#250 - Daniel Francavilla: The Silent Founder Mistake That Hands Clients to Competitors

speaker-0: I do love matcha. discovered it years ago through friends, but then during the pandemic, I had all this time at home. So I was making different things, looking it up, learning about it, making recipes and whatnot. But eventually it became part of my personal brand.

One of my motivations to actually merge in the first place was that I was looking to then do a little bit more on my own in terms of speaking, consulting. you know, teaching even in post-secondary. So I thought that, you know, having a partnership would allow me to, you know, spread the workload a bit and be able to do those things. The content ecosystem is three layers, which is that it's, it's a combination of founder led content.

It's the company content. And then the third layer is that community or the content from other people. That all together is what comes together and helps you really stand out and compound that trust. speaker-1: you Hey Daniel, what is going on?

speaker-0: Not too much. I'm busy here in the Clarity content studio. How are doing, Jason? speaker-1: Good, and you just moved to the new studios there for Clarity content, yeah?

speaker-0: That's right, we're here in Liberty Village in Toronto pumped to be set up. speaker-1: motivated you to move digs. speaker-0: Well, ⁓ I had originally had studio spaces and office spaces for my creative agency, you know, for years. And then after, ⁓ after, you know, the pandemic times, it didn't have a space and got back into studio space with my former agency that I was a part of.

eventually that space, you we opened the podcast studio, but eventually it turned back into office space because people were coming back to work and needed places to work and meet. So I didn't have a studio space for a while. And I realized that, I want to be able to bring people through and tell their stories. And ⁓ you know how important it is to have good gear and good lighting and all of that.

So I figured, let me just create this space. And it's my place to come and work on my own content as well as with clients. So that's what we're, that's what we're doing here. speaker-1: Yeah, think that's super important for space and then your transition to that space is mirrored with the transition we're making to a new space, which is deeply motivated by having a proper sort of studio set up to create content.

And it's funny, right? Because as more and more people are coming on board with AI generated fake content, we're totally leaning into ⁓ having a more realistic studio with real people and leaning into that. And we're going to lean into exactly that. in this conversation today and obviously the importance and the human element with content creation and we'll get your take as well on AI and where we're going with the future of it.

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Book a free strategy call over at Merged.ca. That's M-E-R-G-E-D. Before we get into that, ⁓ when we were talking at Social Next Ottawa, where I met you for the first time, ⁓ you had a really good story.

It was a very interesting story going from a founder to exit, right? And I want to kind of touch on that and maybe you can ⁓ shed some light on that story and your experience to going from that sort of founder-led agency to going off on your own. speaker-0: Absolutely. think, you know, when I first started the agency, we'll go way back to, you know, ⁓ 11, 12 years now.

I just wanted to create, right? I just wanted to create stuff. I went to school for design and, and, you know, I made a lot of relationships through entrepreneurship, through school, through nonprofit work. So I set up this creative agency, ⁓ and it was really because I had a collective of people that did different things than me.

Right. And so. Over time that grew and then formalized it and made an agency structure and a team and got leadership and salespeople and all of that. ⁓ And then during the pandemic days, there was an opportunity to partner up with another agency actually, who was doing a little bit of a different focus, but kind of working in parallel.

And we ended up joining forces. So my agency got acquired. And in that situation, I then became a partner, of course, and I was still, but I was part of a leadership team. and I was still the creative.

was still the, you know, the go to brand guy. But one of my motivations to actually, you know, merge in the first place was that I was looking to then do a little bit more on my own in terms of, you know, speaking, ⁓ consulting, you know, teaching even in post-secondary. So I thought that, you know, having a partnership would allow me to, you know, spread the word. load a bit and be able to do those things.

But because of the stage of growth and the demand ⁓ and the lack of other creatives and strategists, I actually ended up diving in deeper with a really busy workload. so I realized a lot of my time was being spent on execution work and on business development for this agency. So we had some really exciting opportunities. But as you know, Jason, when you're growing an agency, you got to kind of take in whatever you can.

You're always processing. saying you're always assigning delegating. There's a there's a high volume game there and I really wanted to go deeper on some things and focus more on the brand strategy and the content strategy that I have always been wanting to focus on. So I eventually made that transition over the course of a year where, you know, I started taking on different types of projects.

started saying no to certain things and I started doing a little bit more speaking and teaching. And then basically to start off 2025, I was, you know, Solo. ⁓ And I knew that I didn't want to build another agency again, because I didn't want to have to have a whole big team and structure and pipeline. But ⁓ I did want to collaborate and I did want to find, you know, what that could look like.

