Event Marketer's Toolbox
Each episode, host Chris Dunn teams up with a leading event professional to explore the tools, tactics, and trends that drive real results.
Event Marketer’s Toolbox is the definitive playbook for corporate event professionals and trade show marketers.
From first-time marketers to seasoned planners, this show delivers practical solutions to make your events memorable and impactful.
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Event Marketer's Toolbox
EMT #35 with Brandon Lee - Turn Trust into Revenue: Reputation-Driven Event Strategies
On this episode of Event Marketer’s Toolbox, Chris Dunn and Brendon Hamlin sit down with Brandon Lee, founder of Fist Bump, to explore how trust and reputation drive revenue at events and tradeshows.
Brandon shares insights on creating credible booth experiences, building advocacy, and aligning sales and event teams to convert leads into long-term relationships. Whether you’re a first-time event marketer or a seasoned professional, this episode provides actionable tools and strategies for building trust-based event programs that increase ROI.
- Why reputation matters more than awareness in driving long-term revenue.
- How to create trust and credibility on the show floor with staff, design, and storytelling.
- Post-show strategies to turn relationships into pipeline.
- Aligning sales and event teams for maximum impact.
- Brandon’s practical tools for pre, during, and post-event reputation-building.
- Trust > Leads: Focus on building credibility before chasing prospects.
- Booth Matters: Design experiences that reflect your brand and create memorable interactions.
- Follow-Up is Key: Post-event content and engagement turn trust into pipeline.
- Team Alignment: Sales and events must work together on a reputation-first strategy.
- Practical Tools: Pre-show audits, credibility campaigns, and post-show connection ladders are actionable ways to implement Brandon’s strategies immediately.
Brandon Lee shows how reputation-driven strategies can transform events into revenue-generating experiences. By focusing on trust, credibility, and alignment, marketers can create lasting impressions, build advocacy, and increase ROI.
👉🏼 Join us for more insightful discussions like this by tuning into 'Event Marketer's Toolbox,' where industry leaders share the tools, tactics, and trends driving success in the event world.
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0:00:01
(Chris Dunn)
Hey, hello, and welcome to the Event Marketers Toolbox. I am Chris Dunn, and I've got a couple of friends on the box today. This is the We, sorry, we're just laughing ahead of going live here. This is not the frail male and pale show, although it may look like that. That's a different channel. So this is the event marketers toolbox where we talk to marketers, trade show professionals, video and content people, and we kind of tie it all together.
0:00:31
(Chris Dunn)
So we're building a great community. We've had amazing conversations. We are actually on episode number 35. Very happy to welcome back one of our guest co -hosts, Mr. Brendan Hamlin. Hey, Brendan, how are you?
0:00:44
(Brendon Hamlin)
Hey, I'm great, Chris. Thanks so much for having me back. I've been away for a little while, but always a pleasure to jump in here.
0:00:52
(Speaker 22)
Fantastic.
0:00:53
(Chris Dunn)
Tell us a little bit about Hamlin Creative, your company.
0:00:55
(Brendon Hamlin)
Yeah, so we are a production company. So we do a wide range of content creation. A lot of that ends up being in the live event space. So, you know, trade shows, experiential marketing, activations, all that kind of conferences, all that kind of stuff. So really love that that special space where brands and a consumer or a B2B moment come together, it's really a unique opportunity to create content. And we've been doing that for over 10 years now, so about a decade plus that we've been in the content business.
0:01:32
(Speaker 23)
Fantastic.
0:01:32
(Chris Dunn)
That's good stuff. And then I've got another guest, this guy over on the other side, he's over, he's over there for me. I'm mirrored.
0:01:38
(Speaker 5)
There we go.
0:01:39
(Chris Dunn)
So that is Mr. Brandon Lee. And I'm going to throw it out there right now, Brandon and Brandon, like, I am going to F this up. It's going to get messy, but just follow along and everybody just keep talking regardless of whether or not I say the right name or not.
0:01:53
(Brandon Lee)
I got called Blee in, in like high school and college. So if you need to go to the Blee for B Lee,
0:01:58
(Chris Dunn)
there we go. So, um, names in my life. So that one's, uh, Brandon would be like actually one of the better things, even though it's not actually your name. So, um, normally I start talking a little bit about our, uh, our, our sponsors, one of which is blue hive, the company that I work for. But, uh, but Brandon Lee actually, you started, uh, the company called fist bump and you are one of our sponsors. So this is a very cool, uh, opportunity.
0:02:32
(Chris Dunn)
I've been on your show a few times. Um, I actually met you because of, uh, mastering modern selling. I found my way there. I think it was, uh, Larry Levine was a guest. I w I was a follower of Larry's. I ended up following your show, consuming your content.
0:02:48
(Chris Dunn)
You and I connected. Uh, we start working together. Uh, I signed up for a coaching program and then lo and behold, here we are. Uh, fist bump has been producing our, uh, our podcasts, helping us create this amazing content on this channel for, for 35 weeks, right? We started the first of the year. So here we are.
0:03:07
(Chris Dunn)
Um, great to have you as a guest. Uh, why don't you add a little bit more background and color to that? How'd you end up with the name?
0:03:14
(Speaker 15)
Fish bump.
0:03:15
(Brandon Lee)
Yeah, you know, it, it's funny, I use the fish bump emoji, even though I think it's technically called punch face, which is a totally different. I always saw it as a fish bump. Look, I I've Like in business, anyone shakes your hand, right? You meet someone, you shake a hand, you have a bad meeting, you still shake hands. But a fist bump represents somebody that you have a connection with, like you have some sort of, you've built some sort of rapport. There's that emotional connection.
0:03:44
(Brandon Lee)
And I'm a big believer in emotion. People, we are emotional beings. And I love the expression that logic makes us think, but emotion makes us act. And so throughout my career, I've been fortunate to learn this pretty early on that, you know, business happens through relationship. My, my very first sales job, I had a leader who told me my job as a sales guy was to go out there and be likable and build relationships.
0:04:14
(Brandon Lee)
Set you don't need to know everything because you won't know everything but your job is to build those relationships build trust and report and then when they have a need we bring the team in and and then you got the collective intelligence of the team and it just always stuck with me i had one i enjoyed it more. I enjoyed that part. It made work a lot more fun and made relationship building the core part of my work and my success. And I think there's another expression that we say a lot, which is your net worth is your network. And I've just been a big believer in that. I've tried really hard over the years to focus on that network first, give first, serve first, and believe that we can't really out give the universe.
0:04:59
(Brandon Lee)
And so the more we give, we also get. And it actually makes it a lot more fun.
0:05:05
(Chris Dunn)
Yeah, that's awesome. And I think one of the reasons that you and I hit it off is because that's certainly been my my kind of thought process and my, my mantra, you know, just go out and make friends. I don't have to be perfect, but, um, I have to care.
0:05:20
(Speaker 9)
Right.
