Very excited for Tom to come back to talk about his book!
How does military experience translate to marketing? Find out that, and more, in today’s episode with Tom Harness!
About Tom: Tom Harness is a digital marketing educator, consultant, and entrepreneur based in the Midwest. He serves as an Assistant Lecturer in the College of Business & Analytics at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where he teaches digital marketing, branding, and emerging marketing technologies. Tom is also the owner of Harness Digital Marketing, working with small businesses, nonprofits, and veteran-owned organizations. A U.S. Army Signal Corps veteran, Tom brings a mission-focused, disciplined approach to marketing strategy shaped by wearing multiple hats—student, educator, business owner, and community volunteer for veterans. He is currently writing a book that explores leadership, identity, and resilience through lived experience, drawing from his time in military service, entrepreneurship, education, and community involvement. His work centers on helping people communicate clearly, think strategically, and build with purpose.
Contact/follow Tom:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/itomharness/ https://www.instagram.com/itomharness https://www.tiktok.com/@itomharness
Tom’s plug:
Home
https://www.inwhonorflight.org/
https://petsforvets.com/
The Marketing Gateway is a weekly podcast hosted by Sean in St. Louis (Sean J. Jordan, President of https://www.researchplan.com/) and featuring guests from the St. Louis area and beyond.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Sean Jordan (00:08)
Well, welcome to the Marketing Gateway. I am Sean in St. Louis. And as always, I am so excited to have our guest on today. And this is a guy I got to sit with and be on a panel with last spring at our American Marketing Association St. Louis Conference, where we were on an AI panel talking about AI. And I’m kind of the wet blanket on AI. I’ll be honest. I think it’s cool. I think it’s neat technology. But I have some reservations about it. And Tom is an AI enthusiast, but
You know what you’re going to hear? He is really, really smart and careful about how he uses it. He doesn’t want to delegate his thinking and his understanding and his knowledge and curiosity of AI. He wants to use it as a tool to help him and his students and his clients and everybody else he works with to be better at being marketers. And I love that. That’s part of why this is such a great discussion. So Tom Harness is a digital marketing.
Educator, consultant, entrepreneur. He’s based in the Carbondale area and he is an assistant lecturer in the College of Business and Analytics at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. And he gets to teach digital marketing and branding and emerging marketing technologies. And guess what? He’s also a business owner. He owns Harness Digital Marketing and he gets to work with all kinds of different clients. And ⁓ he’s also a veteran of the US Army Signal Corps. And he’s going to talk about that in this interview too. So buckle up. You’re going to enjoy this one.
Here we go.
Sean Jordan (01:34)
Well, welcome to the Marketing Gateway. I’m Sean in St. Louis, and I’ve got with me a guy who last year I had the privilege of being on a panel with at the AMA conference here in St. Louis. This is Tom Harness. And Tom, we got a chance to talk about AI last year in front of a whole big audience, didn’t we?
Tom Harness (01:49)
Yeah, was a great opportunity. was a lot of fun and especially when it was in my back door here in Southern Illinois.
Sean Jordan (01:56)
And I noticed you’re wearing a 618 hat, which is of course the area code of Southern Illinois, which is where I live too. represent.
Tom Harness (02:04)
Represent
I had to wear the hat. is kind of like my staple hat, you know being in marketing and branding. So you got to practice what you preach, right?
Sean Jordan (02:11)
And
you know, it’s always interesting to ask people what they consider southern Illinois because ⁓ I live in the Belleville, Swansea area, and that’s like the very tip of like the northern part of southern Illinois. But where do you consider the dividing line to be?
Tom Harness (02:25)
So I am originally from South Dakota. So I moved here when I got out of the military in 96. And so when I came here, if I would consider Southern Illinois would be route 13 down. But I would say probably Effingham is pretty much what everybody considers all the way down to be Southern Illinois.
Sean Jordan (02:45)
And I’ve gone up to Chicago and they pretty much think it’s anywhere south of I-80, right? For those that don’t know Illinois, that’s pretty much across the northern two thirds of the state there. ⁓
Tom Harness (02:50)
Right? Right?
Well, you know, Sean, anytime you say you’re from Illinois, everybody says Chicago. Like, so there you go.
Sean Jordan (03:02)
Very true,
very true. Well, let’s start off with that question I like to ask every guest, and that is to tell me something surprising that I don’t know. So anything you’d like to share, go for it.
Tom Harness (03:12)
So I am a big fan of just kind of like history. And so ⁓ one of the things that I found interesting is that one year, and your audience might find this interesting, one year, my daughter, ⁓ she bought me Ancestry DNA for ⁓ Christmas. And little did I know, and I’ll give you the abridged version, found out that my dad that raised me wasn’t my dad.
⁓ but, ⁓ found out my father and had the opportunity to go actually meet him and he was mixed. So I had this whole other culture, ⁓ about me that I didn’t know about. And then the more that I read into that, the more that I found out that not being raised around this other family of mine, they were doctors, they were educators and they were entrepreneurs. And so all those things other than the doctor, unless I go back and get my PhD.
I’m an educator and I am an entrepreneur. I do have my own business. And so the more I found fascinating about that was the fact that you get into that whole concept of nature and nurture. And I felt really connected. And so one of the cool parts that I’ve had to the opportunity of doing is learning more about my history and my culture and having an African-American background on that side of my family was just very interesting to, to learn more about.
some of the amazing histories and the things that I’ve learned about, you my biological dad was in a jet magazine. So it just, was really cool to learn. And so that’s where I’m at right now is just continually researching and learning about that side of my family. So I would say a lot of people don’t know that part about my journey of that. have this other ⁓ part of me that is connected to a different culture that I’m enjoying learning about and, and accepting and, being able to incorporate that into all that I do.
Sean Jordan (05:08)
That’s fantastic. Thanks for sharing that. My wife is a big genealogy nut. She watches Finding Your Roots all the time and she’s got an ancestry account. So she found in her family ⁓ that her grandmother had been married one more time than she realized.
