Jonathan Tasman on Building Growth Systems That Scale Without Burnout

Overview:

Jonathan Tasman joins the show to reveal the systems he used to scale content and brand presence across eight different companies simultaneously. He dives into the hidden tax of context-switching, the power of batching and backlog, and how he helped six executives build LinkedIn profiles that drove actual revenue. Jonathan also shares how studying platform algorithms (especially YouTube and LinkedIn) gave him an edge, why founder-led content is essential, and how to measure real impact with limited resources. Whether you're just starting your content engine or want to grow without chaos, this episode gives you the tactical blueprint.

Transcript:

Jonathan Tasman 0:00

It does take a lot longer than we, than anyone cares, to admit, whether it's just writing socials, whether it's doing the content system where you're doing your intro question, like the little quiz that you had at the beginning, where it's like, okay, you got 30 minutes a week. It's like, okay, I look I challenge you guys 30 minutes a week. Take the thing, do a 10 minute recording, turn it into a transcript, and turn that into a blog and a social post and like, do that for one month, so four posts really, and then see where your numbers are compared to the month before, right? It's, it's, you can see those early indicators, month over month. However, in my opinion and experience, if you want to see real change, if you're starting a podcast three years like you, got to commit to three years, and you'll start to see things.

Kerry Guard 0:57

We are live. Hello and welcome back to Tea Time with tech marketing leaders. I got to tell you a little FYI, y'all, this is the last episode of this being called Tea Time with tech marketing leaders. We are doing a rebrand. We are bringing the brands together from tea time and the podcast over to mkg, which is the brand that funds and makes tea time possible, and so we are now merging the two, and I am so excited for where both of these brands are headed and how they're going to come together to support each other, and I can't wait to share that with you all. This will be the first episode after the live that actually gets rebranded, and you'll get a sneak peek into that once we bring Jonathan over to the website and across transistor and all of the things. So stay tuned. It is coming. I know I promised that you would might see it today, but it's not quite ready. My typical founder mind. I was like, Yes, let's go. The creative team was like, wait not yet, so you're gonna have to hang on just a little bit longer. But I promise you, it will be worth it. I'm so excited for this show, not just because it's going to kick off the next the next generation of of the podcast, but because I this conversation is going to rock hard. It's going to be awesome. Jonathan is going is is our to guest today. Jonathan Tasman the growth engine behind city innovations, as Director of Brand and growth marketing, Jonathan scaled eight brands at once, building operating systems that fueled LinkedIn growth, launched multiple podcasts and turned content into pipeline if you're ready to learn how to scale smart without burning out. Jonathan has the blueprint. Jonathan, welcome to the show.

Jonathan Tasman 2:52

Thanks for having me happy to be here and happy to be on the front end of the rebrand. That's great.

Kerry Guard 2:58

Yes, and even your colors and everything are like, gonna tie right on in. It's gonna be perfect. It's like, you knew you were like, like, I knew it's in them.

Jonathan Tasman 3:05

It's in the marketing ethos. And so we're just both tapped in, and it's like, oh yeah, let's do

Kerry Guard 3:12

it. This is gonna happen before we get into my questions, which I have a plethora of, I wanted to play a quick game to get our brains in motion. Are you? Are you ready for the rules? Yes. All right, Jonathan, imagine you only have 30 minutes a week to market an entirely new brand, no team, no budget, just you. What's the one repeatable system you'd set up first? And why

Jonathan Tasman 3:41

30 minutes a week, that's not a lot of time. Not Can you give me a little more detail, like, what industry are we in? Is it business-to-business?

Kerry Guard 3:50

You worked with, whatever you're comfortable with? Yep,

Jonathan Tasman 3:53

30 minutes a week. We're gonna do a 10 minute rant, and then we're going to take the transcript and turn it into social and blog posts in less than 30 minutes. It's not going to be polished, but it's doable, right? And it gives us some play across LinkedIn, website and video all at the same time. So it won't be edited, but that's what we'll do. I love it.

Kerry Guard 4:22

I love it. And I think if you're a founder led, and you're trying to figure out social media, that is a wonderful tactic for you to take and just go, go say something smart into a camera, and take the transcript, and there you go. You got five posts making it happen. I love it. I love it. Amazing. All right, Jonathan, if you, you've led growth for eight brands at once, is that right? You did? You had eight?

Jonathan Tasman 4:48

I lose count. But yeah, I think I want to say eight is correct. I like have to pull up my thing, because it's, it's when you, when you're research.

Kerry Guard 4:58

I am just dumbfounded by it. Like all. My gosh, I have a few clients and I and it's not that many, and I'm having a hard enough time keeping those straight. So eight just feels, wow,

Jonathan Tasman 5:09

yeah, it's a lot. Now, granted, I will say on the front end, like, not every brand gets all your attention and like that. Just, I don't want to mislead people, where everything got the same amount of attention and they all grew at the same rate, right? Like, because you do, you're limited. Everyone's got 24 hours, so you don't have all the time in the world.

Kerry Guard 5:27

But that's true. What was the in terms of all that complexity and working with all those different sounds like you sort of managed the time pretty well, but what was the biggest challenge in keeping all those balls in the air.

