“At my core I’m not a marketer, I’m a writer…”

With a decade of freelance and in-house marketing experience, Brooklin focuses on helping both clients and freelancers stand out. The memes are free. He is also the Co-Founder of BEAM Content, a B2B content marketing and content writing agency that makes B2B content that isn’t boring.

Questions and topics we covered include:

• Why writing as a skill became a big focus for Brooklin early in his career
• How Brooklin started his content agency called BEAM
• How Brooklin recruited his first set of team members
• How to know if freelancing, working at an agency, or working internally within a marketing team is right for you
• How to identify and deal with “nightmare clients”
• How to time referral requests from clients
• How to successfully execute on cold outbound pitches
• Why are interviews a good source for content?
• How original research and data is a differentiator when it comes to content marketing
• Does AI content have a place in a content marketing plan?

  And more!

You can connect with Brooklin on LinkedIn –  https://www.linkedin.com/in/brooklin-nash/

You can connect with Brooklin on Twitter: https://twitter.com/realBrookNash

Our Podcast Partner – MarketerHire

If you’re looking to hire expert freelance talent this year to scale your business (and impress your boss), check out MarketerHire. MarketerHire vets freelance talent so when you hire an SEO expert, Email Marketer, or even a Fractional CMO—you’re not wasting your money or your time. You can hire your first freelancer and get a $500 credit by visiting: www.kennysoto.com/hire 

Music for this podcast comes from www.davidcuttermusic.com

 

Full Episode Transcript:

Brooklin Nash  0:00  

at my core, I’m not a marketer, I’m a writer, right? And it’s just you can use writing to make pretty decent money in marketing, especially if you’re talking about tech marketing or SAS marketing, right?

 

Kenny Soto  0:12  

Hey there, you just heard a clip from our latest guest on the people Digital Marketing Podcast, the number one resource for marketers who are aspiring to become a CMO one day or start their own business. That guest is Brooklyn, Nash. Brooklyn is the founder of beam, a content marketing agency content writing agency. And on this episode, we talk about his agency, how he got started, how to identify nightmare clients, some good old rapid fire questions on content, marketing, and much more. So if you’re interested in working as a freelancer, or starting your own agency one day, this episode is for you. Now, without further ado, let’s tune in to my conversation with Brooklyn lash. Hi, Brooklyn, how are you?

 

Brooklin Nash  0:57  

Hey, getting 133 It’s a good number.

 

Kenny Soto  0:59  

Yeah, it’s it’s this has been a trial of of love and patience and just doing my best to find experts such as yourself to help the listeners in the community with being better digital marketers over time. And we can take this conversation in many directions. But I always like to start in a very specific point in time in in your history, which is just starting off with asking, How did you get into marketing? Well?

 

Brooklin Nash  1:30  

That’s a good question. The short answer is I don’t know. Okay. The real answer is I, it was completely by accident. So I did things a little bit backwards. I freelanced right out of college, kind of by necessity, my wife and I were living in Tel Aviv for a while, couldn’t have full time work there, we weren’t allowed to. So I started looking online for gigs. So I just did kind of anything and everything. But first five years probably is product descriptions, ecommerce brands, there’s some freelance writer, freelance writing, there was social media management, it just the marketing, the remote work came first. And the marketing was a natural progression for that, because so much online work is related to marketing, right. And then just slowly got more and more dialed in on specific aspects of digital marketing and moving into b2b and working with SAS companies, you know, the last five years or so.

 

Kenny Soto  2:35  

And you were tasting various things, both with skills and with different kinds of companies. How did you start realizing, Hey, this is a particular skill I can dive into even more,

 

Brooklin Nash  2:49  

I think I always enjoyed the the long form writing pieces the most. At my core, I’m not a marketer, I’m a writer, right? And it’s just you can use writing to make pretty decent money in marketing, especially if you’re talking about tech marketing, or SAS marketing, right? So I just gravitated towards doing something that was more enjoyable to me. And that was the writing element. And that’s in, in our world. That’s content marketing. Right?

