#I was very ambitious eight months ago when I imagined doing stuff for this

[alagaisia]

Okay so I never got around to replacing the not-very-good-anyway astronaut shaped cookie cutter that I melted in the dishwasher with a better and unmelted one. And my cookie-decorating skills are none. So tonight, in preparation for Lunar Landing Day tomorrow, I made moon (circle) shaped shortbread cookies with just a regular old smear of frosting on them. But! They are pretty tasty :)

I (more or less) used this recipe for apricot basil shortbread:

It’s pretty savory on its own, which isn’t a bad thing at all, just not what I was looking for. But luckily, I was already planning to also use this recipe for apricot cream cheese frosting:

I halved it and had pretty much exactly the right amount. (…I also barely followed this recipe because I had dried apricots, not apricot jam, and because I’ve made cream cheese frosting before, and it’s very easy. The important takeaway here is that half of a block of cream cheese is the amount of cream cheese to start with for this recipe in this instance)

[lewishamledger]

Taylor made

Above: Taylor Bradshaw (centre) with Danny Nattrass and Cameron Burt in Mamma Mia!

WORDS BY EMMA FINAMORE; PHOTO BY BRINKHOFF/MÖGENBURG

Lewisham’s Taylor Bradshaw only graduated from university earlier this year, but he has already landed a 12-month spot on the cast of Mamma Mia!

The feel-good musical, featuring classic tracks from Abba, has been running in the West End for 21 years – the same age as Taylor himself – at the Novello Theatre in Aldwych.

Taylor treads the boards as playful Eddie, a waiter at the taverna on the musical’s fictitious – and fairly action-packed – Greek island, alongside his colleague and partner-in-crime Pepper, performing to hundreds of people every show. Having kicked off his tenure in June, it was only a matter of months ago that he was still studying musical theatre at London’s ArtsEd performing arts school.

“I was flabbergasted,” Taylor laughs. “It [getting a role in a big production] was the dream from the beginning. I’m overjoyed, grateful, every day. Everything’s switching now and I’m getting my feet on the ground.”

It’s a moment he seems to have been rehearsing for his whole life. Born in Lewisham Hospital and growing up in Brockley, Taylor fell in love with dancing through his sister, who attended classes at the Scott ’n’ Wiseman School of Performing Arts in Forest Hill (now Studio 23). As a child he used to watch her shows and was captivated from the off.

“I was like, ‘Yeah, I want to do that,’” he laughs. “Tap, modern, street jazz, ballet, singing, drama… whenever my sister had rehearsals I’d be standing on the side doing the same dance. I knew all the dances to every single senior piece.”

Taylor’s parents encouraged a keen interest in all activities from an early age: karate (he holds a black belt), art club, chess club, debating club. “I tried everything,” he says. “And then I said, ‘I want to do performing arts.’”

He went on to study at the prestigious Brit School, an environment just as motivating as the one he had with his family at home.

From there he moved to ArtsEd – whose glittering alumni include people like Julie Andrews, Martin Clunes and Tuppence Middleton – and from which he graduated with a BA in musical theatre before landing his role in Mamma Mia!

With his graceful, dancer-like way of moving, easy confidence and glowing CV, Taylor makes his route to the stage appear easy – which, of course, it hasn’t been. “A few months ago it wasn’t like this,” he says. “Not sleeping, trying to practise everything, all the time. They say put 10,000 hours of practice into something and you’ll be good at it, so I just fit everything in when I can. I like to work hard.”

During his degree Taylor began auditioning and taking part in as many performances as possible, even performing at the Olivier Awards last year, before going on to help present at the awards this year. It all led him to a life-changing opportunity to try out for Mamma Mia!

He sang Don’t You Want Me by The Human League at his audition, before performing a routine from the show. He also had to tell jokes and bounce off another character, Pepper. He clearly impressed: he got the part.

Taylor seems so confident it’s hard to imagine him fazed by anything, but a debut role in a West End show must be fairly daunting. Does he ever get stage fright?

“I can see where it comes from,” he reflects. “If you worry so much it goes into a cycle, especially something like opening night – you’re fine, then backstage, about to go on, you’re like ‘Oh, wait... I’m going on to a West End stage in front of important people, like a thousand people.’ It’s scary, especially if you make a mistake.

