Episode 84 - Brian Joseph

Erik Martinez: Welcome to today's episode of the Digital Velocity Podcast. I'm Erik Martinez and I'm thrilled to have Brian Joseph on the show today. Brian is the CEO and co-founder of RevJen Group and spent the last 20 plus years guiding the revenue growth of for-profit and non-profit businesses. Today we're gonna talk about the impact of professional development and networking on business growth and the opportunities and challenges of digital programs on those areas.

Brian, welcome to the show.

Brian Joseph: Thanks Erik I'm happy to be here.

Erik Martinez: Yeah man I've been looking forward to this conversation. I think I say that to everybody though.

Brian Joseph: You have an interesting group that comes on though, man. You should be excited to talk to them.[00:01:00]

Erik Martinez: Yeah. No, it's been fun, you know, the audience has been hearing about our heroic cohort. We spent almost 7 - 8 months together learning how to write speeches and perform those speeches on stage. Brian was part of that group and he's got an amazing message. And, today I thought we would talk a little bit about professional development, networking and how digital is impacting that. It's a changing world, right? And there's lots of different ways to consume education.

But before we dive into that, Brian, tell us a little bit about you.

Brian Joseph: So currently live in Dallas-Fort Worth. Was lucky at a young age that I had somebody take an interest in me. So I had a mentor who taught me how to build and scale national organizations, primarily insurance industry, but done things in other industries as well, from manufacturing to, you name it.

Currently have a company that's focused on serving a nonprofit space. We're a social enterprise, so we're a for-profit company, but we serve a nonprofit space, training executive teams how to build [00:02:00] out repeatable and scalable revenue models.

Erik Martinez: Geez. I think all of us want more of that kind of training. Right? We all want scalable revenue models. I love that. So as we kind of dig tell us a little bit about the core principles that have guided your leadership style and how you believe they contribute both to individual and organizational success.

Brian Joseph: Yeah, core principles are always so important Erik. That the same mentor just mentioned who always used to tell me, "Brian, it doesn't matter if you're the CEO or the janitor, nobody's anymore or less important to the organization. We all just have different responsibilities."

And I think from my leadership style, I tried to bring that to everything I do. As leaders I think we have an obligation to do the deep work, to really figure out who we are, what drives us, because we create the cultures, right? We have an outsized impact on our teams, and I think a lot of those values are just caring about the people who are in our organizations to help them kinda achieve their dreams, which will help create the results that we want for the company. That helps the things with the customers.

If we keep our customers in [00:03:00] mind, you know the old Peter Drucker thing, what's the purpose of a business? You ask that question everybody will always say, "Oh, let's make money." It's like, no, it's actually create a customer, right? And having really focused a lot of my career on sales. A lot of people think that as a core principle, sales is a bad thing. We think of the used car experience that we had and a million other cliches and example that we all think of.

But what I realized a long time ago was what good sales really is identifying somebody else's wants, needs and desires, and determine if your product or service can fulfill that. And if it can, then how you marry those two is actually a win on both sides. Not to be cliche.

So for me it's always understanding the client's wants, needs and desires by asking questions. I think that leads into the value proposition and core value of just does our service do that. And candidly, the amount of time that I've actually turned potential customers away and said, Hey, if I was talking to you and I realized like my product can't do that or our service can't do what you want, I'd tell you.

Ours not gonna be the best to serve your needs, Erik, but [00:04:00] lemme tell you where I think you should look 'cause we compete with these folks. A hundred percent of the time, the amount of exponential dividends that have paid me because now you trust me. It's always worked out to my favor. I mean always and I was only doing the right thing.

So a core value of, I truly care about you getting the right service 'cause I don't want to set us up where I tell you can do something that doesn't, where I could actually give you what it could and then you're always gonna be thinking of me to be like, man, I wanna go back to Brian 'cause eventually I'm gonna need something that his company could do.

I don't know if I answered that very clearly, but I think it's just

Erik Martinez: No, I think you did. I think you're right. Everybody has kind of the traditional used car salesman, but really. If you're doing good sales, you're a problem solver.

Brian Joseph: Correct. Ask more questions.

Erik Martinez: Whether you're selling service or you're selling product direct to a consumer, you're solving some kind of need or want or desire, and you're solving a problem for them.

So, you know, if you're selling garden statuary, which doesn't sound like a need. Nobody needs garden statuary, but we want it, right? We want to have a beautiful [00:05:00] garden, or we identify with a product, whether it's a religious statue or maybe I really like those furry little bunnies or the crazy gnomes.

