Advisor Of SocialHP: Jonathan Baldock AKA The Consultant Boss – S2E55 (#83)

S2E55 Jonathan Baldock.m4a – powered by Happy Scribe

Alright. Three, two, one. Welcome. Welcome back to another episode of Bosson Cage podcast. Today. We have Jonathan, and I think this is going to be a very special treat because we’re going to talk about marketing. We’re going to talk about software and kind of just give you guys a little bit in and out some different strategies. So without further Ado, Jonathan, why don’t you tell our people a little bit more about yourself?

Very good. Hey, thanks so much. I appreciate you having me on. So a bit of background. I worked at LinkedIn for almost ten years, and I spent quite a bit of time with their big corporate customers globally. And so first few years was all around social media, recruitment, marketing. So building their recruitment strategies, if they needed to hire 20 or 30,000 people, they would come to us. And we kind of help them figure out how to do that with the LinkedIn network. And then the final four and a half years was all around social advocacy and employee advocacy platforms.

And so we had one for LinkedIn. And so really it was helping companies in four different ways, really around the topics of brand reputation, social selling, marketing and telling acquisition. And so I was with LinkedIn up until the end of June of 2020. And then with the lock down and all the other stuff that happened, I was actually supposed to transfer with them over to Singapore, but international travel was banned and all that kind of stuff. So that opportunity came and went. And then since then, I’ve started doing some consulting work with a software company.

I live in Toronto. So this software company is also based in Toronto. So I’m helping them out. And they’re called Social HP, and I advise them on how to build their business and what not.

So let’s just dive into your history a little bit because, I mean, you gave a lot to our audience to kind of chew on a little bit.

Right.

So as a kid growing up, I mean, when did you know that you were going to go into technology? Was there something in particular that happened during your life that said, hey, I love technology and I’m going down that route.

No, I had a zero plan to do any of this. And I think some hard work kind of got me to where I am. So I just have a high school background. And I had planned to go to University at College, but I took a year off and that ended up turning it into the rest of my life. And so actually, when I took the year off, I got a job and just started working. And that particular company just kept promoting me. I was working super hard.

And the harder I work, the more opportunity they would give me. And then such a good learning experience. And so after a bunch of years of doing that and I was managing a pretty decent sized team and working with a lot of great people. I realized, though, that probably my opportunity long term would be a little bit limited, just only working in retail. So what I ended up doing was I found some of my friends had moved over to recruitment and head hunting, and they were working way less hours and making way more money.

And so I thought, oh, I should probably do that. They’re really killing it. And so I eventually convinced them to hire me. It was 13 interviews and including the owner, because that was the first guy they had ever hired that didn’t have a post secondary education. And then I did. Well, there too. They gave me lots of opportunity. And I stayed there a bunch of years. And then that kind of recruitment was technology recruitment. And so that’s how I sort of first started to get my feet wet.

But to be honest, I’m not a technical person. I know I understand the technical terms. I know what they mean, but I can’t code, I can’t build systems and whatnot I know what they are. And I know how it all kind of works together. But I’m not the guy that’s doing it, so I can talk about it. But that’s kind of the end of it. And then I left that industry. And I was, actually, to be honest, spending my time doing comedy and acting on the side with friends and just really kind of building out that creative side.

And while I was doing that, maybe a couple of years in a friend of mine said, hey, you know what? You should work for LinkedIn. And at the time, LinkedIn was much, much smaller. So they had 80 million members and they had 600 employees. And so I thought, okay, cool. I’ll have a conversation with them. And then very quickly I realized, actually, I should I should probably try and get a job at this place, like it’s going somewhere, and it’s got really cool stuff. And the people were great.

And again eventually convinced them to hire me. Same thing. They kind of put me through the Ringer because I didn’t have that educational background. But I did have some good experience. And so they gave me a shot. And ten years later.

Here I am, definitely definitely an interesting journey. So you alluded to a couple of times about the education side of things, right? It seems like that was kind of a hurdle that you had to overcome, because obviously you could do the job. But the credentials of having the diploma behind you wasn’t there at the time. How did you juggle them? I mean, obviously you could have went back to school, but your experience should outweigh your education to a certain extent. And what’s your viewpoints on that?

Yeah. Well, first off, I have a few one is like I never had an issue with the fact that I didn’t have that education. I was willing to work hard. I was pretty smart car. I figured I could get the job done. It’s just really it’s kind of like, what’s the barrier at that company, what’s their thinking? And I will say earlier in my career, it was a little bit more stringent. Like, you don’t have a degree, you can’t work here like that kind of a thing.

And then which is why they would just always add extra interviews. But I knew that was the deal. Like I knew I didn’t have that education, and that was what they needed on the piece of paper. And so I would just eventually convince them. And to be honest, I just try and win them over. Kind of tried to be engaging, and I was enthusiastic, and I wanted to be there. And fortunately, some people gave me the shot, and I convinced them to give me that opportunity.

But personally, my actual belief on it. And you hear, Elan Must talking about this a lot, which is education isn’t necessarily going to pave your way. I think it’s hard work. And so there are a few companies that still like it’s a mandatory requirement. They will not even consider you if you’re not have certain credentials. And then there are certain organizations that won’t even consider you. If you’re not from a particular school, I will say you can’t teach attitude, and you can’t teach someone to be a good person.

