Leveraging LinkedIn to Massively Expand Your Network

Welcome ladies to The Real Estate Investor Show, providing inspiration, strategies, and insight to empower women investors to live balanced and financially free lives. Now here are your co-hosts, Liz and Andresa Guidelli.

So in today's episode, ladies, we have Donna Sadula, She is a master at LinkedIn. She has built a company of over 40 writers for her company to help optimize LinkedIn profiles. And we just get into so much specific content today, don't we, Andresa? Not only content about LinkedIn, but how you can use this to, to really grow your business and to thrive in your particular niche. And we talked about even the algorithms of LinkedIn, which was amazing.

And, and don't get the wrong message here. This is not an overwhelming episode. She breaks it down to a doable method that you can implement right away that she calls SOAR. So I don't want to give anything more away about this. All I can say is that give a chance, listen to this, and idealize this tool that it's available for all of us. It's a, what she calls a sales automation tool.

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Welcome back, ladies.

This is Liz, and this is Andresa Guidelli.

Welcome back to The Real Estate Investor Show. We are talking all things LinkedIn here today. Very excited about having you on. Donna Serdula, thank you so much for being on our show today.

Oh, thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, jump— ready to jump into so many questions we have prepared for her. It's something that a lot of investors struggle or want to really get to the next level. So excited to jump in in a few moments here. Andresa Guidelli, we always like to get connected to our amazing women that are a part of this journey with us. We always say we're not talking to you, we're, we're literally walking on the journey of creating a financially free and balanced life. That's what we stand for, right, Andresa?

Yes, it is.

So we always like to get connected to you. Just really quick story or quick something that come up for us, and then just a quick lesson to bring into your day and bring into your life. So I'm on, I'm on, uh, the hot seat here, right, Andresa?

Yep.

So here's what I have for you today. I went to the library yesterday with my daughter, common thing that we do, and I always, I always have in the back of my mind I'm probably going to owe them some money because basically I always have some sort of fine on my account. That's just what happens. No big deal. So I go up to her with 5 new books, a couple books for my son, 3 books for my daughter. And I said, oh, you know, do I owe you any money? Cause I always seem to owe a few dollars. She goes, oh, your balance is $47.57. $47.

Oh, that hit a button.

I was like, I'm sorry. You said $47? She's like, yes. And I'm like, how long has that been? Oh, the last month. I'm like, so she said, so we're there for like a half hour proceeding to give me a full statement of what is going on at the library, why I owe her $47, her. And it proceeded to show me all like the late fees, the books, the, I lost 2 books. They charge you 2 fees for that when you lose books. So it was like multiple different things happening on this. Like literally she gave me a 3-page printout of my statement at the library. So I looked it over, and not that I was disagreeing with it, but I looked it over and I paid the money and took out my 5 books. And I sat there thinking about this. I'm like, I gotta tell this on my podcast. Why I'm telling you this, not showing that I'm a very good steward of library books, but besides that tip right now, how often do we really know our numbers? How often do we know our kind of where we are with different things, you know, from a, from a financial perspective? I didn't know I owed $47. Now, okay, I went in my, you know, wallet and paid it, and it wasn't like $400. But that happens in other ways, right? We don't know things, you know, what we're getting charged for an electrician or a plumber or, you know, fill in the blank. Looking under bank statement, I got charged $75 on one of my bank accounts, and I reached out to them. Why am I getting charged on this? So I just encourage you as investors, right, as investors, we're creating financial freedom. The worst thing we could do is not be good stewards of our money and make sure we're managing what we have. So whether it's library fines or your, you know, the invoices coming in, have yourself take a look at that and make sure you have a finger on the pulse. 'Cause I clearly didn't yesterday when I went to the library and that is not gonna happen again. We have a new place for all the books. I have a whole new system set up 'cause I wanna avoid $47 fines when I go to the library. So that's what I have for you this week.

