In this episode of The Business Owner’s Journey, host Nick Berry sits down with Sara Nay, COO of Duct Tape Marketing, to explore key strategies for business growth, effective delegation, and the mental mindset required for successful entrepreneurship. Sara shares her journey from intern to COO, emphasizing the importance of continuous learning, quarterly planning, and fostering a positive company culture. They also discuss common challenges business owners face, such as burnout and the difficulties of delegation.
Sara Nay discusses how her role as an integrator complements her father John Jantsch's visionary approach. She explains how they balance each other’s strengths to drive the success of Duct Tape Marketing. While John focuses on big-picture ideas, Sara translates these into actionable plans, ensuring the team is aligned and projects are executed effectively.
Sara highlights the employee review process at Duct Tape Marketing, which focuses on monitoring employee happiness and growth. By conducting quarterly reviews that assess both performance and satisfaction, the company ensures that team members feel valued and motivated. This process not only boosts morale but also helps identify areas for improvement and personal development.
Sara shares her personal experience with burnout and the steps she took to overcome it. She describes the moment she realized she was spread too thin and the importance of aligning her role with her strengths. By delegating tasks that didn’t align with her core competencies, Sara was able to refocus on what truly drives her passion, preventing burnout and increasing productivity.
One of the common struggles for business owners is effective delegation. Sara discusses the importance of trusting your team and the benefits of delegating tasks, even if they might not be done exactly how you would do them. She emphasizes that good delegation not only frees up your time but can also lead to better results as team members bring their own strengths to the task.
Sara talks about the culture of continuous learning at Duct Tape Marketing. By constantly seeking new knowledge and adapting to changes, both she and her team stay ahead in the ever-evolving marketing landscape. This mindset is crucial for any business owner looking to grow and succeed in a competitive environment.
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Nick (00:00)
I just talked to John a few weeks ago and got him to tell his story and kind of like his few light bulb moments that he had that have kind of evolved over like 30 years with DTM and how he's gotten here. But I think it's gonna be really cool to hear
to the real story, like the truth, right? And we can pair that up with John's version, the marketer, and then we've got the reality. So yeah, Sarah, tell me about like, how did you get here with, well, with DTM, but which you and your profession in general.
Sara Nay (00:20)
The truth.
Yeah. So I graduated college as a psychology major and didn't honestly know what I wanted to do with that. But the good news is a lot of marketing is psychology based. It's about understanding people. It's about connecting with people. And so after college, I was actually a ski bum for a little while and then traveled South America and then ended up back in Kansas City and joined duct tape marketing as an intern, still not really knowing like if this was a path that made sense for me or not.
and also didn't really know that much at that point in my life about business or marketing. So it was a bit of a learning curve in the beginning, but over the years at Duct Tape Marketing, I've been there for 14, so obviously it worked out from the intern beginning. But I started as an intern and then I moved into the community manager type of role, and then I moved into client management. So I was managing all of our clients, and then I moved into sales.
And now I'm in the operations role. so moving throughout the company and all those different areas, it's really set me up for success in the operations role because I've done a lot of the things and I put a lot of the work in for the people that I now manage.
Nick (01:47)
Did you understand what DTM did or what John did before you got
Sara Nay (01:53)
Not fully, especially the, we have two sides of our business. And so we work directly with clients. And I think that's a lot easier for people to understand. So we're a fractional CMO agency where we come in and we work with small business clients where we create an overall strategy and then we move into a long -term retainer and basically execute marketing for them. And so that's one side of the business that I think is lot easier to understand. But on the other side of our business, we
and train marketing consultants, coaches, agencies, fractional CMOs in our approach. And I definitely didn't really understand that whole world until I got into it. So I knew high level what John did at Duct Tape Marketing, but not necessarily in the weeds.
Nick (02:34)
tell me about what's it like working with your parent? Like I work with my spouse and everybody who has worked with their spouse, kind of, you know, we make eye contact with another person who's worked with their spouse. They're like, yep, I get you. But I haven't had anybody who works with a parent. So tell me about
Sara Nay (02:47)
I get you.
