Mastering Sales Enablement & Growth: Insights from Rob Durant

Social media, it's everywhere. Do you go on LinkedIn? Do you start off with Twitter? Are you posting on Instagram 10 times a day? If you are a small business owner, if you are head of a startup, it's confusing. Where do you start? Sometimes your head is spinning, and that can create paralysis. You may, in fact, be in need of a coach. Thankfully, we have one today. Rob Durant has more than 20, 20 years of experience advising people like you and me how to get better results, how to engage people, how to enable your skills in social media. He's the head of Flywheel Results, and he's here with us for the next hour sharing his insights. Rob, welcome to the program.

Tj, thank you so very much for having me.

Glad you're here. Let's just dive right in. I mean, everybody these days knows about social media, but I never. I don't think I've ever met a small business owner, an author, an expert, a trainer, a speaker that after talking to them about five minutes for social media, there's this awkward moment and we both sort of admit we don't know what we're doing. We kind of feel like everybody's doing it better than we are. We start things, we stop, we don't get results. We see Gary Vaynerchuk saying, you have to post 150 times a day and everyone has to be a little bit different. We throw up our hands, our head explodes. We think, let's do. Let's focus on it next week. And, you know, before you realize it, three years have gone by and you have, yeah, you've got a few posts on LinkedIn and a few things, but nothing. You really track back and say, this is driving my business. Coach us. Where is the average person really going wrong?

So many things to unpack there. First, I want to ask, are we recording this? Because I want to share this with my audience at a later time as well.

Yes, everything is. We're recording it on live stream on high definition, and as soon as we're done with this, it's going to be saved live on YouTube, Facebook, everyplace else. We're also recording it in 4K, like, you know, the same quality that the Netflix is on, that will be edited later for a higher quality video, video podcast version, and also turned it and edited it into an audio format and we'll be giving you access to all of that.

Awesome. I asked because I saw a note on the side making sure to remind us of recording. So, tj, there were a lot of things that you said. There but the biggest one that I want to start with is we are in the misperception that we are competing against everyone else out there. And because we're competing against everyone else out there and we've gotten such a late start, we're really behind the eight ball. It's probably just better to give it all up. Well, that is not going to get you the results you desire. That is certainly not going to resolve the FOMO that you're feeling. Stop competing against everyone else. Stop competing against Gary Vaynerchuk. Stop competing against the Capital I influencers. There's only one person you need to quote, unquote, compete against and that's you. And all you need to do is start somewhere and be consistent in terms of what to do, what to say, how to look, this, that and the other. Yes, we can walk through all of those things, but nothing will happen if nothing happens. Start somewhere, somewhere that you are comfortable with and move forward.

So let me challenge you a little bit. I understand telling someone, start with something you're comfortable with. Otherwise as human beings, we'll figure out a way not to do it it. But I see so many people say, well, I'm comfortable typing. Everyone types chat, GPT types very quickly.

Sure.

So I often recommend to people, start by speaking on video because you instantly eliminate 99% of the world because most people are too scared or too intimidated or think, oh, I gotta have a perfect camera. So that's why, for example, I always recommend to people, if you have a choice between writing a book, are doing an online course, do an online course because it's a lot easier, in many cases cheaper than writing a book. It's faster and you have less competition. What are your thoughts there?

Completely agree. Absolutely. I would truly advise people to dive in wholeheartedly, but I know that they don't. And that's why I coach them. To find yourself where you're at and make one step forward tomorrow. Video. Absolutely. Not only are you putting yourself out there where most are not, the platforms themselves seem to really appreciate video, promote it more than a text only. So, yes, as you're really refining your social presence, I would definitely recommend getting into video as soon as possible. I do two weekly live stream shows on LinkedIn and it's not because I want to be that capital I influencer. It's because I found that having these shows gives me an opportunity to strike up conversations with people that I would never otherwise have connected with.

Can you give us an example? I mean, what's one of the best connections you. You've ever made from LinkedIn through a live stream. Because so many people think, oh, it's too intimidating, and what if I make a mistake and I can't do live? I mean, I go live almost every day on LinkedIn and make mistakes every day. Nobody cares.

No, they really don't.

Tell us about one of your success stories of someone you met this way and where it led. Sure.

So, in terms of connecting and meeting through LinkedIn Live events, I'll be honest with you, I don't really know where some of my best relationships have stemmed from until I really sit back and concentrate on them. Some of them came from, they appeared on a different LinkedIn Live event. I connected with them, we struck up a conversation, and long story short, we've got a business partnership going. Others, I've met people at live events and struck up a conversation and then hosted them on my show. And again, business opportunity comes from all of that process. I'm also an adjunct professor at Northeastern University, where I teach the Intro to Marketing course. One of my favorite things to tell my students is the secret to success in life. Because they're still young and naive enough to believe that anyone could give them the secret to success in life. But I love telling them this. The secret to success in life is not about what you know, but the secret to success is not just about who you know either. The secret to success in life is about who knows you for what you know. Your job then is to make sure more and more people know you for what you want to be known for. And these days, the best way to help you get to know people for what they want to be known for and have them know you for what you want to be known for is by leveraging social media. It's not that connect and pitch, hey, buy my stuff. It's that connect and connect. Tell me about you. What are you interested in? What gets you up in the morning? What are you involved in? And where can I lend a hand? That's just general, basic networking, the way Dale Carnegie taught us 85 years ago, and how to win friends and influence people.

What I'm doing is seeing the best practices right now, today, as far as connecting with on LinkedIn, because there was a time a couple of years ago where the rules were different on LinkedIn. I didn't do this tactic, but I know people who did were successful. They sent out a thousand messages a day saying, hi, I'm so and so, I do this. Is that a service you could use? Can you meet me for A Zoom call. And Zoom was still kind of exciting and new, and people were looking for an excuse to stop talking to kids and spouse during the pandemic. You could send that out and, you know, you send out a thousand a day, you get. You book 10 meetings a day you close to, and you're happy. Well, a couple of things have changed. Number one, LinkedIn changed some of its rules where they ratcheted it back, and these are not precise numbers, but if you could give out a thousand, now you can give out a hundred. The other thing that's changed is people. People's attitudes, like, oh, my God, not another Zoom call. I'd rather chew off my arm. I know. I don't. I don't take any Zoom meetings with anyone ever, really, if I can help it. So what's. What's the best practice and what are you advising your students to? You're. You're at Northeastern. That's in Boston. Am I correct?

