Thank you for joining me. Megan, thank you for joining. I don't think I need to do a big introduction because most people will know you. You're the CEO of Refine Labs, previously the COO of Refine Labs.
Refine Labs being the company that Chris Walker started, I think, in 2019 or so, B2B demand, gen, go-to-market agency. So thank you for joining. And I wanted to maybe start, I mainly want to talk about LinkedIn marketing, personal branding, founder of their marketing with you. But maybe I'm curious, what would you say was the biggest challenge for you transitioning from COO to CEO?
Okay, cool. Great place to start. I think, honestly, I think that one of the biggest challenges in this transition has been having to be really intentional about not being the COO anymore. I joined Chris so early on in the Refine Labs journey back in 2020.
And there were just a couple of customers, a couple of employees. And so we really built the agency together from the ground up. And I was in the primary operating role for that entire time, you know, full, you know, three years. And it is really hard to kind of stop doing a lot of the things that you've been doing for so long.
It's not like I went to a different company and was a CEO and had a fresh start. So it was really taking the mindset shift, really finding the right people that could step in and take on my former responsibilities and shifting into taking on, you know, CEO type responsibilities. And so it's a daily challenge because I have been at this place for so long. So it's just easy for me to fall back into doing the COO stuff.
And so it's a daily effort to make sure that I'm being really intentional with I'm spending my time and I'm delegating, I'm trusting the team to, you know, move things forward from a day to day perspective so I can be thinking ahead and keeping us moving forward. What was in your COO role, your number one priority and what is now your number one priority as the CEO? So it, my number one priority changed a lot over the timeframe that we were in because the company went through many, many phases over a very short period of time. So to give you some examples though, like over the course of that three year period, my primary priority could have been sales, customer acquisition, could have been recruiting, we're a service business, so we need people to acquire customers as we were scaling as well, recruiting for even non-service delivery positions that we felt we needed within the organization.
You know, at one point we were over 120 people and it was really around how do I manage scaling the company so quickly and implementing different operating rhythms so that we could all be moving in the same direction and working together effectively. I think priority was always really kind of staying aligned with Chris and making sure that we were moving his vision forward while keeping the organization stable, growing, delivering for our customers. So I think all of those were priorities at different stages over the course of my tenure as COO and as CEO, I am still actually primarily responsible for customer acquisition. So growing the company is still one of my priorities, but of course now being more future focused and being more long-term outlooks on thinking of what's next, how are we, we've prided ourselves on being the pioneer in B2B marketing and with all of the advent of AI and all of these different things that are true, how are we thinking about continuing to evolve our philosophy with a changing landscape that is existing and ensuring that we are continuing to hold that position as the innovators in B2B marketing.
Working closely with Chris and other people on our team to really define what that looks like. How? It seems like, I mean, it looks, one of my guesses was that previously as the COO, you weren't at all very much focused on customer acquisition and that now it is one of your core responsibilities, but it sounds like actually even previously that was still a big part of your role. I've been selling for Refi Labs since summer of 2020.
I've never stopped. Wow. Like you took the first demo? Like you were the VP sales or?
I mean, Chris hired me in the summer. I started on August 3rd. I took a sales call that week. I closed my first customer in week three.
I serve as customer. So, you know, we just, we don't waste any time. And on the demand gen side, let's say, it does seem like you've been ramping up your own content and your own presence, let's say, on LinkedIn and guessing on other podcasts. I mean, coming on shows like this one, it seems like you've put a push behind that.
Is that, is that correct? Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's actually interesting to take a look at my, like how I use LinkedIn over the course of the last four years, because it actually changed quite a bit. And I like to explain this to people because it's really important to be really clear on what your goals are with LinkedIn and your goals should inform what your actual content strategy is.
So, I was actually beginning to be active on LinkedIn before I ever joined Refine Labs. This was back in 2019. I was the COO of a different company. It's actually how Chris and I, Chris, like reached out and dm'd me one day and was like, Hey, let's podcast together back in like 2019 before he was a LinkedIn celebrity.
And we, that's kind of how we met and started to build a relationship. I was at the time posting a lot about customer success and sales and operations. So that was really my core focus. And I was also using it to recruit people for the company that I was at at that point in time.
