Should Your CEO Be on LinkedIn? E101 with Brad Zomick

Why do leaders still want to “be on LinkedIn”… even when the content makes buyers cringe? 🤳 In this episode, we’re joined by Brad Zomick—executive content coach and host of LinkedIn Famous—to get real about getting senior leaders to create content that actually helps the business (and doesn’t read like buzzword soup). We dig into when a CEO should be the face, what they should post, and how to build an idea flywheel that never runs dry. 

We get into:
✅ Should every exec post? How to decide (audience fit, proximity to customers, time, POV). 

✅Content that works: start with audience pain, not product; find content–market fit; avoid the “jargon casserole.”

✅Pillars × funnel: top- and mid-funnel stories 80% of the time; when to dip into BOFU. 

✅The podcast play: easier than talking-head videos, produces endless clips, and doubles as elite product-marketing research. 

✅Idea pipeline: sales FAQs, customer calls, events, team-sourced prompts—and why thoughtful commenting now has real reach. 

✅Coaching execs: make it easy, measure in quarters (not days), encourage smart risks, and help them find the fun so it sticks. 

✅Gossip corner: AI makes us “bionic marketers”… and why that can help or hurt depending on how leaders use it. 

If your exec wants to “get LinkedIn famous” by next week, play them this—and build something that actually moves pipeline, product, and trust.

We’re Ruta and Emma, the marketing consultants behind Blame it on Marketing. 

If you’re in B2B SaaS or professional services and looking to do marketing that actually drives revenue and profit, we’re here for it.

Visit blameitonmarketing.com and let’s get this show on the road.

