🔥Marketing Warfare: How A New Framework is IGNITING Small Business Growth

David Mauro and co-host Zach Moskow engage with Kevin McGrew, author of 'The New Rules of Marketing Warfare.' They discuss the intersection of marketing and leadership, emphasizing the importance of frameworks in business strategy. Kevin shares insights on the SMAC framework (Shoot, Move, Adapt, Communicate) and how it can help businesses navigate challenges. The conversation also explores the impact of AI on marketing, the necessity of adaptability, and the future of business leadership in a rapidly changing landscape.

You can grab a copy of Kevin’s new book here: https://a.co/d/9bGjIBf

Growth without Interruption. Get peace of mind. Stay Competitive-Get NetGain. Contact NetGain today at 844-777-6278 or reach out online at www.NETGAINIT.com  
 

Chapters

• 0:00 The Importance of a Proven Strategy
• 2:26 Introducing the SMAC Framework
• 4:31 The Role of Leadership in Marketing
• 7:22 Adapting to Market Changes
• 10:19 Learning from Failures and Successes
• 12:42 The Mindset of Finding Solutions
• 17:08 Understanding the SMAC Framework
• 19:22 The Concept of 'Shooting' in Marketing
• 22:05 Moving with Agility in Business
• 25:15 Adapting with Knowledge
• 30:53 The Impact of AI on Marketing
• 36:18 Navigating Post-COVID Business Landscape
• 39:32 The Future of Marketing and AI

Transcript

Marketing Warfare: How A New Framework is IGNITING Small Business Growth

Summary

David Mauro and co-host Zach Moskow engage with Kevin McGrew, author of 'The New Rules of Marketing Warfare.' They discuss the intersection of marketing and leadership, emphasizing the importance of frameworks in business strategy. Kevin shares insights on the SMAC framework (Shoot, Move, Adapt, Communicate) and how it can help businesses navigate challenges. The conversation also explores the impact of AI on marketing, the necessity of adaptability, and the future of business leadership in a rapidly changing landscape.

 Speaker 1 (00:01.518)
Did you know 50 % of businesses fail within the first five years? 50 %! It's not because their products or services are bad, it's because they don't have a marketing framework, an actual proven way to go to market with their products and services. Look, business is war. The battlefield is marketing. And if you don't have a strategy to shoot, move, adapt and communicate, you're already losing.

Today we're breaking down the SMAC framework, a proven system to help leaders navigate chaos, eliminate and reduce the noise, outmaneuver competitors and thrive. You'll benefit from paying attention, especially toward the end when our guest reveals five key strategies that will set your business growth on fire. This is real, this works, so we hope it helps. This is Cybercrime Junkies.

And now the show.

Speaker 2 (01:06.304)
you

Speaker 1 (01:22.478)
Catch us on YouTube, follow us on LinkedIn, and dive deeper at cybercrimejunkies.com. Don't just watch, be the type of person that fights back. This is Cybercrime Junkies, and now, the show.

Speaker 1 (01:42.068)
All right, welcome, everybody. I'm your host, David Morrow, and in the studio today is my fantastic co-host, Zach Moskow. Zach, how are you,

Doing great, David. Thanks for coming to me.

Excellent. No, we're very excited about today's guest. Today we're joined by Kevin McGrew, author, strategist, veteran and proud Cincinnatian, who just released his brand new book, The New Rules of Marketing Warfare. Kevin has built a reputation for helping leaders and businesses cut through the noise with bold, practical strategies that actually work. His SMAC framework, SMAC, Shoot, Move, Adapt, Communicate, has already

been called a playbook for underdogs ready to win big. We're diving into leadership marketing, what it really takes to stand out in today's crowded world. Kevin, welcome to the studio, my friend.

It's a real pleasure. Finally get to meet you. So yes, I'm excited to be here.

Speaker 1 (02:40.512)
I am very excited. I'm happy to read that before all of your Zoom meetings too. Like I could just do a quick intro of you and then then leave.

I love it. I love it. I always feel blessed how everybody comes up with my bio, you know.

That's all different, but it's good.

I'm we're recording this.

Send it to family. So let's dive in. So you know, your book is on marketing and leadership and they often intersect. So like, how do you see great leaders having a good concept and also driving market?

Speaker 2 (03:22.84)
Yeah, well, you know, I'll start out by throwing out a statistic, know, leaders, business owners, business founders, about 50, according to the SBA, Small Business Administration, and this is conservative from what we're seeing, but about 50 % of businesses fail within their first five years. And just like in marriage, know, marriage is biggest reason marriages fail in America is for finances.

basically financial issues, financial discussions, and marketing is the number one reason that businesses fail lack of having a marketing strategy, a lot of spraying and praying going on. And really for business leaders and leadership, it's about, you know, having a framework that you know, when the bullets are flying, when think there's chaos involved, which is very common in running a business.

or starting a business, you need something that works all the time. And I learned that in the military, you know, as a young man enlisting in the US Navy, was, my job was to be in the Combat Information Center, bringing in and disseminating information very quickly so that we can make a strategy or a response to the threats that are there. And that, you know,

The thing that most impressed me in that experience was as a young man was in the, we were in the middle of the cold war with Russia. We were like hot and heavy in it. We are the tip of the spear and stuff was happening. Bear bombers coming at us and Helios and you know, we're surrounded by Russian stuff and everybody's calm and collected in the midst of chaos.

because they kind of had a playbook that they were.

