Blake: [00:00:00] Okay. And on the podcast today, we have Jonathan who is from growth hackers, and we are going to be discussing a lot of different things from funnel building to building an ecosystem for your branding and not just having to pay for ads, but actually building something sustainable. But before we get into it, Jonathan, how are you doing

[00:00:24] Jon: [00:00:24] today?

[00:00:25] Hey Blake, I'm very good to this. Thanks for having me here.

[00:00:29] Blake: [00:00:29] What we'd love to get a little bit of context on you as a person. Before we dive into all of the details, I'm curious if you could just give us a quick story about your career so far, how you got started and how you got to where you are now.

[00:00:44] Jon: [00:00:44] Okay. So first maybe I should tell you a, your listeners that I'm French, so that's why the Exxon's is maybe a bit weird for people. One that's used to, so I'm originally from France, but, I live in Taiwan for eight years. So I go there, like I used to study marketing international business in Dublin in Ireland.

[00:01:03] And then I used, I traveled a lot like doing small jobs in England, in the U S in Spain and in Australia. And then you just walk in like, yeah, like a video, like a farming that way toasts. They're pretty small jobs. And then as I started to do a bit of marketing for small businesses, which was more the time, it was more like international service because I could speak English, French and Spanish.

[00:01:30] It was more international sales and marketing. So then when I moved to Taiwan eight years ago, I was working in international marketing. So, creating a website, creating marketing strategies. It mostly in English, French, and Spanish at work. I did this for a few companies in Taiwan for like three or four years.

[00:01:48] As then about five years ago, I joined a startup and I kind of move from, digital marketing to go cycling, where it will be more a gross focus was, it will be more, would be more kind of tactics. So as it would be. So for one year, I did just try marketing goals. I came for one startup, and the thing is, during that time I was, we were in an incubator in Taiwan, and then we got funded by an English, accelerate or, so we moved to England for a few months.

[00:02:24] And the thing is, why, why Lynn's incubator in Taiwan? in England, right? We work with many startups and all of them are, there were more like mostly tech founders as a needed app with, with a user acquisition. gross revenue says regeneration and everything. So I was working more as like, as a concert for many startups as the same time.

[00:02:48] And so seeing his idea that much time to work on my own startups, so I decided to quit. Yeah. And kind of through LaunchCode. Psychos was a good, was many startups as the same time or many companies 10 times, same time with marketing, was liking new generation. And so I've created course, I guess with my cofounder who is American and shit, I think invites from, it's from Hawaii, so that's pretty, I never been there.

[00:03:13] We should have wished I could go there. So, yeah, we created go psychos of four years ago and now, you know, we work with many companies from, which machine, if we were a us, Canada. was the Western Europe, Asia, not too much, I would say not too much since America or Africa yet.

[00:03:32] Blake: [00:03:32] Awesome. And it's funny how life will just take you one direction, right?

[00:03:37] You think you're going to go some way and then you end up a completely different path.

[00:03:40] Jon: [00:03:40] Exactly. It's a lot. So people you meet, in a way it's like a, I remember when I used to live in iTunes and Metro, the Spanish, so that's why I went to spans and Spain, a metal of Australian. So I went to Australia in Australia.

[00:03:53] I met my wife. We started it. So we did. I want to kind of, yeah, it's like you, you move, you don't decide where to go. It's kind of the people you...

Blake: [00:00:00] on the podcast today, we have Kyle Coleman from Clari. Kyle is somebody that I follow closely on LinkedIn, not necessarily with the same job description as me, but I watch what he does with his LinkedIn content, and it's a really good example that we can all follow.

[00:00:15] So we're going to dive into a lot of those principles today. But first off, Kyle, how are you doing? How are you feeling today?

[00:00:21] Kyle: [00:00:21] I am doing so great. Thanks for having me. On.

[00:00:25] Blake: [00:00:25] I'm excited for this. I always like to start with context about you so that people know that it's not just a crazy person on the other end talking nonsense, but that you're actually credible.

[00:00:34] So let's get some context on Kyle. What's the story of your career so far? How'd you get started? How'd you get to where you are now?