Tom Harness (05:14)
Yeah, it’s great.
You know what, it’s crazy. ⁓ I always say that those ancestry DNA, those DNA kits, they are not toys. They’re not novelties. It might not change your life, but it can change someone else’s life. you know, use it accordingly. It’s cool to find out where your roots are and where you come from, you know, and like, that’s how I found out, you know, it’s like you’re 25 % African American. And I was like, what? That doesn’t measure out, right? And so that was what.
kind of started that journey, but you can affect people’s lives. And I always tell people, it’s not a novelty, it’s not just a joke thing. Like you might think it’s cool, but it could affect someone else’s life. So it’s just really interesting too. And maybe your wife could help me out sometime, who knows?
Sean Jordan (06:08)
That’s her one of her favorite topics, so I’m sure she would well, you know in this series on the marketing gateway We’re really focused on the st. Louis area and you of course live down in the Carbondale area So I know you’ve been up here to st. Louis because where I saw you But what are your impressions of st. Louis as someone who doesn’t live or work here?
Tom Harness (06:26)
So, know, St. Louis is very interesting. Having a military background and having moved a little bit, you know, I lived in different places in different hemispheres. And so when I came to this area back in 96, I went up to St. Louis mostly for the music scene, right? I loved the music. I used to go down to, I think, I don’t know what that Mississippi Flyway or Mississippi Nights, Mississippi Nights. There was like a, yeah, there was a music venue and I saw some amazing acts there.
Sean Jordan (06:50)
to be noted here.
Tom Harness (06:55)
And to be honest, know, people would, would tell me, you know, you know, be careful, be safe. And it was one of those things where I never had any issues with safety. had issues with exploring. was great. Like the spaghetti works factor was down there. And then I went out into different areas of the mall and hands down the one other than music. And I know, you know, this is about me. The one reason I come most other than conferences, I come to.
St. Louis is for Cubs Cardinals games. And that is probably one of my favorite experiences to always be able to have an hour and a half away. can go watch professional baseball and get booed at and, you know, have a great experience and either leave with my head down or a smile on my face leaving. But I, my favorite part is that whole area around there, the food, the music, you know, it’s just, it’s, it’s a wonderful place to go.
take your family. ⁓ There’s a great cigar lounge because you know in Illinois we have laws and regulations so we can’t have that in Illinois so there’s a great cigar lounge not too far from the stadium that I love to go have bourbon and cigars at and the people are just great and you know it’s a great place for everybody. Great healthcare. I mean I could go on and on. There’s just a lot of things there to do and yeah it’s in our industry marketing and branding.
Yeah, they’ve done a horrible job of really branding it. I think they’re trying to get better about it, but there’s a lot of, you know, it’s like any place. Don’t go down a dark alley in the middle of the night at two and three o’clock. You know, like be mindful of what you’re doing, but I love it. I think it’s a great place. You know, I, it’s closer than Chicago and, ⁓ and I love it. So it’s a good place to go.
Sean Jordan (08:46)
Well, fantastic. We love to have you visit. Sounds like you have a great time. And I’ll mention that you were talking about the Cardinals area where they have now Ballpark Village, which is a really nice entertainment area that’s fairly new. it’s 10 years old compared to the stadium. That’s new. But I worked at Bush Stadium right before they put that in, right before I went to grad school. And we had some Cardinals-Cubs games happen. I learned, I might have told you this, but I learned that the Cubs fans are way better tippers.
because yeah, yeah, they I think they said they are all used to paying a lot more at their ballpark than they pay at Busch Stadium. So that’s you know, that’s a good thing. But hey, for me, I was like, you guys, hey, go win. That’s awesome. Thank you.
Tom Harness (09:16)
You did say that. I’m glad to hear that. I’m glad to hear that.
And it was weird, got to tell you real quick. was weird to go to to Bush Stadium. I had opportunity to go to one of the Savannah Banana games. And I, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen that place that packed and just that with kids and the cool part back to marketing and branding, there was people in that stadium that had never been there, but they got on this whole Savannah Banana sting and they came there for that. And I hope that that transfers that into maybe.
you they’ll come back for Cardinals games or they’ll, whatever team they have. But if that’s in their home area, that they’ll come back and support ⁓ the Cardinals. Cause I think it was a great win-win for them to have that event there. It was so much fun. It was like watching Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas. There’s so many things you could go back and watch it again and find something new to watch. But it was a great experience and I was happy that they were, they were able to host them.
Sean Jordan (10:11)
All bad.
That’s fantastic. Well, let me just ask you one more question about St. Louis and that’s what’s something about the St. Louis area that interests or excites you? Is there anything beyond what we’ve mentioned?
Tom Harness (10:35)
You know one of the things I went to we went up there. I think the is it the there’s a new area, the Museum of Illusion and then there’s a they redid a whole district there like it’s a whole mill. I think I’m trying to remember what was. We went in there. Yes. Yes, I love that development. I think it’s amazing what they’ve done there and having that open concept with the food court and then we went there for. ⁓
Sean Jordan (10:51)
Is it like by the City Foundry?
Tom Harness (11:05)
for the miniature golf, which I’d never played that kind of miniature golf. That was so cool. But it’s such a family friendly thing. And then it’s got a great balance of something for families or, you know, ⁓ young single families, families with kids, you know, or older. Like it’s just, was really, it was a lot of fun just to go to a one-stop place. There’s a movie theater. We didn’t do that, but there’s a movie theater close by there too. But I think it’s just amazing how they transformed that.
and to be able to have music and that open concept in the middle and that Museum of Illusion was, it was so cool. I had a good time. So that’s, that’s the other thing I would say that it’s, there’s a lot of family stuff to do there.
Sean Jordan (11:40)
Yeah.
