Nick Bayne on Why Consensus Marketing Kills Differentiation

Jordan Lally:0:01
Welcome back to the High Ticket AI Systems Podcast. Everyone, please welcome the winner only, Mr. Nick Bay. Nick, welcome to the show, my friend.

Nick Bayne:0:09
Thanks for having me. I don't know about one and only, but it's good to be this one at least.

Jordan Lally:0:14
Absolutely, absolutely. for those of us that are not familiar with the name or the company name quite just yet, could you give us a high level overview of exactly what you guys sell or who you guys best serve?

Nick Bayne:0:28
Yeah, happy to. my name Nick Bain. I am I I would say I'm a creative by force of nature. sort of like, you know, as we were discussing before we came on, like my ADD is a very defining characteristic of of who I am. So I found my way to advertising and it absolutely spoke to me and and everything that my attention specifically was, I think, preternaturally sort of focused on, right? Like getting people's attention, getting them a good idea, an exciting thing quickly. that that sort of tended to come very much easily to me. spent about 20 years in agencies and on the inside of marketing departments. and then recently found myself in a place where I could understand what I felt was a very clear delineation between what people were doing simply by force of habit and in the worst sense of that. And what I saw was a was a really, really sort of vivid possibility that coincided with everything that was possible with AI. And so the Nuance Collective is the the name of the company I founded. I have two partners now and a roster of great clients and even better folks who work with us. I think what we do differently is we are very, very attuned to not only sort of like what will make a splash, but what works and why it works precisely because of the tools and the sort of AI empowerment and amplification that that we employ. specifically that goes into strategy a lot of the time. So what we're able to do with these tools that

Nick Bayne:2:51
I built and this is an English major talking. This is not a coder, but what I managed to do was put together some tools about a year and a half ago and then consistently sort of like update them and update them at the breakneck speed that AI is working. And what those are able to do is is go out and find really fantastic.

Aspects and insights about brands and about culture that eliminate all of that very, very complicating subjectivity that marketing is normally filled with, right? So whether it is a an insight that's not quite an insight because it's in fact what the CMO of the brand really would like to be talking about, whether it is a full-blown marketing sort of like Positioning that's based on consensus honestly is is one of the biggest problems is so much of corporate culture is based on everybody getting along and everybody having a say, but obviously the thing that everybody agrees on in a meeting is rarely something that everybody wants to buy. So all of these things all sort of like come together. to form what it is that we do, I believe, very well.

Jordan Lally:4:22
With your thank you for all the context, by the way. When you look at your client roster, can you name out a few verticals and industries that you are actively helping?

Nick Bayne:4:33
Yeah, I I I think where where marketing is simultaneously the most lost and the most clear is in a very simple relationship with a consumer, the the the very the very brass tacks what will you do for me kind of world and that's consumer package goods or CPG.

We have a bunch of clients in CPG land, which puts them on the aisles of Amazon, the aisles of real actual you know, brick and mortar stores. And that is for us still where the magic happens because it has to be truly about what this brand means to the consumer, what separates it from all the other pretty colors all around it on that shelf. and you know it it is now this hilarious fad that these bright colors are everywhere. So quite literally it is an incredibly sort of like, you know, rainbow shelf that everybody's on. but the reason why that's very much it it itself is not a vertical, it is a you know, an entire marketplace, but I would say within the health CPG sort of like the you know products for body or supplements or anything that has a sort of like more longer term effect I would say sort of like meaning like it's not simply how something tastes and then it goes away. It's like you know you have a relationship with it sounds silly to say but With the lotion you put on your face, right? Like, you know, if you put a lotion on every morning and night, that's a that that's a part of your routine. And that routine is no different than any other brand with which you interact. There's like a level of trust, right? There's a level of like, you know, I I've been using it for X amount of time and therefore I stand by it. Or I've been losing it just using it because I haven't found something better. Or

