Is LinkedIn Dead? Nope. You’re Just Posting Wrong

Daryn Mackey challenges the traditional "cog in the wheel" sales playbook, advocating for reps to lean into their unique strengths and authentic human behavior. Instead of adhering to bloated, nine-month sales cycles padded with unnecessary steps, Mackey shares how he slashed deal velocity down to just 45 days by setting firm implementation boundaries right from the very first discovery call. As B2B buyers get younger, with the average age now sitting at 36, the reliance on human connection and content is paramount. Buyers want to know who they are doing business with—what their hobbies are, if they have a family, and how they think—rather than just comparing feature sets. Consequently, organic social selling on platforms like LinkedIn has never been more critical to outmaneuvering competitors in the final stages of a deal. Mackey also touches on the future of LinkedIn, predicting a shift toward Direct-to-Consumer behavior where solopreneurs and personal brands thrive. To succeed in this changing landscape, revenue leaders must abandon their over-reliance on massive tech stacks and automation, and instead invest heavily in teaching their teams how to write, be genuine, and build personal brands that organically attract and retain buyers.

Discussed in this episode

Why traditional sales playbooks forcing reps to be a 'cog in the wheel' are broken and need to be replaced with strengths-based coaching.
How to compress enterprise sales cycles from nine months down to 45 days by controlling the implementation narrative on the first call.
The necessity of securing a quick win within the first 90 days when trying to prove a new, unscalable go-to-market strategy to leadership.
Why there is no such thing as a 'wrong deal' for pre-seed and seed-stage startups that need at-bats to gather data and learn.
The statistic that the average B2B buyer is now 36 years old and heavily influenced by the human behavior of executive teams.
The shift of LinkedIn towards direct-to-consumer content, making relatable human stories more valuable than boosted company posts.
Why investing in writing and creative skills for sales teams yields a much higher ROI than stacking expensive sales automation tools.
A three-question framework for evaluating risk and making decisions based on the best, worst, and most probable outcomes.

Episode highlights

0:00 — Introduction to Daryn Mackey and his background
2:15 — Rejecting the traditional sequence playbook
4:30 — Letting sales reps lean into unique strengths
6:45 — Shrinking sales cycles down to 45 days
9:10 — Why seed stage startups should close every deal
11:30 — The 36-year-old buyer and social selling
14:20 — The future of LinkedIn and DTC content shifts
17:00 — Why boosted company posts are a death sentence
19:15 — Investing in writing over expensive sales tools
22:00 — Using competitor content audits to close deals
24:30 — The reality of company pages vs. human profiles
26:45 — Three questions for assessing business risk

Key takeaways

Let reps lean into unique strengths instead of forcing rigid playbooks.
Shrink sales cycles by setting tight implementation timelines on call one.
Buyers want to do business with humans, not faceless corporate entities.
Organic social selling consistently beats paid promotion and automated tool stacks.
Assess risk by asking the best, worst, and most probable outcomes.

Transcript

Welcome back to another episode of The Bridge the Gap podcast powered by Revenue Reimagine. I am beyond excited to have someone I've been trying to get on the show, I feel like for the better part of a damn year. And he's so damn busy with what he's doing, and I'm so grateful you made the time. We have Daryn Mackey here, who is a dad, husband, founder of Daryn Mackey Co, where he's coached over 900 leaders, individual contributors, all sorts of folks.

Some that I've even placed in those courses on how to master LinkedIn and social selling. Before that, I did not know this, he was a pizza chef, a mailroom guy, a recruiter, ultimately finding into his way to this like sexy world of SAS sales, um where he found his footing, realized it wasn't so sexy, um worked with some of the top names in the industry and now out here doing his own thing and making a difference. Welcome to the show, man. Feel free to steal that intro and like replay it over.

I done super great. It was a it was awesome. I'm excited to be here. and yeah, I uh know we've been trying to do this for the last, you know, better part of a year and I think this is the first time me and Dale have ever even like been on a call together.

Yeah, I I try I try to keep everyone away from him, man. Yeah, yeah. he was like, fuck, I'm never talking to you again. He knows like I'm going to steal everything from him, so it's all good.