0:05:20
(Brandon Lee)
And you have a purpose behind it and have a strategy. And I know you know that, but I, I know a lot of times I've heard, whether it's been on stage or other places, I talk about relationship first and you people like get frustrated and they get antsy in their seat. It's like, no, no, no, no. We're not just out trying to build friendships. It's a relationship first motion, but there's always that strategy of where can we serve? Where can we add value?
0:05:46
(Brandon Lee)
Where could we benefit people? And it's not like we lead the sale of a product. and we're just like, Hey friends. Um, so I think that's important just to clarify. There's some CEOs out there I've encountered that it's like, if you're not, you know, always be selling, always be closing. It's like, yeah, that was a great era, but it's come and gone.
0:06:06
(Chris Dunn)
Yeah, absolutely. Um, Hey, we're on a live show today, pretty much as, uh, as we are. every Thursday at noontime here Eastern. Dave Childs is already checking in, but just a reminder, drop comments into the comment section here and we will react to them, I would hope. Keep them clean and we'll work those in to the best of our ability. But we've got a great conversation coming up.
0:06:32
(Chris Dunn)
So thanks again for joining us, Mr. Hamlin, Hamlin Creative, and obviously Brandon Lee of Fist Bump. Just a quick word, so Blue Hive is our sponsor. It's a company I work for. We are a creative exhibit agency. We help exhibitors, anything from really like a well -funded startup up through multi -billion dollar corporation. We like to feel like we're in that right -sized group where we're bigger with more resources than a boutique.
0:07:01
(Chris Dunn)
And we're smaller and more customer service centric than the real big guys where your program is just a number. So shout out to Blue Hive. Thanks for keeping the lights on here with the Toolbox podcast. It's been a blast doing this. And I'm sure we're going to get into some of the reasons why having a show, becoming a thought leader, and ultimately, using that reputation that we're developing to help build revenue. I'm sure that's going to be a talking point.
0:07:31
(Chris Dunn)
So that's the meat and potatoes of the show. We're going to get into it. And I'm going to kick it over to my co -host, Brendan, with an E. And hey, why don't you take, take it, take it away and kick off the first line of questions.
0:07:45
(Brendon Hamlin)
Yeah, sure. And just, you know, so you know, I've grown up in the South. And so my name is interchangeable.
0:07:52
(Brandon Lee)
So I have been called Brandon as much as I've been called Brendan my whole life.
0:07:57
(Brendon Hamlin)
So there we go. which will just further confuse everybody.
0:08:01
(Brandon Lee)
And then you get the occasional Brian thrown in there too. Anything with a B, all right, I kind of respond.
0:08:09
(Chris Dunn)
Is it coincidental that my son's name is Brady starts with a B, my dog's name is Barton starts with a B? I mean, I don't think so. I think we're meant to be here. This is something that the universe has been contriving to put together for a while. See you in the two B's.
0:08:26
(Brendon Hamlin)
So just so the audience knows, Brandon and I had the opportunity to meet in person recently, which was really great. And I happened to be in Atlanta and he had reached out about wanting to connect with me. And so it was really great to spend that time with you, Brandon, and really get to know you one -on -one. Uh, we got kicked out of a meeting room, which was kind of exciting.
0:08:46
(Speaker 16)
Like, wow.
0:08:48
(Speaker 22)
Yeah.
0:08:49
(Brendon Hamlin)
Who are these guys? Get out.
0:08:50
(Brandon Lee)
Um, but I think what, you know, what I wanted to dive in a little bit more with, and we talked a little bit, uh, in our time together was really this notion about reputation and how do you, how is that sort of the, the, the currency of today, especially in, in, you know, we spend a lot of time on LinkedIn, we're building these networks, but how does that reputation, uh, kind of permeate in through your business point of view? Yeah. So I want to go down two paths. So let me start with one. And the first one is that for the hardcore sales leader, CEOs, it's all about prospect, prospect, prospect. We're not discounting that.
0:09:34
(Brandon Lee)
We're not discounting that. But when we look at reputation, because we have these tools, we have LinkedIn, we have YouTube, we have Instagram, we have all these digital tools. It gives us a richer way to use that to actually build reputation, right? So we can use LinkedIn and we can post about our business and what we do, which tends to get highly ignored and very boring. And we could do that.
0:10:03
(Brandon Lee)
And I'll say LinkedIn, but, you know, insert any social channel there you want. We could also use it for direct messaging and use it much more like email because, you know, none of us, you know, get enough email. We need more direct messages in our LinkedIn inboxes, or, we look at this and go, I mean, the aha moment for me came back in about 20, 2018 ish is when it dawned on me that LinkedIn is, is actually just like a big conference. It's digital conference, but it's 24 hours a day. Everybody in your industry is there. They may not be here right, right now.
0:10:43
(Brandon Lee)
Right. But they're, they're there. Everybody has a name tag, just like at a conference. So you can look around and go, Oh, I want to meet that person. And in a live event, we don't and you know, we don't walk up to somebody, pull out our brochure and stick it in their face as our first motion and go, I do this. Do you have 30 minutes for coffee?
0:11:04
(Brandon Lee)
Right? We don't do that with real human beings in real life because it's, it's rude and it's ineffective. Like there's relationship building. Human dynamics is more nuanced than that. We all have a wall that we put up. We want to know who is this person?
0:11:24
(Brandon Lee)
Can i do i feel like i can trust them do i like them a bit like no like and trust is always been the foundation of sales and i'd say over the last fifteen years or so with so much tech, we've in certain industries and not all, I mean, I like Chris's comment up here that true business is a byproduct of solid relationships. but it's gotten really easy with tech to kind of sit behind the tech and push the tech out and tell everybody how awesome we are and wait for all of them to realize it and come running to us and go, Oh, please give me a demo. And it's, it's not working for a lot of reasons. I think it worked for a little while because that messaging was new and novel and it was like, Oh, we got direct message. Oh, we got these emails.
0:12:11
(Brandon Lee)
Oh, we can download a white paper. Oh, this is really cool. Oh my gosh, I don't know about you guys. I'm so done with it because now everybody's doing that. And it's just this constant flow of, can I get your time? That whole interruptive outreach, it's so much.
0:12:29
(Brandon Lee)
So what can we do? What can we do differently? And the biggest unique, and I like to call it the uniquifier that we have, is our human. our own experiences, and just like in a live conference or networking event, we usually start with personal conversation. It could be, hey, have you come to this event a lot? Or how did you get here?
0:12:57
(Brandon Lee)
Oh, I see you're from there. Did you drive or did you fly? How long are you staying? Are you staying through the end of the event? We use these conversation starters to start building relationship, and I'll relationship in air quotes, because it's not really relationship. It's just building that rapport.
0:13:16
(Brandon Lee)
And what's happening at that stage? Both people, or in a small group, we're assessing, Do I like these people? Is this somebody I want to have a future conversation with? And once we get through that and we start to build trust. bit of rapport, then we can move it into like, Hey, I know that you do this. This is what we do.
