Jack Monson is the host of Social Geek, a Top 25 Marketing podcast on Apple and the number one podcast in Franchising. Jack is also the CEO of Brand Journalists, a Franchise Development and Marketing agency.
Jack has been working with franchise systems and enterprise brands in digital marketing for 15 years after several years working in radio and public relations in Chicago. He is a monthly columnist for several industry magazines and produces several podcasts for other CEOs and Marketers.
Questions and topics we covered include:
And more!
Connect with Jack on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackmonson/
You can also connect with me on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/kennysoto/
Jack Monson 0:00
We really pride ourselves in being good storytellers. And when I say storyteller, I don’t mean telling the story of the brand. You know, Jack’s pizza company was created in 1965. With this recipe that came over from Italy, no one cares about that stuff, right? The real stories are the other small business owners with that brand. And talking about someone who maybe was part of corporate America and they decided to make a change, and they want to own their own shop. I think there’s been a miscommunication about what small business owners care about. Everyone thinks, how much money am I going to make? Right? That’s not really the number one thing that people think about before they go into business for themselves. What they think about is, what does my life look like?
Kenny Soto 0:47
You just heard a clip from our latest podcast guest Jack Monson. Jack is the host of social geek, a top 25 marketing podcast on Apple, and the number one podcast in franchising. Jack is also the CEO of brand journalists, a franchise development and marketing agency. Jack has been working with franchise systems and enterprise brands in digital marketing for 15 years. After several years working in radio and public relations in Chicago. He is a monthly columnist for several industry magazines and produces several podcasts for other CEOs and marketers. And today, Jack is going to explain the ins and outs of marketing a franchise business. This topic is new on the podcast. And as always, my goal was that people digital marketing is to present new concepts, new career paths, and new ways to impress your boss, so you could eventually become your boss. And without further ado, let’s just jump right into our episode with Jack Monson. Hi, Jack, how are you?
Jack Monson 1:56
I’m doing well. Thank you for having me, Kenny.
Kenny Soto 1:59
So I said this right before recording, and I’m pretty sure the listener just heard it as well. You have an amazing radio voice. I feel like if I didn’t know any better, and I just heard you without seeing this in video I’d be like is that Optimus Prime or someone like
Jack Monson 2:16
wow, Optimus Prime, I would love to be Optimus Prime, there’s some there’s some serious money in those transformer movies.
Kenny Soto 2:23
Yeah, you have a hefty voice. And it’s really nice to hear. But I digress, what I’m going to do is I’m going to give the listener a preamble to this interview, this interview is the first time on the podcast that we will be talking about franchise businesses. But before we get into that, we’re going to get more context into you Jack as a professional. The first question for you is how did you get into marketing?
Jack Monson 2:49
That’s a great question. I was in radio for a few years. And then I decided to get a real job. Right? And and I think all all roads kind of lead to marketing at some point where you get out of radio and you get into marketing agencies. And around that same time, there was something new called social media was starting to come around. And it seemed like everybody in marketing was either going the old traditional way, or getting into, you know, this whole new world of online marketing and blogs. And then we got into podcasts. And then we got into advertising with Facebook, and Google and all of those fun things. So that’s, that’s kind of where it all started, I guess.
Kenny Soto 3:34
Nice. And can you describe to the listeners what it is you’re doing today?
Jack Monson 3:38
Yeah, I’m the CEO of an agency called Brand journalists. And we do franchise lead generation. And I’m sure we can talk a little bit more about franchising and exactly what that means. We do a lot of video for franchise brands. We do websites for franchise brands. And we do a lot of lead generation meaning Facebook and Google and Tik Tok and LinkedIn and all of the places where you would be placing ads or other types of content to try to find people that might be interested in that brand.
Kenny Soto 4:11
Perfect. Now let’s dive into the specifics of this new or not new business model. It’s been around for a while, but it’s new to me because I don’t have a lot of contact, okay. And the listeners are probably going to learn alongside me. So when you say franchise business, can you give examples so we can get like a clearer picture, what kind of business you’re helping?