So if you find, like, a fantastic person and they don’t have the skills, if the skills are learnable, then give them a shot. Because I’d rather hire great people that can learn the job than someone that’s amazingly good at the job. And they’re just not a good person to work with. They become painful and they really drag the morale of the team and the company down. So that I would say, is my opinion on that’s been my experience. And I’ve been involved in a lot of hiring decisions.

And I’ve made serious recommendations passing on people that have all the right stuff on paper, but they’re just terrible in person. And then other people that look like they were missing things, but they were just such a fantastic person. I’m like, you definitely need to get that person to shop. They can learn this.

Wow.

Yeah.

That’s definitely inspiring itself to kind of understand behind the scenes because I think a lot of times people they have that struggle with, okay, they’re asking me for these requirements, but I know I can do the job, and I know I have the mindset to move forward, and then that becomes a hurdle to where they won’t even apply because they don’t think they’ll be able to get hired because of that. So I think you kind of open that Pandora’s box up a little bit.

So I would say just a little bit more on that because I’ve spoken to some youth group where they’re coming from homes that they don’t have access to computers. And they’re not at the very best school. Even like local schools, some high schools are better than other high schools and so on. And so they’re coming from an underprivileged area, underserved areas. And some kids they would go through, like a technical training program or whatnot. And then they got to visit LinkedIn. And so I would chat with that whole group.

And so these kids, they don’t have University, and a few of them did. But most of them didn’t. A lot of them, their belief was like, I shouldn’t apply for that. Or I can’t apply for that. Or they’re never going to give me a chance. And I would tell those kids, don’t listen to anybody. If you want to do something, you got to figure out a way to do it. And if they put hurdles in your way and then just get over those hurdles, sometimes those hurdles are pain in the ass, and you got to work hard to get past them.

For example, they might say, hey, okay. I want to work at LinkedIn. Okay. Well, maybe they tell you you need to have two years of this kind of still experience, two year kind of sales. If you want to work there, get two years of experience doing that. You got a whole lifetime to go after your goals. You don’t have to hit your goal tomorrow. So they don’t get that job getting that kind of experience. And they tell you, you need this kind of experience before you can do that, then go get that experience.

Just keep knocking down those hurdles until eventually they just give up and go, you know what I told you? You need two years of experience. And two years later, here you are with exactly what I asked you for. Yeah. Like, you’re a go getter or you’re going to get it done. And it’s that kind of enthusiasm and that kind of commitment that pushes people forward.

Nice. I think you have hell of tenacity, right. You have a lot of energy. It kind of shows, right? Just by in that last five minutes of this conversation. So if you could identify yourself with three to five words, what would your three to five words be?

I mean, over time, that’s probably changed. I’d say right now, outgoing, confident, engaging. And I try and be thoughtful as best I can. We all struggle, right? Sometimes. But as we get older, I think our perspective changes and we realize there’s a lot more people out there that have done just ourselves. And so that’s certainly been a good awakening for me over the last little while, especially over this last year.

Great. So go to the next question. I mean, obviously you’ve been through LinkedIn, which is essentially like Corporation level at this point, right. But you have the entrepreneurial side to you as well in your current business model. Is that business set up as an LLC, an S Corp. C Corp. How is it structured?

And just to give you a caveat, I’m Canadian. So we don’t have LLC here, but we have corporations and probably the same thing. So the place that I’m consulting for their Corporation, they have their company set up and they have employees. And then I have had side hustles. So I’ve owned my own camera rental company, which was a Corporation. And I just launched an app last summer and that’s tied into my Corporation. And that was a whole experience just trying to build an app because I can know what the technology is, but I can’t do any of it.

So I had to get the right people and get a bill. Now, of course, I’m working on trying to monetize it. Yeah, I’d say. So my hands are sort of in both sides. I’ve got some familiarity of running a business. And then certainly I’ve got some familiarity of being an employee at a business got you.

So lets talk about your app a little bit. I mean, what is your app and what does it do?

So it’s called Glimp social. And the first use case. What I released it for was if you’ve ever used ways to be able to drive and get somewhere ways tells you what’s the best way to go. My app is designed crowdsource information, but my app is designed to tell you what it’s like when you get there. So, for example, is there a big line? Is that stuff in stock? Is there room on the patio at that restaurant so you can drop pins on anything around the world and ask questions, and then people at the other end will get a notification and give you the answer.

So that was the first use case. And then second use case was the election in the the presidential election. So what I did was I dropped a pin on every single polling location in the US, and then it allowed people to be able to basically drop a pin on the polling location and say, hey, how long is the line? Because some polling locations, there’s none, but others there could have been 12 hours. So I wanted to help people out. So they knew what they were getting into when they were voting.

And then still, right now, I’m working on trying to help people if they want to get vaccinated. So trying to get all the locations to wear vaccines once it becomes generally available, drop a pin on all the vaccine locations so that you can find out, do they have it in stock? How long is the line? Because it could be a four hour wait. And then if you’ve got five places to choose from and one’s got a 30 hours wait and one’s got a four hour wait.

I think I’ll go to the one that shorter lines. That’s kind of the idea behind it. And then now I’m working into how to monetize it, which would be around sporting events. So for example, if you want to go to a College football game, maybe which entrance the line is fastest. Interviews with the players and coaches. How long is the line to get beer behind the scenes stuff and setting up the field, et cetera. All that would be available through the app. And there would be custom pins depending on if you’ve got a player interview and they’re interviewing the quarterback before the game and it’s not televised, but it’s just for the app.

