Allegedly | Amber Rhodes

[Dillon] (0:00 - 0:45)

Alright, everybody ready? What's up, Lifers, and welcome to The Daily Standup with Lifetime Value, where we're giving you fresh new customer success ideas every single day. I got my man JP with us.

JP, do you want to say hi? Totally do, Tiddlywinks. And we have Rob with us.

Rob, can you say hi, please? It wasn't as good as mine. Yep, Amber is exasperated already.

Amber, can you please say hi?

[Amber] (0:46 - 0:46)

Hey, y'all.

[Dillon] (0:47 - 0:57)

She rubbed her eyes underneath her eyeglasses to show her frustration slash amusement with us.

[Amber] (0:57 - 0:58)

I didn't know this was improv.

[Dillon] (1:01 - 1:12)

That's all it is. That's life, baby. And I'm your host.

My name is Dillon Young. Amber, my dear friend, thank you so much for being here. Can you please introduce yourself?

[Amber] (1:12 - 1:30)

Yeah, my name is Amber. I do fractional marketing right now. I used to do full-time, and then I was like, I'm not about that life.

I'm for the B2B streets. So I went out on my own. You can find me at AmberRhodes.co if you want to check out my services.

[Dillon] (1:31 - 2:12)

Yeah, we'll put it in the show notes so that there are no questions. Amber, thank you so much for being here. You may or may not know exactly what...

You and I work together. Full disclosure, you may or may not know what we do here exactly. You should, because you should be listening to the podcast every single day.

Don't tell me whether you do or not. We ask every single guest one simple question, and that is usually, what is on your mind when it comes to customer success? But you already talked about the mean B2B streets, so maybe we'll expand it out and talk about that.

So why don't you tell us what is on your mind regarding that?

[Amber] (2:13 - 2:49)

Yeah. Yeah, lately... I say lately, but I mean for the past...

my whole life, I've been obsessed with gossip and drama. It's one of the reasons why I love Real Housewives. And I started noticing that people were really showing...

Can I swear on this? They were really showing their asses on LinkedIn. A lot of founders were showing their asses on LinkedIn, and it felt like Real Housewives.

And I was like, why aren't we... Everyone's talking about it in my DMs, so we should talk about it in a newsletter. I should get people's emails so we can all talk about this together.

So I've been talking about founders behaving badly.

[Dillon] (2:50 - 3:06)

Okay. So you've got this newsletter, Founders Behaving Badly, and you have a podcast launching on the Lifetime Value Media Network, where you're going to expound upon this topic, right? So tell us a little bit about the conversations you've had thus far.

[Amber] (3:06 - 3:53)

Yeah. So the newsletter itself is more like a news alert when something happens. I just write about it, and then it goes out like that week or the next day.

The podcast is like a deep dive into someone who's doing something shady. I did one. She's like an Elizabeth Holmes light, a true scammer, which we love to see.

The other one I did is about... I don't know if you know Telegram, the founder of Telegram, and why he got arrested in Paris last year. I have a few more up my sleeve that I'm thinking on.

There's this founder who takes his son's blood to make himself feel younger. I'm excited about that one. And I don't know if it's bad behavior, but it's definitely weird.

So I want to talk about it.

[Dillon] (3:53 - 3:55)

Founders behaving abnormally.

[Amber] (3:55 - 3:58)

Just doing founder things.

[Dillon] (3:58 - 4:27)

Yeah. So Robin JP, bonus points if either one of you can offer suggestions for additional founders that maybe Amber doesn't already know about. Though I'll be interested to see whether you can stump her.

And secondly, they're going to mess up. They have to mess up to having messed up? It's got to be publicly available because our liability insurance is not that robust.

[Amber] (4:28 - 4:36)

Yeah, that is the caveat. I don't want to get sued. I'm terrified of getting sued, so it helps if there's sources or screenshots.

[Dillon] (4:38 - 4:39)

JP, why don't you go first?

[JP] (4:41 - 6:29)

Nasty work, baby. Nasty work to the max. This is crazy.

I mean, I try not to get too deep in them streets. My precious, precarious mental health just can't take that concrete. But I will tell you, I've been thinking a little bit about the one who was crying because he had to let somebody go.

It reminded me of when I was younger. Sometimes you get spankings, okay? You got spankings, and there'd be some ridiculous nonsense about, this is going to hurt you way more than it's going to hurt me.

That's the first thing I thought about when I saw that crying CEO. I was like, come on, man. What are you talking about?

But what's the nasty work part is that you want to put that out. At no point did someone... You're setting up the camera.

That's the part, to me, that's kind of crazy. It's usually just because we're talking about things that are available, these things that people post on LinkedIn, and they have zero idea. This is not a founder, but we've seen someone put a picture of their daughter in the hospital in tubes, can't even consent to a picture, and posting it and having a weird smile on their face in the picture.

What are we doing? What are we doing? It just doesn't make sense to me.

I think on the topic of founders behaving badly, it's general, just like this weird link social media thing where people want to go be, quote, unquote, vulnerable, and it's like, take it out of the air quotes. That's where you're going wrong. Everything's not content.

[Amber] (6:29 - 6:31)

Yeah. Take me out of the group chat.

[Dillon] (6:33 - 7:29)

Well, perfect segue, because I think what's so cathartic about this idea is that I bet most people have a version of that where they're chatting with their friends and saying, can you believe this? This is bizarre. I can cite another half dozen examples that we have talked about of people posting the craziest stuff.

Some of it's sad, like people dying and they're posting within 48 hours of somebody really important dying in their family and turning it into a LinkedIn post or a picture of subtly a picture of them in a hospital gown. But the post is about business learnings. It's just bizarre stuff.

