(21) Claude Code's new Head of Marketing on Founder Branding & Developer Marketing - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWUr1jZEBTI

Transcript: (00:00) How do you think about how to justify the ROI of doing the sort of founder brand stuff? >> Asking for help think brings people closer to you. It doesn't make them think that you're incompetent. My biggest advice would be lean into what got you there. Um you don't have to have all the answers. (00:20) The baseline is building trust is now more important than it even was then. But with developers, it's the first step. No one will listen to you if they don't think that you're credible and trustworthy. Um, and they can learn from you. Corporate is like anything that sounds or feels corporate is dead upon arrival. >> All right, before we dive in, you're listening to the Executive Brand Podcast with me, your host, Finn Domear. (00:45) Each week, I sit down with top B2B CEOs, executive and founders to break down their playbooks. If you've not yet, it would really help if you subscribe or follow the show because it helps us get on better guests and create better content for you guys. All right, let's dive in. Casey Jenkins was previously the SVP of marketing at Sundo, where her team generated over nine figures of pipeline and helped establish Senoso as the category leader, acquiring two of their competitors. (01:14) She was VP marketing at SourceCraft where she helped grow revenue 4x year-over-year and VP marketing at Fastly where she helped take the company from a series A to 200 million in ARR and a successful IPO. She is currently taking a break and exploring new paths as well as advising companies because you can never just take a break. (01:34) Um, and apparently she's also a great singer. So, um, thank you for joining, Casey, and let me know if I need to amend or fix anything in that intro. >> Thank you for having me. That's a very kind intro. I cannot believe it. Hannah has exposed all of my secrets to the world, but yes, I can sing. >> Love it. (01:53) The reason why I wanted to have you on is because you kept showing up on my LinkedIn over the last couple of weeks and months, and I love your content. >> Say what? >> Oh jeez. No, no. It's uh it's been helpful. I learned a lot from your content. You you share great insights. So, obviously, you're a practitioner. Um you accomplish things in your career. (02:14) So, I think there's lots of lessons to dig into. Um also, um this is the well soon to be renamed Executive Brand Podcast. Um so, clearly you're also working on your own brand and so I think there's lessons there. So, I want to dig into all of the above. First simple question maybe to start with. What do you wish you had known when you started your marketing leadership career which I looked up was in 2013 as director of marketing at Fastley now having gone through all of these experiences for a new fresh marketing (02:51) leader. What do you wish you had known back then that you know now? >> Oh my gosh, so much. Uh I I've been thinking about this a lot. what I would tell that version of myself. Um, I think the first thing is is that there's a reason that you're in the room. I think when you're a new leader, you often feel, you know, imposttor syndrome times a thousand because you've never done that role before and you feel like you should know everything and you should know how to do it. (03:22) Um, and for me, when I first started in uh in a director and then a VP role at Fastley, I uh felt like I should be performing some version of what an executive looked like. Um, almost like a TV version. And I was often in rooms with um all men um very highly technical men who were really really smart who were building the internet. (03:50) Um, and in my head I was a singer uh who had stumbled house stumbled my way into tech and I didn't deserve to be there. And so I spent actually, you know, way too long performing this version of myself that I thought should be there at the table and it was like very, you know, no emotion, very serious, um, pretty annoying, frankly. Uh, and didn't ask for help. (04:14) you thought I should answer every question with like even if I didn't know at all, I should make up an answer. Um, and I started to get feedback that no one really wanted to be around me. Um, and I was fortunate I had people who cared enough to tell me this um, instead of just getting rid of me. (04:32) Um, but they were like, "What happened? you were like, you know, fun and interesting and you had weird ideas and and like you now you're just so serious and intense and um you're people don't, you know, it's hard harder for you to get buy in. No one wants to work with you. Um even when you walk across the office, you get this vibe of like don't talk to me cuz you're I was trying to look important. (04:53) Um so I think you know when you when you look back you can see this and you're like that's so funny and cute like what on earth was I doing? um but that what makes you special is the reason that you're in the room. So for me it was the fact that I was different than all of those people. That's why they wanted me there. (05:11) Um and I was a writer and I was a singer and I understood how to build communities. I was a marketer with you know deep experience in connecting people across the internet and scaling uh human connection that generated pipeline and they didn't know how to do that. they were building the internet. Um, and I was there to humanize the building of the internet and to connect people across our journey. (05:31) So, I guess my biggest uh advice would be lean into what got you there. Um, you don't have to have all the answers. Asking for help think brings people closer to you. It doesn't make them think that you're incompetent. Um, and if you're excellent at your job, which you probably are because you got promoted to director or VP or whatever, that will shine through and you'll learn so much more if you admit what you need help with and you bring people in to to compliment you. (05:59) Um, and and knowing where your strengths are and leaning hard into those. Um, I think I thought I had to get really perfect at all things I wasn't great at instead of bringing people in to to help and support and compliment me. And once I realized that, you know, I was never going to be superlative at the things that I wasn't excellent at, um, in some cases, uh, like Excel, um, I just brought in people who were, um, absolutely magnificent at that to compliment me. (06:29) And I I learned that that was fine. You know, that was part of being a good leader. >> It's a 12- year journey. What do you think are some fundamental truths about marketing that are today just as true with AI and all this cool tooling and all the fancy things that people can do as 12 years ago and beyond that? >> I think, you know, we're seeing this sort of return to the human and return to the personal and the truly personal and the the offline, which I I love. (07:03) When