B2B Mentors Ep. 1 Being interviewed by my own pops!

And we are live take her away my friend welcome everyone to this edition of the B2B mentors podcast we’re here in beautiful Fort Collins Colorado today spring is in the air and there’s a lot more activity out there on the streets so very excited about that I have a special treat for you today we’re what we do here with the B to be mentors podcast is we like to bring together some of the best and brightest minds in b2b marketing world a lot of podcasts are geared towards b2c and so we’re just bringing the best and the brightest of b2b in order to help our our podcast listeners anyways today I am very happy to introduce you to a young entrepreneurial dude his name happens to be Connor Dube I like the way you say entrepreneurial and he’s a he’s a young millennial entrepreneur who just had to throw that one in there huh started an industry-leading podcast back about three years ago called mile high Mentors that was back when I didn’t even know what a podcast was but he said it this is this is that this is the thing we got to do a podcast and so here he is he came to work with us as our sales and marketing director and very happy to have you here Connor as our sales and marketing director and and became our he’s leading he’s now he’s leading our whole entire team clients successes and team success through you know through today’s business and marketing environment and quite frankly doing a pretty amazing job well welcome Connor hey thank you sir appreciate it absolutely first episode first episode launched in live absolutely learning experience for me and I’m so looking forward to it so Connor drum where are you talking to us from today what’s going on folks I’m here in the downtown Denver region today you’re my many hotspots I like to hit gotcha gotcha yeah and how you’ve been making it through these uh the this recent um you know in environment down there good man like I mean as best as I can I suppose I keep I keep joking with you I keep joking with everyone everybody I feel like I’ve kind of been training for this moment for a number of years even though it’s you know horrific everything that’s going on a lot of the discipline I’ve kind of put into practice and my you know mindset the action the hard work that I’ve put in is you know fortunately in in a number of ways paying off with all the difficult things that are going on so yeah just trying to thrive as best I can you know just like everybody else for the most part yeah nice and definitely you know and knowing Connor for quite some time and having the privilege to work with him I you know he connor here has never really been given anything he’s always one of the things that delineates him from from a lot of people out there is he takes the bull by the horns all the way back into high school he was doing his own thing and went out and moving away from the parents and doing the things that he needs to do paying his way through college not waiting around for somebody else to do anything for him so uh so kudos to you and I think that’s what you’re saying when you’re saying you feel like you’ve kind of been training for this it’s not like you’ve been given you know a whole a whole lot to you know to necessarily work with yeah I mean started my first business at the age of seven when I you know took rocks from my mom’s yard and in my neighbor’s yard and I painted them and I sold them out of motorcycle rally just goes to show you can really create a product out of anything and and it went for a good cause also and so yeah a lot I mean I when I came when I started working with you I think what I started working with you for like 11 bucks an hour just doing some you know prospecting and some stuff like that just trying to really navigate the landscape and just diving in and I think that’s what most people how they kind of learn stuff is just diving in there really is no preparation that you could you could effectively do when it comes to b2b marketing now what would actually want to make a young college graduate go to work with his dad versus any of the other million opportunities out there huh I don’t know necessarily that I was coming to work with you I think it was um you know interesting Lia’s just kind of already in a space that I was interested and fascinated and and it didn’t include doing door-to-door sales which is what I did for two and a half years well I was working my way through college so I think just kind of the new experience I was either going to plan on really starting my own business I even knew going through college I wasn’t gonna go the traditional route of submit a job application go get hired somewhere go work a traditional career somewhere like it was definitely not for me I was either gonna start my own business or I realized you had this vehicle already that I could just take and run with it so um you know if I wouldn’t have done it with with with your vehicle I may have just taken you know someone else’s that I was really passionate about I like sales I like I like strategy I like you know creativity so marketing is really just kind of a natural fit for me and others that have those similar qualities I would say so there you hear it folks Connor just didn’t want to write a resume too lazy to write a resume do they see to write a resume although I’ve written hundreds of articles and pieces of content and material and you know I thought of you going through college I’m like I’m never gonna do homework ever again and now I like made more homework for myself and work more weekends and you know I ever did in college but I love it so it’s like it’s not even work to me people from the outside are like do do you work so much I’m like not really like it’s just fun like it’s just uh it’s just it’s like playing with LEGOs you know it’s like we’re just building something that is you know that is impactful for me and for others yeah are there any regrets that you have in coming to work for your dad’s