Meeting Title: Uttam <> Kim Date: 2025-06-03 Meeting participants: Uttam Kumaran, kimbl
WEBVTT
1 00:01:00.210 ⇒ 00:01:01.130 kimbl: Hello!
2 00:01:02.060 ⇒ 00:01:03.849 Uttam Kumaran: Hi! How are you?
3 00:01:03.850 ⇒ 00:01:05.470 kimbl: I’m great. How are you?
4 00:01:05.470 ⇒ 00:01:08.699 Uttam Kumaran: Good, really nice to meet you. Thank you for taking the time.
5 00:01:08.890 ⇒ 00:01:11.689 kimbl: Of course I’m happy to do it. Yeah.
6 00:01:12.050 ⇒ 00:01:15.000 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I know we were playing phone tag a little bit. So I appreciate it.
7 00:01:15.420 ⇒ 00:01:18.780 kimbl: 6 in the night on the calendar front.
8 00:01:18.780 ⇒ 00:01:19.560 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
9 00:01:19.560 ⇒ 00:01:20.095 kimbl: Good.
10 00:01:20.630 ⇒ 00:01:37.210 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. So I I heard a lot of really amazing things from Vishnu. And I think we’re like, maybe in a similar spot to when you were working with their team, or I don’t know we’re following in their footsteps a lot and taking a lot of great advice from them. But yeah, I think I gave
11 00:01:37.360 ⇒ 00:01:44.811 Uttam Kumaran: oh, kind of a little bit of this from the challenges. But happy to share more about Brainforge or or anything.
12 00:01:45.686 ⇒ 00:02:09.280 Uttam Kumaran: but yeah, really, just had a couple of questions just about how we can sort of scale up a little bit of our marketing blog and sort of top of funnel awareness type of work. And really even just hearing about this, the things that strategies are the ways, both like very tactically, but also like what indicators that you were looking at at Flux 7. Probably a lot of the questions that I had today honestly.
13 00:02:09.490 ⇒ 00:02:20.200 kimbl: Yeah, sure. Well, I can ramble if you want, or if you want to ask me specific questions, whatever is most helpful to you, I frankly, I adore that team and.
14 00:02:20.200 ⇒ 00:02:20.610 Uttam Kumaran: I am.
15 00:02:20.610 ⇒ 00:02:25.586 kimbl: So you know they’re like, please help. I’m all I’m all on board.
16 00:02:25.920 ⇒ 00:02:27.159 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, okay. Great.
17 00:02:27.160 ⇒ 00:02:29.620 kimbl: So let’s see my.
18 00:02:31.280 ⇒ 00:02:59.179 kimbl: I think in terms of scale. My Mo. Has been to do. I call him ramble and rights and I don’t know if I said anything about that. But basically have smart questions. Get on the phone like I’d get on the phone with him. I do this today with my executives. And I just ask, like, what do you think about this? What do you think about that like? Let’s form a point of view about what’s happening in the market today, or
19 00:02:59.410 ⇒ 00:03:10.139 kimbl: things that we think should be happening, but always kind of attached in some way to product or the service, or you know, so you can back your way into
20 00:03:10.760 ⇒ 00:03:34.280 kimbl: this is why this piece of thought, leadership or this point of view that we’re putting into the market supports our product position, etc. But that’s important for scale, in in my opinion. Because then I just have a plethora of content that I just take and shape and form and use different ways on the blog in social media
21 00:03:34.560 ⇒ 00:03:44.588 kimbl: pitching, speaking opportunities like it’s it’s the same message. It’s the same thing. It’s the same point of view, just reformulated in different ways. And
22 00:03:45.680 ⇒ 00:03:59.830 kimbl: My mantra has always been like just when I get sick and tired of hearing the same message. That’s when the market’s starting to hear it. So you know, I think sometimes marketers are too quick to move on to the next thing.
23 00:03:59.830 ⇒ 00:04:00.430 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, okay.
24 00:04:00.430 ⇒ 00:04:16.259 kimbl: Gotta be a drumbeat. Right? It’s like, this is what we think. And the market changes like great. This is our point of view on it this essentially the same thing. It’s just, you know, applying the message to whatever’s changing or happening in in the marketplace.
25 00:04:17.079 ⇒ 00:04:17.869 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
26 00:04:17.870 ⇒ 00:04:25.580 kimbl: So and then the right and ramble, in my opinion, allows me to get a ton of content. So you’re not constantly
27 00:04:25.810 ⇒ 00:04:40.619 kimbl: like answering different questions, or, you know, using your bandwidth on content front, but more just reviewing and approving like, yep, this looks good. Yep, this is what I said, let’s tweak this or whatever it might be, so that you’re less
28 00:04:41.177 ⇒ 00:04:49.332 kimbl: in the day to day trenches, and more like just the Uber Review type of a position in the process.