So That's awesome. Darren, it's awesome to connect with you in person, or virtually in person. Um and and said uh had a lot of great things especially with all the LinkedIn stuff that you guys are doing, which is super interesting. We'll get into it a little bit.

But um you've gone across, like listening to that intro, you've gone across a bunch of different things. Um one of the things we talk a lot about is challenges with the go-to-market strategy. So, bring us back to a moment where you felt like that go-to-market strategy you were trying to like build or manipulate or or change was like totally out of control. Could have been like your sales team was terrible or you had no process or I just had this conversation uh two weeks ago with two weeks ago with my old President of Field Sales, one of the companies I used to work with and um you know, I think the interesting part when I joined a couple of these organizations, it was like, hey, we're going to put everybody in sequences, we're going to put everybody in cadences, we're going to, you know, make sure we get, you know, a certain amount of dials, you know, you've got to multi-thread between seven and 14 people in every single deal.

Sales cycles take, you know, six to 12 months. And I was like, this sounds awful. Like why why are you telling a new hire that they're going to do all these things and it's going to take them a really long time to close a deal and they're going to have to do all of these things that seem daunting. Um and so at that point, like I just looked at myself in the mirror and I was like, I'm going to, I'm not going to do any of that stuff.

Um, right? And I'm like How can I ask somebody to do it if I'm not going to do it? Yeah, right? And so, you know, I got in trouble a little bit and then, you know, all of a sudden I was 147% over ramp in my first six months and my cold calls were the lowest, my outbound emails were the lowest, everything was the lowest, but I was still closing closing revenue.

And so that was kind of the time where I was like, all right, let's blow this thing up and do it the way that like we're supposed to do and build relationships and try to like find intent and go after it pretty quickly. So, um, I think it was at that moment where I realized like the industry was just broken, um, and and kind of needed to to be shaken up and fortunately, you know, three years later I was able to jump into a spot where I could figure that out and, um, even in, you know, my last role at Sky, I was able to come in and, you know, not do things different and get us to a pretty good revenue clip. So what what year was that? Was that 22?

That you were like making that? 2020. Yeah. End of 2020, all of 2021.

Okay. Yeah. So there there's there's another founder out there um that we talk about a lot, Darren. I don't know if you've met Anice, the CEO of Attention.

Um, but he you you guys would totally hit it off because his whole premise is do shit that's unscalable, not what everyone tells you to go out and do, and like that's how you're going to grow. And he's built an amazing multi-million dollar company that likely is, you know, going to be in my opinion, like the new gong. Um and I used to be the biggest gong fanboy. Because going out there and sending hundreds of like scripted called email like it just doesn't work, right?

We talk about this all the time. Like it doesn't work. When you look back and you look back at whether it was Sky or whether it was, I think it was Better Up before that, if I'm not mistaken, um where how long until you realized like what the real gap was? Like, was it right away that you're like, fuck, you people are crazy?

Was it a couple months in that you were like, eh, maybe we should do this differently? No, I mean, there there was there was definitely like everybody was, I mean that that company changed my entire life, right? Um and I learned everything I know about sales because of of that organization. I think one of the things that I started to realize quickly was like we were trying to build everyone into the same human.

Um and and for me it was like, well, well, this person is really good in person with financial businesses. This person is really good running conferences. This person is really good in LinkedIn DMs and videos. Like let them do the thing that they were like built out and set out to do.

And so, you know, we talk about like strengths-based approaches and coaching, it's like, okay, well, let's like let's cater to those things and let them do that. And so, you know, I think uh something that, you know, I obviously, you know this, I coach a lot of sales leaders and and AEs now and I'm like, hey, like I'm trying to not have you be a cog in the wheel. Like I'm trying to have you be the unique human that you are going to be, as long as you are closing deals, like let's do that thing. And now, listen, not everybody's going to work out in that category because some people need structure and some people need some guidance.

But like we have that for those people too. But there there is there's still structure and guidance in what you do. And I think, you know, you're you're not telling people to go be the wild wild west and just go out there and do whatever. I think there's still structure and guidance.

