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Welcome to "Visionary Voices" the podcast where we dive into the minds of business owners, founders, executives, and everyone in between.
Each episode brings you face-to-face with the leading lights of industry and innovation.
Join us as we uncover the stories behind the success and the lessons learned along the way.
Whether you're climbing the corporate ladder or just starting your business journey, these are the conversations you need to hear - packed with visionary voices and insights.
Let's begin.
So Kelly, thank you so much for taking the time to jump on today's episode.
Could you give us a top level view about what it is that you're working on right now and
your journey so far?
Absolutely, thanks for having me here on the show.
So I'm a fractional sales and marketing leadership consultant.
Fractional defined by a embedded part-time executive.
So my background is 15 years and the first portion of it I spent managing marketing
in-house primarily for B2B professional service companies.
And then the second half of my career I pivoted to do consultative selling and really...
approached sales not through the lens of classic outbound and cold calling, but through
the lens of thought leadership.
So creating fireside chats and podcasts and getting involved in conference speaking and
really providing education and value to the audience that I wanted to get in front of and
developed a really great network along the way.
A lot of friends and also a lot of inbound opportunities that generated revenue.
So now I have my own company called Thoughtful Resound where I offer that approach.
to other organizations that are either trying to navigate, we've been doing sales the same
way and it's not working as well.
So how do we pivot our salespeople or our key leaders to approach this world of being
experts, being known for what they do, adding value so that when ideal prospects have a
need, they come to us or check out our marketing and see what else we should be doing
because we've been checking the boxes for a long time.
So that is what I'm doing and I'm having a lot of fun with it.
Yeah, amazing.
And we're very much aligned on that side of the marketing and sales process.
So we can definitely unpack that a little bit later on, but I'd love to zoom into the
journey that you've gone on to really get to this point.
So, I mean, I know you're working within the marketing space and now you own your own
business.
So for you, what was, I guess, the mindset shifts that you had to go through from, I
guess, being an employee and then actually owning the company and how did you navigate
that over the last few years?
I know everybody's journey is so different.
And what I tend to hear is people say, I've always wanted to start my own company.
I've just been waiting for the right time.
And that isn't my story.
My husband's a serial entrepreneur.
So I value like the stability of knowing my paycheck and things like that.
But I've also been quite an intrapreneur in every role that I've had.
So most of the roles that I've held prior to starting my own company, I reported directly
to the CEO who was a visionary and they established this big...
really dream of where they wanted the company to go.
And then I wore the hat of how to get us there, right?
So what could I do?
What teams could I bring in to make that happen?
And so I developed this skillset along the way of being quite entrepreneurial, but in a,
we'll call it like a safer environment, right?
I had a W-2, I could experiment with different initiatives and engagements and managing
marketing enabled me to wear a lot of hats within marketing communications.
And then moving into the digital marketing agency world where I did consultative selling,
I needed to learn how do I put pricing packages together and how do you help educate a
prospect along the way to have it be a better partnership down the road.
And so all of those skillsets that are really important when you have your own company,
especially when you're starting out and you're wearing a lot of those hats, those came
naturally throughout my career.
And then I hit a role.
where I was leading sales and marketing and realized that the company and I had just
different visions of how to approach sales.
And that's where I really started realizing when I pivoted from marketing into sales, I
took a different approach than most sales people take.
And I didn't want to cold call.
I didn't want to be viewed as a commodity.
And I don't think there's anything wrong with cold calling.
think that there's a lot of great people out there right now that share insights about
that outbound approach.
Sarah Yue comes to mind for example, who if you're if you spend any time on LinkedIn and
you're in the sales space you know her and she's doing a phenomenal job with trainings.
But for me, it wasn't a comfort zone.
And so I wanted to have it be a little bit more comfortable of okay I know how to produce
great content that people pay attention to and it helps them.
So how do I do that and build a network at the same time and essentially sell without
selling.
And so I found myself in a role that I was really excited about.
the organization and what we were doing and found that I just had a different philosophy
of sales.
Rather than doing the outbound approach, which is what the company was looking for, I
wanted to approach it through thought leadership.
And it was through a series of mentorship conversations, actually, with people that I've
known for years throughout my career.
The idea just kept coming up.
What if you opened your own?
Like what your mindset around this is really needed in today's world.
know, sales doesn't look the same.
It isn't responding the same.
as it always has.
And it is really important to figure out what is your brand?
How do you show up in the world?
And how can you generate revenue out of that as a business leader or a sales professional?
And so that was really the journey.
I hit a pivot point where I realized a W2 role was not, and air quotes if you're not
seeing this, safer, so to speak, than doing my own thing.
And I had always thought it would be.
But at that time I was selling into companies in the tech space that were experiencing a
ton of layoffs.
And I hadn't personally been affected by that.
I hadn't known many people close to me who had.
But I was starting to see so many people I was in dialogue with, their emails would
bounce.
Because literally they got let go or like half their team had been let go.
