Building Your Personal Brand with John Mediana, Founder & CEO of Executive Brand Growth

(Intro Narrator at 00:00:05) Hello, my friends. Today, Joel is talking to John, the founder and CEO of Executive Brand Growth, and they discuss why marketers ruin everything, how to get started creating a strong personal brand, and what it takes to put out a Gary Vee level of content for your personal brand. All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:36) Here we go. This is the Modern CTO podcast. For this episode being about tips for executives, technology professionals to become more known, get their content out there, not necessarily be famous, but just to have some content out there in the world so people can learn a little bit more about you after they meet you in person. Maybe it's just a friend at a conference. Maybe it's a professional opportunity. How do we sum up the couple ideas that we've had? Can you give me a quick 30, 60 second rundown of the handful of things they should be doing and thinking about?

(John Mediana at 00:01:21) I would say number one is think about that first impression. Right? Think about how if you had just a few seconds to not convince somebody, but to befriend someone, and then build a long lasting relationship, what would you do instead of what you're doing now? So instead of what you're doing now, like, here's my accolades, here's my trophies. You want to know me. You want to connect with me because I'm important. Instead of that angle, what would you do different if you're really just trying to make a long term friend in this industry? What would you change about your bio, about your photo, about what you talk about? That would be my first thing. You've got to break through that croc mentality, that security system that we have in our brain. And the most automated way to do that is to optimize your platforms, optimize your LinkedIn, your bio, your photo. Your banner is really important. If you have no banner, that's like red flags security system for some reason. I don't know why. You don't have a bio? You don't have a profile pic? Robot.

(John Mediana at 00:02:39) You've got an egg on your Twitter profile? Not gonna exist.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:44) You don't exist.

(John Mediana at 00:02:45) You don't exist. And that's the sad truth. The harsh truth is that if you're not optimizing those things or not thinking about those things, you just get lost in the sauce or you get lost in the noise of social media. And you're missing out on the authentic connectivity that you can create, and you're creating a barrier or friction between you and someone that could be a long lasting business partner or something like that in the future. So in order to reverse engineer and let go or create a non-friction environment, I call it a disarming profile. How do you create a disarming personal brand? Well, how would you meet someone for the first time if you saw them at a family get together or a company party? You don't start naming off your accolades, I could tell you that. That's not how you build a relationship, and you don't go for the phone number first. You're like, man, you've got to see if there's any synergy. So you've got to optimize your profile and the way you present yourself to the world because you get only one first impression. When people, I love asking, hey, what was your first impression of me? Before, I was like, man, I was really intimidated. I was like, oh my gosh, I've got to change my persona. I've got to smile more or do something. It took me a long time to figure out how to create this disarming persona because if I'm in the business of business, my goal as a business is to create impact. Sales, yes, obviously, but first impact. And that's the first thing I would think about. The second thing I would think about is ask yourself, what are the three things you want the world to know you for? What are three things? Because three things are manageable when you're making content. If you're asking yourself, what kind of content should I make? You go back to the three things. Write it on a piece of paper. Write it and put it in your purse, your wallet, wherever, and go back to that. Those are called content pillars. Those are called value core values. What are the three things you want the world to know about you, and what three things do you want to create in your world? So if it's business leadership, thought leadership, or you talk about tech, people know you, Joel, and CTOs. You're talking nerdy stuff, engineering. That's how people know you, but other people will see you as a family man or an entrepreneur. So there's three things in the scope of what we do on a daily basis. You've got to ask yourself, what are those three things that I want people to know me for? And then if you're not creating content or if you're creating content that doesn't align with those three things, I call that random acts of content. You're just making random stuff and hoping that someone would care. But that's the other thing. You've got to think about, what are you trying to say, and who's your audience that you're saying it to? You've got to think about what kind of value will they get from this post. What kind of, would this disarm me as a personal brand? Because as a leader, it's intimidating. When you reached out to Vayner, the head of, what was it?

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:08) Yeah. Claude?

(John Mediana at 00:06:09) Yeah. Claude. It's intimidating to be like, what do I say? What kind of email should I write? And I bet you were thinking about it really hard. This is my one chance. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:19) Me? No. No. No. No.

(John Mediana at 00:06:20) I'm a volume guy.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:20) I just started texting Eric.

(John Mediana at 00:06:25) Yeah. That's great.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:26) But most—

(John Mediana at 00:06:27) Most normal people that aren't you are overthinking.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:30) Before I made content, I was very shy. But what happened was when I started inviting people on the podcast, I realized, oh, wow. So you have to invite 100 people on before one will come on. It's like, oh, okay. Cool. So if I want to talk to somebody in an area, that's why I pick the area. I pick the topic.

(John Mediana at 00:06:51) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:52) This next week, we're doing something with ransomware negotiators. Basically, hostage negotiators for data.

(John Mediana at 00:07:00) Are you getting—oh my gosh. I've got to hear this. Yes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:02) We're having people, they actually negotiate between the criminals and the victims.

(John Mediana at 00:07:07) That's a lot of risk. Yes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:09) It's crazy. Right? So I need to hear your story.

(John Mediana at 00:07:14) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:14) How did you get into this?