And so took on some really awesome projects with other organizations. I actually worked under a couple of different agencies ⁓ as a strategist for them. I, you know, did various projects over time. And I found that while brand is my bread and butter, so to speak, a lot of people see brands showing up in content.

especially as the market changes, people don't necessarily want to invest in things that they may see as less of an immediate ROI, like brand, even though if you don't have brand, you have less ROI. ⁓ And so content is one of those things that's right there in your face. And I realized that, you know, I've been doing thought leadership content all along strategy wise, but I never had the ability for people to actually execute on that. Right.

And actually how could I actually make this happen? And so that's where after about a year, you know, since leaving the agency, ⁓ the idea for clarity content came and, I've been, I've been building it since, ⁓ yeah, since the beginning of the year. speaker-1: That's always the tricky part, you know, because in some regards we have a similar background. I merged my agency with an SEO company to form Merch Media.

It ended up being a much different outcome in terms of where we are today compared to the trajectory you went down. But I do believe that, like to your point, a lot of that frustration when you're stuck working in a business instead of on the business, especially as a founder, can get extremely frustrating because As much as you have aspirations of bringing that business to the next level as a founder, you keep being brought into the weeds by doing that everyday mundane work, which in a perfect world, you would have people fulfill for you, right?

And I'm sure that was a very frustrating piece to it. speaker-0: Yeah, for sure. think, you know. It all stems from what you I think care about most going into the business, right?

Some people get into it by accident. They're a freelancer and they just expand because of workload. Some people get into it because they're super passionate. Some people get into it because they actually want to grow for a financial reasons.

They're looking at, know, from a business standpoint purely and the service is less important. For me, I cared a lot more about the people in the community and the creative side of things and business, you know, is not something I had any formal trading in. ⁓ And so, you know, you could extrapolate that out over time and you can say, hey, having this business allows me to do the creative work and the community work. But ultimately you want to find a balance that is right for you.

and, know, ⁓ Jason meeting people like you and meeting so many other founders and agency owners, there's not one size fits all for sure. So you got to be able to take that into your own hands and create the version that works best for you. speaker-1: So speaking of that, the version that works best for you. tell me about ⁓ the moment when you decided to go out on your own, how much impact your story had in breaking out on your own into what your brand is today.

You know what saying? Because clarity, you're wearing it on your hat. Clarity, this is a big part of that push and you going out on your own and developing this new brand, right? speaker-0: Absolutely.

I mean, I think I'd spoken about personal branding for years doing workshops, different startup organizations, different, you know, even incubators, accelerators, all that kind of stuff. And I really had my own personal brand. And the lesson here I will say is that even if you think you're going to be doing this one company for the rest of your life, chances are you're going to have other business ventures, other projects. You may leave, you may get a job, whatever that is, but your personal brand actually sticks around.

And I realized that I had a personal brand that I wasn't necessarily, you know, fully leveraging because it was all tied into this one particular agency. And so I decided at first, I actually launched another brand called the good growth company and that focuses on nonprofits and charities. So I realized, okay, I'll launch something that's completely different. It's not an agency.

It's in a different sector. And that's where branding really helps, right? Cause it can distinguish it by two totally different things who it's for, what we do. it and all that.

But as a personal brand, I was the consistent element of that, right? I'm the guy that you talk to behind the scenes. ⁓ I'm the guy that, Hey, I'm interested in nonprofit. I'm interested in in ⁓ marketing.

I'm interested in social impact. I'm interested in matcha, whatever it is. That's my, my ecosystem. So I created this concept called the ecosystem of you.

Well, that really helps people to understand how you can leverage all of those things and tie them together as opposed to working in isolation and, and really not really leveraging yourself, which is. your personal brand that can help you grow overall. So I guess Jason for me, I realized that there was a lot more to me that wasn't necessarily coming out just in that agency role. And if I was to go down that path of, know, mergers and acquisitions, opening new locations, expansion, whatever it is that, you know, could have been the plan for my former agency.

I knew that would be less and less. close to my own personal brand and my interests and my unique combination of skills and interests. think that's... what I would really define as a personal brand is, you know, your unique combination of skills, interests, passions, talents, all kind of merging together.

And that's really what forms your ecosystem. And I wanted to lead into that. ⁓ And so when I, when I, when you asked me about, know, what does it mean to go out on my own? You know, I was already doing all these things, right?

I was already doing bits and pieces of it, but it felt like This could be a way for me to really lean into my own personal brand as the brand and give that a shot for a while as opposed to always working under the main agency umbrella. speaker-1: So when it comes to founders of companies, okay, and a lot of founders of companies might look at this personal brand piece as kind of cringe, right? They don't want to be a part of it. They're not comfortable in front of the camera.

