49:02
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, posts, recruitment, clients, linkedin, connect, recruiters, business, years, moved, content, messages, person, offline, big, building, engagement, fiverr, influencer, conversation, Business broker, Business value builder, M&A consultant.
SPEAKERS
Damon Pistulka, Joel Lalgee
Damon Pistulka 00:02
All right, everyone. Thanks for joining us once again on exit your way live today with me. I’ve got Joel Lalgae, Joel. Welcome,
Joel Lalgee 00:14
Damon. I am I’m so happy that you said my last name. Right. That rarely happens. So I really appreciate that. It’s great. Well,
Damon Pistulka 00:23
I’m a fellow Midwesterner if you didn’t know, grew up in South Dakota. So
Joel Lalgee 00:30
nice. I love that. It all makes sense, then.
Damon Pistulka 00:34
Yes. Yes. So when my wife is watching Fargo on what is it Hulu or whatever that series is?
00:42
Yeah,
Damon Pistulka 00:42
I know the places she’s talking about. I’ve been to Bemidji.
Joel Lalgee 00:48
That’s awesome. And yeah, with
Damon Pistulka 00:50
your Milwaukee that’s it. That’s your you’re a bit farther east. But
Joel Lalgee 00:55
so Yeah, I was gonna say one of my I think one of my friend’s wife’s is from dental. School right? up there, right, or? Yeah, yeah, that’s what she wants. So yeah, it’s a small world up here.
Damon Pistulka 01:08
Oh, it is? It is, man. It is? Well, it’s great to have you on.
Joel Lalgee 01:11
I agree.
Damon Pistulka 01:13
People that don’t know about what you do. I mean, you’re you started a company this year headhunter media? Help recruiters. We’ll talk about that in a bit. But, you know, you’re one of the people that I see on LinkedIn. And what we’re going to talk about is, is authentic engagement. Got Joseph, Steph ghee, and good to see you.
And, you know, that’s what I really have been attracted to, and, and seen with you not only you know, through your posts, but in the some of the videos and stuff you’re doing with people, but kind of explained to me a little bit or that everyone listening, I guess what, what kind of brought you to LinkedIn, and what really triggered triggered, you’re starting to get involved and then and then working into the engagement that you’re doing now?
Joel Lalgee 02:00
Yeah, absolutely. So I’ve been on LinkedIn, by like most people for the past 10 years plus, so I can’t join a platform 2011 I had a mentor of mine who was really big into the recruitment space, he said, You’ve got to get on this platform, it’s a good place to connect with recruiters, it’s how you’re going to get seen, you know, this some business content on here, it’s just a good place for you to be and that was back in the classic LinkedIn where it was, like, I remember the most notable thing was every time I go through the newsfeed, they’d be like pictures of fruit. And it’d be like four lemons plus one orange equals a banana.
And they would have like, these equations down it for some reason, that really sticks out to me. But anyway, I, so I was on the platform. And then I got out of recruit recruitment, or sorry, I got I got out of college, I went into, like the retail banking zone, did mortgages, you know, just help retail banking clients. I did that for about five years. And then I had an opportunity with the same mentor, he had started a recruitment firm.
He said, You got to come work for me, I’m started this firm, we’re gonna really disrupt the recruitment agency world, you should come work for me said, Yeah, that sounds awesome. So I started working as a recruiter. And, you know, when I first joined LinkedIn, I probably I probably grew, I think, I grew my connections to about 3000, just kind of randomly adding people because I thought, it’s a good way, a good way to get around it. And and then when I started getting into recruitment, LinkedIn was the place that I would source candidates. And it was also a great way for me to connect with people.
And if you use the recruitment software package that LinkedIn has, you got to pay to send somebody in mail, which is why you should always just, you know, press ignore, so you can refund that recruiter back their money. But, you know, I found that you could save money if you just connected with people, and you sent them a message. So I grew my connections to an AI over about five years, I grew my connections to about 12,000 people. But I noticed like anytime I post a job opening anytime i’d posted just random content. I was like, man, I got 12,000 connections, 12,000 followers, whatever you want to call them, like, How come? I don’t get anybody respond?
Yeah. And at the same time, I see like the newsfeed and I was like, man, there’s people doing video. There’s stuff going on. There’s people getting hundreds of likes 1000s of likes, and just got really curious with that, but never really never really did anything. And then September, so but right around Labor Day of 2019. I ended up commenting on some bit once somebody post and kind of just posted they posted their comeback story and I just decided, Hey, I’m going to post my comeback story which involves some like mental health and all this other sort of stuff and that person I just happen to be the first comment.
On this person’s post, I think so I ended up getting like 80 likes and got 10 messages and but 10 comments from just that, that that comment that I made. And I got two people messaged me and just said, you know, your comment or your story really impacted me. And prior to that I’d actually gotten off all of the social media. So I was only using LinkedIn for recruitment purposes. But suddenly, in that moment, I was like, wow, like I can actually make an impact with people with just a comment.
