Jan. 6, 2022

Bye-Bye Commodity Content (A Roundtable Discussion)

In this episode, Benji Block hosts a roundtable discussion with James Carbary, Dan Sanchez, and Rex Biberston. We discuss how to spot commodity content, the power of asking better questions, and the work required to move from transactional to transformational content. 

Click here to check out the episode of Unthinkable by Jay Acunzo that is mentioned in the episode.

Transcript
WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.140 --> 00:00:04.340 accelerating value by proof analytics is the podcast for marketing, 2 00:00:04.350 --> 00:00:08.220 communications, sales and operations leaders who want to see their business 3 00:00:08.220 --> 00:00:12.750 value clearly and succeed, learn how leaders are closing the gap between 4 00:00:12.750 --> 00:00:16.800 creative work and business impact through raw conversations. Don't 5 00:00:16.800 --> 00:00:22.290 believe me. Check out the show for yourself from the CFO perspective it's 6 00:00:22.640 --> 00:00:29.790 value is what type of revenue generation earnings cash flow that is 7 00:00:29.790 --> 00:00:33.590 only adding to the growth of the, of the enterprise. You know, another 8 00:00:33.590 --> 00:00:37.230 dimension would be how our margins performing are we, you know, we're 9 00:00:37.230 --> 00:00:42.340 getting the right value by seeing margin expansion by creating products, 10 00:00:42.340 --> 00:00:47.120 services that are generating, you know that incremental value to the 11 00:00:47.120 --> 00:00:53.060 organization and I think from my lens, you know that it's monetary in many 12 00:00:53.060 --> 00:00:57.690 dimensions, right? It's not, you know, thinking about okay, what say from an 13 00:00:57.690 --> 00:01:01.400 employee perspective, other perspectives, but as a leader, as the 14 00:01:01.400 --> 00:01:07.940 finance leader, as you're looking to grow the revenue earnings and cash flow 15 00:01:07.940 --> 00:01:13.610 of an organization, it will only create more opportunities for your employees, 16 00:01:13.620 --> 00:01:18.140 for your suppliers, for your customers based on those services that you're 17 00:01:18.150 --> 00:01:23.760 creating. So to me that's how I view to be valued for more subscribe to the 18 00:01:23.760 --> 00:01:27.560 show wherever you listen to podcasts. 19 00:01:33.840 --> 00:01:38.770 This is B two B growth Benji block here, your host and I'm joined by three men, 20 00:01:38.780 --> 00:01:43.540 I really respect and learn a lot from regularly excited to dive in today. We 21 00:01:43.540 --> 00:01:48.570 have James are sweet fish ceo. Welcome into the show James. Hello, Hello dan 22 00:01:48.570 --> 00:01:52.650 Sanchez, head of audience growth dan, Welcome into B two B growth. Thanks for 23 00:01:52.650 --> 00:01:58.390 having me and rex rex VP of revenue rex, thanks for for jumping on here, ready 24 00:01:58.390 --> 00:02:02.690 to go excited to be here. Okay, so here's why we're all here today, here's 25 00:02:02.690 --> 00:02:07.490 what I want to jump into. I've invited the three of you on to discuss content, 26 00:02:07.500 --> 00:02:11.750 specifically a phrase that if you're familiar with some of what's being 27 00:02:11.750 --> 00:02:16.630 posted on linkedin, we're talking a lot about this, but commodity content James, 28 00:02:16.630 --> 00:02:20.760 this is something you've been really passionate about, you're talking about 29 00:02:20.760 --> 00:02:24.970 it frequently, so I'll give you kind of first step back here to get us started 30 00:02:24.980 --> 00:02:30.060 when I say commodity content. What's the first thing that comes to your mind? 31 00:02:31.240 --> 00:02:36.360 Yeah, so I think the first thing that comes to mind quite frankly is a lot of 32 00:02:36.360 --> 00:02:42.140 content that I've been guilty of publishing in the past. I mean it's 33 00:02:42.150 --> 00:02:49.160 it's content that is produced to hit a quota or a checklist. It's content that 34 00:02:49.160 --> 00:02:54.120 doesn't have a strong point of view. It's content that really doesn't have, 35 00:02:54.130 --> 00:02:58.800 it doesn't have personality, it doesn't actually try to engage a human on the 36 00:02:58.800 --> 00:03:03.600 other side of it. It's been written for an algorithm and so as we've been 37 00:03:03.600 --> 00:03:09.560 thinking a lot the last 6 to 8 months around, you know, sweet fishes 38 00:03:09.560 --> 00:03:16.510 narrative. What's our story, You can't develop your brand story without first 39 00:03:16.520 --> 00:03:20.780 figuring out who your enemy is and I've struggled with this, I mean we've, 40 00:03:20.790 --> 00:03:25.770 we've gone back and forth a million times, like I remember dan, I mean when 41 00:03:25.780 --> 00:03:30.770 dan was leading marketing a few months ago, we've had some internal kind of 42 00:03:30.770 --> 00:03:34.730 like reorg recently, but like I remember having this conversation with 43 00:03:34.730 --> 00:03:39.070 dan a few months ago and it was like, is our enemy, what was it then? It was 44 00:03:39.070 --> 00:03:44.280 like people changing their mind all the time, that's being scattered. Like 45 00:03:44.290 --> 00:03:49.680 we've been all over the map with what is the actual enemy that we're trying 46 00:03:49.680 --> 00:03:54.720 to fight. And a few months ago, it was maybe a month ago, it just became 47 00:03:54.720 --> 00:03:58.620 really obvious to me, we've been I've been consuming a lot of content from J 48 00:03:58.620 --> 00:04:02.500 Kenzo and I've heard him talk about this idea of transformational versus 49 00:04:02.500 --> 00:04:07.100 transactional content. And as we were, I was like, okay, there's something 50 00:04:07.100 --> 00:04:11.810 there, it's like so much content is transactional, how do we? And so we 51 00:04:11.810 --> 00:04:14.650 started playing with that a little bit and like, okay, what is it? Is 52 00:04:14.650 --> 00:04:18.269 transactional content or enemy? No, but you don't really know what that means 53 00:04:18.269 --> 00:04:21.720 when you say it, it was like, what about commodity content? And then it it 54 00:04:21.720 --> 00:04:26.420 kind of clicked into place and as I've been talking about on linkedin, if I'm 55 00:04:26.420 --> 00:04:31.510 being honest, I thought that I would get better engagement. Talking about it 56 00:04:31.510 --> 00:04:36.400 on linkedin, it's been okay, it's been decent, but the people that have 57 00:04:36.410 --> 00:04:40.970 engaged and commented on the, on the stuff that on my posts, talking about 58 00:04:40.970 --> 00:04:45.860 it had a visceral reaction to it. So it makes me think like, okay, we're on, 59 00:04:45.870 --> 00:04:50.110 we're on to something here because it's deeply resonating with people, you know, 60 00:04:50.110 --> 00:04:54.380 that something's popped whenever you write about something on linkedin and 61 00:04:54.390 --> 00:04:57.940 over the next few days, you hear other people using the phrase and talking 62 00:04:57.940 --> 00:05:01.670 about it in their content. And that happened as soon as I started talking 63 00:05:01.670 --> 00:05:05.310 about commodity content. So I feel like we're starting to strike a nerve. It 64 00:05:05.310 --> 00:05:09.330 just, we, we need to, we need to be a little bit more consistent talk about 65 00:05:09.330 --> 00:05:14.310 it a little bit more um to see like is this an enemy that that we can rally 66 00:05:14.320 --> 00:05:17.640 people around because it's certainly something we're against. But it's a 67 00:05:17.640 --> 00:05:22.330 whole, another question to decide, like, is this the enemy that we build in our 68 00:05:22.330 --> 00:05:27.200 story. And I think it might be dan. Where as you were part of these 69 00:05:27.200 --> 00:05:30.410 discussions like the last few months and then rex will, you know, you and I 70 00:05:30.410 --> 00:05:34.970 are kind of the newbies here, but so dan, like where have you seen this? 71 00:05:34.970 --> 00:05:37.840 Especially in the B two B space? Because it feels like it's prevalent 72 00:05:37.850 --> 00:05:42.360 everywhere, right? I mean, it's in every single channel because in every 73 00:05:42.360 --> 00:05:47.690 channel there's a marketer trying to game the system, right? And everywhere 74 00:05:47.690 --> 00:05:50.850 where you see a market or trying to gain the system without actually 75 00:05:51.240 --> 00:05:54.740 thinking about what people freaking want and what would be the most helpful 76 00:05:54.740 --> 00:05:59.570 to them. You're going to have commodity content, Benji, you just ran a marathon, 77 00:05:59.620 --> 00:06:03.310 Let me give you the ultimate example of commodity content to a marathon runner. 