[Sales] How LinkedIn and a side hustle boosted his biotech sales career with Jeff Bissen

I started a side hustle as a dj, and don't get me wrong, I like the signs. But obviously the lab had some drawbacks. It was kind of boring. I had a buddy who was a dj. You know, he said, well, hey, if you want to have a side hustle and, you know, make so much money and, you know, have this creative outlet, like, I could teach you how to dj. Ended up going forward with it and kind of led this double life for a couple of years. Researcher by day, DJ by night, and was just having a good time. But then I realized that this double life can't go on forever. Like, what am I doing here? Like, there has to be some way where I can ignite everything. And then realized that, hey, these sales reps who are coming into the lab selling, to me, that actually seems like a fun job. And through the thought hustle, albeit it's B2C sales in the event industry, I realized that I had actually picked up skills in customer service and sales and marketing and realized that I could kind of bring these together to have a career in scientific sales.

Before we get into today's show, I wanted to tell you a little bit about what we have going on over here at Succession. So Succession is a Life Science sales membership that includes on demand courses to uplevel your sales skills, resources to plan and execute your sales process, a community for peer to peer networking and learning, and live workshops delivered by experts twice a month. You can get access to all of this as an individual for just $79 a month, or you can uplevel your entire sales team with courses and customized learning designed for each individual rep. Come and join us over at Succession Bio. Okay, let's dive back into the. All right, we got a great episode for you all here today. We have Jeff Beeson. You may have seen him on LinkedIn, but he's quite LinkedIn famous, if you will, in the biotech sector. He's got 20,000 followers now, but he's also just taken on a new role at Encardia as the Senior Director of Business Development. We know Jeff back from our Synthego days and he's a top notch rep. It's great to work with and he shares a lot of great insights in this particular episode. Nick, what stood out to you?

Yeah, I really like working with Jeff and talking to him. He's very passionate about how you message biotech and how you message science. He stood out some great tidbits on how to get started on LinkedIn without it being too daunting and actually just get going. And I think that was a really useful point.

Yeah.

He also shares some of his stories and side hustles that he had making the transition from the lab into sales. And a few other good sales tips for folks out there that are selling, you know, either more transactional deals or also, you know, large, you know, large ticket items as well. Selling into pharma, all that good stuff shares a wealth of knowledge. So without further ado, let's jump into the show. Hey, Jeff, welcome to the podcast. Pumped to have you here.

Yeah, thank you, Harrison. Thank you, Nick.

Yeah, pleased to have you.

Awesome.

Yeah, it's been, it's, it's good to see you again. Obviously we go back to our synthego days and so it's good to see you again, but we did prep you and I know you listened to a couple of the episodes ahead of time. So give us a crazy or funny story that's happening in your career.

Not too crazy, a little bit funny, a little bit embarrassing. Back in my lab days, maybe a good indicator about why the lab wasn't the best long term career route for me. Totally messed up a DNA extraction, which was not a good first impression on the job because it wasn't just DNA in two formats. Right. It was kind of 96. Well plate. If you mess it up, you mess up a lot of samples. And silly me, when I was making the 70% ethanol made 30% ethanol. So just totally wash all the DNA away. And I made this mistake a couple times where I couldn't figure out what the problem was because first batch yield was terrible. I was like, okay, I thought I followed the protocol, everything correctly. Did it again. And yeah, I followed all the steps correctly. But then the third time around, my manager comes over, he's checking the reagents and he's like, this does not smell like 70% ethanol, 30% instead. So the third time around, got it right. But yeah, not, not necessarily the best hands in the lab. I always joked that I was better talking about science than doing the science and that were made a joke until I realized that's a real job.

Yeah, yeah. I feel like that's how other people figured out that they wanted to move into sales as well. It's like, yeah, I don't know if the lab's for me, but I like talking about science and learning about it. So I'm going to go into sales.

You found it out pretty quick though. It took me a lot longer. I stayed in the Lab for about 17 years and only moved by accident. And then when I looked back, I was like, I was rubbish at writing the detail down. My lab books must have been awful for other people.

