Growing Your Business on LinkedIn with Jackie Hermes | S01 E17

Hello everyone and welcome to New Breed's Adding Value podcast. My name is Guido and I'm the manager of Acquisition and Strategy at New Breed. For those of you who don't know, New Breed is a customer acquisition agency focused on helping B2B companies grow and expand their business. And we do this by following the inbound methodology, which at its core is about adding value before extracting value. So the goal of this podcast is to bring you stories of how people add value to their customers, their company and the individuals around them. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, give us a five star rating and check us out on newbreedmarketing.com today. I'm excited to have Jackie Hermes join the podcast. You're the founder? Yeah, I asked you right before we got started and I still messed it.

Up, but that happens.

You're the founder and the CEO of Axelity, which helps B2B SaaS, startups and scale ups grow with customer acquisition and lead generation. You're the co founder of When Women Lead, which supports Milwaukee Women's Entrepreneurship Week. And you recently spoke at the Digital Agency Expo in New York. So, Jackie, I really appreciate you taking the time to join today and welcome to the podcast.

Absolutely. Great intro. Thanks for having me.

So glad you're here. I want to get started at the beginning. When I was prepping for this episode, I found out that you got started by selling cookies. You were going to farmers markets and running demo stands in grocery stores, which was something you didn't picture yourself doing as a 24 year old MBA. So can you tell me what that was like and what you learned from your day selling cookies?

Yeah, absolutely. Oh gosh, I don't know. I kind of blocked that part of my life out now because it was the years ago and it was really hard. Like I, yeah, I was finishing my MBA when I started the company. I was working full time, I had a baby at home and just I think what it really taught me one is the ability to figure out anything. Like figuring out how to start a food company has so many different pieces involved that you would never even think of, like licensing and packaging and where you get the food made. Or in my case, I made it myself in a licensed kitchen for a while and then distribution and you know, how you get the product sold off of shelves. There's just, there's so much to learn and I had to figure all of that out from scratch. And also I've always been a hard worker, but it really kind of reinforced the need for hard work. You know, like the late nights up, cooking or creating packaging or making calls to grocery stores, trying to get them placed and working on the weekends. I kind of carried all of that work ethic over into this new company.

So were you doing the cookie business while you were getting accelity started or did you have to stop one to get the other one going?

I was. So I was doing the cookie business, geez, probably for like 8 to 12 months while I was starting acceleraty. And really starting the agency was just me freelancing on the side at first. Right. It wasn't. I didn't start scaling or doing any of what, what we're doing now, honestly, until like two years ago.

Okay, so what was it like then from going from starting off as a freelancer doing accelerate on the site to growing the business to where it is today?

Yeah, I mean, I was too conservative, right? Like, and I think a lot of people do that. I didn't want to take on any investment, I didn't take out any loans, I cash flowed the entire business. Which was the great thing about the cookies is that selling those helped me pay for, you know, the things that I needed to start accelety. But I mean, it was definitely a big transition into, from being that solo consultant or that freelancer that had all the flexibility in the world. You know, I could work at coffee shops, I could work whenever I wanted to, building a team and having an office and having kind of people that are counting on me. We started hiring probably two years in, so in 2015 and now we are going to be at probably about 20 employees by the end of the year. That's the goal.

That's awesome. So when you first got started, I know that at the time you hadn't been using LinkedIn as much from what I understand you of forced into that. So how did, how did that get going? I see you all over LinkedIn now. You're producing videos, it seems like on a daily basis. So what forced you or what circumstances led to you getting so involved in LinkedIn?

Yeah, absolutely. So one of the earliest content producers on LinkedIn was actually my first employee. When I started this company, he worked for me as an intern and he went on to start two other companies. And he has a big story about how he started a business and failed and started a business and failed and then really found his stride in telling stories and a lot of that he was doing on LinkedIn and he and I sat down together and he was like, you have to get on LinkedIn, you know, it's like early Facebook. No one's doing it. It's wide open for people like you. You'd be great on camera. And I was like, absolutely not. I just didn't want to do it. You know, no one really is super excited to be the face of the company and to have, you know, the. Not an obligation. I don't want to say it like that, but when you're producing content, you should be very consistent with it and how often you're putting it out and what you're. You open yourself up to criticism and feedback from people that you don't know as well. So after talking to me about it multiple times, probably a few months later started, and I'm really glad that I did.

