Episode 176 Transcript
Heather Porter (00:01.102)
Lee, thank you so much for being here. I have no idea where this talk is gonna go and I'm really excited about it. How are you?
Lee Pepper (00:07.416)
I'm great, Heather. I'm excited to be with you for so many miles away and so many time zones.
Heather Porter (00:12.856)
I know, I know. You're in Tennessee, right, in the States?
Lee Pepper (00:16.834)
Yes, yeah, I'm actually recording from downtown Nashville tonight. So that's why I'm kind of got a little bit of you can see some of the buildings in the background.
Heather Porter (00:25.314)
Yeah. Love it. So good. And I'm here in my little Northern beaches suburb of Sydney. So let's, let's have a chat across time zones. you have, your, your journey is phenomenal, which we'll talk about. but I always like to get straight into some tangible tips and we'll get more into your journey in a minute. So I'm really curious. How has your, your military background shaped your views on leadership focus?
Lee Pepper (00:34.05)
Excellent.
Lee Pepper (00:42.512)
Mmm.
Heather Porter (00:54.59)
and this hustle culture that's happening in the world.
Lee Pepper (00:57.752)
I think that's a great opening question, Heather. And I think the thing that I always start with is we have to start with strategy. And a quick example in the military is that, everybody in the military, I enlisted when I was 19 and everybody learns how to shoot. But guess what? Shooting isn't going to win you any battles. And so that's where strategy has to come in. And in today's world, we have all these amazing platforms, especially for small business owners, and we get stuck doing these different tactics. It's like we're stuck just shooting.
And we have to take a step back and figure out what is our strategy. So that was one of the reasons that I wanted to write the book was to put some of these military strategies, translate them into mental models. So those that may not be familiar with military, it will be easily accessible for them because that's what served me so well in my corporate careers that I was able to translate them.
Heather Porter (01:51.769)
Got it. Do you have a few tips that you can share from the book on how to actually handle the strategy?
Lee Pepper (01:58.03)
Yeah, absolutely. think one of the first, one of the first things that I think resonates with a lot of people is this example of, of what I call commander's intent. And this is how you actually build your team. And a lot of people ask me, well, how do you, how do you get innovation? How do you have such innovative, innovative teams? And the answer is that you cannot command innovation. You have to set your table with your commander's intent. And that's where in the military, have great training.
We understand kind of where our lanes are, what our scaffolding is, it supports us, but we have the freedom of movement. So when a battle is unfolding, when a training exercise is unfolding, right, we can make decisions in the moment. We're not so micromanage. We're not so hierarchically managed like a lot of people might think. We have a lot of creativity on the battlefield. And that's what we need to have in our corporate lives too, because especially working with younger generations, especially millennials, you cannot micromanage them.
Heather Porter (02:51.47)
yeah.
Lee Pepper (02:53.092)
Give them your commander's intent, give them what the mission is, and then give them the freedom to go out and accomplish it and they'll do amazing things.
Heather Porter (03:03.17)
That is such a valuable point. I'm hearing this time and time again around how we have to change our leadership completely and lead with vision and give hope and purpose and then setting the container around that in business and then they'll follow. So it's interesting you say that. Yeah. What else? there another interesting point in your book?
Lee Pepper (03:16.994)
Absolutely, absolutely.
Yeah, I think the second thing that I think people comment when they've read my advanced copies of the book is, is this idea around force multiplication. Force multiplication was a strategy that I learned when I was in armor school in 1992. In armor schools, when you learn to command and drive the M1 Abrams battle tanks. And the idea is that Carl von Klosowitz was a Prussian general during the Napoleonic times. And in ancient times, your battle strategy was related to mass.
meaning it was the amount of soldiers or the amount of weapons that you had. That's kind of what ruled the day. But von Klasowitz, he introduced this concept of force multiplication. So back then, you you could actually give a soldier, him on a horse, give him speed, give him maneuverability. Don't just give him a sword and give him a carbine. Now you've added different weapons systems. I applied that into marketing. So a great example is with podcasts. You know, if you're going to record a podcast, right, which we're doing tonight,
Heather Porter (04:17.164)
Yeah.
