Vinnie Romano: The Future of Personal Branding in the World of AI

Don't go out there calling yourself a subject matter expert or a thought leader. Stop running after those goals and share what it is that you know with the audience that you're trying to have an influence on. If you do that, you will be a better salesperson, you will be a better marketer, you will be a better professional. Hey everyone, welcome back to Make It Happen Mondays where we talk about sales, business, entrepreneurship, personal growth, mental health and everything in between with guests who I truly respect and I think make a positive impact on the world around us. Now today's guest is Vinny Romano. He's the co-founder and CMO of MySocial.ai, an AI and machine learning tool that encourages and enables professionals to create consistent, authentic and relevant content in their tone of voice for their desired audience.

Even though his background is in creative advertising and marketing, he's been selling his entire life. So his focus has been on aligning sales and marketing teams, which is a lot of what this conversation revolved around. One of the main questions I had for him was about how important personal branding is going to be in the future based on everything that AI is doing and how realistic it's becoming. Will authenticity matter more or less? Now, we had some differing opinions on this one that I think you're going to find really interesting. So, let's make it happen. Vinny Romano, what's going on? Welcome to the Make It Happen Monday podcast, my friend. How are you doing today? Good, thanks, John.

Yourself? I'm doing well, man. It's, as you said, it was about six o'clock in the morning down your time, right? 6 a.m. here in the sunny Gold Coast of Australia. That's right. You might hear a British accent, but I've been in Australia now for over 11 years. So, they start earlier over here. Love it. So, Gold Coast, is it Melbourne, Sydney? I know Melbourne and Sydney, but where's the Gold Coast as it relates? Gold Coast is one hour south of Brisbane, which is the third largest city of Australia, nine hours north of Sydney Drive. Yeah, my wife actually did a study abroad in Brisbane. So, she's very familiar and I've been out there a few times. So, my daughter's dream is to go to Australia because she thinks it's filled with koalas, so.

Well, it is. She's not wrong. She's not wrong. Well, Vinny, look, we connected a little while ago. I think, you know, one of the things we're going to get into is, you know, sales and marketing alignment and personal branding and how it's all evolved quite rapidly with, you know, the advent of AI. But before we get into that, always love the origin story, man. Talk to us about where you grew up, where you're coming from, parents, where'd you catch the bug for the entrepreneur or the sales bug for you? And then we'll take it from there. Sure. Grew up in London. Got my first job at the age of 16 or 17 selling mobile phones, cell phones from a store back in the day when you were selling mobile phones or cell phones.

That was really a push from my old man. He sort of noticed something in me that I might thrive or excel in that kind of environment. You know, how do you know at that age? But, you know, I suppose he knew me pretty well because I did pretty, pretty good. That was a good sort of launch pad, you know, going up and needing to talk to customers within two minutes of them entering the store and opening up a conversation. They're there for a reason, but don't push too hard, that kind of thing. And, you know, really started working in sales. From that point on, you would see me switching between cell phones to then property, leasing manager, negotiator, to even one of my jobs before university was knocking on doors selling gas and electricity, where I learned the skill of not getting a door slammed in your face and having to build rapport within five seconds.

I always say door-to-door sales is like the purest form of sales, man. Anytime somebody comes to my door, like, I'm like, look, I'm not going to buy whatever you're selling me, but I got to give you props, like, good for you. Keep going. You can do this. I know how brutal it is. I'm, I'm, I'm torn, I'm torn as to, I'm torn as to how either scared or excited I would be to knock on your door. I'm a pushover, man. You'd, you'd appreciate it because you are, you know, uh, up there on the, on, on the sales spectrum. They say that salespeople are the most appreciative of, uh, of, of, of sales. They're, they're the most susceptible. They're the most, they're, they're the most, uh, uh, you know, uh, susceptible as I say.

Um, but at the same time, you know, you've, you've been around for, for, for a while doing this. And so, you know, the feedback that you might have ready, ready for me in the first five seconds might be, uh, you know, either soul destroying or, or very elevating. I don't know which it would be completely comes down to my approach. That's it. Like, so to, on that note, like, as long as you're cool, uh, I'm, I'm the, I'm a biggest pushover you'll get, right? Like, as long as you're not, but as soon as I smell the douchey sales rep in you, I will slaughter you. Like, as soon as I can tell you're trying to be like the, you know, Wolf of Wall Street douche, like I, I will absolutely eviscerate you.