Transcript

0:00

hi everybody and welcome back to Blame It On Marketing with Emma and Ruta. We are joined by the fabulous Brad who will introduce himself momentarily. But today we are going to be talking about leadership and content creation. One of our favourite topics comes up a lot because of the world of LinkedIn. And why not have the podcast host of LinkedIn Famous. to kind of guide us on this merry journey. So Brad, over to you. Tell us about yourself. Sure, I feel like it's a long journey. I'll try to tell it in a short version. yeah, I've been in marketing for 10, 15 years now. Came up in the world of content at the rise of inbound. many marketers saw that channel and a lot of channels atrophy over the years and efficiency. Along the way, kind of, guess the life raft showed up, that was LinkedIn. And during that time too, I kind of rose up in the world from, you know, running kind of content to, you know, running teams, overseeing product marketing, demand generation. and held VP roles and a few startups, had a few exits. And the last year or so, I kind of hugged my shingle and put on my consulting hat and I've been helping executives with their LinkedIn presence. And that came to be through during the pandemic. you know helped the CEO get linkedin famous and you know that had a lot of knockdown effects you know she became part of the who's who in the space and you know revenue went up a bunch and you know they raised an a round And now I think she's kind of the marketing vehicle for the company and it was a story to tell. And I actually enjoyed kind of working with executives. I think in-house at early stage, was almost like partnering with a lot of people like this. So it seemed like a natural fit. And yeah, that's kind of a little bit of what I work on. then I have this podcast, LinkedIn Famous, where I have different executives come on and tell their story about why they came to LinkedIn, some of the challenges and things they've learned along the way. And yeah, it's been a lot of fun. Before we jump into the actual topic of getting senior leaders to create content, you have to do us the honor of telling us what is your deepest, darkest marketing fuck up. man, feel like, you know, what the dirty secret is is that marketing is fucking up like all the time, right? Like most of our experience are failures and I feel like there's a lot of them. Like, I don't know, I think back to even like my first, what I used to call a success, you know, I built this blog, you know, and I it up to like, you know, six million visitors a year, but it was all like topical content and it only converted at 1%. That's pretty big fuck up. But I actually think, you know, my... 6 million is decent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was like, it was an affiliate marketing blog, like looking to like online courses and stuff. But I actually think my biggest fuck ups are more, I would say around relationships, you know, early in my career, I thought I knew it all. Right. And I think I, know, always wanted to be right. And I think I, on more, more than one occasion, you know, preferred to be right over, you know, the relationship with, you know, a teammate or even a boss, the sales team. And I think those, when I look back at my career, it's not necessarily like, you know, a failed campaign. It's actually, you know, I think marketing is often like misunderstood and you know, I didn't make it any easier for myself by being, you hard ass. So, um, and I, and I would say, you know, the fuck up is it didn't happen one time. It happened like probably more than a couple of before you realise how to compromise both personally and professionally i think don't we? Yeah. And I think, you know, also the older I got, the more I realized that, and then I got married and you realize like being right isn't always what it's cracked up to be, you know, I'm like, man, I've been doing this all wrong. Yeah. Well, I'm glad you say that because I think, yeah, we deal with a lot of marketing fuck ups of like, you know, actual tactical stuff, but yeah, not getting those relationships right can be really detrimental, especially given that marketing teams are kind of getting smaller and smaller and they have to work more with internal stakeholders. So making sure that you're good and you can collaborate and get stuff out the door is probably a major skill that's going to be very, very useful and was useful as always. Indeed. I can't replace that one. So let's not go there guys. uh Let's start talking about senior leadership when it comes to creating content. Because this has been something, this is not new news. This is something that has gone on for the entire time. I'm sure we've all worked in marketing that there is this kind of demand for senior leaderships, in particular CEOs to be creating content. But where do you think the drive currently is coming from? Obviously, Brad, you talked about that, your experience of working with somebody who did that, who really became a kind of thought leader and then the business benefited. Obviously, there is that side, but do you think they all should be doing it? Yeah, well, I'll address that question in two parts. should they all be doing it? No. And I'll get to that a little bit, how to think about that. But first, like, where does it come from? So I actually think it's always been there, right? And you think about Steve Jobs and Mark Benioff. You know, for Steve's it was always the WD, WWDC, the Apple Developer Conference. You know, that was his big thing. You know, I think Apple also did these at Wall Street Journal Takeovers and, you know, Steve Benioff, I'm sorry, Mark Benioff. You know, he was always out in front, know, historically CEOs are on like the NBC and, you know, getting in the newspapers and stuff like that. And the more charismatic ones brought more attention. And, you know, even you think about guys like Richard Branson. And even Elon Musk, like, you know, their profiles have like, I don't know, five, 10 X more than the company, maybe more than 10 to 20 X. So I think it's always been there because people buy from people they know, like, and trust. And, you know, I don't know, guess LinkedIn kind of put a magnifying glass on that. And yeah, so it's like human nature. And I think what happened is, is over time, you know, the feed showed up, the LinkedIn feed. 2016 and... the early adopters got in and I, know, these like case studies and research started body of research started being built. And I think at this point today, you know, there's, you know, I would say many bodies of evidence that this works. There's, know, there's even like research from like, you know, the big advertising firm Dentsu, they do this, they have a B2B arm and you know, they did a bunch of research last year and all of a sudden like executive