James Kaatz
Co-founder and CEO · Illumination Marketing
From WrestleMania to a $2M Digital Empire: The Truth About AI Marketing | James Kaatz
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"And most people will answer their own questions if you just let them. Like they have the answer already. They're just looking for the person who can fulfill that expectation. That's the secret fail.
Key Takeaways
- ◆James took his section from losing $400,000 a year to just under $2 million in two years by figuring out what marketing actually is (bringing attention to the masses about a product or service) rather than treating it as disconnected tactics.
- ◆An MBA hire with years of agency experience became his lowest performer, teaching him that credentials and education don't predict marketing effectiveness the way understanding the underlying six-step process does.
- ◆James built a six-step marketing process (identify who you serve, what you do well, your SWOT, customer avatar, build a website to host information, develop content and promotion strategy) that his AI tool now automates, turning a 500-dollar-per-week blog project into 12 minutes and 71 cents.
- ◆Google's core update now targets AI content that lacks value, so recycled spun articles won't index unless they include personal experience, properly placed entities, unique images, and maps specific to your website.
- ◆Marketing and sales alignment requires feedback loops where AI transcribes sales calls to identify emotional drivers (like 'make them jealous' instead of 'trim ends'), then marketing creates three separate campaigns for each emotional problem rather than one generic 50,000-foot overview.
- ◆Ask prospects about their end goal three separate times and require them to justify why they say yes each time, because repeating and defending the answer seeds it deeper in their mind and improves close rates.
- ◆In marketing, all six real objections boil down to money and value: prospects worry about cost or whether the value exceeds the price, so getting them comfortable with the money conversation solves most resistance.
Full transcript
Show
Chad
Wrestler first. Yeah. James - Illumination Marketing It was.
Chad
Welcome to Process Over Pressure, Chad Paris. My guest today has had one of the most nonlinear paths to running a market agency I've ever come across. James Kaatz is the co-founder and CEO of Illumination Marketing, a full service digital agency based out of Houston that he started in 2017 with his wife and business partner, Angela. But before that, he was a professional wrestler. And then after that, he was in a band. and in between all that, he picked up a radio TV degree, worked his way through a Houston ad agency running multi-million dollar media gut buys from Fortune 500 brands, got laid off six months into a newspaper job when half the company went under. And somehow, through all of that, he turned out to be the best thing he will tell you that ever happened to him. Today, James runs an agency that helps local services business get found on Google through SEO, paid media, and content. He's even got a little internal AI engine that he's working on that we might talk about that's reshaping how his own shop operates. He calls himself an extreme introvert who accidentally became actually the best salesperson in his own company. So today we're going to unpack it all. Welcome to the show, James. Glad to have you. James - Illumination Marketing Thank you, Chad. Thank you. And you're so close. It's cots, not cats. It fools everybody all the time. Don't worry, you're not alone.
Chad
Well, you know what? It's i it it's it's it's a t it's not a tough one to say, but it can be by looking at it on paper. So thank you for correcting me. I need help a lot. James - Illumination Marketing Yeah, it fools everybody. Too funny. No, my my grandfather was the youngest of 17, and then they spread out across the country, and the name was so hard to say. Like all of the brothers and sisters ended up changing their names. So there's very like varieties of all of all of these names all across the United States. mine used to have the flaw above the first day, the double, the double dot. And then nobody in America knew how to say that. So they took it away for my generation, I guess, and and my dad's generation. So here we are.
Chad
Yeah, yeah.
Chad
Well, you know, it's it's interesting how I mean, you know, how how things change over time. I'm Paris and I get Parish or Paris or or Daris or Harris all the time. So I understand how and it's an easy one to say too, but I'll look at people and say, It's just like Paris, France and they're like, what what what what? It confuses everybody. So so well first of all, thanks for ha thanks for hopping on, man. I'm I'm really excited about having you on here and and James - Illumination Marketing I feel you, man.
Chad
you know, kind of looking at you and kind of what you've done and and, you know, kind of walk me through 'cause I gotta go into this. I gotta talk about this. I think it's gonna be the coolest part. Professional wrestler. Like, that's gotta be like the coolest job ever. Has to be. James - Illumination Marketing Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for having me on. So yeah, it was a it was a cool experience, you know. So all my life growing up, I wanted to be a a pro wrestler. I saw them on TV and I'm like, man, those those guys are so cool. They got the bodies, they got the charisma. I want to be like them, you know? And so I started doing all this stuff. And then in high school, I d joined the wrestling team because I heard from Iron Larry Sharp that that was the number one way you should become a professional wrestler is to have an amateur background. So I started doing it, I was doing fairly well.
