The 4 Pillars of Thought Leadership Your SME's Must Have

WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.040 --> 00:00:00.240 Yeah, 2 00:00:05.440 --> 00:00:09.730 welcome back to BBB growth. I'm dan Sanchez, my friends call me dan says, 3 00:00:09.740 --> 00:00:13.380 and I'm here with Ashley Fathers, who is the content strategy lead at 4 00:00:13.380 --> 00:00:18.150 Atlassian Ashley, welcome to the show. Hey, good to be here. So today we are 5 00:00:18.150 --> 00:00:22.140 diving into Thought Leadership again, because that is the series that we're 6 00:00:22.140 --> 00:00:25.900 on, that's the deep dive we're doing in the month of june if you're just 7 00:00:25.900 --> 00:00:29.790 jumping into this episode, maybe it's your first time listening, but we like 8 00:00:29.790 --> 00:00:34.910 to do a deep dive every other month. And this time I was especially excited 9 00:00:34.910 --> 00:00:38.540 about doing thought leadership. It's a topic that I got into probably just a 10 00:00:38.540 --> 00:00:42.810 year ago and I've been reading everything I can about it. I've almost 11 00:00:42.810 --> 00:00:46.420 read every book and and now I'm excited to talk to all the practitioners out 12 00:00:46.420 --> 00:00:50.560 there, the people who get to do this for a living, whether their authors or 13 00:00:50.560 --> 00:00:54.830 people like Ashley who are in the thick of it at the lassie and creating 14 00:00:54.830 --> 00:00:59.630 thought leadership content day in day out, orchestrating the programs. So I 15 00:00:59.630 --> 00:01:02.980 have some very exciting things that I was just talking to Ashley about kind 16 00:01:02.980 --> 00:01:07.550 of the pre call era area of this show in order to kick off today's episode. 17 00:01:07.940 --> 00:01:11.420 But before we do Ashley, I'd love to know a little bit more about how you 18 00:01:11.420 --> 00:01:15.830 got into thought leadership. Like how did your journey evolve in marketing to 19 00:01:15.830 --> 00:01:18.580 land in a place where you're coming up with thought leadership content all the 20 00:01:18.580 --> 00:01:25.200 time. Yeah, so I started and have have had a number of kind of marketing, 21 00:01:25.200 --> 00:01:29.320 generalist roles at a bunch of small companies. And so because of that, I've 22 00:01:29.320 --> 00:01:32.860 been tasked with creating a variety of different types of content. I've been 23 00:01:33.040 --> 00:01:36.880 kind of the voice of the day to day person behind a ceo's twitter account 24 00:01:36.890 --> 00:01:40.110 and a company twitter account and a variety of executive twitter accounts, 25 00:01:40.110 --> 00:01:44.840 for example. Thinking about how do we market books from these people? Okay, 26 00:01:44.840 --> 00:01:48.200 how do we translate that and make a connection between a product or service 27 00:01:48.200 --> 00:01:52.680 and the thought leadership? Well that's a lot easier to do if I'm also close to 28 00:01:52.690 --> 00:01:57.290 the thought leadership content and kind of the original ideas that fueled those 29 00:01:57.290 --> 00:02:03.190 seminal works. So I ended up in it more out of a necessity that hey, I'm doing 30 00:02:03.190 --> 00:02:06.800 a lot of these fragmented pieces. So how do I bring all those pieces 31 00:02:06.800 --> 00:02:11.920 together into a cohesive program and a cohesive strategy? And was there 32 00:02:11.920 --> 00:02:15.030 something about thought leadership content that drew you into making that 33 00:02:15.030 --> 00:02:17.580 kind of content? There's lots of different types of content that can be 34 00:02:17.580 --> 00:02:23.360 made, right? There's customer stories, there's asking prospective buyers 35 00:02:23.360 --> 00:02:26.320 questions and answering them right there is coming up with related 36 00:02:26.330 --> 00:02:29.660 categories that your customers like to hear about, you know, so how was 37 00:02:29.660 --> 00:02:34.330 Thought leadership? The thing that kicked it off so early early even when 38 00:02:34.330 --> 00:02:37.780 I was getting my undergraduate degree, I was like I never want to sell 39 00:02:37.790 --> 00:02:41.020 anything to anybody and that sounds counterintuitive for a marketer, right? 40 00:02:41.020 --> 00:02:45.270 Like I think is a market or my job is to match problems and solutions not to 41 00:02:45.270 --> 00:02:48.340 sell you something that you don't need, so if I don't have a solution for you 42 00:02:48.350 --> 00:02:52.060 then I should not trick you into buying something. And so when you look at a 43 00:02:52.060 --> 00:02:57.330 lot of thought leadership content um and you think about this, you know how 44 00:02:57.330 --> 00:03:00.210 how that works, it's really about building relationships and building 45 00:03:00.210 --> 00:03:05.390 trust and so that dovetails really nicely with kind of my values of I 46 00:03:05.390 --> 00:03:08.330 don't want to sell anything to anybody now, yes, there are often product 47 00:03:08.330 --> 00:03:11.830 stories or service stories or company stories that get included in those 48 00:03:11.830 --> 00:03:16.210 things, but when you think about teaching people and empowering people 49 00:03:16.220 --> 00:03:20.960 to solve problems, the type of content that that tends to be generally is more 50 00:03:20.960 --> 00:03:24.660 thought leadership content versus, you know, sales enablement or a case study 51 00:03:24.670 --> 00:03:28.760 um from from a specific customer or something like that. It's interesting. 52 00:03:28.770 --> 00:03:32.150 I can almost go into a whole other topic around why you don't want to sell 53 00:03:32.150 --> 00:03:36.490 anything. I'm like, oh my gosh, did you just say that out loud on a marketing 54 00:03:36.490 --> 00:03:40.710 podcast? I don't know if you're allowed to say that, that's all another episode 55 00:03:40.710 --> 00:03:45.100 right there later, but I kind of get it like thought leadership content often 56 00:03:45.100 --> 00:03:49.210 doesn't sell and shouldn't sell. It's definitely on the branding side trying 57 00:03:49.210 --> 00:03:53.330 to create a perception of the company right usually to create, you know, 58 00:03:53.330 --> 00:03:57.260 demand to try to get people interested in who you are and your thoughts right, 59 00:03:57.260 --> 00:04:02.050 That lead to sales eventually, which is a big part of setting up the sale. So 60 00:04:02.050 --> 00:04:05.600 we're still driving back to sales, even if you don't like to make it yourself, 61 00:04:05.610 --> 00:04:09.670 but I don't know, maybe maybe you should, then I don't know. Well, and 62 00:04:09.680 --> 00:04:14.370 it's interesting. I mean, I think that buyers are so much smarter these days 63 00:04:14.370 --> 00:04:19.570 and they can do so much more of their research without marketers kind of 64 00:04:19.579 --> 00:04:24.440 jumping in and trying to tackle them. And so if you put the content out there, 65 00:04:24.440 --> 00:04:27.350 you make it available and you, you treat your audience as if they're 66 00:04:27.350 --> 00:04:31.070 intelligent, that's going to, that's going to increase your sales cycle by 67 00:04:31.070 --> 00:04:33.920 the time they finally raise their hand and say, Hey, I'm actually running by, 68 00:04:33.930 --> 00:04:37.260 um, that's gonna close your sales a lot faster. It's going to give you a better 69 00:04:37.260 --> 00:04:41.040 retention, all those things. So again, if you actually did it, the statement, 70 00:04:41.040 --> 00:04:45.260 it's maybe not as controversial. Do you want to, do you want to do marketing? 71 00:04:45.260 --> 00:04:49.420 So good that people are just like take my money, You don't have to convince 72 00:04:49.420 --> 00:04:54.300 them of anything. They're just like, just please help me. Like I want you 73 00:04:54.300 --> 00:04:58.680 with me way more than I want this money right now. Exactly. That's exactly, 74 00:04:58.720 --> 00:05:01.660 that's still always good sales to, I think good sales people would say the 75 00:05:01.660 --> 00:05:05.380 same thing that they're, they're servants helping them and if they 76 00:05:05.380 --> 00:05:09.510 happen to, you know, if it happens to be a good fit, then they're just going 77 00:05:09.510 --> 00:05:13.600 to say like, well yeah, let's move forward, right? So I think it's a good 78 00:05:13.610 --> 00:05:18.430 marketing sales principle. So when you're setting up thought leadership 79 00:05:18.440 --> 00:05:22.230 content, who do you usually like to build thought leadership around? Do you 80 00:05:22.230 --> 00:05:25.690 like to build it around a logo? Do you like to build around a person if if a 81 00:05:25.690 --> 00:05:29.990 person who in the company do you like to position as the thought leader? 