The Best Dang Livestream Ever

49:45

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

linkedin, people, business, post, relationships, platform, talk, monty, connections, pitch, marketing, engage, transactional, content, sales, build, client, company, call, meet

SPEAKERS

Damon Pistulka, Monte Clark

Damon Pistulka  00:04

All right, everyone, welcome once again to the faces of business man. Am I excited today because with me, I’ve got Monty Clark from abound social Monte. Thanks for being here today, man.

Monte Clark  00:16

My pleasure, brother. It’s great. Great to be with you. Oh, this is fun. Never done it before Monty has never been a guest on the show. I’m excited. Because we’re going to talk a little bit about LinkedIn. And, and bow. Well, first of all, this is going to be the best dang live stream ever. I know we put a lot a lot of expectations up on the board by saying that, but when you threw that out in the beginning, we gotta go down with it. We don’t have to pull any punches. I’ll just let it be raw. Nope. Let’s do that. Don’t do that. So, Monty, you hail from the mecca of marketing.

Kansas City. Yes. So first of all, nothing related to business. Are you a baseball fan or a football fan there with your teams there? I’m mostly a football fan. I mean, I was I’m a bandwagon baseball fan, honestly. So when the Royals were doing really well and winning the World Series, I was all over it. But you know. Yep. Yeah. Mostly football. Very good. Very good. Well, that’s the first stadium I ever went to a professional football game.

I think I was like, 13. My, my father and my, my cousins had season tickets there for many, I think they might even still have them. And it’s valued like 40 years now. And I was 1314 years old. My dad mom packed up our whole family and brothers. Now I got three brothers and sisters. So there was a bunch of us. We went to a game down there and went to a baseball game. So it was the first plus stadium I ever saw baseball game too, because I right side by side.

Totally. And you guys had had a heck of a run to with the new quarterback you guys had and the rest of the team. You just had a really good team. So it’s been a lot of fun being there. Yeah, you know, it is it’s been fun. I’ll tell you why. I mean, you went one of the easily top five stadiums that you can go to. I mean, in the NFL, I mean, the crowd, it’s like going to a college game. Yeah. How? How the crowd is there. But yeah, I mean, I don’t get to go to a lot of the games really? Especially now with mahomes. You know? Yeah.

Right. So those are astronomical, but still fun to watch. Yeah, that’s for sure. So when you think about marketing, the second this, think of this take a step back, because I’m looking through your history looking through your background? And there’s a couple of things that have you been in sales and marketing for quite a while. So tell us a little bit about your background? And, and how you really evolved? How you really became where you’re at today are your decisions to get you here? Yeah, I, right out of college I went into I was freelance designer.

So I was doing design work. That kind of quickly evolved as I was doing project based stuff into companies wanting me to help them more on the strategy. You know, what’s the strategy behind what we’re doing and stuff. So all of my marketing and sales experience came just real world practice, right? So watching, watching what works, watching what people are doing. Over the years, have worked with all kinds of brands have worked with McDonald’s and coke and, you know,

all kinds of different project related stuff. But my real passion for marketing is started probably about 15 years into my career, you know, where it morphed from just doing project based stuff to really working on strategies for companies and helping them you know, once the internet kind of blossomed. The big website craze, you know, evolved into SEO and so I really focused on SEO for a period of time, and helping people get views and stuff to their websites trying to make websites more effective. Have a LinkedIn account for a long time never really did anything with it. Like a lot of people you know, I only had, I don’t know, maybe 501 connections or something like that.

I’ll fast forward a little bit to save boredom but went to I was VP of Marketing for a local company here in Kansas City. And promises made not kept I so I left that decided I’m gonna start back into my I’m company again, and decided I’m going to use LinkedIn, I’m going to try and make LinkedIn work for myself, if I can make it work for myself, maybe I can turn it into a business and make it work for some other people. So I initially started posting on a daily basis about SEO.

And I spent about the first six months talking with people about SEO and started to figure out the algorithm and what LinkedIn was doing, what was successful, what were getting engagement to posts and content. So I was focused really on the marketing side of LinkedIn, and wrote wind up writing a book about it, within a year, started writing a book about how LinkedIn works, what you can do with it, and how you can actually build a business with it.

