23: Personal Branding with Koka Sexton

no kidding all right everybody what's going on it's john barrows with j barrows consulting and make it happen mondays and i am super excited today to talk to a good friend of mine who i haven't talked to in a long time and one of the top social sellers on the planet if you look at any of one of the top 50s or top 25 coca's always up there i kind of bounce in and out sometimes but he's always got me trumped here so anyways uh welcome coca it's great to see you man how you doing i'm doing wonderful and thank you for having me today yeah man we're super excited i think um this is a this is gonna be for me a really interesting conversation because you know i've been struggling with this one for a while now about the whole personal and professional branding and uh and i'm this is really more for me than anything else i mean obviously if anybody wants to jump in and ask questions to coca you're more than welcome to but you know i think i we met back when you were at inside view right yeah uh yeah i think that's probably when we met yeah and so and then you went inside view to did you go direct to linkedin after that yeah i got recruited right out of inside view into linkedin uh three and a half years there uh moved off through the company it was a great experience nice what were you what was your mantra there like when you when you were at linkedin were you kind of head of social selling or what was kind of the the position if you will so my very first position at linkedin was a content and social media manager for the sales solution department uh it was a brand new business unit that eventually launched sales navigator so i was part of the sales navigator launch team i was responsible for the social and content strategy around that uh the mission that we were given was to make linkedin synonymous with social selling and and i think we succeeded because i still run into that as a pain point in my current role as well like you did too damn good of a job nice awesome well and then you went off on your own for a little bit but now you're over at hootsuite right yeah so now i'm at hootsuite um you know it's a social media management platform we focus on the enterprise so my role is to really help the transformation of companies in the digital aspect um but the larger enterprise so you know the the companies that have you know two three hundred plus social channels like how are they going to manage that um and then obviously my core uh my core talk track is always around social selling so outside of the digital transformation of the marketing organization which has been happening now for years the marketing organizations are now seeing that the sales teams need to get involved in this also so that's why they brought me in to be the subject matter expert in that case very cool and why so i always like asking this question which is just why why hootsuite like what what attracted you to them i mean obviously i got a solid platform but you know you i think you could probably at this point uh pick and choose who you go work for right as far as because your reputation thankfully um i am i do have that opportunity where i've got i've been i've been uh i'd say blessed that i've gotten to a point where i i can actually have some choices and i don't have to just take a job right choose where i want to be uh so i've been using hootsuite now since 2009 so i've been a fan of this company for a very long time and i've met a handful of people over the years and they've always had great things to say about the culture of the company um so when i was in between when i had left linkedin and i was off on my own for a little while they had approached me um and they said hey we are building out our social selling platforms um that you know outside of the social media dashboards which most people know of hootsuite they've got other products they've got analytics platforms they've got an employee advocacy platform there and they wanted to explore this idea of how amplify which is their product for um play advocacy how that then feeds into the social selling ecosystem um so part of my role is to also work with the product team to start boosting up what social selling actually looks like outside employee advocacy so there's trigger alerts so as a salesperson if i've got an accounting in salesforce if that person that i'm attached to in the account salesforce says something on twitter i get a notification so it's actually feeding the trigger events um based on the accounts i'm following on on salesforce but amplify is the mechanism for that okay that's sweet man and i i i do have to i have to get a little bit more involved with hootsuite because i use all the free stuff um and uh and i've been hearing a lot about hootsuite for a long time and i got to get a little bit more serious about that so um but uh that kind of actually leads to to the conversation today right because what you just talked about there are those triggers um is is to me i look at social selling as two sides right one is the listening side for the triggers and making connections to people but the other side is and i think that's a little bit more obvious for a lot of people right to say okay i that you tweeted about this you know i can make a connection to that let me either retweet you or engage with you somehow whatever the other side though which is the brand building side and this is the part that i train on but i'm also trying to experience myself and figure out because you know with j barrows i went off at least i think it's about five years ago at this point with j barrows and i fought real hard not to not to make it about me but i had a whole bunch of people in this industry say john you got to brand yourself if you're going to do this you got to brand yourself so begrudgingly actually and but thankfully ultimately i i ended up saying okay it's going to be the j barrows brand and then i started kind of evolving it and doing it very very specifically i wasn't about just getting a million followers i wanted only to share out content that i thought was valuable and only get people following me who cared right um but what happened was the and the question for today the overarching conversation of today is the personal and professional because i had my facebook page right my personal facebook page which i've had for i don't know however many years and then i have my j barrows brand and over the years i've they've started to obviously do this you know and you've seen me up on stage recently i used to wear a dress shirt dress pants and shoes now i've kind of evolved a little bit to where i wear my shell toes and i've got my jeans and you know still a nice shirt but i'm becoming more and more me as i evolve here on social and everything else but there's still that personal side that i i don't quite know how to interact with or combine right because doug landis and one more preface and i want to get your thoughts on this is i kept it separate from all business people for a while and then my good friend doug landis who i actually became friends with um he hit me up he's actually coming to town i'm gonna grab drinks with him tomorrow but um he hit me up on facebook and i said yes and as soon as i said yes to him it opened up the floodgates to every other connection right and so now i'm like now i feel guilty because they're like oh you're connected to doug and then somebody else reaches out to me and i'm like oh shit you know if i don't connect with them then they're gonna know and so fine yes yes yes and then i started realizing that when i started putting my voice out there on my personal side it started to obviously impact my professional brand good or bad and so the the two questions i've seen you do a lot on facebook right now on your coco's sex and page you know what i mean you yeah and how do you what's your i guess what's your thought on personal versus professional branding where's the line and and let's talk about the generations here as well we got the baby boomers who are like the only reason i'm on facebook is because my kids are on facebook and i want to make sure or they're sometimes our kids aren't even on facebook there's us as the gen xers who are like okay we kind of get this but uh what should i be doing and then there's millennials who have been online since they were born but now we're working and getting into the business world they have to have some caution here as far as um what they put out there so help me understand your thought process on personal professional branding and and as it relates to the channels out there yeah so uh it's a lot to unpack um but i'll start so at the very top level the very first thing