In this episode of #TBNE Rob chats with the one, the only, Nick Capozzi. Nick is one of the leading voices on storytelling, brand, and all things video. He has the voice for radio and the face for TV. Don’t miss this episode as Nick shares a few experiences of cruise ship days as we get into the power of B2B Brand Marketing and the need for Brand Evangelists at your company. Check out the full episode now! Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review.
In this episode of #TBNE Rob chats with the one, the only, Nick Capozzi. Nick is one of the leading voices on storytelling, brand, and all things video. He has the voice for radio and the face for TV.
Don’t miss this episode as Nick shares a few experiences of cruise ship days as we get into the power of B2B Brand Marketing and the need for Brand Evangelists at your company.
Check out the full episode now!
Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review.
Connect with Nick Capozzi:
Connect with Rob:
Show Produced by: Niranjan Deshpande (Nick), Broken Frames Studio, www.brokenframesstudio.com
Creative Director: Maxim Sokolov, www.maximsokolov.com
Selling is evolving, are you? Humantic AI is a Buyer Intelligence platform for revenue teams. If you are interested in learning more about Humantic AI use Rob’s referral link https://app.humantic.ai/login/?referral_code=robnapoli
Special offer for #BearNation listeners interested in trying Brilliantly Warm (https://www.brilliantly.co/), use this 10% off discount code WELCOME10.
The 8 Biggest Mistakes People Make When Choosing a Coach (and how to avoid them!) use this link to get your FREE download: https://www.thaxa.com/p/the-bear-necessities-of-entrepreneurship
We have teamed up with Phin, a social impact company, to give back for each episode to the communities that we serve. To learn more or get involved with Phin for your company, visit: https://www.phinforgood.com/
EP 95_Nick Capozzi_Part 1_Transcript
00:00:07:12 - 00:00:28:17
Rob Napoli
Bear Nation. How are we doing? It’s your boy Rob Napoli And this podcast has been in the works for about a year and I mean we've been trying to sit fucking down for about a year to get get this on the books, but we've been so busy going back and forth, our schedules haven't aligned. So I'm excited to have my friend Nick Capozzi on the show.
00:00:29:08 - 00:00:30:09
Rob Napoli
Nick How we doing, man?
00:00:31:04 - 00:00:44:05
Nick Capozzi
Rob I couldn't be better and I was also jazzed up for this. We've been the reason we waited was because there was talk of Am I coming through New York or I wanted to do this in person with you, but this is going to be great nonetheless.
00:00:44:05 - 00:01:05:07
Rob Napoli
And I was trying to come out of Phenix or try to make that happen. And there's just so much that was like going on that I kept at it. And so Nick is kind of this guy, so we'll get into your back in little bit. But he is the co-founder of a community called Social Social, which is a social media think tank, which is absolutely amazing.
00:01:05:07 - 00:01:34:23
Rob Napoli
Head of storytelling at demostack. You got that demostack represented right there. You are a king of videos, king of Brand Evangilism. Basically, this guy with demostack decided to get a Jeep, wrap it, and it went on a fucking Nation tour. Except they didn't make it all the way to East New York. That was what we were trying to make happen and just went out and created content everywhere and I fucking loved it.
00:01:34:23 - 00:01:55:05
Rob Napoli
So let's know there's two type of main topics I want to cover, which is, you know, content creation and then brand evangelism. So let's start on the brand side of things. And I think this is really interesting and it's a hot topic, but just before I jump into that, give us your quick background because you have a unique background, which I love when you share it.
00:01:55:05 - 00:02:08:23
Rob Napoli
So tell us about like what? Where did you get your start and how did you fall in love on the brand side? Like because you weren't on the brand side originally. You're a seller and you've worked your way to connect to brands. So tell me about your little journey to where you are today.
00:02:09:00 - 00:02:24:11
Nick Capozzi
Well, the irony was I was selling brands, but I'll get to that. So real quick BackStory. I went to college for radio and it was a kid. I went to work in radio, so I went to Harvard College in Toronto. I was in radio and then TV for about five years. One day I was at a party and someone say, You do this radio thing on a stage?