I love it. Once I heard from Oprah, She's a billionaire, right? So would she care about small items? I wouldn't say that, but here's what she said. She said, "I respect and honor my money and all the sweat that I put into it. So I do care about where is it going." So I thought it was a very interesting point of view. $47 might not look much, but, you know, it's just the behavior, as you're saying, Liz. What else, where else are we not taking a look and having the pulse, right?

Yep. Yep. Which is a perfect lead-in. Yeah. As we put, we kind of talk about all things LinkedIn and really get into, you know, we put these profiles up, we do different things on social media, right, Donna, which we'll get into, but yet do we really have a strong, you know, presence of what's happening, you know, kind of finger on the pulse. So before we get into all the nitty-gritty and all the questions we have for you to jump in, we'd love to ask you really, you know, what, What propelled you to even get involved in this business of LinkedIn? And, you know, how did that happen? I'm sure you didn't just wake up one day with it. So I'm sure it was a journey. So I'm curious to learn about your journey and how it kind of came upon, you know, your expertise in LinkedIn.

For a very long time, I'd always wanted to own my own business. That was always something in the back of my head. You know, as I worked in corporate America and I was in different roles, I'd always wanted to have my own. Business. I wanted that element of freedom. And for a long time, I always wondered, like, what could be my— like, what is my skill set? Do I have any marketable skill set that would take me out on my own? But what I will say this is I joined LinkedIn back in 2005, so years and years and years ago. And I didn't immediately love the platform. In fact, in the very early days, I totally didn't see any point to it. It seemed like a huge waste of time. I did eventually figure out how to make it work for me, how to make it work for my territory. I was in a very, very cutthroat sales environment. And I really started to see how amazing it was. And it was a fabulous tool. And in 2009, so again, over a decade ago, that's when it all came together for me, that I realized I had I had knowledge. It needed to be shared. People needed help on branding, on utilizing this platform that was more than just a network. It truly was a platform that offered so much opportunity. And so in 2009, that's when I set up shop. And it wasn't very long after that. It was about 2 years later, brought on my first 2 writers. I now have over 20 writers. We've written over 6,000 LinkedIn profiles for executives and entrepreneurs, professionals from all over the world, and we're having a great time.

Donna, and, you know, we are real estate investors and we have LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, now freaking TikTok. We might be late by the time that this podcast airs, we might have different things, right, going on, and they serve different purpose. So I wanted to differentiate LinkedIn from the other platforms, what LinkedIn offers that the others don't, and why should we be there as business owners?

LinkedIn offers a number of things, a number of different components. You know, first off, it's your brand. It's a place to tell your story. It's a place to show your trajectory, a place to really showcase your, your credibility. Who you are, what you do, that's there in the LinkedIn profile piece. There is no other network that provides such a robust profile and done in a manner where people can query against it. So you can be found, found for opportunity. Two, there's, there's the network component. It's, it's a one-to-one component. So when you connect to someone, you're bringing them into your network. They are a first-degree connection, but you're also bringing in all of their network and their network's network. So suddenly you have this exponential ability to connect with people, see inside connections, and it's something that no one can really take away from you. You know, like if you're building a CRM somewhere else, you know, for a company, boom, they can pull that cord easily. But with LinkedIn, it's, it's your own Salesforce automation tool. It's your own CRM. And I think there's something very, very powerful about that. You know, in addition to the profile and the network, there is your ability to post. And in LinkedIn, we're not smiling and pointing to bubbles and having to make a, you know, like be silly to get an audience. We can approach it as mature women and we can do it in a manner that is authentic and elegant to us. So unlike TikTok, unlike Instagram Reels, We don't have to, you know, we don't have to look like bozos. True.

I love what you said that this is a Salesforce automation tool. And instead of like, we receive a lot of like, I believe those are standard requests. Oh, I see you are real estate investors. We should chat. We should not chat because I received the same question. The same request over and over again, and I'm tired. I don't know if you're scamming me or if you're wasting time, or this is it, like, this is the call to action. So what can we do instead of, like, reaching out versus attracting it? What can we do in our profile that will make our, our company be a magnet for other people and other companies that we can either collaborate or people we can serve.

