Your Digital Marketing Coach with Neal Schaffer
Your Digital Marketing Coach with Neal Schaffer
Mastering Personality-Led Growth: Andy Lambert on Customer Understanding and Brand Building
Today we dive deep into the world of personality-led growth and brand building with our special guest, Andy Lambert, co-founder of ContentCal and Senior Product Manager at Adobe Express. In this episode, we explore the crucial role of understanding customer pain points, especially in the realms of remote work and inside sales.
Throughout the episode, Andy highlights the evolution of social media from a sales channel to a platform for building genuine relationships, the importance of influencer and creator collaborations, and the power of employee branding in strengthening company reputations. Whether you're a marketer, entrepreneur, or simply interested in the future of digital marketing, this episode is packed with insights you won't want to miss.
So, get ready to learn how to build powerful brands through personality-led growth, understand your customers on a deeper level, and engage with influential communities for sustainable business success. Tune in now!
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Personality-led growth. It's a term that's reshaping the way that we think about building brands, but do you know how to leverage it to skyrocket your own business? From understanding your customers' pain points to collaborating with influencers, there is a whole world of strategies waiting to be explored. With my special guest today, we're going to dive deep into the future of Adobe Express, because my guest is a product manager at Adobe. The magic of Adobe Express, because my guest is a product manager at Adobe. The magic of webinars and the pivotal role of personal branding.
Speaker 2:We're going to cover a lot of ground, so make sure you stay tuned to this next episode of the your Digital Marketing Coach, podcast, blogging, podcasting, vlogging, tiktok, linkedin, twitter, facebook, instagram, youtube, seo, sem, ppc, email marketing there's a lot to cover. Whether you're a marketing professional, entrepreneur or business owner, you need someone you can rely on for expert advice. Good thing you've got Neil on your side, because Neil Schaefer is your digital marketing coach, helping you grow your business with digital-first marketing, one episode at a time.
Speaker 2:This is your digital marketing coach, and this is Neil Schaefer.
Speaker 1:Hey everybody, this is Neil Schafer, your digital marketing coach, and welcome to episode number 381. Before we get into the interview, I'd like to begin with just a few little tidbits of news that I think you should be aware of for this week. First of all, if you have been looking anywhere in the blogosphere at the news, you'll know that this is the week that Facebook Meta had their Meta Connect event, where they made a lot of announcements. Now, not all of the announcements were related to social media marketing. You know, meta owns WhatsApp. They also have their VR headset, and there were a lot of various announcements.
Speaker 1:I guess, for my perspective, the one that I thought was interesting that I think you should pay attention to is that Mark Zuckerberg said that Meta AI now has nearly 500 million users. That is a lot of users that, when we think of Facebook as an old person's network, obviously this includes WhatsApp and Instagram, so we don't know where those 500 million users are, but there is a growing adoption of AI across Meta's platforms, and this includes AI integrations in apps like Instagram, facebook and WhatsApp. And that Zuckerberg highlighted Meta's continuous efforts to enhance user experiences with AI-driven features and emphasize the role that AI is playing in Meta's future, particularly in expanding its influence in the digital ecosystem and engaging users across various products and services. So that is one to be on the lookout for. I know that, even in their ad product, that Meta is increasingly leveraging AI. And I talk about ad products because the other bit of news that I thought is really interesting is that TikTok entered the search ads market in the United States. You can now target users using TikTok ads through search queries on the platform, which really positions TikTok as a small but nevertheless competitor to Google and other search ad platforms. Because we know, or those of you that do know, that TikTok has a growing user base who increasingly use the app for discovery. And with this, tiktok's ad revenue potential expands because now brands can leverage search intent to reach potential customers, especially younger audiences, directly through the app search functionality via the ads platform. So one more reason that your brand, your business, really needs to pay attention to TikTok. And you know, launching a business account is just like launching a Facebook business account. Get access to the ad platform, play around with it and it's all about A-B testing. You never know what cost per click, cost per conversion is going to be, cost per impression is going to be until you actually give it a shot. Those two are my recommendations. The one that has some action attached to it are the TikTok search ads, which I think is a truly exciting moment in social media marketing history.
Speaker 1:On the personal news so yes, digital Threads is now finally available on all the major retailers for pre-order. It will publish on October 1st. The pre-order right now is primarily e-book Amazon in the United States. Well, you might be able to find it a few more places, but you can find the paperback. I'm still working on getting the hardcover, the audiobook and the companion workbook the paperback edition of that online as well, but I am running a pre-sales campaign, or I should say pre-order campaign. So if you do pre-order before end of day, september 30th, when it is still called a pre-order because it is not on sale yet and you send me proof of purchase to neilneilschafercom, I will invite you to a special webinar that I am doing on October 1st, all about the different ways in which you can leverage chat, gpt and AI marketing. Based on my own personal experiences with some case studies, some data and this has just been the number one question, I've been asked by so many people on so many calls recently that I thought it was a great time to put a webinar together and invite those people that invest in digital threads to become part of that. So, if that is, you, make sure you pre-order on your favorite platform and send me proof of purchase. I also wanted to share with you, for those who are still on the fence about digital threads or maybe you haven't downloaded my free preview, which you can go to neilschafercom slash digitalthreads dash preview. And, by the way, if you want to know where you can purchase digital threads, go to neilschafercom slash digital threads and you'll be able to see the links to all the bookstores where it's currently being sold.
Speaker 1:But there is a famous book review organization called Kirkus Reviews and they're really the diamond standard, or the gold standard, diamond standard Okay, we'll call them the gold standard. That sounds a little bit more natural For book reviews and what they say goes out to libraries and booksellers. What have you? So I was really excited to get a very positive review from Kirkus Reviews for digital threads. They can be pretty well, let's just put. They can be pretty harsh on books, especially when they are self-published. But, as you all know, I intended, with digital threads, to be as good of quality, if not a higher quality, than my previous books that have been traditionally published and I know it is possible with self-publishing so really excited, and I just want to spend a minute here to actually read what they wrote so that you get a better understanding of what digital threads is all about, because I often find that other people I mean it's just like user-generated content Other people can vouch for your brand, for your products, way better than you can yourself, and this is another instance of it. So here we go A comprehensive guide to managing digital marketing.
Speaker 1:In these pages, digital marketing consultant Schaefer, whose last book was the Age of Influence in 2020, describes the altered nature of the consumer world, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. He notes what many have cited as the pandemic's effects the acceleration of the digital consumer, the primacy of digital outreach and the overwhelming importance of handling online marketing effectively. To this end, with the goal of establishing a digital-first strategy, he proposes a new playbook. In this playbook, schaefer recommends that businesses and entrepreneurs concentrate on forming and strengthening digital threads, a system of online outreach. If the system is implemented correctly, it will greatly strengthen a business. If ignored, it could lead to the risk of being left behind in what worked yesterday. He breaks down all of the various digital threads that new marketers must keep in focus, such as search engine optimization, which has advanced enormously from the old keyword stuffing state of pre-COVID-19 days.
