Jeff McKay (00:00.92)
So Jason.

Jason Mlicki (00:05.048)
a reversal.

Jeff McKay (00:07.222)
Yes, a role reversal today. And we have to do this because you’re just not on your A game. So.

Jason Mlicki (00:15.318)
Hey, hey, that’s not a fair way to start me out. You know, they call that a bar lowering activity.

Jeff McKay (00:18.062)
No, listeners will know very shortly that you very much are on your A game because we are talking about an A game issue for you today. And that’s creating a distinct point of view and why it’s so important.

Jason Mlicki (00:25.72)
Yeah.

Jason Mlicki (00:40.76)
So I made that joke, an old friend of mine, he worked with this guy and he had these things he called bar lowering activities. And he said, anytime, this was about his marriage, he would say, anytime he was being too good of a husband, he had to do a bar lowering activity. Stay out too late, come home, forget a dinner, forget a birthday so that the expectations weren’t too high. yeah.

Jeff McKay (01:05.89)
and how’d that work out for him?

Jason Mlicki (01:07.404)
I don’t know, I don’t really get the full story. I imagine he’s divorced, but I don’t know.

Jeff McKay (01:13.708)
Yeah, that doesn’t sound like a good approach for a marriage, but for you, it makes sense. So we’ll lower the ball.

Jason Mlicki (01:16.92)
No, I did not.

Jason Mlicki (01:27.16)
Well, I, um, yeah, I picked this topic and one of my goals was, feel like we talk about point of view all the time. In fact, it’s like, if you were to say, what is Jason’s point of view or a Rattleback’s point of view, would say it’s probably get a point of view. Like that would be probably the best way I would encapsulate how I think about marketing a firm. And, uh, I, but I, it’s easy to say that it’s easy to come up with a list of like, here are the criteria of a good one or a bad.

And just think sometimes it’s helpful just to give examples. And I just wanted to just kind of just share, just share some examples of great points of view and what makes them great that people can look at and say, yeah, I can see why that is working and I can see why it’s working really well. or, or I’ve experienced that, that firsthand. so it was funny. We did that, you know, we picked the topic and we did the exercise and you commented on this and, and,

I won by the way, as I usually do. cause I had more, but, no, but I had, I think I said I came up with, but you don’t even know that yet. I’m waiting to see what you’re going to say about the one. I had seven and you had three, you said three and a half, I think is the way you put it, which cracked me up. And, but I think the interesting thing is that I, I had entities and you had people.

Jeff McKay (02:34.242)
You had more, I had better. You had more, I had better. Quality, not quantity.

Jason Mlicki (02:53.248)
So we both kind of came at the same task with slightly different approaches, I guess. So I think that’s interesting.

Jeff McKay (03:03.084)
Which is interesting. It’s an interesting tension and our listeners should keep it in mind because there is a symbiotic relationship between individual thought leaders and a firm that they feed off of one another. And that tension is healthy.

And it needs to be embraced. lot of firms shy away from that because they don’t want to put their proverbial eggs into one basket or, you know, a couple of eggs into, they, they, they’re afraid of the risk of somebody leaving and decimating their brand. And it’s not going to happen. so they don’t need to worry about that.

Jason Mlicki (03:49.389)
Yes.

Jeff McKay (03:58.198)
so much and we’ll show why.

Jason Mlicki (04:02.06)
Yeah, I also think too on that front, like we talked about this in the decline of trusted institutions, right? The crisis of confidence and all that stuff. And I think that the natural evolution right now is a shift more towards people wanting to connect with people more than ever. So I think if you’re not willing to put some of your key people forward in that way and let them…

have a little bit more robust voice and how you articulate your point of view to the world, you’re putting yourself at an extreme disadvantage in a cycle in which that’s going to be advantageous. if the risk of doing that is so large in your mind that you’re not willing to do it, then you’re missing out on all the opportunities that come with doing it. And right now, I would say those opportunities are going to outweigh the risks for the foreseeable future.