82 00:05:31.040 --> 00:05:36.010 Yeah. So I think my kind of hot take on this is that actually a lot of people 83 00:05:36.010 --> 00:05:40.260 focus on the C suite or execs are founders. And in a lot of cases I would 84 00:05:40.260 --> 00:05:44.090 argue that those people are actually pretty terrible thought leaders for a 85 00:05:44.090 --> 00:05:50.000 couple of reasons, they don't have time to do actual work in terms of the 86 00:05:50.000 --> 00:05:53.790 innovation and codifying it and sharing it and making it repeatable and then 87 00:05:53.790 --> 00:05:58.420 they also don't have time to share that work. So I have kind of a thought 88 00:05:58.420 --> 00:06:02.890 leadership framework, it's got four pillars, credibility, build a profile, 89 00:06:02.890 --> 00:06:09.030 be prolific and depth of ideas and Ceos and kind of execs and founders. The 90 00:06:09.030 --> 00:06:14.730 thing that they tend to have is basically just a fancy title and so in 91 00:06:14.730 --> 00:06:18.380 some cases like, oh, incredible because you have a fancy title, but if you look 92 00:06:18.380 --> 00:06:22.810 at the recent Edelman Trust barometer, you see that actually Ceos are some of 93 00:06:22.810 --> 00:06:26.620 the most untrusted people and like spokespeople in general, the assumption 94 00:06:26.620 --> 00:06:29.410 is like, well of course you would say that you're literally the ceo of the 95 00:06:29.410 --> 00:06:32.480 company, like you're paid to say that. And so even if it's something that 96 00:06:32.480 --> 00:06:36.200 doesn't directly sell, there's still this perception that they're not 97 00:06:36.200 --> 00:06:39.540 trustworthy and maybe they're not as credible, right? And then from a 98 00:06:39.540 --> 00:06:42.460 profile standpoint, you know, there off running the company, they don't really 99 00:06:42.460 --> 00:06:47.020 have time to go out and speak or write or beyond social media from a depth of 100 00:06:47.020 --> 00:06:50.710 ideas standpoint, they're not particularly close to the work. Um 101 00:06:50.720 --> 00:06:53.730 they're getting pitched ideas all day every day. They're doing budget 102 00:06:53.730 --> 00:06:57.050 allocations, they're having to go defend things to the board, they're not 103 00:06:57.060 --> 00:07:01.260 actually close to the work and kind of what's changing on the forefront. And 104 00:07:01.260 --> 00:07:04.730 then in terms of obviously being prolific and building a profile like 105 00:07:04.730 --> 00:07:09.800 those things go hand in hand, you can't you can't get followers, which would 106 00:07:09.800 --> 00:07:13.300 make you a leader if you're not being prolific, you know, and giving those 107 00:07:13.300 --> 00:07:18.270 followers something to consume. So I would say I would probably focus more 108 00:07:18.270 --> 00:07:23.250 on kind of practitioners that are in that like 10-15 years of experience. I 109 00:07:23.260 --> 00:07:26.980 do think there's kind of two paths to creating this content. You can either 110 00:07:26.980 --> 00:07:30.430 build a person or you can build a story, and I think those both have pros and 111 00:07:30.430 --> 00:07:35.250 cons to them um that we can talk about obviously as we as we dig into this. I 112 00:07:35.250 --> 00:07:39.590 loved a lot of things you just said, I want to circle back around to your kind 113 00:07:39.590 --> 00:07:43.590 of four step process. But before I do I just want to concur that I've I've 114 00:07:43.590 --> 00:07:47.500 interviewed a lot of marketers for the show, some of which are Ceos and I do 115 00:07:47.500 --> 00:07:52.200 find that ceos are kind of disconnected from the work, even if they were 116 00:07:52.200 --> 00:07:56.000 marketers at one point, they're just not in it anymore. Some are I've met 117 00:07:56.010 --> 00:08:00.680 that I'm like, wow. Like no, he's still got it, she still got it, but most of 118 00:08:00.680 --> 00:08:04.190 them are disconnected from the work and honestly promoting their own company 119 00:08:04.190 --> 00:08:08.660 more than like the actual topic. Um So actually don't take requests from Ceos 120 00:08:08.660 --> 00:08:12.400 for this show anymore, if you still hear a lot of Ceos and it's usually 121 00:08:12.400 --> 00:08:15.880 because we're reaching out to them versus them reaching out to us. Sorry 122 00:08:15.880 --> 00:08:19.080 if I offended any ceos, but of course this is a B two B marketing, so should 123 00:08:19.080 --> 00:08:23.720 we like to talk to B two B marketers? So I'm in agreement with you, I'm like, 124 00:08:23.720 --> 00:08:27.180 I could see that. Um and of course it makes sense if you're in like, I think 125 00:08:27.180 --> 00:08:29.660 chris walker says this all the time, like he was in medical text, so it 126 00:08:29.660 --> 00:08:34.789 doesn't make sense to set up the ceo selling to doctors, he's not a doctor, 127 00:08:34.799 --> 00:08:38.640 so go find a doctor and make him the face of the company, right? Because 128 00:08:38.640 --> 00:08:42.140 that's what we're going to trust. Yeah, well, and again, if you think about 129 00:08:42.150 --> 00:08:45.250 that, it's funny you say like doctors want to talk to doctors, that was 130 00:08:45.250 --> 00:08:48.610 literally one of the categories in the trust barometer from Edelman was like, 131 00:08:48.620 --> 00:08:53.130 I most trust someone like myself, and it's like, yes, that's why a 132 00:08:53.130 --> 00:08:58.160 practitioner with 10 to 15 years of experience, like, you know, dan between 133 00:08:58.170 --> 00:09:01.810 us, we probably heard about the same stage of our career will probably have, 134 00:09:01.820 --> 00:09:05.970 you know, done similar types of work. I trust you, you trust me because it's 135 00:09:05.970 --> 00:09:09.840 like, oh yes, I see that she's doing this and she's like me, right? So, you 136 00:09:09.840 --> 00:09:13.280 know, we've got some differences, but if I had come in and it was like, oh, I 137 00:09:13.280 --> 00:09:16.950 just graduated yesterday, you'd be like, have you done this before? Probably not. 138 00:09:16.950 --> 00:09:19.830 It's like, you see, I've been doing this for over a decade, right? I've 139 00:09:19.840 --> 00:09:24.390 interviewed some, like people fresh on the scene to, and there's definitely a 140 00:09:24.390 --> 00:09:28.080 difference why we take a focus on directors and VP of marketing for a 141 00:09:28.080 --> 00:09:31.320 reason because they're just high enough that they've earned some stripes, but 142 00:09:31.330 --> 00:09:35.450 they're still close enough to the dirt to uh, know what it's like to build a 143 00:09:35.450 --> 00:09:39.670 facebook ad campaign from scratch, right? It's just a different. So I get 144 00:09:39.670 --> 00:09:42.770 that. So come back to your, your four step process. I like wrote it down, but 145 00:09:42.770 --> 00:09:45.890 you said it so fast, I didn't even get to it. Also repeat it for the, for me 146 00:09:45.890 --> 00:09:49.150 and for the audience. Like what was your, what was your four step process? 147 00:09:49.540 --> 00:09:54.580 Yeah. So one thing I want to clarify is it's not four steps in a linear fashion. 148 00:09:54.590 --> 00:09:59.500 It's a kind of four pillar. Like you have to build all the pillars in tandem. 149 00:09:59.500 --> 00:10:03.710 So the first pillar is around credibility and this is, do people 150 00:10:03.710 --> 00:10:07.110 believe what you say? Do people think you know what you're talking about? Do 151 00:10:07.110 --> 00:10:11.760 they generally trust you? The second pillar is around building a profile. So 152 00:10:11.760 --> 00:10:15.440 this is about how widely you're known and the nature of those connections. So 153 00:10:15.440 --> 00:10:19.400 if you look at people who don't have a big profile, it tends to be that the 154 00:10:19.400 --> 00:10:22.650 people who know them know them personally, they've worked together, 155 00:10:22.650 --> 00:10:26.420 it's their friends, their family. When you look at people with a big profile, 156 00:10:26.430 --> 00:10:31.950 it's more of like 90 of the people know them, but they don't know those people 157 00:10:31.950 --> 00:10:36.420 back. So that's kind of one, just gut check of like, do you have a big 158 00:10:36.420 --> 00:10:42.290 profile or small profile? The third piece is around being prolific. So if 159 00:10:42.290 --> 00:10:45.700 you look at some of the, you know, throughout history, the people that we 160 00:10:45.700 --> 00:10:49.530 would consider to be thought leaders are pioneers in their field, they wrote, 161 00:10:49.540 --> 00:10:53.720 or they painted or they built or they created every single day. And so when 162 00:10:53.720 --> 00:10:56.840 you look at that from a business context, you see that people are 163 00:10:56.840 --> 00:10:59.870 creating different types of content they're sharing in different types of 164 00:10:59.870 --> 00:11:03.530 places and they're doing that on a regular basis. It's not a media blitz 165 00:11:03.540 --> 00:11:07.690 around, you know, a big product launch, it's no they're out there sharing all 166 00:11:07.690 --> 00:11:11.540 the time. And then the fourth pillar is around depth of ideas, so this is kind 167 00:11:11.540 --> 00:11:16.460 of a novelty factor, are you doing new things? One thing that I have shared 168 00:11:16.460 --> 00:11:21.130 that I think also strikes people as a little like, oh, that's interesting, is 169 00:11:21.130 --> 00:11:23.880 that the way these pillars work as you kind of work your way up, right? Like 170 00:11:23.880 --> 00:11:27.580 there's three levels, I would argue that you can be an effective thought 171 00:11:27.580 --> 00:11:32.180 leader at the kind of, innovating on the tactics level, innovating on the 172 00:11:32.180 --> 00:11:35.350 strategy level, and it's rare that you're gonna have somebody innovating 173 00:11:35.360 --> 00:11:39.200 or sharing novel things at the visionary level. In a lot of cases, if 174 00:11:39.200 --> 00:11:43.030 you're that visionary, you've probably already got the other things happening 175 00:11:43.030 --> 00:11:46.180 too. But when you think about, I mean, again, the show is a perfect example 176 00:11:46.180 --> 00:11:51.110 where you want people who have the tactics and the strategies, not just 177 00:11:51.110 --> 00:11:55.450 this big vision of, oh, in 10 years, this fancy thing will happen. It's like, 178 00:11:55.940 --> 00:11:59.050 Okay, but what's going to happen in the next 12 months? And how do I move my 179 00:11:59.050 --> 00:12:03.190 programs forward or move my business forward based on innovative tactics or 180 00:12:03.200 --> 00:12:06.620 innovative strategies? The visionary wants tough because that gets a lot of 181 00:12:06.620 --> 00:12:09.870 people in trouble. Right? And a lot of people were thought leaders and then 182 00:12:09.870 --> 00:12:12.820 became not thought leaders because, well, they're visions were wrong, right? 