78 00:06:03.360 --> 00:06:06.980 I'm sure you ran across some, especially doing searches for how to 79 00:06:06.980 --> 00:06:11.770 run a good marathon time or how to run my first marathon. If you got two 80 00:06:11.780 --> 00:06:17.430 elliptical and the first answer was drink water, How helpful is that to you? 81 00:06:17.440 --> 00:06:22.970 How about 10 list tickles in a row, right? And they all say like, oh yeah, 82 00:06:22.980 --> 00:06:26.490 drink water and you're like, no freaking duh, I'm gonna drink some 83 00:06:26.490 --> 00:06:31.490 water. I'm running a marathon. How about something that is actually 84 00:06:31.490 --> 00:06:35.290 helpful, but the drink water thing and it'll give like 10 more things that are 85 00:06:35.290 --> 00:06:39.120 just kind of like, duh, like, have you ever gone and googled like creative 86 00:06:39.120 --> 00:06:44.730 dates with your wife and gotten a list of like go to a ceramic shop and throw 87 00:06:44.730 --> 00:06:48.760 a pot together. You're like, like, it's the same stuff every freaking time. 88 00:06:48.830 --> 00:06:54.370 It's commodity content. It's literally being produced for the sake of ranking 89 00:06:54.480 --> 00:07:00.040 without actually having a unique thing, without actually getting good content. 90 00:07:00.130 --> 00:07:04.110 Now. At one point it wasn't commodity content, right? No commodity start as 91 00:07:04.110 --> 00:07:09.640 commodity at one point, this was legit, but like, I just changed the batteries 92 00:07:09.640 --> 00:07:14.940 in my keyboard. Battery's probably used to be really cool. But nowadays I got 93 00:07:14.940 --> 00:07:19.370 this from all the, and it's like an off branded battery. It's a double A. It's 94 00:07:19.370 --> 00:07:23.880 a commodity, double A. Is a double A. I don't care what brands on it. They all 95 00:07:23.880 --> 00:07:27.870 work about the same, it's a commodity, it's everywhere. It's dispensable and 96 00:07:27.870 --> 00:07:32.000 that's the same way it's gone with most content. Yeah. What you said there for 97 00:07:32.000 --> 00:07:36.500 the sake of ranking, I think that's like a big contributing factor to a lot 98 00:07:36.500 --> 00:07:40.170 of the content. It's just like, is it long enough? And I think there's just 99 00:07:40.170 --> 00:07:45.300 so much that goes into, we want to rank higher rex was some of the other stuff 100 00:07:45.300 --> 00:07:48.320 that you're seeing maybe more from like this marketing angle where you're like, 101 00:07:48.320 --> 00:07:52.260 man, we are so guilty of commodity content, not maybe not just to fish, 102 00:07:52.260 --> 00:07:56.960 but like in general, because I know you see it all the time. Yeah, I mean every, 103 00:07:56.970 --> 00:08:00.940 every company I've joined, there's been some level of that, right. We've been 104 00:08:00.940 --> 00:08:07.170 trying to accomplish this for the right reasons and kind of the wrong reasons. 105 00:08:07.170 --> 00:08:11.080 I think every marketer at some point in our career has been guilty of this, but 106 00:08:11.080 --> 00:08:16.830 also I think we can all agree that nobody wanted to do this. We didn't set 107 00:08:16.830 --> 00:08:21.800 out like I don't open my laptop in the morning and hope to write garbage that 108 00:08:21.800 --> 00:08:25.660 no one's going to pay attention to, right? That's not, that's not what I 109 00:08:25.660 --> 00:08:28.540 wish for, it's not what little boys and girls dream of when they say they want 110 00:08:28.540 --> 00:08:33.770 to be a marketer one day, that's not the goal. I see this all over. I think 111 00:08:33.770 --> 00:08:37.890 google searches like a really big one because you know, we think that the 112 00:08:37.890 --> 00:08:42.090 algorithm is telling us to hit a certain checklist. But really what 113 00:08:42.090 --> 00:08:47.040 google hopes is that it's producing the best content first. Unfortunately, I've 114 00:08:47.040 --> 00:08:49.580 worked with agencies in the past and I posted about this on linkedin. I feel 115 00:08:49.580 --> 00:08:53.740 really passionately that the challenge with outsourcing most of your content 116 00:08:53.750 --> 00:08:58.170 is that what they're gonna do is go search for all of your competitors who 117 00:08:58.170 --> 00:09:01.150 are already ranking or people who are competing for those key terms and 118 00:09:01.150 --> 00:09:04.180 they're going to mash up all those ideas and they're just going to 119 00:09:04.190 --> 00:09:07.140 reorganize them. They're going to reorder that content, they're not doing 120 00:09:07.140 --> 00:09:11.070 anything unique. Had a bad experience with this. When I was running marketing 121 00:09:11.070 --> 00:09:15.560 at my second startup, we worked with an agency, they picked a key topic that we 122 00:09:15.560 --> 00:09:19.170 wanted to go after several keywords, downloaded all the articles. I could 123 00:09:19.170 --> 00:09:23.500 see the work happening in google docs. They reordered it and when I read the 124 00:09:23.500 --> 00:09:27.140 output, they said, hey, are we good to publish this? And I said absolutely not. 125 00:09:27.150 --> 00:09:30.770 You cannot, it doesn't speak to anything unique about our brand and we 126 00:09:30.770 --> 00:09:34.640 have very specific takes, we had a very clear voice when you saw us talk on 127 00:09:34.640 --> 00:09:38.420 social, but if we were going to write a blog article that captures traffic and 128 00:09:38.420 --> 00:09:40.960 then people weren't gonna learn anything about us by reading our blog. 129 00:09:41.240 --> 00:09:44.970 What was I hoping for? What's what's the best possible outcome there that we 130 00:09:44.970 --> 00:09:48.280 tricked them into looking at something else from us and this should be where 131 00:09:48.280 --> 00:09:52.990 they feel that they identify with us is in our content. So this happens all the 132 00:09:52.990 --> 00:09:56.760 time, agencies are commonly guilty of this because it's the fastest way to 133 00:09:56.760 --> 00:10:00.960 produce that content. It's the easiest way to rank, but it doesn't represent 134 00:10:00.960 --> 00:10:05.840 the brand behind it, it doesn't create anything unique of value. I think so 135 00:10:05.840 --> 00:10:13.420 many marketers, Benji are so focused on how do I get someone's attention and so 136 00:10:13.420 --> 00:10:18.760 I can get somebody's attention if they search for this thing in google and I'm 137 00:10:18.760 --> 00:10:24.110 the first article that pops up, but then they don't think I've been guilty 138 00:10:24.110 --> 00:10:28.730 of this. You're like, okay, mission accomplished job is done. I got their 139 00:10:28.730 --> 00:10:34.640 attention. I ranked first, they clicked on the article and it's baffling to me 140 00:10:34.640 --> 00:10:39.790 how idiotic that thinking is. And I'm calling myself an idiot here. I've 141 00:10:39.790 --> 00:10:45.990 literally done this where I'm like, oh that's not actually winning, like what 142 00:10:46.000 --> 00:10:51.030 is the impression they have of you after consuming that piece of garbage 143 00:10:51.040 --> 00:10:56.020 that you just optimized to rank their or like I know we're talking a lot 144 00:10:56.020 --> 00:11:01.030 about google search, It applies to linkedin to like you can optimize 145 00:11:01.030 --> 00:11:06.770 around how to write a brilliant hook or a headline in linkedin and you can, you 146 00:11:06.770 --> 00:11:12.070 can get a lot of people to click see more in the linkedin feed and then your 147 00:11:12.070 --> 00:11:17.720 content says the exact same crap that everybody else is talking about and 148 00:11:17.780 --> 00:11:24.530 that's now the impression you've left on somebody is ah this isn't good, this 149 00:11:24.530 --> 00:11:28.900 didn't change my thinking. It didn't make me even think remotely differently 150 00:11:28.910 --> 00:11:34.400 about anything about my work and that's freaking hard man, because like, we're 151 00:11:34.400 --> 00:11:39.400 getting preached at by all of these thought leaders that we have to create 152 00:11:39.400 --> 00:11:42.930 lots of content, you gotta stay in front of your people, you gotta build 153 00:11:42.930 --> 00:11:47.170 personal brands for your team and they got to stay in front of everybody. And 154 00:11:47.170 --> 00:11:51.170 so there's this tension between, like, I have to stay in front of everybody 155 00:11:51.170 --> 00:11:56.620 all the time and I know I've, I've struggled with it, like I'm running out 156 00:11:56.620 --> 00:12:01.860 of ship to say like, I don't know what else to say, like I'm over here doing 157 00:12:01.860 --> 00:12:07.200 my thing and it's working, but you can only, like, you talk about that so many 158 00:12:07.200 --> 00:12:13.760 times and it doesn't keep resonating. And so the thing, the big unlock for me 159 00:12:14.040 --> 00:12:18.100 that's been massive this year is, you know, consuming a lot of jake Kenzo's 160 00:12:18.100 --> 00:12:24.100 content and his whole approach to developing, you know, content that's 161 00:12:24.100 --> 00:12:29.050 not a commodity is asking more intriguing questions and because there 162 00:12:29.050 --> 00:12:34.750 are endless numbers of questions that we can ask as brands and there are 163 00:12:34.760 --> 00:12:39.770 endless ways that we can go about, like taking our audience on a journey to 164 00:12:39.770 --> 00:12:43.310 find answers to those questions. He did a podcast. It might be one of my 165 00:12:43.310 --> 00:12:48.320 favorite podcast episodes of all time on his show. Unthinkable And it was an 166 00:12:48.320 --> 00:12:54.060 episode called Leaving Expert Bill and he talks to someone john Bernini who 167 00:12:54.060 --> 00:12:57.710 has actually become a good friend over over linkedin, I say good friend, I 168 00:12:57.710 --> 00:13:01.290 mean a good, a good digital friend, I think a few of us have been on his 169 00:13:01.290 --> 00:13:05.240 podcast, I'm sure we've had him on GDP growth in the past, but anyway, he was 170 00:13:05.240 --> 00:13:10.690 talking to john and john was basically lamenting about this point of like 171 00:13:10.690 --> 00:13:15.500 john's content is very tactical, it's like very like related to content 172 00:13:15.500 --> 00:13:19.800 marketing and he was like, I'm running out of stuff to say and through this 173 00:13:19.800 --> 00:13:24.190 dialogue, J was basically walking him through well, like what if you just 174 00:13:24.190 --> 00:13:29.360 started asking more intriguing questions. And instead of positioning 175 00:13:29.360 --> 00:13:34.100 yourself as like I have the answer, I've made it to the top of the mountain 176 00:13:34.100 --> 00:13:37.510 and I know the answer and the reason the episode was called Leaving Expert 177 00:13:37.510 --> 00:13:41.730 veils because so much, so much of the time we're trying to portray ourselves 178 00:13:41.740 --> 00:13:49.090 as experts as opposed to trying to lead an audience on a journey that we don't 179 00:13:49.090 --> 00:13:53.960 know the answer to yet. And I just think that's a fascinating way to flip 180 00:13:53.960 --> 00:13:58.550 content on its head. I think there's endless potential in that approach in 181 00:13:58.550 --> 00:14:04.220 that episode, J talks about a story about a guy his name is Andrew, I'm 182 00:14:04.220 --> 00:14:08.280 blanking on his last name, he's a public speaker, but right after like 183 00:14:08.290 --> 00:14:12.670 right after the pandemic Hit Andrew started, you know, seeing everybody 184 00:14:12.670 --> 00:14:15.960 talk about, we've got to get back to business as usual. We got to get back 185 00:14:15.960 --> 00:14:20.170 to business as usual. We've got to get back to business as usual. And Andrew 186 00:14:20.170 --> 00:14:26.010 asked a simple question, what does that even mean? Like, do we want to get back 187 00:14:26.010 --> 00:14:30.970 to business as usual? Like, is that something we should aspire to? Not 188 00:14:30.970 --> 00:14:36.290 saying we shouldn't, but I don't know. Let's go on an exploit to figure that 189 00:14:36.290 --> 00:14:41.520 out. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts down because your approach to 190 00:14:41.530 --> 00:14:46.400 content creation is very much from it. Like be a student. So I don't know. 191 00:14:46.410 --> 00:14:50.740 What are your thoughts around all this stuff. That one podcast you mentioned, 192 00:14:50.750 --> 00:14:53.940 everybody in this listening to this episode needs to go and listen to that 193 00:14:53.940 --> 00:15:00.210 J Kenzo episode, Leaving Expert Bill, It changed me plus one to that in the 194 00:15:00.210 --> 00:15:05.490 best way possible. I was like, he's right. And I actually think it's it's 195 00:15:05.490 --> 00:15:09.580 ahead of the curve. I actually think there's still actually there's room for 196 00:15:09.590 --> 00:15:13.660 expert ville. Like we should leave expert Bill, but I think like jay is 197 00:15:13.660 --> 00:15:18.970 playing a couple moves ahead of where most people are. And I actually still 198 00:15:18.970 --> 00:15:24.340 think like, like search for example, google is primarily dominated with 199 00:15:24.350 --> 00:15:28.160 articles that are not written by the experts. They are written by writers 200 00:15:28.160 --> 00:15:31.750 who did an hour or two of research scraped that did the best they could 201 00:15:32.140 --> 00:15:37.400 And good for them and wrote an article in five and 8 hours. But like they're 202 00:15:37.400 --> 00:15:41.270 not even written by experts yet a lot of times, right? Or if they are they 203 00:15:41.270 --> 00:15:45.290 had they only had 500 words to get it out on a Forbes article. Right? And of 204 00:15:45.290 --> 00:15:49.680 course it can't be median in depth. So like there's still a lot of room for 205 00:15:49.680 --> 00:15:54.690 good expertise, but in places like social less so in places like social 206 00:15:54.690 --> 00:15:59.300 and podcasting and even in some in a lot of niches in Youtube, it's 207 00:15:59.300 --> 00:16:04.520 saturated like there's plenty of good answers there. So this is the next wave, 208 00:16:04.520 --> 00:16:06.950 this is the next generation. I still think it's going to take a couple of 209 00:16:06.950 --> 00:16:11.690 years to actually play out. So jay's thinking is well well ahead of 210 00:16:11.690 --> 00:16:15.400 everybody else. I want to ask the following questions walk me through 211 00:16:15.410 --> 00:16:19.950 when you say like ask better questions. What does that look like for your 212 00:16:19.950 --> 00:16:25.030 content creation because like I've also seen, I mean, people try the question 213 00:16:25.030 --> 00:16:28.940 like, well just pose a crappy question to be honest as a way of engagement. 214 00:16:28.940 --> 00:16:34.540 But you're saying use questions and and develop really intriguing questions and 215 00:16:34.540 --> 00:16:38.110 then what are you writing long form content based on that? Are you posing 216 00:16:38.110 --> 00:16:41.460 those questions to your audience? What's the type of like back and forth 217 00:16:41.460 --> 00:16:45.150 that you guys think is going to develop from from that framework. That's a 218 00:16:45.150 --> 00:16:49.980 great question. My immediate two cents on it is I think you build your content 219 00:16:49.980 --> 00:16:55.740 strategy at a high level around like, okay, our, our live events, we're going 220 00:16:55.740 --> 00:17:00.950 to be taking people on this journey and asking these questions are pillar 221 00:17:00.950 --> 00:17:05.160 content. So like the episode we're doing right now, like, let's start 222 00:17:05.160 --> 00:17:10.290 regularly talking about questions, intriguing questions that we don't know 223 00:17:10.290 --> 00:17:15.380 the answers to yet. Like how the hell do you create commodity content, not 224 00:17:15.380 --> 00:17:19.869 create commodity content when you have to create content all the time? Like, 225 00:17:19.880 --> 00:17:24.290 you know, there's so much, there's so much desire for attention right now and 226 00:17:24.290 --> 00:17:29.800 to get that attention with everything else, like screaming at you, where is 227 00:17:29.800 --> 00:17:32.610 that? And I don't know the answer to that question, We haven't figured it 228 00:17:32.610 --> 00:17:36.420 out yet. There's still a lot of people that don't know about sweet fish media. 