What would happen if I started making you know, videos, so I did I put out a video. It was a five minute long video with no subtitles. And I shared my story about how I got an internship using LinkedIn, the platform, LinkedIn, and I tagged everybody I knew I tagged like three people I knew who were like influencers, and yeah, I push tag 20 people. And it got a good response. I was like, this is it like, this is what I’m supposed to do. I’m my LinkedIn video superstar. And it says, I’m going to post every single day.
And so, you know, I posted again the next day. And you know, that zero engagement on it. Yeah. And so that happened for about three to four months, I just would get really low engagement. And then I started, I started taking a lot more conversations offline, and really connecting with people. And that’s really where I saw a big increase in engagement. As I really started to get to know people, obviously, it makes sense. You as you get to know people, you just engage with them more. And that’s really where my engagements journey really started. And haven’t looked back since then.
Damon Pistulka 06:41
Yeah, yeah. So let’s, let’s go back a little bit earlier, because you you have an interesting history. I mean, you you were not born in the US, but you moved here young, and kind of explain that a little bit. That’s pretty cool.
Joel Lalgee 06:57
Yes, I was born in the in the UK. So I was born in England. Yeah. And, yeah, you know, so one of my uncle’s married a, a woman from Wisconsin. And him, my dad really close, and they were in business together. So when my uncle moved over to the states and moved over, because he got married. About five years later, my dad decided, you know, we’re gonna, we’re gonna move the family over to United States as well.
And so I was 12 years old at the time. So just entering High School. And obviously, when you have a big shift, and you move country, it’s a big deal. Yeah. Every there was a lot of things that were culture shocks, like, Oh, you know, even though you speak English, you know, both places speak English, it’s just, it was a big culture shock. And then you’re heading in high school, and there’s all these trends, so.
But I’ve moved, I’ve moved back and forth from England a couple of times, I moved back to England when I was 18. And, and then since being in the States, I’ve lived in Southern California, I spent some time in Colorado, and then just really try to travel as much as I can, as well. But I think that that that actually helped a lot with the recruitment industry, because, you know, when you’re having conversations with people, it’s great to be able to connect with them on different levels.
And I think just moving, the act of moving is like a younger, younger child or teenager, whatever, whatever you want to call it, it forces you to make new friends, it forces you to try and connect with people. And, and so yeah, it was it was like really hard in the moment. And I think it was definitely a challenge. It ripped me away from everything else familiar with, but in the long run, I really see that as a big reason that I’m able just to connect with people who are different than me. And that’s really served me well in a lot of the industries that I’ve worked in.
Damon Pistulka 08:56
Yeah, that’s cool. And I think you’re right you know that as as hard as it is that that act of having to relearn some things make a new friend group do those kinds of things, and it really does make you more comfortable doing it the next time.
Joel Lalgee 09:15
For sure. For sure. Yeah, and it’s I think the hardest thing for me was like I’m just really big soccer fan. Yeah, football we call it an England I got over here and so that that was that was something that was that was really big cuz back at Back then, I mean, that was only a few years ago. Me soccer is really popular now. It’s on TV a lot more which I’m happy about but back then it was like, really, like why are you playing that and then then I had just issues with like, I had, you know, even just have an English accent like people can understand me. And so a lot of people like well, you don’t sound like you’re from England.
And and a big reason for that is because I didn’t want to live my life. Especially when you’re 12 years old, like you don’t want to be different. You want to fit in I remember coming home and, you know, I remember the first time I told my dad or we had a conversation. I’m like, what’s up? And he’s like, what does that mean? And I was like, Hey, man, he’s like, Why are you calling me man? Like, cuz you don’t say that stuff in England? So definitely a culture shock for sure.
Damon Pistulka 10:18
Yeah. Yeah, I bet. Yeah. At that time, like you said, you know, soccer was, you know, on the show it Levin o’clock.
Joel Lalgee 10:27
Exactly. There was one show, I think it was like it was on Yeah, it was on it was on Fox Sports. At least the league I watched, right? I’d have to, they would they would like randomly show it. And I’d have to wait, like once a month, and it would be at like 9pm. And if I missed it, or if they just decided not to show it. I didn’t have any other way to watch it. There’s no YouTube. There’s no like streaming. And they I kind of, and then I’m glad the internet came into play with that one.
Damon Pistulka 10:58
Yeah. Put out on that. So then you move from the UK. So you go from the UK Where? Yeah, they have winters and stuff. And you moved into Wisconsin of all places.
Joel Lalgee 11:08
I know. And tell me about it. Yeah, we moved we moved would have been a year. So it was 1999. And I think 1999 was one of the worst, worst snowstorms. And we moved in january two. So it was like, we got picked up from all hair. And I remember just looking around and just thinking, what why are we live? Why are we moving here? And, and it was like new schools and everything as well. And I got into the school system. And but then quickly, like the summer came, and I found out about the winter.
This is the greatest place ever. like everything’s bigger. Just you know England’s really small like yeah, I don’t think people necessarily always think about that. But like houses a tiny and it’s really expensive. And there’s a lot of people in a really small space. And then you move to someone like Wisconsin. It was like amazing. Roads. Huge.
Damon Pistulka 12:04
Yeah, yeah, you got you got Yeah, there’s nothing comparatively and there’s there’s plenty of room to do what you want and, and, and you have the lovely cheese’s that they have in Wisconsin, and I don’t mean that jokingly, because they know what the hell they’re doing there.