Yeah, I mean, that's partially why like back 14 years ago, I started out as an intern part time because we were both like, you know, obviously we're family first, we want to make sure that it makes sense. But him and I have very, very similar working styles in certain ways, but also different working styles. And so we complement each other well, but also get each other, which is interesting. So I call him John in work settings, I've called him John for 14 years, which is funny because I call him John more frequently than I call him dad at this point, I feel like.
You know, he's a visionary. He has a lot of great ideas. You know, he's created a lot in the marketing space in terms of like creating a marketing system and his frameworks and methodologies. And so he's very big picture and I've developed that over the years, but I've also been very like systems process oriented minded as well. And so if he has a vision that he wants to bring to life with me in the COO seat, I'm able to take that vision and able to map a process around it. I'm able to get the team involved.
and I'm able to get that across the finish line. So we complement each other really well with being more of like the visionary and integrator, if you want to think about it that way, which is very good. We also work similar style where we make decisions very quickly and we move very fast and we want stuff done yesterday. And so that can get us into trouble sometimes, but it's all good.
Nick (04:11)
Is there like a third party or other more than people outside of the two of you that kind of serve as a counterbalance to the two of
Sara Nay (04:20)
Yeah, keeping on track. mean, I do have the mindset of like, if we set these quarterly priorities, we're gonna get them across the finish line and we're gonna commit to them, where he does with the visionary creative mindset have more of like, actually, let's do this instead. So that's where I do, I think balance them out pretty well. And like more of the integrator role is I'll be able to say, no, we created the plan, let's stick to the plan. No shiny object syndrome. So we do, and then we also have, yeah.
Nick (04:45)
Yep, you're John right now. You're not dad, you're John. We're sticking to the plan.
Sara Nay (04:48)
Yeah, yeah, you're John and we're sticking to the plan. But then we have great people on our team as well that help us stick to the commitments we've made.
Nick (04:57)
That helps. So what are you, what have you done along the way to help develop yourself to into a COO? How do you sharpen your
Sara Nay (05:07)
I, this is a big piece of like our whole culture at Duck Tape Marketing is always be learning and growing. Like that's one of our core values. That's who we hire basically as we want to hire eager learners. And that's something that I've always been passionate about as well. And so I'm always like reading a book and listening to another book, just consuming content. I think that's been a huge piece of mine, but also like being able to serve in all the different areas of the business has been really helpful.
part of another mastermind that's all about scaling businesses to exit and sell. So I've gotten a lot of training and mentorship through that program. it's just being involved, always be learning, having great people surrounded by you are some of the pieces. But then also, as I said, like serving all the different roles in our businesses just helped me learn a ton over the years.
Nick (05:56)
Yeah. Has anything in particular helped you kind of establish a clear vision for what you think your COO role should look like? Like what are you, you're working on growing, but to what? what is your aspirational image for yourself?
Sara Nay (06:13)
Yeah, there's a lot like so a while like I don't know how many years ago, and the books on my shelf, I read a book called rocket fuel and that really helped me understand. And that's where like the visionary and integrator, like what I should be doing in the role of the CEO. And so that's really helped by thinking like early on, I think I read that book like six years ago at this point or so. But also like a lot of what john and I do, and the whole team does is we do quarterly two things quarterly planning.
and then also quarterly reviews. And so for the quarterly planning piece, I'll start there. Like John and I always talk about where do we want to be in one year and three years from now. And so that's like from a revenue perspective, growth perspective, like my role perspective, his role perspective, our team, you know, so we're talking about like all of those things. And then we always talk about, okay, what do we need to do over the next quarter to continue to progress to reach these goals? And so we've done that type of strategic planning for years
every single quarter, looking at the long term and then taking it back to the short term. And so that's one piece that helps me just kind of stay on a growth path in terms of roles and responsibilities, but also analyze for our team, what are some things that we can assign to them to ensure that they're growing and working on the right things as well. So that's one piece. And then we also do quarterly reviews on a regular basis with all of our team. And so when I talk about our team, we have full -time team members and we also have contractors that we
with as well. We do the team reviews with our contractors as well. And in those, they're reviewing our business and their happiness as much as we're reviewing their performance. And so there's a series of questions they answered, myself included, when I'm doing it with John, that's just like, are you fairly compensated? Are you working on the right things? Do you feel integrated and part of this team? Do you enjoy the work that you do? Does your boss manage you well? Like those types of questions, because we're just trying to see like how happy they are in the role.
and their growth path. But then we're also reviewing them on their performance as well, just as more of like a traditional review and just giving them some action items for improvement.
