James Creech is a well known voice in the creator economy, SVP of Strategy at Brandwatch, Advisor to VidCon & 3x entrepreneur. And rising B2B influencers. We delve into the unique was he sees B2B influencers monetizing, what Twitter’s new role is in B2B marketing and why personal branding is so important.

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Jessica Phillips (00:07.278)
What’s up guys? Welcome back to the Social Standard podcast. Today we have James Creech who is a super interesting guest making some big headways on LinkedIn and in the influencer space. So James, what’s up and welcome. Thank you. I’m thrilled to be here. Yeah. So James is currently the SVP of strategy for Brandwatch. You’re also an advisor on VidCon. You are a three-time entrepreneur and you’re very involved in the creator space. You just recently launched a LinkedIn mastery course to help people figure out how to show

on LinkedIn and build their personal brand, correct? Yeah, you’re the perfect hype woman. Can I keep you around for a bit? Yeah, yeah, exactly, right? I’ll be your MC, your inter-introducer. I love it, thank you. I’ll follow you around. Yeah, well, it’s nice to have you here. Oh, and Jake, sorry. Jake, our head of accounts is also here. Yes, say hey. He’ll be of the social standard, that’s all you need to know about. Very good. Yeah, he’ll be a pleasant addition to the conversation. So today I really wanted to talk a little bit about what’s going on LinkedIn and run it honestly across the internet.

with personal branding. So we, as you know, launched a B2B influencer division earlier this year, and there’s been a lot going on in that. This is part of our overarching series in terms of how we’re looking at the B2B influencer space through the lens and expertise of B2C creators and B2C experts in the creator space. So that is you. So with that, I will say, I’ll pose this first question, is like, what do you see, let’s start kind of on the smaller scale here, what do you see with personal branding going on right now on LinkedIn?

Yeah. Well, first of all, I love that you’re focused on it because B2B creators don’t get enough attention and we’re trying to spread the word and encourage people to get more involved. But I think there are a few trends that are informing what’s going on. The first is the future of work is changing, right? My grandpa worked at IBM for his entire career and retired and had a nice life with one company. My dad worked in, I don’t know, three, four jobs over the course of his lifetime. But my generation and beyond, we are going to

many, many jobs, many different careers and iterations of that. And if you look at the data for the US economy, we are going to be a majority freelance workforce by 2027. Absolutely. Right? It’s unbelievable. Yeah. So within the next five years, people, the whole idea of the gig economy or getting together small bands and teams and crews for different project-based work is here to stay. And so the importance of having a personal brand is more important than ever. Add to that the fact that we have embraced this trend towards populism and everything

Jessica Phillips (02:36.912)
from politics, the rise of AOC and Trump and Bernie Sanders, through to companies and institutions. People have lost their faith in everything from traditional news media to companies you don’t think about, the New York Times anymore, or even a company you don’t think about. Amazon, it’s Jeff Bezos. Or SpaceX, it’s Elon Musk. So the individual is front and center. That’s the ultimate American thing, to be as individualistic as you possibly can. Exactly. So now that we’ve evolved towards that individualistic

Populism way the importance of your personal brand is more important than ever right social media has democratized access to that Whether it’s linkedin Twitter newsletter podcasts you now have space for these B2B creators to emerge and connect Yeah, totally well said Thinking about this for a while. I did a talk on this at youth marketing show in London a few weeks ago Okay, where this is the theme of our conversation of it’s on later this week So it’s very top of mind and I think those are some of the trends that are influencing

American audience considering the archetypes that you invoke are so uniquely American. Yeah, it’s interesting, right?

I think it’s a theme that’s resonating elsewhere, right? Because you’ve seen the growing popularity of LinkedIn, right? I mean, not just reflected in the monthly active users, their membership now is over 900 million people worldwide. LinkedIn as a platform, they’re not shy about this, has moved towards becoming a daily content destination, not just a resume drop, hey, show up here, next time you need a job, right? They want it to be a place for connection and conversation. And LinkedIn is unique in the fact that, like,

themselves, right? So there is, you know, it’s not anonymous, like Reddit, it’s not, you know, we try to avoid it being Facebook, here’s all my personal moments, some of that creeps in. But it’s a place for real conversation about meaningful things that are going on in the world and in your industry. And I think that’s super valuable. Yeah, yeah, no, I agree. And I think also, even Jake, to your point, it’s like social media. Well, two things, I would say social media across the board has made it more individualistic, even globally. I think that’s got to be a trend. And then, you know, you also have with

Jessica Phillips (04:44.06)
the more accelerated push into digitization.

leaders, brand leaders, CEOs, anyone who’s in the C-suite and honestly even below, they know that they have to show up to be relevant, you have to show up somewhere online to participate in the conversation. And all of that sort of gives way to the rise of this personal brand and then honestly the rise of the B2B creator. Because it’s like all of these things ladder up to say, I actually wanna hear from these people. You’re not just posting sort of into the druthers of the internet, it’s actually something that people are engaging in and I know you yourself have built over 20,000 followers.

LinkedIn, which is, if you’re thinking about that in comparison to a B2C creator, does that sound like a big number? No. Depends on who you ask, right? No, it doesn’t. But the reality is it is big on LinkedIn. And it is because LinkedIn is about niches. And we are also, that’s another trend that we’re seeing is the continuation of these niches from the internet. And so when you own your niche, just like a more what we call traditionally a micro creator on the B2C space, those are the ones that have been able to really monetize their following in an interesting way.

Yeah, right. I want to underscore a couple things you said first is that modern leaders have to be creators, right? Yeah, this is not the future. This is the present. That’s right. If you are in a leadership role in an organization People expect you to have an opinion right to share that online and participate in the conversation So I encourage people like this is how you show up nowadays. That’s number one. And then yes the Relative importance or you know audience metrics are different for each platform, right?

different than LinkedIn, Twitter, et cetera. But you don’t want to get caught up in the vanity metrics of it all. Having a lot of followers is great. It’s helpful to have an audience. But more than anything, it’s about creating community and conversation and connection. LinkedIn is an amazing place for that. So I started my journey encouraged by many others in the space, Brendan, Gayhann, Phil Ranstead, others who had been active on the platform for years. And I tell people through my LinkedIn Master course, I made all the excuses that everybody makes. I’m too busy.

Jessica Phillips (06:47.696)
say who wants to listen to me anyway. But for some reason, COVID said, I’m going to make time for this. I’m going to dedicate to writing every weekday for a year.

which was grueling, but also incredibly enlightening. Yeah, for sure. It is a good way, everyone is different, but knowing my own psychology, part of the reason I did it is, if I did it every day, I would build a habit. If I told myself, oh, I’ll do it once or twice a week, Monday, which turns into Tuesday, it turns into Friday, and the week’s gone. So part of it was just getting that practice in, the repetition, but also figuring out what works, finding my voice as a writer, finding who my audience is and what they care about. And I mean, the results blew me away.

