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Why Some Entrepreneurs Keep Growing While Others Stall

Thu, 21 May 2026 22:22:13 +0300

Why Some Entrepreneurs Keep Growing While Others Stall written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch the Full Episode:

Overview

Most business owners are not failing because they lack ambition. They are failing because the daily practices that drive performance quietly erode under pressure, and nobody notices until the stall is already underway. In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, John Jantsch sits down with Jon Gordon, bestselling author of The Energy Bus and his latest release, The Power of Positive Habits, to talk about the micro-practices that separate leaders who keep growing from those who plateau.

Jon has spent two decades working with organizations including the LA Dodgers, Miami Heat, Clemson football, Southwest Airlines, and Dell. His work is grounded in a simple premise: habits are not just personal development tools. They are leadership infrastructure. Without them, you cannot show up consistently for your team, your clients, or your business.

This episode is for entrepreneurs and small business owners who feel like they are already working as hard as they can and still losing ground. Jon walks through specific, actionable habits around mindset, leadership, health, and relationships, and explains why simplicity and practicality are the only things that make habits stick long-term.

Guest Bio

Jon Gordon is a bestselling author of more than 30 books, including The Energy Bus, which has sold over 4 million copies worldwide. He is a sought-after keynote speaker and consultant whose clients include professional sports franchises, Fortune 500 companies, and leadership teams across industries. His work focuses on how positive habits, energy, and mindset drive individual and organizational performance. His latest book, The Power of Positive Habits, compiles 93 proven practices into a practical framework leaders can start using immediately.

Key Takeaways

Habits are not just personal development. They are leadership tools. If you are not showing up with the right energy and mindset, your team cannot perform at their best.
The thank you walk, taking a morning walk while practicing gratitude, floods the brain with positive emotions that build resilience over time. It is one of the highest-leverage single habits in the book.
Connect before you correct. Building genuine relationships with your team is not a soft skill. It is the prerequisite to feedback that actually lands and performance that actually improves.
Do not try to build 93 habits at once. Start with one. Master it. Then add a second. The compounding effect of three solid habits will outpace the chaos of chasing all of them simultaneously.
Good habits are the first thing to go during stressful times, but they are exactly what you need most when things get hard. Your habits are your foundation, not a reward for when things calm down.
Positive thinking is not about ignoring reality. It is about maintaining the belief and optimism necessary to navigate challenges and find a path forward. Pessimists do not build businesses.
Most plateaus are caused by a leadership gap or an unresolved wound that is quietly constraining growth. Identifying and working through it is how leaders move to the next level.
Mastering the morning, reading, thinking, and doing something positive before the day begins, creates a success anchor. You start the day already winning, which makes you more resilient when the punches come.
Principles inform, practices transform. Knowing what you should do is not enough. The habits you actually put into practice are the only thing that changes your life.
Jon Gordon was not naturally positive. His habits are the result of deliberate, consistent work over 20 years, not personality. That means these habits are available to anyone willing to practice them.

Great Moments (Timestamps)

[00:01] — John’s opening frame: the owners losing ground without knowing it, and why habits are the hidden culprit

[01:17] — Why Jon wrote this book for leaders specifically, and what makes it different from other habit books

[02:18] — The comparison to Atomic Habits: what ChatGPT said, and why it is worth hearing

[03:26] — The thank you walk explained, and the research behind why gratitude in the morning changes your brain chemistry

[04:43] — How these habits apply to small business owners and entrepreneurs, not just corporate teams

[06:42] — The one thing that makes habits stick long-term, and why complexity is the enemy

[09:07] — What happens when someone tries to do all 93 habits, and what Jon recommends instead

[12:23] — The honest answer to “can you be positive and still face hard realities?” Jon’s response is worth the whole episode

[14:22] — Why plateaus happen, what is really holding people back, and how to move through it

[17:16] — Jon’s personal story: how a failing marriage and a naturally negative mindset led him to build the habits he now teaches

Memorable Quotes

“Principles inform, practices transform. It’s going to be the practices that transform you.” — Jon Gordon

“Being positive doesn’t mean you ignore reality. It means you maintain optimism, belief, and faith in order to create a better reality.” — Jon Gordon

“If you grow your capacity for leadership, you will become greater than your problems.” — Jon Gordon

“Good habits go out the window during stressful times, and they actually need to be our foundation during those stressful times so we stay strong in the storm.” — Jon Gordon

“I’m not naturally positive. And so I have all these positive mindset tips in the book because thinking is a habit.” — Jon Gordon

How I Set Myself Free | Keke Palmer | TED

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“I taught rats to drive cars, but they taught me to enjoy the ride” #TEDTalks

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How to Know When Your Business Is Ready to Scale

Wed, 20 May 2026 22:03:21 +0300

How to Know When Your Business Is Ready to Scale written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch the Full Episode

Overview

Scaling too fast kills companies. So does scaling too slow. But most business owners never stop to ask whether they have actually earned the right to scale at all. In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, John Jantsch sits down with Mark Roberge, co-founder of Stage 2 Capital, founding CRO of HubSpot, and author of The Science of Scaling, to unpack one of the most misunderstood decisions in business growth.

Mark helped take HubSpot from zero to IPO, then spent years at Harvard Business School teaching founders why so many fast-growing companies implode. His framework asks a different question: instead of “how fast can we grow,” ask “have we proven we deserve to grow?” The answer requires evidence, not instinct, and not pressure from investors.

This episode is for small business owners, agency owners, and entrepreneurs who are thinking about adding headcount, launching new channels, or entering a new stage of growth. If you want to scale without destroying what you built, this conversation is your roadmap.

Guest Bio

Mark Roberge is the co-founder of Stage 2 Capital and the founding Chief Revenue Officer at HubSpot, where he grew the company from zero to IPO. He later joined Harvard Business School as a senior lecturer, teaching founders and operators how to scale with discipline. He is the author of The Sales Acceleration Formula and The Science of Scaling, and has spent the past decade as an investor, board member, and advisor helping companies navigate the gap between early traction and sustainable growth.

Key Takeaways

Product-market fit is not a revenue number. It is a retention metric. If customers are not staying and using your product, you do not have it yet, regardless of how many you have signed.
Go-to-market fit is the second gate before scaling. It is measured by unit economics, specifically whether you can acquire and serve customers profitably.
Scaling revenue too fast is a structural problem, not a motivation problem. Hiring 27 reps when you only have one requires 270 qualified interview screens, management infrastructure, and demand generation that most companies simply do not have.
Build a monthly hiring pace instead of a January 2nd headcount dump. Steady, intentional growth gives you time to build the systems that support each new hire.
The CRM funnel should not end at closed-won. Retention, engagement, and expansion are stages, not afterthoughts. The Marketing Hourglass is the right model.
Leading indicators of retention can be defined simply. Slack tracked whether 80% of customers sent 2,000 team messages per month. You do not need a data science team to build a version of this for your business.
A feature is not a moat. If a competitor can replicate your advantage in six months, it is not long-term defensibility. Founders need a vision for what makes them unbeatable over time.
The ability to up-level the executive team around you as the company grows is one of the strongest predictors of a successful exit. It is also one of the hardest skills to develop.
Sometimes the business outgrows the founder. The COO or president model is not failure. It is graduation. The reframe: someone else does the work you hate so you can focus on the work you love.
AI is accelerating faster than society can adapt. Mark is donating book proceeds to McLean Hospital for mental health research, because the people building this technology have a responsibility to help manage its consequences.

Great Moments (Timestamps)

[00:02] — The opening question that reframes every growth decision: are you betting on a business that is not prepared to win?

[04:04] — Mark defines what it actually means to earn the right to scale, and why most founders get this wrong from the start

[06:25] — The two-step framework: product-market fit and go-to-market fit explained clearly

[09:51] — Half scale too fast, half too slow. Mark explains the Groupon and WeWork examples as two failure modes

[11:40] — How to measure product-market fit without a data science team, using Slack and HubSpot as real examples

[13:29] — John and Mark align on why retention and advocacy belong inside the customer journey, not outside it

[16:31] — Why a feature is not a moat, and what long-term defensibility actually requires

[17:43] — The London School of Economics study on what predicts a strong startup exit (the answer will surprise most founders)

[20:33] — The mental health connection: Mark shares why he is donating proceeds to McLean Hospital and what the AI era demands of technologists

Memorable Quotes

“The decision on when to scale is usually when someone hands you a fat check, which doesn’t sound that strategic.” — Mark Roberge

“Do not let the dashboards and sales funnels in your CRM end at closed-won. That is literally step four of seven.” — Mark Roberge

“A feature is not long-term defensibility. If your competitor can build it in six months, you don’t have a moat.” — Mark Roberge

“We’re basically offering to pay for someone to do all the work you hate so you can do the work you love.” — Mark Roberge on helping founders let go

“We as technicians need to diversify our efforts away from just building and profiting toward helping society adapt to this new world.” — Mark Roberge

Duct Tape Transcript

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John Jantsch (00:02.19)

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

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

Mark Roberge (00:53.259)

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

John Jantsch (00:59.105)

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

Mark Roberge (01:04.916)

Yeah.

Mark Roberge (01:11.393)

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

John Jantsch (01:21.271)

Ha ha ha!

