RTR EP10 - Your Marketing Isn’t Failing, it’s Frozen in the Past

Most CEOs and marketing leaders aren’t doing the wrong things, they’re doing outdated things. In this powerful episode, Brandon Lee reflects on a critical shift: from marketing that promotes to content that connects. 

This episode goes deep on why traditional tactics no longer resonate, and what kind of storytelling builds trust, opens doors, and drives revenue today.

▪️ Why Great Content Still Falls Flat

Brandon shares how his first podcast, Celebrate the Wins, had great guests, solid production, and all the “right” content strategy moves… yet it didn’t create results. The reason? The content lacked emotional resonance. It was professional but not personal - visible but not memorable.

“We were doing everything the experts said to do… but we weren’t getting traction. It wasn’t working.”

▪️ The Power of Humanity Content

Forget robotic “thought leadership.” Today’s buyers want to know the person behind the brand. Brandon calls this “humanity content” - storytelling that offers a glimpse into the life, experience, and values of the executive. It’s not about oversharing—it’s about being real.

“The picture of me hiking with my daughter - people remember that. They connect with it. That’s what moves the needle.”

▪️ Emotional Resonance is the New KPI

People remember how your content made them feel, not the polished jargon you used. Brandon unpacks why stories that connect to shared emotions -like struggle, growth, or even failure- leave a lasting impact and stand out in the noisy digital landscape.

“People want to feel something. If your content doesn’t touch the heart, it’s just noise.”

▪️ Executive Storytelling: The 4-Step Framework

Brandon outlines his 4-step framework to help leaders tell emotionally resonant stories:

• Align: Start with shared experience or pain point
• Agitate: Help them feel the tension or frustration
• Assert: Present your insight or turning point
• Invite: Extend a thoughtful next step or CTA

This model creates relatability, urgency, and trust - without coming off as pitchy or self-serving.

▪️ Your Content Needs a Reset, Not More Volume

If your content calendar is full but your sales team is struggling for meetings, the problem isn’t effort - it’s style. The episode encourages leaders to rethink their content from a connection-first perspective.

“It’s not that your content is broken. It’s that it’s frozen - in a past that buyers have moved on from.”

If you’re feeling the frustration of content that doesn’t convert or campaigns that don’t start conversations, you’re not alone. 

This episode is your roadmap to reset-away from performance marketing that under-delivers and toward reputation-led content that actually builds trust.

The Revenue Through Reputation Show
Hosted by Brandon Lee
New episodes every Tuesday at 11 AM ET | LinkedIn & YouTube
Empowering CEOs, founders, and sales leaders to build high-impact digital reputations that drive business growth.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction: “Revenue Through Reputation” origins & focus
• 2:43 Why Celebrate the Wins failed: the content-promotion trap
• 6:43 Defining “content for connection” & humanity content
• 12:43 Emotional resonance explained with the Purple Cow analogy
• 15:43 Humanity content in action: Brandon’s hiking story
• 23:43 Personal content that drives opportunity
• 28:43 Executive storytelling: The 4-Step Framework
• 36:43 CTA: Shift from pitch to connection

Transcript

Brandon: [00:00:00] And we're live. Hey everybody, I'm Brandon. Uh, welcome to Revenue Through Reputation. Um, you know, be honest. I'm not sure if I love the name of the show. I. Probably gonna change it here pretty soon, but I think that's pretty normal. Like you gotta get a few episodes into a show to really get a feel for it.

Brandon: Um, but for now it's revenue through reputation and, you know, um, my career has been spent helping leaders use content to grow their reputation in order to create more opportunities. Therefore revenue through reputation. And today we're, we're gonna talk, you know, the title is Your marketing isn't Failing, it's Frozen in Time.

Brandon: Um, I'll be honest, part of that's kind of the get the hook to be like, Hey, what's going on? But we're gonna talk about, um, creating content. [00:01:00] To build connections versus building content for promotion. We talked a bit about this last week, and I want to go deeper into it this week about what the, what the heck do we mean about content for connection versus content for promotion.

