Shift & Thrive: CEO Insights on Driving Change

S&T_Thought Leadership 2.0 Compilation
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[00:00:00]

Artificial intelligence has transformed how quickly companies can create content, automate outreach, and scale their go-to-market efforts. But as those capabilities become available to everyone, something else is becoming far more valuable: trust. Across these conversations from Shift and Thrive, business and go-to-market leaders explore what it actually takes to stand out in an [00:01:00] increasingly noisy market.

From thought leadership and founder-led marketing to brand building and employee advocacy, these leaders are rethinking how companies earn attention and build trust. The future of go-to-market may be powered by technology, but the companies breaking through are finding ways to make it more human. Let's take a closer look at what that means in practice

Kristina McMillan: So one story that I thought was really. Impressive, um, that I've heard in the last six months. Um, it is a, not a portfolio company of scale, but another organization. And what's interesting is AI was not the thing that started the transformation, but AI supported the transformation. So this particular organization, um, had been growing pretty well up to about a $15 million SaaS company.

Um, and then all of a sudden everything just started tanking around them. They dropped to around 30 million in revenue per year. And like it was, it was sliding, downhill in the wrong direction. Um, they brought in some fresh, um, folks on the executive team to try and [00:02:00] literally turn it around. They had a two year mandate, let's turn this around, see if we can, uh, become a market leader, and if we can get to a hundred million, like we have to like.

Hey, Mary, this is it. Like let's try and see if we can do this. And what I think was so interesting is that team, what's old, is new again. And that team went back to some really, really

important basics

from a Go-to-market standpoint. I'll call it thought leadership 2.0. And so I've been in and around watching a lot of different markets, um, come and go, a lot of different vendor categories come and go.

And we all know kind of thought leadership can

be very helpful

to that, to an organization finding their way. Um, establishing a brand that is then trusted, incredible,

and growing

from there. Um, but that's changed. Thought leadership used to be a lot about our organization having an opinion. This particular, um, company decided that they were gonna.

Put

the people forward,

they're gonna take their executive team each in their different positions. The head of marketing, the head of sales, head of product, the CEO themselves, like all of them in [00:03:00] their different vantage points.

Um,

I think only one of them was a founder, but they said, we all have a perspective

on how

what we do as a business affects people, uh, affects our target prospects.

And so they

set out to do a very specific personal branding oriented thought leadership, which is why I kind of call it thought Leadership 2.0. Um, and what was really magical about it is they coordinated it as a team. They used AI to be able to execute. So obviously creating a lot of

content across a lot

of different individuals was really challenging at first, um, but they used AI to do that.

And were able to create

consistency, create

accountability, and literally it was

things like the

CMO would be like, all right, CEO, all right, head of product. Have you guys posted on LinkedIn today? Like very, very basic things, but it created an incredible moment.

Momentum for

the organization. And they, within uh, 18 months, they had hit, um, they were back on track and at the end of

two years

they hit a hundred million.

I mean, it's astonishing. We all wanna grow that

fast anyway,

[00:04:00] but to have grown and then contracted and then be able to stretch beyond that is just, it was incredible. So, uh, I guess my, my main message there is for everyone listening, even with ai, as much as we will talk about it, let's not forget that there's a combination of old things are now possible, again with ai.

Um, so let's not forget some of those old basics.

Natalie Nathanson: I think, You know, that concept of, uh, branding and when a company is struggling with, especially a startup, kind of struggling with lead gen or needing kind of more pipeline as quickly as humanly possible, um, the temptation is lead gen and where can we put in more, You know, dollars in right?

Things like paid ads and more sales dialing and things like that. And your example is a perfect one for why, unfortunately, the quick fixes are not often the most fruitful ones. Um, and the increasing and kind of growing role of, of brand.

Kristina McMillan: Yeah. And I think, You know, it's worth saying particularly with that 'cause a lot of folks are [00:05:00] questioning their old

methods, right? The

way we used to build pipeline is not working the way we used to. Try, try and, You know, um, uh, engage prospects early is not working. So how do we do things differently? But sometimes doing differently is not, um. Something completely new. It is actually revisiting old things. So we are seeing people revisiting handwritten notes and veto campaigns from like the early two thousands.

