Building a Content Culture: Why Some B2B Teams Create and Others Can’t | B2B Podcast - Content Wars EP21

You won't be asked anything you don't know.
Our goal is to make you look like a rock star.
If you're uneasy, great, that means we need more repetitions.
You probably didn't go to your first trade show and go, "Man,
I'm gonna walk in and nail this.
I can't wait for them to bring up prospects so I can
just knock 'em down one at a time.
" That's not what happened.
You were twenty four, just out of college, you were supposedly an
expert, and you were questioning yourself if you even knew the answer,
but then you got to that trade show and asked that question,
and you were able to answer it, and now you're forty four
and you get asked to do that, and you're like, "Yeah, I
can answer any question, I don't care, because I'm an expert and
I know it, I'm confident and I know that I can deliver.
" That same thing exists with video.
Get, get some reps in, say some things, get the knowledge that
you can deliver within those arenas, and it, and it creates a
different expectation for you.
So you ran into an interesting scenario the other day where you
came across two different companies seemingly similar from the outside, but
you ran into a situation that proved a stark contrast between the
two. Definitely.
So the two different companies are similar and dissimilar.
So they both serve the oil and gas market, they're both greater
than two hundred million in revenue, they both have a significant amount
of employees, they both have very smart people that work for them,
and they both have a need to create content to get their
thoughts and ideas to their market.
And that's where the similarities end.
Okay? So, kind of walk me through what you saw, how they're
different, and why you think that is, 'cause I think that it's
an interesting example that I wanna lay out for people to be
able to hear, because I think there are gonna be some people
that maybe self-identify on the one side, and then there's gonna be
a-- probably the majority of people who are on the other side
where they look at it and they say, "Ah, that sounds like
my company, that sounds like where we are, that sounds like
kind I think it's gonna be a really good episode to be
able to break those down.
Sure, so let me just set the table in how I realized
where that separation was.
So, we'll call them company A and company B, right?
That was real creative.
Yeah, we're gonna protect the innocent.
So, company A.
We had them in our studio, the CEO was in here, we
started talking about content and thought leadership and really capturing those, those
moments of genius coming from the brilliant people that work for him
and getting them in front of his target audience.
His exact words were.
We're kind of the best kept secret.
We have a brilliant technology, very few people know about it.
Which we hear that a lot, all the time.
Like, we're the best kept secret in our industry, and it's like,
it's almost like a- Positive thing, but I think that there's underlying
ramifications that they don't necessarily consider.
100%. So that, that was his goal, and we started talking about,
if you, if you got your smart people on camera talking about
the smart things that you're doing, hey, guess what?
It's not gonna be a secret anymore.
He was bought in.
He loved the idea.
Fast forward about two weeks, he's trying to get that going, he
hands that off to his marketing team, his marketing team picks up
the torch and starts running with it, and then they run into
opposition. And basically where we got to with them was we can't
create the content that we want to create because our subject matter
experts. Don't want to be on camera, don't really
want to create content, they don't wanna be involved
in the way that we would need them to be involved, so
in order to have a prayer of making this happen, we have
to- Tiptoe around them and invite them to little micro moments
of "maybe they'll be involved in this content, or maybe they'll do
this, and we have no power or influence or authority in this
realm. We're pretty much at the mercy of the subject matter expert
class, and if they decide to participate, they will, and if they
decide they won't, then they won't.
" We'll let you know when we can change that or when
we could figure out a way that we might be able to
get someone involved at some time, maybe.
And all of that is a giant hurdle to the directive that
the CEO wanted them to execute on, which was: "We need to
get our smart people on camera, we need these ideas heard, we
want our audience to know what we're up to.
" In that same day, I, I literally had that meeting with
that marketing team.
It was very deflating, not just for me, but for them.
They don't have the power, they're not set up for success.
They want to create the content.
They said, "This is brilliant, we, we love how this is put
together, we love the quantity of content that we could get, we
see the value across the board, but we've got a slight hurdle.