183 00:12:12.830 --> 00:12:16.690 It happens a lot. You're funny, you're four things. I'm like, oh, it's so 184 00:12:16.690 --> 00:12:20.370 similar. Actually built a similar framework, but I have three and there's 185 00:12:20.370 --> 00:12:23.920 overlap between them essentially said like, you're not an authentic thought 186 00:12:23.920 --> 00:12:26.540 leader unless you're an expert, like you kind of know everything there is, 187 00:12:26.540 --> 00:12:29.940 you're contributing unique and useful ideas and you're an authority on the 188 00:12:29.940 --> 00:12:33.710 topic, as in, like you said, you're credible people believe you, but I have 189 00:12:33.720 --> 00:12:38.330 to kind of have two in mind, like what your credibility and prolific car. I'm 190 00:12:38.330 --> 00:12:42.770 just kind of capturing an authority, right? People believe you and they like 191 00:12:42.770 --> 00:12:47.380 you both those things. So you need all those ingredients to have a thought to 192 00:12:47.380 --> 00:12:51.440 be a thought leader. I'm curious when you're looking for that and at last and 193 00:12:51.440 --> 00:12:54.530 or maybe in past jobs in the future, Like are you looking for people who are 194 00:12:54.530 --> 00:12:57.990 currently already have all those things or people who just have the potential 195 00:12:57.990 --> 00:13:02.160 for those things? I'm open to both. So I've been in the very fortunate 196 00:13:02.160 --> 00:13:05.830 position in a couple of in the past company where the person was already a 197 00:13:05.830 --> 00:13:09.380 thought leader. So when I worked at Duarte, I worked very closely with 198 00:13:09.380 --> 00:13:14.480 nancy Duarte and helping to launch her, was it fourth book? I think it was her 199 00:13:14.480 --> 00:13:19.430 fourth book illuminate, working very closely with her To continue to expand. 200 00:13:19.430 --> 00:13:23.380 She was one of the first prior to linkedin, opening up basically their 201 00:13:23.380 --> 00:13:26.820 whole platform for people to be able to publish. She was one of the original 202 00:13:26.820 --> 00:13:31.610 400 influencers on linkedin that was allowed to publish long form content. 203 00:13:31.610 --> 00:13:35.380 So I helped her build that program and helped her think through how do we 204 00:13:35.380 --> 00:13:39.680 connect the ideas that are in your books to the service offerings, to what 205 00:13:39.680 --> 00:13:43.480 you're trying to share next and how do we make those connections? So in that 206 00:13:43.480 --> 00:13:47.550 case she was already a thought leader, I was able to come in and it was 207 00:13:47.550 --> 00:13:51.270 basically tasked with like, cool, we've done all this great stuff, How do we 208 00:13:51.270 --> 00:13:54.600 turn that into business and how do we keep it going from an Alaskan 209 00:13:54.600 --> 00:13:58.010 perspective? We have a number of people who are already, you know, great 210 00:13:58.010 --> 00:14:01.380 spokespeople, they're super smart, they have big followings, they appear in a 211 00:14:01.380 --> 00:14:04.580 lot of places, right? They check all the boxes, what we realize is that 212 00:14:04.580 --> 00:14:07.930 maybe we don't have the biggest bench or the deepest bench of people and as 213 00:14:07.930 --> 00:14:12.160 we start looking at going into new markets and telling new stories, do we 214 00:14:12.160 --> 00:14:15.170 have people lined up that can tell those stories because we've already 215 00:14:15.170 --> 00:14:20.140 built these great people that have credibility and kind of one area in 216 00:14:20.140 --> 00:14:25.500 terms of topics, but they don't necessarily have that credibility to go 217 00:14:25.500 --> 00:14:29.060 into another topic. So what do we need to build from the ground up? And I was 218 00:14:29.060 --> 00:14:32.970 fortunate to work one of my colleagues, he has an excellent reputation 219 00:14:32.980 --> 00:14:37.250 internally, He's freaking smart, like super smart, you get in a room with him 220 00:14:37.250 --> 00:14:41.630 and just like, do you know things like how do you make these connections? And 221 00:14:41.630 --> 00:14:46.410 he had started to make those connections outside of it last year, 222 00:14:46.410 --> 00:14:49.460 but when you look at his profile for example, so what we do is we set a 223 00:14:49.460 --> 00:14:53.110 baseline and we score people based on how they're doing and I've got a couple 224 00:14:53.110 --> 00:14:56.690 of numbers that make sense for us in terms of how many followers do you have 225 00:14:56.690 --> 00:15:00.890 on different social platforms? How much content are you creating or being 226 00:15:00.890 --> 00:15:05.050 featured in per month? What's the nature of the outlets that feature you? 227 00:15:05.050 --> 00:15:09.100 Right. And so when you look at it, he was in that kind of smaller profile 228 00:15:09.100 --> 00:15:13.600 area of personally knowing people. So um he would get brought in by a friend 229 00:15:13.600 --> 00:15:18.330 to share, his expertise at, say, a meet up And so what we were able to do with 230 00:15:18.330 --> 00:15:22.480 him is to start getting him sharing on social more regularly and then honing 231 00:15:22.480 --> 00:15:27.580 in on the specific stories and topics that he would cover, so that we could 232 00:15:27.580 --> 00:15:32.680 build that credibility with more, you know, conferences, press, working with 233 00:15:32.680 --> 00:15:36.310 partners if they had, you know, guest blog or podcast or something like that 234 00:15:36.320 --> 00:15:39.940 that he could be featured on because he was very high on the depth of ideas, 235 00:15:39.950 --> 00:15:42.560 but he wasn't sharing and because he wasn't sharing, he didn't have a 236 00:15:42.560 --> 00:15:47.330 following. So his profile was not very big. He also has a practitioner with 20 237 00:15:47.330 --> 00:15:51.680 years experience, has a solid title, managing a big team, so he's high on 238 00:15:51.680 --> 00:15:56.640 that credibility piece as well. Yeah, it's really interesting that current 239 00:15:56.640 --> 00:16:03.350 title and what they're doing is such a big factor. More than PhD more than 240 00:16:03.840 --> 00:16:08.160 awards. That's that's the thing you're kind of using as the benchmark and I 241 00:16:08.160 --> 00:16:11.350 guess that makes sense because you're, you're looking at like, well where 242 00:16:11.350 --> 00:16:15.390 you're at right now, it gives context, right? For where you're at and like you 243 00:16:15.390 --> 00:16:17.930 said, even before, I think before, I don't know if you've said this on the 244 00:16:17.930 --> 00:16:22.400 show already, but like people want to get advice from peers often, but piers 245 00:16:22.400 --> 00:16:25.390 that are farther ahead than them. But we're maybe once where they were or 246 00:16:25.390 --> 00:16:29.690 like in a similar stage maybe, and maybe just doing a lot better. Right? 247 00:16:29.700 --> 00:16:33.060 Rather than people were like professional thought leaders who just 248 00:16:33.060 --> 00:16:36.960 essentially always on a never ending speaking circuit. Right? Right. 249 00:16:38.040 --> 00:16:43.030 So one thing I'd like to hear about is if you were given $10,000 sorry, not 250 00:16:43.030 --> 00:16:46.200 $10,000. If you're giving 10 X the budget as I'm sure your budgets a lot 251 00:16:46.200 --> 00:16:51.130 more than $10,000 you were given 10 X the budget. What would you do 252 00:16:51.130 --> 00:16:54.640 differently at Atlanta? And if you wanted to grow at last season's thought 253 00:16:54.640 --> 00:17:01.610 leadership? Yeah. So I if I had 10 X the budget, I would basically pair I 254 00:17:01.610 --> 00:17:06.300 would do a 1 to 1 pairing of a marketing generalist with a thought 255 00:17:06.300 --> 00:17:10.790 leader. Um and I would say that for both kind of more niche topics that are 256 00:17:10.800 --> 00:17:15.329 kind of technical in nature as well as brand level topics. So at last time 257 00:17:15.329 --> 00:17:19.720 what that means for us, we cover a lot of agile and devops topics. That's what 258 00:17:19.720 --> 00:17:24.329 I tend to be responsible for in my current role. Like finding people with 259 00:17:24.329 --> 00:17:29.650 the chops that have that depth across all of those topics is really hard and 260 00:17:29.650 --> 00:17:33.170 a lot of cases, once you find them, they're not because it's not their 261 00:17:33.170 --> 00:17:36.320 expertise, they're not that great at social, they're not that great at 262 00:17:36.320 --> 00:17:40.610 writing. They struggle to put together a presentation. A marketing generalist 263 00:17:40.610 --> 00:17:45.830 can come in and say you just, you tell me what expertise you have, let's 264 00:17:45.830 --> 00:17:50.540 codify those ideas and then I can go away as the generalist and break that 265 00:17:50.540 --> 00:17:55.680 up into 100 social posts for you to get scheduled or five conference pitches 266 00:17:55.680 --> 00:18:00.190 and hey, I can reconfigure this deck or let's turn those into modular stories 267 00:18:00.200 --> 00:18:06.050 that can be told to press conferences, you know, across social media, you know, 268 00:18:06.060 --> 00:18:09.330 in writing as a vlog series and then so we can package it up as an ultimate 269 00:18:09.330 --> 00:18:12.900 guide. But so, and so, and then we can break it apart. Right? So I would do 270 00:18:12.900 --> 00:18:16.220 that as a 1 to 1 pairing, Same thing for brand level topics, obviously 271 00:18:16.220 --> 00:18:19.780 things like remote work, future work collaboration, teamwork, etcetera. Um 272 00:18:19.790 --> 00:18:24.360 same thing. The people who are building out all of those massive programs and 273 00:18:24.360 --> 00:18:30.430 practices, they do not have time to translate their internal facing what is 274 00:18:30.430 --> 00:18:33.690 essentially thought leadership to be appropriate for an external audience. 