Trust factor is one of the top binding signals. And then you don't have to go to look far on LinkedIn to hear like a modern case study of like say Alina Vanderbird from Chili Piper or Adam Robinson or Sam Jacobs. I would say today, It's more like those people create FOMO a little bit and like, you know, people want to be known. I mean, at the end of the day, most of the executives, want revenue. then when they see guys like Adam kind of telling their story about how they bootstrapped the company to twenty five million dollars, like all the back of LinkedIn, you know, I. I had him on my podcast recently and he was saying, you know, he's kind of joking a little bit how LinkedIn doesn't want you to leave their site, but they give you that link, you know, visit my website and something crazy like 95 % of like retention and RV to be traffic, you know, comes from, from that. Um, so anyways, yeah, like I would say there's just, uh, at this point, you know, we're almost 10 years on to the, LinkedIn, the Facebook of application of LinkedIn. Hmm. evidence is clear. And that's why executives want to be there today. They want to grow their business. Now the question is, should every executive be on LinkedIn? I think. The answer is a little bit more shades of gray. So number one, is the audience there? And I think obviously if you're in mainstream B2B SaaS, there's probably no disputing that. But there's all sorts of vertical SaaS where maybe it's not that apparent. And for instance, manufacturing or construction, ones that wouldn't be obvious. For instance, I had a client in health care nursing space where I don't know you think kind of nurses would be on like TikTok and Instagram but at the executive levels like chief nursing officer, VP of nursing informatics you know those people are on LinkedIn. I think there's also a few other factors to consider. Well I think the big one being if it's in their quote-unquote zone of genius right you know if it's something they are good at doing. And I would say the proxy for this is they can go on stage at an event and have the audience highly engaged and riveted by their presence. They could probably do that on LinkedIn. And I like to think of LinkedIn as almost like a... one slide, one story at a time, you know, just kind of unbundled from a conference presentation. And, you know, I talked to that and that's what where CEOs used to want to do. You know, you go back 10 years ago, they were like, get me on stage at the event. uh And now the event's just always happening all the time. The other couple of other factors, I think. I think like that they're gonna like spend time on LinkedIn and they're close to the audience. Or I guess it's kind of linked like, yeah, I do think, you know, in the early stage, the CEO is like very. tied to the audience, they're often doing founder led selling or so that's why it makes sense to be doing the founder led marketing on LinkedIn. So they really know the pulse of the audience really well. And so I think that matters and there is some drift that happens and can't wipe like different people are different companies are different, but as a company gets bigger and it goes from like say 50 to 100 people or 200 to 500, often there's drift and like the CEO becomes the chief problem solver for the company and you know like the buck stops with them on anything that goes wrong so they get further away from that customer and then the last thing is they're gonna be are they gonna spend time on LinkedIn you know because like the way LinkedIn works today You're not really going to get a ton of engagement if you don't actually spend even a few minutes a day there engaging with people who are your customer, your prospects or influencers in the space. So I think that's the calculus for deciding whether or not a CEO of a company should go there. Right. And I would say they should have a point of view. So if they decide it's not for them, at least they understand why. It shouldn't be like, no, I'm not doing that. It's something they should explore. And if they can't do it, they designate some other person in the company. They shouldn't just not do it at all. It's not like, oh, the CEO can't do it. No one should do it. And that's why a lot of companies Especially like larger ones often will have some sort of evangelists, know, and I don't know, for instance, I think Sixth Sense was it hired somebody from that came from like Topo or Gardner. You see a lot of companies, for instance, like an HR space, so hire like a former chief learning officer, chief HR officer, and that person becomes. Yeah. yeah, we totally did that. And we, when we worked together, I'm useful person to have when the CEO can't show up to every event and do every talk and, you know, have someone that's on the same level, at least in the expertise. But I think you make a really great point that not all content is equal. And, you know, if you're going on stage and you're able to engage an audience with the story you're telling, or with whatever information is that you're conveying, that's hopefully interesting. It does make for a good indicator. At the same time, we're all kind of sick of LinkedIn. We're all kind of mad at LinkedIn for all of the cringy content that's out there. You know, the selfies with the no connection posts, the videos of CEOs talking about their product when truly nobody cares. Why is it that people are really not resonating with that content? And what are you seeing now in 2025 that is actually working with the senior leaders that you're working with? Yeah, so I guess at the end of the day, maybe the stuff that doesn't work is probably due to lack of audience research or the not being close enough to the research or the audience. Like, yeah, like I think a couple of things like, you know, people coming up and maybe showing their product and people, people don't want to be sold to, but they want to learn. They want to learn. Everyone wants to learn and grow. And LinkedIn is kind of like that water cooler for talking about learning and growth. So if you can speak to problems that, you know, are pertinent and, maybe even like acute. and how to solve them. I think that's kind of what you think about guys like Adam Robinson, like, you know, what most people don't know is before he was talking about, you know, the I guess the SDR crisis or whatnot, like, how to like, just grow a company bootstrapped and with like a very lean team. Uh, he was actually like retention before the company before R to B, RB to B was about e-commerce and he wasn't an e-commerce guy and he was like doing okay. Uh, and he was posting all these like e-commerce studies for like a year and a half, but like, he wasn't the, um, the ICP itself. So it was like kind of like disingenuous. And I do think that you can get over that the more time you