More than anything, it’s about catching up with old connections and friends and generating new opportunities for angel investments or advisory opportunities or speaking engagements. And also just learning a lot in the process, right? Becoming more informed.

learning about our space, writing about it, and defending those opinions in public, I think makes you a more well-rounded, capable leader. Oh, absolutely. I mean, you’re doing all the things that used to be done in real life, right? But you’re just now doing it, and it’s documented. Yeah, right. The process is documented, but you’re doing it in a digital space. Yeah, and as we all begin to live even more of our lives online, that becomes important. And it’s nice to have this corpus of information. One of the things I tell people where they say, well, what do I write about on LinkedIn? Yeah. Is I say, well, what do you tell people

Exactly. Jess, what do you tell your clients in every pitch meeting? Or what do you tell your team and your stand ups? That’s great fodder for conversation. And now you have a place where you can reference it. Here’s that post I did about XYZ. You can go read it. Exactly. Yeah, no, I think that’s true. And I think even for us, at the social standard, we have our monthly, excuse me, our Monday meetings. And those are always informed by my Friday research, which is where I put together our social brew or our business brew newsletters. So it does sort of, I think that’s actually one of the things I love about a newsletter

Jessica Phillips (08:44.88)
Every week I literally sit down like, I don’t want to do it this week. There’s so much to do, you know? But then you sit down and you do it. And it just, it continues to build that habit. It gets you going, it gets you thinking. And I think you’d be, I think people, I don’t think that people write as much as they used to. You know, if you read back like, or if you listen to like older individuals, you realize that a lot of them kept journals. Like daily journals where you were exercising this price and how cathartic that is to just sort of process everything. Because you know, you think about the short form, video craze, the algorithms,

and we’re just consume, consume online. And no one really has a moment to sit down and process all the information that is coming at you at a million miles an hour. And I think it’s a wonderful way to do that, through a newsletter, through an email, through a team meeting preparation, through LinkedIn posts, through tweets, whatever it is, it’s a really lovely way to kind of take what you already know.

and put it to good use for yourself. Yes. I mean, we live in an era of Slack messages and voice memos and TikToks. And it’s hard to keep up. I think that’s obviously condensed the attention span for a lot of folks. But writing is hopefully not a lost art. It’s so valuable for.

kind of crystallizing your thought process, sharing that with other people, allowing them the chance to critique it. And newsletters are phenomenal, right? So I love the fact that you have the two newsletters because just for you as an individual, like taking the time to research and share and publish that is so useful, but also like open rates on email are still amazing, right? In terms of building a direct relationship with your audience, there’s almost no better medium than either a newsletter or a podcast. Yeah, yeah. And you see that a lot in the publishing space in the last couple of years, the extent to which, you know,

publishers that might have obviously, you know, on-site strategies are, you know.

Jessica Phillips (10:31.566)
That is, nobody is necessarily leading with their dot com anymore, and so many of those same publishers have pivoted to heavy reliance on newsletters. I mean, there are media companies now that are effectively just collections of newsletters. Yeah, right, and really powerful ones. And especially for B2B, it makes sense because you own the audience. What we’ve learned, renting our time on the social platform for so long, and no knock against them. They serve a purpose, and it’s great

for top of funnel, build the audience, but then channel them to the newsletter, to the podcast, to your site, to your product, a place where you can own the customer relationship. So that will continue to be paramount for B2B. And we’ve seen that with the creator economy, right? B2C creators have been doing this really well for a while, or at least they’re starting to figure it out in a lot of ways, right? And so it’s really exciting, I think, to see that transition over to B2B, because I think that B2B influencers are literally, they are the original influencer, right? Like we talk about CEOs, people who are leaders,

It’s like…

you guys are the original influencer in a lot of ways. And so to have them come back and have their moment in time is exciting. And then also I think for me personally, I’ve never, even though I’ve been in this space for like 15 years, I’ve never once said, hey, I wanna be a YouTube influencer or an Instagram influencer. It’s just not been my shtick. But then you come in. It’s too bad, the money’s a lot better. Yeah. I think we both made the wrong choice. I think potentially, but it’s just, it’s a very, It’s a grind. It’s a grind, you know? And I think what’s interesting about the LinkedIn influencers or being on Twitter, it’s like you have an expertise, you have something to say. Yeah.

feels a little bit more like warranted and a little bit less vanity driven. Yeah, I’m curious to learn more about your experience because as someone who’s been in the creator economy for a decade, you wrestle with this fact that like, oh, I’m on the business side and yeah, I work with creators and influencers, but that’s like over here, it’s B2C, it’s on these platforms. And then all of a sudden, like I’ve been doing a podcast since 2015. I launched my newsletter last year, I’ve been writing on LinkedIn for, I don’t know, three years now and you catch yourself and you’re like, wait, am I a creator? Right, like wrestling with crossing the chasm

Jessica Phillips (12:32.928)
into the other side of the equation. What’s that been like for you? Yeah, I mean, I just started, I think, on LinkedIn six weeks ago, maybe. So it’s a very new experience for me. But we’ve been doing the podcast for, I would say, a better part of two, two and a half years. And that’s been really good. And the newsletter. The newsletter for us started, that was sort of my pandemic baby, if you will. That was a way that we had to reinvent ourselves to say, all right, well, we can’t, in real life, go out and buy coffee and lunches and dinners and drinks and fun things for agencies and brands.

So how do we do this? And so we actually started with a roundup of interesting activations that were happening digitally as people were making that transition. And it really excelled pretty well, which was exciting. And then we kind of pivoted, you go through some growth pains and stuff, and finally I just took it back over and it’s been doing really well. I was actually telling Jake we had a client call set up early this morning that was a source. It was a leading agency. The CEO gets our newsletter, reads it, and told her, social team,

these guys and figure out how we can work together. And it was like, yes. Nothing more powerful for DemandGen than being in the CEO’s inbox. Yeah, exactly. And it was exciting. I think I got a screenshot of my LinkedIn followers their day and sent it around to the team, because Zendesk is a client of ours. And the CEO of Zendesk follows me. And I was like, boom. So little things like that are really kind of interesting and exciting to see. And I think that that’s another thing that is maybe a little bit different about B2B influencers versus B2C, is that you don’t have to be

big. And I know we kind of talk about this a little bit, but you don’t have to be big to be impactful. Correct. And I think that it ladders up a little bit more closely to how we view micro-influencers in B2C. Right? And I think also that it also brings together challenges because it’s like, you know, I know you have a nice following, but it’s like, I don’t know how many brands reach out to you yet, you know, in terms of like sponsorships. But I don’t know if that’s the purpose, right? Like, and when I contrast the differences between B2C, B2B, B2C obviously they need to survive on ad monetization, brand sponsorships. Yeah. And that’s not the case for B2C.

Yeah, like B2B folks tend to be entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, salespeople or marketing folks who are doing social selling.

