126 | Winning B2B on LinkedIn and TikTok w/ Zoe Hartsfield

Zoe Hartsfield calls herself the Queen of video prospecting, a killer relationship builder, and a mediocre podcast guest.

I beg to differ... at least on the last part

In fact, just that description alone shows part of the reason she's doing so well in her career using LinkedIn and TikTok to grow business relationships.

We had a PHENOMENAL conversation about all the tactics she uses to grow relationships across multiple channels and skyrocket her personal brand.

Connect with Zoe!
On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zoehart/


Connect with ME!

Also, I'd love it if you connected with me on LinkedIn or Instagram.

Or shoot me an email at youshould@connectwithpablo.com with the "Heard CEC's Zoe" in subject.

This that's a genius email address?  Me too, but I didn't come up with it.  It was the idea of my good friend, and super talented web designer, Nathan Ruff.If you want your website redone, updated, and managed with unlimited updates for just $250/month (CRAZY GOOD DEAL RIGHT??), go to Manage My Website and hookup with one of the smartest, most talented guys I've ever met- THE Nathan Ruff.

Transcript

Zoe: 2:19

sales is so much less about"hi, I'm Dooley. This is what I do." It's"Hey, this is who you are. This is the headache you're feeling right now. What if you didn't have a headache anymore? Well, here's some Advil. Like we sell it. Do you want to have a conversation with us?" That's really what it is. It's like, you have to point out their pain, you to present a future state where they don't have any pain. And there are levers that people want to move. So it's make more money. Save more money or be more secure. Those are kind of like what I see as the three key things that, that SaaS is solving at the moment and so if you can present something as solving one of those pains, Then I think you earn that time. and so I think everything from the sales process to the messaging that you're putting out, it needs to address the pain that your prospect feels not your product. Like you don't need to flex your product. You need to like show them that, you know, And then present a future state where they don't have that pain anymore. And that's when you introduce your product as a solution, it is the last step, as opposed to leading with me, me, me, this is what we do. It's you, you, you, what if you could be here?

Pablo Gonzalez: 4:21

Welcome back to the chief executive connected podcast. I am Pablo Gonzalez, your host and chief executive connected today. I'm super pumped to talk to Zoe Hartsfield. Who's the community partner manager at Dooley. She is the queen of video prospecting killer relationship builder, and self-proclaimed mediocre podcast guest Zoe. I'm really excited to talk to you for a very variety of reasons. Yeah. Number one is the idea that self-deprecation is my favorite form of introduction. Yeah.

Zoe: 4:51

I mean, well, I don't know. I can't tell you how many people have connected with me. And their first message is I love your tagline. Like it's I did it on purpose and, and sometimes people, I don't know, I don't know that they get offended, but they freak out a little bit about like, why would you call yourself a mediocre podcast guests? And I was like, why wouldn't I.

Pablo Gonzalez: 5:09

Yeah, that's awesome. you strike me as kind of like a social animal and networking beast. Is that kind of a, is that kind of accurate?

Zoe: 5:19

I am a person of the people. I really, really like relationships. I mean, I think networking is. Is a natural byproduct of that. But when the world was open, I am the person to chat up my barista at the local coffee shop and become best buddies with them. So I just really enjoy conversation. I love people. I think people have intrinsic value and, and are really worth getting to know. And so that's translated really well in the business world and online because I love making genuine relationships. And I also am just a believer that yeah. Introductions are the key to really, really beautiful things. I met my husband because of an introduction. I met my best friend because of an introduction. Like relationships are really, really valuable. And when we know people and can introduce people to other people who can help them, I just think that's a beautiful thing.

Pablo Gonzalez: 6:08

A hundred percent agree. Do you have like a introduction kind of framework or like, do you have like a go-to introduction move that you'd like to do?

Zoe: 6:16

I mean, it's no, it's like way sloppier, like more abrasive than that. It's like a light bulb goes off in my head of like, oh my gosh, you need this thing. I know this person who has that thing and has the resource to give it, like, let's connect the two of you. Somebody reached out to me the other day and was like, Hey, Zoe, I've been out of a job for almost a year. if you know of anybody looking for a CSM, let me know. And literally earlier in that day I saw a post from one of my good friends that they were looking for a CSM and I was like within an instant. Yes. Put them in a group chat together, introduce them. And now that person has an interview. So like, I, you know, any time it crosses my mind, I think that's something always working in the back of my head of like, how can I help this person who kind of introduced them to you? Because like, I don't always have the resources to help everybody that I meet, but if I know somebody that does and have a good relationship with them, and I have that rapport where I could say, Hey, I know so-and-so, I'm willing to vouch for them. Will you give them a shot? Like I love doing that. I would do that all day. If that could be my job,

Pablo Gonzalez: 7:20

I love it, man. I love it. So I have a, my go-to introduction template, which I feel like compelled to share. Right. Because I always think about putting two people on a stage, like put two people on a pedestal to each other. Right. Like it would always be, like Zoe Pablo Pablo mean Zoe Pablo Zoe is the queen of connection. She is the community person, blah, blah, you know, like compliment that I really, really like. And they'd be like, I think it's useful for you because of X. And then I'll be like, oh, I also put in, like, when I met, when I met you. Right. So it's like, if I, oh, I just met you or I've known you for 10 years. Right. Like kind of that framework, then I do the second one, one, and then I'll end it with the two of you. are And I'll say like some kind of similarity and be like, you two will get along famously. It's kind of like my tagline and then happy connecting. That's like That's like, my templated thing. And then I keep the intro paragraph that I use for each person. I keep it so that I can just copy paste when I'm going to introduce them to different people.

