208. Grow Your LinkedIn Platform Authentically and Organically with Daniel Alfon

Welcome everybody. Today I'm really excited to have Daniel Alfon with us to talk about LinkedIn and some of the things you might not know about it, some of the things that might be so that you don't know. I meet a lot of people, myself included, who think we know it, and when I got to talk to Daniel, I realize there's so much I don't know.

So first of all, Daniel, thank you so much for joining us today.

Thank you very, very much, Wade. It's a pleasure to be part of a 3-Day Weekend Entrepreneur with you.

Awesome, thank you. So Daniel advises other people on how to connect and grow their business with their LinkedIn, and rather than telling you a whole lot about him, I wanted to just have him share a little bit about how he got started. Then this is gonna be actually a very practical episode in a lot of ways.

We're going to, uh, talk about some basic strategies and then we're gonna also, at some point in the video look at my profile and he's gonna give some feedback on that. So, Danielle, how did you get started? And because you know, a lot of people, a lot of people dabble with LinkedIn. I have LinkedIn profile.

People think they're in it, and a lot of people reach out and we've all probably seen some, some reach outs that have been pretty good. We've seen some ones that are kind of cheesy. Um, how did you get started and, and how do you help people?

Thank you very much, Wade. Uh, I started with LinkedIn early in 2004. Had no idea it would become such an amazing platform. And two years later, two years later, in 2006, uh, LinkedIn Seal Plea helped me, uh, slash my, my, uh, sales cycle and beat my quota. I had a, a back order, and then out out of, uh, the blue LinkedIn showed me the name of the person within the organization I needed to reach out to.

And back then, that was such a huge deal. It, it changed my life. It helped, it enabled me to beat my quota and then I decided to dive a bit more into it. And then I started helping friends. And those friends wanted me to train their Salesforce and, and, and help their staff. And at one point he decide to wanna specialize and, and leave everything else.

And since you, you hit record, hundreds of people have joining. Tune every second Wait. Three people sign up.

Wow. So, yeah, I know when I first got started, I was a somewhat early adopter and I just remember so many people saying, yeah, but it's not as good as Facebook. It's not this, it's not that. And now I hear some other things. They've definitely, I think, grown and evolved. What they're doing, they're offering how they do things.

I, as I shared with you before the call, I know I can directly trace back at least 50,000 or more of sales that I've gotten from LinkedIn without ever getting it off of a, an InMail message or a direct message. Not that I'm against that, I've just never really gotten great at that. But I know just being active on there and doing things and being in motion has certainly helped me even to the point where this podcast has helped my other brands and my sales on other brands.

Cuz again, I'm still on LinkedIn. And maybe the first thing to start out with, and this is actually you and I had not discussed this, but one of the things I started out with when I first started was I wasn't sure what should I put on LinkedIn because in my case, I just remember I was being taught well, you know, focus on one thing and just do one thing.

But if you're somebody who's multi-passionate and does a lot of things, I don't want to say, I don't want to not say that. Well, I wrote, I've written books on parenting or spirituality or personal finance because to some people they might say, Wade, well, if Wade brings that, To his business consulting or to his software business.

That's a good thing. And yeah, I'll turn off some people by saying, oh wait, we wrote a book on spirituality. Who the heck does he think he is? A lot of people I think on LinkedIn think it's kind of like just a digital resume. And maybe when it started it was maybe a little bit of that. First of all, how has it evolved and and what would you say people should be putting on there to start?

It's an excellent question and a question many LinkedIn users have never asked themselves. And simply repeating the question would help them start exploring about the possibilities. And their answers are going to be better than my answers. But your point, you nailed it by asking the right question, so we can take an example.

Okay. If you are a, an Entrepreneur, if you're a business owner, then the fact that LinkedIn is a job search, uh, platform does not need to affect weigh your choices because if you're not looking for a full-time position as an employee, Then my suggestion is to consider LinkedIn platform as an addition to your website as a platform that needs to convert your ideal reader into basically reaching out to you.

Reaching out to you. Could mean go and and go to 3D weekend Entrepreneur dot com and reduce their fourth forthcoming program or jump on a strategy call or anything that you would see fit. So instead of thinking of it as a cv, think of it as a website that's need to, that needs to convert your ideal reader.

I, I really like that cuz that's something that I, I know. I, I every once in a while see these notifications that they've added this piece, they've added another piece. And I think there was a while where I think they were maybe about five, seven years ago where they weren't as quick to making changes.

And then, I don't know it. At some point it, it really shifted and they've, they've tried some things, they've pulled back some things, but they've really, I feel experimented in, in a, the way you'd expect a business company to do. Not, not in a, not in a crazy, let's try everything that that's out there, but they've said, okay, let's see what works.

Let's weigh a little bit. Like they, you know, they did the stories and they pulled back the stories. Uh, they did the blogs, they've done different things. Um, the other thing that a lot of people ask is then, okay, so if I, I'm saying on LinkedIn, this is kind of who I am, what I'm about. Should I be posting content on there?

Should I just be liking other people's content? And because again, now you're asking me to invest my time. So somewhere already, if I'm even remotely entrepreneurial, whether I'm an Entrepreneur or a business person, I start thinking return on investment and. As you and I know, some of the ROI numbers come back in any business quickly, some don't.