00:02:24:11 - 00:02:44:22
Nick Capozzi
And I'm like, Fuck yeah. Next thing I knew, I stepped on to a cruise ship in Miami, spent ten years living at sea, pitching brands, high end luxury duty free, we think duty free, things like Toblerone bars and perfume. But it was like really high end Swiss watch houses, jewelry brands that you know, and we were presenting these concepts on a stage.
00:02:44:23 - 00:03:04:20
Nick Capozzi
So I have like 10000 hours on a stage pitching trade, 800 people how to be live stage presenters move Shoreside I became an executive, worked for the biggest cruise line companies in revenue, and then I pivoted to tech by accident because I started posting content on LinkedIn about two and a half years ago. What I knew, which was skills, presentation skills.
00:03:05:14 - 00:03:26:19
Nick Capozzi
And that's it, man. That's that's the long and the short of it. But today I am the head of storytelling at Demo Stack, and that's, you know, a marketing evangelist role. So I'm creating awareness for the brands and it's kind of a mix of a content video content specifically. And then, you know, about a third live events and a third virtual events.
00:03:27:08 - 00:03:29:02
Nick Capozzi
So that's that's kind of my day job.
00:03:29:09 - 00:03:57:10
Rob Napoli
I love it. And, you know, when you're doing one, you have the perfect radio voice for sure. I love like it's amazing. Like you are meant to be behind a microphone when you work, when you kind of got into this live, you know, that that the stuff on a cruise line. What about it excites you? Like why did being on a stage like you're selling other people's brands right now on a cruise ship?
00:03:57:10 - 00:04:15:05
Rob Napoli
There is you know, you're basically on a floating ship right. And there's nothing else to do besides what's on that ship. Right. It's not like I mean, you have a couple of day excursions, but that's as far as you're spending your time. You're in your room at the bar, at the food court, at the pool, or whatever the activities are, and you're there to go the active.
00:04:15:05 - 00:04:29:15
Rob Napoli
But I hear you are trying to sell them to buy stuff. So like what? What made that exciting for you? And what was it about that that you thought just made it fun? Like what about being at sea? Made it fun for you to be around all these people selling brands and like.
00:04:30:00 - 00:04:49:19
Nick Capozzi
Well, let me tell you, being at sea and living on cruise ships is a whole other conversation. I mean, it could be a Netflix series just sitting on a couch telling you cruise ship stories. I mean, what kind of true crime do you want to rob? Because I've seen that. I've lived that. So but I'll park that. I think from from a sales perspective, like I love being on stage, right?
00:04:49:19 - 00:05:06:18
Nick Capozzi
I was still a radio guy, except now I had a 500 person audience. And what was cool about it was that like if you are thinking about taking a cruise and you're coming from Brooklyn in the winter, what are you thinking about your cruise? You're thinking about it like on the train, like three weeks in advance as you're heading into Manhattan, right?
00:05:07:10 - 00:05:30:00
Nick Capozzi
So but you're not thinking about buying duty free If you're thinking about and you think about the sun, first of all, you think about the pool, the islands, what excursions I want to go on. But if you are thinking about revenue departments, you're thinking about excursions, the spas, the casino, the sexy department. So we weren't sexy. So what was cool was now that I have this terminology from tech, I can use it.
00:05:30:00 - 00:05:49:20
Nick Capozzi
But we were doing demand gen with video content like in 1999. We were giving value in 1999 and like helping people and solving problems to get them to understand what we did. So I think part of the reason I fit so well was like my personal ethos and how I look at myself as like a hotelier on the Cruise ships hotel, you first, cellar second.
00:05:50:07 - 00:06:22:05
Nick Capozzi
I think it really helped me in the B2B space, and I think that's also what's really cool now was, you know, my brand background. These were like big like brands that like are sponsoring the FIFA World Cup level of brands. This wasn't small potatoes. And I think what was really cool was that having having spent most of my career looking at selling through a B2C lens, I think now when I create content in a B2B environment, it changes it or it gives me a unique perspective because B2C sexy, it's chicken wings and beer and Nike's, right?
