GTM Full Throttle Roundtable- August 2026

training 24/7. So the digital twin— Huh?

Talk to the hand.

Yeah.

So I didn't really do the digital twin for internal use like that. I'm like, this is actually great because you could actually make a digital twin for onboarding clients, onboarding people for your company, or just maybe if you're a consultant, I would think that you could do that and say, listen, it's $50 to talk to my, to my digital twin or $150 an hour to talk to me. I saw, I saw people using that aspect as well. But we'll get started here in a couple of minutes. I'm just letting folks in the room. I will be posting the roundtable on YouTube and LinkedIn. So just keep in mind that it's semi-public information. The whole idea is to talk about ideas, tactics, tips, strategies, things that are working, things that failed. It's like a little kind of a TEDx/workshop/cohort. Is what today is, and then what I do every two weeks. And it's a great way. I pick out people that have registered, and also do like a one-on-one. And sometimes I will do a podcast with them as well. So that's something you should think about, you know, doing as well. Hi, Emily. Hi, Alicia. Chris, Andy. Rajiv, how you doing?

Michael, nice to see you.

Long time.

Hey, Joe. Hey, Melissa. Um, just letting some folks in here. Oh yeah, please put your contact information in chat and don't just put LinkedIn URL. Put down like what you do and why you're on. Even if you want to put like, hey, I'm, I'm in Orlando, that's, that's always nice to know where everybody's calling in. Yeah, if you guys put— also put your information where, where you're calling in from. Um, I'm excited also to have Razorfish back in here because something I grew up with in digital marketing. So I see a bunch of your folks are coming in today, right, Emily?

Yeah, I actually— I got a lot out of the last one, so I don't know if the invite was shareable, but I invited My colleague who does our demand gen, Abby, in paid media, and also kind of a junior person who supports her, because this is exactly what we need to do is like, we do emails, we do roundtables, we do LinkedIn, and it's like, we need to learn this. So thank you for approving them to join.

No worries.

You can invite your friends, your family, your clients, your coworkers. Obviously, if you need help building this type of approach for Razorfish, that's what I do as well. But absolutely, I won't turn that into a commercial. You could talk about that offline. But I'm gonna start the roundtable here. And basically, it's— this is a place to put your information in the chat, which is kind of like your sales Mission right there, right? Here's what I do. Here's why I'm here. Here's what I'm looking to hire for, or here's what I'm— here's what I'm looking to sell or strategically talk to someone. I mean, I've had people get some pretty big deals from doing these roundtables because they're talking to each other. I'm not in their way. Okay, if you think about it, some of these folks like Bob in the past have taken their LinkedIn and my LinkedIn, and we've done a joint roundtable. So the whole idea there is I have no clue who Bob's connected to in this case when we did it. And we had like 50 people from Bob's LinkedIn. And what he got out of it was obviously seeing my folks and being part of this group, but also it re-engaged his LinkedIn that he hasn't touched all the time. There's 10,000 or 15,000 people that he had. And he got a lot of like, hey, Bob, what are you doing? I haven't talked to you in a while. Bob, do you want to kind of comment on like what that was and then maybe introduce yourself real quick?

Um, so introduction, I'm Bob. I'm a management consultant. I work on top-line revenue for folks. Um, and what I did with Michael here was, like he just said, we shared contacts, uh, put together a quick present— quick presentation where, uh, we were pulling apart Basically any of the problems that they had. I basically kind of made it a roundtable so people can start chiming in. The great thing, like, again, like he mentioned, is that people that I hadn't spoken to in a long time had actually said, you know, where have you been? I'm like, well, I've been busy, I guess. Too busy to talk to you, I guess. But the fact is that it really helped me reconnect with all of the people that are really important. If there's one thing I would say, though, it's Be careful how many you're going to bring in there, because if you get too many, you're not going to have a chance to really talk to everyone, and you're going to have really low engagement. But, you know, do it with a good number of people, 20, 30, 40, 50, something like that. Don't do it with 1,000 because—

No, no.

Yeah, that's just too much.

That's too much.

But do it with enough people that you can actually have a conversation, because that's what it's all about, is just communicating with each other.

I'm gonna also introduce Suzanne, who actually helped me build this one. Bob just told you about one we probably did maybe a year ago, but Suzanne, we took her LinkedIn and we automated this and basically built a nice audience. We did, I think we did one already, right, Suzanne? This is the second one?

We have, yep. And we have 11th and 25th.

Yep. So introduce yourself real quick. And talk about kind of what did help when we did some sort of partner approach. I think partner approach on this roundtable is important because for me, I would never have so many meetings, so many deals cooking right now if I didn't say, hey, I don't want to pitch slap people. I want to team up with Bob and Suzanne, whoever else I've done this with, and say—

Right.

Let's do this joint approach where I take your contacts and my contacts and let's blend them together, because if we sell to the same people, we still compete. So we'll talk a little bit about partner approaches and also thinking about this LinkedIn approach, email approach, but using roundtables and podcasts as the bait. Not that you're doing a pitch. Swap and say, okay, yeah, I don't really want you on my roundtable. No, we're having a roundtable. But the whole idea is you give first and say, hey, I want you to be part of this. I want you to have a voice. I want you to learn as a cohort, right? If you charge for this, which people do— I don't charge for this— I think you're missing the point of it. I'm trying to, to develop relationships that possibly could help me versus worry about $50 per person per month. Which could add up to $5K a month, which is great. But then I have 50 clients wondering what the cohort is about. So I'm dealing with things I really don't want to deal with. I want this to be kind of a free-flowing thing. Um, so Suzanne, why don't you give your feedback and then talk about a tactic or strategy, which is what this really thing is about, that you learned that was great?