So that went really well. Still out on Amazon, you can still go out and get a copy of it. It’s called Mastering LinkedIn. But from that, once I started figuring out how I can make it work for myself, then I launched into trying to teach other people how to do it. And it eventually evolved to the point where I met my current business partner, and Isaac Anderson, he’s here in Kansas City as well. And he was focused more on the sales end. So I had a machine if you were built for the marketing aspect of and he was focusing on more of the sales.

And just through the funny thing is, we were introduced, we’re in each other’s back yard. But we were introduced by Judy Hayes, who lives in New York City. introduced us both on LinkedIn. Right? Yeah. So I mean, that just shows the power of LinkedIn really, but um, you know, LinkedIn is such a phenomenal tool, because it perfectly marries marketing and sales. And so if you can figure out how to do those together, then you can really build any business in the b2b space, using LinkedIn. And it’s unlike any other platform. So we put the companies together, we call it about social.

And oops, over here, I call it about social and rest is history. I mean, we’ve been growing and, and everything has been working really well, helping a lot of people. Not only learn it, but also build their companies. Yeah. Very cool. Very cool. So as you as you’ve gone through this, I got to ask the questions, because you know, this, the thing that I think that is, it’s funny when you talk to someone that in starting a business or going through things, they’re like, oh, this and that. And you know, and you always hear about the good things, you know, and you really don’t understand some of the trials and challenges you really face running a business.

And so what was one of the first things you learned as you started down this road trying to build a business on LinkedIn? Thinking back to that? It’s hard? Yep. It’s not? I mean, it’s not easy. It’s LinkedIn is a fantastic tool. But that’s really all it is. I mean, you can, you know, it’s, it’s not a hammer, you can’t use it. There’s not just one use for it, right? I mean, there’s, there’s so much to Linked In. And there’s so many different things that you can learn.

But your basic business principles still apply. And one thing that I had to learn over time is that LinkedIn is like a live networking event. It’s not a lead list. And that’s where most people go wrong. They treat LinkedIn like it’s some kind of a lead list. And they get too transactional in their approach. But what it really is, isn’t, is a relationship funnel. And the more relationships you can establish and nurture, and more likability that you can create around yourself and your own personal brand.

They say, you know, the better you’re gonna do, and it does take time, but it doesn’t have to take an extensive amount of time. If you have the right strategy, and if you work the platform, like it’s a live networking event, and you have the right strategy around the content and the messaging that you that you’re doing, combined with the right approach for your outreach. Then those activities will Um, pound month over month. And in time, you will build a very consistent, steady growth business, right. But most people don’t give themselves enough runway.

And they wind up getting transactional really fast. And, you know, in 2019, sales changed, or 2020 rather, sales change, because nobody, the whole country locked down, nobody was able to do business. So what happened was the old traditional, you know, cold outreach, prospecting, hit LinkedIn. Yeah, so it was just connecting pitch connecting pitch. So everybody’s getting pitched left and right. So now it’s, you know, to, to do today, what you could do pre 2020, or at the beginning of 2020, is significantly more challenging. Because everybody is weary of the pitch.

Yeah, I’m writing that down. Everyone is weary of the pitch. Well, and I feel it, I feel it every time. Every time someone connects with me, once it sends me a connection request, it’s like, oh, and you know, there’s some of them, you know, right in, you can tell from the connection request message, that you are going to get pitch. And I honestly, I connect with some of those people to see what’s going to come next. Yeah, yeah. Because you want to see what’s gonna come next. Because you could be the best one you’ve ever seen a guy?

Wow, maybe I learned something. So the end, Gail Roberts had said it said it best when she coined the term I get pitched, slapped every day. Gets a pitch lap. But the thing of it is nowadays, even asking to meet with somebody or do a zoom call or something is also seen as a pitch. Yeah. So even getting too close too fast. Right? is hard to do. So you got to take a different approach. Well, and I’ve done before sent people that I loosely, no messages on, on like, when we have free webinars to attend, and like, Hey, what are you bothering me for? Like, I looked at your business, I thought, you know, and then they’re okay. Because then as soon as you send a follow up message, say,

Hey, this is why I thought and then they realized that you actually read their profile, and you understand why you sent it, then it’s always it’s a little bit better in some cases. And some people are, I guess, smart enough. They don’t need any help, ever. So are nice to meet anybody else. But that’s it’s, you know, there are those people. So it is interesting, though, and you’re right, it did change an awful lot. So what’s the worst message that you’ve seen? sent to you?

