Be The Content!

 Just kind of the market swinging the other way. And so we made that shift about a year ago and decided we’re going to help companies build out their internal content teams. And they’re typically CEOs, executives, founders of successful companies. And when they bring in attention and audience, they transition that and parlay that right into the company brand.

So they make. money that way, but we’re not sitting around following a bunch of companies where we want to hear people speak,  step in, see the problem diagnosis, say, Hey, I got a plan for you to actually get out of this and get on a better path.  It’s hard to scale a highly creative scripted. I mean, those things take.

An enormous amount of energy. How do I scale my efforts? And I’m like, it’s got to be less scripted. I have to be the content versus always having to create the kind of example,  you know, Apple, like all these iconic brands, they do it. They take a different approach. They’re not scared to ruffle the feathers, but they do it with purpose.

They do it with intention.  There’s one thing that all champions have in common. They get shit done. So welcome to the get shit done experience. Well, well, well, we are back at it again. You are in studio. This is the get shit done experience, also known as the G S D X podcast. You can find us at www.

gsdxpodcast. com. Again, I’m telling you right now, this thing is taking off. We are growing really, really fast. Our YouTube channel is performing extremely well, and we’ve made it to top 10 percent podcasts globally for business and marketing. Thank you for your contribution. Please rate and review the show.

Help us out. We keep bringing on amazing guests and I’m excited today because this is somebody who I have.  Um, in some ways, uh, well, no, in a lot of ways I’ve been extremely envious of this gentleman. He is a master content creator. He’s an executive, he’s a CEO, he’s an entrepreneur, he’s a leader, and he’s extremely creative and inspirational.

We are here today with the one and only Mr. Alex B Sheridan. He is the founder and CEO of Impacts Marketing. What is happening? What’s up, my brother? Great to be here, man. It is so great to be here. I was talking with somebody this morning about, they were asking like, who’s Alex B? I’m like, okay, first off,  pull up your LinkedIn, pull up your TikTok, let’s get crazy.

And so we went down the rabbit hole and started scrolling around. Uh, but I told the story. Of when I sent you a video or a, um, I think it was a DM on LinkedIn, I think it was a video DM and you responded back with like, hey, nobody sends videos like this and we were kind of, this is like six years ago, man, and we were kind of like, yeah, yeah, we were starting the journey, um, you were, you were ahead of the curve on that.

And, um, have absolutely launched, but I was also going back and thinking, I think you were the fifth person that I ever interviewed on a podcast. Is that right? That is right. It was like fifth or sixth. Wow. Yeah. So I, you never would have known. Thank you. Because you just let, you just look like a season pro day one.

You know, it’s, it’s the sales game. It’s just, it’s just a sales. It’s communication. So I appreciate that very much. Now we’re back 2. 0. We’re on the get shit done experience. And that’s all you’ve been doing. Alex is getting shit done. Tell us about how the business is going.  We made a, well, it’s going great.

We made a pivotal shift about a year ago from doing a lot of like the done for you content and marketing, right. And social content to helping companies build out their own internal content teams. So if you just look at like the, kind of the stat line of. How effective is content when you have somebody, another company do it for you when you outsource it, when it doesn’t have your brand voice, it doesn’t sound like you.

It’s slower. It’s less effective. And so we started to notice this with other companies that we were working with. But also we were doing ourselves and we were saying the companies that were helping design strategy, coaching, mentoring, and they’re building out their own content teams. They’re having a lot more success than the companies who are just strictly outsourcing all of their own content.

And just like you’re doing in here, what are you doing? You’re building internally. This is the internal system and process and strategy. So we saw that big shift and just kind of the market swing in the other way. And so we made that shift about a year ago and decided we’re going to help companies build out their internal content team so they can say, Peace to marketing agencies, um, at least for all of their content.

Right. Start doing it themselves. Now, websites and things like that. Absolutely. You’re not probably not doing that yourself. You’re going to hire and have somebody do that as you should, as you should. Right. But, um, it’s been going well, man, we had the highest profit year we’ve ever had in the business.

We’re growing. We hired our first W2 employee. We still got a good team in the Philippines. So things are rocking, man. Things are rocking.  There’s always savings, but it’s about way more than savings alone. Total Technology Solutions Group redefines managed print services. Excellence is the minimum standard.

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So as you navigate business and constant change, partner with TTSG for premium advisement and seamless implementation of your technology goals. We set the bar high. Your people deserve it. Peace of mind. Powerful innovation. TTSG. com  I think one of the things that we both recognized is that company pages are never going to perform as well as personal pages.

So a lot of what you’re emphasizing is there has to be influential voices and creators within the leadership team, within the sales department. The marketing team can’t hide behind a keyboard. They have to get out front and they have to be a voice. So when you’re thinking about your company pages and company driven content, yes, you need to have a cadence of getting informative content out there.

You need to be able to have really cool graphics. You need call to action, you know, all of that. But I think what you’re talking about more is building a following. That really engages in the creativity and the messaging that’s going out there, but through personal pages that are running parallel, as you said, with the company message.

That’s it. I mean, if you, a company needs a brand and we can get into that, what that looks like, and it needs a story to tell that story in the marketplace for that brand, for the customer. But from a content standpoint, if we all look at our feeds and we think we rattle off the top five or 10 creators that we follow.

None of them are companies or people, right? And they’re typically CEOs, executives, founders of successful companies. And when they bring in attention and audience, they transition that and parlay that right into the company brand. So they make money that way, but we’re not sitting around following a bunch of companies where we want to hear people speak now from a company brand or a company content strategy, you’re absolutely doing things like this.

Podcasting, the company pages, the company YouTube page where you have a channel, a channel, it’s exactly, it’s more about creating a content medium or channel and then you have personal brands that fit within that, but everyone should really own their own personal brand and then the company has a channel that personal brands intersect with and that kind of represents the broader story of the company.

So are you seeing, um, and we saw this four or five years ago, companies were very reluctant in. Influence their people to be influencers for the brand. A couple reasons. Number one, there were no brand guidelines as it relates to social guidelines. Like what can you say? What can you not say? How do you make sure you protect the brand?

But on top of that, I think companies were also nervous that their people would build. Such a following that they would be recruited away and they would leave, right? So what are you seeing now? Has there been a shift in that narrative where companies are more open to the idea that this is in an influencer marketplace right now?

And your sales people can’t just be smiling and dialing. They have to be using the phone where people are really going to the phone, which is for the scroll. Yes. And I think you’re right. Fear drove a lot of that, right? Where people are like, Oh, we don’t want, what if everyone builds their personal brands here and they leave the company?

It’s like, what if they all build their personal brands and they stay like, what kind of opportunity does that create for the company? If they’re all now winning clients through their content or a minimum, they’re reaching out and it’s a warm conversation because people recognize them from through the videos and through the content.

So to me, it’s like you’re either going to approach this from a fear standpoint, you’re going to say, all right. What if our. What if our employees leave because now they’re getting recognized and someone, you know, poaches them or you’re going to say, yeah, maybe that happens occasionally. But also what if we did this thing really well and we became one of the few or only companies in the industry to really produce high quality content, build personal brands, create a culture around it, like having something like this in your shop.

Right. And we, when we just knocked it out of the park and our company grew 30, Because of the social and content strategy that we have. And I also think it goes back to the deeper thing of like.  As a leader of a company,  is it employees first or people first? Because to me, it’s people first, employees second.

That’s how I look at my people. My W2 employee, she’s a rock star. She’s amazing. She’s green. She’s doesn’t have a ton of experience, but she works hard. She’s smart. She takes initiative. She has a side hustle,  and I talked to her about her side hustle. Now, a lot of people and leaders in this position might say, You’re freaking crazy.

What are you doing? Why do you got a side hustle? Or they would ignore it and just hope that conversation never happens, even though they’re going to have the conversations with or without you. I actually talk to her about it. I try to mentor her about it. I give her advice. I say, Hey, why don’t you try? Go, go do it.

Doesn’t that make her better Anshan, auction. Entrepreneurial spirit, which kind of makes her run parallel with you. So she’s, she’s going to understand what you, the way that you’re thinking like an owner doesn’t look at a business the same way that an employee does. But if you have an employee that’s also an owner, they might look at it in a different way.

