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Agency Forward explores the future of agencies as tech and AI drive down the cost of tactical deliverables. Topics include building competent teams, developing strategic offers, systemizing your business, and more.
New episodes delivered every Tuesday.
Chris DuBois 0:00
Hey, everyone, today I'm joined by Joao windero. Joao is a business strategist who helps consultants turn their methods into standout service formats. He's known for teaching how to design high conviction, high conversion workshops and his frameworks have helped agencies codify their expertise into scalable offers. I wanted to have Joao on because agencies need to differentiate in this AI era, and building signature formats is a potential moat to capitalize on. So in this episode, we discuss why formats can't be faked and how to use that, how to codify your method without being generic. Signs clients see that make them trust you faster and more. Lead Gen is the hardest part of running an agency. For most it's unpredictable, it's slow and it's usually expensive. Jia flips that. It's the all in one growth platform that turns your existing relationships and client work into a steady pipeline. Jia automates lead gen follow up and content, and it's all from the work you're already doing, you can check it out and get some free bonuses at get gia.ai/dynamic agency, and now to Al land arrow. It's easier than ever to start an agency, but it's only getting harder to stand out and keep it alive. Join me as we explore the strategies agencies are using today to secure a better tomorrow. This is agency forward. When did you realize that formats could be a moat?
Joao Landeiro 1:34
There wasn't a specific point in time, but there was a confluence of signals that I was getting. So the first one was when I was talking to people in the more more in the boutique consulting world, they kept hitting on this consulting value proposition, signature methodology, that kind of thing that spoke to me, because I like to think about methods and stuff like that. But another thing that was an ingredient to this realization was, I know it's not a quote from Blair ends himself, but Blair quotes this, which is the sales process, is a preview of the service. So what happens in the sales process? It's kind of how things will happen throughout, right? And I remember thinking that the way you the way you deliver the thing that you do, is very hard to copy. Right on the surface. People can have all sorts of claims about, oh, we do it, like these guys do, but usually what you see of somebody else, somebody else's process is only like a little bit of it. So if you're for if the way you do the work, if you the way you deliver the work, is packaged into a format, and that format represents how you do things that's difficult to copy, unless people are already have the same skills and the same perspective and the same fight hours and all of those things that are difficult to copy, but it's not about what you say, it's about what you do. And that's kind of how I came into that.
Chris DuBois 3:09
Yeah, there are so many different like, you can have one outcome that you're targeting, but the the way that you actually achieve that outcome can differ based on the format, right? Yeah. And so obviously, there's, like, some people might gravitate towards certain formats based on their skill set, for experiences, everything. How do you kind of figure out what is the best format for me to actually like deliver this outcome?
Joao Landeiro 3:37
You hinted at one of the elements, which is there must be a fit with the way you function, like some people are. For instance, my thing is workshops, right? And some people are not really good at that sort of emergence or kind of meeting, right? They want to have things really on very specific rails. So for them, it wouldn't fit, right? So that's one thing. The other thing is, which specific kind of IP we're talking about. So to me, it feels that IP is usually about a way of seeing things, or a way of doing things. There's variations, but that's mostly how I see it. And then there's the objective you have for that IP, right? So let's say, let's say that you have a way of of helping agents, agencies, and you, you, you have this, this whole model of how you could be of use. But right now for your business, you're trying to find a way to, you know, get into a new sector, vertical, whatever, new group of people. So for that specific business objective, maybe the format you use is the different. Is a different form of format than a format that you use for existing clients that already trust you. The underlying IP, the underlying world model, is the same, but they change the format based on on those things.
Chris DuBois 4:58
So. Yeah, that makes sense, because even so, I ran a workshop, actually last year as like a hey, let's plan out 2026 let's get you everything you need so you can have a good 2026 and we brought it, I think we were like five agencies. And this is not normally how I work with agencies, but every agency in that workshop ended up becoming a client. And I think it was because of how, like, getting the initial sales was a lot harder than selling them from there into my coaching program. And I think it was because of, just like how we were delivering men, they got to see me in action, like working with them in their brands, talking about specific things. And it was just super obvious that, like the format here really did help with, like, the sales process. And now, in retrospect, I'm wondering why I haven't done that more. Are you seeing the same thing?