But as long as you're cool and you're just like, you could screw up a bunch of times. I don't care. Like, but you know, I can't stand the, the shitty sales rep. And I don't mean shitting as far as like not good at sales. I mean, the manipulative sales rep, those are the ones I can't stand. And those are the ones I'd shred. And, and, uh, and that's, that's, that's what it comes down to, right? You, you, you, that's why you do what, what you do. That's why you found the passion for what it is that you do, why you do it. Um, so yeah, knocking on John Barrow's door, uh, that's, uh, that's a, that's a tale for another time. But, uh, from, from, uh, from there I had at that point probably got about four years under my belt of professional, uh, sales, um, one, one, a couple of awards, best newcomer, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, you know, all that kind of stuff at that point.

I didn't really know where it was all taking me. Um, and then I went off to university. I did, I did, uh, I did a year at the university of Tennessee, um, in Knoxville. Um, and that was as a, uh, a secondment or a, or a travel abroad style thing from my host university in the UK. And I found myself gravitating towards, you know, business marketing, that kind of thing. They don't teach sales at university, um, which is a whole other topic. Um, they're getting there, but it's, we got about 200 schools. You can get it here in the States, but it still needs to be a lot. Okay. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Um, as like a, as like a full on university degree. Yeah. Wow. Okay. Yeah. Some of them are more minors, but, uh, there's about 200 schools that have a sales degree associated with them, you know, Purdue and a bunch of others here.

One up here, um, uh, that I'm associated with here in Massachusetts, which is pretty cool. So that's awesome. That's awesome. Cause it's, it's, uh, it's one of those, it's one of those things. I, I wholeheartedly believe if you, if you can harness how to sell again, to your point, not Wolf of wall street, you know, do she, as you say style selling, if you can harness how to do it and, and it be natural, um, and find your own natural way of selling, uh, with a little bit of guidance, particularly from a school, uh, you can be set up for life. Cause to your earlier reference around, um, negotiating with your parents, uh, to stay up a little bit later. Um, you know, I believe that we're all salespeople, or at least we are all always selling irrespective of your job title.

If you want someone to do something, not necessarily manipulate them, but if you want someone to take a certain action, uh, and they're not quite where you are, you're, you're, you are, you know, showing them the way, bringing them into your vision, um, and relating, making it relevant to them, um, you know, that's an element of, of sales. Look at me. I'm, I'm, I'm talking to, uh, one of the sales masters talking about what I know about sales. I don't know if I should be, I don't know if I'm qualified. I mean, look, sales is, sales is nothing more than helping people solve problems and achieve goals, man. That's really it. If you're trying to convince somebody in sales, I think you're doing it wrong.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying the conversation so far. I want to take a quick minute to share with you what I'm working on these days with my new JB sales membership. It includes live monthly training delivered by me on my two signature courses, which are filling the funnel and driving a close that cover all aspects of the sales process. It also includes monthly workshops that I'll be running on specific sales skills and different tech skills like chat GPT and how to leverage AI throughout the entire sales process. Finally, the membership gives you access to my entire online catalog with every course and every tip I've ever done. And as an exclusive offer to my podcast listeners, if you go to jbarrows.com, click on the individual membership link and use coupon code podcast at checkout, you'll get 25% off.

Now let's get back to the conversation. So with my social, how did that come about? Because as we were talking through this, there's a couple of pivots you'd had to go through. So how did that come about? After I left university, I then found my groove working in large creative advertising agencies where the role was client relationship manager or account executive, account manager, account director, you know, that kind of thing. Essentially, that was the most sales role within working within a creative space. So I would be responsible for, you know, liaising with the clients, the brands that we would be working with, taking the briefs, turning those into creative briefs, managing that relationship through the agency and then going back and selling the strategy or the idea that the creatives had come up with in line with the creative and the strategy team.

And so I very much found that I was selling in every sort of capacity in my professional career and fast forward about, you know, 15 years from my first, from my first role, I have started an agency of my own, a B2B content marketing agency. We were creating content on behalf of the brands in a, in a B2B digital content sort of space. But one of the things that my agency was doing for ourselves as a way to, you know, generate conversations with net new or existing customers, um, was leveraging our own personal brands. And it was something that some of our clients that we were working with, uh, caught wind of and they turned to us and said, Hey, we noticed that you're doing this for yourselves.

Can you do this for us? And then we spun that out into a service where we were connecting individual executives, um, to the content that we were creating at a company level. We saw some results from that. Um, and through the tenure of my time at that agency, which I exited in 2015, I look back at that and wish I had made more of an effort on that particular service. I think it could have been done a lot better. Whilst I was at that agency, I was working with, um, Microsoft, um, and my now co-founder was the ex head of social and digital marketing of Microsoft Australia. So when he left Microsoft and I exited the agency, we sort of came together. Um, I was consulting, he was consulting, we were just kind of, you know, this was through COVID as well.

