REIA 414 Anthony Simonie & Donald Stojack: Leverage LinkedIN to Attract Affluent Clientele

Welcome to Real Estate Investing Abundance, the show for busy, fulfilled professionals like you to learn how to develop financial independence built on solid passive real estate investments. Now here is your host, Dr. Allen Lomax.

Hello, enlightened investors. Welcome back to Real Estate Investing Abundance. I'm your host, Dr. Allen. Thank you so much for being back with us again today. We're going to take a look at an exciting topic, and that is how to leverage LinkedIn to attract affluent clients. 2 experts are with us today to guide us through that topic. It's Donald Stockjack and Anthony Simone. So Anthony is a seasoned entrepreneur. He helps businesses scale profits with a no BS marketing and sales approach. He has an expert strategy, and Donald Stockjack is a renowned strategist with a 40-year track record collaborating with industry luminaries, enhancing business profitability. So take us into the show and share a memorable experience from your formative years that may have helped you to be who you are today. And I'll let you all decide who is going to go first on that.

Donald, we'll let you go first. Yeah.

And the formative year, you know, for anybody, what are the formative years? I, when I think of that, I think what really changed me was, was finding and marrying my wife. And the reason for that—

and I think men's formative years are much later than women's, but I was a little bit older—

because she continually challenges me, she inspires me. And I'll tell you, when I get off track, she gets me back on center so fast, it's crazy.

But that—

it's been a game changer in my world.

Well, that's— that is wonderful. My formative years didn't come really until my late 30s, and it was the opposite. of yours was my wife deciding that she'd had enough and she left. So, Anthony, how about you?

You really caught me off guard with that one, Alan. You know, my wife is one, but I'm not going to piggyback off of Donald. I would say, you know, some of the things that have changed me and shaped me into who I am today, there's many. But, you know, 2 things. One is I was adopted, and because I was adopted, I was given a chance to have a really great life because I, I don't know what my life would be like if I hadn't been. And so I always talk about that no matter where I'm at. If I speak in front of a group, on a webinar, on a podcast, if I'm at an event and I'm speaking to folks, I bring awareness to adoption and foster care because they're, they're very dear to my heart. And they mean a lot to a lot of people. And so that for sure is one. And then I'd say the other is having the— you know, we love the high times in, in our journey, but even the low times to me are really important. For example, I've, you know, one of my business partnerships that broke up early on, I got, uh, I got taken advantage of in that partnership. And, uh, it was during a time in my life when I was already dealing with a huge challenge, and that was that my son nearly passed away. He's one years old at the time, and he had had he had a seizure one day, and I was actually had to give him CPR, and we ended up in the hospital for a couple days. But during that time, that's when my good friend quote and business partner decided to draw up a an amendment to our agreement and told me a lie about it, and I didn't really read it, and I signed it under duress. And so essentially it. Took half of my half of the business. And you could probably guess where that business went after all that occurred. So, but that was a learning experience for me. And I've used that to really grow in a lot of areas. And so I'd say that's a, that's a really important moment in my life that a lot of people would not welcome. And I wouldn't either. But it's something that I, if somebody said, hey, you could, could you, if you could change that, if you can go back, I probably wouldn't, because, you know, if you change one thing, you change everything. So we're, we're in a good place, helped a lot of people, still helping a lot of people, and, and, and I'm just bringing that message to others. So, uh, I think that answered your question, Alan, in a kind of a long way.

Yeah, yeah, excellent there. I often say that, uh, the worst days of my life actually have turned out to be the best days in my life, but that's only in retrospect. And they don't feel that way at the time, do they?

They don't.

Well, let's, let's talk about LinkedIn and, and how it is that we can use LinkedIn to attract potential investors.

Yeah, so LinkedIn is one of those platforms that is commonly misunderstood, misused, And is also a platform where, if you can figure it out and you can apply some simple things, you can mine a lot of gold out of LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a— it's a business platform. It's a business social media platform. It is different in that way. And the reason that's important is because if you think about Facebook, you think about Instagram, you think about all these other channels. They all are great with the right strategy. But LinkedIn is unique in the fact that everybody that's on LinkedIn already knows that they're— you're there to do business. You're there to network and for business purposes, to look for insight, to solve a problem. Or maybe you're even looking to find somebody to hire, or maybe you might be looking for a job. But all that revolves around business. And because of that, when we are operating on LinkedIn and we're running campaigns and, and doing what we do on LinkedIn, We don't have that same level of resistance that you would get elsewhere. And that doesn't mean you don't want to operate in the right way. I mean, you've got to be conversational. You've got to believe in delivering value to these folks and building relationships, because let's face it, relationships are the most important thing in life and in business. And so when you try to shortcut that, no platform is going to work for you. But It just so happens that if you act the right way on the platform, you can interact with so many different folks that you probably wouldn't believe you could reach unless you got on the platform and saw it for yourself. I mean, you can reach celebrities, professional athletes, high-level CEOs. I can't tell you how many times, Allen, people say, well, my market's not doing anything on LinkedIn. I target CEOs, right? I work with CEOs at a really high level. I'm like, well, guess what? We do it every day and so do our clients. And it's pretty, it's pretty unique in that way. So I kind of start there and then we can kind of, any other questions that you want to ask or Don, if you want to add anything there.

