Content-Market Fit
Content Market Fit - Inbound Led Outbound Live Workshop
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Okay, what's up team? Welcome to another inbound load outbound workshop. Today,
I'm going to talk about
a lot of people want to hear about the LinkedIn game, which is what this is all
about. You know, I think it's
somewhat unique that I was able to come so fast so quickly. And I think what
some people don't understand
is the journey that it took to get there. So that's what this week's workshop
is going to be all about.
I've been at this for 18 months. The first 12 months, it wasn't working at all.
And I'm going to
describe that. And then there was a period of basically like a week over Labor
Day last year,
where I had this breakthrough. And I'm going to tell you all of this journey,
like kind of who I was
working with, what I was posting. And there's a lot of QR codes in here. If you
want to get your
phones out and like, and like snap some stuff and like look at the visual
examples of what I'm
talking about. So let's rock. Let's do this. Here we go. I'm going to share my
screen. So
okay, so here we go. LinkedIn. I think that there's two competing audience
building strategies to
LinkedIn. One, you can try to be well known and chase Diamond. I know him and
love him well. I
know him and I love him and he says it's about himself. He is trying to be well
known, meaning
he's trying to have a large and untargeted audience. He's posting things like
job interviews,
posting things about copywriting. And his goal is to just have as big of
audience as possible
and sell them these few things that he sells them, info products, some stuff
related to,
people growing their own LinkedIn audiences, whatever. So I think that the true
power of this
platform is being known well. And you can have mass a very tight, very targeted
audience
by not only using LinkedIn as the attention platform, which chase uses it as
the attention
platform and he drives people like he's out of things where I'm sorry, I'm
doing here. And so I
think the power of it is you can actually use it to basically make people feel
like they are friends
with you, which is my goal in all this, like a maximum, maximally human
experience. So this is
an interesting graph and followers don't really mean as much as they used to be
. But I think it's
a pretty good proxy for kind of how well I believe that I've understood the
game. From September 22
to August of 23, my level of understanding of what this was doing for me was
like, kind of,
you know, to that slogan. And then there was a rapid acceleration after Labor
Day. So that was
an aha moment and I'll describe it later. You guys know who I am. So this, like
check out this Peter
Concordia analysis of my audience. What I think is unbelievable about this
being known well versus
well known is that 75% of my audience is actually in my ICP. And there's two
other really amazing
stats about it. Number one, 80% of audience of Engagers post to post are unique
. So there's only
20% overlap post to post of people engaging in my content. I think that's
unbelievable and super
powerful. Meaning the reach is far and wide. So the next thing that I think is
is pretty powerful
about this whole thing is like 27% of my audience are CEOs and 18% are people
above 1000 employees.
So like I think it's easy to think that LinkedIn is just, you know, kind of a
place for, you know,
gurus and people selling info products and training and stuff. But like if done
properly,
like this can be the result. So my link in journey, it definitely started as
many things did in my
journey in life with Jasper. I shared an office with these guys for two years
before they started
Jasper and they were some schmucks just like I was stuck at 3 million ARR. And
they were literally
out of money. They were about to liquidate their company and start a restaurant
. And in December
29th of 2020, Dave took one more shot at it. Can I interrupt you for a second?
Can you check
if the LinkedIn live is still, it seems like it's not working. So it's working
for me. It's just,
it's delayed. Are you looking at that? QR code, by the way, Adam, is not
working on the previous
slides, slides seven. I wonder if my cure, this is kind of been a little bit of
an old deck. I
wonder if it so Santos, that's the, that's the LinkedIn live. Okay. I'll go
click on it. I see,
I see just I normally see like a 15 second delayed version of what's on my
screen. And it appears as
though that is the case. Yeah, we're going for me as well. Just a second.
Yeah. We got a bunch of it's working the QR code. Okay. So by the way, I don't
know about this QR code
app I used. It could be that all the QR codes expired because it was a trial
and I didn't pay for it.
So if that's the case, I apologize. I will send, I will figure out how to get
you this stuff to look
at. So anyway, long story short, Dave created Jasper. They made it in seven
days and they thought it
was going to be like, you know, another three million ARR sass and it ended up
going to 50
million in 12 months with a very small staff. And they raised 125 or 200
million actually,
I think it was and took a bunch of secondary off. And I love telling that story
because
I've told it before on this call. It's like, it's just amazing how large things
can be that
seem like they're going to be small. Like you just never know how big something
's going to be
when you start it. And I think that's like an amazing lesson for like anybody
involved in
startups, founders, revenue leaders, stuff like that. So at this point, when
this was all going
on with Jasper, like this is our revenue retention.com. We were 12 million ARR
and six full-time employees.
And I thought that it was time for me to try to make a unicorn as well. And
around that time,
I brought Santoshan. And I genuinely thought that honing down on our ICP, these
big shop
by stores, we're our best customers. I thought that it would eliminate this
churn problem that we
had. I thought there was a massive market because I was looking at Klaviyo. And
I then read this book
named founder brand. Everybody should read this Gerhard's book. And it very
clearly articulates
this story about why the founder story can cut through so much better than any
other marketing.