If you knew which two postcards out of the a hundred were gonna get you your business, you wouldn't send the other 98, but sometimes you gotta send a hundred postcards. What would you tell somebody? What's a realistic way to get started, uh, and time commitment wise, and what should they be doing so that they can see some gains and really in a positive way, get good feedback to where if what they're doing isn't gain feedback, you might say, Ooh, let, let's tweak that.

That's a, a great angle and I'm, I'm very, uh, um, concerned about the time we need to invest. So perhaps what I would suggest is this, I would ask you, Wade, how much time do you think you can commit to LinkedIn on a regular basis for the next three to six months? And any answer is acceptable. You could tell me I could only, uh, uh, find 10 minutes a week.

That's fine. But immediately I would ask you in 3 weeks time and in 3 months time, will you find those 10 minutes or are you not sure of it? And if you're hesitating, then I'll, I'll, I'd rather scale back to five minutes. Anything you can stick by, because consistency is probably more important, especially when you're starting out than binging LinkedIn.

If you only use LinkedIn for 20, if, if you use it 24 hours and then you forget about it for a quarter, you aren't going to make a lot of it. So spend your time wisely and. Dedicate a certain amount of of time per week and then go. Getting back to your question, I would start with building my online presence, my profile, basically if I'm a business owner or if my company doesn't employ thousands of people, forget about the page and then grow my network.

And not only then I would ask the questions about the content sharing in the frequency of sharing, because if I start with LinkedIn today and I share. Very few people are going to see this, so I'm not going to see traction. I'm going to just to tell you, wait, LinkedIn doesn't work. It, it suddenly, it doesn't work.

Is that I, I try to use the car before having, having any, any gasoline in the car. Okay.

Awesome. So one of the things that I've told people, so I've, I worked with, with different people and some of the people I work with are in regulated industries. Like, like say insurance or financial services where they've gotta be careful about what they share and sometimes they might even be regulated by what they can or can't post and what I've told them.

But I'd love your thoughts on this and how you'd add on this is I just say first look, are there people that you know that do good business that you could write an honest recommendation for? Because. You and I both know this. Authors want reviews. Podcasts, people want reviews. And people who don't have a podcast don't know that.

People who don't write a book don't get how much. That's like oxygen. You know why? In these book campaigns, people are begging, please write me review. Can I buy a hundred? Actually no. Write me one review, a good review, uh, or whatever it might be, and, and I just find. As somebody who does write quite a bit of recommendations for people, and I only write them if I feel them.

I've had a couple where I changed my mind later, which is an interesting situation. I still haven't figured out what to do with that one yet. Cause it wasn't gross, but it was just like, ah. I said they were awesome and they're eh, they're okay. But I just find to your point of building a network, people have said to me, wait, what's this like?

Well, I said, well, first of all it's not Facebook. I mean, you can reach out to anybody. They're expecting that you're gonna reach out to 'em. You don't have to be best friends. What have you found as far as connecting with people as far as either recommending them or endorsing them? Because then there's the flip side.

Somebody endorses me, they have no idea who I am, and that's like, okay. To me, that's, that's shady. That's sketchy. I don't, I don't know you. And so now you've already demonstrated that you just lied. We just met and you've already lied that I'm awesome. You don't know me. Or at least you didn't, or you didn't tell me why you think, you know I'm awesome.

Maybe you saw an article I wrote or something. How can a person, what does that look like for a person to start building their network maybe is the better question.

Wow. Cool. So it's, uh, it's a very good question and I would probably, um, make it easier perhaps by asking you, wait, if you only started on LinkedIn, I know it's difficult because you've been on LinkedIn a lot, but imagine we would just discover LinkedIn and you can, uh, lay, lay back and think about your future long term strategy.

Would you like to be in 2027? Would you like to be the most connected or would you like to be the best connected if you had to pick one? I know it's a

Best connected. Best connected for me,

Fine. So let's, let's, let's just, uh, say something about the most connected and then we, we will, uh, revert to the best connected. If you decide you want to be the most connected, that means you need to, uh, grow the size of your network to 25, 30,000, 40,000 people on LinkedIn.

And why am I mentioning those figures? Because if you only grow your network and you have three thou, 5,000, 6,000, you may think that you are successful on LinkedIn. You may think you are popular, but the size of your network is not significant in terms of exposure, not because of view Wade, but because of the way many LinkedIn users treat the platform.

They will simply visit it every now and then, so there won't be 24 7 on LinkedIn. There will be a trigger, someone send him an invitation request, so he will check that person out and, and hang out for a couple of minutes, but they may only check LinkedIn once a week. So the chances of of them discovering the content you, you shared are very slim.

Again, not because of you. So if you want to go quantity, that's mean. That means 30,000 and 40,000. Let's get back to the best connected, cuz I think it's an amazing strategy and it's almost the road note taking. What does, what is the upside of being best connected? That means that I can look at your profile and if we share a mutual connection, LinkedIn will tell me the name of that person.

So imagine I see two people, two mutual connection. One of them was someone I had a meaningful conversation with, and the second is someone I have no idea and I, I don't really know. And if you look at my, my profile, you see the same names. If I connect only with people I know, well, I only will, I will probably see just one mutual connection.

But that's the moment where I can leave the LinkedIn platform to communicate with that person and re and ask him, could he make an introduction? Could he make me speak with you? If that happens, as you know, referrals is a great source for future clients, less price sensitive. Uh, the conversation is a lot more comfortable.