But how do you now, and sorry, Dale, but how do you now, especially with coaching people from the outside, get people to convince their CEOs and their CROs that like, I don't have to be the cog in the wheel that follows this exact playbook and says, hi, Darren, my name is Adam. Yeah. It's okay if I'm going to do LinkedIn. It's okay if I'm going to hop I mean, hopping on airplanes is a bit different because there's a big cost there, but yeah.

And and I do think in person works, but it's okay if I don't send the script that you want. Let me try it this way. How do you convince senior leaders that that's okay? Yeah.

It's super I mean, it's super hard. The one of the only ways that you do that is to connect that senior leader with another senior leader that has already seen success doing this, right? And so, um, and then the only other thing is like I tell people like you have if you're going to go try to do this and you're coming, your company, you're going to have to have a quick win. If you don't have a win in the first 90 days of doing this, like you're probably gone.

Um, and they're going to be like, hey, do what's been working for us for a really long time, but like I have We've always done it this way. Yeah, I'm just I have such a playbook that like if you run that playbook, it's it's it's going to work, right? Like my my biggest thing that I love when I go into organizations and they're like, yeah, our average, you know, sales cycle is nine months. And then I come in and I'm like, why?

No. Like what are we what are we doing? Like, uh and it should be 45 days, right? We took Sky's average sales cycle in the first year that I was there was like six to nine months to the last year, it was like 45 days.

And that's just because we stopped talking about it. Yeah, so that's so it's interesting. Um let's talk through that a little bit because I think those there's there's three levers we always talk about. It's like what's the time to close, so your deal velocity, the average deal size that you're you're portraying on and then like the close rate.

So if you if you're starting to pull those levers, you're starting to starting to scale and get repeatability. What did you do to bring it down from like because I think everyone just says six to nine months depending on what size of the deal is. How do you how did you get it down to 45? Yeah, average deal size, um was at the first year around like 80k a year.

Um average deal size got over six figures in that second year, which is kind of interesting because people, you know, typically would say, hey, if it's faster, it's smaller. And, uh, we just didn't see that. So typically the conversation would go, right? For for our whole life in sales, we've been built and trained to like walk into that meeting and be like, hey, like this is this is going to take us a little bit of time.

Um Right. You're going to have to go through finance, you're going to have to go through legal, we're going to have to probably mess with some stuff on Sock 2 and GDPR, we're going to have to probably build some things in. You got to meet all of these people, we got to meet all of these people. So you do that in the first couple calls and then all of a sudden your buyer looks at you and they're like, I don't I don't want to do that.

Right? And it's like, all of a sudden it's like just takes forever. I don't care if you're using one of those tools where like everything's in one place and you can see what's going on, I forgot what it's called now. Um, so I just switched the script and in the first call, you know, I I sold the Chief Learning officers and VPs of organizational development and the end of the first call I'm I say, hey, listen, um, some people take a really long time to implement this.

The majority of folks, we get this done in 30 to 45 days. At most, we're in the 60-day range. Um, here are the things that we need to accomplish in the next like 10 days. Um, I'm going to push you hard, um, because I know you need this.

And as long as I said that, they were they were pretty good. Like they don't want to work on a project for nine months. No buyer wants to try to implement your company in nine months. So but you're you're at the implementation stage, not at the buying stage, or that is the combination of both.

That's in the very first call. No, no, no, but when you're when you're talking about the the time frame, are you talking about the time frame to buy or are you talking about the time frame to implement? Oh, time to implement is a whole another animal. Um, time time for contract signature.

And then I mean, most companies that I've worked with, right? I think y'all probably see this as an AE, um, from contract signature to full launch date has to be less than 90 days. Yeah. 100%.

You know. And and if it slips, then, you know, the likelihood of it continuing to slip is pretty high. Um, but yeah. 100%.

So, implementation. I don't really care about that because it's not my job. Don't confuse sales and execution. Yeah, I'm I've I will tell everybody I've ever interviewed with, I am a really good starter.

I will get you to a million. I will not get you past that, and I'm not going to be the AM. You sure? Is it is it really I I want to push back a little bit on this.

Yeah. So, and you shouldn't be the AM, and I agree that implementation isn't sales' problem. But we we deal with a lot of companies, dealing with one now that is having an incredible amount of churn. Like ridiculous churn.

