I'm Thomas Halford the founder of instantlyrelevant.com I was just recently on with the real Jason Duncan on the rootable success show I really encourage you to check out the show just you know give it a try give it five minutes if you last for five go to ten and keep going I've really enjoyed the time on there and thank them for the the opportunity to speak welcome to the root of all success with the real Jason Duncan a podcast that explores how the world's most powerful entrepreneurs unlocked success and how their stories can help you do the same a successful educator turned entrepreneur Jason has built multi-million dollar businesses that have been featured in ink magazine and Entrepreneur magazine his life's Mission now is helping entrepreneurs live what he calls hashtag the exit lifestyle introducing tedx speaker mastermind leader author entrepreneur Cigar Aficionado motorcycle Enthusiast and host of the root of all success the real Jason Duncan the real Jason Duncan welcome back to another episode of the show I am the real Jason Duncan I am so glad that you're here with me today I've got a guest on the show his name is Thomas helfrick he is the AI nerd we're going to talk about that today but his really his big specialty is LinkedIn and we're going to talk a lot about LinkedIn today and and really the whole purpose of today's show is not only to hear a little bit of his story but we're going to do a really deep tactical dive into how to engage with people in social media specifically LinkedIn but it applies everywhere how to engage with people on social media to move them from someone who doesn't know about you to become a prospect to become a customer how do you take them on that journey to become a customer with you and do it in an authentic and relevant way Thomas is known as the pioneering founder secret marketing weapon because he shows them how to engage in a relevant way on their social media platforms he's the CEO of a company called instantlyrelevant.com so you need to go check that out instantlyrelevant.com that talks all about and helps people get more relevant engagement on the LinkedIn platform and of course it applies to all platforms but he specifically pays attention to LinkedIn so please help me welcome to the show today Thomas Thomas welcome to the root of all success Jason thank you for having me it's uh I'm excited to be here well we're going to be talking about relevance today because that's kind of your thing we're talking about your company instantlyrelevant.com we're going to talk about a little bit about LinkedIn because we were talking pre-show about LinkedIn shutting my account down you've got a great huge following on LinkedIn so I'm honored that you're here part of the cool thing about doing a podcast and I know you're you're in this this uh this field as well is you get to sit down and have real conversations with people that you probably wouldn't ordinarily run across in day to day uh day-to-day business so I'm really honored that we're here I don't even remember how we got introduced but I'm really glad that we're here doing this where are you in the world right now tell everybody where you're coming from I usually joke and say I'm in your basement but I'm not I'm in Atlanta Georgia um just a little North in the suburb up here oh well my brother and his family live in Tucker which is north I don't know if you know where that is somewhere Direction it is we're gonna call it Atlanta yeah it's close enough Atlanta is big enough but and I'm I'm coming from the Nashville area again North a little north of town but uh we're not we're only about four and a half five hours apart but uh so tell everybody a little bit about instantly relevant let's just kind of kick it off with just a high level view of what it is that you're doing with instantly relevant and then we're going to dive into how you became so successful and we'll talk a little bit about in LinkedIn as well yeah well I appreciate that first of all once again thanks for having me on uh it and it's you know it's a great podcast I'm just excited to be here so thank you the uh instantly relevant is uh you know we're a lead generation company but not your typical spammy automated Type of Way um you know 99 of people come to us uh to stop guessing on what to do in LinkedIn to generate inbound interest brand awareness and leads for their for their organization so this is yeah earlier LinkedIn is this purely LinkedIn play is that what you guys are doing just purely through Linkedin we're a full digital agency so you know the you know when people come to us initially though they're coming to us because we do LinkedIn so well and the methodologies we can get into kind of the stylistic and my approach to it how it's different and how the company's grown it applies across multiple channels of social media right it's just LinkedIn is kind of where we found the best traction initially and it's one of the places most wrought with this kind of Automation and and spam and and some other things that really just it's threatening the the network a little bit of of kind of its credibility but it's there's different ways to do it that leverage uh social media correctly and doesn't hurt your brand to do it and you can outperform all these uh automated tools so that's what we do that's where they come to us but we have the full capabilities right of an agency so LinkedIn uh let's let's look at that a little bit so linkedin's a is is a LinkedIn and Instagram are the two platforms that I spend most of my time on Instagram number one LinkedIn number two and then YouTube would be number three kind of in that order uh I'm not on X or Twitter as it used to be called formally I'm not sure what X or threads does anymore I don't know what that I don't know what the heck that is that seems to me like a just a power play because you can and because it doesn't seem to be any business I've done a few posts and I see what's on there I'm like I don't need to get another social media channels anyway you said you're on Instagram um LinkedIn and YouTube so that's very very common kind of Trio of uh of you know LinkedIn you know