229 00:17:36.430 --> 00:17:41.880 And so I think like talking about it in your pillar content, letting that 230 00:17:41.880 --> 00:17:46.450 pillar content then shape the micro content that comes out of it, which 231 00:17:46.460 --> 00:17:51.710 turns into the content that your team is sharing on linkedin. So I think 232 00:17:51.710 --> 00:17:57.100 that's the flow of it, is you have long term kind of pillar content channels, 233 00:17:57.110 --> 00:18:01.040 whether it's a live event, you do once a week, whether it's something like 234 00:18:01.040 --> 00:18:05.880 this, where it's like, hey we know two or three days a week, the three of us 235 00:18:05.880 --> 00:18:10.690 are going to jump on a podcast and and talk about one of these concepts and 236 00:18:10.690 --> 00:18:15.140 then I think as you explore, way more content comes out of that because you 237 00:18:15.140 --> 00:18:19.650 start asking these other kind of these other questions that come up, I don't 238 00:18:19.650 --> 00:18:24.860 know, what do you think we should do? So that's, that's my take rex. It's 239 00:18:24.860 --> 00:18:29.170 almost an ideation, it's an ideation session. Like that's where it was like, 240 00:18:29.170 --> 00:18:34.250 it's going like we're not, we're all saying this is stuff that we can try 241 00:18:34.260 --> 00:18:37.400 right. Like let's all ask our best question and see where that question 242 00:18:37.400 --> 00:18:39.770 leads, which I think is super intriguing rex. What are your thoughts? 243 00:18:40.640 --> 00:18:44.520 Yeah. So I went through an interesting transition professionally for a long 244 00:18:44.520 --> 00:18:48.840 time. I co authored a book about outbound sales. Like I, all my content 245 00:18:48.840 --> 00:18:53.480 on linkedin was about outbound sales or sales in general. And I felt a draw 246 00:18:53.490 --> 00:18:57.060 towards talking about marketing. My last company, we targeted marketers, 247 00:18:57.070 --> 00:18:59.780 but I also love marketing. I wanted to talk about it but I felt a lot of 248 00:18:59.780 --> 00:19:04.110 pressure to be an expert and guys, I'm not an expert. Like I didn't, I didn't 249 00:19:04.110 --> 00:19:08.200 walk into my first marketing leadership role, knowing everything about 250 00:19:08.200 --> 00:19:11.650 everything about marketing and I don't think I'll leave my very last role in 251 00:19:11.650 --> 00:19:14.850 marketing knowing everything about marketing. So I felt all this this 252 00:19:14.850 --> 00:19:19.790 pressure. But recently instead of worrying about asking the very best 253 00:19:19.790 --> 00:19:22.570 questions I've been asking some questions I've been more willing to 254 00:19:22.570 --> 00:19:26.240 admit. Like, hey, I don't actually know but what James mentioned and what we're 255 00:19:26.240 --> 00:19:29.100 talking about the questions lead to more questions and those are such 256 00:19:29.110 --> 00:19:32.220 interesting. The second layer of questions are really interesting. So 257 00:19:32.230 --> 00:19:35.860 recently I posted on linkedin, like, hey, what's what's your favorite gift 258 00:19:35.860 --> 00:19:39.560 you've ever received from a vendor dan had this incredible answer. And it 259 00:19:39.560 --> 00:19:42.910 brings up 100 different questions about how do we think about interacting with 260 00:19:42.920 --> 00:19:45.590 other businesses and people and businesses and how do we think about 261 00:19:45.590 --> 00:19:48.560 the relationships that we have with vendors and what we call them and how 262 00:19:48.560 --> 00:19:51.960 we relate to them. Like that's powerful. And then on the other side it was I 263 00:19:51.960 --> 00:19:56.230 said don't mention anything that's got somebody's logo on it because in my 264 00:19:56.230 --> 00:19:59.140 head I was thinking that's just garbage. But in reality there are people who 265 00:19:59.140 --> 00:20:01.990 mentioned it because that was their favorite gift. It's like, okay, well 266 00:20:01.990 --> 00:20:06.270 then the question is, why do I feel so strongly about branded gifts and what's 267 00:20:06.270 --> 00:20:09.700 the right variation of that or who's the right target audience for that that 268 00:20:09.700 --> 00:20:13.170 would enjoy? And there's, I mean I could go layers, layers, layers, deeper 269 00:20:13.640 --> 00:20:16.170 And that's been a powerful experience for me because I don't have to pretend 270 00:20:16.170 --> 00:20:20.230 to know the answer and give them the five best gifts you can use this year 271 00:20:20.240 --> 00:20:24.180 or hey, you're 2022 plan isn't complete without these 10 tips. I don't have to 272 00:20:24.180 --> 00:20:28.860 do it. I don't have to know it and people relate my content to marketing 273 00:20:28.870 --> 00:20:31.570 and they're having more conversations with me about marketing and they're 274 00:20:31.570 --> 00:20:35.130 more willing to be open in sharing thoughts and advice and strategies 275 00:20:35.130 --> 00:20:37.600 about marketing, which makes me a better marketer. And it makes the 276 00:20:37.600 --> 00:20:41.690 people who follow my content enjoy the comments and learn a ton more than if I 277 00:20:41.690 --> 00:20:47.890 was just always putting the only idea I had about that question. Hey everyone 278 00:20:47.900 --> 00:20:51.030 Emily brady with sweet fish here. If you've been listening to B two B growth 279 00:20:51.030 --> 00:20:54.170 for a while, you know, we are big proponents of putting out original 280 00:20:54.170 --> 00:20:57.830 organic content on linkedin. But one thing that has always been a struggle 281 00:20:57.830 --> 00:21:01.620 for a team like ours is easily tracking the reach of that linkedin content. 282 00:21:01.630 --> 00:21:05.220 That is why we are really excited about Shield analytics. Since our team 283 00:21:05.220 --> 00:21:08.170 started using Shield, we've been able to easily track the reach and 284 00:21:08.170 --> 00:21:11.480 performance of our linkedin content without having to manually log it 285 00:21:11.480 --> 00:21:15.200 ourselves. It automatically creates reports and generates dashboards that 286 00:21:15.200 --> 00:21:18.370 are incredibly useful to determining things like what content has been 287 00:21:18.370 --> 00:21:21.740 performing the best, what days of the week we're getting the most engagement 288 00:21:21.750 --> 00:21:25.520 and our average views proposed shield has been a game changer for our entire 289 00:21:25.520 --> 00:21:29.550 team's productivity and performance on linkedin. I highly suggest checking out 290 00:21:29.550 --> 00:21:32.670 this tool. If you're publishing content on linkedin for yourself or your 291 00:21:32.670 --> 00:21:37.070 company, you can get a 10 day free trial at shield app dot ai or you can 292 00:21:37.070 --> 00:21:41.800 get a 25% discount with our promo code B two B growth. Again, that Shield app 293 00:21:41.800 --> 00:21:46.990 dot Ai and the promo code is B the number to be growth all one word for a 294 00:21:46.990 --> 00:21:51.990 25% discount. Alright, let's get back to the show. It requires you, it's a 295 00:21:51.990 --> 00:21:57.440 forcing function, Benji to take the ego out of it. Like you can't go into 296 00:21:57.440 --> 00:22:02.800 content creation with this approach, right? Like asking really compelling, 297 00:22:02.800 --> 00:22:04.350 intriguing questions 298 00:22:05.540 --> 00:22:10.380 and guiding people along the way and genuinely like trying to explore for an 299 00:22:10.380 --> 00:22:14.580 answer because you have to be able to acknowledge, I don't have the answer, I 300 00:22:14.580 --> 00:22:20.060 don't know to me, I see that is incredibly freeing, but we've been 301 00:22:20.540 --> 00:22:25.730 Programmed in marketing land for the last 15 years, I mean more than that, 302 00:22:25.730 --> 00:22:30.060 I'm sure, but since I've been in the game you have to present yourself as 303 00:22:30.060 --> 00:22:34.560 the expert, you have to have the answer or why? Why would somebody want to 304 00:22:34.560 --> 00:22:38.600 consume your stuff? You have to give him an answer. And I've just found that 305 00:22:38.600 --> 00:22:42.580 it leads to like, it's like, okay, but I can't keep doing this forever, this 306 00:22:42.580 --> 00:22:47.140 isn't sustainable, Like I have gone, I even think about it right now, there's 307 00:22:47.140 --> 00:22:50.100 a guy that I've been following for the last three or four months that I'm kind 308 00:22:50.100 --> 00:22:54.330 of tuned out on right now, his name is Alex, her mosey, I freaking binge, That 309 00:22:54.330 --> 00:22:59.400 dude's content more than maybe as much as I did with Gary V, certainly more 310 00:22:59.400 --> 00:23:02.980 than I have with a lot of other people, but when I think about the content 311 00:23:02.980 --> 00:23:08.600 creators that I've gone on binge fests with Alex or mosey, I've done it with 312 00:23:08.600 --> 00:23:12.390 Michael Hyatt. I've certainly done with Gary vee, Gary V has probably been the 313 00:23:12.390 --> 00:23:16.630 longest and most most sustained because it was more