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Agency Forward explores the future of agencies as tech and AI drive down the cost of tactical deliverables. Topics include building competent teams, developing strategic offers, systemizing your business, and more.
New episodes delivered every Tuesday.
Chris DuBois 0:00
Hey everyone. Today I'm joined by Garrett Caudill. Garrett is the CEO of influence helping founders ideate create and execute on LinkedIn. They don't just focus on posting, but rather the full pipeline of social media lead generation. This conversation was a lot of fun, and packs a serious punch. For anyone looking to jumpstart their publishing journey on LinkedIn. I know I pulled a lot of insights that I could apply immediately. So I know you're gonna find value in this one as well. In this episode, we discuss the biggest mistakes founders make when starting on LinkedIn, the secret to social publishing success, what to do once you have a social presence, and more. Today's episode is brought to you by Zen pilot. There are lots of tools out there for agencies to manage projects, but any project issues aren't usually caused by the tool. They're from your own processes. Zen pilot helps agencies implement their project management tools, while streamlining operations. So your team can move from chaos to clarity, you can see for yourself at Zen pilot.com/forward. And now my conversation with Garrett Caudill. It's easier than ever to start an agency, but it's only getting harder to stand out and keep it alive. Join me as we explore the strategies agencies are using today to secure a better tomorrow. This is agency for our agency leaders using LinkedIn Rob
Speaker 1 1:28
Yeah, Chris, this question gets me heated, because the reality is, so we work with a lot of agency founders. It's, you know, a really great, you know, client base for us, because this is a commoditized world where, you know, there's a how many 1000s of agencies out there. And so you know, if you can make your agency stand out, because you have, you know, the best expertise and you're showing it on LinkedIn that can be super effective. But what almost all of them get wrong is agency founders have facet all the time on LinkedIn. They know the channel works. They, you know, stitch some stuff together, they paper mache together a strategy, they do it for three and a half months, and they go, God, this thing doesn't work. LinkedIn is not working for me, what am I doing wrong? They get frustrated, they put it down and pick it back up later. It's inconsistent. The reality is, is that if you sat most agency down agency founders down and said, Are you actually really giving this like the full go? They would tell you no, they're not. It's almost always it's just not being given the attention it needs in order for in order to have success. This is a hard thing to do. Like, if you sit down and talk to any like influencer out there, like a b2c influencer, they'll tell you like, this is an extremely difficult thing to do to build a following build a community create engaging content. And it's a game that'll like, chew you up and spit you out. And yet a lot of these agency founders treat it like any other marketing channel, it's like, you know, SEO, throw up some blog posts, you know, it's like, you know, Google ads, set up the strategy, let it run, set it and forget it. It's just it's a different beast, man. And if I could just shake every agency founder and say, like, Dude, you're not, you're not trying this is there's no actual, there's no data involved in this. There's no structure involved in this. You're not actually putting your best resources toward this. You know, that's, that's honestly, the biggest mistake I see all the time.
Chris DuBois 3:12
I ran an agency for a bit and getting LinkedIn like was a at one point was like the priority like we need to just drive more conversations through LinkedIn. But then all of these other competing priorities, right, because priority at one point, I love Greg McCowan, as it's in the book. essentialism talks about how priority was a singular word until like the 1900s. And then all of a sudden, it's it's plural. Like, yes, it's a battle for every right. So I guess, when you're How do you work with agency like owners, founders, anyone to actually make it a priority, so that they do want to stick it out longer than that three months, then to see see how it works. The
Speaker 1 3:55
great thing, this is what I tell, you know, agency founders in the sales cycle, when I'm talking to them, is that working with us, you're now you have skin in the game, you're committed, right? Like you're signing a contract with us and you're investing a decent amount of money. We're not you know, we're a premium service, we're not cheap, which means that you're going to be all in on this. And we're going to do it the right way. And so that's why in the sales cycle, I try to be really honest, is like, yeah, you believe in this channel? Yeah, you think you know, your agency can make this work? But are you really actually ready to take that step. And I know, it make it sound really dramatic, but it's true like this, this is a really, really big step for most agencies. I mean, for most of our clients, this is a big step, because for the very first time, you're creating a certain type of content engine that just doesn't exist inside the company. And it is something that it's a really difficult thing to set up. And it's a really difficult thing to maintain. And it takes a lot of, you know, time and energy and effort. So yeah, so you know, just by working with us, sometimes I'm able to really, you know, get people to double down and actually come in. And then the other thing I like to do sometimes is I like to show them what's possible. So you know, sometimes I'll take them, you know, founders through, you know, our case These of our clients, and I'll show them the results. And they'll be like, yeah, man, this is what I want. And then I show them behind the scenes. And I go, okay, cool. Here's a five page map of all of the different topics and how they're related. And all of the different, you know, POVs, and worldviews that this agency founder has. And by the way, here's this really in depth study we did about all of their, you know, ICP and where they're at on LinkedIn, and the kind of people they follow, and the kind of content they engage with. Oh, and by the way, here's 12 variations of this one hook that we tested for this one, you know, POV that this one agency founder had, and then it clicks for them to go home. Okay, the reason this works is because you guys put in crazy sophistication into the process. Right?
