Join Dustin in an engaging conversation with Emily Wilkins, who is on a mission to empower job shops to revolutionize their marketing by crafting a Radical brand that authentically reflects their identity and irresistibly attracts their desired audience. They explore the significance of a strong brand, simplifying website development, maximizing social media presence, and embracing authenticity. Don’t miss out on this week’s episode of MFGMONKEY for invaluable insights and more!
Find Emily at:
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/emilyjoannwilkins/
- Website: Marketing Metal
- https://www.linkedin.com/company/marketing-metal/
- https://www.instagram.com/marketingmetal/?hl=en
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Building a Radical Brand with Emily Wilkins
In this episode, we have Emily Wilkins. Emily is dedicated to helping job shops elevate their marketing by crafting a radical brand that’s true to their identity and irresistibly attractive to their ideal audience. Her approach empowers businesses to market themselves simply and effectively, without breaking the bank or spending endless hours on social media. Operating with a philosophy of being Sharp, Shiny & Magnetic, she believe the energy you project is the energy you attract. With a vibrant disposition and sharp wit, she help uncover the “metal”—the unique qualities that make you, your team, and your services magnetic to the clients you want to engage with, regardless of your industry. She illuminate our inner brilliance and challenge us to step out of our comfort zone, embracing our true essence and excellence (thank you, Beyoncé). When she’s not guiding job shops to marketing success, collaborating with inspiring women in manufacturing, or sharing branding and marketing insights on LinkedIn, you’ll find her seeking adrenaline in outdoor adventures, enjoying time with family and friends, or creating art that remains her personal treasure. Years of study, practice, and open-mindedness have shaped her sharp, shiny, and magnetic essence, and the journey continues as she strive to become her most authentic self. We’re in this journey together.
Welcome Emily. How are you?
I’m great. How are you, Dustin?
Oh, good. Just running around. I appreciate you letting me be 30 minutes tardy for today. So, thank you again.
No worries gave me more time to prepare.
The fun thing is we’re working on a pretty big deal right now. We just went and looked at another 100 plus thousand square foot building to do some warehousing for a new customer. Exciting times.
Wow, that’s amazing.
Why don’t you tell the audience a little bit about yourself and then we’ll get into it? I think we’re going to probably talk about all things marketing and maybe a few other things.
My name is Emily Wilkins. You can find me on LinkedIn as Emily Joanne Wilkins. There are a couple of us out there. So, trying to differentiate, as a marketer, always trying to differentiate. My company is Marketing Metal, and I work specifically with job shops.
Mostly machine shops, fabrication shops, sometimes some robotics integrators, prototype companies, and companies like that. People who are doing custom work for larger manufacturers, not selling their products.
That’s awesome. I learned about you through Paul with pro shop. Paul and I did a podcast couple of years ago. His market and your market seem to align line pretty well.
Yes, they do. I did a workshop for Paul last summer and got five clients from that workshop. I’ve worked with quite a few of his clients and I think they’re a good fit because it’s shops that are trying to grow. Trying to be more efficient, be of better value to their customers and trying to make an impact in their community. Those are the types of owners that I like working with.
It is hard to work for or work with an owner if they don’t want to evolve. If they’re not looking at the latest and greatest technology or marketing.
I think those businesses are dying out. If you’re not growing, you’re dying. I think Paul said that in your podcast, I listened to your interview with him as well. The famous Black Sheep, right? Is that from Black Sheep?
Maybe, I haven’t seen black sheep for a while. So, I think I would have to watch it again.
Yeah, I’m forgetting. Chris Farley, his dad runs a manufacturing company, so it’s kind of a funny one to watch.
That took place in Sandusky, Ohio. One of the famous scenes is with the big dinosaur in the background. That’s close to my place up at the lake there. It’s pretty funny to drive by that and think of Chris Farley. He is definitely one of my favorites of all time. So, what was the company Callahan Auto Parts?
Yeah, Callahan.
He has a couple of other really good quotes in there if you remember them.
Yes, I’m coming up dry at the moment, but there are lots of good one-liners.
