Transcript

Jason Mlicki (00:03.171)
So Jeff, today we’re talking about differentiation. And I decided we would start with a very simple question. What do you think differentiates prudent penalty?

Jeff (00:26.08)
I should have an immediate answer for that, right? Yeah. Yeah. And, and I do, I believe it is prudence. It’s practical knowledge to make the right decision at the right time for the right reasons.

Jason Mlicki (00:28.223)
As we all should,

Jeff (00:54.676)
And it’s, it’s born out of the experience and knowledge that supports what I think are the three drivers of brand preference, which our listeners have heard me talk about time and time again, which will probably come up in this conversation. But I would say that.

Jason Mlicki (01:13.721)
So at the end of the day, would you say when you’re trying to grow your business, grow your firm, grow your brand, you’re trying to position? We talked about position and differentiation. You’re trying to position around prudence. Is that essentially the essence of it all?

Jeff (01:30.86)
Yeah. The, the, the been there, done that they understand me. He can make the help us make smart decisions. Yeah. I, I, I encapsulate that as prudence. Would my clients define, Hey, we chose Jeff because he’s prudent. No, that would not be the word they would use.

Jason Mlicki (01:44.217)
So really it’s smart.

Jeff (01:57.24)
but it describes the attributes that I hear time and time again from the clients that choose me.

Jason Mlicki (02:05.625)
So they choose you because they believe you’re going to help them make smart decisions. Better decisions or smart decisions, or are they the same?

Jeff (02:14.178)
What? Say that again?

Jason Mlicki (02:15.555)
Better decisions or smart decisions? Or are they the same?

Jeff (02:23.224)
Well, if the decisions they’re not making aren’t smart, they would be better.

Jason Mlicki (02:27.673)
That’s fair point. Make you I’m gonna help you should position your brand around I’m gonna help you stop making bad decisions stupid decisions. You’re making a lot of them. Okay, so

Jeff (02:32.173)
you

Jeff (02:43.404)
Yeah. But I would say this, and I think this is going to be important where we go today. And I know you’re going to set up the topic. I throw that out because it’s the obvious one. I would argue there’s more than one attribute that combine underneath prudence. I kind of alluded to those.

And I think that’s kind of the point of what we’ll be talking about today.

Jason Mlicki (03:18.425)
Yeah, well, I threw I guess I threw this topic out. I think it just sort of came up in a discussion we had in the 2025 priorities episode. And I just threw it out there, Roy Nellie and said, I believe differentiation is getting harder. And you said, I don’t know, I think it’s getting easier. And so that became the topic. So that’s actually what we’re going to talk about is whether or not it’s getting harder to differentiate a firm or if it’s getting easier.

And I guess what’s asked you that question under the context of what I just did, do you think it’s harder to differentiate Prudent Pedal today than it was when you started the firm however many years ago?

Jeff (04:08.94)
My consultant mind is just running around. It depends.

Jason Mlicki (04:15.409)
I don’t know what.

Jeff (04:15.511)
It depends.

It depends. Did I really say I think it’s getting easier? Did I say that? I probably did. I probably did just to provoke you.

Jason Mlicki (04:25.771)
I don’t know. might have. Yeah. Probably.

Jeff (04:32.578)
Yeah, I don’t think it’s getting.

Man, do I sound wishy-washy today.

I think in some respects it’s getting really hard to differentiate. In other respects, I think it’s easier to differentiate. So we’ll talk about what that means because it is very much a consultant answer. And we can talk about why it’s getting harder or why it’s getting easier, but I think it depends.

Jason Mlicki (05:14.393)
I don’t think it does. But that’s OK. So let’s do this. Let’s define differentiation first. So what do we mean by differentiation? So what does it mean to be differentiated? And you actually, I thought, did a nice summary of this. We kicked this around a lot in actually setting up the episode. So I can read you what you said, or I can let you say it, whatever you want to do.

Jeff (05:38.38)
I’m not sure that I could regurgitate it in my current flustered state. Maybe you should read it.