“It [the show] gets into your body though. Then you can just relax into it and experiment. That’s why I love that I’ll be in a show for a year – I can find so many different things there.”

He really does experiment too, with devices like a character diary that he writes for Eddie whenever he has a spare moment: “I just write down character stuff from his life before, brothers who live away, he just lives with his mum, he’s the smart kid at school, the types of holidays he likes going on… If I’m in it for a year I may as well see how far I can go with it.”

Obviously the music and dancing is as much a part of Mamma Mia! as the characters. Taylor says he’s lucky enough to dance lots of old-school jazz with a bit of funk, which he was pleasantly surprised by when starting the job. Even though he’d already watched the film many times (it’s his “guilty pleasure”, he says, along with Legally Blonde) he actually watched the stage production for the very first time after landing the part, during rehearsals.

“I watched it here,” he laughs, gesturing towards the Novello, “and I was like, ‘Oh my God it’s actually amazing!’ The concept, the lighting, the party at the end... yes!”

That enthusiasm hasn’t waned, either. Taylor talks passionately about his show highlights, like Voulez-Vous – “It is such a good number. No matter how tired you are, once you hit that C note, you’re like, ‘Come on!’ And the lights are flashing and there’s great choreography… it’s just a good vibe on stage.”

Then there’s the eight-minute finale, a medley of feel-good singalong hits like Waterloo, Dancing Queen and of course, Mamma Mia. “Everyone loves it,” says Taylor. “When my dad came to watch he came backstage afterwards singing it.”

As well as relishing the moment, he’s also ambitious about the future and reels off productions he’d love to have roles in, such as Fame, Hamilton, Memphis, Dreamgirls, The Tap Dance Kid – “such an underrated musical” – and Rent, as well as plays – “anything at the Young Vic” – and an idea for a new production he’s had: “I’m ready for a Muhammad Ali musical to come out.”

Taylor also wants to pursue dance further, citing Five Guys Named Moe, The Scottsboro Boys, Hairspray and Cats as dream shows for this.

He’s incredibly enthusiastic about the craft that goes into building a whole production too – in fact he hopes to write his own show one day.

“The backstage routine is just as impressive as the front routine,” he says. He paints a vivid picture of a brightly coloured, bustling and dynamic world, chaotic but also moving like clockwork.

A key part of the show’s mechanics for Taylor is his working relationship with Danny Nattrass, who plays Pepper. The two are good friends, having come through ArtsEd together. “We’ve known each other for years,” says Taylor, “and it’s made it so much easier; we’re just comfortable with each other, we understand each other.”

In spite of the kudos that comes from appearing in a top name West End show, Taylor gives off the vibe of someone who cares little about bright lights and big crowds – he does musical theatre for the love of it.

“Theatre and the arts are just so important,” he says. “The freedom people have to express themselves, that’s what we need – we don’t give ourselves time anymore. Just taking the time to open your eyes, look around you and take inspiration from it, and see the beauty, is so important.”

He’s just as appreciative of the beauty indoors at the Novello, when the curtain goes up: “Maybe I’m still in the honeymoon stage, but I’m loving it.”

[jeremystrele]

Rone’s ‘Empire’ Eclipses All That Came Before

Rone’s ‘Empire’ Eclipses All That Came Before

Art

by Elle Murrell

Rone’s Empire has taken over Burnham Beeches in Melbourne’s east. Pictured here: The Study. Photo – Rone.

The Street artist has been working on the largely self-funded project for over 12-months. Photo – courtesy of Rone.

The 12 vast zones incorporate Rone’s Jane Doe murals, the muse for which is actress Lily Sullivan who came on-site early in the project’s development. Photo – Rone.

Part exhibition, part installation, part VR and AR experience, Empire combines art, vision, sound, light, botanical design and scent to take audiences on a hauntingly immersive multi-sensory journey. Photo – courtesy of Rone.

‘It’s almost like we’ve discovered a forgotten time capsule and cracked it open for the world to see,’ he says. Photo – Rone.