Chris DuBois 5:41
Yeah. And that's, that's a great strategy for making that happen. I mean, how many people have said, I could go to the Olympics, but when you like, look at, right, all of the training that's involved, like, every calorie is counted, every workout is measured. Now, it's like, oh, there's a lot of work involved here. And that's where you guys would come in, and this metaphor of like, let me bring in a coach who actually knows how to do all that. I
Speaker 1 6:06
mean, you know, it's funny, I think, as marketers, even, you know, we run marketing agencies. And so all day, we talked about how, you know, we approach things different, and we're on the bleeding edge of marketing, and so on, and so on. But the way we typically market ourselves, you know, the type of like the shoemakers kids, right, like, the shoe makers, kids are the last ones to get shoes, like, we often don't take the same attention and effort into, you know, our own marketing that we do, you know, to our clients marketing. And so if, you know, agency founders are honest with themselves, they realize that, like, you know, I would not be a client of myself, the way we're approaching our marketing on LinkedIn, I would not, you know, I would not pay for that as a as a service. And so that's where, you know, either you get, you know, your whole in house team on the same page, you try to get everyone invested, or you work with an agency like us where, you know, we have the whole playbook set up, we can take you on that journey. And then, you know, typically that path, you know, keeps people accountable. And we end up seeing some really great results.
Chris DuBois 7:03
Right, so it's Solomon's paradox, or think Solomon, super wise gang, but he couldn't solve his own problems for anything, right? Just couldn't say, well,
Speaker 1 7:13
and this is also we're having, like a partner is helpful is like, a lot of getting this right is about understanding what is your actual unique worldview? Right? Like, if you think about like LinkedIn, like an attention economy, right? I mean, that's what social media is, you're getting real time feedback from people when you post and you don't get engagement, that that actually wasn't very compelling to them. And that can be a hard pill to swallow. And sometimes what you really need is an external partner to come in and say, Tell me all of your, you know, what is your worldview? What's your beliefs, though? How does your agency approach marketing? And the first thing people rattle rattle off is the same stuff, everyone else says, No, you know, we believe in, you know, the customer journey, and you know, people first and this and that. It's like, Okay, what else? How is that different from? Because I hear that every day? I really do. I talk to agency founders, my team talks to founders all the time. And so sometimes it helps have a second partner who can come in and say, Yeah, but what do you actually believe? And it takes time to really whittle down and then you actually arrive at some really unique positioning. And after hours and hours, you get there you go, okay. That's what you should be leading with on LinkedIn. That's what you believe in and having a second, you know, having a third party do that can be super helpful. That's why we all have therapists and advisors and people.
Chris DuBois 8:23
Yeah, 100%. That exercise as well, if you so I call this the every curse. If you're looking at agency websites, they're all dude, all saying the same thing. They're, they're providing everything to everyone. And in reality, then providing nothing to everyone. And they just, they're the same, you can slap a different logo on that site. And I can't tell the difference between your brand and someone else. This
Speaker 1 8:47
is gonna sound dramatic, but like, if I woke up one day and just owned like a, just another, like, you know, mid size, you know, a full service agency that does SEO and ads, and this and then it's like, I, it would be my worst nightmare. I would go back to that and say, Please, you know, give me something else. I can't stand it. There's a reason why I started the LinkedIn agency, I want to be the best full funnel full service LinkedIn agency that takes a unique approach using executives to build awareness to generate leads, that's a tight set of services, we're going a mile deep on a while mile wide. And it's not to say you can't have success with mile wide agencies, you know, they obviously exist for a reason. But if you're one of those agencies, and you do all of it, if you're not going to whittle down your services, then it's incumbent on you to whittle down your messaging, you need to have a really tight worldview, sell that worldview. And then the services all funnel in toward that worldview. But if you you know, if you come to me, and you're, you know, the 100 and 50th Best SEO shop, it's like, Alright, let's do some work. Because obviously, you know, there's a reason that you don't sign clients other than referral, like we need to actually work on your messaging here. Right.