29 00:04:50.190 ⇒ 00:04:53.600 kimbl: I don’t know if that looks anything like what you guys do today or.
30 00:04:53.770 ⇒ 00:04:56.160 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. So let me maybe explain a little bit. So yeah.
31 00:04:56.160 ⇒ 00:05:03.229 Uttam Kumaran: today, we have we’ve sort of finally gotten into that sort of position, where I think, with the help of
32 00:05:03.440 ⇒ 00:05:06.030 Uttam Kumaran: me, talking to Chatgpt a lot, and then.
33 00:05:06.030 ⇒ 00:05:06.470 kimbl: Taking, that.
34 00:05:06.470 ⇒ 00:05:07.680 Uttam Kumaran: Transcript, and then giving it.
35 00:05:07.680 ⇒ 00:05:08.540 kimbl: Yeah, that’s.
36 00:05:08.540 ⇒ 00:05:31.230 Uttam Kumaran: It’s been our process so far. I think we last week, and the week before was like the 1st week where we achieved almost 6 to 7 posts a week. So we’re trying to do a lot on Linkedin. And you know, in in speaking with a lot of my friends that do. B, 2 B. That’s what they said is, just try to get to that sort of cadence. I think what we’ll work on now is having set things that people can expect on the same days of the week.
37 00:05:31.551 ⇒ 00:05:42.789 Uttam Kumaran: And again, I I think all that makes my my background, by the way, is, I’m an engineer. So I worked a lot of designers. I’ve worked a lot of marketers. I tend to just ask them what’s working with the algorithm or.
38 00:05:42.790 ⇒ 00:05:43.220 kimbl: Yeah.
39 00:05:43.220 ⇒ 00:05:58.767 Uttam Kumaran: I can sort of follow. I don’t really question too much, but part of it. The reason we haven’t been able to do it sooner is because of the sustainability. Right? So I know that we want to do something a real sustainable process. And so that’s currently what we do. Is we we
40 00:05:59.220 ⇒ 00:06:02.870 Uttam Kumaran: every week we’re we’re doing also video content as well.
41 00:06:02.870 ⇒ 00:06:03.530 kimbl: Perfect. Yeah.
42 00:06:03.812 ⇒ 00:06:18.770 Uttam Kumaran: And so we’re able to repurpose that for clips on Linkedin and on Youtube. So that usually takes up a day or 2 anytime. We have a speaking engagement. We sort of do like a series before, like we’re talking what we’re talking about day of, and then like a recap.
43 00:06:19.096 ⇒ 00:06:36.949 Uttam Kumaran: All of that, I think, is empowered by just me answering much questions, sort of handing it to that team. We have one just one person on our team. That’s sort of that’s sort of repurposing that and turning that step. We we do have a blog, and the blog is helping with SEO and just helping us to do more thought leadership work.
44 00:06:37.246 ⇒ 00:06:50.289 Uttam Kumaran: I guess my question would be like, you know, I think you mentioned 2 things, I think I’ll probably get to the the speaking second, the the this I guess I would be curious into like what you felt was like the highest leverage
45 00:06:50.290 ⇒ 00:07:05.430 Uttam Kumaran: activity that y’all were doing on a weekly basis. Did it come down to just like the consistency? Did you have like clear sort of Kpis, and like you were measuring like what was actually driving.
46 00:07:05.790 ⇒ 00:07:09.850 Uttam Kumaran: you know. Traffic, of course, but like meetings booked like, maybe you can talk about
47 00:07:10.358 ⇒ 00:07:19.119 Uttam Kumaran: what? What? What was the if, if anything in particular activity like really cracked the code more than than the other.
48 00:07:20.290 ⇒ 00:07:27.370 kimbl: Yeah, we I think to your point, it’s all about cadence. So I think that was one of the things that just really
49 00:07:28.200 ⇒ 00:07:39.640 kimbl: paid off, and for me continues to pay off. People know what to expect. And just having that cadence, you’re rewarded by a lot of the algorithms to. You know.
50 00:07:39.760 ⇒ 00:07:48.360 kimbl: these folks have something good to say. They’re consistent. They have great thought leadership, that type of thing. And I think you know.
51 00:07:48.970 ⇒ 00:08:03.376 kimbl: Linkedin is a beast to feed, but you know, even on a blog, if you post every Tuesday and Thursday, or whatever the case might be, and people come to expect that we had a lot of kpis around the blog when I worked with Otter
52 00:08:03.860 ⇒ 00:08:07.009 kimbl: and we got meetings from like
53 00:08:07.260 ⇒ 00:08:14.840 kimbl: John Deere, who ended up being one of our biggest customers because they read the blog things like that. So it was more
54 00:08:16.390 ⇒ 00:08:17.169 kimbl: kind of
55 00:08:18.310 ⇒ 00:08:33.460 kimbl: it wasn’t something we were tracking every week per se, like how many readers or this type of a thing, but definitely looking at the content that performed the best? And how can we? Do you know more like this type of an approach to the blog?
