Building Your Brand in the B2B World: A Conversation with U.S. Olympian Johnny Quinn

Good morning, and welcome to another episode of b to b weekly. I'm your host. To Maitlyn. And thank you for tuning in to what I know is gonna be another fantastic episode. You know, the purpose of this show is really build community and engage community. And market scale mission is we believe that the best way for a company to grow is to truly build a community around them. So the purpose of this is to be a part of the community. As you're in this conversation and you're listening, if you have a question, if you have a comment, if you wanna celebrate something. If you wanna respond to somebody, go ahead and jump in the chat. Have some fun with the questions. We're gonna take some live q and a's. From the community today. So be bold, ask questions, and and we can't wait to really put on this this epic production here today. Today, I'm really excited, because we have an amazing guest. We have Johnny Quinn here. Johnny is an former NFL athlete a former US Olympian, and he has such an incredible story of really parlaying from the world of sports at the highest level. To now the world of business at the highest level, and Johnny's gonna teach all of us in the community how we can take any past and previous and current experience and use that to build a brand, whether that's to build a brand independently for initiatives we might have in our career, or to build a brand within our business to help our company grow and and to become more dominant within our vertical. So really excited for Johnny to lend his thought leadership and voice and for everybody to learn from his enthusiasm and and his expertise. But before we jump in and bring in Johnny, as you know, we love to do a little new segment each and every week. So let's go ahead and jump into that in the news here with b to b weekly. So today, we're gonna talk about specifically BMW, and them actually launching a marine division. So BMW historically, obviously, they've never they've never made boats. They've never, played in that segment. However, recently, they launched an amazing EV boat, an electric powered boat. Now historically, BMW has not really empowered the transportation world with EV solutions. Right? They're one of the best motor companies of all time. They actually even own Rolls Royce Automobiles who probably is the best engine manufacturer of all time. And they're pretty late to the game. So what better way to make a splash than literally jump in by launching a boat? Now this boat is a unique play. You're not gonna see this BMW boat on your local lake or even really your local marina, if you're on a coastal town, It's really more of a concept, similar to concept car idea. Now what BMW is doing with this is they're showing really the power of the I three battery and the ecosystem that the BMW EV world's gonna be able to create. Now if you didn't know Marine, it's actually about ten times more energy to power a boat than it is a car. And the same exact batteries that are gonna be powering this forty two foot boat is gonna be the ones that they're using in their vehicles. So it's just a true testament to BMW being able to der diversify the testament to showing how unique and how powerful their batteries are. And it's just another way to engage a BMW community in a unique way. That they're have no plan on really scaling, but just as a unique way to adopt and normalize the ID, idea of EV and the BMW brand. Another thing as a business guy, what I love, is BMW is starting to disrupt themselves. Right? We know Tesla. We know Tesla's obviously dominated the EV game. However, what's kinda taking place with BMW is they've said, hey, look, we are one of the best engine manufacturers of all time, but if we don't disrupt ourselves, somebody else will. So they're taking that step to evolve. They're making that investment, and you're gonna see a lot more electric charge BMWs on the road and you've seen previously, and it's all starting with this launch of the marines. So pretty cool story, and we're gonna keep tuning in and and watching that. Now today's conversation, I think, is so extremely important because it is market skills belief that everybody within a business can build their own brand. Right? We don't need to sit back as a salesperson or as an engineer and as an executive and just expect our companies to be the one that builds the brand in the market segment, we can do it our own. We can build our own channels. We can go direct to our own community like our LinkedIn, follow or Twitter followers. And today's lesson is so important because we're gonna learn how you're able to do that at any scale within, you know, what you're doing in your business, or any sort of experience you've had in your previous life and and bringing that in to what you do today. So I couldn't think of a better time to bring in our guest As I said, he's a former NFL athlete and US Olympian. He really needs no introduction. Let's play his hype video anyways. Let's go ahead and bring in our guest, Johnny Quinn. Olympic Bob's letter, Johnny. Johnny. Johnny. Do our work matter. Absolutely. But friends, it's our actions that speak louder. I got stuck in my bathroom. So I broke this bathroom door