The worst messages, I always see our people who are just trying to sell me my own services, you know? And it’s just what, but here’s what’s funny about it. I help people build business on LinkedIn. So part of that is lead generation, right? Yeah. If I’m, if that’s what I do, and you don’t, you’re just sending me an automated message. My, in my mind, I’m always saying, Why in the world, would anybody use your services? Okay, because you’re scamming everybody about this.

And you’re not even using the platform as it can be eaten or as it should be used to develop any relationships around it. You’re just going for the off chance that somebody is desperate enough to say, Yeah, I’ll do it. You know, so already, it’s just funny, because it’s, you know, I already know that they’re not going to be effective with that because they’re not, they’re sending but you know, who would potentially be a competitor? You know, yeah, that same message asking for me to be a client. So yeah, those are always there, it always cracks me up.

I always respond to him. You know, that’s saying I can show him a better way to do their own business. That’s good. That’s good. I actually had someone I guess you could call him a competitor. But it said this sent me. industry-specific thing. I had no idea that I didn’t have a business in the industry. I work in and, and went through, and it’s still gone. I think it’s, I think we’re in the like, week three or four of, of cadence they’re, they’re doing but it’s interesting to see what’s what some companies spend a lot of money on. Yeah, it is interesting. blows my mind. Really?

Yeah. Yeah. It’s So as you when you got on LinkedIn, first of all, do you remember what do you know, off the top of your head where the day was the year was you got on LinkedIn? May 19 2019. Oh, really? You got on 2019? Oh, wow. Yeah. So you started in 2018. And then you started your business in 2019 Holy buckets. So I started my business in May of 2019. You know, we rolled around at 2020 in the world shutdown. Yeah. But you know, honestly, it actually helped my business.

I was just one of the fortunate ones, because my business was all about LinkedIn, and helping people to do what everybody was jumping on LinkedIn, hoping that they could do. Yeah. So we actually had a pretty substantial growth period. Nice. Yeah. Well, let’s talk about that. Do you think that the traditionalists have learned anything from it? Do you think they’re just saying all LinkedIn was good while we had COVID? And we’re shut down, but it’s, we’re moving away from that? Do you think that they’ve learned that or that it’s, it’s part of what we should be doing, or?

I think that most I think that if you are younger, like the younger generation of people that are users that are on LinkedIn, that are in sales, pick it up, and believe in it, and are successful with it, I think the older generation, like us, and above or later, who are just pick up the phone, you know, just pick up the phone and call people that that’s the approach that they take to LinkedIn. And what they say is LinkedIn doesn’t work. Well, it doesn’t work with that process. There, right. But it’s just like anything, if you’re not willing to learn a new process. And if you’re not willing to learn a new technology, it’ll never work for you, and you’ll get left behind.

So, you know, what we find a lot when we work with corporate accounts, is that anytime we can find a client who has or a potential client, who has a sales leader that understands relationship building, then they’re going to we can work with them, they’re going to be successful. Because they’re going to look at the right KPIs. Anytime we have somebody that’s stuck in an old school sales process of cold outreach, that’s transactional, they will never be successful. And what we’ve found is that, you know, they’re not really successful, even in their current, those businesses are usually someone struggling, or not growing as quickly as they could be.

Because they’re still stuck trying to use an old system that’s not working. And the only reason that they’re successful is, is they’re just going by sheer volume, but the amount of opportunity that they leave on the table is astronomical. Yeah. So Yeah, cuz they’re, I mean, it’s just like, if you look at any cold outreach campaign, you know, you got a very low percentage, but if I, if I go, if I got a point a half a percent, and I call 100,000. People, I know I’m gonna get this many and if you know, but there’s the, the other if the toll buying population that is, you know, 3% want to buy at any given time, you know, not that you’re trying to shoot for that.

