CEO Diaries: The Lessons I Wish I Knew at the Start of My Career…

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In today's moments episode, I'm sharing some of the most important lessons I've learned about B2B marketing, the lessons I wish I'd learned earlier in my career.

A few weeks ago, I was in New York and sat down with LinkedIn CMSO Jessica Jensen for a LinkedIn Live.

We spoke about everything from how to target and reach the right people to how to avoid wasting your marketing dollars and our tactics for building real influence.

This is the stuff every B2B marketer today needs to know.

But instead of learning it the hard way, like I did, you can hear it all right now.

Jessica Jensen, it's so wonderful to meet you and you have one of the most interesting jobs and careers that I think I've ever encountered.

Chief marketing and strategy officer at LinkedIn.

One of the most used terms in my circles at the moment of entrepreneurs has been this term AI and there's a mixed reaction.

There's a lot of people that see it as a threat and are kind of leaning out the ostrich with its head in the sand.

And then there's a group of people that I have in my close circle that are excited and leaning in.

What is your advice for entrepreneurs that are trying to contend with this new thing called AI?

Yeah.

I think that AI will become the air we breathe and the water we drink just in the way the internet has.

Can anyone imagine business or life today without the internet?

I don't think so.

And that has upsides and downsides.

I think AI is the same.

It will be.

It will power so many things, personally, professionally.

I can't imagine starting a company now without leveraging AI in some way, either to

save yourself incredible amounts of time or to create product prototypes.

Certainly, if you're trying to raise money, not being versed in AI, I think, would be rather challenging today.

I think all investors are viewing it as a must-have.

It allows you so much more creative power and efficiency, regardless.

You could be producing flip-flops or selling digital software.

So I think anyone who thinks they can avoid it, I would encourage them to jump over the line.

How do you advise founders and startups that you talk to about how to use Gen AI?

So I always think that the opportunity and threat are in the reaction.

So, and I've seen this over my brief career in, you know, there's been certain waves that have come into shore, like social media was the first wave, then it was this thing called the blockchain.

And now the third wave that I've observed is artificial intelligence.

And in all three of those examples, the opportunity or threat was in your reaction, i.e., if you if you lean out, then it is a threat, but if you lean in, it is an opportunity.

And so for me, the most important thing whenever I experience that dissonance that comes with something new that I don't understand, that is technical and it comes with words I don't understand, is to like like lean in and mess around.

So feel the dissonance, lean in.

And for me, leaning in and messing around just means like make sure that my LinkedIn algorithm is understands that that's what I want to be served.

So I start engaging with AI content that is in, yeah, and it's, it's, it's giving me more content in that regard.

It means speaking to my team about it.

And one thing we've done at the moment is we've set this

AI agent challenge, which is for the next 60 days, every single team and every single department is

implementing AI and AI agents to improve and automate their workflows.

And we're all sharing it in this new channel.

And at the end of the 60 days, there's going to be this big presentation where every team presents how they've implemented AI agents into their workflow.

And there'll be this big prize that I'm handing out with a judging plan of like AI experts coming into our company.

But I, did you just click?

Yeah.

That's so cool.

I didn't see that so cool.

And I'd say

I think it all comes down to your relationship with change.

And in the world we're heading in, you've just got to have a really healthy, positive, optimistic relationship with change, I think.

I think flexibility is the foundation.

Yeah, amen.

Amen.

Yeah.

And in the world of AI and large language models where we can generate content now,

you know, this it becomes very, very tempting to go for quantity.

Yes.

And like copy and paste cookie cutter perfect M dash text.

What would you advise us as marketeers marketeers in such a world where the cost of creation goes to zero and we can churn out?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm so excited about what Gen AI is doing for marketing and will do for marketing.

And I also think people can smell a rat.

So we're leveraging it.

So many marketers are.

It does lower costs.

You're able to concept faster.

You're able to edit and try new things more quickly.

But when you are trying to convince human beings to take action,

you will need to convey human emotion and human judgment.

I firmly believe human marketers will have jobs

and

that knowing what is real and what is fake is going to be so important, especially somebody like you, right?

People are trying to fake you every day.

And so I think as business people and as marketers, we need to view AI as an expeditor and a creative fuel and never lose human oversight.

I have been pondering this idea for the last couple of weeks about how,

like, I'm not good at spelling.

I've no idea what it is.

I'm horrible.

I'm a horrible speller.

But I now see it as an advantage.

Because when you see it.

It's so funny because I was outside.

I'm going to lean into it myself.

No, but I literally, I said to my team earlier on the way here, I was like, there was this title for this piece of content we're producing.

