The Cold Calling Blueprint Making Millions on LinkedIn - Sean McPheat

0:00We went on an Anthony Robbins weekend. That got me my first four clients, got me 50k in the bank, walking across hot coals, smashing bricks. He's always been my hero. So I was on about 100k, age 29. And I spent about one or two months learning about search engine optimisation, copywriting. There was no social media, really. It was all cold calling back in the day.

0:24Sean McPheat:What were those first steps that kind of set the path for where you've ended up today? It's a difficult one because the more that you've got to lose, the harder the decision. At that particular point in time, my wife had been with me since I was 18. And I remember saying to her, I've got nothing now, but nobody will outwork me. And she went, yeah, I'm all in. What can you leave us with from a real practical element? Don't get me wrong. I was the original LinkedIn tart. When you create a bit of content, it gets shoved out to a percentage of your connections. and you're depending upon how well those connections like, look, it's going to go out to more.

1:00So if I've got 30 ,000 connections and it's going out to 3 ,000 and it's not giving you the better chance for your bit of content to pop. How do I keep it so it's always re-engaging? And I'd recommend that everybody... Sean, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, guys. Good to be here. Yeah, great to have you. We're very excited. So we always start the podcast off the same way. Who are you and what problem do you solve? Oh, the$6 million question. My name is Sean McFeet. I've bootstrapped two multi-million pound training companies. I'm the founder and CEO of MTD Training, which is a leadership development, management training and sales training organization.

1:44That was founded way back in 2001. So we're 25 years of age this December. Wow. Whoop, whoop, whoop. So we've seen off our competition, we've seen off Brexit, GDPR, wars, you name it, and of course, COVID, we've seen that off. We've delivered training to over 9 ,000 different organisations around the world and shed loads of awards too. I'm also the founder and CEO of a company called Skills Hub, which I created in 2019. SkillsUp's an online learning platform with over 1 ,000 online learning sessions, which you can either take on the actual platform itself, or people can kind of like lease them out for their own systems.

2:37And we also create bespoke e-learning, custom-designed e-learning as well. In terms of the problems that we solve, I think there's two, really. There's one at a macro level and one at a micro level. The macro level is all around ineffective training, because I believe there's a lot of crap and dross out there. As you two guys have probably seen yourself, it's not fit for purpose, and it's not geared around improving performance. And our motto and our mission statement is all geared around creating innovative learning and development solutions that work in the real world, which actually have an impact and drives performance.

3:24So that's kind of like one of the areas that we look to solve. And second of all, I suppose it's a micro problem. We're just looking to improve leaders and make salespeople sell more stuff. So that's kind of like what it's about in a nutshell. Nice. So you're a bit of a unicorn in a way. To have a business running for 25 years is a rare thing. Yeah. So, you're right. No, no, thank you for that. What do you think it is that makes you uniquely qualified to not only have a training business, but also have one that's lasted for 25 years? Oh, yeah. Wow. Well, I suppose every entrepreneur, when they actually think about it, has had two lives.

4:04And it's the life before they were a business owner and the life that they have now. And probably you guys know that as well. And they're normally completely different lives. and you learn different things as well. So prior to starting MTD, you know, way back when, you know, I was working in a bookies, for example, when I was 18, 18 years of age. I couldn't get a job for Love No Money and I ended up working for Labbrooks as an assistant manager. And believe you me, you learn about man management there, I can tell you, not only for the punters but also in the members of staff who are a lot older than you and a lot more experienced than you and they know a lot more about you.

4:50I got my big break when I first started working for Barclays when I was 21, but I was on the 311 shift and I used to call it the Yummy Mummy Brigade because they used to come in at 6 or 7 o 'clock at night for a little bit of pin money and there was little old me, 21 years of age, trying to tell them what to do. I suddenly found out that that was not management and leadership. And that you needed to create the environment for people to do their best work and then get the hell out of the way. I learned that really, really on in what I did. And from my scenes, I kind of like was known as a really good man manager.

5:28So I progressed through the ranks really, really well. I think by the time I ended my proper job, i.e. the corporate career when I was 29, I'd managed maybe about 100 to 120 staff over the years. So I got the scars of battle with that. When I started MTD training, I really wanted to hone in on what I thought I was good at. Because you're passionate, you're going to do really well at it, well hopefully. and so when MTD training started it was all geared around management and leadership okay and in terms of the scars of battle you know 25 years I've kind of like gone through it all not only in building the aeroplane and flying it at the same time when you first start to when you got your first member of staff to all of a sudden you're in that soft underbelly of a company where whereby you might have six to ten staff, and if anybody boogers off and leaves, then you're in the shit, really, because it really does impact you and how to overcome that.

6:41Then you go through a period of time whereby, well, I call it the Sean Show. It was me and my team. It's just not scalable, and it relies too much on you. So around about 2012, 2013, I decided to, I need to train some people up to near enough make myself redundant out of the process with that. And don't get me wrong, sales went whoosh, straight down for about six to nine months. But I knew that the people who I was going to leave to do the selling and the senior managers were going to do a good job. I really did. So I put faith in them and trained them. They were coming out and shadowing with me and everything like that.

7:29So in terms of the scars of battle, you're building the plane and you're flying at the same time. You're going through these periods of peaks and troughs, but then also external stimuli as well. 2008, financial crisis, Brexit, COVID, even GDPR, where at a time where I was getting everybody on the newsletter, irrespective. You could fart, I was getting you on that. I was getting you on that email list and I was marketing and selling to you. So when GDPR came, then all of a sudden, God, I ask permission, what? You know, we had to kind of like change what we were doing there. So I like to think that I'm qualified because I've been on the grassroots on the coalface, but then also led a successful business and not many of us make it to 25 years really.

8:28And so I'm really, really proud of that.

8:30Sean McPheat:I like the idea, Sean, of like standing on this fault line of like before entrepreneurialism and then after. So it sounds like you maybe weren't always there, like you're working in a bookies, you're working your way up through this corporate life. There'll be people listening to this that are probably thinking, is it time to jump into the water? Should I do it? Should I not? I guess for people that are listening from where you've been, what are the symptoms that they might be facing and how do they overcome starting their own thing? Yeah, it's a difficult one because the more that you've got to lose, the harder the decision.

9:12So at that particular point in time, my wife and I didn't have any kids. my wife had been with me since I was 18 actually I actually met her when I was on the doll and I remember saying to her oh I get choked up we're at Coventry Cathedral on the steps and I said I've got nothing now but nobody will outwork me if somebody can just give me a chance then I'll make it good and she went yeah I'm all in and she was on a YTS on 25 quid a week So when you actually think about it, we really did start with NAFOR with regards to that. I think when it comes to business ownership, and I do get a lot of emails and DMs every single month from people saying, I'm thinking of quitting my corporate job and I'm thinking of going it solo.

10:06And I always say to them, you need to really question the shit out of it before you do it. but because just because you are good at x doesn't mean that you're going to be good at leading a business and building a team at x you know you only have to look at decorators and painters to know that right okay brilliant at what they do answering emails calling back a commercial awareness sending an invoice everything like that is is no good so i'd always say you need to really question the shit out of it but the acid test question and why I left my corporate job to quote-unquote be an entrepreneur and see if I could cut it is I never ever ever wanted to be old and look back and regret my life I know my mum and dad um kind of like really scrimped and saved all of their lives worked their fingers to the bone for nothing absolutely nothing so I looked at them and their work ethic was incredible but they had nothing at the end of it my mum passed away a few years ago she had nothing you know and I said I never want to regret all the things that I didn't do and it's never too late to be what you could have been okay but do not go into it light-hearted you really need to think it through and sometimes if you're that way inclined, it might be a case of, right, I'm just going to burn the bridges.

11:36I'm going all in. A bit like what myself and my wife did, because the year we just got married in 2000, and we went on an Anthony Robbins weekend, where we were walking across hot coals, smashing bricks or this sort of thing. And he's always been my hero since I was 18 years of age. and he really pumped you up to say do not regret things in life if you're in your your rocking chair at the end and you're thinking about your life you're always going to think about the things that you didn't do not things that you did do things that you didn't do and I'm saying well I think I'm pretty good at man management and leadership I've done really well and at that particular point in time you know full disclosure with bonuses and everything like that I was on about 100k so I was on about 100k age 29 a lot of my friends were on 20 25k at the time and I turned to my wife on the train on the way home from the Anthony Robbins weekend and I said you know what let's go for it and she says I've heard you ticking for the last two bloody days she said i've been waiting and i said i've been listening i've been trying to list all bloody objections that you you're i'm going to overcome with you and she went you should have known me sean i was with you when you had nothing and even if we lose everything then we can build it up again like i went i should have known she'd have said that that really um so yeah you know my advice really is don't go into it half-arsed don't go into it half pregnant you've really got to go all in if you're going to go all in and probably build up a bit of a little bit of a treasure chest really of savings before you do it just to give you a couple of months and i did that although it soon went whilst i was trying to figure out what to do it doesn't have to be all or nothing it depends upon what gets you going some people like had to have their backs against the wall and go wow the only way out is i've got to make it work and i know sometimes i've been good at that like with covid you know 120 face-to-face training programs cut overnight with covid we had no effort we had to make it work and i think if you're backed into a corner sometimes and you just make the decision, if you've got faith in your ability, then you will make it work.

14:18Oh, God. I'm so tired. I've just been talking to qualified prospects all day without any wait time.

14:24Sean McPheat:How have you been doing it? Because I've been cold calling people on my mobile, and I reckon I've spoke to one person. No, no, no. Stop that right now and use Nooks.ai. Why? What does Nooks do? It finds me the right people to call, and it calls them, and it connects with them over and over and over again. So you're saying it's Nooks.ai and I can just be speaking to qualified decision makers all the time. No other better connection, right? Wow, Nooks.ai. So it sounds like the Anthony Robbins weekend, that is like great. I think the way I'm picturing it, Sean, is like a can of Coke being shook. So you're like ready and I'm raring to go.

15:04Sean McPheat:But actually the motivation comes and I think books like that and Anthony Robbins those weekends a great like getting you a point of I'm ready to take action now but then from what you were saying then it alluded to the fact that you were ready to take action but the path ahead was still what is this what am I going to do I'm going to do something big but I don't know so I guess what what were those first steps that kind of got you moving and kind of set set the path for where you've ended up today yeah it's interesting because when I left I had no idea what I was going to do. I remember waking up on that Monday morning, having given him my notice.

15:43And I had a couple of months, you know, notice period as well, which was okay. But I just spent it watching cricket. It was in the summer, and it was a really hot summer. But I'm looking at it and going, oh shit. The realisation came on that Monday morning, after that weekend. end. And I said, what am I going to do? And I says, well, let's not think about what I'm going to do. Let's just think about the world that we live in at the moment. It's a bit like AI at the moment. At that moment, it was 2001. And I said to myself, what's going to be the future of everything? And I took a real big punt on the internet.

16:24Okay. Now, bearing in mind, you still had AOL, ask Jeeves you know Yahoo, Overture, Pay Per Click all this sort of thing but back at that time and I said to myself okay well what am I going to do so I'll learn everything there was to know about internet marketing and I spent about one or two months in learning about search engine optimization, copywriting, Pay Per Click and email marketing because that's all there was back then There was no social media. There was no way to get in contact with people very easily, really. It was all cold calling in the main, but back in the day. So I learned everything that there was to know about internet marketing.

17:12And I said, right, well, okay, we're two months in to my three months gardening leave. I had two grand left in the bank because I didn't reduce my lifestyle at all. And I'm going, oh my God, I've got to do something here. So based upon my knowledge of internet marketing, I set up a couple of side businesses. One was called Confidence World. And I was selling PDFs for 19 quid online. online and I got to the top of the rankings and it was for confidence building confidence all those sort of things self-esteem or whatever and I was selling 19 pdfs which I'd written out okay because when I was 18 19 I started losing my hair so I was low in self-confidence then so I could talk from a place of how to cheat yourself when everything is going south really so I started confidence world.

18:13I started a directory called Live Coaching Studio, an executive coaching studio, where I'd get up to number one in the rankings and then sell advertising space to live coaches and executive coaches. And everybody wanted to be a live coach back in 2001 okay so started earning some some money on that and then a real left field one because of my internet marketing knowledge I started a prom dresses directory Wow and you're coming where's all this going this is just this is just crazy but I always I'm a firm believer get up to number one in the rankings get the traffic in and then sell them something on the back of that where somebody gets the product first, or where am I going to find the people?

19:09So I get up to number one, and my first aim was to get to number one, and I was getting something like 35 ,000 hits per day, right? But predominantly from the US. They were all from the US, because it was still in its infancy over here in the UK. The prom dresses didn't really kick off till about 2005, 2006. so I said okay so I'm getting all this traffic how am I going to monetize it so I thought about affiliates maybe I'll get a percentage off each dress that I put up and I went no sod this, how about I put all of the states down one side the 50 states in America and I'll sell them advertising in each one and I went fab, great oh shit where am I going to find all these prom dressing stores in Arkansas So I'd go online and I'd try and find Arkansas prom dress stores and I'd say, hey, you know, I'm getting 35 ,000 hits.

20:12OK, I put up, you know, I had all of the states down one side. I said Arkansas is getting 9 ,000 hits per day. But I've got no advertisers. Would you like them all? Would you like to have all of the traffic? Yeah, OK. How much? Oh,$250 per month? Like that? And it was, yeah, okay. We'll sign up for six months. Oh, right, okay. So then goes on to the next Arkansas. Hey, your competitors aren't here now. Oh, yeah, okay. Oh, how much is it? $300 per month? So to cut a long story short, I maxed it out, did really well. with prom dresses. It did really, really well. And I actually sold that to a company in New York who had advertisement space in every single one of them.

21:14And I flipped it within three months. I think when my wife got a call from, you know, Nancy from New York in the middle of the night wanting a dress, she was like, Sean, will you stop mucking about with this and keep doing what you're good at? What you're good at doing. And so I'm saying, right, okay, so I'm really good at internet marketing here. Okay? What sort of, like, sustainable business, which is a high-ticket item, could I do? And I hadn't even thought about management training yet. Okay? It weren't even staring me in the face. And, you know, sometimes when you put something out there in the universe, something comes back.

21:59I get a call from somebody who I'd managed in the past and said oh I'm Mr. Big now in this company we want some management and leadership training can you deliver it and I went yes of course I can no problem at all you know yes is the answer what's the question right so I went oh who's it for oh it's for for 10 newbies oh Sean you were you were brilliant at what you did previously you used to get the best out of people and i'm there going do i say i'm not a trainer you know what am i gonna say oh no sean don't worry about that just come in just deliver your style like what you did and you know what will be cool um well by the way what's your daily rate and i'm there and i'm going oh no it's another arkansas moment here and i and i went two thousand pounds talk about not not sounding confident and i went two thousand pounds and they went is that per day and i went yes and i went yeah no problem we'll have two days and i'm there going oh i think there's something in this right but hold on a minute i've never delivered training ever only what I think training should be like from having a commercial career and being on the end of it so I went down to I think it was office world it weren't even staples back then I'm showing my age and I says what am I going to do and I didn't think about powerpoints or anything like that I just got two flip charts I got a meter ruler pencil and I'm drawing lines across the flip chart so my writing's not going to end up like this and I wrote agenda you know what's the difference between management and leadership what's a good manager coaching delegation everything like this went and delivered the training I was on the on the train on the way home off the first day of the training there was another day to go I never even thought about charging for a hotel I could have probably I probably could have got away with that and it was my friend and it and I'm there and you know you know when the phone goes I'm immediately thinking oh crap right I've been caught out I've been caught phone goes and hi Ian everything okay everything okay what have you done and I went what have I done and he says they're all back at the desk now it's quarter past six right that's never been known and and they're all jazzed up and they're juiced up really well done and I went oh brill I said so I can come back tomorrow then and he said yeah yeah yeah no problem at all put the phone down goes home I'm cockahoo goes back delivers the training come back and I'm going two grand a day I said internet marketing I said oh and I really enjoyed the two days delivery that I did as well maybe there's something in this okay and that's how MTD training was created good story on the name MTD right people go where's MTD come from well there's there's two parts to that one is if you wanted to get to the top of the search engines back in the day, keywords in the URL was really important.

25:37So I bought management-training-development.com. Okay. Got to the number one rankings after about four or five months. Okay. And then I remember delivering some training for Friends Provident in the Isle of Man. And the guy said, oh, here's Sean from, oh God, I'm not going to say that big long word, MTD. Right. And I went, well, I like that. It can actually fit on my business card. I said, now, sean.mcfee at management-training-development.com. Way, way, way too long. So that's how the name came about, MTD. So the thing is with it is that I said, right, that's what I'm going to do. Okay. the confidence world and some of the other sites were kind of like you know they were like dying really because i weren't putting any attention into them and after after a period of time i was going a 19 quid pdf i mean i just felt a bit icky at the time whereas with this it was management and leadership start with sales training didn't come till about 2005 2006 but then at that particular point in time I said right how am I gonna get you know some clients now bearing in mind I bought the domain and I set up the website and I was designing the website myself they didn't have any help with it and it looked like a bag of spanners it really did you know like old Amazon's first ever website it looked a bit like that it was actually terrible I think think it might have had me on the on the front of it like this over a chair it was just absolutely terrible but I said it's going to be about four or five months till I get good rankings for that so I need to jump some business somehow okay and the whilst I'd got some money from from that um from that company I said to myself oh right I'm going to have to bite the bullet and I'm going gonna have to make some cold calls right now bearing in mind that I'd never made a cold call in my life right but I'm not gonna shirt responsibility and I'm gonna say and I said to myself how hard could this be I'm just gonna do exactly the opposite of how I've been pitched right and I remember saying saying to my wife at the time oh what are you doing now I bought a I bought an emailing list, I bought a mailing list of 100 names, okay, and it's got the name, the title, you know, what they do, where they are, and everything like that, 100 names, and I'm going to do cold calling today, right, and she says, you doing cold calling?

28:35And I says, well, yeah, and she says, how are you going to do it? And I says, well, I'm just going to do a complete opposite of what everybody does, right, and sound different. So she went, all right then, okay. You know, I can't wait to hear these results tonight over dinner. So I remember going into my bedroom, closed the door. It was a boiling hot day, I remember. It was in the summer. And I literally had a vest and my boxer shorts on. And I had this list. And I said, right, okay, how am I going to do this? So first of all, I said, right, I don't want to be like a cheesy salesperson who's been calling me for the past 10 years.

29:17Oh, hi, is that Sean McPhee? Hi, it's such and such one. How are you today? Right? Money mouth, I call that. Right? You can just hear the salesperson and you guys do it properly. Right? And I'm there, so it's not going to be anything like that. Plus as well, I said to myself, it just sounds too polished. Way too polished. And if I was phoning you up for it, for example, Zach, and you said, oh, hi there, Zach's speaking, I'd say something like this. Oh, yeah, hello there, Zach. How's it going, mate? Oh, hello there. Yeah, those fumbles. Struggle a bit. Struggle a bit. I called it a fumble, right?

30:00And then I'm thinking to myself, when I phone up everybody, do I go, oh, hi, Jack, how's it going? I go, oh, hi, Jack. Oh, oh, hi, Jack. You know? And I said, I'm going to give a fumble at the front. and I thought it was crackers at the time but I'm saying I'm going to give it a whack see how it goes because if you listen to any call in the office it starts that way oh hello yeah there yes and even even that lunchtime I heard my wife on the call calling somebody and she went oh hello yeah yes something like that and I'm going oh hello yeah yes and I'm going what's all that but it's natural And the other person, subconsciously, will be thinking it's natural.

30:45So I went, what am I going to call this? And I went, fumble. Fumble. Then what shall I do? Right, okay. So I'm going to sound like I'm calling a friend. And I'm going to assume that I'm going to be getting through to a gatekeeper. And they're going to have to think, right, okay. Am I going to piss off this friend? Am I going to put them through? Okay. So I said, right, okay, I'm going to say something like this. So whatever the receptionist's name is, if they say their name, I'm going to use it first off. So I'll go, oh, hi, Jenny. It's Sean from MTD. With inflection up. And inflection up means that you should know us just by inflection.

31:31So if Microsoft called you, you wouldn't go, oh, hi, I'm Sean. I'm calling from Microsoft. it'd be i'm calling from microsoft yeah because you know them so i'm gonna use a bit of inflection at the start to go hi it's sean calling from mtd right and i'm gonna half the calls i'm gonna stop there and get something back and half calls i'm just gonna go could i speak to jill please thanks right and i'll see what if i've got a winner you know see if i've got a winner so i went right here we go so took a deep breath loads of water wringing my forehead like this I'm there like this I'm ready to rock and roll and I go right first one and this is true Jillian in Claire's accessories Birmingham right here we go right phones up hi good morning Claire success of this is Jenny speaking how can I help oh yeah yes and i paraphrase oh yes hello there jenny it's sean from mtd oh yeah hi there sean how can i help you right so i'm going i've got a little bit of rapport there i went oh um could you put me through to jill please thanks yeah no problem and i'm there going oh fuck i hadn't even thought about anything to say next right hadn't thought about anything to say because i honestly probably thought that these are just going to be practice calls just to get to the gatekeeper i'm not going to get through to anybody right get through hi hi jillian speaking and i'm there and i'm going jillian i'm not going to trick you this is a cold call um i think i can help you can you just give me 10 or 15 seconds of your time and she went yeah okay and I went shit what am I gonna say now anyway I fumbled through it we I set a meeting put the phone down and I went oh god this is a piece of piss isn't it go to the next one Johnson Matty same sort of thing right phones up gets through to the decision maker didn't set up a meeting with that one and to cut a long story short out of the first 20 I got through to 17 of them and I'd set up four meetings just using the fumble with what I did the inflection actually the 21st person when I got through said oh i thought you were from mtv not mtd and i kind of thought to myself was that the real reason why people were putting me through you know but still even when i got through to them i managed to um you know set a meeting with them and then going forward from that I did trial different things so you know that fumble worked really really well and like a friend worked very very well and then even and it's only the last 10 years that I've heard this and I know you guys really do this in all the cold calling that you do I think you say this is a sales call you know you have 10 minutes at a time you can just see whether it's relevant or not up to you sort of thing I was actually using that back in 2002 and I never bloody knew about it but it was I don't want to trick you that's what I use I don't want to trick you this is a cold call okay can you give me 10 15 minutes and from that it's it's polished up a bit from from back then but then from that that got me my first four clients got me 50k in the bank and then at that time I was number one in yahoo not google yahoo right and they oh wow the nasgees remember the butler yeah remember the butler and um started getting incoming leads in and i went shit all of a sudden i'm going out delivering training then coming home and i've got eight calls right incoming calls to an answer phone that i had in my bedroom wow yeah and some emails in i went oh better start getting um serious about this the there'll be someone at home now who's listening to this going i wish i could do that but it's not 2001 anymore that the world's changed there's different technology in place if if i just men in black moment wiped your brain you had to start again today in today's economy with today's technology what would you do to set up both of those inbound and outbound vehicles Yeah, I mean, I'd definitely use LinkedIn, yeah, for sure.