Brandon: So, welcome everybody. Uh, if you are on the, um, if you are on the podcast. Thank you so much for joining us. Um, I know that I spend a lot of times talking to the live audiences 'cause we go live on, um, LinkedIn and Instagram now. Crazy new for me and YouTube and, um, and then you're on our podcast. So hey, if you, if you like the podcast.

Brandon: Here's what I ask. You can take a little screen capture of it, share it with somebody, tell 'em why they should pay attention to it. And if you really like it, I'd love the um, reviews. Or send them to me on LinkedIn. Tell me what you think. Uh, [00:02:00] gimme any topics you want. But anyway, if you're live, if you're on either, uh, Instagram or YouTube or LinkedIn and you wanna comment, you wanna add a question, you wanna make a comment, you wanna tell me I'm wrong, anything like that, and add it in there so that, um, I can address, it'd be pretty cool.

Brandon: Okay. So we're gonna jump in, um, you know, in 20. 18. I started my first podcast and live show. It was called Celebrate the Wins. Now I know a lot of people out there. You may have started shows. Um, I know there's. I've heard from a lot of people like, oh, we started a show, or we, we tried a show and it didn't work.

Brandon: Well, this is my story of a show that didn't work in 2018. I started a show that was called Celebrate the Wins. Now, I think that we were right in our approach. Celebrate the wins was designed to get leaders to be able to come [00:03:00] on the show and tell, tell their wins. Um, I feel like so many of us leaders, we don't celebrate our wins enough.

Brandon: We kind of quickly move on to the next thing and forget to celebrate. I. And I wanted to take a time to let people celebrate their wins and share their stories. And it was also strategic around the content that it wasn't promotional content. It wasn't me, me, me, our product, our service. It was getting leaders to share their victories and tell the stories around it.

Brandon: And the content was honestly great. The guests were. Awesome. And we are creating, you know, three months, four months, six months, nine months, doing the show every week, doing what all the experts say to do. We take the show, we break it down into short clips. We are returning, uh, the transcripts into newsletter articles and blog content, and we are sharing it all over the place.

Brandon: And content, content, [00:04:00] content. And guess what happened? It's basically nothing. I mean, I think in the year that I did that, it, I went, I, I gained like 500 connections on LinkedIn. Um, it was just frustrating that we were doing everything right. We were creating a ton of content, but we weren't getting traction.

Brandon: It wasn't working like we hear so many people say, um, what I realized. In hindsight. So in 2020, shut it down. Uh, in 2019, COVID, mid COVID started doing more lives again. And that's also the time that I learned that. Content needs to be done differently. Now, I've known this throughout my career, but I just, honestly, at this time of my life, I took what I thought I knew what I've experienced.

Brandon: Let me rephrase that. I took what I knew, what I'd experienced with content in my previous [00:05:00] companies and kind of put it on a shelf and started listening to experts that were talking about the way to create content for LinkedIn, and it was very. Promotional. So when I look at the time I was doing Celebrate the Wins simultaneously, the rest of my content was promotional.

Brandon: It was all about our products, our services, what we do. Some of it was case studies, but it was much more about us and nobody cares about that type of content. So the show itself. We were doing the right things, but the supporting content around it was very promotional and it turned a lot of people off because nobody wants to be sold.

Brandon: And so, um, I ended up shutting down, celebrate the wins, and um, and then in 2020 and going into 2021, I started going back to what I knew to be true. And it was creating [00:06:00] content for connection. And that concept for me has evolved over the years. I mean, I started creating content for connection in 1998. Um, so it's evolved over the years, but the, the foundation of it is still the same.

Brandon: Creating content that gets an emotional response creates that connection from the audience to the person that created the content. And promotional content just doesn't do that. So if you're one of those companies out there that you've been creating a lot of content, you've been doing all the right things, you're checking the right boxes, but it's still not working.

Brandon: I hear you. I hear you. It's not that you're not creating enough content, it's that we are creating the wrong type of content. We're creating content to promote instead of content to connect. So I made the shift and I [00:07:00] started getting back to my roots and created more humanity content, as I call it. And I'm gonna get in, I'm gonna talk about humanity content.

