Don't Be A Hero

Tom Nixon (00:01.996)
Well, Curtis, we are back with another episode of Bullhorns and Bullseyes, but we have a very special guest lined up today. Very special.

Curtis Hays (00:10.639)
I’m excited. Are you gonna, is this guest here, there with you?

Tom Nixon (00:14.67)
Some may say, yeah, sometimes, most of the times. Yeah. Why don’t you introduce this esteemed guest of ours today?

Curtis Hays (00:17.807)
Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Curtis Hays (00:24.461)
Is it? It’s just you. You’re the guest.

Tom Nixon (00:26.158)
Wait, wait. What do mean? It’s just you. You don’t have, know, Tom Nixon is the president of Creative Bill. He is 30 years in the industry. You know, that my bio queued up.

Curtis Hays (00:35.215)
You’re my Obi-Wan Kenobi who’s taught me everything I now know about content marketing.

Tom Nixon (00:44.782)
Well, interesting because I think I am going to reference my personal Yoda’s today. So there’s always a Jedi and there’s always a master at a padowan or something like that. I recall.

Curtis Hays (00:50.199)
Yes.

Curtis Hays (00:55.789)
Well, yeah, so you’ve you’ve name dropped. It’s am I going to get this right? Is it Brian Clark? Okay, so you’ve you’ve dropped the name Brian Clark, and I think there’s somebody else’s name who you’ve maybe mentioned a few times. And I’ve had I’ve had a tendency to do this in our podcast. I I’ve mentioned to many people, one of the greatest things about doing this podcast series with you is how much I’ve learned over the last two years.

Tom Nixon (01:03.416)
Yep, Brian Clark, yep.

Curtis Hays (01:24.537)
that I didn’t realize I didn’t know. Yeah, thank you. yeah, because people ask, is this podcast, you know, has it been successful for you? Is it bringing you business? And you get into that mindset where you think you’re doing this to win business. And yeah, that is a potential outcome from this. But it was at the end of the day, in the core, we wanted to do some storytelling.

Tom Nixon (01:27.0)
Yeah, and I can say the same of you, by the way.

Curtis Hays (01:53.423)
I didn’t realize in that storytelling initially how much I would learn and I think that’s probably been the biggest value that I’ve gotten out of it. And I think in turn creates additional value for my customers. I mean, I’m a consultant at the end of the day, as you are. And the more we learn, the more value that we can bring to our customers. Would you do not say?

Tom Nixon (02:16.066)
Yeah, absolutely. And it’s great because well, two things in response to that one is any conversation you have like this with a peer is valuable. And the problem is we don’t have them anymore because we don’t have time. We don’t have time to go to lunch. We don’t have time to grab coffee. You know, the introverts among us won’t even go get cocktails with colleagues anymore. We’re just we’re too busy. So you stop what you’re doing for 45 minutes and you have a meaningful conversation. Somebody is bound to learn something, which is why we have the guests on that we have today. Notwithstanding.

And the other thing is, yeah, I mean, I know our existing clients are not listening to the podcast to buy from us, right? They’ve already, you know, essentially done that, but they’re they want to learn from us. And that’s really flattering is when people who don’t have to or don’t feel like they’re in a position that they need to listen to us. They want to listen to us. And I think that’s a testament to what you said. And let the outcomes be the outcomes. But at end of the day, if we can get smart people on the podcast to share smart wisdom with us, then our clients.

you know, benefit through osmosis.

Curtis Hays (03:16.207)
Definitely. and I don’t know, I’ve had this or there’s been this tendency, I suppose, I don’t know if that’s the right way to say it, but the last few years, companies come to me and they say, hey, I’ve got $3,000 to spend in advertising. What can you do with that? My tendency has been to go to a channel.

go to Facebook, go to Google or something like that, say, yeah, hey, I can spend that money. Who’s your audience? What are we going after? And we start selling features and advantages and different things like that. And really not see a whole lot of success, honestly, really at the end of the day. mean, in some cases, certainly, there has been. But I think by and large,

you know, the type of growth that I’d really like to see and where that should come from in some cases isn’t happening. And so, yeah, I had an email come in today. It’s like, five brand new digital marketing strategies for 2025. And how many of us are inundated with, whether it’s on YouTube or LinkedIn or whatever, the latest AI or technology or strategy or tactic or whatever that you’re going to do that’s going to

take your business to the next level. And you said something that really hit a chord with me on our last podcast, which was, if I had one piece of advice to give to a brand right now, it would be, go be awesome. What did you mean by that?

Tom Nixon (04:57.206)
Hmm. Well, it’s like maybe it’s a little too pithy. But what I mean by that is there’s a lot baked into that. One is what you just said, which is a company thinks, well, you know what? We need to sell products. So let’s do some ads. And that’s as far as the thinking goes. They don’t think through, like, why would somebody be compelled to pay attention to this ad in the first place? Right. So it’s all tactical. It’s not strategic. What I really want to do when I’m working with a client is find out, first of all, if they’re awesome, meaning

Sometimes you get inside a company and you see its dysfunction from the ground up, you know, like who if they knew what I know now, who would want to buy from this company? So I think there’s and this is not work that I do, but I think there’s a lot of work to do in terms of establishing a culture, which is eventually going to be reflected in your brand. But like really be truly awesome. Those companies that people want to go tell people about because their experience was amazing are just awesome. They’re awesome at customer service.

