Episode 204

Secrets to Sales and Personal Branding Success with Marcus Chan

In Episode 204 of The Business Development Podcast, host Kelly Kennedy welcomes sales expert Marcus Chan for an engaging conversation about sales and personal branding in 2025 and beyond. Marcus, a renowned figure in the B2B sales space and founder of Venli Consulting Group, shares insights from his remarkable career, which includes coaching Fortune 500 sales teams and driving over $700 million in contract value. Together, they explore the evolution of sales strategies, the importance of building trust and authenticity in a competitive market, and actionable tips for professionals looking to level up their social selling and personal branding efforts.

Listeners will discover Marcus’s journey from humble beginnings to becoming a Salesforce Top Sales Influencer, including how he leveraged hard work, strategic insights, and a relentless focus on value to inspire and empower others. From his "top five rules for social selling" to the critical elements of an optimized LinkedIn profile, Marcus delivers powerful advice that resonates with sales professionals, entrepreneurs, and business development leaders alike. Don’t miss this episode filled with practical strategies, inspirational stories, and tools to thrive in today’s sales landscape.

Key Takeaways:

1. Success in sales and business development requires a balance of hard work, strategic thinking, and adaptability.

2. Social selling is critical in today’s market, and an optimized LinkedIn profile can build trust and credibility.

3. Content should follow a 90% value, 10% pitch rule to engage and nurture audiences effectively.

4. Outbound sales efforts provide greater control over outcomes compared to relying solely on inbound strategies.

5. Personal branding is essential for building trust and standing out in a competitive sales landscape.

6. Creating consistent, high-value content across multiple platforms enhances visibility and trust with potential clients.

7. Tailoring your online presence to align with the expectations of your target audience is key to successful social selling.

8. Confidence in sales is built by consistent effort, embracing challenges, and refining skills over time.

9. Trust and authenticity are powerful differentiators, especially in an age of automation and AI-driven tools.

10. Overcoming fear of video and leveraging it as a medium can significantly enhance personal branding and client engagement.

Links referenced in this episode:


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Transcript
Kelly Kennedy:

Welcome to episode 204 of the Business Development Podcast.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

I absolutely loved his book Six Figure Sales Secrets.

Kelly Kennedy:

ales and personal branding in:

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Host:

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

Host:

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

Host:

And we couldn't agree more.

Host:

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

Host:

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

Host:

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

Host:

Let's do it.

Host:

Welcome to the Business Development Podcast.

Host:

And now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy:

Hello.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

Achieving an impressive 12 promotions in just eight years.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

His mission extends beyond mere metrics.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Marcus Chan:

Hey, I'm pumped to be here.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

Oh, I think so too, dude.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

Right.

Kelly Kennedy:

I really do position myself in that like lead generation.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

But you sir, are next steps.

Marcus Chan:

Perfect combination.

Kelly Kennedy:

Absolutely, absolutely.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

How did you end up on this journey?

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Yeah, just in the business to business side.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

It wasn't enough, frankly.

Marcus Chan:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

Require other skills as well.

Marcus Chan:

So that was interesting.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

And this was.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

I'm like, do what?

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

How did you have this consistent track record?

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

I don't know how to write a book.

Marcus Chan:

This is like:

Marcus Chan:

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

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

It wasn't that smooth.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Guest:

Yeah, yeah.

Marcus Chan:

And.

Marcus Chan:

And people bought that ebook and people loved it.

Marcus Chan:

And that was really interesting.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

The main company I was at.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

I mean, I love closing deals.

Marcus Chan:

I love me this product.

Marcus Chan:

I love every part of the sales process.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

And I love doing that at my company.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

So eventually kind of spiral off over time.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Like I want to help other people.

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

That's amazing, dude.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

It'll be easier.

Kelly Kennedy:

Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

I was like, what am I going to do?

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

Like just go to.

Kelly Kennedy:

What are you doing?

Kelly Kennedy:

Go to college.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Marcus Chan:

Right, right.

Kelly Kennedy:

And yeah, it was really interesting, dude.

Kelly Kennedy:

And the rest is history.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

Just like you.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

Like I actually love this.

Kelly Kennedy:

But it took a while for me to get there.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

And I love the book, dude.

Kelly Kennedy:

It's very well written.

Kelly Kennedy:

It's.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

It's an amazing book.

