The Content Crib Podcast
The Content Crib Podcast is where bold ideas meet real execution. Hosted by Eric Anderson and Chris Grosse, this show breaks down how to turn content into trust, attention into opportunity, and your story into strategy. No fluff. No filters. Just what works. Welcome to the Crib.
The Content Crib Podcast
People Trust People, Not Logos: How Authentic Content Transforms Careers- Content Crib Podcast #7
Personal branding has never been more important than it is today, with statistics showing it directly impacts trust, job opportunities, and conversion rates.
• 82% of people are more likely to trust companies whose leadership is active on social media
• Professionals with strong personal brands get 10x more job opportunities and can earn up to 25% more
• 76% of B2B buyers prefer engaging with salespeople who have established personal brands
• Content from personal accounts converts at 7x the rate of company page content
• Companies empowering employees to develop their own voices perform better than those using traditional marketing
• One good post can lead to direct messages, podcast invitations, job offers, speaking engagements, and investor interest
• AI tools ($10-20/month) now allow individuals to create content previously requiring expensive contractors
• LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman predicts traditional 9-to-5 jobs could disappear by 2034
• Algorithms increasingly reward authentic, human content as AI-generated material proliferates
• The most supportive platform to start building your personal brand is LinkedIn
Join us at our Content Crib event in October where participants will create their own AI agents to enhance their personal brands while saving time.
We're on episode number seven. Yeah, episode number seven Pretty wild. We've had some fun interviews and we've learned a lot from people that we know pretty well and, I hope, people in the audience that have been tuning in. Thank you for all the support. Yeah, I've learned some things as well. We're having a lot of fun doing this. Yeah, it's been great. It's been great. I, too, thank everybody who's tuned in.
Speaker 1:Although we are right now recording number seven, we just in the podcast gig game called we dropped the first episode, and so it actually has been extremely exciting. Yeah, people really like the fact that first episode was 20 minutes and we've already kind of eclipsed that recently. Yep, so keep listening at 1.7 speed and you'll keep it under 20 minutes. I think Valerie made that exciting new discovery that if you, eric and Chris, are much better at 1.5 than at 1. So there you go.
Speaker 1:I have to talk slow because I'm not that bright, and if I can articulate better, if I slow it down a little bit, which may not be great for the podcast listener, but listen, I'm from the Northeast originally but I live in Florida long enough that I can slow it down when I need to. So, getting started, we wanted to talk and touch on a little bit on the last episode about personalized content, about not just what you do from a business point of view, but your life, and I know you wanted to talk a little bit about that. Yeah, so I get lots of people who talk to me about not wanting to share their family on social media or not talk about family, just that they feel weird about it. And I don't know if you've noticed or anybody listening who's noticed. I don't put any of my family ever on anything. I never have. I mean, you won't find a picture of any of my family. You won't really hear me talking about specifics about them, um, and the reason being I just I had young kids and I younger kids and they were under 18. I didn't want to do that, I just felt weird. Now they're getting older and and I think I want to share more about all their success and what they're doing and all the things that they're doing.
Speaker 1:You know we talked about last time. You know my son got married and and you know which was super exciting and you know it's at at certain points in my life I'd go. There's no way I'm sharing this information with anybody online. You know I don't want to, you know, put that stuff out there to the masses. Just, it's just not a good idea. But I totally changed my idea on that. I really have changed my mind completely and, uh, I'm going to share a lot more personal things and events and things that go on with me.