spend with your customer to understand them and you can do that. But, you know, he kind of did a few posts about like just kind of building a public about his own failures. And those blew up. And then they realized like, oh, I can use the same product that I built for e-commerce for B2B and started posting exclusively about B2B. I want to say like mid 2024. So I think a lot of it is like like content market fit, which stems from audience research. and like the more, know, your customers, the more you will not do things that, you know, Piss them off, right? Um, yeah. Yeah. I think that's one of the biggest failures that we see when we start working with someone in the C-suite. I think you probably see this as well, Brad, which is this like, we should do this because other people are doing it. But the type of content I want to post is this. And it's just completely missing the mark because there's nothing in there about. who the product or service actually serves. It's not about the customer. It's basically about kind of fulfilling some sort of egotistical thing that people have idea that yeah, idea that people have about I'm the CEO and therefore people, I'm important and people should want to listen to what I have to say rather than actually thinking, how can I create value for my customers? I mean, I don't know if you've ever had conversations like that where you've had to tackle that. I'd be interested to hear how you guys handle that conversation. It'd be great. Cause I feel like some of the people listening to this would be like, yeah, my CEO wants to do this stuff, but the only thing they want to talk about is themselves. Yeah, I've certainly been there. I think back to like a company, this is like before the LinkedIn days, but like, if you work, the bigger company you work at, like the executives almost speak in like a jargon, you know, like a buzzword soup and whatnot. And I think like the beauty of back then is like, you'd often be doing for like, it wasn't for LinkedIn, it was for like Forbes or something like that, you know, or something like that, You know, and you have like, you know, someone from press kind of coaching them or PR coaching them and kind of eventually editing it to be something that was palatable for the masses. I think at the end of the day, when you're, well, I mean, I think if you're working with someone like that, that should be part of the decision making process. If they're like, I think there can be a little bit of self-serving interest to it, but it needs to be like one pillar of the content strategy. So think like a lot of that is like the strategy and planning. It's like, all right, like, you know, like let's say, you know, at the highest level, we want to be known for one thing, right? And that's the one thing under that there are some subtopics. All right, like, you know, you want to talk about this one thing you have, we have, let's say three or four topics. Here's your one topic. You can do that on, you know, whatever. once a month or something or something like that. I mean, I do think, you know, when you look at some of the brands out there, it's a personal brand. So, you know, I always like to say that the top of the funnel starts with you as a person. So, you know, I mean, for instance, You know, I think the the reason I got into this was was the CEO Kate Stevens. And, you know, she talked a lot about like her personal thing was being a mother and also really advocating for women in the workplace. And I mean, to be honest, those are great topics. Right. And they're maybe it's self-serving for her. But like, really, she's advancing a lot of other people. And it really helped build her. This is not quite what you're describing. But everyone has their passion topics. And maybe for some of these people, it's maybe something that's a little bit less. Interesting to the masses, you know, like their golf passion or something like that But but I would say you kind of limit it and like but like, you know three out of four posts are gonna be focused on the pain of our audience and here are those subtopics and you you kind of put structure around it and I think from there, know giving a good framework for like guess idea capture and You know making sure you have a bunch of topics for them, you know to bounce around. if anyone given topic, it like doesn't really produce any shoes for them on that given day. They're not going to have a writer's block on the other nine. Yeah. as well, the kind of the situation I've been in is less on the personal side, but more on the, because they're the CEO of the company, they're so deep in, their knowledge is so much faster than the normal buyer that they would have that they end up talking at a level which is way too high for their normal like audience. And the normal audience is still like maybe at the beginning of learning about the thing that they do or the problem that they tackle. So it's kind of just like matching. the audience to their knowledge level. So I've done like little, I guess, buyer personas and just put in like, okay, how knowledgeable are they about this topic out of 10? If it's a two out of 10, okay, cool. We're going to have to bring it way down and just, you know, kind of almost start from the beginning instead of talking about like, I don't know, the like, nth layer of the issue, which they're not even around, if that makes sense. that, I think that's it. You, you, that's it. It's the message sometimes. And this happens on people's websites as well as, you know, the content they create, um, on, on LinkedIn and elsewhere. It's that like kind of ethereal, ambitious, this is where you want to get to with our things hype message. And that is lovely. And there is absolutely, like you say, Ruta, there's a place and a time for that. But yeah, if your buyer is not there yet, then yeah, finding a way to kind of cross that. a new thing you're doing like you need to way way way before that think the content pillars are useful because I think like you were saying Brad, I think that framing it like that. So it's like, well, you can, if you want to have your little moment where you talk in the way that you want to talk, that is part of the strands of your content strategy. But like the rest need to be framed. Yeah, absolutely. Around your audience and those sorts of things. And also I agree. Um, for a while, I think we were a bit like, Oh, people talking about their passions on LinkedIn. especially we're very, we're very British. And that to us is like, you know, not normal. And it's something that we've had to get used to, right. And something that I think a lot of us have now embraced is actually, it's okay to talk about the things that we actually care about. That's really good. That's fine. Um, and tried to put our Britishness aside. But yeah, I agree. think framing