And the conclusion that I came to was the quickest way to spread awareness in
the world today is
through building up a per on social media rather than a business. So the report
, the we are.
Okay, I think we think we covered that problem. We're going to figure out this
mute thing next
week team. So we'll be on top of it. So I had these objections and you might
have them too.
I think everybody probably has them. It's like, you hear about this, you're
like, that sounds great.
I'm watching all this content being made by people, but I don't want to A, B
famous, B post
every day, C, B on the social treadmill, D post against the best people in the
world, E,
have to learn the game from scratch and F. I don't want to spend my time
reading content. I'm way too busy. I'm running a startup, you know, I'm running
departments of
a startup, whatever, right? To that, I will say this is how I overcame the
objection. Well,
I now know and I did not then that number one, you're not actually famous. You
're like very
locally famous. And being very locally famous helps literally everything that
you do in your
business, every single part of it, like related to recruiting and, you know,
investors and, you know,
it just creates this type of parasocial relationship that helps sales and
everything else. These other
objections are basically along the lines of I am either unfamiliar or
uncomfortable with the game,
and I don't want to like step into that trap. So to that, I say, when you begin
, I would advise
that you have a ghost writer start writing for you and see if you sort of get
this content bug
like I got, right? And the guy that I had right for me in the beginning was
named Tommy. And his
basic pitch was like, you know, he was he was in the Shopify space. He worked
for this company
called Triple Whale, and they had a great social presence. And I was trying to
learn how to have
a social presence. I had zero. And he's basically like, look, you should start
on LinkedIn.
Only 1% of active users create content. I can write for you. This guy Daniel
can sort of boost
your posts, which is another thing the sort of well known guys do there. They
engage in their
other they engage in each other's posts and sort of have this artificial boost,
whereas like, I
think, no, well, does not do that. He's like, you'll crush. So the journey
begins September of 2022.
And so a lesson I learned quickly is there are some fundamental parts of this
game that these guys
who know how to write for LinkedIn just understand that if you're just starting
, you will not. So I
spent 90 minutes writing this great post about this experience that I had,
which was super weird
in a fireside chat where like I said what I did, and then I got harassed by the
audience. And the
other guy in the fireside chat didn't even get to talk. So it was like this
like kind of humble
brag post. It got like 20 likes and five comments. And then Tommy put this up
the next day, which is
a screenshot of some tweet. I don't even know who this person is. It took him
probably 30 seconds,
and it got 2500 likes. So like, I was just like, okay, literally, I don't know
what is happening
in this world. I'm going to step back and relax and just observe for a little
while. So
then shortly thereafter of like observing what Tommy was doing and contributing
ideas,
I started to feel like, and I've heard this quote a lot with people who start
posting on LinkedIn,
I don't know exactly what this is doing for me, but it's doing something. And I
think the
essence of that, it means that you start to get inbound for stuff that you
weren't getting before
that isn't necessarily like inbound demos, but it's just like people reaching
out to you for stuff
that it's just other types of inbound other than deals like partnerships or
like recruits come and
tell you they want to work for you. And this stuff starts happening, right? So
I kind of got the bug
from that. And I wanted to add video because I just like have this belief that
video is super
powerful, which is kind of another story altogether. But I was basically trying
to figure out how to
make this work. And if you look at my stuff a year and a half ago, it's a bunch
of video that was
trying to be very authentic, but it didn't, you know, the engagement is like a
hundredth of what
my engagement is now. I didn't know why I was making what I was making. In mind
you, we were only
selling to Shopify stores at that point. We were not selling this B2B audience.
So I was
deeply conflicted about the fact that I was creating a bunch of content for e-
commerce stores,
yet I was not one. So I tried to resolve it by just talking about like whatever
related to my
business. And I'm not sure it was the right thing, but it just kept me going.
And like I was just
determined to keep banging my head against the wall until I figured it out. I
even made a docu-series
which maybe I wouldn't recommend. It's just, I think it's an awesome product.
This girl,
Kristi Ellington made it and it's amazing. I'm making another season this year.
But it doesn't
really work for LinkedIn. It's kind of like formatted for Netflix or whatever.
So again,
internal struggle number one at that point was I did not know why I was making
what I was making.
Internal struggle two was I was trying to make content for Shopify store owners
and I wasn't a
Shopify store owner. And internal struggle number three was I felt like every
post wasn't the best
version of itself. It could be because just my machine wasn't set up properly.
So
next up, I did a team change in July of 2023. This guy, Alec Paul, who I work
with now, he works
with a bunch of B2B SaaS CEOs. And I was looking specifically, I saw a webinar
that Sam Jacobs and
Alec did. And I started looking at Sam's posts and I was like, this stuff just
feels like how I
would like to feel when I post. So I hit Alec up. I told him basically how much
I was giving to this
effort and how much I was spending on it. And how badly I wanted it to succeed.
