketing consultant network, which trains and licenses, independent consultants and agencies to use the duct tape methodology. John's small business advice has been featured in the New York times. The wall street journal Forbes, fast company, entrepreneur, CNBC, CNN money. And of course the duct tape marketing podcast you're listening to right now, Seth Goden called John Janse, the Peter Drucker of small business tactics and interesting facts. John is the father of four daughters. He's one of 10 children and he is a diehard Kansas city, Royals baseball fan, John, congratulations on the ultimate marketing engine and welcome to your own long running show. The duct tape marketing podcast.

John Jantsch (02:46): Well, I'm just, I'm glad we recorded this Douglas because I'm just going to play it every show I'm just going to let you introduce me. I must admit it's a bit surreal being on the theoretical other side of the mic, but we've done this before. This is actually the second time we've done a desperate,

Douglas Burdett (03:03): I had the honor of interviewing you and Phil Singleton about SEO for growth and a hi, just love that book. And I, I can't remember how that happened, but I remember thinking, aren't you going to talk on your own show about this? And maybe you were just a little surprised or delighted at how excited I was about that book. And I, I S I had read an article you'd written about guests hosting other shows, and I said, Hey, look what this chance guy said, what do you think? You said, okay, uncle I'm in, I'm in, I'll do it.

John Jantsch (03:33): I think listeners, of course, hopefully you've found, Douglas's show the marketing book podcast because I get interviewed by a lot of people. And he really is one of the best interviewers in, in large part because he actually reads the books, which really helps. But if you haven't checked out the marketing book podcast, you really should. If you're interested in books at all, make sure that you're listening to the marketing book podcast.

Douglas Burdett (03:57): Well, thank you. And I should also say that what I didn't add to John's bio, but which is now going to be pretty much featured is that he is now a member of a very exclusive club called the marketing book podcast five timers club. So what that means is that, you know, he can just pull up to any taco bell in the United States. And just tell him that you don't tell him he's John. Janse just say, I'm a member of the marketing book podcast, five timers club. There's only three of us and, and John, you're just going to see what things are gonna start happening for it. I'm just going to leave it at that.

John Jantsch (04:29): Wow. I can't wait to can't wait until I, you know, closing the bars down at 2:00 AM again, so, and, uh, and heading over to

Douglas Burdett (04:37): That's right. I'm sure. I'm sure. So you're a big, uh, Kansas city Royals fan. I'm just wondering, have they started doing the John Jans bobblehead day at coffin stadium?

John Jantsch (04:47): That would be awesome, but I don't think it would attract very many fans, which is really the whole point of, of, of the bobble heads. And you know, that frankly they've, they are probably looking for some new promotions because fortunately the product on the field isn't is it performing so well?

Douglas Burdett (05:04): Well, yeah, maybe, I don't know. I just don't think you should under value, you know, the presence of your own audience, you know, you could get podcasters from around the world. There may be show up at Kansas city, you know, it could be John Jans day. Let's just, let's just test it one time. Okay. Let's leave it at that. All right. So now this it's more than just the book. This also has really great downloadable resources, which I've already shared with one of my colleagues and also for people who buy the book, there's actually a course that goes with the book. This is all@theultimatemarketingengine.com. Talk, talk about the, the resources and the course, and I guess any other bonuses for,

John Jantsch (05:46): Yeah, well, you know, one of the things Doug, when I wrote my first book in 2007, there weren't a whole lot of books out there. I mean, people were hungry for sort of new information on the digital age of marketing, but in the 15 years that have passed since then there are books everywhere. I mean, it's gotten so much easier affordable to self-publish their distribution channels. So they're there in the time we've been talking probably five or 600 bucks came online. So I think like so many things, you know, the expectation is that it has to be not only great content. It has to maybe include some innovative ideas, but people have to be able to take action on it. That's the real differentiator. I think this book is, is, is largely a strategy book, but I kind of refer to it as a strategy book with a workshop tucked inside of it.

John Jantsch (06:38): And you know, at the end of every chapter, I give you action steps and, and I ultimately want people to take action. And so I've tried to make it as easy as possible. You mentioned the companion course, which is really videos of me explaining some of the core concepts and introducing some of the resources that you will encounter. And that that course has actually been available, you know, was available a couple of months prior to the launch of the book because I wanted people to taste it. I wanted people to see a little bit of what they were going to get when the book became available. But when readers do actually buy the book, they'll be able to return to the website. There's a URL printed in the book. I don't know, several dozen times that I caught it, that I want to send people to, because I really do want them to take action on this. This is not just theory that I've come up with and wrote about and hope works. I mean, this is stuff we do every day and teach every day. And so I've created a whole tool set so that people can benefit really from that as, as a reader of the book. I think that ultimately the impact I'm going to have is that people do something. I don't want them to just buy the book and read it. I want them to do something.