down in. Hey, friends. Johnny Quinn here. I'm gonna share some tools and frameworks that I learned in professional football and the Olympics that transition over flawlessly to the marketplace. Collaborate work together, find a way to get the job done with the current resources available. There's no role for distraction. When it comes to selling in any industry and any economic climate. It comes down to two things. Number one, are you likable? And number two, are you trustworthy? Those two features together, you can be stoppable in the marketplace. Do you wanna talk about financial growth. This is how you blow it out of the park in the market. Johnny, good morning. Thanks for joining us today. Sam, good to be here with you. Yeah. I know it's great to have you. I feel like the BM W new segment might have been perfect because on the cover of your book, I think I remember seeing a BMW badge, you were sponsored by them as an athlete. That's right. You know, they were a big, help for our Bob sleds in the Olympics, and who knows sport and performance better than BMW. So to see them come and help on, design our sleds when we're looking to maximize speed and performance. We couldn't think of a better partner. That's amazing. And and you were the engine. So you were the the human powered engine behind it. And I gotta say I'd I I would regret if it had this opportunity to tell you not only a US Olympian, but you literally have probably the best Olympian name. I mean, Johnny Quinn sounds like, action figure superhero name. So pretty cool. Yeah. I'll have to, that with my mom and dad, you know, they did they did a good job. A little bit cooler of a name than Tim Maitland, but, no, we're so glad that you're here. And, you know, your story of, you know, being an athlete and now being, obviously, a very successful author and a very successful, you know, public speaker and motivation speaker. I'd love for you to just share with the community today a little bit about your background and and really kinda how you got here today and, you know, kind of a quick overview. Yeah. You know, a little bit about me, to your point, Tim, sports guy, right? NFL went on to the Olympics. I mean, it was just, just an incredible, you know, career through sports. But then I had to pivot. Mhmm. And so I I got into speaking. I wrote a book. We got an app coming out soon. And so I had to find a way to tools that I used in sport. Does that transition over into the marketplace? And Tim, the answer is yes. And so went to the packers. I was with the bills, went to the CFO, then I go to the Olympics, just kind of a a unique, right, path to the Olympic games. And, now I speak full time. I'm in the community quite a bit. I think I'm the only winter Olympian in Texas, right, or maybe there's another one of us. Kinda have get cornered. And so here we are today. Perfect. So you've obviously had some big pivots, right, from, you know, NFL to Bob sledding to now business. And what you've done is you've done exactly what we preach to companies. We say, hey, look. You need to build your own brand. You need to build your own media channels and go direct. If you could speak a little bit to how you kinda went from zero to one, right, kinda saying, hey, this would be kinda cool to build a brand around this. Now I'm gonna do it. So where did you pivot? And what were some of those initial steps you took to build that brand? Yeah. You know, I'm I'm very big in taking small accurate steps. And so, Tim, one of the first things I did to build my my brand and my community is I uploaded the same profile picture on all my social media platforms. You know, it it sounds a little elementary. But you would be surprised on this low hanging fruit when it comes to branding that some people mess. You know, your profile picture, Tim, is not a profile picture of boots the cat, even though you might love cats. Right? It is an understanding that there are these digital tools with best practices that we've got to take advantage of. And so I just started being consistent in my username. I've got Johnny Quinn USA on all platforms, not big cat eighty or whatever. Right? And so it started to build some consistency that whether you find me on social media, whether you're on my website, whether we're doing a live broadcast, you start to see some consistency. And I think that's huge for our community is that if you wanna jump in this game, let's get consistent. That's what we need to do. So you talk about consistent with, obviously, the profiles looking the same. That that's great advice. I think that's probably overlooked too, and and it's such a simple one. Right? It's like writing your name on the test. Right. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. Now what about the consistency of of content creation? So you build the channel that has kind of the affinity consistency? What about consistency of actually creating and and going to that growing community? Whether it's one person to start or a thousand people to start. There's two ways to go about this, and I think you need to do both, Tim. The first thing is there needs to be a consistent amount of drip. And it doesn't necessarily have to be every day, but we do need to get some type of rhythm that you are consistently posting online, so you start to build this ecosystem. And so that's one vertical that you wanna take care of. The second area in your line of space is you wanna participate And so when people are asking questions, you're not just liking a comment. You're actually diving in. And truthfully, Tim, that's actually where I'm seeing a lot of growth. Is participating in discussions online where I can come in as a potential expert and answer a post or answer a question. And so I think those are two again low hanging fruits that you can start from a branding standpoint is let's find a consistent schedule. But then let's engage and actually participate. Right? Let's give more than we take. And I love that too because one of the things that we preach is the idea of earned media. Right? Build your own media so then people can naturally kinda reshare your content to their community. But you could also jump into their community by just responding to a question somebody asks on a platform or lending your thought leadership. And now everybody that follows that individual, they're naturally seeing your brand. You kinda give them the access to click into your profile, subscribe to your channel, and whatever it might be. That's right. Yeah. You know, what participating does is it allows you to position yourself, Tim, to your point as the expert, when you come in and can provide some type of advice, especially in your career, what you are good at, what you are hired to do, If you can come in there and alleviate somebody's problem, then you already position yourself in the in the marketplace as an expert. And when it comes to branding, that's what you want. One of the biggest disconnects that I think happened in in the b to b side is you'll have a company who might be very technical or maybe they're a little bit outdated in their form of communication. And they just think, okay, my company building a media channel or, hey, let's take this engineer we have or sales leader we have and kinda build them an influencer. Is that really gonna translate into opportunities? I've got my ads that kinda work. I got my trade shows that kinda work. I've got my sales process that kinda works. And together, it works really well. But, you know, you literally using your brand and your media channels to conduct business, how have you seen it literally build revenue opportunities and and sales opportunities for you. Yeah. Good question. I think the first hurdle that we have to overcome is that we've gotta get rid of this imposter syndrome. Right? This why me? Does anybody wanna hear from my perspective? Especially if I'm somewhere on the org chart, not at the top. Tim, what I realized is that people need to hear your experience from your point of view. Nobody's heard your experience from your point of view. So it is crucial from a branding standpoint, no matter where you fall. If you're out on your own or you're within a company that people see life from your point of view. And when you do that, Tim, in this day and age, what that does is that you come off as authentic. Mhmm. And that's you want to be anyway. You want to be authentic. When you start doing that consistently, things start to increase, whether it's a revenue goal that you're tracking down, whether it's, a growth opportunity that you're going after. We wanna start building in this assistency. Let me give you one of the challenges I had building my brand early on. I had to overcome the imposter syndrome of Tim, I'm not an Olympic medalist. I I really wish we would have won an Olympic medal. I wish I would have been on that metal stand and could have this medal that I could wear around post on social media and let people that I meet wear that medal. Mhmm. I don't have one. So does that mean that only the people that have Olympic medals should be creating a brand and outposting in the community? Absolutely not. Because no one has seen life from my point of view, and that's what I would encourage community members. Nobody sees life from your point of view. You've a a tremendous amount of value that you can share with the market and you need to. What I love about that too is the idea that because something that I hear marketers say all the time is, well, there's so much noise. There's so many podcasts in the market. There's so much content out there. People really wanna hear from me, do they wanna hear from our brand? So you're saying they actually do because sure you might have a similar sounding voice, but your perspective could be unique, and that could be the spark that really ignites all of this. Tim, that's exactly right. Let me give you an example. You know, one of the hardest things to shop for is water. Have you ever gone to a grocery store and you go down the water aisle? And there is just, you know, all these different brands of water. And so how do we shop for water? Here's what we do. What we think through Tim is we think about Well, I know a friend's grandma who's ninety one years old. She's in fantastic health, and she drinks this style of water. You know, I follow somebody online or somebody that I trust, and I'm always seeing them post about this type of water. And so when we're overwhelmed with options, we go to what what we're familiar with and with people that we