Gift biz on wrapped episode 71,
My business transformed like within the month.
Hi, this is John Lee Dumas of entrepreneur on fire,
and you're listening to the gift of biz unwrap.
And now it's time to light it up.
Welcome to gift biz,
unwrapped your source for industry specific insights and advice to develop
and grow your business.
And now here's your host,
Sue Monheit.
Hi there.
And welcome back to the gift fifth unwrap podcast,
Whether you own a brick and mortar shop sell online or
are just getting started,
you'll discover new insight to gain traction and to grow your
business. And today I have joining us Vivica on Rosen.
Vivica is internationally known as the LinkedIn expert and is the
author of the bestselling book,
LinkedIn marketing an hour a day.
Vivica is the CEO of linked into business where she takes
the social media marketing knowledge.
She has developed and perfected over the years and transforms it
into engaging and informational training.
Her sessions provide not only valuable information,
but actionable tips to get you and your team up and
running quickly and effectively to date.
She estimates she's trained over 100,000
people and has personally worked with executives and sales teams at
Oracle, the New York times and Western union to name a
few of her fortune 500 portfolio.
She's also a contributing expert to LinkedIn's official blog and they're
sophisticated marketers guide.
Perhaps you already are one of her 32,000
LinkedIn contacts or 82,000
Twitter followers.
But if not,
I'd like to introduce you to her now.
Welcome to the show.
Vivica. Thank you So much,
Sue. It's a pleasure to be here.
Would you like to add anything into that?
Okay. It was hard for me to whittle it down because
so much of this is important for our listeners to hear.
So I just kept it going because it was important.
I like to start off our conversation by having our listeners
get to know you in a little bit of a different
way. And that is by you describing your motivational candle.
So if you were to create an ideal candle that represents
you, what color would it be and what would be the
quote on your candle?
I thought I knew what I was going to say.
And then I had one of those morning inspirations.
Oh, good.
Off the cuff.
I love those.
So I'd say,
Oh, a purple candle,
of course,
because purple's my favorite color.
And my normal quote would be do what only you can
do. Or people buy from people they know like,
and trust,
which is a bumper quote,
but that's so businessy and boring.
I was thinking one of my favorite sense in the world
is Lilla coy.
It's kind of a fruity fresh spring ne type smell.
And so I thought,
well, that would be like a mint green,
like a vibrant,
fresh mint green,
which also is money.
So that's good.
And then my quote would be,
don't let yesterday take up too much of today because how
often do we keep from moving forward?
Because of something someone said,
or because of something we did or because of just a
past that tells us we don't have a future and that's
ridiculous. That's all in the past.
It's all yesterday.
It has absolutely no effect on,
or it shouldn't,
or it doesn't have to let's put it that way.
It doesn't have to have an effect on who you are
today. So just let it go.
Smell that candle.
Look at that bright green,
vibrant energy life creation and move forward into tomorrow.
I love that positive message because it's so energizing about the
opportunity that comes ahead of us.
You're right.
Every day can be a new day.
It's so easy to get stuck in your mind.
It's like,
if you messed something up the day before,
you're like,
you're thinking and you're focused on,
Oh, maybe I'm going to do that again,
but only you are the one that's laying the groundwork for
your future.
Exactly. Right.
And you know,
we can blame people and we can blame our parents and
we can blame our education.
But the fact is there is so much out there that
you don't even have to get.
I mean,
you should,
but, but you don't even have to get a degree because
there's enough education out there.
I can't remember what university it is.
If it's MIT,
I think it's MIT puts their entire course load for free
online. Now you don't get a degree from MIT,
but you can,
you know,
if you wanted to find out about quantum physics,
go for it.
So there's no reason in today's day and age that you
can't break out of whatever shell that your experience has put
you in and move into a successful life,
a successful career,
a successful marriage,
a successful relationship with your kids.
You don't have to let the past weigh you down.
Absolutely. And just like we're talking about today,
I mean,
starting this podcast,
I didn't have to wait for some radio station to decide
that they liked what I was saying and picked me up
and add me to their schedule because it's become more common,
the whole internet in terms of resourcing information like you're talking
about or providing information,
we have never had as much opportunity as we have today.
So total reason for optimism,
right? Exactly.
All the way back to that quote.
All right.
So Vivica,
I need to tell you that locally in my community with
my chamber and other networking groups I'm with,
and then also with my customers and when I'm going out
to trade shows and speaking,
everybody talks about LinkedIn.
Like, they're not sure if it's something they need to do
or not.
Do they don't understand how it could be better than doing
Facebook or in conjunction with Facebook.
And that's one of the reasons why I really wanted to
have you on today is really to dive down and talk
about specifically what LinkedIn can do for my audience,
which is people who have retail shops are crafters designers,
possibly sell on Etsy.
