Can You Grow a Company Without Social Media? [Guest: Joe Sullivan])

Join Lee Murray as he engages in a discussion with Joe Sullivan, co-owner of Gorilla 76. In this week's episode, they try to answer the seemingly impossible question of whether or not B2B companies can grow without using social media.

If you've ever found yourself wondering whether investing time and effort in social media is worth it for your business, then this is an episode for you.

Thank you for watching. If you are enjoying what you hear, please consider sharing it with a colleague or a friend.

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Go here: https://www.harvardmurray.com/exploring-growth-podcast

Connect on LinkedIn:
Lee - https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehmurray
Joe - https://www.linkedin.com/in/gorilla76joe

Speaker 0 (00:00:00) - All right, welcome back. Uh, today we have Joe Sullivan, co-owner of Gorilla 76, and, uh, Mary Kio actually introduced us. Um, and at the time Mary was, uh, there working with Gorilla 76 and, uh, had a great conversation and thought this would be a good time to bring, um, one of the co-owners on. And I thought it was really interesting because, you know, I own Signal Media. It's a content agency helping, um, all kinds of different companies, um, create video, uh, that they can use in their content strategy, uh, and some podcasting as well. And then on your side, you're working specifically with manufacturers. Um, so, um, and then that's kind of your niche, you know, to, to help them build a good content strategy and deploy that strategy. So, as we were kind of talking through, well, you know, what's the, what's the singular kind of thread?

Speaker 0 (00:00:52) - Um, I, I've been working on this, this, this thought came to mind. I think I even posted on LinkedIn a few days ago, um, that I'm, I'm curious to get your sort of, uh, knee-jerk reaction to, so I haven't prepped Joe at all. Um, so we'll see what his response is. I'm curious if you think that, can you grow a company B2B without social media? So essentially you let, let's say you start from scratch. You don't have any social, that's, that's an easier one. You say, just don't start 'em. Um, or you currently have some social, social media. And, and we could talk specifically maybe even geared towards manufacturing too, if you want to. Cuz I know that's really heavily your wheelhouse, but let's say you were to just get rid of all social media. I'm not talking about YouTube, I'm talking more social platforms. Mm-hmm. , um, can, can you still grow a company today without social media? Is the question? Curious your, your thoughts?

Speaker 1 (00:01:51) - That's a great question. I, I, it's not, it's, I was trying to think as you were, you know, setting me up here. What, where's this gonna go? What, what question am I about to get? And I've never been asked, I've never been asked that question, so I don't have a canned answer for it. But I, as I kind of think on the fly here, can you, yeah, I'm, I'm not, I mean, I'm not the type that's gonna sit here and, and talk about, you know, whatever is dead or you can't do this if you don't have this thing. But I do think that we're, we're at a, a point now where it would be very, very challenging. Um, you know, it's, I think like when I think about what, what really matters in marketing or, you know, fundamental marketing strategy mm-hmm. , it kind of comes down to this, who are you targeting and what, what, like, who is your audience?

Speaker 1 (00:02:34) - Who are the individual human beings or job roles that you need to reach? What matters to those people? Like, what are they trying to achieve? What problems they trying to solve, what outcome they're trying to get to? Um, how can you align your expertise with that and package up, you know mm-hmm. resources and insights and content, or whatever you wanna call it. But then it comes down to how do we make sure those insights and that messaging is consumed mm-hmm. and I think mm-hmm. without social media, um, I think you're, you know, you're, you're taking away probably for most of you the best, uh, and most efficient distribution channel or place to go target and reach those right people at scale to engage with them, start conversations, to try to, you know, get input on what message is resonating and, and what's not. So I think, you know, I have some thoughts on where, where would I go if social media disappeared today, how would I start doing it? Yeah. But I, I do think it's, it's possible, but I think you're, you're especially, uh, you know, I guess if the question is if it went away, what would you do? Well then we're all in the same boat. If you just said, nah, it's not important, we're not gonna do it. Well then I think you're putting yourself as at a massive disadvantage.