Well, it’s exactly right. And it’s also two things like one.  I just think it’s the right thing to do. So I think it’s like if you care about people and helping them get to where they want to go, to me, that’s like what a leader should do. Right. It’s like, again, they’re people first employee second to you create an enormous amount of buy in for you as a leader and as the company, because now they think, wow.

I’ve worked for a lot of people, none of them really took an interest in what he actually cares about me, what I want, not just, oh, how can john benefit the company? And if it’s not about john benefiting the company, I don’t really want to talk about it now. It’s like, wow, they care about what john’s doing outside of the company.

Like that’s That’s really cool. So I think you get like, like I said, they’re going to have the conversations with or without you. They’re going to build that side hustle with or without you. So you might as well be part of it. And at least you can help them on their journey. Maybe they stay an extra couple of years.

Maybe they get you connected to somebody through that side hustle that ends up being a customer. Maybe they find your next employee cause they rave about how well you treated them. on the way out or whatever it is. I just think there’s so much, there’s actually a pretty significant ROI on actually caring about people and treating them the right way.

And that’s partly, that’s allowing them to create their own personal brands and post content and things like that. Yeah. And I think along the way, it’s also strengthening the return on investment that you get out of that person, uh, because they’re, they’re growing their personal skill set. Which they’re going, they’re not just going to use that for their side haul.

So, right, there’s, they’re, the things they’re learning, they’re going to use in their role as well. So, obviously, there’s boundaries there where you don’t want it to, to get out of hand and, and so on. But, again, I think that if you lead by caring about the person, they’re going to care back. Which means they’re not going to cross that boundary.

Well, that’s the thing, and you got it, you still got to It’s not like you got to hold people accountable. You got to have a mission that you’re working towards and goals, and they have to do their job, right? If it’s like, Hey, they’re spending seven hours a day building their side. That’s probably not good shit done, right?

Then they’re not going to be there for that experience. They’re not going to be at that job. So you got, I treat them like adults and it’s like, if you want to do your own thing, awesome. But when I, when you’re here, I expect you to show up and put in the work and we’re all clear on what the mission is and what the brand story is and.

We’re working hard towards it every single day. What I, you know, what comes to mind for me when I hear, and I’ve heard owners and CEOs be like, I’m not so sure that I want my people creating a ton of content and getting a huge following because, you know, um, they’re going to give away the secret sauce or maybe they’re going to get recruited away or their name is going to become bigger than the brand.

And then, you know, that has a different, but  Think about it this way, would you tell your salesperson not to go to networking events because somebody at the networking event might really like them and try and recruit them away? Absolutely not. Do you want them to go to as many networking events as possible?

The problem is with an in person networking event, you could only really get three really strong conversations across with all the distractions that are going on. People start drinking,  then who knows where the conversation goes. Whereas when you post content consistently, you could get 40, 000 people in a week to hear your message for 30 seconds.

Right. Yeah. You’re not going to get to do networking and think about that too. Like, that’s a great point. Like video content just scales. Right. So it’s like I was, I was doing sales, knocking on doors, cold calling in this very area. Like I was telling you earlier. And I, you know, it was, I could visit, you know, 20, 30 people, 40 people a day.

Now I can post a video. It can reach tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people. And I can drill down based on job title where that attention is going. So, yeah, I mean, the game has changed. I think, you know, Yeah.  It’s a different world now. So you started your career, and a lot of people don’t know this, uh, I think they think of you as like a trained marketer.

Yeah. Like a trained branding expert. And, you know, um, you started in sales. You started like a lot of sales people too, where it was like, I’m not sure what I want to do. So I’ll try this out. Oh shit, I’m good at this. And it just kind of took off. Yeah. Where was the intersection, um, or the collision between your sales expertise and this creativity that came into play where you were like, okay, there’s this whole new vehicle and way that I can use my sales attributes and my creativity and actually benefit both. 

Which ultimately is creating more revenue, creating more commission, or in the case of being an owner, creating more revenue, creating more profit.  When did that happen?  So the creative edutainment stuff, it happened pretty early. I mean, if you look at my videos, if you look back, and please don’t look back because they’re not good.

No, they’re good. There’s one bad one where it’s like you got no likes. Whatsoever. And you’re sitting at like a, you’re sitting at a big table and you posted just a picture and it’s like, you almost look scared of the picture. Like, I’m not sure if I should do this. Yeah. Well, it was late 2019,  early 2020. I was just like, man, I didn’t.

So, you know, to your point, I came from sales. So I thought like. When I got interested in posting content and creating videos, social selling, it was kind of by accident. I was trying to promote my sales coaching business that I didn’t have. I was trying to start as a side hustle. And then I started to notice like, wow, I’d post videos and people would respond and drop a comment and DM me and email me and say, Hey, how’d you create that video?

Or, Hey, I see your LinkedIn profile set up really nicely. Can you help me with that? And I was like, Hmm, I think there’s actually a business here. I like this better than the sales coaching. I’m going to pivot the side hustle here. And that’s really what started it all. And then I started to think, how do I separate myself from everyone else that’s out there posting content?

Right. And I thought, well, I think it’s probably two things. One, how can I leverage my unique gifts and talents, which sense of humor, a little bit of acting, a little bit of music, a little bit of rap, a little bit of rap, right? How can I kind of separate myself and then two is just like, what do I enjoy doing?

And it was like putting together those types of videos. So I don’t think I had a good, like, if you would ask me five, six years ago, walk me through the brand story and how you’re going to develop. Like, I wouldn’t have been able to technically walk you through that. Yeah. I didn’t come from marketing. So I, yeah, you were talking a sales funnel.

I was, yeah, like I was, I was like, how does this convert to revenue? What would emotionally get customers into it? I wasn’t like, what’s the click through rate and the impressions on the, you know, I just, I didn’t think like that. And I thought that was a bad thing. By the way, should anyone even think like that?

Well, I think there’s a, there’s a time and a place for data, right? So I do think data is important, but I think that the old school way is like, all we look at is the data and we don’t think about the brand building or the emotional connection we have with an audience. And so that was like where I went first.

I was like, I’m going to build a relationship with my audience. I’m going to emotionally connect with them. I’m going to put out all my effort is into making them better. Yeah. Learn something, feel appreciated, feel inspired, laugh, whatever it was. And show them your gifts. And show them, yeah, and show them why I’m unique and why you want to work with me and that kind of stuff.

And so that’s really how it started. And then, you know, obviously it evolved from there where if you look at my videos now, you won’t see I do a lot of skit videos and that kind of stuff, even though I miss doing that. But sort of the strategy is a little bit changed. You, you, you did, you flipped, you flipped from highly curated. 

Videos that were badass, and I hope that you’ve continued to do those and mix them into the cadence.  But you have shifted to the, I’m simply going about my day,  and these are conversations that I would have with an employee, that I would have with a customer, that I would have with somebody who walks by at a restaurant that I’m filming a little segment at, and says, why are you doing that?

You wanna know why I made that shift? Please. Two things.  One, scalability.  It’s hard to scale.  A highly creative, scripted, you’re acting out. I mean, those things take an enormous amount of energy. And if you don’t think so, go try. Go try, go try. Oh my God, I promise you. I had a, I had hair down on my shoulders when I

And then now look that this is from, this is from trying to curate content. Yeah. So, so one thing was like, how do I scale my efforts? And I’m like. It’s got to be less scripted. I have to be the content versus always having to create the content like people think I got to create all this content. Actually, you can be the content.

You’re already doing. Yes. Yes. So it was it was scalability. And then it was too. I learned pretty quickly that A lot of people would see the videos that I was doing where they were really creative and acting and that kind of stuff and they go man, that’s really cool. You’re really good at that. I could never do that.

So I was like, huh, I’m kind of losing people because they think, oh, it’s Alex. He’s doing his thing. That’s Alex. Like, you know, like, how am I going to do? How am I going to be that? It would be like Michael Jordan trying to be a coach. It’s like, yeah, well, Mike, I can’t dunk from the free throw line, dude.

Like I know for you, it’s easy. But I can’t do that. So it was like, for me, I had to say, how do I create a system and a strategy and something that was scalable, but also very doable. And when clients would see it, prospects would see it, they would go, you know, I could sit there and record some of my stuff or have someone follow me with a camera.

