0327 | Mark Firth

Hello, this is mark firth of markfirthonline.com and you're listening to Mario Fauccini with EA interviews.

EA interviews, episode 327, inspiration, transformation, success stories and the imperfect action round. Seven days a week. Join Mario Ficcini for today's expert authority effect. Interview, influence, persuasion, leads, profit. All of these fun things in business, but how do you generate them? Should you do A, should you do B, should you do the shiny object of the week? How about the messaging? How about the video? There's all these different tactics and strategies and all of these things, but one of them stands out to me. And I'm excited to have Mark Firth on today's episode to talk about LinkedIn leads. Everyone knows what LinkedIn is. Everyone, I would say, wants more leads. But are you getting them?

We're going to get all the answers from Mark right after I thank the sponsor. Every business needs a book, including yours. And that's why I'm launching my new book to help you, regardless of where you think your current writing abilities are. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Once again, that's eapublishingmethodbook.com Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, Mark Firth. Mark, how are you feeling today?

Really good, thank you, Mario, it is fantastic to be here and thank you for the kind invitation. I'm looking forward to that and I love that studio, I absolutely do. We've just been having tech speak before we jumped on.

Well, I appreciate that. It means a lot. I put a lot into the show to bring the best expert authority world and that includes you having the best guest to deliver the most value. And I have no doubt you're a wealth of it for LinkedIn leads. So I want to start off with Drumroll. Why is LinkedIn important for your business?

LinkedIn is important for my business because it is quite simply the number one place to get leads. And I believe it to be true for any coach, consultant, small business. If they do not have a presence on LinkedIn, then they are really making things difficult for their business. Let me explain that analogy. You can either swim with the current or you can go against the current. And I know which one's easier for me. A lot of people say, no, I want this one platform strategy. No, I want to concentrate here. But the reality is growing a business online is not about platforms, it's about growing. Growing your clients with a profit and getting them impact so why wouldn't you go where your clients are? It's not much extra work at all.

I love that analogy because I love the water, I love swimming, everything related to it. And swimming with the current definitely is easier. So knowing this and you know, LinkedIn is not one of the new platforms that's shiny and shimmery. And I think, I think it's great. It's fantastic, and I do leverage it. But why do you think some people do overlook it to go to the other ones?

I think they do it for exactly the reason you said there. You've said the new and shimmery and just as the. I just want to talk through a little concept on that, because this is where people get pulled in the wrong direction when it comes to building an online business. In my opinion, and what I've seen to be true with hundreds of clients since 2017, a lot of people are looking for that tactic. They're looking to get ahead with something that their competition, quote, unquote, is not doing, whatever the flavor of the week is. But the reality is when they get attracted to this and go into programs or coaches or online courses, whatever, where they're teaching tactics, they often do not find success because they find really, they're not new and lots of people are doing them. They do better if they go to a program which is teaching. So the tactics, the what, right? They can go step up, and they can really go into programs which are talking about strategy, and that's the what and maybe when you would do it and that. They're going to get a lot more success. And that moves them away from the shimmering new shiny object. And they're starting to conceptually understand how they need to do what they need to do. Because the cold, harsh reality is like, no one's going to hold your hand every single second of every single day when you're building your business. So if you just got a tactic and you don't understand the why and the when, it's difficult. But the third level, and this is where LinkedIn gets really easy, is understanding LinkedIn isn't actually that different to any social media platform or, dare I say, any way of getting clients. Because we're all in the business of working with humans, and humans all adhere or follow what I call principles. That's the principles of human behavior. Reciprocity, authority. We respond to social proof. If you see someone tall, we automatically believe their authority. These are not like the laws of physics. They're not like gravity. You drop an apple. They're not true all of the time. But they are true most of the time for most of the people. So once we start learning and actioning at that level, it doesn't matter what platform we go to, we can make it work. Be it LinkedIn, be it Facebook, be it Instagram, be it meeting someone in person. Because last time I checked, I'm not selling to aliens, I'm selling to human beings. So that's my view on shiny objects and actually learning the things that are going to work and allow you to like, go, oh, this is happening. Maybe I should do this instead of what this, you know, tactic is. Does that make sense?

It does. And a lot of what I'm hearing is reminding me of one of my favorite books by Dale Carnegie, how to Win Friends and Influence People. It's not so much about the platform, it's building the relationship with them.

Exactly, exactly. I have read that book, but not for a long time. You'd be testing me to recall it.