Good morning, everybody. I see some familiar faces. I'm very excited. Melissa, I'm looking at you. Emily, hi. And, well, first of all, thank you for having me on. I'm excited. I've been blasting everyone's LinkedIn up with the 11th and the 25th because I'm excited to do this with Michael. I think one of the best things, the takeaways from this is getting people in the room that you wouldn't normally get in the room, meaning this amount of people.

Dave, could you, uh, move?

We're gonna move forward with the transmission fluid and we're gonna move forward with the stream.

We got—

you might need to mute him a little bit.

I'm trying to find the, uh—

no problem.

Okay, wait, hold on, let me— I'm trying to find this thing here and I can't. Those items we're doing. Dave Weston. Yeah, we'll have to hold off till like the next. Yeah. The participants button.

I'll give you a list.

Annoying as heck. Okay, I found it. Perfect.

Cool.

We have audience participation already.

I love it. Yeah. Right.

No, I think one of the coolest things, one is this group of people wouldn't normally have the opportunity. We'd have to travel or we'd have to be at a conference, to be in the same room, the thought leadership and the topics that we've already discussed in the last few meetings, I think are really fascinating, whether what's close to you is revenue or, you know, go-to-market message or, you know, whatever you're looking to meet. Also understanding what everybody else's pain points and sharing that and sort of how we can support each other as a community, as a larger community, whether we're working directly or indirectly together. So that's one of the things that I found. I'm excited For our 2 sessions on the 11th and the 25th, specifically because there are people that I wouldn't normally be in the room with. Um, some, some people that I love spending time with, I just don't have time. Um, and I think we're gonna have a different conversation. So, you know, what are the pain points? What is keeping everyone up at night would be my question, you know, for everyone here.

So yeah, that's a good question. Like, what's— I mean, AI is a big, it's a big topic right now. You know, are you seeing a, are you, are you seeing a drop in— I mean, some of us are entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, or developing services, which is what I do. I've definitely seen in the last 12 months it's been tougher to get clients because people are like, I'm just gonna do this myself. I'm like, great, but do you know how to talk to your AI? To get what you need. You still need someone to orchestrate it and ask it the right questions. And then, like, even just Cloud Cowork, if you don't know how to set it all up and do what you need to do and orchestrate and think about all the things that you want to do, you're never going to ask it the right questions. So yeah, you might have to— you might be able to get rid of some lower-level people in your life, virtual assistants, you mean, assistants in your life, but you still need to be able to talk to it. So that's, that's what, that's what Suzanne and I are asking her. Like, what, what can you use help on? Like, what's driving us? For me, it's, it's just making sure that for me, the cloud coworker is— I have it dialed in. How about Emily? You wanna, you wanna interact here on that one?

Sure. Sure. So, so right now, you know, we have you know, interesting legacy problem just internally where we use Salesforce, but we've been primarily using it as, you know, a forecasting tool. So when we're, you know, we don't have it up to date with the contacts and everything of our existing clients so much. So kind of we need to beef up that discipline. What we are absolutely amazing at And Abby or Abigail, who's on the line, does this with Jaidalyn, is demand gen. And, you know, bringing people in through, you know, they're downloading our papers, they're attending our webinars. And so we have complete information on them. So as far as growing net new logos, that's really our focus because we have that completed information. We have permission to reach out. So, you know, we get usually a couple hundred a month. So really our challenge is sorting through, hey, so with these new leads, and this is very basic, you know, we may put them into Claude and be like, based on Razorfish's ideal customer profile, which are these things, who are the top contacts and brands that we should be speaking to right now based on what's going on at their moment?

Mm-hmm.

And so they're actually able to organize that for us. And then we'll also look at organized by vertical. And then we're able to target that because they've opted in and put them in our financial services, you know, or, you know, your other ones. So we're fantastic with that. So now we've perfected that. We're trying to— our whole focus is on the meaty middle. How do you move that forward? Because it's like It's, it's, that's kind of our role now. So that's why it's like once you're past that, you know, we are doing more personalized outreach. We're trying to really, you know, look at, you know, we can invest in these companies. It's going to be a longer relationship until we maybe get an RFP. We're not looking for something that's going to close now. We're looking for something, an opportunity in 2027. So it's really kind of operationalizing the meaty middle and moving it to more of a one-on-one relationship. That's, that's ours. And that's with net new logos.

So you're, you're basically had the first call with them. Like, I'm trying to sort of make sure I understand what your, your ask.

How do you move people that you have that are like ideal targets in the meaty middle? How are, and so you know who they are, they've opted in. How are you using— like, right now we are sending them kind of a drip campaign of different emails, but what are other ways to automate that? Like, does anyone build a bot that they can, like, search their— continually search their LinkedIn for new posts that we can comment on? Like, how do you actually engage them more?

There's LinkedIn automation tools that I use, right? It's my services that Little comment on their, on their post. You, you can also do things where you, you endorse them. I didn't like that idea.

Yeah.

But endorsing people, I get, hey, Michael, thanks for the endorsement for CRM. And that's my—

I'd rather do the comments. Like, that is great. And is that a tool that's built into LinkedIn that we can—

No.

It's like a, it's, it's a, it's one of these tools that I use that I private labeled.

For me.

