Unsloppable

I started my career in financial markets, for big banks. We had a ‘marketing’ department, but the head of the department was not called ‘CMO’. As far as I understood it, that department was mainly creating PowerPoints for the sales, helping with events, etc. They were not expected to generate leads.

This was a decade ago. It feels like a different era, but this culture is still felt in the FinTech world, where most founders have a financial background and have not been exposed to a modern marketing setup. But they are smart people who know it’s not just about having ‘hungry’ sales anymore. So they hire marketers - but they expect results fast. It’s one of the main reasons Fintech CMOs have such a short tenure.

That’s the realm where my guest, Araminta Robertson, the MD and founder of Mint Studios works. Her answer is ‘BOFU’ or Bottom of the Funnel Content. The process is explained in the episode, and you can read about it in detail here. I will share a few quotes below to give you an overview.

Here’s the idea:

Start with the bottom of the funnel. Start with people who are closer to converting.  So these are people who already know they have a problem and are actively looking for a solution.

And its benefit:

It helps you get results sooner, which makes your leadership happier, generally. It helps direct your content strategy because then you suddenly know the topics that seem to bring in customers and revenue.

In an ideal world, you’d get the topics directly from your customers, but in practice:

We use a proxy, which is the salespeople, customer service reps, product people, the people on your team who are constantly talking to customers and over the period of like two or three weeks, we interview them and ask like a list of questions to try and understand the customer.

Araminta runs a copywriting studio, I trust they write well, but this conversation makes me understand the role of the copywriter differently. I’ve used copywriting services before, but mainly because I though they had a comparative advantage: they’re better writers, they have SEO skills and it makes sense for me to spend my time elsewhere. But this is different.

Copywriting is as much a process as a skill. And if you think of the brand as a content engine, audience data was exhaust from the publishing process. It’s becoming the fuel.

To find out more:

https://www.mintcopywritingstudios.com/

[Reposted: original episode from August 2024]

We explore how content and authenticity build the trust that closes B2B fintech deals, with someone who's worked both sides of go-to-market — as an investor, operator, and content strategist: Leonard Burger.

Includes actionable advice on

Using Video Through the Sales Funnel

• Match content format to deal stage — top-of-funnel awareness vs. bottom-of-funnel conversion
• Build short, internally-shareable videos that travel inside the buyer's organization without you in the room

Turning Thought Leadership Into Pipeline

• Anchor every piece of content to a single "red line" story that ties back to your product
• Track brand and product trust as measurable assets, not soft metrics

Building Personal Brand Without Losing the Company Narrative

• Why marketers are often bad at marketing themselves — and how to fix it
• Align personal visibility (founders, product leads, CS) around one shared story

Staying Authentic in an AI-Saturated Content Market

• Why authenticity became more valuable, not less, after generative AI
• How to use AI tools for content without losing the voice that earns trust

The 100-word AI summary

Leonard Burger argues that in B2B fintech, trust — in the brand, the product, and the person — is what ultimately gets deals done, and content is the mechanism that builds it. Video plays different roles at different funnel stages: short clips convert internal stakeholders once a prospect is already engaged, while thought leadership earns attention earlier by connecting genuinely to a buyer's pain points. He warns that AI-generated content is easy to spot and erodes trust, making authenticity and a consistent personal voice more valuable than ever. The throughline: people do business with people, so brand, product, and individual trust must be built together, deliberately, over time.

Resources

Get actionable insights about enterprise sales & marketing in your inbox: ⁠⁠⁠oramatv.substack.com⁠⁠

This episode was produced by Orama - thought leadership videos: ⁠⁠https://orama.tv/⁠⁠

About Leonard Burger

Certified Product Marketing Manager (CPMM), Exec MBA, and angel investor navigating the intersection of growth strategy, fintech innovation, and venture building.Please contact me for anything related to:

👉 building high growth GTM engines, especially within fintech

👉 AI Venture building and investing

👉 startup, scaling and funding advisory

Connect on LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/leonardburger/

About George Aliferis

George Aliferis is the founder of Orama. He spent over a decade in institutional finance before moving into media to build the bridge he couldn’t find: content that makes complex solutions visible and engaging.

Connect on LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-aliferis/

About the Unsloppable podcast:

The show about enterprise sales in serious industries. Each episode, George Aliferis talks to commercial and marketing leaders in regulated, high-stakes markets about what actually moves complex deals — where thought leadership earns its place, and how they’re holding the line against the flood of AI-generated content drowning everyone else out.

Unsloppable: how human intelligence wins.

Timestamps

We explore the art and science of building a Go-To-Market strategy in B2B fintech with lessons that are applicable across industries, with someone who’s done it before and has spent years perfecting it: Leonard Burger.

Includes actionable advice on

Building a Go-To-Market (GTM) engine

Managing complex, multi-year sales cycles

Building Visibility & Trust

Setting the right org Structure for GTM

The 100-words AI summary

Leonard Berger explains how complex fintech enterprise deals can involve many stakeholders, take up to two years, and require a repeatable go-to-market (GTM) system rather than one-off selling. Using wholesale financing platforms as an example, he describes selling to finance providers while engaging dealership groups and OEMs, often replacing error-prone Excel-based processes. Success depends on sustained sales enablement: coordinated messaging, targeted account selection, and ongoing collateral—especially video—delivered at the right stages so momentum survives staff turnover and stalled deals. He also notes startups run two parallel sales cycles: selling customers and convincing investors. Visibility across channels builds trust, which ultimately closes deals. He advises product marketing bridge product, sales, marketing, and customer success, with a dotted-line structure across leadership.