company we’ve been around for 19 years and you know we’re pretty set in our ways and how we how we do things and I’m just curious about what regrets you have not really I think it was a great question I think that is this can be used against you in a court of law at some point I don’t think any regrets I think I’ve probably taken actions throughout then that I regret in hindsight but I’ve learned and grown so like if I came into the business cold or another business knowing what I know now I mean probably would have like exponentially done things differently and like exploded things totally differently if I you know knew what I knew now even just you know number a few short few number of years later so no regrets really people always told me even when when I told him you and I were gonna start working together I was like oh yeah I’m gonna go partner up with my dad and help him grow his business and I got everyone’s like oh you don’t want to go on a family business like don’t go work in a family business is a bad idea and honestly I think our relationship we’ve never been closer than you know working together before and it’s fun and we’re both passionate about it and know that you know all your friends were right and in the thing too is like being able to work together compared to being in another company as you know we have our spats at moments like we butt heads but then you know we turn we can have an argument and turn around and be like finding the next minute so that’s pretty rare most people don’t get that in their work you know work life as well so it’s just kind of all it’s all it’s all one in the same for the most part for me well I gotta hand it to you a lot of people your age there’s a lot of responsibility and shouldering a lot of responsibility you know towards the business in the leadership role that you have and even recently you’ve taken on more of a leadership role um whereas you pretty much let me know that getting in the way of the way that the young millennial dude wants to do it and I didn’t exactly say Marc Marc seems to think I’m like I was like get out of the way old man but that’s just how he describes it that was not how it went down for sure yeah no it wasn’t a couple cocktails and he told me in a little nicer way no really and a lot of people really would maybe want to still maybe have all the perks of being in a leadership role but when the times times get tough and they have you know they they may want to you know kind of dive back out of it again and you certainly haven’t done that you’ve pretty much shouldered the responsibility pretty pretty nicely but also let me know where you know hey maybe we’re doing some things for the last 20 years that really need to change and your leadership style is is a lot different than mine and maybe you can just tell everybody kind of like in you know where you did kind of take a lot more responsibility here lately to free me up to do a few things tell me a little bit about how you maybe you would compare my leadership style to some of the things that you’ve changed while working with the team you work with the team directly every single day you really you really want me to break no I’m just kidding I may be held against you in a court of law okay I love to hear it you’re just doing this podcast together just to get all the good stuff against me yeah to incriminate me I did I mean I think like my leader I think leadership is was my leadership style was not like born out of just taking over this leadership role I’ve been in a number of leadership roles from even a young age like even when I was playing sports I took a leadership role I took ownership I took responsibility of you know of you know helping empower other people and you know I I was involved in a lot of nonprofits in high school and I was you know leading a lot of those organizations I was president of our deca and FBLA clubs in high school and I was leadership I was leading you know group tens of tens and tens of tens and tens like not hundreds tens and tens is that how you’d say that tens and tens and tens times tens so I did that for a number of years put on events coordinated you know a lot of different stuff and then when I was in college and I went to work with Renewal by Andersen windows I immediately kind of like leveled up into a leadership role there as well when I came in and I kind of found a style that worked for me and was successful and I was you know we were going door-to-door and like some my manager dropped me into like a neighborhood and you know I’d like prospect for like half the amount of time of everybody else and I get like two three four times the amount of appointments as everybody else not because I’m smarter or better than anybody I just you know was just refining out and making adjustments and everything and had my own style that was working and then I doubled down on it so I was teaching people how did sell door-to-door and then I was promoted into another role in that company where I managed a department where I was training twenty-five salespeople and marketers and some of them were three times my age and I was 22 years old at the time and and and I kind of learned management different management styles very early on just from practitioner shit and also I think I think my style has actually been influenced quite a bit from that company and in and and like kind of seeing how transparent that they are with everything and I think that’s very millennial ask people would say also and a lot of the more innovative you know if startup companies who have employee one employee – it’s all about transparency and so that’s just how I lead and lead lead our team and lead our clients lead our you know coaching students lead our marketing matchmakers that I train with is like total transparency even when it’s kind of painful to be transparent it just it it and it’s not even because that’s like sophisticated and I kind of like think about it in a sophisticated way I’m just