How Nyce Jonez Inspires Content Creators to Scale with Purpose

[00:00:03] Hector: Hello and welcome to another episode of the How to Scale Business Podcast. My name is Hector San Steon and I'm your host. Our special guest today is Mr. John Logan. He is the founder of Green Lit Growth Strategies and , strategic Marketing Specialist. And we're gonna talk about one of my favorite things to us to talk about in business.

[00:00:21] Hector: , and

[00:00:24] Jon: Absolutely.

[00:00:25] Hector: I. digging and as I was going through your, background, your LinkedIn profile, I remember one thing standing out and saying like, BlackRock engineering and technology. And I was like, I'm wondering if that's like the BlackRock Black, you know? So anyways, take us into your background, your history, and then catch us up on some of the key important points along the way that, you know, led you to now helping people grow their business.

[00:00:47] Jon: First, no. BlackRock is not the big BlackRock. , BlackRock engineering technology is small. , Cybersecurity consulting and compliance. Firm, , mostly focusing on DOD subcontractors for the Space Force. , They do some technology and software engineering as well, but not the big one. but yeah, so my background, , is a bit mixed. it's not the traditional marketers background. I did eight years in food service. , Mixed bag, but, you know, I think it's everyone should work in the service industry at least one time in their life.

[00:01:16] Jon: And, , learned a lot there. How to deal with people, , how to talk to people . Did that for about eight years. And I went to the University of Central Florida for their, , cybersecurity defense professional certification. , Got that, graduated and , turnaround within a few months. Got a job as a junior cybersecurity engineer at BlackRock.

[00:01:32] Jon: good little job. You know, small business. So lots of areas to grow. And, , one day the owner comes up to me and he goes, Hey, you're young. Like, okay, thanks. I dunno. This conversation is going , he said go do marketing. Cool. Got it. So I did some compliance stuff and then this marketing thing for internally and, , started the whole journey down to where I'm at now.

[00:01:56] Jon: And, , I grew BlackRock through my own, , processes. I developed for marketing strategy from 3 million to 25 million in less than three years. . , I touched all the marketing, I did all the content creation, the strategy, the executive, you know, leadership, figuring out, okay, what is the owners wanna do, how can we, , execute on that for marketing?

[00:02:16] Jon: And then all the tactical side. So I did solo marketing, , department, and that was a pretty good, , training ground for me. 'cause a few years later I started my first company, which was a cybersecurity, , software company for email. And, , you know, the quintessential founder tech story had this idea in college called My Buddies.

[00:02:35] Jon: We made it a thing and, , three months before we went to go launch it, a very large industry competitor came out with a new capability that was similar to what we had. So it kind of killed that before got off the ground. But I had , gotten all this experience in marketing and branding and strategy for my day job, and. I had aggressively been networking at a high level for the launch of my SaaS product. And the people and the connections I made in the industry approached me to help them with their marketing. Like, we love what you're doing, we love your branding. Like, this is really great. Can you help us? And so, , I ended up starting a marketing agency.

[00:03:09] Jon: Started out mostly with social media and then some strategy stuff. , Eventually it grew into a full service marketing agency. Websites to SEO, to ads, to content, , the full gambit. And, , did that for a little while and I started a few other businesses on the side. And, , last year in 2024, , I decided it was time for me to get StoryBrand certified and really step out into this personal brand consulting role, which I'm doing now with Greenland growth strategy.

[00:03:35] Jon: So that's the summation of, that story, and I like to brag that I had a meme page in high school, so that was my first marketing experience, had like 35,000 followers. , So I'm like that's where I started marketing, even though, you know, it was, it was actually later.

[00:03:47] Hector: I don't know if it's like the superhero villain origin story, but I find that a lot of entrepreneurs, they have these experiences that sort of, you know, looking backwards, you go, oh, that makes sense, how we put all those together and how. Product or service or business that they've created. the other thing that I'm, curious, because you have such a different perspective, is what most business owners get wrong about. And what they get wrong about, positioning or you know, this sort of thing that you seem to have found. I dunno if the secret or at least a really good recipe to, , are there a lot of mistakes out there or some common ones that you see businesses make?