Speaker 1:He touches on the use of artificial intelligence, but warns his readers that digital threads is an intensely person-oriented plan. You should not lose the soul of how you appear to your customers and prospects, he cautions. His chapters are distilled into key takeaways that help the reader to clarify the large amount of advice and information they're getting here. For example, building relationships with algorithms is about trustworthiness and authority, and backlinks create validity that your content is useful and trusted. Absolutely everything is analyzed in terms of enhancing business.
Speaker 1:Schaefer's approach is a winning mixture of the personal and the professional. He opens his book by reflecting on how the pandemic affected his own business as an author, suddenly deprived of book tours, book signings, readings and so on. And throughout the book he convincingly stresses that the strongest, most important aspects of his digital thread strategy are people, actual personal connections. Hence his cautions about AI. When discussing the uses of social media the book's strongest narrative component, for instance, he advises readers there is no better way of becoming friends with the social media algorithm and exposing your business to more social media users than by feeding the algorithm what it wants platform authentic content. He convincingly urges his readers to embrace social media algorithms as a means of connecting with actual human beings. You're telling your brand story, he writes, and you're telling the story of the consumer within the frame of your brand Show. Don't sell, as he puts it, even on such quotidian subjects as building an email list. He stresses that mere accumulation of data is not enough. Companies and entrepreneurs must turn these connections into conversations is not enough. Companies and entrepreneurs must turn these connections into conversations.
Speaker 1:Throughout his guide, schaefer directs readers to the downloadable electronic workbook that accompanies his main text, which not only distracts from but also undermines the sufficiency of the main text itself. Side note there Kirk is as famous. You're not going to get a 100% golden, happy review. There's always going to be a little point. But I'll take that because the companion workbook does serve a big value, I think, in helping you implement what I teach. Getting back to the review, but even so, that text abounds with practical tips and insights born of experience.
Speaker 1:Schaefer is entirely right that many small businesses only hesitantly and incompletely dabble in the digital side of their marketing. A Facebook post here, an email blast there, and his book provides a bracing corrective to this negligence a highly useful, invigoratingly people-centered approach to digital marketing. Thank you for indulging me in allowing me to share this review with you. Maximizing LinkedIn for Business Growth is still a bestseller on Amazon, at least here in the United States, in a few categories, and Digital Threads is already a number one new release. In fact, there was a category, I think global marketing in which both Digital Threads and Maximizing LinkedIn for Business Growth were in the top 10. So I cannot be happier and really, I really hope that this book serves you and I can't wait to hear your feedback about it once you have it in your hands and you are reading it.
Speaker 1:Alrighty Well, you know, when you come out with books, your personal updates are all about the book. So I'll stop here. I want to get into today's interview Now. Today's special guest is Andy Lambert, and you might remember him because it was just about a year ago, on episode number 335 back in September 2023, where we talked about uncovering the secret to B2B growth. Is social media the answer? Andy is the author of Social 3.0. He's one of the co-founders of Content Cal, a social media scheduling tool that was actually bought out by Adobe, and now he is at Adobe working as product manager, and he is on the Adobe Express team, for which I am a proud Adobe Express ambassador. I give a little bit deeper intro to Andy in the interview, so, without further ado, let's get right into it my interview with Andy Lambert about personality-led growth that I know you're going to enjoy. Listen to the end.
Speaker 2:You're listening to your digital marketing coach. This is Neil Schaefer.
Speaker 1:Your digital marketing coach. This is Neil Schaefer. Hey everybody, welcome to another live stream edition of the your Digital Marketing Coach podcast. You know it's fun to bring on guests that we've had on before. Not only do you get to know them better, but I also get excited by bringing in new ideas from past guests, because the people that I tend to interview here, or that I like to interview here, are true innovators in their space, and today my special guest is another one of those innovators. His name is Andy Lambert. He is the author of Social 3.0. And if you've been a longtime listener or viewer of this podcast, he was actually not so long ago.
Speaker 1:September 7th 2023, episode number 335, uncovering the Secret to B2B Growth. Is Social Media the Answer? For those of you that remember, andy Lammert is one of the co-founders of Content Cow and he is currently a senior product manager at Adobe, where he works in the Adobe Express product, where I am a proud Adobe Express ambassador, and when I asked him to come on the show the last time, he was talking about social media for B2B growth, which was a great topic. I also want to say that I you see the poster behind me that is from the Adobe Max conference that Adobe puts on, which I've gone to two years in a row. And two years in a row I've seen Andy speak there, and he was the first one where I heard the term recommended media, the era of recommended media, which is something that we talk a lot about today. So I'm like, andy, what do you have up your sleeve this time? And yes, andy is going to deliver and he's going to talk about something.
Speaker 1:I also have come to a similar conclusion and, for those of you that know, I teach this class on personal branding at UCLA Extension, and although this next book is not out yet, I'm already working on the next, next book, which I plan to be a personal branding book, and not just personal branding, but, if you are an entrepreneur or small business owner, that your personal branding becomes a central part of your marketing actually. So I think that's where the discussion is going to go today. I don't know. I'm excited to learn as much as you are, so, without further ado, I'm going to bring on Mr Andy Lambert. Andy, thank you so much for coming on today and welcome.
Speaker 3:Thanks so much, neil. Great to be back on, and it still shocks me that. How many podcasts that you've done, the fact that September 23, episode 330 something man, that is a commitment to consistency. So much respect.
Speaker 1:Well, I will say why. I appreciate that. I will say that the consistency is not always there. But, andy, at some point I realized that I need to commit to producing 50 episodes a year. And if I can stick on a weekly episode or a weekly schedule, all the best. If I can't, because I travel like you do, it's okay. So I'm actually right now playing catch up. I need to produce an episode every six days in order to get to 50 by the end of the year. So it's a weird definition of consistency, but when you're busy, you know, I think a lot of people forget. And you know, as a content creator, we expect like, hey, why didn't you drop a podcast episode like this week on Friday? Or a newsletter this week on Thursday? Or, you know, why didn't you show up on social media today? It is a lot of work and we all have lives, both professional and personal, outside of that. So I appreciate your recognition, my friend.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I also like the approach of the fact you've given yourself a top level goal of doing 50 in a year, because it was one of the things that held me back from doing another podcast, because it feels like once you're you've made that promise to an audience to say I'm going to drop a weekly podcast, you feel burdened by it to a degree I certainly do where you're like, oh, I haven't done it, so you feel guilty, like I'm letting people down, etc. The reality is people don't really mind as much as you mind, and it's also a nice perspective you give of giving yourself a bit of permission and that leniency. Yeah, you got a top level goal, but life happens. So, but over time, then. I think that's the important thing, like over time, you've committed to that level of consistency, of which has been a huge reason that you've got to where you've got to and driven the level of growth that you have. So massive respect, and the fact that you're just writing another book and another book on top of that.