Kelly Kennedy:

Congratulations.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

Not, not just endless inbound.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Marcus Chan:

100.

Marcus Chan:

100.

Marcus Chan:

Because it's.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

But outbound you can always control.

Kelly Kennedy:

Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Marcus Chan:

Right.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

100.

Audience:

100.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

Right.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

Editor's like, that's too many.

Marcus Chan:

You're gonna trim it down.

Marcus Chan:

You have to trim it down.

Marcus Chan:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

But it'll still be very, very relevant.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

It's a must.

Marcus Chan:

Like, I think it's.

Marcus Chan:

Especially in today's time.

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

So before you be like.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

Especially if it's like social media.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

ould be like I, I call it the:

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

I should be everywhere.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

So they go on there.

Marcus Chan:

All they do is just promote, promote, promote.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

But they check you out now.

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

So that's really, really powerful.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

My product.

Marcus Chan:

Look how amazing we are.

Marcus Chan:

Here's just more testimonials.

Marcus Chan:

That's not good.

Marcus Chan:

u can, you can go from like a:

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

But still consistently, how can you add more value?

Marcus Chan:

So I think it's definitely number two.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Like the pitch, right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

So I think it's really, really powerful.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Like LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

And there's no problem.

Marcus Chan:

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

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

And then you can like reach out.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

And so I think we're all still learning.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

We need to start utilizing it.

Kelly Kennedy:

And for me it was a learning experience.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Marcus Chan:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

A few other things I'll say as well.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

All right?

Marcus Chan:

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

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

What are some results people have achieved?

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

Where are some resources and then redirect them to place.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Well that's probably not going to hack it.

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Okay.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

For come like Zendesk.

Marcus Chan:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

They don't want to comment.

Marcus Chan:

Yeah but they'll check out your profile.

Marcus Chan:

Like that's interesting.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

It just opens up a conversation.

Audience:

Right?

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

Which goes in that same point.

Marcus Chan:

You don't be pitching there.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

That's amazing, dude.

Kelly Kennedy:

Like even I haven't been following that.

Kelly Kennedy:

That's a really smart way.

Kelly Kennedy:

Right.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

I'm gonna start doing that.

Kelly Kennedy:

That's a great tip.

Marcus Chan:

Oh yeah, yeah.

Marcus Chan:

It works super well.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

I love that.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

You know, talk to me.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

On Sales Navigator.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

And I think a lot of people over complicate this.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

Even like my headshot is literally me in my.

Marcus Chan:

At home.

Marcus Chan:

My wife took the photo.

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

That's all we did.

Marcus Chan:

Right.

Kelly Kennedy:

That's a great photo.

Marcus Chan:

Super simple, right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

And it's so.

Marcus Chan:

It's so simple.

Marcus Chan:

Most just don't even do that.

Marcus Chan:

So get your headshot dialed.

Marcus Chan:

All right, so headshot dial.

Marcus Chan:

It looks professional, matches the image.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

You don't have that.

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

You know, maybe we're a polo.

Marcus Chan:

Maybe just wear a button up.

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

Maybe wear something in between.

Audience:

Right?

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

So mine's like in between.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

It's not perfect.

Marcus Chan:

It is what it is, right?

Marcus Chan:

Yeah, Stu.

Marcus Chan:

Right then.

Marcus Chan:

So that's the first piece.

Marcus Chan:

The second piece is also what's your tagline?

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

It can be as simple as that.

Marcus Chan:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

Which is very, very easy.

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

So some people want to go super simple.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Which, which is totally fine.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Right?

Marcus Chan:

That's totally fine.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Now what's your banner look like?

Marcus Chan:

So the banner by itself is.

Marcus Chan:

Is it.

Marcus Chan:

Basically, it's.

Marcus Chan:

They may not.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

So they may not scroll below this.

Kelly Kennedy:

Okay.

Marcus Chan:

They might just literally stay there.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Yeah, that's it.

Marcus Chan:

Very simple.

Marcus Chan:

So same concept.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Can I trust this person?

Marcus Chan:

And they start scrolling down.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

You can easily link that.

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

Then you can have the about section.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Okay.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Make it very easy for them to just reach out.

Marcus Chan:

They want to.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Include links to whatever you want.

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

Some people leave completely blank.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

And they want to keep scrolling down.

Marcus Chan:

They can see my, the past history as well.