it's basically Microsoft Google meta right so you have you have three platforms there to work through yeah well so X Twitter I'm not on that at all Facebook I have a frenemy relationship with I'm only there because I have to be to do ads otherwise I wouldn't I wouldn't be on that at all but LinkedIn so LinkedIn has always been this professional spot like you could go there and you're not having to look at pictures of kids at their birthday parties and their kitty cats and dumb pictures of people out doing stupid things that's for other platforms but it's actually a little bit shifting that direction I not a lot but a little bit shift in that direction and I kind of mute those people I'm like listen if you want to show pictures of what you did over the weekend of what you ate for dinner go somewhere else that's not what linkedin's for but dude what the heck is going on with the spam reach out and the sales people it is it is an epidemic right now I get these cold outreaches through Linkedin that are just terrible every day not anymore they shut my account down last Wednesday I don't know why so I don't know what they've done in the last week but uh but what's what's up with that what what is going on with people thinking that they can use LinkedIn as the spam machine to go out and just put put messages in people's inboxes all the time about crap that nobody wants yeah it's it's a it's a good it's a it's a valid point and it's one that I'm you know so my background let me just said a little credential so I understand I'm not coming from this one and how I'm coming from this so my background is you know born out of.com definitely remember myself to be a better developer than I was but um my background's Ai and uh you know intelligent automation systems so professional Consulting like the kpmgs accentures if you will uh pricewaterhousecoopers of the world kind of Consulting big big stuff as that Journey kind of went along I I really saw this inefficiencies in marketing and lead generation as you you know build practices and you kind of you know rise up through your career if you will the biggest thing I saw was that in marketing and all these other places are leveraging um just old tactics to connect instead of looking at the technology they're using from how it's supposed to work to how people really want to interact and you describe it like people don't want to see on certain platforms you smash your face or what you have for food or whatever else it'll be they want to see the business related it doesn't mean that your content can be you know fun and trendy for example LinkedIn featured our uh post of mine last week on Barbie but we tied it to marketing and the kind of cleverness they did of revamping it and moving the messages and it's something you're like I don't know but it but the post is very relevant to business professionals so it it's okay to do some of those kind of personalized things just gotta do it right but the spam thing just to answer that quickly and to the point we can have discussion around it is linkedin's enabled us through an API set and so they have all these apis in the background that people can leverage to do Mass invites and do other things but you're but this but the number of companies have come out are leveraging it in a way that's it's just ruining the platform so I think there's going to be a contraction back if you're using a bunch of automation which is against terms of service you often get your kind of you know blocked or shut down but that's why it's happening is that there's just a lot of tools out there to allow you to do it at Mass I'll leave the t's that is not how we do it and that's not how we recommend anybody to do it uh at all yeah well that's that's kind of why I wanted to bring this up to to kind of pile on them for just a minute then give you the opportunity to say well here's how it could be relevant it can be actually different and that's when that's why I like I like the name of your company instantly relevant because I think relevance is something that we all strive for to be and that we want to interact with things that are relevant and so many of the reach outs that I get through Linkedin are absolutely irrelevant to my life and I'll give you one example that I can remember off the top of my head but it was as a lady reaching out and it sounded like it was actually her talking not just where she'd pre-typed it it actually sounded like she was engaging with me but then as I continue to read yeah we're looking for women like you who when and I said listen I know we're in weird times but I'm definitely not a chick like I'm a dude and I'm proud of it I'm a man right I am a man there's two genders there's male and female and I'm not the other one that this is where I so but but but I just deleted it I didn't even I'm not able to respond because it's obviously not her and then she kept doing it kept doing it kept doing it kept it and I finally had to say look I'm a dude leave me alone and it wasn't that she was pitching something irrelevant necessarily because it was a business thing but her Target was women and like what the heck man so are these people not even like they're obviously not paying attention they're just setting up this this Automation and they're just send it to everybody in their group yeah there's a lot of that so so the kind of the the core four things that I know that matter and you're spot on with that there's I had one I've seen comments of stuff like I'll back you up a couple years ago so we've been on open ai's Beta platform for about three years which is what jet gbt is based on in the early days we were experimenting with and how we could automate commenting or post or reactions and one of one of the things it did was it would it basically said hey my dad was also in a felon died on a plane crash as well and I was like what like like none of us see more closer he's alive and it was an optometrist and I'm like okay turn that off and then if you and then I see these messages come in like you said the person doesn't even know they're sending them they're on a sequence that has if thens if you open it reply