So I, I'm going to, to mention my methodology. I have methodology, I call it SOAR, SOAR to success on LinkedIn. And SOAR is an acronym. It stands for strategize, optimize, amplify, and relate. So the very first thing in order to become that magnet, to be, in order to really approach LinkedIn, you need to do it strategically. You need to say in your head, Why am I here? What am I really trying to accomplish? Am I doing this for branding? Am I doing this for prospecting? Am I doing this for reputation management? Why am I here? You need to know that. You need to know who your target audience is. You need to know if they were looking for you, what would the words be? Because not everyone knows that you exist. So what are those keywords a person might be using to try to collide with you? So you really need to think of all of those things. And I would even go so far as to say, think about your story. How do you want to present yourself? How do you want to be seen? You can control how others perceive you by the words and the stories that you tell. Really think in terms of how do I want to be perceived by that audience? So that's the strategize portion of SOAR. Then you gotta optimize. You gotta go in there and really Be strategic. We've already done the strategy piece. Write it very specifically and fill it out. Like I said before, that profile is so robust. I mean, you can have your entire career trajectory. And that right there can, you know, for us as women, you know, sometimes like guys look at us and they're like, ah, you know, why are you here? What brought you into this room? Well, buddy, look at my profile. Look at where I've been. Look at what I've done. Look at these accomplishments. They prove, you know, my presence here. We don't want to just copy and paste a resume. But we want to use it as this manner, this platform, as a professional manifesto to tell our story, to impress and prove who we are and what we do. At that point— and Andresa, if I'm going too deep, just let me know.

No, this is great. I'm listening and just like, tell me more.

Tell me more. That's great.

But now this profile is going to act as as almost like a calling card, as bait, it's going to be floating there within the LinkedIn ocean. And when people are searching, they're going to find us. And maybe they're searching for us, maybe they know who we are, maybe they know that we're gonna be walking through the door talking to them about something. But now we have this profile that's really going to showcase our skills, our abilities, our accomplishments. And so it can create that rapport earlier right? But there's people who also maybe need someone like us, and we can collide with those searches because we've, we've done our, our due diligence in terms of thinking about our keywords. We've infused them into our profile. Now here's the thing, this is where most people get caught up, all right? So they, they've done these things, but they're not getting any traction on LinkedIn. They're not getting any traction because they haven't amplified. Amplification is in the size of your network. All right. I was just doing a presentation yesterday and I, and I said to everyone, get out your phones, hit my network on your profile, on your app, your LinkedIn app. How many people are in your network? 150, 200, 500. These numbers are not enough. We really need to think about who have we met throughout our career. And it's not just people in the real estate industry. We want to make sure that we are connecting with our true network, our true network, people we went to school with, our neighbors, our friends, our families. It doesn't matter if they're in different industries, because remember what I had said earlier? I said, when you connect with someone, you're connecting with their network and their network's network. So as you're connecting with that neighbor who maybe he's in manufacturing, but maybe he's connected with other real estate developers. Maybe he's connected to investors, right? So we really want to be open in terms of those connections. I'm not saying connect with, you know, the guy from Nigeria who has like, you know, $100 million he wants to just give to you. But, you know, be open about it. You need to have a strong network. Without a strong network, without a— I don't want to say vast, but you know, a forged network, a network where you've really built it and you continue to build it. You continue to connect. Once you have that, then you want to start to relate to people. And that's really the networking aspect. So what does that mean? That means get on LinkedIn. Actually, here, here, let's, let's say this. You've got your smartphone in your hand, right? You got, maybe you got yourself a cup of coffee. Maybe it's the end of the day, maybe a glass of red wine. And what do you want to do? You want to go to Instagram. Don't you? You wanna look at pretty pictures. You know, you wanna, maybe you wanna go to Facebook. I say this, stop, go to LinkedIn instead, because LinkedIn can actually help you in your career, can help you in your professional life. So yeah, I know you wanna go to Instagram, go to LinkedIn and scroll through that feed. And you may find that it's just as engaging and just as interesting as the one over on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok.

Yeah.

