0 (2s):
Who's ready to rock today. Fire Nation. JLD here. Welcome to Entrepreneurs On Fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network with great shows like the MarTech podcast. Today, we'll be focusing on the ultimate marketing engine to drop these value bombs. I brought John Jantsch and EOFire studios. John is a marketing consultant, speaker and author of Duct Tape Marketing, The Referral Engine, The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur and The Ultimate Marketing Engine. And today Fire Nation, we'll be talking about the customer success model. Why no one wants what we sell, how to scale with our customers and how to make our content, the voice of strategy, and so much more.

0 (42s):
When we get back from thanking our sponsors, ready to finally have repeatable, predictable and scalable operations for your business, Trainual can help. Pre-order a free copy of the business playbook, how to document and delegate what you do. So your company can grow beyond you today at trainual.com/fire. John say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

1 (1m 14s):
Hey, welcome Fire Nation. Great to be back here. I've been told as my third time here, it's got to put me in, like at least the mid ranks, top 25, this show top 25. All right. Awesome. So, you know, I'm not sure that everybody, you know, doesn't believe this, but I, one of the things I find challenging is that a lot of people don't believe that you get to define what sex success means. And in fact, you have to, because it is only going to be success. If it is, it's the thing that you defined, the thing that brings you joy, the thing that, that means something to you and it, you know, using other people's metrics is going to bring you nothing but heartache

0 (1m 54s):
completely agree. I mean, I have found that my version of success, which by the way, a lot of people disagree with. I mean, I've been publishing my income reports for 94 months in a row now, and guess what? I've been plateau city. I've been making a couple million a year, you know, just most of that net profits. And like, to me, I'm like, that's enough. And I get people all the time. Well, where's your 20%, 40%, 60% year over year growth. I'm like, I'm not willing to work five to 10 times harder for two to three times more money. That's not the kind of business I'm looking to run. I have found my version of success. I wish you the best luck finding yours. And you need to find a Fire Nation for you would eventually is going to be enough because a lot of people never find enough.

0 (2m 34s):
And then they just build something. They didn't even know what they've built, but that's a longer conversation for a later topic. And we're talking today about the ultimate marketing engine. And John, I was going to ask you right off the top, why this book, why now?

1 (2m 52s):
Cause I had a contract publisher wanted me to write a book. I had to write a book now, actually that did happen in March of 2020. I signed the contract and then like two weeks later, the world shut down. And so I was like, whoa, now I I'm going to write a marketing book. I don't want to write how to market in a pandemic. Nobody wants that book, especially now, but I will say that the pandemic and what I saw happening to my customers really informed this book. One of the things that's always been true, but it, it was such a bright light shown on this idea. Is that the, the companies that, that actually thrived, I mean, I know it's kind of scary to say that, but not just survive, but thrive during this last kind of crazy year were the companies that meant something to their customers and clients, those customers and clients wanted them to be around, you know, wanted them to get closer and, and, and kind of offer support and offer.

1 (3m 47s):
Like, what else can I do for you? What else can I do with you? And that is really what this book is about, is getting so close to your customers, that you actually start treating them as members. And I don't mean like a membership program. I mean, literally like, like somebody who wants not just a transaction with you, but a transformation with you.

0 (4m 5s):
Oh, transformation, Fire Nation. That's the name of the game. And you have something called the customer success track model. What the heck is that?

1 (4m 18s):
Well, I, I'm going to say it's like a really big innovation to the concept of the customer journey is basically what I'm going to say. You'll be the judge after you read the book. But the, the thing that I've done over the years, I've had my own business for 30 years and I've actually got a client that I got in 2004 that is still with me. And one of the things that, that is really key, you know, shone a light and being in those, doing this that many years is that, you know, I went to them and sold them like a solution to a problem they were having. And then I paid attention and thought, well, what, what's the next stage for them? And the next stage, not just more of the same, but like, how do I actually take them to where they want to be as opposed to just provide a service.

1 (4m 59s):
And so over the years that's really been my model. We bring clients in, we do strategy first. Then we do foundation. Then we do lead generation and then we get to scale. And so the, there actually is a track of marketing maturity model and the, the, the innovation, at least over the last couple of years, what I've been exploring is can I teach other businesses to do that, that, that, that they would actually be able to take their top clients or top 20% of their clients and, and start to ask themselves, you know, how can we take them for where they are to where they want to be, as opposed to, how can we just provide the service we agreed to, and by developing these stages and the, the characteristics of each stage and the challenge at each stage and the promise of getting to the next stage.