[00:04:29] Jon: There are so many, we could do a whole episode just on mistakes, but the most common ones is they businesses don't know how to talk about the problem They. So they end up just kind of being like, oh, we've been in business for 25 years and there's a couple roofing companies here I've been talking to, like, oh, we've put on 10,000 roofs in this region in the past 20 years.

[00:04:47] Jon: I'm like, okay, that's great. Good for you. How are we gonna help me put a roof on my house or on my grandma's house after this hurricane? they talk about their business backwards. They position themselves as what I would call the hero of the story. And that's, you know, from my story brand experience, how I would word that. The other part is, , they ignore the experience of the brand. And what I mean when I say that is all these brands, usually smaller businesses, a lot of businesses, larger ones make the same mistake, but they focus on, oh, you know, we have these great fonts and we have these cool colors and the symbolism and everything and that's great and that's good for your brand identity.

[00:05:24] Jon: But the problem is, is they don't focus on how does the brand make their customers feel? And has that has to do with your messaging, how you talk about it, but also does your brand build a tribe? Does your brand build a sense of, , insider? We're on the inside circle. We're all in this together. We're doing something meaningful and purposeful.

[00:05:43] Jon: , When I consult with customers, I use five frameworks to help them renovate their marketing from the ground up and turn it into what I call a marketing machine that scales and can drive your bottom line growth. And one of the frameworks I use in that is primal brand. branding is all about identifying the seven points of how a tribe.

[00:06:03] Jon: It's that feeling of community and then how you can replicate that in your brand. Like Starbucks is the easiest example. There are some really strong icons, there's a clear leader. There's some, what we call sacred words, you know, grande, venti and tall. They make no sense. But the people who know what they mean, it makes 'em feel on the inside and it builds that loyalty.

[00:06:21] Jon: A lot of the brands miss this opportunity and they just kind of. Bunch of guests were, I'm in South Carolina and they say Palmetto. Everything here here is Palmetto, , hvac, palmetto, plumbing, Palmetto, , electrical, like everything here is palmetto. Nothing of that is unique. They're trying to tap into this local identity and local pride, but then there's no effort in it.

[00:06:42] Jon: It's just a name. The thing a lot of people really miss building the community and building a brand that attracts the community to then turn them into an army of brand advocates.

[00:06:53] Hector: Yeah, it seems like the typical things that. Let's just say people associate with brands is your logo and your colors and your slogan and that sort of messaging thing. And I think that, , another challenge is that some businesses might say, you know, I'm boring, or I'm just an accountant, or I just have an agency, or I just, you know, there's nothing special about me.

[00:07:18] Hector: Which I think is probably something that, you know, a deeper issue. But for those sort of businesses, how would you help them to sort of see the brand or the community that they might be able to build, even if they don't have the sexiest or the shiniest of, products or industries?

[00:07:35] Jon: Yeah, that's a really good question. So there's two factors in which I would build into this. Number one would be the story that you tell. when you talk as a brand, as a company, whether you believe it or not, you're telling a story. Hopefully that story makes sense and hopefully that story is engaging.

[00:07:52] Jon: A lot of people, they miss out on opportunities and website conversions and everything because their messaging is unclear. They talk about going back to that roofing example, like we've put 10,000 roofs on homes in this area for the last 20 years. That's great, but what I need to know is how are you going to help me get a roof on my house?

[00:08:11] Jon: So you need to tell them that right off the bat. Be very, very clear, very simple, very upfront. And then you can tie that into what I would call a higher purpose. So when in StoryBrand they present that as a, because it's a philosophical problem that you are providing a solution for. So for roofing it would be, you know, we provide, let's just say hypothetically, we provide, , affordable financing for, , widow disabled and veterans with low fixed income.

[00:08:40] Jon: In order to help them get a roof on their home because no one deserves, , to have a leaky roof, something like that. Because then when they get tied in, when they use them, when they're like, oh, you're talking to me and you care about my unique problem, you're gonna have a lot of brand loyalty and advocacy there.