Joel Lalgee 12:19
You know what I will have to counter that with like, I am a really big fan of like English and European cheese. So even though I’m in like in like the cheese capital of the US, there’s certain types of cheeses, which I just think there’s some of the European cheeses is spawn. But it’s not bad hair, either. I shouldn’t bash it too much.
Damon Pistulka 12:39
Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. So you, you were doing the recruiting? And you know that was going going, going well enough, or whatever. But what really prompted you to to start headhunter media? And first of all, explain a little bit what headhunter does, and then then kind of back into what, what prompted you to start that?
Joel Lalgee 13:05
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So the goal of head hunting media is to work with recruitment agency owners, or independent recruiters, and really help them produce primarily LinkedIn content. But I also have helped people with website copy, I’ve helped people with, you know, some just click one pager, kind of selling documents. And, and really, but really help them understand number one, they have a voice, they’ve got a story, they’ve got some value that they can bring.
But how to do that with a platform like LinkedIn, and how everything from like how that that algorithm which everybody talks about, but like kind of how an algorithm works in terms of being consistent. But then also understanding that simple concept, like, doesn’t really matter how many views you get, like in a day, it’s about how many views you get over an extended period of time. And then also looking that, yeah, great, you might get some engagement.
But it’s not about how much engagement you’re getting, it’s about getting the right engagement. And as you get that engagement, how to turn that into a real relationship that’s either a candidate or a client for most for most of my clients I work with, or just overall awareness. And so you’re not having to say to your network that you’ve built over the last five years, maybe you got clients in there, you’ve got candidates you haven’t spoken to, they’re sending out a blast newsletter that says hey, you know how you been like that and it’s maybe awkward, maybe I’ve talked to him for a while.
Be Top of Mind by putting out regular content. And, you know, most people if you built in a strategic way, which most recruitment owners have, they’ve connected with a lot of that target market that heavily niched, and they’re very connected. The idea of the content it’s not to is doesn’t have to be anything crazy. It’s just staying top of mind. And what you start to find is that Yeah, maybe you only get 1000 views.
But if 300 of those views, even if it’s just your name, and they see your picture, and that triggers a positive reaction, they’re probably going to reach back out to you and say, Hey, you know, finally, I saw one of your posts on LinkedIn made me think of you, you know, you know, we have this search, can you help us so it’s just really training people into that mindset, and really trying to get away from, I think, the idea of social media that you number one, like you got to be some sort of viral, you’ve got to like influence or it’s got to be, it’s got to be something more than it is.
It’s really just you being consistent, putting out interesting stories, putting out a piece of who you are, and then tying it back to business. And so it’s a lot of fun. It’s a lot of fun. I get to work with everybody from independent recruiters to small recruitment owners. And it’s been been a really exciting journey. So far, I think about three and a half months in into it. So obviously, early days.
Damon Pistulka 16:05
Yeah. Yeah. Well, that’s, that’s, I mean, the way you built it, I think that you’re going to continue to be able to help those people. Because as we were talking before, we got on, you know, this year, as really been a game changer for people that had been adopting digital. Media means social media, LinkedIn been been active on it prior because we came into the year, you know, ready to go. Yeah, exactly. When the user basis, just jump like that, I think it was a real opportunity to to help a lot more people and share your message. Yeah,
Joel Lalgee 16:45
yeah. 100%. And I think, you know, one of the things that I’ve noticed, particularly within the recruitment industry, it’s very sales focused. So there’s amazing sales people and, but what we’re also seeing is, obviously, the phone still works. And nobody doubting that I’m not here to say cold calling doesn’t work. But what I am here, and what I do preach a lot, and a lot of the content I put out is, you know, even if you get 500 views, you get 1000 views, and it’s just your name, they just see a picture and the people that you know, to make that many phone calls and get connected to them, so they just hear you, I mean, you making a lot of phone calls.
And what I found is, you know, it used to be 3040 phone calls a day, kind of get away with with connecting now, it’s probably closer to 100 to 150 cold calls a day. And that’s not, that’s to reach the same amount of people, you could with the 30 phone calls. But obviously, it’s a tiring exercise, it’s a lot of voicemails, it’s a lot of people hanging up, and then suddenly you get somebody live, and it’s like, okay, it’s on.
And even if you are skilled at cold calling, you know, that within itself, is really challenging. So if you can add other means to market yourself and get brand awareness, so maybe you get some inbound calls, or you’re getting some inbound messages. It’s something to replace you stuff to sell people and all of that. But what I found is within the recruitment space, and this is from going, you know, through multiple training courses in the recruitment industry, there’s zero training on how to market yourself, even though the work that you do is primarily, like you’re building up your own reputation.
So even if you work for a firm, typically they’ll say, once you leave that firm, the client is going to go to because they’re working with you as a person. Yeah. So there’s a huge opportunity to just teach individuals. How do you go from being a salesperson to a marketing slash salesperson? Which I think it’s, it’s, I think it’s the same for a lot of industries, and it’s going that way. It just happens that recruit recruitment is a little bit probably further behind, and then maybe some other industries.