Jeff McKay (04:53.751)
Yeah. I read some interesting research this week. I can’t remember who it was, was from. I’ll see if I could dig it up and put it in the show notes, but the engagement levels between a LinkedIn company page and the LinkedIn individual page were astronomically different. mean, the company pages had a fraction of the engagement of individuals.

and I think that is, you know, kind of empirical evidence, of what we’re talking about here. People connect with individuals, which is why I chose individuals for my example. you didn’t. That dig went right over your head.

Jason Mlicki (05:33.159)
Yeah.

Jason Mlicki (05:45.132)
Yeah, you’re more of a guinea pig. More of a lemon.

Jason Mlicki (05:54.206)
get that at all. So okay, why don’t you start us out then since you have all the ingenious insights here. So give us your first example.

Jeff McKay (05:55.882)
okay.

Jeff McKay (06:04.2)
okay. Well, this first one is in my list was very easy because I just went through who are my favorites that I regularly engage with, you know, who gets, direct access to my inbox and who gets, moved over into the promotions tab. and these are the ones that go straight into my inbox.

And I think that’s a good measure, don’t you? Isn’t that a very scientific measure?

Jason Mlicki (06:39.582)
Yeah, yeah, it is. I’m curious to see how you unpack them. I want to see how you unpack them before I fully say that that is the best measure. So, unpack one.

Jeff McKay (06:47.5)
Hahaha

Okay. This is, this is going to be a quintessential Jason and Jeff conversation. can feel building in that direction. All right. So my number one, Scott Brinker, chief MarTech. I absolutely love this guy. he’s just a super nice guy, wicked smart, but in terms of thought leadership, I seldom if ever.

miss a blog post or article that he writes. For those who do not know Scott Brinker or Chief Martek, he is the thought leader behind the ubiquitous marketing landscape graphic that has been, gosh, produced since 2011. I believe his first one came out with 150 software companies on it.

Today in 2026, I think the, the count has grown a hundred fold. think there’s 15,000 companies are close to it on, on the landscape. and I, well, his, his thinking is impeccable. What gave him mainstream pickup was this graphic that I think anybody that’s in marketing knows.

Jason Mlicki (08:21.066)
And how would you describe his point of view?

Jeff McKay (08:24.76)
So what I think is fascinating about his point of view, number one was just doing the hard work of, of, inventorying all these different software companies is unbelievable. That’s a heavy lift and especially 15,000 with the churn that goes with those. mean, that’s, that’s unbelievable. And that’s not even the mainstay of what he does.

And he has partners now helping him with this. But what I think he does better than anybody else is he looks at the individual companies. He sees the bigger trends, but he understands the ecosystem of MarTech, of sales and MarTech. And his point of view is one of…

thinking about technology from an ecosystem perspective and building out an infrastructure that is not necessarily made up of specific software names, but of particular functionality. He is the person that I think set or made known that

there’s a new buyer of technology and it’s not the IT anymore. It’s the CMO and the CMO, excuse me. And the CMO is going to be investing as much money as the CIO. And I thought that was fascinating. And that was a sea change in how people looked at technology and in particular how they looked at marketing.

Marketing moved from the creative side of the house to one that was technical, metric driven, and much more operational. And it continues to hold. And he’s the one who saw that back in 2011.

Jason Mlicki (10:47.599)
Okay. Yeah, no, I agree. He’s a great thought leader. I think it’s interesting in that I think we approach this task very differently. And I said that at the outset. And when I approached the task, I guess I thought about it differently. I see Scott as a thought leader. But I have a hard time articulating, and I think you did as well.

Like specifically what his point of view is because it’s kind of a, he’s in this fuzzy space now where it’s like, well, yes, he’s the architect of, of, of the marketing technology, super graphic, but like, what is, what is his crystal clear point of view on, on, on the problem that that presents and the solution that it entails. so I thought about this more around like, you know,

Can I think of it in this case? I, for me, it was mostly companies, but a lot of times companies are intertwined. And can I describe what problem they see and what solution they see to solve it? And I couldn’t do that with him. That’s why I kind of asked the question. I can’t, I can’t in my head specifically articulate the problem that he’s that he’s are he’s speaking to right now. I can fuzzily suggest what, like you said, I’m getting off track a little bit.