Speaker 0 (00:03:47) - Yeah. And I think another way to, to, to come at it would be, what, what is the real impact of social media for a B2B company, right? Mm-hmm. . Um, and is that impact great enough to spend all the time, resources, manpower behind it mm-hmm. that could be spent somewhere else. You know, that's, that is even more fundamental cuz I think you let it out perfectly. Um, how we should think about, you know, fundamentally how we should go about marketing a company. Um, but in the process of doing that, again, speaking straight to the b2b, uh, I think b2c, it's a completely different question. Um, but b2b, we can buy a list. We know who is sitting in which seat. Um, if we know already have, let's say we're already pretty far down. Let's say your company's been around for a little while and you've done the, you've done the homework. You, you're kind of already down the road a little bit to know kind of what those pain points are, what the desires are, what, what, um, what their days look like. You've built your personas out and everything, uh, and you've had some success using the fundamentals. Then what, why would we need to use social media? You know, I guess where's that impact really, really coming from? Uh, I, I'll give you another chance to kind of go at it and I'll kind of give some my thoughts.

Speaker 1 (00:05:02) - Yeah, for sure. So, you know, I think about maybe more traditional channels of, you know, dispersing your message or, or reaching people. And you think about live events, trade shows are huge in manufacturing. Everybody goes mm-hmm. to trade shows. Um, you know, there's, there's email, right? Like 10 years ago I probably have been, and I know, I mean, not probably I was advising and helping clients, you know, build lists, whether it was buying lists, whether it was, you know, some, you know, ZoomInfo type of stuff. Or if it was, you know, just the organic lists you've, you've built through with your company, um, and, you know, sending information that way. I think some of the problems today is that, you know, the, the buying process has changed so much. You don't know who is actually in, in market for a product or service these days.

Speaker 1 (00:05:55) - Um, you know, you think about sending email, you are, even if you're amazing at email, we actually do really well with our email for Gorilla. It only hits five, 6,000 people, but every other week and it performs well. But it's, it's every other week, and that's about the most you can do. Um, you know, only some small percentage is, is actually paying attention and engaging and you're competing with all the other companies that are just spamming constantly with, with email. So I think email has its limitations. I think it's done right. It can be, it can be really good. I mean, live events, I have seen manufacturers put their entire marketing budget into three days at IMTS or fabtech or Pack Expo or some of these huge shows, and they spend 200 K and ship all this equipment across the country. And that's it. Like Yep. And you look at social and you have a 24 7 platform to mm-hmm. target, who you want to, to build actual human connections with people. And, and it's a lot of work organically, but there's a paid side of it too. And I think we should at some point differentiate between Sure. Organic and paid, because you can pay for access to your audience mm-hmm. , and if you are delivering meaningful messaging and content, you can win that way very quickly. Right?

Speaker 0 (00:07:03) - Sure. All well said. And, and I personally think that it just comes down to how you use the tools. You know, if, if you can win on trade shows alone, then that kind of proves my point. You don't need social media because you've, you've utilized that tool to its fullest, fully optimized, you know, fully integrated, whatever it may be. And all, again, it depends on the trajectory of how you wanna grow your company. If you want this massive company, then ultimately you're gonna need all the tools. Um, but smaller companies, depending on what their end game is, um, may not, they just may have to do some things really well. But on the social side, I think if you were to deploy those tools, if you utilize them properly, and I, and I'm even thinking, um, efficiently than then you would need them less. And I guess I'm trying to make this point because when a lot of CEOs of these mid-market companies think about social media, they think about their personal feeds.

Speaker 0 (00:08:02) - They don't, they're not in, maybe the marketing leaders don't think about it this way as much, but I think the, the C-suite leaders, they think about social as just how they use it. Well, how could we reach our customer, especially in manufacturing, what are we gonna do? TikTok dances? Like, I don't see how this connects, right? And so I think the point to make from this conversation, at least from my side, is paid of course, is a, is a completely different animal, um, than, than organic. But it doesn't necessarily have to be utilized as a tool just for lead generation or just performance, or just bottom of the funnel. I think you can utilize social all the way up the funnel. In fact, you can probably utilize it more strategically up the funnel than, than the bottom of the funnel. Um, you know, if you're, if you're doing really well at trade shows then, and you fully optimize that, and you feel like that spend is, there's a return, which in manufacturing a lot of times there is, then how do you support that effort from year to year or show to show by utilizing a more up, you know, top middle of the funnel utilizing social and email, um, to support that.

