Podcast appearances and mentions of josh fechter

Urban affairs reporter Josh Fechter, and Emily Dove join the pod to talk about how the legislature is moving the needle on housing costs, zoning restrictions and property taxes.

Neste episódio conversei com o Bruno Estrella, gerente de growth da Webflow uma empresa SaaS de desenvolvimento de websites. Ouça nesse episódio a trajetória de Bruno em que ele conta como trabalhou na maior agência de Growth Hacking, a BAMF e o que ele pode aprender com Josh Fechter um dos maiores growth hackers dos EUA.

Social media collaboration and approval software startup Planable has been growing at a rate of 25% month over month, something the company's co-founder attributes to its marketing team structure. This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Planable co-founder Vlad Calus talks about how he built the company's marketing team from the ground up using a three pronged approach focused on people, processes and tools - and why that approach is key to the companies fast growth. Vlad has written a book on building the marketing team of the future and in this interview, he summarizes in detail how Planable's team is structured; the processes they use on a daily, weekly and quarterly basis; and the software tools they've chosen to implement. This week's episode of The Inbound Success Podcast is brought to you by our sponsor, IMPACT Live,  the most immersive and high energy learning experience for marketers and business leaders. IMPACT Live takes place August 6-7, 2019 in Hartford Connecticut and is headlined by Marcus Sheridan along with special guests including world-renowned Facebook marketing expert Mari Smith and Drift CEO and Co-Founder David Cancel. Inbound Success Podcast listeners can save 10% off the price of tickets with the code "SUCCESS".  Click here to learn more or purchase tickets for IMPACT Live Some highlights from my conversation with Vlad include: Planable is a content collaboration platform for marketing, freelancers, and agencies. For the first two years of the company's history, the marketing team was trying to use growth hacks to achieve its objectives, but quickly realized that was neither sustainable nor scaleable.  When they hired a new marketing director, the team began a process of studying how high performing marketing teams operated, and from that research, decided to focus on content marketing as the core of their strategy going forward. From their, Vlad identified that there were three main pillars of effective and efficient marketing teams - people, process and tools. When it comes to people, Vlad says that marketing teams need to have individuals with clear roles and clear ownership, as well as a defined quarterly marketing plan. The teams processes need to deliver transparency, consistency and alignment. And the tools that the team uses need to be effective. Vlad's team uses Zoom, Slack, Dropbox, InvisionApp, Google Drive, Planable, and Frame. Resources from this episode: Save 10% off the price of tickets to IMPACT Live with promo code "SUCCESS" Visit the Planable website Follow Vlad on Twitter Connect with Vlad on LinkedIn Listen to the podcast to hear Vlad describe, in detail, the approach he used to build Planable's marketing team and how that structure has enabled the company to grow 25% month over month. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth, and this week my guest is Vlad Calus, who is the co-founder of Planable. Welcome back, Vlad. Vlad Calus (Guest): Thank you. Thank you Kathleen, and thanks for having me. Vlad and Kathleen hamming it up while recording this episode together . Kathleen: I am particularly appreciative that you joined me, and it is crazy late at night, your time, because you are based over in Europe. Vlad: Yeah, exactly. I'm currently in Bucharest, and in Eastern Europe. Kathleen: Well, I appreciate you staying up and burning the midnight oil to join me for this podcast. For those who are listening, can you talk a little bit about what Planable is, and your background? About Planable and Vlad Calus Vlad: Definitely, yeah. So, Planable is a content collaboration platform for marketing, freelancers, and agencies. Basically it's a mock up of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram, that helps you preview how the content would look like, like 100% pixel content, and then you can simply just ask for feedback or collaborate with any of the stakeholders in the team, including brand managers, or human resources, or legal, or anyone else just to make sure this is the right content that you want to publish on social media. Then you can just simply ask for an approval, and then schedule the content directly to social media. Kathleen: Great. And you personally have a really interesting background. You went through Techstars, you were on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, you're a very active startup mentor. Can you talk a little bit about your background and what led you to co-founding Planable? Vlad: Yeah, I would love to. So, I would say that at the age of 16, I started participating in a lot of non-profit organizations and starting my own organizations, just because I was feeling and trying to fix the problems in my own community. Like starting from really small problems and then just trying to get some use time and good time for myself, and learning something from everyone. And then at the age of 19, I found my first or second job, and I went to a startup competition called Startup Week in Moldova, in my home country. And I ended up meeting two of my current co-founders of Planable just by accident. I was just walking around them, looking for a team to join during the competition. And when I just started with Xenia, who is my current co-founder, we start chatting about the idea that we wanted to work on, and I just started talking to them, "Hey, may I join with your team? Would really love to participate. I really don't want to go home. I would really like to make it happen." And then we started, on the second day, we started actually working on this idea and debating it more. We participated with something related to the social media, but it was like an initial concept before making everything happen at Planable. And we ended up understanding that all of us shared the same passion and frustration for social media, and frustration in terms of the problems that marketing agencies and social media managers are fighting with. And couple of hours after that, we just won the competition, and we were invited to a pre-accelerated program in Romania. And we just founded a company then, and everything started there, and just in couple of months after that, we ended up being part of Techstars London, which I really believe changed the way our company work and exists, because it gave us a big round of funding, over 120K, and lots of support. We also started the company, we started monetizing the product and the company then, during the Techstars, and gave us the first support from actual people, like actual customers, and people that we understood that really, really believe in our vision, our company, our product, and everything that we are doing right now. Kathleen: That's great. And I've always been impressed by the businesses that have come out of Techstars, and so it's fun to get to talk to someone whose gone through the program. Now, one of the things that I thought was interesting about the experience you've had is, you started right from the very beginning, you're one of the founders, and you've been growing this company, and a lot of the people I talk to on this podcast, we talk about their marketing techniques and strategies, and how that fuels growth. And when you and I spoke, I thought something so interesting was that you have plenty of marketing techniques and strategies, but one of the things that you consider to have been a major contributor to your growth is the way you've structured and grown your marketing team in particular. And so, I wanted to dig into that a little bit more with you, and explore how that has worked, and the results you've gotten. How Planable's Marketing Team Is Structured Vlad: Definitely, yeah. So, changing the way our marketing works, our marketing team works, actually was one of the most important things that happened to this company. Because the product side was always working and ticking, and the product was always developing. We had and we still have a brilliant co-founder and CTO that came up with the product and division, and the way everything works. But we had to compensate this with the marketing and the business, and actually getting the first users and customers to the product. So, the first two years of the company, we were trying really, really hard to do any growth hacks that you could ever read on the internet, and all the Facebook groups, and Slack communities, and Twitter, List, and everything else. I would say that we really tried to bootstrap our way in the most possible way. But then we just understood that nothing is actually working, and nothing is actually scalable. Like really, really scalable that could generate us success in the long term, and that we could actually replicate all of this. So, in I would say April last year, we ended up partnering with a brilliant new employee, who is called Miruna. She's our head of marketing at the moment at Planable, and we just started talking with her about the fact that we need to restructure our marketing team. We need to work on something from the ground up and start making some extreme, extreme changes. And we started this by analyzing the whole industry and understanding what are the biggest issues of marketers, and what are our issues, and starting to understand how can we work on solving this problem from the very beginning. So, right now, marketers are facing enormous challenges when it comes to content marketing, because content marketing was something that we wanted to focus on, completely. This would be the ground zero, the main, main focus of our marketing team. And when we understood that there are couple of main problems, like an enormous amount of wasted time and effort results in productive ... loss of productive hours than creating the content. And lots of PR crisis are being created because there is no clear approval process, there is no feedback, there is no communication. And there are campaign that are launched, that should've been launched exactly because the content was not approved. And then we also started to think more about the content marketing, and how can we actually scale it. So, we ended up thinking about many of the pillars, or many of the parts of content marketing, and how it should be structured. And we ended up creating a system for our own team that we started with couple of colleagues and analyzing this within the team, and then we understood that many big companies actually have a very, very similar structure but we would never actually understood this. This was just the way we were. So, we understood that there are three main parts of ... of an effective and efficient marketing team, and this is the people, the processes and tools. These are the three main pillars that we understood that we have to implement in our team. "There are three main parts of an effective and efficient marketing team - the people, the processes and tools." - Vlad Calus Click here to Tweet this quote Building a Marketing Team: The People Vlad: So, I would say that the first when I was mentioning about the people. People are obviously the essence of any content marketing process. You have to have people in order to deliver everything that you want. And then we understood that in order to have an efficient marketing team, all of us have to have very clear and understood roles in our team. And start working on the main skills and best skills that each of us have, in order to actually succeed. So, we just looked at each other and started to think, "What's all of us do?" Because all of us, we were free marketers back then, and we were like full stack marketers. We were doing everything- Kathleen: Everyone was doing everything? Vlad: Exactly, yeah. Everyone was doing everything, no matter what. We just looked at the task and then was like, "Should I do this? You do this? Okay, let me do this today, and then we can next week ..." This is how we would do it. And then we just understood, we looked at everyone and started discussing this. "Okay, what can I do?" I am not the most, in my case, it was I'm not the most creative person, but I can really deliver. I am an efficient person that can deliver lots of stuff, I can promote our content, I can work on twitching the content exactly the way it is from the technical perspective. And then Miruna, my colleague, was the most creative brain of Planable, because she could really speak the way our brand would speak on social media and digital. This is something she just had this from the very first day, and I was amazed by this. And then we also had the third colleague. She was Luciana, she was the most creative person on the social media. She likes engaging with people on social media. So, we understood that we need to have clear roles. In my case, it was SEO, search engine optimization. I need to tweak all of the content that we are creating, and then I also need to write the content for Planable outside of Planable, like writing guest blogs, and also representing Planable outside the building. Miruna was the one that was creating the content and also doing all the design part, and Luciana was doing the social media and the newsletters. So, we had three main pillars of content marketing, divided by three persons, so we understood that we have clear roles established. This was the first part to create clear roles. And also, the second part was to establish a clear ownership of everything. So, if you, for example, Luciana was doing social media and newsletters. There might be chances when we have to help Luciana, she needs creative ideas or design materials on everything else, but this still means that Luciana has a complete ownership on this. We even made ... and this was the second part, and the third part that in terms of the people, we had to do a clear plan for the next quarter. We are doing 12 weeks iterations on the marketing plans, because we think this is the most efficient. We are not trying to jump on the next six or 12 months, or even three years. We believe that this might be a waste of time, so this is why we try to stick close to three months iterations only. So, just to sum up, this was, for us, having a clear ownership, having clear roles, and have a clear definitive marketing plan for the next three months on all of the marketing objectives that we do. Kathleen: Yeah, we use quarterly planning