26 - Building a Community: The Power of Small, Consistent Steps - Justin Zimmerman

Justin Zimmerman joins the show to share his insights on building a community and the importance of authenticity. 

He emphasizes the power of small, consistent actions and the value of personal connections. Justin also discusses the future of sales and the role of influencers in the industry. 

He talks about his journey of building his own business and the lessons he has learned along the way. Justin also introduces a tool he has developed called "hand raised" that helps capture event intent and generate qualified leads.

**Key Takeaways:**

- Building a community starts with creating a sense of belonging and connection.
- Consistency and authenticity are key to building strong relationships.
- Going to market first and establishing a brand can lead to better product development.
- Webinars are a powerful tool for generating leads and capturing event intent.
- The traditional webinar model of driving registrations and hoping for attendance is flawed.
- First-party data collection and segmentation are crucial for effective lead generation.
- Justin has developed a tool called "hand raised" that captures event intent and connects with sales.

**Quotes:**

- "Consistency over intensity, small daily doses of action lead to big results."
- "People respond to people, not brands."
- "Go to market first and establish a brand before launching a product."
- "Hope is one of the biggest risks in webinars."
- "Event intent is some of the most killer overlooked underutilized intent."
- "How do you find prior to register prior to attendance? That's what we're really looking for."
- "I've learned so much about what works and what's missing in those pain points."
- "I've developed a tool called 'hand raised' to capture demand and connect with sales."
- "Print something off, give yourself a sales pitch, and capture leads in real time."

Transcript

Jason Yarborough: 0:25

Welcome back to the show, friends. So thrilled you're here with us today. Uh, it is officially holiday season here in the Yarby household. We've got Christmas trees, we've got garland decor, the kids are losing their absolute minds over Santa.

Sam Yarborough: 0:44

We've got advent calendar.

Jason Yarborough: 0:46

Yeah, so, uh, you know, what do you guys have going on for Christmas that are listening? Shoot us a note, tell us about your Christmas traditions. We, uh, actually you just posted a video of us going and cutting down our Christmas tree here in Bozeman, Montana. Highlight National Forest. Sure did. That's one of my favorite traditions that we do here.

Sam Yarborough: 1:03

Also illegal. Don't turn us in. But

Jason Yarborough: 1:07

we got taxed.

Sam Yarborough: 1:07

No, no, no, that's not what I'm talking about. Nightly we throw the kids in the front seat. Without, they sit on our laps. We, we go around the block to look at the Christmas lights, but it is the highlight of their day.

Jason Yarborough: 1:22

So as soon as they come home from school, they're asking about going, look at the lights. Look lights, look lights. We don't leave the neighborhood. We don't even really leave our street barely, but you know, they love it. Don't turn us in. Yeah. Don't hope no one's listening. So anyway, we've got a really fun episode today. One of my dear friends in the space. Someone who I've spent a lot of time with on the road. Uh,

Sam Yarborough: 1:40

who we got? Mr. Justin Zimmerman.

Jason Yarborough: 1:44

Absolutely. One of the best. And I'm just kind of laughing in my head because I asked that like you didn't already know, cause you know, it's, it's in the title of the episode, but Justin Zimmerman is a, one of my favorites out there. We've done a lot of runs together. We've done a lot of conspiring together.

Sam Yarborough: 2:00

If you don't know him or you haven't followed him on LinkedIn, first of all, get out from under your rock, go do that. But I think what we uncovered today. Was I was pleasantly surprised because we went deeper on a lot of topics than I expected to one of which is Authenticity, which is actually the Webster year, word of the year.

Jason Yarborough: 2:24

Yeah. One of them was genuine, authentic,

Sam Yarborough: 2:27

authentic. I think. Yeah. Um, also he updates his LinkedIn every day, so I'm not going to be a hundred percent, but he's something like 1700 days in a row of running. That's so much running. But I love this because it's like, for me, I'm like, Oh my God, I could never, but he breaks down the barriers to entry. It's just like, get out the door one mile accounts. And that theme translates to everything we do in our life, building a community, doing our job. Running whatever it is. Um, and then also bringing people along with these communities. Justin is an expert community builder. He's a great marketer. I have tried to copy many of his tactics. Um, it's an awesome episode. I certainly learned a ton.

Jason Yarborough: 3:17

Yeah, it was really good to finally record all these conversations that we've been having with Justin and talking to the work he's doing it's, uh, something that definitely worth your time to listen in on and not only that, but to Sam's point to like, go check them out on LinkedIn. Schedule a conversation with him, talk to him about running, try to do the math. We kick it off the show, but he's that's gone. That's a lot of pair of shoes that he's gone through and running. And I love him just like, just get started. I'm reading discipline is destiny right now. And Ryan holiday talks a lot about that. Like just getting started with the physical lead you down the path of getting started in the professional and everything else. So here we are, get started with this podcast and we hope you enjoy it. We'll talk to you next time. Welcome to the show. Justin Zimmerman, everyone's favorite webinar coach slash runner. What's happening?

Justin Zimmerman: 4:03

Yeah, pleasure to be here, guys. It's, uh, surprising it took this long for us to, uh, put something on the books, but, uh, I love the story of how we all became friends and how we've arrived here to talk about what we're going to share today.

Jason Yarborough: 4:15

Exactly.

Sam Yarborough: 4:15

what's actually really special about this? I just put this together, is in today's world this doesn't happen. I met Justin in real life before we had a virtual call. This is our first like Zoom, other than one of your webinars, but that doesn't happen.

Justin Zimmerman: 4:35

No, no, we, uh, it was B2B MX 2023 in Phoenix this year. Feels like earlier this year feels like last year at this point, right?

Jason Yarborough: 4:45

that is true. Very true. Yeah, that's actually, yeah, you and I met there as well. We went on that nice little morning run.

Justin Zimmerman: 4:51

Yeah, and, uh, it's funny, uh, the partner hacker people wouldn't, when they were called partner hacker, that's how long ago this is, uh, I stayed in the partner hacker house, and of all the times ever, I forgot my running shoes. And you and I went out, and I went, I went running, uh, in my, uh, these other non running shoes. Still made it happen.

Jason Yarborough: 5:09

Yeah, some loafers or something.

Justin Zimmerman: 5:11

Yeah.

Jason Yarborough: 5:13

So, speaking of running, uh, you've got a bit of a streak going on. Have you, have you run today? Did you get your run in already? Yeah,

Justin Zimmerman: 5:22

I knew you were going to ask me that. I wanted to say yes, but, uh, I took my sweet time this morning. It's Friday. Uh, ain't got no job. I got lots to do.

Jason Yarborough: 5:31

there you go. Yeah, you gotta hustle and make that dollar. So, how far are you gonna go today?

Justin Zimmerman: 5:36

Uh, 3 to 5K. Just, uh, you know, a little bit. I had a saying a while ago, I don't talk about it much now, but I say, do a little, a lot. You know, do a little bit, a lot, and then you build that muscle. And so, for me, you know, people are running marathons and ultras and all sorts of stuff. And I'm like, my goal isn't that. My goal is just to kind of make it out the door every single day. In about a week and a half or so, I'm going to be celebrating my five year running anniversary. So every single day, no days off, no days missed, rain, cold, travel, sick, injury, all conditions in which someone would experience over the course of five years. I've somehow managed to put my shoes on, put my hand on the door, walk through the threshold and cross that barrier of like, okay, I got it done. And the checkbox is for me, you know, I have my own accountability to myself. How long and how far that's really up to You know what's going on in that day, but I I get it done and uh, you know

Jason Yarborough: 6:31

I was sitting on the couch last night, kind of doing the math. I was looking at your LinkedIn. It's like 700, 1730 days, something like that. And I was like, good Lord, that's like almost five years. So you're, you're right there at the five year mark. And that's incredible. So I do want to hear a little bit more about like what started this journey and kind of what's transpired since then.

