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Eggs 453: The Role of AI in Modern Marketing with Mike Snyder · EGGS! The Podcast

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And now. Back to the show.
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Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Eggs, the
1:33
podcast. Today's special guest is Mike
1:35
Snyder. Mike, thanks so much for joining
1:36
us. Glad to be here, Ryan.
1:38
Absolutely. Hey, let's, I guess sort of
1:41
start at the beginning. Let's talk a little bit about
1:42
who you are, where you come from, and why we're visiting
1:44
today. Well, who am I?
1:47
I'm a retired Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel who worked
1:50
all across the the world in public affairs and got into
1:53
business, you know, while being a Marine Corps reservist and was
1:57
very fortunate to have started and run several companies,
2:00
including a a marketing consulting firm for the past,
2:03
you know, 14 years where I've had the joy of working with
2:05
hundreds of business owners all across the country from all
2:08
categories in the commercial real estate now and just
2:12
enjoying life in 2024. Yeah.
2:15
No, that's awesome. Well, and it actually kind of
2:17
maybe gives us a good place to start, which is relatively early
2:20
in the year. We're taping this sort of mid
2:21
January. We're just kicking off 2024.
2:24
I wonder if we could talk a little bit about just sort of
2:26
any trends or things that you've noticed in sort of the marketing
2:29
landscape, but then also as it pertains to your expertise,
2:31
specifically things that might be new or interesting or, or
2:34
what's next. I mean, obviously we're hearing
2:36
a lot about AI and things like that, but you know, what are you
2:39
seeing playing out in the marketing?
2:40
Well, you know, that's interesting, right?
2:42
I mean, you know, I was there at least when the Internet was
2:45
invented. I was there when cell phones
2:47
were invented. You know, it's just funny how
2:49
technology and even in the military, they teach you, right?
2:52
The art of, of military war fighting follows the science.
2:56
And in business, you know, the art of business follows the
2:59
science. So yeah, AI, right.
3:01
I'm not going to get into it. Hey, you know, it's computers.
3:05
I mean, we all dealt with it in business.
3:07
It'll be a new thing. You know, running is it is funny
3:10
because, you know, I've been in the advertising and digital
3:12
marketing categories, right. And so, you know, I was, I, I
3:15
used to consult with clients on, on what their Yellow Pages ad
3:18
should look like. And then I was also there when I
3:20
said, stop buying a yellow page ad start this thing called
3:24
search engine optimization, You know, and so, yeah, companies
3:27
absolutely ought to be taking a look at AI.
3:29
You know, it's on the radar. We're using AI in our, you know,
3:32
in our businesses to, to write blogs and getting, you know,
3:35
and, and digital art and stuff like that.
3:36
And, and so it's impacting us. But really, you know, I, I would
3:40
just say at the beginning of a, of an, of any new year, the, the
3:44
strong question for any business owner, any business executive,
3:47
any business manager out there, anybody who wants to aspire to
3:50
any of those positions is how can we think strategically now
3:54
that we've got 11 1/2 months to go rather than act tactically?
4:00
Because that's the tail wagging the dog, you know, and AI is one
4:02
of those tactical areas. Now it, you might even in a SWOT
4:05
analysis considered a strategic opportunity or a strategic
4:08
threat, in which case maybe it is strategic for you.
4:11
But otherwise, it's just another tool like, you know, PPC or
4:15
social media. And those tools are endless, by
4:18
the way. Yeah, now I think that's
4:20
actually a really great point, this idea of thinking
4:22
strategically first and not acting tactically, I think
4:24
especially as it pertains to things like AI or, you know, in
4:27
this case it's AI. But you know, any marketing
4:30
flavor, dujour, you know, whatever the new thing is,
4:32
people tend to jump on it whether they need it or not.
4:34
And you saw this a lot with social media early on, right,
4:37
Which is, well, we've got to get a 14 year old to run Twitter for
4:39
us because by God, we have to be on Twitter.
4:41
And so you saw a lot of people jump into the marketing space
4:44
using a tool like a Twitter or a social media platform or
4:47
whatever, name your platform. And the reality was they didn't
4:52
do any strategic planning prior. They're just like, oh, well,
4:54
this is a new delivery channel, we need to use it and, and
4:56
didn't really think that much about it.
4:58
So I think that's a really, you know, great thing to sort of
5:00
point out or talk about is this idea of thinking strategically.
5:04
Yeah, it you mentioned the yellow page ads and it took me
5:06
back to forever ago because I used to actually have them.
5:10
I, I would, you know, people would actually like change their
5:15
business name to start with an A to be first on the list and then
5:18
pay for extra like a, you know, an inch by an inch larger actual
5:24
ad in the placement and two or three locations under different
5:26
titles. That was the strategy back then.
5:29
Now it's all almost online. Are there any, any niches that
5:35
you specialize in anything that you would?
5:38
I've heard that like Google Adwords isn't the thing anymore.
5:41
SEO isn't as important using AI to generate content and, and use
5:46
that for your, your, your blog. And supposedly Google's found a
5:51
way to actually determine that it's AI generated and not put it
5:55
in search results. So there's, it's a very fast
5:59
changing landscape and it's kind of like at the point, you know,
6:02
two years ago we were talking about SEO, What, what do we do
6:05
now? You know, like what's the the
6:06
best? Approach, you know, that's,
6:09
that's an interesting question, Mike.
6:11
So, you know, let me just say, first of all, I'm a business
6:14
owner and I outsource a lot of my consulting, my professional
6:18
services, right? I try not to be a lawyer.
6:21
I try not to be an accountant. I don't even like doing payroll,
6:24
OK, with our 30 employees. And, and so, you know, when it
6:27
comes to what you're talking about this rapidly evolving
6:31
marketing communications landscape, I, I just look, you
6:34
know, business owners, don't try to be the expert here.
6:38
I'm not saying hi or us. I'm just saying get somebody on
6:42
your side who really is proficient in all of those
6:45
landscapes you're talking about, Mike, right?
6:47
I mean, you know, it is amazing how often Google changes an
6:50
algorithm and all of a sudden your SEO is all messed up.
6:54
You know, you got to have professionals who are on top of
6:57
it. And, and when I say on top of
6:59
it, I don't even mean like, you know, with one company, I'm not
7:02
talking about diversity of companies, diversity of
7:04
industries, taking the learning the cross industry applications,
7:07
whether it's all of these tactical areas you're talking
7:10
about, you know, and, and getting it fixed before it's
7:13
even an issue. So, you know, I think that's
7:15
critical. I mean marketing, you know, it
7:17
used to be about that Yellow Pages ad or you know, a
7:20
television ad. And now it's not it's, it's a
7:23
technology. Matter of fact, we like to say
7:24
we're, we're ATES company, we're ATES industry.
7:28
We're technology enabled services.
7:31
You can't do anything in marketing anymore without there
7:33
being some sort of application technology.
7:35
You know, we spent hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on
7:38
these technologies that aren't Google.
7:40
And I'm not talking about media spends.
7:42
I'm talking about, you know, the software, you know, that goes
7:45
and facilitates and, you know, optimizes all of the executional
7:49
areas. And it's, you know, for, for a
7:52
retired Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel, I'm like, you know
7:54
what, give me the good old A's. Give me a pen and paper, you
7:57
know, but can't do, can't go back.
7:58
And so I've got a lot, you know, a lot of smart, you know,
8:01
youngsters, so to speak, under 30 who, who live for this stuff.
8:05
And so, you know, they're almost software engineers, honestly.
8:09
But what's interesting too is like with the rise of different
8:11
technologies and sort of the rapid spread of these things.
8:13
I mean, if you really were to just kind of map out the last 10
8:16
years in marketing, for example, I mean, there's you've gone from
8:20
a few players to just a gazillion players, right?