Resources

Join the newsletter to get actionable insights about enterprise sales & marketing: ⁠⁠oramatv.substack.com⁠

This episode was produced by Orama - thought leadership videos: ⁠https://orama.tv/⁠

About Leonard Burger

Certified Product Marketing Manager (CPMM), Exec MBA, and angel investor navigating the intersection of growth strategy, fintech innovation, and venture building.Please contact me for anything related to: 👉 building high growth GTM engines, especially within fintech 👉 AI Venture building and investing 👉 startup, scaling and funding advisory

Connect on LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/leonardburger/

About George Aliferis

George Aliferis is the founder of Orama. He spent over a decade in institutional finance before moving into media to build the bridge he couldn’t find: content that makes complex solutions visible and engaging.

Connect on LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-aliferis/

About the Unsloppable podcast:

The show about enterprise sales in serious industries. Each episode, George Aliferis talks to commercial and marketing leaders in regulated, high-stakes markets about what actually moves complex deals — where thought leadership earns its place, and how they’re holding the line against the flood of AI-generated content drowning everyone else out.

Unsloppable: how human intelligence wins.

Timestamps

(00:00) What complex deals in B2B fintech look like

(03:06) The long cycle of Tech against spreadsheets

(05:39) Startups’ dual sales cycles

(08:32) GTM as Infrastructure

(12:34) Org Structure For GTM

(15:16) Product Marketing Bridge Role

We explore the art and science of building a Go-To-Market strategy in B2B fintech with lessons that are applicable across industries, with someone who’s done it before and has spent years perfecting it.

The 100-words AI summary

Because we reckon with the usefulness of AI.

Leonard Berger explains how complex fintech enterprise deals can involve many stakeholders, take up to two years, and require a repeatable go-to-market (GTM) system rather than one-off selling. Using wholesale financing platforms as an example, he describes selling to finance providers while engaging dealership groups and OEMs, often replacing error-prone Excel-based processes. Success depends on sustained sales enablement: coordinated messaging, targeted account selection, and ongoing collateral—especially video—delivered at the right stages so momentum survives staff turnover and stalled deals. He also notes startups run two parallel sales cycles: selling customers and convincing investors. Visibility across channels builds trust, which ultimately closes deals. He advises product marketing bridge product, sales, marketing, and customer success, with a dotted-line structure across leadership.

Resources

This episode was produced by Orama - thought leadership videos: https://orama.tv/

We build thought leadership video assets for those selling complex products or services to enterprise buyers: human content for institutional solutions.

Leo and I met via the Fintech Marketing Hub who organise their flagship Fintech Marketing Conference on 30 June.

About Leonard Burger

Certified Product Marketing Manager (CPMM), Exec MBA, and angel investor navigating the intersection of growth strategy, fintech innovation, and venture building.Please contact me for anything related to: 👉 building high growth GTM engines, especially within fintech 👉 AI Venture building and investing 👉 startup, scaling and funding advisory

Connect on LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/leonardburger/

About George Aliferis

George Aliferis is the founder of Orama. He spent over a decade in institutional finance before moving into media to build the bridge he couldn’t find: content that makes complex solutions visible and engaging.

Connect on LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-aliferis/

About the Unsloppable podcast:

The show about enterprise sales in serious industries. Each episode, George Aliferis talks to commercial and marketing leaders in regulated, high-stakes markets about what actually moves complex deals — where thought leadership earns its place, and how they’re holding the line against the flood of AI-generated content drowning everyone else out.

Unsloppable: how human intelligence wins.

Timestamps

00:00 What complex deals in B2B fintech look like03:06 The long cycle of Tech against spreadsheets05:39 Startups’ dual sales cycles08:32 GTM as Infrastructure12:34 Org Structure For GTM15:16 Product Marketing Bridge Role18:03 A dotted line reporting model18:44 Wrap up

Thanks for reading Orama | Insight to Impact! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Yesterday, my kids (6 & 9) have decided to spend their precious screen time in front of silly AI-generated dancing animal - i.e. slop. The day before, I asked Gemini to find some references to back up a serious article, and it found perfect quotes, that fitted exactly my purpose, from people I follow and appreciate. The only issue is they were all fake - slop again.

This is not great parenting, or research (I’m working on both), but the point is slop is everywhere.

And maybe it’s fine for entertainment, we will get tired of it, just like we did with the Ghibli profile pictures. But in high stakes, complex environments “slop” will be an ongoing challenge.

As I relaunch this podcast as Unsloppable: how human intelligence wins in enterprise sales, I’d like to offer a definition of what it’s about and why it matters.

The audio episode itself is about Blackstone, a firm I wrote about previously. They are getting more love from institutional investors with content that stands out and provide an example of what unsloppable can look like, but below are some thoughts about the term itself.

Why Unsloppable?

The term was first heard from TBPN, who offer their own definition:

Becoming Unsloppable means two things. First, your business actually has to derive its economic power from a moat that is Unsloppable, and second, you need to clearly communicate that to shareholders. Right now, if the market thinks you’re just a bunch of lines of code, you’re cooked.

