LInkedIn Training 2018 - How to leverage LinkedIn to drive REAL business!

Okay. So what you're saying is that you're on LinkedIn and you're trying to figure out what's the best way to be able to leverage LinkedIn without getting sucked into the craziness of your newsfeed. Is that what it is you want?

Well, that plus how do you, how do you use LinkedIn if you've got, you know, 1,500 connections and thousands more of potential buyers that are out there? How do you find them, engage them, and, And convert them into suspects or prospects and clients.

Okay. So let me, let me give you— there, there are basically 2 different ways to be able to leverage LinkedIn. There's the push way, and then there's the pull way. There's the push way and the pull way. The push way means that you're outbound reaching out to people, and the pull way means you're pulling people towards you. That means you're waiting for people to come to you. They say you build it, they will come. So the best combination is To both do push and pull. So I'll show you exactly what I'm talking about. So if you're— take a look at your articles. I'm going to click on View All Articles. Can you see my screen?

Yep.

Okay, great. You'll see the most recent article you did was August 14th, 2017. Are you reactive or proactive networker? Right. So who are you talking to here? Are you talking to people that are networkers? Are you having a conversation with people that are networkers? And then we go in here and we read it. Recent discussions, blah blah blah. And then you go, go, go, go, go. And you see you had 22 people that liked it, 3 people that commented, and 4 people that shared it. Okay, and this was obviously for your target partners, people that would refer business to you so that you could educate them because you are an expert networker. You're teaching people about networking, right?

Right.

Now if you go back And you look at the article before that was how an accidental release of data can cost you tens of millions of dollars. So obviously you're talking to who there? You're talking to CFOs, your target market.

Correct.

Okay. So you, you write an article, you got 3 likes over here. Now the question is why, why'd you get so many likes on this one and such few likes on this one? That's one question that I would be asking myself.

Right.

And the second thing I would ask myself is why haven't you posted anything more recently? I mean, it's been a year, more than a year since last time you had any activity here? That's, that's another question I would ask myself. And then if I click on posts, those are the articles. If I click on posts, I'll see the last time I posted anything on LinkedIn was a month ago.

Right.

And you posted a statistic here which got 2 likes. And then before that, you, uh, when should a company start blah blah blah, and you wrote something else over here, um, also around a month ago. And I go back and I see a month ago you were pretty active Um, but then before that it was 5 months ago, so 3 months ago. So that's what I call dabbling, right? When you have time, you do it and you dabble a little bit, and then you kind of get lost, and then you totally forget about it, right?

Totally.

So that's— now what, what happens if you dabble in networking? What happens if you go to a networking event once every 3 months and then you kind of follow up but kind of don't follow up? What do you think will happen to your results? Because you're an expert networker. What do you think would happen? Obviously what would happen is you wouldn't get any results because networking needs consistency.

Right.

And the same thing with LinkedIn. You need to have a certain level of consistency where you're building a relationship with your followers. Right now you have 1,581 followers, and that you're building a relationship with them over time that would allow you to access their relationships as well. Because when they engage with your content, then your relationships are, are being taken advantage of as well. You're actually being seen by their stuff, by their friends will see your stuff. Take a look at these people here. Do you know who Andrew Singer is and Michael Kaufman?

Sure.

Have you recently reached out to them?

I saw them both on Thursday.

Okay, great. That's awesome. That's awesome. And the reason why they liked your stuff is possibly because they like you. They like you as an individual and probably you like them. Do you know Walt Goschert and Joseph Biske? Do you know all these people here on the list?

Just about, yep.

And have you reached out to all these people recently?

Uh, just a couple of them.

Right. So what I would say is, in order for you to be successful on LinkedIn, you have to see who's engaging with your stuff, who's commenting on your stuff, and then how often are you communicating with them, either via LinkedIn or in person or a combination of both? And are you looking at their own stuff? So if you saw these 2 people on Thursday, right, because they're part of your networking event, You go here and you just basically see what has Andrew been up to.

Hmm.

He only has 400 followers on LinkedIn, but you look at his posts, recent posts, and you see that 5 minutes ago he posted something, and then a day ago, and then 2 days ago, and then—

Yep.

