The Power in Audacity

Tom Nixon (00:03.062)
Welcome back one and all to bull horns and bulls eyes. Curtis, you were, uh, you, probably recall me saying something along the lines of, should you build on rented land? If you remember, thought that was so wise and so pithy. And I guess I had here to confess that if I’m ever sounding intelligent, it’s because I’m either quoting you, Brian Clark, or in the case of rented land, today’s guest, Mark Schaefer.

So you’re going right to the horse’s mouth today, Curtis.

Curtis Hays (00:33.777)
This is exciting. Yeah, I’ve asked you a few times, hey, we’ve got to bring some of the subject matter experts on who you’ve been learning from over the years. And I’ve been trying to understand this whole peso model and pair paid, earned, shared, owned, those types of things. What does that really mean? Build on rented land? And you’ve done your best to explain that to me. But excited to learn more today.

Tom Nixon (01:04.083)
Yeah. Well, I kind of feel like zero to Bergerac that I say that sorry. No diverse rock is, the words may be coming out of my mouth, but they were not my own. let’s bring on a true expert. As you mentioned on the subject matter of content and all things marketing, Mark Schaefer, Mark, welcome to the podcast.

MARK SCHAEFER (01:21.932)
Well, I’m delighted to be here with you fellas. Thanks for having me.

Tom Nixon (01:25.472)
So you are an educator, a consultant. know you’re a podcaster. You’re a blogger. I subscribe to your newsletter. So, tell us what is new and exciting in the world of Mark Schaefer these days.

MARK SCHAEFER (01:38.458)
well, I mean, the thing I guess I’m most excited about is I have a new book out and it’s called Audacious, How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World. And certainly that’s a timely topic and perhaps an existential topic. And I’m excited about it for a couple of reasons. First, I just think it’s my best work.

It’s a meaningful book. There’s ideas and inspirations on every page. It was a joy to write. Usually I get really burned out when I write a book. This is my 11th book. But this one, I was energized. I was really sad when it was over because I got to meet so many extraordinary people who are truly the best creative

moguls in the world. mean, they’re just amazing. And I’m also energized by the reception of the book. It’s doing very well. People love it. It’s getting lots of good reviews. So this is a fun, fun time for me to see that launch into the world.

Tom Nixon (02:53.364)
Yeah. Well, we want to dive deeply into that a little bit today, Curtis. So one of the key themes of this season has been this word authenticity and on Mark’s podcast, he did a whole episode on, if I were to put it in a nutshell, how authentic is too authentic perhaps. So what do you want to ask the expert on authenticity, Curtis?

MARK SCHAEFER (03:11.502)
See ya.

Curtis Hays (03:17.515)
Well, yeah, so in the ever changing world of AI, as we’ve mentioned, and all this ability to sort of create content, maybe ad nauseum, that everybody has the ability to create content at their fingertips, what can actually cut through all the noise and actually start to resonate with a target audience? And that’s something we’ve talked a lot about, Tom, of different ways, whether that’s video, whether that’s getting

behind are getting out from behind your logo and actually showing the people behind your brand and their thought leadership and those types of things to really connect. And if people really do buy from who they know, like and trust, you’ve got to be looking at ways of creating content that do that. So really interesting to hear what your thoughts there are, Mark, and lots changing in the world of AI and has over the last couple of years.

MARK SCHAEFER (04:19.0)
That’s a very deep question and a very important question. And I’m glad that your show is three hours so I can answer that appropriately. But let me just answer it in two ways. When Chat GPT came out, I could immediately see that this was, I mean, I think people use the word game changer a little too lightly, but that was certainly a game changer.