That’s a software-focused definition, it comes from an episode on the SaaSpocalypse, and it’s restrictive. I feel the meaning of the term is still up for grabs, and I will suggest my own definition from a B2B perspective in complex industries like finance, law, cybersecurity, etc.

The unofficial definition of slop refers to: low-effort, low-quality digital content generated by artificial intelligence.

Three elements there: effort, quality & source.

By that definition unsloppable could mean: something that requires effort, is of high quality and generated by human intelligence.

All of those are true, but they are hard to pin down.

What does quality content mean? Is it informative, entertaining, or does it have to be both? And may be it doesn’t require a lot of effort because you’re very good at it?

That last part feels problematic as well. I mentioned before that we still need to reckon with the usefulness of LLMs. I don’t think there’s much content that is untouched by Language Models anymore. I used to Google stuff to fact check, and Grammarly to spell check, now LLMs are part of my workflow.

Below is a definition, for people selling complex solutions to enterprise clients.

Unsloppable for enterprise

Unsloppable, for enterprise sales, has three sides, each represent its own challenge, and bringing in more questions. The podcast will aim at providing answers (I don’t think we will run out of episode material any time soon).

1: Visibility

The default is that your buyers are drowning in content, and the loudest content wins. This trend existed before LLMs; the volume is now categorically different and an existential threat when your industry is boring complex.

Your thought leadership is unlikely to go viral and if it did, it would probably become a compliance issue.

Being unsloppable is about managing to stay visible by using your expertise. But how do you transform it to grab people’s attention?

2: Trust

David Maister’s classic Trust Equation, where Trust = (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy) / Self-Orientation is a good starting point.

There are 4 elements but Credibility used to be the foundation. I can talk about X because I’m an expert in X.

AI has democratized the appearance of expertise. Today, anyone can write about aerospace manufacturing compliance and look credible at surface-level. When synthetic authority is virtually unlimited, buyers develop an intense skepticism toward all written content.

Can your credibility still stand out? Or do you need to leverage Reliability and Intimacy? Or perhaps you need to bring Self-Orientation close to zero. But self-orientation is how you close the deal.

3: Relationship-building

I’ve mentioned that 83% of the B2B customer journey takes place outside the sales pipeline. That was 2025 data, it’s getting longer. The use of LLMs means buyers may become even more independent, increasingly pre-qualifying and pre-disqualifying vendors entirely through content, before any human contact. The window where a commercial can build relationship through conversation is shrinking. The risk is that it closes the door before the commercial gets a meeting at all.

Yet, enterprise deal will still need human-to-human interaction.

How do you still build a rapport with champions or the buying committee in this new environment? How much can you only rely on events/physical meetings? And how to sustain that connection throughout a long process and be present when there’s finally a trigger for a deal?

Future guests

I already have a few stellar guests lined up across, fintech, cyber, defense. If you are in sales, marketing, bus dev, growth in complex industry, and would like to share your thought leadership, drop me a line [email protected].

I will also do a few solo episodes, like this one.

The Blackstone example

This first episode of the podcast shows what it looks like in practice. A breakdown of how Blackstone — the largest alternative asset manager — uses video to make its executives feel familiar to institutional buyers long before the first meeting. Jon Gray (COO & President) filming with kids in the office on Q1 results day is the quintessential way of sharing expertise, personality and shared values.

Martin Brand  (Head of Blackstone Capital Partner) answering institutional-investor questions between two meetings and grabbing a sandwich a from portfolio company that’s just filed for IPO. All of it engineered to ensure that when Blackstone stays on a pension fund’s shortlist, and features as a known peer while the competition arrives as strangers.

Sources and relevant links

Subscribe to the newsletter and get podcast updates in your inbox:

This episode was produced by Orama - thought leadership videos :

https://orama.tv/

Blackstone videos mentioned in the episode:

* Q1 results: https://youtube.com/shorts/yyySn8vILCA?si=-KDUnhX8bQ4fwphE

* Between 2 meetings: https://youtube.com/shorts/uh3joLX9EnM?si=u7gh6IYSDbToTD5A

* Blackstone Holiday video

About George Aliferis:

George Aliferis is the founder of Orama. He spent over a decade in institutional finance before moving into media to build the bridge he couldn't find: content that makes complex solutions visible and engaging.

Linkedin profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-aliferis/

About the Unsloppable podcast:

The show about enterprise sales in serious industries. Each episode, George Aliferis talks to commercial and marketing leaders in regulated, high-stakes markets about what actually moves complex deals — where thought leadership earns its place, and how they're holding the line against the flood of AI-generated content drowning everyone else out.

Unsloppable: how human intelligence wins.

About Orama:

We build thought leadership video assets for those selling complex solutions to enterprise buyers: human content for institutional solutions.

https://orama.tv/

Timestamps

00:00 Blackstone is Unsloppable

01:12 Q1, the billionaire president, and some kids

03:19 The Blackstone filming setup

04:47 Making executives video-ready

06:55 Between two meetings

08:17 How Blackstone stays Unsloppable

10:30 Takeaways for Enterprise Sales

Next episode:

https://oramatv.substack.com/p/the-unsloppable-gtm-strategy-for

Hi, It’s George from Orama, a virtual podcast and video studio for brands.

You can watch this episode on the Substack player, on YouTube, listen to it on podcast platforms, or read an edited transcript below.