Douglas Burdett (07:46): Yes. I could envision this book being seen on a lot of desks open. In other words, people would be referring back to it because all the exercises you have there, as well as the online ones, this is really something that you and your team could work through, whether you're a marketer or a business owner, uh, don't try and do it all at once though.

John Jantsch (08:04): It's a, it's a system. I mean, that's a great, great advice. In fact, I would tell people, I'd let people off the hook even more than that, get one or two good ideas and implement them. And I guarantee you, you will have gotten your 1699 worth or whatever it is that you pay for the book. So, so, so really, you know, I don't want people to read the book and go, oh, this is a lot of work to do all this, do one thing and then come back next week and do another thing.

Douglas Burdett (08:28): Yes. Great advice. Great advice. Cause this topic marketing, all this sort of thing can be, it's really overwhelming for a lot of people. And what's funny is in the book you give examples and it's based on some examples you've had in your own business, providing marketing services. And you talk in fact about how overwhelmed business owners are, as it relates to marketing. It's not something they started out to do is become a marketer. They do something else. So that's a very relevant. So let me just read two quick excerpts from the beginning and then get into some of the key highlights of the book during most of 2020 and into 2021. You saw article after article proclaim, the strategies needed to market during a pandemic. Most of them boil down to some version of stop taking your customers for granted and stop spamming people. When has that ever not been good advice, good marketing that delivers value to those who are trying to solve a problem is always in season.

Douglas Burdett (09:30): And it always arrives from the customer's point of view. Don't misunderstand. This is not about the customer always being right. This is about being relevant in a customer's life about changing the context of how they view your business or industry. It's about making every other business irrelevant in their eyes. In this book, I'm going to ask you to rethink how you view your current or future customer, how you view marketing and how you choose who you work with. Ultimately, you will get the chance to dump most, everything you have been told about how to build your business. You will see that there is an entirely fresh perspective available, steeped, not in what you see everyone else doing, but in what is in your heart, what serves your grand purpose and what creates the greatest value for those, you choose to call customers and then skipping over to page three in this book, I'm going to take you on a marketing journey, but we won't travel the same old road you've been down before. Rather I plan to push you to think about marketing from an entirely new point of view that allows you to create ridiculously consistent growth. So John, let's talk about that. What, what new ground does the ultimate marketing engine cover that makes it different from, well, maybe the other 350 other books that have been featured on the marketing book podcast, for instance?

John Jantsch (11:01): Well, I think there's a couple of things that I challenged people to do that go against conventional wisdom. I mean, there's so many Facebook groups and courses that you can buy today that talk about funnels and funnel hacking. I really at least spend a lot of ink on trying to talk about how, why that idea is so incomplete and then a complete customer journey is something that we have to be thinking. And frankly, I think it's become more important than ever. I think nobody knows how to do anything anymore. You know, all, all systems are broken. We now have the opportunity to really fix everything. But I also think that there, there was, there, there was a real desire for a return to some humanity in business again. And, and I think that, that, you know, you know, people talk about being customer centric. Well, we all learned what that actually meant, uh, the last year. And, and I think is what it's going to mean going forward. It's no longer a buzz word. I basically make it, or at least make a case for looking at it as the entire strategy and mission of a business. So that's certainly one part. The other part that's going to really challenge a lot of people's thinking I'm not the first person to say this, but it certainly, I certainly get a lot of pushback when I do say it and I'm, oh, that means you're

Douglas Burdett (12:11): Making progress.

John Jantsch (12:13): That's right. And I'm going to suggest that people focus on the top 20% of their customers and not necessarily, you know, reject everyone else, but, uh, see that top 20% is the real opportunity, uh, for growth and maybe ultimately the place that you take your entire business. And that's the one part that scares people probably the most. And I talk about, you know, not only the rationale for it, but how to do it and why to do it. And I think that, you know, hopefully the, those two elements, the idea of a complete customer journey that include this thing that I call the customer success track, which really can become, I think that the goal and the mission for, for an entire business is, is to take a customer from where they are today, to where they want to be, as opposed to sell them what it is we have to sell them. And that all starts really with this idea of focusing on the right customer.