Interior stylist Carly Spooner of The Establishment Studios was back, after teaming up with Rone for Omega, and has proved integral to the sourcing of items, propping authenticity and the final film-set-like styling. Photo – courtesy of Rone.

The year-long project coincided with the birth of Rone’s first child. Photo – courtesy of Rone.

This grand piano that was left to the elements for several weeks to achieve its aged patina before being transplanted back into the house – moss, leaves and all. Photo – Rone.

No task is too menial for the internationally-acclaimed artist. Photo – courtesy of Rone.

Inside Her Room. It was given the working title of Diana’s Room as it is rumoured Prince Charles and Lady Diana once stayed at Burnham Beeches in its luxury hotel heyday. Photo – courtesy of Rone.

The dedication to seasonality, tonality and historical accuracy is astounding across the vast rooms. Photo – courtesy of Rone.

The experience has been meticulously curated to evoke a distinct series of moods as audiences move from room to room. Photo – Rone.

‘Once I got inside and realised that I had free rein on an entire mansion my mind was blown with ideas of what could be possible. It was quite overwhelming,’ tells Rone. Photo – courtesy of Rone.

Fragments of inspiration came from Johnny Cash’s heart-wrenching Mark Romanek-directed film clip Hurt, (where he covers Nine Inch Nails), but Rone was careful not to dictate the narrative. Photo – courtesy of Rone.

‘I want people to walk in and feel like they can explore the possibilities of what might or might not have happened here,’ he explains. Photo – courtesy of Rone.

The project has now been supported by Visit Victoria and Yarra Ranges Tourism. Photo – Rone.

Built-in 1933 Burnham Beeches was the family home of wealthy industrialist Alfred Nicholas. It later served as a research facility, children’s hospital and luxury hotel until being shuttered in the late 1990s and purchased by current owners, The Vue Group in 2010. Photo – courtesy of Rone.

Rone doesn’t like to cut corners… unless he’s trying to make vintage Chesterfield armchairs appear submerged. ‘That wall is four-and-a-half metres, and that is three-and-a-half metres, and if we have a row of books every 30 centimetres, that’s eight rows,’ the Melbourne-based artist calculates, as we peer into The Study he is creating. Tyrone Wright’s precise project-manager demeanour comes as a bit of a surprise, but it really shouldn’t have. If you’re familiar with his art, it’s clear that the same meticulous, exacting detail applies to both his large-scale murals and the 40-something spreadsheets he’s been coordinating to bring Empire to life.

‘…that comes to 64. So I thought to myself, “OK, go find 64-metres of hardcover books that are the same height”. That’s where I started,’ reflects the artist. It seems an arduous task that someone so internationally-acclaimed might outsource. Nope. Scouring Gumtree and racking up miles around Melbourne, Rone pulled it off. Then he proceeded to paint one of his stunning Jane Doe artworks – this time in the image of actress/’girl-next-door’ beauty Lily Sullivan – on the library of said books, before flooding the entire room to create a captivating reflection. Inspired by a leaking, OH&S-liability ceiling and concept sketch from years ago, The Study is arguably the most ambitious room of the 12 spaces transformed throughout this neglected Art Moderne manor.

Following the wild success of his now-demolished The Omega Project, the artist was invited by past-collaborator Shannon Bennett of the Vue Group to ‘come and check out a place I’ve got up in the hills, maybe you should paint a wall there… it’s empty at the moment’. It was, in fact, the sprawling Burnham Beeches: a glamorous 1933-built home of wealthy industrialist Alfred Nicholas, which later became a research facility, children’s hospital and then a luxury hotel, but has been vacant for decades.

For all the exceptional location’s promise, this was a risky gig, especially as it was self-funded up until some support came through just a few weeks ago. ‘I’d taken a dedicated six-months off before our first baby came, and decided “let’s go for a drive up the hills and look at this place”. When then I saw it and I thought, “well, there goes the next year!”,’ Rone explains. ‘It was a very serious sit-down conversation with my wife as we didn’t know how our life would look after a baby. Yet, it was the most incredible opportunity I’d ever been offered..” could we make it work?” If we could pull it off and at least break even, It would just blow peoples’ minds, and that alone would be worth doing it for!’