Chris DuBois 9:56
So I guess what's the what's the approach for getting through that? In a world that's so commoditized, how are you helping them actually stand out.
Speaker 1 10:04
So this is where it can be kind of fun and fun and infuriating, maybe at the same time. But usually, this starts with us, excuse me, doing a, what we call like a thought leadership mapping session. And what we do is we take the different sort of subject matter experts throughout the organization. So usually, this is the CEO, you know, they usually come to the table with maybe a few people from their leadership team, and maybe a person or two from their delivery team, we put them all in a room together, and we shut the door. Usually, it's a virtual room, but you know, imagine the virtual door being shut. And we say, okay, we're not leaving this room until we really crack the code of like, what you all actually do differently. What you actually believe that maybe not everyone believes. And maybe it's not one thing, you believe it, maybe it's the combination of these different things you believe that make you guys special. And I believe this is something that should be happening anyway, for any company, that's, you know, if you're creating a company, you should ask yourself this question. But a lot of companies, you know, they've been in operation for a while they don't do this process. So it's a really helpful process for them. And a lot of effort again, for, you know, just LinkedIn content, right? Like, they can take this exercise and use it for, you know, everything. But we do that we put them all in a room, we've mapped out their worldview, what are some of the worldviews they have? What are some of the, you know, narratives that, you know, they're trying to tell? And then what are the different POVs different points of view that they have that ladder underneath that, and that becomes a thought leadership map, it's like an artifact that we can then take and say, Okay, let's execute against this, let's create content in different pillars according to this thought leadership map. And it becomes an artifact that we use and iterate on and add to and that's what I mean by like, a five page document for some of these brands,
Chris DuBois 11:41
right? How long is that? Just out of curiosity? How long does that process usually take you?
Speaker 1 11:46
Well, it depends. So it is, you know, one of those things where it's going to take you as long as you give it, right, if you say we have five days to do this, it'll take five days, if you tell people we have 90 minutes, you'll have a really great 90 minutes. Typically with us, you know that we're able to get it in like, you know, two sessions, both being 60 minutes, the first kind of focused on high level, the second one being more focused on sort of the the narrow, it also depends on you know, we have different packages, and those different packages come with different levels of, you know, research on our end. So, you know, we can bring together you know, who are the thought leaders in your space? What are they talking about? Who are your ideal customers? What are they, you know, who are they following? What are they talking about? Do a little bit of social listening exercise, bringing that to the table. So for some of our advanced clients, it's, you know, it can be like a really, like, a couple of weeks, but for our average client, we're doing like 260 minute sessions, basically. Gotcha.
Chris DuBois 12:37
And so once you, once you have this planned out, right, the executive, stir whoever that leader is, right, it's really going to start focusing their content around that. Do you include the team in this as well?
Unknown Speaker 12:52
Meaning the rest of their team? Yeah, like everybody.
Chris DuBois 12:55
So I guess this, let me go a little further, this was a, one of the pieces we looked at with the agency, and one that I've talked to some of my clients about, and there's always this fear that like, if my, everyone on my team is also building themselves up, they're gonna get poached, right? If they're seen as a thought leader, they're going away. And now I have to find someone else to fill that role. So I don't necessarily want them being like the name that people recognize I want it to be me, and they can just support my content, is how do you approach that or what what takes the you have on on it? Yeah,
Speaker 1 13:24
you know, I might take on this might be a little bit, I don't wanna say controversial, but I, I'm sort of, of the camp where like, if you're actively avoiding trying to hire extremely talented people who are experts in their field, and you're actively trying to prevent them from gaining visibility for your company, because you're scared, they're going to leave you, you're building a team of C players that is going to, you know, make your company fail anyway, fill your team with a players make it worth it for them to be there. If they're wanting to leave, then maybe you're not paying them enough, or maybe you're not setting the vision high enough, or maybe they're just gonna leave. And then you need to have a really great recruiting engine to find the next person up. But the reality is, to me is that if you're, you know, afraid to let your team share their expertise, then you are, you know, actively hurting your business in ways that you probably aren't coming to terms with,
Chris DuBois 14:15
I guess, my view is pretty similar to that. It's like when you start building up that kind of profile, right, where people seek seek you for thought leadership, and they see everyone else on the team is doing the same. It gives your entire team this, like, I don't know, credibility, that, like if I am part of this team, I will also be able to do these things and think this way, and be able to provide this level of results. So it's like why now it's a recruiting engine as well.