Speaker 1:I know that you do it and you do a great job with it and you know, actually you kind of inspired me because you, you put out a cool post about being on the boat with your wife and I was like you know what I need to be doing that too. So here we are, yeah, and I often wonder what your kids say and your family say, since you're such a social media aficionado and brand builder, what they say to you at home why they're not following you fully. No, they don't really follow me at all. Actually, they tell their friends that I'm on that LinkedIn thing for old people. So they said, although my daughter did pay me a super cool compliment the other day, she goes you know, dad, at least you're not so old that you're only on Facebook. And I said, yeah, thank you, I appreciate that. Hey, that is yeah, that's a very nice compliment and you're officially a Gen Xer, right? Well, I'm 28 and a half, so I don't know what that makes me. Yes, I guess I don't know. I don't know what all those are. I really don't. I do know this. I do know this, that you know, when I started doing this, like five years ago, I did have several people in my peer group who thought I was nuts. Five years ago, I did have several people in my peer group who thought I was nuts. So I'm going to tell you Well, I think that's an important point and we've touched on this before it's those people that are, once you start putting your voice out there and crafting it, which is what people ultimately want to hear is what, individually, you have to say, what makes you tick, what makes you special and different than everybody else.
Speaker 1:You start to get a little bit of that. You know noise from the peanut gallery and eventually those people start to become the ones that are, well, deep down, they're envious because you had the courage to share what they want to share and all of a sudden, you have a, a following and a brand, a brand that you're building and which I think segues kind of into another thing we want to talk about, which is why you think and why? Why do we both think the personal brand is more important than ever in 2025? Yeah, well, here's a couple of different. Oh, yeah, we can go. You you've actually talked a lot about statistics and some statistics that you share, and I was like this is amazing. But, um, you know, for me, I'm going to, I'm going to let you do the stats part of it, cause it's it's kind of mind blowing. But for me, you know, I talk to everybody anytime you're meeting at a party or something and you know people are like, oh, you're doing that LinkedIn thing. I'm like, yeah, because if you have a personal brand, you take it with you, you own it for the rest of your life and you become well-known and you may not be at the same company you're with in three weeks from now. You may not. You may decide. You know what. Today's the day that I'm going to start my own side hustle, my own entrepreneurial journey With a personal brand.
Speaker 1:You can do that. It's completely different than it was 20 years ago, where you needed others to create your persona or you needed to create your marketing message. You had to hire a big agency in New York and you had to focus on different mediums and now, with this, you can do it. The magic word's free and all it takes you is your time and your thoughts around what you want to convey and what you want to share. So it's never been more important, yeah, especially with the world of AI, and it's as simple as and I forget who said this, but it's as simple as you're getting your reputation out there digitally. If you have a good reputation and people trust you and you have something to say, that's a value and you can educate people. There's trust you and you have something to say, that's a value and you can educate people. There's something there for you to build on.
Speaker 1:But yeah, let's run through these stats. Yeah, please do. I wanted to touch on this. I thought it was super interesting. Some personal brand stats. According to Edelman Trust Barometer, which is an interesting they had quite a poll here but 82% of people are more likely to trust a company whose leadership is active on social media. What's your take on that? I wonder what that number used to be about five years ago, because I'm amazed. I don't think there was a large number of people on social media and they probably thought it was gimmicky. I think it's probably skyrocketed in the last five years.
Speaker 1:But, all that to be said, like what's the first thing I do? When I come across somebody's name, from whatever walk of life or whatever company or whatever, I Google it and that's how I learn about people, and they've done a fantastic job with SEO of directing. Google is directing people to, whether it's LinkedIn, instagram or wherever you may be, and I'm sure you would probably agree with this. When you have a whether it's an inbound or new potential doctor to partner with, if they have a strong brand and a strong website and their name is on literature or on podcasts, I'm immediately doing everything I can to send them the most unique personalized video. I might drop something in the mail the same day and a phone call to the office if they're not far away to stop into. Yeah it again. We talk about it all the time.
Speaker 1:You want people to know you before they meet you, and when people get that on the other end of it, I mean it's it's game changer, and I, you know, now, when I go to research a business or a product that I want to purchase, I look, I dive deep into the social media piece of the puzzle. I really do. I look at it, I want to know what they're doing, why they're doing it, and I also get I get feedback on them from other people who utilize those products. So it's a very different situation than it was just a few years back. I think few years back, I think, yeah, and I wanted to. I wanted to give that perspective from doing business with somebody, let alone just purchasing a product or service from somebody. You know to me, I almost trust them faster to that There'll be a good partner because they care about their brand and they care about their product. That much, all right, let's jump to the next one.
