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Apple PodcastsOn this episode of the podcast, Dean Denny interviews marketing expert Jesse Wroblewski. Jesse shares his journey from starting a vocational school to founding a successful marketing agency. He emphasizes the importance of adapting to industry shifts and maintaining a clear strategic vision. Jesse also discusses the challenges of scaling a services-based business and the pitfalls of pursuing growth without a clear focus. Tune in to learn about the significance of simplicity, specialization, and strategic branding for sustainable success in the marketing landscape.
Timestamps
[00:00:00] Jesse Wroblewski, a marketing expert, shares insights on brand differentiation and avoiding commoditization in the industry.
[00:16:57] “Decommoditized businesses with science and art.”
[00:31:01] Differentiate with simplicity and approachability.
[00:44:30] Differentiation is key for small businesses. Building relationships through value is crucial. Public speaking and lumpy mail can land mid-market and enterprise clients.
[00:58:32] Friend discounts impact livelihood and relationships.
Lessons Learned from the Podcast
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The Power of Differentiation:
- Jesse emphasizes the importance of transforming brands from being “interchangeable” to “irreplaceable.”
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Lessons from Carnivals:
- Jesse draws a fascinating parallel between carnival culture and marketing. He explains how carnivals, often run by the most “undesirable” individuals in society, perfected the sales funnel through tactics like patter (attention-grabbing scripts), social proof, and qualifying prospects.
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The Importance of Focus:
- The hard way of trying to be everything to everyone can dilute your brand and lead to inefficiency.
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Adaptation and Reinvention:
- Jesse’s journey from building websites in the early 2000s to running a full-service marketing agency illustrates the need for continuous adaptation.
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Simplicity Scales:
- Jesse discusses how simplicity in service offerings is crucial for scaling a business. By focusing on a few key services and doing them exceptionally well, businesses can scale more effectively, avoiding the pitfalls of overextension and complexity that can cripple growth.
This is Open Source Growth, Australia’s number one SaaS marketing podcast hosted by me, Dean Denny, founder and director of Owendenny Digital. Get ready to deep dive into a world of direct response advertising. Unlock the mysteries of digital marketing, master the art of copywriting and drive massive revenue growth with cutting edge customer acquisition strategies, from product led growth to sales led growth. We’ve got it all covered, and that’s not all.
Join us as we sit down with some of the brightest minds in our industries, founders, CMOs who’ve been where you are and have made it to the other side with stories to tell and wisdom to share.
We’re not just about the strategies in the how to’s, we’re here to fuel your drive with a heavy dose of motivation because in the world of SaaS, it’s not about knowing the path. It’s about charging down with all you’ve got. Whether you’re looking to double, triple, or even 10X your SaaS company this year, Open Source Growth is your ticket to the big leagues.
So plug in, turn up the volume, and let’s get your SaaS rocketing to new heights. Because here it’s not just growth. It’s exponential growth served with a side of fun and a sprinkle of the extraordinary.
Welcome to Open Source Growth. Let the adventure begin.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Open Source Growth, where we dive deep into the minds of the world’s most intriguing and innovative marketers, Founders, and CEOs.
Today, um, we have a guest whose unique approach to marketing and branding has not only set him apart, but also earned him a cult like following in the industry. Our guest today that we speak of is Jesse Wroblewski. The mastermind behind Decommoditized and the author of Marketing for Supervillains, Jesse is on a mission to rescue brands from the quagmire of commoditization and propel them to new heights of distinction and leadership.
With over 20 years of experience as the CEO and founder of Generations Beyond, Jesse combines analytical and scientific marketing expertise with a flair of creative differentiation that is nothing short of revolutionary. He’s not just any marketer. He’s a brand differentiation expert who believes in transforming brands from interchangeable to irreplaceable.
His passion lies in helping businesses stand out in an overcrowded market, ensuring that they reclaim their unique identity and leadership position. His journey is shaped by personal experiences and influences from iconic figures like Riedel Yankovic and the insane clown posse, which have molded his distinctive approach to tackling the madness of the marketing world.
Today, Jesse will take us through his incredible journey, sharing insights on how brands can avoid the race to the bottom, reclaim their market share and connect with their audience on a deeper, more authentic level. Get ready for a conversation filled with groundbreaking strategies, innovative ideas, and a whole lot of inspiration.
So, without further ado, let’s welcome the man, the myth, the legend, the super villain marketer himself, Jesse Wroblewski. G’day, g’day, what’s going on?
Yeah, I don’t think I can live up to that intro. Well, you know what? We’ve got the audience hooked, so we need to try a little bit. So, thanks for that. You are so welcome. So guys, if you’re watching the video here today, before we even get into Jesse’s story, you’ll see like a whole bunch of carnival, uh, memorabilia, carnival games, carnival everything behind him. And. You’re going to think, hang on, we’re talking to a marketing expert here. Oh, wow. He’s even got the sledgehammer. He’s rolling forward.
So this is, this is for the, uh, the clients that don’t pay sledgehammer. If you pay me, if
Some people have people who knock on doors. Others send angry legal letters. Jesse has a massive hammer. Um, does the client get projected from like the lever that you hit with the hammer and get, and they get launched directly at the bell and then they go being when they do pay, like, how does it work?
That is correct. That is correct. And every stage is a, is a late fee. How, how much late fee we’re going to charge.
5 percent 10 percent 25 percent . 150 Wow. So I guess for those interested in this, um, carnivals have unique psychology and they have unique marketing and sales pitch. And apparently mark a carnivals and the Carnie culture have optimized the sales funnel. And Jesse, I want you to tell me about your fascination with carnivals and Carnies and. Um, why your room is filled with all this crazy stuff.
Yeah, so I became fascinated with carnivals because like you said, it’s, it’s basically everything we do is marketers hyper focused into this tiny little, you know, a marketing funnel may take a month, two months, three months to get someone to the end of the funnel where a carnival is basically a marketing funnel. minutes, right? And there’s a secret code of the Carney. And, you know, for anyone that says, you know, I can’t apply to sales funnel to my to my business or it doesn’t really work for me. Carnivals by and large were manned and, and, and womaned by what they call undesirables and unemployables, right? Ex-cons, freaks, geeks. So you have kind of this, this roaming, traveling family that created this incredibly succinct sales funnel that’s hyper focused. So, I have a video that basically goes over the secret code of the carnival, but I’ll go through a couple, a couple of quick things and see if we get any, uh, any bells and, uh, and lights turning on.
So, if you think about a sales funnel and you think about walking past the carnival, initially you have the carnival barker and he has a script, which is usually referred to as patter. And that’s kind of the thing, step right up, step right up that kind of gets your attention and brings you into the sales funnel. If that carnival barker does his job, he gets you over to the ticket booth. And I never noticed this before, but now that I pointed out, I realized every carnival I’ve ever gone to, the ticket taker is usually elevated for whatever reason. I never really even noticed it, nor questioned it. And then I realized throughout history, that was a sales tactic, a qualification tactic, because when you paid for your ticket, the ticket taker would actually peek over into your wallet to see how much money you had. And if you had a lot of money, they would do a secret little signal to qualify you. And somebody else, a member of the Carnival family, would come over and literally tap you on the back with chalk on their hand. And if you ever hear someone say, you know, he’s a mark, or he’s our mark, he’s our target, that’s where the term comes from. Because they literally mark you. So now that you’re qualified as a bona fide prospect, you’re marked. And as you walk through the carnival, you may see people walking down the midway, holding giant prizes, teddy bears. And it turned out that those people actually worked for the carnival and they were employing a tactic known as social proof that, Hey, if this guy can win something, I could win too.