Nick Bayne:6:53
you know, any number of things. And so what we have found is that that can be both the best case scenario and worst case scenario for brands because you have what are called legacy brands where they have that name recognition that puts them right at the top of everybody's sort of mental list, right? That mental availability as it's been studied is A huge part of why you buy what you buy, right? Like, you know, you know Lucky Charms before you ever, ever think of the s like slogan or the song or anything. Whether or not you've bought Lucky Charms in the last 20 years, you know it, right? So many brands that are in that routine space, like in the health CPG, have a Tylenol like name recognition. And so what we tend to do is, although we'd love to have Tylenol as a client, what we tend to work with are that sort of mid-level CPG brand that is either a just sort of of that certain growth level, so to speak, or they're an up and coming and they are launching and they're trying to steal share from another one. And those are really the most, I mean, I love what I do. It's very much about the challenge because those are the biggest challenges, right? Is what is it that's gonna make you put this lotion down and say, I'm gonna try this one? Or whatever that sort of choice may be, we've got to get in there, get in your head and really make you understand why it's gonna be a a good choice for you. Creators are everywhere. They are all of what anybody is talking about in terms of how you get that convincing done. But where we come from, that's part of the plan. That should be part of the plan. But you don't pay, you shouldn't pay me to sort of tell you to go use creators, right? As much as

Nick Bayne:9:15
That'd be a nice way to make a living. I think that's where we come across is what are you gonna have somebody say that's gonna really make a difference? Because if you're not simply trading off of the cachet of who's saying it, you need to be saying something that's really worthwhile. and that's where our magic really happens, you know.

Jordan Lally:9:38
No, I I'm I have a million and one questions, my friend. Okay, so would you say maybe maybe this will be a better question? Ignore what I was just gonna say.

Would you consider yourself full service with like helping brands with packaging, colors, logos, and then okay, cool, once that's dialed in? Messaging to the correct audience and like how it actually creates a visceral feeling for me and my emotion in this example. And then to take it one step further, if we are selling on Amazon, would you help them optimize their Amazon listing, or do you primarily focus on the the creative front and like the the full service but specifically for the creative side of it. Don't know if that question made any sense, but I think you may

Nick Bayne:10:28
No, it it absolutely did. I I would say where we would stop ourselves is on being billing ourselves as as subject matter experts when it comes to the inner workings of Amazon. and I'd say sort of on the on the other side, truly developing packaging, which is very much a an industry in itself.

Jordan Lally:10:31
Okay.

Jordan Lally:10:45
Okay.

Nick Bayne:10:58
We are the idea of the brand. And that has a full sort of spectrum of of needs. And as our sort of our approach is that we will give you what you need to succeed. If that is bringing in the right packaging company, if that is working with designers to get your style. that much different so that you stick out in the right way at the right time. where I think we would always want to steer you is in a more conceptual sense, what is going to separate you from the other brands. And in fact, where our competitors and in fact like the majority of the brands that we see and I mean the royal we, like that all of us see, are so staggeringly alike, precisely because that's what they're trying to be. It is so counterintuitive in theory, but in practice, the best advice that is given to it's the worst advice, but the most frequent advice that small brands are given is to do what the other bigger brands are doing. And the bigger brands are saying, being told, You know what? You really need to look like one of those cool smaller brands. And what you end up with is this mush of bright colors and funny things. And all of a sudden you're losing any sort of like tangible differentiation that the brand could have. and that's really where, as far as like the labels of full service, et cetera, I would say we are not an influencer company. We are Those who would say, these are the right people, and absolutely we will guide you towards those packaging. We would guide you towards those people. Amazon optimization, that is a a hieroglyphics reading type operation that we don't want a part of. But we have a fluency in all forms of when and how things are being bought. So that means it is our job to know.

Jordan Lally:13:11
For sure.

Nick Bayne:13:22
all of the ins and outs of media choices, but not be a media agency. I'm not gonna buy your media, but I'll sure as hell tell ya that's probably not the best move. That's a better move to accomplish what it is that you want to accomplish.

Jordan Lally:13:39
Absolutely. So for my opinion, from my understanding, specialized knowledge in the creative aspects on how consumers actually purchase products and services. But no offense, please don't take any. But like generalists in the other areas. But you have to be. You have to be. Like if you don't know anything else about business or marketing, but you only know how consumers purchase products, like you're zucked. Like you're not gonna pr be the best provider or the best company, you're you're lacking the F

Nick Bayne:14:06
Yeah.

