It's Marketing's Fault

It is time for Build That Podcast, where we'll discuss how you can use a podcast to grow your business and expand your influence.

I'm your host, Eric Rutherford, and I am thrilled today because I have with me Michelle Raymond. She is a LinkedIn strategist and founder of the B2B Growth Company, which teaches B2B marketers and business owners how to sell on LinkedIn. She is the author of Two bestselling LinkedIn books. She is also the host of the LinkedIn for B2B Growth podcast and co-host of the LinkedIn branding show with Michelle B. Griffin. Michelle, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Eric. It's so great for me to be here as well. It's an amazing opportunity to actually get to speak to you. So yeah, I'm so glad we made this happen.

Yeah, I was so thankful you accepted the invite. I first heard your content on a social media marketing podcast back in the early part of 2023, started following your content, and it is just gold. It really is.

I appreciate that because it's something that's evolved over time. And it's something that I put my heart and soul into it because I just want to share with other people, everything I've learned so that they can grow their businesses.

And when I see that happening around me, that is just the best feeling in the world. I do have the best job in the world. I'm just throwing that out there.

Ha ha! Oh, no, I completely get it.

Now, before we get into podcasting and other things like that, I've been following you, what you've been posting on, on LinkedIn about your rebrand. You're in the midst of a rebrand. I have had, I don't wanna say the opportunity, maybe the experience of going through a corporate rebrand and it's a job so. Why not leave it the way it was? Why not just leave things, you know, and avoid all of the pain?

Operation rebrand as I affectionately call it is something that as I'm, you know, in, in it up to my eyeballs right now, there are days where I'm wondering, why did I bother doing this? And the fact is it needed to be done. Why?

Because my branding that I created for my business when I set my business up in March, 2020 was done without thought, without planning, without an ideal audience in mind. And you think, Michelle, like, why did you do that?

Well, I quit a job on the spot and decided the following day, I would never work for anyone else again. I had no intentions of being a business owner. I had no idea what that business would be. It wasn't like I was pretending that I, you know, had these dreams of being an entrepreneur.

It wasn't even on the horizon. You know, there was an event that happened and I had to quit on the spot. Like I said.

And so from that, I have built a great business over time. I call it.

My Frankenstein brand though, because I bolted bits on as I learned some bits no longer fit, they didn't quite mesh together properly, but I got to where I am today, which I'm really proud of, but it was getting to a point now where it was like that rock in my shoe. That every time I tried to move forward, I could just feel that it wasn't right. And it was starting to hold me back. And so that's why I've decided for the second half of this year, all my attention. essentially is to rectifying that. And that is when I say it's a rebrand, it's literally everything from business name websites, all of my visual rebrands, like the whole lot, there is nothing not being touched. Even my podcast is getting the Midas touch. Um, and so yeah, it's paying off already and I'm not even anywhere near finished.

That's, yeah, I completely appreciate that. I also like how you said you started your business, you just went in a direction, and then you sort of figured it out as you went along. Because I think a lot of business owners, well, I say business owners, a lot of content creators, a lot of people trying to start businesses, they think they have to know it all from the beginning.

It sounds like from your experience, it's like you just need to get started and then you can adjust. Am I, am I tracking with you?

You absolutely are. I say to people, even if I had been given a blank check three years ago and the best experts in the world, it wouldn't have helped me because I didn't know where I was going. I couldn't articulate an ideal customer or even a product or a service that I wanted to sell. There was none of that. You know, I literally thought I come from the beauty industry selling raw materials and ingredients. And so it would have been one of those things where I thought I was going to be selling something along those lines. And hence my business name at that time was good trading Co. And so the name was good because I just had a really bad experience with a bad boss, so I wanted to work with good people.

Okay. Now trading, that's a word that was used in that industry, buying and selling makes sense. And Co, I don't know, the web domain was available.

That's about as much thought that it went into that one. And that made sense at that time, but as you know, I ended up offering LinkedIn training and become a company page specialist and all of these other things have nothing to do with trading and buying and selling raw materials.

And so, you know, it was confusing for people.

It didn't make sense.

It was not good even from an SEO perspective.

There was a whole bunch of reasons that just became too big. The further I went and the more I learned. And I think that's it. I gave myself the power and the space to just learn as I went. And I've made a ton of mistakes, but that's what got me here. And I just learned from them and just kept going. And you know, you don't have to be perfect. I am living proof of that.

Well, and then that kind of rolls into really your podcast plural, uh, cause that was something I wanted to, to just ask about you were running a successful business both then and now. And yet you're like, I am going to launch a podcast. I'm going to launch the LinkedIn for B2B growth podcast.