the guiding light to my north star is the my my methodology or my i guess my mantra that visibility creates opportunity so my guiding light is visibility creates opportunity so i have i believe that i have to continue to be visible so with that in mind all this other social stuff then falls into constructs around that my personal is who i am my professional is what i do and so then i put things into those buckets so you know i did not have a professional like business page on on facebook for a very long time it was just my personal profile and it was yeah i i struggled a lot the same thing as you way as you it's like who do i let in who do i let out like who do i keep out because i do have my opinions and i don't know sometimes those opinions can reflect you know either neutrally or in some ways negatively on my professional side um and sometimes even personally um but it's with that being said there are very easy filters to put in place on facebook so one of the very first things i did as i started adding professional contacts for people who i may not even really know but i've had interactions with them and other social ecosystems they're like hey i want to be your friend on facebook and i'm like well i don't really know how to do this so i set up some very basic filters or some some rules and facebook so one i obviously have public updates that anybody can see these are the things that if somebody were just google my name and go to my facebook profile they'd see public update these are either items that i don't care sharing with the rest of the world like personal things like if i'm at a giants game no offense if that's awesome did great last night um we uh got to you know the things if i'm on vacation things like that like the the more like broad stroking personal stuff um and then stuff that could almost not offend right like the stuff that's so neutral that yeah you're a giants fan i'm a red sox fan and we could go after that but at the end of the day like i'm not going to change my opinion on you based on the fact well maybe if you're a if you're a yankees fan maybe but but if you're giants you're cool no but like that type of stuff right exactly uh and then on the the next layer down is my friends and so my friends are the people you have as friends on facebook they can see all the stuff that you're sharing right you're putting publicly there's also another thing called acquaintances on facebook and so what i've had to teach myself how to do is when i'm adding friends in that aren't real friends they're just people that i want to bring into the fold but may not want to steer my political commentary or i don't want to actually share pictures with them of my kids for example right like i just want them to see the stuff i'm sharing so when i share things i put things through the filter is it public can anybody see it do i just want my friends to eat the big the other larger bucket or do i want to just have my friends minus these acquaintances so my true friends um and i remember posting something probably like six months ago about you know if you're seeing this you are in a very select group of people on my facebook friends and he would even commented on it well this is fascinating that you didn't because i think i got like 150 comments on this thing because um i what one of the things i was doing in that process was i was trying to figure out who else could see that and did that person meet this criteria to begin with and i've done this systematically over the last few months where i will do the post up to that very small group of people to continue to read through who do i really want in this group and it's not because it's i i'm not looking for alternative opinions like i'm not taking you out of that group because you disagree with me right i i like that disagreement um it's just a matter of which bucket do i want these people to fall into based on the types of conversations i'm having uh and so that's basically that construct now outside of that uh my personal brand is really who i am my personal brand is how i want people to think about me coca when they hear my name my professional brand is what what is that in fact you know the the what's my legacy like what do i want when people hear coca section in the in the business world what do i want them to think about i don't want them really to think of like oh he's a really fun guy i've met him conferences you know he he likes to chat about this stuff he doesn't like no like when when in a professional context my professional brand is he's the guy you go to when you need to transform your sales organization he's the guy that you talk to when you are trying to build a content machine that's actually going to drive your lead like so there's a very conscious decision you made about what i want my professional brand to look like and then how do i feed that and what is my personal brand and how do i want to feed that there you know one of the other things i think you touched on was that there's always that sliver that small group of people that you want to be able to share personal thoughts with your opinions on politics your opinions on you know religion whatever that may be you know those have these subjects for the most part and you know some of that stuff will get put into into social but you know the hard part about the world we live in now is that i have to actually keep that even outside of social and it's really just personal conversations that i have because i know how polarizing some of those conversations can be yeah and that's i think that's the what what hit me was this past election and that's where you know what i'm seeing is i'm seeing facebook become a lot more business oriented and linkedin become a lot more personal oriented and what was shocking to me i i totally got it during the election when people would post stuff about their opinions like that's what facebook is for in my in a a lot of ways but what shocked me was how many people voiced their opinions of the election and that type of stuff on linkedin and to me i was like whoa very heated through the very heated election well yeah and regardless of what side you're on i'm not picking sides here i'm saying like regardless somebody's gonna post that and i think this was the obviously the most polarizing um uh election that we've had and people's opinions of you change right and so that's why i looked at linkedin and said whoa like these people are putting their careers at risk here because all of a sudden you know their next hire their next employer wants to or customer looks and says wait a minute and so i was i was cautioning a lot of people who i was connected with saying yeah take this offline or do something else with this because this is where that personal and professional stuff is is getting too fuzzy yeah and i think it's some of it's naiveness um some of it is i i don't know ego driven but my general advice to anyone is that you're perfect those taboo subjects right politics religion all those you do not you should not be posting those things publicly yeah if your goal is to build that brand unless you're in that space unless you're a a political commentator or sure you're trying if you're trying to get known in that space that that's the brand you're trying to build albeit go for it but for most of us that's not the case so let me ask you though like so you said something interesting there which is before you said hey um you know if that's your thing but shouldn't all of us be focused on our personal brands right now regardless of what your job is and i mean that you know i talk to sales rep i talk to sales reps all the time like i i you know i'm freaking out about artificial intelligence and you know how you know skynet's here and they're they're they're going to start replacing our jobs and all that other stuff and the only i personally believe that that your personal brand is what's going to save you from obsolescence right because and we were having this right before we got on board here like we're we're gen xers right and we grew up being brand loyal in the sense that we we trusted corporate brands you know like i've been wearing shell toes since i was you know 10 years old right adidas you know kind of pisses me off that they're cool again because everybody's wearing them but by the way sidebar for people out there the difference between old school and new school shell toes is fat laces versus skinny so just want to but anyways um you know we grew up we grew up with brands and we trusted coca-cola mcdonald's this generation millennials absolutely did not trust corporate brands but what they do trust is personal brands you know and i and i use the i use the dummy