Oh yeah. I kept the worst lab notebook as well. And you're right, I did make them relatively quick. I think it took me about three years. I am jealous of one of the people though, like, you know, a tenth ago, for example, there are a number of sales reps who just went straight into sales right after college and they got such a head start.

Yeah, yeah. Although I think there is still benefit of being able to have a little bit more time in the lab too.

Right.

So you get a little bit more experience, you know, as that sort of customer, if you will.

Yeah, yeah.

I would say although they, they gain that what they, what they gain in going straight into sales, they lose a bit in being able to relate to the scientists. And I think having that connection of being a scientist that spoke to reps really helps.

That's true. So I suppose there really is a sweet spot if you need enough lab experience to know what your customers are going through and so that they can trust you and see you as a scientist at some level. But you know, everybody makes that switch at different points in their careers.

I think what's really interesting though, about this industry in general coming from originally from the software side of things is that when you move into sales, you're. You were the customer at one point. So a lot of people that go from the lab into sales like you are now the you you were, you have been the customer of now probably what it is that you're selling or at least to some extent, whereas I think in a lot of other industries you just don't see that at all. And so it's a. You get a unique angle as a.

Sales rep. Yeah, yeah, I like it. I think it's fun.

Cool. Well, why don't you tell us a little bit more about that transition process. So what was it like? So you realized it's not for you. How did you decide that you're going to make the move into sales and then kind of go through that whole process?

It's a fun story because it's one that's not super obvious on my LinkedIn profile because on LinkedIn it looks like I just went straight from the lab to sales, but I kind of blurred the lines there with some side hustles and temp jobs that really stitched everything together. And looking back, it made a lot of sense and I'm glad that I had this more non traditional career transition. But at the time it was quite confusing because, long story short, I started a side hustle as a dj, of all things. So I was working in the lab 9 to 5, Monday through Friday, you know, putting my degree to good use. And don't get me wrong, I like the science. But obviously the lab had some drawbacks. It was kind of boring, lonely work. It's very repetitive. You got your head, you know, stuck in the fume hood and just pipetting all day long. So I was kind of conflicted where I enjoyed the science, but I didn't really like the lab work environment. And I was just looking to find some type of outlet and, you know, put some extra money in my pocket as well, and really wasn't thinking long term. I just. I had a buddy who was a DJ with weddings mostly or, you know, bar trivia nights, things like that. Nothing crazy like clubs, I wish, but, you know, he said, well, hey, if you want to have a side hustle and, you know, make some extra money and, you know, have this creative outlet, like, I could teach you how to dj, which I thought was crazy at first. I did be considerate, conditioning, but then ended up going forward with it and kind of led this double life for a couple years. Marley's researcher by day, DJ by night, and was just having a good time, like for a few years after college. But then I realized that this double ice, I can't go on forever. Like, what am I doing here? Like, there has to be some way where I can ignite everything. And by this point, I had kind of paid more attention to other career paths within biotech. I think college, they teach you, you get your bachelor's to go get a PhD or get an MD. There's very little support for people who are in my position who just wanted to go get a job or see what else is out there within the industry. So kind of had that piece that together on my own and then realized that, hey, these sales reps who are coming into the lab selling, to me, that actually seems like a fun job. And through the side hustle, albeit it's B2C sales in the event industry, because you need to, you know, book gigs and all that stuff, I realized that I had actually picked up skills in customer service and sales and marketing and realized that I could kind of bring these together to have a career in scientific sales. It wasn't quite enough to make that switch. So then I got a temp job through a staffing agency. It was essentially a sales support role, kind of preparing quotes, coordinating orders, things like that. But it was enough to get a bit more formal B2B experience on my resume. So all that together with my bachelor's degree in genetics and that research experience out of college, and then that side hustle kind of getting my feet with B2C sales and then a temp job with B2B sales, all that together was enough to finally get me into biotech field sales.

So what's weird about. I don't know if we've ever discussed this, but while I was working in the lab, my creative outlet to be social was that I started a mobile cocktail events company and I would go out evenings and weekends and make cocktails for people. So, like being in that party vibe as well until I went into the sales side of things. But yeah, I had a whole company running these events for a while.