Speaker 2 (05:17.88)
They had a playbook, there's professionalism that we train, train, train. And you knew no matter what you stuck to the playbook, right? And I mean, you adapted and that's where smack comes involved, shoot, move, adapt, communicate. But, you know, as a as a business owner, I founded six businesses myself, service business, franchise, software, I've kind of done it all. I learned the hard way.

that you just can't wing it. I'm really good at winging things.

Yeah, I think we all are. You know, what Why do you think that is? Like, like getting down to the heart of it? Why do people not think or follow frameworks that often? I mean, yeah, that's I, I find people look for them. But it's almost like mentorship, they asked for a lot of mentorship, but then when the mentors tell them what to do, because they've literally walked down the same road previously, and they're like, don't step in that hole.

And then people are like, yeah, thanks for the mentorship. And then they go step in the hole and you're like, what, what's going, why'd you ask me? Like why, right? Like, why do think that is?

Well, I think number one, if you actually are a really thoughtful person, think through stuff, you'll overthink and not do you know, I think I think there's a lot of

Speaker 1 (06:42.158)
Perfection is the enemy of good right correct Yeah

Yeah, I think, you know, that's why entrepreneurs are kind of like, you know, squirrel or, know, shiny object syndrome, you know, all over the place, because without that, they would, you know, probably say, no, I'm not going to do this. Which is what most people do. Right. It's too scary. There's too many limiting beliefs. What have you? You know, when I jumped out of an airplane, not in the Navy, but, know, kind of as a dare.

I worked with Navy SEALs and stuff and they're like, Hey, let's go jumping. I'm like, but, you know, you, there's so much fear leading up to thinking about it when you're actually in the air, you're like, why was I scared of, you know, kind of thing. Right. And this it's, it's that prep. It's the initial jobs up. It's even the before the jump, the stress, you know, before you start a business, all those things that will limit you. back to your question is why is it that people

have frameworks and they don't really follow them or they, you know, have to learn the hard way. And, you know, the, think everybody in some way has survival skills, you know, and everybody's developed their own framework. And in order to replace your framework, have to have buy in. And so even when I went in the military, we went through bootcamp, you know, I'm using these military analogies because I think it'll shot in.

It's very raw. Yeah, we're in we're in cybersecurity, cybersecurity frameworks are everything. That's we do. We every vertical has one and if not, lawyers will make you have one and so everybody has one whether you know it or not and then just addressing them and it's just it's very it stems right from the military, know, especially because cybersecurity is kind of a matter of national security. Right. So right. kind of what it's all about.

Speaker 2 (08:38.699)
And you need a way to say, did it break? When there is a breach, right? You need to say, we followed the framework. Where did it break? So we can fix that, right? Yeah. And so that's, that's what, you know, I agree with you. I think a lot of, people that are taking risks out there, they go from their gut instincts, you know, and it's,

That's exactly right.

Speaker 2 (09:01.87)
it needs to kind of you need a wake up call, I call it, you know, basically is you need something that says I can't do this myself, you know, kind of thing. And sometimes it's too late. Somebody business goes out of business, you know, COVID hits what, know, you don't have a framework, you don't know how to work through it. But what I decided to do was take years of learning, you know, of the hard way and package that in a way as you know,

My goal is to save a million businesses every year there's about 10 million 12 million businesses created in America. And like I said five half of them sorry go out of business within five years. My goal is that next 10 years save a million businesses that would otherwise go out of business. Right. Because that's what we're doing is ever social. My agency we are a Navy SEAL team more than a an army of marketers if you will. Our clients are hitting a wall usually they're they're

They've tried, they tapping out to what their skillset can take them to. And they're saying, let's bring in the guys that know what they're doing. And so we have a very small elite team that's very execution driven. So we're not wasting bullets or wasting money, right? We, we know how to get in there, understand who the target is, who to go for and do that. So I've taken a lot of those learnings and packaged them in a way to teach somebody who has no marketing understanding, no,

concept of what marketing is versus advertising versus PR versus things and put them in in very plain text, practical analogies and metaphors, along with hundreds of case studies in the book, you know, so it's kind of like this bakery, when COVID hit, right, found a way to they had to shut down their their reach.

Yeah, they found a way to adapt online and turn into each other.

Speaker 2 (10:55.618)
new e commerce right they and they made a lot more money there was only a bakery you know went out a they New York everybody loved their stuff but nobody could go to it so they went online and they were making instantly $10 million a year you know from a $2 million a year enterprise and now there are mostly e commerce you

Because once that's built and you realize, well, we don't have to sell locally now, we can go and scale everywhere. Everywhere. Right. Right. Just because we're all back and we can see each other in person doesn't mean we're going to get rid of that. Like it's it's filling a lead, a void, and it's able to scale. It's able to continue to scale and continue to grow.

And there are some strategy impacting business strategy as a whole.

Right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, if you think of like the Great Depression, IBM was born in the Great Depression. You know, they needed a workforce. They need they started moving to typing pools and IBM created typewriters, right? You know, and now we have the IBM we know today. But in adversity, there's opportunity for

growth or opportunities abound but that's the scariest time because you know the my stocks are down my mortgages underwater.