Joao Landeiro 5:52
Yes, yes, it's a high bandwidth thing, right? So especially for this sort of expertise that we're talking about, which is, is not just specialized. You're specialized not on a skill or on a tool. You're specializing about integrating different things, right? And this is a difficult thing to convey and to express, and this is why, when you know people ask you at the barbecue, maybe not you because you've been doing this for longer, but this is a common trope, like your clients kind of get what you do, but your family doesn't get what. Doesn't get what you do, right? A lot of people know this or feel this, and one of the advantage of working side by side, like in a workshop, is that people see you thinking in real time, right? They see like you're thinking on your feet. And those things they they are very difficult to fake. Like experts do that experts will arrive at the situation, see like a whole cloud of issues, and they'll say, what matters is this one, right? And you see that with a plumber or any, any expert that comes to your house to fix something, that's one, one signal of expertise. So, yeah, I think, I think in that sense, makes a lot a lot of sense, that when people saw you doing things with them, they were like, Yeah, I'm confident that Chris knows the second part of this.
Chris DuBois 7:15
So, yeah, so I guess, how do you go about determining now, like this is, this is the best mode for handling, because, like, workshops is one format right to be able to tackle, I guess, what were some of the other formats for how we could be delivering?
Joao Landeiro 7:35
I tend to look at workshops in terms of a range in which sometimes the word workshop means, like a longer thing, maybe a half day or multiple day thing, but then you have, like, work sessions, but the primitives, the ingredients are the same. So I usually, I usually talk about this in terms of shoulder to shoulder work, instead of face to face work, which is you and the client. You are peers, which is great for the whole framing as peers like you are with them solving the issue. So I wouldn't say that the formats that I specialize in are so different, but you have ranges of of involvement, of depth. So to say,
Chris DuBois 8:16
Yeah, and I guess even like, like, I'll do one off, just one on one coaching, and which would be more of like a work session, like a workshop kind of session, like, because I am getting the client involved in whatever we're doing. I'm not just giving them the answers to the test Exactly. And so, yeah, that's interesting, though. Like even just rethinking about how you framing a workshop in, like, just a smaller piece, in a one on one environment like that. Yeah, so I guess I did want to talk to you about just best practices for workshops, but why copying some of those best practices might actually be risky.
Joao Landeiro 8:57
Got it. So I will say that as someone that tends to try to come up with things from first principles, don't try to come up with things from first principles. It's good, I think, to copy the first layer of things. But what you're copying, and we kind of touched on this previously, what you're copying, is like your perception of how they do things, right? So you're copying a photocopy of the map, not the territory, right? And a good example of this is the advice about niching. Like niching is not just pick something and go really small. There's a whole lot set of things that you need to consider, right? But if you just pare it out, like, oh, niche down. Niche now, niche that, but you don't think about like, how you make those decisions, you're copying the best practice, which is, yes, niche down, but you're not understanding how to actually do it, right? So the same thing applies to workshops like one example. Sometimes this is. Very common thing for people that start that are starting out with workshops, which is they want to use all the interesting activities and the exercises, all the nice, funny post its and games. It's very common. And so what happens is that they try to use all the tools, all the activities of they know, and then the workshop becomes disjointed because it's not flowing, because in between each step of the way you're changing what you're asking of the audience, right of the participants. So that's that's an example of you're copying someone that is really proficient at workshops, and you see them do like, almost crowd work, you know, like, Oh yeah, yeah, I need to wear, like, a funny shirt. And that's not it, but you're just seeing what's on the surface. So when you copy best practices, at some point you should start there, but at some point you could enter,
Joao Landeiro 11:01
as they say in Brazil, you enter the woods without the dog, so you, you're
Chris DuBois 11:07
just gonna get lost. I don't know. We'll figure out the translation for that
Joao Landeiro 11:11
one. The woods here they have like, jaguars and stuff like that. So you want to have a dog?
