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John Jantsch (00:00): This episode of the duct tape marketing podcast is brought to you by the MarTech podcast, hosted by Benjamin Shapiro, brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network. Ben’s episodes are so awesome. They’re under 30 minutes. They share stories with world-class marketers who use technology to generate growth and achieve business and career success. Ben is a great host. I’ve been on his show. He’s been on my show. He always really digs down and gives you actionable stuff that you can take away and do. And he’s always bringing up new stuff. The science of advertising, how to figure out what to automate, just things that marketers are wrestling with today. Check it out. It’s the MarTech podcast. Find it wherever you listen to your podcasts.

John Jantsch (00:50): Hello, and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Pam Slim. She’s an author community builder consultant, former corporate director of training and development at Barclays global investors. Uh, you probably know her best for her. I think first book escaped from shoot apical nation. And today we’re going to talk about her latest book called the widest net unlock untapped markets and discover new customers right in front of you. So Pam, welcome back.

Pamela Slim (01:24): Thanks for having me, John.

John Jantsch (01:26): So you are an IRA recording this pen-pal when people listen to it, but we are recording this on a holiday indigenous people’s day. And ironically, you are my favorite person married to a member of the Navajo or Denae nation. So what does this day look like in your household? I’d actually love to hear because cause there’s, it’s like a lot of those things it’s become sort of a new holiday, uh, that people celebrate, but I suspect that it has a different meaning in your household.

Pamela Slim (01:58): It does. I think, you know, we, uh, my husband and I are the types where I think you can probably relate. We don’t really have a huge separation between work and life. Right? My husband is a traditional healer and so he’s, uh, he ran a heavy equipment construction business for many, many years. And then when he did kind of an early retirement, now he mainly does ceremony. So really every day for him and the work he’s doing is generally about supporting relatives, you know, really strengthening the health wellbeing, um, and really cultural connection. I know for me here, we have our CA main street learning lab, which is a learning I’m right in the middle of main street. And it’s kind of a big celebration here. Cause a lot of the folks who we had used our space are actually opening their own spaces today that are all native led and run. So O X, D X clothing, which is a Navajo, uh, clothing design line opened a new space in Tempe, Arizona, Cahokia, which is a, uh, art tech social space is opening up in Roosevelt road today. And there are others as well. So for us, that’s really the thing is to see indigenous people running their own businesses and really in positions of leadership.

John Jantsch (03:07): Yeah. Awesome. Well, I, I knew you’d have something valuable to share. So let’s talk about your book, um, right off the bat, the title, the widest net seems to go against a little bit of conventional wisdom these days. There’s a lot of conventional wisdom around, you have to niche down, you have to go narrower. So tell me maybe why that’s wrong or how the widest net fits into that thinking.

Pamela Slim (03:31): I think I’ll say the title did its job bright, cause it does make you go wait a minute, but that doesn’t make any sense. And really a lot of what I see with the model of the widest net is that in many, for many business owners, even those that have been established for a very long time, like you and I, there we can get in ruts and limit our thinking about who the potential customers are for our business. And sometimes we’re just used to always thinking in a certain way about who that audience is sometimes within a vertical segment, other times maybe within a certain type of person that comes from a certain demographic background. And so at first, if we have a methodology and a system, which I have in the book for looking strategically at a wide range of opportunities in the market, then of course we narrow the focus and really make strategic decisions about going in with focus.

John Jantsch (04:24): Yeah, it’s funny. I, because that is so prevalent, that thinking is so prevalent in about, you have to narrow your focus. A lot of people haven’t don’t have the experience to narrow their focus. They think, oh, there’s opportunity to work with dentists. So I’m going to go after dentist and then they realized, nah, I don’t like that direction. Now I’ve got to pivot and change. So I wholeheartedly agree. I’m okay with narrow your focus, but before you narrow, your focus has always been kind of my mantra. So would you say that this book, because I think what you and I are talking about right now is probably somebody, maybe that’s a little more established or as you said, is maybe gets stuck a little bit, but would you say that this model is also, if I’m getting ready to start my business and then somebody says, should I read the white us net? You know, what would be your, uh, other than your author, uh, and, uh, you know, what to solve by, uh, What, uh, what would be your particular sort of take on that person’s experience?

Pamela Slim (05:23): Well, as you, as you said, in the, in the intro, I’ve had lots of years experience of working with people as brand new entrepreneurs, and that are transitioning, especially from corporate, as well as folks that are really growing or scaling. And the methodology to me is the same. It’s what I use with people, whether they’re brand new and starting out and just trying to evaluate and think about what would be the best customer segment to start with, or customer segments as, as they are for somebody who’s been established in business. Like, you know, I, I talk often with clients, it feels sometimes like a spiral. We think sometimes that it’s just a, you you’re in business, you make decisions, you get to a different level and you keep climbing. What I find instead is you just keep circling around the same foundations, things that you’ve established well with your duct tape marketing methodology. But when you circle back around, you are really coming at it from a different angle or a different level. So a lot of the foundations that the understanding that somebody might have as a brand new entrepreneur is going to be very different from somebody who has tested it and tried it and knows how to sell within one particular vertical. But the point of view and the method is the same, regardless of what stage you’re in.

