KF #21. Builds Networks Archives - Page 2 of 9 - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Pete Mockaitis
Pat, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Patrick Kilner
Pete, it’s great to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Pat, I’m so excited to get into your wisdom of Find Your Six: Stop Lead Generating & Start Building Influence, which has plenty of applicability, not just for sales-type folks but anyone looking to build influence and have mentorship and good things flowing. But, first, we have to hear about your semi-pro athletic experience in Spain. What’s the story here?

Patrick Kilner
I played soccer undergrad, and I ended up having the opportunity to go and study in Pamplona, Spain, so running the bulls, which only happens, that’s a 10-day sort of event. That’s not what little Pamplona looks like all the time. But I was there, and the great news is there’s no NCAA in Spain but the university had a futsal team, which was just starting to make its way into the US at the time, futsal, but was really big in Brazil and Spain, and I’m looking for a way to get some exercise in, go try out for the team, and make the team.

And because there’s no NCAA, everything is semi-pro. There are just gradations of semi-pro, and this university team was a pretty high-level semi-pro team, and I didn’t even know what I was getting myself into, but that’s how I stumbled into it, is just through the extension of my academic career and being on a really cool campus, and friendships that led me to try out for this team. Total blast and learned some great new skills and meet some awesome friends in the process.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s beautiful. That’s beautiful. Well, we’re going to talk about building friends and allies and networking. Maybe to kick us off, could you share one of the most surprising, fascinating, counterintuitive discoveries you’ve made along the way when it comes to what we might call networking, what we might call relationship-building? What do you want to call it?

Patrick Kilner
Yeah. So, well, I want to talk about it as business development. So, every business needs to generate revenue, and what I want to propose to anybody who’s listening, regardless of whether you feel like you’re in the business development realm or not, is that you are contributing to that. You’re contributing to a business and its functioning, and so, in some ways, shape, or form, we’re all business developers.

And as I began researching this book, and frankly, actually before that, maybe I’ll tell a quick story about how I sort of stumbled upon this. I was teaching a class of entrepreneurs, business owners, business leaders, in the DC metro area, which is where I’m from, of about 40 people, and we’re doing a mid-year check in on their businesses.

And I said to them, “Okay, so you all had revenue goals. What are those goals? Six months ago, what did you set those goals at? Write that down.” Okay, they write that down. “Now, how are you trending towards those? We’re about six months in, how are you trending towards those goals? Write that number down. Now, you may have been a little bit overly optimistic at the beginning of the year, so that’s okay. We still have six months to catch up. Given that, what is the lead-generation tactic that you have in your back pocket that you can pull out and make that revenue come in the door.

I spoke about it specifically through the lens of lead generation at the time. And they all wrote that down. And I was treating this as sort of a mastermind. So, I said, “Okay, great. We’re going to get a few really good things here out of 40 people.” I said, “Okay. So, given that lead generation, I’m just curious, how many of you are really excited to do that lead generation, not just for the next six months but for the next three years every day, two hours a day, just go get it? Because I know that if you’re excited about what you’re doing, you’re going to continue to do it. It’s not just going to be a solution for this year but for future years.”

Pete Mockaitis
And if I may, so for examples of these lead generation tactics might be, “I’m going to get up in the Facebook ads, or the Google ads, or start calling people, or asking for referrals.” So, any number of those things might’ve been on the table.

Patrick Kilner
Smile and dial, pound on the phones, write scripts, dialogues, objections, handlers, all the stuff that you learn in that lead-generation sort of paradigm, knocking doors, whatever it is, speed networking, “How many networking events? How many cards can I hand out?” Those types of things. And when I asked that question in that way, and it wasn’t a scripted question, it was a live question, nobody raised their hand, nobody said, “I can’t wait to do this for the next three years plus.”

And so, now I didn’t have any content with which to sort of have the mastermind. And so, I said, “I’m just curious, how many of you who have kids would be excited to take that lead generation tactic that you wrote down and teach it to your kids so they will have more flourishing, more exciting careers and lives?” Not a hand.

And this began the process for me of thinking, “Well, if we’re not excited about how we’re going to make business come in the door,” and, by the way, these people, most of them had most of the skin in the game for their organization. They were the leaders of their organization. And if the leaders of the organization aren’t excited about that, they can’t transfer that skill to other people. It’s just something they’re trying to retire from as quickly as possible, and that’s not a sustainable reality.

So, there’s something broken about just how we think about business development. And it shifted my thought process. Business development is sort of the broader thing. Lead generation is really just a blip on the radar screen of the history of business development. So, to answer your question now, what was sort of the aha moment or that piece of evidence that really struck me, is after this, I went and I got on Google Ngram, which is really a cool tool if you played around with it.

And what you’re able to do is figure out when the first times we actually used certain language around certain ideas. So, it categorized all of the…Google has sort of categorized everything that’s ever been written. So, you can use this tool, and academics use it a lot, and what I found is that we didn’t actually use the word lead generation, the phrase lead generation, until around 1976.

If you’ve been in sales since the ‘80s, you think that lead generation is synonymous with business development. It’s actually just there’s been a turn of phrase. Things like smile and dial, things like scripts and dialogues around telephone, hitting the phones, all of those ideas, call centers. You can actually look at how these spiked in the ‘80s and the ‘90s, and then how they get taken over by technology and re-used. So, who does lead generation better than any human being now?

Pete Mockaitis
I’m thinking Facebook or Google.

Patrick Kilner
Right. Exactly. The really critical thing, and what I’ve begun to discover in my research is that if you are doing lead generation, eventually you get beat out by cheaper options that do it 24/7 and actually, ultimately, better than you because AI is just eating your lunch when it comes to lead generation, which actually makes us feel like cogs in a big wheel of our business instead of the indispensable drivers of our business.

And so, to get back to the story, that’s why nobody really wanted to continue doing this long term because, whether they realize it or not, they realize, “I am fighting a losing battle.” So, take travel agents, for example. How many travel agents do you know are in your phone?

Pete Mockaitis
I don’t know any.

Patrick Kilner
Right. So, if you know some one or two, there used to be travel agents all over the place. What happened? Lead generation was the thing, and they got disrupted radically by tech. So, Travelocity, whoever, has just cut out the middleman because they’ve, ultimately, really quickly done better lead generation than a human being could do.

So, what I talk about in the book is that if you’re doing lead generation, not only is it stripping you of your joy of working, but you’re also more disruption-prone. And so, let’s look at our relationships and where the relationships were…our relationships are really commoditized. Commodities are easily exchanged for anything else or versus the few relationships that are indispensably fundamental to our success that, regardless of what happens, they’re still going to be there for you, and we all have those in every aspect of our lives.

So, that’s the premise of the book. The question then is, “How do I go find those fundamental relationships, that are not commoditized, faster so that I can accelerate my career?” And the surprising thing to me is that people have applied this to mentorship, they’ve applied it to their sales, they’ve applied it to finding major accounts, to building boards of trustees because they realized, “Wow, in order to really accelerate my growth, I just need a handful of really amazing people.”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s beautiful. And this reminds me of Keith Ferrazzi’s book Who’s Got Your Back and some stuff I’ve done back in the day with accountability groups and folks who really support and challenge me in terms of making things happen. And so, yeah, it is broad and vast, whether you’re deliberately trying to get folks who you can sell stuff to, or rather you’re seeking out mentorship or other kinds of relationship goodies.

So, tell us, if that’s something we want, like, “Yeah, I would love that in my world,” how do we go about doing it? And maybe I start with you say “Find your six…” What’s up with the six? And why is six people the magic number?

Patrick Kilner
So, I went and started researching “Exactly how many people do you need?” If the lead generation paradigm tells us you need thousands in order to get a small percentage. That’s basically, “You need to make these many calls in order to have this sale or this conversion rate,” “You have to have these many likes in order to get…” whatever, that dopamine hit.

