John Jantsch (00:00.866)
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Sara Nay. Sara is the CEO of Duct Tape Marketing, where she spent over 15 years helping small businesses build strategy-first marketing systems that actually work. Now being my daughter, Sarah has lived the small business reality from every angle as a teenager, as a team member, as a fractional CMO, and now as the CEO. In her new book,
Unchained, she makes the case that traditional agency model is broken, both for the clients and agencies and lays out a practical AI enabled strategy first approach she calls the anti-agency model. We’re going to touch on that. Permission helps small business owners stop renting their marketing and start owning it. Unchained, breaking free from broken marketing models. So Sarah, welcome to the show.
Sara Nay (00:53.858)
Thanks for having me on.
John Jantsch (00:55.778)
So you and I have been talking about marketing models for a long time. Was there a time when you kind of said, you know what, the agency model is broken and I got to create something different?
Sara Nay (01:06.455)
Yeah, I mean, as you mentioned in the introduction, I’ve been part of the agency space for about 15 years. And in that journey, I’ve moved from intern to community manager, account manager, fractional CMO for our clients among other roles. And so I’ve really been in all the different areas of the agency space. And throughout that journey, there’s definitely been times where I’ve noticed things that didn’t quite feel right in the agency space. And even further than that,
there have been several moments over the last 15 years where I’ve been burnt out and on the brink of saying, does this make sense to pursue even more, even further? And so I’ve lived a lot of challenges along the way and there’s no secret in the challenges I’ve seen. think a lot of people experience this in the agency space. And so starting on that side, on the agency side of things, there’s challenges with meeting client demands and managing scope creep and scaling and maintaining profitability and
retaining great talent and those are a lot of the things that I’ve heard from other agency owners struggling with, but I’ve also experienced it myself. Also in my roles, I’ve been on in the sales side of our business for a while now. So I’ve spoken with hundreds of small business owners who have worked with different agencies or outsourced solutions over those years. And I have heard all of their stories of
things along the lines of marketing doesn’t work or I’m paying this agency for X and I have no idea if I’m getting results or if anything’s happening with my marketing efforts. And so there’s been a lot of this going on for years in the agency space. But I think it’s becoming more more heightened now with the evolution of AI.
John Jantsch (02:49.518)
So you actually use the term anti-agency model. Now know you’re not an agency hater. so, so what makes this anti or, and not just a better agency.
Sara Nay (03:02.379)
Yeah. So the whole play with the anti-agency model, as you identified, like obviously we’re not anti-agency. We’re an agency ourselves. We have been for 31 years. We love agencies. And so I do keep, I keep explaining that because I don’t want people to think this book is against agencies, but what it’s with the anti-agency, what it’s saying is the model is broken essentially for some of the points that I had highlighted just a second ago. So it’s anti-agency model specifically.
And so the way we have been doing and functioning for years as agencies were being forced in some ways to evolve because of the evolution of AI. so previously to AI, it made sense for agencies to hold onto things like marketing, execution, content, social, SEO, paid ads, all of the execution elements. But with the evolution of AI, I believe small businesses are able to take some of that stuff in-house.
They still need strategic leadership and direction, but they now have an opportunity to stay a little bit more lean with their in-house marketing team by layering in AI systems below them to help with the heavy lifting of execution. And so that’s the whole idea of stop renting your marketing and taking back ownership of your marketing. You still need strategy. You still need direction. You still need leadership.
But now you can build a marketing department or team that is a bit leaner because they’re overseeing orchestration of marketing, which is done by AI systems.
John Jantsch (04:39.086)
So one of the things you and I talk about a lot, cause I say it all the time is I, you know, I’ve been doing this 30 years and while a lot of new shiny things have come along, the fundamentals of marketing have not really changed or what we’re here to do as marketers has not really changed that much. What timeless principles do you think from, our system? As you know, it’s still worked today.