storytelling, it was his 314 00:23:16.630 --> 00:23:20.300 vlog. He wasn't necessarily like, he had the same 11 or 12 things that he 315 00:23:20.300 --> 00:23:24.420 would talk about all the time, but the compelling nature of the stories he was 316 00:23:24.420 --> 00:23:28.160 telling, it's like you're just following around this, you know, $100 317 00:23:28.160 --> 00:23:32.680 million ceo and seeing his life that was compelling, I wanted to watch it, 318 00:23:32.680 --> 00:23:36.930 which I think teaches us something about commodity content. But this idea 319 00:23:36.930 --> 00:23:41.550 that like even the most prolific content creators, for me personally, 320 00:23:41.550 --> 00:23:48.850 they have my attention for 23 months maybe and I get through a backlog of 57, 321 00:23:48.850 --> 00:23:53.580 10 years of their content, then they tap out because it's like okay, like 322 00:23:53.580 --> 00:23:58.500 I've learned from Alex or mosey enough for a freaking masters degree, it has 323 00:23:58.500 --> 00:24:03.260 changed the trajectory of my entire freaking business because of what I've 324 00:24:03.260 --> 00:24:06.980 learned from this man over the last two or three months and I see this stuff on 325 00:24:06.980 --> 00:24:12.060 linkedin or I see a stuff on instagram now and I'm like ma on to the next and 326 00:24:12.060 --> 00:24:19.970 I just think ah man, like this is freaking hard, like how how are we 327 00:24:19.970 --> 00:24:26.070 supposed to like stay engaging, but For the last nine or 10 months, every 328 00:24:26.070 --> 00:24:30.150 freaking time I see a, every single time I see an unthinkable episode pull 329 00:24:30.150 --> 00:24:36.310 up in my podcast feed from J Kenzo, I'm like, yep, give me that because J is 330 00:24:36.310 --> 00:24:41.080 asking really compelling questions that he doesn't know the answer to, and he's 331 00:24:41.080 --> 00:24:44.750 taking you on a journey to try to figure out what the hell, how should we 332 00:24:44.750 --> 00:24:49.050 be thinking about it? And so he said something on twitter, somebody was like, 333 00:24:49.060 --> 00:24:51.420 ah there's too many marketing shows, should should I create another 334 00:24:51.420 --> 00:24:54.450 marketing show? And I think jay responded, he said something to the 335 00:24:54.450 --> 00:25:00.870 effect of so long as there are still questions to be asked and voices to be 336 00:25:00.870 --> 00:25:06.300 heard, there are more shows that need to be made and I was just like, yep, 337 00:25:06.310 --> 00:25:13.210 and there's always gonna be questions to ask and so I am so intrigued by this 338 00:25:13.210 --> 00:25:18.050 because I'm like, this is like the well that it's like, you know, I'm a person 339 00:25:18.050 --> 00:25:22.690 of faith, it's like this is like this is the well that keeps bringing life, 340 00:25:22.690 --> 00:25:27.430 like jesus is the water of life, Like I can go and drink a cup of water or I 341 00:25:27.430 --> 00:25:31.890 can go get jesus in the same way, I'm like, oh this is everlasting, like, I 342 00:25:31.890 --> 00:25:36.840 can go and drink from this well for decades and decades to come because 343 00:25:36.840 --> 00:25:41.960 it's not an expert bill anymore. I there's always going to be intriguing 344 00:25:41.960 --> 00:25:47.270 questions and the question that rex just asked about gifting, I'm super 345 00:25:47.270 --> 00:25:51.940 passionate about gifting too and I hate branded swag, but he's right. As soon 346 00:25:51.940 --> 00:25:55.960 as he said it, I was like, you know what? I probably hate it too much. Like 347 00:25:55.970 --> 00:26:00.450 I need to ease up on that point of view and really explore, why do I hate it so 348 00:26:00.450 --> 00:26:05.010 much? Like what, what did somebody get me that puts such a bad taste in my 349 00:26:05.010 --> 00:26:09.870 mouth and then how can I not do that? But not completely throw out the other 350 00:26:09.870 --> 00:26:14.630 stuff? Let's go on an exploration. We could do that for a month, we could do 351 00:26:14.630 --> 00:26:19.350 four or five different episodes like this exploring questions around that 352 00:26:19.350 --> 00:26:23.840 one specific thing and other questions would inevitably pop up and we'd have 353 00:26:23.840 --> 00:26:27.740 content for an entire month and that doesn't even freaking scratch the 354 00:26:27.740 --> 00:26:32.840 surface of all the things that people are asking related to B two B marketing, 355 00:26:32.850 --> 00:26:36.330 which is what our buyers care about when it comes to gift giving. The 356 00:26:36.330 --> 00:26:39.680 reason that we probably hate some of the branded swagger's because it was 357 00:26:39.680 --> 00:26:43.660 just commodity. I mean, like ultimately, like, it's just just like every other 358 00:26:43.660 --> 00:26:47.610 thing we ever got, there was no heart behind it. There's no passion there. 359 00:26:47.620 --> 00:26:51.090 It's, it's the exact thing we're talking about because so much of it 360 00:26:51.090 --> 00:26:56.160 comes back to mission and purpose, like dan you brought up earlier, my marathon 361 00:26:56.160 --> 00:27:01.140 training. The things that I read, there was articles that brought up drinking 362 00:27:01.140 --> 00:27:05.530 water that did hit me in the wrong way. But there was also ones that hit in the 363 00:27:05.530 --> 00:27:08.880 right way because they told me something like a trick that they 364 00:27:08.880 --> 00:27:13.960 learned while they were like, it's still drink water that's still the core 365 00:27:13.960 --> 00:27:19.200 message. But hey, this is how often this is how long my sip was. This was. 366 00:27:19.210 --> 00:27:23.130 I, I tried these three methods and then you know what I mean? Like because they 367 00:27:23.130 --> 00:27:26.050 were being inquisitive and they were asking a question, I was asking, am I 368 00:27:26.050 --> 00:27:30.680 drinking too much water at a time? And you know what I mean? That's starting 369 00:27:30.680 --> 00:27:34.930 to really get things rolling where you're like, oh yeah, we've covered 370 00:27:34.930 --> 00:27:38.680 this topic, but not in the same way. It's point of view, it's perspective, 371 00:27:38.680 --> 00:27:41.940 right? And dan. That's something you told me early on when I first joined. 372 00:27:41.940 --> 00:27:45.800 Like perspective point of view is crucial and I'd love to hear kind of, 373 00:27:45.800 --> 00:27:50.230 your take their, I think that's when it stops becoming commodity content. It's 374 00:27:50.230 --> 00:27:54.580 not just generic drink water, it's nuanced and the good answers always 375 00:27:54.580 --> 00:27:58.130 nuanced. Um, and that's how you can tell that article was actually written 376 00:27:58.130 --> 00:28:01.920 by someone who's probably actually ran a marathon because most of them aren't 377 00:28:01.930 --> 00:28:05.800 there just kind of hashing out ones that other people maybe had rehashed 378 00:28:05.810 --> 00:28:09.890 before and then it just becomes rehashed. Rehashed. It's funny just to 379 00:28:09.890 --> 00:28:13.690 go back to branded swag. There have been times where I've purchased branded 380 00:28:13.690 --> 00:28:17.540 swag Because I was such a big fan of the company that I was like, I will 381 00:28:17.540 --> 00:28:23.280 gladly pay $45 for a polo with this company's logo on it because to me, 382 00:28:23.290 --> 00:28:28.500 this company and this logo means more than Nike to me, I don't care if nobody 383 00:28:28.500 --> 00:28:32.980 else knows the logo. I do right? So it's kind of like, what's up with that? 384 00:28:32.990 --> 00:28:37.930 Why do we do that? And that, that speaks right there, that speaks right 385 00:28:37.930 --> 00:28:42.390 there, dan to what jay talks a lot about about being their favorite. Like 386 00:28:42.400 --> 00:28:45.330 he showed this story in an email, I shared it with our leadership team 387 00:28:45.330 --> 00:28:49.750 probably four or five months ago, but he was like, any time the conversation 388 00:28:49.750 --> 00:28:55.000 around favorite Disney movie comes up, I don't care what anybody says, Nobody 389 00:28:55.000 --> 00:28:59.770 is ever going to tell me that that, that a Goofy movie is not the greatest 390 00:28:59.770 --> 00:29:03.410 Disney movie of all time. And he goes into the story about why it's his 391 00:29:03.410 --> 00:29:06.680 favorite. It's because it's super nostalgic. And when he was in college 392 00:29:06.680 --> 00:29:10.110 living in this house with a bunch of people that all all their