We can't get our team to participate in the way that they
would need to to make this successful, so I have that meeting
in the morning.
I leave the office and I go to a shoot that we're
having at a client's office that afternoon.
Is this client?
B. This is client B.
Yeah, yeah, for those following along at home, this is client B.
We show up, standard shoot, they have a, a new HR initiative
and they're, you know, they have a scripted piece that one of
their executives is delivering on camera, and while we're there.
One of their marketing team says, "Hey, look, I'm also trying to
create some thought leadership content on this really cool initiative that we're
working on.
I really wanna bring somebody in and just, just Q&A, just have
them just answer some questions real quick about what we're working on
because I wanna turn that into social content that we can put
out from the company.
" Of course, we said, "Yeah, that sounds great.
No, no problem.
Let's, let's figure out how this works.
" She literally gets on the phone, calls the subject matter expert,
is like, "Hey, we're thinking about this.
" She leaves for like fifteen minutes and comes back and says,
"Hey, he, he's on board.
We finished the first part of the shoot.
He shows up, we set him up on camera.
She asked him, I think, four questions, said, "Hey, get on camera.
This isn't stuff you don't know He
got on camera, answered the four questions, answered them rather well.
I mean, he, he wanted a little bit of space, hey, maybe
I do it one or two times and we take the best
clips, but honestly, he answered all four questions brilliantly the first time,
and he was with us for a total of fifteen minutes maybe,
and then he went back to his day.
The difference between company A that can't get their subject matter experts
on camera to participate in anything, and company B that can
literally call on a subject matter expert almost on a whim and
say, "Hey, we want you to get in front of a camera,
we want you to share your expertise, we want you to be
the thought leader that we hired you to be.
That difference is huge when it comes to whether you are or
remain the best kept secret or whether your audience understands the
value that the company can create.
And it's weird for me who saw kind of that, that separation
in one day.
I literally have one marketing team that can't get it done, not
because they can't get it done, but because they weren't set up
for success, and then I have another marketing team that literally gets
it done on a last minute basis because they have an idea
in the moment and have a team that can support them to
do that.
And I think that, that difference needs to be addressed, needs to
be talked about, and we need to say, "What's the real difference
in these organizations?
Or more importantly, how would an organization move from an environment of
company A into an environment of company B?
That's a really great breakdown between A and B, and I think
that there's, whatever the kind of excuses or reasons for company A
or why companies like company A, never get around to thought leadership,
I think there's all sorts of things like, "I'm, they're too busy,"
or, you know, "You're trying to protect them," but help break down
for the audience, what happens?
When marketing treats these content requests like favors rather than if it
was just a part of the business or part of the job
function. And that's essentially what it comes down to, i-i-is that lack
of authority within marketing to say, "Hey, this is what we're gonna
do, and we need you to participate.
" It is literally asking for a favor.
Company A was asking for a favor, "Hey guys, I have this
thing, it's not part of your job, I was wondering if you
could come in and maybe help me out.
" And then the answer ends up being- Being no for whatever
reason they manufactured to not do it.
Whereas the other one was, "Hey, we have a video crew here,
we need you talking about this thing, when can you come down?
" And the thing that I think that you said just a
minute ago that was really interesting was they sat them down and
they talked to them about things they already knew.
I don't know why, I don't know if it's imposter syndrome, I
don't know whether it's the fear of the lights and the cameras
and everything, but there's always this like fear of, "I'm not gonna
We're not asking you the Pythagorean theorem, we're literally asking you things
that you are an expert in, like the reason that you're hired
for this, so none of this is new.
I'll tell you, the stuff that that, geologist was talking about that
particular day from company B might as well have been some wacky
theory that, only college professors have ever heard of, but, he was
going deep on some basins and some technologies that I, I honestly
don't even know what he was talking about.
So he knew what he was talking about, I didn't, which is,
is perfectly fine.
I'm, I'm the video guy, he's the geologist, all that, all that's
expected, but.