Nick (08:12)
So that sounds like that's going beyond the EOS there, like once gets it, it, whatever their little simple review process is that, is that something that you guys have created on your
Sara Nay (08:26)
Yes. So as I said, I'm a book nerd. so I read, in Employalty I believe is what it was from that I took that review process from. so he talks about, you know, in happiness for employees, is a number of factors and it's, you know, being fairly compensated, having flexibility, having a great boss. can't remember what all the things are. There was like a bunch of them. so we basically took questions from that book and put it into our quarterly review survey to just basically score them on those core factors.
Nick (08:55)
Yeah, I like that. I mean, it's kind of a, like a small business version of doing what you can do in place of like a 360 or something like that, right? To make it more of a two -way conversation. I really like
Sara Nay (09:04)
Yep, exactly.
Yeah, and it's nice because then we created it in a spreadsheet. And so over time, we can just see like last quarter, you're at all nines and this quarter, you have some 10s or just kind of see the progress as to where they're at on their happiness journey.
Nick (09:24)
Yeah. And I mean, it's something like that. You can, it doesn't even have to be perfect. As far as your scoring system, you can recognize like, are we going in the direction we want to go or are we not? And that's, that's, that's all it has to do right
Sara Nay (09:37)
Yep, absolutely. So we do that on a quarterly basis and then we use another tool called 15 .5 that we send out every Friday. And so that basically asks people on a scale of one to five, how are you feeling? But then it also asks like, what did you accomplish this week? What are your priorities next week? And then it asks some random question and it allows people to give team shout outs. So like if some other team member did something great, they can do a shout out. And I really like those as well because it helps people kind of close out their week and think about their next week.
It also allows them to shout out obviously other people, but then it gives me a trend over time. And so I can see if someone's like always a four and this week there are three, I'll reach out to them and say, Hey, what happened? Like, is it something work related that I can help you with? You've always kind of been a four and I noticed you put a three on your survey. And so it just allows me to constantly check in with people as well. because you know, think the, biggest benefit there's so many benefits in keeping people around a long time on your team.
just because they get to know your business and how you work and your systems and processes and your clients. So like in the agency space, we can be more profitable with our clients and keep them around longer if our team members are around longer. And so I do put a lot of emphasis on their happiness and building a really positive culture to keep them around, but it also obviously makes work a lot more fun as
Nick (10:56)
So there was something else in there that you mentioned that I think is neat and also important. When you're asking them at the end of their week, what did you get done? And then also what are your priorities for the next week? And I feel like that does a lot for maintaining continuity. Like they're coming into next week having already had some sense of being prepared, right? And because not everybody's wired like
And I feel like the last thing you want is for everybody to show up at the beginning of their work and it'd be like, okay, I got to do a full rebuild. Like, what am I supposed to do here now? I want them to able to show up with a little bit of momentum and you've already got them, they've identified their next steps. Like here's what I'm going to do when I come back in that door or when I said back down or when I push the power button on Monday. I love
Sara Nay (11:34)
Yeah.
Yeah, it just helps people kind of close out their week and look forward. And as you said, like not everyone thinks like that. Like not everyone's great at like planning their priorities for the upcoming week, but it gives them space and time to do that and to focus on that. And then we have on Mondays or Tuesdays, usually all of the one -on -one meetings within our team, because then you're able to review the priorities with your boss at that point and just kind of see if you're aligned and if you're working on the right things and then you work on those things that week and
all the process of closing out your week with 15 -5 at the end. So that's kind of the structure for meetings as
Nick (12:27)
You and you call that tool 15 five. Is that your tool or is that 15 five? I'm going to look into it. That's interesting. okay. So let's kind of shift gears and talk about some of the challenges, that you've run into and maybe some of the lessons that you can share in your time, like coming up through the organization and in your role as COO. one of the things that you'd mentioned and
Sara Nay (12:30)
Yeah, no, that's what it's called.