 

Kenny Soto  3:16  

Yeah. And Brooklyn, if you had to explain to the listeners what it is that you actually do every single day. Now, how would you describe your job,

 

Brooklin Nash  3:26  

I’d make memes and posted on Twitter. So now I run beam content and agency with my wife, or whatever it was my co founder, and Sam, our other co founder, we now have two other full time team members. So there’s five of us. We are a content marketing agency for b2b SaaS companies. So we’ll we do case studies and thought leadership articles and benchmark reports and all

 

Kenny Soto  3:53  

of that, right. And I have to make the assumption that beam didn’t just happen where you like, woke up and tapped your wife and said, Hey, we’re gonna start a company where all it being? Because that doesn’t seem like that’s the reality. What is what was the exact like, progression? What’s the plot and the story around how being was created? Yeah, so

 

Brooklin Nash  4:11  

I was, she and I both freelance for about seven years. And then I jumped into a full time marketing job at two different tech companies, mostly because I had never had a full time job before. I was like, there’s a lot to learn in this space that I probably won’t be able to by being on the outside just writing stuff for clients, right? So I spent two years in house at two different companies. I learned a ton. So I’m very grateful for that time, but by the end of it realized that self employment was the better route for me and for my wife, we both we both thought that and we had we had kept a lot of our freelance clients at the same time. So those two years overlapped with a lot of but with COVID So we were working way too much like 6070 hour weeks to do both. And so we had a solid foundation, when it got to the point with the second company where I decided to leave the middle part before being we had a few months left in October, we asked our co founder, Sam to join us in January. And we spent those few months trying to figure out what was next we we weren’t. It’s not like I jumped out to start an agency I left to the job, we were spent a few months thinking and feeling out what came next. And the two options really were a continue just freelancing and keep it just her and I and reduce our hours, go back and go down to you know, 1520 hour weeks from the 6070 that we were at before, or build a team so that this thing can exist outside of our selves, we got more excited about that idea. Just because there’s an opportunity to learn things we have never done before, didn’t know what it looked like to recruit and hire people and train people and build operational processes and do the all financial planning that goes into a larger scale business than what we had been running as freelancers, right. Sorry, now I’ve been rambling. But then we suddenly spent about six months with Sam or the co founder planning out the launch, we landed on beam as the name we got the brand setup site and our offering and our pricing and, and all that. And then launched almost a year ago, we launched in June. So another month, here will be a year.

 

Kenny Soto  6:41  

Wow. So the journey is still going. And what comes to my mind is there are many paths that you can take when you become a freelancer, you can go solopreneur route, you can do a productized service, you went, I don’t want to call it traditional because an agency could be seen as traditional, but that’s probably in the style of like 50 people where you’re running a more lean operation. How did this I’m asking this question, because there are some listeners who may be contemplating doing this in the future. How did you start recruiting? What, what values and skills were you looking for? Was there a plan around that? Or were you just thinking, who was a great coworker, or someone that I’ve worked with in the past that might be interested?

 

Brooklin Nash  7:29  

Yes, Sam was an easy decision. She and I had worked together at our previous company, before I left and she was there until she left to join us. So I kind of coached her I guess, is the pejorative way of saying it. But we just had a great working relationship. She’s super talented, creative, good at a lot of the things I’m not good at, like visual design, brand social things, she ran things at the company that I didn’t touch as much. So it just made a lot of sense to, to ask her to join and kind of own the creative and marketing and love of beam. From there we knew the next hire was going to be ahead of content. To we were just looking for somebody with a really keen editorial eye who could have the same mindset towards content that we did, because we are all thinking is trying to create b2b content that isn’t boring, because a lot of b2b content is boring. So yeah, we just looked for somebody that that kind of matched that perspective. And then our next hire was I had a client success and strategy because up until she came on two months ago, I was still doing all the account management with their clients. So it was time to, to start distributing that a bit.

 

Kenny Soto  8:49  

And I have to make the assumption that the pitch for getting someone to join evolves over time, but for the listeners, what advice would you have for them? As far as like timing is concerned? When is the right time to start recruiting? Is it on day one? Are there certain things that need to be set up? around the idea that infrastructure, the operations before you get your first team member? How would you recommend they go about doing that?