Justin Zimmerman: 6:48

Yeah, so I think you know We've got professionals listening to this talking about marketing and go to market and we get a lot of that in but behind you know the The professional is a personal and every person, you know, has things in their lives that they're dealing with that, um, if they get clear on them, they show up as a better person everywhere in their life. And so, um, like anybody else, you know, I have my challenges and heartaches and pain points and problems. And I knew that there are things in life that are controllable and things that are not controllable. And so I realized at the heart of when I started my running streak. Um, you know, I had family issues and work issues and all these things I realized, like, I can't control, but the one thing I realized I could control is like my mindset and my approach, and so I realized that if I could give myself a win every day, regardless of whether I was losing everywhere else in my life, if I could put my shoes on and I just started getting out there and feeling good, and then one day led to another, led to another, and then all of a sudden I felt like I was winning a little bit, a lot, right? Uh, every single day. And then people started saying, you What day are you on, and then how far have you run, and then all of a sudden it became kind of its own self accountability thing, and now every day I wear a running shirt and a running hat, and I'm not going to stand up, but I'm wearing running shorts because, you know, this is a family friendly show, right?

Jason Yarborough: 8:04

Ready to go at any moment. I love it. So that's that's it. I love the do a little bit often right and just getting started. Reminds me of an interview. I'll watch with Aaron Rogers quarterback at one point in time. He mentioned, you know, he starts every game. He likes to start off with like a short pass. Right. Like a five yard pass, 10 yard pass. And there's a lot to like using that in like everyday life as well. It's like, you know, get your, get your short, easy wins first. Like he gets a short connection, gets a short pass, gets comfortable, feels the flow. And from there he's just off right for you. It's like, you know, just get out the door, just get dressed, just do something. Like if you're working during your day, just get started, just start on something. Right, once you start, you're not gonna stop.

Justin Zimmerman: 8:46

You know, you bring up a really good point and I know that I would be much further along in my life, my career, my finances, whatever you want to call it, if I would have realized what you just said sooner, is that, you know, in order to do big, great things, you have to do a lot of consistent small things. And so often I spent. Call it big projects thinking so big, never getting started thinking so big getting lost in the details. And so even recently, I've got some development projects. I've become a product developer, believe it or not. And like I've had two tracks that I've been working on with two different development teams. One development team, we started with this big giant picture of what the end state's going to look like. And then same outcome I'm looking for. I am literally split testing development teams. And the other one is let's start with the most functional, basic. You know, rudimentary, but deliverable piece, guess, guess who's further along, guess which team I'm actually going with. Right. And so that call was today and. And they asked, well, why, what happened? I go, well, we just got caught up in, in, in the big picture too much. And we never started with something just granular, small, iterative and daily. And so I can see consistency over intensity, small, tiny steps, adding up professionally, personally to, to great things, and, you know, I just. You know, I have a little, uh, you know, everybody knows I send postcards. If you're in my, if you're in my social circle and professional circle, you know I, I send postcards. And so I, every month I have a bunch of, a bunch of postcards I print out. And every once in a while I have a, like a little one that's probably not here that is like a saying. And it's just like, keep things simple. Oh yeah, where's, there's a Gary V one. Every once in a while I'll even, I'll, that's not the Gary V one I'm looking for. But it's over here. And, um.

Jason Yarborough: 10:20

I love that.

Justin Zimmerman: 10:21

yeah, I just, I try to remind myself to keep things simple because I, I still over complicate things, and I have to come back to it.

Sam Yarborough: 10:28

I mean, I love, I'm so inspired by this because The other thing I'm thinking here is like from a past life, say that you used to be a runner. I'm speaking for a friend here.

Jason Yarborough: 10:40

I think that's me.

Sam Yarborough: 10:41

No, it's me.

Justin Zimmerman: 10:43

Mm mm.

Sam Yarborough: 10:46

anymore, but it's like, well, I don't think I could go out and run seven miles. Who gives a shit? I love like what you're saying. Even after five years, it's like, it doesn't matter. Just get out the door. And I think we can translate that to literally anything to building a following, to building a partner program, to becoming the go to webinar coach. Like we all want the end state and we all forget all of the little pieces that lead up to it.

Justin Zimmerman: 11:12

Incremental beats exponential. You can't get to exponential without incremental. In fact, there's a book, if you can see it on the floor over there, this won't scale. I don't know if it's visible in the frame here, but, uh, you know, Oh, I don't know. Oh, guess what I'm talking to you. I'm talking to Jason from drift. Of course, you know that book, right? You know, this won't scale, you know, for everybody starting anything new. And we just think like scale and. You know, explosive growth is the must have immediately. And I think we just get kind of caught up in, um, figuring out what those incremental next iterative steps are day by day is. And so that's marketing, that's health, that's relationships, it's everything, right? And so, um, I think I'm succeeding now in a way I never succeeded in my life before, because I finally just became okay with, uh, thinking small and taking daily steps versus everything being this big giant. Complicated approach that needs lots of money, lots of people, lots of funding before I can even get to the first step.

Jason Yarborough: 12:06

Yeah, no, I love that. And even like in my last role is head of partnership to drift. Like one of my charges to the team was, you know, slow, small, incremental progress. Like we're not going to try to boil the whole ocean at one time. We're going to, you know, make, take the right steps. We're going to learn, iterate, learn, iterate, improve. And over time, like we made the right progress and we're able to scale part of the program

Justin Zimmerman: 12:30

you know, let me know if you've seen this in your life. Cause I, I, I, I'm again, I'm, I think I'm, the principles are starting to show up in my life in like really powerful ways. I'll do a lot of stuff, a lot of noise and every. Every like three months, there's like one tiny micro thing that is like literally off the charts in comparison to everything else that I'm doing. And it was because I have, I just try to, in my copywriting, in my partner programs, in my content, and there's always like these one or two little things that I discover that then become, oh, that's part of the system. And so, like, even, yeah, just. Like I have this one little piece of copy that I've iterated over the last six months that now when I send it to somebody, I get a 50 percent response rate. And then that's now connected to this little followup piece that has, uh, you guys get emails from me, you see how kind of micro tiny they are and like the smaller I make it and the more targeted it becomes. And now there's this piece and element that I've discovered that's now creating lead gen for me through like a single tiny question. I'm like, it's, it's like. It's the tininess of stuff that I'm starting to see really, it's not big, it's small, it's like, the goal is to do a lot of big stuff, but then find the tiny, big wins, and then build that into your systems, and so I'm just starting to see that show up as like, this, like, discovery of like, simplicity, and pulling those simple things out, and it doesn't have to be huge and complex to win.

Jason Yarborough: 13:49

you

Sam Yarborough: 13:49

I think the other thing too. Yeah. I mean, what, what I just took from what you Just said is you a you never would know that stuff if you hadn't tried it So you have to, you have to try a lot of little things and pay attention, but B, you can't be afraid of putting something out. That's not perfect. Cause you'll never get

Justin Zimmerman: 14:10

Oh my gosh.