Yeah. So I— that's kind of one of my things that I do. But whether you use me or use anybody else or do it yourself, I'm just kind of giving you some ideas here.

This is what we need. It's like, that is fantastic.

And other people could chime in too. I'll let, I'll let Caitlin after I'm done here. So making comments is great. Endorsements is great. Beef up your, your, uh, Your recommendations on LinkedIn too. I have 150 of them. Like, if people write about you and then you— and then we do a podcast. That's what I would do. When you want to do a podcast, I can maybe get someone your level for sure to come on my podcast because you want to talk about your journey. So my podcast is like, hey, I want you to be on my podcast, but I need to talk to you about what the podcast is about. And that conversation before the podcast Is really a discovery call, you know, and I'm getting content. And then I post, hey, Emily, which we should do this together, Emily, but then I post the podcast and say, Emily talked about this, this, and this. Then you get tagged. So doing those types of things are touchpoints that I do to drive them. So I would do those types of things, joining groups on LinkedIn. If you join a group, you could send them a message without having—

Yeah.

InMails.

I like the—

I love the idea of the automated comments and then joining groups where you can send them messages without linking in. And I think the other one is right now we do private CMO roundtables and it's so we're able to get CMOs to speak and we have a Forrester analyst work with us. So it's kind of like off the record and it's giving value to our high-level clients. And then we also bring in new clients. That way, but it's a longer-term process because it's like building that trust. The podcast thing I really like. I mean, it is to build a podcast. So I think what I can do is talk to our PR and be like, what are some podcasts we can target and pitch to, for our clients, for, you know, prospects to speak with us on or something like that?

Yeah, do it like being part of someone else's podcast. Is okay. That's PR, right?

Take it.

The whole idea is to get them the meeting. So if you do your podcast and say, I'm starting up a podcast, I'm Emily, I'm at Razorfish, I just wanna get to know your journey.

Yeah.

The whole idea is not the podcast is the, the beautiful thing. The whole idea is the interview before the podcast to learn about their journey. That's how you build a relationship. So now you have a relationship. Now you can sell them or push, push them to sell.

Yeah, we don't have the capacity. You know, I know it's ridiculous to be part of Foolish, be like, we don't have the capacity to do a podcast, and I'd want to invite people and have it be a legitimate podcast. So it's just that we don't have that right now. But if we do the other things and we can show that, hey, we're moving leads through the funnel, we're making progress, we're getting them here, Then that gives us the level 2 to be like, and now we want you to invest in a podcast. So I feel like, yeah, you know, like we're showing that value.

The roundtable could be a way of do like this whole thing that you guys can do for yourself is do instead of a private CMO roundtable or whatever, do one where you invite VP of marketing, CMOs, executives where they talk to each other. It's not because the whole idea of being able to learn from other people, not just 3 other people.

Exactly.

Yeah, so that's, that's the whole idea. I, I, I, I'm gonna— Caitlin, what do you, what's your thoughts?

No, I, I like it.

Yeah.

So I, so LinkedIn is our number 1 marketing channel and sales channel. And this is, this is like how, what we do for other companies is we help them show up on LinkedIn. So this is something I've spent a ton of time studying. The, the commenting on kind of like, let's say everyone has a list of kind of the key accounts they're targeting.

Thanks.

Commenting on their post is a great way to build like parasocial relationships with people so that then when you're— someone does do the outreach, the name is, you know, they recognize. And like, I've gotten so many meetings from doing that strategy. I would just caution on the automated commenting because bad comments can have the opposite reaction of what you're looking for, right? Like everyone's really like, that's a hot button issue on LinkedIn right now where everyone's complaining about like these and everyone gets it. When you post, you get these like You can just tell it's AI generated. Another strategy that's worked really well that I think is kind of like a pro move is I've done things where I've tagged like, so let's say I have 20 key accounts I'm trying to go after and I'll, and so I typically sell into like, we sell into like CMOs, VPs of marketing, head of marketing kind of thing. And so if I were to do that, I might look and find like 5 marketing teams that I really respect. that I love the stuff they're doing. And I actually put together like a shout-out kind of gratitude post where I call out and tag those people. But you can't do it— there's a nuance to it. You can't be like just like tag, tag, tag. That's super annoying. You have to do it in a very thoughtful way that shows that you actually know these teams and have studied something they've done and are like complimentary of a campaign they've put together or something.

Yeah.

And I've done like, I am like, that's how I ended up getting connected to the CMO at Zapier and like talking with him and having great conversations with him. And so that's been a really great methodology for us as well. And people love like the recognition around that.

Yeah, Kayla, I would like to add to that because if you do take these posts, do you put them on their um, on their wall, right?

It's—

and it says, I see that you did this, and it's trying to align with them, and it's using AI. It looks very horrible, right?

Yeah.

So you gotta— what I do is, that's congrats on this, I would love for you to share your story on a podcast that I'm doing. Do it so it's, it's giving but doesn't look like you're using automation. You know, and then, or don't use automation too much on your top 20 because you really want to win those.

Yeah, it's worth it for you to like say something thoughtful and engaging because what you comment is how you build trust and authority in some way too, right? Because then it's your opportunity to kind of show that you understand the space well, have a depth of subject matter expertise kind of, or you're funny or witty or kind of whatever the secret sauce is.

And then on LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you can go mention the news recently posted, recently changed jobs. So if you use that with automation, at least say congrats on your new job. If they posted, you could kind of filter out so it doesn't time out either. Anytime you use automation and it basically has problems with it because it's not— they don't— they didn't post something, it becomes a real big problem. Caitlin, could we ask your kid? Was it— what's her name?