 

Brooklin Nash  9:17  

I don’t know if this piece has to come first, especially because if you have a solid network, odds are there’s somebody in your network that you’ve crossed paths with before probably be a good fit for your team. So those one on one conversations, I think can be really promising. But I do think it was really helpful for outside recruitment for us to have, I think a pretty strong brand, if I do say so myself, that like we launched with a really solid site. We were very specific about our offer. We came out with a strong point of view on content marketing. So by the time it was time to start recruiting in about November, six, six months ago or so, so people knew what we were about and got excited about the prospect of working on what we were working on what we are working on. So that’s number one, just like building, making it really clear what your point of view is, so that you’re attracting folks with a similar mindset, right? I think number two, I, I don’t take credit for this at all, I give credit to our business coach, and Becca, my wife, because my, my go to is to just jump in and do the thing. Like if I was left to my own devices, I would have opened a blank google doc typed out the job description in a couple hours and then posted it on Super path and LinkedIn, right. But our coach kind of walked, walked it back. Sorry, this might be a little convoluted, but leading up to launch have been we went through this process. They call it model one. And it’s essentially just laying all the foundations for your business. It’s what your positioning is. Your pricing your offer, your differentiators is all of this really foundational work before we ever wrote a single line of copy on the site, right? And it gave us a really strong understanding of what we were about when it did come time to start creating content and, and writing copy for the site. So our coach had had me do that same thing. But with a recruitment mindset. So it was what are our differentiators? Why would you want to work with beam? What are our benefits? Like? What how what’s going to be incentivizing and exciting to folks? What are the different roles and like plan for the next year or two so that I could communicate clearly about that. Then created a rural scorecard in Google Sheets and laying out all the responsibilities, what they’ll be measured on for success. And all of that took both of those things to create a job description. So there was like, quite a few more steps before even writing the job description than I would have thought. And I think it was really beneficial for finding the right person.

 

Kenny Soto  12:10  

And this, I want the listener who’s listening to this interview to self select whether or not this is the right career path for them. So my next question, I’m asking it, knowing that there’s many places we can go, and I might not be asking it in the right way. So work with me here, Brooklyn. But there, there are multiple industries, multiple roles that a marketer can select as part of their career, but how when you’re considering those things, there’s also another layer, which is aside from business model, industry and skill set. There’s also whether or not you want to be in house, a freelancer or part of an agency, right? Have those three specific criteria for a career? From your experience? What are the pros and cons of each? Hey there, if you’re enjoying this episode, and you’re a first time listener, when I hit the Follow button, my goal with each of these episodes is to introduce a new marketing concept, or dive deeper into one so that you can become a better digital marketer. Hopefully, through these episodes, you join me on this journey, the path to CMO. So, if you’ve gotten this far, I’m assuming you’re liking the conversation that I’m having with Dan. And, again, I’d love it if you subscribed. Thanks for listening so far.

 

Brooklin Nash  13:39  

When it’s a good question, you asked it in the exact right way. Cool. Awesome. Yeah, well, let’s take them in order. Let’s see who’s freelancing first. Pros, there really is no limit, or the limit is very high. And I don’t mean to sign sound cheesy in that but if you can, niche down not just in the type of clients you work on, but also what your skill set is. Instead of being a generalist marketer, I think you can make really good money as a solopreneur or free just straight up freelancing, right. By the time I left my full time gig, I was making more on the side as a freelancer than I was for my w two. Right. So I think there’s really no limit. I mean, there’s freelancers who make you know, a few $100,000 A couple that I know make seven figures. So you can just build a lot more financial independence for yourself, I think than if you’re in a full time job. That’s a pro. The con is you’re the business so you’re running up beard running bookkeeping and sales and marketing yourself and it’s it’s just, it can be a lot so it isn’t for everybody. It’s not like that. The dream is to be able to do creative work for 40 hours a week, right? Get paid for it. But the reality is putting probably at least 30% of your time towards operations and admin and all of that. I’d say that’s a con in house. I think the learning opportunity is better. At least it was for me, I learned so much those couple of years were, like, just more about marketing. I learned from my manager, what great management looks like, I learned kind of the internal, not politics, but what it means to, you know, actually try to get internal buy in for things and how you can how you navigate that. So I think you can just learn a lot in your career by being in house if you’re at the right company and have the right manager, right. Yeah, the con, I think it’s slower growth in terms of actually moving up in your career. You know, promotions can be hard to come by, even if you’re stellar. And your company is great, like moving out positions, probably every 12 to 18 months. The earliest right. And then there’s politics. So that’s actually did enjoy learning that and how to navigate it. But there’s so many more politics than I would have thought you’re totally right. And that’s all like a con.

 

Kenny Soto  16:31  

And there’s politics.