Yeah, at, at no point in time for any thought leadership content
is someone gonna parade out cameras and be like, "Hey, hey, bro,
talk about this thing you don't know about.
That's, that's not productive or helpful for anyone.
" So yeah, I mean, part of it is- An expectation of
what does that look like for you as a thought leader?
One, are we gonna create in our thought leadership class,
whether it be the leadership or subject matter experts, are we gonna
create the idea that they would be on camera?
If we are gonna create that idea, who is that expected of?
Is it across the board?
If we have eight hundred people, is it that we could pull
any one of the eight hundred people at any time and say,
"Okay, you're on, let's go"?
I don't think that's necessarily realistic.
But if we can build a group of people where we say,
"Hey, it might be possible that you might be asked to contribute
in these things, whether you are or not, yet to be seen.
But it's possible that you are.
" And then there's a second step to that, which is, "If
you are.
" Here's what we're going to expect.
For starters, we aren't going to expect perfection.
You're, you're not perfect.
You don't know everything.
So come, say what you know, contribute what you can.
If you're wrong It's fine, we'll cut it out, we won't use
it. If you don't know the answer, guess what?
We won't use it.
We'll only use things that make sense for you in context of
you, and the things we're gonna ask are about the things that
you should know.
It's the stuff that you're working on daily.
It's, it's the same thing if someone walks in your office and
say, "Hey.
Tell me about this little aspect of this piece that you're working
on. You'd be able to do it.
Those are the types of questions that should be coming down the
interview cycle when you're in a thought leadership production event, but
if they don't know that, if they don't know- Oh, you know
what? I'm, I'm only gonna be asked things that I know about.
I'm allowed to not know.
I'm allowed to be wrong.
If they don't know those things, it creates a little bit of,
"Oh, oh shit, I'm gonna be asked this, and I, I gotta
get on camera.
It's permanent.
I don't know it can be cut around.
I, I have to nail it.
Or I'm gonna look maybe like I don't know what I'm doing,
which is bad for me because I'm a subject matter expert, right?
So setting that table with whoever you might expect to be on
camera is gonna be a huge benefit so that we kind of
alleviate those fears before it's, okay, we're on in five.
One of the things that we have to really drive home is
that it is important that we have to normalize the creation of
content and normalize the participation in that.
Yeah, normalization is gonna be the first step.
It has to be expected.
If you walk into somebody's office and you're like, "Hey, bro, we
got cameras in the next room, come on over, " they're gonna
tell you, "No, no, thank you.
I don't know what you're talking about.
This is a surprise.
I don't like surprises, and I don't like 'em especially when you
are seemingly gonna put me on a stage and have me dance
for something that I'm unaware of.
" It needs to be an education process where you're bringing people
in, you're spreading the awareness, and you're not just saying, "Hey, Chuck,
you're gonna create thought leadership content," you're saying.
Hey guys, we have a situation.
We are the best kept secret.
We're working on the coolest shit.
You guys are rock stars.
P. S.
Nobody knows it.
We need your help so that our audience understands how unique we
are, how cool we are, how advanced we are, how much we
could help them accomplish if they let us, but they're not gonna
do that if they don't know how awesome you guys are.
We hired you for a reason.
We put you in these positions for a reason.
We give you a paycheck for a reason.
You're a rock star.
It's time to rock.
This is one way we do that.
We do it on client work.
We do it on the product we're working on.
We do it with the service we deliver.
We do it when we create content.
You are part of that equation.
You're important to this organization.
You're important to our message that we're delivering to our audience, and
this is how this happens.
Let's get comfortable.
Let's figure this If we have an organization that's taking it seriously,
leadership probably isn't just saying "Hey, you guys are gonna get on
camera and dance.
" They're probably doing it themselves.
They're leading by example.
They're showing what it looks like to get in front of a
camera, what it looks like to be asked questions that are on
the fly sometimes.