their awesome at storytelling the CX or customer experience on their website is flawless and intuitive. Everything about it is fun. And that’s why people go out and say, Hey, have you heard of have you heard of Tom’s that shoe company? Right? Oh, you got it. You got to go check it out. You got to go check it out. It’s a mission based company. You buy a pair of shoes from them and they give another one to share. It’s amazing. You to do this. It’s great. It’s an awesome company, right? It’s an awesome brand, awesome model, awesome story. And so

What you want to do is a first step before you go out into the world and try to sort of trick people into clicking on a link so that they get to your product page and then automatically without thinking, put something in the cart and then give you their credit card and check out, which is what we want people to do. You need to give people a reason to want to be your fan first customer second. So that’s all hard work to do. So if you don’t do all of that hard work where I come in then and then say, OK,

Tom, we need you to help tell our story. If the story is not authentic, then it’s built on lies. And a house built on lies is not going to last. Right. So what I my job is to uncover why are you awesome? Who would care that you’re awesome? And then figure out a way to connect those two things. Right. There’s people out there looking for awesome. If you’re that, let’s tell the story that connects with that person. But it starts with you being truly authentic. And, you know, last point on this is there was a book.

Tom Nixon (07:18.54)
Maybe even just a blog post I read 20 years ago that said customer service is the new marketing. And I think that holds true today. People are not being white gloved anymore. You know, the brands that do that really well almost don’t have to do marketing, but that is their marketing. So that’s what I meant by go be awesome. Easier said than done. But what’s baked into that is don’t think already that just because you’re putting an ad on Facebook that somebody is going to think you’re awesome. Everybody can do that. Right.

Curtis Hays (07:43.918)
Riot.

Yeah, so I want to touch on that. What you just said about customer service, I a LinkedIn post the other day where I said something to that effect of like, I’ve just now realized if you’re doing content marketing, don’t be thinking about selling. Right? So if you’re doing content marketing, be thinking about customer service, which customer service, let’s flip those words around. You’re providing service to your customers, but free. Free, right?

Tom Nixon (08:11.222)
Yeah. That’s scary. Right.

Curtis Hays (08:14.075)
And, and I think that’s hard for a lot of companies to like get into this mindset of like, you’re not tricking them. These aren’t lead magnets. These aren’t landing pages. We’re not optimizing for keywords. We are trying to earn. What’s up?

Tom Nixon (08:24.892)
Right. Yes.

Tom Nixon (08:30.752)
Or conversion or we’re not optimizing for conversion either, which means give me money.

Curtis Hays (08:35.339)
Right, right, right. We are trying to earn the trust of an audience, right? And it’s like how…

Tom Nixon (08:40.972)
Right. That’s right. mean, all of the terminology baked into traditional digital marketing is loaded with like all of these facades, right? A lead magnet.

Curtis Hays (08:53.263)
And that’s my wake up right now. I’m like, I’m literally coming awake to this realization that like everything I’ve been doing isn’t grounded in something. And so what that grounded is, Tom, is an emotional response that you want from your audience. talk about two things. I’m gonna just a two part question. The first question is define an audience.

Tom Nixon (09:04.174)
Mm-hmm.

Curtis Hays (09:19.855)
Okay, and what that really means. We talk about ICPs and personas and different things like that. We had a guest on last week. We talked about audiences a bit, but talk about what an audience really means. And then the second part of that question is you want to get an emotional response from that audience first, and that’s why you lead with why. But talk about what that really means, that emotional response.

Tom Nixon (09:31.576)
Okay.

Tom Nixon (09:50.03)
Yeah. Well, it audience. Let’s stick within the confines of the term awesome, right? So an audience is somebody who already thinks something is awesome, right? So if you go to a concert, there’s an audience there, right? And they’re there because they think that the person on stage is awesome, right? It’s like, love this band. Your audience is the entire universe of people who will genuinely respond to you in some way, usually emotionally to your point, maybe intellectually.

But they think something is awesome and you might be the conduit to get them there. They don’t you don’t the trick isn’t to convince them that you’re awesome. They’re not going to believe you at first, right? They convince the trick. It’s not even a trick. The task that you have is to align with an audience of people, a tribe. Seth Godin calls it right. Finding a tribe that already exists that needs to get someplace. I don’t want to jump too far ahead because we’re going to get in. You have a question. I know on this concept.

That audience needs to get someplace. You need to be in that audience, not talking to that audience as a first step, because when you do that, you get to understand what makes them tick. Where do they need to go? How are they going to get there? How do I potentially fit in to this? And I want to use the journey. I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but where they’re going. Right. And if you can understand those things, then you can speak their language and then you can.

identify with them in a line with them as opposed to say, I’m here, you’re there. You need to get where I am. There’s a ticket that you need to pay to get where I’m at. And that’s not what I’m advocating for. So an audience is that group that genuinely genuinely is all going in a certain place, right? For B2B audiences, that can be tricky because sometimes it’s less emotional. So we think but truly at the heart of any sort of journey in in a in a

purchase is the end of a journey or maybe it’s the midpoint of a journey. It’s all driven by this thing, this emotional, guttural, instinctive desire that a certain group of people has. That’s different than saying who are Yes.

Curtis Hays (12:00.483)
There’s an outcome. That’s what we miss out on, right? I know we’re going to talk about that, but there is an outcome, I think no matter what, whether you’re buying a product, selling a service, you have a software, there’s an outcome. Right?