Let me just give another example. So what’s up?

Jeff McKay (12:16.761)
Hold it, hold it, hold it. I liked where you were going there. I don’t think you were off track at all. You, you… Go ahead.

Jason Mlicki (12:24.76)
Well, yeah, you heard me say this in the, the setup. Like, I feel like there’s like, there are people that are thought leaders that they have a, they have a, there are, there are issues that they take ownership of and we follow them because they’re interesting. And they have a, they have a regular perspective about a couple of different themes. for me, it’s Scott Galloway is a big one like that. Scott Galloway falls into that bucket of.

I can’t really tell you exactly what his overarching point of view is on anything, but I can kind of fuzzily tell you certain areas where he has sort of domain authority and he’s interesting to listen to. And then there’s other people or companies I think where there’s a very specific, clear point of view that’s attacking a very specific problem. And one that was on my list would be DCM Insights and Mac Dixon. And we’ll look at Matt as a very specific example.

How does a professional service firm build business? They have a very clear position based on research that there is a better way to build business. And that is by using an activator business development mindset and approach. And so that point of view says the way that you’ve been going about building business, relational, going to the golf course, know, networking is not a very good one. The better way to do it.

is to use this activation approach where you’re sharing useful information and you’re sort of curating the world for your prospects. And the people that do that succeed better than anybody else. So there’s a very specific problem that they’ve narrowly dove into and they’ve presented a better way to solve it. So to me, that’s an example of like a really concrete, great point of view that’s having significant marketplace uplift. We heard from him directly, right?

Whereas like Scott, like right now for me, I’m not saying that this is wrong, but like he’s more, he’s more in the thought leader bucket, right? Like I can kind of like, yeah, I mean, he’s totally a thought leader on marketing technology, but I don’t really know anymore. Like what the specific problem is that he has a crystal point of view on. And now he doesn’t, I’m not saying he needs to, I’m just saying like that. So it’s a slightly different nuance to me for what it’s So like keep going.

Jeff McKay (14:48.719)
No, I want to think about what you, uh…

You just said.

One of the distinctions between DCM and Chief Martech is DCM has a specific linkage to a solution. Whereas Scott has big thoughts, gives deep understanding to the Martech

Jason Mlicki (15:12.984)
Correct.

Jeff McKay (15:26.475)
world and ecosystem and the things to consider as you operationalize Martech, but he’s not linking it specifically to a solution. He probably offers advisory services, but there’s not that direct linkage to a solution.

And that is a critical thing for listeners to take away. The thought leadership and the point of view needs to link specifically to a solution.

Jason Mlicki (16:10.904)
Well, we come back to what we talked about with Matt, this notion of there’s thought leadership and then there’s commercial insights. And a commercial insight attacks a very specific problem, presents a better solution than the current one and leads to a solution that only you can provide. And to me, ultimately, when I think about point of view, that’s really what I’m thinking about. I think about, right or wrong, I don’t know Scott that well. don’t really follow his stuff that closely anymore. I used to follow it, but…

I’ve got a little overwhelmed by the marketing technology supergraph I got for a while. I’m just kind of my eyes rolled over. What am I going to do with 15,000 pieces of software? You know, he’s just trying, I cluster him.

Jeff McKay (16:45.396)
Hahaha!

Jeff McKay (16:51.535)
Now see, that’s the whole point of his point of view. What do you do with 15,000 in the software?

Jason Mlicki (16:55.864)
Yeah. that’s what I sort of cluster him. I cluster him as a thought leader in the sense of like, if I want to stay up to speed on what’s going on in marketing technology, he’s the guy I listen to. But I don’t go, boy, you know, how do I make better technology choices? let me see what Scott says. That’s not where I go for that. If that makes sense. So.

Jeff McKay (17:07.503)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jeff McKay (17:18.061)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I like it.

Jason Mlicki (17:21.442)
Let’s do some more examples. I don’t want to get, I don’t want to spend a half an hour, not get through. Like I want to get enough examples that people can kind of like wrap their head around this. So.