Jessica Phillips (14:41.47)
executives, leaders, people who say, well, I’ll point you to my products or services, right? In your case, social standard is a great resource for you if you’re trying to figure out the digital ecosystem. Yeah, and influencer space. But you don’t necessarily need ad dollars turned on your podcast or a sponsor in your newsletter. So the positioning is a little different. But yeah, that’s one of the kind of fascinating nuances to observe between the two. Totally, and you don’t need it, but you still might want it. Yeah, I think we’ll see more of that.

Sponsored content on LinkedIn. You know, we’ll probably see more B2B creators Maybe aligning with brands or products in interesting ways. So yes, good for that Yeah, cuz they don’t I think LinkedIn you can’t yet do you I know they just released the thought leadership Sort of bump where they can do it for employees But you don’t have it where you can do in paid partnership with no That’ll be the same disclosure rules or hashtag kind of policies So we’ll see how that comes together but where I think it’s interesting too is like

years ago when you know I for whatever reason remember Intel coming and wanting us to do B2B influencers for them and we gave it a shot but we’re like you know what this is this is hard and B2C is really easy so we just don’t have the time to chase this right now yeah and then all the reasons that we just kind of laid out have given rise to this situation now but it’s just it’s much easier because you don’t have to rely on trying to get in touch with the CEO of open AI to talk about AI stuff right there are so many other people who

literally their entire role in life seems to be just to be a thought leader and to be an expert. Or an educator, totally. An educator, and those people are influencing the influencers, and so I think that that’s a really heavy, like a really good place for B2B brands to be focusing because their timetables work a little bit better, their audience is more receptive to that content, they’re already kind of posting regularly and warming their audience up for these types of things. So for me, I think that’s really where I see a lot of potential success for the B2B influencer space.

Yeah, yeah, so I mean, but you know that all that to say it’s like maybe a CEO is gonna do something at some point And you know, I think that if you look at if you look at who your customers are and then you ladder that back I think that works really well for like a CEO or a CMO or someone you have CMO says hey We use slack because of this and this you know, that’s a pretty I think traditional approach to B2B marketing Yeah, but how much more interesting is it if now your customers have these huge followings? Exactly, where do your customers spend time? Who do they trust or they listen to and then turning them into advocates?

Jessica Phillips (17:11.119)
turning your employees into employee advocates. Exactly, and give them discounts or two things. Like there are a lot of trades that you can do that people do with B2C influencers that makes a ton of sense and then the CMO can say, hey, well I’m doing this, but I’m also saving my money. Like saving my company a ton of money because of this. I’m activating this community. Yeah, exactly. Exactly, or brand collabs kind of line up and you start to do a lot of different things. So I’m excited about that potential space. I mean, what do you think about, some people say, look, people are a little too precious about their LinkedIn and they don’t feel like it makes sense.

to press the button. Yeah, it’s…

Jessica Phillips (17:46.19)
you know, I care what these people think of me. Uh, true. Yeah. But that matters less and less the more you do. Right, no absolutely. Not that you don’t care, but you have less of a, I think, at least for me, it’s like the more often I post, the less crazy I am about every single little detail. No, for sure. Yeah, I think people can be conscientious. Obviously they should, and it’s nice to have a place where people are maybe a little bit more professional or reserved or whatever you want to characterize it.

people to have fun with LinkedIn, right? Like it doesn’t have to be super stuffy. You should show your voice and your personality. I love it when you know people shitpost on LinkedIn and like troll the bro tree on the platform or people have fun in the comments and make a joke or share like their personal experiences. That’s what it should be all about. Yeah, no I agree. I mean I think and we’ve sort of talked about this and that’s one of the reasons Jake is here today because I was like we’re gonna get you going. Yeah, I mean I you know I think I pride myself on otherwise

building a social media persona that is too cool for school and fundamentally unserious. And so to I think, you know, one of the burdens for I mean, I would imagine a lot of people should maybe and this just could be uniquely my, my somewhat more ironic generation, but being

earnest and I think you know there is a there is a there is a fear

you know, on being earnest across most social platforms for the most part. I don’t know. I mean, I think that earnestness is, I mean, I think if you’re going to be earnest anywhere, it should be LinkedIn and thusly, I think that it carries a higher risk for. The importance of being earnest you’re next to a LinkedIn leadership post. Exactly, yeah. I’ll probably be proud. Yeah, no, I was going to.

Jessica Phillips (19:48.478)
If I, the newsletter title I’ve dreamed up so far is Thought Thinker. Yeah. Because you know. Someone needs to think. Right, exactly. Might as well be you, Jake. Might as well be Jake. Thank God. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. So we’re. Very good. Yeah, we’re QA-ing it. We’ll see. I like it. We’ll see. Well, you gotta hook up here with James and get into his course. I’m into it. So you can, you know all the things. Yeah. But you know, to that point though, I think that it does seem to me, and I think that

let me know if you guys disagree, but that everyone needs to have a digital presence no matter what. It doesn’t matter if you’re trying to sell for yourself, sell for your company, or just be there.

you’ve got to have it because even if you just want a job, I think about if I’m coming out of, I hope that I will never be searching for a job, I hope that I’m just always building businesses. However, if I was in that position, I think about, well, if it’s me and somebody else and we’re neck and neck, basically the same, where are you differentiating yourself? Well, if I have 20,000 followers on LinkedIn and the person I’m competing against has 500, well, that’s an obvious choice. For me, as an employer, I would say, I would choose the person with the social following

Right, and there’s a few reasons for that. One is if you’re hiring for a sales and marketing role and someone has demonstrated, okay, they’ve built reach, they have an audience, they have relationships and connections, obviously that’s part of the job. Exactly. So it makes sense. The other piece is you get to know someone through their content, right? This is the new calling card. This is how I get to know. We’ve known each other on LinkedIn for how long before we actually met in person? Exactly. And obviously we have a lot of mutual friends and people to vouch for you.

have a sense for your personality and your tone from your podcast and your newsletter. That helps me feel like I know you. Yes, exactly. And that’s the parasocial thing. But the interesting thing about LinkedIn influencers is I think that there is a higher propensity to meet in real life. Yes, for sure. And that’s, I think, where the strength and the power of everything really can happen because I know creators can draw people in, but they’re not, they’re drawing them in for different reasons. It’s almost more of a celebrity.