Sales is closing deals fast, but I think that when it comes down to it, are they closing the right deals? Yeah. Everyone likes to say when churn happens, oh, it's because CS isn't doing this, or account management didn't do that, or the handoff wasn't this. How do you balance the we need to move fast, but we got to sell to the right people as well.

I think it it depends on what stage of the business that you're in. If you're pre-seed, seed, there is no wrong deal because you're learning, right? I I I I will always be in that camp. I used to hate.

I mean, it's happened. It happened last week on LinkedIn. Somebody was like, um, you know, you got 100 leads, they're all wrong, and, you know, you're wasting your time. There's no wrong lead when you're a seed stage startup.

Like I don't care if it's Joe over here that runs the lawn care business that wants to talk about coaching, I'll I'll have the conversation because it's just at-bats. Um, but I think as you grow and you get bigger, right? Like, um, this is an interesting conversation to have because like if you're a cog in the wheel, right? And you're just an AE at an organization, you're just trying to make a ton of money, you don't really care.

I'm just being honest with you. And I think I think people are trying to hire to that as well, right? I mean, so where does where does the root of that cause, where does the root of that come in from? Is it like the investors?

Is it the old school sales thinking? Like where do you see that that that root cause of that happening? Well, I think it's just because every single all-hands we've ever been on, it's like, we got to get to this ARR. We got to get to this ARR.

And it's not like, hey, we got to fix our, you know, net revenue retention. Like we like we don't talk about those things. So it's just like, and then it's in every quarter. Like, get these deals in, get these deals in, get these deals in, get these deals in, right?

And it's like, all right, well, I'm just going to do what you told me to do, right? Like it's up to everybody else to to figure it out. Um, but I mean, listen, like I I try to have conversations like my reputation has been on the line being a seller for the rest of my career. So if I sell somebody a shitty deal, they're never going to sign up for me at the next company.

The one beautiful thing about Sky is, um, after I was after I was gone from the last company in the same space, I was able to convert a majority of my customers over. Right. Right? Because I sold them something great back then and then I knew I was going to take care of them here.

Uh It wasn't it wasn't all about the product, like they trusted you. Yeah. I mean, listen, like I I'm always in the camp of like, sure, is there always a premier player in the space that's just like a better platform, better this, but at the end of the day, when you get to a certain point, like they're going to do the same things, right? Um it's like thinking about CRMs.

It's a CRM. Right. Are you going to be really good, are you going to have a really good AM, are you going to have a really good seller, you're going to have a really good founder? That's what people care about right now.

And especially with like the younger generation, Adam and I were talking about this the other day, the average B2B buyer is 36 years old right now, today. Um and 77% of B2B buying decisions are based on whether they can see content and see human behavior in the C-suite. So, like it's not even necessarily about is the product the best, it's like can they feel comfortable doing business with this individual? Um, and so that's kind of why I focus so hard on social selling.

It's like, if I'm in the final round of a, you know, 17-meeting deal and it's me and two competitors, well, I want them to know that like I've got two kids, I love the outdoors, and I love to travel because they want to do business with that person versus the person they know nothing about. You you do a really good job of that. And of teaching others to do that, of humanizing yourself, right? Like I I think and I say this often, it used to be that if you're a halfway good salesperson with a halfway good product, with someone who had half a budget, you can show up and be like, oh, we can do this and fix this.

Oh, I have some money to spend. Great. And today's sellers, we're all a little older, but most of today's sellers have never worked in a different world where they have to work to get a sale. It's again, you're halfway decent and people have money, great.

It's changing. Where I I want to shift gears slightly. Um, you in my opinion, and I've said this to more than a few people, know LinkedIn better than 90% of people out there. Um, you don't have some secret path and secret bat phone to, you know, the CEO of LinkedIn.

Um, it's not like they're feeding you super secret information. I'm sure people ask you all the time, well, Darren, what's going on with the algo? I don't fucking know. Like I know as much as you do.

Um, but LinkedIn is changing. Where, and this is going to be a very broad question, where is LinkedIn going? And what are the fundamental changes you believe we're going to see in the platform and how it helps or hinders sellers over the next 30 days. Yeah.