On subsequent visits, potential collaborators were equally intrigued and quick to sign on. Interior stylist Carly Spooner of The Establishment Studios was back, after teaming up with Rone for Omega, and has proved integral to the sourcing of items, propping authenticity and the final film-set-like styling. After linking up over Instagram, Wona Bae and Charlie Lawler of Loose Leaf added their botanical sculptures, including an incredible twig-lined hallway, while composer Nick Batterham has scored the scenes, incorporating months of ambient audio recorded in the estate’s gardens. Further elevating this immersive experience, is the bespoke scent design by Kat Snowden and cinematic lighting by John McKissock, along with an area for before-and-after augmented and virtual reality experiences.

As well as bring together the exceptional team to realise his ambitious vision, Rone has done everything from sleuthing second-hand furniture across the city to collecting bundles of branches from around the property, and he’s even been pilfering from the onsite café’s coal ovens to dust the entire installation! If you can look past the transfixing details – epic murals upon aged wallpaper, trees growing through walls, a forgotten Champagne tower or that grand piano that was left outside to weather for weeks – the dedication to seasonality, tonality and historical accuracy is astounding across the vast rooms.

Rone encourages visitors to walk in and explore their own imagined possibilities of what may or may not have happened here. Yet, his own veiled narrative draws on aspects of Johnny Cash’s melancholic music video, Hurt (2002), and the project takes its name from the Trent Reznor lyrics delivered ever so harrowingly: ‘And you could have it all, My empire of dirt’. Standing in His Room, while Her Room is at the far end of the hallway, Rone explains, ‘already they have become separated, maybe he has lost her. I guess the whole concept of Empire is: “I’ll give it all up for you”. Having that realisation about what is really important… It’s not all this material wealth,’ he gestures. ‘You have the feeling that it has all been walked away from, that this grand stuff, without her, is nothing.’

Empire truly is something. Spine-tinglingly unforgettable, it shouldn’t be missed!

Empire by Rone March 6th to April 22nd  Burnham Beeches, Sherbrook Road Sherbrooke, Victoria Book for day and night sessions at R-o-n-e.com.

Limited-edition art photographs of Empire, taken by Rone, are available to view and purchase in an on-site gallery. Just like his meticulously documented The Omega Project, which has now toured internationally as a photography and virtual/augmented reality exhibition, he hopes Empire will continue to be experienced into the future and in alternate locations – stay tuned!

[timothyakoonce]

Transcript of The Key to Success? Taking Care of Your Community

Transcript of The Key to Success? Taking Care of Your Community written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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Transcript

John Jantsch: Who doesn’t love Copyblogger? Really been around since the dawn of the online era. Brian Clark and I have been friends for a really long time and they have certainly set the standard on how to build a business, how to build a brand, how to take care of a community. In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast, I catch up with Brian and we just talk about a whole host of things. Why don’t you sit in and listen with us? You don’t want to miss it.

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Brian Clark. He is the CEO of Rainmaker Digital, founder of Copyblogger, host of unemployable and curator of further. Brian thanks for joining me. This is about your third time on at least.

Brian Clark: John, it’s always good to be here. Always good to talk to you.

John Jantsch: Yeah so you’ve got a lot going on in your world always. We always enjoy, I think, we forget there’s an audience listening even sometimes and enjoy just chatting about this online world that we’ve both been in for a long time. Tell me what’s new at Copyblogger and Rainmaker.

Brian Clark: There’s two big developments that have happened in the last six months or so. One was the launch of Studio Press Sites. For those that are familiar with Studio Press, it was pretty much the industry standard for word press things for many, many years powered by the [Janis 00:01:44] framework, which is our design framework that makes word press more powerful and easier to use. That was a company founded by Brian Gardener who is a principle here in Rainmaker Digital. We came together in 2010. That was part of our overall initiative to build what became known as the Rainmaker platform. As a bootstrap company without investors we always have to use cash flow as our development and maintenance funds.

