Seth Farbman on Podcast - From Startup to Stock Exchange

How Personal Branding Impacts Publicly Traded Companies | John Newtson

• Seth Farbman

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In this episode, Seth Farbman, CEO of Vstock Transfer, sits down with John Newtson, CEO of Pendry Cannon, to explore the evolving role of digital marketing in shareholder acquisition and corporate storytelling. Seth shares his insights on how CEOs can leverage LinkedIn and other social media platforms to build authentic connections with investors and stakeholders. Discover how personal branding, strategic content creation, and social targeting are transforming the way public companies engage with their audiences. Learn about Seth’s 20-year journey in capital markets and the lessons he's gathered along the way to help companies thrive in today's digital landscape.

John Newtson:

A lot more people follow Elon Musk than follow Tesla. That's part of the CEO's role, is to kind of be out there as the face of the company.

Seth Farbman:

Just share valuable information about the industry. You give value, hopefully you get value.

John Newtson:

So much of the social content of influencers, a lot of them basically build their following pretending to have a lifestyle that they don't have. And then you have all these CEO's who are actually living a lifestyle that those influencers were trying to paint a picture of and they're not sharing it.

Seth Farbman:

Corporate profile for LinkedIn, you can only attract followers you can't get.

John Newtson:

All right. Hey, this is John Newtson, CEO of Pendra Cannon, and I'm excited today to be joined by Seth Fardman, who is the CEO of Vstock Transfer, who also has an enormous amount of experience with LinkedIn marketing in particular. Seth, thanks for being here. I appreciate you coming in here talking about shareholder acquisition.

Seth Farbman:

Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

John Newtson:

So just kind of as background, you obviously, as a transfer agent, I mean, you have what, like 800 plus clients, you've worked with thousands of companies, you've built companies yourself and exited them. I would love to get your take on kind of framing, just like issue of shareholder acquisition today in kind of the digital environment that we're at, in how important digital marketing, whether it's the content creation, content marketing, paid marketing, where would you kind of place that? The importance and role of digital content and marketing in the realm of shareholder acquisition?

Seth Farbman:

So that's a lot of questions wrapped up in one. So I'll try to unpack it a little bit at a time. But, yeah, I mean, it's funny because I've been working in one form or another with publicly traded companies or pretty IPo to public for about 20 years. And at the end of the day, they never really want to speak to me about what I do, whether it's transfer agent or Edgar filings and things like that. They all have the core goal of access to capital and IR and PR and telling their story. And I think that over the years, it's transitioned to the point where you can't just put out a press release anymore and hope somebody reads it. That's where it used to be. And I'd probably say around five, six, seven years ago, I think people started to recognize that you put in a press release and it's just crickets. And now it's really just one slice of a very large pie of what needs to be done, whether it's, know, road shows and SEO. And as you're saying, digital marketing, because we live in a very visual world. So that's sort of point number one where you've got to get something and do something to stop the scrolling, right. So we want to just be able to, oh, like, what's that? And let me, let me read this because I've seen that visual. So that's something that's important, as simple as it sounds. And then I think also digital allows you to hit them often and frequently, as opposed to that once every couple weeks or a couple months press release. So I think digital is now a very important role in the life of any storytelling that a company does.

John Newtson:

Right. And grabbing the attention piece, I think that's one of the problems with kind of the press releases sometimes is that it doesn't always grab attention in that old model. Communication strategies to change in all digital marketing is essentially an arbitrage of attention. You're trying to grab that attention and focus it on some kind of an action. I always think of the audiences that when I talk digital marketing to people, they tend to assume that we're only talking retail audiences, which is enormous opportunities and access to retail audiences. But there's also professional investors and there's the whole ecosystem of potential shareholders that's out there is engaged online. So how do you think that people should be thinking about that in general, in particular in relation to some of the LinkedIn stuff that you've been doing?