So that's where I want to get to with the conversation.
But before that,
let's talk about why you chose LinkedIn in the first place.
How did the LinkedIn expert evolve?
Of course,
this is early days.
So it was actually pre social media.
LinkedIn pre-dates believe it or not Facebook and Twitter.
I was running a business center at the time.
So I had a,
you know,
brick and mortar.
It was more business to business focused,
but still I had a brick and mortar store as it
were. And here's what I discovered about myself.
I was really,
really good at marketing and personal engagement and even recruiting when
it came to new customers and clients,
I really sucked at managing my team.
I sucked at managing my business partner.
I sucked in managing my staff and in a way I
sucked at managing my clients.
So what I did cause you know,
go with your strengths.
What I tried to do was create these networking events,
where the entrepreneurs in our center could meet each other,
could support each other,
could learn.
Things, could help to improve their businesses,
which was an added bonus that no one else in the
field was doing at the time.
Plus it was something I was good at.
And so I actually brought someone in to talk about web
2.0, which tells you how long ago it was.
Oh my gosh.
Words from the past.
Right. I know.
Right. You're like,
Oh yeah,
I remember that.
That was such a big,
because it was back then.
It was such a big deal that essentially your website could
become a personalization of you.
It could begin to engage with your clients and with your
customers and with your consumers.
And that was new.
I mean pre 2.0,
your website was a brochure,
right? This is a little bit around the beginnings of blogging.
I mean,
blogging had been around for a while,
but really at the beginnings of blogging,
certainly before all the big data,
you know,
deep data mining information that we have and all the responsive
stuff that we have.
And I mean,
this is before the iPhone,
right? So I had a trio.
I remember my trio because it was,
I think a touch screen.
It was such a big deal.
So that just that ages me and at that age is
the story.
But that also lets you know,
how long ago this was and someone introduced at the end
of the web to,
it was my friend,
Lori, Maycumber actually at the end of the web 2.0
conversation she was talking about.
And you know,
there are,
these places are kind of like match.com,
but for business that you might consider for business networking.
And she just did like a five minute blurb on LinkedIn,
but because I'd managed to double our business and under a
year just doing face to face networking,
we went from,
I think 72 to 148,
maybe new customers.
I just thought,
Oh my gosh,
there are,
I think it was five,
seven, six,
seven, five,
six, 7 million people on LinkedIn at the time,
by the time I signed up,
it had already grown to 12 million.
To me that was a huge number.
Now these days would be like,
Ugh, it's not even worth my time.
If the social network only has 5 million members,
what's that Facebook has 1.5
billion and Twitter has over 400 million and LinkedIn has 460
something million and Instagram has over 400 million.
So the numbers today just blow us out of the park
with how big they are.
But back then,
in reality,
if I could do business with one 10th of a fraction
of 5 million people,
my business could be successful.
And so to me,
it opened up the world of social business,
networking, really.
It took about a year for me to start teaching and
training on it.
And one of our local associations that had a national brand
picks me up.
I started teaching and training for them.
They flew me to New York city and I picked up
enough clients and customers from that,
that I was able to thank goodness,
drop my day job of which I really was kind of
mediocre other than the marketing part and start doing what I
loved. I'm a serial entrepreneur kind of by accident,
but I love being on stage.
I love speaking and training.
And so I thought the only thing I could be was
a professor,
you know,
a teacher except for,
I probably,
I'm not patient with children and or a motivational speaker like
Tony Robbins.
And at that time I had too many limiting beliefs.
Like I could not be a Tony Robbins,
right? So the ability to teach and train on something that
I believed in and get on stage and speak and inspire
people and help people with their businesses that was just designed
in gold for me,
I love the path of your story and what I want
to really focus on and underline for our listeners is listened
to what Vivica was talking about in terms of,
she really knew where she was strong and where she was
less strong,
I guess I'll say.
So she understood in herself what was available and what she
could do and what she liked to do.
And so that was kind of lingering in the back and
networking, Oh my gosh,
you're so right.
It seems like such a soft thing.
Oh connection.
Do you know?
You know,
somebody, you go to these meetups,
you meet people,
you know,
you have some coffee,
whatever they can be.
So unbelievably powerful and now to be able to take them
online and to be able to connect up with people you
never in the past would have been able to do is
so, so exciting.
And I also have to say many of you I'm sure
have not seen her in person.
You do have the talent on stage for sure.
You are a fabulous speaker.
So, but again,
I wanted to just underscore what Vivica was talking about in
terms of she knew what her strengths were.
And instead of trying to work on weaknesses,
she was going to go full force with her strengths.
So you found LinkedIn,
you started working with it because you saw that as a
way of doing online networking and you already knew networking was
highly valuable.