And I said, can you just like uncapitalize it and like just make it a little bit messier so people know that we wrote it?

Interesting because everything is so perfect.

And whenever I see something that's perfectly formatted and has perfect grammar now,

part of my brain discounts it.

Totally.

What do good content creators do, whether they're B2B content creators or B2C content creators or just individuals?

What are some of the things that you notice that they do well in terms of just like base-level principles?

I think that great creators are like great communicators at any time in history.

They know what they want to say.

They have something to say.

It's interesting.

It's different.

It has an angle.

They know who they're trying to talk to and who they're trying to engage.

They convey information and human connection.

They are real.

They show themselves and their ideas openly.

And then I think in this day and age, they are using multiple form factors, right?

They're using text, they're using photos, they're using video.

And video, I think, becoming more and more prominent.

So many of the principles of being a great communicator and a great marketer and a great creator are the same.

What's your answer to that question?

I really liked your way you started at the top of that with this idea of having something to say.

Because I think sometimes people overlook this.

And it's very easy to speak before you've you've got something to talk about.

Don't get me started on this topic.

And I think the best creators that I've met have have gained clarity on what their message is and it's a unique message.

It's a cliche proof message.

One of the phrases we use a lot on our team is if the world has heard it before then we don't need to add it again.

And it's a nice principle for like knowing what to post and what the world needs.

If the world has heard someone say it before 10 times, 100 times,

we don't need to add to it.

So we add if we have something unique to add to the conversation.

And then I think the other part, I agree with everything you said, is just analytics and data,

which helps us to create a nice feedback loop.

How do we know that it's working?

Yeah, exactly.

As a creator, sometimes it can feel like you're at the roulette table with the lights off when you're making content because this did well.

And then for some reason, this did well.

Then this one got loads of comments.

That one had loads of views.

That one crashed and burned.

But with

a perspective, a positive relationship with analytics, it turns the lights on.

And you can start to, you know, post,

look, learn,

iterate, improve, and post again.

And that's what's made me a better creator: just

having a nice feedback loop on what I'm doing and why it's working.

So, I look at everything from the retention of the videos we post to the engagement metrics,

what people are saying in the comments as a qualitative measure.

So, having a positive relationship with that, I think, is imperative.

Can I ask you a few questions?

Sure.

You are a leading entrepreneur, thought leader, media personality on LinkedIn.

What do you find has been the most powerful tools or formats for you on the platform?

Yeah, I just think there really isn't another shop in town if you're trying to do B2B marketing or you're trying to build your personal presence.

And I'm actually surprised, this is a strange thing to say, but I'm surprised that LinkedIn has remained so effective and dominant at that in particular.

And I also see LinkedIn as both being the healthiest platform in terms of communication and comms and discourse, but I also see it as being the most effective as it relates to building a business in all regards, from a comms perspective, from a hiring perspective,

from an internal and external personal branding perspective for your company as an executive.

And I have for many, many years told people that I thought the opportunity of LinkedIn would at some point pass it pass because that's typically what I've seen from other platforms.

They kind of lost their way, they've gotten to too many things, but it just hasn't been the case with LinkedIn.

And that's been the most surprising thing of all for me.

And I think for really any founder out there, I think it is your most important platform because the most important thing in business is obviously acquiring customers, it's hiring great people, it is marketing the company itself.

And I tell all of the founders in my portfolio that...

Until you've cracked LinkedIn and you've got the system up and running, the flywheel, the video sort of content flywheel, the recruiting side, you filled out your profile, really don't think beyond that.

So when my founders come to me and they say, I want to start a podcast, I shut down the podcast and I say, you're not using LinkedIn properly yet.

So like, it's, I've always just, I draw this picture out, which I've drawn so many times, and it's a pyramid.

And at the bottom of the pyramid is LinkedIn, if you're a founder.

So like, make sure your LinkedIn strategy is on point.

Only until you've completed that part of the pyramid, you move up to level two, which could be newsletters, which are a big part of LinkedIn now as well.

You've got to figure out what's going to yield the most.

And then relative to the yields, which platform is going to require the least investment.

So it's not, you don't need to have 20, 30 people, a big production team to get started on LinkedIn.

And the return of investment is so high relative to the investment that it is the best place to start.

And then you move on.

Yeah.

Building from there, thank you.

I hope this conversation has given you some clarity because honestly, these are the lessons I wish someone had shared with me when I was first getting started in B2B marketing.

If you're ready to dive deeper and take the things you've learned today and put them into practice, our sponsor, LinkedIn, is offering a $100 ad credit.

Just head to linkedin.com slash diary to get started.

That's linkedin.com slash diary.

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