Chris DuBois 11:16
Yeah? Yeah, we're fortunate enough to not have those. But so yeah, there's a, there's a decision making model called the kin of an model. Gaelic, yeah. But what I like about that model is, like it, it literally tells you you cannot just copy best practices, unless you're in an environment where there are minimal variables. Like, as soon as you start adding variables, it's impossible to have a best practice. You can just have, like, a better practice, yeah, because you can't take into account everything else that's going on, and say this is definitely going to work for every single situation. And yeah, I think a lot of people get lost in that and then. But to your credit, that like the niching down example, I was actually thinking about this the other day, where it's like, what is the punk? Is the point. Because everyone does give the advice, oh, you got to niche down. But it's like, what's the actual point to niching down? It's like, to carve out a place in the mind of the buyer, right? So it's, it really has nothing to do with how small can we get here? It's like, I could find a very large niche if I'm the first person to find it. And stuff. Like, you get the bonuses that now we, you know, we get more efficient at everything because we're seeing the same patterns and doing this, but like, really, we're just trying to carve out that place in the mind of the buyer. And so that would be, like, the best practices would actually lead to that, not just, how do we keep removing things from what we're trying to do? Yes, yes,
Joao Landeiro 12:33
yeah. Niching down is about the reducing the the area of consideration, not the market, right?
Chris DuBois 12:39
Exactly. And I think that's where, yeah, a lot of people get mixed up in that. So it's perfect example for why Best Practices probably shouldn't be followed.
Joao Landeiro 12:47
That framework is really good, and I think it's, for me, it was a huge unlock.
Chris DuBois 12:54
Keneven cone, it's Irish or Gaelic, so it's really hard to get it
Joao Landeiro 13:01
on purpose. But, I mean, it really is like a meta method. So once you know that, you start thinking, Oh, where am I? What kind of it's I love to nerd out on that stuff.
Chris DuBois 13:13
I've got his book, like, somewhere on the shelf. Oh, I see it right now. Yeah, I'll pull that up there. But the Yeah, that model was just very eye opening for for seeing how you can approach problems and how, depending on the type of problem, how you should actually approach it differently, exactly. Strongly recommend everyone check that out. But I guess, okay, so let's moving from best practices here. It's like you're going to kind of find your own practices as you're going through this, how do you start choosing what do I need to codify like within my method, my system, in order to make sure that you are kind of getting the repetitions in and doing the same things and not just starting with a blank slate every client? Yeah.
Joao Landeiro 13:56
So couple of things. The first one is that you need to treat the like your explanation of what you do, like your model. It's a product. So you iterate on it. It's never you think about it in versions like it's not it's never done. But at the same time, you need to release it right, like a product. You need to work on it and show it to the world. And work on it and show it to the world, which is difficult, is difficult, I think especially because a lot of this, how do I work? Sort of questions. They are almost existential, in a way, right? So it can be difficult for people to really hone in on how they work. And one of the things that has helped me the most on that was just write, writing and publishing things, because then you have a forcing function to say, You know what, I'm good. This is what I know about it right now. So that's, that's the first thing. But I would say to focus on what people find most fascinating about what you do, like when you when you were working with someone, and you. See like their eyes go wide, and that tells you that you're doing something that they were not expecting, but they're probably valuing. And if I were to begin codifying a method, I would start there, because, again, one of the advantages of codifying a method is because it gives you a differentiation asset, right? It's something that you can talk and you can show people that tells others that you do things in a different way, right? So it makes sense that you start doing that with the parts of your work that already get people excited, right? So that's where I would start. But generally speaking, I look at it like you need to have three models. It's a basic checklist of three models you need to have a model, in my view, of how the world functions, or at least your world in your subject matter expertise thing, a model of how people are operating, usually. And this is usually where you find like common the best practices, but also like common mistakes and blind spots, and it helps you diagnose when you're working with a client. You need to have a model of how they approach these things, right. And then finally, you need a model for how to bridge this sort of stuff, right. And these models, they can they're a little bit like a fractal. You could go crazy and just zoom in, zoom in, zoom in, zoom in. I don't think that's useful. I think, and it's is a kind of fool's errand. Just try to do that. It is intoxicating, if you like that kind of stuff, because it's exciting to feel that you're discovering new layers of abstraction. But it is can really spend a lot of time on it and have not much to show for it. So just to recap this this bit, first thing, focus on what people are already reacting to in the way you deliver your work, and then have a model for how your domain works, how people operate in it, and how to take them to the next level, next step. Do
Chris DuBois 16:57
you have a Do you have an example of those three that we could go into.