trust. And so let's be that trusted expert in the marketplace just like water. Now I the the water point's good because, too, water is a commodity. Right? And and and to your point, it kinda lends well where people say, well, there's so much oversaturation of communication. Does your content always have to be this big polished piece that takes hours to edit or, you know, days to plan, or talking about authenticity, is it sometimes just as good as you're with your family or you're standing in front of that product. You're at that trade show. You just pull out that iPhone and you just take a selfie video and you just post it direct. Is that just as impactful of any of the big branded media you could create? You know, it really is. And and there's a concept or a formula that I that I got from Gary v, very big brand guy, has an incredible presence. And he talks about similar to, like, a a boxing You just don't get into a boxing match and just throw these massive right hooks. You jab, you jab, you jab, and then you come in with a right hook. Mhmm. Same thing with posting content online. I'm gonna post about my family. Gonna post about pickleball, which is what I like. I know we're gonna talk about that later. And then I'm going to post my write, my jab about booking me to speak, And so when we're building a brand, it is not right hook after hook after hook, that's actually being a megaphone. And that gets really annoying. Interesting. Really quick. Well, we wanted these little jobs. Share a little bit about your perspective from your line of work. Share a little bit about your family if you're comfortable with doing that online. And then go in for an ask or go in for a booking or go in for a get a quote or submit your contact information here. I really love that boxing concept of where jab jab jab, and then we go in for the hook. That that's a really good point. Yeah. It's almost like watching a Floyd Mayweather boxing match. Yeah. You're not just seeing pay makers left and right. Yeah. No. I mean, they'd be exhausted after round one. It'd be so sloppy. And so think about that from an online presence. That's what a lot of people are doing. So if we can position ourselves different, which we can. If we have a plan in place, the jab jab jab right hook, fantastic formula. That's really great advice. Now a question from the community that came in is what if you're a little bit nervous in in getting front of the camera? Right? Because, you know, you've obviously been a professional athlete you've played in front of know, thousands of millions of people, you've spoken for a millions of people. But what if you're that shy engineer or that young sales professional and you have don't have the experience of speaking. Yeah. So let's think of let's think about that. If you don't have the experience, you feel a little bit nervous. What I love about posting online and video content is you get to practice. Right? You could practice at the house and the car at the office wherever you're at. And if you don't like the content, friend, don't post it. And so take I can't tell you how many times Tim that I have taken multiple shots because I didn't like, you know, a tone of voice or I didn't like, you know, the way something came came off or I wanna change something. So to our community members, my recommendation is let's practice, but let's get some content out there. You're gonna get great feedback. And the more we practice, the better you get. Hey, that's a good sports concept that you can take to the bank. And there's a unique kind of movement to taking place race in in media, you know, not not to get political. This isn't the platform for that. But you saw yesterday, you might have heard, you know, DeSantis literally announces his presidential candidacy through Twitter. And he has Elon Musk on who is not a professional journalist. He's not a professional host. Honestly, he's not the best speaker. It's not his forte. They had technical glitches and hiccups, and they just totally owned it. And it's the idea of, hey, look, this is real. This is authentic. This is a person announcing for presidency. It shouldn't be this big forced element with a bunch of ad dollars and revenue behind it. It should just be organic and direct. And just think there's a lesson. No matter who you are, what you like, there's just a lesson there that companies can have that same sort of authenticity, the same sort of idea of just going direct and and to your point, letting that authentic self shine and not worrying so much about messing up or how you exactly sound. That's right. You know, the barrier to entry is so low now from a branding standpoint, which is incredible news. It's super encouraging that you can truly flip on your phone and get content out there to a network that are either your buyers or your prospects or whoever you're working with. And so, what I'm starting to see from a branding standpoint, what I'm starting to see more of the the, portrait mode Right? Because everybody's consuming content on the phone. And so that's great. And so now I can get in there, I don't have to worry about getting a bunch of different editing in there. I can just shoot from my phone. And get that content out there because a lot of people are consuming