What it looks like to deliver that performance and be okay with
it. They should, in my opinion, model that example that could be
followed by other leaders in the organization, your, your, your thought leader,
group of people, your subject matter experts, they can see that you're
not just telling them to do something, that you're also saying, "Guys,
we're in this together.
" And You're taking the actions that prove that that's really the
case. Yeah, and I think that's a good point because I remember
being at a client's office where they had about six
subject matter experts lined up and the CEO, and they were all
gonna talk on, you know, different areas that they were able to
speak on, and it was really interesting because all of the subject
matter experts were really, really sharp.
They were really refined with the way they talked about it, and
we actually see this a lot with some CEOs unless they've had
media training.
But But the CEO was the worst out of all of them,
but the end result, the end video looked really good because of
power of editing.
But most of the time, those thought leaders only see the finished
video. They're, they're never all together, and so it's really interesting to
see them get this apprehension of like, "Oh, well, I, I'm never
gonna look as good as, you know, our CEO does on camera.
" But in reality, like, you're probably good enough with the information
you have and the combination of editing.
But I think that that's an often An overlooked component.
Yeah, and to your point, that happens a lot.
So the CEO has a much different role than your subject matter
expert. The CEO's very passionate about the thirty thousand foot view of
what the company's up to, but a lot of the CEO's role
isn't actually hands in the dirt doing the work all the time.
So as much as they might be passionate about what the company's
up to, the actual functions that you need to share within your
thought leadership sometimes escape- They don't have the passion about it because
they don't have the same knowledge that your subject matter experts do.
And this isn't all, but most subject matter experts, if you get
them talking about what they're doing on a daily basis, about what
they're passionate about, about the cool stuff that they're doing, it comes
out in the content that they create.
They don't say, "Yeah, they don't shut up.
They don't shut up, yeah.
Yeah, that, oh, fair enough.
but..." They talk with passion, they talk with expertise, they, they give
you the details that you wanna know because they're excited about it.
Yeah. What they fail to realize is that they're gonna get excited
and they're gonna say things that are great and they're gonna say
things that aren't so great, and the things that aren't so great
can be cut out, the same as what would happen with the
CEO. We're only gonna keep the best pieces that make you look
like a rock star, we won't keep the pieces that make you
look like you don't know what you're talking about if they And
that, that's true for everybody.
Like that idea of content and what it is, once
we get aware that we can cut anything out.
In fact, if you get on there and go, "blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah, "and you don't have anything to say, guess what?
None of that is gonna turn into content.
It is up to you.
To have something to say that is going to contribute to the
conversation and that is worth keeping in the content to be distributed.
You're gonna say something.
If you're being asked to be on camera, you're a smart guy
or a smart gal.
There's a reason you're being asked.
People have heard you speak, in meetings, in conversations, you
are. Being asked for a reason.
You know things, and you communicate well enough for the organization to
trust you, you just have to trust yourself a little bit.
And to your point, I think that those expectations, those different points
of how to handle, you know, what you say will or won't
be used depending on, you know, the quality of it, all those
things should be communicated by the CEO, should be communicated by the
top level of leadership, because in reality, I think when we look
at company A versus company B, you have Company A who really
was trying to treat this as kind of a side project, they're
trying to, you know, a-ask for that favor, and there's all these
unspoken things and it creates tension versus company B where it is
from the top down, and the marketing team can help facilitate it,
but the leadership is explaining it and casting the vision and setting
the expectations, and I think that's where the core difference lies, is
it's not marketing treating it like a side project.
Project, it's the leadership treating it like it's an actual initiative and
explaining why and kind of going through what to expect with that.
And I think that is the core difference that will make or
break those two differences between A and B.
That's definitely the core difference is that prep work and having an
executive team that stands With the marketing team, it says our initiative
is to get the message out, marketing is in charge of doing
that, you are tasked with this, no one is going to say
that they're not doing that.