Jordan Lally:14:09
You're s lacking the know how in these other areas to actually guide a business owner to make a a a strong decision. You see what I mean? Yeah.

Nick Bayne:14:12
Surely.

Nick Bayne:14:16
Yeah. Yeah. And I would say actually what was most important to learn really on the inside of these big corporations was how the business part of those businesses is working. Because a lot of times as an agency partner, you have this sort of safe distance, creatives especially, wherein you are sort of kept one step removed from some of the nitty-gritty about, you know, the supply chain and distribution and all of that stuff. Whereas when you work on the inside in corporate America, you're for better or for worse, you're really close to all of the problems that can come up. And so you're much more privy to what it is that's going on behind the scenes in order

Jordan Lally:15:04
Mm.

Nick Bayne:15:14
To then subsequently provide a better solution. And that that is absolutely where the generalist specific makes a huge difference is being able to understand, yeah, that budget is not being given to this one thing right now, but it's not because they don't like the idea. It's because you have to figure out that they need to allocate that budget for this specific piece right now, before the end of Q3, because if they don't.

That changes Q4, which will change Q, like all of these things that go into it. Even if we are as we are creative first, we have to understand that. We would be doing our clients a disservice to come and say, strategically, we think X when we have no idea all of the Y that is part of their mind.

Jordan Lally:16:06
No, for sure, for sure. And that's what I was trying to articulate, but you didn't you you crushed at the park. So thank you. I'm actually a bit curious to know, outside looking in, what would be the process whenever you onboard a new client to helping them dialing in their their messaging, ensuring that the brand is on point and also separating themselves from the competition to make them actually stand out. Is there a a playbook that you live by or a process that you have, or is it truly purely creative where it's like it's different every single time.

Nick Bayne:16:38
I w it is different every single time, but I think it is it is a form of the same type of structure within each piece. So how we would come to you if it's you know the Jordan brand, well let's be honest, you'd be sued out the wazoo. Well we'll just call you the JL brand.

So if we come to the JL brand, what we would first do is use some of our tools. So, like one of the the nuances, the company, one of the tools we we built is called the new factor. And what that does is it goes and basically finds all of the factors basically that go into what it is that you have as a brand. Looks at your competition.

Jordan Lally:17:07
Yeah.

Nick Bayne:17:35
looks at how long you've been in the market, how long the competition's been in the market, how the fluctuation of sales in that category have been. And that gives us a real sense not only of the landscape, but then specifically about your brand, it's gonna look at everything that you've put out from advertising. Right. So every time you have an ad out there or anything, it will look at it and look at basically Without my sort of like putting a thumb on the scale, it will tell me here's all of the things that JL Brand has done and where they are. And sort of connecting those pieces would be step one. Looking at that and saying, What is not always a very welcome opinion? But if you're doing a great job and everything's going great, you probably don't need to be looking for me.

If you aren't, that's really where the rub happens, right? Is like it it frequently is that kind of awkwardness of a client is like, we know we need something, but I sort of would prefer it if you told me that it is what I think it is, as opposed to what it may be. And so what we find really valuable is the fact that our tools are very objective. I mean, that is What I love most about AI is it takes the very imperfect humans out of the equation. So you don't have somebody going like, well, my opinion is this. You actually have like, nope. See those numbers? Those are real. That's how many people actually are searching for what you sell. and then from there, though, it really does depend on what it is that you need and what

Jordan Lally:19:23
Right.

Nick Bayne:19:33
We started out as from a business, in my mind, was planning on being much more faster engagement type relationships where we would come in, sort of diagnose something, give you some advice, and then be like, have a great afternoon. And we could do a zillion of those and we'd all retire early. What has actually happened is we've spent a lot of time. sort of with initial engagements which have then built into okay, so now can you help us with X? Can you help us build what we need to build? which in a way is fantastic, obviously. I think we had in my mind, not to get too specific in my mind though, it was sort of like 30% longer term retainer in my model and 70% Higher volume shorter term engagements. And that basically was the inverse of our first year was 70% longer term engagements with sort of more sustained partnership and a lot less shorter ones. but all of it really should fit the consumer, right? It's like the client should determine what it is that they need. more than what it is that of course I would like to do. If if that makes sense.