00:06:22:05 - 00:06:29:06
Nick Capozzi
Well, an efficiency tool is not sexy. Saving you time and money is not sexy. How do you make it interesting? And to me it's about making it experiential
00:06:30:06 - 00:06:51:05
Rob Napoli
I love that. And honestly, I think that's part of what I love and why I love working in brand and write a book on it is I worked in B to C, I worked I sold shoes as when I started in retail and I had right now Richard's on the podcast and we talked about, you know, when you're selling shoes, it's the thing that was why I became a top student.
00:06:51:05 - 00:07:07:02
Rob Napoli
I would ask like, what kind of writing did you like? What kind of game do you have? Like, not about, like trying to sell the shoes, like asking those personal questions, But it's but it made it really easy that when it came time to sell the shoe is sexy like this is this is nice cameo but and then I sold a wearable device B to C company and I help them scale.
00:07:07:08 - 00:07:26:14
Rob Napoli
And so I got into that B2B kind of marketing and brand. It's like cool. Saving me time and money isn't sexy and honestly saving me time and money, like, isn't really a value proposition, right? Unless there's a few things I for the most part, it's process or it's something else. And time and money is the byproduct of whatever you're saving them, right?
00:07:26:15 - 00:07:55:16
Rob Napoli
Like you're doing this more efficient and the byproduct that is time and money. Right. So how do you make that process sexy? How do you have any kind of put that like B2C kind of marketing, advertising, branding hat on and you bring by the BTV space, you could do some really cool fun shit, which I think if anyone has seen any of the content that Nick and you did at our was the why am I blanking on his name, your buddy that you have like you guys have done a lot of co-created videos that are just hilarious as fuck.
00:07:56:22 - 00:08:24:24
Rob Napoli
Will Aiken will like and the British guys like the two of you have done some so much fun collaboration making like B2B stuff. Just absolutely hilarious. How did so you have this branding thing with this? How did how did this turn into okay, how do we make brand sexy, right? How do you make B2B sexy? And how did you kind of like when you got this opportunity to be a brand evangelist and story time?
00:08:24:24 - 00:08:32:11
Rob Napoli
What did it mean to you? What is brand evangelist mean to you and why is it important to make B2B sexy in terms of content?
00:08:33:06 - 00:08:55:02
Nick Capozzi
So first question first. So I think the way I look at it was so one of so what we did, we did a 30 day road trip and we were interviewing influencers and it was a social equity play. So basically I'm going to interview someone who's really well known in the sales tech SAS space. We're going to shoot content for demo stock, but then I'm also going to off camera interview them, kind of produce direct and we were gifting content.
00:08:55:02 - 00:09:20:08
Nick Capozzi
So that was the first way we kind of leveraged partnerships. The second was with these brands, so we partnered with outreach and vidyard. And again, it wasn't a dollar exchange, it was a social equity barter exchange. Are you willing when we're on tour, if we're plugging you and gifting you videos, are you willing to promote the posts we're doing just through your go to market team like dropping your Slack channel?
00:09:20:13 - 00:09:38:22
Nick Capozzi
Can you get 30 or 40 people involved regularly? So that was incredibly effective is but to to hammer home based on your exact question, one of the one of the companies we were working with was a gifting company. So hey, listen, sounds cool. Take a meeting, I'll send you a $50 gift card. You can use it for whatever.
00:09:39:09 - 00:10:02:24
Nick Capozzi
So that's a nice to have. Right. But what we did was as we were gifting these cards to all our speakers, we were recording their reaction, recording them, going into their phone, looking at what they could get. And when we chop this up with like 20 different people in it, you know, this 90 second video became like super impactful about the experience of what people were actually doing.
00:10:02:24 - 00:10:21:12
Nick Capozzi
And I think that's the place brands myths. So when I talk to people who work in brand marketing, I think the way they think about it is it is about the whole experience, but it's more about the esthetic experience. I find the what does it look like? What is the sound, what is our narrative? But how do you bring that to life with video?