Speaker 3:I've only done one and that took it out of me. So, yeah, another one.
Speaker 1:I admire you, for I'm actually in the middle of writing a trilogy, so that book is only the first of three. But anyway, I digress. But yeah, you know you have to give yourself some grace. You know it's okay if you miss a deadline, because, guess what? There's a hundred other podcasts, there's a thousand other newsletters. Your fans will be served and they will be waiting for you when you come back. So I don't like to sweat about it and I think we all need to find our own groove, and maybe that's my personality and maybe that's what's led to my personality-led growth, which I think we're going to talk about today. But for those that don't know you, andy, I'd love to give you a minute just to sort of introduce who you are, where you came from, what you do now, and then we'll go into today's topic.
Speaker 3:Yeah, sure, I'll give you the short version. Career started in sales, funnily enough, and this was probably 2008, 2009 and very early user of of social media, and so the days where I was using tweet deck regularly set up streams to look for um people that were talking about the industry that I was in and you know still mourn the loss of free access to to tweet deck, but never mind, we won't go deep into x's strategy right now, but it was such a powerful time where you're setting up those streams, really nascent people sharing their, their views and perspectives openly, and it was a really fantastic opportunity for myself to really start understanding the use of social media and where you could differentiate. Because here I am on a sales floor, people hitting the phones, emailing people, and I was like, well, how can I get an edge? And social media gave me that edge and it was also I didn't know what I was doing at the time. I just thought, oh, it's just a goldmine of information and some insight I'm getting and getting a one up on my peers. Right, because that's a very competitive scenario working on a sales floor and over time. Then you know, looking back, that was all personality driven growth. Right, because, just innately, like you've known from a lot of a lot of your career and certainly the period that I've known you for, neil is that you recognize that people buy from people and it's incredibly cliche but it's incredibly true. And investing in building your own brand and investing in having those one-on-one conversations on social pay dividends so that gave me my first insight into the power of social.
Speaker 3:And then roll the clock I wanted to always wanted to start my own business and came across someone that had already created the idea for what was to become Content Cal and you know I was sold. At that point saw the opportunity of scaling what I just personally gravitated towards and enjoyed, and being able to provide a platform that allowed people to do that around the world at scale was just too much of a great opportunity to pass up, to be honest. So, yeah, left my corporate job, went to startup land. That was 2016. Difficult first couple of years it's fair to say, exciting first year when you're brand new into a business.
Speaker 3:Trying to evaluate your market proposition, evaluate your early customers and try and win those first 100 customers took a lot longer than we thought it would. I think it's probably the case for a lot of startups. Everything does take a little bit longer than you think it will. Then, I think, throughout the COVID times much so I don't want to remember a lot of that our business boomed because, naturally, when you've built a platform, a collaborative platform, to allow people to create content at scale, we were fortunate enough for our business to really take hold through then. And yeah, in August of 21, adobe came knocking on our doors asking to buy us. So that's a very short story. And now I work for Adobe and have the absolute honor and privilege of building social media technology, but just a next level of scale, which is pretty amazing to see. But today we're going to talk about this term that I've come to.
Speaker 1:And Andy, before you go there, I just want to say so. I don't know if you know this, but my background before all this is B2B sales as well.
Speaker 3:Was it.
Speaker 1:And maybe that's what gives us this different perspective than what a lot of other marketers talk about. And in fact, you and I were both social sellers before. We were social media marketers, right? So I think it's a very, very different mindset and a different approach and and it's like, oh well, now I know why andy has all these great ideas, but anyway, all good.
Speaker 3:No, that fascinating. I did not know that and, without wanting to blow too much smoke, because that's how I came across you when I was just looking at influential people on Twitter, because I think that's where you'd built your largest following at that time. You were early on Twitter, right?
Speaker 1:right.
Speaker 3:And when I read Age of Influence, it's just like you. You know, when you read a book and it just validates your mental model, someone's put into into words what you were thinking all along. That's what like. That's why I love a great book because you read it and you're like I definitely thought this all along, but I didn't have a mental model or a capability to explain it and I think you've done a great job at shining a light on that. But still, I may appreciate that and, I'm hoping, the book.
Speaker 1:You say the same thing once it comes out.
Speaker 3:Having seen the kind of like the preview that you're kind enough to share, I'm sure it will deliver on that. No doubt, neil, and yeah, maybe you're right. Maybe that's what gives us a slightly different perspective on it, where our use of social had to be incredibly intentional and tactical. Right, yeah, yeah, it's probably even better word of of using for it.
Speaker 1:I like to say results driven right in sales, it's all about how much you sold. How much you sold last quarter, how much is in your pipeline for this quarter? Right?
Speaker 3:exactly. You know it's like, especially in in lands of startups, sales floors there's nowhere to hide. You are your results. You are only as good as your last quarter, and that gives you like a level of humility when it comes to choosing the things that you are going to invest your time in. Right, because there is nowhere to hide. So it's not like, oh, that was a good campaign, but, you know, got a few engagements and impressions but whatever, let's move on to the next one, and not saying that marketers are not held to account too, but it's definitely not as cutthroat having been now in marketing roles nowhere near as cutthroat.
Speaker 1:Yeah, If I told my VP of sales the ROI of this was all about engagements and impressions, well you know where I'd be the next day, so it's a different world for sure.
Speaker 3:Exactly that and I think there a another track in that conversation that I think marketing as a discipline has probably got a little bit lost and over the last few years where it's kind of in a difficult position, where sometimes it's like fluffy and about brand and such and sometimes, which a lot of people don't truly appreciate I'm going to talk about brand a bit more today or it's like you know, marketing have just fallen into a lead gen orientated role, which is not really where marketing should play either, and marketing's real job without wanting to sidetrack this conversation is really to level up and understand the strategy, to go to market and be the absolute experts on the customers, to understand the positioning, the value proposition, the strategic lens that you view your business through. That's what marketing is really about. Basically, anything that touches the market is marketing and of course there's a load of tactics that fall off that. And anyway, without getting sidelined too much, on that thread about marketing vSales, yeah, I'll let you get back to.
Speaker 1:You know, this is the end of our conversation on that. You were just about to jump into today's topic. My apologies there, I'll let you get started on it?