But he's doing it to a following of 400 people. You have 1,500 people that you could be doing it to, and he's very active. But again, he's, he's active talking about case studies and GDPR. He's doing a lot of informing. And what I tell people on LinkedIn, you could do informing, but more importantly, what you want to do is you also want to do educating and entertaining and engaging. And there's many other things you could be doing on LinkedIn. Now let's take a look at my profile just so you see from the— again, this is all pulling more than pushing, right? You want to pull people towards you by staying top of mind with them. Let's look at my profile and see my activity here. And see what's going on here. So if I click on all activity, you'll see the things that I've done recently, the things that I posted recently. And you click on posts, and you'll see that recently I posted an engaging post. Can you help me with this? 67 people saw this, one person liked it. It didn't go viral. It didn't get the attention that I wanted it to get. I'm also going to mention people's names. I mentioned one person's name, but I'm going to ask for For example, Corey, I'm going to ask Corey. Okay. Because I want to create a rap. Can you help me get this rap going? Looking for some lyrics. What would be one sentence that must go in the rap? My name is Joe and I'm the LinkedIn pro. 15K connections and I'm looking to grow. I want to help my people, teach them how to fish, make your dreams come true, and grant you any wish. LinkedIn's so big with 500 million members, people are so confused like it's sunny in December.

Only you, Joe. Only you can do this.

But that's me. That's who I am, right?

It is.

This is who I am. I need some lines. I'm asking for some help here. I also— I'm talking over here. I'm telling people that I do speaking. speaking engagements, and I have a video that I recently got released. 150 people liked it. 9 people liked it. I'm going to reach out to the 9 people that liked it and say, and by the way, I'm having a meeting with Michael, and I'm going to ask Michael if he knows anybody. And I'm having a meeting with Norman. I'm going to ask Norman or Philip if they know anybody that I could assist them, you know, and so on and so forth. So you can see I made a public introduction over here, introduction by Joe Apfelbaum between these 2 people. 1,700 people saw it. 19 people liked it. 6 people commented. I responded to the comments. I posted something about gratitude here. I posted a quote, you see, by Stephen King. Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is what? A lot of hard work. You know that.

Mm-hmm.

I'm doing a speaking engagement next week on the 28th, and I shared it and I told everyone they can come to the thing with my special code. I have a code they can—

thing.

Over here, I'm telling people 4 simple steps of how to increase profile views. And what they can be doing, because I want to teach people how to fish. Here I just posted a birthday selfie of myself freezing in New York City. Look at the engagement on this, 1,700 people. You know, look at the engagement on that. And people— and I asked people, I said, post a selfie of yourself, and people posted.

How do you convert these levels of engagement into something valuable?

So the way that I convert it to something valuable is that Right now I'm having— I'm building relationships with people. So, um, somebody just contacted— somebody just made an introduction to me and said, Joe, I see all your content. You obviously are the expert in marketing, the expert in business. I have a client who needs help, and I've been watching your updates, and, um, can I introduce you to my client? And boom, I get an introduction. Um, I got an introduction today. If you go to my Facebook, Let me go to my Facebook profile real quick just to quickly show you. Um, I go to my messaging and this literally happened today. Let me see, messaging. Rachel. Rachel sent me a message. She wrote, um, hi Joe, I'm with EO Seattle, been looking for some help with LinkedIn marketing, heard you were the expert, blah blah blah. Sure, email me.

Boom.

You see?

Mm-hmm.

Um, this, this is the stuff. It doesn't only happen in this, it happens with people that just see me updating You know, somebody just today reached out to me and said, Joe, I see that you're speaking. Could you come speak for my organization? Like 2 weeks ago, I closed a $40,000 deal for somebody that was a second-degree connection that needed branding. I don't write that I do branding, but we do branding for B2B companies. We can rebrand your B2B company. So we signed up for a branding gig. It was $40,000. You know, so it's— I see money, business coming in, not necessarily— people say, yeah, but you're on LinkedIn promoting that you do LinkedIn. Of course. No, I'm not promoting that I do LinkedIn. of the time not even talking about any of that stuff.

Is that with, uh, do I see Mitch Brill?

Oh yeah, Mitch Brill. Where do you see Mitch Brill?

Right there.