Speaker 1:Linkedin and Forbes report that people with strong personal brands get 10 times more job, job opportunities and can earn up to 25 more. I love this one. I think it's actually can earn more than that. I, it's I, you know I. I just I know when, again, here we go again. But when I want to learn more about somebody and you know I I go to chat GPT now more than I do go to Google. But if I go, when I go to research somebody or something and it pops up their social media, I can go out and it's just see their videos.
Speaker 1:And, and I can tell you, if you're listening to this right now and you're thinking, ah, you know, maybe it's time for me to start looking into this, because I maybe I want to do my own thing, or I want to develop a brand, because maybe I want another position in another organization, you better do it, because people aren't, you know, I, sending your resume to somebody. Yeah, it still happens, but nowadays it's the reverse. They're going to look for everything they can about you. Well, well before you're going to have the opportunity to share your accomplishments on a piece of paper and just make sure you're not in a police log. That's a great first start. That's fantastic advice. All jokes, jokes, jokes, all right.
Speaker 1:Another one here 76% of b2b buyers say they are more likely to engage with a salesperson who has a strong personal brand, and that stat comes from the sales benchmark index. Again, man, pretty straightforward. You know whether, whatever walk of life you're in especially you know we're probably talking to a lot of people in healthcare but I know this that you know, even in the real estate industry of the world, I mean, if I will go and Google somebody, if I see somebody, if I'm going to try and buy a piece of property or something like that, and I know that I mean I deal with certain realtors, whatever, but if it's out of state I travel a lot I go and look for that person's information. It's what I do. Did I do that five years ago? Nope, I didn't.
Speaker 1:Careerbuilder found that 75% of recruiters check social media profiles before interviews. This is kind of a no-brainer. The average person's name appears in three or more search engine results. I would think recruiters would do that 100% of the time. Now, yeah, yeah, I think so too. That's pretty straightforward. Content from a personal account converts at seven times the rate of content from a company page. I love this one.
Speaker 1:People trust people, not logos, and I want to and I'll give my take, but I want to hear your take on what companies or companies that you've heard of that are actually doing this the right way, and maybe some companies you might know that are doing it this wrong way without you know comfort level. If you want to mention the names of the companies or just use examples loosely yeah, I made you loosely the first thing I'm going to say is I'm going to like scream into this microphone don't share graphics of your products and make them bigger because you think people would be more impressed. It doesn't work. People and I I like I was looking at linkedin just before we got on. You know, there's a large orthopedic company that shares. Staring at it right now my other window I can. I know exactly what you're talking. I can see it in my feet. It's just like they shared a bigger picture of something more benign and stupid that you know could care less about. And I'm like I, I don't get it. I don't know why they keep doing it.
Speaker 1:And when companies start understanding and there's a company right now that I think really gets, it starts with a big Z, I think they get it. I mean, their CEO is sharing. He shared a story about an auction where they were selling wine for an orphanage down in central america. We all know we were talking, but you know, and I I shout out to him. I mean I, I was, I was glued to it, I was like this is such a cool story about a guy who is in finance. This is the CEO Ivan, ivan, yvonne I'm sorry, yvonne, yvonne, yvonne's friend, who's a priest, who was in finance and left, decided to move to Central America and open an orphanage and help, you know, obviously, kids in Central America. And now they're selling his wine collection.
Speaker 1:I was collection, I was glued to it. I was like what are they doing? What can I do to be a part of this? This is cool. And then other companies are showing us pictures of their stupid implant. I'm going, guys, come on. Anyway.
Speaker 1:So what about you? What companies do you see that are doing things that are? You know? That makes you go all right, scroll, stop, or you want to learn? Yeah, it's the same thing. And, um, I always get caught kind of in the middle where, if I'm sharing an exciting therapy, I may post one or too many pictures that have the therapy in it. But I do like to share personal stories and patient success stories tied to it, which I think is important. Um, because there is nobody else educating, or not many other people on linkedin educating about certain things that I talk about with customized medicine, therapies and whatnot.