Sam Yarborough: 14:11

we talked about that a lot with this podcast. If you think that we had this perfect before we started, go listen to the intro music because we,

Jason Yarborough: 14:20

Wait, I think the intro music's pretty perfect.

Justin Zimmerman: 14:23

Yeah. Yeah, it's,

Sam Yarborough: 14:24

well, it's certainly not highly produced and. We hummed that upstairs, but I love what you're saying here is it's just like, get out of your own way, cross the threshold, make, make the next move and then pay attention.

Justin Zimmerman: 14:38

Yeah, you hear it all the time. And it's just like, just start, just press send just when you feel that anxiety around putting something out there that is like actually the right signal, even though it's telling, you know, slow down, make it perfect. Like, if you can cap, if you can stop yourself in the moment and say, Oh, wait, this feeling, even though it tells me this, if you can do the opposite to that, and then hit send and walk through that anxiety, or Yeah. Sense of criticality and judgment that you think might come from it. It's so much better to put it out there and let the judgment come than to sit on it for a week, two weeks, three weeks, and then hopefully, right, you might have it perfect and put it out there. And so I can't tell you how many years of my life I've not been where I wanted to be because I was so critical over things being perfect. Now I put things out there and they're spelled wrong, right? People will find that stuff in my LinkedIn posts, right? You think people are actually like so many few people are not. They're not scanning for perfection. They're scanning for content and, and context. Right. And so like, so yeah, is it better

Sam Yarborough: 15:38

how we're going to tell people are human from now on. AI wouldn't spell something

Justin Zimmerman: 15:42

that I, uh, here's

Jason Yarborough: 15:44

Now we have to intentionally misspell things and use bad grammar.

Sam Yarborough: 15:47

I'm in.

Justin Zimmerman: 15:48

I, I, I actually, yeah, that's actually one of my secrets is, uh, if you get emails from me, I will abbreviate things BRB or, you know, LMK. And, you know, you know, that AI is not writing that,

Sam Yarborough: 16:01

That's true.

Justin Zimmerman: 16:02

Right? Not yet.

Sam Yarborough: 16:04

about that because I love the way you, um, Are building your business. Um, we, we have a lot to talk about in terms of your business, but you have said, I don't have a job. I have a community. So can you share building a community is a lot of work. Um, can you share kind of the work that you have and are putting into building such an intentional community?

Justin Zimmerman: 16:29

Yeah, that's great. So, um, let me give people, like, I think when they hear community, they have some really quick, like, mental go to's as to what community means. And, uh, when you have those mental go to's, it feels onerous and bigger and, More complex than the way I've started it and done it. In fact, I, I have a sense of like wanting to be part of a community. So that's kind of the first thing. And then also cultivating a community. So starting with that feeling, but then the, the philosophy and methodology often leads to jumping to the technology. And so I'm going to change kind of the latter piece, the technology side of like what that means. So that way, anybody who wants to start their own community doesn't have to go by. a software solution and follow all the normal things that you think about with community. Um, I, I'd say, um, whether it's explicit or explicit, meaning like there's a Slack channel, there's a, you know, a community tool and people are, you're actively like moving people into, or something a little bit more, um, ad hoc, the way that I've done it. People reply back and say, Justin, I'm glad to be on part of your community. I didn't even really think about it that way until people started responding back. And so you can have like a distributed async, like non, um. You know, non channeled structured community. As long as people think that they're a part of something that you are creating and then they hear and see and speak from you and then other people are are a part of it and you and you and you use this thing that I call a BI always be inviting. Always be inviting. So when you're inviting people the language of an in the language of invitation. It is a precursor to the concept of, uh, being a part of something and being a part of something, right? Is that sense of community? And so whether it's me in the personal styled emails that a lot of people who were on my list, get right that I'm talking with Justin and people respond back. I know you're not sending this to me individually, but it feels so individualized. Right. I know it's not possible for you to invite 2000 people one by one, uh, to this thing, but the way you speak to people and the way you interact with them can activate that sense of bonding that trust that emotion of belonging. And that's the element here is the belonging. chemistry, right? If you know how to write and connect with people that creates a sense of belonging where you move that next step to whether it's a platform or webinar, you don't have to have a formalized sense of community to build a community. Now that is something that can happen, but you first need. In fact, that's probably why most community projects fails that they start with the technology and they hope by sending a mass email to go belong that somehow that sensation and connection of belonging is going to happen through that process versus The other side of it first, creating the bond, creating and activating those emotions and then learning how to shepherd that sense to other technologies that help amplify and create that. So for me, not having a job, which I didn't have, and I still don't have, but I didn't, but I had a community as I started writing on LinkedIn about topical things. And this is something we were all talking about, which is pick a niche. Pick an industry actually first and then pick a niche inside of the industry. So me partnerships, next category in partnerships, partner marketing, niche inside of partnerships, partner webinars, right now you're known. In an industry for in a specific category in that industry for a very specific thing that then people can relate to. And now when you talk to them, you're inviting them and connecting with them along those lines. And so for me, I've just been able to write on linked in about those topics about those conversations. And then we can talk about it more if we want on then. How do you. structure that language and activate those emotions that they get. People wanted to bond and connect with you because every single day I get a linkedin connection and I've got a little piece of copy I talked about. I perfected over the last six months. Then on a 50 percent conversion turns into an email where people will say, yes, please invite me because I'm inviting people to things to whatever that next thing is. And now my list is this and Um, the last piece of this is instead of having a 10, 000 person list or a 100, 000 person email list, I've got a 2, 000 person email list that performs at the same level of something that's 10 times, 20 times its size because I activated personal connection with those people. When they get an email from Justin, it's not an amorphous brand and logo, it's Justin. It's me. And so people respond to people, not brands.

Jason Yarborough: 20:46

right. So you're talking about inviting people into like your, what it feels like into like your circle of friends, you know, versus, and bringing them into like a, you know, a paid community like you. Partnership leaders or pavilion or some of these others that have that community brand, which is nice. And I like what you're using, like that language of invitation, you know, by inviting them to be a part of like what you're trying to scale and build within your business, right? So you're just bringing your friends along for the ride at that point.

Justin Zimmerman: 21:15

That's that's how I look at it. I really try to like right from a sense of friendship and like, um,

Jason Yarborough: 21:23

you, you mentioned like, go ahead.

Sam Yarborough: 21:27

I want to know, like, is this a learn skill because if you haven't gotten an email from Justin, follow him on LinkedIn and he'll invite you.

Justin Zimmerman: 21:36

yeah, hit connection request and you'll see, you'll, you'll see, like I said, going back to simplicity, you'll see everything I'm talking about. It'll be so subtle. You'd be like, that's, that's the technology. This is the flow. You will enter into a structured marketing sequence without even knowing it. That's personalized and connected from LinkedIn connection all the way to and through my events. And if you want to see that. Come follow me on LinkedIn and you'll see every piece is a

Sam Yarborough: 21:59

I think it's more than that though, too, because it's like, so I'm a huge fan of Cole Schaefer. He's a great copywriter. Um. I'm, I actually have a lot of copywriters that I love and follow and I'm going to put you in that bucket because I get so many freaking emails day in and day out. But for whatever reason, when an email from Justin hits my inbox, it cuts through everything. It feels like, like, literally, I have to read them a few times to be like. Does Justin actually need something from Sam? Like, should I respond to this? Or is he, is this one of his webinar invites or whatever? And I, that's like, it's magic. So, my question to you is, was that a learned skill? How did you cultivate that? Um,

Justin Zimmerman: 22:50

and yes.