If that’s what it’s telling us, that volume is the key, how many actually do we need in your six? And so, the shift, just to sort of reveal it is you really need a shift to thinking about being in the talent game, that if you’re in business or just in life, you’re actually not in the lead generation game anymore; you’re in the talent-searching game. So, how do you go find that talent? How to do that?

Now, where did six come from? I’m very fortunate to have built a business around great relationships, great professional relationships, and I found the 60 most impactful people who had had really long term and illustrious careers. So, these are folks typically 60 plus in all sorts of different careers, and I took them out and I interviewed all of them because really, really interested in “What are the keys to long-term success? And who are the people that made that happen for them?”

So, I was really curious in finding out the characteristic of these people. But, in so doing that, what I found is that the average number of people that had made really impactful contributions to really high performers in their careers was just six people. It wasn’t 600 people, it wasn’t thousands of people, it was just six people, and that kept happening as I’d have these interviews one after another.

And so, not only did I find the characteristics of the talent that they had saddled up next to, or who had invested into them, but I also found that you actually just need six of them. And they sort of accidentally found their six over the course of an entire career. So, my question was, “How could we go find those six in six months or a year? If you knew how to crack that code, what would that look like for you?” And so, that’s why six is from some of the ground research, if you will.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, when you talk about those six, can we paint a little bit of a picture in terms of “If someone is in someone’s six, it kind of looks like this. These are the sorts of things they do for them; they share with them; they talk about.” What does that look, sound, feel like in practice?

Patrick Kilner
Yeah. And you can apply this to, again, anybody in any career. I’ll give you sort of the principles that you can apply to anything, but then we can certainly drill into what that might look like for specific people depending on their career. But the first thing you’re looking for in terms of a character trait is longevity. So, I began looking for people who had clocked a lot of hours with others by virtue of their position.

So, why longevity versus sort of very transactional relationships? So, if somebody is in the habit of just having transactional relationships, they’re not typically going to be in the connection game, in the wisdom distribution game, that I’m looking for, for later on. So, that’s the first thing, is look for longevity. So, people who are spending more time than usual in relationship with folks. And we can drill into that a little more. So, longevity.

The second thing was implicit trust. So, for me, I was looking for people who, and this is what I found with others, people who worked in really big organizations, and they found people who were implicitly trusted, not just by them, but by the entire organization. Everybody that ran across them, these people actually, in many ways, their career and their income depended on the fact that everybody who encountered them was deeply implicitly trusting of them.

And then the final thing is finding people who have an ownership mindset to their work. So, these are the people that if the company is going down, they’re holding onto the rudder the whole time. They’re trying to make this thing go. Their DNA is part and parcel of the company. I had a great encounter with somebody who was in legal document storage, and he said, “I know exactly who you’re talking about,” and I’m thinking, “Okay, he’s going to talk about one of his clients. He’s a partner at a law firm.”

And he said, “It was the woman who greeted me at the front desk of the law firm. Her DNA was all over this place. She knew when the partners were having issues, if they were staying late, how the cases were going, if their professional relationships were good, or if she could angle me in to go help sell whatever I was bringing to the table.” And so, that type of person who, maybe isn’t actually on paper the owner, but also, but really is they own their job.

So, if you find people who have that type of longevity, that implicit deep trust, and an ownership mindset, you’ve basically found the right person. So, if I’m hiring for an organization, or when we’re hiring for…I own a real estate company. When we’re hiring people, we’re looking for people who, when we’re interviewing them, have established implicit trust with others around them, and how they do that, and how they think through those relationships.

We’re looking for people that have a true ownership mindset versus, say, what in the book I call a run-it mindset, or a work-it mindset, sort of that Fred Flintstone end-of-the-day, like the dinosaur gets pulled by the tail and he’s like, “Okay, I’m done. I’m washing my hands of this thing.” And that’s a commoditized relationship with the employer. That’s sort of working for the weekend.

So, those are the people that we’re looking for both internally as well as externally to advise us, to make connections to major accounts, to refer us business. And so, in the book, I go deep into how to apply those principles, but that’s sort of your talent profile, if you will.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so then, I’m thinking about it from two lenses. One in terms of like the sales business development, and another one in terms of sort of mentorship and growth and development. So, if we’re thinking about it on the mentorship side, so much time means much time in the career or the domain that we would like their wisdom in. Is that fair or how are you thinking about that?

Patrick Kilner
Yes. So, it could be, I would say, in general. And so, longevity really is the first indicator of whether somebody is trusted. You can’t be trusted unless you’ve spent time with folks. So, it’s a really quick filter. If you look at your list of everybody. Let’s say you work for a big consulting firm, and you’re up and coming, or you just got there, and somebody says, “You know what you should do is go find your mentors here.”

Look for the people who have the longest-standing client relationships and relationships within their teams, and who have clocked the most hours with those people. These may be managers but it could also be people in the regular mix of the organization. So, I’m looking for those people. That will limit your list pretty substantially. One of the things that I realized is I was getting frustrated in my business that depended a lot on referrals that people who have known me for a long time just weren’t giving me a lot of business. I was so frustrated.

And then I realized, actually, they don’t spend enough time with most people on a daily basis to build enough trust in order to send me business. And the same is true if you’re looking for mentors. These folks have to be in the practice of investing time into folks so that when they decide, “Hey, you know what, you should go talk to this person.” What do mentors do really, really well? They connect you to other wisdom through other great people. And so, that’s why longevity is really important. That then indicates the type of trust you’re looking for.

So, when you’re, let’s say, you’re looking for that mentor, you’ll know that you have somebody who’s implicitly trusted by asking them the right questions when you sit down with them. Maybe asking them who their mentors are. What kind of relationships do they still have in those mentor relationships? Or, they may be in peer mentor relationships. What kind of organizations are they involved in? What kind of board activities should I get involved in that you found really great?

People who sit on boards, oftentimes, they have to be implicitly trusted. They have a fiducia allegation. So, those are some of the indicators that I’m looking for when I’m looking for a mentor, is people who are really generous and who kind of know that this is going to come back around. All this stuff comes back around whether in the form of business or the right connections when it comes to sort of this game of life that we’re all playing.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, could you maybe tie it all together in terms of perhaps a story? So, there’s a person who was looking to turbocharge their advancement, ascent, wisdom, and they set about identifying six folks who could be of great assistance, and maybe we don’t need the 20-minute saga, but just the general broad strokes of what happened, how they went about it, and what results came from it.

Patrick Kilner
Right. So, I’ll give maybe a personal one here. So, the first business I started was in real estate, residential real estate business, and I got into it prior to the 2008 bust. But then 2008-2009 happened, and there was blood in the streets. National Association Realtors went from 1.5 million people to 750,000 people in less than two years, so experienced people taking early retirement really quickly. And I’d been in the business for three years at the time.

And I remember thinking, “Okay, all the stuff that all of these people who have taught me, who are now getting out of the business and it was all lead generation stuff, I need to figure out how to do this better.” And so, I called somebody who I knew had weathered storms in his own career, and he was, at the time in his 60s, and I called him up, and I said, “Jerry, I’m trying to juggle all this. I’m looking for any wisdom that you have.” I was not pitching business. I just needed his advice.

And, unknowingly, and by going to him and saying, “Listen, I just…I’m coming hat in hand here. As you know, I got a young family, you’ve done exceptionally well, and I’m sure have weathered some storms. Would you be up for a cup of coffee or breakfast?” And he said, “No problem.” Two days later, on his calendar, one of the busiest people I know.

And 45 minutes of me taking copious notes, and I remember he turned to me at the end, and he said, “You know, Pat, these are great questions. I listened the entire time,” and he said, “You’re going to do really well in real estate.” And what was interesting was I hadn’t talked about myself the entire time. I just asked the questions.