Chad
Yeah. James - Illumination Marketing And then I had an opportunity to come along my senior year of high school, where I could become a professional wrestler where I grew up in Austin. and for the low, low price of free. And then, you know, $2,000 later, I was a professional wrestler because everything's a work, brother. and it but it was a cool experience, right? And I did it for eight years. It took me across the United States, it took me internationally. I wrestled Mexican movie stars, I wrestled plenty of famous people. I was even part of WrestleMania twenty-five. So I did a lot of really cool stuff with it. but I figured out I was beating up my brain for not nearly enough money. So That's when I decided it was probably about time to pivot, to to keep what I had left of those brain cells and keep them functioning. I'm glad I did because it worked out fairly okay for me in life.
Chad
that's awesome. So so what was your I have to ask, what was your what was your like stage name or what was you James - Illumination Marketing Yeah, totally. So my name was Chris James. I know, very creative, but it was my middle name and my first name put together because James Kaatz was too hard for people to say. Right.
Chad
Look at you there. So hey, everything comes right back around. That that that's that's that's it. So now you you you you live in Houston. you and your wife live in Houston there and started your you know, you got a you got a a marketing company you know, we and really have done well. so you know, I think something you said that when we first talked is I really wanted wanted wanted to kind of dive in just a few minutes 'cause I think it's really cool, is you know James - Illumination Marketing marketing from a very young age.
Chad
I call it the unconventional road, right? That that is that to me, when I heard your message and was talking to you, that kind of sums it up because it's not the conventional how marketeers or how they come about or whatever. So, you know, yeah, I love the unconventional road. I think it's great point. W so in a world where we have to be conventional, what is it like to be unconventional? Let's talk about that. I love that. James - Illumination Marketing What is the conventional road? No, what is the conventional road? James - Illumination Marketing Well, well, let's figure out what conventional is first, right? Cause everyone I met really had a a different route coming into marketing. I don't think many people grow up going, you know what I want to do for a living? I want to be a marketer, right? Or no one goes grows up and goes, you what I want to do for a living? I want to do sales. Like everyone wants to be a professional wrestler or in a band or an astronaut or a scientist or an attorney even. not many people go, I want to be a marketer. So, like, what is the conventional route when it comes to marketing? That's the question.
Chad
I I you what I think that's I think that's beautifully said and I think you're right. I think you know, you start talking to people, especially, you know, today we're we're we're people you know, look, people go to school to be to do this, right? I they go to go to college and they spend a lot of money to do this and then I often find that they went to school to do that and they don't even do it. They do something different. And and I think you make a great point is like what is a conventional way and what is unconventional, because What the books would tell you is that you go to school and you become, you know, marketing or or whatever it is you want to do, but very rarely the people that are actually in marketing went to school to be into marketing. Fair? James - Illumination Marketing Yeah, that's totally. Because like I said, no one wants to go in to do marketing. No one goes, you know what I love doing? Influencing people on a mass scale to buy a product. Like it's not something that's sexy. It's just something that is kind of cool once you start doing it because you you start to figure out what marketing means. and here's a fun story. So I started a marketing agency in 2013. This was after a couple of jobs. You you kind of mentioned them on the intro. but I I found I started in a marketing agency in 2013. It was a marketing agency based in the automotive vertical. And they put us through an intense training program. Like we had to pass a math test, an English test, all of this to even get into the company. And then when we got into the company, we had a three to five month training program just to figure out about the automotive industry and the marketing industry. And when I started there, I had been working at an ad agency for several years. I'd been doing professional wrestling band, all of that for several years at that point. So I thought, you know what, I think I know kind of what this is. And then we started going through the process. And then I realized I go, I don't know what marketing. Is, even though I was working at a marketing agency. So I started going on that path to try and figure it out. And that's where I kind of discovered it. Ultimately, what is marketing? It's bringing attention to the masses about your product or service. What is it that I love about marketing? Because it's influencing people. It's psychology, meets math, and meets art. And it's those three things together that make effective marketing. And I really just discovered that when I started at that marketing agency, which then I started doing really, really well at and I got promoted into management. and I took my section of the company from losing 400,000 a year to making just under two million in two years. And we grew our team from a team of four people to a team of 10 people who each had about 10 people under them. We went from 19-ish accounts to 120 accounts in two years. So we did we we grew quite a bit. And it's because of figuring out marketing. And then one more point that you mentioned too, because I'll I I go on tangent sometimes, but
Chad
I love it. James - Illumination Marketing So part of my job at that agency was hiring the right team members for my team. And I didn't have any experience at that at that part. So, you know, I started looking for what you would think you would want to look for for an A plus player. I was looking for MBAs in marketing or tons of experience in marketing, things of that nature. And you would think that would be the route to go. Well, I was looking at this one potential employee for the company. And I thought they were going to be the biggest knockout candidate. They had an MBA in marketing, they'd been working at an agency for a couple of years. And I hired him on. And routinely, he was my lowest performing team member. And I couldn't figure it out why, because he was so smart, he had all of the education, he was so charismatic. He should have been the rock star, the best of the best. and even to this day, he's he's a fantastically great guy, but he just couldn't put the pieces together.