Interestingly enough, our company actually got acquired by WeWork, which was sort of cool until it wasn't cool and like we were bubble exploded. I know a different story for a different day. Yeah, check out the documentary on Hulu. And I ended up leaving that position after some of the crazy stuff went down.
And I just went on to LinkedIn and was like, I'm a free agent, like looking for my next role and I never updated my resume, never applied to a job. Two weeks after that post, I had like 10 meetings with founder CEOs for different COO positions. I got three offers. I took my next job.
So, you know, like I had an original purpose for LinkedIn, then I was like, all right, now I'm going to use a time job. I ended up working at a company for a short period of time that was negatively impacted by the pandemic. And then that was when Chris reached out again and asked if I would sort of join him at Refine Labs. So when I first started at Refine Labs, I had some experience in marketing, but my predominant experience was COO company operations, sales, customer success.
That was the primary like core focus areas of my background. So when I came to Refine Labs, I like to say I kind of quickly, or not quickly, I've become a marketer over the last three to four years. And initially, I was just looking to continue to build up my LinkedIn presence and my audience. But I was talking about the topics that I felt like I was an expert in, right?
Whether that was customer success or sales, as I was learning more and more about the marketing world, I was sharing those learnings as well. And early days, I was posting with Chris both to try to build awareness for Refine Labs and drive some inbound. But one of my initial priorities was recruiting. And so I was like, I'm going to use the same tactic to attract candidates to us, right?
So I started thinking about what it was like to work at Refine Labs, what our values were, how the type of conditions we want to create in our workplace. And it was really successful in really building not only our brand for customers, but our employer brand. And it all came around that, no? Was it you?
Yeah, we had a podcast for a period of time called Talent Destination where we really died into that. But basically, me and one other person probably hired our first 60, 70 people. And then we had hired in Jessica Winder, who was my co-host on Talent Destination and then another person on our people team, Jordan Anderson. And then they helped us hire sort of the next 60 people to get us up to that 120 employees at our sort of highest, our biggest size at the time.
And so really interesting how you can use the LinkedIn platform, the same fundamental marketing and content strategies, not only to acquire customers, but to recruit really amazing people. And that's one of the things I'm most proud of. Like we've had the best marketers out there come through our company and had gone on to be CMOs and other, you know, start their own businesses and do a bunch of amazing things. And so while I was COO, I was focusing on that.
I was of course talking about marketing here and there, but more so really talking about topics that I was very passionate about coming into the CEO position. We knew as Chris was starting to also talk about his new company, Pisseto. We wanted to make sure that we were being strategic and not impacting our pipeline for the Refined Labs Agency. So I really leaned in and started embracing a lot more classic B2B demand and marketing content, leveraging videos, leveraging assets from our content product, the vault.
And that's really, I think, what you've seen this year. But you know, Chris, I'll get credit to Chris. He's way more consistent than me. I've had a couple of weeks off because there's just been some urgent priorities that have come into business.
And so it's like, okay, I'll come back to this. Our pipeline is doing fine. I'm not overly obsessed about posting every day. I want to make sure that every time I post there's value.
And I'm not afraid of taking breaks when I need to. And I recognize like sometimes it's more important to actually be running your business and doing the work. And it doesn't have to negatively impact your ability to generate pipeline too. So I know like the cloud like post every day, never miss a beat.
And I don't necessarily agree with that perspective. That's a lot of. No, I love it. I think maybe the analogy is that LinkedIn is really just a 24 seven networking event.
And so when you go to networking event, you also need to know what your goal is. Are you trying to find customers or partners or find talent or do you want to just explore and you find opportunities? But unless you have that goal, you're not going to do the right activities and have the right types of conversations. Interesting.
Yeah, I do agree with the consistency thing. I think you can post five times a week and it's just not going to do anything for you because it's all fluff and high level and not really adding value. And then if you make sure that you just focus on quality, you know, one or two posts a week and then skipping two weeks is totally fine. So how do you think about, I mean, Chris obviously is a big brand in this space.
You know, everyone knows how do you think about becoming the face of the company? Is that even a goal or should Chris always be the association or given that he's now kind of doing different things or multiple things, you now need to become the face of the company? Like how are you thinking about that? Yeah, it's a really great question.
So this is how I think about it. I don't, I personally just don't have a lot of ego. And so I don't really think it's about me. And I don't, my goal is not I want Megan Bowen to be the face of our bi labs.