Brandon: I'm gonna talk about how to create business content in a manner that connects. Instead of him being ignored, I'm gonna talk about all that today. But at the, in 2021, I started creating more humanity content and the type of content that I created, and I said, humanity. I know a lot of people, you know, LinkedIn isn't Facebook and create that type of content outta here.

Brandon: Well, hu content humanity type of content for me was using pictures. To demonstrate my humanity, but also using the content to demonstrate my experience in business. So here's an example. It was, um, there was a picture of me with my daughter and we were on a hiking trail. So giving insight into what I am, uh, what I do outside of being a business owner and sharing a bit of my, my personal life.

Brandon: [00:08:00] And, and yet the copy was talking about my experience on that trail and that. We weren't expecting, but just didn't pay attention that a storm had gone through the week prior and the trail was thrashed. And so we got there expecting this trail that we've done before. Perfect. Pretty neat, easy. And instead there were trees down.

Brandon: There was debris all over the place and we weren't expecting it. So the copy. It was me talking about entrepreneurship or business in general that so often we have expectations of a linear path to success and we get there and a storms come through figurative, figuratively speaking. So that's a concept of.

Brandon: Humanity with business side. So it's not picture of my food, like belongs on Facebook. Um, honestly, nobody wants to see your food anywhere unless you're a chef, but whatever. Um, but creating that humanity, uh, pictures with, with personal, [00:09:00] uh, with business content, what happened is I started to see more engagement.

Brandon: More comments. More connection requests. More connection. Requests accepted more followers. During this, celebrate the wins. I was saying earlier in a year, I grew like 500 connections. Really not that big of a deal, but in 2021, we also started Mastery Modern Selling as a show and podcast. Simultaneously, I started changing the type of content that I was creating and sharing to be more of this humanity content.

Brandon: And I just found out from Carson shared it to with us this week that mastering modern Selling has just been rated the number one social selling podcast, uh, by feed spot. Now is there a correlation? I think so. Look, I change the type of content I created to be more. Connecting with people instead of promotional, which [00:10:00] means I got more people watching the content, paying attention to the content.

Brandon: In 2021, I had about, um, 2,500 to 3000 connections, and now I have about 13,000. Now I know I'm not a hundred thousand. I'm not the huge influencer all that I, I haven't. Really tried to be or pretended to be. But what I've seen over the time of changing the style of content for connection is I saw an increase in the, the listenership and the subscribers to Mastery Modern Selling.

Brandon: I saw my own connections and followers increase to 13,000, and most importantly, I saw the conversations. Increased pretty dramatically the opportunities for business. And, and in that time when I, when we launched Mastery Modern Selling, launched a show to talk about LinkedIn. I didn't even like the term social selling.

Brandon: I still don't love that term. But we just wanted to create a platform, Carson, Tom and I, [00:11:00] where we talked about what are we learning with LinkedIn and how are, how are people using this to generate revenue? Um, it wasn't until later that fist bump even started, so, um. If you are in that stage, you're creating a bunch of content and you're just getting kind of frustrated and feeling like it's not working, man, I felt your pain.

Brandon: And the answer to it is not more content, but changing the style of content that we've been creating. So, um, we're gonna talk today about. Uh, you know, your marketing isn't broken. It's just needs to be, you know, tweaked a little bit. I want to, I want to talk a little bit about emotional resonance and what that means and why it is so, so important that our content resonates emotionally with people.

Brandon: No matter if you're promo, you know, it's about your product or service or what you do, it has to emotionally resonate or else they won't remember it. [00:12:00] They won't care. And it's just more noise, especially as we're in an AI consumed world. Um, and I'm gonna give you the four step, I I've got these really cool four step storytelling framework that is, I know there's a lot of frameworks out there to tell stories, but I like about this one is, um.

Brandon: It is really designed to build that emotional resonance, and this is something you could use with humanity content. It's something you can use with your professional, uh, promotional content as well. So we just start flipping the script a little bit and, and sharing your content a little bit, uh, differently.