And you start to like and comment. This is the big issue with LinkedIn. And that is people are so scared to actually do anything, but that means we've got this great opening. We've got this great opportunity because less than 1% of their active monthly users are actually creating anything.

Hmm. Less than 1%.

1%. It's ridiculous. So this is— don't think of it like, oh, this is a place I want to be. There's an audience that is consuming this information. They're consuming it. They're just not creating anything. So it's low barrier to entry, low-hanging fruit here.

Love that. Yeah. I mean, it's funny because I, you know, previously I used LinkedIn in my consulting days, in my sales days. And then as I transitioned, I just kind of forgot about LinkedIn. You know, you, you almost like forget about it. And then as we, you know, we've, we've, we've launched our community, our podcast, and ramping things up on, on our investor kind of movement, I'm re-engaging with it for a very variety of reasons, just personally, right? Just, you know, in terms of, but there's so many ways companies, collaborators, uh, a lot of people, a lot of investors will use LinkedIn for passive investors, right? And because these are professional, these are busy people who don't want to be active. They don't want to go find the property. They may want to invest with somebody else. So there's so many ways that we could be engaging on this platform. I'm curious though, you know, from a, from a content perspective, what seems to work with LinkedIn? You know, is it obviously, you know, everyone says video, video is the key to so many different, you know, social media outlets. Is it, is it that, is it repurposing? Is it creating something specific for LinkedIn? I'm just curious about that.

LinkedIn has a really unusual algorithm. And if you can understand the algorithm, then you can— it's just another way of getting more traction on this network. So this is how I want you to think about LinkedIn. Now, what I'm going to say is for the average user. I'm not talking about that mega influencer. All right. Mega influencers have a different set of rules. But for that person, that professional who's out there, who wants some traction, who wants some success, who wants to feel like their time is worth, they're getting an investment for their time. What I want you to do is recognize this. One, you do need to post, but you don't have to post every day. You don't have to post numerous times a day. If you can post once a week, if you could post twice a week, I'm sorry, once a week or once every 2 weeks. I'm taking away that intimidation and like, you know, the post once a week, post once every 2 weeks. But when you post, make sure the post is high quality. Make sure it's asking for engagement. So don't just tell a story. I mean, Liz, you just told that great story about the library book. I mean, you could, you could repurpose that for LinkedIn and you could even say, What's the highest fee you've ever paid? Or, you know, like, ask.

That's a great point.

And people— what LinkedIn wants is, they publicly stated this, they want that newsfeed to be people you know talking about the things you care about. All right? So we have to always think that, keep that in mind, right? So people you know, how do they know who you know? Well, they know based upon your network, but they also know because you've engaged with these people on other posts. So when I tell you post once a week or once every 2 weeks, I'm not saying don't get on the LinkedIn platform the rest of the time, but when you are on the LinkedIn platform, spend time commenting on other people's posts. So let LinkedIn know who you know and who you have those relationships with. So when you do post, they're the ones that get it first and they're going to actively engage with it because you've been engaging with them. All right? So that right there is, that's a secret. That's something that very few people talk about. All right? So, you know, post, but when you're not posting, engage with other people. And don't just scroll past a post. When you see a post that you know the person, you actually know that person, like it, comment, say something. The other thing I said is talking about things that you care about, things that you care about. How do they know what you care about? Hashtags. So make sure you follow hashtags, but also make sure that you're including hashtags in your posts. They say 3 to 5, that's the magic number. Totally different than, than Instagram. Okay. So in that 3 to 5, and, and think in terms of, there's no like list of hashtags, but so what you want to do is part of that SOAR, you know, my SOAR methodology is the strategize part. And part of strategizing is What are your hashtags? What are the hashtags that you talk about? Is it real estate? Is it real estate development? Is it investors? You know, is it high net worth? Like, I don't know what, but you've got to figure it out and you want to do that search ahead of time. So, you know how many followers that hashtag has, right? Because we don't want to just use a hashtag that has zero followers. That's not going to help anybody. You know, I remember when they first introduced hashtags, I remember doing a search and I thought, I was like, okay, you know, I just did a post. I'm gonna, I'm gonna do hashtag marketing tips. That sounded like great to me, marketing tips. And I, so I thought, but let me first check. So I ran the search to see on LinkedIn. I just did hashtag marketing tips in the search, the search bar, the top of the screen came back 5,000 followers. I'm like, ooh, that's not bad. 5,000 followers that I think I'm gonna use, but let me try something else. I did marketing, hashtag marketing, 5 million. The LinkedIn world, it seems like the more general the hashtag, the better performing it is.

Mm-hmm.

Nice. And Donna, I want to talk about mistakes, right? Because you've probably seen tons of mistakes that maybe that company, their website or their branding, it's not matching what they have on LinkedIn, or it's just different language. The copy is not concise, consistent. What are the biggest mistakes that you have seen and how can we avoid them?

Biggest mistakes that I see, a lot of people don't like to write about themselves. They find it very, very hard. And so they'll just regurgitate already created information. So on their profile, they'll copy and paste a resume or an old bio. And, you know, and they wonder why they're not getting any type of opportunity, why they're not colliding with good things. It's because they're branding themselves in a manner that isn't aligned to their future. It almost clings them to their past. And that's why they feel pigeonholed, because they're not actively telling the world who they are and why they're there and what they're trying to accomplish. So regurgitating old information is, is huge. The company page doing the exact same thing. You know, people probably were already at your, your website. Don't just take that about section and paste it into your company page. They're there now to learn something else. So let's use LinkedIn to build, build in terms of that information. So they recognize there's still so much more they need to reach out to learn more.

Love that. Talk a little bit about branding for the future. That's interesting. I mean, that's so important, but I think that's such an interesting point. And this is a key point for the women listening. So tell me more about that. Tell me a little bit more how someone would kind of explore that a bit so they can ensure they're— because, you know, I'll just say this as you answer that. Women don't want to appear that there's something that they're not. On the other hand, there is a level of ensuring that the companies, the people we're attracting align with where we're headed.

When we look at the LinkedIn profile, for years LinkedIn said, oh, it's just your online resume, copy and paste your online. You know what? We're not everyone is on LinkedIn because they're looking for a job, right? Most people are looking for connections. They're looking for relationships. They're looking for, you know, potential clients, partnerships. You know, they're on it for other reasons than a job. And yet they copy and paste an old out-of-date resume and they put it out there. And, you know, you— this is your chance. People are looking.

How about the picture, Donna? From 1995.

You know what? And Andresa, like, sorry to interrupt you, but I just like to be imaginative. Or, or when you can see like the bathroom mirror behind them or a steering wheel, it's like, oh goodness, you'd think we'd be further advanced. But no, you're, you're absolutely right. You know, I always say this, you know, people want to do business with successful people. Right. It's less risky, you know? So, so how can you make yourself appear? How can you make yourself look like that success that you most likely already are? Let's be honest with you. You are, you know, professionally taken headshot. And if you don't have one, go to headshotcrew.com, find a person in your area and just book it. Just get it done. It's surprisingly affordable, you know, but get that, get that headshot, but also Again, soar, right? Strategize. Who do you want to be? Where do you want to go? What is that direction? And I hate to get new agey, but the universe is not going to deliver unless you're ready. And you've got to say, you have to be very specific, very deliberate. This is who I am. This is how I help. This is what I stand for. This is what I represent. We really need to think this through. And when you write your LinkedIn profile, it's not about bragging. I'm not saying, like, tell me all your accomplishments. But maybe tell me a story that features some of these accomplishments. What are the things that have made you proud? What are the things that you want to continue to do? That's what we focus in on. That right there, when we work with executives and professionals, whether it's on their resume or if it's on their LinkedIn profile, One of the things that I find is hard for them is letting go. Yes, you made some great accomplishments in your past, but you don't want to do them again because that was from your past. We've got to think about your future. What do you want to do? And that's what we talk about because that's what's going to allow you to get found, right, to do it again.

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That's a great point. I'm totally thinking about my profile right now. I'm like, ooh, I got some serious work to do. So we got the profile. I get that. I have two questions to follow up on that. You talk about your LinkedIn headline. I'm not even sure what that even is. So can you tell a little more about what that is and the importance of it and maybe some tips on how women listening can improve that? Why should we improve it? And what do we do to improve it?

Oh, Liz, thank you so much for bringing that up because that is such a— it's such an important point. And it's something that LinkedIn buries. They bury it into the profile. And people don't recognize how important it is. So when you are looking at your profile, there's your picture, there's your name, and right underneath your name is the headline. And this headline is not just resident at the top of your profile. Any type of activity that you do, that your picture, your name, and your headline follows you. It's even there in the search results. So if someone is typing in, you know, real estate developer or whatever it might be, and you want to pop up in those search results, when you infuse those keywords into your headline, you're more apt to pop up higher in the search results. And then when the person is scanning those search results and they're looking at the picture, the name, and the headline. If that headline is developed in a manner that is, that is compelling and intriguing, not overly salesy, because salesy turns people off, you can convey that you are the solution to, you know, what they're looking for. You're going to get more clicks to your profile. And when they click on your profile and they look through your profile and that profile is optimized, and written strategically to that target audience, conversion takes place. That conversion could be a phone call. It could be visiting a website. It could be downloading a white paper, whatever you want that conversion to be. All right. So in terms of the headline, 220 characters max, who you are, what you do, how you help, infusing those keywords, the ones that you really wanna be found for, the meat and potatoes, the ones that are like the most important. It's hard to do. 220 characters, that's like a sentence. That's less than a sentence. I hired a developer and we created a LinkedIn headline generator app. It's on my website and it's totally free. So if you visit LinkedIn-Makeover.com and you click on free resources, you'll see it listed under the apps. It's the LinkedIn headline generator, but it's a really fun little tool. I don't— you girls don't look old enough to remember Mad Libs. Do you remember the game Mad Libs? Yeah.

I could use the excuse that I'm not from here.

I totally did Mad Libs. Yeah.

So Andresa, what Mad Libs is, it was like a little booklet that you could buy from like Scholastic at school. It would give you like a story, but the story was missing certain verbs and adjectives. And you'd say to your partner, you know, you're doing it with a friend. You say, OK, give me a noun, any noun. Give me— and then you— write it in, and you'd get this really silly story. That was sort of like my inspiration when creating this generator. It says, give me your business title, give me your keyword, and then we roll it together. And it comes up into a really attractive, compelling headline that you can copy and paste. But you can also play with it and use it and use it to sort of stimulate and inspire you. But it gives you a structure that very few people recognize that there is this a very specific structure for that headline. I love that.

Donna, do you think based on things are really changing in terms of TikTok and the speed, how short the videos are and the changes on Facebook and Instagram is just like, I believe we're in transition right now and trying to figure things out. What are the latest changes with LinkedIn? And do you think that it will embrace more and more videos or you think that they will stand where they have been.

They tried, they tried with Stories, which is very much like Reels. It has a bit of a TikTok flair and it didn't work. They removed it. They got rid of it about 6 months ago. So they did try. What I think they're doing now is they're now inserting a video into the profile picture. And I believe that's the way they're going to now try to get sort of that stories quality back by injecting it more into the profile than through the newsfeed, which is what they were doing. In terms of the posts that perform better on LinkedIn, so one of the things that LinkedIn has within their algorithm is this thing called dwell time. And dwell time means like, are they just scrolling or are they stopping and looking and kind of like, even if they're not actively engaging through a like or a comment, Are they hitting the show more to expand that post? That conveys to LinkedIn, oh, this is relevant. This is intriguing. This is interesting. If this person liked it, other people may like it because LinkedIn wants to serve good quality content. They want that homepage to be sticky. They don't want people going out. So with that in mind, the longer the post actually does better because it creates that show more, which would then make a person click. See more. That conveys to LinkedIn. And so those posts actually do better. So it's actually the opposite. It's like, it's not the shorter the post, it's actually the longer the post. So that's the one thing to think in terms of. The other thing is polls do amazingly well. I don't know why. I don't know why, but they do. You know, you do a post within like 5, 10 minutes, you're going to have 1,000 views on that thing. It lasts for a week, you close it out, you have at least, you know, 5 to 10,000 views on the whole thing. And it didn't take long to do. So that may change, you know, I don't know when people are listening to this podcast. But you know, right now, the last year and a half, polls have done really, really well. So that's something to consider and to utilize.