[00:08:55] Jon: And then another thing to kind of pull on the other side is nurture. A lot of these businesses, you know, these quote boring businesses, they don't provide any nurturing and they don't build a relationship with their customers. It's a one and done and they walk away. You don't wanna do that. You're missing a huge opportunity here if you are a boring business.

[00:09:15] Jon: You get a customer, you know, whatever that process, however you get the customer, you get the customer, then you need to put them into a nurture sequence. Either that is going to be, some businesses now, like there's a, plumbing company here that has like a Facebook page that is private, which is customers of X, Y, Z plumbing company.

[00:09:31] Jon: And it's almost like this networking thing where people talk about plumbing and then they talk about their issues and they talk about the area and they talk about restaurants. And it's kind of a weird thing to do as a brand. But what's happening is every time you know, this lady, this gentleman logs onto Facebook and they get a notification from that group.

[00:09:51] Jon: They see the brand. They see X, Y, Z plumbing companies, you know, former customers group. So that way when they have a plumbing issue or someone else has a plumbing issue, that company becomes top of mind. The most common way that businesses, , usually traditionally do nurture is through email. And they don't have some email sequence that's just touching in like, Hey, here's a great , tip for how to keep your house safe.

[00:10:12] Jon: You know, during winter time I'm actually working with a pressure washer. Right now we're creating a nurture campaign that runs all year round that ties into holidays into the different seasons and talking about cleaning your home or your driveway or whatever. And 'cause he's sitting on, a stack of 1200 previous clients that he has done zero nurture to.

[00:10:30] Jon: He is always trying to get new clients. It's like, no, no, no. You're missing out this big opportunity to create a relationship with a very large customer base by nurturing them, by building a relationship with them, giving them free value, giving them information that is relevant to the problem that you solve, so that way when it comes up again, you're the first one they call.

[00:10:47] Hector: Yeah, this is a, a really good just conversation about. the experience. and I think when you sustain an experience, you're able to, create that community. And I think it's just a really good conversation about expanding it outside of just the logos and colors and typography.

[00:11:04] Hector: , Or the slogans, which is, you know, probably the marketing and branding of the nineties and, early two.

[00:11:12] Jon: Yeah, I agree. I mean, a lot of these businesses, especially down here in the southeast. They have a very, what I would call antiquated perspective on marketing, which is a nice way to say old fashioned. , They just think that you know, you need to put an ad in the newspaper or put an ad underneath the clear top in a diner, and that's how you do marketing.

[00:11:32] Jon: It's like, no, no, no. The times have changed. That's not how it works anymore. You need to be online, you need to be digital. And it's all about, it's always been about relationship, but now it's about, , nurturing and fostering those relationships online.

[00:11:44] Hector: Yeah. When we get back from break, I'm curious about some of these frameworks that you talked about because it's a huge ocean and, I love that you've got some frameworks that can really help people to sort of navigate those. And so we're gonna get into that, , right after this quick break.

[00:11:59] Hector: . Hey y'all. Today's episode is brought to you by Amplify Media and we are a podcast and content production company. while, we like to think of ourselves as the media entity for your business because chances are you probably have a passion, a product, a mission, a message, something that you're trying to get out to the world.

[00:12:12] Hector: You might not have the time, the team or the tech skills to be able to do it well. If that's the case, we can help go to Amplify Media.

[00:12:27] Hector: John, one of the things that I think, , is really interesting about marketing is marketing, , it tends to change really quickly, , but also not really at all, you know, in the sense that perhaps tactics and platforms. You know, those things sort of change the tools and the tech might change, but it seems like the general strategy or ethos never, never really does.

[00:12:55] Hector: , Would you agree with that how do you see how marketing is sort of evolved, , in your experience?

[00:13:02] Jon: I would agree with that. At with a slight caveat. So what I would call the core tenets of marketing do not change. You want to get in front of the right people at the right time, and you use people by emotionally. Like that doesn't change. It's purely the medium by which that needs to be executed.