Then they can interview that and you would get a VIP pin that would show up. That would show you a player interview, et cetera. So that and working on it for shows like music events or even just like conferences and trade shows.

So I would think with that push notification will probably be a serious add on if it’s not there currently right now. I mean, obviously to know when the line is short and when to run to the line. Is that already built into the app currently?

Yeah, you can get alerts, you can decide when and where you get alerts, you can follow different things. So the next version is just about to be released. With the next version, you’ll be able to say like, I’m following this team. I’m following that venue, I’m following this event. And then these are the kinds of notifications I want to get. And then in a perfect world in the future, if you see hypothetically, let’s say we’re both in New York City and we want to go to a restaurant every night.

It’s busy there. And so we want to go to a restaurant. You try and phone and you don’t know how busy it is. You go on the scheduling tool and it’s telling you you got 3 hours to get a table. We could just drop a pin on three different restaurants and then they all fire back answers, saying, oh, yeah, there’s room over here. The patrons are telling you it’s a good scene. There’s tables or no. It’s jammed and people are lined up at the door. Then we know, okay, we probably don’t want to spend 30 minutes standing out in front of the restaurant.

Let’s go to the one that’s not as busy. And then that would also give the other restaurants the opportunity to be able to advertise to you to win your business. So it would be like real time and ten based advertising, which is kind of the goal of where it would head to.

It’s pretty in. Jesus, let me just regurgitate that translation. So you pretty much took the functionality of Way speed trap to say, hey, there is a speed trap ahead, and you converted that into, like, first person user basis. So if they’re going to store, they go into a concert, going to the bank, going to pick up anything. Now they have access to Noel ahead of time. How long is going to take them before they even leave to go to that location.

Exactly. I’m going to Costco. Is there a line to get in? And is that thing I want is that flat screen TV that they had on sales or any left? I want to know that I don’t want to drive all the way down there, get there, going to line up, get in and find out if not even there. It’s like, okay. Well, that kind of sucks. So that’s how it’s designed to work.

Obviously.

Next goal is to try and get as many people on it and get people helping each other. And that’s really how it would work is that when you have the masses on it and they’re sharing information back and forth, it’s everyone’s lifting everybody up. So it’s really about providing information what you need when you need it. Yeah.

I mean, the reason I went down that road is kind of like I think you brought us full circle and let me just kind of pull that together for everyone is obviously you created an app that does what you describe that you do. But you’re also working with another company that’s more socially aware. So the combination between the two, it’s a gold mine. I mean, it’s obviously it gives you an opportunity to kind of figure out the marketing strategy and the branding of the social awareness of what people are looking for and how and then you have an app of support to deliver on the results.

So you’re juggling both points.

Yeah. I’m trying to work it on both ends. Yeah. Absolutely.

Yeah.

I learned a lot working at LinkedIn, and I’m doing my best to try and provide something that I think could be valuable to a lot of people where also you can kind of turn it into a way to make money. And then I want to be able to donate some of the proceeds to system good. Not for profits.

Nice. You’re definitely Frank. You’re socially aware on all aspects of it, and it kind of goes back to you, like your word choices. Describe yourself. Right. All of these things are shining through in this moment. It also shining through. Or you could have picked any app you want to develop, really and truly. But you picked an app got to fit your personality, which is definitely ingenious. I mean, something that I think that you love to do, and you would continue to love doing it, moving forward as well.

Yeah. I’m pretty passionate about it. I appreciate you saying so.

Yeah. Definitely. So let’s just talk about time frames like somebody may hear this podcast and. Okay, Jonathan seems to be someone that I want to mimic. So I want to get some insight from him, and it seems like he’s overnight success. This app just popped up out of nowhere, and he’s working with these other companies. But the reality is, how long have you been on this journey.

I mean, from a technology standpoint, I think the technological awakening was probably me spending time at LinkedIn because I saw growth from 600 employees to 13,000 employees in ten years. I thought go from 80 million users to 750,000,000 users in the same amount of time. And so when you see that kind of scale and you see what’s involved and obviously there’s a lot of very smart people there and a lot of professional level engagements. And, of course, the companies that I got to work with, I’m working with some amazing Fortune 50 Fortune 500 kind of companies and very senior level folks at these organizations.

So one is great experience. And I learned a ton and I’ve got to see new functionality and new technology being implemented every day at our own company and various other companies. But I will say, I think would also help is that sometimes we put people on a pedestal. Sometimes we put the CEO at this or the senior executive at that. And then we’re afraid to talk to them because they’re this sort of glorified person. They’re all people. They’re all trying to move forward depending on what their goals are and their objectives are in my experience, through all that really help me to understand that not necessarily everyone’s, like reachable and you can call up anybody but nobody that is necessarily better than anybody else.

They’re all just at different stages of their journey. And so it’s being able to connect with the right people and kind of move your story forward. I don’t know if that sort of answers the point, but that would be my take on it.

Definitely. So I’m just thinking about, okay, you have a cool app, the name of his glimpse. Right. So if I say this app had time travel associated to it, right. And you had an opportunity to go back in time and you could get a glimpse into the future of the Forks in the road ahead of you. Right.