Speaker 3:Not at all. Not at all Because, well, we've known each other for many years now, Neil. So these conversations, whenever we meet in person, they seem to go in random directions.
Speaker 1:Anyway, meeting person, they seem to go in random directions anyway. So I love that To guide it in that direction. I once did, you know, I sold mainly to Japanese. I lived in Japan and I mainly sold to Japanese, really big consumer electronic manufacturers. And there was one deal that was, you know, a pretty sizable deal six figure deal, close to seven figures that my boss, the VP of sales, said, you know, I don't you take it off the pipeline, I don't think you're going to get the deal. And I ended up getting that deal and what my boss said was that, you know, neil, he didn't buy from our company, he bought from you. You made the sale.
Speaker 1:And I think this is where the sales background and what we're going to get in today is that we do buy from people we like, know and trust. And I think of the example of my brother who's a winemaker, who has a wine tasting room and when he gets in front of someone talking about wine, his passion, his knowledge, he's able to sell the wine. He's not showing up on social media and it's like, dude, like you are the ultimate example of. I think we're going to get to that today. It's not taking this like oh, you can share wine information but, like you, are the face of the brand in person, why can't you translate that to social media? So I've been working with him and he's doing better on that, but I think it's a message really for everyone listening.
Speaker 1:Whether you're in sales, no matter what place you're in, you sort of got to get out there and sell yourself. And I think those are, with AI content, those are the people that are going to rise to the top, that are going to build brand loyalty and be able to sell. So that's my next introduction to the topic and I'll let you take it away from here, Andy, because once you said you wanted to talk about personality-led growth, I did a little Google search and I realized, well, it was the first time I had ever heard that term, but there's a lot of people talking about this now and in fact, I was listening to a podcast where Amanda Natavadad, the creator of the zero-click content concept, also was talking about the growth of personality brands. So really excited to get in this topic and, without further ado, andy, I'll let you take it away from here, thank you.
Speaker 3:I think there's no and I think, yeah, personality-led growth I think everyone can understand what that term really means and and really it's a recategorization of things that we already know, concepts that intellectually we would understand. Right, as you'd expect, personality-led growth is everything you've just mentioned there, which is like your brother the winemaker, trying to scale what he does outside of those one-on-one interactions and use social media to scale that. So that's a part of it, but it's also a part of it is collaborating with creators, and I think the interesting thing that I've and we've all seen of late is, especially in like D to C, b to C, how this kind of creator and personality led brand has become a thing. Right, ryan Reynolds? Of course, we don't need to talk too much about his endeavors, but it's amazing to watch what's happening for personalities getting behind, either not just getting behind brands, but creating their own brands, and, of course, did they found those brands themselves? Most of them, no, absolutely not, but they've supported them and then they've evangelized for them, and I think this is the really interesting thing.
Speaker 3:Is that you know, to pick on Ryan Reynolds, is Aviation Gin the best gin that's ever been invented? Probably likely not, but is it an incredibly valuable brand. Yes, it very much is why? Because Ryan Reynolds, and it's an incredible halo effect and it's really like the next generation of influencer marketing which has existed since marketing existed. We buy from people, you know, of course, if we see people we like and we already trust endorsing something. But we're now going beyond just influencers getting paid to promote something. You know that's a thing and that's not going away. But we're going to talk about how that will evolve. But that whole kind of personality driven growth where those individuals behind the business whether it's celebrity, or whether it's your brother the winemaker, or whether it's you and your books, et cetera, whether it's me building a software company those personality driven brands will continue to become more powerful.
Speaker 3:And before I kind of get your take as well, neil, I mentioned like that fluffy term of brand and we use that word brand mostly incorrectly, because typically when you say old brand, people think, oh, a logo, your typeface or your colors, etc. That's a component of it, it's your, those distinctive assets. But your brand really, quite simply, to steal Jeff Bezos, is what other people say about you when you're not in the room. It's the impression that you leave with people and that's why I always ask, like every founder, everyone I'm talking to about social media is like what do you want to be known for? Because that people are only going to remember you for one thing. So you want to make darn sure, uh, you're very happy with what that one thing is that you're going to leave people with anyway. That's, that's my quick segue into this topic. What are your thoughts?
Speaker 1:No, that was awesome. And in my UCLA class on personal branding, I begin with defining brand and I go well, you know, here is the American Marketing Association definition and here is what companies would probably say. And then I end with the same conclusion you have with the Jeff Bezos quote, with the picture of it, right, and that is just the ultimate way of thinking about it. And so thank you for bringing that up, and I completely agree, and I wrote about this in the Age of Influence At the end of the day, influencers and they weren't called content creators back then.
Speaker 1:They are today. Obviously, the end goal is really to have your own product. So to see more of that coming is to me, you know, a no brainer. I think that every, every content creator, you know, doesn't want to be relying on the algorithm. They need to diversify their revenue stream, and if they could create their own product, whatever that is, and if you can create a physical product like you know, jay Baer with his tequila is another great example All the better, yeah, great, right, especially if it's part of what you're passionate about as well. So I wanted to ask you, talking on this talk of personality growth, that growing now that we know what a brand is and I think you sort of hinted at this of how do we grow a brand through content and communities. Skipped around it without getting direct to the point. But if I'm a brand and there's social media, there's all these things going on. If I can just focus on content and communities, how do I do that and why does that become a powerful strategy?
Speaker 3:Great question.
Speaker 3:So let's start with the why and let's go into the how. The why is pretty clear because, if you think about what all these creators and influencers are doing that you've just called out as well, neil they're looking at it from the other side, to where we as business owners are. They're like oh, I've got an audience, so now I need to find a product. Building a product in the business is darn hard, as we all know, and, interestingly, you've seen a lot of those influencers, typically in the YouTube space, where they've tried to create D to C brands and it hasn't worked, right. So it's not just because you have an audience isn't necessarily a guarantee that it's going to work, because a business is very hard to build, as we all know. So what we need to think about as business owners, marketers or people that have influence inside our organizations to help steer the strategy, is we need to think about it from the other side, you know. We need to think about how do we turn our business also into a media engine, right? So that's going to require expertise and support beyond you Now, of course. So that's the why. So why very clear? Because, quite frankly, quite frankly right now, brands are going to be strongest when they have a personality that leads them. For all the reasons that we know, brands don't perform very strongly on like TikTok, which is still one of the fastest growing platforms right now, and it's all about personalities. And same with like. How Insta are leaning into creators and all of the social platforms are supporting creators and really creators is just another way of just describing influencers, too, but influencers of all different sizes, whether it's micro, nano, macro or however you might describe how many followers in that sphere of influence that they carry. Now, how we do it getting into the tactical piece. How we do it getting into the tactical piece this is something that took me a long time to figure out, going through the journey of content, cal, and it's still kind of messy and manual and the kind of I'm sorry to say there is no quick win here, and building this type of model in a business is like an investment in your long-term future growth. This isn't something you turn on, like Facebook ads right, you can't just do it immediately, but think about this as a model whereby number one is invest in your own personal brand. Where are the things? What are the things that your customers struggle with, their problems, their challenges, and where's the overlapping Venn towards what you serve? What's your unique perspective on this matter? How can you serve your customers' problems better through content? Pretty simple standard. That's a pretty standard formula to look at this through. So start with yourself and thinking about how you as an individual can do that. Point two is then is there anyone else in your organization that you can get on board to help scale that? And I sat down with the global head of social at PwC a couple of weeks ago and what they've got? 350,000 employees. Not all of us are blessed with an employee base that large, but what was fascinating to me when I was listening to him is that even a brand as strong as PwC, with a huge global LinkedIn presence, they still rely on the impact of their employees to drive growth on social. And that's a business as strong as PwC, so it just goes to show the impact of that.