Let me go spend some money. And then going further down the funnel, my favorite one is at the end. It’s you always leave your mark. With enough money for bus fare meaning after you clean them out you never want to clean them out for everything you want them coming back. But at first you want them to have enough money to take the bus. So as the book says so they can go home and kick their mailbox instead of sticking around and trying to kick you. So they do to let everybody leave happy even though they have the ability to completely clean you out. So a lot of fascinating sales tactics that are all hyper, you know focused in creating a sales funnel. By probably the most uneducated, undesirable people in American history.
It’s really interesting. Um, when you started the explanation of how carnival culture work, you said like criminals, undesirable nerds, geeks, prisoners, all that sort of thing. Sounds a lot like the shady parts of the internet as well in a really bizarre way, you know, and, um, you know, I know that the internet marketing history, you know, in the very early nineties, and you’ve obviously been there really from the dot com bauble, which I want to talk, talk to you about in a moment as well, of course. Uh, but it’s really interesting that, you know, against all odds, if you looked at it, there’s no MBAs, there’s no marketing degrees, there’s no, professional sales people with a professional sales program, basically what society would consider a bunch of degenerates just banding together to create like the ultimate sales funnel. Like you, it’s, it’s actually quite inspiring when you look at it that way, because you would never believe that they’d be able to achieve it. And you know, it’s like anything through iteration and through rinsing and repeating, how did this carnival go, et cetera, et cetera, they got better. Um, I mean, it’s super, super inspiring.
So, now Jesse, 1999, what happened that year for you?
So, I was working in the hospital and I’m a physical therapist then I realized once I started working that I was literally getting paid to walk people in circles in slow motion for eight hours a day. And the worst part of that for me was, Eight hours of small talk every day of my life. How are your grandkids? What do they do? What’s the weather like? Over and over. It was mind numbing. And I had minored in art in college, but there was really no industry. I didn’t want to go and work in New York City and Manhattan. So I didn’t, I didn’t really pursue it. And then I got a AOL disc in the mail with like 43 hours of this thing called the internet. And I hopped on and all my, all my weird kind of offbeat interests were represented on this thing called the internet. I could find fan sites about Evil Dead movies and fan sites about the Insane Clown Posse, all these weird things. And I was like, wow, everything’s about, literally everybody’s represented. And there’s a, there’s a future here. Um, I think this internet thing is going to stick around for a while. So I just started, uh, I started, uh, a, uh, a vocational school for nine months, took every course they had to offer and I hit the ground running just, uh, trying to sell websites to people that had no idea either what they were or if they even needed them.
Wow. And that’s how Generations Beyond got started.
Yep. Right in my mom’s basement. Just, uh, you know, I was working, working a day office job and I would steal their photocopier and I would photocopy off website flyers and I would snap envelopes and mail them out and that’s how it.
So like, let’s talk about generations beyond. So that’s a full service marketing agency, which you still have today in those very early days in, you know, the early two thousands when the internet was kicking off, like you were there in that original. com boom. How was it like selling websites back then?
It was, well, the process was you would sell a website to someone and you would launch it. And they’d be like, it was like, you’d never see them again, seven years before they would need an update. Right? It was just so, so unimportant to their business, but it was kind of like. A thing that everybody, you know, kind of wanted. Everybody wants social media at the time. Everybody wanted an NFT. They didn’t know what the hell it was. Now everybody wants AI, even though they have no idea what it really does. So you get, you would have gotten the right population and like, yeah, I need a website. Um, and you built something really cool and, you know, six people would see it over the course of a year. But, uh, yeah, that was, that was kind of the, the, the, the, the first step.
Wow and how did you get those initial customers was it just through flyers was it through door knocking? Because at the end of the day right the internet was new so the way you would acquire customers wasn’t through the internet via assumption. So, from what I’m seeing here, like, internet marketing wasn’t even really a thing yet. So, like, this is pre Frank Kern when you got started into, started in this game. Yeah. Pre, pre Pre Google, like, pre Search Engine, like, it was probably AltaVista and AskJeeves kicking off at that point. Google was probably starting to become new in about 2001, 2002. Um, so, yeah. How did you acquire those first customers? Was it just flyers? Was it direct mail? Was it networking events? Like what did you do to build, you know, your first hundred thousand dollars in revenue?
Yeah. So the first, first client I got, believe it or not, is still a very close friend and a client today. And that was from one of those bootleg flyers that I made at my, at my day job. Um, but Yeah. I mean, it was just, it was just a process of, Being the guy, you know, when someone hears, you know, everyone was talking about.com back then you hear IPOs and people going crazy. The second the conversation came up, it was a very small world. Like, Oh, Jesse, you know, talk to him. He’s a website guy. I don’t know what websites are, but I know that’s what he does. Right. So it was, it was a lot easier. If you want to talk about the world of becoming commoditized back then, there were so few people that as soon as the, as soon as the buzzword came up. You know, I was the only guy that they ever even heard of that did this
stuff. it amazing though? Like when you’re the quote unquote, the guy for a very short period of time, it really helps you gain that initial traction in your career. It’s funny because I could even resonate myself that I was. One of the very first like Facebook specific marketers in my regional town of Geelong and I was an expert well before people even started using Facebook pixels and metapixels and they started doing ROI based campaigns or They started to influence Then people started to run, you know Facebook ads. Through you know direct response advertising principles a lot of the time It was just like Lickshares and Clyde and Lickshares and Likes, all that stuff, right? So, it’s, it’s really special when you get that opportunity to be the guy I can totally relate. So, we’re talking early 2000s, you’re building websites, and, you know, you’ve been in this game for 20 years. I want to know about your journey from being just the guy building the websites, through to building like a full service agency, because I think before we get deep into that conversation around how you’ve gone and pivoted to building Decommoditized. Um, I think it’s important for us to really unpack your journey here. So the listeners really understand like, what led you to this point? When did you arrive at that Yeah, so.
Yeah, so I was probably and I would say it was overall a mistake, right? So a lot of clients, you know They started coming to me and those six seven years went by and they came back and said, all right We gotta redo my website and I hear about this thing, you know called Google I’m hearing about social media and I always said, you know, no not for me. Don’t want to do it I just want to be the website guy And a couple of things would happen. I would either lose the deal because someone would go to a full service agency that could do it all, or I would design a beautiful website and then they would hire an SEO person. They’d say, Jesse, you know, help this SEO guy and I’d have to get him logged in and teach him all the things that they go in and they ruin the website because back then SEO form and function did not match. Ultimately, they’d get fired, and then the client would come back to me and say, Jesse, make the website beautiful again. And I’m like, I’m spending all this time nurturing some SEO guy that I don’t even know, and then I’m cleaning up this mess, why don’t I just bite the bullet and offer it? Um, so I went from being the guy when websites came up, to not being able to say no, if you had a computer virus. Oh, Jesse works on computers, go see if he can do it, alright, I’ll fix your virus. Uh, you know, whatever. So I started becoming watered down as far as the expert goes. And I was just the computer guy, one of a million computer guys. And I started building a, uh, a staff and I took out a rent and a lease and built a headquarters. And before I knew it, we were the biggest we’ve ever been. And we were making less money than we ever made. So our, our sales were up here and our profits were in the dumpster. So at that point I said, all right, I was under the impression my, my, there was this huge economy of scale and more is better, more services, more employees, more clients. And it just wasn’t the answer. So it was a major like smack in the face, like everything you’ve been striving for for the past 20 years is wrong. Uh, go back and retool.
