Welcome to episode 204 of the Business Development Podcast.

And on today's expert guest interview, it is my absolute pleasure to welcome Marcus Chan.

I absolutely loved his book Six Figure Sales Secrets.

And today we're talking sales and personal branding in 2025 and beyond.

Stick with us, you are not going to want to miss this episode.

The great Mark Cuban once said, business happens over years and years.

Value is measured in the upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal.

And we couldn't agree more.

This is the Business Development Podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and broadcasting to the world.

You'll get expert business development advice, tips and experiences and you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs and business development reps.

You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business brought to you by Capital Business Development capitalbd ca.

Let's do it.

Welcome to the Business Development Podcast.

And now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Hello.

Welcome to episode 204 of the Business Development Podcast and today's expert guest is Marcus Chan.

Marcus is a towering figure in the realm of B2B sales.

Celebrated for his profound impact on the industry through transformative coaching and training programs.

His illustrious career spans over a decade with Fortune 500 companies, marked by an exceptional trajectory that saw him rise through the ranks with unprecedented speed.

Achieving an impressive 12 promotions in just eight years.

Landing one of the top sales regions, Marcus consistently delivered outstanding Results, driving over 700 million in total contract value and surpassing sales quotas with unmatched consistency.

Recognized as a Salesforce top sales influencer, Marcus has channeled his experience into founding Venly Consulting Group, where he now dedicates himself to empowering B2B sales teams and startups alike.

His mission extends beyond mere metrics.

Marcus strives to inspire and equip sales professionals globally to achieve their highest potential, fostering a legacy of excellence and impact in the field of sales.

Beyond his professional accomplishments, Marcus Chan is known for his commitment to elevating others and leaving a lasting impression on the sales landscape.

His approach blends strategic insight with a genuine passion for mentoring and guiding others towards success.

Through his coaching and thought leadership, Marcus continues to shape the future of B2B sales, embodying a relentless drive for excellence and a profound dedication to empowering individuals to to thrive in their careers.

Marcus, it's an honor to have you on the show today.

Hey, I'm pumped to be here.

That's the first time someone called me towering, so I, I appreciate that.

My, my towering five foot seven and A half inch figure.

But I, I, all jokes aside, I'm excited to be here and I think we'll have some fun today.

Oh, I think so too, dude.

I love having sales experts on because you know, at the end of the day business development sales are very closely aligned.

You know, in a lot of ways a lot of people think they're the same thing and in some ways they are.

In some ways they are but in a lot of ways they aren't.

But you know, I don't, I don't position myself as a sales expert.

Right.

I really do position myself in that like lead generation.

Here's how you build relationships, here's how you establish them and here's how we lead it to next steps.

But you sir, are next steps.

Perfect combination.

Absolutely, absolutely.

You know, how did you end up on this field?

I know you've been doing sales a long time but you know, who is Marcus Chan?

How did you end up on this journey?

You know it's interesting because you know, I would never say, I never believe that someone's a born salesperson.

I definitely was not that, you know, so I mean I grew up in, in small town Springfield, Oregon working my parents restaurant.

So kind of growing up, even as a kid I thought maybe I just probably go in the restaurant business.

Really didn't know what I was going to do, didn't know I was gonna go go to college for et cetera.

Ended up going to college, you know, end up with a, a double major in marketing in Chinese, but still didn't know what I wanted do after that.

And for me I'm like, well my first step was basically was a B2B sales job.

And to me I saw as more of a stepping stone at the time which was hey, I'm going to go into this opportunity, learn about skills, learn about business development, learn about building a territory from scratch, help build the startup division up and we'll see where it goes and hopefully I can like lead people.

Maybe I could be like you know, managing like an operation because of my background working in the restaurant it's more like more operational based.

I'm like maybe that's what I'll end up doing anyways, right?

Yeah, just in the business to business side.

And what was really interesting was when I dove into sales for the first time, you know, I thought I'd be decent at it just because you know, we talked about this before, I thought you just needed hard work, you needed a grit, you know, you need a smile on your face, you just kind of smile and down kind of push forward and, and, and it'll make you successful.

And because my past of working in a restaurant as a kid, I'm like, I work super hard.

Like, I'll probably, like, be probably pretty good at this, I think.

Yeah.

And I almost got fired in my first two months because it turns out that wasn't.

It wasn't enough, frankly.

Right.

Require other skills as well.

So that was interesting.

And eventually figured it out, had success, got promoted, etc.

But as I went through my journey, I just didn't.

I didn't realize how much I enjoyed and loved this till almost a decade later.

And this was.

I was like, I was almost 30 and I just got promoted to a leadership role where I was running a sales org of 85 employees.

And a lot of people were saying, hey, Marcus, like, how did you do this?

I'm like, do what?

They're like, how did you get promoted so many times?

How did you have this consistent track record?

Like, how did you, like, how did you even hit an exceeded number literally every year, even through the last recession?

I'm like, well, you know, I think I just kind of work hard, whatever.

And they're, well, Marcus, you should write a book.

At the time, I didn't have a book now, but at the time I didn't have a book.

And I was like, no, I don't.

I don't know how to write a book.

This is like 2015, 2016.

But I was like, you know what I'll do is I'll write an e book.

Yeah.

I'll write an ebook on how I got promoted.

I call it 10 times in 10 years because it sounded better than 12 times in eight years.

It wasn't that smooth.

I'm like, how to get promoted 10 times in 10 years.

It's kind of flow, kind of this 10x mentality, if you will.

Yeah, yeah.

And.

And people bought that ebook and people loved it.

And that was really interesting.

And this is, this is actually my first experience of having an impact outside of just my main.

The main company I was at.

Because at this point, even with the big org where I absolutely love.

I mean, I love closing deals.

I love me this product.

I love every part of the sales process.

But what I really enjoyed the most was actually helping my teams crush it.

So, like bringing like past versions of me into the company, helping train development and make them really, really great.

And I love doing that at my company.

And now this ebook was an example of being able to do it even beyond my company, which is kind of Cool, right?

So eventually kind of spiral off over time.

And I mean that eventually that little side hustle, I added more procs on it basically expanded out for, I did for another four or five years.

Kept having success in my corporate career and decided at that point it was time for me to go bigger.

Yeah, I do help more people because it got to the point where I'm like, I love my, I love all these things but like I want to have a real impact.

Like I want to help other people.

Yeah.

And that was where I dove headed to my business, you know, almost five years ago.

And it's been an incredible journey now just helping, you know, sales team, the sales reps absolutely crush it in sales and just achieve stuff that they've never thought possible before.

So that's how I kind of dove into it.

That's why I'm still doing it to this day.

That's amazing, dude.

I look at your story and I got, I got into business development running from sales, which is really ironic.

Oh yeah, I don't want to do that.

It'll be easier.

Yeah.

Well, just like you, I, I'd been in sales from like, honestly like 18 all the way to like my early 20s and I, I kind of hit a wall.

Like I'd gotten, I'd gotten let go.

We were in a tough time in Canada and I'd gotten let go from a position.

I was like, what am I going to do?

And my sister's like, kelly, like just go to college.

Like just go to.

What are you doing?

Go to college.

And so I did and I went to business school and I got a diploma in business admin.

And my thought was I'm going to go to college, I'm going to get a diploma in business admin and I'm going to go work operations somewhere because I don't want to do sales anymore.

Well, about six months into that job I was working business development.

I remember I had to Google what is business development because I'd never even come across it in college.

Right, right.

And yeah, it was really interesting, dude.

And the rest is history.

But yeah, I had a love hate relationship with sales and business development for a long time.

Just like you.

I think I really found my passion for it probably 8 to 10 years in where I was like, this is what I am meant to do.

Like I actually love this.

But it took a while for me to get there.

It took a while for me to understand like, you know, I just finished Six Figure Sales Secrets, which is your book and we're going to talk about it, you know, during the show.