Damon Pistulka 18:58
Yeah. Yeah. And that’s, that’s true. I mean, you look at people that use recruiters, even when I was still using recruiters, you call the recruiter that had placed you that’s how you talk to again. And exactly, yep. Because, and they like to do it too, because they’ve placed you before they know what you’ve done that, you know, just you get that relationship. I mean, hell, my wife used the same recruiter for her whole career.
Yeah. And they they get almost like a dynasty of clients with them when they on both sides as they build that career, going through, but you’re right, it’s it’s got to be very difficult. someone trying to build that or maintain that or stay top of mind in in both on the candidate and the client side?
Joel Lalgee 19:47
Yeah. 100% and I think, I mean, when you when you look at even kind of people entering in the recruitment, world agency recruitment world, typically If you don’t make it past, like, I mean, this phases like a lot of people don’t make it past the first year, yeah, then it’s like three to five years, if you made it past that five year mark, you’re probably gonna be doing doing well.
But even then, I mean, it’s competitive. And, and, and a lot of people get burned out. And then they go to the corporate side of recruitments, they go in house at a company, even though it’s less money, it’s less stress. But I think for a lot of people who are just starting out in particular, or early on inaccurate, it’s really, really competitive.
And a big a big part of what makes it competitive. It’s lucrative. And so what can really set people apart probably earlier on it, I think, if you’ve been doing recruitment for 20 years, and you have a lot of existing relationships, you pretty much you should be safe, and you should be able to get referrals, and it’s Who do you know, but, you know, even even in that case, we are seeing these shifts where brand awareness is just, it’s just more and more and more important, and particularly for, I think, decision makers, who are becoming, you know, maybe more in that millennial, yep, age group, they’re making decisions differently.
And I think relationship building is different than so having that online brand is big. So I’ve got a number of clients who have like, you know, they’re like, Hey, I don’t have a website, like, you know, all my business is just word of mouth.
But I see that I need I need actually have the digital presence, I’m going to be able to expand, and I don’t want to get, you know, five years down the line. And maybe some of the client relationships I’ve had change, or that they move to a different company. I don’t want to be left with nothing. So we need to start building this. And and luckily, I believe, I believe there’s plenty of time, if you understand compounding the compound effect. And if you understand that, it’s going to be slow for a while. But if you stick with it, you’ll actually gain momentum. You know, I’m a big believer in that.
Damon Pistulka 22:07
Yeah. Well, I just it’s funny, you said that, because we just had a our Thursday event that we have this morning, we have it every Thursday at 730. But we had Josh Kershaw from protocol at talking about SEO, inbound stuff that they do for manufacturers. And that is the similar thing, right? You it takes a while it’s like a grind, you gotta wait. And then it’s building, building, building building.
And he had actually had some nice graphs from different manufacturers, where their their traffic was just like, it just started going, you know, real, it looked like it was real flat, low, and then all of a sudden, it just started going. And then it was like, you know, they’re getting 1510 15,000 website hits, hits a month, and then they go into then this translates and how many leads, you know, in this stuff, I think a lot of people and I’ve, I’ve seen you write about it, a lot of people get discouraged, because none of this stuff comes fast.
Joel Lalgee 23:06
It’s like, I think the best thing you can compare it to honestly, it’s like working out and diet. It’s like you just you simply can’t diet for two weeks and exercise for two weeks, and expect to see results, you need to shift your thinking it’s got to be a habit. And I think what happens is a lot of people jump into it really fast. And they either invest with money with like production, or they invest a lot of time. And I think whether it’s whether it is like online influencers or kind of coaches that may be misleading with like, the expectations and how long it’s going to take. I think people get into it, and they invest so much time and they’re like two weeks later, they haven’t got what they want.
And so I always tell people, I tell us with all my clients, I’m like, you mean you don’t come to me, really realistically don’t like come to me, until we’re like three to six months in and then we can start gauging because then we’ve got enough posts, we’ve got enough data to see. We even what your audience responds to, what’s the type of content is it short as long as videos and but you know, three months, that’s it’s the same with SEO, it’s the same with it’s the same with most most marketing, but it’s just our culture, right? I mean, it’s just a culture where we just want things. Everybody wants things done super quickly.
And but I think I found it myself. I didn’t get any traction. I just love doing it, which is why I kept doing it. But once like you said once you start even with like followers, like I think people think, Oh my gosh, how did that person gets to like a million followers. And it’s like, it’s actually probably harder to get to 1000 followers than it is to get to a million because once you start once you get up to like 50,000 then it’s like it’s Just started starts to just start to go like that. So maybe 1000 is not the right. But once you’ve got that initial following, it’s easier to build. But it’s a grind, man, you got to figure it out. You got to see what works for you as well.
Damon Pistulka 25:14
Yeah. Yeah. And if you’re like me, I mean, I, I look at how many views and reactions and stuff I get. I mean, I track it too. But
Joel Lalgee 25:25
what do you use to track it out of curiosity? I
Damon Pistulka 25:27
do a manual yet I’m old school man, I see the apps and stuff. I don’t mess with it. Because honestly, I’m, I’m looking for people that, like my vibe, that one, that one, do you know that I think that I’d be good doing business with. And I just want that I want I want to be able to meet me through the videos, because, because they can see who I am and stuff like that.