Joao Landeiro 17:04
Yeah, okay, so imagine that you are, I'll try to use an example that everyone can relate to. Imagine that you are an accountant, right? And you help people not go to jail. And you you know how the IRS functions, right? You know what they expect. You know the all the mechanics of it, right? You also know, because your experience, that most people, they get some things right, but they usually mess up in a specific aspect, right? Oh, people always forget to file the whatever form, right? And you know that the way to get people to file that form is to warn them ahead of time, to tell them what kind of information they'll need to put in. And maybe that a question. 30 7b You might feel that that is about your boat. It's not really about your boat, it's about your daily driver car. And so you have these three models, and if you're like an accountant, and and you have no idea of this stuff because you just started. You have never codified what you do. But you notice that when you're serving your clients, and you make this offhand remark, oh yeah, about the boat and the thing you need to file the specific form, if your boat is larger than whatever so many feet, and your clients are like, Oh, this tells me that this guy really knows this stuff, right? So that's your hint for there's something in here about my method, or my way of doing things that gets people people's attention. Is this a good example? I try to
Chris DuBois 18:35
No, I think that makes sense the so I guess one of my questions, and going further from this when you're creating, like, your model, right? So, like, it's something and it's gonna change your words on this one, but, like, the model is the product, but I'm quoting you on that now, if you're okay with it, so, but when you create this model, a lot of times, people will borrow from other places. They'll just have ideas and put it in and, like, I'm comfortable saying I borrowed this idea from this person, and I'm using it because it is the best thing that I found for this situation. When you're doing things, how do you kind of create your like, if the model is the product, how do you sell the product when including other people's ideas within what you're doing?
Joao Landeiro 19:21
That's a very good question. Okay, so I think it depends a little bit on your audience. For instance, for some audiences, if you refer the origin ingredients, they will respect you more and trust you more, like, Oh, this guy's not claiming something that they didn't invent, right? And some other audiences, they don't care about that, and I think there's less that you can do about that. And I used to, I used to wonder, like, Yeah, but if the thing that I do needs all these parts from all these other people may this is just my opinion, and I felt like it's. Not a great way of framing it. And then I was talking to someone that helps people publish books, and they were like, there's a difference between a perspective and an opinion, right? So it's not your opinion, it's your perspective, as in, is not random. There were many tools, frameworks, ideas, concepts from other authors that you were exposed to, but you decided not to use right? So when you make your cocktail of foundational theories that support your own theory, in that choice, there's an element of of how you think and how you you think about your work, right? So you can talk about it and but I do think that for some audiences, like when you reference genevieven or cunning, I never know to pronounce it. We need the counter. They will say yes, because they'll recognize Yeah, Chris is. Chris knows this stuff. And for others, like, yeah, sure, whatever. How do I do this thing? And so I think at the end, it really you don't control how people interact with their concepts, right? You can only it's like a garden gardening thing. You create conditions, but maybe people will interact with it in a different
Chris DuBois 21:09
way. Yeah. So I'm wondering if it's better to layer your perspective on top of whatever model and find like what pieces of the model don't I necessarily agree with, so that I can kind of create my own version of this, or is that too close to, like, just stealing IP? Honestly,
Joao Landeiro 21:26
I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea because, okay, let's use an example. Do you know Garfield, the comic strip? Yeah, I don't know if you love Garfield. If you love Garfield, this will feel awkward, but Garfield is not a great comic strip, right? Helping and Hobbes, there's, there's other comic strips that are really good, but Garfield is the most successful, financially successful comic strip ever, right? Because it was made to be that way. Garfield doesn't have holiday strips, a cat, the creator research to see that. You know, cats are pretty much vanilla in every culture. Dogs are not like that. In some cultures, dogs are not as well seen. So Garfield was created in a lab to be maximum vanilla and acceptance, right? But people that you know care about comic strips, they don't really tend to find because there's nothing so interesting about it. He's a cat that likes lasagna. So, yeah, that's it, right? So we might need to edit something here, because I got lost in my own argument. What was your question
Chris DuBois 22:40
around stealing IP.