If I had a strategy behind it, a process behind it, I could hire somebody in the Philippines to edit videos. I could set up this, this, and this. I could do the podcasting thing. Like I had to make it more real for them. I also think the, the other thing was just. I was getting more. I was becoming more of a business person, and I had less time to create all this content.

In the beginning, I was like content creator, part, little bit of part entrepreneur, but you had to show people the possibilities, like the endless possibilities of, as you say, unleashing your creativity like there are no rules. That was the other thing that I think that you have had a huge impact on is debunking the concept and idea of what should be on linked in.

Well, it’s got to be, you know, Brand it’s got to have a branding frame on it. It’s got to be highly graphic. Where’s our logo on that one? Like, where’s our, put our logo on there. What’s the KPI on that? Like, what’s the reason? Like, you debunked all of that and kind of broke that and said, no. Like, if you want to rap.

In a Darth Vader outfit and talk about how to close more sales like you can do that. Yeah. And then all of a sudden you started getting 300, 400, 500 likes on a post, which means that you probably had to have 30, 000 views on the post in order to get 500 likes. That’s kind of how LinkedIn works. So  that That was amazing, but not scalable. 

Well, and I think it’s a great point, too, is like breaking the mold. Most companies are like, we want to be different. We want to be unique. And that’s like, cool. Then we’re going through website. We’re messaging and the brand exercise. And we’re like, well, we kind of like what all these other companies did.

It’s like, whoa. I thought you said you wanted to break the mold. I thought you said you wanted to be different. You wanted to take, you know, go a different path than what other companies did. Differently the same. Yeah. So I mean, I think there is, if you look at like, you know, all the great brands do it. You know, Liquid Death is a great example.

You know, Apple, like all these iconic brands, they do it.  Take a different approach. They’re not scared to ruffle the feathers, but they do it with purpose. They do it with intention. There’s a story they’re telling through their brand. Yeah. And that’s, that’s really what is, is connecting, uh, with people. And that’s really what you’re trying to do more than anything is you’re trying to connect with people and get them to engage.

So what’s kind of been the secret sauce to that? Because one thing that I do, uh,  I do really admire about your content. You know that I’m a loyal follower and I really enjoy it is that you get a lot of people to comment.  Like, what is the magic to getting people? Like getting people to view it is kind of the first step.

Getting the people to have some sort of a reaction, like a like a celebrate or whatever. That’s kind of the next thing. Getting people to actually take the time to type something out. That’s intimate. And that means that you’re actually moving them or inspiring them to take some sort of an action. What is the, what’s the kind of the secret sauce to go from, okay, cool, I’m getting likes, but now I’m getting people to actually want to have a conversation with me and my business.

What’s the secret sauce to that? Well, I think it depends on. Branded where you’re at in your journey to write because some people are so loyal to your brand that they see your stuff and they instantly want to comment because they know I know this guy or gal. I know this brand that so there’s that there’s brand affinity.

I think it’s what it’s two things. It’s your message and your content and then it’s your delivery. So if I look at content across the board, whether it’s a podcast, YouTube video, short form clips, there’s only two real things I’m looking at outside of consistency and some other things. What is the message?

Number one, who am I speaking to? Am I dialed into that audience? Who am I talking about things in a way where they go?  Did you just like, were you sitting like, do you have my office bugged? Because I feel like, you know, exactly what we just talked about, you know, an hour ago in our board meeting or whatever it might be.

I literally had a client do that today. I was talking about spamming on LinkedIn and how you shouldn’t do it. There’s better ways to attract customers when business and they go, I was in a meeting just right before this and they go. We felt like you heard us talking about automating LinkedIn and things like that because we hit pause real quick because we saw your video hit the feed and it was like you were reading our mind on what we shouldn’t shouldn’t be doing.

So I think it’s like, do you know your customers really well? And is that message really penetrating through them? And then I think the other thing is just the delivery side. Message is one part, delivery is the other one. Are you delivering it in a way that does have some emotional aspect to it? Maybe you’re doing different shots in different environments.

Or you’re showing behind the scenes type stuff. You’re being the content versus always creating it. Um, mixing things up there. So I think when you combine those two things, you’re going to drive more engagement. So there’s an interesting thing. Trends on TikTok, and you look at some of the creators, they build a following because they do the same thing over and over and over again.

It catches, they keep doing it.  People kind of are buying into that, like, I know what to expect.  You don’t see that often on LinkedIn. So  that’s another element that I think companies have to consider is that each platform has a different magic to it. You can’t necessarily, like you can take something really cool off of tick tock, save it to your phone, drop it in LinkedIn, right?

Nice copy. Yeah. You’re probably not going to get as great of results because LinkedIn is not going to be happy that you dropped the tick tock video into their thing and might penalize you for that, I guess. But, um,  Talk a little bit about how you map out and plan each platform and what message and style of delivery should be for that platform.

Well, and the trend thing too is like, I’ve never done trends for the most part. Like, I just don’t, like, I’m talking about the TikTok, like, oh, here’s 7sexy, do this, do this, do that. I’ve just, it’s never been my thing. And I think it’s also part of the breaking the mold. Like, I don’t want to do what everyone else is doing.

You want to create your own trend. And to me, trending is like a short term, and I’m not opposed to trying trends and doing things occasionally. That’s totally fine. And certainly I’ve taken ideas I’ve learned from TikTok or Instagram and brought them to LinkedIn. I just think the trend game can be a dangerous one because you end up focusing so much on the trend.

And can we get a video to go viral versus just like, what is the message that my customer needs to hear today? Like, fuck all the noise, man, like get rid of all the noise and just say, What is the most important thing that I can communicate over the next month to my customer? And how do I break that up into pieces of content that I can get out into their feed?

And so, um, That’s how I look at it. What was it you asked the question specifically? What was it? I think, you know, how do you, how do you kind of balance what should be on LinkedIn versus what platforms. Yeah, because are you, are you having to create, you know, A catalog for each one and then storing it. I mean, that’s, that’s time consuming.

I saw we’re in a great place with social media, unfortunately, or fortunately now where you can post like the same vertical video to multiple different platforms, right? It doesn’t mean it’s going to perform the same way across the board, but it means that unless you have a team, a personal brand team of 10 people or 15 people, You’re probably not creating an individual video for LinkedIn and then TikTok and then YouTube shorts is like, why would you do that when you’ve already got good, solid short form videos that can go to these different platforms?

Now, are you maybe adding a title on the video that goes on TikTok versus LinkedIn? Are you maybe changing the copy for LinkedIn and You can make it spin or whatever potentially, but it all depends on how many people you have on the team and how many, how much resources you have to be able to do that.

Because if you’re a one to two person team, you’re not doing that. I think people would be shocked to buy the amount of free apps or very low cost apps where you could record the video into that, save it to your phone and then distribute it on multiple platforms. Yeah, that’s what we do. I mean, we never, I never record content on the platform on the platform.

Yeah, because why do that? Because now you’re, it’s, it’s more work to be able to distribute that out to different platforms. Now, there’s a benefit to doing that. I actually think it can improve reach and you can try different things. It’s a little bit more native feeling, but to do that at scale, if you’re posting 10, 50, you know, whatever videos a week, that’s hard to distribute at scale, right?

Because then you’ve got to take that video down and get rid of the watermark or whatever you got to do. Versus we’ll just record from a smartphone, send it to editing. We have a very dialed in process with automation and AI and all kinds of things. We can talk about that too. And then that goes out to different platforms via posting platform.

And that’s just the easiest way that we found to do it. I love it. You keep bringing up The the concept of brand messaging. And when I hear that, what that tells me is there’s a mistake that is happening, especially in small to mid sized businesses. You take a 10 million company. They have a marketing department of one or two people.

Likely one of those two people was not even hired for marketing. They were hired for something else. They started to scale, they said, you’re no longer admin, you got a great Instagram, you’re over here now. And it’s just kind of passed off that, hey, we just need to keep putting stuff out there. You know, put, just put some graphics and some pictures and so on, and then you read their copy.

And the copy just talks about this is what’s happening in the picture, right?  So when you’re talking about brand messaging, that means that the CEO, the board, the leadership team, the director of sales, um, the folks that are actually, um, compiling that message need to be far more engaged with what is happening with content.