Lee Pepper (04:19.503)
then why not go ahead and turn the video on like you're doing, you know, with your studio. And now you've got the audio, you had the video you put on YouTube, you'll probably clip it and you'll put it on TikTok or Reels. And then you'll also for companies, this may become the basis of an SEO article that you're gonna put on your website or your blog. And then you're also gonna have some still photography that you're gonna put on LinkedIn or Facebook. Now all of a sudden this one thing, you have force multiplied it.
Heather Porter (04:32.897)
That's it.
Lee Pepper (04:48.257)
among all these different platforms. And the reason this is so important is that it's budget friendly because most companies end up paying for these things multiple times. They'll pay for the podcast. Then they'll go hire a videographer and they'll pay for the video. And then, my God, I've got to hire content writers for SEO and I've got to hire social media. And you end up blowing your budget. Whereas if you can think about what you're doing today and how you can force multiply it, then you can be on all these kinds of platforms. And it's not just
tactics then, it's an overall strategy.
Heather Porter (05:23.337)
the epitome of working smart. mean, start with that long form piece of content. You're right. Yes, Lee, you're going to show up on my TikTok and on my Instagram and on my LinkedIn and in a white paper later end of this year with your best takeaway sound bites, all of it. I'm, I'm an advocate of that for sure. So thank you for bringing that up. yeah.
Lee Pepper (05:41.539)
Well, absolutely. And for small businesses, Heather, I mean, that's a lot of the folks that I still consult with are owner founders, mom and pops. And guess what? When they spend that money, it's their money. You know, they don't have these huge corporate budgets. And so I think most people really resonate with this idea of how they can multiply the efforts that their team is doing.
Heather Porter (06:02.957)
And most of my listeners are, are, they're small businesses, they're established, they're, they're in the grind and the hustle. And that's why they listen to us. So they're looking for these, these ideas, which is great. I want to change gears a little bit about your journey because you have written a book we'll talk about and you work in marketing. How did you choose your direction after the army?
Lee Pepper (06:10.499)
Yep. Yep.
Lee Pepper (06:24.163)
I was fortunate that when I enlisted and then I went to college, my degree was in political science. So then I went to officer candidate school and then went to armor school as an officer. But I graduated with a degree in political science. And, you know, most people who get degrees in political science, very few of them actually go work in politics. But I was fortunate that I had been a volunteer and worked on Ross Perot's presidential campaign in 1992. And we did some really exciting things in Tennessee.
Heather Porter (06:38.794)
Okay.
Heather Porter (06:51.445)
I remember that.
Lee Pepper (06:52.641)
and we got noticed by the corporate office in Dallas and he hired me. And so I became one of his youngest campaign staffers. So I actually took my degree and used it for a few years. And then I pivoted when he decided he didn't want to be involved in politics after the 96 election. And I had the chance to go work at Pro Systems, which was his IT services company. So now political science, I don't have an IT background, but I took advantage of every training that they offered.
And so I kind of was a very fortunate to build my career than an IT and then that led me back to Nashville where I was from he bought a company here and I stayed for a few more years and then I got the but this entrepreneurial bug and this is the advent of digital music so I jumped into a digital music company of course Heather I bet on the wrong horse we were on the Microsoft platform and Steve Jobs and Apple just came through and in that killed us we ran out of money pretty quickly
Heather Porter (07:46.477)
Yep.
Lee Pepper (07:48.046)
And then that's what got me into behavioral health. Then they were looking for a CIO and back then digital marketing was in the realm of the CTO and the CIO. So being chief information officer, I still handle all the digital marketing, which is kind of where my career had really moved into from IT with the music company. So I think my career has been a lot of pivots and I just always took advantage of every bit of training that was offered.
Heather Porter (08:16.008)
I love that you said that, especially since you were younger as well. There's, I think a lot of people, especially in their twenties, they're not, they're open to learning, but they don't really double down on it. So it makes a world difference learning, but I'm gonna ask you a question about learning. Cause there's a fine line of almost learning too much and not doing. So what's your take on learning? How much should we learn? What should we look to learn based on our own strengths and weaknesses?
Lee Pepper (08:24.781)
Mm-hmm.
Lee Pepper (08:39.427)
Well, it has to be practical. I'm not one of these people that has three or four degrees. And then you're wondering, like, I can't get a job. So everything that I did was, was tied to some role that I had. You know, it was sometimes I remember the very first time when I was, I started working in recruiting, which at pro systems was, you know, it wasn't in the department of HR was actually like more of a sales job, like you're going out recruiting programmers. So I really had to dive deep into what do DBAs do? What are programmers do?