This is Mira.

Mira, what's your thoughts on AI, Mira?

What do you think?

What does Mommy do for work, Mira?

Working.

She works.

Yeah, there we go. She's filming.

Michael, I'm really curious about the podcast piece. I haven't had problems getting people on my podcast, and I really like connecting with people. The, the thing that I'm trying to kind of figure out is what's the strategy around— you, you don't want to like have someone on the podcast and then immediately turn around and try to sell them. It feels like that's a very like thinly veiled kind of concept. Like, how are you like nurturing the relationship after someone comes on the podcast? What is then— what is kind of the strat— like, what is the next steps after?

So I, I do For me, and this has worked great, I've had 70 episodes in the last 3 months, right? And yeah, but those podcast pre-calls about getting on my podcast are discovery calls. So I'll go through the podcast, I'll tell them why you do it. I said, think about why you're on this call, Samantha. It's because I gave you something and I want you on my show. But realistically, Right. I'm doing this because I want to get to know you, because possibly we could partner. Don't say sell. Don't, don't be too, uh, aggressive. It's business dating. Think about like if you're— if you were single back in the day and you tricked somebody to, to do something, it doesn't look good. So your point is, I've had 2 out of 1,000 people go, wait, you put me on this because you want to sell me? You know, that's 2 out of— I'll take 2 out of 1,000 being a little irritated about, but I do the podcast and they are getting PR out of it, and it's something that you could take Opus or AI and say, cut it up, take those pieces, put it on here. Make sure you have an opening and an ending with animation, which is what I use on my waiting room, right? Can't just get on a Zoom call and call it a podcast.

Have—

I'm a production guy, TV production guy, did in the military too. Have some production quality to the podcast to make it Look good. But I never get asked, hey, how many, how many viewers do you have? Every single time, maybe 1 of 1,000 people say that and they don't want to come on. But realistically, my podcast is to get to know you, and I don't charge for it, and I'm not trying to sell you sponsorships on it, but I am going to get to know you. And it's before you get on it because I want to know if you'd be someone I even want to interview.

So you, you reach out to them Ask them if they'd wanna be on the podcast, do the discovery call with them at the beginning to prep for the podcast. And in the discovery call, you say something to the lines of like, would be great, you know, love, excited to get to know you better, you know, trying to understand if there's, you know, some, we could partner on something in the future. You do whatever due diligence you need to make the podcast great. Then you package up the media, you provide it to them as kind of a, like, I wanna make you look good.

Nice.

This is your thought leadership. Kind of piece. And then is there something that happens after that point? Like, do you touch— like, I'm assuming they go into kind of like your communication sequences and drip campaigns and things like that. But is there anything that's happening kind of after the interview is complete?

It goes on LinkedIn. I tag them so they get all the people that are tagged to them gets, gets information. You know, at one point I would love to sell sponsorship and make that a revenue path for me, but I'm not worried about that today. And then there's tons of— for me, I do tons of roundtables for my clients too. So I take people that went to my roundtables, people I did roundtables for, and I cross-mingle them. So like Suzanne's people and my people and Tom's people, we all— we're all like cross-mingling, even though she might not know Tom, right? So it's, it's not a—

hey, I'm—

I, I don't like the whole like Let me drip market that person the rest of their life. You know, I just— newsletters, I don't care who can— anytime I send something, who cares? So what? Why you telling me this? Why you bugging me? That's how I know they're thinking. So why would I want to do that to them when I don't like it? Or making phone calls, it's just one of those things you just gotta— business day, it's like dating in life. It's like, don't be annoying, you know? But if you do If you do a newsletter all about me, me, me, I, I, I, it's very self-serving. That's why to me the roundtables and the podcasts are very good. I actually did something that has nothing to do with roundtables and podcasts. I said, hey, I'm thinking about going to Inbound and HubSpot, which is the conference. Can you give me your opinion if you think it's a good conference to go to? 4,000 people sent 600 responses. 45 meetings, didn't go to, didn't go to HubSpot's conference. So my whole thing is I want meetings and I want business deals and I want to hopefully get clients so I could be better off than I am today, right? So that's, you ask opinion-based things too, that works a lot too. But don't just say, hey, it's Michael, I do lead generation, blah blah blah blah. I even changed my name from Full Throttle Falato Leads to GTM Full Throttle. Because I don't want to be a lead gen company. So you got— I think today you got to start thinking, reworking what you offer if you guys are solopreneurs and say, are we going to be the same old same old? Are we going to be something where we service people too? Because AI can do a lot of the stuff that we thought that was very unique. So now we got to figure out how to be more of, let me do it for you and save you time because there's you're still not an expert. Does that answer your question, Caitlin? Let me go to Bob since Bob's been patiently waiting here.

I love listening to you, Michael. All right. So getting back to Emily here for a second. Emily, I know you're with Razorfish. Are you talking about a solution for Razorfish or a solution for your clients?

A solution for Razorfish.

Okay.

So in your Salesforce, do you have Something, some sort, some sort of a qualification tool built into it where you can score your people, something like MedPic. Do you have that built into your Salesforce?

We have it built. Yes, we have it built into our Salesforce.

Okay, good.

So that's that because that's where most people can kind of fall down. The probability of you closing is about 2 questions. Is the customer ready to buy? And is the customer ready to buy from us? And so, you know, if you can actually answer those 2 questions, and MedPic does a good job of actually getting to the bottom of that, then you're better off actually being able to close deals.