Chad
Interesting. James - Illumination Marketing And then that's when I sketched out part of my job at that agency was auditing my team members' meetings and giving them points of advice so we could improve. and so I sketched out my whole theory of marketing on my Surface Pro at the time and figuring out it was only six steps. And that if you do all six steps in sequential order, it's really hard to mess up marketing. And that became the basis of everything I've done in my career. and that's what I still do all my public speaking on how to build a marketing plan using six steps. You can find it on our YouTube channel. I've done this in probably, I don't know, a hundred presentations through the last 10 years. We used it to build that section of the company from that nineteen accounts to those hundred and twenty accounts, all from this one thing, which I discovered long-winded way of I discovered my love of marketing by not being in marketing and not figuring out what marketing was until later.
Chad
Yeah.
Chad
I I love that. And you know, in that that dialogue that you were talking about that there's a lot of things in there that that kind of was was as you were talking, I was kind of thinking about and it's so true is that, you know, we we live in a we live today in a society or in a in a world where where everything is is quick. Gotta have it now, right? And you you see, you know, everybody everybody wants to be a podcaster. Like everybody wants to market and brand themselves and and then get people to pay them to talk about their product. Hey, look, I love this shampoo. We all have that going on. But what I thought you said there, and I, and I, and I'd like to go back to that because it's I think it's so true is is and and I and I agree with you, marketing is, is not a it's it's a basis parameter of of what you're trying to do, right? You're trying to you're trying to make people aware of something. You're trying to make them aware of that. That looks different in a lot of different companies. And a lot of structures in different companies. It doesn't all look the same. It's not just like a some I mean, the concept is but the plug and play sometimes is not all the same in the way you develop that within a company, right? I mean it's different depending on what you're trying to do. James - Illumination Marketing Well, the process is the same. The tactics and the strategy change. Totally, right?
Chad
That's right. That's it. And that's what I'm talking about. Y the tactics can change, right? James - Illumination Marketing Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So fun thing you mentioned about the podcaster. When I was working at the ad agency, that's what we did at that ad agency. It wasn't podcasting, it was right like it was like pre-podcasting podcasting, in that what we did is we bought live radio endorsements on radio stations for big products, ATT, SodaStream, Arby's, Sleep Number, FanDuel, all these big companies, right? And what we did is we'd find a lot of talk radio DJs or popular morning shows, and we would get them to read us as first in break on a 60-second commercial. So it seemed like it was a seamless transition into commercials. And they would read about how they loved our product. And it was incredibly effective that it helped to launch SodaStream here in the United States. I helped to relaunch Zest in Canada, Zest the Soap, by doing this. And it was unbelievably effective. And the other way I knew it was effective is that my first job at that ad agency was to sit and listen to Caraba's Italian grill commercials all day long for eight hours a day. And by the end of eight hours,
Chad
God bless you. James - Illumination Marketing I was starving for carabber. And I go, I guess this advertising thing works. So yeah. So it's just funny that everyone wants to be a podcaster now, but that's really what I started off doing. Except the difference is you don't need a big company to produce you to do that these days. It's crazy how the world has changed in 15 or 20 years. it is, but for the marketing part of it, it's all the same. Like you have to it's a six-step process, right? You have to figure out who you're trying to market to, you have to figure out what you do well.
Chad
I guess so. James - Illumination Marketing You have to figure out your SWOT, you have to figure out your customer avatar, your ideal customer profile, those types of things. And then that can be the basis for everything that you're trying to do after that. So basically figure out who you serve and why you do it well and why you do it differently out of the commodity world. And then you can start to build your marketing plan. And then you go to a website because you have to have somewhere to host the information that you discovered in step one. And then from there, you have to develop content to get people back to the website. Otherwise, it's just like having a pretty business card that nobody knows about. and the the different type of content depends on who your customer avatar is. So it might be videos, it might be radio, it might be billboards, it might be postcards. There's so many different things you can do, right? but it really just depends on who your customer is that you're trying to talk to. And then you have to go to the promotional side of things. You have to have some way to promote the content that you just created to get people back to the website to try to make a sale. Right? That's steps one through four right there. And it doesn't change. Like that is marketing. The only thing that changes is your strategy and your tactics on how you reach those people.
Chad
That's right. That's man, that's so, so rich and and so good. And you know, it's it's interesting talking to to guests like yourself on on here and and everybody, you know, everybody one thing I love is that you're very you you you s you tell it very easily to understand. Like you you don't, you're not a lot of language fluff. It's pretty much this is what it is and how you do it. This is it, right? Like this simple. so James - Illumination Marketing Nailed it.