it it changes it and they can be very effective but they're they're completely ruining your brand so anybody listening entrepreneur business owner you're ruining your brand you're slowly drip bleeding your brand down uh so if you're there for a cash grab and you don't care keep doing it fine but if you actually care about building a business that you want to sell or you know or have a cash cow or just have lifestyle or however you'd like to do it you're doing it wrong and you really are I'm saying throw that baby and the bathwater out together um first of all it's going to get you kicked off the platform at some point and but the very least use your personal brand has been like you just said that lady might have had a very good product you might have been willing to introduce the right person to but because they hit you up so many times you're like I don't want to hear you at all now and and there's just a different way of to do it I'm teasing it again you had asked but listen you had asked how we connected we connected to the exact technique of why I'm sitting here to do this we go and comment on your post we go and interact with you in a message and then we bring the right people in the conversation to have a conversation and at no time to ever reference what we do or what the value is we get you by optimizing by profile making sure content making it you know sure that the uh the people that we're connected with are the actual people that I want to meet and I don't do any of the work really like if it's all done and then you cut then we interact and then next you know you're in a meeting with me and you have no idea really kind of how you got there all you know is he comment on my post and I wanted to meet him that style allows you to really build a relationship and see if there's this person could be a prospect for you or should you introduce them to somebody else or should you just listen and take it as a networking meeting well it's a completely different time well that's not only relevant but authentic and I think that's the I think that's what's missing and so many social media outreach is people are just not they're they're just not authentic and I think that you know I now remember because because you were engaging with hey you know you'd comment on a post and it would be a legitimate comment in support of or commentability on my posts and you see somebody doing that often enough and then their name shows up with an ask an appropriate employee to ask about something hey let's set up a call or something not pitching we just set up a call I'll do that as a matter of fact the the marketing company I just recently engaged with that's exactly how uh Victor is this guy that he reached out to me that's what he did he he was politely interacting not spam not comment on every single thing I posted but over the course of several and then reached out and said hey I'm not selling anything but I would love to talk to you if you're interested and we got on a call and uh and you know that took several months but I find I think the slow way is the better way and maybe people may disagree but um one of the other things that I've got kind of a filter on my LinkedIn to kind of filter that crap out is I'm the real Jason Duncan so in my LinkedIn profile my name is the real Jason Duncan I get all these people reach out hey Thee and you know or hey the real and I'll forgive hey the real Jason because that actually maybe they were just being they're trying to be brand Centric but when hey V and most of the time I delete those but Thomas every once in a while I'll just go my name is not thee and then and then the guy will go oh you know I'm sorry you know that was my automation like exactly not interested in talking to you that's how you reached out to me not interested in talking so tell I used to I used to use AI nerd Thomas AI nerd like I love it and I called you out I called you Al nerd postcode because that's okay I probably typoed it
it just said a capital a capital I but if you use a a sans-serif font there's no it doesn't look like an eye it could be an L it could be a one so my that's my fault but you are the pioneering founder of secret marketing weapon so how like what what does that mean tell everybody what that means yeah that's as cheesy me being my personality coming through a title I actually changed it on my LinkedIn to get that so people would stop soliciting me as a CEO so if you put CEO as your title on LinkedIn you're gonna end up in a list and then you're gonna get a lot more automation so if you cleverly change that title because you're allowed to you won't be in anyone's list and no one will automate you reach out because you won't be part of that group of current title that's why there's a tip for everybody right there there's a tip take that home everybody do that yeah now they can still get to you but the point is that is one way for getting too much automated spam to just change your titles to be something that's not traditional and not found if you're trying to find a job don't do that but if you're trying to just be ignored spam do that the um I forgotten the question I mean there there it is right there 47 years old you can call yourself you call yourself the pioneering founder secret marketing weapon what does that mean oh well because I don't I'm not a marketer I didn't come into the I own a marketing company but I didn't come into it from that perspective I came in from it from an intelligent automation AI systems perspective where my perspective specifically in point of view is you use Technologies to accelerate your humans and not replace them and in AI in particular you do not turn on AI automation ever because at this point because it's just a brand killer and when it is appropriate to do it you'll only be talking to other computer systems so the the pieces that we look at are I look at how the social media algorithms work with your kind of limits restrictions of those platforms are and then how do people want to interact with them so specifically LinkedIn our approach is well you can only send so many messages only as many connections that's not scalable