Seth Farbman:

Yeah, it's funny because I think that historically, the way that a CEO or management team had hoped to get in front of the right audience was to go to a conference and they would budget accordingly to go to three or four conferences a year. They would have those one one meetings with some of the family offices, the investment bankers, the institutions. And they would hope that outcome would give them the relationships that they need. But in today's day and age, if you can market accordingly with social, you're really spreading that net extremely wide and again, extremely often. And so the analogy that I give to a lot of the CEO's is, and today's discussion, John can definitely focus on LinkedIn because I think that's my core, but it's really social and digital marketing as a whole. The analogy that I give is imagine that you're giving a TED talks five days a week and you've got an auditorium of 5000 people and just make a checklist of who do you wish you could be speaking to and who would you like to invite to that party. So you've got 5000 seats to fill. You want to fill that with chief investment officers, family offices, funds. And the beauty of LinkedIn is that you can even drill down with specificity. If I'm in biotech, pharma, Medtech, electric vehicles, esports, I can really invite an audience that cares about the topic and the category and appreciate what I want to talk about. So I think that's something that companies really can focus on when they want to get in front of the right audience. Is leveraging social and digital marketing to actually get in front of the right audience and tell their story to people that will care.

John Newtson:

Yeah. So the targeting opportunity is enormous. Like you said, that you can find people who are already invested and interested in your sector, you can find influencers in your sector, you can find all kinds of folks who are very much interested in what you do rather than just kind of putting out a generic press or general press release and hoping that the right people will pick it up. I mean, you can even target journalists, you can target publishers and editors. The ability to find the right people for a particular company today is, I think, better than it's ever been.

Seth Farbman:

Absolutely.

John Newtson:

For sure. So what do you find are the most effective things that people do in terms of once they start actually trying to reach people? There's the whole issue of what kind of messaging do you do, what kind of conversations do you have? What are the kinds of things, if you are going to talk to people on an ongoing basis, what is it that moves the needle? I guess, for folks.

Seth Farbman:

Yeah, I mean, so I think that the world we live in, people care most about authenticity. I can only speak for myself. You'd probably agree nobody ever really wants to come across as salesy or as cheesy or as self promotional. I don't think anybody wakes up trying to come off that way. So if you're a company, let's just say you're a biotech company, you may not have information about your company that often to share. So great, you've got an amazing press release in January, and then you've got something else to announce six months later. But how do you engage your audience for the six months in between? So there are ways to be authentic. I probably break it down into two categories, stories. The first is to just share valuable information about the industry so you can take articles that your newfound connections would just appreciate. Nothing to do about you, nothing to do about your company, per se. But if you're, let's just, we'll use me as an example. If I'm constantly posting information about ipos, about capital markets, about Nasdaq rules, SEC regulations, that has nothing to do with v stock. But at the end of the day, people appreciate that I'm providing them with industry knowledge or industry events. And as a byproduct of that, I get extra branding. And so anybody can do that with providing content, not necessarily written by themselves, but content. It takes time and effort and digging and research, but they've got to find good content that they can provide value. And if you give value, hopefully you get value. I think the second category when we speak about authenticity is if you're the CEO of a company, people kind of want to know a little bit about you and about the company, what's under the hood. So what type of meetings are you going to? What type of conferences are you going to? Not just about the successes of the company and the press releases that announced the mega deals, but if you're able to, what didn't work and those things, if you're able to post about them, make you more real and relatable. And I think that, again, still gives you visibility. So that in between those formal press releases, if you've got 510 thousand connections and you're posting twice a week, you're getting tens of thousands of eyeballs on your symbol, on your company name, on your branding. And I think that's slowly but surely organically effective marketing.

John Newtson:

Yeah. So kind of that piece of authenticity then is you're talking about one, just there's always, especially from an investor standpoint, there's a lot of information that somebody who's inside the industry is going to probably understand or have a context for that might be at a greater degree than somebody who's outside the industry, even if they're an investor in that industry. And so sharing that kind of useful information, contextualizing things, giving people something to think about in terms of that is really valuable. And then I love what you're saying about the looking under the hood of the CEO and kind of like just being there, showing people, documenting kind of you doing business, doing the business, what it is that you do. And I know that was one of those things that probably one of the greatest influencers prior to like Mister Beast, Gary Vee had. I mean, he basically just, he was like, I'm not putting out content, I'm documenting what I'm doing and showing that I'm actually doing things. And that in and of itself is interesting. It's branding, it's getting people engaged with him and kind of starting not only that, I think it actually, when you do what you're talking about, when people start to go on that journey with you and then they start to root for you.