But over time, how much of those, how many of those people would buy as a much higher percentage, you can take your time and build a much better, much better pipeline of people that want to talk to you? Well, you know, most companies, you can always tell a company that is stuck in an old school sales process. Because they’ll just go get some kind of automation. Yeah, and that their sales team will just only be engaged in automated messages that are primarily transactional.

And those are the ones that you get hit in your, in your inbox on a daily basis, people that are wanting to connect with you, and all of a sudden that’s just, you know, three messages in it’s just that immediate pitch. Yeah. So the reason why and we will not work with those, those companies because you know, 95% of market this effect, okay. 95% of your markets, not gotta be ready to buy today. So if your approach to LinkedIn is I gotta go find the 5%, who are well you’re actually doing is you’re finding 5% of people who are already in the process of comparing providers. So now you’re into a price match. Right?

You haven’t developed a relationship at all. So you’re down to price comparison. And what you have done, if you, if you take the transactional approach that remaining 95%, you’re going to lose that opportunity. Because the minute you get pitchy with them, they’re not going to want to do business with you, they’re not even going to want to talk to you, right. So it’s very difficult to go in and start a relationship with somebody after you’ve pitched them. To your point, you know, you’ve got to come back and go, Well, I’ve looked at your profile, and I’ve done you know, all these different things.

But most people lose that opportunity. And they don’t take the time to invest in the relationship where if you have a company, or if you have an individual, and they look at LinkedIn as a relationship funnel, it’s how many people that can you connect with in your target market, that you can put into the top of that relationship funnel. Understand where, you know, the opportunity is to understand where they are in their buyers journey.

And you can’t force somebody through that buyer journey, it’s their own journey they’ve taken on their own right, but you can get in the middle of it. And then you can nurture them through it. And when you do that, you’re establishing relationships, you’re solving problems, and they will do business with you. It’s just a matter of time when they will, right. So anybody that can do that with LinkedIn is going to be successful, they’re gonna build a business, and they’re gonna build a big business that’s successful. Because if you’re doing that month over month, you’re continually putting people on that top of that funnel.

You’re continually trying to get in the middle of that buyer journey, and sift them through into conversation face to face like this, to where then that’s where business is done. No business is done on LinkedIn. All businesses done off platform when you have a conversation like this, just how can you make that happen? Yeah, it’s, it’s really surprising to me how many people think that you’re going to close business on LinkedIn? Well, you can’t. Yeah, I mean, but they think they’re gonna, you know, get it as close as you can.

And really, it is about because, like you said, it’s a live networking event. It’s meeting people, it’s how many people it’s how many, how many good people that you talk to a week that are that are, you know, potentially could introduce you to the next person could potentially be a customer or something works out right down the road? And just to figure out where they’re at. Because, honestly, if you’re in business, I mean, okay. I don’t know if I’m going to use the wrong words, probably. But if you’re, if you’ve been in business a while you’re going to be picky. And I know, I’m not using the right words, but you should understand who your perfect client is, right? Correct.

Yeah. Nice. Right, nice down. So we get if you get a call from somebody that’s outside of your industry, but you know, they’re honestly they need some help or something, you can be talking to them, but you’re going to talk to a lot of people that aren’t going to be could aren’t going to be a fit, that you can potentially help in other ways and move them to the helps they need help they need. You know, it’s there’s just so much about, like you said, it’s a live networking event to meet people understand where they’re at, help them out if you can, and, and you know, that that comes around in time. 100%. In fact, I just had a, we had a client, and that we had signed up a few weeks ago.

And it became very apparent that they actually needed to work with somebody who is technically one of our competitors. Because they were better suited to, to take care of that client than we were. And I made the connection with our competitor. And I said, this is our client, but they’re more better suited to work with you. I’m gonna hand them over to you. And they, they did a call together said yep, that’s a fit.