I can recognize that right away. So I called up a friend of mine. He’s a very famous tech analyst in New York, Shelley Palmer. Shelley has been around a long time and I said, Shelley, what do you think about this? He said, I’m terrified. He said, I’ve blogged almost every day for 15 years and I asked ChatGPT to write a three point blog post for me in my voice.

and it did a perfect job in three seconds. I’m 80 % replaced. Now, on the surface, that does seem terrifying. But the more important question for me is, what’s the 20 %? What’s the 20 % that is not being replaced, that AI can’t touch? And that is his personal brand. Personal brand isn’t

It doesn’t mean you’re dancing on TikTok. It doesn’t mean you’re Kim Kardashian. It doesn’t mean you’re necessarily famous. But what it means is you have the presence, the reputation and the authority to help you get your job done. And Curtis, as far as I know, this is the really the only leverage we have against AI is to have that courage.

to show up in a way that means something to people. Now, Shelley doesn’t have to worry. People are still gonna read his blog. They’re still going to attend his speeches because they know him and they believe in him and they trust him. And there will always be that need for a human connection to help us navigate this world of confusion and misinformation and…

Tom Nixon (06:21.783)
Yeah.

MARK SCHAEFER (06:45.442)
you know, and deep fakes. And I feel the same way. I’ve worked very hard to be consistent, to show up in a way that means something to people. And so that’s the first part of the answer. The second part of the answer is last year I tried to write a little book using AI. I’ve written 11 books and when I write a book

When it is finished, I am completely exhausted. It takes everything out of me mentally, psychologically, even physically. I feel ill because I get so obsessed with writing these books. So I was doing the third version of a little book that I wrote called Social Media Explained. It was time for an update. I thought, by golly.

I am going to use AI to write this darn book. I’m not going to be exhausted anymore. So I tried to use AI to write this book and it was a total flop. Because for me, the real meaning of my books and the way it connects with people, it’s my personality, it’s my stories, it’s my dad jokes, my humor that I put into my books.

It’s my anecdotes. It’s the way I connect the dots over decades of a career in this industry. AI just couldn’t touch it. It was just regurgitating information from the past. And that makes for a crappy book. So I meant something. I mean, I still mean something in this world.

You know, I can’t write a great book without my presence, without my personality, without my experience. So those are the two things. mean, like I said, I really literally could talk three hours on this subject because I just I’m totally immersed in that idea. But those are the two big ideas, I think, around how do we reinforce an important, meaningful human presence?

MARK SCHAEFER (09:10.272)
in this AI world.

Tom Nixon (09:12.65)
Yeah. I’m a huge believer. What’s that? Go ahead, Curtis.

Curtis Hays (09:13.579)
I like the first point, Tom, if I could, real quick, the first point on courage. And it’s the courage to put on a cowboy hat and jump on a podcast and record an episode every week. And now I have clients who I’m on a call and they say, hey, Curtis, I’ve got a question for you. Can you put the cowboy hat on? Like it’s synonymous with, I need your advice. You know, put on the thinking cap. Yeah. But Tom, the second point,

MARK SCHAEFER (09:18.86)
No, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Tom Nixon (09:21.654)
You

MARK SCHAEFER (09:34.424)
Sure. That’s great. Yeah, I love it.

Curtis Hays (09:41.483)
You had a story that you related, somebody that you read once who had this example of, know, asked Chachibiti to write me a story about how my, I think it was my daughter was born.

Tom Nixon (09:53.108)
Yep. Yep. Boy, I wish I had that at the ready. Yeah. And it’s Eddie. Copy by Eddie is the name. Are you familiar with Eddie? S. That’s all. Anyways, the basic premise was he asked you at GPT to write a story about the day he met his daughter. And it was in like you said, three seconds. There were 300 beautifully written words that describe the day a daughter is born, but they had nothing to do with the day that his daughter was born.

Curtis Hays (09:54.765)
Is that the story?

Tom Nixon (10:23.102)
And so he decided I’m going to retell the story the way I remember it. And I’m going to limit myself to the same 300 word count in his story. Literally evokes tears. I don’t even remember the story now, but I remember the feeling I had and I’m starting to already well up a little bit. And that’s that taking the C plus work that chat GPT might give you and turning it into an A plus. That’s the 20%. I think you’re talking about Mark. So, and I think it’s rooted in the core concept of your book in audacity. Curtis and I were.