John Jantsch (06:32): I kind of compared to seasons, I think that there are elements that are true every spring, every fall, but I’m a different person next year when I come around to that. And I think that that’s as an entrepreneur, you know, is, is something that if you stick with this long enough, you really start to recognize those patterns.

Pamela Slim (06:48): That’s right. Yeah.

John Jantsch (06:49): So you start this book where a lot of books that are talking to small business owners, entrepreneurs, startups start, and that’s, what’s kind of mission and vision. And I know certainly from knowing you for many years, that that’s something you truly believe that’s in your heart. There’s a lot of literature right now. It’s going all the way back to, and I’m going to sound a little cynical right now, story starting with your why and all the things that people have just really grabbed onto. But I think for a lot of people, they end up just feeling hollow or feeling like words. And I know that you don’t mean them. Then in that sense, it’s really more, how do you get people to really connect with this idea of mission? I don’t think anybody argues, it’s not an important aspect, but I don’t know too many people that truly connect to a mission.

Pamela Slim (07:35): I see it for a couple of different places. One is being somebody who for 25 years in my own business has spent lots of time in very private, confidential, bearing your soul conversations with people where I do believe that it is meaningful for entrepreneurs to know that all of their effort and energy, the hard path of entrepreneurship makes a difference beyond just making a profit. So that’s one piece. The second piece that’s very pragmatic is really the, the puzzle piece link to my method, which is when you really look at connecting to a deeper mission, that is just the bigger description and definition of a bigger problem that you want to solve inside of which your business fits within a bigger ecosystem, which is a foundational thing. So I use one of the examples in the mission chapter about Intuit, which we know makes accounting software, but their mission is power prosperity.

Pamela Slim (08:30): And you think about for them to truly deliver on that for their customers to truly experience prosperity, they need financial education, probably money, mindset, work, bank accounts, retirement accounts, a whole series of things provided by other professionals besides just Intuit, who is creating that software. So if you don’t know the scope of the bigger problem that your mission connects to, it is not going to be possible to know you then dial in with your business to define the specific problem that you help your clients solve. And that’s what I think is the foundation for a marketing plan.

John Jantsch (09:03): Yeah. And I, I don’t think I’ve heard anybody express her quite, um, that way. And I think that what happens is a lot of people, a lot of people stop at the ecosystem or the other parts of this admission is let’s have this grand mission, but everybody kind of goes well. Yeah, but we just do this one little thing over here. You can’t do the grand mission. And I think what you’re suggesting is by understanding your place that actually opens then the doors for who else do you need to know? Who else do you need to engage? Who else is also serving your same mission? And I, I think that that’s a pretty eye-opening perspective.

Pamela Slim (09:37): Well, yeah, I think for most business problems, as wonderful as we all think we are within our own business and with our products and services, it is impossible to completely solve the problem for your client. I think every client I’ve ever worked with works with a whole multitude of different service providers, they use different products, services, organizations. They listen to podcasts, they, you know, get information at events. So to me, it’s connecting strategically to those partners who are aligned with your mission and values that creates natural referral sources of which I know you care about so much. You wrote a whole book.

John Jantsch (10:13): It’s funny you say that though, because we work with a lot of small business owners and quite frankly, to truly get them the results that they want in marketing, we probably also have to be, or should be helping them with their hiring, with their culture, with making a profit, even though those are well outside of certainly my expertise. But I think that I’ve learned over the years, that if they don’t have the right relationship with money, marketing’s actually going to still be a problem for them. And I think that’s the sort of responsibility, I guess we have to develop this whole ecosystem around the customer as though

Pamela Slim (10:52): It is. And I think you and I have known each other for a long time. And we, in many ways, I feel like I’m just sharing the most obvious thing that most of us who have been in this space know, which is we know each other, we know that specific areas of expertise and we’ll call each other, right? We’ve gone back and forth and email, Hey, I have this problem. My client’s facing this situation. How can you help me? We refer other podcasts and resources. And I think the way that many people are taught, and sometimes it’s how we’re socialized in business with this, what I call the empire culture, where you’re taught that you must be positioned yourself as the sole expert, who has all the answers to some of these problems. But the reality is for me in business, I have this whole circle of really smart friends. Each of whom has a little different perspective on solving the problem for our clients. And we help each other all the time. It’s a very natural process.

John Jantsch (11:39): I guess what I’m having an aha is that it, it really, I think a lot of people say, oh yeah, we’re, I’m going to need some help somewhere. Some point I’ve developed these relationships. I like these people, but I think there’s actually an intentional of this. If I get a client and I develop a marketing plan for a client, why shouldn’t I, why shouldn’t I take that plan and educate the executive coach and the other people that they’re working with intentionally, maybe that develops a relationship at some point. But the real point of that is now we’re both going to be better able to serve our mutual client.