8:22
And so now there's this saturation in the market and I
8:26
almost wonder or maybe it's because of my age, I'm hoping
8:28
and praying that there's actually a reversion back to
8:32
some fundamental stuff, some of the things that we learned,
8:34
which we get a little bit distracted by the shiny new
8:36
thing, right? This is the new technology.
8:38
And like, after our conversation about tactical use versus
8:42
strategic use, you know, we get into using these platforms
8:45
because it's the thing to do, you know, hey, AI can save me a
8:48
ton of time writing this article.
8:49
You know, I'm not paying attention to the fact that
8:51
Google's not crawling it because I've put out, you know,
8:55
basically plagiarized, you know, article.
8:57
Like I just had, you know, AI write it for me.
8:59
And so, so we're not looking at the long tail effects of using
9:01
these technologies, but rather just doing stuff to do stuff, it
9:04
seems like. And so I wonder just given your
9:06
experience in the industry, the amount of time you spent at it
9:09
and now, you know, with your experience and just, I mean, I
9:12
don't know how old you are. I think we're probably sort of
9:14
contemporary. But like you've got this
9:17
disparity between sort of your age and the age of the people
9:19
who are coming to work from you. The things that you were exposed
9:22
to as you proceeded through, you know, life for school or what,
9:25
you know, whatever your trajectory was like versus what
9:27
they're going through, what they're learning in college and
9:29
the platforms are growing up on that sort of thing.
9:32
There's such a dichotomy between your educations as it pertains
9:35
to marketing. Are you finding that there is
9:37
sort of a reversion back to just fundamental knowledge and that
9:40
like all this new cool stuff is new and cool and maybe it does
9:44
make some things easier, but at the end of the day, it really
9:46
goes back to some marketing fundamentals?
9:49
You know, that's really fascinating.
9:50
So I've got a daughter, you know, and she just recently
9:53
bought a record player and now, you know, she's spinning vinyl
9:56
records, you know, and orange is back, I think, in carpets.
9:59
I mean, this looks like the 1960s and 70s out there at Home
10:02
Decor. I wish I hadn't thrown away all
10:03
my 80s clothing. So, yeah, you know, things kind
10:06
of come around and some things never change, you know, And so
10:10
I'm, I'm classically trained in business, classically trained in
10:13
marketing. OK.
10:14
And there's a difference between marketing and marketing
10:16
communications. Everything we're talking about
10:19
websites and video and SEO and even AI, you know, is, is is
10:23
marketing communications. It's how you execute.
10:25
Take that off the table. You're asking the most important
10:29
question I think in business and that is, you know, what is
10:32
marketing and how do we how do we achieve it and excel in it.
10:37
And a lot of business owners don't understand, they think
10:40
marketing is that website and everything else.
10:43
I call that all that marketing jazz.
10:46
You know, when it comes to marketing, it's not, it is, it
10:49
is the number one operation in the business.
10:52
It's literally why does this business exist?
10:54
What value are we creating that some customer out there
10:58
perceives and will purchase at a profit to the shareholders?
11:02
That's my preferred, you know, and you'll see a lot of the
11:05
great thinkers out there, they have definitions around that.
11:07
That's the one I've glommed onto.
11:09
And so when it comes to marketing, you know, in
11:11
businesses, it's like, OK, forget about what we did last
11:14
year, this year in the changing competitive marketplace with
11:19
changing consumers, whether in business, right, retail
11:24
consumers, whatever they migrate, they move a little bit.
11:27
How can we create value this year?
11:30
And not just value, but differentiated value?
11:33
I've, I've worked with a lot of companies out there and they
11:35
don't know what they got, you know what I mean?
11:37
They're talking about themselves like they were 1985, You know,
11:41
they're, they've got so many opportunities to enhance their
11:44
product, to upgrade their price. I believe in premium pricing.
11:48
I don't believe in discount pricing unless you're an Ollie
11:51
or something and that's your strategy.
11:52
But by addressing the value that you're creating and
11:55
differentiate that value, you're going to have a long runway for
12:01
the next couple of years and what I like to call a Moat
12:04
around your business. So here's a challenge question
12:06
for your listeners. Do you have a Moat around your
12:09
business filled with sharks with laser beams?
12:13
Or are you, you know, in a bloody ocean, right?
12:19
Yeah, no, I I think that that's a really great point.
12:22
And actually I just made a note here, this idea about
12:24
understanding the value you're bringing and and this idea of
12:27
creating a mode. Actually I think we could have a
12:28
little bit longer form conversation on each of those.
12:31
You know, first of all, as it pertains to understanding value,
12:34
I mean, obviously the big dogs, you know, have some idea or
12:36
they've used metrics and figured out, you know, where they should
12:38
price point in a very scientific kind of way.
12:41
But I think for a lot of small businesses, they either
12:43
undervalue themselves, which is they don't understand what
12:45
they're actually worth in the market, or they overvalue
12:48
themselves in which place there is no market for them.
12:50
And so I wonder if do you have any thoughts on just sort of
12:53
recognizing your value or being able to look at it, you know,
12:56
outside of maybe just general comparison?
12:58
I sell this widget, you sell that widget.
13:00
We can kind of agree on a price. You know, I, I, so let's go back
13:03
classical. I want to give two tools to your
13:05
to your listeners. And both of these tools have
13:08
just one label, right? Positioning is the first one and
13:11
the second one is strategy. So, you know, there's cheater
13:15
tools. Look, I'm, I'm a I'm a retired
13:18
Marine officer and I got to tell you that KISS principle, keep it
13:21
simple, stupid is all over marketing consulting in my
13:25
world. It's like, you know, I'm not
13:27
here to make them more difficult.
13:28
I'm here to simplify stuff. So when it comes to complicated
13:31
topics like differentiation, let's just talk about two tools,
13:34
positioning and strategy, right? And so positioning is
13:38
fascinating. You know, just imagine an X&Y
13:41
axis. Now I'll just take our company.
13:42
We were a startup, you know, in dog 2010 and we were in Wichita,
13:47
KS and we were an advertising agency.
13:49
So our X&Y axis look like, you know, advertising agency on the
13:52
X and Wichita, KS on the Y Woo. You know, do you think we were
13:56
differentiated? No, because we had 20
13:58
competitors all around us. OK, So what we did is we said,
14:02
you know what, nobody wants to hire an ad agency.
14:06
You know, business owners don't even understand what ad agencies
14:08
do. So let's relabel ourselves.
14:11
Now. The insight here is just talk
14:13
about yourself differently. So we became a new label on the
14:18
X axis. Instead of saying advertising
14:21
agency, which was our, you know, category and according to some
14:24
government label, we described ourselves as an outsourced
14:28
marketing department. And then we changed the Y axis,
14:31
which used to be a geography and we made it a behavioral or
14:36
psychographic. We like to say make your X axis
14:39
product oriented and make sure make your Y axis market
14:43
oriented. So we, we, we started a label
14:46
called entrepreneurially minded principles.
14:49
Entrepreneurially minded principles.
14:51
There's no rule on what your labels look like when it comes
14:54
to your positioning analysis, right?
14:57
And so when we changed our labels, it moved all of our
15:00
competitors from us into what we called the death quadrant.
15:03
Did we do anything different operationally?
15:05
No. Now what we did do though in our
15:07
marketing, we differentiated ourselves and then we activated
15:11
it in our marketing communications.
15:13
So when we started talking differently, I mean prospects,
15:17
we started killing it in sales because we were talking
15:20
differently. And, and, and, you know, Bob and
15:23
Henry running an, an industrial firm, you know, or a
15:26
manufacturing firm would sit down and go, no one's talking
15:29
like you guys. You guys are really making it
15:32
simple for business owners to understand what you do.
