What I Learned From A Kickass Event

Why leadership is more than a buzzword.

Why you'll never see how much unseen effort goes into being a founder or business leader.

How Google really works and why we are all the algorithm.

Welcome to this very special episode of "How to Sell More," where today we're not just sharing strategies, but breaking down the key takeaways and golden nuggets from this year's exclusive "SparkTogether" event.

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Links to This Episode

• Apple Podcast
• Spotify
• YouTube
• Audible

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Key Takeaways

• The Complexity Behind Success - The journey to success is universal in its difficulty, emphasizing that one should never presume that others' achievements come without their own set of trials and tribulations.
• The Perils of Comparison - By recognizing the individual nature of success stories, leaders can foster a healthier mindset that values personal growth and resilience over comparative metrics.
• The Power of Community - A community's strength lies in its ability to foster a comfortable environment that encourages open conversation and the sharing of ideas as if among friends.

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Top 3 Reasons to Listen

Combat the Isolation of Leadership: The episode provides comforting reassurance that the challenges of leadership are universal, offering solutions to overcome feelings of isolation.

Understand the Hard Work Behind Success: Get a real sense of the dedication and hard work that successful business leaders put in behind the scenes.

Avoid Common Pitfalls: The podcast discusses common pitfalls in leadership and sales, providing guidance on how to avoid them.

More About our Host, Mark Drager

AKA the Badass Brand Architect, 5th Generation Entrepreneur, Host of The How To Sell More Podcast

When he's not podcasting, Mark's the Co-Founder & CEO of SalesLoop. He's a dedicated husband to his high school sweetheart, Jacqueline, and a proud father of four.

Mark didn't follow the typical route to becoming a sales & marketing expert. A connected figure in the entrepreneur community, Mark provides listeners with a unique mix of wit, insight, and straightforward advice.

Some of Mark's unconventional adventures include commandeering a Boeing 737-800 for a day, facing harsh criticism from a billionaire, and shedding 70 lbs in his late 30s. Though he never attended college, Mark stands as proof of the might of maintaining a student mindset and being ever-ready to seek assistance

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A Transcription of The Talk

Mark Drager:  Welcome to "How to Sell More."  Today we are talking about why you are not alone. We are talking about advanced strategies, tips, and secrets that I picked up at an event I was at last week. And I'm also sharing a few more surprises with you. I'm Mark Drager, let's get into it.

So, this episode is going to be a bit different. If you're listening for the first time, typically, we're even more strategic, even more tactical than I'm about to be. But this message is just too important for me to delay. So, if you follow me on social media, you've probably noticed that last week I attended an event called "Spark Together." Let me take a step back and explain how this all came to be.

I've been a fan of Rand Fishkin, one of the co-founders of Moz—the SEO tool and software company—and also the author of an amazing book, "Lost and Founder," where he breaks down the BS and secrets that exist within VC-backed start-ups and the bicoastal start-up entrepreneurial, VC-funded world. He kind of breaks it all down—a lot of secrets there. I've been a big fan of Rand for quite some time. I had him on my podcast, the "Mark Drager Show," and I've had him on this podcast. That's because last year, when his new company SparkToro put on this event, I was completely blown away by it. 

They bring together extremely experienced, senior, and strategic people. They give them a platform for 20 or 30 minutes, just like most conferences do. But here's what's unique and different: They do not record any of the sessions, and all of the attendees are kind of under an NDA-type approach. Because nothing is recorded and we all agree it's supposed to stay in the room, if you're there, you get it. If you're not, you've missed out. And, being a virtual event, there's a very active and interactive chat. Those three things together mean that the speakers are really transparent. They are vulnerable. They give you all the details, dish all the dirt, and share all the secrets. Frankly, I think if it was being recorded, they would not share as openly as they do, and there could potentially be blowback or legal action because they name names, they tell stories, they get real.

Last year, I marvelled at how unique the event really is. If you host or run events, I think there's a lot we can learn from how Rand Fishkin, SparkToro, and Amanda, the VP of Marketing, run this event because it's special. When the opportunity came up for us to be a lead sponsor, I turned to my partners at SalesLoop, at my agency, and I said, "I think we should sponsor this. We need to be a part of it." I'm a user of SparkToro's software, we use it in our brand strategy process, and we're fans. We learn a lot by being around them. Why wouldn't we want to be a sponsor? So I'll put it out there right away—yes, we are sponsors of the event. But it's mainly because I believe in what they're doing, and I want to be part of it in some way.