Zoe: 8:13

That's awesome. You know what I think I do that subconsciously I can think through a couple of introductions and I do a lot of video introduction. So like, what I'll do is I'll record a video and address the email to both people and be like, what's up Laura? I wanted to introduce you to mark. Mark is the XYZ at ABC company, mark Laura. So-and-so, she's one of the best marketers I've ever worked with. I think you guys would get along swimmingly, like whatever. And so I think that format is a great way of explaining something that I already do would highly recommend to anyone who's listening to this, drop that down. It's a great way to introduce people. You want to hide people up, you know, and then they get excited about meeting each other. And it's also fun. Like I love people and any time I can build them up publicly, I want

Pablo Gonzalez: 8:54

to do that. Yes, totally. Totally. Are you are you by nature, a super organized person, like with like contacts and details and stuff like that, or,

Zoe: 9:03

no, I am a super, like, my brain is just a chaotic mess and my, my house is the only thing that's organized. Like my computer is a nightmare of sticky. notes And my notebook is literally just, I write things down for the sake of cementing it in my brain. I almost never look back at notes. So it's actually having Dooley has been really, really helpful for that organization process. Like the company that I work for is a note-taking app to help keep things straight in Salesforce. And so it helps me a lot when I'm working on like partnership deals to keep track of conversations, because otherwise they'd all be floating around in my head and that tribal knowledge would be gone. but no naturally It's not my go-to. So I need tools that are like idiot proof so that I can take notes and conjure them back up when I need them. most

Pablo Gonzalez: 9:50

Awesome. Awesome. All right. So I guess, tell me, I'm just like, I'm obviously just like going down this vein of like, oh my God. We're twins, but tell me about, so tell me about your career path. So like get into Dooley, right? Like you, you kinda, you came from sales, then you got into marketing, then at some point. Community in your title, which made me want to reach out to you. Tell me a little bit about that. Yeah.

Zoe: 10:08

So before I ever started in SAS, I worked in finance and I hated my life and I, and I was still a senior in college. I was finishing up. my time at university and my husband was like, you hate your job. I make enough money that we could survive while you finished college. Like, why don't you just quit and, and finish school for the next six months? And so I was like, okay, I'm going to do that. And then like six weeks into that, I hated not working. So I went and started looking for another job. And I wound up at this company called BombBomb, which is a cool little tech company in Colorado Springs. They really believe in rehumanizing the planet. Through video. And the video is just a more human way to communicate and, and a better sales tool than just a written email. And I'm a huge fan of it. I use video in my process, even after leaving that company, I'm a fan of those people, but they gave me a shot as an SDR. Was really just fun. It was meeting people and introducing them to other people and a lot of context finding out what they needed. Seeing if we were a good fit and setting them up with an account executive who could walk them through, you know, the best fit product for them. And then about eight months into that role, I moved into an outbound role where I was then starting conversations out of thin air with strangers, which is super-duper challenging. Cold calling is one of the most brutal things I've ever had to do in my life. A really valuable skill. Wouldn't trade that experience for anything. I don't necessarily want to do it again, but I'm glad that I have that in my toolbox. And yeah, I got to just meet a lot of people that was where I sort of got introduced to social selling. And I found out that I could build these relationships with people, even if it wasn't the right time for them to buy our product. and I also found that people are really, really willing to help. So I would ask for help. I would just come from this place of like, Hey, I'm new to this. I am, you know, 23, I don't know anything. I would love to pick your brain. Can I buy you a cup of coffee and just learn from you? And that was how I started. Just like meeting people, building these more authentic relationships. I have a ton of mentors that I've met through that. And then I moved into marketing because of some of the things that I was doing on LinkedIn. And I got to take over our social media. I write a lot of customer copy for our emails and got to work on my copywriting skills, some sort of short form communication, which was really, really fun. And I found that I loved kind of just the communicating with strangers part of it. I found that there was a lot of overlap between sales and marketing and slowly but surely I got started to be invited onto like podcasts and things like that. And I really loved being an evangelist for our brand. So that started happening. And actually the beauty of how I wound up at Dooley was because of an introduction. Someone who used to work up BombBomb introduced me to the head of marketing at Dooley, mark Chung and mark. And I chatted. I met with our head of HR, then our CEO, and then they made me an offer. And. All of that came about because I had this relationship with this guy named J K sparks. Who's phenomenal. He's the head of growth at flat file. And he's a great relationship builder, connector person too. And so I just appreciate it. The ways that people have gone to bat for me in terms of relationships. And now that's something that I get to do a little bit more. And now in a partner in community role, I basically handle all of our communities. so Dooley itself doesn't necessarily have like a proprietary community at the moment. We do a fire talks, which is pretty epic. It's like that fun show where people eat hot sauce and answer sales questions, which I love. And we are a part of many different communities and I manage those relationships. I also manage any of our like partnerships heading in. Affiliate channel stuff is what's next for us, but I love that. I get to maintain those relationships more long-term than I did as an SDR. Just like setting meetings.

Pablo Gonzalez: 13:49

All right. That was good. Oh yeah, no, no, that was good. That was good. So tell me, all right, so it sounds like when you told me that whole story, I imagine that there was one part of you that refined your like social skills and your selling skills, like it, like in finance, I know it's like a, like a networkers game, right? Like you're just kind of like at the chamber of commerce and wherever you can show up kind of thing. And that, at some point you started transitioning to building relationships online and social selling. Can you, can you tell me a little bit about that? Like, did. I I assume. And it sounds pretty explicit that you're somebody that loves talking to strangers. I love talking to strangers too. Right. So, so, so that part's easy. at what point did you. Let me rephrase it. How similar is talking to strangers when you're networking in person versus approaching them via content online. And at what point did you start taking lessons from both to inform each other?