Jason Mlicki (05:44.793)
Well, I the way you put it was really good. was differentiation is the attributes you own in the marketplace that make you unique and better to buyers. So it’s the things that you want to own that make you special, I guess I did in the day, such that a client would pick your firm over any other option for.

the problem at hand or the expertise they’re looking to access or the relationship they’re looking to have. Or guess maybe the outcomes they’re hoping to achieve.

Jeff (06:19.202)
Boy, that sounds a lot like expertise results in some potty co the brand preference drivers, which are the sub attributes, right?

Jason Mlicki (06:23.031)
No, it doesn’t sound like that at all. That doesn’t sound like that at all.

Jason Mlicki (06:31.929)
So, okay. Okay listeners, I’m gonna do us all a favor here So Jeff you have you have morphed into having a habit of taking every single thought every single point of view that happens in the world and Ramming it into this model of yours under the guise that that’s exactly what it is

Jeff (06:52.3)
Hey, when, you have a universal framework like that, well, you just, our listeners know I’m a simple guy. I need some answers. So.

Jason Mlicki (06:56.958)
Ha

Jason Mlicki (07:00.555)
That’s ridiculous. Okay.

Jason Mlicki (07:05.809)
no, no. He always he always says this, by the way. But you guys don’t get all the all the stuff that ends up on the cutting room floor of him philosophically, you know, waxing and waiting on whatever.

Jeff (07:17.93)
All right. Well, we need to get to the point of this thing.

Jason Mlicki (07:22.649)
Okay. All right. So it’s my belief system and my hypothesis that, it’s actually harder to differentiate a firm now than it ever has been. And there’s a number of reasons why I believe that to be the case. So, we describe them as the new forces of commoditization. I don’t know if that’s the right, the right re what right language to call it, but there’s a couple of things going on that I think are, making it more difficult.

the first is you and I’ve talked about this a lot and I’ve talked about it a lot is this idea of AI replacing traditional search as an interloper. I like to call it an interloper between the client and the firm. So it’s this, it’s this like weird middle layer that sits in between you and the potential client. That’s actually creating separation. So it’s actually making it pushing you further and further apart. You know, so if, if

The most important part of differentiating a firm is actually getting a client to potential client interact with you in a meaningful way. And that’s really hard for them to become aware of or understand what makes you unique and different if they never actually have a meaningful interaction with you. And AI is functioning as a wedge between you and the buyer in a lot of ways. So that’s force number one.

That’s a real problem for lot of Force number two is directories. So tools like Clutch and G2 that are sort of also inserting themselves between buyers and sellers in an attempt to sort of categorize the world, right? So try to take firms and identify their areas of expertise and sort of copiously categorize them and line them up like apples. So they’re…

whole agenda is to create clusters and groups of firms and get them to all look alike so that they can be compared as different varieties of apples when the essence of differentiation is to look like an orange and everyone else looks like a bunch of apples. And so when you don’t fit into those boxes real well, there’s not a place for you there. And so they’re creating a lot of space there as well.

Jason Mlicki (09:45.399)
And the third force, which kind of is along the lines of the first force, I believe, is just AI showing up as a substitute for deep categorical expertise. So there’s a real risk that, you know, an AI tool is just sort of harvesting the web for all of its collective wisdom. And a generalist firm that doesn’t have any deep categorical expertise can kind of show up and look sort of like they have categorical expertise.

by using an AI tool to help them appear like they have expertise, even when they may not. So it’s making it harder for buyers to distinguish, well, who really is really the expert here? Who is really great at what they say they are? And who is just sort of posing and not really there? So I believe those three forces are making it harder to differentiate, because it’s making it harder to

Get clients to interact with your marketing, get them to interact with your brand, get them to interact with the things you’re doing to demonstrate what makes you different. And then when they do show up, they’re also, you know, they’re on edge because they’re being bombarded with messages from so many sources that maybe look like yours and sound like yours, even if they are not really true.

That makes sense. So.