275 00:18:33.690 --> 00:18:37.910 But a marketing generalists can come in and do all of that kind of packaging 276 00:18:37.920 --> 00:18:41.970 for that person. So does the subject matter expert need to be full time 277 00:18:41.970 --> 00:18:45.840 thought leader, doing nothing but talking in front of a camera and mic. I 278 00:18:45.840 --> 00:18:49.700 would say that having the subject matter experts doing that as a portion 279 00:18:49.700 --> 00:18:52.480 of their time and depending on the size of the company and depending on what 280 00:18:52.480 --> 00:18:56.270 your goals are and depending on what that person is doing is their day job. 281 00:18:56.440 --> 00:18:59.870 I struggle a little bit to say how much of their time they need to put into 282 00:18:59.870 --> 00:19:04.320 that, whether it's, you know, 20% 50% etcetera, I think it can also scale 283 00:19:04.320 --> 00:19:08.540 depending on the needs of the company, right? So if you are obviously we have 284 00:19:08.540 --> 00:19:14.080 a large conference called Team 2021 so a number of our leadership and you know, 285 00:19:14.080 --> 00:19:17.830 practitioners or spokespeople speak at that conference, obviously around that 286 00:19:17.830 --> 00:19:21.280 time we tend to do a lot of press, we tend to do a lot of social, there's a 287 00:19:21.280 --> 00:19:26.120 lot of stuff, so the blitz in that case, they may have to spend 50 to 70% of 288 00:19:26.120 --> 00:19:31.510 their time honing the story, prepping, sharing, writing, etcetera for that 289 00:19:31.510 --> 00:19:36.030 event. But then it may scale down to be 20% of their time or 10% of their time 290 00:19:36.040 --> 00:19:39.750 going forward. But I would say that you definitely don't want them just out 291 00:19:39.750 --> 00:19:42.980 there speaking all the time, because then to your point, they start to lose 292 00:19:42.980 --> 00:19:46.690 that connection again, that depth of ideas pillar, they start to lose that. 293 00:19:46.690 --> 00:19:49.840 And that's why I say all the pillars have to work in tandem. Like you can 294 00:19:49.840 --> 00:19:53.700 get a lot of followers if you do some not safe for work or not on brand 295 00:19:53.700 --> 00:19:57.700 things right? Like people will follow you to watch you be a train wreck, but 296 00:19:57.710 --> 00:20:02.070 that damages your credibility and obviously there's no depth, right? If 297 00:20:02.070 --> 00:20:05.680 you're only just heads down and you're doing the best work in your building 298 00:20:05.680 --> 00:20:08.680 your own bank account or your own value for the team or your own value for a 299 00:20:08.680 --> 00:20:13.590 company, but you're not sharing it and you're not being prolific, you're not 300 00:20:13.590 --> 00:20:16.340 going to build a profile and you're not going to have that external credibility, 301 00:20:16.350 --> 00:20:20.870 so they have to work in tandem and it makes a lot of sense because obviously 302 00:20:20.870 --> 00:20:25.380 just getting in front of a microphone, um even for an hour a day and talking 303 00:20:25.390 --> 00:20:29.380 whether by an interview, like the amount of work it takes the marketer to 304 00:20:29.380 --> 00:20:33.240 like record that, publish it and splinter it up into all the different 305 00:20:33.240 --> 00:20:39.180 pieces is literally the rest of the day. So if you had them like six hours of 306 00:20:39.180 --> 00:20:43.160 the day, like producing content for the market or to go to like package and 307 00:20:43.160 --> 00:20:47.290 market, Like you're gonna overwhelm even one marketer at a 1-1 relationship. 308 00:20:47.290 --> 00:20:49.830 So that makes a lot of sense. And actually it's a pretty good case 309 00:20:49.830 --> 00:20:54.900 considering like most people have one thought leadership content marketer and 310 00:20:54.900 --> 00:20:58.010 usually they're creating thought leadership for multiple people on the 311 00:20:58.010 --> 00:21:02.180 executive team, but it's probably not enough, it could probably just focus on 312 00:21:02.180 --> 00:21:07.180 one person, but if you only had enough budget for one thought leadership kind 313 00:21:07.180 --> 00:21:10.670 of content marketer, how would you do that? Would you just focus on the one 314 00:21:10.670 --> 00:21:15.170 or would you have that person focused on multiple subject matter experts? 315 00:21:15.940 --> 00:21:19.720 Yeah, I would, I would go ahead and have them focus on multiple people for 316 00:21:19.720 --> 00:21:24.860 a couple of reasons. One is that, as I mentioned, just having us having all of 317 00:21:24.860 --> 00:21:28.580 that hinge on a single person. Like do they ever get to take vacation? What if 318 00:21:28.580 --> 00:21:32.190 they get sick? What if they have a child and they need to take leave for, 319 00:21:32.190 --> 00:21:35.220 you know, to raise their kids for a couple of months, right? Like there's 320 00:21:35.220 --> 00:21:39.000 so many things that are not bad. The biggest risk is everyone's concerned. 321 00:21:39.000 --> 00:21:42.780 Like, oh what if that person leaves? And I'm like okay, but there's shorter 322 00:21:42.780 --> 00:21:47.080 term great things that are good for all of us that they should do, they should 323 00:21:47.080 --> 00:21:51.120 take vacation, they should raise their kids, they should, you know, take sick 324 00:21:51.120 --> 00:21:55.130 time if they're sick. So that's one issue is that you do need to have kind 325 00:21:55.130 --> 00:22:01.250 of a bench of people. The second piece of that is the how many kind of topics 326 00:22:01.260 --> 00:22:05.790 you have the credibility to talk about and one person can only be an expert in 327 00:22:05.790 --> 00:22:10.000 so many things. And I've even had this in my career, like prior to kind of my 328 00:22:10.000 --> 00:22:13.930 focus in over the last several years, I was doing everything. So I did events, 329 00:22:13.930 --> 00:22:18.000 I did demand jin I was in marquette or hubspot. I don't do that anymore. I'm 330 00:22:18.000 --> 00:22:23.330 the wrong person to ask if you're workflow logic is correct in marquette 331 00:22:23.330 --> 00:22:28.070 or hubspot. I understand where traditional demand in fits into an 332 00:22:28.080 --> 00:22:31.360 overall marketing strategy. I understand the connections between kind 333 00:22:31.360 --> 00:22:38.430 of content marketing and demand in. But I do not have the credibility anymore 334 00:22:38.440 --> 00:22:44.400 to speak about in depth dimension. And so if again, let's say I worked at 335 00:22:44.400 --> 00:22:48.250 hubspot, I would be a great person to speak about the content marketing side. 336 00:22:48.250 --> 00:22:51.770 The thought leadership side. I could probably hold my own on social media, 337 00:22:52.040 --> 00:22:54.890 but you don't want me to be, you need somebody else to be that demand in 338 00:22:54.890 --> 00:22:58.480 person. And so if you try to have that spokesperson be all in one again, 339 00:22:58.480 --> 00:23:01.150 you're going to lose that depth of ideas and you're going to struggle on 340 00:23:01.150 --> 00:23:06.100 the credibility side, even if they're very prolific because they can kind of 341 00:23:06.100 --> 00:23:10.020 talk about a bunch of different things. So that's why I would also say building 342 00:23:10.020 --> 00:23:14.600 the same building people and making sure that they are credible and in the 343 00:23:14.600 --> 00:23:19.790 topics that you as a company, No, you want to address over the next Call it 344 00:23:19.790 --> 00:23:25.560 12-36 months. It's interesting. So, do you find a person that you think is a 345 00:23:25.560 --> 00:23:30.320 good candidate and help them find their niche to become that public face? Or do 346 00:23:30.320 --> 00:23:33.230 you reverse engineer it? Like you find the niche you want to cover and then 347 00:23:33.230 --> 00:23:36.530 you look around for the person who can be that thought leader. I've done it 348 00:23:36.530 --> 00:23:40.760 both ways. So we and and we've done this kind of both ways at last and 349 00:23:40.760 --> 00:23:43.940 where we've said, let's find the story and then say, okay, we need a couple of 350 00:23:43.940 --> 00:23:47.360 different people to be able to tell that story. So if we think about 351 00:23:47.370 --> 00:23:51.680 obviously at last and the last one is a very engineering heavy company, right? 