Jonathan Tasman 5:44

The biggest challenge I can list up like 15 of them, the time management's the huge the huge part of it where it's like, okay, what are my due dates and what are the KPIs for each of the different brands who's trying to grow what? When? Some of the ways that it became easier is once we streamline people's processes for the video, like we were doing video to podcast and then to shorts and then turning those into blogs. So like, once we got clients onboarded and these brands that I was owning, it was a lot easier to make it streamlined so that the timelines were like, Okay, these are the due dates here. And as everyone who's done marketing, like, hiccups happen, people, editors don't get back to you, things don't get done. And you're like, oh, a guest falls through an hour before your show. Been there, been there. All the things happen. And so you have to scramble. But if you can finesse your calendar well, and know that each time that you're spinning up a brand or like focusing on a brand, you can have your your process down, then it makes your life a lot easier. So yeah, systems and processes.

Kerry Guard 6:57

That's what I am here for that, and it definitely allows you to then take that same system and process, if it works for one client, and move that over to others for sure. Are there any other challenges that before we move on to next question? Is there any other like across when you think about that that's the beauty of working across a couple different brands, right as you can see, sort of trends and opportunities. But in terms of challenges, was there any other trend? Time management, obviously, anything else where you were like, this is clearly a challenge in this area, across all these clients,

Jonathan Tasman 7:36

context switching, it's a hidden tax that I don't think, well, I mean, until I was managing this level of this, this level of brands, or grouping of brands, it's like, you don't think about, like, Oh, if I switch tasks, it's okay. It's real quick. Quote, unquote, it's not real quick. You have to pick up where you left off. I've got post it notes and, like, you know, task journals for days over here into like, which one was it on? I know that I'm missing something that's due next week. So even if you have your systems and processes, even if you have stuff rolling, you're like, Oh, you got a random email from one of your brands, and they're like, Hey, this is urgent. And you're like, and it throws whatever you are currently working on, because you do know it's urgent, and then you have to drop everything and do it. The tax of context switching is insurmountable in some ways. So that is, like, one of the main challenges that I ran into.

Kerry Guard 8:34

Totally feel that I feel like, sometimes I starfish, I like, start over here, and then I'm like, Oh yeah, but about this thing over here, and then I do that thing, and then I'm like, oh. And so I end up, like, working on three things that day, but I never, but not, like sitting down on that one thing and getting it done. It's like, oh, like you're just starfishing around. Oh my gosh, I totally feel that. And I it is one of the biggest challenges. Well, welcome to agency life. It's why we've built operating system to help us manage all of those things, because those challenges are real. Those How do you decide which channels deserve focus when resources are spread across multiple ventures? Well, I kind of we kind of just touched on that in terms of you. But let's change the question more around. How you decide where to start with a brand? You know, you mentioned this great tactic of, sort of one of your go tos. But when you're looking at, you know, do you always start there? Or does it really depend? And what does it depend on?

Jonathan Tasman 9:38

I do try to push people towards video is because I'm mostly in business-to-business. And so a lot of their clients, the people that they want to talk to, are on LinkedIn. And LinkedIn is huge right now for in the algorithm dispersing video better than text, and so getting people on camera talking about something that in. Definitely gives you YouTube and LinkedIn. You can if they have a tick tock or an Instagram if they're also on there, just to have, like, more brand awareness that one recording I can spread across minimum four channels even more. You know, when we take it the transcript, and we turn it into posts and whatever, so it's like video, and video is also a little harder to work with, so I do try to push people there. However, if they're in a more of a growth stage, and they the founder doesn't want to get on or something like that, I'll say, All right, well, then let's record some internal stuff so I can get the transcripts. Because they're still the subject matter expert on whatever that is, and they know their customer best. So I still want to make my life easier by saying, All right, here's the transcript. We're going to turn it into some, some, you know, social posts and blog posts. And it's also research where it's like, Oh, hey, they mentioned these three terms. Maybe, I don't know what those are, but that's really big for their industry, and so I've got to go do a little research. But long, long, long question, long. I do try to start people on video, if they're willing, and if they're not willing, then we I still start them on video, just internal, like, not released type content.

Kerry Guard 11:07

I do that as well. Yeah, if I can get my clients on camera, my one of my clients just asked me, they're like, I know I need to do video. You've been screaming at me for months to do this thing. I've made time. Just tell me what you need every week. Just give me a list, and I will go out in the neighborhood, because he's a we do a lot of local marketing for him, and he's like, and I will shoot video of me walking around the neighborhood saying smart things. I just need to know what smart thing I'm saying. And I was like, I can do that. And then I have another client who's like, I just don't, I don't have the time or energy to do these videos. And I was like, great at the at the first 10 minutes of every one of our calls, I'm just going to ask you three things about the last week, and then I will take those stories and we will produce content based off of that the transcripts. Yes, totally enough. And if you can get pictures, like, I just say that to him, I'm like, can you just give me a picture of you playing baseball? Can I just have a picture of you with your daughter? Can I just have and then he just flips me pictures, and that also gets it done. So yeah, I think there's lots of different ways to come out. The content and transcripts are amazing. And I will say, I don't know how you feel about this, Jonathan, and then I'll get off my high horse. I'm just so passionate and excited about this. But I will say it's so important, because we have to say new things, our clients have to say new things. It's not with llms and the way AI works, like it's not enough to just do a bunch of research and pump out whatever they've said in the past or or even what those web is being scraped for. Like it has to be net new, and it's got to come from to your point the subject matter expert.

Jonathan Tasman 12:45

yeah, and I want to just emphasize you fitting it into the already calls you're having. That's why it's like, it's, it's, it's, um, it's silly to not do video. You're already doing calls. You're already on the just, just record them, even if it's just like, hey, I'm recording this for internal purposes, and then use the transcript. Like, that's, that's the bare minimum, because we're just all on video all the time. So, like, it's really not that big of a lift. Now, I know, you see, I've got these lights and things doing a little bit of a bigger setup, and we can even adjust, like, you know, I'm brighter, less bright, but you can do a big setup like that, or you can just do a video call and just grab that and like, if that's where you have to start, that's fine.