So you started testing the network,
seeing that LinkedIn was a great platform to get business and
then decided you were going to start teaching it.
Like It was just something I was doing in the evenings.
I enjoy doing it.
Or it was something I could do during the day that
I enjoy doing a little bit more.
It was never at that point.
I mean,
it was,
it was again another year.
So now it's two years after I've been introduced to LinkedIn
that I ever went,
Oh wow.
I can really create an entire career around this,
but yeah,
it took a while to get there.
All right.
So now let's get down and dirty with this.
Okay. So now there's Facebook,
Instagram, Twitter for a while,
there was a point where LinkedIn looked like this was the
job search center.
That's I think past now,
but you'd be Hasty.
You would imagine it was passed by now,
but there are still people who just consider it a job
seeking site.
Yeah. Okay.
And is it for people who are out there who are
thinking, you know,
this entrepreneur thing may be something I'm thinking about,
but not quite yet.
And they're in transition.
Is LinkedIn still a viable place for you to go and
find a new position?
Of course it is.
It'll always be strong.
That's one of their three legs.
So yeah,
recruiting is always going to be a backbone to LinkedIn.
But LinkedIn itself is,
seems to be focusing a little bit more on the business
and sales part right now because let's face it.
The recruitment part is just kind of moving along as it
is. So it doesn't need a lot of support and help
right now.
Okay. So let's talk about the audience we have here,
which are people who are like retail shops or they're at
home creating products or possibly they're bakers who provide their products
to shops.
How would they use LinkedIn?
And maybe it's two different.
Maybe it's people who have physical locations versus not.
I'm not sure.
Yeah. It's to focus on,
are you business to business?
Are you business to consumer?
So obviously we're talking more along the lines of business to
consumer. So here's the thing.
Facebook is probably always going to be the better solution for
you as an Instagram,
as far as getting out there,
what your product is.
LinkedIn is probably not the place to sell your product,
go to Facebook,
go to Etsy.
They're actually set up for that.
Both of them have storefronts.
Now what LinkedIn is phenomenally good at is helping you build
your business with relationships.
Yes, you'll find some customers and clients just naturally that will
happen. But it is about finding those strategic partners.
It's about finding the right vendors.
It's about finding the right tools to help you run your
business and the people who can get you the best deal
for those tools.
Quite frankly,
it's about finding the talent that you need to help support.
One of the quotes I was actually thinking,
I was going to say about the candle was do what
only you can do.
And I know as a female solo preneur,
I just because of monetary issues because of,
I didn't believe in myself enough,
like I bootstrapped and did everything.
I did the accounting,
I did the marketing,
I did the sales.
I did the design and guys,
you guys are artistic.
I am not,
I am graphically impaired.
And how I designed my website.
Like I did everything I needed to create my business for
the first,
I don't know,
it's just the first three years of my business because I
thought I had to,
and that limited my growth.
You know,
maybe you have to do that for the first three or
four months.
But when I found it first,
it was a virtual assistant and then she was full-time and
then I had two people in.
But anyway,
when I hired my first person to help me support my
business, my business transformed like within the month.
And I was paying her almost as much as I was
paying myself,
by the way,
I think I was paying myself like 15 bucks an hour
when I was first starting out and I was paying her
$12 an hour.
So, but what it did was it freed up my physical
time and it freed up my mental time.
And that's probably the more important thing so that I could
do what only I could do that coincidentally or not.
That's when I started writing more because I had the time
to do it and I had the focus to do it.
And that's when Wiley saw my blog and picked me up
as one of their LinkedIn authors.
So that's where the book came in.
Needless to say,
having a book transformed my career too.
So what I'm telling you is don't be sitting in your
store unless you love doing that.
And you find it invigorating from getting things ready at 6:00
AM opening at eight,
working through six,
because by the way,
folks, I did this too.
And it past life working through six,
closing up to seven,
going home,
exhausted and doing it again and then going,
Oh, I need to be open seven days a week so
I can make the most money out of what I do.
Be smarter,
like be in your store.
If you've got a storefront,
of course,
be in your store,
but hire someone to help you with the inventory,
hire a bookkeeper,
Oh my God,
folks hire a bookkeeper,
hire someone to help you with your marketing,
hire someone to coach you in your business.
The other thing that really transformed my business was having a
network and folks,
you've got a network in Sue's podcast,
right? You've got people speaking to you as I am today,
telling you what they went through and what kind of things
they needed.
And well,
that's a network that support.
And of course,
with chambers of commerce and local networking events,
maybe you create your own networking event,
but find that community that can help support you,
hire individuals who can help support you so that you can
get down to the business of business.
