May 24, 2025 | Read online
Helping elevate the people and profession of Sales by sharing authentic conversations, practical tips, expert advice, relevant tech and real-world lessons from my experience selling every day. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday.
“Comparison is the thief of joy” - Theodore Roosevelt
I was reminded of that this week.
I was #36,142 on Linkedin. I have over 410k followers. I get varying degrees of engagement depending on the post but they usually do ok.
And yet, I still find myself getting jealous of others and frustrated as I scroll through my feed.
That’s what I hate about social media. No matter how confident you are, you inherently compare yourself to others which inevitably makes you feel worse about yourself.
I had to take a step back and remind myself of why I still post and share content regardless of the engagement or how it compares to what others post.
Before I get to that in the Sales From The Streets Section, I’ll share a few tips and resources for those of you out there who are still sitting on the sideline and not sharing content or building your personal brand.
(p.s. Reminder to JB Sales Members, make sure you scroll all the way down to the “Member’s Only” section of the newsletter for upcoming events and resources. If you’re not a member yet you can use coupon code: JBNEWSLETTER for 20% off the Membership.)
TACTICAL TIPS:
Share What You Learn, Not What You Know
Based on my experience training thousands of sales reps on prospecting and integrating social selling/personal brand building into their process, I can tell you the main reasons people don’t do it or stay consistent with it are:
- There is almost zero short term benefit to posting on social and building your brand
- Most people don’t know what to post or they feel uncomfortable posting because they don’t consider themselves a “thought leader” (whatever that means)
- They don’t feel like they have time to do it with all the other things they are being held accountable for
It’s true, there is almost no short term benefit from posting on social media and trying to build your brand. The likelihood of you posting something and having one of your ICPs see it and reach out to you directly to engage in a sales process is almost zero.
However, with AI coming for all of us, personal brands and authenticity are going to be more important than ever moving forward. That’s why I try to focus on playing the Infinite Game (long term), instead of the finite game (short term).
This leads to the ‘‘what to post’ challenge.
This is where most people get it wrong in my opinion, specifically related to ‘what to post'.
Most people think they need to “create” content that highlights their expertise or knowledge on the subject.
WRONG!
You don’t have to be the content CREATOR, you need to be the content CURATOR.
People care less about what you know and more about your journey and what you’re learning along the way.
Here’s what you can do to find endless things to post about, improve your business acumen and build your brand in an authentic way:
- Identify the main persona you sell to and need to learn about (ex > CIOs in Healthcare)
- Go into ChatGPT or any AI platform and ask it to give you the top 10 thought leaders (companies or people) who are blogging and posting about the priorities and challenges that CIOs in Healthcare are dealing with today and make sure you ask it to include the links to their blogs.
- Read through some of the blogs to find some that you like and get value (i.e. learn) from.
- Consume their content with the focus on LEARNING first
- When you come across an article that you find interesting and learn something from, share it on social with your context (key take-aways, questions, etc.)
When you share what you’re learning from other “thought leaders” and people read their content because you shared it, you get the credit.
TECH/RESOURCES:
Feedly
Now let’s deal with the “I don’t have time” objection to sharing content and building your brand.
This is all about creating a routine in my experience.
Just like anything else, if I approach brand building and posting on social as an “event” it rarely happens due to other priorities coming up. But, if I create a routine around it, and do a little bit every day, it has a much higher chance of happening consistently.
That’s why I use www.feedly.com (not a sponsor).
Feedly is an RSS aggregator. If you have 5 blogs you like reading, usually you have to go to 5 different websites to read those blogs or get 5 different emails in your inbox every day.
With Feedly, I can set up a folder called “Sales Blogs” and add all my favorite sales blogs to it so when I open the folder, all I see is the headlines of all the new sales blogs that come out every day and I can scroll through them to see which ones are interesting.
I’ve built this into my morning routine so now instead of checking my Fantasy Leagues (which I suck at) or reading the news (which is nothing but depressing), I scan through articles on topics specific to me and my audience, read them to learn something and then share them with context to build my brand.
If you want to see the details of how I do this you can sign up to my Membership (coupon code JBNEWSLETTER) or buy this individual bundle: BUILDING YOUR PERSONAL BRAND
SPOTLIGHT: Regie.ai
I'm so excited to announce my partnership with RegieAI!
Reps have been drowning in tools and admin work, spending less than 28% of our time actually selling. It’s not because they’re not working hard enough. It’s because the actual job - building meaningful pipeline and connections with people - is buried under clicks, copy/paste, and task switching chaos.
That's where RegieAI comes in - it's not just another AI tool, it's your IRONMAN suit for sales. Their AI agents handle the high-volume, high-friction stuff so you can focus on what matters - building meaningful connections and closing deals.
The reps who learn to use AI to elevate their impact are the ones who will win.
Want to see how you can cut your prospecting tech spend by 50% and actually get back to selling?
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SALES FROM THE STREETS:
You Saved My Life
Again, this was a week where I found myself comparing myself to others and had to take a step back and remind myself why I continue to post and share my journey.
I don’t share content for likes or comments.
I share my journey and what I’ve learned or am learning along the way because you never know who is listening and what a difference you can make in someone’s life.
I had an interaction with someone who listened to my podcast a while ago that I will never forget.
For those of you who have been following me for a while, you know that my Dad passed away back in early 2021.
I was really struggling with it and shared a lot of what I was going through on Instagram and on various episodes of my podcast since sometimes I tend to use my podcast as an open therapy session.
Fast forward about a year and I was at an event in Boston during Hubspot’s INBOUND conference and a guy came up to me and asked for a hug.
Since I’m a hugger, I said sure, gave him a hug and then asked him how he knew me and why he wanted a hug.
He said - “I just wanted to say thank you for saving my life.”
I was a bit shocked and thought he was joking so I said - “Wait….what? Come on man, how could I have saved your life? I don’t even know you.”
He explained how he had recently lost his mom to cancer, his brother died unexpectedly the same day, his girl left him, his company fired him for taking too much bereavement time and he was kicked out of his apartment, all within 30 days. He ended up living in his car contemplating suicide.
Are you fucking kidding me? I was speechless as tears started to well up in my eyes.
He went on to explain how he had been following me on social for a while and listening to my podcast where he heard me talking through how I was dealing with the death of my dad and trying to get through it.
I don’t know if it was something specific I said or just how open I was about it but he said it gave him hope and a belief that he could get through what he was going through.
He was now back on his feet with a new job, a nice apartment and a new girlfriend, thanking me for helping him through it.
Now I was the one needing a hug, feeling gratitude.
Never in my wildest dreams did I ever believe that I could have that kind of an impact on someone just by sharing my journey.
If my podcast never gets another download I’ll still consider it a success based on that one hug.
Tell your story. You never know who’s listening.
MEMBERS ONLY
Last Month’s Free Training Friday (Intro to AI in Sales) was a huge hit and got great feedback so I’ve decided to bring in my AI coach (Chris Briest) to do a 3 part workshop series on AI for Members only.
Use the link to Session1 above to register for one or all three.
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ADDITIONAL WAYS YOU CAN LEVEL UP YOUR SALES GAME
- The JB Sales Membership is where you’ll get access to my live training, workshops, AMAs and OnDemand catalog so you can level up your sales skills every day! 3000+ Sales pros have already joined. Are you next?
- The industry-leading Make it Happen Monday Podcast where you’ll get insights and inspiration from some of the most interesting and influential people in the world of Sales and business. (this is where you’ll hear the Guy Kawasaki episode on May XYZ)
- The JB Sales YouTube channel with practical tips that you can apply immediately to drive results along with interviews and content that is guaranteed to get you to think differently.
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