Joao Landeiro 22:41
Oh, stealing IP. Yeah, okay. But so Garfield is super vanilla, and that's why a lot of people like Garfield and Garfield made a lot of money, right? So there's this idea that I think is really useful, which is most advanced, yet acceptable. The Maya principle is an old thing, like you show people something that they know and understand, and then you stretch their understanding a little bit, right? So you see these when someone is creating, like a new startup, and they'll say, oh, is the Uber for whatever? Because they give you something that you know, an anchor. And then the next thing, right, right? When you piggyback on existing IP you are kind of doing that. You are already taking advantage of something that you know people probably recognize. And I think there's clean ways and dirty ways of doing that, but I think that's better than just trying to become super esoteric, esoteric and losing the crowd.
Chris DuBois 23:38
Yeah, yeah. There's definitely, I think intention is required. Mine, whatever you're doing. Yeah, I'll continuously cite all these people that I reference within my own work, within my workbook, everything. And like, I'll literally be coaching clients and say, Hey, I just learned this from this guy. Here's what we need to do. But I'm okay knowing that, like I've got learnings and earnings that I get to share and and so here you go. But yeah, so that was top of mind. Anyways, let's get into we talked to signals a couple times and brought up signals of expertise. What are some of those, those ways you can signal expertise that will actually help with conversions and stuff.
Joao Landeiro 24:24
This thing you just did when you've mentioned that you you are okay with expressing that you're just learning some things and learning in real time, that is a mark of expertise, right? Real experts are truth seeking, and if you are truth seeking, you don't, don't really mind sharing that. So 111, mark of expertise, I think, is adaptation. You you can. This is like the same thing when, when people are entering a new field, and they read the books and they see the frameworks and they get the. Like this super ossified ideas of how things are supposed to be done. And then you get, like, these super clever junior people that they know all the tools, but they cannot adapt to the reality that, yes, people don't answer in the time that you think that they will answer right? So a mark of expertise is adaptation, and within the point of adaptation is the identify, identifying what matters in a in a large and complex scenario. Quickly, there's a science to the to this. They call it naturalistic decision making. And when you go and interview people like firemen, and when you go and interview firemen that are very experienced, and they were like, how did you know that you could enter that blazing inferno and the floor would not give and you could get in and out in enough time? Sometimes they don't know exactly how to express it, but they were paying attention to all sorts of cues. It was not random. So experts have this thing that they filter out a lot of things, and they see what what matters and and make a decision based on that thing. So they make decisions faster, and sometimes so fast that they don't realize they've made a decision, right? So that's another mark, selecting what matters. And third one is second order effects, right? And this can be frustrating, like, if you're an expert and you know that the way people are doing that thing will fail because there's something else that they're not considering. It can be frustrating that you need to hold yourself back at times depends, because for that, for them to trust you, they'll need to hit that wall, right? But that's something that experts can Can, can do. They do. They can describe what will happen, right? I can give an example in some of my workshops. One of the one thing I like to do is, at the end, include a bingo, a bingo card of what will happen as people try to implement the decisions of the workshop, right? And it's funny, because it's a game, but it's, I'm really trying to convey, like I'm seeing into the future, but I'm seeing it in a random way, because it's not a sequence, it's a bingo card, right? I'm not tied to sequence. And that really, really conveys the idea that, Oh yeah, this guy has seen this stuff many times before. And I think every expert in every field can do things like this, but you can convey it just tell people what will happen if they take specific courses of action, or what's likely to happen
Chris DuBois 27:40
like that idea. That's a it also gives like, more your bingo card. Idea gives some credibility to like, your follow up, yeah, like, when you show up and say, like, so how many like, who got bingo? Yeah, it's like, All right, so let's go back. Let's actually, like, restart this space and start talking about these things. But you can literally say I told you so, without actually saying I told you so. So, yeah, I think as far as an expert signal, the the other piece the naturalistic decision making, there was an acronym. I was listening to a podcast. I'm not going to nail all this. I want to say what's called. It was fire was the acronym, but it was any decision that is fast, something that starts with, I that means not important. Was it repetitive and then evolutionarily based? Then we can make those quick decisions. And it was just interesting seeing, like, how that shifts depending on, like, a lot of people go with their gut on things when it's like, actually, you should not necessarily go with your gut. Let's actually run this through a model. See this out. But there are times when super fast decisions are necessary, and those are some of the things where it's like, you could just go with this trigger. Yeah? We could probably do a whole podcast on just like, how people make decisions. It's
Joao Landeiro 28:57
fascinating, yeah,
Chris DuBois 29:01
but we are talking agencies, and while important to them, I want to hit you with with one more question around the topic, and it's just, how can agencies kind of stay premium in this AI era? Because they're looking at their the formats that they're using and content as they're, you know, considering different ways to achieve their targets. How do they stay ahead of AI?