I don't know if they know where they're going yet. I don't think they know where they're going yet. You know, Let's face it, y'all. Hiring sales talent is a real pain in the ass.

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If you're looking for a proven way to win and retain more customers, visit sendoso.com. you know, one year it's like, all right, we're fully into we're fully into creator, we're fully into social selling, we're fully into, um, social media, we're fully into just being a social media platform. And then the next year it's, hey, we've taken the word creator out of everything on our entire platform.

We don't want people to go viral, we don't want this to be social media. And now it's like, okay, let's implement this video feed and have a for you page and like have all of these things. So we're now social media again. And it's like, I I think it's they're they're trying to figure out like what's what's happening in the space.

I have a very strong idea of where we are going. Um, and I don't think it's B2B, uh, and I think it's direct to consumer. Um, and so I think I think LinkedIn becomes a place where people go to learn, people go to buy, um, people go to find exactly what they need to have. Um, and direct to consumer becomes the the primary force.

And the only reason I say that is because I track the people that are signing up for my classes. And it's the lawn care guy, it's the real estate agent, it's the mortgage lender, it's the, uh, roofer, it's the fence guy, it's the landscaper, it's the, you know, it's the coach, it's the in it's the the individual selling to an individual, um, and a solopreneur, um, because it's the only platform where humans are traceable. There's no other platform where you can trace a human past a username. So I I I I agree with you 100%, but I think we're seeing this across the board.

Not just LinkedIn, like IG in my opinion, and you I don't know how recent, but you have recently started popping up on my IG feed. Uh, don't know if it's paid or if it's just organic. I don't know what I'm doing. No.

Nonetheless, you you you you but you have started showing up on my IG feed, but you know who else has showed up on my IG feed is the local AC guy, is the local, you know, lawn guy showing a video of the great lawn he's cut. And forget a year ago, three months ago, you would never see the lawn guy or the electrician on Instagram promoting his services. Yeah. Um, I think and that is coming over to the B2B world of LinkedIn.

I think it's a fundamental shift and it goes back to this human nature of people want to buy from humans, not from companies. I mean, I think it goes down to the whole like this is probably counterintuitive to this, you know, both of our businesses. Um, but I it's never been easier to make $70,000 online. And so why would you go be why would you go work 60 hours a week at a startup?

When you can Only 60. Yeah. Yeah. Here's what I said there.

And there's there's cross, there's cross uh, uh, advertising from Facebook and and Instagram, right? So it could be that they're just putting it on Facebook and they pay to cross pollinate it into into IG. Like the the localization part of like a Facebook or an IG is that is that it's easy to to segment audiences there. That's not the way LinkedIn works.

Like you're not segmenting audiences on LinkedIn that way. Not yet. Not yet. Not yet.

But I and maybe they're getting there. And I I think people from a business perspective are scare or more scared about LinkedIn because like, are you on LinkedIn, are you not on LinkedIn? Many people are on Facebook or IG, especially if it's a visual thing like lawn cutting, you know, any of those types of things, like it's easier to do a picture on what you're doing than like a 100%. Yeah, it's funny.

I think I think the the more real you can be right now, the better, right? Like I I saw somebody yesterday talk about like how, you know, the reach was so down and the algorithms were so bad. And the same person that said that, um, was the same person that was having their post boosted and promoted all over LinkedIn over the last two weeks. So like they're they were flooding and there's multiple people that are talking like this, but they're it's just the same post I see over and over and over and over again.

And I'm like, I don't want to see your face anymore. So a lot of people are clicking, I don't want to see this. And then LinkedIn is saying, okay, well, you don't want to see this human. And so then they're gone, right?

And so they're out of their like promoting a post on LinkedIn is a death sentence. Right. Tell me more. Tell me more.

Well, because it just says promoted by, you know, the brand that you and then all of a sudden. Six months ago, everyone Darren was saying this is the best thing ever, you can promote your posts. Yeah, well, now it's like it's like, I don't want to see, you know, let's just let's just say I did it. I don't want to see Darren's face nine times on my feed in a day.

100%. 100%. Right? With like knowing that it's boosted or promoted and it's like it doesn't really make sense.