Sara Nay (04:59.085)
Yeah. And so that’s the second really section of the book we get into the timeless after the intro and all of that, we get into the timeless principles. And so some of the things that I touch on there are things like target market, identifying your clients on a very deep level. I think that’s becoming even more and more important with the evolution of AI, because what I see is a lot of small businesses bringing in something like a chat, GBT or a clod or whatever their tool of choices. And they’ll start just like,
creating content and so it’s all over the place. It’s not consistent. It’s not on on brand. And so in your original book duct tape marketing, you talked a lot about identifying your ideal client on a deep level, understanding them emotionally, what keeps them up at night, what drives them. And so with the evolution of AI, you still need to understand your clients on a very deep level. But then if you’re going to bring in an AI tool, you then need to train the chat, you’d be to your tool of your choice that you bring in.
on that information. So when you’re creating content moving forward, you’re creating content that speaks to your ideal client on a deep level and isn’t just generic. Another timeless foundational principle is core messaging. We talk a lot about that over the years. So identifying your core message or we’ve talked a lot about talking logo as well. And so that’s really identifying what makes you unique, but also what messaging resonates with that ideal client.
That is still incredibly important today, but it’s also important to take that messaging and train your AI tools of choice on that messaging as well. So again, you’re not creating generic content, you’re creating content that speaks to your ideal clients with the messaging you’ve identified is really important. And so those foundations are still the same, but the way we’re using them is evolving a bit because of the technology that’s now available.
John Jantsch (06:48.733)
So, you know, we’ve, we’re all seeing people run into AI and just like, look what it can do, makes life faster, better, cheaper. Um, where do you think the danger of this, that like eyes wide open, you know, jump in and start using the tools? What do you think the danger of that is for many small businesses?
Sara Nay (07:07.987)
It complicates things that causes confusion. causes inconsistency. It causes noise. It amplifies the chaos that’s already there. It causes so many issues for the internal team or the team using the program, but also for the clients and prospects that you’re putting out content to as well. And so it’s causing confusion in both of those areas. And so a lot of what I encourage small businesses to do is take a step back.
John Jantsch (07:12.916)
amplifies the chaos that’s already there, right? Yeah.
Sara Nay (07:33.767)
And if you’ve been following duct tape marketing for any period of time, you’ve heard us say strategy before tactics. But it’s now strategy before tactics and technology is the conversation we’re having with clients. And so if you’re thinking about, okay, we need to be using AI tools instead of just diving into tools first, take a step back and answer some very important questions as to what’s the business actually trying to accomplish? What’s the marketing strategy look like based on that?
What’s the team strategy or what’s our current team structure look like? And then you can say, okay, what tools can help us accomplish our goals? And then once you identify what the tools are, you then need to train the tools on your strategy that you would have created to then get to the point where you’re ready to execute on them efficiently. So don’t dive into tools, take a step back, create the strategy, and then answer the question of what tools are gonna help us get from where we are today to where we’re trying to go.
John Jantsch (08:30.936)
So, you know, the fractional CMO plus concept is a big part of our model. what do you tell that small business owner that’s got kind of a smaller budget and it’s thinking, I really just need somebody to do stuff rather than like, you know, I can’t really afford or I, or maybe I’m not big enough to even think about the idea of having fractional leadership. What do you say to that business as to why they need to maybe change their mindset?
Sara Nay (08:55.403)
Yeah, I mean, think, again, I keep going back to AI, but it’s causing small business owners or small businesses an opportunity that we haven’t had before. so, you previously, let’s think of traditional marketing org chart. You would have a CMO in a company and then you would have a lot of different executors under them, essentially. So you’d have like a paid specialist, an email marketing specialist, a social, you know, all of the different channels and categories. That’s never really been feasible to small businesses because
they wouldn’t even have a budget for a CMO, let alone all the other people that are involved in that story. And so I think the best opportunity that small businesses have is right now in terms of the org chart, because you can bring in a fractional CMO. So you’re not paying a full-time salary. You’re paying a set fee every single month. That fractional CMO is then tasked with creating the overall strategy, managing the budget, owning the metrics.
overseeing all of the marketing department essentially. And then under that fractional CMO, believe instead of, I don’t know if we’re quite there yet, but the direction I believe we’re going is instead of having a specialist in all the different channels, small businesses can have marketing executors that are familiar enough in writing great copy and understanding social media, but they’re really systems oriented and technology first people.
where you can bring in AI systems below them to help them execute at a higher level than they’ve ever been before. And so now you’re getting a marketing org chart with all of these different roles that you previously probably couldn’t even think about affording as a small business.