I’m testing the video feature of Substack; it’s pretty cool that you only need to upload the video, and it will create an RSS feed from the audio for your podcasts.

How do you transition from Minimum Viable Podcast (something we discussed here before) to Most Valuable Podcast?

As a Frenchman who enjoys watching basketball, I enjoy following the NBA career of Wemby or Victor Wembayama🇫🇷. He’s a newcomer to the NBA, a rookie with a chance to become an MVP.

**Trivia: Only two players in NBA history have done it before: Wes Unseld and Wilt Chamberlain.**

You may be the Wemby of podcasting, in which case congratulations, go for it. But for the rest of us, the great news is that you can gradually elevate to “Most Valuable Podcast” level by improving episode by episode.

If your focus is a brand or niche podcast, the aim is not to top the charts but rather to become the reference point within your industry and a favourite among the small group of people who matter to you.

Shifting the MVP metaphor from NBA to Startups

Let's move to a startup metaphor, where MVP stands for Minimum Viable Product. An MVP approach involves iterating and improving over time. And that’s the idea behind the Minimum Viable Podcast.

If you’re running a company podcast, it might be just a small part of your duties, but the mindset remains akin to a startup transitioning from MVP to something greater. In all humility, creating a defining podcast for a niche is the goal, with my recently relaunched ‘Investology’ podcast, that focuses on investment management (YouTube, Audio podcasts).

The process, not the topic, matters here.

(It’s also the goal with this podcast, but that’s a more remote possibility, as I’m still very close to the Minimum Viable state, so I use Investology as a better example).

Although it's an established podcast, my interest changed from broad fintech to investment management, so I paused it, rebranded, and relaunched it, so it feels brand new.

Below, I'll share the tool I use to manage my own and my clients’ podcasts and how it can help your show as well.

From List to Dashboard

Previously, I used a comprehensive brand podcast checklist for launching and growing podcasts. There are 45 items there (but the list is flexible)

You can access it here.

Even if I’ve launched quite a few podcasts before for Investology, I wanted to do many things at once and… I wasn’t doing much because it felt overwhelming.

Leading me to develop a production dashboard (or development dashboard - I thought this was a better name after the recording)

NB: This is not the usual “performance dashboard” where you can see your past audience stats; this one is forward-looking and qualitative.

Introducing the podcast development dashboard

You can view the Investology version of the dashboard in its current live state here.

Categories

It is organized across four categories: setup and branding, production, distribution, and monetization.

Setup & branding: This is what you need at channel level. It's similar to your brand editorial guidelines.

Production: what you need to create every episode, but also in general what you need to create content from your podcast, and that goes beyond the episodes (think articles, clips, etc.)

Distribution: everything that you need to [00:04:00] grow your podcast

Monetization: is how you generate revenues. But that might sound a bit restrictive because maybe that's not your goal. If you're a brand, you are not planning to generate money directly by monetizing the podcast, but you want to generate value from it. For example, if you manage to promote your services through the podcast, that's useful. If you network with guests, that's also something very valuable. So I'm putting everything in there.

Completion or Progress level

You can visualize them as little gauges, but it could also be a number from 0 to 100, 100 being this is fully done. For example, I haven’t started on a podcast website.

I prefer this gauge over a checklist because nothing is set in stone.

For example, the podcast logo is something that I'm probably not going to change for a long time.

Other elements are more fluid, like setting up a YouTube channel, which is something that I can initiate in a very basic way and improve over time because there's a lot you can do specifically on the YouTube channel in terms of SEO, or graphics.

Setting Priorities

The next aspect is to have a priority view because you shouldn’t always be starting with the thing that's least completed.

For example, you cannot launch a podcast without a hosting platform and a logo. Again, the YouTube channel is an intermediary priority. You don't need to start with that.

Creating Actionable Items

The goal of the dashboard is to create actionable items, and we do this by mixing up the priority with the completion level (via a basic formula in Notion).

So if I look at Setup & Branding: I want to create a trailer. I want to review the audio assets, the music that I use for different tracks. I want to create series that are more distinctive. I want to improve the run of the show.

I can also use it for new ideas. For example, I just thought about having a media kit for sponsors. I haven't got one, so I will put it here in monetization, with a low priority.

The bottom line is that it gives me an overview of what I need to do. It's not overwhelming. It's actionable and itemized.

As a bonus, this can also be used as a reporting tool if you manage a podcast. You can combine it with hard viewership numbers to explain how the show evolves qualitatively and quantitatively.

Thanks for reading DisContent - by Orama! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

I hope this dashboard is beneficial for you. Even if you don’t use the file, you may keep the idea.

Here is the link again to the Investology development dashboard.

I'm planning to create a template that I can share in the next newsletter. Stay tuned!

I will be sharing the evolution of the podcast and the template itself.

Dave Wallace's venture into podcasting started as a personal project and a way to catch up with a long-time collaborator, Dharmesh Mistry. Their podcast, "Demystify," focuses on FinTech and allowed them to explore their interests while growing their audience and developing media opportunities, such as a partnership with Fintech Futures (a leading fintech publication, part of the Informa Group), or a recent invitation to record a series of interviews in Dubai. But for Dave, it was also a personal journey and an opportunity to “find his voice”, and pursue new opportunities.