(John Mediana at 00:07:15) Oh my gosh, bro. The way it started was actually an accident. I accidentally fell into marketing. And I don't even like the term marketing, but that's what it is, I guess. That's the term we use. But it happened because of Myspace and technology and the internet and social media started blowing up and stuff. And I, you know, I grew up, we're fairly the same age. So millennials, I don't even like that word, but we're a different kind of millennial. You know? Born in the late eighties. We're nineties kids and stuff like that. We still, we remember the days where dial-up happened and stuff like that. So we kind of adopted the technology, but it goes way back to even my whole life journey and story. I was adopted as a baby, and I was also the first generation of immigrant parents. So my dad was in Vietnam, and he came from the Philippines. So my mom, she came from the Philippines. They started a brand new life in the States, and they adopted me when they were a lot older. And I felt like I had this, not disadvantage, but I felt like I had to work 10 times harder in life. And I felt like I had to just do better than everybody else or feel like I have to work harder than everybody else because everybody was just born for greatness. And I was like, I don't even know where I come from. I felt like that mentality. So I really naturally gravitated towards creativity because my dad, he always took photos as I was a kid. Anytime that we went on vacation, and we went on a lot of vacations, he always brought his camera out, and he was always taking photos. I remember I was just a little kid, and I was just so fascinated because, you know, he'd go get them developed, and we'd look at the photos growing up. And I remember picking up my first camera at a very, very young age and then having a video camera when I was like 10 years old. And, you know, me and my friends, because I was so drawn to creativity and music, and it was just so out of the box. It was so not, you know, towards any Asian culture because, you know, I'm a male Filipino, so typically we go the nurse doctor route and, you know, government job security. But I was just like, that doesn't really intrigue me. And I just have this creativity inside me, and I just want to explore that and express that. So I started filming my friends, and they were skateboarding, you know, when I was a lot younger. And I was like, oh, this is amazing. This is so much fun. I get to create something that never existed, and here it is. I get to watch it. I get to play it back. I get to almost encapsulate this moment in time and just rewatch it over and over and over again. It was very fascinating to me. And if we move forward, I started editing and doing all these things in high school, and I was like, I just stuck to creativity and music and audio and all that stuff, and Myspace came. And I was like, I just want to be a rock star. I want to play music, write music. I want to express myself. Myspace was totally mind blowing to me because I could share stuff, and people would find it. And, I mean, the whole top eight thing was a little crazy. I was always switching my friends. I'm like, you're not my friend this week. We're just going to move you down. But the whole concept, I think it was the technology that blew me away. And growing up, you know, I think creativity and technology were the biggest things in my life that I gravitated towards. My parents would get really frustrated at me because I would take things apart, like radios and remote controls and all kinds of stuff. I just wanted to know how they worked. How did this thing work? How was it designed, and how did it function? And then had the creativity part. I probably drove my parents nuts as I was growing up. But when Myspace came, it was really fascinating because I started learning how to play with audio and engineering. I used to actually record my music when I was in high school in my bedroom, and I just started learning. And, you know, we had the fascinating thing about Yahoo and all these search engines. I was like, how do you record? So I went to Guitar Center. Most of my life in high school was spent at Guitar Center just kind of purchasing gear and testing things out. And I was like, I'm going to record this. I'm going to put it on Myspace. And then, oh, I'm going to learn HTML. So most of the coders out there are like, yeah. I was a Myspace coder. I learned HTML. That's what got me into the engineering and coding and programming space. You know? And when I was in high school, I was learning CSS and all kinds of stuff, and C++ and all that stuff. I was like, oh, this is fascinating. I could integrate this into Myspace because you could code it. So I started designing Myspace pages when I was in high school for local bands. I was like, oh, this is rad. I'm going to build these Myspace pages for bands, and they're going to give me money to do it. That's cool. And people are going to see the work that I do, and they're going to be like, who did your Myspace? Oh, John did. And later on, I learned my name was getting around, starting to build more Myspace pages, and then that led into just developing more content like photography and filmmaking. I graduated high school, went to art school for six years in Santa Monica, the Art Institute. And funny enough, it was like a two year program, and I was like, I'm going to stick around for a while. You know?

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:03) So—

(John Mediana at 00:13:03) I was also working in the industry, and I just was so fascinated by the technology. And, you know, I started in Windows Movie Maker when I was in middle school in high school and then graduated to Final Cut. And then when Final Cut made that shift to Final Cut X, I was like, it's like a glorified Windows Movie Maker. I need to switch over to Adobe. And then I learned all that stuff through the industry, and I was like, I just want to learn everything that has to do with creativity and online and connecting people to people and showing the work, and I was obsessed. I was literally obsessed. And what happened was I started just doing so much work that I was getting emails and calls from businesses and entertainment companies like E! Entertainment and Capitol Records and every local business and businesses in Los Angeles because that's where I was based. And I was just like, yeah. I'll do the work. Yeah. I'll do it for free. Okay. I just want to learn. I want to gain experience. So I started getting to that, and I started directing commercials and then music videos. And I was just getting all kinds of learnings, and I was like, oh, okay. This is what marketing is. You're getting attention, and I started filming and, you know, kind of following around influential people and filming them, like LL Cool J and people that are in LA. And I was like, oh, this is a thing? I get to follow celebrities around, and then they post it on whatever outlets they want or post it on TV and MTV and all that stuff. They get to use my content. That is the wildest thing to see your content on TV. And I'm just like, oh my gosh. What is this all about? And so that was kind of my journey. And in my late twenties, I started using that in marketing strategies and developing a lot of techniques and processes for companies that were trying to really get their hand on the internet, the power of marketing and branding. And over the years, I just learned, you know, the best way to build brands is through people and personas, and that's the closest thing to great marketing is tying it to a person and the mission that they're on and the why and why they're a part of this company. Why do they believe in this brand? Why do they do what they do every single morning? Those are the things that really intrigued me. And I was like, how do I help them tell their story better? So I spent a lot of time working alongside of these people. I've learned so much and been very blessed to do the work that I do now. So that's kind of the journey in a nutshell.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:51) I like that you mentioned, how can I help people tell their story better? Because, you know, I see a lot of bios. Right? Because it's part of our preparation process. So I've seen, I've literally read over 400 of these from and then gotten to meet the person. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:08) So usually you read a bunch of bios and you decide who you want to meet from that, you know, if you're hiring. But I read these bios and then I meet them, and rarely does someone start with why they do what they do, which is like a very Simon Sinek thing. I love it. Usually it's like, you know, Mr. So-and-so or Mrs. So-and-so is an expert in, you know, science and space and has, you know, piloted three missions to Mars and, you know, and goes on their technical achievements and everything like that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:41) And I'm sitting there like, are they married? Do they have kids? Are they at soccer?

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:47) Like, what's their Friday nights like?

(John Mediana at 00:16:48) I know. Like, are they at soccer games? Trophies.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:51) Yeah. I want to connect with them on a human level.