Let’s work together. So, I mean, those types of things should be happening all the time. You know, we’re a community we should be able to help Grow each other’s businesses. Yeah, there’s enough for everybody. You know, there’s 900, almost 900 million people on LinkedIn right now. Yes. So yes. If you can’t find the right people to do business with, you’re just doing it wrong. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, it’s, it’s people say, well, it’s not my mark. You know, people in my market aren’t here. And it’s just not that not.

That’s the funniest thing that I hear ever people let people say, Oh, my mark, it’s not on like, Oh, yeah. Man, you doing Sales Navigator search, or just a basic search on LinkedIn, you find a million level? Yeah. Oh, well, they’re not active. Oh, yeah. They are. Yeah. Every single market that’s in b2b, right, is on LinkedIn, and markets who are not b2b or on LinkedIn. Yeah. Yeah. So. And I’m amazed, I’m amazed to, because I think I started posting five days a week, I don’t I don’t post on the weekends, unless I’m just screwing around and doing something I post five days a week.

And I started in late 2019. And I’ll tell you, I am amazed at the people that I haven’t talked to for 10 years, and I’ll see him and I’ll say, I see you post your posts all the time on LinkedIn. them like urine, urine, Houston, I haven’t talked to you in 10 years. You’re in business in Houston, which is good, and you’re seeing my stuff. So that’s kind of cool. But it’s just like people say you’re not on there they are people are on there. Oh. We call them lurkers. There’s more lurkers on LinkedIn than anything else. Right? And yeah, there’s, like, we had a client.

We’re working with him on posting. And four weeks into working with us. He came back and he said, I went to dinner last night. And my waiter said, Hey, you’re that guy on LinkedIn. I see your posts all the time. Nice. So I mean, the wider that everybody’s on LinkedIn. Yeah, the opportunity. There’s pretty substantial. Yeah. So you know, one of the things I thought about before we talk is, is it would have been interesting if we could somehow pull up LinkedIn, from 15 years ago. And just look at it back then.

Yeah. Because I actually, I looked at my date today, because I was going to ask you, I signed up in 2005. And I probably had, you know, three connections for 10 years. But it’s, it’s interesting to see how this platform has really changed. And, and just, I mean, when you think about just in the past few years, the live streaming, the videos, how the videos have been integrated into it and the creator thing now and there’s just so many different ways to get great content out to engage with people, you know, share good information. I just, I just I wonder, what are some of the things that you think are coming up for LinkedIn?

That would be really cool. Ah, well, let me tell you something real quick. Yeah. I’ve got some friends in Silicon Valley. And I’m, I have one friend who was one of the first 100 people on LinkedIn. Wow, when it launched, yeah. He has over 300,000. Followers. Right. When he posts he will not get any engagement at all. Yep. Okay. So the size of your network is not really a factor. It can. You can, but my point is, I’m way back when LinkedIn launched, all the way up to when Microsoft bought it out. It was super easy to get connections. And that’s what he told me to is just like, people are just connecting with everybody.

It was just, you know, you just that’s what you did. You just made connections. That’s what it was for. Well, it’s very hard to get connections now. You know, and LinkedIn has made it that way. I think that and I should say Microsoft has made it that way. I think Microsoft came in and they understood the value of what valuable networks are. Right? So they limited, they significantly limited your ability to make those connections. And now people, if you work LinkedIn, you’ve got to be pretty focused about, you know, working LinkedIn for the right people. What I think will be coming down the road. You know, they’re always, you know, they’re there to make money.

Yeah, well, I think they’re going to be adding to their paid features. With Sales Navigator, they made huge improvements to Sales Navigator this year. I think they’ll continue to do that. I think it’s going to continue to get more, more and more CRM, you know, related. I think that ultimately, at some point, they’ll probably compete with all these CRMs. Yeah, I honestly think that’s their biggest opportunity. I think they don’t do it now. Because I think they would have problems with it.

But I think that’s definitely where it’s going. You know, quite honestly, all these platforms are kind of the same. But I do think as web three, and the metaverse and stuff like that, I think they’ll probably be launching into more virtual spaces, and stuff like that. I could see them moving groups into more of a Metaverse style, you know, scenario where you can be a part of a virtual group like that, that might actually put some life back into him. I think it’d be pretty cool, actually.