 

Brooklin Nash  16:32  

That’s actually one of the reasons I ended up leaving was, it just got so exhausting to try to continually get buy in for the things my me and my team were working on. When I’m, you know, I had to go through so many jump through so many hoops. Whereas, like, I’m spending 30% of my time talking about the work. Yeah, instead of doing the work right. Agency, I don’t know if I have a non biased answer to this because I run an agency rather than work for an agency. I know. Agencies have a bad rap for long working hours, high pressure, high turnover, growth, growth, growth, all that. So I think that from talking to other freelancers, and agency owners, that does feel like the con like it can be pretty unnecessarily demanding, like, really everybody, we’re helping software companies sell software to other software companies, do we need to really need to build so much pressure around this? I think a pro is if you find the right agency, you can spend a lot of time in the creative work. Like if you’re a designer, you know, finding the right design agency, if you’re a developer, you know a full stack agency if you’re a writer, and just really loved writing, and agency like beam where we focus on conversations and the story rather than pumping out 50 SEO blog posts every month, right?

 

Kenny Soto  18:11  

Yeah, and there’s the advantage Brooklyn of if you have an agency that has good account managers, and a sales rep doesn’t need a full team. But there’s like at least one or two people that are just full time sales for it. You don’t need to do that work. You’re just literally getting the briefs, you’re probably doing like a monthly or not already. Bigger scaled meeting with the client. But aside from that, you’re getting briefs, and you’re just working on the creative stuff that you want to do every day, which is one of the benefits I saw from working in an agency two times in the past, which is very

 

Brooklin Nash  18:42  

cool. Oh, you worked at an agency? So you have a better answer than I do.

 

Kenny Soto  18:48  

Yeah, I worked at I worked at VaynerMedia. In the past, that was a long time ago. Yeah, that was a very long time ago, I didn’t know nearly as much as I should have known when I joined as it separate story. And then I also worked at a agency that was doing paid media and media buying for a solar solar industry, small businesses and franchises. One of the my favorite things about that gig was I didn’t have to sell my services, their whole team doing that, for me, specifically the founder and his sales reps. My job was just create advertising creative, set it up into Facebook, and monitor their ad campaigns, the pacing and just get stuff done. Yeah. And I really love doing that. That was one of my favorite parts about being an agency. It’s always why sometimes it’s like, if I find myself in a job search, I’m always trying to figure out that internal conflict of I love agencies, but I love in house. I don’t know which one to do next. Because every single thing all three of them have their pros and cons. Yeah.

 

Brooklin Nash  19:48  

Yeah, they really do. And it’s another there’s no one right path. That’s, I think you said choose your own adventure. You know, what was the phrase you use? For listeners to figure out what the Right Path is for them, right? Yeah,

 

Kenny Soto  20:01  

yeah, yeah. So there’s that now Brooklyn, when it comes to, let’s just take the route of both agency and freelance because both of them kind of have to deal with clients. And sometimes, you can only learn this through experience, even when I’ve listened to countless YouTube videos and podcasts about the situation. So the listener was listening, take this with a grain of salt, you sometimes have to learn this through experience, but Podcasts can guide you in the right direction to catch it sooner rather than later. Nightmare clients. How do you spot a nightmare client? Before? Ideally, before you sign a contract?

 

Brooklin Nash  20:47  

Never had a nightmare client? Are you talking about? Yeah, no, it’s inevitable, right? I see. Yeah. Only because Oh, yeah, I just if if there are freelancers listening, I just want you to know, I see you because there’s so much it just feels like there’s so much pressure on you all the time. Like you’re facing impostor syndrome. You’re constantly feeling like, if you lose one client, then you know, you’re gonna be able to pay rent, just as I get that there’s a lot of pressure in it. Which is why sorry, all that to say, I think in general freelancers, are really not great at saying no, because it’s like, oh, I have to please the client so that they stay as clients so that I can get the money, that I was really bad at saying no, as a freelancer and I think most freelancers I’ve talked to or if they’re not bad, if they aren’t now they have in the past and not so great at saying no. Wonder the knows is? Yeah, saying no to a potential client, which is potential Money in Your Pocket? Because you’re seeing red flags and saying no, instead of ignoring those red flags, right. None of that was answering your question. Well, you know,

 

Kenny Soto  22:12  

go for it. What I was just gonna say is, when you’re thinking about those red flags, you can say no, before the contract starts. But you can also have opportunities to say no, in the middle of the contract, if you’re trying to guard your scope of work. Yeah. So with that in mind, what would be some of those red flags before? And maybe even during that you might have missed in this hypothetical scenario with a nightmare client?