Pamela Slim (12:13): It is more and more the work that I do every day, working with CPAs. I refer everybody, all of my clients to profit first. I’m a big fan of that book. It’s changed the life for many of my clients. And so very often I’m working with web teams and with, you know, CPAs it’s, and there is a very direct way you get to know each other’s work, but it also saves, I think your client, some time, money, and energy of being the translator between all these different people who they’re hiring to help solve their business problems.

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John Jantsch (13:51): So there are two aspects that are talked about all the time in marketing, and you offer them up as chapters of this book. And I don’t, I think sometimes they’re miscommunicated, but I also really like, um, I’m really butchering my question here, but let’s break it down into a smaller chunk. You talk about personas all market, you’re talking about personas. You may even call them personas, but I think where I wholeheartedly support your approach to them is that a lot of marketers think every 30 five-year-old is exactly alike. Yeah. And that, because they are 35 years old, they’re going to have the same problems and the same challenges and reply or respond to the same message. And I’ll let you answer your take on how you think about narrowing, your focus to this perfect client.

Pamela Slim (14:41): Yeah. Well, our mutual friend, Susan, Susan Byer from audience audit completely changed my life. She’s here in Phoenix. She’s an attitudinal segmentation researcher and it really was through working directly with her and my clients that I pretty much just pushed aside, defining avatars or personas just by demographics first because you, there, there really is no way. If you look at people of the same age, I mean, just look at, you know, in any way, politically from a values perspective, from an interest perspective, your demographics don’t necessarily say anything about the kind of problem of challenge you have as a business owner. So when you look at it first by what is that core problem or challenge that you’re helping people to solve? So I know for me, for example, lately, I’ve been working with a lot of people who are thought leaders who have really well-established IP.

Pamela Slim (15:33): They have books, they have longtime programs, but they want to create a licensing or certification program. Cause they’re kind of tired of just doing it all themselves. So they want to create that when I’m, when I have that kind of definition of who my avatar is, that person could be all different ages. They can live at all parts of the world like they do. And it helps me to actually reach the people to solve that particular problem. So I really just use the methodology and the book that Susan has taught me so well. And, um, I’ve just seen it over and over with clients that we’ve worked with mutually.

John Jantsch (16:08): Yeah. And I think the, the thing that I’ve used for years, I talk about them as behaviors you there must have, and there’s certain things people must have, or they can’t really be a customer, but then you start getting into ideal or nice to have an ideal behaviors. And I think that that sort of transcends any kind of demographics, some very small businesses, it comes down to, you know, do we like each other? I mean, that can actually be a narrowing, you know, of who you want to work with. The next thing I want to jump to is something that gets talked about often in maybe more advanced places of marketing and you bring it in very early. And this is probably the place where I think people will struggle with your book the most partly because we don’t think of it and this is offered. Um, I think a lot of people think, well, I make a product or I have a service and I offer it to the world and the story. Um, now there are books that when they start getting into, you know, funnels and things that are maybe a little more down the road for people, you know, they start bringing offer up. I really love that you introduced the concept of offer this early in the book and probably are going to help some people redefine the relationship to what they sell.

Pamela Slim (17:15): Yeah. One thing I find a lot in, I can be guilty of this as well is a lot of folks just get very enamored by what they want to sell. And so it’s like, I want to do a mastermind where we visit a different country every year. And you know, it looks like it’s 10 days long and you know, whatever,

John Jantsch (17:34): This is amazing.

Pamela Slim (17:35): Actually, it sounds pretty good. I’d like to go to, but, but you can, when you start just by thinking about what you want to offer, and then you want to wrap marketing around it, everything to me really is like this, you know, Lego piece link in the, so when you know the bigger, bigger problem you’re trying to solve in the mission, then you figure out based on your ideal customer, what’s maybe a specific thing you could do for them. You have to understand the total journey that they need to take to go from where they are, to where it is that they want to be. And within that journey, there are certain steps that they’re going to take that you just like you described in your earlier example may not be the best person to give to them, but you need to understand the totality of that because that’s what we know your customer needs to do to, to fully get the promise.

Pamela Slim (18:23): And then from that, and when you really understand it much more specifically in having conversation with him, then you can figure out what’s the part that you can come in and deliver. And maybe it is a different country, you know, every, every week for a mastermind, but it could look to be something totally different. So you’re right. In general, the things I find that many entrepreneurs struggle with, um, is just to hold this space of looking at the bigger strategic picture first. But I feel like if you can do that in the first part of the book, then it makes the tactical piece so much easier and actually quicker when you know the right places to go in the right things to offer.

John Jantsch (19:03): Well, and there is an order to this too. I mean, that’s, that’s certainly something I’ve learned over and over again. A lot of people want to jump to, okay, what’s the tactic that I should be doing because everybody’s doing it. Should I be on tick-tock? And it’s like, well, you don’t even know you’re, you know, who you provide value for and where they are and all those kinds of things, you know, those all have to come first. Uh, otherwise you’re just guessing quite frankly. So when I think of you and how I’ve known you and how I experienced working with you, relationship building connecting is always been a sort of a deep part of your DNA. Um, talk a little bit about that, that element of the book, but also a lot of, um, what business owners I’m working with these days are really sick and tired of social media, which we’re supposed to be a relationship building, you know, platform. Right. Um, and so, and that’s not to politicize it or just talk about the, you know, the Facebook stuff that keeps coming up in the news. But I think just in general, they’re just finding that not to be a useful practice anymore. So talk a little bit about how, what, what’s the state of relationship building for Pam slim right now?