names 393 00:29:10.110 --> 00:29:14.170 starting with J just like him and you know, gets into, I mean just, it's 394 00:29:14.170 --> 00:29:19.540 masterful storytelling. But at the end of the day, it's like, it's my favorite 395 00:29:19.550 --> 00:29:26.620 and you can't change it because it's my favorite and if we as brands start 396 00:29:26.620 --> 00:29:33.040 trying to create content that is our buyers favorite. It doesn't look like 397 00:29:33.040 --> 00:29:39.100 doing short term hacky trying to manipulate algorithms. Like I say that 398 00:29:39.100 --> 00:29:43.400 like it's a negative thing. Like the next question I was gonna ask, y'all is 399 00:29:43.410 --> 00:29:48.280 how do you create a higher level of content content that is asking 400 00:29:48.280 --> 00:29:52.980 questions instead of proclaiming expertise? But then how do you get it 401 00:29:52.980 --> 00:29:58.250 in front of people? Like the reason we started gaming headlines on linkedin 402 00:29:58.250 --> 00:30:02.990 and and gaming things on google and it's because we want to be where the 403 00:30:02.990 --> 00:30:07.220 people are like we we want to get the stuff that we're trying to put out into 404 00:30:07.220 --> 00:30:10.650 the world in front of as many people as possible and I think there's a 405 00:30:10.650 --> 00:30:15.050 disconnect in the people that are really doing some good work. Like I 406 00:30:15.050 --> 00:30:19.270 know that there's not as many people listening to jay is unthinkable show as 407 00:30:19.270 --> 00:30:23.040 there should be. And I'm like, but this is like the greatest stuff and B two B 408 00:30:23.040 --> 00:30:28.440 marketing right now, but we're consuming and this is not at all. I'm 409 00:30:28.440 --> 00:30:32.030 not even gonna say names because this isn't to bash other people, but like 410 00:30:32.040 --> 00:30:37.320 we're seeing other types of marketing content flood our feeds that's not 411 00:30:37.320 --> 00:30:41.620 nearly as substantial or like doesn't have the sustenance that what jay is 412 00:30:41.620 --> 00:30:46.570 talking about. So it's like, how do you create content that really does have 413 00:30:46.580 --> 00:30:51.490 sustenance that like can change people's thinking and challenge what 414 00:30:51.490 --> 00:30:55.890 they're currently doing and do it in a way that actually meets them where they 415 00:30:55.890 --> 00:31:00.880 are so that they can see it and and have an opportunity to engage with it, 416 00:31:00.890 --> 00:31:03.500 but I don't know, I'm curious dan with you building the audience growth 417 00:31:03.500 --> 00:31:07.010 product, curious rex if you have any thoughts on this, but like, I think 418 00:31:07.010 --> 00:31:11.160 that's the thing, we've got to try to figure out as we continue to explore 419 00:31:11.840 --> 00:31:16.180 commodity content. It's like, how do you create non commodity content, but 420 00:31:16.180 --> 00:31:19.910 also get it in front of as many people as you can. One of the reasons why I 421 00:31:19.910 --> 00:31:25.990 think jay is a few years out is partly because of that. His message is 422 00:31:25.990 --> 00:31:30.860 resonating with a very select few who can think ahead and see where he's at, 423 00:31:31.240 --> 00:31:35.030 but most people aren't there, it's like trying to catch a wave, but you're, 424 00:31:35.040 --> 00:31:39.700 you're a few feet ahead of this. Well, right, he's ahead of the swell, he's 425 00:31:39.700 --> 00:31:44.520 not writing the current swell in versus Gary V road, the swell of social media 426 00:31:44.530 --> 00:31:50.410 in and find it pretty much perfectly right. And now now Gary v is ahead of 427 00:31:50.410 --> 00:31:53.620 the swell and like the web three point oh thing. And that's, I mean, I guess 428 00:31:53.630 --> 00:31:56.170 not even like the swell has been building and like there's a lot of hype 429 00:31:56.170 --> 00:31:59.240 around that. So he's writing, he's writing that as it's picking up, it's 430 00:31:59.240 --> 00:32:03.160 just early versus JJ is ahead of the head of the game when it comes to 431 00:32:03.160 --> 00:32:07.380 asking questions and I actually think like, you don't have to, like, you 432 00:32:07.380 --> 00:32:10.110 haven't arrived when you start asking questions, you can start asking 433 00:32:10.110 --> 00:32:13.120 questions from the very beginning because you don't know crap in the very 434 00:32:13.120 --> 00:32:17.050 beginning? So you might as well just start asking questions. How do you do 435 00:32:17.050 --> 00:32:21.860 this? Hey people who have been here for five years, how do you accomplish X. 436 00:32:22.240 --> 00:32:26.700 What is X? Right? And then you just keep asking questions. And the thing, 437 00:32:26.710 --> 00:32:30.670 the thing where it starts to become movement changing is when you have all 438 00:32:30.670 --> 00:32:35.190 the expertise, you've kind of learned all the all the possible ways of doing 439 00:32:35.190 --> 00:32:39.060 something and you have essentially mastered the craft instead of 440 00:32:39.060 --> 00:32:43.210 pretending to know the answers than leading with questions is such a better 441 00:32:43.440 --> 00:32:47.670 way forward. But by the time, you know everything, you know what things have 442 00:32:47.670 --> 00:32:51.900 been answered and you know which things haven't been. You're much better 443 00:32:51.900 --> 00:32:55.930 position to ask. The one question that everybody is wrestling with or the the 444 00:32:55.930 --> 00:32:59.930 few, there's probably a few big ones in the industry, like in marketing. I 445 00:32:59.930 --> 00:33:04.260 think like this is one of the reasons why we were even considering this as a 446 00:33:04.640 --> 00:33:07.890 as an enemy for us rather than commodity content was distraction. You 447 00:33:07.890 --> 00:33:11.470 spoke about it at the very beginning, there's a reason why we considered that 448 00:33:11.470 --> 00:33:15.620 is because it's a widespread problem across marketers. Too much distraction 449 00:33:15.620 --> 00:33:19.150 trying to pursue too many endeavors at one time. I think you even Wrexham 450 00:33:19.150 --> 00:33:23.890 Benji, you just did an episode on this right distraction. It's a freaking huge 451 00:33:23.890 --> 00:33:27.580 problem. It's not what we're going to villainize but it's still something we 452 00:33:27.580 --> 00:33:31.090 need to be asking questions about because it's a it's it's a problem for 453 00:33:31.090 --> 00:33:35.110 our for all marketers more than most departments rex What are your thoughts? 454 00:33:35.120 --> 00:33:38.730 I'd love to hear your take. Yeah, I was going to share a little bit of why I 455 00:33:38.730 --> 00:33:42.880 think we're all trying to game the algorithms and we're trying to to trick 456 00:33:42.880 --> 00:33:47.280 the systems into what we what we want as the outcome, which is a lot of 457 00:33:47.280 --> 00:33:51.890 people seeing something that we've produced and ultimately, you know, if 458 00:33:51.890 --> 00:33:54.960 we're if we're thinking like marketers who care about revenue ultimately want 459 00:33:54.960 --> 00:33:58.860 them to then engage and we want them to buy and that's but there's not a clear 460 00:33:58.860 --> 00:34:03.280 path. So one of the things that I've noticed with a lot of the content that 461 00:34:03.280 --> 00:34:06.440 we're talking about, let's let's pick on google search for just a little bit, 462 00:34:06.440 --> 00:34:11.239 let's talk about SEO optimizing, right? And you know, one of the reasons that 463 00:34:11.239 --> 00:34:15.760 we try and game the system is because our entire distribution plan is google, 464 00:34:16.540 --> 00:34:19.510 our entire plan. The only thing we think is going to happen is that google 465 00:34:19.510 --> 00:34:22.610 is going to pick it up, right? We talked about it like that, but we don't 466 00:34:22.610 --> 00:34:25.310 have an email list, we're gonna share it to that we expect this to deeply 467 00:34:25.310 --> 00:34:28.739 resonate with. We don't have a linkedin network that we're gonna share this 468 00:34:28.739 --> 00:34:31.310 with our top five influencers who are going to really care about this and 469 00:34:31.310 --> 00:34:35.290 they're going to distribute it. But then you look at companies like gone, 470 00:34:35.300 --> 00:34:38.380 one of my favorite examples of a brand that I will go by their swag. They 471 00:34:38.380 --> 00:34:40.820 literally put up a swag shop and was like, yeah, you know what son of a gun? 472 00:34:40.820 --> 00:34:44.409 I'd probably buy one because they resonate with me. But way back in the 473 00:34:44.409 --> 00:34:47.110 day when chris or lob was their director of marketing, he's now over 474 00:34:47.110 --> 00:34:52.090 sales, he would send us hundreds of people and he would send us all notes 475 00:34:52.090 --> 00:34:55.460 though. People he knew were deeply passionate about sales and he would say, 476 00:34:55.469 --> 00:34:59.240 hey, we just posted this thing about this kind of controversial topic about 477 00:34:59.240 --> 00:35:03.630 the things never to say on sales calls, Would you take a look? Yeah. You know 478 00:35:03.630 --> 00:35:08.120 why not? So the question is, are you using the channel for distribution? Is 479 00:35:08.120 --> 00:35:12.630 that your only way to play there? And would you be confident enough to share 480 00:35:12.630 --> 00:35:16.080 it with your audience with your network with a friend? Would you do you have 481 00:35:16.080 --> 00:35:18.550 the confidence in the content you're creating? And this is a question 482 00:35:18.550 --> 00:35:21.960 reflective of myself. Like, do I have the confidence in the content I create? 