Kerry Guard 13:28

It's great. It's great. You just need new, net new, smart things that come from you as the founder, who only know the real as well as you do. I love that. What does a brand operating system mean in practice?

Jonathan Tasman 13:46

How much time we got so I would say brand operating system in practice is kind of what we touched on earlier, where you determine what are the systems and processes you need before that. Well, let me pause for a second. Here's how I think about things. I start with, who's my client, what industry are they in? Who are they trying to talk to? So who's their who's their ideal customer? And then I go, where's their ideal customer spending time? And oftentimes, for me, it's on LinkedIn. So it's like, okay, they're on LinkedIn. This is a big channel for me. They're also looking for more information about their industry, their topic, whatever. So that's we could put stuff on the website for white papers and things, and then I work my way backwards with like, a flow chart, basically, of where are they spending time, who are they trying to talk to? And just map it out visually, because I'm a visual learner. That's where I start. And then from there, it's like, okay, I know that these are the channels that I want to focus on, what's the type of content that I kind of push on those channels? So, you know, LinkedIn, it's carousels, you know, just normal text, there's video, and then it's like, all right, how do I consolidate that stuff? Just like you said, where it's like, Okay, I've got a meeting with them. They're not willing to do extra time for video, so like, let's cram it into the meeting we have. Or can I just say, hey. Me pull out my phone and record us this meeting, if we're in person at a lunch or something like that, and again, take the transcript and make my life easier to create a flywheel that's just like we can rinse and repeat. It's lower, or it's less of a burden for me to, like ghost write all your stuff for you, because you're the subject matter expert. I want to hear you say it, and then I can literally do literally just quote you in socials or carousels or whatever. But it's starting like, what's my end goal? What's my KPI? Is it leads? Is it awareness, whatever? And then work my way backwards with a visual thing. And then from there, like, okay, what are the channels that I know that they already have platforms on? And then from this is my playbook. Folks like, feel free to take it. It's it's reusable. I used it on a bunch of different brands all at once, because once you start doing it, you're like, oh yeah, this is not that bad. Oh yeah. This is not and you're just like, rinse and repeat. The same systems for all your all your folks,

Kerry Guard 15:56

all your brand itself, for sure, and is, once you get the momentum going, you kind of need to get, like, a little bit of a backlog happening. Once you have that, it to your point, it compounds and builds on itself. For sure. Man, it's so hard when you when you get off track for and, yeah, and then you got to build back. So definitely try. You know, having system process and staying ahead is absolutely crucial. Otherwise you're like me, and at 11 o'clock at night, you're thinking of the craziest things to post on LinkedIn, to wake up and only find that now it's got like, 20 comments that you have to now respond to at seven o'clock. Get ahead, make a plan and iterate on it. For sure, backlog

Jonathan Tasman 16:39

is huge, though I didn't mention that, but that's a huge thank you for bringing that up, because I do do that. Like, how can we get ahead? Let's get the next month, the next quarter, planned out. And if something urgent comes up, you drop it in. That's fine. But like, you have your editorial, you have things planned out. The further ahead that I can plan, the happier that I am, because when I'm like, week by week. Oh, that's when you get stressed. Yeah? Absolutely

Kerry Guard 17:05

brutal. Yeah. My team harps on me about I have tasks every week to get them specific things that are weeks out. So they're like, Okay, what are the social posts that are going to be in three weeks? What's the newsletter that's going to be in three weeks? And if I miss that window. Oh man, the dominoes is so real. So I, I love a backlog. It helps too, because if you do miss a week for, like, because clients, you know, founders are so busy, you are going to miss a week, and then that gives you that buffer for that to be okay.

Jonathan Tasman 17:39

And another thing, another toolkit, or, like, piece of my toolkit, if folks are interested, is, I like to batch things so like, if I know that I am, like, my backlog, I'm using it up. I'm I'm close to week to week, which is frustrating. It's like, all right, I need to just take the next hour and like, what are all my ideas? Let me outline them quick. And not, maybe not all the ideas. But like, oh, you know, 1010, ideas, outline them, build them out, and then throw that into the backlog so that you can have something there. But like, batching stuff is, is, like a game changer. It's like, okay, I'm gonna work on just this for the next hour and time boxing. Like, huge,

Kerry Guard 18:16

huge, huge. If you're with us today, hanging out in the comments. We love to hear from you. We are watching, and we'll be sure to respond in real time as they come up. So Jonathan's clearly got the playbook. He's done this multiple times and in parallel, and so he clearly has this down to a fine science. So if you two want to figure out how to run these plays, be sure to pop in the comments and we will respond if you're listening to this asynchronously. No problem. Same thing. Drop in the comments and we will, we will follow up with you after, after the show. Nbd, not a big deal, all right. How can you share how you built six executive LinkedIn profiles that actually drove revenue