The gnome thing is a little over the top for me. Cause I talk to some people like, "Yeah, I would have a gnome army in my yard." I'm like, okay - go for it.

Brian Joseph: I've got a sister that's the same way. And it's funny, she'll never listen to this, so she won't know when I do this. So I bought some gnomes and as I travel, I'm gonna start dropping 'em in the mail to her without a return address so she doesn't know where they're coming from. So I got like literally 10 of these gnomes I need to start dropping in the mail as I travel.

It's funny you brought that up as an example.

Erik Martinez: That would be hilarious. So, no I think you're right. Knowing who your customer is, what they need, want and desire, and then aligning your products and your or service around that is really a critical piece.

Brian Joseph: And I think the other principle is on the internal side. I think it's having clear communication with your constituents, whether that be a shareholder, an employee, a [00:06:00] colleague. But so often, and I say this a lot 'cause I serve the nonprofit space.

In the nonprofit space, we're always too polite, right? Well, I don't wanna say something and Erik's going to be offended by that, but I'm actually not doing anybody a favor by being too polite. I always say - we can say things without being combative or as a statement about you. I can actually tell you like, "Hey, your program's not gonna fit my needs, or here's why, or, hey, great that we want to be able to do this and I see where you want to go with the vision of this experiment or whatever we're trying to do, but we don't have the financial resources for it." Or if we do this, it's gonna take our eye off the ball on the things that we already committed to with our board or our customers or whatever.

It's too often we don't have that clear communication. I think it's another core principle I've always tried to have internally, which is just - candid. Be candor and be truthful and sometimes things just don't line up and all those windows have to line up. And I think when you do that, it also helps.

I literally just had a conversation here recently about, when people are no longer a fit for the organization and we put it off as leaders about having that tough [00:07:00] conversation because we don't wanna make it hard on us when actually what we're doing is keeping that person from where they could go find their forever home or what's next for them.

Erik Martinez: I am thoroughly guilty of that.

Brian Joseph: We all are

Erik Martinez: I'm a hundred percent guilty of that. But you're absolutely right. I mean, being clear and candid without being mean. Because I think sometimes people associate those two things together and they're not necessarily true, but all it does, when you don't say something the way you mean it - all you're sending is mixed signals.

Brian Joseph: Well, and then when you think about what I mentioned earlier as leaders, the inner work. So if we have things that maybe I grew up in a house where we were never supposed to disagree, right? So it was like to disagree means I'm gonna create discourse. So my internal biases of things I may not even truly understand about my own personal psyche is I don't wanna create discourse, so I can't speak candidly.

So I go along with things and I'm not speaking my mind because I don't want to upset the apple cart, right? There's all these little things that we gotta kind of continue to peel layer [00:08:00] back of ourselves just in how we interact in human dynamics, but also just in a everyday setting.

Erik Martinez: Yeah, no, I totally agree. So what was a pivotal moment in your leadership journey that shaped your approach to driving business growth, and what key lessons did you learn from that experience?

Brian Joseph: Well there's how much time you got? There's a ton of these.

Erik Martinez: Let's just pick one. One that you're like, Hey, yeah, this was a major turning point in me understanding how to help this business grow. I mean, I know you've done turnarounds, so I'm sure there's great examples from that.

Brian Joseph: Yeah, I mean, I think it was, let's just go with the first turnaround that I did. I think that was a huge pivotal one because I had somebody who was, again, back to my mentor, who was teaching me on a turnaround. And we called him RJ. And what RJ taught me right away was just - you've seen it in business book, confront the brutal facts.

Kicking the can down the road to have the tough conversations is not gonna help anyone. [00:09:00] And when I first started it was like, well that seems drastic. How do we do that? How do we communicate that? And what he really taught me to do was to step back and say, let's look at the entity itself.

Park everything. Park products, park people, park everything. And if we have a chance to step back and kind of have a blank piece of paper, if we were setting this up or if we just bought the assets of this company, how would we set the structure up to make the most sense to with where the market is and the customers are saying?

And then we can build from there. And when you do that, you're free from all the baggage. Because we bring that with. I'll get to how to kind of address it, but to me that was really a pivotal aspect of how I just view things, which is don't get caught.

Because too often it's like, well, man, Erik's the COO and he's not gonna wanna do this to his department, and if I do this and if I suggest this - I'm dealing with all kinds of past history that has given me a skewed reality of where we should actually go. Right?