John Jantsch (10:35.832)
So going back to the theme of renting, mean, the opposite of renting is owning. and so to a large degree, you know, what you’re describing there is kind of that path towards owning your, your marketing, you know, as a business, as opposed to maybe it wasn’t even renting. was abdicating like going here, you do it. I don’t care what you’re doing over there, but how does that change the business owners mindset in terms of.
Sara Nay (10:54.124)
Yeah.
Yeah.
John Jantsch (11:05.262)
people in terms of structure, in terms of process, if they’re actually, you know, now they’re going to have those people in their organization or they’re going to have those functions in their organization. Who manages that? How do they hire for that? Are they, are they bringing in more overhead that makes sense for their business if they’re going to start thinking that way, or is this the ultimate path to, truly scaling a business?
Sara Nay (11:16.557)
It obviously depends on the business situation, revenue size, long-term growth goals. And so there’s a lot of factors that I would need to consider to answer that specifically. But for me, if you’re a small business and you’re looking to scale up,
when you’re doing a certain level of revenue, you’ve been in business for a few years, let’s say you’ve passed the 1 million revenue mark, I think it’s time to start considering you need marketing leadership of some extent. And so when small businesses scale up to a certain point, if they haven’t looked for marketing leadership, the CEO becomes the CMO and they either have marketing experience or they learn marketing. And now it’s this necessary evil that
they’re having to spend a lot of their time on where they never wanted to become a CMO in the first place. And so if you’re scaling up and you have high growth goals, looking for someone like a fractional CMO, I think makes a lot of sense because the whole idea is as the CEO or founder, you stay in your zone of genius. You stay focused on the why behind you building the business in the first place. then you… In selling, yeah.
John Jantsch (12:34.798)
or in selling, you know, stuff that actually is going to make money for the business rather than you having to figure out how to manage the technology.
Sara Nay (12:46.121)
Exactly. And then you bring in a fractional CMO or a marketing leader of some extent that then is tasked with what you identified earlier in terms of managing team, bringing in partners or hiring full-time team, running the technology, building the systems and processes, running the budget and the metrics. so the fractional CMO is really tasked with leading the marketing department and working alongside you to help you reach the specific business goals that you would have laid out.
John Jantsch (13:15.566)
You know, if somebody, whoever you’re working with is going to bring you strategy first, you know, as the first step, it doesn’t really matter what you call that person, right? What their role is, right? I mean, it’s really more the idea of thinking strategy first, isn’t
Sara Nay (13:21.901)
Yeah.
Sara Nay (13:31.137)
Yeah, absolutely. And so we’ll throw out all different terms. I mean, we talk a lot about fractional CMO, but if that feels like too elevated of a term, know, marketing leader, marketing strategist, marketing advisor, you know, the point is what they’re doing. They’re, leading the marketing initiatives and not just being an order taker.
John Jantsch (13:51.672)
So let’s flip to agencies that are listening, because I know we have agencies listening as well. How do they have to shift their mindset to really stay relevant? mean, I think in some agency, you look at some of these agencies that are providing SEO and content and social media, that’s their package, right, of done for you services. There might be a time in the very near future where that’s just not that relevant.
Sara Nay (14:19.372)
Yeah.
John Jantsch (14:19.423)
or people aren’t going to be willing to pay what you need to run a profitable business. So how do agencies need to shift their mindset?
Sara Nay (14:26.705)
Yeah, and there’s been a lot of stuff coming out there that I’ve seen on LinkedIn and different articles about how many agencies are going to shut down in the next few years. I think a lot of that stuff’s hard to predict, but I do think if you just keep offering execution, it’s a race to the bottom in a lot of cases because small businesses, even if they’re not doing it that effectively yet, they are bringing in AI solutions to cut costs in certain areas. And I think that marketing execution is one of those.
areas. And so, you know, I think if agencies keep offering execution as their core services, it’s going to be very challenging in the next few years moving forward, because AI is becoming more sophisticated. So you’re basically competing against AI in that scenario versus if agencies shift their offering and they step more into this leadership role, where they’re, you know, focusing on strategy.
they’re elevating team, it can be their own team or it can be internal team, but they’re elevating humans essentially with AI systems below them. Then they’re working alongside AI versus competing against it.