 

Brooklin Nash  22:38  

Yeah. I think beforehand, I would recommend looking for clarity and specificity and what they’re telling you they need. If it’s very wide open, and they don’t really give a clear answer about what they need and what their goals are. For that, it’s pretty likely that there’s going to be a disconnect where maybe their expectations are way up here, they’re getting a certain result. But that might not be realistic, or they wanted or the or they’re not even clear on what type of work they want. You’re just looking for clarity, and them telling you Look, here’s where we’re at, here’s where we’ve come from, here’s where we want to get to. And here’s where we imagined you plugging in, right. I think there’s exceptions to that. Because I think like consultants can come in and help too, if you’re very if you are freelancer, turn consultant like coming in and helping guide make those decisions. So there are exceptions. But if it’s pretty wide open, that might be at least a yellow flag, I see the phrase I’ve tweeted about this before, the like, oh, we can’t afford that much for this initial project, where we have a ton of work coming down the pike. That ton of work is always going to be on the horizon because they don’t have their shit together. And know, the project management side of marketing, right? So then that’s, it’s just going to be always moving target and a probably won’t increase rates that easily. And be weirdly, that’s a sign of a client that is going to be most likely to ghost you. Right. So I just steer clear. That’s a big red flag for me. Yeah. And then just asking questions about internal bias. And like, I think I’ve gotten myself in this situation before where the person I’m working with directly is bought in and gets it. But the CEO or the CMO or the VP of Marketing hasn’t been hasn’t. They haven’t gotten buy in from their leadership, essentially. So then you get three months into the project and it’s like, way out of whack. Right. So I would ask pretty intentional questions about what the team looks like what the goals are The leadership team are if there’s buy in around this specific type of content or marketing play, or whatever it is you’re talking about with your potential client.

 

Kenny Soto  25:10  

Yeah, because there’s that political dance, whether you’re in house or you’re a freelancer, or part of an agency, that dance is happening, no matter what. Yeah. Now, let’s say you’re not dealing with a nightmare client. And you are, you are doing great work for them. They liked the engagement, they’re going to renew, and you’re having a long lasting relationship with them. A lot of times in this specific career path, one of the best ways to grow is through referrals. But it might be scary to ask for one. What is the best approach for asking referrals? And when is the right time to do so?

 

Brooklin Nash  25:50  

The right time? I would probably wait at least three months know the project. So yeah, until you’ve turned around a solid set of deliverables, and you know that they’re happy with the result, probably closer to six months waiting that long. Just doesn’t feel like you’re using them to take that next step, right? It’s just, hey, you’ve been really happy with the work. Anybody you know, that might benefit, right? In terms of asking, just like that, just do it face to face on a call on one of your checking calls? If you can, and just ask directly? You know, you can say like, Hey, I’ve really enjoyed working with you on this. This is the type of project I like working on, do you know anybody that could benefit from the type of work that we’ve been doing together? So ask them a call, follow it up with a short email or Slack message? Yeah, and leave it there. Like I don’t, I don’t know if everyone would agree with me on this. But I’d probably stop at that, that like one or two asks, rather than putting it on your calendar to send a reminder, if you haven’t gotten any referrals from them, like just make the ask, make a direct. And if there’s a good fit, I think, though, don’t make those introductions.

 

Kenny Soto  27:16  

Let’s say that the listener, knife it, I faced this myself so many times, I failed at this so many times. So I can use your advice here, too. Let’s say both myself and the listener are struggling with getting clients. And we’ve tried doing the cold pitch. But 10 times that it said, we don’t even get a response. What makes for a successful cold pitch.

 

Brooklin Nash  27:46  

I think I’ll turn that on its head a bit and say it’s probably probably the most important piece is what comes before the cold pitch. Like we talked about referrals, direct referrals, but there’s also just reputation. And I think it’s building your reputation in the space so that when that pitch comes in, ideally, there’s some recognition there. And I mean, my route for that was social. So if I’m sending somebody a DM, odds are they’ve seen my stuff on social. We we used our use logos for that too. I think that’s almost like a sync referral, where it’s like, I can’t count the money, the number of times I’ve gotten on a sales call. And they go like, Oh, I didn’t know you guys work with metadata. I love their stuff. And it’s just like, an instant goes from 5050 to like 80% sold because of the clients we work with, right?