And I love the book, dude.

It's very well written.

It's.

And I would recommend it to anybody who has to grow a business or who has to sell on their own behalf or on behalf of another company.

It's an amazing book.

Congratulations.

Because you wrote it in a way that I can really get behind.

I think a lot of books nowadays that I'm seeing, people are really trying to push the digital marketing.

They're trying to push that, like, passive side.

And, and really what it's doing is it's just preying on people.

Because me and you both know it getting in front of people is what's going to sell.

Not, not just endless inbound.

Like 80, 90 needs to be on that, that active process.

100.

100.

Because it's.

If you only rely just on inbound, you know, you, you, you have to succumb to the pressures of just the market.

Right.

It's market fluctuations, etc, external things that you can't control.

But outbound you can always control.

Yeah.

And we need to focus more of our time on things that we can control.

Right.

Like who wants to be completely out of control over your future?

Right.

100.

100.

Marcus, I want to chat about your top five rules to social selling.

That was a part of the book that I found really interesting.

And especially in a world now where we're all learning how do we even use socials to sell.

Right.

Can you walk me through your top five rules to social selling?

You know, it's funny, I think I probably had to trim it down because I don't, I don't, I don't remember even the top five off the top of my head now because at the time I think I had way more.

Yeah.

Editor's like, that's too many.

You're gonna trim it down.

You have to trim it down.

Right.

So yeah, I'll walk through at least at the time of this recording right now.

I'll talk about some of my favorite top ones for, for social selling.

Right.

And it might pivot a little bit from the book, but.

But it'll still be very, very relevant.

So I think the, the first piece is for social selling.

It's a must.

Like, I think it's.

Especially in today's time.

Yeah.

You take a look at any garter stats, but majority of businesses, if they're looking at any type of vendor, they're gonna do so much research on you far in advance.

Yeah.

So before you be like.

So if they're, if you're if you, if you are not online, you're not people can't find you.

When they Google you on any of the platforms, you're actually at a disadvantage versus somebody else who's already there.

Right.

Especially if it's like social media.

I mean it's basically free advertising if you do it right.

Okay, now the second I'll say key rule to social selling is it can't.

It should be like I, I call it the 9010 rule, which is like, it should be like 90% pure value, 10% ask.

Yeah.

So mistake I see some people make is they say, oh, marks, it makes sense.

I should be everywhere.

I should be on you Instagram, TikTok, you know, I should be on axis, be on whatever.

So they go on there.

All they do is just promote, promote, promote.

Now aside from like a promotional campaign that you might be running the rest of the time, like 90% of the time should be, how can I add value to my target market?

How can I give them so much value that they basically, they're like, wow, I feel guilty consuming this company, this person's content that I like.

Whenever they make me an offer, I'm going to say yes, right?

Like, like, like the saying goes, like, make the free stuff so good is better than your competitors paid stuff.

So I think it's having that mind space is really, really important as part of social selling strategy to be doing that level output.

Because when, what's really powerful about this is if we talk about the outbound piece.

Number one, when you, when you, when you post this way you'll get inbound leads.

But let's just say for example, you do outbound, they don't answer your call, they don't read your emails.

You hit them up on LinkedIn but they still don't respond.

But they check you out now.

Yeah.

And they see your content that's consistent as high value and actually useful and relevant, that actually will nurture them like a salesperson for you.

So that's really, really powerful.

But if it's only like, just like pitches nonstop, hey, look at this demo.

My product.

Look how amazing we are.

Here's just more testimonials.

That's not good.

Now over time you can kind of, you can, you can go from like a 9010 to maybe like 80, 20.

Right.

But still consistently, how can you add more value?

So I think it's definitely number two.

It's like, how can you add a lot of value for 99, 90% value, 10%.

Like the pitch, right.

I'll say number three is you want to utilize social selling for like inbound and outbound.

So I think it's really, really powerful.

I mentioned the inbound already, which is your posting content up and your high value.

But also using tools like, for example, like LinkedIn is probably my favorite tools, especially for B2B.

Like LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

Right.

And there's no problem.

We don't get paid for it for LinkedIn Sales Navigator, but the way you can target people and be able to hyper target a list.

Right.

And then you can like reach out.

There's triggers on there, you can see for buy intent or at least like what they're into.

Being able to utilize that is like really, really, really powerful as part of that strategy too.

Well, you know what I think, like for instance, for me, I'm still, I've been using social selling pretty hard for the last say five years, but before that I wasn't using it at all.

And so I think we're all still learning.

And like post Covet especially Covid was kind of for me, the big shift where it's like, okay, LinkedIn is really critical.

We need to start utilizing it.

And for me it was a learning experience.

And I would say I'm still learning every day.

Yeah.

A few other things I'll say as well.

This is, this is at least a key basic is you want to.

Every, every profile page of any platform is designed to be a sales page.

All right?

And what I mean by sales pages is it should be designed to build trust, credibility and potentially convert them into a lead or even an opportunity.

Right.

So I think it's gonna be a really big one.

Where I see a lot of people miss the butt on this, which is you get on there, they may be that like their banner, for example, on LinkedIn is just like some motivational quote versus being really clear about what you do or credibility or what to do next.

Right.

As you kind of scroll through, they have it written like a resume, you know, and depending what you do, then maybe that makes sense.

But for most people it doesn't make sense versus like, hey, how can you help people?

What are some results people have achieved?

Right.

Where are some resources and then redirect them to place.

That's going to really be also useful for them too.

I think it's also going to be very, very powerful.

So to your website, to free resources, stuff like that, it's going to be very powerful.

But having every page do the same thing is very key because once highly optimized, then if you're doing outbound, they're going to check out your profile and hopefully I'll convert them or at least make them open to conversation or if it's your content that's going to lead to them, you know, checking out your profile.

Yeah.

Again, they might go into them, they might opt in, they might reach out, they might, they might do whatever.

Right.

I'll say the next tip as well is in terms of social selling is if you are consistent, I'll say the problem, be consistent.

If you're going to be posting content, be really consistent.

So like yeah, doesn't mean you have to like post like 10 times a day, but if be consistent with it, whatever the case, you're going to choose if you're like a business owner, like I'm really busy, like okay, like I'm, I'm going to like post like you know, once, once a month.

Well that's probably not going to hack it.

Right.

So you have to also view it as an investment in your time for generating future opportunities.

Right.

So getting on consistent cadence of say, you know, even it's like once a day consistently.

Right.

And if you think about like how can I create content?

Can you, can you share a story about, you know, which problems your customers are running into?

Can you record a quick video or if you do a long form video, can you repurpose conversation?

So there's many ways to kind of create content as part of it.

Right.

But the key is obviously being really, really consistent with it.

Okay.

And then I'll say the fifth one, especially from this will help with inbound and outbound is you want to maximize your content.

Right.

So for instance, a lot of times when people start posting content out there, you know, they'll have people like, like comment, engage on their post.

Yeah.

They'll be able to check out their profiles, you know, but most people are not reaching out to those people.

So if you post, you know, let's say for example, if you sell, I don't know, let's say you sell like a, a customer support ticketing software.

Right.

For come like Zendesk.

Right.

And you, you post just like a, a really powerful, I don't know, testimonial or you know, easy ways to reduce, reduce your, you know, your, your customer churn by way to reduce customer churn other powerful posts and you can all these people, that's your target market like liking and comment engaging on it.

Well those are opportunities for you to then to go and comment back but also engage, send them a message.

Right.

Or you have the people who kind of lurk in which they don't necessarily.

They, they see the post, they know it's useful but they just don't want to like it.

They don't want to comment.

Yeah but they'll check out your profile.

Like that's interesting.

Yeah, I like what Kelly's all about now fully maximize that.

But then you know, going to Kelly, reach out to Kelly.

Hey Kelly, you know, you know, so I check out my profile.

You know, anything helps support you with, you know, something like that.