Jessica Phillips (21:59.556)
B2B side, yeah there’s a celebrity but it’s more of like an expert, someone to have a conversation with, you know, and really kind of like dig in with. Yeah, and there’s real relationships there, right? So I’ve been on the platform since, gosh, I don’t know, 20, late aughts, right? So…

And when you first got on LinkedIn, it was a lot of early adopters, and you could kind of reach out to people and be like, hey Jess, we don’t know each other, but we’re kind of in the same field, what you’re doing is interesting, like I’d love to learn more. And people would be like, sure, let’s jump on a call, we’ll meet for coffee. And then over time, LinkedIn got bigger and…

with any of these platforms, there’s a little bit more spam, there’s more stuff going on, you don’t necessarily wanna talk to every single person. But I found that now rather than it being this kind of push mechanism of hey, let’s chat, it’s a magnet, it’s a whole mechanism of I’ll share my content, you follow me, we kind of engage in the comments or through DMs. And then it’s like, hey, are you going to that event? Or let’s jump on a Zoom or let’s meet for drinks and get to know each other. And so yes, LinkedIn is a platform that facilitates more of that.

and I think people are way more open to that sort of style of connection now as well because people are just, especially with remote work, right? If you’re not going into an office, you’re not talking to 50 people a day anyway, so you are a little bit hungrier, I think, for conversations that are relevant in the industry. And so I find that whenever I reach out to someone, most of the time they’re receptive in having a conversation, at least at the baseline, right? And I do think that that’s super interesting. And I love that…

I just love to see what other people are doing. Yeah. I mean, I think it’s so cool. And you see like, hey, well, if this is their path, I could do that. Of course I could do that. Why couldn’t I do that? Why couldn’t I do keynote or whatever people are doing? Keynoting, they’re starting podcasts. Look what we’re doing right here. This was all born off of LinkedIn. I mean, Jake, we hired you off of LinkedIn, right? I believe so, yeah. Yeah. There you go. So it’s like LinkedIn. This whole room is basically a LinkedIn. Do you think there are any alternatives? Do you see this activity happening on the platform? I think about this all the time.

Jessica Phillips (24:00.52)
because there I mean firstly I would say LinkedIn is arguably the most social network at the moment right I think it’s really where I mean other than

Facebook for a largely older and mostly non-professional demographic, I think LinkedIn is really where you see the most person-to-person interaction in these stories. You’re probably right about that, because the original idea of a social network, connecting people, fell out of fashion as platforms realized, OK, well, if I push content, and we can monetize it. Ads can do that. We can monetize it. It’s a little bit of a better business. And obviously, LinkedIn is kind of moving in that direction. But you’re right. There’s so much communication that

on the platform, whereas maybe less so on Instagram and TikTok over the years, relative to the consumption of content. And people are moving to dark social platforms, direct messages, messaging platforms like Telegram or WhatsApp. So yeah, exactly. Actually, we were talking with Leah earlier about the extent to which she’s seeing.

Discord resource for professional I’m in a few networking groups that are your discord. Yeah, okay Yeah, but like just word feels like maybe a better resource for yeah, it feels less like you’re at work Yeah, right like hearing that alarm bell or getting the notification on slack feels like okay Yeah, and I do think that discord versus slack has just built up much more social functionality Yeah, I would agree with that, you know whether that’s whether that’s

whether that’s voice memos or just custom memes. I think that they have built into their UX just kind of more casual interaction that enables a freer flowing conversation versus just this point where when you’re on Slack you do just kind of tend to feel like you’re, I mean work is literally just a click away. For sure. So Discord is interesting, but I tend to think of,

Jessica Phillips (26:07.128)
had almost this kind of B2B platform peak in, call it early 2021, Clubhouse came on the scene, everyone was spending time, oh let’s have professional conversations through live audio, Twitter spaces, other platforms, yeah, racing to do the same thing. Some of that seems to have cooled off, some of that has moved to other places. Twitter is the other obvious example of a B2B platform, but for specific communities, like VC, journalism, like sports, there’s some really…

core active groups. But I wonder if they’re going to stay there or if they’re moving to new platforms now as a result of recent changes. I know I read a stat, and this is from LinkedIn, so you always got to kind of, you know. Sure, grain of salt. Oh, grain of salt, exactly. But I think it said 31% of LinkedIn, senior members of LinkedIn are not on another platform. So they’re not on Twitter. Yeah, so you know, and that would be me. Like, I’m not on Twitter outside of the social standard. I am not personally on Twitter. I like Twitter, and it’s fine, but I go in

really participate necessarily, consume a little bit every once in a while. But Twitter did just announce that, not just, I think it was last week, but they’re talking about now they’re gonna have a jobs functionality. And I think, my guess is that they have seen the success, part of the success that LinkedIn has had, driving more businesses there. Because if you have people who are, you’ve got talent who are now all over LinkedIn, because they’re looking for jobs, plus you have senior members of teams who are hiring, they’re all over. And so it just becomes a natural place to continue to have conversations and be there.

needs a little bit more of at the present time. Yeah, and also I wonder if the format lends itself to it because you don’t have just this micro blogging concept. It’s kind of a little bit more long form in nature. Yeah, yeah, that’s true. I mean, I think Twitter is like, I think actually Twitter has a really interesting opportunity ahead of it in terms of getting into long form content. I mean, I think that we’ve seen that start to kind of play out, but I actually think they could do a really interesting thing there

You have the short form, which is your advertisement. You have the long form, which drives your revenue. You have a lot of conversations. They’re doing picture-in-picture stuff now. So they…

Jessica Phillips (28:16.154)
I would say what I would say about Twitter is what I used to say about Pinterest. Yeah. Is the only thing that will get in their way are themselves. Uh huh. Right. So if they can just, if they can get out of their own way, I actually think they have a really good shot at doing a lot of, Yeah. A lot of really cool stuff. And to their credit, Twitter has probably one of the fastest cycles of innovation, right? Yes. If you follow their announcements, right? Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube tend to be the best at shipping new features. Now, obviously Twitter, sometimes they’ll pull those back or it’s just beta.

at which they are ideating and innovating is strong. And I think Twitter is a platform where B2B and B2C creators can both utilize them. Yeah, you can coexist. Totally. And so that’s really interesting. I know that creators are migrating a bit to LinkedIn, having some success there. But I just don’t think it’s the same. Yeah, and I’m curious about that. You’re probably closer to this than I am. Why, if I’m a traditional B2C creator, do I want to be on LinkedIn? I imagine it’s to connect with brands and agents and whatnot. Yeah, to be in front of brands. It’s lead to, right? I mean, would you agree with that? Yeah, without a doubt.

I remember in the early era of professionalized YouTube, when you saw a lot of creators actually build out LinkedIn profiles, it did seem to me just as another marketing channel for their.

for their services, as creators, not necessarily, they weren’t per se doing professional networking on there, it was just much, it was about effectively marketing per your point of their personal brands. Yeah, that was, and I think increasingly, I mean, I don’t see that, I don’t think that has abated, but I also, they haven’t expanded that use case

marketing themselves for effectively for brand opportunities. Yeah and I don’t think they need to necessarily but you do see like the creator economy the people who are supporting creators getting on there like Reid from Night Media. Yeah, sure. You know, he doesn’t he has nightlight That’s his newsletter and he talks a lot about the creator economy and you know that he’s an intellectual guy because he’s surrounded by all of these These big creators. Yeah, so you want to you want to lean I want to know what he’s saying and what you’re seeing because he has a different perspective, right in terms of like what’s actually going on

Jessica Phillips (30:36.464)
we were interviewing for a role, I don’t remember, I remember exactly what it was, but I had interviewed a guy who set in on all the discussions that Mr. Beast would have with the network of creators. And they would have all these learnings, kind of like their standups and their sort of things. And I was like, wow, that’s really interesting. He would be a really great guy to hire just because he knows so much about what’s currently trending. But yeah, I mean, I think, you know, and it just, it makes sense for everyone

of presence. I just think it does. My question though is like, and this is something I’ve been posing to a lot of people this last week and we’ll you know continue all through VidCon and everything, is where do you think, how do you think this shakes out in terms of like, is there, will there be a line in the sand where people can be like…

just themselves. This is personal, social, non-work things, and then this is professional. Because if everyone’s spending more and more time online, that’s fine, but you have to be able to cut loose and do some fun things. Are we talking about America or France? Yeah, well that’s a good point. America, I would say, but generally, the broader. But I do think that to some extent it is cultural, right? It’s probably true. In America, I think partly why, I think in America in particular, partly why

LinkedIn is arguably the most social of social networks is because we tend to identify much more closely with our vocations. Whereas in countries such as France, they pass laws where your boss is forbidden to email you after hours. I mean, I think it’s going to vary from culture to culture. But I think America is still the largest global cultural influence. And so yeah.