They don't want to do it. They just want to let their marketing team run with it and go. How much, how critical is it for a founder to just stay quiet? Is there a bigger opportunity for them that they're totally under utilizing or maybe do they just hire a brand ambassador to do that piece if they're not comfortable with it?

What are your thoughts around founders and personal branding? speaker-0: Well, I mean... I got a lot to say about this topic. We can go deeper into it.

Mostly because you know, the reason I started clarity was to help founders specifically founders and leaders, you know, better tell their story and show up. Now you're right. Not everyone wants to be the face of course. But I think depending on the business that you're in the industry you're in, it could be, you know, make or break for how you last and stand out in this time where everything is starts to be the same, right?

When A lot of things are ⁓ becoming equalized because of AI, right? It's noisy. It's a saturated. People don't trust content as much as they used to your voice as a leader, as a founder is no longer really optional.

I think that if you can, if you stay quiet, you know, other competitors or the market kind of fills in fills in that space for you. And so I think that, you know, as a leader, as a founder, people look to you for the proof. You're that person that has that expertise and that skillset and that realness, right? Like Jason, there's a reason I'm talking to you on a podcast live instead of us just, you know, submitting some notes to, to an AI tool that's going to spit out, you know, a summary for us.

actually, we want to have this face to face conversation and It's us, you know, we're the people here. So it really is and I'll tell people who do not want to be on you know, they don't want the attention. It's not about ego, right? It's about literally building that layer of trust and If you're almost doing your company or your brand or your organization a disservice by not being the face now, does it have to be you 100 % of the time?

No, there can absolutely be someone right? Whether it's a partner, another leader in your company, even if it's your business development person, whoever that is, there should really be a face to your brand at this point. speaker-1: For small businesses, I think it's even more important because in most cases, it's not like you have a team of 50 to 100 people to just delegate all sales and everything in your business to your team. A lot of founders want to work with founders.

Business owners want to work directly with business owners. So the closer you can have those conversations with other business owners, the more business you're going to get. speaker-0: Yeah, for sure. And you know what?

There are brands that are founder led clearly, right? Where the leader's voice is what's actively shaping that perception, the trust, you know, positioning all of that. But then there's also brands where it is brand led, maybe some very, you know, complex tech companies or B2B brands. but to make that stuff more humane and to kind of translate that down, then there are the leaders or the founders that right.

So not every company needs to be founder led. That's one strategy, but you still certainly need to have some type of thought leadership or you know, personality there to help really bring that trust in that, that proof. think that's ⁓ almost a non-negotiable nowadays. speaker-1: I want to dive a little bit into just like social paid ads for a moment.

Okay. Because for a lot of, ⁓ meta advertisers out there, the fixation is on generating a lead cost as low as possible and dot and putting all of your budget into that lead generation aspect. How important to you is having that brand awareness piece in tandem with the direct response meta paid stuff. speaker-0: Well, I mean, you've probably heard other people say this too, that whatever the paid is, it's amplifying something.

So if your brand and your messaging and your offer is not clear target, it doesn't like resonate with your audience. Then you're just amplifying something that doesn't work, right? That doesn't necessarily help, you know, to shine a spotlight. It's like if you're wearing, if I had ⁓ a big splat on my shirt, if I spilled my matcha, which does happen from time to time and.

speaker-1: There he is, the matcha, there it is. speaker-0: I've got this big spotlight on on my shirt like I'm drawing more attention to that right? don't I don't want you that's not the part that I want you to see so if I spend the time upgrading my wardrobe cleaning my shirt Then it makes sense that to really amplify that right and of course there's there's testing phases But that's the first thing I would say and then the second thing is that It's all part of an ecosystem, right?

So what I consider the content ecosystem is three layers. I talk about this all the time. ⁓ and I know Jason, you don't want to go too much into frameworks, but I still have a couple of things that I, that, that could help here, which is that it's, it's a combination of founder led content. The idea is the point of view, all of that.

It's the company content, which is like case studies, you know, your services, like actual information about what you do. And then the third layer is that community or the content from other people like testimonials, team members, UGC, all of that. So that all together is what comes together and helps you to really stand out and compound that trust. Right.

So ads can easily amplify one, two or three of those, but most likely the ads are going to amplify the company content and then the founder content and the community content helps support that. That's kind of how I would see ads when you think about the content ecosystem. speaker-1: Yeah, it's brilliant. Naturally, the algorithm is starting to do that now more than ever is sequentially put your ads in front of the right people at the right time.