Sure.

What’s one thing that you would want to do differently if you can time travel backwards?

That’s a good question. I don’t know if I have a great answer for it other than I should probably have had a better understanding of what it takes to actually build the app, because there are a lot of hurdles with that one, the requirements to launch an app on Android versus with Apple very different.

Yeah.

Like apples like, you know, a 40 story climb upstairs and then Android everything’s on the first floor, so way harder to do it. And then I kind of went in with sort of heart and passion. I would say, like the direction of where things head and listen system. I listen to some good podcast. One of them that I listen to is how I built this. And you will hear very regularly when you hear those interviews, like the business started this way, and then it evolved into this, and then it changed into that.

And then now it’s this, and I am definitely experiencing that where I’m like, this is what I want the app to do. But how do I get it to do? How do I get everybody using it? Well, I mean, I don’t have billions of dollars to be able to just run ads indefinitely and tell everybody about us, so they all download it and it does what it does. So how do I get people to use it? Well, maybe I use it through sporting events and shows or concerts or maybe, etc.

Etc. So it’s finding different ways to provide value so that you can still reach your end goal and being creative and trying to come up with that is good. So I would say probably what I would have done is build a strong network of smart people around me to provide advice, because as I meet people that are awesome and provide great advice, I’m like, oh, wow. Can we keep that conversation going? Your feedback so awesome. Like, I really appreciate it next time I come up with something about it.

If you give me your opinion and finding those different experts that can help you through your journey because you there’s no way you know everything and you’ve got to learn so much and you’ve got to accept the fact that you you’ve got a long way to go and you need a lot of help. You know, it’s kind of like if tomorrow I said, I want to be an Olympic sprinter. First of all, you’d laugh. You’d be like, good luck. But but I need a ton of coaching.

Now. First, I have to have some talent, which I don’t in that area, but I need a ton of coaching, and I’d be relying on a lot of people. And yet, for some reason, in business, so many people think like, I just like, I got to do it on my own and I can’t ask any questions and what not. And the answer is, if anything in life, we need coaches, we need support. We need a good network. So that’s my ramble on answer.

Yeah. I think you definitely hit it on the nose. And to your point, about the Apple versus Android, it is a complete because I’m working on an app right now as well. I’m working on two separate apps. One app I’m working on is essentially for the entire Boston Cage network of different tentacles to have one portal to say, just download the app and you have access to everything just makes it ten times easier. And in that journey, obviously, Apple cost more just to buy in. You have to go through all the dim requirements and specifications versus Android.

You kind of just sign up for the account where you upload the app and it’s live and like, 2 hours.

Yeah. Thumbs up. Good luck.

Yeah. Pretty much. So. I definitely appreciate that answer with your tenacity and your entrepreneurial spirit that you currently have did that come from like a family member, any ancestors and your family have that entrepreneurial hustle.

I’m not sure my family doesn’t have a lot of entrepreneurs in it. But I will say when I was a kid, I always had a little bit of hustle. So I was always looking to try to figure out a way to make a bit of money. And my first job, I was delivering Flyers when I was eleven years old. Nice, because I could make I think it was like one or two cent per flyer that I delivered. And so I was like, oh, wow, great, because I want to be able to buy stuff.

And so my motivation was to get stuff. But I was like, I want that whatever. And that pair of shoes or whatever. And so how do I get the money? Well, my parents aren’t going to give it to me. So I had to figure out a way. So most of my household, to be honest, just came from me wanting material things when I was younger. And then now most of my Huckle comes from just wanting to be passionate about something that like finding something I’m passionate about and then really wanting to do it.

And then in that it evolved a lot because as you get older, you also care a lot more about helping others and and providing some value. And so I think that’s a great way to do it.

Nice. So I think it’s safe to assume that you’re a highly passionate individual. And I think once you sink your teeth to something like your laser focused on the end result of getting that thing mission accomplished, correct me if I’m wrong.

Well, you’re mostly right. You’re certainly right on probably what you’re hearing. But I do have a lazy side, which is that can wait till tomorrow. I have some natural built in procrastination, and but I’ve been doing everything I can to try and crush and get rid of that and try and squeeze it out of me. And so to kind of building really good habits around how you live. And so I work on that every single day, trying to just make sure that I’m using my time the best way I can.

So that kind of leads me into my next question. Like, how do you currently juggle your work life with your family life?

Well, I have the good portion of sitting at home so that works. And then my kids are about. But they’re not little. So they’re kind of independent. And so evenings we socialize and spend time together and try to spend time with some friends when and where we’re allowed, depending on the nature of the world as it stands, because I’ve got irons in a few fires. What I do is I just have to have a pretty organized view of what’s the next conversation and make sure my mind is ready that I’m prepared to have that conversation.

So I think that’s helpful planning things out is good and then making sure that I’ve got gap that I use them. So like, I’ve got a dog waiting for me to walk her on my next gap in the day, and it gets me outside, which is great. And then I do all of my working out before I do anything. So I get up at 06:00 a.m. Or 630 every day, and I do all of my working out right away. So that way I get that done.

But I’m pretty, like routine based, so work is just kind of like fits in. And then if I have a 1 hour gap during the day and I need to get groceries, then I use that. I go get the groceries and then I come back home. So to be honest, I think when evenings hit, I actually don’t have a ton of stuff to do other than to try and be social with family and friends.