Yeah, yeah. And, and then what I do is I also post selfies of me with people that I meet at events. And then what happens is they say, oh, I knew that guy, I know that guy, I know this person, or I know another. And then they're like, oh my gosh, he's friends with my friends. And then it turns into business. So that's basically what happened. I invite people to webinars, I inspire people, tell them I lost weight. I tell, you know, I also want to see who my engaged folk are, right? So not everyone out of my 15,000 followers are going to be engaged. But if I have 100 people that are engaged or 200 people that are engaged, those are my people. So I want to know who my people are. And once I know who my people are, I start learning about them and building a relationship with them because they're showing up to my networking event every day. These 18 people here, likely that most of these 18 people are showing up to my networking event every day. Shragi will refer business to me. David became a client of mine. Yorochim wants to become a client of mine. Mandy just reached out to me for coaching. I introduced him to another coach because he wasn't right for me. You see what I'm saying? Israel came to 5 of my networking events. Now some of these other people, I have no idea who they are. I know that this guy has a really great podcast, which eventually one day I want to be on his podcast, so I'm engaging with him. He came to 2 or 3 of my events. But I have to find— look at the other people. David Schnurman is the CEO of Lawline. They're doing incredible, incredible things. And he's the president of Entrepreneurs Organization, and he was a client of mine as well. And he's constantly referring business to me because he sees me on LinkedIn every single day. So that's the pull component. The push component is a whole nother animal. I'm going to show you the push component real quick over here. The push component is, um, if you go to my profile, you're gonna see a bunch of people trying to set up calls with me. What happened? Why are people suddenly trying to set up calls with me? Because I'm reaching out to them. So if you go to my recent activity over here, you'll see this is just through November 16th, right? Look how many messages have gone back and forth.

Wow.

Look how many messages have gone, and I'm trying to scroll down lower just so you can see the 15th, um, because, um, nothing major happened on Friday the 16th, but look what happened on the 15th. Look how many messages were sent out. Amy, looks like we're connected on LinkedIn. Would you like to see what we're doing for CEOs? Hey Tim, looks like we're connect— great talking to you. Whatever. I just had a conversation with him back a year ago. It's time to get back in touch with him, right? So I'm going back and I'm looking. Boom. This was a successful one. Hey Zach, blah blah blah blah blah. Not actually on LinkedIn very often. I heard about your events through these people, blah blah blah. You see what's going on over here?

Yeah, but, you know, going back to what you said earlier, a lot of these people are engaging you on LinkedIn because you're promoting your LinkedIn expertise.

Correct, correct. But whatever I would be promoting, they would be engaging with me about that. And because I see it for my clients, I've helped over 15 clients be able to do this, and I know that whatever you're posting on LinkedIn about, that's what people are going to be engaging with you about. So if I posted about the fact that I was a coach, I would get tons of coaching clients. There's a guy, Kurt Mercadante. Have you heard of him?

No.

He's doing— his goal is to do $1 million a year as a coach, but he literally does coaching. That's what he does. And look at his activity. He has 20,000 followers and he's literally on there every single day adding value, posting content, active in the comments. And he's getting— and he's doing tens of thousands of dollars in recurring revenue from his programs just from doing this, and he's just getting started. He had a— used to have a PR agency, but look at this, right? Stop talking, start doing, blah blah blah blah blah, right?

Mm-hmm.

Inspirational, entertaining questions. What the hell is a grill grinder bowl? And then he's just getting into it. You see, he's constantly— and this is just in the past week. And look at his stuff. Look how many likes and comments he has. Look how many views he has. He's active. He's posting videos and content and information and other people's stuff and articles and podcasts and whatever. He's active. He's sharing, posting. So I know for a fact that he's getting business because I see people talking about him and everything that they're doing. So, and he reaches out too. He doesn't just sit around and wait for people to come to him. He's also doing outreach and he's invited me to some of his events. Outreach to me. So that's, you know, the fact is there are people that are out there that are doing all types of work, especially in your line of business. There's no reason why you can't stay top of mind with your existing connections. If you take a look at the most important number on LinkedIn, it's your profile views. How many profile views have you had in the past 90 days? Right now, I've— my goal is to be 1,000 a week. Right, right now, look, this is where I am. I'm only about 500 a week. But how many people have looked at your profile in the past week? And it directly correlates to how many people you're reaching out to by pushing, and by pulling, how many posts you're posting of quality content to your target audience. Those are 2 very important things. Now I can give you 15 other factors that you could look at, but I'm saying if you're taking a look at a very simple approach, what should I be doing on LinkedIn?

Right.

