Guardian Marketing and Advertising Podcast

About Guardian Marketing and Advertising Podcast

Learn how to build a business that gets you closer to what you want. guardianmarketing.substack.com (https://guardianmarketing.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

It's not sexy. Until it is.

Category

business · education

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

29 Mar 2024

Latest episode

31 Jul 2026

Latest episodes

21 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   31 Jul 2026

   Monthly Turn Bonus (Man Bites Dog)

   Resources Mentioned: * Foundry Dashboard (https://foundryschool.co/foundry/dashboard) * Engage The Field handbook (new) * Engage the File workbook (new) * Ascent Letter (https://foundryschool.co/ascent) * Arena (https://foundryschool.co/arena) Cleaned up transcript: Substack Live. That’s cool. I’ve never actually done a Substack Live, and I’m doing it for Man Bites Dog instead of my personal, so I don’t know who’s going to show up, and I don’t know if my audio is working. But that’s okay, because we’re coming up on a mid-season turn in the summer season, and I want to communicate with everybody, whether you’re watching live or catching the audio. I’m sharing my screen, so if you’re an audio listener and something doesn’t make sense, I apologize. This replay will be up on the Man Bites Dog Substack page. The Arena went live today. It was the first version of the new Arena, and I want to show you real quick what that means for you. If you’re a free subscriber, you still benefit from everything we do, and I want to show you how to start getting those benefits. Of course, it’s aligned with the season. This is the Foundry dashboard. I’m showing you this because it’s important to remember that in our world, in the Foundry world, in the Gray Wolf world, all things get weighed against it. Whether you have a Foundry dashboard or not, and it’s free, so you can go make one if you want, the number one thing we want to keep top of mind is: what am I actually trying to accomplish? And we want to be careful not to lose that. Don’t let the medicine become the poison. Right here on the Foundry dashboard, and again, you can make a free account or just write this down on a piece of paper, it doesn’t matter to me, we want to keep top of mind what the most important thing is. Get an idea of where you’re at. We have our methodology, the three clocks, but use whatever you have. Get an idea of where you’re at, and then: this is where I want to go. The more detailed the better. The longer the timeline the better. So you say, okay, if this is where I want to be in ten years, what do I do in the short term? That’s the most immediate constraint. When you’re thinking “my business has to get me where I want to go,” I wouldn’t make short-term goals, you can if you want, I’d name the end destination. This is enough. This is where I’m good. This is where I can sleep at night, where I have distance between my words and space between my thoughts and all that. But what about the short-term goals? Those are the constraints. If you’re here and you want to be there in ten years, the most immediate thing preventing you from getting there is the short-term goal. You could pick a different goal every time, fine, but I’d name the single most important thing and keep it right at the top, whether that’s on your whiteboard at home or on this dashboard. And then: what is the one thing that, if I removed it, would unlock the next step, the next wave, or make it possible? That’s what we’re going to talk about. There’s a skill here. There’s a skill in identifying where you want to go, a skill in identifying the constraint, and a skill in removing the constraint, actively learning what’s necessary or getting the help necessary to remove it. In July, our work inside the Arena was exactly that. July is generally the best time to double down on this Engage the Field material. So I rewrote the Engage the Field handbook. It’s now a hundred-something pages, but you could probably skip straight to the workbook, which is about thirteen pages, and just work through it. Both of these are going to be free in the Foundry, and I’m going to post them both to Man Bites Dog today, so you just have them. I stripped all the colors out so they’re easy to print if you want. I strongly recommend going through it. What do you want? What’s the most immediate constraint? There’s a velocity check. And one thing to start practicing right now is six words. Your six-word update. Can you consolidate your thoughts, your experience, your concerns, your lessons into six words or less? There’s a whole lesson on why that’s so powerful, and it’s in the book, so I’m not going to go over it here, because I do have a business development announcement that may help you as soon as we get through this. The cool thing is you can print this off and do your six words. Print it off every day if you want, or whenever you need it. We developed this inside the Foundry, and it’s free. You can go look at it right now. I don’t even think you