Seth Farbman:

That's a good point. That's a great point. And you also, it's funny that you say that you mentioned Gary Vee, because he says something that I saw was so true with some of the CEO's that I interact with very often. The challenge is people want to do this, they want to do the messaging, but they just feel like, well, my life is boring. I've got nothing going on, so therefore I have no content. So I was talking to this CEO and I said, listen, I said, john, what are you doing next week? Let's just use that as an example. So he says, well, I got a board meeting. I was like, okay, where's the board meeting? He's like, oh, actually, I could probably come up with something. The board meeting is in Switzerland. I was like, okay, that's exciting. We're in Switzerland. He's like, well, one of my board members has a villa in the Swiss Alps, and we're all meeting there for, like, wine tasting and cheese. And then we're going to have the board meeting. And I was like, john, just take a picture in the Swiss Alps at the villa with your board, and I promise you will have content to talk about your board meeting that's quasi related to business. And the irony is that I spoke to him like, two, three weeks later. I'm like, John, I never saw you post about that board meeting. He's like, oh, I forgot to take a picture. It really takes a training of the mind and a certain thinking to think like a marketer, even though you're running a business and trying to get the word out.

John Newtson:

Jeff. Yeah, no, that sounds like what a wonderfully missed opportunity, because it does. Like, there's so many things that could have been posted around that are so engaging. And I think that's one of the things that I think a lot of people miss, too, is that so much of the social content of influencers, it's ironic because a lot of them basically built their following pretending to have a lifestyle that they don't have. And then you have all these CEO's who are actually living a lifestyle that those influencers were trying to paint a picture of, and they're not sharing it because it's a different mentality. I don't know, maybe it's a generational thing as well. I don't want to put myself out there and act like I'm a big deal in this and that. So trying to navigate that kind of personal dynamic of like, I don't want to seem like a jerk or, you know, and. But at the same time, like, actually using that kind of lifestyle that you have and displaying it in relevant situations can have a really great impact on.

Seth Farbman:

Yeah, I think when it comes to shareholders, they respect the CEO's that we've had. I've had the good fortune to be at just a couple of Nasdaq Bell ringings over the years, and you've got some CEO's that will literally tear up at the exchange and really just thank their teams and thank their members and come clean with how difficult that roadmap had been and the challenges of raising money till then and the 99 nos that they got until that one banker committed to the 75 or 100 million, I think shareholders appreciate that and make that company and the CEO more relatable. They appreciate the, you know, the journey. I think that's important for people to get out there in their storytelling.

John Newtson:

Yeah, it's such a dramatic process. There's so much drama going on behind the scenes. There's the story of the company, but then there's a story of kind of building the company. There's a story of the money and what you need and what you're going to use it for and how you get it. And it's a struggle often, and people love to. It's not even that they love. It's like you naturally engage with that. It's almost like, you know, it slips under the radar of kind of. If someone's trying to sell you on how great we are, you know, everyone puts their wall up. But if somebody's sharing, like that emotional moment of. Because I had that, I had the, I was fortunate enough to be at the one NYSe bell ringing. And I remember the CEO's up there in the back in the boardroom ahead of time. And he did exactly what you said. He was like, I grew up here in New York. This is a dream come true. To be able to ring the bell and he's tearing up and choking up. And it was a beautiful moment. And I felt like even just being able to witness that in person, I felt like, man, what an honor to be able to see a friend live out his dream in person. That's amazing. And it is, it's this great story. But that kind of also brings up another point on marketing then. So when you talk about, like, marketing for a company, it's, there's the company and then there's the people, and so who's the marketing and content? Like, there's that, what the company puts out, and then there's kind of what the CF, the CEO and the founder and the team itself is putting out. Do you see, like, they should.