Jack Monson 4:29
Sure when you say franchise, most people think of McDonald’s or subway, right? Which are both franchise brands very successful. They’ve been around for decades, and they’re, you know, they have 10s of 1000s of locations around the world. There’s a lot of other types of businesses that are also franchised. Some are restaurants, some are retail stores, some are own services, some are b2b companies. So, basically what happens is you have a brand, McDonald’s is probably a good place to start. Art, where it’s a brand it’s doing well, they have a few locations, and someone comes along and says, Why don’t we have more of these in other parts of the country or other parts of the world. And instead of just building more stores the way Walmart, or Starbucks or some other target some of the very big brands have done, instead of that company owning those stores and those businesses and all of those cities, they open it up for someone else to come along in that small town, or neighborhood or suburb, and actually own that McDonald’s or subway, or any other type of business, in that neighborhood or small town. And you’re actually a business owner who owns that local restaurant, or store or business, you’re using the licensed branding, and logo, and menu and all of those things that all of the other stores have across the country, but you actually own it as a small business owner. And I’ve just found this industry to be fascinating, as far as being a great way for a brand to expand quickly. And also for it being a great way for a small business owner, who may never have thought that they could own their own restaurant, or their own coffee shop, or their own handyman business or anything like that, where they could actually get into business and own their own business without working for a corporation. So it’s been something I’ve been involved in for about 15 years now. And it’s growing, it’s growing stronger and stronger every year. So it’s been it’s been a lot of fun being on the marketing and sales side of this franchise space.
Kenny Soto 6:43
From your experience, what industries tend to do the best using the franchise model.
Jack Monson 6:50
We mentioned restaurants, and that seems to be sort of the the traditional type of franchise, but the other ones that really seem to be doing well, right now are home services. So anything from companies who come in and remodel a bathroom, or a small business owner who comes in and does your roof, or repairs, flood damage, or new carpeting or anything like that, those businesses have really taken off in the past few years, especially since the pandemic, because more and more people in this country and all across the world are spending more dollars on their home, you know, they’re spending more time at home, they’re spending more time on their yard or fixing up their porch, or getting they’re getting a new swimming pool installed anything like that. So we’re seeing a lot more consumer business happening with those home service brands, and those local owners with those home service brands across the country. And with more consumers needing that sort of thing. Those enterprises are selling more franchises, in places where they probably never thought they would be. But they’re setting up small businesses in small towns and suburbs and neighborhoods all across the country. So that’s a good one. A couple of other good ones, I’ll mention real quick child care and early child education. So you see a lot of things from whether it’s it’s early daycare, all the way through tutoring and other types of education things for your kids. That leads into other kids activities such as there’s a lot of swimming schools, and other types of sporting things that involve kids. Also, on the other end of the of the age spectrum, Senior Care, there’s a lot of brands out there that are selling franchises in local senior care taking care of people so they can remain at home, and maybe not go into a facility and and actually have a local business with local people taking care of folks in that town.
Kenny Soto 8:54
This is interesting, because I feel like there there’s a decision to be made here in terms of like how you provide your marketing services, and correct me if I’m wrong. Potentially, it’s two paths where you could probably do both where you want to pick one and the other one would be helping franchise owners market their franchise to a local market, or helping a brand, get business owners to then become the franchise owners. What is it that you specifically do in terms of your services or your agency
Jack Monson 9:29
are used to do all of the above right now I’m a lot more focused on helping those brands find people who would make great business owners. I see. Yeah, okay. So we’re so we’re targeting a lot of advertising and creating a lot of content, hoping that people will read it, watch it, listen to it, and maybe be interested in learning more about that restaurant brand or that senior care brand or that home services brand. But you’re absolutely right Kenny there’s there’s really two different directions The marketing within a franchise system can go it’s that that overall brand trying to find more franchisees and small business owners out there. And then on the ground, there are 1000s of locations already and they all need to find customers for their restaurant or the retail shop or whatever other type of business they’re in.
Kenny Soto 10:22
Yeah, cuz I heard recently on a separate podcast is for the listener was overhearing. There’s this podcast called My first million where there are agencies popping up that just focus on carwash franchises interesting, where they only do paid advertising for fast food chains to get more people to use DoorDash, Uber Eats etc. For McDonald’s, for example, and all their clients are local McDonald’s shops, and they’re just doing Facebook ads for them. So this is a new kind of business model that’s coming up as well.
