1682 – Why Does Jonny Hate Marketing? Exploring the Solopreneur’s Perspective with Jonny Hates Marketing’s Jonny Cooper

Josh (00:00:05) - Hey there, thoughtful listener. Would you like consistent and predictable sales activity with no spam and no ads? I'll teach you step by step how to do this, particularly if you're an agency owner, consultant, coach or B2B service provider. What I teach has worked for me for more than 15 years and has helped me create more than $10 million in revenue. Just head to up my influence and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments. You can even chat with me live and I'll see and reply to your messages. Also, don't forget the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for guests. Go to up my influence and click on podcast. We'd love to have you. With us right now, Jonny Cooper. Jonny, you are found on the web at Jonny Hates marketing. Com. And Jonny, by the way, is spelled j o n n y. To our friend. Let's listen to a conversation. Just click around and your podcast app you'll find where we've got the notes for this episode, the direct link if you want to follow along.

Josh (00:01:20) - Jonny, it's great to have you. Thanks so much for joining us.

Jonny (00:01:22) - It's great to be here. Joshua, You're a legend in the podcasting community.

Josh (00:01:27) - Huge. Thank you. That's that's high praise, as we say. So, Jonny, give us give us an overview of your work. And please tell us why do you hate marketing?

Jonny (00:01:39) - Hey, you know what? I'm great to be here. Josh, first of all, thanks for inviting me on. I so some years ago I decided I wanted to work with online solopreneurs so kind of coaches, therapists, consultants, you know, people are running their own boat trying to trying to make a carve out some influence online and make a name for themselves. And I came up with this sizzling brand called the Success Party. I call it the Success Party. Com. I thought that was great. Nobody else agreed. It didn't really go. Maybe it wasn't just the name, but, you know, names are important, aren't it? So I was on a podcast interview in early 2017.

Jonny (00:02:25) - I'm guessing that and the podcast host and I were talking about rubbish marketing ideas, things that we just didn't respect, we thought were not good things to do, you know, not best practice to say the least. And we got to the point where we'd made such a list of things that we didn't like about marketing. But he said to me, Spoiler alert, Jonny hates marketing. I just went. Wow. Say that again. That sounds like a brand. And, you know, within a couple of days, I just rebranded everything to marketing because you know what? My community and I'm going to say probably a lot of yours as well. Josh, you know, they want to just get on with business. They just want to serve clients that want to make products and ship. And marketing for them is oftentimes not just a blind spot, but it's a pain in the neck. And it's.

Josh (00:03:21) - I hear.

Jonny (00:03:22) - We'd like to wave a magic wand and have it all done for us.

Josh (00:03:25) - It's like a necessary evil, right? So that's the thing I have to do so that I get to do the thing that I really, really.

Jonny (00:03:33) - Wanted want to.

Josh (00:03:34) - Do, you know, if I'm an expert in accounting or something like that, why on earth would we expect, you know, that they you know, that they should be all of a sudden degreed in best practices for demand generally gen or whatever it is. And certainly, I mean those are a lot of extra skills that don't come innate, you know, that require.

Jonny (00:03:56) - Like totally.

Josh (00:03:57) - I mean.

Jonny (00:03:58) - They're learned skills. But I often say, you know, it's if you are in your example, a skilled accountant, you know, it's it's another channel of learning you have to do, which is just as difficult as becoming an accountant, becoming a skilled marketer. You know, there is so much to learn. And what's the real kicker really these days on social media is it's a changing landscape all the time. There's new stuff happening. And what about the AI explosion, which is this year, isn't it? You know, and if we expect our, you know, our overworked therapists and life coaches and consultants to learn all that stuff as well as all the stuff that they're still not doing very well, you know, it's it's a huge thing.

Jonny (00:04:41) - So when we say it's marketing, they they arrive on my doorstep and go, I get it. I have marketing too. So it kind of works, you know?

Josh (00:04:51) - Yeah. Well, if we are not marketing Jonny, then what are we doing?

Jonny (00:04:57) - Hmm.

Jonny (00:04:58) - You caught me taking a gulp of coffee there. Watching the video will have seen that. I thought it was going to be a longer question.

Josh (00:05:06) - It's a gulp of coffee for the audience acoustically as well.

Jonny (00:05:12) - It truly is, isn't it? Just just to show our authenticity, you know, we're not robots. We drink coffee like humans. So if not marketing, well, I would fall back on one of the one of the greatest definitions of marketing that I've ever seen or read by the fantastic Seth Godin. And he and his book called This is Marketing. He defines marketing. He says marketing is the generous act of solving someone's problem. Once you start to regard it like that, you start to think, well, if it's not about me, if it's not about self-promotion, if it's about helping somebody, then the task becomes slightly different and sharper in focus, I would say, because all you got to do is you got to understand your ideal client and what's keeping them awake at night.