Marcus Chan:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

This is what I read.

Marcus Chan:

Reports like this, I analyze this.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

And then I back it all up with proof.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Hopefully.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

And then if they keep going.

Marcus Chan:

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

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

I think we have like 70 or 80.

Marcus Chan:

se since, like, I don't know,:

Kelly Kennedy:

Sure.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

Wow.

Kelly Kennedy:

Okay.

Kelly Kennedy:

So it's all in alignment.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

And the story is that you're awesome.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Guest:

Yeah, yeah.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Marcus Chan:

Really good question.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

So unfortunately the bar is really, really low.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

So this is an opportunity.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

It's the same type of concept.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

I book here.

Marcus Chan:

I was here.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

You have to change your thought process.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

You need to speak to the customer.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Guest:

Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy:

You know, let's talk about content.

Kelly Kennedy:

I know we kind of got into it.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Marcus Chan:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

Wow.

Marcus Chan:

Hits like all the channels.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

It's a little bit different.

Marcus Chan:

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

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Okay.

Marcus Chan:

That's the first piece.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

I have an idea area.

Marcus Chan:

I use Clicko as a software.

Marcus Chan:

I throw all the ideas inside there.

Marcus Chan:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

So I realize it's.

Marcus Chan:

I can create better content.

Marcus Chan:

I'm less pressured.

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

So meaning like today and two weeks after today.

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

Consistently.

Marcus Chan:

So it makes it much easier.

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

And that's how it was.

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

Pretty simple.

Marcus Chan:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

It's become a little bit easier over time.

Marcus Chan:

So my strategy is kind of piv.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

Just being consistent is the key.

Marcus Chan:

And stage two is like Put some systems in place.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Super high value, super tactical.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

It happens every single week.

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

We just got to keep it in motion.

Marcus Chan:

It's all we gotta do.

Guest:

Yeah, yeah.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

Like, I started this show.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

So this particular show has been.

Kelly Kennedy:

Yeah, we've been at it.

Kelly Kennedy:

Right.

Kelly Kennedy:

And we've been consistent.

Kelly Kennedy:

And consistency over time breeds success.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

So we took that to the podcast.

Kelly Kennedy:

We haven't missed a single episode.

Kelly Kennedy:

We've been just flying through.

Kelly Kennedy:

We do two episodes a week.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

Like you would think, I get it.

Kelly Kennedy:

Business development.

Kelly Kennedy:

I should have a ton.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

How do you repurpose content?

Kelly Kennedy:

How do you use all this stuff?

Kelly Kennedy:

And I am by no means a pro.

Kelly Kennedy:

I'm getting better all the time.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

You can kind of see it.

Marcus Chan:

So I have my content day.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

There's many tools out there.

Marcus Chan:

Notion's great, Trello's great.

Marcus Chan:

They all work some way, shape or form.

Marcus Chan:

So it's all managed within ClickUp for us.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

We have different stages for it.

Marcus Chan:

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

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

So she'll kind of adjust a little bit.

Marcus Chan:

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

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

So pretty easy.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Has to look a certain way.

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Yeah, right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

And it gets marked accordingly.

Marcus Chan:

Click up if it's a video.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

She double checks everything.

Marcus Chan:

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

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

And then she'll work with Them approving the.

Marcus Chan:

Proving that.

Marcus Chan:

Approving that piece of real.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Let's just cut these parts out already.

Kelly Kennedy:

The script is amazing.

Marcus Chan:

Exactly.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Guest:

Yes.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

They use this other tool called.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

It helps do jump cutting for you automatically.

Marcus Chan:

So it saves like a.

Marcus Chan:

Saves a lot of time.

Marcus Chan:

I don't know what it's called.

Marcus Chan:

It's like a plugin for that.

Marcus Chan:

I think.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

I'm not even sure.

Kelly Kennedy:

Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy:

Like, you listening?

Kelly Kennedy:

This is the mess of having to create content.

Kelly Kennedy:

These days.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

And yes, we're all doing this.

Kelly Kennedy:

It's bonkers.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Marcus Chan:

Make it easy to use now.

Marcus Chan:

Like, it shouldn't be.

Marcus Chan:

There should be no learning curve.

Marcus Chan:

Yeah.

Guest:

Oh, yeah.