Chad
What do you what do you think is and you may not be able to name one, but over the last ten years, or let's just call it ten years here, what have you seen change in marketing that maybe one or two things is your like change that you've seen to change or tactics or things like that? James - Illumination Marketing AI. That's the that's the biggest change, right? So it has significantly altered the world in which we live in. and you know, it's just it's not the same. And now AI can do everything that a marketer can do, it just needs the appropriate prompts to do it. So that it's scary that the world we're living in and it is more effective if you put in the right prompts because garbage in, garbage out. But if you put in the right
Chad
Okay. I would agree. James - Illumination Marketing direction, it can perform outperform any employee. and so that's completely changed. And it can do anything from create photos to create videos to create those avatars that we were talking about to creating websites to creating everything. So like when I said that we have that six step process to marketing and in the intro you said that we developed an AI tool. That's exactly what it does is it does my six steps that I developed, you know, over 10 years ago now. and it just put it into an AI prompt that does every step for you, which means that you have better outputs when you have better inputs. And so it just builds upon each other. It it builds upon itself. And it's it's just really mind blowing on what you can do these days.
Chad
Yeah. So y you you hit on a you hit on a nice subject that you and I probably could do four podcasts on. yeah, probably way more than that. It it it is, right? So, you know, in my own business, I s that's part of what I do is AI automation and help with companies. And I get this question often. i it it's either I'm either well, there's probably multiple camps that people are in when I first talk with them, but these two are significant. They're either James - Illumination Marketing Probably more than that, my friend. It's changing by the day.
Chad
scared to death, like absolutely like, like, my God, you know, AI is about to take over the world. I don't want to touch it. Don't want to do it. I did this article. I I wrote this article and put it on my LinkedIn. It's called the AI the boogeyman because people think it's a bad word, like there's the boogeyman. Or you're in the count. Like I said, there's probably more than that, but you're in the count of like you love it and you want to do more of it. And so you're in this one, and I this is my analogy for that, is you take a bag and you open it up. James - Illumination Marketing Mm-hmm.
Chad
like put in front of a bunch of kid of Skittles and you throw it on the ground and people are just starting to grab and what they can and try to implement it and they have no idea what all they're putting in there. They just know it's really cool and they want to do it. so what do you what do you when when people's that you talk to, because you talk to people all the time as well, just like I do, when you say the word AI, what's the reaction you get? James - Illumination Marketing Same as you. some people are all for it. Some people are scared of it. Some people just don't even know how to start it, you know? So there there's a a big diverse pool out there of people that you can help. But the way I look at it is in five years, you're gonna have two types of businesses, the businesses that have implemented AI and those who have gone out of businesses because they have refused to touch AI.
Chad
So true. I a and and you're right. I mean, it's here, right, James? It's not going anywhere. It is it's it's only going all it's doing is getting better every day. I mean, I I saw a I saw an article that came out. The the amount of money right now in infrastructure just to be building these these data centers is gonna fuel AI, which basically in this country alone is is pe I don't even think people really understand how how much is being built and paid. and bought right now just to build the platform. The I call it the brains behind it, what's gonna help make build it and infrastructure behind it. It's it's unfathomed. People bigger bigger bigger than the the power grid at one time when it came across James - Illumination Marketing yeah, it's crazy. So we work with some industrial turbine repair companies, which is all about power generation. So I have a little bit of a knowledge on this subject because of its impacted the what they're doing right now all across the world. And then funny enough, I was at a charity golf tournament like three, four weeks ago, and the guy I got teamed up with was actually the the chief marketing officer of a big European AI cloud company. and so he was letting me in on all these types of things. And I'm like, wow, this is nuts. So we don't have enough power to generate how much these things need right now. And then in addition to that, we don't have the cooling mechanisms in place to keep them from blowing up. so this is really like mind-blowing stuff when you think about it. So, as an example, we are already having a lack of energy, and then especially with the war going on right now, there's the lack of of oil and LNG coming through, liquefied natural gas. That keeps things going. And then even a couple of years ago, Germany tried to go from oil dependence to renewable energy. So they built all these giant wind farms in Germany. And then they had a historic wind drought and they didn't have enough power to power the country. So they had to fire up their their coal power plants again, which is kind of crazy to think about. They were importing all their energy from everywhere, which is what all the Middle East does and China does and everyone does right now, right? So there's all that going on that's not enough to power it. And then you don't have enough to cool it once you do it. So now we have like China's trying to dump them into the sea, and apparently that's still not working. There's talk of sending them into outer space because it's so cold up there, and then zooming it back to to America through or America, the world through how centrist am I? You know, America. but sending it back to the world and keeping it cooled that way and using waves. So like there's all these crazy things that are happening and the world cannot keep up. Not to mention, I don't think that OpenAI or Claude Anthropic have even turned a profit yet from running these big AI systems.