content in that vertical frame, which is great. It absolutely is. And, you know, one of the points too, I think that can be a disconnect is the idea of, okay, Johnny. I I get it. I can practice. And, okay, I can take some of my expertise, but I'm gonna run out of things to say. There's only so much if I wanna become a thought leader in valve manufacturing. If I wanna become a thought leader in sales, there's only so much I can say. So what advice might you give somebody that's looking for kind of content ideation? Yeah. Where can they go to source some, you know, thoughts or or where could they kinda learn from or create their own? Yeah. Great question. So here's what we would wanna do when we're thinking about creating content. What are the pain points for your customers, your clients, your prospects? That'd be a great place to start. You can jump in some online forums what are people complaining about? You wanna have content to talk about. Let's go start answering some complaints because I've got great news. People are gonna continue to ask that question. So what a easy way to become a, you know, a thought expert to break in from a branding standpoint by answering pain points. Here's what we know about posting online, is people will continue to complain. It's not a knock, but that's the truth. So if you need some content, let's jump in some forums and find out what people are complaining about, that's where you're always gonna have some consistent content. There's a lot there. Yeah. There's a lot to jump into. Yeah. Now one of the ideas of building a successful brand is you obviously create revenue streams on it. Right? And you and you're doing it ad free, you're doing it without having to scale out things like, you know, big travel to trade shows or, you know, ad campaigns. And then when you build a successful brand, you can always kinda parlay and and bring in other areas. So you've obviously built a successful brand, and and you've got your own media channels and and you're doing your public speaking in in your books. But now you're parlaying and building literally a a pickleball business. You and your wife. That's right. So if you could talk a little bit about maybe how your successful brand that you're continuing to sustain and grow is now helping parlay into a whole another idea of -- Yeah. -- you know, pickle better and attacking a new community. You know, think about this. If you played pickleball, any of our community members, you would've put in the chat, hey, go pickleball, go. It is an addicting sport. And so My wife and I, we fell in love with it immediately. And Tim, one of the things I thought is how do I monetize a hobby? Right? How do we how do we do this? And so what I realized is that I wanna solve a problem in the community. That's where we start when it comes to branding. Here's what I noticed about pickleball. I show up on the court and I'd see people with arm sleeves, knee sleeves, they're complaining about how sore their shoulder is. And so my wife and I thought, what if we designed an app that we could give to any pickle wall player that they could start using right from their phone to work on getting out shoulder soreness, or to start doing specific movements that pickleball players use to train and work on those muscles. And so that has led to this app that we are launching next week called Picklebetter. And so here I am take going from a a sports guy to a public speaker, author, to now diving into pickleball in building a ran a brand about something that's passionate for us. And so what I love about our community members is that you have something that you're passionate at work at home in the community. Let's build a brand around it because you can. And we've talked in previous shows about the power of the pickleball community. Right? It's really a phenomenon. I mean, you even have professional athletes like Tom Brady -- Yeah. -- and LeBron James literally throwing their brand into the sport. What I think is really powerful about what you and your wife were doing and and building this app for the community is the content you're creating It's it's pretty simple, but in a in a refreshing way. Right. It's not this big. You're renting out some big facility and you have this huge camera crew following you around. Know, it looks like it's probably you, your wife, maybe somebody videoing you with, you know, an iPhone. And it's just you sharing your expertise and your knowledge of how you pack your bag how you treat injuries, technique, and just to power that authentic connection with the sport and the love of the sport, that's more powerful than somebody might be an actor who are, you know, paid to do this big official training and this huge scaled out operation behind it. Right. You know, if there's any encouragement I could give to our community today is one thing I've learned in sport in business, and it comes from a quote that you you've everybody's heard. It's on hashtags, coffee cups, t shirts, Tim, it's this quote called winners never quit. Mhmm. Vince Lombardi is, you know, big back in the day. You know, the guys are down at Super Bowl a half time. Vinson Party gives a speech, finishes with winners never quit. The guys go out and they win the Super Bowl. Here's the problem