1316: Grow Your Business Faster: Transform Your Marketing Strategy Through Data and Artificial Intelligence with AI-First Business Coach Jeff Sauer

Robert Plank 0:01 Hey, we're here in our back with Mr. Jeff Sauer. That's S, A, U, E, R, and Mr. Jeff is formerly Jeff olytics, but now he's the co founder of measure holdings Group LLC. They represent measure u.com profit school.com and measure summit.com Mr. Jeff is a business coach. He's an award winning blogger, university lecturer. He was the owner of a Five Time Inc, 5000 award winning agency, and he's a firm believer in data driven marketing. And we're going to find out about some of just unique insights on how we need to be better working with our data and our analytics and everything that goes along with that. It can be a headache, it can be tedious, but also complicated at the same time. So Jeff is here to set us straight and help us out. So Jeff, glad to see you.

Jeff Sauer 0:50 Yeah, I'm glad, glad to see you as well. Thanks for having me.

Robert Plank 0:53 Happy to have you. And right before the show, we talked about like, I'm going down memory lane, because I bought your course way back when, and then I had Chris Mercer on the show of a bunch of years ago, and then when I was doing my research on you, it came across Mike Killen, who's another guy that I haven't talked to in like, three, four years. So just there's all this, like a Jace adjacentness, adjacent to the I don't know, but, like, we sort of know similar people slightly, and I'm excited to jump in about the old and the new and AI and how things are crazy, we just need to keep up. So what's your current focus and passion?

Jeff Sauer 1:27 Yeah, I mean, it's, it's a lot of the same stuff that we that you did when you took my course, right? So I think you joined my course six or eight or nine years ago even, and it's really making data accessible to marketers, helping them be empowered to really understand this stuff, not be intimidated, and then to have that aha moment when they can actually make a decision and they can improve things. They can improve their conversion rates, their results, whatever it is, by being data driven. Because I think a lot of people say, let's be data driven, but nobody really knows what it means. I think the people who have gone through my courses definitely know what it means, because it's really showing by doing, like, here's what it means to be data driven. It's, it's looking at the data and coming up with with insights and discovery. And so that's, you know, that's the the main passion. It has been for a long time. I've also expanded into helping small businesses really just navigate the changing landscape, especially with AI. You mentioned AI, it's like the elephant in that room. It's the biggest change since the internet. And I'm helping any business that wants to go AI first, go AI first, so they can have a system and do more with less. Essentially, well,

Robert Plank 2:39 wonderful. I'm making a couple of mental notes of what I want to know from you. I want to know about this data driven mindset and what it means to be aI first, because it's like, I think you're still right, that it's it used to be a huge problem. People just relying on the marketing cliches, right? Someone would run a couple of split tests, and then for years later they'd say, Hey, you have to have an orange button. This is the only way to do it. And then you'd have people falling on the crutch of like, just saying, Oh, well, I can't give you any advice. You have to split test it. It's like, no. Like, let me look into my data. Or like, Give me something that works specifically for me. And you always see these viral reels, not even full videos, but the reels that say, like, you know, feed your whole LinkedIn or your whole Facebook, dump into AI, and that sounds exciting. And then there's been times also where I like, take some like, promo emails, I've I've made posts, I've made landing page, and I tell AI, like, fill in the gaps. And there's so many exciting things that can be done in these two extremes, right? Like crunching the numbers, but also figuring out the insights, but then it also, just like overwhelms me. So some of these terms you throw out, like the data driven and and AI first, like, what do these means? And am I on the right track as far as my simultaneous enthusiasm and confusion about all of it?