Wow. And I think this is really relevant for those who are listening to this podcast that are a services based business owner, not necessarily a software based business owner, because with services, It’s a bit like software. Actually, we’ll conclude software. There’s never like an end to what you can offer and deliver. And because you’ve got a unique set of skills, you have this tendency to believe, well, oh, we can keep pushing. We can deliver this as well. Oh, we’ve got a friend who can deliver this. And you start to on sell other things. And the complexity of your operations can really, um, take its toll because at the end of the day, like, and this is probably something we can both jam on in a second, but Simplicity scales really well. You know, if you’ve got like a really defined set of, you know, one, two, or even three services, and you’ve got really modular offerings, um, which you can then essentially tailor a little just to get the customers the right outcomes. It’s so much easier to scale your professional services business in that way. So. Let’s, let’s just do some numbers here. When you were running, um, Generations Beyond, and I’m assuming it’s still running today and you’re still heavily involved. Yep. So at its peak, like how many clients were we actively servicing? How many staff members and how many different services were you running?
I’d say peak. We had about 300 clients, uh, 22, 22 full time employees. Um, and we were just, we, one of the, one of the things that caused us to run into trouble was we had a salesman. We’ve tried hiring many, many salesmen. We actually hired a salesman. That was very relationship based. So he would go out. Kiss baby, shake hands, I’ll mow your lawn for you. He would just like, he would just nice you to death. And then people felt obligated to be like, all right, what can we do together? And we would literally do anything just to nurture this guy’s relationships because that was, that was his thing. Right. So you had mentioned, you had mentioned offering these services as service providers, people come to us to solve problems. And it’s, it’s kind of like a dopamine rush when we were able to solve it. And they say, well, you know, I know you don’t do this, but I also have this problem and it’s so hard to be like. I can solve it for you. But no, I got to be disciplined and only offer my set suite of services. So, yeah, I mean, we, he, he definitely got, uh, he definitely got his kicks from being liked and being able to provide services, favors, whatever you want to call it to anyone in his network. And it just ended up sinking us as far as letting everybody through the door. Yeah, we do anything you can think of.
That’s interesting. So you, your growth approach was really, well we’re offering so many services, why not mow the person’s lawn, so to speak, or wash their car, or take their child to childcare, and do whatever it takes to get the deal over the line. And it’s interesting how that, for you, was kind of like the beginning of the end of like, we’ve got to do things differently. Wow. Isn’t that fascinating? So 300 clients, 22 full time employees. There’s some big numbers there. If you, if you just do the back of the envelope math, we’re talking like a multi seven figure business right here and less profit than you’ve ever had. So are we talking that you were breaking even or were you losing money at that point?
So our profitability was below 10%. So we were taking home less than 10 percent of these huge numbers. We were, we were bringing in. Um, so yeah, like we, we, we hit it. We had a major milestone. And my business coach is like, it’s like, I feel so bad for you. I want to, you know, I want to go out and celebrate, but I know you don’t have any money in the bank. So it’s like, congratulations on reaching this, but I’m sorry. You don’t have anything to show for it.
Thank you for being so vulnerable here. Um, Jesse, because of the fact that I think a lot of people who might be listening to this podcast may be thinking, you know, Oh, it’s going to be better on the other side. You only know what it’s like on the other side until you arrive. And like, I can happily share with you, um, and the listeners here, like we’ve doubled the agency in, you know, the last 24 months and it’s been awesome. Right. But I can tell you that I had a lot more money when I was a solopreneur. I was crushing it, you know, um, you know, I was living it up like Gerule. But, you know, through the, through the baptism of fire, which is business growth, you often need to just experience what it is. And as you said, you know, If you, maybe if you did things differently and if you had modular services and very defined offerings, which were profitable and you had a very clear, um, client that you would only let through the door, maybe that could have been different. And I’m assuming this was the epiphany you’ve reached, which has led you down the path of Decommoditized. Is that a bad assumption?
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, to sum up your. Some of your thoughts, you know, great saying top line is vanity. Bottom.
Oh, emblazon that on your arm, everybody.
I was, I was chasing that vanity, like, Oh, I need to grow bigger. I need more employees. It looks better. It sounds better, but what the hell am I doing? It was just insanity.
Yeah. And isn’t that fascinating? You know, like we’re all sold this idea of big business, more revenue, whatever. But like, if you can be more profitable as a two, three, four person business, and you’re able to live a really good life. You know, have a really amazing work life balance, have the car you’ve always dreamed of, have the house you’ve always dreamed of and, you know, be able to enjoy your day to day experience like you would never want to escape it. Like that is what success truly is for a lot of people and having the right amount of money and the right amount of, you know, the right amount of opportunities and abilities to grow. And like, I think it is, you’ve got to be really careful when you allow society to dictate what you must do with your life. And that must always be like inwards to out. So tell me. What made you develop Decommoditized? Like what was it? How did it get started? Because you’ve gone in a radically different direction to like a, a generalized one size fits all marketing agency to a very niche, a very polarizing like challenger brand. Um, and I cannot wait to unpack like your expertise here today. This is gonna be so damn exciting. So like, just tell me more. I want to know what happened. How did it go? Let’s go.
So, probably it wasn’t a logical, um, decision, right? When COVID hit, it was like, all right, whether it was logical, emotional, did some soul searching. We took a hit like everybody else. We scaled back a little bit, uh, which is probably a good thing for profit, profit margin. Um, but in doing my soul searching, I was like, you know what? I’ve been doing this for so long. Let’s pretend COVID completely wiped everything out. What would I do if I had to start over again? Based on my past 20, 25 years experience. And I went through everything I did and I realized that my favorite and most rewarding, not only for me, but I made the most money for my clients were typically a very, very broad, boring product that I was able given the liberty to inject life into and create, create a personality, right? So I started working with a bunch of positioning coaches and I basically said, Hey, I want to turn, you know, boring products into exciting products. And they said, you can’t call your clients boring. Like no one’s going to self identify as a boring person. Right? So I’m like, all right, that’s kind of. That’s kind of what I do though. I don’t take exciting things that make them more exciting. So like the key, you can’t call it boring. You can’t call it. So I was searching and searching. I said, you know what, what about, you know, I felt like I was becoming commoditized, right? No one could tell the difference between me and the next guy specifically without my headquarters anymore. What if I come up with a way to do the opposite? I’ll Decommoditized businesses. I don’t have to call them boring, but if your business is like everybody else’s and you’re racing to the bottom. Let’s come in and get you to reclaim your leadership position. So that was kind of the mantra behind Decommoditized.