Sam Yarborough: 22:51

because every, like literally, I sent your emails to my marketing team and it was like, do this, make it sound like this. And

Justin Zimmerman: 23:01

yeah, the answer to that is I'm embarrassed to say that the Well, there's a genetic inherited aspect to it, and then there's a learned side of it. And so, I'll start with the genetic side, which is like, my mom's a very affable person, and she showed a lot of love, and gifting, and connection, and nurturing, and desire, like very high on the like, Um, you know, oxytocin, like, how can I create and gifting and doing for others? And so I inherited kind of that sense of like, how do I make other people feel the way my mom made me feel as a kid? And then how do I package it and translate that into something that, um, you know, There's also kind of the, the, the point of like, I didn't really have like the brothers and sisters that I wish I would have had. I don't, I have like one brother and I wish I had a bigger family, kind of thinking like that. So then I try to take that love, if you want to call it that, package it into my emails and then build the family of people that I always wish I had in, in distributed kind of a personal way. So like I, you know, this is, you know, me looking back on 20 years of like, uh, 20 years of therapy all in five seconds here. Um,

Jason Yarborough: 24:05

Yes, please. I'm here for

Justin Zimmerman: 24:06

But the, but where it started, if I looked at the first couple of emails I wrote, Oh my God, it's embarrassing. Um, I had a friend make fun of me and it still stands out. Who's a really, he's a great entrepreneur and he's, and I actually worked for his business and he pointed it out to me. He's like, I used to start my emails with greetings, dear sirs, dear greeting friends. And I'm like, I saved that email. Cause my, my, it was this structured branded greetings. Very like grammatically perfectionist based polished like what everything school teaches you and like It took me, it took me years of like, like punching at that and looking at that and breaking that apart and to finally kind of matching my personality and conversational style and can, and like the, when I talk to people and how I want other people to feel when I'm talking with them, like if we were in person, it's, that's been, that's been, that's been the skill I've had to learn how to cultivate and translate and then simplify into email and email copy because it's hard to write, like you get a small email from me, it takes me an hour to write. Okay. Three

Jason Yarborough: 25:08

Super hard to simplify. Super hard. I do have a question. What was the, uh, what was the call out from your, your mentor, your friend around the emails that you were putting?

Justin Zimmerman: 25:17

Yeah. He says, yeah. He said, you know, stop being so damn formal

Jason Yarborough: 25:22

Nice.

Justin Zimmerman: 25:22

greetings, greetings, fellow Americans, you know, like, Oh, greetings. That's like, you know, that doesn't, that doesn't speak to anybody. Then of course, I didn't pull this up for our conversation, but I found this. If you haven't, this 1999 when I was in high school, uh, an audio book. On a thing called a CD that you put into these things called CD players if you haven't yet

Jason Yarborough: 25:45

may not know what those are.

Justin Zimmerman: 25:47

This right here is everything that just took me, took my conversational marketing career to the whole next level is

Sam Yarborough: 25:54

tell us what that is. Yeah. Tell us what that is for people who aren't on video.

Justin Zimmerman: 25:58

Yeah. Okay. Sure. Yeah. So Seth Godin, you should have heard of him by now if you're in marketing and anything at all. Um, back in like the nineties, he was so ahead of his time. Most marketing, first of all, wasn't digital because there was no internet and it was all like interruptive phone calls and advertisements. And he said, like, what if you could create. Advertising so valuable that people would be willing to pay for it. People would miss it when it's gone. And how can you do it in a way where you're not interrupting their world, but you're getting permission to talk to them like. Email and opt ins didn't even exist then and so, um, really in the way that we know today. And so he laid the foundation conceptually, philosophically, to like think in terms of like, What do you need to say? What do you need to do? What do you need to write? What do you need to create in order to make what and who you are and what you sell so valuable that people are willing to opt in and give you permission to talk to them? That didn't exist then. And so, you know, this, this audio book was, and that plus a Robert Cialdini's, um, everybody should know that one as well, you know, influence book, those two, like, those are the two most, out of all the books behind me, those two, two things really stand out as like fundamental principles to, you know, everything that I've, I've built and been building and will build. Yes,

Sam Yarborough: 27:13

on my notes app, I keep of like podcasts I listen to and quotes and whatnot. And I just searched Seth Godin and what I wrote down from him was incrementally add the amount of people on the bus and then you connect them together and amplify their work. And I think that's exactly. What Justin Zimmerman is doing.

Justin Zimmerman: 27:37

if, if,

Sam Yarborough: 27:38

to take what your mentors are saying

Justin Zimmerman: 27:39

yeah, Seth, Seth going to be proud, right? 20 years later. And so I don't have any books or courses or anything I really teach on this. And, um, you know, people can hire me and I build this into their marketing systems and I. Um, tried to share as much of the magic as I can, but if you really want to learn and go to the source that I've gotten it from, read everything Seth Godin, right? That's pretty much it. And then, um, from like tactical, practical copywriting stuff, um, you know, there's a couple of books out there that teach you how to do it. So just, you know, uh, Dan Kennedy stuff and salesmanship and, uh, there's the one great copywriter, his name forgets, I had his course for a while, but, um, yeah.

Jason Yarborough: 28:19

I think there's the commonality is like, how do you, you make it something that people want to be a part of, right? To your, to your, to use your verbiage, which I love, like the language of invitation, right? And making, making. Content, community, advice, value, help, all those things that people like they want to consume from you. If you put that kind of stuff out there, then heck yeah, they're gonna, they're gonna come be a part. They're gonna get on your bus and they're gonna follow you to whatever extent you need them to. They'll show up as long as you're showing up for them.

Justin Zimmerman: 28:48

And I want to, I want to add to that is that there are people who are going to listen to this and say, well, I don't know what product or service I'm going to sell yet. Or I'm a business and I'm an owner. I'm a CEO. I'm a CMO or CEO. And like, you know, where does this all lead if I make this investment of time and energy? Because it is not insignificant, you know,

Jason Yarborough: 29:05

Right. Not at all. It's a lot. Every day.