Speaker 1:Um, but in terms of companies, it's the same thing. You know, what you're saying is companies sharing pdfs of their products, and you and the big news today, whatnot? It's all over social media and some people they're doing it the right way, but there's some that aren't doing it the right way with their product announcements. People just want to scroll right past it. They'd much rather hear the story and the why, especially coming from the reps too, and I think companies that are empowering their reps to create their own brand and then, in turn, promote their company's product they work for, instead of, you know, putting on a uh clamp on what they can say, those are the companies that are going to be performing the best in the next five years. I a hundred percent agree, and and you know, you and I and Matthew, we coach companies, individual salespeople, surgeons, physicians, and you can just see when the light goes on and when it does go on and they make the switch to all right.
Speaker 1:I want the people to hear my why, whether your why is about you, your product, your company, what your family does, whatever your why is, and you're sharing it genuinely. It completely changes the narrative and people just I think it's a legacy marketer like rut that they get in as marketing, marketing teams that they think you know we're gonna do, we're gonna make this picture a little bit bigger this time and then we're gonna make the background blue and they're gonna love it. Um, I don't know. I can tell you that the companies that we have mentored and and coached and talked have completely changed what they were doing and they seem to be thriving. They're thriving, yep, thriving, yep. It's like they have a glow and a pep in their step and they're empowered and more confident. And that's the whole point. Right, you want to believe in your why and your purpose in this crazy world. We're spinning on and you might as well do it that way rather than trudging along and doing it the old way. But hey, what do we know? I don't know. Well, as I say a little bit, you know what? I always say this to people who ask me you know questions about marketing as like was, like it's really, really easy to be a bad marketer or bad sales channel if you have really high margins. But one day those high margins go away. They do, and we may, in healthcare, be in the longest cycle ever of extremely high margins. But it will change and when it does, it's going to be those that are part of the innovation thought mindset that are going to evolve, and then there are going to be the ones that don't, and we'll call them BlackBerry Part 2.
Speaker 1:And I actually brought up BlackBerrys. My wife was watching Desperate Housewife reruns and they're all talking on their blackberries. Brought up some blackberries, brought up some old memories. You know it's crazy. Yeah, so people are buying blackberries on ebay and they're coming back. They're like and they're calling them dumb phones instead of smartphones, because they don't want to have all the social media and all that stuff on their phone, so they just want to be able to do email. So it'll be interesting to see if that can help. Is that why I took out a junk box and picked up my BlackBerry and almost turned it on the other day? That happened too. It's so weird that we're having this conversation. Well, I can't remember where I read the article, but it was about this revolt against smartphones and that people are going back to flip phones and going back to BlackBerrys, and BlackBerrys on eBay are surging in price right now these models from 20 years ago because people are like that's what I want. I don't need to be scrolling on Instagram with my phone. Exactly. So I thought this one, this last it's not really a stat, but I think it's something that's absolutely true.
Speaker 1:One good post can lead to direct messages, podcast invitations, job offers, speaking engagement, client leads or even investor interest, and I want to hear your take and I want to give my little input on why I think this is so important. Well, we are a perfect example of investor interest. Yeah, exactly, we get a lot of. I never knew there were so many people in the venture capital world that just invested in whatever no-transcript yeah, and this, this one hits home. This has happened to me a couple times that I posted where I've ended up having lunch with authors of books that I've posted about that I've really enjoyed. Oh, wow, yeah, you know lick lives in the area. That happened a couple of times. Um, new friendships that I've made just from a post or a comment I've left or they've left over time. You know you build those relationships. You kind of understand who the person are person is from the what they're sharing. Those relationships. You kind of understand who the person are person is from what they're sharing.
