Camille Trent's newsjacking technique that doubled PeerSignal's email list from 6K to 12K in 45 days

[00:00:00] Ramli John: One of the best ways to get your message across a huge audience is to ride a trending topic. And that's what newsjacking is all about. When done well, it can give you a burst of traffic and also email subscribers in a short period of time. This is what exactly, Camille Trent, director of Content and Community at Big Signal, did they newsjack their way to doubling their email subscribers from 6000 to 12,000 in just 45 days. Can you believe it? In this Marketing Pops episode, you learn, first, how peersignal double their email traffic using the newsjacking technique. Second, the BLUF technique that Camille uses to write vile posts on LinkedIn. Third, how to create original thought leadership content that even AI finds hard to copy. And number four, one piece of advice that Camille used to accelerate her career. Now, before we get started, I created a free Power Up cheat sheet that you could download, bill, and apply Camille's newsjacking technique to double their email subscribers. You can get that marketing powerups.com or find that link in the show notes and description below.

[00:01:03] Announcer: Are you ready? Let's go. Marketing Powerups. Ready? Go. Here's your host, Ramli John. 

[00:01:30] Ramli John: Specifically for peersignal, you use that to double their email list from 6000 to 12,000 in 45 days using LinkedIn and other things. Can you talk a little bit about what was your approach to growing that list? And we can just go through it just very high level because I want to get into that Power Up with the block technique in a bit. [00:01:39] Camille Trent: Yeah, so you're right. So most of it was Adam and I posting on LinkedIn. That was our primary distribution channel. And the reason for that was really because Adam already had built up a good following there. It's kind of like where he initially launched Pure Signal and grew his email list so we knew it worked. And then on top of that, I think when I joined, it kind of helped double that reach, right? Like, we had around the same amount of followers. We're both at about 30K right now. So I think if you think about it in terms of just doubling down where you already have chips, where you already have strengths, that's where I would recommend most people start. That was a lot of it. I did do a little bit of experimentation with Twitter, even a little bit of TikTok, although I'd barely count that. So still kind of playing around with some other channels, but trying to make sure we stayed focused on one thing. And then I think it was helpful for me because Adam actually, originally he was talking about when bringing me on, like, let's branch into Twitter, let's add some other channels. We still want to do that. But I think after we saw what there was still what we could still reap, I guess, from LinkedIn or how much more opportunity there was there, he was like, Actually, let's just focused on LinkedIn, LinkedIn first, and don't worry about those other channels. So that really gave me the space to focus there. Number one is really just focus. That's the hardest thing I think for marketers is so many shiny objects, like so many things that could work and do work for folks, right? But it's like what's working the best for you? Where have you already found success? And then it's like a momentum game a little bit from there, right?
[00:03:38] Camille Trent: And so two ways I guess that I think about this is through the lens of content logistics. So content as a product, if you will. So there's the production, there's like how the content is made. And I think of content as more of the long form piece. So for us, that peersignal itself has these data sets, has these galleries, has basically this library of resource for B, two B marketers. So we have those, we have all that we can pull from for our research. We essentially tap into our databases to think of research projects and to essentially cut and filter data to get some interesting insights so we can share. And then those insights are distilled into our newsletter. And that's like a weekly newsletter right now. Those are kind of like what I think of as our long form pieces. And so a good sort of like rule of thumb is when I'm excited about that long form content, right? If you especially since we are the target market to some degree, where our target market is sales and marketing professionals and we want to talk to the VP C suit suite level. Not that it's not going to appeal to anyone else in that field, but we just figure if we talk to that highest level of strategy and we're really trying to understand go to market and how to run an effective sales and marketing program. I've just found that everyone else within that industry also likes that content versus if you optimize for a younger level and earlier level, you're not going to appeal to the sweet C suite. Right?

