Nobody trusts a faceless brand

Can we can we start again? You can you can cut that out, right? It's the last name is pronounced Edelin. Edelin like English. Okay.

Sorry.

Thank you for inviting me.

Old. I actually started my first business getting laid off when I was 26 and was driving home. And before I got home, I had decided to launch my first business, which was in the marketing space. I called the company Communicate with an exclamation point. Note to anyone thinking about starting a business, do not include punctuation in your brand name. It's just such a pain. But so I started that and then got into sales training and did quite a bit around solution sales training back in the late 90s, early 2000s. And then one of my clients was launching a business in technology that helps with electronic securities trading like stocks, bonds, futures. And I was Pretty interested in what he was doing, and he asked me to join him as a co-founder. So launched that business in 2000. and that was a category creating business in financial technology. We built that up for five years, sold it to investors, and started another business also in financial technology in 2005. That one didn't do so well. We had some problems with an investor. My co-founder kind of crashed and burned as well. And so we had to shut that one down. I started Propel Growth on the back of that and and it was interesting to me because that business failure, I I was really, really worried that that was going to kill my personal brand and that I was kind of done in the financial services industry because we crashed and burned. And I was shocked to find out that it didn't actually. do that kind of brand damage. I mean, I owned the failure and what had happened with the business. Some of it was our fault as founder, some of it was our strategic investor went out of business. So there were there were lot of things that happened that caused that failure. And what I realized was that while the business failed, my personal brand survived and I was able to win trust with people. And I interestingly we had four Other major competitors in this space. We were again in a category creating space, and all four of those direct competitors engaged my services to help them differentiate their business. And I had just read Blue Ocean Strategy at the time and was able to actually help them stop competing directly with each other and swim into blue oceans as that book describes it. so that they could kind of carve out their own market niche because this was a very new technology and too early for the tech to be commoditized. And so I I really helped each one of them develop a unique go-to-market strategy. And they knew I was working with their competitors. And so by doing that, all four firms ended up getting acquired within two to three years after the work that I did with them, which was pretty exciting. all the founders had really solid exits. And and it really made me realize what how valuable a founder brand is and how valuable my brand was that it could survive that failure and that I could even thrive after the failure. So I then really focused a lot with Propel Growth on helping other financial technology companies build brands for the organization and specifically for the founding team. And And it's made a real difference, and that's that's what I focus on exclusively now is helping founders build their own and by brand I don't mean a logo or you know corporate identity. I mean what people say about you when you're not in the room. I mean helping people to know you, to view you as a credible resource and as of ultimately the authority in the space.

That's a great question about how do you stand out in today's world given how much noise is out there? I mean, with AI generating content, it's, you know, you're right. It's just LinkedIn is so crowded, everything is crowded, the web is crowded, YouTube is crowded, everything is crowded. and so I think that it starts with having a a unique point of view. everybody who starts a business, well, not everybody, but 90% of people who start a business start it because they have a unique point of view, a unique perspective on the market. They see a problem that not everybody sees, or they see a different way to solve the problem than what everybody else in the market is seeing. They care about their customers and the outcomes that their customers are going to get. And so I think it really starts with deeply caring about what you do and then bringing out that. Like so then I work with them to pull on threads about that. The why behind what they're doing is much more important than the how. the how is still important, but it's not important if there's not a solid why to it. And s and lot of founders have trouble articulating that. So I think really starting there, it's not about the tools or the platform or you know, should you do video or should you do text. It's about your why first.

Mission, vision, purpose. Yeah. Yeah.

I think it depends on the person and what you're doing. for me, actually looking at what I don't like, what I see in the market that I think is lame or giving bad results, and in the marketing space and go-to-market strategy in branding, there there are so many companies that And an outbound outreach too. that was where it all kind of started for me in this current iteration of what what I do. I get a ton of spam in my inbox and I hate it. podcasting, for example, I probably get invited to five to ten podcasts a week that don't name the podcast or the host. They just say Brenda is running a podcast for, you know, coaching and whatever they pulled out the category on LinkedIn and they're sending it automated. This stuff drives me nuts. And and so I built a brand villain and I started there. Like I don't believe that you can automate a relationship with a human being, and I don't think you can really outsource a relationship to a third party and expect it to go well. I've seen cases where that went really bad for people. I see it in my own experience. And so creating this brand villain that it's not a person, it's an idea, it's a it's a methodology, it's a mindset, and then attacking it. other people who are equally annoyed by the spam. Join me in attacking that villain. And we just kind of like, you know, like a crowd beating up on the villain. Now there are people that disagree with me. There's lots of people who strongly believe in these automation techniques. And then we can go have a fight in public. And that's kind of fun too. I'm not afraid of a debate. I've actually been on podcasts with people who disagree vehemently with me, and we had a really great conversation. I've done that probably five or six times. And it's super fun if you both are willing to actually have a dialogue. But so that's I think something that a lot of people don't consider but you see people that are doing things that you just really disagree with. So why not start there?