Heather Porter (08:43.662)
Nice.
Lee Pepper (09:07.417)
And then I went to work at our data center. And so the very first week that I was at the data center, I just said, well, yeah, I'm the man, the shift manager, but I need to go learn all the roles. So I spent a week in each of the chairs, each of the positions. I was hanging tapes back then, you those old real, real tapes. You know, I mean, I was, I just learned all that. And I think that that just showed that I didn't need to know every single thing, but I needed to understand what the team was going through. And that was the same thing in the military.
Heather Porter (09:26.136)
yeah.
Lee Pepper (09:35.545)
That was really ultimately why I enlisted. My father had enlisted and my dad was 26 years, know, career military. He enlisted before he became an officer and he always told me, you know, Lee, if you're going to lead people, you need to know what you're leading. And so I've always, that's kind of how I took my training. I wanted to make sure I was doing training, but it had to, it had to be practical and I had to put it to use.
Heather Porter (09:49.986)
Yeah.
Heather Porter (09:57.688)
That's so good. makes me think of a story that some of the most successful CEOs will have conversations with the janitors that clean their office buildings because right understanding every facet, every point of view from every employee is so important.
Lee Pepper (10:04.491)
Absolutely.
Lee Pepper (10:11.522)
Yeah, you can't lead from behind a spreadsheet and the companies that I go into today and help consult the ones that have issues. That's a lot of that going on. They haven't been to the front lines. And I tell a great story in the book about Patton when he was basically hired by Eisenhower to take over the failed North Africa campaign. And it was because Major General Friedenhall was in a fortified bunker many miles away. Whereas Patton, when he took over, he was on the front lines and it wasn't
Heather Porter (10:16.716)
Yeah!
Heather Porter (10:33.26)
Hmm.
Lee Pepper (10:39.138)
just to put himself at risk, but he needed to understand the terrain. He needed to understand the types of troops and the training and what was going on. And I think for a lot of young leaders, boy, they need to get out of their offices, get out from behind the spreadsheets and get their hands dirty.
Heather Porter (10:56.589)
More than ever. I yeah, here's to that. I agree. Yeah Now you teach people how to win at them. You call I think the modern marketing battlefield, which by the way, I love that What it's so good if you came up with that that is gold modern marketing battlefield What what do you feel is the biggest or are the biggest issues that businesses are facing right now with their marketing?
Lee Pepper (11:07.355)
thank you.
Thank you.
Lee Pepper (11:20.322)
think right now it's a vanity metrics. A lot of the clients that I have when I go in there, they're telling me all these amazing stories. Lee, I don't understand why our beds aren't full like in healthcare. When our beds aren't full, our senses of full, I've got 100,000 subscribers on YouTube. You know, our tick talk has got all these fall. I don't understand why we're not full. And I explained to them, well, you're stuck in vanity metrics. You know, you haven't translated
all these amazing platforms, but you haven't translated it into the actual business. And a lot of times it's because they treat marketing, they don't really understand marketing. They think it's a black box. don't under, and so they have this disconnect between their agency of record or their team as to really what the KPI should be. So that's a lot of what I do when I come in right now on a consulting side is just to help them establish what are the meaningful KPIs to drive the business and get away from.
views and likes and this really get down to what's driving the business.
Heather Porter (12:22.414)
And how do you do that? So what do you look at if you're working with a consulting on a project and you first come in, what do you do?
Lee Pepper (12:27.638)
just had a project that just wrapped up a couple of months ago and they had a podcast and they were doing these amazing interviews and they were telling the CEO, we've got 50,000 people that are listening to it, we've got 100,000 subscribers on YouTube. And so when I got there, I showed the podcast host and I showed the CEO. I said, interesting, you've got all these views on YouTube as an example and you'll have one comment.