Jordan Lally:21:09
No, it it does, but at the same time, on the last note that you said, if they knew what to do and they tried that thing and it didn't work, and that's why they're talking to you, right? Like if they knew what to do, then they might just do it, you know. I love how circling back to AI, because huge topic right now, it's almost as if it's it's a third party trusted source, this AI tool that you build, right? It's like I'm not saying anything.

Nick Bayne:21:21
Exactly. Yeah.

Jordan Lally:21:37
This this third party is saying it. And I feel like that also works very well with storytelling. Because if I was gonna, in this example, coach you directly, Nick, and say, Hey, I think you should do XYZ with your business, in this example, you're like, Hey Jordan, you're a cool guy, but like, fuck off, right? But if I were to tell a story about how I help another person similar to you, they did XYZ, and you're like, damn, that makes a lot of sense. That resonates with me. It's the exact same thing with the AI tool, right? It's third party and like

Nick Bayne:21:39
Yeah.

Jordan Lally:22:06
slips their critical faculty of our mind and it's like vi like we feel it viscerally. Cool. On the topic of AI, would love to explore without going into too much detail, right? They're definitely proprietary. But the tools that you have built and have helped clients implement, you know, with growing their business if you don't, yeah, if you don't.

Nick Bayne:22:25
So I sort of went through the new factor that that is a great way. And that basically was that started from from my trying to figure out really more through a research form of what is separating the brands that I know are succeeding because of their distinctiveness. That not simply the ones like you know, the liquid deaths of the world that are like, my God, they are doing everything right. But but the other ones that are sort of it's somewhere in the middle that have that like, you know, whether it's like a Trisket that is a very unique type of cracker. And you're like, God, what is a Trisket? How did they come up with that? That is so interesting. And yet their sales are like consistent for certain reasons, right? Anyway.

As I was building that, that turned into the new factor because I realized that I could build sort of I could reverse engineer the all of the the sort of environmental factors that needed to be present in order for this to be true. That became what that was. As sort of like that agentic shopping and all of that pieces built, And it's funny because it sounds like I'm like way back when I was a kid, it's like, you know, 11 months ago. We were looking at LLM shopping in the in the sort of the earlier way that it was being explored, and in fact, figured out a way to create what we then trademarked, which is our LLM mirror tool. And what that does is it basically creates a separate

Jordan Lally:23:55
Exactly.

Nick Bayne:24:18
API, which is like you know, a fresh, untainted LLM, and then starts asking questions about the brand and how to buy it and why, and then it gets all of these answers back. And the answers are fascinating. they are not always what you expect. Sometimes they are very much what you expect, but they are a perfect. perfect way to find out what the world thinks about your brand when you're not in the room. Right. The the famous way would say it would be like your brand is what somebody says about you when you're not in the room. That is in fact exactly what that is. So it will look on all of the reviews anywhere that it can crawl and it'll come back with this sort of really interesting thing. That gives us insights which As a, you know, a creative and as a strategist are some of the most fascinating things to work from because you end up finding out things that are like, you know, for decades have been taken as assumptions inside of a building where the brand is like, absolutely, we everybody knows us. You know, as a pizza company, we're famous for our pepperoni. Then you find out that.

Nobody knows they have a pepperoni pizza or something, right? That is the kind of amazing shit that comes back. And so where we can use that, sometimes is almost like, I would say almost like unbelievably easy in the sense that sometimes it is like well, we should talk about the fact that we make pepperoni pizza, guys. Nobody knows it. And they're like, whoa, okay.

And we had a client who it was not a pizza company, but it was a similar type situation where they were the market leader in a specific vertical of a healthcare CPG. They were a problem solution brand. And in fact, when we were looking for what it was that would set them apart, they weren't actually getting attributed.