Nice. So I think you kind of stepped into my next question, which is like, you know, like, since you’re so habit oriented, like, what is your morning ritual? Your morning routines look like right now.

Over the last few months, it’s been wake up at six or 630. I do a yoga class, I lift some weights, then I do a spin class. I’m fortunate enough. I got a peloton bike a couple of years ago, and so it’s in my bedroom, literally, my workout gym is at the end of my bed. I have a yoga mat on the floor. I have kettlebells and freeways, and I have my Pelton bike, and I just do all that stuff. And I’m not a guy that likes to go to the gym.

I like to just work up by myself and even the commute to the gym and back. I’m like, oh, that seems like a total to. Yeah. I mean, first of all, yeah, it’s dead. So just as soon as I wake up, I find yoga is like a great thing to do because it starts getting me moving around, start stretching me out, starts getting me limber, and then I get all the workouts done. I shower, I take the dog for a 45 minutes walk. Then I get home, and then I start making breakfast, which right now is oatmeal and some berries matched into it because my doctor told me I had high cholesterol, so I’m eating more fiber.

And you’re walking more often as well, too.

I get two or 345 minutes dog walks in a day. It was a little bit worse because I’m in Toronto through the winter. It kind of sucked. It’s cold and windy, and so I had to get a really good quote for my dog because she gets a cold in the winter and shakes. So I got her a nice park, which she seems to appreciate interesting.

So coming into the book segments. Right. And I got a live book club that every time I have an opportunity to talk to someone like you, I always ask them what books inspired you on your journey and what books are you currently reading right now that you want to recommend.

So I listen to books rather than read them. And I think that’s just because I like to listen to podcast and and use my time. So like, while I’m walking the dog, I’m listening to a podcast or I’m listening to a book. So recently I finished a book called Lifespan by Davidson. Claire, I’m very try to be as health conscious as possible. I want to eat healthy. I want to put good stuff into my body. And I want to be as active as possible. And so this book is really cool because it talks about the technology, of how its evolving around our health and how technology will help us reverse aging.

So it won’t be like going to the place to get plastic surgery will be more like going to the place to get your certain kind of shot or take a pill. And it’ll kind of help to roll back the clock. So understanding how that all works is very, very cool. And then I’m actually a super huge fan of Malcolm Gladwell. His commentary, social commentary is just amazing. And so the most recent one was Talking to Strangers. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with that book, but it’s pretty fantastic.

I really enjoyed it. And then the audio piece was really kind of excellent. And then food and health wise, there’s one on it’s called Breath, which is all about breathing through your nose rather than through your mouth. There’s like a pile of health benefits there. And I could keep going on, like, sort of the food and health side. I’ve got a whole bunch of them that I listen to.

Yeah. It’s always funny to me when I ask that question is always like, I open up Pandora’s box. And at the point, I probably do a whole podcast, just one book at this point.

Sure.

I mean, they fill up a lot of people’s lives, and they give a lot of ingenuity to how to achieve your next goals and your next aspirations. So, like, what do you see yourself? 20 years from now.

I would like to see myself with a boutique hotel on a beach somewhere. I own the hotel, live in it, have it, make some money, but have access to the nice restaurant, have some drinks. And I constantly have friends coming in and out and meeting people on their journey and lives when they’re on vacation. That would be a pretty ideal situation for me.

Sounds like a Casa Blanca kind of situation.

Yeah.

So coming into, like, software, right? I mean, obviously, you’re building apps, you’re working for software companies. You worked for LinkedIn tools or software applications. Do you currently use right now that you do not see you doing what you do without.

Well, from a marketing and communication standpoint, the one that I consult for right now is pretty key. So that basically figuring out how to get your message out at scale and without paying because I don’t want to have to pay make a buck in order to be able to do that. This is designed for business owners that have employees. And so if I give you the example of LinkedIn LinkedIn, you’ve got a company page and then your employees like, I work there. And so you’ll have people that follow the company page, which means if you do an update company page update and it works the same for Facebook and others.

But you do a company page update, it’ll reach all the followers. Well, the reach of your employees is way, way, way bigger than whatever your company page followers are. So to give you a quick example, the average member on LinkedIn has 800 connections. And so if I have 50 employees, a company of that size might have a thousand followers. So if I do a company page update, a thousand people will see that if my 50 employees share that out, it’ll reach 40,000 people. So the reach of my employees is amazing.

And then who are my employees connected to? Well, they’re connected to my customers and they’re connected to my future customers. So if I get my employees to commonly, like, regularly share out stories that help bring value to the company and also help them bring up their professional profile, elevate them, then that’s what that’s what is a good thing to do. And so versus spending a whole bunch of money. Paid campaigns are exceptionally targeted, and they’re very, very valuable. But usually people don’t have deep pockets to be able to keep running those kinds of targeted campaigns.

And so utilizing a channel like employees is a great evergreen strategy. And it’s a great equalizer, because then a company of 50 people can have the same power and reach as a company that has 2000 people.