And I said, and the comment was in Spanish. So I said, you have a real problem that you think you're hiding behind these, whoever's handling this is hiding behind the metrics, the vanity metrics. Whereas really what I want to have, I don't necessarily need the vanity metrics. I want to be influential, not necessarily an influencer. And so when it comes to the modern marketing battlefield today, I think that's where businesses really have to understand what it is they're after. Because if you're chasing the influencer market, that's a
Heather Porter (13:01.387)
Lee Pepper (13:24.556)
different market than the business market. Whereas like in our space where in behavioral health, we're trying to drive phone calls, live chats, web forms, leads and assessments. Like that's what's really measured. I don't really care that I've got this many followers. In fact, I would rather have less followers that were more meaningful because we're trying to transform people's lives, be influential versus just trying to be the influencer. If that makes sense.
Heather Porter (13:52.91)
More than you know, I actually teach part time at the University of Sydney at a division there, marketing. And when people come in, a lot of them come in and they're trying to work out how have better relationships with their agencies. And I'll say to them, what does the report look like that you get? How many pages is it? They're like 50 pages. Right?
Lee Pepper (14:05.375)
Mm hmm. Yeah, I know. I know. And yeah, I see that every time when I usually when they when I show up, I guess the agency knows. but yeah, they've been they they drown them in data and nobody knows what it means. And I'm like, yeah, because it's all superfluous. It means nothing. You know, you need to you need to. And some of it's on the business owner because a lot of times people hire an agency and they think I've hired the agency. All my problems are solved.
Heather Porter (14:19.955)
Yes! No!
No.
Lee Pepper (14:35.222)
And that's not the case. mean, they need to be a partner with you. They should actually be at your office as much as you are. They need to learn your business and understand they can't just be pushed off the side. And that's where a lot of times I'll find that business owners, you know, they're the ones missing the meetings, you know, for the weekly check-ins or they're not approving things or they're slowing things down. And so I find that it usually is a two way street and we just kind of try to bring everybody together.
Heather Porter (14:37.409)
Yeah.
Lee Pepper (15:03.914)
Hahaha!
Heather Porter (15:05.003)
So good. Now you've mentioned is so true. So true. You you've mentioned you've worked on political campaigns, Ross Perot, you've led marketing teams, you're now consultant. What do you think is one or two things that you personally have done exceptionally well in your career?
Lee Pepper (15:21.196)
think the first thing that I would point to is that I've been able to translate our marketing spend right with our accounting and our finance teams. Most marketing departments, they have an adversarial relationship with their CFO or with their accounting team. And so what I have been able to do is create a partnership with them. And a lot of it is because I explain the strategy and I'll use a quick example. The Anvil and Hammer is a very
famous military strategy that I have a whole chapter about. It was most famously used in the first Gulf War after Iraq invaded Kuwait. And just briefly, Norman Swartzikoff lined all of our allied forces up on the border of Kuwait. Saddam Hussein had to do the same thing. But then Swartzikoff was able to take the 101st Airborne, right, and 7th Corps and do a famous left hook. He outflanked them, and that was called the hammer.
Heather Porter (16:03.304)
yeah.
Lee Pepper (16:19.659)
So the anvil was all your soldiers that are on that line and who won the day was the hammer. But guess what? That wouldn't have worked if you didn't have your anvil. And what I find in finance is that when you're talking and you're your reporting and they're having these conversations, they always want to cut the anvil because the anvil may not appear to be their lowest cost per admin or the most effective. And they always want to just, well, let me just spend money on the hammer, but the hammer won't work unless you have the anvil. And that's where a lot of marketers, I tell that story a lot because
Most people have experienced that and now try to give them some voice so that they can better explain that strategy and not fall into that trap of cutting something that's holding the position so that your hammer can work.
Heather Porter (16:56.332)
Yeah.
Lee Pepper (17:04.429)
Well, Heather, when I was sitting with the, you know, depending on the kind of company I was at, whether it was the board of directors or the private equity or this or the C suite, whenever I started quoting, quoting Patton or Caesar, they would just sit back and go, God, okay, Lee's throwing out Caesar. Now we can't win.
Heather Porter (17:05.864)
I love these metaphors that you're coming out with are the best.
Heather Porter (17:17.826)
Yeah.
Heather Porter (17:24.281)
Here he goes again. You're one of those guys with the table. Yeah. I love it. I love it. Now you mentioned in some information you sent me that you've helped to lead a company to, think it was 350 million acquisition, which is huge. So based on this journey of growth, what do you think that most small business owners are getting wrong about growing their businesses?
Lee Pepper (17:27.382)
Right, right, right.