Jonny (00:06:02) - That's a pain. Other challenges while they leap out of bed for in the morning, which is their hopes and dreams and aspirations and all the rest of it. And if you can define those things, then it becomes quite simple to communicate with them, to outreach and to speak their language, you know, to end the conversation that's going on in their heads. Whether you're doing that with landing pages or campaigns or emails or, you know, face to face on Zoom with with actual words and questions and that kind of thing. As long as you're under their skin and you understand your ideal clients and marketing becomes a whole lot easier and it generally doesn't feel like marketing, you know, we've got our communities at the point now. We've got nearly 7000 coaching therapists in our Facebook community, and I just show up every day and talk to them. I just speak their language. I ask them questions that I know will resonate with them that are questions are probably asking themselves right now. And, you know, you kind of you kind of eliminate the kind of massive fog in front of you that's got an name on it as marketing just by saying, Well, how about if we make it all about them and not about us? We're not marketing our services.

Jonny (00:07:11) - What we're doing is we're helping them to solve their biggest problem. And if you can do that, you solve the marketing puzzle in one.

Jonny (00:07:20) - Yeah.

Josh (00:07:21) - So what might be some examples of kind of giving a lot more value on the front end and or communicating in a way that's very customer centric as opposed to consultant centric, right. Or the consultant or the coach or the service provider or the agency. They just want to earn that business. What would be maybe an example of a before and after?

Jonny (00:07:47) - Yeah, well, the before would be, you know, constant sales posts, regular sales, but just blathering on about the product, about the join this, join this now two days to go sign up now you know price goes up on Thursday. All that kind of stuff versus entering the conversation it's going on their heads. And you know, another way to think of this is that if your ideal client can come across you on social media, where on your website and their first instinct is that people like them work with you.

Jonny (00:08:23) - Then you're kind of halfway there. And this is another another Golding quote. You know, he says that, you know what your ideal clients need to feel is that people like us do things like this. And this speaks to the heart of a community rather than a transactional business where you're just kind of shifting product. If you can get people into a community where they understand the ethos in there, they've got comfortable in that. If it's safe and nurtured and they feel that you're the leader, you're the authority, they're then prepared to hang on your every word, including the words that you'll speak to them about your products and, you know, the necessity for them to actually buy your products, they're going to believe them. So it's all about building communities, and that's what we do for our clients. You know, from day one, we say, look. We get what you do. We've heard what your skills are. What's in your toolbox, right? Modalities, Huh? What kind of people would benefit the most from that? And let's build a community of those people so that, you know, your umbilical connected with your with your aims, with your values, with your ethos.

Jonny (00:09:30) - And it then becomes almost second nature just to just to sell stuff every now and again or even consistently to sell stuff to people because, because they trust you and they believe you and they feel like they're a part of something important. Part of a part of a mission, I guess.

Josh (00:09:47) - Yeah. Yeah. How do you work with your clients so that you can help them achieve these things?

Jonny (00:09:55) - Yeah. My clients are generally Josh, coaches and therapists who are perhaps pivoting from another profession. You know, work with a lot of people who are packing in their job and want to go out on their own. We also work with coaches and therapists have been at it for a while, you know, in some cases years. And they haven't cracked the code of of client attraction. So what we do is we we build that business from the inside out. We start from these really important questions. One, what is it you do? That's the first pillar. And in words that people understand, you know, not coach you kind of jargon, but what is it you actually do for people? What do they feel you do? Secondly, what kind of people then would be would benefit from that? So who are these people? And then thirdly, we help them to build their offer, their signature program.

Jonny (00:10:45) - So it's three simple pillars. What who and how? How are you going to deliver what it is you do to those people? And with those pillars in place, the rest is detail, as in which social platforms could we use, Which bits of software might we need? You know, what kind of product stack are we going to build around that? But it's really, really important for anybody wanting to make a foothold in online therapy or coaching to just develop this this signature program. You know, you guys have probably heard this many, many times, you know, one offer one audience and just get on with it and everything becomes simple with that kind of clarity. So, you know, I guess what we do, what we deliver is simplicity and clarity. Try and bust through the marketing overwhelm that most people feel and say, look, you know what? It's simpler than you making it.