56 00:08:34.307 ⇒ 00:08:44.109 kimbl: And then we were also very close partners with aws, so always looking for things that we could leverage, cross, promote, get on their blog, put.
57 00:08:44.110 ⇒ 00:08:44.630 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
58 00:08:44.630 ⇒ 00:08:51.869 kimbl: Repurpose and turn into byline articles for publications to get them published in other places. Those types of things, too. Yeah.
59 00:08:53.080 ⇒ 00:08:58.123 Uttam Kumaran: And then, so maybe we could talk about that like we haven’t done a lot on the
60 00:08:58.850 ⇒ 00:09:06.689 Uttam Kumaran: like I think we could. But we just haven’t done a lot on sort of backlinking with other blogs and like, Can you talk about any sort of the
61 00:09:07.137 ⇒ 00:09:23.260 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know. I sort of call like hijacking their cack or basically taking advantage. And we’re we’re commonly the smaller fish. So maybe you could talk about that like if you if you guys did any of that, and if that worked really really well and like how you navigated those conversations with some of those partners.
62 00:09:23.690 ⇒ 00:09:28.079 kimbl: Yeah, so I my background is in public relations.
63 00:09:28.240 ⇒ 00:09:32.380 kimbl: So I come from that kind of history. And so, you know.
64 00:09:32.560 ⇒ 00:09:45.169 kimbl: I did a lot of pitching of different publications to get articles on there, and you know they’re actually quite eager for new, fresh content. Within media there.
65 00:09:47.330 ⇒ 00:09:50.020 kimbl: It’s just not a growing industry. I’ll say it that way.
66 00:09:50.020 ⇒ 00:09:50.410 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
67 00:09:50.410 ⇒ 00:10:19.050 kimbl: They also, they’re trying to feed this content beast. And so they’re interested in new points of view. You know, if you’re from a very large company. Of course, that’s interesting to them, but even more so. It’s something that people are just gonna read and engage with. So that’s where they’re coming from. And so I think if you have a unique point of view, a new twist on something, or like even a customer joint customer, story type of thing that you could tell that would definitely be interesting to them.
68 00:10:19.481 ⇒ 00:10:33.820 kimbl: They won’t always include a direct back link like promoting you per se, but if you have an interesting piece of thought leadership, they’ll connect to it. So a report or something that’s more
69 00:10:34.100 ⇒ 00:10:41.860 kimbl: kind of non biased feeling, yeah, and then they’ll always include your bio, and you can add a link in there, too, which helps.
70 00:10:42.480 ⇒ 00:10:56.359 Uttam Kumaran: And then for those like, who who do you reach out to at like the publication? And and, like, you know, is there any you would recommend for us to just even like try to give it a shot like. And I could sort of ask my team like, Hey, maybe let’s let’s try to
71 00:10:56.590 ⇒ 00:11:11.279 Uttam Kumaran: connect with these folks and see if there’s something that we can, because we’ve written a lot of stuff about. Not only AI in our own business. But you know a lot of AI related stuff that we’re doing for clients which I think would be like really hot for them to promote, you know. So just thinking through that.
72 00:11:11.480 ⇒ 00:11:13.629 kimbl: Yeah, super interesting. I think.
73 00:11:14.160 ⇒ 00:11:28.960 kimbl: I could send you an email afterward with some kind of like definite people to reach out to. But I would start with like the tech targets of the world. Some of those folks that are always like they have an open call for papers. Type of thing. Yeah.
74 00:11:29.090 ⇒ 00:11:42.408 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. And then can you talk about you mentioned like leveraging this for like speaking engagements? One thing that we we recently put together, and maybe I can. I’ll just briefly even
75 00:11:43.210 ⇒ 00:11:48.240 Uttam Kumaran: share. This is we put together like a why promote with brainforge
76 00:11:49.300 ⇒ 00:11:51.069 Uttam Kumaran: sort of thing where it just has.
77 00:11:51.070 ⇒ 00:11:51.480 kimbl: One year.
78 00:11:51.480 ⇒ 00:12:08.869 Uttam Kumaran: Events, we ran pictures from some of those. Well, of course, we spoke at Vixelcon this year. So vision is, I think gonna hopefully. Give us a little bit of a testimonial to put in here. But I just was wondering if you could talk about your process.
79 00:12:09.239 ⇒ 00:12:22.959 Uttam Kumaran: I think speaking engagements, you know, one of the piece of advice we got it could be from author. But like to spend. Try to spend 60% of our budget, you know, on events. You know, again, I I think about this time budget energy. And, like, you know.