(John Mediana at 00:16:53) Yeah. You know? Yeah. No, absolutely. I think you're right. And, you know, I always say the future of business is personal, and we're here to create human-to-human impact. You know? And there's a lot of terms. And I always say, I always heard, and since I've heard this term, it's just always stuck in my head: how marketers ruin everything. Like, they just ruin everything because once there's a trend going, it's like, oh, that's so successful. But once a trend started, it was because someone decided to just test something, and it just happened to go well. And then that became a trend in marketing, so everybody in the marketing space is like, I saw that person do it. I'm going to do that too. So, like, when, you know—and we're going to deep dive into all that in the history of marketing because it's really important to understand when it comes to personal branding—but when people started spending on Facebook ads and all that stuff, when that first came, not that many people understood it. Not that many people, you know, spent on Facebook ads until marketers started saying, "Oh, you know, you got to do Facebook ads. You know, Gary Vaynerchuk started saying you got to spend money on Facebook." And then everybody was like, "Oh, I got to spend money on Facebook. What if I built a whole agency on Facebook marketing and, you know, ad spending?" And everybody started flooding the scene. It started becoming very noisy. And you even look at today's platforms like Instagram and Facebook and even LinkedIn and Twitter. It's just ad after ad after ad, and it's just getting so noisy that when you say something human, it gets a lot of attention because it's in a world full of robots and ads and AI. How do you stand out as a brand? Well, talk like a human. Simple, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:48) Yeah. That's, like, how you can stand out in your bio. Talk like a human in your bio.

(John Mediana at 00:18:52) Yeah. Like, I always say—and this is probably not really good advice, but I'm just going to say it anyway. You know? When I have people ask me all the time, "John, how do you write your bio? Like, you're just so natural, authentic." You know? And I'm like, "Well, thank you. I'm not trying to, like, fluff my head up or anything like that," but my advice is always just like, "Hey. Like, write your bio like you're just having a beer or wine with a friend, and just talk like you would talk to a friend," because it's about human-to-human impact, and it's about, like, you know—I mean, I also see a lot of bios, and I also see a lot of pages, you know, especially on LinkedIn, all these experts in their field. And I think, again, why marketers are ruining everything is because they're like, "This is the formula for your bio, how to build a perfect bio," and it's pretty much you start with "I help," and then you add who you help and how you help it and what time they help it in. And it's very formulaic, and that's why marketers ruin everything. They create, like, a formula that's used over and over and over again. And when you do that and when you saturate the market with this formula, well, you get lost in the noise. They all look the same, and it always feels like a sales pitch. So if you could just be like, you know what? I'm, like, you know, on my Twitter bio, I'm like, "I'm a dad. I'm a husband." I get to do this stuff. You know? I get to be a part of this community of marketing. You know? And it's, like, yes, it has its ups and downs and good parts and bad parts like any family does, but I'm part of it because I get to, you know, make content and share that content and help others make content because that's really, really important when it comes to marketing. It's like, okay, you got to make stuff for people to see. Well, how are you going to make stuff? I don't know. I just thought—especially with an engineering industry and the engineering space—well, I've been so focused on building this prototype for six, seven, eight months, maybe a year. I didn't even think when I was done, what's next? That a lot of them come to me and they're like, "Well, I got this thing. It's phenomenal. It could solve a lot of the world's problems. But no one knows about it, John." And I'm like, "Yeah. They—well, marketing, you know, they're not the greatest marketers. I could just say that, you know?"

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:13) So for, like, executive personal brand type conversation, the things that I liked about your profile that stood out to me the first time I looked you up is you had a really great headshot photo. It wasn't, like, boring. It wasn't childish. It had this, like, interesting balance of it was professional. It was cool. It was unique. You had some—you had a nice bold color in your background that complimented you, right? And, because, like, I was like, that's a cool yellow, but it doesn't work with my face.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:48) Right.

(John Mediana at 00:21:49) Right. Yeah. I just know my skin tones, you know? Like, what compliments my skin tones?

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:53) There you go. Self-awareness is—

(John Mediana at 00:21:55) Yeah. I think that's important, though, you know, to point out, like, how do you not lose your personality in an industry full of professionals? Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:08) So you just have to relentlessly be obsessed with being yourself.

(John Mediana at 00:22:14) Oh, mic drop. Boom. Okay. End scene.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:19) No. There's more. There's more. All right. So we talked about, like, the profile page. Like, we got the photo. We got some—so a good photo that represents your personality. It's, like, not dry and boring and, like, not you out drinking at a baseball game, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:34) Right. Yeah. And then you've got a bio that's written in a way that stands out. So what I—I play this game where we'll go get 10 of something. Like, if we're designing a new podcast, right? We'll look at the category, look at the top 10, and we'll put them all side by side. And we say, "How do we make this one look like it belongs but also stand out?" Right?

(John Mediana at 00:22:56) That's so good.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:57) It has to look like the set but also stand out. And so we'll play that game with the designers so that we get something that when you look at it, you're like, "Oh, that looks like it's a top podcast." We're like, "Yep."

(John Mediana at 00:23:06) Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's also a psychological effect that's called the mere exposure effect, or some people call it the familiarity effect. So if you're building something or creating a design or coming up with the name of a podcast, really, like, there is already a psychological anchor that people are attached to, right, that they see bombarded every single day on their feed or their favorite podcast or their favorite whatever. They've been already assimilated to that style, their brand, the language. So when you're introducing something new to the industry or into, you know, your audience, and you're trying to inject something that feels familiar but it's also different, it's really good to kind of steer towards the familiarity but also have one kind of twist when it comes to the marketing part or the messaging or the style or the colors, right? So that's really important.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:05) Yes. That first impression, beautiful profile page or whatnot. Maybe let's just go with LinkedIn for this discussion, right? It's like a nice LinkedIn profile. I was just trying to think, like, there's so many things you can do when it comes to content creation. That was one of the things I found out really fast, right? Everyone's like, "How do you produce so much content?" I'm like, "We don't produce a tenth of the content I want to produce." You have to pick and prioritize. But when you look at the landscape, right, if you want to stand out as an executive, you can, you write a blog post maybe. Well, I would say that, like, doing that profile stuff is probably the most important.

(John Mediana at 00:24:49) Yeah. Because—

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:49) When you get into, like, blogs and books and things like those types of content, I find personally that I use those after the initial interest. So let's scope the conversation even farther to hiring or bringing a partner on. Like, it doesn't have to just be hiring for a job. You could be bringing a business partner on, and you're researching this person. Step one, you know, are they professional? Are they clean? Do they match my style?