MARK SCHAEFER (10:44.312)
Yeah.

Tom Nixon (10:52.156)
very much with B2B brands who they want to play it safe. They want to follow the leaders. They don’t want to be bold and they don’t want to be audacious. How do you convince your clients to now because it’s imperative that they do so. How are you convincing clients and coaching them that say it’s okay to take chances and be yourself and expose some of your authenticity?

MARK SCHAEFER (11:12.46)
Yeah, the word convince is a red flag for me. So my experience in business is the best leaders, the greatest leaders, they want to evolve. That’s their job. Their job is to beat the pants off the competition, to learn what’s happening, what’s new, where do we need to be? And if…

if I think the business case I present in the book audacious is just So self-evident, I mean, it’s just so slam dunk that we live in this world of boring and Look if you’re competent You’re vulnerable if you’re competent You’re ignorable if you’ve got people who are competent and you’re creating competent work

Those days are over. know, AI is going to do that for you. AI is more than competent. So you’ve got to dig deep and look.

I think B2B is especially ripe for disruption. So many industries, there’s this pandemic of dull that has just seeped in where boring has become institutionalized because that’s just the way everybody does it. And there’s this massive opportunity not to be stupid, not to be reckless, not to be offensive, but just to connect in a new way, just to do something that

people have never seen before to really earn attention for your products and your services. And it’s exciting. And a lot of people are dwelling on this. Maybe even they’re feeling depressed about how AI is nipping at the skill sets and nipping at the heels of our careers. And I’m like, you know, bring it on. I don’t have any competition. There’s only one me.

MARK SCHAEFER (13:22.318)
The more boring AI is, the more meh AI is, the bigger the opportunity is for really great marketers to transcend that and to not just survive, but to thrive. And I mean, that’s the opportunity. It’s this massive opportunity. I think great leaders will see that. I don’t like the word

Tom Nixon (13:22.55)
Mm-hmm.

MARK SCHAEFER (13:50.434)
you know, convinced because that basically is a losing hand. I mean, that, that to me, that’s a signal that the leadership just wants to, you know, hold their cards. They just, they just want to keep things the same. That’s not the type of people I want to work with. I want to work with people that say, Mark, help me, help me win. Help me see what’s next. Help me see what’s new. And I mean, like I said, the business case in that book is slam dunk.

Tom Nixon (13:54.037)
Mm-hmm.

MARK SCHAEFER (14:18.126)
You don’t have to be convinced. It’s self-evident.

Tom Nixon (14:24.49)
What about could you elaborate in the book you talk about the importance of disrupting where stories are told Curtis I know your ears are going to perk up because Curtis is a recent convert to the power of storytelling is that telling tales out of school Curtis.

MARK SCHAEFER (14:32.226)
Yeah

MARK SCHAEFER (14:40.526)
You

Curtis Hays (14:41.451)
There was an example you gave that I think really hit home for me, which was the story you told when you were a kid in one the papers you wrote. It was like the teacher came back and gave you feedback that said, don’t tell me the person was crying. Like actually describe the tear running down their face. it was like finally a light bulb came on for me that storytelling is this

Tom Nixon (14:58.571)
Yep.

MARK SCHAEFER (15:03.566)
I want

Curtis Hays (15:09.863)
art of making somebody feel something and why why the power of why really sits at the top of the marketing funnel as we’ve put it in the framework that we have. And so, you know, creating connections then just leads me to this authenticity, right? You can’t create these connections and create these feelings and those types of things unless you’re authentic. And you really have this ability to connect with whoever your reader is or watcher.

Tom Nixon (15:40.302)
Yep. Yep. Mark, what about do you have an example of a brand that’s done this really well, the storytelling and being disruptive? Explain what you mean by the concept.