80 00:12:23.060 ⇒ 00:12:39.169 Uttam Kumaran: cost. And we want to try to do that more, I think. Certainly the reception we’ve had when we’ve done speaking engagements has been really, really positive. So I do think we have something unique to share. I think we do have some sort of onstage presence for that. And so wondering if you could talk through like
81 00:12:39.610 ⇒ 00:12:56.279 Uttam Kumaran: how you sort of leverage the social media and blog to then get into sort of speaking engagements. Yeah, just like, maybe that’s kind of like, 1st question, just about that, because that’s something. Certainly we’re, I think. Just want to start to keep always on.
82 00:12:57.140 ⇒ 00:13:12.760 kimbl: Yeah, yeah. So I think couple of things. It comes back a little bit to that content review. And knowing what people are interested in what they’re reading. What’s kind of just hot with them. It’s gonna be the same thing that’s gonna be interesting to the conferences.
83 00:13:12.870 ⇒ 00:13:16.209 kimbl: The folks at the conference that are selecting, who’s going to speak?
84 00:13:17.710 ⇒ 00:13:22.179 kimbl: They also often want you to speak with a customer. So
85 00:13:22.490 ⇒ 00:13:28.100 kimbl: build in some real world examples, or hear from a real world practitioner. And maybe
86 00:13:28.920 ⇒ 00:13:40.929 kimbl: I don’t know enough about Rainforge, but that could perhaps even be you. All right, like this is our 1st hand experience as a practitioner, and what we learned, what we can share with the community type of an approach.
87 00:13:42.180 ⇒ 00:14:05.139 kimbl: any event, I shouldn’t say any most events on the website. They’ll have a call for papers, and you can just go ahead and submit. They require a brief abstract, and usually 2 or 3 like. Here’s what the audience will take away or learn from the session. And I really use that. What content is performing well, to build those, and then.
88 00:14:05.140 ⇒ 00:14:05.680 Uttam Kumaran: I see.
89 00:14:05.680 ⇒ 00:14:11.130 kimbl: I peek to it? You know what what was chosen the year before. Is there any kind of theme, or
90 00:14:11.370 ⇒ 00:14:15.078 kimbl: something they can pick pull out from from that
91 00:14:15.690 ⇒ 00:14:16.970 kimbl: And then
92 00:14:18.030 ⇒ 00:14:27.169 kimbl: the other thing you can do if you haven’t already done a lot of speaking engagements is just hit up your local user groups or local community groups
93 00:14:27.400 ⇒ 00:14:38.160 kimbl: and talk there and use that as a place to like. I’ve already spoken here and there in the other place, because that’ll help kind of just boost your resume for the conferences.
94 00:14:38.430 ⇒ 00:14:50.430 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay, yeah, we’re starting to do a lot of like local, like, I go to a lot of the stuff here. I mean, here in Austin. So I go to a lot of local stuff. And then I’m now applying to try to speak at a lot of those.
95 00:14:50.430 ⇒ 00:14:50.870 kimbl: Perfect.
96 00:14:51.108 ⇒ 00:15:04.921 Uttam Kumaran: I think that’s exactly. I mean, we do have some vendors where, if they do, host like a conference, something we could try to position ourselves there. But I think what stuck out with me what you mentioned is to really just hammer some of the same points like, Can you? Can you just reiterate on that like
97 00:15:05.290 ⇒ 00:15:12.940 Uttam Kumaran: So if you were to take, if it was, for example, if it was like a type of Aws technology or something that you guys were promoting or doing a lot like.
98 00:15:13.120 ⇒ 00:15:27.989 Uttam Kumaran: were you like, was it just repurposing the same stuff, or like, like, what were the different types of content that you did if you were to. I don’t even know if you remember an example or something, because just so, I can. I can sort of try to pattern match to something that we’re seeing in our world.
99 00:15:29.200 ⇒ 00:15:30.332 kimbl: And I think
100 00:15:31.650 ⇒ 00:15:37.370 kimbl: So we did a great case study with well, with a few customers, but
101 00:15:38.360 ⇒ 00:15:43.069 kimbl: our Mo. Was kind of to get the customer to join us on stage.
102 00:15:43.580 ⇒ 00:15:48.559 kimbl: talk about it, tell their story, and then I would come behind and say.
103 00:15:48.700 ⇒ 00:16:09.009 kimbl: that was so amazing. What you shared. We would love to write that up and share it on our website. Would you be cool with that? And they would usually say, Yes, and I write up as kind of a formal case study. And then I’d say, you know, I’m just gonna turn that formal case study into more of a blog content. So it’s a little bit, you know, chattier and
104 00:16:09.510 ⇒ 00:16:12.439 kimbl: a great entry point for the full case study.
105 00:16:12.620 ⇒ 00:16:20.580 kimbl: And people be like, Oh, yeah, that makes sense, that’s great, you know, and then I would say, you know, I was talking to reporter at CIO Magazine.
106 00:16:20.890 ⇒ 00:16:24.960 kimbl: interview you and learn more about your case study. Do you mind doing that?