00:10:21:24 - 00:10:53:01
Nick Capozzi
And I think that's where a lot of people need help. I think that's where the opportunities missed. So that's the first question. Second one, in terms of brand evangelism, I think this is critical because you need to control your own audience. In 2023, the one thing I have realized you cannot rely on, you know, buying webinar time essentially with communities, what you need to do every day is, is have someone, whether it's your CEO, whether it's the content or content marketer experimenting with tech talk.
00:10:53:15 - 00:11:12:21
Nick Capozzi
But you need someone out there talking about your brand. And I think there's a couple of ways to look at that quick little subset here is that one, you can look at it as we're just going to pitch, which most companies do, or you can make it about the problems you solve. And that is kind of like it's a thinly veiled promotion for your company.
00:11:13:06 - 00:11:17:01
Nick Capozzi
But really what you're doing is giving value, right? That's how I look at it.
00:11:18:03 - 00:11:38:13
Rob Napoli
So I kind of break that out for a second because I think that's really important. The first time you brought up like or and I agree with you, so many brands like is this on brand, right? Is it the right colors, is the right esthetic, is the right narrative. But what what misses is like, who cares if there's no experience to who cares if there's not a tangible result from it?
00:11:38:23 - 00:12:06:16
Rob Napoli
Right. And the other thing is, as we saw the rise of like the webinars and the bootcamps and the courses and all that during the pandemic and we were gobbling that up. But as we come back out of it, that there's staying power and those that have, as you said, owning their community. Right. And so what happened and we see this a lot now as we see people who are hired as head of brand evangelism or brand evangelist at this company, and it's sometimes not the CEO, it's an influencer, it's a content creator.
00:12:07:03 - 00:12:27:11
Rob Napoli
It's a former executive who now has a consultancy. Why? How? I mean, how have you seen this role? Why did it become a role in your opinion and why How does the brand evangelist help a company own that audience on a daily basis? Like let's talk. It's kind of break that down a little. If you went into that subset, which I love, which I want to kind of get into.
00:12:27:23 - 00:12:29:04
Rob Napoli
So let's break that down a little bit.
00:12:29:12 - 00:12:49:17
Nick Capozzi
So I'll tell you from my own experience. So you know, when sales food was launched by Vidyard so video was an incredible video communication tool specifically used by sellers, they launched a kind of comedy brand called Sales Feed and, you know, I had had some discussions with Tyler Lessard, who built it, who's the VP marketing at the Vidyard
00:12:50:07 - 00:13:13:00
Nick Capozzi
And, you know, he wound up going with Wil Aiken at the time and which was 1,000,000% the right the right thing to do. And I watched what Will did. I watched how Wil built this new channel for sales feed, how it shined a light on video vidyarthi and frankly, how Will's personal brand blew up. And I said, well, that's really interesting.
00:13:13:00 - 00:13:33:20
Nick Capozzi
And I said, There's something to that. And then I started seeing more and more people get involved, or I start to notice more and more. So like Travis Tyler from Panda Doc is one of the best. The hilarious makes his business with humor will ache. And of course, Amelia Taylor with Reggie Arthur Castillo doing an amazing job with this at Chili Piper.
00:13:34:04 - 00:13:55:06
Nick Capozzi
And I think that's what's really interesting is that there's all these plays with with evangelism and having someone out there as the face of your company. But I think there's also something to the dark social that has happens behind the scenes where people like Travis, Wil, Arthur, Amelia and myself are in these WhatsApp chat chat groups discussing these things.
00:13:55:06 - 00:14:17:06
Nick Capozzi
And I think they're I think this is going to become more of the future. I am so bullish on community and I think owning your audience and owning your community is so critical. And I think the best way to do it is with the brand evangelist and where I think people get stuck, especially with a CEO, is how to is how does a CEO who's wearing so many hats put time into developing content?