0:13:35
(Brendon Hamlin)
Can we grab a coffee and talk a little bit about it? That's real life. And when it dawned on me that we could do that with LinkedIn, it totally changed the way I started looking at these digital tools for Building influence building relationship and building our reputation i think influence relationship and reputation all kind of synonymous for me when i speak about this topic i felt that over the last. really couple years when we really identified LinkedIn as a place where we could really put some effort into that it, just like you said, it wasn't just about, here's all of our capabilities, let us know how, you know, let's chat, you know, or whatever that the closing line is, but really about learning about me or my team as people. And then because there's lots of people that do what we do. So what's the differentiator?
0:14:31
(Brendon Hamlin)
Just like you said, Brandon, it's, it's me, or it's my team. It's how we treat that that client, how we interact with them, and that that's really, that's the way that we can really connect with our clients in a different way and draw more people to us. So that's why we do, you know, our posts are varied.
0:14:50
(Brandon Lee)
You know, sometimes it's about a project we did, or capabilities that we do have, or a place we visited, or something personal. And that sort of ebb and flow creates your own personal brand, which I think then leads back to your reputation. Yeah, and we'll go back to that. Logic makes people think and emotion makes people act well when we start to incorporate our humanity into our business and create content. We're giving other humans an emotional way to connect with us we're giving them something to remember us by again we are the universe. But if we're not sharing that part of us, sharing from our experiences, sharing from our observations, even sharing from our feelings.
0:15:35
(Brandon Lee)
I'll give this as an example. You know, shout out to Benji McKenzie at System and Soul, who are one of our fist bump clients and they have their show sessions by System and Soul. You know, Benji and I had known each other on and off throughout the years. We're never really close, but we saw each other one day and he said, Brandon, I need to talk to you.
0:15:56
(Speaker 9)
I got to take a look at this leader led content.
0:16:01
(Brandon Lee)
Let's chat. great. We schedule a coffee. And I asked him, I said, so Ben, why, why me? Why now? And he, he kind of like laughed a little bit and he's, he's like, I can't believe I'm going to tell you this.
0:16:14
(Brandon Lee)
Like, but it was a while ago, you posted in LinkedIn and it was you and your daughter on a hiking trail. But the message was about you forgot that a storm had just passed through like, you know, a week prior and didn't think about it and you got out there and the trail was a mess. And so we were like climbing over down trees and you know, there's rocks and stuff and the trail wasn't as smooth as it used to be. And I related it to business. Sometimes in business we show up and we think, here's the trail and we find out that it's not as smooth and not as easy. But what did, what did I do there?
0:16:53
(Brandon Lee)
Let me dissect that for people. I used a picture of my personal life. I'm sharing a little bit about my humanity. I like to hike. Um, I like the outdoors. I, I'm, I'm very involved with my children and then I related it to business and he remembered that he remembered that post from years prior.
0:17:15
(Brandon Lee)
Why did he remember it? The, the personal part gives the emotional part. and we humans are emotional, we can't get around it or various levels of emotion but we're at the core were emotional beans so i gave him something and it my unique a fire he remembered it. He likes hiking. He likes going out in the outdoors with his kids. He's, he's got four kids.
0:17:38
(Brandon Lee)
He likes spending a lot of time with his wife and his kids. So I gave him something to remember me by. If I had just talked on that about live shows, podcasts, content engines and all that, it probably would have been, that's where the logic like, Hmm, that's interesting. And 60 seconds later, he's onto the next thing and completely forgot about me. So that's, that's where our reputation, we have the ability to, um, rise to the top in the, in people's memories and psyches and emotions by bringing a bit of our humanity to the table. Now I'll say this for him, but I'm not saying go like all kind of Facebook.
0:18:16
(Brandon Lee)
Like I don't put pictures of my plate of food and tell everybody I'm eating lunch, but it's incorporating bits of your humanity, just like you would in a live event. If you're at a conference, they go, well, Hey, have you ever been to Boston before? Like, Oh, you know, I came up with my family one time and we did, we went to the aquarium and we did this and we did that. You would share some of those types of things. Why would we do that? We're building rapport.
0:18:43
(Speaker 8)
We're sharing person.
0:18:44
(Chris Dunn)
We're sharing bits of our person. Yeah. You know, it's, it's interesting, obviously, uh, Brennan, you and I, met and I started working with you on our LinkedIn presence, both for myself as well as my company. And it started really to make sense. And, and as you're talking about it, I'm the event guy, right? I'm trade shows.
0:19:03
(Chris Dunn)
And I'm like, the, the motions of what we're doing here on in using this digital platform and social networking and so forth, um, are so similar to what we do on the trade show. with regards to how we're building rapport, how we're doing that. And I know we're going to get to it in a little bit, but obviously the idea of using, building that reputation that we're talking about and leveraging that to push more interest when we know we're going to an event, right, we can build a pre -show motion that takes advantage of all of this stuff where we're creating this kind of a secondary funnel type of a thing to drive insight and the ability to gain interest and to attract people and be like, this is going to be great. You're really going to not want to miss us here when we're doing this live thing. And the two things are so related. Hey, I want to pull up, Dave Childs had a question a little bit before.
0:20:04
(Chris Dunn)
So before we kind of jump into relating this a little bit more directly into the event world. So Dave's question was, I'd love to hear more about how you leverage relationships into a non -threatening offer when business does present itself. So how do you make that leap, right? If you're, and I think I'm guilty of this, right? I could use, I could use a, you know, maybe recognizing the signals or, you know, when do I when do I make that step? I tend to like to keep things really loose and and and more humanity based and personal.
0:20:36
(Brandon Lee)
But it's, at some point, let's admit it, right? We're all here to gain business. So what does that transition potentially look like? Yeah, I think, I think part of that is having your own, your own strategy in place, your own process. Right? I learned years ago from Brian Tracy that if you don't have a way, a process to move to close, You'll never move to close.
0:20:58
(Brandon Lee)
So it's it's having a system or a tactic or a strategy like when do you move this from relational to so tell me what are you doing about this? and i think there's people that tend to be on the far side about relationship first will struggle with bringing business and people that are all business will struggle to bring the relationship and the key is to be able to be in the middle and i found i always found the right way to do it is to have that process. have that system. And for me, it tends to be, hey, I've really enjoyed this conversation. I'm generally also asking a lot about their company, about their industry, like, oh, what are you struggling? I try to bring it in more naturally.
0:21:41
(Brandon Lee)
So I use the relationship side to get more conversations. Then in the conversations, I'm looking for the opportunities to add value. And it comes from a lot of questions. Like, Hey, how's this working for you? What are you experiencing in these, in these areas? Oh, tell me about that.