as well, and I agree with you. You certainly could come up with a plan for a longer time horizon, but so much changes, and I've really found over time that quarterly is the most effective time interval for that kind of thing. Vlad: Yeah, definitely. I also was speaking with lots of teams that they are also using that quarterly, but also six weeks iteration. This is definitely something that you can do. Unfortunately, being a small team such as ours, it's hard to actually feel like you've implemented a lot during the six weeks, so we just give us lots of time during this 12 weeks, like three months that we do quarterly. Kathleen: Yeah. So, that's how you approach the people element of your team- Vlad: Exactly, yeah. Kathleen: Yeah. Vlad: And there is also something that we also related to the people, something that was super, super important for us. We understood that we cannot do everything, so this is why we need to get other stakeholders into the team. Meaning that we started using lots of video and audio production teams, like design and branding, website building, link building, data scrapping, people on the PR side, people on the page marketing, and so on. Because we believe that everyone should do the best that they could, and if you don't have the time, but have the resources, you should definitely use. Because for example, we are also doing people of marketing, this is a video blog, and we just understood that we would waste a lot of time on video production. We can film, or we can create a content, but editing and post producing the content is super, super hard for us. Kathleen: Yeah. Building a Marketing Team: The Processes Vlad: Yeah, so moving on. The second part was about the processes, because in terms of the processes, we wanted to make sure that we don't have only a clear plan, but we can also implement all of this plan and we can deliver everything that we proposed ourselves. Unfortunately, lots of teams are making critical mistakes in terms of this, because they are not having the clear workflow and the clear processes established within the team, and within the whole company. And we understood that we have, and we need three main aspects of this. First, we put transparency at the top of our processes. And we put transparency at the core of our entire workflow, because we believe that transparency was the most important thing, and transparency in terms of what's everyone doing today, this week, this month? What are the main files that we should access, for example, I should have the access to all of the marketing files, and all of the marketing materials, even though I don't actually have a need of them, but I should have them in case I need to be involved in this process. And transparency, because there is, for example, social media or email marketing teams, they have two departments and therefore two ways that they are not even communicating between them at the time that they most need, because we believe that collaboration empowers teams to not only create better content, but also be more efficient, and better at the way content marketing team works. Then the second part was about consistency. We understood that we need clear consistency on everything we do. For example, when I just started content marketing and writing articles, this was one and a half years ago. I was literally staring at the blank Google Docs document for 20 or 30 minutes, and could not came up with any ideas at all. So, because of that, I was just trying to get inspired all around the internet with any ideas that I could, and just writing random keywords, and starting to write something from those keywords, just to get this creative flow going somewhere. And then I tried to make it consistent as I could, so I just had the task in my task management tool that each day I am writing at least one hour a day. No matter what, no matter if this is good, no matter how perfect this is, but I just wanted to write. And then at the end of the week, I was starting to editing all of this content, and putting everything that I could. Because I was trying to throw all the raw idea that I had, and instead of editing and then being depressed because nothing really works, I was just trying to constantly came up, like throw ideas to this digital paper, and make sure that I move and I do something actually. Kathleen: Yeah. It's a great goal to be able to write out an hour a day. I feel like so many people say they're going to do something like that, and then they never follow through, so kudos to you for actually doing it. Vlad: Yeah, because I believe that a lot of marketers, and they really show this when I was speaking with marketers over the past year, a lot of marketers have exactly this struggle of writing content. They think that writing an article of 2000 words, or 3000, or even in my case writing a book of 30 000 words, this is super complicated. But I think about this like a process that you have to complete, and something that you have to deliver if you are consistent, and I believe that writing, especially writing, this is a skill that you empower with consistency. If you write more, you can create more and you write better. Kathleen: Yeah, and we should mention that you are a published author. You did write an entire book called Marketing Teams of the Future, which is sort of what we're talking about here in terms of how you built your team, so this isn't just a couple blog posts that you're getting out. This was an entire book. Vlad: Yeah, exactly. Because I focused the book exactly on this part, how to build your marketing teams by showing all of our examples of the team, and then speaking with some of the best marketing teams out there, from InVisionApp, Digital Crowd, Night Watch, and many more, and trying to understand what are the most efficient teams in the world, and how can we do this better with our help and anyone else. And then the third part of processes was about alignment, like making sure that alignment starts with a clear strategy, and then with consistent daily variables. In our team, these are two parts that we did. The first part is that we have a marketing meeting at 10:00 AM each Monday. There is absolutely no chance that we skip this meeting, unless you are on vacation we give you the full freedom on your vacation. But usually if you're traveling, if you're not in the office, we will connect you with a Skype call or Zoom call, or anything else, and we'll do this meeting at least for 10 or 15 minutes to make sure that everyone is aligned. And then the second part, also something that lots of marketing teams give, I believe is super important to do it one to one's between the marketing managers and between the marketing teams themselves because there are lots of things that people usually want to speak, but we just miss speaking just because maybe this is not the right time, or maybe this is not the right environment. Or this is just not the conversation that you would have at the desk with other colleagues in there. And this is why, if you at least plan one, one to one, at least once a month, or in our case once in two weeks, this will help you make sure that everyone is on the same page. You have everyone is expecting the same thing from you and from the team, and from the deliverables and everything that you do. Kathleen: Yeah. So, you've got your three points under people, you've got three points under process. Let's recap each of those again just so that everybody's following along. Vlad: Definitely, yeah. So, in terms of the people, the three things that we did was about making a clear ownership, what's everyone doing, and then the second part was about establishing clear roles, and clear things that everyone is doing. And then the third part was about creating a marketing plan for the next quarter, because this is what we do at the quarter, and this is something that I would recommend. And in terms of the processes, there were three parts of what we do, and I would suggest implementing in your team as well, this is first of all transparency. Everything has to be transparent across your marketing organization. The second part is consistency. Really embrace consistency from the very beginning. Try to do content marketing each day, try to write an article each day, do social media each day. Write at least one newsletter each day, and you will see that day by day, you will feel improvement in yourself, and your own marketing team as well. And then the third part is about alignment by making sure that everyone is on the same page, and discussing and communicating all of the expectations and the variables clearly within your team. Kathleen: I love it. Thank you for recapping that. And then you had ... so, in addition to people and processes, you had sort of your third overarching category of things. Could you talk a little bit about that? Building a Marketing Team: The Tools Vlad: Yeah, the third part was about the tools, and in terms of the tools, I would say that this is pretty straight forward, but I want to mention first of all that, do not rely on tools because no automation tool can or should replace the creative force of your team. Because when time consuming, repetitive tasks are automated, these billable hours can't be spent on creative work. So, we should work only with the tools that we really understand that value for us, and that really feed for our team. And in my case, in the book I just presented a couple of tools that I can also send you the links after that in email, but in terms of the list that we are currently working with the tools, and something that we would suggest. First of all, this is using Zoom for all of your video calls and everything else. We switched to Zoom. Before that we used Appear.in. I really loved Appear for connecting on the video calls directly for the browser, but that didn't work for us all the time. Sometimes we had issues, sometimes our customers couldn't connect, so we just switched everything to Zoom, and wow. Over the past four months, I never had a bug. Never had an issue. Kathleen: Yeah. Vlad: This product is just working- Kathleen: It's pretty great. And people who are listening can't tell, but we are on a Zoom call right now. That's how I record the podcast, and I probably spend six hours of my day on Zoom, because we're a mostly remote company, and so all of our meetings, all of my conversations are on Zoom. It's fantastic. Vlad: Exactly, yeah. And in terms of the other tools that there are, I would obviously recommend to use Planable for all of your content management creation and social media, and then there is also InVisionApp, for all of the prototyping in terms of images and creative content that you are doing. There is also Frame. I really love this company. If you even open the website that they have, it's a super beautiful website. When you are a creative person, or work in a marketing team, this really fulfills your heart when you see a beautiful website in a team. Kathleen: And what's the URL of that website? Vlad: Frame.io, I think. Yeah, Frame.io. Kathleen: Yeah, I'm pulling it up now so I can look at it while we talk. I love looking at nice websites. Oh, okay. So, for video review and collaboration. Vlad: Exactly. Yeah. Kathleen: Yep. Vlad: This is something, so we are basically describing Planable as Frame IO, but for social media. Kathleen: Got it. Vlad: Because this is something very similar. And if you look at the list that I am presenting right now, you can actually see that all of the platforms are also collaboration, because I really believe that collaboration is the key of any marketing team right now. Kathleen: Yeah, absolutely. Vlad: And then there is obviously the Slack for building a transparent environment that we were speaking about because you can create all of those channels, and anyone can join those channels and you can simply collaborate on everything that you do. Obviously also for assets management, you can use Dropbox, or Google Drive, or anything that fits you. We are personally using Dropbox, we are personally using Google Drive across the company. I am using Dropbox and Apple Cloud for some personal stuff that I am doing right now. And then the last one that I highly recommend almost all the time, this is Airtable. This is spreadsheets on steroids. Anyway, this is the way I am ... the founders describe it, because you can almost do anything in Airtable, that is similar experience to spreadsheets but actually really different. Kathleen: Well, you have a very similar list of tools to me, because we use all of those I think with the exception of Frame. We actually use Wipster, which is really similar, so very similar functionality. But yeah, if I'm not on Zoom, I'm usually on Slack. Vlad: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kathleen: And yeah, and we are using Airtable as well because we had some complex spread sheeting needs that we couldn't solve with Google Sheets and its been great. Vlad: Yeah, exactly. And we use Airtable for almost anything that we do in terms of the list, and the databases in our team. For example, we have a specific list in Airtable for recruiting, we have another sheet for marketing list, like events, or podcasts that we are listening, or events that we want to be part of, or speaking engagements. And lots of other stuff that we do. And Airtable really, really helps us make sure that we are on point with our idea. Even though our marketing plan and ownership plan, and everything that I was saying is also part of Airtable. Kathleen: Yeah. That's great. So, you've outlined really your overarching three kind of pillars, I would say. The people, the processes, and the technology. Talk to me about how that impacted your ability to grow the company, to deliver results through marketing. How Planable's Team Structure Enabled It To Grow Vlad: Yeah, definitely. So, we started implementing all of this processes, and then we obviously did not see any major results from the very first day. But when we started observing some of the patterns that are happening in all of our analytics, so first we started seeing a growth in our traffic. So, it was like the first couple of weeks, it was an incremental traffic. Like 10%, and then 15%, and 20%, and then everything else. And we actually felt like wait a sec, it's growing. It's actually something is happening in here. And when we started understanding where this is coming from, and we ended up analyzing all of the sources, and it's actually from the content that we were creating. And then we started speaking with the people that shared this content on social media, like Facebook, Twitter, and everything else, and we were saying that it's really exceptional content that we are creating, and we really feel like we answered the questions