Marcus Chan:

Yeah, dude.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Marcus Chan:

But it's a long time.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

You know?

Marcus Chan:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

Make it easier.

Marcus Chan:

It's this whole thing, you know?

Guest:

Yeah, yeah.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

Yeah, man, I had no idea.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Like, are we even using this?

Marcus Chan:

That's the problem.

Kelly Kennedy:

Right?

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

So you still need.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

Transcripts are still better.

Marcus Chan:

Sometimes you just need the best tool for the job.

Marcus Chan:

It is what it is.

Kelly Kennedy:

That's right.

Kelly Kennedy:

That's right.

Kelly Kennedy:

Yeah, dude, it's.

Kelly Kennedy:

But you know what?

Kelly Kennedy:

I love this.

Kelly Kennedy:

Like, I love doing this podcast.

Kelly Kennedy:

I've.

Kelly Kennedy:

I've learned to love content creation.

Kelly Kennedy:

So it's like I.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

I know this sounds a little scary.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

Yeah, just start with one.

Kelly Kennedy:

Like, do something.

Kelly Kennedy:

Doing anything is better than doing nothing.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

So I didn't really start with that.

Marcus Chan:

So I started like text.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

Yeah, yeah.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

Honestly.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

I love podcasts, I love talking.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

It's probably been nine years since.

Marcus Chan:

Since I started.

Guest:

Wow.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Sound quality was terrible.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

And they just weren't good videos.

Marcus Chan:

Like, just very, very awkward.

Marcus Chan:

That's what I found.

Marcus Chan:

But here's the thing.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

And I got better over time by simply doing it.

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

So I had to just.

Marcus Chan:

I basically had embraced the suck.

Marcus Chan:

That's what broke down to.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

It's like putting myself out there.

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Now.

Marcus Chan:

Now it's like been.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

I did like once a week.

Marcus Chan:

It was what I did.

Marcus Chan:

I did a video, like once a week video.

Marcus Chan:

And it was only to my website.

Marcus Chan:

So, like it got no traffic at the time.

Marcus Chan:

And then it was:

Marcus Chan:

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

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

Like once a week.

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

And just like committing to that.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Not very good.

Marcus Chan:

Not very good.

Marcus Chan:

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

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

And then start.

Marcus Chan:

What was interesting was this is early.

Marcus Chan:

My business was getting started.

Marcus Chan:

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

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

And it wasn't.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

So that also made me better as well.

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Guest:

Yes.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

So that was like big for sure.

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Uncomfortable for me.

Marcus Chan:

Sure.

Marcus Chan:

That's what it was, long form.

Marcus Chan:

Because I got.

Marcus Chan:

ed so you picture now this is:

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

So like it wasn't like overnight.

Guest:

Yes.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Like it's kind of a long video.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

Very daunting for that llama time.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

What could I do to make it easier for myself?

Marcus Chan:

Like, well, you know what?

Marcus Chan:

I could script a video.

Marcus Chan:

So I started to script the videos out.

Guest:

Yep.

Marcus Chan:

So I'll write the whole script out.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

That really helped a lot quite a bit.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

So that was like:

Marcus Chan:

Yeah,:

Marcus Chan:

One a week.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Like I'll script from start to finish.

Kelly Kennedy:

Like the whole thing.

Kelly Kennedy:

Like you didn't ad hoc anything.

Marcus Chan:

I didn't ad hoc anything.

Kelly Kennedy:

Wow, that's harder.

Kelly Kennedy:

That's much harder.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

They are not.

Marcus Chan:

Not at all.

Marcus Chan:

So I would really script everything out.

Marcus Chan:

So like so the first.

Marcus Chan:

I mean, and.

Marcus Chan:

But I'll.

Marcus Chan:

I have to practice natural.

Guest:

Yes.

Marcus Chan:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

You sound natural.

Marcus Chan:

So I started practicing it.

Marcus Chan:

So I got really, really comfortable with that.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

It's probably like 4,000 words.

Marcus Chan:

Totally.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

So great.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

So like I'll just tell.

Marcus Chan:

I'll write the hook.

Marcus Chan:

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

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Guest:

Yep.

Marcus Chan:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

Just like high level.

Marcus Chan:

What's gonna be about.

Marcus Chan:

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

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

And I have way more mess ups for sure.

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

But like it's, it's.

Marcus Chan:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

I was just thinking that.