John Jantsch (15:35.64)
So if I’m a small business owner listening and.
Obviously picking up and reading the book is going to be step one. But what are a couple steps towards taking this ownership mentality that somebody could start this week? If you’re stuck in the old kind of way of thinking, here are a couple things you can do this week to start changing your mindset or maybe even changing your marketing.
Sara Nay (16:06.165)
Yeah, of course. There’s two things that come to mind right off the bat. One of the first things, and I talk about this in the book as well, is the marketing strategy pyramid. We talk a lot about it at Duck Tape Marketing, but it’s really taking a step back and answering some business strategic questions first. So really analyzing what are your business goals? What are your objectives? What’s your revenue? Where are you growing towards? What are your mission, vision, values? And so really analyzing some of those things.
And then thinking through what is your marketing strategy to help you move in the right direction. And then thinking through what is your team strategy. So you have to have those two bottom layers of the pyramid first to then think about team. But, know, to the question of how can businesses take back ownership when you’re analyzing your team structure, think through like, these internal roles? Are we relying on outsourced vendors? If we’re relying on outside outsourced vendors or solutions.
Do we have clarity and confidence and control or ownership as to what they are doing or are we kind of left in the dark? I if you’re left in the dark through some of your partnerships, that’s when it’s time to analyze, does it make sense to continue on with this partnership or is there a way where we can get more ownership and control? So that’s where I would start is kind of going back to the basics there and analyzing your current structure, your current relationships, your current team.
and making sure that you have clarity in what everyone is doing.
John Jantsch (17:35.672)
So I’m going to go a little in the weeds here on AI, mainly because it’s on everybody’s mind right now. There are a lot of some of these agencies that we’re talking about are shifting their whole model to being calling themselves AI agencies, where they want to come in and show you how to put in agents and how to automated this and automated that. How do you think small businesses should be looking at?
Sara Nay (17:51.703)
Yeah.
John Jantsch (18:02.806)
I mean, I don’t think we have to convince them that it’s not going away, but how do you think they should be looking at getting the most out of AI as really the end to end solution or the end to end assistant at this point that it can be rather than just looking at it as, here’s how I can automate stuff and or worse yet, here’s how I can fire people and do more with less.
Sara Nay (18:08.909)
Yeah, a big part of that I think is doing an analysis of who’s currently on your team and you’re not asking the question.
How can we get more work out of them or how can we get them to move faster or be more productive? What you’re answering is how can we elevate them to make more of an impact? And so one of the exercises that we’ve done with our team fairly recently, and this is also in the book as well, is we had everyone on our team analyze what skills are they doing on a regular basis. And then we basically had them identify what are human-led skills that they should continue to focus on, things that light them up, that they love.
And then we also had them identify what skills can be AI assisted and what skills and tasks could be executed by AI. And so we went through that exercise so people could essentially analyze their roles and think about how they could future proof their careers moving forward. And so I think that’s a really great exercise for anyone listening as a business leader or for your whole entire team is you should all be thinking about how can we future proof the business as a whole.
And that’s a lot of what you and I talk about when we talk about shifting our model in a new direction. But you also need to be considering everyone on your team. How can you help them elevate with AI instead of be replaced by it? And then how can you help them continue to grow and focus on the skills that are becoming more important because of the evolution of AI?
John Jantsch (19:54.414)
talking with Sarah Ney, the author of Unchained. Sarah, I appreciate you spending a few moments to talk about Unchained. Is there a place that you’d invite people to go to find out more about the work you do, of course, but then also the new book?
Sara Nay (20:08.269)
Absolutely, so unchainedmodel.com is the book’s website, so love for you to check that out and also connect with me on LinkedIn. Again, my name is Sarah Ney.
John Jantsch (20:18.23)
Awesome, well again, I appreciate you stopping by. Hopefully we’ll see you one of these days soon out there on the
Sara Nay (20:24.589)
Thank you.