John Jantsch (01:27.438)

You

John Jantsch (01:35.288)

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

Mark Roberge (01:37.365)

Hahaha

Mark Roberge (01:54.207)

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

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

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

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

And here we have it.

John Jantsch (03:47.128)

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

Mark Roberge (04:04.286)

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

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

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

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

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

John Jantsch (06:00.866)

Yes.

Mark Roberge (06:25.372)

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

John Jantsch (06:29.506)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (06:46.018)

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

Mark Roberge (06:59.21)

Sure. Sure.

Mark Roberge (07:07.528)

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

John Jantsch (07:15.094)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (07:21.92)

Okay.

Mark Roberge (07:37.513)

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

Big pothole that people make there is even

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The Amazon founder and owner of The Washington Post also rejected the idea that he has made changes at his companies to gain favor with the president.

Before You Touch Your Marketing, Do This First

Wed, 20 May 2026 19:26:46 +0300

Before You Touch Your Marketing, Do This First written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Most founders come to a marketing conversation with a tactic already in mind.

Better website. More leads. A LinkedIn strategy. Maybe an AI tool that’ll finally make content easy. The tactic changes. The assumption underneath it doesn’t: the marketing needs to change.

After 20 years doing this work with small businesses, here’s what I’ve actually seen. The marketing is rarely the first thing that needs to change. The founder’s clarity is.

Not because anything is wrong with the founder. Most of the founders who ask for marketing help are working hard and carrying a lot. The problem isn’t effort. It’s that they’ve lost the ability to see their own business clearly.

Why that happens

Five years in. Ten years in. You’ve absorbed a hundred opinions about what your business should be, and somewhere along the way you drifted from what it actually is.

You’re making decisions based on the business you remember, or the one you wish you had. Every new strategy you install inherits that confusion.

I watched a founder last year build out a full content strategy, hire a new agency, and rewrite their website. Same results they’d been getting for 3 years. The strategy was fine. The clarity underneath it wasn’t there.

The Founder Portrait: 4 questions most founders avoid

Before you touch strategy, before you change anything about your marketing, do this. One hour. A blank page. Four questions.

What’s actually working right now, and how do I know?

Not what you’re doing. What’s working. There’s a difference, and most founders can’t answer it with specifics.

“Working” has a real definition: it produces revenue, a measurable input to revenue, or it reduces what you’re spending to acquire revenue. Everything else is activity. If you can’t name what’s working and point to the evidence, that’s a starting point.

What am I doing out of habit, guilt, or optimism that I should stop?

Every business carries weight it doesn’t need. A service line that never quite worked. A customer segment that costs more than it pays. A channel somebody told you to be on 3 years ago.

The honest answer is almost always 3 to 5 specific things. Naming them is the hard part. Stopping them is what creates room for real growth.

Where is my business actually making money, and where am I pretending it does?

This one requires looking at revenue by segment, by service, by customer, with gross margin attached. Most founders have a story about their business that’s drifted from the numbers. The numbers don’t drift.

I’ve seen this pattern enough times that I look for it now. The founder thinks they run a 3-service-line firm. The numbers say they run a single-service-line firm with 2 expensive hobbies attached.

Who am I as a founder, and what do I want this business to give me?

This is the question most marketing work completely skips. Growth is one possible goal. Some founders want a business that supports a specific life. Some want an exit. And those are different businesses with entirely different marketing systems.

If you don’t know which one you’re building, no strategy can serve you. It’ll always optimize toward the wrong target.

What the Founder Portrait actually does

These 4 questions together produce what I call the Founder Portrait. It’s not a document you share or hand off. It’s the ground you stand on when you do the strategic work that comes next.

Without it, every downstream decision is made from an unstable position. The messaging, the ideal client definition, the channels, the campaigns: all of it inherits whatever you were confused about when you built it.

You can only build a system on what you actually know. The Founder Portrait is how you find out.

One thing to do this week

Sit down for one hour with a blank page and answer the 4 questions. No team. No advisors. No AI. Just you and the page.

Don’t try to turn the answers into a plan yet. The work this week is to see the business clearly. Everything else comes after that.

The Founder Portrait is the starting point. The rest of the system is what comes next. I’ve put the complete framework in a new ebook: “7 Steps to Small Business Marketing Success.” It covers everything from defining your ideal client to building a referral engine that actually runs. Grab it at dtm.world/7steps.

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Why the Smartest Leader Usually Fails

Thu, 14 May 2026 22:17:31 +0300

Why the Smartest Leader Usually Fails written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch the full episode:

Overview

Most companies hit a ceiling not because of strategy or market conditions, but because the leader is still trying to be the smartest person in the room. In this episode, John Jantsch sits down with Jason Wild, executive advisor and co-author of Genius at Scale, published by HBR Press, to make the case that the lone genius model of leadership is not just outdated. It is actively holding companies back.

Jason spent more than 20 years in senior roles at Microsoft, IBM, and Salesforce, leading projects across 40 countries. He watched brilliant people pour their careers into innovation efforts that succeeded at rates of five to fifteen percent, not because the ideas were bad, but because the conditions around those ideas were never built to support them. Genius at Scale is his answer to that problem.

This episode covers the shift from pathfinding to wayfinding, the three leadership roles that drive repeatable innovation, why most good ideas die in integration rather than ideation, and what small business owners can do right now to build a team that does not need them to be the source of every good idea.

About Jason Wild

Jason Wild is an executive advisor, co-founder of Wild Innovation Consulting, and co-author of Genius at Scale: How Great Leaders Drive Innovation, published by HBR Press. He spent more than two decades in senior leadership roles at IBM, Microsoft, and Salesforce and has led projects in 40 countries. Earlier in his career he had television and film credits, including a co-starring role opposite Mr. T in a CBS movie. Learn more at geniusatscale.com.

Key Takeaways

Stop hiring for the A player. Build the A team. The distinction sounds small but it changes everything about how you lead, hire, and structure work.
Innovation is a social process. You cannot mandate it. You have to create the conditions where people feel safe enough and inspired enough to want to co-create the future with you.
Most innovation stalls at integration, not ideation. Good ideas are not the bottleneck. Getting them through the seams between people, systems, and teams is where everything falls apart.
Language shapes culture more than most leaders realize. The Pfizer VP who banned the word change and replaced it with evolve saw an immediate shift in how his skeptical team responded to new initiatives.
The most dangerous place to make decisions is your office. Getting out and experiencing what your customers actually experience is not a nice-to-have. It is a leadership practice.
Celebrating individual achievement sends the wrong signal. If you want collaboration to be the norm, recognize teams, not heroes.
Wayfinding is replacing pathfinding. In a world changing this fast, the job of a leader is not to set a fixed destination and remove barriers. It is to figure out where you are going while you are already moving.
Self-awareness is an underrated leadership skill. How you make people feel when you give feedback shapes whether they will ever bring you their best thinking again.
Small business owners are better positioned for this than they think. Smaller teams, less bureaucracy, and closer proximity to customers are advantages in building cultures of repeatable innovation.

Timestamps

[00:02] Opening hook: the reason your company hits a ceiling might have nothing to do with strategy.

[00:53] Jason’s first career in Hollywood and co-starring with Mr. T in a CBS movie of the week.

[01:44] The core premise: why the lone genius model of leadership fails and what replaces it.

[03:33] What Jason saw at IBM that shaped his thinking about why smart people accept such low innovation success rates.

[06:37] Why small business founders are wired to be the genius in the room and why that eventually becomes the ceiling.

[07:19] The ABC framework: architect, bridger, and catalyst unpacked.

[10:07] Why the architect role is really about culture and psychological safety.

[11:03] The bridger as the unsung hero of innovation and why Death Valley is where most good ideas go to die.

[13:04] The role outside consultants and third parties play in bridging across boundaries.

[14:03] What catalysts do differently and how movements start with people and ideas, not companies.

[16:35] The Pfizer story: how banning the word change helped get a vaccine out in 266 days instead of eight to ten years.

[18:25] What we typically celebrate about leadership that the research says is actually wrong.

[20:31] How writing the book as a collaborative team proved its own thesis.

Memorable Quotes

“Stop trying to hire the A player. Focus on building the A team. It sounds subtle but it is a fundamentally different way to lead.”

“Innovation is not about coming up with the best idea. The organizations that innovate time and time again focus on the conditions and the environment around the idea.”

“Most innovation stalls not at the ideation phase but the integration phase. That is where good ideas go off to die.”

“Self-awareness is one of the most undervalued skills in leadership. How you make people feel when you give them feedback determines whether they will ever bring you their real thinking.”

“If the billionaire founder can make time to stand in line at a bank branch, everyone else can practice empathy too.”

Learn more at geniusatscale.com.

Duct Tape Transcript

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John Jantsch (00:02.083)

So what if the reason your company hits a ceiling has nothing to do with strategy, funding or market conditions and everything to do with who you think the genius in the room is supposed to be? Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Jason Wilde. He's an executive advisor and co-author of a book we're going to talk about today, Genius at Scale, How Great Leaders Drive Innovation. was published by HBR Press.

Jason spent more than 20 years in senior roles at Microsoft, IBM, and Salesforce and led projects in 40 countries and co-founded Wild Innovation Consulting. And this wasn't in your bio, I don't think, but I found you had some television credits, movie credits. So can we start there?