Justin Zimmerman: 29:09

I guess another book over here is like, if you, you know, everyone's going to, when I say this, you're going to like, yes, okay, I get it. This is the reason why things fail is whether it's integrations that get built without talking to marketing teams, integrations that get built without talking to the, uh, the end customers and enrolling them, uh, products that go. You know, get built and they then have to go do product market fit. Like they, everybody's always building stuff first and then having to go to market. That's why we call it go to market, right? Like we do something and then we go to market. The problem is is that going to market is hard. And so if you go to market first and that's really kind of what we're talking about here is if you go to market first and establish a brand, establish a connection with an industry, establish a connection with. An audience in which you might one day most likely serve, then you're already in market, learning about the pain points, the problems, the people, the communities. And this is what I've been doing, is I've been building this list of people. And, uh, I think before we started recording is I treat my community the way I would treat any marketing campaign or exercises. I've got data enrichment. I'm collecting roles and titles and all these different, uh, points of segmentation. So that way later on as a copywriter, I can go in and say, you know what? I really want to solve for this problem. Let me see if I can now go to my market, which I've already established first, my community, my channels, my email list, my LinkedIn following my referral partners, right? And if you watch any of my webinars, you'll see how I activate, um, you know, essentially news and media, uh, owners to help support my stuff, to get a message out there, to validate what I'm doing next to join a webinar where I might sell something to get product feedback on something that I'm building. And to go get my first couple of customers, which is why I, I can say, should I name names? There's companies that I'm inside of before I'm even having a product. And that's why I'm inside of them because now that I'm here, they're like, Hey, we know, like, and trust you. What do you got,

Jason Yarborough: 31:08

Yeah. So you're using your, that go to network, as Scott Leis likes to put it, right? You go to a network and you frame it up in the network. You learn from the network, you bring it back, you're in the product. And you're essentially, you're creating for what your community wants, needs, and finds helpful. Like if you're actually engaged and involved in showing up for them and learning from them, you can build a product that is going to help them. You just got to be willing to invest the time and have those conversations and understand at least a little bit of around, around where you're going, what your North star is.

Justin Zimmerman: 31:35

you know, us, us as marketers and partner people are in such a special privilege position. Especially if you're employed right now, like if you're being paid every day to go talk and connect with other companies and you're and you're not also simultaneously building your Rolodex, right? You're not building your CRM. You're not capturing and owning those relationships in a system that allows you to no matter where you move or go to bring those relationships with you.

Jason Yarborough: 32:04

That's

Justin Zimmerman: 32:05

You're really missing out on, on, you're really missing out on an opportunity to either be a more higher, higher, highly valuable candidate in your next role and job, or go and start your own thing, because now you have connections and in, in a automatically scalable way to reach out to

Jason Yarborough: 32:23

That's it.

Sam Yarborough: 32:24

You know

Jason Yarborough: 32:24

people are going to be hired based off those networks here going forward. Sorry, I was just having this conversation with a company earlier. It's like they're looking for a certain candidate and they want to have, you know, X amount of network connections. Like before they even consider like interviewing the person, like, yeah, we got to know that they have networks and connections into these, uh, types of companies and verticals. I'm like, oh, okay. So we're, we're there.

Sam Yarborough: 32:44

Yeah, I mean, that's how I got my job.

Jason Yarborough: 32:48

This is true.

Sam Yarborough: 32:49

Yeah, but I think too I love love love what you said Justin and I think a lot of people aren't capitalizing on that opportunity, but it doesn't Stop at just partnership people. I mean, CS people, they're talking to customers all the time. Salespeople, they're talking to prospects all the time. Those are all tremendous opportunities to build your network, not only for your company, but for yourself. Um, and yeah, we, we get a privileged position because it is literally our job, but it also is literally everybody else's job too. You just have to change your perspective on it,

Jason Yarborough: 33:24

Oh yeah. And there's people like, like, uh, I think of Kat Shook over at a six cents. I'm not sure if I said her last name right or not, but she does a fantastic job. She's a enterprise AE and she's building a hell of a brand for herself on LinkedIn and doing a great job there and she's getting the recognition and if she was to ever leave Sixth Sense and she's going to be set up to go wherever she wants. Cause she's, she's got the attention.

Justin Zimmerman: 33:45

You've just given me an idea around a prediction I'm going to make. And so maybe in two years from now, we'll walk back, we'll look back on this.

Sam Yarborough: 33:51

call it here.

Justin Zimmerman: 33:52

yeah, let's call it right now.

Jason Yarborough: 33:53

Heard it here first.

Justin Zimmerman: 33:55

yeah. So I've seen it because I'm working on it day in, day out, both myself, but then even in a bigger sense, like I'm gonna say the word influencer marketing and, uh, the people who really understand how to capture and own a community and be able to drive influence and attention based on their ability to, uh, create trusted, repetitive, um, outcomes for others. Um, the, the, the future of sales, the future of AEs is going to. Look more like an influencer model, right? And so, like, if we, if we look at, like, an eight, like, a high value AE doing cold outbound with no trust being told to make 20, 000 dials and 50, 000 cold outreaches, like, that's going to die. Because it's going to be replaced by the super nodes and every single one of the companies and industries and these super nodes, like the person you just mentioned, this is my prediction is that they're going to build a not a book of business, but a book of relationships that they own and then no matter where they go. And here's the thing is, even if they don't ever come out with their own product, right? This is what this is. What I'm saying is like, I'm looking at the reverse of this is there are. Influencers I'm working with right now who've built an amazing brand on LinkedIn. In fact, I just did a deal with one of them and we did a test campaign. Here's, I'll tie it back to more of the prediction in a second. I said, okay, let's do this campaign. Here's the copy. Here's the image. Here's the link. Go post this and like 1400 plus unique views in 24 hours from that link. 500 and like 20, uh, downloads of the ebook that we were promoting and 89, uh, qualified leads from the sales team from that one, one post, one influencer, one campaign, 24 hours, like just complete, like I said, completely off the charts results. And so what this person has done over the last year and a half is build their brand on LinkedIn. Right. And so they're on the LinkedIn front end of the, of the side of the business. They don't know yet how to connect that to bottom of funnel. And so what I'm saying is I'm going to see that we're going to see the reverse happens. We're going to see AEs and we're going to see SDRs. We're going to see people in on the sales side on the bottom of the funnel, recognize that if they could do what these other people are doing at the top of funnel and learn how to manage both, those people are going to be invaluable. So they can come to any company. And be able to drive business immediately. In fact, I rec, I bet there, and this is where the prediction comes in is there may even be like a world where those people don't even work for companies anymore. They become just kind of affiliate referral marketers because they've built their book of business and they have an understanding of how to make those trusted recommendations that, um, that will outperform

Jason Yarborough: 36:34

world already.

Justin Zimmerman: 36:35

Yeah. So that B2C is going to come over here and those AEs and those SDRs, those salespeople, when they catch on to what that person just said, those people are going to activate and then they're going to move up funnel and then they're going to be demand drivers to the bottom of the funnel and be able to either have a really nice commission compensation package for the companies that recognize the value they're going to produce, or they're just going to go straight up affiliate and just earn that lifetime recurring commission for those companies that have those partner programs.

Jason Yarborough: 37:02

That's it.

Sam Yarborough: 37:02

You heard it first here. I think, I mean, it's already happening a little bit. Um, like the conversation we had with Scott least was very along the same lines and he's, you know, he's leading the charge there. But so to double down on this, I want to ask you a question here. Um, I've heard you say most people meet, they have a one off conversation. Then that turns into a follow on linked in. And then it ends there. Um, guilty, occasionally.

Jason Yarborough: 37:30

Yep.

Sam Yarborough: 37:30

has said, I have done it differently. What does that look like?

Justin Zimmerman: 37:34

Well, first of all, you guys have done, Probably the most amazing job of like pre podcast research work that I've ever I've ever seen or done when i'm being on a show So kudos to you guys for like digging into stuff i've said and written and done So, um, I gotta give you a compliment on that feels really good on this end, too So, yeah, that goes back to the system I was talking about is, um, I have this natural desire to like create bonds and connections. And so, you know, typically you meet someone, you have a great conversation and then, you know, you float off. And so, um, I've done some, I tell Ella Richmond over at. Near bound partner hacker. She's great. She's got this natural aptitude. And so I every moment I can, I try to remind her how to cultivate this into something. I talk about, uh, what is Ella 2030 look like? Right? Because she's 2021.