Pushing and pulling, literally pushing and pulling. That's what you should be doing. Pushing means you should be reaching out to people, kind of like cold calling but without selling, just building relationships, networking. And pulling is just constantly putting yourself out there so that people see who you are, what you're about, what you're doing, so that you can ultimately grow your business. Because if you're top of mind, if you post once a month, it's not going to really help you much.

Right.

It's like going to a networking event once a year.

Right. No, I understand that. I guess, you know, the challenge is, is what do you post? You know, I create my own content. I see a lot of other content, but let's face it, insurance is not as exciting as, you know, B2B marketing like you're doing.

It's not exciting, and that's why a lot of the stuff that I'm— by the way, I'm posting is not necessarily about B2B marketing. This is my I have a webinar tomorrow at 3:30 PM where I take people through my blueprint and I teach people how to go from a lurker to an influencer. And the reason why a lot of people are just lurkers, they're just watching and not posting. And by the way, this, this right here is my— let's see if I have— this right here is my like ladder of success. People are a technophobe, a lurker, a dabbler, or an influencer. And you can watch that video. I basically break it down. But, you know, this specific image right here, which is goals, target, message— that's your strategy. And your strategy is identifying what your goals are, figuring out who you're targeting, and then what message will resonate most with them. Because you don't have to target a million people. You target the right people, that's how you'll be successful. And so once you have a clear strategy, then you can create the right messaging to put out there that Doesn't necessarily have to be messaging that's selling insurance or even talking about insurance, but talking about who you are. I would love to see that you're a woodworker and find analogies from woodworking to business and to hard work and sales and networking. I would love to see what you're up to, the fact that you're a hiker and how hard it is to hike and, you know, who you're speaking to, or even knowing what you're up to, what networking events you're part of and what books you recently read and what TED Talks you've watched and who you are as an individual and Things that are going on in your life, and that's what your 1,500 connections and their friends want to see. They want to see who you are as an individual. And every once in a while, you'll throw in your article that you wrote 2 years ago about risk and compliance or whatever it is.

Yeah.

Every once in a while, you shove something in there. Most of my updates, if you take a look at my updates, most of my updates is not me selling anything. It's me just adding value and talking about the things that I'm wondering about, the things that I care about. If you take a look at my articles, um, yes, recently a lot of people have been asking me about LinkedIn. So my last 3 or 4 articles have been that about LinkedIn. But this has nothing to do with LinkedIn. Questions Hungry Entrepreneurs Must Ask Themselves to Prepare for 2019. What does that have to do with LinkedIn? Or How to Avoid Negative Feelings When Life Sucks. What does that have to do with marketing? Lessons from Entrepreneurs and Speakers by Dan Thurman. Nothing to do with LinkedIn. Questions for speakers at events organizers. And then I have my blueprint here where I basically break down the blueprint. And then I have a challenge and how to do the challenge. Or somebody said, Joe, you ran 12 networking events. How do you run a successful networking event? I say, here, this is how I did it. Here are the steps to do it. Somebody asked me, Joe, how do you create videos on LinkedIn? Here's how to do it. Um, how do you leverage your relationships? Um, how do you build meaningful relationships? And then so people ask me questions and, you know, how to increase your productivity. Um, you know, 8 sales reps to 60 sales reps or 5 sales reps that are 10 times more productive, which ones would you rather have? Um, you know, lessons from a seminar that I went to, uh, preparing for a networking event, 7 simple goals that will make you or break you. You know, kind of like I can go back, you know, I've wrote 150 articles over the past several years. This is not something that happens in one day, but the idea is to be able to share information with people that would add value to them. That's really the key. The key is adding value. And so if you go back and you see how my— you might say, Joe, how are you adding value writing about SMART goals? And I'm like, because a lot of people don't know how to set goals.

Right.

Go back. Don't say I want more money. Say I want $100K. Don't say I'll work harder and do more. Say I'll send 100 direct messages a day with the right strategy to 10 or 20 people on the phone. Don't say I'll shoot for the sky. Say I'm going to fill my current bandwidth to 80%, which means hire 3 new people and double my capacity. And so I was very specific with that, and 52 people agreed that that is something that's important to them, and 3,000 people saw it. That's just one update in the past 2 days, in the past 3 days. That's one update.

Yeah.