And I'm coming at it and I'm already boxing myself in. When he taught me to just say, "Stop. [00:10:00] Quit limiting yourself and just how should this look? Then let's poke holes in it." And then you start dialogues from there. People tend to get less defensive. People start to see like, "Wow, if we really step back what this should look like and it allows you to move forward in a much faster and more productive way."

I think one of the reasons I like turnaround is it's, you know, don't ever waste a crisis. Right? It's the aspect of the alternative is everybody gets to go home 'cause we go outta business. When you're in a turnaround, it's not because things are going great, right? It's because things are not going well. There's increased debt, there's customers that are leaving, there's mass exodus of potential key employees.

You're dealing with all kinds of complex things. So it's how do you quickly galvanize the team and in a turnaround situation, that's what it does for you, because those that are still on the ship with you, right? The boat may be going down, but we got a chance. We're still bailing water. We're trying to fill holes and to step out of the noise instead of stepping into all of the, yeah, but the bank says we gotta do this, or we have to do that. Time out.

Let's create some calm here. Let's [00:11:00] paint the picture of where we want to head to. Then we can map the delta. Current reality. True future state of what we want to get to, and now how do we quickly and easily navigate to that? And I think that was really pivotal for me and my viewpoints of not being constrained by all the past noise that we tend to come at it with.

Because we tend to come at it with, here's where I am, what's my next first step to get me to? But it's like we tend to operate from a, let's start with the end in mind and then I'll figure out the next first step right to map me as I go there.

Erik Martinez: Because we all panic to a certain extent, right? So what do we go to? We go to the things we know. So, I need more marketing, or I need more, whatever, .

Brian Joseph: Right. And it can be applied to anything. It doesn't have to just be a turnaround. It can be like, I have a major customer that's, we're gonna lose. If we step back and just start to ask ourselves, why? And don't get defensive. Look at markets - to your whole point about the digital, like what's changing in our world that we have to acknowledge and be aware of?

We can't ignore it. We can't ignore AI right now, oh, that's not gonna happen. But the [00:12:00] fact of the matter is it's gonna impact every single human already is on the planet bar none. That'd be like going back to, you know, sending letters and saying, oh, the Internet's not gonna impact that. We're fine, people are always gonna want to hand write and send letters, like, well, world moves. It changes.

Erik Martinez: Now you can hand write and have somebody send it digitally and make it look like handwriting using AI.

Brian Joseph: Exactly. Exactly. There we go.

Erik Martinez: That's totally true. So before we pivot off of that let's keep on that key lesson. Start with the end in mind. I think sometimes we have to give ourselves space to do that, and I think sometimes when you're in that crisis, it's hard to pull yourself out and give yourself the the space to look at stuff from the top down.

So when you're in that moment and you're having a hard time finding just mental space, right? Or taking yourself out of the daily distractions. What do you recommend people do in that moment?

Brian Joseph: I think remove yourself from the day to day [00:13:00] tasks. We got on this when we were talking about how busy we are, right? And if you're sitting there thinking you're gonna address this when your emails are going off and the phone is ringing, or whatever else you have, you've gotta remove yourself from distraction.

Cause you just need time to think. So for me, I know I think best in front of a whiteboard. I wanna draw it out. I wanna think it out. But if I'm in front of a whiteboard, I never actually get the creative process flowing if I'm constantly trying to respond to an email. Right?

One of the things that I've found is oftentimes I struggle to truly get a creative aspect for me, again, this is just understanding the individuals. I'm better sitting down at either a whiteboard or with a pen and paper and getting my thoughts codified.

If I'm doing it at a computer, I start worrying about like, damn, 365 - my cursor's not down here, and I'm not in the creative flow of problem solving. I'm actually in the problem solving of why isn't word doing what I'm asking it to do. Right? I find for me, really figuring out how I learn and how I think best is key to my next first step. So how do I approach that? Which for me is always [00:14:00] typically whiteboard because I'm just better at that.

If I can have somebody help me whiteboard to ask me questions, even if they don't understand what I'm trying to do as I try to outline thoughts that they just ask me questions. It helps me think through the process. And if I'm alone, I either do it with a whiteboard, but then tend to get to pen and paper.

So I think for people - get outta the noise. There's a million distractions and you've got to be able to find that calm. Cause if your mind's not calm, you're never gonna find the way out. And sometimes we gotta just get out of the depth to look at the way out. And for me that's the big one to start with.