It just opens up a conversation.

Right?

Yeah.

Which goes in that same point.

You don't be pitching there.

You're just going to open the conversation up and then in the DMs should be a conversational, should be seeing what they're all about.

Question you have questions for them and as you can open up to an actual live conversation on the phone or on Zoom.

That's amazing, dude.

Like even I haven't been following that.

That's a really smart way.

Right.

Like, I guess for me it's like I've always engaged with people who would comment or who would message me.

But yeah, obviously we get checked out all the time.

But I haven't really taken the time to mess.

I'm gonna start doing that.

That's a great tip.

Oh yeah, yeah.

It works super well.

And same thing also of like, I mean if you have Sales Navigator, you can take a look at some of the lowest hanging fruit are people that follow your company page or just check out your profile and you can build specific lists for that.

So every single day you're going there and you're engaging with those people as part of it, you know, and that's really powerful.

But it kind of ties in the whole ecosystem we talked about where you know, you have a well optimized page, you're consistent with your content and that's going to ultimately going to help as well.

I love that.

Let's spend some time on the pages because I think this is something that unless you're Marcus Chan, we don't quite understand how to make the best pages.

I think I've done as good as I can, although I've seen better and I'm always looking to upgrade.

Like I, I'm never good with just where I'm at.

Like I, we reevaluate everything all the time and we make updates and we're getting better every day.

But I am by no means the best page on LinkedIn.

You know, talk to me.

What are, what are the best things that we need to make sure are on all of our LinkedIn pages when we're doing any type of social selling.

So I think the first piece is I'm always thinking like, okay, what's the first impression you're gonna have when they, when they check you out?

Right.

So let's just say for example, if they go and they.

Let's say they, you know, you call, you cold message them.

Right.

On Sales Navigator.

So the first thing I do, they're going to click on your headshot and go to your profile.

So the first thing they're going to see is your headshot.

So as simple as that sounds, but does your headshot align to the image that that person's expecting out of a trusted advisor, out of a professional?

And I think a lot of people over complicate this.

You know, they use like they just got married, the wedding photos up there.

Right.

But like just taking your phone, putting in portrait mode, having someone take it with good lighting can make the world of difference for you.

Right.

Even like my headshot is literally me in my.

At home.

My wife took the photo.

Yeah.

And then I put in Canva, I put the yellow background and blue and blue ring and that's it.

That's all we did.

Right.

That's a great photo.

Super simple, right.

It's like, you know, and also it's like it's.

And it's so.

It's so simple.

Most just don't even do that.

So get your headshot dialed.

All right, so headshot dial.

It looks professional, matches the image.

And again, I think it's really important because let's say for example, if you're wearing like a, like a suit and tie in your photo, but most of your prospects are just not really like the shirt tie type.

You don't have that.

Yeah.

You know, maybe we're a polo.

Maybe just wear a button up.

Right.

Maybe wear something in between.

Right?

Yeah, like, like for me, I sell that even corporations or maybe more suit and tied.

So like you know the, the T shirt and jeans company.

Right.

So mine's like in between.

Like, okay, the best way I'll just do suit, no tie.

Like that, that kind of is that bridge in between.

It's not perfect.

It is what it is, right?

Yeah, Stu.

Right then.

So that's the first piece.

The second piece is also what's your tagline?

So your tagline is basically what's going to show up.

So if you are say commenting somewhere, they're going to see it was going to say your name and basically what's the tagline say below it.

And you can make it very simple, which could be like, you know, we help target market achieve this.

It can be as simple as that.

Right.

Which is very, very easy.

Right.

Then you can add some other credibility if you want to.

Right.

So some people want to go super simple.

It's all they say, hey, I help companies do this.

You know, I help CFOs do this, I help CXOs do that.

Which, which is totally fine.

If you want more credibility, you can add more credibility.

Right?

That's totally fine.

But that's, that's also really important too.

So now let's say, for example, they click on your page, they're checking your profile.

Now what's your banner look like?

So the banner by itself is.

Is it.

Basically, it's.

They may not.

This is, this is what's called above the fold.

So they may not scroll below this.

Okay.

They might just literally stay there.

So what if they, if they stay there, is that going to be something that's going to be.

When they see it, will that person say, this is a high value for me?

So, you know, for example, like, even on mine, I'm pretty clear on what we do, right.

You know, we help sales team, the reps, you know, like basically blow their numbers out, you know, and I'll change, I'll change the wording depending, whenever, but it's always basically the same stuff.

Right.

I have some credibility on where I've been featured.

Right.

And then I have a little CTA which is like, you know, head the featured section.

Yeah, that's it.

Very simple.

So same concept.

You just basically they get the, is this person for me?

Can I trust this person?

And they start scrolling down.

There's a couple of things just make it easy but like link to things that you're going to want them to click on.

So, you know, there's, there's little links to add in there.

Whether you want them to opt into a lead magnet or just head to your website or check out case studies or testimonials, whatever.

You can easily link that.

Right.

And then if they decide, keep scrolling down if they decide to.

Right.

Then you can have the about section.

And the about section, again is an opportunity to be some sales copy there.

So some people just posting on what they do, which is totally fine.

Yeah.

But if you can write a little story in terms of story, that's really powerful.

So I do a combination of a little bit of story and then also like some CTA as well, and how we can Help.

Okay.

And then there's going to be the request services section.

So if you're, you know, if you're running your own business, you want to fill it out, like, what do you do and how do you serve them?

Make it very easy for them to just reach out.

They want to.

And then you keep going down and there's going to be your history.

So, you know, your job history is definitely important for sure as well.

If you have your own business, that's your opportunity to write more about your business.

Include links to whatever you want.

Right.

Some people leave completely blank.

But again, this is just if, if they want to, if someone want to keep scrolling, we'll help convert them and build trust with you.

So I, I write what we do and I share examples of how we help people.

Right.

And they want to keep scrolling down.

They can see my, the past history as well.

So I'm in the coaching consulting space, so a lot of people want to know, like, did this person actually do what they're trying to coach and consult people on?

Yeah.

So I have my work history on there that elaborates on my results intentionally so I don't share what I did.

Like, terms like my, like, like, I manage a team of this, this people.

This is what I read.

Reports like this, I analyze this.

I'm like, here's results, results, results, results, results.

And then I back it all up with proof.

Yeah, I show like screenshots, attachments, et cetera, so people can keep going down.

So again, like, if they happen to look down there, it's in.

Hopefully.

Hopefully they're like, this person knows what, what they're all about.

And then if they keep going.

All right, it's going to be the, the test, the, the recommendation section.

Yeah.

So having that is, I think, is also really key too.

Like, you know, I think, I don't remember how many we have now.

I think we have like 70 or 80.

But it's like, but I've been getting those since, like, I don't know, 2009.

Sure.

So, like, getting a consistent over time is really powerful as well, because again, if they were just to stand on a single page, it's going to hopefully get them to like, convert into a lead or to reach out or be more open to conversation.

So it takes a little time to get it all set up, but that's really key.

And then of course, if you're doing content consistently, that's also going to be a section they might check as well on LinkedIn too.

Wow.

Okay.

So it's all in alignment.

So you want everything, you don't want anything to feel out of place, you want it all to tell the story.

And the story is that you're awesome.

Remove, you want to remove any type of doubt in their mind.

Right.

Or at least open them up to be a little more open.

Because the thing is, if you structure your page right, it's gonna be one of your top SEO ranked pages.

So if someone Googles your name or company, it's gonna link that LinkedIn page is gonna be one of the top ones that's gonna show up.

Yeah, yeah.

Like we're talking obviously to a lot of entrepreneurs and maybe a lot of coaches actually, which is kind of what I think we, we aligned here.

How does this, how does this apply to say, you know, a regular salesperson or a regular business development person?

Really good question.