That's just one update that has nothing to do with marketing, literally nothing to do with marketing. Go back. I'm talking about how I lost 95 pounds and kept it off. What does that have to do with LinkedIn marketing? Nothing. My goal is to sell 125,000 copies of this book. Nothing to do with marketing. Every time I post this, I get sales. I see the sales come in. This is real money in the bank and really helping other people. What does this quote have to do with marketing? It's a quote that I love, that I love. You see what I'm saying?

Mm-hmm.

You go back and you'll see a lot of the stuff that I post are inspirational, have nothing to do with marketing. That's why people reach out to me and say, Joe, coach me. And I say, I don't really take on coaching clients. I'll refer you to somebody else. I'll take on the occasional client that's really hungry that I believe in, but most people that I speak to, I'm not going to take them on as a client because I don't have time. I shared a Russell Brunson video here, um, you know, telling people to blow up my notifications. Um, share I went to a seminar. I, you know, like, I— speaking engagements, ideas, recommendations, you know, how to get testimonials in general, right? I don't know how many recommendations you have, but my goal was to get 150 LinkedIn recommendations. I blew through that because I've been letting people know what my goal is, and people have been saying, Joe, you've added so much value to me, I'd love to leave you a recommendation. And I'm like, all right, cool, go ahead. And by the way, if anybody's watching this, please leave me a recommendation. Let me know what you got out of this.

Which I did.

Thank you. I appreciate that. I appreciate that you left me one. You know, what are you doing for Movember? What are you doing for Movember? I wrote, I'm growing my beard on a boat. And I have a bunch of bearded fellows on the boat.

Yeah, yeah.

No bearded women, but you know, for that we go to the circus. So that's the idea. Here I did a seminar in front of 100, 200 real estate agents, real estate and whatever professionals. It was just So much fun. Boom, I took a selfie and I posted it. Over here I did a networking event with Mitch Brill, another networking event with Mitch Brill.

Okay.

Um, here I took a selfie. Here I posted a testimonial that I got about how I inspire people. Again, nothing to do with LinkedIn marketing. This guy inspired separately, right? He's a CEO of, uh, of an IT company and a coach, and he wrote something very nice about me. So here's something I read in a book and I just posted it. Again, I'm not looking for a million likes on each thing. I'm looking for consistency. Like I say, I would rather have 1,000 people see me 1,000 times than have a million people see me once. I say this to everyone I know. So you know the importance of having your 1,500 people see you every day. You know that it's important for them to see you every day. Now the question is, are you going to email them every day? No, that's annoying. That's beyond annoying. But what you can do, and you have permission to do, is update your LinkedIn with the right strategy. Now, most people don't have the right strategy. That's why we created the blueprint to give you the step-by-step strategy that you need. We'll write down all the ideas into a document so you know what to do each day, because if you knew what to do each day, you wouldn't, you wouldn't have to think about it. You would just go in and do it.

Right.

So we have this strategy That's a step-by-step strategy where we walk you through what you need to be doing, what posts you should be posting, what articles you should be writing, what media you should be sharing, whether it's video, audio, images, whatever. And then your scheduling. We give you the actual schedule of what to do each day and how to do it, how to properly post, and then how to view your reporting, which is kind of like this idea, right? Everyone has reporting, but how do you read this? What do you do? How do you know if you're making— You know, like David, David Littauer came to a few of my events. He's a great guy. This guy, by the way, you see this guy here, Gabriel? He's gonna sign up to be a client tomorrow. He came to my webinar. He lives in Paris.

No kidding.

Yeah.

Hey, go back to, uh, go back to your blueprint for just a second. I want to just ask you a couple questions on that.

Sure, go ahead.

Um, So I think it's valuable that you're talking about, you know, the first row— goals, targets, messaging— but then media articles and posts. How much time are you recommending people spend on LinkedIn every day or every week?

Most people spend a significant amount of time trying to come up with ideas, but if you already have an asset library with all your ideas written out, I say that you need no more than 15 minutes a day and maybe an hour a week to kind of get organized, or 2 hours a month to really strategize and plan out your month. Make sure you have everything written down. But once you have a library of assets, I have a—

Let's talk about that. What's a library of assets?

So for example, there are 4 different types of assets that I like to have. So I like to have posts, things that I post all the time. I like to have articles that are ready to be sent out. So I'm constantly sharing my articles. I like to have videos that I can easily share. I have videos on my computer that I can easily, quickly share, you know, that are promotional videos. I have my rap video, which is in my library. You see this rap video? I, I've done a rap video in the past, a really great video.