Pamela Slim (20:15): Yeah, you’re right. I was born, you know, making friends with all the nurses, probably in the, in the hospital room. If you asked my mom and I’m really the only extrovert in an all introvert family, both my biological family and my family now, but what I’ve really learned is that it kind of would be like saying, if I just gave you like a whisk and a mixing bowl, no recipes and no idea of ingredients and just said, Hey, throw a bunch of stuff together and put it in the oven probably would taste pretty awful. A lot of the reason I think why people don’t like social media is because of not really having a strategic way to think about what they’re actually trying to do and what a lot of people think. Cause my clients are like yours. Many of them is that either it’s about propping themselves up and self-aggrandizing, and just bragging all the time about what they’re doing or constantly selling and just promoting stuff that makes them feel really gross. To me. It’s simply can be an extension of when you have a well thought out plan. One of the best tools that I use all the time for just connecting with people, um, is something like a LinkedIn message. And we think about how poorly it’s utilized. Sometimes the people who might just reach out to connect and then spam you with an offer. Instead, imagine you’ve been at a company.

John Jantsch (21:30): I actually, I actually play a little game, you know, when people that to connect to me, I go, okay, you know, $2 this person connects me or, you know, sells me something in two days or less. So sorry about that.

Pamela Slim (21:43): But so, you know, but just if, you know, by converse, if I know I just recently had a speaking engagement at GoDaddy’s conference, uh, last week or the week before. And it was so wonderful when somebody reached out and they’re like, oh, I’m listening to your session right now. Thank you so much for sharing that. And it just, it’s such a natural thing. I just, it makes me feel so good to connect and begin to have a natural relationship. So it’s true. Not every business needs to use social media. I’ve known people who are very successful without it, but I think a lot of the reason people hate it so much is never really having a framework in which to utilize it effectively. Yeah.

John Jantsch (22:17): And I think I bear some of the blame for this the early days, it was about connecting and having lots of followers and having, and going out there and seeing it as a free place to broadcast to some more. And so I think what happened was so many people viewed it as that kind of tool. And you know what you’re talking about, the real deep connections, those take time, you can’t broadcast those. And I think though, for a lot of people, while a lot of people are getting a lot of value out of it, I think a lot of people, the promise of it being like it’s free way to reach the world is what’s disillusioned a lot of people of course, because it just, it just isn’t that

Pamela Slim (22:54): I agree. It has to be one part of a bigger strategy, or if you don’t use it, you need to have some other really effective strategies in place.

John Jantsch (23:02): So you mentioned K, um, T maybe for those obviously who are new to your work, you want to talk a little bit about that sort of unique model that you’ve developed.

Pamela Slim (23:14): Yeah. So we have a, we call it the calf main street learning lab, which is here smack dab in the middle of main street in Mesa, Arizona, and really by day it’s my office as a business coach where I coach people all over the place. And my husband’s when he works with, with his patients. Um, but the evenings and the weekends, of course, in non COVID times, it is a gathering spot for many, especially black indigenous folks of color entrepreneurs to really test and try different ideas to teach workshops, to, to, you know, pilot programs and what we found. It’s been interesting in the research of just starting of knowing, Hey, this is a place we know we want to have a presence, especially to be highlighting the leadership of native entrepreneurs. Knowing, seeing as my husband has one and we didn’t see much representation whatsoever in the media.

Pamela Slim (24:01): But the other thing that we’ve really learned with more research with places like the Brookings Institute, is it in these innovation districts like we have here in Mesa, it’s actually essential to have a place for people to test and try different ideas. And for me, in my profession as a business coach and a writer and somebody who works with brands that support small businesses, I feel so lucky that literally if I opened my door, you know, right now I would have such an interesting collection of people who had walked through the door and asked their questions. I have a deep relationship with all of my other main street businesses. And so I feel like I get just an up close and personal look at this intersection between online business and main street businesses, which drive so much of our economy everywhere.

John Jantsch (24:47): Yeah. Awesome. So, uh, depending upon when you’re listening to this, the book will be in stores everywhere in the middle of November or so. Uh, but, uh, you’ve also got a, you’ve got a superclass, you’ve got some other things that obviously is a companion. So you want to tell people about where they can find those and find out more about the work you’re doing.

Pamela Slim (25:06): That’s right. So currently we have a pub date of November 3rd, and as part of that celebration, I’ll be doing, I call it a superclass as opposed to a masterclass, partly just to be a little bit different and partly because I love to teach and make things fun. But if you do sign up, uh, before the book comes out right before the book comes out and pre-order, um, we’ll do a two and a half hour, very hands-on action packed, 12 month marketing planning session using a lot of the methods in the book. And also you can get a workbook that has all the exercises in the book. I am a coach, I’m really an author practitioner. So every chapter has exercises and we have some tools for you to use as well. And all of that, you can find it Pamela slim.com forward slash the widest net. Oh,

John Jantsch (25:51): Okay. Well, Pam was great catching up with you and, uh, appreciate you dropping by the duct tape marketing podcast. And hopefully we’ll run into you, uh, would be, uh, now that we’re starting to slowly get back.