Yeah, yeah, I know you had that. That story as well. So kind of funny how you and I had a similar path. And I think a lot of people find they have something that's more relevant than they realize. So obviously I'm not recommending, oh, you got to go be a.

Be a bar.

You need to go be a D to if you want to switch from the lab lab to sales. But a lot of people have more sales experience than they realize. So to any researchers who do want to make that switch and don't know how to get there, I think it's not necessarily a matter of getting more experience. It's knowing how to lay up the experience that you already have but didn't realize was transferable or relevant.

Well, and I think what we need to do is put a shout out to any of our listeners. Anyone that has a party relevant, transferable skill needs to email in and we'll see what kind of succession party we can get going. We got a dj, we've got some cocktails going. What else do we need?

Party planning.

Yeah.

Need some party planning maybe.

No, I don't even.

Everyone side hustle together for one epic succession party.

Love it. We glossed over the most important things though, which is what was your DJ name and what's your SoundCloud? So we could throw it in the description.

Yeah, if only. Like I said, it was mostly weddings. So it's not about me, it's about the bride. It was all very professional. It was through a company where it was just like dj, first name, last initial. So you would have been DJ Harrison W. You know, DJ Nixie, DJ Jeff.

B. I mean, Jeff B.

Is kind of a cool lot.

Jeb B kind of works.

It does a little Bit.

Yeah, it's a lot better than the DJ name of Harrison W. That's awful.

That's the worst one.

Not a great DJ name, which my producer name actually was Dirty Harry. So I actually think it's a lot better from that perspective.

So we've got the DJ producer in the Cocktails.

That's great. Okay. All right, now let's talk about some real stuff. So I know one thing that you did. So you got into sales, you're being successful. I think you. At what point we're at stem Cel Tech, and then. But you. You were in the Midwest and you decided to make a pretty big decision, which was you're going to move to Boston and kind of put yourself in the biotech hub. Tell us a little bit about that decision and kind of what the thought process was going into it.

Yeah, well, I mean, there's obviously a lot that goes into it because it's not just me, it's my wife as well. So it was a decision that we made together that made sense for both of us. And she was, you know, a big motivator behind that, of course. But I guess for the sake of the podcast and how it's relevant to biotech, clearly that was a career move. Right. Because Minnesota was a good place to grow up and go to school and start my career. And it is, I think, a hidden gem in a lot of ways, like, especially if you're in medical devices, for example, Medtronic is headquartered there. Or it's also good for, you know, agriculture, if you're into that type of biotech. But with regard to therapeutics, obviously getting to one of the coasts is the place to be. So Boston or California in Boston was what we decided on. So that was definitely a career move of realizing that I think there was only so far I could go in biotech skills within the Midwest. And you just need to be where the action is. And in that sense, you know, here we are four years later. It was a great move at the time, didn't realize what I was getting myself into because we were making that decision around late 2019, early 2020. That's when I was applying to Synthego and doing that interview. And I started, and at the time, Covid was just a thing in the news. And then literally three weeks into the job, everything shut down. So in retrospect, you know, could have gotten the job remotely and then stayed in Minnesota, paid way less for rent for a year or two. So point being that that first year or two was a very odd transition. With the pandemic.

Yeah.

The trip where you went out to train in California was where. When we met was my second to last trip before everything shut down.

Yeah. Yeah. That was February 2020. Didn't. I don't think anybody really realized what was coming.

We would have enjoyed that a lot more if we'd have known.

If you had known. Yeah. Well, then you would have been stuck in the U.S. oh, good. Is that worse than Covid for you?

Yeah.

Man. All right, so you're there, you're living in Boston. You're shut down during COVID Like, how did you have to sort of make that adaptation? Living in a new city and picking up, like, you know, learning about the new territory. You're in a new role. Like, I'm sure there's a lot of moving parts with that as well. That might have been challenging.