but I can do unlimited comments I can engage with people on the platform because that's what the platform wants me to do that's why I'm allowed to do unlimited comments that are thoughtful and provocatively you know we do a thoughtful comment and provocative question to drive conversation in the post that's exactly what the platform is Desiring wants that's real engagement you know as we chase top voice right so I think I this company targeted me the other day because I'm 24th of all contributors on LinkedIn for uh uh their contribution articles um but we don't have a top voice yet but they came to me to Mentor me because like hey you're going to be it soon here's the two things you need to go do so I was like oh cool thanks the point is it's because I'm giving we're out there contributing to articles we're attributing to posts which are contributing other people's stuff and we don't ask for anything we'll we may send them a connection request that references or I may have you know send it something that says hey you and your uh post was great whatever you know in reference to post love to do a virtual coffee some people come back say hey I'm not interested in buying hey cool just still love the network other people are like great I need your services and and I didn't say ever I was gonna say anything I just said let's have a conversation so if you can do it that way and you can slow down like you said a little slow be more patient and you're in a B2B or a higher ticket sales piece it's the way to get a customer for life a little as opposed to selling somebody who's going to quit in 30 days or 60 days well let's if you don't mind and I don't normally do this on a show but but I think that would be appropriate because I like your personality and I think I think you've got the chops to do this let's help the audience a little bit let's talk about what it takes to engage in an appropriate authentic and relevant way with people that we're trying to connect with online so we could this could be applicable to Facebook Instagram Twitter would be X whatever absolutely any of these but we've just said one of the tips that we need to do is you gave a very tactical tip is change your title to be more um explicitly descriptive of who what it is that you do as opposed to CEO founder president you know because those are the examples are going to get you spammed right they are um and and I'll bubbled up so I train people how to do this we give away the keys of exactly what we do our company is an execution arm because I know it's not scalable once you get busy that's when you bring us I want you to do it I want you to know what you're doing for your to do this stuff because when you can't scale it I can just take your process that we've taught you on how to do and just go execute it for you and so we'll I'm gonna leave that off because I don't want to sell sales you with that but I'm okay and I'll explain exactly what you need to do on any profile we'll send it around LinkedIn for the purposes of just the example but it'll be applicable um there's core four core things you need to do after you've kind of set a strategy of what you want to accomplish with that social media channel uh that social media channel is LinkedIn I want to generate leads so I can you know close more business fine the four things you need to do and we'll dive into it is you need to really know your ideal customer profile and so in LinkedIn specifically that's a let's say a search or or a sales Navigator search but you got to be specific um you can't go by mail you can't go by female you know you have to get but you should know it to that degree you know it's 35 to 55 year old males who are entrepreneurs running companies you know less than 10 years less than 10 people have 20 plus years experience Etc et cetera it's posted on LinkedIn 30 days right that's one of our searches we typically uh will take that ideal customer profile and I'll pause here for that that is so important um and maybe you can explain to you know from what your experiences are building million dollar businesses how important it is to know a very specific audience to your solution for having a chance to connect with them I mean I I'm sure you've seen that yeah and there's four tenants that's one of them as well so and I want I'm going to make notes and I've already written down the first one everybody who's listening to this make sure you take these notes too and you can go back and replay this later but but but you're right Thomas I think knowing your ideal customer profile here's the thing when I first started in the personal branding Arena as a coach as a public speaker author podcaster the guys that I was working with told me that hey you got to know who's your avatar I don't like that question but who's your avatar who's your and it wasn't until I actually figured it out that things started to change I thought well it's it's any entrepreneur it's anybody who owns a business it's anybody who blah blah blah well now I know here's mine 40 years ago you weren't in business unless you had your business in the Yellow Pages you remember those things and 30 years ago you weren't in business unless you had a door-to-door Salesman 20 years ago you weren't in business unless you had a website and today you're not in business unless you're doing social media content am I right social media content social media content in the turn in the form of like micro content which is 30 to 60 second spots on Instagram reels or Tick Tock or YouTube shorts that's the way business is done as a matter of fact that may be how you found out about this podcaster or me as a business coach this medium that we're using today to communicate what we do is vitally important and just recording yourself isn't enough you've got to do it right and my friends over at story do it right and one of the problems with doing it wrong is that you sit around thinking well what the heck am I going to record what am I going to say how am I going to say it like I don't I don't know what to talk about Well story takes all of that away from you stop wasting time trying to come up with content because