Um, we sort of came together and, and chewed the fat, um, for a couple of months. Uh, he told me that he wanted to build a product. I told him I was working on how to productize a suite of services that I was doing. And one of the main services I was doing was this executive social selling, uh, program-esque style work. Um, and the idea of my social was born. We, we, we incorporated it, um, launched the business, started working with a number of different clients. Um, and we were off to the races in terms of, uh, starting to build a product around how do we democratize social selling, um, which means a different, which means different things to different people. Um, but in, in, in the, in the, in the broader sense of the term, how do we help more people find the time to create consistent, authentic, and relevant content from their profiles?

If they are in a sales or a leadership capacity, because we know that it works in modern day sales and marketing in terms of raising your profile, raising your notoriety, helping people from every part of the buying journey, specifically in B2B, helping people see and consume and be exposed to the thoughts of the individuals that work at your organization at scale. One of the points that you made earlier, you have 50 megaphones. Why aren't you using them? It's something that I say all the time in slightly different words, but what I could, what we bring to the table is that we understand that a, it works as a great sales tactic. If you can factor it into everything else that you're required to do.

The idea is that, that I don't know any B2B salesperson. You correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't know any B2B salesperson that isn't already using LinkedIn, even in the most basic and free version of LinkedIn. I don't know a single B2B salesperson that isn't using LinkedIn to at least prospect, to at least find names of people that they're trying to target at the very least, right? And so if you're already using LinkedIn and you're sending out connection requests, and then you're doing the thing that 99% of salespeople do, which is either as soon as they accept, you slap them with a, with a pitch slap and you say, and you talk nothing about them and you talk only about yourself, you are doing it wrong, right?

Because no one gives a shit. What you can be doing, it's not a silver bullet, but what you can be doing is if you're using that as a platform, if you're also creating content consistently, not only do you have a higher acceptance rate, but you have the higher chances of having a better quality conversation when they do accept. And it's that insight that we have latched onto, but then on the flip side of that, we also understand that marketers in B2B generally are smaller teams than the sales teams. That makes sense. They're responsible for a lot more than just traditional marketing. Marketers are no longer just the coloring in department and working with agencies. They're responsible for a lot more.

They've got a smaller team. They are consistently, we are consistently as marketers told to do more with less. One of the first things that gets cut from the, from the budget is marketing spend. And so to your point, if we can find that alignment between salespeople, you're already doing it. You're already on LinkedIn. You're, if you create content, you're going to have a better time, better chance at genuinely connecting marketers. You've got all of these fantastic salespeople that are already doing the activity. How do you, how do you leverage them as marketers, especially as your budgets are being cut? They're already out there talking to your prospects. How do we bring the two together? And our thinking is that, is that solution to sales and marketing alignment?

So roundabout way to answering your question, how did we come about it? Those are really the two things that underpin mine and Wayne's, my business partners, thinking as to why we created MySocial in the first place. Cool. So let's talk about brands because, you know, I've been, I think I've been fortunate in the sense that, you know, I've, I've talked about this previously, but you know, I was, I was member 35, 36,541 on LinkedIn. So it was super early adopter. But before I was on LinkedIn, I, I was at networking events. I was at networking groups, you know? And so I understood what it was like to network and build relationships. And so when, when LinkedIn came out, it was very easy for me to kind of adapt to it and just use it more as a digital form of developing relationships.

Whereas now reps just jump into LinkedIn and they look at it as a sales tool, which is why we all get those sales things and, and they don't look at it as much as a brand building. And so, you know, I think it's hard to put an ROI to personal brands and there's very limited short-term benefit to it. It's very, I mean, it's extremely rare that, that you post something or share something and a perfect ICP looks at that and says, man, we got to do business, right? So I understand why most reps don't do it, but I guess we're at a, I think we're at a inflection point right now. And I'm curious from your perspective with the advent of AI and the fact that there will be quote unquote influencers that are AI driven.

Like I actually even know what I'm doing. So I got a lot of sponsors, you know, that type of stuff. And, and, you know, I stand up, I give my pitch to them and like, and I use their product and it's authentic because I won't work with anybody who doesn't. But quite frankly, influencers are a pain in the ass. Like we, like I, you know, there's certain things I don't want to do. There's certain times of the day. I don't feel like doing it, you know? So, so for the brand to work with somebody like me is a challenge. Whereas AI with the realistic aspect of the human brand version of, right? They're going to move. So I guess what I'm trying to get at is, is where are we with personal branding right now?

Is it more important now because of the advent of AI or is it going to get replaced by AI? And, and, and, and our brands going to have their own John Barrows that, that they have? I mean, there's some, I mean, there's some Instagram accounts that are making millions and millions and millions of dollars. And they're just, they're not even people. You know what I mean? Like they got millions of followers. They engage with their people. They, they say whatever the hell the brand wants them to say. So I guess from your perspective of what you're seeing out there, where are we with personal brands? And is it time to lean into them and double down? Or is it time to basically take a step back and say, shit, I need to actually develop an AI version of me because somebody else is going to do it anyways.