And so it started to feel a little bit like, wow, I've put so much security in the thought
of a W-2.
But that could change at any point.
And if I create my own book of business, I have my eggs in different baskets and I get to
do
work that I find really fulfilling.
And so that was the pivot for me and I realized I'm more excited about starting my own
fractional consulting business and seeing if I like it than any role I could network my
way into or get recruited into.
And so I just figured I'm gonna try it.
And in my mind, I'm such an achiever and I know a lot of people listening to this probably
are, I didn't want to view it through the lens of pass or fail.
because then I didn't think I would actually go for it in the beginning, right?
If I thought I might fail, I might not wanna go for it.
So I've never thought that I reframed my mind from the beginning of it's a season, it's a
chapter, and I'm gonna lean into it.
And now I've been doing it for about a year and a half, and I've worked with 14, 15
different clients along the way, some in long-term retainer capacities, some in project
capacities, and I really enjoy it.
And it's fun to add value to those organizations.
Yeah, such a cool journey.
And what seems to be a common trend among people that I've been speaking to throughout
this podcast is, they're working within a role within a job somewhere and they're like, do
you know what, this, this isn't being done right.
And then they're like, do you know what, we can actually make this change.
And they go and start their own business around that thing.
And that seems to be a very common trait, I think around the successful entrepreneurs,
because basically what's happened is, you know, you've kind of looked out into the
marketplace and it's like.
this isn't right and you're creating that product market fit in a way before you even set
something up, right?
Because you've understood the problem and you've kind of witnessed that.
And then you're developing your services around the thing you've witnessed rather than
doing the other way, just creating a product and thinking people need it.
And so you're establishing a product market fit before you get started, which I think is
so important from an entrepreneurial point of view for sure.
Yeah.
have people hungry for that becomes a much easier launching pad.
And it's funny because one of the mentors I have, I was sharing with her, different people
are telling me that they would be interested in working with me if I ever do this.
And she has just an incredible amount of experience.
She's an executive within a large brand and
It took her saying to me, Kelly, that's a golden opportunity.
The fact that you have clients waiting to work with you before even really getting this
thing going, before even deciding if you want to do it.
And it helped to hear that from an external perspective because I was thinking about it
along the lines of, yeah, that's pretty cool.
Huh?
Well, we'll see.
That's an option.
But to hear someone else say that, I realized like, okay, this is actually a really unique
point of time.
And so.
It gave me the nudge to actually really decide to do it.
Definitely, definitely.
And I guess zooming into the service offering of what it is that you do.
So we're talking about sales and a lot of people in terms of, I guess, my point of view
from people and other businesses is they're very transactional in the way they've been
approaching their sales and marketing combined, right?
It's like, okay, how many emails can we send?
And what's the conversion on that?
And they're all sales emails or let's do a thousand call calls and try and convert X
amount.
But people are missing the relationship point of
of sales itself.
And I think people are starting to actually feel that.
I think for a period of time, it definitely did work for sure.
But as the marketplace has become busier and everyone's doing the same thing, it's made it
very difficult to become successful in those areas.
Obviously they have a place, it's the efficacy of it has become less and less.
So is that what you're seeing in the marketplace and how do you approach it when you're
looking to, I guess, change the sales process and change their mindset around
transactional selling versus relationship style selling?
Yeah, it is what I'm seeing in the market.
I'm seeing, as we all are with AI becoming more more common, everyone has the ability to
send a million messages to a million people all at once.
And so as buyers, which we're all buyers of different products and services, right?
We get bombarded.
And then it creates this scenario where you're really skeptical to listen to someone
coming to you, telling you, you must have this problem that they think you have just
because they have something that they think will solve it.
I'll name another individual who I think does a great job on this particular message.
Jen Allen Knuth, if you're familiar with her on LinkedIn.
She talks a lot about the cost of inaction.
So as opposed to selling to someone through the lens of, hey, you need to do this because
it's going to make your life so much better.
Actually taking a step back and identifying, is there a problem here to fix in the first
place?
And if you don't fix the problem, what happens?
And so that...
resonates with me so strongly because my approach to selling is by adding value and
sharing insights.
And so if you as a seller can identify what your prospects problems are, which you know,
right, because your product or service solves them, otherwise they wouldn't be your
prospects.
If you can make those problems visible and solvable, even without you, you become that
trusted voice.
So if you're sharing video content, social content,
you know, built into your sales enablement, all of these different touch points, and you
are essentially sharing with them, hey, this is probably what you're seeing, probably what
you're experiencing, and these are things you can do to fix it, right?
These are the things that even without someone like me, even without someone like our
company, these are like some of the steps that you can do, but naturally what happens is
those individuals, those prospects hit a point where they don't have capacity or skill set
to implement the changes needed to get to the other side, and then they look to you.
An example I like to use is like if if somebody wanted a six-pack, right?