Nick (12:51)
I'm super interested in talking about this, just the mindset. Because I didn't realize, I didn't intend for it to be this way, but I like it. So far, my podcast has kind of turned into conversations about being mentally tough, your mindset as a business owner, like, you know, how do the good ones do it and how can I improve on it? So what's your experience been? What's your
Sara Nay (13:14)
It's such an important piece to focus on. Being an entrepreneur or business owner is not easy. I work with a lot of people through our certification program that are just getting started and it's challenging, but it's really rewarding as well. But you have to have a tough mental mindset, I think, to get through that. So a few of the things that I've worked on over the years is there's a lot of highs and lows in business.
always and John's always preached that to me over the years as well. Like things are going to be challenging, but there's also really great times. And so I think you have to be mentally tough to get through those lows and understand that things will turn around in most cases. That's been one piece. An area that I see a lot of people struggle with as well as like getting close to burnout. And because it is, it's a lot. And myself, I was close to burnout, I would say seven or so years ago.
And I took a step back. remember like we have trails behind my house and I remember going on a hike and I remember coming down and thinking like, why am I burnt out? Like, am I just not in the right industry? Am I not in the right role? Do I not like what we're doing anymore? Do I have too much on my plate? Am I spread too thin? There was just like all these possible factors I think that could lead to burnout. And what I realized in my specific situation was I was spread too thin and not in the right role.
So I had a conversation with John about that. And so that's back when I was doing all of our client work. And so I was managing all of our client engagements and all of our implementation team. And so it was just like too many people for me and I was spread too thin. And so over time, like after I made that realization, we had the conversation of where are your strengths and what should you be doing? And that's when I started to shift into more of the COO role because
I really love training and educating and managing and teaching. Like those are some of the things that I love to do. and not necessarily like the marketing side of things, doesn't necessarily light me up more of the operations and team management side of things. So I've shifted and grown into this role and then we've hired people to run client engagements. and so we basically replaced me out of that role. And so it did just come down to like deep thinking
Like I was doing too many roles and not the right ones. And so then I was able to bring in people, delegate, and then step into where I think my strengths truly are.
Nick (15:34)
Yeah. Do you happen to remember whenever you kind of got to that place, like before you went on that hike, what were some of the symptoms? Like what, was telling you like this something ain't right
Sara Nay (15:46)
Yeah, just stress. I mean, it was a big piece and just like not wanting to do it anymore. I do remember like one specific moment. I was holding my daughter who was a newborn at the time and she was sick and she was home and she was on my chest and I was like behind holding her like on my phone talking to a client about like a social media color for one of their posts and just like debating back and forth and I'm
I can't even be here and like be present for my daughter right now when she's a newborn and obviously needs me. And so that was a big like wake up moment that I needed to make a change and make a
Nick (16:22)
Man, yeah, that's a, if it involves the kids, it's like a kind of a gut punch,
Sara Nay (16:29)
Yeah, and just a reminder of like, why am I doing what I'm doing? I'm doing like, I'm working really hard and I love what I do to be able to support my family and be there for them and have that flexibility to be there for them. I think that's the one of the great things about, you know, working from home and being a bit of an entrepreneur mindset is you have that flexibility to be there for your kids in a lot of cases when you need to
Nick (16:50)
what are you seeing out of the business owners that you guys are working with? we get to, they get to down on the couch and we get to like pick through their problems. What are you, what are you guys seeing and how?
Sara Nay (17:00)
Yeah. Yeah.
Nick (17:03)
How does it manifest in the conversations that you have And how do you help them navigate their way through it? Because that's not really your
Sara Nay (17:11)
Yeah, it's not really my job, but I've gotten into it more and more just because there's such a need for it. think I actually took a eight month long mindset course because I'm interested in it all. But I realized there's a huge need in it, especially for people just getting started. like a few things, a few areas that I see people really struggling like from a mindset standpoint is this topic of delegation. Like it's hard when you're just getting started. Like it's easy to feel like you should just hold on to everything.