it in those content pillars is a really useful way of kind of helping the CEO or whoever it is understand that we do want to hear from you. We do want to hear what you think, but it's got to be framed in the right way and that it's not all the time. Yeah, I actually think you make a great point. It's not necessarily, it's not just about the pillars, but it's like, like matrix against the funnel. So kind of what you're describing is like very bottom of funnel technical stuff and like realistically, you know. LinkedIn is the top of funnel discovery tool. You want to stay higher up, closer to the pain. And I think like, to be honest, like if you're staying close to the pain, you know, it's a good place to be because you're attracting people and it doesn't get technical. Now bear in mind, think like, you know, maybe it's like 20 % of the time you can get down to the bottom of the funnel in the weeds of like, I like to say like, so the top of the funnel is, top of the funnel is like, you know, who you are Personally, the middle is probably where the marketing funnel starts, like the audience pain, how to do better, what the future holds for this, what better looks like, or just how to alleviate the pain. And then at the bottom of the funnel is more of your selling conversations. The FAQ, the... you know, guess some case studies and I think to some extent, you know, the technical stuff that like, like a customer might have sometimes, you know, and, but, but I think that's probably that's more for maybe more companies been around for a while that has, you know, big customer base that they want to market to their customer base as well. So I think it's matrix against like the content pillar against the layer of the funnel. And I think it's a good point. Yeah, like you definitely don't want to get ahead of the market and you want to meet people where they are. Yeah. Don't alienate them. One of the things that always strikes my mind, cause some people are natural content creators. know, some CEOs are really great or even just doing the whole shooting match themselves and kind of put themselves forward. We've certainly worked with a few that have been really great and have almost been like, yep, I'll do whatever you want and throw themselves out there. But for those who maybe aren't like that, what kind of content do you think is kind of good for the C-suite, hopefully the CEO, if they're good to be making? a great question. Because for anybody who's ever filmed for their iPhone or they get one of the little stands and try to talk for it or even have somebody there with a camera film for you, it's like really hard. You get all flustered. You do a million takes. And it can be very discouraging. I think of me personally, I probably tried recording for like three months before I put my first video out there. And meanwhile, there was a tactic lying there that like I didn't consider. And that's basically doing a podcast where, you know, the CEO, the executive is a host of a podcast that is looking to solve an audience problem, you know, usually around whatever the business does. And they interview prospects and customers. And what is nice about that is very casual. Like, you know, we're having a little chat and there is that the. What's the word? the I guess like the nervousness and the butterflies like they're not really there because it's just you know I mean you started off it's very casual you know it's like you know like who are you and like you know tell me something about yourself and you know you know tell me about your career and what you're struggling with and then it slowly gets a little bit deeper what are you struggling with what are the things you're excited about and it's just way more casual and you you get a lot of great like sound bites that become the video. And I think, you know, personally, you know, my experience with what that really often gets, I mentioned the contrast to, you know, filming just to produce the video, which is hard to do. But I think what, you know, what most marketers start with is not even that they're like, I'm just going to interview the CEO. And I think that, you know, it's a natural place to start, but it actually has its own set of problems, right? We mentioned the CEO is very busy. So like to get them to come to a meeting every week or even every two weeks or even once a month, that's like asking a lot of their time. And that whole process is what I call a conveyor belt, you know, it kind of like. You know, you just kind of like start here, you end there and the content goes up and then like, you know, you don't come back to it for a while. Maybe you look at the analytics in a while and if it was like a heater, you want to do it again. And if it wasn't so great, you figure out a way to optimize and revisit it. But, you know, it's like a terminal point for the CEO. You know, they come, they like waste their time. I don't want to say they waste their time, but they spend their time with marketing and the content gets created and like they're not It's not like a seed that gets planted, so to speak. um they come, they record, they've done a job, they move on to the next thing. Whereas with a podcast, don't, I'm sure you guys agree with me, but like what I've seen with CEOs who've gone from maybe being a bit more reserved to doing a podcast is that they look forward to it. Cause it's a conversation, like you say, Brad, it's a conversation, it's engaging. still getting to talk about what you do and your stuff, but also hopefully getting to engage with some customers in particular. That's, you know, really important that there are customers on your, on your podcast always. and I think that that does change it. It becomes less of a job to be done that I then move on from and forget about and more, more about something that like they actively look forward to doing, which just makes such a difference to the tone of the content as well. Yeah, it's no longer a chore. And I think that's kind of what happens, especially if you, know, the CEO is busy and they're doing a million different things. And like, to be honest, like to have a good. Jam, you know, is what I, you the interview, the journalistic approach, like they need a little bit of prep. You need to get to some topics. They need to actually think about it. Right. And actually I think one thing that kind of happens is if they don't actually like it in some way, or form after a while, it becomes a little taxing and burdensome and they kind of get frustrated. And I think not only that is like there, you need to kind of like, cause they're just kind of riffing and it's like low stakes. think some people like to start there cause they could just say whatever they want and the marketing makes them that sound great, but after a while it becomes hard to produce. They're