107 00:16:25.870 ⇒ 00:16:30.130 kimbl: Okay, I guess we could do that right. So I just kind of would bring them up.
108 00:16:30.130 ⇒ 00:16:30.670 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
109 00:16:30.670 ⇒ 00:16:50.441 kimbl: And so by the end of the relation, and at the same time you’re not asking them for 20 things at the same time. But by the end of the relationship we had, you know, a story. And, CIO, we had a full case study. We had them on stage, you know all of these great pieces that told the the full story.
110 00:16:50.950 ⇒ 00:16:54.260 kimbl: and I think it’s same thing with other just general
111 00:16:54.560 ⇒ 00:17:12.220 kimbl: product or service messages for the company. It’s like, don’t do it yourself. Hire somebody who already knows what they’re doing and expedite it and hear examples and examples might change based on the technology or what’s happening in the market. But the message is still the same like, you don’t want to go it alone.
112 00:17:12.569 ⇒ 00:17:21.739 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, yeah, I think that’s really helpful. I mean, we’re trying to do the same thing where we have customers or partners where I think I’m 1 of the few I’m like, let’s go do a video right? Because I talked.
113 00:17:21.740 ⇒ 00:17:22.490 kimbl: Talk to some of these folks.
114 00:17:22.490 ⇒ 00:17:39.180 Uttam Kumaran: We have a great conversation, hey? Why don’t we just record the next one? We do. I’ll come if they’re here somewhere, or we’ll do it on zoom. And and we have we now have. And then we have part time. Video editor, this stuff looks like pretty high quality. So and then we can clip that. So we’re taking kind of taking advantage of that angle. Because I think Linkedin is really promoting
115 00:17:39.240 ⇒ 00:18:02.570 Uttam Kumaran: video a lot more and then it gives us these like, Re, we’re gonna use those assets again on the website. And so trying to lean on video a little bit more like, for example, even for our case studies for blogs. I may even just record like a 90 second thing. And you can just talking head sort of put stuff up there and try to do a lot more of that which I feel like is another way for us to sort of differentiate ourselves a bit.
116 00:18:03.390 ⇒ 00:18:08.570 kimbl: Yeah, that’s terrific. And but he was just taking off in terms of.
117 00:18:08.570 ⇒ 00:18:09.120 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
118 00:18:09.732 ⇒ 00:18:10.739 kimbl: I mean it’s all.
119 00:18:10.740 ⇒ 00:18:18.060 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t like. I’m not like particularly like love to do it. But whatever it takes, so yeah.
120 00:18:18.060 ⇒ 00:18:22.668 kimbl: There’s strength, because so many other people don’t like doing it either. And so they just don’t.
121 00:18:22.940 ⇒ 00:18:27.533 kimbl: That’s why I’m like, Okay, that’s like, that’s my sign that we should do it.
122 00:18:27.840 ⇒ 00:18:28.280 kimbl: Okay.
123 00:18:28.712 ⇒ 00:18:33.229 Uttam Kumaran: And it’s hard and like I, you know, I consume a lot of content. So I
124 00:18:33.260 ⇒ 00:19:03.140 Uttam Kumaran: I I want it to look good. And actually, you know, it doesn’t need to go viral. But if, for example, it’s also when a lead comes and talks to us, I want them to see, like 10 different. I want to see the site, the video, like they sort of like, get familiar with who we are and they get comfortable. And then also, like as we’re even having we’re talking to leads as a follow up, we’re sending like, Hey, check out a recent video we did, or check on a recent case study. But that’s what’s actually happening. I think now, more than ever is we? Because we have all these assets that we’ve created?
125 00:19:03.487 ⇒ 00:19:14.420 Uttam Kumaran: You know, it’s actually getting easier for us to cross promote those through all channels. And then it leaves us with stuff like we can always bring this video up next month and just repost it and say something and just keep doing that, you know.
126 00:19:14.630 ⇒ 00:19:20.599 kimbl: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That’s the beauty of some of these things are kind of evergreen. So yeah.
127 00:19:20.600 ⇒ 00:19:21.450 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
128 00:19:21.580 ⇒ 00:19:31.140 Uttam Kumaran: okay, that makes sense. I mean, I think, what we’re gonna we’re gonna continue to sort of do this like 7 day a week cadence. I think we’re doing I don’t know. Some people recommended doing more than that.
129 00:19:32.110 ⇒ 00:19:32.879 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know.
130 00:19:32.880 ⇒ 00:19:36.729 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, if it’s too much you are.
131 00:19:36.930 ⇒ 00:19:43.700 kimbl: If you post too much. My experience lately, anyway, with the algorithm is, you start cannibalizing your own content.
132 00:19:43.700 ⇒ 00:19:44.250 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
133 00:19:44.250 ⇒ 00:19:45.130 kimbl: Yeah, yeah.