Speaker 0 (00:09:13) - So you're, you're even more fully optimizing the time that you're at a show. Um, for me, I think that there are companies out there, albeit most of them smaller, uh, in size, um, that have gone for decades. You know, generations of families have owned these companies and done really well, made lots of money, and they never had a Facebook page. You know, they never had any social media. They still don't. Um, so I think it's totally possible. I think that us as marketers, we get in this world of, I guess that, that was my me, I'm, I'm on a little bit of rant here, sorry, but that was my message to CEOs. But I think my message to marketers is don't think that just because we deal with this, these tools every single day, that your customer, your client necessarily needs to use it the way you think it needs to be used.

Speaker 0 (00:10:05) - You know, it's, it's not, you're not, it's not a ham, you're not a hammer and it's a nail. Like you, you know, it's, that's not that, that's not how we should approach social media. It, it needs to be utilized first and foremost strategically to be set as a tool to serve the strategy. I, I mean, I'm, I'm very much a strategist, so I, I'm kind of, you know, playing to my, my skill, but that's the way I look at it. I, I think that companies come at social media so, so wrong and they, they can get caught up using agencies to not really move the needle. And agencies, I think have a lot of time have a hard time justifying the spend that's being, being made with them by the client because they're doing, they're using the tool the wrong way. Yeah. So that's, that's kind of my, my 2 cents.

Speaker 1 (00:10:54) - I, I completely agree. I, I think, you know, the way we look at it when we're using social for our clients is, you know, it, it's your place to, to target and reach as much of your, your address, your total addressable market as as possible. And, and we're gonna be really dialed in and whether doing it organically or, or, you know, with paid budget mm-hmm. , you want to be able, you want to use that as your, your brand marketing platform, right? Mm-hmm. where your, your job is to, if you understand the people you need to reach and what cares what those people care about, it's your job to figure out how do we package up our expertise, address all those things, and be consistently publishing information around that that matters to those people. And really expecting nothing in the return, in return in the short term.

Speaker 1 (00:11:40) - Like your, your job is not to blast sales messaging out there. This is not direct response advertising, like you're selling some widget off the shelf. I mean, I, I have one of our, our clients is having the most success in, um, in, in on LinkedIn right now sells $800,000 equipment to engineers and plant managers with year and a half long sales cycles. Mm-hmm. . And they're winning on social, like paid social, paid LinkedIn is, is one of their, their strongest platforms with the, with the highest roi. But that's because they go in there with content that is driven by their engineers mm-hmm. for engineers and plant managers. It's deep expertise content. We're targeting those specific people and nobody else in the geographies and types of companies and even specific companies that they wanna reach. Yeah. And it's the consumption of that content over time. Little piece after little piece that builds awareness and trust. And as those people all of a sudden have a need, need, they need to make a change, they have a facility expansion, they're not happy with their current piece of equipment, bit by bit, they enter a bicycle cycle and, and our clients the first one they think of because they're in front of them all the time. Mm-hmm. , educating and teaching. Right.

Speaker 0 (00:12:53) - That is such a great example of what I'm saying, what I'm talking about. Yeah. I, I think that is a very dialed in, um, example of how to use social tools properly. I mean, and so to the point where you actually have the subject matter experts speaking to other subject matter experts directly as directly as you can mm-hmm. , um, the value there is immense. Mm-hmm. , it's, it's, it's amazing. Um, yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:13:17) - You, you can't, you can't really fake that. And it's, um, it's a, it's a slower play. And that's why most companies won't do this, is cuz they That's right. This particular client, they, they understand that like, you're not, they're not gonna, they weren't gonna see an ROI in six months. Their sales cycles 12 to 18 months, right? Mm-hmm. like, they're, of course they're not gonna see an roi, but you're, look, what you wanna do is, is be able to do this in a way where you're looking for signals. Is the message that we're putting out there, reaching the right people is the message resonating? So we're looking for signals like if we're running video content, are people dropping off after 10 seconds or are they watching a two minute video? Mm-hmm. at least 75% of the way through. And are those the right people? Yeah. You're looking for signals like are they following links back to our website? What are they doing when they get there? Are we generating actual quote requests from those mm-hmm. and tracing it all the way to revenue. So, but that for a, for a company like that, with a year-plus sales cycle, you know, you have to be content with the early signals to show you if you're on the right path before you're ever measuring o roi.