And through my posts, because if you read my posts, half the post during the week, sometimes, I mean, we do some events. And so we put that stuff on, but most of the other posts are stuff like, you know, I’ll come up, I’ll be reading a book or something like all that stuff, I gotta write about it, write it down. And, and that’s all it is. That’s That’s how much thought I put into my marketing.
I just want people to know who I am. Because what I do takes a real deep level of trust. And yeah, look at my look at my history, how I can do things with businesses that I can do things with businesses that make them work. Yeah, but you got to do that kind of stuff. I need someone to know and, and at least appreciate me and understand me a lot about who I am. Because we work so closely together that if we clash, this isn’t gonna work. Exactly.
Joel Lalgee 26:45
Well, and that and I think that’s a I mean, that’s the part that I’ve come to love with with content is, for a long time, I was trying to like appease everybody. But now it is a lot more. I mean, most of my content still resonates with a lot of people, but I think it’s like, yeah, I get I like, for example, I posted something the other day, it was a picture of me.
And it was kind of like, making fun of a little bit of like, you know, like the typical thought leader picture with like their face and a quote, my quote was, like, if you’re not nice online, or if you’re, if you’re an influencer online, but offline, you’re not, you know, like, nice, whatever, like, you suck. That was the thing. I like the guy locally to me who I know I’ve talked to you before.
And yeah, he’s a little bit of a, I guess, more seasoned, like, not necessarily really, so sold into, like the idea of social media marketing, and all this other stuff. But he cut, he jumped on there. And then it was like, three of his buddy jumped on there. And we had a great conversation, though, look through the comments. And I was giving it to him. I’m like, Yeah, I don’t care what you think, like, I’m not thinking about like, the next five years, I’m thinking about the next 20 years. Like, that’s, that’s why, you know, we’re having these conversations. And then one of the guys asked me today, and it’s just like, Hey, you know, confidentially, I’m looking for a, you know, this position.
And I looked at his profile, like, Yeah, he’s a top candidate. And it just goes to show it’s like, I could have been like, Oh my gosh, like, these guys. Like, they’re, you know, they’re, they’re making fun of what my sacred thing was like, Nah, man, I’m not here to connect, and have a little bit banter. Now, on the other hand, I’ve noticed recently, two people coming on my post, because I’ve been getting more reach and people who don’t know me coming on and just spewing whatever. In that case, I’m a little quicker to just close it down and not respond.
But I think it’s like, the more you’re just you are yourself, the great thing is, is that when you have the conversation with them offline, and they’re like, Oh my gosh, the same person, or like you have the same vibe that you do online, it’s awesome. Because then it’s like, you don’t have to you don’t have to have different sales process. So I’m 100% with you. But I think we just get, it’s like we see, we see the term influencer, we see the term use, we think of social media.
And I think there’s just like generational paths there, or there’s just different ideas. And even for me, like I didn’t grow up, like with social media, it came around, you know, 10 years ago, so I was like, still in there where I saw people explode with it. But even now, a lot of people are really afraid to they’re afraid to put like real stuff out there. And, and, but not knowing that, like, there’s a lot of business out there. And you don’t want to be chasing after all of it. Like you can use your content to like cut that small piece out of the pie.
That small group of people that like you said, you’re gonna vibe with them, you’re gonna have a great experience, you’re going to help them make money, you’re gonna you know, you’re going to help them grow their business, they’re going to love working with you, then they’re a great referral and they go hey, you know what, that you’ve been great working with them. It’s what it’s about. And it’s more fun of it’s that way and I think somehow, it’s got crossed into this like weird activity that you’ve got to cross, tick the box off, go I’ve done my marketing piece, instead of doing what you do, which is common.
I’m in fired, like that caught my eye and maybe the person I want to reach, maybe that’d be inspired to buy it. So I’ll put it out. And then the three people who are inspired by it, respond and go, Hey, you know, I was thinking that same thing today, we should come cut, we should have that conversation offline sometime, whatever, however, that looks, and then next thing, you know, profitable relationship and business. You know, it’s not not as complicated as I think we try and make it sometimes,
Damon Pistulka 30:24
when you you, you bring up a good point. Now get to Matt Perkins, a couple questions here. But you make a great point is, is, and something that I really, I started doing more of last fall with and Nick Dorsey helped me out with this is taking it offline, right. It’s not an it’s an online place to engage and talk to people, but your real relationships are still, when you get on zoom calls, sit down having a beer, whatever it is, that’s where it, that’s where the, it’s still the same in that in that respect,
Joel Lalgee 30:59
and 100%. And I think like, it’s so funny, because like, when it came to like networking events, you know, like after work, networking events are like the best places to work events, whatever those events were, I used to go to that all the time. And that was very, I was kind of like, uncomfortable in those positions. Because I’m just, I’m not that great at small talk. I’m not, I’m not that great at, like, I’m just not that great in that in that particular situation. But I think I started viewing LinkedIn as like, literally, it’s a way for me just to make a quick connection, then take things offline as quickly as possible.