Yeah, definitely. Because it's new product, new territory, new company, and the new selling environment. Everybody had to adjust very quickly to the world of virtual sales. That's something I think that Synthego did well. And Harrison, I don't know how much of a role you had in this, but we adjusted pretty quickly. You got the sales team up to speed with how do you actually sell effectively in a virtual environment? Because, you know, it's tough to get the information you need, or it's tough to build relationships, or, you know, there are many points in the selling process that are more difficult. Virtually. Some parts are easier, but overall, it's a handicap when you don't even have the option of going. So in that sense, I think you and the sales enablement team and something goes a whole. Did a good job equipping the sales team to adjust with that, in particular with the messaging, because the whole thing was, hey, you're not in the lab. You can't really be in the lab because of all these social distancing restrictions. So let's position simply go as a way to keep your research moving forward. You know, outsource your cell engineering to our. On the automated cell factory. So in that sense, I think we found a way to make lemonade out of lemons and find a way to position as best we could within the market at the time. And then obviously, it kind of receded. Then you have to continually update your messaging after that. But I think it was just a matter of accepting the situation for what it was and just going forward with what you got.

Yeah, I think it was. It was really interesting. It's funny to talk about it now. It's like, we're so Used to virtual meetings. But at the time, I remember when we kicked off the first virtual training, like virtual sales training class that we were doing, you could just see everybody like on zoom. And like there's some people down there, their face is like hidden down here. And there's some people, like, you just can't see them. They're too far, they're too close to the screen. Everybody's background is all weird. Nobody had. Nobody even knows. I don't even think they had virtual backgrounds yet.

Right.

It's like all of these things were just like challenges in those early days and I think we take it for granted nowadays.

It's why I was just waving this around as well. This is the mic I bought for that.

Speaking of virtual selling issues, Nick's technical difficulties. Classic. Yeah, but, yeah, so I think another sort of topic we wanted to talk about. So you made the move out there. You were started off as an account manager, I think, working with a lot of, I think of our academic and commercial accounts. But then you made a switch into. I guess there were two switches. Right. You kind of moved into more of a key account role and then you also went into more of the clinical focus. Want to talk about maybe some of the differences between those different roles and the different selling styles that you had to take on?

Yeah, a couple points there because obviously starting off in academic sales, it's a good entry into sales.

Right.

Because I think it's a very easily understandable type of sale and type of research that people are doing where, you know, you sell to a grad student or postdoc, maybe one other lab member. Obviously the PI needs to sign off or, you know, potentially procurement gets involved at some point. But relatively speaking, it's a pretty straightforward sale where you know who the stakeholders are, you know the buying process. And it's relatively low dollar amount where you can kind of skirt around these limitations and just, you know, push, push the PO through as opposed to when you move up into commercial accounts, especially as you get into like large forma or GMP sales and these are big contracts, many more stakeholders involve long sales cycles. So it's a lot more complex in that regard. For sure. On the GMP side in particular, because when you're selling RUO products, it's fairly straightforward. There's not a lot of regulation around it and. And then as long as it's not some big project or some bulk order, like I said, the, the dollar amounts are usually relatively lower. But on the GMP side, it's a big contract and A lot that goes into it. So I think one big shift for me was learning how to sell or work more collaboratively internally. Because I think if you are selling in a simpler environment with academic as well being in biotech, you can to some extent be a lone wolf as a salesperson. Obviously better to be collaborative in general, I would say, but you can be a lone wolf if you want to be. But with large pharma and gp, that is simply not an option. Well, that needs to talk with, you know, quality and operations and R and D and the chemistry team just to put a contract together. And there's a lot of back and forth and then mapping our subject matter experts with their subject matter experts, you know, putting quality people in touch with quality people. And then me as a salesperson knowing when to step back with this quarterback and sale along. The point being it's a lot more complex both on the customer side and internally. So that was a big shift.

Yeah. And I imagine a lot of the times, even the customers especially we were selling stuff that was. You didn't quite know all of the regulations or what the requirements were going to be. I imagine just like the purchasing process on their end was unknown. So it's like you have a situation where you're selling into maybe a known, like a known vertical or a known, you know, product. It's a little bit easier because they've probably purchased it before. And so there's like a defined purchasing process. But if you're selling something that's much more innovative, there may not be a defined purchasing process for that particular product or service.