Seth Farbman:

Distinction? Yeah, no, that's actually a really good distinction. I get that question asked frequently, and I think that I do think you need both. But in other words, there's a mechanical distinction, and then I think there's the perception between the two of them. The mechanical distinction is that on a corporate. Let's just focus on the LinkedIn side. On a corporate LinkedIn page, I feel like it's more informative. Like, you've got to have a corporate profile because people check it out, and if it's not there, people will think that something's wrong or it's lacking. But on the corporate profile for LinkedIn, you can only attract followers. You can't get connections. It's a small distinction, but it's important because the followers that you're going to be attracting are generic. Right. It could be, you know, John from Idaho who runs a pizza company. It could be Jane who runs an insurance firm. You can't target them, whereas on a personal profile, you're targeting specific connections. So you can target healthcare investor, you can target esports analysts. So if your focus is on building that TED talks room, you want to be doing it on a personal profile where you can get a very curated audience. So I always encourage companies that I speak to do both. But you definitely should have. Should have them going on simultaneously. You can CERtaINLy share information between the two of them. And I also have certainly come across that type of CEO that says, no, I want to stay under the radar. I don't even want to have a profile. I want it to just be all about the company. And I respect that. That's certainly a personal decision. I find that to be a bit of a challenge, tHough, because people want to know. I want to know the face of the company. I want to know who's behind the curtain of OZ. Right. And people want to do business with people, and they want to engage and message with that person. So if there is a CEO that says, I don't want anybody to know who I am, I don't know if that's the best role for a CEO of a publicly traded company.

John Newtson:

Yeah, it's Kind of LiKe a lot more people follow elon musk than follow tesla.

Seth Farbman:

Right.

John Newtson:

Exactly.

Seth Farbman:

That's a good analogy. Yeah.

John Newtson:

You're right. I think that's part of the CEO's role is to kind of be out there as the face of the company and be out there.

Seth Farbman:

And to your point, in terms of the shareholder component of it, whether it's the institutional side or whatnot, very often if you're leveraging the platform the right way or any social, or any digital media for that matter, if you're storytelling correctly, the ultimate goal is to take that relationship offline and then build from there. So on the personal side, you'll get messages coming in from shareholders or funds or bankers and saying, hey, I noticed your last post, I noticed your last press release. I liked your last conference. Can we set up a call that's a forum for direct interaction with these shareholders? Which isn't necessarily going to be found on the corporate profile side. So, you know, that messaging component on the personal side, I think is just another way of that shareholder engagement component.

John Newtson:

Right. Right. And so when you do target, like, you know, if were to drill down on that targeting issue, then like you're going to try and build your perfect room. Let's say you were, you know, maybe you're direct to consumer e comm kind of company. How would you look at, like, I would think that there's, you know, a sophisticated even that, I don't even say sophisticated, just a thought out and more reason strategy then would be kind of starting to stack types of people, whether it's known investors in that sector, analysts who cover that sector, journalists who cover that sector, publishers, influencers in that sector on the product side who, I think that's a whole other area that you can kind of, with the same effort, almost start to interact with are people who have audience for the product itself, not just the investors. And so do you think about targeting those groups, like creating different content sets for those groups? Do you have kind of just trying to get everybody engaged and you kind of have one content stream that's kind of the different times featuring other ones or messages for different groups or like, how would you think about that?

Seth Farbman:

Yeah, I mean, I think it depends, again, if somebody is doing it themselves, if they're outsourcing it, if they're utilizing a firm, depending on the size of their budget. Right. It's going to be extremely customized depending on what their goals are. But yeah, I mean, if you're doing it yourself, you're probably just going to have one size fits all just to accommodate everybody that's going to be viewing it. You may be a CEO of a company that has multiple products or different divisions that have. We were working with one company that was in the neuro brain space, but at the same time they were touching on surgical robotic devices. And so it's a matter of juggling different messaging, not necessarily depending on the types of the audience, but just what you want to convey your company is about. So I think that it really gives you an opportunity to give a lot of different content, and that's what makes it variety of the spice of life. Right? If you're a robotics company and five days a week you're just posting about robotics, it gets a little repetitive. But if it gives you the chance to sprinkle in one day about this topic, another day about this topic, even another day about a vacation that you're going on with your family, so that people, again, are interested in following you and connecting with you because they're exposed to different types of content, I think that's the best route to go.

John Newtson:

Yeah, yeah. And then I. I mean, do you find CEO's are resistant or attracted more often than not to kind of creating a content plan for themselves and their company? Or do you think it's still kind of a generational thing? That kind of.