And what I found is, you if you I could connect with me and you we could dialogue. For years online, you know, through text, we could, you know, I could go on your posts, you know, we could comment on other stuff for years. But that that 20 to 30 minute conversation is worth, like 100 years of engagement. And the quicker you can do that. The quicker you find the people you connect with equally, maybe take some Take, take the conversation offline, you’re like I Well, they don’t really align with me.
And it doesn’t mean then you’re like, I hate that person. But but then it also like you get better and it stretches you you get to meet different people. You know, and you get to learn how to relate to different types of people. And I think it’s it’s it’s a skill that more and more in the future, particularly now, but I think it’s just going to be more and more of a huge thing, like how do we take our engagement online and turn it into something that’s real.
And I can tell you, I said this in a podcast recently. I mean, it’s been probably three conversations offline, or in some sort of fashion like this. The last year, and I mean, that’s some of those a weekends as well. So if you add that up, you’re talking like 800 900,000 conversations. And I’ll say it every day, like that’s why when I make a post, or I put a post out there. That’s why you know, 50 100 people show up, it’s not like I’ve saw on my contents necessarily that magnetic. Yeah, it’s like, I just know that many people and the same when I see someone’s posted, I know, I’m more likely to engage with it, because I care about them as a person.
And I know the person and it’s, it’s huge. And it’s something which like, you know, somebody to talk to people and they, they’re having a real issue with engagement. It’s like, well, when’s the last time you talked to anybody, even on the platform that you connected with? Like, I never have, like, well, or they don’t say never have they’re just like, Oh, I don’t? What do you mean, and you get into it? And you’re like, Well, fine, those relationships, like fine, you know, so I love that you’re doing that. And I think it’s, it’s huge. Yeah,
Damon Pistulka 33:37
yeah. I mean, I you have to, I mean, like you said, you do more than I do, but I got probably 10 a week, I don’t even count them anymore.
Joel Lalgee 33:46
I mean, that’s a lot as well.
Damon Pistulka 33:47
You just started going and you just you cuz it’s a it’s so easy anymore. If you got calendly or something like that. Let them schedule a time that work for them talk, you do the zoom, do the team’s whatever you’re doing, and and spend the half hour hour doing it because you never know.
Joel Lalgee 34:04
Yeah. And we went before it’s like, oh, man, look, I didn’t try to you know, 20 years ago. You want to meet with someone from wherever, you know, LA and you’re in Boston, and you’re like, Okay, I wanna I want to I want to meet this person. You got to call him you got cold call him. You got to do all that. So it’s okay. You could still call him here. But But now it’s like you can connect online.
Oh, great. We don’t connect. We don’t connect with you. Oh, you connected. Alright, have a quick phone call. And then now you can just you know, use B get the phone call, then you got to buy a plane ticket. You got to do all this stuff. Now. It’s like, Hey, why don’t you have a zoom call? We’re face to face. Obviously, it’s not the same. But hey, it’s about it’s about 60 to 60 70% you don’t get the like the, I guess the energy.
But you know, to be honest, like I think if you get comfortable in front of camera and you get comfortable and you do you do podcasts, you do meetings do live streams, you get pretty decent in front of camera to where you can connect with people say yes, it’s it’s easier if I could schedule, we could schedule five, both of us, we could talk to people on every continent in the world in a morning without leaving a house. I mean that when you think about it, it’s it’s like mind blowing. And I don’t think we really act on that as much as we should. Or the people who are though are capitalizing on it big time.
Damon Pistulka 35:28
Yeah. Well, and you know, for us in our consulting business, what it allowed us to do by going virtual, we started on teams in like the middle of 2019, or beginning sunlight in 2019. And when we rolled into this, the pandemic hit, we already had to go virtual, because we were in 2019, because we are doing national and international clients, so you get used to it. Well, even the local clients where we can go to see him now like our virtual stuff better, because they’re on teams with us.
They can, they can message us, and they know, they know the little indicator, if it’s green, we’re not in a meeting, they know they can message us or video costs at any time. It’s like we’re working the same damn office, super smoke. It’s crazy stuff when you think about what you can do. And then you look at the value for them, right? Because we had to do that you had to go fly somewhere or go meet them and sit down, you’re in the talk for your time, and you’re gonna go and then you got to do well, now. It’s it’s like, it’s it’s an open office and laws. They respect the boundaries, which they do. It’s an awesome way to work.
Joel Lalgee 36:34
I yeah. And I was talking, I was talking to one of my clients today, or, you know, sorry, yesterday, and she’s in like, the HR consulting space. And, you know, sometimes they have like, just stuff that comes up with payroll, or they, you know, just have kind of emergency situations. And she’s like, yeah, I get messages. through Facebook, I get messages on Slack, I get messages, text messages. And you know, it’s interesting, because there’s so many ways to connect with people. And I think it’s been despised for a long time and feel like, Oh, this, this sucks. But when you really think about it, I think it’s awesome.