00:14:17:17 - 00:14:37:23
Nick Capozzi
So depending where you are as a company, you know, potentially bringing in someone to do brand evangelism is really key. And that was also why we launched Social. Social So Willie Can and Jen Allen are my partners in Social, Social. And what we realized was or where I started the conversation on this was there's a few things that we there's one thing I'm good at.
00:14:38:05 - 00:15:02:10
Nick Capozzi
I can capture a lot of content really fast. My first choke point was editing, which became a problem. The solution we needed help with too, because we were captured so much content we just couldn't produce enough, put it through the factory to get it on social. But then the other was how do you distribute on social? And there was all this, you know, misinformation or anecdotal things about this is what you do on LinkedIn, this is what you do with YouTube shorts, this is what you do on Reddit.
00:15:02:22 - 00:15:16:02
Nick Capozzi
So we built social, social audio and that was really for us a think tank to find what's working, what's outlet minutes ready to go. And it's been very effective. So you know, we had problems and we were looking for solutions.
00:15:16:15 - 00:15:36:01
Rob Napoli
I love that. I think, you know, another big buzzword that came out of the pandemic was like community. But everyone creating a community and community there, a community that and you saw some communities blow up. You saw some communities fall flat on their face. And I think that you kind of made a big point. That community is really impactful, but you need somebody that can help evangelize.
00:15:36:01 - 00:15:50:01
Rob Napoli
That means to drive conversation. And that doesn't always have to be CEO. Some companies, the CEO is the best person to be the face. Other company is something else, like want to be the face. I got all these hats. I want to stay behind the scenes. I'm more technical, whatever, and you want to bring somebody in to do that.
00:15:50:01 - 00:16:15:03
Rob Napoli
I think understanding that as a company. But this idea of community I think is you're building social, Social, you know, my things. I've seen y'all do well is that there's a lot of great people in there that want to drive conversations, right? I mean, a lot of slack groups. And I made it. I was at one point I had 21 different Slack channels that were like community things, and I like removed 90% of it because I was just like, I was I wasn't in any of them.
00:16:15:03 - 00:16:21:24
Rob Napoli
I was on the edge of all of them. And I was consuming content, but I wasn't able to really get deep because I was like, notification this and I got like notification anxiety.
00:16:22:12 - 00:16:42:07
Nick Capozzi
So so I think real quick, sorry, Rob, you're going to love your question, but just really quick point. I think the key with the community is picking one and really getting going deep. So I think deep versus wide is important here. So a great example would be Pavilion Pavilion, if you were selling to, you know, C-suite marketing sales leaders, that's where you want to live.
00:16:42:16 - 00:16:48:03
Nick Capozzi
So, you know, find one community and double down on that. But sorry, I just want to make that point.
00:16:48:06 - 00:17:04:01
Rob Napoli
That was that was asking me the question is what advice do you have on how to best leverage community, both from a consumer standpoint and a business standpoint? Right. And that's one of the things that I realized, like I need to cut back and go deep and a few of them know one or two of them that I that I'm really passionate about.
00:17:04:01 - 00:17:28:01
Rob Napoli
And it's kind of changed the game in terms of networking, connections and opportunity. But to make a community really work, we have these brand evangelist roles and that a lot of companies try to do this. So what in your opinion makes a good brand evangelist? Like what are the things that that role should be doing, that person should be doing for the brand, and how do they capitalize on that position?
00:17:28:14 - 00:17:50:10
Nick Capozzi
I think they need to have a deep understanding of the product. That's the most important. Are they a good fit for the product? I was a good fit with demo stack because I taught presentation skills, and demo stack helps you give a much better demo, right? So to me, part of the reason that we we had so much success, both myself and for Demo Stack was there was such an alignment between the two.
00:17:50:10 - 00:18:12:17
Nick Capozzi
I think that's really key. I think that there's a lot of young people who are maybe new, maybe like an SDR who like, Look, I don't want the pressure of carrying this bag, but I like the space and I can talk about the space and I think you need to look at them, you know, especially another big thing we did was I was on the road 120 days and eight months in 2022.