probably ignorant and I’m just oh like if you know me like I have no filter so that’s just how I end up kind of leading is through transparency and then the other thing too is like leaders think leading is about Direction like hey I command you to do this versus my style is someone comes to us and they say hey Connor we have a problem or a challenge which I tell everyone don’t tell me we have a problem we have an opportunity we have a challenge you know challenge is different than like we have a problem and so when they come to me – like how do we solve this I’m like I don’t know how would you recommend we solve it like I give everyone the empowerment to solve things first and then circle back with me where there’s gaps that need to be filled so most leaders when employees come to them and they say hey what do we do here they tell them I want my people to be great to be able to take make decisions be creative be innovative without me and so I give them all the the power to do it you know I can think of five different scenarios this last week someone came to me hey we got this challenge with our client what do we do here I’m like well what do you recommend tell me give me two or three different options and I’ll give you feedback from there yeah absolutely I come from much more of a traditional business environment where it is not perhaps as transparent and a little more you know cus structured and things like that and honestly I’ve you know I saw your leadership style before we really turned over you know managing you know just all the different parts of the business that you weren’t you know as a sales and marketing director and you you you have a really you know great style I think that you really are transparent and really helped the team so I was pretty impressed with that and kind of felt like you know we needed to make that shift in the business as long as we’ve been around and and so um yeah I think you’re doing a remarkable job there so you know look people don’t want to be managed and told what to do and and meet it like it’s probably even more so because like i f and hate being told what to do I mean how many taught like Connor don’t touch it it’s hot and then what do I do I go touch it like that’s a that’s a funny story for another time but you know I burned my hand on Christmas when Mark told me not to touch the hot stove and my dummy you know brain was like oh you should definitely go touch that like that’s just that’s just how I am so did your thirty seconds yeah 30 sec to think about it I don’t know how much thinking about it there was but yeah I mean people want to be led not just like told what to do because again people have unrestricted access to everything information people resources and I really like the like the kind of I can’t remember where this came from but the quote of what if we you know train our people and and in refine our people and they leave us and it’s like well what if we do don’t do it and they don’t you know um so I would rather and I take that approach with the team to I’m like hey listen you may have another career down the road I’m gonna help you develop some skills right now that are gonna like immensely help you in your next career step and may hopefully it’s with us forever and ever and ever but realistically like I would I would be a cheerleader for for you to like go somewhere that you’re more passionate about like yeah I tell people to you know this is probably a difference between you and I – and management style is I would tell people to like leave like if you’re not passionate about this go find the thing you’re passionate about and I’ll help you – you know we can find more talent we can find other people for the business and and I think that actually makes people more sticky and I’ve experienced that too in other organizations well it’s empowering it’s empowering them for you know their future no matter hopefully it’s with us and we’ve had as a business an incredible track record and absolutely blessed by the caliber of people that we’ve had in a business really all along and one of the one of the little taking a little bit of a step back is a couple years after you know we Connor came on with us I walked out of my office one day and I didn’t recognize anybody they were all you know a lot of them you know kind of younger Millennials Connors age and and more and at first I didn’t get the jokes about you know are we really gonna have flying cars or not and they definitely have a different sense of humor and you know you know and all that so I was thinking I even got what the whole hurry because I’m a millennial but I think I think I think what people pick up really quickly and I was I was like this when I was young too right is like I’m an old soul so like I’m but I I have a pretty old I guess energy to myself that allows me to lead a lot of my dear have a maturity definitely a maturity about you but what I would say to anybody about you know this the millennial generation and we’re even kind of moving on from there but I’ve been just so impressed with the work ethic and the caliber of people and the the speed the lightning speed at which they they do things at so our our business was ready for a transition and sometimes as the founder and as long as we’ve done you know I’ve done this it’s hard to make that transition and totally change everything the way you’ve been doing it but I’m glad we made the change it was important to make the change and I think you know even everything down from we went remote back at the end of 2018 and so especially with current events that was a super timely thing to do and that really was um kind of mmm brought on by you really being behind that concept and some of the other folks and so you know definitely happy now that we went remote and didn’t have to figure out how to do it at the you know like a lot of people have here in the last couple of months and so so anyways yeah thanks Connor I want to move on to that and I want to hear