Um, and that, that probably means not only the pictures and the videos that are being taken, but also what the copy is to that video.  How often is that?  An issue when you meet with, with customers, they just want to hand you off to the two marketing people and go, you’re going to go work with them. And you’re like, well, wait a minute.

What’s your brand message? Yeah.  Yeah. I mean, every company should have a brand story. And if you want to know, like, if you’re like, I don’t know what our brand is or I’m trying to, I don’t really know if we have a brand, right? Obviously you’re. Customers are the interpreters of what that brand is. Yeah. So you could say, oh, we’re, we’re, this isn’t this, but ultimately your customers are going to decide if you are that thing.

So in a lot of ways, I don’t say your customers own your brand, but I say it’s a collaborative effort with your customers. So you’re saying that the marketplace has to embrace your message and essentially validate that that is in fact it. And if they don’t, you might need to change your message. Correct.

So it’s not like, Oh, we own our brand. And then, cause if like, look, if Nike does something radically different, or we saw it with Bud Light.  Ooh, that didn’t work. They made a, they made a move that was not consistent with what their audience thought their brand was and what happened and stood for the audience said, this is not the brand that we’ve came to love.

And they pushed back. Mm-hmm . And Bud Light had to react. So what did that show us? The brand is not owned exclusively by the company. It’s actually shared with the audience, with the customers. Now, what I will say is that when I come into a company and if I asked an employee or an executive, I say, Hey, walk me through your brand story.

If I was a customer and I’m in the story now, and it is your brand and how you service them, tell me that story. And I’ll give you a good example. I know people watching like, well, what’s an example is let me hear your camera is right there. If you want to pray, if you want to break the fourth wall, break, break the fourth wall.

That’s right. That’s how you connect with individuals. He’s looking at you right now. Too many people are out here just doing this. You got to build a ham. I’m watching you right now. Right. So if you’re like, Hey, how do, what is an example of a brand story? And I asked my, I was telling you earlier, I asked, uh, my employees were on a call today and I said, guys, what’s our brand story impacts marketing, walk me through our story.

And they were able to repeat it back. Pretty good. Okay. Here’s the example.  We know that a good story has. A hero main character villain right and typically a guy who I can’t wait for you to get into that so if we get into like, you know, story brand Donald Miller, he wrote a whole book about it’s a great book.

By the way,  you think about Star Wars is a great example that everyone knows, right? You got Obi Wan Kenobi, who is the guide. You have, um, Luke Skywalker, who is the main character who becomes a hero through the guidance of Obi Wan and who do they defeat? They defeat Darth Vader, the evil empire, you know, all that stuff, right?

So if you look at our brand, we help companies build their own internal content teams and work through strategy and things like that. We don’t do marketing. We help them build it themselves. Our story is this. Customer walks into the story.  Seven to eight figure business. Typically it’s B2B doing anywhere from three to 30 million.

They walk into the story. They are the main character at this point, but not the hero yet.  They now have an encounter, a problem, a villain. And that problem and villain is that outsourcing your content is leading to underperforming content, not the right brand in the marketplace, not the right voice. It’s slow to produce.

They’re not getting out things like they need to in the time they need to. It’s not really generating inbound leads or revenue for the company. It’s not moving the brand forward. That is the problem. Then they meet us,  the guide.  The guide’s job is to step in, see the problem, diagnosis, say, Hey, I got a plan for you to actually get out of this and get on a better path to victory. 

We give them the guide, or we give them the plan as the guide, and we say here’s how you’re going to be able to build out your own internal content team. Here’s the strategy you need to put in place to dominate with social, video, LinkedIn, wherever you’re at.  We call them into action.  That main character goes and takes action through the use of our plan.

They accomplish what they defeat the villain, they get rid of their marketing agency, they’re outsourcing, they start doing their own content, it starts performing, they’re getting wins, the brands are finally in their voice, everyone’s like, let’s go!  They get shit done, then they become the hero.  When they become the hero, we are not the hero.

We are the guide that said, nice freaking job. So you’re being Obi Wan. We’re Obi Wan. And most companies do not have that brand story. And that is why a lot of the content fails. Because there’s no like overarching, okay, this is the point of view that we have in the marketplace. This is our unique perspective that other companies do not have.

And I’ll give you just one more quick thing on this. We used to say things like, We help companies drive revenue. We help companies build brand. We help companies do social media. Problem is everyone can say that.  And a lot of things that companies are saying now, everyone else can say and potentially do, even if they can’t do it that well.

Now we’ve put ourselves, we said, you know, we’re not going to be a little bit better than everyone else, which is what most companies are trying to do. We’re a little bit better. We got this and they don’t have that. We’re going to say, we’re actually just completely different. We’re in a totally different place and a totally different arena than anyone else that you would even look at. 

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It does take, you do have to have people that can have that type of voice. There are CEOs that  You know, might not be able to stand in front of a group of people and deliver a message. They can do it in an intimate setting. They might be the technical expert within the organization. So there’s, there’s, it’s even done before, before content, personal branding and all that.

The brand story is, is flows to the entire company. Absolutely. Messaging website. It’s what the employees know about the company. Like it starts there. Then you figure out, then it, so you go from brand strategy and messaging to, and you’re probably getting there, but. Then you go to content strategy. And content strategy is how we tell it.

How do we tell the story? How do you tell that story in a creative way? How do you, how do you tell it?  Is, is creativity or consistency the biggest struggle that you think companies have with marketing that is effective?  I pause cause it’s, it’s really both.  Um, cause I think you can be consistently bad.

You know, like, I think if you look at most companies are like, we’re posting a few times on link, you know, like, what’s your strategy? It’s like, we post like three, five times on LinkedIn right now a week. It’s like.  That’s a tactic, right? What’s the strategy? Well, I guess we don’t really have one, you know, so you can be consistently bad.

You can be, I can consistently show up to the gym every single day. And we’ve seen people like this in the gym, half assing it, you know, still overweight, still not eating the right stuff, not on their phone, checking people out. So I mean, yeah, be consistent. But if you’re not doing the right things, it doesn’t work on the other side.

If. You don’t have the creativity and you don’t have the right opportunity or the right kind of mindset going into it where you’re like, Oh, we’re just going to post the bland, you know, corporate stuff or sales ease, slicks, you know, whatever. That’s not going to work either. So you need some, you know, and I don’t even know cadence.

Yeah. And I mean, like. Creativity is great, but I think creativity is like an, uh, an ingredient that you sprinkle into the dough. And I think the dough is like that brand story, knowing your customer, the value that you provide, the educational knowledge, and then it’s like, could you sprinkle in some creativity and make that go from like, you know, a cheap cinnamon roll bought at the store to like a Cinnabon, you know, with that creativity makes it that a Cinnabon.

Now I want to Cinnabon.  I am now hungry. So as it relates to, um, you know, growing the business and taking the business to the next level. What’s the vision for you? Because you’re playing creative director, right? And that also is a difficult thing to scale because if this business continues to grow at the rate that it is, how do you find 15 mini Alex’s to be able to become the account manager slash creative director with an organization as you’re potentially spending more of your time dealing with.

the larger organizations that you’ve established your own personal partnership with and are staying with you because they want you to be the creative director. How, what’s the vision to scale that? Um, it’s a great question, man, because it’s one of the biggest challenges that we’re working through right now.

And I think we’re doing a decent job at it. We just hired somebody that is helping take a lot of the responsibilities that I would do from a client management standpoint off my plates. Yeah. So my number one thing is like, I have to find a way to get myself out of the client service, client management portion, not entirely, but let’s say 75%.

Cause if I’m involved in every client, every decision, all creativity runs through me, all messaging. What do we, should we do about this? How do we structure this? What’s the strategy on that? I’m 100 percent bottlenecked, right? And so then we’re stuck at, you know, 10 clients, right? But if we have someone and multiple people that we have in place now that are able to take some of that off my plate to where I can do more of this and focus on content, brand building, because I think that’s the number one place.

An owner should spend their time if they can now we can scale. Now the question from here is what type of company do I want to build, right? Do I want to build a hundred person company?  We’ll see. I don’t know. Right. That’s not necessarily sometimes you don’t, you don’t get to decide that it does it. Right.

