037: The Ultimate Marketing Engine with John Jantsch

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This is your time. How can we earn twice as much in half the time with joy and ease while serving the highest good? That is our guiding question here at the Freetime Cafe, your home for heart based business. I'm your host, Jenny Blake. Join me for conversations with authors, friends and fellow business owners as we explore ways to free your mind, time and team to do your best work. Now onto today's show.

Hello my friends. Welcome back. I am thrilled to be here today with John Jantz. He is a marketing consultant, speaker, author of Duct Tape Marketing, the Referral Engine, the Self Reliant Entrepreneur and his latest, the Ultimate Marketing Engine. Five steps to Ridiculously Consistent Growth. John has been.

So helpful to me on my journey as a business owner and entrepreneur and he knows because we've talked about this many times. But the Referral Engine is just one of these books that's closest to my business heart. I love word of mouth. I love the idea of systematizing referrals and in this book it is just front and center which is, as John defines, the ultimate marketing engine. It is a successful customer and specifically one who is excited to rave about you to their friends and family and colleagues. John, welcome to the show.

Hey, thanks for having me. Jenny, it's great to see you. Great to chat.

Always, always thrilled to have you here. Let's kick off. What is the biggest lever, lever that has created free time for you within running your business?

Gosh, I don't know if this is going to feel very practical to people, but I think it's the first step. To me, the biggest lever or lever.

I know what, which one is it?

It's like niche or niche. I don't know.

Potato, potato.

But anyway, to me it's permission.

Oh, are you psychic? Because I ask that at the end of every episode is what permission do you want to give people? Tell us more.

Well, I just mean I think, I think there's no question there's always more to do than you have time to do it. And if you have eight hours in the day, you will fill up eight hours. And so you Know, the idea behind free time is to say, you know what? I'm going to just give myself that time.

Was there a shift. Was there a point in your business where you had been working typical corporate hours, let's say, and then you realized, oh, wait, I'm the one in charge here. I give myself permission to work less?

Well, it probably was not as dramatic as one day I woke up and said, you know, but it definitely was something that probably crept in over time, and you just started experiencing it more. And then. And then it really just, you know, like a lot of things just. Just like using all your time as a habit, you know, taking free time becomes a habit.

Hmm. I feel like you've also been so strategic about scaling your business beyond yourself. Even what you've done with the duct tape marketing consultants and licensing that material. I've always looked to you as such an example of how to scale, how to scale ip, how to scale ideas, how to scale your business and yourself. And I feel like that. That seems to me like one of your greatest gifts as a business owner is looking how to create systems where things have a life beyond your mind.

Yeah, I think it really probably started with the fact that I just never really wanted to have a whole bunch of employees and build, you know, build it that way. And so, you know, looking at the alternative was there's a way to get some of these things working together and to build momentum by building things on top of each other. And as you said, you know, kind of leveraging the fact that. That there are people out there that wanted to join and do what I'm doing, but. But not necessarily sit in an office next to me.

Yeah, I can share that, the same desire. And it's interesting. I'll link in the show notes, listeners, the episode I did with Lee LeFever. I don't know if you know him, John. I don't, but he wrote a book called Big Enough, and he and his wife decided we do not ever want to have any employees beyond us. And that also sparked all their licensing programs.

Yeah, I think that that's one of the beauties of the last 25 years, really, is that we can do that, that you can have best of.

We use probably somewhere in the neighborhood of, on any given day, 10 different people, most of whom we found through Upwork, that work on a very specific part of our business, and that's all they do. That's what they're really good at. And we don't have to find other stuff for them to do because they're a 40 hour a week employee and I think that's really one of the beauties. I think you actually are much more. You can get much more efficient and effective work done by. By having people specialize.

Yeah, I just had the best experience on upwork too. Like, the person was so responsive, proactive, communicative. It was just a delight all the way through.

Yeah. And I think that those folks are in a lot of ways living their version of that dream of being able to freelance and do what they want, keep the hours they want in some cases. You know, we have one guy I know that does a lot of work for us on our membership or community platform, our teaching platform, and he has a couple young children that he is primarily caring for during the day and then he does our membership stuff at night because he can.

Let's come back to how you define the ultimate marketing engine. I love how simply you boil this down, a successful customer. Say more about that.