Jordan Lally:26:15
So what

Nick Bayne:26:41
the like assurances that one would expect from a market leader, right? If you were, we are the Tylenol of this, you would suspect you'd get back a lot of this is proven to have this relic, you know, this result, this, et cetera, et cetera. And what we got back was a lot of sort of like ho hum stuff, precisely because, and I'm getting very specific on purpose, because The way that the brand talked was very clinical. And so what is obvious is when you and I, Jordan, look for something, we don't type in like some clinical term, right? We're like, you know, my nose itches, not like I have, you know, some sort of dermatitis of the nose or whatever it is. to be clear, this is not a dermatitis of the nose product. I don't want any clients of ours going like, wait a minute.

Jordan Lally:27:15
Mm.

Jordan Lally:27:28
Yeah.

Jordan Lally:27:34
No, right, right, right.

Nick Bayne:27:41
But that ended up being the solution was why don't we say stuff like itchy nose guys? Because people are looking for itchy nose. And everybody had sort of assumed that that was, yeah, obviously they know us as the itchy nose people. Let's talk more about the dermatitis thing. And that fact that people weren't actually making that connection, especially those who hadn't sort of grown up with the product.

That provided this unbelievably like juicy piece of meat to go after for us as a brand because we could say, guys, here's what we need to do. And then as soon as we sort of put that piece in motion, people started looking in the right way.

Jordan Lally:28:29
Then how much of your work is like market research and data analysis?

Nick Bayne:28:38
I would say it is a hundred percent and zero percent at the same time. Precisely because it is it is all like if you were to ask me how much is market research like 10 years ago, I would have been like that. I'm allergic to that. Like get that out of here. But this is like this is like this operationalizing of it makes it fascinating to me and

Jordan Lally:28:44
Same time. I love it.

Jordan Lally:28:57
That yeah, that I that's not up your alley, knowing how like the brain's wired.

Nick Bayne:29:07
awesomely like you know cause and effect in in an instantaneous way so you know we are always looking at like what is working in social with a media buy right the media company will say this ad is doing really well this campaign is doing well that's a a sort of a necessary evil right but part of that is because We are as a industry totally beholden to those effing platforms. They do whatever they want and they can make or break brands, though they would never admit that they do this. It's very easy for brands to fail because they don't follow their rules, even if they are following the rules of what it is that a consumer might want.

The fact that those two things can be true at the same time is why I do what I do. And it's also terrifying as I do what I do. Because that sort of market research is wonderful because we can take all of the information in the world, but then we keep coming up against that very real brick wall of how those platforms say, you know, by the way.

I don't know if you know this, but if you don't have music, now all of a sudden we're not gonna serve your ad to all of your target audience. And you're like, okay, so do I guess we have to add? I wish it was more intellectually rigorous than that, but sometimes that's how it feels is you know, you're just like, God, okay.

Jordan Lally:30:53
The littlest thing.

Jordan Lally:30:59
No, absolutely. The platforms are very tedious with their their advertising channels and platforms. But a pricing question without getting into into specifics, earlier you brought up when you initially launched the company, your idea of clientele was some short term, thirty percent short term or thirty percent longer term, seventy percent shorter term, it actually was inverted. Was there a pricing difference?

Nick Bayne:31:15
Yeah.

Jordan Lally:31:28
Between if you knew you were gonna stay engaged with this client for twelve months in the example, was the price lower, was the retainer lower per month because you knew you were gonna just collect more over a lifetime, or and was it the was the shorter term price that

Nick Bayne:31:46
That's a great question. I I didn't go into it thinking that I was trying to extract the same like lifetime value of each client in the same way. What I did do though was the reason I looked at you know, I sort of made it seem earlier like it was just because I had a short attention span and I could be like, here, you're done, and now I'm gonna take the afternoon off. But what I tried to do was productize. the shorter term engagements in such a way that it felt and was very helpful very quickly. And by doing that, I could then solicit a cost for that that was not in some way like, you know, a big sticker cost in order to compensate for some lull, but in fact to just be representative of the real value that I was bringing with what we were doing. I think what has been such a crisis for marketing in general is figuring out how to value what it is that we do. it is very, I've always felt like it is very easy to do bad marketing. It is very hard to be a bad doctor because you still gotta go to all that medical school, right?