Yeah.

So, as long as you're doing that, that's fine. That's really the only thing.

I actually can comment on that. Like, we're more like, you know, no one is basically going to be like, okay, they're ready to buy and gonna Reach out because they download something and be like, now we're gonna spend a couple million dollars with you. It's like, really, our audience, it's about getting in front of them like 4 months, 5 months before they even know they're gonna buy. So these are longer-term sales, and that's why we're trying to build that relationship now. And kind of what Caitlin spoke about, like, we're getting these people to roundtables, we're interacting with them, we're meeting up at conferences. So I feel like that's not— it's kind of like, when and how do you turn it to a sales conversation? And that's maybe something that, you know, I'm working out with our BD team. It's like, what are the qualifiers that you need? Because they're working on so many RFPs that they don't have time for that. So we're really kind of leaning in past what our remit is in trying to do that. But you know what I mean? If they're, if they're in the mood, if they're going to buy, And it's usually a committee buy. It's never one person making the decision. So it's like we're, we're getting in ahead of that. Okay, cool.

And what, and what, quick on that one, what are they, the big brands that are B2C or B2B or both?

We do both. We do both. So Samsung is our largest client. You know, then we have, you know, Amica Insurance, then we have New York Life Insurance, you know, then we have like Church Dwight, which is like a brand of brands. So, You know, basically our target is $2 billion plus in annual revenue and a company that has hired a new CMO in the last 3 years and has made hires in areas of innovation. Those are kind of our targets.

Have you used LinkedIn to look for CMOs that took a new job? that are mentioned too. There's ways to do this in LinkedIn where you can pinpoint all those little things for intent.

Yeah, so that is great. And I think we have a great program where they're actually already opting in. So our— it isn't a problem of getting them, it's a problem of like, how do we then move them forward? And we're gonna like, you know, Abby, Jada, and I who are on this, Like, talk in a smaller group and maybe do, do a test. We're like, look, we're gonna pick 40 of these people or 50 of these people, and for H2, we're gonna, you know, do bespoke comments on them. I mean, Jaidelyn and Abby can have my LinkedIn access, and they take 10, I take 10, they take 10, whatever it may be. So ours is more like, how do we, you know, Get on the phone with them? How do we meet up with them? How do that, you know, how do we actually make it, you know, more one-on-one?

A pre, um, like cohort before the conference. Is it something I, I saw people doing as well and I started doing? It's like, hey, yeah, we're gonna have this little get-together on Zoom before this conference starts, and we want to get them together at the conference as well and maybe take them out to dinner. So a pre, a pre, a pre-Zoom thing so that when they get to get, when they're there, they go, oh, I saw you on, on our Zoom call.

Good idea.

Yeah.

Because we try to be, because we work with so many different brands and senior levels, like we try to be like, that's our capital is that we can introduce people to other people and they wanna meet their peers.

You think of this even better. Now let Rajiv go. I used Suzanne and I, I used her LinkedIn, right, to, to help us build this, and she's freaking awesome. Think about— and I would never have met you without Suzanne, Emily. Okay, now take those people that you have, those 20 people you want to meet, and say, Tom from Samsung, I want to do this, but I want to use your LinkedIn for 2 weeks, and I'll give you guys A, B, and C for doing that. So then I automate their LinkedIn for you, and we take all those people that you would never would have known who Samsung knows as they're putting their arm around you saying, Emily, it's Razorfish. I know, and she's cool. That's what, that's what, that's what happened today with Suzanne and me.

Right?

I would never have met these people. They trust her, and then my people trust me to trust her. So there's— that's the biggest thing that got me meetings and introductions is not doing any of this automation approach for myself. It's really borrowing someone's LinkedIn together that we benefit. And so win-win. Now, if it's not a win-win, it's— I, I don't think people want to do it. And she wouldn't— Suzanne would never have done this if it wasn't going to help her, especially since I'm not charging her to do it. You know, right?

That is true. Yes, that is all facts.

Yep.

So recap, I'm doing this from the Jersey Shore too because I'm about to wrap up my vacation. That's how much of a commitment I have to Michael, right?

If you stay out there, forget about it, right? Is Joey Bagabones out there throwing a throw? He is.

Then he is.

All right, Rajiv.

Thanks for the opportunity, Michael. And of course, I always love when Michael makes the allegory of, uh, business networking and dating. It always makes me chuckle, but it is You know, he is spitting facts and I just love that he's so real. The comments that I'd like to make, you know, for based on what a couple of people have shared is one, you know, Emily, like based on what you shared, like one approach that is that I found to work is that there's like a new system I discovered that is looking for a signal that validates a prospect based on behaviors and actions that they've taken on platform, which is like, for example, if you're kind of targeting a person and you wanna kind of pitch them with something related to, I don't know, let's say MarCom. And if they've interacted with MarCom-related content on the platform, that signals to the system that they're a valid prospect because timing is a factor. So if they've interacted with that content, let's say in 2 weeks or something, it kind of validates to the system that they are a valid prospect. So that's like one approach that I've found because it's not always the right message to the right person, but it's also timing.

Right?