MARK SCHAEFER (15:48.226)
Yeah, well, so, yeah, you mentioned this idea of disrupting where the story is told. So I’m, I’m, I’m the kind of guy. mean, when I write a book, I, I see what’s the problem in the world. mean, what are people really struggling with right now? And I’m not the kind of guy as a teacher and a consultant that’s going to look at the world and say, my gosh, AI is going to

Tom Nixon (15:58.07)
Ahem.

MARK SCHAEFER (16:17.42)
you know, do everything that we do. well, we’re just going to give up. I want to look at what do we do? What are our options? Where do we thrive? And so I went out and I got to meet the greatest marketing minds in the world, just absolute acclaimed geniuses. And how do we do it? What are they doing? And there is a pattern. And the pattern is.

So what is a story? A story is the narrative, it’s where it’s told, and it’s who tells it. So it’s an easy framework. You just think about what is our story? How could we tell it in a completely new way? And technology can really help us these days. How could we tell it in a new place? How do we disrupt who’s telling it? Because if we’re the ones who are telling

our own story, chances are they’re not going to believe it. If they hear it at all, they’re not going to believe it. Right. But people believe each other. People believe their friends, their family, their neighbors. How do we create something so awesome, so cool, so worthy that people can’t wait to tell other people about it? That’s the marketing that works. So, you know, Mackenzie did this study

a few years ago, I think they analyzed more than 200,000 customer journeys. And what they found was about two thirds of our sales are happening without us. Two thirds of our sales are happening because we’re just listening to other people. We see something posted on social media. You were sitting at dinner and someone tells us about this exciting new

product that they found or a new service that they found, where we hear it from an influencer or we see a review, we see a testimony. So if two thirds of our marketing is occurring without us, the best mindset today is to not have, sorry, fellas, a bullhorn. It’s not having the bullhorn, it’s handing the bullhorn to someone else.

Curtis Hays (18:36.235)
Okay.

Tom Nixon (18:36.31)
Yeah.

Curtis Hays (18:42.718)
Mm-hmm.

MARK SCHAEFER (18:43.97)
That’s the best marketing today. Create the script and then hand the bullhorn to somebody else because that’s what people really believe. So that’s disrupting who is telling the story. there’s lots and lots of examples. go deeply into all these ideas in the book, but you know, an example of disrupting where the story was told, you know, I start off the book with this huge challenge that I faced.

I was at South by Southwest and I was having dinner with friends and all of a sudden people started leaving the restaurant. They just stood up and left their food. And my back was to the door. was like, what the heck is going on here? There was no alarm. Everybody was calm. They just left. So I looked out the window and everybody was standing on the street. So my friends and we looked at each other and we got up.

We left our hot food and cold drinks to go stand on the street. And what we saw with this was this drone show in the sky, which was this is like maybe three or four years ago. So it was a novel idea at that point, this idea of a drone show, and it was promoting a new television show with all these images. And at the end of the images, there was a huge QR code in the sky. So now people were holding up their phone.

Tom Nixon (19:58.518)
.

MARK SCHAEFER (20:11.736)
clicking on this QR code in the sky and it goes to a trailer for the TV show.

Tom Nixon (20:19.438)
my ass.

MARK SCHAEFER (20:21.262)
And I was haunted by this for weeks because I challenged myself to think if someone came to me and said, Mark, I want to create a story so great people would leave their food in a restaurant to go see it, not just see it, but record it on their phones, share it all over the world. Click on a QR code to see more of it.

Tom Nixon (20:24.342)
You

MARK SCHAEFER (20:51.758)
Could I do it? And the answer was no. And I thought, is there a lesson here? Who did this? How did they come up with that idea? Are there lessons here? Is there a framework that we could teach any business to think through? And the answer to that is yes. And that’s what the book is about. you think about it, they told the story of this new show in the sky.

Tom Nixon (21:22.196)
Yeah, that’s amazing. So.

MARK SCHAEFER (21:23.746)
Yeah, and that’s really what made all the difference.