Correct. Yes.

Okay. What are you advising them to do?

What you just described is what we affectionately call the pitch slap.

Here I am.

Here's my stuff. You want to buy? No, thank you very much. I do not. What I would suggest is still doing that. Reach out, but not to a thousand people a day. How about 10? How about 10 people that are either in your industry or working for an organization that you're interested in either working for or buying from or selling to, or maybe they write about a common interest, a hobby, or someone. Send out a personalized message to 10 people a day. Two will accept it. That's fantastic. At the end of the week, you have 10 new connections that you didn't otherwise have. Do not invite them to a coffee chat to a Zoom because they're not interested. They're Zoomed out. Thank them for their connection and engage with what they have to say when they have to say it. Build a relationship the way you would build any other relationship as opportunity presents itself. If opportunity presents itself, then yes. Invite them to a get to know you networking call again, so that you can understand them for what they want to be known for, and they can understand you for what you want to be known for. Seems like a long, hard slog, because sending out a thousand a day and 10 meetings and. And so on, it. That was a whole lot more profitable back in the day. It's not working at all right now. So the two connections a day that you make by being authentic and by being just a genuine, interesting person to have in their network is far more viable these days.

Our special Guest today is Rob Durant. He's the head of Flywheel Results. He guides and advises startups, small business owners, all authors, experts on how they can enable their engagement on social media in a way that helps themselves and helps other people. If you want to check out more of what he's all about, we've linked to his websites in the comments section and we've given you his bio. So please check that out. Interesting to me you also call yourself a coach. And I've been in the training business, the speaking business, for decades. I typically have not called myself a coach. I've called myself a trainer. People say coach, they think of Anthony Robbins and people wildly successful. I do meet so many people who tell me they've been through a coaching program, they're a certified coach, they've been through this person's program, this person's program. And then I asked them, well, okay, I don't mean to be overly personal, but how do you get clients? And you know, how much, you know, how much are you really banking with your coaching? And invariably, 99% of the time people are like, well, I haven't really, you know, marketed myself. I'm not making money from that. I'm still, you know, being a waiter or I'm still doing sales stuff or I'm doing other things. They kind of like the label. It seems sexy and cool to call yourself a coach, but very few people have actually figured out how to market themselves as a coach, how to get clients, how to go from talking to someone who may have a need all the way through that threading that needle to the point where they've paid you money and you're then either meeting with them on Zoom or in person or training them. Walk us through your process of how you became a coach and what does that, what does that even mean to you?

Sure. So let me start with the, the what does it mean to me? What it means to me is that one on one relationship that I don't generally have when I'm doing a, a training session. I, a teacher at my core. I love the thought of helping people. And whether I do that in a large audience form with formally teaching in front of a classroom or speaking or whatever the case may be, it's fantastic. But I also appreciate being able to sit down with somebody one on one and help them work through the things that they want to work through. And the beauty of coaching for me is I never have an answer, but I like to think that I have some pretty good questions and together we really dig Deep into the things that they're curious about and inevitably they have the answers themselves. We just work through that. How do I find clients? They kind of find me because of people knowing me for what I want to be known for. My coaching clients have all been referred to me from somebody else. Sometimes it's a coaching climb, former coaching client. More often than not, it's somebody that I've had a deal different personal relationship with. Maybe I worked with them, maybe I taught a session that they were participant in or whatever the case may be. So frankly, when it comes to marketing myself as a coach, I could probably learn a thing or two. But I don't choose to do a lot of that marketing right now because I like the way that the relationships that I have with my coaching clients have come about authentically.

And walk us through how it evolves when you help people. And there's a lot of different coaching models. There are people who have, you know, coaching slash mentorship community and it's once a month and you're in with 500 people. And yeah, you can ask a question of coach. There are people who have a one on one call, zoom call every day with a client for a six week period or for a year or indefinitely. There are people where you, you may meet face to face once a quarter and then you have unlimited texting with them. There's so many different ways of doing it. What really became popular a couple of years ago was, and a lot of people are still pushing it is this model of a, a coaching, like an eight week coaching program where you watch videos on demand and then you have a live session once with a coach, with a lot of other people. That's been a popular model. I found it didn't really work with the sort of skills that I, that I do or at least I couldn't figure out how it works. What model do you use as far as the time and delivery method with your clients?

It's all one on one live via Zoom. It's typically weekly or bi weekly and there is no set agenda, there is no course outline or anything of that nature. Yes, I teach courses, I teach classes. But for the coaching it is exactly that. It is coaching one on one on the things that are front of mind to them at that time.

And it's always a bit fuzzy sometimes the division between a business coach, executive coach, life coach, because as human beings if we're upset about our a child who's been kicked out of school, you're not going to be as productive marketing or anything else. How do you draw lines as far as what you do help people with, what you don't help people with? Most coaches I know are very quick to say, okay, I don't do therapy. You're going to need to go someone else for that. How do you draw the lines for your coaching practice?

That's really about the only line that I draw. I mean, it's easy to say I'm a business coach, not a life coach. Every business coach is a life coach in some way, shape or form because we cannot separate ourselves from business and life. I try not to focus on too much of the personal simply because I am not a therapist. I am not an expert, but I am happy to be a sounding board. One of the things that I will say, especially as we're addressing more personal issues, more life issues, do you want me to just listen, agree with you, or tell you the truth? And then based on that, just that question alone helps sometimes refocus the discussion.

How often people say anything other than I want the truth?

Oh, no. Sometimes they'll say, just listen. Sometimes they won't respond to that at all. Sometimes they'll realize, oh, I'm probably going down a path I don't even want to go down. But the reason I consider myself a business coach is because of my business background, my business training, and I know that I can be of assistance there. The reason that I consider myself a life coach is because, well, we're all life coaches too.