0:21:58
(Brandon Lee)
You know, just like my, um, my friend Carl, uh, he always talks about being super curious and being curious. And you can find a lot of times by asking very curious questions that, um, it'll kind of naturally move in that direction. One strategy, be curious, ask a lot of questions and start, using your questions to lead the conversation to the topic that you want to ask about. And if you have, if you really believe in your product, your service, and it's very beneficial, it should be very natural. The second way, and this is what I learned way back when from Brian Tracy was more direct, like, okay, we've got to a certain point. I've gathered some information and then move into your closing process, which usually starts with a very direct question.
0:22:47
(Brandon Lee)
It might be a, Hey, if we could help you do X, Y, Z, would it be worth the conversation? Or, Hey, it seems to me from what you're saying that, that these are areas of concern. Is that something we can start fleshing out a little bit and in even later, it might be more. So Dave's question was more about. how do you move it into a non -threatening offer? First of all, I try to move it slowly in that direction and see it evolve.
0:23:12
(Brandon Lee)
But if it's more of like, if you're more of. not so much of a relational sale, but it's more transactional, then it's definitely a very direct, Hey, here's, here's what we do. Is this something that, that would be of interest to you and move it very quickly? I just haven't sold transactional in so long.
0:23:30
(Chris Dunn)
I do it more from that place of curiosity with lots of questions, but I'm, I'm constantly looking for the opportunities where I could add value.
0:23:39
(Brandon Lee)
And usually that value starts with a question.
0:23:44
(Chris Dunn)
Is that I think that's a great answer. Yeah, it's hard without a specific example.
0:23:49
(Speaker 21)
Right.
0:23:50
(Brandon Lee)
And Dave did say he's, you know, he's a relationship based guy and he's working his way to the middle. So I think we hit a chord there. I love that. I love the way he just said it. You know, I shared with you guys, I think before we went live, I started, I liked the term go to network. instead of go to market, go to market just over the years.
0:24:08
(Brandon Lee)
It's really like, how are we going to go outbound? How are we going to go communicate? How are we going to go tell everybody who we are and what we do go to network for me is, Hey, let's find our ideal customers. Where are they? And how do we go put ourselves in the middle of that and become known, build relationships, build influence, become known, which a live show and podcast is a really great way to do that.
0:24:32
(Speaker 12)
in a very specific space.
0:24:34
(Chris Dunn)
Cause now you've got, you're bringing in guests that your ideal customers know of. I mean, we have all these different guests in episode strategies that you can use, but go to network is a mindset of how do I go get in the middle of this, learn, give and become more relational, influential and relevant and build my reputation. Yeah. I want to use a, a, it. Love it.
0:25:01
(Chris Dunn)
Um, I want to use kind of this as a, as the pivot point to, to kind of talk a little bit more specifically about events, uh, and, and trade shows and so forth. So, um, you know, how do we, how do we take some of these strategies and, and, uh, and, and leverage them for our benefit at, at events? And I'm, as you're talking, I'm thinking, We do trade shows as well, right? We, we not only build the booths, but we go out and we do shows ourselves and I'm standing in the booth and I'm, and I'm having these conversations and I'm thinking about, you know, your, how your, how your. you're strategically kind of working your way through these conversations. A little different when you're at a trade show, right?
0:25:37
(Chris Dunn)
And somebody actually approaches you and comes in, you kind of know that they're there for a reason. We're going to get to that business conversation sooner than later. But again, if all I do is run up to them and be like, are you ready to buy a booth? You know, you want it in blue, you know, versus like, Hey, how's it going? I see you're from, uh, you know, San Jose or San Francisco or right. You build rapport in the beginning and then you work your way through those, those conversations.
0:26:00
(Chris Dunn)
Um, And obviously, we already kind of touched upon, and I love, you know, in order to get people to come into your booth, to be known to have that reputation. So whether you're using a channel like this to kind of be a thought leader in the industry, and have people walk in, this has started to happen to me, you know, people catch me, I've seen you, you know, on LinkedIn, I've seen you, you know, with your show. So that's a, that's a great way to kind of to build that. So from, you know, you know, from a leader -led standpoint, this is a, this is a great tool. You definitely had to get me over, you know, my, I guess, my scared, my scared self. And like, I could never do that.
0:26:43
(Chris Dunn)
And then got me to a point where I became comfortable enough to give it a whirl. And, and again, here we are, you know, 35 weeks in. So it's been, it's been great, you know, kind of going through the process. And I
0:26:55
(Brandon Lee)
know that the trade show component is a cog on the marketing flywheel, right? It's one piece. This is also a piece and they all need to work harmoniously together. So I've just talked in a big circle, but let's bring this back to like, how do we use reputation and action and translate what you're talking about to the trade show floor? How many people out there, you've spent a lot of money, you get your team, you get in your booth, and it could be a small booth, it could be a big booth, but then people are walking by and they kind of side -eye you. They kind of look and they're curious what you do because they might want to go talk to you, but they don't want to be hounded by you, and so they kind of side -eye and they're nervous.
0:27:46
(Brandon Lee)
When you have a reputation, like this is the go to network concept, you know, you've gotten involved, you use a show, you share content, you bring guests from the industry. So they're like, Oh, you you know, this person, this person and this person. And then when they see you at the show, whether it's in your booth, or it's in line to get a cup of coffee, it's the I know you. or I feel like I know you. And a lot of that fear goes down because they recognize you. They've heard you online.
0:28:16
(Brandon Lee)
They've seen your content. They've watched your show. They get a sense for who you are and it lowers that barrier. And a lot of people, whether it's them coming to us, which is great, or it's when we go to them and they go, Oh yeah, I feel like I already know you. I see, I see all your content. Just that wall drops down immediately.
0:28:35
(Brandon Lee)
And now we're in conversation. I think that's the biggest way, like planning and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to go to an event, or if you're a smaller company, you're still spending $20 ,000, $30 ,000 to go to an event. That's a big expense. It's a big investment. And a lot of times the strategy is hope. I hope we're going to get there.
0:28:56
(Brandon Lee)
And I hope a lot of people are going to come into our booth and we're going to scan their badge or we're going to build a database and we're going to go email the heck out of them for the next month afterwards. And we hope. that's going to turn into something. Look, there's just a much better way of doing it. And that better way is grow your reputation, become more relevant in the industry, become known. And we have these very easy tools.
0:29:21
(Brandon Lee)
The biggest, the hardest part to using these tools in this manner is fear, getting outside of ourselves and putting ourselves out there. That's the biggest challenge that people have. It's scary. I get it. Like, we're putting ourselves out there for people to take pop shots at. Well, you said this, and well, I didn't really mean that, but you just, you know, you get punched.
0:29:46
(Brandon Lee)
You know, the cancel culture doesn't seem to be so high. Like it was years ago and so i think some of that starts is starting to wane a bit but for a while with cancel culture people are just too scared to put themselves out there like what if i say something stupid well you know what when you're in a boardroom and you're presenting to a prospective customer and it's filled with people you have the potential to say something stupid there too. but you don't because you're, you're thinking about it.
0:30:16
(Speaker 20)
You're aware of what you're saying.
0:30:17
(Speaker 19)
We just, it's the same thing here.