And here I am, I feel like a total pseudo-professional, total impostor, that I should be getting kicked out of this industry as well. I’m holding on. And he said to me, “You’re going to do really well. Listen, I’m really good at this attorney thing,” he was an attorney, “but I don’t know anything about real estate. I like how you think. If you run across any investments, let me know. That would be good for me.”

I’m thinking, “Wow, that’s…” I wasn’t selling. I can’t believe that this person just did this. But then he said something even more interesting, he said, “When I get back to the office, I got to get to court here in a second, when I get back to the office, I’m going to make an introduction to three different people for you.” And he put his name, his professional name to me, a young professional who was just struggling. He knew that I was trying to figure this whole thing out, and made connections to other professionals who respected him enough to say, “Yeah, I’ll have a conversation with you.”

And from that, what I found is that the right people, so Jerry for me was my first, the first one of my six ever. And great people in his shoes, great mentors, these people who sit at your table, if you will, that I talk about in the book, they are great connectors, they’re great wisdom distributors. I got more wisdom in one breakfast than I could ever imagine, but then he connected me to others who could help me. And those others also put their name to me because he had shown them that he was going to do that as well.

And it was my job to research what I wanted to talk to them about, how I could help them, and to stop worrying about not knowing everything, and just get out there and have these conversations. But Jerry taught me that the right people will be amazing connectors and, what I call in the book, wisdom distributors for you as well. And so, that set me on a course to build a really big organization that has provided for my family ever since through a serious recession. And I never did lead generation again after that.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. And so, alternatively, you just kept talking to great people who introduced you to other people, and then away you went.

Patrick Kilner
Yeah, I thought to myself, “Gosh, if I could have one of those conversations every day, what would my business look like? So, how do I go about doing that?” And so, I spend the last half of my book talking about how to have those conversations. What’s the art of that meeting? How do you land the meeting? How do you prepare for the meeting? How do you artfully have the meeting? What do you do to follow up? How do you add value? Can you even add value? I’m just starting out here.

Or maybe I feel like an impostor because I just shifted careers, but what I realized is, gosh, for the time that I spent those 45 minutes to an hour that I spent there was the most fruitful time, and I could imagine doing that for three, five, 15, 25 years every day of my career.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, so let’s hear it then. So, let’s say we got a professional, they want to meet some of these people, have some of these conversations, get it going, what’s sort of the step one, two, three of making it happen?

Patrick Kilner
Yeah. So, the first thing, and it sounds really simple, is make your list. Who do you know currently? And look at that list and ask yourself, “Okay, of the people who I know currently,” you can say, “Hey, I just arrived in a new town. I don’t know that many people. Who do you know, because you know some folks, somebody helped you moved, somebody recommended that you use this company for X, Y, and Z, so you know some folks?” And so, make that list. It can be short. It can be long.

Then ask yourself, “Of those people, what would I be if I could ask them one question? What would I be most interested to ask that person about?” Some people, you won’t be able to come up with anything. Others, you’re going to have three or four questions that you can’t wait to ask them. So, like a good podcast host, now you have really pointed questions specific to that person. And so, that’s the first step, is finding just a handful of folks who you want to go sit down with and have a cup of coffee with. That’s step one.

You can build that list in a number of ways. Chamber of commerce, directories, you can look up people. It’s so easy to find lots of lists of people to go sit down with, and to be interested and have these conversations with. It’s obviously better if you have connections to them prior, but if you don’t, okay, you can start somewhere and we’re really, really fortunate to have all sorts of networking opportunities online as well. These can turn into much deeper relationships.

So, second step is now you’ve got to get the meeting. So, ask for advice. The easiest way to do this is to ask for advice, and ask for advice authentically. So, here’s how not to ask for advice. Don’t call somebody – Pete, I’m sure this happens to you all the time, “Hey, Pete, you’ve got this successful podcast. Could I pick your brain?” And you’re like, “Gosh, if I had a dollar for every time somebody asked me to pick my brain, I’d be super wealthy.”

Here’s the problem with that. There’s a certain laziness to just saying, “Hey, Pete, can I pick your brain?” They haven’t actually dignified Pete with a little bit of research about “What specifically does Pete do really, really well that I know about, that I’ve really thought about so that he knows I’m not going to waste his time, and that he also knows where the direction of this thing is going to go? We’re not just going to sit down for a cup of coffee and this is going to turn into a two-hour long conversation, and we’re going to get nowhere. But I’ve got somebody who’s actually interested specifically about something that I’m an expert in.”

So, that’s the next step is research the person well enough to know why you’re asking them for advice. Then go have the meeting. Now, what does that do? That comes off very authentic because now it’s not a script. This is not lead generation. I’m not lead-generating this conversation with you. I’m being very specific. I’m authentically curious. And authenticity is really, really powerful in relationships, especially at the beginning.

And with that authenticity, now you frame the conversation that you’re going to have. Now, you’re going to go meet with the person. The conversation is framed. They know that you’re going to honor their time. They could be the busiest person you could possibly find. If you show them that you’re going to honor their time, and you’re authentically curious, they’ll have the conversation with you.

You go have that conversation, and if you ask the right questions, three, four really, really good questions, make sure that they know that you know about them. Again, you’ve given them the dignity of saying, “Listen, you’re really busy and I saw this and that, and I’d really like to know how you made manager. How did you go from here in your career to here in your career? That seems like almost an impossibility to me but I’m sure that you’ve got some insights in this.”

Or, “How was it that you landed that major account when you were pretty early in your career? How did you do that? Who were the people that made those connections for you?”

So, asking that, or you might be really…I remember going through a phase where I really wanted to know what made high performers tick and what their daily routine looked like because I really wanted to hone in my daily routine, and I was coming authentically to that in asking that question as well. So, those are some of the things, and now those are the bedrock for a much deeper conversation.

Here’s what I found with Jerry, is that because my conversation and my questions were specific and authentic, he liked how I thought, and he said it. He said, “Pat, I like how you think. You’re going to do really well in business.” We don’t work with people because of what they know. We work with people and we hire people and we want to continue relationships with people because of how they think.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s true.

Patrick Kilner
Think about your best relationships.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that resonates. And I guess I’m thinking of what not to do. I received a LinkedIn message, like, “Oh, hey, I see that you’re a podcaster. Could you send me a link to your podcast?” This is on LinkedIn. And I’m thinking, “My LinkedIn profile literally says, ‘Pete Mockaitis, podcast host and trainer and chief at AwesomeAtYourJob.com.’”

And so, I guess it’s like, “Okay, you’re not a real human. You are a piece of software that is automating outreach because a real human wouldn’t do that.” And so, what you said is like when you do that bit of research upfront, it helps distinguish you from the vast majority of inbound requests that are just like, “Meh,” as opposed to, “Oh, okay, you’re a human being. You’ve spent some time looking at my stuff. Therefore, I have an inkling that if I were to invest some time in you, it’s going to be well spent.”

And I think Tim Ferriss has some good tips about how you show just that, like, “Hey, your time was well spent. You mentioned a book, I read the book, and here’s my key takeaways from the book you mentioned that I’ve already read two days after you told me about it.” It’s like, “Oh, this guy. Okay, you’re serious. Intriguing.”

Patrick Kilner
And be an active listener. Carry one of these things around and actually take notes because, again, you’re endearing yourself to this person who is honoring you by giving you their time. But flip this on the other side, when asked correctly for your wisdom, have you ever been offended?

Pete Mockaitis
No, I guess that correctly is the key word. But, no, I haven’t. It’s flattering. I guess the worst-case scenario is I feel guilty that I don’t have the availability to give them a little something. That’s like the worst but it’s always pleasant and uplifting because, most of the time, most compliments that come my way immediately precede a pitch to be a guest on my podcast, which makes them feel very insincere.

Of course, there are plenty of genuine compliments as well. They’re just outnumbered. But givers versus takers, right? So, yeah, that totally resonates. And so, if there’s any…I guess that’s sort of a good takeaway there. If there’s any fear, like, “Oh, I don’t know. I wouldn’t want to bother them. I wouldn’t want to inconvenience them. I’m little ole me. I couldn’t possibly….” Point well taken. It’s like if you do it well, they appreciate it.