But more importantly,
you can get down to the business of being the artist,
the creator that you are,
because that really can't be taught,
right? So my ability to get on stage and be super
comfortable and love it,
that's people's greatest fear,
right? And it's just something I was born,
literally born,
loving to do.
I won my first public speaking award at age seven Is
really natural to you for sure.
It is really.
Yeah. I love it.
I, you know,
and most people are terrified of it.
Well, I'm here to tell you I have taken art classes.
I love art.
I love creation.
I love crafting I'm bad at it.
In high school,
my 12th grade teacher,
he was so sweet.
He was my art teacher.
He told me the VOCA,
you really appreciate art.
And I can see that you really should consider being a
curator. Oh geez,
No, I really am better at writing,
painting or craft.
And I've always wanted to be a crafter.
You can't even believe all the paint sets.
I have watercolor oil,
past crayon pencil.
I've got easels,
I've got canvases.
I have beads out the yin yang.
You know,
so you do it for your own self satisfaction,
right? Any more,
because that is not where all I'm saying,
folks is that is a gift.
Your ability to create things of beauty,
whatever that looks like,
whether it is a greeting card,
whether you're creating jewelry,
whether you're a sculptor,
whether you own an art store,
that artistic genius is actually a huge gift and very unique.
So run your business.
That's fantastic,
but do invest in people who can help you.
Real people who can help you build your business.
Because I was the queen of get rich schemes to like
I put $10,000
into, you know,
I went to see one of these raw go-go type events.
And yeah,
if you invest $10,000
in us,
we can turn it into a hundred thousand dollars with real
estate schemes.
And this,
that, and the other.
If I had only taken that $10,000
and invested in me and invested in my business,
I would have experienced success much more quickly,
which is I never give short answers,
which is all to say,
you can find the people who can help you support your
business no matter what your business looks like on LinkedIn.
And that really is the power.
And the strength of LinkedIn is truly anyone.
If you want to find the CEO of a fortune 500,
you can.
And if you want to find the person who can help
you get a phone call with that fortune 500 person,
you probably can,
you might have to work it.
You might have to work it for a long time.
I'm in high-end B2B sales and it's not come into my
house and buy LinkedIn training.
It is a three to six to 12 to sometimes two
years process getting engagement and then getting paid from these companies.
But truly I can find those individuals.
Now. That's probably not the people that looking for,
but you can truly find almost anyone on LinkedIn.
And the nice thing is because the art world is still
pretty niche on LinkedIn.
You guys can really create a pretty powerful community.
I would join some LinkedIn groups.
Normally I wouldn't recommend that by the way,
but because it's a tight community that you have,
you can join.
Some LinkedIn groups really begin engaging with the other members.
You can send private messages before you're even connected to other
members of a group,
which actually on LinkedIn is a big deal normally if to
pay for it.
But you can actually start some really great partnerships.
You can find mentors there.
You can find people who found success,
selling art.
There's a lot of gallery owners and there's a lot of
artists on LinkedIn.
They can tell you what they've done to succeed.
Even for myself.
A lot of my biggest competitors obviously are on LinkedIn because
we're the experts teaching and training LinkedIn,
but I've become friends and actually started a business venture with
nine of my biggest competitors.
And we're now in business together supporting people through social selling.
So there is so much opportunity,
but mostly it's the networking.
Okay. So I want to just summarize real quickly where we
are. And then I have another question for you.
I think Vivica has totally landed at,
for us.
The opportunity is really to connect with people who can provide
services and help you grow your business versus LinkedIn,
being a place for us to find customers.
But you also brought up two really important business building tips
here that aren't associated with LinkedIn.
And I just want to make sure everybody caught these.
The first thing is,
and my gosh,
I was just as guilty.
I think everybody is,
is not hiring out services fast enough.
You're going to start out.
You're going to be super woman or man.
And you're going to put in as many hours as you
can. And by golly,
you're going to be able to get it done.
And that's that.
And you're going to learn how to do every single facet
of your business from accounting to inventory management,
to sales,
to marketing,
to website development,
you know,
like everything,
right? You guys,
it doesn't work.
I heard that so many times,
but until I actually started outsourcing some of my stuff,
did I really understand the value?
And the trick here is a change in thinking the thinking
is, you're not paying out for that.
That is pulling from your profit margins.
You should be paying out for that so that you are
building your profit margins,
because if you're just not going to pay out and not
expect that extra time that you have,
or the smoothness and service for accounting or whatever,
you're just not going to go then and sit and twiddle
your thumbs.
You should then be doing what you do best and bringing
in more business because you freed up the time for yourself
to do so.
That's the point.
So it's not just taking out money and you have less
money. It's spending money so that you can make more money.
Exactly. The other thing you talked about that I think is
really important,
and I struggle with this.