Let me bite into that a little bit because I mean, obviously marketing is one of the things that makes my heart beat right in that depiction that you just clearly outlined something like that. Let’s say you have a company of 50 people, and let’s say I do a monthly sweepstakes for my employees, and I’m tracking, like their shares how many times they share, how many times they communicate with additional target audiences based upon what we do at the company. Then, like you said, it’s an evergreen situation that I could say I put $100 into gift cards or hardware or whatever I think my employees would tangibly want would be ten times or 100 times cheaper than spending 100,000 or 10,000 an ad spend.

And that’s pretty much what you just outline. Is that correct?

Exactly. It. So to give you a quick example, a small paid campaign on LinkedIn would be ten grand, and that could last a few weeks. If I have 50 employees for under five Grand, I can communicate through my employees for an entire year.

You’re definitely right.

With a pay campaign, I run one ad where I’m like, Please click on this and buy my stuff. If I can communicate through my employees for an entire year, I could tell that story in so, like, such a nice way, a little bit about the company, a little bit about thought leadership, a little bit of how we participate in the industry. Here’s our perspective on this. And instead of just like, pitch, pitch, pitch, pitch, pitch. Now I’m building an awareness of us. I’m building an awareness of our employees.

I’m raising everyone’s profile. Now we’re thought leaders in the industry. All of a sudden, the conversation is different. We’re no longer a company that’s just pitching. Now we’re a company that’s adding value. And then periodically we talk about ourselves and talk about our products and services. But we’re not in any kind of rush because with a pay campaign, you’ve got a stuff in people’s faces, whereas with an evergreen channel like that, I I can tell you this story over the course of months because decisions don’t get made usually don’t get made in the moment.

It’s not like I see an ad and go, oh, gonna go by Bentley. I just saw that commercial and made me want one. If I’m in a position to buy something or even as a company, we’re going to buy some software. We’re going to take a while and a bunch of people are going to be involved. So if you build that awareness with me over the course of eight months and all of a sudden, now we’re in the market for that product immediately. You’re top of mind.

Well, we definitely need to talk to those guys. They’re smart. They’re adding value, and they’re in that space. We need to get their opinion on what we should be doing. And I wonder what their product is like. So that’s how you change the conversation through the employees channel. And so tools like who I consult for and what LinkedIn hat before, which was Elevate, which was their social sharing channel, and a product that was designed for that. It was a fantastic platform. They’ve since sunset that platform.

And so now I invest my time with social HP, but Benet of it is, you know, you can really drive a lot of value. The hard part is trying to convince people to do it regularly.

Yeah, that’s why I threw in the sleep steak sticking it. I want everybody to listen to this last ten minutes. I want you to kind of rewind it back and listen to it again, because the Nuggets are definitely falling from the sky right now. Right with that. So pretty much I want people to really understand is that if you have a tribe you could weaponize your tribe with the right Spears to go out and Hunt for your right clientele by just giving your tribe initiatives on a routine basis, which is significantly going to be cheaper than running ad campaigns at a shorter period of time for a higher cost.

And that’s pretty much what he’s saying, which is golden when you really think about it. It’s so simple. But the reality that not everyone’s doing that, not everyone’s doing it well, almost nobody’s doing.

Some big companies are doing it, but they’re on the bandwagon early, and they’re adopting technology at a pretty fast rate. Smaller companies, definitely not midsized companies. There’s a few, but not a ton. And then I will say, I’ll add to this, which is software, especially either consumer based software or software that you would give to employees. It’s hard to get them to do it unless it’s like they’re going to get fired unless they don’t do it. If it’s an opt in kind of thing, most people will say, yeah, but then they forget real quickly and they opt out.

And that software is a service. That’s the number one problem is usage. And so with most tools that curate and bring in all of this amazing content for you to be able to share, to try and convince your employees to regularly go in, you can contest and you can Starbucks cards or whatever, like a gift card. You know, that kind of thing that will definitely make a difference. But it’s not on. Some people aren’t motivated by that. And if they’re not motivated by that and then they’re not motivated by the greater good, then they’re not going to do it.

And so my experience when I was at LinkedIn is that about of your employees will actually regularly go in and share and won’t. And so with the company that I’m supporting now, which is social HP, they build some technology, which is basically where your employees are like, look, you guys, the marketing experts, I individually am not going to be a social media marketing manager, and I don’t want to become one. So why don’t you guys just do it for me? And that’s what we built. We built to do it for me functionality, which is basically like, hey, why don’t you share for me four times a month?

Share good stuff that makes me look great, makes me look smart and helpful for the company. Get up. And then I just give you permission to do that for me. And then now everyone can share and they don’t ever have to log in. They don’t even have to touch it. And then they’re sharing all the smart stuff so that their networks are like, oh, wow. Like, hey, Sarah, that was amazing that you shared that. And they’re like, cool. I didn’t literally have to do anything.

Who’s going to eat the cost of that? I mean, essentially, you’re talking about a software that’s going to have API integrations into individual social media platforms. All of that information is going to be regurgitated to reflect positive on the mothership company that these employees work under.

Correct?

Who’s paying the cost for that?

So the mothership company buys the software access. The employees don’t pay anything, but that software is cheap. That’s the thing. Like one paid campaigns. Ten grand that’s offer for 50 employees is under 5000.

So 5000 monthly or annual or no for the year. Oh, shit.