So it's a great question. I can't talk for the, any B2C brands that are developing AI based influences to push out messages and them see success. I can't speak to that. I don't know any figures. I don't see, I haven't seen any evidence to suggest that that is the way forward. The sad thing is, is that if that does become the way forward and we end up just having a bunch of robots talking to a bunch of robots. I mean, how is that going? How is that going to do anything? Right. You could, you could argue, you could argue that in a more B2C environment where already a human goes to a website, e-commerce looks at a website, chooses all the things that we, that I want, and I'm not dealing with a salesperson.

But that's okay because I know what I want. I've been nurtured through digital marketing practice. I've gone onto the site. I want to buy that pair of socks or I want to buy, you know, what have you. Right. But that's because I am decision maker. Number one, do I see an evolution of that very process of me outsourcing the purchasing of those things to a robot version of myself? I don't see how I could because how could the robot version of myself know that I want this suite of things unless I tell it. Well, am I not just giving myself more work to outsource the desirables to go and buy those things? I don't know. There's this, there's, there's, there's pros and cons to that. I can see at some stage I might have an AI personal assistant.

I tell it what it is that I want, take my credit card and go nuts. Right. Would I trust that? You know, who knows? But if we're talking specifically in B2B where sales cycles are longer, cost of sale is higher, and there are more people involved in the decision-making process. I believe Gartner's latest number was nine and a half, maybe 10 and a half decision makers in any B2B decision-making process. The fact is, is that there are nine and a half, 10 and a half individuals making that decision. Are they all going to leave it in the hands of their own AIs to make the decision on their behalf as to whether or not they come together and agree on behalf of the organization within which they work for to make purchasing decisions?

Well, I'm not necessarily talking about the purchasing decisions. I'm talking about the value of a personal brand in the sales process, right? So if I, the value is from a marketing standpoint in sales and marketing alignment, right, is I'm out there with my brand. It's an impression point. Every time I post, every time I share something, you know, hopefully it leaves an impression where there's more of a comfort level, a familiarity level, a trust level with me so that when I send you that email, when I make that phone call, when I'm involved in the sales process, you tend to gravitate towards somebody you trust because you just feel like you know me because I'm out there on social all the time, right?

So there's, there's, but that takes a lot for, for, for, I mean, I've been doing this for 20 years. I've been posting on LinkedIn since 2000, whatever, right? Two or something like that. It is very rare that somebody is going to be able to be in a situation like me where I've grown up with this technology. I was there at the beginning. I was able to build my brand. I'm in sales on my own trust. You know, I sell myself. So it's a lot easier for me than most people. And so now, you know, looking, I keep looking at the sales rep and I'm trying to answer the question of what is the value of your personal, of your personal brand as part of the sales process? Now, I think it's valuable when it comes to hiring, right?

Because all of this person has a social brand, they, you know, great, but in the sales process with as much noise as there is out there and the value of a sales professional diminishing in front of our eyes. Because when AI can answer almost any question and clients wanting to speak less and less to sales professionals, they want to speak more and more to sales, you know, solutions architects or whatever. I guess what I'm trying to figure out is, again, do we double down on personal brand so that as a sales rep I can survive or do I just try to figure out a different angle here? Because marketing is going to drive all this demand for me and therefore, I'm not going to have to do outbound. Like I, quite frankly, I don't know in the next five years if humans are going to be involved in outbound in any way, shape or form.

Because I do think that AI is going to know me better than you and, quite frankly, I use Instagram as the example. Like, why do we hate spam? We hate spam because it's irrelevant. Well, why do I love Instagram? It's because that algorithm has trained me to, and so now every single ad is something I want. So, if I project this into the future, with all the stuff that's out there on LinkedIn, with all my social posts, you can't tell me that AI isn't going to figure out exactly who I am, what I want. And I'm going to have super hyper-personalized emails in my inbox of shit that I actually need and want from a business standpoint. And do I ultimately care if that's a sales rep or not? Like, a human's doing that?

I don't. Now, do I want to talk to a human? Sure. But when I talk to that human, and this is ultimately where I'm going with this, is does that brand of that human matter? Because all the front-end shit's going to be taken care of for us. So, there's a lot in there. And the reason I was going on the tangent of the B2B decision-making is because I challenge that it is actually very important. Because at the very, very top, again, I can't speak to more B2C, D2C-style communications. I don't care about B2C. No, no, that's fine. But, you know, in the instance that I am one of one in the decision-making process, the use of – the need for a salesperson has diminished before AI, in a sense, right? So, the need for that has gone.