Jeff Sauer 3:59 Heck yeah, you are, and I love it. That's that's where we're at right now, right? It's like, it's okay to both be a little bit confused and a little bit excited and and not knowing what what's going to happen. It's like the Wild West. It's like the night late 1990s with the internet right now, with this world. So it's like we're basically having to reinvent ourselves. Things that worked in the past may or may not work the same way. There's more players in the market. There's change happening all the time, which can be overwhelming, but I also think it's empowering and exciting, like I would you know, honestly, I was in a real bit of a rut in the in the analytics industry. Before Google Analytics four came around, before AI started coming around, it was just sort of getting boring for me. It was like 20 years without a lot of changes, or 15 years, and now it's like, bam, it's exciting again. And so I found a second win now, specifically around like words like data driven and AI first, I'll help you unpack that for sure, data driven simply means that you make decisions with some kind of numbers to support that, as opposed to making it. Decision based on just your gut instinct or just the feel of things. But it's also sometimes misunderstood because data driven, I've heard it in a negative context. Sometimes people like data driven means that you're just, you're only looking at data, and you're not considering the world around you, right? You're not considering the reality the trends. You're just, like looking at a number and saying, Okay, I need to make this number bigger, which I think can be very dangerous, taking a number and saying, Hey, how do I make the number bigger? Is that really what's going to move the needle for your company? Maybe, maybe not. But what I like to look at it as more like data informed like you can't. You shouldn't make a decision without some kind of case study, some kind of first party data that you own, that's part of your company, some kind of data that backs it up. So like, for example, if you're trying to figure out who should I market to, and you're assuming that everybody in your audience is agency owners, yet you have no data to back that up. What if you were wrong? What if you're not validated? Or what if you just use chat GPT to say, hey, come up with a marketing campaign for me to send to market, to agency owners, and you had your target market wrong. They also, they're just surfing the internet, just looking for answers. And they're, they're giving you answers that may or may not be correct or not, without data. There's no filtering of that. So you're you have no way of knowing if this is correct or not. So you can go in the completely wrong direction without any validation whatsoever. I think the thing that just understanding data, that the thing that gets intimidating and that people misunderstand, is that you don't need all the data in the world to make better decisions. You just need to think of like, okay, well, I need some kind of validation. So for a veteran marketer, it could just be one data point, one survey that you send to your audience, and you get 10 answers, and you feel pretty good about it. For others, it's like you need more and more and more. But ultimately that's that's how you can make a more informed decision. Is just referencing and knowing that this, this is available to you, and if it's not available, going and finding it AI first is basically saying, if you're going to have a business, if you have employees or a team or yourself, if you're not trying to figure out if AI can answer this question before you go to humans, then I think you're doing it wrong. Basically, AI should be the first thing you consult, and then you bring in other people as you go forward. AI is your co pilot. It's your partner in crime. It isn't. It's an answer machine that you can get in seconds instead of hours or or years that it's going to take by relying on asking people. So you're just consulting AI first to see if they can know the answer. Then you can go to the other traditional channels,

Robert Plank 7:34 very cool. And you know, you're you mentioned something really helpful about AI is that, like, I mean, with all of this, right? There's the fear that we'll just stop thinking, and that the logic channels get carried away, and that you do something ridiculous and stupid. And I think that the way that I've thought of AI, especially like these last couple of months, is like, well, like you said, I go there first just to see what it says. And I kind of had my guard. I have my guard up in that first iteration. I'm like, Well, I'm not really sure if I'm even asking this correctly, or if I trust the answer, or maybe I don't give it enough input and then the output. It's like, okay, I know it definitely don't want that, but it's a good jumping off point. And I like how you're saying that there's data in different contexts, right? Because, like, you say data, I think, like, oh, man, am I, like, is it some, like, e commerce, transaction history, or, like, years worth of analytics, and you're saying, Well, hey, it might just be a survey. And, you know, you're making a little bit of a connection. Happening here is, like, you know, like, 2025, years ago, I do product launches, and they usually flop, and then I go and do all the surveying stuff, kind of like, ask, like, like, two or 300 of my subscribers and like, kind of aggregate, like, it was a low tech form, like aggregating the data, I'd say, like, Hey, what's your problem in your space where you stuck in your business? Group them together. And now I'm thinking about it, it's, it was kind of like crunching the data, but just unofficially. And then that would usually, like, right the ship, as far as the product launch, like listening to your people and then simplifying it down. And like changing the copy and the marketing, like, what a concept. And so as far as, like, you do these, this, this training, this teaching, you do these excellent courses, but the times have changed. And so like, what are you specifically teaching about these days? Like, where are people stuck? And then what do they get from you? As far as a breakthrough after they learn from you,