And it's hard to start delegating because you're losing control, you're letting go. You don't have your hands into everything. And also from a financial perspective, when you're just getting started, it's harder to bring people in. So it's a bit of a risk in that sense. And so I think the whole delegation piece is a big thing. But I'm in the mindset of like, if someone can get me like 80 % there by delegating it, that's a huge win. In my mind, and I will say like
biggest wins I've experienced over the years is like when you delegate to someone else and they end up doing it better than you. I think that's like such a huge win or better than you could have done it. So that's where I think a lot of people struggle early on is like, can I delegate? Should I delegate? What should I delegate? I fear of letting go is a big piece. Another mindset piece as well is I think a lot of people struggle with like labels as a topic. And so people have a lot of like negative labels that they put on themselves.
or other people put on them that aren't necessarily true. And so I'm bad at sales or I'm not a great leader or I'm bad at public speaking or whatever it might be. And so I think it's really important to think about those different labels that you're telling yourself and really analyze like, those true or can you replace them with something a lot more positive? And so one of the things I struggled with early on is and still get somewhat nervous today is like the topic of public speaking.
And I would just always be like, I'm too nervous to speak or I'm not good at it or I'll stumble over my words or, know, like those are like the things that I would tell myself leading up to it. But now I've adopted the mindset of like, no, like you're, it's normal to be nervous when you're getting up on stage for the first time. Like people have those energy or those feelings inside of them, but like go out there and provide value and connect with people and you'll learn every single
And so it's a bit of a shift in like, I'm not good at it too. I'm still getting better at it every single time I do it. And that's helped. Another area on mindset too, another piece that we talk a lot or I talk a lot about is like the, relationship to failure and rejection. And so some people like don't want to put themselves out there because they're afraid that they're fail or be rejected, which might happen. But I think if you can think about failure or rejection as an opportunity to grow and learn.
So maybe you didn't get an opportunity or the speaking thing didn't go as well as you had hoped. What can you learn from that to then do better next time? And so those are some of the key areas that I see a lot of people struggling with and needing to focus on in the entrepreneurship space.
Nick (20:16)
Yeah. Yep. And I think, you know, what I'm hearing you talk about there is a lot of the shift from a fixed mindset to an open or growth mindset where it's like, you might not be at this thing right now, but that's right now, that's a temporary state, right? It's where you're not as good as you want to be, right? It's all, it's a process and a journey, not a permanent state.
Sara Nay (20:43)
Yeah, yeah. Another example, like when people start recording videos for the first time, like if they're a business owner, we're like, record a video, they put on your homepage. Like we see this all the time when we're building websites with people. They're like, I can't record a video. Like that's terrifying. I'll be terrible and I'll stumble over my words. And it's like, you probably will stumble and it will be really, really, really hard for your first one. But every single time you do it, it's going to get easier and easier and easier. And I think that's important to keep in mind.
I launched a podcast a while ago, I'm not doing it anymore. And I remember like the first introduction I did for someone I was like, so nervous and I like stumbled over it. And if like I went back and listened to that now I'd be like, my goodness. But like by the time I did a handful of episodes in 20 and 30 and 40 and 50, like it was just easy and it rolled off my tongue and I was never nervous and it was just a conversation. And so I just think that's an important thing. Like if stuff feels really hard today, that's normal and it should get easier if you're doing the right thing.
Nick (21:39)
Yep. And, and I think your perspective is going to evolve a lot too. Like you have this thing in your mind. So going back to your initial podcast introduction that you said, like most people that would listen to it aren't, don't care about all the little things that you're finding wrong with it. They do not care. It's kind of like the outfit that you're wearing or whatever else that you're worried about that you're like, I cannot, I got to make sure that this picture is
Sara Nay (21:55)
Yeah, exactly.
Nick (22:06)
Most people don't really care as much as you do. So you figure that out and then you can look back at things and be like, well, it wasn't very good. It was really good for me, like being my first one. But most of the things that I was worried about never mattered. What mattered was that I got in there, got the first step taken. I knew what I was trying to work on and I kept getting better at that thing. And I mean, that's kind of brings our conversation full circle
Sara Nay (22:31)
Yep, absolutely.