So I think if, if you've been around for any short, any period of time, we've all had, have had bad experiences with salespeople like some way shape or form.

So unfortunately the bar is really, really low.

And you know, people, we get looked down upon as sales professionals.

Right.

So this is an opportunity.

If you're a sales professional, it's like, okay, if I have one, I'm gonna reach out to them.

How can I position myself as a trusted advisor, Someone even I'm new at the company, someone who actually knows what they're all about.

So this, this becomes an opportunity for you now to do the same thing I just mentioned.

So if you do outreach or someone checks, checks you out that you're going to be able to hopefully convert as well.

It's the same type of concept.

But now instead of just do it for yourself, it's for your company as well.

But I think mistake a lot of people make is they all they do when they get a new job, they just change where they work and then it's kind of left as a, as like you know, just a job history.

Yeah, like oh, I was a, I was a bdr.

Here, here's, here's, here's how many calls I'm, here's my employment.

I book here.

I was here.

Now if you're trying to get a new job, you're basically optimizing for that, that's fine.

But if you're looking to convert customers, how can you optimize for that?

So maybe for, if it's, give some people examples that are watching this.

Like for your current company, you could write who you help and how do you help them and link out to case studies or Testimonials or examples or any optims that might be useful.

Right.

You know, or if you're close clients, like share who, who, who you've helped.

If it's your past companies, you know, you can just share about like, you know, like the results that you got that helped customers.

So instead of saying, hey, I booked X number of meetings, it's like, hey, who are some clients you served?

So again, this would be this way you're focused on them to say, hey, I'm a, I'm a credible professional.

Yeah.

Who's out there to help other people, not just to close people.

You have to change your thought process.

Instead of trying to job shop, essentially you need to customer shop.

You need to speak to the customer.

That's what you're trying to do 100%.

Like what's, what's on their mind.

Right.

And this, your goal is do you want to just minimize that friction?

So this way they see this guy's actually like, this guy or gal is actually legitimate, you know, entertain a conversation with them and I'll, I'll help them out.

And this is actually why the content can be really powerful because you're, if you're consistently posting useful content, if you're pretty new to the industry or new to the company, they're like, huh, Actually that was a pretty interesting post that they posted about, you know, xyz, about the, the CX experience or whatever it's going to be.

Yeah.

You know, let's talk about content.

I know we kind of got into it.

Obviously you didn't get to where you're at without a pretty impressive content strategy.

Can you tell us a little bit about your content strategy, Marcus?

Yeah.

So I'll say what I do now is a little different than what I used to do.

Right.

Because, you know, typically we pump out over 100 pieces of content every single month.

Wow.

Hits like all the channels.

So it's a little bit different now because now I have a team of people, I got staff to help me.

It's a little bit different.

When I got started, it was just me and only me.

Yeah.

So I'm kind of share from that perspective how to really kind of get started because I think that's the hardest part.

So I think the first piece is, you know, you always want to have like an idea bucket.

So meaning, like you'll get different ideas about, like, you know, what customers talk about.

It could be in sales conversations, it could be just talking with friends.

It could be in reading books in the industry, it could Be reading other posts.

You want a place where you kind of dump your ideas.

Okay.

That's the first piece.

So even to this day I still do the same thing.

I have an idea area.

I use Clicko as a software.

I throw all the ideas inside there.

Right.

And then from there I basically organize it into like, what, what, what I'm going to create for when.

So, you know, in the, the process that really hasn't changed now in five years, but like literally on the 15th of each 15, 20th of each month, I literally will just map out the next, third, next month's content, like what the topic's going to be for each day.

So then from there, every single week, I'll create the content.

And because I've been doing for so long now, I've also learned how important is to get ahead.

So I used to wake up, okay, here's this idea.

Yeah.

I'll try, try to create the idea on the spot, which is very hard, by the way, which is like, it's not fun to do that at all.

So I realize it's.

I can create better content.

I'm less pressured.

Yeah.

So I got to the point where at the very minimum, I'm two weeks completely written out.

So meaning like today and two weeks after today.

Yeah.

I've already written all the content, I've already created all the content, so I'm good to go.

So that way, each week, if I have my content day, which is usually Tuesday, then I just gotta wake up and I gotta create content for basically three weeks out.

And as long as I'm really consistent with that, then it just multiplies over time.

So now I think I'm like three or four weeks out.

Right.

Consistently.

So it makes it much easier.

Right.

But then from a content perspective, like what I used to do is I would create the content and then I would basically schedule it to post on LinkedIn or whatever platform.

And that's how it was.

Right.

Pretty simple.

Now my work was a little bit different, but that's kind of like the high level of it now because now it's like, it's a little bit different where we have so much long form content that we have more, more repurposed content.

Yeah.

It's become a little bit easier over time.

So my strategy is kind of piv.

So now what I do now as a kind of a pivot.

So if you're a stage one trying to get started, that's kind of how I did it.

Right.

Just being consistent is the key.

And stage two is like Put some systems in place.

So, for example, now that how the strategy works is every week I'll create one pillar piece of content.

So this is like a 30 minute to 60 minute long form video on YouTube.

Super high value, super tactical.

That same video is in turn into a carousel and then turned into like multiple posts.

The video clip is cut into like 8 to 10 different clips as well.

Yeah.

So that single piece of pillar content can now turn into 10, 20, 30 pieces of content.

It happens every single week.

Right.

And that, and the rest of those pieces get dispersed all throughout the content calendar.

And then, and then we'll still have other ones we create as well as part of it.

Right.

But then also on top of that, I'll take it.

They'll typically take a look at like content from last three months, find the best performing ones, repurpose and reuse it in a different way for the future too.

So because it's ongoing, the system, like we just have so much content now where it makes it much easier for the creation process because now the flywheel's in motion.

We just got to keep it in motion.

It's all we gotta do.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, I, you know, I mean, obviously I'm getting better and better and better.

Like, I started this show.

By the time this show airs, it'll be out for a little over two years.

So this particular show has been.

Yeah, we've been at it.

Right.

And we've been consistent.

And consistency over time breeds success.

I've known that forever since I've been in business development.

So we took that to the podcast.

We haven't missed a single episode.

We've been just flying through.

We do two episodes a week.

But the content strategy was something that I didn't have a lot of background in.

Like you would think, I get it.

Business development.

I should have a ton.

But like, reality is, I used, I used socials in the way that I needed to use them.

And it wasn't until I really started the show and I felt like, okay, I need to start to learn.

How do you repurpose content?

How do you use all this stuff?

And I am by no means a pro.

I'm getting better all the time.

But we use things like opus clips, we use canva to create a whole lot of posts.

But you know, what are some of the, what are some of the programs that you're using to kind of help make your life easier?

Because you and me both know content creation is a monster.

So I think if the first piece is actually the who.

Right.

Is Hiring the right people in place make it so much easier.

So like we use Opus Clip, we use canva, we use all the same type of tools but like from a workflow perspective I'll kind of walk through the workflow but makes it a little bit easier.

You can kind of see it.

So I have my content day.

So we manage everything within a project manager software called ClickUp.

There's many tools out there.

Notion's great, Trello's great.

They all work some way, shape or form.

So it's all managed within ClickUp for us.

So I create the content that's scheduled on a certain day.

We have different stages for it.

So, so my, my, my EA knows once I put into pre approval it gets sent to her.

Yeah.

So this way it's like whatever it's going to be.

Right.

If it's like, you know, if it's a short form video, whatever it's going to be or if it's a, a carousel, whatever.

I write the kind of, I create the content I put it into pre approval gets sent over to her.

She'll review my work because sometimes I just, of course it just looks errors, there's grammatical errors or I'll, I'll change like you know, the tense I'm talking.

Right.

So she'll kind of adjust a little bit.

And if it's just like a text only post or text and image only post, she'll then send over to, you know, one of the content schedulers, the content schedule, then schedule onto whatever platform is going to be.