15:35
I don't have a marketing department.
15:36
I want a marketing department or at least the resources that come
15:39
with that. How much does it cost?
15:41
Let's go. Yeah.
15:44
No, I love that. And I actually, you know, even
15:45
in my own business, this is something we've struggled with
15:47
this concept of differentiation. I mean, we basically we run a
15:51
subscription based design agency that's designed to support
15:54
agencies like yours or big marketing companies, big ad
15:58
agencies. Especially right now in a period
16:00
of layoffs and things like this where you're seeing a lot of
16:02
people coming and going in these different fields where basically
16:05
we're a totally outsourced team with our own project management
16:08
and our own design team and our own copywriting team or
16:11
basically a little agency in a box and you can strap us on.
16:14
We always say sort of like, you know, sharked pilot ship or
16:17
pilot fish kind of relationship, you know, so we'll be your
16:20
little guy and we'll just glom, glom onto you.
16:22
And we're a little white label service, you know, on the design
16:25
front. So, but I mean, I've been doing
16:27
this since 95 and it's taken us that long to figure out who we
16:32
are really. Because until then we've been
16:34
every variety of creative agency, design agency, branding
16:38
agency, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
16:40
And, you know, and we've tried all these different things.
16:42
But the one thing I wanted to touch on is, you know, how do
16:46
you reinforce this change, I guess, across the company?
16:48
So we're kind of a small organization.
16:50
We're just like what we call a virtual agency.
16:53
So we have a couple core people in the middle and then we build
16:55
out, you know, big networks of freelance providers that help us
16:58
with all the other stuff. And so that way we can bring in
17:01
the appropriate expert for the appropriate job.
17:04
And so and that's the way we've decided to model our business.
17:06
But for somebody like you that's got, you know, even 30 people in
17:09
house, you know, how do you take this change, You know, going
17:13
from, hey, we're an ad agency or hey, we're a marketing agency to
17:15
now this entrepreneurial focused language, you know, from the top
17:19
down. How do you do, I guess, inject
17:22
this new ethos into your people or get them to talk about you in
17:25
this new and exciting way? You are, you are, you are
17:27
pivoting big time and you know, you're going into the really
17:30
hard stuff, which is managing people, you know, And so I, you
17:33
know, I say, you know, and there's a book where all this
17:36
is, by the way, you know, Ryan, the, the, the, the tools, the
17:40
models and all the resources. But one of the chapters, the
17:43
final chapter in the book is basically all about what you're
17:45
talking about. And how do you, how do you get
17:47
this change to happen? And who owns it?
17:50
Well, who owns marketing, right? It's, it's got to be the
17:52
business owner or the president that is hired, you know, to run
17:55
the business. And that's who owns marketing
17:57
and that's who owns the culture. Now, look, I'm a servant leader.
18:00
I believe in servant leadership, which is, you know, you get
18:03
people involved and you, you let them have a say at the table and
18:06
you know, you seek their insight at the same time, you know what
18:09
I mean? Because that I mean, Marines,
18:11
you got to look at, I'm sorry, I can't talk about marketing and
18:14
the Marine Corps separately. They're together because you're
18:16
both trying to win campaign and win, right, using the tools that
18:20
you got, tools that you don't even have.
18:22
So, you know, when it comes to Marine officers, they're
18:24
supposed to know their people like their children.
18:27
They're inside and out. And then you know what they got
18:29
to do? They got to say go assault that
18:31
machine gun nest. OK, so in business, it's the
18:33
same thing. I'm going to know you inside and
18:36
out, but at some point I'm the boss and this is what we're
18:39
doing, period. And so when we a case in point,
18:42
I've seen this a couple of times.
18:44
Oh my gosh, it's so fun to see this in action because it's kind
18:47
of scary and thrilling. Like, you know, you got popcorn,
18:49
you're watching a movie. How is this going to end?
18:51
And so when we did our, our, our, our positioning
18:54
redirection, as, you know, our company, we had people quit.
18:58
Well, I don't want to be that. I want to be an ad agency.
19:01
I want to have all these fanciful designs and make
19:03
everything really pretty. And we said, no, we're not that.
19:07
We're the marketing department for, you know, companies that
19:10
one straight business, but differentiated and somewhat
19:14
creative, but not that way. And so we people walk out the
19:17
door. And then we had to change how we
19:20
were recruiting account service people, right?
19:23
The, the, the young marketers working because, you know, they
19:25
had to be oriented towards a principal and not a marketing
19:28
director, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
19:29
And so it did, you know, change the way that we ran the human
19:33
side of the business. And if they didn't like it or if
19:36
they didn't see themselves like that, well, there's the door,
19:39
you know, And so eventually, if there's going to be a hard turn
19:42
in the business, and we, we've talked about positioning, we
19:45
haven't talked about strategy yet.
19:47
You know, look, I mean, I'm not saying fire somebody's been
19:50
loyal to the company for 30 years, but if they can't make
19:53
the turn, you're going to have to get him off that management
19:55
team or just have a real honest conversation, you know, and say,
19:59
look, we're we, we, we thank you for your, your naysaying.
20:03
We're past that stop. Right.
20:07
Well. I think I think that's really
20:09
smart. I mean, I think there's so many
20:10
businesses that actually don't go through with the pivot
20:12
because of employees say versus, you know, following through a
20:16
sort of their, you know, hopefully leadership who is
20:19
hopefully visionary, you know, so I mean, they're, you know, if
20:22
they if they're not willing to go along, it is, you know, I
20:24
mean, obviously you don't want to fire people just need, you
20:26
know, for no, no good reason. But I mean, alignment is such a
20:29
big part of a successful business that you know, if you
20:32
don't have that, then it's a problem.
20:33
Yeah, there you go. I mean it, it sounds good in the
20:35
book, getting all the right people in the bus, getting all
20:38
the right butts in the chairs, but it's really hard to do it
20:43
and to sustain that conviction culturally, for instance, right.
20:47
Let's talk about culture first for for a second.
20:49
So, you know, most companies have lousy cultural documents.
20:53
They they have no cultural strategy.
20:54
You know, we got ours from Netflix years ago.
20:57
I mean, it was 120 page PowerPoint that we came across
21:01
on how to maintain, you know, an entrepreneurial culture in the
21:06
face of growth and, and to avoid chaos and, and creating too many
21:09
rules, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
21:11
You know, and, and their strategy was this, this thing
21:14
called stunning colleagues. But we stole that.
21:16
Thank you very much, because they, they probably spent
21:18
hundreds of thousands of dollars on this, you know, cultural
21:20
statement and we got it for free because somebody put it on the
21:23
Internet. And so, you know, our company's
21:25
culture, our strategy is and ask yourself anything that is, you
21:29
know, what is your strategy for your culture?
21:31
Ours is stunning colleagues, right?
21:33
The strategy statement should be no longer than 3 words short.
21:37
Anything longer than that, like, you know, all our culture is
21:39
about having people of integrity who provide value for our
21:42
clients, the price points they can.
21:44
That's not, that's not a culture, that's nothing
21:46
actually, you know, it means you're in business, you're
21:49
honest people. Thank God you're not criminals.
21:51
Why, why put that in your cultural statement, You know,
21:54
and so we're like, no, we're, we're, we're a culture of
21:56
stunning colleagues. You know, we make mistakes, we
21:58
clean up quickly. You know, we maintain by the
22:01
edge. You know, we're not going to
22:03
tolerate mediocrity. Mediocrity gets fired.
22:05
I mean, you know, that's, that's a direction people go.
22:08
I want to aspire to that. And so, you know, part of if
22:11
you're going to have organizational change, you
22:13
really need to have a cultural statement and or a strategy that
22:16
supports that. But that's complicated and that
22:21
takes that may take some time to get to.