Joao Landeiro 29:24
I think there's two things that come to mind. And I mean, obviously it's just my it's not my opinion, it's my perspective, but there's two things I've noticed. First, people telling me stuff, like, I want our company to be an object of desire, like not really just a rational decision, but something else, like a luxury good that people just want to have. I've had people tell me about this pretty much in these words. And the other one is the idea that a lot of the. Selling point of AI is removing friction, right? You don't need to wait. You just ask it. It tells you stuff. It tells you stuff in the way you want. It to tell you stuff. So AI takes away a lot of friction, but friction builds conviction, right? If you get quick answers for everything, and if you know that AI gets things wrong all the time it does happen that don't really trust that thing, or you trust it enough. Just while things are going well, when you need to make, like, a difficult decision, like, I'm going to fire this person because chat GPT told me so, but this person has been important for the company and so on and so forth, then it gets hard and like, do you really trust that some people do, but others don't, and I think conviction comes from the friction, and conviction is a deliverable. So if you're doing strategic stuff and really like integrating different aspects of someone's business, like heavy decisions are riding on that the way you arrive at those decisions influences how certain you are that they are good decisions, right? So it really matters that you arrive at those decisions in the way that people will be able to follow through on them. Otherwise, there's no point. It was an interesting thought exercise, but if they're not acting on it. There's no point. And I think AI cannot provide that conviction, because it's too smooth, smooth and there's, there's no incentive for AI models not to be smooth, right? They'll keep on increasing the smoothness, right? So I think that's that's a place where agents, agencies, can grab something that is not going away anytime soon, in my view.
Chris DuBois 31:53
Yeah, I like that take. All right, we got two questions as we we wind down here. The first one being, what book do you recommend every agency owner should read
Joao Landeiro 32:03
actually, I have it here. It's a sprint. A lot of people have read it. It's not a new book. What I like about about the book is there's a method that it describes. It's really about multi day workshop. But it's also interesting, if you read the book from the perspective of, oh, here are some guys that have a method, and now they made this method famous, right? Because sprint got famous. And to try to reverse engineer how people talk about their methods and their own formats in a way that those things become famous, right? And if you go through the book and see the examples like they teach people how to do you how to do it. The kind of problem that the method solves is a problem that has a large stem, you know, the way they do the work brings in people from different companies. So if you're looking at the meta of getting your method to be famous is a really interesting book as well, so I recommend
Chris DuBois 33:04
it. I don't know that I've read it yet.
Joao Landeiro 33:08
Jake Knapp and sprint, all right.
Chris DuBois 33:11
Last question is, where can people find you?
Joao Landeiro 33:16
They can find me on substack. Is Joelle lender dot, substack just read the show notes. You're not gonna get it from me saying it and and my company is misozoic, like the dinosaurs.co and then you'll find links for everything else. I usually post on LinkedIn, usually complaining about the algorithm, but sometimes workshop stuff and productizing,
Chris DuBois 33:41
and I have to give your substack a shout out now, because this was for some reason. So I've known Joao for over a year now. Probably did not know yet a substack until I found it within the best couple days, and was after we've already scheduled for this episode, everything. And it was just like diving in there and seeing the model, seeing everything. It's very, very much worth anyone listening to this to go check out a substack. Thank you, but all right, man, well, that's a wrap. Thanks for joining. Thank
Joao Landeiro 34:10
you. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Chris DuBois 34:16
That's the show everyone. You can leave a rating and review, or you can do something that benefits. You click the link in the show notes to subscribe to agency forward on substack, you'll get weekly content resources and links from around the internet to help you drive your agency forward. You.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai