MMS #120 - How to Level Up Your LinkedIn Strategy for More Conversations in 2025 with Brandon Lee and Carson Heady

[00:00:01] Welcome to Mastering Modern Selling, relationships, social and AI in the buyer-centric age. Join host Brandon Lee, founder of Fistbump, alongside Microsoft's number one social seller Carson V Heady, and Tom Burton, author of The Revenue Zone and co-founder of LeadSmart, as we explore the strategies and stories behind successful executives and sales professionals.

[00:00:24] Dive into business growth, personal development, and the pursuit of excellence with industry leaders. Whether you're a seasoned executive or an aspiring leader, this podcast is your backstage pass to today's business landscape. This is Mastering Modern Selling, brought to you by Fistbump.

[00:00:49] Okay, welcome back. Episode number 120. Mastering Modern Selling. And 120 is your birthday. 120 is my birthday, yes. Five days. Five days. Look at that. My birthday is Martin Luther King Day, Inauguration Day. I mean, it's just, you know, all kinds of things. Tom's birthday, look at that. Tom's birthday, right. It's a national holiday. I mean, you know. It's pretty incredible.

[00:01:16] Anyway, yeah, I'm looking forward to reaching my 30s next week, so. Woohoo! Yeah. You can identify as whatever you wish, Tom. There's a fine line between optimism and delusion. So. All right, all right. All right. So, hey, Brandon, what are we talking about today? We're talking about leveling up on LinkedIn? Yeah. Yeah, you know what?

[00:01:45] I've heard, and I'm curious what you guys hear. We've been all busy. We haven't really talked as much lately. But yeah, it just, I think coming into 2025, I think at the end of 2024, heard a lot of like, hey, we want to take LinkedIn more serious next year. We need to level up. We need to figure out LinkedIn. Just a lot of those conversations. So, it made sense for the three of us to talk about, you know, what does it mean? And I think getting more practical, tactical. Carson, I know you have a playbook that you follow.

[00:02:15] We have a playbook that we follow for ourselves and for our customers. And we tweaked our playbook a little bit last quarter. My pipeline is better and stronger than it's been in the last, you know, 18 months. And so, turning this LinkedIn thing into more relational, more humanity, but focused on outreach and focused on prospecting. Carson, I know you do that extremely well.

[00:02:42] But I think it's hard for a lot of people to connect that of, hey, this is like networking. It's just like a live event, getting to know people, doing that chit chat type of stuff before you get into business in a live setting. I think a lot of times people just skip that in that chit chat part, that getting to know you. That's really where people start to make a decision. Do they know, you know, get to know the person, get to like the person, feel like there's some

[00:03:11] trust, there's a little bit of value there. A lot of people tend with LinkedIn automation, just go straight for that. Here's what we do. Here's what we can add. Here's my calendar link. And I think that, you know, Carson, you do such a great job with the humanity piece, with all the content you create. I think I do a pretty good job with that, such that when we do reach out to people and say, hey, would you be interested? A lot of times it's, oh yeah, I feel like I already know you from your LinkedIn content.

[00:03:38] And the consistency with that, but then more strategic processes behind the scenes to create those opportunities or ask for those conversations. There goes Tom. So we're, we were talking beforehand, everybody. Tom is in Southern California with all the fires and the winds and his power seems to be going on and off all day. So I think Tom's going to be making, you know, surprise visits here and there throughout the day. But Carson, welcome. How are you doing?

[00:04:08] Yeah, Brandon. Good to see you. My heart's out to everybody in on the West Coast and, and I've got a lot of friends that are being impacted. And you know, you said it well, Brandon, it's a new year. And I just recently did a separate show on, you know, what are we, what are we coming into here in, in 2025? And honestly, a lot of the 2025 predictions are very similar to last year's predictions.

[00:04:36] You know, we're going to continue to see more and more AI, which means there's going to be more and more around automation. And it's all about standing out from the crowd and standing out from the noise. So leveling up and mastery, these should really be the mantras of the modern seller. You know, how can we get really focused and polished and crisp, you know, around how we're leveraging what is in essence a 24 seven coffee shop.

[00:05:00] You know, at any point in time, you can walk in and, you know, engage with people in different ways that you're comfortable with, whether it's video or, you know, whether it's sharing your experiences. You know, I've had a lot of actually, you know, what's ironic is over the holidays, I made an intentional decision over the holidays not to create new content because I was so busy and actually shared some greatest hits from all of 2024. My impressions quadrupled.

[00:05:31] Wow. During that time, because I was repurposing some previously used content that had gotten a lot of impressions. And I always create with a goal of just starting conversation and starting dialogue. To your point, you know, creating a brand where there's awareness. I get a lot of outreach from colleagues, but also when I talk to customers where they feel like they already know me, like you said. And so fascinating is, you know, arriving at the different mediums

[00:05:58] and arriving at the different mechanisms by which you feel comfortable engaging, being willing to try new things. But know that right now it's really all about how, what's the unique value proposition that you have? What are your unique powers, you know, superpowers and strengths and passions that can amplify everybody around you? And then how can you leverage LinkedIn to uniquely connect, whether it's through posts, comments, groups, all of the different elements that shows.

[00:06:29] Yeah. Well, let's jump in with Andrew and Randall and Josh and Butch. I'll join in. Thank you guys for joining. I really want to invite everybody today too, especially, I mean, every episode, but especially today, you have specific questions or comments or things that are working well for you. You know, please put them in the comments and let us, you know, bring them up on screen and and make that a big part of the conversation. Tom, welcome back. We'll- Yeah, sorry.

[00:07:00] Power went out again. So I'm now connected to my phone hotspot. Hopefully we stay- I was going to say, if anything, I mean, this is- This is real life. I mean, it kind of teaches you, if sales teaches you anything, it's how to be adaptable and how to pivot, especially in uncertain circumstances. So here we are living it. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:07:27] And, you know, Tom, you're cutting in and out, buddy. I was just going to say- Fred, can you hear me now? Is it? Yeah, we got you. Okay. I was just going to say one thing. And our power has been going in and out for the last five, six days, you know, because we're not in the fire zone, but we're in the wind zone.