Speaker 3:So point one, as I said, think about the content that you can create. Think about focusing on one channel. How can you serve your customers better? How can you fill those problem gaps, those problem solution gaps? How do you bridge those for your customers? And point two how can you scale that throughout the rest of your employees? Who else can you get on board with this? Then point three is where it gets really interesting. Is that? Who else can you work with on this?
Speaker 3:So point one I would start with look at your customer base and look at anyone any of your customers that are influential, right? So we had quite a few people in early days of content cal that that had influence, that started using our product. That is a fantastic place to go to to speak to those individuals, understand them and see what the value exchange is. Now the thing that I learned that I well, it was a big lesson for me is that not everyone wants to be paid to endorse a product, and actually some people were offended when I said, oh, like, thank you for supporting ContentCal, it's great that you're a customer, et cetera, and yeah, it'd be amazing if we could work together and we can happily pay, et cetera. They were kind of offended because they use this product. They wouldn't necessarily want to be paid to talk about something. They actually genuinely advocate for it, so they want to share it, advocate for it, so they want to share it. So that then gave me my the kind of initial spark of like. Okay, so scaling my own personal brand, working on my my, the rest of my team members personal brands. Now I'm looking at my customers and going what customers have influence and let's start like an ambassador program. So that worked. That worked really well.
Speaker 3:And then, point four, I'm looking at where are the communities that our audience hang about in, and that's a really easy thing. It's quite manual but a very easy thing to figure out, speaking to any one of your customers to understand how did you hear about us? And also, where are the places that you go to get like social media advice, news recommendations, etc. Because that was our space and very clearly that started to come up. Like a few Facebook groups started to come up, and that's when I started spending a lot of time building relationships with the people that ran these Facebook groups. And this is where having a background in sales really helps, because you're happy to get on a call with someone, you're happy to do the cold outreach, because you're happy to put in the hard yards and the reps that it takes to be ignored numerous times and then be like, oh, just follow up. See, if you've seen my message. I've got a couple of ideas of things we could do together and you know, not all of those land, but some of them did.
Speaker 3:Where I was going to these group owners, these Facebook groups in particular, with a suggestion of hey, I noticed that you've created a lot of content for X topic. You haven't done much on like. My angle was analytics and social media how to truly evaluate social media data to know whether something is good or not. So I was like well, I'm happy to create this content for you and maybe this is a great place to start like some form of partnership, and it's like a soft intro and you've got to look at working with these creators in a really soft way. Number one consume their content and understand the vibe of the group. Number two when you're ready to outreach, don't say, oh, could you share this latest link or post for me, because no one wants to do that, because it's not going to provide any value for their audience. Look at what you can do to help them provide value for the audience, and when you start doing that, you're in the door. And then, once you've got that, these people start to learn about your product.
Speaker 3:And we had so many different facebook groups that ranged from like a couple of thousand members up to 120 000 members. None of them like huge individually, huge scale by themselves, but it creates a wonderful sphere of influence, and this is the bit that a lot of people don't really think about or look at social media negatively in this way. Social media is one big flipping echo chamber and whilst that seems bad when you think about it from like a Twitter lens, it's wonderful for a brand because we all listen to the people in our sphere of influence. We spend so much time when we think about social media we're like oh, what are we putting in our feed? Like what we post in today, that doesn't really matter. The only stuff that really matters is what other people are saying about you. So really, rather than putting stuff in your feed and I'm not saying you don't need to do it, but like rather than just obsessing over your own brand pages and trying to grow followers, I would be investing my time in building relationships with those individuals that have that influence, building those relationships so they feel like they actually. You know they support our products.
Speaker 3:Some people didn't want to be paid, some larger ones. You know there was some financial exchange there too. That's why it's got to be manual, to try and figure out what is the right value exchange, and I think we did some deals with you as well in the past. Neil. I remember reaching out to you a few times as you were definitely on my hit list in the early days and with that, a magical thing that happens, and sorry for the really long narrative on this.
Speaker 1:Not at all, my friend.
Speaker 3:The magical thing that happens is that, even though your follower growth doesn't look very impressive, the one thing that does look very impressive is your share of voice. I probably spoke about this in the last, last session, because I speak about it all the damn time, because it's still and, to be honest, it's the hill I will die on at nil, until until people that, um, that work in marketing, truly understand the impact of this. Social media allows us to light a fire under word of mouth and have that amplified at scale. And that doesn't happen just by one post going viral or trying to figure out the latest Instagram algorithm hack or whatever. It's done, by thinking about strategically mapping out how does a sphere of influence work in your industry and then tracking that through a metric called share a voice. And I religiously tracked us against Hootsuite and Buffer, who are both formidable competition and you know incredible marketers, and we obviously didn't have the resource and the budgets to compete with them, but we got some tactical chops and some tactical execution and that worked really well.
Speaker 3:So, recap, this is a very long how, but it's yeah, it's super important. Building own personal brand. Point two building your employees. Point three is about our customers that carry influence, ambassador program. Point four is about going to those communities that carry that influence too. And then point five is more macro level influences when we're kind of paying for, you know, more kind of larger campaign driven stuff. But really point five never drove as much as we thought it would. A lot of the glory came in.