Tom Nixon (21:28.658)
And I see your new book over your right shoulder. It’s the orange color. There’s a QR code on the cover. If viewers are watching on YouTube and they take their phone and they scan that QR code, is that going to get them to the book?

MARK SCHAEFER (21:41.516)
No, it gets it. So here’s what it gets it to. So what we did is I uploaded the book to AI and AI is creating abstract images based on the stories in the book. So when you hold up your phone to the book cover, the book cover changes endlessly. It’s an infinity cover.

So that so you interact with the cover. Look, the book’s called Audacious. The damn book had to be Audacious, baby.

Curtis Hays (22:20.395)
You

Tom Nixon (22:20.616)
Yeah. And this case, you can judge a book by its cover. Wow. That’s impressive. That’s really the power of Audacity.

MARK SCHAEFER (22:23.768)
Yeah, first in the world, first time it’s ever been done.

It’s a book that’s never the same twice.

Tom Nixon (22:32.95)
That’s so cool Curtis. Now, we can’t be never claimed to be that creative in Audacious, but did this whole thing sound familiar? I guess I was a little bit smarter than I give myself credit for when you came to me and you said I’d like you to write a case study for my website. And here we are 62 episodes later because tell that story.

Curtis Hays (22:57.075)
Yeah, I needed content. I said, I’ve got some clients who have some good stories to tell. Can you write a case study for one of my clients? And maybe if that goes well, we’ll do a few more. And you had the conversation with Mario and came back to me and said, look, great conversation with Mario. We were on the phone for 90 minutes. I don’t know how I’m going to turn this into a one page case study. It seems like it’s more like a, you know, three chapter, maybe four chapter series.

but what if it’s not a series? What if we do something different? What if we do a podcast and, you came back with the name and everything and you had me sold and then I threw on the.

Tom Nixon (23:39.88)
It, the important part was, that it wasn’t you telling the story. said, let’s get Mario on to tell the story in his own words. For one, he’s a great storyteller. Repeat to your point, Mark. People are willing to listen to him tell his own story for Curtis to, you know, tout his story about how he did wonderful things for Mario. You know, maybe some people would have read that. I don’t know.

Curtis Hays (23:46.091)
Right. Yep.

Curtis Hays (24:00.48)
Yep. Yeah, it goes in hand with giving other people the bullhorn. And the other more recent story is somebody who is actually not a lurker, but actually comments on a lot of our podcast watches is actually a vendor of mine had a colleague of his that he used to work with reach out to him and say, I need help. I’m in this professional services company. I need help with lead gen. And, you know, who would you do you know anyone? Would you recommend anyone?

And he says, well, yeah, actually watch these guys watch this podcast. And so he consumed about three episodes, came back to his colleague and said, yeah, I watched a couple episodes. They’re interesting, but are you sure they’re going to be able to solve my problem? And he’s like, yep, yep. Gave him the confidence, gave him the endorsement and called me up here. We talked the other day and he’s got board approval and a $25 million company that’s ready to get going. Now I don’t know Mark, if they’re ready to be audacious.

I think they’re trying to play it safe right now and we need to push them away from playing it safe. But it can definitely work. mean, we’ve got to get behind just being real and being authentic and trying to connect with people in a different way.

MARK SCHAEFER (25:17.39)
Yeah. Sometimes, I mean, sometimes you have to give the customer what they want, earn their trust, and then give them what they need to really blow things up. Right.

Tom Nixon (25:26.377)
Mm-hmm.

Curtis Hays (25:26.461)
Right.

Tom Nixon (25:29.812)
Is there Mark, there anything different about the way or the methodologies in terms of measuring the impact of what you would call audacious marketing? Is there anything different about measuring impact as opposed to conventional market?

MARK SCHAEFER (25:45.326)
Yeah, it’s a great question. So actually have a story about how I got to this. But it’s, yeah, but it’s I think it’s a great commentary on the world today. So when I finished the book, I uploaded the book to chat GPT and also to Claude by Anthropic. And I said, what’s missing in the book?