352 00:23:51.680 --> 00:23:57.300 We do sas we do collaboration, we do software. So the engineering from a 353 00:23:57.300 --> 00:24:01.800 recruiting standpoint, from a buyer standpoint. from a user standpoint, all 354 00:24:01.800 --> 00:24:06.370 of those things are very important to us. So having just one person be the 355 00:24:06.370 --> 00:24:11.470 face in quotes of at last an engineering is gonna be really hard. So 356 00:24:11.470 --> 00:24:13.910 in that case we decided, here's the story we want to tell around 357 00:24:13.910 --> 00:24:17.960 engineering. Here's a couple of different people who have, you know, 358 00:24:17.970 --> 00:24:21.510 great expertise or maybe they've already already high and at least one 359 00:24:21.510 --> 00:24:25.150 pillar. So now we just need to figure out what to build across the other 360 00:24:25.150 --> 00:24:29.710 pillars to make them acceptable or good thought leaders for us around 361 00:24:29.710 --> 00:24:32.950 engineering. So in that case we we focused more on building the story and 362 00:24:32.950 --> 00:24:36.480 finding the people, we've had other cases where we found someone, you know, 363 00:24:36.480 --> 00:24:42.030 or or somebody already had a following or they were already very good at this. 364 00:24:42.030 --> 00:24:45.080 And so then at that point we were just like, all right, cool. We just need to 365 00:24:45.080 --> 00:24:49.820 kind of supply you with a few. We need to help you hone your story in a way 366 00:24:49.830 --> 00:24:54.480 that makes sense for our goals. But we still want you to be out there talking 367 00:24:54.480 --> 00:24:58.610 about different things in your own voice, applying your own lens to it, 368 00:24:58.610 --> 00:25:02.430 those kinds of things. That's kind of an interesting point on you hit there 369 00:25:02.430 --> 00:25:07.020 where you're honing their story, right? A piece of advice. And I've mentioned 370 00:25:07.020 --> 00:25:10.370 this in this series already. A piece of advice that honestly drives me crazy on 371 00:25:10.370 --> 00:25:15.190 linked in all the time is, uh, that I it's just wrong in my opinion, is just 372 00:25:15.200 --> 00:25:20.830 be you just be yourself and you're like, what am I supposed to do with that? 373 00:25:20.840 --> 00:25:24.990 What like, how do I craft that? It's like, so hearing you say like, no, we 374 00:25:24.990 --> 00:25:29.080 honed their story is not just just be you advice. It's like, no, like it's 375 00:25:29.080 --> 00:25:33.740 not like we made up a story, you're probably going in and looking for what 376 00:25:33.750 --> 00:25:36.630 part of their journey actually lines up with what the story, the message we 377 00:25:36.630 --> 00:25:43.540 want to tell. Yeah, yeah, so there's a couple ways that we do that in. I have 378 00:25:43.540 --> 00:25:46.660 kind of another framework within the framework kind of thing. And this 379 00:25:46.660 --> 00:25:50.720 dovetails a lot with my kind of my general mindset around content strategy 380 00:25:50.730 --> 00:25:53.600 and that's focusing on different content depths. So looking at the 381 00:25:53.600 --> 00:25:58.820 conceptual, strategic and tactical levels of an idea. And so when we get 382 00:25:58.820 --> 00:26:01.920 in, usually whenever I do these working sessions with people, you know, we get 383 00:26:01.920 --> 00:26:05.220 in and I'm just like, tell me all the things that you're interested in or 384 00:26:05.220 --> 00:26:08.940 that you're working on, like, let's get it all out, and then let's start to 385 00:26:08.940 --> 00:26:14.060 talk about okay, going forward over the next 12 to 24 months, which of these 386 00:26:14.060 --> 00:26:19.100 things do you think you've got enough to say to fill up? You know, one blog 387 00:26:19.100 --> 00:26:23.570 post per month, five linkedin posts per month to presentation abstracts. And 388 00:26:23.570 --> 00:26:26.950 when you start to frame it up that way, people immediately can see like, oh, 389 00:26:26.950 --> 00:26:30.660 it's this thing over here, and I'm like, why is that? Well, this idea, and then 390 00:26:30.670 --> 00:26:34.470 they start talking and you recognize, okay, they've got the big idea at the 391 00:26:34.470 --> 00:26:38.980 conceptual level, They understand the process is the key knowledge components, 392 00:26:38.980 --> 00:26:43.280 the capabilities, the tools that you need at a strategic level to make that 393 00:26:43.280 --> 00:26:47.560 idea reality. And then obviously they've got examples or case studies or 394 00:26:47.560 --> 00:26:52.810 workflows or tips at the tactical level based on how that fits into the 395 00:26:52.810 --> 00:26:56.470 strategy and all ladders up. So when you look at that, the likelihood that 396 00:26:56.470 --> 00:27:02.540 somebody has more than maybe three of those levels of ideas that they could 397 00:27:02.540 --> 00:27:06.910 really, it's got the legs and they can, they can go up down that hole, you know, 398 00:27:06.910 --> 00:27:10.560 conceptual and tactical and strategic, in fact to tactical and strategic right? 399 00:27:10.560 --> 00:27:16.300 Like it's rare that you're gonna find somebody that's just so broader, 400 00:27:16.300 --> 00:27:20.260 prolific or whatever, they can go beyond kind of more than three ideas. 401 00:27:20.270 --> 00:27:23.980 The second thing that I do is I do a personal branding section and this 402 00:27:23.980 --> 00:27:27.740 tends to be for a lot of people who aren't marketers, the most scary thing. 403 00:27:27.750 --> 00:27:30.520 I sit down with them and they're like, you just tell me one of the first 404 00:27:30.520 --> 00:27:34.620 things I'm like, what do you wear? How do you dress? And they're like, I'll 405 00:27:34.620 --> 00:27:38.030 wear whatever you, whatever you tell me. You know, I just, whatever you tell me 406 00:27:38.030 --> 00:27:41.840 to do, I'll just do that. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, I have no answers here. 407 00:27:41.850 --> 00:27:47.420 I do not have an agenda legitimately. Do you wear polos? Do you wear button 408 00:27:47.420 --> 00:27:52.400 ups? Do you wear t shirts? And like, 11 of the people I was working with, um he 409 00:27:52.400 --> 00:27:55.770 started out with that, like, oh, you just tell me I'll do whatever you say. 410 00:27:55.780 --> 00:27:58.790 And so we started going through, and he's like, well, actually, I I don't 411 00:27:58.790 --> 00:28:02.090 really like the color red. I'm like, great, you don't wear red, got it. He's 412 00:28:02.090 --> 00:28:05.760 I mean, I can wear red. I'm like, no, you know, we're red, put it on the list, 413 00:28:05.770 --> 00:28:09.350 and he's like, also, I don't really look that great in hats, I'm just, I'm 414 00:28:09.350 --> 00:28:12.270 just not a big fan of hats. I was like, great, you don't wear hats, like, I 415 00:28:12.270 --> 00:28:16.850 mean, I can wear hats, like, again, once we get into it, you have 416 00:28:16.850 --> 00:28:22.230 preferences. So you tell me what those are and and same thing on the how open 417 00:28:22.240 --> 00:28:26.780 or how personal, like how truthful are you? Do you share about failures or 418 00:28:26.780 --> 00:28:30.450 mistakes in the moment or do you wait until it's cleaned up with a tiny bow? 419 00:28:31.140 --> 00:28:36.530 Both ways work. You can do it either way, but you need to decide like do you 420 00:28:36.530 --> 00:28:39.690 share about your kids? Do you, do you share about your spouse? Do you share 421 00:28:39.690 --> 00:28:43.470 about your family? Do you show pictures of them on social media or in 422 00:28:43.470 --> 00:28:47.690 conferences? Again, there is not a right answer, but you need to choose 423 00:28:47.690 --> 00:28:52.250 because if you start doing all of this stuff now and then what you know, 424 00:28:52.250 --> 00:28:54.880 hopefully the goal is that you have a big audience and all of a sudden you're 425 00:28:54.880 --> 00:28:59.590 like, actually I wish I hadn't shared that photo of my husband. Well, kind of 426 00:28:59.590 --> 00:29:03.190 should have found that six months ago before you spoke to a crowd of 1000 427 00:29:03.190 --> 00:29:07.570 people and flash that picture up of your kids, your husband, right? So that, 428 00:29:07.580 --> 00:29:10.760 you know, I I talk about this to even in some of my stories where you know, 429 00:29:10.760 --> 00:29:14.480 my husband will hear me rehearsing for something and I'm like, I don't want 430 00:29:14.480 --> 00:29:20.100 you to listen because you lived this with me and I'm telling a story. And 431 00:29:20.110 --> 00:29:23.920 again, it's not a lie. It's just nobody wants to hear about the two year 432 00:29:23.920 --> 00:29:29.400 journey. They want to make it smart to be. But for him, he knows it was two 433 00:29:29.400 --> 00:29:32.950 years and the fact that I'm able to tell in five minutes, something's 434 00:29:32.950 --> 00:29:38.020 missing, right? So in my case, I have I have made the trade off on the spectrum 435 00:29:38.030 --> 00:29:43.870 of you know, every detail 100% truthful exactly how it happened with. I'm going 436 00:29:43.870 --> 00:29:47.860 to tell the right story to the right person at the right time. I mean part 437 00:29:47.860 --> 00:29:52.850 of being authority and being prolific is being trust is being trusted and 438 00:29:52.850 --> 00:29:57.310 usually people trust you more. If James Carberry, the founder of Swedish Media, 439 00:29:57.310 --> 00:29:59.910 is the one who really taught me this, he's like, you have to put little hooks 440 00:29:59.910 --> 00:30:04.540 out there for people to identify with you and it's not the thing, it's not 441 00:30:04.540 --> 00:30:07.780 your expertise. Yes, they're coming to you to here to you. But he's like, 442 00:30:07.780 --> 00:30:12.270 there's a reason why I tell everybody that like my ambition in life is to 443 00:30:12.280 --> 00:30:16.770 live as many days as possible without wearing shoes. He's like, I'm a flip 444 00:30:16.770 --> 00:30:20.910 flop guy. I live in florida, like he's like, I hate Pepsi and I don't wear 445 00:30:20.910 --> 