[00:05:25] Camille Trent on Content Distribution Tips for LinkedIn

[00:05:25] Camille Trent: So starting with that, essentially what does good look like for your organization? And we have kind of this write up for us that's kind of a work in progress, but how we define good content and what we think it looks like. And then when we write that newsletter, and often that starts one thing that we've run into is that kind of starts with what would the press release look like for this, right? What's the hook, what's the title for it? And then if it's like, oh, that would appeal to VP of Marketing, that would appeal to a VP of sales. If that's the type of content that they'd want to consume, that's probably a good sign. So essentially when we're excited about the research project we're working on or about the upcoming newsletter, I've just found that it makes the distribution a lot easier versus if you're not excited about it, it's going to feel like promotion because you're going to feel like you have to promote something, right? Versus sharing something. I think when it feels like, oh, I get to share this thing that I know is going to be useful for a lot of folks. Like distribution just gets really easy versus when I'm like, I have to promote this thing because that's my job and that's it. And that's the next step in the process, right? So I think about thinking content, like, did we do that right? Do we have the right definition? Is it reaching the right people? Are you excited about it? And then the packaging stage I think of as copy and design. That's kind of how I define packaging and distribution. So for that I think of unique angles, hooks, format, some newsjacking. Like I would say though, those are some of the ingredients that we kind of like used in our distribution process. So to go through each of those unique angles. So we kind of decided adam has a particular voice. He's very analytical, he very much appeals to that high level audience, has been a founder multiple times. He has that credibility. So playing to that, like still having the slide decks and reports go through his profile first and then I'll usually take a different approach where it's a little bit more experimental. So for instance, we start experimenting with what I call like the product gifs. So for most people listening, they're going to have a SaaS product. We have a SaaS product as well. But when I say product GIF, like I'm more talking about our data sets or our research. Like I'll just take a quick GIF of essentially just like a sneak peek into this good piece of content that we're going to be delivering. So I'll take things like that. I'll take things like charts from our data set. There's very data driven content and it's a mixture of screenshots and charts and things like that. I'll just experiment with different formats that way for the imagery and for kind of like the supporting stuff. And so I can see an experiment with our links still tanking on LinkedIn if we include those in the post. I'll keep checking that every once in a while because we have have found if you put the link in the post but you don't have the link preview, that can still work if you have really strong hook and a really strong image and if it feels like native content. So I think shout out to you, I think Amanda nagidot of zero click content kind of idea of the more native than it looks, even if it is a link, you can kind of overcome the algorithm to some degree. So we experimented with that essentially. I don't want to say Burner account, but I would almost kind of use my account more as the Burner account. Whereas adams was more like the true and tested things. We know this works. And so what was fun for me, though, is going to the newsjacking portion I'll get into actually, I think later on we'll get into that specific example that I'm talking about. But there's a good example of newsjacking if you have an idea that something's coming or you have an opportunity to capitalize on a trend because it is relevant to your product or the type of research that you're able to produce. Right. So again, going back to what are your strengths? Lean into your strengths. And then hooks. I'll talk about hooks a little bit. I think a couple of things that over the years of posting that I've realized is there's a couple headline frameworks that work pretty well on any social channel, but specifically LinkedIn is what I call the thesis. So you have a thesis for something. When I think about a research paper, like my husband's in science, right? And so you'd have to write an abstract, right? And so it's kind of like going into the thesis or just like, you're the overview of your project. Project. And so most important thing first, right? And then you have your antithesis, right? And so this is kind of more of this is what everyone else thinks and this is why they're wrong. You have kind of that shock value, devil's advocate type of post, right? The trick here is I think you actually have to believe it. You can't just be Boy who Cries wolf and just constantly being contrarian all the time. It's going to be very obvious. You actually have to have to believe it if you're going to do antithesis type post objections. So I love this for especially salespeople, but really to help drive revenue, like, I think these posts are good. There's probably some objections that come up frequently, like in the sales cycle of why people push back on your specific category or your specific product, right? Especially if you're creating a new category. It hasn't been adopted in the market yet. And so you just take like a quote, Kabuma sales call of like a good one that I used at Marketer Hire was, if these marketers really are that good, then why would they be going through Marketer Hire, right? Like, why can't they market themselves? Like, that was kind of like a common objection of like, can't a good marketer market themselves? Right? And there's tons of reasons why, right? Good reasons why. And so just breaking that down of breaking down someone's objection into credible arguments. So objection as a headline. I really like dialogue. We love stories. So start like just dropping into the story by dropping into dialogue. Like two people talking, right? It can be a conversation from work. It can be like something in everyday life that has to do with I did this a lot, like with Sales Tech of if I'd had a conversation with a salesperson, even if it was for what was it recently? It was our dishwasher. Our dishwasher is broken. Right? You are experiencing sales all the time. You have sales conversations all the time. So it's just observing those from kind of a third party perspective and thinking about what the lesson was there. So dialogue, conversation starters. So I think these are great for creating a community of like, how can you how can you format a post to really be a conversation and not a lecture and like, genuinely be asking I'm looking for recommendations or I'm trying to get better at this thing, like opening up the conversation to people with interesting, intriguing questions. Right? And then the last one is analogy. And I think these can be the best for viral posts. Not that that should be your goal, but I think when you're able to articulate like a really good or observe a really good analogy and make those good comparisons, that's the definition of creativity, really, of making those connections and simplifying it to something that everyone understands. So those would be like my tips for distribution is kind of like starting with the hook, starting with some good headlines.