story will send you a video prompt on what to record you can pick the categories you want to record in whether it's real estate entrepreneurship Finance relationship leadership life insurance it could be anything don't waste time on that and and by the way if you if you're not confident in talking on video or if or if the video editing portion takes up way too much of your time story will edit the videos to perform well on social media they add the subtitles the pop-ups the zoom Cuts they remove all the filler words like uh and um and uh they remove the awkward pauses and then they take that 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a male entrepreneur typically a Founder but although that that's not necessarily but typically a Founder male entrepreneur 30 to 50 years old married with kids and uh probably white although that like I don't I'm not saying black no but it's who's buying from you it's not a problem and they're probably living somewhere in the Eastern or Southeastern part of the United States although I've got people in different parts of the country and uh typically conservative in terms of way they see the world politically although again that's not what I'm advertising like I figured that out that's that's why this has happened and now that I know that I'm not advertising hey if you're a pro-trumper you're a white dude talk to me because that's not what I am I don't know I do but I'm not a pro Trumper but but like you are a white guy those are the people that those are the people that I'm attracting and now that I know that it makes it so much easier to engage with people and I don't exclude those who don't fit in the ideal because the ideal is simply the ideal people outside the ideal you can also serve but you need to know your ideal so 100 I agree you've got to know your ideal customer profile and I'm actually saying like even what you describe like you should be like I need to have a mustache they gotta like hot dogs not bratwurst and if they drink Bud Light or what like I mean you like you should because because when you do that you start painting this picture and however you know your your customers come to you in the ideal customer profile really know it in your head and try to get as close as possible in the search terms allowable when you're building a list that that's what I'm saying to you don't exclude people and don't presume that white versus another color work don't females versus male you can look at your whole client base and it could be you know 100 wait I just you just described but it doesn't mean the other people don't need it there's just a reason they're not buying for you and you can either solve that or not and and but the idea is just know who's buying and know why why they've connected with you that's that's the first core tenant we call it the core four so that's the first thing and you do need to do that first um this is there's a presumption your kind of signature offer your signature solution solves their problem so that's a whole different podcast idea but let's say you have something that's viable and you want to repeat it and you want to do it through kind of social networking without ads or without um uh spam or automation you there's there's a presumption you have something to Value so we'll just pause that for a second coming in the second piece is um it's kind of understanding that prospect's Journey so when you have the ideal customer profile and you do the next thing which is common on one of their posts they immediately become a prospect so here's the one thing you need to do if you're on any social media is thoughtfully comment in a sentence you can use gpt4 to help if you want just just be aware that doesn't doesn't always produce a good answer but you could go copy that post you can go put in gpd4 you can come back and have a thoughtful comment followed by a provocative question actually use that term in gpt4 provocative question and tag the original poster what will happen is 99.99 of the time they will at least like it which means they'll see your name and I'll explain why that matters in a minute the second piece is they will likely reply and if they reply thank you or something that's pretty bad but at least they replied that gives you maybe a second and they're you're in their brain for a second most times their reply will be longer than the post and it's unbelievable when this happens because then now then they wrote that and they thought about they're thinking your name your name your name your name I'm replying to this guy once that happens your sales cycle just started they just became a prospect that became interested and now they're likely going to go check out your profile so the second first core tenant know the customer the ideal customer profile is safe search second comment with that type of style with thoughtfulness and provocativeness the third piece is your profile must be optimized now I'll take a break here if you want to you know ask a question back but that second tenet of the commenting is the first action to get someone to be drawn into you and ask for nothing is a second tip you have to do
so you said uh so so number two you got to understand the prospect's journey in other words what are that what are the problems what are their pain points what do they go through and what is their Journey with you their Journey with you so that when you start commenting that starts their Journey as a prospect so um you know so there's a there's a path that they take every time and then and the first part is you know who they are they don't know you know that yet but you've commented they now know who you are and now they've become a prospect without realizing it so there's a there's a trick there um you were asking a question I apologize no so you said you you had this this journey of a thoughtful comment right and then a provocative is it question statement comment what what did you say provocative question yeah provocative question so it's a reflective thoughtful comment which is interesting that you don't typically want to you know you got to be careful what you agree or don't agree with the