In recent research, I mean, it's not just, it's been our experience actually working with our clients that that actually happens. But recent research showed that people are more likely to do business With somebody who first connects with them on LinkedIn, that's like 73%. That's like crazy numbers.

Wow.

So the positioning there, you know, there's always that, how do I transition over, you know, from a connection to a relationship to, you know, doing business with somebody? It's a much more congruous thing if you first connect with them on LinkedIn as far as positioning. It can be done on the other platforms. Absolutely. But I think the research shows that the transition is much smoother from LinkedIn. to actual doing business.

Well, can you give us an actual example of how that has worked for you or for your clients? And, uh, and what were the results of that?

Yeah, and I think it kind of piggyback off what you just said, Donald. The, the main thing to remember here is, is we're trying to build trust, and people already have a certain level of trust for the LinkedIn platform. And so what we're doing is we're we're borrowing some of that trust to bring it to people in the conversation, to bring them to where we want them to go when we work, you know, not only in our own businesses but for our clientele as well. So in terms of results and what we do on the platform, the first thing you really need to pay attention to is what does your profile look like. So there are 4 main areas that I like to cover when I, when I talk with folks, because these are areas that you can go into relatively quickly and change and make a difference. So the first one is going to be your cover image. And that cover image, if you're on your profile, it sits right behind your profile photo. So the photo of yourself, there's a little circle there. Behind that is your cover image. And so that cover image, it really needs to grab attention and it needs to convey what you do and really kind of who you are in a very short period of time. So if you take mine, for example, on mine, we— I have a photo of my family and I have a quote there. And that quote is, people and results, the 2 things that matter most. And I'm a big fan of that because I'm maximizing that real estate, if you will, to let people know who I am and what's most important to me. And the reason why that is important to everybody listening here is that good marketing should always push people away from you that are probably not a fit for you and what you do, but also draw the ones that are closer to you. And so if somebody lands on my profile and they're like, oh, he, he's a family guy, probably talks about his family a lot. I don't know if this is for me. I am totally okay with them going elsewhere, right? Not that they're a bad person. We're just different in that way. And when I work with folks, I look for long-term, you know, it's life's too short to, to try to act like you're in a business where you're gonna do cash grabs. I want relationships and I want long-term potential with our, with people we work with. So, so if that resonates with them, then they're gonna read on. And so the other reason that's important is because imagery is, you know, our brains process images so much faster than it, that we do text. And also we remember only about like 20% of what we read, but 80% of what we see. So we want to— because that we want to play to those things to our advantage. And so the COVID image, then your profile photo is the next area you want to pay attention to. And that profile photo needs to look like you, right? Not, not you of like 20 years ago, but you of today. And the reason why you want that to, to be so is because we live in this world where technology is advancing so fast. We've got AI now that is like, I mean, it's running rampant. And so with that, there's some, there's some pros, there's definitely some advantages and some great things that come with that. But there's also a diminishing of the human element and that connection that, you know, we as humans, we want to feel. And so if you put a picture up on your profile And it doesn't look like you. It's a small thing, but it's also very meaningful because let's say, Allen, that, that we agree to meet for coffee and my picture is like from 20 years ago and it looks nothing like me today. I'm sitting there having coffee. You come in, you're looking around for me, and then you leave. And then I'm like, wow, okay. And you, you send me a message. You're like, hey, where were you today? And I'm like, yeah, I was sitting at that first table in the diner. That's a, that's a disconnect, right? It's, it's, it's not authentic. And so something as little as having a profile photo that looks like you can, it's like a small hinge that swings a big door, if you will.

And a photo with a genuine, warm, authentic smile, not a fake smile, not a deer in the headlights smile, but a real authentic smile. If you gotta have somebody to the side tickle you or poke you to get that smile, that's worth everything. That's the magic.