So do you carve out time on a daily basis to make sure that you get those videos done, or does it kind of come off a little bit more naturally, organically? So when an idea pops in your head, you have a space available to just record a video.

It's a mix. So I record videos twice a week, typically, and so I'll record a few at a time. And it's often me keeping a list of different things that I hear while I'm talking to prospects or conversations that my team has or articles I read or things I hear in podcasts. And I'm just kind of constantly consuming and syndicating. Not really even syndicating, but turning that content into my opinion. You know, I'll hear something. I'm like, I completely disagree with that. Or honestly, a lot of it comes from people, things that people say to me, or things that happen on the team. So I shoot twice a week, and then I will just randomly shoot videos when I'm feeling motivated to, you know, walking down the street or whatever. A lot more of the those go on to Instagram, then go on to LinkedIn. Because with LinkedIn, there's a process around it, right? You have to get a caption, you have to write really good copy for it to take off, et cetera.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And you mentioned earlier that you're going to receive some feedback. Some of that would be negative. Was there anything along the road, as you've been doing this, that's kind of made you second guess whether this was the best approach if you received any feedback that made you stop and think, huh, this is kind of scary, almost.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. One of probably one of the earliest videos I put out was about going through divorce as a woman in business, and that was a very hot topic on LinkedIn people did not like that at all. And I published the video on a Sunday night and I woke up and I had hundreds of thousands of views on the video, hundreds of messages on LinkedIn, and most of them were overwhelmingly positive, like from women saying, I've gone through this, I feel like I need to hide it, I haven't even told people, etc. And just, you know, there are trolls on every platform, lots of people with nasty comments. I actually took that day off that Monday because I was like, you know, I couldn't handle it. I didn't have super thick skin. Gosh. Now stuff like that rolls off my back because I've been through it over and over again. But at first, when you're receiving that kind of criticism and it's not even constructive, it's just kind of mean, you know, it can be. It can be a little bit harder. So I really, really questioned if I had done the right thing on that day. And I'm glad I kept going.

Yeah, I'm glad that you kept going, too, because the content that you're producing now is incredible. I try to keep track of it as much as I can. And those videos and the posts that you create are consistently very, very helpful. It's great to see people that are putting themselves out there and doing that. So since you've started doing this, which, from what I understand was in 2018 or so, what. How has that contributed to Axelity's growth?

Mm. I actually. So you mentioned that. I was just speaking at the Digital Agency Expo. This is one thing that I went back and we track all of our lead sources and stuff like that, but I actually looked at, in the amount that we've grown in the last year, the lead sources of all of the deals that we've closed and how much revenue I can attribute to LinkedIn, and the number was it was over half a million dollars. It was like $568,000 in contracts. And the funny thing is, I'm not out specifically hunting for prospects on LinkedIn. I'm just building an audience and people are like, oh, what does she do? Oh, what does her company do that could be a fit for us? And I'm interested in learning more. So it's super inbound, as you know.

Yeah. And from what I've seen the majority of those videos, like, you could watch one of those and not even realize that you have an agency off the bat. A lot of them are just about, like you said, your opinion on certain topics within the industry or matters that might not even be related to what Accelity does. So how do you decide what topics are worth posting and which ones you're going to talk about?

Yeah, I mean, so that works for me because I am someone who's growing a startup and I'm speaking to other people who are growing startups. Right. And so I'm talking about the mistakes I've made, the decisions I've made, how I do certain things, things that I've noticed that our clients do that I agree with or don't agree with. So I try to keep it in that realm. But really any business topic goes, I mean, I've talked about different things, like what it's like being a woman in business. I'm about to put out a video on a harassment issue that happened to someone on our team, with someone outside of our team, and kind of how we were able to deal with that. So I think people just really appreciate the insight and no one's out there like really talking about what it's like to grow a business. Right. Like you see the highlight reel, but you don't see the ins and outs in the day to day.