I mean for the most part I think that the you know things will trend American until you know we lose our own cultural hegemony which you know we never will because we’re the greatest country ever. Well look at that we could just you know press forward on a strong, free traffic. The way I look at it is the future of media is increasing fragmentation right? We started with one two three TV channels and now we have hundreds the same

Jessica Phillips (32:54.1)
content choices now and the same thing is true of platforms and formats. And so with that you also have a fragmentation of identity, right? The way I show up on LinkedIn may be different than how I connect with friends on a social platform or a dark social conversation like iMessage or WhatsApp. Different than how I talk to family, college friends, people who I have an affinity group, right? Like people I play tennis or pickleball with. We talk about different things in different spaces in different ways and that’s okay, right? Like that’s all

represented in different ways and on different platforms online. Yes. So I agree. And I think that mirrors how people do things in real life. Totally. I think the distinguishing factor for me is that like, if I can see all of those conversations that you are having in other places, that’s where it gets a little dicey. I think because, you know, unless you’re 100% squeaky clean online, eventually this does come back to bite you. So to me it’s like, is there going to be some sort of like, somebody has to, like, we were talking about earlier maybe with Snapchat,

platform has got to come up with a way to solve that problem. Right? Well, we live our entire lives online now, right? There’s generations who are growing up on the internet. And so, you know, the crazy stuff we may have done as teenagers didn’t get captured and recorded and shared with the whole world. And now that one can be a politician. You know, just as users and consumers are also just much more savvy about kind of gating and curating our fees. And I think

Yes, right exactly and I think that that’s that partly explains the popularity of or that you know the recent popularity of news and newsletters in particular which are effectively just sort of blog.

3.5 because I think the conclusion at which a lot of older people or nearly middle-aged people is your inbox is ultimately your most curatable algorithm. It really does permit sort of a level of control over the feed of information that a social platform can’t. That’s true.

Jessica Phillips (35:11.016)
I think that’s what’s sort of not dangerous, but it’s a little tougher if you are trying to If you’re a new site for example if you’re trying to get few eyeballs there because the reality is everything that we’re doing now With all the algorithms is curated specifically for you So you almost lose the ability to figure out where to go when you want to find something in a lot of ways I think there are a lot of strings there But I think myself as my own personal examples like when I’m trying to figure out if I need like an event like Outfit or something. I don’t know how to find that on Google anymore

I only know how to go to the brands that I know that are showing up in my inbox Yeah, and to what the influencers are sharing about on social That’s that’s where I search on social and I search on the brand sites that I actually go to and that all may change In the next two years as AI Replaces search right like the way that we interact today is keyboard a mouse and search right? But if we move into a you know voice dominated era and then AI curation of you know Here’s your copilot or your smart assistant

find the, yeah exactly, then your entire experience, the way you connect with your devices and your online persona, they change forever. And I love that too, just to think, if I could use that to search through like a haystere moment, can you find what Amber Clark wore when she was pregnant and went to the beach? And they can surface that swimsuit and then I can go and find maternity-based clothing that works in the style that I like. That. It’s coming. Yeah, and that’s a real,

strong case for affiliate. I mean the long tail on affiliate is about to get outrageous.

Jessica Phillips (36:49.518)
creating incentives that influence the algorithm to inform that answer. And from my perspective, at least the current, the biggest problem currently with generative AI is its inability to admit when it’s wrong. And I cite this very specific example of just, to the extent that I, like most people, have been worried about how AI might impair on my own job.

tasked it with coming up with a talent, with a list of TikTok creators who met certain parameters. And when I did then did due diligence to double check these creators, 99% of them just didn’t exist. And moreover, you could see a very clear pattern in how it generated these usernames. It was literally some outdoor term

and then an alliterative first name. So it was, you know, Mountain Mike or Camping Chris. And I do think we are already at a point where people are putting maybe too much faith.

in the answers rendered by the generative tools. And that is an uncanny opportunity, I think, for social networks to say, actually, this multitude of opinions, this sort of morass of ideas and conversation is going to ultimately deliver a sounder and better conclusion than this nebulous generative

thing that happens across several million servers. Well, but I think facts or information is.

Jessica Phillips (38:46.666)
It’s not knowledge. Right. And that’s the differentiation, right, for AI right now. It’s just, it aggregates things. It’s not actually, you can’t glean anything from what AI tells you. Yeah, right. At least not yet. But then that actually got me thinking. It’s like, I wonder, now this is not a conversation about AI, but how interesting would it be if you know somebody at OpenAI, when anyone types in the best influencers in XYZ, if you can pay to have, a talent management company

their roster pop right up. Yeah, that’s why the affiliate point sort of inspired that reflection because, I mean, then you’re in the search business where you are basically paying this thing to surface your product as a top result, contrary to whether or not that might be true. Exactly, that’s just more evidence that search and social are basically the same thing. They’re literally going to be the same thing, which will make for some really interesting, it’s gonna be really interesting to see

like our business evolves over the next couple of years because we’re already, we can already do paid media and we’re already getting smarter on SEO because of the way that TikTok searches and it’s just those are gonna be things that are continuously built out. So it’s gonna be kind of an exciting time. Yeah, well and you mentioned affiliate as such an important income stream for B2C creators, but imagine that will become of greater importance to B2B talent as well. You think so? Yeah, well yeah, like if you could promote something that you’re already a fan of, right, that you would use in your work context

you want to share with your audience. In my experience, affiliate works best at scale. It does, but if the ACV is low. In B2B, the ACV is really high. So you don’t necessarily need to drive as big a volume of purchases. But if someone signs up for NetSuite because you referred them, that can be meaningful. Yeah, that’s true. However, on the flip side, the ACV

the presuming, you know, we’re talking about a B2B influencer who, you know, is truly a B and, you know, and is otherwise a working professional.