example here you know i hate it but it's true like kim kardashian right like i can't stand her but i got to respect her for what she's done you know when kim kardashian goes ahead and posts on instagram go buy maybelline right a million people go buy maybelline and it's not because it's maybelline it's because kim kardashian told them it's maybelline correct and so so you marry that with the fact that i think robots are absolutely going to start displacing far more jobs than they're going to be creating and you think to yourself like who am i going to trust in the future and that's why i think that personal brand regardless of your role whether you're 22 years old and you know it as a sales rep an sdr or bdr or you're 40 50 what plus years old and you're trying to get you know to that next stage in your career trying to figure out what that next step is so shouldn't we all be at least in some way shape or form paying attention to our brands out there on social so i'll say i think that all of us everybody that's listening and watching this right now there and we'll be watching this after this is done recording you do have a personal brand and you even have a professional brand if you are aware of it or not you already have one if you go and talk to all of your friends and say what do you think of bob sue whoever it is like they're going to have an answer the same thing with all of your co-workers right like so you've already got a brand right so what is being said is what you need to focus on and that's why it's important that you are very conscious and aware of what that is what do you want to be known for what are those words that come first come to mind when somebody brings your name up to you know to the public so you have to be very conscious and very self-aware and very deliberate on how you're presenting yourself in those different buckets to to build that brand up so that you don't become obsolete you know before this call we were chatting about like i firmly believe again like visibility creates opportunity like i firmly believe that the only reason i'm in the position i'm in today is because i actually spent time to build up that personal and professional brands absolutely five years ago yeah um you know and if if you're watching this now like where do you want to be three to five years from now you have to start setting the stage up for success today as opposed to just trying to wait on serendipity and like you know opportunity to unlock itself randomly so so let me jump on that for a minute so because i i'm a thousand percent in agreement with you so but what do you say to the kid uh or what do you say to two people right the person that's not really been like you know maybe gen xers or above that it looks at this social stuff kind of with a half roll eyes yeah whatever and but but says you know what i see the importance of it i probably should start doing so how should i get started and then i think more importantly um because i think it's a major part of my demographic here is that kid that that 22 23 24 year old kid who's been social that who's probably every aspect of their life has been recorded or snapped or tweeted in some way shape or form and maybe hasn't been all that appropriate you know what i mean like college getting hammered and video of you know whatever frat you know fraternity parties or stuff like that and now they're saying okay what do i do do i you know do i change because i see here's another one i see a lot of people changing their last name on facebook so if it's like john michael barrow my name is john michael barrow so you can search john barrows and find me and they're changing it to john michael so only people who know me would be able to find so i'm seeing a bunch of my friends like wait a minute what i didn't even know that was did you have a name change and what they're trying to do is hide right so my question is twofold here that kid do do they start trying to clean up their facebook profile and or and and do the all the whole acquaintances thing that you just said and only let in those people but start being very thoughtful more about what they're pushing out there or do they kind of let facebook be what it is kind of try to keep it separate and then go on linkedin maybe and try to be a little bit more professional with that brand and same thing with the those more senior people who are like okay where do i start should i even i don't even have a facebook page should i start one of those uh should i what do i do so you to the young sdr aes of the world that are watching this you don't need to connect with your business prospects your clients your customers on facebook right like at your stage in your career like that's not that shouldn't be a focal point well and it's weird too by the way that's weird like i'm sorry when a kid out of nowhere comes and connects with me on facebook i'm like dude come on like no i'm gonna decline that one like if you're an associate of mine cool like some kid i trained sorry guys out there you're not getting on my personal facebook page yeah see so and i i would think that most people are aware of that like but some people are like screw it i'm gonna try i'm trying to jump up i do it all the time with celebrities and every now and then i actually get one i'm like sweet xyz but anyway uh you know you know i think that your professional brand is what you as a young career focused individual like you need to spend this into the in the areas where your customers are actually going to be seeing you more often so obviously it's linkedin how are you actually building your professional brand on linkedin how are you creating your profile in a way that is customer-centric how are you then leveraging the platform because that's what it is not just your profile it's an entire platform are you leveraging this platform to be be more visible to then attract more of an audience to identify connect and engage with these decision makers you know i also believe that sales people or people in general you know they haven't been very invested in twitter or maybe they have but i don't see very many sales professionals highly active on twitter it's it's kind of few in parts between usually it's kind of you know it's a gateway drug is they're trying to like consume content but they're not actually posting opinions and thoughts or and stuff like that but i see twitter is a massive network because of the ease of connecting and visibility of stuff on that on that platform to share you know the content that is going to help build that brand and again because it's you know it's indexed by google it's indexed by like other you have a search engine and it it can become one of those areas when somebody a client says who's this john barrows guy and does a google search like the first things that are going to come up are usually your linkedin profile twitter maybe your website if you have one and that brings up another thing if you're really focused on building this professional brand if you don't own your own domain name at this point you're failing right like i i own the domain i own my domain name i own the domain names for all my kids i own my niece's domain name like like the future is going into this world where you have to own your identity right and you have to be very conscious about that so you know even if you're not not going to use it okay i do believe it's worth the ten dollars a year to own your domain name that's actually a good point you know for this somebody else grabs that and is using it for something else well you saw it happen at marketo recently right yeah oh yeah that was that was it's like i don't even i i know the ceo put out a letter and then i can't and yeah we'll get into it but it's like auto renewal is your friends yeah oops but uh so so yeah that took a billion dollar company off of a domain name um yeah i you know so i think that you need to be aware of what it is you want to be seen for and what you want to be known for you know your your linkedin profile because that's where your a lot of your professional contacts are and come into play but i find that twitter is also that that medium where it's you depending on the industry you're working in it is a very low barrier of entry to build this network really quickly because of the ease of connecting and engaging with individuals that you're not able to do on a platform on linkedin so so agreed um where do we get where was where does someone get started though because for instance when i first went off on my own right and and people were um i got i can't tell you and this was probably like i said five years ago and i can't tell you how many people reached out to me were like john you know