22:24
Yeah. Sure.
22:28
So we talked about positioning, let's talk about strategy.
22:32
You brought it up. All right, Yeah, marketing
22:35
strategy is really tough to get your mind around.
22:40
Although I got a cheater tool for you.
22:42
And this cheater tool in America at least, is really, really,
22:46
really, really, really works. Then I have an example.
22:51
The cheater tool is one word when it comes to developing
22:54
marketing strategy, and it's called easy.
22:59
How do we make it easy for our customers, our clients?
23:03
I don't care what category you're in now, you know, your
23:09
listeners are probably thinking, whoa, what does that mean?
23:11
I got to augment, I got to change our core product or
23:13
service. Maybe, you know, there's the
23:14
four PS, right? Classical marketing, product,
23:18
price, place and promotion. So yeah, if you want to take
23:22
your product and you want to make it easier, you can't.
23:25
You want to make your price, for instance, just take a couple of
23:28
cases in point and these are all strategies.
23:31
So we, we took our, we were very early movers and taking
23:36
marketing services and putting it on a subscription, a flat
23:40
monthly subscription. And I'm not talking about hours
23:43
that eventually at the end of the year get chewed up.
23:45
No, we committed to let's just say $5000 a month and, and my
23:50
God, I mean, initially we were losing our shirt on the
23:52
subscriptions because they're operationally we had to train
23:55
our people to fit their time into that, for instance, right?
23:59
That is a strategy underneath the pricing.
24:01
Let's just go to promotions, right?
24:03
Promotions is really how you talk about your company, how you
24:06
communicate and you know, messages to your to your
24:09
audience. I need to use a manufacturing
24:12
example. So I was working with this
24:15
custom tool manufacturer, meaning, you know, if you needed
24:19
a tool, you know, a custom cutting tool in your
24:22
manufacturing company, my client would manufacture that for you.
24:27
And he was going off one day, you know, really capable
24:31
company. And he's like, you know what,
24:33
People just don't understand that.
24:35
They go with our competitors, it's going to take them three
24:37
months to get this custom cutting tool.
24:39
We can get it to them in three weeks.
24:42
I went whoa, whoa, whoa, stop the horses.
24:46
It sounds to me like you are making this really easy for your
24:49
customers and prospects, but you're not telling them.
24:52
They weren't saying that they were like, oh, we've got high
24:54
quality tools, you know, and we're competitively priced
24:57
because that's what everybody is saying.
24:59
So we, so really quickly, we went through the positioning
25:01
analysis, right? We changed their labels as to
25:03
how they communicate. Then we went out into the
25:05
marketing communications. We developed a new tagline for
25:08
them. Boom, boom, boom from one
25:09
meeting with this guy and and their tagline became three
25:13
weeks, not three months. And all of a sudden they had
25:18
$1,000,000 accounts targeted for years within 90 days got a new
25:22
account, $1,000,000 account. And why?
25:24
Because they used the cheater tool thinking, if you will, how
25:28
do we make it easier? They were already doing it.
25:30
It wasn't anything they had to start doing.
25:31
They were already doing it. Well, time, speed, speed of
25:36
production, right? And so speed became their
25:40
communication platform and and they won just by changing the
25:44
way they were talking about their company and they had it in
25:46
their pocket the entire time. They just don't know.
25:49
A lot of times folks just don't know what they got.
25:52
Yeah. I can see that stuff.
25:55
Yeah, No, I think that's true. And I think, you know,
25:57
especially that example is really good because you do get
26:00
kind of lost in a sea of marketing and advertising and
26:03
stuff that always kind of looks the same, right?
26:05
I mean, it's it's always stating the obvious, you know, or I
26:07
guess the expected, right. I mean, you're telling me you're
26:10
good quality, but like, no duh, if you're not good quality, what
26:13
are we doing? Or if you're not, you know, the,
26:15
the best whatever, or that, you know, if you can't do X, you
26:18
know, like, I mean, this is the whole thing that we're buying
26:19
you for. Like of course, like those are
26:21
all the Givens, you know, but what can you do?
26:23
That is the thing, you know. And so in this case, it was
26:25
time, but I think it's really important to to be able to.
26:28
Let me let me clarify one more thing on that that's really
26:30
important because you're just kind of talking about tactics
26:32
and kind of going back into the good old days.
26:34
So they were captive and I know this is going to speak to a lot
26:37
of your a lot of your listeners. So their sales team was captive
26:41
to purchasing managers. These, these large clients of
26:44
theirs are prospects. They thought their customer was
26:48
the purchasing manager because the purchasing manager would go
26:50
out with an RFP, right. And so purchasing managers are
26:54
concerned about cost, not even speed necessarily.
26:57
They're there to get the lowest cost.
27:00
So when we came out with this new strategy called speed, we
27:04
said to them, who does that talk to?
27:07
And they said, well, that talks to the operations managers and
27:09
maybe even the CEO is the presidents.
27:11
I said, well, do you have a communications program for them?
27:15
Well, not really, no. But I mean, we've got emails and
27:17
we've, we just never really, we've been communicating with
27:19
purchasing managers. I said, we'll start talking to
27:22
those people. And we even included a direct
27:26
mail. We, we started sending letters
27:28
because you know, they open letters and they may not get the
27:31
e-mail, but emails and letters. And that's how we had turned
27:35
their community educations program around based on that new
27:38
strategy. But I just thought that was
27:40
brilliant. I mean, look, it's a
27:41
collaborative. A Harvard study said three
27:45
people make a genius. Take any three people off the
27:47
street and they can they can pass the Mensa test, the genius
27:49
test. And so, you know, you get, you
27:51
know, you know, a diversified team in a room, meaning like the
27:55
marketing partner, the principal, maybe an employee.
27:58
And some really brilliant things can happen very quickly.
28:04
Yeah, so I'd like to circle back to some of the discussion we had
28:06
earlier about creating a Moat. And I think that this might help
28:09
with some of our positioning talk and and these other things
28:11
we're talking about now, which is building this Moat and
28:13
finding your your competitive difference, right.
28:15
In the case of the example you just gave, maybe their
28:17
competitive Moat is this ability to to deliver their product so
28:21
much more quickly than other people.
28:23
But if you've got, you know, something that's sort of common
28:26
in the market, you know, or if you are, you know, are looking
28:29
for a way to differentiate, do you have any tools or ideas it
28:32
might help people specifically with that differentiation or
28:35
standing out? You know, it's so funny, right?
28:37
Let me just, I buy professional services.
28:39
So I've been telling my law firm, a very large law firm, you
28:42
know, like, you know what, I want to buy a lot of stuff from
28:46
you. I just don't know what to buy.
28:48
I'm sure that my business has all kinds of legal needs, you
28:51
know, And so, you know, and I said, I think I, I need, I need
28:55
to have my contracts reviewed. I need to have some estate
28:58
planning done. I think I need to have, you
29:00
know, this, that and the other looked at and I here's how I
29:03
want to do it. I want to do it, you know, over
29:07
a year or two. I want to pay you guys a set fee
29:10
because I can't, I can't be talking to you guys when I get
29:12
a, you know, 5 figure bill up just wantonly.
29:16
Can you devise a program for me now?