Like you can look online and find all the things to do like you eat you eat this way you
work out this way you get this much sleep whatever and then of course there's a million
variables with that particular scenario, but It may not happen unless you hire a physical
or a personal trainer and like they walk you through the process but if you're scrolling
and a personal trainers post dives right into
Okay, now are you eating enough vegetables?
Because you really need to be not eating at this restaurant or this restaurant.
You need to be eating vegetables and meat.
Like, I'm gonna scroll right by that, right?
Like that's not exciting.
That's like the responsibility angle of what they're actually helping you do and how to
work out and how to have proper nutrition.
But if they start with, okay, imagine this, you're on a beach and then like tell the story
of the future state of where you want to go and then share with you how you can accomplish
it.
All right, well then when you decide it's not cutting it the way you're doing it.
who are you going to go to?
Right?
You're going to go to them, not someone who's selling to you in a boring service product
way, or someone who's just trying to like create enough noise around you that they pay
attention to them.
Yeah, yeah, no, definitely.
And the other thing with that, especially content is, you know, trust and authority closes
deals.
And so the more time they've, they've seen you do it.
When someone can consume some of your content and then they jump on a call with you, they
kind of feel like they know you already, at least in my experience, that's what it's been
like.
It's, I feel like I already, already know who they are.
And so you've already started from a much higher place than someone that's completely
cold, right?
It doesn't know anything about you at all.
And so I think the power of that is so important.
Yeah, yeah, that as well.
Right.
And it's like, it can reduce the sale cycle time by a massive amount because you're not
going through all those processes to build that trust and that authority, which can take a
long time if they are coming from cold.
And then the other thing as well is my experience has been the prospects or clients that
I've got through say cold channels.
They've been in a way like lower quality than ones that have come through relationships
themselves.
Is that something you've witnessed as well from the companies you've worked with?
I have, I have.
I'll even give my own example.
So when I was building a digital marketing agency brand, right?
So we had the delivery team that was phenomenal at SEO and paid and content and fill in
the blanks, but no one knew this brand name and we were bringing it to the market.
And naturally there's competitors in every space and there's competitors in the industry
we were going after for our segment of digital marketing.
And it was just interesting to see how
When we started out, we were running LinkedIn ads and targeting very specific buyers.
And we were getting inbound leads, but there were people who were kicking tires, a little
bit more skeptical, know, tell me what, like why you guys, why should I even be doing
marketing in the first place?
And I was finding in those early day conversations that there was a lot of education that
I needed to do of, okay, I know you want the end result of all the leads, but it does not
make sense to run ads on Google.
or on social if your website is crap and you're driving people back to your website.
So there's a lot of education in the sales process to even get them to a point to have a
logical offering that would help them.
And then when I started doing these, these insights videos and hosting fireside chats and
bringing clients and prospective clients and industry partners on those and talking about
the challenges they were seeing and how they were solving them for customers and things
like that or how they were solving them for themselves.
People started coming.
to me and everything pivoted.
We shut off the old ads because we're like these actually aren't generating the right type
of lead for us.
And 95 % of the business I closed with that company came from seeing me on LinkedIn or
seeing things that we were doing out in the marketplace.
And they did come way, way, way more educated because at that point they had already
concluded before the call.
This was very common.
I know that I need this help.
And I know that you are one of the best companies suited to help me because you know my
industry.
So we weren't to shoo in for the SOW, but we were absolutely on the short list and usually
the one that they trusted most coming into it.
So it turned from a, have to beg you to understand this process and please work with us.
And that wasn't how I approached my conversations, but that's how it felt behind the
scenes to it was ours to lose.
Right?
Like it was ours to find, there an alignment here?
Because if there is, there is, if there isn't, there isn't.
And what it allowed me to do and the organization to do is we swam upstream three
different times of, okay, this is the typical retainer level.
All right, well, we're now offering more sophisticated services.
Let's expand that, let's expand that.
And each time it required a pivot of the type of content we were producing because we were
speaking to a different buyer.
We went from speaking...
to the really small boutique shops in our industry, to the more medium, to the largest
global brands in that space.
And not the exact same service offerings, right?
They built over time, but the price tags built significantly too.
And that model of selling through the lens of thought leadership and building
relationships and building trust and having people recognize me and recognize the brand,
it worked the whole time.
And so it was quite cool to see the evolution of that.
Yeah, definitely.
I think what we're, I guess, for the, for the audience to be talking about, you know, the
lead quality, right?
Is it's so funny.
I see all the ads all the time of like cold outbound agency saying, look, we're going to
get you 500 leads, 500 appointments in the next like two days or whatever.
And it's like, well, okay, maybe you can do that.
Let's say you can.
What is the quality of those conversations going to be?
Um, they're not going to be high quality conversations realistically, because you haven't
taken the time to go through all these steps that you've just been talking about here.
like educating the prospect, making them really understand and then only coming to you,
you know, when it does actually make sense and there's an alignment there.
so I think, I think that's really cool.