[00:00:42] Kyle: [00:00:42] Yeah. Good question. So I started in B2B tech. In about 2012 I got a job at an advertising agency in San Francisco, B to B tech advertising agency. And from there I was introduced to, actually one of our clients was a VP of marketing at some other ad tech company in San Francisco. He left his company to go join Looker.

[00:01:05] A, Looker was a seed funded, actually, I think at that time it was an angel funded company. I had never heard of it. I had a little bit of exposure to the business intelligence and the analytics space and opted to jump ship from my not so cushy advertising job over, over to, I was a sixth employee at Looker.

[00:01:24]stayed at Looker for about six years. Grew the SDR team from just myself to a team of about 60, as the company itself. Went from six employees to about 800 or so. And I left and helped scale the, the revenue at Looker from about a hundred K in RR when I started to about a hundred million in ARR when I left.

[00:01:44] And they were, Looker was by Google in the summer of 2019 for, two and a half billion dollars. So that went pretty well. And, I joined Clary as the head of sales development and sales enablement back in April of last year. one thing led to another over the course of the summer and early fall, and I ended up taking on an expanded purview on the marketing side.

[00:02:06] So I, we have this newly created department that we call our growth department that encapsulates a lot of top of funnel sort of teams from demand generation to field marketing to SDR and enablement. All in our little growth team here.

[00:02:21] Blake: [00:02:21] Awesome. Yeah, I've, I've heard more and more companies doing that, trying to combine sales and marketing, not necessarily combined the departments, so just get them to collaborate more. I think that's

[00:02:29] Kyle: [00:02:29] Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And you know, Clary itself as a revenue operations platform, so we're trying to drink our own champagne here to a certain extent and make sure that all the teams will as aligned as possible.

[00:02:39] Blake: [00:02:39] Yeah, no, for sure. Okay. And then my second question of context here before we really get into the actionable advice is if you had to. Yes. Or, or just tell us what your professional super power is. What would you say? Yeah.

[00:02:53] Kyle: [00:02:53] Hmm. Good question.

[00:02:56]

[00:02:56] Oh, this is a tough one. I feel like I am able to. I, I feel like I'm able to communicate with people really well by understanding their success criteria. So for what I mean by that is when I'm speaking to a sales person, I'm not speaking to them about MQL or leads or website visitors.

[00:03:16] I'm talking to them about pipeline. And then conversely, when I'm talking to my marketing person, I'm able to kind of switch gears and talk more about the metrics that matter to them, and so I can help bridge the gap between the two. that's one of the beauties of the beautiful things of coming up as an SDR and, and sort of staying in that orbit that's right between sales and marketing for the last seven or...

Hey there, and welcome to the micro-influencer podcast on this beautiful Friday. Once again, if you are new to the show, this started out with just interviews every single Tuesday, which has kind of been my day for sending out the newsletter, putting out the podcast, doing all that good stuff, and then I decided.

With the longer form interviews, which are still pretty short, they're usually 20 to 30 minutes, not, not too long, easily digestible, but I wanted to give something that was a little bit more digestible so that if you had like a five minute drive, you could listen to something, learn something new. So every Friday, I'm just doing this alone.

Five, 10 minutes snippets max of. Just advice. Okay. My week to week, as you know, I report on the podcast stats every single Tuesday on a LinkedIn live. So feel free to join that. You can see exactly how many people are downloading this podcast and how it's growing. And this can help you with your own endeavor.

And today I want to talk about building a community. This is something that whether you are building a personal brand, obviously that's directly related to this, or even if you're building a product, if you want to see any modicum of success, you have to have some kind of community behind it. But I think that the idea of a community is flawed because typically that suggests that there's a community leader and then the rest of the people are followers in that community.

Aye. Don't think that, yeah. Should be the reality for any successful community. And that is not the goal for this. So I, I put out a post recently on LinkedIn and I want to just go through the points of this. I don't want a massive community for this. If it happened, then you know, whatever. But I really don't want that because I want everybody to be able to lead in their own way within this community.