Yeah, and that area has really continued to grow since they put it in a years ago, fantastic. Well, let me move into talking about some of our marketing type questions now. So you have worn a lot of hats. You’ve been a veteran, you’ve been a student, you’ve been an educator, you’ve been a business owner, a community volunteer, all these things. ⁓ What hat has most shaped how you approach marketing today and why?
Tom Harness (12:10)
Well, I think I’ll have to go back to my roots of being a veteran. I think that the skills that you learn, the tenacity, you know, we don’t have, there’s no problems in the military. There’s only solutions. And I think that applies to being an educator, especially in Illinois. If you teach in Illinois, there can be a lot of challenges with legislation and rules and all that. As a business owner, 100%, you know, every day,
people talk about putting out fires, what you’re really doing is, you know, coming up with solutions. I would much rather come up with solutions and put out fires. So I think, you know, when I, when I go back and really reflect on all those hats, the veteran one is the one that I always default to. I always go back to that, you know, I gotta be tough. I gotta be resilient. I gotta be adaptable, you know, adapt and overcome. And I just, I have to be able to know that I can get dropped in any situation.
and I can get my way out of it. And it might not look pretty and I might need to ask for help and I might need to have my team and my other veterans by my side, but there’s a way to get out of it. And I think that that that’s helped me as a business owner. It’s helped me as an educator and it’s helped me definitely just as a community leader to work with other veteran nonprofits in this area.
Sean Jordan (13:31)
And, you know, mean, in the Metro East where I live, it’s a military community because we have Scott Air Force Base and ⁓ there are so many veterans that own businesses around here or who I volunteer with a lot of them in the scouts. And you’re absolutely right. That focus on how do we solve the problem and how do we work together to see a resolution is so refreshing compared to other avenues of life where, you we don’t have the same military experience. So I really do enjoy and appreciate that.
Tom Harness (13:58)
It’s the same thing that when we come out of Sean, that we, it’s not valued as much. So we have to adapt and change that. so I think that’s what makes it hard for civilian life for lot of veterans is because that’s how we operate and everybody does. And that’s just not how it works in the civilian sector. And you want it to, and you try to force it. And so we come off as being a little bit more rigid or grumpy or forceful. And that’s just kind of the way we are in the military. just.
You know, we, do have our own language and we have our own way of doing stuff and we don’t get easily offended. We just get the job done. Right. And so transferring that same concept to, to the civilian life is hard. And it is hard for a lot of them to like tone it down a notch. And, and, know, it’s, you get that instant kind of gratification of knowing you outrank someone. So they have to do what you do, you know, get that in the, in the civilian sector, you know, it just, it just doesn’t how it works.
Sean Jordan (14:56)
when I grew up on a military base, my dad was in the Air Force and his rank was on our house. So anybody that came to play with me, they had to make sure that their dad wasn’t my dad’s superior or vice versa. We had to watch carefully.
Tom Harness (15:11)
It’s a real thing, man. It is real. Yeah.
Sean Jordan (15:14)
Well, what is a marketing best practice that you’ve seen, taught, or repeated that actually falls apart in the real world? And what do think people should focus on instead?
Tom Harness (15:24)
Well, I think I haven’t watched all your shows, but I’m going to guess that one of the things that a lot of us in marketing talk about is consistency, right? And I think the novelty of it, you know, when you start a business, it’s exciting and it’s fun. You choose the name, you choose the colors, the logos, all the things that matter, but they don’t. Right. And so the consistency of getting out there and getting in front of people in different ways. And I think
The one thing that I would tell them about consistency is every, we’ve been in this for a little while and we’ve got colleagues that have been in it longer than us. And so they’ve been, there’s some people that have lived through radio, ⁓ TV, ⁓ newspaper, and now we’ve got digital marketing, we’ve got social, we’re going to have AI. And so I think the part of the consistency that I would really encourage anybody to do.
and not be cliche about consistent content. It would be consistency of the platform that you need to be on and not jump on the next shiny thing. Do the research, figure out if it aligns, go back to basics. Does it align with your target audience? Does it align with your brand? You know, there’s been, we test a lot of stuff out. I’m sure you do too. And then I realized really quick, this isn’t my platform. I know exactly what platform this is for. This is for a millennial. This is for a younger, you know.
And if I have a client that markets to that or has a target demographic, I’ll absolutely bring it up. You know, ⁓ it’s amazing to see podcasting itself ⁓ be this kind of like, was, it just had this little, it had like a stock market effect. It was like everyone was on it and they kind of dove off and then it picked back up. And then whether it’s the Joe Rogan effect or all these other crime podcasts.
It just, it seemed to pick up. And I think people are learning now with consistency. ⁓ and if we’re to be specific on podcasting, find your niche, find what you’re passionate about. Don’t, don’t do everybody. You know, Joe Rogan show is just a, it’s a, it’s a fluke. doesn’t follow any of the marketing practices. None. Right. Other than he is curious and he brings interesting people on and talks about interesting questions, but we’re not, most of us are not.
Sean Jordan (17:29)
Mm-hmm.
Tom Harness (17:49)
that interesting. And we just have to be able to look at it from a concept of what can we consistently talk about that we’re passionate about every day? Because if you’re not putting something out consistently, they forget about you and then it doesn’t look like you take your profession seriously, right? It’s it’s a perception game. And so I think ⁓ be consistent with with with podcasting, be consistent with content in general. And if it doesn’t, if you’re not getting the results,
You want pivot, figure it out, download the data, sticking in chat GPT. What’s what’s going on or just analyze the data, but consistency in a different way. We got to stop looking at it from consistency of posting content, but we got to look at it from consistency of of what’s the relevance and how can we be passionate all the time about it and not just go through the motions and put, know, this is, know, I like this and
the same questions, you know, or if you don’t use those questions as a guide to elaborate on, then then what are you doing? What’s the point, right?
Sean Jordan (18:49)
Okay.