Brandon: So, um,

Brandon: buyers and audiences are totally overwhelmed with content. So if we're not. Being strategic about the content that we create and using it to build that emotional resonance. Um, we're just more noise that's gonna be [00:13:00] forgotten. So, um, let's talk a little bit about what I mean by that. What is, what is emotional resonance?

Brandon: Uh, resonance? It's, it's when our content resonates with an audience emotionally. When it hits an emotion, it's something they can relate to personally. It, it then touches the heart, not just the brain. And we are human beings and we are led by our hearts. So when we emotionally connect with something. We remember it more.

Brandon: We remember it easier. It's like, I like to say when we emotionally connect with something, there's like a hook in our heart area that it goes on and we remember it, we recall it, and we stand out. Know Seth. Seth Godin, um, has amazing writing and he has this concept around the purple cow. And most of you have probably heard [00:14:00] it, but you know, you see black and white cows, you see brown cows, you see black cows.

Brandon: You're like, cow, cow, cow, cow. They're all cows. I grew up in dairy country. I mean, I, I know cows, but if you ever saw a purple cow. You would remember exactly where you were, who you were with. You might even remember the smell because that's the way our memories work. Like it would be such a profound shift that you would remember exactly where you were when you saw a purple cow.

Brandon: And that's the goal of creating content that creates resonance. And I know that's a big, that's a big lift. That's a big ask, like comparing it to a purple cow. But that's the direction that we need to be moving with our content is every time that somebody is paying attention to our content, reading, watching the video, whatever, um, how are we helping them have an emotional connection [00:15:00] to that content?

Brandon: And that's really what, what we mean by, um, emotional resonance. So.

Brandon: Now that we understand emotional ance, um, I wanna talk about the two different types of content that creates emotional resonance or the, the two different types of content that we all need to be creating, especially as we're talking about executive leadership. Um, you've heard me say this before, I'm sure what people really want to know right now.

Brandon: They really wanna know what your leaders are really, really, really like there. There's a couple layers of things, go with me on this. They wanna know who your leaders really are. They wanna know how they think. They want to know what they've experienced. They want to know, um, how they've succeeded. [00:16:00] They want to know some of the challenges overcome.

Brandon: They want to know how they are. Much more than they wanna know about your product or services. And when we're, when we're leading with that type of content, we're building that emotional resonance because we're sharing personal story, we're sharing stories of overcoming or over, over, we're sharing stories of success.

Brandon: You know, I just a, a couple of days ago. I, I shared a post about a failure as, as a business owner, and I was sharing authentically about, man, this is, this is what it did to me. It kind of wrecked me. And I was going through a little bit about that detail. And, you know, what happens from that is others are able to see their own stories in it, their own experiences in it.

Brandon: And they resonate with it. So what [00:17:00] happens is you get more people commenting, you get more people liking it. I got a couple of direct messages from people who actually didn't like it or commented on it, but they obviously saw it because they direct messaged me and said, Hey, thank you for sharing that.

Brandon: I've gone through something similar and it's just good to know that I'm not the only one. Right? When, when we share those authentic stories, what have we lived? What have we learned? What are we living? What are we currently learning? That's the type of content that gets remembered, and we stand out like a purple cow from all the other voices that tend to just be, uh, business, business, business, you know, um, I learned this really, really well in my second company called ByDesign Publishing and, and what we did at ByDesign.

Brandon: It was such a fun business and, uh. You know, if, if, if you, if you were with us back then as a client or, or you worked at [00:18:00] ByDesign or something, um, man, that was such a great era. That was such a wonderful season. It was a great company. But what I learned in that is we created a. We created personalized custom magazines and we sold them to business owners.

Brandon: We had a lot in residential real estate, but we also had chiropractors and lawyers and accountants and you know, professional service providers. And what it was, we had different. Types of magazines. We had different styles of content, but we allowed customers to personalize the cover. So we'd have like, the body of the magazine would be 52 pages or something like that.

Brandon: And then the cover would be personalized for a business owner. And they would give us a database of like a hundred names, 200 names, 212 names, it didn't matter. Um, and addresses. And we would print that many covers, bind their cover to the body and mail it to their. Database of people and it was their magazine.