I don't view myself as the leader of the community. I just see somebody that. Organized it and had the idea to start getting other leaders together. I don't think that I'm the ringleader by any means. I'm still learning alongside every single other person listening to this. So that may sound unambitious to some, but for me, I think it's a great way two grow.

And the reason for that, it's because it's based on building real relationships. And the reason that I came to this conclusion it is because I've gone the complete opposite direction in the past. I used to care a whole lot about follower counts and I thought that that was something that really mattered.

I also cared about the perception of being the leader of the community. I wanted people to see me as the captain and I wanted the glory for that community and guess where that got me pretty much nowhere. The, none of those podcasts, communities, videos that I tried to build around that concept ever produced results for me.

They never worked and I never really got any meaningful relationships out of them. So this time around as I've matured and started to grow from my experience and learned that that doesn't, no, not only does that not work, but it's not enjoyable. I started realizing it's way cooler if I could be a part of my own community that's actually led by every single person in it.

I don't want to be selfish or illogical or pointless anymore with with trying to be the ringleader and the sole leader of a community. I really want to adjust to this new reality that I'm going to put in hard work, consistency and meet great people, and that's what's going to lead to success. And everybody in the community is doing that together.

So I don't want followers, I want peers, I want friendships, I want relationships. And I know that sounds a little bit corny, but. I really think that if I can take this a little bit more, one to one over time, this is going to be much more impactful for people and have greater success than if I just try to reach everybody, which I've definitely been guilty of.

That's advice that you're going to get from every...

Blake: [00:00:00] today we have Nick Stagge on to help us discern how we can be creating compelling content, unwrap what it means to actually create something that's worthwhile on social media and how to maximize that.

[00:00:11] Nick, how are you doing today?

[00:00:13] Nick: [00:00:13] I'm good, Blake, how are you,

[00:00:13] Blake: [00:00:13] man? I am fantastic and I'm really excited about this one. I'm excited for me to learn a lot, so I'm sure the audiences as well. And let's, before we dive into it, I'd love to get a little bit of context on you. If you could just give us a brief snapshot of what your career has been like so far, how you got started, where you are now.

[00:00:31] Nick: [00:00:31] Yeah, absolutely. I, it's been a long, it's been a long walk. I started in retail and spent a decade working in managing stores on the Western United States. And, and. I learned pretty quickly in that environment that at the time, brands weren't doing a whole lot to help drive the last moment of the sale.

[00:00:52] They were totally reliant on, on the retail team. So I took that learning and I, I pounded on the door of Skullcandy and I convinced them that they should be better than that and they should create a retail sell through team. And they gave me. They said, look, you can come on for 90 days and prove that this will work, and if you're willing to do that, we'll take a risk.

[00:01:16] So I did 10 years in retail for that, and after 90 days we kept running forward. We built a global program, and then I was recruited to go do a, an upleveled version of that at GoPro with a larger audience. And. I realized while I was at GoPro and Skullcandy that technology is just where, where it's at and where the future of interacting with one another really is.

[00:01:47] So I left GoPro and I went to a, a tech company in Utah that's still focused on the same thing. So it was a nice, smooth transition. And I spent five years there and then just. Over the last eight or nine months, I have moved over and I as the COO of woolly a tech company that is putting digital rails around word of mouth marketing.

[00:02:12] Blake: [00:02:12] Awesome. So you've made quite the climb from being in retail all the way up to being a CMO now at a tech company. So I think that establishes a little bit of of your credibility there. I would love to know what you would consider your PR, your professional super power is.

[00:02:27] Nick: [00:02:27] Oh, man, I have so many weaknesses.

[00:02:30]I mean, so when I'll, I don't know about that. Some people who know me best would say, I, I probably, need a dose of humility. But, but I, I mean, I, look, I think because I, I recognize, I have so many weaknesses. I've found a way to. To team up with people who are truly spectacular and learn from them and learn the things that I need so I can be better.

[00:03:01] And the things that I, I just can't learn or aren't my forte. I've learned to lean on those people and have those people help prop up whatever sort of initiative or goals we have in place. So to me, I think it's all about understanding. What you're good at and what you're not good at. So you can put a team around you or you can join a team that compliment you.