So that's like one factor that I found to work. Another, I think, and this is something that I think Caitlin might have mentioned, is about like when you're commenting on, you know, like people's comments, like in, you know, like a discussion or whatever. I think like when you're making a comment that's super insightful, that is something that allows for people to notice your point of view, even if you have a contrarian point of view. And I would even advocate to have a contrarian point of view because Oftentimes, I mean, no shade on anyone, but I've noticed that people are sometimes like sheeple. You know, they'll just kind of like just do yes, hurrah, rah rah rah. It's so nice. Thanks for sharing. Blah blah blah.

You're amazing. Blah blah.

Yeah, it's like it's the same old same old.

Or they look at your LinkedIn and they're pulling from a company that you don't work, or it's a actually it's a community. Like you're part of this platform that you're just a community member. I want to talk to you about what you're what you do at this. That's not even my company. So it looks like AI shit or slop.

AI shit, I like that. That's better than AI slop.

I'm gonna get a shirt that says, looks like AI shit. There you go.

Yeah, because that sounds more disgusting than AI slop, you know. But yeah, so essentially when you have that, when you're bold enough to share a contrarian point of view or even ask a very hard question, which is 100% related to the boss, It tells the author that, first of all, you've actually read it, you've processed it, and that you're asking an honest, genuine question to go deeper, as opposed to going to the surface level that most people do.

Honestly, that's, that's very helpful. And it's a great reminder that, you know, it is a relationship you're trying to build, and it seems like such a task today to actually read something. But You know, you're, you're right. If you're, if you're building a relationship and you're genuine about it, the least you can do is spend 2 to 5 minutes reading their posts and comment to show that you actually read it and then post something. So it's just like, it's just a nice reminder of that.

If it's dating, go back to Rajiv's thing. Bring me a flower.

You know.

One, you know, one tiny, tiny nuance to this too is if you're post— if you're commenting on someone's post that gets lots of comments, My recommendation is to always tag the person in the post because you get a notification if you're tagged. But I often get a bunch of comments on my on my on posts, and if they don't tag me, I don't always see that because it's a few days old, and I tend to post a lot on LinkedIn, and so I have lots of activity and stuff happening. And so if you're you know Emily, the accounts you're going after like big Samsung execs kind of all these things. If there's a lot of activity on there, just Tagging them will make sure that they actually read the comment that you spent the time to put on there.

Don't mean like I read, if I read their comment or they posted a piece of thought leadership, actually being like, you know, @so-and-so.

Yeah.

And then you add the comment. Yeah, exactly.

All right.

And just to add to what Caitlin was saying, like the strategy that, because I think Caitlin, you're right when you said that there is a nuance to it. The nuance that I use when I do that is I kind of look at the last 2 weeks of one-on-ones that I've had. And I tag those people in the comments because they're recent connections. So there's a high likelihood, I mean, no hubris intended here, but there's a high likelihood that they would at least remember who I am because I am pretty memorable. And then when I tag them in a post that's related to them, because I mostly meet with a lot of MarCom people. So, and if it is a post related to MarCom and I'm tagging them and they know that this is something that can help them, then there's a very high likelihood that they're going to see that. And more importantly, there's also a high likelihood that they would respond to it because these are not people from far and wide and distant. These are people that I myself have recently met with personally in the last, like, you know, 1 or 2 weeks.

So you could actually take the comments and, and just cut and paste it and put it in, in like your, your AI and say, I want to write a very personal message for me that has emotion. tied to it based on what everybody's saying. So you think about where you can use it, and then don't take it from that and put it up there. Rewrite it. But that can get— that can make it a starter. Like, again, when I asked about what you think about inbound for HubSpot, thinking about going, that's— I'm asking for your opinion. It doesn't look like a bot, you know. Uh, Martin.

So everyone, Greetings from Europe. I believe I'm the only one maybe here.

What part? What part of Europe?

I'm in Spain.

Okay.

Originally, I'm from Lithuania, but I'm living in Spain for ten years. So anyway, thanks, Michael, for invitation to this meetings. I really enjoying seeing people from the marketing field. I spent maybe seventeen years in the marketing, so and twenty. 6 or something building digital systems. So before AI and before automation become a sexy thing. So at the moment, I was listening to you, what you were saying about the podcast, like inviting leads and talking with them and making them a star of the show and etc. I'm not a fan of this. And but I would like to share my point of view how I do podcasts, and maybe some of you will find something interesting and valuable here. So my goal is like, sorry, I don't see Emily, I think. Yeah, Emily said like, hey, I'm following after those. I have 20 of those leads what I would like to work with and etc.

Yeah.

So how I do that, I find out who is authority for those 20 leads, who is the bigger authority.

Like, who is the biggest authority of the 20 leads?

Yeah, not out of them, but for them. And also I'm tracking what they are talking about, the topics, the problems they're having, and etc. So I'm trying to get a bigger shark, let's say, in the field, put it on the podcast and talk about all these topics, what, let's say, others had. And then when I see what it's repeating, I already have the clips out of the podcast and say, hey, by the way, you can check the clip we talked with XYZ about the same topic. And it immediately creates authority for you because, because you talked with someone from the field who knows what they are talking about. And etcetera. Maybe not; it really depends. But you can present it that way, and and then you are you can ask the question like yeah, what is your opinion on the same topic? Maybe you have different point of view, and this is how you get into the conversation. And you know, it it starts build then you start building the the relationships. So not even inviting them into the podcast because not Not everyone wants to be on the podcast, but using podcasts to start conversation.

So, or fireside, I call that a fireside chat of an expert too, like a subject matter expert.

Yeah.