Pamela Slim (26:02): Sounds good, John. Thanks for having me.

John Jantsch (26:05): All right. So that wraps up another episode. I want to thank you so much for tuning in and, you know, we love those reviews and comments. And just generally tell me what you think also did you know that you could offer the duct tape marketing system, our system to your clients, and build a complete marketing consulting coaching business, or maybe level up an agency with some additional services. That’s right. Check out the duct tape marketing consultant network. You can find it at ducttapemarketing.com and just scroll down a little and find that offer our system to your clients tab.

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Duct Tape Transcript

John Jantsch (00:00): This episode of the duct tape marketing podcast is brought to you by the MarTech podcast, hosted by Benjamin Shapiro, brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network. Ben’s episodes are so awesome. They’re under 30 minutes. They share stories with world-class marketers who use technology to generate growth and achieve business and career success. Ben is a great host. I’ve been on his show. He’s been on my show. He always really digs down and gives you actionable stuff that you can take away and do. And he’s always bringing up new stuff. The science of advertising, how to figure out what to automate. Just things that marketers are wrestling with today. Check it out. It’s the MarTech podcast. Find it wherever you listen to your podcasts.

John Jantsch (00:51): Hello, welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Brian Clark. He’s a writer, traveler and serial digital entrepreneurs is the founder of the pioneer content marketing website, known as Copyblogger, the midlife personal growth newsletter, further and unemployable and educational community that provides smart strategies for freelancers and entrepreneurs. Brian, I don’t know how many times you’ve been on the show. I’m not a lot of people couldn’t tell me when I’m on shows. They can say you’re on episode three 50, but I know you’ve been on several times. Welcome back.

Brian Clark (01:24): Thank you. Thank you for having me back. I do not know the answer to that. I don’t know the answer to how many times you’ve been on my various podcasts. So I think this is a very good long-term relationship with God. Go in here, trading off audio guest appearances.

John Jantsch (01:41): So you’ve been writing a lot lately about this kind of transition that you feel like we’re going through moving from web 2.0 to web 3.0, so I guess the first question is just explain the shift. You and I basically grew up in web 2.0, and that was what launched our sort of existence. But to explain this, a shift to start with, what do you call web 2.0, what’s the shift.

Brian Clark (02:02): Let’s go all the way back to the 1.0 version, because I think we both really got started there and that was basically more of a, oh, it was all about information web 1.0 was the ability to publish webpages and have anyone across the world, access those pages. And, uh, and you could build audiences that way. And so that’s what I started doing in 98, ironically, with email newsletters, which are going strong to this day, but I really I’d started three successful businesses using exclusively digital marketing, but they were offline businesses, real estate and law. But the inflection point that where I became me in Copyblogger came into existence. And I think duct tape marketing came into prominence as well, was really a web 2.0, which started really what we would call the interactive web started with blogs. And really, I think those were the good old days of the thing, because then it became a about mobile and apps.

Brian Clark (03:09): And when that happened, social media went mainstream. And so now primarily people think of web 2.0 as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, the huge platforms that have way too much, I would say, sway over our lives and have had certainly arguably bad effects on everything from democracy to the broader society. So in, in the broadest sense, web 3.0 is a collection of technologies that kind of allow us to decentralize again, the web became very centralized around these tech giant platforms. And now we can go back to not exactly where everyone has their own blog, but something that’s a good analogy that you own your property. Maybe you get to control your data and who accesses it and the value that’s extracted from it. And there, like I said, there’s a whole range of converging technologies that are making this happen. So it’s early days, but things are really picking up and with the pace of change that we’re experiencing right now, I wouldn’t sleep on it. I would start paying attention. Now,

John Jantsch (04:17): Some of the defining characteristics, and everybody’s talking about cryptocurrency and blockchain and AI and AR and virtual reality, are those kind of the core components that make this a different thing. Yeah.

Brian Clark (04:29): Yeah. So there are, there’s various terminology for what we’re calling web 3.0, another term is the spatial web or the 3d web where we really move from that page metaphor to a place where if you’ve ever seen ready player one or way back in 92, there was a novel called snow crash by an author named Neil Stevenson where he coined the term, the metaverse, you’ve probably been seeing people dropping that lately. Yeah. So again, early days, as far as the fully realized thing, but farther along than people think, because really we live in the metaverse now in the sense that the real world is being digitally reproduced, they call it digital twins of various things. You can think of the cars that go around for Google maps and basically digitize everything. Every Tesla is mapping the, the real world to make their autonomous, uh, features work and pave the way for autonomous cars.

Brian Clark (05:32): But at the same time, all that data is working to merge the physical world with the digital. And then you hear about things, the internet of things, right, where everything has a sensor and is therefore connected to the internet. All of this is happening behind the scenes. And a lot has accelerated because of COVID especially investment in artificial intelligence and automation. But also with the fact that no one seems to want to go back to the office is accelerating, augmented and virtual reality, which had been long promise. But I think we’re on the cusp. My, my test for this or the thing I’m waiting for is apple to release some hardware. And I think it will change things like the first iPhone did in 2007 may better and worse. Who knows?

