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In Episode 3 of Industry Next, Danny Gonzales sits down with Joseph Lewin, Head of Podcast Strategy at Scrappy ABM, to unpack why digital presence has become a leadership skill rather than a marketing function. Lewin breaks down how manufacturing leaders can use content to shorten sales cycles, attract top talent, and build trust that earns deals before a sales conversation ever begins. Plus: a 30-day playbook for leaders ready to start.
Joseph Lewin is the Head of Podcast Strategy at Scrappy ABM, where he helps B2B and industrial brands turn digital presence, content, and community into trust and influence. His path into marketing was unconventional: years of manual-labor work before teaching himself strategy through hundreds of books and podcasts, which grounds his approach in practical results over theory. He's also a long-time content creator in his own right, having built an entertainment YouTube channel with over 100 million views.
Episode Breakdown
Joseph Lewin has spent years helping B2B and industrial brands understand what digital presence actually does for a business. As Head of Podcast Strategy at Scrappy ABM, he has watched companies build content programs with no goal, run paid ads too early, and lose their best people because they failed to recognize the value those people were creating. In this episode of Industry Next, Lewin breaks down how manufacturing leaders can use digital presence to shorten sales cycles, attract top talent, and build the kind of trust that earns deals before a sales conversation ever starts.
Start with the Goal, Not the Channel
The biggest mistake Lewin sees in industrial content strategy is not the wrong platform or format. It is the absence of a clear objective. He breaks the goals into three distinct buckets: driving near-term revenue over a three-to-nine-month window, improving recruiting and retention, and building long-term brand trust over twelve to twenty-four months. Each requires a different kind of content, and trying to pursue all three simultaneously usually means doing none of them well.
For manufacturing specifically, Lewin argues that recruiting is often the most underserved use case. Industrial companies are growing revenue but struggling to attract the workforce to keep up. A leadership team that consistently highlights the real stories of how employees grow, advance, and contribute signals something a job posting cannot: this is a place where your work will actually matter.
Lewin’s framework maps to how buyers behave in long-cycle industrial sales. Content does not close the deal. It earns the right to the conversation. By the time a potential customer reaches out, most of the decision has already been shaped by what they have read, watched, and trusted. Showing up consistently in those spaces, before the RFQ and before the evaluation, is how industrial brands stop competing on price alone.
The Podcast as a Sales Weapon
Lewin learned what podcasting could do before most industrial companies were thinking about it as a revenue tool. While working at an engineering software company, he could not get internal approval to launch a company podcast. So he started one on his own. By his second or third episode, he had booked a buyer from a key target account, someone inside a company the sales team had been trying to reach, and used that relationship to facilitate an introduction that helped close a deal worth hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. There was no other path to that person. The podcast created it.
The same principle scales to employee advocacy. When a salesperson creates content about how customers can do their jobs better, they stop being someone buyers call to place an order and become someone buyers call to solve a problem. That shift in positioning changes the nature of every sales conversation that follows.
Lewin is also direct about the internal cost of ignoring this. He built his own podcast on his own time with his own money, despite friction from colleagues. When his employer failed to act on what he was creating, he eventually interviewed his future boss on the show, accepted a better offer, and jumped five years ahead in his career in a single move. Companies that empower their best people to create tend to keep them. Companies that merely tolerate it lose them to competitors who will.
Your 30-Day Start
Lewin’s advice for manufacturing leaders ready to move is specific. Start by identifying one person on your team who would genuinely get excited about creating content. Not someone who can be assigned to it, but someone already leaning toward it. Then share the company’s real strategic priorities and ask what they would want to create. The intersection of those two things is where a sustainable program begins.
From there, commit to six months of consistent output and resist the impulse to treat it as a pass-or-fail test. The right frame is iteration: review what worked at the end of month one, double down on it, and build from there. Lewin is emphatic that a year-long content calendar built before a single piece of content has been published is a liability. If you have not learned what your audience responds to, you are planning in the dark.
On metrics, the answer depends on the goal. If the aim is recruiting, watch for potential candidates engaging with team-focused content. Those are people you can reach out to directly. If the aim is revenue, podcasting is the most trackable channel because you know exactly who you built a relationship with inside a target account, and you can follow when that relationship turns into a conversation and then a deal.
LinkedIn is the best place to reach Joseph Lewin. He's active there daily. Connect with Joseph on LinkedIn →
Danny Gonzales
CEO, IndustrialSage
Danny brings deep industry knowledge and an operator's mindset to every conversation, cutting through the buzzwords to uncover real strategies that manufacturing and industrial leaders can actually use.
Can podcasting actually close a deal for a manufacturing company?
"I used to work at an engineering software company, and I couldn't get buy-in to do a podcast for our company. So I just started doing it on my own. I was able to get somebody to come on my show who was a buyer, who was part of that company, who was actually using our software, and then get them into the sales conversation and help to make that introduction. It was hundreds of thousands of dollars a year that this company was spending on that. And there's just no other way they would've gotten in front of this person I was able to reach."
Joseph Lewin, Head of Podcast Strategy at Scrappy ABMHow do you choose between creating content for sales, recruiting, or brand building?
"Every goal requires you to create different kinds of content, and you can't do all of them well. If you're trying to drive revenue, that's usually where I focus. That's why I love podcasting: you can really drive revenue in the short term for your business, like three, six, nine months. Another goal would be hiring. In industrial, that's actually probably one of the bigger things. And then there's the longer-term brand building. It's really picking one and then seeing the other ones as kind of like icing on the cake."
Joseph Lewin, Head of Podcast Strategy at Scrappy ABMWhat is the difference between a sales order taker and a strategic advisor?
"If your salesperson is seen as an order taker, people are only gonna call them when they're ready to take an order, and maybe begrudgingly. But if they're posting content about how your buyer can do their job better and they're an expert, they're now positioned as a strategic advisor that they're gonna call and bring in to help them solve a problem. That's a way better position to have your sales team be at."
Joseph Lewin, Head of Podcast Strategy at Scrappy ABMWhat is the 30-day action plan for a manufacturing leader starting with content?
"Find somebody on your team who's gonna get excited about doing it, because ultimately content is about momentum. Find one person internally who would be excited about creating content, and then talk to them and figure out, 'What would you be interested in doing? What would you be interested in creating content about?' Share with them what your strategic goals are for the year. Give them at least six months of something consistently. Don't look at it as a pass or fail. Look at it in month one and go, 'What worked? What didn't? Let's double down,' and just keep doing that over and over again."
Joseph Lewin, Head of Podcast Strategy at Scrappy ABMWhat happens when a company fails to recognize the value an employee is creating?
"I ended up interviewing my future boss on the show, who offered me a way better job, way more money, and way more opportunity. Now, if my company would've recognized the value that I was bringing, and they would've gotten behind it, I would have taken less pay if I saw opportunity to grow. Whereas there was no opportunity for me to grow there. You have to create ways for them to have upward mobility in your company and empower them, or they are gonna leave."
Joseph Lewin, Head of Podcast Strategy at Scrappy ABMInsights from manufacturing leaders shaping the future, delivered to your inbox, no noise.
Author: Wes Garrett
Content and Growth Marketing Producer | From Strategy to Execution, Delivering Impactful Media Solutions and Client Success