Jessica Phillips (40:51.458)
the incentives are, at an affiliate engagement, the incentives are potentially lower, right? Because you are being paid at a cost per action versus, it’s not as attractive a sort of ancillary, more passive revenue alternative.

to maybe somebody that has a day job versus an influencer. I think what we’re really going to see is large B2B creators taking ownership stakes in companies, right? That’s a great point. Either their business or a small minority stake and promoting other entrepreneurs or people that they’re aligned with through the power of their distribution online. I mean, you’re already seeing that on the B2C side as well. I mean, a lot of these so-called celebrity

companies are ultimately just elaborate endorsement deals by pre-existing entities. True. Yeah. Yes. So I guess the net of it is we should all be, well, I guess I don’t need to tell you guys, but building up our LinkedIn following. So someone offers us an ownership stake. Yep. There we go. Yeah. I like it. We’ll just sort of set up. You can set up your own little incubator and little VC for all that sort of stuff. Yeah. I mean, I think that’s right, especially because when you look at the VC model, obviously it’s

getting and that’s the main thing. But a lot of them in order to differentiate themselves will also provide like strategic advisors or they have the ability to open doors, right? That’s basically what Shark Tank is. Right? Be able to open doors and do all this sort of stuff for you. A B2B influencer can absolutely do that. Not only can they be a lead gen, which may be the cash component in some case, they probably have the cash to put down and then on top of that they actually have in theory expertise to drive value for the business. So that makes them pretty interesting.

Jessica Phillips (42:41.872)
has grown from a cottage industry to a big business. And obviously that has partly coincided. Tantrum to way. Yeah, I know, right? To the massive explosion in startups, right? Yes. It’s easier than ever to start a business now. Well, some of that also has to do with Fed policy. Sure. And interest rates. True, yeah. But I think VCs have to respond to the fact that there is greater competition for the demand for capital.

pressure where we’ve moved away from an environment which you know VCs and many still do fund you know like hard tech problems or really capital intensive businesses upfront hardware, life sciences right. If you’re starting a software business like you can kind of increasingly do that with pretty low capital requirements. I don’t know Facebook was started with something like five hundred thousand dollars in seed capital. So it just makes you wonder right like if these businesses aren’t necessarily as capital intensive as they used to be what

the value that the VCs offer has to be differentiated. Yeah, oh, that’s definitely true. I mean, that’s a big reason why I was, I saw I was in private equity a long time ago. And that was one of the reasons I said, this is not a career for me, because the same thing happens. It’s like you start, you look around, I’m like, how many private equity firms can the economy support here at this point? The goal is to get to the top, right? That’s always the best way, but it’s just like the value is going down, down. By the time I get to anywhere where I’m gonna be, it’s gonna be so hard to eke out,

any value. I mean that was the whole model with LBOs like leveraged buyouts right we’ve gotten troubles like that we’re just financial engineering and I was like yeah I’m not here for the technical side of it right and I thought VCs were more interesting because you could make bigger bets and you make a lot more of them. Very different discipline right? PE is about noticing okay well there’s an imbalance in the market and we can profit off this opportunity. Whereas VC is betting on the long-term growth potential yeah which is you know a risky game but

Jessica Phillips (44:41.732)
But yeah, you’re right. It’s like I think even when I when I was in when I first started getting into this business And it’s well No, I guess it was actually five or six years after I was in the influencer space I did have friends who were you know at VC funds and PE firms and they were calling me say hey like Influencers it seems like this is something that’s coming up. Yeah, you know really big we think it’s gonna be big How do we get into it? I think you don’t yeah, really you don’t because I don’t know what you how do you how do you exit? This how do you write? What’s the recurring revenue? What are you investing in? These are people? Yeah, right and it’s not that you can’t do that

I know what the model is that works that leads to big exits, and I don’t see it here. People are still trying to solve that problem, right? Do we create animation versions of talent? How do we bring the talent from the forefront to still playing an important role, but diversifying the cast? And you’re finding ways that these aren’t solely relying on an individual. Because yes, you’re right. Media companies, especially talent founded or talent led, are very challenging to transition. Why I knew Endeavor would never IPO.

Because it just seemed absolutely impossible to me to establish any consistent valuation of a talent agency when at any given time your talent could merely walk out the door. Yeah, exactly. It’s like, what’s the values in the contracts? The contracts are short, usually. And then if your agent leaves, or they’re tied to the agent, or whatever it is. Or they’re nonexistent at all. I remember, I have this very funny anecdote where I was in a

I was in an agency assistant like everyone else who was trying to make it, who was trying to fulfill their entourage dreams. And I, you know, I remember the one the agent I was working for assigned a new client. And he was really the client was really intent on, you know, signing whatever was his commitment letter to be represented by this by ICM and agent was talking to another agent who, you know, who was going to be sharing him.

I’ve never in my life had a client so intent on signing agency papers. In other words, usually they want the most informal tangential commitment possible because they don’t want to be locked or committed to that relationship. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. I mean, how do you value a company whose assets are effectively… But they’re contracts, so they’re not existing. Right, exactly.

Jessica Phillips (47:01.556)
non-proprietary. I think, I don’t know that, I’m not sure if the other ones did it too, but I remember reading about House CAA in the beginning. That’s why they always have like three or four people on every single influencer celebrity that they manage. Yeah exactly, if someone walks away, they don’t feel like they have to go with that person. And then that was also, in the beginning, I thought oh this is really interesting to look at how CAA would just do, you know, not just the actors, the actresses. They would also, the producers were influencers and directors and they would kind

Jessica Phillips (47:30.156)
scratch and they would get a piece of the pie on every single thing and that’s kind of what creators have done. Yeah do you see similar parallels in the critter economy like exclusivity versus people not wanting to commit to longer terms? Yeah I mean I think so right? I mean I think if anything it’s you know it’s only intensified and accelerated yeah like most things I mean like the like the pace of technology and particularly technology related to entertainment but yes I mean I think

you know, especially for independent content creators who did not, you know, who can credit themselves with making that on their own.

to a much greater extent than might have a offline celebrity 10 years ago who had to abide the strictures of the infrastructure of offline entertainment. They are just by build going to be wearier of large infrastructures and formalities and operationalized institutions as represented by traditional talent management and agency companies. Yeah, totally. Well, and I think even the information had that article.

Earlier in the week last week maybe saying that the creator economy has got its reckoning Right because you have all these businesses that have tried to capitalize on services and building products around creators Yeah, and then you realize like hey not that this isn’t as big of a market gets a ton of press Not everything needs to be the X for creators. Yeah We are in the midst of a creator economy winter whether you want to admit or not Yeah, that’s the case for a lot of industries. Yeah, that doesn’t mean amazing entrepreneurs are still building

the rare birds that can do it. But we had such enthusiasm. And the COVID bump pulled forward so much activity in 2021, 2022 that I think, as with any hot space, people rush in that say, oh, dollar signs. I can make some money here. Versus, I’ve spent a decade learning about this industry and passionate about solving this problem, working with creators. And so we probably have too many Lincoln Bio companies. We probably have too many XYZ companies. But that’s part of building in a new space. You’re going to have a lot of people rush in.