Studio Press was a work horse for many years as we did development of Rainmaker, which was released in 2014 and then a couple years of rapidly trying to iterate that more ambitious marketing automation website email total solution type thing. When we finally came up for air, which was last fall, we started thinking about an idea that we had had for several years which was the idea of a hybrid between an all in one solution like a Square Space or a Wix, but without limiting all the functionality that you can do with word press. It’s a hard thing to do because what makes word press so powerful is just being able to use any plug-in, any theme, mix and match, put it together your own way.

Of course, as an open source project when you start mixing all these elements together from different sources, you have possible compatibility issues, you have security issues, you’ve got ease of use, who can you trust, who do you go for support, all that kind of stuff. That’s what we tried to solve with Studio Press Sites which is a little up market of say a Blue Host or an entry level thousand on a box type very inexpensive solution. Still, nowhere near the higher pricing that you would see. That rolled out at the very beginning of February. We’ve been thrilled with the reception level while we’re taking in all the feedback and improving and trying to do the same thing there with rapidly making that more in line with what we’re hearing from our customers, which has been pretty good.

There’s that side of things. That was our chance to revitalize Studio Press. The brand was always so important to us, but just again, by the nature of being a small bootstrap company even though we made it to eight figures in the last couple years, you know how it is when you’re running a small business you choose your priorities and you focus. At least that’s what we do and that’s the only way we’ve been able to make things work. That was a revisiting of Studio Press, which we’re really excited about.

On the Rainmaker side we evolved the platform. It’s kind of like Hub Spot if you will. That’s the easiest way for people to understand what it is. It was designed to be more accessible and more affordable because we started with word press and then we tricked it out heavily just as we do for our own sites. We got to thousands of customers and millions in recurring revenue. We started seeing the writing on the wall, I’d say at least a year ago where, again, you’ve got to listen to your customers. If there’s frustration, if there is something standing in the way of your customer’s success, even if it’s their own staffing, it’s their own skill levels, anything, ultimately it becomes your fault. Right? If you don’t solve the customer’s problem and provide a mechanism for success. We saw people, they were just running into roadblocks whether it be content development, design, any myriad of subset of that SEO, which of course you’re having a nice focus on custom development. All of that kind of stuff we realized we needed to do that, even though from the beginning that wasn’t really what we aspired to do. We weren’t trying to have a client type business. It was always at the customer level.

The thing we found with that model, to make it affordable and easy to use, you spend an incredible amount of time on onboarding, documentation, just trying to figure out every possible way to keep a paying customer on track and successful. I think we did a pretty good job at that, but when you spend all your time on that type of stuff, not all of it but a substantial part, that’s just taking away from development of new features. Again, even beyond that it was still take my credit card. Why can’t you just make me the content? Why can’t you do design for me? Why can’t you just set this up for me? It was amazing how much of that we got.

John Jantsch: You and I talked about this a couple times I think probably about a year ago. I think that’s always gonna be a challenge in there are 700 million variables and how you plan for every one that every person wants. Right? Everybody wants their thing. In the end, like you said, everybody really just wants somebody to do it for them. Rainmaker, I think, at the outset was incredibly ambitious. What’s the right term? You’ve enhanced it? Is that the right term?

Brian Clark: I think what we’ve done is listened to the market. It’s going to be a little bit upstream, not enterprise level, but certainly more than 150 bucks a month just for the platform. We’re gonna create just more bundled solutions as well as a la carte services. We had started that, and again you’re right, you and I had a conversation because of course you have this network of talented consultants and our friend Michael Port same thing. There’s some congruency here. Of course, that’s what Hub Spots model was and other similar platforms, they rely almost 100% on agency reseller arrangements. Right? They’re the point of contact for the sale, but they’re also doing the substance of work for them as well. We had to consider are we gonna be a me too, again, we didn’t take 100 million bucks like Hub Spot and we’re not trying to go public, so for us it made sense to why don’t we make power house hybrid agency where you have technology solutions, website, email, marketing automation, but also the creative services that back that up. Everything from strategy design, SEO, and whatnot.