Zoe: 14:45

Yeah, so I think they're, they're similar and they're different. And in some facets being in person, talking to strangers is easier than other facets being online is easier because. You've got this like barrier between you and another person when you're online. So rejection doesn't sting as bad as like, if you were in person in real time, trying to strike up a conversation with somebody who was clearly not interested in talking to you, which really doesn't happen to me. I feel like I get rejected more like as an SDR, when you're cold calling, you get rejected way, way more than you do in real life because people just assume you're not a real person. They're like, oh, this is a robo dialer. Like, oh, they're just a sales rep. Like there's sort of this layer of humanity that get stripped from you when you're a BDR. From a prospect's perspective, which is why I always try when I pick up for a salesperson to be really nice, even if my answer is no, because I just know what it feels like to be on that side of the spectrum. but the thing about social is like, you can connect with so many more people in real time. So. In real life. I can have a conversation with one person at a time, or like a small group of people that we're all kind of conversing at once. I can't talk to three different people about three different subjects in the same moment. There's, there's no way to do that. I would never be able to keep track of conversations, but when you're online and you're writing messages, I can be, DM-ing three different people at the same time who are hitting me up and answering questions and everything's written down. So I can go back and forth. And so there is a volume that you can attain digitally that you can't in real time in real life. also I think there's like this sort of baby step with social media where you can engage with people's content. So you don't have to hit them up in the DMS. In fact, I would not recommend that right off the bat. If people are putting out content, I would start jumping into their comments and adding value and asking questions and, and building them up and thanking them. And then, you know, once you have a little bit of familiarity there, when they responded to you a couple of times, when you are confident that they would recognize your name, if you sent them a DM, then you can take it offline, send them a message. And again, I wouldn't lead with any sort of ask. I would just continue to lead relationship first. Now, obviously that's different. If you're a BDR, like you have different goals. And you may have a solution that can help them, but if you're just looking to actually cultivate relationship and network yeah, I would never lead with an ask unless it's like, Hey. You're amazing. I want to learn from you. Can I buy you coffee? I would love to just pick your brain for a bit. Like that's an easy, easier. Yes. If they have the time then like, can I sell you something? so that's, that's kind of the way that I approach it as comments are this really easy in to building relationships and then taking those conversations offline.

Pablo Gonzalez: 17:27

Totally agree, man. I totally agree. I think it's brilliant. So tell me, talk to me about. Talk to him about how you got the title that had the word community in it was this like something like, did you have an aha moment? You're like, dude, we need to focus on building a community. Did somebody come to you with a task because they saw that you were like an awesome relationship builder. how did that start?

Zoe: 17:50

Both in a sense of when I was still an outbound BDR and I was cold calling, I went to our head of marketing, our marketing manager and the person whose role I thought I could take over when she ultimately got a promotion. And learn about the role learned about like, I knew I wanted to be in marketing and I had this theory because of an experiment we did that individuals had a better reach than our brand. So I started posting on LinkedIn. I started garnering a little bit of a following building these relationships, and I found that I was seeing more success from a selling perspective. I was getting more inbound opportunities. People asking me about BombBomb because I was putting out content around video prospecting. So. When that happened and ultimately the person whose role I was I, and she actually got a management role at another company. And that role was vacant. I was already sort of in my eyes, the obvious choice, because I had been meeting with everybody on the marketing team, telling them I was interested in that role, working on the skills that I lacked initially to take over that role. And I had told them, like, I really think our brand needs to have a personality. I think it needs to have a voice. I think that brands. Needs to be something that you can interact with. And that's partly because I had a conversation really briefly with a guy named Bruce enough. He is a ghost writer, a ghost writer for like executives on LinkedIn. he's got some insane following, but I asked him, you know, like why, why should it be. Senior leadership be active on LinkedIn. Like what is the value of social media, if you're like that high up in a company. And he was just talking about, as companies scale, you lose social trust because you're no longer a person who started a company. You're this like entity and there's this lack of humanity that comes with an entity. So. By getting individuals engaged in communities, you begin to rebuild that social trust and have like a more human relationship with your customers and your fans and potential customers and things like that. So that was sort of the vision I brought to that role. And they were like, yeah, we want you to manage short of our customer community and our social media communities and see how we can build that following and build engagement even if they aren't customers yet. And so that's sort of how the community title got roped into. my title at BombBomb, again, we didn't have a proprietary community. It was more so talking about our customers, our followers, and our potential future customers that we could kind of engage with on

Pablo Gonzalez: 20:17

social media. Did you end up with a proprietary community by the time you left there?

Zoe: 20:23

Uh, we, we actually found, so one thing that I was really proud of, that we were able to do is we would have customer webinars and we kind of deemed that like our community is we had a monthly webinar with our customers. And we would show them either strategy or features. And I tried to make it more strategy heavy. And then I actually tried to bring in people who weren't our customers, or even to the point where they like worked like, worked with our competitors, where we could just offer genuine value and strategy, because the reality is like video strategy is video strategy. Whether you use BombBomb BDR Loom, what have you, the strategy is pretty much the same. It's the features that are different. And then like obviously the teams that you're working with that are different. but I had this theory of like, if we just put out value and come from this place of like abundance, abundance will follow. And so we started putting on these webinars when I started. I was not very good at writing email copy and we would have, you know, 600 people registered and like two or 300 people attend. By the time I left, we had 3,200 people registering for the webinars and 1200 to 1500 people live on that call at the same time. And so. Creating that engagement. And like, I didn't lead those webinars. Like I helped come up with content. I wrote the copy to get registered in some things like that, but we had a really cool content team who is coming up with the actual webinars and they were killer shout out to Alicia and Kevin, but yeah, it was really good time. And that was, that was sort of what I saw as the bulk of our community. as well as posting from our social platforms with more of that. Like if the brand had a personality. Point of view. And then that sort of like got more people to jump in to those webinars.