either taxed for ideas or they're taxed for time to review the content. What happens is when they have the conversation, the marketing team, you're literally writing from their words. like there's probably less review. And it's also like a mix of the insights from the customer. So I actually, think the one thing I wanna add there is that we talked about the conveyor belt. The podcast becomes a flywheel. And I think... what I think is the most powerful thing. Sure, you know, it throws off a lot of great like little stories and nuggets and you know, you're to get a ton of video from it. There's going be awesome soundbites and but it is this powerful source of product marketing insight. You know, you're going to understand the hopes and dreams and the aspirations of your audience. You're going to get their language, like their terminology that you use in the trenches. You're going to get like the things they struggle with, the things they hate, their pet peeves and, you know, the things they love and like, you know, that is the most important thing. Right, that's the CEO or I mean, it's great for the whole team. The product team should be listed in these calls, like the marketing team, the sales team. There's really nothing better than that for an organization. that's the fodder that feeds positioning, messaging, roadmap, sales talk tracks. And to me, know, like, so it's funny, I had produced like, like, I don't know, like five podcasts in my career. And I think in the beginning, you know, this is going back 10 years ago, like I hired somebody from like the radio world. And he was like a sound engineer. He was like the voice talent. And I was more the executive producer. And over time, I got deeper involved, but I was always more the producer. And the technology got better. I was like making it and helping record it. Like it wasn't until I was the host that I realized The power of the podcast and and that's what it is. It's it's it's the insights that are contained the conversations like these And of course like the gravy is like there's a ton of content and it's not a heavy lift for them and I think as long as they like like to have those conversations and I actually think it could make them You know like, you know, yeah better CEO closer to the customer better inform the whole company on the voice of the customer. Definitely. mean, one of the things that I, so one of my clients, basically based, so within our marketing strategy, one of the key things in there is about making the customers kind of feel like they're part of a community because the particular ICP generally, it's they're like one person teams. So we want them to feel like they're part of a community, part of something bigger. And so that they feel, basically they feel loved. By us and our content. so the podcast forms like a key, key part of that marketing strategy. And it fulfills so many things. Like you say, Brad, it's the product marketing insight that you get. It's the fact that if you have customers on it, there's this advocacy effect where people are like, Ooh, I went on the podcast and they share it. And everyone's like, Ooh, how cool is that? and all of a sudden your brand is, your brand is out there to a new audience that didn't maybe know you previously. and then there's the customer marketing bit, which is the. we have customers talking about the actual challenges they face that we can send to our other customers. So it's like, like you say, it's a really nice flywheel effect. it kind of, I know a lot of people get very hung up on the numbers when it comes to podcasts and the sort of like listenership, but the reality is if you've got a niche podcast, it's about your product and service and it's for your ICP, it's okay that it's low numbers as long as you're using it. effectively, like we've just talked about the product, the customer advocacy, the customer marketing bit. And for the client that I, I did, we did this for, I mean, it, it had the effect we wanted it to have. So we'd get together in person with our customer base and everybody knows each other because everyone's been on the podcast and you're in the room. And all of a sudden the event has a different feel to it because of something that's happened online. and people having conversations about each other's challenges in a way that's more open because people have already heard it online. It's just a really good thing. And then when you've got prospects in the room and those conversations are happening, you're just, it's just win, win, win, right? So it's like something that's created quite authentically with this feeling of wanting to support people in mind, but it has this knock on effect. And I think a lot of people are afraid to do it because they think it's a resource drain. That is just a brand thing. And it's like, no, really, it really, if you do it properly and you do it well, it really does. I've seen the benefits. So I'm waxing the record now because I've seen the benefits. Yeah, I think we all know what happens when you listen to a podcast repeatedly. You feel like you're best friends with the hosts and you know. Yeah, like if you have other fans, you feel like it's a weird feeling. I guess they call it parasocial. Right. And that's what happens to a lot of people who get quote unquote linkedin famous. Everybody feels like they they know them. But like, you know, for the person who is the creator or the influencer, you know, it can be strange for them. But I think one thing you mentioned, too, is like the role of prospect in this. So I think in a lot of cases, this is like another wrinkle or layer, a positive one to the podcast play is that when you interview prospects, it's a nice touch to the sales cycle. So, you know, you're basically getting a ton of research on the account. you pass off the sales team and you might even be able to mine from the episode a very specific nugget. you mentioned you're struggling with this. We might be able to help you with that. And obviously that needs to be nuanced and delicate. you know, necessarily ram down their throat, but it it does become a soft touch at the top of the funnel that creates some warm fuzzies. know, you know, like, I like this brand. They had me on their podcast. Right. So there's the reciprocity principle from see all the influence. Absolutely. And also who doesn't want to be invited on a podcast? it's a thing, Yeah. Exactly. We talked about quite a few marketing concepts like the flywheel, the funnel, content production, all of those things. But are there any other key kind of, I guess, ways that marketers could be helping their senior leaders create good content? Yeah, I mean, I think at the end of the day, it's about kind of making it as easy as possible. Right. So I think I find that like one of the areas where things tend to break down are