Jeff (11:16.288)
I don’t know if this is a fourth one or a subset of a couple of your other ones. One of the major challenges is just the volume of firms. I mean, you think a decade ago or two decades ago, you know,

Jason Mlicki (11:33.997)
Yes.

Jeff (11:44.694)
I bet you there was a third as many professional services firms because with the evolution of technology and self-sufficiency, people like me and others can create a firm around an area of expertise and apply all these concepts to differentiation to try to carve out

And now, I used to have to only remember 10 firms. And now I have to sort through 100 that could help me with this thing. And then even on top of that, you see this blending of services and technology with SAS that now those are also firms that are trying to differentiate themselves in terms of solving a given problem.

so I think just the volume and the, I don’t know if they’re, I’ll say they’re finite attributes that firms can try to, to own. There’s only so many permutations and only so much mental capacity on buyer’s part to make sense of.

Jason Mlicki (13:04.535)
Yeah. Well, yeah, enter AI, right? Like, I mean, I think that’s why so many buyers are leaning into AI as a tool to help them because they are feeling overwhelmed. I remember, so this has been a while, but like we did this analysis, this is probably 15 years ago. And what we did is this was when we were early stages of our marketing automation journey. And we were trying to understand the impact of thought leadership and the

the marketing efforts we were making on the sales process. Because at the time, you would get a lot of questions from clients. do I really need this content? Is it really helping me? Is it making an impact? I don’t know. I don’t really know. And one of the things that we found when we did this analysis was that essentially, the more times someone interacted with our stuff, the more likely they were to hire us. So if we got into a funnel, like we got someone into a sales conversation,

trying to help them. If they were really engaged with our thinking, the likelihood that they would hire us would go way up relative to someone who just sort of came in, found us off a Google search, filled out a contact form and started a conversation. They didn’t do like the hard work, the homework. When they got there, they were less likely to hire us. Now, where I’m going with all that is buyers don’t do that as much anymore, I don’t think. I think that they, I think that

I think they’re spending less time that way than they would have in the past.

Jeff (14:40.076)
That was insightful what you said there. I wonder though, because I think this is relevant to our conversation. If you confused cause and effect. You said, you, you, you said that they chose you. They were more inclined, but they were more inclined to read your stuff because they found value in it. Therefore making a decision to choose you was a no brainer.

Jason Mlicki (14:52.418)
well.

Jason Mlicki (14:56.866)
I’m out.

Jason Mlicki (15:09.961)
Yeah, no time out. don’t want to imply cause I didn’t I didn’t intend to imply cause and effect. I would imply I mean for our research walks on the call listening and just correlation, right? There was a correlation between the two of the people that spent more time with our stuff more frequently hire us if that makes sense. So, you know.

Jeff (15:30.976)
Right, right, but what I’m saying is they spent more time with your stuff because they liked your thinking and were inclined to hire you anyway.

Jason Mlicki (15:39.595)
Yes.

Yes. And That’s essentially my point in what’s why it’s more difficult to differentiate now. Cause how were we were differentiating? We were differentiating both on our thinking that we had this unique expertise and point of view and our delivery of it, like our personality, our style, all that stuff. And, and the combination of like tons of more firms publishing tons of more stuff. Buyers are overwhelmed. AI becomes a great tool to make sense of all this. It.

washes away all that, right? Like it’s like they don’t spend that kind of time anymore because they’ve got this great tool that can help them make sense of it a little faster, a little easier. So.

That I believe is making it more difficult to get the clients to interact with the thought leadership and the thinking and the storytelling and everything that a firm is packaging up in its digital experience, which is a big element of what differentiates it.

Jason Mlicki (16:49.209)
So there’s a fourth force in there that you threw in. And that is just the growth in both the volume of firms and maybe a fifth force, and then the volume of information that’s coming out through all those firms. It’s just overwhelming buyers. And so they’re just not, I find it hard to believe. I’ll give an analogy for those of us who have college age or high school age children who have been through the college selection process.

you know, it used to be, when you and I were growing up, maybe you applied for three or four colleges. Well, nowadays with the common app, kids apply for 15 or 20 colleges. You know, Ohio state says they’re going to get over a hundred thousand applications this year. And you and I both know that the amount of time that the reviewers are spending with those applications is far less than they used to when they’re getting that kind of volume. and I think that’s the same analogy for buyers and firms, right? There’s just way more out there. There’s way more firms out there.

producing way more thinking, it’s just logical that they’re probably spending less time with that thinking than they used to.