[00:13:19] Jon: Getting those customers in front of them and getting their attention, that's what changes. And now with AI coming in, that changes the tactics of how you're gonna do that, but really doesn't change. The core tenant of you want to connect with people and you want to sell 'em emotionally. Now, I will say the one thing that has changed, I think from, you know, the age of all ads were in the newspaper to today is people want speed and convenience.

[00:13:44] Jon: before, you know, selling them speed and convenience wasn't as much of a hook, I don't believe back then. , 'Cause I mean, you had to go down to the store and cut out the coupon and, you know, it's a lot more manual nowadays. If you don't have quick, easy access to whatever you're selling, immediately people tune out.

[00:14:00] Jon: so I would say yes, I agree with that. One caveat, I think convenience and, , instant gratification is a lot more important than it used to be.

[00:14:09] Hector: Yeah, for sure. People's attention spans, you know, and especially in marketing and one of the. Key components of marketing is, awareness or, people, you know, just even knowing you. And I think that that has evolved so much But the further that you go back, the, more different it is today than it is back then in terms of how are businesses getting people's attention.

[00:14:32] Hector: And then keeping it in a way, and doing it in a way that's. Authentic and aligned and , perhaps with integrity as well.

[00:14:41] Jon: Yes, absolutely.

[00:14:42] Hector: , you mentioned there are five frameworks we talked about one, primal. Can you touch on any of the other ones that you think are sort of relevant

[00:14:49] Jon: Yeah, absolutely. So the five frameworks that I use to build what I call marketing machines, which are I believe your marketing should run like a machine. It needs to be a scalable system that drives your bottom line growth. So imagine a car, you know, you have your engine, you have your driver, you have your steering, you have your fuel, and you have your tires.

[00:15:07] Jon: You mentioned tactics earlier. I think tactics are your tires where the rubber meets the road, executing on what you're trying to do in your market. Obviously your fuel is your funding. You have to pour money into marketing. It's not just gonna happen through osmosis. You're gonna have to dump some money into it.

[00:15:21] Jon: It's an investment. You're gonna have to have a driver. Your driver is going to be your leadership. That who is a decision maker, who's calling the shots. , Your strategy is your steering. You can be going a hundred miles an hour trying to do something in your marketing, but if you don't have steering, you're driving off a cliff.

[00:15:36] Jon: And then you're gonna have your engine. Your engine is your tools and your team. And that's where I think AI would come into this analogy. Yes. I mean, it used to be newspapers and it was social media. Now you, pretty much, everyone needs to be using AI in their market. There's a whole lot of different platforms you can debate on which one is better, which one's not.

[00:15:54] Jon: But you need to be using AI in your market. Period, end of story, because otherwise your machine is going to fall behind everyone else's, and your team needs to understand how to use ai. , Now, some of the other frameworks that I use that plug into what I call the marketing machine. So, , primal branding is one, and that kind of ties into a bunch of different parts of it, but you could even call it the chassis is the brand, right?

[00:16:14] Jon: Like, all right, are you a Jeep guy? are you a truck guy? Are you a coop brand? Are you a sedan brand? . The primo branding is one, StoryBrand is another. That's the messaging framework, how you talk about your brand, how you talk about, , your sales, what that process looks like. It is the story you tell as a brand.

[00:16:30] Jon: , The third one is going to be unreasonable hospitality. Unreasonable hospitality. , That framework is about the experience of your brand, showing that you care about your customers. I mean, we were talking about that a little bit earlier. The authentic, , genuine relationships that you build with them and how you can elevate their experience.

[00:16:47] Jon: So there's primal branding, story branding, unreasonable hospitality. And then there's a really great book. If you haven't read it called they ask you answer. And it's about how to create quality content to help you with your inbound marketing.

[00:16:58] Jon: And I mean, it's in the name. the customers, ask the questions, you wanna be the one answering their questions. And that's with your content with images, videos, infographics, blog posts, et cetera. , And then the last one is my own framework that I've developed, you know, through using, working with different clients, , helping them grow.

[00:17:14] Jon: And it has worked across multiple industries. Even in politics, which was a fun experiment and, , it's called the Growth Marketing Strategy Framework. I'm currently writing a book about it to try and teach, , small business owners and entrepreneurs how to develop a marketing strategy that drives bottom line growth.