In company A, you have a CEO who's motivated, who wants the
message out there, who wants this message created, handed it off to
a marketing team, and unfortunately, your marketing team in this case isn't
empowered to actually make it happen.
Now, I think that they'll correct that, I think that that's probably
what they're actively doing right now because they recognize that.
It doesn't work very well.
The CEO wants something and we can't get it done.
Something has to change here, and they're trying to figure that out.
But if the CEO, in the instance of company B, or
the leadership team in general, has a, been on camera themselves and
set a standard of "this is what we do to communicate, "and
selected other individuals who also should or could be on camera as
well, and Gave marketing the directive of "We want you to share
our message, and you're in charge of this.
You have the authority to call on this subject matter expert or
that division leader or this particular person that's working on this project
because we need to share messaging around these things.
You now have permission to have them be part of that content
versus in company A.
When they went and felt like they had permission, "Hey, we wanna
get you involved in the content, " what they got met with
was obstacle after obstacle.
"No, we don't want to do that.
We, we can't.
We're gonna do it a different way.
" They felt like they were in charge.
Marketing can't ask us to do that, or if they do, we're
just gonna say no, we're gonna do it differently, or maybe not
at all.
That, that authority, authority within your subject matter experts versus within your
marketing team when it comes to creating of the content is the
problem, and that authority didn't come from marketing, it didn't come from
subject matter experts, it came from, in this case, I believe, a
lack of communication around what the company was.
up to from leaders to probably both parties, maybe even at the
same time.
Hey guys, this is what we're doing.
We're going to create messaging.
These are guys and girls that know things.
These are people that have the ability to capture what you know
and package it up and distribute it to our audience.
You guys are gonna work together.
You know things, you can package it up and distribute it.
Together we're gonna create content.
When they call on you, you say yes.
It's not that hard.
But that conversation was never had within that organization.
It has been had in the other one.
So let's say that you are in the bucket of organization
A and your CEO hasn't talked to the team about a content
initiative in any way.
Break down how should the CEO approach that conversation?
What should he say?
What should he include?
What are the key points that you need?
Because if you just go in there and you're like, "Hey, we're
gonna create content, " like we, we've, we've kind of oversimplified it
for the sake of this segment so far, but it's like, it's
not just like, "Hey, you know things, you shoot things, go away
and be happy.
" Like, what is the reality of like, as a CEO trying
to get your team all on board for this initiative What
are the things a CEO needs to say or needs to communicate
to make it a cohesive initiative moving forward?
I think many times it's actually gonna start with the marketing team.
The CEO probably isn't gonna realize there's a problem.
In fact, in company A, I bet to date, the CEO hasn't
yet realized.
That his vision of creating this content isn't actually achievable because the
groundwork hasn't been laid yet.
He will realize that, but I don't think he has yet.
The first people to experience it was the marketing team.
They said, "Hey.
" We wanna create some content, we wanna get y'all involved, and
they said, "Whoa, hold on, bud, we're not gonna do that.
" "I'm not, I didn't sign up for that.
" "Right.
So the-- that's where you, you know, hey, we have a disconnect
between what needs to happen and what is able to happen currently.
So when marketing feels that, I think that's where that tension's gonna
show up initially.
They need to approach the CEO or whoever the appropriate person is
going to be and say, "Hey, I think we have a, an
issue. " You.
Have a vested interest in our audience hearing from our best and
brightest people.
They don't wanna be heard from.
That's where we are right now.
From the executive's perspective of.
I want our best and brightest to be heard, they're not wanting
to be heard.
How do I approach that with them?
I think it's a multi-step conversation, and, you know, I think some
of the tendency on some of the CEOs I know is just
kind of walk in and be like, "Hey, boys, you're doing this.
" That's the wrong approach.
That's not going to resonate very well with your team, right?
What does resonate well is if they truly understand what's at
stake, why they're being asked to participate to begin with, why are
they the ones that are being singled out for this?
And ultimately, what are we hoping to accomplish here?