483 00:35:22.140 --> 00:35:25.310 That? I would send it to a friend and say, hey, would you comment on this? 484 00:35:25.320 --> 00:35:27.940 Hey, I'd love to get your perspective on this because I know you'd say 485 00:35:27.940 --> 00:35:31.200 something unique here. I've been doing that more lately? Where I've been very 486 00:35:31.200 --> 00:35:33.920 guilty in the past of like, uh yeah, I'm not gonna send this to someone, I 487 00:35:33.920 --> 00:35:37.390 hope linkedin picks it up because I wouldn't send that to my friends 488 00:35:37.460 --> 00:35:42.230 because it's just not that good, right? I don't want to share it. So it's the 489 00:35:42.230 --> 00:35:45.070 question of what's your distribution plan? It's the question of how 490 00:35:45.070 --> 00:35:47.250 confident do you feel in it that you would actually share this with the 491 00:35:47.250 --> 00:35:50.470 people you care about and who should care about the topic? I think those are 492 00:35:50.470 --> 00:35:53.310 two of the biggest issues around commodity content. We're just, we're 493 00:35:53.310 --> 00:35:56.420 relying too much on other people doing the work and we're not putting in a 494 00:35:56.420 --> 00:36:00.360 plan and doing the work on the other end. If you don't want to proof read 495 00:36:00.360 --> 00:36:05.680 your own content, somebody mentioned this in a comment on one of my linkedin 496 00:36:05.680 --> 00:36:09.530 posts. Like she said, one of the reasons I know I'm creating commodity 497 00:36:09.530 --> 00:36:13.410 content is I don't even want to proof read my own stuff. That's so true. So 498 00:36:13.410 --> 00:36:19.260 good. I'm like, that speaks exactly to what rex is saying here, but we've 499 00:36:19.270 --> 00:36:23.730 we've programmed our minds to think that even though we don't, I think it's 500 00:36:23.730 --> 00:36:29.540 that good, we've optimized the crap out of it and it's going to, you know, and 501 00:36:29.540 --> 00:36:32.700 some platform is going to make sure that it gets in front of a lot of 502 00:36:32.700 --> 00:36:37.010 people, but it's like we're not thinking that very next step if it does 503 00:36:37.010 --> 00:36:42.650 get what I want, google ranking this article because what does that, what do 504 00:36:42.650 --> 00:36:47.330 them people think of our brand when this is their first exposure to it. 505 00:36:47.340 --> 00:36:53.550 This article that looks like Abbott wrote it and it has zero personality. 506 00:36:53.560 --> 00:36:57.700 It's not helpful. It's just an amalgamation of the other seven 507 00:36:57.700 --> 00:37:01.280 articles that they also like popped up on google for the things that they 508 00:37:01.280 --> 00:37:05.150 searched for and I don't know, marketing gets way more fun when you 509 00:37:05.150 --> 00:37:10.850 start thinking about like when somebody does engage with this, is this going to 510 00:37:10.850 --> 00:37:14.580 be their favorite? Like could this be potentially be their favorite piece of 511 00:37:14.580 --> 00:37:19.810 content that they consume today? And I think if you can stack and like over 512 00:37:19.810 --> 00:37:23.050 and over and over again, consistently deliver someone's favorite piece of 513 00:37:23.050 --> 00:37:28.950 content, you become a brand where it's like, I want to buy their swag because 514 00:37:29.530 --> 00:37:33.270 these guys get me like, I don't care what you, I don't care what anybody 515 00:37:33.270 --> 00:37:39.310 else says, they're my favorite and that, that's what I want to start doing for 516 00:37:39.310 --> 00:37:44.820 our customers is like helping our customers figure out how can you create 517 00:37:44.830 --> 00:37:51.300 your audiences favorite content and and it's, it's going to be freaking hard 518 00:37:51.300 --> 00:37:57.390 man. Like this is not, this is not an easy problem to solve. And and here we 519 00:37:57.390 --> 00:38:01.150 are saying like we've made it to the mountaintop, we know how to do it, you 520 00:38:01.150 --> 00:38:06.330 just ask questions like how do you, maybe we figured maybe in six months 521 00:38:06.720 --> 00:38:10.630 we're like, ok, we're inadequate. Like I don't think that's gonna happen, but 522 00:38:10.640 --> 00:38:14.150 there's all kinds of stuff. We're gonna be like figuring out on our journey to 523 00:38:14.150 --> 00:38:18.540 figure out how to create, you know, more more resonant stuff, stuff that is 524 00:38:18.540 --> 00:38:22.570 somebody's favorite because we're trying to figure it out along alongside 525 00:38:22.580 --> 00:38:26.540 hopefully a lot more people, the more and more we talk about this. I'm 526 00:38:26.540 --> 00:38:31.900 curious and I know we only have a few minutes left here chris walker for 527 00:38:31.900 --> 00:38:34.890 anybody listening to the show. They probably already listened to, you know, 528 00:38:34.900 --> 00:38:40.210 demand gen, lie or stated Manchin. He has seemingly done the exact opposite 529 00:38:40.220 --> 00:38:43.980 of what we're talking about here. He's not, he's not asking a lot of questions. 530 00:38:44.000 --> 00:38:49.520 He's making a lot of proclamations and they're really good proclamations. I 531 00:38:49.520 --> 00:38:53.590 think he's got 25,000 people listen to his podcast. Everything he puts on 532 00:38:53.590 --> 00:38:57.570 linkedin seemingly turns to gold. He put a nine minute linkedin video up the 533 00:38:57.570 --> 00:39:02.370 other day, I had like 11,000 views was like, what the actual hell? Like this 534 00:39:02.380 --> 00:39:07.350 seemingly can do whatever the hell he wants and it freaking works. But I find 535 00:39:07.350 --> 00:39:12.410 myself tagging rex or dan or sending a text message to bill, like, oh my God, 536 00:39:12.410 --> 00:39:18.420 think like look at this because this stuff really is good. So like why is 537 00:39:18.420 --> 00:39:22.790 that working when we're sitting here over saying like, don't be the expert 538 00:39:22.800 --> 00:39:26.290 don't make proclamations, like what chris walker is doing, okay, I gotta 539 00:39:26.290 --> 00:39:31.860 tap it for one second and then I want dan's take too. But to me, I feel like 540 00:39:31.870 --> 00:39:34.780 it's exactly what we've been saying this entire conversation because 541 00:39:34.780 --> 00:39:38.850 there's space in anywhere that you're doing, what you're doing with true 542 00:39:38.850 --> 00:39:43.070 heart and passion and you actually know why you're doing it. You can thrive in 543 00:39:43.070 --> 00:39:46.890 any of these. It's not like everyone needs to move the question asking. It's 544 00:39:46.890 --> 00:39:51.660 the people that feel and resonate with that, which I really resonate with. We 545 00:39:51.660 --> 00:39:55.640 need to ask better questions. And so that would be something that would 546 00:39:55.640 --> 00:39:59.260 really work for me as someone who already loves interview. You know what 547 00:39:59.260 --> 00:40:02.770 I mean? Like already loves thinking through what's a better question, What? 548 00:40:02.780 --> 00:40:07.340 But if you have something to say and you can say it pretty firmly, there's 549 00:40:07.340 --> 00:40:10.220 still space for that. There's always gonna be space and content for the 550 00:40:10.220 --> 00:40:14.000 person that comes along that's like, you know what? This is the best way we 551 00:40:14.000 --> 00:40:16.360 