Well, although I do remember from my time as president of the National Speakers association, the New York chapter, this was a dozen years ago or so. I met so many people when I asked them, what do you do? They said, oh, I'm a life coach. And, oh, that's interesting. How long you been doing that? Once I scratched it. Invariably they were an out of work actor. They'd had zero business experience or successes and pretty much zero successes and other things, and just figured, well, it sounds better than saying I'm unemployed. I don't mean to have a broad brush of saying all life coaches are worthless, but it does seem to me that that's a field that has attracted a lot of flaky people, in part because anyone can call themselves a life coach. There's, there's no, it's not like I can't just say, I'm a surgeon. I'm a medical doctor surgeon. I would be put in jail for doing that. You don't have the credentialing and the legal process. It's. On the one hand, it's anyone can get in. But the other hand, there's no barriers to entry, but there's also very high barriers to success. Certainly high barriers for someone even making a middle class income in that field. What do you do? Let's say I'm a student of yours, 21 years old. I like psychology, I like business, and I tell you I want to be a life coach. Tell me how you would give me guidance if I came to you after class and I'm already one of your good students and I really want to soak up your knowledge. What's your advice to me?

I'm going to ask a lot of questions. What do you think it means to be a life coach and what's drawn you to that and what training do you have? What's going to set you apart from anyone else? Sure, there's a low barrier to entry as a life coach, but there are things that you can do to differentiate yourself. There are things that you can do to hold yourself in more esteem than others. There are respected training programs and certifications out there. What are your plans regarding that? What's driving you to want to become a life coach? And why did you enroll in college if that was your end goal? I'm not afraid even as a professor to ask them about why they were here. Not in the why are you here, stop doing it type of questioning, but in the why are you here? Let's take a moment to dig deeper into what motivated you down that path.

And have you had any students come to you with that goal, life coach?

No, A few other things, sure. I love coaching for a number of different venture startups, incubators and I'll do coaching in that regard as well. And I will really help them identify their why for having begun that. So no, not I want to be a life coach, but oh, I want to pursue this or I want to pursue that. Absolutely want to encourage it, but I want to help them dig really deep into the whys behind it. Because ultimately their reason for doing something is probably predicated on a reason for doing something prior. When we can get to that core why, that's the epiphany. That's when they can figure out, oh well, I can still get to this with a different end goal or they double down. Now that I know this is what I want, I absolutely want to pursue this path that we were talking about. Either way, that's why I coach, that's why I work with them, because I love that kind of help.

What's your number one piece of advice to college Kids these days, to me, I almost like, it's like I almost want to choke them and say, wake up. You have any idea how much opportunity you have these days? I spent my entire 20s, half of my 30s. All I did was bang on the doors of gatekeepers. Please, please, please, TV station manager, put my show on. Please, please, please, radio network executive, let me have a show. Please, please, please, newspaper publisher, let my column be. They don't have to do any of that. They could just create. And when it boggles my mind when I see someone who says, oh, I want to go into marketing or I want to go into business. And I said, okay, continue your studies in the university, but how about starting a new business every semester and see what works and use every kind of social media platform promoting it. Build fine paying customers even if you lose money. Four years of college, you could start eight businesses, seven of them could fail. And you might end up with one that, let's say, kicks off 80,000 a year and you figure out a way of managing it, maybe you know, two hours in the evening. You now have so much more power in your career. You no longer have to learn to move to the small crappy town away from every friend and family because it's the only job you could get 2,000 miles away. You no longer have to accept a job where you think, oh, the manager seems really creepy, but you know, I got no other opportunities. Have a business and have income that gives you power, but more important, you've learned all the skills of modern marketing and you're so much more valuable to any other company. And I just see so few students really using that, but you're there in the trenches. Tell me, tell me what's really going on with your students and what do you see the most ambitious ones doing?

So you're exactly right. Get out there and do it. And I have college age students in my own house and I try and give that advice, but that's advice from dad nobody listens to.

It's very hard to advise. It's very hard to be a life coach to a family member. And we all know that.

My students, I love your thought of just starting a new business every semester.

And really what's underlying that and I apologize. Let me let you know that what's really underlying that is it's, it's now so easy to test whether you have a good idea and to fail quickly. I mean, early in my career I want. I launched a TV talk show. It took me two years, no income, mounting debt before I could really go through all the most figure out, okay, this didn't work, it's a failure and I've got a hundred thousand in debt. You could start a YouTube show, do 7 show and you may decide, I just don't like it, stop, and you've lost nothing. That's my point is you can, you can test things, fail faster, and in the world of business, it only takes one hit to do really well. I'm one of the most successful Udemy instructors ever. Not because I'm the greatest instructor. It's because I've made 220 courses. 20 of them are best sellers, 200 are awful sellers. Does it matter? The 20 that sold well did everything else I needed to do. Yeah. So tell me more about the mindset of young people you advise today and how do you. Are any of them trying this?

Not many. And that's because what you are suggesting is so far outside of the norm of everything they've learned in school. School, everything. And Seth Godin is a great source of information on, on this. But everything they've learned, in short, is how to conform. And what you're telling them. And what I tell them is it's not about conformity. You do not need permission to start your own talk show. You do not need permission to talk about your personal life on LinkedIn. I don't care what the LinkedIn police tell you. We're kind of cut from the same cloth in that, that way. Tj, because one of the first things I tell students, day one of any new class, I share with them an article that I posted on LinkedIn, I share with them, I want you to fail. Great. You walk into class, day one, and your professor says, I want you to fail. How quickly can I drop this class?

Yeah.

And I say, wait, wait, wait. Before you go to your advisor and switch out, please allow me to explain. I am the son of a math teacher. My dad has taught in public schools for over 50 years now, and he taught me two valuable pieces of information before I started teaching. The first was Rob. You don't need to know the whole textbook. You just need to stay one page ahead of your students. Ah, good. The second was, no student who shows up regularly, puts in effort regularly, simply tries, will ever fail my class. Now, you might not get the A plus. You're going to get a grade worthy of your effort, but you will not fail. I tell them, try things, break things, go and experiment with different things and learn the hard way on some of the lessons that we're going through in class. And you will not fail my class. The other thing that I like to share with them, generally midway through the semester, now that I've established a rapport with them, they are at the best time in their LinkedIn life as a college student. And what I say to them is this, as a college student, if you reach out to 10 people a day, 50 people a week with a connection request, reach out to an alumni, reach out to somebody who's in the industry that you're majoring in, and simply connect with them, I would expect 6, 7, 8 out of 10 will accept your connection request. Best. Because we've all been students, we all appreciate what it's like to be a student, and we all want to help students. And if I can help a student with something as simple as, yeah, sure, I'll connect. Really not a big ask. They'll do it. And then when you have.