Speaker 1:And I think that just proves the point of you need to unglue your mind from the old way of doing things and that sharing and engaging, especially on social media, where we, you know we play mostly in the linkedin space, which is a great platform. It's highly professional. It's all people that are career-oriented or healthcare entrepreneurs or just entrepreneurs in general. I think it's an important, it's one of your first lessons you learn when you start actively posting and commenting is the activity that breeds from it. Sales is activity too, right, it's just a different kind of activity. Yeah, that's so well put. I mean that's so well put because you're right, it's just, it's an adjunct to your activity that you're doing in person, and this activity never sleeps, never, never sleeps.
Speaker 1:Well, we wouldn't be the Content Crib podcast if we didn't talk about AI, yes, ai. So I was reading this yeah, ai, the overlord which they've totally AI has totally pacified us and I'm not afraid to admit it, but I was reading this article the other day LinkedIn co-founder Reed Hoffman predicts that the traditional 9 to 5 job could disappear by 2034, and in the post he talked about the rise of the gig economy and artificial intelligence and how it will likely replace full-time jobs, and I think this is, I think this is. I think to me and I want to hear what you think about it is is it's more. It's a better time than ever to start to upscale in different areas, especially with AI and learning some of the cool things that's out there A lot of these apps and tools are free or very inexpensive $10 to $20 a month to try out and become a whiz at, and go bring it to three or four companies you know and show them. It's kind of what I took from it. Yeah, I, I, it's already happening in in my world. I, I've replaced several of the contractors that I used before because now I can use AI and create a lot of the things that I want to on the fly Whether that's a beautiful presentation, a sales literature, whatever that may be. I'm able to do that now with AI. And obviously that was somebody. So I, um, I totally agree. I think there's going to be, but it's a huge opportunity for one in business where you know, now you can have, like you, you put it perfectly, you got a 10 or $20 software that can now monthly software that can, with AI, can create whatever you want to create with the twist you want to create it with, and then you can utilize that in your business. It's a big deal. I mean it's exciting.
Speaker 1:I don't know if anybody else follows Dan Martell. I follow him because he's Big fan. Yeah, yeah, he's got a lot. I mean he flipped a switch on content last year. I mean, he just has gone nuts with it, but he had a video all about different ai um platforms that are out there and it was like solid gold. I'm sitting there taking notes on the on my, yeah, the vibe coding, yeah, like I'm sitting there taking notes on my couch about all the different ai platforms that I had no idea about and I was like, man, this is great, this is great, this is great, I can use this, I can use this, I can use this and and if, if, if, there, those opportunities are out there and you can utilize those kinds of things. I mean it opens up a whole new world.
Speaker 1:And his big thing was that he embraces AI because it saves him so much time and he pushes the.
Speaker 1:It's the time savings that you can utilize that time to do other things or spend with your family.
Speaker 1:And I was like, yeah, I agree with that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think there's a ton of fear, right, and it's, you know it's. I'd be lying to say like I didn't have that initial fear, but you need to re. I think you need to reprogram your brain at the opportunity, because I don't, there's really no other. This is never going to happen again at this moment that we'll have an opportunity like this to be a part of, like the industrial revolution or world wide web when it first started. I mean, this is a generational situation, so you know, I'm trying to take advantage as best I can by, like you, watching YouTube videos of people like Dan Martell, who's going all in with his businesses on AI, or taking classes and courses and implementing tools here and there. You don't need to do all of that.