Speaker 1 (12:18.804)
I did there. Yeah, they're looking and sometimes it's out of necessity. mean, live course we live through the 2008 meltdown. Big one for us for our generation. Gen X really got hit over the head with baseball bats when that happened. But but so many organizations adapted during that time and then COVID hit.

That was a big one for us.

Speaker 2 (12:45.048)
COVID. Yeah, I mean, we saw that.

Yeah, we've seen stories like that. We've seen stories like Toys R Us and how they've, how they got, you know, bought out, got leveraged with debt. But also like how they struggled to same thing with Kodak, how they struggled to adapt.

in the coaches, you know, blockbuster Netflix, right? You know, I mean, I there's tons of stories that I could go through. But you know, the biggest thing I would say is until you have a mindset that if as a business owner, business leader, know, business is war, right? marketing is a battlefield. And most people are going into this battle blindfolded and smoking hopium.

You know, they're just hoping what they try is going to work. If I build it, they will come. We've heard that from field of dreams, right? And a lot of people go, Hey, this is good. People like it. I like it. It should work. You know, it, unfortunately things are moving way too fast. Marketing changes every day. Now, you know, AI is disrupting everything. And so you need something that's solid through all the changes and that's a framework. Yeah.

So tell us about why you, what drove you to put pen to paper?

Speaker 2 (14:07.352)
Yeah, good question. I think COVID did, you know, okay. I originally started this about 20 years ago, believe it or not, it was more of a letter to my kids on how to survive. And it was more the another book I started writing this evolved into that was called the FAA principle, F A W. And it stands for find an effing way. And that came from my dad who is a Marine.

And it was like, no excuses, Kevin. It takes just as much energy to form an excuse than it does to find a solution. Right? Find a way. I can't mow the lawn, Dad. my, there's no gas for the lawnmower. Right. Baw. Hang up the phone. I knew my butt was in trouble if that lawn wasn't mowed some way. Even if I, yeah, even if I get scissors and cut it, he just wanted to see the end result. And that's what we live in today with customers is I want the end result. Right.

figure.

Speaker 2 (15:05.954)
I need protection, cybersecurity. need to not worry about it. They're paying for peace of mind for you. That's what they're paying for. They're not paying for all the...

They don't want to hear any reasons. right.

Right? They don't want the weeds. They want to see a beautiful lawn. That's all they want to see is a beautiful lawn.

so funny. That's that's amazing. I came up with the file FIO and my daughter who's now grown adult was like, I'll ask her something and she was like, well, dad, just just just FIO just figure it out. circling back. Can you not just help me with this? Like,

figure it out.

Speaker 2 (15:43.436)
My granddaughter went to kindergarten this week and she was really scared, you know, and I said, you're gonna fall baby, you're gonna fall. And she came back to me. She was Papa, I fought, I fought, you know, and even the grandkids are now saying my kids teach them, you know, teaching their kids. And so it's a it's just a mindset to say, you know, do I, you know, we have this whole thing of I had a t shirt that said, Have you googled it yet? Because everybody thought I was Google.

know, my wife's like, how do you fix the printer? Hey, right? right. You know, that was have you AI, you know, chat, chat, GBT

It does a better job. It really does a better job.

So I didn't think I'd live in a world where better than even Googling things.

I know. I know. Grandkids are to look at us and say you you you used to search for stuff, you know, and we were like, click on blue link. When we

Speaker 1 (16:38.35)
were your age we didn't have Google like we didn't we had to go and figure it out we had to like it's so it's so amazing

Speaker 3 (16:50.382)
Exactly.

Well, and it would just, I just remembered the timeline. Like, well, I don't know this. And there was like a two week period until I found the answer. And I'm like, oh, wow. And I'm like, that was two minutes. Now it's seconds. Now you just, you figured out there's so much more.

And it's over. It's overwhelming for the brain to be honest. There's so many options that I people are sticking their head in the sand with AI right now because they just don't get it's hard for their brain to like we're digital immigrants. Right. In many ways. And our kids and our grandkids are digital natives. Yes. You know, yeah. They don't know life without a touch screen. Like, you know, I remember that seeing my first computer in high school and going, what is this? Right. You know,

Yeah, but you had to a card in there to program it, you know, kind of thing.

I've admired Steve Jobs in not for his parenting, but for his leadership and his vision, right? And that's not a slam for that, but it's just that wasn't why I admired him. But I, know, Apple was like everybody sees Apple today and they're like, it was so obvious. It was so easy for them. Almost collapsed several times like.

Speaker 2 (18:05.782)
Right. Yes.

Speaker 2 (18:09.89)
He came back and resurrected it twice. Yeah.

Right. It was it by the grace of a lot of effort. they here today? That is it is it was it was not easy, there was a willingness to blow things up. There's a lot to say and to fight those that phrase of, this is how we're doing it. Yes, how we've always done it. And it's like that is the end. That's the enemy.

Right.

Speaker 1 (18:36.938)
Right. That is the always, always the enemy. so to really transform, we've got to find we've got a FAA and we've got a FIO. We've got to figure out how to actually make it work. Right.

Yes, thank you, for assuming all of this, too.

Yeah, so let's get into the SMAC framework. Walk us through it. Tell us about it. SMAC, shoot, move, adapt, communicate. I love frameworks, by the way, because it's great theoretical view of how to view reality and then how to act on it. think they're very helpful.