[00:14:06] Maximizing Lead Generation Strategies

[00:14:06] Ramli John: Before we continue, I want to thank those who made this video possible. 42 Agency. Now, when you are in scale up mode and you have KPIs to hit, the pressure is on to deliver demos and sign ups. And it's a lot to handle. Demand, gen, email sequences, rev ops and even more. That's where 42 Agency, founded by my good friend Camille Rexton, can help you. They're a strategic partner that's helped b two B size companies like ProfitWell Teamworks, Proud Social, and Hub Doc build a predictable revenue engine. If you're looking for performance experts and creatives to solve your marketing problems at a fraction of the cost of in house, look no further. Go to 40 Twoagency.com to talk to a strategist to learn how you can build a high efficiency revenue engine. Now, you can find that link in the description below. Let's jump back in. Those are some really valuable stuff that you just shared there. I feel like that could be a whole blog post, an episode on its own.

[00:15:01] The BLUF Technique for Content Creation and its Application on LinkedIn

[00:15:01] Ramli John: One of the things you mentioned earlier is around when you're creating social posts, you want to make sure to start off with your thesis and that kind of ties to a technique that you've talked about in other podcasts shows and webinars. There's something called bluff technique and it applies here as well as the research that all of you are doing there at Peer Signal. What is this bluff technique that you have talked about quite a bit and we can jump into how applying this into one of the social posts that you mentioned around Newsjacking. [00:15:39] Camille Trent: Yeah. So the bluff is a military term and it means bottom line up front. And someone who was in the military actually ascribed how I thought about headlines and how I thought about content, like, to this technique. He's like, oh, that sounds just like what we do in the military of bluff. And I was like, that's brilliant. That's exactly what I'm talking about. So if you come from more of a journalism background, they talk about this as, like, the inverted triangle, right? So an upside down triangle, meaning the most important information should be first, right? And then you get to the least important information as you go. So you start with the most important, and then you get less and less important as you go. And that's how a lot of real news stories are framed. Like, you have the format is, like, who, what, when, where, why, how, and who cares? All of that pretty much in, like, a sentence or two. Like, you're supposed to try and, like, fit that in the first sentence or two. So your posts or your marketing content shouldn't be much different. So I kind of simplify it to translate this to LinkedIn and the whole format of one sentence per line, which I don't think you always have to do, but I typically would have the first line be the point, right? Like, first line is my point. What you can expect from this piece, essentially, you should know immediately what I'm talking about. And then the second line is like, my angle essentially is kind of like the who cares? And oftentimes I was looking back through well performing posts, oftentimes that second line acts as an ellipses, right? So if it kind of feels like it could use an ellipses after it, you're probably kind of onto something because it should feel like you want to read more, right? That's wrong. And this is why, right? And here's the framework, right? Like, it should be something that, like, leads easily leads into something else. Like, I'm about to, you know, get to the point and tell you, like, the meat of the matter, right? But you already know what I'm talking about, and you're already able to kind of qualify in or out early on. So I think and this other way works too, where you kind of dangle the carrot. It's not my preference, right, to kind of just say, keep reading, keep reading. Every sentence is basically just like, keep reading. I just always prefer when you can kind of qualify yourself in or out of content. And I think that's interesting because it goes back to discovery, a good discovery call. You shouldn't be afraid to qualify a prospect in or out, right? Like, you should be wanting to only be talking to people who are serious, like people who relate well with you. You shouldn't be afraid of turning some people off because that's just the nature of the game, right? And so just knowing that you're not going to appeal to everyone, knowing that while it's attractive to kind of attract everyone in this entire market, realistically, as a marketer, your market is this you only should be trying to attract the small portion of the market. And sometimes I think we get greedy and we're like, but I just want the likes, I just want to go viral, right? Like, it gives me endorphins. But yeah, the more that you can kind of let people qualify in and out of your content, the better, I think. The second thing I'll add to this, of why it's a good framework or why I like it is because ideally, I want you to get something out of the first line or two, whether it's like, hey, that's a well written sentence, right? Or like, that's an interesting fact, like, maybe it's a stat or something that you'd lead with. Ideally, you get something from those one or two lines and you can decide, I want to keep reading, or I don't want to keep reading. And you should get more if you keep reading, right? Like, there should be more value in there, but you should be able to kind of scan the content in the same way that if I read a newsletter or not newsletter, if I read the news and I read the headline and the first paragraph, I know what the news is at least, right? Like, I know what happened. So that's kind of bloss in a nutshell. [00:20:24] Ramli John: I love this technique. For several reasoning, it's all about leading with value, which is what product Led is really all about. And I see what you just talked about applied to some of your posts really well, and we're going to be talking about this one post that's done, like, over 1360 likes and 133 comments. And it does showcase this buff thing where you give up who it applies to right away. And it reads here just the first few sentences, like, Meta just laid off 13% of its 87,000 workforce, joining Stripe, Lyft, Twitter and other tech giants. It's not good. But there might be a silver lining for B two B tech. Those still hiring seems to be compensating for those making cuts. And then you have a link to peer signals. B two B tech job resource.