Jeff Sauer 9:26 yeah? So first of all, I love that insight that, like, yeah, if you don't have data, you need to create it yourself and that, and it can be as simple as just asking questions and then tabulating it. It's taking facts and turning it into something that you can then use, right? So I love that, as far as teaching goes, principles relatively stay the same. And that is, you know, you you, if you're trying to, like, I teach web analytics, like Google Analytics, you have to, you have to understand how the platform works in order to get the most out of it. You have to understand how to extend that platform in order to get. To speak the language of your business, and then you have to be able to use the technical piece, like the tagging or whatever, in order to get the data to match that. So there, you know, it's like, what am I trying to measure? What's important to me? And then how do I get the system to do that? Which is the technical part? The good news is that, if you have a good strategy, the technical part is sort of like you just, there's people who can do it for you. AI can tell you how to do it. It's, it's easier than ever to do that piece. And once you have your strategy, now, if you don't have a strategy, then ultimately all the data in the world won't save you. It's just noise at that point. And so, so really it's, it's still very similar from a timeless perspective, as you need to understand your strategy, what are you trying to measure? What channels are out there, what platforms are out there, where, where are you sending traffic from? What are people doing on your website? And then? And then, the way that you do it is completely changed. It's, it's when you took my course. None of that is relevant the course that you took that that basically that platform doesn't exist anymore. So we updated the course, we redid a whole brand new tour down to the studs, and rebuilt it for how to do it in this new platform. And then you iterate on it. You know, you're like, Okay, here's where this thing is. This has changed. But ultimately, the principle you keep on helping people realize their strategy with what's going on. So ultimately, understanding your strategy was important 10 years ago is important 100 years ago. It was important 20 to 25 years ago, when you were launching products. Right ultimately, it's really just asking the right questions about what are you trying to do? And then, how do I have data support me? How do I get it to be my support now, the way that we do it, we teach live as opposed to pre recorded courses. A lot more often. We have way more support on top of it. It used to be that it would be like, you could ask me a question in a forum and then I would answer you in a forum. That was how I gave support, right? And it wasn't even guaranteed. Now we have weekly calls where somebody, or actually multiple times a week, somebody, can go live and talk to one of our instructors and get their exact implementation problem solved. So we've started adding, you know, instead of just doing it yourself, like DIY are, we're more done with you, and even some done for you services on top of it, because not everybody wants to do it themselves. They want to learn the concepts, but they don't necessarily want to do it themselves. So we have variety of ways that people can learn this and get the result they're looking for. We're more focused on the result. And then what's the best way to get to that result for your budget and for your skill level, versus saying there's one size fits all?

Robert Plank 12:30 Very cool. I love your attention and your obsession in keeping it current and up to date and helpful. And so you're kind of filling in some helpful gaps here in that well, it's, it's so easy enough to say, Oh, well, I want to have this, this funnel set up, or want to have this automation, or all this AI stuff. But then there's always, like, a, how do I get from point A to point B? Right? There's in my imagination. It's a swirl of ideas. And we want to get to the point where we're measuring, tracking, testing, seeing some results, seeing some numbers, seeing some data, making sure, like the KPIs are hitting all that good stuff, and how do we get there? And you're saying, Well, you ask the questions about where am I versus where I want to get? And I think that's a cool way of looking at it, right? Because it's so easy to complicate strategy, right? You say, Oh, strategy, here's my goals, and here's my milestones, and here's what I want to stay away from, and here's how it helps me. And it becomes this big old, crazy answer, but you're just like, hey, it's, it's about the questions, right? The someone takes your course, they say, Well, how does this exactly apply to me? Ask questions, or what are the steps I need to take to get all the set up? Will you ask some questions? And so as far as the recent questions, right? Things change all the time, but the principles stay the same. Have you seen any trends about like, where people are always getting stuck or just needing extra help?