00:18:12:24 - 00:18:29:23
Nick Capozzi
So I was everywhere. I had a tripod and a mic ready to go. So if you can find someone who can talk about it, is aligned with your product and can get in front of people aren't afraid to use a camera. You can develop interviewing skills. All you have to do if you want to become a better interviewers read any Larry King's book.
00:18:29:24 - 00:18:56:10
Nick Capozzi
You remember Larry King Live, one of the best interviewers ever. Joe Rogan, Take Politics out of the Equation is such a brilliant interviewer. And the reason is this is a key point. So he Hartsfield, taught me this full credit to Zoe. He has inverse charisma. He's so fucking curious about who he's talking to and the subject matter that he pulls out their most engaging and charismatic self more than they could ever get to on their own.
00:18:56:16 - 00:19:18:24
Nick Capozzi
Right? So do you have someone can you find someone who is really into the topic and can can learn some interviewing skills? And then a big part of we did was bartering content. We collaborated on content or we would shoot content for us. But then, hey, which chopped up three videos? I'm not in it. This is for your own social helps to make friends.
00:19:19:07 - 00:19:45:13
Rob Napoli
It does. I mean, for every podcast that I do for my guests, we chop up three or four or five six contents. That's just them. And it's them with a fire pit quote fire knowledge bomb and sidekick. Yeah, And I and I've put it in a real format and I like I believe I think square videos at all time ago in fact real format most people on their phones are true and so it gets better plays because it's using for real estate and my share here is five real secrets on Tik Tok.
00:19:45:13 - 00:20:06:18
Rob Napoli
You can go on YouTube shorts, you can throw on Instagram because they're on LinkedIn tomorrow. You got it. And I think one of the things that brands are starting to realize, the ones that are really taking off is that power and collaboration. It used to be like, Oh, I don't want to like share my stuff or about the cross-pollination to be such a big thing in the space.
00:20:07:20 - 00:20:36:06
Nick Capozzi
I love that and most people miss that. And I think that's, you know, we've kind of gone through to the foundation. We've now built the house, we put the roof on the drywall is actually that. And I think that's really key is partnerships, and that's the opportunity that's missed. And if you look at there's an amazing newsletter that Partner Hacker puts out big fan of of the content and people want to to be better partners to each other.
00:20:36:06 - 00:20:50:15
Nick Capozzi
They don't know how to do it. And I think sometimes the way people look, a partnership is like, well, what else is in the sales tech stack? How to ad words in conversation. I'm so worried about closing my deal to actually want to bring up partners. But I think there's opportunities either in content, collaboration or through events.
00:20:50:22 - 00:21:21:03
Nick Capozzi
We did an amazing party demo stack did last year with Avniro. We did a party with Lavender and JP sales in Toronto, so you know, waterways that you can collaborate. So you're bringing collaborator collaborators together who are making content together. What does that look like? That partnership is the missed opportunity. And if you're looking for a North Star on that, I'm telling you that Partner Hacker newsletter is Fire.
00:21:21:03 - 00:21:37:12
Rob Napoli
So the last question is brand evangelism is what do you think about There's a lot of conversation about this. You know, people in the front line, folks like Starz that kind of executives have kind of building their own personal brands and kind of becoming mini brand evangelist. What's your opinion on that? Because there's some really like big debates on that going on in the Internet.
00:21:37:12 - 00:21:40:09
Rob Napoli
So what is your feeling on that as a brand evangelist yourself?
00:21:40:22 - 00:22:02:09
Nick Capozzi
I think there's certain people who could transcend brand evangelists and actually become their own media company, and I look at them very differently. So I think there's you have content creators, you have true influencers, people with like big followings who were in that following. And then you have people who are not a lot of them right now, but people who are looking to become media companies.
00:22:02:16 - 00:22:30:14
Nick Capozzi
I've got someone out of the SAS space. His name's Sean Walsh, chef from Cali Barbecue Media. He's got four fucking podcasts talking about fucking barbecue and how to grow your restaurant, and he takes you through building your restaurant. What's what's necessary for that? So he's built a media, he's a media company. He's not an influencer anymore. So and you know, if you just look at some of the sponsorships he has, I don't want to talk out of school, but that's that's what the opportunity is.