Lee Pepper (17:48.846)
Yeah, I think that I use that stat and I'm glad you asked me about it because I was very fortunate when I joined Foundations Recovery Network. You know, they had just switched from a nonprofit here in the States to a for profit and we got our first seed money from a private equity. Well, I was able to earn stock options and then I was able to as we then going through different acquisitions, I was able to then roll some of that profit that I made back into the company. So I had a seat at the table.
Heather Porter (17:56.619)
Yeah.
Heather Porter (18:05.079)
yeah. yeah.
Lee Pepper (18:17.685)
And that was one of the things that it was a great example of private equity done well. our partners, Sterling partners and the Pritzker Family Fund were just really good partners with us because they wanted us to have a seat. They wanted us in the boat with them. Right. And I think that a lot of small business owners need to find the key people in their teams that they can share some of that future opportunity with, because that's what really gets people like me excited and willing to
invest our personal time, right? Even more so than just the nine to five, really invest and stay with the company. I was there for 10 years and that's really, think what drove, we had a 60 times return for our investors. And at the time it was the largest exit in behavioral health in 2015. And it was because all the key people, they were at the table with the investors. It wasn't just the investors that we all saw what our hard work was going to pay off for.
Heather Porter (19:02.967)
Wow.
Heather Porter (19:18.187)
Yeah, you keep mentioning partnership as a big theme in what you're saying to me and really open communication and just, yeah, don't hide behind the fake metrics and numbers. I'm liking where this is going. Yeah, go.
Lee Pepper (19:19.212)
Mm-hmm.
Lee Pepper (19:27.799)
Yeah, I have another, I have another chapter Heather on allies. And that's another, I think key differentiator that I outlined in the book is that a lot of times in our corporate world, we want to have these sponsorships or these product deals. But what I advocate for is that you need to find your allies. Who are the people that no matter what you would pay them or what contractual you have that they love what you do. And so, because that's how it is in the military, right?
Heather Porter (19:36.151)
Tell me.
Heather Porter (19:46.199)
Yeah.
Lee Pepper (19:54.744)
You know, the military, something goes wrong, like in you're in Australia, I mean, you know, when we needed help during 9 11, we weren't asking for, well, did Australia, you know, how much did they pay or how much did we pay? No, we're allies. Same thing with Europe. Like that's, you know, we have a special bond. And I think you as a company, you have to find those companies that have that same special bond. I use the example of GoPro and Red Bull GoPro and Red Bull, they are allies. They do all this co-branding and cross-marketing.
And a lot of this outside of just contractual advertising deals. And I think that's so important for a small company to find the people that are cheering just as hard for your success as their success. And that's the kind of people you want to be around and get your marketing team around.
Heather Porter (20:39.714)
Yeah.
Lee Pepper (20:41.811)
Hahaha!
Heather Porter (20:43.533)
So good. Now, Lee, you are a husband, a dad, you know, you're a mentor, you're a consultant, you have a lot going on in your life and now you have a new book coming out. How do you personally design your life so it's not always about work?
Lee Pepper (20:51.788)
Yes.
Lee Pepper (20:58.781)
that's a really good question. mean, I was fortunate enough when I was early, early on in my career that, I had parents that set a good table for me in the sense of, you know, I didn't personally go into debt other than my mortgage on my house. So I've always had the ability to take risk in a sense of like when I wanted to, you know, leave pro systems to go to the digital music company. Like, yeah, I mean, that's a risk, but I had the
ability where I wasn't necessarily like, okay, if I missed a check or two, I wasn't going to also be on the street. So I think having your financial house in order is really important. And in America, you know, we're a huge consumer society. Like sometimes it can just be devastating, but we, my wife and I've always been really just, you know, fair with ourselves and not getting too ahead of ourselves. So think that's key. And that's allowed me to spend time with my sons as they were growing up.
Heather Porter (21:33.421)
Mm.
Heather Porter (21:40.438)
Mm-hmm.
Lee Pepper (21:53.281)
you know, it wasn't that I had to all of sudden, okay, I can't leave the office or I'm working these hundred hour weeks that you hear about sometimes in the States. So I just, set up our lifestyle to where we could afford to do the important things. And that's, that's paid off, I think in dividends. then for now as a consultant, I only keep three or four clients. I just can't do more than that. And I'm not trying to be the influencer. I'm trying to be influential with a small handful of people. And that's given me the time to
Heather Porter (21:57.132)
Nice.