[00:17:29] Jon: And growth is an acronym, which, you know, our friend Macy says that, , you know, an acronym isn't a framework, and that's true. Generally, , but the acronym is this, it's goals, revenue opportunities, what assets, timeline, and hurdles, and those are the, what I call the six pillars of strategic marketing. If you're going to develop a marketing strategy, you have to have clear goals, you have to have clear, measurable goals that are actually tied to your bottom line, and we'll help you drive growth. You need to look at your revenue and people are looking at me. Kind of weird when I talk about revenue and marketing. No, no. Your revenue is a critical factor of your marketing. Your sales and marketing team need to talk. You need to understand what products and services sell the fastest. What is the shortest sales cycle?

[00:18:08] Jon: What has the highest profit margins? What do you want to sell more of? What. Products, maybe should you cut? What do you wanna focus on in order to hit your goals? What product or service do you wanna push? , Then you need to look at, so is GRO, , goals, revenue opportunities. And to me, I've classified opportunities in three categories.

[00:18:27] Jon: There are amplification, optimization and differentiation opportunities, and we'll work way backwards. Differentiation is how are you different than the competition? What are you doing to stand out? , Mike Mitz wrote a great book called Get Different Marketing That Can't Be Ignored. And his analogy is, your brand needs to be a pink suit with purple polka dots and a yellow top hat in a sea of the gray suits of your competition.

[00:18:50] Jon: How are you going to stand out? And his example, which I love, bit of a fanboy of is the Savannah Bananas. If anyone is remotely familiar with sports, the Savannah Bananas are this wacky, super unique baseball team outta Savannah that they're called the Savannah Bananas, and they lean into the name and they have built this entertainment element to the sport, which is extremely unique.

[00:19:13] Jon: And they sell out all the time. They just sold out Death Valley at Clemson University. It's a baseball field. It's crazy. And how are you going to get different? And then optimization opportunities. We'll go back to that. So optimization is what assets do you have? What processes do you have? What systems do you have?

[00:19:30] Jon: And can they be optimized to be more effective? Because if you have this great strategy, you have these goals, you're gonna sell the snot out of X, Y, Z product. And then your CRM doesn't work or your, , email list is on an Excel sheet. That's a problem. If you don't have a fully integrated, a vertically integrated sales process, that's a problem.

[00:19:50] Jon: And then if your assets aren't fully dialed in, and this is where, , when I go through this process with, , clients, I talk about StoryBrand. Your messaging is an asset. How you talk about your brand is an asset. Your website is an asset. , That you need to be optimized. It needs to be built to maximize your conversions.

[00:20:08] Jon: 'cause if it's old, if it's clunky, , I run into so many, , websites right now that aren't a DA compliant, which can affect your SEO and people looking at it and liability opening, that's not optimized. You need to optimize what you have so that way you can support the strategy you're building. And then amplification opportunities.

[00:20:25] Jon: Amplification opportunities are what I would call more traditional marketing opportunities. It's a one to many. Running an ad is an amplification opportunity. Creating a strategic partnership. Like Hector, if you and I decided to go in and , start a co podcast together, that's an amplification opportunity.

[00:20:41] Jon: 'cause you hit your audience and my audience. Right? That's a strategic partnership. , There's a million other examples, but it's the one to many concept. How are you going to get in front of as many people as possible and amplify the reach and exposure of your brand? so now we got our goals, our revenue opportunities.

[00:20:55] Jon: Then we look at what assets, what assets do you have? What assets do you need to leverage these opportunities and hit your goals? And what assets can you optimize and kind hit on. But when you're building the strategy, as you're walking through this framework, you're able to identify, okay, these are the opportunities I see.

[00:21:11] Jon: What assets do I need to leverage those opportunities in order to hit my goals? You can optimize ones you already have. You can create new ones. , And this is what I would call the secret sauce, honestly, of this whole thing because people miss creating or optimizing assets for these opportunities. Like, okay, cool, this is a great opportunity.

