Midtown Story

Still feel stuck making content on LinkedIn? I sure do, and I've been writing every day for over a month! Samuel Cheong offered some amazing tips.

Our habits, our mindset, and the people we engage with help us hone our skills and become better creators.

3:50 -- Creativity got Samuel excited about Marketing:  there's no limit to the amount of ideas that you can come up with and test.

6:00 -- Content is like breadcrumbs in a forest: Inbound marketing and bringing people to you by creating content that's helpful and resonates

8:40 -- Success habits: "This year is my year of discipline." Start with the smallest steps first, before skipping to ambitious plans. Goals set direction, but habits get you there.

13:54 -- Lessons from Daily Content: Everyone can write, and everyone is sharing ideas. Networking and meeting people helps us hone our skills as creators.

27:54 -- The one big idea. Every post will have one key takeaway

35:25 -- More on content ideas and connecting with creators to fill our idea buckets

It's all about habits, mindset, and engaging.

Joseph is the Director of Demand Generation at Proofpoint Marketing, and also hosts The Strategic Marketer Podcast. Today we learn about using storytelling to build relationships at scale.

0:50 Joseph's focus is on building relationships at scale, not so much lead generation.

2:22 How relationships drive a business, and positioning yourself as the go-to-provider.

6:43 How to be a better listener with prospects and customers. 

11:48 A story framework:  The ideal future  --> The current pain --> The real problem --> The solution --> The Transformation

22:00 You have to serve other people first. Focus on winning in the long-run.

I had a wonderful time talking to Daniel Shub about storytelling and Product Design. He's the founder of SignStream.net and Principal Consultant at DKS Design LLC. Here's the highlights:

3:18 Daniel's backstory and the love of visual storytelling. Started with the love of photography at a young age & working at a community center.

10:35 The Achilles Heels that Founders suffer from in Storytelling. Money is a big one. Lean on your true supporters.

15:07 Deep Dive: Product design. Ideas don't happen as epiphanies, they happen as webs. A series of experiences and persistence build a great product.

22:51 Jobs-to-be-Done Theory and Product Design. "You have to have passion. If you don't have passion then what are we doing it for?"

26:55 A fun excursion: Why DID phones ditch the physical keyboard? 

30:28 Having fun and relaxing as an Entrepreneur. Our minds are always ticking.

34:03 Finding balance in life. Recognize the need to take care of ourselves in order to take care of others.

Dev Sahoo is a Webflow specialist, marketing strategist, and plans on scaling his services agency into a SaaS company. We talk about Webflow, and all sorts of things related to design, marketing, and growing a business:

1:06 Webflow vs Wordpress

4:20 What goes into developing high-converting webpages

11:12 Get out of the comfort zone to test new things and grow

14:41 Imposter syndrome, sales, and teamwork

21:58 What goes into designing a great product

Sam Browne is a serial entrepreneur and founder of Haro SEO, Findaband, and Fable. He believes that there's power to storytelling in running a business and being a successful human being. Also can hit some decent rock guitar riffs...

Stephanie, CEO of Lumavate, was the VP of sales/marketing back when we did this podcast. "It's more about getting yourself out there. And being honest, and stop holding yourself back. Because when you hold yourself back, you hold your career back, your happiness back. You also hold others back that look up to you." We also talk about a ton of marketing concepts - such as ABM -  but this was really inspiring.

James Cross believes that designers need a seat at the table. At every table. He’s the VP of Brand at Energy Worldnet, Inc, mentors Amy Lujan who was also a guest here and talkedabout design hacks. So I’m really glad that he’s here today and we’re gonna talk about culture, and design leadership.

Today we're doing a pod-collab with Ishu Sing, host of the Starting To Know podcast! Ishu, founder of Scabus and Innstal, believes that we're always starting to know something new about the business world. So we talk brand, business, and how he started his journey into entrepreneurship. When Ishu sets his mind on to something, just moves forward and learns by doing it!

Jonaed Iqbal’s here today! He’s started NoDegree, which is on a mission to help people succeed in their careers without needing degrees, and also to show that there’s options out there beyond the traditional education for success. We’re talking tools, advice, and 13,000 live jobs on the website as of today. In his NoDegree podcast, he interviews people that paved a way to success on their own terms. We talk about education, people who've paved their own ways to success, aaaand somehow stumble onto a very serious question: What is it that makes TikTok such a hit?!

Josiah Farnsworth is a cinematographer for CAP Collective, which specializes in cinematic video marketing. We talk about what goes into a moving video experience, and how he comes up with fresh ideas. Recently, he started a passion project with to Tom Pottiger to share deeper stories of the Black Lives Matters movement, and to start more dialogue around systematic racism.