And I think as well is the, especially for consultancies and like service based
businesses, I think if you can optimize lead quality, so every conversation that you're
having is really high quality in terms of operations sales team, like the size of that
managing that it becomes so much easier as well.
you know, some of the best clients that I've, I've worked with, they take this approach
where it is relationship first and they have a super small lean sales team, and marketing
team as well.
And they don't need like this big bloated, like sales organization right within their
company because they're just so good at having less conversations, but higher quality.
which really just helps them in all areas, especially in the operations as well.
and make them run as lean as they can.
Yeah, definitely.
to that, if I were to name a certain product type, like within a tech stack, you could
probably think of someone who is a really good spokesperson for that, for a brand that
offers it on LinkedIn.
And the only reason you may know that brand is because that person is doing a great job
talking about it.
and then you feel like you know them and the next time you have a need for that or if
someone else says they have a need for it, you think of that person and even if you
haven't used their product or even one of their competitors products, you're more likely
to say, check out, check out this person, check out that person.
Like at least as far as I know, they seem to know a lot about what they're talking about
in that area.
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
mean, I think all the all the tools that I use right is come from some champions on
LinkedIn preaching about the product and showing them how they're using it right.
And that's how I found it through through this context itself.
And so, yeah, I completely agree in alignment there.
Yeah, definitely, definitely.
of the solution offering.
Yeah, for sure.
And then I guess with your current business and...
Sorry, one sec.
I think it's disconnected on my side.
Sorry, is there a bit of a lag for you when we're like kind of talking?
No, there isn't.
It must, I don't know what's happening.
Shoot.
Okay.
It just, I just thought you were like waiting to see if I had anything else to say.
It doesn't, it doesn't feel like a lag to me.
Yeah, mine I think there is a little bit of a lag.
are you in the u.s.
right now you outside the u.s.
on the side
Puerto Rico.
You want to put, okay.
The only reason why it's saying is I could, do you have like a WhatsApp number?
Because my lag on here is like really, really big.
So it might be easier for like voice call on WhatsApp and then we'll just keep this
recording if that makes sense.
Sure.
So you just want to call me through WhatsApp and then I'll bump my headphones to this and
then we just keep chatting.
Will it capture for Riverside?
Um, yeah, so what we'll we'll keep the mics on here, um, and just turn the speaker down,
if that makes sense.
Yeah, just for the voice.
Yeah, what was your number?
Okay, 320, 583.
Oh yeah, plus one.
Yeah, plus one, 320, and then 7460.
Yes, as long as I don't hit mute on the mic and just turn it down, we should be the same.
Cool.
Let me get this synced.
Is that, can you hear me now?
Yes, I can.
Yeah, that's, that's way better.
I was really struggling there for a little bit.
No worries.
so your, your mic's still on, isn't it?
On your, on your, Riverside.
Just to check.
says Yeti.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Perfect.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that should still be recording.
Yeah.
No, that's fine.
The speaker's fine.
It's just a mic.
Yeah.
Yeah, all good.
I see.
Yeah.
the speaker was through the Mac, but I just hit mute on it.
So I don't have an echo coming through.
Okay, all good, all good.
Okay, let's pick up where we were just...
where we were just at.
Okay.
Okay, yeah, we'll cut that out.
Yeah, yeah, sure.
Yeah, that's fine.
We'll click this section out anyway.
That's all good.
So I guess from your service delivery and what you're currently working on, where do you
foresee, you know, changes happening within our industry?
Because I know AI has become a big thing, especially for outbound agencies and everything
like that.
But within relationship selling itself, where do you foresee this type of tech being used
and are you using it yourself with the clients that you have right now?
Yeah, that is a great question.
think there are ways to create more efficiency using AI.
And I've seen this for different thought leaders, right?
Where they've got this idea down and they're like, I just don't know the best way to say
it.
So using a tool to put a prompt in, right?
Like chat GPT, for example, and say, how do I better say XYZ to create social posts?
I think the challenge is when it stops sounding like them and sounds more...
robotic or clunky or just cumbersome.
think there's a lot of value to having it still sound authentic.
I've heard people refer to AI as an eager intern.
And I love that description because there's a lot of things it can do, but you still need
to get back in there and say, okay, is this what I want to accomplish or are these the
parameters?
But there's some really amazing tools out there, right?
So like Fathom AI, which is a note taker, like that can transcribe an entire call.
as it goes and then within 30 seconds of ending like an intake call where you're digesting
information from a client, it kicks out a summary.
And literally you can have different types of summaries where it's like this was a sales
call or this was an onboarding call or this was a whatever you might need.
So I love things like that.
And then even to use, let's say a podcast, right?
You've got the transcript from the podcast.
pre-AI, you would have needed to read through that transcript, write a blog, know, like
whatever other mediums that you want to translate it to were very manual.
Now it's super slick just to be able to drop it into an AI tool and have it take and run.
So yeah, I think it's a great tool or a great development for our industry.