Speaker 0 (00:14:19) - So to companies, you know, leaders who are listening to this right now, if you're utilizing a content strategy to any degree and you have an agency involved that's giving you direction, and they're maybe even creating some content for you, deploying that content for you, if they're not speaking in this way, if they're not talking about SMEs, talking to SMEs, dialing in on your target audience messaging, you know, making things resonate with the length of your video, the, the con, the type of, uh, what the actual content that's in your, your video, but then all the other things that go along with it, like length and, um, style and tone. Um, if they're not speaking to what content you should create at this level and what it is doing or what it should do, then you need to kind of rethink, um, who you're working with.

Speaker 0 (00:15:10) - You, you know, you'd be looking for an agency that's going to be thinking about it at this level. Um, so let's, let's switch gears here for a minute. Um, just to kind of, um, to, to change it up a little bit. I, I'm, I'm curious, since you're in manufacturing and you, you know, you work with companies that are already at trade shows are gonna continue to go to trade shows, um, what have you seen that's worked really well? Talk, you know, speaking to this point of like utilizing, um, social tools strategically or, or, you know, in, in an important way, what have you seen that's worked really well to merge the two? Right? So if you're going to a trade show, your client's going to a trade show, how can you use social, be it LinkedIn or you know, Facebook even, or, um, or, or even some of the newer platforms, like how would you utilize them in a strategy to support what's already working at the trade show? Have you, have you done that before?

Speaker 1 (00:16:09) - Yeah. So, you know, if you think about it, what's the biggest value in, in going to a trade show? It's a co it's a, in a concentrated area for a, a short period of time. You have a lot of your audience right there. That's right. A chance to meet hu actual human beings in person. Mm-hmm. , you know, if you've got a booth set up, you know, I, I'm not a huge advocate of, of big fancy booths and, and spending all your money there, but like agreed, I'm a big advocate of being there and Right. And, you know, looking for ways to have, have conversations and things. But like some of the things that I've seen that I think are the smartest things companies out there are doing right now. Um, you know, one client of our, for example, they, they manufacture cutting tools like for CNC machines.

Speaker 1 (00:16:48) - Okay. Like, you know, in, in layman's terms, like drill bits, but for, you know Yeah. Chiseling away at, at blocks of metal or, or whatever. Right. And, and so, um, they, something they've done, I've seen other companies do it too, is they'll bring a videographer to, to the show with them mm-hmm. and like their customers are there, their prospects are there, they'll just do interviews with them mm-hmm. and they'll, they'll, like, if it's customers, they'll have 'em tell a success story right there on camera as opposed to having to, you know, fly to that person's like office or facility and do like, they've got 10 of their customers there. That's right. And they've got prospects there who they can meet and, you know, kind of do what you and me are doing right now. Right. Where you're just, you and I didn't know each other before this, but you're, you're interviewing me, you're gathering insights from me mm-hmm. , um, do the same with your audience people, the

Speaker 0 (00:17:36) - Talk and shop.

Speaker 1 (00:17:36) - Yeah. You're, you talk shop, you learn what's going on in in the world. What, you know, what do, what trends are you seeing in the space, what's some problems you've been, you've been struggling with or, or, you know, solving, um, and all of that stuff. I think it's, it's the idea of going to these trade shows with the mindset that we're gonna leave here, not with 30 business cards of, of people we can cold call, but have having built relationships by simultaneously making content with mm-hmm. with these people. Mm-hmm. , um, you know, I, you know, you're a, you're a Orlando area guy, I dunno if you know, like Sweet Fish Media and James Carberry down there Yes. In Orlando. Yeah. So they, James and his, his team, they produced my, my show, uh, the manufacturing executive for the first few years I was running it.