 

For the actual pitch,

 

Kenny Soto  28:49  

it’s a complicated subject. Yeah. And there’s so much

 

Brooklin Nash  28:53  

out there. Not a sales guy. So it’s not actually something to be honest, that grayed out like, I know, I could do a lot better on sales calls. I am not super proactive with follow ups might. The few cold pitches I’ve sent out. could probably be better. I would check out. We’ll all read on LinkedIn. And I think he’s on Twitter now too. He’s one of the cofounders of lavender, which is literally about this. It’s about helping people send better cold emails. And he just has a ton of great advice on making them personalized, relevant, short. And timely. I think those are the four. There we go. I finally landed on answer. I think those are the four pieces that you’d look for in a cold email or cold DM is it’s relevant. So you’re talking to the right person about the right thing. It’s personalized, which is not hey go Raiders. You can say you’re in LA or whatever it’s like a I saw your post about this would love to hear more about or like this piece of it just like making it truly personalized. Timely, you could look for potential triggers, like if they’re hiring for a certain role that might need support from somebody like you like, you’d have to call that out in the message, but you know, that they’re looking for additional help. Or if they’re new to their role, like within three months, like saying, Hey, how’s the NIF has a new job going? Yeah, support and the remainder of 2023. Right. So making a timely. And then there was a fourth one I forget when it was

 

Kenny Soto  30:46  

timely, relevant. Personalized, I was sure, yes, straightforward. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Brooklin Nash  30:53  

Very straightforward. Get to your point make it about them. Not. I work on this and this and this. And these are wack clients have said about my work. And yeah, make it about them and make it short so that it’s a back and forth conversation, not a you throwing everything and the kitchen sink at them.

 

Kenny Soto  31:11  

Yeah, that makes sense. Before I ask some rapid fire questions for the listener, there is a previous episode at the time of this recording with one of the team members at lavender, Chelsea Castle, so if you want to dive in? Yeah, if you want to dive into lavender, and what they’re doing and how Chelsea is as approaching growing that that company’s content arm, definitely check it out. Now, when it comes to

 

Brooklin Nash  31:37  

follow, go follow Chelsea to Yes, she’s

 

Kenny Soto  31:39  

good. Yeah, she’s great. And hence why I had her on the show. Now, Brooklyn, these questions can create a whole other episode in and of itself. But it’s hard to task you at this within one to two sentences for each question. See if you can encapsulate each answer. So the first question is, why are interviews a great source of content?

 

Brooklin Nash  32:07  

One to two seconds. Yeah. As the challenge. Starting with interviews, in few inevitably infuses the the resulting content with personality and specificity. Why are you why are you content?

 

Kenny Soto  32:30  

Yeah. Why is original data and original research important with content?

 

Brooklin Nash  32:36  

It’s a differentiator. Not many companies do it well. So if you can leverage your platform data or put budget behind a survey, that’s not leadership, because you’re showing original insights that they can’t get anywhere else.

 

Kenny Soto  32:57  

Nice. You’re doing great at this. Do you believe right now? Ai content has a place with marketing?

 

Brooklin Nash  33:07  

Yes. This is the hardest one, Kenny?

 

Kenny Soto  33:11  

Yeah, yeah. It gets progressively harder.

 

Brooklin Nash  33:14  

Yes, it has a place with major yachts. And for specific use cases.

 

Kenny Soto  33:25  

Nice. And you can only learn that through using it at the end of the day. As a side note, yeah, I’ve been thinking about this. And I tweeted about it recently. Any and this is this is specifically only for myself as like a reminder for myself, but also for the listeners. Anyone who says they’re an expert in AI is somewhat fooling you books fooling themselves, because AI is not even like a year old. So So if if you really want to follow someone’s advice, ask them to do a screen recording of all of the chat logs, do they have a tool? And if it’s not more than 100 chat logs, don’t listen to them?