Jeff Sauer 13:53 Yeah, for sure. Like, one of the biggest changes is just all the details around privacy and and absolutes versus trends and patterns in your data. So let me, let me unpack that for a second. So when, when you took my course in 2015 2016 it was pretty much there was no GDPR, there was no iOS tracking protections, there was no war on cookies. There was none of these things, right? So if somebody was on your Google Analytics, I told you how to get accurate data, like absolutes like, to get your E commerce system to match up with how many purchases were there? Like, that was a module that we taught. Well, guess what? It doesn't really like, I can't teach that anymore because it's not possible that people are not allowing cookies, there's ad blockers, there's, there's all kinds of other stuff that's there. So really, it's, it's focusing less on saying, what's the absolute number, and how do I get parity between my analytics tool, my E commerce platform, or my my leads in my CRM system? And it's more like, Okay, well, how do I extrapolate what's happening here? The best way? Possible. How do I know how my ads are performing and try to get some kind of attribution? How do I make informed decisions about ad spend or what campaigns are working so the data you have, which could be 30% of the data you used to have, it could be like, it's it could be less than 50% of the data you collect is the actual data that's on your the people who went to your site, it's basically saying, Well, how do I extrapolate that so that I know that I should be putting my money into Facebook ads versus Google Ads versus organic versus whatever? So it's really helping people deal with that level of uncertainty and to make, still make the right decision, still make the right spending decisions with where they go their marketing, the right bets that they would place on channels they choose, and still helping them be accountable to their organizations. So that's that's that principle still there. The way that we do it is so different now, because it's not like basically everybody had to unlearn that. Like you could have the same you could know exactly how much search traffic you got. You could know exactly what keywords somebody, where it was was searching for on Google. Like everything is getting less and less transparent and let and harder to deal with. And so a lot of it is dealing with that change to say, Okay, well, we still need to do marketing. We still need to put something in the market. We still need to connect our product or service with the marketplace. We still need to spend money. So how do we do the best with what we have? And make make directional advice? And so we like, for example, in our measure you we have this thing called the measurement marketing framework, and it's still, you know, the difference between marketing measurement and measurement marketing is that marketing measurement means that you do marketing first and then you try to make up some numbers to know whether it worked or not. Measurement marketing is you start with what you want to measure, what your strategy is, and then you apply your marketing channels based on what your strategy is and what the numbers are telling you. So it's sort of like a way of being data driven. And so with measurement marketing, you're still building these dashboards that tell you where to spend your money, what is working right now where things are not working, and you you can place educated guesses on fixing things. And that's the same whether you have 30% of visitors or 100% because it's really just telling you where you have leaks in your funnel.

Robert Plank 17:12 Very cool. So a new mindset is needed to be had and and it just Yeah, it seems like if someone tried to figure this out on their own, just from, like, their own research or their own chat. GPT, it's like, it's so difficult unless you have someone who's on your site who kind of has this proper mindset, and so is, would you say, since you're a data driven guy, is there like, a breakdown, or is there a pie chart of like, different people that need your advice? Like, is there a lot of like, you know, like, website analytics, e commerce analytics, like email tracking. Like, what's the breakdown? As far as, like, the people that say, Hey, I need help being data driven. I need Jeff and his training to do it. Like, who comes to you?

