138: How SDRs Crush Quota Using Marketing Tactics With Gaetano Di Nardi

Thank you to our sponsors, LeadIQ, Costello, SalesLoft, WorkRamp, and Dialpad for helping us produce this podcast. Head over to jbarrows.com slash blog for the highlights of this episode and explore resources you can use right away. Let's make it happen. Good afternoon, everybody. This is John Barrows with Make It Happen Mondays. And I am sitting here with a very special guest, some motherfucker who knows what the hell he's talking about when it comes to marketing and branding and all that other stuff. My boy, Gaetano, Director of Demand Gen over at Nextiva. What's up? How are you doing? Jay Barrows. What's up, man? Damn. I mean, here we are. You know, I first learned about you in 2016. Yeah.

Reading Sales Hacker blogs. And then the following year, I started optimizing them. Yeah. And yeah, man, it's been great getting to know you over the years. Love your work. Big fan. And mad respect for everything you do. So thanks for having me. Yeah, that's what I'm looking forward to this conversation. We're going to, for everybody out there right now, we're going to get super tactical on this one because we're both, we were kind of doing a little chat beforehand on some of the challenges that we're seeing with people and like, and getting their message out there, right? Social selling and branding and all that other stuff. And man, we got to start with some of the basics here. Because I said this to Gaetano when we were getting ready.

It's like, I'm having a lot of clients who are asking, oh, John, that training sounds great on prospecting and all that other stuff. But do you have anything on like how to teach them how to write like grammar? And I'm like, oh, excuse me? I'm like, what the fuck is school teaching these kids the other day? Like these days, right? So, but I do see a big issue with kids just not knowing how to write. And I think that's actually a big reason why a lot of them aren't, quote unquote, building their brand. Because they're sitting there saying like, first of all, the question is, what do I say? But also, even if I have something to say, I'm not really that good at writing it. So let's talk about copyright because you're one of the experts in it, Gaetano.

Let's start with that. And what are you seeing out there? And then let's talk about some fixes for this as we move into other channels of how we're going to develop this stuff. Yeah, man. Well, you know, John, obviously, you're a great copywriter and you're in sales. Well, I'll tell you this. Well, thank you. But I'm not like my shit. Like, dude, if there wasn't spellcheck on Word, I would not write. If there wasn't Grammarly, you know what I mean? Like, I got to get myself QC'd by a few, especially on the blogs and stuff like that. I mean, emails are short enough where I can be short, sweet, and to the point. And I've learned to cut out all the fluff. But I'm inherently not a very good speller.

I don't read a ton, so my vocabulary isn't that strong. But I get my voice out there, my way, in a way that sounds all right and doesn't – I think what I've done is I've minimized the negative stuff that automatically puts you in the, this kid's an idiot and doesn't know how to write bucket. But I definitely have not mastered the English language in any way. Yeah, well, you know, you mentioned a couple of good things in there, right? Like using Grammarly, using spellcheck. These are basic things that, unfortunately, most salespeople don't even do, right? They – maybe their company has some templates in the Salesforce account. They copy it, you know, they paste it into their Outlook client. They tweak a couple of variables.

Then they try to get fancy with it, maybe add a couple of things. They don't run it through Grammarly or spellcheck. And before you know it, you got a disaster. Or even worse, they don't check the variables. And they send it with, hey, I would love to get to know. And then it has, like, your company in brackets, you know. That's just brutal. Right? And I think it kind of stems from, like, the pressure to, like, scale, volume, volume. You know, you've seen this a million times, I'm sure. But, yeah, the art of great copywriting has been lost. And I think, you know, one of the – aside from not using tools like Grammarly and spellcheck, there's other ones out there that I use and I encourage our sales team to use.

And the marketing team definitely uses it at Nextiva. But there's tools out there called Hemingway and also the Flesh Kincaid readability tool. So, essentially, what you do is you paste your copy. You can just Google this stuff and use it for free. You paste your copy in there. And what it does, it tells you how difficult your readability is. So, if you're using words that are far too complex, it's going to call that out. It's going to say, you know, you're at a 12th grade reading level. You need to get your shit down to, like, 8th grade reading level. And that's the beauty, actually, behind – you know, politics aside, that's the beauty behind Donald Trump and his messaging and his language because he uses the most basic stuff.

Most of his words – word choices have few syllables. They're words that everyone can know and understand quickly. There's nothing too complex. You know, they compared his language, actually, in a Flesh Kincaid study against, like, Barack Obama's. And his was, like, far more complex. So, there are tools out there you can use. And then, finally, you know, to kind of close out this point, people don't practice writing, man. I mean – Why not? Why not? Like, is it just because they don't think it's important? And from your perspective, how important is writing at the – not being too fancy, right? But being able to write and articulate your voice the right way? Like, what's the benefit of that? Because what I think is – I think a lot of people say, like, okay, that could make me marginally more effective.

But not, like – it's not going to take me from a D student to an A student if I learn how to write better. So, it's one of those things where I know I should get better at writing, but, you know what I mean, type of thing. So, first of all, A, what kind of difference do you see being able to write really, really well makes from your team's standpoint? And then, B, why do you think more reps aren't, like, more thoughtful about it? Yeah, it's a good one. So, I think the reason why a lot of reps don't want to do it is because they don't see any benefit in doing it. Hey, the marketing team's writing my templates or someone's writing my templates. I don't need to really do that much. I just need to kind of go.

The emails that they are sending are very basic. You know, it's following up with, here are the things we talked about on the call. You know, it's simple shit, right? But one way that I encourage our sales team to think about writing in a way that's going to benefit them is the LinkedIn updates, right? So, you only have 1,300 characters. Got to make the best use of it. You got to be concise. You got to have a strong hook. The opening line has to make people say, whoa, has to be thumb stopping in the feed. Like, people are scrolling. They have to see that opening line and say, whoa, I want to stop and read this. So, let's pause there for a second. How do you do that, right? Because is that why I'm seeing a lot of people put all caps as kind of like the title in their feed and then they write the paragraphs?

Like, or is it like you got to have a cool hook? Like, what are people doing in that first to get you to stop? Yeah, there's a couple of tricks. So, I don't know. The all caps is stupid. I mean, that's what you would call a hack, right? I don't think that's going to do it. But if you address a certain audience group, for example, you do this really well. You might say, hey, VPs of sales, this is a problem. So, you make a problem statement. Or you might say something like, hey, chief revenue officers, here's a question I have for you. And it's about something I'm noticing lately that's bothering me. Hmm. Oh, my gosh. I'm a chief revenue officer. It's bothering John Barrows, a very influential person.

I probably need to know what this is about. Do you do that with emails too? Because what we're moving towards is we kind of follow that. And I'd be curious kind of your thoughts on this. We follow the old school AIDA factor now of how to write an email, attention, interest, desire, action, right? The subject line gets your attention. The first sentence gets you interested. And that first sentence has got to be about you. And it's either personalized. Hey, I was on your website and I saw this. Or what we're doing now is we're asking a question. Very persona specific, right? So, hey, Gaetano, as a director of demand gen over at Nextiva, are you currently faced with blah, blah, blah issue, whatever it is?