Jason Wild (00:53.47)

We can start wherever you want, John. It's great to on your show, yes. My first career was Hollywood. My mom was the classic stage actor, stage mom, trying to get me and my brother to be famous. So yes, believe it or not.

John Jantsch (01:09.562)

That's awesome. So you started with Mr. T in something? Is that one I found maybe? Was he? Yeah.

Jason Wild (01:16.238)

I did. did. It's, yeah, going back to the eighties, but at the peak of his his fame in the 18, I did co-starred a movie was the CBS movie of week called The Toughest Man in the World that you can find on Amazon or YouTube. I think actually a few years ago, I found a YouTube clip where whoever uploaded the clips said it was the worst fight scene in Hollywood history. And I agree.

John Jantsch (01:43.081)

Well, you have that permanent record for you. All right, so let's dive into the book. The core idea is that the idea of the genius at the top, the boss, is really now out of date and what's needed now is genius at scale. Can you make that concrete really for a business owner, say, running a team of 10, 20 people?

Jason Wild (02:08.046)

Yeah, absolutely. this is a book that when my co-author invited me to write the book almost 10 years ago, I kind of thought it would be the book writing version of the Gilligan's Island, right? It'd be maybe a two, three year tour. And here we are, believe it or not, almost 10 years later and thousands and thousands of hours and worth every minute. So basic premise was I was not interested. I'm a practitioner. You know, I've been leading projects in teams.

trying to do meaningful work around technology, digital transformation, cultures of innovation around the world with large companies as well as startups. honestly, at this point in my career, John, I was not interested in just writing a book to write a book. But I was really lucky to start my career at IBM when Lou Gerstner was still CEO there and got to interact with Lou a little bit and

And it was a really important moment, I think, for me at that part of my career, because IBM was very client focused, very customer centric. And that was ingrained deeply in my brain. I was surrounded literally by geniuses. I was there when IBM did Watson on Jeopardy. I got to know the guy who invented the relational database, eventually a small company called Oracle monetized and created a nice little business around.

John Jantsch (03:30.042)

You

Jason Wild (03:33.711)

You know, as I was working on these projects, long story short, I was seeing these incredibly talented people literally pour their life into these projects or whatever it is they were working on, but accepting very low success rates, 5%, 10%, 15%. And, you know, I bought into the same notion that innovation was all about coming up with the best idea, that it was about the lone genius.

John Jantsch (03:58.329)

you

Jason Wild (04:01.672)

I'm the person with the biggest title and power. But over time, I became really curious about what really did set out in a small company or a big company. You why did some ideas, you know, go far enough along to actually change the way that we live or work or change the system? And others didn't. And it kind of became a little bit of my career and life passion. And I saw so many of these people that I really looked up to just approaching it kind of the wrong way.

falling in love with the ideas, focusing on the world of innovation. And maybe they get lucky or there's some heroic result, but the real organizations or teams that were great at innovating time and time again, were the ones that really focused more on the conditions and the environment around them. And so, we started talking about Mr. T, it took me 40 years for my life to come full circle away.

But, know, genius at scale in some ways is meant to kind of put down this notion of, you know, senior leaders stop looking to hire that A-Team player and instead focus on building an A-Team. And I think it sounds very small and subtle, but it's a big part of the difference. And then when I looked at it, there are lots of books on innovation, of course, and lots of books on leadership, but there are no books about how do you actually lead innovation.

John Jantsch (05:25.433)

Yes.

Jason Wild (05:25.486)

which to me was really really fascinating because it's one of those words or topics that lots of people lean forward, they're interested, they're curious, but there was a lot more opinions than actual science around how do you actually create those conditions as a leader for people to be willing and able to want to innovate. In my co-author's last book that was published about 12 years ago, focused a lot on companies like Pixar and eBay.

right, super creative, know, digital native companies where innovating is not easy, but it's certainly easier than being, you know, a mom and pop small company, right, or a legacy company that, you know, was founded 80 years ago. So in Geniuses Scale, the book that we wrote, we, you know, we focused on companies in regulated environments, healthcare, banking, you know, as well as startups, startups in Africa and Japan to really shine a light on, you know,

Everyone's context is different, but really the role of leaders is to create the environment where innovation organically thrives as a result of the community versus constantly trying to chase the next shiny object.

John Jantsch (06:37.322)

So, a lot of my listeners are small business owners, mid-size business owners, founders. And I think the very nature of that is like, I created this thing, I'm the genius, it starts there. And so then I'm going to build a team and everybody looks to me to continue to say, what's next? And you really introduce the evolution, I guess, that that leader needs to go through and even some roles that they need to take on. You're ABC, you've got a good, like all consultants, you have a...

a good framework there for architect, bridger, and catalyst. Walk me through a little bit of what those roles are and maybe the challenges for lot of business owners to step into those roles.

Jason Wild (07:19.446)

Yeah, no, absolutely. I think, you know, for small businesses, you know, even large businesses these days, you know, doing business in the past was, don't think it was ever easy, but it was, it was, it was easier. And, you know, and literally the world is shifting two or three feet underneath our feet, you know, every single week. So there's so much to keep up with and

Yeah, you know, so legacy leadership was, you know, some would call kind of pathfinding to your point, whether you're, you know, the owner of a small business or a 4,200, 500 company, right? And that legacy kind of leadership is change management, setting the direction, right? Articulating the vision, hopefully very, very clearly, and then convincing as many people as quickly as possible to get in the car and follow you to that, to that destination. And maybe that was okay, right? When you had the luxury of time.

But the world is changing really quickly and you could argue that it's never going to be as slow as it is right now. It's only going to accelerate. So part of what the book is about is this what we're calling wayfinding. If classic leadership was pathfinding, setting that direction and tr

Yes, Winnie the Moo is in this TED Talk #TEDTalks @mayahiga

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What Really Won the Trillion-Dollar Supreme Court Case | Neal Kumar Katyal | TED

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Conservative Influencers Tap a Nonprofit to Pay for Their Security

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A charity is raising money to provide security, arguing that protecting some of right-wing media’s biggest stars is a public good.

The 5 Stages From Operator to Owner

Wed, 13 May 2026 18:05:09 +0300

The 5 Stages From Operator to Owner written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch the Full Episode:

Overview

Most agency founders think becoming CEO is the finish line. Jason Swenk says it is actually one of the traps. In this episode, John Jantsch sits down with Jason Swenk, founder of Agency Mastery and author of Operator to Owner, to walk through the five stages every agency founder has to climb and why so many get stuck long before they reach the top.

Jason built and sold his own digital agency after working with brands like AT&T, Hitachi, and LegalZoom. Now he works with seven and eight figure agency founders who are still doing too much, holding on too long, and wondering why the business cannot run without them. The conversation covers the identity shift required at each stage, why founders are usually the worst managers, and what it actually looks like when you finally get out of your own way.

This one is for agency owners and consultants who know the business depends on them too much and are ready to do something about it.

About Jason Swenk

Jason Swenk is the founder of Agency Mastery and host of the Smart Agency Masterclass Podcast. He built his own digital agency from scratch, working with clients including AT&T, Hitachi, and LegalZoom, before selling it. He now advises seven and eight figure agency founders on building businesses that run without them. His book, Operator to Owner, maps the five stages every agency founder must navigate to build a business they actually own. Find the book and a free diagnostic at operator2ownerrevolution.com.

Key Takeaways

Being the CEO is not the finish line. Most founders mistake the operator or manager stage for success and never push through to genuine ownership.
The agency owning you is a choice you keep making. You started a business to escape the nine to five and accidentally created a 24 by seven. Getting out requires an intentional identity shift, not just better systems.
Founders are usually terrible managers. Hiring people without systems, clarity, or defined outcomes is why you end up doing their work on top of your own.
The bottleneck is almost always the founder. Until you build decision-making layers that let your team act without coming to you, you are the ceiling on your own growth.
You held on to sales too long. Almost every agency founder does. And competing with your own sales team for leads is not a strategy.
Do not hire a salesperson before you have a system. Giving someone a quota with no context, no stories, and no process is like prompting an AI with no instructions.
You do not have to reach owner level. Architect is a legitimate destination. Know what stage you want to reach and build toward that intentionally.
Picking a niche takes time and that is fine. Treat it like a Vegas buffet. Try things, notice what works, and ask yourself who you would serve on a performance-only basis.
AI adds work before it removes it. If you do not build decision systems and layers first, AI will amplify your bottleneck, not eliminate it.

Timestamps

[00:01] Opening hook: being CEO of your agency might be the trap you mistook for the finish line.

[00:40] The moment Jason’s wife told him to shut the agency down and get a job, and the two questions from a NASCAR interview that changed everything.

[02:25] The five stages: operator, manager, architect, CEO, and owner, and why most founders stall in the first two.

[04:24] The rubber band effect: why founders sabotage their own teams to feel important again.

[06:20] What the agency actually needs from you at each stage changes. Most founders never update their job description.

[08:29] Why hiring a salesperson never works until you have systems and stories behind them.

[11:34] Throwing your team into the deep end without floaties, and why fender benders are acceptable but train wrecks are not.

[13:34] The E-Myth reference and why most agency owners start a business to be free and end up less free than before.

[14:08] The niche question: why forcing a niche too early backfires and how to find the right one over time.

[16:11] What a true owner’s week actually looks like day to day.