And he's like,
cool, I'll take you on, I'm gonna go fire a client. And at that point, I think
the content got a lot
better. I started like writing. Alex whole thing is just like, make every post
the best it can
possibly be. Make the best hook, you know, maybe use templates, maybe not, but
there's some
templates that works really well in LinkedIn. You know, everything's got to
take away. You know,
everything's got like a coy close that leaves you with a dopamine hit that gets
people to engage.
So that's his philosophy. And these guys, he and this guy Kyle, he works with,
they have this
motion that's basically like, you make a post. The content is so good that you
get inbound
connection requests. You go through the connection requests and accept the
connection requests from
your ICP, you basically write them and automated what got your attention
message, you wait for 60
days. And then they're getting served your content because you just connected
with them and you have
a message history. And then you go back 60 days later and casually ask for your
demo and it's got
some insanely high accept rate. So that's these guys motion. And the internal
struggle that I had
after a couple months was it was all great, but like, it wasn't booking demos
for us in this e-commerce
audience. And there might have been a couple like going into it, Alec was like,
I don't know if these
guys are on LinkedIn or not that you're going after, but we can certainly try.
And then if not,
we can focus on Twitter. And Twitter is super hard. The dynamic is very
different than LinkedIn in
terms of content creators versus content consumers. It's super competitive. And
that brings us to
basically this point where long story short, San Toshi who's on this call had,
yeah, you can
have a copy of this presentation. So long story short, San Toshi who's on this
call joined us to
help us scale this Shopify business, which we both thought was going to be
unicorn. That didn't
end up happening. And all the while he had been pushing us to start to create a
product for the
B2B space, which he's he comes from. He's like, there's nobody doing person
level identity in B2B.
It's all this reverse IP lookup company level website identity stuff. We need
to sell it to B2B
if it works for people selling $100 pairs of shoes. It's going to work for
people selling $20,000
software. So while this was still something we were contemplating, I went to
Alec and I was like,
I'm just like so kind of like bummed that this isn't booking a demo. San Toshi
wants to
create a B2B product. What if I tried writing for B2B? He's like, dude, if you
write for B2B,
this will crush with like what you're willing to give to it and what you're
willing to
basically share. And I had this huge post about BDR basically in late August of
last year. I mean,
3,000 engagements, 700 comments, all super high quality commenters. And the
post was basically like,
I don't know. A lot of people were struggling with BDR in 2023. And I just came
out and said
effectively like all the stuff that I've been hearing from founders and venture
people. And
the long and short of it is like, does this still work anymore? Right? And I
had recently
shrunk our BDR team and our company sped up when I did it, which is an
intriguing idea.
And the post crushed. So then this was later that week, I write all of my
LinkedIn posts in
a batched fashion. I was in Santa Fe on vacation with my friends. I owed Alec
three posts and
we had dinner at eight o'clock. It was 6 p.m. I was like, guys, I'm going to go
write these posts.
And I came back out after like 730. I was like, man, I just wrote these three
LinkedIn posts.
And I've been talking to him about the other one because I just couldn't
believe how well it did.
You know, I was like, man, this link is crazy. I was like, okay, I just wrote
three posts.
I think that they're all going to crush. And if they do, then I understand what
this
LinkedIn thing is all about. And if they do not, then I'm still lost. I have no
idea.
So the next three posts were these three posts. I'm sure the QR codes don't
actually work.
But if you squint, you can see unbelievable engagement, 1.8 million organic
impressions
from all three of them. And this is probably around the time that everybody in
this call
started like hearing about me. It was it was Labor Day last year. So my
followers jumped
from 20 to 40,000 in one week after a typical year to get to 20,000. And I then
felt that I knew
what creating great content on LinkedIn was all about. And by the way, that's
12 months
into this thing. So the lesson there is that this author to platform to
audience fit in making
this really work is like a real thing. So before I was writing for an e-
commerce store,
not a they're not on LinkedIn in the first place. And I'm not one of them. So
when I talk about my
pain, it doesn't just like deeply touch their soul. Like a SaaS founder, when I
'm talking about
the struggle that I have trying to grow my SaaS company. And I was still trying
to figure out
what great was. And then afterwards, when I was writing for BDB SaaS revenue
leaders, which I was,
they also live on LinkedIn, I share the tumultuous parts of my journey. And I
know exactly what
great looks like. So then we enter this era that we're in right now, which I
call the Chris Walker
playbook. And you know, working with Alex, every text post is as good as it
could possibly be.