And some of that stuff is a, it's easier to execute now because of all the additional resources that ai, um, uh, supports, but also because those things were, um, one-to-one and Slightly targeted and personalized in a way that is standing out amongst the digital noise that we have today. So we can dig in more to this.

Natalie Nathanson: For sure. And You know, we're often talking to our clients about like the same kind of thing, the old tactics through new techniques. Right. And I think you can use, whether it's AI or automation or some combination of that, [00:06:00] um, to be able to get a lot more done, make it easier for these thought leaders and SMEs to not start with a blank page, but use these kinda tools the right way and move, uh, move through that.

Stephen Ochs (2): It's

very common in the B2C world where you see influencers on Instagram, TikTok, and you know, promoting consumer brands, but you're starting to see a lot more of B2B brands start to come through that as well.

And um,

you know, I started

playing around with that I'd say in early 2020. And the reason I started doing that was. Marketing to a technical buyer in general, they don't want to hear from a marketer, right? They want to hear from a, you know, a peer, someone who understands them, understands their pay,

their pains,

operates on their level, understands the technical depth, so you can't really fake

it with a bunch of

white papers and

things like that.

So

really what that leaves you with is with a few options. You either, you know. [00:07:00] Hire someone to come in house and be that evangelism,

or you

start

working with external evangelists and

you start giving that show, don't tell experience so. Uh,

one of my previous companies, what we

started to do

is we reached out to this network of influencers and

started

to create a thought leadership pod.

And we would, you know, really tap their shoulders for webinars,

through,

for podcasts, and for,

you know, also demoing, you know, new features we were making to make sure we could bring

them to the community and their relevant audience.

And

you know, what we really start to see is our cost per leads were much cheaper.

The amount of marketing work doesn't change, right? You still need your content marketing teams,

your

digital

teams, everything like that. But the distribution channels and change, right?

So what

you do is you end up spending less on, you know,

just these vanity clicks and you're spending more

for engagement and awareness.

And I

think that's the world we're really entering to. So. You know,

I started that playbook a couple, uh, companies

[00:08:00] ago and it started to

really work and it's

starting to become

the norm

from what I've seen a lot. My other, you know, CMO peers are starting to do the same, right? They're

starting to really lean into the influencer model and, you know, I think there's just a lot there.

And also one of my old mentors, you know, I

think he really pioneered

the quote unquote, community

free tooling, um,

mechanism, you know? 10 plus years ago, and I've, uh, learned a lot from him. And we've started to bring that and it becomes your number one lead magnet, organically and paid because you're giving people

value right away.

And I think that's

really the importance. Whatever you do value has to be forefront and center. You have a couple minutes to capture their attention and their trust and give them reason to wanna learn more. It's gotta be value driven.

Natalie Nathonson: I think, you know, knowing that a lot of our listeners are kinda CEOs and executives, and not all necessarily in go to market. It. Um, I think that there can be some friction between, you know, do we try the, [00:09:00] the tried and true,

which to, as we know

are not necessarily as tried and true these days as they were five years ago.

Um, compared to kind of taking these bigger bets where maybe like the metrics, uh, don't show up in the same way. Um, like you said, it's more of a brand play, so how do you talk to kind of your, uh, kinda CEOs, the board, uh, around kinda what to expect and kinda what to, to brace yourself for, uh, to kind of harness this

and have,

have the stomach for the, the, the time to impact, I should say.

Stephen Ochs (2): So I think the one

thing that hasn't changed is everyone wants to be data driven, right? At the end of the day, we wanna see ROIs, we wanna see customer leads, we wanna see customer SQLs, you know, customer opportunities, um.

and

That doesn't change.

I think what you have to do is be willing to dig a little deeper to extract that information.

Right. So,

um,

we use Fathom as our AI note taker, right? So, you know,

I have my team combing through

the calls,

the AI

notes, and you know, we also have trained our BDRs and

our sellers to [00:10:00] ask

like, Hey, how do you hear about us? How do you

find us?

And. I've had to have that very conversation many times, right? Like I have a couple influencers on my team today and you know, the question comes up is like, hey, is there impact going beyond just brand recognition

and like we're working with

that cool guy, right?