That's not the goal with what I'm doing on LinkedIn. We're always going to benefit from the audience that Chris has cultivated his content strategy, you know, for the record, refine lab still behind the scenes, we power and support a ton of that existing content strategy that exists today, right? He's obviously driving the most important components of it with his, you know, his point of view, his thoughts, his examples, the experience he brings to the table. But we have a very well oiled machine of content strategies, video editors, producers, podcast managers, right that are that so he can just go to go to his podcast studio, record, and doesn't really have to do much else.
And then he gets all of this stuff that he can then start posting on LinkedIn. And part of it is like, hey, that clearly is a primary driver of inbound the refine lab. So we are going to keep that content engine going. I know Justin had some questions about that.
So we could also dig into some details when you're ready, and you can, you know, can be there. But then from my perspective, I know I've developed a good following. Most of them are in the marketing space because I really was intentional about that starting four years ago. I get DMs on LinkedIn for new clients interested in working with us.
And so the approach that I take is, and this is kind of like early days refine labs when we had almost everyone at the company posting about what we were doing, right? So I'm just one of many team members at the company that's talking about the latest content asset that we've released to the vault, an interesting insight that we've learned, reinforcing our company's strategic narrative. I have a lot of personal passions around leadership development and personal development. And I get a lot of feedback from LinkedIn that they like that content from me.
Maybe that's not directly related to B2B marketing, but people want to learn more, right? And by default become affiliated with the company that I'm associated with, right? So I mix up my content. I'm not every post is about B2B marketing.
And my goal isn't to be the face. My goal is to lead by example so that the rest of the company feels good about posting and to be one part of the marketing strategy that's ultimately driving the inbound demand for our services. I'm just curious how like ballpark number do you think of your own, let's say LinkedIn content being on podcasts, et cetera, like is it like 1%, is it like 20% of, you know, like your inbound, your demand, the revenue, like give me a ballpark idea of what, you know, what a magnitude we're talking about here. Yeah, it's a good question.
It's really hard to say a lot of our self-reported attribution will just say LinkedIn, you know, we certainly have ones that we'll call out Chris by name. I take every sales call. So one of the first things I do is I always ask kind of an open ended question of like, you know, I mentioned, I saw you, I'm not a about a show about LinkedIn, like, tell me a little bit more about that. And qualitatively, you know, of course, everyone's following Chris and, you know, listening to the revenue, idols podcast, but even like Simcoe coming on at the beginning of this, like I've been following you both for years and I've been following the journey.
And now I'm at the right company and it's the right time. I think I might want to hire an agency and I think you guys are going to be the best one. And so it's hard to say like an exact percentage, but even the ones that sort of say LinkedIn or Chris, and it's not just me too. It's like, oh, you know, we've seen Ashley, Lou and Evan Hughes and all the other people on your team posting, right?
And so just like everything in B2B marketing, it's good to be tracking like the core channels or things that are influencing it. But we all know the reality is there's like five to 10 things that they saw, right? That brought them in. So I'm not super obsessed with like trying to get credit for some percentage.
I know that this philosophy works and I'm doing my part to, you know, to build the brand and to acquire customers. All right, let's dive into Dave's question here and then Justin will jump into your questions. Dave asks, how do you convince your client CEO to post on LinkedIn? It's a great question.
So actually I personally do a lot of these sessions with our clients as well. And so there's a couple of things. So number one is we try to provide a lot of really concrete examples of successful CEOs adopting the strategy and explaining to them what the financial return on that activity is. When you're speaking to any CEO, like coming at it with almost like a business case or sort of the data backed argument is really key.
The other thing is, you know, this is interesting with the dynamic of me as the CEO now and Chris, the real way that this is the most successful is when you have the true subject matter expert as the primary presence that's evangelizing the company on LinkedIn. So Chris is an interesting example. He was the founder and he was the CEO for a period of time, but now he's not, but he's still having the same impact, right? So it doesn't always need to be the CEO.
What it's really about is who is the right person that has really compelling thought leadership, points of view, differentiated thinking who has some of like the X factor to bring to the table to really command and audience and drive interest. And so in many cases, it is the CEO. Sometimes it's not. So it's also like, remember what your goal is.