I forgot how the whole thing goes. Something like, you can take my word for it or, you can take the butcher’s word for it or stick your head up the cow’s ass to look at a t-bone steak. Always a classic. Going back to what you said in the beginning with your LinkedIn. We will have a link to your LinkedIn, the bio, and all that fun stuff on the podcast notes. Make it easy for everyone to find Emily and contact her. Going back to the workshop, tell us a little bit about the workshop that you did.
It was called “Marketing Doesn’t Have to Suck”, which is also the name of the talk that I gave at Fabtech last year. I think that’s the name of the first talk that I ever gave, that was at the Advanced Manufacturing Expo in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It has evolved since then. Fabtech was definitely a bucket list item. It was cool to do that last year. I’m waiting to hear if I’m on the list this year, but I think my prospects are pretty good.
Good. So you did the same workshop at fab tech, “Marketing Doesn’t Have to Suck”.
It was more of a talk at Fabtech and less of a workshop. I kind of just made it a little bit more interactive for Paul’s customers. We had a huge turnout. There were over 100 signups and I think like 40 people were actually there.
Oh wow, that’s great. Marketing has always been one of my favorite subjects, especially around manufacturing. There is a very small little niche of people that I think get it when it comes to manufacturing marketing because it’s so much different than marketing lets say, a dentist, an eye doctor or an ice cream shop, etc. It seems like all the marketers that are extremely good at that try to play in the manufacturing space. My experience is you end up teaching them the lingo, and what certain things It is just six months of them learning about manufacturing. I think it’s really cool that you’re focusing all in on manufacturing and marketing.
I came up in the manufacturing space. My grandpa retired from a machine shop in Detroit, actually a competitor of my husband’s grandpa’s shop also in Detroit. My dad was very mechanical, had his shop in the garage, and I used to hang out with him, tinkering. One of my co-op jobs, where I did my senior thesis project in college was a fabrication shop. I learned a ton in that job. there were seven people that worked there, so it was a really small company. I worked directly with the owner, and it was very much duct tape marketing, figure it out yourself kind of thing. A lot of my career I have worked with small shops like that. Really helping the sales team, figuring out how to understand their customers, understanding what makes them different and better, learning how to communicate those selling points to ideal customers.
Did you do some marketing with your family’s company too or were they open to it?
The company shut down when my grandpa retired, and I was 12. So it was before my time, sadly.
I guess that’s a decent excuse. Where did you go to school and how did you get into marketing and manufacturing? Because it’s a unique position, I think, all the manufacturers I know, especially if they’re under $10 million, they don’t have a marketing team, person, or even a sales team.
I went to Kettering University, which used to be General Motors Institute. They are famous for their co-op programs and they’re mostly focused on engineering and manufacturing. My mom teaches there. That’s how I ended up going there. She’s a calculus professor and she was an electrical engineer before that. My dad is a technician. He did a lot of vehicle testing, and stuff for GM. Tons of manufacturing in my family. My sister also graduated from Kettering as an industrial engineer. My husband is an industrial engineer and we met at Kettering. I speak the language. It helps to have Justin, my husband, to be able to talk through things with him. He’s always the one sourcing parts from these companies. Just being able to bounce things off him and make sure I’m getting the language right.
Well, traditional marketing is so much about playing into the emotions of your audience. With manufacturing, emotions are there when you play into on time delivery, quality and people’s livelihood. You can certainly play into the emotion, but it’s definitely not the same emotion as Dairy Queen.
No, it’s not. You’re right though, there’s a lot of emotion involved in that purchasing process. Even as much as these technical buyers like to think that they are using their logic in their decision-making, there can still be a lot of emotion behind it. Especially in these days of overseas suppliers and it’s even more important now than ever to really bring that personality forward and show that you care. It’s important to show that you care and that you’re different because you care.
I think the manufacturers that do care are a step ahead of everyone. Myself and one of my good buddies that I have worked with for quite a while, Jamie at McGregor metals, he is the CEO there, a big metal stamping company does it right. He stands in front of his team and says when you work for us, you see me at Kroger walking around. I buy my meat from the same store that you buy your meat from. That is why McGregor Metals is such a great place to work. It’s not run by a Japanese company where you are never going to meet the owner. Moves kind of away from marketing a little bit, but not really. If he has 500 people in his facility, he’s got 500 bird dogs that are out there talking about how great McGregor Metals is. Like we are right now, we’re talking about it because it just popped into my head. I listened to Jamie’s annual meeting last year and, and that’s big when you have an owner of a company that, doesn’t hide behind the curtains playing Wizard of Oz. When you’re engaged in your people, those people are going to talk about that. It helps with the people that are recruited to work at your company, they naturally care more. I think that really buys into the emotional aspect of manufacturing too. You can certainly talk about that with the customer. When your salespeople were out there saying our people do care, they want to be on time. It’s not they’re clocking in and clocking out just for a paycheck, but they care that your parts show up to your facility on time.