The videotape that I try to put on there and like kind of half or two thirds of
them
provides additional and relevant detail. And more importantly, it's a face
which humanizes
and adds authenticity, which I think is just so important in this world of, you
know, chat
GPT Jarvis type stuff. And you know, I'm trying to do a mix of like working
public stuff,
takes on go to market and how that's changing. And the ultimate goal is for
people to feel like
they know me. And I think that's just really important because I don't think
that that's
necessarily a goal that other people have when they post on LinkedIn. And it's
something that I
think is helping us out a lot. This is a killer close that I'm sure a lot of
you saw at the end of
like a post where I was talking about, you know, I talked to, you know, 40
marketers about demand
based and six cents in clear bit and like here are the five things that I
learned or whatever.
I wrap it up with that. And I mean, we got thousands of people to sign up for
waiting list. And like,
we did like 300 discovery calls as we were building this product, which is like
an incredibly valuable
thing. You know, for, and I think I'm sure anyone would agree who started
several startups.
There's this like lean startup customer discovery mentality, where it used to
be really hard to
connect with this many people while you were building something. But this
perfect alignment
perfect megaphone has made it amazing. And Kyle Williams actually does this
kind of semi automated
messaging that we do with Alec. And it's even involved in our PLG. For instance
, if someone
signs up to the product, their high value, they don't get the script on four
days later,
my profile will message somebody. And the book rate for a call, if it comes off
my profile,
for someone else who's not even me, is like the same as if I send my counter
link, which is super
interesting because it's just means that this is scalable beyond, I mean, what
I certainly
appreciated in the past. I'm paying a lot for all of this stuff. A lot of it is
like stuff that
you don't really. So the consultants and inbox manager are the LinkedIn
execution.
The film studio is because I'm trying to like do a lot of this narrative stuff.
And it's not
optimized for cost. And I need to work on it. And I know. But the point is,
like Chris Walker
doesn't spend nearly this much. I'm talking to him tomorrow about what he
spends on it. But
he's also way more expensive, doesn't need as much coaching as I do. And plus I
spend,
I was at one day per week on content when I did this, did this presentation
three months ago.
I literally think it's like half my job now, this like founder brand stuff. But
the good news is
you can start with Tommy. And, you know, if you're trying to just dive in, I
would start with a
ghost writer and it's like not nearly that expensive or intense. And with that,
I will turn it over
to Mr. Santosh to guide us through some Q&A. Thank you, everybody.
Excellent. So all of you start posting any questions that you may have.
Meanwhile,
Adam, I have a few questions for you. So let's start.
First, I'm going to bring Tommy's LinkedIn to this check as people ask him for
Tommy Clark.
Okay, ask me, I'm ready. Tell me how this LinkedIn popularity has affected your
personal life.
My personal life, actual personal life, it has not affected it very much. But
there has been,
so it has like gotten to the point where certainly at industry events,
you know, I am, it's still a very new feeling, like kind of like being someone
whose content
gets read by most people at these events, it's very strange because people walk
up to you and
they say hello and they don't even say their name. And you've never seen them
before. But like,
they feel like they know you and they feel like they were talking to you
yesterday,
which is kind of like the power. I think it's like, you know, Sun Tsuraj and I
talk about this
this crazy power a lot. And I think we both kind of believe that SaaS products
are heading into a
world where everything is going to become increasingly commoditized and there's
going to be a thousand
people who sell everything. And what is York? Why is someone going to buy from
you in that world?
And my answer is, I think that the Kardashians know why or how and like, I
think that Alex
from Ozzy has an understanding of how and it's this power of building. I mean,
it's just that.
It's like this new mechanism allows you to be just create a bunch of very close
friends at
scale in a way that wasn't ever possible before. Yeah, yeah, excellent. So
how relevant is this for like a soloprene especially focusing on coaching or
consulting
type of work? Yes, so like I would if I look at LinkedIn,
the most of the biggest people on LinkedIn are doing that type of work. They're
doing
training, they're doing solopreneur type coaching or whatever.
Me problem. So I think a lot of the reason why that dynamic exists, meaning
people who are good at
creating content end up doing training and coaching work is because that like
by doing this, you are
building authority and status and like perceived expertise in this audience
that you are writing for.
And a very easy way to monetize is to sell courses and coaching into it. There
's the classic,
I like to like sort of joke about the Facebook and Instagram sort of life coach
model where it's
like these social media machines linked into a lesser extent, but I still think
that it is.
It's like an envy inducing machine. Instagram definitely is. Facebook
definitely is. And like
what an envy inducing machine allows someone to do is basically say, look,
you know, I'm better than you. And if you give me all of your money, I'll show
you the one thing
that will make you as good as me. Right. And that's like a really effective
pitch. So
the answer is, I think right now, most people who are doing this have just sort
of fallen in to
monetizing it through coaching and through courses and stuff like that. I think
it's a
great way to do that if that's what you do. And that's what you want to do. I
think there's this
even bigger opportunity to create more valuable businesses than that, like, you
know, SaaS or whatever.
