Transcript 0:00 Hello, founders. Welcome back to the Next Round Ready podcast. I'm excited today to talk about how content will help you with sales. 0:07 And this is a complicated thing for a lot of people who really don't understand how it works. So first, I'll say that most founders hate selling because they're not-- like, they-- you're not a salesman, right? 0:19 You're technical. And if you're a technical guy or a woman working on your startup, you're probably not thinking about selling. You probably have never taken a sales course. 0:28 You've never had to actually go out and sell, you know? And that's not a bad thing. I'm not gonna sit here and chastise you. I'm not attacking you. I'm just saying that you don't know, right? 0:38 And you don't really care to. There's a way to overcome that. And I'll say that myself, I'm the opposite, right? Like, I am not a builder. 0:46 I didn't go to school to learn how to be an engineer or anything like that, but I've had a ton of sales experience. I've done door-to-door sales. I've sold the multi-level products. 0:56 Like, I've done a lot of the worst sales you could do, and it was like a character-building experience for me, and I built a lot of skills. Now, I'm comfortable selling anything. 1:06 I'm comfortable getting on stage and talking to people. Like, none of it bothers me. After years of going door to door trying to sell things to people, I can sell pretty much anything at any point at this time. 1:17 So, I wanna show you how to do this with content. Now, the how. The how is really important here because when most people are making content, it's very surface level, very bland. 1:29 It goes around in circles, and that's typical, right? Especially now with AI, people are using that to make even crappier content. 1:36 The thing with the right content is it'll prime your prospects before you get on a call with them, and it's different types of content. I talked about this a lot in recent episodes, but I'll kinda go over it again here. 1:48 The content really ranges from trending topics to, you know, news and stuff like that. Everybody can cover that. 1:56 Then you also have educational content, the authority-building content, um, content where you interview your happy clients and customers. 2:05 It's a lot of different types of content, but there are some specific versions you want to use to give people a transformation. 2:15 The biggest thing to understand now is people are not looking for content that will be information. The information content age is done. 2:23 Now we have AI, you can just simply go to any AI tool, ask a question, and within seconds you get an answer. Now, is this always right? No. Is it always super clear? No. Is it always perfect? No. 2:35 But that's what people are using to get their questions answered now. If your content just delivers information, it won't be good enough. You have to do something that takes the content to another level. 2:45 And if you're trying to sell specifically, there's a process. I'm gonna break it down for you. The first step is you have to create content that solves a very specific problem. 2:54 You notice how at the beginning of this episode, I mentioned that if you're not technical, you pr- you probably don't know how to sell. 3:01 I'm identifying with you and your problem of if you're a startup founder, you need to sell so you can make money, obviously. 3:07 But another problem behind that problem is the fact that you're not experienced in sales at all. You just learn how to build products, make software, whatever that is. 3:18 That is me identifying the problem and then how I can go, like, layers deeper on your problem. 3:23 This is something that you can only do if you have real skills and experience within your marketplace and you understand your ideal customer. 3:30 I understand what founders are going through because I've been a founder myself, and I talk to so many founders that I know what the gaps are. 3:38 When I talk to a founder, I know exactly what their problem is, so I can sit down and come up with 20 content ideas for problems I wanna solve for founders off the top of my head. I don't need AI to do that. 3:50 I may use AI to organize it, but I don't need AI to help me lay that foundation of this is a problem here and this is a problem there. 3:58 I know the problems that a lot of founders are facing at a lot of different stages as well. So, that's the first step with your content, is you have to create stuff that solves a specific problem. 4:08 When I sat down to plan this episode, m- my mind is only focusing on the founders who are not great at sales, which is a large majority, to be honest, right? 4:17 Now, the second step to creating really high-quality content that'll help you sell is to do research on these problems. Even after you know, you wanna continuously talk to people. 4:29 And when you have those conversations, you're going to learn. You're going to understand even more of the problems, the issues that they're facing, and most importantly, how they talk about it. 4:40 I understand that the developer who's on X following 4:44 all the top VCs and all the top, you know, uh, angel investors and stuff and talking with other founders, that founder talks way differently than the founder who is only on Instagram or the founder who barely even uses LinkedIn and doesn't use social media at all. 5:02 All of these people talk about their problems differently. That is very, very key. Very important. When I say you're a technical founder, you know exactly what I mean. 5:13 Now, if I say you're non-technical, you know what that means. That-- The verbiage you use to talk in your content is so important. It plays out in whether you're recording or writing, titles, descriptions, everything, 5:28 and this is why the research is so important. Even though you know, you wanna do research, and you gotta go and talk to people. I will never stop talking to founders, ever. 5:38 And when I go to events and when I'm in certain spaces, founders love to approach me and talk. I'm always gonna be open to talking to founders. 