[00:07:52] And I have extension cords running all throughout the house and different things to plug into and all that kind of stuff. It's pretty sad, actually. And it's like, you know, five or six days. So you have to keep life going. I don't even know.

[00:08:18] You realize that you rely on when it's not there. So, all right. So I'm going to go back to Brandon. Tom, you're very robotic. That is AI, Tom. That is AI. Sounded a little bit like the peanuts parents, if you will. But no, I think the gist of it is Tom's right.

[00:08:47] I mean, we rely on these mechanisms, having power, having technology. And sometimes, you know, we've got to get creative to make sure that we're still connecting, because at the heart of everything in sales is the connection piece. And that's what LinkedIn is all about. I know that's what it's been for me, and I know that's what it has been for you as well, Brandon. Yeah, totally. And Carson, let's start for both of us. You mentioned at the beginning that LinkedIn is like a coffee shop.

[00:09:15] I use the terminology that LinkedIn is like a 24-7 conference. Everybody's walking around with a name tag. So you know their name, you know their title, you know the company they're from. And just like in a live event, like you, I had somebody comment in one of my posts today about she said, you know, when I'm engaged with somebody on LinkedIn, I imagine I'm standing next to them in line at a coffee shop.

[00:09:41] And I'm looking for ways to start conversation and create that. And, you know, we do that all the time in real life. You know, we look if they have a logo, like a college logo, maybe we use that as an opener. They have cool shoes or cool glasses, like, hey, cool glasses, those are neat. And we just we look for ways to start conversation. Yes, there is a strategy in our mind like, hey, this could be a good customer.

[00:10:10] But we don't go right in their face and start talking business. We start looking for ways to create a little bit of rapport, a little bit of that. I mean, I think the power of the chit chat, the strategy of chit chat is so important in real life. What does that look like in LinkedIn? So when you when you say LinkedIn is like a like a coffee shop, what does that mean for you and how do you activate that?

[00:10:38] Like, what activities do you do that are analogous to being in the coffee shop and starting conversations with strangers? I love it, Brandon. And Mike, thank you for your support of the show must go on. The look when I think about LinkedIn, I think a lot of times we put pressure on ourselves. Right. You know, when I think about conversations that I have about people that are like, man, I know I should improve my LinkedIn game. I really need to up level there. I really need to go out there more.

[00:11:06] I've been meaning to post out there. You know, I've been planning series of posts. It's like, first off, just do it. The other element, it's like we put so much pressure on ourselves to get it perfect and it's progress over perfect. I've done like far from perfect from a LinkedIn perspective, but it's been advantageous for me because I go out and I'm intentional in my strategy. You know, if you followed me on LinkedIn, you probably think I'm out there all the time and I'm not.

[00:11:31] You know, I have about three times per day that I intentionally go out there and I try to check as many messages as I can. I have my folks that I'm following where I've rung the bell and I try to make some intentional comments. And then I also try to post something meaningful. Could be experience based, could be a video, could be an article, could be a blog. A lot of times that we've talked about that on this show, you know, you post a picture. We're all always trying to figure out the LinkedIn algorithm.

[00:11:58] You post a picture and you post something that sounds relatively provocative. People will engage. But when you think about it as kind of a coffee shop analogy, it's really all about, OK, what's my what's my goal? Like, what's my outcome? What am I trying to leverage LinkedIn for? And for me, it's been very much about my personal brand in my career.

[00:12:21] And also engaging and meeting other people, both people that are customer executives. And that's led to billions of dollars of revenue that never would have existed without meeting these executives on LinkedIn. But it's also led to meeting people in the sales community. So I wear a lot of different hats and I'm still actively out in the field. And I'm, you know, I lead a team and I mentor a lot of people.

[00:12:48] So I have thought leadership in certain industries where, you know, I have a lot of work, but I also have a very strong affinity for sales. And so I try to be very intentional. But at the same point, like there's a lot of elements that it can achieve. So think about, you know, what are the desired outcomes that you have? You know, if it's meeting your sales goal, then it's relationships. You know, you want to go out and create relationships.

[00:13:15] You can follow the greats, follow people that you ultimately want to emulate. You know, I follow people like Jeb Blunt, Mike Weinberg, Anthony Anarino. You know, I get notified every single time they post because I've rung the bell and I can, you know, take in those concepts, listen to those podcasts, read those recommended books. Furthermore, I work a lot in the nonprofit and the healthcare space from a leadership and a sales perspective.

[00:13:41] So, you know, staying in tune with those trends, joining those groups, you can kind of cultivate what your coffee shop looks like. You get to decide, you know, am I going to hang out over by the pastries? Am I going to hang out over by the mocha? You know, what am I going to hang out by? And the conversations, the water cooler talk that you want to pick up on, the beauty about Sales Navigator and LinkedIn, you can really cultivate your feed and what you gravitate toward.

[00:14:08] And that's what I think has been really helpful for me in the coffee shop analogy. What about you, Brandon? Yeah, and I love, thanks for putting Jeff, his comment on there. I love it. You're right. What happens when you comment? You might get annoyed. You're better off. You're better off. Yeah, you know, I think. The worst thing that can happen if you comment is you make an AI comment and it sticks out like a sore thumb. Good point. Good point. Yeah. Yeah. I think some of the things that you said there, I want to highlight for people too.

[00:14:36] For anyone that doesn't know, when Carson says you ring the bell, you can go to anyone's LinkedIn profile. And the bell, it's like kind of the top right below their banner, top right corner. If you click the bell, that's a notification. It means you're going to get notified every time they publish. So for, you know, thought leaders in your industry, I think a big strategy is ring the bell of people that your buyers are paying attention to. So that you can go comment on their posts.

[00:15:06] If your buyers are watching their content and you're consistently commenting, it's a great way to grow your reputation. They see you everywhere. I've shared this story on the show before. I had somebody in the Microsoft ecosystem in Atlanta send me a connection request. I accepted. He asked me if I wanted to, you know, hey, we're both in Atlanta. We both lead companies. You want to meet for coffee? Of course, we meet for coffee.