[00:03:26] And I think if you do that, then you can become really successful.

[00:03:30] Blake: [00:03:30] I love it. So let, let's dive into the details here. We're here to talk about creating compelling content and maximizing your social media organically, getting more reach, reaching the right people for this whole thing. I'd love to just kind of be a thought experiment based specifically around LinkedIn, because I think that's where we're going to get the most out of it.

[00:03:49] So given let's just say that I'm somebody that is just starting out zero followers on LinkedIn. I maybe I just graduated from college and I'm just starting to do my own project. Maybe I'm starting an eCommerce store or something. I'm, I'm totally,...

Blake: [00:00:00] Welcome, welcome to the micro influencer podcast. Once a week, I wanted to do one of the shorter episodes where instead of just doing an interview, which I'll continue doing on Tuesdays, I think that's highly valuable to hear from experts and pros and other people in your position that have done it before.

[00:00:17] This is going to be based on my journey, so that you can see some of that's actually building something currently, which is the podcast that you are listening to. So this will be a little meta, but, I think it's going to be valuable really for me to document what's happening on a weekly basis. Going over one, I'm actually trying what's working, what's failing, and sharing that with anybody that is trying to build something on their own.

[00:00:40] Now, you may not be trying to build a podcast yourself. You might be trying to build a YouTube channel or an Instagram store or an Etsy shop. You might be trying to build something in software. It might be more advanced than that. So wherever, whatever stage you're at, I'm hoping that this will help you at least see what.

[00:00:59] The production and the distribution and all of those steps that go into building something meaningful, what those are, how to decide what works for you and things like that. So I'll just start with where I'm at right now. There's no need for me to go. Back into the past I, because my recollection won't, won't serve me as well.

[00:01:20] So I'll talk about this this week and what's been happening in terms of building out this podcast. And I hope you find value in this. So here we go. This week I. As you can tell, I lost my voice and it's just recovering. So it's been an interesting time for podcasts when I'm recording intros, nachos, and things like that.

[00:01:42] Sometimes they might sound in the next couple episodes, a little raspy. Apologize for that. And especially right now, it probably doesn't sound great, but I'm at, I'm at the tail end of this thing. I feel like I'm recovering. And this past week I've been focusing so much on distribution because I have run podcasts before, so I have an idea of.

[00:02:01] What sounds good, what makes for an engaging interview, how to find the right people and come up with great questions and things like that. So I feel like this time around, I was more prepared for the actual content of the podcast, but still really trying to figure out distribution and getting an audience out of it.

[00:02:20]it, it's not easy. That's easily for me, the hardest part of this whole thing. I, I could talk for days, I could. Go into a studio and just record my own voice and I, I'd be fine. I could be able to create something, at least a value, hopefully, and in a short period of time, but I haven't been able to grow a podcast quickly, and I'm not looking for gimmicks or things that will.

[00:02:47] You know, hack my growth right now and then kill me later. I'm looking for sustainable growth, but I'm trying to find ways that I can be more productive and efficient to expedite that growth realistically, and I have found some success. So I started sharing my numbers on LinkedIn last week and I'll share them more and more every single week.

[00:03:07] Last week I was at 400 downloads. Of the podcast. And that was after the first nine days of the episodes being launched. So within nine days of the, of the podcast launching, I was at 400 downloads for context. In previous podcasts I had done in about six months, I had gone to a thousand so it took a much longer time.

[00:03:27] This is almost a week, and I got the 400 so as of right now, I'm at about 620 so in the past week it's gone up 220 and I'm still really trying to figure things out so. I want to share some things that are working for me. First and foremost, I've been leveraging the audience that I already had. my biggest platform is LinkedIn.

[00:03:47] So I've been leveraging that and trying to find ways to provide value. I've been...

Blake: [00:00:00] Awesome. On the podcast today, I've got an old friend, Mike Carroll, who was on a previous podcast that I hosted, and we're running it back today. Mike, how are you doing?

[00:00:12] Mike: [00:00:12] I'm good, buddy. How are you?