Well, and I think you raise such a great point about curiosity in particular because so much of my ⁓ growth and success in marketing and in research has been when I’ve had a conversation with someone and they have told me something that absolutely stunned me and I had to think about it. I had to go back and research about it or learn more about it just because ⁓ they gave me a new perspective. And I can only get that by asking questions and talking to people. I can’t get that by just sitting at my desk and trying out new tools or playing around with the tools I have.
But if they tell me about a tool that can do something, they tell me they’re using JetJPT in a really interesting way, or they tell me they’re doing something on perplexity, I’ve been hearing a lot about it recently. I get excited because they might know something that I don’t know, and they might be able to introduce me to something that I can check. And it’s not a shiny ball, it’s something that might actually help me to do something differently. So it’s at least worth looking into and evaluating, right?
Tom Harness (19:34)
Right?
Yes, absolutely. I agree 100%.
Sean Jordan (19:52)
Well, speaking of AI, because you know we’re going get to this topic. This is a big passion of yours, and it is everywhere right now. So how do you help marketers use tools like AI without losing their voice values or common sense?
Tom Harness (19:54)
Hahaha!
Yes.
So, you know, the last time we’ve talked a couple of times about I’ve been working, I’m almost done with my book and I can’t plug it, but because it’s not completed. I as my educator hat, I’m always fascinated by pedagogy and how we learn metacognition, right? How we learn how we learn. And so metacognition was a word I learned in education. I loved it. It was so it was so impactful that I still remember it to this day, right? But
Sean Jordan (20:15)
Ha
Tom Harness (20:37)
There was a philosophy of education, how we learn, that really changed my way of thinking and teaching and applying it to business. And that was Bloom’s taxonomy. And Bloom’s taxonomy, for those of you that are not familiar, it is how we learn and the process of what we should achieve to learn at. And so there’s different levels. At the very top, there’s evaluation, I try to get evaluation, synthesis, analysis.
comprehension and knowledge. And so most of our education system, even university is not always, but most, but definitely K-12 is down here. It’s comprehension and knowledge, memorization, a train left at this time, and this is the speed and figure out the average speed, you know, and so it’s there. And what we really want to achieve to, so we retain information and we know how to use that information.
we want to be up here at evaluation and synthesis. We want to be able to take all this data, all this information and do something with. What does all that mean? Well, that means with whatever input that we put into something like AI, for example, a chat GPT prompt or any type of prompt that you type, you’re only going to get the output at which you put information in. And so one of my passions has been, and I’m so close to finishing the book was
writing a prompt based on Bloom’s whole philosophy and structure of writing prompts based on Bloom’s taxonomy and being able to clearly label a prompt at those levels. Well, that’s important for many reasons. From a business standpoint, the better input you get, the better output. This is plain and simple. From an education standpoint, what does that mean? We can embrace chat, GBT and education at all levels.
And we can start encouraging and expecting and analyzing prompts at that Bloom’s taxonomy level. Is that student, is that person writing prompts at an evaluation level or are they all the way down here at comprehension and knowledge? And if they’re at a university level, they not acceptable, right? It’s just not acceptable. It’s a basic prompt, right? And so we can gauge that to pretty much analyze prompts.
and educate and rewire our brains to then be at a higher level. So in my mind, I feel like the prompt writing is the biggest thing to focus on ⁓ because I think that’s going to be the future of that. think how we train, how we ⁓ process is going to change drastically and either we’re going to have very low expectations or we’re going to have very high in the business industry. So
That’s where I’m at. That’s what I’m pumped up about. That’s what I’m passionate. I’m curious to see if you have any questions or comments about that.
Sean Jordan (23:34)
Well, know, one thing that comes to mind, ⁓ so I’m in the classroom too, and students are up until fairly recently anyway, because now they’re using the AI tools, but ⁓ they would ask me, how do you want the paper cited? Or how do you want the papers formatted? And I would say, I don’t care. I just want you to write a good paper. And it occurred to me that we had taught them so much about the form of the paper, but not about the format of the paper. ⁓ Not about the content, not about what mattered within it.
And so many bad instructors had drilled in them these terrible ideas about, it has to look like a research paper, but if it didn’t have any good style or substance to it, who cares? It was just gonna be a bunch of words. And I think that that’s kind of the problem that we run into with prompting as well is that the prompting has to really reveal thought, right? Like we have to actually, we’re tally a machine to do something for us and we’re giving it instructions and we have to learn how to do that as humans because…
You can’t just put a bunch of words in there. You have to tell it what you want to get the output that you’re looking for. And so I 100 % agree with you on prompting is one of the areas that we have to teach as a skill. It’s not just something that we can assume people can do easily. But when you’re teaching that, are you teaching them to be really specific and direct? Or are you teaching them to be kind of novel in how they talk about things so that the AI engine will generate different types of output?
What are you teaching them in that prompting process?
Tom Harness (25:02)
So I’ve only done, this itself could be its whole course, right? You could literally have prompt, I try to pitch that and it didn’t go over very well, but so I get one week to kind of test and that’s what’s great about university, right? Like I don’t have to have my doctorate or be working on anything to like research. I’ve got access to some great tools. I’ve got students and so I can incorporate that as long as there’s some learning modules, but.
Sean Jordan (25:07)
Of course.
Tom Harness (25:31)
⁓ the way that I really tried to instruct them is to, and this is marketing. So obviously this would, I would adjust this for different philosophies or different genres, but for, marketing, the basics, do you talk about, are you specifically aligning the target audience, the branding? Like you have to know those things, let it learn that. And then that way you, when you ask questions or when you put stuff in, it’s already geared in there and you don’t have to repeat yourself. Right. And so.