Jonathan Tasman 19:05

more systems and processes. Basically, I looked at each person as their different subject matter expert. I created this thing that I termed cascading social growth campaign, and so it was basically between the subject matter experts and the business pages we were working with. I had like, I this is all again with video, right? So we have a studio that we partner with where we go in and we shoot content a couple times a month, if not more. So I had a bunch of video to work with. So this playbook can work for you if you just text, but like, I use video. That's just my early warning, I guess. But what we what do I? What I built is I'd have the business page post something, and then I would build out my schedule for the business page to own that as well, and then I'd have the first subject matter expert post a 10. Text. And then we had, I think, 15 videos, something like that, maybe 20. And so then it'd be a social post from them on video one, and then social post on video two. And I did it in two day increments, because of how linkedin's algorithm works, where I didn't want to flood the market too much, because I'm going to be using six professionals, you know, personal LinkedIn through a HubSpot on top of the business pages. So I'm about to flood the market with the same content over and over and over again. And I had some sort of forethought and like, flooding the people that we were talking to, like, all right, if you see this, you're gonna go, All right, I've seen this already. Or maybe you it posted a few times and you hadn't seen it, which is what I really loved. Is what I really loved, because we saw a strong growth movement, probably like the first quarter the way through the campaign, where, I think was like, well, professional three, where they started to get a lot more comments, because people were like, Oh, hey, I've been seeing this around, but I didn't watch it yet, and these videos were two minutes at the most, right? Real short content to make sure that people have the ability to watch it. I'm not sending them a 27 minute, you know, video about our stuff. It's just like identifying a problem with some sort of hook, giving them a meat afterward and then a call to action. But across 20 different videos and six different profiles, plus our business pages in a properly scheduled and this just gets ahead of it, right like and you get to schedule it in HubSpot, make sure that everyone's voice sounds unique for any of the ghost writing that you have to do as well. But that's kind of how I broke it down. And it worked out swimmingly.

Kerry Guard 21:37

It does awesome. And clearly it worked out swimmingly. This is, this is coming up more and more we're trying to figure out. You know, even for myself, of the brand page side, there's sort of a debate, I guess that's happening on LinkedIn, of whether brand pages are even worth our time. Yeah, and but it sounds like they are when you do it in conjunction with both. So like my plan. Tell me if this is a good plan or not. Jonathan, so I don't shoot myself in the foot or do something that is going to take me forever and then not actually amount to anything, but my thinking is with my mkg brand, since we're coming, we're repositioning ourselves, is that the brand page and even the podcast page will do a good job of the actual branding side, of giving tips and tricks and the value that We bring and who we are, and all of that stuff. And then I was going to use my own personal brand as more of the behind the scenes of how, like sort of that marketing in public, of how we went and did all those things to sort of uncover for founders, how I do this for clients, over and over again, see how I'm doing it for myself. This is what it looks like. But I'm a little worried that I'm going to put all the going to put all this energy and effort into these beautiful pieces of content, put it out onto a brand page, and nobody will see it.

Jonathan Tasman 23:11

That's a fair like concern, because LinkedIn, at least at the last update that I read, they're still not giving as much push on the algorithm for those pages, as much as they're doing for you and I, and then you and I, if we're posting video right like, so I think that what you're going to move towards makes sense to me. You still need to have some sort of presence like, but as someone who's viewing LinkedIn, and I scroll past and I go, Oh, hey, Kerry, posted this thing. Let me go and read it. And then, oh, hey, she's doing this for her company. Let me go check out the company. So I do want somewhere to go do, oh, hey, this episode. Oh, that's good. Let me go check it out. So I do want to have the ability to, like, move to whatever the next stage or step is for myself as a viewer, you know, assuming that the the contents valuable for who I am and like, what I'm looking for. So I think that that's the right play.

Kerry Guard 24:07

That's the plan we shall see. I'll also say Christopher Penn. I've been talking about this a lot because, oh my gosh, talk about real value you're bringing to your audience. Holy smokes. But he just created the ultimate like, what do they call it? The UN go check out. It's a LinkedIn. It's basically how LinkedIn has changed their algorithm, and what to do about it.

Jonathan Tasman 24:31

Oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna need to read that.

Kerry Guard 24:33

Yeah, I'll, I'll link to it for you. But it's, it's brilliant. But what he's talked one of the things he talks about, and one things I went ahead and did is, and you did this too, and this is why this is such a great question, is it's so important to make sure that everybody's saying the same thing, so that your personal page is in line with all the content you're pushing, because those are signals to the algorithm. Now. Now, so it's very clear on who you're talking to, what value you bring, and what you're talking about, both on your profile page as well as in the content you're writing, and then linking that to your brand to do the same. So that consistent messaging is crucial nowadays, especially nowadays with the way the algorithm has shifted. So great examples of why and how to make that happen. Love it. You grew YouTube channels from scratch to 10s of 1000s of views. What made that work?

Jonathan Tasman 25:37

Yeah, so I like to say that I studied the algorithm, because the way that I look at each of these different platforms is they're all kind of like their own puzzle. They're all their own game, and they have their own unique algorithms. And while they don't necessarily tell us what the ins and outs of those things are, because we would game them, I look at the people who are doing way better than me, and I look at their examples, and then I take that and use it as my, my my playbook, because I don't think that I need to be the pioneer in it. When there's the Alex for Moses and the Mr. Beast and the Dyer or the CEO, where it's like, hey, what patterns Am I recognizing on their page, between titles, between thumbnails, between their posting cadence and then, like, okay, great. How can I take that for whatever business I'm currently working with and making sure, okay, hey, the shorts should look like this. Or, hey, the shorts should have thumbnails. Or, oh, not in this industry, because no one cares. And just like, spending time with the big dogs, if I can call them that, are doing these, like, million plus 15 million 100, you know, billion views, whatever, and taking what they're doing and going, Okay, this is working for them. Let me try it. And also doing a bunch of AB testing. Like, that's, I think, slept on for YouTube right now is people not doing AB tests on thumbnails. Like, you can get way more click through rate if you create even just three thumbnails. Some people that I've chatted with they I don't work with them, but they do upwards of nine to 18 thumbnails because they're really just committed to growing their YouTube channel, because that's a really important channel for them. And you know, if I had the resources, I'd do the same thing, I don't so we do three, but

Kerry Guard 27:24

gotta start somewhere, three is better than than one.