Brandon: Now the body was the same for [00:19:00] everybody, saved everybody a lot of money. But the, the cover made it their magazine, a little picture of them on the front cover, inside cover, inside back cover, outside back cover. Local content, personal content, whatever. When we learned, when we started talking to people who received that magazine is that they felt connected to the person who sent it to 'em.

Brandon: They felt. Emotionally resonant, they felt this emotional connection to them. And I'd hear from clients who would say, like, uh, my friend Gail Hartnett, and she told me this story many times, but she'd get a call as a, as a real estate agent in, um, as a realtor in Boise, Idaho. She would get calls from people, say, Hey, we're, we're gonna sell her home.

Brandon: Can we meet with you? And she would go there thinking she was being interviewed. And when she got there, you know, she's like, well, you know, if you choose me. And they'd be like, what do you mean if I choose you? Like you're, you're Gail. You're the one that sends us this magazine. Like there was a [00:20:00] connection that was strong and the person sending the magazine for a long time, they didn't realize how strong that connection was and the amount of referrals that they got from it, and the amount of repeat business and how their reputation grew so much because this magazine.

Brandon: Gave people like a 20 or 30 minute break from life. Like it was a fun magazine. It was beautiful pictures, beautiful locations, beautiful rooms, kitchens, and somebody could, you know, kick their feet up and flip through it for 15 minutes or 30 minutes and take a little vacation. But the key of that was, is that little mini vacation was provided by.

Brandon: The person who sent it to him, and there was that, that connection. Now I know with so many people we talked to that are B2B owners and like that maybe doesn't, isn't not a direct translation of, of sending [00:21:00] a home decor content or we had a magazine that was called Swirling Sip that was wine and food, right?

Brandon: They were able to choose the theme of, and the content that was, that they wanted to send to people. But the foundation of that is still a thousand percent accurate. When we send our content, helps build that emotional connection to people. They remember us and they engage more with us. They share our content more.

Brandon: Um, we stand out from the big, loud noise of everything that's out there. So there's, there's two types of content. Um, one is what I call the humanity content. Uh, I shared with that a little bit ago. Look, humanity content isn't personal content. Let's just get rid of that. It's like, I, it's not personal content.

Brandon: It can be personal, but it's really more because people want to know you, [00:22:00] right? Think about for yourself, who do you wanna do business with? Who do you choose to do business with? We, we choose to do business with people who we like, who we know, who we have some part of trusting with them, but overall, if we like people.

Brandon: We're more likely to do business with them. If they have a competitor of somebody who we don't know, or especially we don't like, we're always gonna choose to do business with those people. So you've got this double, double value proposition here when you start sharing your humanity. I'm gonna share this story.

Brandon: We have an a, a client of ours right now, um, who, when I, when I met with him as the owner of the company. I, I had said like, okay, well you know, why, why me? Why us? Why now? And he, he kind of chuckled a little bit and he got this look like, I can't believe I'm gonna tell you this, but it's true. He said, you know, a little while [00:23:00] ago, he is, I don't know, a year, year and a half ago, he's like, I saw this post.

Brandon: Of you and your daughter hiking. It's when I told you about, a little bit, a little bit ago, he is like, I saw you and your daughter hiking and then your content was something about how the trail and you related it to business and unexpected things. He's like, I just always remembered that post. I remembered seeing you and your daughter and, and you know, I like doing active things and hiking with my kids and I, I just always remembered it.

Brandon: So when. The need for leader-led content came up in his world. He said, I'm gonna call Brandon. And we ran into each other and he is like, Hey, I need to talk to you about leader-led content. But that humanity content resonated with him. Now, there's a couple types of humanity content. There is the like I did, and I think this is the most.

Brandon: Comfortable for a lot of people. Use a personal [00:24:00] picture, but relate it to something in business and start to at least show your humanity. But there's also the humanity content that is sharing your experiences and this type of content does really, really well. Um, and it's not just engagement. I don't, I like engagement because of what it means for opportunities, for conversations, but other than that, I don't get hung up on.

Brandon: How much engagement, how many impressions, how many comments? I just, I don't have time to care about that. But this type of content does really well with it because it's, it's raw, you know, so much of our business content is safe. It's polished. It sounds like it went through the PR machine and it gets highly ignored because that's mostly what we get.