Tom Nixon (12:12.846)
Yeah, exactly. The outcome isn’t always necessarily a sale. There are sales. Obviously, we’re all in business to sell things, right? So I’m not going to say you’ll never, you know, don’t ever.

Curtis Hays (12:20.963)
Yeah. It’s not your outcome. It’s your audience’s outcome.

Tom Nixon (12:26.082)
That’s what we need to focus on. And what we just said earlier, landing pages, lead magnets, conversions, shopping carts, all of these things are oriented around the seller’s outcome, right? I want you as a lead. I want to attract you. I want to get you onto a landing page. I want to have you captive. I want you to convert or sign up for a demo. Of course, that’s the outcome that we want. But what does the person want that we’re trying to put into this audience?

They want to solve a problem and there’s an effective way to do that. And you mentioned I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but we should talk a little bit about what that journey looks like.

Curtis Hays (13:09.879)
Well, yeah, we can go there. Well, let’s go back to your English roots. Did you learn about the hero’s journey?

Tom Nixon (13:19.756)
Okay.

Tom Nixon (13:23.786)
That’s exactly where I wanted to go. Yes.

Curtis Hays (13:25.335)
Okay. My daughter loves writing. She’s in English. She knows a lot more than me about the hero’s journey, but we’ve talked about it a bit. We’re big Star Wars fans. And so, you know, in the context of all the different episodes and cartoons and spinoffs and all those types of things, there are hero’s journeys. And, you know, those arcs.

Tom Nixon (13:35.842)
Mm-hmm.

Curtis Hays (13:52.173)
And we’ve talked a lot about those arcs and those types of things. Okay, so tell us what a hero’s journey is.

Tom Nixon (13:57.72)
So it’s a framework. think, you know, it’s existed since the dawn of time. I think since probably cavemen and women were drawing on, you know, on the caves and trying to tell stories. But it’s I think formally identified by a man by the name of Joseph Campbell. And he was trying to deconstruct what makes for a great narrative. And he identified that there’s

consistency among all of the great stories as old as time, whether it’s Greek mythology, whether it’s the story that’s in the Bible, New and Old Testament, or whether it’s Star Wars to this day. George Lucas has even said he was a big disciple of the hero’s journey. What it is essentially, just before we even apply it to marketing, is that there’s a person who has some sort of either gift or flaw, tragedy, whatever it is, and that person, because of that, ultimately gets called to an adventure.

So let’s think of Luke Skywalker, right? Luke Skywalker at the beginning doesn’t even realize he has the force doesn’t even know what the force is, but he lowly farmer who meets a stranger, right? Who sounds like he’s a mad person. When he leaves, he’s a little bit inspired by this person, but mostly confused. And when he goes back, he finds that his, his village has been burned down in the aunt and uncle that were taking care of him are dead. Here’s a call to an adventure.

Curtis Hays (14:58.915)
He’s a lowly farmer.

Tom Nixon (15:19.17)
For him, it’s vengeance. He needs to figure out who did this and why, and he needs to exact revenge. So then he goes on this whole journey, right, where he goes back and he goes back to this mysterious stranger. It says, tell me more about the force. And then he learns the force over the time he goes to meet Yoda, right? And so he gets to finally meets his father and the father is the bad guy. wait, spoilers. Hold on. Spoilers, spoilers, spoilers, spoilers. Turn this off if you haven’t seen Star Wars, right?

Curtis Hays (15:43.598)
You

Tom Nixon (15:47.542)
And so at the end of that, as you’re watching that, you can’t help but align with Luke Skywalker, right? And you’re rooting for him and you want him to kill close your ears, Darth Vader, because this is outcome, right? And so that is a typical hero’s journey. So it’s a call to action or call to adventure. There’s this transformation, something changes and then. Pieces restored happiness ensues. So what people have done is they’ve applied that the smart people have applied that to then

marketing, right? So, but the twist is, the inclination is to make yourself the hero in the story. So you go to a website, it’s like, look how great we are. We’ve got 20 years of experience. We’re faster. We’re cheaper. We’re better. Our widget does these 10 things, right? Look how great we are in the concept that I think people are found effective. The experts of the world, um, inclusive, including Joseph Campbell say, no, the hero in the journey is this person in your audience who you want to become a customer.

They don’t want to become your customer. They want to solve their problem. They have a dragon to slay. They have a mountain to climb. They have some sort of aspirational end game. Your product may or may not be the thing that gets them there, but let’s show them how you might fit into their story. Let’s not sell them a product. Let’s relate to them. Be part of them. It’s just maybe we guide them along. We hop into the story. We take their hand and we say, okay, I’m Han Solo.

You never met me before, but I say I can help you. Right. And so really fast. Right. Yes. Yeah. He didn’t.

Curtis Hays (17:19.981)
I’ve got this great spaceship that’s really fast. Now you’re selling features and you know, these other things, right? But you didn’t even know that that person needed you at that point, right? Yeah.

Tom Nixon (17:29.294)
It’s exactly right. Exactly right. And if you remember, I told the story of the Fisher King. Can I tell that story again real quick? Because I think this is gets to the heart of how you should think about how you’re doing your messaging. this Fisher King was a movie in the late 80s, early 90s with, Jeff Bridges. Yeah, Jeff Bridges, Robin Williams, Mercedes Ruel. Anyway.

Curtis Hays (17:36.964)
Yeah.

Curtis Hays (17:48.143)
I think it was 91 or 92. I looked it up the last time you mentioned it. Yep.