Really when you think about it, I have two Rainmaker sites. I wouldn’t go back to word press if you paid me. Just the interface alone of word press scares me sometimes because I’m spoiled now with what we did with Rainmaker. I’ve never had an issue. Here’s the difference, my Rainmaker sites were set up for me by someone on the team, my designs were done by [Raphal 00:09:15]. You know? It was seamless. I don’t ever have a problem. I just go in there and I post my content and I do what I need to do. I send my emails. It’s wonderful. I can imagine if I had to start from scratch, even with all the onboarding work we did, even with all the extensive documentation and videos and everything, for me, I’d be like just do this for me. My time is more important than my money. Right? Now imagine you’ve got someone in a similar position to me, but they haven’t been doing content marketing for 20 years. They need a whole lot more help than even I need. That’s just the reality of where we’re at.

John Jantsch: Well and I think the other thing that a lot of people really neglect to is I find increasingly we used to live in a world where you could go get somebody to design your website and then you could get a content producer to help you produce content and then you could get an SEO person to SEO it all. I think we increasingly live in a world, a business and marketing world, where all that stuff has to be done together. Developing your website is strategy now and developing your content is strategy and developing your SEO is strategy.

Brian Clark: Right. We’ve been preaching that for awhile. You have. I know [Lee Odin 00:10:33] wrote a whole book about it. It is true. It is one thing. I think people are coming around to understanding that. That’s one aspect of it. Then also look at where we’re going with consumers and prospects are expecting personalized experiences as long as you don’t creep them out with your automation and whatnot. That’s just adds another layer of complexity. Within the strategy, it’s not just content and SEO and design, it’s entire choose your own adventure sequences of if then, then that so that you’re creating, not only from a conversion standpoint, but from their perspective, their experience of this is perfect, this is for me, without them ever knowing what’s going on behind the scenes. It’s when you pull back the curtain on the wizard that people get creeped out by automation technology. Right? That takes skill and that takes strategy. That’s a whole new brave world. I don’t think there’s that many people on the planet who can say they’re really good at that. But that’s where we’re going.

John Jantsch: What’s gonna be the role, I’m gonna go down a whole path I didn’t know I was gonna go down here, but what’s gonna be the role of AI in all of that?

Brian Clark: That’s the interesting question. That was another thing that kept me up at night. Again, we’re a successful, profitable company, but we don’t have a war chest. We don’t have investors. I started thinking we may be on the cusp of seeing the website radically, what’s the word here, just when you think about it, websites have changed a lot in the last 20 years, mainly by content not by structure. We’ve had the same metaphors for navigation, organization, some better than others, user experience interface, but if you look at how people use chat bots and if that experience can get to true AI, and plus machine learning on the fly, that is the first chance I think we’ll have where we see the website that’s been with us since the nineties essentially radically reinvent. You’re still gonna need content, you’re still gonna need design, everything, but you could get caught flat footed as a CEO of a company like mine if that change happens before we could adapt to it. Then all of a sudden we find ourself losing customers, not making new sales because we just couldn’t move fast enough.

Now, I am encouraged because everything from chat bots to AI to even some machine learning stuff, is being developed so that it can be plug and play. That’s encouraging. You start with your core platform and then you have something like [inaudible 00:13:27] for integrations and then we should be able to do anything. It still return to me that desire for it to be done for them, then again, my own experience, would I take the time to do all this myself. That doesn’t make sense to a person in my position right now. If you’re just starting out and you don’t need all the bells and whistles, hey we got Studio Press for that. But eventually people who are successful, I think, are gonna have to look long and hard about what is the next level of experiential marketing and personalization that people are gonna start expecting because the leading edge companies are gonna start doing it and then it’s gonna start becoming expected. To answer your question on that, as far as timing, I don’t know. What do you think about that John? How fast do you think the potential for change is happening given the rapid acceleration in AI technology?

John Jantsch: I think it’s gonna be like a lot of things. Remember how long we talked about mobile is coming?

Brian Clark: I made that comment just today. Every year since ’98 was the year of mobile and it didn’t really happen until the iPhone 2007.

