How to Lead, Coach, and Market Your Way to Success with Michael Bungay Stanier

[00:00:00]

Michael: honestly, Allan, a key part of my marketing success is persistence. Like do it for a while, keep going. It takes longer than you think. The second thing, and it's is have a really good idea of the person exactly who you're serving. You're like who are you really helping here? Who's your ideal client? And then do everything to find that type of person.

Allan: Welcome to the Lean Marketing Podcast, where we break down marketing strategies, business systems to help you grow fast, but do less stuff. Today, I've got a very special guest. I had the privilege of spending a bit of time with him recently. He's a former Aussie or maybe still an Aussie.

I'm not sure how he identifies.

Michael: Come on. I don't live in Australia, but I am definitely an Australian.

Allan: Okay, fair enough. Fair enough.

Welcome Michael Bungay Stanier.

Michael: Allan, thank you for having me here. , I've been 30 years now out of Australia, but, you know, , I have a tattoo of a eucalyptus tree on my arm and the Southern Cross

Allan: All right. [00:01:00] Well,

Michael: I'm rooted into that Australian landscape. So, I'm happy to be here.

Allan: well, we'll treat you like an Aussie. So,

Michael: that. But I'm from Canberra. so I know when Australians meet a Canberran, they're like, okay, we'll take the piss out of him for 25 minutes. So you might have to cut that out of the podcast. That will get boring for people.

Allan: we won't do that, but we had a good night in Nashville with a few Aussies. Uh, we had a bit of an Aussie, Aussie night out. So it was good. Michael, you are a really unique character in multiple dimensions. So you're an incredible author. And I mean, we could stop there and, that would be a massive accomplishment, but you're a serial entrepreneur.

You've built many many very highly successful businesses. You speak on stages all over the world, but you're a very different thinker, you know,, having spent. time with you. You were someone who was really coming out with unique ideas and things that I hadn't heard before a room full [00:02:00] of extremely smart, intelligent people who are creative for a living.

So, that really caught my attention.

Michael: well,

Allan: So, yeah.

Michael: I think you're building up expectations now. People are like, who is this guy? It's going to be amazing. And I'm like, okay, I have to try and rise to the challenge here. Yeah. Yeah,

Allan: He is amazing.

So the book you're probably best known for is the Coaching Habit, which if I were to introduce it to someone, it'd helping you become a better leader. So, and it's very much centered around several key questions that you ask people that you're leading to see how they're going.

Is

Michael: It's like trying to un weird coaching. So that it becomes an everyday leadership and management tool, because like, coaching is really powerful. It's a way of focusing on work that matters and getting to the heart of a challenge. And it's also a way of bringing out the best in people. So you get the best version of them doing the right work.

But for lots of people, coaching comes with a bunch of baggage. It's a bit touchy feely. It's a bit kind of HR, caftan [00:03:00] wearing, , incense burning, whatever. And I wanted to make coaching. Something that everybody could use in an everyday way. And really it's like, I don't want to turn anybody into a coach, I want them to be more coach like, which means just learning how to stay curious a little bit longer, and rushing to action and advice giving a little bit more slowly, because most people, it turns out, Allan, are advice giving maniacs, and I'm just trying to slow that down a little bit.

Allan: I love that.

So, just so we're sort of a little bit clear, like, can you break down coaching versus mentoring versus teaching? Are they all the same? Are they different? How do you think about coaching?

Michael: You're right, these are words that often get kind of, I thrown in the blender together and they're like, are they the same? Are they different? Even if you just say the word coaching, people have like 10 different definitions of what coaching is. You're like, is, are you like a rugby union coach and blowing a whistle and making people do pushups in the mud?

Are you uh, an ADHD coach? Are you an [00:04:00] executive coach? Are you a life coach? So there's a lot of, ambiguity really around that. So here's how I think about it. teachers and mentors and coaches. Share a common goal, which is to bring out the best in the people that they serve. If you're a teacher, you're like, I want this person I'm teaching to thrive and do well.

If you're a mentor, you're like, this person I'm mentoring, I'm trying to help them have the best journey ahead, and I want to kind of walk beside them. And similar if you're a coach. In some ways it becomes what's your mix of curiosity and content? That you might want to use. So a teacher is often working within the constraints of a curriculum, which is like, , whether you're like teaching in an organization or teaching kids, you're like, here's the content we've got to get through and a good teacher will go, I've got to get this content across and.

I'm going to help these people learn it and remember it and kind of get it in [00:05:00] their bones and to do that, you're often going to be using coaching approaches, getting people to ask them good questions, getting people to wrestle with the content. If you're a mentor, now your content tends to be more about your own journey and your own scars and your own stories and your own trophies.