John Jantsch (06:24): I bet you, a lot of listeners have experienced like an Oculus device or something. And I think that’s a really mainstream or at least common experience that brings a lot of these things in. Yeah,

Brian Clark (06:34): It’s becoming much more mainstream. I am not a fan of Facebook. I keep holding off on experimenting with the Oculus. I should just for the experience, but yeah, I think apple is going to break it wide open. I there’s,

John Jantsch (06:47): Uh, travel the world app or game or experience. I’m not sure what they actually call them on the Oculus and you could actually put in coordinates. And so I actually put in my house and I’m on this thing and I’m literally walking up my driveway and it feels like I’m there. And I’m at that point 600. It’s so

Brian Clark (07:03): Reproduction of your actual house. Yeah.

John Jantsch (07:05): Because it’s using Google mapping technologies.

Brian Clark (07:09): That’s what I’m talking about. All of that’s been that’s amazing. Yeah.

John Jantsch (07:12): So I’m walking like I’m walking up my driveway. It’s pretty crazy

Brian Clark (07:17): Interesting.

John Jantsch (07:18): Yeah. So, but that’s, that’s AR that’s the artificial intelligence. That’s all of the mapping and the internet of things. It’s connected, everything. So it’s, I think that’s where a lot of people think of these things as Saifai still, that’s a very everyday experience that is using all of this technology. So,

Brian Clark (07:34): And it’s about to become much more every day in, in industry AI, augmented reality is used a lot. They’ll have custom glasses or headsets in say a warehouse setting. And this increases in productivity when you can digitally identify information in location in a analog space is amazing. And there’s a lot of applications for the,

John Jantsch (07:57): I saw a heating and cooling person using augmented reality to actually have a schematics of, of a piece of equipment that he was working on that we’re basically said, this screw right here happens to be screw C put the red wire on that. And it’s boom right there instead of,

Brian Clark (08:13): Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So just real quick. So people understand the host of technologies that we’re talking about here. So you’ll have a new interface for being online to the extent we ever call it being online anymore. It’s like we’re online all the time to some degree. Um, but yeah, you’ll have augmented displays that you’ll have glasses that, uh, serve information up. As opposed to looking down at the rectangle, we call a phone virtual reality of course is much more immersive, creates an entire place. So imagine the kind of training that we both do, John, that where we’re having to grapple technology in order to get people to feel like they’re in a classroom with us soon, we’ll have a virtual classroom through that interface. There’s also that internet of things, aspect where 5g and all these sensors are going to just rapidly increase our ability to do anything anywhere through the commandants of various access points that way in the physical world.

Brian Clark (09:19): Then you’ve got your artificial intelligence and machine learning, which will be the easiest way to think about that is we have apps. AI is an app that’s just way smarter than the apps we have right now. Siri is not AI, but one day Siri will be AI or Alexa or your surveillance technology of choice. And then, but what’s happening right now and you can’t really escape it. And almost I think in, in a bad way, cause I think it obscures the true potential of what’s going on here is blockchain. So you have cryptocurrencies, you’ve got NFTs, non fungible tokens. You’ve got smart contracts. You’ve got new legal entities called dowels where communities can work in a more egalitarian manner together. It’s really working to where we go away from these centralized platforms. And yet we have the ability to collaborate almost friction free in a decentralized manner.

John Jantsch (10:25): Let me make the connection between cryptocurrency or blockchain and why that is, is powering this web three point out because it’s not just another feature of what three, three oh, I’m surmising. It’s really more of the inner workings of what’s going to make this go from a finance standpoint.

Brian Clark (10:46): I use the word foundational it’s it’s the, you could call it the trust layer or the layer that dispenses with the need for trust, where you can do transactions with people without intermediaries, without platforms collaborate with people at using these smart contracts, which are really applications in themselves that are programmed to say, this happens in this happen such as if this proof of work is made, then this payment is transferred out of escrow kind of thing. So right now we have an entire business ecosystem that is really dependent on trusted intermediaries. And what blockchain is working towards when we talked about de-centralization is getting rid of those intermediaries. And you can imagine how many people might be upset about that. So when you hear about reps, exactly, when you hear about crypto regulation and this and that, there are some very powerful legacy players who would rather things stay the way they are, but the inherent nature of the blockchain is I don’t think you can stop it. So,

John Jantsch (11:58): And there’s sometimes too, though, if somebody like newspapers really fought the change for a long time, because it was gutting their business, but the smart ones, a few smart ones jumped on it and said, no, we’re going to be a part of this because it’s inevitable. You see banks ever doing that.