the source of ideas. You know, having, you know. Yeah, like that to me is where this can all fall apart really quickly. And. I think as long as you have a good framework for where ideas come from and you can help them see the matrix, so to speak, like they'll never run out of ideas. And I think that's where some of these efforts die in that. Yeah, like if, sorry, I don't have anything this week. then, you know, cause like when you start a LinkedIn, like. influence process with a founder or an executive. It's not meant to be one of these things like, I'm going to post every once in a while. It's like we're starting to strain and it's not going to end until we make the brand bigger. maybe the company becomes like 200 or 300 people and we have to replace you with a designated evangelist. And I think like a few easy places to look for those ideas are, you know, the sales conversations, the frequently asked questions, the, you on the customer side. Uh, like the, things that customers are asking about, cause I think that's interesting to prospects too. The event calendar, cause I actually do think events are a good source of ideas, like the conversations that you have with people at the events that people speaking on the panels, you know, so there's like a pre-event and a post-event strategy. Uh, there's, I guess to some extent, like, you know, we talked about, you don't always want to show the product, but when you do have like a product roadmap. You know, that's a good place. think there's like a whole, you know, like I think you can co-op like your whole company in this, you know, like, and make it like a team effort. And obviously, you know, to some extent, like. the team is often the first line of distribution, but when they're feeling like they contribute, they have ideas, you know, that they can contribute to, you know, a C-suite or, you know, an evangelist, you know, that is kind of rewarding for them too. Oh, I had this conversation with an excellent teammate. You can even like tag them in it or something like that. So, but yeah, I think like. If you have a lot of ideas, you'll never run out of things to say. And that's, I think, if you're doing more than, obviously, the podcast is a way. The cool thing about the podcast is it's an idea source, too. I think when you're doing the podcast, these executives will often have more things to say than they would in absence of it as well. But yeah, I think anything you can do to make it easier. Yeah, like whether it's like structure, calendars, tooling, and yeah, especially around, think the commenting is one of the hardest things to do if you're with a busy executive and like coaching and tooling for that. Because I think... Yeah, this day and age the way LinkedIn is headed, you guys have probably seen it too, you can now see the number of impressions on your comments. And when you go to, I think it's like your analytics, and it used to be just search appearances, and now it's search, it's content, and it's comments. So it's almost like a new frontier. And I do think that's often, I think, one of the hardest areas for a lot of these busy executives to invest in. But I think once they start seeing that when they engage in the comments and they're either customers or prospects right back to them, they get a little bit of that dopamine hit. And they're kind of like, I get it. But yeah, think there's like a million, there's all sorts of different things to do to make it easy. The easier you make it, the more engaged they are, the more willing they are to participate over the long haul. Yeah. And I do think as well, just to add to that, I do think back to that strategy point, that is also important. I'm not saying you need to write in there, do a podcast because that's a tactic, not a strategy. Let's be clear. But I think making sure that something in there that leads back to content creation for your audience, you know, like I was saying with my client, it's that... these people work alone, we want to make them feel part of a community and we want them to feel loved by us. So we want to create useful resources to make their lives easier. That feeds into it. then that gives you the kind of, that also gives you the ammunition to push these things forward. where you do need to do things like have a podcast and create video content in particular, that can be quite time consuming. You know that it's been worth it because it's part of the strategy. the metrics to back it up. there's.. and everybody gets the good feels as well when they're like.. people liked my post. so yeah. all of that combined i think is.. is the winning.. for me the winning recipe. i don't know if you'd add anything, ruta. No, I couldn't agree more. It has to be part of your strategy and process. Like you can't just show up usually and start posting just because you fancy it. It's never going to last that way. I do that all the time and I then just fall off the cliff. So yeah, fall off the wagon. So it makes sense, right? Make it part of what you do and part of a broader objective basically within your business. Yeah, I think there's one thing I might add there is that going into the process, there is a decent amount of coaching and priming that needs to be done. Because I think, you you get a lot of these founder CEOs are like, Oh, I saw, you know, Sam Jacobs do this, I really want to do this. But I think what happens is they often get this feeling. It's like, you know, the analogy of going to the gym. they want to get buff, but they don't want to go to the gym. So they have to realize that it's a participatory sport that like, hey, you know, in marketing, you know, we're your trainer, but you still have to come to the gym, right? You know, you also got to tell them, Hey, this is going to take a long time. You know, this is not one and done. Like, you know, so like, you know, be long-term greedy, right? Don't think of this as direct responses. Sure, sometimes there might be like leads that fall off the tree right away, but this is something we're gonna measure in quarters and years. I also think there's like from a... semantic and like editing standpoint, like not to get too caught up in like the perfection of the words and how things that I do think like the combination of like the long time horizon to see results. And, you know, being like obsessive about every line is a toxic combo. Like people can get really frustrated, you know, I didn't like the way this was and like, you know, the post bombs and, you know, like those type of that mindset over time. And then you did is they should realize that, you know, there's going to be, you know, things that like, you know, pop off. There's going to be things that kind of sink like, an anchor. And that's part of the process. You know, we need to look at that stuff and we need to optimize. I think