Yeah, it's so great to. And it's refreshing to see people that are willing to be authentic on video and you see other companies that are leveraging that as well. I had Mark Killens join the podcast from Drift a few weeks ago, and I think Drift is another great example of the type of company that's willing to be authentic, willing to do videos off the cuff and just talk about things that matter in people's lives, lives, whether that relates directly to what they do or to or otherwise. So that authenticity, you can see, plays a huge role in engagement on social media, which is awesome to see. And that kind of ties into the next area that I wanted to ask you about. So we've mentioned briefly the speech that you gave at the Digital Agency Expo, New York, and your, your speech was on the accessibility approach. Can you explain what that is and how LinkedIn and the videos that you've been doing plays a role in that?

Yeah. So really it is kind of three pronged and it's not something that I was like, ooh, I want to create this approach and implement it at my agency. It's just that we have consistently made decisions to be very transparent with our prospects, with our clients, with our audience in all facets of the business. And it has kind of summarized into this approach that other businesses or agencies can take and use. So the first part. Well, I'll touch on LinkedIn videos first. So it's not even just LinkedIn videos. It's personal branding as it relates to the business. So I have a personal brand. I'm working on growing my Instagram as well, and I'm the face of the company. Then in Q1 of this year, I actually had my full team go out there and start working on building their personal brands too. And I think a lot of people think this is crazy because you're paying their employees to build a brand around themselves. But when my team is out posting videos on LinkedIn or they're out posting articles and they each have a medium that they like, some of them like writing, some of them kind of edit and put out videos. Some of them just post real videos of themselves. When I get on the phone with a prospect, not only do they know and trust me, they know and trust my team already. When I say, cast is going to be your copywriter, they say, oh, yeah, I see all of her content on LinkedIn. So it really helps build this, you know, trust in what we're doing.

That's awesome.

Yeah, it's really. It's been really cool.

I've seen other companies that have done that to great effect. One of them is Wistia. I mean, they're a video company and they do video hosting. So it kind of makes sense that you're going to see their faces a decent amount. But their videos are all about their culture, what it's like at Wistia. And before people start working with them, more often than not they feel like they're a part of the team. Vidyard is another example of company, similar platform that does the same thing. They use video throughout all of their outreach. And before you start working with Vidyard, you feel like you're a part of the team and you know who they are. It's awesome that your team is going out there and building their personal brands in that way.

Yeah. It's not even a requirement anymore, so it was required for a quarter and now everyone's kind of doing it, doing it in their own way. And I would say most people on the team are still creating. So there are two more pieces to. Were you going to say something?

Nope, go ahead.

Okay. Two more pieces to that accessibility approach. One is pricing transparency. So when I this company, I was working as a consultant on behalf of some B2B software startups and working with agencies, and the problem was always the same, that we go through this pricing or this conversation with the agency and then they'd ask for our budget and we'd say, oh, I don't know, we're looking for your recommendation. You know, it's like 90% of your prospective clients and then they come back and they'd always be really high. Or it didn't exactly include what we needed, or we didn't understand what was in the package and it was just a waste of time for everyone. So we decided to publish all of our pricing to our website and be very transparent about that. Not a lot of agencies do it. And it's funny because at the beginning, everyone said, don't do it. It's not a good idea. You're gonna pigeonhole yourself into these packages and a lot of people are going to disqualify themselves when they see your website. And that's actually turned out to be a good thing because the people that get into our sales process now know the range of what it's going to be like to work with them. Yeah, we'll customize our packages a little bit for them, but it saves us so much time in the sales process. It's been really amazing. And again, it builds that trust. Like, oh, wow, here's a marketing agency that's publishing all of their pricing on their website. That's not something that you see very often.

Yeah, we're actually one of the agencies that does not post our pricing publicly. And there's a lot of reasons for that. And we've been nervous to put some of that out there. We've seen more of our competitors starting to do that too. And even they add ranges, they won't give exact pricing. And it's a challenge. There's so many different variables that can come into play in a given package that you deliver to a certain account. So that's great that you guys are able to figure out a model that allows you to post your pricing and be transparent about that up front. It's not surprising to hear you say that it's helped out with the sales process either. It just eliminates that one step of, well, can we afford you guys, or is this in our price range? It just takes care of and addresses that concern up front, which is awesome.