[00:15:31] And the first question I asked him was, well, why did you want to get together with me and have coffee? And he said, well, I bought this technology company who's a Microsoft partners about six months ago. And I'm just trying to learn the ecosystem. He's like, I would go to these different posts and like somebody in Microsoft or somebody with the big Microsoft partner. And I kept seeing this Brandon Lee guy that kept commenting on all these different posts.

[00:15:58] He's like, then I went and looked at your content and I saw that you posted a lot. And he said, you seem very well connected in the Microsoft ecosystem. The perception that he had. Now, I don't think I'm that connected in the Microsoft ecosystem. But from his perception, because of my comments, I was very well connected in the ecosystem for him to reach out and want to have coffee and start the conversation. So there's the coffee shop for me is about.

[00:16:29] Creating conversations when you have opportunities. I do like that analogy that it could be a coffee shop. It might be the bar at a trade show. It could be, you know, any sort of networking event. How are you like, first of all, what's your goal? And secondly, how do you go about creating conversation? And these aren't magic bullets.

[00:16:51] Like I think, you know, too often people thought over the last 10 years or so that, you know, some LinkedIn was something you could plug in and it was just going to work. And, you know, you've said this before, Carson. POs magically fall out of the sky. Doesn't happen that way. But when we're intentional with how we spend our time, whose content are we looking at? What content are you publishing? Adding elements of business, but adding elements of the humanity.

[00:17:21] I know Jeff Leisure, who commented before, he talks a lot about the humanity content that he creates and all the conversations that come of it. And it helps us become more known and liked. And what I've seen is our humanity content with our business content changes the way people look at us. They see us as a real person and they get to know us a little bit instead of just seeing us talk business.

[00:17:51] You know, this is what I do. This is what I do. This is what we can do. Who wants to talk? Nobody wants that. But when they see you as a real person and your content is helping them think or adding value, educating them, entertaining them, encouraging them. Then when we do reach out, it could be on email. It could be on a call. It could be in a direct message. It could be at a booth and you're asking people to come to your booth or they walk by and they see your booth. That's when people go, I see you all over LinkedIn.

[00:18:20] I feel like I know you. And that barrier drops and conversations are much, much easier to create when we do reach out because of the activity that we're doing on LinkedIn. Yeah. I mean, look, be the real you. I think that's at the end of the day, that's the ultimate advice. And be willing to try different mechanisms to connect. Going out and following folks is important. What you share can be important. And groups that you join can be important.

[00:18:49] But I even look back over my last year of LinkedIn and what resonated the most and some of the things that jumped out at me the most. I've shared on this show the story of how there was a chief operating officer that I commented on every post that he made for like six months. We had maybe one really good line of business relationship in that organization out of about 20 business units.

[00:19:11] And after all these comments, like there was a moment where I actually we traded book recommendations in the comments of one of his posts. And he said, well, Carson, coming from you, I definitely take that with a lot of credibility. I'd never spoken to this person. I'd never met them. But we had traded comments for six months. Guess what happens? Play this forward. The CEO takes another role. This person is elevated to CEO. And now's my shining moment. I reached out. I booked a meeting immediately.

[00:19:41] He already knew who I was. And we multiplied, you know, going from one business unit into seven later that year. And now we're having conversations in all 20. So you can take that to what's the value of the relationship and how can you expound upon relationships and connect authentically and meaningfully with people that you would have never met otherwise. But also looking at, I look at the last year of my content and what got the most impressions.

[00:20:07] And it was times that I took on a new project or changed roles. You know, you make a post and that's what a lot of people's experience with LinkedIn is. You go on every time you use it as a resume. And there's nothing wrong with that. I recommend that you update it frequently. I update it, mine frequently, even around the current role that I'm in. If I take on a new project, have an accomplishment, an experience every quarter that I have new results that I can add in there, I'm massaging that constantly.

[00:20:35] But furthermore, you know, thinking about like, did you take on a new project, become an advisor somewhere? You can create roles. You know, even being a podcast host, you know, we've all created a role for that podcast company page, etc. So I have multiple roles that are going on at the same time. And these things prompt impressions. They prompt profile views. And these are some of the types of things that can create dialogue and conversation, which is good.

[00:21:02] Furthermore, some of the personal posts that I made over the last year, the biggest impression wise posts that I made that engaged the most conversation and the most really results in the way of new relationships was one of them was like, I hit my fitness goal for the year. Right. And it was just talking about like the ups and downs, like I had some injuries and I pushed through kind of a resilience thing. It resonated. Those stories resonated.

[00:21:28] Furthermore, one of the other ones that really blew up was sharing my career walking deck, sharing an experience that I had. And, you know, something that I've massaged over time based on mentors and different experiences and conversations that I've had, being able to translate that into a walking deck. You talk about how do we stand out amidst all the noise. If you're going for a job or you're even just having an informational with a new potential hiring manager, you're looking to de-risk their decision.

[00:21:56] And you've got a very limited window of time to really leave an impression and make that good first impression. I like to send a walking deck as an appetizer. That walking deck was downloaded thousands of times in a month long span. And so those are the types of things that really get a lot of play. And furthermore, you can write articles. You can create your own newsletter. You can go live. You can create podcasts. I wasn't doing any of these things five years ago. And now they're part of my daily rhythm. I still have a day job.

[00:22:27] I've got a wife and three kids. These things are very, very manageable. And you can do all of them or you can do one or two of them that you really gravitate toward and do them well. Yeah. And I like Anthony's comment on there too. It is professional content plus the humanity content plus engaging with your network.

[00:22:46] Not only does it create conversations, Anthony, and I agree with you, but all of this and everything you just said there, for anybody that gets overwhelmed, like Carson, I say this with admiration and respect. Carson's a machine. And I know sometimes, like when we did our webinar on your playbook, I have people like, I can't do what Carson, like that overwhelms me. I get it.

[00:23:09] But everybody that's listening, everything that Carson is talking about is the activities that he does in this digital platform. It's part humanity. He talked about his fitness goalpost. And I'm a big believer. Humans remember the emotional pieces. They remember the humanity pieces before they remember what you do for work. So he's doing all this activity around creating a reputation.