I was leading marketing at Fastley, we had a giant marketing team. Um, you know, by the time we IPOed, I think it it was 50 to 100 people. We had 800 people on the company by that point. >> Um, and uh and and I I think, you know, the whole landscape has shifted. So, I wouldn't rebuild the team that way, but the foundations I built the team on are the same. (07:33) Um, so I think, you know, I was marketing something highly technical, pretty cold, you know, like the the back end of the internet, but our customers spanned everyone under the sun. Um, we were powering, you know, ecom and uh, airlines and the NFL and, uh, you know, all sorts of cool stories uh, were behind the work that we were doing with these customers. (07:59) And I think you know the the kind of core fundamentals of uh thought leadership, building credibility, um building trust, showing what you know, um building in public, all the things that you do to build trust with engineers who have the perhaps the highest bar of of any humans that that I've ever encountered. Um Adam is nodding >> are the same ways same ways you build trust with with any human. (08:25) Um and and I think you know for us that was starting with our CEO who was brilliant and had a a a pretty incredible personality. He was very confident and outspoken and um you know swore all the time and was extremely like concise with the way that he and decisive um and we leaned hard into that uh because that was the how we were going to build our brand. (08:48) Fastley was part of him. He had a giant red beard and so we went hard into the red um for our branding and we became quirky and funny and and you know our brand was was born out of him. Um >> sorry just to interrupt that was like >> what did that mean in back in I think this was like 201617 was this like Twitter or like LinkedIn I guess not what did that mean back then? Not so different. (09:19) Not so different, right? So, um, thought leadership, which I hate that term, but, um, I can't think of a better way to say it right now. Building credibility with other humans, was just as important then as it is now. Um, Twitter was just as important then as it is now. It's still where a lot of developers live. (09:37) Um and so for us it was heavy heavy on Twitter, heavy on writing, technical writing, you know, for for developers showing that you actually understand problems and are solving the ch same challenges that they're thinking about is really really important. Um our documentation was even very important. I think now we're seeing that become more interactive but you know when I was doing it it was pretty static. (10:02) um and uh YouTube video showing our people, you know, showing our CEO and our subject matter experts um their faces. Uh and then for us it was also like we did a huge push where we we thought about what are all of the open source projects that our customers rely on and use and our business relies on and uses. (10:22) And we went out and opened up uh an open-source program where we powered all of those for free. Um and we partnered with all of those open source maintainers and then we did a big tour of speakings. So um we we sent our CEO and our subject matters, our CTO um all over to conferences where we knew that both the speaker lineup was our customer base. (10:46) Um so we were getting them in rooms with our buyer, the the CTO of uh you know a giant enterprise company who was speaking. So he was at the speaker dinner and the speaker room making friends and building relationships with those people and then the audience was the developers that we were hoping to reach for a bottoms up motion. (11:03) Um and so he was on a lot of stages and at a lot of conferences. Um the O'Reilly conferences were really big for us at that time. Some of those are aren't don't exist anymore those conferences. But um same same idea, right? Get out take it hybrid off off Twitter and in person. um you know, get in a room with the people you're trying to sell to. (11:25) We also joined a bunch of CTO clubs all over uh major metros and sent our CTO, who was um the least performative person I've ever met, most authentic man, um he he came with his skateboard into a bunch of these like posh New York uh CTO group meetings. Um just rolled up like in the building and security was like, "This guy's not supposed to be here. (11:48) " Um and he he came in and just talked about his work. um and and topics that he was he was an expert on and never sold or pitched. Uh and that ended up getting us into a lot of the rooms with the CTOs we needed to be in as well. Um so I think you know the baseline is building trust is now more important than it even was then. (12:11) But with developers it's the first step. No one will listen to you if they don't think that you're credible and trustworthy. Um and they can learn from you. >> Um and so that's where we started. So, I I want to double click on this just because what that's what this podcast is mostly about. I you were doing found a brand before it was cool, I guess. (12:30) Um >> I think that's true. >> It's like a hot term now. Now everyone thinks about it. Uh almost like as a must I don't think back then. What What have you learned about how to work with a founder, with the CEO, with the CTO? You also mentioned there what's the right way to collaborate? how to support them while still let them be themselves. (12:50) What have you found works in terms of supporting them? >> I think um not every founder is going to want to do this. Uh if you don't have a founder who is willing to do it or willing to learn how to do it, you're at a disadvantage is is my personal viewpoint. Um there are going to be other subject matter experts and I believe in building a bench so it's not just your CEO by themselves. (13:16) um of subject matter experts who can reach different personas that you're selling into in in a buying committee. Uh but there is going to be no one who has can match the conviction uh that your CEO brings into a room because they built the company. Uh and it's their passion that's driving everything. So uh I for for me I have never encountered I have never personally worked with a CEO who who wouldn't do this. (13:44) Um, but I talked to a lot of people who say, "My CEO doesn't think this is important or doesn't want to do it or or wants to outsource the whole thing to someone else." Um, and what I would say to that is like in the beginning, uh, ask them about their activities and what they're doing every day. Um, most CEOs are prioritizing speaking to customers so they have at least a few customer calls. (14:04) If they're not doing that, they're not a good CEO. Um, but you know, they should be directly interfacing with customers. uh doing thought leadership on Twitter, on LinkedIn, wherever your customers live. Most of them live uh in some some form on LinkedIn as well. Um and for for developer marketing, this involves like actually meeting your customers in person at, you know, engineering