(John Mediana at 00:25:13) Yeah. And—

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:13) You can't be everything to everybody. That's why you have to just be you, really.

(John Mediana at 00:25:16) That's it. Intentionally. Yeah. If your audience isn't familiar with kind of, like, how the, you know, stranger-to-client journey is—like, the funnel of marketing—because it applies to really not just a brand, but it applies to your personal persona, your brand online, your LinkedIn page, right? How does someone go from stranger to, like, "Oh, like, we're friends now. Actually, you're a client of mine," right? So how do you go through that stage? And there is a process. And, again, I think the reason why marketers ruin everything is that they try to expedite the process, right? They try to close a sale when they put up an ad, and that's not what marketing is. Marketing is a department. It's a living, breathing thing where you're supposed to test, learn, and adapt. But most of the time, executives or teams or a marketing team would really ruin the process because they try to attach sales because they're like, "Well, ROI, ROI, how do we set up some key performing indicators for our marketing budget? How do we close the books on marketing or make sense for our bottom line?" But that's not what marketing is designed for, right? Marketing is designed for attention. Marketing is designed to build trust, right? And personal branding, I think, is simplified in the word trust because it's personal. You're building trust in your whole career. You're building trust as a personal brand, as a person, right? And it's the fastest way to gain trust because you have a consistent reputation in the market. So going over kind of, like, the history or, like, the funnel of marketing kind of follows, you know, the first impression and then the consideration and all that other stuff, but it starts with the top, which is exposure. How do people find you? And there's, like, three categories that I'd like to—or, like, three degrees of exposure I really love to talk about a lot, which is that first degree, which is your first degree, right? If you're on LinkedIn, you know how it says, like, "Oh, you're first degree away from, you know, who your friend"—or they want to friend-request you or follow you. It's like, "Oh, I know him. You know? That's Brad. That's Joel. Like, yeah. Of course. I'm going to go ahead and follow, right? We're going to connect on LinkedIn." That's my first degree. And the second degree is, like, you know what? This is a friend of a friend. So, Joel, you are my second degree through Brad, right? So we made a connection, and then we started getting into a discovery phase a little bit. You're like, "Let me do a little research. You know? I need to know who this person is." And then, which is great because that kind of brings you a little bit closer, right, in proximity. And then that third degree is you're not really friends, but you heard about the person, and they're not really in your circle, but you found—you've been exposed to their podcast. Maybe they wrote an article on Forbes. Maybe they were a guest on someone's show. Maybe you found their book in the Barnes & Noble section, or, you know, you downloaded a PDF or white paper. That's where I absolutely would love to see executives thriving the most in that third degree of impact when it comes to their personal brand. And there's also a bonus—it's the fourth degree, which is the person that you admire in the industry. Maybe it is not even your industry, but it's, like, you know, like, I admire the Gary Vaynerchuks, right? And when you get, you know, rapport or when they recognize you, you've reached that fourth degree of impact where you're like, "Oh my gosh, like, how does this person I've been following—they don't even know they've been mentoring me—but they just totally recognized the work I had done." That's wild, right? So when you follow that and you're like, "Okay, exposure." That's why it's so important to make content always and document always and share always, because it's that consistent touch point. Again, going back to that mere exposure effect, that familiarity effect. The more people see your face, hear your story, understand what drives you, why you wake up every morning to lead your company, the more likely they're going to create more familiarity. They're going to know you more. They're going to know about your brand. And most likely, if they ever have, like, a season where, like, "Oh, top of mind, that one person does this, I need to reach out to them," you're going to be that person, and you're eventually going to create, like, a sale or get them, you know, into the system somehow because they constantly think about your content all the time, the things that you say, probably to your staff, probably to your colleagues. You know? Even Zoom calls are great to record because you never know what comes out of Zoom calls, like, just the communication part. But that's just exposure, right? There's another segment under exposure, which is called discovery. So, like, I—you saw some of my posts. You were exposed to those things. You're like, "Oh, I need to find out more," right? So as you go through the stranger-to-client journey, that discovery phase is next, and you're like, "I got to do more research about this brand. I got to do research about this person. I need to start looking at their posts and maybe even go to Instagram, Twitter, different platforms." Like, they get curious enough, right, to kind of go into that discovery mode. And then they finally go into this consideration mode. They're like, "You know what? I've watched, like, seven videos of Joel. You know? I've listened to 10 of his podcasts. I'm going to—I'm going to consider just, you know, jumping in the comment section. I'm going to consider just shooting him a DM and seeing if he responds. I'm going to consider reaching out to his team. You know? I might need some help with this or that." So it goes from consideration to that nice bottom of that funnel, which is conversion, right? They actually started doing work with you. They started becoming a client of yours. They start, you know, getting into this groove now of, like, "Oh, this is a relational thing, and, you know, it's a value trade," and then there's a transaction being made. And then you go into client relationship, so you start pulling out that relationship. And that last bottom of the thing there is client retention. How do I continue to nurture our relationship and keep that relationship? So that is, like, the scope of what a marketing funnel looks like, like a typical journey, and this is the same funnel that's used for personal branding, right?

(John Mediana at 00:31:55) You could apply this to your executive brand if you're thinking about your audience's journey. How do they discover you? How do they discover not only you, but your authentic you? Right? Because everybody's kind of in this—we call it croc brain mentality. It's in our frontal lobe.

(John Mediana at 00:32:19) And it's like a security system. You know when a sales pitch is coming. When you see someone's banner and say, like, I'm a performance coach, and you get an ad and connect on LinkedIn, they're like, oh my gosh, they're gonna jump on my DM. Right?

(John Mediana at 00:32:34) Like, how many of those do we get a day? But that security part in our brain is like red flag. They're gonna want to sell you something. So how do we disarm that?