And the

answer is yes.

I've been on so many calls this year that say like, Hey, I saw XY Z's post on LinkedIn talking about what you guys are doing.

and I wanna learn more,

I wanna see it, right? And it's not even

on the full product. Like I have

some of these influencers developing those free tools for us, right?

And they're showing off that free tool. And it's just a small component of what we do, and we don't even commercially sell it. And that has driven many, you know, high,

you know, intent,

um,

bottom funnel opportunities

for us. And

I

think at the end of the day. Revenue cures all sins, right? Everyone talks

about

that.

So I think

as long as you're capturing

that first party [00:11:00] information, it

helps stomach it.

David Axler: In a world where you

are solving

for an administratively burdened customer, they do not have the time or the ability to fact check.

Thousands of leases or hundreds of accounting records. It, it needs

to be

true. They need

to be able to have that

high trust. And so understanding the nature of the workflow

that's kicked

off by that

is what's going to

give you the, the sense of where and how do we introduce AI as the value prop? Is it, is it the thing, is it supplementary to the thing or are you getting too far ahead of your skis where let it be the thing that allows you to build efficiently?

But there is, it's the, almost the inverse value prop with they, the fact that there are humans who are overseeing this, this machine is the thing that gives your end customer the most confidence.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah, that was very well said. I'm, uh, going to a conference in, uh, a few [00:12:00] days, uh, that last year. Uh. Almost every booth had kinda AI plastered everywhere. Um, and I'm very much hoping that this year it comes back to kind of the business value, the problems you solve, the impact and outcomes, uh, because it, You know, you just walk the trade show floor and everyone sounds the same and you can't really tell kind of where the value's coming from or kinda how it's working.

David Axler: Well, and, and there's this, this phenomenon

of galman amnesia. I don't know if you've heard

this concept

before. It's a, a Michael Creighton concept where you're reading the newspaper on a, and it's a section

that You

know a lot about. So if I'm reading the sports section, for instance, I know everything about the Toronto Maple leaf. They torture me every year. I could see a editorial about this is the Leafs year. And I could fundamentally know, like, this is not the

leafs year.

They are terrible. This person doesn't know what they're talking about yet. I flipped the section to the art section and I didn't see any of the Oscar nominee

[00:13:00] films

this year.

I could just take that editorial saying,

um, You

know, sinners is the, the worst movie. It has no choice, no, no chance at winning. That that sounds probably right. And we have this selective critique based on what we deeply understand. And the same is true with

ai. When

we get something back that we know the space, we can instantly say like, this is not right.

I would never trust this. Yet in the same working session,

we can ask about

something that's just slightly outside of our purview and trusted as gospel. And that, that to me is what's distinguishing, first of all, it's a risk of ai, but it distinguishes. Those that can re create real

value versus

the AI slop that I think a lot of the, the, the tools unfortunately help to, to create and, and permeate.

Um, and as human beings, we, we have a hard time distinguishing

between those two things

unless we really understand that intimately.

Natalie Nathanson: It's true. [00:14:00] Well, and the, the distinction, uh, that, You know, everyone, you, you can be an expert and kind of serve that role in the areas that You know well. But then you can be kinda duped like everyone else in the areas that you don't know, uh, as well. I think it'll be a very interesting thing to, to solve for in the world of ai.

And I think we just see so much like content swap because things might sound good, uh, on face value, but it's being put out by people that have, have not taken that critical eye. So I think the, it, it really ups the ante for every, uh, knowledge worker, probably others as well, uh, to really, uh, kind of work through that.

David Axler: and, and

I think it increases the value of authenticity.

In a world where we're hearing, where we're seeing, and you can see it, whether it's on LinkedIn or or other, you can see where this is not authentic. And authenticity, customer advocacy, real,

real,

authentic voice, I think

has never

been more important and

to, to

break through the noise because there's [00:15:00] never been more noise in all of our ears or all of our screens.

And so authenticity has become a,

a real

currency.

Yossi Carmon: so in my opinion, the, the, the most important PO point today in GoTo marketing is authentic authenticity. Onset authenticity. Authenticity, sorry. Um, that's the main, the main part with AI today, with everyone being able to, uh, to generate content. If it's a video, if it's, uh, uh, um, even messaging, whatever you have.