Speaker 1:Point four Hence me spending a lot of time talking about it. Yeah, no, that was a really fantastic overview and, like with the age of influence, I think we've come to very similar conclusions. So in digital threads and I really haven't been publicizing the name of the book, but I literally have this mapped out, sort of there's an order of things, right, and I believe the first order of things but I literally have this mapped out, there's an order of things, and I believe the first order of things is what I'm calling platform authentic content, content that will perform well based on why people are on that platform, which obviously is related to the algorithm as well. But I think we know what is the content that does the best doesn't always generate the most traffic to our websites, right, but I think that the hurdle is so high now that there are so many good content creators and big brands that can invest a lot of money into doing it For a lot of the smaller businesses, I just you know, do you really have to be your own media? Right, and you know I came to the same conclusion that no, you know, you don't have to be your own media, because if you look at social media, not as a place of 2 billion people to market to, but a place of 2 million people to collaborate with. It opens up your mind to all the possibilities that you talked about and my natural stage is okay, platform authentic content is going to be really, really hard to do. The ROI may not be there, obviously.
Speaker 1:If I was working with a business, I'd say how do we go? 100% UGC or user-generated content, and that's sort of the conclusion I came to. It's really about the user-generated content bringing those high performers from that into a brand ambassador program. And then, yes, the external influencers, but, as you said, they may not be as most impactful because they don't know, like and trust your brand to begin with for the most part, and they're usually talking about a lot of different brands anyway, so the message could be diluted.
Speaker 1:So I think we got there in different ways, but very much similar conclusion and I couldn't agree more with everything you said. So, based on that, now, content communities I just lean in the term user-generated content because a lot of people understand that term and what you may be talking about might be a little bit greater than that when you talk about communities and things of that sort and those collaborations, but you talk about working with influencers and creators to build a media engine for your business, so I'm wondering what, in practical terms, what that would look like for anybody that's listening or watching this video yeah, to be honest with you, neil, it's it the way I describe that sounds more grand than it is, to be honest, and it ultimately is what you just described and I think that's.
Speaker 3:It's such A wonderfully refreshing thing to hear when you think that people aren't on social media to be sold to and when you say this is like 2 billion people to collaborate with. That's where the opportunity exists, absolutely. And you know, it's when we start thinking that social media isn't about us, it isn't a channel, it's just. You know, of course social media can be used like that. Yes, posting content to your feed is important. Yes, all the stuff we know. We don't need to cover those grounds, but we really need to reframe it in our mind to know that it's about our audience, not about us. Social media is a business strategy, not a channel. You know, we need, we need to think social first when it comes to our business, because it touches everything. It's about how people recommend us, it's how people find us, it's it's how people come to know, like and trust us. It's everything. It's a sentiment, it's a brand, everything. And it's how people share feedback with us too. It's everything about you can build a whole business flywheel around social, and that's why it's incredibly important.
Speaker 1:And I think, fast forward to today, where Google's recent changes and the emergence of AI, search social becomes that much more important as a point of discoverability with TikTok and the era recommended media. So I think, Andy, it's just become that much more important over the last six months. And I have another brother who is involved in a, let's just say, like an Airbnb type operation and he was talking about, well, you know, we're going to put together some blog content and SEO and I'm like dude, that's not going to pay the bills. But if you can bring in a few content creators, influencers, to talk about travel in that region, invite them over for the weekend, wine and dine them, get some content. That's where the gold is today.
Speaker 1:Right, and hopefully people listening I know you're nodding are nodding as well, but yeah, it really is different times. I don't think we would have talked about this five years ago. But then again, content creation before the emergence of TikTok. I think brands struggle when Instagram came out, Like how do we visually represent ourselves if we're not a visual brand? And I think brands now have gotten to the point where they can do that. But TikTok, once again, just raise that bar and short form video is not an easy thing to crack.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly, and like if I was going into TikTok now as a brand, I would not be considering what we put in our feed I'd have a profile to link back to, but really care about what we put in it. Yeah, I would care deeply about everything you just said. What that example of your other brother with the airbnb type thing and working with creators that that's the media engine for your brand that I'm referring to. And we need to think about it because you, you know, whilst we could probably grow, we could buy followers and we can, you know, pay for TikTok to promote our account and grow our account to, you know, 10,000 followers, which is fine. We could get that within three months and no doubt there's still power in that, but we could 10x that very quickly by finding the right people to work with and the right value exchange.
Speaker 3:And I keep on talking about this and this is the hard bit, and there's no silver bullet for this and it's not. This is a bit where it gets a bit messy and I think there's still need for like products to come and try and solve some of this, to solve some of this kind of creator and brand collaboration, some of this kind of creator and brand collaboration. There are some products there, but it's still a bit kind of marketplacey and it's still very messy of like how do I do the right deal with someone? How do I know what's right to collaborate with? That's still basically. What I'm saying is that brands need to make the space for someone to spend time focusing on that, because it's every bit as important as having a sales rep hitting the phones, because that, ultimately, is how you drive the demand or create the demand for a business. That will result in sales.
Speaker 1:And to me, that's the sales part, because it's a one-to-one, it doesn't scale right, but it also makes it fun because you're working with people and you're creative and you're developing relationships and mutual value. Right, I mean, this is sales 101 to me. But, yeah, and Andy, I think you should know, and I want everyone else to know, what we're talking about here. Right, I've had a number of people other authors read the same manuscript and what they describe everything we talk about. They just describe it as modern marketing. This is just how it's done today, and I think the bigger brands, the savvy brands, know that, but 99% of the small, medium-sized businesses and entrepreneurs don't know that.
Speaker 1:So that's my mission to really democratize this, and I thank you for joining me today, andy, because it validates that this is the direction you need to go. And there's no, you're not gonna hire an agency and pay them like an SEO retainer for this type of work, and the work is also deep to your brand, because, if we started with the Jeff Bezos quote of what people say about you when you're not in the room, you want to pick the creators you work with based on their vibe, right, and I love that you had also mentioned the vibe earlier and I think that's another important point. I think there's a lot of rabbit holes we can go down here, but I did want to get to. You know, everybody listening. It's like you know, andy, I've bought into this. I want to transition the way we look at social, the way we look at content, the way we look at communities. How do I establish the operating model to bring this to life, and what would your advice be?
Speaker 3:Nice. So my first port of call I can only give my experience. So I tend to not try and give too much advice, because my experience right, because all business contexts are very, very different, but in my experience one of the the highest leverage things that that we did early on, which I recommend based on the results. So we we started a webinar series early on, so it doesn't sound particularly innovative, but the really interesting thing that happened with it is that we spent a lot of time reaching out to people that were very known and respected in the in social media management, not necessarily like influencers, and we kind of went down that track later on, which didn't yield as as well as we hoped, which I alluded to earlier but actually we spent time reaching out to like the people that were running socials from brands that we really respect. People really respect it. So a lot of them in the uk brands that you might not know, so monzo bank in the in really really important bank in the uk, very fast growing and innocent drinks which like the champions of social and UK brand again, but these brands in our market because we're targeting the UK. They are beloved by social media people worldwide, but particularly in the UK as well. They weren't customers. We didn't have a product to serve those folk because they were using Sprout or Sprinklerler the products that are, like you know, next level. We weren't at that, but the fascinating thing that happens, because when we invited them on a webinar, we talk strategy with them. We, you know, have this kind of level of discussion.