And it's all like, for example, that founder leg content is a great retargeting piece. So that case study is a great retargeting piece. And the combination of that top of funnel ad combined with the UGC content is creating the conversion. this is just getting so much next level where historically we would have had to like micro every single part of that journey on Meta.

speaker-0: you I will, I will add though. ⁓ you know, I explored all kinds of different options on the table when I launched the studio clarity and I thought, you know, Hey, why not take a bunch of calls? I'm getting targeted with ads or people who are offering all these, you know, ads, services, content services, all kinds of stuff. Right.

And, ⁓ a couple of them that I spoke to had told me like, yeah, we'll run your ads for you. We'll guarantee XYZ results and all of that. You just have to record the content and we'll run everything. And they said to me, you don't have to have anything on your organic.

You could be starting completely from scratch and we can still, we'll still get you the growth. It doesn't make a difference. And to me, I'm sitting there thinking. If I see an ad and I go, naturally, I don't know if you do this, Jason, but you want to click on the company page.

You want to see who this ad is coming from. their profile is blank or it's got three old posts on it from, you know, six months ago, immediate, immediate red flag. It doesn't mean that they're the worst company in the world. No, but it's, it's some kind of credibility thing seems to be off.

You're not getting that, you know, trust signal that like, yeah, these are the guys, right? They know, they know what's up. And so I think it has to work in combination. You can't just go with an all paid strategy.

There has to be some, combination there. speaker-1: 100%. Yeah, I know definitely the Omni-channel approach is definitely, we recommend the clients, whether that's leveraging the Google paid to get the high intent traffic, looking for your product or service and then staying top of mind to the retargeting, do meta, right? I think that's a very simple two-prong strategy, but if you get the SEO there kicking too and you're getting a lot more higher intent traffic, it definitely helps with it all.

I think that, you know, what you're doing with Clarity is creating a lot of the fuel for that. funnel fire, right? You know what I mean? the ⁓ creating, you know, the right pieces that that need to be a part of it all work together.

I was curious the other day as I was going through my cupboard grabbing my nighttime tea and I opened up my cupboard and I saw my wife had picked up some Tetley matcha tea and so I was like matcha. I've heard matcha more in the last probably few months since I met you have paid attention to it than I ever have my entire life. So I grabbed the matcha tea and I had the matcha tea and then I start seeing some of your content and you always have a matcha tea there. Is this by design to latch yourself to matcha tea because you really or do you just really love matcha tea that much that you just love talking?

speaker-0: I do love matcha. ⁓ I discovered it, you know, years ago through friends, but then, but then during the pandemic, I like had all this time at home. So I was making different things, looking it up, learning about it, making, you know, recipes and whatnot. But eventually it became part of my personal brand.

Right. And I think that's a funny thing is that, you know, has nothing to do with marketing, has nothing to do with creativity specifically, but It just became part of my personal branch to the point where like you said, you know, you saw me pick up the matcha you identified that and people really associated with it to the point where like they would send me, I don't know. They heard about a new cafe. They would send it to me or they would send me a meme or whatnot.

What I realized is that during this period after I left my agency, I had I had some time to experiment, right? I thought, Hey, I've never launched a direct consumer brand before. I've only ever run an agency B2B stuff, right? But I've had clients in this space, but Hey, why not experiment with this?

So I thought, okay, if I create a brand since I'm a brand guy for matcha, what would it actually look like? And it was just an idea. You know, I threw it around with my wife and a friend and, ⁓ I dunno, a couple of months later, it became a real thing. And we, we had a brand, we had a pop-up, we had websites.

So, ⁓ Bacha for me is just, it's definitely a passion project and, I've really learned a lot about the community behind it and the people that are, you know, embracing it. And, ⁓ it does have a lot of health benefits. I will say it's, it's a lot better energy than, coffee. So, ⁓ yeah, it's just, it's, it's a lifestyle you could say.

speaker-1: Okay, so you naturally went into it because you're genuinely interested in matcha and you unintentionally Did such a good job of pairing yourself up with that because when I see matcha I think about you so it's just like You know what I mean, and that's super effective And I think there's something to be said for a lot of founders out there to latch on to something themselves That's unique to them. My thing is rugby. I play rugby. It's it's I got a rugby ball behind me there on my wall and I post content about coaching my and rugby it usually does well on social so a lot of people don't just know me as Jay the marketing guy or Dave Jay marketing agency is Jay the rugby guy that owns a digital marketing agency and I think it's important because now you can start really diving into some sub niches of a people that are interested in that same niche that just so happen to be business owners which would be an ICP for me and for you anybody that's probably you know any sort of matcha business out there would probably love to have closer ties with you speaker-0: Right.