I don't need to speak to a salesperson. If I can get hyper-relevant content delivered to me for things that I want, and AI accelerates that, I say, all the better, right? I say, all the better, right? Because I am no longer frustrated with 10 emails that hit my inbox that are completely of zero relevance, right? Do I see that being 100% clean in the next 10, 20 years? Probably not. I think there's going to be problems that come up with that, and that I'm going to get inundated with so much stuff. Am I going to do a complete 360? But that's not what I'm talking about here. What I'm talking about is, in B2B specifically, are we going to end up with robots selling to other robots? One robot, in this case a robot that is me, selling to 10 people who are meant to be making a decision, replace all of them as robots, and all of a sudden, there is no human involved in the process.

Now, it is worth noting that in B2B sales, I believe, and you might be able to correct me on this, but only 5% of the B2B buying journey, only 5% of the B2B decision-making journey, does the buyer want to talk to a salesperson? Only 5%. Yeah, I mean, back in 2022, I think Gartner was like 43% didn't want to talk to a sales rep, and I think now it's upwards of 80%, 90%. They just don't want to engage with a sales professional. Not until, because, well, I mean, the answer there is that they don't need to. Is that to do with AI specifically? I wouldn't necessarily say so. No, I think it's low value, right? They don't get any value from the sales rep. The buyers have more access to the information that they need themselves, so they don't need someone giving them a call.

They don't need someone to help them as part of that journey because they are more savvy. So why is that important? To your point around why a professional brand is important in B2B sales is because that exact reason, the B2B decision-maker has all of the information readily available that they can go and search for the answers that they're looking for. Google, right, being number one, and then going to look at the company on LinkedIn. It is the number one place where B2B decision-makers will go, and then they want to be seeing this person that has sent me an email as part of that automated workflow. So, who is this person? Can I trust this person? And they're likely to go onto your LinkedIn profile.

If what you've got is a bunch of AI, if you've, so firstly, if you've got no content, trust levels are not as high as they could be. If you've got no profile photo, if you've got no headline, if you haven't got a LinkedIn profile, I'm going to throw that email straight in the bin, right? If you do have a profile with a clean picture, with a clear headline, and you are also creating content, that trust bucket is being filled up. So, I am more likely to respond to an email that I receive from you from your automated workflow, irrespective of knowing that it is automated. And so, you can also exist as part of my ecosystem when I am either following you or you have reached out to me and connected with me on LinkedIn.

That doesn't mean that the first thing that you need to do as soon as I accept that you hit me with a pitch slap, allow me to get to organically see your content moving forward. So, in a roundabout way, you know, you're asking how important is the professional brand? Well, all signs are pointing towards that it's becoming more and more important. Because, sorry, go on. No, go ahead. Because why? Because at the end of the day, people buy from people. Yes. And I think that is going, and this is kind of where I'm going with all this. Like, I think we're in the Pareto's rule here, 80-20 across the board, right? I think for the 20% of the people that really have a strong brand, have strong skills, sales skills, and, you know, business acumen, I think they're going to be invaluable in the future.

They really do. My fear is that the 80% of sales reps who are not building their brand, who don't have the fundamentals, who are just using these tools to try to check out the boxes, they're just going to get absolutely smoked. And before AI, I was like, all right, well, they can kind of last. You know what I mean? Like, there's always room for crap. Now, I just don't think there's room for it. So, it's almost, which is why I'm trying to figure out where to, like, if I'm a sales rep right now, listening to this and saying, yeah, I see it. I see it coming. And I got to figure out, like, do I want to double down and go, or do I want to figure out something else to do? Now, don't get me wrong. I think this is happening across industries.

Like, pick an industry, legal, healthcare, you name it. Same thing. But with this, if I were to prioritize, you know, personal brand versus this versus that versus all these other things, knowing that personal brand is a long-term play here. You know, how do I bake that into my routine? How do I have that bifocal vision of building my personal brand while still driving results and staying relevant? So, how do you do that? How do you do this in a manageable way so that I'm not spending hours a day sifting through, trying to figure out what to post, those type of things? If starting to create a professional or a personal brand on the likes of LinkedIn specifically, which is where I specialize or where my team specializes, I can't talk to any other social media platforms.

But if you are in B2B sales and to that thread, you are of the thinking that starting to create a personal or professional brand is important, there are some very easy things to note when it comes to creating content. Firstly, look to post three times a week. Some people think that they need to post every single day. Some people hear me say three times a week and they go, how am I meant to even start thinking about that? So, let's address both. You don't need to be posting every single day. If you do, it's a lot of time and you're probably not going to get any real more results than if you just scaled it back to three. If you are someone that hears the number three per week and gets scared away from that, let me break it down.