Douglas Burdett (13:05): Well, let's talk some more about those. Let's, let's unpack one of the biggest concepts from the book. I thought that I had, I had never had this sort of paradigm before, which is this idea of customers as members and full disclosure. We're not talking about like a Costco or a membership or a software as a service, but this, this idea of treating customers like they are members.

John Jantsch (13:34): Yeah. And I'm glad you made that distinction because obviously the word member does have some baggage, but it was, to me it was the best word, but I mean, it, in the sense of thinking about an organization that you want to become a member of an organization,

Douglas Burdett (13:47): Emotional memberships at the subconscious level, that they don't, you might not even use that.

John Jantsch (13:53): Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and I'm not suggesting people start referring to their customers as members. It's really more of a point of view that that to understand why somebody joins an organization or cause even that they want to be a member of it's because they, they, you know, they really want to, uh, invest in themselves in their businesses rather than just make a purchase. They want to find an organization that they're not just going to refer, but they will evangelize because that organization is, is so bent on creating transformation in their life or in their business. And so I start that as, as really the, the beginning point of changing how you come to think about your customer. Now it's a great idea. Sounds great. You know, makes good speech a bullet, you know, in, in when I'm giving talks, but I've also tried to make it very practical and give you how I think this is, can be accomplished and really how it can actually become an practical way to build your business.

Douglas Burdett (14:55): Yes. It reminded me of, or it brought to mind the idea of customers who innately feel like you're looking out for their best interests rather than just trying to churn and burn or sell and, and, and, and, and ignore them like, like most businesses seem to.

John Jantsch (15:11): Yeah. And I actually start the book out with a story of a customer that, that what I saw and experienced with them really shown a very bright light on how important that is. I mean, there are a lot of businesses out there that actually have just innately done that. And we saw a lot of them actually not only survive, but really thrive through the pandemic because that element was such a driving force in why people stayed with them and bought gift cards from, from them, even though they couldn't use them, you know, at the time those kinds of things I think really showed kind of who was that kind of business and who wasn't that kind of business. And to me, what I tried to say is can't we all be that,

Douglas Burdett (15:52): Yeah, let's do that practical point. Let's talk about how the marketing hour glass helps a company to, to think that way. In other words, let's contrast it with, you know, the typical sales and marketing funnel of what are, you know, pick your, pick your words, awareness, consideration decision. I've also seen the hourglass concept portrayed in a couple of books as a bow tie. In other words, it gets narrow and then it gets wide again. But I think too many companies have half a Botox.

John Jantsch (16:23): Yeah. Well, it's it, you know, even the words you used, awareness, consideration decision. I mean the, the typical marketing and sales funnel is all about what we want them to do, what we want our prospects and customers to do. And what I suggest is that that marketing day is become less about creating demand and more about organizing behavior. So my marketing journey to marketing hourglass consists of seven stages. And I like to, I like to suggest that these are behaviors that people want to do, and we just have to organize them, doing them

Douglas Burdett (16:57): Just to interrupt you say that way too many companies have maybe just two steps rather than seven.

John Jantsch (17:03): Yeah. I mean, the typical marketing that I encounter is here's our ad to come on down and buy that. Those are two of the stages I have to know about you, but in between that, no, I have to develop some fondness for, or at least a decision to maybe go a little deeper. I have to develop trust. Maybe I have to actually find a way to try what it might be like to work with your business. And certainly when I do buy, I want that experience to stay just as high because the buyer's remorse is a real thing. It's, it's going to kick in. So what are you doing to intentionally make sure that that stays high now beyond that, once I become a customer, what's your process for retention for repeat sales, for maybe finding out what else I might need. And then obviously the ultimate goal to lead every single one of our customers become an evangelist or a referral source for our business.

John Jantsch (17:54): So those stages of know, like trust, try, buy, repeat, and refer to me, really map out the entire journey that pretty much everybody wants to go on with the businesses that they do business with. And our job really is just to allow them to, to facilitate it, to make it a great experience, to make them, you know, so thrilled that they want to go out of their way to tell their friends, neighbors, and colleagues about us. And, and that, you know, that journey, I think portrays a much better picture of what we have to do as marketers.