Jack Monson 10:51
I like that idea of really specializing in an industry whether you’re specializing and getting customers for a local restaurant, or like you said a carwash, I liked that idea of someone having a lot of expertise in the digital side of how do we find good customers for a carwash? Right. I think I think the other direction, you know, where we’ve been for the past 20 years, is a lot of big global agencies that really seem to say, hey, we do it. All right, we do public relations, and we do Google ads, and we do websites. And the reality is, they don’t do all of those things very well. Right, some of those things are gonna be done kind of mediocre. So I love seeing agencies that are really focused on an industry, or a business structure like franchising, like agency does, or you know, something very specific to, we’re looking for customers of a certain of a certain region of the country, or we’re looking for customers who own cars and need to have him washed, right, yeah, and really using some a lot of data, and growing their own expertise to help those clients and not just being everything to everybody. So yeah, I love seeing that trend grow.
Kenny Soto 12:11
Yeah, the specialization is interesting as well, because you have two modes of specialization. One is the industry slash business model. And the other is essentially the services that you provide. So you can do Facebook, and Instagram ads specific to one particular type of franchise. Or you can do all those services, so long as you also specialize in one specific kind of industry. So it depends on which path you choose as well.
Jack Monson 12:40
Yeah. And I think, I think it’s not even so much a path you choose. It’s what path chooses you, right? I don’t think anybody ever said, you know, what, I want to be in the carwash industry. Or I you know, I never thought before I got into the industry that I’m in now, I never thought about franchises before. That was like I said, That’s McDonald’s, right? So, but once you get a customer or two in that category, and you have some success for them, and they start doing well. And and I think in any sector, there’s always that aha moment of, oh, this is how the customers in this area act. And this is where I can find them. Maybe right now, they’re all on Instagram, or maybe they listen to podcasts or something like that. And I think once you start getting those aha moments of, oh, this is where we’re going to find the customers for this client, then you’re you’re actually building your own expertise. And from there, because businesses like doing business with people who have been successful, that’s where you start growing your customer base as one of these agencies.
Kenny Soto 13:51
Hey there, if you’re enjoying this episode, and you’re a first time listener, when I hit the Follow button, my goal with each of these episodes is to introduce a new marketing concept, or dive deeper into one so that you can become a better digital marketer. Hopefully, through these episodes, you join me on this journey, the path to CMO. So I’d love it if you subscribed. Thanks for listening so far. Speaking of customer characteristics, and the nuances of how customer things on the small business franchisee psychology kind of thinking, could you give the listeners a broad overview of the considerations The hesitations what they’re thinking about throughout their journey of oh, I don’t even know what a franchise is all the way down to all I’m ready to now work with this brand and start my own shop or restaurant to do them.
Jack Monson 14:57
Yeah, the biggest hesitation of course is money. Right. And you’ve got to have some funding before you go in the worst thing anyone can do when they’re getting into owning their own small business, is to go in undercapitalized. Because, like any business, things are going to come up, right, we’re going to have some event happen where we decide we need to purchase more equipment, we need to spend more on advertising, we need to do something different with our menu or our services. And all of those things are going to cost money. And oh, by the way, we better have a lawyer insurance and all of those things that much, yeah, that all of those things that aren’t fun to spend money on. So going in, undercapitalized is something that any consultant you work with will tell you, you know, just don’t do it, make sure you’re you’re you’re well on your way before you open your doors. So that’s the first thing. The other thing, and I’ve been pretty involved in this is, there’s so much happening with the government right now on on many state levels and the federal level that are making it, that’s making it really hard for small businesses to grow different regulations and things are just changing constantly. And I belong to an organization called the International Franchise Association, that is there to sort of guide small business owners through all of these changes, and fight some of these regulations in Washington, and in state capitals around the country, and keep everybody educated on you know, here’s what this new law means for a small business owner. A lot of it has to do with employment. So that’s another thing that everybody is a little bit worried about right now. And of course, as you can see, with any business owners right now, one of the biggest problems is employment and staffing. You know, how do I get enough people? If I want to open my pizza shop? How do I get enough people to work there? How do I have enough revenue coming in to pay those people, it’s not getting cheaper to pay more talented people, it’s getting more and more expensive all the time. Finding good talent is hard right now in this economy. And that’s really the number one challenge that a lot of small business owners have. I don’t see that changing anytime in the near future. We’re just trying to find some ways to help people along.
Kenny Soto 17:23
Would you say there are I have to assume that there are general best practices when it comes to the lead generation portion of getting these franchises to franchisees? Can you speak on some of these best practices for Legion?
Jack Monson 17:36
Yeah, I think it depends on the brand. And it depends on the persona of the of the type of people that would make a successful franchisee in any brand. For a long time, there was a lot of advertising out there, that and you’ve probably seen some of these things, you know, be your own boss, and own your own business and, and all of those great things that make a nice slogan, but it was it was targeted towards everyone. And I think what we’re doing right now, as an industry is really focusing down on people who might not just have the right amount of money to invest in a franchise, but finding people who would be successful. Because if someone opens your franchise pizza shop, and they close in six months or 12 months, you may have gotten an upfront payment from them. And great, that’s terrific. But the long term is not there for you, right? A brand really grows, when their local franchisees, those local owners are successful, and they grow their business and they’re making more money and employing more people and selling more product. That’s when most brands really start growing. So what we’re focused on right now and a lot of advertisers and marketers are right now is finding the right people who will be very successful in that particular franchise. So we developed personas for all different brands, multiple personas per brand, to find people who really fit certain criteria and have certain things that they’re interested in certain things that they’re passionate about, maybe certain skills, a lot of small business ownership is a lot more sales focused, then a lot of people want to think, you know, I just, I just want to open my own coffee shop, well, you’re going to have to go out and find some customers, you’re going to have to go out and deal with local community leaders and other businesses and things like that. So finding people who have certain skills to run certain types of businesses. That’s really the the key tool, all of this, I think,
Kenny Soto 19:44
are you in the messaging and content you’re creating for your clients, either on their websites or specifically through video or social? Are you creating some kind of messaging that helps the receiver of the content self select and Say, Hey, maybe this isn’t for me, based on the content saying,
Jack Monson 20:03
that’s exactly right. We really pride ourselves in being good storytellers. And when I say storyteller, I don’t mean telling the story of the brand. You know, Jack’s pizza company was created in 1965. With this recipe that came over from Italy, no one cares about that stuff, right? The real stories are the other small business owners with that brand. And talking about someone who maybe was part of corporate America, and they decided to make a change, and they want to own their own shop. Or maybe it’s someone who just came to this country not long ago, and they want to build a new life. And they have a certain set of skills and a certain set of interests, that is going to make them wildly successful, or telling the story of someone who just decided that something in their personal life, maybe it’s a family situation, or they needed some different type of flexibility. That’s really their their key driver in why they want to own their own business, rather than work for someone else right now. So telling those stories, is the most important part of everything we do. You know, we can create corporate videos and podcasts and blogs, talking about the products and the features and the benefits. No one really cares about that stuff. They want to hear stories of other people who who are just like them, maybe they have a similar situation with their job, or their family or their lifestyle. And they think, wow, I could jump into this Jack’s pizza franchise, and my life could look sort of like that person’s life. I think there’s been a miscommunication about what small business owners care about. Everyone thinks, how much money am I going to make? Right? That’s not really the number one thing that people think about before they go into business for themselves. What they think about is, what does my life look like? What am I going to do every day? Am I going to be in a kitchen? Am I going to be out in the town trying to sell my services? What am I going to do all day long. And I think that’s the number one thing that people really care about when it comes to owning their own business.
Kenny Soto 22:17
With these stories in mind, obviously, that’s a craft in and of itself, creating the right stories, making sure there’s more than one making sure that it’s useful. Part of making sure they’re useful is the distribution of the stories. What platforms are you seeing, as of right now being the most effective for distribution?
Jack Monson 22:40
Great question for a long time, the most important and probably still now, the most important method of content distribution is video, people love to watch a video and see those stories and learn about the people who are involved in the business. And for a long time, those videos pretty much lived on a company’s website. And then they move to YouTube, right? Where we’re seeing the most successful right now, along with websites and YouTube are on Instagram reels, Facebook reels, tick tock and LinkedIn video. That’s where we’re seeing the biggest increase in activity right now. And I’m so thrilled that so many people in the franchise industry have jumped forward. And instead of just saying, Well, we’re going to write some articles and we’re going to send out some, some emails with a link to an article that worked great. 15 years ago, that does not work right now. The people that we need to talk to are not checking emails and corporate websites, and, and other portals and other types of places like that. They’re on Tik Tok. They’re on Instagram. That’s where people are right now. So we need to be wherever people are consuming some sort of content. We do a lot of podcasting to just like you do, Kenny, because there are a certain number of people who listen to podcasts. I’m one of them, right? I don’t really watch that many videos or, or, you know, go to too many corporate sites. I listen to podcasts all day long and all evening long. But there are other people who never listen to a podcast. So we want to hit them with a tick tock video or an Instagram reels. One platform that I don’t want anybody to sleep on right now is Facebook reels. And a lot of people think on Facebook. Aren’t we kind of done with Facebook? Have we moved on? Not at all Facebook reels for telling a business’s story, especially in the franchise sector. Those Facebook reels are doing really well right now. Don’t know why. And I understand that Facebook is going to change some formatting very soon and actually promote reels on Facebook. A lot more than They are right now. So I think that’s an area that if somebody’s not using reels on both Instagram and Facebook, make sure you’re checking that out.
Kenny Soto 25:08
There’s two, two points that I want to follow up on what you just said. So the first one is vertical video on reels, both for Facebook and Instagram, as well as tick tock, and of course, Instagram, LinkedIn, excuse me, I’m hearing that vertical video is definitely something that you want to prioritize as far as your content engine is concerned, yes, because you can always take videos and turn them into written anyway. Yeah, written is no longer for brand awareness videos for brand awareness videos also possibly for conversion consideration as well. And then you can always just repurpose the video, put it into writing 100.
Jack Monson 25:48
Right. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, we do a lot of websites. And I think even the whole point of a website is changing. People used to go to a website to do the research and check it on a company and, and they’re still doing that don’t get me wrong, they will always need to go to a website to do some research before they decide to make a big life changing decision. But you’re absolutely right. The written word and websites and blogs and articles are not about brand awareness. You know, if you’re, it’s very different. If you’re working with subway, or McDonald’s or Burger King or Taco Bell, everyone’s aware of those brands. But most of the franchise systems that we’re talking about here are things that outside of the hometown where that brand started, many people might not be aware of it. So we’ve got to reach them with things like videos and vertical videos and podcasts. So they actually learn about a certain brand that they may not have ever heard of before. And therefore they’re not probably going to go to that website and research them. So yeah, you’re spot on with the brand awareness is really where this all needs to start right now.
Kenny Soto 26:59
And you also mentioned podcasts. And when you when you mentioned it a stat came to my mind, I believe it’s now more than 50% of all households are listening to podcasts, the source is stocked marketer. Yes. And who wants to verify? Yeah, so more than half of the United States households are listening to podcasts. We’ve hit critical mass. So if you’re not considering podcasting as a platform, you don’t need to create your own podcast where you should be putting ads
Jack Monson 27:27
Kenny Soto 29:06
Yeah, absolutely. And before I ask my next question, the only other thing I’d like to add even further to that, is the fact that with AI, I’m always thinking about, like, how AI will affect my podcast specifically. And I saw I think they’re called 11 Labs. I can verify this live, but I’ll put it in the show notes for anyone who’s interested. They did this experiment with Joe Rogan, where they turned and converted an entire episode and Josh Yeah, so I think the evolution of podcasting in so much as like the business side of, of the viewpoint is every single podcast or will have the ability to gain new audience, especially if they want a global audience, simply by converting all their episodes to a new language.
Jack Monson 29:54
I think that’s an amazing step forward, especially console uttering a decade ago to take a podcast, and especially if you’re looking at when, like Joe Rogan’s podcast, two and a half hours long, sometimes void, right, right? Yeah. And if you’re gonna take that and try to convert it into Spanish, you know, Joe Rogan has the money to do it, but most podcasters don’t. So the idea of first we’re going to translate a really long podcast, and then we’re going to have to get someone else to do it in that other language. And that’s just for one language. What if we want to also do it in French, or German or Mandarin or anything else? You know, now your costs are going to scale way out. And there’s just no way you could do it. Now with AI, you could do that in the snap of a finger
Kenny Soto 30:46
now, and I suspect that for the business, whoever’s listening to this, who works for a company, and they’re thinking about using podcasts, or they’re already is in broadcast, I suspect the main costs will just be someone who speaks a language just verifies it. You don’t need to do any of the work. They just listen to it and say, Okay, it’s
Jack Monson 31:02
good to go. Right? publish it.
Kenny Soto 31:07
Now, when it comes to franchise businesses, going back to the main topic, one thing that came to my mind in doing research for this podcast was brand consistency. I feel like this is a pitfall that may happen, where you have a franchise, and then you have all these locations, and all these franchisees, and some of them, if not all of them may operate differently. How do you create a cohesive brand across locations?
Jack Monson 31:31
Yeah, that’s really the million dollar question or billion. Okay, question at this point. And I think the marketers out there are the ones that really shoulder a lot of this burden, because the menu with one restaurant versus another restaurant that’s 500 miles away, you can pretty much dictate what’s going to be on that menu. But it’s really the marketing, you know, making sure no one is changing the logo or changing the brand. Or they decided, you know, hey, we want our our coffee shop to be green and purple instead of orange. Right? So it’s really the marketing departments inside these brands, that have a lot of that responsibility. Because it’s, it’s the consistency in your marketing that all of those customers see out there. You know, the last thing anybody wants is for someone to go to a different store and have a completely different experience. It causes confusion, they’re not really sure what this brand is all about, do they make pizza? Or do they make hamburgers? I’m not really sure anymore. So that consistency that you mentioned, is really important. And I think a lot of that comes down to the marketing. How is the brand presented? How is the customer experience presented? And you know, how are those local owners following the guidelines, of course, every owner is going to have things that they want to do a little bit different, because that’s why they started their own business. But following those brand guidelines, and keeping all of the operations consistent, that’s really the key to a successful and growing franchise brand.
Kenny Soto 33:06
Even more questions for you, what skills they have can be technical slash hard skills or soft skills, but What skills does a marketer need to have in order to succeed in the franchise model?
Jack Monson 33:20
Right now, in franchising or out of franchising, all marketers need to up their game when it comes to being an AI prompt engineer. Work on your skills, work on your prompts your writing, work on using AI in everything that you do every day. And I was not expecting that as Yeah, it but I think that’s the most important thing people need to do right now. So they don’t get replaced by AI, get really good at it. Get really good at writing your copy with AI, your LinkedIn ads or Facebook ads, use AI to help you come up with new ideas to brainstorm, to write blog content. I’m not saying let it do it for you. I’m saying it’s another tool just like the computer or, you know, 100 years ago, the typewriter, it’s another tool to help you do your job faster. And I think speed is the key, right? We’re not going to be sitting here two years from now and being and saying, you know, I used to write five ads a week. And now I’m writing six ads a week. No, if you’re writing ad copy, you’re going to be writing 10 times the amount of ads that you’re writing right now, because it’s going to be expected because you can do it. There are new tools to help you do your job faster. So find all of those things. If you’re a marketer, find all of those things that are tedious and time consuming, and figure out a way to use AI to take those off of your desk. So you can spend more time being strategic, right? If you’re growing your career and I think that’s a lot of what you talk about on your podcast. So, if you’re growing your career, and you want to take that step forward, you don’t want to just do more of what you’re doing right now, you want to step up, and no one’s going to pay you a lot more money, or give you a lot more responsibility to just do more busy work, right? You want to be paid for your strategic ideas for your creativity. Let ai do the dirty work while you’re out thinking of the next big thing.
Kenny Soto 35:28
And to get this some more tangible thought for the listener who’s probably just started their career, the way to think about it is, and this is also for the naysayers. People who don’t believe AI will replace you. Okay, that’s fine. We can we can work around that for now. But what I would say is in the near term, a near term for me is 123 years from now, okay, ai ai may not replace you, but someone in your same position using AI will replace you.
Jack Monson 36:00
Absolutely. 100%. I couldn’t have said that better myself.
Kenny Soto 36:03
Yeah, and this is not an original thought. For me that comes from the CMO of Zapier was constantly saying, You need to learn how to OD automate all the stuff that you don’t want to do. Find a way to automate it. If you’re not already delegating it, then see if you can just give it to an AI tool, create an automation, obviously, he’s plugging SAP Zapier. Makes sense. But the whole point is, start adopting these tools before someone else does. And then you’re out of a job. Right. 100%. Now, back to the topic of podcasts, you have done almost 1000 podcast episode. Yes, yeah. And there’s memory tired and I need a break. So yeah, there’s many places this question can go. But I’m going to keep it vague for a reason. Because I want to see where your head’s at, with almost 1000 podcast episodes, on the subject of marketing. What have you learned?