And the goal there is to get you to go, damn, yes, and then read the rest of it. So, do you follow a similar format there for emails too? Oh, yeah. I think that's totally brilliant. I actually use that formula for a lot of LinkedIn content as well. Okay. A recent one was how to handle when someone asks you, hey, can I pick your brain? So, I use that as the opening thing, which is a question, but it's also kind of like this problem statement. Yeah, yeah. And then the thing that I do, I haven't tested this enough in emails, but I think it would work. So, you ask yourself the question and then you answer it. Yeah. The reason I ask is because. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. So, something psychological.

It's problem, solution, question, answer. People love that shit. Okay. And then the third step is, or the third section, whatever you want to call it, of the formula is the benefit or the why behind it. So, with the pick your brain thing, it was, you know, pick my brain. Then it was the answer. I tell them, you know, basically, instead of jumping on a call, like what everyone wants to do, just tell me what your questions are or what you want to pick my brain about. And I'll make content about it. And then, so yeah, so I'll make a five-minute video explaining what it is you want to know about. And then I'll publish it. And then here's all the extra benefits that will come along with that. You'll see a long thread of comments from other people.

And you'll get additional perspective that you wouldn't have gotten if we jumped on a call, right? And all these other benefits. And then the final part was like the call to action, which was, you know, don't think of it as such a negative thing when people want to pick your brain. It's actually a positive because they look up to you. I love that because that way you're helping them build their brand. So what you're doing as a quote-unquote influencer, if somebody reaches out to you, you're saying, look, fine, I'm not going to take 30 minutes on a call with you to fumble around and figure out what the hell you want to talk about. Why don't you put it on LinkedIn? I'll answer it either with a video or with text or whatever it is.

And then the benefit is there. Now you're building your brand because you're now tagging me in something that I'll respond to, right? That's right. Yeah. So that follows the kind of the formula you mentioned for email, the AIDA. I think it's brilliant. So yeah, salespeople just got to practice. That's at the end of the day, that's how you're going to get better. Just practice. And back to the LinkedIn format, the benefit for salespeople in doing that is they build their personal brand. Yeah, exactly. So you practice writing on LinkedIn with that short 1,300 character limit and you're going to get better over time. You're going to build your personal brand. You're probably going to get some inbound interest or at least some kind of relevant conversations going and it's going to benefit you in the long run.

I love it. Do you dumb it down? So based on personas, so you talked about 12th grade level versus 8th grade level versus the super basics, right? Do you speak to your audience? So let's talk about like, so brand building, we'll get back to that. But like, let's say I'm reaching out to a prospect, right? I always say don't use industry jargon unless you know they know that, you know, don't use acronyms and stuff like that if you don't know that they know that stuff, right? Especially your acronyms. But you also want to show a level of expertise in that industry by dropping some phrases or some maybe potentially some acronyms that are more relevant to there. So what's that line of really trying to speak at a level of like the executives maybe that you're reaching out to versus kind of quote unquote dumbing it down to have plain language to get through?

Yeah, I think, you know, I don't know if there's a right or wrong answer to that one, John. I think it really is trial and error. And it does, I think it does depend on who you're reaching out to. Like, so for example, one of our key buyers is IT, right? And with IT, I think it's okay to be a little technical. We have a lot of acronyms that we use, but they're widely known acronyms in that space. They're not things that like you wouldn't catch someone too off guard with. Like one of the common ones is PBX system, private branch exchange, and VoIP, voiceover IP. These are like the basic ones. So just throwing a couple of those in there, I think work, where you might get too wacky if you get really in the weeds with shit.

But like if you're reaching out to like a chief revenue officer, you're probably going to say things like CAC, LTV, all that sort of stuff, right? So I don't know if there's a right or wrong answer to it. Maybe I'll defer it back to you to see if you have any, you know, best facts. I think it's, well, it kind of leads to my second question, which is, so I think we'll answer it in context here. Because somebody brought this, like, so I was having a, I had a talk with Doug Landis, right? A little while, last week, and we did a podcast. And, you know, one of the things he said, I mean, I've always been a proponent of going all the way to the top, you know, C-level executive, getting referred down, whatever.

I've softened that up a little bit because it used to be 5, 10 years ago, you could easily go to a C-suite and say, yo, what's up? I was on your website. I saw this cool shit. Who can I talk to on your company about that? Getting referred down, right? So it worked because LinkedIn wasn't as obviously, you know, readily available. It was there, but it was, you know, people weren't. And so, and people in the C-suite wasn't getting as hammered as they are now. All of a sudden, you know, these cadence tools came out. Now I've deferred down to like line of business, right? So I'll go after the VP of sales and say, who on your team can I have this conversation with? I'll usually go after the VP. For me, I'll usually go after the VP of sales saying, hey, what's up?

Let's have a conversation, right? Or if you're not the best person. So, but Doug said something. He's like, you know what? If you're a 22-year-old kid, don't go after the C-suite. He's like, you have no relevance to the C-suite. They have no interest in talking to you. There's no value at all. And if you don't, and if you're dumb and you take a very generic approach and you just fire off an email to them and say, hey, who could I talk to? Now you're showing your ignorance because you can't use LinkedIn. So with your team and the reps that you work with, what are your thoughts on kids going after executives? Because I think we've been beating that into their head for the past 10 years. And now it seems like it might not be the best idea.

Oh, you're spot on. Doug is spot on. We don't recommend that. Okay. Straight up. Hey, you know what? If you are a 23, 24-year-old SDR, you graduated from Arizona State University two years ago, you have no business sending an email to a CTO of, that's a person that's 20, 25 plus years, more experience than you in business and life, period. You shouldn't be hitting them up. Right. So what do you say to the kids who, what do you say to the kids who, who, whose bosses are telling them, reach out to the C-suite, which are 22, 23 years old? Like what, how do they, how do they deal? What approach should they use if they're being asked to go to the C-suite outside of quitting and going to another company?

What, what kind of, what approach would be an appropriate approach for a kid, 22, 23, 24 years old to go after a C-suite with, if at all? Yeah. I mean, that's so tough. I mean, the example I will give you is what works on me as the buyer. So demand generation, you got a target on your back. Oh, you have that, you have that title on your LinkedIn. You got a target on your back. Yes. The thing is, um, if you didn't know me at all, you just saw my title, you would probably message me, um, in the same way that every other demand generation, you know, director would be approached, which is, you know, Hey, I'm sure you're interested in buying intent data and all this stuff and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But if you know me, you know that my last post was me playing reggae guitar on LinkedIn. Yeah. If you know me, you know that I wear basketball jerseys to board meetings. Yeah. If you know me, you know, um, you know that I like to do wacky shit that I'm like, you know, New York city boy, right? Like all this shit. So, um, I'm not corporate. So the, the, the, the, the advice I would give is try to find something about this person that will make it relatable. So if someone hits me up, like, yo, I got some cool shit for you. Like, you know, and has this informal vibe and maybe sends me a video of some shit playing guitar or I don't know, like shows me that they're not a robot. I'm going to give that person a look if it's at least decently relevant.