[00:00:13] Blake: [00:00:13] I've been fantastic and I'm excited to have you on. Mike knows a ton about sales and marketing and blending them together and growth and all that good stuff.

[00:00:21] So we're going to talk about bootstrapping and growth in general when you're just starting out. But before we get into all the details, I want to give the audience a little bit of context as to who you are and what you're doing. So if you wouldn't mind just giving us a brief history of your career so far.

[00:00:36] Mike: [00:00:36] Yeah, sure. That's a, well, I'll, I'll try to give you the, like the TLDR version. it's been short. So I graduated from, from college and went to grad school and got a master's degree in journalism. I worked in politics and ran political campaigns from like, you know, aldermen all the way up to the, to the U S Senate for about six years.

[00:00:52] Then I freelanced for a while, jumped into an agency, did that for six years. And now I'm at nutshell, as the head of growth. And actually in the very near future, I'll be going back to the agency side. be the VP of growth at marketing supply co, which is a digital growth agency in Detroit.

[00:01:07] Blake: [00:01:07] That was, that was pretty brief.

[00:01:08] That was a much more brief than a, than we usually

[00:01:11] Mike: [00:01:11] get resected who does

[00:01:13] Blake: [00:01:13] the short episode. I figured

[00:01:14] Mike: [00:01:14] I'd keep it through it. If you want to dive into any part of that career,

[00:01:17] Blake: [00:01:17] yeah. Be a little crappy. Oh, you only got like 20 minutes here, so let's, yeah. yeah. So I'm curious, if I were to ask you what you think professional superpower is, what would you say?

[00:01:27] Mike: [00:01:27] Problem solving? Without a doubt. You know? And that sounds like a really weird, like, nebulous, thing to say like, Oh, I solve problems, but, but my superpower for sure is I think my ability to take any situation, any challenge that you're facing, break it apart into its, its requisite components. Figure out which of those components needs to be fixed first and then draw on a really kind of strange and diverse background and skillset to figure out what to attack, how to attack it, and then, you know, and solve that problem.

[00:01:56] Well, that's a business problem, a marketing problem, a sales problem, political problem. You've been, that's, that's definitely my superpower. That's thing it's served me well. Just the ability to kind of like take a 30,000 foot view of any type of problem and then dive into it and bust it up and figure it out.

[00:02:10] Blake: [00:02:10] Well, let's solve some problems today then.

[00:02:12] Mike: [00:02:12] All right,

[00:02:13] Blake: [00:02:13] let's do this. So one of the problems that we see often when you're a side hustler, you're just starting out on a project. I don't really know where to start in terms of the growth. You maybe you have an idea, you kind of have a game plan of what you want to accomplish, but then you feel overwhelmed by all the things you need to do on social media to grow it and all the sales side of things and, and you might feel tempted to immerse yourself in buying all kinds of different tools.

[00:02:39] I'm curious what your thought process is that early on actually having tools or if you even need them.

[00:02:46] Mike: [00:02:46] personally, I don't think you need them. I think the only thing that you need to start any type of side hustle or project as a whiteboard. So, yeah, and what I mean by that is that whatever you're going to do up front, whatever your side hustle is, the most important thing is just to, and actually I read one of your posts this morning,...

Blake: [00:00:00] On the podcast today, we have Colin Campbell, who's here to talk to us a little bit about marketing and how to make it feel like a gift, not so much a, a burden or an interruption. Colin, how are you doing

[00:00:15] Colin: [00:00:15] today? I'm great, Blake, thanks for having me on.

[00:00:18] Blake: [00:00:18] Really appreciate this and I'm excited. This is somebody that I follow closely on LinkedIn, so really, really excited, but I want to get some context on you for the audience first so they know who they're dealing with here. if you could just give us a quick story about your career so far, how you got started and how you got to where you are now.

[00:00:34] Yeah,

[00:00:35] Colin: [00:00:35] sure. So the short version is I graduated from college with a degree in global studies, which turned out to be not so useful for helping me get a first job. I was lucky that my parents had a small business, so I helped them with customer service, sales and marketing. I taught myself some content marketing.