Jonathan Tasman 27:28

Yes, and even if you only have resources for one, just make one, because it's better than just posting your video and it's just the people sitting there when we're scrolling YouTube, what I've found is we will pause. And I've done this for myself. I've asked other people, like, Can I watch you scroll YouTube? Right? Like, direct research, they throw their eyes towards facial recognition, faces making, like, large emotive moments, because we're human, and when we see that, we oh, it's, I got my attention. And then now you're looking at the thumbnail, and at least if there's some text on it or it like catches dry with the colors, depending on your industry, again, like, you'll go, oh well, let me check it out, right? But it's the big face with the emotion on it that draws you in and like, it's not every industry, it's not every niche, but like, that is something I've seen work really, really well.

Kerry Guard 28:20

Dan Sanchez, who I need to get back on the show. We need to reschedule that Dan, if you're listening, he talks a lot about this from a thumbnail perspective, and how much time he spends just on the thumbnail is kind of intense, but it's because for all the reasons you're saying, it pays off in dividends, in terms of building an audience and the importance of that. So if you need another example of somebody who is trying to figure it out, he is definitely experimenting with some very interesting thumbnails. Dan chez is his channel. Go look it up. I'll drop it in the comments later so you can check it out. Yeah, I'm gonna have to check that out. Dan's great. And he's like, all into AI and how to how to use AI to help further things. So he's thinking very creatively in that regard, too. Dan's great. He will come back on the show. We will make that happen. What's the difference between a content calendar and a true content system?

Jonathan Tasman 29:28

That's a great question. The difference between a content calendar and a content system? So I'd say a content calendar if I'm going to like draw lines in the sand here, right? Content calendar would be simply my editorial calendar on a spreadsheet, where it's like, I post post number one on Monday, post number two on Tuesday, and that's it. You just go down the list. And then for a content system, it would be, I like spreadsheets, but it would also be on a spreadsheet. However, this. One would include the video the the SEO blog. Like, when are these posting? How am I going to chop this up? And I like to pair things down, where, once you have a blog, how can I chop it into multiple social posts to drive back to the blog? Or, how can I link it between two things? Or, how can I have the video pair with the blog and then link to it? Like, where's the interconnection that I can that I can create so that there is this synergy? Because you don't know where the attention is going to go. Hey, if, if, if Kerry comes on my page and she's looking at paragraph three and she notices something, and just go, Oh, interesting. And there's a link there. She clicks it, but then the other 100 people don't. There's whatever paragraph three was about, you know, hedgehogs and dogs. Kerry really loves that. And so she's like, Oh, let me find, find a new outfit for my little hedgehog. And then everyone else is like, I don't really care. And they scroll past it, like, I've caught Kerry hopefully in a buying sequence. And so it sends her over to a lead magnet or some other video, or something else where I'm I'm intentionally making sure that I am capturing my audience's attention, first off, secondly, that I'm sending that attention somewhere. Because what I what I find a lot of times with companies, is people will catch attention, but they don't end up sending it anywhere, relevant, right? And so that ends up being a problem, because then you just have people frustrated where they were on your website looking for some sort of key information, and they couldn't find it. So I'd say that that's kind of the separation between just a content calendar and content system.

Kerry Guard 31:32

I love that to make sure that everything is connected and so you that you're sending people somewhere. I do think that's one of the challenges that we're having across the board of like, what's that conversion point, and what do you send them to, and how do you we just redid one of our newsletters, because the click through rate, the the click to open, rate tanked. And we were like, what happened here? And it's because we didn't. We stopped having a clear call to action. And so we moved the newsletter around so that the call to action was actually at the top, and more of like the customer testimonials and all that were at the top, and then the thinking parts were at more at the bottom. So if they wanted to dig in and they wanted to learn more, then here's two blog posts that you could do that with and so now we're seeing a much better click to open rate where people are actually picking up the phone and calling to book meetings. And so just by not only giving them a thing to do, but moving it to a more intentional spot, because attention spans, as we know, very limited these days, makes such a difference, I feel like we got worried about being salesy and about coming on too strong, and so we sort of forgot about actually bringing people along and giving them the next thing to go do. So yes, great reminder.

Jonathan Tasman 32:59

Yeah, watching people, watching your audience, and knowing where they give attention, or where they're like the minimal attention they're giving. So like to bring YouTube back up. There's a huge drop off right in the first 30 seconds of every video, and if you don't catch them, then you're gone. But you have to take a step back. We were talking about thumbnails minute ago. If they're scrolling for whatever topic, if you're not catching their attention, then you're not they're not going to give it to you like people know that they're spending attention subconsciously. There's a quote that I was reminded of recently from Ogilvy. David Ogilvy, you know, this world renowned advertiser, and he said, when you write your headline, you spent, I think it was, 80 or 90% of your advertising dollar. The same thing applies to YouTube. The same thing applies to LinkedIn, right? So your attention starts before they ever even get to your content.