Um, if it's, you know, dry corporate speak, blah, blah, blah. I'm not right. And it's good chance that any, you know, C person could also be like me. You never know. I mean, the, the, the CEO of Goldman Sachs is a DJ and he, and he does gigs, you know what I'm saying? So like, that's just one example of a way, like you never know what C level person plays the guitar or likes to do whatever, um, find something relatable and try to take that angle instead of just, you know, the usual corporate speak. But that, so I think that comes up to the next kind of point here as far as warming people up on social a little bit. Right. Because what I can't stand, I'm going to be straight up. I cannot stand fake personalization or fake connections to a hard cut.

Right. This is where I think our artificial intelligence is failing. Right. Because, you know, a while back, I mean, you heard me talk about the Shakespeare email that I always show where it was like, holy shit. Right. But now, now that they went out of business and I'm not going to call anybody out here, but there's like three or four players now in the, in the AI space and in emails, automated, whatever. And they do quote unquote personalization scale. And what they do is that first line they personalize, but then it's a hard cut to their value prop. Right. So it's like, Hey John, you know, I see you're in Boston, you know, you've been to legal seafood recently, something dumb like that. And then we're the leading provider of, right?

So there's no connection there. So I think there's, there's, yes, let's go for personalization. Hey Gaetano, I saw you that reggae thing, man. I'm a, you know, I'm a DJ or whatever it is, but then there's gotta be some sort of relevance to why you're reaching out to me. Right. So, so how do you break, how do you bridge that gap of personalization? And, and let's transition that to social. Cause I think this is where social can come in real strong is, is, is warming that person up for that conversation. Right. Is that, is that kind of how you guide reps on your end to, to kind of do a little bit of legwork up front? Exactly. Exactly. I mean, I'll give you a good example. A company that says that sells video software has been hitting me up.

Right. Okay. And they, they get my whole shtick. They get my whole thing. Right. They know who I am and stuff. And they sent me a rap video as like them rapping a song about me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now, now as great as that was, unfortunately what they failed to understand is that I already have Wistia embedded into like, you know, thousands of content, you know, assets across the site and, and their value prop of, well, we have advanced analytics that will let you know this when, you know, people are watching the video. And I'm like, guess what? That's not that promise of, you know, of, of value does not outweigh the pain, the agony, the nightmare of ripping out Wistia from, you know, potentially, uh, five to 600 pieces of content manually.

There's no way to do it with a script, replacing it with your sht. Sorry. So, so that kind of like the, the, the track that I've been on a lot recently is this is like, again, going back to kind of, I used to build my career on going top down and I've shifted that a little bit. I've also built my, my, my, my career, at least in this world right here of, of personalization. Right. Of like being super personalized, right. That type of stuff. And, and, but making it relevant. Right. So, Hey, I was on your website and I know this, like, there's a reason I'm reaching out to you, but I think people are getting what you mentioned right there. There's, there's a big difference between personalization and relevance right now.

And there, I might even add a third level of timeliness, right? Because, because there's personalization. Fine. John, you went to university of Maryland, go Terps. Who gives a sht? Then there's relevance. Oh, there's video. You use video. Like we have this video solution. I see a lot. So there's relevance there, but then there's the timing as far as look like, dude, like, yeah, cool. That's relevant to me, but I ain't going to do that right now because of my headset. So where are you on that spectrum of like, how do you balance personalization, relevance and timing in a way that can be scalable? Because I think if I had, if I had two hours to look at Gaetano at, you know, Nextiva, I could sit down, I could look at your videos, notice that they were on Wistia, you know what I mean?

Probably send you a more tailored message. Maybe do the reggae video and be like, yo, I hope that got your attention, man, or that rap video and say, yo, I hope that got your attention. You know, one of the reasons I actually wanted to reach out to you, because I noticed you got all your stuff on Wistia and, uh, and, and which is, I'm sure is a big pain in the ass to make a switch, which is why you've never considered it. But we have a service offering here that can actually make that switch for you. And I, right. So therefore, then you'd be like, okay, well, maybe I'll have that call. But, but how do you balance those three things without spending two, three hours figuring out how to get it, go after somebody?

Yeah. Okay. So you, you nailed it for, and for one, if this service did, if that service did exist for the company that was hitting me up, I would certainly give them a look, but they didn't do the pre-work of understanding what my pain already was, what my, they didn't, they didn't really assess my current state. Their whole, their whole thing was like, Hey, we made this rap video. We deserve a meeting. Yeah. No, you don't. Sorry. Um, I, I, you know, props for well done. Yeah. Yeah. But all you did was not suck like everyone else. So I can't give participation trophies for not sucking, you know, you're not supposed to suck. So sorry. Um, but anyway, to the, uh, to the point of timeliness and relevance, what I tell my, my, um, team, my sales team is look, you know, I'm a buyer.

I'm someone that gets targeted all the time. So I'm going to tell you the way that I buy, and this will help you understand this all the time. So never do I wake up on any given day and just randomly say, Hey, I need a better marketing automation solution. Or, Hey, I need to switch from part out to HubSpot or Hey, you know what I really need today is a new SEO rank tracker. Like it never, it never happens. And the same thing with the same thing with the CTOs and CIOs and director of IT, they never wake up one day and just say, you know what, I really need a new business phone system. It just doesn't happen. So what I, what that tells them is what I tell them the takeaway on that is like almost 97% of the time that you're reaching out to someone, there's no interest.

There's no, there's no timeliness factor at all. It's interruptive. It's outbound. So, um, what you should look to do is hit on the personalization, hit on the relevance, but, but keep in mind that the timeliness is probably not going to be there. So what your goal should be is to establish a connection, establish a relationship and be as top of mind as possible. Become friends with as many prospects as you can. Like, don't look at them as a prospect. Look at them as I have to become this person's friend. How would you do that? And it's the same thing with content marketing, with LinkedIn marketing, with top of the funnel marketing, what you're doing is just implanting yourself in the minds of the buyers.

You're getting in front of those relevant audiences so that when that time does come where, oh shit, uh, Wistia crashed or, oh shit, um, you know, Pardot's down or there's been outages with this, with, you know, my, you know, I'm a ring central customer and now I have outages like crazy. Oh, I'm going to remember Nextiva now and I need a business phone system. Remember that rep that befriended me. That's how I think, aside from buying intent data or doing any trickery with data, that's how you do it. So is that where Mark, cause I'm seeing, uh, I mean, where does this leave sales, right? Because this is all nurture. This is all impression game. I couldn't agree with you more. This is why I think it's so important to build your personal brand, right?