So there's different labels, right? You can, it could all be a podcast in your brain, but it's really, you call it something else so they don't think it's a podcast because they might be like, you know what, I'm getting 15 podcasts a week of people that are nobodies. But a fireside chat with Samsung's chief marketing officer, learn what made him successful. What, you know, that's a way to feed the— you gotta think about ego, ego, ego. Everybody has an ego, especially people that are in a big, big brand and they want to build their brand. And it's not necessarily about Samsung, it's about that person's journey.

Yeah.

How about Andy here?

Yeah, hi everyone, um, Andy from Seattle here. I am more a technologist who came into marketing and, uh, did a lot of marketing stuff over the last 5 years. Um, I mean, in this meeting the topic of AI was coming up a couple times, and, uh, if that's okay, I wanted to come back and The whole idea, Andy, is to learn from each other, right?

You know, and we're not— no one's really pitching here, which is great. I don't like that. But we want to just throw like what's working, what's not, and just be concise. I think sometimes I, I go on too long, so we just want to make sure we get to the point and just say, here's what I think and here's what I'm asking and here's how— what I can help you with. Does that make sense? Yeah.

So I'm curious in people's opinion, uh, how marketing is transforming with AI and, um, and how they are rethinking their own jobs in this new world. And I think we're sitting on a new evolution. What Cowork is doing still requires technical skills, and in one year you will not need any technical skills to use AI. And so it removes a lot of boundaries in terms of what was a lot of effort before suddenly is not an effort, like running a podcast is less effort. You can do more. But at the same time, Michael, you brought up a point that what customers will want to do themselves is probably more than they would outsource. So how these trends people see is what I'm curious on.

Where are you calling in from, Andy?

Seattle.

Where?

Seattle.

Where's that?

Seattle, Washington. State, yeah, West Coast.

Oh, but where's your where's your accent from?

It's a Russian accent.

Da da. Nice to meet you. So does anyone? I know Matthew have your hand raised, but do you have maybe an answer for for Andy? In what regard, Michael? He was asking like what what was it? What was the question again, Andy? Just so I don't screw it up.

No, I think how we are as marketers rethinking our role in the world of AI that's coming now that can do probably 80% of what we previously did. So what is that 20% we're planning to do?

Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts about that.

Likewise.

Yeah, too many thoughts. You know, I'm, I know, like probably many of you, you've all been around since pre-internet. And I remember when the internet was first kind of getting going, it's like this is gonna transform the world and business. And it did in many ways. Think about a small business today that can compete with a Walmart. You know, if you think about products that you can buy and sell online, AI is, I think, even a greater transformational opportunity with sales and marketing. My point of view is that a lot of the old, what I would call the grunt work we had to do as marketers, data analysis, Even the idea of reporting, I think, Emily, you were talking about kind of reporting and dashboards before. I think that idea is going to be archaic in about 3 years. You're not going to have—

You're not doing predictive. It's past.

It's like, yeah, what happened last year? It's almost like, who cares? Because we're already reacting to the current and the now. My point being is that software, and my background's mostly in SaaS. I spent years at Adobe and actually worked with many of your businesses like Razorfish and Axiom and others. And the idea that you have a SaaS platform that has dashboards and reporting systems, etc., and then workflows, and then a database underneath that, all that's going away because those were built for humans. It's going to be AI agents that are going to be interacting with each other, which means all you really need is those data systems. The workflows are the AI agents and the dashboards are are for humans and the AI agents don't need those. So now the question becomes, what can AI do for me as an organization, as an individual marketer, if you will, that can supplant or replace all those systems? And I think it's tremendous. On this topic, Michael, with LinkedIn, one of the things that I do is I have— I do it personally, but I have AI agents that'll go look at a post. It'll do an analysis of the post. For example, the CEO of HubSpot was posting about something recently. And I thought I had a relevant comment to make to her. My AI will review the post, recommend a comment. It's always me commenting and reviewing and editing it, but it enables me, and I think any marketer now can be scaled up to a point where find the signal amongst all the noise, create my signal for me, allow me to review it and approve it. And now I can be a lot more productive instead of spending 6 hours on LinkedIn trying to find that. 3 or 4 good comments or posts I can make. Have the AI do all that grunt work for me, tee it up in a way it says, here's the ones that are most relevant to you. That's today. I think if you fast forward a year from now, you're gonna have AI proactively calling me and saying, hey, I found Yemini Rigon from HubSpot just posted something. I've got a great post for you. Here's what it says. Do you want me to post this for you? And I say, yeah, go do it. And I go back to my—

Would you want your workflow to be That you log in in the morning, all the accounts that you want to interact with and kind of build the relationships with. And if any one of those people have posted, it would kind of show you the post, give you the opportunity and kind of just line it all up. And then you're going to spend 20 or 30 minutes in the morning just going through and kind of commenting thoughtfully, building those relationships. And then you put that, you check the box and then you move on to the next thing of the day.

I think that's, that's a workflow for sure.

Yeah, that's—

I've got some of that mechanically, but it's, it's hard to do with AI just given LinkedIn's restrictions about bots being on their platform.

Well, our coworking has some tools for that. That's what I do.

Yeah.

Matt, I might connect with you after this session because this is one of the features that we're working on and kind of building out, and I'd love to just pick your brain a little bit on how you would want it to function for you. That would be really interesting.