that we proposed from the very beginning of the piece. And this was a clue for us that we are doing something the right way. We are actually creating the right content for the teams, and we understanding for us, this was exactly because we built this processes and workflows in mind, and we were building everything the right way. And when we saw the growth in traffic, we saw the growth in the number of users, and this obviously reflected the number of our revenue. So, and then looking over the past 12 months of the growth from June last year to June this year, we can definitely say that we have month over month growth of between 20 to 30%. I would say that the median number is 23%, but it obviously varies from one month to another month. For example, for our surprise, December was one of the most spectacular months that we've ever had. Kathleen: That is interesting, because I feel like almost every company I know that works in something related to marketing, December is a very slow month because- Vlad: Oh wait, no. Sorry. Sorry about that. This is June. No, this is January. So, January was the most spectacular month, and then December was one of the ... oh my God, one of the most horrible months. Kathleen: I was going to say, that sounds more like every other company... Vlad: Yeah, sorry about that. Yeah. Yeah, this is because we felt ... and in January, we felt like is there anyone looking for a new subscription for their team. Kathleen: Right. We have the same conversation every year. We have usually got tremendous traffic growth in the fourth quarter, and then after the first week in December, it's like it all falls off a cliff. Nobody's working, it seems. Vlad: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I never saw so sad Google analytics on our website like in December, especially the past two weeks. It was just dropping. We had probably minus 60% drop in all of the traffic and then it quickly came up- Kathleen: Which, as long as it comes back is fine. Because if you know it's going to dip every December, you can plan for that. But yeah. Vlad: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And the most funniest thing, I will never understand this, is that people were signing up for new subscription on January 1st. And I was like, "What the hell are you doing in a new subscription?" Kathleen: Right. Vlad: But then we start analyzing, and we understood that their trail had expired, and they had lots of content planned, and they did not want to give up on this, and then we just ended up publishing next. And we had to renew their subscription, which is a good sign, so we can put- Kathleen: That is a good sign. Vlad: Yeah. And we can prepare for more marketing campaigns or ideas at the end of December and beginning- Kathleen: Yeah. What I like about this story is I've always personally had a belief that marketing is a little bit like weight loss, and health and fitness, you know? There's lots of people who kind of think they're going to get this magic solution, this diet that's going to miraculously have them lose all their weight, and it might in the short term. There's all kinds of fad diets that help you lose weight quickly. But does it last? And usually the answer is no. And unfortunately, the real solution in health and fitness slash weight loss is consistency and good old fashioned calories in, calories out, right? And in marketing, I honestly believe it's a lot like that. There are plenty of little fads and shiny objects that you can chase, and they might give you a short term boost, but as you said in the very beginning, those are not scalable things. And with the tech changing so quickly, and algorithms changing so quickly on social and on Google, if you're just chasing the latest greatest fad, you're always ... it's like chasing your tail. You're always going to be chasing something. So, it made me happy to hear that your great results came from consistency and good old fashioned, you know, content marketing. Vlad: I love it. I love your comparison. I was actually thinking yes, this is totally true. I completely agree with that, yeah. Kathleen: Yeah. It's great to see. So, the company is now how old? Vlad: So, we are now ... so, we started the company in February 2016. I would say that we worked two years in order to get the product on the market and actually feel like people see the value of this product. We started monetizing the company after one year and a half, but then it took us two years in total to get to the product market feed when we understood that people actually see the value and we understand, and we are building something valuable for people. Kathleen: Yeah. And in the meantime, you've been seeing this consistent growth and traffic, and leads and sales, and- Vlad: Yeah, exactly. Because we just understood that if something is working, let's try to stick to it. And you can always stick with consistency. Try incremental, super, super small, super, super small steps. But just do this consistently, week over week, month over month, and make sure that you keep up the same pace. Kathleen: I think that you had a lot of great tips, but I think the one for me personally that resonated the most and that I'm going to try to take to heart is blocking off an hour every day to write. Because really, we do live in a world where content is so central to getting found online, it's also so central to how you nurture your leads and convert them. Even once you have customers, content is central to that. Preventing churn, and developing loyalty, so I love that suggestion, and again it goes back to that exercise and eating right analogy. You got to do it every day, you got to stick with it and you will eventually see results. So, that is going to be my resolution. It's not the new year, but I'm going to make a resolution to write for an hour every day. I love that. Vlad: Yeah, definitely. That's a good one. Kathleen's Two Questions Kathleen: Well, before we wrap up, two questions that I always ask all of my guests, I'm curious to hear your take. When it comes to inbound marketing, and content marketing, is there a company or a person that you think is really doing it well right now? Vlad: Yeah, I actually have someone else in mind, but when you just asked the question, I immediately came up with Drift. I really think that oh my God, I'm following these guys over the past years. We are using [Intercom] personally, just because we went with Intercom, and it was a great decision back then. But we just can't really change from Intercom to Drift, but I just look at the Drift with what we do, and wow, these guys, what we do is completely amazing. There is the founder, and then there is ... Kathleen: Dave Gerhardt. Vlad: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kathleen: Dave Cancel, and Dave Gerhardt, or as they like to call themselves, DC and DG. Vlad: DC and DG. Yeah, exactly. DC and DG, and what they do on social media, this is completely nuts. They are super, super active what they do. They came up with new projects, new content, new ideas, new landing pages, new books, new everything. And then we do this all of this experience is so beautiful and so extraordinary that I feel like I am part of this company every single day. Every time, when I read something about the company where they are products, I really feel proud that we did this, that we are doing this. I feel part of this company. Even though I am not even a user, I am not even a customer of this. And they did this just by creating a culture of their company that this is like we are building something extraordinary. Especially even their attitude that they do. DC, when they have a conference that we are organizing, probably a couple times a year, and they saw how DC is writing messages in Twitter that, "Let me know if you are coming to the conference. I am coming to personally pick you up at the airport and get you to the conference. From the airport, to the conference." Kathleen: Yeah. Vlad: This is the most amazing thing that a founder can do in the day of the conference. When you have so many things to focus on in the day of the conference, you are picking up people from the airport. Like, really? This is the commitment that I want to see from all the company that I am using. Kathleen: That's great. You know, it's funny. So, I did have Dave Gerhardt, who's DG, on a as a guest on the podcast, and he was one of the earlier guests, and it was so fun to pick his brain specifically about what he is doing with LinkedIn Video, because he's really good with that. And but what I love about what you just did is I've had, since that time, I've had a lot of my guests actually mention Drift when I ask this question, but you're the first person who's gotten really specific about what it is you like about how they're doing their marketing and how it made you feel. And I think that's so interesting, and I love what you said about feeling like you're a part of the company even though you're not an employee, you're not a customer. That's a very fascinating take on it. Vlad: Yeah, in case of my book, I interview 20 people, and DC was one of the people that I wanted to make an interview for 20 minutes, to get him in the book. But he actually didn't have time, and he forwarded the message to DG, and when DG also didn't have time. But when I asked for a quote, and he gave me at least a quote. Kathleen: Oh, that's nice. Yeah, they have a lot going on. Vlad: Yeah, exactly. I was like, "Okay, I totally get it. Please give me a quote at least. I would be super, super happy for a quote." And they did it. Kathleen: That's good. Well, second question. The world of digital marketing is changing at a lightning fast pace, and the thing I hear from most marketers is that they don't have the time to keep up with it. So, how do you personally educate yourself and stay on top of everything that's changing so that you remain on the cutting edge? Vlad: So, couple of things that I do, this is I have couple of people that I'm following on Twitter. This is obviously Matt Navarra, everyone knows about Matt Navarra in social media. There is no chance you don't know about Matt Navarra in social media, because he is writing all the latest updates in social media, and everything what's happening. And then there are also other people that I am following, like Geoff Desreumaux, from We Are Social Media. Also, I am also following We Are Social Media a lot. This is WeRSM- Kathleen: WeRSM. Yeah, one of my other guests turned me onto their newsletter, which is great. Vlad: Yeah, this is super awesome, I love their newsletters just because they add the GIF usually in the beginning of the newsletter, and it's usually fun. Yeah. And I'm also following, and I am part of lots of Facebook groups. Like SaaS marketers and founders, and product marketers with Josh Fechter, and B2B bloggers as well. And I believe that Facebook groups are helping me to stay in touch with the marketing industry, like from underneath. From the underground of it. Because you can read lots of updates and everything else what's happening in the industry with like on TechCrunch, and many other websites. But actually getting the true reaction and understanding what's truly happening in industry, you can only get from the people that are doing this every single day, consistently. And then this was the first. There's Twitter, then second is Facebook, and the first part, this is Zest. I met the founder last year, and- Kathleen: Yam? Yam Regev? Vlad: Yeah, exactly. And they are doing an incredible job with building a platform that helps you put all of the best content right in front of you directly in your face, and they really put some of the best content. I am constantly ... if I'm looking for some marketing content, there is no chance I'm not looking this on Zest first of all, and if I don't find a good answers, I might Google it or as for someone else for more tips and tricks on this. Kathleen: Yeah, that is a very good one. I know we use it a lot at Impact. And I actually just emailed Yam, who is the founder of Zest, saying I wanted to have him on the podcast, so Yam, if you're listening ... answer my email. Vlad: That's awesome. Yeah, if you want I can just drop him a quick message- Kathleen: Do it. Do it. Let's gang up on him and get him to come on. He's great. Vlad: I will message him on Facebook after our call and make sure that he answers your message. Kathleen: Perfect. Vlad: Yeah, he's really cool. I invited him for a conference in Moldova, in my home country, and lots of people said that he was one of the best guests that they had. So, I really think he'll be a great addition to the podcast. Kathleen: Yeah, yeah. And Zest, it's Zest.is, if you're listening. It's a great browser extension for Chrome, so when you open a new window, literally it's like a curated publication of top marketing articles. So, totally agree with you on that one. Great, great suggestions and insights, Vlad. How To Connect With Vlad Kathleen: If somebody wants to learn more about Planable, or get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that? Vlad: So, if they want to get in touch with me, like really if you have absolutely any questions, hit me up on Twitter, or LinkedIn, or Vlad@Planable.io. I am more than happy to help and answer any questions. As Kathleen also said in the beginning, I am trying to be active in mentoring communities, so I am trying to ... I'm currently actually mentoring couple of people on building their own digital agencies, and also their startups. And if you really have any questions or need some advice in this, we'd be more than happy to chat or jump on a call. And then if you want to learn more about Planable, and see how we are changing the content marketing collaboration generation, just go on Planable.io. Kathleen: Great. Well, I'll put all those links in the show notes, so if you want to check any of them out, head over there and you'll be able to get in touch with Vlad, or check out Planable. Thank you so much. This was really fun, and it's great to hear your story, and I'm so impressed by what a structured process and team you have for a company that really is still very young. So, there's kudos to you for figuring that out as quickly as you did. Vlad: Thank you. I really appreciate that, and thanks a lot for having me today. You Know What To Do Next... Kathleen: Of course, and if you're listening, and you liked what you heard, or learned something new, of course leave the podcast a five star review on Apple Podcasts. We always appreciate it. Vlad: Yeah, totally. Kathleen: And if you know somebody else doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me @WorkMommyWork, because they could be my next guest. That's it for this week. Thanks, Vlad. Vlad: Thank you.