[17:52] The one thing Jason held on to too long and what finally changed when he let it go.

[19:46] One move agency owners can make in the next 30 days based on which stage they are in right now.

Memorable Quotes

“We start an agency to leave the nine to five and end up starting a 24 by seven. It does not make any sense.”

“It is not about who you need to hire. It is about who you need to become.”

“If you are not evolving, you are not doing anything. Especially now, more than ever.”

“I held on to sales too long. I was even competing with my own sales team, which is completely unfair.”

“If you had to be paid on performance only, who would you do it for and what would you do for them? That is how you find your niche.”

Get the book and take the free stage diagnostic at operator2ownerrevolution.com.

Conan O’Brien Will Return as Oscars Host

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Joni Lamb, Whose Christian TV Station Went Global, Dies at 65

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YouTube Plays Matchmaker for Sponsors and Stars

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The company is trying to help streaming influencers, who are increasingly being wooed by competitors like Netflix and TikTok.

Watching ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ as an Elegy for Magazines

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A future living with robots isn’t science fiction — it’s practical, messy and already here #TEDTalks

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When Referrals Stop, Do This Before Touching a Single Marketing Tactic

Thu, 07 May 2026 17:13:44 +0300

When Referrals Stop, Do This Before Touching a Single Marketing Tactic written by Shawna Salinger read more at Duct Tape Marketing

When Referrals Dry Up: What Small Businesses Should Do Before Touching a Single Marketing Tactic

Featuring insights from Sara Nay, CEO of Duct Tape Marketing

It starts with a sick feeling.

You built your business on referrals. Good work led to good word of mouth and for years, that was enough. Then you look up and realise it has been months since a new one came in. When referrals dry up for a small business, there is often nothing else in place. No ads. No content strategy. No real pipeline. Just the hope the phone will ring.

Sara Nay, CEO of Duct Tape Marketing, knows this scenario well. She sees it constantly across the small businesses she works with. And she has a direct message for anyone in that position: the answer is not to start running ads next week.

The answer is to build a strategy first.

Sara Nay’s segment begins at 13:04. Full episode on Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Edge.

Why referrals dry up and what most small businesses do wrong next

Growing through referrals is actually a good sign. It means clients like you, trust your work, and talk about you. Sara is the first to say so.

“It’s great that you’ve been able to grow based on referrals,” she says. “That shows that you provide a good service and clients are happy. That’s checkbox one.”

But referrals are not a marketing strategy. They are a single, uncontrollable channel. When they slow down, businesses with nothing else in place have nothing to fall back on.

The instinct when referrals dry up is to grab the nearest tactic. Run some paid ads. Start posting on LinkedIn. Hire someone to do SEO. Sara says that instinct is understandable but almost always wrong.

“Instead of just going okay, we’re now going to do paid ads,” she explains, “it’s taking a step back and saying: who are our clients? Where do they hang out online? How do they make buying decisions? What keeps them up at night?”

Channel selection follows strategy. It does not precede it.

The two things you need before you pick any channel

Sara is clear about what has to come before any channel decision. Two things.

First, a real picture of your ideal client. Not just their job title. Where do they spend time online? How do they make buying decisions? What keeps them up at night? What problems are they trying to solve?

Second, messaging that gives people a reason to care, not just a list of what you sell.

“You really need to understand those two things first before you can decide what channel or how you’re going to approach the channel moving forward,” Sara says.

This is the foundation of what Duct Tape Marketing calls Strategy First. It is a structured 30-day process that produces a complete marketing strategy before any tactics start. Duct Tape Marketing has built their client work on it for over 30 years, and Sara argues it is more important now than ever. The current positioning at DTM says it plainly: strategy before technology.

Technology, AI tools, platforms, none of them become valuable until a clear strategic direction is in place. The tools should follow the strategy, not the other way around.

Map the customer journey before you map the tactics

Once you know who you are serving and what to say to them, the next step is understanding how people move through a relationship with your business.

Duct Tape Marketing uses the Marketing Hourglass. It is a customer journey model John Jantsch first laid out in his book Duct Tape Marketing, and Sara still uses it with every client. The seven stages are Know, Like, Trust, Try, Buy, Repeat, and Refer.

Think of it as a complete loop rather than a one-way funnel. The goal is not just to get someone in at the top. It is to move them through every stage and bring them back again.

Sara explains why this matters in practice: “You can sit down and analyze what are we doing in each of these stages. Where are gaps? Where are opportunities to improve? And if you can really nail moving someone through each of those stages as they interact with your business, they’re going to become repeat customers and then they’re also going to just naturally refer you.”

A well-mapped customer journey does not just improve retention. It restarts referral flow naturally. When referrals dry up for a small business, this audit is often where the answer lives.

Tactics without tracking are just busy work

Sara sees a pattern constantly. A new client walks in running five or six marketing activities. When she asks what is working, they have no idea. They never set a goal before they started.

“It’s not enough just to create your list of tactics at the end of strategy,” she says. “You need to say, if we’re going to do these things for the next 90 days, what’s the definition of success and how are we going to track that? Because that information is going to help guide if you should keep doing things or if you should shift.”

Set a goal for each tactic before you start, then track it over 90 days. Hitting the goal, keep it. Not hitting it, stop or adjust. That is a system. Running activity without measurement is just spending time.

How to stand out when everything feels like noise

The marketing environment right now is loud. AI-generated cold outreach fills inboxes and LinkedIn messages. New platforms launch weekly. Every vendor promises a lead generation system.

Sara says she barely checks her LinkedIn messages anymore because so much of what arrives is automated pitch after pitch.

“It is harder to get people’s attention and it is harder to stand out,” she says. “But if you approach marketing with a more authentic human feel to it and not just trying to scale with AI, there is opportunity for people to see your authentic selves.”

Her take on AI is precise. Use it, but put a human on both ends. Lead with your own insight, stories, and direction. Let AI help shape and scale that into content. Then edit and refine the output yourself.

“Human on the front end, AI in the middle, human on the back end. That’s where it can be powerful,” she says. “It helps elevate you and your skill set and not replace your creativity.”

Low-budget marketing that actually works

If you have a few hundred dollars a month and no marketing infrastructure, Sara has a clear point of view on where to start.

Content repurposing. Record short videos on specific topics your audience needs to know about. Use those videos as the source material for social clips, email newsletters, and blog posts. AI makes the repurposing faster, but the original thinking has to come from you.
Direct personal outreach. Build a list of people in your ideal target market and reach out to them as a human. Call them. Send a personal message. When every inbox is full of automated pitches, a real call or personal message stands out immediately.
Podcast guesting. Getting onto someone else’s podcast costs nothing but your time. It puts you in front of their audience and builds authority in a format people actually trust.

None of these require a big budget. They require clarity about who you are talking to and the discipline to show up consistently. That clarity, as Sara would say, comes from strategy first.

Frequently asked questions

What should I do first when referrals dry up?

Do not start with a channel. Start with your ideal client profile. Define who they are, where they spend time, how they make decisions, and what message will resonate with them. Only then does channel selection make sense. Sara Nay of Duct Tape Marketing also recommends auditing your customer journey using the Marketing Hourglass to find where existing client relationships are breaking down.

Should I run paid ads when referrals stop?

Not until you have a strategy foundation in place. Paid ads without a clear ideal client profile and resonant messaging will waste budget. Build those first, then decide whether paid ads are the right channel for where your clients actually spend time.

How do I get referrals to come back naturally?

Map your customer journey using the Marketing Hourglass. Look at what you are doing at the Know, Like, Trust, Try, Buy, Repeat, and Refer stages. Gaps in the Repeat and Refer stages often explain why referrals have dried up. Fixing those gaps creates the conditions for referrals to restart without actively asking for them.

What is the Marketing Hourglass?

The Marketing Hourglass is a customer journey model created by John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing. It maps seven stages: Know, Like, Trust, Try, Buy, Repeat, and Refer. Unlike a traditional funnel, it continues past the first sale into retention and referral. Duct Tape Marketing uses it as an audit tool to identify gaps and set marketing priorities.

How should small businesses use AI in their marketing?

Sara Nay’s framework: human on the front end, AI in the middle, human on the back end. Bring your own insight, stories, and direction. Let AI help shape and scale that into content. Then edit and refine the output. The goal is to use AI to elevate your thinking, not replace it.

Ready to build your marketing strategy before your next tactic?

Duct Tape Marketing works with small businesses to create a complete marketing strategy through a structured 30-day engagement called Strategy First. You leave with a full plan you can run with internally or have us execute as your fractional CMO.

Visit ducttapemarketing.com/strategy-first or connect with Sara Nay on LinkedIn.

Tom Rath on Purpose, Meaning, and the Question Every Business Owner Needs to Answer

Thu, 07 May 2026 16:47:38 +0300

Tom Rath on Purpose, Meaning, and the Question Every Business Owner Needs to Answer written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch the Full Episode:

Overview

Most small business owners are not stuck because of strategy. They are stuck because they have drifted away from a clear answer to one question: what is the point? In this episode, John Jantsch sits down with Tom Rath, bestselling author of StrengthsFinder 2.0 and Eat Move Sleep, to explore why purpose is not a grand philosophical destination but a practical tool you use every hour of every day.