Or even a 20 person company, right? Or do we want to get this thing where it runs 80 percent without me and then have a big time, like a bigger marketing company, a conglomerate come along and say, I think what you guys are doing is. In a lot of ways, the future, it’s a big risk point for the old, old traditional marketing agency.

I think if we could just buy you up or acquire you and you stay with the company for a couple of years when we give you a nice buyout and take care of employees and that kind of stuff, is that an option too? So to me, I’m looking at like a, in two years or less. Yeah. I want to have a plan. Have you considered that Alex, that they’re,  while  your, your viewpoint is,  um, hey, look,  we’re the Obi Wan.

We’re going to show you how to build a personal brand because we know that personal platforms work better than corporate platforms. We know that the messaging needs to come from the CEO, the executive team, all of the people. So we really know that you have to be at the forefront of essentially,  it’s really selling, it’s social selling,  um, through content creation without making somebody feel like they’re being sold.

You’re getting them to buy in. So it really is a branding play. You don’t do call to action. You do, I’m going to keep giving you this message over and over and over again until you are in a position where you go, I’m ready to buy. And now I immediately think of that company. Do you think that there is based on what you just said, you think there’s a likelihood that you will get, you will have a smash together where an agency that does the multitude of all these different things goes, Hey, look.

This is an, uh, another alternative that we could offer to our client base, because there are going to be buyers out there who are like, you know what?  The agency just is the right route for us because we just want to delegate it out. But we also have a sales team of really dynamic people and a director that we want to put center stage.

Can you consult and advise them?  Do you see that there’s a potential of that happening? Definitely. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, those conversations are already happening. So I think,  you know, again, I got like a two year kind of My time frame, in my mind, we’ll see what could be six months, it could be a year, it could be three or four years, you don’t know, my job is to make this, just to do as best job as we can for our customers and really help companies transition away from mark, using a marketing agency to do all their content, all their, all their marketing efforts to be able to build out their internal teams.

So. We’re in that process now. It’s going really well. It’s working for every single company. We’ve done it for. It’s worked out tremendously well. I mean, almost in the first three or four weeks, they see way better results than their seed. Well, I’ve not only seen your content, I’ve seen the content of your clients.

Yeah. And I go. Holy shit, like I would have never stopped the scroll on their previous content. Yeah, but now I am right and now I’m following and now I’m paying attention. And now when I’m ready to buy their service, I know where to go. Exactly right. Yeah, so that’s a pretty powerful thing. If you were talking to a sales department as a director of sales, you walked into an organization, 35 sales people.

You walked into the organization, CEO goes, dude, keys are yours.  I need you to, I need you to, you know, 5x the, the, the revenue. And however you need to do it, you do it. Here’s your budget.  What would you take from what you’re doing currently and apply to the sales team,  um, along with the traditional methodology of selling?

I would probably ask them all to pull out their phone  and measure how much time they’re spending on their smartphone. And I would just say, let’s just, let’s just do a quick read. And I would ask them maybe the last few things that they bought, how’d they buy them? Did they see pricing first on the website?

Did they consume content about it? How many hours a day are they spending on their phone? And I would have, I would just look at all of them and go, does anyone doubt in here that the way that people buy has changed? And it’s changed dramatically, dramatically, dramatically. And does anyone doubt? And we can see that from the data now that people are spending a lot of time on these things right here.

And if you’re listening, I’m Holding up my smartphone.  Is there any doubt? No, I don’t think there is, right? So the question then becomes, is everyone agree? Is everyone in agreeance with that kind of premise? And if everyone said, yeah, that’s the way it is. And does anyone think it’s going in reverse? Does anyone think we’re going to get rid of smartphones and going back to the dial phones and everyone’s sitting at their desk 24 seven?

No, we’re not good. Now let’s move forward. What do we want to do about it? Right. How do we want to capitalize on this opportunity? And then I, and then it gets into strategy, right? Then it gets into how are we going to connect with these, our audience, our customers? What do we say on LinkedIn? If it’s LinkedIn, how do we send the messages?

But I think first and foremost, it’s getting people to really get bought in on the idea and why we’re doing it in the first place.  To me, man, it’s. It’s not that you wouldn’t do any emails, cold calls. I actually think, no, you got to do it all. Yeah. I actually think now direct mail, I think it works better than ever because  it’s a collage, right?

Yeah. Cause now if you get creative and I send you a really cool like box with a couple of cool things in there, it’s like custom to you guys. And you know, I’ve been wanting to meet with you for some time or whatever. And I send something like that to you that breaks through the mold versus the millions of automated emails that we get.

I just think, imagine if you sent that gift and then I’d, and then, but then you’d seen my videos on LinkedIn and you said, Holy shit, Alex sent me a, this is, I’ve seen all your video dude. This is so cool. I got this right. It makes, it makes it hit harder. It makes it harder. So it’s not one thing anymore.

Like I think in the past we had like really salespeople had cold calling and you knocked on doors and you did email, it was like, you know, trade shows, that kind of stuff. Like it was all just very, you know, the traditional sales stuff. And now we got different opportunities and different ways to get in front of our customers.

So to me, it’s like, who wants to be great at sales? You know, like, do you want, do you have a desire, like, do you understand where the world’s going first? Secondly, like, do you have, who wants to get great at this shit? You know, like, do you guys want to sit back and kind of like let things pass or do you want to.

Really embrace us and get good at this. And if we’re going to get good at this, we got to be able to combine the modern things that we know are starting to work better than ever and mix in some of those old school stuff that still works. We’re still building trust and credibility. We’re just able to do it a little bit more scale now.

Like the business fundamentals have not changed. It’s just the mediums have. You’re talking about a sales lifestyle. You’re talking about not being a job. That’s the first thing. If you’re in sales and it’s a job and you’re not sure if you want to do this, like it’s a, it’s a tough job. You have to have it as a lifestyle.

The lifestyle means that you’re, you’re taking all those vehicles. We talk about Dale Dupree, right? He’s got all the really creative ways that he’s using, sending of the donut box and he’s, you know, the crumpled letter and he’s got that. Then I see your videos where you’re constantly putting out messaging over and over and over again to get people to buy into it.

And when you combine all those factors with the traditional, you have the strongest likelihood of getting awareness and attention. So when they get one of those things, a direct mail, or they get an email from you, it increases the likelihood of conversion, of them actually opening the email. Like, if people are on LinkedIn and they see your content on a regular basis, And then they receive an email from you that might have gone to 10, 000 people, but they saw it said, from Alex B Sheridan, they’re going to open the email because they’ve seen your content.

Um, whereas right now, if I get an email and I don’t know who the person is, It is a strong likelihood I’m deleting it and not reading the email. Yes. So, the marketing actually that you’re doing, the content creation that you’re doing, and helping other people to do, is creating a higher return on investment on calls answered, emails responded to, um, marketing collateral.

Embraced in red, right? It’s creating a bigger return for all of those things. Yeah, and even if I go to to that point exactly, if I message somebody on LinkedIn or I get connected with them or I see one of their posts, if I actually do a little bit of outbound and say something like, hey, Jeff, I liked your post on this or hey, Ron, I like this or Sally, I like the, you know, and then they respond back going.

Oh, thank you. I, yeah, I’ve got a lot of inspiration for your videos. Yeah, I’ve seen your stuff. I really like your content. Like that is a warmer conversation than me coming in completely cold. They know you before they actually know you. Right? So again, trust credibility. We’re not doing anything different than we did 100 years ago in sales.

We’re just doing it a little bit differently because we’ve got opportunities now at our fingertips that we didn’t have before. Now you don’t need somebody else to tell you about the person that. They know. That’s how it used to be. It’s like, oh, man, I’m trying to figure out how to fix my lawnmower. Oh, well, I got a guy who fixes my That was how it used to be, right?

Now it’s, you can be the guy telling everyone on a regular basis that you fix a lawnmower, but it’s not as intrusive because it’s not me face to face putting you in an uncomfortable situation where you have to respond. You get to just watch that over and over and over again. What’s the right way to DM? 

Video personalized, relevant. Okay. That’s it. Those three words, man. You can do, you can do, you can do audiograms, you know, you can do text. The point is what you want to do, what you want to avoid is doing what everyone else gets in their inbox all the time, because it’s never going to work. Right. Which is, Hey, my name is Alex and I work in impacts.