Yeah, that's what I called it. The new rules of marketing warfare. You know, I really wanted people to know that there they need to have a mindset that this is life or death for your business. Right. And and so shoot is shoot with precision. So basically most businesses, especially small businesses have limited ammo. Right.

And, I know as a young entrepreneur, I wanted to do a lot of things, but I had to pick my battles because I had limited resources. Right. So the more, you know, there's an old saying of measure twice, cut once. Right. And, the whole idea of shoot is to know who you're shooting at. lot of people, you ask them, who's your ideal client persona or, you know, audience avatar, whatever you want to call it. They'll say anybody with a credit card.

Speaker 2 (20:14.626)
you know,

that a bit. That's a big risk to organizations. You can't be everything to everyone. And I mean, I remember, Simon Sinek talks about this in his TED talks. He's like, we don't want to sell our products or services to everyone. We want to find people that believe what we believe, because those will be long term.

Exactly. You to know the why. like, you know, why will people buy from why will they stick with us? Why you know, all these things. And that's essentially what we're doing is we're finding the why about your product or service, your software, whatever it is, right. And so a lot of times when we come in, we're, you know, we're acting kind of like naval intelligence, if you will, and doing a lot of research, you know, we understand that the threats so we call them threat assessment, that's your

competitors, right?

really good. And I love that it's like got a military tinge to it because it really is. And and and people need to take it as seriously as

Speaker 2 (21:22.222)
Yeah, that's why I wrote it with that flavor because there's a lot of marketing books out there and a lot of them say, you know, find your audience, you know, and do these things. But people skip over that because they don't realize that they'll come back to it's really a lot of work. got to think that through, you know, kind of thing. And so we put in the book, we tell you these theories, but then we give you the exact tools and paper, but it's also digital.

But you we break it down with a little worksheet you can work on right there and do it. Just come up with one, have a small victory, right? And so it's a little worksheet on how to come up with your ideal client persona, for example. And we give you a lot of analogies and metaphors, but also case studies. Here's a business that they did. As soon as they did that, here's what happened.

Right. So that way you can show them the practical effects of executing on the framework.

Like you're highly motivated at that time to do the work, right? That's the hardest part. Like that. When you asked me at that question at the beginning is why do we not go to meet? Why do we go to mentors and not follow their instructions? It's because we're not yet motivated to we haven't burned our fingers yet. We haven't messed up yet. And we but we want that we want the easy button, you know, the state was easy button, right? So yeah, that's what shoot is shoot is knowing who you're shooting at. If you think of it,

again, like through a let's say you're looking for a target through binoculars, right? And you're seeing a whole crowd of people, but you're looking for a particular avatar, you go, there they are. Right? You can now put messages in front of them. That's gonna be highly effective. Right? So we call

Speaker 1 (23:01.239)
Right.

Speaker 1 (23:08.34)
imagery actually when you think of like a radar scan or a scope on a rifle or something like that or like a heat seeking thing where everything's green and then you see it in red and you're like that's the target right businesses there but the ones that really believe what we believe in that would this service product would resonate with is the one in red right there

Right.

Speaker 2 (23:23.522)
Well, he'd say

Speaker 2 (23:35.096)
What really kind of triggered this for me as a young man was inspired me to when I started my businesses was our technology compared to the Russians, right? When their tactics and we were, it was all about warfare. We would go up against each other all the time, but we wouldn't shoot. And our goal, their goal was to get their aircraft within a hundred miles of us. And they knew at that point, they could launch their missiles. They had longer range missiles than us, but they weren't accurate.

So they have to shoot a lot of them. And then our strategy was to get within 50 miles of their ships. But we we only needed to shoot one.

is. Yeah, right. cybersecurity and cybercrime the way I do. I have a theory of why that was the case in Russia, but that's for another podcast.

Yeah. So that's that is basically they don't have the technology to like zero in like we do with the Tom. Right. Right. And so they would just shoot its quantity versus quality. We're quality versus quantity. But that's what you have. You have limited resources shoot properly. So that's shoot. And then move is move with agility. Right? Your your your strength as a small business.

is you're a fast attack submarine compared to an aircraft carrier. And you know this in corporate, the bigger the company, the more bureaucracy, the more layers, the more breach potential too. Um, and so the flexibility of being small is you can move quickly. David on the battlefield with Goliath was told by King Saul to put on armor. If you're going to fight him, put on my art. Here's my armor. Right.

Speaker 1 (25:03.958)
So.

Speaker 2 (25:21.634)
He looked at the king and goes, King, I have not tested this in battle. Like I'm going to, I'm not going to go toe to toe with a giant with his and his strengths. I'm going to go with my strengths. I trained in battle, taking care of my father's sheep against lions, tigers, bears, wolves, you name it. I had one shot. If I missed, they take them out and me out. Right. So I had to be good. I had to practice my 10,000 hours like Malcolm Gladwell talks about, right.

Exactly.

And so that's our strength. The ability to quickly move when we see opportunities, when we see date, don't get stuck trying to act like IBM, right? Act, know what your strengths are and lean into that. know, Conica Minolta, when you worked there, that's a big company, but all covered, beat, got a lot of contracts because you guys were very agile compared to a large competitor, right?

Exactly.