Jessica Phillips (49:39.94)
Then the dust settles shake out and then you’ll have a few winners, but it means great growth and opportunity for Yeah, and I think that a lot of that enthusiasm Came on the heels of sort of the vertical video explosion music the tick-tock Yeah, the whole reason that you know that exploded was the extent to which They lowered the barrier to entry, you know as soon as you as soon as you flood

the market with a product that product is just invariably going to be less valuable. Yeah. And now we have reels and we have shorts and we have spotlight. Exactly. I know. All these things. Yes. Yeah. And I think that has been just the sort of fundamental. I mean, I think that we are now facing what has been the sort of the defining dilemma of

video and content and what are effectively, what I think of the latter video platforms, specifically TikTok and Reels as being less social networks or video platforms than just kind of like. Entertainment. Right, exactly. They’re just. Do I watch TikTok or do I watch Netflix? Right, exactly. Do I play a video game or do I go see my friends? They’re just viral video machines. And that, to the extent that they are thusly invested in constantly servicing you.

new content.

just divorced from your necessarily who you follow or your feed. I think that by nature, people are just not going to be able to form those intense parasocial connections that they were able to. Oh, you see it already, right? Exactly. How many TikTok stars do you know the name of relative to an Instagram or YouTube creator? You don’t, right? Because what’s the genius of TikTok is we kind of went from the early era of entertainment, which was social networking. It’s interesting to hear what my friends

Jessica Phillips (51:34.172)
online to okay but now there’s like professional influencers and creators and they do interesting things all the time they’re a little bit more interesting than the people I know in everyday life to TikTok says well you know we could just serve you the best of the internet all the time catered to your personalized wins and preferences right that’s a lot more interesting and I think the next iteration is of course generative AI produces the content specifically tailored to your watch history like that’s where we’re going right but the other clever thing about

Well, in an average session on YouTube, someone watches two videos, right? Maybe looks at 15 photos on Instagram. Someone watches over 100 videos on TikTok. So that’s a lot more attention and opportunities to serve an ad spot, right? If I can serve an ad in between every third to fifth TikTok video you see, my ad load is a lot higher than you have on YouTube. Right. And then that creates what is their fundamental sort of monetization problem, which is attribution, right?

to whom do you attribute that at? Yeah. The video before, the video after? Yeah, classic social issue. Yeah, yeah, or the six videos.

prior that they might have rewatched three or four more times. Yeah. I don’t know that we’re ever going to solve multi-touch attribution, but we maybe don’t have to. Yeah, exactly. I think this just kind of replaces what TB was. Here’s your general reach, top of funnel, awareness, boosting. And then you could do your more targeted retargeting work or influencers to drive people to the next stage of a purchase. It’ll just be a substitute. But I think people get too, I think brands in general get a little too granular on tracking all this stuff.

Because even if you back up before the internet, it’s not like, when people were creating diaries for what they were listening to on the radio and the ads that they heard, do we really think that was that accurate? You know what I mean? It’s like we’ve sort of over-indexed on our comfort levels with being able to track things. And if you put too much faith into it. Yeah, I mean the reality is, and I think even just to bring it back to me to be influencers or influencers in general, what you’re seeing on LinkedIn is like, yeah, if you are everywhere all the time in your niche,

Jessica Phillips (53:42.448)
elevated status because people know who you are. So whether or not you’re a leading name or you’re not, or you would be in real life, you have the appearance of that. And all, the whole internet is based on the appearance of things, right? Whether or not it’s actual fact, we don’t know. But if a brand is everywhere, you’re gonna buy from them. Because you just can’t get away from them, right? So. I mean, that’s been Coca-Cola’s marketing strategy for decades. Yeah, and look, and they’re a big brand for a big reason. I think people wanna discount

I actually had a really interesting conversation with a guy from Chief Outsiders, which is like a fractional CMO based company. And he was saying, look, we are working with a lot of these DTC brands and they just want digital, digital. They’re not interested in trying mailers, like direct mail and things like that. And he’s like, it’s really effective. And there’s a reason why people have been using this stuff forever. It’s not just because the internet wasn’t around. It’s because it is really effective. And I think we even saw for a while a couple of years ago how cheap television was because

was on it. Yeah. Right. And I saw a lot of like even our clients, some of our clients testing television spots. Right. QR codes and all sorts of stuff. Makes sense. So I mean it’s there but I think this isn’t a this is not a lesson in branding or marketing. But like you have to be you have to be in multiple avenues. Like sure you could start as a digital only brand. But that’s not how you get past. If you want to if you want to get past 25 30 million. Oh yeah. Look at Warby Parker. Look at all the DTC success stories. Honest Company. They’ve all bridged the gap and gone into traditional. Exactly. And there

You know, there’s a sizable infrastructure being built out now for companies that provide wholesale solutions for TTC companies to get them into niche boutiques in Brooklyn and Silver Lake. And presumably with the plan of then owning the host site relationships to Walmart and Target.

Yeah, it’s interesting stuff. I mean, I don’t know, when you think about B2B influencers and you think about brands, like B2B brands, like what would you say, what would you say?

Jessica Phillips (55:51.33)
they need to focus on predominantly, like in order to be successful in this space. Sure, so on the brand side, as we touched on, I encourage them to find your employees and your customers who are already advocates and amplify that, right? Give them more resources, encourage them, right? Give them early access, discounts, anything you can to promote the concentration and the activity there. The other part is participate in the conversation. Show up where your audience is online. Encourage that conversation.

And then.

Again, think about how your people, not just in leadership, but throughout the organization, can be thought leaders. So you should, particularly if you are an executive, you need to have a presence. You need to be sharing your viewpoints and active online. And then for individuals, think about your personal brand. It’s more important now than ever. It’s still, we talk about so much about LinkedIn, but only one or 2% of people actually post. A lot more people consume content or use it in other ways, but that ratio is only going to grow.

It’s still a great time to get in early and share your thoughts. And then even if you’re maybe hesitant to post or you don’t have a fully formed idea, engage. Comment on someone’s post. Take part in the conversation. Share your learnings. You’ll learn a lot in the process. And the dividends will reveal themselves as you connect with people. And to kind of baby step it in. I think you can tell where, at least I feel like I can tell, that LinkedIn is in this sort of interesting time where you can still get in. You can make a big impact. You can do a lot of different things. So don’t sleep on it.

because we’ve watched this happen. Time and time again, where brands wait until, oh, I’m not sure if I’m gonna be here, I’m not gonna be here, and then the price of entry is big. You have to buy your way in, whereas now you can kind of earn your way in, and you are better for it. Exactly. Right? Yep. The other, so the last question I have for you is, what do you, we’ve kind of touched on this a little bit, where it’s like, LinkedIn feels a little Facebooky sometimes, with, oh, I’m getting birthday updates, I’m getting life status updates, I’ve seen baby. Just had a baby, totally, yeah. Exactly.