It ties into health and wellness. It ties into people that care about productivity. And so what I when I talk about personal branding, ⁓ you know, yes, much as part of my personal brand. Great rugby is part of yours.

It does help people remember something about you clearly like they're going to make that association. ⁓ But also, you know, I have my blog, my newsletter is called the intersection and the reason I called the intersection is because it is my unique intersection, right? My combination of those worlds marketing creativity social impact, whatever that is and and that's why it's called the intersection because if you're going to read something for me, those are the perspectives. Those are the lenses it's going to have.

Anyone can have a blog about content. Anyone can have a newsletter about SEO. Anyone can have a newsletter about macha, right? But you could individually it's a lot harder to compete or to stand out, right?

But if you bring all that together in your unique combination of that, that's really what helps you stand out as a personal brand. would say. speaker-1: Yeah, I think that's super powerful stuff. if there's one takeaway people get from this, really trying to find what it is that makes your brand unique, aside from just the offering that you have, you know what I mean?

Or your subject matter expertise. If you can latch on to something else, I think it opens up a lot more opportunities. Let's talk a little bit here, Daniel, about the process in terms of when somebody onboards or you're onboarding process for a client that's interested in branding. What does that look like?

like specifically the first 30 days. speaker-0: Absolutely. So I'll talk a little bit about it. I'll kind of merge the worlds of content and brand together because I think that they are definitely closely intertwined.

And by the way, at Clarity, we won't work with someone who doesn't have some type of, you know, brand strategy or messaging there. Right. So the very first thing that we do is we audit your presence. What is out there about you?

What assets do you have? You know, what's the competitive landscape as well? And I always like any marketer, you'll do competitive research, of course, but there's a lot of, ⁓ There's a lot of competition that you might not consider competition, but there's some type of overlap there, right? Cause all of us are competing for attention and it's more so if your audience might consider them for another reason, not necessarily because they're offering the exact same service that you are, but you're still competition for their attention in some way, right?

They might not have to hire you, your exact service. They might find that solution elsewhere or their dollars are going to go elsewhere instead, right? So that's the first thing. is the audit, the competitive landscape, all of that.

The second thing is developing your actual messaging framework and your backbone. Now there's a couple different tools and frameworks that we use for that, but when you think about messaging, that is part of brand, that is part of strategy. Your messaging goes everywhere. It's what you say on your newsletter, it's how you position yourself on your website, it's the stuff that you're gonna include in your video content and your social content.

On top of all those key things, then we look at your voice. So I can't tell you how to talk. Of course, right? I can't give you that lens, but I can help you to define it a little bit further based off of what we see based on how you want to frame yourself.

So, you know, the voice, the tone, the unique point of view that you're going to have, I really, you know, in my role, I do my best to extract that from people and help them really own that. Right. ⁓ sometimes they think they don't have something unique or they don't have a point. of you or they don't have a voice, you do.

The more you talk to them, you realize that you do. And so my job is to help really extract that and document that for them. And then at in Clarity content, you know, like I talked about before, you don't just want to run an ad and you have nowhere to send people to. Right.

So what I actually do in this first stage here is revamp or audit people's LinkedIn profiles, like as basic as your banner. Jason, you've got a compelling banner. I can visually picture it from when I went to your LinkedIn profile. So banner, bio, headline, positioning, what is in your profile?

What are you saying about yourself? Is it all optimized? Because you're going to drive. eyeballs there they might as well get a clear understanding of what you do.

And then finally, um, we don't actually launch without having some type of lead magnet or conversion based thing that someone could actually take action to. are you sending people to an email newsletter? Are you sending them to a webinar? Do you have a download for them?

Do you have a guide for them? You know, are you hosting something in a few months? That's a conference. Like what is it that people need to drive to if they are actually interested and making that really, really, really easy for people.

Um, that's all part of the process here is we're not just doing content for content sake. Yes, awareness is huge and you do see an uptick in the amount of people reaching out to you and commenting and engaging when they actually when you do start posting consistently, but ultimately we want to clarify your goals and get get those people to the right place at the end of the day. So yeah, it's a little bit detailed but but hopefully that's a little bit of the foundations that we go through it at clarity.

speaker-1: When it comes to the lead magnet, do you find a specific lead magnet is more successful than others in breeding a solid conversion? speaker-0: I think the basic how to DIY stuff is actually it's low hanging fruit, but it actually doesn't necessarily get the right type of buyer, the right type of lead. You know, if, if I, for example, I'm looking to start a podcast and I get a lead magnet, it's like, here's your how to God and how to get all the gear you want and how to use the editing software.