Nick (22:35)
like how hard it is as a business owner, that's really what you have to do, right? Because as a business owner, you're playing this game of who can handle the uncertainty and the complexity the best, because nobody knows who has what card, like all you know is like the ones that are in your hand. Maybe there are some that are out on the table and you've got to do the best you can do with it. And sometimes it's going to feel like you got
And sometimes it's going to feel like you can do no wrong. And neither one of those are usually true, but you have to be able to get like, just use it as an opportunity to try to do a little bit better next
Sara Nay (23:16)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you as you were saying, like as a business owner, like a lot of your responsibility is understanding like what to do next for your business and then actually making a move towards that. And so you might not always pick the best path, but understanding like where you're trying to go and what you're trying to work towards is really important. But as we're talking about, like you might stumble along the way, but you at least have to have a path to work towards and then start making those small steps every day to be working towards it. And so that's where
When we're doing our planning, we're thinking about like the one year and three year goals and we're thinking about bigger picture, but then we're also breaking it down and saying, okay, what small steps do we need to do this quarter to start moving in that right direction?
Nick (23:59)
So I think the quarterly planning is a good example. So you set your goals for a year from now and you have an idea right now, you know what your next quarter is supposed to look like, and then you probably have an idea of what the following quarters probably are going to need to look like. What do you think the odds are that when you get there and you hit your goals, that it's actually going to look the way that you expect it to, the
Sara Nay (24:23)
path. It shifts. Yeah, it shifts and evolves. mean, that's where yeah, that's where we're we're really big on only planning a quarter at a time. And that's for our business, but also for our marketing clients. Because stuff evolves and shifts so much. You have to test, you have to tweak new ideas might come into the picture that are great ideas. So like I attend a conference every single quarter, through a mastermind that I'm part of, and I always get a lot of great ideas.
Nick (24:26)
There is... It's not
Sara Nay (24:51)
if we've already done our quarterly planning, we still try to filter them into the next quarter. So it's all about creating the plan in small chunks, but also being okay if like you do have to shift a bit as it makes
Nick (25:02)
Yeah, you know you're going to have to, right? Because something's going to change. And that's part of the game is we're going to lay out this plan. It may not go according to plan, but that's not really the pass fail part of it. Like what's important is that we'll figure out how to get to the
Sara Nay (25:18)
Yep. Yep. And another big piece too is like, we always try to stick with like three to maybe five quarterly priorities that we're working on. All of those priorities have like projects below them, but like three to five max. I was speaking to one of my clients that I just coach at recently and like they really struggle because they'll plan out three to five priorities and then they'll add on a bunch more. And then all of a sudden no projects get finished because they have so many going and they get confused.
And so I think it's really important, like, if you've done your quarterly planning and you're working on your three to five priorities, like don't just add on more and more and more and more as things come up. If things come up that are worth mixing in, then put another project or priority on hold to make space for it. Because I think if you have way too many things going, things just won't get finished. Things will be forgotten about, teams will be spread too thin. There's just a lot of challenges in
Nick (26:11)
Yep, takes a lot of discipline. Do you guys stick to the EOS process pretty religiously or are you pretty loose with it?
Sara Nay (26:21)
With the, we don't necessarily fall, I know a lot about EOS, but our process is kind of like pulled from a number of different programs, I would say, over the years in books and thinking over the years. But yeah, I mean, we're pretty big on like, do quarterly planning every quarter and have those conversations every quarter. And I'm definitely a person that like, I'm in love with project management tools. I like having it all mapped out and understanding like what's working and what we're working towards.
pretty big on using those heavily and communicating with the team through
Nick (26:52)
What's your like, can't live without tool right
Sara Nay (26:56)
We've been using monday .com for a while for project management. It's pretty, it's visual, but it has a lot of capabilities in terms of like automations and functionality. So we use that one pretty heavily. I always joke if like Monday, cause I have my task list on there. So like if Monday shuts down, which they do occasionally, I'm like, what am I supposed to be working on? I have no idea. So we use that pretty heavily. We also use Slack really religiously as well, just for team communication.
Nick (27:24)
Yeah, well, OK, what about what are you reading right now? Or what have you read recently that you think everybody should read?
Sara Nay (27:32)
One of my favorite books I've read recently, somewhat business related, somewhat not, is called The Comfort Crisis. And it's all about getting outside of our comfort zone. So there's definitely pieces of it that relates to business. His whole thought process is that we're just too comfortable in life and that we need to be uncomfortable sometimes, which that really resonates for me. And I actually signed up for a race in October that's like 40, a trail race that's 40 miles over three days, just to get out of my comfort zone.