One of the things I really try to encourage them is to understand and do the basics. ⁓ Research market, ⁓ target demographics, business, the basic fundamentals they need to learn and retain that. That is, for an essence, that’s the comprehension and knowledge that they need to know. Other than that, curiosity, ⁓ I drive them crazy. So one of my papers, so I alternate quizzes and ⁓
And I have these papers called deep thoughts. And I stole that from SNL for Jack Candy’s deep thoughts. And so I have to put these little innuendos in everything that I teach, right? Some of them get it, most of them don’t. And so I told them go, I said, I need you to go deeper. need you to get be deeper in thought. And to your point earlier about focusing on MLA and all that stuff. I’m like, don’t write me a paper.
Sean Jordan (26:33)
huh, that candy, yeah.
Tom Harness (26:55)
write me a paper about what you think. If you disagreed with content this week, tell me and tell me why. And the other component that I really put into the students is we live in an information world where you can tell me anything and I could possibly believe it. So whatever you tell me, give me data. That’s your citation. Like tell me where you got it so I can at least go back and check it. I also tell them on anything that you do prompt in their site.
in chat, give me your citations and go look at it. Look at the validity of the website. Look at the information. Right. So it’s, it’s, they still think it’s, takes a long time to do all this, but you and I, that had to go through paper after paper, even if we did cliff notes, it still took more time than what chat, GBT could help us with. Right. So I really encourage them. Like you said, focus on the content to get the construct, use it for the comprehension and knowledge.
to learn what you need to know, then ask the questions and write the prompt based off of that. But it has to have those core principles of aligning it with target audience market. Where do you want it to be? The curiosity. I tell them, be curious, not judgmental. I stole that from Ted Lasso because I love it in marketing. I think we forget sometimes that we really do become biased and we become prejudicial. We think we know demographics when we don’t know anything.
So be curious is not being racist, it’s not being judgmental, it’s being curious. Ask questions. Does your demographic like this? Does your culture like this? Instead of telling them, ⁓ I guess every culture likes combs. Well, I don’t. So there you go. So I want them to be curious. I want them to structure. And I want them to create the prompt writing as a habit.
Sean Jordan (28:52)
You know a tip I just heard, I’d love to get your feedback on this. Somebody was talking about how when they’re using an AI engine as like a scaffolding to kind of get them to help with a proposal or a report or something like that, that they start by telling like, know, chat GPT for example, I’m going to write a proposal for this. Here are some basic specs. What else do I need to, what do you need to know to help me to write this? This is basically how they write it. Which it sounds weird, like you’re going to ask a machine to tell you what it doesn’t know, but they said that
it would give them a bunch of questions and they would answer them. And then the result was a lot better because they had put all that information into the thread so that the chat bot was relying on that information in order to give them some output. And I thought, that’s a really clever hack because you’re not changing your prompt, but what you’re doing is you’re forcing yourself to give it more information by having it ask you questions. So have you tried anything like that?
Tom Harness (29:46)
definitely. I’ve gone down different rabbit holes like I’m sure a lot of people do. And I will tell you this. So that structure, though good, doesn’t help with, well, one, with my prompt, with the way I want you to rewire your brain. You become reliant. So you’re not cognitively learning, you’re becoming reliant. And so I talk to them about that too, is that it needs to be scaffold. You need to use this as a brainstorming thing.
Sean Jordan (30:00)
huh.
Tom Harness (30:15)
You need to put all your ideas and have it organize it for you and then restructure it to your voice. I, I think that’s great for anybody that is a novice and I don’t see, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having it ask you questions, especially if you’re doing interview questions or whatever, mock interviews or whatever it might be. But I would challenge that, that that’s not the purpose. That’s not the path that you should want to go down.
because it’s not making you smarter. Why spend time and value in something that’s going to make you dumb? Like when you say that, right? Like it’s like, yeah, I don’t want something that’s gonna make me dumber, but we do it every day. I do it. I might park closer to the store so I don’t walk. Well, that’s affecting my health, right? I might ⁓ use chat GBT to summarize something. Well, am I cheating? I?
really processing and asking the questions or am I summarizing and then like, you know, I’m not sure if I understand the context of this. What does this mean? That’s where we get at. And so I don’t know how I feel about that. To be completely honest, I think we should not become dependent. We need to be on the other side of where for lack of better words, we’re in control. If you could say that, I mean, we need to be well, we at the end of the day, we’re typing.
we are driving that ship. And so we need to stay in that seed. So when we give over that control, when we give over our thought process, I think I have a concern about that.
Sean Jordan (31:54)
And this is why I love talking to you, Tom, because that perspective is so good. I thought this is a good tip because it gets you out there. I was just thinking about, so I’m doing Okinawan karate. just got my black belt recently, which I’m really excited about. But in karate, I had to spend years learning how to do basic things, basic punches, basic blocks, basic kicks, so that I could get to level where now I can actually learn how to use them correctly. That’s what I do at a black belt level.
Tom Harness (32:07)
Nice!
Sean Jordan (32:22)
But if I still was trying to do the basics that I was doing then, I the basics are important, but they wouldn’t help me get better at karate, right? At some point I have to put in application and thought and trying to do them more than just mechanically. I have to do them with an understanding of what they’re doing for me. And I think what you’re articulating there is the same kind of thing. We don’t want to delegate our thought and our application to the machine so that it’s just answering our questions and giving us questions to answer. And it’s just a back and forth with no real thought. We want to learn.
so that when we give it instructions, we can be the masters. We can be the ones that are saying, I need you to do this for me, and you’re a tool to help me, so help me. And the way you put it, I thought was really great. yeah.
Tom Harness (33:03)
Well, even more simple, we’re toddlers in this right now. We’re
toddlers asking, right? We’re toddlers asking it to do things for us. Like our parents, can you get me a drink? Can you change, you know, I went to the, you know, I got changed in my diaper. When we can start speaking, we’re at that level. But what’s the goal is to educate and train so they can independently take care of themselves. I see such huge positive implications for this, but I also worry too,
that if we don’t like anything in our society, if we don’t educate and learn, we’re going to have another huge divide. We’re going to have this AI divide of these, people that are over here and then the people that are up here. And I, that makes me a little nervous too, is that we need to take control. I hate using the word control. We need to take accountability for, for what we want, what we want out of this great tool. This is an amazing tool.