[00:23:39] And all of us have it going into any conversation. You either have a positive reputation, a negative reputation, or no reputation. And we have this opportunity through consistency and strategy, content, commenting, sending connection requests, direct messages after we connect with people. All of that, Carson is what I'm hearing.

[00:24:07] All of that creates this reputation so that when you do ask somebody for a meeting, you do have an at bat. But nine times out of 10, I think you and I go into meetings with people going, I feel like I know you. And that's what, I mean, my encouragement to everybody going into 2025, stop looking at LinkedIn like another version of email.

[00:24:32] Stop looking at it as pushing out that analogy of the coffee shop, the networking event, the trade show. You're in a room full of people. How do you start conversations? And there's nothing wrong with the informal chit chat. How do you start those conversations to build that reputation? And I think to piggyback what we talked about last week with Steven Newman, which was awesome.

[00:24:58] He talked about what if you had one conversation a day with somebody that was networking focused, not targeting on your audience and just started talking with people. That brings us right back to we're building our network. We're building our reputation. And we've talked about this on the show, but I think all of us have talked about this our entire careers in some way, shape or form. Your network equals your net worth.

[00:25:25] If you don't have a network, people don't know you or don't know of you. It's really, really difficult to get them to want to talk to you in the middle of all this noise and craziness that's going on. And as you said, 2025 is just going to get noisier. Yeah, no doubt. Victoria had a great comment. Victoria, great to see you pop up. Hopefully all is going well in your world. Victoria has been on the show before.

[00:25:52] And she's so right with the stigma around sales, showing up with authenticity can help water down that stigma and lower those barriers prospects put up. Because absolutely, I always like to say, just like we have a process, our customers have a process. Buyers have a process. You know, they're very data driven. They've got a lot at their fingertips. Their need for sellers looks a lot different than it did 5, 10, 15, 20 years ago. And that makes it all the more critical that we're showing up in meaningful ways.

[00:26:21] And when I think about like how we leverage LinkedIn, and when I think about, you know, just some of the different ways that we can engage with buyers. First off, there are things that you can do with LinkedIn that are very focused. And there's also some that you can do that are very scaled. I've used LinkedIn automation tools, and I don't always get it completely right. But I tried very hard not to abuse my first degree connection. You know, I've earned that, hopefully, and I want to nurture that. So I want to add value.

[00:26:50] And typically, especially with customer executives, I may only reach out to them once or twice a year via LinkedIn. But I really make it count. You know, we have a really big event coming up later this calendar year, and it is geared toward executives.

[00:27:05] And so I'm leveraging LinkedIn to message the thousand plus people that I've connected with in that industry over the last year to invite them to the event and really try to add value around offerings that we have that are exclusive to them. So while I'm sending out a lot of connection requests and sometimes messages, I'm doing it in a way that is very respectful.

[00:27:33] And furthermore, I've often found, and I've shared this on this show before, I've found that sometimes customers don't respond, believe it or not, to our sales overtures. Right? But if we show up talking about something, maybe an article that we saw that we think might resonate based on a conversation that we might have had. Or I've got a podcast that I do with a gentleman by the name of Hilke Faber, who wrote a book called Taming Your Crocodiles.

[00:27:59] And it's all about building culture and, you know, tackling limiting beliefs. And I've actually sent messages out to some of these executives that I've wanted to earn a relationship with, and I've asked them to be on the show. And I've had customers that didn't respond when I was trying to have a business-related conversation about their business unit. But they did respond when I asked them to be on the show.

[00:28:23] And to this day, I mean, in some of these cases, these were two, three years ago, I still have a regular rapport with some of these folks that said yes. They were on the show with me. And it was very no-sales conversation. We developed a rapport. Opportunity and deals actually came out of these conversations. It's just not, it's not always a straight line. That's why we've got to focus on the relationship. And you're not going to get a relationship without a conversation. Focus on meaningful conversations.

[00:28:52] Invest. Invest your energy and your time in trying to create meaningful dialogue. And if you do that over time, it will bear fruit. Yeah, I really like that. And I'm going to bring back what you said for everybody back to the coffee shop or the networking event.

[00:29:12] What Carson was saying is with his show with Helka on culture or mindset or things, he's able to reach out to people on a topic that's not business-related that might be more important to them. So you're in the networking event. And that's why I say we're looking for things to connect with people in a live event. Maybe they have a logo. And you go, oh, did you go to the University of whatever? It's a way to start conversation.

[00:29:40] And then that chit-chat, we don't go into business, but we talk about whatever. If it's at an event, you might be like, oh, where did you fly in from? Or, hey, did you have a problem with the weather? Or all those things, and we're just starting to get to know each other. And the value of that in face-to-face is huge, and we don't think about the value of it all the time in LinkedIn.

[00:30:03] That chit-chat phase, they're assessing, is this somebody that I want to keep having a conversation with? Is this somebody that I'm enjoying this conversation with? If you bypass that, which a lot of people do in LinkedIn, they go straight to business. They don't have that gut part of, do I even want to talk to this person? Because people still buy or choose to spend time with those who they know, they like, and they trust, or somewhere on that continuum.

[00:30:33] You can come off trustworthy within a few minutes through chit-chat conversation. They may not have super high trust because they don't know you yet, but they're getting a sense. And then when you lead the conversation to something like, well, tell me what you do for work. And they ask you what you do for work. If the chit-chat part went well, and there was some rapport there, and there's something business-wise that could be done, it's much more likely to go, gosh, let's keep this conversation going.

[00:31:02] I'm really curious what you guys do. That's what it looks like offline. And what Carson was just explaining is how he establishes or creates that in an online world through his content, his humanity content. I missed, you know, I hit my fitness goal. I didn't think I was going to make it, or I missed my fitness goal because of whatever.

[00:31:24] Like, these are real topics that other people resonate with, even if they're not ready to buy, but it gives them that like, hey, I like this guy. Like, oh, and then they remember us because we're different than all that just business, business, business conversations with they, which they tend to tune out. We all tend to tune it out, right? Because none of us like to be sold.