Tom draws on decades of research at Gallup and his own experience navigating a life-threatening genetic condition to make the case that meaning is not optional. It is the thing that separates people who build something lasting from people who are simply going through the motions. And with AI accelerating fast, the motions are exactly what will be automated first.

This episode is for business owners who feel quietly stuck, leaders who want to build teams that actually care, and anyone who suspects that the way they are spending their days does not quite match what they would say matters most.

About Tom Rath

Tom Rath is a number one New York Times bestselling author whose books on strengths, wellbeing, and contribution have sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. He began his career at Gallup, where he helped develop the strengths-based tools used by millions of people globally. He is the co-founder and CEO of CareerSight and the author of What’s the Point, out now. His other titles include StrengthsFinder 2.0, Eat Move Sleep, and Life’s Great Question. Learn more at tomrath.org.

Key Takeaways

Purpose is not a destination. It is a tool. Stop treating it as a big existential question you answer once and start using it to prioritize every hour of every day.
AI will replace the people going through the motions first. Routine, responsive, eyes-down task work is exactly what large language models do well. Builders, initiators, and creative thinkers are far harder to automate.
Reserve at least 20 to 30 percent of your day for work that will matter a week, a month, or a year from now. If you cannot point to any of it at the end of the day, something needs to change.
Financial outcomes are a poor north star. The research on wellbeing is consistent: the more you treat income or status as the primary measure of success, the less satisfied you are likely to be over time.
Do the meaningful work first. If you save it for later, it will not happen. Protect your best hours for the things that matter most, and push responsive work toward the end of the day.
Your energy is a business asset. Small business owners are often the worst at protecting their own wellbeing. The tone you set becomes the norm for everyone around you.
Turn purpose outward. One of the most effective habits is spotting what someone else is doing well and telling them where they made a difference. It helps them and tends to come back to you.
Young workers are not entitled. They want meaningful work. That is a healthy evolution from the industrial era model of work as a means to an end, and smart leaders will build for it rather than resist it.
Start with what the world needs, then map back to who you are. Self-awareness matters, but it only gets you so far without understanding what your clients, your community, and your market actually need from you.

Timestamps

[00:01] Opening hook: the quiet drift away from one simple question is what keeps most business owners stuck.

[00:57] How everything Tom has written about strengths and wellbeing led him to write a book about purpose.

[03:47] Tom’s personal health journey and why a life-threatening diagnosis at 15 shaped how he thinks about time.

[05:33] Why he almost titled the book around the word purpose and what stopped him.

[06:32] How this connects to small business owners specifically, and why the question is more urgent now than a year ago.

[08:39] What the research actually says about chasing income and status as primary outcomes.

[10:18] The relationship between asking what is the point and employee engagement.

[13:57] How to actually get to it: practical steps for building purpose into a workday.

[16:09] The counterintuitive first habit: sleep as the reset button for everything else.

[18:13] Why unlimited vacation policies often produce no vacation at all.

[19:08] How younger generations entering the workforce are changing what meaningful work looks like.

[21:25] How strengths shift as people advance in role and responsibility, and what that reveals about how we develop.

Memorable Quotes

“We always say we’ll have tomorrow. Take it from somebody with life-threatening conditions: you don’t. You never do the stuff you put off till tomorrow.”

“If you’re just the responder, there’s a cloud update coming for you.”

“Purpose unlocked was the working title. I realized we have a semantic challenge. When most of us hear the word purpose, we think of some big grand thing that’s almost intimidating.”

“It’s not like my grandfather’s generation where the job was just a means to an end. People who are 25 expect to have a job that makes a difference in the world. I think that’s good.”

“Start with what the world needs, what your community needs, what your clients need, and then map back to how you can do that well based on who you are.”

Learn more about Tom Rath and his work at tomrath.org.

Duct Tape Transcript

Download New Tab

John Jantsch (00:01.249)

So what if the reason so many small business owners feel quietly stuck, even when the numbers look fine, is not burnout or strategy, but the slow drift away from a clear answer to one question, what's the point? Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Tom Rath. He's the number one New York Times bestselling author whose books on strength, wellbeing, and contribution have sold more than 10,

million copies worldwide, including Strength Finders 2.0, Eat, Move, Sleep, which we did an episode on this show. Tom started his career at Gallup where he helped build the strengths-based tools used by millions of people. He's now the co-founder and CEO of CareerSight and his new book, What's the Point, is out now. And we're going to dig into why that question matters more than most of us want to admit. So Tom, welcome back to the show.

Tom Rath (00:55.406)

Good to see you again, John.

John Jantsch (00:57.215)

So how is everything that you've written about strengths and wellbeing and contribution kind of made this question, what's the point, something you need to spend a whole book on?

Tom Rath (01:08.758)

Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I realized in my own life and in teams and leaders and people that I'm working with that it's gotten so easy to just go through the motions in a given day because it's I mean, it's almost easier to just feel like you get to inbox zero and you respond to the things you're supposed to respond to your finish your day's tasks. You do your expense reports, you get home and then you catch up with some of your family members. You let a show play on Netflix, let the next one go and you just kind of

become a little more passive in terms of the way you're kind of going through days in life. And that's almost more enjoyable and easier to do sometimes. And so I think we need to, especially with all the automation and everything coming our way right now, we need to do a little bit better job. And at least I realized that I did of kind of shaking myself out of that routine and saying, are you dedicating some time to more creative pursuits? Are you building things? Are you investing more?

deliberate time in relationships and conversations with people that matter so that at the end of the day, you make sure that you reserved at least, I don't know, 20, 30 percent of your time at a minimum for doing things that might really matter a week from now or a year from now or maybe even a decade from now. asking what's the point, not as some broad philosophical sunny day once in a lifetime question, but more as a light for how you prioritize every hour within a day.

is what caught me and has really helped and worked pretty well.

John Jantsch (02:38.359)

Yeah, and I think that's true of many small business owners. mean, the crushing noise seems to take over. if you can, see lots of people advise this, if you can get in the habit of saying, what's like the one thing that if I did that today, that would move the needle instead of all this other garbage, which 80 % of is probably just busy work. So it's not, like you said, it's not just self-development. I mean, it's a very practical business tool, isn't

Tom Rath (03:06.338)

Yeah, and I think that one of the very just I'm always looking for those practical tips and tools from the research. But what I figured out is if you can try and restructure or reprioritize the order in which you do things in a given day so that you ensure that you're not going to go a day without working on some meaningful purposeful items that and that can just be having a 15 minute conversation with someone who works for you and really listening and closing your mouth and giving your device stowed away and investing in someone's development and then realizing that

That kind of is the point and that is the purpose. And that's not a waste of time because it's it's those kind of trust and relationships that really build speed and efficiency and creativity and innovation over time.

John Jantsch (03:47.447)

So many people, there's lots of stories of people being kind of woken up to this idea by something that happened. You've been very open about your own health journey. How is that, in fact, you're one of your last books. We talked about that on the show, but how much has your personal experience sit underneath this new book, you think?

Tom Rath (04:08.33)

It sits under this new book to a degree where, I mean, I probably realized much earlier on because I was told I had a debilitating genetic cancer syndrome when I was 15 that I needed to try and pack more life into those years than a lot of people think about pretty early on. But one of the things I realized when I worked on the book about health, Eat, Move, Sleep, that you mentioned was that even with all those big threats to my health and I had active tumors in my kidneys and pancreas and spine and all over,

That wasn't a very good motivator to skip the cheeseburger and french fries at lunch and to get a salad instead. that research I did on health kind of taught me that we all need better ways to just give ourselves short-term incentives throughout the day to do things that matter and that make a difference because just knowing that in the end the eulogy virtues will matter more than the resume virtues as David Brooks described it, that doesn't stick with me at least.

to change the priorities of what I'm doing within eight hours that I'm working in a day. But what can shift that is when I'm able to connect back an hour that I spend editing a draft with the difference that will make for someone who can read something faster without all the kind of extra bloated sentences and fluff and all the things around it and realizing that that is a part of why I'm doing what I'm doing. And so I think...

You know, one of the things is I started to work on this book that hit me. I hope at the right time is I was going to title the book around the word purpose. I think it was purpose unlocked or something like that. And I realized that right now we have a semantic challenge where when most of us hear the word purpose, we think of some big grand thing that's almost intimidating and it gives us anxiety when in reality we kind of need to learn to just make purpose a part of our toolbox that we.

John Jantsch (05:43.693)

Mm.

John Jantsch (05:53.675)

Right.

Tom Rath (06:02.904)

tap into and use every hour throughout a day essentially. And it can be something pretty pragmatic.

John Jantsch (06:08.661)

It's funny as I listen to you talk about the editing of the draft. had an editor that, that used to tell me, why are you doing all this throat clearing? You know, like get to the point. that's always stuck with me anytime I find myself running on. so you've spent a ton of time in, very large companies, lot of the research and, done at Gallup. I would say that.

Tom Rath (06:22.392)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (06:32.641)

this idea of what's the point. I'm not saying it's exclusive to small business owners, but I've worked with a lot of entrepreneurs. And I think that that question just almost haunts them a lot of times. Do you find that this work is maybe more appropriate for one audience or another?

Tom Rath (06:42.03)

Mm-hmm.