00:30:26.610 shoes. He's like, I zero fan and I like Swedish fish. Trust me, there's a lot 446 00:30:26.610 --> 00:30:29.300 of people that I just defended and there's a lot of people that are like, 447 00:30:29.300 --> 00:30:34.730 yes, amen coke zero. And he's like the Pepsi people could probably get over it. 448 00:30:34.730 --> 00:30:38.550 But I trust me. Like all the coke zero fans were probably like, this is my man, 449 00:30:38.560 --> 00:30:42.950 you know, hundreds of little things like that just like, and they're all, 450 00:30:42.950 --> 00:30:48.010 yeah, let's just talk about that. Pepsi is the worst among team coke to um, 451 00:30:48.010 --> 00:30:51.410 it's sweet fish. We have debates because not everybody's on team coke 452 00:30:51.410 --> 00:30:55.920 even though James and I are, I don't know how they got hired. Come on, come 453 00:30:55.920 --> 00:31:01.210 on. I know I probably should, but James is too nice. He lets team Pepsi on I 454 00:31:01.210 --> 00:31:04.950 guess. I don't know. I guess everybody deserves a chance. It's questionable 455 00:31:04.950 --> 00:31:09.000 though. So it's interesting. It's how do you go about identifying which 456 00:31:09.000 --> 00:31:11.350 things are worth highlighting which things are? Because there's clearly 457 00:31:11.350 --> 00:31:15.490 like, you don't want to make up fake stuff just because it's trendy, like, 458 00:31:15.500 --> 00:31:18.300 oh, they're into this because that's kind of a trending topic. No, they're 459 00:31:18.300 --> 00:31:21.250 not into this and you don't address them and stuff, they're not comfortable 460 00:31:21.260 --> 00:31:24.130 because that would be an authentic and they're probably not going to perform 461 00:31:24.130 --> 00:31:27.710 that well on stage or in front of a mic if they're wearing something that's 462 00:31:27.710 --> 00:31:32.940 like they never wear that. But then how do you go about finding the things that 463 00:31:32.940 --> 00:31:37.940 create kind of a unique image? What do you look for? I think the biggest thing 464 00:31:37.940 --> 00:31:44.770 is digging into their actual experience and then kind of almost playing that 465 00:31:44.770 --> 00:31:49.250 five. Why? Question or asking what next? What next? Right. So, for example, 466 00:31:49.260 --> 00:31:53.820 talking about people who, it's like, man, you know, I remember back in the 467 00:31:53.820 --> 00:31:58.170 day where we, one of the people I used to uh was working with, they had a 468 00:31:58.170 --> 00:32:02.310 story about you, the wifi was so bad in the office when it was like, oh, we 469 00:32:02.310 --> 00:32:05.790 first opened this office and I was like, like that wifi was terrible, and I was 470 00:32:05.790 --> 00:32:10.390 like, tell me about that. And then like, you literally had to like turn the 471 00:32:10.390 --> 00:32:13.950 router upside down and like, put it on the window sill. But then every night 472 00:32:13.950 --> 00:32:17.490 the cleaning crew would come in and like move it off the window sill. And 473 00:32:17.490 --> 00:32:20.830 so every morning there was a whole ritual that somebody had to go in and 474 00:32:20.830 --> 00:32:25.200 turn the wifi router and you're just like, that's ridiculous, right? So when 475 00:32:25.200 --> 00:32:31.080 you think about, let's talk about scaling a company and you say, yeah, 476 00:32:31.090 --> 00:32:34.560 you used to have to take your meetings in the bathroom because there wasn't a 477 00:32:34.560 --> 00:32:38.180 conference room. Do you happen to have a picture of that? Like surely someone 478 00:32:38.180 --> 00:32:42.090 took a picture of that? Oh in fact, I do have a picture of that. Perfect. 479 00:32:42.090 --> 00:32:45.690 That's your opener for talking about scaling a company and saying, I don't 480 00:32:45.690 --> 00:32:49.110 know how many of you have ever had to take a call on a freaking bathroom, but 481 00:32:49.110 --> 00:32:54.630 it sucks right. Like the acoustics, the echo of the whole thing. And so that's 482 00:32:54.630 --> 00:32:58.520 the jumping off point because somebody in the audience has had to take a call 483 00:32:58.520 --> 00:33:02.160 from a bathroom. Half the people in the audience have never done that and it 484 00:33:02.160 --> 00:33:07.580 bottles their mind right when you then fast forward and it's fine to say fast 485 00:33:07.580 --> 00:33:11.350 forward five years and now we're in this high rise office, it's fancy we 486 00:33:11.350 --> 00:33:17.290 have all of these things but we're still dealing with our servers from 487 00:33:17.290 --> 00:33:20.530 that time period and the other half of the audience that's never taken a call 488 00:33:20.530 --> 00:33:26.120 in the bathroom but understands about outdated infrastructure is like, man, I 489 00:33:26.120 --> 00:33:29.540 wish I do not have to deal with these infrastructure concerns, I feel you. 490 00:33:29.540 --> 00:33:33.950 And then that's that same pain. Right? So from my perspective, it's finding 491 00:33:33.950 --> 00:33:38.180 those moments that if there's pictures or if their stories and you can tell, I 492 00:33:38.180 --> 00:33:40.680 mean their demeanor changes. I had somebody say this to me the other day, 493 00:33:40.680 --> 00:33:43.970 they were asking me about like, well what do you want to talk about on this 494 00:33:43.970 --> 00:33:46.580 podcast for this conference? And so I started listening to things I could 495 00:33:46.580 --> 00:33:50.820 talk about and they're like, whoa, go back that one you got really excited. 496 00:33:50.830 --> 00:33:54.510 Like you smiled and you lit up and you're talking with your hands, That's 497 00:33:54.510 --> 00:34:00.210 the one. And so again, giving people that permission to say, here's kind of 498 00:34:00.210 --> 00:34:03.370 the high level goals that I need to talk about. But when that's broad 499 00:34:03.370 --> 00:34:09.590 enough to say engineering or storytelling, I'm really trying to find 500 00:34:09.590 --> 00:34:14.469 what is the thing that you genuinely like? Not everything you've ever done. 501 00:34:14.480 --> 00:34:18.550 Not everything that the company is selling. No, Why did you come here? 502 00:34:18.550 --> 00:34:22.190 Like what problem did you actually come here to solve and why are you excited 503 00:34:22.190 --> 00:34:26.020 about that problem? That prompt also tends to get people like, well, let me 504 00:34:26.020 --> 00:34:29.710 tell you if you know what happened in this situation. And I'm like, in fact, 505 00:34:29.710 --> 00:34:34.250 I don't please tell me what happened in this situation that changed your mind. 506 00:34:34.260 --> 00:34:37.219 Even if you're dealing with like a founder for example, and you're like, 507 00:34:37.230 --> 00:34:44.360 no, they have to be the face, ask them what happened that made them so mad 508 00:34:44.940 --> 00:34:48.449 that they left whatever it was they were doing at that moment and started 509 00:34:48.449 --> 00:34:54.449 the company. What was that? Because that's the interesting part. Not. And 510 00:34:54.449 --> 00:34:57.380 then we made this company with 10 features, like nobody freaking cares 511 00:34:57.380 --> 00:34:59.300 about your features, that they care about the features. They'll go to the 512 00:34:59.300 --> 00:35:03.050 website, do the checklist right? To watch the Webinar, they'll do a demo. 513 00:35:03.840 --> 00:35:07.120 But what what made you so mad that you just dropped whatever you were doing 514 00:35:07.120 --> 00:35:11.530 and you came to solve this problem? And then how did you go about validating 515 00:35:11.530 --> 00:35:14.140 that other people have this problem? How did you go about validating that 516 00:35:14.140 --> 00:35:17.970 nobody else was solving it the right way? Right? That's the interesting part, 517 00:35:18.640 --> 00:35:22.820 ma'am. That is such a good framework for answering and figuring out 518 00:35:22.820 --> 00:35:27.020 someone's backstory essentially. Like why, why why why just asking the 519 00:35:27.020 --> 00:35:30.280 question so many times that you finally get to the root of why they did what 520 00:35:30.280 --> 00:35:33.710 they did? Uh Sometimes I run into people who started have started 521 00:35:33.710 --> 00:35:36.990 companies. This is kind of like more founder centric, like why do you start 522 00:35:36.990 --> 00:35:40.770 the company? They're like, well because I was assessing the market and it just 523 00:35:40.770 --> 00:35:43.820 seemed like a really good market to get into, but there's always a little bit 524 00:35:43.820 --> 00:35:47.720 more than you being opportunistic and finding it, you know, you kind of have 525 00:35:47.720 --> 00:35:52.230 to want to get into that industry and there's usually more more there. Um 526 00:35:52.230 --> 00:35:56.060 what do you do to find things that aren't like related to this story, 527 00:35:56.840 --> 00:35:59.060 memorable things? How do you make people memorable? 528 00:36:00.230 --> 00:36:05.380 So this is where the if I had 10x. The budget, I would pair one marketer to 529 00:36:05.380 --> 00:36:12.020 one thought later. Because the only way I found to do it is for, and this is 530 00:36:12.020 --> 00:36:17.800 like my personal experience is to genuinely no the person and to also 531 00:36:17.800 --> 00:36:21.580 love the things that they love to fall in love with, the same things that they 532 00:36:21.580 --> 00:36:26.390 fell in love with. And you can only do that by spending time together and that 533 00:36:26.390 --> 00:36:30.510 ability to walk and talk, that ability to watch them, that ability to lurk on 534 00:36:30.510 --> 00:36:36.440 their calendar, like that closeness, that's how you get the interesting 535 00:36:36.440 --> 00:36:41.230 stuff, you know? And yes, you can manufacture it, you can come up with 536 00:36:41.230 --> 00:36:45.160 the right questions, like I can say all day long, oh, here's my 10 questions. 