Jeff (18:04.064)
and Jeff Head.

I just had, I had a throwback to seven years ago, eight years ago, before we were rattling, pedaling, we were having phone calls, right? We did prep work a little to kind of shape this, this episode. But as you’re, as you’re talking, I feel my thinking about this going deeper.

Jason Mlicki (18:18.926)
Yeah.

Jeff (18:37.158)
And, making more connections, which is why I always love those phone calls and why I love these, these podcasts. Our listeners may not be entertained by some of these, you know, bloating and digressions as, as we say. but I, I’m, I’m just thinking through some of, some of your points.

Jason Mlicki (18:49.346)
You

Jeff (19:05.742)
I use AI, you use AI a lot. And to me, it has great potential, but it has a lot of limits as well. And when I’m looking for substantive answers, I don’t go to AI, right? I go to known experts. I make phone calls. I question,

other thinkers. I asked for referrals to people that know a subject, right? Here’s an example. If you wanted to go deep on SEO, would you go to AI or would you go see the thinking from like Rand Fishkin? Or if you had questions about MarTech, would you go to AI or would you go to ChiefMarTech.com?

Jason Mlicki (20:05.817)
Well, think there’s a couple of flaws in your question that I’m going to point out. So one is that the assumption is

Jeff (20:11.502)
How can there be a flaw in a question? How can there be a flaw in a question? There’ll be a flaw in an answer, but not a question.

Jason Mlicki (20:15.317)
they’re there of course they can and I’m gonna point them out right now if he doesn’t so so flaw number one is your assumption is that the buyer has enough information to know that chief martech or that Rand Fishkin exists and maybe they don’t so they don’t necessarily know they have that other option and to the other flawed your question is it is if you decide you you made the assumption that they want to do a deep dive and deep dives come from surface queries

Jeff (20:20.206)
Come on.

Jason Mlicki (20:45.741)
Right? Like, I don’t know much about SEO. need to kind of get, I need to get up to speed on that a little bit. And then you start to kind of enter this world and then you want to go deep. And then you might start to go find out other sources and look for new, new sources. So what, what are my contentions is that, is that that Google query that used to be the start of that kind of like surface search that led to the deep dive is being replaced by an AI query that is just yielding a different result.

And so like that those surface queries would lead to those things. They might lead you to Mark tech. They may lead you to Rand Fishkin. They might lead you to Rattleback or whoever they lead you to. Right. And you did your own homework on those pages. You don’t do that anymore. You know, you just don’t. There’s no reason to. It’s not until you’re ready to do the deep dive that you’re going to go there. So I think my point in saying all this, I think.

I think there’s a lot of researching and vetting of firms that’s occurring away from the firm’s branded marketing experiences itself. It’s occurring in clutch. It’s occurring in chat GPT. It’s occurring in places that the marketer has little to no control over and ways that it wasn’t intended. Right. I could even, if I want to, mean, I know people do this, you know,

Get summaries of a firm’s thinking, you know, through an AI query, right? To save some time. Give me the highlights of this. I don’t want to read the whole thing. It’s too involved, too into.

Jason Mlicki (22:27.107)
Summarize this video for me, summarize this podcast for me, right? Those are all buyer behaviors right now, and we’ll be for the foreseeable future.

Jason Mlicki (22:45.933)
We should change gears.

Jeff (22:48.494)
I’m still thinking. You keep talking, I’m still thinking.