You're like, yeah, I've been there and I've done that. But it's a mistake to think that the most useful thing you can do as a mentor is just sit there and pontificate and tell stories of your glory days. A great mentor uses her experience and her stories to share some content, to share some advice, but also to ask great questions.

And a coach will probably lead with curiosity, lead with questions, that's kind of one of the core things in their toolkit. But they will have, Stories, and they'll have tools, and they'll have frameworks, and they'll have, , advice to share as well. So, in some ways it's a slightly different way you blend info and [00:06:00] questions.

Some of it's slightly different in terms of just the context in which you're a teacher, and a mentor, and a coach. But all of them, if they're good, will be typically using great questions to unlock greatness.

Allan: And the goal, I would assume, and I mean, that's been my experience that if you get someone to come to the conclusion themselves or come to a realization themselves, it's much more powerful than just giving them the answer. Like it can be abundantly clear what you should be doing. And I, it could be absolutely clear to me, Hey, this is the path forward.

But if I take you there by leading you with questions and getting you to come to that conclusion yourself. That tends to be far more powerful.

Michael: Yeah and more powerful for them, and also more powerful for you. Because when somebody has their own aha and literally you increase their potential and their capacity because you've had neurons fire in their brain, they become more competent and more confident and [00:07:00] more self sufficient and more autonomous.

And all of that benefits you if you are a leader because you want people who are smarter and better and more autonomous because you've got plenty to do already without having to do their work for them. And. , this applies really no matter what size of an organization you're part of. I saw I know Allan Mullally, a little, the former CEO of Ford.

And so, big company, and when he took it over, they were losing, I can't quite remember how much it was, but it was like, , a billion dollars a week or something. It was going down the toilet. And I've heard him say explicitly, even when I know the answer, my job is not to share the answer.

Allan: Mmmm

Michael: My job is to have them figure some stuff out. Now, when I define being more coach like, I say, Can you stay curious a little bit longer? Can you rush to action and advice giving a little bit more slowly? So, for me, I'm always going, Look, there is a [00:08:00] place for advice. There's a place to share the story, share the idea.

It just happens to be later in the conversation than you might otherwise think.

Allan: from a leadership perspective, I mean, you read five different leadership books and other than the cliches they'll have five different ways of, and strategies and tactics of leading people.

What's in your view, some of the most underrated ways that you can really lead people to a place where you want to take them?

Michael: , so much of leadership is other people have called, and I agree, old wine in new bottles. , it's just like, okay, this stuff's been talked about since Homer and the Odyssey. we know we repackage it and we reframe it and we give it a new context. And that's great. I think of the stuff that I do, Allan, as old wine in new bottles.

Like, I'm a good bottle maker. Like, I put up, I've come up and I get a good blend of wine and I put it in a good bottle and that's actually helpful for people.

Allan: Yeah.

Michael: I think where I'd start with this, Allan, is that , know thyself. Humility is an extremely powerful [00:09:00] place to begin because then you get your feet on the ground and you start to understand with humility who you are.

And humility for me isn't kind of, , false humbleness. It's getting a clear eyed sense of what you're good at and what you're not good at and what your biases are in terms of the way you act and the way you prefer to operate. Because once you understand that. You start to understand what's the leadership guidance and training and advice and suggestions that is most helpful for you.

Because, you know,, I could come up with a list of five things and I might be thinking to myself, well, these are great for me because these are the flaws I have as a leader. And so this is really helpful. This is the stuff I keep trying to remember. And you might be going, None of this is useful or relevant, and that's true with your listeners as well.

So I think it's a really interesting and probably under asked question, which is like, so what are your biases? What do you bias [00:10:00] towards? , do you bias towards overthinking or overacting? Do you bias towards confrontation or running away? Do you bias towards new ideas or steady state operations?

And once you start noticing what your bias is, you can decide to follow your bias or counter your biases. Depends on the situation.

Allan: How much do you think the role of the leader really influences behavior of the people being led? Because , I've flipped and flopped on this over the years. Like sometimes , I will see someone and I'm like, Man, this person comes with batteries included, right? couldn't stop them even if I wanted to, right?

And then there are times when, , maybe you've led someone in a direction where they've gone to a better place. And sometimes, I mean, you can either immediately see or down the track. So, , this person just won't work out. so what are your thoughts around how much, does leadership influence versus the person [00:11:00] look is just right for the role or not right for the role they were an A player at disorganization, but here they're just not working out for some reason.

Michael: well, there's plenty of research that says just because you're an A player in one organization doesn't mean you show up and be an A player in another organization, particularly like fund managers. , there's this whole thing around, oh, I was a top, fund manager, I made a ton of money for my previous firm, so then I get headhunted to another firm, and they're kind of thoroughly mediocre.