That is epic and it’s epic. I love it. Like it’s so interesting. Like COVID did so much good for us spiritually. I think as people, um, personally, you know, I wasn’t a huge fan. I was in Victoria, right? I was in the worst lockdowns on the planet. Like I was stuck indoors, man. I couldn’t move five kilometers from my house. Like it was effed up. It was next level cooked. But. The thing was that it enabled you to reflect and identify what was important. It’s kind of like a holiday in many ways. Like I just came back from Paris and um, the UK and um, the Netherlands and it’s amazing how it enabled us to get distance from our problems when often we need to travel, you know, 25, 000 kilometers in one direction to achieve the same outcome.
So, yeah, I mean, I made kind of, you know, you had said that before about what society, you know, falling through the trap of what society expects success to be, right? So I kind of, one of my favorite movies is Fight Club, Oh, yeah. And at the end of Fight Club, At the end of Fight Club, Tyler Durden says, you know, what, what would you actually be if you didn’t have to lose those 10 pounds that society makes you feel like you got to lose? No one gave a shit about the car you drive. You know, your work is no longer your, your work. And then we kind of like got that, you know, we didn’t have to worry about everybody put on 10 pounds because of the epidemic and quarantine. Nobody was driving anywhere. So you didn’t have to worry about, you know, how people perceived you. And a lot of my friends, they started going a little, a little batty because they, they had this time. They always said they were going to pick up an instrument or learn a language and they just weren’t motivated. They didn’t know what they were truly meant to become. So, I kind of drew that parallel during it. A lot of people, I’m sure like you, benefited tremendously from it. You know, it might have been a little scary at the time, but yeah, I mean, what would you be if you didn’t have all these responsibilities.
I agree. It’s actually, you know what? Um, thinking about it and getting back to, like, what COVID did for me, I’m just realising, holy shit, it was the most transformative part of my life. Like, I left a I left a relationship that wasn’t serving either of us. I met my beautiful wife. I got back into jazz guitar. Um, I, I started thinking about what I can do. My business, you know, it doubled over the period of time. Obviously I spent all my money to keep it afloat and, you know, I had to really, you know, salvage a lot of things, my personal savings to keep it going. And, you know, there was a whole heap of failure and misery and all that sort of stuff. But if you think about it, Um, like anything that Steve Jobs would say, you know, things only make sense when you connect the dots in reverse and, um, yeah, it’s amazing how you managed to have that, like that, that true business breakthrough all the way along. And funnily enough, it wasn’t through a coach. It was through your own reflection. Um, which is epic. So tell me, um, Jesse, like what do you do at Decommoditized? Like if someone was thinking, okay, you’re a brand consultant, you help people differentiate or die. Um, you help them position themselves in a crowded marketplace. Like if I’m say a software company or a, you know, a high ticket services business and I came to you with something really boring. Like, I, it’s like, I. Have a, a time tracking app, um, which helps, you know, accountants, um, properly build their hours. Like, I’m going to give you something really embarrassing and really boring here.
Yep, yep.
Give me the demo give me the decommoditized treatment right here, right now.
So, there are a lot of business books out there, and they very, you know, kind of off the cuff say, you know, in order to be successful in business, you’ve got to differentiate. And that’s the end of the chapter, right? They tell you to run out, find your, find your differentiator, and then somehow succinctly tell the entire world about how you are completely different from your, from your competitors. And, you know, they kind of leave it at that. And while it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s definitely a bit of art, there is science to it. And I tried everything I could not only to read everything on the subject available, but also take from my experience and almost codify or create a process. And say, all right, there’s a million ways to differentiate and sometimes that’s worse, you know, when you have a million different choices. Um, I chose the top 12 ways brands throughout history, both large and small have successfully differentiated themselves and people say, you know, Hey, when I hear the word different or differentiated, that has a connotation of like different, meaning odd and weird. Do I have to be outlandish to be differentiated? I’m in a very suit and tie button up, uh, industry. And the answer is absolutely not. You know, in the universe of differentiation, there’s Rolex, there’s Tiffany, there’s Steinway, these brands that are very buttoned up have successfully differentiated themselves. And you may not even consider them, quote unquote, differentiated. But when you think of jewelry, Tiffany’s is head and shoulders above above, you know, anything else. Uh, and when you really dive into, you know, how they accomplish that is through successful differentiation. So yeah, I mean, I have something, it’s a, there’s a free download on my website called the universe of differentiation and has those 12 planets. And when I work with my clients, It is absolutely kind of a back and forth, uh, communication. Uh, we figure out through their brand history and their current state, what planets kind of resonate with them. And then we figure out who lives on those planets. So if they’re trying to go after the elevated, you know, amazing, uh, you know, affluent crowd, but there’s only. College kids that live on the planet they chose, those aren’t going to match up. So I tried to bring as much science into, all right, this feels good. This feels authentic. And not only that, this has a huge upside opportunity, um, based on the audience segmentation associated with that differentiator. So I’m using, I’m using a lot of words, a lot of marketing buzzwords to kind of like, Negate all the other dark marketing buzzwords that are thrown around, but I hope I hope
that.
No, no, no, it totally does. Like, I think what’s really special here about you and your process is that you’ve broken it down in a really easy to understand way. And you’ve, you’ve essentially, you’ve codified it and you’ve developed processes and systems to arrive at results. Yeah. That truly pushed the needle forward for a business. Right. And I think that’s really, really important to demonstrate here on today’s call because, well, today’s podcast, it’s not a call. Come on. Um, but like, it’s so important because of the fact that a lot of time branding slash creatives get a lot of flack for just being like, Oh, they just developing pretty pictures. Like I’m sure that there’ll be a, a software CFO or CTO listening to today about how do they go about differentiating themselves? And they’re probably going to be looking for, Oh, well, let’s just use the Tiffany green and our software is going to be different and everyone’s going to think we’re expensive. Like there’s more to it than that. Like in terms of being able to identify those customer segments and. Um, you know, get all that market intel, like, what is your process?
So if we have a four week process that we call the DOA the differentiation opportunity analysis and You know, it’s it’s a four week pretty intensive, Pretty intensive program we go through brand history Um, and ultimately we end up with that differentiator and that audience segment and that, that, that kind of kickoff campaign. And then people always ask, you know, when you get to the 99 yard line, there’s always friction. You know, people hate change and you’re, you’re creating some pretty drastic change within, within the brand. And they say, how do you, you know, how do you get over that, that final hurdle? And it’s very important that, you know, during the beginning of our, of our consultation, I tell people, I am really, really good at branding. I completely suck at reading minds. So if you feel, you know, we have, we have 12 options here. If you feel that being funny or approachable doesn’t really fit well with you, let’s get it out in the open in the beginning, right? That way we don’t go to the 99 yard line and I present you something and you go, yeah, we’re really not funny people. We’re not comfortable with that. We got to go back to the beginning. So it’s a process of, you know, to use your word. Getting everyone to trust each other and become vulnerable and say, you know what? That sounds like a good idea, but something inside. It just doesn’t feel right. Let’s go to another planet and kind of investigate. Um, and then from there, once we kind of get comfortable, the data, we just basically present the data. Hey, here’s what everybody else is doing. And here’s what, you know, someone similar or someone in a, in a different vertical utilize this tactic, utilize this audience segment. This is the growth they’ve experienced.