Well, I don't need to hire you anymore because I was going to do it myself. Anyways, I was actively looking for a DIY solution, right? So the more, the most effective lead magnets go a little bit more in depth. What I love as a lead magnet that I've been seeing a lot is quizzes, right?

Where it's not just a quiz for the sake of a quiz, but it's an assessment. ⁓ and one of the collaborators I worked with actually who was, ⁓ also targeting founders. ⁓ the strategy that we came up with was to actually do a little bit of a founder, a DNA assessment, right? Like.

Which type of founder are you? So created a couple different profiles. You answer a number of questions and then from that they have a bunch of programs and things they can link you to based off of your diagnosis or whatever you've selected. And people are a lot more likely to respond to a lead magnet like that than to just say download a how-to guide.

How-to guides are great, super helpful, but really Jason, if we're in the business of Creating some type of output, whether it's content, whether it's design, whether it's ads, we don't want to just tell people how to do that in our lead magnet because well, if they were going to do it themselves anyways, then you're just giving them that to do. But we want to give them something that intrigues them and gets them to think differently about the problem they're trying to solve.

speaker-1: 100 % is that transformation right that you're trying to get them to go through and then you're right I think that You know, we've done tons of lead magnets and very you know It's easy to get a low-cost lead through a lead magnet right with a how to do this type of download ⁓ and yeah, sure you can get all the emails in the world for under a buck but Really how many of those emails are gonna turn into a paying client and the answer is very minimal. However We I have a client where he's got a quiz that is probably takes about 10 minutes to do it's very thorough and I said to him I said dude your lead cost is gonna be astronomical because who's devoting 10 minutes to complete this but I will say the leads that do complete that 10 minute long assessment it's a super quality lead and they usually convert so ⁓ that's the you can't back can't balk at a lead that costs a hundred bucks if they're going that through that entire process and your program cost a thousand you know what I mean speaker-0: Absolutely.

And also, you know, looking at something that if someone is high intent and they're going to take the time to fill that out, then chances are they're most likely going to want to get on a call with you and they're going to actually want to talk that out and be open to your solutions. Now, I will say there has been some, it's different B2B and B2C. Obviously this is mostly used in B2B, but there's been some lead magnets that I've signed up for where the process is too much. Like, And maybe that maybe it's intentional.

If I wasn't extremely high intent, maybe they want to disqualify you from taking the next step. Sure. But I think that people running businesses or leading companies or nonprofits were busy, right? We've got a lot of different areas to spend our time in.

And if you're going to make someone who is an executive, a leader, go through, you know, five, six, seven steps, booking calls, reconfirming, having to watch videos, having to fill something in, having to, you know, check a time for a pre-call, you know, doing assessments, doing a, I think that's, I think we're just blowing it a little bit out of proportion here and we're, we're, ⁓ almost damaging the strategy of, know, a proper funnel here. And if I resonated in something in the ad, I want to actually know if this solution is for me.

And I actually need to know what that solution is going to be the format. it a, is it a course? Is it a program? Is it a software?

Is it a done for you services that are done with you service? I think we as marketers or our service providers need to be way more clear and transparent upfront about that I've wasted a bunch of time going through these funnels and I find out ⁓ yep This is a membership that you're part of like no, I don't need the membership I need someone to address this particular like solve this problem for me or do this, you know execute on this on this strategy I don't need to go into a monthly community or a membership, right?

or vice versa if I'm looking for information but instead you know it's a subscription service to a tool or a platform. Again you've got to be able to give those people it's a little bit of a rant here but I think we really have to get more clear and almost respect the buyer's time. Those are the people that are going to trust you more and want to work with you. speaker-1: And nowadays a lot, a lot of, depending on who your ICP is, they might value time more than money.

So we all know how much noise is out there now and it's a battle to get through that noise on a daily basis through an inbox, social media, whatever it is. So get to the point, right? Get to the point. as possible.

speaker-0: 100 % and the same goes, you know, the same goes when you're dealing with clients and they're already your client when it comes to things like approvals, right? Make it as easy as possible for them to review the work and approve it. Perhaps they don't need to approve every single ad or every single piece of content. They need to approve the principle of it, the style of it, whatever that looks like, and they can kind of trust you with the rest.

So it's all about respecting and valuing our clients times. I think that goes a long way when we're overwhelmed with, you know, with content, with decisions. There's a lot out there that they're dealing with, that business owners are dealing with, and I think we want to make it easier for them. speaker-1: Easier said than done.