00:22:30:14 - 00:22:46:24
Nick Capozzi
And I think what happened, you know, you mentioned courses before. I think part of what happened post-pandemic was that was hot. People were looking for solutions, but a lot of people did it. And there was a lot of kind of templated how to post what the posts, blah, blah, blah. And so many people were doing that, that LinkedIn became more crowded.
00:22:47:13 - 00:23:08:16
Nick Capozzi
But according to LinkedIn, 1% of people who are regular users and I'm pretty sure I have this right, but according to LinkedIn, 1% of people who are active users and by active they mean at logging in at least once a week. Create content. Well, how many of that 1% are creating video content? 1% of 1%. So that's the opportunity.
00:23:08:16 - 00:23:33:07
Nick Capozzi
And the other thing that's interesting, and this is one of the things we actually teach in social. Social is how to make content at scale because the the key thing is, is you want quality always like don't don't throw up shit, but you need volume if you can be posting 30 videos a month, which sounds crazy, but like that's like 3 hours of work if you have a plan and we'll teach you that in social.
00:23:33:07 - 00:23:56:04
Nick Capozzi
But if you're posting 30 videos a month, you become instantly recognizable. You become a face. They might not stop all the time. But I also will tell you this Everyone is bought from you has been a lurker. Not people liking and commenting. It's the people who are lurking. So the more you are visible, the more people are aware with you, the more niche you get was a problem I had when I got out of Cruise.
00:23:56:04 - 00:24:19:09
Nick Capozzi
I'm like, I'm a fucking generalist. Like my versatility, the fact that I can think from a marketing sales brand, SDR, customer success, that's that's what I'm hanging my hat on. No one fucking bought from me. Then more niche I got the more into this really granular detail right, the more people bought from me. So, you know, don't again go deep.
00:24:19:09 - 00:24:20:04
Nick Capozzi
Don't go wide.
00:24:20:10 - 00:24:39:18
Rob Napoli
Yeah, that's hard because you know, you have a lot of passions and it's okay to have those passions. But this is why I say, you know, the lurkers have always been the crux of my business. I always have. I've talked openly about how a lot of my business I've never had to do outbound. Yeah. The last few years because some people work on my content, but it's not so much my content as much as my engagement as well.
00:24:39:24 - 00:25:14:01
Rob Napoli
I engage on five posts a day. People see me commenting, people see me engaging, people see me. And so that as they're working like, Oh, Rob knows this person or Rob knows that person, or Rob's engaged to that content, Rob and that conversation. And that creates a better fun. And this is why our brand evangelist, I think this is why a company should have a brand evangelist, but also why they should allow their employees to be mini brand builders within their within their kind of role of what they're doing, if they're a seller or whatever, because they can also kind of create some organic conversation by being them.
00:25:14:01 - 00:25:34:13
Nick Capozzi
So I always tell people, So let's see, you're a solopreneur trying to build your own business or a B2B series D Company or an SDR just starting out. There's three ways you can create influence and create engagement. You can either create content, you can curate content as such a position yourself as a news source. And then finally you can comment on content.
00:25:35:00 - 00:25:48:23
Nick Capozzi
Commenting on content is the most important to your point. You can build a whole fucking business of following the right people and commenting on their content, but if you do all three things together, you're you're unstoppable.
00:25:49:17 - 00:25:57:17
Rob Napoli
I mean, you know, there's a book I don't remember who wrote it called The Social Soul that talks about that exact playbook and has
00:25:57:17 - 00:26:01:14
Nick Capozzi
Never heard of that. Oh, my, show my Amazon right now.
00:26:02:17 - 00:26:22:24
Rob Napoli
I know. I mean, literally, I have the six CS of building a brand in my book called The Social Side. Three of them are curate comments and create like those are three of the six CS of building a brand. And I've been talk about this for years and I love that you're bringing that up and you just so rightly identified that.