But to be a bad marketer, there's more of them than there are any type of good marketers. And the reason for that is that there are so many aspects of this which are just going through the motions. Why retainers themselves are so falling out of fashion is precisely because a lot of these companies get into relationships which are not giving them value.

But they are shelling out huge amounts of money every month to have them around. They are having them at the end of a phone line. They are making sure that they are the sort of throat to choke, so to speak. But why I sort of priced it the way I did was precisely because I wanted to put as much value into the most comprehensible amount of space, which to me was basically like a product.

Nick Bayne:34:13
Right. If you know your brain as a human, you totally understand that. And that's why it made a lot of sense to me. as we then built our retainer situations, they were almost all initially on project basis, precisely because we were being brought in to to fix something, right? Not to say, hi, can you be our friend? What then happened was we ended up being like, can you fix it and then stay around.

And so in each of these situations, we've been attached to a project outcome or a sort of a situational outcome, if you will, rather than we would like a one year engagement. and in fact, we really only have one of those types of clients. Everybody else is a different level of a longer term retainer, but retainers as known are part of the problem is that the reason we are in such a crisis is because retainers ruined the idea of value for so many people and for such good reasons.

Jordan Lally:35:31
Yeah, I'm a big fan, especially when I'm purchasing products or services, purchasing on value. Like I pay for X and I get Y as the as the outcome. Opposed to I pay you, sure, three K a month in this example, a retainer, and who knows how many hours I'm getting out of you. You know what I mean? Like sure, you can say like we'll give you X amount X number of hours, but it's like you can just make some shit up at the end of the day. You know, you know what I mean?

Nick Bayne:35:57
Yeah. Well, you know, and clients are clients are not like in the dark about what it is that we do, right? A lot of times I think it it's a very much of a cross pollinated like went to agency, then became brand, brand, then went to agency. So it's not like there's like we have no idea what they do in their magic lab. It's like, no, we know what they're doing.

I've been in those meetings. I know what those hours are. You're putting together this sort of scope of hours. And I'm like, what why is that taking so long? And when I was on the brand side, that's all I did, I felt like, was like look at those kinds of situations and be like, I have no idea why it's taking the agency this long to do this. I know exactly what they're doing. This should not take this long.

Jordan Lally:36:38
Right.

Jordan Lally:36:54
Interesting. Yeah, so you have insider perspective, you know?

Nick Bayne:36:57
yeah, I was a terrible client because of the

Jordan Lally:37:00
we'll wrap it up on time, but a few more questions if you don't mind. going forward over the next twelve months, what is one thing you would have hoped to accomplish looking back if if it was a year from today?

Nick Bayne:37:05
Yeah.

Nick Bayne:37:19
I think it's all about the impossibility of consistency, but consistency. I think, you know, what what we will always have to do is continue to evolve. I know that my part of my whole like reason to be is to make sure that our tools are staying top of the line, cutting edge. Everything that we offer cannot be like an also ran thing.

So I know that if I'm doing my job, we have the wherewithal to do it. I have two fantastic partners. And Terry, my COO, is very much in our new business driving mode. And what we are working on together is figuring out how to systematize more of what are sort of top of funnel pieces that are generating fantastic leads.

It's really taking that sort of top of funnel and bottom of funnel and bringing them closer together. I always like to think like, you know, our batting average is is tough. Any any business batting average for a new business is really hard, right? If we could get, God, if we were really batting like a 200, that would be an amazing.

But what I do feel very good about is like we have a great average with runners in scoring position kind of an attitude, right? When we have it it it is very, very simple. Like once you understand the type of value we're bringing, that is where we can very quickly figure out how to get you home. But I think that's gonna be

Jordan Lally:38:56
Thank you.

Nick Bayne:39:14
where we learn and continue to grow is in systematizing that with a consistency.