Jack Monson 36:57
I’ve learned that I don’t know, nearly as much as I ever thought I did. And it’s constantly changing. I think that’s the biggest thing to me is, we’ve gone along for a few decades, with people thinking they have a five year plan, oh, we’re going to really get into this. And that’s going to be five to 10 years. And then we’re going to move our business in that direction. Five to 10 years is now one year, right. And AI has definitely changed that as well. Social media changed everything. 15 years ago, AI is changing. And again, right now, it’s going to change again in one to two years, just like you said a little bit ago. So nothing stays the same. And change is accelerating. Right now. At at an exponential rate. So everything we’re talking about with AI right now, a year from now, Kenny, we’re gonna go back and listen to this podcast and be like, Oh, wasn’t that cute? Right? You know that it’s it’s changed so much just in the past year. And I think that’s a good thing that provides a lot of opportunity for the people who are thinking strategically, and who do have big ideas, and do want to make an impact, either in their business, or their clients business or the world. It’s an opportunity to think big and change and not be tied down to, we’re just going to do television ads and newspaper ads the way we did for 75 years. Now, no more of that. It’s all changing. And the people who really want to be out in front of it, you now have the opportunity.
Kenny Soto 38:35
My last question for you is on the same theme. It’s hypothetical. Okay, if time machines existed, and you can go back in the past, knowing everything, you know, right now, about 10 years, how would you specifically accelerate the speed of your career? Oh, that’s
Jack Monson 38:49
a great question. Well, first, I’d go buy a bunch of Apple stock, right? About 15 to 20 years ago, perhaps. But I’ll tell you a I’ll tell you something that a friend of mine named Thomas Scott told me a while ago, about six, seven years ago when I first incorporated my podcast, social geek. And, and I really turned it from a hobby, and a passion and something I loved into a business. And I was looking for some advice on you know, how do I do this? And how do I set up the financial side of the business and all that kind of stuff. And Thomas told me, the one thing you’re going to find out is you will wish you had started this 10 years ago. And he was absolutely right about that. I wish I would have started this even earlier than I did. So social geek is coming up on we’re in our 14th year right now coming up on 1000 episodes we hit. We hit a million downloads over last year, we went over a million downloads. And now I’m looking back thinking Okay, podcasting wasn’t really a thing 15 years ago, but it could have started some other business that led to it or, you know, was doing something else at the same time. So if you’re thinking about starting your own business, or if you’re thinking about starting your own podcast, or you’re thinking about starting, I’ve got a great idea for something to do on tick tock to share some content. Don’t wait. Because I’m going to give you the same advice that I got. You will wish you had started it years earlier. And the best day to start would have been 10 years ago. The second best day to start is today. So jump into it now. Don’t look back, because the only thing you’re going to regret is not doing it sooner.
Kenny Soto 40:43
It’s the same principle. And I love how these things overlap where it has nothing to do with marketing. But it’s the same thing with investing. The best day was yesterday. The second best day is today. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And it’s just investing in yourself. Right. Like if you have a concept. Get it out the door. If you’re 100%. Perfect in any concept you have. You’re already too late. You you could have gone out. Yeah. And then work your way up to 100.
Jack Monson 41:10
Yeah, yeah, just just get started, get get it going. Because here’s the thing, it will never be perfect. Never. I’ve done 1000 podcast episodes. And man, let me tell you, they’re never going to be perfect. Sometimes I feel like I’m getting worse at some things. But you know, it’s because everything else is changing. You’re never going to get it perfect. And if you wait till it’s perfect. You’re just never gonna have it done.
Kenny Soto 41:33
Jack, if anyone wanted to find you online, where can they go? Say hi,
Jack Monson 41:37
the best place to get me is on LinkedIn. I’m on LinkedIn about 20 hours a day. And I’m not kidding. So so please find me on LinkedIn. You can also get me at social geek radio.com. That’s my website.
Kenny Soto 41:49
Thank you so much for your time today, Jack. And thanks to you, the listener for listening to another episode of the people do your marketing podcast. And as always, my one request is if you can, please rate us on Apple or Spotify or wherever else you’re listening to this podcast. And as a bonus, if you’re Donald doing that, or if you already are, if you already done it, please refer this podcast to a co worker that way you’re learning and your team is learning alongside you. And as always, I hope you have a great week. On the next episode of the people Digital Marketing Podcast, episode 136, I will have Jessica Cogan on the show. Jessica is the co founder and CMO of Cameron Hughes wine and chief growth Officer of vintage wine estates. On this episode, we’ll be talking about how the DTC market has evolved over time. How can brick and mortar stores compete in the future how a business’s brand affects their retail strategy, and much more. If you like this podcast interview with Jack Monson, you will definitely enjoy this next interview with Jessica Cogan. Don’t forget to subscribe. And thanks again for listening