If, if somebody walks up and says, "Hey, you know, Jim, we're
gonna have this, this conference that's in your realm of expertise, marketing's
gonna be setting up the whole booth and handling all of that,
we, we just wanna pay for you.
To go to that city, wherever it is, we'll fly you there,
we'll put you up in a hotel, show up at the trade
show, hang out at the booth for a couple hours, talk to
some potential customers about all the smart things that you know.
You're gonna say yes, oh yeah, of course, no brainer, no problem.
It's the same thing.
We just have to communicate with them of, we, we know why
we go to the trade show.
Well, there's gonna be customers there, there's gonna be competitors there, there's
gonna be talks there.
I'm gonna show up as a representative of the company in case
I need to be called on for my expertise.
And when they call on me and say, "Hey, come over here
and talk to this potential customer about that thing you're working on,
" I don't I don't know, this is- that's probably too much,
it's not my job description.
I- that's not the reaction.
It's, sure, let me talk to them, let me- let me tell
them what I've been working on, 'cause I'm smart, I'm confident, I
know that this is different, and I'm excited to communicate it.
That's how you need to position it to your team.
That's important, we need you to keep doing that.
But we also need you to do that outside of a one
to one conversation.
We need you to do that to our wider audience.
This is how we're gonna get this done.
We as a company are gonna package our thoughts so we can
deliver it to our audience.
You are the person with the thoughts or the people with the
thoughts. Marketing is the people with the ability to capture those thoughts
and put them in front of our audience.
Here's what might be expected of you.
We might have camera crews in, we might ask you questions, we
might get you involved in roundtables, we might do question and answer
sessions, we might do a lot of different things.
All about them all ahead of time, hopefully.
You won't be asked anything you don't know.
Our goal is to make you look like a rock star.
If you're uneasy, great, that means we need more repetitions.
You probably didn't go to your first trade show and go, "Man,
I'm gonna walk in and nail this.
I can't wait for them to bring up prospects so I can
just knock 'em down one at a time.
" That's not what happened.
You were.
Twenty four, just out of college, you were supposedly an expert, and
you were questioning yourself if you even knew the answers, but then
you got to that trade show and asked that question, and you
were able to answer it.
And now you're forty four, and you get asked to do that,
and you're like, "Yeah, I can answer any question.
I don't care, because I'm an expert, and I know it.
I'm confident, and I know that I can deliver.
" That same thing exists with video.
Get, get some reps in, say some things, get the knowledge that
you can deliver within those arenas, and it, and it creates a
different expectation for you, even, even the guy from company B that
came down initially was saying, "Hey.
I might want to do this a few times.
He did the first two twice.
On the second one he said, "I feel like my first answer
was better than my second one in both of these instances.
" And on question three and four he didn't do a second
one. He just said, "Hey, let me just say what I gotta
say and I'll be done with it.
" And he did a fantastic job because he became confident in
one sitting.
He did two where he wasn't sure, and the next two he
did and he was sure.
And honestly, they're all gonna turn out Subject matter experts, usually,
I can think of like two examples where this isn't the case,
but usually, will get fine on camera because they'll forget that that's
there and they'll just get passionate about what they're talking about.
But to get them to that level.
You have to let them know what you're doing, you have to
let them know how they will be called upon and in what
setting and what to expect, because if they don't know what to
expect, if marketing walks in and says.
Hey Jim, we're on in five, we're gonna go do that thing,
and you can't place why you're being asked this, what it's gonna
be used for, who wants you to do it, what you're gonna
be talking about, how it's gonna be used.
Your automatic answer is always gonna be no.
'Cause it's safe.
No, it's safe.
No, I'm not gonna do that.
If you want people to do it, you gotta give them the
prep work to know what's up, how it's gonna be used, how
the two teams, marketing and whatever division you're from, are working together,
and what you're ultimately up to.
'Cause what we're really up to is benefiting the company that we
all work at, and if we do that well, we all win.
Okay, so you went through the scenario of how a CEO should
approach this or how somebody in a leadership role should approach involving
the team in creating content.