Chad
Right. Yeah. Yeah, no, I mean it's it's it's it's you know, bring it it's it's just amazing at at what's what the infrastructure and if you if you look at, you know, and don't get into the business side of it, but you look at just the history of of of not just our country, but all all the youth the world. Money being spent on infrastructure will tell you a lot of the path of where we're gonna go. Like if you just pay attention to that and so you know When I think about AI and what's happening out there and and and you mentioned it. You said, you know, companies that are are not talking about it or exploring it or understanding it, they're gonna be left behind in a big, big way. there's just not enough time in the day to move as fast as these companies will start moving. And and it's it's gonna be a a full throttle ahead. So, you know, I talk about this a lot with business owners. They're c they're that use my services and I'm sure you do too when they start talking about, hey, you know, what about AI and how can I implement that? And and I always tell like, and you may have a different philosophy, but my philosophy is always like, you don't have to turn it all on today. Start somewhere. Start somewhere and get it involved. You'll notice that it will grind it will, it will grow. But think about a place in your business that is a galp or an area that you spend a lot of time on, or you have a big people doing or whatever. And and that's a great place to start there and s and and implement it into your company. You don't have to go full throttle. You don't have to have everything and the whole business running on AI tomorrow, but you gotta start somewhere, right? James - Illumination Marketing Yeah. It's one of those things. This is what I say. What's your biggest bottleneck? And if you can discover what your biggest bottleneck is, then you can start to unwind it. And so that's everything. The only thing we can't replace right now is physical labor. I don't think people will trust robots to go in and plumb a house. but it can replace how you recruit, it can replace how you market, it can replace how you do your books, it can replace how you communicate through your whole company.
Chad
That's it. James - Illumination Marketing Like it can replace so many things. You just have to figure out what that bottleneck is. And often with smaller businesses, it's finding the right people or hiring the right people and/or getting enough people in to keep their employees busy enough. So it's marketing and hiring. And those are usually the two biggest problems. And I go, that's where you start. Or is there something that's sucking all of your time? are you too busy putting out fires? You're too busy looking at your books. What is it? And then take that away by implementing something with AI with it. And so in our case, just to give you the per like the example, ours was to write a blog four years ago, it would cost us five hundred dollars in a week of time. Because we had to research, then we had to put a brief together, then we had to hire a writer, and then they had to do their research on top of our research and then write it. And then they sent it to us and we sent them their revisions and they rewrote it and then they sent it back to us. We put internal links in, we'd write schema for it, and then we'd put it up on a website. Whole thing took five hundred dollars-ish, maybe a little bit more, when you put all the labor into it. And then you know, it'd take over a week of time just to get that done. Now with AI, we can Automate that whole process. we can go pull from all the resources that we need in the world, from the red as the cores, the done and bad streets, everything, right? and then we can pull that into a brief that matches our customer profile with their psychological beliefs and their psychographics. So we're not just writing to what is this, it's writing to that specific pain point a little bit more in depth. And we can create the images based off of that and they can be realistic images in our tool that we've created. We've even have a place where we put employee pictures in the tool, and then the tool uses it to create those employees in their environment or them doing the job. So they look like realistic photos. Like it is really hard to tell these days. and it just blows my mind. Like as an example, we have our salon clients, like we have the salon people cutting hair in their actual salon and you can barely tell that it's AI. I'm just like James - Illumination Marketing Right. And so we Right. So we've been able to replace that five hundred dollars a week of labor for twelve minutes and seventy one cents.
Chad
Crazy.
Chad
Yeah. Yeah. I have a it's funny you say that I have a client that I'm working with right now that that actually it's retail and he he wants to have a blog and and and he was trying to figure it all out. I made I made in a in a day, I made an out that he basically can take his phone, drop a picture, he can record exactly what he wants to talk about, and it automatically writes the blog for him. Like made it in a day. Think about that. 20 hours before to do that. Half a day, like boom, done, fixed, built. And now he takes him no time to do it. Like that's that's the world that we're living in that we're talking about. That people just, you, you gotta, you gotta get on with it because it's just crazy. And and it and it's a marketer's dream, I think, because the tool the tools and resources to to make some really cool stuff is out of this world. James - Illumination Marketing Yes and no, garbage in, garbage out though, right? And so here's part of the problem with Google. And they just rolled out a core update targeting AI content. So if it doesn't provide value to the world, it won't index, which is you know, the the step one of getting found on Google is them going, okay, this is worth showing in our search results. And we call that indexing. And so if it's just the same recycled garbage that they've seen everywhere already, they being Google, the the machine, the algorithm.
Chad
Right. That's true.
Chad
Mm-hmm. James - Illumination Marketing that it's picked up from the internet already. So, like spun articles, it won't index. And there's shady marketers who are out there turning 200 pages a month, 200 blogs a month by just spinning these articles. And there's not no value that they're adding from personal experiences or anything like that. So you have to have the right way to put in the appropriate inputs. Otherwise, it's just flooding the market and Google can't even keep up right now, which is why they're trying to cut down on it so hard. And the processing power that is required to index all of this and read through all of it is just skyrocketing. And so that's that's yes and no, right? There's a duality to everything. The duality is, my gosh, this can help real marketers, you know, like me who have 20 years of experience, going, okay, I have this proven process that's worked for 20 years. I can put this into an AI that will do it for me.
Chad
Absolutely. James - Illumination Marketing versus someone who's starting today and goes, Hey, I didn't know that we need a personal experience. We need entities that are mentioned within the article in the appropriate places, that we have to have the right words and the right densities in the right places in order for Google to trust it. That I know that I have to have a map in there, that I have to have pictures that are unique to our website, all these different things, right? Marketers who don't know that are just flooding it, making it harder for real marketers to break through the noise. So there's always the duality to everything. It's one of those things that you have to consider.