Donna, for the ladies that are listening and they're asking, Why the hell should I do a poll? What do I get out of that by doing a poll and investing time on just asking a question or surveying it?

Top-of-the-mind awareness, I would say. It's also a way of just engaging. You know, people see you, they see that you're posting, they see that you're relevant, they're engaging with you. It's a touchpoint. You know, back in the day, you know, you take something like Sandler sales training and they used to talk about, you know, the 6-point sales Yeah, strategy.

Yeah.

And that's— I joined LinkedIn back in 2005. I, you know, I set up shop in 2009, and back then a lot of the same principles are the principles that we're using today. It's, it's— you want to be seen, you want to be known, you want to create that feeling of trust, that feeling of familiarity. Those are all things that, whether it was back in the '20s or it's back now in the, you know, 2020s, it's still valuable and it makes people feel good and wanna work with you.

Yeah. And the connections are huge. The other day I connected, a woman invited me to a women in wealth conference and just on a whim, you know, obviously knew that we're in the work of empowering women and, and, and real estate. So she invited me, I couldn't make it, but I messaged her. I said, thank you so much for inviting me. I'd love to connect with you further. I looked at your profile and I'm really curious to learn more about Women in Wealth, you know, because we are always looking for collaborators. We want to serve more women. And we had a call this week and it was, it was a great conversation. There's going to be some potential opportunities to maybe collaborate for her to come to our community, etc. But that wouldn't have happened if I hadn't reached out. So I, I just say that not to make myself look good at all. Um, looking good, Liz, but I do like to look good, but that's a sidebar. But no, it's really about like taking that next step. It's not going to just be about posting. We have to actually reach out. And connect. And not everyone knows how to do that, you know? So I don't know if you have any particular tips on that to Andresa's point. Hey, I wanna connect. So does everyone else. Like, especially as you, as you get out there in your business, what are some of those messaging? This, this woman was very kind to invite me to an event that was totally connected to what I'm in the business of doing. So there was a connection. What other things can women listen to, especially if they may not think in the networking connection way, what could they do? What are some of those strategies?

So what I like about the way you're phrasing this is, how can I— how can we connect? How can we network? And I think that in itself is the real key point to all of this. So many times people get onto LinkedIn with this idea of, I need a job. I need prospects. I need leads. I need sales. Like, give it to me. And there's almost a desperate quality.

Or just not good.

It's not good. It turns people off. So what I would say is this. Approach LinkedIn as this conduit for good, right? So you're getting on it because you want to add value. You want to educate. You want to inspire. You want to motivate. You want to act as that person who can find people with good synergies, and you want to bring them together. You want to introduce people. You want to open up your network to people and give them the resources to be successful. I think for women that resonates with us. We want to help. We want to, you know, do that. But when you do that and you do it repeatedly, it's this giving mentality and people resonate to that. People love it and people want to do business with you. So take that step back and say, let me not get on here and like just try to hammer people with like, here's these properties, you know, here's this. But, you know, really look at it and say, how can I, how can I help people? How can I add that value? How can I educate? How can I inspire others? And when you do that and you do it over the long term and you do it in a consistent manner, people are going to remember you. They're going to know who you are. They're going to know what you do. And when they're ready for you, they're going to— your phone will ring.

Yeah, I love that. Advertising on LinkedIn. Just curious about that. You know, obviously, you know, On Facebook, a lot of advertising is going on. You can, you know, as soon as you start to do a search, it's like it's in your Facebook feed. Is it different, similar? You know, is there value to people paying for advertising, advertisements on LinkedIn? I'm just curious to get your thoughts in general about that strategy.