Right.

So pretty easy.

If it's like a carousel, that same person wants to create the carousel, then there's an approval process back and forth.

Has to look a certain way.

Yeah.

So my EA will work with the content scheduler and creator of the content of the Kanma document and go back and forth until it's nails.

Yeah, right.

Once it's nails, she gets a thumbs up that gets scheduled again into the platforms.

Right.

And it gets marked accordingly.

Click up if it's a video.

If it's a short perform video, we have a short form editor.

So same principle like video gets done, little clip gets done or if it's, if it's a repurposed clip, I'll write the copy for everything and then send it over to my ea.

She double checks everything.

She'll then upload to, to Descript and then from Descript it'll get sent over to the, the, the short form editor who then actually will create the reel.

Yeah.

And then she'll work with Them approving the.

Proving that.

Approving that piece of real.

And then once that's good, goes back to the content scheduler, who then schedules on the right platform.

And then if it's a long form video, like YouTube, 30 minutes, 20 minutes, an hour, whatever, we have a different person for that.

Yeah.

So my E will first put it through Descript, review everything, just kind of clean it up a little bit.

Because sometimes if it's like a long form video for 60 Minutes, she like, all right, we could probably like, Marcus messed up 100 different times.

Let's just cut these parts out already.

The script is amazing.

Exactly.

And then send it right over to the long form editor.

Then they'll go back and forth to basically approve it.

So, like, now the process is a little simpler because, you know, I create it, I pass to my team to take everything else.

Yes.

And then they'll use Opus Clip, they'll use Adobe Premiere Pro, they'll use Canva.

They use this other tool called.

But it's like a plugin into Adobe where it cut.

It helps do jump cutting for you automatically.

So it saves like a.

Saves a lot of time.

I don't know what it's called.

It's like a plugin for that.

I think.

I think my short form guy, I think he uses Cap Cut.

I'm not even sure.

Yeah.

Like, you listening?

This is the mess of having to create content.

These days.

We're using like five to six programs to create content.

And yes, we're all doing this.

It's bonkers.

Someone needs to come along and make one program to rule them all and.

Make it easy to use now.

Like, it shouldn't be.

There should be no learning curve.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, dude.

It's like, I got into this and I didn't know how to use any of that stuff, and it's been like, holy cow.

The amount I've learned in two years has been absolutely next level.

But it's a long time.

Even figure out the workflow, you know, like, all right, the workflow.

It takes a while to figure out then, like, what tool should I use?

You know?

Yeah.

Make it easier.

It's this whole thing, you know?

Yeah, yeah.

But trust me, guys, if I can learn it, anybody can learn it.

Like, I'm not technically deficient by any means, but these are all things that I had to learn from Square Zero, including Adobe Audition, which is what we use to record the show, and.

And Riverside, which is what we're talking on right now.

Yeah, man, I had no idea.

Like, the the longer I go down this road, I'm like, my God, do I really need another program?

I know I'm always like, what can I cut?

Like, are we even using this?

That's the problem.

Right?

It's like everything is trying to do everything, but it only does the one thing that it does really great and it half asses the other thing.

So you still need.

It's like, even if Descript and Riverside put out transcripts, Descripts.

Transcripts are still better.

Sometimes you just need the best tool for the job.

It is what it is.

That's right.

That's right.

Yeah, dude, it's.

But you know what?

I love this.

Like, I love doing this podcast.

I've.

I've learned to love content creation.

So it's like I.

I hated it, and then I got better and better and better at it.

Now I actually really enjoy the creative process of content creation.

And yeah, you know, if, if you're not doing it right now, I don't want to discourage you.

I know this sounds a little scary.

We've talked about a lot of different programs, but just start with one.

Yeah, just start with one.

Like, do something.

Doing anything is better than doing nothing.

Yeah, I would say, like, lean into your strengths.

Right.

So, like, for me, video is easier for me, you know, but the issue I actually have, the video earlier on was because the editing piece, I didn't know how to do that.

So I didn't really start with that.

So I started like text.

I'm like, I'm pretty good writer.

I'm like, I'll start with writing first.

Yeah.

So ideally picks whatever you're naturally better at, you know, start with that first.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, you, you do a lot of personal video and, you know, I wanted to chat with you about that because that's something that, you know, we're looking at on our side too.

Honestly.

My introvertedness has kept me away from video, to be honest.

I love podcasts, I love talking.

But honestly, I've never really felt comfortable in front of a camera.

I just never have, you know, what was it that led you to that?

You know, how were you able to build up the confidence to really start to put yourself out there in front of a camera?

Well, I appreciate you saying that because if I look at my videos when I first started doing videos, like videos like this or even just teaching something, it's been almost.

It's probably been nine years since.

Since I started.

Wow.

And when I take a look back in those videos, I mean, super awkward, like Very stiff.

Sound quality was terrible.

I didn't know anything about lighting or cameras or even acoustics or any of that type of jazz and make a good video.

And they just weren't good videos.

Like, just very, very awkward.

That's what I found.

But here's the thing.

I, I just first started doing it and I just kept doing it more and more.

And then over time, I start to realize I'm like, I, I, this, I can, like this is actually useful for a skill for me to learn.

And I got better over time by simply doing it.

Right.

So I had to just.

I basically had embraced the suck.

That's what broke down to.

And that's, that's what it was.

It's like putting myself out there.

Yeah.

Because I'm, I'm, I'm naturally more introverted, actually.

I'm, I'm a tested ambivert now.

But doing videos, I just hate the way I looked, hate the way I look, hate the way I sounded and just, just didn't like it.

Now.

Now it's like been.

Let me think, let me back up a little bit because I kept, I kept doing videos.

I did like once a week.

It was what I did.

I did a video, like once a week video.

And it was only to my website.

So, like it got no traffic at the time.

And then it was 2019.

I'm like, I'm gonna start posting on social.

Yeah.

Like once a week.

Right.

And just like committing to that.

So I started like the micro commitment and I'm like, okay, one minute video record about something and just do it again.

Not very good.

Not very good.

And then I kept doing it and then got to two videos a week.

Right.

And then start.

What was interesting was this is early.

My business was getting started.

I started getting, I started getting invited to a lot of podcasts because of my social media content.

Yeah.

And it wasn't.

I was, I was still only doing like one video a week or so at the time, I remember.

But I was getting all these podcast interviews and actually was a really good way for me to practice.

So it kind of forced me to like get good on having a conversation like via, like, just like, like an interview style that could repurpose.

So that also made me better as well.

Yeah.

And then that allowed me cut into micro clips, which is useful.

And then I just kept, I mean, I basically just kept doing it.

Like, I just kept doing it and I kept watching people who look way better than me.

I'm like, how do you do such a good job?

You Know like, and also I found too was even with video, man, like editing makes a big, big difference.

Yes.

So like being able to like I have someone actually know what they're doing for editing could take a, you know, an okay video that recorded and make it look much better by cutting out my errors and whatever thing they stumble over.

So that was like big for sure.

Yeah.

And then long form videos, I mean I started getting real long form was so uncomfortable.

Uncomfortable for me.

Sure.

That's what it was, long form.

Because I got.

Once I got the short form dialed so you picture now this is 2022 now.

So this is me six years in my trying video journey.

So like it wasn't like overnight.

Yes.

And I'm like, like, you know, I'm pretty bullish on YouTube but man, I gotta do these YouTube videos.

Like it's kind of a long video.

Like I gotta do like the delete 10, 15 minute 20 video video.

Like I have no problem presenting live in front of people.

But there's something about just like looking to a camera by myself and doing something.

Yeah.

Very daunting for that llama time.

So then I'm like, okay, what's.

What could I do to make it easier for myself?

Like, well, you know what?

I could script a video.

So I started to script the videos out.

Yep.

So I'll write the whole script out.

You know, got a teleprompter, started doing that and that was like.