have to log in. We did the Arena today, which was a lot of fun. You can see the people who were in the Arena, the aha moments they could condense into six words or less, scrolling right across here. What happens is not only are you sharing, but look at all the different perspectives. All of these people read the same thing, but what they took away was very different. So there’s an opportunity to learn from your community by sharing six-word updates like this. You can go to the wall, enter your own, and upvote. That one’s popular, that one’s popular. It also helps us figure out what people actually got out of it. Play around with the six-word update. It’s a powerful tool. I’ll read every one of these over the next couple of days, because I’ll learn from what other people took away from the discussion. Now, why would you learn this skill? One, summer is the best time to develop skills that involve engaging the field. The days are longer, it’s easier, it’s the whole seasonal intelligence thing. I’d develop this over the next couple of weeks if you have the time and the interest. It’ll make everything else you do better. It doesn’t cost anything, but it amplifies everything else. No matter what program you’re in, who you’re paying for coaching, or what you’re watching on YouTube, this skill makes all of it more effective. I share that because, starting next week, and I made this post on my personal Substack too, I’m going to be live the first, second, and third Thursday of every month, teaching everything I’ve ever learned about business from the ground up. A few reasons I’m doing it. One, I mapped it all to the seasons. So in August you’ll be learning August material, not necessarily sequential chapters. Two, we want to get it archived, and I’m writing another book. Like I need another book, right? But this one is the foundational how-to-think-about-your-business, so that every move you make gets you closer to what you actually want, and you don’t play the wrong game and build the wrong thing for years and years. So the first, second, and third Thursday of every month is the curriculum. The fourth Thursday is the Arena. If you have a seat in the Arena, you come live and we talk about it. I go live in a custom-built room and talk over my outline. I do it that way so we get the transcription and catch all the little stream-of-consciousness thoughts that didn’t make it into the writing. If you’re on the letter, you can listen in for free. If you’re invited by one of our partners, Laurel Portie, for example, can invite her clients, you can listen in for free, live. Just because. Why not. I’m doing it anyway. And if you’re on the letter, you’ll be able to ask questions while you’re live. Afterward, whenever we get around to the replay, it’ll be posted on Man Bites Dog. Most of it will be there for free. Nothing will be paid, we just might not post all of it. So it’s fourteen months of business curriculum, from the ground up, mapped to the season. Every Thursday, noon Pacific, so you can mark your calendars if you want to join. Fourth Thursday is the Arena, the others are the curriculum. And then I’m going to boot everyone. Cool, thanks for listening. Our partners, our Rainmaker Council, and our apprentices are going to hang out, drink beer, b******t. But really, we’re going to be deepening the book content and stress-testing it against their business, their industry, their clients. By the time the book is ready to release, fourteen months from now, it’s been through the ringer, and the discussion happened at the right time. Even though it’s the first session, next week we’ll be talking about Chapter 5. Why? Because Chapter 5 is the most appropriate thing to talk about the first week of August. The week after, we’ll talk about Chapter 13. It’s: how do we talk about the thing that’s presenting itself the most, at the time it’s presenting itself, and stress-test it against real-world situations? And then, why not let people listen in if they’re interested? So, letting you know: if you subscribe to Man Bites Dog, you’ll get some of the updates. Go create a free Foundry account and you’ll get all of them. Really up to you. Go over to the Foundry School and just read the six-word updates. If you read the Engage the Field handbook, go through the workbook, and then read the six-word updates, it’s pretty powerful. You’ve got the content, and you immediately get perspective from people doing the same thing at the same time from a different vantage point. There’s value in that. That’s it. Hope you found it useful. I’m going to figure out how to make this Substack thing into a podcast and transcript and all that. Otherwise, subscribe, don’t subscribe, it’s up to you. I never know where I’m going to post next. I don’t even know why I went live here instead of my personal Substack, but that’s what I did. I appreciate you. See you next time. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit guardianmarketing.substack.com/subscribe (https://guardianmarketing.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