1 (5m 42s):
And then of course, the milestones and tasks that are going to make somebody do that. It becomes an entire business strategy. In fact, it informs the mission. It informs the training. It certainly informs the products and services and who you bring on the team. And so while, while I'm it a customer success track, it really becomes an overarching business strategy approach,

0 (6m 3s):
Fire Nation. There's a lot of things I love about John, but one of the things that I really do love about him is he simply says it like it is, he's not pulling punches. He's not blowing smoke straight shooter. So tell us why does no one John? And I mean, no one wants what we sell. I'm

1 (6m 21s):
Not the first person to say this, but I've certainly been beating this drum for a long time. Well, they want what they think they're going to get from doing business with us. I mean, they want their problems solved for the most part. And obviously they get to define what that is. But, you know, for the most part, I sell marketing strategy, but no one has ever come to me and say, John, you got any marketing strategy for me today. I mean, my website does not say we do marketing strategy. What they do come to me and says, you know what? I'm just tired of marketing overwhelm. I'm just tired of all the tire kickers. I'm just tired of competing on price and the solutions to those problems. That's what we sell. We sell clarity. We sell confidence, we sell control.

1 (7m 2s):
And by the way, don't tell anybody it's called marketing strategy,

0 (7m 5s):
Marketing strategy. I mean, Fire Nation. This is the kind of knowledge that you need. This is the kind of straight shooting that you need. You don't need people to kind of puff things up and say, Hey, you know, this is the airy fairy way. No, like this is the ultimate marketing engine. That's why this book was titled this way. And that's why this is the content you're gonna get today. And one thing that I know you struggle with Fire Nation, cause I do. And John does as well is scaling with customers. And you, we also want to talk about strategic ways to make your content, your voice. And we're going to talk about that in so much more. When we get back from thinking our sponsors emails are an important part of our marketing strategy. And as you can imagine, writing email copy under pressure, isn't always easy, but imagine how much easier writing would be.

0 (7m 50s):
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0 (8m 34s):
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0 (9m 33s):
Chris Ronzio is releasing a new book that impacts everything you need to know about documenting your business, and you get a copy for free visit trainual.com/fire to pre-order a free copy of the business playbook, how to document and delegate what you do. So your company can grow beyond you today. That's trainual.com/fire. So John we're back and it's just a struggle across the board for so many people. I mean, they get one customer, two customers here, but how do you really scale getting more customers potentially, but even maybe an another way of looking at is like with the customers that we have, like, what is the ultimate marketing engine have to say about

1 (10m 14s):
It's terribly cliche, the old 80 20 principle, but it's sort of a cliche because it's so true. So often all over the years, almost all of the clients I've worked with, you can just tell almost to a T 80% of the profits come from 20% of their best clients. And yet they have 47 services listed on their website home page, and they don't want to ever turn anybody away by like really defining who it is they can provide value for. And by the way, who they can't. And really what, what I focused on trying to get people to do is let's figure out who those best clients are. Let's figure out why their best clients let's figure out the behavior that makes them the best client.

1 (10m 54s):
Let's figure out the problem that we are better at solving than anybody else let's build our entire business around. Well, as you said, getting more of them, but primarily focusing on blowing them away, doing more with them, do serving their entire ecosystem because then they become a referral generation machine. And I will tell you that. And I know you share these numbers as well, or this thinking as well, John, that 20% of our best clients want to do 10 times more business with us. Wouldn't do 10 times more business with us. If we showed them how, and then another 20% of that group would do a hundred times more business with us.

1 (11m 34s):
If we show them how, if we built our business around just growing and with them, scaling with them, as opposed to going out and just finding more clients,

0 (11m 44s):
20 rule Fire Nation, it is true in both business and life. And I mean all forms of life. It's a really crazy just how that works. And how can you ask yourself that question, Fire Nation? How can you make a referral generation machine? And how can you continue to serve your current clients who already know like, and trust you, your current customers who want more, you know, that 20% that you know, will pay 10% more, a hundred percent, more, a thousand percent more. And then the 10% of that and so on and so forth. And that is where I like to say, you never say no. Like you never stop the conversation. You, the offers keep coming your offers, keep coming. They decide when to say now, like they can say no at any point, they can say no on a free offer.