Wow. It’s, it’s almost like the Picasso, you know. Bad artists copy, great artists still, and you’re able to take those ideas from, say, another industry and another business which has targeted a very similar consumer, um, and brought them across. It’s a lot like the old, um, what’s it called, Blue Ocean Strategy approach with Mauborn and Kim. Yeah, that’s, that’s, really, really cool. I should reread that book. Thanks for reminding that book exists. I keep on forgetting about it. It was one of my favorites.
Yeah. Yeah. I made, I made sure, you know, I, I, I, I’ve read a lot of marketing books, so I made absolutely sure that anything in my book has never been referenced in another marketing book because you pick up marketing books and it’s like, Oh, here’s, you know, don’t squeeze the Charmin and here’s, you know, this example, that example. So I made sure they were completely new examples. Um, so each planet, uh, in the universe of differentiation has a example, everything from the world’s most hated band to G. I. Joe’s to Metallica, uh, Metallica created whiskey, et cetera. So it’s all completely new stuff for, uh, any of the marketing veterans out there.
That’s a book that I cannot wait to get my hands on. I need to still send you my address so I can read through it. And Yes. Yes. that I’m going to give it some mad praise. Because if it’s anything like the way you speak, I am going to be enthralled the whole time. I’m going to be *drumroll*
Oh, come on.
Yeah. So tell me about it. Obviously, marketing for supervillains. Um, when did you start writing it? Uh, what was the process? What, what compelled you to do it?
Yeah. So, when COVID hit, I needed an activity. Um, so I had a shipping container, a 20 foot shipping container dropped in my backyard. And I was like, you know what? I’m going to turn this into a super villain lair. So I had no idea what I was doing. No idea what I was doing. I was out there with an angle grinder, cutting holes in this thing, installing doors and sheet rock and electricity. Um, so I made my, I made my super villain layer slash studio and I was like, all right, now I’m going to take all this pent up stuff, half of it’s cynical visions about, you know, my past 25 years of the torture I went through and, uh, you know, some new, new marketing advice. And I’m going to create some type of video series, right? I’m going to do 13 episodes. Just to kind of figure out my way of thinking so I did that had fun with it did a second season called the uh, the marketing supervillain hall of fame and then I was like, all right time to write a book so I started using, using a lot of the video content and then crafting an overall narrative and Throughput and a year later. I had a uh had a book.
Wow. That. Is. Amazing. Another. Incredible. COVID. Project. Which. Just. Eventuated. From. Like. A visual. Like. It’s just like. It’s just layers and layers and layers of the onion getting peeled back to. To realising. Hang on a minute. I can write a book. How cool.
Yeah, there’s a uh, there’s a time three time lapse videos of me Changing the shipping container from this ugly metal thing into like this A pretty nice, uh, supervillain lair. So if you’re interested in that, I’ll
Do you. Is this. Are you in the supervillain layer as we speak?
No, my supervillain lair is in the backyard. Um, I could take you out there. Um, but, uh, yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s decorated similarly, much more supervillain themed, less carny themed.
Ohh, that’s exciting. So I guess Where I’m really curious to know in regards to Decommoditized Obviously, you’ve got your own language about what a brand should be and I think what’s really amazing here as a copywriting geek myself. I really love when you develop like a Brand set of language, which is uniquely you now you hear words Um, like supervillain and you hear words in your, um, in, in your sphere, like using things like manifesto, um, you know, you’ve got like a whole suite of things of which essentially orbit around your, you know, your life force. So tell everyone about supervillains, like, and why is there this fascination with comic books and how does that intertwine? With differentiating yourself in the modern world we live in.
Absolutely. So, uh, half of it is, you know, if anyone’s been in the marketing arena, it’s enough to drive you out of your mind and turn you into a super villain, right? So there’s a, there’s a stat out there that, you know, 85 percent of people will outright reject a new idea on site. Right? So as marketers, we’re agents of change. That’s what we do. No one hires you to say, Hey, you know, we have marketing going, just, just keep it going. Like. You know, maintain the status quo. They always hire us to usher in new ideas. And at the same time, 85 percent of the people that hire us are like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, we don’t, we don’t want that much change, right? So just, just being in this industry is enough to drive someone over the edge into, uh, into the world of supervillainy. But the real parallel is if you’re a brand entering a market, or you’re a challenger brand, or a brand new entity, There’s usually always a name brand in that vertical, right? And that name brand, that mega brand is like a superhero. They have huge public favor. Everybody knows who they are. They usually have big muscles, which in marketing equates to big budgets. And time and time again, people come to me and they say, Hey, we want to, we want to be like that guy. We want to, you know, we want to act like him, look like him, uh, achieve their same success. And to do it with particularly when you’re under resourced, try to outspend them, try to do more social media than them, try to, you know, do more SEO. It’s a recipe for disaster. And much like if you think of your typical supervillain in a movie. They usually don’t have a ton of resources. They’re usually not the big buff guy. They’re usually the small, scrawny guy. They have to use their brain to outwit the superhero. And there’s a lot of parallels here with, you know, don’t do what everybody else is doing and try to be or act as if you’re the mega brand. You’re not the mega brand. So, one of the biggest things you can do is think and act the way the big brands are not. Do something that’s completely different. You know out of left field completely differentiate yourself reposition the category for yourself and state your claim So I thought of like all if you think of everything that we do as marketers, what’s the biggest? You know, superhero power, you know, superpower that you can do and bring, bring to the game and level the playing field, have that mic drop moment. And that’s proper differentiation.
So if you’re a startup right here, right now, just say you you’re just say you’re a software company, right? Like, what are the first three steps you must take in order to carving out an appropriate brand strategy? So differentiation isn’t just something that happens by chance, but it happens by scientific precision. What are the, what are the first three steps anyone can take? Mhm.
there’s, no one size fits all. It’s a process, right? So if you’re a startup versus someone that’s been, you know, has some market data, it may be a little different. But particularly with, with software, I know, I know this isn’t software, but I’m going to draw a parallel. I think, depending on who your audience is, software is unapproachable. Right? Especially, you know, for websites and marketing. People don’t run to like, Oh, you’re a marketer. I want to talk to you. I want to talk to you about websites. They’re usually intimidated because they don’t know what we know. And they don’t ask the questions that they want to ask. So I use the term unapproachable, right? It’s this thing that, you know, they need and, you know, You don’t have this true, honest relationship. So if you think about Priceline, right? They’re this online, gonna compare prices, book, book, uh, you know, travel arrangements, which isn’t very sexy. Um, but they wrote in William Shatner, William Shatner, the price master, whatever, whatever he was. To make it, like, all of a sudden that became like a persona and it became approachable. Right. That, that, that nameless faceless database of plane tickets all of a sudden became like, Oh yeah, William Shatner. I love him. He’s funny. The commercials are funny. It kind of breaks down walls and gets people more comfortable to approach you versus maybe a travel agent where you don’t know the right questions to ask if you never used one before. Now there’s a human there and I don’t know how to say no because I don’t want to hurt their feelings. So I think approachability. And again, this is if you are selling high level B2B stuff and, you know, they know what they need and they know the language, obviously a different differentiator. But I think software, where typically people and users use 5 percent of the 100 percent of options that your software offers.