Um, what, what prompted that?

I have a full confession that I need to make upfront, Eric, is that I do not listen to podcasts.

They put me to sleep. I cannot learn that way.

And I never understood why anyone would want to listen to them. So sorry to all of your listeners out there. I have come a long way since then.

I literally started my first podcast because my friend Michelle Griffin said to me, Michelle, you need a podcast to build up your authority and your credibility and your thought leadership. And I just went. Okay.

You know more about personal branding than me. I'll just do what you tell me to do. Uh, so I decided that that's what I would do with no audience in mind, no goal for the podcast. Just my only goal was to start one.

And so I was focused and obsessed with figuring out the tech side, because to me that was the important part. And it was actually called the good for business show back then.

So even it has had a rename over time. Uh, I just renamed it at.

I think January this year is when I renamed it. Uh, because again, it was confusing. The good aligned with my previous business name, but you don't go into, you know, search on a podcast platform and site and search for good business. It's not what people look for.

So the name change was like a huge thing for me at the start of the year. And, you know, obviously lots of branding changes as I evolved, but, you know, ultimately I got started. And my premise was just have some good conversations with people I like to talk to and let other people listen. And it still is that, but I'm a little bit wiser now as to what other people want to listen to.

It is a learning process. I know I am continuing to learn this whole aspect of it, the conversations, what how to host, how to guest, what questions to ask. Now, you started your podcast, you ran it for a year, and then you changed the name. So did you change the format too? Was it just the name? Did you change the focus? Was it like, I've got 52 episodes and now season two is this.

I wish I was that cold and calculated and plans. It literally for me, I like to just dive in the deep end and swim with sharks as Michelle always tells me. So if I want to change something, the thing I love the most about having my own business is I just change it. And so for me, what had happened was I knew I needed to have the word LinkedIn in the title somewhere.

So at least I would come up in searches. And can I just tell you by doing that small change, significantly improved my numbers. Like I'm telling you probably 10 times what they were. My podcast was never a priority at that stage as well, because I have another confession. This, I feel like I'm in a confession box here on today.

But the funny thing was, is that I actually hated being a podcast host for probably the first year. I could not understand. why anyone on earth would want to be a podcast host when in my mind, your only job was to do all of the work and put the spotlight on your guests and you got no, none of the praises.

Now that is being brutally honest, but I felt like I was this bobblehead that sat next to the star of the show and did all of the work for them to look good. And I can tell you that does not make a good podcast host when that is in the back of your mind.

Uh, and that is the level of effort that I put into it as well. You know, I didn't want it to be better because I couldn't reconcile those things in my mind, but something shifted. And again, I think it was almost the start of the year. And I thought, well, actually I've got this amazing opportunity to speak to some of the most brilliant experts around the world. I have their undivided attention for, you know, half an hour, 45 minutes.

And I learned so much from them and I help other people on a bigger scale than what I did by myself and that shift with the name and you know, a whole bunch of other things this year for me, now I get it, but did I get it back then? No, definitely not.

Well, I think that's a very reasonable response because as the host, what you described is absolutely true. You are shining the spotlight on the guest. You ask questions.

You just kind of sit there and nod and tell me more. And like you're facilitating them, right? You're just facilitating and it... Yeah, it feels like very anticlimactic, right? It's like, oh, I've created this podcast and like, I'm just second banana.

Yeah. And I'd spent a good 12 months before that guesting on other people's podcasts. And I absolutely loved guesting on podcasts. I thought it was my 30 minutes of fame and I got all this content. I got to be exposed to other people's communities and I highly recommend it as a place to start for other people. Uh, and if I hadn't reconciled being a host, I would definitely focus on. I think there is such an opportunity there. But for me, like I said, eventually it kind of kicked in. And then I realized that there is almost like, you know, people see me and how they see me is a reflection of the kinds of guests that I can have on the show and the kinds of conversations. And I think as well, I learned to ask better questions.

Another thing that happens on your journey as a podcast host. is asking good questions and then being able to just be quiet. Like that is a skill that took me a little longer than I think probably most, but it can make the difference. And, you know, I don't know if you can relate to this, but it's certainly been my journey.

I can absolutely relate. It's the more you do it, the better you get, the better the questions, the easier it is to just stop and not speak. Or yeah, it just takes practice and intentionality and it's always a learning game. It's always a learning game.

There is so much to learn.