They stand, they stay with you longer or they're happier, or they, they send other clients themselves. And the only way to gain referrals is to connect with people you know, well. Most entrepreneurs don't want to make a choice. They want both quality. And quantity. So if you push them to the limit and you say if you had to pick one, they sort of twitch and say, now they would start with quality and then they would be hearing all the time, no, you need to, to grow your network and, and the risk is to stop in Midsong and have 6,000 people because you would a pollute the quality of your network.

You would no longer be able to get an introduction. B, you only gained marginal exposure, so you wanted to get exposure, but you didn't get the whole way. You don't have 40,000 connections, so you're paying the price on both sides. Pick one, please.

Wow, that's so awesome. And I, you know, I just, I just dabbled with Sales Navigator for a while and in my case I have a specific client group, uh, one of the client groups I work with that works for a specific company or they are, Have that common in common so I can easily identify them. It's very easy. So I did a, a sales navigator, search people, you know, second connections who are, you know, connected in this way.

Reached out and at the time I think I had about 2800, 2900 connections. I have a tighter, tighter network. I know who a lot of my connections are. I could probably call them on the phone, not, not best friends, not that many people, but still a lot of 'em. I could at least. I could entertain, I could, I could serve a conversation very quickly.

That would be very relevant because I know who they are, what they're about. And as I started doing these sales navigators, the first round, I got something like I was sending connection requests with a, with a tailored message. Say, Hey, here's how I help people if you'd like to check on my content or just, just get in touch.

Not, not really. Probably almost, somebody might say it was too weak of a connection request Anyway, so I got about like 50% for a while. And I got 30% while and I got 20%, and now I'm at, I'm at like 5% and I'm, I'm in about 3,500 connections or so. And, and in looking back at it, even just that little group that I did for about four or five months, and to your point, I, I committed like, okay, I'm gonna do this for a certain while and I'm, I'm gonna see what happens.

And when I now look at it, I say, okay, a, I'm glad I did it cause I looked and I've seen different things and I still wanna learn more about it. I definitely. Wrote in a way that I think did not isolate people, and yet I didn't write either powerfully enough or I didn't follow up enough. So I kind of did the one time connection, and my idea was that they would come to workshops.

So I've, as I now get invited to workshops and different things, sometimes people show up, sometimes they do. I found a lot of people say, yes, they're gonna show up, or maybe they're being polite and they don't. Um, but I've definitely come back to. You know what? I just like it when a, my feed kinda like, and kind of like Facebook, at least for me, I wanna see mainly people I know about in Facebook.

I don't want to see 20 people that when they've got their business profile header as their Facebook thing, I've, I've like unfriended somebody this. I'm like, I don't, no offense, I'll connect with you on LinkedIn. I don't, I don't want that there. Well, similarly in the LinkedIn, I do like seeing posts of people I know I do like.

Almost becoming a fan slash follower, even if it's someone that's a friend or somebody and seeing their content. So to your point, I can see where, wow. Yeah, if you have too many people, uh, there, you're not gonna get a chance to do that. Um, so then what should, what, what metrics if, if a person just says, okay, Wade, I'm in a generic situation, so to speak, a common situation, I want more sales.

I know what I do. I already, you know, so I, I'm established. So if we're not looking to build a business from scratch, we've got somebody that, they're either in an employee or an Entrepreneur, they have a certain amount of sales they're doing, they say, okay, what metrics should they focus on in themselves?

Or what, and or should they look in other people like, or what metrics are other people looking at? Cause I know followers obviously is an obvious one. Uh, sometimes the amount of, you know, comments you get and whatnot. But what should that person be focusing on? To increase if there is, is it more, do you find, and I know we're starting to get a little more in advanced strategies here, is it more of the reaching out with direct messages?

Is it more starting a conversation? What does that look like? Again, let's assume they already have success, um, but they don't yet have recommendations. They don't yet have endorsements. They're just getting started. Is it better? Going back to the boat analogy, is it better to, or the car analogy, is it better to get more recommendations and then turn on, try to turn on some traffic?

Um, how, or, or create some content? How would you, how would you advise somebody in that way?

I think you know the answer. I'll just remind our audience here the, the metrics I would advise you to focus on. The business metrics and not the LinkedIn metrics. And what, what do I mean by that? You mentioned workshops. Let's, let's consider workshops or webinars to be top of funnel. Uh, where you educate people, you give them value and it's easy or, or sometimes free for them to join if that's the top of your funnel.

And say you have, uh, um, workshops every month and you have 200 people signing up and say a hundred showing up. Prior to using LinkedIn, and now you start to use LinkedIn and you can now know that if instead of 200, you get 250 or 300 or 500, and out of those, let's say 250 show up, then wait. At one point you can trace the additional revenues, just like you said earlier to your LinkedIn activity.

So I would simply consider LinkedIn to be a black box. You don't need to focus on your connections, your views, your followers, your SSI level, your endorsement, your mentions. That's not what brings your business. What brings you business is revenues and subscribers and orders. So try to focus on one simple metrics that is probably top of funnel.

Where you would control the next steps. And if you managed to use LinkedIn in a way that would bring you 25% more or 55% more, or 80% more, then you would know how to turn them into, into currency, into real life dollars because your, your bank, your bank does, you don't go and say, wow, I have. I have a, a huge score.

I have a number of connections. You just see that your business has increased 30% by using certain strategies, and that's way, way more important than growing your LinkedIn metrics and seeing a plunge in your revenues. Forget about the LinkedIn metrics. They're, they're their vanity metrics. You might end up with huge metrics on LinkedIn, but your business might fail.