0:30:19
(Chris Dunn)
We just have to be aware of what we're saying. Don't say stupid things.
0:30:24
(Brandon Lee)
How's that for you? Say something. If you do say something stupid, you own it and you just move on. I said that, that was wrong. Sorry. But what I see with, with this trade shows, yes, we have shows.
0:30:36
(Brandon Lee)
Um, there's, there's strategies around, um, we're going to a, go to a trade show. I'm working with a customer right now and, we've got this trade show we're going to in January. Well, what are some of the things that we know about the trade show? Number one, we may not have the list of everybody that's going to attend, but if we know who they are, we know their industry, we know their titles will then LinkedIn and YouTube and all these other, um, options where we can advertise, we can target them. That's right.
0:31:12
(Brandon Lee)
So we take clips from our show. Maybe, maybe we use a show like yours and you have a strategy for a six to eight week period where you have topics and guests that are very, very focused on the people who are going to be attending the show. And you talk about the conference. Let me, I'll say trade show and then live show podcast, but you can have, content and topics and conversations that are very strategic to appeal to those the people that are going to that conference. start inviting them to come to the live show and podcast, sending out the connection requests. I mean, much better connection requests than, Hey, I'm with this company and this is what we do.
0:31:58
(Brandon Lee)
Do you have 30 minutes for a coffee is, Hey, I'm the host of this show. This is what we do. These are some of the guests that we have. Love to have you attend, or maybe someone, you or someone in your company would be a good guest for us. Very much different. But now you've got that content, you turn it into, shorts, like social posts, then use very inexpensive brand building ads to target the people that are going to be at the conference.
0:32:29
(Brandon Lee)
Here's what happens. They're seeing you. They're seeing you. They're seeing you. It looks like an organic post. It's just in their newsfeed.
0:32:36
(Brandon Lee)
They're seeing you. Then they're at the event and they look over and they go, Oh, I know you guys. the wall drops down. I'm not so scared to go in there. I've been seeing them, right? We, we, what's the, um, I just blanked on it.
0:32:48
(Brandon Lee)
What's the expression is, um, um, proximity. uh, creates familiarity. We're able to be near them, not physically, but we're near them because we're on their screen and they can, you know, they keep seeing, keep seeing, then they see you in person. They're like, Oh, you know, you referenced my other show, mastering modern selling and Tom, Tom Burton is one of my co -hosts and Kevin Brown, his partner and their business. They've been doing a show about us a little bit longer than we've been doing mastering modern selling. They tell me all the time, Kevin goes to these shows and people tap him on the shoulder like, oh my gosh, Kevin.
0:33:25
(Brandon Lee)
He's like, hey, how you doing? He has no clue who they are. Because of the show, there's people out there, they feel like they know him. In a micro way, it's like you know, the, the Jimmy Fallons of the world, you, you tune in and watch him all the time. And you feel like, you know, him, if you saw him somewhere, you'd walk up to him and go, Hey, Jimmy, right?
0:33:52
(Speaker 15)
We, it was that way for years with the evening news, newscasters had credibility.
0:33:57
(Brandon Lee)
All they actually did was read the news, but because we saw them every night and they gave us information that we wanted, we gave them credibility. We felt like we knew them.
0:34:07
(Chris Dunn)
We would go out of our way to go find, you know, see them in places. You see them in a restaurant. Oh my God. That's them. It's a microcosm of that, but we then just have to use these tools in a way that allows us to do that. I think you'd actually mentioned, or maybe you and Tom talked about it on your show, but they've actually started in their booth, right?
0:34:33
(Brandon Lee)
And his company is called what's Tom's company, Tom and Kevin's company. LeadSmart, right? In the LeadSmart booth, they put actually the name of the podcast up just as high and give it equal billing with LeadSmart, because they knew that that was a draw. And, and their format was really, the two of them get together, they kind of go through the news in their industry, and they become, they've become that newscaster, right? They become that, that place of, of, of not responsibility, but, but, but, you know, being well known for delivering things that they want.
0:35:06
(Brandon Lee)
That is phenomenal. I mean, I've been thinking through like wanting to incorporate that, that episode strategy of a show. You're curating other people's content and then you talk about it on the show and you in a sense become the news for the industry. And Kevin and Tom get people to come to him and go, oh my gosh, I love your show. It's like, I watch it for an hour and I learn from you guys. And then I go into the break room or I go into the boardroom and I go, you know, I read this article the other day and they like regurgitate the opinions that they had on the show.
0:35:41
(Brandon Lee)
Well, it's not, they're not like just ripping it off. They're learning from Tom and Kevin. their gas, and then they're using it in other conversations internally.
0:35:51
(Chris Dunn)
And it's making them feel smarter, look smarter, be smarter. They're becoming more educated in the industry because of the show. Those guys are going to get all kinds of credibility.
0:36:02
(Brandon Lee)
I mean, Tom and Kevin have been getting invited into businesses to come in and just talk to the leadership team because of their show that that has nothing to do with sales.
0:36:11
(Chris Dunn)
Oh, it's got everything to do with sales.
0:36:16
(Speaker 18)
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
0:36:18
(Speaker 17)
Hey, we've got some folks checking in here.
0:36:21
(Chris Dunn)
So obviously Dave has several comments. We see Miss Sarah Hamlin, last name, any, any relation to Brandon? Brandon? I think so.
0:36:31
(Brandon Lee)
Exactly.
0:36:33
(Speaker 9)
Chris Musgrave.
0:36:34
(Brandon Lee)
So Chris has got a question here and I'm reading, I've read it a couple of times. Uh, it's a slippery slide. I don't know if I'm Eli, can we pull this up here?
0:36:41
(Speaker 16)
Slippery slope for those that don't have solid fundamentals of the approach as their presence, uh, can also become fatiguing depending on the content.
0:36:50
(Brandon Lee)
Yeah. I, here's the way I read that is, um, You know, it's, we have to train, we have to train this in one of my companies long time ago, we trained over and over again, how to work a room at a cocktail party. That's where a lot of our prospects were. And we know you look at it, I mean, this, you know, we're all the same age, we look in this room, you're like, hey, this is a target rich environment, got my quote. where it's from. It's a target rich environment.
0:37:22
(Brandon Lee)
It had to throw a little top gun in there. But if you, but if you, if you don't work the room, so to speak in the right way, that target rich environment becomes a goose egg, right?
0:37:36
(Speaker 15)
All everybody in here, we want to know them, but if you're not equipped, you're not skilled.
0:37:40
(Brandon Lee)
So we did a lot of training with how to start conversations, how to be a good conversationalist, how to be curious, And then be able to go around, like, how do you go and just for a lot of people, it's just practicing, like, how do you go walk up to a complete stranger, and introduce yourself? Sorry, Chris, that was in regard to the familiarity approach. Okay, so there's some of those that don't have a self -foundation approach. Oh, yeah. Cool. Chris, hopefully, I'm answering that question.