Guest:

Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy:

Like, you know what's really funny?

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

You would never know.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

And then the next day that was an amazing show.

Kelly Kennedy:

Like great, great show, Kel.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Marcus Chan:

Totally.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

You may not even realize it.

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Really?

Marcus Chan:

You know that's right.

Kelly Kennedy:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

But then once I say the final.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Like, actually, you know what?

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Like, you know, from:

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Like, be really consistent with it.

Marcus Chan:

Like, that's really, really key.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Just doing the work to actually build the confidence up.

Marcus Chan:

And then frankly, not caring.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

What am I gonna do?

Marcus Chan:

Like, it's.

Marcus Chan:

This is who I am.

Marcus Chan:

I've accepted this.

Kelly Kennedy:

Yeah.

Guest:

Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy:

And you know what?

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Marcus Chan:

That's right.

Marcus Chan:

100.

Marcus Chan:

100.

Marcus Chan:

Like, I.

Marcus Chan:

I find confidence is like a bank account, right?

Marcus Chan:

Everything you do either is a deposit or withdrawal.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

And that's just.

Marcus Chan:

That's just what happens.

Marcus Chan:

And if you.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

I'm like, yeah, it sucks.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

It is me.

Marcus Chan:

It looks just like me.

Marcus Chan:

It sounds like me.

Guest:

Yeah, right.

Marcus Chan:

But it's, like, too perfect.

Marcus Chan:

Yeah, it's too perfect.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

That's way more organic.

Marcus Chan:

It's just how it is.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

People don't really trust people.

Marcus Chan:

Right.

Kelly Kennedy:

Sure.

Marcus Chan:

They see things that are too perfect.

Marcus Chan:

They, they, they, they question it.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Right.

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Guest:

Right.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

You got to be yourself.

Kelly Kennedy:

That's what people want.

Kelly Kennedy:

People want more authenticity.

Kelly Kennedy:

They want more.

Kelly Kennedy:

They want a real person that they can trust.

Kelly Kennedy:

Right.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

You will never be able to replace.

Kelly Kennedy:

Replace it.

Marcus Chan:

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

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

Totally, totally.

Kelly Kennedy:

And I think that's really important.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

Right.

Kelly Kennedy:

They want something that they can connect with.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Marcus Chan:

Yeah, 100%.

Marcus Chan:

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

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

They're going to consume a piece of content.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Who is that person specifically?

Marcus Chan:

What's, what's on their mind?

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

And generally speaking, most time they have their problems.

Marcus Chan:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

I think it's a really important piece.

Marcus Chan:

This allows you to create depth to your content.

Marcus Chan:

So, for example, I have prompts.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Do I want them to feel enlightened?

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Do I feel challenged?

Marcus Chan:

Do you want them to feel joy or comedy?

Marcus Chan:

Don't let them feel curious.

Marcus Chan:

And sometimes you have multiple of these feelings.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

So what to do then?

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Since I'm making.

Marcus Chan:

It's going to be very tactical.

Kelly Kennedy:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Yeah, Right.

Marcus Chan:

Versus some other ones.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

I'm going for.

Marcus Chan:

I'm just going for connection.

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Are they even real?

Kelly Kennedy:

This person?

Marcus Chan:

Exactly.

Marcus Chan:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

So, my gosh.

Marcus Chan:

Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Marcus Chan:

100.

Marcus Chan:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

It makes it much more real.

Marcus Chan:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

There's so much power in the brand Right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

That's right.

Marcus Chan:

So launches a tequila brand, crushes it.

Marcus Chan:

Yeah, right.

Marcus Chan:

What's up?

Marcus Chan:

The guy, Ryan.

Marcus Chan:

Ryan Reynolds.

Marcus Chan:

Same thing.

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

You know, been building man for years.

Marcus Chan:

Rolls up.

Marcus Chan:

I think he mint mobile.

Marcus Chan:

I think he has a gin as well.

Marcus Chan:

Aviation gin.

Marcus Chan:

Crushes it.

Marcus Chan:

Yeah, right.

Marcus Chan:

You know, the Kardashian hater.

Marcus Chan:

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

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

Like Oprah has been run for decades now.

Marcus Chan:

She mentioned someone's product crushes.

Marcus Chan:

Yeah, right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

So, you know, there's certainly.

Marcus Chan:

I don't share on personal.