134 00:19:45.130 ⇒ 00:19:51.779 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. So that’s why. And I think the biggest thing is for us just to get something basic on the weekends like a book review that we’re reading, or something.
135 00:19:51.780 ⇒ 00:19:52.160 kimbl: He was more.
136 00:19:52.160 ⇒ 00:20:10.219 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s kind of like what we’re trying to do. I think what you mentioned about the speaking gigs. I think we’re gonna probably be more aggressive there which is trying to apply for a lot more, I think, from what we already have done, and we we’ve hosted events ourselves. I think we have enough to sort of push that
137 00:20:10.548 ⇒ 00:20:30.950 Uttam Kumaran: I think we have been a little bit more shy on like going really attacking that. But I think if we can sort of get a list of of the ones that are even happening locally. And I can just apply to or be basically create something to apply more quicker or something. So I I think I’m gonna try to lean on that a lot more, because from vixel Con, from all these sort of events we’ve done.
138 00:20:30.970 ⇒ 00:20:42.890 Uttam Kumaran: The Roi has been huge like we’ve had so many follow ups tons of support. Like, you know. So I think that out of all the things we’ve done, anything we’ve done. A speaking engagements really, really been tremendous.
139 00:20:44.440 ⇒ 00:21:00.470 kimbl: Speaking is that you can go to a show for free, I mean as a speaker, and then you can walk the show. You can get a really great sense. Talk to the vendors. Does this show perform for you get kind of a feel for? Is it worth investing in in the future? So yeah.
140 00:21:00.470 ⇒ 00:21:02.010 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, okay.
141 00:21:02.210 ⇒ 00:21:09.879 Uttam Kumaran: And then, yeah, I think we’ll probably give it a shot with the with, like, some of the publications as well, like, I read a lot of pretty technical publications. So I may ask.
142 00:21:10.090 ⇒ 00:21:17.630 Uttam Kumaran: let me just reply directly to the email and say, like, Hey, big time like, been reading for a while would love to do something together. So.
143 00:21:18.880 ⇒ 00:21:31.910 kimbl: Yeah, they would love that, I think. And I I jotted down a note. I’ll send you a list of some publications, and who to reach out to and by all means, if you ever want to just run somebody by me, I’m happy to
144 00:21:32.140 ⇒ 00:21:33.899 kimbl: look them up for you, or whatever.
145 00:21:34.280 ⇒ 00:21:45.420 Uttam Kumaran: Cool. Yeah. And I guess, just like, if there’s anything else you know in in thinking back on flux or any of your current clients like that, you know, is moving the needle, and we’re willing to try
146 00:21:45.530 ⇒ 00:21:49.665 Uttam Kumaran: whatever I think as much as we can do to stand out
147 00:21:50.210 ⇒ 00:22:03.679 Uttam Kumaran: and like, have a sharper message. Is what we’re trying to do. And you know, we’re I’m reading. We’re reading some books on Brand, and how to have a really clear like. What would it be like to work with us like having a clear call to actions on everything?
148 00:22:03.790 ⇒ 00:22:08.658 Uttam Kumaran: I think that’s sort of like a little bit rough around the edges that we’re trying to clean up a little bit more.
149 00:22:08.870 ⇒ 00:22:09.215 kimbl: And.
150 00:22:09.560 ⇒ 00:22:10.720 Uttam Kumaran: But getting better.
151 00:22:11.950 ⇒ 00:22:13.840 kimbl: Let’s say, you know, it’s like.
152 00:22:15.360 ⇒ 00:22:28.859 kimbl: also I do a lot of just scanning the competition constantly. Make sure they’re not doing something cool that we should be thinking about. If you’ve got a lot of websites, you’re like, what do these guys do?
153 00:22:29.140 ⇒ 00:22:29.860 kimbl: Yeah.
154 00:22:30.230 ⇒ 00:22:33.729 Uttam Kumaran: The same. It’s terrible. Yeah. I mean, that’s what’s happened.
155 00:22:33.730 ⇒ 00:22:49.170 Uttam Kumaran: Like software. I feel like it’s a lot of really flashy websites. And then the products really suck. That’s why I’m trying to do video more because can’t hide. I mean, maybe at least for a little bit longer. You can’t hide behind the video is a real person, you know. So.
156 00:22:49.170 ⇒ 00:22:49.510 kimbl: Yeah.
157 00:22:49.850 ⇒ 00:22:54.609 Uttam Kumaran: Trying to find angles that like, hey? You may never. There’s not another data.
158 00:22:54.830 ⇒ 00:23:00.760 Uttam Kumaran: you know, consultancy that, like the CEO, is just on the front page talking about what they’re doing.