like say give us your twitter handle we'll get you like 10 000 followers in in like a month or something like that i'm like and just for me it didn't register i'm like why the hell would i want 10 000 random ass followers following me on twitter like that doesn't make any sense so no i'm gonna do this my way right i'll explain what my way was but but for that rep who's out there sitting there saying okay you know i'm first of all i'm buried i have so much shit to do right now i got prospects i got this like now i got to add social into this world and and i got to start posting things how do you how would you suggest somebody kind of getting their feet wet in doing this in in a way that's not going to disrupt in in a way that will hopefully fit into their daily routines or something like that and without being uh disingenuous and and i say that because it drives me nuts like what's killing me right now is a lot of these social platforms the marketing and i know you preach against this but the marketing firm connects with the marketing department connects with all the sales reps right and all of a sudden just read you know that has them retweet stuff that the marketing puts out there so it's just basically but that's more of a marketing thing that's not a personal brand building thing yeah it drives me nuts when people just retweet like a 39 page ebook and don't put any you know like why should i read this like okay thanks for sharing the information but why should i read this so how would you suggest a kid or again a gen x or anybody who hasn't been involved here start to do this in a way that is reasonable and doesn't crush my time from adding yet another thing i got to do yeah and i mean i think it's yeah 15 20 minutes a day at most um is is is the the barrier of entry so if you can find 15 20 minutes a day like this is doable like so you know without making this a huge product pitch like sweet again why i've been using them since 2008 was because they made this extremely easy for me now i just happen to have the opportunity working for them but you know once you know outside the conversation of what your profile should look like you know are you customer centric are you actually you know is it your photo like all the good stuff you know how are you how are you engaging with an audience so are you building lists of people who are thought leaders in the space are you building lists of you know people who you want to stay engaged with and then you set up streams for those people right so you can spend two minutes out of the day going through these streams and saying oh i like this i like this oh that's a really nice article from john i'll share that whatever that is um you know when it comes to sharing of content again like this is the visibility piece as well is i have streams set up for content so i have keywords that are set up so as i get read articles from either entrepreneur ink or you know my favorite blogs you know john barris.com whatever it may be like i will take that and then i will read it and then i'll re-share it out uh you know i think that you know that's that's the skill level one is just sharing you know stuff that you're finding skill level two is when you actually start adding your opinion into stuff okay this is where and and i think that there's a balance between the two because you can get over indexed on trying to personalize everything through social and that then consumes an entire day in some ways right because you're just you're trying to do too much but if you blend that approach and it's kind of weaves together where you have the third-party content from john barris or from salesforce or wherever it is and you're sharing that content out on on a regular basis you can have rss feeds that point work into your social channel so that there's one or two a day that's going out there so you're always staying visible and it's active but you are taking the 10-15 minutes out of the day to actually find people for that you're interested in following through some list and actually commenting on what they're sharing through through twitter or whatever it is or you're retweeting them but you're not doing just a native retweet it's called it's called a quote retweet where you're actually saying hey everyone you want to read this blog post because like point number three was amazing you know so that takes an extra couple of minutes and if you can learn to blur those lines or blend it together so to speak uh you have a very i say consistent drumbeat on social but you're also injecting yourself into that conversation as well okay because that because i'm right i like the two levels there right because and i think there's a third level which i think you and i are at where we create content right where you where you actually write a blog or whatever it is and i think that's that's a journey to get there and some people have the time to do it some people don't but i think we need to live between these two worlds here and somebody you and i between two and three is the engagement piece so you know oh yeah if somebody mentions you how often are you actually replying that how active are you in that like you know if you know in in our worlds when somebody mentions us or asks us a question like there is an expectation absolutely that they are going to get an answer and if they don't you will get called out again on social right and it's so like there's another layer to it that you have to be reactive to the stuff that's happening you know most aes most fcrs people who are watching this you're not going to get mentioned a hundred times a day like that would be amazing if you were but the reality is not but you want to set yourself up for success so that when somebody does mention you you get that slide really quickly so you can always be seen as that guy when somebody asks a question you are on top of it and we were talking earlier about uh you know the whole social selling space and like the video conferencing world and it's amazing to see how like even in that world when i was investigating either you know blue jeans or zoom or webex whatever it was and like seeing the sales people getting involved in that and then replying back to them to see who could reflect access uh like right like it's like it was a fun game to play but like that's a layer of social that i think you most of us are not accustomed to but we need to get accustomed to well i mean it's proof right here i mean the reason i use blue jeans to do this facebook live thing is because i was doing it off my phone and you know i'm a i'm a gen x you're trying to figure all this shit out you know what i mean so i'm like all right and i'm like unless i have my little phone up there i'm like all right facebook live like and i figured out how to do it on my business not my personal one so i was happy about that and then some kid hit me up and he was like hey john did you ever want to pull somebody into your facebook live sessions to do video like shit yeah i'd love to do that he's like well we can do that at blue jeans i'm like giddy up get called the kid up i was like all right what does it do showed me how to use it i go okay send me over the contract and he's like it was funny because he was like well okay you know just because you're such you know we really want to promote you and all that other stuff we'll give you a 10 discount or whatever i'm like whoa hold still i didn't ask for a discount i'm like don't give me a discount i'm like did you you like you had me at hello here kid like just send me all the contract all the time i'm like like now i'm gonna get a discount because you gave it to me but don't i don't get anyone one so anyways but my point is like we wouldn't be on this we wouldn't be on this if that kid wasn't listening and what network was that where was that conversation where did that take place uh that's a good question i think it was i think it was facebook i think he hit me up on facebook live uh and he was just like hey john you know i've been watching your facebook live stuff love it have you ever wanted to and it was in the chat so yeah it was i mean it was um so let me get back to the getting started right because you and i both follow one of i think one of my favorite guys gary vaynerchuk right um and and one of the things that he says which i which really struck me i think this is the first way i got introduced to him was the whole context versus content right he says he says everybody talks about content is king content is king he goes fine if content is king context is god and to me that's sales versus marketing right or marketing versus sales marketing is content sales is context if we as sales reps aren't putting