Jeff Sauer 17:54 Yeah, we, we have three personas that we that we cater to, and then we help. And so the first one is the me crowd. They need to learn analytics for themselves. That's either because it's part of their job, it's because they're, you know, mostly it's because it's part of their job, or they want to get a job advancement by having more skills, and so they might go through our courses, pay their own way, because they want that skill to be on their resume. They want to be able to start a freelance business. At some point, they need that skill, and they're doing it, they're investing in themselves, to bet on themselves, crowd, and we love them, because I know that's who I was, right? And a lot of respect to somebody who, who bets on themselves. That's about 20 to 25% of our of our audience. We have the them, which is people who are doing this for somebody else. They're doing this for clients, mostly. So they're, they're learning these skills, they're staying up to date. So they can do this for a client, that's your freelancer, that's your agency, that's your consultant, that's your coach type person, but 40% of our audience, and they're the ones who are, you know, their business is sort of paying it. They're reinvesting in their business and keeping their skills sharp. And then there's the US, which is the company is doing this. We're gonna, we're gonna put our whole team through this so we can get our strategy in place. That's the remaining people, and they're basically saying, let's just make this a competency in our company. Let's become data driven. Let's implement measurement marketing, and let's get this in place. Now the cool thing about us is that we actually give away our framework for free inside of our at measure u.com if you join our free community, we have this toolbox that has like 40 plus frameworks, calculators, ways of explaining this to your company, and even the measurement marketing framework. Everything's there where we our business model is, if you need us to teach it to you, you can pay for that. And then if you need coaching, or you need an extra level of support on top of it, then you can join our premium programs, because that's often what happens. And you were touching on this earlier in your question is that a lot of people, they they can learn the information, but they don't actually get it implemented because they don't have the expertise, they don't have the confidence. They don't have that that person who's done it 100 times. Times, or 1000 times on their shoulder. And some people will still keep on doing it because they don't have the budget, or they, you know, they're they can't afford it, or they're not sure about it, those people will just continue to do DIY. But for those who are like, I just want the result, that's where they come and looking for us, and that's where our they've joined our premium programs,

Robert Plank 20:18 very cool, and you made so many helpful points in our discussion here, Jeff, and especially this, this last one here, of like, well, if you tried to piece it together yourself, and you didn't have you mentioned, there's like the the expertise, and there's the confidence, and there's like that deep knowledge of all the nooks and crannies. If you're figuring that out, then it's so easy for distractions to crop up, for a project to take too long, and then you don't really have motivation, and it's kind of weighing other things down, and by the time you figure it out, then there's the next update, right? The next Google slap, the next AI breakthrough. And I can definitely see the value in if you have multiple people working together, if you have a whole organization to get everyone on the same page. Because if one person tries to learn it and they say, Well, first I need to figure it out and then teach it to others, and others figure it out my way, then it changes again. And so I can see the value. And everyone just going to you and using your framework and using your calculators and going through your training and asking those questions and getting the done with you help if that's needed. So that way it's like, man, life's too short, and that all this AI stuff is really just going to accelerate the problems that we have and the need to keep up. I mean, the there's all, like, the deep research kind of stuff happening, and the agentic stuff happening and and who knows what's going to happen next, and even like that, that little insight you had there about how it used to be about making the data match up, right? It used to be with all the when cookies were accurate. But then now, no matter what you do, they won't match up. And so if you were trying to solve that problem, you'd waste time. You won't get back on something that you can't do anything about. So here's the better strategy, the better way of doing it. And so as far as some next steps here. If someone says, Man, I'm so excited listening to Jeff, I'm tapping into this new mindset. I need to get my analytics, my data figured out, but doing it myself is an exercise in frustration. I need the help of Jeff and his team. There is measure u.com is that the logical place to go, or are there other resources?

Jeff Sauer 22:19 Yeah. So measure you do calm has the community, and we'd love for you to join the community and get get the resources and and participate. We have 1000s of people in there. It's very active. It's probably the most active community that I know of in this space, where people are just there to help. We have 20 plus mentors who are experts, who are just in the community, trying to help you, and who just want to help you. So that's really fun. And so that that community is awesome. We have a sister brand called profit school, which we barely even have a chance to talk about. That one, right? That one's really more about AI first business. We basically made the decision not too long ago that we're only going to be aI first business specifically for consultants and agencies and freelancers who want to who want to grow without having to necessarily grow a team or do more with less exactly there. So that's at profit school.com and that has a similar community, basically the since their sister brands, they have the same, very similar format, just different focus area. So a lot of my teaching these days is going over to that profit school crowd and teaching that piece, teaching AI. We're doing an AI first summit, or AI first challenge, where people can, if they want their AI business, go AI first. They can jump in and learn there. So we have a lot of cool stuff at profit school, basically getting on the mailing list for either those will let you know exactly what we're doing and what the what the latest and greatest is. And then you mentioned measuresummit.com as well. We have that conference every fall, so the next will be coming up in October.