That's not what you, what do we want here?

Absolutely. Yeah, I, one of the things that, the best way I've understood it, and please feel free to improve on this, is I almost see it as to your point of the sales funnel at the bottom of the sales funnel. Like, okay, obviously cash in the bank is, is the end result, and then you go up, okay, well what led to that?

Well, maybe a webinar, maybe a strategy session, maybe. Okay, so if I can say, this got me strategy sessions. Or at the very least opt-ins. But for me, anything less than an opt-in the value of it is questionable. Or as you've, you've probably heard some people say, you know, I can't go to the grocery store. I can't, you know, give them my followers.

I don't, I can't, that doesn't buy me anything. So unless it's at least, so for me, the minimum. The minimum viable result where I'd say, yes, it did something is at least an opt-in, or they emailed me, they reached out to me. We had a conversation where now, I guess maybe even viewing it this way, that if I were a LinkedIn business lead generation specialist, that I could charge you for that result.

I could say, you know what? Daniel, I just gave you 10 opt-ins and you say, okay, that has currency. Because if I can't convert the 10 opt-ins now that's a, that's a different part of my funnel, or that's my issue, or that's my sales department. But LinkedIn did its job. If, if that's the case or my strategy in LinkedIn did its job, it, it got the person there,

I like what you said. Yeah, I'm sorry.

Oh, awesome. Thank you. So then what sort of content do you find and maybe is there, um, Sort of a beginner's level content versus advanced content. So, you know, I've seen some people that they see what I do, I'm producing a podcast, I'm sharing video clips that are transcribed and, and they're like, wait, I do not want to do that.

And I said, well look, I've only just been doing that recently cause I have a podcast and I wouldn't advise for most people. I have a very specific thing that I'm doing with that and it relates to the podcast and, and a bigger long-term play. What's a. What's a reasonable starting point that still creates value?

Should there be an image? Is it sharing an article? Is it having some sort of unique thought that you share with people? Um, what does that look like?

cool. So, um, let's say this LinkedIn is the only, um, A social network. I know where you can generate lead without sharing a lot. You, if you have content that's great, that can add more numbers and more opt-ins and W revenue, that's fine. But let's go back to the example you, you mentioned earlier if you connect with people you know well and your profile is decent and you run a search and you find Jane Doe and, and Bob, and you reach out through two mutual connections and you have a strategy called with both.

Then you don't, you haven't produced anything on LinkedIn. Now let's get, let, let me do, try and, and answer the questions specifically. If you're in a regulated industry such as financial advisors or, or you, you feel more, um, you need to be more careful about what you share. So question number one, are your connections, your audience, because some financial advisor may say that their connections are, are people or basically colleagues.

So, They're not their prospect. If you worked for a mutual fund and you, and you moved to a hedge fund and you moved to a VC and you did something else, then maybe 25 or 50, uh, uh, percent of your network are not going to buy anything from you. But you have a great relationship with them, but they're basically in the same ecosystem.

Are you, is your network really made of your prospect or not? And that boils down to the importance of a system. If you have a system where you connect with prospect and then you follow up in a smart way. It's challenging, but you could do that. Then you can think about content. If that's not the case, then the content you could uh, share on LinkedIn, you could start with very simple things.

Check out your company's website, check out your company's. LinkedIn page cuz any, uh, any content that your company has produced has probably been through legal and, and many eyes have seen it. And, and there is very minimal risk of sharing this. Even if you wait like 24 hours, you can basically share anything like that.

And if I can ask another question, what sort of, uh, questions are your ideal prospects struggling with? Okay. If financial, if I'm, I'm a financial advisor, sorry. And my clients and my prospects are, um, asking themselves questions because they're planning to retire or they want to invest in their kids' education, or they, they have more questions about, uh, divorce or inheritance or anything that affects their financial, uh, uh, situation, then I.

Finding content around that revolves around that topic and educating them is going to be the best content that would make people trust you. And that content does not have to be solely produced by you or me. You could in many cases curate content, cause producing content is time consuming. It's great. If you can do it, that's fine.

If you can be a, a rockstar like Wade do it. But if you don't have that capacity, if you don't have that time, then finding conferences, meetups, articles that could educate your ideal prospect is a lot easier. And you can simply ask yourself maybe once a week, what is the best educational piece of content I read that could be relevant for my POS prospects?

You don't, and, and when you do it three weeks in a row, you no longer have to ask yourself at the end of the week, uh, the week you, you know, that is the piece of content that's going to resonate with my audience. And maybe a, a, a quick, uh, pro tip,

what you could also do is join LinkedIn groups. LinkedIn communities where your prospects are.

That means the content you do share way does not rely specifically on your connections. Again, even if you have 35, uh, 3,500 connections, you probably have lots of other, uh, prospects out there that are not connected with you today. So finding those groups and sharing that content in the, in those LinkedIn groups are going to, uh, increase the traffic or the, the eyeballs of.

Potential customers discovering that educational content and then discovering you and going to your website and reaching out to you.

Awesome. Thank you. Yeah, the LinkedIn groups, I've still, I've dabbled with that and you, you've got me really excited to do that again because I felt. Like before I, I didn't want to be the person that just went in there and just, you know, almost seemed like, okay, well I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna make five or seven, nine nice comments and I'm gonna pitch the heck outta you, as opposed to just saying, like you said, the investments.