And it's not like this cookie cutter approach. Every single CEO should post on LinkedIn every day and do this, right? It's like, okay, we want to acquire customers. You should have an organic content strategy.
As your founder, CEO, your evangelist and subject matter expert, or is that someone else on the team? Is it a different co-founder? Is it another individual with a different title? And even if you have that person doing it, take the example with Chris and I would say, Chris is really the subject matter expert, like the visionary marketer, but I can still post great content coming from me authentically about V to be marketing to support that, but in a different way than he is.
So that's a thing with like the LinkedIn echo chamber. Sometimes I think people is just like, oh, there's only one way to do it. And everybody should just do it just like this. And it's again, it's like, okay, let's look at your situation.
Should you as the CEO be doing this or not? Now, if it is the CEO, CEOs are busy and this might be the same way into Justin's question. Like, if you have a CEO that is the right person, they are willing, they, okay, yes, I want to do this. I just don't have a lot of time.
I need support, right? Do this on an ongoing basis where I'm personally not spending hours and hours a day doing it. So I don't want me to just kind of like roll in. Go for it.
I love like all your experience running these live events. I love it. You're like, let's say. So yeah, we'll go into that.
So Justin, this is for you. I think it sounds like you're on the hook for supporting your CEOs and founders and to get some content out there. And so the first thing that I like to understand is, is the, are the people that you're supporting? Do they have really unique points of view?
Do they have really interesting things to say? If they do not, this is a tough question. But if they do not, that's when you need to take a, take some stock and really understand, okay, I could go through the motions and do the playbook. But if the actual content isn't high quality, it's not going to have the impact that I want.
And if it's not the CEO or whoever, if that's okay, then who can you find that can evangelize your company's category, your problem, your solution, et cetera. So let's say, let's say for the sake of this conversation, we found the right person would say it's the CEO, they're, they're bought in, but they definitely need a system and they need help. So at one point, you're Megan, because I think sometimes they do have a point of view, but especially if they sell into enterprise, oftentimes they're not willing to be a little spicy or ruffle some feathers and they're just, they're not willing to put those strong points of use out there. So you also need that.
You need a strong point of view and then someone who's willing to actually put that out there. Absolutely. And there's a way to talk about spicy or controversial topics in a way that is totally respectful, right? And so it's like, it's not an either or and something I also think that can be lacking from LinkedIn sometimes is like the nuance.
Like when you think about a lot of these thought leaders and a lot of the things that people are trying to communicate, people trying to distill it down into the simplest and clearest points, which is good in some ways, but it also can strip out like the complexities or the nuances of the situation. If you are selling into the enterprise, all of those little things matter a lot. And actually that's a goldmine of really rich content that you can be thinking about how to communicate the nuances and the differences over time. And that's going to be what builds your credibility and your expertise.
So let me give you a framework to think about when you have a CEO or a person that is willing to do this. They don't have a ton of time. How can you think about designing a system to get them to talk about really interesting content so that you can help them come up with like a talent, a content calendar of their posts and different assets that they can use. So the classic playbook that we ran at Refine Labs that works are still really, really well.
And this is what Chris and I did in the early days is set up a weekly live event. Kind of like what you're doing here, right? During this live event, your subject matter expert can open with a 15 to 20 minute, almost like monologue, little keynote on a particular topic that they're fired up about that's top of mind, that they just had an experience with one of their customers and you can invite people. You can invite your target customers to this event and you can invite them like you're doing here to ask questions.
All of this is recorded and you basically have an hour of recorded content, answering questions that your customers care about from someone who is an expert or a thought leader in the space. You can now take that hour long event recording, put it on YouTube, publish it to a podcast, clip up 10 micro videos, throw up on YouTube shorts, use the 10 videos on LinkedIn. Each 10 of videos will have their own distinct point that they're making. Pair that up with some text that kind of explains what's going on in the video.
And you do this one live event and you basically have content for podcasts, YouTube and LinkedIn for a week. And you can just literally rinse and repeat that same motion. And then when you think about what does the CEO really need to do? He needs to show up to this event.
He needs to have something interesting to say and he needs to be willing to spend 30 to 60 minutes a day, like taking the content that you're feeding him or her and spending a little bit of time on drafting a post. Now, you know, just a minute. Oh, I'm kind of doing it for them. What I recommend in that case is cool.
