Latest / Pre-Sales Pathways / Build your brand before you need it | Ryan Krueger and Sameer Sahay-Kausar
Transcript
- Chris: I think a lot of people, myself included, they'll cringe a bit when they hear the term building Ryan Krueger: Mm-hmm. Chris: a brand. Ryan Krueger: There were so many times I'd be like, I don't know, should I put myself out there? To this day, my friends still give me a hard time. Chris: I would love to talk a bit about why people should think about building their brand Sameer Sahay-Kausar: Beyond just building your personal brand, it helps you hone your own personal thoughts. You start to develop a point of view on something. Ryan Krueger: What I never expected to come out of this was just like how far the external brand could potentially take you. One of the managers there actually responded back and said, "I know exactly who you are from the podcast" Chris: For someone who's not active right now, where would you recommend they get started? Sameer Sahay-Kausar: If you're scared to post publicly, start internally. If you're scared to do that, share with one coworker. Even if three people like the post, imagine three people sitting in a room, that's a packed couch. Ryan Krueger: People want to hear what you have to say. Just like anything in life, it's like you're gonna have ups and downs. And the things that you think might work might not work, but you just have to keep on you just have to keep on going. It's the only way. Chris: Hey Ryan, how's Samir? Thanks for joining me on the show today. Sameer Sahay-Kausar: Morning, Chris, happy to be here. Ryan Krueger: Yeah. Happy to be here. Chris: Yeah, fantastic. And congratulations again, both of you both in new roles recently, recently. And I actually noticed that you went live just today with an episode on your own podcast specifically on how should people interview for new roles. Before we get into today's conversation, we'd love to hear if you had a tip maybe to you that you wanted to share from that episode. Maybe Ryan, I'll hand over to you first. Ryan Krueger: Yeah, I think you know, we actually gave away some freebies as a part of our episode, is how we were coining them. I mean, these are like the very smallest little things that you can do as a part of an interview cycle that make you really stand out in amazing ways that if you just don't do them, you're actually going to likely get overlooked. But I still think like one of the biggest takeaways I have from The interview process as a whole is just like if you want to be in a specific industry or at a specific company, it is time for you to go and do some work. Whatever that means, if they have a free tool, if it's reading through their website, if it's reading through documentation that's out there, if it's sending messages to folks on LinkedIn, either if you're connected or not connected, it's just about going the extra mile. In a very crowded space right now, where finding the right people is extremely, extremely hard. And if you just want to stand out, you know what's the best way to do that? By reaching out and talking to some people internally, by showing somebody as a part of an interview cycle, hey, I was reading through this and I went and built this. You should actually take a look at this. That is the best way in which to stand out. So definitely check out the episode. There are these amazing tips that came Sameer Sahay-Kausar: Mm-hmm. Ryan Krueger: out of this, and I guarantee you. They will actually help you land the next job that you're getting. Chris: I love it. Yeah, so definitely the productivity and resourcefulness. Sameera, what about you? there one standout tip? Sameer Sahay-Kausar: I mean we the the episode was filled with them. I think one of them is also remembering that this is a sales role. And when you are interviewing, you are selling yourself. And so treat it as if you were going into a prospect called doing your research. Understand how the company you are applying for makes their money. And use that as a way to position l look at what's happening recently in the company. Did they just get a funding round? Did they just buy and acquire a an another business? A lot of things are always happening. Marketing teams are pumping out content. Go and read that content and be able to weave that into your conversation. to show that you know what's going on. So when you show up to the interview, you're not just not just a random name. It's someone who is like, they actually understand what's happening internally within the business. Chris: Yeah, it's a treat like a sales cycle. Great tips. Well, Ryan, you already alluded to the sort of use your network there as you're trying to get into an organization. The topic of today's conversation, I guess, is going a step earlier in that process and actually building that network, building that brand before you need it. And I want to be fully transparent. I think a lot of people, myself included, they'll cringe a bit when they hear the term building Ryan Krueger: Mm-hmm. Chris: a brand. You know, they'll think of Instagram and influencer culture, polished profiles. fellows, likes, that thing. But in my mind, it's a lot broader than that, right? And it could be as simple as just sharing what you're working on internally, externally, could be formulating a point of view and putting it out there. But I would love to kick off just with like, what were your initial thoughts when you first got into this world? Like, how'd you get over that feeling of cringe? Ryan Krueger: well you gotta have the right people in your corner. so Samir is actually the entire reason in which I even have some kind of brand or presence online. when Samir and I actually first met I noticed a couple months after getting to know each other, we we were already good friends. he started posting on LinkedIn, like dropping memes and just thoughts and ideas around solutions engineering. And I remember sending Samir a Slack one day and just being like, Hey, like I I really like today's post. And, you know, just something like very, very basic and easy. And I remember Samir responded back and said, like, you need to start. And I thought that was so like Odd because I like a lot of the times people in the quote unquote influencer community or people that post online, there's almost a small gatekeeping that goes on, which is like, I'm trying to be the voice of blank. We can't have more voices out there, right? And so for Samir to respond immediately back to me and be like, you need to get started. And then the second line of that was People want to hear what you have to say. And I really paused at that for a minute of being like, huh, why would somebody want to hear what I have to say? I've been in this role for a few years, but not long enough where I'm an expert by any means. I'm passionate about it for sure, but why would somebody want to hear me? And so like Samir continues on posting. I don't post at all. But what Samir does for the next like couple of months. as he continually I don't know, if you set up a automation, there were no automations back then, but Samir could have set up an automation 'cause I'm telling you, every week, every two weeks he'd reach back out and say, when are you gonna get started? People wanna hear you. When are you wanna get started, people want to hear you. And really, that was my first entry way of getting my external brand exposed, was just simply starting on LinkedIn and posting about some things that I had noticed about the role in the profession through conversations I had, through experiences that I was having in the field, and also from being fairly new into sales engineering, I had a lot of thoughts about man, there were a lot of things that I did to break in that might actually be helpful for somebody else to understand. And I can tell you, as those first few posts started to happen, one thing it started to take a mental toll on me. Cause it's like you put a post out there, you put a lot of time and effort into crafting it. especially back then, I would probably spend maybe somewhere around 30 minutes crafting a single post, really trying to think of what would people want to hear. And then you post it, and it's like got five likes, you know, 40 views. And I'm like, I just spent, you know, 30 minutes for like 40 views, and I would get so mad. And so then I would drop Samir another note. I'd be like, How do you do this? what is the point? He's like, you just have to keep going. Just like anything in life, it's like you're gonna have ups and downs. And the things that you think might work might not work, but you just have to keep on you just have to keep on going. It's the only way. And eventually, I just kept going and going and going, and now it is what it is today. But it's not that easy, and that's why I have so much like. I I get so much happiness from when somebody actually reaches out to me on LinkedIn and says like, this this post really like meant a lot to me or like I'm experiencing this, or like, Hey, your your podcast actually was the reason in which like I got my job or I'm using it right now to help me out in my job. it it's literally those small moments that actually really inspire me to keep on posting because it does take up so much time and capacity mentally for me to actually think about like what I'm going to say and write every single week. So I do encourage, like please continue dropping me a note because it's honestly the thing that like keeps me moving forward. Chris: I love it. So Ryan, you had the benefit of Sabir beating a corner, but Sabir, how did you get into it? how did you feel when you first got into the whole posting things and building your brand? Sameer Sahay-Kausar: Yeah, I got into it by accident. I remember I ha was taking a really early flight, going to a customer site. I think I was at the airport at like six AM. So I was up at like four thirty, got to the airport early and decided to make some memes and I made one that was re regarding some automation thing in relevance to the company I was working at. it was a no-code automation platform. And then made two and I think by that stretch I just was I inspired and made like six or seven of them. and then I just posted it internally in our Slack channel at the company. And the head of marketing reached out and he's like, these are pretty good. You should just post it on LinkedIn. And I was very, very nervous about that, similar to Ryan feelings like, who am I? What why would people care? but through that I was just like, okay, I'll post it. posted it on LinkedIn, and then I copied my that LinkedIn URL and I sent it to all my friends and family telling them to go like it, even though none of them were in the automation space, none of them like knew what it meant because it was kind of niche. but I was so nervous about it, I still just DMed. my friends, I was hey, can you go and interact with this so it doesn't flop? And then I just continued to like post memes that were related to automation and I think I did that for about like a year or a year and a half. and I had then once Ryan and I started working together I remember coming up with the this concept about sales engineering and and created a Venn diagram that had like six bubbles and at sales engineering in the middle. and I shared that with our manager at Russ at the time and he's like, this is like pretty good. You should you should share it. And I was like, okay. And so I put it out there and that was still my most number one post that's blown up. and then I put out another one that talked about duck life. and equally blew up so it was two back to back bangers and I was like, okay, maybe there is something within the the sales engineering content world. and then I just continue to stick to it. Some some weeks are more content heavy, some weeks are not. I've also like stepped back from LinkedIn, come back and it's not necessarily has to be a, you know, for going five days a week, every week. Some weeks I have, some weeks it's like one, some weeks are just zero. and that's okay. And to Ryan's point, the content that sometimes just I'll I'll just whip out my phone, type it real fast and post, banger, home run. The content that I sit for an hour, write out, edit, go back and forth, it's just Ryan who likes it. so like it it Ryan Krueger: Ha ha ha. Sameer Sahay-Kausar: there's hit and misses everywhere. But memes is how I got in because I w it was a lower lower lift for me personally and I also think memes is just a very interesting way of showing an idea. you it's it's very multi-layered and oftentimes you can use what's happening culturally into your industry. and they're fun. They get people to laugh. they're always usually lighthearted. So I I still like putting out memes but it just started with with a meme about automation and then transitioned. And here we are now. Chris: I love it. Yeah. Ryan Krueger: Amazing backstory on the the Venn diagram, Chris, because you actually probably don't know this, but When I first started at Glean, and you are actually aware of the Venn diagram because in the onboarding experience, there's the first thing you click on is sales engineering at Glean or whatever. There's a whole entire card. On that Chris: Yep. Ryan Krueger: card is Samir's Venn diagram. So when I first started, I'm literally like, yeah, you know, texting Samar, I'm like, this is so crazy to think. Like your content is now made it to like the main page. of our thing of just describing what sales engineering does and looks like at our organization. So it's amazing when you put some stuff out there externally There are people in companies that will actually take that information and use it because it is helpful. And that's the whole reason why it's so impactful to actually share our experiences and how we view things, because it's likely that other people also do. So a little backstory there, because Chris and I worked together at Glean, you've actually seen it internally, which is kind of funny. Chris: I love it. Yeah. And as I said, people will see the polished product, right? They'll see the podcast that you guys run, the post you put out, the follow account. And that can be a bit intimidating in terms of thinking where to start. So really appreciate you sharing the sort of humble beginnings and the importance of having someone in your corner. Ryan, you that was Samir, Samir having someone inside the company and in marketing encouraging you to take that first step. I'd love to shift things. So we sort of talked about that, like how this can be perceived. I would love to talk a bit about why people should think about building their brand before they need it. And we had mentioned it right at the top of the show, this idea of job searching. And as I understand it, this has been something that's actually quite helpful for both of you in terms of your job searches. So would one or either of you love to kick us off in terms of how your brand and your network has helped when you've been looking for a new role? Ryan Krueger: Totally. You know, and look, and when I first started getting into the posting and doing the external brand, because I do think it's important to really define internal versus external brand. There's two different things that you should constantly be building up. If you don't feel confident today to start your external brand, you should start internally. Meaning like as you experience things in the field, you should be dropping that information in your like public sales engineering channel in Slack Teams or wherever that information is held at, or building documentation to say like here are things that you might experience. That helps build up your internal brand. So even if you don't feel comfortable doing the posting, that's okay. Cause even for me, when I first got started, There were so many times I'd be like, I don't know, should I put myself out there? And look, To this day, my friends still like, you know, give me a hard time. right? So my good friends, like, you know, and especially in like my fantasy football leagues, okay, they love to, you know, drop some of my post in there and or say, like, hey, how are you gonna turn today's you know, fantasy loss into a a LinkedIn post about sales engineering? Right. Like, okay. Sameer Sahay-Kausar: That's not true. Ryan Krueger: All right, guys, appreciate it. but What I never expected to come out of this was just like how far the external brand could potentially take you. so originally when I was trying to break into Glean, and just like I said at the top of the show, like you should reach out to people on LinkedIn. Well, that's exactly where I started. Like, I identified who the managers were, identified who key people were, and I started. Instantly turning myself into an SDR and saying, I want to break in here. This company looks amazing. Here's where I want to be. Let's like find a way in. And so like I started doing some of the messaging. And then One of the managers there actually responded back and said, "I know exactly who you are from the podcast" as well as some of the posts that you've done. I've seen them. Chris: Amazing. Ryan Krueger: And so that actually cracked the door open for me to have a conversation that I might not have got otherwise. because I mean, look. There's tons of times where I get inbound messages about hey, I want this job. But if we've never interacted before and you've never interacted with my content in any way, it's hard when I'm getting an inbox full of messages to say, okay, I'm gonna stop and do this. But when you have somebody that is a familiar face, it's very easy to actually stop and say, Yes, you know what? I should actually follow back up with this person. And so It actually helped me at land a role. so like when we talk about the importance of this, like it quite literally changed the trajectory of my life in one way, shape, or form. And so that's why it's so important to not only like get your voice out internally, but you should also try to work on getting your voice externally because it can help you down the road. Chris: I love it. Sameer Sahay-Kausar: And then just to piggyback on that familiar name, that's that's how I also got my role at home run. because of my activity on LinkedIn, co founder Brian, who's also very active on LinkedIn, we had interacted with each other's posts at times, like I would comment on his, he would comment on mine, and this was probably going for at least six months to a year before I went and cold DM'd him straight up asking, like, hey, are you guys hiring? And because he was familiar. With my name, my content, and we were familiar with each other. He was open to taking a call, and one call led to another call, which led to working part-time, which led to you know then going on full-time with Home Run. And so that was all because I was active on LinkedIn. Yes, posting mattered, but also commenting does matter. So if you're not, if you're too you know timid to have your own posts. you can still go and reply to other people and that still gets your name out. And over time your name with your photo starts to just pop up and and show up. LinkedIn is and social media in general, but from a professional perspective, LinkedIn's like the new town square where your Chris: Yep. Sameer Sahay-Kausar: name starts to keep popping up. People are on there, people are scrolling there, people who you want to see your your name and your thoughts get affiliated with That's an area that is relatively low lift, right? If I'm reading something and I have an opinion on it or a thought about it, put it down. Doesn't need to be perfect. If in fact it like now with all of the AI slob people want less perfect. have the spelling mistake. Have the wrong there with you know, with context. But the I think that's in the probably the easiest way to start honing your voice is just commenting on on other people's posts and providing a a different angle, not like, that's awesome, but something more more in depth than that to show like how you're thinking about it. Maybe you disagree, maybe you agree, things like that. Chris: Yeah. And Samir, you had mentioned the move to Home Run pre-sales for some of the audience that maybe haven't heard of Home Run. That company sells to solutions engineers, sells to pre-sales professionals. So you had effectively built a brand with their target audience, right? I think that's an important thing for people to bear in mind if they're aspiring to a role like a field CTO or an evangelist role, actually having a brand, having a point of view, demonstrating thought leadership to that company's target audience. That might actually be a prerequisite to that. that time. Sameer Sahay-Kausar: Yeah, that is a prerequisite, but that was a complete accident. that was not Ryan Krueger: Mm-hmm. Sameer Sahay-Kausar: planned. I I did not come in and be like, I wanna go and use my audience for this. I just had a passion about sales engineering and I remember telling Ryan when I got the role, I was like, dude, it's like my content and my job is finally aligning and like it's Chris: amazing. Sameer Sahay-Kausar: all like synergy now. so yes, that that is important. as Someone starting out, I wouldn't worry about trying to develop Ryan Krueger: Mm-hmm. Sameer Sahay-Kausar: an audience for a specific way. I would just start out with writing what your thoughts are and let the audience develop around that. Chris: Yeah. Yeah. Ryan Krueger: I think like outside looking in on like how that all like matured and and came together too is like it was just really a culmination of like Samir's true passion for this that kind of like met at an intersection of like an opportunity, right? And I think that's where I would encourage anybody more or less to like Focus a bit more on what you're passionate about, not necessarily around just trying to build a community of space that you're not passionate about. Because people will feel that too, right? people want to interact with those that are really passionate about what they do. And so I really think it was that culmination because when Samir and I actually started the podcast, and I and I know we shared this, originally on Diary of the Sales Engineer, but Samir literally bought a flight to Denver to hang out with me for a week to badge. Me every single day when we were working at this we work about starting this podcast, and each day, Monday, I don't want to do it. My dad, my wife, your wife are gonna be the only listeners. Okay. Like I was very adamant I thought Tuesday happens. No, I'm not gonna do this. Wednesday happens. No, I don't want to do this. Thursday happens, and he gives me the name of the podcast and like all the different thoughts that he had, right? And he kept building that up over the week. And I said, Okay, you know what? Let's go ahead and make it happen. And so to me, that really was more or less his passion was the thing that pushed me forward to actually do the podcast. Cause I'm like, man, if he believes in this so strongly with so much conviction to fly out here, nonetheless, right? Like it wasn't a work trip that brought him out there. This required real money of Samir's to come on out and hang out with me for the week. Said, all right, you know, if he believes in this this much, at the very least, what we should do is we should try. Let's give it three episodes. I I had said let's give it three to five episodes. And if it doesn't go on Chris: Yep. Ryan Krueger: from there, we can just kill it and and move forward. And sure enough, what we saw was we had found a niche of information that was actually missing for folks. And then that Chris: Yeah. Ryan Krueger: kicked off and things started to head upwards. And to me, like the thing that still amazes me the most was last year, like when we got like some recognition from Spotify, like I just No matter how many times I kept reading it over and over and over again, I was like, I can't believe this. I really just envisioned that three people would listen to this. And instead we've had thousands of people all over the world listen and tune into the podcast because they want information around sales engineering that doesn't exist elsewhere. And we've had some recognition lately come about and it's just like it's pretty amazing. But to me, I think the reason why that happened for Samir it just happened to be like where his passions actually drove an opportunity to come out from nowhere. Chris: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love that. And actually, one of the reasons for building your brand and building your network is that it can just be good fun, right? And I think Ryan, you had mentioned our previous discussion getting out of that echo chamber, you know, we all work within an individual company, we know how things work at that company, but it can be really interesting to talk about how you're working here, how other people are working and just get that broader perspective and contribute to that broader perspective. Ryan Krueger: Yeah, one of the things I still focus on doing today. I did this very early on in my career, and I did a lot of it very early on in my career, which was like, how many SEs can I talk to within a single week just to learn about what their life as an SE looks like at their company? And what I Chris: Yep. Ryan Krueger: found out was there are a lot of similarities that we all experience. But the role can be so different at so many different areas, right? One place you just might be somebody that literally just gets pulled into a deal just to do an hour-long demo and then that's it. And you're just in and out of deals and you're not really sitting, strategizing, working with these reps. You're just quite literally like. on all these demonstrations, on technical validations and the role can change quite a bit. Some roles are highly strategic where you're working with your rep every step along the to say, no, we need to price it this way. We can actually discount up to this level. Let's come back. We can actually, dig our heels in the sand a little bit. And so the role changes actually, like very much so, even with the different titles that exist. Sometimes, like, you know, a solution architect and a sales engineer might match at one place, but then a solution architect somewhere else might be like totally like a highly technical role in which like there's very little pre-sales function. So it's important to understand that like from the networking, what happened was I got to learn so much about the SC world. So to this day I still highly prioritize it because Every once in a while I'm on these calls, talking to somebody brand new for the very first time, and I'm asking them, hey, what's working? They'll give me an idea. And that Chris: Yep. Ryan Krueger: idea I can now take and actually use within my role at my company to help me think about doing something successfully. Like there were folks along the way that helped shape my views of like how to run more effective proof of concepts and like things that they were doing to drive like better user engagement. And I was like, wow, these are like amazing tidbits that this person is doing or that their company is doing. Why aren't we doing that here? But I wouldn't know that, right? Because I live in my echo chamber. I think, okay, this is how the role is and functions, and here's how we typically do stuff. you should always source that outside viewpoint. And I do still make a point too, as every new hire comes in the door at any company I'm in, I try to really prioritize finding some time to meet with them as well, because again, they have different viewpoints from where they're coming. That can help shape the way in which I work and I operate. So I really find those like those networking conversations really, really important. And something that's like really exciting happening for me here in Chicago. I've been working with CoForm and we're working on building out an SE community in person in Chicago. Like that is so much fun. Like interacting with people in person, talking about things that we experience as SEs, having that sort of like place to share these insights is huge. It it's huge. it just doesn't exist everywhere. And so it it's really an exciting time. Chris: Love it. So we talked about some of the reasons why you would build a network and some of the ways you can do that. Co-form being a great example of these in-person meetups. We'd love to shift things towards how to get started, right? You guys have been doing this for years. You've got the benefit of experience. You're doing the podcast, LinkedIn, these meetups. But For someone who's not active right now, where would you recommend they get started? And Sabir, I know you had shared before. Some thoughts around, you know, the type of persona that you would have in mind like writing for an earlier version of yourself in your career. Would love if you could maybe share a bit about how you would recommend people get started. Sameer Sahay-Kausar: Yeah, I think the piece Ryan alluded to it in the beginning, was even starting internally and building up that internal brand that can be Chris: Yep. Sameer Sahay-Kausar: posting within just your team public channel and then broadening out to maybe your overall go to market or sales channel and then broadening out to your overall company channel, whatever you start to feel comfortable with as you are honing that voice and and providing an opinion on what's going on. And then once you feel comfortable there, then you can start taking it to LinkedIn, starting with commenting on people who you follow, comment on Ryan and I's post, comment on your posts, Chris, there's plenty of other SE thought leaders out there that you can start to comment on and then write. and just write. They just put it out there. What it does Beyond just building your personal brand, it helps you hone your own personal thoughts. And I think this becomes very, very powerful in your day job as well, because You start to develop a point of view on something. and you can use that skill to develop a point of view on how your prospects should be approaching a problem that they have, on how you should be strategizing with your AE on closing this deal. So that point of view starts to get honed by writing comments by writing a post. And another thing that helped me To your point, Chris was writing for my younger self when I first started as an SCE, I didn't know what a BDR even was. what is a BDR? What's an SDR? are they the same thing? Are they different? what is an overall SaaS sales process look like? And that's where I started writing about. It's like, all right, you know, for someone who's brand new, never sold something in their life, like what is the how does this structure even work and where does it fit in? And I started writing there. And then another thing is Sometimes I have to remind myself that, if Even if three people like the post, or we got forty impressions, imagine forty people sitting in a room and like what that would look like. imagine three people sitting in a room, right, at your dining table in your house. that's a packed couch. And as soon as you start thinking about it that way, like wow, five people, seven people, ten people is actually a lot of people that are viewing this, interacting with this, like it enlicits some type of feeling for them to go and and like the post, comment on the post. And that gave me a little bit less anxiety and a little bit more like, wow, this is actually something versus just seeing like a s like a A ten on the screen, it's like small, it feels insignificant, but then you imagine ten people in front of you and it it helped me shift shift my way of thinking. So that would be a big one is don't don't set out like vanity metrics, set out to just post and hone your voice and and keep going and keep going. I mean if you d have done research on Mr. Beast, he pumped out hundreds and thousands of pieces of content that nobody saw. And he kept doing it and doing it and doing it and finding one thing to tweak, finding one thing to tweak. So just Just get started. Start figuring out your voice. Start writing. If you're scared to post publicly, start internally. If you're scared to do that, share with one one coworker. one friend, be like, hey, I wrote this, like, take a look. And just Chris: Yeah. Sameer Sahay-Kausar: get your your feet wet and write and get it out. Or record yourself talking. I've done that before too. I just put my phone out, hit record, and talk. That's how Ryan and I do the podcast. We don't do any post production. We have we have a one sentence of hey, this is what we talk about and then we hit record and and then we publish it. And that's sometimes you sometimes you add more friction than you need and you can simply just type or simply just hit record and and post it. Chris: Yeah, yeah, I love that technique about visualizing the audience. I said 10 people, it's like that might not feel like much, but we've all been at an event where maybe only 10 people turn up and actually you can have some really good conversations. And that thought around, you a lot of people feel like they need a finalized sort of bulletproof point of view before they put it out there. But to your point, actually, the process of writing it down and sharing it actually helps you formulate that final point of view. And it's something that you do on an ongoing basis. How about you Ryan, what thoughts do you have in terms of how people can get started? Ryan Krueger: I think you just have to you just have to do it. you can't wait around, you can't overthink it, you can't second guess it. You can't be so afraid of what your friends might think. which you know, again, like I had a lot of thoughts about that up front. It's like what are my good friends that aren't in this field, like, what are they going to think when they see me posting about this stuff, right? How many text messages am I gonna get about the first time I say, here's here's what this taught me about software sales, right? And that like that becomes a real fear, right? And so I think you have to just remove the noise. And and luckily for me, like I will say and like, you know, Samir knows this, but like luckily for me I had somebody great in my corner pushing me along the way to say like, hey, continue doing this. So find somebody that can help encourage you throughout the process because it will be hard. I remember once upon a time there was this post I had like regarding like MacGyver. Okay. And I spent like forever writing this thing. I just thought it was like such like a great parallel to like what SEs can do on a call. Just like stitch together an amazing solution in five seconds. I've got this, you know, paper clip, this pencil, mouse, and whatever. And like next thing you know, like it's the perfect thing that they're looking for. And I posted it and I remember it fell So flat, you know, like tens tens of views. And I had I had messaged Samir that day and I was like, my God, like I don't know if I can continue doing this. Like I spent so much time doing this. but again, like you you push through the difficult part, and then you get to see some of the benefits of it. And again, don't make it a vanity thing about the numbers. Like, if it's about the numbers, you will start and you will stop. very quickly. Because numbers aren't gonna be there. Not gonna get rewarded right off the bat unless you have truly the most novel, awesome thing to say and like it takes off on the internet. But typically the next one that follows will be minimum. So if it is a numbers thing, like it won't be there. But if it's about just like owning your craft and owning your thoughts and ideas around the thing that you are passionate about, let that be your sounding port. At times like the posting almost becomes like a mini journal of my thoughts, right? About man, in the past I've experienced this thing. If I were to want that thing to be better, what would it be? Right? what what would I what would I ideally like it to be? Or is there something that I can make fun of that I've experienced in the past, right? if so, people might find that funny because I also found it funny when this sort of engagement happened on a call, or when this sort of engagement happened between me and you know one of my previous reps. Like, that's what people want to hear, but it's not about the likes. It's not about the growth. Like, it's truly just about me trying to share. And like, I said at the very beginning, when I get one message One message that says this helped me, it always grounds me in my why of my reason for doing this, which is just like when we set up to do what we were doing with Diary of a Sales Engineer, Samir had a simple goal. And I would call it our core mission statement of Diary of a Sales Engineer. And I would identify that it's like my core mission as like somebody that's like posting on LinkedIn externally, which is like We set out with one goal, which was to make sales engineering a title that people recognized at a dinner table. So that way, Chris: Yeah. Ryan Krueger: when you tell your friends, you tell your family, they don't ask what in the world is that role? And I gotta tell you, I feel like we've actually made massive headway on this. now we did get a small bump from forward deploy engineer getting roped into being an SE, but we are becoming quickly one of the most popular roles in all of tech startups and go to market. I think in some degree, we've played a small factor in that. And that's my why. that's the reason why I do this every day still. So when I get that one message that says, This really helped me, and I respond to you and I say, Thank you so much. this is literally what inspires me. That is fully authentic. That is that is me telling you, you have just encouraged me to continue posting for another two, three months because if I can help out one more person one single time, it's all worth it for me. Chris: Yeah, yeah. And Ron, I know you had mentioned this idea of writing about what you observe that could be in your deals or at your companies, but some people will have some concerns around like, what am I able to share? What's acceptable to share? Like, will people be able to know what I'm talking about? Have you got any sort of tips as people think about that, like protecting confidentiality and how they think about what they're able to write about topics they're able to write about? Ryan Krueger: Yeah, use discretion and be smart about this. like quite simply put, if I am having a one-on-one conversation, never will it make its way to LinkedIn, right? If I am talking to my managers, never what I'm discussing will make its way to LinkedIn. Even like the deals and stuff that inspire some of the posts, everything is, know, protection of the truth of what happened, right? Which is like I would never ever reference a customer by name, a prospect by name, a rep by name, nor would I ever have it be word for word the story that happened because I don't want to ever have somebody come to me and say that was something that we did together unless it was positive, right? But anything from like the here's what I've learned from these situations is more like drawing conclusions across numerous things that look similar and then Chris: Yep. Ryan Krueger: conveying it into one single piece to say like, hey, when things like this have happened in the past where there's been friction with a rep. Here's what I've seen. Because I've not had just friction with one single rep in my life. There's been a few or many. and so you get to draw the parallels there. But don't ever like, you know, you're on a call the day prior talking to X company, and then you get on LinkedIn the next day and say, I was talking to X company yesterday and I didn't really like when this happened. Like, bad idea. Stop. Do not do not pass go, do not collect $200. Actually, go directly to jail. Okay, 'cause Chris: Yeah. Ryan Krueger: you are going to go to jail at your company, right? And so there's a fine line of like how you need to do this, use discretion about the way in which like you actually do those things. And again, if something is happening that's like you're really frustrated about that you want to get out, but you also think like if I post about this tomorrow, like somebody's actually gonna be able to say like, didn't that just happen a couple of days ago? The idea there is like stop, let it pause for six months or a year. Like in my case, Chris: Yeah. Ryan Krueger: there's been certain things that I've waited two years before ever posting a similar ish story of like what kind of And again, it was more or less the parallels of what I learned throughout the experience, not actually detailing or chronicling the experience itself. So it's really important to find that way of making sure that you're like in a fine balance. Like at the end of the day, like you still work for your company, you want to paint your company, your light in the right way, while still sharing some of those experiences of like maybe the downturns of what can happen in a day-to-day world. But like you gotta know how to actually do that. Right. And so it's a fine, fine line. So you have to be careful is what I would say. Chris: Yeah. Yeah. Sameer Sahay-Kausar: And if you're unsure about a story, that tells you that you shouldn't post it. if you have any like, I don't know if this is okay, don't do it. Like the that that intuition is right. you should feel very comfortable that you're doing this. You should be okay, hey, what happens if my CEO reads this or my manager reads this? Like, is that gonna get me in trouble? Like, and if you feel what any ounce of that, don't post it. Send it send Chris: Yep. Sameer Sahay-Kausar: it to a a a close friend if you really need to get off. Or you just keep it in the archive and have another just another place of practicing. There's stuff that I've written that's never gonna come out, but I just needed to get it out. Chris: Yeah. So trust your judgment, keep it general, look for patterns. And you both noted that point around sort of leaving some time or maybe as you put it, Samir, putting it in the archive. That's a really nice segue into how do people actually keep up momentum with this habit, right? Because they might find initially this is great and they've got that all that enthusiasm. But like you said, the numbers don't come immediately. And Ryan, you said it's something that a habit you do need to keep up. What advice would you give to people as they start doing it to make sure they can continue that momentum? Sameer Sahay-Kausar: I think starting small, like just say, hey, I'm gonna do it once a week. And and say, I'm gonna do it once a week for four weeks, or whatever you feel comfortable with. But and then once you once you make it, it's like, okay, we were able to do it four weeks. Once a week I think is a good a good cadence for me. Let's do it for another four weeks or let's let's push it to a quarter. and And then then you'll start to to get into a rhythm of things. I personally will consume content from different areas of life and use that for inspiration. that that occurs, I have gotten inspired from training, Kappaware and and Krap Maga that'll come and bring into my content. I've gotten inspired from po other podcasts that I've listened to that that are is in the like the technology space. You know, I have even while we were on this pod, I got an idea for something and it'll probably come out later today. Like Ryan Krueger: Mm-hmm. Sameer Sahay-Kausar: I I tend to just write when I feel and what's going on within the world. And then there are times where I've had a notebook on like my side table and if something gets to me before going to bed, I'll just write down a sentence. And for me personally I tend to write like a thought or a sentence. And then when I go to post I'll use that to go and write. and then and then post it. I don't go and like bulk create. I've tried it. It doesn't work for me personally. Chris: Yep. Sameer Sahay-Kausar: I will more often just write some ideas, few words of those ideas, and then when it's ready to actually like write out the content, I'll go and sit down and expand on that. and then also just give yourself some grace. Sometimes it's just a really tough time with work and maybe life and LinkedIn's not that important in the grand scheme of things. So it's okay to let it slip. Like people won't notice really. Like I've I've disappeared for a month at a time and I like it hasn't really affected me, I don't think. But it just starts small, something that you can think you can keep up with. And I think just don't think too hard about it. If something is interesting to you and you wanna you have a night a thought about it, just put it out there. Whether it's good or not is i is entirely for you. Chris: Yeah, I love that point around getting inspiration from other really different sources, right? You mentioned your martial arts. I find the podcasts, I'm not cut out for martial arts. can only see my head, but if you saw the rest of my body, you would see why. Ryan Krueger: Hm. Chris: But listening to other podcasts, even like totally unrelated podcasts, it often gives you that spark, right? It's like, that gives me an idea of something I could write about. And I love your point around, like don't actually write them all up front, but just have an archive where you can sort of file those notes away. What about you, Ryan? Ryan Krueger: I I'm the same way. I think for me, people have asked me about that process before too. typically what I try to do is like if I can, on a Sunday night, I try to come up with maybe, you the three to five different topics that I want to talk about, for the week, and start just drafting down what those conceptually look like. And then each night I'll write the post, button it up, get it ready for the next morning. That way, it allows for some last minute inspiration that can take place or to be able to take advantage of things happening, whether Whether they're in pop culture or real life. just last week, like the new movie Whale Fall came out and there were like a bunch of pictures being shared on X. And I thought to myself, like, all right, this guy's in a whale. Like, if I'm an S E, like, what in the world would that potentially feel like if I'm inside this whale? Like, what what would be the thing I want to get out of, right? And I was like, well, the thing I would want to get out of, because I've done enough of these in the past, would be like the POC that never ends, right? And Chris: Yeah. Ryan Krueger: it's like Boom, I post that, image and then there's so many people put posting and commenting on it because it's like, yeah, like this struck a nerve where it's like, we've all been there before in that never ending POC, and it does feel like you've been swallowed up by the whale. And so like you can kind of like work and iterate with what that process looks like. But I've told both of you this in the past. And so like I actually like was looking at my desk and no one is allowed to make fun of me for my handwriting. Samir's seen it in the past, because I used to do this thing at our previous company. I would show customers my handwriting. But like you'll see here, like I I do write post-it notes for like ideas that happen. So this just simply says like S E as QB, AE as as wide receiver. So I was having a conversation doing one of my networking things and it sprung an idea for me to think about like there's all this talk always about like the AE being the quarterback, but I didn't necessarily think or like believe that. Like honestly The end of the day, I think the S E is like the way more technical play caller, right? Which is hey, I know the exact plays that need to be run to win this deal, because I I've done it so often. And the AE is like The superstar wide receiver, the the TOs and the Randy Mosses of the world, they get the big bucks, they get the big shine, At the end of the day, when the deal comes in, the spotlight comes on. And to me, that was some of the inspiration why I wrote this post-it. Now I haven't come up with exactly like what I want that post to be yet. Because I'm not, I'm still iterating on what that process of like the post looks like, but my desk gets covered in these random ideas that get thrown about. And then I try to figure out okay, is this a post that is truly just text? Or is there some kind of image that maybe goes with this post that helps encapsulate the thoughts or ideas that I have? And so, on my desk, there'll be numerous ones of these that sit here for sometimes weeks or even months. And then finally, when I have that idea, Russia creativity, I'll I know exactly what I want to do with like the S E as QB and AE as as wide receiver. Maybe like that might take me another two months to come up with, but it'll sit here until it gets done. So eventually everyone will see that post. And again, I'm not sure what it will look like. Yeah. Chris: I love it. So give your ideas a little bit of time to stew and also if there's something going on, current events that you can tie in, then incorporate that as well. I wish I had the patience for that. I try and do it. I try and do it then I keep something for like a week and I'm no, I just want to write about it. But then occasionally I do get like halfway through writing a post and I feel like actually, no, I haven't really thought this one through and I do have to bank it. But yeah, it's difficult for me at least to exercise that patience. I would love Guys, if you've got any thoughts on AI and where AI fits into all of this, we already alluded to some of the you mentioned at the beginning, AI slot, particularly on LinkedIn, right? And people looking for something a bit more authentic. Have you got any thoughts on how people can leverage AI without compromising those sorts of things? Sameer Sahay-Kausar: I think the best phrase that I've been telling people is i it's AI generated, human curated. And so I use it in my content. I use it as a thought partner a lot more than like something to generate. It's more like, hey, I'm tinkering with this idea. This is what I have so far. This is what I feel like is missing. Let like let's let's have a little bit of a s like a sparring match intellectually of you know, what could I be missing, how could I tighten this up? I I do a lot of voice to text, like using Whisper Flow and we'll just monologue. an idea and then use it to help synthesize it and and put it together. and then I also have fed it a lot of my content and use it to just try to hone my voice a little bit more. And yes, there is a little bit more strategy that I've started putting into my content about different buckets that I want to be focusing on from personal life side to purely sales engineering things to hey here is like advice and and things. And so I've started to help look at my previous content and see, hey, what are what are things that I've already been writ writing about? how how are they organized and how can I continue to organize my content a little bit more? But I really avoid saying and everyone should avoid going, Hey, write me a post about X and X is like four words. And then all of a sudden it like spits something on you like, yeah, that seems all right. Let me just post that's like no. I will write Chris: Yep. Sameer Sahay-Kausar: I will always write a first draft, even if it's really bad, and then go back and forth and I've never one-shotted content and I don't think anyone should. and use it to like help pull out ideas from you. I often have it question me. It's like, hey, this is what I'm working on, like ask me some questions that I can think about it more deeply. And I found that that's that's worked really well for me. Ryan, how are you using it? Ryan Krueger: Mm. People always ask me about this process. do you have some automation or agent that just writes your content? I'm like, absolutely not. Because if I did, it wouldn't be authentically mean. It's not my voice. And that's not what people are coming to my page for. Right. It's like people come to my page to hear my raw thoughts and emotions. So the way in which I typically write my content is like I come up with the ideas. I then write my raw emotions for how I feel about the topic. At this point, like I've gotten pretty good at like the way in which like LinkedIn. content gets written. So I kinda outlay it within my the the AI that I use. And then I just simply have it clean up my text. English has always Chris: Yeah. Ryan Krueger: been my worst subject. And because of that, like I don't know where like the commas and the ands go. I also never even knew what an M-dash was until AI Chris: You Ryan Krueger: was released. Okay. I actually texted one of my friends to figure out what the name of that character was. I was like, why is this showing up in my text? I would never write like this. Same with like semicolons and colons and other things. I'm like, I don't write like this. This is not Ryan. It's not my voice. which you Chris: Ciao. Ryan Krueger: can't do is like clean up my text so that way it's lined up properly and is grammatically proper but what I don't want are extra characters and things that aren't Ryan. Right. And so that that's really my process. Chris: Yeah, yeah, and I love the point around dashes and colons. Samir, you mentioned feeding AI some of your previous posts, and I did something similar in the early days. I tried to create a sort of like tone of voice skill, and it would get like close, but then it would always, there would still be some of these mannerisms, like it would remove all of the dashes, but then replace them all with colons, or it still say, you're right, but not for the reason you're expecting. It's just like some things where you can always tell. You can always tell, maybe things will change in the future, but I like that idea of having it as a sparring partner for your thoughts and validating things. Guys, we're coming up to time, so I would love just to close out on, is there any other advice that you would give to anyone listening to this, either early on in the journey or later on, but any advice for people in building their brand? Sameer Sahay-Kausar: You just gotta start. it's It's really not that complicated. It's scary, but it's fairly simple. you just start putting your ideas on paper and and sharing them with with the world. And I think it's the easiest time it's been to share your ideas with people across the world. Like there are people in India and Germany and in France and Australia that are all reading stuff I write. I remember going to Demo Fest, like when we first started the pot and three different people came up to me and were like we listened to your pot and I was like wow be like in London like our our voices come out over here so I think that just just starting is the first step and then there's another concept that I always like to think about is like dig the well before you need it. Like you will Chris: Yeah. Sameer Sahay-Kausar: need help down the line. I don't know what it looks like. I don't know what it'll be when it will happen but it will happen. And creating content, creating your own personal brand, getting over that cringe is that well that when you do need to tap it, like you've already put in the energy and the work. Ryan Krueger: Yeah, final thing I'll say is just people will wanna hear what you have to say. Just like how Samir encouraged me and I encourage all of you, you have a unique point of view and people want to hear it. Chris: It's amazing. Guys, thanks so much. Really appreciate it. It must be interesting being on the other side of the questions, but to everyone Ryan Krueger: Mm-hmm. Chris: listening, make sure you check out the guys podcast, I'm a sales engineer and follow both the guys on LinkedIn. Ryan Krueger: Awesome. Thanks so much, Chris, for having us. Sameer Sahay-Kausar: Thank you. Chris: Cheers, bye