Douglas Burdett (18:26): Yes. It's interesting. When you say that buyers want to do that again, back to the use of the word, subconscious, even at the subconscious level, people want that. That's why like your sales process is often viewed as a preview or a try to see if, is that a preview of what it's going to be like to be a customer. And often it is basically if it's a bad

John Jantsch (18:48): Sales process. I mean, I think it's very true. We don't sit there and go, okay, I'm going to call these people and try them, or I'm going to fill out a form on their website and try them exactly. That's what we're doing.

Douglas Burdett (19:00): Oh yeah. Oh yeah, absolutely

John Jantsch (19:02): Absolutely. Had a bad if we have a bad experience, there may at the trials over.

Douglas Burdett (19:08): So one of the other things from the book that was, um, I thought very different having read several hundreds of these was not just the customer's member concept, but you talk about the customer success track. And I want to ask you about that. And as I was reading through the beginning of that section, another book came to mind, which was Joey Coleman's book, never lose a customer again. And then I turned the page and you mentioned his book. So there's two books at least that talk about this, this concept, but talk about a customer success track, and maybe what, what a company could be doing to start to

John Jantsch (19:45): That's one out. Sure. So the reality is, so the customer success track is, is really my attempt to say, how can we take our customers from where they are today to where they want to go? But the reality is it's something that I've maybe subconsciously created over the years because I want to keep a customer forever. I don't want to do marketing projects. I want to have a client or a customer that stays with me and I mature and grow their marketing because the reality is once we do a good job with marketing, they're going to need something else. And then they're going to get to a certain level and they're going to maybe need us to help them build a team internally, for example. So,

Douglas Burdett (20:20): And they might even give you a referral, which we're going

John Jantsch (20:22): To talk about. And so really developing this customer success track was really came about as my approach to how can we mature and grow with our clients because most of our clients seem to be coming to us at a certain stage. They have certain characteristics of where their marketing is and certainly challenges because they can't get past that stage. And so we started finding ourselves, you know, creating a repeatable system to take from that first stage, which was typically foundational building out of things to the next stage, which was our ability to start generating leads for them because now they had the foundation. And so us driving traffic to a webpage or a landing page was going to make sense. And then we went to work on, okay, let's how can we, how can we ramp up the leads while we also ramp up the conversion of those leads? Because that's really the goal and that we found that it kind of had a linear fashion to it. And so we actually developed it can be

Douglas Burdett (21:16): The mistake to try and do those latter things before the first things are

John Jantsch (21:20): Squared away. Yeah. I mean, we, we see it all the time, people running ads to their homepage and, and, um, you know, because they don't know any better. And so, so what we found is that we could create a, uh, a list of milestones for each stage that, that we can answer yes or no to, and, and assigned task, you know, have they done this? Have they done this and really almost get through that checklist. It was almost guaranteed that they were now ready to go to that next stage. And so in an attempt to keep these clients for a long time, we just kept growing those stages and doing more and adding more. And ultimately what, what we discovered is that this became really our entire mission. So instead of inviting clients in so that we could fix the thing that was bothering them today, we actually, we actually educate.

John Jantsch (22:09): And, and certainly in our sales messaging, talk about the entire roadmap, talk about what future state is going to look like and talk about, you know, kind of how and why we're going to get there. And, and what it automatically did is had people looking at us as a long-term solution. But it also, as I said, it really, it became our mission. It certainly became, you know, how we thought about product and service development, how, who we hire and how we train. I mean, it really, this roadmap, you know, really becomes and has become the entire strategy for our business. And so I document this thoroughly in the book. So if you're interested in marketing and what a marketing roadmap looks like, including tasks and milestones, it's in the book and it's in the additional resources. But my real goal is that I would like to see how many other businesses that are not marketing businesses could take this idea and apply it. Because I think that it is universally applicable. Obviously there are some industries or some types of businesses where, you know, it'll immediately make sense, but I think if you stretch your imagination a little, it doesn't really matter what business you're in. You can take this approach of growing with your clients and making that kind of the, the, their success, you know, ultimately your primary goals.