Jeff McKay (17:27.437)
Okay. Well, this is going to be a good juxtaposition. I’m going to throw one out and then you’re going to beat it up because it doesn’t link to a solution. My next one, my next one is Jeffrey Moore. Silicon Valley thought leader, wrote the book Crossing the Chasm. Absolutely love his ideas. They have been

Jason Mlicki (17:38.828)
I don’t know.

Yeah.

Jeff McKay (17:57.932)
I don’t know if I’ll call it gospel, but they have been solidified and accepted for some time. When you look at go to market and the product life cycle of B2B software, I would argue that they have applicability to other B2B services and solutions as well.

But the concept behind Crossing the Chasm, which is a book everyone should read, is that growth is not linear. And the way one segments the market to launch a product is not the same way one would segment and market in order to scale a product. And I think there’s such phenomenal learning in that. And he applies this…

this point of view to technology as it evolves. And I think right now he’s writing some great stuff on AI that is very applicable for the people in our space.

Jason Mlicki (19:18.016)
Yeah, think crossing the chasm broke new ground on how to think about technology adoption. And it comes up in almost every B2B firm that has anything to do with technology all the time. And so I love it as an example, because I feel like part of having a distinct and powerful point of view is that it

shapes and changes behavior, shapes and changes the way we think about problems. So your point about Scott, like not to keep coming back to it, but like, absolutely. He changed the way we thought about marketing and he changed the way we thought about marketing technology in a meaningful way. And so that point of view has tons of value. I agree with you wholeheartedly. I think that I was thinking about this in one of my

When I was thinking about the examples I wanted to put forward for me, it came down to there was like a couple things. One, was like, you know, I was looking for for people or companies that I trust and admire who are speaking to a very specific, relatable problem that strikes an emotional chord for people and then are presenting a better way of solving it than conventional wisdom has solved it historically. And it’s evidence back.

Jeff McKay (20:33.273)
Yeah.

Jason Mlicki (20:40.598)
So they have something to back it up. and it’s something that hopefully I can say in a sentence, like I’m not overwhelmed with trying to articulate it. If I’m overwhelmed with our time to articulate it, then it’s probably not very strong. And then it’s changed behavior. And there’s no doubt that crossing the chasm massively changed behavior for go to market and marketing and sales teams everywhere and strategy teams, you name it, you know, venture capitalists. mean, it’s, changed.

Jeff McKay (21:04.771)
Yeah, yeah.

Jason Mlicki (21:09.997)
the way everybody thought about technology.

Jeff McKay (21:13.636)
Yeah. Which is another important attribute. You alluded to it, but you didn’t expressly say it, is that people understand the point of view and they’re able to share it succinctly as well. That gives you scale.

Jason Mlicki (21:29.313)
Yes.

Jeff McKay (21:34.808)
Right. And with, with Jeffrey Moore, people talk about visionaries and pragmatists and early adopters and laggards and, stuff like that. and they, that, that language of crossing the chasm creates, you know, this, this visceral reaction that people can relate to emotionally. so that it adds.

fuel to the story, if you will, that I think is critical, but that having a succinct point of view that somebody can pick up and run with is critical as well.

Jason Mlicki (22:19.562)
Yeah, I like where you went with that too. It’s like some of the best point of use spark a movement, right? You know, this wasn’t on my list, but I’m going to throw it on there. And it was, and it was HubSpot, you know, and I give them credit, you know, when Halligan and I can’t think of the other founder’s name, my first interaction with HubSpot, in fact, I just, I recently did some research on this to unpack it, was back in 2008. And at the time there was this really clear crystal video.

crystal clear video that Halligan did where he talked about how marketing was changing coming out of the great recession. And he was, and I remember the video so clearly because he was basically speaking to small agency owners and saying, man, I feel really bad for you. This is a really hard time to own a small agency because marketing is changing. His advertising is changing. You don’t know what to do. Clients are in control. And it was, this was kind of like him articulating the idea of inbound, the idea that,

customers are changing their behavior and they’re using Google more and they’re searching and they’re in control and you’re not and you’re advertising and interrupted after interruptive marketing you’ve been doing forever isn’t working. and there’s a better way to do this and we’re calling it inbound. It’s inbound marketing and it sparked a huge movement. As you know, you’ve been to the conference and you’ve seen it firsthand more than I have. and I always felt like that was like then they really nailed it. And what they nailed was the emotional cord.