Tom Rath (06:50.594)

I think in smaller businesses that I've been a part of and startups, there's more of a natural and healthy tendency to be asking that question to say, well, what's the point of doing this or we're wasting time doing this. And as you get bigger and as more layers come in, it's a lot easier to have larger groups of people or teams or people on a team who are essentially sleepwalking through a lot of their days. And I think whether you're in a business, large or small,

One thing that's hit me as I've started to have more conversations about what's the point is that I really do think when you look at what AI and automation can and will do not three years from now, but six to 12 months from now, it's the places where people are just going through the motions and responding and doing routine eyes tasks that can easily be done by a machine that wi

Turn Talks Into Your Most Effective Marketing Tool

Wed, 06 May 2026 21:11:22 +0300

Turn Talks Into Your Most Effective Marketing Tool written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch the Full Episode:

Overview

Most small business owners are sitting on one of the most powerful marketing channels available and never use it. In this episode, John Jantsch welcomes back Jess Ekstrom, founder of Mic Drop Workshop, to make the case that speaking from a stage is not a vanity play. It is a lead generation, brand building, and audience growth strategy that compounds over time.

Jess built her first company, Headbands of Hope, almost entirely by convincing professors to let her speak in class. She did not know she could charge for keynotes until a university emailed asking for her fee. Now she teaches entrepreneurs and founders how to turn their story into a signature talk that earns bookings, builds an audience, and drives business without ever feeling like a sales pitch.

This episode covers the difference between keynote speaking and lead gen speaking, why sharing your failures lands better than your wins, how to build a talk backwards from the outcome, and the mindset shift that dissolves stage fright almost instantly.

About Jess Ekstrom

Jess Ekstrom is an entrepreneur, two-time bestselling author, and Forbes top-rated speaker. She founded Headbands of Hope as a broke college student and grew it into a nationally recognized brand before it was acquired. She is the founder of Mic Drop Workshop, where she helps women step into their voice and build careers as confident, paid speakers. Her TED talk on the spotlight vs. lighthouse speaker mindset has driven significant attention to her framework. She hosts the Amplify podcast and can be found at micdropworkshop.com.

Key Takeaways

Speaking is a marketing channel, not just a career. The keynote can drive awareness, build an audience, and generate leads without ever directly selling anything from the stage.
Know which lane you are in. Keynote speaking means the talk is the product. Lead gen speaking means you waive your fee in exchange for the right to sell from the stage. Both work. Pick one and be intentional about it.
Build the talk backwards. Start with a transformation promise: after people hear you speak, what do you want them to do, believe, think, or feel? Everything else builds toward that outcome.
Spotlight speakers ask what everyone thinks of them. Lighthouse speakers ask what everyone needs from them. The second mindset makes you a better speaker and kills stage fright faster than any rehearsal trick.
Share what went wrong, not just what went right. Audiences do not connect with wins. They connect with the arc. Admitting the $10,000 wire to a fraudulent manufacturer landed better than any highlight reel.
Build one signature talk and stick with it for three to five years. Changing your topic every year means no one has time to associate your name with a solution.
Use the slide deck as a lead magnet. Offer to send notes, discussion questions, and slides via a QR code before your closing. It converts better than almost any other stage-based list building tactic.
The false finish line is the biggest trap. You do not need a certain follower count, revenue number, or website to start pitching yourself to speak. You need a topic you are excitedly curious about and the willingness to do the reps.
Simplify, do not complicate. The best speakers remind people of something they already knew but forgot. Novelty is overrated. Clarity wins.

Timestamps

[00:00] Opening hook: the most underused marketing channel for small business owners is a stage.

[00:37] Jess’s background: building Headbands of Hope by speaking in college classrooms before knowing speaking was a paid profession.

[01:37] The moment she realized speaking could be a revenue channel, not just an advertising channel.

[02:22] The difference between an elevator pitch and a keynote, and why the keynote becomes the product.

[03:18] Keynote speaking vs. lead gen speaking: two lanes, two different business models.

[05:03] How to weave what you do into a keynote without it feeling like a sales pitch.

[07:14] Using a QR code slide deck as a lead magnet from the stage.

[08:26] The difference between wanting to be on a stage and actually having something worth saying.

[09:09] The spotlight vs. lighthouse framework from her TED talk, and why it changes everything about how you show up.

[11:18] Why sharing failures lands better than sharing wins, and what that requires you to give up.

[11:36] Her framework for building a keynote: transformation promise, work backwards, simplify.

[17:35] Why having one signature talk beats being a Cheesecake Factory speaker.

[19:52] The billboard exercise: the simplest way to figure out what you should be speaking about.

Memorable Quotes

“The keynote becomes the product. It’s not about selling your product through the keynote. It’s about raising awareness for it and most importantly, sharing a story in a way that inspires someone to do something about it.”

“The more you give, the less nervous you’ll be. And sometimes that means not looking good.”

“No one wants to learn from someone who’s always been at the top. We need the arc.”

“Stop making people think too hard. The best speakers remind people of something they once knew that maybe they forgot.”

“If you’re not willing to stick with a keynote for three to five years, don’t do it. You’re not giving anyone time to associate your name with a solution.”

Connect with Jess Ekstrom at micdropworkshop.com or find her on LinkedIn.

Duct Tape Transcript

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John Jantsch (00:00.977)

So what if the most underused marketing channel for a small business owner isn't a new platform or a bigger ad budget, but the founder standing up and telling their own story from a stage? Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Jess Ekstrom. Entrepreneur speaker, mom of two and founder of Mike Drop Workshop, where she helps women step into their voice and become confident speakers. Started her first company.

Headbands of Hope. Longtime listeners may recall we talked about that so many years ago on this show. At the time she was a broke college student, built her entire marketing engine by begging professors to let her speak for five minutes in class. That scrappy beginning turned into a career as a Forbes top rated speaker and two time bestselling authors. She's also the host of the Amplify podcast. So Jess, welcome back.

Jess (00:57.162)

It is good to be back. We're going to have to do a fact check on how many years ago I was on this show, but I know two kids and a new business later. Here we are.

John Jantsch (01:06.471)

Well, how old is oldest child?

Jess (01:09.07)

three. But it was long before that. It was long before that.

John Jantsch (01:10.219)

okay. It was, yeah, I was gonna say, I thought that was gonna be arch. Well, I'll go back and research it. So let's talk, we don't have to go back and relive the headbands of hope, although are you still doing anything with that? Okay, okay, cool.

Jess (01:23.01)

Yep. It got acquired, which was really exciting. Yeah, very exciting. And it was great for me to be able to fully step into my drop workshop and let new people in. And it's doing great.

John Jantsch (01:37.127)

So when, at what point did you realize that speaking was, you know, a lot of people talk about it as free marketing and certainly a lot of people want to be highly paid speakers. When did you just decide, hey, that's really a great way, I mean, that's a marketing channel all by itself.

Jess (01:52.492)

I remember the first email I got from Marshall University that said, what is your fee to come speak to our students? And I had to ask about a dozen people what they meant because I was like, what are they talking about? A fee? I pay? I was so confused. I didn't even realize that this was a channel for income because it had been such a good channel for advertising for me. And one of the things that I teach now in my drop to a lot of founders,

John Jantsch (02:03.301)

You're welcome.

Jess (02:22.416)

is the difference between an elevator pitch and a keynote. You know, an elevator pitch is around what you're selling, you know, the problem you're solving. But a keynote is around the story of your startup and making that story transferable to someone else. and then the keynote becomes the product. So it's not about selling your product through the keynote. It's about raising awareness for it, but most importantly,

John Jantsch (02:25.969)

Mm-hmm.

Jess (02:49.238)

sharing the story in a way that inspires someone to do something about it.

John Jantsch (02:52.903)

So maybe there's not either or, you maybe just tell people both can be true. certainly, well, I haven't asked the question yet. Here are two things. Because I have a lot of people that, there are a lot of people that want to be speakers and they start out at a low fee and maybe they work up, I don't know, let's say $10,000 for a keynote. But then.

Jess (02:58.658)

Both can be true.

John Jantsch (03:18.247)

There were other speakers, myself included, when I was getting started that if I got in a room of 50 prospects, I would come away with $100,000 worth of business. I didn't care about being paid because I knew the opportunity to get in that room was more important than what I might make as a speaker. How do you balance those? And again, like I said, can both be true.

Jess (03:38.796)

I think that there are two different lanes that you have to decide what you want to run in. The keynote is your product, which means it's not about selling a product. It's about delivering a keynote. And then the other lane is called lead gen speaking or selling from stage, which means you get no fee, which is exactly what you're talking about, John, but you have free rein to sell from the stage. And in that case, whatever money you make in the back of the room becomes your fee for being there.

But I am a big advocate for the keynote being the product. And in my drop workshop, I teach people a framework called moment to meaning, where you share a moment, a lived experience, and then what's the takeaway for the audience. Your moment can be a story in your business. It can be for me, you know, I told the story probably on your podcast, losing money to a fraudulent manufacturer, starting my business, Headbands of Hope.

John Jantsch (04:09.223)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (04:35.62)

Mm-hmm.

Jess (04:37.206)

And then the meaning is, you know, failures don't have to be the end. It can be, you know, just a pivot in your story. But now I'm not going up there selling headbands of hope, but now everybody knows about it. And so I don't necessarily think that you have to choose between being a lead gen speaker and a keynote speaker. I think use the story of your company in your keynote and that way it becomes a both and.