It’s like it’s cheap. You’re giving it away. Can you share a LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter? You can share all the platforms. The employees decide which tools they want to connect, which of their networks they want to connect. And then you can just take care of it for them. So they literally just go, yeah, I’ll connect my stuff. That sounds great. Thanks for making me look smart. I’m happy to promote the company. I’m proud of the place where I work. We’re going to talk about how we do in that charity run or how we’re doing this good community work, too.

Amazing. I want to talk about that. And the employees don’t know where to find those stories. And if you could profile an employee, like, say, hey, like Cassandra is been working here for three years, and we’re just so proud of her. And here’s the great work that she’s doing. The rest of the employees don’t know where that story is posted or located. It’s on their corporate blog. They’re never looking at the corporate blog. Is it on the Internet or is it on our website? Where is it this way?

One administrator just pops it in, delivers it out. And then Cassandra gets a visibility of 40,000 people Super Super fast.

So who is developing and creating the general content? Where is that content being sourced from?

So the tools like this pull in from third party. So you can pull in from, like, any third party publishers, whether it’s like Harvard Business Review or industry stuff. Like, if you’re in the legal field, then it pulls in all the law journals, anything like that. If you guys have a corporate blog, it’ll pull in from the corporate blog. It’ll pull in from your corporate, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn account. It’ll pull in from your marketing tools. It’ll pull in from any source you want. You can even do Google keyword searches if you like, every time we’re mentioned in the news or anytime this topic is mentioned in the news, then it’ll pull in all those stories, and then the administrator just basically select which ones, and when they get shared.

It so human me here for a second. I’m listening to it and we’re diving in the convention, and I’m enjoying this conversation.

Right.

So that particular software is a sexy as hell when it comes down to corporations. But I see an alternative use for it as far as like, if I’m a corporate individual and I want to sell a particular product. Everyone’s familiar with influencer marketing. Could I not then say, I have 15 influencers that are my employees.

Yeah, of course.

We should give the system.

Yeah. You can invite anybody on you want not only that, let’s say you have customers. So let’s say I’m in a retail business, and but my customers are passionate about me. So maybe I have an email list of 2000 people that have all bought for me, and they’re all like, hey, keep you posted when stuff comes up. Normally, what I would have to do is write out an email and whatever. I could literally just take a story, click a button. It creates an email and it’ll send it out to all of them.

One it’ll allow them all to read it to it’ll, allow them all to share.

It nice.

So they can share as a guest so I can invite in my own employees. I can invite in my own influencers, and I could share content to the masses and have them amplify it for me.

Yeah.

Literally. Within 10 seconds, it would take me to do that. Yeah.

Definitely. It’s sexy. And it gives it its kind of manipulating the organic side of things to scale. Like you said, it’s all about scale. So you’re scaling organic. It’s going to, like, final words of wisdom. Let’s say 20 something year old. And I’m listening to this podcast, and I’m hearing all this information, and I’m like, this is great. I love this. Like, what words of insight would you give to me to continue on this path?

Well, I mean, definitely the more you know, the better you are off. Right. If you’re headed in a certain direction, figure out in this case, if it’s social marketing, figure out what kind of platforms are going to be the most valuable to you. And then learn about what technologies that you can use that will help to amplify your messaging. And then from that standpoint, I’d say, there’s so much out there right now that you can do for such a small amount of input, like, small amount of dollars in and you can generate a ton of value out.

So rather than hiring like a company to run your social channels, I had a friend do that recently, and they were paying $500 a month for whatever it was like, six posts, like, good for them for being able to charge that. But it shouldn’t cost that kind of money to do that. And if you don’t have the expertise, I think you just need to invest a bit of time. Doesn’t mean you have to be an expert, but you just need to invest enough time to figure out what you should be doing.

And if you don’t want to have to handle it, then that’s when you have to build out your advisor network. I’ve got an advisor. That’s an expert on marketing. I’ve got an advisor. That’s an expert. And these are like my advisors aren’t trying to sell me something. My advisers are like legitimate experts that they have no incentive to tell me what they’re telling me, because if they have a reason behind it, they’re giving you this information and then you go, oh, yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.

And then like, okay, cool. So you should buy my service. That’s not really an advisor. That’s the sales person that will give you good advice. But they’re definitely trying to sell somethng. So I would say build a really good network of people. If you’re a young entrepreneur and you want to grow your business, reach out to people that can help you in every area that you touch and every new area that you find. You got to get those right people on board.

I definitely insightful. So how can people get in contact with you? I mean, what’s your online handle? I would think by the fault you have a LinkedIn profile, how people get in contact with you.

Yeah, LinkedIn is probably the best way to reach me. So it’s just my name Jonathan Baldock. So that’s the URL as well. So LinkedIn. Com. My name Jonathan Baldock. And you find me. We’re happy to answer any questions.

So going into the bonus route, right. What is your most significant achievement to date outside of your kids, outside of your family? Just as far as business goes?

Good question. To be honest thing I’m most proud of is being able to launch that app because I was like when I went into it, I knew zero about how I would go about getting that done. And I owe it all to the people that help me get there. But I pushed hard and invested the time and got that done. I know it’s recent, but I’m very excited to have done that.

Got you. Well, I definitely commend you on. I’m in that space right now as well. And I’ve been with other people that’s built apps, and I think a lot of people from the outside and looking in, they think it’s kind of like building the website and it’s as simple as that. And in reality, there’s a little bit more that goes in behind the scenes to actually start an app. You got to stay away from the feature free ups and then executing the app. And then once you get the app done, that’s not the end of the journey.