Now, what I'm about to share with you are the key lessons, the key takeaways, and the secrets. I've been careful to ensure that I'm not sharing anything that will get a speaker sued or in trouble. Coming out of the event, I had pages of notes. I reached out to some people on LinkedIn who attended, asking for their number one takeaway. Most people gave me a novel's worth of feedback.

We've sifted through all the feedback, and I'm here to share with you the secrets you probably missed if you were not in the room—brought forward not only by me but also by a handful of attendees. These golden nuggets and secrets are what you can implement in your business too.

Okay, so takeaway number one from the event—and I call this section "It's Hard, It's Hard"—I'm going to start off with James De Roche, the founder of Lead Comet. He's an attendee who wrote back that his number one takeaway was, "I'm not alone in this." Being a business owner is chaotic, stressful, and challenging. Do you ever feel that way? I've been doing this for 17 years, and I often feel alone, even though I have great partners, a great network, and a mentor. I've taken many steps to combat that loneliness. But business ownership is chaotic. I think James is right—it is stressful and challenging.

He goes on to say that knowing others have faced challenging situations and pushed through really helps. He shared a story about starting an SEO agency right before a shift in AI and the market, saying it's been a tough year. But knowing there's no clear path forward, knowing we're all facing the same challenges, and as leaders, we all have to deal with this—it's really hard. That made James feel a bit better.

Sunny Hunt, the CEO of Hunt Direction, shared an amazing point: The end result of doing great work is harder behind the scenes than anyone would admit publicly. There's a lot of big thinking, planning, sweat, and tears behind the scenes. So here's the real key point, and I thank you so much for sharing this with me: Never assume anything comes easily for anyone.

We run into problems, don't we? They say comparison is the thief of joy. Do they say that? Let me look that up. Hold on. Is that a thing? Yes, Teddy Roosevelt said, "Comparison is the thief of joy." But apparently, Mark Twain felt even more strongly about it, using the word "death" instead of "thief."

And I think that was Sunny's takeaway from this. And here’s why I started with, "It’s hard." Because at this event, there were a lot of senior leaders who shared some really amazing stories. We’re talking about people who were VC-backed, where it would all fall apart. We’re talking about people who, you know, are trying to avoid lawsuits, or people who were getting sued by past employees, or people who had to restructure teams, or people who had to lay people off. It’s just the truth of business ownership.

It’s none of the stuff that anyone on Instagram, trying to tell you how you’re going to make $100,000 over the next year for doing nothing, or how we can just teach you how to do it. Or if you buy my package, it will all work out for you, or I’m going to make you rich. None of that stuff is real. We know that, right? Let’s... let’s call it—You’re listening to this; you know that.

Now, Axel Sukianto wrote back to me, and he’s a marketing manager of demand generation at UpGuard. He said it's okay to fail. Even leaders fail and cry. One of the presentations was all about the first time that this founder cried at work. Axel goes on to say you often see on Twitter and LinkedIn all of the wins, but not the failures. Rand and Amanda over at SparkToro have built an amazing space for people to share the whole story. I agree. I agree. We’re going to circle around on lessons we can learn if we host events later. But Axel's right, you know, it's okay to fail because leaders fail. It is okay to try because leaders try. What's not okay is not trying.

Now, I'm a recovering perfectionist. I think I need to go to P.A.—is that a thing? Perfectionists Anonymous, let’s make that a thing. I think I need to go there. Because I do not like screwing up. I do not like making mistakes. I don’t like looking stupid. Maybe you feel the same way as me. But I’m reminded when we’re surrounded by people who are willing to be open and honest and willing to share these stories, you realize that this is just part of it. This is just what you signed up for.

I think of a line I’m often reminded of—my personal trainer was doing a health challenge. And it was really hard, just like being a business owner hard, but in this health challenge, it was really, really hard. And I was giving him excuses and excuses, talking about my time and this and that. And he said, “Mark, what did you think was going to happen? What do you think you signed up for? It takes what it takes, right?” Being a leader, being a leader in marketing, being a leader in sales, being a leader of a team, being in the C-suite, being a manager, being a business owner, being an entrepreneur, it’s hard. What did you think you signed up for?