Erik Martinez: Yeah I think that's great. You know, as a digital marketer, I hate to say this, but sometimes it's the digital noise. I mean, I think the digital noise is really exponentially created way more distractions than solutions at the moment. I don't think that's gonna be true forever but I think it's really true right now that the tools we have available to us are constantly talking to us. All the time.

So, you know, turn off the phone and start to think, or do the whiteboard [00:15:00] or heck turn on your phone's recorder and record your thoughts,

Brian Joseph: Correct.

Erik Martinez: Take that, load it up in the chat GPT and have it turn it into a transcription. There's different ways to do it, to your point.

Let's move on to the realm of professional development. I know that your company is building these training programs for executives. How important is ongoing professional development for business leaders?

Brian Joseph: Probably one of the most important things you do. And I think it's important, Eric, because twofold. Like let's talk tactically to begin with. Nonprofit space especially, but again, I came outta the corporate world, private family office, private equity leaders have an outsized impact on everything. And if we don't take care of ourselves, the outsized impact on the rest of the organization is severe.

Predictive Index did a study during COVID and what they found was, don't quote me exact, but these are pretty, pretty damn close, but they're not exact numbers 'cause I'm going off of memory, but they found out [00:16:00] that if a manager or leader is burnt out, roughly call it, 75% of the staff feels the same way.

You can directly correlate that to the Harvard studies if you're burnt out. The loss in productivity, the non-creative aspect, problem solving, everything. All that translates to business outcomes. I don't care if you're selling pens or you're selling a service, like we know that.

But if an executive, or a leader, manager is not burnt out, only like 22% of the staff feels burnt out. You're talking about three and a half to four x delta between these two when you look at the actual numbers.

So as leaders, we listen to these books and we read all these things. Leaders eat last, right? You know, the servant leader, et cetera, et cetera. And we wear like a badge of honor, how much we work and how tired we are and everything else.

But the fact of the matter is, if we don't do the deeper work. If we don't do the professional development to take care of ourselves, we're actually not taking care of the rest of our team. If you work for me. And I'm like, [00:17:00] "Erik, come on. Go do some professional development. Take care of yourself." But I don't do it. You hear what I say, but you watch what I do. So for me, it's critically important not only to demonstrate to our team to help them continue to better themselves, better everything else, but it's also just critically important just as humans, right?

We have, again, we have an outsized impact on ourselves as leaders. So if I run a small department, maybe there's only three people that report to me. I have what we call climate versus the over our culture. But my department then has a culture. But in a broader organization, we call that climate.

And I have an out outside impact on not only those people that are in my department - with the climate that I create - but then my peers, because my department interacts with other departments and we bump up against each other. Right. And if I'm not doing the work to understand- maybe it's back to, "Hey, everybody gets along great" - but because Brian's household never could rock the boat because that was deemed as not okay that my team. Have all these things underneath that we're all nice to each other, but below the waters we're [00:18:00] all just seething and pissed off.

Because we don't know actually how to have tough conversations together or to have conflict without being angry at each other. To resolve things that need to be addressed. We all go through this politeness that just continues forever.

So to me, I think professional development's probably one of the most important things that we need to do. But too often we have things in our society. I mean, how many people are - "Oh, I'm so busy. I got so many things." Again, we do it. We wear it as a badge of honor, how busy we are, but when we actually gotta step back and be like, but am I doing the right things. Am I majoring in the minors? Am I doing the big things that need to be done.

And I think some of these principles are timeless. Professional development, et cetera. I mean, I'm a big Peter Drucker fan. If you read his book, the Effective Executive, at the end of the day, executive leaders in particular, you get paid to do the big stuff, right? And then what, we're always in the weeds. We're always putting out fires. You've had these million conversations.

So for me, I think the professional development aspect is absolutely critical and not only for our own personal wellbeing, but also the [00:19:00] wellbeing of our organizations . And just to demonstrate that, I listen to another podcast maybe six months ago and well-known executive coach, and he was talking.

Basically a similar question, how important it is for leaders to do this work in professional development, et cetera. And he is like, it's critical. But I'll tell you why. It's even more critical that this is the one it tends to get to. And this was during Covid, but these stats were pre covid. And he said he had a call from a well-known software company on the West Coast, and he said it was their HR department, that they were looking at their claims utilizations and their healthcare. And they told this consultant, "We need your help because our use of anti-anxiety and depression medication is up." I think it was like 45%. And he is like, wow. But not for our employees. For our employees kids.