Speaker 1 14:44
100% I mean, some of the most successful companies I've seen with a strategy. They have thought leaders identified throughout their organization, who maybe they're, you know, department leads, or you know, GMs or whatever it is, and these people are just as much thought leaders tactical thought Here's as the CEO or the founder, anyone else in the C suite. And, you know, I've even seen people compensate because of that, meaning like, normally we pay this much for a director of whatever, but you are a public facing, you know, marketing tool for us. And we're generating leads, and we're trying to, you know, so we're going to do this, we're, we're going to help you build your personal brand, we're going to invest in it, we're going to give you more strategy, more resources, and we're going to compensate you a little bit more, because, you know, because you're bringing in, you know, business for us. Well, that's a great way to create, you know, aligned incentives, the only reason that person leaves is because their incentives aren't aligned with you. If they're, you know, they want more money, and you don't want to give them more money than, you know, that's that's the nature of, you know, what we're doing here, it's free market. Right. And so that's, that's, you know, that's just part of the part of the business, I
Chris DuBois 15:47
think, yeah, I think one of the sub non agency company, that's a, I think, doing this really well, exit five, were started with just Dave, Dave, you're creating content. And he has started hiring this year and bringing in other team members, and they just got up to five team members. But what's interesting is that now even these, like junior team members that they're bringing on, because everyone in the company is also liking and commenting on their posts, it's expanding the reach of those individuals, they build up faster, but now the entire company's spread is exponential. And so it's just amazing how facets, you can see that exploding. Yeah,
Speaker 1 16:25
man. I mean, think about this idea of like, the garage agency, I was talking with a friend about this, the idea that like, you know, an agency of 10 people with incredible technology, and very deep expertise, meaning you have like 10 people who are all, you know, could be directors in any other person's, you know, agency. And then very, very few sort of frontline, you know, folks, maybe you have some project managers and whatnot, that kind of agency is the future of a lot of NDA of a lot of the agency world, right, because you have technology that augments, you know, what's what's possible in terms of like the frontline actual activity, which means you can go from a team of, you know, 30 doers to a team of 10 really strategic people operating with great technology. Okay, awesome. Well, if that's the future of agencies, then you are leaving so much upside on the table, if you don't take those 10 people who are deep domain experts, and say, This is the person behind our, whatever practice our, our, you know, LinkedIn ads practice has this, this this person who's so brilliant, and who knows how they're going to do, and that's the person who structured our entire thing, and empower all those people to be able to be the thought leaders in their space. Next thing, you know, you have like a team of like, oh, man, rock stars that are all sort of building this sort of credibility for your company and driving leads. And yeah, man, there's huge upside here.
Chris DuBois 17:43
Yeah, great. So I guess let's talk when you're starting out on LinkedIn, because this is where the slog kicks in, right? You're gonna make some posts, there's very few impressions, it may be because you're just not providing the right message. It could also be that you just don't have an audience yet who's actually looking for this type of stuff. Correct. And so how do I guess how are you going to jumpstart that? And in order to know, are we even providing a message in a way that resonates with who we're trying to target?