post if you really feel passionate about it dive in but just be careful with it just it's more it's it's more effective to just be reflective in the in the thoughtful comment and then ask a provocative question of that post to the person make them think about you what you did that's the first step of the journey yeah and then now as they move into Prospect phase um they're not just a contact out there in The Ether they're now moving into Prospect phase number three you said your profile must be optimized right yeah so what does that mean and the reason for that is when so so there's obviously this this is their this is their Journey but not the order you'd be getting things ready just to be clear their journey is you've commented they're going to come now they're going to first thing they're going to see is the first seven words of your LinkedIn profile headline I think mine says right now let's get Syria are you serious about LinkedIn lead generation we change it monthly explain why you do that but when they see that that's the that's the first question your your profile has to answer your profiles answer three main questions the first one is why should I click your profile your link so you make the comment they read that little headline that's the first thing they look at and say okay it's clear what you do for me and why I should click that that's the first question you have to answer is why should I click it for you know serious about LinkedIn lead generation let's talk that's what mine says so you click it all right I'm actually serious about that when they land the profile and this be optimized to answer the second question as soon as you land the big banner image explains what it is you do for me I don't care what your company name is I don't care what your title is I don't care how many books are written I don't care what address to go through just tell me what you do for me as soon as you land the third thing is it has to answer a question of why I should take your call to action and and so when you get through your headline there's some other words that factors into it but then there's usually a link or a button that that goes out to something it's your call to action it might be a lot of people just put their website address that would tell me where to go it doesn't tell me why to go there so mine I think says something like best meeting of your week who does who doesn't pick that Jason really or should I call you the real for the rest of the day so I can be like I could be the automated guy hey the real listen um but that's the reason why so when you can answer those three questions why should I click on your profile what it is you do for me and you can say why should I take your call to action and when you have that nail that is your profile optimized you can have the other stuff about sections and some other things you need a good headshot all this basic stuff instead of putting he him or he she you know or whatever you want to put there you can change that to be customized mine says CEO of instantly relevance you I identify as the CEO of instantly relevant.com so you can like play with it um but that's the SEC that's the third part of the journey they've now checked out your profile so the fourth leg and the fourth core tenant is going to be content so they take your call to action that's where your marketing CRM takes over so you get a zoom meeting whatever happens they download something they take your call to action on LinkedIn your CRM should take over from the marketing you should be they should be part of that chain now that's part of the sales funnel if they don't take it you go back in and you message them if they you know if they don't connect with you go back in and message them and just maybe comment on their post keep them in this engagement cycle until they've checked you out if they don't accept your you know connection request let it be just go comment you're just dealing with somebody who's not ready to buy or doesn't you know but just keep engaging be thoughtful with it don't ask for anything now the fourth time at tenant I told you about was or the fourth leg is the content it has to be in a what's in it for me format and when someone connects with you and your Now new connection you've seen this say hey your new connections shared a post check it out this happens the the algorithm automatically feeds it back into that prospect it's super important that you create content that's not all I don't recommend doing it all the time I tell most people two to three times a week it's more than enough the engagement what you're giving them matters way more than your content and your content needs to be have some trendiness to it so the example I think I stood was the the Barbie thing that was focused that was featured on LinkedIn it's trending people are talking about it tie it to business we don't sell anything in that we just explain some ideas on lead generation how marketing strategy worked really beautifully in that movie and how they did it we do these we do these kind of things all the time right you need to do those kind of things all the time things are effective trendy eye-catching have relevance to what you sell so those are the hashtags in your profile and some other things and don't do it for views or vanity metrics we don't get very good engagement on our uh post 20 30 likes I have over 30 some thousand connects but we get an incredible amount of inbound leads because it is absolutely targeted to the people we're commenting on posts well I mean it's hyper targeted it's like I don't even care how many days I know they see it because we can see it and then they connect with us it's so just be targeted and quality over quantity so if you put those four things together and I can repeat them if you want that is the that is just the process very simply laid out well I I wrote them down I want to make a comment too about this before we recap and then kind of finish up the show but one of the things you mentioned was we don't chase vanity metrics and um so I spend most of my time on on Instagram second most of my time on LinkedIn of course as of the