Chad
I and I and I'm and I'm so glad that you said that because you you are so spot on. And and this goes back to kind of relating back to those that that have the belief that AI is going to replace people. There is an element of AI that is good and it's useful, but you also need people like yourself to to to what are they looking at? What are they pulling? What is the information? What is the what is it reading? How is it reading? Those things are valuable and and you're right. There is a lot of marketing people that are just saying, Hey, I got this for you, put it in here, and they're just repeating the same stuff. They're not growing. They're not growing their company or putting them first in Google or anything like that. And and that's that's the part that you gotta have people who understand it. And I'm so glad you said that because it is true. There is a lot of people just trying to make money off people and they don't have a clue what they're doing and they're and they're just telling them a bunch of stuff and it's it's just throwing money down the sink, basically. James - Illumination Marketing Yeah, it really is. And and most people don't understand that the way that Google and all the LLMs work are based off of entities now. And it's not based off of keywords. And so it's making sure that you have the right depth to those entities. Yeah, without getting too far into the weeds, I guess, but having the right depth to those entities for them to for the math algorithm, because Google and all of these are just a math algorithm. They've never seen anything, tasted anything, they've never experienced anything. They can only understand it through these entities and the relations from these entities. to see if it's worthy content or not. And so it's it's one of those things, yes, you need someone like me right now in order to build the tools, but at some point there's gonna be tools that are so damn good at this that you don't need. You just need someone to proctor the tool and to make sure that someone's watching the code so it doesn't go all wonky. And then so we've gone from having a hundred person team to a five person team.
Chad
Yeah, I mean it's it's and that's that's real savings. I mean it really is. It's it's it's you know, makes a big difference. So James - Illumination Marketing Yeah, for companies. But where does that go with the world, right? That's the next question because there aren't digital jobs anymore. There are going to be, you know, hard labor jobs. And I think that's kind of where we're going. Those are the only things that are really protected.
Chad
Yeah. And I think there's a huge element of of I think people are I do think people are scared and I think people are asking, like, what what are we gonna you know, what is the workforce gonna do? Especially for you, I have a younger younger kids or whatever that are coming through school. Like, you know, the jobs that they'll be applying for or be going for will be they're not gonna be the same that was when when I when we went through school or went through in that time. It's just gonna be different. It's gonna be a different workforce and You know, I think I think even colleges and and I mean there's some jobs that like you said, there's jobs it's gonna always have, right? You're always gonna have lawyers, you're always gonna have doctors, like I get all that. But I think we're gonna maybe be in some different categories where there's gonna be a whole lot of different things out there for people to to explore that's just different, that's not the same. James - Illumination Marketing They're gonna be less doctors because we don't we don't need, you know, t two or three doctors per shift anymore. We'll have one doctor that can hold all of that because they can use LLMs and Chat GPT and all these things that are getting really, really good at that. it's the things that are dealing with your hands that I think that is going to be really hard to replicate right now. You can't have a robot that can cut hair. You probably can't have a robot that's doing open heart surgery, but you can have a robot that's an internist. You know? So I think it's
Chad
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. But
James - Illumination Marketing Going in that direction. my daughter is twenty-two, twenty-one. She turns twenty-two next month. and when she was growing up, she's like, I either want to be a coder or I want to be a video game tester or I want to be or those were her two main things. And we started having those conversations with her in the last couple of years too. I'm like, hey, that you those jobs that you want, they're no longer there. Like you the the world has changed since twenty twenty two.
Chad
Yeah. And it's true. so man, this has been great. Like I said, I I felt like I could talk to you for days. But I do want I do have a couple things I wanted to get through, you as we as we kind of move in through here. One being and you and I talked about this a little bit. This concept of I've seen it in business. I know you probably have too. In this world of sales sits here and market sit market the marketing department sits over here and they're and they're battle between the two. They're not they're not they don't and it's and it it's it's it's a lot. People don't see it together, like how they work together. And I I'm sure you've experienced that. And I'd just love to get your take on that thought process a little bit as as you've seen companies and and that divide. Maybe you haven't. James - Illumination Marketing Yeah, totally. Yeah, someone who has done both sales and marketing. there's definitely a divide. and the life the the the lifelong like rivalry between them, right? Because marketing never develops the right leads for sales and sales never cle closes the leads that come from marketing. And you know what? They're probably both right. and the divide in the middle is the skill set on both. And so marketing oftentimes doesn't market in the right way. And sales oftentimes doesn't follow the process of a real human interaction and how the brain works. And if if both of them combine and they have good feedback loops, then both of them can improve at the same time. And I'll give you a perfect example. A lot of marketing is done on a high-level 50,000-foot overview. You know, do you want something here? We offer that. Come to our website today and we'll sell it to you.