Tom Nixon (17:54.52)
There’s a part just to get to the heart of it where the main character, Robert Williams has to explain to Jeff Williams. What is this Fisher King that he keeps talking about? And he tells us quick parable about this young man who wanted to become a king someday. And he was out in the woods and he saw this vision and in this vision was this Holy Grail in this ring of fire. And he got so enamored with it. He had to have it right now. So he went in and he grabbed it. And as soon as he went to grab it, it disappeared and he burned his hand and he went through his entire life.

wanting to get that Holy Grail. And so eventually he becomes king. He becomes very old and very feeble has never found the Holy Grail. He’s dispatched all his best people to find it. Can never find it. One day he’s lying in a bed and he’s tired and he’s thirsty and this lowly fool comes up to him and hands him a glass of water and the king now grabs the glass of water. It’s not a glass of water. It’s the Holy Grail. It’s a chalice. And he says to the fool, how did you know?

I put all of my best, but how did you know where to find this? This is I’ve been looking for this my entire life. This is the Holy Grail. And the fool says, I didn’t know any of those things. I only knew that you were thirsty. So that’s how we need to position ourselves. Not that we have the Holy Grail, but that you’re thirsty. We understand that that’s horrible. And maybe I have a way to help you. So lots of stories, lots of, but that’s another example of the hero’s journey, right?

Curtis Hays (19:14.511)
Mm-hmm.

Curtis Hays (19:19.961)
So what I finally learned then with that is it’s not our story that we need to tell. It’s our customer’s story. And in order to be able to tell our customer’s story, we have to get to know our customer. So here we have clients who we say we need to help them. They come to us and say, help us do content marketing. We say, OK, let’s take a look at your messaging.

Who are you talking to? What are you saying? What’s your unique value proposition? All these different types of things. If that’s not in a good place, we say, okay, we need to take a moment to talk to your customers. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,

Tom Nixon (20:01.538)
Right,

Tom Nixon (20:09.496)
They’ve already told us everything. We know what makes our customers tick.

Curtis Hays (20:14.691)
We’ve got existing customers, but these new profiles who we’re actually going after, whatever situation you’re in, you have to do the due diligence, take the time and do research to understand that journey. I think what I’m understanding is, yes, the journey is important, but knowing the outcome, is that the…

Is that the point of this story? Like, I only knew that you were thirsty, right? So it’s like, I knew the outcome that you’re trying to get to. I understand your pain, and I’m here to help you solve that pain. Everybody’s journey might be slightly different, but the path they walk, you have to understand because you want them to walk that path towards you. They’re going to walk the path, but getting them to walk the path towards you,

Tom Nixon (21:03.491)
Yes.

Curtis Hays (21:08.525)
You have to understand their journey. And so there’s this, I guess you could use the Star Wars analogy, which just sort of came to me and saying this that Obi-Wan Kenobi could relate to Luke Skywalker because he’s walked Luke Skywalker’s journey, which is in episodes one, two and three. It’s not the exact same journey, but it’s still a journey and he had mentors that helped him solve his problem, right?

Tom Nixon (21:37.824)
All right. Let’s stick in the Star Wars theme. This is great. So Obi-Wan Kenobi knew the backstory that Luke did not know. Right. And so that’s typically our role is to learn the backstory that the clients don’t know. Our clients don’t know. Right. Because they’ve never asked. A lot of times we’re afraid to ask. So what I’m trying to do and I insist on speaking with clients customers is I’m trying to understand the genesis of the story, the beginning of the story.

Curtis Hays (21:40.099)
you

Curtis Hays (21:46.457)
Yeah.

Curtis Hays (21:56.27)
Yeah.

Tom Nixon (22:06.324)
And I don’t ask it this way, but it essentially follows the model of tell me what life was like before you went out looking to solve this problem. I don’t want to hear you tell me how great my client is and whatever. And I can go read Google reviews for that. We do do that, of course. But what was life like? What what hurt like? What got you to a point where you’re like, I can’t live like this anymore. I need to go find a solution. That’s what we’re trying to trigger on. That’s the call to adventure. So what is the call to adventure? Because we want to be there.

the moment they get called to adventure. But we need to understand what’s motivating this. Is it emotional? Is it intellectual? Is it a pain? Is it an aspiration? All of these things. That is, that’s the why. Right. That is the why. Then the person who gets called to adventure goes out the first step of the journey is to say, okay, how do I solve this problem? Right. So do I go back to Obi-Wan and say, you know, take me to my father, take me to the bad guys, whatever it is. But it’s like there’s

Curtis Hays (22:43.289)
So that’s the why. When you say why, how, what, that’s the why.

Tom Nixon (23:03.606)
some first step in the journey. And that’s usually when the person, the customer goes out shopping for a solution. All right, I’m to do a Google search. I’m going to ask a friend. I’m going to go join this forum. Who’s out there that can solve my problem? And there’s a bunch of competitors. They all do the same thing, right? So. They all claim that they do it the best, right? But now, so this person on this journey is now into a.

how mindset, right? They’ve already been motivated by why and they’re starting to evaluate vendors or potential partners on how a lot of that language sounds the same because everyone’s claiming to the same thing. We’re the fastest. We’re the best. We’re the smartest. We’re the cheapest. Right? So the brains that move ahead of that and say I am connecting with you on this emotional level. You’re why not only do I understand it. I’ve lived it and I’ve helped other people through this journey are going to have an advantage over the people who only talk about their house.