also like there needs to be a little bit of encouragement of like risk taking and being frisky because like, I don't know, like depending on the category, you know, the feeds are quite crowded these days. Right. you know, if you're in one of those like, you know, vertical SaaS category, that are five years behind, that's good for you. But I think mainstream SaaS, it takes a couple of years to really become part of the who's who. And I would say the one thing I think that is the most helpful is to help the executive find the joy in it for them. Because that's human nature. like recede from pain and frustration, you gravitate towards things that you enjoy. And I think, you know, for some people it's the storytelling, for some people it's the engaging, for some people it might be the spotlight. You know, some people it might be, you know, the feedback loop. Or for some people it's like the long-term of like what I know this is gonna do to my business. know, derive enjoy from that is what sustains this over the long haul. And because it could be a slog. So and then so I think like, these are all the things you need to tell this person like, hey, this is a marathon, not a sprint. And like, we're going to be here for you. But like, you know, get ready. Yeah, get ready, do some training, So before we let you go, Brad, have you got any marketing gossip for us, either something you love or hate that's happening right now in the world of marketing that you want to share? okay, so... I well, I like this and I don't like it, but I kind of like, well, obviously AI is like really high. It's a double-edged sword. What I like about AI, it's like, we're all like bionic marketers now. You know, I used to play this game when I was a kid called the bionic commando on like Nintendo. This kind of dates me a little bit, but. I think it's kind of cool, like especially being part of an early stage company, how much you can do. You're like a one person wrecking ball. What I... Or like the Kool-Aid man. Or Kool-Aid woman, know, bursting through the wall. Do you guys hear about that, Kool-Aid challenge that's happening with teens these days? All right. So out where I live, I live in Long Island, the suburbs of New York City. And we have these like white PVC fences and like teenagers will like drive around the middle of the night. And they will like like if the fence is on like a corner on a street, they'll like get out of a car or jump off their bike and they'll like jump through the fence like the cool. Homeowners don't like it. Homeowners don't like that. But yeah. can imagine you. But I think it's kind of cool what like a under resourced marketer could do today. On the flip side of that, what like really is unnerving is that like these like, you know, bigger, you know, more well capitalized teams, you know, management is like using this as like a carte blanche excuse to be like, okay, we're gonna like. Yeah, bye. We're gonna like, you know, cut our human resource expenses and we're gonna like raise our EBITDA and our stock price all at the expense of people and that sucks. I feel like I, yeah, seeing those headlines like makes me sad. um yeah, we feel that as consultants because the, yeah, they're like, we're like the Swiss army knife of marketers now, right? We could do all this stuff, but at the same time, the fight to try and convince people that you still need good marketers to come equipped with the AI and know how to use it responsibly is the problem. And I think... Ruta said this, I'm gonna steal this from her, she's a very wise woman. But I think you said, Ruta, that like people, there will be a flip round for this because people will be like, everything is just shit, AI, content, and everything else is just a bit, it's all become a bit meh. And then hopefully it will flip back round where people are like, no, we still need the good marketers. I hope. a technology adoption curve, right? Like there's going to be a little, little dip at some point where we're like, Ooh, we weren't quite ready for this. I don't know. Maybe not if AI gets significantly better over the next couple of years where it can judge marketing itself. Maybe not. I don't know. Um, but that's usually a little, and then we go back up. It's also a little bit dangerous. I think, I mean, like, you know, I think we've all had those moments are like, wow, this is useful. And like, what happens like, when it like, I don't know, like there's a cloud flare outage or whatever it is. And it's out for two, three days or like, you know, like marketers think again. uh Yeah. Well, we have to write the copy. So, so I think, Yeah, it's a little bit scary, you know, because it's become like very quickly in the span of probably, I mean, obviously it was around in 2022, but like really 2024 was like the year of mass adoption for all these AI tools. And, know, even like, yeah, chapter GPT alone is like super powerful, but like, you know, there's also a lot of these, like, you know, the walled garden, you know, SAS tools that have it embedded and you know, like the more of like the, I guess the agency and the actions that it like absorbs, you know, like it's like you become increasingly reliant and like when the technology absorbs the job, it's like, okay, how much is left for us to do? is also what's the purpose of a company anymore if it's not to enrich people, right? Like why have a business if there's nobody working? Minus if you're the business owner, right? with a lot of people that I'd ask that question about right now but you know they're like just bodies moving around but yeah. what's all of this capital doing if it's not, you know, yeah, if it's not even like making the economy go around because people earn money and then they spend money and you know, all of those things. So yeah, it's a bit existential, excuse me. universal basic income, we're all just living tiny pods. Okay? Like the economy is fucking trash everywhere. Like universal basic income, my ass. Yeah, yeah, it is existential. I definitely, I think a lot about it myself. Maybe there's, I don't know, we regress and we go back to our agrarian ways. Yep, gonna farm the land, yeah. and I are ready to farm the land. We've been, we've been prepping. Yeah, I've got some land. I know how to grow vegetables. We can do this. All right, we gotta do business. Brad, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It's a pleasure talking to you, like always. We also have an episode on Brad's podcast, LinkedIn Famous. If you wanna go check it out, it's talking about kind of our, not rising on LinkedIn, that's a weird thing to say, just our journey on LinkedIn with Blame It on Marketing and our personal profiles. So yeah, hopefully we will see you soon and yeah, go over to Brad's and have a listen. Thanks for having me guys. It's been a pleasure. you.