Yeah.

Um, so I have a library of assets. So once you create your assets, I have 150 LinkedIn articles. I'm not going to share all of them, but I have my top 10 that are in my asset library that I can easily share Whenever I'm sharing content, I have certain images that I've created, kind of like this blueprint and a few other images that I have in my library that I can easily share whenever I feel like sharing those images. I don't have to think about it. I literally have all the ideas written out in advance, and then I'm able to share information in 15 minutes a day and not have to think about it. Once you prepare, like, it's kind of like, you know, preparing in advance, like the night before. Um, before I go running in the morning, I wouldn't go running in the morning if I didn't have my running gear laid out the night before, because I would get up and I would find something else to be busy with. But if I know where my toothbrush is, I know where my toothpaste is, I know where my scale is, I know where my water is, I know where my running gear is, I know everything is in the place that it needs to be. The same thing with your asset library. Most people are not going to post because they've never prepared to post.

And I would bet you that's the biggest struggle for most people who are not in marketing, is to create that library.

And that's why we do it together with you. Okay. And over time you'll have a library. Now you already have articles. You already, believe it or not, you have a library. You just haven't assembled it. So, um, and it's not perfect obviously, but over time you'll be able to perfect your library. And working with us through our blueprint, we do this blueprint where we send you a questionnaire We do a 90-minute strategy session, and then for 2 weeks we'll go out and create your, your asset library and your content calendar for you so you don't have to think about it. But if you go back to all the stuff that you've done, that you've dabbled with in the past, right, um, you can actually already have a library of things that you can share. You can keep resharing this article, um, and repurpose this article many times over. This is not something that you do one time. This is something that you can— You have this stuff that you already created. And if I dare to go to your website, I'll be able to more see, find more information about you.

Right.

Um, and that probably I can share as content and information, kind of like your story or like your competitive advantage and why you do what you do with your golden circle and like all this stuff. And if I go over here and I take a look at ideas, I could take view all your ideas over here. These are all amazing, amazing pieces of content that could be shared on your LinkedIn as a separate LinkedIn article or as a separate LinkedIn post.

Right.

This is stuff— this is relevant, great content. You could tag a few CFOs, you can ask questions. All this stuff's already here for the most part between me and you. It's a matter of putting it all together and making sure that you're targeting the right people. You know, who you work with. Who do you work with here? Let's see who you work with. Come on. I'll find those CFOs that you work with and I'll be like, oh cool, that's really, really awesome. This is who he works with. I don't know why it's not loading.

Go back to home.

Okay, now it works. Okay, it only works from home. Just keep that in mind. But you work with these companies, but you're not writing that you work with the CFO. So I would write, we work with CFOs and whatnot. Because those are the people that are most likely to hire you.

Right.

So I would show some photos of other CFOs and I would get more involved and have conversations on LinkedIn with CFOs. You see which CFOs are actually active on LinkedIn and then you mention them in your posts and say, I'm polling CFOs. What's the biggest trouble CFOs have in their job? Or what's the biggest frustration they have with their CEOs? Why are CEOs a pain in the ass? And you tag four CFOs and they all comment. Say tag today's CFO day. Tag your favorite CFO, you know? And then before you know it, you start seeing that there's—I don't know. Let me Google how many CFOs are on LinkedIn right now. I'm searching CFO on LinkedIn. I'm going to search people specifically. One point one million CFOs on LinkedIn. Let's say we're just targeting Greater New York just for the heck of it. 65,000 CFOs. Think about that.

Yeah.

That's more than you can handle in a lifetime, you know, or multiple lifetimes. You can't handle that many. So if you start, you know, if you start taking a look at this and you say, okay, how many of these do I have as a first-degree connection? You'll notice that you have— I have 271. Be like, oh cool, I have 271 CFOs as a first-degree connection. These are the first people I need to be Looking at to see what they're up to. So for example, Yitzhak Weiss, I want to see what he's up to, where he's been working at, and what activity he's recently had. I see that he has done some activity here, so I click on see all, and I could see his activity. I could start engaging right with his activity. 19 hours ago, he posted this. I'll watch his video, I'll like it, comment it, and I'll send him a message about this video. I'll be like, so inspiring, blah blah blah, whatever, or that you Or I noticed that you commenting. What'd you think about that video? Blah blah blah, right? And then I try to get him on the phone after that. Mm-hmm. All right. And by the way, I sent him this message. I already reached out to him on Thursday. That video you commented on was pretty amazing. The energy. Wow, right?

Mm-hmm.

So this is what I would say if I was at a cocktail party with him. Now he thinks he's the only person in the world I'm targeting right now because he's like, holy crap, he's actually looking at my stuff. And I happen— he happens to be one of the 2,500 people we messaged in the past 2 weeks.

Wow.

Now, am I generating business because I'm sitting around waiting for something to happen? No, I'm generating business because I'm doing stuff, right? So that's the idea. Okay, does it make sense?

Yeah, it's— it makes sense. It's just focusing on doing the right activities daily and then setting aside time for it and really getting engaged on it and making sure you're doing it like anything.

Yeah, like any— it's like any other sales job. This is a tool. It's a tool. It's literally a tool. And—

And I think that what stops me and probably a lot of other people is, is that they can't see a straight line between the activity or the work that you put into it and the results.

But Gordon, I'll tell you the same thing with networking. It's the same exact thing. You can't see a direct correlation between going to that networking event every week for a year And the results. I have a friend of mine who spent several years networking and he didn't get the ROI he wanted and he stopped. But the crazy thing is year 4 is when most of it happens.

Right.

Year 5 is when you get that $45,000 a month deal. I mean, it happened for me.

Well, I know, and that's— but even, even for me, I can say, well, networking has proven itself as a sales tool or a strategy or a marketing tool because That's how I get most of my business today is through referrals. I get all my business through the referrals from the relationships I've built. So all I'm saying is that it's— I've not seen the connection between LinkedIn and a sale.

And I'll tell you why. And I'll tell you why. Very simple. Because the effort you put into LinkedIn is like 1/10 of 1/100% of what you put into actually doing face-to-face.

Right, right.

And the effort I'm putting into LinkedIn is a similar effort that I'm putting face-to-face, so I'm getting the similar result.

Right.

Does that make sense?

No, it does. I guess, um, it just goes back to what your perception is and how you feel about where your results are and where you spend your time.

Correct, correct, correct, correct, correct. But again, having a plan is the difference between just using up energy and doing random acts of networking.

Right.

You know, I had, I had somebody who recently, who I recently had a conversation with, and he said he's going to commit 2 months to this and see what happens. And I said, if you're going to commit 2 months to this, don't do it and see what happens. Because if you join a BNI group for 2 months or you join any networking group for 2 months, you're not going to get what you want out of it.

Right.

You got to commit to networking for life. This is something that you just do. And by the way, all the stuff that we create through our blueprint for our clients is you could use that in email, you could use that in person, you could use that as a follow-up, as a postcard, as a news— I mean, all this stuff is the same stuff that you use everywhere else. It's just right now you have a platform with built-in CFOs, with built-in CEOs, with built-in decision-makers that are just waiting to be contacted, that are just waiting to be given information that they can lurk on. Because 500 million people, most of them are lurkers. 99% of people are not posting anything.

Right.

So you have, as a creator, you have the ability. If you're going to post, you're going to go from being a lurker to an influencer from the mere fact that you're influencing 100 people or 200 people. If you had a captive audience of 100 people that was waiting in a room, wouldn't you go up and do your elevator pitch once a day?

Right.

Of course you would. Of course you would. You got to be a dumbass not to do that. But most people, they have, they have They have a captive audience, right? I have a captive audience, right? Look at my notifications. They're just blowing up. I have a captive audience of how many people? 188 people. I have a captive audience. I'm not going to tell them that I want to do 50 speaking engagements with my video that's in my library that I can upload with one click of a button. Look at this. I got to be a total dumbass not to post this every once in a while, right? I got to be a complete idiot not to tell the people that already know me, like me, and trust me That they can hire me. But most people are not doing that, and the reason they're not doing that is not because they're not good people. It's because they haven't created a strategy. They haven't had the time to sit with a coach, to sit with somebody that will help them. And that's why we're doing this, not because we're making money, because you don't— you know very well you don't make money off the, off the person who's going to spend a couple hundred bucks with you. I'm doing this because I want to make a difference. And it gives me something to do while I wait for the big fish to come, while I wait for the $100,000, $200,000 deals to come. So this is what's keeping me busy and it's helping me. And the fact that I can have this conversation with you gives me a lot of passion because I'm making a difference. And the fact that we're recording this to be able to share with others is very powerful as well. Mm-hmm. I agree. So, you know, look, ultimately at the end of the day, step number 1 is have a plan, have any plan. Step number 2 is do it every day. Do it every day. If you do it again, if you reach out to one CFO every day, that means you only reached out to 365 CFOs a year. You would get 100 times more results than you're getting right now from LinkedIn because you're not getting any results from LinkedIn because you haven't reached out to a CFO on LinkedIn.