We take this stuff home with us and the impact that we have on our kids, et cetera, is massive. And when we don't do the work, the professional development work, the deeper work, it has [00:20:00] ramifications that we may not even recognize.

Not only at the workplace, which is key, but where we should also care deeply. And when they talk to anybody, what do you care most about your kids? And yet we're passing this on when we don't spend time taking care of ourselves. A little bit of a rant there, but.

Erik Martinez: No, I think it's hugely important. Cause you can't run a small business these days and not run into those situations where that's really likely to happen and be a scenario in your lives.

So let's take that conversation and bring it into the digital world because, you're now purveying digital courses for executives. I saw at some point in time you guys were running live or virtual peer groups, right? There's all these different ways to do professional development these days.

How impactful are the digital forms in your opinion? I mean, you're selling some of this stuff, so you must believe in it, but you know, what's the give and take on digital education, from your perspective?

Brian Joseph: Another a good question. I mean, I think we're getting more [00:21:00] used to this, right? The good thing about the pandemic is it forced all of us really quickly to get used to zoom. We're still figuring it out because you know how it is. It's one thing to be on a Zoom call for 45 minutes or an hour. It's another thing to be in a six hour training course where you're like, wow. Right. I mean,

Erik Martinez: I just did one the other day.

Brian Joseph: And it's just more mentally exhausting because we're all in. Right? With our eyes and our ears. Versus when we're in a room training, we're moving around, we have touch, we have all the different senses that are being engaged.

So it's something we're still figuring out. What's the cadence. I know from my own perspective we've shortened a lot of our time that we keep people active from 90 minutes to two hours. Cause once you get beyond that, the efficacy we're finding just really falls off the cliff.

And I'm sure there's other people who have been much more effective at doing this. We're again, just small trial area. But there's also huge wins in this, right? Like, go back to - I was raised in South Dakota. I'm first generation off the reservation, and part of the reason we moved to digital trainings and stuff at RevGen [00:22:00] was because for nonprofits, a lot of philanthropy is done in urban markets, and candidly, a lot of consulting is also very expensive and if I'm a rural nonprofit on a reservation, I'm probably doing really needed work and doing really good work, and I need the same trainings that my counterparts in New York City or Kansas City, Dallas, LA or pick a city need as well, but I can't get access to that.

The great thing about the digital aspect of now, not only can I get things on the internet. I can go through digital recordings, everything else, but I can also participate live with my peers in other rural markets and other urban markets to have a transfer of knowledge. And I bring a completely different perspective that can actually still be valuable to my counterparts in urban markets that may never otherwise see.

So the digital aspect to me, you know, we have to embrace technology, but we also can actually impact and see more people. So it unlocks a lot of doors. Again, it still has its challenges. What's that combination And then frankly, for us it's also , trying to pull together [00:23:00] in-person trainings of leadership teams now. How many companies do you know, where the leadership teams all in one small geographic area? They're not.

Erik Martinez: It's rare. It's extremely rare. Oh heck, within my less than five person team finding a spot where we are all available at the same time is almost impossible. Within my one, little teeny tiny team. Let's now explode that out to 20 person organizations or a hundred people organizations or a thousand people organizations. It's really difficult because of the demands of us on our time for it to do our jobs is it's really challenging to do that.

You know, it is interesting you talk about the digital stuff. I had a conversation with my wife the other day. She does the the editing of the podcast and she wasn't doing this job until the beginning of this year. So she's had to learn this new tool and stuff.

We record each voice track differently - so your voice track and my voice track are separate. And she's like, " I have this little problem. Where I'm trying to edit, but there's this little [00:24:00] sequencing thing. If I edit you and somebody else, the tracks get off" and she's like," I figured out how to do it."

And there's just all this plethora of information online that I can go and figure out and learn how to use the tool better - that isn't necessarily coming just from the developer of the tool. And she was like, "That was fantastic." Her eyes lit up and you know the whole nine yards, and you're like, "Oh yeah, we couldn't have done that 10 years ago."

Brian Joseph: Right. Well, and now overlay AI with it. Where all of a sudden you start to have these questions that come up. So for instance, I'm working with an organization outta California. They do curriculum and they train teachers, et cetera. It's called Collaborative Classroom if anybody wants to look 'em up. They've been developing an AI tool to assist teachers- especially new teachers - when they have questions around different things that come up in their classroom.