I love to schedule some time. We help companies do that. Like never going  to work or like, Hey, what’s your business schools this year? It’s like. Yeah, I’m a, I’m a busy ceo. I’m gonna sit down and tell you my business goal. To a stranger. Yeah. To a stranger when I have almost no time of the day to get the shit I need to get done.

And even if I answer it, you think it’s not gonna be surface. It’s, it’s not gonna happen, dude. So the key is like, I always say, there’s kind of like two angles you can take in the dms right there. And I would say that maybe there’s three, there’s one where you could play at the long game. You could just say, Hey, I saw your post on the podcast you guys are doing, John, get shit done.

Experience.  Amazing job, man. I watched one of the episodes. Really cool stuff. That’s all I wanted to say. You could save that lead, potentially sales navigator, CRM, whatever you want to do. And you could come back and have a couple different touch points before you finally said, John, I’ve seen so much of your stuff, man.

I know I’ve said this a million times. I feel like I know you. But dude, I got to ask you, man, are you guys doing this at your company? Or can we grab a coffee, man? I’d love to talk. You’re probably going to get that meeting because you’ve built up the trust and credibility now. Because you’ve been kind of a fan and a supporter of that person’s content versus a salesperson.

So that would be like the long term approach. The short term approach would be, what we’ve seen work is two things. One, you ask maybe a really good question. Right, so I may see someone on LinkedIn and say, Hey, like, maybe I commented on their post or they commented on my post, and I look at the company size and I say, Hey, I, you know, you guys are, look like you’re about X size company of employees.

I’m curious. I’ve talked to a lot of companies and CEOs at that level. A lot of them are complaining about how their marketing is just not doing it. Like their agencies just aren’t cut it. I just curious. Have you guys ever thought or considered building your own team versus outsourcing the marketing agencies and paying all that money for underperformance?

That’s one way to do it, right? Because now I’m asking the question that’s relevant. I’ve made some observations. I may look at their profile and say, Hey, I saw something specifically that made me think this might interest you. The other thing is just value creation, which is what we do in our content.

Right. We could offer something up to say, I’d love to show you. If you got five minutes, I want to show you something that I think could change the way that you look at X, Y, and Z. We still got to lead with the personalization of the relevancy, right? So we’re going to leave with something like John just watched episode number three of the get shit done experience where you talked about the importance of personal branding.

I, um, yeah. Work with a lot of other CEO podcast hosts, whatever, like yourself, and I put together something really interesting that I thought you could actually use on those episodes right away. If you got a few minutes, I’d love to show you what this looks like. Now, if you do those things in video, you’re going to see a higher conversion.

Much better because nobody’s doing it. Because you can’t really fake it, right? You can’t really mass send those out. Not if you use their name and reference something specific in there, you can’t. And it’s a, there’s more of a human connection. I also think there’s a little bit of like, Oh, they put in so much effort.

I kind of owe them some type of response. Like it’s a little bit of a reciprocity. We’ve like, Oh, just maybe I can’t just ignore the dude’s video. It’s like, Hey, I’m not interested. At least you got a response. At least they’ll say, Hey, nice video. No problem. You like their next 12 posts and you try again.

Yeah. Hey, it’s a Q1 focus. It’s not right now, but I love the video. Thank you. You know, a minimum you’re building brand through your messaging. What you’re also doing on LinkedIn that’s very important is you’re. triggering to the algorithm that you want this person in your feed and vice versa. So people forget that, right?

It’s like, Oh, just message, try to book a meeting, try to book a meeting. Yes, but not always. But like what you want to do is kind of retrain that LinkedIn algorithm to where now, cause LinkedIn is more of a social graph still in the TikTok video feed. I think they’re trying to make a little more interest base. 

But it’s still kind of old school where like LinkedIn will look at who you commented on their post or who you DM or whose profile you visited. Like I DM with a guy who booked a call with me.  He booked a call with me because his content is not very good to be honest, but that’s why he booked a call with me.

And so once he did, we were messaging back and forth, right? Cause I saw he booked a call. I was chatting with him. He sent me a connection request. We sent a couple messages back and forth on the DMs. What do I know? The next morning he shows up in my feed and he’s got zero likes on his post. So it wasn’t like the, you know, the post performance brought it to my feed.

Exactly. LinkedIn just said, Hey, I know you’ve been talking to this guy. Now we probably, you might want to see. So LinkedIn is actually trying to help you to build your business. Absolutely. Cause they want to build a business community. They don’t want to be the tech doc, the Instagram, the, you know, they want to be like, this is a community full of professionals that are helping.

Virtual networking. Yes. So that’s why I’m like. Treat LinkedIn like you’re showing up to a live event, and you will win.  I’m gonna go through my DM methodology. You tell me where I should improve it or I’m off. Yeah. First thing that I do is I go to profile pages of the titles that I think would potentially buy for me.

Yeah. The first thing that I do in, in going to their Regular LinkedIn or SalesNav? I use regular LinkedIn. Okay. Okay, so I go to the profile page. I know that simply by going to the profile page, if they’re active on LinkedIn, they’re going to see that I looked on at their profile. So that’s one. The second thing that I do is I’ll send the connection request, but I always follow first.

So I’ll send the, I’ll send the follow and the connection request. Then what I do is I go and I look at their content. I look at their last three posts.  I actually watch the posts, read the posts. Dig into the post  to know what they’re actually doing. I like comment on each one, but I don’t comment like, Hey, this is really good.

I comment with two to three sentences. Something that has merit, that is, has substance, and um, is lending to the value that they’re trying to provide. Yeah. I let that sit for a couple days. If the, when they connect,  I let it go for about three seconds from when they connect. The connect, when they connect, if I see it pop up immediately, I respond, Hey man, I’ve really been enjoying your content.

Thanks for connecting. I hope that you’ll check mine out. Let me know if I can introduce you to anybody in my community. Be well. That’s it. Just, uh,  just from there. I then spend a week continuing to engage with their content. And then at that point, I do what you, what you essentially said. Hey, I’ve noticed this is going on.

I’ve noticed this is going on. What should I Add to that. Subtract from that. Or what would you tweak? So I think it’s a good formula. A couple of things. If you use sales navigator, you can drill down by posted content recently on the platform. Explain that. So if I’m on regular LinkedIn, I’m trying to search people by job title, like you said, right?

So I’m like founder, CEO, executive, whatever you guys are searching for.  You’re going to find people that some of those people maybe potentially aren’t active, right? So they’re not posting content, which is harder than to then engage in content and connecting also. So I drill down by. On Sales Navigator, job titles, I can do multiple different titles, geography, industry, if they follow my page or can, if I’m first degree or whatever I want to do, and then I click posted on LinkedIn.

And so that’s going to give me only a list of people that are actually active, posted on LinkedIn. Right. So that’s a game changer. So  that just saved you hours. Right. So then secondly, I would ask you, is there a reason you don’t engage with their post Before sending the connection request.  Well, I do. Oh, I thought you said, so you said you send the connection request, then you engage on their post.

So, maybe I said that wrong. So, I’ll go to their profile. I engage on three pieces of content. Oh, then you send the connection request. Then I send the connection request. And by the way, it might happen all at once. Yeah. But likely I probably engage in their content first and I send the connection request.

If I send the connection request first, it’s because like I hit the connection button, went to their content and immediately engage with it. Yep.  But what I’m trying to do is give, give, give, give, give before I give any before I have any ask. Right. And so in think, I think that’s a great way to do it. Right.

And I think the longer, not that you want to drag it out for a year, but if you give yourself a little more space, it’s probably easier to make that ask. Right. So think about if I wanted to ask you for something, John, the relationship that we have right now, I would just come out and ask, like, John, can you set me up with a meeting with so and so and you’d be like. 

Right. And if you’re like, Alex, could you hook me up with a guy? I’m done. Right. Easy. Why we have trust and credibility. We have a relationship. If you don’t have that, you can’t necessarily just ask like that. Yeah. So you have to start to build that relationship, that trust and credibility. And so that’s what you’re doing with those comments is you’re kind of just like bringing that path to the ask where it’s a lot faster.

Like trust is speed. It’s speed. It’s speed. When you have trust with somebody, I can go, Hey, stop fucking around. Yeah, you know, I don’t know if I guess no, you can say that,  but I can just say, Hey, that was that was not good, right? Let me tell you what’s going on, right? Or give them feedback or ask them for something valuable.