They nailed this moment in time when marketers and advertisers everywhere were feeling this angst of like, cannot figure out how to connect with customers anymore. And I don’t know what’s going on. And they gave a clear, here’s what you’re feeling and why you’re feeling it. and here’s our better solution. And I thought that was one of the most, most effective points of view. I think I’ve ever seen really. So that wasn’t even on my list. My list of seven, that was just.

Jeff McKay (24:14.253)
Yeah, and I can’t believe you said that in public, so…

Jason Mlicki (24:14.776)
Yeah, I know. I know you’d be surprised.

Jeff McKay (24:18.959)
Kudos to you.

Jason Mlicki (24:24.952)
that.

Jeff McKay (24:26.361)
So does that make it my turn? Are you going to throw in the one you’re going to throw in? Okay. This is a new one for me, but I absolutely love the thinking. And that is Mark Andreessen from Andreessen Horowitz. It’s a venture capital firm. Mark Andreessen was one of the, I don’t know if you call them fathers of the internet, the dot com phenomenon.

Jason Mlicki (24:28.024)
That makes it your turn. That makes it your turn.

Jeff McKay (24:56.303)
He created Mosaic, the browser that then became Netscape.

Jason Mlicki (25:02.348)
Jeff, you’re getting confused. You mean Al Gore. So keep going.

Jeff McKay (25:06.015)
yeah, Al Gore. So anyway, for those of our listeners that were in junior high and may have missed some of that. And he made so much money, started his own venture capital firm. And what I love about his point of view is he brings this incredible analysis of market trends.

Jason Mlicki (25:12.812)
Hahaha

Jeff McKay (25:35.748)
But his philosophy, which really set him apart, is tied up in a single line. And that is software is eating the world. And that this creative destruction, this disruption that software was reeking was inevitable. And you couldn’t fight it. And morally,

Yeah, actually, he would argue that you shouldn’t. And as a result of that point of view, that this is inevitable, he now looks at the market as here is the opportunity. Who’s going to build the inevitable? And I love that point of view. And he just wrote one great piece. I just read it this week on Workday.

and the demise of Workday coming in order to just shape what the solution to a new Workday is going to be. Workday is a SaaS system for human capital management. And it was just fascinating. his analysis is just so thorough and so confident that he almost speaks things into being.

And I think that’s what’s so powerful about the point of view is it starts with software is eating the world. This change is inevitable. Who’s going to own and build the change? And I just, I love it. I love it.

Jason Mlicki (27:20.223)
Well, the cool thing about that example is that if you stop and think about it for the last 20 some years or whatever, since he penned that original article, he’s basically been providing evidence of that to be true again and again and again, sort of infinite. And it’s like there’s this foundational moment where there’s a manifesto or a point of view that’s penned and then his life’s work to follow is proving his point.

again and again through investment and whatever else. Yeah, I like that one a lot. And that is one of the probably most prolific articles ever written in business anyway. Most prescient, you name it. It’s fabulous. Another one I’ll throw out there.

He’s been a guest on the show and he’s a good friend of mine and a great client is Dave Patnaik and Jump Associates. I just think that his, his future focus approach, future focus mindset, future focus strategy, this idea that, you know, enterprises fail not because they don’t know what to do. They fail because they don’t think enough about the future and they don’t prioritize the future nearly enough.

and their daily operations is a really, really powerful statement. And he’s done such a great job executing on that. This idea that the companies that win operate on a longer time horizon, and they’re more willing to operate in the future at any given moment than their peers. And he’s exceptional, I think, at telling that story.