There's one that I came across recently called Stella and
It's got some cool features.
I'd met the founder of it.
Her name is Adriana Lika.
She and her co-founder launched Try It On AI, which was one of the very first like
headshot AI tools.
And I played around with it and posted, this was at this point a couple of years ago, and
said, can anybody spot the real photo?
Because my husband literally couldn't.
He was like, I don't know which one of these is not a photo shoot because they look so
real and that was even a while ago.
And so I've been following their journey.
And they launched this company called Stella that essentially you can plug in your social
channels, plug in your competitors, social channels, give it some prompts, and then it
will actually create the entire post.
Like the image gets created and the copy gets created.
They do the same with blogs.
They even do the same with like TikTok style videos.
If you see a trend that you like, you can plug into the chat and say, do this trend, but
with.
this type of an audience and this is the goal I'm trying to accomplish with it and it'll
spit out the whole script.
So it'll be like shot by shot, this is what you could have in that shot and this is what
you could say and then you can go shoot it.
So I'm seeing things like that.
I think it would be fascinating if I were at the point in my career of just a few years
out of school implementing marketing, like just the amount of time savings is kind of
wild.
But I think it's really important for marketers to lean into if there is efficiency
created, what...
other value can I offer to the company?
So that you don't end up in a spot where a CEO or whatever ultimate department you roll up
through says, well, either I could hire you for this amount or I could have this tool,
right?
Like there still needs to be brand oversight to any tool.
But instead of it being like, shoot, well, that was going to be 20 hours in my 40 hours a
week job.
Like, okay, well, what else can you pivot into that can add value to the company?
So.
I think it's a touchy delicate subject in the world of sales and marketing, but I do think
the human approach becomes very evident when it's missing.
And you see that.
And so I think that's always going to be important.
no, I completely agree with that as well is, you know, can spot some AI generated content
for sure, especially written, I think, you know, you can understand when things are put
together.
But that being said, the improvement that I've seen over the last two years, especially
even with written or as we said, the photos as well, it's crazy.
Um, like some of the outputs you can get now, because people are getting much better at
the prompt engineering side of it as well.
Uh, but to your point, you know, especially in marketing and sales, I mean, we're seeing
it all the time.
There's so many new tools saying, Hey, look, you can have an AI SDR or AI BDR or whatever
that can do the work of 20, 20 reps.
Right.
And it's like, things like that is scary for the industry because ultimately so many
people are in those jobs.
And so it will be a case of, look, if they are adding in AI or whatever, like how else can
you add value to the company?
You know, as you said,
and I think within the marketing and sales space, the value add to the company is going to
be the knowledge on how to use the AI tools in the right way.
think ultimately that's where we're going to be getting to.
I mean, it's, kind of like how, you know, Google ads and Facebook ads are now right.
Media buyers, pretty much what they're doing is they're figuring out ways to program, the
ad to the algorithm spits out the result that they're looking for.
It's pretty much going to be the same thing, but just in obviously, you know, other areas
within sales and marketing.
It's just how you use the tools itself is where the value add can be seen.
but that being said, it's going to be very interesting the next five years, I think.
think the first two years is like teething issues where people are seeing what's actually
possible, what they can use it for.
The next five years is where the implementation stage for a lot of companies is going to,
it's going to be there.
and, yeah, so, mean, with, with the clients that you're seeing, you know, are you seeing
any unique use cases with this new technology within their sales and marketing at all?
Are they all kind of dipping their turn the water a little bit, but not fully redoing
departments or redoing entire processes because of this technology?
Yeah.
You know, I think, I think it depends on which industry we're talking about.
So I do a lot of work in the staffing and recruiting industry.
And so in that sense, there's still a really high relationship touch, right?
Like I'm not seeing AI fully take over sourcing a candidate, doing the full interview
process, presenting them to the client, right?
Like there's elements that are streamlined, but there's still that hands-on relationship
component.
Same with the sales side of that approach.
And I work within a variety of industries and right now I'm seeing it more implemented for
internal optimization, we'll call it.
Like from what I've seen, there's kind of two ways to utilize AI.
One is how do we get better at our jobs and more efficient at our jobs?
And the other is how do we create a product with AI that we can then market?
So an example of this would be,
I'm trying to think of good example.
you know, if the favorite store that you have, like if you can give it a prompt that says,
tell me anytime there are clothes that look like these types of things that become
available at Target and then the Target app, then automate all of that.
And not just through like an email, like, hey, here's your stuff.
like setting up an appointment and acting as a personal shopper or like proactively
mailing you those like.
those types of pieces being strung together would be an added feature that target as a
clothing brand, as you know, more than clothes, but as they could offer, they would
generate more revenue through it as opposed to just targets marketers that post on social
utilizing a tool to make their marketing posts easier.
So I think that will become more and more interesting to see which industries take it
beyond the how do I get efficient, which I think every industry is exploring right now to
How do I make revenue off of AI more and more?