What they've done, and I know a little bit about this, not deep, but they realized they had all these years and years of data, these questions that these teachers have and that they could answer them and utilize AI where these teachers could then access because especially if you're a new teacher in a [00:25:00] classroom, there's probably 10 things that come up pretty regularly. But if you don't know it, you don't know it.

Now having this data that's synthesized for you that you can learn in a digital environment through a, AI aspect to it, it's pretty impressive versus having to wait. "Hey, in six months we're gonna have this professional development. This person's gonna come in and they're gonna give you this training, and hopefully they can get to your questions as you get to it."

It just shortens that amount of time. Like I have an immediate need. I can access information that's not just Google it. Now I got 10 million hits on. How do I sort through all this stuff, but actually get to things that are relevant and timely for what I need, and I can actually put it to work today or in 10 minutes or tomorrow.

Erik Martinez: You make a good point about that. I just formed a relationship with a company called Micro Casting and they're doing kinda what you just said, but for the retail space. So we just did the survey and one of the things that came out in the buyer behavior survey.

They hate chatbots. Retail chatbots are [00:26:00] horrible. And I'm sure you've had that experience. I know I've had that experience. You're like, I want item number, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, I don't know what that is. What? Come on man. It's your item number. So they've built this tool that can basically take a data feed or crawl your website. Take all the information that you already have and integrate it, and then you can train it and it will start having a conversation with you like you're asking questions about how to use the product and it will bring that information to you and share it with you, and then recommend, here's the pieces, parts that you need.

Like, wow, that's really cool. So, you're right there. There's great uses of technology that we can bring into professional development or stuff. I know we went off on a little bit of a tangent, but I think it's really important to know that there's lots of access being created to learn. And if you really wanna spend the time, you could learn just about anything these days.

Brian Joseph: Yeah, and what's the balance then [00:27:00] become? It's between digital self-learning and then. So with my main company, RevJen, what we try to do is bring executive teams together to go through the training together. And I always say common language, common framework, but dedicated time. And there's something about and this is even pre AI and all that stuff, there's something about not having a trainer model, right? So it's one thing if you watch something online and then try to come teach me, it's another of how do we take digital assets and then have you and I go through together so we're having a collective shared experience, even if it's through Zoom.

So there's these trade offs. If it's full digital, no interaction, even if I have AI and can ask questions, I'm gonna take in a certain amount. But then there's other trainings where it's like, yeah, but if it's a leadership team and I want to, you know, quote unquote speaking from the same handbook, what's said and what's heard is the same thing. Then there's a combination of that.

So I think it's which levers do we pull on to get the outcomes we want? And it's like anything, there's always trade-offs. Full digital, full access. They can watch at 2:00 [00:28:00] AM if they want, but the efficacy may not be as high versus in person harder, logistically, a little bit more time, a little bit dedication, but the efficacy's higher, right?

So what are those trade offs? But now you have a structured time 'cause you have a facilitator in the room. So literally, if you can't show up on Tuesday at one, you have to watch a recording of it.

Erik Martinez: Yeah no that's fantastic. Let's talk a little bit about networking. 'cause everybody talks about networking and I think it means something different to all sorts of people. But the end of the day, for me, my definition is, hey, you know, I was lucky to be part of this amazing heroic cohort and got to meet Brian Joseph, who we would have probably never crossed paths in any other circumstance. Right? And we're building a friendship and relationship. And I guess the question for me is how do these networks. And the concept of networking impact business growth.

Brian Joseph: I would say huge. And the reason I say that Erik, 'cause I've always said people do business with people they [00:29:00] know and like, but what if I never get a chance to know you? Or what if I never get invited to the table? I think networking is so massive because so often that's where our referrals come from.

Even if I get to know you, you may not be quote unquote my customer, but we start to know other one another. We form a relationship. I learn what you do and, three weeks from now I'm talking to somebody who needs, you know, your services. Yeah, I know somebody. Right? I think networking is hugely important. I think it comes more natural for some than others. I mean, I'm an introvert, so it always takes me a little while or I have to be very intentional about it. If you're a Ted Lasso fan, I try to use the Ted Lasso thing.

Right. Like I try to be like, be curious, just ask questions and if you start to learn about people and they're gonna wanna learn about you. So that's kind of how you and I met. We we're in the Heroic thing and we started just learning about one another and then we get the privilege of it. If you are curious and you get to hear somebody who's talking a little bit about their speech, you're like, that's fascinating. Tell me more about that. Right. And you see it at lunch and everything else.