Speaker 1 18:13
It's a great question. So this is, this is sort of a funny conundrum right? Where like, you, you have to spend time dialing in your content in terms of what you want to what you want to contribute to the conversation, you take a lot of time to build out your thought leadership map, you spend a lot of time trying to figure out, okay, if I'm going to say anything at all, what can I say that's going to be actually additive to the overall thought leadership landscape, you figure that out, and you feel confident that you have that and you're posting. But you're right, you're not going to all of a sudden see all these people flocking to you. Because LinkedIn is a community based platform, you're trying to build this community slowly around you. And it's not gonna happen overnight. It's not like Tik Tok is not just gonna get picked up, you get a billion views. So what do you do? This is where you have to be super dialed in, when it comes to looking at not how many likes you're getting not how many comments you're getting, but who is liking and who's commenting? Are you getting three people from your ICP? who commented on that post you did, and not just commented, it left these big, long walls of text and started a conversation with you about that interesting thing. You said? Well, now what you're doing is you're starting to realize you're getting signals, okay? My ICP does care about this. And not only that, but they actually care enough that they're willing to engage me in a conversation on LinkedIn because of it. That signal should be enough for you to be able to say, I'm going to go deeper into this, and I'm going to keep doubling down on this. And keep diversifying how I talk about this one subject or how I like approach this and whatever, and start bringing those people into the conversation even more, start tagging them start really building community with those people, and then start building it up that way. And so the only way that happens is if you know when you start posting, you're really paying attention to who the qualitative who is engaging, what kind of engagement are they giving me? And you'll you'll notice, if you optimize for that, after you know, a week, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, you start having bigger, bigger, bigger communities. stuff that that ICP because you're optimizing for that,
Chris DuBois 20:01
right? And I'm assuming there's a play, where you're trying to get into like in their comments and talking to you know, talking to them a difference if we are talking about this being a community building platform now, it's like, I don't just want you to come to me, I want to you to know that I'm going to you and I'm paying attention to these conversations.
Speaker 1 20:19
Correct? 100%. You know, this is, this is kind of an interesting side of the whole LinkedIn strategy is, you know, there's the really main benefit, which is the publishing of content, but then there's the actual, you know, sort of engagement with your community. And if your goal is how can I create positive, you know, interactions with my community? Posting is one way, but it's not the only way. And that's where, you know, you have to start looking at, you know, what is our? What's our cadence for engaging with our communities posts? What sorts of people do we want to be, you know, tagging in our posts? And do we want to be maybe creating co creating content with someone from our ICP, right? Like, that's interesting? Or like, what if we ran thought leadership ads, I just did a post today about b2b influencing, what if we took people from our community that we build a relationship with, and we start co creating content with them, and then boosting their posts to get in front of more of the people like them? There's so many interesting ways that you can answer the question, how do we engage with our community, but it's a huge part of it. Because if you're just this sort of, like, you know, we just post every day, and then we sort of Peace out, it's not doing it right. Right now.
Chris DuBois 21:29
So, okay, we got a bunch of directions, we can, yeah. I guess, let's, uh, someone builds their presence on LinkedIn. Now what? Right, they have people paying attention to them, what do we do from there?
Speaker 1 21:48
Now the fun begins, because, you know, there are, you know, there's so many ways you can cut up what we do. But one of those ways, you're kind of what we do is we are here to help grow that LinkedIn presence. But we're also here to help activate it, right. And so for certain clients, most of our clients, we're, you know, basically helping them, you know, grow it. And we're activating it throughout, it's not like a, you know, wait a couple of years, and then activated, we're activating it throughout. But for other clients where maybe we're actually coming in, and they've already built a little bit of a presence, now we're helping them activate that presence. And that's a huge part of our engagement. And when activating that presidents can look like is, we could spend probably three podcast episodes talking about that. But just some ideas. You know, once you've built up this community of people, your ICP who have been engaging with you, what you're really sitting on is an incredible dataset. And that data sets actually, it's yours, it's public, because what you can see is you can go back through, you go back through a year's worth of posts, and actually scrape information, this is what we do, we have some tech that we built, where you can look at all of the people within your ICP who have been engaging with your posts, you can look at, you know, score them and aggregated by likes comments, you can also look at what topics they've been engaging with, you can look at what formats have been engaging with, and you have this incredible dataset. Now you can do two things. One, you can use this dataset to inform the rest of your marketing, we should build a white paper based off of this topic, because this subset of people really seems to enjoy that. And here are all the questions they asked, and we're going to use that in the white paper. And then we're gonna send that white paper to those people. So now you can start to kind of like build your content around what your audience is doing for you. That's incredible data. And there's so many ways to use it. But then you can on the other side of things, you can actually start using this when it comes to the rest of your sales strategy or your business, your growth strategy. So can we start running thought leadership ads, and then retargeting ads