29:19
Now it's a rare prospector customer that will be that
29:22
candid with a provider, right? And I'm talking about something
29:26
really critical here. And that is just strategic
29:29
listening. You could, you could say
29:30
listening, but most of the times we listen to talk, I'm listening
29:34
to you so I can have a response. I may not actually be listening
29:38
to what you're saying. I'm just devising what I'm going
29:40
to say. So I, I like to put strategic
29:42
listening in front of that, you know, so it's like, am I
29:45
actually listening? And look, I mean, this is basic
29:48
stuff, but if you're a president or, or senior exec out there
29:51
listening, when's the last time you actually listened to a
29:53
customer? Or are you getting your
29:55
listening to your sales team? Are you getting your listening
29:58
to market research? Just go talk to a real human
30:02
and, and say, how aren't we servicing you or in this
30:05
category that we're in whatever category you're in, you know,
30:08
what is lacking? What, what should our entire
30:10
category be providing that, that we're not like that law, that
30:14
law firm example I gave you. Heck, you know, I'm, I'm an
30:18
enlightened consumer. So I actually try to give
30:20
businesses the benefit of the doubt.
30:22
Like we, we, we use an HR O and you know, we're PEO outsourced
30:27
HR management and all that stuff.
30:29
And I have gone to them and I'm like, Hey, do you have any tool
30:32
online tool so we can organize or HR online that we don't have
30:36
that. Hey, do you have any kind of,
30:37
you know, interview package, you know, that would help us?
30:40
No, we don't really have that. We just do payroll and HR
30:43
management. Well, I go, well, don't you have
30:45
any of the other stuff, you know that that surrounds HR?
30:48
You know, I asked our law firm, can't we have an online portal
30:52
with all the documents? Because I can't, I've got to
30:54
find my articles of incorporation.
30:56
Where is it W 9 and all that. No, we don't do that.
30:59
So, you know, if you're listening and a lot of times the
31:02
advantage and differentiation is making it easy for your
31:05
customers by providing some of these basic, you know,
31:08
associated services, you know, and it's it doesn't have to be
31:12
expensive or heart listen to your audience and give the
31:15
people what they want. I think is that hard?
31:22
I think the the kind of what it's breaking down to is just
31:25
the whole communication process. I think we live in a, in an age
31:29
where, you know, even dating, it doesn't involve communicating
31:33
anymore, involves swiping and reading profiles and deciding
31:36
beforehand and, and bias judgments before you even meet
31:41
the person and have a conversation.
31:43
You you, you're the face to face and, and actually talking to
31:48
people and having a conversation and you're, you're listening,
31:53
you know, like actually listening, not listening to try
31:57
and come back instantly. I think that's a lost art.
32:00
I think people don't really have that that skill anymore.
32:03
And I think it has a lot to do with, you know, the online
32:08
community aspect of things and the short attention spans of
32:12
people these days. And so I feel.
32:14
Less right or Mike, I want to I want to, I want to pound that
32:16
home real quick, OK, because you know, you're right and that is,
32:21
you know, people are busy. So the, it's really fascinating
32:24
because the enemy of easy is busy, OK, the business owner is
32:31
busy. And because they're busy, it's
32:33
very difficult for them to slow down and think easy.
32:36
They're thinking complex, complex, complex, complex,
32:38
complex, solve problems, solve problems, problems, right.
32:40
So when I went to the owner of that HR firm, not a small
32:42
company, big company, and I said, look, can't you just
32:45
provide some sort of a software solution so that we can have all
32:48
of these, you know, our performance reviews saved online
32:51
and people can review one another and give praise on, you
32:54
know, he was blank. He wasn't prepared to listen to
32:57
that. And he said, no, that'd be
32:58
complicated for us to do. But he wasn't thinking about the
33:01
Moat. First of all, if he had done
33:05
that and no one else is doing that, then guess what?
33:08
He is increasing his his retention of this account.
33:12
It's becoming sticky. The claws are getting into the
33:16
client, right? And but they don't look at it
33:18
that way. They're not thinking retention.
33:20
They're thinking acquisition. I got to sell something today.
33:22
Well, the number one rule in revenue was don't lose the
33:24
clients you got, OK. And then also, you know, it may
33:28
be a small thing, but in, in, in, in, you know, in America, we
33:32
have first world problems and I got employees and managers on my
33:35
butt who want an online, you know, solution.
33:38
I'm willing to pay for it. So I, I even told him, I said, I
33:42
will pay you more money. Just tell me how much I got to
33:44
pay you. Isn't that amazing?
33:47
So premium price point, client retention, client delight.
33:51
And he said, no, I'm not the only company out there.
33:55
God, every company needs an HR management software and you
33:59
know, HR OS, no. It's true and I and I think
34:01
like, yeah, and I think like Mike's saying about just
34:04
communication in general and being a lost art.
34:07
I think is right too, is just that we've we've crafted this
34:11
society and and you you know, it's funny that we're hitting
34:13
busy so hard because I think a lot of us are busy, but it's
34:15
like artificial busy. We're not busy with real stuff.
34:18
We're busy with Instagram, we're busy with social media, we're
34:20
busy with all the the conveniences that technology has
34:24
brought us has actually made everything so easy individually
34:27
that collectively it's very busy.
34:29
And so we're caught up doing a lot of stuff.
34:31
You know, maybe Mr. CEO is busy. Maybe he's got to get to the
34:34
bank and he's got to talk to the financiers or the the investors
34:37
or, you know, maybe he legitimately has stuff.
34:39
But you're, you're, you know, run-of-the-mill, you know, small
34:42
business owner, you know, who, who is wearing a lot of hats and
34:45
doing a lot of stuff can be easily overwhelmed with all this
34:48
stuff, you know, so there's a little bit of like an artificial
34:50
busyness. Also, I think we, you know, also
34:53
to Mike's point, our crafting society where we communicate in
34:57
little bits and bytes and we try and be clever and we're just,
35:00
you know, we're too busy thinking about the response
35:02
before we, you know, even hear the question.
35:05
And so we're crafting a society where that doesn't work as well.
35:09
And so I wanted to ask, you know, I mean, for as far as like
35:12
a marketing tool and a channel and like, I mean, for a lot of
35:15
businesses, I mean, the social media, and this is a really
35:18
broad question. So don't worry, you don't have
35:19
to have the answer. But I mean, is social media or
35:22
digital marketing more generally a good idea for most small
35:26
businesses? Meaning, or really the question
35:28
I'm trying to get to the bottom of is, would we all just be
35:31
better served to go back to the olden days and talk to people
35:34
and have human interactions and build relationships, you know,
35:37
kind of in a traditional way, you know, versus maybe the
35:40
broader reach of a digital marketing way?
35:42
You know, because like I just look at, you know, again,
35:44
looking at my own business, I'm going, OK, well, like I'm not
35:47
going to win a lot of business on social media because I have a
35:49
complex product or an important product.
35:51
And I need to have a conversation with some agency
35:53
owner or creative director or an executive manager of some
35:56
variety who's going to talk to me about their, you know, agency
36:00
has got overflow and we need some creative resources.
36:03
You know, so I mean, so like, I'm going to have to have a
36:04
conversation with somebody. They're not going to see me on
36:06
Twitter and be like, OK, well, we're going to fire off that
36:08
$15,000 check. Here you go, buddy.
36:11
It's just not gonna work for me. So I'm wondering if in general
36:14
terms, do you feel more strongly or more powerfully about human
36:18
interaction or sort of getting back to some fundamentals again,
36:21
this idea of better communication and things like
36:23
that. Wow, We're going to be just fine
36:26
if we just kind of keep pushing the digital line.
36:28
Well, let's just, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's not a yes
36:31
or no kind of response. It's a shape, it's a shaping
36:34
response. You know, you know, you, if you,
36:36
if you, if you shoot, you know, your rifle all directions with
36:41
the bullets, you know, you're going to hit something, but
36:43
that's going to be very expensive and it's going to take
36:45
more time and look stupid, right?
36:48
At the same time, you know, never forget, I think it was
36:50
United, that old United commercial, you know, where
36:52
like, yo, you know, where we've forgotten who our clients are.