Or, you know, D2C, like whatever it is around these personal profiles that
build this type of
crazy affinity. And by the way, this is like a new belief for me. Like, you
know, when I started
this 18 months ago, like I never would have guessed that I would have been
saying these words right
now. But like, that wasn't really the point. It was just like, I'm going to
create awareness
for this thing we're selling in a job by stores. And then I'll just be on to
what's next. Now,
I'm totally obsessed with it because I think this alignment that that I was
talking about,
like it's so perfect. And we want to keep building products for B2B, which is
like,
and I look at the B2B landscape and I don't really see many other CEOs doing it
like
G's doing it over in Europe to a large extent. But like, yeah, it just seems
like there's
a huge opportunity to like build a large company in the way that some of the D2
C operators have done
in B2B. And it's less competitive at the moment.
Yeah, makes sense. All right, here's a good one. So you spoke about hosting on
LinkedIn,
but then you also do a lot of content generations outside of LinkedIn, like
your 10 podcasts or
conferencing. Can you talk a little bit about that and how you balance your
LinkedIn engagement?
Yeah, so for now, in mind, you were still like really early on in this.
I think that LinkedIn is the kind of cornerstone to all of this because that's
where
the ICP audiences of this product were selling Rb2B.
The events that I have been doing, I've been trying to go to events where they
're willing to
give me a keynote, which is another strange thing. All of a sudden, if you are
your ICP and you have
the largest audience in the space, I would have to pay $50,000 in the e-com
world to get this keynote
opportunity. No joke at any of these. I used to pay that to go there and be on
stage with one of my
customers. And now they're asking me to come share my journey or come explain
this LinkedIn thing
or whatever. So my attitude has been I'm trying to just be everywhere, which is
a steady stream of
content on LinkedIn. We've added this weekly event. And then I try to do as
many podcasts in B2B as I
can, which are other people's podcasts. And go to events and give keynotes.
Sometimes there's live
webinars that I can get on. But it's basically my philosophy is this. I'm
trying to get people back
to Rb2B.com. I think that the story of the person and the founder is like the
most compelling story
and it happens to be deeply intertwined with what we're doing right now. So
that is why it look,
if I'm on somebody's podcast and 50 people listen to it, if 20 people listen to
it and it took me an
hour, then I bet you 10 of them will go back to our website. They'll know what
we do. They'll enter our,
you know, kind of inbound let outbound workflow. And it's just what I think
that the new model is. So
it's why I feel compelled to spend most of my time doing this stuff.
Yeah. So here's another one. Adam, so for us, we were fortunate that we made
this switch from
E.com to B2B. And then you wrote this B2B content, right? But for others who
don't have the same
liberty or opportunity to make a switch. And they may be in a, operating in a
business that is not
necessarily the core of LinkedIn. What do you suggest? So I think it's much
less obvious.
I think that it's much less obvious. So let me say what let me say let me step
back and say one
thing. I think that the we're in a new world when it comes to the power of
organic social versus
the power of paid ads. And this change has occurred over the last couple of
years.
I was reading Gary Vaynerchuk's Day Trading Intention. And on page four, he
says,
tick tock showed up. And they had the first interest based algorithm. What does
that mean?
It means that with zero followers, you could make a piece of organic content
that was truly good.
And it could reach billions of people because if you made it good enough and
people were interested
in it, then the platform showed it to them. Now, now the platforms, everybody's
maxed out on
social times. The platforms are competing against each other for eyeballs. And
interest is the
best thing to compete on. And that's why YouTube shorts and Instagram reels and
all this stuff
started getting created. So now more than ever, the power of creating good
social content is
enormous, because it effectively means your distribution capability is
unlimited. And I think
that's the reason why Santos and I have been able to do so well in LinkedIn. It
used to be about
having 400,000 followers. Now it's about being able to create good new novel
content
well, insteadly. So long winded answer to, I think it's highly dependent on
what you are doing.
So like, for instance, let's use the e-comm case, right? If we would have never
pivoted to B2B, I would be giving everything I had to try to figure out how to
be the Twitter
guy, right? Like it would have been much harder, would have taken a lot more
sophistication,
probably, but I would have given everything to that because that's where those
people are.
And you know, depending on your market, people might live in other places. I
was talking to a girl
who was selling into like elementary schools and these people weren't even on
the computer. I'm like,
yeah, I don't know. You know, we're getting into a conversation about how to
advertise, right? But
the short question is, should I go all in on LinkedIn if my ICP is not on
LinkedIn?
The short answer is, you should definitely not go all in like I am. But I think
it's, and by the way,
another example of how to harness this power of organic social content is this
story I love to tell
about one of our customers on the DTC side. It's called there, it's a shower
head brand called
Jolie. And this guy, Ryan Babenzi, and is like a great entrepreneur with three
people, they got
up to 50 million and run rate revenue in 18 months. And they did a lot of stuff
because they're
really good. But what they did better than anything was they basically figured
out how to target a
slice of like tens of thousands of micro influencers, not micro micro, but like
10 to 50,000 followers.