John Jantsch (04:49.884)

Right.

John Jantsch (05:03.995)

Yeah, you know, it's funny, I do remember early on, I certainly took that very much that approach of I'm just here to deliver lots of value teach you guys lots of stuff. Hopefully it's awesome. And I remember early on a couple times where people come up to me say, like, what do you actually do? You know, how could I actually hire you? And I thought, maybe I somehow need to work that in more than just I'm just here to teach you stuff. So so how do you kind of balance that? I

Jess (05:21.486)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Exactly.

John Jantsch (05:33.605)

I never call it selling from the stage because I didn't have like a $500 course that they could go back there and buy. It was really more that at some point, in fact, I had a speaking engagement that early on in my career, I'm sure I wasn't paid for it. And a gentleman came up and said, I really liked what you said. Can you come talk to us? And that was in 2004. They still the client today. So millions of dollars worth of business from that client came from.

Jess (05:36.056)

Right.

Jess (05:40.301)

Yep.

John Jantsch (06:03.245)

him actually coming up to me and saying, I like what you had to say, but like, how do I hire you? So how do you balance kind of that, you know, that you do want people to know that you can help them solve the problem you just described?

Jess (06:09.826)

So.

Jess (06:14.668)

Yeah, right, exactly.

I think alongside with using how you help people as an anecdote in your keynote as a way to get a point across, are, you know, with I work with coaches, they can say, when I coach people on this topic, I tell them this. Or if you're a podcaster, and you want to promote your podcasts, but without being like, scan this QR code and listen to my podcast and leave a review, you can say here's some really interesting guests I've had on my podcast.

And here's what they said. And it's continuing to further the value that you're delivering to the audience without selling them something. But one kind of hack I will give to that, John, you can still use your keynote as an audience building technique that still delivers value in a way where you're delivering them the notes or the recap or the slide deck from your presentation.

in exchange for an email. So when I speak right before my conclusion, I tell them that they can scan a QR code and it's going to send the slide deck to them so that they have it, they can remember it, it's going to give them discussion questions to bring back to their team. But that is also where they're now in my orbit. Now I can also, they want to he

Marketing Strategy for Businesses That Have Outgrown More Tactics

Fri, 01 May 2026 17:31:49 +0300

Marketing Strategy for Businesses That Have Outgrown More Tactics written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Strategy for Small Business: Why Clarity Beats More Tactics Every Time

Most small businesses aren’t short on marketing activity. They’re short on the clarity that would let them do less of it. After working with hundreds of small businesses on their marketing strategy over 30 years, I’ve seen the same pattern: scattered tactics, inconsistent messaging, and a team that’s busy but not aligned. The problem isn’t effort. It’s the absence of a strategy.

You Don’t Have a Marketing Problem. You Have a Clarity Problem.

Most business owners I know are working harder than ever. More channels. More platforms. New AI tools to figure out every other week. The promise of AI, by the way, was that it was supposed to make all this easier. Ask most owners how that’s going, and they’ll tell you they’re working harder just keeping up.

That’s not a tools problem. That’s a strategy problem.

When you don’t have a clear strategy, every new platform looks like an opportunity and every new tactic looks like the fix. You say yes to everything because you don’t have a filter for knowing what to say no to. Teams get busy. Vendors get busy. Nobody is coordinating. And the messaging starts to drift in five different directions at once.

I’ve seen this at every level. Businesses with five people doing marketing. Businesses with five outside vendors all working on the same brand. All moving. None of it quite connecting.

The fix isn’t a better tactic. It’s the clarity to know what you’re actually trying to do, who you’re doing it for, and why someone should choose you.

What a Small Business Marketing Strategy Actually Looks Like

Here’s where a lot of people get tripped up. They hear “marketing strategy for small business” and assume it means more planning, more documents, more time before anything happens. That’s not what I’m talking about.

Clarity starts with a single honest question: do you know exactly who your ideal client is, and do you know why they’d choose you over every other option they have?

I worked with a business owner a couple of years ago. Solid seven-year-old business, good local reputation, decent revenue. But the marketing never quite landed. He’d tried ads. Tried SEO. Had a consultant in for a while. Still felt like running in place.

When we sat down, the problem was obvious. He had tactics. What he didn’t have was a clear picture of who he was actually for. His messaging was written to appeal to everyone, which meant it resonated with nobody.

We got specific about his ideal client: who gets the most out of this, values the work, pays well, comes back, and sends referrals? Who is specifically not that person? Once he could answer those questions clearly, everything else simplified fast. The messaging changed. The channels narrowed. The conversations started to feel different.

That’s what strategy does. It’s not about doing more. It’s about knowing what matters, and having the confidence to ignore the rest. You can see this play out in our client case studies.

The Part That Doesn’t Get Talked About Enough: Team Alignment

Even when a business owner has clarity, the team often doesn’t. And that’s where a lot of good strategy dies.

I walk into businesses regularly where the founder has a clear sense of direction but the team is working from their own assumptions. The vendors are doing the same. Nobody is comparing notes. The result is inconsistent messaging, wasted effort, and a growing frustration that marketing “just isn’t working.”

That’s not a brand problem. That’s an alignment problem.

And alignment doesn’t come from circulating a PDF after the fact. It comes from building the strategy together.

When the whole team is in the room for the process of defining the ideal client, sharpening the message, and setting priorities, they own it. They understand why decisions were made. They can defend those decisions to a vendor or a prospect. That shared language is worth more than the document itself.

How to Build That Foundation Faster Than You Think

In the past, the kind of strategy work I’m describing took 30 to 45 days. And it was worth it. Clients came out the other side with more clarity than they’d had in years. Relief was usually the word that came up most.

But I kept asking myself whether we could deliver the same depth faster.

Turns out, we can. With the AI research tools we’ve gotten good at, we can do the front-end analysis of your industry, your existing marketing, and the competitive landscape before we ever show up. Which means the day itself is all signal, no setup.

We call it Strategy First in a Day. One focused day with your key team in the room. We build the ideal client profile, sharpen the positioning, tighten the messaging, and set the priorities for the next 90 days. Same outputs as the full engagement. One day instead of 45.

It works especially well for businesses in the one to 25 million dollar range: ones that have proven they can get clients but feel the growing complexity that comes with real traction. The ad hoc approach got you here. It won’t get you to the next level.

Questions I Get Asked About This

Is this only for businesses that are struggling with marketing?

Not at all. Some of the businesses that benefit most are growing well but feel the friction. Revenue is up, but the messaging is inconsistent. The team keeps restarting conversations that should already have answers. Strategy First in a Day works best when there’s real traction and you’re ready to make the marketing match where the business actually is.

What does my team walk away with at the end of the day?

A complete strategic foundation: your ideal client profile, your core message, your positioning relative to the competition, and a 90-day priority roadmap. Some businesses hand that to their internal team and run with it. Others move into ongoing fractional marketing leadership. Either way, the work is done in the room, not assigned as homework.

How is this different from a workshop or a consulting engagement?

Workshops give you frameworks. Consulting engagements give you recommendations. Strategy First in a Day gives you the actual deliverables, built with your team, that day. The distinction matters. When everyone in the room builds the strategy together, they understand it, they own it, and they can actually use it. That’s different from being handed someone else’s conclusions.

The Bottom Line

Growth that feels messy usually isn’t a marketing execution problem. It’s a clarity problem. And clarity isn’t something you stumble into by adding more tactics.

It starts with knowing who you’re for, why they’d choose you, and what matters most right now. Everything else follows from that.

If you want to see what building that foundation looks like in a single focused day with your whole team, head to dtm.world/oneday. That’s where we’ve laid out exactly how Strategy First in a Day works, who it’s built for, and what you walk away with.

Write Press Releases That Generate Real Media

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 15:09:12 +0300

Write Press Releases That Generate Real Media written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch the Full Episode:

Overview

Most small businesses have written off the press release as a relic. They should not have. In this episode, John Jantsch sits down with Mickie Kennedy, founder of eReleases, to make the case that earned media is more valuable now than it has been in decades — and that AI is changing how smart businesses write press releases, but not in the way most people think.

Kennedy draws on over 25 years of press release distribution to explain why 97% of press releases fail to generate a single article, and what the other 3% have in common. The conversation covers story arc, the contrarian angle, using surveys to manufacture news, and why putting the spotlight on a customer often works better than talking about your own product.

The AI component here is practical and specific. Kennedy walks through a paragraph-by-paragraph approach to using AI as a writing tool — not a strategy tool — and explains why letting AI decide what to write about is where most people go wrong. If you are a small business owner who has dismissed PR as too expensive or too complicated, this episode will change that.

About Mickie Kennedy

Mickie Kennedy is the founder of eReleases, a press release distribution service he launched in 1998 after watching small businesses get priced out of PR agencies charging $20,000 minimums. eReleases gives small businesses and entrepreneurs access to the same national newswire infrastructure used by major corporations, at roughly a quarter of the cost. He has worked with more than 32,000 clients and distributes around 10,000 press releases per year. He teaches PR strategy through a free masterclass at ereleases.com/plan.