Brandon: But when, when it's executive content. Or leader content, or just person content, but you're telling a story of what you've been through and like, it, it doesn't mean [00:25:00] you go full open Komodo and sell and share all the, you know, nasty, dirty things, laundry, whatever that you've been through, but sharing things like, Hey, I, I, I had this big challenge and this is the way it made me feel and this is what I ended up doing.

Brandon: I. And this is how it, how you know what happened. Even if it's not an awesome outcome, but you're just sharing your story, you're sharing what you've learned, maybe you share what you would do differently. In hindsight, not only is it emotionally resonant, like people can connect to it and go, wow, I've been through that.

Brandon: But it makes people remember you and it helps them feel like they know you, um, and like you and trust you. I've, I've shared this story before and Natalie and I traded some text messages this morning. You know, I was at the airport sitting in my gate trying to sh. Get an email out before I, I jumped on my plane and I, I got this tap on my shoulder and it was Natalie at the [00:26:00] time.

Brandon: I, I didn't know her as well. Um, we were connected on LinkedIn, but we had never met in person. And she taps me on the shoulder and she goes, Brandon, and I said, Hey, and I stand up, she gives me a hug. She's like, it's Natalie from LinkedIn. And I'm trying to connect the dots, but here's the point, because of my content.

Brandon: She remembered me. She felt like she knew me. She felt more connected to me to a point of not only stopping while she was rushing to her gate, but tapping me on the shoulder saying hi, giving me a hug. And then we had, uh, a coffee meeting a few weeks later, and now we, we've been doing work together. That's why that type of humanity content is, is so important.

Brandon: And it, it, it leads right into executive storytelling because executive storytelling is an extension of that. Um, with executive storytelling, [00:27:00] executives may not be as comfortable about using a personal picture or something from their personal life, a hobby, something they do. If you like boating, you like golfing.

Brandon: You know, I love what Butch Nicholson does with, you know, he's been a lifetime golfer and he does a post where he, he does videos about business and sales, but he does it from the sand trap when he is out golfing. And so he's giving this glimpse of, Hey, I'm a golfer and I've been doing this my whole life.

Brandon: But the content he's talking about is what he's learned over the years in sales and what's been changing in sales. When, when we do that, it, it helps people feel like they know us and when they feel like they know us, we stand out from all the other voices that are just pitch, pitch, pitch, and they don't feel like they know you.

Brandon: And it gives us that it increased probability of being success successful. So let's talk a little bit about [00:28:00] executive storytelling, and I'm gonna jump right into the four step framework. Um, of telling stories, but the idea is that we move an audience from feeling seen like, Hey, I get you to a sense of an urgency of like, man, you, not only do you see me, you get me, but also trusting the solution and the outcome.

Brandon: That you are proposing and moving them to a point of, of taking action. So I wanna ask you is how is your executive. Storytelling happening right now. What type of stories are you telling? How are people resonating with it? If you're like most people that, Hey, we're, we're doing our best with content, but we're just not getting the engagement that we want.

Brandon: We're not getting the conversations that we want. We, we post post posts, but then our cold outreach is still getting met with a lot of. [00:29:00] Hangups or no returns and no, no return voicemails, no returned email because people don't know you when when they feel they've got that emotional resonance with you, they feel connected, they they know you, then they're much more likely to return those cold outreaches.

Brandon: Because I know you, I feel like I know you. Now I've, I've shared, excuse me, Chris Dunn's, uh, example, sending out cold emails as he is doing this work in LinkedIn and, and being, showing more of his humanity, and he sends an email out to somebody who responds and says, Hey, yeah, let's schedule a call. Cold email, right?

Brandon: Cold email, not somebody knows, sends it out and the guy responds. Yeah, let's schedule a call because I feel like I already know you from what you post on LinkedIn. That's a win. Right. That's a win because our content paved the way it led the work for us so that somebody felt like they know us, felt like they knew us, and said yes to a meeting, [00:30:00] and, and, and then it becomes an opportunity.