any context around our content then i don't we're no different than marketing and i have no idea why we're getting paid to do what we do so that's my go ahead i was gonna say so i 100 agree with that um i believe that content being king was the the mantra like five six years ago right but companies realize pretty quickly that content becomes you know over innovative into the market becomes noise without context so great marketers are figuring out how to put context into things and that context is put into play by segmenting your audiences so that when you're sharing something with a specific message it's getting resonated with a very core group of people and that even though that same ebook be repositioned in a different way to another core cohort of individuals so i think marketers are figuring that piece out but that being said sales people always have to have context i can never reach out to the i can't reach out to six pmos or heads of sales with the exact same pitch every single time and expect anybody to pay attention like that is the problem with sales people right that's why sales people get a bad name because there is no personalization in these conversations or these engagements that they're having so sales people are actually wrapped or bound by this idea of context and you know i think it's great that you picked up on this but i don't think that sales people understand that that terminology and well enough but it's so true context matters why am i reaching out to you why is this important it's the thing that you're preaching all the time you know why me why now like that is context and if i'm going to be sharing something on show social i should be pushing out some of that information along with it why why you and why do you want to read this or why do you want you to consume this i think that so it's it's interesting because it's if you look at every channel across you know from cold calling to door knocking to uh email to phone you know to social the same fundamental rules apply right i mean like if you're you shouldn't be blasting out a million emails template emails because again you're no different than marketing you should put at least some context around what that message is about same thing with cold calls if you read a script you know that might have worked worked for wolf of wall street guys but you know in the age of people who have a head on their shoulders and beat a b selling like you can't just be ripping through a list and expect anything to be same thing with social if you're just retweeting retweeting retweeting you might get a bunch of people following you but they're probably all going to be tweet bot followers who will literally do nothing if you ever put something out there to yeah that you want people to engage with right yeah so and i think the idea that you it's a splendid approach like again as professionals we're all busy sure and i you know i i i don't want to say like we're busy like we're we're doing non-productive stuff but like we have a lot of stuff on our plate yeah and you know some days i have more time to do this stuff than others that's why with this blended approach even when i'm doing data like you know when i'm traveling i'm flying from san francisco to new york that's a you know hours that i'm not actually doing anything on social but like i set it up so that at least i know while i'm that in during that flight i'm going to be sharing something so i build the schedule up so that i'm always visible and i'm always appearing to be active um it was amazing really early on in my career when people were like you know how are you in sales well i do see you tweeting all day long well i'm not being all day on most of my day i was trying to make my quota 150 dials and two hours of top time but i set the system up so that i was sharing stuff all the time on social while i had work to do um and i think you know it's easy to do if you just align the right tools to put the tools in place i think you're well what i talk about is like creating that morning routine so and and this is a well explained like this is where social kind of flipped for me because i will say when it first came out i was very skeptical i'm like uh you know i don't know right and then that's how you and i met right exactly i'm like i don't know this bullshit man i'm like look i'm all for listening and picking up triggers and cherry-picking opportunities but this whole but but where it flipped for me was when i started looking at all the information out there and instead of looking at it as hey what can i retweet what could i post i looked at it as what can i learn what you know like what these all these channels feedly and all these different channels and hootsuite does this too to have information come to me that i want to learn about right because i think a huge thing that's missing in the sales world at least is like the whole business acumen discussion is like how how are you a business like people techniques skill process whatever but how do you just have a business conversation how do you be a logical person that can talk about the trends and industries and stuff like that so what i do is i i instead of reading the morning paper or checking my fantasy leagues getting all pissed off about that type of shit you know i set up these feeds of hey like i'm fascinated right now with artificial intelligence so i'm listening to the thought leaders on artificial intelligence and i'm reading the article to consume it for myself right to say hey i just learned something and then when i learned something that's when i put the context around that content and share that kind of second level that you're talking about and that's to me the way like i'm trying to connect with the the gen xers and above with social and saying hey replace the morning paper which right now if you're reading the morning paper you're probably just getting pissed off because i don't care again i don't care what side of the house you're on you're probably angry why start your day off that way instead read the paper with stuff that you should be educating yourselves on and when you find an article you think what are you actually interested in right and what are your customers interested in like that's what you should be reading my morning routine um you know was i would come in the morning i'd grab my coffee i get my computer set up i'd start thinking about who i needed to meet with for the day or the calls i had to make but while that was happening i was looking at tech crunch i was reading entrepreneur i was reading things that were going to one stimulate the brain first thing in the morning before the coffee kicked in but also it was it was with the explicit intent of what's going to matter for my business my day with my customers with what i was trying to accomplish um not the personal stuff it was it was even though it may be personally investing to me because i wanted to know this these things but what is it in in that professional context and as it almost just like you as i read things i pull out a one-liner out of it like here's the quote that ties all this together and i would share that piece out along with the article or if there was something that i read and i was like oh that makes me think about these three other things like that would be the headline or whatever the update was and i'd share the article along with it uh and then most of the stuff i would read be like this is really interesting and i would just schedule that stuff out through the day so that when i got to my job and was actually like plugged into the matrix and working this stuff was still dripping out into the ether um and i think that you know it's again it was like 10 or 15 minutes in the day and i would build you know a day or two's worth of scheduled content in that in that very few minutes yeah well and you can also do that i mean so you're talking hootsuite does that there's buffer there's a bunch of like where you can schedule it out and i do the same thing because i'll be training all day from 8 30 in the morning or 4 30 and it's funny because reps are while they're following me you know they'll be following me they'll be in class they'll be like uh some of them will look at me like did you just be like that wasn't me i did that earlier this morning or i think what you also can do if you don't want to carve off that hour a day or half hour a day or something like that you could maybe on a sunday night go read a bunch of articles and say okay i'm going to schedule these out this one goes out on monday tuesday thursday friday and so all of a sudden you know you're you're out there and you might you do it in a compartmentalized way hour a week two