a little bit about why you do what you do and what’s important to you about it I would say the biggest factor for why I do what I do maybe just as a whole and probably why a lot of Millennials do what it is that we do is freedom you know like I don’t really keep like yeah money’s good money’s awesome and and all that and like um and I love helping people to like I genuinely love helping people it’s my favorite thing I think people pick that up pretty quickly when they absolutely actually get to know me probably to a fault also but mostly just freedom and I think a lot of Millennials who observed their grandparents and their parents kind of go through the traditional walks and phases of life of like you know work a career till you’re you know almost dead and then you’re you know you’re retired and then you have like four or five years to enjoy a retirement and you’re most of them are totally broke when they’re retired and you know I’m just always even from from yuen yuen yuen like I even remember when I was like 12 or 13 already seeing my vision of the future and already realizing that I wanted to have freedom so like it it actually is probably more out of fear why I do what I do to a certain extent because like I fear not you know reaching my goals and I fear not getting to that point of freedom at a place in my life like um you know I’m 26 right now by the time I’m 30 I want total financial freedom like I could retire at 30 if I want and I probably get there too it’s onry it’s not unlikely and it’s not obscure from the trajectory that I know I’m on but that’s probably it freedom fear and then I love helping people too so like part of the freedom too is I want the freedom to be able to help people in a different way and you know travel when I want go where I want with who I want all that good stuff so I mean so the what is it about if you had if you had a impart that let me back up for one second you talked to a lot of people every day business leaders marketing directors presidents CEOs of b2b companies and you’ve done that for the last three years you’re very familiar with the challenges and the opportunities if you could maybe just kind of boil down to maybe one thing that you see is perhaps a mistake that a lot of b2b leaders are kind of going off of now and maybe the one thing that you would say that could actually help mmm overcome that particular mistake what is it that you would kind of impart there for our listeners I would say the biggest thing for marketers CEOs is thinking that you know it all and I think ego gets in the way a lot of that and and like oh I’ve been in marketing for 20 years like what do you know you smoke like get out of my way and it’s just kind of funny and and honestly I was kind of the same way too until I really you know especially doing like mile high mentors and um you know let’s take LinkedIn for example people coin me as a LinkedIn expert it’s a platform I know very very well but I learn new stuff all the time and I ask questions of other people who know more than I do I’m just a facilitator of information for the most part and so I think I think that thinking that you know it all even if you consider yourself an expert on coffee mugs there’s always one more thing about coffee mugs that you don’t know even if you’re a total expert so I’m always studying always researching always observing and then I think the other thing that people fail at and in their biggest mistake is that they try to go at it alone and they don’t have a mentor or they don’t have a authorities source to like teach them what to do or even just hold them accountable like even just someone to hold them accountable you know thankfully I got you cuz we’re in the business together also and it’s like do or die but I also have other mentors too that that help keep me accountable outside of just you know you and i’s relationship and so i think other people to try not too much to go at it alone can’t create success in a vacuum whether it’s success in your department that you’re in if it’s your health if it’s your mental well-being if it’s your business success your financial success you need people to show you the way i just did a talk on this i just talked about this the other day i did a keynote for them university of denver down here last week a virtual keynote which was really interesting and that was something i talked about is the first caveman that discovered fire it was like the message of fire the first caveman that discovered fire without him transferring that knowledge to the next person um they wouldn’t have had the the the added survival skill to like survive in and thrive and the foundations of where our society is nowadays so it’s like you need to seek that fire from other people when if we cook the viewer the if your the dude that invented who does i don’t it probably I just love to just find that moment cuz I’d love that you know what I think is I think it was probably like a lightning strike that happened and and it lit something up and then someone picked it up and then realize like oh hot and then it transfers over to other stuff and just kept that going and then eventually learned how to create it themselves so who knows man it’s it’s it’s interesting but it’s like a very primitive form of mentorship in my mind the way I think about it is you need to seek that fire from other people because um you could be sitting here in the cold dark cave thinking that you got it going on and then all of a sudden someone shows up with like a hot fire and you’re like oh shit this is pretty cool like there’s so many even just I’ve interviewed hundreds hundreds of people and I’ve only I’m always learning stuff from other people even people who are younger than me and less experienced than me I still learn from yeah you do you yeah you really do you are listening to the beat to be mentors podcast here in Fort Collins Colorado you are you gonna be hosting that you moving forward and you are and we are here interviewing