So, , we've all got a human bias to assume that when it's going well, it's all down to you and your own brilliance and your own skills. And then when it goes badly, it's because, , the world is against you in some way. So I tend to think of it in two ways Allan. The first is I go, I'm just much clearer these days about who I am a good leader for. Like, I'm a really great manager for some types of people, and I'm really not a very good manager for other types of people. My forte as a manager is to be thoroughly encouraging, [00:12:00] to encourage people to take on more rather than less responsibility, to amplify their best and make them feel confident and to not micromanage, to get out of their way. And so, it's taken me a long time to learn this, but I, I need to hire people who are kinda like that. to have the best experience for me and for them. And there's a another profile where I'm like, honestly, I'm just not that good a leader for you. Cause I just don't care about the details. And I'm not good with people who move into passive mode or victim mode or whatever. And there are other people who are like, , that's my expertise, which is like shifting people out of that mode into a more active mode. So I think, , the type of leader you are. And therefore the type of people you best lead, it's useful to know thyself. And then I do think it's context as well, and you're right, some people are just fabulous.

And so it comes down to that, that old advice which you've heard and we've all heard, which is A [00:13:00] players hire A players, B players hire C players. And that's like, it all kind of makes sense, but you then have to figure out what an A player means for you and your team and your organization. And for you as a leader, because an A player in one context might not be an A player in another context.

Allan: And in my experience, I've never been able to turn a B player into an A player or a C player into an A player, and I don't know, maybe that's a reflection on me as a leader or something like that. Maybe I didn't do the coaching right, maybe the leadership right or whatever, but

Michael: Yeah. It's most, it's mostly you mate. It's

Allan: I believe that, I believe that.

Michael: I can name one or two times where I've had that, luck and I feel like I've taken somebody who was a solid B player into much more of an A player. But it's rare rather than common.

Allan: to hire based on attitude, not on skills, because skills can be taught to a large extent. So I can put someone through a course, teach them the skills mentor them or whatever. [00:14:00] but them showing up with work ethic, them showing up with confidence, all of that sort of stuff. Very difficult to teach in my experience.

how do you feel about that? Yeah.

Michael: I agree with it somewhat, but for instance, if somebody works for me, they just have to be a decent writer. They have to be able to communicate. And that's a skill, that's not an attitude, that's a skill. And if they're not able to write, we're just not going to work, because writing is a key way I show up in the world, and we communicate out to the world.

And so there are some things where I'm like, I need skills for this. And there are some people I'm hiring, like, I'm starting a new podcast in the new year, and I've hired a podcast team to help me with that, super excited about it, they have a great attitude, they also have skills, they have mad skills, they are a top class professional unit, they produce Katie Milkman's wonderful podcast, and I'm like, no, I need to hire skills, I need that, [00:15:00] so, I'll I think it depends a little bit, like if you've got a chief marketing officer role, you need somebody who's like, I get marketing, and I get the type of marketing that you're doing, B to B, or B to C, or digitally driven, or whatever, and, if you hire for skills, and they don't have the right attitude that fits, Your organization and I, I got taught the other day a nuance, rather than looking for culture fit, you're looking for culture add.

Allan: yeah,

Michael: and I really like that because it's like if I hire somebody, I don't want you to just fit in with what we've already created. I want you to expand it and make it better then it already is. So I think. Skills depends on the role and the person and the specific reason you're hiring them, but attitude, you're looking for culture, ad.

Allan: yeah. Speaking of podcast you're a super creative guy, and we got to talking about podcast format, so, selfishly, because I want this podcast to be [00:16:00] uh, a wild success I'd love to, , Talk with you about different podcast formats, what you've seen has worked before. What should I do with this podcast?

Cause I feel like a little bit like it's okay. It's an interview format. Great. And I have awesome people like yourself, but I feel to some extent having great guests is a little bit of a crutch, , because great you have great guests, you feature amazing people you talk to them, but a lot of the time.

Their story is similar to what's been heard already and all

Michael: table stakes. Honestly, a guest is table stakes.

Allan: Perfect. So would you coach me for a moment and talk me through, what are your thoughts around a good podcast format? Something that I could potentially look at or test and that you think might work well.

Michael: Well, the first question is, tell me who your ideal listener is. Like, be really specific about it.

Allan: Yep. I'm really talking to small business owners who are [00:17:00] just frustrated with marketing. it's the audience for my books, really. So the people who, Marketing is not their field of expertise. They're a butcher, baker, candlestick maker, construction company, whatever it is.

They've gotten to a level of success themselves already just out of hustle, out of dedication, out of hard work, all of that sort of thing. Oftentimes they will hit a plateau, often around at a million dollars in revenue to 20 million in revenue that they will offer just because they've reached that ceiling of, you know, , using their network, using their skills, all of that.

And they don't have marketing processes and systems in place, which is the thing that will really help their trajectory. So often they're in, what we would call kind of normal businesses. They're usually not, , creating the next chat GPT or some crazy SaaS unicorn or whatever. They're usually, we're in construction, we're in medical, we're in chiropractic, we're in whatever, right?