Seth Farbman:

It's actually a great question. I think my answer has changed over the last couple years because I've started to help or guide a bunch of friends and CEO's that we, that I work with on sort of the LinkedIn route. And I would say a couple years ago, everybody was like, oh, I'm not touching LinkedIn. And, you know, kind of the way I say, oh, I'm not touching Facebook. I mean, I'm still like that to an extent. But the people that are totally against it are still adamant. And then the guys that are of, they get it. Like, I can tell they get it instantly. They're like, oh, yeah, no, I'm all over LinkedIn. And then the guys that are iffy about it will try it out and start to leverage it.

Seth Farbman: And honestly, they become the worst because they become addicted as soon as they see the power of it. These guys are emailing me at like 06:

00 on a Sunday morning. They're like, oh, I just saw this great article. Do you think I should post it? I was like, yeah, go for it. But I think that people across the board are recognizing that when you're a publicly traded company, you want to use every avenue possible to communicate your story in a healthy way. As I said, road shows, conferences, digital. I spoke to somebody the other day. He said that for him, he throws in radio. I was like, radio? Really? Are people still doing radio? He's like, absolutely. Every communication means possible is part of the secret sauce in telling the story.

John Newtson:

Yeah.

Seth Farbman:

Yeah.

John Newtson:

No, I think that's, it's almost like the, I mean, you need a media arm essentially, anymore. And this is almost becoming true even on a personal level. I feel like the part of your career development path is building audience. People who have an audience are going to have more advantages in just getting hired, I mean, in general, because if you have an audience that follows you on a certain topic, then you have impact in that industry, which means that one you have, when you need a job, there's an audience there, too. Like, you can bring more to a company. You actually bring more value to a company, whether it's in business development or in some other area or in recruiting. And so I feel like I'm seeing more and more folks across the board realizing that audience building is part of how you succeed in a career these days.

Seth Farbman:

I think you hit it on the head. Meaning, John, you're effectively saying what Gary Vee had said. I don't care if you are a college student or a lawyer or an accountant. You're basically a media company regardless of what you do. You need to be selling yourself and telling, you know, the story of either who you are or why your company is better or what your product is about. You're a media company regardless. You might be, you might be a lawyer, but that's secondary to being a media company.

John Newtson:

Right. And I think that's, you know, when you put that, like, nothing happens in a vacuum. So if you're a company and you're not doing this, then just realize that, like, your competitors are. And so they're the ones that are getting the attention. They're the ones who are being seen. They're the ones whose names are out there and whose CEO. So it's really kind of, if it's uncomfortable, I feel like it's kind of like one of those things where you kind of have to cowboy up, you know, and find a way to do it. Because if you are, not, everyone else is.

Seth Farbman:

And that's why LinkedIn may be great for some people, because, you know, I'm not comfortable. I mean, I've had an amazing partner over the last 20 years. I stern, and he's the salesman. Between the two of us, I'm the guy that, at a conference I'd rather be in the corner pretending to be on my phone than actually walk up to somebody and introduce myself. But with LinkedIn, where I can write something or provide something of value and then ask for something in return, that's different. So, yeah, when you say cowboy up, that might be an alternative.

John Newtson:

Yeah, no, I think that's it. Like, I feel like, I know for me, I'm always like, you know, social media is for people who look better than me. But, you know, I made a commitment to myself last year that I was going to start putting out more content, having more, just good conversations. I was like, you know, what is valuable? The kind of content that I consume is I want to have good conversations with smart people who are interested in the things that I'm interested in talking about. And when I kind of found that kind of pattern, it was much more useful for me. And I also found that you don't even need a large, you don't need a large audience. You just need the right audience.

Seth Farbman:

Right.

John Newtson:

And, you know, it's kind of like, you know, you have people who might have a million followers, but then you have this guy over here who has 250 family offices who are really paying attention to him. That is an extraordinarily valuable audience.

Seth Farbman:

And it also snowballs. Meaning, you know, if you're getting in front of those 250 people and they're resharing or they're commenting or whatnot, then, you know, the algorithm is getting you in front of their audience. And, you know, hopefully as a family office, you know, their audience consists of finance institution, family offices, decision makers, things like that. And, you know, that's the beauty of hopefully the whole system is that you're going to be exposed to their communities as well. Or if somebody posts something or reshares something in a LinkedIn group, you may have 1000, 5000 followers, the next guy might have 1000, 5000 followers, but then they share that in an ecom group or biotech group that has 30, 40, 60,000 followers or connections. That's where a lot of good things can happen. Like you said, it doesn't necessarily matter. It could snowball and really get you exposure at any time.