Okay, yeah. I'll invest in, you know, that community. And I'm even thinking now and tell me this is a good strategy to say, okay, let's say I find a group right aside, yes, I'll show up to that group. 10 minutes a week. In other words, I'll, in some way I'll participate. Because to your point, now that I think about it, the person that comes in like wildfire, you almost think, oh my gosh, you know, they do 20 posts in one day.

Like, are they desperate? Are they trying to make sales? Are they, they can't pay their bills, versus, oh yeah, I've seen that person before. And even just human nature, the familiarity, like, okay, almost like if you see a person in your community every day, and you've never even met him before, but you've made eye contact, you're like, okay, I, I know who that person is.

I've, I've seen that person before. So I, I feel like yeah, I'm definitely gonna do that. Cause I think that's, uh, so in, in the LinkedIn groups. Okay. So you join the LinkedIn group just to paint a picture. Cause I know a little bit about this strategy enough to be dangerous, but I'm like, you let you run with it.

What does that look like? So I, so for example, I coach entrepreneurs to work less, make more, create more impact, more income. At the end of the day entrepreneurs, do I look for something that's more specifically my flavor of work less, make more work-life balance? Do I just look for entrepreneurs in general?

And then what do I, what does it look like, let's say over a a, a period of eight to 10 weeks, or, you know, the first few weeks I'm doing X, then I'm doing Y. What might that look like?

Excellent. Uh, the easiest thing to do would be to, to step into your prospect's shoes or even have a conversation with two or three, uh, um, clients or people you, you know, well, and you, you need to look at. You could also look at their profile profiles and see the sort of group they have joined, and that could give you all sorts of ideas.

Because it's, it's nice for us to try and strategize, but if you see a group, you would wait. You would know whether that group makes sense for you. In some cases it would be a business vertical. In some cases it would be a metro area. In some cases, it would be something specific about entrepreneurs. Six figures, entrepreneurs or, uh, family business or, or all sorts of, uh, um, different verticals.

Some of them are less attractive for you, some of them are more attractive and you don't need my advice to know what's attractive. You simply have to look at it and say, yes, that's, that's exact, that's exactly at my alley, because I know that serving those people has helped them and we had great, uh, uh, conversations.

And I think that's that's right. Strategy. So, Step a look at it from, from your prospect's, uh, perspective. Check the the groups they have joined and run a number of searches and find, say five to 10 interesting groups, let's say mostly around business. And then you join them. And initially what I would advise you to do is just what you said.

I would just monitor the group for 10 minutes a week. You can even do it in, in, you know, in, in batches if you'd like. And basically you would see that in many groups. Very few people post, sometimes one person, sometimes the group manager. And the secret is that you don't necessarily have to share in the group in order to profit from the group.

Because once you've been accepted to the group, that gives you the ability to see everyone within the group. And in some cases you will simply find, wait 20 interesting prospects, and you would reach out to them outside of the group. The group has simply, instead of running a search for them, if they have joined that metro, uh, or that business community, then they have maybe a, like they're likely to be, uh, uh, interesting for you.

So you don't have to, to, um, shoot from, uh, from the heap and, and, and, and overshare. Uh, there you can simply pick cherry, pick the ones that are most interesting for you and perform zero public actions on the group. That's also, uh, a viable strategy. Ideally, at one point, there would be a que a question that you could help, that you could answer without tooting your own horn.

Too much. So you would basically answer and educate the person, remembering that the, the, the people who are reading the answer are not just Jane Doe that asked questions, but the group com, the the community as well. So if you, uh, uh, manage to, uh, delay the pitch. Basically answer the question guide in a, in a professional way, just like you would do in real life and maybe linked to a resource, not necessarily yours, but a resource that would further, uh, uh, help that person understand and maybe end by saying that you, you would be, uh, um, um, glad to, uh, uh, to answer any questions if they had, that would go a long way for that individual and for the group as well.

Because if I see that, then maybe two weeks later when I meet someone with your skillset, I would go and find you. Some of your prospects are not ready to buy when they see that action, but they would put you in a a, in a certain label or a certain box and maybe down the road they'll say, now is the time where, or how can I find way?

Then, then they would reach out to you.

That's awesome.

You could also do all sorts of getting back to the question of, of content. Perhaps the easiest way to do to share content is. Not to produce content for the sake of LinkedIn, but to repurpose existing content that you do have. And that's really easy to do. It could take you, uh, half an hour, basically look at your website and do a, a digital portfolio inventory and ask yourself what sort of resources are there that would educate my ideal prospect, ideally top of funnel, and if possible, evergreen.

You can't always have it like you want, but if you, it's evergreen on top of funnel, it's, it's excellent. And that sort of content could be leveraged through your LinkedIn profile, and that could be shared as a post or as a LinkedIn article or as a a video cover. And that could also be shared across different LinkedIn groups.

So maybe those 10 groups maybe. Every week you would share one piece of advice. In one group, it would take you 40 seconds and you'd have dozens of people from each group discovering that piece of content, going to your profile, visiting your website, and registering for that workshop or the next step that, that you would suggest.

Nice. You know, one of the things that I'm, I'm realizing as I'm, as I'm speaking with you is part of the reason I think I've become more interested in LinkedIn again, I've got this renewed interest, is recently in my business when I've looked at what has just been the most successful for me, and I don't know about you, you know, I always have plans of what I want to have happen, and for the most part, good things happen, but it certainly does not always happen the way I plan it to.