And that’s the beauty of a partnership to I can say no, I can disagree. It doesn’t mean that we break up, right? Doesn’t mean it’s over. It means that you that you could rebuttal and then we do. Meet resolution. Some of the greatest things that ever happened. Start with conflict, right? And then resolution is where the, where the beauty is.

Yes. I’ll tell you one other thing with speed, right? Trust with speed that you guys will like listen to this, especially trying to win customers on social and linked in.  Speed to the sale. When you’re posting valuable educational content that helps Shift perspectives of your buyers helps teach them something helps, you know, shed a blinds, you know, a blind makes them aware of a blind spot.

They didn’t know they had  teaches them a strategy that they go and implement their company that helps them, whatever that may be. When you put out that kind of content consistently, you build the trust, you build the credibility by time you get on the call. Those calls are some of the easiest sales calls you will ever take.

They’re in a buying position. They’re not a prospect. Right. They’re saying, where do I sign up? Like literally my calls are like, so we’re okay. So I know your pricing. It’s all on the website. How does this work? I know what you do. Your brand story was very clear. I know, you know, I’ve seen your packages.

Just had a couple of quick questions on this is our industry is a little bit different. How would you tackle something like this? I already have somebody doing this. Could be, would that be okay to work around this? It’s like, it’s like the final details, right? Imagine if their response when the initial call is like, explain the onboarding process.

That was their first question. That’s kind of what you’re talking about. I’m going to do my 30 second drill. I’m going to do my two minute drill. I’m going to do the first piece of the presentation, then the second piece. And this is in a week’s worth of content. Right. You’re essentially getting all that chunk out and then you’re repeating it.

So it’s building the credibility of the trust. And then by the time you get to the ask, right, it’s like, dude, where was that? Like, it’s almost like they’re asking instead of us. Yeah. It’s like, so how, how would we get, I get a lot of this, a lot of the questions towards the end of my calls now are,  so how would we get started?

How soon could we get started?  Now, I came from B2B sales, right? I did 10, 10 years of sales, knocking on doors, cold calling. So I know what it’s like to have that same conversation. But when you cold called in, didn’t have the trust credibility again, our timeline to be able to ask those, you know, hedge after hedge, after hedge, after hedge, it’s tiring.

I gotta, you know, act like, you know, drop off this. Yeah. Then I got to ask a lot of questions. I got to figure out if there’s a need, I got to do this. And it’s like, They feel like almost I’m taking their time where I get on calls and they’re like, man, I’m excited to learn. Like, I’m excited to go through this process.

So I look at it from the standpoint of a cold call. Like when you do a cold call, if you were trying to do a cold call and you’re trying to have a speedy sales cycle, the first 15 minutes of that, you’re just, you’re sniffing butts like dogs do. Like you’re trying to figure out, like you’re trying to establish commonality.

Like, hey, do you golf? Hey, where are you from? Where’d you go to college? You’re doing all that stuff when you create content on a regular basis. And you’re putting the messaging out and you’re engaging with other people’s stuff. That 15 minutes is, is done. It’s done already. You don’t have to do it. So the ice is broken.

And that you’re, you’re just getting right to what’s the problem, here’s the solution,  here’s the process of onboarding. Yeah, and that’s why I’m a big fan of putting pricing and terms on the website. Because complete transparency is complete transparency. I’ll give you a great, a great example of how this plays out in real world.

I mean, first of all, we’ll screen out people based on the pricing on the website. We’ll screen in people based on the pricing on the website. One thing I don’t want to talk about on the, on the call, the sales call. Pricing. So you’re putting the pricing out to disqualify people? Well, cause some people are gonna go there.

They’ll disqualify themselves. They’ll try to book a call and say, Oh, I didn’t realize it was a few grand a month. Yeah. Like, yeah, it’s not 99 dollars. I’m not selling a course, you know? So it costs some money, right? But, we’ll also qualify people in where they say, Yeah, we’re a parent on marketing, you know, agency more than this now.

But here’s a quick example. I’m having some furniture. Remove some office furniture removed from my house, right? I was calling different looking around different companies to have someone come pick this up haul it away to like a charity Give it back because it’s not it’s not like completely broken stuff.

It’s just old stuff. Yeah, I look on website one website And I couldn’t find the pricing and they’re like, Oh, you got to schedule a call, then we’ll show you the pricing that I finally got. And I went all the way down this path. I don’t even know why, to be honest, but it’s like the repellent. It was terrible.

And then they want to meet a book schedule to call. And I was like, but you still didn’t give me the pricing. And they reached out and I go, you lost me as a customer because you’re not transparent. They’re like, Oh, but our pricing we do. It depends on everything that I’m like, But give me a range, give me an idea.

They even had a video on pricing, but it never broke down. Like what drives price up and down or even a range or an idea ballpark, something right. I get it. If you don’t want to give out your exact pricing, but give me something to build some trust and credibility with me. Then I went to another site.

They gave me a quote before the delivery guy came. And I went with them, and the other company reached back out, Are you sure you don’t? I said, no, I went with another company because they built trust in me. So you know what’s amazing is you really are bucking the system that has been, because every rule that I was taught in sales, Don’t until you got the value.

You never talk price until they’re there, like, you know. But you know what? Content’s the value now. Content’s the value. So there you have the value. They, and by the way, they can research it. Right. So you never talked price 20 years ago because there was no way for them to find the price. Right. Uh, if it was, here’s a great exercise to do with the CEO executive.

If you want to know if you should put pricing on your website, you say, get the executives, get the team in place, say, if you guys were going to buy something that was decently expensive, right?  And you’re going to the website, would you prefer to see pricing on there? Or to not to have to talk to a sales rep first to see pricing.

Every person is going to raise their hand. Yeah. Yeah. I would love to see. You know why you don’t want to talk to a salesperson. Right. And in eight and 60 to 80 percent of, you know, buyers are 60 to 80 percent of the way sold by time they talk to a salesperson anyways. So everyone’s going to say, yeah, I would prefer to see pricing.

Great. Guess what? So would our customers. Let’s get pricing. Let’s go. Let’s get a range or something on there or a video about or something. I say, if you don’t want to give out the exact price, fine, do a range, say, this is what drives price up and down. These are probably the ranges are going to be in, you know, all that stuff is fine to do.

Just not having nothing or making somebody book a call and then delivering everything else. Like it’s just not a good buyer. See, that connects with me because the fact is that 80, I keep saying this because I read it and it like slapped me right in the face. Bucket of cold water. Um, there was a report and I can’t, unfortunately, I can’t go back and remember where I read it, but it said that that consumers want 86 percent of the buying experience to be human list. 

And so, and where do you think that’s going with AI and everything else is only going up from there? It’s only going up from there. And so that ties into as well. Another statistic, and I’m kind of backtracking here, but you talked about like where you were talking to the sales department. You were going to say, like, where are people spending their time?

I saw a timeline, one of those timeline content videos where they show like five different, like six different things, and then they show from year to year and how the percentages changes. Right. So, um, cool. Yeah, it was really cool. So 1950 and the bottom one is it’s like online. Um, Uh, reading,  um, entertainment with family, practicing faith, um, at work.

Okay, so it goes like 1950 all the way to like 1999 online is just like zero. And then by 1999, it’s like 2%, right? By 2024, online surpassed family time, surpassed reading, uh, faith. It surpassed all of it, where people are spending 58 percent of their time is online.  58 percent of their time. If that doesn’t tell you right there that consumers don’t need you as a salesperson  to Get all the basic information that a salesperson used to have to deliver in the first few meetings, right?

They only want to talk to a salesperson when they are a captive, um, when they’re captivated, you have their attention and they’re in a ready buying position. And the only factor that they’re deciding on is whether it’s you or the other two companies that they’re looking at, you’ve made it into the running.

So really what it comes down to at that point is do they like you as a salesperson? Which probably makes sense to have content because that’ll win tiebreakers. And, um, do you maintain that character, that class, that transparency? Um, and are there little features that you have that maybe are better than another organization?

Do they get the feels from you? Yeah, so this all aligns with what we’re talking about. It’s why we’re doing a podcast. It’s why you’re running an organization like you are. It’s why you’ve, you’ve grown so fast. It’s why people are following you because it’s all about how do you break the mold of traditional sales methodologies?