Yeah. So in that sense, you and the customer are sort of figuring out the process together. And I think there's a lot of trust that goes along with that. Like obviously on the customer end, trusting me and the company that I'm working for that we can go through this process together. Because there's a lot of unknowns. They're going to clinic. They're going to the clinic for the first time. They don't know the regulations, they don't know what vendors to work with. They don't know their purchasing process. So there's a lot of confusion and skepticism on their end, obviously. So trying to build that trust and let them know that, hey, I don't know all the answers either, but we're going to figure it out together. But then trust on my end as well, because these are big deals and, you know, just one or two of them could make or break your quarter or your year. So I think there's A lot of trust on the salesperson's end as well, of knowing how to properly qualify a deal and make sure that you're dedicating your time and efforts to the right opportunities. Because it's a very different pipeline dynamic when we're, you know, hunting whales versus kind of this run rate business where we just get, you know, these orders that, that build up over time. And honestly, in the end it should be a mixable, like it's nice to get whales but you can't depend on them because you know, you might end up wildly below play in one quarter. So kind of having a, A, a healthy balance of more predictable orders but then, you know, in big as well.

It's funny, we were actually just having a conversation about this with someone where they were focused really heavily on these really big opportunities and trying to close these big opportunities, but were sort of neglecting the, the, I won't call it transactional because they're still pretty complex, but the stuff that was going to be a little bit easier to close. And so they ended up with this pipeline that was really heavily weighted on these big, large opportunities. And so you just have to close them and if you don't, you're just going to end up with like a goose egg. And so it's really high risk, high reward sort of situation to be in. Where to your point, you're better off sort of having a diversified portfolio, if you will. Right. A diversified pipeline of different types of assets or different types of opportunities that you're working.

What the hell is a goose?

I've never heard that phrase before. I gotta pause it there because I.

Don'T know what he means.

A goose egg. A zero.

Big old zero.

Big ol zero.

Goose eggs are elliptical.

They're not circular.

All right, well a zero is also not circular enough.

Maybe it's an Americanism. But here's the. You should know, you're in the UK now.

Yes, I should. I should be picking up on these things already.

Yeah. One other point I wanted to raise in there was that a lot of these so called small deals will become bigger ones.

Right.

Especially if it's a case where you start off with a pilot project or some samples, you can waste wasting quotes a lot of time on these orders that don't produce much that quarter. But assuming that sample goes well, if that pilot goes well, then that could be one of these whales a couple quarters down the road. And I think that takes some insight from the salesperson as well as to understand, okay, who is worthwhile to work with. On these samples where like you're putting in a lot of time and effort for literally zero revenue or you know, a heavily discounted sample, knowing who is actually going to have potential to turn into something big and who is just saying, yeah, sure, I'll take a sample to YouTube.

So, so, okay, that's a great point. So how would you, I don't know, maybe what's a couple criteria that you would use to determine is this the right person to spend my time with or you know, should I try and I don't want to say, you know, move them along but you know, not spend as much time on those types of people, the tire kickers, if you will.

Yeah, I think one little exercise I like to do with potential customers is ask them if everything goes perfectly, how would things run out here? And if they say oh, it goes well, then you know, maybe we'll switch or oh, we, we only have a couple projects. It's like, okay, then sure, I'll set you up with a sample. Maybe someone on the tech support team can walk through it. But this sounds like it's not really.

Going to be worth my.

Well, whereas if they say, oh yeah, you know, we are comparing a few different vendors and the winner of this batch, you know, we do have, you know, tons and tons of stem cell cultures where we need buckets of maintenance media to maintain those experiences. Okay, that, that sounds like it's probably worth my while and of course I don't want to be out my competitor in this head to head sequencing situation.

Yeah.

So you're basically taking, getting them to think about what does the future look like if all goes well? What is this future state that you're trying to determine? Are they actually thinking about that future state? Have they thought about it and you know, is there like a, is there room for growth within this, this account?