And so all of that is to say there is no shortage of this content. So, Amber, choose what you write about.

[Amber] (7:30 - 8:17)

I wish I kind of wish I pigeonhole myself into like just founders because there's so much craziness. But that's what LinkedIn lunatics is for on Reddit. I just I look for is it funny?

Is there a funny element to it? Is it recent right now is what I'm looking for? And do people will they care about it?

Like, I'm almost getting tired of the Google alerts I get that are like fraud, scam, like another founder has scammed investors out of money. Like, I don't really care about that as much anymore. But yeah, it's got like a funny element or something that I guess I can make a pun out of more likely to post about it.

Like, did you hear? Did Did you see my newsletter about the founder of pirates booty? The snack?

[Dillon] (8:18 - 8:21)

I did. Yeah. Do tell pray tell.

[Amber] (8:21 - 8:44)

Yeah. So this one is interesting, because it wasn't tech. So it's a little different.

He declared himself mayor of the village that he lives in, in New York. He was just like, I'm mayor now, based on this old law. And they were like, No, no, you're not.

No, you're not. And the funniest part is that he did that right before an election that he could have run for.

[JP] (8:45 - 8:52)

Yeah. Yeah, this is gonna be interesting. Yeah.

[Dillon] (8:56 - 9:02)

Rob, do you have a framework for this?

-: 10:10

Not a framework. I have a criterion, though, that I try to use whenever I'm on LinkedIn, which is just, if I'm not learning, or I'm not laughing, I probably shouldn't be on LinkedIn. Mmm, those are those are really important rules I'm trying to live by, because I'm ending up doom scrolling.

And it's interesting. Oh, by the way, speaking of people laughing, I heard recently, some guy recently, the comedian, he declared himself CEO of LinkedIn, he put on his LinkedIn profile, he's like, I'm CEO of LinkedIn. And like, nobody, there's no filters on LinkedIn to stop you from saying you're the CEO of LinkedIn.

Which is funny for like a year, didn't he? Yeah, something like that. So I'm trying to unpack two things.

I'm trying to unpack first layer is why is LinkedIn so weird. And I think it's because it's like the only platform where we do as much cold outreach. Like I don't cold outreach people on Instagram, or Facebook or whatever.

Some people might but that's because you're not young.

[Dillon] (: 10:10

My cousin found his girlfriend on Instagram, my cousin. I'm not kidding. I've heard that.

[Rob] (: 10:18

Yeah, this rapping slid slid into the DMS. No, I mean, it happens. But I also feel like, I don't know, I feel like the other part of LinkedIn is you're reaching out to people cold with with a business context, and then sharing personal information. And it's like, what my colonoscopy taught me about b2b sales.

So so I think like the framing is entirely different. The fact that it's not meant to be truly a social network, but more of a work network. The same things you wouldn't want to share when you're at work, you presumably wouldn't want to share on LinkedIn.

But a lot of people, they let that boundary creep. And their standards might be different about what they consider appropriate, or consider funny. But the other part about this, we started on the topic of founders specifically, and I was thinking about these stories like, man, all I do is work with founders, most of whom are in their 20s.

And I've seen some funny founders behaving badly, like, not realizing one. Yeah, yeah, hit up the tip line. I'm just saying I've been in situations where founders have not realized that they were off mute.

And they're talking about the customer. That's bad. I've heard them talking about employees on recorded calls that then get shared back with those employees, which is just so awful and so cringy.

And if I try to unpack that to look, to be honest with you, being in a founding position has to come with a degree of there's a certain power dynamic. There is, we can't escape that there has to be deliberate effort on the part of founders to be a conscious leader for their organizations. And you know what, not making fun of the customers and not making fun of your employees is an easy place to start.

And certainly not doing it on LinkedIn.

[Dillon] (: 12:03

Amber, I want to give you your flowers in a number of ways here, because we kind of went in on LinkedIn. I don't know that I agree that I mean, it's social media at the end of the day. So we can dress it up as being business oriented.

I think that's up for interpretation anyways. But Amber, I think you do a phenomenal job of tying in business topics to otherwise absurd ideas on LinkedIn. So for anybody listening that does not follow Amber on LinkedIn, go and change that immediately.

But I also think this idea of founders behaving badly is unique and brilliant. And we'll make sure to share all of this in the show notes so that folks can find it. But Amber, I want to give you an opportunity to first correct anything we've said, share any additional information you think is important before we say goodbye.

[Amber] (: 13:03

I don't think I have anything to add. Subscribe to the newsletter, listen to the podcast. If you like satire, I also have a satire website called B2B Bulletin.

So if you like fake news, real fake news, not fake news. Yeah, just follow me. Sorry.

Sorry, derailed right.

[Rob] (: 13:24

That's a third rail. We try not to touch. Look, I'll feel bad.

I'll feel bad if we close out without me just saying, look, I understand people have their own ways of dealing with situations.

[JP] (: 13:34

And so I knew you was going to say so. I have to say it. I have to say it.

[Rob] (: 13:37

And I don't want to be judgmental here. But that was the whole point. But I want to be real.

You're not. Amber is just saying people can cope in the ways that they want on my on my feed, though. Edit that out.

[Dillon] (: 13:56

Unsubscribe. Unsubscribe. Amber, that is our time.

Thank you so much for joining us in the circus that we put on. Again, everything will be in the show notes. Come back once this launches.

Let's talk again about what the reception has been and and maybe what's been the most fun part for you in running this podcast. But until that time, got to say goodbye.

[VO] (: 14:26

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