want to hear that kind of stuff. We want to hear someone make a 552 00:40:16.360 --> 00:40:22.050 proclamation and defend it and back it up. Like with data or numbers or here's 553 00:40:22.050 --> 00:40:26.310 a case study. Like we still want that. It's just not everyone should be doing 554 00:40:26.310 --> 00:40:30.000 it because not everyone has the experience that he has, not, everyone 555 00:40:30.000 --> 00:40:35.480 has the like that all plays into it. So it's not, this will never be a one size 556 00:40:35.480 --> 00:40:40.330 fits all and we all start fumbling when we all think it is that like then we're 557 00:40:40.340 --> 00:40:44.050 all, we're all just ranking for search and then what we're all screwed because 558 00:40:44.050 --> 00:40:49.160 we're all just copycats and we're not filling the lane that we know we should 559 00:40:49.160 --> 00:40:53.240 be filling, that comes back to mission and purpose so much. But in marketing 560 00:40:53.610 --> 00:40:58.190 again, you're looking at everybody else and then you get caught copying. So dan, 561 00:40:58.190 --> 00:41:00.400 what are your thoughts, man? That's just like the first thing that came to 562 00:41:00.400 --> 00:41:05.040 my mind. I think your answer is right, Benji, like there's just so many 563 00:41:05.040 --> 00:41:08.750 nuances and if you hit a lot of the right points the right way, like chris 564 00:41:08.750 --> 00:41:12.080 has, then it's going to resonate, it's going to do well. And I still think 565 00:41:12.080 --> 00:41:16.830 he's, he's riding the wave expert bill hasn't left yet. There's still plenty 566 00:41:16.830 --> 00:41:21.300 of room for good expertise and he's, he's an expert answering something that 567 00:41:21.310 --> 00:41:25.790 in a way that nobody else had quite addressed and came counter counter to a 568 00:41:25.790 --> 00:41:29.610 lot of popular beliefs, which just creates momentum because now you have 569 00:41:29.610 --> 00:41:33.250 people fighting with you over, which just creates attention, it's just 570 00:41:33.250 --> 00:41:38.050 fantastic. But I don't know, I'd, I'd wager to say that uh, in three years 571 00:41:38.050 --> 00:41:42.040 he's gonna be asking more questions. That's exactly what I was thinking is. 572 00:41:42.050 --> 00:41:47.240 I'm curious to see in 123 years I was thinking one year, but I think three 573 00:41:47.240 --> 00:41:50.850 years probably more accurate. Is he still going to have the kind of 574 00:41:50.850 --> 00:41:57.440 attention that he has now and maybe, I mean I think you, you see, you see 575 00:41:57.810 --> 00:42:02.620 other types of content that constantly pull up in my feed from other creators, 576 00:42:02.760 --> 00:42:07.420 it's not nearly as good as his stuff but they're still like and it seems 577 00:42:07.420 --> 00:42:12.320 like a little bit more sustainable but because chris is so in the weeds, not 578 00:42:12.320 --> 00:42:16.630 in the weeds. I think he's intentionally engaged on a deep level 579 00:42:16.630 --> 00:42:20.620 with some of his customers so that he keeps his finger on the pulse of like 580 00:42:21.000 --> 00:42:25.770 what is actually working and what's not working. And I think he's very 581 00:42:25.770 --> 00:42:30.860 intentional in doing that. And so I think by seeing that it's going to feed 582 00:42:30.860 --> 00:42:35.450 him like he seems to consistently have a new point of view every 3 to 4 months 583 00:42:35.460 --> 00:42:40.070 and I think he's intentionally designed it that way so that he does and we have 584 00:42:40.070 --> 00:42:42.920 over the years. I mean we've we've talked about P. O. V. Discovery for 585 00:42:42.920 --> 00:42:45.890 seasons of time. We've obviously talked about content based networking for a 586 00:42:45.890 --> 00:42:49.110 long time. We talked about doing original research on the back of your 587 00:42:49.110 --> 00:42:53.380 podcast. That was something we were all talking about for for a while because 588 00:42:53.380 --> 00:42:57.850 we're practitioners of the craft. We are constantly learning new things 589 00:42:57.850 --> 00:43:01.360 about it. And it's like as we learn it like hey we made it to the top of the 590 00:43:01.360 --> 00:43:04.990 mountain, we figured out that you can produce your own original research just 591 00:43:04.990 --> 00:43:09.080 by asking three simple questions at the end of your podcast interview or we 592 00:43:09.080 --> 00:43:13.530 figured out that you can create a better episode by asking one of three 593 00:43:13.530 --> 00:43:17.120 different P. O. V. Discovery questions at the beginning of your episode? Like 594 00:43:17.200 --> 00:43:21.440 but the thing that's been frustrating to me is like man do I just do we just 595 00:43:21.440 --> 00:43:25.850 have to keep coming up with those points of view Like And I get like I 596 00:43:25.850 --> 00:43:29.850 guess every 3-4 months we'll we'll think of something else but like I just 597 00:43:29.850 --> 00:43:33.830 like this other way so much more. And are there more things that we're going 598 00:43:33.830 --> 00:43:37.830 to figure out about B. Two B podcasting? Yeah of course like we're figuring out 599 00:43:37.840 --> 00:43:43.390 a lot as we go but I think to your point Benji it's like there's never 600 00:43:43.390 --> 00:43:49.150 gonna be a this is the only way I really like question asking, exploring, 601 00:43:49.160 --> 00:43:53.650 guiding along a journey, asking questions that people haven't asked 602 00:43:53.650 --> 00:43:59.060 before or haven't necessarily thought about but that I for sure don't want to 603 00:43:59.060 --> 00:44:03.560 proclaim that that's the only way well I'm gonna wrap us up here this 604 00:44:03.560 --> 00:44:08.090 conversation. I feel like we could easily go for quite a bit longer. We'll 605 00:44:08.090 --> 00:44:12.010 probably have to have you guys back on so we can continue this, See the 606 00:44:12.020 --> 00:44:17.280 evolutions that continue to happen. But instead typically what I do, I take 607 00:44:17.280 --> 00:44:21.260 notes on my white board and I read the things that I I learned from the guests, 608 00:44:21.260 --> 00:44:24.890 I gotta say I'm walking away from this one with just two questions that I want 609 00:44:24.900 --> 00:44:29.080 every listener to ask themselves. One I want you to ask is this for attention 610 00:44:29.080 --> 00:44:32.460 or for transformation Is the stuff that you're posting is the content that 611 00:44:32.460 --> 00:44:36.600 you're producing this week. This month as you're thinking about 20, is it all 612 00:44:36.600 --> 00:44:40.450 about attention or is there a level of transformation? And then second, I love 613 00:44:40.450 --> 00:44:43.750 the question that we were considering, do I have the confidence in my content 614 00:44:43.750 --> 00:44:46.960 to send this to a friend and say, Hey, what do you think about this? Because 615 00:44:46.960 --> 00:44:51.380 that's another really, really helpful question as we're making content to be 616 00:44:51.380 --> 00:44:54.410 thinking about, Do I have the confidence in my content to send this 617 00:44:54.690 --> 00:44:59.750 to a friend and say, what do you think about this? Thanks guys. James rex dan. 618 00:44:59.760 --> 00:45:04.950 Excellent insights, Absolutely. Such a fun conversation and thanks for being 619 00:45:04.950 --> 00:45:08.200 on B two B growth today. Hey, if you haven't subscribed yet, do so on your 620 00:45:08.200 --> 00:45:12.040 favorite whatever podcast platform you're listening to this on right now, 621 00:45:12.050 --> 00:45:15.830 you can connect with all of us on linkedin. We would love to chat with 622 00:45:15.830 --> 00:45:19.760 you about marketing, business life and keep doing work that matters. We'll 623 00:45:19.760 --> 00:45:20.320 chat against 624 00:45:23.490 --> 00:45:27.090 one of the things we've learned about podcast audience growth is that word of 625 00:45:27.090 --> 00:45:31.770 mouth works. It works really, really well actually. So if you love this show, 626 00:45:31.770 --> 00:45:35.690 it would be awesome if you texted a friend to tell them about it. And if 627 00:45:35.690 --> 00:45:40.020 you send me a text with a screenshot of the text you sent to your friend, meta. 628 00:45:40.030 --> 00:45:43.670 I know I'll send you a copy of my book, Content based networking, How to 629 00:45:43.680 --> 00:45:47.110 instantly connect with anyone you want to know. My cell phone number is 630 00:45:47.110 --> 00:45:54.300 40749033 to 8. Happy texting. Mm hmm.