Speaker 3:We got known as, like the social media strategy people. We got known as the people that delivered best practice around this. This is what we became known for and because we had such large brands on with us, it gave us a halo effect like, all right, they're working with those types of organizations. Now we weren't. We weren't, not once did we say that we were. But it becomes associated and this is the interesting thing that happens. So, like we ended up having by two years worth of doing this and consistency pays off. This is not a quick win thing. We did this for two years and every week we were having one and a half thousand people join these webinars and wow, yeah, it was. It just became such a thing.
Speaker 3:And all the time we just committed to that journey of knowing that social media is hard. Building social strategies is very hard, all of those user pains we lived because we were social people. It's very easy to then to speak the language of the people because we have true user empathy. We've walked a mile in their shoes, and that really is the start of that operating model. You have to truly, truly understand and obsess about your customer problems and pains, and marketers don't do this anywhere near as much as they should do, and obviously I know this as a founder. I speak to customers all the time multiple customers a day, continually because that's the only way you can truly understand how to market to people, when you truly understand them and their problems and their pains. It's only through that lens of true user empathy do you then build an operating model around. Ok, here's a bunch of things that unanimously, people hate and struggle with. How do we try and plug that gap? And whilst we can't plug it, we can try and plug it through our product, but that takes a long time to develop features etc. But you know we have a product backlog and a roadmap to try and solve that. But in the short term, what can we do? What can we do to plug that gap? Through content, and that's where we're big.
Speaker 3:On the webinars, we did a podcast as well, which wasn't as big as the webinars. Webinars just became our thing and, because we're a startup, scale up, had maybe 40 employees at that point. You've still got a major on one thing. So we majored on those webinars and also a major on one thing, major on two and the community driven stuff that we were talking about. But all of that. So at the top level, we had a wonderful halo effect of these big hitting webinars with people that were hugely respected in the space, which again gave a halo effect to the brand, and that what fell off, that was a whole bunch of leads and new business and it also became a series and because it's a series, it means you can invite the same 1500 people from the last one and get another 1500 people on. So it just we ended up with a database of about 150,000 people that have attended our sessions over the two years. So it became an incredible, just basically became a media company.
Speaker 3:Like had that newsletter, those webinars just became a thing and that could have been a business in its own right, but really it was the brand that propelled us forward, and I'll talk about the net result of that in a second. So that was like the core operating model. That was the thing that sat at the middle and we also used getting a bit tactical. We used HubSpot extensively so we could track leads generated through webinars too. So we had some fancy stuff going on which I won't get into now, but it made like attribution real. I also held back commissions from sales folk that didn't have their lead source correctly input into HubSpot. So I was like I'm absolutely militant on attribution so we could see.
Speaker 3:So that also then meant that we could see the impact on the sales funnel, because our typical sales cycle was somewhere between 45 to 90 days for people that we would want win through, like Facebook ads or PPC on Google, whereas the sales cycle was under 14 days for the people that found us through content. And if that doesn't underpin the impact of brand on business, I don't know what flipping does. So, yeah, that was a hugely important thing to demonstrate to our investors and it really helps when because I ran growth for Content Cal it really helps when someone is both marketing and sales-minded to really bridge the gap between the two to go. Brand is super important. Marketing isn't just about lead gen, but we need to balance that. How do we do balance that? How do we do brand, how do we build brand while still acquiring leads, and how to improve the correlation between the two, and that was a really important thing.
Speaker 3:And the net result to close off this, this story, is that we won I've told the story a few times, so we won the largest rfp that we've won at content cal. It wasn't nine figures like your deal, six figures, nearly seven like your deal, neil, but it was big for us. And after we won it and after I was comfortable that we'd got the contract signed, I asked the guy who made the decision. I was like why did you choose us? You used Hootsuite and I knew who else was in the running, so they're very good products. And his answer was yeah, they are good products and in some areas they did beat you from a scoring perspective.
Speaker 3:There's a couple of features that we're really going to miss by moving to you, but the truth is, andy, he's like I bought this because I believe in you guys and I was like what do you mean? And he goes. I think my team will be better off from using you. I believe in you guys and I was like what do you mean and he goes. I think my team will be better off from using you. I believe in the journey that you're on and I also believe that our team will get better by using Content Cow, thanks to everything else that you do around the business, and I was like I'm done.
Speaker 1:I'm done, Mic drop yeah that is everything.
Speaker 3:It still gives me shivers down my spine now because it's like that moment where you're, like you, just validated everything that I have come to believe and know, and it's also been incredibly painful over the years to explain this type of operating model to like investors or other people that join the business who have come from more kind of performance marketing backgrounds, where you, like you know, put out ads ppc, facebook ads and just drive performance and there's an element of that and that's. There's still a proportion. That's that's useful, but that really should be 25, probably a bit less, of your efforts, whereas the efforts really need to be invested very heavily into demand gen. And when we talk about demand gen more specifically, it's all about that personality driven growth through our own personal brands as an individual, through our employees, through our customers, through, as advocates, ugc and also through creators and communities. So that's it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, andy, I truly think you have another book in you with just what we talked about today, cause I love that third point about talking about the customer, and I'm going to share with you two stories here, if I may, about the customer, of understanding your customer. So my daughter went to a private high school here in Irvine, california, a Lutheran high school, and it's named after someone, and I'm like I wonder who this person is that donated money to create this amazing educational institution. And it turns out the gentleman's name is John Green. John was the founder of a recreational vehicle company RV as they're known here called Fleetwood, which if you're into RV, you probably know the name.
Speaker 2:I've heard of it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And reading about his story, andy and I just found a real quick. He passed away in 2007. But at the time, the RV industry was still in its infancy, with much room for innovation and improvement. John Cream was the man to do it, building Fleetwood and one of the largest, most successful manufacturers in the world, forever down to earth, even as the CEO. He would attend rallies and, while there, thought nothing of pulling out his toolbox and making a repair for a customer. And this is the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company. And this is not only getting to know your customer, but building. That is a personality led brand when I mean whatever we say about Elon Musk. That is a personality led brand when I see his fanboys on X talking about Tesla.
Speaker 1:he has built that using the same concept that you're talking about there. So I love that. But it's also once you do that. It also feeds into that content creation, because now, imagine if John Kareem was still alive today, I'm sure there'd be some RV influencer taking short form videos of, like, the CEO fixing his RV right. It builds that media engine that you talk about and it also helps you cement those. I mean, once you understand your customer, that is the heart of the personality of that brand.