Everyone talks about their how the key though is finding a differentiating how that separates you in the store, separates you as a provider potentially then then the masses. So that’s another reason I’m asking this client, right? So when you went out, look at why did you settle on my client? You could have chosen everybody else. What was it about the way that my client did it? And then we start getting into how well they were the only ones that were offering a 30 day guarantee.

And this is a big risk for our organization. Everybody else, you know, was asking us to sign up, whatever it is. There’s this how and then I start differentiating that how against the competitive field and we’re going to lean into that. And then the what is what they buy at the end. you know, you mentioned why, how, what the why, how, what is what they and typically all the what’s look indistinguishable. And by the time there’s a what and there’s a purchase decision and where there’s a contract that maybe there’s even a bid list. You’ve already if you engage with them on a why and you’ve

you’ve demonstrated that you have a differentiating how you are way ahead of the field and sometimes not price doesn’t even matter. It’s like, yeah, they were more expensive, but you know what? These guys get us and I’m willing to pay more because of their how these other companies don’t do it this way and that’s what I need. So I’m willing to pay more.

Curtis Hays (25:13.679)
Right. So,

You’re focusing on what success looks like for your customer at the end, right? At least most of your messaging in the beginning. We’ve had a lot of analogies. I want to sort of tie this back to business here, if we could, and content marketing itself. And that like…

Tom Nixon (25:41.038)
Yep.

Curtis Hays (25:46.763)
If you’re not trying to be the hero in that case, you know, and there’s maybe a few different things that you sort of mentioned and what you unpacked in that there are different ways that you can set your prospect, your ideal customer up for success. Right? So different types of content marketing, like educational content or motivational content and different things like that. Talk about the different, you know, types of

I guess strategies for a business of, you know, how are you going to potentially position the why and deliver it? You know, it’s like, there’s different ways I suppose you could deliver the why, get that emotional response and pull that audience in. It’s not an audience if they just…

come to a landing page, see some content and leave. They’re not an audience yet. They were a visitor. Right? Yeah, they were a visitor. And an audience is somebody who you have their attention. Right? And I think there’s different ways of getting their attention, isn’t there?

Tom Nixon (26:47.724)
visitor. Right. Visitor.

Tom Nixon (26:57.848)
There are and it maps to well, real quick because I forgot to it is it’s baked into your question. Part of the customer interview process, by the way, is to get to that ending journey and say, OK, what does life look like now? We talked about what life looked like before we went through your journey. And now what’s the happy ending? The happy ending to the end of the story is what we want to key in on because that’s what we want to show that we could demonstrate for the other the next person who’s at the beginning of that journey. Right. So we we we get all of that.

Curtis Hays (27:09.187)
Yeah.

Tom Nixon (27:27.756)
Then we understand specifically and this why, how, what model there’s an implicit step that we skipped over, which is important, which is the who. And we’ll come back to that because who is the audience? Keep using this. The who is a specific persona profile. What that who needs to get to this end goal is going to change based on industry, the product or service you offer, whatever their pain point is. But we asked them, know, when you went shot, what were some of the

determination, the criteria, right? That you were considering when you were looking for a vendor and keep in mind, not everyone is currently in market for your product or service. So you’re telling this to you’re gaining this audience before they even have the pain potentially.

Curtis Hays (28:06.329)
Yeah, what is it like?

Exactly. Like what is it 7, 10 % are actually in market to buy right now of your total audience. I shouldn’t even say considering they’re in that lower part of the funnel. So you’ve got 90 % still way up here at the top that haven’t self identified yet. But they’re what Amy would call potentially learners.

Tom Nixon (28:15.842)
Yep.

Tom Nixon (28:29.986)
So which segues into the answer to your question. So we have to give them things that demonstrate that should you be in this position to start this journey someday, you’re going to know where the first step is. And sometimes for my B2B for my professional services clients who sell things like legal services, sophisticated IT, consulting, things like that, you’re not always in market for an attorney or new attorney or whatever.

Curtis Hays (28:59.459)
You hope you’re never in market for an attorney.

Tom Nixon (28:59.576)
But exactly, but if you are, you want to have the confidence that you’re not just doing a Google search and saying who’s the best IP attorney? I’m getting my butt sued here, right? So the smart IP attorney would demonstrate expertise along the way, establish authority, gain trust, earn a reputation so that when somebody moves into market, they think of this attorney first and not.

everybody else. And so, maybe there is no search. Maybe there is no competitive bid list. Maybe it’s just, you know what, Tom, IP attorney, I have this problem. You’ve demonstrated to me that you’ve solved this for others. I need you to solve it for me. So, how did Tom do that? Well, Tom, back to your question, told stories, right? They remapped others customer journeys. So, you know, here’s a company that had this huge trademark issue. Thankfully, they took these measures to protect themselves so that when the

the beast entered in Act three and said, I’m suing you, they were protected, and they saved themselves millions of dollars. That’s just a story you tell, right? There’s also educational content. So sometimes, like you said, when they’re at the top of the funnel, they’re learners. And so they need to learn you need to give away for free some of your best ideas. Attorneys particular struggle with that, because that’s what they should be paid for. But if you aren’t doing that, then you aren’t establishing the trust, the authority and all of these things that people need to want to hire you. So

There’s you could answer that a million ways. And part of our job is to map that to the authentic customer journey for that well established who that I mentioned at the beginning so that they’re getting the things that they need. If they need to learn something, let’s teach them. If they need to understand something, let’s analyze something. If they need to be aware of something, let’s tell them if they need to be entertained, let’s give them a story. So it’s not the same for everyone, but it needs to be if you don’t go again, ask.

the audience, the customer, the potential customer, what’s the journey you need to take and what’s the outcome you need to achieve, then you won’t know. And so back to your original problem at the beginning, I have $3,000 to spend a month on what? I don’t know. I just know I need leads, right?