I apologize, I don't mean to sound like I'm or look like I'm multitasking away from you. I just wanted to pull up your LinkedIn page and I wondered if you could sort of walk us through what you do and best practices you try to. To reflect and that you recommend to your students and to your clients as well. Sure, I'll just. I'll just pull that up and while we're talking about this, if that's okay.

Absolutely.

And okay. All right, here we are. So I'll go ahead and. Oh, right here. There we are. And there. And there we are. Great.

There we are. Yep.

We don't want to be too meta, watching ourselves. Right, Right.

So once you've had these connections, simply be generous with your network. And what do I mean by that? Add to the conversations taking place in your industry. You can share content. Do that twice a week. Find something relevant to your industry and post it. But don't just post the link. Post something relevant to your audience. Although I don't like calling it an audience, I like calling it a network. And tell me maybe why I should read that article too, or maybe why I should skip that article or give me your insights. What did you learn from it? Why should I take the time to read it as you do this regularly, as you share valuable things with your network, simply curating is something that they will value, something that they will start to recognize you for. Oh, this is somebody who's plugged into this industry. Then start sharing your own thoughts about this industry. Don't hesitate to put yourself out there. You have thoughts, you have an opinion, you're learning things.

Is this Your most recent post here.

This is one of the articles that I've pinned and I've got a few articles that I've written that have pinned to the top of my profile simply because I want to make sure to draw a attention to them, including that I want you to fail that we were talking about in terms of content that I'm posting a lot of these time these days, the content that I'm posting is like you were talking about video content, the weekly shows and so on. But yeah, I will post written content as well. I will find an article and share that or I will write a post of my own.

And what do you find is best practice now for LinkedIn etiquette? Like should I hit follow first? I mean, now we've talked, we've met, should I just go ahead and hit the connect button? Do you advise students to try to do now? Normally I would send a note, but I'm going to do a verbal note here. Hey, absolutely, I'm going to do that. But what do you recommend to your students? Should they start off by following someone for a month and then commenting on their stuff and then maybe after a month and seven good comments saying, hey, I really love your stuff, I like that you do such and such. And I'm wondering if we could. How do you see the best practice for for creating a network on LinkedIn?

Sure. So the reason it highlights follow on my profile and not connect is because I have creator mode turned on because I do LinkedIn live shows and so on. I would love to have it default to connect because I want people to not just follow me. I don't want to be a personality. I want to be a connection, a genuine connection. I recommend that the students connect with the people that they're reaching out to, not simply follow. I don't need a lurker. Don't go commenting on seven things that I've published and then send the connection request. If the connection request that you've sent to begin with speaks to me about why I might want to be connected with you. For students, it's as simple as I'm a student in marketing, I'd like to connect with you, learn marketing best practices.

That's it.

And once you've connected, once they've accepted that, thank them. Hey, thanks for connecting with me. I look forward to engaging with your content on LinkedIn and then do that. Engage with that connection as is appropriate. And that's the key point here, as is appropriate. Don't simply like something like it and tell me why you like it, don't simply comment awesome or agree 100 or whatever. Tell me what's awesome. Tell me what you agree with. If you don't have a comment with about a dozen words, you're probably not saying much of anything worth saying.

You're not adding value.

You're not adding value. And I'm not saying hijack the post, you don't want to do that either. But highlighting what they said, that resonated with you. Absolutely. Tell me why it's important for me to want to get to know you even closer as you've done this. As the opportunities present themselves, maybe there is an opportunity to reach out and have that one on one conversation, especially as a student. Reach out and ask for an informational interview. An informational interview is just that. I want to learn more about the role that you're in. I want to learn more about the organization that you work for. I'm not asking you for a job. I'm not asking you to buy anything. In fact, the only ask I have of you is the time that you would put forth into meeting with me. That is my only ask. You see the about section. This is one of the things that I see is an opportunity for people to get to, to know you. Yet so many of us use this page, in this space in particular as a digital version of our resume, a digital version of our cv.

And we can see you've written this very in a conversational manner. You're saying, ugh, I swallowed hard, took the job. You're, you're sharing your emotional side and how you felt. Most people don't do that on like this.

No, because you know, this isn't Facebook. TJ okay. Nowhere in LinkedIn's terms of service do they say this isn't Facebook. Nowhere do they say we don't want to know the personal side of you. In fact, it's just the opposite they want.

Nor does it say you have to be boring here.

That's right. Which is why.

You know another thing, if you look.

At the top of the profile there, you'll see my LinkedIn headline is atypical. At my core I'm a teacher. I'm great at the middle of conversations and I'm not as athletic as I remember being. Rob, that doesn't tell me what you do. But you're right, it gets a little chuckle. I don't mind a little self deprecating humor. And I want people to know me for what I want to be known for. I want people to know me as a Teacher so. Well, what does this mean? You know, I'm great at the middle of conversations. I'm not as athletic as I remember being. If they're curious enough, they'll come to my profile and they'll read my about section and they'll learn more about me. And then as they learn more about me, the opportunity for relationship presents itself more and more.

I'm fascinated by your focus on startups because I like startups and in fact I was the communication judge for something called. It was a lean startup group. I actually forgot the name of it, what it was called in New York City and the, I don't know, the 2005-2012 range. It was. And I would go and meet all these startups and I would coach them, I would critique their presentations and we'd meet. And some of them were interested in hiring me, but it was often the same message, oh, we'd love to hire you. We just have to go out and raise our first round of money. And then once they get that, well, we have to spend all that on marketing. So as much as I love talking to startup founders, I found, at least for me, a horrible business model. It was much better for me to talk to executives that work for 100-year-old insurance company. It may be a big boring company, but they have, you know, multimillion dollar training budget and they also get better at their communication skills. So when they wanted me, A, they could hire me B, there was money already budgeted, C, it wasn't coming out of their own pocket or any investors pocket it. So it was just infinitely easier for me to build a business around mid size and large businesses and government agencies and United nations agencies. Tell us how you've been successful navigating that startup world. Because I do know people who have a lot of expertise set out down that path of being a coach to startups, had a million conversations every day, built good relationships, never made any money or they got, you know, they got warrants for stock that never became. And at some point their family members said, hey, you got to start paying your share of the bills, do something different. So how did you find success there?