In this weeks show; Update on that new messaging feature - 3:50 Oleg has a new profile pic - 09:59 Josh Fechter lost his account - 12:00 New LinkedIn Member numbers - 17.29 How to spark meaningful conversations (according to LinkedIn) - 19:24 The New LinkedIn profile design - 23:24 LinkedInLive update - 31.13 Post of the week - 36:05 NOT post of the week! - 40:03 LinkedInLocal, Manchester - 43:59 AFQ - Question about invitations to connect - 45:50    

Hello! Welcome back to the Fire Show, the show about entrepreneurship and creativity from Austin TX. My name is Moby, and if you don't know who I am, I am an immigrant to the US who gives a shit about Austin TX, entrepreneurship, and I enjoy making content for people who're building companies and products they give a shit about. Thus, all the tactical shit in this. Today, we're talking copywriting for businesses and startups, i.e, writing to get the attention of your customers on social platforms, blogs, ads, and everything else they see. Copywriting is about text, we've also covered video on this podcast with Dave Trausneck, if you do a lot of video as well.Josh Fechter is a marketing powerhouse. He's the creator of Badass Marketers and Founders (BAMF), BAMF for short, the most valuable growth marketing community in the world in my opinion. He's also the creator of BAMF Media, a growth marketing agency based in Venice, California.He's a content marketing machine.A top Quora writer for 2017 and 2018. Buzzfeed has given him credit for “popularizing the genre of poetic LinkedIn posts"", Reuters credit “with starting the trend of viral LinkedIn content"". Forbes calls him one of ""12 Innovative Founders To Watch And Learn From"", and Maxim a “Top B2B Marketing Influencer"".He's also the author of Content Machine, LinkedInFluence, and BAMF Bible the #1 book ever on product Hunt.Check out Josh's community on Facebook, Badass Marketers and FOunders, which you can get to if you search for BAMF on Facebook.This was shot over at the Work Well Win and MediaTech lounge during SXSW. WorkWellWin is a new coworking space based in Austin TX, focused on being a wellness and health-conscious space for entrepreneurs. MediaTech is a media advisory firm that is focused on building the US media economy, through an the launch of a technology incubator and education platform, Collective, in Austin.All, enjoy.