[00:31:46] So everything that Carson was just saying, if y'all think about how you behave in real life and that chit-chat to earn the opportunity to take it deeper, that's the real value of LinkedIn. Yeah, and you know what I think is interesting too? And there's a good question there from Santino, and this is going to tie into one of the comments that I want to make. So his question is, LinkedIn restricts the number of custom notes when making a connection request.

[00:32:15] Is there a limit or best practice like sending connection requests without the custom note? There's different schools of thought on this. Personally, I like to send a custom note with every invite, and it's, you know, usually it's based on something specific as to why I want to connect with them. I use my connection requests often for connecting with folks that I'd like to start a relationship with that are business executives that are, you know, target customers, right?

[00:32:41] And so I'm often sending, and I learn a lot by if I send a connection request. And look, you said earlier that bit, Brandon, about like, hey, you know, folks that look at my playbook, and it's a little bit intimidating when you look at the spreadsheet. I've been doing this for a long time, so a lot of this is a work in progress. And I've started to take a very counterintuitive approach to my outreach based on the rejections and the responses that I get.

[00:33:07] So, you know, very early on when I started working at Microsoft, I'd get, you know, customers that either hadn't heard from us in some time, or maybe they had gotten audited and they didn't want to talk to us. There was a bad taste in their mouth or their previous rep didn't pay any attention to them or whatever it was. I started incorporating some of these reasons that people didn't want to talk to me into my outreach. And it just, it gave me a higher probability of success. Now, I think we'd be remiss not to talk a little bit about AI and some of the new things around AI. AI is everywhere.

[00:33:37] Can I jump in before you jump into AI? One of the things I think you heard that, I think I heard that you said that's really important. You said you were looking at what some of these people that may have not wanted to talk to Microsoft. You looked at why. You looked at what was going on. Maybe they had a bad rep. Maybe this.

[00:33:58] You went back into your ideal customer and you did the research and you pulled out the messages that were most important to them. And then those messages started becoming part of all your content, email, post, direct messages. I think so often people feel like LinkedIn doesn't work.

[00:34:21] The reality is you didn't do the deep enough work with your ideal customer profile to find out the right messages that are going to get your ideal customer to pay attention to it. So you've got this humanity piece that we've been talking about, but then you've got your messaging piece that's spot on. And I find too often people like I'll ask you, it was like, you know, talk to me about your ideal customer profile. Oh, we got it.

[00:34:48] I start digging deeper and it's usually like, yeah, we don't know it that as well as we thought we do. And I love that you said that, Carson, because I think that is one of the big difference makers that works really well for you. I've seen it working really well for us. And we go back into our ICP and look at our messaging three times a year now. Yeah. Yeah. Because everything's changing so quickly. I want to know what are they thinking? What's going on?

[00:35:15] And we revise that messaging so that it's getting their attention. It's not just post whatever you want. Right. And they will come. But I really, I mean, that if you guys are listening, what Carson just said there was brilliant. And that's the nuances that makes this tool so powerful. But you still got to do that work. And I think that's one of the jobs and one of the functions that a lot of companies skip.

[00:35:44] And then they blame the tool. Well, LinkedIn didn't work. Or, oh, our email messaging didn't work. But I do find companies spend more time looking at email messaging and refining it. But they don't look as much at LinkedIn messaging. We still think it's a silver bullet. I'm just going to post and they will come. Preach. I mean, and to Santino's question. So you can send 100 per week. And AI and automation are phenomenally helpful. Right. We have to use them the right way.

[00:36:12] We can't use them in a way that it neglects the value and the quality of the relationship. It can't become noise. You can use it to do things better. Every Monday, I have a LinkedIn automation tool. I send 100 connection requests with a personalized message that I've crafted. Right. And it is a counterintuitive approach. The biggest heartburn for a lot of our customers, I found, was that we're a lot of times one of the bigger checks that organizations write.

[00:36:40] And yet our sellers are always trying to show up selling more stuff. So I took the approach of saying, hey, there's a lot of resources that you're entitled to as a result of your significant investment. Let's discuss that. I got a lot of meetings that way. How in the world can I diagnose a customer's challenges without actually speaking to them? So I kind of come in with, here's some immediate value that I can add. Some of these conversations don't go anywhere. They're happy. Everything's working.

[00:37:09] They don't need me. But I'm available. But then there's others that you uncover a slew of different ways that you can jump in and help them with things that are already in flight. And that's what helped me tremendously. But when I think about that element is AI is a great tool to leverage. And it's all in the prompts. If you're ever struggling with what to post, if you're ever struggling with what to email someone in a certain circumstance, I mean, the more detailed you are in your prompt, hey, this is what I'm looking to achieve. I'm emailing this person.

[00:37:39] You can literally put their LinkedIn web address into the prompt. You can put their company web address into the prompt. I've literally, and I talked about this on this show, I've developed a strategy by which I can open up 50% of the scale organizations out of the 400 that I support. I opened up 50% of them with a C-suite message and with AI helping me. Now, the key element is AI can't have the final word.

[00:38:09] You have to have the final word. I'll have AI look at transcripts of maybe shows that I was on or maybe an article that I wrote or just raw words and help it crafted in my voice. You can say, you know, after over time, it learns your writing style. You can have it write the email in your writing style. You could have it write. I often will say I'm writing this specific email to people that fit this category and, you know,

[00:38:39] write a subject line that will maximize clicks and opens and, you know, write a message that says this and I'm massaging it throughout time. The more specific that you get, but then also the more humanity that you infuse into the end result, it can help you be a lot quicker. It can help you get access to the data that you need. It can help you write that message or get over hurdles.

[00:39:04] And I might have come up with three or four of the awesome use cases or stories that I want to tell in a customer meeting. But if AI can come up with an extra two and one of them just happens to resonate, it just enhances your probability of success. You can't blindly use these tools, but if you use them in a way that helps you better connect with people and also nurture those relationships, that's what's going to help you be more successful and master sales in modern selling.