Well, obviously the key word there is successful. And what I mean is, I mean a lot of the emphasis, or if there is a big idea in this book, it's about shifting our emphasis away from transaction and more to transformation. So in other words, looking at our best customers. And by the way, we can't make every customer successful. That's one of the keys in this, is choosing the right group of customers, but looking at that customer where they are and really trying to map out over time where they want to be and build your business around those stages and taking them through those stages to whatever the next level is for them. And you know, I actually have a tool and a process that we've developed over the course of many years that I call the Customer Success track, which is really just a way to document this idea of leveling up your customers, of moving customers through stages. But I think that in my experience in my business, and certainly the businesses I've worked with, that can embrace this idea. It's not just a marketing roadmap. It really becomes the mission for the business. This is our goal is to take every customer that we've really narrowed our focus on and to make them successful, whatever that means in your world or their world. It really drives training, it drives hiring, it drives even product and service selection. And the whole idea behind this ultimately is to grow with your customers as opposed to continually on the hamster wheel of chasing new customers.

I love this emphasis and you really make it so clear. You talk about the membership model, even if you're not running a, quote, membership, community, the way you Think about your business. And this aligns with a great book I read called Subscribed. And there's another one retention point. I'll throw these in the notes where. Yes, with a, with a membership mindset or model. Just with that in mind. We are growing with our customers. And in fact you called the marketing hourglass. You're not just, we're not just trying to make the sale. We are putting people through a process. And then I love how you share this customer success track that this can become not just a documented system internally guiding products and services. You can give this document to customers to help them figure out where they are on this map of success rather than just thinking of products.

I've retained customers now I have, my oldest, longest running customer is from 2004. And I think it really, the big emphasis of this is that you've got a retention plan. I mean it's a built in retention plan. You're actually telling them up front when you, when, when they hire you or when, when they decide to start working with your business that you know, here is the roadmap, you know, that we've got a plan, you know, plan on being with me for a lot of years because I'm going to mature, we're going to mature what we offer with your business as it matures. And I think it's a really compelling sales message as well.

Do you think that. So is that possible? Sometimes I wonder what if your customers outgrow you or they even perceive that they, they've outgrown you. I mean, I guess that can happen too where you graduate some people out.

Well, there's no question. Step number three in the book, as you mentioned, there are five steps. Step number three in the book is narrow your focus to the top 20% of your ideal customers. So I'm really telling people that, and obviously that number is just arbitrary, but I'm telling people that your top 20% of your customers want to do 10 times more business with you. And as some percentage of them want to do 100 times more business with you. What if you focused on figuring out how to do that? I don't think you'd ever outgrow that customer because you basically would grow together.

Yes. And, and that's a great reminder that in terms of the capacity to help others grow, like you said, there are some customers that are saying I would spend 10 times more with you if you would just create what I need and what I need next.

Yeah. And, and one of the things that I want to throw in there It's a lot of people. When you have this idea of narrow your focus, meaning it's like, here's my most profitable customers, you know, here's, here's who I like to work with. Those are all great things. But I will tell you, one of the things that I realized years ago is that the top 20% of my customers are the top 20% often because I can provide the most value to them. And I think that that's a component that often gets overlooked. It's who can we actually help the most? You know, they're probably the folks that you should be focused on.

Another thing you say is shifting this perspective, especially around referrals. You talk about. These are two very powerful questions. You say, how can we get 100% of the people who eventually buy this product or service to tell their friends about it? And then another one that jumped out is what would it be like if you became the only business that mattered to your customers? Tell us about one of the two.

Well, the second one is a pretty bold statement, but it's really. Both of those are very bold statements. But what I'm really suggesting is if we at least start there, would that change how we would follow up? Would that change what else we would offer? Would that change how we would actually exceed people's expectations? We'd have to at least start thinking about that if that was the goal.

What do you think is the most important in terms of creating the referral system? Because I have to say I read your book referral engine so long ago, but I, I have not successfully implemented. I don't have this like ironclad, brilliant referral system. You know, I often leave it to chance. So I wonder, what do you think most business owners miss or get wrong when it comes to creating a referral system?