It's very, once you get into the groove, and I dislike it when people say, just start, because it's not really an actionable item. But I've got to say, to use that here is relevant. To just get going, you will see that it will become easier if you stick at it. It is a long-term play because it's organic social media. The thing that I do is I break it down and I think, okay, rather than thinking about me, because I post three times a week, have done for coming up to six years now. And the results are incredible. I go to events. People tap me on the shoulder and say they've been following me for years. They really like my content. They are my ICP. And I end up having a conversation with them in the event that I am at an event.

Or people reach out to me based on the content that I'm creating. It's not to say that all I do is create content and everything just falls. No. You still have to be able to pick up the phone. You still have to be able to send an email. You still have to be able to read the signals and do everything else that you are a professional at as a salesperson. But if you can factor in the content creation element on LinkedIn, you're going to see an uptick in all of the activities across all of the multitude of things that you're doing. So to break it down, what it is that I do is I think, okay, I've got three opportunities to post. How do I make this really easy for me so it ultimately turns into autopilot?

Not using any tools. So forget about my social. Forget about any other social media management tools. Just using your brain, right? What is it that is going to make this really easy? Three things. I think about what is it that my audience is going to be feeling on certain days. So let's choose my days. Okay, so I've chosen Monday, Wednesday, Thursday. Every Monday, I know my market. My market are just coming back from the weekend. I want to give them something to smile about. So I share a funny meme about marketers because that's who I'm talking to. Marketers, PR, comms people. That's who I'm talking to. So I share a funny meme. But because I am also a marketer, I kind of get away with it. I take the piss out of marketers and or salespeople, right?

Because I'm also a salesperson. And I take the mickey, right? So funny little meme. Make them laugh. Every Wednesday, best day, midday of mid of the week is the best time, apparently, to be communicating with your prospects in terms of sharing valuable information. So, you know, it's still the best time of the week and best time of the day to be sharing it, to be sending emails, prospecting. Middle of the week, middle of the day. So on Wednesday, I want my audience to learn. So I am part of a podcast. I'm a co-host of a podcast. And I share a recent conversation that I've had with someone where I've learned something I'm learning in public. So by me learning, they are also learning. And then every Thursday, I want my audience to listen.

I want them to listen to something about what it is that I can do for them. So whether that's sharing a testimonial of what one of my customers has said about what it is that we've done for them and the results that we've helped them achieve. Or a new feature or product release, whatever it might be. So I use this 3L framework of I want them to laugh. I want them to learn. I want them to listen. And by using that 3L framework, it then becomes very easy because it almost becomes something that you start looking out for and knowing in the back of your mind, oh, I have my 3Ls I need to fill next week. What do I have? And you start doing things to create that content. Not to say that you start doing it just for the sake of it, but you actually start to see, okay, I'm now putting myself in this position because I know I'm looking to fulfill that framework.

You don't have to use 3Ls. Find your own one. That's what I do. I make it really, really bloody easy. Yeah, I think it's interesting because I reflect on that on the newsletter that I put out there, right? And in the newsletter, it is a tactical tip, a new tech or tool or resource and a story, right? And I call it sales from the streets. And sales from the streets is always something from this week. So, I write the post on. I write it on Friday for a Saturday delivery. But I always think through this week, like, what's a sales story that I experienced this week, whether it was a meeting with a client or whatever. So, I'm very conscious throughout that week of, like, oh, I got to jot that one down.

Like, yep, okay, there it is. Same thing with a sales tool. And you're starting to think about those things as and when they happen because you know that you've got a time on a Friday coming up where you're going to have to sit down and think about this. So, to make that part easier, you're thinking throughout the week, what can I add to those bits? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and I think the learn part is the easiest. That's the transition that I try to help people make is, you know, don't post what – because I think the fear a lot of people have is, like, you know, who am I? Like, who am I to post shit? Nobody – you know, like, I'm not the thought leader or whatever. And you don't have to be. Quite frankly, it actually comes across usually pretty bad when you try to tell people how smart you are.

But the learn part is where I think it's the easiest. And this is actually how it combines business acumen and branding is if you follow the other thought leaders in your space, right? So, if I'm a – you know, I'm going to follow all the thought leaders in sales. And I'm going to consume their content with the focus on learning something. And then when I learn something, that's when I share it with a little bit of context. Hey, really interesting post here by Vinny. Some of my key takeaways were X, Y, Z. Da-da-da-da. You know, whatever. And I always joke with people. I go, look, I write a blog. It's a pain in the ass. It takes me, like, three to four hours to write this fucking newsletter. It's a wicked – I mean, I enjoy it.