[00:39:33] You know, one of the uses I've really found with AI and, you know, with FISMUP, I do have what we call our doppelganger. It's built on open AI. We put our own car around their engine so it already knows me. But one of the things that I found that really works well, there we go. One of the things that I found that really works well is I'll take transcripts from conversations

[00:39:58] and use the prompts, tell it like, hey, you are a master researcher for a sales team. Your job is to take this transcript and identify for me what were the pains, what were the challenges, what are the goals that they were talking about in there and bring those, you know, first of all, they bring them to my attention so I know what they are. And then I'll go in and say, now you're a master copywriter and we're going to turn this into newsletters.

[00:40:26] We're going to turn this into social posts. We're going to turn this into email messages because I would now want to send this to, you know, 50 other people who are the exact same as this person, the same type of CEO, same business. And it helps me now create that. Yes, I did that before, but it took me hours. Yeah. And I wouldn't do it with every conversation because I could do one maybe a month because it took so much time. But now I can do this with lots of conversations.

[00:40:55] I would say what, you know, Carson and I were talking before we went live. Our pipeline right now is fatter and more robust than it's been in a long time, just over the last three, four, five months. I think part of that is because more companies are going, I need to figure out LinkedIn. But a big part of it was we went back to our ICP multiple times this year and said, what are they saying? What are they talking about? How are they looking at this?

[00:41:25] And then we just adjusted our messaging accordingly. We've adjusted our show topics accordingly. Like this show for everybody listening, level up your LinkedIn is a term that I've heard multiple times over the last 90 days in conversations with people. So we turned around and turned it into a topic of one of our shows. How do you level up LinkedIn in 2025? I know that's what they're interested in because they've been telling us

[00:41:54] and we've been paying attention to it. Using AI, saying, tell me what they're saying, helped put a spotlight on some of these terms that they were using. We then moved it into our messaging. And then all of our messaging from our emails that go out, my LinkedIn newsletters, my LinkedIn content, direct messages we're sharing with people, and of course our show. And then we take the show and we use our AI to help us create different shorts

[00:42:24] and different written posts and summarizing things for our LinkedIn newsletter. And then we'll publish that over the next two to three weeks. And we'll share it directly with LinkedIn direct messaging with our top 100 prospect accounts. So we're getting that in front of them. So what I want people to see is that LinkedIn is this powerful tool, but it doesn't mean you show up and you just do a few things and you wait for it to happen.

[00:42:53] It's still sales. It takes hard work. It takes focus and it takes some creativity. But the key thing is, for me, always going back, what are my customers saying? What do they need? What are they thinking? How are they talking about this? And from that foundation around the messaging, then our content has a lot more power. And I do want to address something too.

[00:43:20] Victoria said earlier about, I saw the word authenticity show up a couple of times. And I want to address this because I've heard this in a lot of my conversations. My AI has brought this to my attention. What the heck does authenticity mean? Authenticity has become a word that really has no meaning anymore, that gets used a lot. And a lot of CEOs that I talk to, that scares the crap out of them.

[00:43:50] And here's what I believe authenticity should mean for us. In our content, just like, so imagine you're at a dinner, a couple of colleagues and maybe four or five customers. And you're having dinner, lunch, whatever. First of all, how much of that conversation is business? And how much of that is more what we would call personal?

[00:44:17] 80% is personal, 90% is personal, 95% is personal. We do that because that's how we connect with people. But in that environment, we're not authentic. We don't go full open Komodo and talk about all of our warts and everything in our life. No. Even if you haven't thought through a strategy, everybody has some sort of a strategy of these topics about my personal life.

[00:44:44] I'm willing to talk about in a business environment. Embrace those and talk about those. And you can be authentic within it, but it doesn't mean you share everything. And I think when a lot of people hear authenticity, it scares them because they think, oh my gosh, I got to go say all these things. No, none of us need to do that. Yes, there are some people on different social channels that blurt out everything that's going on.

[00:45:13] Let them, right? Let them. But if that's not your style, don't feel pressured. That's not authentic for you. Strategize these topics. I'm good talking about. I'm happy to share with anybody my strategy and how I do it if you're interested. But don't let that word authentic scare you. Carson, what would you add to that? Because I know you do a good job of that too. You talk about your family. You talk about your fitness.

[00:45:40] You talk about your goals, but you don't go full open Komodo and let everybody into your house and see all the dirt and everything else like we all have. Well, there is no dirt here, but no, I'm kidding. You know what's fascinating, Brandon, on the talk track is when I think about that and another post that I made last year that got a lot of traction was one where I'm looking in the

[00:46:07] mirror and I'm not smiling and I'm just like wiped out in the morning. And I'm like, this is the me that in the morning that nobody else sees because this is the me that, you know, I've got to psych myself up in the morning before I jump on calls. And, you know, often we are a different version of ourselves in this medium than we are the second we walk out that door or we make the commute home and we're exhausted from, you know, another day at work. That was actually the epitome, the gist, the impetus for why I wrote The Show Must Go On

[00:46:37] because, you know, look, I've been doing this for a long time. We have to conjure up this ability sometimes to bring our best self every day, though we continue to get knocked down. And, you know, why do we gravitate toward all these feel good resilience stories? Because that's what life is. I mean, there's so many challenges. I mean, even just to get a deal done, sometimes it goes through so many different hurdles. You're on the one yard line and you get yet another devastating blow.

[00:47:04] You know, you think you've got this thing in the bag and they end up going with the competition anyway. Some of my most, I would say, engaged with stories are ones that I'm able to talk about the losses and the stuff that isn't like, hey, look at me. I'm winning. I'm winning. People don't necessarily gravitate or resonate with that as much as they resonate with the learning and the experiences. And we all have them. You know, even if you're just starting out in your career, you're having experiences.

[00:47:33] Your story matters and your story will resonate with someone out there who's going through something similar. And I think that's what you want to embrace. You don't have to tell everybody about like the fact that if I walk out there, my bathroom probably has my kids toothpaste from this morning all over the freaking wall. Like I, you know, it's not, I don't have to be that authentic, right? But being able to showcase a little bit of the humanity, I realized long ago that the

[00:47:59] biggest value that I could bring to my team was that I did their role for a considerable amount of time. I had that credibility and that ability to walk in and share those experiences with them. And there's so many of you all that are out there right now that are having an impact, right? But I think LinkedIn enables and other tools enable, but LinkedIn specifically, it can amplify or multiply the impact that you have.

[00:48:25] Instead of telling your stories to your team or your colleagues, you can tell the world. And because of LinkedIn, you know, I've been given the opportunity to train sales and sales leadership and social selling in 11 countries. I met Brandon and Tom and started becoming part of this podcast. You know, I've written multiple books because of the experiences that I've had. Um, got the opportunity to present to my CEO. I became known as the number one social seller in all of tech. None of that exists without LinkedIn.

[00:48:53] So think about how you can amplify, multiply your message or impact. All of those things matter. And being authentic for me means showing enough of yourself that you don't come across as fake. Like I put it all out there. I put it all on the, I leave it on the field and I have no regrets, you know, I, and I don't get it all right all the time either. I've made mistakes. I've sent automated messages that probably ticked people off and prompted them to unfollow me.

[00:49:21] But, you know, likely I've never tried to sell anything on LinkedIn because I don't need to. I don't want to. Um, I genuinely use it to try to connect and I am my true self out there every day. Yeah. I love it. I think, um, thanks for that, Carson. And I think, yeah, Victoria, let's do it. We're long overdue for a strategic brainstorming session. And, you know, um, you know, let me just, I want to talk about automation before we, we

[00:49:48] wrap up and I want to, I want to end with a couple of practical tips for everybody as well. Um, but you know, I'm going to just take a moment. Victoria and I met on LinkedIn. Um, we, we started engaging and I don't remember. I think maybe she found our show and then we connected, we've engaged, we've had zoom and teams meetings together. Um, I think I, she interviewed me for one of her projects or something at school.

[00:50:16] Um, but then she also brought me in is it when she was an intern in her last year of school, she brought me into the company and introduced me to her boss and gave us an opportunity. It didn't become a deal, but it became, and it was just through this relationship building on LinkedIn. And now we're, we're going to have another brainstorming session. And who knows? I know Victoria is now landed in her full-time job after school and she's crushing it and doing well in sales and learning a lot. Right. What's that?

[00:50:46] She can teach us. She's out there doing it. We had her as a guest, right? Just talk about like her journey. So, um, Victoria, thank you for that. But Carson, let's, let's transition into automation. And for everybody who knows me, I have been mostly anti-automation for a while because I started using automation in like 2015, 2016.

[00:51:10] I got my LinkedIn account suspended, kind of scared me into like, oh, wait a minute. And those were, those were a bit wild, wild west days of automation. But since then, what I've, what I've learned is it's not so much the automation, it's the content you use and the strategies you use and the automation. Most people use automation poorly because they try to go the lazy route or the easy button

[00:51:38] route and just say, you know, Hey, here's what we do. We're awesome at this. Here's my calendar link book a meeting. And because all the automation that I've been getting, I'm like, I'm not touching this, but Carson, I've come around. Like, and I know you shared with me last year too, about some of the times automation has sent the wrong, you know, messages to people that probably shouldn't have messaged and they get upset or some people go, ah, no big deal. Like your automation sent me a message one time and I replied, oops, automation failure,

[00:52:09] but who cares? I get it. Right. Some people will get it. Some people might be a little bit perturbed or maybe unfollow you. That's okay. But I do think if we are doing the things that we talked about this whole episode, we're creating content, we're adding value, we're commenting other people, our, our, our content we're creating is really geared towards our best customers. And the messages are relevant and people get value out of it.

[00:52:37] We can use automation to save us time and to do things wider, faster. So I'm, I've moved over. It's been the last several months. I haven't talked about it yet, but I've moved over and I'm, I'm, I'm back around, but it does, you've, you've got to be careful with some things. Yeah. You don't want to get suspended. And I believe too, for a long time, I believed, you know, the T's and C's are pretty clear. I believe LinkedIn, and maybe someone can correct me.

[00:53:06] LinkedIn says a lot of things about we'll do this and we'll do that. I believe LinkedIn turns a blind eye to a lot of the automation because when it's used well, it actually benefits LinkedIn and it's benefiting the user experience. So there's my new belief around it. Carson, I'd love for you to share with people, you've, you've, you've said a few things here and there about using it, but talk a little bit about your strategy around the automation based on everything that we've just, we've just talked about.

[00:53:37] You're evolving, Brandon. I love it. Automation for me, I've used a tool called Octopus CRM for the last few years. And I was, it was actually an internal mentor that showed it to me a few years back. Um, you know, it can send your connection requests. The cool thing is you can set it up where it'll shut things off, right? It will only send a certain number of messages. It'll only send a certain number of connection requests. It'll send exactly what you want. You can personalize it. You can slice and dice. It fuels from Sales Navigator.

[00:54:07] So I can go out and just find exactly who I want to send stuff to, what message I want to send, cut it off when I want, right? Um, so I use it for connection requests. I send a hundred a week every Monday. Um, and the key element, it's kind of nice that it's only a hundred because you don't want to get carried away. If people respond, which they do, because I send personalized messages, I may get 20, 30 messages back on a Monday. I need to be able to respond to those in a timely fashion and book those meetings.

[00:54:35] And that's where I've seen a lot of value is being able to start conversations. Furthermore, you have the capability to send messaging campaigns. Don't abuse it. Um, you know, look for, you know, if we have very specific targeted events that we're doing and it's a certain subset of people, you know, I want the C-suite and the board at these, this vertical, um, you know, I may send them a direct message, but I, I might only send, you know, a couple of messages to those folks a year. Um, so it really just depends on how I leverage it.

[00:55:04] Um, it also allows you to go in and, and, uh, visit people's profiles, which I find value in. And if I go out and I visit profiles of people that are following topics and people that I'm also interested in emulating to some degree so that you can kind of build some community, could stimulate potential followership, you know, people following you that are, have similar interests. So there's some value there.