I need to do this better is you do need some
downtime to sit back and reflect on your business,
not just work on your business,
but as you were talking about,
and it was when you were starting to talk about doing
your book Vivica,
you need that time when you go out and walk and
don't have a podcast in your ears,
I shouldn't be saying that,
but you know where you can just be letting your mind
go free because that's where a lot of the opportunity comes
and you realize new ideas and new thoughts.
Some of it's when you're on vacation,
even if it's a staycation,
just not being in your business.
So two really important points in terms of how to grow
your business,
that has nothing to do with LinkedIn Vivica,
but you're the one who brought it up and I think
they are super.
So we were just getting into right now,
talking about,
you were talking about LinkedIn groups,
let's back it up,
just a tad in that it's possible that some of our
listeners aren't even on LinkedIn yet at all,
what are the three steps?
What should people do if they're seeing,
if we've made the case that they should at least be
on LinkedIn,
right? Yeah.
What are the first three steps that they need to do
to get started?
So obviously kind of going through all the steps that LinkedIn
is going to tell you to do.
So it's,
you know,
put in your name,
your name should be only your name and the reason for
that, it goes against LinkedIn's end user agreement.
And LinkedIn will kind of punish you from the start.
So it should be first name,
last name,
or first name,
middle name,
last name or first name,
maiden, maiden,
name past last name or first name,
nickname, last name.
That's fine.
Don't have crafting expert of the world.
So your name and only your name,
then going to ask you for your title in your company.
For a lot of artists,
it's like,
well, I don't know,
I'm an artist and they just put artists or they put
dot, dot,
dot. In fact,
you can put 120 characters describing what it is that you
do or more importantly,
how you affect change in the world.
So that's one thing where you put in,
in associate title at company.
Well, you know,
guess what?
You're more than just a title at accompany.
Let me ask you a question right here.
If you're a shop,
could you say your store name dash,
and then how you're different or what the product is or
something like that?
Oh, yes.
I'm sorry.
Yes, you can.
Absolutely. So,
but thank you for bringing that up.
A lot of mistakes that people make is they take a
personal profile and try to make it a company page.
So instead of their photo,
they upload a storefront picture instead of their own name,
they upload their company name.
LinkedIn actually has company pages use those because doing that,
creating, you know,
uploading your,
your company,
a storefront instead of your name that actually goes against LinkedIn's
end user agreement.
So if you're an artist with jewelry,
should you have a personal account and then a business account
If you want.
But yes,
you, you first and foremost have a personal account because it's
not just your business,
very similar to Facebook.
Exactly like Facebook,
except for LinkedIn company pages,
not nearly as autonomous or coolest Facebook pages.
I'll tell you that right now,
you can't sell things and you could only kind of showcase
your stuff there,
but for an artist or,
or for a jewelry designer,
you can do exactly that jewelry designer at ABC jewels,
creating beauty in the world.
You can do something like that instead of just like owner
of blah-blah-blah jewelry and allow personal or on your business,
on your personal page.
But you put your name,
you, you upload your photo,
it's you,
it's you in this century folks,
it's you in this decade,
it's the you,
that will be,
you know,
that will be identifiable at a trade show.
You're not going to put a picture from 20 years ago
because it's a beautiful shot of you,
right? Is that what you mean?
Exactly. Because too many people do that,
right? They go,
Oh, but this is a much better photo of me.
Well, you're lying to me.
I mean,
what it comes down to is if that is what you're
showing me,
you're essentially lying to me already.
I don't trust you.
And the other quote I was going to mention today is
my friend,
Bob Burg's people do business with people they know like,
and trust.
Well, So would you say for the overwhelming number of our
listeners here,
Rio and hiring out probably yet.
Right? So I don't want to conflict over complicated for people.
So you think the majority of our listeners would probably be
able to put a personal page up.
It's your picture,
it's your name?
But then in your information below,
that is where you can talk about your business,
what you do,
because that's about you.
You don't make the page,
your company,
you make the LinkedIn account,
you, but then below there,
you can put all of that information.
Yeah. I mean,
but there's two big areas on LinkedIn where you can,
where you can really talk about you and your business.
And then you can talk about your business.
And this is on the personal profile.
You can obviously on your company page,
do that,
but on your personal profile,
there's something called the summary section.
That's 2000 characters,
not words,
but 2000 characters where you really can dive into who you
are, which you do and who you serve.
Now, the last is also extremely important.
You need to know who you serve,
whether it's because you have a storefront and you have a
geolocation and you only serve people in that geolocation,
or you only serve.
It's like our friend,
Jeff Shay,
you know,
manly, Pinterest.
He does Pinterest,
but his audience is younger.
Well, younger to me,
men in their twenties and thirties and some forties.
But it's a very distinct audience.