The internet and evolution of traditional products has given rise to a new discipline in marketing called 'growth hacking' or "growth hacker marketing." Products are no longer just physical things, they are software products like apps, platforms and podcasts that have the potential of spreading themselves and playing a role in their own adoption. Growth hackers understand this power of virality, and use a combination of marketing, analytics and engineering to acquire and engage users—with the ultimate goal of users becoming brand advocates themselves. A growth hacker is a creative rule breaker. They must continually think of new and innovative ways to drive growth. They are masters in things like social media, blogging, A/B testing, copy wiring, UI/UX, automation, email marketing, SEO and more. While this might sound similar to a digital marketer, the main difference is that digital marketing is focused on brand and positioning, while growth hacking is all about testing and perfecting different tactics and strategies to achieve one thing and one thing only—GROWTH! In this episode, Hala interviews Josh Fechter, CEO and founder of BAMF (Badass Marketers & Founders), a growth marketing agency and exclusive Facebook community with over 30,000 members. Josh is the former head of growth for several venture-backed companies who rose to fame this year on LinkedIn by starting a viral storytelling trend that broke the professional social media network's algorithm. Growth hacking is not just a 2018 buzz phrase. Tune in to learn how Josh overcame early career failures, unlocked growth hacking secrets, and became one of the top growth marketing influencers in the world. Download Josh's BAMF Bible here: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/bamf-bible-2018  Want to connect with other YAP listeners? Join the YAP Society on Slack: bit.ly/yapsociety Follow YAP on IG: www.instagram.com/youngandprofiting Reach out to Hala directly at Hala@YoungandProfiting.com Follow Hala on Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Follow Hala on Instagram: www.instagram.com/yapwithhala Check out our website to meet the team, view show notes and transcripts: www.youngandprofiting.com

On episode 5 of #OrdinaryFreaks storyteller, entrepreneur, personal branding and content strategist Quentin “Q” Allums relives his story as he guides us through his past struggles he faced during his failed attempt at creating a VR startup and how rather than stepping away from it all he harnessed what he learned from those hardships and used them to rise above those barriers to get over 3 million views on LinkedIn and become the person he is now.-KEY POINTS:Why LinkedIn?LinkedIn’s misfit & the new wave of sharing who you areLaunching VR company, losing everything and not being sh*t An internship can open a thousand opportunities - Newaukee If it’s not a life or death situation, f it, go for it Leave, go experience other places, get new perspective Childhood dream, get paid to be himself Be open to change, as things change keep stepping forward Current companies: Mad Genie + Milwaukee Misfits What’s in the future for Q? Ordinary Freaks questions-QUOTES:“I don’t believe there’s work life balance, there’s just life, and business is part of that.” - Quentin “Q” Allums -“I don’t have any role models, my role model is me in 10 years…” - Matthew McConaughey-FOLLOW Quentin “Q” AllumsWebsite: https://www.madgenie.io LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/quentinal... Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/qallums Twitter: https://twitter.com/qallums Instagram: https://www.instgram.com/qallums -MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:-PEOPLEMichaela Alexis: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelaa... Josh Fechter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuafec... -EVENTSVidcon: http://vidcon.com -COMPANIESNewaukee: https://instagram.com/newaukee Mad genie: https://www.madgenie.io/-FOLLOW ORDINARY FREAKS AT:Website: http://ordinaryfreaks.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ordinaryfreaks Twitter: https://twitter.com/ordinaryfreaksInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ordinaryfreaks -FOLLOW B:https://www.instagram.com/roblesmelgoz -FOLLOW EDDIE:https://www.instagram.com/eddjuarezs

On episode 5 of #OrdinaryFreaks storyteller, entrepreneur, personal branding and content strategist Quentin “Q” Allums relives his story as he guides us through his past struggles he faced during his failed attempt at creating a VR startup and how rather than stepping away from it all he harnessed what he learned from those hardships and used them to rise above those barriers to get over 3 million views on LinkedIn and become the person he is now.-KEY POINTS:Why LinkedIn?LinkedIn’s misfit & the new wave of sharing who you areLaunching VR company, losing everything and not being sh*t An internship can open a thousand opportunities - Newaukee If it’s not a life or death situation, f it, go for it Leave, go experience other places, get new perspective Childhood dream, get paid to be himself Be open to change, as things change keep stepping forward Current companies: Mad Genie + Milwaukee Misfits What’s in the future for Q? Ordinary Freaks questions-QUOTES:“I don’t believe there’s work life balance, there’s just life, and business is part of that.” - Quentin “Q” Allums -“I don’t have any role models, my role model is me in 10 years…” - Matthew McConaughey-FOLLOW Quentin “Q” AllumsWebsite: https://www.madgenie.io LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/quentinal... Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/qallums Twitter: https://twitter.com/qallums Instagram: https://www.instgram.com/qallums -MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:-PEOPLEMichaela Alexis: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelaa... Josh Fechter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuafec... -EVENTSVidcon: http://vidcon.com -COMPANIESNewaukee: https://instagram.com/newaukee Mad genie: https://www.madgenie.io/-FOLLOW ORDINARY FREAKS AT:Website: http://ordinaryfreaks.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ordinaryfreaks Twitter: https://twitter.com/ordinaryfreaksInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ordinaryfreaks -FOLLOW B:https://www.instagram.com/roblesmelgoz -FOLLOW EDDIE:https://www.instagram.com/eddjuarezs