Marcus Chan:

I don't want to share about that.

Marcus Chan:

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

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Marcus Chan:

Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy:

You're in trouble.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

I think on a certain level.

Marcus Chan:

Oh, yeah.

Kelly Kennedy:

f you aren't looking after in:

Kelly Kennedy:

So this time and beyond.

Guest:

Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy:

Like you.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

And I know that that sucks.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

Totally.

Kelly Kennedy:

But something's changed, man.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Marcus Chan:

Oh, yeah.

Marcus Chan:

I mean, it's.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Like he.

Marcus Chan:

He is on.

Marcus Chan:

He's on X.

Marcus Chan:

He's posting and stuff.

Marcus Chan:

He.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Attention.

Marcus Chan:

He knows how to get attention.

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

And attention is a new currency.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

You get more conversations.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

You know, no, media is bad media.

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

Like, you know, that's.

Marcus Chan:

That's the truth.

Audience:

Right?

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

It goes crazy.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

They're good.

Marcus Chan:

Like, what's Andrew Tate?

Audience:

Right?

Marcus Chan:

Like, it's.

Marcus Chan:

People love and hate that guy.

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

But then people are talking about him now.

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

And that's what makes him.

Marcus Chan:

Makes him go viral.

Marcus Chan:

So he's.

Marcus Chan:

He's hacked that.

Kelly Kennedy:

It's.

Kelly Kennedy:

It's happening, man.

Kelly Kennedy:

There's no hiding from it.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

is the, like, is the thing of:

Kelly Kennedy:

Like, last year, everyone was talking AI.

Kelly Kennedy:

That was the new big thing.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

And, you know, it's.

Kelly Kennedy:

You can start tomorrow.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

But it's time.

Kelly Kennedy:

It's time to start thinking about it.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

Right.

Kelly Kennedy:

Good place to start, 100%.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

That makes it much easier.

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Wherever they are, go to that place first.

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

And, like, you want to build that muscle.

Marcus Chan:

Build a habit of doing that.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

And I was like, cool.

Marcus Chan:

Like, you know what was.

Marcus Chan:

Exactly.

Marcus Chan:

And they're.

Guest:

They're.

Marcus Chan:

It's kind of fun.

Marcus Chan:

They're like, I think it's.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

We found all this stuff about you from other people.

Marcus Chan:

Like, you just have a.

Marcus Chan:

You just better online presence.

Marcus Chan:

We actually know you're legit.

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

So, like, the risk.

Marcus Chan:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

You built trust before that interaction.

Marcus Chan:

100.

Marcus Chan:

100.

Marcus Chan:

So.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

This is why I was even open to conversation.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

And also your timing worked out really well.

Guest:

Yeah.

Guest:

Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

They want to be Marcus Chan.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Marcus Chan:

Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy:

So talk about that decision.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

What do you really want?

Marcus Chan:

I think it's really important.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

I hate my job.

Marcus Chan:

I'm starting my own business.

Marcus Chan:

Not necessarily a bad thing.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

You're able to keep going.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Audience:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Right?

Kelly Kennedy:

Yeah, like, that's right.

Marcus Chan:

So, like, understand what are you optimizing for?

Marcus Chan:

But what's your big end goal?

Marcus Chan:

Okay.

Marcus Chan:

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

Audience:

All right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

You know, very little, very demanding clients.

Marcus Chan:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

So this.

Marcus Chan:

This put me in a better position.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

But.

Marcus Chan:

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

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

I think that's really, really key.

Marcus Chan:

That helped me quite a bit.

Marcus Chan:

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

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

It wasn't really great.

Marcus Chan:

So this allows you to make better decisions.

Marcus Chan:

So I think it's really key.

Kelly Kennedy:

Yeah, I.

Kelly Kennedy:

I will.

Kelly Kennedy:

I will attest to that.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

Like, it was really make it or die.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

Right.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

And like you, I was dialing until I.

Kelly Kennedy:

Till I did it.

Kelly Kennedy:

Because it was that or.

Kelly Kennedy:

Or fail.

Marcus Chan:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

Oh, yeah.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

I agree completely.

Marcus Chan:

You.

Kelly Kennedy:

You mentioned that.

Kelly Kennedy:

I.

Kelly Kennedy:

I didn't hate my job I actually.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

I'd been there for 10 years.