Any other do’s and don’ts for that reach-out message? You do your research. You convey you’ve done your research. You don’t use the phrase ‘pick your brain.’ Anything else?

Patrick Kilner
Yeah, I think stop thinking that you don’t have anything to offer. So, you’re giving two gifts. One is the gift of actually having done your research and asking this person about what they’ve dedicated their life to most likely, “You’re awesome at this. If you have the time, I will inconvenience myself to make sure that you and I can sit down. I’ll meet you at the airport if you’re traveling all the time during your layover.”

So, that’s the first gift, really is that’s what gets me out of bed. Somebody says to me, “Hey, so and so told me that I should be in touch with you because you’re really, really awesome at this,” specific thing. “Would you have any time for me? Not next week maybe, but any time in the next month or quarter. Could I just find 45 minutes on your calendar? I’d love to take you out for a cup of coffee or whatever works best for you.”

And so, again, so that type of idea, and I go through a bunch of different ways to do that and endear yourself. So, that’s maybe going to look different within depending on your organization, depending on your career track, but really mastering that language, and that art of preparing, and the art of having a meeting is actually, frankly, a lost art because we hide behind screens so long that we’re actually not in this habit of connecting deeply with people and allowing them to have that in return, really, in an authentic way.

Now, that’s the first gift. The second gift is the gift that you give them afterwards. So, if you’re doing this, and I said if I could have this conversation every day, so if you said, “Part of my business plan or my career plan is to have one cup of coffee every single day with somebody who could be,” what I call in the book, “an influencer candidate, somebody who could be a candidate for my six. And those are just people who I have an authentic curiosity about what they do.”

So, because you’re doing this, you have a network, maybe not of people who are at the top of your list, your six. That’s sort of a sacred spot, but you have a lot of people who are at different places in what I like to call the influencer pyramid. So, they may be not as influential for you but really great folks. You can find a lot of those. And now you can be a connector of great talent. Again, you’re in the talent game. You’re looking for just a handful up here, but you will have…you do this for a quarter, you do this for half a year, you’ve got 50-100 people who know your name and who you can connect others to.

And so, even if you’re not somebody who’s old and wise and can give that wisdom, like Jerry did to me, you can certainly be what Jerry also was, which was a connector to other great minds and other great influencers, potentially. So, that’s the next gift. And so, those two gifts really are super impactful. And what it does is it reframes who you are in the mind of the potential influencer. They now see you in a totally different light. So, those are some of the hacks, if you will, of that conversation.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Well, thank you. Well, Pat, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Patrick Kilner
Yeah. So, I’d say this, never leave a meeting without asking this simple question, “Knowing what you know about me, Pete, who else do you think I should talk to? If you were in my shoes, who else would you go talk to?” because not everybody is going to be your Jerry who’s just going to think to do that to make the connection. But if you prompted that, what I found is I had maybe a list of 25 people when I started out, who I was just desperate to learn from. That turned into a list of thousands over the years because I prompted that question.

And so, if you’re in these great conversations, again, you’re looking for a mentor, “Knowing what you know about me, who am I looking for?” What I found is also, just mathematically, you’re looking for, basically, a one in 20 talent. So, Pete, I’m sure you’ve hired folks before, and you go, “Gosh.” When you’re hiring out of desperation, you’ll take the first person who sends you a resume, when you’re looking for talent.

The same is true for mentors, the same is true for almost any person you’re looking for, external talent or internal talent to your team. But if you’ve talked to 20 people, gosh, you know what the landscape looks like and you can now choose who you’re going to go invest your time in, or time with, and who you want to forge that relationship with. You can talk to 20 people over the course of a month. Over the course of six months, you’ve found your six.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. I see how that math works there. Monday through Friday, hmm-mm. Thank you.

Patrick Kilner
Take off a weekend.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now can you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Patrick Kilner
This one is from Dostoevsky, so great Russian novelist. And he said…and this is really comforting too, a guy who got straight Bs through college. He said, “It’s not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them – the character, the heart, and generous qualities.” I love that. As a dad, that’s what I want to teach my kids. So, that’s one of my favorite quotes.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Patrick Kilner
So, that Google Ngram, I thought was I kind of nerd out on using that. I think it’s really interesting to understand how we use language and why we use it at certain times and how it impacts us. So, as a tool, I thought that was really, really interesting, and something that I think that I use quite a bit still.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Patrick Kilner
Okay. So, I’ve got two here. One is my favorite book of the year. I probably recommended this book more than any other, and it just came out this summer, a book called Wanting by Luke Burgis. It’s on the reason why we want what we want, and how people influence, how the people around us deeply influence why we desire, not just why we want things but why we actually form certain desires for things.

Totally made me shift how I see the people around me, and I’d wrote a book about the people around me. Fascinating book. He studies a guy named Rene Girard, who many people know was a mentor to the likes of Peter Thiel and others at Stanford. So, awesome book, a must read. And then David McCullough’s The Wright Brothers. One of the coolest stories about entrepreneurship around, and I’m an entrepreneur, and this is like these guys totally bootstrapped it and figured it out after having a bike shop. So, really, really cool story.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Patrick Kilner
OptimalWork.com. These guys have been a total gamechanger. I would not have been able to crank out a book without OptimalWork. The thesis here is that I particularly like a tool that they have on their site called The Golden Hour. And what it allows you to do is to get into the state of flow. So, block out distraction, get into a state of flow on command. So, a pretty amazing tool. Highly recommend it. I’m having my high school kids doing this already and it’s changing their grades already.

Pete Mockaitis
Flow on command, that’s enticing.

Patrick Kilner
Yeah, and that’s the key. And they do this at Harvard, so they take kids who are already high performers, and they teach them to actually perform at an even higher level and actually enjoy what they do a whole lot more. So, Dr. Kevin Majeres is behind this. He’s a clinical psychologist and just a tremendous mind. So, OptimalWork.com.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. And a favorite habit?

Patrick Kilner
For me, it is waking up earlier than my competition. I think it has to happen.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a key nugget you share, something that really connects and resonates with folks; they quote it back to you a lot?

Patrick Kilner
Yeah. So, I’ve got two from the book. One is simply trust is transferable. We can trust-transfer, and that’s a big part of the book is this idea that you’re really in the talent game and the trust-transferring game. And then the other is I didn’t actually expect as much resonance with folks, but folks who are trying to balance your family life and professional life.

This struck me that this idea that save your professional time, effort, and money for the most influential people so that you can save your personal time, effort, and money for the most vulnerable. So, whatever you’re in, like in my case, those are kids running around in diapers at a certain point of my life. But that’s why I work so that I can provide and really spend my time, effort, and money with them.

Pete Mockaitis
And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Patrick Kilner
So, really easy, FindYourSix.com or PatrickKilner.com will lead you to me, yeah. And it’s pretty easy. There’s forms on there. You can probably find my email on there as well.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Patrick Kilner
So, I’d ask, really, what’s, first, a reflective question, “What is the cost of commoditization in your business of your relationships?” So, if you’re in sales, lead gen, but fill in the blank. What’s the cost of that compounded over time for your career? I’d encourage you to take the Find Your Six challenge. I lay out a challenge at the back of the book, and it just says, “Here’s how to go about the challenge. Here’s how to find your six in six months or at least get to that point.”

If you want to totally reframe your business development and understand that, regardless of what your position is, you’re in the talent game. So, that would be the challenge. It’s really just built into what I have here. And here’s the idea, the business grows and your career grows and sustains and becomes disruption-proof only through the right talent. So, you’re in any position, “How do I disruption-proof my talent for my career so that I’m indispensably important?” It’s through the right relationships, and not just, “Hey, you scratch my back, I scratch yours,” but real investment into them.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Pat, this has been a treat. I wish you much luck with your six.