Do some ghost writing, ghost write the post in the video, but encourage the CEO to do a once over so that it comes through in his tone. Chris writes all of his actual LinkedIn posts. He gets a ton of help with all the videos and all the different assets that he posts. But developing your own unique voice is really important.
And so that's where you want just the CEO to be focused on the actual content that's going to be discussed being that voice on the event. If you don't want to do an event, just hop on zoom and record him and you ask questions and then clip up the same videos, right? So you can even work up to the event if you feel like it that's too overwhelming initially. The other thing that we used to do early days was we would take free consulting calls with people and we would say, Hey, we're not going to charge you for this.
We'll give you free consulting, but we want to record this and we're going to put it on our podcast and because other people are probably going to have questions and I said, people were like, cool, I'll take free consulting. You can record it. I don't care. And so those are just some really easy ways to do that.
The other piece then is how how is the CEO or the thought leader of Central Better X for how are they making sure that they are having time to to continue to evolve their thoughts and their content because that's when it becomes the richest and you'll see when I take breaks, it's because you know what? The business needed me these last two weeks. So I was I was really busy from nine to five and I'm not going to throw up a shitty I'm not going to throw up a shitty LinkedIn post. I'm going to wait until I have some time and you know what though?
Usually I get some great content ideas when I'm in the fray. So what I'll say to you for CEOs or people just getting started post once a week, post twice a week, post three times a week, doesn't have to be five days a week. And you can work up to that. The other thing that everybody always forgets, you have to have a connection strategy that you are deploying alongside.
If you post something through a personal LinkedIn profile and you're not actively adding connections of your target market, the people that you want to see the content are not going to see the content. This is why people hire refined labs because you can pay for the privilege to guarantee distribution to your target market through paid advertising. But that's the other piece of it, right? So how are you sending five connection requests a day to the people that are in your market?
And how are you doing that consistently? And then I would say commenting on other people's posts in your space is hugely underwritten. Number one, there's like good karma and reciprocity. If you're commenting on others posts and they'll do the same for you.
Number two, your target market will see your engagement with other posts and can. And that's another way, another touch point to build credibility. So all of those things are kind of part of the process. I'll stop talking again for a second.
I love it. Just follow up questions from your side. So what do you follow up questions? How much time do we have this going?
Go for it. That's really, really good. Highlighted a lot of, I think gaps, because this is again, very new to me. I think a lot of the way we've been doing this is like feeding the CEO, all of the marketing content say this, that hasn't been a really two-way communication where the CEO is giving up to the hot takes.
He literally, yeah, here's my login post on my behalf. And there's a gap in authenticity, I think. And I know that's why this is struggling. I'm giving the hot takes.
I'm like, I don't have the voice that you have. So anyway, just thank you for this perspective. I think it's going to be really helpful. Yeah.
And sometimes CEOs don't believe that they have a hot take or a unique point of view. And that's why I say, hey, give me 30 minutes. I'm going to ask you a set of questions. I'm going to prompt you.
Let's see what comes out of the jam session together. And it takes a ton of practice. I think Chris is very well-spoken and on point for all of his podcasts today. That's a years of practice.
And how many events like this did we do where there was two people attending? And we do it every week because I'm like, we're going to ton of content out of this, no matter how many people show up. So the more the merrier, but that's not exact. But if we have low attendance, we're still achieving a lot of goals.
And the regular practice and talking with your market also uncovers new and interesting hot takes and things that people care about and want to share about. I'm going to add one more point and then I have a bunch of follow up questions for you, Megan. I would also, and this is what comes back to what you said with like building the business case. I think just before any of these, the CEO or whoever that person is just needs to see this as a priority and as something important and something that matters and has an impact.
Because otherwise getting them to comment and engage and write their own content and post and show up to the weekly thing, it's not going to happen. Right. If they think it's like a box checking exercise of like a marketing team tells me I need to do this. Like they need to see the connection, how we're doing this and commenting and engaging and writing and putting out their thoughts as an impact on the business and the growth.
Well, the live events, Megan, I'm just curious because you guys have done so many and we talked about kind of live attendance. I mean, and I feel like this feeds into kind of your suggestion for the CEO, like it's so hard to get people to show up. How do you have any tips? Yeah, it's a great, it's a great question.