Yeah. We make sure that our potential clients see that pricing page in our first 15 minute call, and then it speeds up the sales process a lot more and we just get better prospects in the process. And then the third piece is transparency and strategy. So not only do we invest in testing all of our new ideas on ourselves, we then push that all out to our clients and to the public. I was just in a Meeting right before this, where we were talking about. Okay. In Q3, we completely revamped our LinkedIn best practices, our LinkedIn AD strategy, our process for pillar pages or pillar content, and our Prospor thank you pages and demo and consultation requests. We did tons of testing on ourselves, which is super cool because then we get the benefit of that and we get the leads in the door and the proof is kind of in the pudding. And then we were talking about how we're going to put this out. So the whole team is going to do videos on the testing that they did and what they learned. We're going to publish blogs on it, we're going to roll it out to our clients. So it's. I mean, you really could figure out how to do everything that we do by digging through our website. And I believe strongly that those that are going to dig through our website to figure it all out on their own are probably not an ideal client for us anyway. So those three strategies have really just helped us build trust up front. And people see this theme of accessibility and transparency woven through the company and through all of our personal brands.

That's so cool because you're essentially making yourselves your own best case study. People can come to your website and realize that you know exactly what you're talking about because you're doing it for yourself. And they came across your website because of those same reasons, because you're doing a good job at marketing. That's awesome to see. Do you. Do you ever hear direct feedback from clients or prospects that the content that you're putting out there is having that effect and helping them decide to work with you?

Oh, all the time. It's so funny. I get on calls and they're like, I have been trying to reverse engineer your process, or I came in through your LinkedIn video, or I was downloading content on your site and I'm like, perfect, it's working. And that's what we're gonna do for you. It makes the conversation so easy because they experience it and then they're like, oh, they can do that for me, it just makes the whole process a lot. Yeah, it's easier on our end. And we are our own best case study for sure.

That's great. So I wanna shift gears a little bit. There was another thing that I mentioned in the intro that we haven't touched on yet, which is the Women's Entrepreneurship Week. Can you speak a little bit about what that's all about?

Yeah, absolutely. So Women's Entrepreneurship Week is really intended to shine The Spotlight on Female entrepreneurs around Milwaukee and share knowledge with other female entrepreneurs. It's a completely free event series. Last year, we ran 62 events in a week. It was insane. Absolutely insane. And it ranged from really any business topic, from funding to growing a business to hiring. And we had lots of different speakers and people coming from all over. Last year, let's see. Last year was our first year, so it's kind of a building year. We actually just started Talking about what 2020 is going to look like, and I think it's going to be even bigger.

That's awesome. And this event occurs in Milwaukee as of right now, is that correct?

Yeah, as of right now, it's Milwaukee. We have some other cities that are close to us kind of looking at what we're doing and considering running something like it themselves. So. So, yeah, we'll see. We'll see how far it goes. I'm excited to see.

That's awesome. That's a really cool initiative. I really hope that other cities kind of take up something along those lines. There's a ton to learn in that area, so it's great to see you taking the initiative there. So apart from the Women's Entrepreneurship Week and the Digital Agency Expo, do you have any other opportunities where people can come see you speak coming up?

Not right now. I have some things that are in the works right now. But if you check out jack jackiehermes.com and there is an events tab there, anywhere that I will be speaking will be there. Like, I'm speaking at a local conference in Milwaukee this weekend, and I do a good amount of local speaking, but I should be in a few other places around the US in in the coming months.

That's awesome. I really hope that I can check one of those out pretty soon. I wasn't able to make it to Digital Agency Expo, but the next time you're either in the New York or Boston area, I'll make sure to check you out. So, last question I have, and I try to ask every one of our guests this question. What's your favorite part about what you do?

Yeah, I think that I love the process, the process of building a company. I mean, I love the output. You know, like, I love growing a business and I love our happy clients and all of that kind of stuff. But I really have loved the process of just figuring everything out. I think that I just shot a video on this the other day. A lot of people talk about, like, quit your job and do what you love or you should, you shouldn't love what you do, you should do what you love. I think it's all about getting into the process, too, and loving every single step and being excellent at every piece. And then you will love what you do no matter what.

That's great advice. I try to find that in the work that I have at New Breed, and it's really great to be able to have an opportunity to do those types of things at the company that you're working for, and I'd recommend that anyone follow your advice there. That's great. So I really enjoyed this. Jackie, thank you so much for joining today. We've got more great episodes on the way, so make sure you subscribe to the podcast so you can get notified when our next episode comes out. In the meantime, check out newbreedmarketing.com for our other great resources. Thank you for joining, and we'll see you next time.