Speaker 1 (00:18:16) - And um, James' book, content-based networking was really influential to me where he, it's all about how do you meet the people you wanna meet and build relationships with the people you want completely to know by making content with them. Mm-hmm. and, and making content may sound intimidating, but it can just be having conversations with That's it, 'em that about what matters. Right. That's it. And, and what better place than a trade show to do that? So I watch, I watched some people do that really well in the manufacturing space. There's a couple guys like Chris Luie, he runs manufacturing Happy hour, Jake Hall, he's got, you know, 200,000 LinkedIn followers and he's like, that's cool at the manufacturing millennial. And he, they, they're always there setting up shop. They, they've got, you know, a table branded, they're interviewing people like crazy mm-hmm. making content. And that's the type of, of stuff that manufacturers should, should be doing. Look at it not as a place to collect business cards, but build real relationships and make content with your audience.

Speaker 0 (00:19:09) - Yes. A hundred percent. And because you can then distribute that content all year long in whatever way you wanna distribute it. Yeah. And if you, if you think ahead, which you may not think ahead first, but then you get feedback and you're able to think ahead next, you come to those, those conversations with good, solid questions you want to get answered cuz of you're already thinking about distribution.

Speaker 1 (00:19:31) - Exactly. Yeah. You know, another guy I'll mention here is, uh, Justin Simon, I dunno if you've, he'd be a great guy for you to have on, on your show, but, um, he's got a podcast called Distribution First. And Yeah. His, he thinks about his distribution strategy for his content before he makes the content. I like that. Um, because it's, how, how he, he, I had him on my show recently and he talked about all about how the companies who do get to the point of, of making good content often will make so much that it never gets all, it never all gets used. So Right. Where are you gonna deliver the content? That's right. And, and, and then think about what things we need to make to, to, to, you know, to distribute.

Speaker 0 (00:20:07) - It's, it's similar to hiring a social media agency to help you with social media. You're hiring a production company to help you create videos for what Yeah. I mean, you have a bunch of videos now that's great and you, they look nice, but Yep. And they're not, they're not gonna help you at all. Um, I think, I think you can get too dialed in too in that all you have are these very, you know, minutia, um, driven, um, high level or, or high level, uh, s m e conversations which don't benefit the greater. So you have to have a balance. Um mm-hmm. , I like this real, I like this idea of like going to trade shows or conferences, finding who's gonna be on stage and bringing them on a podcast or a show or a blog or whatever, pre-conference and then following up with them post, you know, after everything has happened to get, it's almost like you're Monday night football, you know?

Speaker 0 (00:20:55) - Yeah. Think the debrief, like Yeah. I think those kind of things can be amazing because the, the organic kind of genuine conversations that you have because there's, there's an endgame for what you're doing, but it's, you're gonna kind of let it play itself out. Mm-hmm. is, it's all kind of built in. You can go back and chop it up and distribute it, but then you've made all those connections, you know, and it costs, you ru almost $0 if you already have the, the machine running. Um, you didn't have to pay for sponsorships, you didn't have to have all the breakout sessions, you didn't have to do any of that. Um, but you're now, you know, you can interview the executive director of the c the show, like the actual trade show. I mean, you're now in the, the circle of people who are paying big dollars to be in that circle. Yep. Um, defac sort of de facto.

Speaker 1 (00:21:44) - Yeah. And a few other little things I'd add there that I think to build on it, um, you turn a three day event into something that can, that, that becomes evergreen, right? Mm-hmm. , the content you produce there, a lot of it can get reused and reused and That's Right. Distributed in different channels. All these companies that put all their eggs in, well, I guess we're gonna go to IMTS this year and we're gonna ship this hu this piece of equipment the size of my house across the country to, to get it to Chicago. Um, you know, you, you now have something you can take and repurpose after that. Um, and then I think there's also, you know, something to be said for the cross pollination of audiences when you're interviewing someone. Like, just use this as an example, right? Mm-hmm. , you're interviewing me for your podcast mm-hmm. , but I'm gonna get these clips from you and I'm gonna distribute 'em on my platform. Mm-hmm. . And now like you've got, and so if you think about interviewing 25 prospects or customers at a trade show Yeah. And, and they'll share the content too. Yeah. And if some of those companies are billion dollar companies that have, you know, massive followings, that's it. Um, you know, so you're, all of this stuff works together. It's such a no-brainer to me, but once