Scott Heimendinger, an inventor and culinary technologist—I don’t know what that means, but that’s pretty cool—said that his one takeaway is that entrepreneurship, in all its versions, is highly personal, highly emotional. And the only way to survive it is to have a network you can lean on for support and advice when times get tough. I agree.

Jason Dodge, the founder and CEO of Black Truck Media, goes on to say that the idea is that we’re all humans, we’re all making mistakes in life. Sometimes we get some wins along the way. It’s okay to be vulnerable in the process. That’s how we learn, together.

Oh man, the men and women who shared feedback with me not only helped reinforce the takeaways from an event like SparkToro or any event you go to but it also reminded me of where I need to be spending more of my time. I need to spend more time in the right rooms, around the right people. I need to listen to more of this type of content. I need more of it. Because when I'm not in a room like this for a few weeks or even a few months, sometimes I kind of forget about it. I feel like I'm alone. I feel like it's only me, I feel like I'm the only one who has to face these challenges. And that's just not true.

One more comment from an attendee, who I think will help us wrap up this part of the conversation—Bob Kahns, a performance marketing manager at Proofpoint Marketing. He says his main takeaway was that being a founder is hard. We heard that right, being a founder is hard and emotionally draining. But he goes on with a really unique perspective. And he says, you can actually extrapolate this founder's journey, this entrepreneur's journey, to a marketing leader's journey as well. As leaders, we're constantly pitching new ideas, many of which may not be fully understood, with the hopes of getting funding or budgets to run tests, do experiments, and run new marketing programs. But here's the challenge—skepticism runs high. Our leaders, our C-suite, our clients, when you're in sales, when you're in marketing, when you're in client services, skepticism runs high. And even if your campaigns and your projects are successful, often there is renewed or continued skepticism if, for whatever reason, revenue numbers aren't growing to the expectations of the client, of the C-suite, of the leaders. 

And so he says marketing is more than a tangible end goal, which is why it's hard to be understood, and why it's the easiest and often first department to get the blame. Having spent 17 years in marketing, having worked with hundreds of companies, and thousands of projects—oh my goodness, do I resonate with that? The feeling of being the first one to get the blame. 

Well, let's jump in. Now let's move past the fact that it's hard. Our pity party is over, let's jump into some really cool strategic gold nuggets. So the first I want to focus on is a takeaway from the presentation given by Katelyn Bourgoin, who's the founder of Customer Camp. And she talked about mimetic desire. Mimetic, mimetic, mimetic desire—I can't even say that. Now, while this is a hard phrase to say, it's a really important topic, a powerful topic, and something I've been digging into and thinking about for the last few years, but I never had a way to articulate it. And Katelyn's presentation really brought it home for me. 

So, this idea of mimetic desire, I think that's how you say it, mimetic desire, is a concept that was created by this guy, René Girard, a French historian, literary critic, philosopher, social scientist—I'm not going to bore you with all those details. I'll give you the Coles notes: the basic gist of it is, often, we think we want what we want not because we actually want it, but because we are told by others that they want it. So we assume we want it, or we're told by others that we should want it. So we assume we want it. And then we work and work and work. And then we start to get it. And we go, "I don't want this. I don't like this. I hate this. I didn't realize it came with these side effects. I didn't realize it came at this cost. I don't want any of this stuff." And so we stop. And then we go ahead, and we pick the next thing that we think we should do, or that might work, or that we should want, or we think we want because everyone else seems to want it too. And we go down that path. And then we get there. And we realize, "I don't want this. I don't like this. Why did I think this was a good idea?" And Katelyn really painted an amazing picture. 

Now, we're lucky enough that we're going to have Katelyn on the podcast in a future episode. So we'll be able to break some of this stuff down. But if you haven't looked into it, you really should.

 And so,  Beth Brodovsky, who's the president of Iris Creative and the host of the "Driving Participation" podcast—I like that name—was talking about the fact that this concept is something that has affected her, but she never really had a word for it. I've said, for the last few years, I've been looking into this and thinking about it, and I never really had a word for it. With all of the thought leadership and all of the personal development work and all of the stuff I've worked through, I've never heard this term. And so if you feel like this is something that may have affected you, I would recommend maybe taking a deep dive into mimetic desire, m-i-m-e-t-i-c desire. Take a look at it and dig into it because people were blown away by the presentation and the concept.