Welcome to episode 202, this week I don’t really have one main subject to cover but I guess the most eye grabbing headline is that LinkedIn have decided to re-design profiles….again! More of that later but to start with as usual…. Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week The Bible of LinkedIn Bollocks LinkedIn Top Companies To Work For - UK LinkedIn Top Companies To Work For - US LinkedIn Top Companies To Work For - Canada LinkedIn Top Companies To Work For - Australia How we created the 2018 LinkedIn Top Companies list LinkedIn Updates New Profile Design About a year ago, most people were seeing the new design for the first time, The basic (free) version of LinkedIn had a complete makeover including a new design for profiles…..and now they have decided the re-design profiles again!! Firstly let me make it clear that these new profiles are in the early stage of roll-out so very few of you will see this. I also don’t have this new design, the above screenshot was sent to me by my good friend and fellow LinkedIn Trainer Angus Grady. Please Note: Roll out of new features is per account, not per profile. You might think this is the same but it isn’t. Angus’ LinkedIn account is part of the early roll-out, not his profile. When I view his profile, it has the picture in the centre but when he views it (or any other) he sees the new design with the picture on the left. Also please note: Another misconception about new features is that there rollout is based on geography…it is not! The amount of times someone states “we don’t have it yet here in X” drives me crazy! Roll-out isn’t random but your account was allocated into a cohort when you signed up, this group is still continually added to as new members sign up. I’m not sure how many cohorts there are but they are not based on location, premium or when you signed up. They allow LinkedIn to test new features in a random way. Because I don’t have this yet, I haven’t been able to test if the links and features are different or whether it’s purely a cosmetic change. One thing is for sure, there are plenty of people out there who are going to have to change their background image! So what do you think of the change of design? I must admit it does look better, that said I think Linkedin have far more urgent priorities than making profiles look prettier! Multiple Image Posts on Desktop An image post made of up to 9 images has been a feature of the LinkedIn mobile app for sometime but recently LinkedIn quietly made it possible on Desktop, this is great news for company page admins who are not able to mange their page via mobile. To add images via a PC simply use the ctrl+click or cmd+click on Mac to select multiple images (or the click+shift feature for a complete line of files). Video Filters LinkedIn Video: Stand Out with Filters and Text Ok, maybe it’s just me but those filters just look ridiculous! They remind me of the equally ugly emojis in Messages that no-one uses! That said, the ability to add text is useful and actually works pretty well. I won’t be using this feature but mainly because I recommend recording your video on the Clips or Clipomatic apps. They both provide much better filters, text and editing options. Is LinkedIn Deliberately ‘throttling’ post distribution? Er…no! I have heard and seen a fair bit of chatter about this, instigated mainly by Josh Fechter announcing that LinkedIn had reduced his post views by 90%. He followed that up with this article LinkedIn Wants to Put an End to Broetry in Favor of This The thing is, I don’t believe ‘Broetry’ was ever a reason why he got high numbers in the first place. All that matters in a post is that it’s more than 3 lines long, this will ensure it triggers the ‘See more’ and if people click on that, the algorithm will automatically push the post out to more people. It doesn’t matter if it’s easy to read or a big, ugly block of text. If the first 3 lines are enough to tempt me to click or tap on ‘see more’ it will get more views. As far as Josh is concerned, his numbers are still amazing so I don’t really know what his is complaining about. I very much doubt this is a conspiracy to ‘throttle’ posts but merely a consequence of more people posting interesting and engaging content. The algorithm has to limit the amount of content in our feed or it would be unmanageable so a reduction in views is inevitable....the same thing happened with Articles. This is simply a consequence of success, if you get high views and engagement, other will copy and as they get higher views, your will go down. That’s all there is to it….no conspiracy!   Posting Statistics A listener Mark Lee decided to conduct his own experiment on the success of his posts on LinkedIn and he has been generous enough to share the numbers and conclusions with me. Mark’s target audience is Accountants and small Accountancy firms The analysis goes back to the start of December, initially he was posting links to his or other Blogs via IFTTT, this was soon halted in favour of long, text only posts. His conclusions are as follows; Posts with genuine questions attract more views and Likes Comments are the most important thing to aim for There appears to be no relation between early success (first 2 hours) and eventual numbers There is some evidence of a cumulative effect, the average numbers increased over time. My observations Controversy creates engagement True stories work Questions are critical Very few of Mark posts were images so it would be wrong to conclude that image posts don’t deliver results

Josh Fechter is the founder and CEO of BAMF media, a growth hacker, a LinkedIn influencer and has been featured in Reuters, Forbes, Entrepreneur as well as others.  He is also the author of the #1 book to ever launch on Product Hunt called the BAMF Bible. During our interview we discuss... - What is growth hacking? - Josh shares his top growth hack for both LinkedIn and Facebook. - He shares how he landed his first client for his growth agency, BAMF media. - We also dive into the #1 strategy Josh uses today to get new clients. - Josh shares what he would do differently to grow faster if given the chance to do it all over again. - LinkedIn recently changed it's algorithm and Josh talks about how he changed his approach to continue to grow his following. - We talk about his favorite growth tool/software. - Josh also shares his favorite business book. Josh's websites: Josh@bamf.media www.facebook.com/groups/growthmarketers/  

Named as one of "12 Innovative Founders To Watch And Learn From" by Forbes Magazines, Josh Fechter is one of the people who popularized the genre of poetic LinkedIn posts. Josh manages Bad Ass Marketers and Founders (BAMF), one of the biggest and most active Facebook groups, which gave him the opportunity to meet the Zuckerberg himself! In this episode, learn how Josh started and grew the BAMF community from 0 to 15,000 members.

What if I told you how to reach a 100 million people? What if I told you that there is a recipe for creating a viral post? Seems too good to be true? Well there is someone who has cracked the code. Hacked the system. And knows the secret. A young unassuming guy wearing a backwards cap. His name is Josh Fechter and he’s the co-founder of BAMF Media a Growth Hacking Media Agency His FB group, Badass Marketers & Founders has almost 20,000 members and Mark Zuckerberg named it one his favourite groups! Josh pioneered what was later coined Broetry – an easy to read style of writing which I have been using and has been an absolute game changer. His books have been voted #1 on product hunt and Forbes named him one of the top “12 Innovative Founders To Watch And Learn From” As always here’s a short rap to help introduce my guest.. Here goes …   From a downward spiral to going viral. He gets more views than the daily news. Content machine, his book is supreme. Set fire to your gasoline. No need to shout and scream. His stuff ain’t mainstream. Through failing ventures, frustration and aggravation. He’s mastered the art of communication Now he’s impacting a Nation. A movement, a congregation. His works a revelation. Welcome to the new generation… So without hesitation I welcome to you, a new breakthrough … A super connector , creative director the one and only Josh Fechter!   What you will learn: How to reach 100 million people on Linkedin The exact formula to creating a viral post How to turn eyeballs into paying clients The importance of building deep relationships Why you shouldn’t accept every friend request on social How to build a community that will create endless leads Why reading stories can make you more money than business books … and MUCH MORE Interesting highlights: Josh had 8 failed startups Why Josh turned down 7 figures Josh currently get 500,000 views per status post on Linkedin Josh’s #1 practical advice:  Build a communityTweet This Wanna pick Josh‘s brain?   Join my exclusive FB group now (https://www.facebook.com/groups/canipickyourbrain) ! Resources & Links: Josh’s free book (http://www.bamf.media/contentmachine) The Self Help Addict (http://www.theselfhelpaddict.com) (My book) Gefen Media Group (http://www.gefenmediagroup.com)   Did you enjoy this episode? Then  please subscribe to my podcast on iTunes (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/can-i-pick-your-brain-entrepreneur-business-podcast/id1076916148?mt=2) , so you can get automatic updates whenever another episode goes live (and you will be helping me get to #1 on iTunes!)