0:38:10
(Brandon Lee)
Maybe I'm not. But You know it's training we have to practice and practice and practice i could have the ideal networking event filled with all my customers i can sign up but if i actually don't show up, it's a wasted event. Or if I do show up, I get nervous and I just go sit up against the wall and drink my drink and stay for a couple hours and leave and don't meet anybody. It's a wasted environment. So I think that training is really important, whether it's a live event and the training is super important when it comes to creating content, because Number one, having a community of people.
0:38:48
(Brandon Lee)
I mean, Chris, you and you and I have done this within our community of people like, Hey, I tried this and it bombed. It was awful. And you got people around. Oh yeah, I've done that too.
0:38:56
(Speaker 14)
Don't worry about it.
0:38:56
(Speaker 13)
Keep going.
0:38:57
(Chris Dunn)
You have that support and that encouragement that when you try something that nobody cares about, you can at least laugh at it and go try something different. When you're alone, you're in a silo and you post something and you get crickets. It's really hard to recover and go, Oh, let me go do that again tomorrow. I didn't know that felt so good. Yeah, right. Now, Brendan, you, you're an entrepreneur's entrepreneur.
0:39:20
(Chris Dunn)
You're, you're doing, you've, you started several companies. You've even your approach and what you're doing has evolved with, with regards to fist bump and the offerings. I know that specifically you have something that's really dialed in towards shows, but I want to kick this really over to, to, to Brendan. So Brendan, your wheelhouse is creating content on, you know, at events and then the benefits that you get from taking that content, whether it's, you know, real quick, you know, quick edits, pushing it out that night to maybe promote tomorrow, or using it after the show as after show follow through, or even taking that, you know, first, you know, event a taking that content and then using that to push people towards event B, which is five months from now, but similar enough that we can talk about it.
0:40:05
(Brandon Lee)
So I want you guys to, you know, kind of run with that conversation, but I see some nice paths being kind of crossed there. Brandon, sorry, Brandon, your, you have a specific kind of mindset. you know, booth, the, the kind of the booth domination type of thing. You're, you're kind of working on, um, you know, some, some show related projects like that, creating content onsite, being visible microphone in hand, um, interviews, all those kinds of things. So I just kind of wanted to start that conversation and let's see where that goes.
0:40:38
(Brendon Hamlin)
Yeah. I think what Brendan and I do is a great one to punch. I, you know, what. His content is more professional, it's more strategic, it's very structured, and it is brand. What I look at is how do we take the humans that are inside of the brand and leverage their humanity to go build influence and build relationships. I think they're very, very complementary.
0:41:06
(Brendon Hamlin)
I love the, I love the idea of, well, I'm a promo guy. So I came out of the promo world for about 18 years before I launched my own production company. So I know a lot about how to get people to an event. And what I, meaning, like a broadcast, you know, TV show or whatever. But what I love is when we can capture content within the event, and then carry the message forward.
0:41:32
(Brandon Lee)
And I think that's some, that's a, that's a component that I think is a little bit missing and a little bit, I don't know, misunderstood, or just, I don't know if folks are really completely clear about how to best leverage that event. Because just what you're saying, Brandon, like the, the reputation that you built up to get people to the event extends well past the event. And so you can continue that conversation, just like you got them there, and invite them to other things that aren't just, you know, an ad or, you know, a call to action, but like an event, an online event or something like that. I think that there's all of this sort of circular type of presence that a brand can have that can really leverage that event well beyond just what happens on site. Are you seeing that as well in your work?
0:42:27
(Brandon Lee)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think, look, I believe that live events are gonna become more and more popular. I think, you know, five years out of COVID pushing six years out of COVID, uh, companies are starting to ask employees to come back into the office more. I think live events face to face shaking hands is, I think, I think our humanity misses it overall. And I know, I don't want to get into the controversy of remote versus, but, but I believe there's, um, we're relational beings and people want to be face to face. Secondly, I think there's so much sales first motions out there that people are being bombarded with that we've we have our human felt just like we have spam filters on email we all carry our own human filters.
0:43:22
(Brandon Lee)
Like we can see a post and sniff it a mile away and know it's a pitch and we scroll right past it. Yeah. Right. We're just so tired of being pitched.
0:43:31
(Speaker 12)
And that's what I think that opportunity is of bringing our humanity and, and talking about our experiences and our observations in business, that one, two punch and marrying those together is content that people are more curious about, you know, you know, There's also the challenge, I just spoke with someone the other day, and I'll be honest, I've been burned out on LinkedIn a bit.
0:43:56
(Brandon Lee)
And I talked to somebody the other day, they're like, I'm just so tired of seeing the same formula over and over again. Like, here's that, oh, I lost my job in 2018. you know, 2008 and I thought life was ruined. And then they go on and tell their story. It's like we find, we find things that are working like a post structure that works. And then somebody goes out and tells millions of peoples how to do it.
0:44:23
(Brandon Lee)
And then our LinkedIn feed is filled with it. Yeah. We're, we're chasing the algorithms. I think, you know, what I find is just be consistent with your humanity.
0:44:35
(Speaker 12)
Now I've given myself some freedom.
0:44:37
(Brandon Lee)
Like I've just been a little burned out. I haven't posted nearly as much as I've, I've done. And I was just burned out and I didn't care. But, um, but I know when I do it, it's very human.
0:44:49
(Brendon Hamlin)
It's very real. It's very authentic. And I find my network and my network finds me. Yeah.
0:44:58
(Brandon Lee)
You know, and I'm not, I'm not going to sell to people who don't really like my style anyway.
0:45:02
(Brendon Hamlin)
So why should I try to create content? That's not my style to begin with. So, um, I know I kind of took that down a different path from what we were talking about, but, um, yeah, there's, there's always room for digital because it's convenient, but the more face -to -face humanity style we bring into digital, the better, the better, um, results that we get from it. Yeah, I think I posted after we met Brandon in person about my friend Joel Pilger who talked about his, his mantra is experts travel, and that the difference between somebody working on their, he posted recently, somebody working on their deck in their office to them present to a client, and him sitting in Boston at a bar with that same client talking about, you know, the project, who's gonna who's gonna win, you know, and most likely, it's the guy that's, it's in real life, I do think there's a, you know, a pendulum swinging back towards, you know, people seeking the connection. I feel like the, I hear you about LinkedIn and just feeling like we're working for it.
0:46:13
(Brendon Hamlin)
And we are. Every time we logged in and they show us ads, they're making money.
0:46:22
(Brandon Lee)
Yeah.
0:46:22
(Brendon Hamlin)
Yeah.
0:46:23
(Brandon Lee)
But I do feel like it's part of the, it is part of the, you know, the whole, ecosystem.
0:46:30
(Brendon Hamlin)
You can't rely on just that. Get out there and meet people in person.