John Jantsch: I feel like AI is gonna be the same way. Everybody’s talking about it, they’re seeing like demonstrations of it, people are experience good and bad of it, but when it becomes behavior that dictates … It’s like unseen. It just dictates, you expect it, to me that’s a few years off. There’s so many forces, I think, that are driving at that. Everybody’s developing this stuff, Facebook’s embracing it. Then you’ve got Google. Google still today, whether it’s gonna go away or not, who knows, but I think still today drives a great deal of how websites are positioned, how websites are designed. I think they want to keep everything. Now to find a local business, quite often we don’t need their website. Their website has to inform Google. It has to tell Google what the phone number is and what the address is and what the hours are, but there’s a lot of consumers today that click three times inside of Google and find themselves out of business and never went to that person’s website. I think Google holds a lot of the reigns on what role a website actually plays for a business.

Brian Clark: That’s a good point. To think that there are still millions of websites out there that are effectively brochures. They missed the entire last 10 years of the content revolution. Things to move slower than those of us who [inaudible 00:16:11] worrying about what the next level of change is, and yet I was afraid that that type of thinking might put me in a complacency a little bit. No matter what happens, I think our new model in which we’re effectively taking the Rainmaker portion of the business, you know we’re a multi-product line company, and forming a new entity that is merging with an existing agency. One thing that we did not feel like we were gonna try to do on our own was try to start an agency from scratch. That didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me at all.

We’ve done a lot of work on the technology side and that was a valuable asset that allowed us to remain the majority partner in this new effort, but really all we’re doing is responding to what we’re hearing, what people want, and then also being able to be in a position to where if things do radically change with AI concepts, that’s so much easier to deal with on a custom development level than it is from trying to make something one size fits all. Can you imagine the onboarding process when you have to start programming in? Effectively you’re trying to create a person. They’ve got chat bots off the shelf, but you’re gonna have to personalize that even further. It’s interesting times John. I’ll tell you.

John Jantsch: Hey thanks for listening to the Duct Tape Marketing podcast. Are you an independent marketing consultant or an agency owner? You might want to check out the Duct Tape Marketing consultant network. It is a growing group of independent marketing consultants and agencies that are partnering and collaborating and using the Duct Tape Marketing tools and really scaling their business. Check it out at ducttapemarketingconsultant.com.

Is the new venture live and online or is it still in beta? This is June of 2017 when we’re having this conversation. Is it ready to roll?

Brian Clark: Yeah. We’ve been moving pretty fast, but not that fast. Basically we announced what we were doing in May. As we’re recording this the platform, as it’s currently sold as online [SAS 00:18:30] where you do a free trial and then you put in your credit card and then you buy, that’s coming off the market in a couple days. That was the next necessary step. From there, I would say around August 1 would be a target date for when we start rolling things out. We do have a substantial customer base that we’re gonna to first. You know, what can we do for you? Some of you have definitely been asking. That will be a way to roll it out behind the scenes. Then of course, basically it becomes agency record for Copyblogger. Beyond that, you know how it is, you just have to see what the reaction is, see what the further demand is, and tweak and go from there.

John Jantsch: Let’s change gears a little bit here. I like asking people this question because you and I have been doing this for a long time, blogging seems easy to us, but if somebody’s starting out today what would you tell them, and they wanted to build an online business or they wanted to build a brand, what advice would you give somebody starting out right now? Where should they focus?

Brian Clark: I came back to writing on Copyblogger this year after really being neck deep in development and other I guess you would call traditional CEO stuff and I got away from writing as much, so when I came back at the beginning of the year I had already decided that the thing people need to start with that most people don’t, even at the [b to b 00:20:14] content marketing level, these are high powered companies with big ticket prices and they have no documented strategy whatsoever. Right? Only 34% according to Content Marketing Institute take the time to document their strategy, what they’re trying to accomplish, which is insane. Now think about the average blogger and why thousands of blogs are started probably every week and a fraction of those ever stick around or succeed. I think it’s for the same reason, which is you got an idea for a topic, maybe it’s something you’re passionate about, that gets you going, but that’s not gonna sustain you number one, and number two, you’re not really gonna be mindful of attracting the right kind of audience. The right kind of audience has to match what your actual goal is. Are you selling products, services, advertising sponsorships? You have to have a general idea of what you’re trying to accomplish.