So yeah, we had our best attendance, I would say like, you know, 2020 and 2021 and it's important to recognize that a global pandemic was happening and nobody could leave their house. And so yeah, people were joining zoos. There wasn't anything better to do. So we obviously did promotion, right?
We would promote it on LinkedIn. We promote it to our database. We would promote it in like custom podcast intros. So you should think about your promotion strategy and make sure you're getting the word out about how we can subscribe.
The other thing is really thinking about the right time. What is the right day and time where people aren't busy? The original time slot for demand gen live was actually 730 Eastern time on Tuesdays. We weren't interrupting a workday, maybe the tail end of the workday for people on the west coast in the US, but we have really good attendance there.
We've then moved the time sort of like midday on a Tuesday and attendance is consistent, but not as big as it was during that pandemic phase when it was in the evening. The other thing though is again, the live attendance itself is not necessarily the most important day. But one thing I will say though that we did for a while was we would email like the list of people that would typically register for events the day before and we would kind of give a teaser about the content that was going to be covered. And Chris was really good about identifying topics that were really hot topics at the time.
And so that's another way to like draw people in is like let them know what they're going to learn about. We always did those, you know, AMAs. And so people really a lot of people would come because they would want to be like, okay, this is my situation at my current company. Da da da da da.
What would you do if you were me? And so almost like kind of getting a little bit of that free consulting in the event setting. So those are things to think about, but I wouldn't obsess with trying to drive like a huge amount of attendance as long as you do all the follow up for the event, right? How would you consult me on?
So I do this every week, but it's always an interview. So I always have a guest and I kind of hear now and start myself a little bit to maybe get some content for myself, but it's really the guest and the interview. And I've been thinking a little bit about like the solo thing, like having like a, I don't know, 15, 20 bit that I prepare, but then I'm like, I mean, people are showing up because you're interesting and you're a cool guest and you're run the big company. If it's just like me, Finn talking is like, then really no one will show up.
So like, how would you tell me to think about that? Yeah. And so it's a great question. And it was why when we had the DGL format, it was really intentional.
Chris was sort of the like main speaker and I was almost like host moderator. And so the goal of the event was how can we get Chris to talk as much as possible? Because we're going to put this on the podcast. We're going to clip a bunch of content.
So in this case, I would, you know, I'm probably talking up all the airtime, right? On this particular podcast. So if you want to think about, dude, how can I evolve my own live event strategy? So I become the main character in my weekly show.
I would think about, is there someone that, you know, maybe it is a, a well-known guest that helps you draw attendance into the event, but maybe you format the conversation completely differently. Maybe you do open with a five to 10 minute monologue or, you know, little, little talk about something that's really top of mind for you. One thing that I do if I do have a guest on our podcast and I'm sort of interviewing them, I'm very intentional about when I'm about to ask them a question, I basically say, Hey, we're going to talk about this topic. This is what I think about this topic.
I'm going to share my perspective for as long as I need to get my point out, then I will ask you what you think, right? And then we can actually have a really great back and forth where I'm like, Oh, I didn't think of it that way. And like what you said, just made me think of this. And that can be a really rich dialogue, but I'm being really intentional about, I want to communicate my POV on this topic regardless of the format.
I'm going to figure out how to do that. If you had some type of like co-host dynamic like I had with him before, then you also have someone else that can help you with that, right? So like we would go into demand, gen live, we would know generally what we wanted to cover. And I would basically be able to set up the spikes, right?
I personally could jump in and ask a question. Over time, we had the same people coming every week. I knew which topics certain people would cover. I could basically create the conditions to make sure that we had all this great content that we would be able to clip out and publish.
And so that is the benefit of having kind of like a sidekick or a co-host to help do some of that. Have you looking for you? So you're more focused on communicating your POV. Got you.
You mentioned, you know, when you build that business case for customers that you kind of show them examples of people doing this and like some numbers, do you have favorite ones that you share, like certain CEOs of people and what numbers you share to build that case? Yeah, we specifically can share a lot of specifics about like the Refine Labs story and you even posted some of those numbers that I think Chris has shared with you on like the impact that it can have. So we primarily share that as the main point and then we will reference some of our other customers. I don't want to name specific companies and their details here, but it's primarily like the Refine Labs example and then examples of other Refine Labs customers.