You can do it with AI and, and social media and everywhere is like, there's a, uh, almost 1000%, uh, um, growth with content. All, all, all over social media because of ai. 'cause everyone can now write amazingly very story storytelling, very appealing. Uh, but people are like sick of it already. [00:16:00] They, they want, uh, something very authentic.

Very true. Um, and I think with, with your go to marketing, in my opinion, is the market will, will be, in the next five years, it'll be more word of mouth people recommending to, to their friends, uh, more on that area. I think people want to see, want to see in their eyes or hear with their ears, see that the, this is the actual.

It's actual, it's like live, not No, no, not a video or, or ad. Um,

and

experience. People wants to experience that themselves. Um, it's not enough to, um, uh, there's a lot of fake out, like, um, crazy fake. And I think therefore the, if anyone plans with go to marketing, uh, email, emails, uh.

Add [00:17:00] the, the efficiency of those drop down to almost zero.

All of them ads. Google ads not working anymore at

all.

Completely. Like it's, uh, and AI is like, everyone's searching in with ai. So you, you need to think out of the box.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah,

Yossi Carmon: would go by the way, I would go as a marketing person, I would go to the old ways. You know, you are my age. On, on average, I can close enough.

Uh, when we were in, in, uh, like 30 years ago, we sent envelopes with letters to people, to their inbox, uh, mail inbox. Uh, that was the, the an, an amazing way to reach out to, uh, business, uh, partners, to um, to CEOs, to executives. It was easier. With a gift, I think. I think the go to market, the next go to market will be back to that, to that area,

something. like that.

Natalie Nathanson: Uh, I, I love that you said that. It's a [00:18:00] conversation I've been having a lot both with, you know. Customers, uh, my team, um, and very much agree. I always say, and my listeners are probably sick of hearing me say it by now, that it's never been easier.

To create mediocre content, right? And so that becomes the new table stakes. That's why it's so easy to ignore. There's this kind of AI slop everywhere, and I think we will see a return to, uh, kinda some of the more traditional channels, ideally powered by kind of newer technologies, right? Using AI the right way, using automation the right way.

Um, but human to human interactions. And I, and I think that can seem almost like a cop out, right? Well, what do you mean there's no new silver bullet tactic, right? And we're going back to events and back to word of mouth. Um, but I think it's really like, how do you orchestrate. Um, all of these different tactics in the right way and make it authentic to your company and the solution you bring and what your audience cares about.

And, um, I [00:19:00] think there's a, there's a tendency to wanna look for kinda what is that, that next silver bullet. And,

um,

it, it doesn't feel like it's there. It feels like you need to really make your, your kind of go to market. Your own.

Yossi Carmon: Yes, definitely. You need to think out of the box.

Natalie: the fact that our team does have that experience and they know what

good looks like

and they know how to work with kinda all the different, like, functional areas of marketing means like, you know

how to get

out of these tools, what you need. Um, and unfortunately, like we've seen the cases of.

Um, someone maybe outside of marketing thinking, oh, just like, you know, put a quick prompt together and, you know, send it to cha GPT and,

you know,

I don't need content writers anymore. I don't need, you know, marketers in the same way. Um, which like, yes, things are changing,

but I.

I think that eye on, on quality and kind of true thought leadership when it comes to content.

Like there's a lot of things that, um, it's easier for things to go wrong I think, in this environment than than ever before. And so you need to have the

folks

that, like [00:20:00] I said, like know what good looks like and how to, how to harness it in the right way.

Hey, this is Natalie, your Shift and Thrive host. After chatting with lots of CEOs, one thing is crystal clear. Leveling up your company means having a killer Go-to-market strategy. That's what my crew at Magnitude Consulting does every day. If you're trying to step up your marketing game, whether it's strategizing, accelerating your pipeline, expanding into new markets, or getting into AI and automation, let's talk.

No pitch, no pressure. Just good conversation. Visit shift and thrive podcast.com/natalie to schedule a time. Can't wait to connect.