Sam Yarborough: 38:25

had a call with her yesterday and asked her the same thing. If

Justin Zimmerman: 38:28

And so she's so prime. She's such a great candidate for the answer to this question is that she asks great questions. She's right in the middle of the industry. You know, she's developing her skills as a marketer and as a connector and as a partner person. And so, like, my answer is, I'm going to give it to her and then everybody else who could benefit. And I've given her this advice too, is like, the answer is when you meet and connect with somebody, go the extra step and invite them to something. Have them. A newsletter that goes out once a month. Have even, and a newsletter can be a single email with five sentences and it says, Hey, what's up? Just catching up saying, Hi, I read this one article here. Go check it out. It doesn't have to be anything complex, but they stay in front of people. for the lifetime of your relationship with them. And so instead of just taking your card or just cards anymore, or meeting somebody and scanning their LinkedIn thing, have like one or two more steps to follow up with them and get them into your own. I tell her this, getting them into your own personal CRM, go use HubSpot. Right? HubSpot has a free, up to 3 million contacts for free, right? CRM, that as you get better and more advanced, you can activate all the other features. HubSpot's not just this big expensive thing, which it is, but at least use HubSpot as your main CRM. I think I pay, I'm on their starter plan, which is like 50 a month, and it gives me custom fields and stuff. So 50 a month, go make the investment. And when you go talk to somebody on LinkedIn, do a follow up and say, Hey, I've got this thing. Would you like to come and invite it? Collect email addresses at the very least. And then once a month, export them out of HubSpot because you're probably not going to spend the six or 700 for some of their marketing automation and go put it into MailChimp. Go put it into Woodpecker. Go put it into, you know, uh, a tool and send something. Just send something. And so that's a simple and like most like, cause then you compound that over 10 years, Ella, right? One person, two people, five people, especially her in the position that she's in as partner people, she's going to have 10, 000 people who she stayed in contact with over the last 10 years. And when she's ready to go make a move or start a podcast or right, like, instead of trying to go to market later, she's been in market this whole time, building her personal relationships. And, and so for me, that's just like, that's, that goes back to the beginning of our conversation around, let's do small daily doses of do it incremental over exponential, right? Like consistency over intensity. And so for me, that's like, if you're 20, if you're 30, if you're 40, if you're 50, right? Like, you can still start and do it. If you're human, if you're still alive, just do the right thing a little bit a lot.

Sam Yarborough: 41:08

I I love this and I know we both have questions to follow up with you on, um, we've all received these like follow up emails. Actually, I just showed Jason one the other day from, I'm not going to name names, but a highly well known influencer connected with me and it was very simple. It was like, Hey, thanks for like engaging with my content. Um, that was it. So I was like, Oh yeah, you're, you're welcome. You know, follow up. And then immediately the follow up is, yeah. Follow my newsletter. Um, you know, make sure notifications are up for when I post. It was all like me, me, me, follow my newsletter, follow me, follow this. So what advice do you have to like make that

Jason Yarborough: 41:53

Well, to tack on to that, like my follow up question is going to be like, Talk us through like how you got started here or what you, what advice you would give to somebody we'll, we'll keep using Ella's example of like you're getting started, right? What are you, how are you getting email addresses? What are you inviting them to?

Justin Zimmerman: 42:10

Yeah. Um.

Jason Yarborough: 42:11

on to Sam's question.

Justin Zimmerman: 42:12

Sure, so if you're in market, like I said, here's the structure, right? Like I said it before, industry, category, niche. Um, if you're in an industry, like you probably are, like that's, that's the first thing you need to have, you know, might not need to need to know what your category and like when you have your niche, that's when you have your calls to action to bottom of funnel and like business and rev stuff like until you figure that out, well, you know, like, don't, don't worry about it. You don't need people, you know, if someone gives you their email address, like you don't, you don't need to like ask people to double down on follow me on LinkedIn, Twitter, like, you know, what does that feel like? Don't do that. Right. So, um, yeah. You know, the, uh, the, the advice is, is, is, is again, it comes back to simplicity is, um, you meet somebody, you have some great rapport, and you do have to think about this stuff, um, along the lines of, well, what am I inviting them to? What's that call to action look like? Here, this is what I would write. I would say, you and I have a great conversation. I actually use this. Okay. Here's here's where here's here's proven use case from this is people join my email list. I often get a professional email address. Last month's emailing was the worst for bounces and invalid. I've ever seen. Why? Because people have more people have lost their job and I can tell. Uh, when people have lost their jobs, sometimes before they know it because, uh, the email bounces or the rest of the team, it's, it's actually sad and scary. And so I'm like, wow, this is a good indicator of what's going to be news eventually is the number of email bounces I get on professionals. But what I ended up doing, and this comes from my heart is I still want to stay in touch with you. I don't care about your email, what company you're at. I care about the individual person. And so if they go switch, go to another company. So what language I would use to get people. To start with is the language I use to get people to stay engaged with me after they're they leave or lose their job. Um, and so yeah, funny. Like, hey, how did you know? I'm like, oh, uh, your email bounce, right? Um, and so what I ask is, hey, um, so you have a great conversation on the front end, you know, you have, they're not on your list yet, and you want to build this community style of connection and like personal with Authenticity at scale, right? And so, you have to think systematically. What you ask here, you need to ask always here. And what you say here, you ask always here. And I'm always testing out that copy, and then building that into systems and flows. But the thing that I would take from the back end when I lose somebody, and it feels like a loss to me. It's like, I feel like I've put connection into that relationship, even if it was a one time interaction. Like, how do I build this family of friends and connections? And so I bring that, bring that forward and I would say something like, you know, uh, Hey, hey, Sam, we had a great, you know, like we would meet and say, Hey, we had a great chat or Jason, we had a great chat on our run, right? That was so great. Hey, let's stay in touch. You want to stay in touch? Yeah. Okay. Well, and then, and I don't even ask for the email. I was like, how about we stay in touch? You know, that was great. Right? Question mark. And that person's response is yes. And then I say, well, great. What's a, what's a good email address for us to stay in touch with? That's what I use on the backend. The version on the backend is, Hey, I noticed your email bounced. Hope everything's okay. I'd love to stay in touch. Would you like to continue to stay in touch? Yes. What's what's what's what's

Sam Yarborough: 45:22

subscribed to my newsletter?

Justin Zimmerman: 45:24

no, no, no, no, no one's connecting to my newsletter. They're connecting with me, with me, the person, the individual. Right. That's, that's the difference is do you want a newsletter or do you want to stay and people will say, yeah, I want to stay in touch and I'll get a 30 or 40 percent reactivation. If you think about it that way from, uh, an email and they'll give me their Gmail address. So now I'll go update there. And I've got some Zapier scripts that I've written that find email addresses and we'll go up to the contact or yada, yada, yada. But you can still do it manually. Um, you know, yeah. In fact, actually, I've written a Zapier thing when email bounces and goes into global, global bounce. Uh, there's a campaign that runs if I have their LinkedIn email, uh, their LinkedIn URL. I'll actually go, I'll actually send a LinkedIn message to them and say, Hey, and so actually we'll do it automatically. How sophisticated you want to go, right? So that way you have two channels of connection. Email fails, right? So I've got LinkedIn, which is kind of usually pretty permanent. And so I've got this system that will, and then they respond to the LinkedIn and then my Zap will see the LinkedIn and it will find the at sign and pull it out, look up their contact record, re add, and then send them an email later and say, Hey, thanks. I re added your thing. I'm glad we stayed in touch.