Yeah, what's, what's the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and there's nothing there then, but that's fine. You know, maybe it's just one little project that a grad student has and that's important research, but it's not something that I as a salesperson should be dedicating my time to. Rather that grad student can talk to tech support or you know, companies usually have articles and resources on their website. That's maybe more of a self serve situation.

Yeah, I like to think of this as, as like you've got your, you have like your best accounts. Which are your best accounts are the ones that are giving you the most money. And they're, they're kind of like. What's the right word? They're kind of like maxed out. So there's a difference between an account where you've maxed out the revenue that you can get from it versus a growable account. So, like, what are the accounts that have the most growable pot? Those are the ones where you want to be prioritizing your effort. Because if you're just going to continue to get, you know, run rate or continue to get orders from these, like, maxed out accounts, you don't have to, like, you don't have to spend as much time to make that happen. So use your limited time that you do have to focus on those more growable accounts, and that's what, that's where you're going to be able to get the biggest bang for your buck.

Yeah, absolutely.

Just going back to what you said about the Imagine if, I actually call them that, the imaginative questions, I find them really powerful in lots of different scenarios. Because if you say to somebody, so are you going to buy lots of this? Then if it works, you're getting them to commit to something. Whereas if you're saying, imagine a hypothetical scenario, what would you do in that hypothetical scenario? You're not asking them to commit so they can give you a more honest answer without fear of that. Committed. Committed to it. So I call it the imagine if. And you can use it in multiple different scenarios.

I think it also tugs on the emotional aspect, right? You're having them transport into the future, into this happy world that they're in. Or you could even do it on the opposite side. Imagine if all of this goes to hell, goes to shit. It's like, okay, then what are you going to do about it? And so you could kind of transport them into these two different worlds with, with that simple question.

Yeah. Yeah.

Cool.

So we.

It wouldn't be a podcast with Jeff Beeson if it wasn't for talking a little bit about LinkedIn. So you have recently crossed over 20,000 followers, which is impressive. And I know you have. You've been doing it for a while and you've made a conscious effort to do this and you've done it, I think, consistently over a long period of time, which is, I think, a part of the secret sauce here, which is just keep doing it over and over and over and like, eventually these results are going to pay off. But you know, what would be some of your advice that you would give to people that are thinking about, should I start posting on LinkedIn? Like, should I go down that road? Like, is it going to be embarrassing? Are people going to make fun of me? Because I'm sure those are all the sorts of thoughts that some people have. And so, yeah, just love to hear your thoughts on that.

Just do it. Oh, my God, it's so worth it. I know that people look at LinkedIn and think like, oh, like, like, what's the point? Like, I have a job to do. It helps your job if you do it right. I mean, certainly if you do it wrong, you can waste a lot of time on LinkedIn because it's social media. They make money by, you know, making the platform sticky. So you can easily, you know, wait hours a day on it and get nowhere with it. So obviously you got to do it right, but if you do it right, it's totally worth it. And I think you had mentioned this a little bit in a previous episode with Was it Hannah Roddy, how it's not just prospecting, it's helping you throughout your career with networking and job hunting and just your personal branding in general. So obviously there's. There's a direct correlation between, you know, your LinkedIn activity and your pipeline because it does help with prospecting, but it helps in a lot of other unquantifiable ways. So I would say just do it. If you're on the edge, just do it. At least give it a shot. If it's really not your thing, so be it, because, you know, it's one tool of many. I'm not saying you have to do LinkedIn to be successful, but for me, I have had a lot of success with it. I know a lot of other people have as well. So just give it a shot. So hopefully, if you are interested, then it's just a question of, well, how do you get started? I know there's a big barrier there as well, and I would say to start small because I know I certainly experience this myself, is having these big ambitions with LinkedIn or other things for that matter. You try to go on full force. You can maintain the habit for a little bit, but then you fall off and then you think, what's the point? I take to go with it. So just start small. And it really is quite small. So first just make sure your profile is set up. Hopefully you have that already most of your name, but make sure that it's really properly set up with like, good picture, good headline, good banner. You know, you actually filled out the about section when you reached and all that stuff, like really properly, because that is your first impression online, right? If you try to book a meeting with a potential prospect or your job undo, people are going to look you up. So make sure that it's a good first impression that they see. But most people have at least some kind of profile set up already. So then it's a question of like, okay, how do you actually do something with this? How do you make content and actually become, it's not a new sales team to actually become somebody that people want to follow. This is where I tell you that you really need to start small because there are people like me who are pretty ambitious and I post, you know, five days a week. I'm not saying post five days a week, just leave one comment a day. That's it. Because comments are content and comments are a good way to see what other people are doing. So, you know, bonuses you can, you think are influential on LinkedIn within the biochat space and check them out to see what they're doing and kind of try to reverse engineer their content process and use, you know, just, just a couple comments a week on their post. Because you know those comments will pop up on how many people see and those comments give themselves odd content. And I think we'll what spark amount of inspiration can you leave it to artists?