Because your personal brand, I tell kids all the time, I, I use the, um, I use the example of what, what, what we need to be like today. Okay. Cause people are like, John, is it emails at phone? Is it social? It's everything. It's, it's literally everything. You got to be omnipresent and that's not your company. That's you. Right. And, and so the, you know, in the example I use is you ever see the movie focus with Will Smith? I haven't seen it. Oh dude, you got to see it. So, so it's not his best, but, but you'll, so long story, I'll try to make the real long story short. He's a, he's a con artist, right? So he goes into these, uh, he goes in with like a group of people, like 20, 30 people. He goes to like the Superbowl and he runs scams on everybody and he pick pockets and gambling schemes or whatever.

And then, so goes into the Superbowl, does this, makes a million dollars, right? Puts it in a suitcase, leaves, goes to the, and then, you know, and they say, all right, we'll meet you in a couple of weeks. Right. So we can divvy it up next scene. He's at the Superbowl and he's, uh, in a suite and he's with his girl who's part of this, but she doesn't know what's about to happen. And she starts, they start betting on random shit. Like, Hey, I got to bet you that guy eats his popcorn before she eats it, whatever. And, uh, this guy kind of leans in cause he's near, he's like, Hey, you mind if I get in on bet? And so Will starts betting with him and he's like, Hey, I bet you 50 bucks. Now it's cash, right?

Bet you 50 bucks is going to be a running play. Oh, he loses, right? Bet you a, you know, double or nothing is going to be an end around to the tight end and loses again. Long story short, loses the million dollars, right? As he's leaving, his girls all dejected. Yeah. He's all dejected. His girls are pissed. As he's leaving, he goes, Hey, I got one more bet for you. I was like, man, you're a glutton for punishment. He goes, I'll bet. I'll let you choose any number you want on the field, any number you want on the field. Okay. And I'll bet you I'll, I'll guess what number you choose. And the guy's like, are you out of your mind? There's two football teams down there. Right. And a girl, and he's like, you know what?

I'll do you one better. I'll let my girl guess. You can choose the number. My girl. And she's like, no, absolutely not. Right. He's like, just wait. Right. So the guy looks around, he sees down standing next to the coach, this big dude with 55 across his chest. Right. And so he looks at Will. He's like, you want me to write it down? And I was like, no, no, I trust you. So he gives the binoculars to the girl and the girl's like, don't make me do this. Right. But then she's like, he's like, just look. So he's sweating and sweating and looks around. And all of a sudden she sees down that standing next to the coach, their friend, who they've been hanging out with all week with 55 across his chest.

And so she kind of looks and she goes, 55? The guy's like, no, no, no way you guessed that. Right. Doubles up the million wins. And the point is, this guy was a mark. Like Will knew that this guy was a degenerate gambler from somewhere in Asia. He was a billionaire. So a million meant nothing to him. And he liked betting on the most ridiculous thing. So when the guy landed in New Orleans, Will had it set up where the license plate on the car that picked him up was 55. The protesters outside his hotel were Union 55. The chandeliers inside the rooms look like fives. The song that was playing was Mandarin. Yeah. Woo woo. The Rolling Stones. And apparently in Mandarin, woo woo, it's 55. So everywhere he looked or saw, he saw 55.

So when it was his time to choose, he had to choose 55. Right. So that to me is, that's why I'm going to retweet you every once in a while. I'm going to jump in on a DM. I'm going to make a comment on LinkedIn. I'm going to join a group that you're in. I'm going to send you an email, make a phone call, send you some shit in the mail. So eventually when that priority rises to the top, I'm the one you choose. Is that kind of where your head's at right there? A hundred percent, man. I mean, dude, it's that, that example is brilliant. And I think there's examples of this in our everyday lives that we just don't realize. Politics aside, you know, I'll put this out there. I, I study Trump, not because I agree with him or think he's a great guy or, you know, his branding is, his branding is undeniable.

His marketing and branding is undeniable and oh, for a copywriting tip. Oh, you want to see good copywriting? Subscribe to his email list. Oh man, his emails and texts are off the chain. Like he, I mean, really good. I mean, not sometimes not sane, but like as from a marketing perspective, it's like, wow, like it's, it's good shit. Um, but anyway, the example I was going to tell you from Trump was, uh, one thing he does notoriously is he adds these little nicknames to his, to his rivals, right? Crooked Hillary, Shifty Shift, Mini Mike Bloomberg, right? So then when election time comes around and you go to vote, man, am I going to vote for someone who's crooked? Yeah. Oh, crooked Hillary. I mean, crooked Hillary, even if you like, I supported Hillary, right?

Yeah. And even if, but, but eventually like when, when the name Hillary popped into my head, the name crooked was attached to it pretty tight. Exactly, exactly, exactly. Um, you know, so like it's subliminally, right? Like you just implant, implant, implant, and, and eventually it just works. So, um, that's, that's, I guess what I'm getting after with the timeliness thing with you, but I don't know if you have any better tips to offer, John. That's just the way that I view. No, I, I think that's why the challenge is, I don't think a lot of people see that. I, I think the, all the stuff that we talk about, you and I talk about makes all the sense in the world, right? Except for to that kid who's going to be an SDR for less than a year and they're sitting there looking at it and they might not even be in the same job for two to three, you know, after two to three years.

So they're basically like, if I, I'll be, I'll be straight, right? If I was 22 years old these days and I was being told I got to make my 50 dials and I got to hit my numbers or else I'm going to get fired. This whole brand building and impression thing, man, I'd be like, go fuck yourself, man. I got to hit my numbers right now. I know what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to wake them up to their big picture career. Like your, your, your overall career, this is something you absolutely do, should do. Forget for your business right now. Forget for, for the company that you work with, like for yourself. Right. And so that's why I think it's so important to be omnipresent and on those channels. But how do you do that in a way that doesn't get in the way of you driving results?

I think is a lot of what people are trying to figure out. Yeah, exactly right. I mean, it's the same thing from, well, there's so many things running through my head right now. I mean, for one, for one, um, that entry level SDR, hopefully they're not entry level. I don't believe that SDR should be an entry level role anymore. I think you have to talk about that a few times. That's a whole nother podcast. That's a whole nother one. But you know, these sales managers, you've got to figure out what the motivation is for this person. Why are they an SDR, right? Like, why are they there? Are they there because they really want to be in marketing someday and that's their step stool. You got to figure these things out because that intrinsic motivation is going to be how you guide this person.

And it's going to kind of dictate whether or not they willfully, uh, decide to build their own personal brand. If they don't want to be in sales for the long run, they're probably not going to do it. Um, so, you know, I think that's, that's kind of step one, right? Like we think about that kind of career goals type of thing, as far as where you vision of where you see yourself, right? Cause people do use, you know, SDRs as kind of like a, Hey, this is my in cause it's low barrier to entry. You know, I'm, I can take a beating for a little while, but this will kind of help me figure out. I do want to go marketing ops or sales. Right. And so if you don't tap into that, then you're probably not.