2. 

   23 Jul 2026

   Same effort. Better timing. (Full video and audio)

   Cleaned up transcript/overview: Seasonal Intelligence for Business Development(Summer) Welcome. We’re going to look at seasonal intelligence at the most basic practical level — through business development. The question is simple:how many times can I say the same thing and make it more useful? If it stays mythical, it’s worthless.So this is a timing tool.If you know which way the wind is blowing, you have a higher probability of getting where you want to go. The year has five phases We know four seasons.Behaviorally, it tracks better as five: * Spring * Early summer * Late summer * Autumn * Winter In theory, this improves everything.In practice, it improves most things.Sometimes you still have to sail north while the wind blows south. That’s fine.But as much as possible, stop swimming upstream. Most business development ignores the season We notice holidays and industry deadlines.We rarely adjust the frame. Same message all year.Same posture all year.Same urgency all year. Then something works… until it doesn’t.And we blame the creative. Or the algorithm. Sometimes those are real.Often, receptivity changed. Analytical people — white-paper people — tend to think everyone gets dumber in July.They don’t.Anxiety rises. Days get long. Movement increases. Contemplation gets harder. Everything in us says: this season is for action. If you understand that, you stop killing good ads.You run them when the field can receive them. That’s why these slides are red.It’s summer.This is not a data-heavy talk. That belongs in the fall. Collective, individual, stage There are five primary dispositions people recognize quickly: * Fire — action, sales energy * Wood — vision, founder energy * Metal — analysis, systems, precision * Water — depth, meaning * Earth — cohesion, relationship, holding the center Those map to seasons. Collectively, summer elevates fire characteristics in almost everyone.Even non-anxious people are more anxious than usual.Even steady people feel more pull to move. That matters if you’re advertising or messaging the mass market.Lean into the wind. Individually, a fact-finder is still a fact-finder.They may have a little more drive in summer, but they are still built for precision.Speak to the person in front of you by constitution. Stage is the third clock:life stage and business stage.A startup has to do startup things.You can’t install elegant systems when you have no clients. Three rhythms.Today we’re focused on the first two, because it’s summer and you need something to do. When speaking to many, speak to the season * Spring — stories, possibility, vision * Summer — action steps, experiments, movement * Autumn — systems, frameworks, structure, cadence * Winter — human resistance, meaning, why follow-through fails Late summer is earth: digestion, integration, what to keep. Your brand often lives here more than people realize. One asset, four lives Take one white paper. * Spring: tell the stories behind the data * Summer: pull out one thing to try * Autumn: deliver the paper * Winter: talk about why people won’t use it You don’t have to become someone else. If you’re a storyteller, keep telling stories — that’s your strength.Then, when autumn arrives, extract the systems and numbers from the same body of work. If you’re a white-paper person, stop forcing dense analysis into spring and summer.Derive a story from the paper for spring.Derive experiments for summer.Save the full document for autumn. Same source. Better timing. Wider reach. This maps cleanly to the lenses in Laurel Portié’s work and in R3. One-to-one is different If someone is sitting across from you, do not mechanically apply the season. A fiery operator in winter still wants a next step.An analytical operator in spring still wants the white paper. Mass communication → lead with season.Individual conversation → lead with constitution. Don’t get dogmatic. Since it is summer Anxiety is high.FOMO is high.The urge to do more is high. So: * give homework, not essays * make offers actionable * prefer short experiments over long explanations * “try this week” beats “understand this framework” If you’re spending real money to reach a general audience, this is not cosmetic. It affects conversion. Three moves * One pipeline experiment for the next 7 days * One conversation script run 10 times * One constraint cleared before August If you have Laurel’s material, use something from there — Cash Now, bucketing, whatever fits.The point is not the tactic. The point is motion. Also notice: how much have you generated in ChatGPT or Claude this month that felt productive and moved nothing? Anxiety loves the feeling of completion.Redirect that energy into pipeline, conversations, or a real constraint — not another stack of unused pages. Where this goes deeper * The letter — monthly seasonal current * The Arena — run the current against a live business constraint * Gray Wolf — for people who want to understand it deeply, and maybe teach it Even the gatherings follow the season:summer in Hawaii because it is summer;fall in New England because fall teaches best there — colder air, smaller room, cider, the actual characteristics of the season in the body. Do that for a couple of years and the patterns stop being theory. Stop fighting the season Your mission is already hard enough.You’re not lazy. You’re ambitious. That’s why you’re here. So remove friction where you can.Get the wind at your back when it’s available.Save upstream swimming for the moments when it’s actually required. Same effort. Better timing. Do something with this first. If you want the letter, the Arena, or the deeper path after that, the links are below. * Ascent Letter (https://foundryschool.co/ascent) * Arena (https://foundryschool.co/arena) Nic PS. if you want one of the remaining spots in the Autumn gathering to experience the full embodiment, email: vip@graywolfdoctrine.com This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit guardianmarketing.substack.com/subscribe (https://guardianmarketing.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

3. 

   21 Jul 2026

   Media as a byproduct - my strategy

   Media as a byproduct: Overcoming the guilt, shame and pressure to do more media and how I am choosing to structure mine. Mentioned: From The Valley (https://www.amazon.com/Valley-1-Nic-Peterson/dp/B0H58YJH41/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0) The Foundry (https://foundryschool.co/) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit guardianmarketing.substack.com/subscribe (https://guardianmarketing.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

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