That really helped a lot quite a bit.

So I started getting, got used to it and then I made a commitment where I'm like, I'm gonna do like one a week.

So that was like 2022, I think.

Yeah, 2022.

One a week.

So then from there, I mean for the most part, I mean literally up until probably this a year ago, every video is scripted out.

Like I'll script from start to finish.

Like the whole thing.

Like you didn't ad hoc anything.

I didn't ad hoc anything.

Wow, that's harder.

That's much harder.

Like people don't realize that people think that scripts are easy.

They are not.

Not at all.

So I would really script everything out.

So like so the first.

I mean, and.

But I'll.

I have to practice natural.

Yes.

Right.

So like you get, you can't just like read off a script.

You sound natural.

So I started practicing it.

So I got really, really comfortable with that.

And then about a year ago I'm like, well, first of all this thing taking too long because like descript it all out to script a 20 minute video out.

It's a lot like actually quite a bit of time to actually do.

It's probably like 4,000 words.

Totally.

Like I'm basically writing like a mini college essay each time.

Right.

I'm like, ah, it's like a lot of work.

So great.

So then I'm like, okay, you almost start doing like let me just like let me just do bullet points now.

So like I'll just tell.

I'll write the hook.

The hook is most important for like, for like videos.

Yeah.

And I'll write like the, the back end CTA and then everything else in between is just gonna be bullets.

Yep.

Right.

Just like high level.

What's gonna be about.

So that's what I've been doing now for a year now.

Right.

And I have way more mess ups for sure.

Yeah.

But like it's, it's.

They're usually more dense and better videos because like I go more stuff, you know.

Yeah.

Sorry, I don't mean to cut you off.

I was just thinking that.

Yeah.

Like, you know what's really funny?

I've been doing it that way for a long time and I've had plenty of shows where frankly I probably, I don't know, like, I don't know what was with me that day.

I was just really struggling to talk and I had way more edits that I'm friggin even comfortable admitting and the show still came out absolutely amazing.

You would never know.

But I remember releasing shows just thinking like man, that was a horrible show.

And then the next day that was an amazing show.

Like great, great show, Kel.

And it's funny, like it's amazing what editing can do.

And I would say too, you know, like you said by, by using bullet points it allows you to speak to your expertise and in a lot of ways you're going to say something better than if you scripted it anyway.

Totally.

And on top of that, like it's just like if you already know the content, it's not, it's, it's totally fine.

Yeah.

But also because you know, I'm sure same with you when you do, when you do this for a while, like you, you're, you're actually getting better over time.

You may not even realize it.

Yeah.

So like your, your standard for like that was bad.

Like today, you know, five, a year ago.

Really?

You know that's right.

Yeah.

Look, even now when I, when I do like with the bullet point video, I'm like, I don't think it's that good.

But then once I say the final.

I'm like, actually, it's way better than I expected, actually.

Like, actually, you know what?

Like, this is still 100x better than my videos.

Like, you know, from 2016.

You know, it's still progression, but I think that the best to get better on videos, you just have to practice it and like.

Like, be really consistent with it.

Like, that's really, really key.

Well, I forgot to mention, there's some other things I did as well that got me more comfortable on video, which was.

This was big, my first year of business, which was like, every.

Every time I got a connection request, I would accept it.

And then I sent a video message, okay, my phone out.

So this got me comfortable, like, on the fly as well.

So it was like these little things that I kept incorporating as part of the video journey to get to a point where now it's like, I can riff no problem, you know, on a video really quick.

But it took a long time actually to get there, actually.

Just doing the work to actually build the confidence up.

And then frankly, not caring.

Because now I'm like, yeah, it's not like a dope still.

I think, you know, I still sound goofy, hate my voice, but it is what it is.

What am I gonna do?

Like, it's.

This is who I am.

I've accepted this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you know what?

Let's get into that, because a big part of your book is really about confidence and authenticity.

That's right.

100.

100.

Like, I.

I find confidence is like a bank account, right?

Everything you do either is a deposit or withdrawal.

And every time you commit to yourself and you do the things you know you're supposed to do, you build more confidence over time, right?

And that's just.

That's just what happens.

And if you.

If you don't do it, like, for, like, for example, why can't I do videos consistently?

I'm like, yeah, it sucks.

By doing it consistently, it start building up my confidence, right?

And also on top of that, you know, like, when the video is not perfect, there's a level of authenticity in realness that comes with it.

When it's not, like, perfectly scripted, you know, like, for instance, like, I've.

I've done, like, I don't name the tool, but I tested some AI videos out where it's like, it's.

It is me.

It looks just like me.

It sounds like me.

Yeah, right.

But it's, like, too perfect.

Yeah, it's too perfect.

So, you know, like, it actually didn't convert as well as a Super raw one where I had like, ums and yeahs and like, pauses.

Yeah.

That's way more organic.

It's just how it is.

You know, I think it's also because I think, you know, now we're into like a trust recession.

Right.

People don't really trust people.

Right.

Sure.

They see things that are too perfect.

They, they, they, they question it.

I think that's why people love TikTok these days, because it's far more real and authentic they feel, at least.

Right.

Yeah.

So that's, that's, that's why I think it's key to be able to showcase who you are as part of your wholesale process.

Well, I always say, you know, in a time of AI and robots, be human.

Right.

Like that differentiator these days, guys, like, we're going back.

You got to be yourself.

That's what people want.

People want more authenticity.

They want more.

They want a real person that they can trust.

Right.

We have this, like, idea that AI is going to kill everything.

And mark my words, it will never kill salespeople and it'll never kill a real relationship.

You will never be able to replace.

Replace it.

I'll tell you what, I, When I get a handwritten note, I still struggle throwing that, Throwing that away.

Yeah.

You know, I'm saying, like, you know, versus, like, you get so many emails, you get something that, you know is odd, like that handwritten note.

You're like, okay, that's, that's pretty nice.

It's like, because, you know, they took the time to do it.

There's a, there's an emotional feel to it.

So you can't go wrong by just being a good human as part of your process.

Totally, totally.

And I think that's really important.

Like, in this time of creating content, we talked a lot about content, but people don't just want to be sold or sent a bunch of marketing content.

Right.

They want something that they can connect with.

Can we maybe talk about personalizing content and how you do it, Marcus?

Yeah, 100%.

So, yeah, I think the, at the end when you're creating content, you always want to create with the end user in mind.

Right.

So, like, like, I have this little prompt here on my, on my email, my computer here.

So, like, while I'm creating content, the first thing I ask myself is who am I writing to specifically?

So I imagine, like, my person I'm writing to is on the other side of my computer screen.

They're going to consume a piece of content.

They're going to either read it they're going to watch or whatever they're going to do, they're going to scroll through it.

Who is that person specifically?

What's, what's on their mind?

And that's really, really important because you want to be writing to what's on their mind.

And generally speaking, most time they have their problems.

Right.

And then what I also think about it is like, how do I want them to make them, how do I want to make them feel after they consume a piece of content?

I think it's a really important piece.

This allows you to create depth to your content.

So, for example, I have prompts.

I'm like, okay, do I want them feel inspired or motivated?

Do I want them to feel enlightened?

Do I want them to feel empathy or connection to me?

Do I feel challenged?

Do you want them to feel joy or comedy?

Don't let them feel curious.

And sometimes you have multiple of these feelings.

But if you, if you begin with that end in mind, what your desired end result is, then you're going to hopefully create a piece of content kind of geared towards that.

So, for example, like, this morning's post was about enlightenment.

I want to enlighten people on what to do, you know, when they, when someone gets added to a demo call with new stakeholders.

So what to do then?

So, you know, it's not designed to be funny.

It's not designed to challenge people's mindset.

Since I'm making.

It's going to be very tactical.

Yeah.

Like, it's like, this is how you do X.

Like, so hopefully they walk away like, oh, I need to be doing these things.

Yeah, Right.

