In this episode of Entrepreneurship Simplified, Mike Michalowicz sits down with Sara Nay, CEO of Duct Tape Marketing, to explore why traditional marketing models are failing—and how to fix them. Drawing from her new book, Unchained, Sara explains how small businesses can avoid AI-driven chaos, build strategy-first marketing plans, and stop blindly outsourcing without direction. Whether you're overwhelmed or just getting started, this conversation will help you simplify your marketing, reconnect with your customers, and create authentic content that actually converts.
RESOURCES:
Unchained: Breaking Free from Broken Marketing Models
Available now on Amazon or at unchainedmodel.com
On the book’s site, there is an Unchained Resource Assets / Marketing Toolkit containing 48 downloadable worksheets and templates (e.g. empathy maps, content maps, metrics trackers) tied to each chapter.
Duct Tape Marketing by John Jantsch
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Entrepreneurship is hard, but the process can be simplified. You can achieve success faster, sooner, and easier. I'm Mike Michalowicz and I'm on a mission to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty. My goal for this episode and every episode is to serve you on your journey. Let's start right now on entrepreneurship Simplified.
Sarah Na is joining me today and we're gonna talk about her brand new book called Unchained, breaking Free from Broken Marketing Models. And I gotta tell you, Sarah, it seems like all the models are broken right now with AI in particular. What inspired you to write the book? Yeah, and actually I talked about that early on in the book, is I feel like the marketing models have been breaking for a little while, and now in the age of AI it is just.
Speeding up at this point, but essentially I've been at Duct Tape Marketing since uh, 2010, and I've had multiple different roles in the company over the years, and I've seen a lot of challenges being in the agency space for that time, both on the agency side of things, but also on the small business side of things as well.
And so now that AI is developing, I see a lot of businesses bringing in marketing in-house. But they haven't taken the time to create the overall marketing strategy or even determine why they're bringing in ai. And so there's a lot of mess that's happening right now. And so I wrote the book to help people take a step back, be strategic in what they're doing, and be thoughtful with the tools and platforms that they're bringing in, and also the agencies or outsource solutions that they're working with as well.
Yes, I heard a term called the, uh, cognitive atrophy, where AI is doing all this processing and there is a decline in thought. For people using it, and just like a muscle can go into atrophy when you don't use it. Our, our minds are declining and we're just like whatever AI says, but I think it was in the forward.
You talked about the inter-agency model. Is that mm-hmm. What you did. I know you did. I can't remember if it was in the forward now, but. But what do, someone owns an agency. Why? Why would you say inter-agency? And I always have to start when someone brings that up. As you said, we're an agency. We've supported and trained agencies for about 17 years now at this point.
And so the point of using that phrase, the key word in there is model. Uh, there's a lot that's broken with the model. I'm not saying that agencies are bad because we are one and we support agencies. What's broken is. There's a lot of small businesses over the years that has simply just delegated their marketing out to outsourced solutions, and I've heard a lot of horror stories of that over the years.
And so what's broken is when a small business is working with an agency. But they're staying completely in their separate lanes. And so the agency is executing on the marketing over here, and the small business is functioning over here, but the two aren't really collaborating and working together. And so that's what's broken and simply outsourcing.
And I make a point in the book that as the business, you should own the business strategy. You should own the marketing strategy. You should own, own the team strategy. And you need to put all of that work in to then be able to bring in an outside solution to be able to partner with and work alongside.
So again, I'm not saying agencies are bad, there's not, um, there are some bad agencies out there, but there's a lot of good ones as well. And so it's more pointing out. The simply outsource delegation model is the piece that's broken earlier today. Sarah, I was talking with a, uh, good friend of mine and business owner.
His name is Bill Litster and he said. Mike, I finally figured out that marketing and sales are different. Yeah. And he is like, I'm really good at selling, meaning converting someone that's interested into a client. 'cause I'm really bad at marketing, which means attracting people who may be interested. At least that's how he defined it.
And he goes, I'm just totally overwhelmed. And I said, dude, bill, you're lucky. In about an hour I have a call with Sarah Nay, and I'm gonna ask her this question. Where, where does someone get started with marketing? Particularly if you're in an overwhelmed state like Bill is. Yeah, so there's a concept that I talk about in the book we call the the marketing strategy pyramid.
And so it starts with actually taking a step back further is what's the business strategy? So what's the mission, vision, value, current revenue, revenue goal, growth goals moving forward one year and three years from now. You have to be able to answer all of those questions before you can then say, okay, let's think about a marketing strategy.
'cause you have to understand. The business foundations first to build it off of from there. And so once you do that thinking, then it's next up to say, okay, let's start thinking about the marketing strategy and marketing strategy. There's a few different components into it. There's a research phase of marketing strategy in my mind, and then there's a planning phase.