100%. I mean, that’s just great branding is what that is. They’re branding themselves as a company that cares, that is part of the community and that’s so important.
I was reading through your bio on your LinkedIn and outside of marketing that doesn’t suck there was something else in here that I found, found funny. Now that I’m looking for it, I won’t be able to find it. I like your language and how you talk about it, because it is real. We talk the talk of different languages but it is different.
Was is it the unnecessary shit? I think you mentioned that.
Yes, necessary and unnecessary shit. What a good point to really evaluate what we’re doing. We have all gone through periods of times where we’ve done things that work and then suddenly, they don’t work anymore. So, now we’re doing unnecessary shit. Then you have to figure out the necessary shit to get it to start working again. What are some of those things that you’ve seen over the years?
Some of the necessary things we talked about already. For example, having a really strong brand, having a personality and being real and not all buttoned up. There are so many boring, mundane, terrible job shop websites out there. The website is important. That’s what people are doing when researching. Even if they know of you already, they’re going to look at your website to check you out and see what else they can find. If you don’t have that, and if it’s not memorable, interesting, and if it doesn’t reflect your true value that you bring to the table, then it’s not going to work. The other thing that is important to me and where I saw a really big opportunity was the process of having a website built or marketing at any capacity as a job shop was painful. I’ve been on both sides of it and there just was such a break in communication It is this back-and-forth email chain forever and they drag on. The client doesn’t get back to you with the details that you need and then vice versa. The client is waiting forever for the agency and by that time they have five other projects that they’re working on and yours falls to the wayside. It ends up being this really long-drawn-out painful process. I actually learned this from a business coach that I still work with. I don’t know if you can see my bag in the background, the NoBS. That is my business coach, Pia Silva. She developed this process that is an intensive process. Instead of working on several projects at once, we focus on one project at a time. We did this. There is the setup in the beginning where I really get to know the customer, try to understand what their needs are, really identify what their brand needs to look like and what their marketing should be. I help them, I give them advice on how to be more effective with outreach, finding the right customers, and positioning themselves to be the go-to for those customers. Then our intensive process, from the customer’s perspective, we only spend about a day to three days of their time, depending on if we’re doing like photography and video as part of the project. We build everything ahead based on what we picked up in the setup process. I try to get a really clear understanding on what they’re looking for, what they don’t like, understanding their personalities. Then we build everything ahead and then present it to them. We go through and make changes on the spot and then we launch it together. I teach them how to use everything that we built. Unlike many agencies, we build in Squarespace so that it’s really easy for the client to manage. They don’t have to worry about plugins breaking all the time and trying to figure out where to make changes to things. It is a simple interface. Then we also, as much as we can, we use Canva to build graphics. Then they have the templates to use, even their brochures. When doing all of this in Canva, down the road when they get a new piece of equipment, they can just add it themselves and they don’t need to reach out to us. I really try to help them get everything that they need to be successful so they’re not having to call us all the time. That is the opposite of what most agencies do, you know like they want you to rely on them, right?
I see both sides of it pretty good. I have no idea how to change anything that we do. So we are guilty of it. If I need something changed for our brochure, we have to call the marketing company to do it. I don’t even have the design file to make the change myself, even if I knew how, let alone go onto our website and make a change. You and I talked offline a little bit about how we’re building out a new website. I think we’re in month 11, which is the most painful thing that I’ve ever done. It is very frustrating, especially when you’re jumping on a phone call week after week, explaining the same things repeatedly. It is tedious for sure and unnecessary shit.
That is unnecessary shit, yes.