Jason Mlicki (22:52.825)
Okay, let’s look at the other side of this, because I think there are, there’s a pretty strong case to be made that it’s easier as well. And you pointed this out to me. I kind of came at this glass as half empty and said, I think it’s a lot harder. And you said, well, I don’t know, Jason, I think there’s opportunities for it to be easier. And I’ll give you a couple of examples of what I think makes it easier. One is you threw this out. There’s all these firms. It’s so much easier to identify underserved niches, issues, and problems.

because of AI, right? AI has made that task so dramatically easier that you could identify client issues. You can identify niches that maybe you’re missing. You can identify client problems. Or at least you can get an indicator of them. You can get like a hunch that you can then follow up on through deeper research and other forms. I think that’s definitely makes it easier because all of sudden you say, well, boy, there’s this, there’s this.

I hadn’t seen before, hadn’t thought about before that we can solve and maybe it’s kind of underserved right now. No one else is really talking about this and that can help us differentiate ourselves. You can use it to, one of my favorite tasks is essentially using AI to help understand the prevailing point of view on an issue. Because my hypothesis on this is that if a

Large language model is just a, it’s just, it’s a prediction device, right? It predicts what word comes next based on frequency. Right. And so when it does that, essentially what it’s doing is it’s sort of collectively sharing the conventional wisdom. So it’s like, what’s the belief on the best way to solve this? The answer it’s giving you is sort of a collection of all the writings that have been published on this. So in and of itself, it’s the greatest engine to generate a

prevailing point of view on an issue that’s ever been, because that’s essentially what it’s designed to do. So it helps you identify conventional wisdom, which is the backbone of thought leadership is understanding conventional wisdom, understanding the flaws in conventional wisdom and how you might look at it differently, which to me is a big piece of differentiation, right? And then I think it’s a great thought partner.

Jason Mlicki (25:15.659)
in the sales cycle. when you think about a lot of what I’ve talked about up till now is trying to differentiate a firm from afar. So this idea of before we’ve had meaningful conversations, how do you get a firm to look different, sound different, be different before dialogue happens? But of course, as you would always point out, a lot of what makes a firm different only

can start to come to bear when conversations start to happen. And that’s when clients start to understand the people and the culture and all the things that make a place special. And I do think that, you know, I’ve found AI to be an incredibly valuable tool in, you know, doing exploratory research in early stages of an engagement. could help you just go further faster than you ever could on your own.

to understand a client’s very unique situation and maybe come up with a very specific point of view to how they would solve that situation, especially if it differs from, you know, because every client problem is a little different. They’re never always the same. I mean, yes, they share tendencies, but they can be just a little bit different. They’re almost always a little bit different. So.

Jason Mlicki (26:38.457)
So that’s the case for easier as I see it. Your eyes are glazing over. think you’re going to either explode.

Jeff (26:45.432)
They are not, they are not glazed over. They are, are deep in thought.

So what I’ve heard you say so far, and rightfully so, the tip of the spear of differentiation is expertise, which manifests as a point of view on a particular issue relevant to me as a buyer that I’m trying to solve. So the way that I would get exposed to firms is

Jason Mlicki (26:56.739)
Yeah.

Jeff (27:23.426)
trying to understand the issue.

I would go to AI to try to understand the issue that I’m experiencing. I would go to a G2 or a clutch to look for a solution to that issue. That’s what you’re saying so far, right? So those, those become hurdles or translators of a firm’s differentiators.

Jason Mlicki (27:54.136)
Yes.

Jason Mlicki (27:57.655)
Yes.

Jeff (27:57.888)
in terms of expertise, right? And that’s the main hurdle that exists, right?

Jason Mlicki (28:09.229)
I like the word translators because essentially that’s, think the real challenge is that one of the things I’ve been talking to our clients about a little bit is this idea that, you know, when you develop thought leadership and you publish your thinking, ideal is that clients are going to consume it in its native form. And tools like ChatGPT are upending that, right?

Jeff (28:12.27)
Okay.