👇🏼Below you will find key lessons for brands from our conversation

👂Listen via the Substack player above and the usual podcast platforms

👀 Watch on YouTube

**Disclosure: Dave & Dharm Demystify is an Orama client**

Key lessons for brands

A safe place to

Dave’s advice to individuals and brands embarking on their podcasting journey is simple: just start.

Podcasts offer a safe environment for people to express themselves and share their stories. Unlike the traditional belief that podcast hosts need to be charismatic entertainers like TV chat show hosts, for Dave, the key to successful podcasting is genuine interest and the ability to keep conversations going (which we all have).

And who knows, a podcast may even help you find your voice, like it did for Dave.

Leveraging content beyond audio

Dave stresses Demystify’s multi-faceted potential of podcasts beyond just being audio content. The episodes are a foundation for creating diverse content streams, such as articles, videos, and social media posts.

Particularly for B2B businesses that naturally struggle with content, turning podcast conversations into content can act as an efficient content engine, generating white papers, LinkedIn articles, and even whitepapers

A call to businesses

The podcast is not just about the audio experience; it’s an opportunity for brands to articulate their messages, share insights, and connect with their target audience on a more personal level. Dave argues that every business should consider podcasting—not necessarily to reach thousands of listeners but for deeper engagement with their specific audience.

Companies are so terrible at creating their own content, like terrible. Whereas, people are good at talking. So actually recording a conversation within a business and turning that into a podcast and then writing content on the back of that. This is the way to do things.

More about Dave Wallace:

* Follow Dave on Linkedin

* Dave & Dharm Demystify podcast on Fintech Futures

* Watch the show on YouTube

Useful Resources for Brand Podcasters:

* The Brand Podcast Checklist

* Grow Through Conversations: a Framework for B2B Brands

* Distribution and Audience Growth Playbooks for B2B ‘Shows’

* How to stand out in a crowded niche (when everyone has a podcast)

The term “embedded finance” is hugely popular in fintech and gaining traction more broadly. The potential is huge—$7 trillion by 2030. Yet a significant knowledge gap exists among non-financial brands and tech companies. To bridge this divide, Lars Markull, an embedded finance adviser who supports brands, infrastructure providers, and banks as they explore and build embedded finance products, has embarked on a content creation journey that includes blog posts, newsletters, podcasts, and events. He’s rapidly built a significant niche following and attracted sponsors, with indirect benefits to his main consulting business.

He shared his insights about his content strategy and the challenges of balancing consulting with media activities.

👇🏼Below you will find an edited transcript of the conversation

👂Listen via the player above and the usual podcast platforms

👀 Watch on YouTube for added charts & visuals.

**NB: Embedded Finance Review is an Orama client and I’ve also interviewed Lars for my Fintech podcast.**

Personal Highlights:

* It’s a journey (you won’t get everything right on day one)

* It’s a bit like a workout: You need a cadence, but build up gradually

* As a consultant, you may not get a lot of direct enquiries, but producing content helps with visibility, authority, and relatability

Transcript:

George Aliferis: When I look at the Embedded Finance Review online, I see a newsletter and a podcast. How do you characterise it as a content platform for your consulting business?

Lars Markull: It's been quite a journey. Initially, I started with insightful blog posts on LinkedIn, sharing insights about embedded finance. I identified a knowledge gap between FinTech companies and non-financial tech brands. My goal was to produce content for the latter group. The early blog posts were an educational series, which I'm reworking for an updated release soon. I soon realised the challenge of maintaining this output frequency, so I explored other formats like news curation. Now, I focus on a European perspective in my weekly newsletter, gaining great feedback from various sectors. The podcast naturally followed, amplifying the stories of those who've succeeded in this field. Recently, I've started organising physical events in European cities to foster connections between different sectors. It's a journey of education, especially for non-financial brands, as they navigate these trends.

GA: You haven’t mentioned the word marketing. But building online communities via episodic content and then hosting physical events sounds like a good marketing strategy for many B2B brands. Did you first launch as a consultant and then move into content creation, or was it concurrent?

LM: I always had a love-hate relationship with producing content. When I was employed in open banking, it must have been in 2016-2017; I started under my own domain with my own name. Basically, I started publishing blog posts. My big role model was Fred Wilson, a VC in New York who became famous with his blog, called avc.com. Back in the day, he published a blog post every single day. On some days it was a photo on the beach with a dog. But it was quite often really insightful stuff. I realised I wasn't always enjoying the writing part, but putting content out there is really helpful. Even as an employee, it was helpful to be visible in the space for the things you're doing.

I pushed myself to post back in the day. I focused on embedded finance. By learning, and speaking to companies, I understood there’s a massive gap. The content is not there. That's when I realised I needed to come back to that. And, to be honest, now the content production around embedded finance is a lot more love and a lot less hate. Of course, there are still days when you are writing the newsletter or doing something where you feel like you have a bit of writer's block. It's good to have a rhythm to keep getting stuff out there.

GA: And how do you think about monetisation?

LM: I never did it for monetisation. I've now started taking sponsors for my newsletters, as this could give me more time to focus on content because right now it's a side thing. A newsletter is a great way for lead generation. It's not like I've received a lot of project enquiries, but I think it definitely helps with building your brand, not so much with the cold network but with your existing network. Sharing on LinkedIn is definitely helpful.So sharing on a weekly basis, my newsletter, and my podcast definitely helps me to be visible. And again, it's a journey. I don't think embedded finance review will become a media business, but the media element will become more relevant.