So sometimes something as simple as, oh, I wanna do a bunch of group coachings, and then a bunch in, in my case right now, a lot of people are targeting me more weight. I either want really small group coaching or private coaching, and if you're doing the, well, I wanna sell, you know, 10,000 courses to at a hundred bucks each.

Which is one way, let's say, of making a million dollars. Well, obviously you don't have, you don't have time to do this on LinkedIn. On the other hand, if you say, flip that, I'd like a hundred clients at $10,000, now all of a sudden at least, well, a hundred is at least it seems conceivable as opposed to 10,000.

And so I just, the more I look at it, I'm, I'm going back to that basic sales thing. Do they know you? Do they like you? Do they trust you and. Obviously we create content in hopes of that. You and I are doing that right now. We're sharing stuff. People will never meet, will benefit from us. This, some of them will reach out to us, some of them won't.

And you and I both know the beauties that it's scalable. So you don't, I don't have to have, you know, thousands of conversations. And yet there's something when it's not just, well, oh, Daniel is somebody who knows LinkedIn. No, Daniel's the guy that I know that knows LinkedIn. And so when I have a LinkedIn question, That's who I'm going for.

Is that really in a lot of ways, what you're aiming for regardless of what you're selling. To the point where someone says, I like Daniel and, and I don't even know what Daniel sells, but I want to, I want to, I wanna do business with Daniel.

Um, I think it, it could be a possibility depends on, on, on what you're offering and how you help people. In some cases there's, uh, um, I don't know if you re recall, but, uh, there was a book by Jill, uh, Conrad and, and she mentioned the importance of trigger events. And, and that means that let, let's say you have 10,000 potential customers, but the minute they become really interested is once something affects their situation, it could be, uh, you know, the birth of, of a baby.

It could be relocating to Naples, Florida. It could be something else. And prior to that, in general, they would say that you're a good person and if they need your services, they would reach out to you. But that's part of the equation. That's 50%, maybe 99% of the, the, the equation. But the 1% that's missing is a real life need.

And in terms of LinkedIn, the real life needs is either a new manager who wants his team to leverage LinkedIn better. They, they, they could be discovering that the, the team has not worked in a systematic way or they're not happy with the results, or they're seeing that they're. Percentage are, are getting from 50 to to 5%, and they wanted to consult some, someone else.

So that manager or that, uh, business owner, um, the trigger event was, um, heading the new business unit or becoming an Entrepreneur or moving, relocating to, to, uh, California and then discovering that they need to do something, something else. Do you find that the, the, the clients you work with, Is it evergreen or are there periods where they would be even more interested in, in, uh, working less and in having a Three-Day Weekend.

I would say you, you nailed, there are definitely trigger events having children, uh, for sure. Not so much getting married, but having children. Then there is when the kids reach about 10 or 11 and the kids start pulling away from the parents, just like they start becoming their own people and they start looking outside for answers, and all of a sudden mom and dad don't know squat and everybody else knows something.

Now the parent at that stage, it's almost like a second wave where the parent's like, oh my gosh, they're gonna be gone soon. Until then, it's like, oh gosh, do I have to play with 'em this many times? Or, you know, are they gonna gimme a break? My gosh. And so those two, uh, definitely the empty nest because then a lot of people, when the kids leave the house, were like, okay, well what do I do now?

Do I just go and fill up my time with work or do I fill it with something more? Job changes because sometimes what'll happen, like with what the pandemic did, my gosh, the shuffle of people realizing you could work from home. People saying, well, like, gosh, if I'm gonna lose my job, or if my job's gonna, you know, if I, if I'm, if I'm only gonna make X amount, at least I'm gonna do something I enjoy.

So usually it's job related triggers or family things, or sometimes the other one is, um, and it, it's probably in some ways the most sad one is, is the death of a friend around their age where they realize, oh wow. I'm, I'm still do. I said I was gonna do something different. I said I was, if it was an Entrepreneur, it's often I said I was gonna work less hours or if it's an employee, I said I was gonna get outta this field.

I said I was gonna do something different. So yeah, there are definitely triggers. And to your point, that's where I look back at LinkedIn. The business that I mentioned and I've gotten over the years has been, oh, well wait, this just happened. Wade, I hear you do. Hi. I knew you do hiring, but I just lost a, a key team member.

So now, I mean, the whole time I knew you did it, but I didn't have the need, so Yes. So the seed was always there, just waiting for that, for that trigger event.

May I ask you a follow up question about that?

Sure.

So is there content that you've produced or, um, that, that answers questions people have when they're maybe their firstborn, uh, uh, baby was born or when the kids turn 10 or, or 11 or when something close to them makes them realize that they're not, um, timeless.

Somewhere in all my episodes, yes, but not in an intentional way that reflects how big of a deal it is for them. So even in listening to talking to you right now, I'm realizing, wait, if these really are, you know, you hear people sometimes say, this is one of my favorite lines. Daniel, I have a moral obligation to sell you my stuff because it's so good and it's so important.

And you know, when people say, I believe in my work and I get it, and I, you know, you just kinda laugh about it, like, of course have a moral obligation to, to give you money or to get to do my best, that you'd gimme money. But at the same time, there are things like, and everybody has these, so this is not saying my business is better than anybody else's, but in my world when somebody realizes, oh my gosh, my kids just left the house.