[00:21:17] Camille Trent discusses strategies behind a successful LinkedIn post at PeerSignal

[00:21:17] Ramli John: What was your thought process around this? It seems like everything you talked about so far, with the hook and leading qualifying and the audience definitely tech people. Can you talk about how you put this together and what your thought process was and why you think it's done so well on LinkedIn? That's one of your most liked posts on LinkedIn. [00:21:41] Camille Trent: Yeah, no, that's a nice example to pull out because it kind of brings together a couple of elements that we were talking about here. So it does incorporate the bluff idea, right? Like it reads kind of as a news article, right? Of here's the news. Like, Meta just laid off this many people of its giant workforce. Here are some other people that laid people off. It's not good but there's silver lining and that's the ellipsis part, right? That's the dot, dot, dot. I want to note what that silver lining is as a B, two B marketer. And so under the fold, if you think about it as a fold, that's what you see in the feed. You don't see the rest of the post. Then hopefully you click and then I tell you right away the good news, right? You could just read those three lines and be okay, interesting, these other companies are hiring and it's kind of like breaking even. Interesting, but hopefully you still want to read on from there as well. So that's how it goes back to the bluff idea and journalism in general. And then I think the other part was the newsjacking element. So I mentioned that that was kind of a packaging or distribution technique that had worked well for us on a couple of occasions and in this case it was right in the middle of these layoffs, right? So we'd seen like these big tech companies do these layoffs and then in doing the research for the upcoming newsletter, which by the way was on our hiring tracker, we were doing a monthly hiring tracker update for B, two B sales and marketing folks. And so it's always kind of like keeping an ear to the ground of what's the latest news on this, and we want to be able to cover that in the newsletter itself, but even better if you can be there right when it's happening. So I knew that Google was going to make cuts. They had already leaked that they were going to make those cuts. It was just a matter of how many. And so the newsletter was coming out on a Thursday. I kind of pre wrote, and I think this is a good tip for folks like pre wrote some of the posts that we were going to do. So some ideas for Adam, some promo posts for me. And then I thought through, okay, if this does hit before the day of the newsletter, I want kind of a pre written post for that where I can basically just plug in the total number that they end up cutting. So that's what I did, I just pre wrote the post. And then when it did happen to come out, I suppose I hate to say favorable, but favorable time for us was basically like the day before. I essentially just hit publish on that. And yeah, there are a couple of risks I guess too. I really didn't think it would do that well. I thought it was well written. But there are a couple of things. One, I wanted to be able to put the link itself to our hiring tracker to help folks in the post itself versus buried in the comments. But I knew LinkedIn might bury the post because of that. So that was a bit of a risk and then also had like a screenshot where I highlighted the companies that were still growing that kind of emphasize this third line of essentially the silver lining of, hey, there are still companies growing. There are still startups and software companies that are doing really well. So I know it seems like the sky is falling right now, but there is some good news that we wanted to lean into. So I had the screenshot in there as well. So those things were a