Tom Nixon (25:52.502)
Perfect.

MARK SCHAEFER (26:14.828)
read the book and tell me what’s missing. And both LLMs came back with the same answer. They said, you need to have a chapter on measurement. Now, in my original outline for the book, I had a chapter on measurement, but I didn’t do it. I was just getting too tired and measurement is such a hard subject. I thought, maybe I’ll just skip it. Well, basically,

artificial intelligence held me accountable and said if you really want this to be the book that you want it to be, you’ve got to have this chapter on measurement. And so I dug deep, worked for a couple more months, created this chapter on measurement. so the problem I was trying to solve is first of all, I marketing measurement is usually very difficult.

Curtis Hays (26:47.484)
Okay.

Tom Nixon (26:47.669)
Mm-hmm.

MARK SCHAEFER (27:12.846)
I mean, you talked about performance marketing. That’s a little easier to measure because it’s like dollars in dollars out for an ad or SEO or something like that. But when you’re talking about building a brand and being different, that’s a little more abstract. So what I did is I did create a measurement system, a five point measurement system to sort of grade how much of risk are we taking? How much of a risk are we taking?

vis-a-vis our competition. And so it’s an internal measure. The measure I think would be different for everybody, which I think is good because the definition of taking a risk is different in different industries. So you talked about your new customer who tend to be conservative. So for them, if you convince them to do something just a little bit

something that the industry has never done before, it might seem simple to us, but huge for them. So they would get a pretty big score on this measurement scale. So there is an audacity index in the book.

Tom Nixon (28:24.119)
cool. Awesome. I’m definitely got to make sure I’m reading this. The book is Audacious, How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World. So can you help marketers beyond what you’ve already said who are struggling with this idea that am going to be obsolete? Curtis and I have pretty much embraced AI, even though I’m a content creator and Curtis, you’re not, but you see all the value in content creation. So

What, how can marketers content creators embrace AI? What tools should they be using? Because I don’t think it’s prudent to say AI is verboten, know, writing is a human craft that only humans can do. I also don’t think you should outsource it entirely to AI. So what is the sweet spot and how are you coaching clients?

MARK SCHAEFER (29:14.168)
Well, we definitely need to embrace AI. And I actually just wrote a blog post about this idea today that the quote that’s going around right now that I hate most of all is, well, your job isn’t going to be replaced by AI. It’s going to be replaced by somebody who’s using AI.

Well, I mean, that’s just not true. mean, they’re going to, they’re already, we’re seeing lots of people that are being replaced by AI because their job is obsolete. And no matter how much they learn about AI, couldn’t have saved their jobs because AI is an enhancement technology. Yes. It’s also a replacement technology. So we need to be steely eyed and intellectually honest about that. But we also need to learn as much about it as we can.

and embrace it where we can. So, I mean, I talked about the importance, number one, of your personal brand. I think we sort of talked about the book, which is kind of a third leg of the stool, which is creating this transcendent content, right? This is creating content that digs deep into

the human experience, exploring the areas where AI can’t play. You you told the story about the birth of your daughter, right? And leveraging audacity. For the businesses out there, they’re saying, geez, this sounds really scary. Audacious is a survival skill. You’re not gonna, I mean, you might wanna be conservative, you might wanna play it safe.

That’s it’s just not going to last because that’s the area where AI is going to surpass everyone. So audacity is going to be a survival skill. Another area that I think. Will that will remain in the realm of of the human experience is community is brand communities and this gets into.

MARK SCHAEFER (31:39.47)
the book I wrote before this one called Belonging to the Brand. Why brand communities are the last great marketing strategy? Because community was really the first marketing strategy. Back before the days of the internet, before the days of network television, my grandparents bought at the stores where they felt they belonged.