Keeping it simple, making it approachable is a huge simple and making it approachable. That is gold. Yeah, we’re founders their avatar, obviously Probably be thinking oh wow. That could change my life now. Does it now. I’m curious when a business Ascends to different levels and obviously your businesses ascended to different levels too. You know, you’ve worked with like the mum and dad Shops with their websites, and you’ve also worked with enterprise customers And I’m assuming you’ve done this both with generations beyond and also Decommoditized how do you, How do you position? Differently In a situation like that. Where do you go when the brand is like so established like? Well, give me an example of how you’ve taken something really established and maybe not turned it on its head, but how have you done things differently so they still achieve their organisational goals?
So while it’s a challenge, you get a lot of benefits, right? So an established brand has usually a big hmm. have you, if you had not, not that it’s going in my pocket, but if you have the ability to truly create a narrative, At the drop of a hat because of your, your, your bank account, it makes everything so much easier. So again, there’s no hard and fast rule that says, Hey, you gotta, you gotta kind of inch into it and then, you know, get everybody comfortable versus, you know, Hey, something’s coming on July 1st. Be prepared for July 1st, and then boom, you turn everything on its head. So there’s a lot of ways, a lot of ways to do it. And unfortunately, I don’t have an answer that’s a one size fits all. Um, but you know, if you are a, if you are a small business to be completely transparent, being differentiated really, really needs a budget to get that narrative out there. So if you’re, you know, the, the local web guy and your customers are coming to you and they only really, they’re only going to look at two or three other web guys. You know, differentiating yourself, that, that message might get lost on them. Um, so know know your audience, know the sales flow, um, keep your eye on the ball of where the sales are coming from. Differentiation is, great um, but when people are only comparing you to one other person, you may not have to differentiate that hard, you know, just got to be nicer, have better customer service. All the, all the basics of, of business is when, when there’s a slew of competition. That’s where differentiation really
You know what, Jesse, like, I love that sort of transparency here, because I totally agree, like, if you’re just the local marketing guy, or the local web agency, or the local services provider, and you’re, you know, you’re pre seven figures a year, a lot of the time it just comes down to, are you more approachable, are you kinder? Do you provide people with the right services and solutions? Do you sell them better? And that’s all it is in the very beginning. But then when you really want to go from say, seven figures all the way up to like eight figures, that’s when the differentiation play comes in there. Because you’re trying to change the way people buy and change the way people approach an industry versus just getting the buy in the first place. Exactly. And you know what? I really appreciate that because I think that A lot of people out there who are say like services business owners, um, doesn’t matter if they own like say a psychology practice or a marketing agency like myself, or, um, how do I say that? Um, you know, you could be a physiotherapist, you could be an accountant, a lawyer, like just getting the product right in the very beginning takes care of a lot of your problems. And then when you’ve got that quote unquote market share or that market cap conversation arise, that’s when someone like you can literally be wheeled into an organization and radically transform things.
Yeah. I mean, a majority of small businesses, I’ll play a little game with them. I’ll take out a card. I’ll write something on it. And I’ll, you know, go around the room, you know, where do you get most of your business? Where do you get most of your business from? And one by one referrals, word of Yeah. that, you know, It’s referrals, right? So when you’re when you’re primarily using referrals, your marketing doesn’t have a huge impact on your business. It’s when you want to get past the referral pool and use your marketing to actually start getting cold leads, people coming in. That’s where your branding, your marketing, and potentially your differentiator comes in. Right now, it’s all coming because you’re a great person, a great service provider, and it’s all and nothing wrong with that. you’ll get to a point where you’re like, I want to be able to control referrals. I want to be able to control the amount of work that comes in. And that’s where, you know, you can start to look at things like marketing and
You know what? You are so right. I’ve never thought of it that way, in the sense that, you know, when you’re that initial services business and you’re just trying to get your first, you know, first 10 clients, uh, you know, past your first like six figure year is like a freelancer. It is literally just referrals, word of mouth, friends, and everyone’s trying to help you out along the way in the very beginning too. And they really do look after you. And it’s as soon as you start getting to that point where it’s like, I can’t scale up my referral lead flow. I’m not getting more than 10 or 15 referrals a month. I need I need some real, like, I need a shot in the arms worth of, you know, growth juice, and I need to be spending some money on some advertising. That’s when you do really need to start considering, like, okay, I need to, I need to get out into the market. I need to come with the right message. I need to come with the right offer. I need to come with the right sales flow. I need to determine how I’m going to ascend someone from a marketing qualified lead to a sales qualified lead. I need to understand how I’m going to sell them. Is it a two, three, four, five touch point sale? Um, what’s my process for follow up? Can I do this while still running all my other business? Um, but I have to do as a, as you know, as a founder, like I, I, you’ve really just blown my mind on a lot of these things today, like, no, cause it’s just, it’s true though. Like, um, and you know, and, and I love talking to other marketing professionals that have a completely different skillset to myself. Like, I’m very T shaped. I’m a direct response copywriter. I’m a media buyer. Like, that’s really just real T. Like, branding, positioning, um, product development, all that stuff. Like, advertising. Like, it all comes under, like, many different, um, you know, aspects of the marketing umbrella. And it’s just so, so cool to hear these certain things. Now, I’ve got an interesting question for you. This may not be something that you, you may want to disclose. Here on the podcast, but I’m really, really curious. You’ve worked with enterprise and you’ve worked with small business. And I think a lot of the people who jump onto this podcast want to know how you acquire customers. Because again, at the end of the day, software companies, entrepreneurs, CEOs, they all tune in here to figure out, well, how do I get more customers? How do I get more leads? What are you doing to generate leads for yourself? When it comes to number one, let’s go with small business owners or the smaller size customers. And then number two, what are you doing to do the, to, to generate leads, to acquire, say your larger and your enterprise clients? Curious to know.
Yeah. So, I mean, it’s a never ending process, right? So I don’t know, I don’t know many people that say, Hey, I’m going to go write a business book because I just want to, you know, I don’t really care what happens. I just want to get stuff out of my head. You know, I wrote the book because, you know, that was kind of the next, the next step, the next iteration to kind of grow my expertise, grow my client base, grow my network. So it’s, it’s a never ending, you know, how can I level myself up? How can I level up? And, you know, everyone, I don’t think I’ve ever met someone in the marketing field. This is what we do, you know, and you say, you know, what thing is working? Never an answer. It’s what things, right? It’s always a combination. Yeah, Always a combination. There’s never a magic bullet and, you know, where I think as marketers incredibly guilty. of being undisciplined and not taking our own medicine. Um, but, you know, I do, I do everything from time to time. This morning we had an all hands like, okay, back on the email, back on the email campaign. Here’s our list. Here’s what we’re going after. I’m going to lead with me doing, you know, speaking at their organization and then kind of squeeze in, you know, a plug for the agency. So it’s, it’s always, always, uh, uh, an iterative process. What can we, where can we be where everyone else is? And I get 35, 40 emails a day. Hey, we’ll do your website design for 4 an hour. Like how do you send out a message that competes with that? Right. Um, so yeah, it’s, it’s always, it’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s a mini differentiation process with, with every marketing piece you put out there, because. Especially now with the internet, with AI, people are able to put out thousands of marketing messages that are probably pretty crappy. Um, you just have to get, you have to say something that they’re not saying and they’re all following the same textbook. So it’s a little exercise in marketing.