Know who your audience is because you want to speak to
them in their language,
which by the way,
if you happen to work in Spain,
do it in Spanish,
right. You need to know who your audience is.
So, first of all,
who are you?
What do you,
what do you do?
Who in,
what do you do?
Like really,
really clear on your gift and your,
you know,
your offer to the world.
And then who do you serve?
Be very clear on your audience.
And then you've got 2000 characters to really explain why you
do what you do,
how you do it even,
but importantly,
what's in it for them.
So if they're buying jewelry,
if they're buying,
crafting supplies,
whether your,
the most accessible you have the best customer service have the
highest quality product,
you know,
I guess you can talk about price.
That's not anything we ever really want to talk about,
but you can certainly talk about the benefits of people working
with you or buying your product or service.
And then underneath that even more.
So there's the experience section and that's where you would essentially
at least to start copy.
If you've got a website,
the about us portion of your website and just copy and
paste it right in there.
And then there's a lot of other features.
You can talk about organizations that you're a member of.
So if you're a member of the,
you know,
national crafters association,
by all means,
you can add that organization.
If you're working on projects right now,
maybe you're a geographic expert in your way,
you're working on this great project or you create great murals
and you're working on city project.
You can add projects to your profile.
And then I think one of the most important thing for
this audience,
because you are artistic and at heart,
or at least crafty at heart is you can add media.
So if you can absolutely upload photos of your jewelry,
upload photos of your sculpture,
upload photos of your knitting or,
yeah, exactly.
What About the endorsement section?
The love,
hate relationship with that in Norseman section.
So you have to add endorsements and the reason,
or you have to add skills to your profile for two
reasons. Number one,
if you don't LinkedIn will and they'll have skills or they'll
suggest skills to your network that maybe have nothing to do
with you.
I mean,
LinkedIn makes like no lie link makes an S an assumption
because you're an artist that you paint and it might suggest
to people that they endorse you for your painting skills.
And you've never touched a brush.
You're polite.
Oh, interesting.
So you're saying,
make sure that you put in the skills that you have
so that then you'll get people who will reinforce that.
That's the fact through those pictures,
if you don't understand you guys,
what I'm talking about,
go to LinkedIn,
look at a couple of accounts.
You'll see very quickly what we're talking about,
but that's interesting.
I didn't know that they made that jump and made the
assumptions. If you didn't fill it in yourself.
That's really interesting.
So Getting people asking me to do their YouTube marketing,
and I'm like,
what's like,
if you look at my YouTube channel,
it's pretty much sucks.
So honestly,
folks, and it was because LinkedIn suggested because I'm in social
media. So I must be a YouTube expert too.
LinkedIn was suggesting to people that I did YouTube marketing.
And so people were adding that to my profile.
They were endorsing me for it.
And so here's the point is the more endorsements you have,
the more find-able you are under that particular skill,
which call keywords,
your search terms can perfectly with your skillset.
You want to get those endorsements.
So you're more likely to show up than say your competitor
down the street.
And by the way,
search terms are not only your skills,
but they're also your name.
They're also your location.
If you're a storefront,
they're your industry.
So you want to think a little bit outside the box
when you're creating.
And so one of the things you want to do when
you create your profile for the first time,
or go back and fix it up a little bit,
you want to create a keyword list,
a search term list that you can start to pepper in
or bake in those keywords,
into the logical places within your link profile.
Like the summary section,
like experience like that professional headline,
that description underneath your name of who you are,
what you do and who you serve 20 characters.
So that's important.
And here's the thing we talk about in business.
Especially we talk about ROI.
What's the return on my financial and time investment.
We never talk about COI.
And what I'm talking about is cost of inaction,
bad. LinkedIn profile can actually cost you business because people are
absolutely using LinkedIn to research you certainly,
if you're looking for a job,
but even partnerships,
if you've reached out to someone outside of LinkedIn,
you know,
like maybe you want to create an event together.
Maybe you want to go in partnership,
you sell this,
they sell that.
Maybe you're looking for someone to help,
you know,
to open a store with.
Maybe you're wanting to create a networking club with someone they're
going to research you on LinkedIn.
And if your LinkedIn profile is sucky,
that might be why you've been getting nos.
And same thing,
by the way,
for investors,
if you've been looking for investments,
banks, investors are actually looking at your LinkedIn profile.
So you want to make sure it looks as good as
possible, and it really only takes an hour or so to
get the key elements in place.
There's a whole nother section of LinkedIn that I don't see
us getting to right now.
And that is the connections and how to link with connections
and all of that.
Is there a place we can direct our listeners to,
to learn more about that?
Absolutely. There's a couple places.
So my main website has all the free stuff is linked
into L I N K E D I N T O
into business BI I'm sorry.
P U S I N ess.com.
LinkedIn to business.com.
I'm sure there'll be in the show notes.
I've got a couple pages you might want to look at.
Obviously just the blog.
I've got a ton of LinkedIn information.
Just use the search to find what you're looking for.
You want to search on the word advanced search because that's
really, what's key to success on LinkedIn.
I've also got a little header there that says tips.
There's 18 tips there that can really help you with the
design of your LinkedIn profile,
with engaging with people with Beth best practices.
There's also a free downloadable ebook called eight deadly mistakes that
are costing you success on LinkedIn.
I would highly recommend downloading that it's not just the mistakes,
but the fixes.
So that's all free.
That's on my website.
If you happen to be a LinkedIn user and you have
the premium account,
or even if you don't lynda.com,
which LinkedIn bought it's their training platform,
L Y N D a.com.
I've got a couple courses on there.
The one you want is also called linked into business,
and that's on lynda.com
and it is all about actually creating a company page,
how to search for people and how to engage.
And then finally,
if you want to deep dive into like,
how do I really use LinkedIn to find high quality leads?
I've got a course online called high quality LinkedIn leads.com.
And of course you have to pay for that one,
but it is everything you will ever need to know about
LinkedIn. It is how to create the right profile.
It is how to build credibility on your profile,
how to use LinkedIn search,
how to find exactly the right person,
how to create a buyer persona,
and then how to reach out to those individuals so that
you can begin to truly build your business and create these
new relationships with these prospects,
but also convert them into new customers for you,
which you still can do as a B to C on
LinkedIn. It's just that Facebook offers you some tools as far
as actually selling that LinkedIn doesn't have,
but that's not to say that LinkedIn can't be an incredibly
powerful source for you.
Perfect. That's awesome because we understand where Facebook can fall within
our business and then also where LinkedIn can fall.
So listeners,
I connected you up with Vivica and Vivica has linked you
up with LinkedIn knowledge.
So Vivica,
I want to swing now into our reflection section.
This is a look at some of the things that you
do throughout your day that make you successful.
That could be keys and things that our listeners can think
about for themselves.
What natural trait do you have that you think has helped
you to succeed?
Well, and this is what I,
I'm just,
I'm good on stage.
We can't tell Vivica.
I'm just FYI.
And that is,
that is a key part of my business.
But the other thing is,
it sounds so corny,
but I truly am a lifelong learner.
So I don't get satisfied with a course that I created
last year or a book that I wrote four years ago
or the way I've always been doing things.
I am always exploring certainly on LinkedIn,
what's new and how can I use it?
And how can I use that to help build my client's
businesses as well as my own,
but also just what's new in the world.
I've always been an entrepreneur,
which is another quality,
I suppose,
but I've always been fascinated with new technologies.
It took reflection on this Sue it's,
it's funny because one day I'm like going,
Oh yeah,
like the whole virtual office in concept was a new idea.
I ran a experiential education marketing and actually do some,
doing some facilitated for an experiential education company.
That was kind of a,
a new concept and a new idea,
obviously LinkedIn and social media 10,
12 years ago was a new concept and a new idea.
So I've always been fascinated by new technology,
whether it's a thing or a process or an industry.
And so I think that helps me as well,
because it allows me to be cutting edge and then empathy
is always good to be empathetic.
So even though I'm not a,
you know,
40 to 50 year old professional male in the corporate setting,
that's, by the way,
my purchaser persona that's,
those are the people who buy my products or buy my
services. Actually I can empathize with them.
I can know what's keeping them up at night,
meeting quota,
taking care of their family.
Like I can empathize with that.
And so,
even though I am not that I can create courses and
products and trainings that serve that.
And so same thing with you folks,
you may not be your ideal client,
but you can emphasize if you're empathetic with what their needs
are and how you can serve them.
That goes back to what you were talking about when you're
filling out your bio too,
or the intro who is the avatar,
who is your ideal customer and speaking to them in terms
of your point about lifelong learner,
Vivica is,
you know,
the world is changing so fast.
You have to keep learning in this day and age.
It's not 30 or 40 years ago where things went slower,
everything stayed the same.
You're going to get lost in the dust.
If you're not continually updating yourself on what's new and going
on. And it seems to be in some cases by week,
things are changing.
You just don't know.
Is there a tool that you use regularly during your business
day? Or is there something else that you call upon to
create some type of balance or any tips for our listeners
in that vein?
Yeah. So as we mentioned earlier,
I have an assistant and she's just priceless to me.
She's absolutely keeps me sane.
The having that support is crucial as far as software.
I mean,
above and beyond LinkedIn,
obviously there's a couple tools that I use.
Like I use a Gora pulse to schedule my updates.