Kerry Guard 33:53

Yes, absolutely it. So feel that for all these things we're talking about YouTube, we're talking about brand building, we're talking about content and the flywheel, which I love, that term, by the way, I heard that from Andy Georgina. It's not too long ago, and I was like, man, but how are you measuring its impact? How do you know it's, quote, unquote, working?

Jonathan Tasman 34:22

Yeah, I sift through heaps and heaps of data. So I talked about context switching earlier, right? And something that I struggle with, or there's a tension, is, I love sitting in the data, looking at the charts, and going like, okay, because the data doesn't just blatantly tell you, Hey, this is up because of these three reasons. I wish it was that easy, but it's not. It's like, it's, you know, you're, you're seeing an uptrend, and you go, Okay, what? What happened? Like, where's the spike in the graph? What made that happen? And literally, just having to sift through it, and I haven't, and if anyone in the in the any of the listeners. Just know of a tool that's really good at analyzing data so I can speed up, like, please let me know. But I have not found anything, so I still have to do it very much manually. And the thing about data is you're really just doing professional guessing. I'm just going to call it what it is, right? Like, you're extrapolating based on data points. So you see the last week, the last month, the last 90 days, whatever. And you go, Okay, what is this telling me? But then you have to go piece by piece, whether it's long form shorts, if it's on LinkedIn, like, hey, this post had a video. It's a spike. Maybe we do more of that. And so you have to just take the snapshot of data that you have and then extrapolate understanding first by synergizing, like, what do you know about the algorithm? Who is your audience? Is your reach big enough? Is it not big enough? And so, like, there's just so many complex moving parts to help discern, like, is this working? And then when you're across brands, and this is the, this is my attention part, because I'll flip through multiple sheets, and then I'll go, Wait a second. I'm on, you know, client. B, okay. I'm like, mixing. I just, like, shove the windows down, because I'm like, All right, I'm getting distracted with multiple, you know, different charts. So focus in what's going on and also, like, what's their current goal? And so, like, then I can just measure what's the one goal that they're trying to reach right now they're trying to go their LinkedIn. Okay, great. So let's focus on LinkedIn. Let's focus on the content we're making for LinkedIn, and then extrapolate from that data to make new decisions moving forward on that backlog that we're creating for the next month or next quarter, or whatever

Kerry Guard 36:41

it sounds like you're very much, you know, focused on the brand building side and the leading indicators versus the lagging ones. I just went through a whole lot of spreadsheets today on the lagging indicators. I was like, how we just had an awesome month. Where did all this revenue come from? And it came from, like, months ago. And I was like, Well, what were those, right? And so there that's a whole other different kind of ball game in terms of digging through 100% the data. But I love, I love leading indicators, but I work with founders, and I had one founder actually tell me I don't want those vanity metrics, stuff about the clicks and the impressions and how many people are following my channel. I don't care. So how are you taking this information and bringing it internally to show your clients and the founders. The value in those leading indicators, that's a tough job.

Jonathan Tasman 37:46

It's it's basically the whole job. Because, to your point, people are like, well, I don't want the vanity metrics. I want sales. And it's like, sure businesses exist to make money. That's premise number one, we don't have jobs if we don't have businesses that make money, because they need the money to pay us our salaries. Okay, great. How do we get them more business? And it's like, well, who are they talking to, etc, all the stuff we covered, but to make sure that those leading indicators are driving towards sales, it it has to link. It's that content system we talked about earlier. You need to let me either create or already have something that can lead them to the sales funnel. And I say sales funnel because it's the way that we talked about it for the last 10 years, 15 years. But honestly, when we're buying stuff today, like we're checking Amazon for pricing, we're looking at reviews on Yelp or whatever, and we're we're scattering our attention when we're in this buying motion. And it's not just us, because, you know, we're smarter than the rest. Everybody does this. Everyone does this. So you need your pieces to be out there. And so what do you have to do? You have to take all that data in. You've got to weed out, like, Okay, we've got 15 new followers, and this, that and the other and like, weed through the vanity metrics and find the story that is hidden in the data. And I say hidden because it's there in front of you. But again, you have to make connections between things. To me, it's just pattern recognition of like, okay, you've got lagging indicators, hey, we have new revenue. Where did it come from? And you're following each trail back to when it started. Same thing with leading indicators. It's like, okay, we're seeing this influx. Oh, it's because last month I read something about YouTube updating their titles. And so, like, I'm going to change the whole catalogs titles. And it's not sexy work. It's it's annoying, but like to do it, you make your brand that you're working on appear in more searches, and, like, that's what they want. And then you go, Hey, we've got three lead magnets on these videos, and four of them on these and then you say, I can prove in like, Google Analytics or something similar, that they came from YouTube and it's this video. And so, like, you have to dig into it, though, and I, I haven't found a course from anybody. And I'm sure they're out there somewhere. But like, I had to figure out and stumble through the darkness myself to figure out, like, how do I prove attribution of the sales that are coming in where it's like, I know that what we're doing is working, but I have to figure out how. So, like, eight years ago, I was like, I just have to live in this this page and figure out, like, what is this data mean? How do I get around it? And then, because you have to present the story to your stakeholders to prove like what you're doing is working, to the question, yeah,

Kerry Guard 40:29

yeah, it's a tough job, for sure. I will say, once it starts working and the trust has been built, then founders are definitely like, cool, you got this. And then they can go touch on other things. But it is, you do need those leading indicators to start getting momentum. And then once you see those lagging indicators actually coming to fruition, and you can map it back to the work you're doing, it is, it is magical, and it's nice in the early days because you only have like, a handful of like quality leads that you need to worry about. And so it is a little easier to, like, figure out the attribution. But, yeah, it's definitely a balancing act. And this 100% the struggle is

Jonathan Tasman 41:12

real, building the trust is like the goal. And when you get that, it your life, just it really does become easier.