If you, I think that, that kind of speaks to, if you don't tap into somebody's intrinsic motivations, you can't get them to do anything. Right. That's right. That's right. And if they do want to be in sales long-term, that's even a bigger reason to start building your personal brand now. Yeah. You're taking a beating doing your, you know, outbound motions and following up with leads and stuff like that. But if you eventually want to be a sales ops leader, you got to really know how to navigate those waters the right way. You look at Morgan with the, uh, the series he built, the SDR Chronicles, right? He took something that was seemingly, you know, blah and made it cool. Like he made it, he made it cool to be an SDR.

Yeah. You know what I mean? Before it was cool. And I think he did a lot for just the community and the sales profession, just like you. I mean, you guys together are making sales cool again. Trying to, man. Yeah. Done the right way. Right. I mean, I think that's the, that's the key. It's like, is like trying to, and I think that goes back to the authentic voice. Right. I, you know, right now, um, I actually got a call coming up in a little bit with Kevin Dorsey, um, where we're going to be talking about like the, the power of authenticity in your messaging, right? Like be you don't try to be somebody else. Don't try to speak at a level that you're not at that. That, that kind of, I think leads to that, the point earlier about, you know, do you speak CTO?

You try to speak this level. Do you try to speak this level? I figure you just try to speak your level. You know what I mean? Like, like, don't be something that you're not. Don't talk with a language that you don't know. That's why I like the buzzword. That's why marketing, marketing can get away with using buzzwords and shit like that. Cause people, I think expect that, but sales, we need to speak a little bit more plain language. Um, this is also why I've seen stuff like, like, um, numbers start to reduce in value. It was far, I used to tell people, Hey, call up somebody and say, yo, we showed how XYZ company, how to increase their whatever by 35% cause it was a very concrete number and it was very specific to that.

But I've actually stopped using numbers now because I think numbers have lost their value. Like people just kind of roll their eyes at that. Right. Um, so I mean, speaking that language, your language and the authentic language, right? Oh, dude. I mean, you nailed it with the numbers thing. I mean, when I see, you know, Hey, um, clients that have used our solution have, uh, have seen their, you know, XYZ by 60% growth. Like, I'm just like, yeah, where'd that number come from? Right. And back to Trump, you know, one thing he is brilliant at is, is, is hyping stuff up, saying the numbers are through the roof. Yeah, there were so many people there. We couldn't even see to the back of the room because there were so many people, but really he doesn't know the number and he never says the number.

He never says there were 7,827 people there. He just says, Oh, the numbers are through the roof. The economy is performing well. It's astronomical numbers. And people are just like, wow. Yeah. You, you know, there is an astronomical number. So, um, you know, hate to keep going back to that, but I mean, but also there's that perception reality. I mean, I think there's the branding side of this, but then there's the substance side of this, right? To say, you got to be able to back up. I mean, he's gotten to himself to a position where he's got enough followers and whatever it is that believe whatever the fuck he says. So it does, it does that. So that just feeds into their personal belief. He ain't getting anybody like me to say, Oh, that I now believe you.

You know what I mean? Like, so I think reps on the other hand have to be like, they have to sell the dream a little bit, but have some substance behind that dream to be able to back it up or at least their company does. Um, and, and, and how to engage. But I, you know, to go back to the branding piece, cause here's another one that I think is, is hanging a lot of people up on it is, is the transition is like, Hey, Gaetano, I'm going to be in this role at Nextiva selling PBX phones, you know, stuff like that, you know, these types of things or whatever, uh, for the next, I don't know, maybe three, four or five years, but then I might go do something else, man. So I'm going to put all this effort into building something that's a long-term benefit for me.

Um, but yet I might completely shift industries and now what? So let's talk about that transition. Cause I've struggled with that myself. I tell Morgan and James this all the time. I go, guys, we got to be very, very careful with telling people to build your brand when it is so much easier for us to build our brands with what we do and who we sell to. I mean, I sell crack to crack heads. You know what I mean? Like I'm a sales trainer that sells to sales reps who are looking for sales. Content from somebody that isn't full of shit, right? So, I mean, so for me to build my brand in this space is, I'm going to say easy, but it's a hell of a lot easier than that 23 year old killed selling to CISOs.

You know what I mean? It's like, uh, sure. So is there advice, like, what do you, what advice do you have for the kid that's, say they've done their job or they're, they're building their brand or whatever it is, but they're now like, man, I'm going to go into a completely separate industry here. How do you make that transition without just being like, all right, sorry. All that stuff, you know, is, is now irrelevant and I have to start from zero again. Yeah. So I think I have a really good answer for you. At least I hope it is. Yeah. All right. So I did it. Um, you know, I used to run marketing as sales hacker. Yep. And, um, you know, the, I, so I think what the main takeaway is before I get into the story is the main takeaway is adopt to the platform, adopt to the platform, to the audience that's on the platform.

So I'll break it down. When I was VP of marketing at sales hacker, um, it was a sales, you know, content engine, right? Um, sales and marketing, um, and customer success engine. So I would share a lot of content about that on LinkedIn, which was perfect. That's what people want. Like you said, you know, you're selling sales tips to a sales audience on a sales platform. I mean, it doesn't get any better, doesn't get any better than that. Right. Okay. So what happened? Sales hacker gets acquired. I don't want to go to outreach because I don't want to be in that sales engagement space. I go totally left field. UCAS cloud communication. Ooh, right now. Now what do I do? Do I suddenly start talking about business phone service and UCAS and cloud communication and, you know, how to, you know, moving from on-premise to the cloud and digital transformation and all this bullshit?

No. What I do though, is I keep feeding topics that people want, but then I, you know, I inject that little shit in there. You know, I, I, I fit it in somehow, you know, and, and it might be the case that, um, you know, we, uh, we do a, uh, a report that gets data on how often people use their desk phone versus conference phone versus mobile phone. So I take weight. I find ways to, you know, inject what we do into the stuff that matters to people. Gotcha. So if I would have just went out of the gate and said, all right, I'm at a cloud communication company and I need to start talking about cloud communication. People would have been like, dude, you're fucking crazy. Exactly. Um, but because I don't do that and I still give the people what they want, but once in a while I'll plug in something, um, it's, it works.

So, um, I think that's the takeaway. Yeah. I think, I think that, that the slow drip, right? So if you're, if you're posting, you know, five times a week, make one of them start to start to make that transition. Where if it was like five times a week at your previous thing with three out of five of them being kind of oriented towards that topic. And then when you make that switch, keep talking about whatever it is on the higher level, but then maybe one out of five start to introduce your new shit and then start to transition that over time. That's exactly right. Yeah. So I use kind of this signal to noise ratio, uh, four to one, four to one usually four to one. Yeah. Jabs versus right hooks.