Jordan Lally:39:21
Do you feel like that that process right there, like you said, we excel with runners in scoring position, but it's just getting them on base is the challenging thing. Do you think getting them on base is more like educating them and kind of teaching them like this is the value that we bring? Or I I

Nick Bayne:39:40
It's no, I I it's a really tough thing because I think so much of what What it is is less about us and more about those. I don't want to do the baseball metaphor too deeply, but I think it's really much more about the batters than it is about us, meaning like they have to be in a position. There are so many companies out there that are in need of what we provide, but they need to be of that opinion too. And so

Jordan Lally:40:15
Mm.

Nick Bayne:40:16
The education is not that we exist, it's that they need what we have. And that has to do with something that is immensely problematic in all of corporate America, which is just the combination of ego and fear are what's behind like I feel like 90% of the decisions that are made in corporate America. And so for a human to be inside one of those buildings in a position of power, raise their hand and say, we need help and I can't figure it out myself and I need to go ask for help, that is exactly what it they are built to basically prohibit people from doing. Right? The CMO, the joke is the CMO comes in, they clean house, they quickly bring in a new agency. But as soon as that new agency starts to falter, it's not the CMO's fault. It's the agency's fault. So I think we're, you know, getting back to your question is really more about finding more people that understand what it is that we offer in the context that they are open to being helped.

Jordan Lally:41:37
That that's the thing. You have to admit that you're not as good as you wish you were.

Nick Bayne:41:45
Yeah, and that's really.

Jordan Lally:41:45
That is so hard to do 'cause like you said, ego i in the the individuals and companies you help have to have a big ego to assume that they make it that far in life and to pay your fees. Like they can't just solfy, you know what I mean? Man.

Nick Bayne:41:56
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You you'll be hard pressed to find like, you know, CEOs and CMOs who are not convinced that they have a lot of the right answers. By that same token, the probably the two people with whom I work the closest are precisely the that opposite. And that's why we work so well with them. Is that they are two.

Jordan Lally:42:11
Right.

Nick Bayne:42:26
Brilliant women who are like, here's what I know, here's what I don't know. Let's work together on that in the middle. And that's how that partnership really works. A lot of the time, I hate to tell you, it's guys suck at trying to get out of their own way because we are so bred to be like, I probably have the right answer. Just give me a second, right?

Jordan Lally:42:48
Right, right. I know what I'm doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. And I I mean you you probably know this just as much as I do, but you can go so much further and farther in life if you admit that you don't know everything and you're always ready to learn, you know? And I don't know.

Nick Bayne:42:53
Yeah.

Nick Bayne:43:04
yeah.

Nick Bayne:43:07
A hundred percent. I think it it is saying I don't know in a boardroom is one of the smartest things you can ever say. And it is probably the three words that you would hear the least in any corporate boardroom is I don't know.

Jordan Lally:43:28
That is so funny. Super quick. I used to date a girl. She went to Stanford. She was getting her PhD. Very corporate life. Like they're prepping her for corporate America. And she said that. She's like, how how can I go in front of my PI, like my professor, right, in my lab, and say, I don't know. Like I'm gonna get shunned for life. I can't say I don't know. I have to make some shit up. So what you're saying is very, very accurate. Like they shun you saying, I don't know.

Nick Bayne:43:47
Yeah. Yeah.

Jordan Lally:43:53
They'd rather you make some shit up on the fly than you to admit you have no idea what's going on, or you don't know the answer. That is very funny.

Nick Bayne:43:59
Yep. Yep. And unfortunately mostly guys don't need that reminder. We go in there usually going like, Well, I have to make some shit up.

Jordan Lally:44:12
Nick, thanks you s thank you so much for joining us. Tons of laughs. where could they find you if they were open to the idea of you helping them go their

Nick Bayne:44:21
you know what? We are very active on LinkedIn. You can look for me, Nick Bain, or my partner, Terry Sites. or our actual website is the nuancecollective.net. I I honestly I would always steer people there because we tell our story pretty definitively there, but I never shut up. on LinkedIn so you can always see what it is that I'm thinking.

Jordan Lally:44:52
Absolutely. Audience, thanks for tuning in. Until next time.