36:55
And so the sales team at United that we're getting airline
36:57
tickets on their own to go and see their, their clients, right?
37:01
So on one hand, you've got social media, on the other hand,
37:04
you've got your sales team, for instance.
37:06
Well, So what, which is more important?
37:08
So there's two things to bring up. 1 is called media richness
37:11
theory, you know, and it's a marketing principle which says,
37:14
of course, meeting face to face conveys more information than a
37:18
letter or an e-mail. And it's just because of course
37:22
we can see hand gestures, face gestures, you know, non verbal
37:26
communication conveys a crap ton of information, not just words.
37:31
On on the other side is the decision making process, right?
37:34
There's a model for that and it says that people have to go from
37:38
awareness to understanding to interest to desire to purchase,
37:43
purchase and repurchase. A six step decision making
37:45
model. And so yes, on one hand, you
37:48
know, the classical approach of having people talk to people is
37:51
going to be most effective. At the same time, it's going to
37:54
be towards the end of the decision making funnel, not the
37:57
beginning. We know that 75% of businesses,
38:01
business owners do their purchase research before ever
38:05
contacting A salesperson. So therefore, I come to the end
38:08
of my answer, you have to have a broad marketing communications
38:12
platform to give the people what they want.
38:14
They want the ability to research stuff online 1st.
38:19
And so, you know, it should all lead towards communication with
38:23
a very well informed salesperson who knows, you know, they've
38:28
done their research and now we're going to go in for the
38:30
closing decision. Now, when it comes to marketing
38:32
communications, unfortunately, the answer for most businesses
38:36
is you have got to be putting out content all the time.
38:39
And that don't mean just like blogs or social media.
38:41
I'm talking videos, you know, talking about, you know,
38:45
research papers, I mean, whatever that looks like.
38:47
But you got to be putting out a lot in rich media format, audio
38:52
files, podcasts, videos, you know, and not just like product
38:56
videos. It's like, look, man, let's
38:58
let's I want to have a have a video series featuring your
39:01
engineers. Have your engineers talking
39:03
about this process or their background or anything that
39:08
differentiates. Because if you know, if you're a
39:09
manufacturer, for instance, and your competitors aren't doing it
39:12
and I know they're not, but you are, you know, and your
39:16
prospects are like, I like the way that engineer thinks.
39:19
I need that kind of perspective on my team and the sales team.
39:22
They're not going to be preaching up their engineers.
39:25
So let marketing communications do the work and that might be
39:28
under a strategy cuz everything you do ought to be underneath
39:31
the strategy. Yeah, I was gonna say, and that
39:33
kind of lends back to that idea of strategy, right?
39:35
So it isn't, you know, like you said, it's not a yes or a no.
39:37
Do we use digital marketing or in person marketing?
39:40
It's both. And you know, but what do we do
39:42
it for, right. So we're meeting in person
39:44
strategically because it makes sense to rub elbows with people
39:47
every now and then and look people in the eye, where we also
39:50
can use marketing channels, Twitter's, Facebook, so, you
39:53
know, social media or whatever to share content, but not
39:55
content for content's sake, rather content that feeds a
39:59
strategy. So we want to show how great our
40:01
engineering team is or we want to humanize our our back, you
40:04
know, back end people you don't really see or we want to, you
40:07
know, yeah, any of those things. I was actually going to say
40:10
something about that, Ryan, because creating content for
40:13
content's sake is a huge pet peeve of mine.
40:16
There's a banking institution that I follow here locally.
40:21
It's a local smaller kind of, you know, credit union kind of
40:25
thing. And they just, they'll, they'll
40:27
walk up to their tellers and do some TikTok dance.
40:31
And it's like, how is that serving me as a customer?
40:34
How is that helping me learn about your home equity loan, you
40:40
know, your whatever services you provide?
40:43
That kind of marketing drives me nuts.
40:45
Something that could actually. Be it could actually be working
40:48
against you, right. In your case, you're turned off
40:50
by this. And so getting that that
40:52
message, I mean, you might look at that and go, God, these guys
40:54
aren't very professional. I mean, can I trust them with my
40:56
home equity loan? Like, you know, could actually
40:58
work to their detriment if they're not actually, you know,
41:01
pursuing a strategy that makes sense.
41:02
Yeah. So and if I mean just there's go
41:06
ahead. As a marketing guy, I can tell
41:08
you, so I would hope I love your example, right?
41:11
Because you're talking about a tactic that, you know, outside
41:14
of strategy doesn't make sense. But if I were to go to their XY
41:17
axis and their product, look, they, they offer banking
41:20
products, right? So let's just say that there's
41:22
no real differentiation there. So the differentiation in their
41:25
products on their product axis could be the label could be
41:29
likeability, the likeable bank, the bank people like the place
41:33
people like to bank at likeability like like like now
41:36
the tactical execution of a strategy of likability is, is
41:41
that TikTok like thing? But at least they can, they can
41:44
communicate that, you know, and hopefully it's, it's, it's
41:49
uniform. It's it's it's broad their
41:51
execution. They're executing against a
41:53
likability strategy broadly. So it wouldn't be as weird as
41:57
just seeing this world. What the heck?
41:58
Well, until that end, right, I mean if they if the company was
42:01
supporting that all the way through, right.
42:02
So again, back to our strategy and our positioning
42:04
conversations, you know, I mean, if their position is the company
42:07
who's likable and a little bit silly and their commercials or
42:10
the ads that they put out or a little tongue in cheek or
42:12
whatever. And if it's the personality of
42:14
the brand, well, then it doesn't seem odd at all.
42:17
It won't bump you, you know, But if the problem is that they seem
42:20
very professional, all their ads are in business suits and they
42:22
look like they're ready to just do serious business.
42:25
And then you've got, you know, the secretary Molly down the
42:28
down the hall doing a TikTok dance in the way you're going.
42:30
Well, what's going on with Molly?
42:31
Like how come she's not as serious as everybody else, you
42:34
know? And so I mean, so I guess to all
42:36
the points that we've made throughout this conversation,
42:38
you know, positioning and strategy are, are sort of the
42:42
keys here, right? Because this, it really is, it
42:45
changes the tone entirely of what this, you know, this stupid
42:48
social media content is, right. I mean, if they're funny people
42:52
and we know them as funny people, it's not weird when they
42:54
be funny. That's correct now, and you
42:56
know, and by the way, I mean, marketing can be complex, right,
42:58
Because there's the retail division of the bank and maybe
43:00
they, so even your divisions can have different strategies.
43:04
You know, so maybe the retail division is likability and
43:07
meanwhile maybe the commercial division is all about, you know,
43:10
education. So you know, because I've had
43:13
very few banks actually educate, right?
43:15
So it's like, what aren't banks doing?
43:16
Well, they need to educate you on balance sheets, educate you
43:19
on P and LS, educate you on cost cutting.
43:21
They're not doing any of these kinds of things that contribute
43:24
to a healthy P&L. So what you can qualify for
43:26
their damn loan, right? OK.
43:29
So you know, even your product divisions can have different
43:31
strategies. Yeah, Nope, I think that's
43:33
right. And it, and it's probably good
43:34
to kind of point out the nuance there that it's not always so
43:37
simple. You know, maybe in the, in the,
43:39
you know, in the OR through the frame of, you know, the small
43:42
business that makes 1 widget and this is our thing.
43:45
You might have a little bit more simplistic approach where if,
43:48
yeah, I mean, if you're a marketing company, obviously the
43:50
commercial guys are are lending to different folks than the
43:53
retail guys. So, you know, so it makes sense
43:55
that they have alternating strategies or different
43:57
strategies, or maybe there's like a global brand strategy and
44:00
then there's different by division.
44:03
Totally lots of. Different ways to look at that.