So you're absolutely right. In terms of financial success, it's challenging. But I do it for more than the, the financial success. I actually volunteer at a lot of startup incubators because, well, I know myself, I am never going to be a brain surgeon. I am never going to be the one who finds secure for cancer. But I believe that the backbone of the American economy is the small business. And if I can do my little part to help small businesses succeed, then I have found my place in the world. I love working with small businesses, with ventures, because there's so much Greenfield you never hear, oh, that's not the way we do it here, because they've not done anything here. And I love seeing the impact of what I've been able to do. I've worked inside and outside with tech startups inside. Fantastic opportunities to really cut your teeth on areas where you might not have tremendous experience. So for the students out there that are are wondering, you know, how do I get hired when I don't have a lot of experience? Go work at a startup. You'll get experience across the board. For those ventures that I'm coaching and volunteering with, I love working with them right now on social enablement because they are seeing tremendous opportunity there. And a colleague of mine just stumbled across a recent study, a statistic that said startup CEOs who are active on Twitter get on average 5% more for their valuations. Startup CEOs who are active on LinkedIn get on average 20% higher valuations. We're using LinkedIn to build a relationship that marketing and advertising is not doing for them. And we're doing it in an authentic way. And they see the results of this quickly. That's fantastic. And you know what else is great about working with them? They know a lot of other people. They know the VCs who know the companies that got the funding. So success in life is about who knows you for what you know. They know me for what I know. They share with others what I've helped them achieve, and that leads to opportunity for me. Yeah, it's the long path, but it's the path I'm happiest with.

We're speaking with Rob Durant. He's the head of Flywheel Results. His website, flywheel results.com we posted links to his social media. You can follow him on Twitter, you can follow him on LinkedIn as well. Rob, can you share with us a startup you have worked with where it doesn't even have to be a tech startup that became worth $100 billion, but just one where you're proud of your work with them and you nurture them along from here to here, however you want to decide what here is?

Sure. So the first sales enablement role I had, I was recruited out of the world of teaching. I was teaching math and business at a local high school, and a recruiter reached out to me and said, rob, we've got this VP of sales at a tech startup, he said, go find me a math teacher. My sales guys don't know math. Okay. Well, by any chance if you looked at my resume. No, why? Well, you see, I've done almost 20 years of training and development in sales and customer service as well. So yeah, let me take this opportunity. I came on board and at the opera at the time they said they were hoping to scale their sales team. They had about 10, 10 to 12 representatives. They wanted to get it to 60. 60 is an interesting number because that was their turnover rate at the time that I came on board. When you have 60% turnover in your sales team, you're not scaling anything. When you have 60% turnover, that means the person you hired in January, you're hiring for that same seat again in June. And empty seats don't feel quoted. So I would love to tell you it was all me. It wasn't all me. It never is any one person. But I had a leadership team that gave me enough rope to hang myself, as they say. That gave me the audience and respect that we needed to really make things happen. We came in, we took what was really working for them, codified it, and built formal processes around that, not just for the sales program, but for the sales hiring. We took that organization from 60% turnover down to less than 10%, closer to 5% in about a year and a half. At that same time, we had scaled the number of sales reps hitting quota, we had increased the quota simultaneously, and ultimately that organization went from startup to unicorn status. They were bought out and are highly successful organization still standing on their own. And not only am I proud of what I was able to accomplish in conjunction with the team there, I was able to take the lessons because remember that Greenfield where you learn about these things as well? I was able to take those lessons, map it over to the next startup and do that same thing in just six months. So it's been exciting for, for me to work with these organizations because you can see the impact of the results so quickly as well.

Great. That must be gratifying to see something progress like that because, you know, 60% turnover rate, you're doing something wrong. There's no doubt about it, for any organization, regardless of the industry. Now I am, I'm intrigued by you being in the industry of academia. So I'll ask you a question. I've never failed. Figured out the answer too, which is in the academic world, there are lawyers, I know economists, they are able to convince to sell themselves to universities and say okay, pay me 400,000 a year, 500,000 a year, certainly 200,000 a year. People I know who teach law, who teach economics, for example, not to mention medicine, are typically really compensated very well. And yet people who are great at the fields of marketing, of sales, of communication, in my experience, and I'm hoping you have a completely different experience, are generally awful at actually selling themselves in the academic world. I've had countless universities come to me and say, hey, T.J. can you do a guest lecture? Can you teach this course? And invariably it almost gets to the point where they want me to pay them for the luxury of saying I'm an adjunct professor and it doesn't matter if it's an Ivy League school, It almost doesn't matter. There's a sense that if you're in the communications marketing field, you should just be happy to be able to tell people you're associated with a university. And yet again, economists, lawyers, can make $400,000 a year without even being a famous superstar. I don't know of any famous superstar communicator who is paid a lot at a university. So I'm wondering if you could talk about that. Is that just my sample size is too small. Is there something marketers and communicators are not doing in the university world? Because it definitely appears to me that the academic world doesn't really respect communications and marketing skills. Or like with politics, you can be a former mayor of New York City, not have an advanced degree, and a university will give you a couple hundred thousand dollars a year because you have perceived expertise. But if you're a perceived expert in communication, marketing, sales, you know, it's, we'll pay you $500 a month, and you know, we want you to take five classes. So first of all, tell me if I'm wrong. And B, is there a solution to it? And see, have you figured out a particular solution since you do work in the academic world?

Have I figured out a solution? No. Are you wrong? Not in my observations. But, you know, you go back to the law of supply and demand. I mean, I'm teaching the intro to marketing class. If I were to command $400,000 for it, the law of supply and demand says, I'm going to go find supply that costs less. And there are plenty of people willing to take that on. Now, do I believe that what I deliver is valuable? Most definitely. Do I believe that what I deliver is worth $400,000? In fact, I do. But I am willing to deliver it for less than that again, because this is, I, I, this is another passion project for me, more so than it is the, the primary way to, to drive revenue for me. I love being able to get in front of these students and make an impact. The things that we talked about earlier fail, try things, don't wait for, for permission. These are things that they're not hearing from anyone. But I truly believe they have to hear this soon. So getting in front of freshmen and sharing that, it's worth it to me. And yeah, oh, by the way, saying I'm a professor at Northeastern, I don't mind the reputation that comes along with that, but I'm not doing it for the reputation and I'm not doing it for the money. I'm doing it for the impact. And I get to see that impact with each and every class I teach.