It is probably one of the things that frustrates me the most is doing things over and over that I’ve already done. We have talked about this five weeks in a row, why isn’t it remembered. Their response, “Oh we forgot”, or “we didn’t think that it was important” or, any other excuse. It is just painful. In addition, the lost opportunity cost is unknown. If you should have launched something six months ago, who knows what that website would have done in those six months. It is still on the back burner, getting worked on constantly. Websites are important. I think that a lot of people undervalue a website. From a communication aspect, talking about your company and what you can do, it’s a visual aid for somebody to go and see what you’re actually doing. That marketing and branding piece online, just people finding you, rather than them finding you on Thomasnet. They are able to go to your website and and it really clarifies what we are doing even more. On a marketing standpoint would you agree with that?
Definitely, even as social media gets more and more important your website is still the hub. It’s still where, especially in this manufacturing space, where people are going to go look. The brand as a whole, having something that your team is proud of, having something that the owner or your salesperson is proud to share like that changes the game for you as a representative of the company too. You are excited to show people. You’re like, “Wow, look at this company that I work for”, or “Hey, you know, I think we would be great partners for you. Here’s our website”. It’s great to be proud to do that and not embarrassed, right? It just changes the conversation so much.
I can relate to that because over the last year, when someone asks what is your website, I find myself explaining to them it really doesn’t reflect what we do today. It reflects what we did eight years ago. Here is how we’ve evolved over time and our website really doesn’t reflect what we’re doing. I find myself going into this explanation where you go to our website, go to this page, it’ll show you another company that we worked for, and this is how we helped them, and here is the white paper on it. That conversation is way different by the time I get into like the 30 or 45-second mark of me, justifying why my website sucks. They are checked out and that is a whole other level of pain for me.
Oh, I’m sorry that you’re going through that. I feel so bad. I wish we had met a year ago.
The conversation is just way different than you want it to be, especially for the salespeople out in the field. I grew up in sales, it is what I really enjoy doing and probably spend way too much time doing that. It is very important to have good content and good websites, and you can be on the phone with somebody and say, hey, go to this page on our website and learn more about us instead of explaining how it doesn’t talk about what you do anymore. So.
You mentioned a white paper case study too, we’ve sometimes done video case studies, which are awesome as well. I’m going on-site to my customer, asking them a bunch of questions about their processes, how that turned out for them and how it alleviated pain for them. Those pieces of content are just invaluable.
Oh, absolutely.
It’s so nice to be able to say here, this customer is just like you guys check them out. Don’t take it from me. Take it from our customer.
The educational piece with the video, I believe strongly in education. It is the most powerful marketing that you can do. If you’re teaching and, talk to somebody about how things are done, instead of telling them about how great you are, it’s far more powerful.
What’s the most fun video that you’ve made?
Oh, man, we’ve done some really cool ones. I was just working on a case study for replacement brush panels. They do brush panels for the turrets in stamping and punching machines. They have a really unique value proposition because they’re one of the only US suppliers, domestic suppliers of these panels. Most fabricators are used to having to go through the OEM, which a lot of times are overseas. They are focused on selling machines, not much on helping customers get replacement panels. The process is just really slow and frustrating, especially since COVID, the lead times have been just insane. Bringing out their personality, showing they are hands-on with this. We went on site again with one of their customers showing a lot of interaction with them and the customer. That’s a differentiator for them because they’re here, they’re on site, they’re going to come and find out what you make and be sure that you get it. That one’s fresh in my mind because I was just working on the case study for that. Probably one of my favorite ones actually was this past fall, I worked with Ian Storck of Storck Filmworks, amazing videographer, producer, and we did a series of videos for a company called Cogitic that makes machines, massive machined components for submarines.
Oh wow.
They are super visually striking to see, these huge machines and the massive parts that they’re making inside of them. Ball valves that are, bigger than a doorway. That was really cool. We did a company overview video, then we did a career focus, who we are video. Also, team highlight videos, we interviewed three people from their team, on what they liked about working there. One of them in particular was like “this is so amazing”. That is exactly what I needed them to say. You rock, thank you so much for giving such a great interview. It is really cool seeing that’s not something you would think a machine shop would specialize in. But they do, and they are great at it and building a really cool company.