They had a good sales motion with sending people a showerhead and very casually
asking them to
post about it if they like it. And they got 30,000 pieces of UGC created about
Jolie last year without
paying anything other than the price of the showerhead. That is incredible. And
that's harnessing
this power of organic social that I'm talking about in a way totally different
than I'm harnessing
it. Ryan Babenzi, and it's not the face of that brand. He's not out there doing
TikToks about
showerheads. He figured out a way to create an army of people to make organic
social content for him.
And if the volume is high enough, some of them go viral and there's this crazy
effect from them. So
yeah, look, I think we're going to try to do something like that with UGC with
B2B. I think
we will see a lot of these models work over the next three to four years in B2B
, but like no one's
really cracked exactly how to do it yet. But the point is it doesn't have to be
you. But like,
I don't know, there's a lot of different ways to capture this organic social
thing.
Great. Thanks. Let me go through several more questions. So I'll try to rush
through it.
How much follow-up or comments you do that is delegated to somebody else or
automated
single-worded to know about people. Yeah, yeah. So my approach, again, this is
all like with a
under, this is through the lens, I look at it through lens of I'm trying to
build relationships
with these people on LinkedIn. And I'm giving a ton of time to it. And I don't
have a ton of time
to, yeah, long story short, I get a ton of comments on my posts and I try to
comment
to almost all of them, like sometimes on Saturdays and Mount with a family, I
can't really do it.
But I try to answer in a thoughtful way any comment that people will give me.
And it's sort of
annoying because some people leave AI generated contents and I can comments and
I can totally tell
who they are and I'm sort of annoyed by the AI generation of them. But I think
people are beginning
to come conditioned to the fact that if they comment, I will write something
meaningful back
and that increases the value of their comment. So that's my approach. If I wasn
't getting so
many comments, I would probably have a list of 10 people that I tried to like
read their posts
and leave something thoughtful every day. Because I mean, I could tell you
someone who
writes like, it is not, you know, it is nice when someone leaves your real
content comment.
And some unbelievable things have come out of it. I mean, all this PLG stuff we
do is just amazing.
Yeah, it takes a lot of time as well.
Yeah, by the way, we actually do that. Santos and I actually are the ones
writing back. We don't
have our team do that. But we think we have this shared view that this is like
warming these
relationships with the market is actually the power of this program or of this
platform.
That is why we're investing so much in it. It's because we are forming
relationships with
thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people by doing all this.
Yeah, here's another one. If somebody has a sea level of senior folks in their
ICP
that supposedly don't visit LinkedIn as much, is this LinkedIn outreach still
interesting? Or
can R2B be used in any way to target them? So I think, yeah, if people are not
on LinkedIn,
it's just LinkedIn become, if your ICP does not live on LinkedIn, then LinkedIn
will just be
less effective than selling sales and marketing technology where all those
people do live on
LinkedIn. It doesn't mean that it'll be worth zero, but it does mean that it's
not going to
probably not going to do for you what it's doing for us. The point is,
how do you plan to target them? I think that in fact I know,
people, sweet, sweet, sass, they're on LinkedIn. Now as we move into other non-
Lincoln industries,
that's a really good question. I don't know. So cold email is getting harder,
but I still think
you can work a little bit. Yeah, that's a tricky one. Maybe you can.
Yeah, moving advantage. But also does cold calling still work? Does cold
calling still work in
traditional industries? I'm not sure. Part of it could be, we have this freem
ium product, right?
The hope and dream of a freemium product is that it sort of expands outside of
your ICP on its own.
I don't know, create a referral program that sort of could get some virality
spreading for you,
and then I don't know, figure it out from there. Here's a question on building
public. What are the
stories or battles you decide to share versus decide to keep private?
So I think that it is things that I probably wouldn't talk about are basically
like,
are we going to let somebody go? I wouldn't talk about stuff like that. I
wouldn't talk about
a sensitive compliance topic that I really don't mind sharing, but specific
things related to them
as it could relate to a partner or something like that. I don't think I would
share stuff like that.
But I think kind of anything else is on the table. And it's almost like the
harder it is
for me to write it, the better content it ends up being, because the harder it
is for me to write
it, I think the lower odds that other people will be willing and able to share.
And I'm not
saying that I'm some like brave guy. I'm just saying, I don't happen to have
any investors.
I don't have any future rounds I'm going to do. I don't have an employer. So I
'm just able to
say things and not have people be like, you're an idiot or like that affected
your ability to
raise in the future or something like that. And I just know from seeing the
performance of the
post, that's people relate to that. And they relate to the journey. It's not
like they only
like stuff when it's bad. But like, if you're actually sharing when stuff hurts
it almost makes the good stuff that much sweeter. So yeah, I mean, I think just
kind of
people related privacy kind of issues I would ensure or everything else. I kind
of would.