Pablo Gonzalez: 22:10

Love it, man. So my you know, my, my community formula, the way that I described it is value, connections and content, right? So it's like, how can you position a value that is not just your company, but value that your clients want and peripheral to it, how you can drive them into like an interaction point where they can all interact, right? Like between. You know, you're, you're the person in your company, the guests, and each other in a formula, and then how you can repurpose all the content in order to drive it all back to the next one. Right. So it's like sounds really, really similar, which I love, which is cool. sounds like. You your, the major lever that, that kind of improved during that time, was that positioning of the value piece on like, like you said, you weren't very good at writing emails and then you got better at writing emails and all of a sudden you started getting a ton of people showing up. Like can you talk to me about that.

Zoe: 22:59

Yeah, of course. So I think our, our invites used to be pretty straight forward. Right. Like, I, it was just like, Hey, we're going to have this webinar. Come, if you would like, you know, like, and it was just, it was short and sweet, which was phenomenal. I ended up coming up with this sort of formula, which I didn't realize I was using until I ended up leaving. And I was like, writing it out for the person taking over. I was like, this is like the basic formula here. Like this first question is, or this first sentence is a statement followed up by a question. So we're presenting the problem that everyone is facing. Here's a question that vague The, you know, like what would be the future state? And then we present what we think that future state could be introducing our product as the solution. And it was like really more compelling to be like, So you've been cooped up at home for the last, you know, year and a half. And you're not getting as much FaceTime with your clients. What if you could get face to face on demand with your people when you needed to to, you know, connect with them? Like, do you think you'd do more business and then it'd be like, BombBomb is going to show you five instances where video is better than plain text. And like, that would be sort of the. The call to action of like, join us for this webinar. We're going to show you bullet point bullet point bullet point. If you can't make it, we'll send out a recording. And, and I would do that same formula every single time. And we just progressively got more and more and more registrations, I think, partly because we dialed in some of the content that our users wanted to see by listening. We'd have Q and a, on our webinars. And we jot down some of those questions and be like, okay, this one came up like eight times maybe we should do a webinar on it. And then we decided to do some content on things that we were learning. So like, we were like, what if we did a LinkedIn like connection with video sort of webinar? And that was our most attended webinar. I got to like, co-host it. And talk about how I was like building relationships on LinkedIn and that. But get a bunch of questions that we then turned into. When I left, I set them up with eight months worth of topics to do webinars on so that they could continue that momentum with like, basically it's it's user led content because they are the ones who want to lead it. That's actually something. We talk about a lot at Dooley or like user generated content UGC. And it's something that I, I kind of got a taste of when I was working at BombBomb and does ask some people really leaning into it duly. And I think that it's going to be phenomenal within communities is that UGC motion of like, how can you get your fans, your customers, your partners, to generate content with you or for you just because they love your team and your product. I mean, it's, it's part of that, like surprise and delight kind of methodology. I think Dooley does that really well, where they, you know send out like a care package and give people like, Hey, if you want to post a picture, here's a hashtag we recommend. And then they post a photo with their like Canadian snacks that dooly sent them or something like that, or send them a t-shirt or we buy them a cup of coffee. I think Mark Jung is one of the best relationship builders. I know he's our VP of marketing. I report to him and he is really good at creating these experiences with people and, and delighting them and creating something that somebody would want to join in on. It's like if the cool kids are sitting over at a table and you really, really want to join I've used this example before, it's way easier. If one of them looks over at you and it's like, Hey, Zoe, do you want to come sit with us some invitation to participate in something that seems interesting. So how do you make the ask to yes. That distance as short as possible and. it's by providing people, those resources to jump in and join the conversations that are already happening, that they deemed fun and exciting, and that they want to be a part of. We did that with our series B funding announcement. Slack went down at the same time as we were kind of announcing our funding. And so we made a joke like Dooley broke slack, anybody who, you know, posts a meme or something with that hashtag. Well, mint it as an NFT. Give it to you. Maybe someday it'll be worth something because Dooley is, you know, on a rocket ship to the moon. And we had a couple of people take us up on it. I'm currently working on figuring out how to mint some NFTs this week. So it's just, it's that kind of motion. It's it's not always something you can plan in advance. Sometimes it's things that come up in the moment, but how do you make something delightful that people want to participate in? And that's really the question.

Pablo Gonzalez: 27:32

So many things here, man. Like I first of all, I'm like, I've never. I say this often, there's nothing more powerful than a secret cool club. Right? So like, if you can, if you can create a cool club and then give somebody a nod to the cool club, that to me is the ultimate. You know, leverage, move, marketing move, or, or whatever. And I love that. That's exactly how you, how you think and you've done it. And then the other piece that like, you just kind of went from end to end on stuff that I'm kind of obsessed with, right? Like this concept of like cool club and a customer ecosystem. And then, and then letting everybody get those SLI invite. And then now this idea of NFTs and how, how NFT. Seems to be something that I think is going to totally disrupt the idea of how you create community and, and, and these experiences, what are you, what are you researching? Like, I assume you're just kind of getting started on it, but like what, what are you researching? What are you getting inspiration from? So again,