Yeah, it is. Machine shops are so much fun. I was just talking about this yesterday to one of my buddies. He’s a chiropractor, we’re both into guns and we like to shoot. Between the two of us have broken, I don’t know how many different targets. One of his clients owns a machine shop and we were talking about making a different target that doesn’t break as easily. We met yesterday at his machine shop, and he was doing stuff in there for the military that was just mind-blowing. When you walk into it, I think you have probably three different kinds of machine shops. One looks like a hospital, and everything is perfectly clean and amazing. You walk in and you’re like, holy cow, you’re manufacturing in here, which is so much different than old school machine shop. Then you still have the old school machine shop, that guys are smoking at the machine, the ceiling is kind of crusty and the floor is covered with cutting oil and chips everywhere. That’s kind of like this place as you walk in and you’re like, what does this guy make in here? Nails? I mean, there certainly can’t be anything, very high tech in here. Yet, he was making some of the hardest components for guns in this place that I had ever seen before. I was like, holy cow. They are the only ones that can do it. I guess, there’s something to be said for it and they’re still operating off of paper. Paul’s mind would probably explode. But they are doing an amazing job. They’re getting things out on time. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it, kind of an attitude. If you could go in there and show what those guys are doing, it’s just incredible. It’s a lot of fun to be in those places, I think.
I’ve had customers that are like that too, or they’ve, you know, the shop has been there forever. They have some really cool old machines that they still use for stuff because they’ve dropped out, they do really low-volume stuff. It doesn’t make sense for them to upgrade. They are super specialized in what they do. One of the only companies doing it and small companies, especially that are doing this kind of stuff. So that’s cool.
It is. One of my buddies. I want to say the name of the company, but I’m going to butcher it. I’m just going to not do it. But they recycle precious metals. He’s turned into one of my best friends. We started going around to each other’s companies and checking out what we all do, since we spend so much time hanging out. He recycles precious metals, titanium and all kinds of crazy alloys. There are a few alloys that they can recycle that nobody else in the world can, that come off of a jet engine. In my head, I’m envisioning people with saws and grinders and this crazy stuff, recycling metal. It is like a chemistry lab, it was mind-blowing how they’re using different chemicals to extract the metals out of these jet engine parts. They have these huge fighter jet engines, sitting in their shop, the size of a school bus which is, pretty cool to me. They cut these things down and then do the chemistry thing to them. They end up with grams of recycled material out of this huge jet engine. Pretty mind-blowing. I guess when you’re the only one in the world that can do it, you don’t need to market a whole lot, right?
Yeah, I guess so. That’s a big part of what I help my customers with too, what are you really good at that, that other people can’t do? That is where you need to focus. A lot of them, get stuck in that trap of taking on whatever projects come in, and, try to figure it out and make it work. Really specializing in something, that’s where you really set yourself apart.
We are certainly guilty of that. You get a project, and you focus on how to do it. We have done a couple of projects that made my mind wonder if we couldn’t do it. We were the fifth person that they came to because nobody else was able to do it. Maybe it was my ego, but I say, we’re figuring this shit out. We are going to figure out how to do this. Two or three instances, we were really able to figure it out. But that’s the fun part of this for me, talking through those things, picking the minds of people like you, and especially in marketing and the things like that.
Yeah, it’s cool that you have other shop owners that you talk to too. I mentioned that the No BS program that I’m in, it really has changed the game for me to have other agency owners that are doing similar work as I am also focusing on their unique niches that are very different from mine. Being able to talk through problems with them. So much of it is just mindset things, right? You just get stuck in your own head and being able to talk through those things with other owners is really game-changing.
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I belong to a Vistage group and it is a game changer. One of my buddies, Kai Fell, Kai owns an Aluminum Sand Casting Company out in California, probably one of the best in the world. We were struggling with some things, we were having beers, and he’s like “Dude, you need to look into the Vistage” Instead of running everything across family or trying to figure out who in your organization you can trust to talk to you go talk to this group. It’s all business owners. There are guys in my group that are doing well over $500 million and to have that guy’s ear for even just once a month for 10 minutes, it’s invaluable. So, certainly I can definitely appreciate having a group to go to, to talk to, to bounce ideas off of. It doesn’t always have to be technical. It could be a personal issue that you’re having or, who knows what it could be, it is invaluable to have somebody that’s in a similar situation that you’re in now that is 50 years ahead of you or 40 years ahead of you. To have that person guide you or mentor you is certainly invaluable. For me, it was very intimidating to go into a room with folks like that are just, why am I even here? They are doing 500 million, I’m nowhere even close to that. They welcome you with open arms. So, definitely if you don’t have it, go get it for sure.
What are a couple of tips that you could give for free, not giving away the farm. We brought up social media and I’ve always either loved it or hated it, or you don’t know what to do with it. I’ve always found LinkedIn invaluable. That is how you and I connected right, through LinkedIn? We’ve never met each other except through LinkedIn. I think Instagram is a great one because it’s videos, you can show things being made. It’s a cool place where you can put little clips and videos. One thing that I thought was absolutely ridiculous was TikTok. And I have a TikTok account and I shot a video of a stamping machine, stamping out a blank. These parts are falling off the machine. I think we have over a million views on it. How the hell does this thing get a million views? We couldn’t try to, it was the dumbest video. It’s like 30 seconds long of just a clip with a stamping machine, stamping, and parts falling off, that’s it. It gets a million views, we could have spent thirty thousand dollars on a video and maybe get 30. Things that you don’t think are gonna work and then it works, weird.
TikTok is a funny animal. There is no way for you to know if any of those million views are potential customers, right? Unless somebody comes to you and says, hey, I saw you on TikTok.
Oh, absolutely not. It could be some 14-year-old. It could be all 14-year-olds kids that are really interested in manufacturing, which is fine. It was just crazy that we got a million views off of it. You can’t track it.
You had asked about tips. We talked a little bit about LinkedIn and TikTok and it’s hard to quantify what some of those things do. There are tracking things that you can use. Obviously, you could track if somebody clicked on your LinkedIn profile to go to your website or clicked on a LinkedIn post. It is hard to quantify, but if you’re getting yourself out there. If you’re putting yourself out there, then people are gonna start to notice. It will eventually get into the right hands. the algorithms are set up to show people things that they’re interested in because they want you to keep coming back to the platform. They are going to keep showing you things that you’re interested in. If you’re showing stuff that your potential customer is going to care about then it’s likely that they’ll see it. I think a lot of owners want to just hire somebody to post stuff for them and not have to think about it, worry about it or look at it. In the case of LinkedIn especially, it’s hard to do that. I think that is where the value really comes from LinkedIn is the connections and interactions with the people that you meet there, creating those human connections through a digital channel. Just commenting on someone else’s post or saying something interesting, those things go a long way. One of the ways that I built my business before I really got serious about posts was sharing my own stuff on LinkedIn and doing more of these podcasts. Positioning myself as more of an expert, just doing warm outreach on LinkedIn, and not necessarily looking for potential prospects. I was just reaching out to my network and saying, “Hey, let’s have a catch-up call. I haven’t talked to you in a while”. Then during the conversation saying, “Well, you know, this is what I’m doing now. It’s pretty cool. If you run into anyone that sounds like they might be a good fit” I’m being very specific with who my customer is. If you’re being specific, memorable and you’re a genuinely kind person who wants to help and you are helping, you’re reciprocating, then you’ll get referrals. I just got one last week that is potentially going to be a really great customer from a friend that I made on LinkedIn. It is those connections that are invaluable. It’s hard to quantify them and it’s hard to say which ones are going to turn into something. You can’t really go into it with that ROI mentality. But, if you keep showing up and keep doing it, you’ll see results.
I agree. I don’t know if you know Matt from MRS machine? Matt and I did a podcast, Matt and I met on LinkedIn. I feel like we’re talking about dating sites. He had reached out to me and said “You know I really like what you guys are doing, we have this machine shop. If you ever need anything, check us out”.
Yes, Matt Gussie. I love Matt Gussie.
I ended up driving up to his shop, which was extremely impressive. He had done some work with us and it was all through LinkedIn. Its been five years ago that I met Matt and he’s just, he’s a great guy and he knows what he’s doing. His story is a lot of fun. LinkedIn is definitely valuable, you’ll see tangible results, just getting out there and making connections.
Again, the more specific and memorable you can be, the more human you can be in sharing, not just your work stuff, but personal stuff and showing that you’re like a real person with a personality, not some bot, right? It goes a long way.