I think there’s a real interesting nuance to what he talks about when he writes about it in that there are a lot of other people that talk about this idea of, you know, future, future oriented thinking. But they he approaches it a little bit differently than everyone else does. Other people kind of approach it as if you’re trying to predict what’s going to happen. And he purposely does the opposite of that says your job is not to predict anything.

Jason Mlicki (29:39.702)
Your job is to be prepared for everything. And I think that’s really where that point of view is really getting, is taking hold so well. So I point to that firm a lot of, you’re looking for an example of a small to mid-sized firm, that’s really punching above its weight in terms of using point of view to build business, man, they are doing it in space. It’s pretty awesome. Pretty cool to watch.

Jeff McKay (30:07.287)
What I love about their point of view is it’s pragmatic. When they start to analyze and they do it in real time with specific examples, they don’t talk theoretically. They analyze situations and their approach

is simple and complex at the same time. I mean, if it were easy, everybody would be doing it. But if when I listen to them, like, damn, I didn’t think about it like that. And to me, that’s kind of a telltale of great thought leadership and a point of view is when you have people going, I didn’t think about it that way.

That makes a lot of sense to me. And that’s what I think of when I think of Jump. They’re pragmatic.

Jason Mlicki (31:20.926)
It’s funny. like the way you said that too, because he did a piece recently on the retirement of Tim Cook at Apple. And I haven’t read them. Dave, this is a fabulous article. What I loved about it was that there’s a conventional story being told about his tenure at Apple by all the Apple historians or whatever, the people that write about Apple all day long. And they have like, no, like it’s most they’re kind of right, but they’re missing this.

And to your point, I think that’s what great thought leaders do. And also, you know, in this case, he brought it back to that, that central point of view. said, well, actually he did these things as well as the things everybody says he did. And they were very future focused and here’s why, here’s why. And, yeah. So, and we’ve talked about this, you know, the characteristics of great thought leaders, great thought leaders beyond having a great point of view.

are really good at bringing the world back to that point of view again and again and again and again. And that’s to your point of Marc Andreessen, perfect example. Like he is really good at bringing you back to that central thesis, you know, kind of forever. It’s like, I remember I told you I saw First See in the World. Oh, yeah, here’s it is. See, see, well, look at this. Right. And I think that that’s really, really key to all this is you’ve got to want you to articulate the point of view.

You got to drive it home again and again and again and again again ad nauseum if you want to be successful. So, no.

Jeff McKay (32:50.605)
Yeah. And firms don’t like to do that. They get tired of hearing their own message. And at that point, the market’s just starting to get your message. So if you’re not sick of hearing your own message, you haven’t communicated it enough.

Jason Mlicki (33:07.736)
I always tell them, always, whenever they say they’re tired of it, I always say, eat more chicken. We’re going on 30 years here. Eat more chicken guys. Like, what do want me to tell you?

Jeff McKay (33:12.55)
Hahaha!

Jeff McKay (33:19.791)
Has that been going on for 30 years?

Jason Mlicki (33:22.776)
I don’t know. Forever. I have not done the history on it, but yeah, mean, it’s been going on forever. And so I use that as my example every time. Every time a client’s like, well, I’m tired of talking about this. like, well, eat more chicken. I got more. want to do some more before you wrap? OK. Another one I really like actually is, it was also on the show, was Blair Ends. And.

Jeff McKay (33:35.767)
Eat more chicken, I love it.

Jeff McKay (33:41.495)
Yeah, yeah, give me another one.

Jason Mlicki (33:51.384)
I want to look at actually his founding philosophy, which is he named the company out, which was win without pitching. And his original point of view was that there’s a better way to win work than being lined up like cattle and compete for an RFP. And he really spoke to, again, the emotional angst that small creative services agencies were feeling. I’ve worked with them directly over the years.

And he gave you a better path. He said, here’s a better way to do this. Like you don’t have to do the things you’ve been doing. You can do it differently. And let me show you what that different looks like. And then his current iteration of where that business is, is more around value-based selling and value-based pricing. But the kernel, the foundation of it all was something different. And I think he does that.