Well, it's like a lot of things, consistency or inconsistency, I guess if we're going to say what they get wr. Um, I think that's one of the keys is that, you know, the idea behind a system is it might have a component like once a quarter I am going to send a mailing to all of my customers that says X or that incentivizes them to do something that's obviously, you know, one of the keys. Having, you know, having things, triggers built that that get you to ask at the right place, that get you to stay top of mind. But I go much deeper, I think, in this book too, because I think one of the greatest opportunities we have in this idea of growing with our customers is what are we doing to impact their entire ecosystem? What else could we do? Who else provides value to them? How could we actually partner with those people to provide even more value to our customers and quite frankly, naturally develop a referral strategic partner network out of. Out of the intention of serving our best customers? Even better. So those kinds of things just have to become intentional that every client that you work with, part of this success track idea is how can we actually help whatever it is we're doing? So for example, if I create a brand plan for a business and that business owner is working with an executive coach, I should be working with that executive coach to at least educate them on what the path forward is for this brand. And I think just taking steps like that, again, provide more value for your customer. But guess what, you're probably going to establish a potential referral partnership with that executive coach who is going to be so thrilled with this approach.

That's so true. That's a great example too of going above and beyond, like going to an adjacent next step that your customer is taking and helping it be successful. And it's reminding me. I'll give an example. Right now we're working on the free time book and there was the brand strategy team like you just mentioned. And then it moves to the typesetter. Well, the brand strategy team created implementation instructions. They created something that I can easily pass along. And then meanwhile it exposes the typesetter to this brand team and vice versa to everyone in the network. So I love how intentional you are about that. And you also encourage people to be really clear, like write down and ask of potential referral partners.

The specifics, like how would I spot your ideal customer? How would I describe your unique benefits? What would prospects say to me so I know that I should refer you? These are important things that we don't often know for ourselves, let alone telling our friends and referral partners how to talk about us.

I also have a whole section on doing referral masterminds. So in other words, develop. I mean, even your. You can do it with customers or you can do it with strategic partners. Teach them how to generate more referrals. Teach your customers do it for free. Jenny, you could do this. I know that that's not an you work in, but you're so passionate about it. What if you started holding free workshops for your customers to teach them or at least to mastermind and brainstorm around ways to generate more referrals? Just meet once a month with them. I guarantee you they're going to actually start bringing you referrals based on your service to them.

Yeah, I love that suggestion in the book. Like become the one who is creating these conversations in your own community. We'll be right back just after this.

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There's also Bar to me John, I wonder what you think about this. Sort of my measure of quality of the podcast or any book that I create is that people authentically and spontaneously want to tell their friends. Like it's so helpful that they just, they can't help but send the link to a friend because they want someone to know about it. What do you think takes somebody from the level where, okay, yes, I am, I have a system and I'm reminding people and I'm asking for the referrals to that totally exceptional place where people cannot not refer you because it resonates so much or they know someone else that needs it so much.

So you mentioned my book the Referral Engine a couple times and if you go onto Amazon and look at my 1 and 2 star reviews for that book, they all say something like, well, the whole first half of this book isn't about referrals.

And my response to that, of course, is the shortcut to getting referrals is to be more referable. So I spend the first half of that book telling people, hey, you have to be more referable. A great let's just face it. I mean, go, go read Google reviews, go read millions of them like I have and you will find that what people talk about is the problems that you solve that they're not getting solved in other ways, other providers in their life at all. They talk about the People, they talk about the experience, they talk about how nice somebody was. And so it really does. Certainly you, you benefit by having a process in place where you ask for the referral, but the referral actually comes about because that everything that you promised them in the sales process, you actually exceeded that in the delivery process.

What a great piece of homework for listeners to just go peruse reviews. That's so smart. Especially in your industry, I tell you.

I mean, it will become the subject lines for your emails. It will become the copy above the fold on your homepage if you do this.

So good. Okay, let's move into some rapid fire. What are. Do you listen to podcasts? Are you enjoying any business pods in particular these days? Speaking of referrals, you know, I don't.

Listen to a lot. Isn't that terrible? But I don't have a commute or anything. You know, I never have and so I never really got into the habit of it.

But I will say podcast for a long time.

16. This is my 16th year.

Oh my gosh. Amazing.

But I tell you the one that I listen to all the time because it works into this perfect timing of this little loop in my home up here in the mountains. And it's Seth Godin's podcast, Akimbo. I just, I just think he is so brilliant and his point of view about pretty much any subject that he tackles. And he tackles a wide range of like almost potpourri of subjects and I mean rarely about marketing frankly, but it's just, I just always appreciate his point of view so much.