But it also relates to lot of business stuff as well. But we do a book club at our company and right now we're reading radical candor. And that's all about how to be a great boss basically and how to communicate with your team effectively.
Nick (28:01)
Good for
Yeah, that comes up a lot in my conversations. I was talking Brett Bartholomew, he's big on candor
So where, tell me where, what's lay ahead for DTM and for you? What does the rest of this year look like? what does the future have in store?
Sara Nay (28:32)
so we've always worked in the small business space with those two core audiences. And so we're going to stay offering fractional CMO services to the businesses that we serve. We're really more of a fractional CMO agency. And so we're able to come in and work with clients, create the strategy, and then they get a fractional CMO as a retainer. And then they also get to agency, so a team to help implement some of the marketing.
So we're gonna continue doing that. We work with a handful of clients to stay in the game and continue to learn about marketing once progressing. But a big focus of ours is our certification intensive as well for our marketing consultants, fractional CMOs. And so that's a piece of our business that we're really looking at growing and going all in
Nick (29:16)
so for the audience, it may not know we put one of our companies through the certification. So I mean, I can speak to that from firsthand experience. I really, really like a couple of concepts that, that, you guys share that. mean, I've heard John talking about marketing as a system for, you know, since he wrote duct tape marketing and the referral engine actually was the one that really, really got me.
So, you if you're a, if you are a marketer who feels like, need to have a better grasp on how to use marketing as a system. these are your guys. And the other thing is the, the fractional CMO. think that, I mean, that's booming right now. And you guys have a methodology. You're able to take people who may have the aptitude. They have the, the, the willingness
They have the characteristics that are needed, but they need like the framework and help them get started on the path. And I think that's very powerful. It's been great for a lot of small businesses who are trying to get off the ground and a lot who are established too. I didn't mean to make it sound like it's
Sara Nay (30:19)
Yeah, and that's, mean, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that's, it's a great offer for the small business space. It's a great offer for larger businesses as well. But like for the small business space, previously, like hiring senior level marketers has been more out of touch until this fractional model has really grown. Because now you're able to invest in marketing, bring in a senior level marketing marketer, but also have implementers to help get the work done as well. So it's a really, really important piece.
Because that's where I've seen a lot of small businesses struggle over the years is they'll hire one or two people to do marketing on their team, but then they just get really bogged down in all of the execution. Because if you think about marketing, it's complex. There's website, there's content, there's social, there's data, there's AI these days. There's just so many different pieces of it. But to have someone that can do all of that, but also be a high level strategist is very challenging.
And so you really, like even the small business, you need multiple people to help in the marketing world, to help with the marketing piece because it's challenging to find one person to do it all. And so that's where like the fractional and part -timers makes sense to a lot of marketing or small businesses because you can build out a team without having to hire all of those roles full -time because that gets expensive very fast.
Nick (31:41)
yes it does. So I chat with Sarah lot on LinkedIn and I follow her, keep up with her there. Where else does the audience need to go to follow
Sara Nay (31:52)
Yep. So LinkedIn is great, Sarah Nay and then also our website is DucktapeMarketing .com. And we also have a page on our website that is DTM .world backslash growth, where there's a bunch of free resources for either small business owners or fractional CMOs, consultants and agencies. You can choose your path and grab some free content there as
Nick (32:13)
Yeah, choose your own adventure. You guys have a ton of free stuff for people. So I think that's great. Sarah, thank you so much. I always enjoy talking to you. really, love your company and what you guys do and the way that you go about doing it. So I'm looking forward to continuing to watch what the direction that you guys go and watch you as you keep growing and stepping into the forefront.
Sara Nay (32:18)
We do.
Thank you so much, Nick. It was fun chatting with
Nick Berry is an accomplished entrepreneur and CEO, whose track record includes founding and leading numerous companies since 2002.
He is also a mentor and coach to other entrepreneurs and business owners who are looking for a trusted (and proven) advisor.
Among peers, colleagues, staff, and clients, Nick has been referred to as both 'The Business Guy' as well as 'The Anti-Guru', due to his pragmatic approach and principled leadership.
He shares his insights and lessons learned, along with those of his expert guests,
on his podcast, 'The Business Owner's Journey'.