You know, he stays also, you know, really getting a little bit off off the topic of a great point of view, but he stays in his lanes better than the most right. He knows how to say to always bring the conversation back to, let’s talk about value based pricing again, because always without bringing it back to what his central thesis is on what you need to be doing. And I also love whenever, you know, it’s rare to me where you can where you find a company or a firm.

where literally the name of the company is built around his point of view on the world. That’s so rare and so cool when that comes together like that. I haven’t seen too many people or companies that can do that.

Jeff McKay (35:26.969)
Well, he’s done such an incredible job of weaving the point of view, the solution and the methodology in between the two into story form. He has great anecdotes, but just the way his model is built.

And the way he explains it is you take this complexity, but it’s communicated in a very memorable and understandable way that this really impacts, I think, potential clients. And you just alluded to it, right? He spoke to the angst of small firms.

And he gets it. And what he does with his point of view is he gives firms confidence. And that’s what firms are buying. They’re not just buying his solution win without pitching. I mean, that’s the means to the end, but it’s the confidence is what they really need in order to go out and sell.

Jason Mlicki (36:26.263)
Yes.

Jeff McKay (36:44.207)
And he does such a phenomenal job with that in his delivery style. He mixes humor, little sarcasm, self-deprecation, it’s a winning combination for sure.

Jason Mlicki (36:46.676)
Yeah.

Jason Mlicki (36:52.041)
Yeah.

Jason Mlicki (37:02.732)
Yeah, it’s funny, I’m gonna go full 180 on you on that comment because I’m gonna give you an example of one that I I loved. I don’t know that it ever really kind of got to where he envisioned it, but it’s from an individual that is anything from, but self deprecating. That’s Elon Musk, complete opposite. And what I’m talking about was there was a moment in time, he’s kind of lost the thread on this over the last few years, but there was a moment in time when he had this.

Jeff McKay (37:20.045)
Jason Mlicki (37:29.526)
sort of vision point of view of what I call a closed ecosystem for Tesla. And the idea was you would have rooftop solar, a whole house battery, an electrical vehicle. And it was this kind of like circular loop in which you basically built your own kind of like mini ecosystem of energy generation, storage and consumption. And I thought it was probably one of the most compelling point of views I’ve ever seen in business of a vision of a reality that he was going to build.

Somewhere along the line, he lost the thread and went in other directions. And I don’t know that that ever came to fruition for what it was. But man, that was such a compelling view on what your life could look like. And I think that there was, you know, there’s tons of people that signed up to be a part of that, even if it never really came to full fruition, as far as I’m aware.

And you think about people with vision and point of view and storytelling, man, I don’t know if there’s anybody better than him alive. Right? It’s like he can get you to buy into a vision that’s unbelievable how he does it. So anyway.

Jeff McKay (38:40.387)
Yeah, I, I like that. And, and he didn’t set out and to set himself up as a thought leader. That guy just spoke. He just was who he was. I mean, it was just a natural extension of his big brain. and because, he had success and lots of money, people lent him a lot of credibility.

Jason Mlicki (39:08.14)
Yeah. I liked him as an example only because I think that there’s sometimes I try to remind people that it’s like, you know, we think of a point of view as maybe a way to differentiate a firm. think that a lot of marketers think about it that way. but I would actually argue that the most successful businesses are, are, are based on a founder having a vision. And that vision is a point of view. It’s a point of view on where the world’s going and how they’re going to shape the world. And.

those companies are rewarded handsomely for being able to articulate that. So the better you can get as a business leader at seeing a problem and presenting a better solution to it and articulating that in a compelling and interesting way, I I can show you on a stock value chart the value of that, right? Like it’s like, know, and Tesla is the perfect example of that because I mean,

I don’t know the numbers right now, but it’s worth more than the next three automakers combined historically. And they’re not making as many cars as Toyota. So the value from a shareholder’s perspective is ridiculously high. anyway, I guess I wanted to kind of close on that one only because I feel like.

At the end of the day, you’re building a point of view because it’s valuable. It’s valuable to have a point of view. It’s not just a marketing tactic. You’re creating real value for your organization when you get this right. And if you don’t get it right, you’re just running on a treadmill, a treadmill of mediocrity for a very long time.