Josh (00:11:41) - Yeah. Jonny, you've got a group. I know that that's quite popular, a Facebook group. But, you know, to someone that's been listening to our conversation, let's maybe give them some let's, let's start by giving a couple of action items that require no connection whatsoever, you know, things that you would recommend that they start doing.

Josh (00:12:02) - Maybe it's, you know, kind of reviewing their language or their copy or whatever it is. And then let's let's give them maybe a couple of action items that where maybe they could start connecting with you.

Jonny (00:12:12) - Yeah, that's that easy.

Jonny (00:12:14) - Those those first two pillars, you know, what is they do and who they serve. Let's cover those with action items. So with the first thing. All bits of social where you appear, all your profiles and your groups and that kind of thing should be all about them and not about you. It pains me still, after all these years of best practice and information out there online, so many people seem to just be setting up their social profiles as online CVS. You know, trained here, worked with this person, did this at this college, you know, went to school here, all that kind of thing. Nobody cares about any of that. Just, you know, that's not what they want to see. That's not going to draw your ideal clients towards you knowing that you went to some, you know, high school in Chicago 27 years ago, you know, so it's got to be all about them.

Jonny (00:13:07) - And, you know, most social profiles allow you to put a simple headline there that says, you know, this is who he's for and this is what it is. So start talking about them is the first thing and then understanding literally who they are, who is your audience? It's been said so many times, so many people that I guess, you know, a lot of online practitioners are just weary of it and they see it as a cliche. But you know what, the niche, as you guys call it, or the niche as it's correctly pronounced in French. Um, the niche is twofold, isn't it? It's the outcome. What is it you actually do for people and the client niche know? Who do you do it for and with? So those are the those are the two action points. Just go away with a blank sheet of paper. If you have to scribble down some ideas about what people get from working with you and you you know, the easy way to do this, look in your back.

Jonny (00:14:05) - That's all to see what people have achieved when they've been working with you, You know, have their lives been changed from before they met you as a practitioner to when they've worked with you? You know, what does that journey look like? Write that down and then describe that in your socials, because then other people like them will see that journey and go, Yep, that's what I need. Um, and then, you know, make some effort at least to define a client niche. You can be a little bit loose on that to start with and you can, you can kind of narrow the niche as you go on. You know, we call it inch wide and mile deep, this process. So you can you can start on the surface and then find sub niches and sub issues of sub niches. If you just take a stab at it to start with, you know, just slice the global population down at least a little bit, even if it's just, you know, work with overworked women, middle aged women or something like that, if you slice the population in half at least.

Jonny (00:15:02) - So those are the two deliverables, you know, work out what it is you do on the basis of the transformation you've created already for people. And then decide what kind of people are you going to go after and you know who is for.

Josh (00:15:16) - Awesome. Again, your website Jonny hates marketing. NY hates marketing. In the upper right hand corner there's a button that says Join the Facebook group. It's free. And what happens in the group.

Jonny (00:15:32) - When the group we have daily conversations through a simple little question that we post first thing in the morning that gets the brain cells going, gets them thinking about their life and business. We also have regular live trainings. So on a Friday afternoon in the UK, that's 4 p.m. UK, which is accessible to most Americans. It's 8 a.m. West Coast, that kind of thing. We do a training call. Thank Flip. It's Friday where where I flip a commonly held belief about marketing businesses turn through 180 and you know, state the truth as I see it, which hopefully makes people's lives easier.

Jonny (00:16:14) - So that's quite a lively session. It lasts about 45 minutes each Friday and they're all streamed into the groups you've got to be in the group to, to actually experience those. So yeah, just join the group as well where all the fun starts, basically. Yeah.

Josh (00:16:30) - Awesome. All right. Jonny Cooper, aka Jonny Hates Marketing your website. Jonny hates marketing. Jonny, it's been great having you. Thanks so much for joining us.

Jonny (00:16:41) - It's been awesome. Josh, thanks for inviting me.

Josh (00:16:48) - Thanks for listening to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit up my influencer slash guest. If you're a listener, I'd love to shout out your business to our whole audience for free. You can do that by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or join our listener Facebook group. Just search for the thoughtful entrepreneur and Facebook. I'd love even if you just stopped by to say Hi, I'd love to meet you. We believe that every person has a message that can positively impact the world.

Josh (00:17:26) - We love our community who listens and shares our program every day. Together. We are empowering one another as thoughtful entrepreneurs. Hit subscribe so that tomorrow morning. That's right, seven days a week, you are going to be inspired and motivated to succeed. I promise to bring positivity and inspiration to you for around 15 minutes each day. Thanks for listening and thank you for being a part of the thoughtful entrepreneur movement.