Co-founder of BAMF Media, Josh Fechter has evangelized growth for a couple of the fastest growing SaaS companies, including Autopilot (top 10). Author of three growth hacking books. Josh was awarded Top Quora Writer and Growth Hacker of 2017, and has over 50+ million views on his writing in the last year.

Co-founder of BAMF Media, Josh Fechter has evangelized growth for a couple of the fastest growing SaaS companies, including Autopilot (top 10). Author of three growth hacking books. Josh was awarded Top Quora Writer and Growth Hacker of 2017, and has over 50+ million views on his writing in the last year.

[Live] LIVE episode from SoCal Marketing Club: How to Scale Your E-Commerce Business Like a Badass With John Bertino, Alan Bush, Steven Picanza, and Melissa Rautenberg! We're having a blast!   [00:30] What's up Creative Hustlers! [01:00] Biggie isn't overrated… [01:13] Live at the Loading Dock in Little Italy, in SoCal. [01:30] This is John's first event on his own! [02:35] Got to chat with Josh Fechter! [02:40] You need to join Josh's Facebook group! [03:30] Here's the Interview with Josh Fechter! [04:00] So what is Growth Hacking and BAMF Media? [05:00] BAMF Media was built to handle clients. [05:21] What clients for BAMF Media look like… [06:10] Josh growth hacked his way to Mark Zuckerberg. [06:50] Facebook's Developer Conference in Chicago! [07:20] Facebook is actually running a Facebook Test Group for admins of Big Facebook Groups! [07:58] What's in store for Live SoCal Marketing event! [08:05] Some of the interviews of the night: Caden from CPC Strategy,and Nathan from Sourcify. [08:50] Where you can find Josh on the internet! [09:30] Look for Josh on a future episode, hopefully! [10:15] Steven was serious about if Josh could take down Zuckerberg. [10:54] The next interview we had was Brian Lischer! [11:17] Brian is great at Business to Business branding. [11:50] It's almost like Barbalicious! [12:15] Brian is really cerebral, and very into psychology, mythology and culture. [12:27] Brian is a really unique interview from the crowd at the event. [12:50] It's all about the internal brand! [13:05] It's the interview with Brian Lischer! [13:30] Brian works at Ignyte, and Alan works with Ignite Visibility. [14:08] What Brian does, and why Ignyte is different! [14:50] It's getting to the essence of the brand, and rebuilding around that. [15:26] Branding is expensive but a LOT goes into it. [16:03] It's going to cost more to do a REBRAND wrong! [16:33] Why Ignyte is different from others. [16:55] The external brand is only ONE SIDE of the coin! [17:40] For some companies, it's about experience in store, and when calling support! [18:49] Educating people on TRUE branding. [19:05] What BRANDING is NOT! [19:20] The craziest thing about branding… [19:59] Branding is just chemicals in the brain. [20:25] Brian just did a workshop in New York figuring out their Brand Archetype. [20:57] Where you can find Brian and Ignyte on the internet! [21:33] Tons of value at the SoCal Marketing event. [22:12] Well done to John Bertino for the event! [22:40] Some of the great speakers on the panel. [23:27] Moderating a panel is hard work. [24:40] Open mixer with SoCal Marketing Club for Entrepreneurs in San Diego.Stay Tuned for details! [25:50] Where John and the So Cal Marketing Club live on the internet! [26:28] John Bertino is always on the show. [26:57] Peace Out, Creative Hustlers [27:02] Melissa's Moment of Hustle Contact Info for Interviewees:   Josh Fechter Co-Founder BAMF Media     Website: http://www.bamf.media/ Private FB group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/growthmarketers LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuafechter   Brian Lischer - CEO Ignyte Brands   Website: http://www.ignytebrands.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lischer/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ignytebrands/   John Bertino Website: Theagencyguy.com Twitter: @theagencyguyinc Linked In: John Bertino Email: john@theagencyguy.com SoCalMarketing Club: @SCMarketingClub / www.socalmarketingclub.com

Josh Fechter is an award-winning growth hacking expert, marketing thought leader, social media influencer, and master of building communities. Central to his most impressive accomplishments is Badass Marketers and Founders, also known as BAMF, a highly curated Facebook community of over 15,000 growth professionals founded by Josh. BAMF includes BAMF Media, a full stack growth marketing and marketing agency. It also includes BASH, a program to empower B2B marketing executives to become social media influencers. Josh’s credentials extend far beyond his expertise on Facebook and LinkedIn, where he has amassed over 25 million profile views. He was also named a top Quora contributor of 2017, launched the #1 Book ever on Product Hunt, and has published his writing in over sixteen publications. Any time you read a brief bio of Josh, you learn something new. It’s impossible to contain his successes into a few short paragraphs. The topics discussed in this episode include how companies of all kinds can benefit from user communities, why communities require complete transparency, and the value of being selective with your marketing.

Hailey Friedman is the Product Marketing Manager at RealtyShares and the President of the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of Badass Marketers and Founders, a highly curated Facebook group and community of over 15,000 professional marketers. The group was started by Josh Fechter, who handed it over to Hailey in mid-2017. Hailey started her career outside of the growth, advertising, and marketing industries as a participant for Teach for America at inner city schools in New York. Hailey eventually launched her own mobile app at SXSW and decided to pursue a career in marketing taking on a role as a . She moved to San Francisco in 2015 and joined RealtyShares as 2nd marketing hire and 20th employee. The total head count at RealtyShares is now over 120 and is continuing to grow. She also blogs about marketing on growthmarketingpro.com. The topics discussed in this episode include working on your activation rate, the value of in-person networking with other marketers, and the importance of integrating all your marketing tools.

Cosa fa veramente la differenza tra chi vorrebbe fare e chi fa davvero qualcosa di speciale con il digital? Scopriamo insieme a Josh Fechter come nel fallimento si può scoprire il segreto del successo.☞ ISCRIVITI, CONDIVIDI, SCRIVI UNA RECENSIONE o FAI UNA DOMANDA > http://strategiadigitale.info

Cosa fa veramente la differenza tra chi vorrebbe fare e chi fa davvero qualcosa di speciale con il digital? Scopriamo insieme a Josh Fechter come nel fallimento si può scoprire il segreto del successo.☞ ISCRIVITI, CONDIVIDI, SCRIVI UNA RECENSIONE o FAI UNA DOMANDA > http://strategiadigitale.info

My guest today is marketer Josh Fechter, formerly of Autopilot marketing automation tool, who has recently created his own agency Badass Marketers and Founders. He is also an entrepreneur who has learned many lessons from his previous startup ventures. I found Josh on his agency’s Facebook Group and was blown away by the amount of free information he shared, including google drive folders full of google docs with his tactics, strategies and thoughts. If you are looking for new and innovative marketing ideas to test and grow your business, this episode is for you. *** Tap on this link to access show notes+transcripts, join our private community of mavericks, or sign up to the newsletter: EveryoneHatesMarketers.com/links

In Episode #368, Eric and Neil discuss why you should pay attention to Facebook groups. Tune in to learn the pros of joining Facebook groups, starting your own for your company, and how to extract and give value to these online communities. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:27 – Today's topic: Why You Should Pay Attention To Facebook Groups 00:39 – Eric gets a lot of value from Facebook groups 00:43 – Eric follows Badass Marketers and Founders Facebook group run by Josh Fechter 00:50 – There's a ton of marketing information he gains from the group 00:56 – Another group to follow: Young Entrepreneurs Council 01:00 – There's a high level of engagement in these groups and people share them with others 01:18 – Facebook just launched a summit for Facebook groups 01:54 – You can search for terms in groups that are related to your niche 02:08 – Answer questions in groups—this will lead people to your website and build traffic 02:15 – When you build our own Facebook group, it builds a community with that will strongly support your brand 02:22 – Neil has a private Facebook group and most of its members help promote one another 02:56 – Find the group that has more signal than noise 03:11 – Eric highly recommends Badass Marketers and Founders 03:30 – Marketing School is giving away a free 1 year subscription to Crazy Egg which helps you increase your conversion rate 04:00 – Go to SingleGrain.com/giveaway for multiple entries 04:10 – That's it for today's episode! 3 Key Points: There's a lot of VALUE to be had in Facebook groups—build your network and your following to increase your support. Join groups that are relevant to your niche. Be helpful with those in your Facebook groups—answer their questions and promote one another depending on the type of group that it is. Leave some feedback: What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with us: NeilPatel.com Quick Sprout Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel Twitter @ericosiu