dinners and and u meetups and CTO groups and that kind of stuff. (14:33) Uh it's the same thing. It's just more powerful than getting on a Zoom call with your customer every quarter. Uh, and I can't think of anything more important for a CEO to be doing than to have their finger on the pulse of what are people saying on Twitter, what are they commenting about and reacting to, what topics can I put out there that that people engage with, uh, you know, on an outsiz, you know, level. (14:57) Um and so there's like traction behind those topics and we know that we can work them into um you know more different types of formats and content and talks uh and videos and building relationships. So I think you know like founder thought leadership is not just about one way writing it's about building a flywheel. Um, so for founders I I like to start with that like this is the most important thing you can be doing and the outcome needs to be that you build relationships with our ideal customer profile with people who are buyers. Um, (15:29) you you serve as an exact sponsor who can unblock our deals uh because you have so many relationships because you've been doing this consistently. Um, and you're helping us uh to warm up uh our market so that all of our other channels perform better. Um, and so I start there. Every CEO is going to have a different way they want to do this. (15:52) Um, and you kind of have to go through and try with them if they've never done it before. Um, a lot of CEOs like to transcribe like audio because they're busy all the time. So they'll do it in the car, they'll do it on a walk or on a workout, like on the treadmill. Um, and then use AI to to translate that into text and um, and parse it. (16:12) I'm a big fan of using something like granola, which is my favorite, um to to transcribe all of the meetings that a CEO does throughout a day. Um and then use the smart, you know, um interface to actually mine it for like what are the patterns we're seeing across these? What are the trends we're seeing across these? Um >> what are what are things that where we see like an emotional reaction, you know, from a customer call or or he's they are saying the same thing across meetings. (16:41) And so that's something personal to them that might be a good talking point. Um, I do this as well. So I record everything. I I keep it in granola and I mine it. Um, and I I do the same when I attend events in person. I take notes and I feed that in as well. So that I have kind of a running database of things I am passionate about, things other people are passionate about, patterns that surface repeatedly uh in our in our market. (17:06) um and things that you know are are like uh becoming trendy. Uh and so I think that makes it easier if you have sort of a one source of truth repository and everything is feeding in there. I've also uh you know with with Archer we did calls uh once a week where we would just have a brain dump um what's going on in your week, what really pissed you off. (17:30) Uh a lot of things pissed him off. He was very passionate and very smart. Um, and uh, very opinionated, which was awesome. Um, and so we would just like write down, you know, like what's what's annoying? What do you think is going, you know, needs to be changed or is going wrong? What are we hearing in customer calls that we think shouldn't be happening to them, you know, and and we need to be a force of change. (17:54) And and I think I am not opposed to ghostriting. Um I I posted recently that you can't outsource your voice and I got a lot of comments on like but ghost writers are good. I think there's a lot of CEOs who don't know how to write. Um, but if I had taken Archer's voice, which is, you know, the way he communicated was in two sentences max, and I had put it in mine, um, or I tried to polish it or make it, you know, more formal or more >> executive, everyone would have known because that's not the way he showed up in person. Um, (18:28) and I think my opinion is it's f it's great to have a thought partner. So, a lot of CEOs work with people like Alec Paul who who sit with them and help them sift through, you know, all of their calls and all of their thoughts and and um and help coach on hooks and like how do you get people's attention? Um because that's a skill. (18:47) >> Uh but I don't think you can get better at it and I don't think you can connect with your buyers and forge relationships if you're you don't have your head in the game and you're not actually connecting. So if you're outsourcing, you're writing and you're posting and someone else just like talks to you and then goes and posts all of that stuff and writes it and even in some cases does the comments, no one's ever talking to you and you're not building those relationships. (19:13) So like there's there's a hole there where the CEO should own those relationships, should be on text, you know, with those people eventually and and when you know the AE raises a hand and says, "Hey, this deal's stuck." You should be able to go unstick it. But if your ghost writer is doing all of that, >> yeah, >> it breaks. (19:32) Um, and you should be the one that's sending connection requests and going, "Hey, I'd love to get on a call and, you know, get feedback from you." Um, or talk shop with you. Uh, so that you're you're the face that, you know, people are are forging that relationship with. That's what drives pipeline ultimately. (19:49) Um, so I think, you know, I do a lot of coaching with CEOs around how do you make this a practice, a habit, a routine that works for the way that you operate, so it doesn't feel like a burden. Um, and it it works in with all of your calls and, you know, your day-to-day. And you spend a certain amount of time, I think at least 30 minutes to an hour a day, like thinking about what have I learned today in in all of my calls, and my inerson meetings, at the dinners I attended, you know, what am I what what it would be good for me to write about? Writing like (20:20) actually, you know, humbling around those thoughts and writing it down. Alec calls it bleeding on the page. I think that's a Stephen King quote. I'm not sure. Um and uh and then like you know you should be working a list of like who are we trying to connect with and commenting and connecting with those people. (20:39) That's that's a huge perhaps the most important part of the job. >> Um and then I track that. So I like to have a dashboard where um I call it loving but um it's we gamify this. Most CEOs are very competitive. They do not like to be the lowest on the dashboard. And so if you set up a bench of subject matter experts and you track how many connections do we have with our ICP in these target accounts in the ABM accounts we're targeting how many has the CEO connected with you know the CRO connected it with CTO whoever we're putting on our bench um how many how (21:14) much pipeline how many meetings have come through the DMs of each of these people um you'll