If you have questions for Rob, you can post them in the comments section. You can actually join us live by hitting the link to streamyard. Janice writes in and says looking forward to rewatching and taking more notes from Rob Durant. That's insightful. To communications and marketing experts being underpaid by academics compared to law, medicine and politics. And Janice is a professor at major university in Canada, so we're happy that she's joined us. And if you have expertise, you can share on that, we would all love to know. Now, I haven't set out to be an academic. I do occasionally do a guest lecture. Did that when I'm younger. But I have to confess, it does sort of irritate me that the academic world doesn't seem to really respect the fields of communication. And at least in my experience, I know I've tried to literally give away my services to my alma mater, Duke University, which has had a number of crisis communication scandals over the years. Couldn't even give it away, basically. And yet other organizations are more than happy to pay full fee. Let's go a little deeper in the two strands you just brought up. There's passion projects, there's things you do that primarily drive a business and a career. To me, again, what's so exciting about being a young person today is if you could find one primary revenue driver, you could then explore so many different passions in the context of an overall consulting business or freelancing business. So much of the first, you know, 25 years of my career, I had to spend 100% of my time trying to figure out what's the primary revenue driver. Whereas in the last 15 years, I've been lucky. Just, you hit a couple of things just right. Boom. You got a nice primary stream of revenue and now you've got the time to start other passion projects. What's your biggest piece of advice to a young person today? Or maybe it's a startup founder and they got a lot of interest, a lot of things they care about, they help a lot of people, but they just haven't figured out what's my primary revenue driver that's going to pay the bills to fund the basic infrastructure I need for my business and life. And everybody has some basic needs. It might be a studio apartment for $500 a month. But how do you fund the basic needs so you can work on these other areas of interest and passions for students?

Sometimes that is just taking a job with somebody else. And that's okay. You know, I absolutely agree with you. Entrepreneurship is incredibly valuable. I believe that students should try their hand at it. But don't hesitate to work in the field that you're studying as well. Do your nine to five, do your seven to seven, if that's what it takes, pay your dues. But while you're doing that, try something else as well. You have more time and energy as a young adult, whether it's in school or just recently out of school than you ever will down the road. That's just the reality of it. Yes, enjoy it. Yes, absolutely. Embrace the social life and all of the elements there. But if you can carve out an hour a week, an hour a day for something that is beyond the scope, try those experiments that we've talked about. Get yourself out there and figure out what works and what doesn't. Fail, fail quickly and move on.

That luxury of time is something that young people have that I've always felt like I have. But I have reflected recently that I started online training in 1998, failed miserably, lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. It wasn't really until like 2015, so like 17 years before it really paid off handsomely. And you know what, it's worked out. But I do ask myself, like, I'm spending most of my time now on new digital cloning technology and different, you know, versions of what I do through coaching and helping people through digital clones, a video based digital clone. But I am telling myself, wow, I really, I hope to be alive in 17 years, but I really don't want it to take 17 years before it's, it's successful.

So yeah, but think of all the lessons you learned along the way. Oh yeah, you don't have to relearn those. So that's going to expedite that process for you. And that's the thing that I, I don't think students and young adults realize either there will be an opportunity for them to build on even these failures.

Yeah, tell us, tell us. Tell me what I'm looking at right here.

Sure.

So I wrote a book. Sorry.

Ah, that's all right.

Let me go back. I was trying to, I was trying to make it look too nice. Sorry, one second.

That's all right.

Okay. Tell us about coming, Tell us about your upcoming book, the Social Enablement Blueprint.

Social Enablement Blueprint is just that. It's a blueprint of some of the things that we've talked about today. There are three basic tenets to leveraging social media for better relationships and better results.

It's, and I apologize, Rob, I want to extend you the same courtesy we give all of our guests, which is a complete blank slate of two minutes for you to pitch and sell. So I won't ask follow up questions. You get to do whatever you want. It's as if the Today show came to you and said, just talk about your book for two minutes. It's a free ad. We're not going to charge you for the advertising. So I'm not even going to, I'm even going to put myself off camera and let you talk because we do. We are about, on this show about helping people get more comfortable pitching and presenting and talking about what they're proud of and their passion projects and their businesses and also to see masterclass experts at selling doing that so they have role models. So I'm going to give you two minutes now and I'm just going to take myself right off. So keep talking, get us excited if you want to encourage us to connect with you on social media so we get advanced warning if it's available for pre order anywhere. Anything you can do to sell it, to sell it for the next two minutes, starting now.

The Social Enablement Blueprint. Stop pitching, start selling. You might have heard us talk about the connect and pitch approach or cold emails, or cold calling. Even advertising not working the way people hope. Stop using social media for media and start using it to be sociable. There are three basic tenets. Be approachable, be sociable, and be generous. Within this book is a blueprint, a step by step prescriptive way that you can leverage social media to do just that. Within this, you'll learn about sharing your authentic self. People like buying from people they like. So let us get to know you in terms of being sociable. Dale Carnegie taught us 85 years ago. How to win friends and influence people. That's great, but how do we do that on the social media platforms? Within here, you'll find the prescriptive approach to doing exactly that and being generous. You have thoughts, you have ideas, you have wisdom that people want to hear. Oh, I don't know anything. Oh, I'm new to this industry. New to this industry is fantastic. Because you're bringing a new perspective. It's about putting yourself out there. It's about leveraging social media for driving conversations and driving opportunity. And while the book is LinkedIn centric, that's simply because that's where our clients and their prospects are most often found. But those three tenets that I shared, be sociable, be approachable, be generous. That works across social media platforms and works best when in conjunction with all of them. You can sign up to be notified when the Social Enablement Blueprint is available on Amazon and other book retailers by going to socialenablement Pro. The book will be out at the end of the week, and anyone that signs up at SocialEnablement Pro will be notified when the book is available.

So I didn't mean to take that off. I hit the wrong button. I was trying.

That's quite all right. There was perfect timing.

Okay, great. Now, do I understand correctly? You're saying the book will be out this week?

Correct.

Okay, great. So that, that is good news. So by the time a lot most people watch this, it will already be available. And are you doing paperback version, digital audio? Ed, everything.

You can get the paperback version and the digital version. I will be doing an audio book, but that is probably three to six months down the line.