today a young millennial entrepreneurial guy we work closely together and his name is Connor Dube and so Connor I I think um you know we we have a really good background on who you are and why people should listen to you uh I think it I think it’d be like really great if we can talk a little bit about you know with the disruption that we just had in literally worldwide disruption but definitely business disruption how are you what are you doing to lead the team and our clients and what are you doing differently that perhaps you weren’t doing before the world changed here in March of 2020 hmm if you just had like three or five things that you could make well as far as in the business moving forward and rolling I mean there was a period of time there were where people were pretty perplexed as far as where this thing is going and what to do and I you know so I just like to hear or just help our listeners understand perhaps some of the adjustments you’ve made to our programs our services our staff or whatever that you feel like are gonna help lead lead us to the other side of this thing well I again the whole the whole thing that’s happened is um you know b2b sales all goes back to person to person and the know and the like in the trust after between one another so I’d say more than anything um even though it’s something I’ve been doing for years is really even just doubling down on the things that I can do to continue to build the know and the like and the trust factor this podcast being one of them you know you and I may interchange being host of this show and in in in being able to like instead of just going to people and doing kind of traditional prospecting like we were I think people are a little just leery or exhausted and sensitive right now and so creating a platform like this where we can get people collaborating with us and talking with us in a way that they may not otherwise I mean doing mile high mentors was one of the most like pivotal things I’ve done in my life it is open so many doors business relationships um you know opportunities that you know some some of which will probably pay off monstrously even ten years down the road from here so it’s kind of crazy to think about but again I got to be the first to admit when you came to me told me yours you’re like doing a podcast for like it what’s the point of that it took me a while to really understand the and it took me a while to by the way to understand like I didn’t even know what the implications were gonna be going into it I’m like you know maybe I start this as a business and or whatever and it’s just it’s it’s always like evolving kind of what what what you get out of doing a podcast yeah but I think three years later it’s definitely easy to see that the podcast platform is is the is very underutilized for business-to-business businesses and the extreme amount of potential that I see now as to how that applies to any b2b business I mean so so that’s one area is just doubling down on on those aspects and having our team also double down on that as well and using our team as a whole to also be arms in our marketing and be ambassadors for our brand I think most companies kind of hide their people behind the scenes and I’m really encouraging our team to go out there talk to people incentivizing them positively to you know also open doors and understanding how and when to be able to open doors and in same for our clients too is we’re changing a lot of their strategy to build in similar components to what we’ve ever done before we just did a kickoff meeting with a brand new client yesterday and we’re gonna do something totally different we’ve never ever done it before but it’s gonna change the game and I’ve they’re gonna be one of our most successful clients I can guarantee it the way that the the shifts that we’re gonna make here so what else I would say yeah I mean everyone everyone needs to be putting their information out there I was just in her on the podcast I was interviewed on yesterday the gal who interviewed me was like I’ve I follow a lot of people and I can’t think of a single person who puts out more free information than you do you know people post a lot of you know videos and personal brand stuff that like gets them out there but I post a lot of technical like how-to stuff probably more than most in our space so you won’t say that for our clients as well hundred percent if I give 99 percent of all my stuff away for free all my information you know you see my whiteboard videos that I do and so the thing is like you see the stuff I put out for free imagine the stuff I’m not putting out so that’s kind of how it how it ends up working is like people see how much information I put out there and it’s really helpful stuff um and it’s not complicated um I’m not creative I’m not like I’m not smart I just listen to what people tell me and then I just turned those questions around into content and that’s the same formula we try to get our clients to follow very closely nice nice nice so so you would recommend highly to b2b leaders to to throttle down on their content or to or to amp that up and then what forms of content do you think are important I’m encouraging all of them to like double down on their content even more so because again we can’t travel for business which is how most of most of most b2b sales is done through purse you know networking trade shows conferences I just talked with a client yesterday and like 70% of their marketing budget was sponsoring trade shows this year and that’s like hundreds of thousands of dollars and now they’re um they’re stuck with like we don’t know when this is going to be vile viable again so they’re going much more in doubling down on digital reach and Linkedin especially because it’s way easier to reach your market there so more content and more content in ways that under understanding ways that like people consume differently so we talked about the trifecta effect which is a combination of video