You have to have people use the app to give you insight to let you know what’s wrong with the app so you can fix it and make it better than what it was when you originally came up with it.

So totally you could have the best app in the world. That doesn’t mean anyone’s going to use it.

Yeah, you’re right about that. So if you could spend 24 hours with anyone dead or alive, uninterrupted for those 24 hours, who would it be and why.

Yeah. Okay. Alright. I think I would choose Robin Williams. I think that guy was just such a comedic genius. I had the good fortune of going on set the day after Robin Williams is there. I never met him, but I went on. He was in those night Museum movies, and I was on set the day after he was there. And the director showed me his dailies, which is basically like his takes from the previous day. And they never gave him a script. And every single take was a completely different scene with completely different dialogue from him all made up on the spot.

And every single one was like, the best take I’ve ever seen in my life. Like, I could not believe the director said. He goes, I could literally pick any one of these ten takes, and it would be the best take I’ve ever seen. And they were all unbelievable. And so that’s I would say, like, Robin Williams was just such a such a charismatic. I loved all this movies. He had such range and like, I love movies. I love TV. I love all that stuff. And his storytelling really had an impact on me.

I thought he was just so genuine and then hearing how just wonderful he was, because when I was there the next day, they were like, oh my gosh. She was like, the nicest guy and just so thoughtful and approachable me was a huge star and, you know, had all the money and all that kind of stuff and just was like, the nicest guy a lot. What a great person. I would love to spend some time with him.

Yeah. I could definitely see that to your point. As funny as he was, he was also as dynamic and great as a drama actor as well. I remember, like, 1 hour photo was like one of those movies that was kind of like it creeped me out just enough to be like, Holy shit, he wasn’t funny, but he was jest as organically, dynamic in that role as he wasn’t Morkan windy. So I definitely you get two thumbs up for that.

And. All right. Thanks. I appreciate it.

So going into closing, man, obviously, we had a lot of different ups and downs in this conversation that we jumped around to different ports. Right. So any questions that may have came up on this journey that you may want to ask me, this is the time to go ahead and ask.

Well, you know what you mentioned, the apps. So one you said you’re building for the boss encaged suite of services, but it sounded like there was more than one. Yeah.

So I mean, one essentially to me, it’s using myself as a case study.

Right.

So in the space of entrepreneurs, in the space of podcast and also in the space of just authoring books, because I’m an author as well, I wanted to kind of try out this platform to see. Is it possible for me to make it easy enough to pull all these octopus tentacles into one system to deliver to a target audience, and then taking that and then thinking about the database behind it, I was like, okay, what’s the easiest database that I could think of? An Excel spreadsheet. So how can I create this portal on the front end for Boston Cage and on the back end, turn it into a resource for other podcasters and other authors to simply have an Avenue to plug in information through not necessarily iframes, but through Excel data sheets and pull it all together to create a finished product.

That way they can update it on the fly, deliver to their target audience.

Cool. Cool. That sounds great. How close to finish are you?

So with the first one I’m at about, I could finish it literally, probably next week. But you know how it is when you kind of squeaking. And this one feature didn’t work exactly where I wanted to work. And I’m trying to think about Usability, so that’s where I’m at with that one. And the other one is essentially in still in schematics. Still again, just one app needs to be done in order to get data back to create the other app. I don’t want to create them independently without having some data from one to the other.

So it’s a two part thing. So the first one, I should be able to release it in the next 60 days.

Well, that’s awesome. Well, good for you. I will tell you, I thought my friends were so sick and tired of me telling me, like me telling them when my app was going to launch, because every two weeks I would say, I think I’m about two weeks away, and I did that for six months and eventually at the end. Okay, I can’t say two weeks anymore because you’re all throwing me on the fire. So I eventually had a switch. And I’m like, you know what? I think it’s like a few weeks, but it could be longer.

I really don’t know. And it just took so much longer than I thought. So you’re very, very close, which is very exciting. I’m super happy for you.

Yeah, I appreciate it, man. It is one of those things because this year I had promised I was going to deliver my season one as a book, and it was going to be kind of this episode would have been in the book. And we’ve been talking about software and the great takeaways just kind of like what you said earlier about Guy Roses podcast. And he created a book to complement that podcast similar in that fashion. And then I hit a cross road to where I had some other things came up, and then the app just became more of a necessity.

It was just like, you get on the phone with somebody and you have a conversation like, oh, I didn’t know you had a store? Yeah, I have a store for, like, twelve months. Oh, I didn’t know that you had a book club. Well, the book club just launched. I did all the marketing for it, and you’re in my card. How the hell did you not see it? So I was like, I need to have one thing that I could just market. That one thing and everything else would just come through that one portal.

Yeah, that’s good.

I definitely appreciate your time. I think you definitely like I said earlier, I mean, you made it rain. A lot of Golden Nuggets and a lot of insight, a lot of information, a lot of passion. And I think our audience will definitely if they haven’t. I would say this is an episode you have to listen to more than once to kind of, you know, pull it apart and get the pieces that you need and take action items on what you’ve heard, to get the results that you’re looking forward to.

So again. I mean, John, and thank you very much.

Thank you for having me on.

I really appreciate it as they grant over and out.