Okay. All right. And so because I'm in the. I've published half a dozen books, but it's been a while. I'm probably going to publish one in the next couple of weeks. Weeks. My understanding is things have changed with the audiobook version. There's now these services that do it. They're incredibly inexpensive. And even if you like doing audio as I do, and even if you, you know, you think people want to hear your voice, it's. It's now can be done so easily and inexpensively with a, you know, with a real person. Now there's also the voice cloning, which is something I spent a lot of time on myself. What I haven't figured out is a way of putting in a whole book and have the voice clone do everything in a take. But I'm just wondering, have you explored that? Are you thinking of doing your own voice for it and not doing a digital clone version.

I'm all about connecting. So for me, even though an audiobook is a one way medium, I'd still like the opportunity for people to hear my voice as a way to connect with me and I hope that it encourages them to follow up and actually connect with me. So I will be recording it in my own voice not because I think people want to hear my voice necessarily, but because I want to connect with people and that's the best way that I can see that going forward.

Well, you connected nicely with Janice. She writes. Thanks for the overview of the social enablement blueprint. Stop pitching, start selling. Sociable, approachable, generous, authentic. Great to hear that. Your book is out this week, Rob, so we're building some excitement there and trying to get people, it's always nice to get people excited about your book before it comes out. And I'm sure you've seen, I'm sure you've seen the massive exposure for Gary Vaynerchuk's new book where he's been talking about it nonstop for six months before it ever came out. I basically felt like I didn't have a choice. I did buy it. I think I'm about 75% done with it and is is a lot of it stuff he talks about in social media and you. Yeah, but there are new insights and even though I can't necessarily do everything he does, he always gets me thinking and gets me holding to higher standards. Rob, I hadn't thought of doing this, but since I've got you, Lenno, I try to take advantage of you, if you don't mind. I essentially have a startup, a project and I'm going to ask for your advice while I get ready to do that. If you have questions for Rob, you can post them. You can also follow him on social media. We posted links to his website and to his social media accounts. His website is flywheel results.com. you can go to his Twitter account and to his LinkedIn account, find out more about him and also be ready for when his new book comes out. So Rob, here's my startup. I am fascinated with communication. That's where I focus most of my time, obviously. And to me the medium, the technology I'm most excited about is digital cloning. Now I want you to do some pushback for you because I've heard you stress the personal connection, authenticity, you want your own voice to be heard. There is a school of thought from people who say, oh, you shouldn't use digital clones. It's Inauthentic. It's not, it's not really you. It could make mistake. All perfectly valid criticisms, but I've recently built a digital clone of myself and I'll show it to you a minute. I want to get your sense of a marketing person and as someone who advises startups, because I've got several challenges here. I am trying to alert people to essentially something new. People know what a chatbot is. You type in an expedia. How do I get this? That's been around for a long time. It's also been around where you can hear a digital voice giving you a pre recorded message. People are also used to seeing a digital clone that kind of looks like this and nothing moving. But now where it was that a script. And these days there are even better versions of that where you can put your own face in and a little bit of movement and feed it the script and. And so if you're busy or traveling and you need to make a new update weekly newsletter in a video format, you could type the newsletter, have your clones say it. So people have heard of those things. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is a digital clone where you could go to a page, whether it's on your phone or your computer and say, hey tj, I've got to give a presentation to the national association of Student Marketers next week. I want to practice my opening and you coach me and give me feedback and I would come on, you would see my face, you would hear my voice, talk to you and say, okay Rob, let's hear it. And you talk. And then I say, rob, I really like the opening hook. Here's what I would strengthen to do that. So it's a completely different experience. It really is like a coaching experience. It's more like a one on one. At this moment, the text and the audio version is available. I'm hoping within the next two weeks, if not sooner, the full scale video version of my clone will be available. And I'm using a platform called Delphi. I'm not a computer scientist and I didn't create any of this, but I am trying to be the absolute fastest person hopping on it and getting it out there and promoting it, going on talk shows and podcasts. So I just want to give you a little taste of it because I want to know your perspective. Perspective on really the best way of marketing this. Because part of the problem is people think, oh well that's just a, an old recording of something. Those have been around for years. That's not what I'm talking about. Oh, that's just a face and you're feeding it a script. That's not what I'm talking about. Or they feel like it's going to sound awful. The sound, I'll ask you to judge it, but the sound. Sound is pretty good at this point. I'll introduce the clone here in a minute. I'll bring it up and give you a tiny demonstration. But then I want you, if I could sort of pick your brain as to. And by the way, Gabe says hello. Gabe, thanks for stopping by. If you have a question for Rob, we'll go to you ahead of me. But I'm interested in your perspective of how to market something like this. Because on the one hand it could be a part of this whole we're in a massive hype news stage of anything to do with artificial intelligence. So on the one hand it should be easier than ever to get attention. On the other hand, it's just hard for people to understand its full impact. In that I think it could be, maybe not 100% is a one on one coaching situation, but a thousand times better than a video online course where you just got to listen to me or somebody lecture. And it's very passive. And it's a one to many. This is a one to one model. That's what I'm so excited about. But it's going to take a while unless you can help me figure out how to speed up the process to get people to understand its true potential. Because right now it kind of seems cool, but it doesn't really seem like more than a novelty at this point to people. So I'm going to go ahead and share my stay at the screen and just give a slight taste and I'm just interested from your perspective as a marketer, how you think I can make this meaningful to people to the point where they might value it more than an online course. Because there is a. There is a tradition now obviously of people paying varying sums of money for online courses. So I will bring it on. Hi, I'm TJ's clone. How may I help you communicate more effectively? And I just realized I don't have my settings the right way. I've got to stop one second and change a setting and that way we'll have clearer audio. I have the settings for my streamyard one way, but I have the settings for my computer another. I need that all to go and see. Were you able to hear that, Rob, by the way? Loud and clear in Theory, it's less, it's going to be less quality than if I put everything through the same place. Okay, so now we should be in good shape. All right, so we're going to call again. Tj, I have a particular challenge. I am marketing a new digital clone of myself and I'm finding people are getting confused because they think a clone is just a text bot or they think a clone is just giving a pre recorded script and making it come to life with audio and video. And it's really more than that. I'm struggling. Can you help me?

It's, It did appear to hear you.

I'm sorry, did you, were you able to hear that, Rob?

I heard you but I did not hear the, the clone response.

Oh, so you just heard nothing for the last 30 seconds.

Right.