I just love that. It’s, you know, you have your team with you. You have that meeting with your team. It’s like, okay, cold outreach. We’re doing this with our email marketing campaigns. Here’s a bunch of lists. This is what we’re going to do. Have you experienced because I’ve read, no, I have no, no, I haven’t read it. Million Dollar Consulting by Ellen Wise and he was the guy. From my understanding who really championed the idea of writing your own book as your, as your ability to open up doors in large organizations. Um, have you used the book in this context and how has it been working?
Yeah. Yeah. 100%, so with the lead generation it’s kinda a secret tactic with generations beyond right now, it’s positioned as, as you know, we’re, we’re repositioning a little, but it’s still the catch all agency. Agency and we forever were saying, you know, we’ve got to level up our clients. We’ve got, we’re punching, you know, below our weight. We’ve got to get bigger and bigger clients where Decommoditized really, you can’t really take advantage of our services unless you’re, you know, 5 million dollars and above. Right. So that’s kind of like the secret, you know, let’s get them through the door here and like, okay, here’s your, here’s your plan for how to differentiate. You need a commercial to get that message across. I have an agency over here that’ll, you know, Demonstrate and, and, and iterate and execute on that. So it’s kind of been, it’s it’s the, it’s been the big worm on the hook that kind of feeds everything else down the downstream.
I love that. So realistically, in terms of your funnel, which is actually awesome to disclose here that you have used Decommoditized as your ability to develop those strategy engagements with the right people who can actually afford your services in your large full service agency. Clever. By being able to just be able to do a lumpy mail, send that book out to the organizations, And then, you know, call them up, be like, Hey, it’s Jesse. I’m just curious. Like I’ve sent my book out. Um, did you enjoy it? And it’s like, do you think it might be worthwhile to have a meeting? And then bang, you’re already in there with the mid market companies.
Yeah. That’s the, the name of the game that and public speaking. Right. So you get in front of 400 people at a time and, uh, you know, something about being on stage just, just levels you up.
Like that Kani operator who’s at the ticket booth, right? You can see inside everybody’s wallets. Yes. We’ve come full circle, everybody.
All right. How much did the ticket to this event cost? All right. They’re all good. They’re all good prospects.
Uh, it’s exactly, you know, the more expensive the event, generally the higher quality the client, right? Um, no, that’s actually awesome. And I think there’s like a massive gold nugget there in the sense that if you can provide such immense value for free, plus a bit of lumpy mail plus, or, you know, or an email where you’ve got some form of permission marketing to get your beautiful high value item at someone so they can read it and consume it and then talk about you around the office, Like, what an incredible way to land mid market at Enterprise Customer Spice.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll quote Blair ends from when without pitching, you know, he says, and I was, I think many people are guilty of this. You know, everyone feels the work is the reward for the relationship. Right? So you go out, you make all these friends, they give you some work and they’re like, Hey, I got a buddy that needs this, take good care of him. And, you know, You start doing work for all this network of friends of people you have relationships with. And that isn’t sustainable after a while because you gotta give this guy a deal and if you screw up, then this guy gets pissed off at you because you screwed his friend. He says the relationship is the reward for the value you provide. Alright, so if you’re the only person in the world that can solve this problem, You know, people will gravitate towards you and that, that creates the relationship, not, Hey, I’m going to go out to a networking event. I’m going to have some beers with these guys. And hopefully it leads to work. The work comes first, the value comes first, and then the relationship comes from that, which is a much more sustainable.
I totally agree with you there. Like, I think that, um, with business, that friendship should be formed out of good business. Um, business shouldn’t be formed out of friendship. That’s just my personal view like don’t get me wrong when you take on a business partner like I don’t have any business partners like the closest thing I have in our business to a business partner is my wife and essentially, you know, it’s because of the fact that that’s just the way things are, you know, you work with your wife every single day she writes amazing copy etc, etc, and You know, it’s it’s really exciting and we love it but like people I’ve got no issues with people getting into business with friends. I think that’s actually a really positive thing because at the end of the day, um, who’s got your back like your best mate? Not many people do, right? Um, but when people get it wrong with customers, it’s like, oh, I do work for a friend. You’ve got to cut, like, there’s a social expectation of you cutting a deal. Then you, as you’re right, the next person that knows you is going to cut you a deal and things like that. Like, I’m not sure about you, but if you’re a small business owner. Or a, um, or any type of business owner. And you’ve got a friend who wants to pay you for your services as a, as that friend, don’t you think paying full price or if not overs on top of what you should be paying is the right way to treat your friends. You know what I mean? Because at the end of the day, you know, that person that impacts that person’s life, their livelihood, um, their ability to connect with the universe, um, and to be able to take part in the world. So. Yeah, I, I agree with you there. Um The, the relationship is the reward of the work, for sure.
There’s a, uh, kind of an inside joke amongst car dealers when they say, you know, Hey, when a, when a family friend comes in, how much of a discount do you give them on the car? And the joke is, you know, you charge them 10 percent more because they’re going to be such an entitled pain in the ass because they think they know you and they always drive friends and family more.
Yeah, it’s interesting. I actually have a friend, um, a funny story. I could tell this another day, but one of my best friends, his brother in law is, uh, a dealer principal at a, um, a car dealership. I won’t name names just to keep everyone clear, but you know, my best friend is always. He’s scheming to figure out, you know, how he can get the family and friends discount, um, based on the dealership that he’s working at and the car that he can potentially buy. And him, and he’s such a crazy motoring enthusiast nut, he’s just looking at it, it’s like, Oh, if he moves across to BMW, or if he moves across to Mercedes, or he moves across to, insert European car here, I’ll be able to get this car at, you know, Which is normally 200, 000 Australian dollars, I’ll be able to get a 20 percent off, it’s going to be 160, 000, and I’m going to have this sick car, and then I can flip it in a year, and make 20, 000, and you just hear it, and you’re like, oh, man, oh, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s hilarious, because like, at the end of the day, right, like, if your life is your work, and the other thing you’ve got is cars, like, you’re going to have to figure out a way to make it exciting, to keep yourself sane. Um,
Yep.
That’s crazy. Now, I’m really interested to know your thoughts on this because I know, I know your time is super valuable and I don’t want to, um, uh, take too much of it up because I know we’ve gone nearly for an hour now. No, this is great. Yeah, with 2024, everyone at the end of 2024, I remember when generative AI came on the scene, um, those large language modules like ChatGPT. I remember the first time I opened ChatGPT and I I, it’s almost like I saw the, the, the green code of the matrix, like glows, gloss over my eyes. And I’m like, this is it. This is the big one. Um,
Yeah, yeah,
How have you seen 2024 play out for you so far, um, in terms of the impact of AI in marketing? And, um, I’m just keen to hear your thoughts and what’s going and where are you moving with it?
Yeah. So it’s a, I think it’s a big divot right now, right? So I think it’s taking, taking a lot of work, a lot of jobs away from people like us, but my, my overall longterm game is I’ll liken this back to, I think 2016, I went to a trade show, I wrote a screenplay and I was trying to sell it and there was some real nerdy,
What? You had a screenplay? yes. the onion that never keeps on. This is the, this is the, the, the forever expanding onion. Like these layers and layers and layers and layers and layers. Oh no, he’s going to pull something out from underneath. I can just see it. Oh, it’s, it’s going to happen. Here we go.