Patrick Kilner
Pete, thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
Donna, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Donna Serdula
Hi, Pete. Thank you so much for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to talk about branding, LinkedIn profile optimizing, representing yourself well. And what’s fun because I was just on your LinkedIn profile and, right off the bat, you impressed me with your use of the pronunciation feature which most people don’t use. And you didn’t just say “Donna Serdula,” which is what I did but you said, “My name is Donna Serdula. I help professionals represent themselves or brand themselves on LinkedIn and beyond.” I was like, “That’s awesome.” Like, you got a few seconds to work with and so you, right there at the very beginning, you’ve made it count, and I was impressed. So, it looks like we’re talking to the right person.

Donna Serdula
Well, thank you. They give you 10 seconds and if they’re going to give you 10 seconds, I say use all 10 seconds. I will tell you, right when they first put that out there, I was using like a little bit of the Batman theme from the 1960s Adam West show, I had that as the introduction and then my name, but that was cute in the very beginning, and then I decided, “Let’s get this a little bit more professional.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, well done. And it’s funny, I listened to mine, it’s like, “I’m a little soft. I should do it again.” All right, so I’m already inspired.

Donna Serdula
But here’s the thing. With your name, I kept looking at it in my email, and I was like, “Mocca? Mikatitis?” and then I went to your profile, hit that button, got the pronunciation, and thought, “Why didn’t I see it immediately?” But it’s perfect, like for my last name, very few people know how to pronounce it. And for those people who have an ethnic name, I think it’s a great feature. It helps people and it makes everyone a little bit more comfortable.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so we’re going to talk about representing yourself on LinkedIn. And I’d love it if maybe you could kick us off by sharing what are some of the most wild ways you’ve seen people represent themselves maybe in terms of their titles or the headlines that made you go, “Huh?”

Donna Serdula
There’s a lot of ninjas out there. There’s a lot of ninjas, there’s a lot of rock stars

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, ninjas and rock stars.

Donna Serdula
But I like it. I have to admit when a person tries, I like it. I really like it. What I don’t like is when a person doesn’t try in any way and they upload a really just terrible profile picture and they just copy and paste old stuff that was developed years before, and they call it a day. To me, it’s a horrible, horrible thing. I really feel that people should think and really say to themselves, “How do I want others to perceive me? Where do I want to go in my life? Where do I want to go in my career?” and really be very thoughtful when you craft that profile because people are looking. They want to know what to think about you. And so, if you want to be that ninja, if you want to be that rock star, girl, go for it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. All right. Well, could you maybe kick us off by sharing a cool story of someone who did kind of rethink how they’re representing themselves and tweaked some things on LinkedIn and beyond and saw some cool results from it?

Donna Serdula
This is what we do every day, our clients come to us and they have problems talking about themselves, telling their story. It’s really, really hard to write about yourself. I’m thinking of a very specific client who had come to us. He was 56 years old, and the writing was on the wall, his position was going to be eliminated. He knew it. He knew the end date was coming. He was in technology and he was scared because at 56, he felt he was so far over the hill. He didn’t know where he was going to go, where he was going to get hired. He’d been at this organization for years.

And I remember him calling me and the sense of fear and dread and anxiety that was in his voice, and I remember saying, “Let’s take the bull by the horns and let’s make sure that you’re presenting yourself as who you are, that you’re relevant, that you’re interesting, that you’re energized, that you have so much to offer.” And we worked on the profile and we told his story, and we talked about who he was and what he represented and what he did and how it helped others. We infused the right keywords throughout that profile, and we did the same with his resume.

And he called me back six months later that he had gotten a job closer to his home. He was making 40% more.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, wow.

Donna Serdula
Why 40% more? Not because he did such a great job but because he’d been in that company for so many years, he had never truly gotten the correct upticks in salary that he would’ve gotten if he was in just the regular market. And he was so gracious and so thankful that that’s what happens when you decide to represent yourself and tell your story and put yourself out there.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great. Very cool. Well, a huge success story, so that’s encouraging and hopeful and inspiring for folks who may want to do some things that shake things up. So, can you tell us how do you start thinking about this whole thing? How do you represent yourself? And then maybe let’s get into some particulars for LinkedIn as a platform to do that optimally.

Donna Serdula
Sure. I believe that the very first step, at least with LinkedIn and branding yourself on that platform, it’s really important, Pete, to say, “Why am I on LinkedIn? What am I hoping to achieve?” Not everyone is on LinkedIn for job search. Some people are on it because they want to prospect and sell more. Some are on it because people are looking at them and they want to make sure that they’re utilizing it for reputation management, that when a person looks at them, they see someone who’s impressive, someone who has earned their confidence.

Others are doing it for executive branding to tell that story, to be perceived at a different level, and there could be combinations. But it’s really important to know why you’re on LinkedIn because your goal is going to determine your story and how you present yourself. If you’re in sales and your goal is to sell more but your profile is written like a resume and that goal is more for recruiters that you love to prospect, you’re just going to turn off your target audience which is prospects and potential clients.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great. So, could I hear maybe a little bit of those implications in terms of, okay, if I’m in a selling of products or services mode, as opposed to selling myself mode, what are some key things I do differently based on the pathway I’m going down?

Donna Serdula
Yeah, it’s so important to really envision that audience, that person who you want to be reading the profile. And think in terms of if they were searching for someone like you, if they didn’t know your name, what would those keywords be that they’re putting into the search bar in trying to find you, to get close to someone like you. Those words are words that you’d want to infuse through your profile. That’s how you’re going to get found more often. And very, very few people ever really think that deeply about LinkedIn, they go, “Oh, I copy and paste my resume and I’ll be done.”

But LinkedIn is a professional network but it’s also a search engine, and recruiters and hiring managers are using it, but not just hiring managers. People in the media are using it, people who are looking for talent, who have opportunity to provide, they want to find someone like you, so you want to make it really easy for them to find you. But knowing what you want out of it and what that person would be interested in, that’s what’s going to shape the story.

So, what does a recruiter want? What are you targeting in that regard? Or, what’s going to impress a person? What have you done that you’re proud of that would make a difference? And once you have that down, jot it down. That’s what’s going to start to shape your narrative within the About section of your profile.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Certainly. Well, that sounds fundamental and yet often overlooked.

Donna Serdula
It’s so easy. Why doesn’t anyone do it?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you take some time. Okay, seriously. Who do I want to see this? And when they see it, what do I want them to walk away thinking? And so, you’re thinking through that. And so with that kind of bullseye in mind, what are some of the key factors that make a profile make a great impression in terms of, “Hey, this is remarkable. This person really seems like they could be a winner,” versus, “Oh, okay. Next”?

Donna Serdula
I hate bullets. I hate bulleted lists. I just despise that. I also hate huge blocks of impenetrable texts where there’s not a single line break. It could be the most warmest, engaging copy ever written but if it’s hard for an eye to scan through, you’re going to turn people off. So, it’s not just what you write but it’s also how you format it through the profile. Like, line breaks, that enter or return key should be a good friend of yours. Don’t think like the old-fashioned paragraph concept that we were taught in school. You can actually break it up a little bit more, into more of like ideas so the easier it is to scan, the better.

I would say first person narrative. There are certain times, I have some clients that come to me and they have done the most amazing things. They’ve lived these incredible lives. Their accomplishments are huge. And when they write in the first person, it feels weird to them. It just doesn’t feel right. Those are very few situations where I’m like, “Okay, let’s write in third. It’s okay if you write in third person.” But for most people, they know that you’ve written it yourself, or you’ve hired someone to write it for you. You should write in first person, and write it in a manner where it’s warm, it’s engaging, it tells that story. It’s who you are. Why you do what you do? What does it mean to others? What do you stand for? What do you represent?