Jason Mlicki (28:38.979)
They don’t have to consume it in its native form. They can consume it through this interloper. When you’re talking about your firm and you’re describing what makes it unique and different or its approach or whatever, your ideal is that they’re consuming that in its native form, how you’re publishing it on your website, how you’re publishing it in your presentation decks, how your people are articulating it, but tools like Clutch or G2 or AI for that matter.

are rendering that as a translator to your point. So think I love your phrase. I love your use of the word translator.

Jeff (29:21.206)
Yeah, I’m glad you like that. So.

Jason Mlicki (29:25.411)
So, but to your point, expertise is not the totality of differentiation or point of view is not the totality of differentiation. It’s just one really key thing. But to build on top of that, another piece of this, you talk a lot about is this culture, right? That’s a big part of what makes a firm different and unique is the culture of the firm. But how do you express culture externally?

without conversations. You do it through the brand. You do it through all the multimedia experience, all the content experiences, everything that you do as a marketer to sort of shape the outward persona of the firm. And once again, these forces are rendering those things harder to access, you know, because clients are using the translator and the translator take, you know, guts that out, right? I don’t need the multimedia experience that you’re telling me because AI is going to summarize it for me.

That’s good.

Jeff (30:23.5)
Yeah. Yeah. So let me, let me kind of keep going on, on summarizing what you’re saying and what I’m thinking about. So, point of view around an issue, understanding the issue, getting a, your arms around that going to a, intermediary looking to get a list of potential providers, right?

And then engaging from that. So you say that my universal model is trite because I talk about expertise results and Simpatico, but there is an equation I have used since my time at Anderson’s to talk about brand. And you just alluded to it. Brand equals reputation.

And reputation is shaped by behaviors and the behaviors of a given firm are driven by its culture. You know, and we know that a Goldman Sachs investment advisor is different than an Edward Jones investment advisor because of their cultures, right? They probably have the same access to a lot of the same data and whatever, but

who they target, why they target, how they relate to them is very different.

The phenomenon that you’re describing in the answer to the question, how do you differentiate yourself, to me, seems to be, we’ve alluded to this, but you tell me if I’m wrong, not just in this episode, but other episodes, that we are moving from the digital differentiators back to the analog.

Jeff (32:32.61)
that human interaction, brand equals reputation equals behaviors, are now going to manifest

in a real tangible human way versus the digital way. Because we as humans are going to need that because we’re not going to want to make these risky B2B decisions that jeopardize our career selecting firms without human interaction.

So, and I’m not saying this is the totality answer, but if you want to differentiate, you are going to have to differentiate in a tangible way. And that’s not scalable. It’s more expensive. It’s slower. But if you’re going to differentiate,

Jason Mlicki (33:10.403)
Yeah.

Jeff (33:30.126)
And you can’t come through and we don’t know where AI is going to go. And maybe there’s waves and attribution and stuff that will come through there. But it seems to me we need to shift.

the emphasis of the differentiators that are more human.

And last, content marketing focus.

Jason Mlicki (33:56.609)
Yeah, I agree with most of what you said. The only caveat I would have is I don’t want people to hear this as if we’re going to go backwards to business getting done the way it used to get done on the golf course. Not saying business never gets done on the golf course, but there’s this, I believe pretty strongly that there was a time when a lot of business was done. You build a personal relationship first and then business followed.

These days, it’s the inverse. You have to show value first and a personal relationship might follow. And I don’t want to imply that we’re going back to an analog only world where you’re going to be spending all of your time at conferences again. Buyers still don’t probably want to travel as much as they used to and they don’t want to do as much in person as they used to. I actually think the twist on that that I would suggest is what we’re doing right now, which is that

You so much of this, you’ve heard me talk about this, but you know, for years I would talk to firms when we first started getting into this niche of professional services 15, 20 years ago, and they would say to me, Jason, you gotta understand this is a very people business. I’m gonna say, okay, yeah, I get it. How come when I come to your website, there’s no people anywhere?

Jeff (35:16.014)
pictures of people

Jason Mlicki (35:18.285)
Right? They say, well, it’s very risky to put our people out there because someone might come and headhunt them. I said, well, you think the only reason they’re not headhunting them now is because they can’t find them? Like, you’re kidding. You’re living in a dream world. So my point is, I think the shift that you’ve heard me talk about this is to elevate individual people more, focus less energy on the thought leadership and more energy on the thought leaders.