Speaker 1:I think you know what this article highlighted how there is the likelihood of the gig economy, where you could be juggling a couple different jobs instead of maybe one job, which could be a really good thing, especially if you start to really learn all these tools and you could really profit off it, because companies are going to be extremely slow we're seeing it now Extremely slow to adopt it across the board. Of course, course, big tech, you know, is going all in and they have the ability, but I mean this people in my neighborhood, I'm sure that I'd say more than half of them probably have never logged on to chat gbt or don't know what grok is, you know. So it's oh yeah, take advantage of that opportunity. Yeah, and I I think ai is great. Are there parts of it to scare me? Yep, yep, do, yep. Do I think that it's going to take away? You know, we're all going to be sitting at home and have to be on universal basic income and we're never going to have a job again. No, I don't think that for a minute, no, no. But I do know that it's going to help tremendously in us gaining our time back, which is that's. That's huge for me, huge, huge. So how does this all tie in right? So, content crib why we did this podcast and our sold out pod content crib coming up in October, sold out hot content crib coming up in october.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I, I mean, you know what's going to go on in october is we're going to add ai as a, as a focal point of what we're trying to accomplish and what we're doing. And you, you know those that come to content crib in october. We still have a few spots left. We're going to have saved a few to the side, but if you're interested, just send us a DM. Everybody there is going to create their own AI agent.
Speaker 1:Are those my personal invites you stole they are. Tell me it's sold out. You don't have any other invites left. I have invites now. No, no Contact, either Chris or I.
Speaker 1:People are going to be creating their own personal AI created consultant for their business and you know they're going to be able to have something tangible when they leave out the door. That's going to be something where they never thought they would have before, something that they would have to. You know, sit in front of you know the some really I need to call McKesson for their tops. You know, strategic consultant and spend $50,000. Now you're going to have it in the way of an AI agent. So it's going to be pretty cool. Yeah, very cool. I I can't wait. Actually, it was uh.
Speaker 1:Seth gave me a phone call today. We were chatting and he's just so excited for it and he's already planning the trip and he's like, oh, we're gonna hang out on thursday day before. I'm like, yeah, I'm planning on it. I love the love to add an extra day and hang out and uh, down south, I never get down there, so that'll be fun. Yeah, it's gonna be a nice time of year, so it's gonna be second week of october, so it should be, should be perfect. Yeah, so it's gonna. And if set is going, then I guess I'll go too. That's a must. Well, thank you for sharing all those stats today.
Speaker 1:I mean, if people listening now are like you know, I don't know, should I jump into this? What should I do? Why should I do it? There's a lot of hard evidence as to why you should do it. And again, I was funny. It was funny. I was watching a YouTube video of a guy who's talking about how the YouTube algorithm now is really rewarding creators for being raw, themselves talking into the camera. They don't have any cool video graphics in the background or cool thumbnail, it's just them talking and sharing and it's what we talk about every day and it's those algorithms are skewing that way because there's so much the AI crap out there and the human.
Speaker 1:Anyway, my last thing about AI here. You know people are saying, well, you know, it's going to get so good that you're going to have no idea. And I'm like the minute the person says, yeah, I didn't make that video, well then I have an idea. So I know that it's AI. So I think what way people's consciousness is going to go? Is it's going to go? I need somebody to give me proof up front before I spend the time to consume this, whatever it is, whether it's, you know, a video or long-form content or written I, I really do think that that's going to have to. People are going to start doing that because their their shift to their brain is going to happen. Where they're not going to look at something and you just want to dive into it, they're going to go wait a minute, tell me this is real and then I'll dive in. What do you think? Yeah, I, I think it really comes down to if you're thinking about it, pick five general topics you want to talk about, make sure those topics tie into what makes you unique and what your unique take is on it and start to formulate some posts.
Speaker 1:And LinkedIn is a very supportive place to be. That's true, and because it's positive, people want to learn. You know people hate on it for that and I understand, I get the point, but generally it's intelligent people on this platform, linkedin, that want to learn more Not everybody, but mostly that want to learn and support each other and gives you like a soft landing to put your voice out there. There's a lot of other social media platforms out there that quite aren't like that and you have the opportunity to professionally share, especially going through these stats, companies want you to have a voice before they hire you, because they want to know that you're confident in who you are and what you have to say, especially with B2B business growing in the form you know, in the in the wave of social media. So, yeah, yeah, very well said. Well, there's an episode in the books, yeah, well, yeah, we're at time. We'll end there. Yeah, Episode seven. Everybody, thanks for tuning in. Yeah, absolutely, and we'll see you next week. All right, bye-bye.