little bit, like I said, risky. But I think if you're ultimately selling a product or you do have some sort of end goal like we did want to expose more people to the hiring tracker and let people know that there is a way to kind of pre vet companies. It's not going to be 100% right, like some of the growth signals that we have in there, but we have some signals that kind of show which companies are doing well and might be better bets for your career. So we did want to make that a little bit more accessible even if it kind of hurt our reach. But in this case, it didn't end up hurting reach and we got a pretty good response from it. [00:26:16] Ramli John: Nice. Yeah. I didn't even realize that your time is specifically for this release of the news so that you can make sure to capitalize on that. But one thing I also really liked about this is going back to providing value and delivering value is like, you're not just like, oh, there are companies hiring. If you're one of the tech people who are affected by this layoffs, we have a resource that can help you find your next opportunity. So it really is like value on value. And now you're leading them to something that can actually help them with that. I think that's the reason why if I recall in another show you said this brought one of the high records of new subscribers to your newsletter when you released this. This is like one of those moments where like, oh, boom. Daily record for new subscribers for Peer Signal is what happened here. [00:27:12] Camille Trent: Yeah, so that's true. The first wave, it was like the first week or two at Peersignal. So it just gave us again that momentum. Like the rush to kind of perform or create content as kind of like high pace, like early on to sort of keep that momentum going. But I had the opportunity to basically release this homepage gallery and so again, was really excited about the content, had really good long form, not even content. It like really was like a gallery, a resource for folks. And so that was like it felt really easy to promote because I just really believed it was good resource. That was when we saw the most subscribers that we had to date. And then this I think came a week or two after that and then we actually broke that first record. And we're like, okay, this is actually the most subscribers that we've gotten per day. And then when we were evaluating this a little bit, it was like part of it was broad appeal. Right. Going back to the we mainly talk to the level of the C suite VPs, but this really is hyper relevant for folks. Right. It's affecting a lot of folks. It's kind of like our chance to give back. And then the newsjacking element. You're not always going to have the opportunity to be at the right time, at the right place, at the right place, the right time. And so when you do, it's just about being ready, right? It's just about being if you can prepare something in advance, if you can get everything lined up in a way where you just have the best chance to kind of hit it out of the park. And that was kind of our thought processes. We talked about this the other day of it's not about hitting a home run every week or every month even. But a lot of the projects that you do should have the upside of being able to do that. Right. [00:29:12] Ramli John: That's good. [00:29:13] Camille Trent: Give you the opportunity to at least be we talked about this. We actually like doubles or triples. Right? And not just like settling for singles every week, but really kind of like having those stretch goals of like, this should at least be like a double or triple. And it should have the upside of being able to kind of make it out of the park. So that was kind of the thought process here. [00:29:38] Ramli John: That's awesome.

[00:29:39] Camille Trent Shares Career Power Ups for Personal Growth and Learning