So Adam, your posts are both entertaining and educational. Do you
attend to? So how do you try to balance the tune? I think that, you know,
YouTube calls these
channels, people have channels, right? Like, I think that thinking about your
LinkedIn presence
as a channel is a pretty good way to think about it. There's a lot of reasons
why somebody might
turn your channel on, right? Like, if they know that they're going to learn
something, that's
great. If they know they're going to learn something and be entertained, I
think that's even better.
You know, so, so yeah, I don't have a hard and fast rule for it. I mean, the
way that our
ideation exists is I talked to Alec for an hour every Monday. And we kind of go
over last week's
post, what went well, what didn't go well, what I've been working on, things
that have happened
to me who I spoke to in the last week and basically come up with like three or
four hooks
that I then go right on. And it's not. And so I view that we have three
audiences we're trying
to write for. One is startup founders, kind of like, you know, early stage. The
second are sales
people. And the third is marketers who are doing ABM and demand gen. So
if we haven't hit one of those three audiences in a while, that will get
brought up in this
conversation. If we have hit those audiences too frequently, that will also get
brought up. Like,
we need to like, you know, give the predictable revenue model is dead arrest
for a few weeks or
a month or whatever. Right. So, so yeah, it's, I don't have, I'm thinking about
it more in terms of
that than entertaining or seducational, you know, right. Yeah, somebody's
asking, does time update
matter? And for those two startup and salespeople is Twitter preferred over
LinkedIn or vice versa?
So again, I think it like depends on where your audience is for the second part
of that question.
Uh, LinkedIn for us and B2B, selling into revenue leaders is definitely better
than Twitter,
for sure. I think we might at some point, once we've, uh, optimized the
LinkedIn world for this
audience, try to go, you know, kind of expand the aperture and activate other
platforms, which
we will probably bring it in lower quality leads and traffic for the same
amount of effort,
but it's worth it because the reach is getting much bigger. What was the first
part of that question?
This time of day matter, what time of day. So, Alec manages the calendar for me
and he thinks posting a 3 30 p.m. for me works the best. I don't have a strong
view on it,
but that's what he's doing. And he's like a master at this. Right. Right. Um,
somebody's
asking about, uh, what do you think of other people's personal brand,
especially in B2B?
Uh, so I think that, um, just in general, what do I, what do I think the
landscape is?
And also, I guess there's a, does it compete with the personal brand of others
in the company?
So if you and I post, is that additive or so I think, uh, these are Alex words,
the more people
that you get posting, you widen the attack surface of this program. Uh, so I
talked over the weekend
and like, I'm just so enthusiastic about all this that, um, I think that we
should both be
spending more time doing it just because of, you know, everything that I've set
up until now,
like these, the impre, you know, it's like the most efficient way to create
awareness for what
we're doing is what we're talking about right now. Um, so I believe that it
doesn't, they are not
two posts with it, two profiles within a company are not competitive. I think
that they are one
plus one equals three. Um, yeah, yeah, totally makes sense. You know, um,
social media has shifted
from like the goal is, or the primary metric is not the number of connections
you have, but the
primary metric is number of impressions you have, right? How much visibility of
buzz you can create.
And that really depends on as many people that can post from a company, not
just one or two.
I agree. Yeah. It's the, the change to interest based algorithms, right? It's
like, there's the
perfect alignment between the platform wanting to wanting you to create great
content and the
great content helping you when you create it. And then with LinkedIn, they have
these thought
leadership ads, which are not perfect yet. Apparently I'm not really running
them yet, but I just
listen to people talk about them. But when you create a great piece of content,
that crushes,
you can then turn around and put additional ads behind it to get that great
piece of content
in front of the more eyeballs, which is just amazing. I mean, that's like such
a cool.
It's just such a quick feedback loop for advertising. And one more thing I want
to say about this,
which I talk about a lot like, I have been trying to articulate this idea that,
you know, a good post that, let's say Santo Shurai writes,
the amount of focus that goes into reading that post, which is like very sort
of intellectual
and long form of anything else. Like if you think about the amount of focus
that gets versus the
amount of focus that some, you know, if like rippling throws me carousel with
the case studies
in it, it brands around me, it's like so much more attention that I just think
it has to go this
way, right? It's like, it is creating a type of trust that traditional
advertising never could,
you know, because you'll never feel this connection with a carousel of case
studies, you know,
you'll never feel like you know what someone is thinking.
Yes, I asked about LinkedIn limiting impressions and not all eyeballs are equal
So it's the very nature of this network, right? More people write better
content, there'll be less
visibility. Any comment on just the long term as I guess say three years, five
years from now,
once, so clearly there'll be far more, a lot more people, a lot more content,
right? Which way are we headed?
Yeah, so I think that clearly many more people will be posting then today.
AI tools may get better. I mean, they will get better.
I still think that the best content will be the best because of the perspective
that the person
posting it has and what they offer, right? So like Santo is an example, you had
this great post about
sales for stock being down and you are the perfect person with all of this
experience you have
at all these different companies to offer the take on that, right? Like if Alec
, the LinkedIn
consultant posted that post, there's no way it would have gotten 2,500 likes,
right? So
I think that it is going to get more competitive in terms of content that gets
put out.