Well, it sounds like you're living it out, so why don't you walk us through your process of, you know, okay, so obviously I'm just going to assume we need a LinkedIn account. And for anyone who doesn't have one, I'm sure you know, getting started there is a good point. But what do you do once you have that LinkedIn account? What's the best way to reach out to people so you don't seem spammy to them and you can actually start building that relationship.

So I'll try and keep this under two minutes. Interrupt me if you need to marry. You got my permission. Right, but there's a number of phases when it comes to LinkedIn. The first phase you want to do is take advantage of something that LinkedIn has that no other platform to my knowledge has. Right. And if you, you can do within one of their premium sales navigator, you can do a search. If you went to college, you can look at people that went to the same college as you and, and you can cross reference that search. So you are cross referencing with people who went to your college and are an ideal client. Because college is a formative year, we automatically have a bond with people who studied at the same place. We're part of the same group. Maybe it could be an old workplace, maybe it could be an old geographic location. That's an order of priority, by the way. The geographic location still holds fast and it does improve prospects. But a college or workplace, and then get in contact with them that way, you know, in fact. Sorry I missed out the obvious one. Pull across your network from other platforms. Because the long and short of it is when we boil down the art of starting conversation, going back to the principles, there needs to be a reason for the conversation. Every conversation has to have context. Otherwise they're like, who, who is this talking to me? And you can create like if we think about someone we know very well, there's lots of context. We saw them last Saturday at the podcast, we play soccer with them in the week or we went to this. There's those contexts. It's easy. Once we get moving down the continuum to cold leads, there's no context. But we start in the middle with people that went to college, people that you know, lots of commonality. Once you've done that, that's when you're going to move on to cold. And a lot of people get this wrong. LinkedIn is not an outreach any platform anymore. It used to be and we took advantage of that. But that horse has bolted, that train has left the station. LinkedIn now has a lot of restrictions on it thanks to the marketers with their tactics, shall we say. It's now an attract platform. So you need to get people coming to you, be top of mind. And the one strategy we use, and we've got to be careful tactic strategy is two minute videos. A two minute video where you actually help people. Because if you want to show people you can help them, the most powerful way to help them is by to show that, to prove that is by actually helping them. Like don't hold anything back, do a two minute video. Are you so and so target market with this problem? This 2 minute video will show you how to deal with it. They can go on Instagram, they can go on LinkedIn, they can go on Facebook, you can repurpose. That's all my clients do. And that just kind of like puts leverage on the outreach process. People know who you are, you're top of mind. It's, let's not make it complicated. The thing that makes the difference, as with everything online, is the level of mastery. And mastery by the way, is the ability to execute to a very high level, world class level without the use of conscious resources. Once you get to that point on LinkedIn and with all of it, that's when you pull ahead of your competition. There, done. Did I get every two minutes?

You know what, I was making a joke by looking at my watch here early on, but I kind of didn't want to, I didn't care. I wanted, I just wanted to let you roll and be bringing the truth because.

I really appreciate it and I know Expert Authority World does too. I'm always trying to bring the best value to them and by interviewing you. And I love what you're saying.

Let'S say I was taking mental notes because it's very visual. But tell me about the outreach. When did LinkedIn change?

It's in the process of changing. So I went on LinkedIn 2009, didn't use actively for a few years back in 2016, I went on there and what you were able to do was use automation software and that basically. That sounds complicated, but all it is is you send a sequence of messages to a group of people who you've targeted. So you send a message, they don't reply, you send the next one, they don't reply, you send the next one. They're all the same. And because LinkedIn was kind of new and the shiny object people were like, wow, I've got a message, I'm going to reply to this. I might even jump on a call and buy something. And then of course, the party got crashed by the marketers and they started pushing it to extremes, right. Used to be able to get away with like, you know, 200 a day. Then it got taken down to 100. And as we speak today, Tuesday 25th of May, 2021, they're actually restricting a lot of accounts. And we do believe this to be being rolled out across the platform to 100 connects a week. And why would they not? Because if we look at the objective of any social media platform, it is that users have an enjoyable experience. Because if you have enjoyable experience, they spend more time on the platform. If their stick rate, which is spending more time on the platform, is greater. The social media platform can make more money off advertising or subscriptions, like Sales Navigator. That's the Facebook model. Facebook is paid ads. LinkedIn is trying to get into ads and also has a subscription model. But if people conversely, are not enjoying it, it's, you know, it's goodbye, it's not great for them. So, yeah, of course they're going to restrict spamming and all that sort of stuff. So, yeah, that's why the platform is shifting. And it's just a general truth, like a principle. Don't go against the wishes of a social media platform because you're going to spend every day, you know, trying to get around the rules. You get thrown off. Like, what are you going to do if you get thrown off LinkedIn? Write them a strongly worded letter and sign it. Good luck with that. Dear Mark Zuckerberg. I'm really upset that I'm off the ads platform. Please, would you put me back? No, same with LinkedIn. You know what I mean? It's, it's not going to happen. So they are in the process of changing and we've been ahead of the game.