Speaker 0 (00:22:49) - You, it's not Yeah. I think once people get their mind around it Yeah. It first to become like, how have we not always done this? Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:22:55) - It's audience access is what it comes down to is like, how can we build lanes into reaching people mm-hmm. more easily that we need to reach with the right message. That's, and a lot of that's can happen through building relationships and making content with people.

Speaker 0 (00:23:09) - That's it. That's it. Um, I, I love the idea of creating a show or creating some kind of, you know, consistent workplace where you show up that you can bring people into and, and talk with them at length about this sort of third, it's almost like I, I've related to like that sociological thing that they did, the study did where you have your home, your work, and the third party of Starbucks, right? The third, uh, location that people have to go to mm-hmm. . Um, I look at that as, I think they're calling it media brand now. Like this brand that you're building this show, this, this place where people can come and interact. That there's no sales happening and there's no marketing really happening, it's just people talking shop, but you're documenting it. Um, I think that's, that's the place where more companies need to lean into as we move forward.

Speaker 1 (00:24:01) - I agree. I mean, I'll give you a an example of what we're doing on that front. Like we have, um, we've built something called industrial marketing live. It's every other week. This is a live event. We've had over 300 registers now, usually 50 to 60 show up. There was one this morning. I don't, I wasn't, I didn't get to attend, but I I, I would imagine we probably drew 50 or so we bring on guests, people from outside, you know, our company. We do some teaching ourselves, but it's all people with marketing and their job title from manufacturing companies. And it's all cameras on. There's, you know, imagine 50 faces up and, and there's a topic and we're talking about it. We're doing a little teaching. People are coming on stage and then we have a Slack community running parallel to that that's super active.

Speaker 1 (00:24:42) - People are talking all week long. You've got marketers from inside this company and this one like bouncing ideas off each other and we're just sort of facilitating. Yeah. Um, but that sort of thing is, I mean, imagine that sort of thing for engineers inside of a specific niche or for people, you know, software developers like these things are, are going on out there, but you can be the one to facilitate these, these things. And yes, we don't go in there and sell anything, but it's, those are some of our best channels for, for new business because it just happens naturally.

Speaker 0 (00:25:14) - You're the facilitator, you're the host, so they look to you as the expert, which of course in case you are, cuz you're the one that has to know a lot about what you're doing to put this together. Sure. And then how you distribute that content widely after matters and the relationships you're building within it and how you connect with them after matters. How they connect with you and how smaller groups form, um, you know, you're really bringing it back to just being, um, a good human person to other good humans. Right. Because you love what you do, they find a value in what you do. Um, you're doing it relatively for free, um, but it benefits all parties.

Speaker 1 (00:25:54) - Mm-hmm. , it's kind of ironic. I, I wrote about this recently in one of my newsletters, but like the harder you push sales messaging

Speaker 0 (00:26:03) - Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1 (00:26:05) - Inside the marketing platform, the less you sell. Like that's, that's just kind of the world we're we're in right now. And people don't get that though. Like, well I can't, I can't do this long-term play where we're facilitating a community and we're hosting a podcast or, or we're like writing content and publishing it weekly or whatever the, the medium might be. Cuz like, we need sales, right? And, and here, here people are just on this hamster wheel, like delivering bottom of funnel sales messaging, talking about features and benefits and in, in the background somebody else is just delivering value constantly. Mm-hmm. and who do you think is winning long term? Like it's not the guy who's who you're marking as spam in your inbox and whose calls your, you know, your your screening because you don't want to hear from them anymore.