I do too. Potpourri is a great description for it and I feel like he pulls these very powerful but somewhat obscure factoids or stories that he bases the episodes on. It's so good.

I mean he's a genius. I mean really. And I don't mean that from like a marketing standpoint. I just, I mean I suspect his IQ is very high.

I agree. And he just has such a unique, just a unique lens with a big heart. That's what I really appreciate about him.

So true.

What about your all time favorite business book and one you've read recently?

So my all time favorite book is the least sexies book, book, business book anyway that you can imagine. It was written in 1954. It's called the Practice of Management by Peter Drucker. And he wrote that for GM and the largest corporations of the time. But inside of that book it was the first person, in my view, that was talking about marketing as not only as a system but as the most Important system in a business. In fact, basically, if you boil that book down, he basically says, everything is marketing. Marketing and innovation are the only two things that matter. And to me, that was immediately when I read that book, probably in the 80s sometimes. So the pronouns were very old school, of course, but it just kind of unlocks something in me that became my life's work, frankly.

That is so fascinating. Isn't it interesting what jumps out at you? The fact that marketing as a concept grabbed you, whereas, like, for me, I hear that word and I'm like, well, how can I avoid it? Even if I know everything's marketing? I wonder, why do you think that is that it just grabbed you like that?

Well, I think it's because I had already started thinking about that in my business, but I couldn't wrap my head around where the disconnect was. And when I started talking about first time, I went out to a crowd of small business owners and said, marketing is a system. In fact, it's the most important system in your business. And I saw these light bulbs go on because, because I think everybody else was saying, why isn't anybody else saying that to me? You know, I have systems for this and that, for hiring, for making our products, for, you know, shipping our products. But marketing is like this strange sort of amorphous cloud that I have to try to, you know, get some creative person to figure out for me. And when I unlocked that for people, I mean, I, to me, it was the first time that I think a lot of people's hesitancy was marketing is because they, they are looking at it as some mysterious thing, and it's just not.

Yeah, well, thank goodness we have the ultimate marketing engine that's right here to save the day. Okay. What challenges do you still face when it comes to either systems in your business or just freeing your time from the aspects of it that, you know, you could, but maybe just are still a bottleneck in some way.

Well, I think this is true of, I would say there are two things I struggle with. The one is I love to start things, I don't love to finish things. And that is, you know, that's a very entrepreneurial thing.

I know. Can so many of us relate? Like, I like to build, I don't like to maintain or have to do.

The growth phase, but that's number one. And then, you know, I still like to do the work that we do. And sometimes that's not the best use of my time. I mean, I, I, I can burn up five hours screwing around with a WordPress theme just because I like doing it. But it's probably not a very high payoff work, especially since there are people who can do it better than me.

See, I love that you brought that up, because this is a very philosophical question. You know, so much of the literature in our space says, yes, delegate. Everything you can is not what you and only you can do, including in free time. You know, I talk about that, but I think if something just makes you giddy like that, like tinkering behind the scenes, I love that too. Whether it's the website or software, I don't know, what do you think? Shouldn't you be allowed to keep that stuff if it's so intrinsically joyful? At least some of it?

I guess it depends on your objectives, you know, for your business, which is, you know, part of the equation. Because, yes, I'm a big fan. If something brings you joy, you should probably do it. But if your overall objective is to, you know, help 1 million small businesses get their life back, you might have to actually make some choices about how you spend your time.

Okay, fair point, fair point. What if, what if, though? As you get at the higher, higher, higher level where you've delegated so much, I guess my question for you is, do you enjoy everything up in the air at that altitude? Like, at what point is the growth or the mission, does it become where you're day to day? You know, I think about this, like CEOs that run these huge companies, like, do they actually enjoy, Are they really enjoying their work? I don't know. It seems very stressful.

Again, I think it's probably gotta be connected to the mission. I mean, I think a lot of times that's how you say, well, you know, I mean, even in the early days, my goal was to do X. And so I maybe put in more time and did things I didn't enjoy as much to get to a certain place. And I think that as long as you're meeting the mission, then if you're connected to that mission, it should have some joy in just the results. And I think that that's where somebody like you mentioned, a CEO gets to. But I will also say that that's a place where maybe that CEO finally takes the time to do woodworking.

Yes. Okay, that will take me to our next question. What do you enjoy doing in your free time when you're not tinkering in WordPress?