Yeah, yeah.
And I think as well, like to your point there is, you know, those are some very unique
ways it can be used.
And I think right now with the point we're up with in AI, it's like, oh, that'd be so cool
if they were actually doing those things like calling us whenever this thing has been
brought into stock and setting up that appointment and everything.
But then it's going to be a case of, you know, in the next, to say 10 years.
If everyone's doing the same thing, and I'm kind of feeling the same way about some of
like the AI generated content in terms of social posts, they all kind of sound the same
and they all kind of blend into one thing.
and so will it be the same thing with some of these unique ways to use AI?
It's just going to become the normal thing and it won't actually become that competitive
advantage anymore.
like it's going to be interesting how that I think shifts and changes over time.
but you know, to your point about recruitment and staffing, you know, I have a lot of
experience within, within that industry as well.
I've worked in a recruitment agency, within the marketing side of it on top of it all.
And so it very much is relationship based.
Like you need to, you need to have someone there to handle that side of things.
but the internal operations is, is where they're really seeing, a lot of the, benefit of
AI and automation as well, you know, little things like keeping CRMs clean up to date with
data.
that side of it is saved so much time for, for the reps that work there.
like it's crazy.
And like companies like Clay, for example, when it comes down to putting together those
lead lists and that data and even finding the best candidates as well, right?
You can use these tools to do that.
And it speeds up the process so, so much.
I think Clay is probably one of the hottest tools, right?
Within the like GTM world right now.
I mean, they're doing a phenomenal job with growing that company.
It's crazy.
It's like $1 billion valuation now or something.
I didn't realize that.
Well, and they've done a phenomenal job with, you know, in every other social platform,
it's called influencers and LinkedIn, it's called content creators, right?
But they've done a very good job of tapping into content creators who are advocates for
their brand and telling use cases and just saying, this is how I'm using clay.
This is how you can use clay.
Yeah, clay is a really unique one because, I mean, as the name insinuates, it can be
molded into anything.
And the more use cases you hear, the more you're like,
What?
That's the same tool?
You can do that too.
And because of that, it's evident that it's complicated when you get in there in the sense
of like, where do I even go?
Like, where do I start?
And so it's been really vital for them as a tool to say, all right, we need people to tell
the story beyond just our own brand of how to do this.
And I think that's a really cool development over the last number of years, right?
Like we've got like...
TikTok and Instagram and just all these different places where people are doing unboxings
and whatnot on the product side and the B2C side.
But now we're starting to see it, especially in the last year, become heavier adopted in
the B2B professional side.
Or like, how do you take someone who has a following in this developed trust and rapport
and tie them with these logical brands that have the same audience as them or...
you know, would be utilized by them.
And I think it's a cool, I think is a really cool development because it's kind of like an
advertorial, right?
Like it's not pure editorial content because there's often a payment involved.
But it's also not pure ad because it's not just the company telling you.
You've got like this this middle ground of someone they care about their brand.
So they're probably not going to make something up if they don't like how a tool worked.
And so it's been helpful for me because it's introduced me to multiple tools that
honestly, I probably never would have come across.
but I'm seeing people promote and talk about them as a part of their own journey and
they're not employed by the company that they're promoting it for.
Yeah
Yes.
hold on.
can't hear you.
Okay.
You're back.
You're back.
It's fine.
Sorry.
I think I missed you for a seconds, but, but yeah, you know, the LinkedIn influencer side
of things has been, has been crazy to watch as well.
seeing some accounts go from like zero to tens of thousands of followers in a short amount
of time.
And like back to the point on clay, like they've done an impressive job of capturing that
and creating a very much like a community based way of selling their product.
Mm-hmm.
like even their demo process is very clever.
I'm not sure if you've, you've heard of what they do.
Um, but because it can be molded in so many different ways, when you go to, to, to get a
demo with them is you put in, you know, what is your use case going to be for it?
And then on that demo, they'll actually set up your account and walk you through how to
create that exact same clay table, um, to get that result you're looking for.
So by the end of that demo, it's like, you have no reason not to buy because they've just
solved your problem on a, on a demo itself there and then.
great.
which is, which is so cool to see, from, from a demo point of view.
but back to the point of, of influencers and LinkedIn influencers or content creators is
so many more companies are tapping into that now, especially in the B2B world and so much
so we're seeing even the, the content creators posts, they're now being used as ads on
LinkedIn by the companies themselves.
I've been seeing that so many times now.
And it's such a clever way to do it because, you know, they've already built up this trust
or whatever, and they can just push this post, which is clearly showing, you know, this
product or whatever, and however they're using it, push it to the audiences of that
content creator plus others, you know, similar to them as well.
So it's such an ingenious way to get the word out there while still keeping a face to the
business, right?
Because they're using the authority from the content creator, but they're selling this
tool and they're kind of mixing.
the relationship aspect of all these things into paid ads, which is crazy.
it's like, you'd think it wouldn't have taken this long for the B2B world to understand
user generated content, but it just has.