But it's a royal pain in the ass. So, but if you're following me and you read my blog and then you share my blog and somebody else that you're connected to reads my blog because you shared it and they get value out of it, they don't thank me. They thank you, right? So, I did all the work. You did all the – you know, you got all the credit. And it's the easiest way to make that transition. And I think you had mentioned something earlier about how to build it in an authentic way. I think that's the part that people struggle with the most is how do I – how do I be authentic with this? And I think if you share what you're learning, that's authentic. If you're trying to post for a secondary, like, oh, because you want somebody to click on a link or whatever it is and you're pretending or you think you're smarter than everybody else, people are going to see right through that.

And that's going to lead to me at my last question here, which is more about the advent of AI and posting. So, my social, I understand it makes it really easy. It gets in my voice. I will – and I've promised this on LinkedIn. Every time I fucking post on LinkedIn, I promise you it will not be AI generated. It is John Barrows. It is a pain in the ass, but I refuse to use AI to write my posts. And it bugs the shit out of me that people are using AI to comment and post without – like, and I get – look, I don't mind doing a little bit of the heavy lifting and coming up with maybe some talk tracks and that type of stuff. But if you don't then make that your own, then I don't – this is where the personal brand versus the AI brand gets mixed together, and I don't understand.

So, what is your philosophy or approach to leveraging AI to create these posts or comments about a brand? So, you can tell a mile off when someone has gone on to ChatGPT or another AI copywriter and used it as a one-off thing. They haven't trained that single copywriter on who they are, what they do, some of their thoughts, uploaded a bunch of previous content to provide it with context and get closer to that tone of voice. So, you can tell from a mile off, especially with the use of 100 emojis, which are always – generally, you've got rockets and stars, right? The strong arm – by the way, the strong arm one is always the telltale sign. Like, the muscle one is always the telltale sign. So, you can tell when people have jumped on, they've gotten excited and they go – you know, because there are a handful of people, especially in sales, that go, I really want to do this, but I just don't have the time or I can't be asked or I don't know what to say, when to say it, how to say it, or why.

I don't want to be profiled, I don't want to put my real thoughts out there, I have imposter syndrome, blah, blah, blah, right? There's all of those things. But there are some – there are people who will jump onto ChatGPT and do it for the one-off piece and they're filled with emojis and it doesn't sound like them in the slightest and they're probably, more often than not, peddling something that the company that they work for, they're peddling that. Hey, check out this link or, hey, we're doing this event, click this link and we – and you can enter the prize draw or whatever, right? Firstly, product and service pushes are the least – are the lowest performing content pieces on LinkedIn, just FYI, right?

We want to hear from the individual, we want to hear your thoughts. You are a professional, you've got the job that you've got because you've got some kind of knowledge. Share that knowledge, share that knowledge. And you know what? If you start sharing knowledge as opposed to sharing promotions of stuff, you're going to have a far longer timetable of stuff to share because there are only so many finite events and products that you can push as opposed to your brain consistently thinks up new things. So if you put yourself in a position where you are sharing your vulnerabilities, you don't have to be vulnerable, but it does help bring more of an authentic side to you, right? If you take that approach and you use AI as a starting point, use chat GPT, but brief it in such a way that talks to, I would like to be able to show some vulnerability and some background history on that vulnerability is X, right?

That's not to say that even if you get the post, which goes from peddling something from your company or an event or whatever to sharing a nice, well thought through piece of content that you should still just, it's not to say that you should still just copy and paste that. So what we're talking in our philosophy is, is that if you do not have the time, if you are struggling with what to say or what to write, if you are staring at that blank page and you know that it's important that you should be creating content in the first place, the philosophy is there is now a technology that allows you to at least get a starting point. Right. There is at least the technology now to give you that starting point very quickly for very low cost.

It's not to say be lazy with it, because if you're going to be lazy with it, you might as well not do it at all. Well, it's kind of like cadences, right? It's like you could blast out a million, you get this great cadence tool and, and yes, it can send out super, you know, multi-touch different things and you can do it at scale. You could send out 500, but marketers can do that and they can actually do it better than we can as sales professionals because marketers are actually going to pay attention to the open, the clicks and what people are responding to and make adjustments where sales reps are just going to push the button. It's the same thing with brands. It's like, yes, market, like, again, that's why I go back to the AI version.

If you're just going to do that, like you said, like just to let the AI, then what the do I need you for? I do not need you. If, if you can't have your own personal authentic brand, then yes, AI is better than you. And I think that's where the augmentation versus automation. If you can augment and, and give me insights and how, and if you can use the AI as a learning tool so that you're, you're not just getting the information, but you're actually learning from the information that it's presenting. And then putting a little bit of context around it with your flavor. Now it's a, it's a superpower, but if it's, I'm too lazy and I'm just going to do this, then you, quite frankly, you are working yourself out of a job pretty quick.