Okay, let's hit you with another one of the gold nuggets. This came from a presentation by Wes Kao, who is the co-founder of Maven. Now, Wes was talking about what her business coach told her. But do you know this term, a FOG, a FOG? I don't think I've heard this term before, but she was talking about the fact that when bad circumstances happen, it's really just in a FOG. Now, Ali Paige, who is the founder of the LU Lab, her number one takeaway was, quote, "Shitty circumstances are really just in a FOG." And if you haven't figured it out yet, a FOG stands for Another Fucking Opportunity for Growth. I love that—Another Fucking Opportunity for Growth. So, I have a friend, Evan Carmichael, whenever things go sideways, he always goes, "It's the best." You know, yesterday, my kids were walking home, and it rained, and it poured, and it was close to freezing out, and it was really cold. And they came in and complained, and they're like, "It's so cold. It's so wet." And I was like, "It's the best." And so, I'm going to use it the same way, as Ali Paige writes, "When shitty circumstances are really just AFOGs, another fucking opportunity for growth." That one's great. Let's keep going.

Mariya Delano, who's the founder and CEO of Kalyna Marketing, talked about Purna Virji's presentation, and here was the takeaway: Good marketing is human-centric and emotional. I think far too many people in sales, marketing, business owners, C-suite... I think too many of us forget. Yeah, we know it's human-centric. I can't tell you how many people we've had on the podcast who said, "Know your customers, know your customers, know your customers." But as Purna was speaking about, it's not only human-centric, it's emotional. It's emotional. Even B2B is emotional. Even when you're selling the most boring, process-driven thing in the world, it's emotional. We are emotional people.

Now, I'm holding a copy of Purna's book, "High-Impact Content Marketing." And this thing is amazing. It's like 330 pages of extremely technical, extremely tactical, and very advanced strategies. I just ordered my copy of my book—I'm not telling you to, but I just ordered it because after hearing her presentation, I was like, "I have to learn more about her and her approach and her strategies." And lucky for all of us, I'm actually going to have Purna on the podcast. We were able to figure it out. In a few weeks, we're going to have her on, and we'll be able to deep dive into all of her strategies for the seven questions you need to ask to be able to bring your sales team and your marketing and C-suite together. Like, just, we're going to go through all of the foundations and all the frameworks, but I would recommend you give Purna a follow. I think she's amazing.

Now, let's hit one more of these gold nuggets. And this came from Britney Muller's presentation. Andrew Dipper, a Senior Marketing Consultant at Blend, said that his one takeaway, which was amazing, was in Britney's presentation. Britney is someone who is really into SEO, she's really into technology. She understands PR from her background. She broke down this whole presentation and strategy on why Taylor Swift went to a football game with the Jets. Of course, with Taylor Swift, there's the boyfriend, the football player for the Chiefs. But why did she go to the Jets game? Well, Britney did a whole breakdown on why the data or the evidence kind of shows that Taylor Swift most likely went to this Jets game because she's been caught up for the last year or two in this private jet controversy—like how much money she spends on private planes and private jets, and how much she

 flies, and the CO2 emissions, and all of this stuff. And so, whenever people would type in Taylor Swift and the word 'jet,' when that would come up, someone in her organization was trying to figure out ways to push down the story. And if you put out enough stuff, like Taylor Swift attending a Jets game, then all the news would be about Taylor Swift jets being the football game, not Taylor Swift jets being the fact that her $40 million private jet is putting out all of these terrible emissions.

And so, Britney Muller gave this whole breakdown, this whole presentation because, frankly, she was the one who kind of broke the story and went completely viral. And she had a wild ride, but it was the one takeaway that our friend Andrew Dipper, over at Blend, said has said that he really liked Britney's tactic of reaching out to journalists to say, "I know you don't cover these kinds of stories normally, but..." And here's the thing: You reach out to people who do. You reach out to people who you know cover these types of stories. And you lead off by saying, "I know you don't normally cover these types of stories, but here's something," because you want them to reply and correct you.You want them to say, "Well, actually, I do talk about technology. Well, actually, I do talk about manufacturing. Well, actually, I do cover the beat on this." Apparently, it's a great tactic. I haven't tried it. But Britney says it works all the time.