Well, dude, think about if we could transport someone 30 years ago into the studio right now.  They would say, where do you think they’d say we’re at  on the radio? You’re on a radio station, right? Well, what is podcasting now? It’s the AM radio,  right? So the technology we have, the internet, the equipment that we have, like all of this now can be done.

Inside a small apartment, let alone a company. So that’s one more reason where it’s like, why you have this megaphone now that you can get your message and story out to the world. And why would you not use it now? If you’re like, Hey, I don’t really want to grow my business. I’m cool. I’m going to sunset in a couple of years, then find do your thing.

But if you got big dreams and ambitions and you want to grow your company and grow your team. Why would you not use this megaphone, where you know people are on here non stop. Yes, that’s where they’re at. That’s where they’re at. So, and it’s never been easier to use. So we’re not gonna get political because this isn’t, uh, The Rogan Show, this is a Well, we probably could, we probably could, but, uh, I don’t know, I don’t know.

They’re telling me things. I’d love it. Uh, and by the way, you’re reading my mind again. So maybe you are an Amsterdam is because Alex predicted, um, the winner of the election. And again, this is not political, but he tied it into why he felt like Trump was going to win the election. You want to elaborate on that?

Because I thought the way that you articulated crossed, it didn’t cross any line of, of political belief system. It was purely about the business of marketing. Elaborate. Yeah, I think it was maybe June  2024. I said, Trump’s going to win and he’s going to win because he is out there putting out content showing up on places like podcasts, which towards the end was really a big boost for him.

I think with the Joe Rogan, Sean Ryan. Yeah, Theo and all this stuff like, but he was out there meeting the voters where they were at, which guys, Next time you’re in your car at a stoplight, next time you’re in line at Starbucks, go watch what people are doing. They’re not looking ahead at the person next to them, they’re looking at their phone.

Trump showed up on the places where voters were. He would do live events, he would stream them, he would do podcasts,  he would do video recordings, they would show behind the scenes stuff. Did Kamala and Joe do some of that stuff? Yes, but they kinda hid. But they also had highly curated stuff. Highly curated, they would do news stuff where you could tell it was like, I just want to I want to see them sit down and have a real conversation.

There was no follow up question. Right. There was no second question. Right. So it was like, and it’s exactly why I think the behind the scenes and being in the content is so important. Like that’s the stuff that people want to see. Mm hmm. Should you script something out every now and then and have a dialed in message?

And sure, you definitely can do that. But people also just want to see the realness. Mm hmm. Having a conversation like this. Getting to know someone. Would I like Alex? Right. Do what? I want to hang with him. Yeah. Like when you’re thinking about buying from somebody, can you can answer this question? Would you want to hang out with him?

Yeah.  So, I mean, look, so if you look what happened, like he, you know, I mean, he won pretty big. And so obviously there’s a lot of different factors in an election. I can’t say, but if you look at the media strategy, the content strategy, there was, you better believe there was a reason he went on Joe Rogan and the Logan Paul show three.

Hours and three hours and sat there and talk to people about this is what I believe and this is what I stand for and this is what I’m I plan to do when I get an office and you can love, hate, like them, whatever on both sides. But the reality is one story was sort of out there more and the other was like, I don’t really know what we’re getting from that.

So look at it as two brands. Look at it as, uh, the Harris Corporation and the Trump Corporation. One of them turned themselves into a media company.  And when you look at it from a standpoint of businesses, let’s say you’re a landscape company. There’s 10 landscape companies within a 40 mile radius, probably more, that you compete with.

One of you becomes a media company.  The rest of you drive around in trucks with a logo on it and a phone number and put signs in a yard. Who do you think is going to win? That’s it. That’s what it comes down to media companies, man. Media attention. Everyone needs to become a media. And really this started happening like if you think about when this really the boom took place of social media and content for election was Obama.

Yeah, it’s a big reason. He crushed it. He crushed it, right? And then everyone kind of looked at that as an example and started using it, but this was a big one. I mean you could the difference between the type of content that Trump had on their brand and Kamala and Biden had on their brand. It was completely different.

I mean, completely different. And so, yeah, and even Joe Rogan, I think offered her to be on the podcast and said, sit down, I just want to talk to you like a human being, just have a conversation with me. And they wanted it to be within, within guidelines. And again, I just want to make everyone aware in no way, shape or form, we saying one is better than the other.

This is not political.  We’re not talking about who we believe in or who we voted. What we’re talking about is purely from a business sense.  Um, and making the comparison, bringing it back to business that if you’re competing with two or three other brands, the one that is going to win the most is the one that has the best branding and the best marketing that funnels into sales that can continue that message and the one that Ultimately can create the best human less experience leading up to a human experience.

That’s who’s going to win. Yep. So that’s what it comes down to. Alex, I always like to ask people to finish off with a great final thought. Something that would inspire, something that would leave people feeling a little bit better about their day. Maybe you have a story that you want to tell about.  A time where, you know, you didn’t know what the hell was going to happen and you took a big risk and it turned into something brilliant.

Maybe you just want, uh, you’ve got a one liner, I don’t know, but the floor is yours, my friend. How do you want to leave the listeners remembering Alex B. Sharon and feeling better?  An interesting story was, I’ll tell, we were just in Phoenix, me and my girlfriend for, we were doing some business there. Um,  we. 

After our plane lands, we’re at the Phoenix airport,  we pull out and we’re, we’re calling an Uber right to get to our hotel  and we see this car pull up and it says, you look in a car, there’s no one in the driver’s seat.  There’s literally nobody in the driver’s seat and they’re just dropping off people.

It was a Waymo round from her to the  completely driverless, all AI Jetsons. They’re Jaguars like they’re, they’re cool cars. But my girlfriend was at the time she was like, That’s crazy. She’s like, I, I was like, we should try one. She’s like, you got to be out of your mind. I’m not getting in that thing. I’m not freaking that thing.

And then it kind of, when it pulled out, it did like a little weird, it wasn’t unsafe, but it did like a kind of a weird turn that you wouldn’t normally expect like a human to do. Like it was like a weird machine error. And then it drove off. And I was like, I don’t know. Like, I think I looked up the reports on them and they’re like, the safety reports are really good.

They’re way better than humans. Right. So they don’t make mistakes like that. Yeah. as much.  And then a day went by, we did some business there. And then I said, let’s call, we’re going to dinner. I said, let’s call Waymo. And she goes, ah, all right, we’ll try a short distance. It was only a mile away from the hotel.

We called the Waymo, got in there. It was really weird at first, but it was really cool at the same time. And then what happened right after that, the next ride we did, we did another Waymo.  We did one more. And then we did one to the airport. So now this, we went from seeing this thing at the airport to all of a sudden, now this thing was giving us rides.

We were skeptical, or she was skeptical at first. And now it’s giving us rides. And on the way back, we got back to Chicago. We don’t have Waymo here, so you have to do an Uber. So we took an Uber from the airport to the home. And I said, hey, I go, Amanda,  honestly now, after doing this for a few different times, What do you feel safer in a human car or the Waymo car?

And she goes,  Waymo car. Yeah, because there’s no human distraction. And there’s no human Uber driver. There’s no, I’m looking at my cell phone. Someone just text me. So my point is this. I was like, I’m gonna tell, I want to find a way to get this story out. Cause I think it’s kind of a cool for people to know about this stuff.

But my point is this, like. The things that you’re scared to do, the things that you’re saying, oof, this makes me uncomfortable might just be the very next thing that you end up putting almost all of your trust and efforts and energy and resources into that could very well take your business to the next level.

So you may see video, you may see podcasts, you may see building your own internal content team and go, I don’t know if I trust that looks kind of, Oh, I don’t know. In reality, that’s probably the next thing that will take your business to where you want to go. Test it. Get in the freaking car. Don’t be scared of it.

This is the future. This is where things are. This is where they’re going. And if you want to succeed over the next 10 years, you got to get in the car, use the technology, use the megaphone and get shit. Done. I love it, baby. You always have the biggest fear right before the biggest breakthrough. That’s right.

Alex B. Sharon, I want to remind you, sir, you got shit done. Thanks for being on. Cheers. 

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