written word and graphic posts because people consume content differently you need to meet people with where they’re hanging out and how they’re consuming information differently so maybe um b2b leaders can maybe spread out the you know the written word which has generally been used a lot and maybe spread that over some other mediums definitely that correct yeah gotcha okay and so um so like what is the I’ve heard you say that word before what is the trifecta effect what it what is it really well the trifecta effect is a combination of not just solely one content vehicle most companies get good at creating at least one form of content whether they do a lot of video or they do a lot of like text posts or visual posts or articles or blogs and and then they don’t they don’t apply the other areas again people consume their information differently so the trifecta effect just simply meets people in the way that they’re consuming information some people prefer video so we help our clients you know do videos some people prefer written word so we help them do that and in addition visual graphic content so that’s the trifecta effect using all the all the means of community of communicating okay great that sounds that sounds like it makes a lot of sense again you’re listening to the b2b mentor’s podcast here in Denver Colorado and we are interviewing young millennial entrepreneur b2b marketing expert Connor Dube he’s coming to us from down in Denver and so Connor to just to kind of start putting a wrap on our podcast here tell maybe you can tell the listeners where do you feel like the things with the with this new maybe model for an adjustments that have to be made for business us some of those things are gonna have to stay in place and some make it back to normal here but like how are you positioning yourself and your company for the future and how should other people be you know kind of like planning to be able to move forward in this I don’t want to say a new environment because I want to go back to I want to go back to where things were like I don’t think you know everything should shift just because we had a virus go around town so I’m planning on everything getting back but how would you position yourself if you’re a leader marketing director CEO president of company you know what are you gonna do differently just in just in you know from our learning experience of what we’ve just had here oh so there’s a few questions in there I think I think what you’re about my I think what you’re asking is is like what like personally what I’m gonna do differently is I’m going to still again this is where I keep going back to like I feel like personally I’ve been training a lot for this for this pivotal moment in time because I would say at the end of the day whether you’re listening to this and you’re chief marketing officer you’re a CEO you know sales person marketing director is at the end of the day you you’re still not going to be effective in your business if your health is out of check so I oh I told my PE I tell our people this too is I’m like listen make sure your mental health is in check make sure your your your physical health is in check if you need to take the afternoon off to get your self together do it like please take care of yourself um because most people try to like Ram their head and and this is a mistake I’ve made for years is just try to ram my head fur through everything rather than like taking a step back meditating refocusing um if if I’m anxious realizing like well did I actually workout this morning because that makes a difference I’m on a sales call and I’m like dragon and and and I’m like well what did I eat last night what did I drink last night what did I do this morning so I would say more than anything is focus on your your health and then number two the whole landscape is shifting so I don’t know about long-term planning so much is like really be kind with yourself and take a day by day because your plans are gonna get you know like it’s like Mike Tyson’s quote everyone’s got a plan till they get punched in the face and then what you know so I think we’re into fluid I think we’re in to dynamically shifting times to be like here’s what you need to be doing six months from now now like nobody knows I would say actually do more short-term planning and actually break your weeks down break your days down get super effective they’re good super impactful there and and then it you know find find ways that you can continue to communicate with the people that you would need to be reaching otherwise and other people who have the audience the the eyeballs in the ears of your market too because everyone’s a lot online now like you can reach every single person more people are logged in engaged consuming on social media than ever before in history they’re gonna be writing about it in in books twenty thirty hundred years from now so I understand take advantage of that take advantage of the opportunity yeah yep so if I understand what you’re saying to encapsulate is that this is not the time to be out of sight and out of mind as a business lead quite the opposite quite the opposite and to by the way I think people get too stuck in in the past or what was had right like you and I when when we first started talking about what was going on a couple months ago we’re like we may have to we may have to toss everything and start entirely from scratch and we were identifying ways we may be doing that and trying to understand like you know should we be selling something else in a different industry so I think people again like if you’re furloughed right now if you’re in an industry that’s getting disrupted don’t get hung up you got to keep moving you’re in quicksand right now you gotta find a vehicle that is still going to be applicable in a pandemic because this will happen again it’s already set the frameworks already set um could happen again next year it could happen again in the next 20 years but it will happen again I guarantee it so get yourself positioned in an industry in in a role that isn’t going to like you know totally disappear yeah so you really have to circulate and percolate percolate and circulate in front of the people that need to be hearing from you mmm-hmm like but first you need a vehicle to do that right and but you also have to do that with the realization that trade shows may come back may take a while to come back even if they come back the participation may be low for a while you know just so how do you get in front of people and keep your business rolling and make sure everybody knows you’re still in business what would you say if you had like maybe one or two avenues that you can tell our listeners on how you can do that in this new environment if you’re used to going to the trade shows and meeting prospects in person and meeting clients in person and things like that well use use all the channels at your disposal you got a cell phone you got a you got the perfect communication channel right there so call someone email texts me I text prospects right like I’ve closed deals just by texting back and forth with with I’ve closed like you know high dollar monthly retainer deals just by texting back and forth with prospects so use all the digital communication tools if it’s Instagram use Instagram if it’s Facebook use Facebook I prefer LinkedIn simply because of the fact that if you compare it to any other platform that exists I can go in there and very specifically find anybody um in a more targeted way you can’t do it on Instagram you can’t do it on Facebook can’t do it on Twitter can’t do it on YouTube can’t do it through email you can find people through databases but then the question again comes back to how do you get in contact with them yeah if you really think about it social media is the ultimate social distance distancing marketing remedy yeah absolutely yeah and I use I send video messages to people I send audio messages to people through LinkedIn it’s it’s a it’s in my mind the number one communication channel that exists for b2b sellers and b2b marketers and a lot of people know that inherently but they also see a lot of bad practice out there so it deters them away but you could also like be a and ass at a trade show and like just be you know belligerently intoxicated and be annoying and you know be weird and whatever and looking ahead we all know that one guy who racks up the bar tab when you’re you know trying to learn and educate yourself in the conference and you got your buddy back there at the bar just really just just refined experience or anything but yeah just don’t realize how pathetically you just be at the bar when just pure don’t leave your card at the bar and this is purely hypothetical not that I’ve ever experienced this before with anybody who shall not be named but but yeah so use the channels that are available there’s there they’re all there and don’t be deterred away because other people take bad practice to it you can be doing things the right way okay great so in the interest of time this has been a lot of fun can you do is there anything that you just want to let people know before we wrap up and yes if you if you hear this you think you might be a good potential guest to be on be to be mentors may be interviewed by Mark may be interviewed by me maybe we should both code do a co-host show who knows where this thing’s an open platform and we’re just getting rolling with with this one in particular but um send me a message you can find me on every single social platform even tick tock Connor do BC o NN o R do BD ube send me a direct message make sure you go check out our website active blogs comm if you’re in a position right now where you know you need to either do you know one of a couple things you most people are now in discussing with them are either trying to cut their existing marketing cost trying to try to cut down their cost trying to optimize their current investment in spend and trying to bootstrap with the resources that they have or trying to identify new channels to you know be amplifying their brands out on because they were massively disrupted by kovat so um if if you fall under one of those categories again send me a message or contact us or a website we can get together I’ll give you what’s called a marketing second opinion will identify you know what your biggest needs are gonna research your competitors see how they’re positioning themselves online how we can position you uniquely to them and put together a roadmap or match you up with a partner vendor that’ll give you the right service to make you successful yeah that sounds great what type what type of investment does that marketing second opinion take for somebody if they’re working off a either an unsure budget a lower budget or they’re just not sure where things are going like what is it cost to get for you to actually do that marketing second opinion so the marketing second opinion is generally a $10,000 upfront cotton I’m just kidding it’s actually it’s it’s no financial investment upfront to have that discussion we’re really incentivized to match our clients up with the right option for their needs whether it’s something we’re able to provide them so we really spend a lot of upfront time doing consulting that most people would charge significantly for um we do it at no financial cost um it’s gonna it’s gonna be an investment of your time and that’s it so you just gotta take the action you know if you’re unsure of where to go I will you know I generally point people in in the direction that will give them the biggest impact in the quickest amount of time and even if you’re sitting here like well dude my marketing budgets a hundred dollars a month come talk to us we’ll find you we’ll find you a resource or just point you in the right direction right on or maybe tell you you’re probably understanding on your marketing right on thank you so much for your time here young entrepreneur Connor Dube.