And one more from Andrew Dipper, while we're at it. He talked about the fact that Wes Kao, who's the co-founder of Maven that I spoke about earlier with the AFOG. Here's one more tip from her. She talked about the fact that during the hiring process, and the interviewing process as a leader, she really focuses on back-channel references. Now, this is not something that I've thought about or even really heard about, and many people in the room hadn't, so if you're not familiar with back-channel reference, the idea is, when you're interviewing for any kind of position, often you go through the interviewing process with hopes and dreams about how everything can turn out and how it's going to be great. And you tend to hire people and then later find out it's not a good fit, or they can't live up to expectations, or they oversold themselves.

But what happens, of course, we're going to do our reference checks, of course, they're going to give us references—those are kind of inherently biased, nobody's going to give you a bad reference. I think in many states, or at least, kind of because of the law, I think often, if someone is really, really bad, I don't think you can give them a bad reference because I think that's slander in some way, even if it's your own experience. I'm not a lawyer. But here's the thing: a back-channel reference is the idea that you will reach out to each of the references they give you. But then you reach out to people in the applicant's network to ask them about it. So you wouldn't do this, of course, if they were still at a company, still at a role—you would never reach out to their manager and say, "Hey, they're applying for this job, what do you think?" I mean, that's a big no-no. But let's say they've bounced around a bit, or they've been at a few organizations, maybe you would go back an organization or two, and you would find the leader, and you'd reach out and explain what you're doing, and you'd ask them this question, "Would you hire this person back?" And if there's "uhh, well, yeah, I mean, we'll see"—if there's hesitation, then that kind of tells you something. If they were like, "In a heartbeat. Oh, man, I wish I could work with that person again. And here's why, and here's why they're great," then that tells you something. So, the power of back-channel references is the idea that you're finding a third-party person who's hopefully neutral and can give you a sense of what it's like to work with this person. And here's the other thing that was said, which was amazing: Don't wait until the end of the process to do this. Midway through the process, you should be doing back-channel references. Now, I did go online, I did look around—there is some negativity around it. So it's up to you.

Okay, so shifting gears a bit, I've got some really tactical things that I want to share with you. Now, that was all the like being a leader, being a founder. Here's all the stuff, listening. I want to get really tactical now. Okay, so Allie Paige, once again, who's the founder of the Lou Lab—Allie Paige earlier mentioned something—but she was talking about Lavall  Chichester, who we've had on the podcast. You may remember a few episodes ago, we had Lavell on, and we were talking about how to bring sales and marketing teams together. But he gave a presentation, which I don't know how to explain it. Like, it melted everyone's minds. Like, it was a little bit technical. I'm going, to be honest with you, I didn't really get all of it. But I was watching the reaction from the chat, and I was watching Rand's face as Lavall shared this strategy, and people went crazy. I'm going to give you the simple way because, like I said, I didn't really understand all of it, and it wasn't recorded, so I can't even go back. But here's the tactic, alright? Listen, and be careful—if you can't find the true white space in your market, in your business, or for your product. If you can't find it, you can make it. You can make it. Here's what I mean: If you're able to find different interests, and create overlaps of these interests, you can create your own white space.

Okay, so Anfernee Chansamooth goes on to speak to this as well. They were another attendee. They said their number one takeaway from Lavall  was, "Use audience research to identify and leverage the white space to create content for your audience." Okay, so what does this mean? Well, it essentially means that if you go out and do your audience or your customer research, and the market is really oversaturated, it's really competitive, or frankly, there's no path to be able to market or speak to these people because it's a regulated market, then you need to go out and find your own. You need to overlap multiple interests to find your own space that no one else is in. Let me give another example. So a few years ago, we were working with a cooler company that made a really high-end cooler. You may be familiar with Yeti—YETI Coolers are pretty kick-ass.