And the other piece that I explained to everyone that I talked to is I'll relay some of like even my personal stories that I was sharing at the top of this call. So it's like, yeah, obviously you have this business right now and this is what you're trying to do, but you're a human on this earth and you're probably going to have multiple career chapters here. Like, this is good for so many reasons, not just for the company that you're at right now. And so broadening their perspective a little bit and making them understand that like there's something in it for them personally, the business that they're currently, you know, owning, operating, managing, and then ultimately like reminding them that you really should only do this if you have something to say and you have like a clear goal in mind.
If you don't, don't do it. That's gonna work. That's gonna be a lot of effort for no return. What's your own approach to LinkedIn?
Like, do you wait until you have an idea and then you sit down and you write it and you post it? Do you have like a repository of stuff? Do you have someone helping you and pre writing stuff for you? Like what's your own kind of process workflow looking like?
Yeah. So I try to manage like a general calendar of things that I want to, you know, post over a period of time. Definitely have people on the team that will help clip up videos from, you know, different podcasts or events that I'm on. I was testing for a while, different carousels.
I was trying to summarize some of our great vault content into really digestible carousel pieces. And so I have people on my team help build those out. I've been testing having a little bit of like kind of copy like ghost writing, but I typically will, I really have to, I'm gonna post it for my profile. It has to be my voice.
And so I was finding I was like over copy editing. So I was like, I'll just write my own post. Like I'm not sure that's really gonna be helpful to me. But definitely like feeding me videos, feeding me, you know, carousels, images, other assets.
Also learning about like what, you know, what things the team is working on that are really interesting that I can also share to communicate new experiments we're doing, new insights that we've uncovered, that type of thing. What are some of your, what would you tell a CEO or executive maybe some writing tips on like for LinkedIn content? And I'm asking this specifically because we often create what we call 80% copies for customers, where we interview them and then we give them copy that's 80% done and we say, now make it your own. And then they butcher it in all kinds of different ways.
Obviously it goes back to us like we can look over before it goes out, but I feel a lot of people are just not good writers. So like, and you need to be a good writer to write good LinkedIn code posts. So any kind of quick lessons tips on writing better content? Yeah, I think a couple of things that I would consider your like your first line or your hook really does matter.
And so I think being really, you have to really understand like what is the main thing that I am trying to communicate with this post? Even if it's maybe nuance and a little complex and it's a longer post, like you probably have one core thesis that you're trying to communicate. So get really clear on what that is. And then think about how you can leverage, you know, I don't know, I don't even know how good copywriting skills or LinkedIn hook skills, but like, you know, what's what is a fun, engaging, attention grabbing way that you can open your post so that someone actually clicks C more to read what you're trying to say.
And then I definitely recommend like write out your posts, write out your thoughts and ideas. And then honestly, try to take out like 30 to 50% of the text that you have. I think people will try to over explain and try to shove everything into a LinkedIn post. And it can dilute the message if it becomes too much.
And so I would say get clear on your thesis. You need a good hook and you know, write out your thoughts and then probably majorly edit them yourself. Right. Try to be clear and concise.
I do have a couple audience questions that I collected previously from under the post that I did and people commenting. So given that we have 10 minutes left, I want to start inserting them and guys, if on here, you guys have any other questions, drop them in now for Megan. Kelly Parker said, as a former employee of Megan Bowen, I look forward to a refresher on productivity. Megan is incredibly talented at balancing many people and projects at once.
So I guess this is a little bit in two different directions. What's your productivity, like why is she saying that you're so talented at productivity? What's your secret sauce? Yeah.
Early in my career, I became really obsessed with time management and being the get shit done person. And so I actually, at many of the companies that I worked at, I would deliver time management and productivity training sessions internally. So I have a couple of things, but I've evolved into a new perspective on this. But some things that are tried and true, I encourage people to do what's called a time log.
Actually record how you spend your time for a week, all of it, and then go back and aggregate things. And it's really fascinating, then define what your priorities are and how you would ideally like to spend your week. And that can help build a roadmap for like the core changes you need to make. Whenever somebody does this, their mind is blown because people, you think you spend your time doing certain things, but when you actually record the data, it's totally different.
So that can be a very powerful exercise. Then you can do, I call it time makeover. Then there are things that are just things that you should be thinking about day to day, doing weekly reviews to stay on top of things, having a system for your email. I have this, the golden rule of time management, which is the five minute rule.