And I didn't spend the time with them. I wanted to, that phase is never coming back again. The kids aren't dying, but that phase isn't coming back again. If that's somebody in my circles, I would feel like I missed him. I, I, or at least because whether they did business with me or not, cuz I, I do, to me it's large numbers.

If enough people make that aha, some are gonna choose me, some are gonna choose somebody else. So from that perspective, I've not really elevated it to say, no, no, these are my two or three message points, I guess because, and, and okay, I just turned, well, I'm 51 now since I hit 50. Literally that number, not 49 and 360 4 days.

I really have almost taken on more of the idea of, cause I think I'm in a hundred, 120 years is my goal. 150 maybe, depending on technology for age lifespan. But it sort of became apparent like, okay, well wait. If you're not gonna speak up now, if you're not gonna be a little more insistent to say people, are you Quest?

Are you, are you asking yourself these questions? I don't care what your answers are. I mean, I don't give a damn. But your answers can be your answers. They don't have to be my answers, but are you asking yourself these questions? And so as I'm getting more insistent about that, the part that feels borderline sleazy or icky for me is knowing that it benefits me financially.

But as I've gotten older, I've realized well wait. A, everything I'm doing if I'm in a business is going to benefit me financially, and I'm doing my best in my heart as much as I can as a human being to serve people. So I'm getting more comfortable about doing that, but I do need to strategize that more, not in a manipulative way, but in a way that it's like I know I've met, you know, I've banged that gong X amount of time so that if somebody only has eight to 10 exposures to my content in a lifetime.

That I'll be able to say, well, one outta my four of mine was, was this message, one outta four was that message. Of course, my guests bring different messages and I kind of do a 50 50, but yeah. Wow. I, I need to do that.

Wow. So a, again, the, the, uh, uh, easy part would be not to produce content, but to find the, the content that you've already produced. It could be, uh, uh, episodes from, from the podcast. It could be articles, it could be something else, and maybe rewrite them in a j. Just check taking that angle. And, and maybe deciding that you start with the birth of a child, or you start with when, when, uh, your chil your child, uh, becomes 10 or 11 or, or with a tragic event to speak one and say if the, the see if you enjoy the process of recreating content around that.

And, and then if you produce content that helps people understand, first of all, my guess is if I read this, It would be the first time I would ex be exposed to that sort of content. So, and, and my, I would initially be worried, is it just me? And when I see weight's content that tells me, no, it's, it's a phase.

And, and this after the birth or after your, your children is 10 11, that there is a stage where they will, they will be older and they will understand the benefit that you as a father, as a mother bring to the table. But now you need to. To pivot, you need to do something else. And here is the experience of other people who've gone through the same process before you.

Maybe one of those strategies would work for you. So, so you're not selling, you know, strategy A, you're basically helping them put it in context and relax and see that there is life out there and life continues and basically it means they've been successful, their child has, has been born, or their child has turned 11 and now we need to to up or game.

Wow. That, that's awesome. Like I said, you know, and I, you, you, you're one of the guests that I've done intentionally, very little. I did research, but I didn't, I've not wanted to have a lot of structure cause I, I know you and I talked about how we were gonna do this, so I've really enjoyed this already. So thank you.

Thank you.

So question. Um, and this is, this might even going stepping back a bit, but one of the things you and I talked about in the pre-interview was when you have a connection strategy, I think a lot of us have seen really well-intentioned people, but literally the minute you get a three words in, you're like, oh, you're already, you're already done.

What are some of the things that just don't work when people are reaching out to other people on LinkedIn and what is perhaps. The gene, the generic flavor of what does work, or if you have the magical words like AAL pina butter sandwiches. Great, we'll take those too.

Um, I think LinkedIn basically hasn't changed the way our minds are wired, and that means that there's a process we need to go through. So, And simply, if I just met you, then I would be able maybe to, to chat with you and maybe next time we would grab, grab a beer and maybe next time we would have a meaningful conversation.

But as much as I like it, only in Disney movies do we move from stage 1 to stage 10 in 30 seconds. And because automation enables lots of, uh, salespeople to basically, um, Uh, throw spaghetti on the wall and see that 0.5% will stick. Uh, that doesn't mean they're successful because they've hurt their reputation.

And our reputation is something we've, uh, uh, worked quite, uh, um, uh, hard to, to maintain and to, uh, to gain. And it, it, there's no way back if, if 99% of people think what you do is cheesy. Then even that 0.5% are not going to make you a long term success in your business or, or you would not sleep well cuz you would feel that something is, is, is going wrong here.

Helping people discover you, like you, and then going through a business exchange that sounds, you know, boring and, and long. But I haven't found any shortcut to this. It, it's, it's. It ain't hard.

Gotcha. No, and it's, it's, you know, my, my son recently told me he was great. He's 16, and I was asking him, you know, what are his thoughts? Are, you know, does he want to go to college, what he wants to study? He said, well, dad, you know, I've come to the conclusion that the next 10 years are the best years of my life.

I said, and I'm waiting for, okay, so therefore, So I really just want to, you know, hang, not, not, not, not do nothing, but I, I wanna make sure I enjoy those and I don't wanna take life too seriously. And of course, what am I to tell him? I'm, you know, but I'm like, okay, I got here. I didn't start here. I didn't start working four days a week and that sort of stuff I've got here.