But I think it's kind of nice because it feels refreshing and it feels more authentic than
it would if it had been around for years, I suppose.
So I actually really enjoy seeing it in my feed.
And you're right, I've started to see, there's like two people on a podcast and one person
says, what tech stack are you using?
You've probably seen the same ad if you're a part of the recruitment industry.
I forget the name of the brand, which is not, I guess, helpful to their cause.
But, but I've seen it so many times in my feed where the host says, what's in your tech
stack?
And the gal goes, so many things.
And then she just goes off on the ATS, the applicant tracking system that she's using and
just thinks it's the coolest thing.
Well, she doesn't work for them.
Neither does the guy running the podcast.
And I'm sure this overall brand got permission.
They now have that as an ad running for them.
I it's called Recruiter Flow, Sales Flow.
Anyway, I'd have to look it up, but it's just really cool to see that because it comes off
way more authentic because she doesn't have skin in the game.
Like she's not the sales rep and saying that doesn't drive revenue or commission to her.
They're just promoting it based on her genuine care about it.
Yeah, yeah, exactly that.
mean, it's quite funny, though, because a lot of the posts I am seeing with that, it's
actually the smaller businesses rather than like the large, you huge B2B companies are out
there.
You know, lot of the, you know, the influencer related posts or the ads I'm seeing is
around, you know,
companies like instantly, right?
Where, yeah, they're not a small company anymore, but they're not huge, they're not a huge
well or anything like that.
And those types of smaller side of businesses.
So it'll be interesting to see if these bigger B2B companies will start to adopt that
influencer content creator side of things more, because I feel like they're not actually
leveraging it enough at this point in time.
We know it works, but they're not tapping into it as much as they probably should be.
I'm not sure if that's what you've seen as well.
Yeah, it is.
I think there's a scrappiness to smaller companies who are hungry to grow and seeing
what's working in different avenues, like the B2C world with Instagram and TikTok and
saying, OK, how do I apply this to my world?
I actually saw a really cool organic post in my LinkedIn feed last night about how someone
who is a Gen Z talking about how Gen Z's have this mindset of
In an ideal world, I'd work for three years and then take a year sabbatical.
Work for three years and take a year sabbatical.
And it's like this kind of like semi-retirement as I go.
Like I want to enjoy life.
I want to be doing meaningful things and I want to enjoy life.
And I was really fascinated and I was really sucked in because I could tell she was
starting to shift it to, okay, but that's not possible for all of us.
So how do we do that?
And I'm trying to like get a feel from her tagline.
Like what is she selling?
Right?
Like what is her product or service offering?
And at the end of it, I realized it was from LinkedIn and it was intended to generate
interest in like, what are you seeing?
What would, how would you approach this?
Right.
And, and I thought it was really clever because they don't often see brands like LinkedIn
utilizing that.
And maybe it's just because it's, it's isolated and it hasn't hit my feed, but I would
agree.
I'm seeing a lot more of that type of content from the smaller brands than I am the larger
brands.
So it's refreshing when I see it from the larger brands.
Actually fun, fun, fun fact on even that like.
this hat for example.
I'm the kind of person that if I like something I'm going to share about it, right?
Like ice creams my jam.
will tell you milk jam creamery is the best ice cream in Minneapolis.
That's my favorite thing.
This hat, I recently met the founders, the people who run the company and it's called
American Hat Makers.
And they were sharing that the content that works the best for them is the content that's
authentic.
Like rather than like the highly produced content, it's the stuff that where people are
like hop on camera and just say, I bought this hat.
I love this hat.
Right?
And I think the world, like we're craving that.
And you can translate that to the B2B side of the professional world and LinkedIn as well.
I think we're just craving, okay, yes, yes, yes, brand.
I know you need to sell me your thing.
Like I get that, but like, does it really work?
Like, what is the use case that I can use it within?
And I think the use of influencers or content creators helps with that.
And that to me brings it full circle back to why thought leadership and expert visibility
matters.
And it's because you want to educate people on why...
the thing you're doing can help them, not just sell them the thing, right?
Like you gotta kinda help paint the picture for them and say, if this is what you're
struggling with, this can help you with it.
And it just creates really natural loyalty quickly rather than when you're being cold
outbound sold to.
out about something.
Don't I?
Yeah.
trust they've already built up and then they can obviously use that person there to sell
that sell their product essentially in a very short sale cycle, which is pretty cool.
And B2B is obviously catching up with that side of things.
But you know, as you said, full circle back to the thought leadership point of view is I
think companies do need to start embracing if they're not already, you know, how can you
create thought leadership around your brand?
And the other thing as well is putting a face or faces to the brand.
I think the biggest issue I'm seeing with some companies is they're still staying very
corporate in the way they're positioning themselves online, where if they have an ad,
right, it's just a graphic.
You don't know actually who works in that company.