[00:00:53]got a job at a content marketing agency doing strategy for all kinds of clients in all kinds of industries. And then I ended up, six years later leading. That account management department in the Boston office of that agency. and then through sort of a serendipitous connection to somebody who worked at sales hacker, I got the job running sales hacker after that.

[00:01:13] So I've been doing that running sales hacker for about two years.

[00:01:17] Blake: [00:01:17] Awesome. And if you don't follow sales hacker, go look it up, but we'll, we'll talk about this at the end, but it's, it's great. so. Let's, let's dive into this. I'm curious, first of all, what, what would you consider your professional superpower?

[00:01:31] Colin: [00:01:31] Oh, yeah. I think I'm kind of the guy who just asks why a lot, you know, like, I, I try to do things with a purpose. Which is kind of a strange superpower to have cause it's not a tactic. Like, you know, you hear people talk about the T shaped marketer. my, I guess, you know, I, I'm not, my superpower is an SEO or content.

[00:01:50] I'm pretty good at those two things. My superpower is really like, let's figure out why we're doing these things and then prioritizing and trying to give teams focus so that we can go big. In one area and, really make a difference for the people who we need to make a difference for. Well,

[00:02:07] Blake: [00:02:07] let, let's dive into just that.

[00:02:09] And so making marketing field feel like a gift. That's definitely not how most people feel about marketing. It's usually perceived as kind of slimy interrupted. so I'm curious, first off, generally, what do you mean by that? Cause you say that a lot. That's one of your core messages.

[00:02:29] Colin: [00:02:29] Yeah. I, you know, this started out I think is me trying to like assuage my own adjunct about my profession.

[00:02:37]cause I do love marketing, but, but I am pretty conscious of the fact that I don't love being marketed to or being sold to. And I think most people feel that way. So I really just tried to start doing things in marketing roles. For our audiences without the catch involved, you know? and, and like, the reason I gravitated in early in my career towards content marketing is because it felt like that, it felt like, Oh, this is a nice thing I can do for the people I hope will one day become my customers.

[00:03:06] And if I teach them. Some stuff that's useful for them, you know, maybe it'll come back around, but then we all got really good at attaching forms to things and, you know, basically adding a catch, and I didn't like that. Yep. Yeah.

[00:03:23] Blake: [00:03:23] Well. So let's, let's dive into it a little bit more and start here by, I mean, so you're, you, you're at sales hacker, so you're thinking w a lot of people are gonna think, Oh, this is a sales person.

[00:03:32] But you're, you're a marketer. So first off, what's,...

Want to learn how to grow on platforms like LinkedIn and TikTok that are currently content-deficient? Listen in!

Blake: [00:00:00] Awesome. On the podcast today, I have Courtney Johnson, who is a fellow Austinite. Why more of a passer-by but Courtney, how are you doing today?

[00:00:11] Courtney: [00:00:11] I'm doing good. Excited to chat with you, Blake.

[00:00:15] Blake: [00:00:15] Yeah, this is going to be fun. Courtney is super active on LinkedIn, so that's where I've originally met with her and and decided to do this podcast episode, and it's going to be really helpful because if you go onto her feed, you will see all kinds of cool content, really great actionable ideas. It's not fluffy like a lot of other people's stuff, which I.

[00:00:34] Thoroughly enjoy you. You get a lot of meat in the, in the posts and a lot of specifics. So that's great. And hopefully I'm going to extract that for the audience today and we'll be talking about LinkedIn and then also take talk a little bit. The theme really is content deficient platforms, so platforms where there are more consumers than creators.

[00:00:53] And so we'll dive into that. But first I like to get context on you. So that we know kind of what your background is and who we're dealing with. So if you wouldn't mind just taking us through a brief history of your career so far.

[00:01:05] Courtney: [00:01:05] Love it. Well, I'm Courtney, as you all know. I actually started my career in sports marketing, worked for a lot of teams over in Dallas. then went to a few agencies, started getting hired on to build out agencies. and companies. Social media departments, you know, make them profitable, create service lines around them.

[00:01:24] And then I was hired on at scaled about a year ago to create the digital presence department, which is kind of the bridge between, digital marketing and sales through digital. So we do a lot on LinkedIn where, you know, building out sales teams, LinkedIn and personal brands. So it's been a lot of fun.