GA: 11FS are doing it well, right? They have sponsorship and make money from the media element, but their core business is consulting. Do you have any tips in terms of the workflow and the process that you can share with us?

LM: When I started blogging in 2016, I tried to keep a weekly cadence. I stuck with that for a month or two, then I stopped for a week, and typically one week of stopping meant stopping for another six months. So it's good to keep a rhythm. I think you have to be realistic about what you can achieve. I didn't start with a weekly newsletter. I started monthly, then biweekly, then weekly. You can learn a lot while you do these things. And similar to what I said about the embedded finance process, it's not possible to build a perfect thing from day one. You need to iterate to learn. I learnt that news curation and interviews are great because they don't require too much creativity on my end. I need to find people. I need to be active, find the stories, go out there and amplify them. But I don't need to come up with crazy new concepts around embedded finance.

Find something that works for you; find a cadence content you feel comfortable doing long term.

GA: What are the challenges or things you’d like to improve on?

LM: I spend a lot of time thinking about the mix of consulting and content activities. How they can contribute to each other. There's a lot of thinking around that, but I'm not going to find the perfect answer. I keep trying things; with the sponsors now, I potentially have more time to invest and then see where it goes.

Every day as an entrepreneur, there is a new challenge, something they didn't expect, sometimes small, sometimes big. I think that's just part of life.

GA: You are a leading light in embedded finance, fulfilling an important mission to connect brands to finance opportunities. But I think you're also nailing it with your approach as an entrepreneur and content creator.

More about Lars Markull:

* Follow Lars on Linkedin

* Subscribe to Embedded Finance Review

Useful Resources for Brand Podcasters:

* The Brand Podcast Checklist

* Grow Through Conversations: a Framework for B2B Brands

* Distribution and Audience Growth Playbooks for B2B ‘Shows’

* How to stand out in a crowded niche (when everyone has a podcast)

And to finish, a bit of fun😂

And some interesting reflections on The Podcast Election

Welcome to the new joiners. I’m George, from Orama a content studio that helps Β2Β brands grow with podcasts. The September sprint, a series of short solo episodes, continues.

When I posted earlier about YouTube, I was wondering: should B2B brands invest in YouTube? Here I share tips on how to make it work.

Listen to the podcast, read the edited transcript below, or watch the video for a visual bonus.

The InvestOrama channel is nearing the 20,000-follower milestone. We should reach it next month, and it happened with minimal recent effort, I only posted twice this year.

My podcast channel follows a similar organic growth path on YouTube - with the same level (or lack of) activity - a trend I don’t see on Apple Podcast and Spotify unfortunately. That inspired me to revisit my YouTube Journey and share some key learnings.

My YouTube Journey

My journey with YouTube began straight after I left finance. I started by offering YouTube channel management services and worked with channels across varied industries like food, jewellery, tech and sports. The brand channels I’ve worked with have accumulated around 100 million views. That number would be a total failure for any video of Mr Beast, but if you consider brand videos with a CTR of 0.5%, that’s potentially 500,000 new business opportunities.

YouTube users have changed. It used to be seen as a platform for independent creators. Soon media brands adopted it, then consumer brands, but 10 years ago very few brands could boast a million followers (Chanel was one of the first). Now, all prominent B2B tech brands such as AWS and Google Cloud heavily invest in YouTube and build significant audiences.

Whatever your technical topic, there’s an audience on YouTube for it. Creators who understood the platform's potential have long garnered millions of followers by sharing technical content, from math to coding.

Here are 20 essential tips from personal experience on YouTube (from my channels, or others):

👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼

20+ YouTube tips for brands

How to approach YouTube

1.You don't need to post all the time on YouTube or promote your content.

YouTube can do the work for you, like it did on my channels. The traffic comes from YouTube directly.

2.YouTube is reliable, unlike other social media platforms.

Do you remember Facebook’s pivot to video? (LinkedIn also had one, but it never took off).

 3.The difference with other social networks is that it's based on content, not notoriety, not how popular you are already.

When Apple, or Nike (or the Pope) launched their Instagram account, they had millions of followers instantly. Just like BCG, Goldman, Amazon, did on LinkedIn. That’s not how it works on YouTube, where it’s about the content that you post.

4.It’s an opportunity for smaller brands to punch above their weight - that’s a consequence of the point above

5.It’s an opportunity for SEO

YouTube is the second largest search engine after its parent, Google. It is incredibly competitive if you look at the amount of videos posted.

But if you compare it to non-video content, it's a lot less competitive. If you have an SEO strategy, it's, it's not easy, but it's easier to compete on YouTube than just on the World Wide Web in general.

6.But it’s more than search.

But it's also a suggestion mechanism, and both combined means your content can live forever and be discovered by new people. That's unlike other social media where your posts have a lifespan of days or weeks max.

7.Analytics rule

YouTube provides a LOT of data, you can pinpoint your search terms and target them with free tools like vidIQ. And therefore it pays off to have a very analytical approach and that also means that brands that naturally have an analytical approach should have a competitive advantage by applying those skills.

 8.The ROI is always high if the ‘I’ stays low

In terms of return on investment, well, it can be high because in my case, I haven't published much recently (the I - Investment is low) and it keeps growing and bringing in revenues directly (ads) and indirectly (sponsorships, courses).