0:46:37
(Chris Dunn)
Chris and I are texting all the time, planning a beer summit here in Asheville. I think it's all a holistic approach. I think that sometimes people are looking for the one thing, and that the one thing is going to burn you out. We need a 10K in the morning, Brendan. That's right. A 10K in the morning and a beer summit in the afternoon.
0:46:58
(Chris Dunn)
That's right. We'll give you the digits or the dates on that and make a plan. That's awesome.
0:47:07
(Brandon Lee)
Brandon, one of your recent, let's call it pivots or just the evolution of what Fistbump offers. You were talking to us a little bit earlier about the new rollout of the roundtable idea, right? Where you're putting a bunch of CEOs or like -minded kind of leaders not probably not in a physical room, but in a virtual room together and the benefits of kind of that one -on -one interaction. Again, it kind of goes back to the benefits of live shows, I'm sorry, live events and being face -to -face with people and not just, you know, somebody shouting into a void, but actually, you know, back and forth conversations between just a couple of people in like a small group format. I also think that live events are just going to skyrocket from here. And a lot of people are talking about micro events and just finding ways to
0:48:00
(Brandon Lee)
smaller, more, you know, really intentional versus, you know, the thousands and thousands of people. So there's some similarities there as well. Yeah, look, I think the The foundation of all this is it's harder and harder and harder for us to get conversations with our ideal customers. That's the foundation of it. And we all want more conversations with our ideal customers, right? Everybody listening, we can agree to that.
0:48:31
(Speaker 8)
If we're all getting pitched so much, we all have way too much email.
0:48:35
(Brandon Lee)
We all have way too many calls coming in from unknown numbers. It's going to keep getting more and more difficult to talk to them. We've got to flip that, that script. We've got to change. Like how do we become attractive for them to want to be in conversation with us? We have to add more value and that doesn't mean better pitches.
0:48:54
(Brandon Lee)
It doesn't mean, um, you know tell them more about who we are and what we do so the roundtable is designed that we can invite a bunch of like -minded people into a peer to peer conversation very clearly this is not a sales pitch and it's not a webinar like we've we've collectively kind of ruined webinars to webinar used to be you show up and you're gonna learn something and now they're about 40 % of kind of teaching you something and then 60 % of a sales pitch where they're gonna just go do it for you. Right. And we've learned like, I mean, I don't want to go to webinars anymore because I don't know what I'm going to get. It's going to, is it going to be a waste of my time? Or is it going to be a true webinar? That's going to teach me something.
0:49:36
(Brandon Lee)
And so I like this model. Um, our clients are the ones that moderate it. They host it, they put it together. It's just like a micro event. It just happens digitally. And we're inviting their ideal customers.
0:49:49
(Brandon Lee)
The topic of conversation is the topic that they care about, not. moderator. It's like, Oh, I'm not going to, I'm not going to do a round table on podcasts and live shows. If people don't want to talk about that, I'm going to do a, I'm going to do a topic that they care about. So they want to come and I'm just going to moderate and help them talk with each other. And yeah, I'll have my opinions and everything.
0:50:13
(Brandon Lee)
But when we do that as a moderator and we get 20, 25 people in a room, And then the next day we call all 2025 people who attended and say, Hey, how was that? What did you get out of it? They're much, much, much more likely to answer our call because they just had this great peer to peer experience that you put together. You coordinate it. It's, it's like going to an event and wanting to know the company who coordinated the event because they know everybody. I said that's that's the basic concept of the roundtable but it always comes back to the same.
0:50:51
(Brandon Lee)
Model i focused on for most of my career which is how do we put ourselves in the middle of the community of the people we want to know who we eventually want to sell to and become more relevant. Build a reputation to become more influential and right now what's working really well is these round these peer to peer roundtable discussions just be the moderator. That's it be the moderator and then when you call them they're like oh yeah hey that was such a great thank you for putting that on. No and i connected with this person i connected with that person and now you're in conversation with them and that's been. Everyone i talk to the hardest part right now is getting there at bat getting conversations like well. If we're playing the numbers games, and everyone we talked to is like, we do XYZ, do you have 15 minutes for a coffee?
0:51:42
(Brandon Lee)
Or a if you spend 30 minutes with me, I'll give you $100 Amazon gift card and we result in bribery, right? If you're not giving the calls, then we've got to change the way we're trying to get conversations. And I've just found it to be extremely, extremely powerful. Tremendous. You know, we're at 52 minutes here.
0:52:05
(Brandon Lee)
We try to keep it under an hour here on the toolbox. So I'm going to start to wrap things up a little bit. One of the things we like to do is, is ask our guests about three kind of tips or tactics. So, Brandon, kind of, uh, whether they related to the pre or during or post show, but kind of, can you drop a little knowledge on us, uh, with a few tactics? You know, and it's, I'm going to say the main, the main one, and it's really, really difficult for people to do it because of fear, but try this and get, get several people in your company or build a group of people and I'll try this together. And it's that marrying of a something around your humanity, and then add it to your business.
0:52:53
(Brandon Lee)
Like the story I told about the picture I took of my daughter and I hiking and then related it back to the uncertainty of business and things happen that we don't expect and we have to adjust. Um, if you're, if you're thinking like, Hey, we need to be more active on LinkedIn. Number one, don't go to AI generated content and just publish it. It's, it stinks of AI and people are going to ignore it. But this, this would be, The number one thing, if you can get over that fear and generally find a group of people that you can do it with, and then practice it and, you know, create the post and share it with your community before you actually publish it. What do you guys think of this?
0:53:36
(Brandon Lee)
And it's, it's like any other muscle. It's like going to the gym. It's like working out Brennan, you and I running, you know, we didn't get up one morning and go run a half marathon. You know, I, I started walking 45 minutes a day and then started running, you know, practice get better at it. But I think, I believe I've seen it, Chris, you, you're an example of it. When you start showing up, I love your post with Barton, the dog, right?
0:54:04
(Brandon Lee)
It's you've taken a big piece of your humanity. I know you've engaged with lots of dog lovers because of it. And they remember you because of it. And a lot of their companies, they need exhibits. They need booths. They need you.
0:54:19
(Brandon Lee)
And so I think it's hard. I get it. It's hard.
0:54:23
(Chris Dunn)
It's so much easier to hide behind our title and only post about our company, our offering or the industry, but they're out there waiting for you. And when you have that courage to show up in your humanity, you build influence in relationships. I mean, the three of us on here are a good example of it. We wouldn't have met otherwise, most likely. Yeah. We wouldn't have met.
0:54:49
(Speaker 9)
And Chris, after I don't know how long it was when we first met each other in real life, it was a big hug and a beer and a great conversation because we had all this time online behind screens to get to know each other.
0:55:03
(Brandon Lee)
But that doesn't happen if all you're doing is posting about your business. Yeah. It's leading with leading with the flyer and nobody wants to be, uh, receive a flyer. I like to, I like to refer that as just like fast tracking, you know, the no, like, and trust, like the very first time that we met in person was not the very first time that we met. So we immediately were like, how's your daughter doing with that thing? She just graduated a new job, you know, other daughter got married.