44:05
So I wonder, we're getting into maybe the last quarter hour
44:08
here. I wanted to talk a little bit
44:09
about you've got a new book out, the Great Marketing Lie.
44:11
I wonder if we could talk about your book and just sort of what
44:15
one might find in it and a little bit about the process of
44:17
creating that. Well, so interesting.
44:20
Thank you for asking that. So there's a story behind it.
44:22
So I had a, a great opportunity several years ago to teach an
44:25
MBA class right at a, at a, at a regional university.
44:31
And so they gave me this book to teach from.
44:33
And it was, you know, about strategic marketing and it was
44:36
800 pages. You know, I didn't have
44:39
marketing, you know, in this MBA class, you know, they were full
44:42
of purchasing managers and HR managers and accountants and
44:46
lawyers. And, you know, none of them were
44:48
were marketing people. And I'm like, damn.
44:51
So, you know, it was like death by marketing definition, 800
44:54
pages of just, you know, you need to know this, You need to
44:58
know that you need to know this. And the one thing that the book
45:00
really didn't teach were the fundamentals.
45:03
Not in any kind of clear way. And frankly, I did not even
45:06
concur with some definitions of marketing plans or marketing
45:09
strategies. You know, a lot of times people
45:13
make things really complex. And that's where the title of
45:16
the book came from. Because I took my curriculum,
45:18
you know, and, and my class was scored the top class out of the
45:22
entire MBA program because I just didn't teach the damn book.
45:25
I, I taught what really works in the real world.
45:28
And so I still taught, I gave quizzes on the book.
45:30
Don't worry if you're listening. They're Newman University
45:31
people. But, you know, that that
45:34
curriculum became the basically the seller, the outline for this
45:39
book, the great Marketing lie. And I'll tell you what the lie
45:41
is because, you know, our entire world conspires, you know, maybe
45:47
guys like Simon Sinek, you know, or the fellow who brought the
45:50
purple cow, forgot his name. They actually boil it.
45:52
Yeah. Thank you, Seth Godin.
45:54
You know, they actually boil it down.
45:56
They get it. But, you know, when it comes to
45:57
to folks like me or academic professors, you know, big, you
46:02
know, marketing consulting firms, they, they, they.
46:04
Oh, it's so hard. It's so hard.
46:05
You have to hire us, you know, then they come in and they have
46:07
to make it hard in order to justify a big feat.
46:10
I'm not kidding. This is the way the world works.
46:12
And so, you know, boiling it down into, you know, a few tools
46:17
that could create a Moat for a business owner that they can do
46:19
themselves, You know, so the great marketing lie is that it's
46:22
hard when the answer to that is no.
46:24
It's actually really simple because look, we're surrounded
46:27
by marketing. We make marketing decisions
46:29
every day. Marketing communications is
46:32
hard, but marketing itself is. I mean, absolutely.
46:37
I mean, humans are really good at it.
46:39
I'm sorry. You know, you are both wearing
46:40
hats. I'm not wearing a hat.
46:43
You made a marketing decision to buy a hat based on some need
46:46
that you feel both of you, right.
46:48
Meanwhile, I don't like hats. I'm a non hat guy, no hat, So
46:52
you know what I mean. We make marketing decisions,
46:54
everything around us. Look at that light up there,
46:56
wherever, here it is right back there, the whiteboard.
46:58
I mean, we buy things everyday based on marketing decisions.
47:01
So if we reverse engineer why we're making those decisions,
47:06
then we'll become better marketers just by every day.
47:08
Like, you know, when I first, I don't know, got into advertising
47:11
years ago, I would just drive down the road looking at
47:13
billboards trying to reverse engineer who they were trying to
47:17
talk to, what their message was, you know, how they were
47:20
differentiating themselves. So practicing.
47:23
So I don't know, you know, talking about, you know, the
47:25
book, it's like, you know, basic classical stuff that is made
47:30
easy with the real tools to do this with your management team.
47:34
It's a funny thing, you know? I mean, folks get the book, you
47:37
know, and I hear from them and they're like, yeah, I bought
47:39
some for the management team because we're going to take this
47:41
to the annual retreat and we're going to go over this, this this
47:43
this strategy development exercise.
47:45
We're going to go through these five, you know, questions that
47:49
get to your positioning analysis, you know, And so just
47:52
do it yourself because marketing is not hard and.
47:55
It's funny you mention it's funny you brought up the hats
48:00
because I specifically I, I shop for blank black hats that are
48:08
non branded in any way, shape or form.
48:10
Because, you know, I'll be in one city one week and I'll be in
48:13
another city the next week and doing different things music
48:17
related in front of large crowds.
48:19
I didn't want to be in San Francisco represent a Seahawks
48:22
hat. You know what I mean?
48:23
That that kind of thing. It's like I wanted to be neutral
48:26
in different areas. And so I always go for black non
48:30
branded hats and I always wear a hat because I'm balding.
48:34
That's pretty much it. It's like one of those, one of
48:37
those things that I, you know, it's like I, I've always been a
48:40
hat person. I've never not worn a hat, but
48:42
I'm very specific on what hats I wear because I don't want to
48:45
represent something that might offend other people in a
48:48
different market. Yeah.
48:49
And conversely, like for example, the the hat decision
48:51
that I've make is or that I've made in this particular case is
48:55
these are just hats done up by designers to look like sports
48:58
teams. They're not really sports teams,
48:59
they just look like them. And so but they're just really
49:02
cool designer stuff that designers have created.
49:05
And you know, I support art and I support designers and so I
49:07
think they're very cool. And so for me, it's a design
49:10
statement where Mike, it's actually trying to be not
49:13
noticed, I guess so anyway, but no, So it is really interesting,
49:18
you know, cuz you're right. I mean, we do make marketing
49:20
decisions all the time. I mean, and it's funny cuz you
49:22
guess you don't, don't think about it, right?
49:24
But even as we sit down and like, I mean, just take, I mean,
49:27
I'm still broadcasting from my desk because of the shoulder
49:30
issue I've been having. But, but you know, I mean, I'm
49:33
using blue lights. I'm using, you know, I've got a
49:36
piece of artwork sitting back here.
49:37
I've got, you know, these different things that, that I've
49:39
done. And those are all, to your
49:41
point, marketing decisions, right?
49:42
These are all things that I'm deciding to put out there.
49:44
I want people to see this little illustration I did.
49:46
I want, you know, people to see the cool hat brand I'm wearing.
49:49
I, you know, and, you know, whatever it is.
49:51
And, and so that's kind of, you know, marketing or I guess the
49:55
final output or the end of a marketing decision, you know,
49:58
that people are, are getting to see.
50:00
I mean, my, even my little water jug, people don't see it because
50:02
the camera cuts away. But I mean, I have a liquid
50:03
death water jug. So even when I'm not drinking a
50:06
can of liquid death, I've got my liquid death water jug.
50:08
And so, but it's, it's branded water or my Dutch brothers cup
50:12
that I'm lifting up every couple minutes.
50:14
And so it's funny because even for myself as somebody in the
50:18
industry, and we work more on the design side than the
50:20
marketing side. But I mean, a big part of our
50:21
design is living up to marketing strategy.
50:25
So even given my relationship to that stuff, I hadn't viewed even
50:31
those decisions as being marketing choices on my end.
50:33
So it's, I think that's a good way of looking at things or
50:37
another, you know, a new lens to look through for maybe a small
50:40
business owner or somebody who just wants to think about the
50:42
way they're putting themselves out in the.
50:44
You know, I think when it comes to it's unfortunate really is
50:47
because, you know, every company in the world is.