Curtis Hays (31:10.039)
Right. Right. And you’d be better off taking that money to the casino, I think, and putting it in a slot machine or a roulette table in a lot of cases. Because if you don’t, and I say that because if you don’t understand this journey and you’re features, products, if it’s talking to a brand today, you know, they’re in a huge market and they’re definitely a competitive player, but they’re selling on features. And

Tom Nixon (31:13.953)
See

Exactly. Exactly.

Curtis Hays (31:37.847)
They’re going to run a 4th of July sale here. We’re a couple of weeks away from 4th of July. And it was like, hey, can we create some creative that has this cool rod and this thing, like they come together and like all this is like, you’re selling the product and you have to remember that your audience is going to see ads this next week from 10 of your competitors. What is going to stand out that you’re going to

put into their feed. And it’s the outcome. It’s not, you’re putting yourself as the hero. You think that your product is so cool and so fancy. And at the end of the day, it actually is. But what that customer cares about is the outcome. You’re just a tool that gets them to that outcome. So what happens if you don’t sell the product, but you display the outcome? And I said, I

If you’re going to put out a piece of content in an ad, would you share it on your own social media? Would you go to your own personal page and share this and be proud of it? Because at the end of the day, that’s what you want. A successful ad doesn’t just show up in feeds and get clicks. People share it. And if there’s an offer next to it, they’ll want their friends and family or whoever to take advantage of that offer too.

But if you sell on features, you’re going to lose. And it goes back to the first question I think I asked you, or maybe second, which was on the emotional piece. People buy largely based off of emotion. They make decisions largely based off of that. And so you’ve got to capture that emotion, number one, and then earn their trust. Now you’ve got an audience. An audience is paying attention to you.

So what are you going to do to get their attention?

Tom Nixon (33:36.014)
then an audience can’t wait to buy your next product. You don’t even have to put it on sale, right? And so you mentioned the sales to be bombarded with all of the competitors products who essentially look the same, right? So there’s all the watts, all the watts. I’m bombarded with 10 watts. How do I know which what is best for me? The companies that do this well. So I’ll just give you a couple examples because we’re familiar with them and not everyone’s in this luxury brand sort of space. But think in terms of

Curtis Hays (33:39.759)
Right.

Tom Nixon (34:01.644)
Remember the car commercials we watched growing up for a sports car, right? And it was a young man with chiseled chin and he’s driving through the city or something and all the heads are turning the models, right? And you know, he wants to be you and she wants to be with you. It’s that whole thing. The person that they’re targeting is who wouldn’t you want to be in that chair? Wouldn’t you want to be in that seat surrounded by luxury and everyone’s looking at you and the girls think you’re cute, right? That’s selling the outcome, not the car.

Nike is famous for this, right? With their Just Do It campaign. It’s just brilliant because they never really sell you a shoe, right? Are Nike shoes better than Reebok or Adidas? I don’t know. I mean, they’re all made in sweatshops, but Nike has the brand because they’re selling exactly. And then Lebron and then Tiger, right? It’s like, I want to be the best. The best is these people who have achieved this outcome. That’s me. That’s the hero’s journey. They already got there.

Curtis Hays (34:46.477)
Everyone wanted to be Jordan.

Tom Nixon (35:00.78)
I need their product to get me there too. the last example was Apple was always really good at this. Not as much anymore since the passing of Steve jobs, sadly, but their commercials never even showed the product. Even they showed a young man who is seemingly ignoring his family during Christmas vacation constantly on his phone. But what he was doing, if you know this ad is he was actually filming the family. He was making a video of the family for Christmas vacation.

Curtis Hays (35:03.085)
Yeah.

Tom Nixon (35:29.294)
and he shows them at the end of the Christmas party. Here’s what this last week meant to me. And there’s not a dry eye in the house. It has nothing to do with the phone. It has nothing to do with the camera. It has nothing to do with iMovie. It has everything to do with the outcome. Right? So.

Curtis Hays (35:42.383)
Yeah, it reminds me of the Christmas Folger commercials and like the college son comes home Christmas morning and the parents wake and they don’t know he’s in the house and they wake up in the morning and they smell the coffee. It’s like, did you make the coffee? No, did you make the coffee? And then they walk down downstairs in the robe and the Christmas tree is on and the presents are under the tree. And here’s their son or daughter with a cup of coffee. They’re selling an experience. know, Folgers is what, $6 a can? It’s not.

Tom Nixon (36:11.374)
Right.

Curtis Hays (36:12.143)
It’s not the $16 a bag, fancy stuff, but they’re connecting at an emotional level related to memories and those types of things. actually, my wife and I have memories of her dad because he always made Folgers. Whenever we went to visit, that’s what we woke up to. There’s this nostalgia to it that makes you then want to buy that product.

Tom Nixon (36:41.812)
Yes, as opposed to here’s the

Curtis Hays (36:42.543)
They’re not like, it tastes the best and it’s got, you know, no mold and all these other things.