Michael: right. So that's really helpful. [00:18:00] And I've got a sense of what your answer is to that, but if you had to give it to me in a sentence, what's the problem you think you solve?

Allan: Clarity and systems in regards to marketing.

Michael: Brilliant. Clarity and systems in regard to marketing. Love it. What are the other two sources that people in this ideal client would go to, to get insight around that? I mean, who's your competition?

Allan: I think my biggest competition is them doing nothing. So then just it's all too hard. I'll just work harder or I'll just keep going or whatever. So second biggest competitor is maybe a DIY sort of thing. So I'll struggle through, I'll watch YouTube videos.

I'll do this guy's course, I'll try this app that is supposed to be amazing or this piece of software or CRM or whatever. So I think they would be probably the two biggest competitors to what we would do.

Michael: So, the thing I might be doing, Allan, is I might be calling up 10 of these ideal clients, like 10 of your like favorite people, the people you're like, if I could only pick [00:19:00] 10 people to listen to my pod, it'd be you 10. And I'd be getting into a conversation with them, which is like, what are they looking for?

And how much time do they have? And here's my podcast at the moment. What do you think it's about? And rate the guests from one to 10 for me around which are your favorite guests around this. I think there's something around the power of really specifically owning the niche, the problem that you're solving.

So, mean your book is called Lean Marketing right? If I'm a regular butcher and I hadn't come across your book, I wouldn't know Lean Marketing was for me. That's not a title that, tells me that I solve the core marketing problems for people who run a million dollar business and they need to expand.

Allan: I see the podcast more as a middle of funnel tool rather than a top of funnel. So, , maybe somebody's read the book, maybe someone's seen me speak. Maybe someone's heard me on another podcast and they're like, let me check out this Allan Dib. what other content is he creating?

[00:20:00] So, I'm not seeing it as much as a discovery or

Michael: Okay. So what is success then for you with this podcast?

Allan: Success is kind of being in the ear balls of people who are my ideal audience. And so, my view is the more time someone spends with your content, the higher likelihood you have of converting them. So if somebody spent six hours listening or reading to my book. There's a much higher likelihood that they will join one of our programs than if they saw like a 90 second ad on YouTube or that sort of thing.

So delivering a lot of value. I think there's also a kind of a parasocial relationship that gets built by someone. listening to you for an extended period of time. And I like that. I want to build an audience of people who are like minded and who I can help with some of the things that I can help them with.

Michael: and then you've got a format, which is like, how long is your typical pod interview?

Allan: Once it's all [00:21:00] edited and all of that, it comes out to about 40 minutes or so.

Michael: Yeah. So a 40 minute straight one to one interview is a pretty common format. So you're not standing out by, in terms of the experience you're giving people.

Allan: I agree. .

Michael: so, I'd be going random ideas, throwing them over the fence. I'd be going solo episodes where you're like, here's a four minute lesson from me. I'd be getting the people who you admire as marketers. And go, look, I'm going to cut through the noise. There's a bunch of books and marketing out there.

Most of them you can ignore, but I love, what this person's got to say. So I'm going to do a 15 minute interview with her. I'm just going to get her to teach her best idea. Teach me one good thing about marketing.

Allan: The problem I have with that is some of my best ideas and some of the things that have moved the needle for me the most have not come from marketers, and that's why I have people like yourself, people who are different thinkers, because Most marketers will often think the [00:22:00] same way.

They'll have the same things. , if I ask them, what should I do, they'll generally tell me that the same or similar kind of stuff. So I want to cross pollinate ideas from different types of people, different industries, different types of thinkers, because I think that brings a lot of value that, differentiates it a lot.

Michael: so let me come back to that because I've got one other other thought, which is you do podcast interviews where you talk and you solve the problems for your actual clients. You actually get some of your people on the line and go what are you struggling with?

What's hard?

Allan: So like a live, live coaching

Michael: it's a live coaching session. And in fact, honestly, you could make your entire podcast, you doing five minute teaching moments and doing 25 minute live coaching sessions. And that would be gold dust because that is absolutely about, I am honing in on teaching you this best marketing stuff.

Allan: It's cool. I like that.

Michael: Now I get what you're saying [00:23:00] around the kind of adjacent people to that.

And I like what you're saying, which is like some of my best ideas have come from the adjacent thinking, but I'd also just recognize that's you, right? And you're already so far down the track in terms of your wisdom around marketing that you've learned all the stuff and now you're looking for the kind of the angles that you get from adjacent thinking, from lateral thinking.