Heather Porter (22:16.618)
Okay.
Lee Pepper (22:21.824)
to write the book because you writing this book it was an 18 month endeavor to get it written and then don't even ask me about trying to find a publisher and an agent that's a whole that'll be my second book explaining that whole journey. But I think that you you know I mean I guess the all the way around on that question is just set your lifestyle up so that you don't have so many people that are pulling at you whether it's debtors or whether it's family or just try to keep your life as simple as possible and then once you get older you can then kind of reap
Heather Porter (22:35.245)
Okay.
Lee Pepper (22:52.01)
you some of those fruits.
Heather Porter (22:57.771)
And a lot of us, it's funny, we forget that we actually have a choice to design our lives. it's still, people I talk to, 50s, 60s, they're still going, you mean I have a choice? Yes, you do. You know?
Lee Pepper (22:58.56)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Lee Pepper (23:06.464)
Yet. Well, that's where this influencer thing, I mean, when I was working on the book, I mean, certain people will tell me, my God, Lee, you need to have a you should have a master class and you should set up a coaching academy. And I'm like, no, that doesn't sound very, doesn't sound very appealing to me. And so I think you have to be able to say no. And it gets back to what do you really want out of life? You know.
Heather Porter (23:22.859)
huh.
Heather Porter (23:33.549)
Yeah, yeah. So a couple more questions for you. And I of course have to talk to you a little bit about AI and your thoughts about it because you work in new consulting, marketing and business growth. AI, what do you think about it?
Lee Pepper (23:39.964)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Well, it's one of these things where if you are not researching it now, you're going to get disrupted and left behind. And I think there's two things. So you've got, you've got all the AI tools that a lot of us use, whether it's chat, GBT, or you're one the other bots, you know, or something like, know, if you use like Opus clips for clipping videos and stuff, and those are amazing tools. But then I think the most disruptive part of this is coming is the impact on search engines. So a lot of my work has been, you know, in digital marketing.
And now we're moving from an SEO world to a GEO world. So it's going to be generative engine optimization. And that is where the power of the supercomputers and the algorithms, they can crawl everything. Every podcast ever produced is being indexed by Google, right? No matter if it's the Oprah Winfrey podcast, you know, the Heather Porter podcast, it's all being indexed. all in the, in the key thing is it used to just be, you know, it was links that were on your website and your blog content. But now
Heather Porter (24:31.297)
Yeah.
Heather Porter (24:35.905)
Hehehehe
Lee Pepper (24:40.716)
We have all these signals. So now when somebody is commenting on minute 28 of this conversation, Google's going to know, Oh, there must've been something interesting said at that moment. And you can imagine extrapolate that to all the different platforms, whether it's Tik TOK or YouTube. So the companies that have been ignoring these other platforms are going to be disrupted and they're going to wake up one day and go, why did my search results change? Like we're used to, and I don't know how it is in Australia, but in the States, you're every
three or four times a year, there's a major algorithm update, you know, and, and a lot of people are left scratching their heads, but this is going to be a major shift. And right now, if you're in the States and Google, there is the, you can click on AI and you can start to see, and the results are different. So like for my clients that are in behavioral health, if they're searching for alcohol and drug rehab or mental health services, those search results are noticeably different when you're, when you're turning on Gemini versus just additional search. And pretty soon,
Heather Porter (25:15.233)
same. Yeah.
Lee Pepper (25:38.72)
that Gemini button won't even be there. It will all be GEO.
Heather Porter (25:46.987)
Yeah, it's crazy times ahead. that I'm glad you brought that up because it's something I've been looking at too with my clients and learning. It's all the same in Australia, same Gemini, all the search results changing, shifting algorithm shifts. Yeah, pretty much spot on following the US and vice versa. So yeah, I hear you.
Lee Pepper (25:52.308)
- Yeah.
Lee Pepper (25:59.617)
Yeah. I'm hopeful that it's going to actually potentially democratize and make the search results a little more fair. You know, here in the U S, especially behavioral health, we have really struggled with really bad actors that are constantly impersonating different behavioral health treatment centers. And, you know, they get involved with the paid search and creating fake accounts. I'm hopeful that geo is going to make the platform so wide now that those kind of bad players.