That's great.

Yeah, yeah.

But you're right. I mean, what say do you, what say you do you have in the whole thing? They don't care. And I remember when people were doing that. So you're saying it's around 100 a.

Week now for a lot of accounts that doesn't seem to have any pattern who they're giving. I mean we didn't, we never needed that much anyway. I mean to me you put, I.

Mean that's still 400 people a month. And I remember when I started with networking events in real life, the most I went to was about 19 and six weeks. And I'm very good at what I do. Yeah, I'd be hard pressed to say I met 400 people that month though.

I mean, if you can't convert five clients, let's say if you're a coach or consultant of $5,000 from 400 Connects, then I'm going to say this with love, tough love. You are doing something wrong and you need to improve it. It's really simple.

But maybe the secrets with the extra hundred or the extra thousand that you're spamming. Yeah.

Well, these people have hopefully got a big network. They can, they can kind of go back and say I'm sorry for the spamming. Would you like to talk now? I've had a good look for your profile. I see you spent speak French and studied art at St. Martin's College. What, Whatever, you know. But yeah, there's plenty of opportunity and.

I mean you're being very generous because I thought you were going to say five out of the hundred is only 5%. You're talking 1.25%. I mean, I mean you could do a direct mail to 10,000 people and only get 100 people respond back and still have about the same numbers.

Yeah, exactly. It's a lot of opportunity there.

So what do you do once you connect with them? Do you have any certain.

I love the word script, but I don't want it to be taken out of context. Do you have. There's got to be a format or a system to reach out. I mean, what do you say when you reach out to connect to them or do you let them reach out to you?

We've got to be speaking from the same dictionary and I just want to check My definition of script framework is the same. I believe a script is. I equate with being a template that is word for word. You cut and paste, cut and paste marketing. I don't personally believe in that. I believe in a framework that touches on the fundamentals of psychology.

And you adapt to you and who you are. Because I'm from the United Kingdom, I'm going to speak very differently and have a very different energy to say, I don't know, an investment banker from Wall street or you know, a Californian startup. You do, you. They do them and let everyone else be who they want to be. But the important thing is it's got to be in your own language. It's got to be colloquial. It's got to feel like it's you. Not like hey there, are you having a good day? The long and short of it I go with is I let people come to us, I connect with them and we're doing these continuous two minute videos with the captions across. That's worked exceptionally well on LinkedIn. Just a quick piece of advice, just a quick analogy, just a quick reframe. Just, just building up that trust. Because you know there are various touch points but we can reach out if we want to reach out. I won't tell you word for word because I would be doing you a mis service because the way I say it works for me, it's not going to work for you and your business and your funnel. But here's the principles. You want to reach out in a very non needy way and set the frame. A frame is a focus, the way someone perceives a conversation. You don't want to be like hey, how's your day going? 10 questions. You just want to be unneedy. Hey name Great to be connected.

Great.

Loved your post on insert specific thing. Looking forward to seeing more there. You've set the frame of being non needy. You've set the frame of not selling. You've set the frame of I've respected your time because you know in life you don't get what we want. We get who we are, we attract like and if you're not respecting someone's time and checking them out, just like I checked out everything before this and we had a conversation about respect like what are you going to attract in life? Then you want to give it a few days and maybe you would reach out and move the conversation onto something else that is entirely subjective. It depends on your niche. It depends on what your Service is. If it's a service that requires, what's the best way to put it? There's so many ways you could go with this, but let's take a coach or consultant. You might want to just make another comment about their content and ask them a genuine, intelligent, intentional question about it. Don't make it up, only do it if you're interested. And there you've got a conversation, you've got a conversation. You're one step towards a call. Get the conversation first, get the rapport first. Now, I know that there's a lot of myths going around that says, oh, busy people don't want small talk. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We've not found that to be true. We found the opposite to be true. And I think that comes down to what the majority are doing. Because if you're doing the same as everyone else, you're not going to stand out from the noise. Do you know what I mean? So that would be my best advice there and just continue having. Here it is in a nutshell, because I appreciate this is a long answer because it's such a complex subject. If you have the intention of not trying to get a call, if you have the intention of not trying to sell somebody, then you're going to get the call and you're probably going to end up selling them. Going with intention, care, curiosity, concern, take that frame, get the conversation, transition it to a conversation about business. Simple as that. Wow.