Douglas Burdett (23:25): Yes. And as I was reading through the book, probably even before you mentioned it, I think I thought, man, this is so much better for sales too, because it helps to bring the future to the present and helps people understand all the complexity of whatever it is, whether it's marketing services, an accounting firm or building a house, and it helps them to heal, helps you to manage expectations better,

John Jantsch (23:54): You know? And it actually, it actually allows us to attract an ideal client as well, because we know if somebody comes to us and says, oh, that's all great. Yeah, well, we'll get to that, but just, I want to run some Facebook ads. Yes. They're not going to be a good fit for us. And so consequently, this approach is not really going to appeal to them, but it is going to appeal to somebody who realizes that marketing is an investment that you're never done. That it's not an event that it's, it's a system in your business. That takes a long-term approach. I mean, that's who this will appeal to. And ultimately that's who we're trying to attract. And now let's hear a word from our sponsor. HubSpot CRM platform is easy to adopt and there are really two reasons. Two features that make this possible, the contact timeline and the mobile app and mobile keyboard HubSpot's contact timeline gives you the historical context.

John Jantsch (24:47): You need to get the work done to connect with customers because all of your customer data is in one place. It can serve as a single source of truth. In HubSpot, you can take an action, right from the contact timeline, make a call and roll a contact in a sequence, schedule a meeting. You've got it. And if you're on the go, you just use the mobile app to make it all happen and keep everything up to date. You don't have to spend a lot of time training your team. You can be sure that all the contact information is going into one system, making your team more efficient, look better adoption with a CRM leads to better data, richer insights, and a bigger impact on your customer experience. Learn more about how you can scale your company without scaling complexity@hubspot.com.

Douglas Burdett (25:35): Yeah, just it's so true. It's, it's, it's almost ingenious because it helps to ward off the people that aren't a good fit who if you do try to work with them, they're not going to be happy. You will not have helped them become successful. And they're going to say bad things about you because it was not a good fit in the first place with that in mind, let's go back to that 20%. You mentioned, can you say a little bit more about that in terms of, is it, is it is the issue that companies just want more customers or do they not think through about who their top 20% of their customers are? And you should also explain what top 20% actually means. It doesn't necessarily mean just revenues.

John Jantsch (26:18): Yeah. I think the real issue is we're afraid to say no, it's hard to say no. I mean, of course we're in the chase. In fact, for a lot of people, the chase and somebody saying, well, could you do this for me? That's actually the most exciting part for a lot of people in, in business. I still suffer from it, you know, today, no matter how much I preach this stuff, we, we got an inquiry for a, sort of a one-off kind of service from a company that is located in a country that we really don't have any presence or true knowledge of how their, their business culture works. And I still had this inkling of saying, well, if they'll pay enough, but you know, and that's, I know better. Right. But you know, we, we ultimately turned it down because what we don't realize, because this isn't put in our face, you know, the, the offer for a couple thousand dollars or whatever it is, is real, it's tangible.

John Jantsch (27:10): We know what that is, but we don't see as the opportunity loss that is happening because we chase those things. It is very difficult for somebody to realize that you are the absolute choice and I'm willing to pay a premium for you to do the work for me. When you are talking about the 27 things that you could do for somebody the, this 80 20 rule, which is kind of cliche, but boy, it sure shows up in a real way, still around. It must be working. And, and, you know, I've seen it when I can stand back and have the, the emotional detachment to look at somebody else's client base. You know, I can, I can show them that that 80% of their profit is probably coming from their top 20% of their clients. And yet probably 50 50 time-wise is, is being dedicated. And what I mean by that is that that bottom 30 or 20% also, there's sort of this inverse math, you know, suck up a lot of time as well somehow.

John Jantsch (28:07): And, and so, you know, if we, if we could get to the point where we really understood who we offer the most value to, who's the most profitable who really has the right problem with the right situation or the right behavior or value set that, that, that will work with, you know, our way of working. I think that we can, we can do a couple things. We can narrow our focus messaging wise to talk about their approach, their problem, who they are, you know, how we solve their problem in an effort to attract more people like them. You know, the customer success track we talked about has a little bit of when that becomes a sales tool has a little bit of attracting the right clients, but it also allows us to then start saying, okay, what, what can we do that would really blow them away?

John Jantsch (28:55): How could we make this even better? What we're doing, because now we're so focused on, instead of trying to serve people that are, we're having to create new stuff for, we're really focused on creating stuff just for these group, the 80 20 applies also to, you know, 20% of your top clients would pay you 10 times more probably, uh, if you could discover a way to serve them doing it. And some even smaller percentage of that group would, would maybe pay you a hundred times more, if you could figure out how to actually provide that service or provide that value to them. And, you know, anybody who's been in business any amount of time at all knows, it is so much easier to actually discover what somebody who already trusts you with someone who has already given you money and gotten value for it. It's so much easier to sell more effectively to those folks than it is to go out and find more people, you know, to give you the a hundred dollars starter price or whatever it is.

John Jantsch (29:54): I, you know, I've seen it happen time and time again, in, in my business, you know, I had a workshop that I did for, uh, 20 people, 20 businesses, and it was a very low cost kind of beta, you know, kind of thing. And at the end I just said, Hey, I got room to work with three of you, a one-on-one coaching doing X, you know, for X amount of money. And I had six people, you know, that wanted to do it. And it was, I'm doing quick math. It was 30 times more expensive than what they had paid to be there in, in that, you know, day long workshop. Um, and I just, I'm, I'm only using that example because we all have that. We just don't think to ask, we just sell our $49 product all day long to more people. And we don't realize that there are people that, that have bought that, that would now give us $4,900. If we, if, if we focused on what, you know, their pain points were or what they needed next.

Douglas Burdett (30:49): Yeah. I think a lot of companies don't realize that their customers like them more than they realize, and they, and they're ready to buy more. Let's jump to the, the part that you cover really heavily at the end of the book about referrals. And I should remind listeners that you've written an entire book about referrals and why that is so important. And of course it ties in with the thing I already mentioned about the top 20%. So can you talk about the importance of referrals having a referral system? And also, can you tie that in with this idea of yet another new idea from the book about helping your customers a whole?

John Jantsch (31:32): Yeah, so, so my thought on this is that if you do these first four steps, so, so what we're talking about is step number five in the process, the, the referrals or a focus on referrals is actually just the, almost the only outcome that can occur. So if you think about it, we create this customer success track that, that, that really focuses on transformation. So you're going to work with the right people. They're going to be thrilled. You're going to make them successful. That's that's step number one to getting referrals. Anyway, now we're going to narrow our focus to the top 20%, our most profitable customers who are already referring business to us. So we're now going to attract more of the same, and those folks are going to refer more of the same because they've had a great experience, obviously steps three and four, go into a lot of what it takes to attract and message and all the channels that we have to play in today. And then we ultimately end on step five being, you know, impacting your client's entire ecosystem. So that step is, is really, if you know, there are probably five or six total processes for how to make generation and an automated system inside of your business

Douglas Burdett (32:43): And explain what you mean by ecosystem.

John Jantsch (32:45): Well, so one of the things that that I've done for many years is that, you know, I believe that everybody that we work with, obviously this is, I guess it works for B to C too, but, but certainly works in B2B. If I'm working with somebody, another business owner, they have other service professionals that help them with their accounting lawyers, bankers, you know, things of that nature because I provide marketing. And so one of the things that, that we have done as a bit of a habit over the years is that we will develop a marketing plan for a client, for example, or a branding strategy or whatever people want to refer to it as. And we typically will offer to, to meet with and engage the other professionals that serve them as a way to educate them on kind of here's the thinking, here's what marketing's going to do.

John Jantsch (33:33): Here's the strategy and the, in the marketing for this client. And, and the, the point of doing that is to provide more value for our client, because I believe if I teach their accountant, what we're going to be doing in marketing, that the accountant will actually be more prepared to serve that client or understand where expenses or expenditures are going to be, you know, budget. And I think that that actually benefits our client, but, but it actually allows us to do a better job to, I sometimes find things well, here's why this is going on, or here's this, you know, expense that they're going to have to do. So that's why they can't invest in. So, I mean, it's a, it's a great learning experience for me as well. But over the years of doing that, in addition to helping our mutual client, it is almost always created referral relationships because all of a sudden that accountants go, wow, nobody else has ever done that with any of the other clients that I've worked with. And that was really useful. And so in almost all cases, we've served our client and in doing that set up another referral relationship, and we could do this dozens of times with some clients.

Douglas Burdett (34:36): And one of the things in that section of the book that I found very interesting or was a great reminder, was sort of activating your marketing through all your employees. I mean, how many times have I worked with a client where, you know, it's like, yeah, just leave it at the loading dock. You know, there's not a lot of buy-in and we work hard to overcome that now, but it's you realize just how important it is. And it also reminded me of this notion that the average employee has 10 times as social media reach as the company does. So well, let me just ask,

John Jantsch (35:08): I, I was just gonna say it and I mean, it doesn't have to be a, we're going to give out prizes and do all the, you know, I mean, part of what gets buy in is, I mean, how often does the marketing department sit around and co create the new campaign and the new strategy, whatever nobody else in the company even knows what's going on. I know they haven't

Douglas Burdett (35:24): Even taken that step.

John Jantsch (35:26): And so it means some of us just hate teach this stuff, you know, because any way, shape and form of which your CA your, your company comes into contact with a prospect or a customer, that person, or that interaction is performing a marketing function. So let's make sure we're all on the same page,

Douglas Burdett (35:41): A really important point that you made in your book. I think it's, I have difficulty thinking of companies, particularly medium to small size ones, where there are not many employees who don't have some impact on the customer, even if it's a, a baggage handler. That's very much customer facing, even though they're not actually talking to the customer.

John Jantsch (36:05): Yeah. I mean, I'll go step goofier than that. You know, how many times, I mean, how many times I worked with, so maybe you have to, I'll put it that way, you know, with companies where we're doing a great job, I love the people were doing prior to our valley value. That's, you know, it's awesome. We love it. We've got a great partnership. And then we send an invoice and then we get like, the, the lawyers from, you know, were

Douglas Burdett (36:28): Sending us

John Jantsch (36:30): Back all these information about all these forms we have to fill out and all these things, you know, it's like, maybe they need those things. Maybe they don't, but you know, they're performing a marketing function. I mean, they, they are impacting the relationship that, that we have with that organization. And is it the same brand promise that, that marketing and everybody else is delivering on?

Douglas Burdett (36:50): Yeah. Yeah. Well, let me just ask two other big questions about the book, and then we'll go, and now this is a little bit longer than most of your episodes, but doc gosh, darn it. It's 200 pages and we're not being, we're just skimming the surface. One of the, my favorite chapters, probably my favorite chapter was chapter six. The real problem you saw really got into psychology and just a beautiful way. Explain what you mean when you say that people don't actually want what we're selling, what that's going to hurt a lot of feelings.

John Jantsch (37:26): I mean, I love, I love to just I'll be doing from the stage. You know, I'll throw up this slide, no one wants what we sell and what their problems solved. And we don't, I mean, that sounds so counterintuitive. Of course they want what we sell because it does this and it has this. And, and ultimately, you know, I, the example I love to use is me. You know, I sell marketing strategy, nobody ever, ever, ever wakes up and says, I'm going to go get some marketing strategy today. I really want that. But they do say, how come every time somebody calls, they want a lower price, or why? When I look at Google or my competitors are ahead of me, those are the problems they want solved. And they just happened to be solved by a better marketing strategy. And so, so once we can articulate that we get you, we understand the problems you're having.

John Jantsch (38:10): They'll listen to us and allow us to connect that to the solution. If I just went out there and started saying, everybody needs marketing strategy, come on down and get it. There's not going to be much. There's not going to be much uptake in that. But if I start talking about, you know, the reasons or, or the ways in which you can become the, the, you know, the price leader and, you know, be the most profitable company in your industry that starts talking about things that they want. And now I can connect that to really, you know, how they get it done. And I, and I think in some cases, frankly, a lot of our prospects and customers, best customers, don't, don't ultimately know what their problem is. And so in many cases, by being the company that says, here's why you're feeling that here's why that's happening, you know, is, does that resonate? You know, you, you can really build a significant amount of trust and differentiate yourself because everybody else is talking about how long they've been in business. Yeah.

Douglas Burdett (39:07): Yes. So the last question is 10 chapters and an epilogue in the book chapter nine. So towards the very end of the book, the very first line is your website is the hub of your marketing engine, John Jantz, if it's that important, why is it in chapter nine out of 10?

John Jantsch (39:27): Well, I think I said this on your podcast. Well, as well, Douglas, the two star reviews that will show up in Amazon will say that same question, but about what, what I want to, what I

Douglas Burdett (39:39): Will not have read the book, but they'll complain. Yeah.