Versus some other ones.

If I'm posting about, you know, like, you know, being married for 14 years, like, there's no conversion optimization.

I'm going for.

I'm just going for connection.

Yeah.

You know, because sometimes people just, when we post just too much, like, business stuff, they're like, who is this person?

Are they even real?

This person?

Exactly.

So you want to be able to humanize it as part of it.

So, my gosh.

Yeah.

Like, I'm definitely realizing, like, if you just look at engagement on LinkedIn, people are 10 times more likely to engage with personalized connecting content than they are with your marketing stuff.

And so, like, the reality is, if you're looking to just create a bunch of engagement, you need to stop posting about your job and start posting about you.

100.

Yeah.

It makes it much more real.

Right.

This is why, you know, like, we, we.

There's so much power in the brand Right.

I look at someone like, like the rock, like he can.

He's been building this brand for like, you know, a couple decades now.

That's right.

So launches a tequila brand, crushes it.

Yeah, right.

What's up?

The guy, Ryan.

Ryan Reynolds.

Same thing.

Right.

You know, been building man for years.

Rolls up.

I think he mint mobile.

I think he has a gin as well.

Aviation gin.

Crushes it.

Yeah, right.

You know, the Kardashian hater.

Hate them or love them, but when they raw new product line, it crushes.

Yeah.

Like Oprah has been run for decades now.

She mentioned someone's product crushes.

Yeah, right.

So there's an association of that which is really powerful.

And you know, I think most probably watching, they probably don't want to be like an Oprah or Kardashian whatever.

But you can still own your niche and, you know, build a personal brand around it as well and still do a good balance of everything.

So, you know, there's certainly.

I don't share on personal.

I don't want to share about that.

But like, I'll share a lot of personal stuff, though.

Yeah.

Because I know it's going to help break up my content a little bit and be entertaining.

I think that the time is coming, Marcus, where if you don't have a personal brand of some level.

Yeah.

You're in trouble.

You're in trouble as a business owner, as a coach, whatever.

You're doing, whatever you want to do, even as an employee.

I think on a certain level.

Oh, yeah.

If you aren't looking after in 2024, I guess this show's coming out early 2025.

So this time and beyond.

Yeah.

Like you.

If you're not working on personal brand, you need to figure it out.

And I know that that sucks.

I know there's a lot of people who are like, but I just want to go to work.

Right.

Totally.

But something's changed, man.

I don't know what it is, but I can see it and I can feel it.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, it's.

You hate him or love him, but look at Elon Musk, right?

Like he.

He is on.

He's on X.

He's posting and stuff.

He.

He knows how to get attention, even if it's controversial.

Attention.

He knows how to get attention.

Right.

And attention is a new currency.

So, like, if you're able to gather attention, you're going to be able to get more eyeballs to your stuff.

You get more conversations.

But like, in reality, this is like, you know, I think what's what's that saying?

You know, no, media is bad media.

Yeah.

Like, you know, that's.

That's the truth.

Right?

Like, even people that get hated on, suddenly they explode.

It goes crazy.

So, like, it's like, now people are searching them.

They're good.

Like, what's Andrew Tate?

Right?

Like, it's.

People love and hate that guy.

Right.

But then people are talking about him now.

Yeah.

And that's what makes him.

Makes him go viral.

So he's.

He's hacked that.

It's.

It's happening, man.

There's no hiding from it.

Like, the reality is personal branding, and I've had plenty of people on the show now who are saying the same thing.

Personal branding is the, like, is the thing of 2024, 2025, if you're not working on.

Like, last year, everyone was talking AI.

That was the new big thing.

Say, the thing that I've seen, the big, like, trend is personal branding.

And, you know, it's.

You can start tomorrow.

Like, if you haven't started yet, it's okay.

But it's time.

It's time to start thinking about it.

And you can start, like you said, Missionless Lang, just with your LinkedIn page.

Right.

Good place to start, 100%.

It's like, I think the East, I always say, is.

Is, like, wherever your audience is, go there first.

That makes it much easier.

Yeah.

So if you know they're already on LinkedIn, go LinkedIn.

If you know they're on Instagram, go to Instagram.

Wherever they are, go to that place first.

Right.

And, like, you want to build that muscle.

Build a habit of doing that.

Because if you take a look at, like, two different people, I mean, I was talking to someone the other day, okay, we're gonna go with you.

And I was like, cool.

Like, you know what was.

Exactly.

And they're.

They're.

It's kind of fun.

They're like, I think it's.

I think the offer is actually roughly about the same, you know, what you guys kind of offer.

I'm like, okay, that doesn't make me feel good.

But they're like, the reason we go with you is like, I mean, you just, like, we Googled you.

We found all this stuff about you from other people.

Like, you just have a.

You just better online presence.

We actually know you're legit.

Yeah.

So, like, the risk.

The risk level, if they hit the term risk level seemed much less with me.

You built trust before that interaction.

100.

100.

So.

So it's definitely a long game that's where if people are thinking about posting content, etc, it's like you have to think not just in, like, will I get leads today or tomorrow or even this year?

Like, you want to be thinking like five, ten years down the road.

Like, we have, we have little clients that come on board almost five years later.

Yeah.

They find that, hey, you know, this one piece of content, that's why I reached out.

This is why I was even open to conversation.

Like, I've been watching you from afar and this stuff, this thing had my personal life.

And also your timing worked out really well.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Dude, you started your company, what, just, just under five years ago.

@ this point, you're talking to a lot of business owners who, you know, or maybe they're not yet business owners.

Maybe they're awesome salespeople who are looking to do their own thing.

They want to be Marcus Chan.

They want to step out on their own, but they're afraid, dude, they're afraid to take their future into their control.

Incorporating a company and leaving that, you know, high salary job is a real hard choice so that you had to make.

Yeah.

So talk about that decision.

Talk about, talk about the decision to do your own thing.

So I think the first piece is you have to really decide, like, what are you optimizing for in life?

What do you really want?

I think it's really important.

So sometimes I find some people, it's not as a bad thing, but they're running away from something.

I hate my job.

I'm starting my own business.

Not necessarily a bad thing.

And I think you mentioned that's what you did as well and it worked out really well for you.

Right.

You're able to keep going.

For a lot of people, that doesn't really work out, which is they do it for a while.

Like, oh my God, we have to learn so many more things that I got to go back.

Right.

I think the first, understand what are you optimizing for?

Like, if you're like, oh, I just want to have more free time, let's be real here.

Being a business owner, when we start off, you don't have more free time.

I mean, you're working like 80 to 100 hours a week to avoid working 40 for someone else.

Right?

Yeah, like, that's right.

So, like, understand what are you optimizing for?

But what's your big end goal?

Okay.

So when you know that it's like, okay, you're gonna be more ones, you kind of do the hard things.

All right.

I think the second thing is, like, you want to, like, position yourself in the position you won't position yourself, ideally, where you have freedom of choice.

And what I mean by that is I was really fortunate in the sense, though, that I'm pretty frugal.

Like, since I got started in sales, I've always lived below my means, for most part, almost always lived off my base alone.

And the commissions I invested, either to myself or to other investments.

So I was really strategic with my money and my capital deployment.

So when I decided to make that leap and when I was 35 years old, frankly, I could just not work for 20 years and be totally fine.

Yeah.

So I put myself in a position where I had the freedom of choice.

But more importantly, I'm like, if I start this business, if I completely fail, like, are you gonna be okay, you know, or am I gonna have to just go after the worst clients possible?

You know, very little, very demanding clients.

Right.

So this.

This put me in a better position.

I'm not saying you just set yourself up where you have, like, 20 years of burn.

Right.

But.

But you want to put yourself in a position where, let's say, for example, like, if you want to give yourself a year to be a great business owner.

Yeah.

At least a year of, like, cash that's liquid or easy, accessible, that manages to burn, maybe a little extra if you need to, so you don't have as much pressure.