recording of this show my LinkedIn account has been suspended for reasons I do not understand because I don't do the automations and things that will get me shut down but it is confusing but one of the things that that people chase is they chase how many views how many likes did I get um so I get I get people on Instagram specifically reaching out to me all the time through DMs it says hey love your content and of course I know I'm about to get punched in the face but your your your reels don't have very many uh views or you're not getting married many and and most of the time I delete delete delete I just don't even pay attention but but every once I'm feeling a little bit Punchy and I'll say you know what I make hundreds of thousands of dollars through my social media content so if it had five likes or it had five thousand does it matter to me it's accomplishing the thing that I want to accomplish so I think what you said there at the end on content is really a good point for all the people listening to this is that just produce good content be authentic be relevant don't worry about the vanity metrics because you're going to get the lead that you need you don't need 15 000 views that's right that you need absolutely so if you're buying views or likes your account's screwed stop you can get out of it but quit doing it get out of that cycle immediately if you're using GPT or Bard or any other large language models to create your content totally fine you better personalize it though because remember Microsoft put 10 billion into open AI Microsoft owns LinkedIn they can tell if it's an AI generated article it's going to get downgraded into the algorithm so just know that if you're not being authentic you're not being creative you're not shooting an actual point of view that isn't you know met or so what it hasn't it it's your you're wasting your time just don't even do it then at that point just comment on people's stuff if you can't come up with your own things you can't come up with your own imagery with it see you know Outsource it like there's companies out there that do that well that can help yeah but you can't you got to be it's got to be your thoughts it's got to be originality you can use GPT and all those things to help create the content based on your own input into it own examples do that and so that's super important especially moving forward you know you know if you Google AI nerd you'll see a few things about me I'm not coming off of nowhere from this like you're going to see a massive change of these algorithms every six months the battle spam to battle AI content so so the platforms aren't just talking you know people on the platform aren't just talking to other computers so but those core four things if you I'll recap it right you got to make sure that you have you know the ideal customer profile so no matter how well you think you can you know in your head remember the example they like tacos on Tuesday they have mustaches and shoot 22 caliber guns on the weekend I don't know like it like get narrow with it and get it then your searches narrow around it second remember the profile uh the the sorry the prospect's journey they're first going to see your profile so make sure it's optimized before you start doing this the profile you know is going to check you out because of that comment you made and when they check out your profile make sure it answers the three questions once again why should in this order why should I click on your profile image in I think what is it you do for me and why should I take that call to action link and if you don't even have those call to action links or you don't have an image you then let's talk because you you're way behind then finally create content that's in what's in it for me uh and and this is all across all social media stop selling wee-wee only a very small percentage of the population in the world likes to get weed on I thank you and uh it's a whole nother conversation that's a different podcast that you have I believe yeah no it's not mine not mine well you just pissed that one away did you didn't you see what you did there so let's do this man let's go through uh our four questions that are normally kind of the main part of the show but we'll do this more of a speed fashion here at the end because I want to hear your thoughts what first of all times would you say is your one key to success I know there's a lot that you had to think this is the one thing that made me be successful what is it the ability to Pivot it's to to understand when you need to move it to shift to to go along with what's going on in a lot of uh you know contextual points of interest in situation awareness is knowing when to Pivot and that can be from professional career to business but knowing when to Pivot all right how do you define the term success personally how do you define it show uh it is beyond wealth it has to do with the balance between uh Financial reward uh you know Family Life friends and your availability to have time because it's the one valuable asset that is running out for all of us right so it's it's how you capture time what you get to do with it and I love it I love that you started that with the word balance that's a very big word in my my uh atmosphere I talk about success and balance all the time so based on your definition of success what you said is balance between finances family friends and time do you consider yourself to be a successful person not yet really I uh I'm an entrepreneur you know three years into launching a company a lot of time goes to a lot of time goes to the work uh the remainder goes to like kids not enough goes towards probably wife and friends and and uh nor enough goes towards free time to have fun so uh as you pivot and grow the truth is you know and I wrote a book this year right called never been promoted because it's about that journey of life and intersection there's a lot that's going towards having the opportunity to live a little Freer in the next few years um and so the I go back to the reason about being pivoting pivoting to be more repeatable more focused more you know targeted uh