on LinkedIn that take this community and are constantly surfacing opportunities for them to submit a form? Can we take this list of people and find the list of companies and then connect to all of the buying committees at each of these companies, and have the business development team or to sales? People connect to all of the people out there as and then have them start doing proactive outreach? You know, can I send personalized messages using AI tools to each one of the people in this audience, talking about things that they've engaged with in the past, referencing those things, and then giving them a unique opportunity to have a conversation with someone on my team about that specific topic. There's so many interesting things that can be done. Like that's like scratching the surface. And Martine starting to experiment with so many of these, like weird tactics that like, can only happen when you have that community built. I'll give you one more. We have a client who has such a rich community that they've actually built a new, a new product into the you know, they're an agency, but they have this community and they found a way to actually monetize this community, because they had a lot of people in that community who weren't necessarily ready to buy the full service, but who were very interested. And so they actually took some digital products and some things they'd like sort of turned some of their processes into digital products and actually sold those to that community. And we're able to make money from that audience but then also create a pathway For people to, you know, if some subset of that audience purchases the digital products, another subset of that audience moves on to the agency service. So, yeah, there's some really cool stuff you can do once you've got that audience built. Yeah,
Chris DuBois 25:10
that's a great. So I call that a bridge offer. Not sure. Yeah. Exact someone else was probably coined that term. But the but yeah, it's the idea of like, people aren't ready to buy now how can we get them to a point where they are ready, while still making some money in the process and building that trust and relationship? That's a great example.
Speaker 1 25:30
100% I mean, something that I like to do, you know, as inspiration is there's creators all over. And this is not just in b2b. But in b2c, there are people all over who have amassed communities, and I won't even say, a mass that makes it seem huge people who have communities of 10,000 people, you know, it's a micro influencer. But that's a tight knit community. And in the b2b world, you don't need a million, I don't need a million people to sign up for my service, right? It's probably like, My Tam is like, I mean, way less than that. And there's probably only like, you know, 100 new clients that really I mean, I, that are like the top of the top that I really want. So what you can do is you can look to some of these people who have these audiences, you can see some inspiration for what people are doing. And there's some really incredible stuff out there. I mean, there are some b2c influencers who have created these, like communities and ecosystems that are just, they're brilliant. I mean, the way they use live video, the way they integrate digital products, the way they bring in person experiences into the mix, give aways the way that I mean, they're creating, like an ecosystem. And, and it's incredible thing, and if you take inspiration from those places, you realize like, oh, shoot, like, We're not just building, you know, our LinkedIn presence, we're building like a community. And we can activate that in so many cool ways,
Chris DuBois 26:41
right? So I think I've been playing with this idea of like, the big the big three things, I can give you some leverage pretty quickly, for potential can access and assets, right assets, simple, if I get something that's gonna make money over the long term, great. But the attention, like if you can control an audience, but is attention, like that's a huge leverage point to be able to get them looking at whatever you need. And on the access side, if I have the right people in my network, right, that I can go to, to quickly make certain things happen, or quickly access certain information can go a long way. But I think through LinkedIn, and this community building, like you're, you're gaining the ability to create all three of these.
Speaker 1 27:22
It's so well said, Dude, I mean, absolutely, absolutely. You know, when you shared that it made me think about, so I had a conversation with a prospect recently, who, you know, we started to, you know, really talking about, you know, what this could look like from there, they're sort of seed round software company, and the founder, basically, he's very much aligned with the way I think about, you know, marketing and, and, you know, founder led marketing in particular. And we sort of noodled on this idea that, you know, you could basically take his product, and create a little bit of a sort of a self generating machine, where, essentially, you're relying on building that community from day one. And you're actually building that almost into the go to market plan for the product. So here's what I mean is like, they have a lot of data, a lot of data that they're creating, and plugging into their product. And basically, you're turning that data into content that is constantly being rolled out. And so what you have is, it's actually much less about the individual founder, and much more about the kind of data coming out of this organization. And that data is like stuff that no one's ever seen before. And we're basically just, you know, talking about using the founder as the avatar for all this data to come out into the world. And the reason I bring that up is that you can, if you start as a small agency, or small software company, whatever it is, you start from the very beginning planning, your actual your product growth, or your service growth with this community in mind that you're trying to build with you, you can actually find really unique ways to build these things in unison, and create pathways for all the value that's happening in your product, whether that's the data you're creating, or that's the you know, the studies you're doing or whatever it is, and find ways to funnel that into your community from day one. And it's yeah, man, if you're, if you're willing to take this journey, and you believe this as part of your marketing journey for your agency, you can build your company and your marketing kind of side by side. And it's a it's a really cool experience. Yeah.