I love that answer because it builds on the relationship side, which I'm all about. And sometimes I've gotten angry with myself because I really care about people. I love people. I'm always looking for ways to help them. But sometimes it's like it just has felt like other people were growing faster and you know, well, what's your secret? And they're not necessarily spamming. I wouldn't say they're spamming people, but they might send a hundred messages that are more direct, like, are you looking for a guest interview or to publish a book or marketing helper? They're just being. They've taken the direct approach with it. And I mean that's just strictly a numbers if you're closing 5 or 10%, you know. But I never could pull myself to just do it long enough to get any traction. It just, it didn't resonate with me. It still doesn't.

Yeah. I mean, the long and short of it is, and I've seen this to be true across hundreds of clients, is people will not consistently act in a way that isn't consistent with their beliefs. That is to, that is to say, if that's not the way you want to do things, it's very hard to do that. You're going, we're going back to the analogy of swimming against the current, all the hormones and those, those sorts of things.

It's a great expert authority insight and I appreciate you for sharing that because, I mean, it explains it. I'll flat out say it's been over 10 years. I've at times tried like, you know, see the people who are succeeding faster, whatever that even means. And it's like maybe two, three weeks and then it's like, this isn't working for me.

Look, do I have permission to be direct with your audience a moment?

Say whatever you want it.

I've been in sales since 2003. I started at IBM, I worked at Siemens, I worked at startups, I've run my own business. We've done nearly 1.5 million in cash collected in a very short time. And don't always believe the numbers and the appointments and the leads you see out there. You need to get clear in your head what works for you because there's a lot. The way the online world is evolving at the moment. This comes from Eugene Swartz, Breakthrough advertising. You've got to out promise your market, you've got to make a bigger promise. I saw 500 to 1,000 leads a month at $3 this morning. Right. I'm here to tell you that is unrealistic for a lot of markets. It may be the case for a certain market. You need to know your niche and what works for you, because there's no wrong or right. In fact, there is a right, but the right answer is the one that works. So if something hasn't worked for you, you need to move on to something else. And we've just seen our clients get the best success from this more targeted approach and they're selling premium services. So again, if you're selling a, if you're, if you're selling a sunbed session for like 50 bucks, no, this isn't for you. If you've got something more substantial, a premium offer, this will work for you. Because immediately when you're reaching out and chasing, you're immediately in the beta role when. And that's not really ideal for cultivating the frame and the rest of the conversation. Am I making sense?

Absolutely. And I love how much psychology you're putting in there with the frame and the beta. And tell us more about that. How much of a role does the psychology and the mindset play when you are reaching out and why you want to be dealing from a position of power.

Oh, it's everything. And the classic example is, here is Apple, right? Apple computers, Apple phones, whatever, they are the masters of it. The 2 trillion market capitalization they reached, I haven't checked it recently but if we think about them, they are masters of pre framing because they will have people lining around the block and taking pride in it in the cold weather to get the latest thing, they will have people taking pride in, in paying a premium. You don't go in Apple and go, no, can I, can I stretch that payment out like $2.50 a week over, over three years? It just doesn't happen. People take pride, they're on social media and they also know exactly what they're going to buy before they go there. So for me, outreach done. Well, outreach done as an art can work and it will work and it's not under science and that needs to be done. Just what I alluded to a few minutes ago. You can't go in there asking questions and following the scale script and telling them you can get results. It has to be done in a very subtle way with the right intention. That's okay. Also having people coming to us because there's only a certain amount of people that are problem aware or Solution Aware on LinkedIn or any platform any given time. And that relies on the right message at the right time and the right person. I don't like those odds. I like people coming to me too. So it's important that we're projecting ourselves in authority. We're giving the advice. What I said, you know, if you want to prove you can help someone, then actually help them. The analogy I use here, there's three types of book readers. Some of them buy the book, they don't read it, right. We've all been in programs with those people. Some people buy the book, they implement themselves. There is a level of consciousness, a level of awareness when they can do that. Some people buy the book, read a bit and hire the author. That's what we want because that's an educated client. That's a client that's bought into what we do. They know what we do and they see value in it. That is the objective of social media, not just spamming people every day. Every tactic has its day. I'm not saying you shouldn't jump on if it works. Again, if something's working for you, do not listen to me and stop it. You've got something that's working Double down on it until it doesn't. But then you need to be able to shift. And that comes to the principle is we've shifted constantly on LinkedIn and we will continue shifting. And I love that because every time LinkedIn makes a change, lots of people go, oh, what do I do? I'm like, what a great opportunity. We're just going to get ahead again and we'll get ahead. And there's always a way to get ahead, you know.