I love the thought of that. Years ago when I was working at a company, we were redoing our website. My idea was we should we put our pictures, the management teams pictures and a little bio about us on the website. The president of the company’s response was “We are not publicly traded why would we do that”? I don’t know, when somebody goes to our website and sees your face or people in the company then they come to visit and they recognize you. They have seen you on the website. I think that’s a really good point to have that personality. I love it.
Personal posts on LinkedIn, even though it’s a business platform, your personal posts are likely going to perform better than your business posts. Almost always.
For example? Like, a personal post, here’s a picture of my dog Gustaf.
Seriously, it’s the ones that I’ve got most traction on. Where I’m talking about my struggles with Crohn’s disease and I had a really serious life-threatening surgery six years ago and when I post about that, I get so many comments. People inspired by my outlook on things, what I took from that experience and relating to it. My friend has this, or my mom has Crohn’s disease or, and it’s those connections, that people care about. People want to do business with people. We may be trying to grow our businesses, but it’s the people behind the business that matter.
That’s a very interesting point. I’m so private even on Facebook, I barely post anything. Other people will post things and that’s really what fills up my Facebook. My personality though I wouldn’t post something like that. But I can certainly see how it would be very impactful.
It’s not for everyone. I go through phases. I’ve been kind of hiding under a rock for the last couple of months, but now I have assistance so that’s nice.
That’s awesome. I think it’s great. I love what you’re doing. Obviously what you’re doing is getting attention just with us meeting and things like that. That’s proof in the pudding right? Our connection is because we are active one on LinkedIn and who knows what this will bring, doing the podcast and us sharing it. We didn’t do video for a long time and we just switched platforms. They said the videos get so many views. They said videos would probably get more views then listens. It’s interesting to me that somebody will sit and watch two people in a video talking instead of just listening to it, driving down the road. People like to see people.
Yes, when you have faces in your videos, they’re going to do better.
Well is there anything that we’re missing that you wanted to talk about?
I have a workshop coming up at the end of March. It is a different one than what I did for Paul. It’s actually a LinkedIn workshop, talking about that warm outreach process that I mentioned. How to get really specific about your message and your target customer. Really dial in your message and make it interesting and memorable.
Tell everyone how they can find the workshop. We’ll certainly post a snippet but how can everyone can find it and what’s involved.
Yeah, we’ll be announcing it on our Marketing Metals LinkedIn channel. I’m sure I’ll share it on my personal one as well. The learn more link at Marketing Metals page will have a link to sign up. So probably next week. Well, by the time this is out, I think it’ll be live.
When does it go live?
I think our first post is next week, so it’ll be March By March 7th, I think it’ll be live. And then the actual workshop is on the 28th, Thursday the 28th.
I know Luke will go through and do his thing, pull all the good information out. Then you also said something about a book?
I am writing a book. Still trying to wrap my head around that, but I’m writing a book. That saying, “If I could write the book on it”. I could write a book on job shop marketing. So, I’m going to do it.
I can’t wait to hear about it. Send me one or send me the audio feed and when it launches. Then we should jump back on and talk about the book.
Yes for sure. It’s definitely going to be at least another year.
Well, all good things come with time, right?
Yes, good things come with time. I forgot to mention about our workshop. Do you know Eddie Saunders Jr?
I do not.
He’s another industrial marketer and he worked for Flex Machine Tools for a long time. He started his own agency recently, but he’s going to hop on as co-host. So that’ll be the first time that we’ve done this workshop before, so it’ll be the first time with him on there.
I’ve never done a workshop on or in LinkedIn or is it through your own website?
It is a Google Meet link. It will be a video call and a bit interactive. We will go around and introduce ourselves, ask questions and answer questions.
Cool, I can’t wait to check it out. Well, thanks again. I am sure we could sit here and keep finding subjects to talk about. I again love what you’re doing, I think your personality is fun. You are definitely very passionate about what you do. So that makes it even more fun.
Well, thank you. Try to make it fun. If it’s not fun, then it’s not worth it. If it’s not fun, then what’s the point?
I agree. Go figure out something that’s fun that you enjoy doing. I couldn’t imagine getting up every day and doing something that I absolutely hate. There is a lot of people that do it.
I don’t understand those people.
I think that’s a good place to end.
Thank you so much for having me, appreciate it.
Absolutely.
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