Brandon: I. That meeting may or may not have gone anywhere, but getting that call and building that relationship may lead to a future deal or a referral to a deal, or who knows what. But it's much better than not getting the call. Right. Okay. So let's, we got our humanity content, we've got our executive storytelling.

Brandon: I wanna deep dive into the framework and then we're gonna wrap things up. So, um, first, first step in. And hopefully I, you heard this, my, my, my story at the beginning about celebrate the wins and everything. It was following this model. So number one is align. Step one is a line. Align your story to show empathy and understanding of your audience, especially their challenges.

Brandon: So when I, I talked about celebrate the wins I was talking about, man, we did it. We are doing all the right things. But we weren't [00:31:00] getting anywhere. So the beginning is aligned and, and help people understand like what you've been through, resonates with what they're going through, so they feel like you do know me.

Brandon: So we wanna align, align ourselves to what they're going through today through our story, and it's, it's pretty easy. Right. We've all been through challenges. We've all made good decisions, we've all made bad decisions. We've all done things we wish we did differently. Like sharing that type of stuff is, is pretty easy the next step.

Brandon: Um, and by the way, on the align, it's really making that message about them. Um, I, I actually prefer to do third party stories than my own personal stories in that, you know, sharing the one to celebrate the wins was just so perfect for. Anyone that's creating a whole bunch of content and being frustrated 'cause that's exactly what I went through.

Brandon: But generally I like third party stories, so I don't even say [00:32:00] I and me, I can say they and them and we and us, but I did today with a personal story anyway. Um, making that, using that first part, the aligned side to make it about them. And not at all about your product or service. The second stage is agitate.

Brandon: Now, agitate is, and I've learned this over the years, like I didn't do this well for a long time because I've always been like, gosh, nobody wants to sit in that self. Let's just move to the good part, right? But agitate is really highlighting the pain point, um, and helping them feel it. Right. It could be the risk of staying in the status quo.

Brandon: It could be the, you know, the risk of not making a change. It could be, um, it could be a number of different things, but you really want to [00:33:00] highlight and let 'em kind of sit and stew in the pain a little bit. Like, hey, when you're creating all this content and you're doing a show and, and you're creating videos, and you're creating newsletters, and you're publishing and you're pub, you know, you're publishing to LinkedIn and, and YouTube and newsletters going out and all this, and you're not gonna tell me, man, it, it just makes you feel like crap, right?

Brandon: Like, I'm doing the work, I'm doing the things the experts say to do. I'm checking the boxes. But people out there say, oh, I got all this success, and I'm looking at going, I'm doing the thing, same thing, and I'm not getting that success. It gets frustrating, right? It's, it's, it's frustrating to do a lot of work and have these expectations and have it not come to pass.

Brandon: So we're, we're highlighting the frustration. We wanna let 'em stew in it a little bit. Like I said, I, I've struggled with that over the years 'cause nobody wants to [00:34:00] stew in frustration, but yet it makes a lot of sense if they don't really feel it. And you move on, then the rest of it may not have the oomph to, it, may not quite have the power.

Brandon: So, uh, align and then agitate. And then step three is assert. Assert is, you know, present your unique perspective, uh, present your solution clearly. Um, how do you differentiate yourself? Um, in my story that I was sharing before, like, there I go again, right? My story, but in the story I was sharing at the beginning.

Brandon: The assert was when I realized it was I had to present more human content. I had to create content to create connection instead of content for promotion. That's when things changed. That's when Mastery Modern Selling became a much more successful show than celebrate the Wins [00:35:00] ever had a chance to. It's become a number one social selling podcast.

Brandon: On, um, whatever feed spot. We've been doing it over three years now. My personal LinkedIn gone from about two to 3000 followers to 13,000 followers and all these different opportunities and fist bump came out of it as launched a new company out of it. You see, you see where I'm, I'm asserting that when you present the new perspective.

Brandon: Something good happened. So that's where you assert and go. But when I did this, and then the last step is, is the invite. The invite is not a bash 'em over the head, but, but a gentle like, call to action. Hey. And I've just gone through all this. If you're, if you're a marketer, you're a leader, your marketing team's doing the work, they're creating a bunch of content, they're checking the boxes, you think they're doing the right thing, but you're [00:36:00] just not getting the success you want.