I think it's a great piece of advice is just starting with comments because I think a lot of times there's a hurdle when it comes to posting, which is like, I've got to come up with something that's really interesting that people are going to care about, that people are going to like. And so you're going to associate your post with the reactions that you get from it. Where especially in the early days, I think it's not always going to be about the likes and the comments and all of the engagement that you'll get from it. You know, I think it's, it's more just like posting content that is interesting to you, that is going to be interesting to your audience, to your customers that you, that you want to post this content for. And I think if you just, if you do that and you think about it from that lens, it's more, it's, it's easier to disengage from like the number of likes. It still sucks. Like sometimes you post something, you're like, damn, this is going to be a good post. It gets like, like 10 likes and you're just like, what the hell, there's like five and you're like this, this sucks. And then you, and then you post something dumb and it gets like, you know, dozens. It's just so different. And so, yeah, I think, I think just sticking with it and doing a little bit consistent consistently and doing it on a regular basis and just committing to it and not, you know, not giving up along the way, I think is what matters most.

Yeah, yeah. Is that first you said how you should just post things that you want to post yourself, which I completely agree with. If you are trying to chase likes, that's going to be obvious. And don't get me wrong, you can have some initial success with it. If you try to make some quote, viral post, you might get something that gets a lot of attention. But is it really moving the needle in your business? So, like a pipeline, usually it's more about quality versus quantity. Like, some of my best posts from a business perspective perform really poorly. Like, for example, I think it was maybe two months ago now, I was going to a conference and I was just looking to book meetings at the conference. And the posts that I made about this conference did really bad in terms of, like, views and likes, but I generated actual meetings.

Yeah, right.

I ended up spending like more time at the conference than I planned on because I booked so many readings from these posts that only got like 10 or 20 likes.

Yeah.

So I think that's important to realize is are you chasing these views and likes and all these vanity metrics, or are you actually trying to move the needle in your business and build relationships with people in the real world, like you said, by posting things that you yourself care about. And really, people have a lot more content than they realize because you're doing your job anyway. You're talking with customers, you're sharing insights, you're solving problems. There's a ton of content in your daily life already. You just take a medium, take an email, take a brochure or whatever and just translate it into the format as it is. Yeah.

And I think that what people forget about LinkedIn is that we talk about when we're talking about building pipeline in our industry. You need to have multiple touch points of people. And when you post and people see you, it's an organic touch point. It actually helps when you reach out to them in the future so you don't have to get tons of impressions and likes. And it's more about just regularly being seen by your customers as someone who values. And then that helps when you go to make a meeting with.

Yeah, you made a good point about like, business results versus likes. All of the inquiries that we get are from people that have, like, Never liked a post, have never commented. Those are the ones that reach out, send us a DM and want to meet. So I think it's, it's really interesting when you, you can't just look at it from a surface level. Like, I think I only have like 3,000 followers and like you've got 20,000. So you can't just look at it from a surface level to say like, oh, like that is like, I'm trying to shoot for 20,000. Like, I would love to have that. But at the same time, even with a smaller audience, we're getting tons of inbound inquiries and interest, even from a small audience. And so I think you shouldn't always be chasing these. You know, they're not quite vanity because obviously we have more followers, you're going to have more impressions, more reach, but. So it is important, but it's not the end all, be all.