Sean Jordan (33:55)
Accountability is a great word. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Tom Harness (34:02)
We don’t have to walk or ask our parents to go to the library, go through the Dewey Decimal system to find a couple of books, walk and pick them up, sit down, write, go put the books back and then go home and then come back another day. Like we don’t have to do that. We have access to unlimited information. What are we going to do with that? Right? Anything we want. I love it.
Sean Jordan (34:26)
That’s fantastic. let me go back to talking about veterans for a moment and community organizations you’ve worked with. So what did working with these veterans and community organizations teach you about trust and storytelling that most marketers overlook? Because I know these are another passionate topic of your storytelling.
Tom Harness (34:43)
Yeah, you know, I never really valued in branding the concept of storytelling, you know, until I started teaching and reflecting on some of the like, you know, Nike does some great storytelling, right? They just great storytelling. Budweiser great storytelling. When you go back to the 80s, specifically commercials, ⁓ some great simplistic storytelling.
And I think when you can capture that moment, it lives forever. There’s nobody that’s our age, Gen X, doesn’t know Spud’s McKenzie, Where’s the Beef, ⁓ serial commercials. It’s unique because they tapped into very short storytelling that connected with a generation that you just don’t see.
I don’t hear a lot of other generations, ⁓ millennial and so forth, really talk about commercials. It didn’t have as big impact on them as it did with that specific genre. But when you get into long form storytelling, if you want a masterclass, you sit down and have a conversation with a World War II veteran. You sit down and have a conversation with a Korean vet, Vietnam vet.
I’m going to tell you something. It’s, amazing what they focus on. I had the opportunity to, ⁓ we had mayor Butler, who was one of the longest running bears and Marion, I think in the country at one time, and he was a Korean war vet. And I was going to take, was his, I was going to be his companion, his guardian on honor flight, the very first honor flight. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to go his health reasons, but we sat down and had a talk and this man.
He’s told me this story that I felt I was there. I was underneath, you know, a Jeep and there’s, you know, debris going everywhere. The smell, what he was feeling, like he was so descriptive in a way that I was, I was just taken back. And yeah, I am a veteran. I didn’t see combat. been, I was in Saudi Arabia after the fact on a rotation, but that just right there.
I always go back to when I talk to my students about storytelling that, you know, definitely sit down and capture the moment. It has to be real. It has to be authentic. And you can’t fake it. You can’t push it. You can’t force it. And I think you can see that in a lot of storytelling, whether it’s in social or digital or TV, radio. ⁓ I go back to the principles that you can’t tell your story, you know,
to get a really good connection, I guess a real feeling for it in like 60 seconds. What’s the purpose of having a five, 10 minute commercial, right? If you can’t do that at the very beginning and really connect with the audience. And the other thing with storytelling is know your audience, right? know, veteran to veteran, that’s great. Not everybody’s gonna truly connect with that story in a way that a veteran will. Mothers.
Sean Jordan (37:45)
Yeah.
Tom Harness (38:05)
when moms are talking about other moms. mean, I can sympathize, I can get it, but I love the fact that from a veteran perspective, you can take their experience and some of these people remember the most minute detail. That seems trivial to us, but when you break it down, it’s like, why was that such an important thing for them to remember? And I do think that it’s undervalued.
It’s something that takes time. It’s a thought process. know, those, you really need to go through it. It just can’t tell me a story. Let’s record it. Boom, we’re done. Right. And, and you’re going to go viral with your story because everybody’s going to connect with it and everybody’s going to like it. The other thing was storytelling. I know, you know, this too, angles, sound, music, colors, like all of that is so important into storytelling. So, you know, I, I, I love it. ⁓
Sean Jordan (38:51)
Mm-hmm.
Tom Harness (39:02)
I’m not as creative to do that at that level, but I appreciate ⁓ some of the marketing teams that you guys have in St. Louis, phenomenal. Some of the storytelling that they do, funny, serious, all of it. it doesn’t have to be, storytelling is not just serious. you know, comical. It’s just, I love it. I think there’s a lot of, I wish that more businesses would buy into storytelling than just posting and just.
You ads, you know, if I have to see another car commercial that’s the exact same, I’m going to die. Like this is 2026. Can we not change car commercials now? Can we not be a little bit more creative other than that format has been around for, I mean, almost a hundred years. It feels like back to Ford, the original Ford.
Sean Jordan (39:56)
I’ve seen so many cars driving around mountain passways. I don’t even think about it anymore. It’s just so common. Well, one of the things when I think about storytelling that I always like to mention is when I was in college, I took a class on comic books as literature. And that sounds like a blow off class. It was amazing. That’s why I went into the comic book industry for a little while afterwards was because I learned so much. And my instructor,
Tom Harness (40:13)
No, it sounds amazing!
Sean Jordan (40:23)
Put the first peanuts comic in front of us and the first peanuts comic is there’s these two kids sitting on a sidewalk and This little bald guy walks by it’s Charlie Brown and they’re going. Oh, there goes Charlie Brown. Good old Charlie Brown There’s good old Charlie Brown and then last panel is little boy turning the little girl and going how I hate him as soon as he’s out of the panel and it’s such a masterpiece of storytelling because You don’t know what it’s setting up. It’s not really a joke because it’s a mean thing that this kid is saying
And Charlie Brown, poor guy, he’s just a little kid walking by. You don’t know anything about him at this point. But the story that’s being told there is so dramatic and interesting. And I’ve long said if you can tell a story in four panels, ⁓ you could tell a story quickly. you tell a panel, one panel story, look at the far side. You know, there was another comic that was really good at that. So ⁓ storytelling requires understanding how the audience responds more than anything. And, you know, my kids are really into Internet memes. You know, I personally find memes about as exciting as bumper stickers, but they love them.