start to see a change at least I have um because they don't want to be like in front of the whole company and the lowest rung uh on the on the board and then you celebrate, you know, like huge celebration for everyone who does this. (21:35) Well, because it it actually you can start to see, you know, in multi-touch attribution in um when you're looking at correlative like for for me from the beginning of starting this to the end, it had a a rising tide effect on all of my other channels. Outbound started to perform better because it was warmer when they went in. um our ads when we stacked paid on top of this and started using you know our CEO's actual tweets as as ads that started to perform better and convert better. (22:04) >> Yeah. Yeah. I think that that still works actually. Um I think always a person and a real tweet or a real LinkedIn post performs better for me than any creative that's manufactured. Um it's organic, right? People don't want to feel like they're being advertised to. Uh but yeah, I think this is this is these are the fundamentals that that still are super important. (22:26) This has not changed. >> Yep. A random off-topic just because you mentioned granola. Kylie had them on recently. He also mentioned granola. I use Fathom. Do I need to switch? >> It's really up to you. It's like whatever you like. >> Have you tried Fathom? I haven't tried. >> I have tried Fathom. >> Okay. (22:43) So, you like granola more? >> I like granola more. Um but that's my personal preference. >> All right. Need to check them out. I also >> do not prescribe tools to people, but if they like you like what you're using, use it >> for sure. Um the I'm just curious about the profanity because I think most marketing teams, even if they have a strongly opinion founder or CEO, they would maybe take that down a notch. (23:07) Maybe not put the profanity out there. Just say, you know, say the thing you want to say without the profanity. It seems like you did not do that. It clearly resonated. How do you even I mean I'm a fan of profanity, but you know the it happens in marketing and communications department. So how did that conversation go? >> I don't think you ever want to dilute the personality of of the CEO. (23:33) Um that's the worst possible thing you can do. Um obviously you don't want them to be rude or mean, you know, or uh inappropriate. Uh but then you want to find a difference. >> Yeah. than you do. Um, for us, this was a a this was ingrained in our CEO's personality. Um, and it was who he was. Uh, and so I, you know, like we actually did have a lot of conversations about this because we were selling into Fortune 1000 rooms. (24:02) Um, but we were selling to engineering leaders. Uh, and because they saw him and, you know, he was showing up and he was on stage being himself and he was on Twitter being himself and he was in conversations, he was in u Hacker, you know, Hacker News, he was in GitHub, he was like everywhere when we started. (24:22) Um, people knew that was how he was. And I think it was there was a shock factor to it of like this guy is going to roll into a meeting with, you know, JP Morgan Chase and drop an Fbomb. But he did it because he really really meant what he was saying. You know, it wasn't just like thrown around, you know, willy-nilly. It was like he would drop it when he was really making a point. (24:46) And I think it had the impact of people going, "Wow, this person is extremely himself in every room. He's not performing. He's not pretending. We can trust him." Um, there is also this the factor of like people would laugh because it was unexpected in, you know, like a really serious setting. Um, he just didn't give enough. Like he was just like, "This is how I am everywhere I go. (25:08) " >> Um, >> I think people found it endearing actually. So I I mean like for me I like to lean into and and like amplify the personality of whoever I'm working with. And I think the more you try to polish or dilute or you know make more formal the more you lose the essence of what's going to attract people to them um and makes them different and unique and themselves. (25:35) And you know the only time when we we did not encourage profanity was when we were doing you know live television and you know that's that's not not encouraged. >> They'll not invite you backard. >> Yeah. >> Uh yeah. >> Yeah. I love it. Uh I think Nasim Tale would say they're signaling in that to you that if you're if you're competent and you swear that uh you know that now I wanted to talk about attribution because you talk about it quite a few times on LinkedIn how perfect attribution is impossible and actually this idea of last touch is kind of silly (26:09) but then you also talked about with LinkedIn you like tracking things and tracking how many opportunities were generated through the DMs. I mean, that's that's almost like perfect attribution, right? Like, oh, you did this LinkedIn post there. We generated this DM that turned into a Fortune 1000 deal, but that's not how it often happens. (26:28) Um, how do you think about how to justify the ROI of doing this sort of founder brand stuff? Is it perfectly attributable? And maybe we can use this as a case study on thinking through attribution in general. >> Nothing is perfectly attributable. uh it is the most frustrating I think part of being a a marketer is that so many other roles and practices have uh a much cleaner way of kind of tracking their impact. (27:00) And I think marketing is super tricky cuz humans are not perfectly attributable. We don't buy in a linear fashion. we uh we buy increasingly from word of mouth and dark social and uh Slack groups we're in and text groups we're in. Um and you know I found that actually a large number of our biggest deals came from folks who didn't interact at all on posts but then then sent a DM much later uh months later in some cases. (27:29) Uh my thoughts on edge attribution are are are thus uh I think this is this moment is the perfect moment to blow it up and and disrupt it completely. There are cool tools uh coming out that are AI powered that replace the hours and hours of manual labor I was putting in mining going through every single opportunity and and contact in Salesforce trying to figure out if it was correctly attributed and like had all of the correct information tied to it and I think that's a blessing for all of us. (28:01) But um I I like to combine as many methods as I can. I don't believe in first touch or last touch. I think that misses, you know, like the entire journey. Um, and it also leads to really bad decisions often because you're tracking what's easiest to track and you're giving it all of the credit. Um, I like mixing in multi-touch. (28:22) So, I've used previously Dream Data. Um, I've also used Hockey Stock. Dream Data is my favorite. Um, and uh, and then there are, you know, what what they're calling forensic deal analysis tools like Upside coming out, which I think are very, very cool. You