Well, let me, let me, let me add, Caitlin, let me add something to the mix. Michael knows this, and I shared an MD file with the group. If you look at the chat, so the Zoom chat, you can copy the chat. So I just ran it through our personalized system because I have every webinar that I've attended of Michael's, which is now more than half a dozen. I have an entire memory stream of everything that's been discussed. So the MD file that you're looking at is crafted in that context. The point I'm trying to make is, Your AI will become your second brain, your memory. Michael, you've talked about digital twins. It'll remember all the context of everything that's happened in your past comments with said person from whatever business that you're commenting on. And now you can make an even more poignant comment and your AI will help you do that because I can't remember everything I've commented on or posted. I doubt many of us can. But if my AI says, hey, you said this is the thread of what you talked about over the last 6 months, Make this point, this will be more memorable based on the reactions or the interaction you've had with those users. So, yeah, Caitlin, happy to talk to you more about it.

We got about 8 minutes left, so I wanna make sure we get other people who haven't spoke yet. So, Grant.

Michael, I'm dialing in from the UK. I've got a completely different perspective to everybody else here. I'm an investment banker, and we use AI quite a bit in our business, but for data, not for speaking to people. We're very effective at actually speaking to humans, phoning them up, speaking to them, and seeing them. I've had 3 meetings today, all successful. We've landed business out of that, and quite complicated things. I think AI is killing the personal relationships. People actually want that. AI's got to sit in the background and actually do the heavy lifting, but the human interaction is becoming more and more important. People want to see you, they want to shake your hand, they want to maybe break a bit of bread with you, have a coffee, tea, whatever. That's becoming very, very— it's clear in our world, we can see it. So in the, in the high street of London, you've got to get out and see people. This thing with AI, because everybody replicates everybody else, and you can see clearly how much is AI. Some of my customers, when I started using AI for, for what's lots— what's a lot of people spoken about today, customers said, why are you doing that? It's not your voice. We know your voice well. Doesn't even look like you. So put your own picture on there, write your own stuff, because I don't like flowery things. Write a couple of sentences. And so my view is it's— you need to come back to the actual— it depends what you do. If you're a mass marketer, um, then I suppose mass marketing can work. I'm not a mass marketer. I need a couple of new customers every month and that's it, you know. But to be successful with it, hit rates nearly 100% with personal stuff. Yeah, personal stuff, meeting people, shaking their hand. 3 meetings today, all successful.

Thank you, Grant. I want to push it back to Suzanne, who's, you know, one of my key people that helped build this And get her sense of what's— what we talked about so far. And then also, why, why people work with you, Suzanne. Just not— just now, again, I don't like to do commercials for people on here, but when someone helps me build this, I let them because we're, we're partners, right? And if you control the event, it's your event. You can do what you want to do. And that's why I don't want everybody to pitch, because they can, you know, I can help them build it, or they can do their own. But Again, when you do it with me, I give you a little extra time to talk because you're awesome. Go ahead, Suzanne.

First of all, I love the conversation we're having this morning. I find it fascinating. It's great to hear from other people, like, how the synergy happens, right, on calls like this. Like, wait, I have a, you know, Matthew's like, I've got an answer to that. You know, it's just, it's fascinating. I think, Michael, thank you so much because getting everybody in the room and making sure that everybody shares is you know, incredibly important today's day and age where we just sit behind our computer wherever we are, whatever we're doing. So that is amazing. So thank you for doing that. Um, secondly, I'll introduce myself. I am doing the roundtables on the 11th and the 25th with Michael. So I will be, if I see you guys, I will be pointing you out and asking you questions. Um, I come from both the agency side and the brand side. Um, I started my career as a copywriter, made myself all the way to the C-suite in the ad world. In the pandemic, moved brand side, also started my own agency, which is called The Agency. Surprisingly, it was available. Uh, and I've been working for the last 7 years on building that up. I, uh, twofold. One, I help people turn into brands, and the other aspect is help, uh, small to medium businesses become larger brands. Um, so that's really where I sit, and this is fascinating to me because There are so many points that, you know, you— everybody has sort of contributed. And I loved seeing so many new and familiar faces on the call.

What's a tip, tactic, or strategy that you thought was incredible and it worked out either for you or your client, or something that failed miserably that you can help us learn from today?

Oh gosh, so many of both. I'm trying to think of a quick one that will hit in 4 minutes. A take or a tactic that worked for a client. Understand it. I think the hardest part of a client is getting them to understand their own brand. They live and breathe in it. So that moment where you actually create that relationship with a client and have them just talk and, you know, say, yeah, this is, this is who we are, this is what we do. That moment where you build trust is the moment that they help you. help them build themselves. So it, it, you know, it's that 1-to-1 connection that's critical to helping brands grow.

Awesome. Well, I just wanna say thank you to everybody for, for, for coming by. I got the jump here, but thanks for making time again. The ones that I do, this is the, the one I do at the first of each month, and then I have ones that I do every 2, every second Tuesday. 2nd and 4th Tuesday. So that's the next one is the 11th and then the 25th. And then I do a bunch for my clients. So if you look at my signature, there's the Luma links of all the ones I do, whether they're for me or for my clients and so forth. Please, the reason why I do this is to grow my business and grow other people's business. So please, if you can pay it forward, pay it back to everybody. But especially, um, I, I would love any, uh, introductions, personal introductions, or If you want to kind of team up like Bob and Suzanne and Rajiv did in the past where we, we made a, you know, let's use your LinkedIn. Let's help you guys grow your business and mine. So thank you so much, everybody. If you want to save the chat, there's 3 buttons, save chat, and that's everybody's information that put it in chat. All right. Take care, everybody.

Michael.