Natalie Nathanson (2): We know this kind of brand versus demand argument is that demand generation is about creating opportunities now. Brand building, on the other hand, is more about making sure buyers know, uh, like which companies to trust so that you get into the consideration set, like when someone's getting ready to act.

[00:21:00] Demand-oriented activity is generally, like, somewhat easier to track, whereas brand investments, uh, go over a longer period of time. They don't, like, show up as neatly in a dashboard. Um, but, and I know we've talked about this, like, uh, it's becoming, like, more and more, uh, important, right, as the market becomes noisier and trust is harder to earn.

Um, so wanted to just see how, you know, how do you think about the role of brand, uh,

and,

you know, what does that look like when it's not, like, immediately visible in the numbers?

Michele Johnston: Brand absolutely supports lead gen. When you are only running lead gen and demand gen, you are really focused at a very particular point in time in that buyer's journey, and you might have missed that window. B2B buyers are somewhere between 65 and 70% through their buying journey by the time they make their shortlist and reach out to companies to talk to.

You- marketing's job is [00:22:00] to get on those lists. If you're waiting until that last m- few days when they're about to pick up the ph- you've c- you've kind of missed that window. And again, I guess back to marketing 101, right? Um, only a certain percent of your, um, total market audience is ever in market for your services at any given time.

That doesn't mean you should ignore them, right? That's why cars, dealer, you know, cars advertise year-round even though, like, people are only in the market during a very short period of time, 'cause you want that brand recognition. So yes, it is, like, long term, but if you're only thinking constantly short term, you're really not thinking of the bigger picture.

Um, it's really important to make sure that that brand piece is in there. And I kind of feel like brand versus demand is more of, like, a spectrum than two particular buckets, right? So if [00:23:00] you have a lot of your, um, budget in terms of people, time, and dollars in, in demand gen, there's po- there's some channels and some other things you can do that might be a little bit more a lotg the lines of brand, a little bit less demand, but still give you kind of that bump, you know?

So you don't have to necessarily spend across the entire spectrum of brand and demand, but having both of those, like, brand 100% supports demand generation

Natalie Nathanson (2): I think the other component to that that I often think about that I think isn't maybe as talked about is the sales side of things, right? That by not investing in brand, you're putting a greater burden on your salesperson, sales team. Um, and I've seen like

a strong

sales rep join a company and then realize that like they Especially if it's someone who came from like a bigger company with some brand awareness, that like every conversation they have, they're fighting harder to get that first conversation. It [00:24:00] starts one step further back, uh, than, than what they expected, uh, because they're the ones that then need to talk about like

who the

company is, like prove that, that credibility, convince the buyer that it was even worth like taking that first call versus that's like such a important place for marketing to provide that air cover.

Um, and especially in a world where, you know, anyone can spin up a company, a website, like look like they have something legitimate even when they don't, like it's gonna be increasingly harder for buyers to know who to trust. And so by kind of being out there, uh, you're really supporting, uh, sales from having to do that kinda that legwork, or just missing opportunities altogether.

Christian: If you're an owner of a company, if you're a CEO, especially if you're an owner, you might be the only person in your organization that's authorized to speak on behalf of the company. So anything I say isn't Christian Hyatt speaking, I'm speaking for Risk360 at this stage.

So I need to build brand equity. I need to tell people that we exist and the problem [00:25:00] that we can solve. So I'll do podcasts like this. I do 24 speaking events a year. Um, a lot of founder led marketing. So, uh, that's a really important part of what we do. Although we do have a whole marketing team that's building a great brand outside of, uh, the efforts that I do.

GMT20240905-170236_Recording_640x360: I think that you have, uh, kind of a great brand and kind of do a lot to put your thought leadership out there. And I would say probably more than what I see for kind of the average, uh, kind of cyber security, kind of CEO and founder of a company of your size.

So, wanted to hear a little bit, like, what comes naturally to you in that versus what have you kind of learned or, uh, Kind of pushed yourself to do, what kind of support do you get from your marketing team? Like, talk a little bit about Yeah. You do that.

Christian: So we, we do have, well we've, I've, I've come to understand that what we do is founder led marketing, uh, at least in part, and that's where, uh, A CEO or a founder, you know, talks to the world and tells 'em about their company.