537 00:36:45.170 --> 00:36:50.860 But if you watch me when I do what I do to pull stuff out of people, and it 538 00:36:50.860 --> 00:36:54.130 means the same thing you're doing on this podcast, like you're talking to me, 539 00:36:54.140 --> 00:36:58.700 you're seeing how things go you're hearing, and then you're riffing, You 540 00:36:58.700 --> 00:37:02.050 don't have your proper list of 10 questions to have a good podcast 541 00:37:02.050 --> 00:37:06.280 interview. And so that's a hard question because I wish I could tell 542 00:37:06.280 --> 00:37:10.120 you that there is a formula for it. And the formula is you actually have to 543 00:37:10.120 --> 00:37:13.490 know them and you actually have to care about them and you actually have to 544 00:37:13.490 --> 00:37:19.850 love what they love. And there's just I to get the best kind of content are the 545 00:37:19.850 --> 00:37:25.260 best person out there. There is not a substitute, there's not a handy pity 546 00:37:25.260 --> 00:37:29.740 framework, there's not soundbites, there's no there's no way to get that 547 00:37:29.750 --> 00:37:36.160 unless you genuinely know them. It's interesting. I wonder what the kind of 548 00:37:36.160 --> 00:37:40.670 a model that I'm currently using as a shortcut because I think what you're 549 00:37:40.670 --> 00:37:44.760 saying is right and true, Like finding the things that you can only find if 550 00:37:44.760 --> 00:37:48.680 you spend a lot of time with them. But a shortcut I'm taking with our even our 551 00:37:48.680 --> 00:37:51.960 employees, we have a link to an evangelist program. It's not quite a 552 00:37:51.970 --> 00:37:54.470 thought leadership program, but we're trying to get them out there. Made 553 00:37:54.470 --> 00:37:58.260 content could be a good stepping stone to being a thought leader is I'm having 554 00:37:58.260 --> 00:38:02.210 to come up with ideas about like what are things that you're passionate about 555 00:38:02.220 --> 00:38:06.040 that? Like lots of people are passionate about for James coke zero. I 556 00:38:06.040 --> 00:38:09.110 mean I didn't ask him that question. He was already talking about that on 557 00:38:09.120 --> 00:38:12.640 linkedin quite a bit, but for new employees, I'm just like, give me three 558 00:38:12.640 --> 00:38:16.340 things that you love that. Like it's like everybody loves this, Is it Disney, 559 00:38:16.720 --> 00:38:21.010 is it coke? Is it like what is it? And then give me some things that you love 560 00:38:21.010 --> 00:38:25.710 that are just kind of like weird, right? There's gonna be a few people that even 561 00:38:25.710 --> 00:38:29.150 understand what that is and it's going to work and I like just finding a mix 562 00:38:29.150 --> 00:38:32.520 of them and then hopefully blending that into there little mini brand 563 00:38:32.520 --> 00:38:36.390 identities and somehow making little mentions of it in content every once in 564 00:38:36.390 --> 00:38:40.760 a while, so we all know Gary v, but he has a number of different little ISMs 565 00:38:40.760 --> 00:38:44.800 that are just like, I have nothing to do with what he does, but everybody 566 00:38:44.800 --> 00:38:48.700 knows he's working towards buying the Jets, right? So if he's wearing the 567 00:38:48.700 --> 00:38:53.970 Jets hat, every all the insiders know he loves the Jets, I'm not a Jets fan, 568 00:38:53.980 --> 00:39:01.650 but I'm sure if you are, you're like, yes, yeah, well in mine, you know, I 569 00:39:01.660 --> 00:39:05.440 always tell people to start with start with the bio and like test out 570 00:39:05.440 --> 00:39:08.290 different bios, right? Like, right? As if you're super humble or super 571 00:39:08.290 --> 00:39:13.420 arrogant, write it as if you only have 100 characters, write it as if you're a 572 00:39:13.420 --> 00:39:19.730 PhD and it's a dissertation try on those different bios and for me having 573 00:39:19.730 --> 00:39:23.780 that like, you know, marketer writer, speaker by day singer, actor, Fitness 574 00:39:23.790 --> 00:39:29.900 by night. Like that immediately starts to tell you things and yes, I do 575 00:39:29.900 --> 00:39:33.170 sometimes draw parallels I have, you know, when I talk about the content 576 00:39:33.170 --> 00:39:37.470 depths, the first example that I use actually is around what does it mean to 577 00:39:37.470 --> 00:39:39.850 be healthy and fit and that you're going to answer that question 578 00:39:39.850 --> 00:39:43.220 differently if your runner's world versus muscle and Fitness versus Yoga 579 00:39:43.220 --> 00:39:46.380 Journal. And then I talk a little bit about, hey, I personally ascribed to 580 00:39:46.380 --> 00:39:50.230 kind of this style of workout. So let's let's dig in. Um, and that's how you 581 00:39:50.230 --> 00:39:54.770 get that flavor of like, oh she made the connection with fitness fiend. But 582 00:39:54.780 --> 00:39:57.890 the other thing you'll know about me if you deal with me very often is I really 583 00:39:57.890 --> 00:40:01.830 like a liberation. Like I love it. Right? I I had a blog called amusing 584 00:40:01.830 --> 00:40:05.040 marketing. Then I brought it to consciously corporate. And then at one 585 00:40:05.040 --> 00:40:08.180 point I was kind of like I noticed it was it was before fashion became a 586 00:40:08.180 --> 00:40:11.230 thing. So I was doing like workwear, Wednesdays. And now obviously I was 587 00:40:11.230 --> 00:40:15.620 like, how can I get fitness fiend? And like what rides with fitness? Oh, teens 588 00:40:15.620 --> 00:40:19.590 they go together. You see those little things in there, even though I don't 589 00:40:19.590 --> 00:40:24.230 talk about it as like an explicit thing. But when we have conversations like 590 00:40:24.230 --> 00:40:28.440 this and then you look at everything that I write and you're like, oh my 591 00:40:28.440 --> 00:40:32.750 gosh, she does like she she likes a liberation. And if you work with me on 592 00:40:32.750 --> 00:40:37.140 a team, you know that like, hey, I'm having a copyrighting dilemma. Actually 593 00:40:37.150 --> 00:40:40.060 pull out your liberation, right? Like it's a thing that you kind of know if 594 00:40:40.060 --> 00:40:44.040 you deal with me. And so there's almost that element of asking people like, 595 00:40:44.050 --> 00:40:48.550 what's the quirk or what's something that like, what do you do on the 596 00:40:48.550 --> 00:40:52.460 weekends? Or like what's the one question that everybody always seems to 597 00:40:52.460 --> 00:40:55.790 ask you? Are you that person on the street that everybody always asks you 598 00:40:55.790 --> 00:40:57.030 for directions? Why? 599 00:40:58.310 --> 00:41:01.400 Because you always have a map for you just look confident or you like, walk 600 00:41:01.400 --> 00:41:04.980 really fast. So they figure out, seem to know where they're going. Um, so 601 00:41:04.980 --> 00:41:09.740 asking him like, what are some weird experiences that happened to you a lot? 602 00:41:10.110 --> 00:41:13.930 And then drilling into being like, why is why does that seem to happen to you 603 00:41:13.930 --> 00:41:17.280 a lot? Why do you seem to get that question a lot of like, what's a silly 604 00:41:17.280 --> 00:41:20.600 thing you do with your kids or with your spouse or with your book club? 605 00:41:20.600 --> 00:41:24.840 Right? Like asking those kinds of questions gets that kind of a similar, 606 00:41:24.840 --> 00:41:29.090 how many questions like that do you have? So I would have to look, I've got 607 00:41:29.090 --> 00:41:33.250 like a whole tactics worksheet in the personal brand section. I ask, how do 608 00:41:33.250 --> 00:41:36.390 you speak? Um, and then I give some prompts like, are you formal? Are you 609 00:41:36.390 --> 00:41:40.630 sarcastic? Are you approachable? Are you friendly? Are you funny? Um, and so 610 00:41:40.640 --> 00:41:43.760 as people start to go through those questions, so I think it's honestly 611 00:41:43.760 --> 00:41:48.710 only like five big questions. Um, one of them is kind of that bio exercise 612 00:41:48.710 --> 00:41:52.040 and then we see what happens with that. The other is how you speak, that, how 613 00:41:52.040 --> 00:41:56.500 you dress. I think also it's like, why do you dress that way? Oh well, I don't 614 00:41:56.500 --> 00:42:00.660 know. I've been in tech my whole life, so we wear jeans and hoodies. Okay, 615 00:42:00.670 --> 00:42:04.730 that's fine. How did you get into tech when you say your whole life? What do 616 00:42:04.730 --> 00:42:08.800 you mean by that? Right. So, um, it's honestly only like five questions, but 617 00:42:08.800 --> 00:42:13.220 then kind of some prompts in there to get them thinking, um, I've also done 618 00:42:13.220 --> 00:42:18.430 it if people are stumped to show them a massive list of adjectives and be like 619 00:42:18.600 --> 00:42:23.250 circle the five things on here, like which of these words do you like? And I 620 00:42:23.250 --> 00:42:27.220 don't give them any prompting. It's not which one describes you. It's not what 621 00:42:27.220 --> 00:42:34.340 do you aim to be? It's just like circle some words on here that speak to you, 622 00:42:34.350 --> 00:42:37.760 you know, man, that's so much fun. And I want to see these questions you 623 00:42:37.760 --> 00:42:42.140 mentioned, it's in a