Tom Nixon (36:46.498)
here’s the other way to here’s the other way to do it that we’re advocating against would be why don’t wake up to a perfect Christmas morning for only $6 a can you can get instant crown right and poured you know it’s made in minutes and smells delicious and it’s right who relates to that nobody

Curtis Hays (37:05.071)
Well, and that goes to the other thing that you say all the time, which is show me, don’t tell me. Right? I just showed you the experience. I didn’t have to tell you to buy our coffee. You want to buy our coffee because I just showed you that, you know, the coffee was just this little exclamation point. Maybe it’s not even an exclamation point at the end. Like the lot of really good commercials, you don’t know what the commercial is, who would even, that’s a Super Bowl. It’s like, who’s this commercial going to be for? And then all of a sudden at the very end, it’s revealed.

Tom Nixon (37:09.164)
Right, exactly.

Tom Nixon (37:32.94)
The coffee in this case is a character in the story, right? It may be in this more specifically, it’s a prop in the story. What we’re watching is the story. This goes back to what we’re saying. What you’re watching is the story and you’re relating to the story. And you want to be that hero in the story, which is I wake up Christmas morning and it’s magical. And I’m going to remember this morning for the rest of my life. By the way, there’s coffee here that would probably fit into that story really well. You know, we could be a part of that too.

Curtis Hays (37:35.619)
Yeah, right.

Curtis Hays (37:43.556)
Yeah.

Curtis Hays (37:52.068)
Right.

Curtis Hays (37:58.499)
Right.

Tom Nixon (37:58.67)
So that’s the story that and you know, it’s difficult for brands. And sometimes it slows companies down because they think already have the $3,000. Just put it into the gumball machine and see if a gumball comes out. Right. It’s like, well, hold on, slow down.

Curtis Hays (38:11.981)
Yeah, so that’s a I think that’s a good segue because I want the last thing I want to talk about here is I think a lot of companies don’t know where to. So let’s say they’ve gone through this process and then it’s like, man, I can’t create a million dollar commercial. I can’t like hire a videographer to come in here. It’s cost me ten thousand dollars a day for them to come in and film. Then I got the editing. I only get two or three pieces of content. Then I go and I got to spend money.

You know, and then once, once I spend that money, it’s gone, right? So didn’t build an audience when you go through that process. I a hundred percent agree. And there are likely less expensive ways to do this. Great example is Gary V. And I sort of understood his backstory and then heard this specific story here recently when I’m, because I’ve been listening now to your OB1, your Brian Clark. And, and, so, so I knew this Gary V’s family had a wine business.

And I knew he created a website for them and started doing social when social came out, became this big advocate. And now Gary V has one of the largest media companies in the world. But what I didn’t know is that the start of that website was him then going upstairs from their store in New Jersey and putting out a kitchen table or coffee table and a camera at the other end of that.

and started doing YouTube videos back when YouTube literally just came out and talking about wine and made people actually feel comfortable buying wine because he was educating people about wine with a simple camera and just used a platform that was accessible to him to reach his audience. And his audience tuned in, they consumed his content and at the end of the day, then they bought product from the store and

Tom Nixon (39:41.058)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Curtis Hays (40:05.197)
They quickly went from a $3 million company to a $40 million company. And now he’s got one of the largest, you know, he, don’t know if he’s a billionaire yet, but he’s, he’s, he’s doing pretty good for himself. so you’ve talked about like rented land versus owned land and certainly, you know, there, that could be a whole episode in and of itself of, and I think we want to have another one on the peso model and really kind of diving in into this stuff. But.

Just, you know, where does a company have to look at? Like if they are going to do content or they’re doing content today and they’re not seeing results, where should they start outside of, okay, I found my audience, I’ve got my messaging, I’ve got to get this content out into the world, what do I do next?

Tom Nixon (40:59.236)
Is the assumption they’ve done that well, that part well, and we’ve got

Curtis Hays (41:01.871)
My assumption is they’ve done that well. Let’s say they’ve gone through our why, how, what. They’ve redid their website, you know, those types of, but they need to do content marketing now. Now is the next step to say we’ve got the strategy. How do we determine being how I started out this conversation of like, here’s the five best marketing strategies for 2025. It’s like, you could have the messaging and understand the journey down, right? But then

Tom Nixon (41:11.171)
Mm-hmm.

Curtis Hays (41:30.191)
How do I get that out to the masses to capture my audience?

Tom Nixon (41:37.31)
assume, right? So that they’re starting, right? Because you said, where do I start? And let’s also assume that they don’t have a huge budget. They’ve got a modest budget. It goes back to who, right? So go tell me who that audience is. Here’s what I would just say. Who’s your audience? Now we know that. What’s the journey look like? What are they trying to solve? What does the outcome look like? The happy ending? And where does that audience already live, and play? So there’s the next W word. Where? Where are they? Are they on Facebook? Are they in forums? Are they on Twitter? Are they at TikTok? Are they on LinkedIn?

Curtis Hays (41:40.462)
Yeah. Yeah.

Tom Nixon (42:07.246)
What I would say is I wrote a whole book about this called Do Less Sell More. This one with the yellow. It starts with one. It’s one thing. Find the channel. And this might be YouTube, but you have to ask them. You have to go do the research. It start there and say, OK, what? All right. Let’s say it’s I’m going go back to my lawyer friend. Right. So that lawyer’s clients.

Curtis Hays (42:14.223)
it is.