Chad
Love it. James - Illumination Marketing And then someone goes, okay, maybe I will. And then they go to the website and then it's so broad that they don't really know what's going on. And then the salesperson probably isn't trained to ask the right questions in order to get down to the emotional drivers of why they're trying to make that decision. Because the human brain has to function on emotion to make every single decision. Even if it's putting on which shoe you want to put on in the the morning, it's because you have an emotional emotional attachment to a shoe. So you your brain has to have that. So there's a disconnect in that. And that the marketing is not doing a good job of creating that emotion, and sales is not doing a good job of discovering that emotion. So, how do we fix that problem? Right. and the best way I like to do it is we can do the feedback from both. So, marketing starts, the best marketing solves a very specific problem for a very specific person, right? And so, as a as an example, a haircut isn't just a way to trim your hair, it's a way to Make your ex-husband jealous when he looks at your Instagram photo. Right. So we're we're at layers of emotions at this point. So if you just say we offer haircuts completely different than make him jealous, right? So there's a disconnect. So when we get from that and they go, man, I do want to make my husband jealous or whatever. And it gets over the sales, but the sales doesn't know that. And there's no marketing that going into the go. So hey, so why do you want a haircut today? I just, you know, want to trim up the ends, but that's not the real reason. The real reason is they want to
Chad
You get it James - Illumination Marketing feel sexy. So their ex sees them and gets jealous like they made a mistake. It's vindication, right? And so two completely different thoughts processes. So if the salesperson can start asking the right questions, and here's where AI comes into it. It records everything and transcribes everything and logs every single question and every single answer. If you see these commonalities, then the AI can push that back to your marketing and start creating marketing for those specific problems to get people into that funnel. So it's it's this this flywheel, this this amazing type of thing that can work together, assuming that it does it. But we're so far apart between marketing blaming sales and sales blaming marketing that it it's so hard to pull those together right now. But like I said, if you have that system, that AI system in place and you have that salesperson that transcribes it, then you create, you want to make them jealous, have your hair Cut and colored or dyed or the right way, right? Ever have your hair cut this way. Wanna make them jealous? Have your hair dyed this way. You wanna make them jealous? Get extensions. You know, so those are three different marketing campaigns just from that one question being asked. So there's all these levels and layers that we can work into, and and neither side works into them. So that's the secret to effective marketing and sales.
Chad
Man, what that is that is like beautiful. I mean, so perfectly s said and and spot on. And and and I know for myself, one thing that when I'm working with teams or I'm talking working with them, I do a I have a it and probably a lot of people do, I have a a sales call analyzer. And it's it's basically you can record it. Like if I'm if I'm doing you a sales call and I'm having this conversation with you, I can record it. And I can put it in this this this program, this AI tool that that will basically is doing exactly what you're saying. It's it's it's grading you on your call. What did you do well? What did you not do well? It gives you coaching tips, maybe you could do this better, this better, this better. It's great tool. And I use it a lot with some some of the companies. But the thing that I always tell people is is that that in that singular by itself is a good tool. But when you run your marketing on the side of that as well. And so they're they're taking this, you said it best, all this information and they're gathering this and they're they're being able to do this. And you have the marketing with their information and you start overlapping them, it's really golden to see the points and the and the where where are the disconnects happening and getting down to, well, we need to tighten up our sales on this. And again, the emotion side, right? The bo the the marketing is over in the emotion side, the sales maybe not. is seeing that in real clear pictures for them to go, you know what, I I need to ask a better question. And that's the and honestly, from a from a salesperson, that is the number one thing. People don't know the right questions to ask and they don't ask the questions. And so therefore they don't close the deal because they never asked the right question. Very calm. James - Illumination Marketing Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. and that's one of the things that significantly changed how successful our company was when I figured out how to ask the right questions, and that every sale follows the same human psychology. There's seven steps to it. And as long as you hit all seven steps, you're going to be in a position to at least close a deal if it makes sense. and you don't even pitch what you do until twenty twenty something minutes into a conversation because it's not about you, it's about them. And so I this is I gave a perfect example of this last week when I was talking to someone. I'm like, so why do business owners get into business? And they go, to make money. And I go, wrong. They get into business to business to sell the company so they never have to make money again because it they just have the money in their bank account. Two completely different things. One is going, Hey, do you want to make a lot of money by working a lot more? And the other is going, Hey, do you want make a lot of money by never working again? Two completely different things, right? And so this is where
Chad
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. James - Illumination Marketing on service businesses, there's so much disconnect because all these service companies are going, Hey, do you want to make a lot of money to work more? And so when you start asking the questions to figure out what the end goal is, there's the gap. And then you go, hey, what happens if you don't reach this goal? How close are you to reaching this end goal if nothing changes right now? And then those questions right there, like I said, there there's seven steps. And and I figured out it you have to ask them about three times if they want to move forward.
Chad
Absolutely. James - Illumination Marketing And get them to say yes. And then you have to get them to justify why they say yes, because then it seeds deeper in the mind. And so if you can do that, your close rate's going to shoot through the
Chad
It's b man, we we could do a whole segment on just that. but that's so true. James - Illumination Marketing Yeah. I love sales. I think sales is the most underexposed skill in the world.