plug it into your CRM and it does all of the detective work for you and and kind of connects all of the dots um, and catches, you know, if an if an SDR hasn't or an AE hasn't attached something to an opportunity or if they've closed it and reopened it, it'll catch the thing the nuances that a human (28:51) usually would be needed to to tie together. And then there's stuff like uh Paramark that does you know more like um you know expansive like holistic includes correlative um and and I like to combine as many as I can um so that we're looking at you know over time you know from starting something like thought leadership am I seeing that other channels are performing differently or better am I seeing that conversion rates have gone up am I seeing that the things that I would expect you know to see go better are going better. Um, from a from a (29:29) tracking standpoint, I think, you know, I don't know a better way to do this yet. But, you know, if you are driving if you're creating a flywheel to generate pipeline through LinkedIn or Twitter, you're going to have to manually input a lot of that into your CRM right now. Um, that'll probably change soon, but you know, I was driving hundreds of thousands of dollars of pipeline through my own DMs at Senoso in my last role and I was entering all of those. (29:56) You know, there's a field we created for like this opportunity came through Casey's DMs, came through Chris's DMs, the CEO. >> Um, and so we could actually stack rank and create that dashboard that we needed to create and and you know, tie it back. Um I am not I I think you know looking at engagement is is important to kind of gauge like you know if I posted this or I tweeted this uh did it did it go viral did a whole bunch of people respond to this or did you know was the reaction really you know like strong to a certain topic or or um story so that we can (30:32) learn from that and use it across the rest of our marketing. Uh but I think the most interesting stats are around you know like are is are these being shared? Are they being sent you know is someone sending this to their to their team? >> Um the ones we can track on the back end. I love that LinkedIn implemented. (30:50) >> Yep. you know, deeper engagement measures that kind of show you quality. And yeah, I think, you know, you have to know, you have to understand that you're not always going to see how many people are are actually like paying attention to what you're saying. And so for me, I actually time boxed like we're going to do this for a quarter. (31:11) We're going to do thought leadership for a quarter. Um because, you know, eyebrows were kind of raised in the beginning. Everywhere I've ever gone, people have questions around like, why would we spend so much time on this? Um, so it's like, give me a quarter. Uh, let's consistently invest in this and show up. Uh, and let's let's, uh, mix posting with commenting. (31:33) Let's mix that with, you know, DM connections. Uh, I think you need to be sending out at least 12 connection requests a day to your ACP um, to build your audience and build those forge those connections. I don't recommend automating that because it can go it can get weird and go wrong. >> Um >> and uh you know for us everyone who's who submitted a demo request in my last role I would connect with personally and that's one of the ways that I built my own personal network and curated it for my the market that I was selling into. (32:03) Um and those would lead to calls where I would just say hey you know like if you ever want to talk shop you know like personto person I love doing that. I had hundreds and hundreds of those calls where it was just like this like sitting down going like what are you trying to solve? What am I trying to solve um we're wrestling with the same problems and those turned into deals. (32:23) Um sometimes not immediately sometimes over many months or next year when that person went to a different company or got promoted um or got new budget. Um and so we were able to track using dream data and you know manual tracking uh across LinkedIn and looking you know at the correlative effect of like wow our outbound is really popping off all of a sudden. (32:48) Um and you know our ads are our ads were I actually almost pulled all of my budget out of paid. Uh, and then when we got to a certain point with organic, stacking paid started to work way better because we were feeding it with organic posts and organic content that was doing really well, right? >> Um, and so we saw like a 50% increase in the performance of our paid. (33:10) Uh, but it took a while. So if I hadn't given myself a few months to get there, we would have pulled the plug really fast. So, I think it's a it's a picture you have to build and you have to give yourself enough time for it to start to pay off so you can be like even one enterprise deal that comes through someone's DMs is enough to go wow okay this is working someone these people are paying attention um and I think once you start tying it to like oh this topic went did really well let's do a webinar on it um and then pe then you know (33:41) target other people from that account invite them to the webinar um implement retargeting and retarget other people from the account. If you see engagement from one of the decision makers, invite, you know, your target, you know, VIP decision makers to an in-person event because you you connected with them on LinkedIn and there's a next step like send them a gift. (34:02) Uh implement, you know, like thoughtful connection and think about how to do it in a stairstep type way. Um that all starts to pay off and you start to see results. But I think from an attribution standpoint, if you're just using the crappy old spreadsheet, you know, that's like uh each each tactic has its own little line and each each everything is siloed. (34:25) You're going to have a really hard time forecasting and proving the value of what you're doing because they're all tied together. And I think about it as an ecosystem um or like a symphony. And you should be looking for like if I do this here, do these do the other, you know, touch points perform better instead of like if I do this here, >> uh, you know, like this exists in its own little silo and we should just dump more money here and cut everything else. (34:50) >> Yep. Now I'll go back. I'll go to some audience questions. I I missed some. So Tina asks, and this was when you were talking about your Fastly CEO. How do you build the brand if the CEO founder is not that connector that you're speaking of? Meaning it sounded like a little bit he was he was he was a little bit of a natural in terms of like talking, communicating, speaking, stuff like that. (35:14) >> Um you can either teach it. So you can either sit down with them and coach them through it. um like you know help them pull out thoughts, help them learn uh you like pick pick a list of all of the people that uh they think are aspirational across