Key Takeaways

Syndication links are not earned media. Getting your press release replicated on 200 subdomains means nothing if no journalist wrote an article about you. The only metric that matters is whether a human being covered your story.
AI is changing the value of earned media. Search engines and AI tools lean on credible industry publications as sources. One article in the right trade publication now carries more weight than it ever did.
97% of press releases fail to generate coverage. The ones that do share common patterns: a story arc, stakes, a contrarian angle, or a data-backed finding from an original survey.
Do not let AI decide what to write about. Use AI to structure and write the press release once you have a strong strategic idea. The idea itself has to come from you.
Build press releases paragraph by paragraph with AI. Ask for structure first, then headline options, then opening paragraph variations. The whole process takes about 12 minutes and produces far better results than a single prompt.
Find an enemy or a blind spot. The carpet company that called out big box home improvement stores got picked up in every major flooring trade publication. Nobody had said it before. That is the opportunity.
Put the spotlight on a customer, not yourself. A story about a company that was losing money for three years and turned profitable using your software is more interesting than a feature list.
Surveys manufacture news in any industry. Partner with a smaller trade association, run a survey, find the most surprising result, and build the release around that finding.
The contrarian position is less crowded. Journalists outside of politics want balance. If everyone in your industry agrees on something, being the thoughtful voice of dissent gets you quoted every time the topic comes up.

Timestamps

[00:01] — Opening hook: the press release is not dead, but there is a catch when AI is involved.

[01:30] — How PR and press releases have changed since the web arrived, and why syndication feeds created a false sense of results.

[03:51] — Earned media vs. owned media, and why AI is pushing earned media back to the top of the priority stack.

[06:15] — The waste management client who got one article and landed $30 to $40 million in contracts from Australia.

[08:27] — How to find a newsworthy angle when you are not naturally in a newsworthy business.

[10:13] — The carpet company in New Jersey that called out Home Depot and Lowe’s and got picked up everywhere.

[12:05] — Why blasting a media database is killing your chances with journalists and what to do instead.

[14:47] — How to use AI to write press releases the right way: structure first, headlines second, paragraphs third.

[18:28] — Using AI for deep research and brainstorming contrarian ideas by industry.

[19:09] — Why the contrarian position is strategically underused and how it gets you recurring media mentions.

Memorable Quotes

“When a journalist writes an article about you, it’s an implied endorsement. Someone has transformed the press release into a written article.”

“You have to take what you want, and that’s the pill. Sometimes you’ve got to put it in cheese to get the journalist to swallow it.”

“AI is very good at writing the press release. The ideas behind it — it’s not very good at that. It’ll make a press release like you see out there, and you’re like, this is as good as that one. Well, that one probably didn’t get any pickups either.”

“The contrarian position is a much easier place because fewer people are competing for that spot.”

Learn more at ereleases.com. Mickie’s free PR strategy masterclass is at ereleases.com/plan.

Duct Tape Transcript

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John Jantsch (00:01.71)

So what if the press release isn't a relic of the pre-internet era, but actually one of the most underused tools a small business has right now, especially when AI can help write them, but there's a catch. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Mickie Kennedy. He's the founder of eReleases, a press release distribution service started back in 1998.

After watching small businesses get turned away from PR agencies, it charged a minimum of $20,000. He's since distributed over 150 press releases, more than 30,000 customers. And today we're going to talk about how to train AI to write press releases that journalists actually read and use. So Mickey, welcome to the show.

Mickie Kennedy (00:49.141)

Thanks for having me.

John Jantsch (00:50.872)

So I've been in this business over 30 years. And so certainly the press release and PR and media relations were a big component of marketing. Seems like when the web came along, they sort of lost a little bit of their use and usability. And I wonder how you've been in this game a long time as well. E-Release really came around.

kind of when the web was just starting. how have you seen the practice of PR in general and certainly the PR or the press release tool changed dramatically over the last couple of decades?

Mickie Kennedy (01:30.241)

So I think the biggest change I've seen is the proliferation of noise in the PR space. There is a lot of, I guess you'd call them syndication feeds where for $49 or $119 your press release gets replicated on a bunch of websites, but it's usually like a sub domain or a folder on the website. And if you go to the website and you do a search for your company, it won't show up.

John Jantsch (01:36.066)

Yeah, sure.

Mickie Kennedy (02:00.481)

So, you know, humans aren't actually seeing this and it's more of just a, I don't know, an ego lift. And it's gotten to the point that, you know, people don't recognize the opportunity of what a proper newswire is. In the US, it's largely a duopoly between Businesswire owned by Berkshire Hathaway and PR Newswire. And PR Newswire is the oldest and largest. And they also charge, they both charge

quite a bit being a duopoly, around $1,800 for a 600 WordPress release to go out nationally. That being said, all the releases that go out through e-releases go out nationally and it's probably about 25 % the cost of that. The caveat is you have to be a small business or entrepreneur. Basically the type of customer that PR Newswire sells team has no interest in pursuing. And that's sort of what I act as a co-op for small businesses and entrepreneurs. And we move about 30,

Let's see, right now we're moving about 10,000 press releases a year. Altogether, we've worked with over 30, I think right now around 32, 33,000 clients that we've helped. And so we're moving a lot of volume and as a result, we're really helping people. But you know, there are people who have used the other services, then they'll do a press release with us and they'll actually say, we had less impact with you. And I'm like, well, I see you got no earned media.

and you got no earned media with them. They're like, no, we got picked up by 200 links. And I'm like, where? And they're just the syndication links. And I'm like, nobody wrote an article about you. These are all the press release replicated on a bunch of syndication websites. And they, you know, it's just hard to, I find education has become the thing now where we try to get people to understand the opportunity.

John Jantsch (03:51.736)

Well, let's talk about that because in the old days, certainly the press release was a vehicle to get media coverage, even if you were just trying to get it in your town. Then when the web came along, it actually became as much or more of an SEO play than a PR play, right? Yeah, because unfortunately in the early days, those links buried 10 rows deep were getting picked up by the search engines.

Mickie Kennedy (04:07.861)

Yeah, people trying to game that.

John Jantsch (04:18.19)

Even though no people really saw them, they were getting indexed. And so they did actually have some value in that regard. But certainly the search engines now are onto the game and those days are certainly over. So talk a little bit about this idea of earned media versus owned media, because I think we're actually back in a window of time when earned media is probably going to become more important than it maybe ever was or certainly

Mickie Kennedy (04:21.909)

But right now.

John Jantsch (04:46.978)

more so than it's been in the last couple of decades.

Mickie Kennedy (04:49.685)

Right. I think with AI, people are looking for stuff and AI is leaning on credible sources. And believe me, when I tell you it's not this subdomain on a website that no one knows, it's, if you're in the waste management space and you've been picked up in Waste News, which is the industry standard publication, and they've written about you doing something exciting.

John Jantsch (05:03.459)

Right.

Mickie Kennedy (05:17.537)

the AI as well as the search engines are going to know that that's a very relevant publication. And as a result, you're going to stand out. you know, that let's just take that one as an example. I mentioned it because I had a client who did a press release about them where they build facilities for municipalities. And it's everything nuts and bolts from waste as well as recycling. And, you know, a city orders it.

And there's nothing else. They handle everything. They work with the contractors and they build out a complete facility. very, you know, there's nobody really doing that. And so, they sent that press release out. They got one article and waste news, magazine. It's like the perfect magazine, but it was just one article. They were contacted by, a city in Australia and, within six months they were under contract to build two facilities in Australia.

John Jantsch (06:06.136)

Mm-hmm.

Mickie Kennedy (06:15.297)

And it was I think over 30 or 40 million dollars from one article and so And you know, they'll continue to get leads and recognition for that and that's what happens with our media I tell you you know you appearing on a website that no one's looking at nothing is ever going to happen But when a journalist writes an article about you it's like an implied endorsement You know, it's someone has transformed the press release into a written article

John Jantsch (06:18.83)

Sure.

Mickie Kennedy (06:42.977)

You know, during the pandemic, we helped an initiative called the dining bond initiative to help restaurants that were closed during the pandemic. It was sort of like a volunteer effort. And if they you you nominated a favorite local restaurant, if they were able to contact them, you could give money that went directly to them back by dining bonds for like a gift certificate scenario. And it raised over $10 million in revenue, it got picked up in over 100 places. It got

You name it Wall Street Journal picked it up New York Times lots of food publications and I saw over 80 daily newspapers who picked it up and so it did extremely well and again that would never happen on these syndication sites, know, these were all individual articles that people wrote about and I think that you know what people are missing is You know, what's what's the magic sauce and its strategy, you know in this case it was a lot of unknown

John Jantsch (07:21.4)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (07:27.566)

100 %

Mickie Kennedy (07:40.279)

You know, we were sent home two weeks to flatten the curve and there was an uncertainty. And here was something that was potentially positive news, but it was also actionable. You know, we have, we are powerless, but we could give $50 to the favorite restaurant we go to for our anniversary every year and make sure we're helping them in some small way. And I think that that's

John Jantsch (07:59.896)

Well, that, I mean, I think that brings up a really good point because a lot of times when people think about promoting something, there is like, here's my new product, you know, press release. and you know, that's not very interesting, it's interesting to that person, but maybe nobody else. So how do you find those? mean, you know, the pandemic was kind of an interesting opportunity, but in, in, in the real world, every day of small business, how do you find that thing that, that, that nobody's covering or that

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