36:27I think LinkedIn, you know, if you're B2B, obviously, LinkedIn has been an absolute goldmine for us over the years. and because you can get a free account. I mean, where in the world can you get millions and millions of your decision makers all online at the same time and you can see what they look like, where they work, what their interests are. I wish I'd have had that back in 2001. I'd be a billionaire by that sort of thing. You know, but LinkedIn is the most probably still underused method and activity that salespeople and business people can use. Because what you can do is you can put lots of content out there.

37:21One of the things that I do, I've got 222 ,000 followers now. And I'm a firm believer in giving in public and asking in private. Okay, so I will put shed loads of content out there, which is all geared around my ideal customer profile, which is learning and development managers, HR managers, and C -suites in the main. And over a seven-day period, I'll have one bit of content which will be for each of those and kind of like evergreen content which will appeal to all of them in between as well. What's an example of that then? Give us an example. Yeah, so handling tough conversations, whether you're an L &D manager or a C-suite or whatever, you know, that that would be a bit of evergreen content that could handle everything.

38:22Something which is a bit more unique to learning and development managers is how to come across as though you're not just an order taker within your company and that you're going to add some strategic value. So an L &D manager is going to look at that and go, that's really niched, niched, niched down. And okay, so that might not appeal to the C-suite CEO that day, but if the CEO sees it, he sees that I'm talking about that way and helping L &D managers and HR managers. So it all comes down to you understanding your ICP. Now, I'd like to think that anybody on LinkedIn or anybody starting a business understands the problems that their ideal customer profile is finding.

39:17And if not, then just bloody go on to Claude or ChatGPT and ask it. It can come out with some really, really good things. You could put in a prompt, you know, I sell CRMs. I sell to a CRM manager. think about the top 20 frustrations that CRM managers have and it might come out adoption okay everybody knows that right um you know customization of systems so you can send out all of this really good content and you can whip it up very easily now in AI before AI came along I was doing these by hand, right, using Adobe in 2018, 2019. Then all of a sudden, AI comes along, Canva comes along, and ordinary people are looking good now.

40:11And it's true. You know, I got really pissed off with that because I knew nobody could outwork me or outsmart me with that. But you guys could enter my domain now, right? L &D managers, even if you knew nothing about it. Why? Because you could ask ChatGPT or Claude, even if you don't know about it, and you can create, shed loads of content off the back of it. You can even plug that into Gamma now, for example, and it will create everything for you. But I've moved away, and I used to use AI for some of my writing, but I don't anymore. I might use it for a little bit here or there, or to sharpen things up if I'm not explaining something very well.

40:54But LinkedIn has got so much AI slop in it now. It's unbelievable. And I can read it and I could probably read 100 LinkedIn articles or posts and I would say I'd probably go about 98 % accuracy of whether it's written via AI or not. So my recommendation, if I was starting again, And that's what I would completely do. I'd go all in on that. But then also, whilst you're building a following then, okay, is to DM them, right, off the back end. And I've got a couple of ways that I do this. Number one, if we know of each other, okay, or sometimes I might get in my LinkedIn box, oh, Sean, I'm a big fan of yours.

41:43I have your content, everything like this. I'm not going to go in with a big long you know pitch I might go into something like oh hi Jack do you have anything to do with xyz at all or hi Jack only if you can help me do you know anything about this at all even though I know that you do okay and I use that for people who I know okay and my team knows does that for people who they know and we get about 60 or 70 response rate which I think is really really high okay then you've got people who I don't know and and you know just before I mentioned that it's really important to know that a lot of people are not gonna like or engage with the content even though they'll be buyers always remember that I've had people come to us and say well Sean really big fan of yours can you put me in contact that we're a sales team because we want a big sales development program.