What's next?
What's after that?
The big thing is to start executing.
So if you have that meeting, that big meeting, and you're like,
"Hey, guys, we're gonna do this thing, "and then it doesn't happen,
everybody's gonna forget that that was even an initiative.
So you, you have to be able to execute.
And there's two different ways.
You can jump in with both feet and say, "All right, we're
gonna start doing this, and it's gonna be on a monthly basis,
and here's how it is, and here's what you're gonna do, and
we're gonna go."
Full speed immediately, or you can get a little toe in the
water and say, "Hey, guys, I know this isn't new for everybody.
Let's start slow.
Let's, let's get a couple people on camera.
Maybe we'll use the content, maybe we won't.
But let's start putting some reps in.
Let's see what we get.
And we'll talk about it, and we'll see how we progress over
time, and it will, and it will.
But everybody has to be willing to put in a little bit
of time and effort and be comfortable with being uncomfortable, and we're
all in this together, and let's, let's just start.
Because if we can start and we can see some success, we
can determine how far we go with this.
And we see that all the time with people who are starting
new podcasts, their episode one is very rigid and it's very- Tense
and how's this gonna go and how am I gonna be on
camera, what's it gonna look like, what's the, you know, how's it
gonna flow, and, and you see by the fourth, fifth sometimes they're
just, they're in a motion of doing it and, and all that
fear melts away.
Absolutely, I've, I've got a guy right now that we're talking to
about a podcast, and he, he, he literally sent us a message
on Monday and was like, "Hey, I've been recording myself all weekends
just trying to get comfortable.
It's like, like, are you serious?
He's like, yeah, absolutely.
Like, I bought a tripod for my phone and I've been trying
to record myself to make myself comfortable.
And I'm like, dude, you're not- like, that's good.
That's hard.
Yeah, there's nothing wrong with that, but like, you, you chose a
very hard way to get that done, and like, that isn't the
same thing.
Like, if you want, just- Come into the studio and we can
actually record you in conversations where it won't be used, but you
can at least get comfortable that way, because that's, that's at least
the setting you're gonna be in, but it, it's the exact same
thing. Come in, do content, whether we use it or not.
Doesn't really matter.
What matters is you're getting comfortable.
I mean, even when, when we sat down to do this, like
episode one, we weren't just like, "Sit down, what are we gonna
talk about?
Let's go."
It was more of a, "Whoa, this is, this is awkward.
There's cameras over there.
Is this microphone right?
Like, what, how do I- Yeah.
What do I do?
What do I do with my hands, right?
Like, it, it is a weird situation.
It's not, it's not
normal for You're great.
Other than that, this isn't a normal feeling, and, and you have
to get comfortable with it.
And as leadership or marketing, you have to understand these people.
Sure, they're brilliant.
They're smart.
They always have been.
But they've not been put in this position as a spokesperson essentially,
very many times, if ever, so you're asking them something unnatural.
So get them into a position where it becomes natural.
Give them the reps, let them know it's okay to fail.
In fact, failure is expected.
If we fail, we can learn what we don't do next time,
not on an individual basis, but collectively.
Guys, we're gonna go in this together.
We're gonna learn what works, what doesn't.
We're gonna, we're gonna have some fun, maybe even.
Yeah, yeah.
Let's just, yeah.
but. That's really the next step.
We, we tell them what's up, and we give an action plan
for how we at this company are going to do this.
Maybe we're jumping in with both feet.
Maybe we're gonna soften the ground a little bit before we start
running with this initiative.
But either way, the core concept is to get reps, because the
more reps you have, the more comfortable you'll be, and I think
that that's, that's something that is, and giving them permission.
For it to not work or for it to, quote-unquote, fail, right?
I haven't-- knock on wood, I have never been a part of
a shoot where we recorded something and out of it we got
nothing. And I think that's, an expectation of like- I'm gonna botch
this so bad it's gonna be unusable.