159 00:23:01.330 ⇒ 00:23:17.419 Uttam Kumaran: you know, leaning on things like that we’re doing, you know, more, broader Linkedin stuff that’s starting to work. And then, luckily, I’m trying to even promote people on our team to do more writing. I guess maybe if you could talk about that like either, the employee advocacy side of things. Or even
160 00:23:17.610 ⇒ 00:23:22.619 Uttam Kumaran: if you guys try to get more people engaged in this like content writing
161 00:23:23.380 ⇒ 00:23:26.210 Uttam Kumaran: process and like how that, how that was.
162 00:23:27.030 ⇒ 00:23:27.605 kimbl: Hey?
163 00:23:28.330 ⇒ 00:23:35.450 kimbl: In the past I’ve had a tour of duty program where I recruited people to do a tour of duty for
164 00:23:35.790 ⇒ 00:23:41.460 kimbl: okay or just content. Generation and people are like it’s my turn.
165 00:23:41.460 ⇒ 00:23:42.060 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
166 00:23:42.060 ⇒ 00:23:45.010 kimbl: But I’m like, really, it’s not that bad, because
167 00:23:45.840 ⇒ 00:24:04.643 kimbl: not everybody’s confident writer, but like as long as you can get your ideas down they can be bullet points. You can leave me a voicemail message. I don’t care. We will write it. We’ll make it sound awesome, and then you’ll get to review it and approve it. It’ll be in your name, and we’ll do that for X amount of time, and then you’ll be free.
168 00:24:04.920 ⇒ 00:24:08.780 Uttam Kumaran: So then you you you had them time box it. And who was it that they
169 00:24:08.920 ⇒ 00:24:15.530 Uttam Kumaran: they’re like? You just got like a bunch of posts out of that to carry on for like some time, or was it were they just like.
170 00:24:15.640 ⇒ 00:24:23.499 Uttam Kumaran: is that like a 2 week thing like I’m trying to think through, because we have. I mean, we have some great people on our team earlier in their career that I know that have expressed interest. So
171 00:24:23.720 ⇒ 00:24:24.670 Uttam Kumaran: I want to try to
172 00:24:24.670 ⇒ 00:24:46.969 Uttam Kumaran: take advantage of that. I know how hard this has been, so I’m certainly going to leverage some of the same things. But I think you’re right is that the always on mindset is probably only gonna work for like me, or like management. So maybe it is best to be like, hey, every month we’re gonna pick one person. Maybe that includes a team member spotlight couple of things that they want to write about a video or something.
173 00:24:48.450 ⇒ 00:24:51.313 kimbl: Yeah, I did more of a you don’t have to
174 00:24:52.000 ⇒ 00:25:02.189 kimbl: take this for what it’s worth. I’ll say that way. I had kind of always on for a team. But then within the team I would rotate. So, for example, we had customer success. And I was like.
175 00:25:02.240 ⇒ 00:25:22.459 kimbl: Okay, your tour duty this month, and you’re gonna help me come up with 3 customer stories right? And then we would rotate to the next person, like, all right. Now it’s your turn, you know. So it was to your point about the cadence, like we had a cadence where the customer stories fit in. But it wasn’t always the same person who had to come up with the customer story.
176 00:25:22.970 ⇒ 00:25:24.180 kimbl: Yeah? So.
177 00:25:24.480 ⇒ 00:25:34.210 Uttam Kumaran: And then for them, okay, so that that makes sense. I mean, we’re a much smaller team. So I think we would probably do something like that like once a quarter. It’s like one person, and we just try to get a couple of things.
178 00:25:34.670 ⇒ 00:25:41.870 Uttam Kumaran: You know. And also we’re trying to do a lot more of of like. Ha! I think when people have written it, then they’re bought into promote it as well.
179 00:25:41.990 ⇒ 00:25:44.889 Uttam Kumaran: That’s the sort of stuff that I’m I’m trying to
180 00:25:45.740 ⇒ 00:25:55.510 Uttam Kumaran: help do more, because collectively, as a company, our network is really, really wide. A lot of people aren’t active on Linkedin and so trying to be like, please, can you just repost this with a comment like that’d be really.
181 00:25:55.510 ⇒ 00:25:56.410 kimbl: Yeah.
182 00:25:56.530 ⇒ 00:26:02.639 kimbl: I have a couple of figures I’ll send you to when I send you those reporters around, just like
183 00:26:02.770 ⇒ 00:26:08.800 kimbl: how much a single share across the team makes a difference in terms of amplifying.
184 00:26:08.800 ⇒ 00:26:11.969 kimbl: Yeah, that would be amazing. Yeah, yeah, like, come on, you guys.
185 00:26:11.970 ⇒ 00:26:12.730 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, I’ll watch.
186 00:26:13.360 ⇒ 00:26:39.130 Uttam Kumaran: Show them that basically we need to do this. I mean, cause I’ll go. I’ll bug people like, I just want to. I also know that the better the content the more people will want to promote it. But it’s just like sometimes people are shy, or you know, I think also getting folks to write, maybe get them over that hump, and then they’re like sort of more in the process. I know there’s a bunch of employee advocacy stuff and things like that. But.