Hey, we're willing to do that. We'll try that. Hey, we've done that. No, we haven't done that, but we'll figure it out. You know, well, if I right. And so that's gives you a competitive edge. So that's move, right. And that comes from the military from SMC. It's called shoot, move, communicate Navy SEALs, Delta Force. When you're entering an urban environment, you have no base there, right?

Speaker 1 (26:46.606)
It's not traditional.

historical

Infantry, where like, here's your line, everything here is you, that's their line, and then you're marching toward them. It's not like that. It's surrounded pockets everywhere.

You got to constantly be on the moon. You got to be constantly communicating with your team with everybody so that you don't shoot each other so you you know, coordinate. But that's what I mean. It's so beautiful when you watch these movies of elite teams working together, they even talk, you know, it's like, you go this way, you know, that comes from practice knowing and doing that smack framework, basically. And so I took stole that from the military, I added adapt. So adapt.

is really adapt with knowledge with information. Right? We live in a world as you know, in cybersecurity, it's all about data points, right? Yep. Intel. And so I'm not going to send a small team of elite soldiers into a little village in Afghanistan without satellite imagery, knowing how many people they got there. What kind of equipment do they have to take with them? kind of absolutely all that you need Intel.

Speaker 1 (27:38.766)
I'm you.

Speaker 1 (27:54.614)
going to get out after.

Speaker 2 (27:58.882)
We have Google Analytics. got all this stuff, but most business owners don't know how to read that stuff, right?

No, and I think that they they get here's what I've heard from them is when it comes to marketing sometimes they hear well we have these you know these metrics these marketing metrics and some of them will show well we had this number of people you know look at something or view something or click on something or do whatever and those are metrics those are mean but they didn't necessarily result in sales so you have to be able to

Yes.

Speaker 2 (28:31.612)
Right.

that process until you hit the combination where it's resulting in sales.

It's just like a safe. You got to kind of go to hear the click, right? Right. You click the other way. Yeah. 100%. And that's what I teach. That's what I teach when they get it. When, they get smack, when they get the concept of the smart, they go click, you know, I get it. And now it becomes easy. I mean, you can do this in recruiting. can do this in anything is if I'm going to recruit somebody, I got to know their job description. What, what, what am I looking for? What? So when I see them, I go, yes, that's them.

Right? I got to move quickly. got to be ready to move because someone else is going to get them the good ones go quickly. Right? I need to adapt if they come back with a counter offer. They have some, know, I got to be able to adapt for my strategy quickly to be able to capture them. And then I got to be able to communicate effectively. That's C is most business owners can't tell their story.

in 30 seconds or less. usually say you got to know in 15 seconds or less that it's powerful and people go, I want to know more. I don't want to know everything. I want to know more. Right. And so, you know, it's we use IDA, we teach IDA in there. And if you've heard of IDA, another framework

Speaker 1 (29:51.402)
us through that. I remember it before but I haven't conceptualized it for a while.

Yeah, it's called awareness, interest, desire, action. It's a funnel, essentially of a learning funnel, right? I'm going to go reverse it. To have a desire, take action, buy something, set up an appointment, whatever it is. I need to have a desire, right? And if I don't have a desire, it's probably because I'm not interested. And if I'm not interested, it's probably because I'm not aware. A lot of times we're putting out Google ads.

for somebody for something trying to sell it and they'll they've learned somewhere else. They became aware maybe of the problem somewhere else. They became interested because their friend had it or whatever. They have a desire maybe but we expect them to take action at the bottom of the funnel when they haven't really been through our funnel.

Yeah, there's a lot. That's a really good point, because there's a lot of assumptions made. People going, well, you want marketing? Well, we'll just do some ads. These right good. These look good. These sound good to us, right? Should work. And they put it out there. And then they give you metrics like, well, we there's a number of views. And this number of people clicked on it. But they're not buying it because you didn't educate up front. You didn't build the awareness you

You

Speaker 2 (31:01.43)
They should work.

Speaker 2 (31:15.491)
Right

Build the desire. didn't feed the, didn't leave them down the path. Create that desire.

Right. You have to do it at each stage to build that know, like and trust. Right. Because I can know you like I need or I can know I need cybersecurity. Right. And I know you like people buy from people, right? You don't buy from logos anymore. mean, people will winter establish brand and stuff. Nobody gets fired from buying

or hiring IBM, you know, concept, right? But most businesses aren't IBM, you know, so how do you do?

businesses, most smaller businesses, which is big business in the United States.

Speaker 2 (31:56.344)
Right. Yeah. Ninety nine percent of business. Yeah. Exactly.

employees, most of us, right? And really they don't need necessarily IBM. Like they need to do enough to make it effective for them, against. They might need IBM light or the right. That's exactly right.

They want IBM live. IBM.

Speaker 2 (32:16.974)
Yeah. Well, they, most people go, it's, it's kind of like word for windows, you know, how many people have used all the features and what they say. I think it's 2 % of.

Like we use less than 4 % of what word can.

what can do right. But we pay all this money for it because maybe one day we'll use it. You know, that's kind of the logic. So you have to reverse engineer that and educate him going you don't need that. You need this and this guy knows what I need. He knows my problems. He's agitated them. He spoke them out loud. He really gets me right and now I'm interested. So tell me more about your solution. Okay, now I have a desire.