Chris DuBois 29:20
So I want to talk tools a bit with the caveat that I am a firm believer that a tool does not solve all your problems if you're not looking at the problem the right way, right. But I know the audience is probably going to be interested in in tools. For instance, AI has created all these LinkedIn post generators, tap Leo post wise, all these others I played with them all. I've gotten some good posts from him, but it's like it doesn't Sure. It's like once you start outsourcing your thinking, you start getting diminishing results right? You start sounding like everybody else is kind of my take, I guess what? How are you viewing These tools?
Speaker 1 30:02
Yeah, it's great question. I think in general, I'm bullish on things like AI. And I really like the idea of being able to use AI to increase efficiency, wherever you can. I think that what we're where we're at today is that the vast majority of AI tools, whether you're just using chat, GPT, or Claude, or some other, you know, AI post generator, we're not at a place yet where you can rely on that entirely to create your content for you. We're just not will we be in 12 months? Maybe. But, you know, do you know anyone can go in to chat up to you and say, write me a LinkedIn post about X, Y, or Z, and you'll quickly see the quality that you get, it's pretty, pretty, pretty damn low. Now, can that improve? Yeah, absolutely can improve what you need, I think what what you actually brought up was a really good point, which is what founders need to be really careful with, is that we have a tendency when we want to use these sorts of tools to out to miss the pieces that make the post what it is, which is, what's the core message of the post, what's the thrust of the post, and oftentimes, the actual the writing exercise is what gets you to really refine that, to actually know what's the thrust of what I'm trying to say, the process of actually taking what's in your brain and putting it out into writing. It helps you refine that. Whereas if you take your first thought, you just write it out in a prompt, and then you just hit go and tweak, tweak, tweak, tweak, tweak, what you're where you may arrive is actually maybe a quite a bit of a distance away from what you could have arrived at if you allowed your brain to work, while you also wrote at the same time. So here's what I'll say, continue to test these tools, continue to see what you can and can't get out of them. But remember that it is a writing tool. It is not an automatic LinkedIn post generator, it is a writing tool. And just like any other tool, there needs to be an operator, that operator needs to know how they're using the tool and why they're using the tool, you need to check the tool you need to do XYZ with the tool. And you know, if you're thinking that this is like, Oh, this is the best shortcut ever, I'll just, you know, create 30, LinkedIn posts with tragic beauty and it'll take me you know, half a day and then I'm good, then you are, you know, you're sorely mistaken. That's not how tools work tools help you do something a bit more efficient. But if you're looking for like a, you know, I can outsource my own my own unique thoughts to charge a beauty, like, that's just not going to happen. So here's what I'll say, as an agency, here's how we're thinking about this. I'm not out there to create a content studio, I'm not out there to basically say, you know, we'll write your LinkedIn posts for you and you pay us money. And then that's it. I'm out there to create a full funnel LinkedIn agency, because at the end of the day, regardless of what happens with Chad GPT. And if three years from now it can write exactly like you and it's perfect, great. I don't that actually doesn't bug me. In fact, that makes me excited because now we get to spend more time on all the other things that we've talked about in this conversation, how contextually you want to make the posts the strategy behind the post, how you activate on the post all that stuff? So we're embracing it. That's kind of how we're seeing AI. And, and I feel bad for you know, some of our competitors who just focused on, you know, we're a content shop? Well, I think most content shops are going to struggle and you know, 1824 months?
Chris DuBois 33:18
Do you use anything for when you're looking at just data. So I use the shield app to just track LinkedIn content?