Yeah, I think too, I think it would be cool. So I think it’ll take them a long time. And, and they don’t, you know, thing about LinkedIn is they don’t usually come up with their own. You know, they’re not first in the water. It is, it is Microsoft. I mean, totally, yes. They buy like a gazillion innovative companies and then just fold them in. That’s about it. You know, and they, they kind of like, sit back and wait to see what works.

They’re like, Okay, we’ll try. We’ll try that. That’s, that’s why you’ve now got, you know, all of your voice meetings like clubhouse, you know, the clubhouse came along, then Twitter, Instagram, they’re, you know, they’re all incorporating it. And like a year later, LinkedIn goes, Oh, maybe we should do clubhouse? Yeah, type stuff. It’s gonna fail to I mean, I don’t Yeah, they’re acting like they’re gonna pour more into it. But, you know, nobody wants to sit on voice calls for hours.

So you said we did that already, for decades. And decided we didn’t like it. And the only thing I do have to say that people talk about getting zoom fatigue. And I understand when you’re on it. I mean, I’m on it a lot all day long. On video calls, but it’s weird talk on the phone now without seeing somebody. Totally isn’t it? I mean, it was just me because it’s like, it’s like someone wants to talk to me on the phone. I’m like, what? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, What the Whoa, there you go.

I mean, yeah. I’m out someplace and can’t do a video call maybe. Doesn’t also drive you nuts when you start a zoom call and somebody refuses to turn on their camera. Yeah. Funny. I like now these days, like, oh, wait a second. I’ll wait a second before I turn on my camera. And then I’ll go oh, sorry. I forgot to turn on my camera. And it usually prompts them to turn theirs on to you know what, it’s just it’s Yeah, I had those calls where you’re sitting on the camera, and they’re seeing you and your can’t see them and it just seems it’s unfair.

You get to see this part of communication. I don’t get to see your face. That’s not fair. Yes. Yes. And that’s tricky too. Because I’ll tell you it’s picked me more than once that I haven’t been thinking about it because I don’t see a face and, and yes, look at me. I’m older. I do have opinions. I’ll roll my eyes or something. Like I got legs like this.

And I forget that they’re on the phone to somebody stupid like oh that’s fair game. Like you’re not gonna be on the phone. Yeah. Um, but you know, it’s it is it is interesting though how this has really changed and, and the way LinkedIn has integrated the lives and stuff. I mean, there’s a vibrant community of people that are that are really getting some good.

I mean, you talk about industry specific shows you look at like Chris looky are will Healy are some of these people that are all I’m a robotics person or I’m in this part of manufacturing or something and I see some, because I’m around manufacturing. So I know, and, you know, they’re really doing some, you know, showing the new technology showing implementation, you know, examples of things.

And, man, it’s, it’s really, it’s incredible what somebody can learn, if you just want to take the time just to seek the right people out. No doubt about it. I mean, there’s experts and literally any niche on this platform. Yeah, you know, and if you want to find the expert in the niche, just search the hashtag. For, you know, whatever industry it is. And you’ll ultimately find somebody who’s posting on a daily or regular basis. And they’ll teach you everything. I mean, it’s amazing. Yeah, I’m writing that down.

Because I do need to look at more industry hashtags. I don’t do that enough. Yeah. Go ahead, go. Good way to find. Yeah. So I gotta ask you that I’ve got questions written down here. I’m getting over here. So what are some of the things that you do daily on LinkedIn, you want my daily routine? Well, if that’s if you want to share your daily routine, that’s fine, or, you know, high points of it, whatever you want to talk about. So I’ve gotten to the point now, where I just, I don’t store up my content, right, I don’t write it ahead of time.

It just, it just kind of naturally comes from me now. So I will, I’ll post Monday through Friday, like you, I don’t typically post on the weekends either. Just because I’m on social media all day, every day. So I need to have a break, right, I need to put it down. And my grass gets way too high. So you know, life has to come back into play, you have a family I do. So I’ll, I will typically have my posts live by 730 Every morning Central Standard Time. And, and that’s important, right, you need to be there at the same time, you need to be consistent.