Tom Nixon (42:32.962)
They need to learn. They need their learners. They need education. They’re not on TikTok though. So video strategy makes very little sense for them. They’re not on Facebook. Where are they? They’re on LinkedIn. find a channel, pick the one channel. What’s the best form of media in that channel for storytelling, education, all of the things, building trust, explaining things, analyzing things. Is it identify the media? Is it the written word? Is it going to be short homemade videos?

Is it going to be audio podcasts like this? Right? And then now that you understand the where now you’ve understood this next level of you build a strategy of say, okay, these are the things here’s the list of the problems that the who told me that they’re facing. Here’s how I solve those problems. And now it’s just a matter of mapping things, right? If this is like, I need to explain this. This doesn’t work without a visual. So that’s going to be a video. I need to tell this story.

Why should I tell the story? Why don’t I bring the client on a podcast or do a video interview and have that client tell their story? So it’s kind of a way of saying it depends, but it’s all intuitive once you’ve done this work. Once you’ve mapped out the journey and you’re very clear on who the who is and what the whys are in the house and the what’s this becomes the easy part at the end. The problem is people ask this question first. I was like, Tom, what should my content marketing strategy be? I don’t know, but I know how to find out, right? So that’s going back to the original.

proposition, which is there is $3,000 Curtis go spend it. Where right.

Curtis Hays (44:06.135)
Right. And would you agree that focusing purely on that one channel is potentially a mistake if you don’t figure out how to get them off to a channel that you own? For example, would be a means to collecting their email address or something like that. So now you own their contact info or you even have content in a place that you own where they can access

Tom Nixon (44:22.166)
Well, this is where we might have to.

Curtis Hays (44:35.193)
So that if an algorithm change happens, if those people leave that platform for some reason, you still have that audience. And that audience still has that opportunity to consume content from you.

Tom Nixon (44:48.524)
Yeah, we should probably do a whole episode on this because you mentioned being Obi-Wan. I have two Yodas here. One is going to be on the podcast soon. Mark Schaefer, who made the point that you have to build on rented land, meaning people aren’t on your website all the time. You don’t have subscribers as many as you want on your newsletter. So you need to go where they’re actually spending their time. Rented land are things like LinkedIn, Facebook, and all of those things. You have to have a strategy there, a native strategy, which is why I post long blog posts right on LinkedIn.

Curtis Hays (45:10.318)
Yeah.

Tom Nixon (45:16.922)
way of thinking was get those people over to your website, right? But not only do people not necessarily want to do that, but all of the algorithms now are trying to suppress that type of content because they don’t want people leaving their platform. That said, my other Yoda is Brian Clark, who founded Copy Blogger. We’ll do a whole episode maybe on these guys, who invented content marketing. You would think that his philosophy is content is king, and he says no, content is not king. Audience is king.

And what he advocates for is what you just said, which is you need to get some portion of that audience out in the world to want to be your audience. And this goes back to being awesome. If you’re awesome, you’re going to attract certain amount of those that can’t wait around for your next pearl of wisdom. They want to sign up for it. I subscribe to about five newsletters. I can’t live without them. There’s not 30 of them, but the five that I can’t live without understand me and what makes me tick. And now I’m in their audience in that.

Curtis Hays (46:06.382)
Yeah.

Tom Nixon (46:13.63)
Owned audience is something that Facebook can’t change with an algorithm. LinkedIn can’t suppress with an algorithm. And there’s an owned channel, which is email, which you own that you can always reach those people and avert the algorithms, and avert the rule changes that we’re always succumbing to when we build on rented land.

Curtis Hays (46:32.143)
So let’s wrap this up. My final takeaway then is don’t go and spend that money on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google, wherever, because you just might as well just light the money on fire or take it to a casino if you don’t have that means of bringing them into your own property.

Tom Nixon (46:54.21)
Yep, absolutely.

Curtis Hays (46:54.893)
You’re just throwing it away. You’re wasting your money on clicks and all this. You’re going to have a small percentage you might purchase, who might come into your lead funnel or whatever, but you got to figure out how to, how you are actually transitioning those people into audiences. Cause right now they’re just visitors. They’re just, they’re just users out on there. If you don’t have a way to turn them into audiences, don’t do it. Seriously, don’t do it. I will not take your money. I’ve now decided I’m not taking your money. So that’s, that’s

Tom Nixon (47:08.846)
Exactly.

Tom Nixon (47:17.912)
the exact same thing.

Curtis Hays (47:24.351)
Those are my final thoughts. We’ll help you get there. I just won’t take your money to advertise it. I won’t take your ad dollars, but we’ll bring in Tom and we’ll help you with the strategy. Okay, final thoughts, Tom, close this out.

Tom Nixon (47:34.382)
My final thought too is that once you have the audience, so this does take time, right? It’s hard work, whatever. But once you have this audience, think about what you’re an audience of, right? Like there’s certain things that you couldn’t pry me away from, right? I got all these Apple products here, right? I’m sure Google and Android and Samsung and all would love my business. They might have better ones. I don’t know, but I’m a huge fan. I’ll wear an Apple shirt. I’ll put a sticker on my car. I don’t do those things, but

Curtis Hays (47:39.213)
Yeah,

Tom Nixon (48:02.124)
Fans do right. You can’t get me away. And then the next time you introduce a product, I have to have it. So thinking those terms, I’m an audience of Apple. I’m not a customer that bought an Apple product one time. End of story. All right, let’s leave it there. We will be back soon partner. Maybe I’ll interview you next time on the next episode of bullhorns, bullseyes.