[00:01:41] It's been a wild ride so far. Working in social media is pretty crazy, but, I absolutely love it.

[00:01:48] Blake: [00:01:48] And then for for even further context, if you could just give us an idea of what you would consider your professional super power is.

[00:01:56] Courtney: [00:01:56] My professional super. It's definitely connection and audience building on social. So I think a lot of people, and a lot of agencies, brands focus so much on the content where they forget about the audience. You can have the best content in the world, but if the right audience isn't seat seeing it and it's not formatted in a way for that specific platform that's going to resonate with that audience, it's a waste of time.

[00:02:21] So I really try to focus on that audience and engagement element. Social media.

[00:02:27] Blake: [00:02:27] Well, I think that's going to fit in really well because the audience here, we've got a bunch of listeners that are side hustlers and a lot of people getting started out, not necessarily well on their way in their journey. So this is going to be helpful to give us ideas as to how to get going and how to start engaging properly.

[00:02:43] So let's, let's just start there. Like specifically with tech talk right now. It's so unknown for a lot of people. It's businesses like sign hustlers, everybody. Nobody knows what to do on tech talk except for gen Z people. So like for the rest of us, where should we actually start with TechTalk

[00:03:01] Courtney: [00:03:01] Yeah. So first place to start is just people . Brands are trying to do, just copy what they're doing on other platforms and put that on tick talk. But it's really about the people. So if you work for, you know, some sort of, whether it's a fun, like a fun, easy brand, like a B to C brand, or a little bit more difficult to B to B brand, you need to pick people out.

[00:03:23] That can be the representatives and beyond tick tock instead of...

You can check out Jason's site over at fixmarketer.com.

The free book and 1-page marketing plan template is found at: fixmarketer.com/bonus

And finally, the conversion calculator mentioned is located at: fixmarketer.com/conversion-calculator

Now here's the interview!

Blake: [00:00:00] on the podcast today, I've got Jason Weaver here to discuss something that most of us probably aren't doing, or at least doing very well, which is creating a marketing plan, specifically a one pager. So Jason, let's start off with how you're doing, and then we'll get into the specifics.

[00:00:20] Jason: [00:00:20] I'm doing great. I live in the great state of Idaho and it's been freezing cold and snowy all the time, and it just basically stopped. I don't know if it's going to continue or not, but I am very grateful not to be shoveling every day.

[00:00:36] Blake: [00:00:36] I'm a, I'm from Utah originally, so I get a little bit of that, but Idaho is definitely worse for the weather.

[00:00:42] Jason: [00:00:42] Yes, most definitely.

[00:00:46] Blake: [00:00:46] All right, so let's, let's get some quick context on you first, just so people know who they're dealing with. I want to start out with your story, just a brief story on where your career started to where you are now.

[00:00:57] Jason: [00:00:57] Well, I was going to college and there was this class called internet marketing, and so I was lucky to be in one of the few colleges that actually cared about that 10 years ago. And, I took the class, had to build a website and a, the infrastructure to sell product and everything from scratch within less than three months and advertise it.

[00:01:16] So of course, Google ads was the gold standard back then, and still is pretty good right now. And, so I started selling HCMI cables for $5. Including free shipping. And I broke even during that class. And little did I know if I just kept selling them more stuff, I'd be a millionaire by now. But I got scared.

[00:01:35] It's all like, how do I spend other people's money to learn this thing called Google ad words and websites. And so I went and got with the hotel company that did online bookings. And you know, I got to spend $15,000 a month in other people's advertising on Google. And I learned a lot and it just went from there.

[00:01:52] So the last 10 years have been. What's called traditionally in house, where you're inside the business, working for that business, doing the marketing, running it. And then for a little over a year now, I am now doing my own internet marketing agency, more specialized on those, you know, newer upstarts, smaller companies, especially local small business, which the book I wrote is all about small business because you can apply just about everything, even to the big eCommerce company that, that's in my one page marketing plan as well.