I am with you on that one. And I think even still now I have so much further. I feel like I'm just beginning. I still feel like I'm taking baby steps at this point in time. But it has been something that now podcasting for me is a cornerstone of my content and my business. Now there's no way Michelle J. Raymond from 80 odd episodes ago ever dreamed that a podcast would be this important. Never thought that it would be the opportunity that it is. I just dismissed it as something I should do. And I can tell you that that's not very inspiring, but when I connected with why this makes a difference, not just for me, my guests, my community, when I actually understood that and invested some time into learning more about it and becoming better at it now, it's just brilliant. And you know, it does have a business impact. It does generate new business for me. And it's opened up other opportunities that I never expected because I've gotten better at speaking for instance. And, you know, as I just shared today, just been invited to speak at social media marketing world, which I'm so excited that I can actually share that with people, but it wouldn't have happened without 86 episodes of making mistakes.

It's true. It's like you can't see the benefits. You just see the work initially.

You don't always see the repercussions, the value it will bring. But it is you learn some skills that you wouldn't otherwise have had. Just kind of like what we were talking about before we hit record, it's sometimes you just have to learn it as you go and you figure it out, right?

There's that, and I also find it's the most weird experience being a podcast host that there's no feedback from the listeners very much. So when you're on socials, which, you know, I come from LinkedIn and specializing that there's, you can count the number of impressions really easily.

There's lots of likes, there's lots of comments, you're getting new connection requests, but in podcasting, you talk out into the universe, you hope that it lands somewhere. And occasionally someone might write to a podcast recommendation.

So if you enjoy this podcast, please take the time to leave Eric, a podcast recommendation, cause I can tell you it recharges our batteries and keeps us going because I often wondered, was I wasting my time because I didn't have that feedback loop, um, and that also took me a long time to get used to.

It's a strange, it is because you wonder if anybody's listening, you'll hit, and then you'll see some downloads, but you don't even know if they listened to all of them.

And so it's like, I mean, even like if you speak on stage or do something like that, it's immediate feedback. LinkedIn Live, exactly. You know how many people here, you are literally speaking into the void and who knows?

It literally is who knows you get no names, you get no connections. There's no way of interacting.

I think it's just crazy. And back in the early days, when I'd look at some stats or numbers and it would tell me maybe 30 people listened or something like that, and I'd be like, why am I putting so much effort into something for 30, like My brain could not wrap around a number so little being important. Over time, even now my numbers, you know, be completely transparent, it's probably 300 downloads an episode.

It doesn't sound like it's that big, but what I've discovered is it's 300 people that keep coming back week after week that really enjoy it and are invested in it. And I think that's what I love about podcast listeners, they're so loyal. Uh, and if they enjoy your podcast, it's almost like they're a fan for life, unless you do something really bad and mess with the system. But ultimately it's that loyalty that you don't get anywhere else. I don't think, but again, it's been crazy to learn that lesson. Real crazy.

It's a strange, it's a strange content piece and it, but you're, it's absolutely right.

Once you get a podcast listener. Yeah, they will stay with you forever. And then, so it's like, then you have to be consistent because you don't want to lose them. And it's just a very different medium. But then, you know, kind of like what we were, what we talked about before the show, there's, well, I guess let me ask this. What is the benefit for your business to be a podcast host so that you're hosting versus when you were just doing podcast guesting. So is there a, I know both are beneficial. What's the advantage to be in the host?

For me, if I look at guesting, I'm known as the LinkedIn company pages specialist.

So most of my guesting has in the past been talking about LinkedIn company pages, which are my specialty area, but they're not everything that I know when it comes to LinkedIn or growing your business using LinkedIn. Having my own podcast allows me to open up those topics.

And the way that my podcast goes is that. I ask five questions every episode.

It's the same format every single time. Five questions. My expert guest says their piece. And then I add on my personal story to that. And so what I do is I'm almost, you know, I love being associated with the best of the best. I love being able to share my story and get people to see that I'm more than just my specialty area and that I can have conversations with all kinds of different people. And then I'm still committed to helping others.

And that's why I do that podcast. So it's been interesting. If I had to pick what my favorite, I think I would still say guesting is still one of my favorites content creator experiences.

I still love it, but then I found I have no control over what goes out into the universe. And then that becomes a, most of the time it's okay with professionals like yourself. But in the beginning, I just said yes to everything and some of those things didn't quite work out like I'd hoped.

It is, that is the hard part about being a guest. You are, it's a risk, you're taking a risk, you're like, I have to go by what they've done before, but it doesn't mean they're gonna do it again. And it is, you're putting yourself out there, but hosting, you have that control. And then, so within your business, do you do all your editing and all of the post-production or do you, you know. outsource that, what's that look like? Because I know some businesses are like, do I need to do this myself? Can it be outsourced? I'd love to hear what your side looks like.