(John Mediana at 00:32:51) That's why, again, I'm going back to the markers that ruin everything. They're not—I feel like we're not smart enough to, like, because we have a—we're so attached to a sale, right, because it's been ingrained, and it's like numbers. Like, oh, you gotta hit your quota this month, or else, you know, our department's gonna fire up, and we're gonna have to let you go because it doesn't make sense to our bottom line, which is what a lot of companies deal with, and their turnover is ridiculously crazy. Right? But if they really just focused on building that department, which I would call a media department because that's what marketing is—it's just documenting and demonstrating who you are as a brand and who you are as a person, as a leader of the brand. Right?

(John Mediana at 00:33:38) And you're documenting that, sharing that with people. And I really wish I could reframe marketing as just, oh, it's just media. Right? It's just showing people what you do, who you are, and why you do it. And now you're in a position of permission-based marketing where it's like, hey, you wanna come hang out with me?

(John Mediana at 00:33:58) Like, Facebook—I could tell you exactly what Facebook is in one sentence. Right? I'm bored. Come hang out. That's it. Yeah. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:11) So I'm playing the role of the tech leader. So there was a point in time when I didn't have a podcast. Right? Right. There was, you know, I'd say 20 different times I'd find myself sitting after work on an afternoon with one of my buddies, Derek, who's been on the show before.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:32) This is, like, you know, ten years ago.

(John Mediana at 00:34:34) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:35) And we would, you know, brainstorm starting a blog or maybe writing an open source project or, like, you know, doing different things, different ways to share, like, our knowledge or our experience that we've had. And, you know, they never really came about. There's always that, like, hesitation. So I'm so comfortable with content now. It's ridiculous.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:54) So I try to remind myself first couple times, you know, starting to put out content. But, you know, for the person who's taking it seriously and they said, okay, I want to get from that stranger to know phase, and I've done the bio. I've done the headshot.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:14) And then the content—I have found from my experience—is really, really useful in that next stage. Because, like, if I interview you to come work for me and then we leave, well, we spent that time together. Yeah. Right? Thirty, forty minutes or whatnot. But now I have—I have no more John.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:34) That's it. That was my complete—I can't go online and read about you for five hours. I can't go read your blog to see what you've been thinking if you don't have one, or how you think on specific topics, or even the progression of your writing. I can't watch your vlog videos. I can't watch you talking to other industry experts about specific—I can't get to know you better because you have no additional content.

(John Mediana at 00:35:58) That's absolutely right. And, you know, that's so funny because I talk to executives every single day, and a lot of times the conversation is like, why—like, for me, I'm telling them, I'm like, why are you being so selfish?

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:13) Yeah. Like,

(John Mediana at 00:36:15) imagine telling a high-level CEO of a multimillion-dollar company, like, why are you being so selfish? She's like, John, what do you mean selfish? I was like, I don't see you making any content. I don't see you putting anything out there.

(John Mediana at 00:36:27) Like, you're leading a company. You're leading people, and you're being selfish because you're not sharing your leadership. You're not giving people an experience to get to know who you really are behind the brand. Right? And—

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:49) Most things are just filtered through comms teams anyways.

(John Mediana at 00:36:51) That's right. Oh, I got a marketing team for that. I got an email for you. You know, I got a copywriter for that. It's like, no, no, no, no. You gotta make content. I wanna know you as a CEO, as a CTO, as a CMO, as a—you name it. Right?

(John Mediana at 00:37:08) Even the most tedious task. Right? A CFO. Right? I wanna just know you as a person because every single person that has a leadership role is a human being.

(John Mediana at 00:37:21) You got a family. They've got hobbies. You got hobbies. That is the quickest way to build rapport, I feel. When people can align and be like, oh, I didn't know they liked fishing.

(John Mediana at 00:37:35) I love fishing. Let's talk about fishing. What can we talk about? Right? Or like, oh, you're an engineer.

(John Mediana at 00:37:43) Right? What do you think of Web3? Like, what can we talk about? The camaraderie part is the thing that brings us closer. What can we find together that makes sense and have alignment in?

(John Mediana at 00:37:59) And that's why I absolutely love our friendship. You know? Every time we hang out and every time we talk, I'm like, well, we could talk for hours just geeking out and talk about life. We just have so much alignment in many different areas of our life, you know, and the journey that we're on, right, where it's just like we have so much camaraderie.

(John Mediana at 00:38:18) It's just so natural to continue having those conversations. So what are what are these executives and these tech leaders—how are they creating camaraderie even when they're not having that face to face? Because we're busy people. Right? They're busy.

(John Mediana at 00:38:32) They're running a company. So—

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:35) How do you decide—like, you have all these avenues. Like, oh, I could go start a podcast. You don't have to interview people. You can just do a—one of the most successful podcasts is this guy that I love named Jonathan Cutrell, I think. Sorry if I'm butchering your name, buddy. But it's called Developer Tea, and it's essentially a monologue-type deal.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:55) The short fifteen-minute deals. But, like, there's so many opportunities to create content. Absolutely. Most popular is blogging, you know, YouTube channels. You know, no one really goes on MySpace anymore.

(John Mediana at 00:39:09) Yeah, I logged into mine a couple weeks ago. It was scary. Just for fun.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:13) It—

(John Mediana at 00:39:13) just shows me, you know, it reminds me where I came from.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:18) How do you help people? Yeah. Like, how do you help them figure out, like, where to start? Like, how do you start?

(John Mediana at 00:39:26) I love this question because it's really simple. Right? And it seems complicated. Where do I start? That question, I think, comes from—it stems from the root of: I've seen them do it. I can never do that. Right? I can never get on camera. I'm not a technical person. I barely know how to send a text message.

(John Mediana at 00:39:49) Right? Well, you shouldn't be in the text space, by the way, my opinion. Right? But a lot of things stem and root from the comparison complex. Like, oh, they're already—but you have no idea how many years that Joel has been doing this for.

(John Mediana at 00:40:04) You don't know how many times he's practiced over and over and over again. I can guarantee you, if you can think back to your first podcast—how exciting is that?

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:15) Oh, I know it right now.

(John Mediana at 00:40:16) Right? You could even say it. Like, how was that experience? Tell me about it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:20) It was Derek. We actually aired it as, like, the sixth. I don't know. It wasn't the first—we didn't air it as the first.

(John Mediana at 00:40:26) Why didn't you air it as the first?