0:55:29
(Brandon Lee)
Great. Right. It's like we were, we hit it, hit the ground running. Yeah. And I would say specifically around your audience, Chris, with, with the, the trade shows, um, You want people coming into your booth with enthusiasm.
0:55:43
(Brandon Lee)
You want them to come in and go, I want to talk to you. It starts months earlier, and it's generally going to start not just with content. It's humanity content. They need to know you. Humans start with the heart, and it goes to the brain.
0:56:00
(Chris Dunn)
I know we want to believe everything goes to the brain, and then it gets to the heart.
0:56:04
(Speaker 11)
It's just not the way we're programmed.
0:56:06
(Brandon Lee)
Emotion creates action. Emotion creates memory.
0:56:13
(Speaker 10)
Anthony Iannarino, some of you know him, he's a speaker and author and he's really well known in the sales space.
0:56:20
(Brandon Lee)
And I was telling him one time, and I know I totally bummed him out, but it illustrates this point. When one of his talks at the Outbound Conference, he walked out on stage and he goes, oh, you know, hold on, let me drink water before I start.
0:56:34
(Speaker 7)
And he has a sip of water and he goes, by the way, know, everybody here, the first thing in the morning, when you get out of bed, you should drink an eight ounce glass of water, because your body dehydrates so much while you sleep.
0:56:47
(Chris Dunn)
And then he went out and started giving his talk.
0:56:49
(Brandon Lee)
Guess what I remembered from his whole talk? Drink, drink water. Right. And I told him that and he goes, of all the things that I've shared in all my books, that's what you remembered. I go, there's other things I remember, but it was different. And Right.
0:57:06
(Brandon Lee)
It wasn't what I expected him to say from stage for the outbound. So it stood out. Yeah. Do the unexpected. That's what we have the opportunity to do. And by the way, if you're looking at LinkedIn, you're like, Oh, all these people are, but they're still only about 3 % of people on LinkedIn are publishing regularly.
0:57:24
(Brandon Lee)
So if you're looking at the newsfeed and going, Oh my gosh, everybody's doing it. No, they're not. They're not.
0:57:31
(Speaker 9)
Most of them are not.
0:57:32
(Brandon Lee)
So there's plenty of opportunity for you. be in that news feed and to be known. And it fills pipeline because then when you call people, they go, they're more likely to return your call. You're sending emails are more likely to send emails. You send a LinkedIn message, you comment on their posts. They're much more likely to do it.
0:57:53
(Brandon Lee)
I mean, this is the thing you, you create posts like we just talked about, and then people start commenting and you comment back and then you send them a direct message and you ask for a call. I'm going to grab a coffee. Let's get to know each other. Right? It's not. Simple like, Oh, thousand percent batting average.
0:58:12
(Brandon Lee)
Everybody's going to say yes, but that leads to lots of conversations. Hey, I know I've got a hard stop coming up. So there's one last question. Um, common reputation, killing mistakes to avoid. This is one that I knew we had to ask. Uh, I think right now pitch slaps, um, LinkedIn automation tools, which, you know, they're not allowed, but LinkedIn allows them anyways.
0:58:42
(Brandon Lee)
Um, the, the, the false, Hey, we have lots of, I mean, I got one, Hey, we have lots of common, you know, friends in common, but we don't know each other.
0:58:52
(Speaker 8)
I'm like, just waiting.
0:58:53
(Brandon Lee)
I know what's going to happen. I'm like, okay, sure. And then sure enough, the next message was this long of what he does for work and, and a link to schedule a 15 minute coffee. So I can learn more like, you know, I hate to say that's bad, but it's gotten so prevalent that it's just bad.
0:59:15
(Brendon Hamlin)
Um, the way, the reason it ruined your reputation is what you led with was a little bit of a lie. Hey, I want to be connected.
0:59:25
(Chris Dunn)
No, you don't. You want to try and sell me something. And then as soon as we're connected, you try to sell something. And the human filter starts to go right. If I saw that person in a live face to face event, would I be all excited to go talk to them?
0:59:42
(Brandon Lee)
No, I would be expecting if I talk to them, they're going to try and sell me again, because that's what they led with the first time.
0:59:48
(Speaker 7)
They're probably going to lead with it again.
0:59:51
(Chris Dunn)
It's like a digital door to door salesman. As soon as that person knocks on your door, they're trying to sell you something. Yeah. been very active today. So as we're wrapping up polit third rail kind of stuff. And Chris, I agree with you, the traditional old school kind of way of doing trade shows and conferences is definitely antiquated.
1:00:16
(Chris Dunn)
I know things are changing. I think, you know, millennials are in the driver's seat now and they want a different experience. Gen Z following shortly behind them. So the way that - And experience is the key in that, right? Yeah. Yeah.
1:00:29
(Chris Dunn)
Yep. Exactly.
1:00:31
(Speaker 6)
So, All right, gents, this has been fantastic.
1:00:34
(Brandon Lee)
We're going to wrap it up. So thank you all for tuning in. Again, this was a live show, but it's also now available on your favorite podcast platforms. It'll be out in a couple of days. And a little sneak peek behind the curtain. So this channel, not only are you seeing us here live having this conversation, but Brandon's company, Fist Bump, will send me and Blue Hive, about five or six shorts, video shorts from this.
1:01:04
(Brandon Lee)
And we use that as content. And here's one other little cool thing that I've started doing is my AI chat, GBT, little robot knows all of the shows. And I can go in and ask it questions to look at all of the shows and based on all of the shows, what are some of the things that you're finding?
1:01:23
(Chris Dunn)
And that has proven to be something that has been very cool. Just the insights, the collective insights that we're able to pull from all of that information, 35 episodes of you know, all of this chitchat with people from all over the event world and, uh, and the, uh, the, the, the speed at which it can look at all of that stuff and come back with really interesting insights is proving great as another piece, uh, that I can use or that we can use, you know, for, for content as well. So all good stuff, very cyclical real quick, Chris, too. It's not only, it's not only taking this, what this one does, we'd only take this and turn it into a bunch of short little videos that you can post. You take the transcripts and you turn it into email campaigns.
1:02:04
(Brandon Lee)
You go share it out with your database.
1:02:06
(Speaker 5)
Hey, on this episode, this is what we talked about. This is who our guest was.
1:02:09
(Speaker 4)
Here's a little summary of it. You can turn that into LinkedIn newsletters. You can turn it into blog articles for your website. There's just so much you can do with a one hour piece of content and content is still King. But the type of content is in the, the style of the content is so important as Brendan will agree to agree with. Great place to put a pin in it.
1:02:37
And, uh, we will say thanks so much for coming until next week. Happy eventing everybody and, uh, have a great rest of your week. Cheers gentlemen. Thanks for joining us. Brandon, Brendan, Mr. Lee, Mr. Hamlin, all those guys. Thanks everybody.
1:02:50
Cheers.