Yeah. And I've noticed over the years when they change stuff, it's, it might be inconvenient. I think it's more because people get upset just because of the change. Not that it's going to be worse, it's that you have to retool and everything. But in the case of Facebook, LinkedIn, all of them, there was a point where, hey, I could message you, you could message me. And then they started getting traction and then they, at some point they all unveiled the ads platform, which is a huge value add, if that's something you want to do. Because like you said, they're trying to stay the same thing with Google. People have the argument Google is trying to screw them over. No, they're not. They're trying to make it. When they rolled out the instant answers where you don't even need to finish typing the sentence anymore, that was another game changer to go, we want, we want to be like predictive what you're thinking of. And they're in the business of making us happy and staying on the platform more. So in the, in the process of LinkedIn, how do you feel about LinkedIn groups? Do you think you should, when you're connecting with these people, should you feed them to a LinkedIn group or are you saying to get them on a call?

Do you know what? LinkedIn sometimes makes me want to throw my computer out the window and it's a 27 inch Mac. It's attached to my camera and I'm on the 11th floor. I wish LinkedIn would do groups because it's about community. I like push people from LinkedIn to Facebook groups and I get my clients to push people from LinkedIn to Facebook groups. I push people from Facebook ads to LinkedIn because they've not got the groups done. They've created this creator mode which gives you a tiny short video in your profile image. It's like, do you know what I mean? Just focus on the fundamentals. Because they are losing people to Facebook all the time because there's no decent group set up. There's no notifications, they're spammy. You go in it and you forget about it until the next life groups again, I've not found a way to do use them on LinkedIn as soon as they make them good. I will be on that in a New York minute. That's the thing I'm waiting for because it's just such a great feature to have. As it stands, I've got a Facebook group. As it stands. I teach my clients to build Facebook groups and push people across from LinkedIn. It works really well because people, they get notice.

You're saying because of the notifications. If you comment on my post right now, it's going to pop up.

The LinkedIn, they want people in the feed at the moment. They've added stories, they've tried to move it from messenger to content, but they've not done it with groups yet. I don't know if it's on the roadmap, but they seem to just change like trivial stuff. And look, I have gratitude, but it is frustrating sometimes when they like add pointless stuff when the thing they're losing their users to is a group and a community. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah. And that's the most basic thing. I mean, Facebook's had them for what seems like at least a decade. Yeah.

And they're great at them. And you hear them on Come On Clubhouse boasting about this brand new 6 second. I even know what seconds is video in the profile image. I mean, come on, it's not, it's not shifting things enough.

So it's interesting you, you bring up Clubhouse. So would you say you should be taking people from LinkedIn to Facebook groups or LinkedIn to Clubhouse?

Oh, we're using Clubhouse too. We've had a great journey with that. But I have a kid, a family, a life, so I can't spend all day on stage. So what we do is, by the way, if you don't know what Clubhouse is, don't worry, I'll just explain. Is it okay to explain it very briefly?

Go for it.

And this, this might, this might not. This, this video might not age like a vintage wine. So just skip on if it's here or not. We don't know where it's going to go. But it's a speaking app, so you have a stage. Only the people on stage could be heard and control who comes on stage to speak. And the great thing about Clubhouse is that you have names of room. Like one room might be personal branding on LinkedIn, one might be personal relationship issues, one might be paid advertising, tips and trips. That's working in 2021. What that means is that the person in that room, in the audience listening to that title, they're not going to go to the LinkedIn personal branding if they want to learn how to cook, make cookies. Do you know what I mean? So they're problem aware, they're solution aware, they're looking for answers. So what we need to do is go in there, listen to who's asking the question and connect with them on LinkedIn or Facebook or wherever they are because they're searchable and start a conversation. We've got a prospect who's actively looking to solve a problem we solve. That's how we've done Clubhouse. I haven't had time to go on stage. I do go on stage sometimes and I was on there this morning. But it's a great resource to find people and build the relationships. And as I said earlier in this conversation, every conversation requires context. There's your context. Ready made out of the box. Absolutely.

You're a lot like me because I haven't, you know, put 18 hours a day on the stage and everything. But I've gone in there, seen who's speaking pop in and out. But it reminds me a lot of when Facebook started doing Facebook Live. And because I was doing videos before that in between that in the Facebook lives and all the stuff now I've done over 4,000 of these short videos of, hey, here's some inspiration. Here's the answer to a thing in Clubhouse, to me feels like the audio version of what all of this was five, six years ago. It's, you know, it's new and hot and all of that, but at the end of the day, it's people going to the groups like you're saying, to find the answers to their problems. Truth be told, I was in there with a friend of mine. I saw she popped up and I was like, oh, I'll check it out. And they're talking about, it's like five, six other well known marketers and they're like, okay, so the Clubhouse update just got released and it was. They were talking about the Clubhouse groups you were now able to create because the week before it didn't exist. And they were all trying to figure out how to even pull. Do it, do it. And no one had the answer because it was so new.

I was like, yeah, it's, it's. They should just ask. I didn't mean to interrupt. Sorry. Go for it. I think we had some delay feedback. Sorry.

No, I was just saying that it was so interesting because the people that were in there, it's like the both of us, we're no slouches with business and marketing and all this stuff, but. And we're like, okay, so do we hit this button? No, I think you do that. Well, it depends on what phone. I mean, the conversation was literally like, how do you use an iPhone for the first time? But it was great because by the end of it, I was able to create Expert Authority World on Clubhouse. And I was like, oh, this is awesome. The trick was you had to update to the newest version first and then do something else. And then you had. The feature was able to pop up, but I was like, that was extremely valuable for me to listen for whatever it was. 10, 12 minutes.

Nice. Yeah. No, I wish they'd monetize it in a way that made more sense because they were giving tips, like $5, $1. And like, no disrespect to money, isn't all about money, but if you're going after that, you're probably in the wrong game, in the wrong stage of business, you know?

Yeah, yeah, there's a. There's a lot of. A lot of people jumping on it. And I think it's great what you're saying. It doesn't matter on the platform. Just be adding value and being of service to people.

All you're doing is adding value, helping people out and creating context for a conversation. Because then it's no longer a cold conversation. It's really that simple.

What are your thoughts on LinkedIn Live?

LinkedIn Live. I've got it. It took me 89 attempts to get it and when I got it, I was a bit underwhelmed. The reach hasn't been as good as my two minute videos. It's been nowhere near as good. I was streaming at one point. I was streaming from Restream onto Facebook and LinkedIn at the same time. And yeah, it wasn't worth it. It is useful if you want to do a longer format interview because the native upload on LinkedIn for video length is 10 minutes. But if you're doing a long interview like this, then it's good. But for short, sharp content, it's not really any good.

Were you being sarcastic or did you really try 89 times?

Yeah, I did. I got my assistant to play every week and the only time that I got it was when I moved my location to Colombia before, because we're in that. We're in Colombia right now. Process moved to the States when I Moved it to Colombia. They some, for some reason gave it me. I don't know why, but there we go, huh?

Maybe that's the secret. I. I've done it. Probably five, six, eight, maybe a dozen.

Maybe they just got sick of me because my assistant was literally every day linking them to a new video and just saying, like, why have we got it? They're probably just like, I feel sorry for this guy. I'm just gonna give him.

Who cares? You got it. I. I would love nothing more than. Anyway, it's on the list, and I do a fair amount of interviews, and I know LinkedIn is a hot target market, and it would make it so much easier.

Here's the trick. If you haven't done this and anyone listening, go and look at LinkedIn's mission statement, because that's how every employee in any business is. That's how they set the vision. That's how they manage behavior. This is how I've got ad accounts back on Facebook and position. What you're doing to be in alignment with the vision of LinkedIn, then they should give you. That's another thing I did towards the end that I think move the needle. Because if you think about your average person in the business getting tons of them and having to approve them, I would imagine it's something to do with the vision and being in the interest of LinkedIn that they make the decision. So try that.

Interesting. Thank you for that. Because I know that I'm not the only one who's been.

I'll do a whole episode about that. Like, go check out LinkedIn. It's been a minute. It usually doesn't take this long for things, but. But I want to ask you about.

Who would you say is your biggest success story?

I've got a lot of success stories.

I've seen them.