Jessica Phillips (57:53.544)
to do that, what is your, what’s your take on that? Like do you think that that’s a place for it? Do you think that works? Does that elevate your personal brand? Or do you think it detracts from it? In general, I err on the side of LinkedIn is not Facebook, right, so don’t overshare. Part of that is because a lot of people will use it as engagement bait. If you post your wedding photo, your baby announcement, people will engage with it. Does that necessarily elevate you as a thought leadership,

leader or help you build your audience? Probably not. Right. How savvy is the algorithm at suppressing that stuff to the extent that say, you know, YouTube not great has been incredibly savvy at, you know, at suppressing other social platforms, algorithms, you know, look, I don’t work for LinkedIn. I’m hypothesizing here based on experience. So this is anecdotal, but it’s not as sophisticated as TikTok or YouTube. And it couldn’t be because it’s not been a true social media platform for that long. So but it is evolving. It’s getting better. And so we’ve seen things like,

people were abusing the notion of a poll before the polls function existed to say, do you think people should work from home or return to office, right? Use the thumbs up if you wanna vote for choice A, use the heart for choice B, and it’s like, okay, yes, you’re driving engagement, you are essentially gaming the algorithm to show your post more often and serve impressions. LinkedIn has cracked down on that. They have the poll format, which I think is still engagement-based, but I think they’re moderating the way in which that is used and how that’s shown.

I think they are looking at weights to the algorithm that will over time, look the ultimate currency is time and attention, right? So dwell time or participation with a piece of content in a meaningful way will increasingly prevail more in the LinkedIn algorithm than perhaps it does today. And I think that will be a good thing for everyone online. But

Yes, I would encourage people to say, if you have something personal you wanna share, that’s okay. Like I wrote a post this week about my father-in-law and I building a dining room table, right? It’s like definitely a personal post, but I tied it back to like a business lesson or a principle in my life, which is that I think as adults, we’re hesitant to try new things, right? And to share our stories of being a beginner. And a lot of things have parallels to that, like me starting my journey on LinkedIn. I know nothing about it, but you have to start somewhere so you write a post, right?

Jessica Phillips (01:00:19.228)
Same thing, like I knew nothing about it, but here was a project that I could do. And sharing the story and the personal experience, but tying that back to a broader theme, I think can be appropriate. So you just have to be careful about how you do it. Yeah. And I think that’s right. Because I was actually talking to our CRO about that. And he said, look, you know, personal selling. If you’re a sales guy, you want to get out there, you want to have connections, and you want it to be meaningful. And one of the ways that you do that is you involve your life. Yes. And you make yourself relatable. Yes.

In my opinion, I think for some people in certain industries, it could actually work in your favor. Yeah, it works, right? It humanizes you. It makes you more relatable. Here’s another dimension to me. But don’t, every post should not be promoting you or your company. Every post should not be your personal life. If you have a representative element to that throughout, great. But you should lead with value. And so that should be educating, inspiring, sharing your expertise. And then the other stuff can be included as well.

Jessica Phillips (01:01:20.809)
I think you just inspired my next Lakers’ Dinn post. Fantastic. We’ll start a niche. I love it. People who are creating their own dining room tables. Very good. Table talk. Yeah, exactly. Okay, and I do have one more question for you. Yeah, fire away. So, podcasts. I know you said you’ve been doing your podcast since 2015. We’ve been doing ours for the last two years. I do think that podcasts for B2B influencers is a huge, huge space. Anyone that’s doing it, interesting that you’ve seen, or do you think that if you’re

Is it more of an audio, or do you think there’s an element of visual that can happen there? More and more podcasts are incorporating video. Definitely, but does it make sense for B to B? That would be my question. Yeah, absolutely. A, YouTube is the biggest podcast destination in the world now, and so having a video component is great. And then B, I think it’s just more engaging and more personal. I switched my podcast from audio only to incorporating video.

late in the game, I don’t know when it was, 2018 let’s say. It’s easier to do now when everyone used to do it on Zoom. I mean this is kind of a treat to be able to do it. For sure, it’s gotten diversified, and in person it’s always better. But you think, oh making the switch, it’ll be 10 times harder. It’s harder, maybe 2x or 4x, but it’s not impossible. And so I think the value you get in exchange is strong. You asked who are the podcasters that I think are doing a good job. I’ll tell you what I listen to. I love our friend Chris Irwin, right? My partner and co-host for the event last night. He has an amazing podcast.

He’s got to go in. Yes, we’re from his team at Rockwater where they talk about it’s called. Why am I forgetting the name of it? We’ll cut this up. Yeah, exactly. It’s called the come up, right? That’s right. Yes, we’re talking about entrepreneurial stories and I love I just love the branding and thought behind it. The other podcast I listen to all in right. It’s like macro landscape overview and then.

the My First Million podcast, like what Sean and Sam do. It’s just a lot of fun and very conversational around sharing business ideas. Totally, and see those are the ones that I think will be really interesting for B2B marketers. 100%. Right, because it’s like you could go the NPR route, you could go the Planet Money route, you can do all that sort of stuff, but. Yeah.

Jessica Phillips (01:03:26.438)
is it, that just feels, that’s a check the box, that’s a programmatic box, right? I think where you could have some really interesting conversations and do things like we could get, you know, you can get CEOs or CMOs or like, I’ll talk about elevating employees, right? Thought leaderships, getting them on podcasts with these guys, I think would be really interesting. The conversational element of it is great. And then I also love, like one of the things that we obviously push a lot of our clients towards is, hey, do the long form, yeah, it’s harder, it takes a little bit more setup. Do the long form because then it gives you all the short form, it gives you all the assets, all the cut downs, you can do audio clips,

video clips, you can do everything. We’re gonna do all that with this podcast, right? But that’s what you’ve gotta do, because it’s hard to keep up with content, right? And people don’t know how to post, but if you have this library of stuff, you can take clips and you can say, you can do your LinkedIn post, and then you can add the video component to it. Repurpose, mix and match, totally. Exactly, and to me, it’s like that is, that’s the interesting thing. And I think we’ve also seen the trend on the B2C side, which I think really is B2B, it’s not just everything, it’s the general podcast trend, but it’s like short form is the advertisement

for it and people are going crazy for it, but people also just consume a lot of clips and not like an hour and a half podcast because not everyone has. How many hours a day do you have? And you’re not gonna spend all of them listening to podcasts, right? So. The Tyga principle. Yes, exactly. I told the story about a podcast that I listened to, Throwing Fits. They effectively flew out to LA to shoot their podcast with Tyga and he allotted them 15 minutes

because he was like, oh, because his understanding of podcasts was just as, you know, as short form clips that he saw. Yeah, that’s amazing. 15 minutes is all you need. Exactly. Precisely. You know, he had no concept of, you know, of those being mined from a longer form conversation. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Yeah, it’s telling, right? And I think probably a lot of people are doing it. And I mean, it’s great to listen to just a quick clip and a quick thing here and there. You know, TED Talk, obviously, that they were sort of the original inventors of that quick segment in a lot of ways. So,

I see a lot of that going on for sure. But cool, well hey, great conversation. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you, this has been so much fun. Yeah, and I hope we can do it again soon. Yeah. All right. Thank you. What is up?