Zoe: 28:27

like huge, huge credit to mark. Mark Joan or young, sorry. I always pronounce his name wrong. I've I've just started working with him. And I've been saying around Mark Young is like one of the most creative marketing minds I've ever worked for. And his brain just operates at like a hundred miles an hour. And me and my teammates, Sam, we joke about how it's like hard to keep up with them. but I think just like keeping up with modern trends, one thing that I'm kind of obsessed with right now, and I think is going to be. you know, part of the future of duly content and it's something that I'm working on is TikTok. I spend a lot of time. I was not on TikTok. I mean, you know 25 and I probably should spend more time on social media, but I deleted all of it maybe a year ago. And I, I just joined Instagram and TikTok again, and I am obsessed with the way that people are creating content. When I first heard about like musically being rebranded to Tiktok and what it was doing, I was like, this is the dumbest thing I've ever heard of. Like who wants to spend time on an app like that. And then I did. No, it was like, this is genius. It's perfect for the short attention span that I have, or I can just swipe through and see anything from how to make a healthy cookie, because I love snacks and need to make healthier ones because I'm trying to be fit. And I'm not very good at it, or, you know, jokes or like funny sounds. And, and there's this idea of virality. The Tik TOK does really, really well and encourages people to hop on trends. So it's like, how do we. Jump on those trends early and then encourage others to do the same thing within a business context, because I think there are a lot of brands that fit that fun and delightful. Like I think Chris, our CEO has done a great job creating this like fun environment at work. And we're just trying to kind of inject that into our communities because the way Dooley presents itself online, I can attest to the back that it's exactly the same when I show up to work everyday. Works really hard hustle is really hard, but it's such a fun, goofy environment. And so like, how can we put more of that out into the internet? And I think that us jumping on trends that are already happening, if we can jump on them early and then encourage others to tag along, we can create these waves within tech and within SAS, where it makes sense to be kind of fun and delightful because of the nature of tech. And yeah, I think that's something we're headed toward and, and something they were doing even before I got there. so I can't take credit for that at all.

Pablo Gonzalez: 30:52

Awesome. I'm like fascinated by T I'm a goofy person. Right? So like, I love to talk obviously, but yeah. In my, in my content creation stuff that I do and everything that I've built out, it's all about this to repurpose, right? Like it's like the efficiency of content creation based on based on an interaction, you know, the Gary V model. Right. and I'm having a, I'm having a really hard time. Tik TOK is a completely different way to communicate and it doesn't lend itself to repurposing. So I'm having a really hard time kind of like figuring it out or like spending the time to figure it out. Cause I'm freaking trying to build a business over here. but I realized, you know, like I'm a huge believer in whatever you can do to enable virality, right? Like I think. Video intros is an easy way to like scale your way to like be introduced, right? Like if you have a video of me being like, Hey man, I'm Pablo and I'm looking for this gun, that's the stuff. And this is what I do. You can send that to 100 people. Right? So like, like I'm always looking for that leverage point. And the beauty of Tik TOK is this like high growth rate and the likelihood for virality, right? Like, so what are you, do you have any kind of tips on like, what. How you're getting started. Cause it, it does sound daunting to like re go back into social media and restart social media. How are you approaching this idea of. You know, re-baptizing yourself in the fire of social media.

Zoe: 32:15

Totally. So number one thing, I do, I did this for LinkedIn. I'm doing this for TikToking Instagram right now, learn the algorithm. it takes, you know, I give yourself two days to just Google. The algorithms and there's ton of information out there. I learned a little bit what I know about the LinkedIn algorithm from Casey Graham. And I learned some more of it from a LinkedIn employee and just kind of like dove into what works, what doesn't work. How many times can you post in a day? What have you? And then I tested it out and it worked for me on LinkedIn. So now I'm doing that same thing with TikTok and Instagram and Twitter, just like. What are the algorithms doing right now? Can I pay attention to the updates? Just kind of be in that world of, of what's working. And so I would say a study of the algorithms, because that is the best way to give yourself a leg up. But at the end of the day, like things go viral because they go viral. There's no way to perfectly predict virality. I have two videos on my ticket. One of them was me announcing that I started working at Dooley. One of them was I heard this sound that was like somebody talking about a happy dog. And so I just filmed like 12 seconds of my dog. She happened to do something really ridiculous in that 12 seconds. And I put it up there and it's like, I had zero follower followers. I was following zero people and it's got like thousands of views and like a couple hundred likes, which isn't actually very good for TikTok, but for somebody with no following. It's solid. So I think it's just consistently putting out content and trying to see what trends are going viral and sort of finding out, like breaking that down. What is it, what are the components that they have? Are they entertaining? Are they informational? What trends are happening and going for it? And I think consistency is what ultimately breeds virality, because at some point you're going to hit something. That pops off and, and then you've got more eyes on you and you've got more of a following and that consistency will continue to help you build that growth. So like on LinkedIn, I have probably only one or two posts that ever hit, you know, 800,000 reactions and a couple of hundred comments, but now I consistently get over a hundred to 200 likes and you know, probably between 80 and 150 comments. Whereas before, when I first started, I would be stoked if I had three reactions on my LinkedIn post. So I think consistency is the precursor to virality. As long as you're paying attention to the algorithm. and trends

Pablo Gonzalez: 34:51

That makes a lot of sense. It's almost like no matter what your following is, if you hit a viral moment for whatever your audience is, that is a step up. Right. So then like that shoots up, but then next time now you're now you're engaging. Your average engagement stays somewhere higher than what your floor was before the consistent, consistent, consistent boom, step up, you know, like stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. I

Zoe: 35:16

think, I think that's the way that you build it and like, consistency is the way to build anything. Like, do you want to get fit? You have to work out more than one time. Like you want to get better at, you know, anything learning a language like you gotta. So I think that same thing with social media and the algorithms reward consistency. That's, that's the thing people want. These companies want you spending time on their platform and they want more content creators. So they will reward people who are consistent. And that is part of the algorithm. Well,

Pablo Gonzalez: 35:48

that's cool. That's cool. So talk to me about, I'm gonna, I'm going to kind of pivot here. You've gone from sales to marketing. I strongly believe that we are headed into this world, or at least we are in this world. Right? Like as, as consumers we are. So we have now officially been conditioned to know everything you need to know about a company before hopping on a sales call with somebody, right? Like you're hopping on a sales call last, last minute for the last 15% maybe of, of the transaction. yet companies haven't really. No, I don't think, I don't think, I think B2B, SAS has start is really figuring it out. But you know general contractor has not figured that part out, right? Like, like the average person. Tell me, tell me a little bit about, about your journey of understanding sales and understanding marketing and where you think the future of like the influence of either one is headed just for businesses.