John Jantsch (39:41): But, but, um, what I go on to say from that is that everything else leading up to this is going to make your website now an effective hub of your business. We started with, you need a website and it needs to do this, but we hadn't thought about the customer success. Chuck, we haven't thought about how we're going to narrow our focus. We hadn't figured out the problem that we can promise to solve. Then we're just going to build another website that doesn't do much. And so that's why I really leave all of the channels to generate leads and convert leads really late in, in the book for that very reason. And again, I know not everybody is that approach is not going to appeal to everybody, but people who want to invest in their business for the longterm will get that. We need to do that much strategy work to get to this point

Douglas Burdett (40:29): In the ad world. I remember there was an expression of you can't rush a cake, which is just, you know, they wanted a great television campaign out of nothing without having done any of the work first. It's like, yeah, yeah. There's a little bit of a process there. So John, just a, a reminder tell folks where they can get access to all the resources and the,

John Jantsch (40:52): The course you bet. So I know listeners have heard me say this before. I'll say it again. The ultimate marketing engine.com is where you'll find out about the book. You'll see something there that says, get the companion course. Obviously just follow the instructions. When you get the book, you'll actually find a link to the resources page that will allow you to download really everything associated, kind of we've set it up chapter by chapter. So you can kind of know where that particular tool is as well. You can get a couple free chapters. The book comes out September 21st. If you're listening to this on the day that we launched it, you still got a couple of days to pre-order the book when this spot podcast comes out and grab that course and really get yourself a headstart before that book shows up. If you're listening to this after September 21st, then gosh, darn it. Go to your favorite bookseller and pick up a copy of the ultimate marketing engine. I I'm going to be very self-serving here, doc. I think that, well, this is your show. So I know every time I say this, I think, are they really buying this or not? But,

Douglas Burdett (41:57): But, well, I mean, the fact that I'm on here interviewing you about your book, because you didn't want to talk about it. So it's okay, John it's okay. It's just books

John Jantsch (42:05): Are the best bargain.

Douglas Burdett (42:07): I mean, there is no better ROI than buying a book. And you know, you're probably the same way. There have been a couple of books in my long career that had such an enormous impact, the right book at the right time. It truly is invaluable.

John Jantsch (42:23): I have a, a gentleman that has a, a business helping other authors and sales professionals and, and people that call themselves authorities, you know, building kind of courses and building, you know, their platform. And he had an advanced reader copy of this. I had him on my podcast and, and he swore that this book had given him an idea that was worth $250,000. So if you get, you know, if you get $50 out of this book, it's been, it's been a great bargain and now I've got to really do a number on you. I'm a little power tip here. There is a version of audible. And I find that this book is meaty. I mean, there's a lot of stuff that I'm asking you to do some new concepts. One of the things that I've found to be really impactful is when I really want to, to internalize a book is, is to get the P I'm still a paperback reader to get, get that or the Kindle version, but then also get the audible version. And I will actually listen at like one and a half times speed as I read. And I just find that first off, I get read the book a lot faster that way, but I also find that it really helps me with, with retaining the ideas or even understanding the ideas to hear the author say them, or whoever's reading the book while I'm actually seeing them on the page. So, you know, now you're in for another nine bucks I think, or something, but wow. And

Douglas Burdett (43:42): You actually did the

John Jantsch (43:43): Audio didn't I, I did do, I did do the audio. James Earl Jones was busy that day.

Douglas Burdett (43:49): I think. So. Let me make sure I understand this. I learned so much from you, John John chance. So you get the audio version and listen to it and read at the same.

John Jantsch (43:59): I do. And I actually crank it up to one and a half times. So interesting. A lot of authors really read slowly I find. And so I crank it up to one, one and a half and I read the, I actually see the pages. I'm not probably not reading the same way I would read, but I actually see the words as they're being said to me as well. And it just, I don't know, it just really makes it go deeper.

Douglas Burdett (44:22): I might have to try that. I have only listened to one audio book ever. I have to read the hard copy to absorb it for some reason. So, but that's an interesting idea. Well, that's great. The

John Jantsch (44:31): Other thing it does is it keeps me focused because sometimes when you're listening to an audio book, you know, you tend to multitask and then you're like, wait,

Douglas Burdett (44:38): What happened to chapter eight? That's why I had to take all the social media off my phone and put it on the table away from me. If I may be so bold to listen to the interview that I did with John Jantsch about the ultimate marketing engine, just visit his episodes website page at marketing book, podcast.com. If this wasn't enough for you, you know, go there. There's a lot of really stupid jokes that John tolerated. So you know, something different to listen to John, thank you very much for the opportunity to guest host on your show. The second time it's been a real honor, it's been an honor both times and congratulations on the ultimate marketing engine.

John Jantsch (45:17): Thanks so much, and I appreciate your work and appreciate the support. So thanks everybody for listening, tuning in and we'll catch you next time.

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