And that's a big part of their strategy. I didn't know that that was a thing until someone introduced me to, to that term. I just realized it was something that we were kind of doing. Uh, some of the things come natural to me. [00:26:00] So for example, uh, writing comes very natural to me. So RISC360. com was actually a blog before it was a company.

Uh, it was a way I was teaching myself cybersecurity concepts. So I started a blog and started writing about it. I've always enjoyed writing. I wrote a book. So like that piece of it comes fairly natural to me for whatever reason. It's just a source, a source of, of joy. Uh, a good morning for me is a cup of coffee and like just doing some reflection and some writing.

So it wasn't a huge gap for me to turn that reflection into LinkedIn posts or whatever it might be, or a white paper, that kind of thing. So that piece came very naturally. The unnatural part of it is I like public speaking. I was, uh, I've always had, I mean, I think more than an average fear of public speaking, but I felt it was important for me.

To get over that and to be able to communicate period, uh, to my internal team, but also to the outside world. Uh, I wrestled through high school and college and, uh, and the, one of the unique dynamics of wrestling is that you're the only one on the mat [00:27:00] is you and another guy, and you're both in singlets and you might lose in front of everyone.

So I think that kind of gave me a little bit of background to be comfortable, like in the spotlight, if you will, or at least owning the consequences immediately of your, of, of what happens. So I tried to become a great speaker. I did a standup comedy course, uh, last year that was like groundbreaking for me.

Like anything after that is easy. And I've done hundreds of talks and podcasts. So like. If anything, like this is as good as I am now, but this is the result of hundreds of talks. So you can imagine how not good it would be otherwise, but I just wanted to be a really good communicator. So that was absolutely learned and earned through, through a lot of work.

Um, and then just a lotg the way, we've gotten like a few wins, like at a certain point, our sales team started saying, Oh yeah, they saw your LinkedIn post or this guy saw you at a talk. And we started hearing that enough and completely on accident. Like, I wish I could say it was like part of our strategy to do this.

But we were just out there and people started mentioning that they, [00:28:00] they saw the things that I was producing and it was resulting in opportunities and revenue. And, uh, I think I was lucky in the fact that I made the choice to be authentic and speak to a niche, stay in my lane. I don't talk about a lot of things.

I talk about what I think I'm an expert in and I talk about that regularly. Um, and then we've experienced some success. And then, uh, from there, we were just iterative. We, uh, Just kept doing it and doing a little more. And then some of our practice leaders, um, Sawyer Miller, who's, who's one of our, uh, our audit and implementation practice leader and Chris Donaldson, who's our managed programs and security consulting practice leader and Corey Wolf, who is our offensive security practice leader, they also have really strong presence and, and, and what we call media properties at risk 360, things that they focus on doing video, doing it regularly, and they're excellent at it.

And they also enjoy it. And it's just come to be a kind of part of our core strategy is out teaching the competition, producing great content, or at least the best content that we can produce, hoping that we give back to the marketplace [00:29:00] first and foremost to add value to our customers and to the marketplace.

And then a small subset of those individuals will come back in and decide to give, uh, do business with us. And that's great. And then we're, we're grateful for it. And then our marketing team has helped operationalize that. So, um, if it's a graphic to be created, if it's editing a video, if it is, um, encouraging me because I'm feeling down, if it's, uh, logistics on an event, um, Outreach, uh, a certain amount of outreach for podcasts and events set up.

So those types of things, uh, they, they add a huge amount of value for, there was a time where I was doing all of that and it was consuming me. It was becoming untenable. I just couldn't keep it up. And now they've taken 90 percent of that burden off of me. And I just got to show up and speak from the heart and try to try to talk about what we do and tell everybody about RISC 360.

So if you're, if, if first, see any CEO out there, maybe you're doing it on your own now, Like you gotta get help. I mean, that's the bottom line. Those admin tasks. [00:30:00] Well, it's more than admin. The strategy and the tactics behind getting it done is essential. And I would just say, put yourself out there. I think people should, I think it's especially for smaller business.

I think it's kind of essential for the people to be out there in the marketplace.