Brandon: I spoke to someone the other day and you know, a printing company, they're spending several thousand dollars a month with someone who's creating their LinkedIn content firm for them, and they've gotten nothing out of it. They're checking the boxes, they're doing what they think they're supposed to do.

Brandon: They're just not getting the calls or the conversations or, or the growth from it. So if, if you're in that stage and, um, it's been frustrating, you feel like you're wasting money, when we create content to connect versus content to promote, we get more conversations because your audience then feels like, like Chris Dunn experience, I feel like I already know you.

Brandon: Let's get on a call. When they feel like they know you, when you change the style of your content to build connection instead of promotion, that's when you get more yeses to your request for conversations. That's when pipelines get filled better. That's, that's when you become more [00:37:00] successful. So as you're watching this, if, if you're in that.

Brandon: Situation. You're in that boat, you're a leader and or whether a marketing leader, a CEO sales leader, and they're like, man, we've been checking the boxes. We've been doing the work, and we're frustrated because it's just not creating the outcomes we want. Let's talk, um, now I've got a brief that can shared with you.

Brandon: It's not salesy at all. It's not pitchy. You got a brief about how, how and why emotional resonant content. Wins more opportunities for conversations versus content that creates promotion. I'm happy to give that to you. If you wanna throw it in the comments, just do hashtag brief and I'll shoot you a copy of it.

Brandon: Again, no salesy, no pitchy. Don't force you to get on a call unless you ask for one, but if you want that brief. Um, just throw in the comments, hashtag brief or message me on LinkedIn or whatever channel you're watching this on, and I'll be glad to get it for you. [00:38:00] So, um, hey, I wanna, I wanna wrap up. I wanna wrap this up.

Brandon: Here's, here's a way I wanna, I want to, I wanna wrap it up today. Creating content is still king, right? Content is king. We've heard that, but for, for a lot of reasons, we've been doing this content marketing thing for over a decade. People are starting to get used to all the hooks, employees and subject lines and everything else, and they're not as interested.

Brandon: There's so many more companies in the space because of the startup culture. That means that your industry, I don't care what industry you're in, they're getting hit. More by more people. So they're getting hit by even more calls and conversations and emails and content. So too much we start to tune out 'cause we just can't pay attention to it all.

Brandon: And on top of that, most [00:39:00] messaging is pitchy, promoting, asking for calls that none of us want. I mean, I, I had a, it popped up on my screen. I, I can show it as. Somebody who sent me a connection request and then here it is, um, asking me the biggest, you know, what's your biggest challenge right now? And then goes into a pitch of who they are and what they do.

Brandon: I don't even know who you are. Why do I care? Unless I had that specific need right now today, I'm not paying attention to that. Are you paying attention to that? I know my friend Alice Hyman posted just a few days ago about, and she put in examples of some of these. LinkedIn directs message pitches she got, and you know, this automation and pitchy.

Brandon: What's happening is it's, it's making all of us want to ignore more content, which is why emotional resonance, focusing on [00:40:00] content that builds connection, that creates that emotional connection is so much more important than content that promotes content that promotes is just highly. Forgotten. It's ignored because we don't wanna pay attention to it.

Brandon: We don't want it to be sold. So that's revenue through reputation for today. Hey, if you, um, have questions, throw 'em in the comments or direct message me if you have topics that you would like. To have on the show or guests that you think would be good. Um, I'd love to hear 'em this show for me, like I've been doing Mastery Modern Selling now for three years.

Brandon: We're at like 140 episodes. Um, I think today for me, this is episode nine for this one. This is new. It's different. This is me getting back to my roots. Of content and how we use content to create [00:41:00] relationship and lay the foundation in order to get more opportunities. And that's what I hope to bring you in my, from my 26, 27, 28 year career, um, of creating content.

Brandon: So, um, there you have it. Thank you for joining me today. I really appreciate it, and I'll see you next Tuesday on Revenue Through Reputation. Have a great week.