They're like, I don't know, $70 or $80 million, this company. It's been five or six years of building their company up by doing roadshows. But what makes a Yeti cooler so effective is the fact that they have high-density foam. They have rigid walls, and they're looking at like two and two and a half inches of foam around the whole area. Whereas cheaper coolers are plastic, but they don't have foam within them. Stay with me if you can, they don't have foam within them—they have air, or they may have foam around the outer walls but not on the bottom and normal lid. And anytime that you don't have a real seal, anytime you have two or three inches of high-density foam, you're going to allow energy to go in or out, which means it's going to get hotter, it's going to get cooler, and it's not going to be as effective. So, Yeti designed this brand-new type of cooler. My client had this idea for a custom cooler, really high-end, really special, specifically for Tesla owners to fit in the rear wheel—well, I got to say that carefully—the rear wheel well in the trunk of a Model 3. And so, he went out, and he found the people who made, and invented the Yeti cooler. We developed the brand, we developed the go-to-market strategy, we did all this stuff. 

But if we use this as an example, if we're just going to have to—coolers, the cooler section, the cooler market is pretty saturated, right? Yes, we can look at people who have an interest in hunting or fishing and pickup trucks, right? Like, if you're into hunting, fishing, and pickup trucks. Cool. That's an audience overlap, right? That's what we're talking about here. We can't just go after people who want a cooler. We want people who want a cooler and happen to go out and do outdoor sports and will overlap them. And that's pretty standard. But often, in these established markets, it is really, really competitive. And so even with these audience overlaps, it's not about like, "Hey, can we just go and scale this wall and take over this market and get market share and spend money and just attack?" Wouldn't it be better, wouldn't it be easier if we found two overlapping interests in an area that's kind of green pasture, in a blue ocean-type environment? Wouldn't that make more sense? 

And so, with my client, for example, the fact that we were specifically going after Tesla owners, which means we knew who the buyers of Tesla's were, we knew the regions that they had high density for sales, we knew exactly the zip codes that they happen to be in, we knew that these were people who were most likely into long trips, or travel, or in a hot environment where they would have to take their groceries and put them in a cooler in the trunk because they would naturally get warm as they're commuting home. People who are going to college—we knew all this stuff. So now imagine in your head, ticking these different audience interests or these different audience overlaps and bringing them together. And each time you do, in that Venn diagram, you have a unique person. You have a unique audience who goes to unique places, and who wants unique things. And each time you do that, it's less competitive.

Now, let's take this one step further. And Chans, who's a fractional CMO and B2B Marketing Consultant, he broke it down for me on LinkedIn. He said that his number one takeaway was from this talk about using audience research to identify whitespace opportunities. But here's where he actually breaks it down and makes it simple for me. First, leverage audience data. Second, diversify monetization strategies, so find different ways to earn money off of these audiences. Third, be vigilant for hidden dangers, such as negative SEO threats. So be careful that your competitors are not out there doing a negative SEO campaign against you to try and take you out and steal your traffic. That happens; cybersecurity is a big thing because this happens all the time in SEO. Next, create a data loop. So encourage user-generated content and interactions to build a unique data advantage that sets your business apart. So what they're saying here is once you've found this audience and once you've found this niche, once you've found these things, once you've started to do SEO in this area, once you're vigilant against other people attacking your traffic, create a way that encourages these engaged users to interact and give you back content. And then last, what we should always do in business, is embrace resilience and stay adaptable to changing circumstances. And Chan ends by saying, "Hope that's helpful." It is. Like I said, I was listening to the presentation, and I could see how blown away everyone was. But for me, I was like, "I think this is impressive. I'm not quite sure how I get it." But I get it now. And hopefully, you do too.

Okay, a few final takeaways. Cyrus Shepard gave a presentation about how Google actually works. Mind-blowing—how Google actually works, how you think Google works, doesn't work, and the way he was able to find this out was he got a job, kind of in Google, in the back end to figure stuff out.

 And here was the line, the takeaway—Vanessa Allen, who's the head of marketing over at Four Corners, said it best: "We are the algorithm." And what this actually means is, apparently—this is what Cyrus Shepard said—Google does not look at content or pages the way we think it does. Yes, it uses different indicators like keywords and linking and all of this stuff to get you to the first page. But once you're on the first page, what ranks something first versus second versus third versus fourth, or what have you, is actually more about people interactions than it is about signals. Or maybe signals is the wrong word, I don't know, I'm not an SEO guy. But here's what they're basically saying: The content and the way you do SEO, the way we think we all should, that gets you to the first page. But Google can't measure what is good or bad copy; it can't actually measure what is a good website or a bad website. It can't measure any of those things, but it can measure what people do. And so if people like your website, if people stay on your website, if people go deeper and deeper and interact with it, it measures that and it goes, "Oh, these people must have good taste. So this must be a good site."