I would say that this depends on the definition of success, because success is not just about money. Money is important. And I want to make money. I want to create intergenerational wealth. I want my kids to go to the right school. I want to have the freedom to talk to people when I want, if I want. And, you know, when, you know, freedom. Right. And this all immediately brings to mind, we're now in 2021, back in March, just after the whole, you know, V word thing kicked off. I won't get us thrown off any other platform. We had a lady come. Come on. Who had the, you know what at the time, she was a cancer survivor, and she. She had pneumonia and she was on the call with me and she was like, I want to get this business going. To be honest, I was in two minds about whether it was a good fit. But she was. But she was just so motivated. She see my stuff and she's just like, this just feels right. Let's do it. She went on to be a complete success for it. She's at 20 grand, 30 grand, moved apartment. She now has thousands of followers on LinkedIn. She's a LinkedIn top voice in her field. And that for me, is the best success story. And there's another reason for it. Because she didn't come in wanting the tactics. She came in, all she needed was a little bit of a push, a little bit of belief, and she was herself. That's sometimes all you need. If you're listening to this, sometimes working with someone is not just the transference of tactics. It's actually much more important to the transference of belief and someone believing in you. And there's a lot of programs out there that are copies of copies of copies. And that's why they struggle. They don't create an environment that creates the change. We create an environment that creates the change. Because information itself is not the transformation. And that's probably the one I'm proudest of because, yeah, it's just so amazing to see people when their lives change. And that's happened many times. For me, my success is how many times people say their life has changed. We're not about LinkedIn. LinkedIn is our medium to change lives. Simple as that.

Wow, that's powerful. And congratulations that.

I've gone through that personally and professionally and both as I've hired people and they've done it for me and I've had the pleasure of doing it for my author clients in many instances. And it really is rewarding. Yeah, they're profiting and it's all well and good, but when they're like.

One of mine, unfortunately, before she passed away was one of the last things she did. And I'll never forget, she goes, I finally have my own book. I've always been part of someone else's. And you know what I mean? It's like, you're in this, you're in this, you're in all these different group things. But she goes, I feel like a real author and I have a real business now.

That's so awesome.

And it's reminding me of what you're saying. I mean, this lady's obviously in not the best shape at the time, and I'm glad she's doing well now. And Everything. But it's like that's when you really start thinking, is this something I want to go through with or not? And if you're in that position and you're going, I'm ready for it, you're absolutely the right person.

Yeah, here's my opinion on that. Because that's another topic. Because a lot of people say people shouldn't go into debt. You shouldn't not push people, you shouldn't do this, you shouldn't do that. There's only one person that has the ability to make those decisions for other people, and that is whoever you have faith in. I am not here to impose upon anyone's free will. I am not here to tell people what they should and shouldn't do. I'm here to give them the information, to allow them to make the decision. That's why we did it. And that's why I did it. Because it's easy to get back into all these things you see online. Like, someone shouldn't go in debt, someone shouldn't do this. No, it's up to this individual. They're a free thinking individual. There's no reason why you should impose your values against someone else. Give them the information, as long as it's accurate and not a lie. That's when it gets into an issue, then they can make their decisions, you know, and that's, that's my belief on it really is.

Yeah, I, I, I'm in full agreement on that. You know, wow. We, we could go, we could go all day on that on that alone. And I, I love what you're sharing here. I got one, one more question here for you. It's the wheel of whatever.

Yellow or black.

Love it. Yellow.

Oh, you broke the mold today, huh? Yellow.

Okay, My question for you is, do you think LinkedIn is still going to be just as powerful 5, 10 years from now or more powerful?

Impossible to say. I have no idea what I, what I can say. And I tell me if this is sneaky out. The question is I really don't care because every single day I further my study of human psychology, the principles of why we do what we do, why we respond in certain ways, stimuli, why we do you know everything about that. So I really don't care where it is because I know for sure that in 10, 15 years I'll be dealing with human beings. Unless Elon Musk has his way.

Unless.

And then again, we don't even know. So, yeah, I mean, will it.

Now I'll answer the question properly. I think it'll still be around. But I think there's going to be a lot of things that change between now and then. If we look at the last 10, 15 years. Wow. It's so hard to know that it really is. I don't know. It's the honest truth.

No, I actually prefer your answer. I prefer the honesty because when you said, now I'm going to answer it properly, you answered it properly. Because so many people, you know, they invested. Ten years ago, I've had people even say, I'm not doing a website. Websites are outdated. They invested everything in a platform and now that platform is going absolutely crazy and they're knocking people off of it all the time. And I'm just thinking, the website's the one place online you actually own. Why wouldn't you take the time to build that up? You know what I mean? Maybe it's not the core strategy, but when you're saying, I don't care, I very much feel the same way. It doesn't. Those are. Platforms are just a means to an end, to reach the people, the people I met in, oh, eight and 2005 and 1998 and beyond in 2015. I'm not like, oh, we're on this platform now. I got their cell numbers and we're friends.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, email and podcast, arguably you earn your audience, but then again, you don't, do you?

Really?

If you boil it straight down and we've all seen apps and websites getting tamed up, all you need to do is have the skill and faith and belief that you can build it up if you need to and then you're not worrying.

You know, I could add a caveat and say, what platform is going to knock all existing ones out?

I'm sure there will be one who knows.