187 00:26:39.130 ⇒ 00:26:39.670 kimbl: Yeah.
188 00:26:40.050 ⇒ 00:26:45.249 Uttam Kumaran: I think we’ll just. We’re a small team. So just asking people nicely, and maybe we’ll probably work.
189 00:26:45.780 ⇒ 00:26:49.240 kimbl: I think so. And you know, part of it is just muscle memory.
190 00:26:50.620 ⇒ 00:26:53.219 kimbl: Get in the habit of sharing everybody’s stuff. And yeah.
191 00:26:53.220 ⇒ 00:27:00.050 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, some teams really do do quite well on Linkedin. They sort of swarm a topic or a thing like that.
192 00:27:02.590 ⇒ 00:27:05.230 Uttam Kumaran: And then I guess a lot. Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead.
193 00:27:05.230 ⇒ 00:27:10.729 kimbl: I was. Just say, I have a team of 400 sellers that I’m trying to get to like, amplify post and stuff.
194 00:27:10.730 ⇒ 00:27:12.030 kimbl: Yes, out.
195 00:27:12.260 ⇒ 00:27:23.086 kimbl: 2530% are awesome. And then, like, 20% are like some timers. And then the rest I’m like, Come on, you guys.
196 00:27:23.520 ⇒ 00:27:34.450 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, I mean, but I just sometimes people like we do where I could tell where people’s brains, because I asked my friends open their Linkedin. And I’m usually the 1st one now.
197 00:27:34.640 ⇒ 00:27:47.070 Uttam Kumaran: right? And so someone’s like, if you’re people are telling you like, Hey, I’m seeing you on Linkedin all the time like, that’s a good thing, right? So that’s what I’m trying to do. And just like magnify our audience. But it starts with me right, like I’m the toughest
198 00:27:47.310 ⇒ 00:28:03.720 Uttam Kumaran: client to get the time and the and the resources. So it’s working for me then now we could start to scale it, or at least again, there’s some people I know who are sincere about wanting to grow their their Linkedin. And I’m like, Hey, we use the company resources to do so. It’s a win win right like I don’t mind at all.
199 00:28:05.110 ⇒ 00:28:15.400 kimbl: Yeah. And I mean, there’s just so much goodness that you can pull, whether it’s, you know, participating in those events or the articles or employee profiles, or I mean, people can kind of
200 00:28:15.820 ⇒ 00:28:18.430 kimbl: choose what they want to promote. They don’t have to do.
201 00:28:18.620 ⇒ 00:28:20.709 kimbl: It doesn’t have to be the ocean, you know.
202 00:28:20.710 ⇒ 00:28:25.949 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay, okay, this is really, really helpful. I have.
203 00:28:25.950 ⇒ 00:28:26.330 kimbl: Like, so.
204 00:28:26.330 ⇒ 00:28:39.479 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think. I think you’ll certainly take advantage of a couple of these. I feel like the speaking gigs as you mentioned, and then doing this rotation thing. Yeah, we’re gonna do something like that for sure. That’s gonna be helpful.
205 00:28:41.020 ⇒ 00:28:53.119 kimbl: I I’m happy to be a resource if you ever have a question, or whatever feel free to ping me and I do also have like a database of folks at my disposal. So if you’re ever just like
206 00:28:53.620 ⇒ 00:28:55.649 kimbl: you help out with this, just let me know.
207 00:28:55.990 ⇒ 00:29:09.069 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, yeah, I think maybe we’ll try to. I’ll let you know if we have like something really targeted. We’re trying to promote and and and we’d love to even just your feedback in general. So in case you see something on Linkedin, you’re like, Hey, you guys could improve this a little bit, or any feedback
208 00:29:09.380 ⇒ 00:29:11.200 Uttam Kumaran: totally open to it, so.
209 00:29:11.700 ⇒ 00:29:15.890 kimbl: Okay, okay, I’m so happy. We finally connected.
210 00:29:15.890 ⇒ 00:29:35.079 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, thank you so much. I know. I we’re we’re. I’m just now like, I’m spending all my time on sales and marketing almost as much of it as I can, and so just trying to like optimize. And then because I take this and I disseminate it to the team. And then, you know, we we all sort of go at it together. So this is really really helpful.
211 00:29:36.630 ⇒ 00:29:37.979 kimbl: I’m glad I could be in town.
212 00:29:38.370 ⇒ 00:29:40.570 Uttam Kumaran: Appreciate it. Okay, thank you so much. Kim.
213 00:29:40.570 ⇒ 00:29:42.269 kimbl: You’re welcome. Have a good one.
214 00:29:42.270 ⇒ 00:29:42.780 Uttam Kumaran: Bye.
215 00:29:43.034 ⇒ 00:29:43.290 kimbl: Bye.