Absolutely. Absolutely. So that's kind of, that's your imagery. That's the first things that people see when they land on your profile and people are gonna land on your profile if you've got a LinkedIn. And this is another tip. If you have a LinkedIn profile and you have not optimized it at all, when people search your name, that profile, because of LinkedIn's relationship with the search engines, is gonna show up on the first page of those search results. And so if you have a profile that is lacking, or just is— doesn't have anything on it, then it's going to make you look— it's going to make you look bad. Because business people, if you're doing business with other business professionals and they're on LinkedIn and they look at you on LinkedIn, they're going to go, well, is this person really a business professional? Do they really know what they're doing? Because you've got your web main website and you've got all your social profiles. Your main website is great, but your main website is not controlled by a much larger entity that people feel like they— it'd be hard to pass yourself off as something you're not, right? And so that's why this is so important. When people are searching for you, they land, they're gonna see your LinkedIn profile. And if you show that the lights are on, it's gonna be good for you. If the lights are off, it's not gonna be so good. So— And it's, it's like the old real estate axiom, location, location, location.

Where's the information at? If your information's sitting on LinkedIn, it just has a lot more validity, a lot more weight if you do it right.

And then I'll fly through these next 2 things and we'll talk about results, like an example for you to answer your question in a kind of a long roundabout way, Allen. The next area right under your name is a section for some text, and that's what we call the headline area. That area needs to speak to, to what you do and the problems that you solve and also be personable at the same time. So if you look at mine, mine starts with an acronym that's a little bit creative.

It's—

and there's also a finger, an emoji pointing to the, to the right. And the reason why we have a, a, a finger pointing to the right is because here in the United States we read left to right. And so we want to push people's eyeballs over to that headline. And so I'll start off with an acronym, and mine is CGO. That stands for Chief Giving Officer. And that's because I want people to understand that at the heart of everything we do is we're serving others. And so it catches their attention. It's different. And then I go on and I talk about how I'm an investor, a loving dad, an adoption advocate. People can look me up and see what it looks like, but The main point is, that's one of the first things that people see. If you're on LinkedIn and you're reaching to connect, reaching out to connect with people, they're gonna see your photo and they're gonna see your headline. And that, and that's why that has to be dialed in. So before you start reaching out to a significant number of people, so people that you'd wanna potentially do business with, you wanna have at least your cover image, your profile photo, and your headline dialed in, because those are the first things that they're gonna see. When you reach out to them, and that's going to determine if they're going to accept your connection request and if there's going to be a conversation to take place after that. Those are all very, very important for that reason. So headline, talk about the biggest, you know, the problems that your market has and how you solve it, personalize it a little bit, and then have a call to action. If you look at mine, it says see below with an arrow pointing down. The reason why, and this is all by design, we got the COVID image, the profile photo, the headline, And then the next area that's important is your about section. And the reason why we're— we designed it this way is because we want to pull people from the top down to the bottom, and we want them to spend more time with us. Because here's the thing, nobody has ever given you their money before first giving you their time. So we want to earn their permission to get more of that time. And so that's what we're doing with the COVID image photo. Profile photo, the headline, and now your about section. The about section is, is gonna be more like a sales letter. And that sales letter is gonna talk about your market's problems, how you solve those problems, but not in a braggadocious way, in a way where you can highlight even like a case study. So you talking about, okay, so, you know, here's, here's the market that I serve. Here's why they appreciate the service. Here's an example of that. And then reminding them why they're there to accept your connection request or to reach out to have a conversation. So there's a call to action there because these people are busy for the most part. So if they took the time to land on your profile, went through the time to read your about section, the last thing you want them to do is hop— pop off of your profile without taking the action you wanted them to take. So you want to remind them in that way. And if you have those 4 areas dialed in, those are the 4 most important areas to have dialed in. And, and by the way, Alan, here in a little bit we can talk about how they can— we'd like to give away a guide, a free guide that will go deeper into these areas of the profile, plus the other areas as well. But that'll give people the opportunity to work on it on their own, in their own time, and to go deeper. So That's sort of the, the framework for where do you start on LinkedIn? That's where you start. That's where you want to get in, you know, take some action and get in into— get those things into motion, so to speak. Now, when you talk about results, so we work with a number of different clients, lots of different vertical markets, industries, a lot of people in the real estate market with different niches, anything from syndicators to capital raisers to turnkey people that provide turnkey real estate opportunities. I mean, there's— we run the gamut there, but at the end of the day, the results you can typically see with the strategies that we deploy, we're booking appointments every day. We've got, like I said, people that are, you know, one that comes to mind, we've got like a luxury RV, boat, and business storage development. They're doing well with the, you know, the strategies. We've got turnkey real estate. They're doing well. We've got real estate educators. So, We just received a message just the other day. One of the leads that we generated for our client on LinkedIn attended a webinar and then ended up buying a $50,000 real estate mentoring program. So the main thing you want to focus on— so if the question is, will this work for me and what I do? The first thing you got to determine is, is your market on LinkedIn? So if your market is on LinkedIn, whether it be dentists or medical doctors, CPAs, other real estate investors, wholesalers, whatever they may be, if you can—

Asset managers, just asset managers, any of the people like that.