[00:02:20] But. I have a passion for local small business, and that really started back when I worked for a company called monkey bars. I, they've rebranded now. It's a gorgeous garage. A monkey bars is one of their lines, but they actually go in and organize your garage for you, if you can believe that. And they had 120 dealers throughout the United States and Canada.

[00:02:39] And I got from the ground up, spend five years building their internet marketing, building the team, helping students, which is a huge passion of mine, helping them get internships. And, that's where I really, weren't a lot and started and then it, it grew from there. I've been with big eCommerce companies now, 20 million a year in sales, and, you know, but like I said, the small businesses still where my heart is at.

[00:03:03] Blake: [00:03:03] And that you're, you're addressing an audience of the smallest businesses, which is a, the micro-influencer side hustler genre of people. So this is going to be super helpful for a bunch of people, and I want to dive into the marketing plan, but first, before we get into that one final context...

Blake: [00:00:00] today on the podcast I have and we're going to talk a little bit about building your personal brand, which I know is going to be huge for a lot of people listening in. So Basant, how are you doing today?

[00:00:16] Basant: [00:00:16] I'm good. How are you doing?

[00:00:18] Blake: [00:00:18] I am fantastic. Where? I mean, you're in, you're in Berlin, right? So it's completely different time than, than where I'm at.

[00:00:24] It's early

[00:00:25] Basant: [00:00:25] the afternoon.

[00:00:26] Blake: [00:00:26] Yeah. Yeah. So, I just, just woke up, rolled out of bed and, excited to do this. Yeah. cool. Well, let's dive right into it. Usually I, I want to get more context about you first so that people can come to know who you are, why, why they should trust you, where this advice is coming from, and then we can get into actual tips that people can implement for their own brands.

[00:00:49] But just some quick context on you. First and foremost, what's, what's the story of your career so far? How you got started until where you are now.

[00:00:58] Basant: [00:00:58] Right? So I grew up in Saudi Arabia and I'm originally from Egypt, and about five years ago I moved to Germany to pursue my education. And I think that kind of established me as someone who's a bit more resourceful and constantly trying to get out of her comfort zone. And I think that's why I'm always trying to find ways to really.

[00:01:22] Like be out there and like spotlight myself. And since then, a few, like two years ago, I started posting on LinkedIn about my journey, into finding a job specifically. But essentially it's turned into more of me sharing everything I'm learning. And how, How I've gotten so far in my career and since then I was able to get a job at LinkedIn through doing this.

[00:01:49] So I'm going to be starting as a sales associate this summer, and also because of the thought leadership that I've put out as content. I'm recently launched my. career consulting, like side hustle, called Basant blast. And because I put myself out there and established myself and spotlighted myself, I was able to create my career and also like start e-school projects, get to help people every day.

[00:02:18] So I'm really happy with that.

[00:02:20] Blake: [00:02:20] Awesome. Yeah, that's an interesting twist as well on it because usually when we hear about people posting content on LinkedIn, it's, you know, whether it's to build their own business or their personal brand, but you've actually leveraged it to do both of those things, but also get a job at LinkedIn. So that's really cool.

[00:02:35] And we'll dive into that a little bit more, that kind of the process that you took to get there. But I'm curious if, if I were to ask you what you think your professional super power is, what would you say.

[00:02:46] Basant: [00:02:46] Ooh, that's a good question. I think story telling that's so generic, but I think in general, I'm really good at telling stories and really using my story in a way that will help other people. and I think that's why I love sales so much, is that's essentially helping people through telling stories and also recruitments like that.

[00:03:09] I think so many, so much of business is telling stories, to help others. and I think that's my professional superpower.

[00:03:17] Blake: [00:03:17] well, that that's certainly very relevant to building a brand, and we'll talk about that. I guess let's, let's just start in with that because there are a lot of things that we could cover with building a brand, but first and foremost, stories may be at the forefront of, of doing that. How, how have you, and I guess, how can other people use stories to effectively grow a personal brand.

[00:03:38]Basant: [00:03:38] I would say it's really about. Hmm. It's about using your experiences in a way that will help others. I think that's like the best story you can tell. So when I was looking for a job, that's the kind of story