You don't know any of those different things, whereas the companies that are crushing it,
the founders have that brand, right?
They have that founder led brand or whatever.
And you can see what the founder's doing within that company and what they're working on
and the executive team.
even the sales reps as well, they're also doing content creation and that's all to build
the trust within the brand.
And, and so, I think that's going to be something which the next three to four, five years
companies definitely need to be embracing it if they're not ready, for sure.
Right.
I think so too.
And premise of when I get
it's a higher percentage of moving forward within the sales cycle than when it's just a
cold email or something where it's call it further up the sales process.
And I think people getting on camera or offering insights, whatever it is, just helps
people feel more familiar with them.
So it feels like they've already had a conversation with them.
So by the time they actually do have a conversation with them, there is some like
subconscious rapport built there.
And I've got on calls before where, I mean, it feels like we've met at conferences for
years and we literally haven't, but they've been following me on LinkedIn.
And that's a model that I'm recommending to clients and seeing work well for them.
It's worked well for me over the years of you connect with people and you don't sell to
them.
don't sell to them.
Connect with people and let them see the content of your video.
And when they have a need, they think of you.
I think there's just such an importance of being consistent, even if it's once a week,
somewhere on LinkedIn or whatever your platform is really, like wherever your audience
shows up and just sharing stories of how this can help, whatever your this is, your
product or your service, and just talking about how it can help.
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
And, you know, it doesn't have to be complex.
And this is probably the issue that I fall into a lot of the times is, you know, I like
everything being as perfect and polished as possible before I want to release something.
Um, and then, uh, you know, when it comes down to posting or videos, or like I started
YouTube content a little bit last year and, um, the first couple of videos I made, they
were absolutely polished, went to a studio, kind of recorded them.
And then after that I was like, do you know what?
This, this just makes sense for the longevity of this thing.
Let me just literally.
I recorded on my iPad, sharing my screen, like on a whiteboard, very low budget type of
production.
But I was like, I just need to do this because then I can just become consistent with,
with whatever it is I'm trying to post.
And I think it's the same thing if people are starting to get into the content creation
side is just start and get that consistency first.
And then you can start to improve different metrics or different, uh, know, quality or
whatever a little bit later on.
But the first thing is the consistency, which I think is the hardest to start with.
Right.
cause I think none of us started a business to influencers or, popular in that regard,
right?
Yeah, exactly.
And so you have to make that mental shift as well, you know, as, an owner.
Right, right.
Yeah.
It's a fun world though, because I think it creates, you can create friends really fast
and build a network really fast because there's just that like level of transparency of
who you are and you're not somebody somewhere behind a screen that's trying to get in
front of everybody else via email, which is already cluttered and busy, right?
Like if they can see you, it's just gonna make it more authentic.
Yeah, definitely.
Definitely.
So one of the final questions that we always ask guests on this show is if you can go back
to your 18 year old self and only take three lessons with you, whether it's something
around mindset, philosophy, some technical marketing knowledge, anything, what are the
three lessons you would tell your 18 year old self and why would it be those three things?
Ooh, that's a fun question.
I've never gotten that question before.
Okay.
One, I would say...
Be okay being yourself.
Like if you want to be a kind person, if you want to be a confident person, like just lean
into it and everybody else around you can figure out how they fit into your world and vice
versa.
So not to worry too much about what other people think about you really.
Just like do your jam and the right people will come in your life and they'll be a part of
it.
Two, you don't have to be perfect.
It took me a while.
to realize, especially getting into business right away and especially or the business
world I should say, especially like I worked with a lot of executives at a really young
age out of college, just with the roles that I had.
And I used to feel this need to be so polished and like can't mess up, can't make a
mistake.
And what broke me out of that was seeing some leaders who I had immense respect for were
very impressive, just own their humanity.
Like when they would goof up, they'd be like, wow.
Yep, miss that.
Okay, let's pivot.
And it just, it made it so that, okay, if they can do it, then I can do it too.
So I would say that like, you don't have to be perfect.
And then the third, I would say just keep taking risks.
That's something that I've always leaned into in my career and it's paid off well.
And not every risk has panned out the way that I've anticipated.
But when I get excited,
and feel kind of a peace inside.
Faith is a big part of my life.
So like I pray through things as big decisions and have a lot of logic to them too.
But if I feel this like peace and excitement and you know, weigh out the pros and cons and
all the things, sometimes it's just worth taking the risk.
And I'm the kind of person that I lean into negotiating.
I lean into conversations that I think are gonna progress to something even if they don't
end up where I want.
The worst thing someone can say is no, right?
And so...
The more rest you get in any area, more you're going to get it.
So that's what I think.
Lean more into those risks.
So you okay being yourself?
You're perfect.
Definitely.
I think it's some great lessons there.
Thank you so much for coming onto the podcast.
I've really enjoyed this episode and we'll definitely do another one sometime in the
future.
Absolutely, thanks for having me.
Thanks for having me.