And when you talk about that, ultimately, it’s your why. I think it really resonates with people and they love that.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, I hear you there. And I’m looking at yours right now as you’re speaking. So, I hear what you’re saying in terms of breaking up the text so we’ve got some shorter paragraphs, maybe just a sentence at times, or, “Well, I do,” in the shortest. “Do you know what makes a LinkedIn profile stand out from the crowd?” New paragraph. “Well, I do.” That’s great. Okay, I’m intrigued. Okay. What are you about? So, I’m pulled in.

And then in terms of breaking up the text, you have a nice little bold, capital SERVICES, AUTHOR, SPEAKER, and then a little bit of an underline there, and that’s just easy-peasy to do, there’s no special tricks. You just push the bold button?

Donna Serdula
There’s no bold button.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, now you’re a ninja and a rock star, Donna. How do we do it?

Donna Serdula
So, that is actually faux text. It’s Unicode. And so, if you visit my website LinkedIn-Makeover.com and you go to the free tools, I have this little wizard or online app, whatever you want to call it, where you type in, and it will apply formatting, but it’s not real formatting. It just looks like text but it’s more of like code and you copy it and you put it into your profile. And, voila! You suddenly have italics, you have bold, you have underline. You can even have cursive if you wanted to.

The one thing though, Pete, to know is that it looks like the word but it’s not so you shouldn’t be doing everything in that because it’s not optimized for search. The other thing is if a person who is blind and they’re using a screen reader, they’re not going to hear the right words because it’s, again, it’s fake texts. But, in small doses, it’s fabulous.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Donna, I just love talking to someone who’s just delved deep into the details, they’re somebody like, “It’s not actually texts. It’s code. So, here are some implications of that. Noted. It’s going to look great with some tradeoffs so use it appropriately but just know that you can use it,” and just about nobody does because I don’t think I’ve seen it before. So, kudos, Donna.

Donna Serdula
Thank you. Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Okay. So, that’s some of the particulars in terms of looking great and being friendly to the eyeball such that they’ll actually read it. And so then, what are some key thoughts for what we put in there? We want it to be friendly. We want it to make a good impression. Any particular do’s and don’ts?

Donna Serdula
I recognize that it’s 2021 and I shouldn’t have to say that the profile picture is important but, even to this day, it’s something that so many people really struggle with. So, a good do is work on getting a professionally taken photo. It does make a difference. Don’t just go with a selfie with weird things in the background. Don’t show your shoulders or your elbows. It’s a headshot for a reason, especially on a mobile phone which reduces it even smaller. You really want to make sure that it’s your face that’s filling that circle, so that’s a huge thing.

There’s a background graphic that very few people use, and this is a great place to really illustrate your brand and subtly suggest to people who don’t even have to read anything who you are and what you do and what you represent, so definitely utilize that. There’s a lot of areas to upload, photos and things like that, links to websites and whatnot. It’s now called the featured section. It actually provides like a carousel at the top of your profile, and that’s a fabulous place. Very few people don’t use it but I would definitely say it’s a do depending upon your job and who you are and what you do. It should be relatively easy to find something to populate that area.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, we went right into some tactical stuff. Maybe I should zoom out a smidge. You’ve got a full-blown four-point methodology. Can you kind of walk us through that a little bit?

Donna Serdula
Step one, know your goal.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Donna Serdula
Know why you’re on it. We talked a little bit about that. Two, optimize your profile to your goal. Infuse your keywords. Tell the world who you are and why you shine. Three, start to grow your network. You need to connect. Have you ever seen that movie Glengarry Glen Ross?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, coffee is for closers.

Donna Serdula
Yeah. A, B, C. Always be…well, I like to say always be connecting. Always be connecting. A lot of people say to me, “Ugh, I don’t get LinkedIn.” And then I look at their profile, they’ve got like 10 connections, or even just a hundred connections, and you really do need to have a network, so try to get that online network to reflect your offline network. So, connect, connect, connect. So, that’s three.

Four, so now you want to engage. Now, you want to start to go to that homepage and scroll through and comment and like and share, and start to post. That’s when you can network in your pajamas. That’s when things should start to come together for you. And that’s when you’re going to start to see that there is opportunity in those hills out there.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, so we’ve talked a bit about the first two. Let’s hit keywords for a bit now. Well, hey, if you’ve gone deep into Unicode, you may have some answers that I don’t know. So, I guess I’ve played just a little bit of the Google search engine optimization game. Boy, that is a full-time operation and many people have made that their careers in terms saying, “Okay, so what are the keywords? What’s a traffic associated with those keywords? What’s the competition for those keywords? Where can I win? How can I write content that hits those and gets me surfaced in Google?”

And hopefully it’s good as opposed to, “Oh, man.” Well, I think we’ve all read it in terms of, “You might be asking yourself, ‘How do I get a good price on a mortgage?’ Well, the answer to getting a good price on a mortgage involves three key things. The first step to getting a good price on a good mortgage…” You know, it’s like…

Donna Serdula
Yeah, the redundant, yeah, the repetition of the key phrase.

Pete Mockaitis
So, we don’t want to do that. But I’m wondering, like is there any keyword research tools that give us a sense for, I don’t know, like Python versus Django? I barely know what I’m talking about here, so apologies, Python coders. But you get the idea. It’s like there are some opportunities where I can describe a given skill or set of expertise with many different potential keywords. So, how do I know which ones to go for and optimize for?

Donna Serdula
And, sadly, when you’re on LinkedIn, in your account, looking at your profile, it really is almost like pin the tail on the donkey, wearing a blindfold. LinkedIn doesn’t give a lot of insight into how well your profile is performing for keywords, what are the most searched keywords. Those are things that they kind of hold in the back. They don’t show their cards very easily.

What I recommend doing is this. It’s knowing, “What do you feel would a person be searching for if they were looking for you?” And, yes, there is a whole bunch of different keywords. Choose the ones that you feel are the most obvious, the most used, and then use them organically through your profile. The fields that are most sensitive for search – your headline. That right there, if you can infuse top keywords in there, you will find that you turn up higher and more often for those keywords.

If you can use those keywords not in a repetitive or obnoxious way but you can organically use it in the narrative of your About section, that’s going to be very helpful. Again, not in a repetitive way, not in a bulleted list type of way, but you’re weaving them into your story. That’s a good thing. Job titles, again, perfect for keywords. Very few people do but that area does make a difference as does the job description.

So, if you could put it in those areas, and really think, “If I’m looking for a job,” look at the job description, look at a couple job descriptions, highlight. What are the words that you keep seeing repeated over and over and over again? What are those core competencies? What are those applications that you need to know? That will give you an idea. And then what you do, Pete, is you wait and then you watch, and you see. Are you getting hits to your profile?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And they’ll tell you, like, “You’re viewed this many times,” so you know that. And I think it also tells you, “You’ve shown up this many times in search.” So, views of my profile – 1500. I’m looking at mine now. And so, I could see that and then I can just peruse, well, you looked at me. Hi, there.

Donna Serdula
I like to do my due diligence.

Pete Mockaitis
And I can kind of peruse. It tells you, “Found you via LinkedIn profile,” and it will also say, “Found you via homepage,” and found people similar to you but it doesn’t also say, “Found you via search.”

Donna Serdula
I don’t think it does.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, you set it straight.

Donna Serdula
But when they say, “Found you through the profile,” you can almost surmise that it was either they were doing a name-based search or they were doing a keyword search, and you popped up.

Pete Mockaitis
And I think your point associated with just knowing your audience is huge because, well, I looked at this once back in the day when I was doing more Myers Briggs training, which I’m capable of doing but that’s not been my focus lately. And so, you find tons of profiles that will have MBTI in their headline as their title, which, as a type practitioner, I know, and many others do, that that stands for Myers Brigg Type Indicator, which is the name of the tool.