And could that happen?
Possibly. I mean, the possibility exists.
I, I remember being on a client's location with one person and
he really struggled constructing a complete sentence, and even with editing, we
were able to make it sound good.
But. Giving them permission to fail is gonna be important because it,
it takes the weight or the pressure off of it, and it's
saying, "Hey, we're gonna do this, and we're gonna get better over
time. " And I think that that's okay, and that's something that-
Being a leader is part of your job is to encourage the
team to get outside their comfort zone and do things that stretch
them for the greater good of the company, and if they understand
why, they understand where it's going and the purpose of it, they're
really able to say, "Okay, that may not have been in my
job function yesterday, but I see and understand the value, and I'm
willing to contribute in this way.
" And that's something that you can't underestimate, and that's not something
that you can ask the marketing team to be the sole initiator
of, because if they come to exact same approach the
leadership team would, it'll fall flat.
So the marketing team, to your point, what you said earlier, they
can package it and distribute it, but it's the leadership that needs
to get the buy-in from the top down.
We're talking about this a lot, you know, in terms of the
thought leadership side of things.
The other place we see this in organizations all the time is
in the sales side, to where you have the marketing team that
would love a little bit of time with the customers, even just
to pick- Their brain about what sort of content they might be
interested in, or maybe they want a testimonial or a case study
or something like that.
Like many times sales is putting up that blocker of, "Ooh, you
know, you can't go in and talk about that, you can't do
it," which in that instance, it's the same thing.
Your sales team needs to be cultured on, "Guys, this is what
we're up to, this is what we're doing, this is why we're
doing it, this is how we're gonna involve the customer, and how
it benefits not The sales
team. So regardless of which group within the company you're needing to
get involved, if you want them to actively be involved, there has
to be a conversation prior to, there has to be an expectation,
because at the end of the day, marketing doesn't have the authority
if it's not given the authority.
I've been in a number of situations where I've seen marketing want
to do great content, want to do great things for the company,
and they're shut down by your subject matter experts that won't get
on camera or your- Or sales team who won't let you talk
to their customer.
Neither one of these things are productive for the company, and at
the end of the day, they're not good for the subject matter
expert, and they aren't good for the salesperson that is putting up
that roadblock and preventing that content from happening.
It's not a failure of the marketing team, it's a failure of
leadership to set the proper expectations of what they want to happen.
When you even think about that point, if the leadership team stood
up in front of the whole- organization, and they said, "Do you
think that we need to have more people understand what
we think, what we do, and the results that we get for
people, that anybody in the company would be like, 'No, I don't
think that's a good idea'?
But yet when marketing tries to approach it and get people involved,
inadvertently that's what they're saying, that's the obstacle that they're putting up,
that roadblock is preventing that from happening.
And so I think that anybody in leadership that's going to think
about doing more content has to approach it that way and say,
"These are the things that we need to accomplish for our organization,
are you in or are you out?
" And I think anybody with a brain that wants to keep
their job there is gonna say, "I'm in.
" They're absolutely more inclined if- That initiative
exists, if they understand it, if, if they know, hey, this is
coming from the top.
And, you know, to your point, having a marketing team or a
marketing leader that can go to the executives and say What
do we want here?
Do we want to stay silent?
That's easy.
I'll keep my head down, we'll stay silent, we won't make a
peep, but our audience won't hear from us.
Or do we want them to know what we think, what we
do, and the results that we get?
If that's what we want, you gotta set me up for success
here. I I'm not a thought leader.
Our marketing team isn't comprised of thought leaders in our industry.
I need our thought leaders to play nice with us, and I
need you to voice your expectation of.
This voice that we want to put into the market, who's gonna
participate in it, what it's gonna look like, and pair the two
teams together for success.
If you do that, you will get what you want, our audience
will hear from our best and brightest, and we will no longer
be the best kept secret.
If you fail to do that, I can't be blamed for that
falling short and for us remaining silent and remaining the best kept
secret.