Marcus Chan:

Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

And so that was what the kickstart was.

Kelly Kennedy:

Luckily, they came on, they gave me.

Kelly Kennedy:

It was.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

And they paid me a severance, which was nice.

Kelly Kennedy:

So, yeah, it was like.

Kelly Kennedy:

It was like that boost I needed.

Kelly Kennedy:

But you know what?

Kelly Kennedy:

It was that.

Kelly Kennedy:

It was adversity.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

Figure it out.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Marcus Chan:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

A business owner.

Marcus Chan:

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

Guest:

Yes.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

So it makes it hard if you.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Marcus Chan:

You, like, think about it differently.

Marcus Chan:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Amazing.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

How's it going?

Marcus Chan:

I'm like, great.

Marcus Chan:

I'm like.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

I'm like, I don't know.

Marcus Chan:

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

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

All these things.

Marcus Chan:

Just things that took for.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

I had all these things kind of in place already.

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

And then I'll say, if you can.

Marcus Chan:

Like, I would get like a business coach.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

And you don't know a lot.

Kelly Kennedy:

Trust me.

Marcus Chan:

You know, like, nothing.

Marcus Chan:

You know, how do I file?

Marcus Chan:

You know, file for, you know, file.

Marcus Chan:

How do I create a company?

Kelly Kennedy:

I always say, Marcus, I.

Kelly Kennedy:

I'm a great business development person.

Kelly Kennedy:

I'm a everyday learning entrepreneur.

Kelly Kennedy:

Because I.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

And I learned something new every day.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

Like, entrepreneurship is.

Kelly Kennedy:

Is a completely different monster, dude.

Marcus Chan:

It's totally different.

Marcus Chan:

That's where it's like.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

When you're a rep.

Marcus Chan:

I'm like, not necessarily.

Marcus Chan:

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

Guest:

Yep.

Marcus Chan:

And now you start your own company.

Marcus Chan:

No name brand, dot com.

Marcus Chan:

Say it's different.

Marcus Chan:

Like, you know, there's.

Marcus Chan:

There's.

Marcus Chan:

It's a wildly different situation, you know?

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

Right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

That's right.

Marcus Chan:

That's just reality.

Marcus Chan:

So your system is going to follow you everywhere.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Guest:

Yeah.

Marcus Chan:

And that paid them a massive dividends.

Kelly Kennedy:

That's right.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

It was super hard.

Marcus Chan:

So.

Kelly Kennedy:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kelly Kennedy:

Like, I agree completely.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

That's the approach you have to take.

Marcus Chan:

That's it.

Marcus Chan:

100.

Kelly Kennedy:

You know, we'll take us into venly.

Kelly Kennedy:

Right.

Kelly Kennedy:

Like, obviously you're helping con.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

Like, you're coaching.

Kelly Kennedy:

Talk about Venley.

Kelly Kennedy:

What.

Kelly Kennedy:

What are all services you do?

Marcus Chan:

So I love.

Marcus Chan:

So there's two parts of the business.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

But it's a lot of fun either way.

Marcus Chan:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

Amazing.

Kelly Kennedy:

Amazing.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Marcus Chan:

Super simple.

Marcus Chan:

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

Marcus Chan:

I'm pretty easy to find.

Kelly Kennedy:

Awesome.

Kelly Kennedy:

Awesome.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

But I did read his book.

Kelly Kennedy:

It is six figure sales secrets.

Kelly Kennedy:

You do not want to miss this.

Kelly Kennedy:

This is awesome.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

It's amazing.

Kelly Kennedy:

And I agree, I agree with everything Marcus wrote.

Kelly Kennedy:

Actually it's.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

It's an amazing book.

Marcus Chan:

I appreciate that.

Marcus Chan:

Thank you so much.

Kelly Kennedy:

And people can get your book where Marcus.

Marcus Chan:

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

Kelly Kennedy:

Perfect.

Kelly Kennedy:

Perfect.

Kelly Kennedy:

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

Host:

This has been the Business Development Podcast with Kelly Kennedy.

Host:

business development firm in:

Host:

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

Host:

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

Host:

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

Host:

see you next time on the Business Development Podcast.

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The Business Development Podcast
The Business Development Podcast is an award-winning show dedicated to entrepreneurs, executives, sales, and business development specialists.

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Kelly Kennedy