Like, cause that's what we're actually trying to fill that. Like the, the Gary V right. We're trying to figure that out right now. We went hard. I mean, for no shit. I mean, we, Chris and I, my boy, Chris, who's running all, you know, my CRO, he, um, you know, he, he came to me a little while ago and said, man, you've been doing this for about eight years now and you haven't been throwing any right hooks. He's like, I don't even, he's like, quite honestly, John, I don't think there's a lot of people that know you do sales training. Like, no, you have something to sell right as sales training. Cause they, they get all sorts of free content from you that they're kind of like, okay, cool. Like, where's John's podcast?

Let me listen to that free shit. But not even realizing they could have you come in for an onsite session. Right. He's like, we got to start throwing some right hooks. Like we got to start really leaning into the, the, the, um, you know, we built up this repository of, of, of value and also credibility. Right. So now let's start tapping into it, but there's that line, right? You don't want to throw too many right hooks. Cause now people are like, dude, stop asking me for shit. Right. Stop asking me for sign up for this. And, and that's, I'm always fearful of that. It's like, how many times are we like abusing our audience and asking too much versus giving away too much? And you're, you got that four to one ratio.

Yeah. And you know, my, my one, I feel you on this cause I'm the same way actually. Um, I don't like asking for shit. I just, it's just not, I just don't like it. I would rather it be to where they're begging me. What do you do? Yeah. I must find out. I must go to your website. I must go to your services page. I, you know, so I would rather it be that way, but yeah, a good ratio for me has typically been like four to one, five to one. And when I do throw a right hook, it's usually for something like not too heavy, you know, it's, it's usually not like a, like, Hey, here's this month's promo. Like it's, it's usually something like, um, like a, like a webinar, um, or, um, some kind of report like the state of business communications report that we're going to put out, uh, similar to what we did at sales hacker, the, uh, the state of revenue operations.

It might be something like that cornerstone or pillar content, if you will. Um, or maybe an event of some sort, but it's usually nothing too heavy. So, um, that's the way that I kind of do it, but shit, I'm not great at it either. I'm not great at asking for stuff in a public forum. I, I just, I think that's a, I think that's a little bit the marketers in us versus the sales reps in us, right? Because that's the balance, like a marketers, I mean, an ask, I think marketers have gotten away from, um, you know, too many, like that's why the switch from conversation, you know, from HubSpot and landing pages to conversational marketing with drift, right? It's like we, I think marketers have inherently said, okay, we got to stop always asking, right?

Cause there's, cause it just made that trend of, of like, eventually a few people started giving away free shit and more and more people started. So now the gated stuff, people like, like fuck off on the gated stuff. Right. Um, so I think there's a little bit of that. Okay. We've, we've seen that shift over the past five or six years of, we got to give shift shit away to, to, in order to attract people to us as opposed to always asking them to attract, right? But sales reps, we got to ask, man, like we got to close and we got to ask. And so I think that's the challenge that a lot of reps have is, is this goes back to, I used to be super hardcore with sales reps as far as make sure you have a strong call to action, right?

Always have a strong call to action. What do you, you know, when you, when you have 15 minutes, who's the best way to get, you know, who's the best person to talk to? Now I'm like, nah, you got to back off. You can't, you can't throw any, as many, all right hooks in your cadence. There's got to be a share. There's got to be something that, that gets them to say, or like maybe just a question that's more aimed at getting them to think as opposed to asking them about a meeting or anything like that. Right. How many, if you were to say, like, if you had a 10 touch cadence, right, how many, how many, how many jabs versus right hooks would you have in your 10 touch cadence? Give or take. Yeah, I would have, um, eight jabs and two hooks.

Wow. Okay, cool. And now how do you know those jabs? So, so the other, here's another, you know, challenge I have, which is what the fuck kind of content is, is relevant to share to somebody like, you know what I mean? Like, like, okay, so I don't know, you know, I, I'm going to go back to reality, right? Where I'm, I'm, I got to hit 20 to 50 activities a day. I, you know, I, I, I have some time to do some research on some accounts, but usually I got to get the volume number up there. So I want, I'm going after CISOs and I want eight jabs as part of my sequence here for, for reaching out to them, which means I got to share some content, but what the fuck content am I going to share to a CISO that's going to be like, oh, look at this kid.

You know what I mean? Like that was a really valuable piece of content. Like, what is that? Yeah, I'll tell you, it's really tough, man. Really tough. Like, here's the thing. Um, it varies by buyer type to buyer type and our, our CEO, uh, gave me an example. He said, um, he really wanted to just see how HubSpot would treat him if he, you know, downloaded one of their things and got into their funnel and he, uh, recorded the sequence. Like he recorded everything cool and it was really, it was really masterfully done. He sent me every email, every touch and the way that they, you know, position their whole thing when you're a top of funnel contact in their system is their experts, their solutions, experts, their helpful advisors.

Um, and it's all like things you can use. So it's spreadsheet, calculus, spreadsheets, it's calculators, it's, uh, forecasting templates. It's, you know, and it's all relevant, uh, to your track depending on who you are. And then on every, so they, they kind of do follow that three jab, one hook rule for jab, one hook rule. So they'll hit you with, you know, value asset, something you can use. Um, and, and none of it was like case study or reviews or shit like that. Like, Hey, here's what our other customers are saying about it. It's all shit you can use. Okay. You got to think about ways to give your prospects things they can actually use that are sticky somehow, whether it's a calculator, whether it's an ROI thing, whether it's a spreadsheet that can help them manage something or whatever, or a formula, something like that.

And then eventually say, Hey, um, did you ever get around to using that tool? Uh, yes or no, if, if not, you know, we're here to help. Um, we'd love to, you know, schedule some time to maybe talk about your business and see how we can apply some of that to, you know, whatever you're doing, blah, blah, blah. So, um, that's how I think you can do it. And that's kind of the approach I've always tried to take. Like I'm actually helping like our sales team build out our nurtures. And I've been thinking about this more and more too, like, damn, we've got to do better than just here's what, uh, the results we got for this company were, you know what I think that, so what I'm trying to do, uh, and I, cause I think we guess a lot, right?

So we, we make assumptions, whereas why not ask? Like I, I'm looking to put together an advisory board of like five players in each persona, CROs, VPs of sales and VPs of enablement. And anytime we're coming up with new messaging or content, giving it to them first and saying, Hey, would this be valuable to you? Does this message resonate with you? Right. Get their feedback and then go at it. But it's almost like the, like if you could sit down and, and, and grab your, it's almost like you want to use your own internal resources to figure this out, right? Like go grab your, if you sell to CMOs, if you go sell to CROs, if you go to say, Hey, what are the, what are, what are pieces of content that you see valuable?