And when I say I,
Nicole uses a core pulse to schedule my social updates on
LinkedIn, Twitter,
Facebook, and Instagram,
otherwise I would drop the ball.
I would completely dropped the ball.
Obviously I use Gmail,
I use my calendar,
Oh, I use a tool called Calendly.
And this might not necessarily be important for most of you,
but I book a lot of meetings with vendors,
with prospects,
with clients.
And so this keeps me from having to do the,
you know,
are you free Monday,
Friday, or Wednesday from two to five Nixon,
six to nine or eight to,
you know,
it saves me hours a year.
For sure.
So Callan,
the Lea is the calendar tool.
I use CA L E N D L Y,
by the way,
first one's free.
So if you ever want to play around with it,
your first calendar's free.
I use a Mac.
I Apple everything.
I'm an Apple girl too.
I've got my Mac mini,
I've got my Mac book pro I've got my Mac book,
air upstairs.
I've got my new iPhone in front of me.
I've got two iPads and my Apple watch is charging right
now. Okay.
So Totally you and me and like,
do you bring almost everything when you travel too?
I know me too.
I, you can't leave anything at home.
It's crazy.
You might need it.
So About a book.
Is there any book that you're currently reading or has really
impacted you that you'd like to share Reading like 18 books
at any given time?
Because I'm a lifelong learner also because all my friends are
authors and so I'm always reading their books,
but I think the book that made the biggest difference for
me going back to the Bob Burg,
quote, all things being equal.
People do business with people they know like,
and trust his book go giver,
which is just a little analogy.
It's like 62 pages.
It's a super duper easy read,
but it really,
and it was pre social media,
but it was the social media culture that I was at
least trying to create.
Now we are all trying to create,
which is that Go-Giver as,
as opposed to go get her attitude.
So yeah,
Bob, Burg's the go giver and then there's the go giver
sell more,
which is also a good book.
But yeah,
I would say just the Go-Giver it's like an odd man
Dino type book.
It's just,
it's an easy read.
It's an allegory,
but the lessons in it are deep.
I can remember the day I was,
I was sitting at a networking event at Starbucks and I
remember someone talking about it and I bought it and that's
truly one of the things also that transformed my business and
my life Sparked curiosity.
I am sure.
And give biz listeners just as you're listening to the podcast
today, you can also listen to audio books really easily.
I've teamed up with audible and if you haven't already,
you can go get a book for free on me.
All you need to do is go to gift biz,
book.com and make your selection.
All right,
Vivica. It is now time for you to dare to dream.
All right?
I would Like to present you with a virtual gift.
Ooh, it's a magical box containing unlimited possibilities for your future.
So this is your dream or your goal of almost unreachable
Heights that you would wish to obtain.
Please accept this gift and open it in our presence.
What is inside your box?
It is,
Is the next thing I wish what was in my box
was a little clearer.
It's funny.
You should mention this and it's very timely.
I'm actually heading over to our friend Sue as Zimmerman.
I'm sure you've already had her on the show.
Yeah. Yeah.
We're going to do some brainstorming.
I love LinkedIn.
It's a great tool.
I'll always use it.
There's something next for me.
So whatever is next for me,
that takes me even beyond where the success that I've,
I've managed to achieve so far,
that's what's in the box.
And so I bet it becomes a little bit clearer over
the next week.
Oh, well I'm sure Sue is an person if Nothing else.
And she is the Instagram expert.
All of you guys,
it's an episode back a little bit.
So you can go ahead and take a look at that
if you're looking into Instagram.
But the thing that I really like about this is you're
talking about something that's unknown yet.
It's very exciting.
Cause you know,
there's something coming.
You're not sure what it is yet.
And a lot of people are very uncomfortable with not knowing,
right? But you sound,
you can hear it in your voice.
You sound excited to look forward to see what that next
thing is.
Absolutely spectacular.
All right.
Gift biz listeners.
We already talked a little bit in the middle of this
interview about how you can get in touch with vivid.
And most importantly,
all of those free informational pieces that she has all about.
LinkedIn. I will have other contact information for her on the
show notes.
So you can take a look there for all of that.
Vivek has such great information.
I've met you several times now in person I've listened to
you speak,
but there are some things I learned today that I didn't
know. So I appreciate your opening up and sharing with us
some information that relates specifically to the audience really appreciate that.
I wish I was coming out with you to see Sue.
At one point,
the three of us were trying to connect it up.
It's just,
doesn't look like it's going to work out for our schedules,
but we'll have to do that sometime.
Exactly we will.
Yeah, I know we will,
but continued success.
Thank you again so much.
And may your candle always Learn how to work smarter while
developing and growing your business?
Download our guide called 25 free tools to enhance your business
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It's our gift to you and available@giftbizonrap.com
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