Sam Yarborough: 46:27

is like a freaking Bible slash workbook.

Justin Zimmerman: 46:31

but

Sam Yarborough: 46:31

First of all, Ella, you're welcome for the mentoring session.

Justin Zimmerman: 46:34

Yeah, you're welcome. But this was all incremental. I didn't just one day say, Hey. I was like, Oh, I want to stay in touch with them. Well, what can I do? And I did everything manually, figured out what copy worked, saw what worked, and then put the automation in place behind, um, these like, like I said, it's just so simple. It's like to stay in touch and to build great relationships. It's not this complicated stuff. It's invite people to things when you meet them. Hey, let's stay in touch. I've got some

Jason Yarborough: 46:59

what, what were some of those things in the early days you were inviting people to?

Justin Zimmerman: 47:03

um. Well, it's just, I was, I was doing webinars around my, my niche, right? So category partnerships, uh, industry partnerships, category, partner marketing, niche partner webinars. Now I was inviting people to my partner webinars and I would do something with, uh, you know, Scott Brinker and I've got something with Jay McBain and I got something with. Blah, blah, blah, blah. And so, Oh, and that's another side of is how do you align yourself from a branding perspective with name recognition? Like, Oh, Justin's associated with these guys. So he must be good. Uh, I am good, but you know, uh, you know, but I

Jason Yarborough: 47:36

So you're, I mean, I've seen those now and you're, you're still doing that today. Still running those same place, still inviting

Justin Zimmerman: 47:42

and that's my branding. That's my branding, like community branding, like, To be known as like a influencer or someone who's emails people are going to read and respond to and want to join like you have to do that top of funnel branding association level stuff like kind of like you guys are doing right? You invite great people on and now you're associated with those great people and um, and so then that gives me a reason to invite somebody to something as I have these events that I do and uh, they're once a month. They're not obtrusive, but in the meantime, right? Like I'm working on my product, I'm working on my service and then uh, yeah.

Jason Yarborough: 48:13

to say is like these, these events, these webinars eventually led you to figure out like where to double down where your niche is right now you're able to build

Justin Zimmerman: 48:21

Well, as I figure that out, actually, those webinars were not necessarily directly tied to any top bottom of funnel salesman. There was one webinar I did that actually kick started my partner webinar coaching program. That's a whole other conversation. So, and that goes back to, well, fuck it. Uh, I'm going to go try this out. And if it works, it does, it doesn't, doesn't. And I'm like, uh, and then, yeah, I tried something with like. Far less preparation than I've ever done before. And it may need probably 20, 000, uh, over the course of a quarter.

Jason Yarborough: 48:51

Got it. That's incredible. So you've been, you've been doing these now for roughly what, about two years. I tried to go back and

Justin Zimmerman: 48:56

Yeah, that's a year and a half, too. Yeah.

Jason Yarborough: 49:00

What do today's learnings look like? And we, you and I kind of chatted about this last time we spoke and kind of want to hear more from you, but like from the data perspective, like, what are you, what are you learning today from these webinars, this product you're building and like to kind of nerd out for just a second around, you know, partner marketing and webinars

Justin Zimmerman: 49:18

Oh, well. Jeez. We need a whole other hour for that. Um, so, yeah, uh, so,

Jason Yarborough: 49:25

we got a few minutes,

Justin Zimmerman: 49:26

I can split today's conversation really into three categories. Category number one, kind of just like my personal philosophies and principles that really under, uh, support or the foundation of like my professional stuff. So then, you know, we talked about, you know, consistency, intensity, you know, micro dosing on tiny little actions. And then how does that show up into like my personal branding and my top of funnel and then, you know, go to market before you. Go to market, right? And so now that I'm like in market, and I've been building community and connections and relationships strategically and authentically, I call it strategic authenticity, right? There's a strategy behind the authenticity. And then that leads to this next level of things were like, as I've matured. Um, cause when I got started my own business, I really had no idea what I was going to build or sell. I just knew I didn't want to go back and get a job. I knew that there was something inside of me I wanted to put out into the world and I wanted to do it my way and I was willing to risk a lot and I'm still quite almost feeling like I'm risking a lot, you know, I'm going down with the ship, either we're going to sink or swim with this thing here.

Jason Yarborough: 50:26

burn the

Justin Zimmerman: 50:27

and, um, and now that I'm in this place where I did two things simultaneously, built my network, uh, disconnected from. The product, which I think was smart because if I was going in there dry, you know, people would sense and smell there was some sort of ulterior motive. And that was also part of his genuinely wanting to connect, genuinely wanted to create value, genuinely connecting with people and scaling that through the systems I talked about. But now I'm in this other place. We're on the side, uh, working with the clients I picked up for partner webinars. I've learned so much about what it. Is going to work what's missing in those pain points that I've started to develop an app that helps, uh, people who are doing webinars and other, and I could show the screen, but I'm not going to get into that, uh, flip the script on how most people think about this stuff. And so often we try to drive people to, and here's the linear processes, you know, a webinars. It's the most common go to market motion, according to, uh, Sean Blanda over at Crossbeam State of Partnership Ecosystem Survey. Everybody goes to market with webinars with their partners. They do partner webinars, right? Here I am, Partner Webinar Coach. And, and they end up following the sequence of, like, build integration, uh, Put together co marketing event, promote co marketing event, you know, uh, do the presentation and then have some sort of call to action and then follow up. And so like that leads people to want to then drive as much registrations, drive as much attendance, and then hope. And I call this one of the biggest risks in webinars, hope people show up, hope people wait to the end and hope that you have articulated the value proposition and offer for the people who actually make it to the end in a way that gets them excited and it's clear and it gets. Many people as it's worth that all the energy you put into doing that makes it worth it at the end for those people to show up. I'm like, that is such like a chronologically flawed model and reason why most webinars fail and they don't

Jason Yarborough: 52:18

it's the way we've always done

Justin Zimmerman: 52:19

but it's the way we always do it. And so I'm like, cause I've, I've done that. I put a month's worth of work into a better together webinar, right? Hoping that a very big named company who was 10 times our size was going to drive 10 times the results. Right. And I'm like, that's actually how I became self employed slash unemployed because it didn't work out. And I was like, well, I was betting on that one. And the company did not like the results that we got. So I go, I got to go fix this. And so I went off and fixed it. And what I discovered is, and this is the tool that I've built is that how do you find prior to register prior to attendance? Regardless of whether people attend, regardless of whether you have the most articulate state stage selling, uh, articulate closer partner marketer host to get people to click trial and upsell, regardless of whether you've done a great job of articulating the value of the proposition of better together story in the webinar itself, what you're what we're really, really, really, really looking for is the data first party data. Who's in market with a certain level of pain points and problems. And do they fit our persona to send a qualified lead to sales? And so as soon as I started to realize that this is a first party data collection, segmentation, and then SDR style sales routing equation, it totally complained, it totally changed how I go to market, totally changed eBooks, webinars, uh, demos, uh, access to communities. All those are, are opportunities for you to say something to the market, to get them interested, excited, to raise their hand, to come through this potential, uh, data toll gate. And then you're going to do one of two things. And this is the tool that I've built to find the hand raisers and separate those who are here to listen and learn only. And those who are interested to try and buy a product or service in the market, but not quite a demo stage, not quite a trial stage, but earlier in that process. And so what do you need to say and do during these registration processes to capture that information and then find qualified conversations and leads for sales? And so I built this tool that's going to be something called hand raised, hand raising something to capture that demand and then get that connected with sales immediately. And so that's. That's, that's what I've been building and webinars are only one of the major vehicles that companies go to market around, but I've also applied it to, again, other points in the buyer's journey where people are opting in, exchanging information, first party information for, uh, for content.