GMT20240905-170236_Recording_640x360: Yeah, yeah, totally agree. And I think there's a lot of value in what you just said. I think, uh, it is one of those things that can be a bit harder to measure, especially at the outset. It's not kind of a, a one to one of exactly kind of what you put in and what you get out right away, but you do kind of flywheel and then you start to see it.

And you just gave those examples of like, Hey, I heard you on this talk, or I saw you here. I'm seeing you guys everywhere. Right. And it's the sum of all of those individual efforts coming together.

Christian: Yeah. I mean, that's an important, what you just said is very important. Um, so There was never like a point where all of a sudden I was like, I've arrived like, Oh, we're getting business from this.

I should keep doing it. It wasn't like that. I basically made a commitment. Um, I think it was 2021 and I was like, I'm going to do this for a year. Like no matter what, like I [00:31:00] sustain, one of my philosophies is that pretty much anything worthwhile comes from sustained discipline over time. Like you just got to put in the work and you got to do it consistently at a consistently high quality for a long time for it to work out.

That's business. That's relationships. So I was like, if I'm going to go out there and try to build this brand for the company, I need to just commit and don't take score for like a year, make some improvements a lotg the way, but like do this thing. And I just did it, did it for that year. And then a lotg the way, we started seeing these little glimmers of success.

And, um, and I would say it is working. Um, maybe there's better ways to do it, but it really was about, uh, just sustained discipline over time and committing to a process and, and making it form into a habit. So don't expect immediate results. Don't expect like some post or video to go viral and business to just come pouring out of the sky.

It's really about like shots on goal, just putting a lot of shots up and over time things start to work out.

GMT20240905-170236_Recording_640x360: Right, right. It would be nice if there was one silver bullet, but the reality is it takes time and, and hard work and persistence.

Christian: That's, that's the [00:32:00] reality.

Sneer Rozenfeld: To any conference we are holding, to any conference we are holding, I'm bringing all the team. The developers, the QA, the professional services, not just the sales. People have to sit in the conference with us. They have to sit in the conference. I want them to hear what customers are saying.

I want them to see, uh, uh, the Cyber 2. 0 booth. And when people come and how the salesperson are negotiating with them and what they say back and how they look at the, uh, and how they look at the product, you have to see the things from the customer's eyes and not just from sales. Because, uh, uh, the, the, uh, the technicians and the software writers and the UI and the UX designers, they have to hear the customers.

They usually work with computers all day long and they don't know how much, how the company is being addressed or how customers feel about us. So we have to bring them to that. That's great. I think it supports the notion of right. Everyone is in sales. [00:33:00] Everyone has a role and kind of putting those tentacles out into the broader network. I want to go back to what you were talking about with the, the conferences.

And I love that you have such a strong customer focus, because I do think it can be easy to get lost in the different roles of an organization, uh, remembering it's all about the customer. I'm curious if you have any. Uh, any examples of the kind of impact this has made with any of the folks that wouldn't normally come to a conference?

When we go to conferences, then we build it. It's like a production, you know, and we do rehearsals and I bring everybody. And everybody from the company needs to know how to explain and how to pitch Cyber 2. 0. Meaning if I wake up an employee at 3am at night and I'm telling him what the Cyber 2.

0 does, he's supposed to give me the pitch and explain exactly how the system operates. This is very, very important for us and crucial because everybody must understand [00:34:00] the product, the values, the advantages, because you don't know when somebody will speak with you or something like that. Uh, and they love it.

But the main idea is I want my employees to speak about us. I want to use their social media. To post post about our company, because, you know, you might find some, you might find one of your employees as 9, 000, uh, uh, followers on TikTok, because in his first time he's a gamer. So you don't, and, and this is the main idea.

I want to use them as the public, uh, to make them public, to make them publish the, the, the, the, the, the company and be one with the company. And this is free publicity. And this is the best publicity. Because there's people that being honest, they're happy about their jobs. And you cannot get that. You know, you can do a lot of campaigns and everything, but eventually an employee that, that posts on his private LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, whatever, [00:35:00] Facebook, whatever he does, when he publishes a post about the company he works in, that's amazing.

No, you don't get that so much. You get the CEO, maybe publishing, you get the VP sales, maybe publishing, but you don't get the technicians or the software writers or the QA analysts. You don't get them publishing posts about their company.

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