Kerry Guard 41:21

It sounds like content is really the thing is that really the growth lever that delivers the fastest wins across your portfolio is that what you're saying

Jonathan Tasman 41:36

the yeah across the portfolio, most of what we focus on is content. And while we run some paid ads here and there we you and I were joking about it at the front end of the episode before we we jumped on here that not every business needs to do paid ads. And a lot of times with B to B, that's really not, you're not going to see a whole lot of ROI there. You'll literally see a better ROI getting at a trade show, going to a trade show, and it's going to cost you 80 grand. But like going to a trade show and standing in front of your customers to go, Hey, let's talk, and they can't really run away because they're in front of you, but we've ad blockers, like, it's just not the it's not the best thing. So having these human interactions that people can view or participate in by being guests on podcasts like that, I think, is not going anywhere, even with the ability to generate with AI. Now I have my speculations on people spinning up like their digital twin, or their avatar, or making a new avatar and then using that on podcast. Yeah, you're shaking your head. It's just like that stuff's coming, because we're already seeing it on the fringes, bleeding into the other parts of marketing and society and whatever. I have a an acquaintance who's a therapist, and he has started seeing a married couple who the husband has a an AI girlfriend for counseling. Like this is it's coming. Like this stuff's happening. It's wild. Just a little side tangent.

Kerry Guard 43:04

There. It is wild. I wonder, though, I guess my hope for the future, right? So somebody said this on one of my LinkedIn posts today that, you know, the AI slop is sort of taking over. And I was like, I actually feel like it's doing the opposite. And I don't know if that's because I'm curating it out or if people are just realizing it's not working and so they're abandoning it quicker. But I do think my positive outlook on this, in in hopes for humanity, so to speak, is that humanity will win, like I think there will be fringe cases and things will be tried. There are some really sad, hard stories about, like, teenagers, you know, committing awful crimes and and committing suicide because they an AI essentially told them to after they've developed a relationship with them. There are those cases, and we are going to hear about that for now, but I do think that in the long run, we need as humans connection, human connection, and I think that is going to ultimately be what out wins and outlasts AI. AI will help us, and the tooling will be good, and it'll become the next calculator, and it'll be great. But I think eventually, you know, it's going to be human to human. It's got to be it

Jonathan Tasman 44:32

always. It circles back, right? Like, anytime we have a disruptive tech that, you know, fluxes in the market and, like, floods into the market. That's what I wanted to say. It changes things. People get scared, and then we start adopting it. We go, Oh, this isn't that bad. But also the tech gets smarter. Like, this is the dumbest AI is ever going to be. Like, it's never getting dumber than today, and then a year ago, like that was as dumb as it was ever going to be. And so, like, people are using it to your point, I think, to help humanity. In the wrong one there. Are bad actors. And then there are also, like, outstanding circumstances where we trusted something that was still, like, we'll call it in beta, right? Like, I'd say societally, AI is still in beta, even though it's been around for, you know, five years or four years, or whatever, publicly. But I'm in your boat. I think that it'll be I have hope for the future. I think that the world, I think we just, we, we megaphone a lot of the negatives all the time in the news and the media and everything, because that gets clicks, which leads to ad revenue, which leads to, like, businesses being able to fund themselves, which, we don't have to go down that tangent. But like, we don't talk about all the good things, right? Like, we don't, we don't, we don't talk about that. You know, your your daughter just picked flowers yesterday, and, like, she handed them to a woman passing down the street because she thought it was fun, right? Like, that's great, that's wonderful. That's part of part of society. But we don't report on those things.

Kerry Guard 45:52

So I will say that those stories do resonate on LinkedIn, and I am grateful for that. So LinkedIn, as much as you're changing your algorithm. Keep those human stories going. Yes please. Like them and appreciate them. I could talk to you all day, Jonathan, I didn't get through nearly as many questions as I had. My last question for you is, you know, you've done a lot of content building. You've done it across in multiple ways, in terms of, you know, giving us some great systems. Let's get real here for a second and talk about how long this stuff takes. Right? Is this quick wins? Are people going to be able to stand up some content and get going and start to see those lagging indicators? I mean, how long you've done this across eight plus brands in your experience. How long does it take to really start to a, get the system going and B, to see the fruition of the revenue at the end, at the end of the rainbow?