 

Brooklin Nash  34:00  

I like that. Yeah. solid advice. That’s the proof. Put out a tweet at a tweet earlier this year that was must have four years of chat. GPT experience job description. Yes. At the end of 2023. Probably,

 

Kenny Soto  34:14  

yeah, that’s pretty much what it is. And it’s too early. So if anyone’s telling you, they’re an expert, they’re probably aggregating curating content, regurgitating it in their own voice, probably using GPT to do that. So just to do it. Yeah. Just be mindful that and the best way to prove if someone knows what they’re doing is to see they can they record themselves onto video with their face, and it’s their account, and they’re showing hundreds of logs, Chachi Beatty usage. That’s the only way you can really validate if they’re an expert. Now, I just went on rambling rant so I asked my last two questions. My second last question is, and this is a great way to just showcase like we’re all facing marketing challenges at any given time. What is the biggest marketing challenge beam is facing this year?

 

Brooklin Nash  35:00  

Good question. Honestly, just landing on the right. Next step for our marketing. There’s slightly more than two sentences, sorry, but we actually haven’t really done marketing yet besides our own content and our organic social, right. So we’re now in the spot where we can start investing into a marketing budget. And there’s so many options of where to go. And we only have the, you know, somewhat limited budget. So prioritizing the right channel is proving to be a more difficult decision than I would have thought. And Brooklyn,

 

Kenny Soto  35:41  

I have to make the assumption and, and we don’t need to do with one to three sentences anymore. That was just like a little game I want to play with you. I’m making the assumption here that you started off a lot with like, founder led sales. And now you’re trying to like to transition away from that, right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, that’s it. That’s a big challenge.

 

Brooklin Nash  36:02  

Yeah, that probably won’t fully happen. And for like, another year, we’re taking steps there. So Sam, my co founder, and I are like putting our documenting our sales process, like agenda for sales calls, follow up templates, things that we’ve just done, and bringing our head of client success into that process. So she’ll start joining sales calls and run the follow ups and all that. So we’re just taking baby steps there. So that’s not all founder lead. Ideally, this time next year?

 

Kenny Soto  36:33  

Yeah. It’s a natural progression. Now, when it comes to natural progression of your career, this ties into my final question, or this interview. Hypothetically, if you had access to the time machine, it can go back to the past about 10 years knowing everything you know, today, how would you specifically accelerate the speed of your career?

 

Brooklin Nash  36:55  

I would have, I don’t mean this to be blanket advice. It’s just literally taking the question at face value. But I would have focused on tech and Sass companies and specifically b2b tech a lot earlier than I did, and spent four or five years. Just kind of like all over the map, which in one sense, I think was helpful gave me a good sense of social and email and copywriting, EECOM and do DTC and all these different things. But if you’re talking about leveling up your income as you level up your career, I think I would have niched down earlier.

 

Kenny Soto  37:41  

Yeah, I can agree. I’ve been a marketer for eight years, and I’ve only started niching, down two years ago. And I do think those six years were important though, because it helped me be that kind of generalist that’s necessary for a series a startup, which is kind of like the the stage of a business I like to join. But my niche is financial services, not just fintech. But like insurance, fintech. It’s still not nice enough, though. I would add, there’s there’s more that I can niche down. But that’s just going to take time, and, and being focused on on niching down over time, too. Yeah. Brooklyn, thank you so much for being on the show today. If anyone wanted to say hello to you, where can they find you online?

 

Brooklin Nash  38:20  

They connect with me on LinkedIn. Or follow me on Twitter. Thanks, Kenny. This is great.

 

Kenny Soto  38:28  

Of course. And for listener, if you haven’t done so already, definitely subscribe. Rate us on Apple and Spotify. And this is a request I have specifically if you don’t do the other to share this with a co worker. So anyway this bot has is going to grow is if you share this with someone that you think would help, it would help them with their career as well. And as always, I hope everyone has a great week. If you’ve gotten this far. Thanks again for listening to Episode 133. On Episode 134, I will have Travis Scott, not the rapper, the marker on the show. Travis is the founder of the winding road careers podcast where he talks about how your career is not a straight line. And that’s okay. On the episode we will be talking about if career ladders are dead, which they are the best way to use LinkedIn to find new marketing jobs and much more. So if you’d like this conversation I had with Brooklyn Nash, you will definitely like the next one with Travis Scott. If you haven’t hit the Follow button on Spotify or Apple or wherever you’re listening to this on please do so. Rate us and share this with a friend. And as always, thanks for listening