Speaker 0 (00:26:50) - So if I were sitting in a conversation like that, my immediately, I'm gonna have a red flag mm-hmm. and the red flag is gonna go to culture. Um, because if a leader's saying that we don't, we can't do this, this is not something we wanna do mm-hmm. , then immediately I'm thinking, okay, this is not the only place that you're thinking this. There's other parts of your company that you're being held back. Yeah. Um, if you're not wanting to expand your thinking about marketing and sales and, and, and just be open to maybe, maybe you could actually do some things different in it result in you doing a net less, you know, marketing or less selling than you're currently doing. Um, that's a, that to me, that's a leadership culture issue. And I would almost probably immediately walk walk away because you can't change that.

Speaker 0 (00:27:42) - Um, I've, I've tried it doesn't work. Um, but to me, I think there are some, like if you're talking to the right person, again, CEO to agency, you're talking to the right agency that's knows what they're doing and you're maybe, um, there's some trepidation about going down this path. Well let's, let's address those concerns. What are the concerns? Is it budget? Is it time? Is it capacity from your team? Are there people on your team that you could, that wanna step up and do this that just haven't been asked or they haven't been put in the, the right place? Maybe there is an sme. Maybe there's a salesperson. I mean I know people from, um, that are sales leaders that are really more marketers than they are salespeople cuz they've found their place in demand gen type of content, um, and, and branding. And so they do a lot more than their actual marketing co counterpart in their company, funny enough. And they probably end up selling more too. So, you know, I think you're right. I think it's, um, it's an interesting conversation to have with a company. If, if they're gonna not be open to that idea, then probably the company's gonna start to die if that hasn't already started from within. I know that sounds kind of bleak, but , that's kind of what it is.

Speaker 1 (00:28:56) - There's truth to it. Yep.

Speaker 0 (00:28:59) - Well, hey, this has been fun. We're kind of right up on that 30 minute mark, um, that I'm shooting for. So, um, I appreciate you jumping on here and, and talking about this. We'll stay connected and, um, I know there will be a chance in the, in the future for us to, to get back together and chat about some other, you know, um, topics that may be congruent in our world. So I'll, I'll, we'll stay in touch, but, um, yeah, thanks for this time.

Speaker 1 (00:29:23) - Yeah, I appreciate you having me on. I I love talking about this stuff. So it's, it's, it's fun to be as a podcast host. It's fun to be on the other end of the mic sometimes. Yeah. And people asking me questions. I enjoyed it.

Speaker 0 (00:29:33) - Yeah. I, I, I said to someone else recently that was on, they said the same thing. I was like, yeah, I think being a podcast guest is like being in the passenger seat of the car. You know, it's a whole different experience. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:29:43) - It is. It is.

Speaker 0 (00:29:45) - So, absolutely. Um, so, you know, I'm gonna link your, your LinkedIn in the show notes. Is there anything else, um, you know, we can put obviously Gorilla 70 six.com, is

Speaker 1 (00:29:54) - That right? Yep. Yep. You got it. Yeah, that, that, that sounds great. And yeah, Joe Sullivan, gorilla 77, 1 of probably 10,000 Joe Sullivans on LinkedIn. So put in my company name and you'll, you'll find me. But that's the best place to connect, so,

Speaker 0 (00:30:05) - All right, cool. And uh, you have a marketing pod, uh, podcast, A manufacturing podcast.

Speaker 1 (00:30:09) - It's a manufacturing podcast. Yeah. Inter interview various manufacturing leaders and people who are influential to CEOs and presidents. And probably one out every top 10 topics is marketing or sales related, but I try to really have kind of bringing guests with, with a variety of things that matter to manufacturing leaders. So, uh, but yeah, it's called the manufacturing executive and yeah. Okay. Next week, a hundred week episode, 150 goes live. That's 150 consecutive week, so I'm proud of that one. Awesome.

Speaker 0 (00:30:34) - , congrats on that. That's not, not easy. Good

Speaker 1 (00:30:37) - Milestone. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 0 (00:30:38) - That's awesome. Cool. Great. Glad to have you. All right. And, uh, we'll be talking to you soon.

Speaker 1 (00:30:45) - Sounds good. We'll take care.