Okay. And so research is really important work that a lot of people skip over, unfortunately, in the small business space. And so the research component is things like, you know, audit of your current marketing initiatives, competitive research, interviewing some of your best clients to then be able to develop ideal client personas and messaging that resonates with your audience because.
Those are the first two most important steps of marketing. You need to know who you're targeting on a deep level, not just a demographic level, but on a deep emotional level. And then also what message resonates with them. And so once you create those two pieces, then you're able to think about more of the planning phase of marketing strategy.
So working through things like. Your customer journey, your growth priorities, your content strategy, and putting all of that into an execution calendar. And so that's the middle phase of the pyramid. And then the top phase, or the area of the pyramid is then once you understand the business strategy and marketing strategy, you have to think about your team strategy.
So who do you already have on your team that can help you execute now that you know what you're gonna execute on and where are your gaps in your team? And then can AI. Plug some of those gaps or do you need to hire internally or outsource to an agency, or whatever your solutions might be. But where people struggle a lot with marketing is they start with the tactics or the people.
Um, so they'll, you know, say, we're gonna bring in these people, but they haven't taken a step back to say, what are we trying to accomplish and why are, and where are we going towards? You have to answer those questions before you can say, okay, these are the right people or not. You know, when I talk with small business owners and ask 'em about how to market to their customers, they say, well, I think my customer wants this.
I, I, I, I know this. I know they want that, but they never seem to ask their best customers. Yeah. Do you have a way to inspire entrepreneurs to stop guessing and actually get the data? People are right now craving more human connection. Sure. And so if you reach out to your clients and you offer, you ask for a phone call and you wanna listen to 'em when you wanna get their perspective and you wanna serve them better, and a lot of cases, people are willing to help you out right now.
And so one of the things we recommend doing as part of strategy, but on a consistent basis moving forward, is interviewing some of your best clients so you can understand things like why they chose you and why they've stuck. With you over the years, but also now in the age of ai, one of the things that you can do is record with permission all of your sales calls, especially if you're, you know, doing consultative type of selling.
And so what we do with our clients and for ourselves is we record a hundred percent of our sales calls. We transcribe them, we put them into AI solutions, and then we're using those AI solutions to help us nail. The tone of our prospects moving forward. So what are their concerns? What are their hesitations?
What are their pain points? Where are they trying to go? So you're able to capture all of that information, not based on what you think, but what your prospects and your clients are actually telling you. Because when you're in the business, you're often too close to the business to really understand what messaging really resonates.
But if you can listen to the people, people that you're serving, that's gonna give you so much great insights that you can't come to on your own. So in your book, and I wanna reiterate what the title is, so our listeners right now get their copy. Sarana wrote Unchained, breaking Free From Broken Marketing Miles.
You talk about content and a friend of mine said, Mike, with ai, now the cost of BS is nothing like anyone can quote write. Yep, it. So how is content still relevant? If content costs nothing and is everywhere and ubiquitous and. If it is still relevant and how, how do we do it right, so to speak when we're competing effectively with ai.
Yeah, people are, are, are looking for businesses and brands that are sharing true, authentic, real content, uh, more now than ever before. And so it is easier to create content. There's a lot more people now, I would say creating not great content than before generic. That was putting nicely content. Yeah, you're really good.
Nicely. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, in generic content because before, you know, you had to have. People in place and writers, and it was more expensive. Now everyone can do it, but the opportunity for small businesses is to pro approach content creation strategically and thoughtfully, um, based on the humans that they're trying to connect with.
And so where I see a lot of businesses miss is they'll bring in, let's say a chat GBT, and then they'll start just using it to, to do volume. But you need to take a step back and say. What are we trying to do with the Chad GT in terms of content? Who are we trying to connect with and then train Chad GT on that.
And so when we start working with clients, like we'll spend about 45 days gathering strategic information and training AI solutions on that information before we'll even start thinking about content creation. Because then Chad GPT has things like. Tone of voice and messaging and ideal clients and leadership stories.
'cause we'll interview them and client interviews and sales call recordings and all of the things. And if you can give AI solutions that information on the front end, then you aren't creating generic, sloppy content. You're creating content that's speaking to a specific group of people and that's the content that's gonna stand out.
You know, AI can create content but also can consume content. So who am I writing my content for? Yeah, your ideal clients, which is part of the, the, the key pieces in, in creating an overall marketing strategy is not understanding your clients from a demographic high level standpoint, from, but from an emotional standpoint, what keeps 'em up at night?
What are they actually thinking? What are they searching for online? Yeah. What answers are they trying to get? Like that's the information that you need because then you can speak to them directly. And so if someone's trying to reach me to sell me a coaching package, let's say, you know, I'm the CEO of a company and I'm a mom of two young kids, and I'm spread thin often in life because of all of that.