If you have a high-ticket item, it works. LinkedIn advertising is expensive. It's expensive. It's not cheap. So if you have a, you know, if it's, if what you're selling isn't of a, you know, a high ticket price, you might be better off just organically using LinkedIn in a very natural type of way. And you'll see some good stuff happen. You know, it really, again, it just, it depends on what it is that you're trying to do, but it is a little bit different, but they do have, they have a number of different ways of offering you advertising. It's no longer just like that skyscraper ad on the right-hand side. I mean, they have in-mails and you can sponsor posts and they've been testing like a messaging aspect, which is, which is really interesting. I think kind of harkens back to what Facebook has been doing for a little bit. I think the next aspect to that question though, is something that a lot of people think about is, should I pay for LinkedIn? You know, it's not just the advertising piece, but should I be paying for Sales Navigator? Should I be paying for, you know, a premium level of LinkedIn? And I do believe that it makes sense to pay for LinkedIn. There's absolute high return on that investment. However, for most people, rather than embarking upon your LinkedIn experience with a thought of, should I pay, embark thinking, let me use LinkedIn. Let me, let me access it like a tool. Let me connect. Let me have a great profile and to keep that up updated. Let me engage with my network. Let me post and comment and like, and let me do that. And once you do that for an extended period of time, you will know when it's time to upgrade because you're suddenly going to feel tethered. You're going to say, wait, I want to see everybody who's checked out my profile because I just put out that large proposal and I want to see if these people are coming back and looking at my profile, but I can only see the last 5. Well, guess what? You need to pony up some cash to get to the premium to see everyone who's viewed your profile. You may even say, you know what, I want to start reaching out to more people than just those who are in my network. I want anyone to message me on LinkedIn, not just the people that I'm directly connected to. You gotta pony up some cash for that. So you will start to say to yourself, I want more.

Yeah, which is great. And I love that because it's so many— it's so connected to everything else that you know, the women listening and our real estate investors will utilize, right? They'll, they'll use sometimes the tools that are for free to collect rent for one property or something, and then they start to scale and like, okay, it's time because it makes sense now. And same thing to what, to what you're saying. Donna, this has been great. I feel like I have more and more questions to ask you, so we gotta continue the conversation, of course. But where can the ladies listening learn more about you and connect with you further?

Sure. Visit my website, linkedin-makeover.com. That's where you can get my, the free app, tons of free resources there. And we're always here to help people build their profile, utilize LinkedIn more effectively, and really reap the rewards that are there.

Awesome. All this information you guys can find on our show notes. Now we're going to transition to our fabulous 3 questions, Ana, and the first one is, what's the most transformational book you ever read?

You know, I really did like Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. That was a really good one. Yeah, I think that would be the one that I would, I would have to say did a lot of life-changing thoughts to me.

Great. Great. The second question is, what's the most powerful routine that you do to live a financially free and balanced life, whatever balance means to you?

What is one, one routine thing that I do every day? I'm a to-do list junkie and it's, it's one of those simple things, but in my mind, there's nothing more powerful than being able to sit down and say, all right, this is what I want to accomplish. It holds you accountable. It keeps you moving forward. But it also gives you that sense of gratitude that, wow, yeah, I've done something. So it keeps you moving ahead. And so I would have to say it's just that daily to-do list.

And last question, which woman, famous or not, has inspired you the most?

Oh my, oh my. You know, I can't say the most. I have some amazing clients. That talking to them and hearing what they've accomplished and what they continue to accomplish, I cannot just say one person. There's just so many. But I have some amazing clients who just knock me over with the things that they've accomplished.

Awesome. Donna, thank you so much for being on our show today. Thanks for sharing your wisdom with our community. So appreciate your time so much.

Thank you so much. Thank you for having me, guys.

Thank you, Donna. If you enjoyed this podcast and want to receive updates on our next interviews, go to our website, therealestateinvestor.com. There you can subscribe to our show, become part of our investor community, and get updates on upcoming episodes.

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Ciao.