I started trying to document the process I use and really all of us use inside the company when we were launching something new. The only caveat to that I’ll say for a lot of stuff with our existing audiences, I’ve been with them for a decade so the most important part of strategy is knowing who you’re talking to. Right? You know that. I have a good feel. I’ve got a good relationship with this audience. It gets easier. If you’re just starting out, you’ve got to sit down and figure out why am I doing this, who am I trying to reach, my important point on that is choose your audience according to your own core values instead of trying to put out content that offends no one. You’ll just get ignored. Right? It’s almost like these days if someone doesn’t dislike you then no one likes you. You’re trying to engage heavily with some people. You’re never gonna please everyone. Number one mistake people make. They don’t want to offend anyone. They don’t want to get trolled. It’s gonna happen. You’ve got to just deal with it.

You’ve got to know what type of information this people need. What kind of journey do they need to go on in order to feel like they’ve been helped by me? They’re the hero of their own journey, but you become a hero to them by helping them out. Right? Then what’s the order of that information? Then finally, it’s how do you say it, which I think a lot of new bloggers come … They want to be writers. Maybe they are accomplished writers with a great style and voice, and yet they’re writing for themselves and not necessarily in a language and the terminology of the audience. That’s fine. If you just want to start a blog and express yourself, great. But if you are trying to make a commercial venture out of something or promote an existing business, you really need to sit down and come up with a documented strategic plan.

John Jantsch: Alright so last question. What are you most excited about right now? What’s going on out there in the world or in your world that you’re most excited about right now?

Brian Clark: Well for the last four months since we launched, I guess it’s a little over four months now, launching Studio Press Sites. I’ve been really into that because we tried to create something that was unique, that filled a market need that we kept hearing needed to be filled. I’ve been jazzed about that, which is interesting because, again, I think some people thought we were just taking Studio Press for granted. That wasn’t the truth at all. I was excited to get back to that. We’ve been experimenting with what’s gonna work. Right? You watch the conversion rates go up. That to me is just the old school reason I started Copyblogger in the first place, which is the thrill of using words and content that provide value in order to get people to buy stuff. Still to this day never bores me. I’m not jaded yet.

On the other hand, I haven’t done client based marketing since 2005 when I swore I’d never do it again. What I swore is I’d never personally serve the clients again. In my role on the new side of Rainmaker I am evangelist and trainer as opposed to the guy who does the work. I’m excited about that because this is really a new animal for us. We’ve been a multiple … We’ve launched I don’t know how many things over the last 11 years. They’ve all succeeded. That’s been all great, but this is a different animal and I think there’s a need for it. It’s also a personal challenge. That’s what keeps me going each year, John. It’s like what can we do new and different that’s gonna excite me instead of that feeling where I got to go to work? I never want to have that feeling. That’s, I guess, what drives me.

John Jantsch: Yeah. There’s no question the need for what you’re talking about immense and growing every day. I think that where you have a really interesting spot is there are a lot of people out there that have the expertise and the partnerships and the services, but your technology platform, I think, is gonna be in a way an interesting test of if that gives you a leg up or not.

Brian Clark: It has been interesting and it did influence my thinking. We get pitched by vendors all the time for various things. We had a company that had developed technology that made Q and A testing, a SAS platforms more efficient. It’s software with a service. That’s where you’re seeing the market evolved to. Stand alone SAS, unless it’s for a very simple repetitive task, say something like buffer or [inaudible 00:26:15] those are great SAS’s because anyone can just sign up for it. It’s not that hard. Figure it out. It makes your life easier on a repetitive task. Once you get a little bit more complicated than that … Okay. Let me put it this way. The hard part, despite all the technology advancements that we’re seeing and continue to see, the hard part is the content itself. There you have it.

John Jantsch: Biggest source of stress for business owners today I think. Absolutely. Well Brian it’s always great to catch up with you. Congratulations on the new ventures and hopefully we’ll see you soon somewhere in Colorado.

Brian Clark: Absolutely. I would love to see you in October. See if we can work that out.

John Jantsch: Hey thanks for listening to this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast. I wonder if you could do me a favor. Could you leave an honest review? Your ratings and reviews really help and I promise I read each and every one. Thanks.

from Duct Tape Marketing https://www.ducttapemarketing.com/transcript-of-success-taking-care-of-community/