50:51
And I don't care whether it's a nonprofit government, it's all
50:54
founded on marketing. You are providing some value to
50:57
somebody who's offering you either their loyalty or their
51:00
money. I mean, they're following you by
51:03
way of you're persuasive and they're voting for whatever it
51:06
is. So every company in the world
51:08
does marketing, but marketing is really one of the most amorphous
51:11
and least treated areas of a business.
51:14
You know? I mean, you know, operationally,
51:15
maybe there's Six Sigma or there's, you know,
51:18
certifications, you know, and all this other stuff, right?
51:21
Financially, there's audits and there's, you know, optimization
51:25
models, blah, blah, blah, blah. When it comes to marketing, it's
51:27
very, very difficult for a small business owner to say, OK, you
51:31
know, there's lots of books on it.
51:32
I mean, you know, we talked about Seth Godin, you know, and
51:34
Simon Sinek and I absolutely love, you know, the Y factor,
51:37
and that's actually in the book too.
51:39
But when it comes to like positioning, analysis, the
51:41
important stuff, you know, and marketing strategy, T cheater
51:43
tools and the art of storytelling, because so many
51:45
people don't even know how to talk about the product or
51:47
service of their business or the brand, you know, And so, you
51:50
know, we we pulled together the best of our learning over the
51:53
years and put it into that book, you know, and so really in that
51:57
book, and I'm not trying to sell the damn book.
51:58
You can get it for free, you know, and I think Raptors dot
52:02
biz okay, so you know you can download at least a good many of
52:05
the chapters go do it. But when it comes to taking a
52:09
young management team, and they come from other disciplines and
52:13
unfortunately, you know, who tends to be the marketing
52:15
manager? Some glorified graphic designer,
52:19
dude, you know it. OK.
52:20
And you know, and oh, you do great design, or you can do some
52:23
website and some design or maybe you see, we call them unicorns,
52:26
but they're not strategic thinkers.
52:27
They're not going to get in the in in management space.
52:30
You know, they're not going to say, look, we are leaving money
52:33
on the table because we need to augment our our product or we
52:35
need to do things differently around here.
52:37
You know, they're not going to be that kind of voice.
52:39
And so, you know, yeah, throw a book, which is really a road map
52:43
to get a Moat. You know, when we talk about
52:45
that, you know, get a Moat in your business and to me, take
52:48
three to five years. It wouldn't be nice to actually
52:50
have. Here's our road map in our
52:52
marketing to execute over the next three to five years.
52:55
And we're going to be winning incrementally.
52:57
And by the end of that period of time, there's a Moat.
53:00
Get a Moat, Yeah. And I think.
53:03
It's a good point, right? I mean, to sort of use this
53:07
metaphor, I mean, eventually you have to dig the Moat.
53:09
Somebody's gotta dig this Moat, right?
53:10
You don't just often find a place where you've got a Moat, I
53:14
mean, unless you have island access or something.
53:16
So you're in a position where you've got to dig your Moat.
53:19
So it makes sense that even if you have started a company and
53:22
maybe just by virtue of your product, you've got a a Moat
53:25
just naturally. But for a lot of businesses,
53:27
they don't, you know, a lot of people start businesses based on
53:30
a skill they pick up or a, you know, something they like to do
53:33
or whatever. And a lot of people may like to
53:34
do those things. So it is really difficult to
53:36
differentiate. And so if you've got to build a
53:38
Moat, you know, purposeful thought about that is, is
53:41
critical. And I think, you know, maybe a
53:43
book like yours can help, you know, elaborate on some of that
53:45
stuff for people because I think, you know, even if I mean,
53:48
you know, we were talking about the four PS earlier, But I mean,
53:50
really just this positioning, one can do so much for you in
53:54
terms of, you know, building your mode, helping you resolve a
53:58
strategy, you know, even all the way down to your pricing.
54:00
And things like that can really sort of be devised by
54:04
positioning and by knowing who you actually are.
54:06
And you said it just moments ago, but you know, the the
54:08
reality is a lot of small business owners don't even
54:11
really know who they are. They don't know what they do or
54:13
who they do it for. They started a business because
54:16
they like a thing or they build a widget because they had access
54:18
to a buddy in China or whatever. And they don't even really think
54:22
about who they are or what they. And so I think, you know, either
54:25
through tools like yours, through through this book or
54:27
maybe through this podcast, people get the spark to go.
54:31
You know what? I just need to take a few
54:32
minutes and be introspective. And to Mike's point earlier
54:35
about sort of the social media environment in the world we're
54:37
living in, I think it is harder to convince ourselves to take
54:41
the time for ourselves to to do these kinds of exercises because
54:44
I think a lot of us feel like we're busy and we need to just
54:46
keep moving. But I think that there's some
54:48
real value in stopping and thinking and doing and then
54:52
getting back to work. Ryan, I think you're looking,
54:54
you know, wow, that's fascinating.
54:56
You're hitting on something really important.
54:58
God, God bless it all. You know, at the same time that
55:00
I'm saying, oh, we need to create all this content because
55:02
of course, the decision making model and all that.
55:04
So we're trained as people now to just jump from the next piece
55:08
of content to the next piece of content to always have content
55:12
flooded, you know, and what you're saying is so true.
55:15
And I, I, I like to communicate that as well, which is stop,
55:18
don't just put the whatever you're reading down and go on to
55:21
the next piece of content, Dissect it.
55:24
Maybe don't just sit on it for the next year.
55:28
I'll never forget, you know, when I read 7 Habits of Highly
55:31
Effective People, it took me a year to read that book.
55:34
I was riding the Staten Island Ferry.
55:36
It's 1990, I'm in New York City and I outlined the entire book.
55:40
It took me a year, You know, I did an outline while reading the
55:43
book and and processed the entire thing.
55:45
I mean, who does that anymore, you know?
55:48
Yeah, no, it's true. It really is.
55:50
So here in our closing minutes, do you want to just take a quick
55:53
minute, let people know how they can track you down?
55:54
Maybe if they'd like to find a copy of your book they could do
55:56
that or chase down your company there in Wichita.
56:00
Well, I appreciate that you know the great marketing line 6
56:03
truths for Biz owners and C sweaters is available on Amazon
56:06
and audible. You know, you can communicate
56:08
with me through rappers dot biz rappers Rapper USA is a
56:12
marketing strategic marketing consultancy and, and through
56:17
those means, you can also, if you need marketing execution,
56:20
RSM marketing in Kansas City, in Wichita.
56:23
We, we do that for hundreds of clients across the nation.
56:26
And I just need to say something, which is, you know,
56:28
when we started our firm 14 years ago, we were just a
56:30
Wichita ad agency. And really we're talking about
56:33
scaling, right? And the strategies that make
56:35
that happen. And that's really what we've
56:37
been talking about. It's all about scaling.
56:39
You want to run a small lifestyle business, that's fine.
56:42
But if you're dissatisfied and want to get from A to ZK to L or
56:45
whatever it is, then you need to scale that word or scale.
56:49
How do you do that? That's what we're talking about
56:52
here. And if we can help.
56:54
I'll have a free conversation with anybody because honestly,
56:57
this is all about American entrepreneurialism and we can't
57:00
have enough of it. It's, it's, it's what propels
57:02
our country and it's, it's, it's religion to me, right, Not
57:06
capitalism, but helping business owners be successful.
57:09
Because I'll tell you what, I got a mortgage in my home, do my
57:12
tied to my, my business. And I know a lot of others do
57:15
and keep our homes, grow our business, our employees and make
57:19
our communities great. I like it.
57:21
Speaking like a true Marine. I like it.
57:22
So cool. All right, Mike, well, thank you
57:24
so much for taking the time to visit with us today.
57:26
It's been awesome. Thank you so much.
57:29
Appreciate that. Absolutely.
57:30
And thanks so much to everybody who tunes in the show this week
57:32
and every week. See you guys next time.