Jeff McKay (40:52.921)
Yeah. So sum this up for our listeners. What’s the takeaway from all these examples of point of view? There’s a reason for having one, right? And it’s to increase the value of the firm and to what you offer clients. What else?

Jason Mlicki (41:17.824)
Yeah, I I think to your point, you talk a lot about this notion of legacy firms, right? And I think on some level, point of view does kind of weave into that. you want to leave, there’s going to come a point in your career as a firm leader or as a marketing leader when you step back and say, well, what are we doing here? And have we meaningfully changed the world in which we work? Have we had a meaningful impact?

And ultimately, think a point of view has wound up in that as well. Right. It’s like, you think about like, and the people that do this really well, the examples we’ve given, right? Like, you know, there’s a deeper reason beneath the surface of why they’re doing what they’re doing. and if you get them one-on-one, they’ll tell you that, you know, they’ll, talk about, well, you by the, they’re sort of on a mission, you know, that, you know, they’re, they, they see this vision of the future and they want that vision to

sort of be brought to fruition. And so I think that that’s maybe a piece of this. And then you kind of come back to, at least on some level, I I will get back to differentiation in a way. mean, there’s a reason you develop a point of view, right? It’s because you want to be able to distinguish your firm from everyone else on an issue that matters such that you can command premium pricing, you can generate, you know,

more demand for your services than you have available supply, which is those two things are tied together. And you can be, I think you always talk about the preferred partner, right? At end of the day, you want to be the one that they want to work with over the top of anybody else. And that’s all the reasons you invest in this. I think, did I miss any?

Jeff McKay (43:10.349)
Well, I would just add a couple things to it. One, you can do it. We’ve given great examples. Don’t be intimidated by them.

Jason Mlicki (43:21.878)
And our examples are highly notable people, the people that maybe you’ve not heard of before. So running small businesses. Some of these are not ginormous mega corporations like the last one.

Jeff McKay (43:38.691)
Yes, yes, but they, have energy and clarity, passion about a problem, fall in love with the problem is, you’re always quoted.

Jason Mlicki (43:47.096)
Yeah.

Jeff McKay (43:53.354)
And, and be a giver around the ideas. think we didn’t talk about that, but thought leaders change the way people do business, but they do it because they’re not caught up in being a thought leader. They’re caught up in solving the problem and helping others. and I think that’s all the examples that we have given so far, I think kind of fall into those, those categories.

Jason Mlicki (44:23.702)
Yeah, I agree with that wholeheartedly. And I really like that you added that. So, yeah.

Jeff McKay (44:31.331)
Yeah. Yeah. And if you’re having trouble doing this, you should call one of us too. Because it’s in you, it’s in you. And oftentimes you need somebody outside you to bring it out and validate it.

Jason Mlicki (44:37.983)
Hahaha

Jason Mlicki (44:46.18)
Well, I think that’s an important part. mean, we’ve talked about this in other episodes, but there’s multiple ways to get to a compelling point of view. Some of it’s a lived experience and it’s in you. Some of it’s research. And we look at the DCM Insights example and Dixon’s work. mean, it’s foundational research where they’re uncovering something that nobody knew. Or they’re explaining something that people kind of knew, but couldn’t clarity to.

Jeff McKay (44:57.199)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jason Mlicki (45:15.48)
So there’s a lot of ways to get there. You know, it’s not like you have to just kind of lock yourself in a room and magically come out with this vision of the future. They work that way, you know. Usually you work with a team to figure it out, right?

Jeff McKay (45:22.513)
Hahaha

Jeff McKay (45:29.443)
Yeah, yeah, and it requires taking some risk.

It takes some risk. anyway, well, dude, I think we’ve beaten this up. I think this is, I think this is good.

Jason Mlicki (45:42.316)
I think we have too. Thanks for doing on this ride with me. I appreciate it.

Jeff McKay (45:47.641)
All right, see you later, buddy.

Jason Mlicki (45:49.112)
See ya.