And then the next post like somebody complaining about it. I don't know, just weird to me. So like keeping it organic and keeping it real is is probably the most, you know, impactful thing. I mean, we can get into what happened two weeks ago in the platform if y'all want a little bit, but I think like, uh, you know, Or or we talking about, oh, I don't know Sea Blast and Apollo?

Well, I mean, it's just like I love both of them. I've used both of them. They're great humans. But but like But that's just the first domino.

Yeah. No doubt in my mind. No doubt in my mind. You've got intent tools, you've got enrichment tools, you've got every They're all good.

It's going to be a disaster. So let's go down that path cuz I think there's a lot of people trying to figure out like what is the evolution coming because people like one of the people one of the things that we hear from a lot of people when we talk about their gap and their go-to-market is we need more top of funnel. We want more top of funnel. Like all of these different things that are happening within top of funnel.

And so like keeping it real and organic is one thing, but then you have all these data providers and and aggregators and etcetera etcetera. Like what is going to happen? You said it's the first domino. I think there's going to be a lot of people that just continue to take risks because they have to, um, and, you know, tie a lot of those things to their accounts and and and go that direction.

And I think that that's just a risk that they're going to have to take. Um, you know, the other thing that that is is going to have to happen if if this continues to go this route is like LinkedIn's going to have to build some better tools inside of Sales Navigator so we don't have to, you know, do these things, which I think they're probably thinking about. Um, but, you know, that's the that's the route that, you know, we're going to go. And I think you you talk about top of funnel, right?

Like, um, you know, I'll go out on a limb and say that like you can buy 13 sales tools for your team. And you're going to pay what, $7,000 a person per year, probably, you know, so do the math, $4 million in in sales tools for a team of 20. Um, or you can pay, you know, somebody like myself $50k to come in and help all of your leaders learn how to write. And you're going to get way more eyeballs, you're going to get way more engagement, you're going to get way more inbound than like all of these things that you just like paid $4 million for.

Now, it's way harder to do what I do, but like it I think that's the future. And I think that's why my business is growing so fast right now is because people are so scared to automate. Um, and they just want to figure out how to be a human again because they forgot over the last 10 years how to write. Yeah, but the the interesting part about that is like will people really do the work, right?

I mean, you take 10 people, do two people do the work? And then like now you're back into that iteration of like, are you hiring people and do you hire, you know, journalists? Like who who are you hiring? Yeah, you I mean that's why that's why that's that is a huge role right now for a lot of tech firms.

Head of creative, head of journalism, head of writing, head of uh EGC, right? Like these are all, I think, you know, those are going to be the roles that like we're looking at, right? Like how do we how do we how do we build there? And um I mean it's already happening, right?

That's why you you see it all the time. I mean I I I made a post about Alex Burshoff at Megaport the other day. Remember what she's doing at Megaport. She's changed the entire perception of what that company is across a myriad of different industries now.

You know, so like if for me, like honestly, I'm sitting here and I'm like trying to grow this team, if I was trying to grow this team to 10, of course, I need to get an engineer because I don't know what to do about anything on that side of the house. But very, very quickly, I'm hiring somebody that has a 10 times my brand. And I'm paying them a lot. Yeah.

So, how do you how do you pick the person, Darren, to do that? So, I'm obviously very bullish on what you do and the service you offer, but like let's be real. You're not the only one out there. I get a gazillion emails a day from and my favorite is when I get an email from someone who has like 627 followers.

Um, telling me that I'm using LinkedIn wrong. Um, how do you how do companies, how do founders, how do CEOs like other than ask for receipts and recommendations, like how do you choose who to come in and spend that $50,000 on? Because you're right. I'm going to spend 50 grand for Darren Mackey to come talk to my team for whatever your hourly rate is, however long that you come in, or I'm going to go buy Hey Reach and Expandi and all these great automation tools that eventually are and nothing against those companies, sorry.

Um, but eventually you're going to get booted off LinkedIn. And I promise they're not going to give you a refund on the subscription fees you paid. Cuz buried in their terms of service is some clause that says they don't have to. Yeah, I mean, going back to what I said earlier, right?

Like you you've got to show examples of where it's happened in other organizations, right? Like I'm thinking of one in particular. I've been working with them for 90 days now. They've got three sellers, you know, they were having trouble booking meetings.