Like what are templates, what are tools, what are resources that you personally are valuable to your life? And now those are the ones I'm going to share with the people that are just like you. Right. That's exactly what, that's exactly what we did with ours. You nailed it. So that's how we figured out how to build the disaster recovery plan template for CIOs. We wouldn't know how to, how to come up with that. Who's going to think of that shit, right? Business continuity plan template. I'm not going to figure that out. I have no idea what that is. Another fascinating one was IT career growth paths and how to get to the next stage. So if you are, say for example, an IT administrator and you probably want to move up in your field someday, what kinds of credentials you need to get to the, you know, IT director level.

How do you do that? What is the typical salary like? What is the experience and qualifications that you need? So we put together these tracks, you know, and we ask our, our internal IT department and our own CTO, CIO, Hey, does, what would you be looking for? Does this sound good? Does that sound good? Yes. No. Yes. No. Hey, this is what I would look for. This is what I would do. This is what I would need. Oh shit. I would have never thought of that. So, you know. Well, I mean, that's, I mean, that's, it's a kind of, we'll wrap up here in a minute, but I think that's a real good tip for people out there trying to figure out like, Hey, what do I share? Right. Don't guess. Ask. Right. Go find, I mean, we all know somebody at least once, twice removed, whether it's on LinkedIn or something like that, or at our own company that is in the role that we're trying to sell to.

If you ever want to pick somebody's brain, that's the person's brain to pick. You know what I mean? Forget about picking brains of idiots like me, who's going to try to give you some random ass sales tip that's might help that you could probably read on my website. Go pick the brain of the person that you're trying to sell to and say, what do you really give a shit about? Like what kind of, what kind of questions would get you to pay attention? What kind of content would you like to see that would add value to your world? And they'll tell you and then start doing that. And that just ties the, that, that ties that like obviously in results and stuff that we can push to business acumen, which I think is another, we started this conversation with copyright being a huge issue.

And I think that goes hand in hand with business acumen, right? It's like, they don't know how to write, but they also don't know even how to speak in the language of business. And that's such a critical thing that I think most reps don't pay too much attention to either. Yeah. I mean, I think you nailed it. Um, you know, I think one thing that is kind of, it correlates with having strong business acumen is knowing when to shut up. Uh, that's true that, that you talk about this a lot. And the more I hear you say this, the more I'm like, shit, I got to tell my reps don't talk too long. Cause I, we don't use gong or anything like that yet. We probably will. Or of course in the future, um, we're not quite ready for it yet in terms of sophistication, but, um, you know, a big data point that always comes out of those studies is like reps who talk too much tend to lose the deal and stuff.

And it's just, you know, I guess innate kind of human, human thing, human nature, especially we like to talk about ourselves. You want to talk, you want to talk. And we don't just want to talk. We want to talk about us. We want to talk about the thing that we are most comfortable talking about and like talking about the most, which is us. Yeah, that's right. That's just human nature. That it's, it's human nature. Right. So that's where you may be failing with the business acumen on a call with like a, um, maybe an IT director. You, you may be getting a little bit, you may be jumping the gun, getting a little bit too excited, too ahead of yourself. You might go off rambling before you know it.

This person's annoyed. Done. Yup. And once they're annoyed, cause you talk too much, you know, you, if you don't have the self-awareness to recognize that and figure it out, man, you're already lost. That's tough. Cause it's so, it's so hard to, to be self-reflective and like, if you don't know yourself, you don't know yourself. Right. So it's like, you know, I've been asking this, like, can you teach genuine curiosity? Can you teach drive? Can you teach passion? And there's a lot of the no answer to that. Right. Like I, I think I could put you in a position to ask better questions. I can put you in a position to slow your role and make sure that you're listening and active listening and stuff like that.

But to really give a shit and to really care, I think that comes from a deeper place. And it's, and it's hard for me to try to figure out how to instill that on other people. It's like the whole, you can't, you know, you can teach, you can bring a horse to water, right? Can't teach them to drink. And it's like, you gotta, you gotta want a drink to get to, to get to that next level in your career. Right. I mean, I couldn't have said it any better myself, man. You gotta just, I don't know. I got the immigrant mentality. So I was raised a certain way. Um, you know, my family, uh, came to the U S from Italy after world war II. And like the one thing I always heard growing up was literally my grandfather, he would, he would never stop.

They didn't not go by where he wouldn't say this, this exact phrase, work as safe, work and say, so like every day, yo, work and save, work and save, work and save, work and save. I'm like, yo, it makes so much sense. Work and save, work and save. Right. So like, I kind of had that mentality of always just like, yo, like I gotta just like, I saw my, I saw my family come like not have a lot, you know, build, build a little something for themselves. And like that, I think passed off to me. I can't say that's the case for everybody. I don't know everybody's situation, but I think you got to try to channel your, you know, your immigrant self somehow. And imagine if you came to this country with nothing and you had to build it up, what would you do?

How would you think? Well, you got to find that chip, right? You got to find that chip on your shoulder that drives you to that next level. Cause I, I mean, I've been thinking about this a lot, man. Like I, I grew up blessed. Like I grew up blessed in the sense that it's funny. Um, I worked for Jack Welsh and Susie Welsh for a little while getting their online MBA program off the ground. And Jack asked me, we had like a real good conversation about business and all that other stuff. But Susie, when she got on, you know, she goes like when I was sitting and meeting with her, she goes, all right, forget about business stuff for a minute. She goes, talk to me about your life, right? Talk to me about how you grew up and whatever.

And I was like, oh, you know, I grew up with two parents, you know, they're still married after 50 years. And my sister was about nine years old of me. You know, she, you know, she was more like my, my, uh, babysitter than my sister, real good friends. I'm like, I went to a good college, grew up in a, and as I'm explaining it, she goes, so you're the one. And I was like, what? She's like, so you're the one fucking kid who grew up with the American dream and like no real drama. And I was like, damn, you're right. Right. Cause all my friends like divorce, you know what I mean? Like stuff like that. Like I, I, I had nothing that like was an inherent driver for six. You know what I mean? Like they're like, if you really looked at my background, you'd look at it and say, this kid probably was the motivation.

Where does it come from? And I don't know. I honestly don't know where that motivation comes. Cause I do have a chip on my shoulder. You know what I mean? Like, I think, you know, growing up, I, like I was growing, like we, we lived in a middle of the road town and the two towns next to us were like high end. So all those kids had all the rich shit and whatever it is. So I kind of looked at them as fuck you. You know what I mean? Like basketball, we were always the smallest. So I was like, all right, fuck you. But, but it's like, you gotta, you gotta, I think everybody's got to figure out where that, where that drive comes from, where that chip comes from and keep it on your shoulder. Cause if you don't keep it on your shoulder, once it gets knocked off, then you, then you level off into mediocrity.