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:28) I can't remember why, to be honest with you. I know that we released a batch at once, and I think, in my best guess right now because it's, like, five years ago—yeah. My best guess is that, like, in that first batch of, like, four or six, they didn't—we didn't have them in a particular order.

(John Mediana at 00:40:45) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:45) So maybe that's why. But, yeah, I remembered when I was researching, they said, you know, one of the worst things you can do when launching a podcast is have a really great podcast and only have one episode, and people will hate you for it.

(John Mediana at 00:40:57) Yeah. And so—

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:58) Because they're hungry for it.

(John Mediana at 00:40:59) It's like watching your favorite episode or season. Right? And then, like, right now, like, Boba Fett on Disney Plus is my jam. I watched all the Marvel and Star Wars series. And if they just skip the week, I would be so mad because it's consistency. It's showing up. Imagine if they didn't tell you that, oh, yeah, we're not gonna air this week or next week or the week after that. We're gonna kinda just, like, leave you hanging.

(John Mediana at 00:41:26) How frustrating would that be for someone that's completely just hooked on to that first episode? Right? That's kinda like doing the same thing. But I go back to that because you've been doing this for a long time, and it's taken practice, and you've learned and changed, adapted, you know, done some things. Like, played—even like right now, you look phenomenal.

(John Mediana at 00:41:50) Your lighting, your microphone, the audio, the video—like, the process that you created was through the compound effect of failure. Right? So the idea is: your first video is gonna be your worst video. Your first podcast is gonna be your worst podcast. Your first blog is gonna be your worst blog.

(John Mediana at 00:42:09) But if you don't continue to do something, right—and the best, I guess, my best advice to get started is: look within. What do you like to do? Do you like reading articles? Do you like watching content on YouTube? Do you like watching micro pieces of content? Whatever you gravitate to. Like, I always do the what's my first action on social media test.

(John Mediana at 00:42:33) Right? So, like, I'll wake up. I'll do my daily routine, my hour of power, whatever. I'll spend time with my kids. I'll drink my coffee, eat my breakfast.

(John Mediana at 00:42:41) What do I do after that? What social platform do I go on? What do I gravitate to most? Maybe it's pulling up the Wall Street Journal, which I enjoy doing. Right?

(John Mediana at 00:42:50) And just looking at the highlights and the trends. Maybe it's jumping on Twitter. Maybe it's—what's the first action? And then you look back and you're like, oh, I didn't realize I tend to like going on Twitter and just reading. I should probably just start writing and just start there and doing that over and over for five years.

(John Mediana at 00:43:09) Really, that's how long it takes to start getting into the groove, hopefully sooner. But I think people are afraid of the process, and that's what scares them. I think they are afraid of how long it will take to learn something new because they spent their whole career climbing the ladder, and it took them—like, I guarantee you, every single executive, every single person that's in a leadership position didn't just wake up and become there, become that leader that the company needed to drive the company. Right? It took time, and I think people are afraid of, like, really beginning something new again or feeling like they're not, you know, good at something because they've been so great at it for so long that they're like, I gotta learn this new thing?

(John Mediana at 00:43:56) You know how long that's gonna take me? Right? It's almost like, you know, when back in the day when you were single and you're, like, dating and all that stuff, you're like, oh my gosh, like, long-term relationships—and that didn't work out. You're like, I gotta meet someone again and, like, do the whole dating and whatnot.

(John Mediana at 00:44:14) I'm sorry. I went on a really, like, rad show, but it's kind of the same. Yeah? It's kinda similar to making content. And—

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:23) The fear. Yeah. The fear of starting over.

(John Mediana at 00:44:25) Yeah. The fear of starting over is a real thing. And not only the fear of starting over, but the fear of: this is a new muscle I have to work out. Creativity is a muscle, and making these podcasts for you, the—I guess my advice would be: what's the closest thing that is not building tension or creating friction? You gotta ride your wind. You gotta ride your wave.

(John Mediana at 00:44:51) You gotta ride what comes more natural to you and start there, because you don't wanna add another task. You're busy. I get it. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:01) I wanna share something with you. Okay. You just inspired me to—I remember this story.

(John Mediana at 00:45:06) Yeah. I love this.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:07) So I wanted to, you know, get fit. I wanted to have some sort of, like, physical hobby. Yeah. You know, this is a while back. And I was researching and reading around, and I came across this content, and they were talking about, like, how to make these changes in your life.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:28) Right? Because everybody says, oh, you know, you got different motivations. Some people are like, I wanna be a YouTube star. Some people like, I just wanna have some content out there so that when I'm seeking opportunities, people have some stuff to chew on. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:40) You have all of these different things. But the thing that makes people successful in this article I was reading was when they pair it with their identity. So, like, if you wake up and you're like, am I gonna run today? And that being a question is different than you wake up and you say, I'm a runner, so I'm going to go do my thing.

(John Mediana at 00:46:03) Yes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:03) And, like, there's then there's no question. Are you going to run today?

(John Mediana at 00:46:06) It's like—

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:06) That's what I do. Yeah. I'm a runner. It's what I do. I have my running shoes. And so then you'll start to buy special shoes for running and buy your running outfit. And you have to, like, fuse it in part of your identity.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:16) So, like, if I was a newer professional or if I was a professional that wanted to start creating content to some degree, I would literally start looking at myself like: I am a CTO, but I also create content to help the next generation. Yeah. I'm a CTO, but I create content so my team can know me better. Yes. Because I have 50 people under me, and I can't spend all the time in the world with them.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:39) Yes. Maybe it's not to become famous. Maybe it's just to get your own people within your own organization to know you better.

(John Mediana at 00:46:44) That's so accurate and so true. There's so much truth into that because, again, if you're running a 50-employee company, even, you know, a bigger, larger company than that, you can't spend all the time with them. What can you do to create proximity to your team so that they build an affinity for you leading and trusting that you can lead a company? Right? And funny enough is that when you do the research, you know, I've listened to a lot of Gary Vee stuff, and he talks about his company culture.