Yeah. So for me at this point in time, I have someone else that works in my business. Shout out to Lil and she helps me do all of the podcast editing. So, uh, we do that within Descript is our tool of choice, because I'm not an audio engineer and nor do I want to be. So some of the other programs are too complicated, but I found that made it available to us to be able to handle it in-house going back and listening to the journey that I've shared, I didn't want to invest money from my business into my podcast. I didn't see it as valuable at that time. Now I keep it in house for different reasons. It's a quality control. I want to be able to take ownership of that. And I'm not saying that other people won't do it to that standard, but for me right now, I don't want to outsource it to overseas companies.

I want to keep it within my own. And I think I'm still going through an experimentation phase with what works and what doesn't work with my podcast. And you know, I recently had a.

a podcast audit done with a friend of mine, Neil Velio. And it was interesting to get a professional's experience and feedback. I really enjoyed that.

And there's some things that I can then grow and learn and try. And eventually I think it will become something that I'll outsource, but I want to have a process in place and clear instructions on what it needs to be and what it needs to look like. And I don't think I could fairly do that and give that to someone else right now. Because I I still feel like I'm just experimenting and I just think it's crazy to think 80 odd episodes, you know, coming up to a hundred, not that, you know, not too distant future and I feel like I'm still playing around getting used to this.

So podcasting anyone that's considering it, you're listening in. Patience grasshopper patience.

It is. It's one of those things where the more you do it the better you get but then you do you make adjustments whether it's in the questions you ask whether it's in your equipment whether it's in I'm gonna switch up the episode or maybe I'm gonna tinker with the format and it's like and like you said earlier though you can't get immediate feedback so you try something and then you wait.

I tried a few things like, you know, a spoken intro recently, and then I kind of flipped out and went, Oh, maybe I shouldn't do this. Maybe this, you know, and I just freaked out for no real reason. There was not like anyone had feedback and said, Oh, Michelle, why are you doing that? But in my own mind, it was doubt. So it's great to have professionals around you like yourself, Eric, that can really guide people and give them confidence that the direction that they're going is the right direction. and support when you don't know. If I had to say anything about my podcasting journey, I should have done more work upfront with a professional before I got started having a target audience in mind would have been pretty helpful. I can give you the handy tip. Uh, and it sounds silly, but I was so focused on tech and figuring out how to do it for myself, cause I kind of pride myself on being that kind of person that it probably might not have been the right move, but back then. My business hadn't grown as much. And so I had some time on my hands. So it was like, Oh, just figure this out. It'll be fine. But, um, yeah, look, I've made pretty much every mistake that you can, and I'm still going to make more, but that has. You know, I guess again, got me to where I am today and, you know, my podcast is ranked number one for LinkedIn B2B in Australia, so I'm planning on doing that for the whole world, but I'm not, I'm not going to have the perfect way to get there. It is literally going to be by trial and error and sometimes making mistakes. And you know, that's, that's all part of the fun too.

It is and I don't think just from all the things I've seen and my own experiences and the people I've talked to, I think you have to just start and you start with an idea and then you get 15, 20, 30 episodes in and then you figure out is this working?

Because like you could have had the most narrowed focused. idea and then you could get into it because I've honestly been wrestling with this myself is I had a very narrow focused idea and it's like maybe I need to adjust it a little bit because The best laid plans, right? It's like it so it's oh, I think it's okay as you're going along to learn and go Okay, we need to make adjustments. We will do as much as we can We don't know what two years from now, but it'll look like that, you know, that's It sounds like very much what your journey's been.

It sure has. And you know, at the same time, I'm working with Michelle Griffin on the LinkedIn branding show podcast. So that's a weekly show that we do together. And that's a whole other experience again. So from going from guesting where you have zero control to being a host where it felt like, hang on a minute, everyone else is in the spotlight to being co-hosts has a different dynamic all together again, cause you get that familiarity that goes with weekly shows and knowing each other. And, you know, bringing out different parts of each other.

It has been fun as well.

So there's so many different ways that I think you can do podcasting that I wasn't open to in the beginning, but they all have their own advantages. And I think it's about finding your way, your way of doing things that is comfortable that you enjoy most of all, because on the days that you want to give up, it's that will keep you going. And, you know, for me, it's sometimes trying episodes that I do by myself. I don't do them very often. Uh, but when I do them, I actually enjoy them, but I can't be the one that keeps me accountable to show up all the time. I'm not at that place yet. I can't be trusted.

Oh

So that's why guesting works. You know, I haven't guessed

Uh-uh.

works for me because it keeps me accountable to make sure I keep doing the shows. I tried to want to do myself and then I'll just say, I'm a bit busy. Oh, this, you know, insert whatever. Um, and so yeah, that's the other part about my personality that I've learned, uh, during this process.