Speaker 1:As you said, if it's all about what people say about you when you're not in the room, you need to know that and you're not going to know that unless you talk to your customer and you know your customer. So that was awesome, I'm sure, andy, when you were in sales, we were always trying to bring executives to our customers to understand their pain points and if our whatever we were selling, if it fixed it or maybe there were new business opportunities. So, yeah, that challenge has not gone away. In fact, it's probably gotten harder because there's so much more remote work going on, more inside sales, less actual, direct, you know, person-to-person interaction with customers. So a great reminder, a great way to end the conversation. There was so much gold in today's conversation and I love the direction you're taking it. You know really offering a lot to everybody who listened. I do hope you write that book, andy. Because I do hope you write that book, andy, because I do think you have a part one, part two, part three right there. Oh, nice Well.
Speaker 3:I feel inspired actually after this conversation, so maybe I'll get pens and paper after this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, now I'd love to tap into your amazing mind once I'm further along in my book to interview you and to get your ideas for that. But, andy, this has been awesome, so tell us. Obviously, for those that have been following Adobe Express, you just launched your mobile app, so congratulations on that. That is a huge milestone. What is next for Andy, what is next for Adobe Express and what is next for personality-led growth? Let's end on those notes.
Speaker 3:Cool, so, yeah, do check out Adobe Express notes. Cool, so, yeah, do check out adobe express. Yes, it's getting a really becoming a very strong tool for both building your brand, both personally and within a, within a team and an organization. So a lot of efforts going into that right now. So, um, and so much is available for free as well. So, you know, good technology has never been so accessible, especially for, like, smes, etc.
Speaker 1:So it's amazing what you can do in Adobe Express in an app and, by the way, there's a more famous company out there but Adobe Express was really built with the current social media user in mind. It's a very, very different concept, very, very different perspective. I find it just a heck of a lot easier to use, get going and get something out the door. So if you haven't tried it once again, I urge you to. So I'll let you keep going, Andy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, all good, yeah, Thanks. Thanks for the support, neil. I appreciate it. And what's next for me? Well, I'll continue working on the product, so always open to hearing how it could improve. And other than that, I've started started another podcast you can find it on spotify on the social 3.0, same as the.
Speaker 3:The book nice and that's it's focused on social for b2b is really as you know, given the last two conversations that that we've had on your podcast, I'm pretty one-track minded as it relates to growing businesses on social, and it's lovely to hear other people's perspectives and challenges and opportunities they're finding, so finding a lot of joy in getting back on podcasting and just having those long, in-depth, meaningful conversations, but just recording it at the same time, which is which is great. I think that's it, to be honest, and the only thing else it's kind of maybe this opportunity for you and I to collaborate potentially. You know you're a prolific book writer. You know you said I should write a book. Hey, why don't we co-author one?
Speaker 1:so maybe that's an idea we can go away and riff on, but that's a very interesting idea and I love you know I I play drums when I lived in japan and I often use the word riff, and I find these podcast episodes when you interview someone like yourself, an innovator, and where you feel truly aligned. It is like you're in a studio riffing with each other. You don't have a song in mind, but you start with drum and bass and everybody comes in and it's a really fantastic term. So, yeah, we should definitely have a separate conversation about that. That would be fun. But truly, Andy, thank you for your contributions. Even while working at Adobe, you still have your own original concepts and you're adding so much value as an innovator to the field. So I thank you for that and I can't wait to see where things go. And yeah, I have like four or five different book ideas. It's funny because once you get creative and you get in the groove, it's like, wow, I can do this and this and this and I urge anybody listening.
Speaker 1:One of the favorite bands I listened to growing up was an indie punk band called the Minutemen, who I doubt you've ever heard of, but they would often end their shows saying write your own book, write your own song, start a band, be creative, go create and contribute in your own way to the world. So that's what I want to offer you. My listener to do the same thing, obviously. So that's what I want to offer you, my listener, to do the same thing. Obviously, create in aligning with building this personality-led growth that we talked about, but also, just once you turn on those creative juices, it can help you in so many different ways, as I'm sure Andy, you found and I found as well. So thank you so much, and I assume we can send people to andylambertcom if they want to find out more about you and engage with you as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Thank you so much, andy, thanks so much Neil, Great to see you All right.
Speaker 1:I think talking with Andy on my podcast is going to become an annual event because we see things so similarly. But Andy is just this wealth of knowledge and really strategic advice that I think we can all learn from and we should all be implementing. We can all learn from and we should all be implementing. All righty well, we are now entering Q4 of 2024. And, as I told my digital first group coaching community in my monthly email providing the schedule for our Zoom meetups, it's here the final quarter of 2024. What have you accomplished so far this year? What do you want to accomplish before year end? And I want to throw those questions at you as well.
Speaker 1:For me, publishing two books over the course of two weeks is about forcing myself to get output into the market. Without product, we can't build our company. Without product, we can't grow. Without product, we can't serve. It doesn't have to be a book, but it should be something that people can pay you for the value you provide, Something to think about for those still in the development phase of products and or services and I say this because a lot of my members of my community are digital entrepreneurs that are still developing products and services or they want to develop new products and services. The end of the year is also about finding different and potentially better ways of doing things so that we can do more with less time. And I go on in how. There's something very specific that I'm doing with the group to increase my efficiency, giving a little case study.
Speaker 1:But hey, if you are a entrepreneur or looking to launch a new product, a new service, you should check out my group coaching mastermind community, Digital First. You should check out my group coaching mastermind community, Digital First. We meet four times a month on Zoom. We're all supportive of each other. We have a number of experts in digital marketing in the group, which is why I often call it a mastermind community, although it started as a group coaching community and I would love to welcome you as well we are a very, very tight knit community. We max out at 20. So everybody always has enough time to get all their questions asked on a weekly basis, and we also have a private Facebook group. So go if you're interested, go to neilschafercom, slash membership, check it out, and if you have any questions, I would love to hear from you. Well, that is it for another episode of this your digital marketing coach podcast. This is your digital marketing coach, Neil Schafer, signing off. You've been listening to your digital marketing coach podcast. This is your digital marketing coach, Neil Schaefer, signing off.
Speaker 2:You've been listening to your digital marketing coach. Questions, comments, requests, links. Go to podcastneilschafercom Get the show notes to this and 200 plus podcast episodes, and neilschafercom to tap in to the 400 plus blog posts that Neil has published to support your business. While you're there, check out Neil's digital first group coaching membership community If you or your business needs a little helping hand. See you next time on your digital marketing coach.