[00:21:28] Jon: I wanna get in front of a hundred people on social media, or I wanna do a webinar. But then they don't take the time to fix their CRM and their landing page that they're gonna push everyone to after the webinar. They dismiss all the pieces. Your assets are. What's going to drive your growth ultimately?

[00:21:44] Jon: then we look at timelines when you are building this marketing strategy, like, okay, I got these goals. I see these opportunities to help me hit these goals. I know what assets I need to leverage these opportunities to hit my goals. What do I work on first? okay, am I gonna do build a website in a week?

[00:21:59] Jon: How am I gonna redo this? Am I gonna optimize everything all at once? You need to set logical chronological milestones and then organize it into, I organize it into three phases. So let's say I want to build a website. I want to build a sales funnel behind it, and then I want to do some advertising to push people into the sales funnel.

[00:22:18] Jon: That's phase one, phase two, phase three. well first you do your messaging. That's the first phase. The second phase is gonna be build a website and the sales funnel. Third phase is running ads, right? Simple. It's easy to understand. 1, 2, 3, and you understand that it is chronological.

[00:22:34] Jon: A lot of people will try and jump ahead, or they think I'm gonna renovate my website in three hours by myself. No, you're not. Or even if you bring a professional, they think it's gonna happen faster than it's, Nope, that's not true either. You're gonna have this expectation and then burn yourself out and get discouraged.

[00:22:48] Jon: You need to be reasonable with your expectations. You need to be reasonable with your timelines, and then organize it into three phases so that way execution becomes easy. And the last part of the framework is hurdles. Things are gonna go wrong. there's no way to get around it. Things are gonna go wrong, but you can proactively plan and anticipate, okay, what could go wrong and how will we respond to it when it goes wrong? , An example I've been using recently is Walmart. They had this, I'm gonna use air quotes, rebrand, where they just made their font bold and they're like, oh, look at us. We had a rebrand. Everyone hated it because it was extremely stupid. Walmart needed to have in their strategy, a section where like, okay, if we roll out this brand, a hurdle could be that everyone hates it.

[00:23:28] Jon: How are we going to respond to that? You need to, whenever you're rolling out, whenever you get in front of people, you're gonna mess up, you're gonna make mistakes, or people are just gonna hate what you're offering. How are you going to respond to. Overcome those, overcome those hurdles and continue your momentum.

[00:23:45] Jon: So that's the growth strategy framework, which I spent a lot more time on that one, 'cause that one's my brain baby. , But those are the five frameworks that I use to build a marketing machines. That way your marketing is predictable, scalable, and it actually drives growth to your bottom line because if your marketing isn't making your money, you're doing marketing wrong.

[00:24:02] Hector: Yeah. And what I really appreciate about your mindset, your perspective on the whole. Thing is that marketing is not, siloed, it's really integrated into the rest of the business.

[00:24:11] Hector: , I got one more question for you before we get outta here, but John, if people want to get more connected. In your world, find more about these frameworks.

[00:24:23] Jon: So the best place to go is greenlit growth.com, , or you can go to greenlit growth.info. I got some free resources on there, including a free story brand marketing assessment. So if you want to, , just. Skit my 2 cents on your marketing processes and everything. It takes about 10 minutes. It's free. You fill it out, you get a free consultation with me.

[00:24:40] Jon: We go over your results and we look at where are you at, where can we get, and what do we need to do to help you get there?

[00:24:45] Hector: And we'll link that up in the show notes as always. John, my last question for you is, in your opinion, what is the secret to scaling a business?

[00:24:52] Jon: I got a lot of things I could say about that, but I think ultimately the secret to scaling a business is collaboration. I like to say no one can grow alone. And if you don't have a network of people that care about you, if you don't have good staff behind you, if you don't have, you know people like you know Hector, who can help get your voice out there, you're not gonna grow by yourself.

[00:25:13] Jon: in order to scale a business, you need to be collaborative. You need to have a network, and you need to kind of tie into it. You'd be able to take constructive criticism from that network and be humble, help you grow, be generous, and just. Be around other people as much as you. As an introvert, I don't like being around people, but that really is, I think, the secret to success.

[00:25:32] Jon: That's how you.