So I do have to ask because you were going along with the LinkedIn B2B podcast, you were begrudgingly doing it, you were just doing it because you were supposed to because you should, and then you started this new podcast, right? That's when you went into co-hosting this second podcast. So I gotta ask, what was the prompt, right? Because you're like, I'm not liking this, so now I'm going to do another one. I mean, help me out.

So the funny thing about that one, they started roughly the same time.

So you've got a person who doesn't listen to podcasts, who sees no value in podcasts, starts doing two of them. Uh, so the LinkedIn branding show has, you know, 70 odd episodes as well. Like they started around the same time. That started with a complete, not a different motivation.

Uh, LinkedIn launched a new feature called LinkedIn audio at the time and Michelle got access to it. And so we jumped on and we were like, okay, let's just have a, you know, play at LinkedIn audio. Let's see what these rooms are like. We'd spent lots of time on clubhouse before that. And so we started doing this show together, which was, you know, just once or twice. Then she's like, Oh, we should write a book together. Like, Oh, okay. Cause I'd just finished writing one just before that. I was like, yeah, okay. What will we write it on?

She's like, you know, LinkedIn branding, you can do the company brand side. I'll do the personal brand and we'll bring it together. And I was like, yep. And then I was like, Well, maybe we could just do these, you know, audio type rooms.

Maybe we should do it on the chapters in the book that we want to do.

And we could turn it into a podcast, you know, like why not record it.

So that was one of the things that we didn't like about LinkedIn audio is you can't record it. So then we're like, ah, how about we just go over, we'll create a new podcast. We'll talk about what we're going to talk about in the book, and then we can go back and refer to it with our notes and it'll make it easier to write the book. And so the LinkedIn branding book. actually drove the podcast creation.

And now the podcast is actually, there's lots of QR codes in the book to draw people back and vice versa. And so that was a completely different experience and one that sometimes we kind of go, did you think we'd still be talking 18 months later about all the different ways you can use LinkedIn for branding and we just both shake our heads and we're like, uh-uh. But it's a totally different premise for the show and it's just fun and we love catching up. So, but yeah, they just, I'm blaming Michelle Griffin. There you go. I'm putting

Hahaha

it out there on record.

Eric, I'll make sure that she gets this podcast.

But I think one of the beautiful things about that is you jumped in and then you're like, wow, we can do all this stuff with it. Right? It's like, oh, we'll just do LinkedIn. We'll do LinkedIn. We'll do live. We'll do all of this. And oh, then we can take it and we'll repurpose it here and then we can build our book from it. And it's like, it's this content wealth that

Yeah.

you were able to draw from.

It's completely the opposite of how I did my podcast. This was completely intentional and plans and had an idea. And that's probably the good influence of Michelle Griffin. So we're completely opposite. She's always the planner to the nth degree where, you know, the perfectionism can often get in the way of stuff. Whereas I'm like, let's just dive in and it'll be fine.

We'll sort it out as we go. And. Trying to write a book with those two different personalities was certainly a bit of fun, but it's, you know, the podcast is that it's a bit of how do you do LinkedIn in this particular case, planned and methodical and make sure everything's perfect or how do you just dive in and there's pros and cons that go with both and we share about that. But so yeah, it had a clear audience when we started, we wanted to empower women on LinkedIn to share their voices. that actually evolved over time. We let that go a little bit more and it was just, we found that we had more just people, you know, and women and men. And so we went the other way, you know, not quite so niche, went the other way. And so, you know, again, we're always learning, but it was, couldn't have been a more different start to what my podcast was, but they started roughly not too much difference in time periods and they're both still going, which is... you know, just a credit to everyone involved, but yeah, I've had some funny experiences with podcasting, but again, the fact that I'm sitting here saying to you, it's such a valuable part of my business now that is not the person that started those two podcasts 18 months ago or so.

Oh, that's wonderful. And the fact that you're still doing them is a, that's a testament to the work and longevity because podcasts, they tend not to last too long. So keep at it for everybody listening. I mean, they are both solid podcasts. Make sure you check them out. As we wrap up here, if listeners want to know more about you, want to know more about your content, your podcast, where would you like them to go?

Well, LinkedIn, of course.

So if you come and look for me, I'm Michelle J. Raymond's my middle initial is there because there's thousands of Michelle Raymond's on the platform, but I'm the only one with the J initial. So that's the easiest way for people to find me.

Excellent. So we will put that in the show notes as well, along with the other links.

Michelle, this was a blast. This was just a blast. Thank you for joining me today.

It has been my absolute pleasure to come to what seems like the conf-