(John Mediana at 00:47:14) He has a chief of culture, right? And what he's doing is when their employees see his content out there and the brand that he's built, they're more likely to stay and be a part of the company because he puts himself out there so much that it's just like, yeah, what he says is true, and he has accountability to the things that he says, which creates a dynamic and exciting company culture where it's like, I don't really want to—I don't really see myself leaving here because the CEO, the founder, is really a media person. They don't even have to be technical. It's just like they just always drive the vision, and I get to hear the vision on a daily basis, and I get to attach myself and say, yeah.

(John Mediana at 00:48:06) I want to work for that guy or girl. You know? I want to work for that leader, and I want to be part of that company. And what you don't recognize is that you'll start getting people from all over the world that will stumble upon your content and be like, what would it be like to work for and with them? Right?

(John Mediana at 00:48:27) And like I always say, you're one piece of content away from changing the trajectory of your company. You never know. Right? You just never know. And if you keep on doing that and practicing just like a muscle, right, you're going to be a practitioner of it, and you're going to start learning because, again, the future of business is personal.

(John Mediana at 00:48:49) The future of business is built on impact and proximity and human impact. If you're trying to create human impact and create a phenomenal company culture, or even, you know, what drives you every morning and the vision that you have, you've got to communicate that. Not just with the world, but you can even communicate that with a weekly video newsletter to your employees, and it just sends out to your employees through email.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:18) Yeah, right? A hundred percent. It's just about relationships and just using technology to amplify your reach.

(John Mediana at 00:49:28) That's it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:29) And connect with your people. That's funny that you mentioned—I think his chief heart officer is Claude Silver. She—I think it was three years ago, we were licensing some of our content for leadership development training, and she was the closest thing to head of HR. Yeah. And I was trying to get a meeting with her, and she wouldn't meet with me.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:50) Right? And I was like, dang. I got it. I was like, what could I do? And so I was listening to a Gary Vee video, and he was talking about just crazy ways to get in front of people.

(John Mediana at 00:50:02) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:03) And so I was following her online, and I saw she was having a kid. Well, at the time, I had a children's charity where we made these books, these children's books. Yeah. So I said, all right, well, this is what we're going to do. I talked to Chloe. Chloe, let's get some of these books together, wrap them up, let's just mail them to her office with a little congratulations card. Oh. And I wrote something along the lines of like, "Claude, I'm not trying to be creepy, but I want to stand out, and I was listening to Gary Vee on how to stand out, so I hope this is acceptable."

(John Mediana at 00:50:34) Oh, so true. And you know what's so funny? I love that story because again, when you're leading a department or you're in charge or responsible, you know, your days can get filled up and your schedule can get filled up, and it's just noise. Anything that tries to distract you becomes noise, so it's not—I mean, I'm not surprised that it's like, can't get a call. But doing those things where you're able to drive value and just, you know, his book, Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, is a great example of it. It's basically saying give, give, give, ask.

(John Mediana at 00:51:10) Right? So, and I love the opening line, "Not trying to be creepy." Yeah. And then you're like, you need to finish the sentence. Like, I have to—my brain has to be like, oh, this is going to be good.

(John Mediana at 00:51:23) Like, well—

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:24) Yeah.

(John Mediana at 00:51:24) Like, finish that sentence. Like, what is this going to sound like, you know?

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:28) I'm either going to need to call the police or I'm going to have to order—

(John Mediana at 00:51:32) Alert, like—

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:35) Oh, but she met with me. She did.

(John Mediana at 00:51:36) Yeah. And—my gosh. Yeah. So it's fascinating because, again, going back to the marketing part, the whole department marketing could be really summed up as attention. Right?

(John Mediana at 00:51:50) And that whole thing is, how do I get people's attention? And, you know, when you add—and the whole history of marketing, if we go back, it went all the way back to the first printing press. Right? So you had to—it's a communication tool. What are you communicating?

(John Mediana at 00:52:09) What message? And then that evolved. Imagine with a printing press, imagine if you're a business owner, maybe you sell couches or something like that back in the day, and you're trying to tell people to buy your stuff, you have to figure out how to create a message on a newspaper for people to read.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:27) Bro, bro, you would just shout it from a mountain top. I'm selling this couch. Yeah.

(John Mediana at 00:52:35) Right? That's—

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:36) That's what they would do.

(John Mediana at 00:52:37) So that's the first—the first marketing campaign is you go to Town Square and you say, "Hey, I'm selling my couch." Right? Then printing press. Right?

(John Mediana at 00:52:48) And then the radio came, and you're like, how do I sell a couch with just voice and with just thirty seconds? Right? And it was a time thing. And then TV came. You're like, how do I sell a couch just visually if they can't sit on it, and I only have fifteen seconds?

(John Mediana at 00:53:04) And then time got shorter because attention spans got shorter, and then social media came. It's like, how do I sell a couch on social media while the attention span's seven seconds? And they can't see—so, you know, there was just so many—complicate—but now, marketing has evolved and I think the influencer marketing industry became a billion-dollar industry pre-COVID, and then people are starting to sell stuff. They're like, oh, that's my favorite person, my celebrity. Oh, they're selling—they're a part of that brand?

(John Mediana at 00:53:35) I've got to buy that. Right? I think the very first influencer was Oprah. Right? But they're using personal brands to sell stuff.

(John Mediana at 00:53:44) Right? Because of the trust, know, likability. That's why you have—if you want to sell a couch, just let Shaq sell it because he sells everything, apparently. He'll do any commercial. I see him all over the place.

(John Mediana at 00:53:57) He's selling insurance. He's selling this. I'm like, just get Shaq to sell it. It's fine. People will buy.

(John Mediana at 00:54:03) But—

(Joel Beasley at 00:54:03) He's got some great life advice. I see him on social media with these little clips of him talking. Every time I see him, I stop to watch because he's always got something that will make you think.

(John Mediana at 00:54:13) It does. I feel like he's just come to a place. I think he's like, I don't want to be a celebrity anymore. I'm just a human being. Right?

(John Mediana at 00:54:20) He'll actually go to EDC and all that stuff and hang out with fans. You know? He's a normal human being. And I think going back to Shaq, he has a phenomenal, strong personal brand. I would say it's strong because it's so relatable.

(John Mediana at 00:54:37) He's just honest and authentic. He doesn't care. He's Shaq. He made it. This dude made it.