Chad
hundred percent agree. A hundred percent agree. And and and and I'll tell you, it's it's we we are so when I and I know we're getting close to our time, but I will say I would say this 'cause you you brought that up. One of the things that I that I've seen happen so many times is we we end up let's take company A. Company A says, Hey, you what, we need to hire salespeople. Okay, we'll we'll we'll start putting out ads and they go get a recruiter and and and all avenues of looking for the right person. Very, very, very few times you'll ask them, Well, what is what question is is well, what is the right person? You get kind of this puzzling look. And it all starts with if you don't know your if you don't know what your right person is that you want or what the tangibles that you're looking for in that person, how can you put in the position? Because they're not going to fit out. You mentioned it earlier or or I had another call with a guy I was talking about. He hired this think, you know, brilliant person. that that like you like this you did. Yeah. It's talking about, hey, he's gonna be like he's got all the things. He's smart. He's this, he's that, he's that, but he was not very good salesperson. And it's not because he wasn't smart. It was because what you were asking them to do or the how to understand that is is is gotta either be a taught thing. Can it be taught? Can they understand it? Or do they not have that ability to do that before you start putting people in a sales position? Sell sales sales reps are are Very few today, because the selling cycle in the selling process is not the same as it was twenty years ago. And we still have a lot of people trying to sell like it was twenty years ago. James - Illumination Marketing Right. But the brain still works the same way it worked 20 years ago. It still works the same way it worked, you know, 200 years ago. and that it goes through a cycle and it goes through a process of trust. Right. It starts off with figuring out what you want and why you're there. And then it goes to, you know, tell me a little bit about who you are and what you're doing and what changed lately that actually got you wanting to change this thing. And then it goes to your problem awareness, right? So, you know, how long has this been a problem? And take me through that. And then their situ their solution awareness. Have you tried to fix this problem? And why has that not worked? And then it goes to the consequence of not fixing the problem. So you said this, you said this, you haven't been able to do this, but this is really the goal. So what happens if you don't do this? Right. And so you get them to justify. And then you do your pitch, and then you you turn your objections. And objections are a good thing, it's not a bad thing because it's people wanting more questions. And then
Chad
best thing you could ask for. James - Illumination Marketing Yeah, absolutely. And then for marketing, we figured out there's only really six real objections. And all of those six are turned around the same thing, money. If you have to think about it, what are you thinking about? Money. If you want to go talk to a partner, what are you talking to your partner about? Money. Right. If you go, I'm kind of not sure this will work, why is it not going to work? Because the money costs a lot and they don't know if the value exceeds the money. So it's always about money. So you just have to get them and get their comfortable there.
Chad
Money.
Chad
As it James - Illumination Marketing And most people will answer their own questions if you just let them. Like they have the answer already. They're just looking for the person who can fulfill that expectation. That's the secret fail.
Chad
That's it. And they and they don't mind spending the money if they know what they're getting in the money. This is it's so true. Well listen, we're bumping on our time here. man James, this has been extraordinary. Thank you so much for for joining me today and and being a part. really have enjoyed our conversation. This is exactly the kind of people I want on the podcast. Great stories. you know, people can listen and hear that. I if if they're if they're looking for you know s marketing and help. James - Illumination Marketing Yeah. James - Illumination Marketing It's been my pleasure.
Chad
How do they reach you, James? Can you tell us? James - Illumination Marketing Yeah. That's a great question. You can find us at marketing illumination.com. You know, it should be illuminationmarketing.com, but I wasn't that smart of a marketer when I started. No, they wanted ridiculous amounts of money for that domain when I started. They like they find the LLCs that get registered and then they go snap up those domains. So if you're thinking about starting a business, get your domain before you get your LLC. Just FYI, because that's what got us. And now they want like $18,000 for a domain. I'm like, anyway, go to marketing illumination.com. dot com and that way you can find our phone number there. You can go to our YouTube channel where we do an educational series as well on different marketing topics, SEO, sales, psychology, everything, right? You can find us on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, everywhere, but marketing illumination.com is probably your best bet.
Chad
Man, thanks again. And like I said, if you're if you're out there and you hear this and you're like, Man, we need some help over here, I tell you, James is a great place to stop and and just to have a conversation with him. I've spent some time with him now. I know he'll he'll he'll kindly answer the questions and and give you I think you'll leave a way better understanding of before you came in if you have a chance to talk to him. And as always, if you can't reach him, you can reach me. I know how to get in touch with him. but Chad Paris chat as Chad at stoneflyconsulting . com and I would love to to talk to you as well. So thank you guys for for joining us today and we'll see you next time. So we'll cut there. that's awesome.
Chad
Are you there? James - Illumination Marketing Yeah. I'm here. I was wondering if you're stopping the recording or
Chad
Yeah yeah, I'm gonna I'll I'll stop. I'll cut
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