There's— if they're there, and I can tell you all of those are that I just mentioned, then there's a process that will work for you. It all comes down to how you— how are you treating people? How are you marketing to them? Because marketing can be either— it can turn you off. Like, we see that all the time. Like, I get messages every day and it's just like a blatant pitch. You don't want to be pitchy. You want to think about the relationship. So if we met each other at a grocery store, Allen, and Uh, we struck up a conversation. There's no way that I'm gonna go into a 5-minute, a 5-minute speech about what I do and, and why you should hire me for that. It's going to be simple, like, hey, it's great to meet you.

What—

so what do you do? You know, what's your focus on right now? You know, with the market the way it is, you know, what are you seeing in your market? It's a conversation. It's not, it's not a, hey, a pitch fest, I guess is the best way to put it. And that's— you see that, you see that online, you see it offline. But the more you can dial in a conversation and stop worrying about selling somebody something, the more success you're going to have. So is your market on LinkedIn? Chances are they— if you're in the real estate business, chances are they're there. And then the question is, how do you reach them? Well, reaching them is as simple as going up to the search box on LinkedIn and typing in dentist, Chiropractor, CPA, attorney, whatever it is, and seeing what comes up, because it'll show you how many people identify as that across the entire LinkedIn platform. And then you're just gonna click to reach out to connect with them, include a nice personable message, and then that starts the conversation. Okay, so those are, those are 2 first steps. Now, when you are in those conversations, just like what I said a minute ago, You wanna make sure you're treating them like a person. Do not start pitching them. Just start a conversation like you would if we met grocery store, coffee shop, whatever it might be at a barbecue. You know, just take that pressure off and just breathe and have a simple conversation with them.

And the higher up you go in affluence in society, the more people crave that conversation. It's kind of counterintuitive. But more people, um, that have achieved something in life, uh, find the loneliness in their circles. And so when you actually offer that level of conversation, they welcome it. It's kind of counterintuitive.

Enlightened Investors, if you haven't done so already, be sure and click that like button and also click that share so others can take advantage of the content. And finally, Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a single one of our upcoming episodes. Yes, that makes a lot of sense. Relationship building is where everything is at, and I think it's easy to forget that because like you said, the reason we go to LinkedIn is to do business there, and it's easy I think to jump into the business aspect of that and to overlook the relationship So what are the, I guess, the number one things that you see when people are reaching out and trying to establish this? It would seem to me like the— one of the more difficult things to do, certainly you can go in there and you can put in the search box and you can find all these different entities. But how do you know, first of all, that that's the entity you need to reach out to? And secondly, how do you determine that your messaging is the right one? is the right message. I mean, it could be friendly, it could be conversational, and it could still be a turn-off. So how do you determine it's the right target and you're— you have the right message for the target? And you could very well have the right message and the wrong target, or you could have the wrong target and the right message.

Or the wrong time.

Or the wrong time, yeah.