But I did a lot of work upfront. Once you've built a proper show, a proper channel, once you find something that resonates, it has long-term benefits.

9-You should post regularly: it’s good advice, but it's not a golden rule.

This channel has just posted one video and has been growing ever since.

You can forget this preconception about having to post, weekly or even monthly, even if it's beneficial.

 10-There are things that you can do to maintain the channel which are much less time-consuming than creating actual content.

Although I haven’t been posting, I regularly respond to comments. It just takes a few minutes and I enjoy it. I also tweak the titles and thumbnails based on the analytics that have been fed.

Optimization

11-Content and optimization are a product.

CONTENT X OPTIMIZATION = IMPACT

If you score 10 in content and 1 in optimization, it's going to be hard to break through. If you're very good at optimizing, but your content is not great, you won't have fantastic results.

But if you take care of both, then YouTube can really work for you, and optimizing is a lot less

12-There are 3 essential things that you need to think for optimization

Start with the title, thumbnail and description. Check your ‘Impressions click-through rate’. If it’s less than 1% you need to change something.

I've posted before about thumbnails and titles.

13-And then there are little things:

Think of playlists to organize your content. I don't think tags matter. But you have Cards and End Cards, which are powerful ways to link to other types of content. They can bring your CTR from 1 to 2 or 3 percent.

 14-Analytics over Creative

Your optimization, includes copy and design, things that maybe B2B brands are not the most comfortable with, or are not part of their core skills. But, this is a simple fix, and with iteration and analytics, you can make it work.

15-Thumbnails and hooks are not clickbait

It’s something I've learned through YouTube that I'm not yet applying it to other content. Unfortunately, it's not enough to put valuable content in the hope that people will find you.

You really have to get them a strong incentive to click. And then to keep watching. I apply it fairly well on YouTube, but not on this blog, for example, and it’s something I want to improve.

About your videos

16-Resonance is key

When you find a point of resonance, just like in physics, when an item vibrates in response to oscillation, that matches its resonant frequency, it changes everything. So it's the same with your business. You need to find something in terms of style, content, and format that match your audience and things will start to click. The view count will start to rise. You'll have some feedback. All things will come together

17-There’s an audience for your niche, whatever it is.

That includes your B2B super specialized subsegment of FinTech or whatever. It's not boring. There are probably creators that are reaching millions of people, or just thousands of people on that topic. And I think the more niche you go, the better it is. But no, just publishing content is not enough.  

18-Think of the format.

It’s the unique way you're going to present things. My channel didn’t work at first. I wanted to explain and clarify key technical aspects of finance. I used to post very “good” content with very good speakers. And it didn't really ‘work’ until I found the concept of linking it to series and financial scenes.

It’s pretty much the same content with the same people, but it’s reaching tens or sometimes a hundred thousand views per video.  

* A classic interview with an expert, Nicolas Rabener: 1,500 views

* The same expert, but referring to a Billions episode: 55,000 views

19-Face the camera

For a long time, my channel was ‘faceless’. It's not very practical for me to film myself and also I don't like it. But I decided to embrace it, because you want to create this connection, especially if you're selling a service or something on top of your channel. At least people get a feeling of what it would be to talk to you, relate to you, and work with you. Don't shy away from that.

20-Apply your branding diligently, but it's about perfectible vs. perfect.

It will not be a 10 out of 10 for the first time, probably forever, but you can improve over time.

Keep the end goals in mind

21-Capture value outside YouTube

This is what creators do, and this is what brands should do as well. Try to capture emails straight away.

 22-Selling is fine.

The content can be totally related to what you have to sell your product, your service. Explaining how your product and service can solve issues should probably be your strategy on YouTube. I use Ahrefs as a reference, they are doing it really well without being ‘pushy’. And they're cashing in significantly.

We're coming to the end of my “September sprints”. I hope you enjoyed them.

If you’re interested in making YouTube work for you, here’s an offer exclusive to clients and subscribers to this newsletter.

Free YouTube Audit

What is it?

We use various analytical tools to assess the completeness and performance of the channel. We will provide you with an assessment and some recommendations. (This is not an assessment of the quality of the content itself).

Why do I need that?

A YouTube audit would most likely precede a YouTube strategy. Once you know what works and what doesn’t, you can de-risk your content creation.

How does it work?

No login is required, we will scan your channel with various publicly available tools using YouTube APIs and that will be enough for a first report. If you want more details we can look at your analytics.

Get in touch here and provide your YouTube URL if you’re interested:

Something fun happened since my last post.

Open or close with a conversation?

My last post was about business development and content-based networking.

To write it, I must have been doing searches that got the internet excited about selling me ways to grow my business, and I've been served countless ads, including this one multiple times:

It's about learning a complex funnel system that “attracts and converts high-ticket clients”. What struck me there is that the purpose of the whole system was to lead with a conversational close (below). I've been talking about the opposite: a conversational opener.

Both can work together of course. But, you need to know what type of deal you’re into. If you sell “simple” solutions, but it’s hard to identify the buyer then maybe you need a complex funnel system, like the one above. When it comes to enterprise sales, where you have a clear idea of what institutions can buy your services, but it’s a complex solution, starting with a conversation is a better approach. It’s the opposite of the “traditional” marketing playbook.