Jeff (35:28.718)
You

Jason Mlicki (35:46.135)
So it’s like bringing the people forward in the ways that you and I do ourselves all the time, right? So it’s, you’re gonna have to say, you know what? Boy, so-and-so is our expert on this topic and we’ve got to make sure that he or she is more visible than they have been in the past. And we have to put them out there through a podcast, through a video series in ways that maybe we weren’t comfortable with in the past for a whole lot of reasons. But their reputation is going to matter as much as our reputation.

And I think that genie’s out of the bottle and you’re either getting in on it you’re not. And if you’re not, I think you might be in a little bit.

Jeff (36:29.346)
Yeah, because.

This has kind of been the evolution of marketing and branding. You know, from putting a brand on a cow, laying claim to it, to a label on a particular, you know, flour or wheat or something in the general store that was a good housekeeping signal, symbol to,

you know, direct mail, radio, television, the channel keeps evolving, but the message stays the same. Demonstrate why you are different and why I should choose you. So it’s in that respect. I’ve said, this was my point when I said, has it really gotten harder? Those things don’t change.

You have to find what makes you different and share that and it has to be real and it has to be tangible. and intangibility used to be flesh to flesh. Then it was, you know, paper. Then it was a voice, then it was a picture and now it’s

You know, this combination of interactivity on a podcast or, or something, but it’s still the same.

Jeff (38:12.448)
And the thing that differentiates you is still the same. You have to bring something new to the idea table.

What’s more important or maybe has moved up a little in the process is that element of trust or simpatico, do I sync with you? And now it used to be a tone within a white paper. Now it’s a tone and body mannerisms on a video. those are communicating

elements to me as a buyer, do I trust what this person is saying? So I guess that’s what I’m trying to say where it stays the same. The channels differ, but the result you’re trying to drive through those channels just never changes. It’s building trust and connection.

Jason Mlicki (39:17.581)
Yeah, no, I agree 100%. And I think you hit it spot on when you said that the channels have changed. But I think that it is, I’m gonna come squarely down on the side of I do believe it is harder now. And it’s harder for all the reasons we talked about. There’s many more options for clients to choose from. There’s much more access to those options than they ever had before. And there’s all these interlopers, as I like to call them.

that show up in between you and the buyer to insert whatever it might be, opinion or summaries or whatever it might be that just makes it one more step to try to make that connection than you had in the past, particularly in the last maybe 10 or 15 years. think the beauty of Google and the beauty of the internet was that it sort of enabled you literally to find a needle in a haystack for the first time in your life, right?

You could do that for the first time ever. And then all of sudden, you know, for every haystack, there was like 50,000 needles. And then it’s like, my God, I don’t know what to do. Well, AI is kind of helping, helping sort through that, I think, in a good way. But as a result, it has, I do think it’s going to make a little harder. So.

Jeff (40:23.745)
Hahaha

Jeff (40:36.686)
Yeah. We had a prep call or a conversation with a potential guest that one of the friends of the podcast recommended and we were talking to the person this past week and there was some major market events that were impacting

Jason Mlicki (40:41.272)
Yeah.

Jeff (41:06.814)
I thought the growth prospects of this firm and I thought this answer to this question was going to go exactly where I thought it was going to go in predetermining what the impact of these things were on that person’s business. And the response that he gave us was completely different. He was not threatened by these events that I thought

were risk and should be threatening him. He was actually excited about the opportunities that these threats were opening. And I was like, that’s exactly right. And all of the stuff that we’re talking about right now is exactly a microcosm of that same conversation. All this stuff is going on. It is presenting opportunities for differentiation.

Jason Mlicki (41:45.101)
that they represented.

Jason Mlicki (41:57.401)
the same thing. Yeah.