I mean that's it. That's the thing right sometimes people just need to let go and and I you probably see the same thing Month one got to be hands-on got to make sure you got the brand right, and then it's like okay They got it now I can trust them and they can totally But I'm getting there as quickly as possible making that approval processes as quickly as possible. It's definitely to the clients advantage, right? Yeah Talking about execution.

I do want to touch on how you are leveraging AI for execution in your business. ⁓ And then also, how can small businesses best be using AI to build a strong brand for themselves? speaker-0: Amazing. Okay, well.

The first thing I'll say is that it's always changing, right? If you listen to this podcast six months from now, there might be different tools or tactics, but one of the number one ways that I've been using AI in my business has been with transcription software. And I actually use two different ones. One that joins calls that I'm in and one that's actually on my computer that no matter which, you know, app tool service call, where the audio is coming from, ⁓ it's able to record that.

Now the second one I, that I there actually helps by reducing noise as well on the call so if I'm in a cafe or if I'm on the go that's the number one feature of it but it also does you know ⁓ tasks and transcription that is incredible but if you just leave it there speaker-1: What's the tool called? speaker-0: What is called Crisp? Crisp.ai.

So it reduces background noise. It helps you select which mic and speakers you want to use, a custom setup of that. And then at the end, gives you that transcript. Now.

There's a lot of people that don't want every single call recorded. Of course, you could always turn it off or you could pause it. But one thing I've found it incredibly helpful for our sales meetings, discovery meetings, partnership meetings. You know, when we're, when you're a founder or you're, know, you can talk to someone about three or four things in one meeting.

That's a lot to keep in mind. You don't want to be constantly focused on noting that down and, and, ⁓ you know, trying to remember what to send and actively typing stuff on the call. So AI note takers is huge. But then what do you do with it?

So one is the tasks and then two is sometimes I'm able to actually generate a really great briefing or follow-up email directly from that transcript, right? And, you know, I had a call last week with someone where it was actually in person and you could use some of these tools in person. Now, you should usually get people's permission to record them. But if it's not actually being published or going anywhere, it's just for your own usage.

As long as you have that and you're not planning on sharing it, you can generate your notes from there, right? It's just it's for your own use. I was able to get back to that person at least a week sooner than I would have if I didn't record that right and not just record it but use a tool to dissect decisions, questions, tasks, follow up items. So that's the number one way that I'm that I'm using AI and on a related note, it comes down to the video content as well.

So when I you know, I have a whole editing team and I have a whole process, but when I want to first identify what are some great hooks or some great to this video. I use a tool called Opus. Opus clip very, very, ⁓ you know, easy to use tool. have an app now on the phone, but it's, it's on a browser and it will help you to identify, you know, the likelihood, ⁓ the virality score of something based on, know, the hook or what's in that content.

And it's getting smarter. Now, now it'll even start to recommend, ⁓ you know, ⁓ text that you can add as the hook on your visual text as a designer and a branding person. I don't, I don't trust the design. I like to create my own stuff, but it's really helpful to see what.

you know, a tool that's seen hundreds of thousands of videos thinks is going to perform best. And those are a couple of ways that I use that ⁓ every day. And having the transcript is incredibly helpful as well. speaker-1: Opus is Opus also has the ability to, uh, you know, remove some of those ums and ahs from your conversations pretty easily.

AI voice improvement. there's a siren going off in the background of your recording, you can totally erase that. Although I personally feel it's a little clunky. I've messed around with it with some of my Google or some of my Facebook ads to remove voices and stuff like that or noises in the background.

And then it just sounds like AI, you know, which is what you want to use AI to not sound like AI. you speaker-0: I will, there's one other thing ⁓ that'll add to, which is, Working in marketing or content or creative, you know, we really want to value the, the voice and the original tone and all of that a hundred percent. And that's why we would never trust, you know, an AI tool to just generate default content for us really is about proper briefing. But one thing I'll say is that if I'm reviewing a client for the first time, if it's a discovery meeting, or I'm actually starting to work on some messaging for them or some content for them, one of the most amazing things you could do with AI is.

The best thing that it does is just take massive amounts of information and be able to boil that down for you and do Comparisons. So when you talk about brand and messaging consistency is the huge thing. I was on a discovery call the other day and I have I had actually ⁓ used AI tool to review the website some of the notes they sent and all of this And it actually pulled up a bunch of inconsistencies that they had. And I was able to go back to the website and realize like, ⁓ yeah, like this is actually conflicting information or their services are straight up not clear.

And that tool had identified that it actually thought they were speaking to three different audiences based off of this assessment. And that would have taken me obviously a lot longer to go through and deep dive into, but that alone is worth, you know, using this tool because I I can then go to the client and first of all, I stand by those recommendations. I can go to the client and I can say, listen, it's not actually a content problem you have. It's a messaging problem.