(John Mediana at 00:54:44) But he's still willing to hang out and spend time with people because he's a normal human being, which is crazy. And I'm like, oh, if I could take a chapter out of his book, I just need to start being a normal human being and having conversations with people, and don't think of myself as I'm this busy leader person. In fact, how do we start getting back to the human-to-human impact? Right? How can I start having more conversations with people?

(John Mediana at 00:55:16) And I think the collaborative part and the thing that's really exciting about what we do is that creativity shouldn't be siloed. It shouldn't just be you. Creativity happens when you get—even throughout this whole podcast, there's been ideas that spark new ideas and new stories, and it just creates and evolves. That's why I love the idea of collaboration so much and doing creativity together and building teams to create that environment of, you never know what could happen. You never know what ideas could be born, but then those ideas need a plan.

(John Mediana at 00:55:55) Right? Yeah. So yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:55:58) When you were talking about, I guess it would be not necessarily attention, but attention spans, yeah, right, getting shorter. So I've thought a lot about that because it's a common phrase, and there's plenty of data. I've looked it up.

(Joel Beasley at 00:56:16) There's plenty of data that shows that that's true. But then there's also plenty of data that shows Joe Rogan's the most successful personality in the world right now.

(John Mediana at 00:56:27) Right? Yeah. Two-hour podcasts.

(Joel Beasley at 00:56:29) Yeah. They listen to form a podcast.

(John Mediana at 00:56:30) A podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:56:32) Right? Yeah. And so I was trying to, within myself, trying to somehow settle that. If the attention span's not even fifteen seconds, but yet people are listening for three hours, how do you reconcile that? And I always come up with this.

(Joel Beasley at 00:56:50) Yeah. So I haven't tested this. I haven't run this by the experts. Yeah. But what I've come up with, looking within myself—I always start subjectively first.

(Joel Beasley at 00:57:00) Yeah. Is, it's not attention span as much as it is time to value.

(John Mediana at 00:57:06) Yeah. So—

(Joel Beasley at 00:57:09) If I give people value right away and then I can change to deliver value and I'm like value, value, value. That's what Rogan's podcast is doing. That is. You know?

(Joel Beasley at 00:57:19) He instantly, right when the show starts, they cut it in at some interesting part of the conversation. Right?

(John Mediana at 00:57:25) Well—

(Joel Beasley at 00:57:25) Yeah. So boom, value.

(John Mediana at 00:57:27) That's the formula, I think, today because I think two things about the attention span and value is—number one, I always say your vibe attracts your tribe. You're—if you're not—you're not going to reach everybody. If you're trying to reach everybody, you're going to reach nobody. So if you understand exactly who your audience is, Joe Rogan understands he has a very, very broad audience. But what is intriguing is that he is asking the questions that we want to ask from experts or subject matter experts in their field.

(John Mediana at 00:58:02) And throughout that whole two-hour journey or however long it is, putting that moment or mic drop moment or just exciting moment up front to tee it up gets the attention. And again, going back to the crocodile brain, it kind of breaks past the security system that we have in our brains. Now it's—funny enough, a goldfish's attention span is seven seconds or six seconds. Ours is three. So what does that say about society?

(John Mediana at 00:58:30) Right. But if you—

(Joel Beasley at 00:58:30) We're super goldfish.

(John Mediana at 00:58:32) We're super goldfish. Super Saiyan goldfish now. I was watching a lot of Dragon Ball Z growing up.

(John Mediana at 00:58:41) I just thought of a goldfish with Goku's hair. Basically, what we're saying is up front, people want to know why they're watching. Right? They want to know, am I going to invest time into this? Because time is a currency in today's world, especially in the executive world.

(John Mediana at 00:59:05) Time is currency, and they're going to choose what they give their time to. So if you're making content or making valuable content, you're like, oh my gosh, I know this person would absolutely love this podcast. They need to listen to it. And you send it to them.

(John Mediana at 00:59:23) You probably have had this happen in the past. You send a friend a podcast, and you're like, you need to listen to this. Right? The whole thing. I was just thinking about you the whole podcast.

(John Mediana at 00:59:32) And then you send it to him, and a week goes by, you're like, dude, did you listen to it? He's like, oh, man. I didn't listen to it. I'm sorry. I was just been so busy.

(John Mediana at 00:59:39) You know? And then that happens, you're like, dude, when are you going to listen to it? And it never happens. Right? It's because the value—it was valuable to you because it actually captured your time.

(John Mediana at 00:59:49) You traded your time for the value that you got from it. But if that podcast put up front three seconds, five seconds of value that grabs that person, oh, this is what I'm going to get into. I am here. I'm going to grab my popcorn. I'm going to listen to it.

(John Mediana at 01:00:05) And they deep dive into it as it gradually tells a story, and they're like, oh, I need to find out where that part of the podcast is. They're going to stay all the way to the end because they're hooked. Right? So that's the hook. You've got to find—if you're making content that you want retention on, you've got to hook your audience.

(John Mediana at 01:00:23) You've got to let them know up front, this is what you're going to get from this content. Enjoy it. Stick around. There's more exciting stuff happening. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 01:00:32) I want to make sure that we get any sort of calls to action. People want to learn more about you. Yeah. What's your website? How do they find you online?

(Joel Beasley at 01:00:41) Yeah.

(John Mediana at 01:00:41) Awesome. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me on the podcast. It was so much fun. I felt like the time was so short because we just—I love having conversations with you, bro. So if you want to find out more about who I am and what we do, you could go to executivebrandgrowth.com.

(John Mediana at 01:00:59) You could follow me on all social medias, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn. I'm on all of them. It's just at John Mediana. Media is actually in my name. I felt like I was born to do this.

(John Mediana at 01:01:12) It's crazy.

(Joel Beasley at 01:01:14) That's funny.

(John Mediana at 01:01:15) Yeah. Yeah. And that's it. I would love to continue the conversation with you online, whoever's listening, and I hope this was helpful. I hope it really helped your audience, Joel.

(John Mediana at 01:01:25) But start—start today. You know? You just got to start because you can't get to the hundredth episode or hundredth piece of content if you're stumbling on the first or second piece. So just do it.

(Joel Beasley at 01:01:38) Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you'd like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email, [email protected]. Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.