section. Do you have this published somewhere? So I've 624 00:42:42.140 --> 00:42:45.420 been so bad. So, uh, the stuff that I'm talking about right now is basically 625 00:42:45.420 --> 00:42:49.890 published uh, pretty much internally. Um, I have, I think I've actually 626 00:42:49.890 --> 00:42:56.220 published, I spoke about this at BB forum in the fall, I think, yeah, last 627 00:42:56.220 --> 00:43:00.680 fall. So I did give I turned him into basically worksheets for people and 628 00:43:00.680 --> 00:43:04.520 then I've published it kind of slowly but surely on linkedin in different 629 00:43:04.520 --> 00:43:08.560 places. But yes, I need to publish like, along from article with the 630 00:43:08.560 --> 00:43:13.320 downloadable templates. But I can send you I can I can I mean, you have enough 631 00:43:13.320 --> 00:43:16.300 information to write your own playbook on this and maybe, I don't know if it's 632 00:43:16.300 --> 00:43:19.190 enough to be a full book and maybe I bet you have a lot more. That probably 633 00:43:19.190 --> 00:43:23.260 could be a full book. But it sounds like you have a lot worked out. You 634 00:43:23.260 --> 00:43:25.410 kept mentioning like, oh, I have a framework, oh, I have a framework for 635 00:43:25.410 --> 00:43:29.480 my framework, Oh, that's in section Part three, I'm like, oh, she's got a 636 00:43:29.480 --> 00:43:32.090 lot of information. This this should have been published somewhere a long 637 00:43:32.090 --> 00:43:36.860 time ago. People can say I keep getting people being like, do you have this, 638 00:43:36.860 --> 00:43:40.820 can I get this where you say you have this, where does your worksheets just 639 00:43:40.820 --> 00:43:43.700 so we can publish it with this episode for the audience and I'll send you the 640 00:43:43.700 --> 00:43:47.920 work, you can publish it with, go for sure. And that way people can get it. I 641 00:43:48.300 --> 00:43:52.240 it's interesting because I have wrestled with this problem for the 642 00:43:52.240 --> 00:43:56.210 better part of the last decade and I think I've solved it pretty well with 643 00:43:56.210 --> 00:44:01.160 the framework for my current needs. So it's interesting hearing from other 644 00:44:01.160 --> 00:44:04.100 people, they're like, no, that's actually this makes sense. Like I get 645 00:44:04.100 --> 00:44:07.990 it, I can use this because in the past, when I've tried to solve this problem, 646 00:44:07.990 --> 00:44:10.830 sometimes we go down these like semantic rabbit holes of like its 647 00:44:10.830 --> 00:44:14.790 credibility the right way versus authority or expert, you know what 648 00:44:14.790 --> 00:44:18.320 we're getting at, it's the ethos of trust. Like do people believe you? You 649 00:44:18.320 --> 00:44:23.430 know, So that's part of what's kept me from publishing is that I feel I still 650 00:44:23.430 --> 00:44:26.750 feel like I need to stress test it that like basically on the credibility 651 00:44:26.750 --> 00:44:29.750 pillars that I don't have the credibility like this is the way to do 652 00:44:29.750 --> 00:44:32.940 it. Like if you look at someone like Dorie Clark for example, she's done a 653 00:44:32.940 --> 00:44:38.290 ton of work in this space and she's written full books on it, right? Like 654 00:44:38.290 --> 00:44:41.330 she started somewhere and she was an authority on the space at some point. 655 00:44:41.340 --> 00:44:45.920 I've actually read Dorries book, I've read every single book and I'm telling 656 00:44:45.920 --> 00:44:49.630 you have some unique information. Yeah. And that's that's kind of the problem 657 00:44:49.630 --> 00:44:52.840 and that's I feel like I've done it and I've actually had to start putting 658 00:44:52.840 --> 00:44:55.630 together my own playbook because I went and read every book looking for the 659 00:44:55.630 --> 00:45:01.080 answers and I haven't found them. So you have some of the unique ones and I 660 00:45:01.080 --> 00:45:04.770 would have read your book and I would have been introducing you as author 661 00:45:04.770 --> 00:45:10.890 Ashley Foss already. You would have been picked up by other people and it 662 00:45:10.890 --> 00:45:13.990 would have built and you would have been more you would have built that 663 00:45:13.990 --> 00:45:17.350 credibility but it has to start somewhere. So I'm just encouraging you 664 00:45:17.350 --> 00:45:21.500 as a host of this show that you should probably compile those into a book. 665 00:45:22.190 --> 00:45:25.570 Yeah. Well thank you. Well then that would be better. Right? Like if I 666 00:45:25.570 --> 00:45:29.750 became a thought leader on thought leadership, it's like do the thought 667 00:45:29.750 --> 00:45:32.670 leadership I know and thought leadership is super cringe. E so it's 668 00:45:32.670 --> 00:45:35.990 hard to like want to position yourself as that person because a lot of people 669 00:45:35.990 --> 00:45:40.410 hate thought leadership and think it's a joke but fat or a buzzword, you and I 670 00:45:40.410 --> 00:45:43.030 both know you're like no it's kind of a thing and it's not going away, you 671 00:45:43.030 --> 00:45:47.130 could call it someone else something else. Deloitte's calling an eminence 672 00:45:47.130 --> 00:45:52.550 marketing, you're like what the heck? Just call what it is. Okay well and we 673 00:45:52.550 --> 00:45:58.790 don't even have time to get into like influencers versus spokespeople versus 674 00:45:58.800 --> 00:46:03.170 whatever thought leaders or whatever you wanna call it right? Like there's 675 00:46:03.170 --> 00:46:08.290 all these words and I think that we it is useful to differentiate in some 676 00:46:08.290 --> 00:46:13.160 cases like what is this person do? Like what do they have credibility to say 677 00:46:13.170 --> 00:46:17.860 and therefore you use them differently? Right? But this whole again imminence 678 00:46:17.860 --> 00:46:21.140 marketing like what does that even? I don't know, they're just trying to 679 00:46:21.140 --> 00:46:25.690 reposition it because they don't want to be associated with the term thought 680 00:46:25.690 --> 00:46:29.790 leadership because thought leadership gotten baggage because people have been 681 00:46:29.800 --> 00:46:32.760 calling themselves thought leaders and they're lacking one of your four major 682 00:46:32.760 --> 00:46:36.060 pillars, right? You don't have the credibility and everybody knows it. And 683 00:46:36.060 --> 00:46:40.390 they're like that leader I spoke at the Ted X, you're like great thanks. Right. 684 00:46:40.400 --> 00:46:43.720 Right. Well and I would say that, I mean maybe that's the other big thing 685 00:46:43.720 --> 00:46:47.910 that I do agree with everyone, which you can't call yourself a thought 686 00:46:47.910 --> 00:46:51.130 leader, Like where it's in your linkedin title where you're like Ashley 687 00:46:51.140 --> 00:46:56.770 flat leader, it's like that's weird. That's No, no, no, but you can still 688 00:46:56.770 --> 00:47:01.100 write a book to help people navigate their way to. It's it's worth, it's a 689 00:47:01.100 --> 00:47:03.600 worthwhile pursuit to become a thought leader, even though you can never call 690 00:47:03.600 --> 00:47:08.390 yourself one. And it's certainly profitable as a marketing strategy. 691 00:47:08.400 --> 00:47:11.450 It's not for everybody, but especially a lot of tech companies who want to be 692 00:47:11.450 --> 00:47:16.100 seen as innovative. Like for me to be tech companies, it's kind of the main 693 00:47:16.100 --> 00:47:20.000 avenue to go is thought leadership marketing and I know people are still 694 00:47:20.000 --> 00:47:23.870 hungry for it. I have customers asking me about it all the time as a podcast 695 00:47:23.870 --> 00:47:25.500 agency. So 696 00:47:26.580 --> 00:47:29.570 write that book. You have to still find your position and angle for it of who 697 00:47:29.570 --> 00:47:34.980 it's targeting. But and that's a hard thing in itself. But you can do it. 698 00:47:34.990 --> 00:47:40.370 Cool to wrap up this episode though. Is there anything is there a question I 699 00:47:40.370 --> 00:47:44.530 should have asked and haven't asked yet that you want to tell our audience 700 00:47:44.530 --> 00:47:49.900 about? I don't think so. I think we we kind of covered the given chased a few 701 00:47:49.900 --> 00:47:55.200 rabbits even so Yeah, I don't think I don't think so. I think we've covered 702 00:47:55.200 --> 00:47:59.170 it. Fantastic. And I did my job as a host. Well actually, if people want to 703 00:47:59.170 --> 00:48:03.080 learn more about these things and want to see when that book comes out, where 704 00:48:03.080 --> 00:48:07.890 can they go to learn more from you online? Yeah, So I am at Ashley Foster 705 00:48:07.900 --> 00:48:12.930 on linkedin and twitter. So you should be able to follow me or DME or connect 706 00:48:12.930 --> 00:48:17.080 to me in those places. And I talk about these topics and other kind of content, 707 00:48:17.080 --> 00:48:20.960 strategy and marketing strategy topics in both of those places as well. Well, 708 00:48:20.960 --> 00:48:24.600 Fantastic. Thanks for joining me on GDP Growth. Thanks for having me 709 00:48:29.080 --> 00:48:32.970 is your buyer at Bdb marketer. If so you should think about sponsoring this 710 00:48:32.970 --> 00:48:37.920 Podcast. BTB growth gets downloaded over 130,000 times each month. And our 711 00:48:37.920 --> 00:48:41.740 listeners are marketing decision makers. If it sounds interesting, send Logan 712 00:48:41.740 --> 00:48:44.590 and email Logan at Sweet Fish media dot com. 713 00:48:47.280 --> 00:48:49.190 Yeah.