Heather Porter (26:11.905)
Yeah.
Heather Porter (26:20.17)
Right.
Lee Pepper (26:27.946)
you they might be able to go in and create some fake stuff on paid search, but you're going to have such a wide ocean now of content and all these signals from actual real users, not just bots, you know, that I think are going to potentially have a, a beneficial impact on search. That's what we're hoping for.
Lee Pepper (26:48.694)
Mm-hmm.
Heather Porter (26:50.186)
I've actually never heard that angle before what you just said and I can see it actually happening and I hope it does actually because that would be really handy. Now, where do people learn more about you if they want to get in touch with you and your book?
Lee Pepper (26:52.608)
Mm-hmm.
Lee Pepper (27:01.302)
Sure, so they can go to never outmatched book.com. They can also it's on Amazon. It's on all the major retailers is distributed by Simon and Schuster. So here in the States it'll be in bookstore September 2nd. I'm also out on the speaking circuit. I just was so excited. I got chosen to do a tip my first Ted Talks. I'll be at Ted X Ocala on November 8th then I have a number. Thank you so much. I really it was really because of the of this book. I mean, you know it.
Heather Porter (27:28.444)
my God, congratulations.
Lee Pepper (27:30.892)
you know, having a really good proposal and, and, um, you know, with Ted, you know, you have to do a video and it's always so hard when you're trying to do a 32nd intro video. But I think it was the cons, the content of this book, because, know, this book, I, I, I position it as innovative, but these are ancient strategies. It's just, I don't know how it is in Australia, but in the United States, you know, less than 1 % of the population will serve in the military. So that means, and I don't say that as a judgment, that's just where we are with an all volunteer army.
Heather Porter (27:34.687)
Yeah.
Heather Porter (27:44.618)
Yeah.
Lee Pepper (27:57.942)
But that means 99 % of Americans have never heard these concepts. So I've got a really wide field to go and run in and explain some of these things.
Heather Porter (28:11.98)
Do you know I've interviewed a few veterans from Australia on this show and I love all you guys, the stories and the metaphors. It's just you're concise. You know what you're talking about. It's just a different mindset. And so I really value that you've put all this into a book, especially with the marketing slant on it. I think it's it's going to be really valuable for most people to read because there's a depth that you offer. Yeah.
Lee Pepper (28:29.247)
Well, thank you so much.
Heather Porter (28:35.732)
No, you're welcome. You're welcome. OK, we're going to start to wrap up. I'm going to ask you one last question. What is one last piece of advice that you'd like to leave our listeners with?
Lee Pepper (28:43.723)
I think it would be this concept of what I talk about in the book, the citizen farmer, citizen soldier. So, you know, in ancient times, most, most countries or empires didn't have full time armies. was the citizen farmers that during times of war would then join the army and then they would go back after the war and be their farmer. In the United States, it was a similar situation to the American revolution. We had the Minutemen, right? They were, they were just part-time soldiers. And I talk about it in the book.
that in our businesses, in our corporate world, we don't take advantage of the citizen farmers that are our staff, that are our employees, that love working where they're working and they want to help marketing. And so we have a real opportunity to turn our citizen farmers into citizen soldiers and get them involved, right, in sharing all the great things that are going on at your company. And then that has all these amazing benefits with recruiting. Because here in the U.S. it's really hard to staff, especially healthcare, finding nurses and finding doctors.
Heather Porter (29:13.035)
Yeah.
Lee Pepper (29:42.389)
But if you can have the kind of culture where people celebrate and they go, I want to work there. And so that's where you can activate your citizen farmers when you need them to become your citizen soldiers. And now you're getting this really great effect on your marketing. And so that's one of the things that I think so few people take advantage of, that most people who are working the nine to five, like they, they have some passion. They must have some passion for why they do. They do the work they do. So you just need to kind of create a platform where they can share it. Starbucks does a great.
Heather Porter (29:46.549)
Yeah.
Lee Pepper (30:12.435)
a great job on that talk about in the book. mean, they're one of the best.
Heather Porter (30:21.209)
Lee, thank you so much for being here for spending your time with me telling your stories now making everyone that's listening want to read your book guys go get his book. And thank you for your time.
Lee Pepper (30:26.879)
Thank you, Heather.