But I think if you're willing to really hone down and offer your own
perspective that is unique
and super valuable and then put the effort in to try to be the best and the
most authentic,
I don't see most people sort of shifting their paradigm to putting in that type
of effort in this.
That's really valuable and profound statement. So if I can rephrase it in like
two, so you go
micro-nation sort of broad over time, right? Somebody wrote that in the comment
. Great. So
Adam, you showed that graph which had three inflection points. A question is
how did your content change across those inflection points? I don't know if you
had covered that.
So like number one,
I was talking, number one, I started speaking directly at people like me,
rather than e-comm people. So that was number one. Number two, I got a sense
for
kind of like what a hot take was, if that makes sense. I sort of felt it's like
, oh,
like I'm saying this stuff about PDR, which everyone else is thinking, but no
one is talking about,
right? Like things like, just is this working anymore? Right? You know,
who's like, could I get the same amount out of five people as 50, right? Like,
so I started to feel
what that felt like to like kind of like have my hands on like a hot take, you
know,
which I kind of hadn't felt up to that point. I started using templates a lot
more.
And there's kind of template that I really like to use, which if you read a lot
of my posts,
it's like, I like to use it because it's easy for me to write. It's like, there
's a hook. And
then like, here's my like five or six reasons why. And like, it's just bullets
with some elaboration
and then like a takeaway and then a close. So yeah, I started using a lot more
templates.
But those those prior three things, I think are more important. And like, you
know, working with
Ali, it's like, you know, he's his philosophy is not sort of like, join a bunch
of engagement
circles and get a bunch of people with a lot of followers to like comment on
each other's posts.
He's like, if you make the best hook and the best content in the best clothes,
then your post will get in front of more eyeballs. Like, it's all about
creating the best content.
So all of that together is kind of what changed. But the biggest thing is I
went from talking to
e-commerce people to talking to people that were just like me about this pain
that I had just
gone through this immense transformational, you know, VP sales quit, downside B
DR or whatever.
It's like things that had been happening to people that literally no one else
is speaking about,
you know.
Nice, nice. Thanks. So if somebody is earlier in the career or feels like they
don't have a
lot to share on LinkedIn, what was your recommendation on if they still want to
follow some of these strategies?
So like,
to reemphasize, I had no idea what I was doing for 12 months. No clue. I mean,
like, to try to
take you back to like a year ago when I was making these daily videos, like,
I would try to, you know, somebody sent me some YouTube video that was like,
do, you know, make a video that's three minutes long by doing a hook, a story,
three lessons,
and a soft CTA. So like, I would try to kind of write the hooks down throughout
the week,
then I would write the content and stories and I would record them all at once.
And like,
one week, I might have been talking about, you know, different ways, like
tactics and sales or
something. And the next week, I was talking about like spirituality and being,
you know, like,
sort of the mindset. Like, I had no idea why I was writing what I was writing.
So like,
on one hand, yes, I was the CEO of a, you know, at the time, like maybe 15 or
16 million ARR startup,
but like, it wasn't like that was necessarily positively impacting my content
in any way.
I just didn't know what I was doing. Point being, you know, if you are feeling
compelled to start
going on this journey, there is no other way than to just start consuming a lot
of other people's
content, trying to understand why it's working. I think it's a super important
part and just
posting, right? Like, just post every day, expect it to not do anything for you
, but be working on
this skill. That is what I would do. And then eventually, over time, you will
develop what
Devin really calls content market fit, which was the graphic of this. And you
will know
who you are writing for and why you were writing what you're writing. And more
or less, you know,
if something is going to do well or not or whatever. So,
Excellent. Do we have time for our? Yeah. Do you want to? All right. We can be
quick.
This is actually a really good one. So what role does trust play in the
engagement you do online
and people downloading or buying are going to be licenses?
I mean, I think it was literally everything. No one would know about RV to be
if it wasn't
for LinkedIn. And look, it's a somewhat great area product. Like,
data is an untrustworthy space. Like, I just, that's part of the reason why,
you know, I think this stuff is so amazing for us in particular, right? Like,
it's this automated
trust building machine that then allows you to funnel people through to
whatever's on the other
side, right? It's, it has been everything for this new company. Like, we would
be nowhere
without it. We would be cold emailing people who didn't pick it up and didn't
pick up the cold email
and, you know, wondering why it wasn't working because the product's good,
right? Like,
Yeah, we're not going to be able to say.
But we'll follow up happy to take this offline if, but we are just close to
time.
Cool. Well, thank you everybody. I'm happy to answer any additional questions
that you have.
Just email me at www.retention.com. Santos is as well. And what are we talking
about next week,
Santos? Well, next week, we'll talk about mindset to be successful to dominate.
The global domination mindset. There you go. It's a great topic. Cool. Thank
you everybody.
And we'll talk next week. Cheers. Bye.
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