I need more information. How much is it like what's the commitment that it at that? Great. I'm ready to take action. Right? That's it's fantastic. So that's what we teach our in the book, you know, another frame, there's all these frameworks that lead into traditional frameworks, that you don't have to be an expert, you just follow the frameworks and you won't leave. It's kind like a checklist in the Navy. I remember doing preventative maintenance. I didn't know how to fix a boiler, you know, kind of thing. But I followed the instructions I could tell if

that valve was tightened enough, I could do this, I could do what was expected of me to make sure it doesn't blow up. But, you know, you don't have to be an expert to do it. And so that's, you know, that's kind of the idea behind the book. It's a battle plan to create your own plan to go to market, right? And, and not die. Or business go out of business, right? And, you know,

Speaker 1 (33:54.35)
At the end of the day, are working at connecting those with the...

solutions, right? Yes. Those with the needs. And actually, and helping them recognize their needs, because sometimes they know there's a problem, they don't know what the root causes or what the issue is. And by getting there and having the right groups shoot at them, then they're able to learn that and become aware of it. And then act on it. It's very practical. It's very practical approach.

Well, you know, you got to start crawl, walk, run, I always say, right, right? Your baby doesn't start running in the Olympics, you know, they start by crawling, and then crawling a little faster, and then really crawling fast. And then they stand up and they're back to like stumbling, you know, kind of thing. You have to go through those stages in business. And the book takes that into consideration. It's like boot camp, we don't expect anything from you, you just show up, we're going to shave your head, we're to give you prison like clothes that don't fit you, because you're going to lose weight.

You know, you're like, why is this so tight and stuff? It's like, by the end, you're like, this is perfect, you know, kind of right. Right. Exactly. Well, you're like wondering what you're just come discombobulated, right? And they want it that way, because they want you to become a team member team thinking, not an individual. Right. Yeah. And so yeah, that's, that's essentially the idea of business is we need to crawl, walk, run.

Yeah, there's for several weeks

Speaker 2 (35:30.37)
We need to have micro moments of awesomeness. I call them quick wins or victories. We don't try to go and win the whole war at once. You try to win a battle at a time to win the whole war. A lot of people are shooting for the whole war. You got to have, what's the battle in front of me today? Exactly. What do I need to win? By experiencing wins, it gives you confidence.

absolutely. So in terms of let me ask you about this. In terms of your view on mentorship and leadership post COVID, so many organizations have really still embraced because of the productivity involved when you have a good employee and they can work part of the time remote or all the time remote, but even part of the time.

their productivity has like measurably improved when it's a good employee. You have the other ones that are maybe less disciplined, but I think that's a bigger issue that has nothing to do with working remote. Discipline in the office, right?

Yes.

Speaker 2 (36:39.542)
Right? I don't think I think it's systems again, it's a system people have. We have too many managers in an office environment, right? Right. When you go to a distributed environment or a remote environment, managers are not useless. They're just there. Their hands are

don't need as many, you don't need as many because you can manage people in multiple different states all at once and break them up and still have time for your one-on-ones and all that.

Like, exactly. Yeah, like we have a completely distributed team globally. And it's asynchronous communication, you know, constantly communicate on slack, you know, so we're on top of each other. But how we manage our buddy is through a tool called track a B, right? They log in, it tracks, they log into a project, they start working on their project, they track their like their effectiveness of a client a year from now goes, what did you do on that day? A year ago, we go

You know, here's everything our whole team contributed to that effort. And I can see as the owner, are we being productive? We may are profitable, right? And I don't need middle man. I do have middle manager more for culture, motivation, coaching, things like that. Yeah, but that's what there should be doing not micromanaging. Right, right.

We did.

Speaker 1 (38:01.006)
Yeah, no one has ever accelerated or succeeded in their life with a micromanager above them. It doesn't work. It's not about not wanting to listen to authority or anything like that. It's just a cultural thing. just...

Nobody never

Speaker 2 (38:16.918)
It's very reactive. You know, it's like panic mode. You're panicking. Are they working? Right? And lack of trust to you. You don't trust me. And some people are don't deserve trust, but you don't want to poison the whole water. Right with one person who's poison, right?

Yeah, that's exactly right. If that employee is not executing and working and engaging and leaning in and actively asking questions and all of those things, then you just hired the wrong person. Exactly. it could be the right person, but not at the right time in their life. Like, it's just not the right time for them.

Right.

And but when you get somebody, doesn't matter where they are. It doesn't matter where they are. They will be productive no matter what. And then to be able to leverage technology and allow them to manage people from multiple states and to do all that. It's so scalable, right? Because if we had to all be in the office.

five days a week like we were when we were younger starting out, right? It wasn't really scalable. Like you couldn't, you had to then open a different office. You had to physically go and then with another manager and then it was more of an expensive and restricted.

Speaker 2 (39:29.55)
kind of it scalable. It costs more but it was scalable because you you had redundancy or what have you there. But in today's world, you can't operate at that cost level and be competitive. Right, right. And so definitely the world is if grandma can zoom this way I tell people if grandma knows how to zoom, the world has changed. Right. And COVID made grandma have to learn how to zoom with their doctor, whatever, right, right. So the I

keep on telling people it's pre COVID post COVID two different worlds. Yeah, remember it was $8 for a nice hamburger at a restaurant now it's 13 to $15 for a hamburger, same hamburger. We've, we've all said it's COVID, you know, kind of thing. But that it's, we took us a while to swallow that pill, you know, a Starbucks cost more, whatever, you know, right. And so that's the world is changing. It's very global now, you know, I have teams and

No, 100%.