The people you're serving, they're like, I've used up my network. I don't know the basics of marketing. I can't make the adjacent wisdom leap that you're asking me to leap because I don't know enough about the basics yet.

and if you are inviting me here I'd be going, so how do I make the, how do I show people the bridge between Michael's stuff and a marketing challenge.

Like, my last book was called How to Work with Almost Anyone, and it's about how do you build better working relationships with your key people. And so you [00:24:00] could go, look, if you have a marketer on your team, or you've hired an external marketing agency, we're gonna have a conversation about how you build a better relationship with them.

And we're going to dig into that. Not everybody who's listening will be hiring their external marketer, but some of you will.

And some of you will aspire to get there. So I'm going to talk to Michael and he's going to talk about how do you build really strong vendor relationships. And now you're, kind of keeping it in what I talk about is I talk about marketing because I'm giving you all the basics so that when you're ready to buy the next thing from me I'm your trusted teacher.

Allan: So creating that bridge between what the person is doing and the core marketing message of the

podcast.

Michael: that tough decision where you're like, are you doing this for your entertainment and your learning, or are you doing it to serve your audience? And if you're doing it to serve your audience and you want to keep really kind of lean and focused, then I would say you obsess about just doing the marketing [00:25:00] teaching.

And then when you become the biggest marketing small business podcast in the world, Then you start pulling in kind of peripheral people around that, for now keep it laser focused, so you kind of break through and you become notorious for that one particular thing.

Allan: I like that. That's good advice. And it's probably, , if someone was asking me for advice and coaching me, it's probably very similar to something that I would tell them.

You sort of touched on format.

So the idea of like doing a live coaching session or that sort of thing.

I remember we had a discussion we were in Nashville and you were talking about a few different kind of completely different formats other than an interview style, right? So we were talking a little bit about potentially reading a few pages and then discussing it. I thought that was an, that an interesting

Michael: I did a podcast. It's wrapping up at the end of the year. It's called two pages with MBS and I'm like, you know, , the tagline is brilliant people read the best two pages from a book that has moved them and shaped them. And what I love about [00:26:00] it is it disrupts. the usual interview format, because, , people read a favorite book and then they would go, and I'd go, so what do you love about this book?

And they'd start talking about it, and it would kind of particularly disrupt the people who are experienced podcast people, because those people can kind of move into a bit of a groove pretty easily. They're like, oh yeah, here's my standard answer for this. So, you know, if you were to play around with that invite your clients on, like, I'm kind of big on invite the people you're serving on to be your, guests.

And Ask them to read two pages from their favorite marketing book or to go teach me your best marketing idea and let's talk about it and why it works and why it worked for you and you get to kind of layer your stuff in around their stuff. Or if you want to really wind marketing experts up, kind of invite a marketing expert on, but go, but you can't talk about your idea.

You have to teach me [00:27:00] somebody else's idea who you really like.

Allan: That's cool. I like that.

Michael: I'm not sure how keen people will be to do that because they're like, I only do podcasts to promote my ideas, but inevitably their ideas come into the mix. But it's an interesting thing to force them to talk about somebody else who they admire.

Allan: I love that. So let's do what you advised and let's, cut in your best marketing ideas. And you've grown multiple businesses very successfully.

And maybe if you could give a summary of those and I'd love to hear what have been the marketing strategies and marketing ideas that have worked best for you as well.

Michael: Yeah. So I have a company called Box of Crayons and they are a training company that teaches the IP from two of my books, the two coaching books, one called The Coaching Habit, one called The Advice Trap. I have a company which is just about book sales because The Coaching Habit has been successful enough that I can actually run that as a P& L.

I have a company that is based on helping [00:28:00] people in midlife figure out what their next big thing is. And that's centered around a membership site called The Conspiracy, because conspiracy means to breathe together, and I like that kind of collective sense. And I'm launching a new business in the new year around how change works in organizations.

And so this serves people who lead change projects in big organizations.

Let me talk about the books, I wouldn't call myself a particularly great marketer, but I've done a few things that have been successful enough, so,

Allan: I would disagree with that, but anyway.

Michael: with the book sales one of the things that happens and I hope this is analogous to things other than books, but the typical experience of writing a book is you spend two years, plus or minus Behind the scenes, wrestling with this idea that you're trying to make sound interesting and eloquent.

And, , Allan, you write a first draft and it's [00:29:00] terrible, and then you write a second draft and it's even worse. And then by the time you're on the fifth draft, it's getting better, but you hate yourself and you hate the idea and you're not even sure there's anything there. And finally, by the time you've got a ninth draft, you've actually got a book together, and then you have to copy edit it, which means you have to read every single sentence really slowly, which is, like, excruciating. So by the time the book comes out, you hate the book, or at least you're pretty fed up with it. You're like, I'm pretty tired of this book. Like, the thrill is gone.

Allan: Yeah,

Michael: And in traditional publishing, there's this kind of big push to get on a list. If you can get on a list, it's some sort of mark of credibility, particularly the New York Times list in North America.