Those tell stories too. they, you know, I think that there’s still lot of opportunity to look at how do we distill things down into something people really understand and can grapple onto. It’s still there. We just have to be creative to find it.
Tom Harness (41:36)
I agree. And I’m not a huge fan of the memes either. I have one favorite one and it’s sad Keanu when he’s sitting on the bench. That’s my old, like that’s my go-to. That’s my, I like sad Keanu. That’s my favorite one.
Sean Jordan (41:41)
yeah.
Our favorite one is the one with the cat with the broccoli in front of him and the angry housewife yelling at him only because we have a white cat that looks just like him. Well, if you had to strip marketing down to just three priorities for small business or entrepreneur in the Midwest, what would they be? And what would you recommend that people stop doing immediately to make room for those priorities?
Tom Harness (41:58)
love it. ⁓
So I think this is gonna come from more of my working with businesses side hat, my business hat start. ⁓ Small business owners, if you’re watching or marketers, if you’re working with small business owners, you really need to, it’s more than just encouragement. I think at this point, it’s not even tough love. In the military, you just do it, right? You need to start.
And so we, I’ve had this conversation many times and I’d love your feedback on this too. But one of the things I would say is you got to start and it’s okay. It’s not perfect, right? If you have to use content that when you put it out, looks like chat, CPT, if your content, if your images are not specifically branded for your business, I want you to start. And I want you to start with the goal of building that.
because if you are working, waiting for the perfect logo and the website and all that stuff, there’s no such thing as a perfect website. Everyone, everybody that’s a little dirty secret, everybody in marketing that gets a client from another person that we all know and love or hate, ⁓ always wants their website redone. And that’s another 10, $15,000 every time. So just find a website, get good content.
and stick with it. But you got to start. So that’s the first thing is start. And I want you to start with content that might not be perfect with the goal of adapting and growing. ⁓ Because any of us, even those that have marketing agencies, they’ll go back and look at their content and be like, I can’t believe we we put that out. I cannot believe that we put that out. And that’s just because of growth. So continually grow. The second one is ⁓ and this really isn’t a lot with
marketing aspect as it is kind of, it isn’t work on your business. I’ve learned that you need to take time to not react. You need to take time to have some foresight and work on your business. You know, take a week, take a slow week and start working on your marketing strategy, business strategy, sales strategy, and not in a reactive way, but a way that you can do a process.
where you can go through, set it up, take a break, go have a drink, go back the next day, reflect on it again, go back. Like take some time, so that way you can go back into whatever year, whatever quarter, and you have a strategy, one that you really believe in, that you’ve taken time for your content, for yourselves, for your operations, whatever it is.
I think it’ll help you not feel like you’re putting out fires. You’re building a dream, right? You’re bringing the dream, that plan to fruition. So that would be the second thing. And the third thing is ⁓ don’t be afraid to own your business. And when I say that is, so many people, if you have a service, guess what? You’re the business. They need to see you.
If you own a mom and pop business, they’re not buying from the business, they’re buying from you. And so I need you to own your business. I need you to figure out what that looks like for you. You have to get outside your comfort zone and own your business and let people know that, hey, I own X business. This is, know, it’s easy for me to do that with Harness Digital Marketing because my last name is in Harness. It’s Harness Digital Marketing. But once
I realized that I needed to own my business and get out there and wear Harness Digital Marketing or people would know me for my crazy suits when I did the crazy fundraiser suit campaign. You’ve got to get out there and you’ve got to be known for something, not hokey. If you don’t want to wear a crazy Christmas suit every year to raise money, then don’t do it. I did it for five years. So you got to be committed.
If you’re gonna wear a 618 hat, wear the 618 hat, right? Whatever you’re comfortable with. I have real estate people, it’s for the ladies, it’s their shoes. They’re known for their shoes, fingernail polish. But you gotta get out there and own it. Be proud of that business. So those are the three things that I would say that are tied into marketing but are more about personal growth, I think, which I think would lead to all that. And the one thing to stop,
Like just stop doing. ⁓ well, that’s kind of a loaded question. I, I stop if you’ve already developed a brand, don’t go into chat, GPT and take a step back. Like if you’ve got a brand established, continue the brand. Don’t short, don’t jump on the bandwagon and start making your content look like chat. GP, if you’ve got a system stick with the system, don’t take a step back. You know, ⁓ do not.
Sean Jordan (47:04)
Ha ha.
Tom Harness (47:29)
If you’re starting out, that’s fine. But again, the goal is you need to get off that. It’s great to learn what you need to do, what you need to work, but you got to get off that. mean, it’s, it’s, it’s ridiculous, you know? ⁓ it’s kind of like when something goes viral and the character thing on Facebook, everybody did the character thing. Like it’s like, great. Everybody’s doing it now. And so it’s, it’s, loses its novelty. It’s cool, but it’s oversaturated. And so it’s not unique. It’s nothing.
It’s forgettable, right? It’s forgettable. So I think that’s what I would tell people to stop doing right now. If they’re into this AI and chat GPT and Gemini and all these other ⁓ GPTs, I would just tell them, don’t take a step back. Please don’t. You’ve got a brand, you know that it works, it’s established. Figure out how to automate policies and create a calendar for content that you can build from and brainstorm from. So there’s what I got.
Sean Jordan (48:13)
Mm-hmm.
Tom Harness (48:28)
That’s what I got, Sean.
Sean Jordan (48:28)
Yeah.