Jason Yarborough: 54:42

But I've, I've had this conversation with Mark Killens and I think event intent is some of the most killer overlooked underutilized intent that you can, you can have access to and to provide, especially if like you have a certain very specific topic that someone has raised their hands to attend. They showed up, they took some sort of, you know, engagement through in, within the webinar. Chat, question, emoji, something like they're involved, they're engaged, they're showing up. So like that is some real serious intent. If you can find a way to bottle that magic up, then you know, I think you've got something great.

Justin Zimmerman: 55:14

Yeah. Come talk to me if anybody's listening to this. In fact, I did a masterclass yesterday on Mark's.

Jason Yarborough: 55:21

Club PF.

Justin Zimmerman: 55:22

And so I just delivered this webinar to them, uh, yesterday in the masterclass around event intent, intent. And so if people are doing events, come reach out to me. I'll walk you through a process to help you separate. In fact, I was talking to, uh, Katie over at HubSpot, they just did Apollo's event. And she's like, yeah, we got a list of registrants and attendees, but we're treating everybody the same and we don't know who's in market to have any sort of targeted follow up when, so I've, I I told her what I'm doing. She's like, Oh my God, Justin, we needed this yesterday.

Jason Yarborough: 55:51

Yeah. I'm going to check out that masterclass. I would encourage anybody else to do so because the conversation I've had with both you and Mark are pretty, pretty eyeopening. Right. So that's something I thought about prior to like actually talking with Mark, but there's a ton of data, a ton of richness in, in events and those hand raisers and how they're engaging through in like there's, there's so much goodness there. And you know, I can't wait to see what you build, man, what you bring to market. Cause I think it's going to be great. And obviously you got a lot of fans out there and supporters. So it's, you know, it's going to be a good liftoff for you.

Justin Zimmerman: 56:21

And I would have done this at the beginning, but I just really kind of wasn't in the mood. But here's a little secret to, um, To the sauciers. Uh, here's a play that I give away for free in every one of my webinars and podcasts I do. And so for the listeners, I'm sorry, you're going to miss this, but for the live watchers in recording, what I recommend you doing is printing off a high value ebook or blog post or guide or slide deck. And then, uh, at the beginning, this is the best place for it. Cause most people don't stay to the end. I mean, we're at an hour and. Almost here. And so hopefully, you know, you've made it this far, but the beginning right around the 10 minute mark, you have peak attention on anything live, go print something off, give yourself a sales pitch and tell people that if you'd like to get a copy of something relevant to their world, in this case, invent intent, right? I talk about in this slide deck from the super note event, how to. Do multi partner webinars that generate thousand plus registrants. Hold jump, hold something up to the screen. Give yourself the opportunity to capitalize on that and tell them they're going to get all the templates, all the tools, all the walkthroughs and the incomplete video for it, and then flip to a page and hold up a QR code that launches on your screen, an email,

Jason Yarborough: 57:27

right there in real

Justin Zimmerman: 57:28

and this will pop up an email on your screen and you'll drive leads and intent from a live audience. So now you're generating more than just. Right. You're a normal average registrants. And then there's a followup sequence connected to this. That gets into sales discovery questions around people who want invent intent, multi partner webinar training and how I can help them. And so this is the top of the funnel for me on events and podcasts and webinars like this, that will allow people and you guys should hold your phone. Go see, watch what happens. I want to see your guys faces on this. Let's see. And you'll see, you'll

Jason Yarborough: 57:59

real time interaction. I love the, uh, the show Intel with a, uh, right, it's like,

Justin Zimmerman: 58:06

Yeah, command that attention, drive it towards something, and uh, capture some, some, at least

Jason Yarborough: 58:12

populates the, the subject. It's a populates an email to Justin can confirm that it's his email address. I emailed him this morning with a subject line populated and the body of the email populated. So all you've got to do is hit send. It's a very mindless action that you do to get, uh, the, the product that Justin is mentioning and it's a CTA and it captures leads in real time. Layers of intent.

Sam Yarborough: 58:36

So much better than a form fill and then you already have your automation on the back end.

Justin Zimmerman: 58:41

That's connected to Zapier, it knows the keywords that are in there, goes into the right HubSpot list, and runs the right automation, and, you know, I've got, I've got authenticity and connection at scale.

Sam Yarborough: 58:52

Love

Jason Yarborough: 58:53

it. That's so good, man. This has been yet again to ride yesterday's masterclass, another masterclass and building authentic community relationships product. So thank you so much for joining us. This has been outstanding. Uh, I do want to wrap with a, uh, a friendly question, uh, a little bit contextual to the beginning, but a little bit different from the rest of the podcast. So my math, my math serves me correctly and you verified the first half of the equation dead, you've been running about five years now. And if you average, you know, we'll call it, you know, three to four miles each time on average, you should be on about your anywhere between 20 and 25th pair of shoes in this journey,

Sam Yarborough: 59:33

Loafers included.

Jason Yarborough: 59:34

loafers included.

Justin Zimmerman: 59:36

like how we're, how we're wrapping this up. Um,

Jason Yarborough: 59:38

Do you have a favorite pair of shoes and do you buy the same one over and over and over

Justin Zimmerman: 59:44

and over, and over, and over again. And so I have a little, uh, reminder in my, uh, I use Wrike for project management. And so it's, uh, Buy new running shoes every three months. And so that pops up. I probably could, I probably, if they could have them on subscribe and save. Uh, but the styles change, and I want different colors change, and so, I end up going to the runner's corner advertisement for them here in Provo, Utah, or Orem, Utah. And I go up, I go and pick up a pair of, every three months, a pair of Altra Escalantes. Uh, size nine and a half, if you, if you're interested, my birthday's coming up. And, uh,

Sam Yarborough: 1:00:23

So is Christmas.

Justin Zimmerman: 1:00:24

so it's Christmas, right? That too. Um, and I try to get some fun, funky colors. I got the orange ones right now that came out. And so I just buy all Altra Escalante's over and over and over and over again. I changed a couple of times, went right back.

Jason Yarborough: 1:00:37

love it. I've got a pair of altars are good shoes. Awesome. Well, good to know. I appreciate you sharing that bit of personal information now that I know what to look for, because I don't think I've ever seen you run a pair of running shoes. So

Justin Zimmerman: 1:00:51

Uh, and I'll also just, uh, thank you to you guys for doing such a great job preparing for this. Again, uh, the best podcast slash webinar guest experience I've had ever.

Jason Yarborough: 1:01:01

It's a lot coming from the webinar

Sam Yarborough: 1:01:02

really is. Justin, thank you so much. I learned a ton today. I hope our listeners and viewers did as well. Friends, thanks for joining. We'll see you next time.

Jason Yarborough: 1:01:14

see y'all.