That's a big whoop de woo. So, traditionally, there's been this intense six week flurry of trying to get a book launched where you,, peer on every podcast you can find and you show up and you make as much noise as possible, and then you keel over because you're [00:30:00] exhausted and you're tired and you're bored, and most books vanish without trace. And one of the things that I did with the coaching habit in particular was I said, I'm going to market this book for two years. Somebody said to me the other day that, , it typically takes a startup about three years to really get cracking, really get going. And you should consider your book to be a startup.

You should give it three years and you should go, look, this is just going to take time to kind of push it and promote it and create content about it and get it out there in the world. Now, the tactics you use depend on. You and your product and your market and your audience. , the coaching habits eight years old and I did a lot of podcasts because podcasts were a bit more of a a new medium then.

It was a little easier to stand out. It's trickier now.

, honestly, Allan, a key part of my marketing success is persistence. Like do it for a while, keep going. It takes longer than you think. And I wish I [00:31:00] actually remembered this, but the second thing, and it's kind of come up in our conversation, is have a really good idea of the person exactly who you're serving. You're like who are you really helping here? Who's your ideal client? And then do everything to find that type of person. We all, and me included, get seduced into trying to make more noise and attract more people. And I think if you can just be ruthless about trying to find your best type of customer, it's obvious and it's difficult and it's so easy to get distracted from that.

But, , with this new project, I'm like, I know exactly who I'm serving. They're in a big company and they lead change projects and they're exhausted and they're overwhelmed and they've seen the statistics that say 75 percent of change programs and big organizations fail. So they know they've got a career limiting job and those are the people I want to help.

Allan: Yes. So, being very clear about your target [00:32:00] market, who you're serving, that's key and foundational to everything, clearly the idea of being persistent, again a very clear message in almost all the stuff that I do is. the boring stuff daily, weekly, monthly,

Michael: I've seen you champion that, which is like, , I keep showing up. I keep doing content out there. you're a metronome. You just keep doing it. And that is a core part of it. Probably the third thing, Allan, is , it comes from Seth Godin and his purple cow philosophy, which is, and how are you different?

, how do you stand out? What's the common thing to do in your field and how will you break some of those rules? So, , you can either read Seth Godin's book, Purple Cow or at a kind of higher, more corporate level, Blue Ocean Strategy, but they're all teaching the same basic thing, which is you've got to position yourself as significantly different in one way from your competition.

Allan: so you're an ideas guy. You have an idea, you launch a framework and a [00:33:00] business around it. I get the sense you're not the details guy. You're not the guy

putting together the CRM there. Okay.

So through the launch of your company around this idea of change in midlife.

What then? How did you go from idea to execution to more importantly getting client number one, client number two, client number three? Because you're not doing this through acquisition or whatever. You're presumably doing this through marketing. , somebody is , seeing your message, responding to it.

So going from idea to execution and really marketing to drive that, how are you going about that?

Michael: Well, if you start with my first company, Box of Crayons, it is a B2B company. It is serving Fortune 1000 companies. but it took a long time to evolve into that sharp focus. Cause when I started it, I was like, I'm kind of self help, I'm kind of corporate, I'm kind of B2C, I'm kind of B2B. And, It was just a mess, and I was trying to do, and, , I kind of [00:34:00] got by on chutzpah alone.

When I launched the company that is about midlife stuff, , it starts by the fact that I've been writing a newsletter for 20 years. So I have a mailing list, and so I'm working on the assumption that there are people on that mailing list that I'll be able to sell to. Now, a good marketer would go who's on my list, what do they want, what's the need I'm solving for them, what can I build that will be really helpful for that person.

A less good marketer like me goes, what am I going to do? What am I interested in doing? And maybe I can sell it. So the way I figure out what to do with my life, Allan is I get to the end of our project and I go, what's my best guess at the thing I most want to do next, something that is thrilling, meaning it'll light me up, something that is important, meaning that it'll serve the world and make the world a better place.[00:35:00]

And something that is daunting, something that will push me and challenge me and me.

I thought, I want to write a book on how, just to understand how you change individual behavior. I was like, that's hard and I want to try and crack that and make that change.

easier for people to understand.

Allan: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm

Michael: A version of it and showed it to some friends, and they're like, this is the worst book I've ever read. I was like, they hated it. And , when I'm picking through the rubble of that manuscript, because it was pretty, pretty much despised. I found one line that I wrote that I really liked.

It's like, we unlock our greatness by working on the hard things. And so I took that and just found myself writing this new book, which is around how do you set a worthy goal? How do you find that midlife goal, which is to set you up for your next 50 years? So you have a fulfilled life that is, , a contribution. So then I'm like, okay, so I've got this idea. What do I do with this? One option is I do nothing [00:36:00] with it. I just put the book out and then go, , it'll work. It won't work. It'll sell. It won't sell. Who knows? But I could see. a membership idea around a community of people working together on their worthy goals.