Yeah. Yeah. Dude, you nailed it. Like, I don't know for some of these people where it comes from or like, like you, for example, like there's no, if I were to look at your life from the outside, there'd be no, nothing. Like, no, I honestly, you could, you could dig deep too, man. I'll be like, nah, that was cool. That was good. I was in all right. You know what I mean? Like, yeah. Yeah. My parents pay for college. Like, you know what I mean? Like, yeah. All of it. Exactly. Even me today. Like even with the immigrant mentality, like I'm, I'm not thinking like how my, my parents or my grandparents think, like they were thinking like, Hey, we gotta do good for our kids. Like me, I'm not thinking, Hey, I'm going to have kids someday.

I got to do good for their future. I mean, that's probably true. I do need to do that. But like, I think to myself sometimes, like, what is, what is it? Like, why do, like, why? And sometimes I don't even know. I just, I guess like, I, I just like what I do, you know? And I think that, I think that once that clicks, once you start to find what you really like to do, cause that's, you know, I think probably one of the dumbest things anybody can say is, is follow your passion, right? I think that's just terrible fucking advice. Um, I think find your passion, right? Go find it because once you find it, once it clicks, then I think like a lot, that's where I've seen a lot of people go from, yeah, I don't know this.

I don't like this or whatever it is. And then there it is. And now they just take it to a whole, right. They take it to a whole nother level. So cool. I mean, that, that was me. That was me with, with, uh, with marketing actually. Like I always knew I liked it, but I didn't know how to get into it professionally. And, um, you know, I'm a musician, so I actually applied musician stuff to marketing and that's how it all, that's how it all happened. Very long story short, I started blogging about music companies that I didn't think were doing ethical and fair things. And then, um, people were searching X, Y, Z company reviews and finding my shit. Nice. Like I was getting all these comments on my articles.

I'm like, who are these people? I see some like random dude, like Ebenezer from Tennessee. I almost signed up for that scam. And because I read your article, I'm like, damn, I'm making a positive effect on Ebenezer's life. Uh, you know, I'm saving people from losing money. Uh, they're finding my stuff. They're coming to my website. They're signing up for my email list. I have no idea this is happening. Then I installed Google analytics one day and I'm like, oh my gosh, this is like SEO Google, I love this. I don't have to promote anything. They're just finding it. Uh, and that's how I fell in love with inbound. Oh, I love it, man. And so let's wrap things up. Cause we, we went all the way from like talking about copyright and why that's so important.

By the way, go back and, and, and look at some of those tools and take a, read a book. What's the best book on copyright? And just if people are listening right now, do you know? Um, I would, uh, yeah. So what I would do is, uh, subscribe to the, uh, copy bloggers website, copy bloggers website. Yeah. Check that out. Uh, check out, uh, conversion Excel. So that's, that's a really good website that has good tips on how to, um, basically write for conversion. Right. And I'll just tell you what the, the main takeaway is there. Just remove as much shit as possible. Yeah. Yeah. Cut it all the way. That's like that quote, right? I would have written a shorter letter if I had more time. Right. Like that's real.

Yeah, exactly. So those are my top, those are my top two, um, favorite resources on copywriting. So, um, yeah. So copywriting, business acumen, brand building, the long play of your career, start doing it now. And again, you don't have to create content and videos and stuff like that. All you got to do is consume it and repurpose it with some little flavor on top. Um, you know, and then. You know, figuring out ways to, to, to give a shit, you know what I mean? Like, and, and figure out that, that where it's going to click for you. Right. Cause that's why I think your twenties are just to wrap up on this. Like, that's why I think your twenties are the, the, the, the decade of experiment, right?

Like you should experiment and try as many different things as you possibly can in your twenties so that you figure out where you, what you like and what you're good at. Because once you combine those two things, what you like and what you're good at, that's where I think it takes off. But it's not just what you like because you might not be very good at it. Right. And it's not just be what you're good at it because if you're really good at it, but you don't like doing it, it's not going to last. You got to figure out what those two things are. Oh man. I couldn't have said it any better myself. And, uh, you know, I, I just entered the thirties not too long ago. So, uh, I don't have any regrets from the twenties, at least not too many, but I, like you said, experiment, find out what you like and what you're good at.

I'm, I'm grateful that I did have enough kind of, um, I guess, fearlessness, if you want to call it that to, to experiment enough and, and figure out what those two things were. And now, you know, here I am in the thirties kind of applying it as, uh, my good buddy Max, uh, says, um, twenties are for learning thirties are for earning. And I think that's right. And by the time you're 40, if you ain't figured it out, you're kind of fucked. Right. I always say that. Cause like I'm 40, well shit, I'm 44 now. Right. So it's like, yep. Twenties for learning it. Thirties is for like really nailing down and going all in and forties is, is for now knowing like, cause again, if you haven't figured it out by the time you're in your forties, I think you're going to be in some trouble.

But once you hit your forties, it's like people start looking at you and just based on 20 years of experience, do something people like, oh man, you know what you're talking about. It's like, do I like that? I don't know. Like that, that kind of literally that happened to me is like, cause in your twenties, you're still kind of looking up, right? Cause you're looking for permission for most, right? Cause you don't know what you don't know. Thirties. You're like, I think I figured this out, but you're still holding on to your twenties a little bit. So you think you're young, right? Once you hit 40, you're fucking old. And, and, and so you start being like, but, but because you've just done it for so long in whatever industry or whatever it is, whatever you're saying, people in their twenties are looking at you saying, damn, you know what you're talking about, right?

It's like, oh, that's right. Damn. You know, I just saw my first gray hair. I'm pissed. That's why I shaved mine, man. Right here somewhere. I'm like, let's wrap this up. Look, how can people find out more about what you're doing and learn more from you? Cause I think you got to, you're going to, you're sharing a lot of awesome stuff out there these days. Where can they find out more about it? Thanks, man. LinkedIn. That's definitely the way to go. So search me there. Gaetano Denardi. You can also check out my podcast. Just launched. It's called the musicians in tech podcast. Love it. Oh, you know who you need to have on that? Ralph Barsi. Oh, he's a musician. I didn't know that. Oh, dude. He's a killer musician.

Get Ralph. Reach out to Ralph. Okay. He's got his own band. Like he talks about it up on stage and everything too. Oh, man. He'd be a great person to have on that podcast. Yeah, and Ralph was a homie. I never knew that about him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Reach out. Good to know. All right. All right. Yeah. So I'll do that. Hopefully everybody got as much value out of this as I did. Again, a lot of tactical stuff in there. Think about some of the shit that we just talked about. Cause it's real. Like if you're not doing some of this stuff, like you're just like every other rep. If you want to be above average or great, you got to start taking some of this stuff seriously. So thank you all very much. Like I say, every day, if, uh, if you don't, even if you're having a shitty day, go make somebody smile, right?

Cause if you had, if you make somebody smile, you know, you had a good day. So go out there and kill it these days. Make it happen. Everybody. Thank you all very much. Cheers. Make it happen. Thanks, John.