In Episode #368, Eric and Neil discuss why you should pay attention to Facebook groups. Tune in to learn the pros of joining Facebook groups, starting your own for your company, and how to extract and give value to these online communities. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:27 – Today’s topic: Why You Should Pay Attention To Facebook Groups 00:39 – Eric gets a lot of value from Facebook groups 00:43 – Eric follows Badass Marketers and Founders Facebook group run by Josh Fechter 00:50 – There’s a ton of marketing information he gains from the group 00:56 – Another group to follow: Young Entrepreneurs Council 01:00 – There’s a high level of engagement in these groups and people share them with others 01:18 – Facebook just launched a summit for Facebook groups 01:54 – You can search for terms in groups that are related to your niche 02:08 – Answer questions in groups—this will lead people to your website and build traffic 02:15 – When you build our own Facebook group, it builds a community with that will strongly support your brand 02:22 – Neil has a private Facebook group and most of its members help promote one another 02:56 – Find the group that has more signal than noise 03:11 – Eric highly recommends Badass Marketers and Founders 03:30 – Marketing School is giving away a free 1 year subscription to Crazy Egg which helps you increase your conversion rate 04:00 – Go to SingleGrain.com/giveaway for multiple entries 04:10 – That’s it for today’s episode! 3 Key Points: There’s a lot of VALUE to be had in Facebook groups—build your network and your following to increase your support. Join groups that are relevant to your niche. Be helpful with those in your Facebook groups—answer their questions and promote one another depending on the type of group that it is. Leave some feedback: What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with us: NeilPatel.com Quick Sprout Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel Twitter @ericosiu

What are your biggest time wasters in your startup or business?Josh Fechter, Founder of Badass Marketers & Founders | Advisor | MentorAnswered May 11 · Upvoted by Pat Ahern, worked with/advised over 50 startups1. Meetings based on ego.Let's have a meeting with the entire marketing team so I can spend an hour telling you guys what I've been working on.2. Metric meetingsBoss: “Hey did we increase how many leads we've received this week?”Employee: “I didn't have time because this is our fourth meeting this week on whether these numbers have increased.”Can't he just shoot me an email or Slack message?3. The sales gongWhen the sales team has a win, they'll hit a gong. For a minute everyone must clap and applaud the sales team.Imagine one sales rep closing a big deal, then forty employees wasting a minute to applaud them, then another ten minutes re-focusing on their work.4. Happy hours that shake up the entire officeYou know all your startup employees who want to continue working hard even through happy hour? Well, they can't. Your company wants to blare music and treat their employees to alcoholic beverages.5. Unnecessary tagging on emailAll employees must know when we have a support or demo request. No they don't. Keep demo requests to the sales team and support requests to the support team.6. SlackSeem like every Slack ping is the result of a dumb meme that got posted.7. PlanningTeams love to plan. They'll plan so much that they'll forget they need to execute.8. Poorly structured standup callsBoss: “Everyone give a one minute review of what you're working on.”Employee #9: “Closed out a few leads from yesterday.”Employee #10: “Still working on the blog post from yesterday.”By the end, everyone has forgotten about what everyone else accomplished.9. Too many voicesCEO: “Did you see that Tweet?:”Employee: “You mean that bot trolling us?”CEO: “Yeah. How do we prevent this?”Employee: “It's a bot. A fake Twitter account. We can block them.”Doesn't he have more important things to worry about than a Tweet maybe one person saw from a fake account?10. Too many learning sessionsManager: “James, you need to join this session about sales implementation.”Employee: “Are you sure?”Doesn't he know I work in SEO?Manager: “Yeah, it's valuable information. We need everyone to be on the same page.”

What are your biggest time wasters in your startup or business? Josh Fechter, Founder of Badass Marketers & Founders | Advisor | Mentor Answered May 11 · Upvoted by Pat Ahern, worked with/advised over 50 startups 1. Meetings based on ego. Let’s have a meeting with the entire marketing team so I can spend an hour telling you guys what I’ve been working on. 2. Metric meetings Boss: “Hey did we increase how many leads we’ve received this week?” Employee: “I didn’t have time because this is our fourth meeting this week on whether these numbers have increased.” Can’t he just shoot me an email or Slack message? 3. The sales gong When the sales team has a win, they’ll hit a gong. For a minute everyone must clap and applaud the sales team. Imagine one sales rep closing a big deal, then forty employees wasting a minute to applaud them, then another ten...

Autopilot HQ's Josh Fechter discusses tactical techniques in gaining and retaining a strong user base. Understanding your users and how they discover and adopt your products is very important in building a product.

How do honest people recognize each other? This was inspired by the question on here, ‘how do intelligent people recognize each other.’ Josh Fechter, Growth Evangelist @AutopilotHQ | Advisor @Praxis | Mentor Written Apr 1 They talk about their failures with laughter. Relationships: “She broke up with me. I didn’t give her any attention. It was my fault.” Family: “I didn’t talk to my sister for years. I was stubborn. I said sorry, but it still hurts.” Startups: “My startup failed. I treated my employees and co-founders poorly. It was my fault.” Laughter is important because it shows you matured to where you don’t sulk i...

How can I improve my social skills in 15 minutes?If I were to rate my social skills on a scale of 1–10, I would give myself a solid 5. But I have an interview tomorrow and I want to boost that 5 to an 8. So what can I do? Any answer is appreciated. Thank you. :)Josh Fechter, Growth Evangelist @AutopilotHQ | Advisor @Praxis | MentorWritten Dec 8Pretend like a guy in a black mask has a gun to your back.If you don't act confident and be yourself, then he'll pull the trigger.“Clack!”The hardest part of being social is getting over the fear of rejection, but if rejection means death, then it's easy to act confident and happy-go-lucky.I used this tactic last night talking to a cute girl. After a half hour of conversation, I knew I wanted to ask her out on a date.Then, the worst thing happened.I started thinking.What if this goes wrong?What if I feel like [insert imaginary painful experience] after I get rejected?So much negative self-talk.Time to stop.I thought back to my toolbox of tips for taking action.Ah, the gunman trick.One second later.“Hey, I'm going to this party with live music Wednesday night. You should cruise along. We'll call it a date.”It turns out she already had a boyfriend.Still, it felt great - an enormous relief of pressure.If I didn't ask, I would've kicked myself the rest of the night over someone who already had a boyfriend.The problem is that's what many of us do.This goes for most situations in life when we're afraid to take action. We stop ourselves.The people who land job opportunities, dates, and get salary raises, are those who take the many opportunities given to us.These opportunities are in every conversation, handshake, and meeting.And once you become an action taker, you'll begin to see all of them.To start, picture the gunman behind you whenever you feel hesitant in social settings.

How can I improve my social skills in 15 minutes? If I were to rate my social skills on a scale of 1–10, I would give myself a solid 5. But I have an interview tomorrow and I want to boost that 5 to an 8. So what can I do? Any answer is appreciated. Thank you. :) Josh Fechter, Growth Evangelist @AutopilotHQ | Advisor @Praxis | Mentor Written Dec 8 Pretend like a guy in a black mask has a gun to your back. If you don’t act confident and be yourself, then he’ll pull the trigger. “Clack!” The hardest part of being social is getting over the fear of rejection, but if rejection means death, then it’s easy to act confident and happy-go-lucky. I used this tactic last night talking to a cute girl. After a half hour of conversation, I knew I wanted to ask her out on a date. Then, the worst thing happened. I star...