So whatever you’re gonna do, be consistent with it posted at the same time. So I will post I will sit for an hour. And I will engage other people’s content on the platform for from 730 to 830 every day. And I’ll find new people. And then I have a lot of people that engage me on a regular basis yourself, who I like to go and engage those people on a daily basis as well. So that’s how you build up, you know, what they call the tribe, right? Your group of people who you appreciate their content, they’re there all the time, and you’re just engaging one another. So I’ll do that from 730 to 830.

I’ll typically have calls I have all my calls, mostly start at nine o’clock, these days, it’s back to back until five. But in between calls, I will go respond to whatever LinkedIn notifies me about whether somebody is putting comments, you know, on my content, or I’ll jump in and then go find like, if I’m on a call with a new prospect. After the call, I’ll go find their profile and find content that they have.

And I’ll engage, right. So that’s one of the things that you can just kind of continue the conversation after you’ve had a call with somebody. And I’ll do that just kind of throughout the day. It’s entirely about combining your inbound efforts through your content and your engagement. And what most people miss is that if you put a comment on somebody’s post, it’s considered content. So when you’re out there and you’re posting, don’t just put thanks for sharing, nice post, you know, engage it. That’s what my posts are for. Right?

So put a quality comment because it’s going to show up to your network. So I’ll try and engage in a good way. And mostly my engagement is for the purpose of establishing and likeability. You know, I just want people when I get on a call with people, I want people to feel like they already know me. Yeah, you know, and it’s because they have looked at my content, they do see how I engage people. You know, and, and, you know, anytime you get somebody that’s saying something negative about your content and stuff like that, don’t worry about it, just respond in a good way.

I’ve had a lot of people that have first time I meet with them, made mention about some way that I interacted with somebody that saying something stupid, you know. So that increases your likability to, you know, always be positive on the platform. Yeah. So that’s, that’s kind of my process. And it’s worked well, for me, I combined the I will always be connecting, trying to find good people, quality people that I can actually do business with, that I will go connect with, and try and establish relationships on a daily basis, in addition to working my inbound demand generation, through the posts and engagement that I have on the platform.

So another thing a lot of people do, they don’t connect, right. You know, they’re just accepting any old connection, and they’re just going after. Yeah, they’re trying to build up a number. Well, the number doesn’t matter if you can’t do any business, right. So and that holds true, whether you’re trying to find a job, whether you’re trying to do your due a business, or whether you have a job. At some point, you may need to find another job. Or you may need to add value to the current company that you’re with.

So you always want to connect in a good way. And with purpose in mind, not just kind of willy-nilly, I am a LinkedIn open networker, and I’ll build up whoever I want. Yeah, good. Well, thanks for sharing that. That’s awesome.

Because I know a lot of people think, Well, I’m not gonna get on and post. And I always tell people, I mean, posts isn’t where you build, you know, because I post five days a week does, that’s not where you build the relationships is when you go on somebody else’s post, or you respond to somebody else’s stuff, or you go, you know, or you go look at their profile and just message them and say, Hey, your, the profile picture that you just put up looks awesome.

You know, or whatever it is, or that’s, that’s where you build the relationships, the posting. I feel like I can’t think about what the posts Okay, well, go comment. Don’t make awful comments, like you said and do that. You know, it’s absolutely the truth. I mean, you do. Yeah, if you didn’t post it all.

But you went out and put 10 comments a day on people’s content. You’re going to, you’re going to establish new connections, you’re going to establish new relationships have the opportunity to take those conversations into your direct messaging. It will have the same effect and sometimes even more effect than posting your own content. So yeah, yeah. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Yeah. So as you’re looking at, at the future, what are you? What are you guys, you guys got anything new that’s coming out what’s been going on in your business? Yeah, traditionally, my company has worked with corporate accounts.

So anything, anybody that any company that has at least sales or three salespeople, we’ll we will work with them both from a marketing standpoint, and a business development standpoint. What we’re excited about now, though, is, you know, in the process of doing that, we’ve had a lot of people that are individuals, you know, you’re solopreneurs, coaches, consultants, small business owners that don’t have salespeople come and say, we’d like to work with you, is there anything you can do for us?