However, I have learned that most people, when they’re searching for that, do not search for MBTI; they search for Myers Briggs. And so, just knowing that and, for all you Myers Briggs practitioners on LinkedIn, here’s a free one for you. Just about no one says Myers Briggs in their title even though that’s what more people look for. So, you can sort of try that out and I guess just maybe ask your target audience, like, “Hey, so if you’re kind of looking for someone to do a personality workshop for you, like what might you type into LinkedIn?” It’s like, “I don’t know, maybe Myers Briggs, maybe DISC.” It’s like, “Okay. Yeah, I know she did not say MBTI.” So, that gets you there.

Donna Serdula
Yeah, sometimes you get in the weeds of your own knowledge and you have to break through and step out and look at it. I see that a lot of times when people say to me, “Oh, I’m a dynamic person and I do all…” they’re using these crazy words and crazy jargon, and it’s like, “Talk to me like I’m a three-year old. Talk to your audience like they’re a three-year old. It’s going to help you really simplify the message and make it so much more accessible to the world at large.” Of course, you weigh that because if your target audience really does talk like that then that’s great. Go for it.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s true.

Donna Serdula
But I think sometimes people do get a little too caught up in the weeds. They’re so close they can’t gain that focus.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s great because I’m thinking I just recently learned the term capital allocator. I didn’t know what that meant. But there may be times you want to call yourself a capital allocator based on who you’re attracting, at times you want to call yourself a financial planner based on who you’re going after, even though there’s a fair bit of overlap in capital allocators and financial planners, “Well, Pete, actually, there’s several distinctions much like Python and Django.” But that’s a great perspective there in terms of how they would speak. And it’s unlikely someone is going to search for a dynamic multi-potentialite even though you might be that.

Donna Serdula
You might be. I remember a very specific client of mine had said to me, “Donna, before the profile, I was getting a ton of hits. I was getting found and I was getting a lot more inquiries on LinkedIn.” And, of course, I heard that, I was like, “Do you hate me? This sounds bad.” And he said, “No. Since you worked on the profile, you really dialed in to the right audience. It’s much more qualified, so, yeah, I’m getting less but the ones that I’m getting really want me and I’m aligned to those opportunities that they’re presenting to me. Before, I was getting all types of opportunities that I wasn’t interested in and was a waste of time.” So, you do have to sort of weigh it. You want to make sure that it’s the right audience and you’ve got the right message, and what’s coming to is good opportunity.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s so great. And, as you say it, I think all the little pieces are connecting here in terms of like your image and your banner, was the term I used there, you got your headshot and you’ve got your other image at the top.

Donna Serdula
Yeah, we call it the background graphic but banner works too.

Pete Mockaitis
Your headshot, your background graphic, and it all comes together in terms of telling the story, like the individual pieces, and you might optimize incorrectly. I remember in my early days, I got some headshots and I thought, “Oh, man, this one I looked really…” I thought I looked hot. I was wearing a black buttoned-down and a dark background, and I thought, “Oh, man,” there’s like a smouldering gaze, it’s like, “Okay, yeah, Pete, you do. Great job. They caught a good angle. But, really, we need you to show up as the friendly high-energy speaker guy and not a model.” So, I was like, “Oh, yeah, good point. Good point.”

So, I might look not as good in a, I don’t know, GQ sense of the word in one headshot but, for the audience and the impression I’m trying to give, it works better even though, “My rosacea is more prominent in that photo,” well, we’re going to go with that one because it’s going to get the job done that we’re looking to get done.

Donna Serdula
I know it sounds so strange but, I always say, people feel this need to, because LinkedIn is this professional network, they want to look serious. But when they look serious, they tend to look angry. And you want to seem approachable, you want to seem friendly, you want to make it easy for a person to want to reach out to learn more about you. And so, upload a picture where you do look more friendly. And that, of course, trumps the professional picture. If a headshot, it may be well taken, but if it’s not presenting you in that friendly light, it’s not going to work.

I’m going to tell you another thing, Pete. This is huge and it’s so obvious. People who don’t include their contact information, they don’t put their phone number in, they don’t put their email address, and they make it very, very hard to reach you. One of my biggest pet peeves.

Pete Mockaitis
And I think maybe some people have a worry or a concern, like, “Oh, I’m going to get all these spam callers or all these random calling me.” But I’ll tell you, I’ve got my phone number in there. Hello, listeners, you can give me a ring. My phone number is in there and just about never do I get super random calls that I think are traced back to LinkedIn. There’s robo spam callers but they hit everybody indiscriminately. So, I think, yeah, if anyone has any worries on that dimension, in my own experience, and you’ve got a lot more LinkedIn stuff than I do, it’s really not that noticeable. I don’t think I’ve suffered any negative consequences for having freely shared that contact info there. What’s your take?

Donna Serdula
I believe if you want opportunity to knock, you’ve got to tell it what door to knock on. It’s just that simple. Put your information out there. I actually wouldn’t mind if I got a random Telepass calling if I also knew that I was getting all these fabulous opportunities as well. It’s almost a balance. But I agree, I really don’t get a lot of garbage. I get people who want my services, who need my expertise, people that I can help. And, to me, that’s a win-win.

Pete Mockaitis
Perfect. All right. So, let’s talk about build the connections and engaging. How do we get that well?

Donna Serdula
Yeah, I hate to say this. I really do. I feel like it’s been overstated but send connection requests, put in a nice little note, say something personable, let the person know why you’re connecting, unless, of course…and this is the thing. If you know the person, like I’m going to connect with you after this show. I don’t think I need to say, “Hey, we just talked an hour ago. I think you’re going to remember me.”

Pete Mockaitis
“Oh, yeah, Donna.”

Donna Serdula
So, in that situation, I don’t have a problem not adding a personalized note, like, to me you don’t have to do it always across the board. But if you are kind of going outside of your real network and you’re connecting to people from maybe a long time ago, it is nice to add a little bit of a personalized note to say, “Hey, do you remember me?” And I think it starts that conversation off. So, hit connect, give a personalized note if the moment calls for it, and keep connecting. It’s just not something that you do once. It’s something that you do often. It should be a part of your normal business world that, as you meet people, as you go into meetings, connect.

There’s that quote, “Your network is your net worth.” And it’s something that I think a lot of people dismiss. And I remember years and years ago when I was in college, a woman came and was like, “Oh, you got to create a network.” Like it just sounded so intimidating and strange. And, really, all it is is keeping in touch with people, being friendly, popping up to say hello, making connections. That’s all it really is. And with LinkedIn, it’s a very easy way to connect and grow that network and continue to stay in touch with people.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, yeah.

Donna Serdula
So, that’s it. It’s that simple but it’s something that very few people do.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so let’s say you’re one of those folks who has a hundred connections on LinkedIn, and you and I know that such a person knows many more people on LinkedIn, and they could go ahead and connect with him, and then the whole world opens up to you. And that’s what I found in terms of one side said, “Okay, I’m just going to go ahead and find some people I know, and I’m going to connect.”

And then, I don’t know, I felt just like a surge of powerful feeling just in terms of saying, “Okay. Well, shoot, now that I’ve spent a little time on this, like a huge universe is now open to me in terms of secondary connections. So, if I have like a hundred connections before, and then built it out to a thousand, it’s like, wow, I could get introductions so readily to so many places now. That’s hugely cool.” So, if someone is at a hundred, how do you recommend they get to a thousand real connections relatively painlessly?

Donna Serdula
Well, they could certainly upload their email address book and allow LinkedIn to do like a match, un-match and decide who’s already there, and just mass connect. That’s one way. Another easy way is to go into the My Network icon and scroll down that page. There’s a People You May Know area where LinkedIn makes these connections, they say, “Oh, you’re connected to Pete, and Pete’s connected to so and so, then you might be connected to that person.” So, that’s an easy way to do it.

I actually kind of just like the old-fashion sit down and really start thinking about the people that you’ve met throughout your career and your school and life in general, and just keep jotting them down in a notebook and see who’s there, see who’s connected. And then if you know someone, you have like a history with a person, you could go to their profile and look at their connections, and plod through that, connecting with the people that you know in common. So, those are all ways that you can grow your network.