Robert Plank 23:47 Very nice. And this AI first concept. It's a amazing idea, because, like you said, there are so many things that are just done because that's the way it's always been done. And there, there might be a AI shortcut automation, way to make it work, if you just kind of worked on the problem. And then guess what? Now that that doesn't require a person, and that person can be tasked with something higher level or more, more management based, or higher paying like there's bigger, better problems to be solved. And let's put the machines to work, to it right? That's what they're here for so we said, measure u.com that's M, E, A, S, u, r, e, u.com where you can transform your marketing with a data driven community dedicated to helping you increase conversions and boost your ROI. So if you are the kind of person that is short on time and you want to dive into bite sized, actionable courses that give you immediate answers from strategy to execution. That's how you get that data driven marketing aspect figured out. And then really exciting. Jeff said that as far as growing your business faster with AI is profit school.com, and profit. Profit school. It gives you these expert led trainings and strategies business boosting resources. And you can start off with that@profitschool.com and measure you.com to get your data driven and analytics and conversions figured out. And before I let you go, Mr. Jeff, it's time for the end point, the scary part of the show where I try to put you on the spot where I ask you for a quote or lesson that has served you, that you can pass on to us. So what comes to mind for a quote or lesson?

Jeff Sauer 25:30 Yeah, I love this question, by the way. So as I was thinking about, or as I'm thinking about how to do this, the answer is, it used to be that you could that some people might have been 10 steps ahead of the other for somebody else, right? So it's like you got to stay ahead of the game. And maybe we thought that it needed, that the standard needed to be 10 steps ahead, or 20 steps ahead, or two steps ahead. I think you can get by just trying to stay one step ahead and maybe even a half a step ahead. Everybody's learning this thing. Everybody's trying to figure it out. It's like the late 90s, early 2000s we're figuring out business models around AI. We're figuring out what the things are, what's going to happen. It's like the early internet. And if you recall back then, there's a lot of 20 something year olds who were the experts, because they were young and they were they were learning that was I was that guy, like I was a 20 year old internet expert who everybody to call trying to figure this thing out, and I made a career out of it. I didn't know anything, but I made a career out of it because I was just first mover advantage. Like all you need to do is just get in there. Experiment today. Nothing's too late. Everything's changing anyway. Just have fun with it. Dedicate 10 20% of your time to staying one step ahead of who you were yesterday, and you will thrive, and you'll be great at what you're doing. There's gonna be a lot of businesses that that there's gonna be a lot of need for this. I think that there's that it's basically gonna be the top 1% of performers are gonna be who set things going forward, and it's gonna be people who are using AI, who can verify the facts, who can understand how to get the outputs, who can train agents, who can train all these things. And so, yeah, just be one, even a half a step ahead, and you will go far. But, but, you know, trying to avoid this thing like it's going to go away. It's just not cats out of the bag. So, so see what you can do to use it to your advantage. I love it.

Robert Plank 27:19 Embrace it. Be a step ahead, or a half step ahead, and it's just seems like the exciting, amazing times are back, aren't they? Jeff, it's like back when, if you you made a one website, or you made an app, or you made a s and it really, like, blew up and just became something that, like, grew like crazy. I mean, tick tock came out of nowhere. Deep seat came out of nowhere. There's all these stories of just like companies you never heard of and the user base just like grew like crazy. And so the the good times are back, as long as we embrace AI and as long as we have our focus in the right place. But if you try to do it by yourself, it's an easy path to focus on the wrong things, or to get bogged down, or just to take too much time. So you need some help. You need a community and a mastermind, and that community is profit school.com. If you're AI focused and measure you.com. If you're data driven, focused, and we'll see you there. And thank you, Mr. Jeff, for finally letting me meet one of my heroes, which is you and helping us out with what we need to know. I really appreciate it.

Jeff Sauer 28:18 Thank you so much.

Robert Plank 28:20 All right