John Newtson:

Yeah, yeah. And I think that's so I always categorize media in three big buckets. There's paid media, there's, which is marketing that you're going to go out and like investor relations marketing. Then you have earned media, which is someone's going to cover you or feature you because they just love what you're doing. Then you have owned media and that could be anything from building an email list of potential investors. But I think also social channels. It's owned media. It's like where you control the pace of conversation that you can put out there. And paid media and earned media should build owned media because you're basically using those other sources to drive things into a channel where you can find the most interested people, the most engaged investors, potential partners, everybody, and have a conversation with them on an ongoing basis. And so it's almost like there's a very broad funnel that should move down to that kind of owned media.

Seth Farbman:

Yeah, because that's exactly what you're doing. In other words, it's funny because I was a bit of a loner when I was in law school 20 years ago. And in looking back, I think that the greatest asset that we could develop over the years, and I tell this to guys that are starting out, are the relationships that we have. And so when people are taking the time or hiring somebody to help them with marketing on LinkedIn or any social, you're building an asset. And that asset could be one of the most valuable assets that you have, because obviously it's yours. You own it, you follow it, and then, you know, every 30 days, you can export all those connections and then study them, analyze them, target them, email them, you know, etcetera. But that's an asset that you're building day in and day out.

John Newtson:

Yeah. And then also, do you recommend to people that they actually go out? Like, kind of go out and engage with the, like, if you have a target list of people, then it's not just about posting comment, it's about engaging with whatever they're posting as well, right?

Seth Farbman:

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Because, you know, I've, I mean, I personally have noticed, you know, when people continuously comment or like Orlando, I'll be like, hey, this person has popped up quite a few times. Either I'll thank them or I'll check out what they do and see if there's some synergy, and I will reach out and vice versa. There are people that I've wanted to start a dialogue with, but I don't want to just email them cold or out of the blue and say, hey, I'd love to do business with you. I'll try to comment on their posts or thank them for taking the time to provide information about a conference or an industry update. Because at that point, when I do reach out or they do reach out, to me, it's a bit of a warm. A bit of a warm relationship, a bit of a warm lead. I've seen them, I know who they are. They've checked me out. And so by the time it's a yes, we're like 30% into the relationship already and it makes the remaining 70% a lot more comfortable. So, yeah, I definitely recommend that.

John Newtson:

Yeah, that seems much better. I have the same experience when, you know, everyone who's on LinkedIn or any other platform knows, you just get these cold direct messages from people you have no idea and they just go straight to pitching you stuff. And I mean, almost.

Seth Farbman:

I delete those media. Yeah, I can't imagine if I get a connection and then a sales pitch within the same 30 seconds, 10 seconds later, that's delete, you know?

John Newtson:

Right, exactly. Exactly. And so like kind of your point, then it is like, but when somebody has taken the time to comment on something that I've posted or liked it, and then they message me about having a conversation, I am invariably open to having the conversation as soon as.

Seth Farbman:

Exactly.

John Newtson:

And so, no, I think that's a really important kind of dynamic to recognize for folks. But you do directly consult and help companies then with LinkedIn in addition to everything.

Seth Farbman:

I've started to do that. Yeah, I've started to do that. I'm working with a bunch of CEO's and just guiding them. And I'm happy to speak to if anybody is looking to talk LinkedIn. Initially I just categorized myself as a LinkedIn enthusiast because it's something I'm really passionate about and I think it's really effective. But yeah, I've started to work with a bunch of CEO's, both private and public, and just always happy to help in any way I can. Yeah.

John Newtson:

So anyone who wants to reach out, what would be the best way for them to contact you?

Seth Farbman:

They can email me directly. Sethstocktransfer.com dot okay, great.

John Newtson:

Awesome. Well, I appreciate you taking the time to talk about this, Seth.

Seth Farbman:

No, this has been great. It's a topic that's near and dear because I know that it's effective. And, you know, definitely if anybody's listening, connect to me on LinkedIn and follow John. That's for sure.

John Newtson:

Thanks, Seth. It's great talking to you.

Seth Farbman:

All right, thanks for having me. Thanks. Take care.