will will lead to that success but I'm on the path well I love that you're uh aware self-aware enough to know that you're on that path and you're moving towards it so let me ask you this at the at the end of this show if you had to give everybody listening one piece of advice like this is one thing that everybody needs to do to be better more successful whatever they want as an entrepreneur what is your one piece of advice as an entrepreneur perspective stop talking about [ __ ] and get it done uh uh and get it done I was uh we I was working with a client yesterday and that statement a version of that statement came up in the meeting we all just laughed and like yeah we need to put that on the walls and we're just get [ __ ] done you know just I mean because you'll you'll learn from it you'll learn how to Pivot from it you'll Define if it helped your path to success you know it'll help you if you've taken a step towards what your original goal was if you don't do anything you sit there and just tread water and drown eventually so so get it done start moving forward no matter what it is well Thomas thank you for being on the show today man so I want to encourage everybody to go to instantlyrelevant.com instantlyrelevant.com and if your account on LinkedIn is still active unlike mine go go find Thomas at Thomas hellfrick that's
h-e-l-f-r-i-c-h-h-e-l-f-r-i-c-h Thomas elfrick go look him up on Instagram or on LinkedIn rather tell them that you heard about him on the root of all success with me the real Jason Duncan don't just use the but you heard him here on the show connect with him let him help you show you how to be more instantly relevant on your social media platforms to attract more clients more customers and ultimately more money so that you can make more impact in the world so Thomas I'll give you the last word before we sign off today anything you want to say it's all yours Thomas you get the last word today thank you and if you've made it this point in the podcast uh I I don't do this often but I but this is real what I'm about to say Applause for suspense so the uh it's real I will give you my personal phone number don't call text me I don't pick up numbers I know if you if you text me this is this is the phone I'm holding right here looking at you Android only baby okay
314-954-6900 that's
314-954-6900 that is actually my phone number you leave me a message say I listened to your podcast I made it to the end
I will make sure I get one-on-one time with you directly to just kind of let's just have a meeting of what's what's on your mind kind of thing you know around try to keep it around business if you can but the point is you can actually text me 314-954-6900 mention uh the podcast name and I'll I'll actually find time directly with me to help Thomas thanks for being on the show man congratulations on all your success and I wish you the best as you continue to be instantly relevant thank you there you have it another successful entrepreneur early in his journey of Entrepreneurship who has enough self-awareness to know that he has not yet successful according to his definition but I love this definition and I think you would agree with it it's a good balance between time money and finance oh it's a family and friends so time money and family and friends so you got family and friends that you want to spend time with you got the time that you want to make sure that you're control of and you got money and so that is a great definition of what success truly is he also talked about the importance of being able to Pivot so that is a very very good trait that we as entrepreneurs need to have I want you to go reach out to Thomas ask him for some help on your LinkedIn how can you be more relevant how can you be more authentic and make connections with people but thank you for listening and tuning into the show text Thomas at that number he gave his number was uh let's see I wrote it down
314954-6900 so make sure you text him reach out to him and he'll offer that one-on-one time just like he said and here are a recap of the four things we talk about on the show number one you got to know your customer profile number two you got to understand the customer's Journey how they move from not knowing about you to becoming a customer number three your profile on linkedin's got to be optimized and number four your content needs to be about what's in it for me people need to have value not just stuff that you're throwing at the wall thank you again to Thomas for being a guest on the show I want to remind you to pick up a copy of exit without exiting this is my International best-selling book that teaches you how to get out of the weeds of daily operations so if you're thinking about exiting your company thinking about selling it what if I told you there's a way to keep the ownership of the company keep the financial profits keep the tax advantages but not keep running 80 hour weeks what if you could do it in as little as 10 hours a week and still maintain total control total ownership and total benefit of owning the company without losing any the profits that's what exit without exiting this book teaches go to the real Jason duncan.com book and pick up your copy today thanks for listening make sure you tune in again next time when I talk to you yet another very successful entrepreneur about his or her journey to success until then I am the real Jason Duncan and as always Jesus is King thank you for listening to another edition of the root of all success with the real Jason Duncan if you've enjoyed this week's episode visit the rootofallsuccess.com to access the show notes and other helpful resources follow Jason on social media at the real Jason Duncan are you an entrepreneur who feels Trapped In The Weeds of daily operations not experiencing the freedom you thought you'd have as a business owner want another way out take Jason's free exit Readiness assessment to see how close you are to getting ready to experience true freedom and success as an entrepreneur go to am I ready to exit.com today that's am I ready to exit.com see you again next time here on the route of all success [Applause]