Zoe: 36:45

Yeah, absolutely. I think at the core of sales, marketing, CS, product dev, any of it, like all of it, you have to know who your ICP is. That needs to be step number one. And that's the thing that I've learned. kind of spending some time in staff, seeing SAS sales companies, scale from nothing to unicorns, like I've been really paying attention to them. The tech world. And that seems to be the common denominator is these companies figure out who is my ideal customer profile. What do they look like? Who are the personas within my ICP? And what are their pains? What does their day look like? What do they experience? Because there's a ton of overlap, whether you know what Joe at ABC software does versus what. Kathy at XYZ software does, if they're the same title, VP of sales and they're in the same sort of industry, or they're both within your ICP, even if they're two completely different companies, they're going to go through really, really similar pains if they're in line with your ICP. So if you understand what they go through and you shape your product, your sales process, your messaging within marketing, all geared toward that person. Sales is so much less. about Hi, I'm Dooley. This is what I do. It's Hey, this is who you are. This is the headache you're feeling right now. What if you didn't have a headache anymore? Well, here's some Advil. Like we sell it. Do you want to have a conversation with us? That's really what it is. It's like, you have to point out their pain, you to present a future state where they don't have any pain. And there are levers that people want to move. So it's make more money. You know, save more money or be more secure. Those are kind of like what I see as the three key things that, that SaaS is solving at the moment is can you make me more money? Can you save me a bunch of money? Or can you make my product, my process, my customers, whatever. Can you make it more secure? And so if you can present something as solving one of those pains, Then I think you earn that time. and so I think everything from the sales process to the messaging that you're putting out, it needs to address the pain that your prospect feels not your product. Like you don't need to flex your product. You need to like show them that, you know, And then present a future state where they don't have that pain anymore. And that's when you introduce your product as a solution, it is the last step, as opposed to leading with me, me, me, this is what we do. It's you, you, you, what if you could be here? And so that's, that's really where I see all of it moving. I think a lot of companies are already done that. I think Dooly does that in a really fun way. And that was one of the reasons I wanted to join this team is because. They're kind of using humor to point and poke fun at sales pain, like the pain that people experience when they're like Salesforce is like this nightmare core scape slash beautiful machine. Like I think Salesforce is an incredible tool. It also sucked to update as an SCR. I hated it. And I always did it wrong and I would break reports and my manager would be like, so what are you doing? Like, what is your pipeline look like? And I'd be like, I don't know. I thought I did it right. in Dooly Creates this world where it's like three clicks and I'm done and everything is correct. And it's easier to read and understand. So that was an obvious sell for me as a rep to be like, yeah, I get this. It makes my life easier. It saves me time. It makes my manager happy. Like I want to do that. And the way that they present that online and through their marketing is through humor. Like they point out the pains, they joke about it. And I thought that was so. Nice and refreshing as a rep, who's like in this daily grind, getting hung up on all day to see sales memes about what I experienced from this company that was like, oh yeah. Also like we can help you. with That That was really compelling. So I think a lot of companies are moving in that direction. I think the most successful companies are the ones that create a minimum viable product that is around a pain that they solve for. And then they market it as such. Here's your pain. Here's the solution.

Pablo Gonzalez: 40:54

Brilliant man. So I think of three things. When you just went through all that number one, I'm ready to become a Dooley customer number, number two. It's I heard, I heard somebody say this one time. I heard I'm Dean Grasiozi, who is kind of, I'm not a big Dean Grasiozi fan, but he's great speaking. And he said, people don't follow. You build relationships with do business with people that they understand, they follow, do business with relate to build relationships with people that understand them. Right? So like this idea of, Hey, you have a headache, right? Doesn't that suck? I know. Cause the light hurts and like, wouldn't it be great to have something, you know, like that, that whole piece of everything that you just described as is that in a nutshell, And then, you know, I told you right before this call, like I'm like a category design nerd, right? Like I, I think that's, I think that's why I love category design so much. Cause it's all about marketing the problem and instead of marketing the solution, and if you can, if you can, whoever best states, the problem is known to have the solution.

Zoe: 41:58

Yeah. Yeah, no, I think there's, I think there's value in category design. I used to work for BombBomb and John Ruggie is an incredible category design leader at that team. And definitely check him out if that's something you're interested in exploring. he, he was great at laying that out for us. It's like, how do we present the problem to people so that they know, like it's not just a headache. It's like brain cancer. And we like, then you present your solution as well. The curative surgery or something like that, you know, it's, it's not just that you have this little problem it's that this problem is going to steal your business, like ruin your life. It is, it is one of the worst problems you could possibly have because you don't see the downstream effect. Of that little problem today, if you don't solve it now. And I love, I love that and I think he's doing something really interesting with the team over at BombBomb and the category that they're creating which I don't know if that's public yet, so I won't announce it here, but you guys can check him out if you want to know. But anyway yeah, I think category design is really interesting. I also think that just being a company that is really good at presenting. The, the problem that you have and the solution, I think gong does it really well. I think drifts and Terminus, and I just think of a lot of companies whose marketing is so on point where they present these issues and then they've got data and resources and content and marketing messaging all to back it up. and I think Dooley is one of those companies as well. And so I'm really excited to be a part of, of that kind of team that's headed that way. That's