Jeff (42:07.718)
not cutting it off. I think this is another reason why I intuitively said it might be easier to differentiate because you now have these different channels to demonstrate those attributes that buyers are looking for. And that’s exciting.

Jason Mlicki (42:29.625)
Well, to your point, one of the things, you sometimes when I talk about podcasting in general or webinars or video or some of the things that we as modern marketers do, and if you have a skeptic and they say, well, I know why, why would I want to do that? So it’s a lot of time. And I will say, well, you know, if you have a couple hundred listeners or a couple thousand listeners to a podcast.

It’s like you’re having a one-on-one conversation with 1,000 people about what it is you do and your point of view on how you do it and how easy it is to get that out there. It would have been so difficult to do this 10 years ago, 20 years ago, however long you want to fashion it. I geez, I remember in business school working with a friend of mine trying to create a sort of a video.

based startup and it was almost impossible to figure out how to record video and get it uploaded to the internet and get it hosted anywhere. It was really, really hard. This was pre YouTube, right?

Jeff (43:28.398)
That’s probably on those big reels of film too, wasn’t it?

Jason Mlicki (43:31.641)
It’s crazy. you know, so to your point, it’s just because it’s I do believe it is harder. The the the the the technology provides all these opportunities to do it in ways that you never could have before. And so I like that. That that advice is sort of embrace it and lean into it. Don’t be afraid of it. Lean into it. So. OK.

Jeff (43:55.48)
But it ties back to just to wrap up your great summary there. You have to know the target that you’re shooting at. I want to demonstrate these attributes, right?

Jason Mlicki (44:01.346)
Yeah.

Jason Mlicki (44:07.779)
Can we change the language on that?

Jason Mlicki (44:15.735)
Yes, could we change the language on that though? I’ve been trying to get this done for years. People will say, well, we have a target market and we’re shooting at those target market. I’m like, well, can we change that? Just make it, we have an ideal client that we’re hoping to attract. Doesn’t that sound a lot nicer than we’re as marketers shooting at people? I wrote a blog post about that once that we need to change the language of marketing so that it doesn’t sound like a gun range.

Jeff (44:16.514)
the differentiating.

Jason Mlicki (44:46.167)
But anyway.

Jeff (44:47.714)
You, you, you, did you, you probably didn’t. When I was in St. Louis with Anderson, I met this nun, Sister Mary Jean. She ran one of the biggest hospitals in St. Louis. Brilliant woman. I think they were Malcolm Baldrige winner back in nine, in the mid nineties.

Jason Mlicki (44:52.121)
What’s up?

Jeff (45:12.064)
You could not use that language in that organization. Anything that had war or violence associated with it. I think she’s your spirit animal.

Jason Mlicki (45:24.729)
She’s my I like it. like it. All right. Well, let’s let’s take it to wrap. Yeah, I guess maybe those are the words of wisdom, because I was struggling to say, well, what are we telling? What are we telling listeners to do? And I think maybe those are the words of wisdom. It’s not what you do. It’s just your mindset. It’s and you hit the nail on the head is, you know, whether it’s hard or whether it’s easier, it almost doesn’t really matter.

Jeff (45:26.958)
Sister Mary Jean.

Jason Mlicki (45:52.663)
It’s just embrace the opportunity that it presents that, you know, when Google showed up, there was people that were terrified and, cause it was upending all kinds of things and they didn’t know what to do. And I do believe that sort of this kind of rise of AI or whatever you want to call it is, changing marketplace dynamics every bit as much as Google did. And you’re either leaning into it and figuring it out or you’re on the outside looking at it. So.

Jeff (46:21.61)
As the guys in my cycling group told me when I first joined the group as a noob, Jeff, it never gets easier. You just go faster.

Jeff (46:39.11)
And I was like, what? It’s so true. It’s so true. The level of effort is going to be the same. It’s how fast are you going with that level of effort?

Jason Mlicki (46:48.697)
Just how fast are going? Yeah.

Jeff (46:53.998)
All right, buddy. Good conversation.

Jason Mlicki (46:54.329)
That’s a wrap. Yep. See ya.