They've booked 22 first calls with their top target accounts in their top 70. Um, right? And I mean that that sounds like a lot of proof. Right?

They've shared content every single day for the last 90 days, right? And they're doing they're doing 100 comments a week. Like they're doing the things that they need to be doing. Um, but the easiest way, man, is to coach the founder first.

Um, and show them that like, okay, well, if you let me work with you for three hours, and then all of a sudden you're like, oh my gosh, everything just changed for me. I will pay you whatever you want. And and that that's hard to get the founder, like we talk about that all the time. Now it's about like the value and like, hey, I have 800 other things to do and like I don't have time to do this all the time.

But you're totally right about that. Yeah, I just have other founders that I've coached reach out to founders for me. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

I think I think that is the best way to do it and be like, it's so worth it. Because they'll do whatever it takes. I'll loom video record. So like typically what I do how I get a meeting there just this would be fun for the podcast, but like, um, I'll go to a company that's got 80 reps across the world, right?

And they've got a founder. They're series D whatever. Um, and uh, I'll screen record myself in Sales Navigator and I'll be like, hey, here's your competitor over here. They've got 62 people engaging and creating content out of the 80 reps that they have.

Let's go look at you really quick. You've got two. And like your churn numbers are horrible. These people are about to raise more money.

Tiger Capital is about to invest in them. Um, I wonder why. And just leave it there. And just leave it there.

And like, it's not only the it's not only the content, it's like the fact that like that CEO or founder's posting content, their team's not even engaging in it. So like everybody on the outside looks like, well, that's a shitty place to work. Like if you don't engage with your CEO's post, you you don't really care about your company very much. So, I agree with you, but let's now flip this.

So you have the CEO's post, you have the AE's post, and you have someone in marketing who's saying, but we got to post from the company account, Darren, we got to post from the company LinkedIn account. Everyone's got to go do that. Thoughts on that. And I know you have them.

I mean, I always just ask the same question. I I get this question all the time. Yeah. And I'm like, when's the last time you went and hung out on a company account?

I mean, only reason I go to a company account is to make sure that the company is real. Yeah. If I see somebody, I'm like, all right, what's their what okay, cool. Like it's set up, great.

They probably have a business. Um, that's about it. I've never looked at a follower account of a company page. I don't care.

I mean, I tracked how many followers on Sass Bros. We have I've got 2,500 on the one now. I don't I could care less. I forgot all about Sass Bros.

Yeah, 10,000. Yeah, that RIP to that business. That was hard to run. Um, but I think You did some great things, but that that's like that not to derail us, but that seemed like that seemed very labor intensive.

It was great. We just couldn't scale over 15k a month, which split between two people and taxes, I was like, well, Dale Dale and I had that conver we're having that conversation about other things now. I hear you. Yeah.

I was like, what? This doesn't mean where's the ROI here, folks. Yeah. My time, getting out of bed.

Yeah. I'm like, somebody pay me cash. I'm just kidding. Yeah.

How's Eric doing? Great. Yeah, he's good. He's doing good.

He's doing 20 houses a month staging. He hasn't logged into LinkedIn but one time in the last year. Yeah, he's great. Yeah, he's awesome.

Uh, he's living the life. Um, while us us here are on LinkedIn. It's a drug. It's a fucking drug.

Like my wife yells at me and she's like, it's 9:00 at night. You're laying in bed. What the fuck are you doing on LinkedIn? Yeah, well, I don't know.

It It pays for my life, so. My too. Yeah, yeah, you know. So, um, but yeah, company pages.

I think there is a there's a strategy that I'm seeing right now that's really working if you want to implement it, but you have to be extremely witty. Um, and you have to like you have to be Taco Bell. You have to be Duolingo. You have to be Airbnb.

You have to be Parks and Wildlife. You have to be you have to be you have to be snarky and snippy and witty with your the way that you build your brand. And careful that you don't destroy it going the other way. Yeah, well, like, you know, like Southwest yesterday, you know, it's not like we traded Luka.

That was, you know, that backfired really bad. You know, but Yeah. You know, I thought it was funny and then I was like, I'm not a Southwest customer, so, you know, it probably hurts. Yeah.