you know other CEOs that they they would like to emulate. (35:34) Um this is assuming that they have interest in doing it at all. If that if the interest doesn't exist at all I don't know I don't think you can use them. Um, so then you need to find a different subject matter expert internally that you think can fill fill that spot um and and will resonate with your target audience. (35:53) And then you also need to start thinking probably fairly quickly about which other influencers you know in your network you could pull in to help support building a bench. Um, but you know I most founders can learn uh but they have to be interested you know and motivated and willing to learn. I think, you know, you you you need to to figure out how to make them comfortable being them their authenticelves. (36:16) Cuz actually, when I see this go most wrong, it's when people are performing um or trying to sound really polished or really important or, you know, trying to sound a certain way that comes across as very awkward and cringey and fake. Um and so figuring out, you know, what's what's the authentic way that they feel most comfortable. (36:39) Um, and sometimes you have to sit with them for several rounds of like pulling stuff out of their head and um, you know, having them tell their life story, having them tell, you know, everything that happened in the last week and and and show them like pluck out the shiny objects out of that to show them what you think is is the most interesting or compelling or relevant cuz often times they'll default to what they're most comfortable with, which is boring uh, or irrelevant. (37:04) And so helping them see like here this in a ven diagram. This is what our audience cares about. Here are the challenges that we're hearing from them. Here's what you know and are an expert in, you know, and have strong opinions about. Strong opinions is key. Um, and here's the circle where those overlap. That's the sweet spot. (37:23) You can't just talk about like, I don't know, tax AI powered tax, you know, like assistance because you're really comfortable with that. Like you have to get in layers deeper into like what's a strong opinion that I have that resonates with our audience and what are they not saying out loud that's really bothering them or is a challenge or is annoying that I could vocalize, you know, verbalize and validate for them and then help solve. (37:51) Um, that's kind of the key. If if you're feeling like your founder is your CEO is is struggles to like build relationships, there are coaches that can help with that and you know there there are people who can help them learn how to be more authentic and and organic and like not forced cuz often that's the biggest problem I see. (38:11) Or they're shy. Um, and you just have to get a few under the belt so that they they kind of feel um I think there's like this element of gamification of like they need the dopamine hit and they need to see some success to be like, "Oh, I can do this and I should do this and and I like this, you know, it's fun. (38:30) " Um, so they need the like first post where someone says, "That was a really good post." Sometimes, I don't advocate doing this all the time, but when you're trying to get the training wheels off, um, like if you have a network where you can encourage people to do that in the beginning, like encourage people to give feedback, you can kind of create the dopamine hit early on, um, and like encourage them along, uh, cuz I think people mostly quit when they don't get feedback and they feel like they're talking into a void. And a lot of CEOs are like, "This (38:57) isn't even working. You know, there's no point to it." Um, so you can kind of help help them a little bit along. But yeah, there are cases where you're going to be like, "This person doesn't want to do this. They don't care. This is like, you know, I feel like I'm dragging them around and nagging. (39:14) " And then you need to move on and find a different person, you know, different bench to build. >> You could lead a horse to the water, but you can't make it drink. I actually find it's very interesting. It's almost like the coaching part. You're you need to coach them out of thinking they need to perform where you might show them something and be like, well, we we should be commenting on people's stuff, right? That's helpful to build a relationship and show up. (39:37) So, what do you think about this post? And they're like, well, I think this is stupid and doesn't make any sense. It's like, well, maybe that's what we should be commenting then. But in their head, they're like, well, that's not the comment, right? I need to say something that looks the part and that's just not me. (39:52) And you almost need to coach them out of doing the performative part and find their true natural what they just feel like saying. >> Yeah. And often times this involves educating internally around like there's there sometimes there's fear around oh we can't we shouldn't do that. We shouldn't disagree. We shouldn't be controversial, you know, like we shouldn't stir things up. (40:12) We should be very careful and very formal. Um and no one cares if you do that. Like no one is going to pay attention. no one is going to care about anything you're saying. Um, so you need to kind of like educate internally and show examples and show like this is what works and here are some here are some companies we admire, CEOs we admire, um, brands we admire. (40:34) Here's how they're doing this. Here's our version of this. Here's how we're going to tell our story. Here's how we're gonna show up. um and get people more comfortable with um you know showing up in in a very authentic way that's that's not like doesn't have all of the the raw authenticity like rubbed out because you know you're trying to be corporate. (40:59) Um corporate is like anything that sounds or feels corporate is dead upon arrival. >> Um it's like the worst possible approach. >> Yeah. All right. I'm gonna do your question first, Emily, and then Adam, I'm going to ask your question. By the way, I do think we we almost need to follow schedule a follow-up because there's no way I'll be able to cover everything I wanted to ask you about, but we'll go with you followup. (41:19) >> Um, Emily said, "Can we talk a little bit about how you're applying the lessons that you learned from building your founders brand to how you're now building your own brand?" >> Yeah. Um, I I have gone from like a a handful of followers to over 12,000 in a little over a year. And >> um, and when I started, this is this is so funny because when I started, I felt all the same things. (41:47) I felt like, oh, who am I to say, you know, anything publicly online? Um, this is very scary. I I don't think anyone cares about what I have to say. Um, and I had I kind of built myself a personal board of adviserss, uh, who had pushed me, uh, that were already very good at this. And so I had, you know, Katie Penner on my