But what’s really important is when you grow that network, you’re going to be found by more people because when a person is searched in LinkedIn, when they’re doing a name-based search, yeah, they’re searching the entire database of users. But if a regular free user is doing a keyword-based search, think of yourself, when you do that, you’re seeing first-degree connections, you’re seeing second-degree connections, and you’re seeing third-degree connections. That’s what you’re searching. So, if you want to be found by more people, and you want to discover more people, you need to be in more networks. And that opens up and it really explodes being found and getting found.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I think that flywheel, that virtuous cycle really shows up because, let’s say, you have a hundred, you spend a little bit of time and then you connect with an extra 50. Well, now, LinkedIn has so much more useful information to share with more people you know, it’s like, “Well, as a matter of fact, I do know that person, and that person, and that person.” So, I find that it goes pretty darn quick in terms of getting there, it’s like, you make a bundle of connection requests, a week later, they’ve accepted. And now there’s a whole new bundle. Repeat, repeat, repeat, like, “Hey, what do you know?” In a couple of months, you went from a hundred to a thousand, and it didn’t take much time and it’s kind of fun, like, “Oh, what’s this guy up to? Oh, wow, it’s good time.”

Donna Serdula
Yeah, it’s true. And when you connect, use it as an excuse to maybe reach out and start more conversations. If you’re going to do a huge burst and you’re going from a hundred to a thousand, it might not be possible, but do try. As you’re connecting, see if they’re active on LinkedIn. And if they are, maybe just bookmark their activity and go back and check to see what they’re posting, and then engage with them.

And when you start to engage with certain people on LinkedIn who are themselves active, you’ll start to see that they fill your feed more often because LinkedIn likes to show their feed. They like their feed to be people that you know talking about the things that you care about. And so, follow the right hashtags, connect with the right people, engage with them on that feed, and you’ll start to find that LinkedIn is fun. It’s people that you know talking about the things you care about.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. And then let’s talk about engaging. And, particularly, I’m curious about any pro tips on how to request an introduction? Like, let’s say, you’ve got your network, and you say, “Oh, wow, I’ve got second-degree connections and all kinds of places I’d like to learn about maybe to work or to sell or whatnot.” Any best practices for how we make that request, like, “Could you introduce me to so and so?”

Donna Serdula
Yeah, at one time, LinkedIn had a very structured process for doing that. They don’t now. If you’re looking for an intro button, you’re not going to find it. And the way you do it is more manual. You look at a person, you find them, you see who do you know that’s connected to them, and then you just send them a message. You can also go into More and, say, “Send profile,” and so you can send that person the profile with, “Hey, this is the person I want an introduction to.”

But certain things to keep in mind. I have 29,000 first-degree connections, so if you’re going to ask me to make an introduction to someone, there’s a very good chance that I do not know them personally. So, be aware that if the person has an excessive size network, the answer might be, “I can’t help you,” and that’s okay. Don’t get hung up on that.

But, at the same time, when you’re going to make that introduction, if you could give the person that you’re asking as much information, “This is how you can introduce me to them. This is what it is that I want from them,” and make it very clear who you are and how they can describe you and what you want so that person doesn’t feel like they’re helping a spam artist defraud someone. But make it as very clear as possible, I think you’re going to find that, even if that person doesn’t know that person very well, the introduction will take place and it will be successful.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, Donna, tell me, any other key things you want to share before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Donna Serdula
I will say this, we touched a little bit about my formatter on the website and we talked about how important the LinkedIn headline is, and I will say to your audience, if you are sitting there and you’re looking at your profile, and you’re thinking, “I really do want to optimize this and I need help,” there is a free resources section on my website and there’s a LinkedIn headline generator. It’s a little app and they just fill out just a couple terms, put a little dot on different buckets that describe them, and it pushes out a headline that’s really awesome, and it’s optimized, and they’ll get more views and it’ll turn up more often in search. So, just know that there is a lot of free help out there and there’s an entire section on my website full of those types of tools.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, great. Thank you. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Donna Serdula
This is a Tim Ferriss quote, and it says, “It’s lonely at the top. Ninety-nine percent of people are convinced they are incapable of achieving great things so they aim for mediocre. The level of competition is thus fiercest for realistic goals, paradoxically making them the most competitive.”

And I just love this quote because I find it’s so true. In fact, right before my father died, he had said to me, one of his biggest regrets was that he didn’t dream big enough. And this is something that I’m seeing as I work with my clients, executives, and entrepreneurs, and professionals from all over the world, it’s seeing people who have decided to dream big and go a little further and do a little bit more. And it is scary but you can. You can reach for the stars and you can do it.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Donna Serdula
This isn’t like an absolute study but I found this fascinating. If you were to fold a piece of paper in half 42 times, it would reach the moon. And I really love that. Just thinking about it, folding it 42 times, I couldn’t imagine that this is true but I started doing some Google. And it’s true, it’s the exponential growth, and this inspires me because it really reminds me that it’s just these little steps will get you somewhere much bigger.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I guess that’s about a trillion sheets thickness there.

Donna Serdula
Oh, yeah. I think someone said you’d need like a sheet the size of the Earth, so you can get close to it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, there’s so many parallel, well, takeaways in terms of compound interest or growth, or in terms of like what happens when something just grows and grows and grows. And a favorite book?

Donna Serdula
I’m one of those crazy people. I love the Think and Grow Rich and the Law of Attraction. I love that stuff. I love it so much. My favorite book is one where you either love her or you hate her, but I love The Fountainhead. I just loved it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite tool?

Donna Serdula
I just recently purchased a reMarkable 2 and it’s a handwriting tablet so you can write on a tablet so you don’t need a notebook after notebook after notebook. It’s just this great gadget and it allows me to just do what I love to do, which is just handwrite but not use any more paper. It’s all digitalized.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Donna Serdula
Which goes back to the reMarkable 2, which is I love journaling and I love to-do lists. And, to me, it’s so important to get what’s inside of you out, and I think there’s something very soulful and inspiring when you can take your pen and drag it. If it’s not paper, then you know the reMarkable 2, but really get your thoughts out there and know what you need to do, but also know what happens so you can start to see repetitions because our memories are so short. We don’t even know how short they are so it’s important, I think, to really record your successes and the record things that have happened so you can remind yourself, and you can stop making the same mistakes over and over and over again.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you again and again?

Donna Serdula
I’ve said, “Success on LinkedIn is getting off LinkedIn,” and I often hear people attribute that to me, and I did say it. And, to me, it’s about sometimes people hide on social media and they hide on LinkedIn, and they hide behind the messages and they hide behind the posts. And, really, I find that the best relationships I’ve had from LinkedIn are the ones where I’ve gone to the person’s profile, picked up the phone, and called them. And that’s where the real world is where the real relationships are formed. So, I’d like to say get off LinkedIn, call the person up, take them out for lunch or coffee, and I think you’re going to find that it’s an even deeper relationship that can be formed.

Pete Mockaitis
And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Donna Serdula
Certainly, LinkedIn. I always visit my LinkedIn profile but my website is LinkedIn-Makeover.com, and that’s got tons of free tools that talks about our services. Everything I do is transparent so you can see our pricing, you can see our examples, you can see our portfolio, everything is there.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Donna Serdula
Yeah, I’m going to go back to what I said earlier. Definitely, I challenge all of you to really think about who you are, where you’re going, and look at that profile, and don’t just align it to where you are. Align it to where you want to go. Make it more future-oriented. Tell people. Maybe not just show but really talk about what you’ve done, where you’re going. And if you need help, there is my LinkedIn headline generator and, certainly, we’re here to help as well.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Donna, this has been a treat. Thank you so much and I wish you much luck in all of your connecting.

Donna Serdula
Thank you so much.