But, and I told him, I said, well, you know what son? I said, I'm gonna suggest you two things said, first of all, life's not bad in your fifties, at least my life, I don't consider to be bad. It's not as exciting as my life in my twenties, because I know where I'm gonna grow. I wake up. I know who I'm gonna wake up next to.

I know what job I do. I know the kids are gonna be there. I know the bills are there. I said, but it's fulfilling. It's, it's a different sort of a thing. And I think your point just heads that it can be exciting to meet these people that make these awesome promises and we're gonna do this and, you know, a million dollars in, in 90 days.

And if not, you might. And you're like, yeah, but usually that doesn't happen. And. You and I talked about just that whole concept of the road less travel, the organic LinkedIn option, what comes naturally as opposed to the paid options, what do you see as the, the benefits or the pros and the cons to just growing organically and, and participating in groups?

So it's, let's call that almost, um, enhanced organically as opposed to outright trying to pay for results.

Excellent. Uh, there are six ways to, uh, generate leads on LinkedIn. Five of them are, are basically free, um, and. Before you even consider paid advertising, you need to understand that it's not the only game you tell, and that's, that's probably the last, uh, uh, um, strategy you need to, uh, consider. Because otherwise you, you are missing the whole point.

You, you've, you've, um, become center stage of, of, um, of, of a show and instead of just. Saying and helping people. You need you, you tell them, no, you know what? Let me, um, I, I want to go off stage and, and in the break I'm going to show you an ad about my services. That doesn't make sense. Organic LinkedIn is simple and you don't have to in to be someone else in order to be an organic LinkedIn leader.

Because Wade, you have a real life personality that you've, uh, um, perfected before LinkedIn and it's good enough for LinkedIn. It's good enough for for audience here. There's, there is there, um, when there's a gap or a misalignment between the way you behave in real life and what happens on LinkedIn in the long term, you can't win because your reputation gets hurt.

So organic, if you are. Business is based on trust and, and financial, uh, decisions are to a large extent based on trust. Then what could be more important than me asking someone about you? And he would tell me, yes, I trust Wade. You need to speak with him. When you have that sort of event, that is much better than seeing an ad telling me you can solve my problems.

Because just like you, I could find. 20 thou other people who would promise at least the same thing. But no, I came to you because someone I trusted told me the magic formula. And the magic formula is your name. It's referral, uh uh, a referral based business. It's trust and it can bring you business if you're not in the commodity business.

Awesome. Thank you so much. So, you know, every once in a while I, I get to have one of these interviews where we really just go right into just nitty gritty, just solid stuff. So thank you for that. Um, I'm gonna, of course, put all the links and there's a couple things I wanna ask you before he finishes.

First of all, Who is the, who are the people that you help best, and what do you help them do? Because right now there's people listening and they're wondering, okay, might Danielle be somebody who could help me?

Thank you very much, Wade, probably, uh, People who have been part of corporate America and are starting on their own. They may be 40, they may be 45, they may be 50. Uh, they have been on LinkedIn for a while, but they've never used LinkedIn in order to generate leads. They may have used LinkedIn to connect with colleagues or even to look for a job, but that's, it's the fir the trigger event is basically becoming a consultant or a business owner.

So that is a very, uh, specific, uh, sweet spot, uh, that's, uh, that I enjoy working with.

Awesome. And where can people learn more about your work?

Go to danielalfa.com and you'll be served.

Awesome. Thank you so much. Like I said, there's just so much here. Strategy. And insight. I, I'm really grateful this, I've taken quite a few things I'm gonna do from this and I'll, I'll keep you posted and maybe I'll give updates on how that's going. I think so much of this is, as entrepreneurs, we have so many things we can do.

We can do webinars, we can do this, we can do that. And it can be so easy to get into 10 strategies and do them 10% well and end up with basically nothing. And so LinkedIn, at least for me, has been something that's, that's served me. And of all the different platforms, you know, people hear, you'll say, well, I got, you know, I got, uh, you know, I got kicked outta Google for this or this, or, or whatever it's, or, you know, or Instagram, I've found, unless you, unless you just use spam bots or something, which they don't want you to do for obvious reasons, I've not found that to be the case.

And so I can say that over the 10 plus or whatever years I've been using it, it's an asset that keeps growing for me. Kind of like if you have. Um, a podcast or a YouTube channel, it's, it's something that's there, that it's always working for you, and I feel in my profile is always doing that. Um, your last thoughts on that, on, on what that's been for you and, and how it can, for the person who, let's say, final point to that person who says, now it's not worth my time.

Um, how, how have you seen that work for you and for people you serve?

Uh, thank you very much. Basically, if your career is not important for you or if you have challenges, uh, committing to a, to a long-term process, then I may not be the right, uh, fit for you. Um, but I, I think I liked the way a conversation, uh, went because it, it was technical to, to some extent, but we also mentioned the importance of, of people and networking and, and to me way this is way, way, way more important than LinkedIn.

And just like you said, if you take anything from this and if you, there's any question you ask yourself after listening to this conversation, then I'm happy. I'm, I'm glad I was on the 3-Day Weekend Entrepreneur. And, and going back to the, uh, child, that test turned 10, 11. Mommy and daddy love you exactly like you are.

I'm quoting one of your books.

Wow. That was good. This, this man does his research. I am, I am. I'm impressed. Thank you so much again, Daniel. And for those listening, as always, I look forward to helping you impact more people and make more money in less time.