hours a week or something like that right yeah and what bothers me is when i talk to sales people who say oh shit i don't want to do that kind of work right like it's like something else we do and part of me emphasizes with that because i i get it we're all trying to do many things but the other side of me says you cannot you can't overlook this because eventually you're going to get overlooked right you have to invest in yourself and you have to invest in your network you have to invest in your own growth not just personal like my own knowledge but i have to invest in my career growth and the best way i have found in this new era to do that is by being visible and i could know all the answers to all these different things but if the world doesn't know that i have these ideas and these thoughts and i can do these things and i have these opinions like then what good is that like i want you i want people coming to me and say coco we want to hire you i don't want to have to hand my resume out to a hundred different companies and say please take me you know and the way you flip that script is by putting yourself out there so that these hiring managers at the heads of sales at the marketing when they're looking for stuff they're finding your name you have to become the best marketer for yourself because nobody else is going to do it for you so i i got one more question about the the future um where things are going and why i think it's important and i'll take there's some bunch of questions here on the live on the live chat here but my working at linkedin and working at other places do you think that we're moving into a world where when we get hired or when somebody's considering us to being you know for being hired the they're going to look at our network if you will as one of the top things on their list of criteria so for instance and i'll put this in context like there's the person who kicks ass and i'm we're going to be sales oriented here because we're on this but i think this is valid for any profession um you know there's a kick-ass sales rep who's crushed their quota every single year they've done their job but they're not on social they're just doing their job and then there's the kid who's been doing well in sales but has 5 000 followers and when they tweet they get like a 32 you know engagement rate and they're super concentrated in sass in san francisco and and and do you think that that is going to hold more weight in the future and then the second part of that question is um do you think that's the way for instance territories are going to be split up in the future where it's like hey coca you have a shitload of contacts in san francisco in the sass world so we're going to give you that territory because we think like you're going to be more successful there whereas john you're in boston and you're mostly you know i'm picking you know i'm sass too but like you know financial services so we're going to give you that territory do you see that happening yeah so yeah let's start with number the first part of that um i believe that individuals who are consistent closers that the people who can bring in revenue will always be in high demand if they're on social or they're not on social the problem is is that these people who are not on social and not being visible putting those out there you're going to have to rely on you know recommendations or you know third not third party but like you know your your connection actually vouching for you in that space it's it it's i don't think it's going to stop you from getting a new job but it will slow down that process if you are consistently bringing in business and you're also known in the space for consistently bringing in business you're never going to have any issue well the second side of that if you are a average sales rep but you are very vocal and you have built your network out and you are learning that skill you are extremely valuable to the right company who is going to take you and build you up even further as long as you have that foundation you're willing to continue to grow right like you're going to be able to open doors i'm going to give you a perfect example because i know you know this kid um morgan ingram oh yeah right morgan's 24 25 and it's like this you're going to have to worry about a job the next decade i mean i look at his profile his profile is almost at my level and i'm like what the fuck you little shit like you know you've been you've only been doing this for like two years and yet your following is like you know right here and i'm 21 years in this industry now the danger there is you know he's you know people are perceiving him as a thought leader and you know we can have that discussion all day long i mean you know 24 years old how much do you know as far as sales and business but i mean talk about a kid who's crushed it and to your point he's not going to follow the typical sdr bdr ae to the next level right he's gonna he's gonna skip some steps there's no question about it absolutely and i think you know morgan is a perfect example to bring up on this because he doesn't pretend to be the be all know all in the sales world but he knows his crap he knows the sdr role inside and out and upside down and backwards i mean so like if he's a thought leader in the space like i i would say yes but if he's not well for us yeah for sdr very well known as an expert in this industry and a very outspoken you know um you know voice to that world of like how do you excel as as you know as an sdr as a brand new sales rep that's trying to get into the game uh and again like because of what he tapped into and started building content from that i mean he still has a job but he still produces videos i think on almost a daily or a basis it's not it's short form it's long form and you know he's found that video is his medium and he can create a 15 minute video as a 15 minute walk from the parking lot into the office right but he's doing this raw stuff where he doesn't need to be in a studio so like it's not impacting his job at all actually helping his job building him yeah building his job um in fact i was talking with him a couple weeks ago and i was like you know one of the things i wanted to understand was is this actually helping him build this brand or is it building pipeline and w form and he's like okay this thing is exploding our pipeline he's in a management role now so he's throwing most of the stuff out to his team but he's like of course this is helping and i was like okay you know that that is another just a notch in in in the belt about why it's important that you build these brands like how you focus on how you're putting your voice out there visibility creates opportunity like how are you becoming visible i love it and by the way video doesn't have to be for the people on this video on this video doesn't have to be it you know what i mean you don't have to be charismatic you don't have to be great on video like you can write you can post you can comment you know it doesn't have to be video even though video is probably the more popular one right now right but you can have a voice in all sorts of other platforms i'm not a big fan of video i'm getting more and more into it now but video wasn't my original medium like i just i was a i was a decent writer and so i used to write blog posts and you know that's how most people found out about me because they read blog posts that i've written but i also you know being a student in the game is that i'm realizing that video is becoming a lot more prevalent and a lot more easy to consume based on a lot of different reasons so i have to adapt and adaptability is what makes you survive as a species that's how we've done it that's why we're all sitting here today and not still living in caves we've learned to adapt and once you once you stop adapting is when you start dying so you know i've had to continue to teach myself new stuff i'm a student and this as much as people think of me being a social selling expert or a thought leader like i'm constantly learning things i dedicate resources and time to staying up to date with what is moving in the space and where where the hockey where the where the puck is going to be two years from now so i can start skating to that now as opposed to like trying to catch up to the next step spot on man that's what i mean i'm doing the same thing i mean everybody who follows me like when i lit up snapchat i'm like look i don't know what i'm doing on snapchat i'm going to start trying to figure this out so come along with this journey with me and hopefully you can figure out you know i'll show you my mistakes and whatever same thing with instagram let that up i'm