It's a brand positioning problem first. Whereas if I didn't do that assessment and I'm like, great, let's roll you in. We'll start doing eight videos a month. We'll start doing, you know, then we're going to run into issues.

We're going to run into conflicts with what to say to who to when, what format and which message actually are we going with, right? speaker-1: Yeah, that's very interesting to look at it that way, especially when you're using the AI to, you know, find those little things on a website that's going to help your business. found for us, like we have specific clod projects, or we have all of our, basically everything that's in our head and the way we do an audit, run an audit, way we position our strategy or, you know, on meta advertising or SEO, it's all baked in there.

So when we go to ask it for an audit, it has that sort of foundation in terms of what to look for as opposed to just being like, go and scan this website and find me some things that I can fix. It's like, well, yeah, it's doing that in addition to using our combined brain power to know exactly what to look for and how to position it. speaker-0: You can you can train it what to look for. I'll also say like just like I would research a client's website like you would as well or you would auto a client's website.

Those same clients could be auditing us and our website. So, you know, one of the the stats that I ⁓ learned from this report from Gartner they did last year. Sorry, not last year. It was actually from this year is that B2B buying when you're when when brands and businesses are looking to buy from other businesses.

⁓ percent of B2B buyers are saying they prefer a experience where they don't have to talk to a representative from that company, right? And 45 % so almost half said that they used AI during a recent purchase journey in B2B. So what does that mean? Well, obviously it means that your content is doing the job that maybe an intro call would have done for you.

So that is a it's a serious, I guess. warning that if your content's not up to date or if it's not, you know, in the right place, saying the right things, being super clear or being able to be ⁓ read by an AI tool, then you're totally missing out on opportunities because, you know, again, over almost half of the people in B2B are using AI as part of their purchase journey. I think that's a really important consideration. speaker-1: 100 % it's really, you know, I think that's maybe one little takeaway that the audience can do is as their business go over to chat, GPT, cloud, perplexity, whatever you use and say, who are the best at this service in my space, in my city, see what comes up and then maybe ask it a follow up question and say, why did you select these businesses before mine?

And that'll probably give you some clear ideas in terms of what you need to do with your online presence to be able to stand out. amongst the competition. speaker-0: Let me ask you, Jason, have you had any clients come through with your businesses ⁓ using AI? At least that they've said that they found you through Gemini or Tatsy BT or Clot.

speaker-1: Often and not it comes to AI overview on Google so You know when you Google something you have the AI overview and something at times people might click on that go to your website in a lot of cases though I think a lot of people searching or searching for the DIY You know do it yourself solutions on AI and not necessarily looking for it in the way. I just explained I said we see it firsthand a lot of the high-intent searches through Google are still the most relevant They're the ones that are converting most.

But ⁓ there are a series of searches that happen before they get there. And a lot of the searches are derived from AI, like what to look for in a digital marketing agency before I hire them, that kind of stuff. speaker-0: Right. Absolutely.

Or maybe even doing a comparison at the end of the day. I, ⁓ yesterday I had a discovery call for clarity and, ⁓ I found out that they found me through chat. And not only did they find me through judge, but they booked a discovery call directly without ever having reaching out on chat. Yeah.

So that was really interesting. ⁓ obviously I'm working hard on making the clarity content site be optimized for AO. and I'm having the right questions and I'm, you but I don't actually don't know what their flow was. I didn't want to take them out of the discovery call that turned it on them to tell me their process, but it is always worth thinking about, you know, what are people looking at and how are people actually trying to figure out how are people finding you?

Right. I think that's going to continuously change. It's a big part of our business. speaker-1: I think it's brilliant.

And that's a whole nother topic we can talk about on a future episode. Daniel, maybe when our new podcast studio is done, you'll have to come out to Rockwood. I'll send you a map. speaker-0: I'm willing to come out and look for Rockwood.

speaker-1: Awesome, cool. Daniel, if our audience has any questions for you, what's the best way for them to get in touch? speaker-0: Best way is to connect with me on LinkedIn, just my full name, Daniel Frankavilla. You can also check out my personal brand site, danielduz.

co. And from there, you can find claritycontent.ca. I'm happy to connect with any business owners.

Awesome. Thank you, Jason. speaker-1: Thanks for your time. Hey, thank you, podcast listener, for checking out that episode of Drop the Mic.

If you liked that episode, I would love it if you went on over to your podcast platform and left us a five-star review. And if you don't wanna miss an upcoming episode of Drop the Mic, make sure you hit that subscribe button as well. Thanks again, see you soon.