And so instead of just targeting me as. CEO as a company, that person needs to be targeting me as a mom that's spread too thin, who's looking to be, you know, more productive, but also have a work life balance and wants to be there for her kids. And that's really important. And so it's like getting people that you're working with, understanding them on that deep level because then when you're writing content to them, you're not writing generic content.
You're saying, you know, you got into business to be a mom first, and this is how we can help you focus on that moving forward. I guess my fear or my asking that question too is am I writing for the individual who consumes it or am I writing for AI to consume it and repackage it for that same mom with two children who spread thin?
Yeah. A lot of how I think of AI with content production is you give it all of that information on the front end. It helps you with a first draft, and then you're editing and on the back end. And so some of the work that you're doing, you're, you're doing it to train ai. Um, but some of the work you're also doing is you're using these platforms to then create that content to get it out there.
But the most important piece is human on the front end, uh, thinking of marketing or at least. Platforms as a, an assistant that the more information you can give the better, and then human on the backend because you're the thought leader. Um, you understand your audience, you're human, you're empathetic, all of those things.
And so you have to polish it on the backend as well. So you are the CEO of Duct Tape Marketing. You are an agency yourself. You have other people, you help other people with marketing, but at the market yourself. How has your experience as a CEO of Duct Tape Marketing helped you write this book? And I talk about that early on in the book as well.
I poured everything that I've learned over the last 16 years into this book. And so I share a lot of different client stories and how we've helped them, you know, go from outsourcing and struggling with their marketing to really taking ownership. Um, I share a number of team stories and so how we've helped elevate our team in the age of ai.
And I also share my personal story as well. And so the book the Forward opens up with. You know, my closest, um, deal with burnout when my daughter was a few months old and she was on my chest, and in that moment she was, she was sick and she was, you know, the raspy breathing as they are when they're tiny little babies.
And I had my phone behind her head and I was. Arguing back and forth with a client about a shade of blue and a social graphic we were putting out. And so at that moment, I put down my phone and I gave my daughter to my husband, and I went on a walk behind our house and I came back down, um, and I actually called John, founder of Duct Tape Marketing and, and my father and I said, you know, something needs to change.
This isn't working for. This woman, you know, the clients that we're serving or you know, on our side of things. And so at that moment, that's really where we started introducing the fractional cmo Yeah. To our clients. And so, you know, at that time I was running all of our client accounts, both as more of a fractional CMO strategist and an account manager.
And we, me made a shift at that point to bring in fractional CMOs, which are senior level advisors. For all of our client accounts and then also account managers to support them below. And I ultimately was able to get out of our consulting and, and step into the COO seat and eventually the CEO seat. So I talk about that story as well, but that was a big moment for us to shift from doing all of the execution as an agency to then instead leaning deeper into fractional CMO type of work for our clients.
Yeah, and it was a brilliant move, uh, that term fractional CFO. Was very popular at the time, but no one was using that term yet, and it just gave a great framing for customers like me. We engaged your services ourselves to help us improve our marketing. Didn't know. I didn't know it came from, uh, your baby being sick and you screaming, you having not screaming, having a conversation about, it's a quiet argument on text.
Yeah. It's so funny. It's so funny. Uh, last question I have for you is, uh, I choked up when I saw the dedication you decades, your father, I consider him one of the most significant influencers in my life, in my career as an author. Your dad sat down with me for hours to kind of share how authorship worked before I even understood it.
And, uh, I know he is been a great mentor and father to you, why did you dedicate the book to your dad? I mean, he's obviously been the biggest impact in my career and my life, you know, ultimately. And so he's written a number of books over the years and showed me what it's like to balance family life and running a company and writing a book, which is a lot to put on one person's plate.
And so he's definitely. Paved the way for my career path moving forward has been a huge mentor and leader in my life, so I'm very fortunate to have been able to not only have him and call him my dad, but also learn as much as I had over the last, I have over the last thir, 16 years from him as well. It's amazing to watch what the second generation, what you were doing with your organization, your dad.
I got you. I need you to know your dad went in front of a group of 50 authors, an event I was hosting and said, this is the most important book that everyone in this room must read. And my daughter wrote it, and he starts choking up and we're all choking up and everybody like, let's, let's buy this book.
He is your best salesperson too. And Mark, he's, he's always been a big supporter in everything that I do. So that's that's great. Tell, uh, tell me and our audience, how do we get a copy of unchanged? It is on Amazon, so you can find an unchained. Breaking free from broken marketing models or unchained model.com is the book website.
Great. I invite people to go to the website first 'cause they can also sign up. One of the greatest things about working with a marketing agency and sign up for a list is you get to also observe how they market to you, and you get to learn in the process while they also serve you. Get your copy of Unchained now.
Sarah, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me on, Mike appreciated.