Now, if people hate your site, and then immediately bounce back and go to some other site and spend time on it, it goes, "Oh, this must not be a good site because people did not spend time on it." Let's say that people do a search term, and they come and then they go, "Oh, there's nothing I like." And then they do a second search term, and they do a third search term, and then you have a fourth search term—it goes, "Oh, I guess that stuff we were showing people for the first search term must not be very good because no one clicked on it." Let's say that you do a search term, and then you go to the first, second, third thing, you know, answers right, and you go back, and then you do another search with a slightly different term that's more specific. Google goes, "Oh, I guess that search term was not very good, and that content was not very good. Did the second search term get you closer to what you wanted?" Do you get where I'm going with this?

This was the breakthrough that Cyrus Shepard said, that this is not necessarily about all the technical things we are, but this is actually about people—that people are the algorithm. This is amazing because what it means is, yes, you should focus on all the technical stuff, we should all focus on the technical things. But more than that, this stresses that we need an amazing brand and amazing look and feel, we need the right copy, the right words, and the right tone, we need to spoon-feed everything to people and create an engaging and amazing platform that people can just dig deep into and spend time on and get exactly what they need when they need it, how they want it. If we do that, we can win in the algorithm because it's people at the end of the day.

Now I know this is a longer episode. If you're still with me, I thank you so much. I have a few final takeaways. I was saying that you know what, the way that Rand and Amanda over at SparkToro run this event is unlike anything I've ever been a part of. And I've been a part of many, many mastermind groups, and they're amazing groups. But this is a different event. And so, if you run your own event, here are a few key takeaways specifically around how they run this event.

So Emilie Carignan, who is a fractional CMO, wrote, "Because of the strong community and the whole Rand-Amanda vibe, it feels like chatting with friends, which is super hard to manufacture if not genuine." I agree. Rodney Higgins, who's the director of content at Open Forum, said, "I feel like I'm at a retreat with friends." And I think that's due to two things: SparkToro has cultivated a brand following of marketers and professionals who see each other as human beings first, and professionals second. The nature of Spark Together, namely, it is live only and not recorded, creates an intimacy for brand followers, to let our guard down and connect more deeply.

And finally, I'm going to leave you with these final thoughts from Zoe Hawkins, who's a principal Content Manager at Sumo. She writes, "I think my biggest takeaway is that common sense isn't so common. We all know that we should make more of the interview process," which I was talking about earlier about back-channel references. "We know that we shouldn't be starting businesses that we don't really want to run," that was Katelyn's presentation on mimetic desire. "We know we should be telling great stories based on solid data and research," which is really about Lavall 's presentation earlier. "But actually doing those things, constantly... Oh, that's the challenge." And Zoe, I think you're right. I think that's the challenge. We know these things, but doing them, and doing them consistently is a challenge.

And so, if you run events, if you run a private mastermind group, if you run a coaching session, if you do group coaching, if you do webinars for clients, no matter what you do, I hope that you took something away from this little weird episode, this little breakdown of the event because, frankly, I haven't been a part of something like this before. And yeah, the way that Rand and Amanda have created these vibes—very casual, they've encouraged a lot of talk, a lot of chatting, they built a very strong following. And at the event, I think, what did they say, there were two, three hundred people there? So it wasn't like thousands and thousands of people. But we were active, we were talking, we were making book recommendations, and we were cheering each other up. And frankly, I've met some people that we've carried the conversation on LinkedIn. I'm really interested in learning more about what they do because I think I can learn from them, and I think they can help me with the things that I'm doing in my business as well.

And so, I normally break down the three takeaways. I'm not going to do that in this episode; this episode is already long enough. But I will leave you with this: If you have any questions, if you need any resources, if you want any links to anyone that I've mentioned today or any of the topics, just head over to LinkedIn. You can find me, Mark Drager, from Sales Loop, from the "How to Sell More" podcast. You can find me, drop me a DM, or leave me a comment and let me know what you need, and I will shoot it over to you. I want to thank you for listening to this episode. If you haven't subscribed, you really should. And that's because typically, maybe not this episode, but typically, we give you the strategies and the tactics to be able to boost sales and grow your business. So with that, thanks for listening to this special episode. I will catch you in the next one.

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