Dang it. I gave away my answer.

Is it woodworking?

I do love to do woodworking.

What have you made recently?

Well, if you. Most recently, it's not sitting here, but there's. I use two desks and fairly recently made. One of my sisters had a giant walnut tree that had to go that died and had to be cut down in your backyard. And one of my brothers actually milled a fair amount of the pieces. And so I have a matched pair of walnut slabs that I put together for a desk.

Wow. Sounds beautiful.

It is.

Now, would wordworking include. Have you ever tried whittling?

I have not. I'm really more of a furniture builder is my preference anyway. And it's just. It's just something I enjoy doing.

I wouldn't necessarily say I'm any good at it, but I like doing it.

That's wonderful. I love knowing that. And it's very functional. I was thinking you're just coming out with this new book, but I was thinking writing a book is a lot like whittling. You just have this slab of wood, and then you gotta go first the big broad strokes, then the smaller, finer details, and until you get to something.

For me, it's more like cutting down a tree.

Same word.

Other than the trees we cut down in order to print the books.

Well, that's true. You figure out where you want the thing to land is the first step in cutting down a tree. And then you have to trim away all the. We call it slash, but it's all the. You know, it's all the branches and the fat. And then you cut it in from there. You cut it into some big pieces, which you then buck. That's again, tree cutting down term. And from those big pieces, you drag it somewhere and cut it into smaller pieces. And then ultimately you will split it for firewood. So that's the process.

And then it burns brightly and it gives warmth and function. And see, I'm so glad. Yeah, I'm so glad. I asked you about woodworking, and it led to this beautiful analogy. It also. We can include Abe Lincoln's quote, give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I'll spend the first four sharpening the axe. So it's like, even before you decide where it's going to land, you're like getting your tools ready.

Yeah, I'm not so good about sharpening the axe. I'm more like, just go. Just go.

I like it. There's really something to be said for that. And you've been sharpening it your whole career. I mean, you've been sharpening it for a while. Anyway. Last question, John, back to what you started with. So it's cool that this takes us full circle. If you could give fellow business owners who are listening permission, you could just write them a permission slip. What would it be for?

Delete every social media app on your phone.

You have my permission.

I love it. You don't have to tell me twice now. Just have a quick follow up question. Are you still on social media, you just don't use it from your phone or is that something you don't touch and only people in the business do for you?

So we definitely have two people on our team that, that do elements of it. I obviously love it to share like this podcast when it comes out. I will, we will definitely share it and I have some team members that obviously are following all that and doing that. I, you know, I've, I'm very, very personally very, very little on social media anymore.

Yeah, me, me either. And it's interesting to think about the systems for it within the business or within the marketing engine when, I don't know, I find it so interesting when the owner doesn't actually enjoy it.

Yeah, well, that's right. I mean we've worked with lots of businesses over the years and when everybody was saying you have to be on social media, you have to be on social media and then it was a small business and they didn't have a social media person and the business owner was going to do it and they hated it, I was like, no, you don't have to be on social media because if you have limited time and resources and if you hate doing something, you're not going to do it, you're certainly not going to do it. Well, let's find what you do love to do that is going to have impact as well.

The biggest lever, if you will or lever that will be our tiebreaker for listeners to decide which one is it? John, it's such a joy to talk with you listeners. Be sure to check out the ultimate marketing engine if you haven't already. John's latest book, five Steps to Ridiculously Consistent Growth. And John, is there anywhere else you want to send listeners?

Well, sure. There is a site for the book, theultimate marketingengine.com and if you depend upon when you listen to this, the book will be out September 21st.

Amazing. Thank you so much, John.

My pleasure, Jenny.

Have a beautiful rest of your day everybody. If you've listened this far, you get a gold star. Thank you. Word of mouth is the most joyful way we can grow this show and it helps us land interviews with the luminaries and insightful guests that you would most love to hear from. Please send this episode to a friend who might find it helpful, and for show notes and related links from this episode, visit it's free time. While you're there, make sure you're subscribed to the Time well Spent newsletter. You'll get instant access to my Tech Toolkit, a continually updated list of all the software I use, along with the total monthly spend. To run my business where no one works full time even me, visit itsfreetime.com join remember, you are running the show. It's time for radical reimagining and everything is up for grabs. Let it be easy, let it be fun, and build with love.

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