like i don't know what i'm doing here but i'm gonna start posting shit out there see what happens right facebook live same thing so uh very cool man well let's let's take a couple of questions here um there's one that was actually on here before from michael already uh what are your thoughts i use linkedin to provide value to my prospects and don't include anything sales related i use facebook for my passion and sales is it a good idea to separate the two so i think we kind of touched on that but like you should you know let's talk about the separation of church and state if you will yeah so i put this in my own personal belief is that i made the conscious decision to blur all the lines between personal and professional you know i did i wanted a one twitter profile you know i actually managed multiple twitter profiles but for coca section there's one and you know i some people have you know they'd have like for example you know coca section hootsuite would be my work one and then at coca section my personal one like i made conscious decisions in my career that it was always just going to be neat because i wanted to drive all those people to one place uh you know i see people doing that on linkedin as well like it was which is really bizarre um but you know i think that you have to find ways to blur those lines between personal professional because nobody wants to talk to a robot if all you're doing is regurgitating company contents every single day people are going to tune you out or they're going to disconnect from you people want to hear about you know going to outside land they want to hear about your sports team they want to hear about you know whatever that may be you have to become you have to be personal you have to have the authentic i think authenticity is a whole nother conversation but i believe that you have to blur those lines of who you are you know this professional who am i and what i am and what i do like and if you can if you can mix those two bags together then it's really good so you're getting personal stuff about what i do in my life as coca you get professional stuff about you know the company i work for companies that i support and then you're getting the general you know other management leadership you know skills development stuff that i that i read that i also share through so it's you know it's i'd say you know you cut in the thirds or in the quarters and you just kind of evenly distribute it out as you share stuff you know trying to segment your audiences in a way that you know makes all professional conversations happen over here and all personal stuff happen over there like eventually you're going to have a you're going to look schizophrenic because somebody at some point is going to see both those and be like oh that's kind of weird like why would he say that over here but over here he's actually contradicting it or to be seen as a contradiction so i just made the decision like just start blurring those lines and drawing those clear lines of when i connect into those individuals and when i don't it's still very personal for me in many ways but i've started unlocking it kind of the same way that you have yeah and that's kind of what prompted this conversation i think and i think that very tactical tip there of you know maybe some people don't know that you can go in and segment people out to acquaintances and then when you post you select who it goes to yeah um i mean that's that's a nice way of saying okay you're in my world but you're not going to see my entire world here because some of it is just personal and i just don't want certain people seeing certain things so awesome cool who wants a camera on their entire life like i mean it's it we already live in that world so i mean i think the idea is you have to find ways to to share it to specific individuals yep love it all right so this one's from camille what's your strategy for increasing followers on twitter i think there's a pretty direct one but um you know do you i i there's a bunch of strategies what's yours like um without without the mass appeal like a billion you know just get a tweet bot or something like that yeah no in fact you know i have always adopted the mentality that i don't care if i have 500 followers or a thousand in fact you know most people ask me how many twitter followers i have and i i really i don't i mean i don't know the exact number like i believe i'm over 58 000 somewhere on the 60 000 somewhere in that range but that number has never mattered to me that's a lucky metric what i look at is what is my engagement are people liking commenting and share resharing my stuff that's what actually matters so you know how do you build that audience you do the things that you want people to do it's the golden rule and the golden rule is like it's called the golden rule because it works across everything right do you want to others do you want them to do on to you find the people who are talking about the things that are most interesting to you find the individuals or even sometimes the brands that are sharing the content that is of interest to you and like comment and re-share the stuff essentially you start building your own tribe based on all those others the social graph of information you're going to gain new followers that way as you gain new followers also if they fit within that ecosystem follow them back you add them to a list stay engaged with them you know it's there's no there's no silver bullet it's not magic you have to be engaged in order to be engaged i love it um here's here's an interesting one uh i don't think this is going to be applicable to everybody but i'm curious your answer here is from jared uh what if you have two jobs that are complete opposites do you create separate profiles two jobs completely opposite so i'm a babysitter and i am a vp of marketing at a staff company well say you say no well let's use you as an example okay you like there was a little middle ground before hootsuite right where there was like you you went out there and did your like charged rates for you to go out there and consult with companies and then and and say you know and then you got a job where you had to like it was so it was hootsuite and then you had your job i mean i know they're pretty close for you and you have your own personal brand but what about a kid who's out there who's maybe a consultant and helping people in certain areas got it you know what i mean example um there's a there's a guy i believe his name is i want to say dj no agent dish i-s-h yes from like he is a dj by now okay yeah sales rep by day nice okay he's totally separate jobs yeah he is a a sales rep at lincoln and he is a dj now he has a like a business profile for djing but his personal brand is that he in fact he is what he writes he says sales day by day dj by night right like like so he has found ways to find that consistent blend now if there is a break if there's some schizophrenia in this where you're doing two totally separate things that there is no way to align it like you need to eventually figure out what it is you ultimately want to do so are you trying to build out this other this other brand or this other entity on one side that has no relation what you're doing and this is just the means of the end to get to that then focus on that like focus on your guiding life like where's that north star start moving towards that if this is just your job right so you want to build your brand to be whatever that is that you're trying to get to now if you're actually trying to do both and like they're living symbiotically you have to figure out what that story is so that when you're having a conversation on one side and they say well what do you do during the day you can say oh i'm a sales guy or whatever that whatever that role is that you can say why you're doing those two things or when you're a sales guy like oh i'm also a dj by night so i'm closing business and then i'm going to i'm going to the club and i'm spinning record like yeah and go check me out there a very interesting way of doing this but i think that's what you need to you need to make those conscious decisions how are you going to you to build that brand cohesively um if it yeah i i almost never think that you should have different profiles based on other entities that you're trying to launch because if it's true to you again back to authenticity your network your connections are going to understand because they're going to know where you're trying to get to yeah no i i definitely i mean the only way i've heard a lot of recommendations for instagram because i'm again i'm trying to figure out instagram it's like you can you know it's you want a theme on