Like, I know, I shared this a while ago, one of my posts, my dad used to be involved in helping British companies export into the US. And so it was a cold call into British companies, British manufacturers, and he set up 20 sales meetings, in flyover. And seriously some of the time like, he’d get to those meetings, and people just wouldn’t show up as like, he flew out there because they didn’t know that he flew over there. I sit down. Yeah. The other day, they were telling him like, would it be amazing, if you just had the zoom function, then you could have just zoomed those guys? Oh, we get along? Great, great, I’ll meet with you. They’re gonna they’re not gonna ditch you.
If you’ve already had that, that face to face communication. same token, you could probably knock half the deals out on the line, and maybe you’re going over there to, you know, to sign on the dot type thing. Yeah. And, you know, it’s like, Man, that would have would have been, it would have saved a ton on plane tickets, and it would have saved a ton of time. And I’m like, yeah, that’s, that’s the accessibility that we have. You know, it’s amazing.
Damon Pistulka 38:11
Yeah,
Joel Lalgee 38:12
yeah. ron ron here to say and
Damon Pistulka 38:14
good stuff. Let’s see Matt Perkins, he was talking about what tips you have a business with opposite problem, they grow so fast, they start from the start, you have to scale your golf wallets, and get the process and everything behind. It’s funny he was he asked that, because we were talking about that with one of my e commerce clients as a problem now on it’s, it’s, and they have to turn off their orders. actually got to turn off, turn off the order. spicket. And, and but it’s wild things, I think it’s common.
And even in even in a single person business like yours, or even us as we’ve been growing with and moving to multiple people, it’s really common that businesses have to re engineer what they’re doing. I mean, you can’t leave it said, and then oh, this is how we do it. Because they just don’t scale well. And many, it’s, it’s not uncommon for people to have to, to slow down the growth once in a while just to get things working right on the backside.
Joel Lalgee 39:13
And I think there’s a lot of, I mean, again, like there’s a lot of solutions that are out there, that people aren’t always aware of, to like, I just think of like, what’s up, Ron, and I just think, I think of like Fiverr I think of like VA, this there’s a lot of ways that you can do outsource a lot of tasks pretty efficiently. And so you can become you can kind of become like a even as a solo person, like you can kind of become almost like a super solo person because you can have different contractors working under you.
Yeah, and, and kind of taken away some of some of those tasks. So, I think it’s just a case of looking at like what your processes are and you know, but then also getting with someone like yourself Who like knows business?
You know, like, that was like a big thing for me it was like I did until I went solo. I was like, oh, it should be like a piece of cake and you know, some clients, and then it was like, I’ve had to be really open to just having conversations with people and being like, okay, you should do this, you should do that. Hey, what are you using this? You should use this. And I think you gotta, you got to approach it like that as well. And just be like, get with someone who knows what they’re doing. You know, first. Yeah.
Damon Pistulka 40:27
Yeah. Yeah. I’m Matt’s got a couple other questions here. And, and I know you gotta go, I’m looking at the clock at three in like, a minute, you got to get
Joel Lalgee 40:37
go for another five minutes.
Damon Pistulka 40:39
Okay. But yeah, I know, it’s it. This kind of stuff. I know, Matt is really. But you go back to fiber and be the super person on fiber. I mean, I think we’ve done we’ve done over 300 gigs on Fiverr. This year, I looked the other day. And I was like, holy Heck, we’ve done a lot. But it does. It allows you to do things and the technical people and some of the some of the administrative stuff you can do. And you can find really skilled people. I mean, we have some high level financial stuff done once in a while when we when we need the extra capacity. That’s for sure.
41:09
But yeah,
Damon Pistulka 41:10
but he’s, he’s afraid he’s afraid. Every time or skill apart. Yeah, sacrificing quality. That’s always a challenge. Man, I
Joel Lalgee 41:22
think and I think like, oh, man, I feel like with that, does that mean that was already the challenge I was having really, really quickly because it was like, you know, I was getting a lot of inbound leads, I mean, I still get tons of inbound leads, because I put out so much content, so it’s inevitably going to happen. But, you know, basically, what I’m doing is I’m writing content for people. So I’m meeting with them for an hour a week. And helping them work through that process that you described, like that comes naturally to you.
And it’s just easy. For a lot of people. I think for most people, it could come easier, but they overthink it. So it’s like working with them and going, Okay, what happened this week? Tell me about a week. Tell me about this situation. Tell me about that situation, coaching them on? How did you think and I’ve taken notes the whole time, that putting together pieces of content based on that, but Tell you what, after, you know, much like a client’s to doing after writing, you know, some are doing some are only doing two or three posts a week, other others I’m doing, you know, 1015 posts a week, you know, plus the 15 that I’m doing for myself?
Damon Pistulka 42:27
Yeah.
Joel Lalgee 42:28
And you know, it’s like, I’m selling personalized content, too. So not like, Hey, here’s my copy and pasted library. I’ve already done data, access to it. It’s like I’m writing this stuff. I there’ll be days where I write eight hours. I’m just like, Man, this is I can’t take on any more clients. Even if I’m only doing two hours per client, I’m only doing 20 hours that 20 hours is like, that’s a lot of like, thinking about different things, making it hard hitting. And so one of the one of the things that came up was like, well, do I outsource some of that copywriting. And this is where people kept telling me like, you got to go on Fiverr.