But I think that's the big thing. I think networking, it's hard [00:30:00] for some people 'cause like myself, it may be introverted, but what I find is if I'm intentional about putting myself in situations where I'm around others, I'll become more comfortable. And even though it may not be quote unquote filling my battery. So I may be depleting because I'm in a social setting. If I want to be successful in what else I do, it's gonna save me energy otherwise. And then I end up always meeting people I really enjoy and putting 'em together with other people.

And anytime you connect two people, even if it's not for you, all three of you win. So for me, I think networking is absolutely huge because I think that's where the vast majority of business comes from.

Erik Martinez: So let's bring that into the realm of digital networking. I read this interesting LinkedIn article and I can't remember the author's name, it was like a week ago and I've read so many since. But it was CEO of a company and she was talking about the fact that on places like LinkedIn, that networking feels contrived. We all know, I mean, we're all somewhat guilty of this too, right? Like you go on LinkedIn, " Oh, that's somebody I might want to [00:31:00] network with." So you just send them a invite, but you don't send 'em a note. You don't give 'em any context. You don't comment on their posts, you don't read their stuff. You don't learn anything else about them.

I actually took a moment a few weeks ago to go clean out the whole unpaid attention to LinkedIn requests, and I probably went through 200 in an afternoon and I probably accepted 30 of 'em. And then I reached out to a couple of those people like, Hey, let's set up a call. I wanna learn a little bit more about your business. And I actually ended up getting some more podcast guests, which was great. It was a great conversation.

But how do you think digital networking helps in business and what are the challenges with it? I mean, I just described some, but from your perspective, because you're in a people related business and it feels like your business and all of our businesses are people related, right? Whether we're selling to other businesses or we're selling direct to consumer, we're talking about relationships. What do you see as the pitfalls and [00:32:00] opportunities of digital networking?

Brian Joseph: Let's start with pitfalls I think it's what we all experience, right? Digital network is hard. And I'm just gonna go with LinkedIn 'cause I don't do Facebook, so I don't know a ton of networking on there. But, my guess is it's very similar.

But LinkedIn being a business one, I think the standard thing is exactly what you hit on. People just send in connection requests no note, or they send one with a note trying to pitch you in a note. Or they connect with you with no comment, and then within 24 hours you got this six paragraph thing inside of LinkedIn trying to sell you whatever. Obviously, not effective, right? Like we all know that. You may get a lead. Maybe it's a numbers game for them 'cause I'm sure they have metrics on what it is.

I think the more effective aspect of digital networking is like what we did met you, talked to you, one of us was intentional about going on LinkedIn and connecting, just saying, "Hey, great to meet you." And so now all of a sudden it's made it personal. Right? So I had met you somewhere and now we've connected and I think that carries over then to like, what do they have on LinkedIn? First in your network, then second. Yeah. Third, whatever. Like how many six degrees of [00:33:00] separation.

And I think where I've had success with the digital networking is when I want to get to somebody who may be in two or three in my network and I find out who else has kind of connected them. I just do a little bit of research to see and then I'll hit you up like, Hey Erik, I noticed that you're connected with Beth. Do you know her well? Because here's what I'm trying to do and I would love to get connected if you'd be willing to make the connection. And when people do that - very effective. Like I've had good success. I can't speak across the board, but I think it's the intentionality of - who do you get to make that recommendation?

Right, because I've had people approach me and ask me to do that and I'm like, "I don't know so and so that well, it came through a connection. I didn't really build a relationship. We were just at an event together and hit me up." Versus I do know him well. I'd be like, yeah, I'd be happy to introduce you cause I can connect you. I think those are the things that's the intentionality. But it takes work just like in person networking, right? It takes work and I know people have been successful in building, then you're building a brand. Like you're building a broad network.

You want more people to connect with 'cause that's gonna open up the [00:34:00] top of the funnel, so to speak. I think there's different strategies, but I think digital networking is the intentionality about what are you trying to accomplish and where are you trying to get to. Just like anything.

Erik Martinez: Yeah, I think you're right. It's just, it's so interesting 'cause I'll admit it. I don't love sales. I'm a problem solver, right? You throw a problem at me, I'm like, " Oh yeah, great. Let's talk about that." But me going out and reaching out to other people is actually very challenging for me. It's not something that's natural. I'm a super introvert. I was definitely that person growing up. And still am to a certain extent. So, it's interesting to see this digital world, which it's kind of safe. But on the other hand, like you said, if you don't go and have some intentionality and cultivate your network very carefully.