So when you say reach out—

Send a message like I just did here. CFO, CFO, just search CFO. Like this, boom. You search CFO. You do location, Greater New York City area, boom. Connections, people that you're actually connected to. First-degree connections, right? Connections, first-degree, that means you're actually connected to. Okay, 271, I already did him. I'm going to do Sean, right? I'm going to reach out to Sean. So I'm going to click on Sean. Hey Sean, looks like we're connected on LinkedIn, blah blah blah blah blah. I'm not gonna send him another message because whatever, I'm gonna look for somebody else. Michael. Um, again, every single person. Um, are you still rocking out? Okay, I happen to know Michael Kaner and I know that he was doing some stuff.

Uh-huh.

Right, let me look at Sam Baum. Um, look at this. I sent him a message. He wrote, yes, I'm interested in learning more. I'm in Israel right now. Okay, so when you get back, click on this.

Right.

Right, so he thinks he's the only person that I'm talking to. Again, he's not the only person I'm talking to. I'm talking to a lot of people. As you can see, every person that you look at was already messaged.

Right, right.

Um, that's the idea.

Okay.

That's the idea. See, sending some love. Look, this is how— this is what you can do. You can literally send somebody some love. Love you. If that's not going to get somebody's attention, then what will?

Only you, Joe.

You got to do you. You're right, exactly. Only me. But you got to also do you.

Right, right.

Look at this. I'm going to, I'm going to ask this guy, Yosef. Do your candies dance? Right? Because he runs Candy Bots. Do your candies dance? Like, some people are afraid to send people messages because they're afraid they're going to get rejected. Dude, you did get rejected. Don't reject yourself. Wait for somebody else to reject you and just have a good time with it. I love having fun, by the way. I love having fun. That's what I love to do. If you don't love having fun, then keep doing what you're doing or find a way to have fun. You're a climber, you're a woodworker, you're a networker. Use that to your advantage.

Yeah, yeah.

I would message people and say, do you want to see my wood? I have polished and created amazing pieces of art, and I would like to show it to you. Now don't send it to women because that might get you in trouble. Anyway, that's just— that's a dumb joke. That's a—

All right, this has gone off the rails officially.

It's officially off the rails. No, but you know, I did see your, your bowls. And I like what you've done with JP. He showed me how you guys produce these incredible woodworking bowls. And by the way, I send people to my webinar. Look right on my profile. I send people to my webinar. I tell people, go to my summary, read, and go to my— sign up to my webinar. When people sign up to my webinar, I'm able to have a 90-minute conversation with them.

Right.

Or they could look at what we're up to, testimonials, or they could set up a call with me. You see that?

Yep.

Or they could look at my goals and they can see my website and sign up for my newsletter, or they could see that I'm part of one of the largest CEO communities in the world, and they could see that I do coaching through my Breakthrough Maze podcast, and they could join my motivation group on Facebook. You see, they can watch my rap video. So it's, Boom! You see, he's— I'm gonna try to speak to him about the blueprint. I have an 11:15 call which starts in 3 minutes, but I had such a great time talking to you. You're amazing.

Same here, Jeff. Thank you.

This is great. And by the way, I have somebody helping me send out DMs. I'm not doing it myself. Just so you know, I actually have 3 people that do different things for me. I have a profile I have other profiles as well. My brother. So if you search Apfelbaum, you're going to find a lot of Apfelbaums on LinkedIn. This is my sister. This is my brother. And this is my fake brother. So my fake brother is the fat version of me. And this fat version of me is connected to many very successful CEOs. And he's busy doing his thing.

Yeah.

And reaching out to people and setting them— setting up calls with me and him— me and them. So you can be creative about how you do things.

Right.

And build relationships with people that way. So I just want you to consider that there's a lot of different ways to do it. And, um, yeah, I hope that you got value out of this.

I did. Thank you very much, Jeff.

My pleasure. And I appreciate talking to you.

Same here.