Pablo Gonzalez: 43:29

cool, man. Like, you know, you're, you're kind of just delineating all the things. As I, as I think of this whole, like community creation for business development, and I think of the people that are doing it well, I think there is an element of category design, cause there's a unit vacation around the problem. There's definitely a big element of content, right? Like being a content machine and being a content machine, a generous content machine, not like a advertising promotionally ClickFunnels content machine. Like I like, I, I see it. Using content, the way that you network, right? Like the like, Hey man, how can I help you? Oh, here's the content for help. Right. And and, and, and they're all kind of driving all these companies that are all that are all marketers are talking about these days are all focused on the community piece. Like are they're all driving the community piece. It's, it's

Zoe: 44:16

this idea of giveaway your best stuff for free. Like you don't need the gated content. You don't need somebody recently. He was James yeah, he's he, he recently was like, yeah, we created this thing about like how to create a B2B podcast. And like, it's like a whole course. And like we're, we're doing it for free. And I was like, that's awesome. Like it's not gated. They're not going to like, get your email and blast you with a bunch of nonsense. They're creating this social trust and they're becoming the authority in their space. Like if you tell me how to solve a problem, I, I read a lot of like stuff. I read a lot of Terminus stuff. It's like when I need a solution. That they have, I'm going to go to them first when I need something like gong to give us relationship intelligence. We went to them first because they're the authority in that problem. And they gave away a bunch of stuff for free. So they've created this level of trust. They're not the cheapest product on the market. To solve that problem for me, but they might be the best one in my opinion, because of what they've done for me. And so there is this investment that you put into creating content we're actually bringing on. I think she already announcement announced it. Camille Trent, as our head of content, I think she's killer at putting out. Really really high value content. She's going to be taking over content for Dooley. And I just think we have this ability to give away really, really great information case studies research and these blogs that actually help people so that when somebody is like, oh my God, I'm so sick of updating Salesforce this way. We're going to be top of mind for them, because they're gonna be like, oh, that would be like, it'd be 10 times easier to take my notes, update my pipeline, show my pipeline to my manager. I can do it all in a couple of clicks instead of like bumbling through Salesforce and maybe doing it wrong. So I think that I think giving away your best stuff for free and leading from that space of abundance, abundance will follow. And that's where you. Fans and lifelong customers and those high NPS scores that you then get the G2 reviews, who then bring you new customers. It's like, it's this flywheel that you want to the flat.

Pablo Gonzalez: 46:20

I was just thinking flywheel, man. Totally, totally, totally agree. this is awesome. You ready for the lightning? Yeah. All right. What is your favorite restaurant? Where is it? And what do you order?

Zoe: 46:33

Okay. there is this restaurant in my hometown, Petaluma, California. It's just outside of Napa and it is called wild goat. Be strong. They have these polenta fries. It's exactly what it sounds like. They're like little rectangles. Polenta flash fried. And then they have this like pesto dipping sauce and it's like crack. I could eat way too many of them and then be sick all day. So highly recommended.

Pablo Gonzalez: 46:57

There was a restaurant in Miami by Michael shorts that had these polenta fries that I am now completely. now my mouth is watering. That's awesome, man. Good, good food, good food where you're from it and that's really, yeah. What, what content are you most into right now? Like this could be what stuff? You're, you know, like who's podcasts, you're into who's company's content. It could be what book you're reading. It could be what Netflix and chill series to Zuri you're super into. What content are you most obsessed?

Zoe: 47:21

I mean, really it is Tik TOK, cooking videos, cooking videos are what I am about these days. Especially since like I used to be an athlete. I ran track in college. I am now a couple of years. I'm three years, two years out of college. And I don't work out as much anymore. And I'm just now getting back into fitness and tightening up my nutrition. And so seeing these, I love treats, I'm such a sugar fiend, like I love cookies and cake and candy bars and all of that stuff. So anytime somebody can make a sort of healthier version that doesn't taste like garbage and can teach me in a really short amount of time. I'm all about that. So my entire tick talk percent of it is like healthy cooking videos,

Pablo Gonzalez: 48:03

best. Healthy cooking treat that you figured out how to make so far.

Zoe: 48:09

And that's like any type of protein ice cream that trick of putting a little bit of xantham gum in your blender. And it gives it that consistency. It's what Starbucks uses in their frappuccinos, which like, I'm not a big fan of Starbucks, but that consistency of like an icy drink that has more of a solid, like scoopable instead of really melty, loose texture. so protein ice cream is where it's at right now.

Pablo Gonzalez: 48:29

That's what's up. I like it. Real talk. All right. So you like sweets, you're an extrovert like we've had, we have all these parallels. Are you also the youngest kid in your family? In

Zoe: 48:38

the middle actually. So I know I'm the middle child. so I have an oldest sister who is four years older than me and adopted sister who is two years older than me. She was actually. We're in high school. And my parents adopted her because she was a foster kid and spent most of her time at our house anyway. And they were like, well, you're basically part of the family might as well adopt you. So they did. yeah, it's dope. She's actually here visiting me right now. She's at my parents' house. So I'm going to go see her in a little bit. And then my youngest sister is two years younger than me, so we're all separated by two years. And I was middle child. All the

Pablo Gonzalez: 49:11

way all girls are interesting to finally we found some differences. All right. That's cool. That wasn't really technically part of the lighting round. I just had to go. but clearly you come from a tight-knit family, which I think is another similarity of, you know, people like us, I guess. Yeah. Alright. So, all right. Back to letting run by what's your, either the best, either the singular best piece of advice you've ever gotten or your go-to piece of advice to give. people

Zoe: 49:36

Okay, this is marriage advice, but I would also so I've been married for three years, but I would also give this to anybody. I think it's just solid, like relationship, friendship, like any kind of part where you're interacting with people and you have like a longstanding interaction. So networking tip. Sure. Find someone who can suffer well. And that's, you know, it's easy to be nice and to be cordial and to be supportive when everything's going great. Can you find people who can go through this shit with you and still be kind and still be respectful and still be helpful? I am really lucky that I have a life partner like that. I would say all of my friends have that quality as well. You know, like, can you not turn into a complete monster when you're going through something hard, which is tough, it's tough not to lash out at people. And it's tough to still, you know, you don't have to be positive, but to just maintain a level of humanity and treat other people with that same level of humanity. And so I would say find people who suffer well, whether it's like business partner, friends teammates, if you're looking for a new company, look out companies who know how to, to struggle well and struggle together in the same direction.