You, you, you are. And, and I dare suggest that you shouldn't, you shouldn't be in B2B sales. If that's the approach that you're going to take. I agree. It's a bold, the bold thing to say. Um, some people might get offended by that, but you probably not for you. Literally fuck them. It goes back to that 80, 20 rule, right? It's, I, I honestly think that 20%, if you, if you're willing to put in the work, if you're willing to really do the job, then I think it's, you're going to be invaluable. I, I, I think you would be able to make a shitload of money, but also even more importantly, be insanely valuable to the market. And I mean that to customers, to partners, to employees or employers. But the other 80% that are literally just looking for the easy button are, are just getting replaced.

And, and I, and I, sorry, I was just going to say, I think, I think it's worth, I think it's worth noting here. You know, and I, and a lot of people think that they need to do it in order to become or maintain some thought leadership status. Can I just say to anyone that's listening, forget about thought leadership. It's not about thought leadership until you understand what it genuinely means to be a thought leader. Forget about it. It is not as important. People say to me that, ask me, am I a thought leader? I say, I don't believe that I am. I don't believe I am. What I believe, what I believe I am trying to, what I'm trying to ascertain is. A level of subject matter expertise. By understanding that I am aspiring to be a subject matter expert in a certain area, which again, I don't believe you can ever, firstly, you can never call yourself a subject matter expert.

I don't believe, I don't believe, I don't believe you can ever call yourself a thought leader. If you do, you're not. People have to do that for you. Yeah, exactly. People have to give you that title, right? Yeah. So don't go out there calling yourself a subject matter expert or a thought leader. Don't think that there is an end point of, yay, I've achieved subject matter expertise, or yay, I have become a thought leader. If you're thinking that, you probably haven't, right? Because in order to be one or either of them is an ongoing process. And if you are not involved in the ongoing part of that process, you will never become one. That's not to say that your goal should be to try to become one.

Just because you're creating content on LinkedIn consistently does not make you an influencer, a subject matter expert, or a thought leader. Stop running after those goals and share what it is that you know with the audience that you're trying to have an influence on. That's it. That's all you've got to do. If you do that, and if you commit to doing some of that, you will be a better salesperson. You will be a better marketer. You will be a better professional as a result because of the cathartic nature of writing stuff down. Use some AI to help you get some thought starters, but just be consistent with the creation of that content and putting those ideas out with the goal to generate or continue conversations in a professional sense.

That's it. That's it. Yeah, I think people overthink it, man. I think, to your point, anybody who says they're a thought leader ain't a thought leader in my space. I don't even consider myself. I'm just curious. I'm a guy with a mic who's curious, right? Call me a thought leader if you want. But the reason I would say thought leader is because I'm trying to think. I'm trying to lead myself, quite frankly, with my own development. And it just so happens I'm okay at sharing it with other people. So, Vinny, it's been great talking to you, man. We got to wrap this one up. Where can people find out more information about you, about my social, about what you're doing out there, so they can learn more?

Yeah. So, my social is going on a bit of an evolution at the moment. So, don't visit the website. If you do, you can. Absolutely fine. But going on a bit of an evolution at the moment, so it's probably not going to be relevant. But if you're interested in connecting with me, having a conversation, find me on LinkedIn, Vinny Romano, V-I-N-N-I-E-R-O-M-A-N-O. It's in my name at the bottom there. You can find me. Thanks, John. Yeah, absolutely, man. Thanks for coming. And I think it'll be interesting to see how this all pans out, man. Because it'd be interesting to come back in about a year and see where the AI influencers are and where sales is. So, let's plan on that. But thanks for coming on, man.

Just before we wrap, the last thing I will say is you said something really nice just then, which was some people might consider you as a thought leader, but all you're trying to do is think. If what you do is you use AI to create your content or make a profile for yourself, you are no longer thinking. So, if your goal is to become a thought leader, using AI is probably unlikely going to be able to get you there at this stage, right? So, anyway, that's the last thing I'll say because it just came to mind. All right, everybody. Well, hopefully you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. And like I always say at the end of all these podcasts, go out there and make somebody smile today because no matter how bad your day went or how bad you think it's going, you make somebody smile today and you know you had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that right now.

So, thank you all very much and I'll see you on the other side. Hey, everyone. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. With your support and our incredible guests, we're one of the top sales podcasts out there right now and I can't thank you enough. Now, to keep the momentum going, it would mean the world to me if you could go and leave a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform and share some of your favorite episodes with your network. Also, I am super excited to be launching my new newsletter where I'll be sharing everything I know and everything I'm learning along the way while I'm out there selling every day just like you. Go to jbarrows.com slash newsletter to sign up today.

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