[00:29:39] Ramli John: Thank you for sharing this. I want to shift gears and talk about your career. You've been in marketing for doing content brand and copywriting for several years now. You worked at several companies, and I didn't even notice you worked at a bank, texas Citizen Bank. Market hire. Marketer hire duly. And now you are a peer signal. I'm curious, what's a power up that's helped you with your career? Something that's kind of given you a leg up when you're doing that. What's a power up career power for you, so to speak, as a marketer? [00:30:13] Camille Trent: Yeah. So I'd say in general, go wide. I think just focusing on absorbing everything that you can early on, like optimizing for learning, I suppose. And for me, I remember there was a moment in college where I had a really good lecture, a research professor. I was essentially deciding if I wanted to go. I was in the advertising program. I was deciding if I wanted to go the creative, like, copywriting route or if I wanted to go what was called like, account planning at the time, which is essentially like the research route. Right. And anyways, this professor stood out because he essentially told us that we didn't know how to learn. Right. Or that most people, like most people haven't learned how to learn yet. And that was fascinating to me because I was like, that's true. I know how to memorize things right. I know how to do school pretty well. But I am not always concerned about learning, right? Or else I would remember more things from my anthropology class or like my physical science class. I wasn't always interested in absorbing the information and learning how to be a student, essentially like learning how to learn. So that was like a big light bulb moment for me of just being a little bit more intentional about how to learn and when they're learning opportunities and essentially just seeing more things as learning opportunities, even if they seem very menial, if you're like, I'm in this low level job. I would start out at like an agency, and you're kind of on low level projects, so it's easy to see I can't learn here, right? Like, I can't grow here. For me, I think, though, it was like trying to challenge myself with every seemingly uninteresting, unlike, challenging type of project. There's probably a way that you can expand it if you want to actually learn. So think that was like the big advantage. I think number two is I wanted to say build in public, but I actually want to change it to experiment in public because I think early on you really don't have a ton of knowledge or you don't know what you know, right? Like, you don't you don't know what knowledge is kind of like unique to you at that point. And you're still kind of gaining that real world experience that people are willing to pay for. Essentially put client knowledge or in house knowledge that you get. But what you can do is you can always experiment in public, right? Like, I'm setting this goal or I have this thesis, then I'm going to do this thing. This is how I'm going to conduct the experiment, right? And then I'll give you updates and I'll let you know how things turn out. People are always fascinated by that. It ends up being like a social experiment. Whether the actual experiment itself is a social experiment, you have you're building this kind of community or this sort of support system to both help you as you're doing that experiment, right, help you in your day job, essentially, but then learn how to create and build things in public, right? So there's a lot of benefits, I think, to doing that. And part of it is just like getting out of your shell a little bit. And it's hard to just create the first few pieces of content again when you don't necessarily know how to write or how to communicate with people online. I think it sounds crazy, but those two things, I think, are what stand out. Oh, sorry, one more thing. The last thing would just be like, I've thought this multiple times in my career, especially like, jumping into the startup world and the software world is that my last few jobs that I've taken, I've always felt like I was, like, jumping into the deep end. I had that exact thought of, like, this is in the deep end. I'm on a diving board. You know what I mean? This is going to be uncomfortable, but I think it's the right thing to do. And so, yeah, the last few moves that I made have already always kind of feel like this. I think you want to be in a place where you bet on yourself, where you think that you have enough of that knowledge to do it, but it's going to be a little bit uncomfortable because I think that's where the growth happens. And if you meet every criteria on a job description, it's probably too easier for you. Right. That's probably like a sign that you should move on to that kind of next rung or at least differentiate what you do so that you can continue to learn. [00:35:24] Ramli John: I love that the last two power ups you mentioned ties back to your first one. How do you learn? We don't know how to learn. But you learn through experimentation, and you're learning through pushing yourself to what's capable, like, pushing the boundaries, essentially. I feel like that applies to a lot of things. Is that connection valid? Like, that the first two kind of helps you essentially learn faster is what they help you with. [00:35:51] Camille Trent: Yeah, no, I really like that because I think well, it's funny that that happened in college, right. Like, in, like, a learning environment of, you know, I had this, like, foundational thing, but I wouldn't say that I, like, you know, started implementing that are, you know, right away. Right. Or or I was, you know, acting like a student, like, every day. Like, that was not the case. I had plenty of lazy days. But I think that is true. It's like how to build in public, how to experiment in public, like, how to learn in public right. Is essentially that, and then jumping off into the deep end to force yourself to learn. [00:36:29] Ramli John: So good.