Yeah, there's, so it comes down to typically if you don't know who your ideal target is, you need to spend some time on that. It's, and it's definitely, I know people say that all the time, but I can promise you that most people don't spend much time on it. They think they know who it is, but they don't really know. And so when I say they don't really know, they might, they may have done business with a specific like vertical market or a specific type of profession, but oftentimes they don't really know that profession, right? So they don't dive into, you know, what are, what types of magazines do they read, you know, do they typically have families, you know, all that kind of stuff that it really does mean something, especially when you're trying to create a message for them and cater to that and to build a relationship. So knowing your market Comes before reach out. And so spending some time on that would be very beneficial. But then once you know that, the fact that you can reach directly out to them on LinkedIn is incredible. And you don't— and it doesn't cost you anything unless you, unless you have Sales Navigator, which I do recommend that you get because Sales Navigator allows you to even refine that further. So rather than it just being a you know, a dentist or a chiropractor, you could put a search criteria of, you know, is it— is a dentist that's been in business for this many years, is in this area, and is also part of this real estate investing group, right? So you can really get into a more refined target that way. But that's step one for sure. That's how you can know. Now, the, the thing that you can never go wrong with when it comes to messaging is value. What can you give that can give them value in advance before they ever give you any time or money? And so what I always tell people to do is think in terms of checklists or guides. Like today, I'm gonna give away a guide. Well, the reason I do that is cuz I wanna deliver value to anybody that's watching this, and I'm not asking for anything for that. I just wanna deliver value in advance cuz I wanna start the relationship off on the right foot. And regardless if I ever work with anybody that's listening to this right now, I want to make sure that I still gave value, because I know if you always operate with that, that same frame of mind, that philosophy, you can never go wrong, and business will always come to you. You'll always attract business from somewhere sometime if you operate in that way. So think about what you can give away to them that, that can help them. Checklist guides. Sometimes it's a webinar, sometimes it's a video, sometimes it's a podcast. Hey, We're on a podcast. We talked about this topic. I think it might be valuable to you. Would you be interested in it? Right? And just shooting them a link to it if they say yes, not asking them for anything else. And that in and of itself is going to create what we call the law of reciprocation. And that is very, very, very hard to get away from. I always tell people the way that I feel when I go to Costco, and I just went to Costco again the other day. And the sample ladies are out there and they're giving away samples. And I always fight it because I know if I go get a sample, I am going to feel compelled to buy that product, even though I was hungry and I just wanted a snack, right? I didn't, I didn't want the 400-piece, you know, mini cupcake, you know, box. I just wanted, I just wanted to taste it. Every time I do that, I feel that, that law at work. And so we can use that in an ethical way in our businesses. And so when we really concentrate on that, we put that into action intentionally. I've seen it change businesses in a very short period of time.

Well, wonderful. Well, we are out of time. So tell us the name of your business. And outside of gaining your guide there, how do we directly get in touch with you?

Yeah. So the name of our business is Client Elevator and clientelevator.com is our main website. It's a very simple website. Go there and you could, if you want to opt in, we deliver a lot of value through to our people on our email list. So there's a tremendous amount of value there and you'll find that we are not very salesy types of folks. So we literally follow that philosophy of value in advance. And so we're always delivering value. So every email you get from us is going to have some And value in it. So that's that's one way. And then the if you want to talk to us, we we'd be happy to talk to you. We we do set aside some time on our calendar, a few spots every month to be able to do consultations. And those consultations are very laid back. And the reason why we have that is because when we get on these calls, there people always wondering. So how do I apply this stuff to my business, my offer, my market? With my personality, right? And so when we get on these calls, we go through that stuff and we don't sell anything on the call. If you want to find out what we do, then we could talk about it. But on that call, we go through exactly what we do, how we do it, and how it applies to you with what you are doing specifically. And so that's available as well if they want to take advantage of that. It's a CE session.

.com/book-session.

So cesession.com/book-session. And, uh, Alan, I don't know if you, if you're going to put that as a, like, a link or text or something on the page that this, uh, is on, but that, that could be helpful for them as well. And then if you do want that guide I spoke about, uh, you could just text the word guide Just the word guide, no other letters or anything like that. Text it to 737-373-4989, 737-373-4989, and we'll shoot that guide over to you. You can download it, use it to help build your profile out. There's a lot of good value in there. I've actually had people— I had a lady, I'll never forget it. She went into— she got this guide, she attended one of our webinars. Got the guide, downloaded it, did a few things including changing her headline. She attracted one of her ideal types of prospects that ended up becoming her largest client. She never became a client of ours, but she landed her largest client and then a couple more clients just based off of that. And so now, of course, she sends us anybody that she comes into contact with that make you know that she knows would make sense to to chat with us. But it's that kind of information, and it's the kind of information that each person listening to this. and watching this should think about delivering to their prospects because it, it's— it makes you stand out from your competitors. And at the end of the day, it just does the right thing. It delivers value.

And all of that information will definitely be in the show notes. And I can attest to their consultations. I have had one with them prior to them coming on the podcast. And as they say, It is not salesy, but it is informative and beneficial. So I highly recommend it. Thank you, Donald and Anthony, for being with us. Very informative, enlightening conversation. Enlightened Investors, I know it's the kind of show that you love and like, and I know you appreciate this kind of information. So thank you, Enlightened Investors. Wonderful being with you again today. Thank you for tuning in. You are what make our show. So please Please like, share, and subscribe. And if you would please take a moment and go over to Apple Podcasts, we would really appreciate it if you would give us a rating and a review. Until next time, live prosperously and be well, and we'll see you in the next episode.

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