So this allows you to make better, like, decisions.

Right.

I think that's really, really key.

That helped me quite a bit.

Where I've had friends where they try to make that leap, they didn't really do that.

Yeah.

So six months later, they're back, you know, looking for a job and whatever, because they got kind of put in a tough spot, and, you know, just.

It wasn't really great.

So this allows you to make better decisions.

So I think it's really key.

Yeah, I.

I will.

I will attest to that.

I started capital with ten grand, and I went out on my own, and, like.

Like, it was really make it or die.

And that was enough to, like, really get a client or two fairly quickly, make sure that I was charging enough that it made sense that it was gonna cover my bills and start to make a small profit.

Right.

But it was a necessity that kept me alive, dude.

And like you, I was dialing until I.

Till I did it.

Because it was that or.

Or fail.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

So for me, that worked, but that doesn't work for everybody.

I agree completely.

You.

You mentioned that.

I.

I didn't hate my job I actually.

I actually hit the hit Covid, and my boss pulled me aside.

I'd been there for 10 years.

Yeah.

And he said, kelly, dude, we don't know what the next year looks like, and we're trying to make some hard decisions.

And one of those decisions is going to be, you know, if we can bring you on contract, we're going to look at doing that.

And so that was what the kickstart was.

Luckily, they came on, they gave me.

It was.

It was not the best contract I've ever had, but a contract that was enough to cover my bills when I got my business going.

And they paid me a severance, which was nice.

So, yeah, it was like.

It was like that boost I needed.

But you know what?

It was that.

It was adversity.

It was a situation of you sink or swim, Kelly.

Figure it out.

Like, you're either gonna have to get another job, you're gonna start your own thing, and do you really want to work for someone else?

And it was, okay, I'm gonna do it.

Yeah.

And I would say the third thing is manage expectations for yourself.

So, like, you know, I think it's like, I'm sure you seen what you're like, hey, if I'm a really good salesperson, this should be pretty easy, actually be a.

A business owner.

But then you realize sales is just one small part of what you do.

Yes.

There's so many other hatchet that, you know, think about from, you know, you know, product creation, to offer fulfillment, to backend fulfillment and make sure people, Customers are happy, to accounting, to finance a cash flow, to strategic planning, to do content marketing, sales.

There's so many things you have to worry about.

Right.

So it makes it hard if you.

I don't know about you, but marketing my own company was always harder than marketing somebody else's way harder.

You, like, think about it differently.

Yeah.

Versus, like, you're kind of told, like, this is how you talk about your company.

You know, when it's you, you have.

You make every single decision, the buck stops there, which is.

It's a blessing, a curse at the same time.

So I think some people kind of walk in with the wrong expectation, like, oh, it's me.

Amazing.

But, like, I remember first two weeks, like, I was working like 80 hours a week my first couple weeks.

And after my first two weeks, my wife's like, hey, how's.

How's it going?

I'm like, great.

I'm like.

She's like, what have you been up to?

I'm like, I don't know.

I had no idea what I did for the last two weeks.

Yeah.

You know, and I realized I'm like, oh, man.

Like, before, I had a really clear structure and schedule.

All these things.

Just things that took for.

I had, you know, outlook, calendar, I had tasks.

I had all these things kind of in place already.

Yeah.

I had to recreate from scratch, you know, so it's just like there's all these things you just don't know.

And then I'll say, if you can.

Like, I would get like a business coach.

Like, invest in a business coach up front, like, before even start if you can, because that will help accelerate your learning curve.

Because you just don't know what you don't know.

You don't know what you don't know.

And you don't know a lot.

Trust me.

You know, like, nothing.

You know, how do I file?

You know, file for, you know, file.

How do I create a company?

I always say, Marcus, I.

I'm a great business development person.

I'm a everyday learning entrepreneur.

Because I.

So I'm only four years into entrepreneurship, and I have so much still to learn.

And I learned something new every day.

I learned something new in every one of these interviews, dude.

Like, entrepreneurship is.

Is a completely different monster, dude.

It's totally different.

That's where it's like.

When I see people post, like, it's easy breaking solopreneurship when you're.

When you're a rep.

I'm like, not necessarily.

I mean, there are some things that are good, but like, let's just say, for example, if you work for a big company and you're used to a big logo backing you up.

Yep.

And now you start your own company.

No name brand, dot com.

Say it's different.

Like, you know, there's.

There's.

It's a wildly different situation, you know?

Yeah.

And then, you know, I would say if you can start a side hustle first.

Right.

Like now I always say, don't start a side hustle at the cost of you not being able to perform.

Like, that means, like, you, like, you need to be able to consistently perform if you're a salesperson.

Because reality is like, if you can't perform, if you can't sell for someone else, to be pretty hard to sell for yourself.

That's right.

That's just reality.

So your system is going to follow you everywhere.

So if you're consistently performing and then building up a side hustle, even test out and build a little bit of an audience up, can be a Huge gift.

Like, you know, I know I have buddies who did a great job building a huge audience before they even went into their own business.

Yeah.

And that paid them a massive dividends.

That's right.

You know, versus the ones who did not do, like, I mean, I didn't really do that myself and it was more of an uphill battle.

So I'm like pushing a giant rock up the hill versus, like, some of them, like, they're just kind of like, oh, it's so easy.

I'm like, oh, man, that was not the same way for me.

It was super hard.

So.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like, I agree completely.

It's like, you know, like you said, give away 90, charge 10.

Like, the reality is if you want to make an impact and you want to make a difference in the world, that is the.

That's the approach you have to take.

That's it.

100.

You know, we'll take us into venly.

Right.

Like, obviously you're helping con.

You're helping other business development people, sales people, marketing people, business owners.

Like, you're coaching.

Talk about Venley.

What.

What are all services you do?

So I love.

So there's two parts of the business.

So we have the individual side, then we have the team side.

The individual sides, like, you know, they're.

Most of them are a lot of tech sales professionals, tech AES, you know, they're coming in and we have a coaching program for them.

So we're just helping them absolutely crush their numbers and actually blow their numbers out.

So a lot of them just need a lot of help across the board, from filling the pipeline to shortening a sales cycle, closing deals, stuff like that.

So that's that part of the business which is a lot of fun.

And then on the other side is a B2B side which is working with teams and companies and basically doing the same thing at scale.

So if they have like, you know, 8 reps, 10 reps, 100 reps, different programs for them, because they just need something a little bit different more that's much more customized as a result.

But we're helping their teams just absolutely crush too, on both sides of the business.

But it's a lot of fun either way.

Basically, if you need help crushing your numbers, I'm the guy.

Amazing.

Amazing.

And Marcus, what's the best way for them to get a hold of you if they want to hire you?

Super simple.

You either head to, you know, Bentley consulting.com or, you know, message me on LinkedIn.

I'm pretty easy to find.

Awesome.

Awesome.

And guys like the reality is I connected with Marcus on LinkedIn before I read his book.

But I did read his book.

It is six figure sales secrets.

You do not want to miss this.

This is awesome.

If you have any type of sales, if you're a business owner and you have to sell for yourself, if you're a sales rep, a business development specialist, whatever it is, trust me, pick up the book.

It's amazing.

And I agree, I agree with everything Marcus wrote.

Actually it's.

I can't say that for a lot of books but dude, everything you wrote is exactly what I would recommend and promote.

It's an amazing book.

I appreciate that.

Thank you so much.

And people can get your book where Marcus.

So if you head to benlead co forward slash book they can get a copy there.

Perfect.

Perfect.

Until next time, this has been episode 204 of the Business Development Podcast and we will catch you on the flip side.

This has been the Business Development Podcast with Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry and founded his own business development firm in 2020.

His passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation and business development.

The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your business development specialists.

For more more we invite you to the website at www.capitalbd.ca.

see you next time on the Business Development Podcast.