instagram for instance where like if you come to my j barrows page like you want to see stuff about sales you want to see some consistency there if i'm food and you know and and sales and then travel and then this is kind of confusing to the end so some people on instagram suggest having two separate instagram things but i think you're right it's like you have to back to your point of blending here you got to start making a decision about from a career standpoint where you want to be and and is it you is it the company you're representing uh and what is your voice because it to your point if i see two different people out there i don't trust you i i just don't because now i'm like well did you say that because you were trying to attract this crowd or this crowd like you have to kind of find some way is that the red or the blue yeah exactly conversation right like yeah exactly it raises more questions that it answers when you try and do that all right i love it it looks like one more question here from michael besides research on individuals or companies how else can i develop better context on my emails or in social reach out okay i got my opinions on this any thoughts on this besides research on individuals or companies how can i develop better context on my emails or social research reach out so i think you know doing the initial research of who those individuals are what the company is doing um i think one of the best ways in fact that a you know i i would think that this falls in line with contact is you know my i was raised because you know in the sales world lead with insights so outside of what i find on your profile that should just lead me or direct me to what insight it is that i'm going to lead with when making that conversation so is it some interesting step is it a trend that we're seeing is it some research that just got recently published that also aligns into who you are and what you do you know again if you're leading with insights that is going to be the that's going to be the bow on the context of who that person is because you're actually giving them a gift in many cases because most people are not aware of all the trends and research and reports that are coming out there so if you can wrap that up a little bow and and then hand it over with that context it holds a lot of weight yeah i love it i was just going to jump onto like kind of the persona or industry trends right so if i'm going after cios i don't necessarily you know i'm going to do my research on you as a cio and see if you said anything but i'm also going to educate myself on cio stuff right and and read what cios care about trends that are happening in that industry and then when i read that find it interesting the terminology nomenclature is so important and that's where i think a lot of sales people don't spend enough time like for example like i i i'm starting to work more in the financial services space and they don't talk about trigger events they know what they are they call them money in motion events right and and you can see their eyes light up or their ears perk up when you say money in motion because that is something that they are acutely aware of and always paying attention to i say trigger events they're like yeah trigger events but you say money emotion like all of a sudden like you're speaking in their language um i think that's what sales people need to do is like to understand what how do these people speak what do my customers say how do they say it and then find ways to use those words in your into your conversations love it too it's mirrored i mean it's old it's old school sales it's mirrored 100 don't pretend like you know they're well but know enough to put some context and start a conversation right oh yeah don't pretend because if they know more than you you they're going to call you call your bluff and you're going to look like smuck and they're going to hang up on you you're never going to get that business ever yeah exactly that's like chat that's like the the blessing and the curse of challenger sale right it's like lead with insights that's fine but challenge me oh you better know what the you're talking about before you challenge me like if i'm a ceo in a company 20 years in and i got this 22 year old pissant telling me how i should run my business you're gonna be in trouble so anyways we're up on the aracoga this is i could talk to you for hours here man i always love catching up and just getting picking your brain about stuff so i genuinely appreciate you spending the time here with me and my audience um help me understand a couple of things um uh about like how to follow you know where to find it it's pretty obvious what you're doing over at hootsuite and then also um because you're a veteran um how can we help out veterans uh because i know you're you're very active and you came from that world um and i know that there's a there's a lot of need out there so what can my audience do to help support veterans ideally in sales because i think veterans are are actually a perfect fit for what we do so we'd love to just hootsuite um follow you you know what background there and then also um you know what can we do to help us out there i'm very easy to find i am coca section on just about every social channel there is again you know you have to find ways to brand yourself consistently uh at hootsuite i am helping companies and sales organizations transform digitally so you know if you're a sales organization that is trying to figure out how to leverage social more effectively to grow you know your pipeline like that's that's what i do within hootsuite is i do that with all of our customers uh you know on the veteran side you know i i wish i could do more there are many people out there doing a ton more than i am but i am invested you know being a veteran myself i understand the pain point of going from military transitioning into the civilian world um you know in in many ways in fact many soldiers or you know military individuals have a much harder time than i did because they were they've been doing this much longer than i worked before they had to transition out uh you know find ways if you know a veteran and they're looking for work just help them understand the world you're in i spend a lot of time in every month talking to a veteran here or there like i was just trying to understand how do i get my first sales job what do i need to know and pointing them in the right direction you know again i think i almost said echoing what you said you know veterans making amazing employees when i was transitioning out and coming into the workforce people were afraid of hiring me because they thought i was going to be yelling at people all day long and you know so strict and rigid i was like your idea is like from like 1970 soldiers like nowadays we are trained to be agile to make decisions to you know make quick great decisions and to be able to pivot quickly if you realize the data is not moving the way we need to go um and i think the soldiers are now are being trained this way and as they're coming out of these deployments or out of whether the duty stations are like they just they need that break and so depending on what that role is i think sales is doing really well um you know if you know warehousing i mean like amazon does an amazing job hiring veterans linkedin has an amazing veteran space so if you know of vets and they are trying to find ways like just you know connect them to me connect them to other veterans you know because it's a massive community and we can all help each other to kind of raise the bar of like where veterans are in the professional workforce love it thanks man and and by the way have you been following what uh carolyn betts over at betts recruiting is doing uh yes i have right it's because they're they're putting a big focus strategy around it exactly so if you by the way if you're a vet or if you know a vet out there who's looking for work uh betts recruiting b-e-t-t-s or no i'm sorry b-e-t-t-s recruiting um they're they're a huge initiative right now to help get veterans into sales because uh to your point i think that they'd be fantastic in this profession obviously because you're one of them and i think that's proof positive so anyways we're wrapping it up coca again thank you so much man hopefully i'll see you in singapore next week oddly enough that we're both going to be there um yeah right so and we're gonna i'll put this out there it's on it's on facebook live now but uh we'll see the long tail if there's any more questions uh i'll be moderating that and i'll get them out to you all right out daddy thank you john thanks brother bye everyone you uh facebook live jeez uh