Take a deep dive with Dr. Wilson Zehr as we navigate the dynamic tides of innovation, the strategic intricacies of business, and the revival of direct mail marketing. This episode isn't your average marketing talk; it's an academic exploration of the forces shaping industries – all interwoven with practical knowledge to propel your venture forward. Tune in for a riveting blend of thought-provoking ideas and actionable insights.

Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency Podcast.

Automation revolutionizing direct mail.
Easy letter-sending tool with tracking.
Pub talks: Informal yet insightful entrepreneur tales.
Bridging theory and real-world application.
Moving beyond the hammer-nail paradigm.

Resources:

Connect with Dr. Wilson Zehr:

Connect with our hosts:

Josh Hoffman - LinkedIn
Alex Garashchenko - LinkedIn

Quotables:

10:52 - So Tim, once he told me that one of the things that people need, I mean, we always hear people talk in the industry, we talk about you need the expertise, you need people with the skills, and you need people, you need the money, you know, need the finance. But he said the other thing that people really need is heroes. They need people they can look at and said, if that person can do it, I can do it too. And we need more heroes and an entrepreneurial ecosystem.
24:30 - And then, you know, the Christensen talked about this idea that when you create new industries, when you're doing disruptive, what he called disruptive innovation, oftentimes, well usually favors the new entrant. Usually the incumbent is at a disadvantage for a variety of reasons, including the reason that it's not always in their best interest to do that. They've got an a market to pretend and defend, to protect and defend, but they also have new ideas, new specialties, in a specific area. And we would need to, I guess we'd need to take time to spend on the curve, but the idea of this model that we built on is the idea that if you're looking very early in a life cycle.
18:31 - But one of the interest, the really cool things that you see happening is that students, when you first lay out this project, you know, they just, kind of all the blood drain outta their face and they're like, oh my gosh, what did I get myself into? And they're really nervous about it. And because, you know, like any real world project, like I'm not out of the textbook, any real, real world project project, things are not always clearly defined. There's squishiness and you almost never have complete information, right? There's holes in that information. And you need to use what you have to work with, and you need to make assumptions to do that. So you need to try and make the best assumptions. And it may be that there is no right answer. There might be a series of right answers, wrong answers, depending on who they're for. It may be that, that there's only, you need to pick the least worst of the bad outcomes, right?
32:14 - AI is gonna kill everybody's job. And what history tells me is that it will reduce some opportunities, especially stuff that's systematic and repetitive, things that maybe people shouldn't be doing anyway. But it'll also create opportunities, and it's likely that it'll create many more opportunities than it actually eliminates. So, I mean, I'm not really worried about that technology at all. I'm more worried about the misapplication of it, people trying to use it to solve problems that's not well suited for than I am about it, eliminating everybody's job.
38:44 - I think that the trick for me is AI, just for the sake of AI, everybody today seems to have a need and AI story, but AI for the sake of AI is maybe not as valuable. I, what I'm really trying to do at the most basic level is I'm trying to solve important problems for my customers. And I might use AI to do that. I might not. And in fact, there might be other tools that work more effectively to do that. So that's the question to ask is what's the problem I'm trying to solve?