Brian Clark (12:14): I do see some banks who understand that defy or decentralized finance is happening and they got to jump in. Yeah, because I was just thinking, it’s such a good example, John of the newspapers and they really screwed up. They really did. They fought inevitability and it’s sad because journalism is important. And, and then we’ve had different models that haven’t really worked either. So I’m really still concerned about that issue. I’m not so concerned about the state of the legacy, financial institutions, not a fan, but it’s the way things have worked, but I’m really excited to see what can be done now. Again, I think my early optimism for social media, I think you were there with me and we saw the dark side of that and pretty spectacular fashion. So this time going in, I’m not Pollyanna about it at all. I’m like, I’m trying to figure out what can go wrong as much as I like to imagine what could go, right? But most of it, because it’s essentially democratic and not doesn’t allow for some of the shenanigans that can go at a Lehman brothers or what have you going back to the last financial crisis on paper. It seems like it should be better, but again, let’s keep our eyes.

John Jantsch (13:35): And now let’s hear a word from our sponsor. I talk a lot about tools and strategies to track customer loyalty and satisfaction, whether it’s predicting consumer behavior or diagnosing the many Watts, hows and whys of marketing, the HubSpot CRM platform has customizable solutions to help your business go from why not to what’s next. I love all things duct tape, as you know, except for when it comes to a CRM platform, many CRM platforms are either over-engineered or clunky and unreliable costing you more time and money than they’re worth a HubSpot CRM platform means that you have purpose built solution. That’s tailored to your business and your business alone. So whether you’re just getting started or looking for a robust system, HubSpot is flexible and customizable, meaning it scales and grows as you do with new features like business units, association labels, permission sets, and more HubSpot admins can tailor their accounts like never before and now with sandboxes admins have access to a production like account, allowing them to test iterate and experiment without risk. Learn more about how you can customize your CRM platform with hubspot@hubspot.com. So a, a branch of blockchain, cryptocurrencies, creator, coins, even further down the branching is something that you are exploring as a way to, I think in a lot of ways is as to create a very practical application, if you will, for people that are in, I think you’ve called them. I know I’ve heard Joe Pulizzi call content entrepreneurs. So talk a little bit about that idea of what our creator Koreans, why now, how all that goes.

Brian Clark (15:10): Yeah. It’s interesting. So a creator coin is basically a branded digital currency that you effectively, you could have duct or tape I’ve

John Jantsch (15:19): I’ve, I’ve actually applied for duct. Yeah.

Brian Clark (15:21): Is it doc? Not tape. Okay. I didn’t know which way that was going, but it’s ironic because compared to something like Bitcoin, which people complain has no intrinsic value where neither does the U S dollar, but we agree that it does. So if there’s enough consensus, then things have value. But with creator coins, the entrepreneur has incentive to offer better deals in their coin than they would charge in us dollars. And that seems counterintuitive, but it’s a great deal for your customers, but it’s also a great deal for you. What if they transact in your coin because you own a whole bunch of that cryptocurrency because you created it. So if you own 50,000 of your own coin and people start to transact in it because you offer them a better deal on it, the value of your coin goes up. That means that the value of your store of coins goes up and you’re able to trade that for good old fashioned USD or any other currency that you want. So it’s one of the weird things that doesn’t seem to make sense that does. But the other use of creator coins is similar to credit card points or airline miles. So you can actually give this money to people who send you new subscribers or new customers, or what have you. And again, they can use that to buy stuff that you sell, or they can trade it in and get cash for it.

John Jantsch (16:56): Well, it’s funny because they’re coins, but in a lot of ways, I almost feel like it’s like a membership card or it’s like a community things not. So

Brian Clark (17:06): The loyalty program to a certain degree that supports you in a way that gets them a better deal. It’s like loyalty programs that almost every business seems to have these days, but it’s got the, it’s got some fascinating juice to it with the crypto angle.

John Jantsch (17:24): Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So obviously we’ll read about the people who became billionaires doing this because that’s what will get reported. But is this an in your view, is this something that if I’m a content creator with a community, is this just a no brainer? I should be looking at developing my own currency.

Brian Clark (17:43): I think from what I’ve seen and we tried to poke every hole we could and it go into it. It seems to work. The only way I could lose is if this coin somehow goes less than zero, which is not possible again, when you create your own currency, you take something that didn’t exist and now has a store of value for you. But I think the key here is it works. If you’re able to charge us dollars for something, then you’re able to make your creator coin work to your benefit and with more upside. But if you’re just relying on people to tip you or whatnot, which is the Patrion thing, never did it for me. I know some people, it works for them, but I don’t want to rely on the charity of my customers. I want to create things that they want because they add value to their businesses. Know

John Jantsch (18:38): What’s interesting about this too. That’s an angle that doesn’t exist in any other form of payment that, that we use today, at least is that if you do a good job, the people who invested in that coin or invested in your newsletter, so to speak, their investment actually becomes more valuable as well. And I think that’s right.

Brian Clark (18:58): Yes. Now you’re not crazy supposed to downplay this aspect of it. Cause you don’t want to treat it like it’s a security or something like that. But yeah, when we launched the coin and it was a buck 50 and now where it’s at now, people made money. They made value cause they haven’t sold yet. And a part of my job is it’s interesting how it makes you more transparent. Like you want to tell them about the roadmap of your business when you might’ve kept that closer to the vest, because they want to know that the activity in that coin is going to cause what they are holding to go up. So it’s really causes you to think very differently.