And so really excited about this, right here, this 2000 Fish product that we just came out with? And the whole concept around there is with those corporate accounts, and that’s kind of a white glove service, we’ll do it all for you. Right? This 2,005th product that we’re launching is, we’re going to do it with you. Okay, we’ll take everything that we know about marketing and sales on LinkedIn. And we’ll give it to you on a monthly basis. We’ll walk alongside you and the 2000 Pardo’s if we can put 2000 connections that are part of your target market in your account over the next year. How many of those Can we pull into the boat that you can do business with?

Okay, so we provide a ton of amazing resources for people, in addition to just walking alongside them month over month, coaching them along, helping them with conversations, helping them with getting in front of people, and building their business. So and, and the price is just nice. It’s affordable, literally, for anybody on the platform. Nice. That’s awesome and exciting, too, because, you know, it is about putting the right people in the boat. Yeah. And it’s getting those 2000 fish in your pond or whatever you want to call it and, and go on from there.

So that’s, that’s cool. And, and yeah, trying to think if there’s any other questions, I’m looking through my list here in front of them. We got those. I think it would just say, Matthew, thanks for the question. Building relationships, he hit that early. Matthew is a friend of mine out of Florida. That’s, that’s the thing that has been so much fun for me. And LinkedIn is just, you know, the number of people you get to meet and interesting people may not I’m not gonna do business with a lot of them, but just interesting people.

It’s just phenomenal. And, you know, I have one of these days. I’m going to win when gas won’t cost me as much as my mortgage. You know? Yeah, my car. Yeah. I’m gonna do like, so this guy, Bob Saggar. A year ago. Do you know Bob? Yeah. Yeah, great. Seeing him anyway, seen him? Yeah, great guy. He had to take a trip to Seattle, actually, because he has a client in Seattle. And he wasn’t, I don’t think he was all the way on the east coast. But he’s, he’s more east than I am in Kansas City.

So he decided I’m gonna go, I’m gonna drive there. And I’m going to stop at all the major cities that I have connections, and that I’ve built relationships with people on LinkedIn. And he stopped it like 15 different cities all the way going out there and met with people that he was connected with and have relationship on LinkedIn. I’m going to do that. Someday I’m going to do it. I’m just gonna go east to west coast. Just stop and make it like a you know, like a food networking thing where they go, the dinners, drive ins and dives thing you know, not to go restaurants and LinkedIn connections.

I’m just gonna say I’m gonna be in your city. Tell me what the best restaurant is there. We’re gonna meet there. I’ll buy you dinner a lot less me. Yeah, yeah. Be fun. Yeah, I mean, I did it. I did it a few weeks ago, when I was in Las Vegas. Magic is a fear guy that I’ve met on LinkedIn a couple of years ago. Great guy. We had a wonderful conversation. Yeah, we’re gonna be talking again, I think next week. That’s also Yeah, it’s just that’s, it’s fun. I think that’s an awesome thing to do. And it is really interesting, because you do people you feel like, you know, because you do to a certain extent.

And it’s great to be able to meet him in person. And quite honestly, there is no other platform like LinkedIn. Yeah, there’s no other platform where you actually establish relationships and have conversations than LinkedIn. And I’ve got a very good friend that I’m excited to get to meet someday in Spain, you know, that, that he and I talk all the time on LinkedIn. I’ve got a guy in South Africa. I want to go meet someday, England, I mean, all over the world. I’ve got people that I know and have never met, you know, face to face. So yeah, that’s the last part on my bucket list. There you go. Monty.

Well, it’s great to have you on today. We had Monty Clark from about social sharing, just making this the best dang livestream ever talking about LinkedIn talking about bounce, social, some of the things they’re doing. They’re some of the things you’ve learned over the years and LinkedIn. I want to thank you for being here, Monty. Hey, my pleasure. I’ll do it any time. All right. Well, thanks, everyone for listening. And we will be back next week with another episode. Whoo. Next week, we’re getting close to the Fourth of July holiday. We just got one on on Tuesday, and then we’re taking the weekend off and having a good time. So we will see you next week. Thanks a lot, everyone.