team who was exceptional at this already, kind of as an as a accountability buddy. (42:16) Um, and Brandon Hoffford, uh, who is now a friend who I worked with at Senoso. Um, and, uh, and and some other folks. So I I I had like a a group of people pushing me when I was scared uh and in lightly threatening me in the way I actually advocate for uh with CEOs, you know, like if you don't do this, we're going to um post an embarrassing post about you that that you're not going to like. (42:43) Um that was funny, you know, it wasn't wasn't wasn't like inappropriate or terrible. It was just like we're going to we're going to do something that you don't particularly want us to do if you don't consistently do this. I needed that in the beginning because I had all the same feelings of like no one's listening to this. (42:58) This is stupid. I don't know what I'm doing. >> But I in my in my experience um once I once I realized that I >> could help people through what I was doing and I wasn't just talking at people for my own uh gain, that's when it changed for me. Um, so sometimes that lens is helpful for CEOs who are who feel all of those same things like I don't have anything to say and this is embarrassing. (43:24) The lens of you know the classic developer lens of like build in public help other people you know share the landmines that that you have already been through and help other people avoid them. Um and and you know put a hand back and help other help pull other people up behind you because you've been through all these things that they haven't. (43:45) Um, so once I heard even just a couple people saying, "Oh, that was helpful. I didn't know that." I realized like, "Oh, a a lot of the things that I've been through are useful." Um, and so I could help people this way. And that became way more fun for me. Um, and I I use all these practices. So I record um, I left my last role 6 months ago. (44:06) I have had at least a hundred meetings. I do a lot of meeting with people and talking through ideas and uh building relationships just in general. Um and I do that online and offline. But I record everything you know that that I do and it's just for my own personal like thinking process and then I will you know mine through that with with um with Claude and have it help me look at patterns. (44:32) Um, I was doing a lot of interviews, so I was like looking through the things that I was saying about my personal story and pulling little pieces out of that. Also helped me get better at interviewing. So, fun tip, like if you're doing it, record it and then have Claude help you become better at telling your story and talking about, you know, the threads through your career. (44:52) I I do connection requests every day. So, like I follow this I follow everything that I've been talking about. I I connect with a certain amount of people, at least 12 12 a day. I I look through my comments and pull ideas out of them. I go through and comment on, you know, at least 10 posts a day as as much as possible. (45:11) Um, and you know, like I wouldn't do it by the numbers. I'm I'm hesitant to say like you need to do this at 10 posts a day. You should do it on posts that spark an idea, you know, or like make you feel a certain way or you have something to add. oftentimes I will comment and like offer my thoughts or or like it sparked something for me and then people will interact with my comment and I'll pull that out and make it into a new a new post because it was like interesting enough to to write something else about. (45:36) Um I'm a writer so I will preface this by saying like I majored in English. I love to write. I am a nerd. Like I love words. I read I've read over 100 books this year. Like so for me this is fun. For a lot of people it's not um as fun. And so you have to figure out what's the process for you that feels like fun. (45:57) Um, and it's going to be different for every person. Um, I think using AI as a thought partner and using other people as a thought partner is really helpful. Um, and um, and and if you do it enough, you start to think about this in every conversation you're having. So um, you're like thinking what are the what are the gems out of this conversation that I could turn into something written? And I'm actually hitting a limit now where I'm writing almost the full max, you know, like word count in every post. And I'm thinking I want to (46:28) turn it into a newsletter because I have more to say. >> Um, so I think it starts to become fun the longer you do it. Uh, you start to think differently like almost like a journalist and you're thinking like how could I be most helpful as you're having conversations throughout your week. Um, but for me it's like I am the end goal is always to connect. (46:47) So most of my friends now this is funny but like most of my best friends came from LinkedIn. They came from LinkedIn people who commented or I commented on them their posts and then in the DMs we had a connection and then we had calls to help each other and then we started hiking or we went to we started going to the same events. (47:06) Um and I think if you make that your goal of like I'm not just like posting at people. my goal is to meet like-minded people and draw them to me. That will make your whole strategy better from from the beginning, right? >> Because you're thinking about how do I help those people? How do I how do I post stuff that's going to make them want to get on a call with me, make them want to be friends with me, you know, make set up a the right foundations for us to connect in a way that's meaningful. (47:32) Um, it's not about attention. Um, I'm a really I feel really strongly about people who post shock, you know, stuff or or like really really controversial stuff just for the sake of attention or go around commenting on people's posts like, "Well, yeah, I see your point, but it's stupid and I hate it and you're an idiot. (47:51) " Like, you know, just just to get a rise out of people. Like, that's not helpful and it's not going to build relationships or trust. Uh, so I I I mean I just I think it's really important to think about the end goal of why you're there in the first place. >> Yeah. Which book have you reread the most times? >> Man's Search for Meaning. >> Oh my god. Same answer as Adam. (48:11) >> Same. >> Of course. >> Is it really? Oh yeah. >> That's how I found out. I was like, that's when you said it. I was like, wait a second. The last name is a coincidence, right? >> That book is is kind of like a touchstone for me. I I read it every time I'm going through something difficult or I'm pivoting in my life. (48:29) >> Um it's a really good one. I also I >> for everyone for context, Adam Frankle, who's on this call, his if I remember his grand your grandfather's cousin, of course. There you go. >> Oh, you didn't know that? >> Oh wow, that's amazing. I did not know that. >> Oh wow. There you go. That's the most >> That's amazing, Adam. (48:49) >> I must have it