So I had an inkling which was like, okay, community is an interesting idea, recurring revenue, all the benefits of that. I can see a way of setting it up so that I'm decentralized from it. So I'm not having to do all the work. I can find somebody to run that community for me. And I can test out and see whether we can make that work with my list, which we did, and which we have.

So, that became a tapping into my list.

Now, this new project that I'm starting called Around Change in Organizations, It's a brand new business really it's a brand new type of customer kind of starting at zero so just trying to figure out how this launches right now it'll be.

The people who I'm trying to serve are on [00:37:00] LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a really expensive place to advertise. but I have a, 180, 000 followers or something. So promoting it through there, doing direct outreach. I mean, honestly, Allan, I'm doing just basic re learning marketing stuff.

Allan: again, really, you're doing very basic stuff. You're doing a daily, weekly, monthly. You're leveraging some of the assets that you've got, but in some instances, They're not much use, like you're, if your list comprises of completely different people than your ideal target market for this, then you're really starting with zero, you're starting with the daily, weekly, monthly, outreach, creating content on LinkedIn all of that sort of stuff.

Michael: Yeah. I mean, the benefit of me going like, okay, I reckon there's a problem to be solved around how changes are made. Understood and taught in organizations as I'm like, man, I'm fired up about that. I've got a secret plan to try and like cost McKinsey a whole lot of money because people stop hiring McKinsey to do big consulting projects.

So I've got this kind of like internal [00:38:00] motivation and external motivation. But I'm kind of starting from a green field in terms of the marketing side of it, and that's the price I pay for being ideas led rather than market led.

Allan: Nice. And so for from starting with Greenfield, you know, starting with a new business, no people, no. I mean, you've got a, like you said, you've got a LinkedIn following, but presumably most of the LinkedIn following is people who followed you for your other stuff, right? So they're not necessarily ideal for, for the new thing.

Michael: No, it's a disaster, Allan. Thanks for rubbing it in.

Allan: So, um, with the launch of that, so are you mainly looking at paid advertising and paid options and things like that? Or what are you been thinking and towards?

Michael: so it'll launch with a podcast in February and it'll launch with a newsletter beforehand. And I'm just trying to create a really strong, differentiated lead magnet right now that will be [00:39:00] really attractive to the key, the perfect kind of client that I want. Yeah. And then it's about putting money into paid outreach to try and find those people and to persuade them that this can be their new favorite podcast.

Allan: Love it. I think it's a very smart way of doing marketing where you're putting something out of value when it's valuable to them. Regardless of whether they buy or not, you're creating kind of positive externalities. So whether it's something that converts them to a client or not, either way you're creating a lot of goodwill.

I think personal brand is going to be, I mean, it already is, but I think we're in the early days of the personal brand. I think of it as SEO in 2007, right, So, my view is it's going to be we're in a time where we're early in the personal branding journey where there's going to be huge, Billion dollar personal brands.

I mean, there already are like, like Elon Musk or like a

Michael: [00:40:00] Kardashian

Allan: But I, I think that's going to bleed down a lot more into a micro level. And I think in 10 years from now a business that shows up without a front person leading it as a personal brand is not going to do very well. They're going to

become commodities.

Michael: Yeah, that's interesting.

so how do you think about that when at a certain point, you're like, I don't want to do this for the rest of my life. I want to go and like, put my feet up and watch the telly and not be the person who's constantly on the camera, on the mic, on the selfie photograph thing. how are you imagining that?

Allan: I do think about that, and that's actually, frankly, one of the reasons why I'm doing this podcast, because I want to talk to cool people, talk about cool stuff. So yes, of course, I want to help people along their marketing journey, but can't ever see myself not wanting to talk to cool people about cool ideas and all of that sort of thing.

what I'm trying to think about is what's never going to change. And maybe the area that I talk about, and maybe that's [00:41:00] Part of what's happening with this podcast is I'm talking to people about all sorts of things that essentially interest me.

So I'm talking about, to people who interest me, about ideas that interest me. And I think it will morph and change over time. But I think the stuff that will stay constant is, I definitely want to talk to cool people. I definitely want to and follow new ideas.

Showing up on video, showing up on audio these are not my native modalities, and I feel like that's the price I've got to pay to have this other benefit of having cool people. because often, like, and if someone just Sent me out of the blue, Hey Allan, can we get on a one hour Zoom call?