[00:36:31] Leveraging Newsjacking for a Meteoric SaaS Growth with Camille Trent

[00:36:31] Ramli John: One final question before we wrap up, and it's kind of related in terms of an advice or one or two pieces of advice you'd give your younger self. If you can travel back in time, what would you tell the younger Camille who's just, like, starting out in brand or content and copywriting? What would be your advice to that person starting out in marketing? [00:36:53] Camille Trent: Yeah, it's a great question. So some of the things that I had mentioned are relevant here. I think I did a decent job of absorbing right, and just being really curious about everything and trying to make menial tasks into a challenge. That part worked well, I think. I was also kind of like advertising for the stone age, and I didn't really realize that there were digital agencies out there that I could be learning digital ads or marketing at a broader level. So it took a while for me to kind of like, and this isn't the right move for everyone, but for me to kind of broaden from sort of like traditional advertising and agency work, which gave me, I think, that breadth and a nice foundation. But then to kind of start marketing if the first two jobs were at smaller businesses. But I think I got some good foundations there. But I think it's realizing, do you want to be a generalist, do you want to be a specialist? Like trying to listen to what other people tell you, essentially when other people tell you what your strengths and weaknesses are, really taking that to car and seeing how you can build your career around that, around the things that give you energy. So I recommend paying attention to those things early on. And then I think the other thing was, it just goes back to betting on yourself. So, for instance, this first agency, they didn't allow freelancing. And I was very, buy the book, I'm going to work really hard for this company. And I did. And I didn't realize, because I think I was so young, how much leverage that I had, even as a more junior employee. I was getting raises and was valued and I had good friends there. But it wasn't until later that I was like, oh, this whole no freelancing thing, first off, everyone else is doing it. So there's that. So I started realizing that and then I was also like, and it's BS. Why should we do that? I think starting to bet on myself and again, experiment on my own, right? Like experiment in public to some degree. And I started kind of like a little bit of a freelance side hustle at that time. So I guess in retrospect, I wish I had done that early. I had a chance to, and I did do it for one bigger brand. And then I ended up saying like, oh, I actually can't do this anymore because I'm not allowed, right? This was like right out of college. And I was like, well, that was stupid because I could have really built a good portfolio from that. But that's what I would tell my younger self, is that bet on yourself, take risks earlier on. And I think moving since that stage, those early stages of agency work, smaller business, marketing type work, and then that transition into the startup and SaaS world, my advice changes a little bit to try and understand yourself better. This goes back to other things I said, but I met with kind of not really a life coach so much, but MBTI type coach, right? So I really wanted to understand my personality, my MBTI, what were my strengths and weaknesses. And so I think I'd recommend doing that earlier on because it helped me understand what I was good at, what I was not good at, but it also helped me understand how other people might see things differently than I see them, right, and be able to have better, more empathy for that. So I wish I'd done that earlier. And then the last things are again, as I started to grow and as I started to gain more confidence in some of these things, the advice I would give is just to stay humble and stay level, right? I think sometimes when things don't go your way or they don't go how you expected, it's easy to have kind of like a chip on your shoulder about that and sometimes that can fuel you. I think Michael Jordan, any and every documentary about him will kind of, like, will kind of show you that there's, like, some elements of that that you need to kind of get yourself through hard things. But I think realizing that it's not always about talent, it's not always about the opportunities they're given or your work ethic, sometimes it's also just, like, not a good fit. I think one thing that I started realizing was, like, oh, I shouldn't always take a challenge because it's a challenge and as a square peg, try and fit myself into a round hole. Sometimes most of the time, the best option is to, as a square peg, look for a square hole. This is going, like, way off. But if that doesn't exist, sometimes you're the one who's supposed to, like, create the square hole, right? Like, whether that's becoming an entrepreneur or, like, creating, like, a new role for yourself or, like, you know, finding, like, that environment where you really thrive and can sort of live up to your strengths, essentially and best complement the business. That's one of the early things that I would, like, tell myself is, like, there's gonna be, like, a people pleaser side of you or a, you know, just like a challenge, like, mindset where you're like, I'm just going to do this because it's hard, because it's a challenge. And that's not always the healthiest thing for your mental state. Sometimes it's actually like, no, you should actually find people that are already aligned to the way that you think and you'll do your best work. [00:43:18] Ramli John: Hope you learned as much as I did with my competition with Camille. I know I did. Now newsjacking can really backfire on you if you don't do it well. But when you do well, like, what peersignal and Camille did, it can give you some amazing and really meteoric results, like what we saw here. Now you can follow Camille on LinkedIn and Twitter. Also, you can check out peersignal@peersignal.org. You can find all those links in the show notes in the description. And thank you to Camille for being on this show. If you enjoyed this episode, you'd love the Marketing Powerups newsletter. I share the actual takeaways and break down the frameworks of world class marketers. You can go to marketingpowerups.com, subscribe and you'll instantly unlock the three best frameworks that top marketers use, hit their KPIs consistently and wow their colleagues. 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