They walked down the street to the meat store, to the vegetable store, to the store where they would have their clothing repaired. And these are people that knew them and knew their families. They were part of the fabric of the community. And then we got into this idea of mass marketing and big brands, and we completely lost that idea of community. But it’s back.

And we live in this world where our customers are longing to belong. We live in this world where we’ve got this, we live in this world where people are lonely. They’re depressed. They’re isolated. We see it in the news every day. And this idea of brand community is very, very important.

Because the research shows if we create this community, or we lead this community, where people get to know each other and they build this emotional connection to each other, that transfers over to the brand. So those are really the three big areas I’m focusing on. Personal brand, this transcendent content that I talk about in Audacious, and then brand community.

Those are the three areas I see where humans will continue to survive and thrive in this.

Tom Nixon (33:45.268)
Yeah. Well, for as long as there has been humans, there’s been things like tribes and nations to your point, right? They want, you want to find like-minded people and gravitate towards them and be a part of it. So, my thing.

MARK SCHAEFER (33:49.88)
Yeah.

Curtis Hays (33:57.228)
Tom, we’ve seen this on the data side too, this phenomenon over the last couple of years for a lot of our clients in the lead gen consumer space where nobody fills out forms anymore. They don’t interact with the chat bot on the website. You know what they do? They pick up the phone and they call. Is this drastic number and difference between form fills to request a quote or some sort of consultation to actually picking up the phone and saying,

Tom Nixon (34:13.376)
Call? Yeah.

Curtis Hays (34:25.397)
Hey, I want to remodel my kitchen. Can you talk through that with me? And it gives you this opportunity to differentiate yourself from the big brands if you’re competing with a big box store that is going to push you through a quote builder or bring you into the store through somebody who’s not knowledgeable and maybe not personable to your own unique brand. And you can create community around that. So I think…

The lesson that needs to be heard here is that like to do this, you don’t need a big budget. You don’t need a bunch of drones. There are brands that can do that, but if you’re a small business, it’s kind of like, okay, what’s unique to us that we can put out into the world that people need? And sometimes it is just connection.

MARK SCHAEFER (35:01.74)
Right, right, absolutely.

MARK SCHAEFER (35:13.806)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I went to great lengths in the book to give examples of ideas and success stories and inspiration that was no budget, like low budget, no budget, nonprofits, small businesses, entrepreneurs, universities. There’s a little bit of everything in the book just to kind of reinforce. In fact, I make a point in the book, sometimes a big budget hurts creativity.

Tom Nixon (35:43.926)
Hmm.

MARK SCHAEFER (35:44.11)
I mean, there’s a lot of great success stories where you’re never going to be able to win because the people above you have massive budgets and massive brands. And as a disruptor, you’ve got to dig deep and find new ways to stand out.

Tom Nixon (36:05.534)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, that’s probably a good place to leave off. My final thought was just going to be unless your customers are AI, they are likely humans. So you need to connect with humans in a human way. And I totally agree with the premise of this book. We’re to go out and buy it that humans will win in an AI marketing world. And Mark’s book Audacious will teach you how. Curtis, the words you were searching for earlier were show me, don’t tell me.

That was in the margins in red on my paper all over the first time I did a creative writing assignment. And I’m like, what are you talking about? And I went and saw the teacher and she walked me through that in some 30 years later, I was a novelist and an English major and a storyteller. So here we are. Thanks, Mark. We appreciate you coming on. Good luck with the book and where can people go to find it?

MARK SCHAEFER (36:55.47)
It’s very simple. You don’t have to remember my name, let alone how to spell Schaefer. You just have to remember businesses grow. If you can remember businesses grow, that’s my website. My blog is free. My podcast is free. The book is super cheap, like 20 bucks. You can get two years of my life for 20 bucks. And all my social media connections are there at businessesgrow.com. And I’d love to hear from your listeners.

Tom Nixon (37:24.68)
As the kids say, he’s a great follow. So thanks again. We’ll see everyone else next time on bull horns and bulls eyes.