with that quote, Tim. Winners quit things all the time. They quit things that don't work. And so what I realized in building a brand is I don't need this elaborate set up and and, you know, multiple staff. No. I need to get started. Right? I need to be engaged and active with the tools that are of readily available to all of us that we all have access to. That's what's encouraging. And so to our community members, hey, I want you to go out and quit something today so you can start building your brand. The world needs to hear from you. So if you're an individual within a a big organization, so let me let me just make up an example. I am a sales manager within a company like, GE. And I say, okay. I I do wanna kinda create my book own brand. It'll break up maybe the monotony of the day. It'll help me kinda build new sales flow, a unique to kind of put my brand out there when I'm at trade shows. But I'm worried that maybe GE has these guidelines that, you know, maybe I that will restrict me from creating a brand what advice do you give to that person that says, okay. I'm I'm ready to build my own brand. I wanna take that next step, but I might be concerned that there's some red tapes. Sure. Yeah. So step one, yeah, we do need to check with HR department and and share what you wanna do. And I would imagine when you are authentic about that. They wanna jump behind you. They wanna encourage you. And in Tim's example, just two short pieces of content that I think you could share and not violate a initiality agreement or give, you know, some trade secrets away. If I'm a sales manager and I'm looking to build a brand, I'm gonna share, hey, what books are are are my sales team reading? What about articles that I'm sharing, that my sales team's reading? To kinda get them to think about selling and and twenty twenty three and beyond. The other thing I'm doing, Tim, is maybe I'm sharing some of our goal tracker sheets. We don't have to share specific numbers but just showing how we track goals. How maybe how we reward goals. What a great way to Tim. Absolutely. Attract additional salespeople. Right. And that what a sales manager wants is, hey, let's continue to, you know, the the the the cream rises the price. That's the talent pool. Exactly. Let's continue to to elevate that talent pool. So I there are things you can do immediately that you need to start working on. That's really good advice. You know, you just start with what you know in in your profession. And then, you know, you can kind of build on and and parlay on that and compound. That's right. Gosh. So what, you know, you've accomplished a lot. We're we're launching pickle better here. That's right. What's the goal of pickle better? And what's kind of the the next big goal for for Johnny Quinn. What's the more big things that you're gonna be tackling that you can share with our community? Well, we are thrilled about this pickleball out. Pickle better, pickle better dot com. You'll find us all online. This app targets the specific muscles and movements used in pickleball to help increase performance of all levels and help prevent injuries. If you're a pickleball player, you know exactly what I'm talking about. So that's in the near future. The other thing, Tim, is as a professional speaker, I speak at events all across the country. And so I wanna continue to dive in and help companies think like an Olympian in the marketplace. And so I'd love to connect with our community members. I'm online Johnny Quinn USA. It's all my social media handles. And believe it or not, that's actually my website as well. Johnnyquin USA dot com. I've got all my speaker videos up there, demo videos. I've got a thank guide. If you wanna see the best books, blogs, and podcasts, that I mentally use to prepare for the Olympics in what I use every single day in business. You can download that for free. Johnny Quinn USA dot com. Well, that's fantastic, Johnny. And you're literally a perfect use case of of what we preach. Building media channels, posting a sharing authentic thoughts, and content, and then letting the community get energized behind what you're doing and and bringing that to their community. So congratulations on, you know, all of your success and and multiple endeavors, and I mean, I can't wait for this this pickleball app. I'm a pickleballer. I love it. I love it. Well, thank you. And and it's an honor to be with market scale, because it's top of the line, and I love, working with team. Yeah. No. We appreciate you coming in. And I don't know. Looks like a pretty nice day out there. I think we might have to go hit some local courts. We need to find some courts. Let's do it. I'm in. Awesome. Well, b to b weekly community. Thank you for tuning in to this great episode with Johnny. As I always encourage you, get out there in your community, go find a pickleball ball court meet some neighbors, go have fun, and and wherever you like to spend your time. But we'll be back here again next Thursday with another great episode. In the meantime, if you have any thoughts or any questions, feel free to reach out to Johnny or myself directly. We'd be we would love to connect with you. But until then, Have a great rest of your week, and happy Memorial Day weekend. Take care, everybody.