Jonathan Tasman 46:55

It does take a lot longer than we, than anyone cares, to admit, whether it's just writing socials, whether it's doing the content system where you're doing your intro question, like the little quiz that you had at the beginning, where it's like, okay, you got 30 minutes a week. It's like, okay, I look, I challenge you guys 30 minutes a week. Take the thing, do a 10 minute recording, turn it into a transcript, and turn that into a blog and a social post and like, do that for one month, so four posts, really, and then see where your numbers are compared to the month before. Right? It's, it's, you can see those early indicators, month over month. However, in my opinion and experience, if you want to see real change, if you're starting a podcast three years, like you got to commit to three years, and you'll start to see things. Part of it's your learning. You just don't know yet, and that's okay. Like we we didn't learn. We didn't come out of the womb learning to swim. We had to go take lessons and figure it out. Like things take time. We just don't know. We don't know, but assume that whatever you're doing is going to take longer than you think, and then double that. But, and this is like hope for the future. If you want to speed the learning up 10x your output, if you're doing 30 minutes a day, 30 minutes a day, make it three hours a day, and like you will see a steeper growth, quicker, partly because you're learning, partly because you're you're just changing your output. Because your first 100 anything is going to suck, and you just have to accept that it's okay, but like, the fact that you're doing it is winning. That's really what it is, even though it doesn't feel like that because you're like, Oh, I missed a period. I spelled this word wrong. Someone gave a negative comment. The video didn't do well, zero likes, you know, zero views, whatever that stuff's gonna happen and like we've all been through it. If you make any sort of content or marketing, like we've all been to it, you you mentioned earlier, you posted something, you're like, Oh, well, it's working so, but now I have to deviate my schedule and respond to all 20 comments. So that's, that's that's my answer. It's gonna take longer than you think, and then double that time. But you can speed it up by simply doing more reps quicker.

Kerry Guard 49:08

I think in my experience too, when doing more reps I had, I stumbled over more wins. Yeah, right. So like, I know now that if I do, if I post daily, and I do one sort of off the cuff, usually the one off the cuff is the one that does the thing, but if I do one off the cuff, then that's the thing that I get. My huge impression push for the week. But I have to do it daily. I have to be in practice, and I have to be thinking about, Okay, well, these ones were off the cuff, and they did well. So what would I say off the cuff today? That might spark something, and getting in that rhythm and training your brain to think that way just builds the muscle to be able to then get, you know, hopefully, then I'll get to a week, because I'm just. Put in, I can think more on the cuff, a little bit more ahead of time, because I'm starting to see the patterns of what's actually resonating.

Jonathan Tasman 50:08

And then after you do that for a month, you can take 30 minutes of the next month and look at all of the posts from last month and go, hey, here are my four off the cuff ones. Oh, it looks like I talked about my daughter and her school in half of them, or whatever, right? Let me do more of those topics, because it's human, right, like, whatever those patterns are, just as, like, another little tidbit for the listeners,

Kerry Guard 50:33

absolutely, absolutely. This is a totally founder led motion. This is perfect. This is where the podcast is headed, y'all, we're talking to founders. We want to give you the tips and tricks and tools to help you create your growth engine, in the long run, a sustainable growth engine. That is our mission. That's what we want to do for you. This was amazing. What a great first episode. Jonathan, ah, I could literally unpack this with you all day. I just want to give founders more and more and more, but I think this is enough to get them started. So we're gonna

Jonathan Tasman 51:04

anything's a good start. I'm flattered and humbled to be the first in the series, so thank you.

Kerry Guard 51:10

Oh, it's gonna be awesome. I'm so excited. I love this. Where can people find you? They want to learn more. They want they want help creating their own content. Flywheel. How to get in touch with you.

Jonathan Tasman 51:21

Yeah. Check out my LinkedIn. It should be LinkedIn with whatever the URL stuff in the middle slash. Jonathan Tasman, my name will be on the show here. I think we'll probably drop a link as well somewhere. That's the easiest way to get a hold of me. I also, if you like nerd books, I run a nerd podcast called the side quest, Book Club podcast. That's fun. That's just something I do as well. I also use my side project to test the algorithm. So, like, that's a fun tip and trick as well. Where, if you're doing something on the side, use it as a learning space, because it's it's there. Like, the algorithm is the same with your side thing as it is with your business thing.

Kerry Guard 52:01

So yes, yes. And if you have deep interest and joy in it, it'll be so much easier. So I love that, speaking of side projects and just joy in general, outside of work, it is q4 Jonathan, that happened.

Jonathan Tasman 52:17

Yes, it is

Kerry Guard 52:19

what is currently in in the insanity that q4 always brings out, you know what is currently bringing you joy, to keep you calm through the madness? Hmm.

Jonathan Tasman 52:30

So I'm in the Midwest, and we have something in our city called ArtPrize, and basically the whole city turns into a museum, or, like, an art show for three weeks. And so my wife and I have gone out a couple times to just like, check out the artists in like, different restaurants or businesses will have made arrangements with the institution to host something for the three weeks, and you can just go around and see it. You vote on it. There's a prize or whatever. But that happens every fall is a lot of fun, because you get to see mediums. You didn't think of people telling stories through their art. You wouldn't have considered there was one guy who saved, like, old lunchroom trays for like, 40 years. He used to work at, I think it was Boeing, and he turned those lunchroom trays into a seven foot tall haiku piece. But he made seven of them so, like, and it's just in this building, and it's, they're all painted on and whatever, his wife was happy to get those out of the garage. But right, like you just you saved lunch trays so you could paint on them and, like, write a haiku in Japanese. Like, that's cool. Like, that's fun, yeah. So it's stuff like that right now.

Kerry Guard 53:48

I love it. Amazing, amazing. I'm so grateful. Thank you so much, Jonathan. I appreciate you. If you enjoyed this episode, please like, subscribe and share. We also have a few in the archives for you to check out. I had an episode with Dan Sanchez, many moons ago, on turning marketing into a system-driven machine. Like I said, I'm bringing Dan back on the show to talk about how he is incorporating AI into that. So stay tuned there. I had a conversation with Valerie Zargarpur about positioning security startups in crowded markets. And my episode with Anne Gote from Dropzone. Ai on building pipeline with limited resources. Go check those out for some more tips and tricks. This episode was brought to you and powered by MKG Marketing. We manage the details you capture the market. Thank you all so much. We'll see you next week.