Speaker 1 33:29
Yes, so we have a combination of third party tools, as well as some proprietary stuff we built. As far as third party tools go, some of the ones I'd recommend shield is great. It's still a little bit clunky. They're a small team, you know, they, they do what they can, all of these tools, tap Leo shield, they rely on Google Chrome extensions. And like, you know, they basically use a synced Chrome extension in order to be able to scrape your data and bring it back to you. And it's interesting, and it's great. And if you're sort of like a DIY er, and you're going to try to do this yourself, I think it's definitely worth signing up for for shield or for Tableau or whatever. I will say, if you're looking for some of the data that I think you're going to need to have the most success such as, like, who you're you know, how many, how many people in your latest 10 posts? Were from your ICP? And who are those people? And, you know, what's the total? How do you score them based off of engagement, and what topics performed best with this specific part of your ICP? That's where you're getting into, like, it only makes sense for us as an agency to build that tool. Because you know, it can be done at scale in the way that like, you know, shield can So yeah, just getting started work with those other tools, shield tapeo those are ones I'd recommend. But if you're looking for like that next level of data, you're gonna have to work with an agency like us that built some proprietary tech to do it basically,
Chris DuBois 34:49
are you looking at at some point turning that proprietary tech into something outward facing?
Speaker 1 34:56
I don't think so. And I have two ideas about this. One is that I think it makes us extremely sticky as an agency. And you know, my lifetime value for a customer as an agency can go way up. And if we're having customers for clients for three, four or five years, if we're able to charge them more, because our you know, and they don't want to leave, because we have great technology. I also think that when you only have a certain client base, and you say, how can we provide? How can we use technology to provide the most value to these people, as opposed to how can we get this process to work with 10,000 customers? I think what you're able to achieve in terms of innovation is a lot higher in the former situation, when you don't have to productize it and market it and plus building a software company. He's just like, a whole different business model, like I'm out to build an extremely intelligent agency that uses tech to make our service better. And I think, you know, once I decided that in the beginning, it's sort of a kind of closed the door on software as a service.
Chris DuBois 35:50
Yeah. So as we as we wind down here, I guess if you had to give just one piece of advice to an agency owner, so they could get started on LinkedIn today. What would that be? So
Speaker 1 36:05
I think the one most important important piece of advice, if you're going to get started on this today, is don't stop. And I know that seems like a repeat of what I said before. But it's not because the reality is, is that this is a this is a journey, this is a climbing up a mountain. And you're going to learn a lot on this journey. And if you learn it while working with us, great. And if you learn it on your own, and you you know, fall into the crevices, and you know, roll your ankle and whatever, like great, but when you take that very first step, recognize that as a step on a journey, and that it is not a you're going It's like going to the gym, you know, I'm saying everyone can relate to this, if you're making the decision to lace up those shoes, make the decision for the next for the rest of your life, right? Like you're lacing up your shoes, because you've made the decision that for the rest of your life. I am somebody who cares about fitness and somebody cares about my physical health, you're not making that decision, because you want to work out 10 times and then look better. So if you're going to lace up the shoes, if you're going to start posting on LinkedIn, if you're going to start taking this strategy seriously, do it with the intention of making it a large part of your business for a long time. Don't do it with the end, you know, I'd rather a company wait until they're really ready to give it a full shot, then do it for a few months get discouraged and then quit.
Chris DuBois 37:16
sense. Alright, Garrett, I got two more questions for you. The first being sweet. What book do you recommend every agency leader should read? Oh, God, there's
Speaker 1 37:28
so many. Okay, I'll go with the easiest answer, which is traction. I'm a big believer in the Eos system, to basically it's a business management system. There's nothing necessarily novel about the concepts. It's more than just that it is a framework, right? There are many business frameworks, you can pick any that you like. But it's important that you do pick one because traction for us, or Eos, the system for us provides structure from which we can build our business. And I think all agencies should have some type of framework or structure. So that's one that I would say, read if you don't have you know framework for how you're building your company and retraction get to use the OS system.
Chris DuBois 38:09
Awesome. Last question, Where can people learn more from you?
Speaker 1 38:13
Ah, yes, my favorite question. Two places one, you can follow me on LinkedIn. Obviously. Eric Caudill G Yeah. Yeah, it's a really great place to get especially some of this content, you know, fed into your feed. Second place is our website obviously, influence its ai NFLUENT. It's like the word influential without the eihl and then.co. And I always tell people.com was like a million dollars. I think it was like 1.5 million. So anyway, it's dot co. Or find me Garrett Caudill. Skerrit GA r e t one T on LinkedIn. Awesome.
Chris DuBois 38:47
Alright, yeah. Thanks for joining.
Unknown Speaker 38:50
Awesome. Thanks, Chris. Thanks for having me. It was fun.
Chris DuBois 38:58
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Transcribed by https://otter.ai