If you can do it in five minutes or less, do it now, being intentional about time blocking. So I have a lot of those different types of tips. And I think all that stuff is good, try and ensure your time management advice. Where are the vault though on this a little bit, which I think is maybe more interesting conversation is what I find is more important, is actually energy management instead of time management.
So how are you getting really clear on like how you do your best work, how you manage your own energy, and how you structure your schedule so that you're doing the most important things when you were at your best. That has become my new productivity hack beyond trying to squeeze in as many things as possible. And maybe this is part of my shift from being the COO who's just like, all right, my whole job is just to make it all get done. And now my role has shifted.
And so my mindset on that topic has shifted with it. So what does that practically look like for you in your day to day, how you manage your energy? So I'm more of a morning person. I do my best thinking typically in the morning.
I'm also one of those people that have my best ideas when I'm moving around. So I structure my morning so that I always have full hour of walking outside, and then I have some focus work time before I ever have to hop on a Zoom so that I'm thinking about the most important issues, opportunities, challenges in the business, and I'm spending the beginning part of my day on the most important things. So then for me, most of my sales calls, team one-on-ones, customer calls, whatever it is, I try to have those be in the afternoon. So I kind of have like a morning and an afternoon segment, and then I make sure that I'm getting enough sleep and taking care of myself, all of that, all of that good stuff.
Do you have the discipline to not check Slack or email or before you start your dev work session? That's where it breaks for me. I have that idea. Now I just take a quick peek into Slack or email and then you're derailed.
Yeah, I've had to, it's really hard for me too, but yes, I try. Even if I take a peek at it, I just don't, I try not to respond, but it's hard. I'm not perfect at it. A more recent habit, although I hit 80 consecutive days this morning, the first thing I try to do is do a 20 minute meditation too.
And if I do that, what I find is, I'm more likely to stay the course on the things that I want because I'm kind of, I get my Zen and I'm like, that can wait. I'll get back to everyone in a few hours. Yeah, I love that. Marney Robbins said that we often talk about the CEO being the figurehead, but not that that plays out through content and LinkedIn.
And so she was curious or interested in kind of how that plays out in the digital realm, I guess. So maybe you could just speak to a little bit how you think about the CEO being the figure out of the company and how that translates now on LinkedIn content. Is it the same or are the different ones this year? Yeah, I think she sort of, when she says figurehead, I'm assuming it's sort of same like face of the company list.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if that's the case, I think probably just reinforcing some of the stuff that we've talked about over the course of this, this conversation, I think, you know, often the CEO is the best person because they're the founder of the evangelist, the subject matter expert. If it's someone else, that's okay too. And it's more about, it's less about the person and it's more about the thoughts and the point of view.
I kind of keep reinforcing that point, but that's really what matters the most. Now in our day and age, you know, if you communicated those same thoughts via a company page on LinkedIn or a personal profile, the reality is, is people are going to respond more to the personal profile because it's social media and people want to hear from other people, right? So the thoughts really matter. The person that's doing the active social media posting, ideally is ultimately the thought leader, the subject matter expert.
If they also happen to be the CEO, great, if this is someone else, that's fine too. And you're going to accomplish your same mission. Right. So I do think many and most CEOs should be active on LinkedIn, but there are some cases when there's someone else better to achieve that goal.
Let's totally find that. And if they're not the subject matter expert, it might make sense for them to kind of do more of a PR play where, you know, maybe they don't pull thought leadership stuff, but it's like, hey, we just raised a new funding round and we're opening a new office and we just have a new strategic partner, but that's not like a three times a week. This is more like a maybe once every two weeks, your CEO does a little announcement and it's more like a PR play rather than and then you have your subject matter expert putting out that regular thought leadership content. Yeah.
And I think those are, it's good to get some of that out. I would say your target market probably doesn't care that much. Like you race around, you opened an office, it doesn't mean that there is a consultant selling to you, they care. Yeah, a lot of them.
Yeah, exactly. Cool, Megan. Thank you so much for your time. We're going to wrap up here.
Dave, Justin, thank you guys for joining. We're doing this every week. So, and if you join later, something this will go out on all of our socials YouTube Spotify. And thank you, Megan for joining.
Thanks for having me, Ken. Great conversation. Thank you. Have a good one.
Have a good one guys.