Ah, let me bring on my producer, Dan Ben. What did I do wrong there? Oh, I know what I did wrong. I must have hit one of the buttons that didn't hit the share. Okay, let me try again. I'm going to hit share screen. Oh, I know when I switched the setting I bet I needed to re share. I bet that's what I did. Okay, so let me try it again. I'm going to hit share screen and we're using the streamyard technology for what we do to enable to simulcast across all the social media platforms. So I'm hitting entire screen. I'm hitting share audio again. Now I'm hitting share. Let me know if you're able to hear this when I point when I put my finger up. If you could. Let me know if you could hear here.

Rob.

Hi, I'm TJ's clone. How may I help you communicate more effectively?

Heard that.

Okay Rob, you were able to hear that?

Yes.

Okay, so now TJ clone and omit says he was not able to hear as well. So that was my problem. Omit. So now I'm going to ask a question to the clone. TJ Clone. I have having trouble communicating a message about what a digital clone is. I talk to a lot of people and they, they think that it's just a text back and forth, no real value or it's a way to answer a simple question. Or they think I've created something in an audio or video format that is just going to give a pre recorded script that I've scripted in advance back. I'm really trying to communicate with people that this is completely interactive and can be just like a one on one conversation with me and it's going to feel very personalized. It can Be an audio and soon video. What recommendations do you have on how I can communicate this more effectively? To effectively communicate the value and interactivity of a digital clone, you need to focus on a few key points.

First.

First, emphasize the real time, personalized nature of the interaction. Explain that unlike static text or pre recorded scripts, a digital clone can respond dynamically to questions and engage in meaningful dialogue, just like a live conversation. You might say something like, imagine having a conversation with me where I can respond to your specific needs and questions in real time. That's what my digital clone clone does. It's not just a text exchange or a pre recorded message. It's a fully interactive experience that adapts to you. Next, highlight the versatility of the clone. Mention that it can handle various formats including audio and soon video, making it a comprehensive tool for communication. You could add, whether you prefer talking, listening or watching, my digital clone can engage with you in the format that suits you best. Finally, use examples to illustrate the clone's capabilities. Share anecdotes or scenarios where the clone has provided valuable personalized assistance. For instance, I recently had someone ask my clone about improving their public speaking skills. The clone was able to give tailored advice and even simulate a practice session just like I would in person. What specific. Okay, I'll stop there was almost done, but that's the. That gives you a taste of it. I mean that was obviously only the audio portion, but very soon you're going to see a video that's going to look and sound just like me because it's going to be based on green screen footage that was shot with me. And from what I've seen so far, you know, the mouth will sink. It's not going to look like a, you know, a 1950s Godzilla movie where the lips are not sinking in anything. So let me throw that out to you. If I came to you as a startup business with this, how would you advise I market a digital clone?

Start with why Simon Sinek really put the roadmap out there. Why? How? What? Why would I want this? Why would I need this? Why would anyone care?

Well, the why I think is very simple in that the research shows Benjamin Bloom's famous analysis, the two sigma problem, which is that when someone can have one on one tutoring or coaching, they learn two standard deviations better than when it's a group in a classroom. So that that's pretty much accepted. And right now, if someone wants to hire me for a group of public training and public speaking training for a day, I got a fly to them. They Got a fly to me or we do it on Zoom and it cost a bunch of money. So that's the problem with sort of the traditional way is it either cost a lot of money of a live trainer like this, there could be travel if it's face to face with Zoom there obviously doesn't have to be. The problem with digital courses, video based courses is people start watching after five minutes the teacher can't really see you. You can be texting and multitasking and sort of clicking a box. Most people don't finish it. It's a very one to many model and the completion rates are almost zero for me and everyone else. So there is a real problem with a video based course. So the why is you could actually have close to an actual one on one tutoring coaching experience. You know, Alexander the Great had Aristotle as his personal tutor. Now you can have someone who's trained presidents and prime ministers and Nobel Peace prize winners how to speak as your coach at and I haven't even figured out pricing yet, but it's going to be at least 99% cheaper than hiring me. And you can do it at any time. So if you're 12 hour time zone away, you can do it. It's convenient for you and pretty soon you'll be able to do it in any language. So it solves the language barrier. So for someone to learn, whether it's for me or someone else, a really high level skill from one of the best experts in the world. To me that's a very, very compelling why.

I agree. And none of that was talking to me about the tech and I think that's essential. Talk to me about me and the things that I care about. Talk to me about the improved learning opportunities. Talk to me about the improved access opportunities. Talk to me about the things that matter to me in the realm of where you experience to employ this technology. But don't talk to me about the tech because dude, I don't care. I just wanted to if, if it's magic, if you told me it was.

Magic easy for me because I don't even understand the technology. Well, there you go. That will be easy and. But someone could understand that making needs but it's still a sense of okay, what do I do? If you start a coaching session, you can start off by saying okay, what do you want to talk about? Talk to me. And I can, I can program my clone to start off with that. But so far in just the test I've done in the last few weeks, people come in, they'll ask a question. They'll. Their impression will be, oh, that's really cool, but they're not coming back. They don't see how this can actually lead people through a whole path. Path of I've got a 600 lecture course that's 30 hours long on communication skills. My clone could take you through the lessons, but do it on your terms, the way you want to, rather than you having to follow an exact curriculum that I planned for the masses. It could be personalized to you, but I haven't figured out how to make that understandable to people yet. Any other thoughts on how to do that?

You've got to first get them in and then get them to come back. So have the clone program such that it explains that come back piece. So as it's answering it, you know, it gives me the answer, but then it says, and you know, it elicits a second question from me or a response from me. So that we're having that one on one so that I quickly forget that I'm talking to technology and start to realize I'm talking to a human. Yeah, I mean, I, I really apologize. I'm suddenly getting pulled away.

Oh, I'm taking up so much of your time.

No, it's been a pleasure.

We really want to thank you for your time today today. And folks, by the time you're watching this, his book is going to be out. So you're going to want to check out the book. You can also go to his website, flywheelresults.com and please follow Rob on LinkedIn, Facebook. We're putting all that in the show notes and it's in the comments as well. Rob Durant, thanks so much for being our guest today.

Tj, thank you so much for having me. Have a good one.

All right, thanks a lot. And for everyone else, I'll be back live in just about five minutes. I'll see you then.