Find a copywriter to find this find that. But I haven’t had it in me to like, do that, because I haven’t wanted to figure out the quality side. But I think that’s just like you’ve got to monitor and you’ve got to do what you can to keep the quality at 90% of what it can be, and just mitigate it. And maybe at certain times you like art, I’m going to step more into it. But I feel like that’s like any business, like as you scale it, I mean, if you’re doing if you’re manufacturing something in hand, and then you go to someone else manufacturing it for you, you’re going to have a changing quality, you just got to find that right partner and the right person to help you with that.
Damon Pistulka 43:44
What you hit i think is, if you’re a perfectionist are really, really good at things like you do. Or a if we’re skilled at anything, you aren’t going to find somebody who’s going to do it exactly like you are in as good as you do in your mind. because no one’s going to do it the exact same way. I think part of it is accepting the fact that if you get 80 or 90% if you get 90%.
That’s freaking awesome, I think and look at the results. If they’re bringing good results and the customers are happy. And they’re not doing it, you know, to the extent you would or quite the same way you would but the customers are happy, they feel that they’re getting good value. That’s where we have to as as perfectionist and those kind of things, you have to step back and go. It’s still working. Okay, that’s the only way to scale. Otherwise you are you’re trapped in your own mind, and that’s as far as you can ever go.
Joel Lalgee 44:39
100% Yeah, look, it’s a great way to it’s a great, it’s a good problem to have, too. I mean, I get I guess I’d rather have that problem then. Not being able to have any traction because I just think like, you know, marketing and sales seems to be like the part that most people have a real challenge with. And so I think if your problem is Do I scale? I think that’s that’s a lot more of an easier solution to solve than. Yeah. You know, not having not having any clients, which I think a lot of people are hitting that right now.
And that’s why we were talking before which I’m seeing CPAs lawyers, financial advisors, Bitcoin is no Bitcoin is always around, but the those, you know, the financial advisors CPAs man getting so many messages, and I’m just thinking, why? Why am I getting all that and they’re not even good messages, you can just tell like, they just, you know, hitting out 5000 people, but that should be an indicator of, you know, people like those who are been on LinkedIn for a while and kind of understand content.
If you are interested in helping people and consulting them on how to do that. There’s a big market for it right now. Because it’s it’s a skill set that it’s just, it’s amplified itself over the last six months to like, every company’s thinking about how do we brand how do we reach people digitally? So any kind of business? Like that’s exciting e commerce, like you were saying is super exciting as well. You know, and, sadly, there’s obviously different other industries that are taking a hit to right now. Yeah,
Damon Pistulka 46:17
yeah. That’s for sure. Well, Matt, Matt says that’s fair. Just having accepted the leads are still there, the clients supposed to be satisfied. I think that’s, that’s part of what we were talking about there is, you know, in the end, if they’re happy, they’re happy, and that’s good. And, and, and that, but Joel, I’m so happy to be able to sit down and talk with you like this. It’s awesome to get your insight and yeah, great Connect. People, man. I just so appreciate it. Love, love the the engagement and the just your authentic nature, how you’re going out there after people and tell them I like you believe it. Appreciate it. Well,
Joel Lalgee 46:59
it’s great to be here. And apologies for I know, I did push this back a couple times. I’m glad we were able to make it work this year. And yeah, it’s great. Great to be here. I love love being able to connect and I think this is probably our first conversation to like,
Damon Pistulka 47:12
yeah, yeah, so yeah, it’s it’s, I it is it’s kind of rare, actually. Because usually I talk to people a few times before they do this, but awesome to get you here and then we’ll have you back.
Joel Lalgee 47:23
We have a live segment coming up, right. It’s coming up. No, I don’t think so. Do we not have one? Or did you already do that? And I did. I did I miss it. I thought we had like, I thought you were doing like a maybe you haven’t announced Oh, that was the one on Thanksgiving. That was the flushing 2020 Are you serious? You
Damon Pistulka 47:48
should Yeah, dude. We had a it was you guys that got me inspired because I saw you like we’re on that 24 hour live.
Joel Lalgee 47:57
Oh my gosh, man. There was a 24 hour live and then those those two I’ve done two recently. I can tell you man, those things are I think you were the like I only want to do it for four hours and then I think four hours for smart because I think I got like the people I did they were like 12 hours in and they’re like oh yeah, they I think they stepped away and I just drove it I was like okay well, you shouldn’t use a if that ever happens again you just use gonna call me and let me know sorry I can’t believe
Damon Pistulka 48:30
that. No worries man because we’re gonna we’re gonna do it again though we had I don’t know well then and then it kind of stinks to because stream yard only let you get like nine or 10 people so i would i would be getting the message all the time people are trying to get in. Even though I tried to schedule a course you know you got extra people come in because but it was a ball. We had a lot of fun. Next time you’re gonna be on for sure. And we’ll
Joel Lalgee 48:53
appreciate it. Well, thanks again man. appreciate being on here and there’s a good chat with you guys.
Damon Pistulka 48:59
Have a great evening. You too.