0 (12m 28s):
They can say no on a $97 offer, they can then say, no one, a $997 offer and so on and so forth to the moon. Let them say, no, it's not your decision to say no for them. Now, John, you may content. I may contact most people in Fire Nation make contents, but how can we make that content? The voice of stress.

1 (12m 47s):
We talked about figuring out the problem you solve and really making that your core message. But then you've got to, you know, that becomes a lot of ways, your marketing strategy to compete on, on promising to solve that greatest problem. But then one of the things that, that the mistakes people make is that they then look at content is just another tactic. Oh yeah, we've got to have six blog posts a week, or, you know, whatever it turns out to be. And what we suggest you do is actually look at the customer journey. There are seven stages of my world. They are know like trust, try, buy, repeat, and refer. That's we call the marketing hourglass. I know a lot of people have used the funnel metaphor for years.

1 (13m 27s):
I like the hourglass because it focuses as much attention on what happens when somebody becomes a customer and after they're a customer and how to turn them into a, a maniac, you know, referral machine. So by creating content that, that understands the questions and objectives and how they change at each of those stages, filling the gaps, using content that fill the gaps for like onboarding for orientation for further education, for upsells and cross-sells and for literally creating strategic partners that are going to become referral machines, that you look at that map and map all of your content to those different stages in those different needs, rather than just simply thinking, oh, content is an ad or content is a blog, post, or content is an ebook, nothing wrong with those forms of content, but they're just not integrated into being your overarching strategy

0 (14m 17s):
Nation. What is your overarching strategy? Do you understand this customer journey as John's breaking this down because it's a very meaningful model. Now, John, take the stage, break it down for us. What is the ultimate marketing engine all about? Why should Fire Nation read this book and where we go to get our coffee?

1 (14m 40s):
The reason I think that the people should be interested in this book is because this book is all about creating customers for life. And, and again, if you're in it to hustle a buck, if you're in it to see where this next opportunity is, this might not be the book for you. But if you're thinking I want to build a real business, a business that not only lets me achieve my financial goals, but also is pretty personally rewarding. There's nothing, there's nothing better in my mind than, than working with a customer and seeing the customer grow. And that not only did you have an impact in that, but you actually helped direct that if you're somebody that thinks this is my long-term goal, I want to build this business. That's sustainable. That's joyful. That's the book that I wrote.

1 (15m 21s):
You can find the ultimate marketing engine, certainly anywhere that you buy books, but John can kind of make it.

2 (15m 26s):
Yeah, I love it. Do it. So if

1 (15m 29s):
You pre-order a book, depending upon when you're listening to this, the book will be out in September of 2021. But if you pre-order a book and you go to ducttape.me/fire, that's duct tape two, or it's one word, but two T's D U C T T A P E .M E/fire. You're going to find a way for, to sign up for a free companion course. It's a $99 value, six videos, a whole bunch of worksheets that go along with, as companion to this book. So before you even get your hands on the book, maybe physically you'll be able to dive in and consume this really valuable companion course Fire Nation. You're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with JJ and JLD today. So keep up that heat head over to EOFire.com type John in the search bar in the show notes page will pop up with everything we talked about here today.

1 (16m 14s):
You can also listen to the other two episodes we've done over the years. Value bombs galore there. And of course your Ultimate's call to action is ducttape.me/fire gets that free companion course and definitely check out the ultimate marketing engine. John, thank you brother, for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today, for that we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side.

0 (16m 44s):
Always

1 (16m 44s):
Great to be a part of your energy, bud.

0 (16m 47s):
Hey, Fire Nation today's value bond content was brought to you by John and Fire Nation. Successful entrepreneurs accomplish big goals, which is why I created the freedom journal to guide you in accomplishing your number one goal in a hundred days. And we're talking step-by-step. So visit the freedomjournal.com use promo code podcast for a $15 discount. And thank you for listening to my podcast and I'll catch you there. Or on the flip side, ready to finally have repeatable, predictable and scalable operations for your business, Trainual can help. Pre-order a free copy of the business playbook, how to document and delegate what you do. So your company can grow beyond you today at trainual.com/fire.