That'll be interesting, doesn't he?

There first with the predictions.

Yeah, Gary V and Elon, they'll make their own or something.

Watch. We look back in 10 years. It actually happened. That's kind of crazy. Okay, I love what you're saying. Keep it focused on the people. We're going to thank our sponsor and come back for the imperfect action round. You've heard me say every business needs a book, including yours. And it's true. And that's why I'm launching my new book@eapublishingmethodbook.com so you can learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. But you know what? Don't take my word for it. Take it from a few of my authors like Lori I went from having an idea and a possibility to actually getting my book published. Or Catherine, thank you for making my mom number one best selling author. Or Mary Alice what he got done for me in three days regarding my book launch.

Unmanageable. John Cody I've worked with Mario over.

The phone and online and he's been very helpful in getting me where I needed to go with promoting my books. Rocio there's no way in the world I would have been able to do this with somebody else again. I've attempted it in the past, it didn't serve me. As a matter of fact, I ended up more frustrated than anything. So this has been a very seamless process. Adele if you're looking for an amazing business coach, I highly recommend Mario Ficcini or Bill Benner.

I can't make a higher recommendation.

To.

Work with Mario Ficini.

He has been great for me and right now I won't work with anybody else except for Mario.

Hey, their words, not mine. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com to get your copy and I look forward to hearing your transformation as our next video success story. Once again, that's eapublishingmethodbook.com and we are back with the imperfect action round. Mark, are you ready to take imperfect action?

Yep.

I got three questions for you. 60 second or less answers. The first one is what is the fastest path to the cash?

The fastest path to the cash is stop getting ready to get ready. People think they have to know something before they can do something. But really they have to do something before they can know something. And the analogy here is if you want to drive from Tampa to California, if you decide you're not going to start the journey until you can see the state lines, I can tell you I'm no expert in physics, but you are not going to get there. So what you do to do is you need to start the journey before you have the end and understand you only get to know something by actually doing something and not the other way around.

Love it. Number two, what is the biggest problem you see your prospects making and the fastest way for them to fix it?

Oh, this is, this is the biggest thing I see is.

All these online courses and programs. They have endless spreadsheets for the ideal client avatar. Right? And it gets people into procrastination. It gets people thinking too much like positioning. Your offer is not an academic offer, academic exercise. Because if you're doing in the spreadsheet you're going from you to the market. What you actually need to do is do it from the market to you. It's not difficult. You need like a couple of lines and you're good to go. And it just holds people back for so long. People need to make these courses and programs. Simple overcomplicating shows a lack of understanding. Go to the market with an offer that gets them somewhere they want to be without doing something they want to do. And that's a good enough start.

Excellent. Number three, what is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

Actually help people and get them results done.

That's it.

Love it, love it, love it.

It's not rocket science.

No, it's not. Where would you like people to learn more about you?

All right, so I got told that on the podcast I need to have a phonetically easy website. So we got get Markshelp and on there we will have LinkedIn profile training. We'll give you everything you need to get moving and get the platform and get leads and get clients and understand the relationship approach. So. Www.getmarkshelp.com and it's about to go live.

Excellent. And what books would you recommend? Expert Authority World.

Oh, don't get me started on that. I read and I study all the time. I actually study books. But what's the best book? Oh, I'm absolutely loving. Let's just go. What I'm loving at the moment. John demartini, the values factor. It is fantastic. It's a fantastic book. To understand human behavior. That's been amazing. I'm a big fan of Joe Dispenser, Breaking Habit of Being yourself and any biography. Little Black Stretchy Pants was probably the best biography I read by the founder of Lululemon. Those three are fun.

Excellent. Thank you for those. All right, Mark, it's been a pleasure. Loved everything you shared. Thank you very much.

Thank you. I've enjoyed it. Take care.

All right, Expert Authority World. We have another great episode here today. I'll see you tomorrow. Have a great day and God bless.

You're already the expert. But have you transformed your expertise into a tangible asset that will generate qualified leads while increasing profit for you 24? 7? And if so, how well are you promoting it? With my new book, the Expert Authority Effect Publishing Method, I take you through my process step by step. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com to get started. Now. Once again, that's eapublishingmethodbook.Com thanks for listening to today's episode. I would love to know what you enjoyed most from it, if you haven't done so already. I invite you to connect with me on my new LinkedIn. You can go to it directly at eainterviews.com LinkedIn Once again, that's eainterviews.com LinkedIn. Lastly, check out the full eainterviews.com site for complete show notes, the full interview video experience, links to the resources we mentioned, and more. Have a blessed day and I'll see you on the next one.