Speaker 2 (40:27.832)
Pakistan and Argentina in Mal, Moldova and Eastern Europe. So, you know, I'm finding the best people where they're at. And then I, we onboard them for culture. put them through a bootcamp. go through two weeks through an orientation before they even start working. We don't assume.

Right. So they know that they're the right fit culturally.

Yeah, culturally, but Google works, but do they like everybody says they know Google workspace or Microsoft Office. They don't. Right. So we got to take them through Cal Google calendar and you got to take a test and show me that you know, right. Cause once you get through and you don't know, I gives me a flip switch to say, sorry, it's not working out. Right. Yeah. But there's no excuses after that. Right. You know, you're going to, I'm going to give you two weeks. I'm going to walk with you through it. Lots of training.

But if you don't make it through there, you gotta tap out. FIO, right? FIO, FIO.

Exactly right. So tell us a little bit about as we wrap up here, you know, AI, first I want to end with kind of what's on your horizon, what do you have coming up? But also before that, just touch on how AI is affecting marketing from your lens, from what you're

Speaker 2 (41:46.178)
Yeah. What's definitely very disruptive. It's more.

more generative AI, not necessarily.

I'm going to break out. We don't even say AI to our customers because they don't really know what AI it's a moving target. So we have now we have AI agent or Gentic AI. have people didn't even know what that was a year ago. Right. So it's a moving target from a definition. So we don't use the word AI because in some people's mind, like when I say I love you, does that do you add us me or do you

You know, this meat, like there's lots of different types of love, right? You know, and so we, that's the problem is number one, AI is relative and people's mind what they've experienced and it's still new. It's the Wawa West and we're in the hype stage. I call it. It's all a lot of hype. I can solve all you can fire everybody and start your own business with one person. You know, if you watch a Tik TOK video now, right? You can build a whole website. You don't need anybody and it's ready to go live. You push the button.

Yeah

Speaker 2 (42:51.054)
You know, it's not there yet. And so, I mean, it's definitely making things faster and it's changing every day. But, you know, I'll give you a practical lens as you asked for it is it's increasing productivity. It's taking a human and making them go faster. So I use the analogy of AIs of Ferrari and you're a Honda core driver. You need to learn how to drive a Ferrari. Good. You don't want to crush the

clutch and grind the gears and everything, you got to be really good or an F1 driver. Look at it that way. You know, it's a very specialized car. You just can't get in there and go, I'm to go for a joyride. Right? You got to learn how to be an F1 driver. And so you need to know how to drive it or it will drive you. Right? Now, again, we're an AI immigrants right now. Everybody's an immigrant, not a native.

And there is no such thing as a native right now because everything new is coming out and we're all learning together Not all you know, not everybody but it's we you know from the research I've shown I think it's about 84 % of people have played with it But that's it. They don't really they put something. It's like the old punch cards you put it in it did something and wow, that was cool, you know, Yeah, right or write a song for my wife. It's our anniversary whatever it is, right?

me right

Speaker 2 (44:17.912)
But you know, we just don't know we our brains don't know what fully is in our hands to how to utilize it. And so before you'd have to prompt if you weren't prompting it three layers deep, like tell me more. That's not good enough. I want more. You weren't getting a good answer. But a lot of people get stuck. That's a great answer because it was so quick. Right. So, you

People are getting better at prompting. They're, they're. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I, at least I'm speaking from my own experience. Like I think a lot of people that I know of just, they've learned to like, just explain the context first and then get to this specific question.

From did you mean? Yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:56.716)
Am I my teaching is is is the five W's? Basically who, what, where, why, when, right, right. If you can explain, like people remember that if I go to context, job role, you know, all the things they forget real quick, right, even if I made an acronym for it, because not in their contextual building in sense but yeah, who, what, where, why, when who's who's who are you? Who are you? You know, what are you supposed to do? Why are you doing it?

When, when do I need this by, or when, you know, when should it solve this problem? And, how are you going to do it? Tell me how you did it, how you thought of that, because just to get a magic output, you don't, you have no idea if that's good or not, you know, kind of thing, right? Give me a cybersecurity plan for this large co it'll do it. But if you don't know cybersecurity, you don't know if it's a good plan or not. It might be revolutionary, but you wouldn't know unless you're an engineer. Right? You know,

But that's you have to still needs human. So I use the Iron Man analogy. Where we're at is basically human enabled AI is where it's most effective. Absolutely. When you just trust AI, a part of your brain goes away. You're not using a part of your brain anymore. You're just putting in data and pulling out and I can get a task monkey to do that. Right. And we have any Dan all these automations will do that for you and get you what you need. Right. But

of MIT just came out with the report and they're showing that if high usage of AI generative AI is shrinking this part of the brain, certain part of the brain in the critical thinking, right? Because

I saw that report like the part of the brain scan and how they and how they're not being used and and to me I just think then they're not necessarily using it right because they're just kind of prompting it copying

Speaker 2 (46:39.832)
Right

Speaker 2 (46:50.594)
Well, it's changing so fast. You're right. It's changing so fast. Nobody's it's kind of like, you know, giving a kid a cigarette. He doesn't know what to be like if it's lit in a type. It's it would do what other people do. Right. And so yeah, it's the who what, where, when it's also the where we're at in marketing is very disruptive. It's causing a lot of people to question

If I need to do marketing or certain parts of market like SEO, you see SEO is dead, right? Right. It's GEO now or AI SEO, or, know, all these things, but we're not there yet. It's changing. Like, you know, I keep on telling people like we, we do optimize for AI because AI sends out their own crawlers, for example. Correct. Right. And so we, we put a little thing. It's like, if you're AI at the bottom, you know, where it says about us and things like that, we put AI bots go come here and there's a little text file.