Pablo Gonzalez: 50:46

And your, if your boss knows how to suffer well, he's probably a pretty, oh yeah, for sure. A good piece of advice, man. I'll I always talk about that. Like that cost of. The outlier situations where you act out the wrong way. I like, I compare it to just like, you're on a fixed income. You can save like 150 bucks a month, but three years later you can go to Vegas and blow 10 grand in like 24 hours. Right? Like you'll never going to get that back. I feel the same way in relationships. Like if you can't suffer well, those bottom moments where you. Do something horrible will cost you so much,

Zoe: 51:23

man. Yeah. He loses a lot of social equity and I mean, it's, we're all human. Like nobody's perfect. People have bad moments, but like, if you can find, if you can find people who can go through the tough times with you and you guys can stay. On the same page in our locked, heading in the same direction. Even if there's still some tension, like you're going to get so much farther than a group of people who can never land on the same page, who start attacking one another, when things are hard to point blame, it's like, Hey, it's not about the blame. How do we solve this problem? So that's why I think it applies. More than just in marriage, but in, you know, business partnerships, relationships, friendships, all of that. Totally,

Pablo Gonzalez: 52:02

totally great, great piece of advice. Zoe, before I asked the last question, what's promote whatever you want to promote, man. What's so I'm going to link to your LinkedIn, like you're an awesome LinkedIn follow clearly, right? Like that's going to be done, make that happen if you're listening to us right now. tell, tell us what, like, why should, why should we use Dooley what's what's Dooley's AICP. Why should we use them? or whatever you

Zoe: 52:20

want. Yeah. I mean, Dooley's given salespeople super powers. And what I would say is if you're somebody who hates updating Salesforce, Which you got to use Salesforce. If you don't have Salesforce, sorry, Dooly can't help you just yet, yet. But if you use Salesforce and you're sick of updating your pipeline or taking notes, or trying to keep track of all the things you're trying to keep track of during your deals, Dooly is going to save you five plus hours a week of that grunt work. And it's also going to make your pipeline visualization really easy. It's going to make your manager happy. And it's going to give you more time to do what you actually get paid to do, which is sell. So I would go check it out. We have a free trial go, go try it. Go takes notes, update your Salesforce and see how easy it is to visualize your pipeline. You'll be amazed.

Pablo Gonzalez: 53:07

Cool. Free trial is just right on like dooley.com. Do

Zoe: 53:10

it.io.ai.

Pablo Gonzalez: 53:12

That was way off. All right. So last question. I've always asked everybody in my podcast is where do you find money?

Zoe: 53:20

I would say I find community from people. Well, in real life, I find it from people I interact with. So I'm a, I'm a person who likes to look at people and like, I, I don't know what everybody believes in terms of, you know, connection or spirituality or whatever. But like sometimes I just get a sense from another person, you see it in their eyes. Like they need someone to ask, how are you reading? Okay. And that's like the first place I go to is I say, how are you? And then if they say good, I say, how are you really? And you'll be really impressed to see how many times people change their answer to something more authentic when you pause and ask them something a little bit more authentic. and I've made a lot of friends that way. Just seeing somebody who maybe needed a second ask and, and spending a little time chatting with them. So coffee shops bookstores. Not as much these days because everybody's wearing a mask and you know, how do you strike up conversations with strangers when they're like, you know, afraid to get within six feet of you. But I would say that was something I did pre pandemic and then online. I hit people up and I try and make invitations to connect with me. I recently wrote a post about mental health and some struggles I had last year and invited people to take me up on me sending them a book that helped me and somebody messaged me and they were like, Hey, like I relate to your experience. You said, you'd send a book. Like I don't actually live in the us. So if it's, if it's too hard, like you don't have to. And I was like, no, no, no. So I'm your address? And so now we've been going back and forth for a little bit chatting. And so I would just say like create invitations for conversation, make it really easy. Be that person to invite somebody to come sit at your table. Right. Make it easy to start those conversations. So I would say, I look for the one-on-one connections that I can

Pablo Gonzalez: 55:07

find love it. Authenticity, vulnerability, and invitations. Right. And like, that's, that's a good formula for, for community. What out of curiosity? What's that? it's

Zoe: 55:15

called, if you feel too much by Jamie. Tworkowski

Pablo Gonzalez: 55:19

cool. Check it out. my my go-to books where I saw that post man super brave and an amazing my go-to is the road less traveled by M Scott Peck. I don't know if you've ever read that, but that's a no, but I will. Yeah, that's my it's like the psychology of like, love discipline spirituality and like serendipity kind of thing. Like it's, it's it's hardcore. I've I've gone to the woodshed with Alan a couple of times. Yeah. So this was awesome, man. I really, I really appreciate you coming on, right? Like I saw you from the moment that you've kind of showed up on my LinkedIn feed. However it happened. I'm not sure how, I don't know if it was connected with John and then afterwards seeing you, but you know, it's clear to me that you are somebody that that that puts out. Like the right vibe of the stuff that I think is what I want to attract as well. Like you're the bat signal for the things that I like as well, which I think is really, really cool. And I'm just super impressed by your story and the fact that you're 25 and you've done all this, and you're so far developed in, in what your outlook is and all that stuff. It's really, really cool. So I appreciate you doing this and hope we can be. Yeah. Happy

Zoe: 56:25

to thank you so much for having me on and I appreciate you right on.