somewhere here. There we go. There we go. Perfect. >> Wow. Yeah, highly recommend Adam's family's book. Incredible. >> There we go. Okay, fair enough. Last question which Adam actually asked. Here's a question Casey is uniquely able to comment on. How is marketing to developers including development leaders different from B2B and B2C marketing? >> I love this question. (49:18) Um Adam would also be have great thoughts on this himself. >> We have a whole podcast. This is what's so interesting about this particular time. Um, I think B TOC is is a is a lot more like about um it's it's about creating a story that resonates with an identity or a persona that that people want to people will relate to and helping them step into the story with you. (49:45) But there's a there's a lot more you can do uh without like deep credibility on the consumer side, right? When I was marketing for Roku, a lot of the stuff I did was fun and silly and um it was all just like based on the the different shows that people watched. We did a lot of partnering with the the actual creators of the content that we were streaming. (50:06) Um and a lot of the out of home and the radio ads that I did were were just like fun, silly, you know, like uh resonant with that particular audience, which for us was we were actually trying to sell them to grandparents at the time. um and get o get get OTT streaming to be like a household, you know, like very simple, easy, accessible thing for even grandparents. Um and we did it. (50:28) When you're selling to developers, it starts at the credibility level and you can't start with fun and silly or they'll just write you off in my opinion. So, it starts with, you know, like showing what you know. Um like your documentation has to be really really good. Your written technical writing has to be really really good. (50:47) your your subject matter experts have to be sharing um in public and um and building in public so people can kind of see your notes um and and once they start to trust you then you can be fun and quirky and interesting. I think it's shifting a bit in that you know like in in the next year the way that software development works is going to be completely different like AI is changing that and um and so at at some point in the near future I think developers aren't going to have to write all of their code AI is going to do a lot of that for them and it will be a (51:21) lot of like strategic thinking and oversight and and management of that versus like the manual writing of the code. Um, and then we've got all these people vi vibe coding on the side, including me, who are not technical. And so the definition of what a developer even is is kind of morphing in real time. (51:41) And I think developers are experiencing the same thing. All of us are in terms of like digital fatigue and an overload. And so I actually think that developer marketing and consumer marketing are in this era are are less different uh than they've ever been because it's about uh figuring out how to be unique and different and um I think the level of sort of like quirkiness with developers is high. (52:10) Um, so they have actually an appreciation for a lot of nerdy, quirky, like inside joke, deep cut type stuff. Uh, that makes marketing to them really fun. Um, but it has to come with substance. Uh so you have to mix like you know wink wink type jokes and Easter eggs and um you know we we did a lot of marketing with you know unlocking codes and and um you know like tinkering and and figuring out how to uh actually like use the the giant brain that a lot of these people have as part of the marketing experience instead of just like funny haha you know (52:49) surface level um like consu consumer type marketing. But I think where for for developers these days, same same stuff applies, right? Like events, thought leadership, um being interesting and unique and credible. Um having great content uh that it's useful to them. Um being part of the community, um showing that you actually care and giving back, uh and showing that you're not just there to be extractive or transactional. (53:21) Um, and like living in all of the places where they are interacting and learning and uh and like showing up for the community is really important. What What do you think, Adam? I mean, I would like here's my unqualified opinion. I feel like developers, it's like they're on the extremes. You either got to be super super in-depth and technical or completely silly and nonsensical. (53:46) And like the counter example to what you said who came to mind was James Hawkins, CEO of Post Hog. I mean, all he does is [ __ ] post on LinkedIn. Just memes and random stuff. But Adam, what do you think? >> Well, well, first of all, I want to thank you, Casey, because your stuff is brilliant and original and I'm a big fan and uh I'd love to meet you for lunch one day when you're available. (54:07) And uh in my view the distinction has to do with culture and this is based on 30 years of marketing to developers. developers have a unique culture that that puts them in a certain mindset and you have to appreciate that and people coming from especially from a B2B background don't get it right and the the developers have a split that's really astonishing first of all developers are astonishingly skeptical about vendor claims vendors are trying to sell them something why would I why would believe anything a vendor has to say. And the flip side of (54:50) that is that developers don't lie to other developers, right? Their jobs are on the line. I'm going to depend on some technology I don't really understand. So I need to trust my peers and my colleagues, >> right? So and and they need to trust me. And in order to make that trust work, I can never lie, right? It's it's >> ever misrepresent something. (55:15) You can't misreent it. >> Can't fudge the numbers. >> As as a vendor, you can just assume no one's going to believe you. But if one of your users says the exact same thing, then it's true. >> That's true. >> So, I think there's a lot of like social proof >> question about, you know, if you say anything anywhere, they're going to want to see the how immediately. (55:37) They don't care about, you know, >> source proof. >> Yep. >> Yeah. Awesome. This was fun. We're right on time. Thank you, Casey. This was awesome. Um, I enjoyed that little interactive part at the end. If anyone joined late, this is going to go out on the podcast and all the good stuff later on. Um, and that's it. Thank you, Casey. (55:59) Thank you, Adam, and thank you everyone for joining. Ken, I'm sorry we didn't get to singing. All right. This podcast is brought to you by Project 33. Project 33 is the leading executive thought leadership agency for LinkedIn. If you're looking to activate your founder, your CEO, your executives, or any of your internal subject matter experts and create thought leadership content for them to build trust and credibility for your brand, reach out at project33.io.