John Jantsch (19:40): That’s interesting because yeah, the, there, one of the things that could hurt your $5 coin is half the people deciding now’s the time to sell, uh, because all of a sudden your coin, it’s probably going to tank

Brian Clark (19:50): And this is a new space. But by the time we launched our coin there, we attracted speculators who bought thousands of dollars worth of it at the beginning. And the problem with that is we got up to 13 bucks a coin, we’ll get back there, but we had one of those whales sell and you get, you have to know that’s going to happen. They’re in it. They’re not part of your community. They’re only in it for speculation. And I think that it’s so new Raleigh just, you know, rallies, a platform that we get our coin on. It’s only been around for a year. And it’s amazing. There are people making hundreds of thousands of dollars by getting in early on some random person’s creator coin and then, and then selling later. So,

John Jantsch (20:35): And Henri on Raleigh, there are coins that are worth 40, 50, $60. So yeah, somebody bought those at a dollar then.

Brian Clark (20:42): Yeah, no, I own a bunch of Joe Pulitzer. He’s tilt coin because he gives you $5 worth of coin for every email subscriber you send them. So I just mentioned him once in Copyblogger and I got a whole bunch of coin and he, I think he’s up there around $30 or something, but he’s the one who got us into this. He had to basically talk me into it is Joseph, very smart, pragmatic guys. So I’m like, okay, if this were anyone else, I would think you were full of it. But whether it’s on rally or on other platforms, the thing we like about rally is they are very serious about vetting. They don’t just accept anyone. You don’t have to pay cash, right? So you can’t buy your way in, but you have to have a certain audience criteria and gotta be a good person. Someone’s got to vouch for you. So I’m going to get you in there, John. Definitely good.

John Jantsch (21:36): Yeah. And so explain your coin is called move mov E and obviously people can go to rally. They have to join rally, but then they can invest just like any TD Ameritrade or anything like that. That,

Brian Clark (21:48): That’s a great thing with other forms of other than Coinbase. Crypto is difficult to transact in, but you can with rally, you sign up, you can use a credit card, you can use other crypto. So they’re trying their best to make something that’s inherently somewhat confusing, more accessible. And I think that’s an important step where we’ve got a lot of work to do in this entire space. A lot of people don’t know what a crypto coin wallet is. And, uh, I had invested in the theorem quite a while ago, but I was just holding it there in Coinbase, which I was informed was stupid because Coinbase can get act. And it’s interesting to me that I don’t worry about my stock portfolio being hacked, but with crypto, it’s like the wild west a little bit, but it’s just evolving so quickly. I’m just so interested to see six months from now, six months ago, my life was completely, my business was different. The way I thought about it was different. Even though fundamentally I do the same kind of stuff. And I find this as positive that it makes you think about providing value to your community, to your people, to your customers at an even more accelerated level than we already have to be a successful entrepreneur.

John Jantsch (23:05): And that can’t be a bad thing for anybody.

Brian Clark (23:08): Absolutely not.

John Jantsch (23:10): So Brian tell people where they can, I know people are familiar with Copyblogger, but some of the other things that you are doing as well,

Brian Clark (23:17): A lot of this web 3.0 stuff mixed with it’s still like web 2.0, it’s driven by audience. And I would take it a step further and say that it’s the subset of your audience that could be called community community is a buzzword that’s been passed around since the very beginning of the internet. Usually by brands, who’d never had a chance at it, but you’re really starting to see these cohesive communities fly, but all communities need leaders. And I think that’s the redefined role. The digital entrepreneur is also community leader in addition to product services and whatnot. So my newest project, it’s my version of a paid newsletter is called future freedom. But there is a completely free course. If you get a future freedom.com, it’s a gist of how we think about things in the creator economy and all that good stuff. So I’ll just, I won’t give you the whole list. I, I, because I’ve retained Copyblogger, we launched an agency of a copy. Blogger feels like I got more going on than ever, but thankfully I’ve got smart partners and many of those who handle it for me, it’s a good place to be at this stage of our career jobs.

John Jantsch (24:32): No kidding. So based on today’s conversation, check out future freedom.com. We’ll have other links in the show notes as well. Great. Catching up with you as always. We’ll have to get together. Now that we’re both out here in the level of

Brian Clark (24:43): Both in Colorado, I think you’re doing it even better and I’m going to come out to your place if you wouldn’t mind

John Jantsch (24:50): And come up and shovel some snow. Oh yeah. I carried you stopped by

Brian Clark (24:57): Take care of brother take care.

John Jantsch (25:02): All right. That wraps up another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. I want to thank you so much for tuning in. Feel free to share this show. Feel free to give us reviews. You know, we love those things. Also. Did you know that we had created training, marketing training for your team? If you’ve got employees, if you’ve got a staff member that wants to learn a marketing system, how to install that marketing system in your business, check it out. It’s called the certified marketing manager program from duct tape marketing. You can find it at duct tape, marketing.com and just scroll down a little and find that tab that says training for your team.

Speaker 3 (25:43): [inaudible].

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