Well, it’s so funny you mentioned that because ⁓ last year, probably like December, I had a client tell me for the first time ever, hey, I found you through ChatGPT. And I thought, really? I need to go and see what it’s saying about me. So the research and planning group, my company, we’ve been around 43 years. And ⁓ I didn’t found the company, but I bought it. And I decided to go and look and see what was being said and all the different AI tools. And I would just ask, what
who offers market research in St. Louis and who could I hire? didn’t give me the top five choices. My firm always showed up. There were a lot that would only show up once and there were a few that were even out of business that would show up. So was kind of interesting. with mine, it was pulling really, really good, concise version of the content on our website, which I wrote, so I know it very well. ⁓ It was pulling that and giving me a really great selling point for why I would hire the research and planning group, which I thought was cool.
The content, I wasn’t gearing it at AI. I wasn’t trying to make it friendly to AI. I didn’t even know it was pulling it. But it’s in this training data now because it’s been around for a while. I think having a brand that exists and having been around and being a part of the earlier training data for these GPT models is actually going to benefit a lot of people that have been around for a while because it’s not looking at the newest, most current stuff. That’s not how it’s designed to look at data. It’s only looking at those things if you ask it to pull things from the web.
But when it’s looking at this training data, which it trusts a lot more, it’s pulling things that existed before 2021 or 2023 or whatever the cutoff is. And if you’re in there, you’re going to get mentioned. So I was really excited about that. thought having a historic brand actually is finally a benefit. We don’t have to be new and cutting edge. We’re still going to show up in AI.
Tom Harness (50:16)
And you know, it’s crazy. I know you’re going to see this too. You’re going to, we’re going to businesses, we’re going to start seeing where we’re going to set up your website to be AI friendly, right? Like S it’s going to be just like SEO where it’s not really a whole lot that you have to do. You just have to have some basic knowledge and some writing skill. And, and people made millions of dollars off of SEO, billions, sorry, billions, trillions of dollars off SEO. They’re going to do the exact same thing.
Sean Jordan (50:19)
Mm-hmm.
yeah.
Tom Harness (50:46)
because people are gonna start shifting from Google search to like these GPTs and asking specific things. And you want to make sure that you are on the top of the phone, the phone book, right? You wanna be at the top of the phone book, you know? And that’s the beauty of that is that to make sure that you have that, but at the same time, it’s not that easy. Like you just need to go back to simple SEO, mark my word, you’re gonna see people, we’re gonna make your website.
you know, AI searchable friendly and I’m going to start laughing. I’m going to start laughing. So.
Sean Jordan (51:20)
You know, I just recorded an episode where I talked about statistics about small business. 99.9 % of all businesses in the United States are small businesses. And ⁓ if you were to divide all the large businesses up state by state, there’d be about 400 per state. large businesses are not, there’s not that many and small businesses, there’s a ton of us. So we all have an opportunity to tell our story and to find ways to use these tools in creative ways. you know,
I just like to remind people, if you’re a small business, you’re not alone. Not by a long shot.
Tom Harness (51:52)
No, not at all.
Sean Jordan (51:54)
Well, it’s been so great talking with you, Tom. I always appreciate it. it’s just one of those things where I always learn something when I talk from you. I hope vice versa, too. But I hope our audience has learned a lot as well. And one thing I always want to do at the end of a show is to just ask if there’s anything you’d like to plug. So here’s your chance. We’re marketers. We plug things. So you can plug anything you want. Go for it.
Tom Harness (52:04)
Absolutely.
Well, you know, I just want to plug one day, I want to come back and plug my book for sure. Still working on a title. I want to, definitely want to plug. I want to plug my book, but I think, you know, today it’s really about if you have a local veterans organization or you, know, it doesn’t have to be, I’m a part of operation honor guard, honorees for veterans. ⁓
Sean Jordan (52:24)
We’ll have you on to that for sure.
Tom Harness (52:44)
I’ve taken, I’ve been a part of honor flight. We have vets for pets that’s just started locally here in our region. There’s a lot of different veterans organizations in your communities. And I just, my, my ask would be to just donate a couple of bucks, 10 bucks, five bucks. ⁓ If they have a drive and they’re doing a coat drive or food collection for a food pantry for veterans, I just ask that you donate to a local veterans charity.
and know that you are not only helping an amazing person that has allowed you to have all these wonderful marketing freedoms that we do not have. I’ve presented in Ukraine ⁓ on a project with the Department of Defense. I don’t know how I got that, but back in the day, and I’m going to tell you, we get to do so much more than they get to do in Ukraine and especially now. our veterans…
are should be appreciated and so if you can go and donate time or money I’d appreciate that.
Sean Jordan (53:48)
Fantastic. And some of the organizations you name, we’ll put in the show notes as well, along with your contact information, because I’m sure people will want to reach out to you. But I want to thank you again for being on Marketing Gateway. It is such a pleasure. And I look forward. Next time you’re in St. Louis, we have to get together. ⁓ I don’t do cigars, but I’ll be happy to accompany you while you do once.
Tom Harness (54:03)
Absolutely.
All good, all good. We can go someplace and you can take me someplace I’ve never been. So there you go.
Sean Jordan (54:12)
Awesome. Thanks so much, Tom.
Sean Jordan (54:15)
Man, I am just always so impressed after these interviews with the folks I get to hear from and the incredible things they have to share. And it just makes me so glad to be part of the marketing community we have here in the Midwest and in the St. Louis area. And I hope you’re enjoying it too. So I want to thank Tom once again for being on the show. ⁓ So many thought provoking ideas and great food for thought in many of the things he shared there and.
Quite honestly, I’m looking forward to having him back on to plug his book when he’s ready for it. So in the meantime, you can check out his bio and all of the organizations he mentioned in the show notes. And if you know anybody that would love to be on this show, we would love to have them. If you are a marketer in the Midwest and particularly in St. Louis, let me know. We’d love to have you on because we are trying to build this community of marketing mentors. And Tom is a great marketing mentor. We’re going to have so many more to come in the next few weeks. So.
Thank you for listening. This has been the Marketing Gateway. I’m Sean in St. Louis. See you next time.
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