I listen, I I would love to keep going forever and ever and ever, but we are at that little thing that we call time. Um, couple rapid fire questions for you, though. Yeah, let's kick it. What's one piece of advice specifically related to social selling that you gave that now you look back and you're like, fuck, that was horrible.

I should have never given that advice. Um, post every day and put five hours into the platform every day. I think it's probably really terrible advice now looking back at it. I used to coach people.

I'm like, you got to you got to live here. You got to post every day. You can't take a break. Now I'm seeing that like three times a day and 45 minutes in the morning is I mean, three times a week and 45 minutes.

Three times a day. I yeah. Three times a day I I do that sometimes, but, uh, yeah. I mean, listen, if you're a founder, you don't have two hours.

Yeah. You got 45 minutes. You got to do a lot in 45 minutes. When's um, when's the last time you felt like you had that imposter syndrome, and like, what'd you do to overcome that?

Uh, I got over imposter syndrome pretty fast. Um, so I I got really lucky in the last company I worked with, Sky. Um, I was surrounded by like insanely successful founders pretty much every week. Um, with dinners and I would sit around dinner and like, they're just the same as me, right?

Like, I remember the first time I met Alex Liberman. I was, you know, about to shit my pants. I was like, I don't know what's happening. I'm like, we we just just he's just a dude.

He's just a normal dude, and he just tries way more things than all of us do. Um, and I think Faster. the success point. But yeah, I don't really it doesn't happen very much.

I mean, I do wake up, I don't know if this is just being a founder, but I do wake up like two or three times a month thinking that like everything's going to get destroyed and crumble and I'm not going to have a business and then everything's going to fall apart. That that is being a founder. Um, and that actually ties to my next question, Darren. So if you lost everything tomorrow, what's the very first move you'd make?

Um, very first move I'd make tomorrow. Um, I'd just call all the other people I've worked with because I kept relationships with every single company I've been a part of. Um, I've got referral partnerships with every company that I've worked with. I would just go work with them.

Um, you know, that's the one thing I always I it's a good interview question if you're interviewing AEs to ask them, um, you know, hey, are you a referral partner with any of the companies that you've worked with? If the answer is no, probably not a good sign. Yeah, that that's a great question. You posted about that the other week too.

Yeah, yeah. So as as we close this thing off, um if you're a revenue leader listening to this thing right now and you're kind of like in these go-to-market gaps, what's one thing that they need to hear like right now? Yeah. I mean, I think it goes back to what I just said about Alex.

Um, you got to try a lot of stuff, right? Like you've got to go to the weird events. You've got to get out and create organic content. Um, you got to make some weird hires to see if it's going to happen.

Um, I mean, you just got to do things that like everybody else isn't doing. Um, and and I think if you do that, you're going to make some mistakes, but you're going to have some really big wins. Um, and that's the one thing I just keep telling people. I'm like, hey, what's the So I we ask our kids these three questions every single day of their life.

So when they're scared about something, or they don't want to do something, I say, Landon, Cooper, what's the best thing that could possibly happen here? And then they answer it. And then I say, what's the worst thing that could possibly happen here? And they answer it.

And then I'm like, what's probably going to happen here? Uh, and I ask that in every single discovery call I go on, um, and it always ends in, all right, like I'm I'm willing to to to see the the middle ground here. Yep, I love that. Test, try, test, see what happens, see what feels.

Do more. Yeah. Hang out with other founders probably. That's another thing I'd say.

Don't isolate yourself. I love it. Darren, where uh, where can people find you? On LinkedIn.

And the website is? Or at my house, but don't show up. No, don't show up at the house. Don't show up at the house.

Yeah. But yeah, DarrenMackey.co, co. Yeah.

I will tell you, I have sent people to Darren's course. I have gone through Darren's course. I am going through Darren's course again. You want to go through this course, and maybe just maybe, if you reach out and tell him RR sent you, maybe there's a little something we can figure out.

I'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. Use the power of referrals, use the power of LinkedIn. Darren, thanks so much for joining the show, man.

We appreciate it. Yeah, man. Y'all have a great day. Peace.

Thanks, sir.