And it's all in, you know, markdown language, very schema based. And here's who we are, what we are, how we do it, why we do it, that. So we're still trying to train it. But you know what, as soon as this new Shopify API goes out, I don't have to do that for all my products anymore. Because right API is going to talk to all the LLMs. Now to be secondary. So all those SEO companies that are shifting for this, they'll be gone. You know, like, it's it's it's so you've got to like,

be future proofing the concept, understand the concept where you want to go and constantly developing to be on the forefront of what's happening. So that's what our agency's doing is not like doing what's popular now, but more looking at stuff's not going to change. And so

sure again very similar to cybersecurity making sure the fundamentals are done those core things in place

Speaker 2 (48:37.308)
fundamental

Well, where do think AI gets it from? They go back to SEO. If you do all the fundamentals, right? That's how they know you're not lying to them. Right? yeah, that's the marketing is very, it's in this AI is in a hype phase, business owners, business people are hearing a lot of hype, and it scares them. And then they make rash business decisions from lack of true knowledge of what's going on. And so

what they need is what we call a scout, a guide, basically, or a Sherpa. If you're to climb Mount Everest, you don't just go, I'm going to go today, honey, to climb Mount Everest, right? No, you have you hire a Sherpa who says we're going to stay at base camp for three days because the weather is changing, right? And we got to carry this food with us because we're not going to make it to the top, you know, we have to stop along the way. And I want to hire somebody who knows that mountain, right? So

you know, you've got to hire a cybersecurity firm because it's changing so fast to know what what's real, what's not real, right? Same with on our end with marketing agencies is you want people that aren't specialized anymore, like SEO agencies great, but they're, they're not looking out for you from all the holistic perspective. Right. And so you need a guide is what I'm saying somebody who really understands AI, where it's at, and how to implement it like we're

holistic approach.

Speaker 2 (50:08.184)
We're rolling a crawl, walk, run. We're implementing chat bots for everybody, for all our clients, whether they have a team of customer service or don't have nothing. We're actually getting like a, we have a bookstore online bookstore. We didn't have a phone number to call. put in a phone number. got AI trained it highly trained it. And now you can call and you're talking to a, an AI and it says it's AI, but it answers 92 % of the questions accurately that people have.

right? You know, and it actually suggests

they had before because before they couldn't even get the question.

get it because it was too costly to hire somebody that had all that knowledge about all the books and categories and everything. Right? Yeah. So that Yeah, this also will send Can I get your I see you call from this number? Can I text you and I'll give you a deal I'll give you 10 % off right if you click that link, right? So now it's a sales agent, you know, as well. Good. Yeah. So

That's where we're going with AI. have a sod farm, a sod farm, know, sell sod. What you buy it once every 10 years, maybe. And it's are their sales are up at 49 % because 80 % of their people that were coming after hours can get ahold of somebody because they don't know how to buy sod. Do we kind of side door by I got shade in my yard, you know, and they wouldn't read the FAQs that everybody's lazy now. Right. And so by just we have a button on the says speak to

Speaker 2 (51:35.95)
Luke, you know, our AI, our AI, they can literally push the button and talk through the computer to the AI and say, you know, hey, what you know, where's your zip code? Where you located? Let me see. I'll see if we deliver there. Okay, great. We deliver. have two options for you in that area. Yeah, you know, St. Augustine or quality turf. You know, do you what tell me a little bit about your size of your art and are you Oh, you're near the beach you

do better with St. Augustine. That's $1 square foot 1000 square feet is going to cost you $1,000, you know, kind of thing delivered all in. Great. I'll take it. Let me send you a link to your phone and you can buy it right now and then pick the date you want it delivered. Like people don't know you could do that. Right? Yeah. And so yeah, that's what we're trying to do with AI now. That's that's a crawl. I mean, we can do so much more. But if we tried to do that, it would blow our clients minds away.

Meet me where I'm at.

Speaker 2 (52:33.366)
So they have to get small wins. That was micro moments of awesomeness and 12. We know if we get 12 small wins, they'll move to the next level. So it's a math game. It's a math.

I absolutely love it. That's great. Well, Mr. McGrew, thank you so much for your time today. Check out his book, The New Rules of Marketing Warfare. We will have a link to in the show notes. There's an image of it right on the screen. It is fantastic. We will have a link in the show notes. We encourage everybody to check it out and to check out Kevin's socials as well.

Yeah, connect with me on LinkedIn. I'd love to connect with you.

Absolutely. Well, thank you so much, my friend.

Absolutely. Thank you guys. Nice meeting you, Zach. Thanks, David. All right.

Speaker 1 (53:19.586)
guys see ya