The answer nine times out of ten will be, No, sorry, I don't need more Zoom calls in my life. But if someone reaches out to me and says, Hey Allan, would you like to be on my podcast? Even if it's not a huge podcast or whatever, nine times out of ten, I'll say, Yeah, sure. So,

Michael: here's a random idea just to throw it back to you, which is, I think you've got two [00:42:00] conflicting goals going. I just want to talk to cool people because I like it and I totally get that. And I want to build a mid funnel podcast that moves people through the market, the lean marketing experience.

Allan: Why do you think they're conflicting? Because um,, when I think about my own behavior, we're listening to podcasts. Yes, there are some that I want to get on and, I want to learn something. I want to learn a tactic. but a podcast I don't think is the ideal modality to, okay, like a how to, right?

If I want a how to, I'll probably look at a book or something in on a webpage or something like that. A podcast is , this is a cool person I follow. I want to listen. I want to hear their opinion. I want to hear what questions they ask. I want to, , See their perspective and all of that, and , you're usually doing something else in the background.

You're working out, you are doing something or making breakfast or whatever, right? So,

Michael: I hear you. I'm just thinking that if I was your brand advisor, I'd be floating the idea of you having two podcasts. One is the Allan Dib Show, [00:43:00] which is like, or Dibs on That, or A Thousand Puns on Your Name that you could play with. Which is like, it's like the Tim Ferriss show, it's the Allan Dib show, and you're like, I talk to really cool people, and I talk about leadership, and I talk about the ideas that are out in the ether, and and then there's the lean marketing show, which is like, I'm ruthless about moving you from, me You want more information about me?

I'm going to teach you stuff. I'm going to help you learn. I'm going to actually blow your mind with how much value you get on a very specific marketing tactic for a very specific type of person. And it's purely , it serves people to move them through the funnel so that their next stop is to buy the thing that you're going to sell them.

Allan: Do you not think that we're diluting the audience. We are diluting all the content. We now have to have two production schedules and all of that

Michael: Yeah. Oh, look, it's a nightmare in terms of the amount of work. Don't get me [00:44:00] wrong. But

Allan: not just the amount of work, it's just that now there's two places someone has to go to if they want all the stuff. Uh, It's now two different kind of streams and all of that sort of thing.

Michael: yeah, but it also means that the people who are on your marketing podcast. are perfect for you to pitch the marketing stuff to in a really specific way. And the ones that are in your more general podcast, you don't have to pitch them to, or you invite them over to your marketing podcast. , you can cross fertilize between the two different podcasts. I mean, it's like, what do I know, Allan? I don't you are literally a marketing expert, and I'm literally not a marketing expert, so, , I don't know what, how we've ended up with me giving you sage advice on marketing.

Allan: Well, I don't know if you don't consider yourself a marketing expert, but you're someone who has very creative ideas, and I value that very much. So, do you feel [00:45:00] like people go to podcasts to learn for how to information or how much do you think people do that versus, , I'm interested in this person, I'm interested in their perspective, I'm doing other things, I'm listening, like, what are your thoughts around the entertainment, the connection, the parasocial relationship versus, okay, I want to learn how to whatever, do thing, something in HubSpot or whatever

Michael: I would look to Amy Porterfield, and you look at her podcast, she's just ruthlessly focused on teaching marketing stuff, and she's brilliant at it, and every podcast is like, and you can come and download this worksheet at my website. And when they come to their website, they're like, because, , one of the hardest things to do is move people from a podcast to an email list, but an email list is a more valuable person.

They're more likely to be able to be responsive to stuff that you put out to them. And I think people do learn from podcasts. And I think particularly if you go, I'm going to take you through this, and [00:46:00] there's a worksheet at the end. If you want to pick up the worksheet, great. It's at com slash episode 98.

And they go there and they download that bit, and that potentially throws them into a little funnel if you wanted to do that, So yeah, I do think people learn, but I think it has to be a format constructed to teach , we're going to be really focused on this.

we're going to absolutely understand what this marketing term means. And I'm just giving you nine minutes to explain where people get confused and where it's helpful and what the best definition of this is. And you can download this in a one page sheet.

You can build your lean marketing library based on the podcast wisdom I got for you.

Allan: I like that. I like that. All right. Well, you've given me a lot of ideas to think about and

Michael: Yeah, take my ideas, I'm not using them. Yeah, so yeah, it's like, yeah,

Allan: I am going to steal and rip off your ideas left,

right and center.

Michael: mate. Yeah take, as I always say with feedback, which is like, take what's useful, which might be nothing, and uh, abandon the rest.[00:47:00]

Allan: love it. I love it. Michael, you've been very generous with your time and your ideas. Where's the best place for people to find you among your many different assets? And we'll of course link to those.

Michael: thanks. If there's a one website to check out, it's mbs. works and that kind of sends you the Books and send into the social. I'm on So I'm on LinkedIn and I'm on Instagram at MBS Works.

Allan: Love it. Thank you so much, Michael.

Michael: Yeah, my pleasure.

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