Wow. I’m multifaceted. So I wrote a out of the out of the out of the box comic book called Rockabilly Road Trip and been doing it for about a decade and I had never even met my partner who lived in New Orleans. Uh, we were working together for 10 years and we’re like, you know what? He built the car from the from the comic book, an actual car. And I’m like, you know what? You did that. I’ll come down. We’ll film a sizzle reel. I’ll write, you know, a 90 minute feature and we’ll see where this thing goes. And, uh, that was my adventure for a year or two. And I could, I could send you the, send you the sizzle reel. It’s, uh,
With that sort of, dude, I am fascinated, you got me so curious, of course I want to see the sizzler reel, that’s amazing! Oh wow, so back to, back to AI, was I going? went on a, you went on a roadshow, it was 2016, you went to sell
Went to sell, there was this nerd, nerd, nerdy guy talking about analytics at a Hollywood trade show. And he’s, he’s, he’s going through all these PowerPoints. And he says, in 2016, something happened in humankind that has never happened before. And he went through, he was talking about TV analytics, he said, people, for the first time noted in human history, people are willing to pay more for less. What the hell does that mean? He said, if you go to your cable company, and they have 200 channels, and they’re going to charge you 100 bucks a month, about 50 cents a channel, People now are willing to pay 5 dollars for one channel because it’s all curated for them. Right, so we’re approaching, we’re approaching content tipping point where people are willing to pay more for curated stuff and get rid of all the crap that they don’t want. Right. So I’ll pay five bucks for the BBC channel rather than paying a hundred per 200 channels. So I kind of reflect that as to how we as humans are taking in content where it used to be, you know, you, you, for lack of a better term to swipe, swipe left on the crap. Now it’s getting so abundant. That people need help, like they don’t know what to watch, you know, you sit down at Netflix and you spend half an hour trying to find something to watch because there’s just so much stuff. mm, hmm, So we’re getting to a point in human population where people really, really need a filter in their lives to get all the crap, all the crap content. And that’s kind of reflective in becoming a commodity, right? When a market gets saturated, all of a sudden there’s too much content. People can’t tell the difference between one special thing and one run of the mill thing. So if you liken that to A. I. and A. I. ‘s ability to create content in mass, right, imagine if people now are really hypersensitive to garbage content and people are using A. I. to create garbage content times 20 because it’s so easy, I think in the long run, it’s actually gonna damage brands and people are gonna have to figure out ways to say, All right, here’s the white noise. Here’s all the thousands and millions of social media posts. We need an expert to craft something that’s completely different that chat GPT could never craft because that’s what, you know, 90 percent of the internet is. So I think there’s going to be a dire, dire need for real human created content, truly different stuff, which AI is synonymous with efficiency. It is not synonymous with innovation.
mm hmm.
So I think that’s where we have our leg up as marketers and
You’re so right, because I just did a bit of a mental exercise just then, right? Like, I’ve seen some amazing, like, AI generated images of, like, you know, these, like, essentially, like, evil mansions in the most picturesque locations on the planet. Like, you’ve probably seen it on your own Instagram or Facebook feed. It’s like, AI generated photo of, you know, exquisite mansion with, like, views of the Eiffel Tower or whatever. Like, you know the, you know, what, you see it, everyone’s seeing this crap on the
Yeah. Yep.
But like, if you showed me, like, a, an AI generated video of, say, Slash from Guns N Roses playing, like, classical music, I would not care. Because it’s not real. It’s fake. You know? Give me a recording from the 1950s of Miles Davis blowing his trumpet, which has all the wrong notes, it has all the mistakes, it has You know, John Coltrane potentially hires a kite on tenor saxophone, right? Like, give me the grit, the roar, and the uncomfortable things which make the music look great. And it’s interesting because if you know anything about music, the reason why music tastes and feels so good and sounds so good is because of the fact there are moments in time when the note is out of tune and then it’s back in tune instantly. Because have you ever heard like people play like electronic instruments like, you know, like synthesized pianos when they first started? When they first came onto the scene because they didn’t have the you know, slightly out of tune and then then perfectly.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, there was a big Hollywood strike about AI in, in Hollywood, but I, I think, you know, we experienced that in Hollywood. How many rom-coms are there? They take the rom-com formula, they tweak one thing, and then it’s a new rom-com movie, right? And it’s like, how many, how many iterations of the same movie have we seen without AI? I think we need, you know, we all crave that new innovation, right? And to, to draw a parallel, you know, I know nothing about music, but I’m a movie guy. You know, people are taking motion smoothing off their television. The film is never going to die because of the imperfections in the actual film. It’s just so much more of a richer experience compared to this perfect 4K motion smooth transfer like people prefer the imperfect film, and I don’t think that will ever die.
Yep. Yep.
Yeah. I mean, if, if there is a place for AI and if a robot can do what you do, it might be time for you to evolve, right? You shouldn’t be doing menial tasks that robots can do, right? Let the robots do that. And now your chance to evolve and to do something that robot could never do.
Exactly.
Yeah, it’s it’s it’s far from prime time ready. It’s uh, you know, very flashy very flashy, but still not ready for uh, human consumption on a on a daily basis.
Yeah
Oh great question great question, I usually have my bookcase in my uh in my super villain lair I can look over my shoulder um, definitely win without pitching by Blair 1Eds um I would say How Magicians Think by Josh, Joshua J. And number three, changed My Life. I mean, it’s a lot of, a lot of lessons that we learned in Cycloid. Not a business book, but Cycloid. Yep. Much, much, much better ending.
Okay, cool.
That’s it.
Um, no, I mean, I, you know, I am incredibly grateful. I’ve been on many, many a podcast and people just, they just, I don’t know why they’re doing it probably because everyone else is doing it and they just, you know, trudge through it and like read through their questionnaire. There’s no life. It’s almost like being interviewed by AI. So this was not only not only great on a business perspective, but really enjoyable, really engaging. I’d love to return the favor and figure out a way I can help you. Um, so you have a super villain on your side and on your speed dial if you ever need some dirty deeds done.
All right, so my only pitch is My book which is available on amazon marketing for super villains available in hardcover softcover and the kindle ebook version Um, and I at heart am a frustrated filmmaker So if you like your business videos with some explosions and lasers I overproduce all my videos. So I’m marketing super villain on Instagram, marketing super villain on Tik Tok and Decommoditized on YouTube. Thanks for having me. Super villains unite. Thank you. Thank you. I just started a couple of months ago, so it’s a good compliment. Yep.
Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, just, just having that fourth, you know, that, that foresight and the forethought just makes all the difference in the world, man. So great, great job on your end. Hope you have success with the, this episode and your whole, uh, whole podcast.
Okay.
Perfect. Descript. Here we come. Descript. Here we come.
Yep. Yep. Yep. Awesome.
Great.
Awesome. USA, USA.
I think we’re linked, I think we’re linked in together. Are you, are you active on LinkedIn? Okay.
Okay. I mean, nobody, nobody makes money with books anymore. So yeah, it’s, it’s a lead magnet.
Yep. Yep. All right. So, uh, I, I was going to say, I’ll see you on LinkedIn, but we’ll just, we’ll converse via email. I want to keep in touch.
All right. Awesome, brother. Great job. I’ll talk to you soon.
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