I see some people that are out there like I've got 6,000 followers, but they're not posting any content. They're just going out and it's a numbers game. And then you see people who have 6,000 followers, but they're publishing content every day. They're asking questions of people and [00:35:00] they're doing what you said.

Well. Hey, is there any last piece of advice you'd like to leave the listening audience? You know, it could be on any topic because I think we've covered professional development, we've talked about networking, we've talked about business growth in the concept related to your core principles what would you like to say to the audience of this?

Brian Joseph: I gotta go with what you just said, man. So this has drilled into my head early on, which is nothing happens without a sale. My mentor used to tell me that all the time 'cause it's easy to get caught up in, oh my goodness, like I'm comfortable with operations, finance. We can do spreadsheets and all this stuff. And he always wants to tell me if I still got a picture hanging right here that he gave me. It literally says, what have I done to create revenue today? And the whole aspect of that, Erik was always meant to be. What can we as an organization do to remove roadblocks so our salespeople can be successful?

Because as soon as they get somebody to say yes, whether it's a product or service, and I don't care if you're retail, insurance, to you name it. That then triggers everything else. Because as soon as I get a sale, that leads to fulfillment. [00:36:00] That leads to billing that leads to operations, customer service. It takes all of those things.

So for me, I think the biggest thing is, again, my company teaches revenue generation and sustainability, which is another word for sales. Everything begins with creating a customer, right? How do we create a customer? And from there everything else will flow.

And I think that for me is the thing that I always just love to remind people versus I use the cartoon, a lot of my trainings and stuff where it literally says, "Hey, there's 10 minutes left. Let's do sales strategy." I guess that's it, because we don't wanna talk about it, right? Like that's the messy stuff. Like, "Oh, that's a salespeople problem, let's talk big stuff." That's fun. So anyway, those are, I would say, nothing happens without a sale man.

Erik Martinez: Yeah. I think that's really funny. I was having a conversation with a client earlier today, and she just went through a little bit of a rebrand. She's like, it's a little slow right now. I'm like, oh, yeah, that's normal. Coming out of a rebrand, we need to start, promoting and, she was like, you gotta remember, there's people at the other end of this. You just went through a rebrand, so we've gotta tell that story. Why you're doing this? What's the [00:37:00] what's different today? And invite them to come along that journey.

And the good news is she's got a really loyal core falling. She sells jewelry. But whether you're selling a statue, or something else, at the end of the day, there's somebody on the other end of that experience. And so how do you want them to feel?

Brian Joseph: And what I think what you hit on there is that story. And I think that's the thing that, again, back to heroic, we just did - a powerful speech can weave a powerful story. And I've talked about this here in the last couple years. You know, stories do everything. They help people feel better. They help people challenge their conventional thinking. Stories topple governments, like when you start to think of narratives that are put together, through history, it's done through stories and it's hardwired in our DNA, we used to literally tell stories around campfires, right?

This is how knowledge was passed down before we could write and everything else. So I think what you just touched on there with the story stuff. Is so key too 'cause it does, leads to sales. But I think it's the story aspect that you gotta be good at telling stories.

Erik Martinez: So Brian, [00:38:00] if somebody wants to reach out, what's the best way?

Brian Joseph: You can definitely shoot me an email. It's B Joseph, B-J-O-S-E-P-H at RevJen, R-E-V-J-E-N dot Revjen group.com. Or else eight one seven two seven one zero eight eight eight's my cell phone number, shoot a text or whatnot that may come back to bite me, but you know, there you go.

Erik Martinez: We'll put that in the show notes and we will send that out to LinkedIn.

Brian Joseph: Exactly. No, those, there's my email and this is my phone number. If people always wants to read out or I'll go to my website, www.revjen.com.

Erik Martinez: Oh, awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time and your insights. It's fun to sometimes get out of the digital day-to-day nuances of email marketing or paid campaigns and talk about the leadership business side of the equation. So I really appreciate your time and your expertise.

Brian Joseph: Thanks for having me, man. I hope something I said was helpful with someone.

Erik Martinez: All right everybody. That's it for today's episode of the Digital Velocity Podcast. Thank you for [00:39:00] listening and have a nice day.