Beyond “Content-Based Networking”

My earlier post was about business development and it was inspired by a book called “content-based networking”. Here’s a pretty good one-line summary by ChatGPT.

"Content-Based Networking" by James Carbary teaches how to build meaningful professional relationships by creating and sharing valuable content that fosters authentic connections with key individuals in your industry.

Firstly, it’s worth thinking about sales vs. networking. Although the summary above and the book’s title are about the latter, from memory, the focus is on the former. It’s about finding a balance.

Then I want to mention the elephant in the room: where does it fit in a brand’s content marketing?

And finally, there may be additional, personal, selfish benefits (based on personal experience) that trump profits.

Networking vs Sales

The book says “Invite your ideal buyers”. Why not? But I think there's something a bit problematic about it: keeping a genuine interest (or pretending well enough but that’s even harder).

I'll take a personal example. I've been invited to the “Business Spotlight” podcast. The host was, well, Spotlighting my business.

Approach it cautiously

And he offered some services (coaching starting with a free session!) straight away on the back of it. I wasn't in the market for that. But even if I were, I could see them coming from a mile away. I participated anyway in the podcast. I always say yes if I don’t need to prepare, it’s good practice, but I didn't think this led to a very genuine conversation. There was no incentive to share the episode or recommend it to other people - although I could have.

I’m sure you readers have a more subtle and meaningful approach - but I wanted to offer some caution anyway.

A bigger audience = more value to the relationship

If your show is popular, your business can become popular and that’s content marketing (see below). But even if we miss that completely, it means having a bigger spotlight on your guests, offering more value to the people you will interview. You can’t completely neglect audience growth from a relationship-building point of view.

Networking > Outreach

Secondly, I think this ideal buyer targeting misses a networking opportunity, although the book is called content-based networking, not content-based sales. Being introduced to a connection is probably more useful, more valuable than a serendipitous connection, especially if the introduction is a warm recommendation. If you look at complex deals that benefit from a network-led approach, the various stakeholders and partners can be excellent guests who contribute to your ultimate goal, even if they are not the buyers.

There’s probably an ideal mix of outreach (interviewing prospects) and networking (I’d look at Goldman Sachs and A16Z for guest strategy clues).

Podcasting and content marketing

You’re podcasting. You're creating a lot of content(!). I know what you think if you’re a podcaster… But from a brand perspective, if the primary motivation for your podcast was business development it’s easy to see it separately from the rest of your “content”.

It’s a content engine

Good news! You can still pull them together. Or if you don’t have a content arm, a podcast, a series of conversations can be your content engine.

It's a powerful one and it's also a very efficient one. Let's say you have monthly episodes. You can easily transform each conversation into multiple articles, posts, and clips. They can also help you to create whitepapers, where you regroup the perspectives of different experts. And these can feed your content calendars, week in and week out.

It takes two to converse

It's not just about the guest. It's also about your point of view, and your expertise that you can showcase for the podcast. That’s where the host strategy matters. Your listeners will get a feel for the organization.

That's why I often say that someone at the company should be the host, by default. It can be more than one person, but it should not be the intern who's comfortable in front of the microphone. The host represents the company. Even if just a hundred people listen? Who would you send to an industry conference attended by a hundred people?

And the fact that it's video is not neutral. It's a way to create a connection at scale.

Conversations are more than content collaborations

This draws straight from my experience as a podcaster who recorded hundreds of episodes.

On content collaborations

I think content collaborations are usually a good idea.

It's a good way to break the ice. It works really in terms of audience growth. And you can do it in many ways on social media. There are Instagram takeovers, YouTube collabs, etc. From a more traditional business perspective, you can write an article by sending questions to experts who will be featured in return.

But a conversation is more than that. It is interactive. It has the potential to bring you from point A to point B. You both learn something. It affects your perspective on the world, even if it's not always in a groundbreaking way. That makes it particularly important for relationships.

But there are even more benefits in being able to ignite these conversations.

Other benefits

I evolved my podcast, originally The FinTech Files (about financial technology), into an area of finance that I was even more interested in (investing).

Because this was primarily a personal exploration. In doing so, I transformed a podcast that was bringing in business (as discussed here) into one which isn’t. Because I'm interviewing authors, experts and academics, not brands and my business, Orama, works with brands.

It still amazes me to have this opportunity to reach out to people I admire, my favourite authors, personalities, etc. And most often they will agree to have a conversation with me. The non-monetary benefits are huge.

It’s not a complete financial loss though. It was a time when this exploration of investing was important to me. And it impacted my finances overall by making me a better investor. But you may say it's a selfish perspective, to the benefit of George Aliferis, the individual, and the detriment of Orama, the brand and you probably have a point.

As the sole owner of the business, I’m ok with that… and I'm now thinking of relaunching my FinTech podcast but with a different angle.

So far so good with the September sprints. I started them with a swim training metaphor so here’s another one. Even if you only race long distances it’s beneficial to include sprints in your routine. These solo episodes are not sustainable and I’m here for the conversations, but it’s been a good drill.

So I'll do another one, which may be the last one. And it's related to something that's happening on my YouTube channel as it's about to cross 20, 000 followers even though I've posted almost nothing this year.

It’s an incentive to revisit the missed opportunity for many B2B brands on YouTube.

Thank you for listening, watching, or reading!