Entrepreneur Mark DeSantis on Brevity, Storytelling, and Captivating vs Selling Audiences on LinkedIn Artwork

The Sage Sayers

A weekly podcast on ways to stay calm and compel others as you communicate. Along with executive communications tips and strategies, we interview intriguing individuals who've found the "Sage approach" by finding gifts, opportunities, and knowledge within trying situations. New Zealander show host, Debbi Gardiner McCullough, has written on social and business trends and struggles for the Economist, the Guardian, and Financial Times of London. She's a self-retired college professor of writing, an executive communications and narrative coach. Visit her at: www.hangingrockcoaching.com

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The Sage Sayers

Entrepreneur Mark DeSantis on Brevity, Storytelling, and Captivating vs Selling Audiences on LinkedIn

January 24, 2025 • Mark DeSantis and Debbi Gardiner McCullough • Season 5 • Episode 2

Few LinkedIn bios are as concise as Mark DeSantis whose title alone sits within one word: Entrepreneur. Of course, he is so much more. Mark teaches entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business. And his robotics business, Bloomfield Robotics, got on the radar of Kubota Corporation, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of farm machinery, who acquired them. Mark now serves as advisor.

Our ad hoc, unscripted interview started as complete strangers, two professionals with a shared love for brevity and non-fluff communications on the social media platform that scares so many. Hearing Mark’s story inspires me. The posts he and his team created employed basic but powerful storytelling techniques: Showing how their technology changes the lives of farmers. Using the farmers’ own videos. Humanizing the people behind the scenes building the technology, in good times and bad. Resisting calls to action and anything resembling cheesy marketing. Simple, but powerful, and something you can do too.

You can reach out to Mark DeSantis on LinkedIn here. You can reach out to me, your show host, on all things to do with storytelling, public speaking, branding and positioning via my website or Linkedin. Stay tuned for courses on Maven Learning, launching February 2025.