We were lucky to catch up with Jordan Yates recently and have shared our conversation below.

Jordan, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

I graduated college with a degree in Mechanical engineering and was certain that I would be headed off to be a full-time petroleum engineer after graduation. Most of my internships were in the oil and gas sector, and I thought nothing could get in the way of my plan.

Then, I graduated from school in December of 2020. I do not know if you remember, but oil and gas was not doing too well at the time and no one was hiring.

It was time for me to pivot.

This is when I came across the job posting for “Sales Engineer” for an industrial automation and controls distributor and integrator. I knew nothing about the industry, but had a knack for sales and was confident I would figure it out.

The first day on the job confirmed, I really was out of my depth on these products. What the heck is a VFD? Variable Frequency Drive? Huh? Lucky for me, the company I was at had a great training program and it was only a matter of time before these concepts became second nature. I was soon trained and ready to sell. This is when I learned how much I
hated cold calling.

It did not help the company had little to no name recognition and I had to quickly ex plain who I was and what I do in seconds before they hang up! I thought to myself, it would be nice if my target customers knew who I was before I called them? Or better yet, what if they knew the product lines I sold so well that they would reach out to me! The solution? The handy tool of LinkedIn.

My first experience with LinkedIn happened when I was 19 working a job during my undergraduate studies. My role required me to set up appointments with Facilities Engineers at upstream oil and gas companies. I discovered I could find my target customers directly using LinkedIn.

If it was successful in that industry, why would it not be successful in the manufacturing industry? Boy, was I right! My first step before even conceptualizing the idea of “creating content” was to repeat my prior process and send connection requests to my target customers in my territory. The results were awesome. I was slowly growing my network and reach merely by spending about an hour a week looking up Automation Engineers and Maintenance Managers in my territory, connecting, and sending a quick intro note.

This approach was effective, but I was still supplementing my LinkedIn efforts with the cold calling regimen to fill up my weekly in person meeting requirements. Yes, even with practice, I still hated cold calling and wanted to do it as little as possible. Ideally, never.

I thought to myself, how can I get customers to come to me? Or at the least, if I pop up in their LinkedIn messaging inbox it is more of a warm message instead of a cold one because they have likely seen my face before and know who I am. Soon, I began experimenting with my content creation phase.

It started off simple. I would take a selfie with a Yaskawa VFD and caption it something along the lines of, “Aren’t these awesome? Who loves VFDs??” I never put in anything related to pricing. After all, I’m not DigiKey or amazon, I am just a girl showing her love for automation equipment. I realized there was magic when simply associating my face and name with the products and brands I sold. To this day, three years later, I will have people messaging me for the first time saying that they remember me from the days I would post with Yaskawa drives! It is crazy how personal branding mixed with product association will really stick with people. This industry has been slow to humanize marketing efforts. The individuals and companies that chose to incorporate it into their efforts are being rewarded.

Photo content eventually built into quick videos in my car between sales meetings, which then evolved another step up to YouTube style videos with product demonstrations, and that evolved into doing collaborations with manufacturers and vendors. Then the rest is history…

A couple of years later, ‘Jordan Yates Marketing’ was born, where I now have industrial companies ask me to emulate the same style of videos for them. I run their content and marketing programs as an outsourced agency.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I entered into the industry on accident. Like I mentioned in my last answer, I went to school and studied mechanical engineering and wanted to be a Petroleum engineer, but the timing of my graduation wasn’t. ideal. I pivoted, went to the Texas Tech job fair and came across a company that intrigued me that happened to be an industrial automation distributor and integrator for manufacturers.

My business wasn’t something I planned on doing, but when I was putting myself out there with my video content, I would have companies reach out to me, asking if I could do the same thing for them. Eventually I had enough requests that I formed an LLC and ran with it!

My services include anything from a simple video/ content creation to a fully outsourced marketing department where I implement the content into their overall strategy and run their social channels and email marketing campaigns. I focus on industrial and technical companies as my specialty is ‘making technical content fun and relatable’.

I am most proud of my ambition and ability to put myself out there, fail fast, and learn from my mistakes so I can be constantly improving. This characteristic is why I started my podcast, ‘Failing For You’.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

LinkedIn, by building my personal brand and staying consistent, I have always had a steady stream of customers reaching out to me directly there.

I also over the last few months have built up more customers via referrals.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

I actually was able to run with nearly $0 in overhead! The only time I have spent money is when I wanted to upgrade my free editing softwares to paid ones for more advanced features.

I didn’t start buying nice equipment until I made money. So every time I completed a project I would invest in better computers, cameras, software, etc. which allowed me to create higher quality content and charge more!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://jordanyatesmarketing.com/jordan-yates-marketing-1
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordan-yates-/
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@jordanyates_engineering
• Other: Podcast: https://linktr.ee/failingforyoupod