Wait, I I wanna dig into that story just I I'm I missed something there. So the customer emailed the vendor or w I I don't understand.

It's it's sloppy work, but also there are circumstances when it's really difficult. For example, I had a similar situation. a guy, my client, Mike, was on a golf course with his client, Joe. Well, I don't know the actual name of Joe, but we'll call him Joe. and they Joe had been Mike's customer for like 20 years and they played golf every week, but they were second degree connections on LinkedIn. Mike had hired a company, ironically, here in Fort Collins where I live, to do outbound outreach on LinkedIn for on on his behalf. And Mike and Joe were second degree connections. So the outbound service was just going and grabbing a list of people that Mike wasn't connected to and sending out messages saying, Hey, I love what you're posting on LinkedIn. I'd like to Get acquainted with you. Joe got that message from Mike while they were on the golf course.

I ripped him for a long time about it, but you know, what if Joe was a prospect and they had just finished a sales call? And how does that Fort Collins company know that Mike and Joe play golf every year or every every week? There unless Mike gives him a list of all of his buddies and friends and clients and and they do a good job of the exclusion. And I sales navigator search sucks for this type of thing. I've done that many times where I tried to do a search and just find one specific company or one specific group and you find out that it just ignored all my exclusions and it gave me a lot of irrelevant stuff. So you can't rely on it. And I don't see a way to avoid those two problems, the the story you told and the story that I saw.

Maybe. I I mean now Sales Navigator's automating that stuff. Well, I don't know if they're totally automating, but you can send a message that Sales Navigator will generate with AI. And it sounds exactly like the spammy crap that we all hate in our inboxes. And all you have to do is click a button and it'll send it automatically for you now from Sales Navigator.

I love that.

I love that. I love that. I I might ask you for a copy of that prompt.

I'm definitely trying that. Thanks for the tip.

they think that it should be the company and not them. And I understand that, especially if they're a founder that is ultimately wanting to sell the business. They're trying to make the business more than just about them. And I I get it. However, what we're seeing is especially in today's day and age, people want to do business. And I'm talking about technical sales, consulting services sales where The customer is in many cases betting their career on you being successful, or at least betting their job on it, you know, like they could get fired if they make a bad decision here. And so they need to trust that the company that they're going to be hiring is going to do a good job. And that means that you need to have the visibility, the credibility, and the authority that will make that person trust that you're the right resource. What we find is that these customers, if they are following a founder and are engaging with the founder, close rates go up by 22% and deal sizes go up by about 120%. So While I understand the desire to make it just about the brand and not about the founder, the fact is that customers trust the founder. And I've also seen personally, I've helped of 13 companies get acquired. And in every case, the founder brand played a huge role in them becoming an acquisition target. That doesn't mean the founder can't exit later. It's means that it built trust.

Well, and in the B2B space, it's even more critical, I think, than in the shoe space. You know, you're what you're talking about is influencer marketing, but like we still connect Dharmesh Shah as the founder of HubSpot. And, you know, and we trust the name Dharmes Shah. We trust the name John Miller, who wasn't even of I mean, he was kind of a co-founder of Marketto, but like he built a brand. He wasn't the CEO of Marketto, but He built a brand that people really recognized around it. And that's been the case in l lots and lots of time. I mean, even Elon Musk, I mean, love him or hate him, the brand has really built for Tesla and for SpaceX and things around Elon's brand. And it it it makes such a difference whether it's a small company or a big company. That founder, that executive brand, the executive team makes such a difference in that speed to trust, I guess is a good way to put it.

Yeah. In the US we have other thoughts now.

Chainsaws and doge primarily.

number one is get over yourself about being uncomfortable being a public face. It's necessary. You're running a business, just like you had to be comfortable with sales, you you're gonna have to get comfortable with getting your brand and your name out there. If you can't be that subject matter expert, then find an SME in your team that you can make turn into the brand. But they need to be somebody who's gonna stick around too, you know. and then find Find that brand villain. Find the things that you're against because what you're for matters, and so does what you're against. And sometimes understanding who your brand villains are will help you better shape your why. And then start putting content out there. It is not going to be perfect. It's better to get started and make progress and find your voice instead of waiting until you feel like you've got the Perfect polished pitch. So get it out there, share, engage. I love LinkedIn for this because it's such an easy place to go get feedback. And then you can also engage in other people's conversations. So building your brand on LinkedIn is faster and easier than it is on other platforms. I'm not saying that's the only platform, it's the one I know best.

Yeah, you gotta learn to curate your own feed. Don't recar don't let LinkedIn drive what you see.

reach out to me on LinkedIn if you want. Candace Edelin on LinkedIn. and I've got a dot in my name. That's so that I can flush out the the spammers. but or at propelgrowth.com, you can hit the contact us page and and reach out. I'm pretty easy to find. So just reach out to me, send me a DM on LinkedIn, send me a connection request, send a message on my website. and I We'll be happy to talk to you and give you some tips. Whether we work together or not, I'm happy to help.

Thanks, Mick. I appreciate you having me.