5:45 Even now that, you know, I got the fund going and, you know, I have, uh, my own ways, I'm deploying capital, whatever it is, like, I'm not gonna sit here and act like founders don't exist or I can't talk to them or any of that. 5:57 I'm here, I'm ready to have a conversation. I got your back. Because I have to continuously hear from you and learn from you, et cetera. You know what I mean? And I can't act like I know everything. 6:09 Even if I know everything, I can't sit here and act like I know everything. That is very, very important to not have that ego, you know what I mean? Because then that just puts you in a trap. 6:22 Now, I call this third step move the needle content. And by the way, this is part of my upcoming program, the Startup Content Capital program, and this is coming out in a couple weeks. 6:34 So if you wanna get early access, you wanna get early discounted access, make sure you reach out to me, you know, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, I'm everywhere. I'll put the links down in the description down below. 6:46 Move the needle content is when you specifically make content to get people to buy from you. Now, most people can't do this because they don't have the other pieces of content available. They don't have 7:00 the skills, you know? Think about this. If you never post a newsletter, but the only time you post a newsletter is when you're trying to sell something, people are not gonna buy. They won't have an interest in buying. 7:12 You're not Beyoncé. You're not Jay-Z. Like, people at the top, at the top-top have that luxury where they don't have to do a lot of marketing or anything. 7:21 They just put it out there, "Hey, this is for sale," and then somebody will wanna buy it. You don't have that luxury. You're unknown. So you can earn that luxury. Now, how do you do that? 7:33 That's where the transformative content comes into play. That's why it's so important when you're answering questions, solving problems. Obviously, the other trending topic content, all that stuff is super helpful. 7:46 But to be more specific, the move the needle content is gonna be straight-up sales, giving people direct reasons why they should buy from you. 7:53 "Hey, you should buy this thing because of XYZ, and if you don't buy this, this is the outcome you'll have." 7:59 You know, talk about-- again, identify what the problems they're currently facing and things that they're going through, and then talk about how your product, your resource is going to change their situation. 8:12 Put all of that together. It will help you. It will help you tremendously. And with move the needle content, you can do this in any format. 8:19 It could be on a podcast, it could be in a newsletter, YouTube channel, whatever. Uh, and I think it's better when you have it in multiple formats because you build more trust. 8:31 You build that reliability within your brand, and it's consistent. 8:36 And most people, again, you're-- if you look at a lot of podcasts and newsletters or whatever that's out there, most people don't do this because they cannot. They have not earned that right with their audience. 8:46 It would sound crazy. But I think that's why you built that goodwill by putting out so much other content, so that when you put out your move the needle sales episode, it doesn't sound too crazy. 9:00 You know, it's just, it's digestible. It's understandable. Because in that same month you put out, let's say, 12 other long-form pieces of content, if your 13th one is you selling, nobody's gonna be mad at you for that. 9:15 That's perfect. So move the needle content is gonna be that thing that gets you over the hump. If you're a founder struggling to sell, first of all, obviously, you should be making content. You cannot avoid that. 9:26 But the second thing is really, really focus heavily on making content that's valuable to your audience and valuable to them specifically as individuals, and then take it a step further by selling to them directly. 9:40 When you can do those two things, you will win. Like, I can guarantee you will win. And the best part about this is anybody can do this. 9:51 I don't care what field you're in, what subject you focus on, where your startup is. Everybody should be making this type of content because it's gonna be the difference between you 10:01 having an audience and, and converting that audience or just having a bunch of followers. Think about all those influencers who have a massive audience, who got a bunch of followers, but got nothing to show for it. 10:12 That's part of the problem. They don't know how to position themselves. They don't execute enough so that they can sell. But you can sell, you can win if you set things up perfectly, if you actually execute. 10:24 And not even perfectly, but just execute this strategy I'm telling you. When you put out the other types of content, add this into your workflow. I'm telling you, I'm telling you it is a game-changer. 10:34 Now, if you want early access to Startup Content Capital, make sure you reach out to me, like I said, individually. Shoot me a message, something like that, and we can talk about it.