Yeah, for sure. And especially just recently, I think within the past month or so, LinkedIn did seem to change its algorithm, as far as I can tell. And then from some of the LinkedIn market people that I follow, it seems that LinkedIn has really restricted the reach, which initially isn't a good thing. Like, I saw line questions crash and at first I was wondering what's going on here. I thought we're supposed to be buying, but no, it's just how the algorithm is distributing content. It is much lower these days. But interestingly, I see the comments on my posts increase. So I'm getting fewer views, fewer likes, but more after discussion.

Interesting.

So just someone, are they putting your.

Content in front of people that are more likely to comment and engage with it? That might make sense, yeah.

So initially it is kind of a bad thing. Oh my gosh. MrG is so low. But I think this outlooking change is a good thing. And that's the other reason, going back to your point about authenticity, why it's so important to just make content that you think is good. Because here, chasing the algorithm, it's always changing and it's a moving target that you can never define anyway, so just find your true north and stick the same. Cool.

Well, we're just about up on time here, Jeff, so I want to leave you with one last question so you can help the audience here is give us one, you know, one prospecting or sort of discovery tip that you could give to the audience that they could take away and start using right away.

Besides LinkedIn.

It could be LinkedIn, it could be something related to that, maybe a little LinkedIn tactic.

I think this is a tip that would work well for both LinkedIn as well as you guys and Harrism is probably something that you talked about already is the importance of having a good book. Is the whole point of the first line of your LinkedIn post is to get people to read the second line. The whole point in the second line is to get them to third line and the fourth line until eventually they.

Get to the call to action.

Same thing with emails. The whole point of the subject line is to get them to open the email but make sure you don't spam with face. And then once they open it, that first line, especially since they often see a preview in the inbox, is ticketing to read to the second line. So catching and just that nice progression and when you do them through the first line to the bottom is a call to action. And that's another thing that I really enjoy about LinkedIn by the way, is I feel like it has made me a better writer and a better ego writer in particular because LinkedIn is just my little theory Biotech Diary, which now I have a newsletter called biotech diaries. LinkedIn is super casual. I'm not trying to be like super serious, like, oh, I, I'm an expert in biotech. No, I'm just documenting my journey in public. And writing was tough for me at first, but the more I wrote, the better I got. Yeah, it's easier because like an hour, like it used to take me like an hour to write a post. An hour. If you just want to get a question, five or 10 minutes.

Yeah, I think that's the other piece for people just touching back on the last subject that are thinking about getting into it is it's going to be harder at first and then it'll only get easier over time the more you do it.

So yeah, so if you're frustrated by how long it takes to line a post, if you're frustrated by how few views you're getting, like all that's going to be easier. It's going to be an easy, light post. You're going to get more views, you're going to get more active business results if you're doing it right. Again, be cautious about, don't waste your time because it is a social media platform. But as long as you have a good routine and I guess that's a whole other topic and a potential workshop is what is that daily LinkedIn routine to say improve over time. But that's beyond the scope of this.

Podcast and we always talk about writing posts, but if one comment I'd like is I'm. I'm dyslexic and I love talking. I hate writing. So often my LinkedIn posts a quick video I've done on something, like video or zoom or something, and just post it up with a comment and get the video out for me.

They get.

For me personally, they get better results normally. And I think that's because it's a short video and it sounds like me, whereas when I write, he doesn't sound like me. So I'm not very good at writing. Harrison always would turn stuff to me and go, this sound. Who loved this? And it's like ignoring the typos. That's a good tip. And one thing back to your other comment about having a catchy subject line, because your idea is to go to the next line. Something that Harrison and I warned people against is they have to still connect. You can't be like, the subject line cannot be something amazing and like really interesting. And then the follow up line is not related to it at all. So, yes, clicks, but they have to.

Follow through a theme.

Yeah, no clickbait.

Yeah, no clickbait.

Yeah. Awesome. Well, Jeff, it's been a pleasure. Really appreciate having you on the show. And I think we've got some other stuff that we might be working on here in the future, so be on the lookout for that. Yeah.

Thank you for having me. It's good to catch up with you too. Sa.