[00:55:30] Um, and then also you can endorse, but I use that one pretty sparingly because why would you want to just blindly endorse somebody you don't know? So, I mean, use it for what it's, you know, the value. And I honestly, I'd love to hear if there's some other folks that use automation tools. I don't know much about some of this stuff because I, I tinker and I use, and if I, if I like something, I mean, just ask my wife, I'm not a huge fan of change. So if I find something I really like, I stick with it and I go with it. I'm sure there's a lot of tools out there. It's a lot of things that are working really, really well.

[00:56:00] I prioritize unique, genuine connection. And if I can do that, I'm happy. Yeah. Yeah. I've started using automation to do a couple of things to help me be more efficient. Um, number one is I've created a list in navigator of CEOs who I've recently connected with, who I want to invite to certain episodes of our show.

[00:56:28] Um, inviting them takes time and that's where I use the automation to do it. Now there's two ways that you can invite to an event. And our, our episodes are LinkedIn events. One is you can send it through the notifications and I think it's good. It's not great, but I do invite them more often that way because for them it's an easy yes or no. But then when we are doing what I call a hero episode, it's really an episode that's very

[00:56:56] much focused on what I know our ICP is talking about and what they need. Then I'll use the automation similar to what you say. I use the same list. Um, I've got a couple hundred CEOs in there, a couple hundred accounts that I'm really focused on for the next quarter. And I will send them a crafted personalized message about why I think the show now, look, if you've done your ICP work and you've done your messaging work, you've done your homework,

[00:57:27] they should want to receive this. Like they should be getting like, I want my hero episodes for, for my best customers to look at that and go, Oh my gosh, I have got to watch this. Right. They may not be able to, but maybe they can register, but I want them going, I got to watch this. So I use the automation to send that out to them with a personalized message. Um, and I can track if they've clicked the link, I can track a few things there and see who's

[00:57:56] engaging and who's not. And I can make decisions on those that are engaging. I go look at their company content and then maybe comment on it. If I can do it real, I, again, I hate the word authentic, but if I can comment on something naturally, not try to force the comment just to go, I'm here. Right. It's like, you see people talking over here and you want to be a part of it. You just pop in with some random thing and they look at you like moron, like that doesn't do you any good. And random acts of comments just to go, I'm here.

[00:58:26] Don't improve your reputation. And for the love of goodness, please stop with the, you know, the, every post that I make and I get, you get those, you get multiple of those comments that like sound exactly like your posts that end with a rocket ship. I mean, come on. I know AI wrote that. Like what's the point? Why do people do that? Yeah. I've got now, I have three accounts that I can guarantee will comment on every single one of my posts.

[00:58:53] For a while there, I commented back because I like to engage and realize they never come back. And even to the point that I said, so this is an AI comment, right? And they never responded, but they comment on every single post that's AI. And think about this. If you're doing stuff like that, if you really want my attention and you're doing that, when you reach out to me for a call or a direct message or an email, do you think I'm paying any attention to it? No way.

[00:59:23] You've automated comments that make me look at it and it's not even a human. Hey, Anthony, the rocket ship. Yes. That's the one. Nice to be bonkers. I'm just so over that. Like I, there's, there's so many of these things that are so valuable and, you know, Victoria, you just made a comment too. Like a lot of outreach is automated. Luckily, there's some emails that you can scrap or edit to give that personal touch. Here's the thing. Automation and AI have their place. They can make us better.

[00:59:52] They can put us in touch with data or at the pulse of our customers. They can, you know, pull things together. I made a newsletter the other day where I put like 10 different event links in my prompt and it wrote this whole newsletter for me. I had to massage and edit a couple of things, but what would have taken me an hour took me five minutes. And so there's a lot of value in these things, but just don't abuse them and don't leverage

[01:00:16] them in a way that diminish your credibility or spit in the face of what you're actually trying to achieve, which is genuine relationships. Yeah. I love it. Hey, we, I, I got a comment on this. So Jennifer Johnson just posted a comment in on this post adorable kids. And I'm definitely going to comment. There you go. And that's true. Jennifer posts on my family pick. So I will. So let's, let's unpack that.

[01:00:44] And Jennifer, please, you know, comment in, chime in and, and tell us the why, but I will say, um, that resonates with Jennifer is the human that she is. I know through messages with her, you know, she's a mom. Um, I have five kids. I love talking about my kids as well, but because it resonates with her human, she's going to pay attention to it.

[01:01:08] And if somebody else is talking about their kids, Jennifer's going to remember them. They'll remember Jennifer. And we, we stay top of mind. We, we rise above the noise because the humanity piece is really where people are going to connect more and remember more about other people than just the business piece. I'm curious what Jennifer's reason is behind that.

[01:01:36] But Carson speak, speak a little bit to that again on the humanity piece. Cause I think it's one, especially with CEOs and sales leaders like, oh, I don't, I don't, you know, Facebook is Facebook and LinkedIn is LinkedIn and the two shall not. You know what? We've always brought our humanity into business relationships. That's why we go to lunch. We go to dinner. We go have a drink. We go to the ball game. We go golfing, whatever. Social event. It might be.

[01:02:04] And when we're in those events, we don't talk a hundred percent about business. In fact, we generally talk 10% or less about business because it's about connecting with people. Yeah. I mean, look, there are images that I would say you people share on their Facebook that don't belong on LinkedIn. Yes, that is true. Um, but on the same token, there's nothing wrong with sharing on LinkedIn pictures of family and stories about, you know, I, I, I actually have multiple people that I follow that post

[01:02:34] things about like, um, you know, there's a gentleman, Justin Clark, and he'll post things, he'll post pictures of family, but he'll tell like, he'll, he'll almost wrap it into like an analogy to business. Yeah. And I love stuff like that because we can relate to that. You know, how many life lessons and career lessons do we get on the other side of this wall? Uh, when we go out with our family and we're trying to, you know, teach kids or we're grappling with the hurdles of life. I mean, all of these things play in the career and the business world and those things resonate

[01:03:04] because they're real and they're genuine. And when people can see that side of you, they, the walls come down, like Victoria said earlier, I can't say it better. So I'm not going to try. It brings down some of those walls when people can see like you actually being real out there and talking about real issues. Um, plus I like posting my family's pictures cause they're a lot prettier than I am. And so the people resonate with that, you know? And we're proud of them and we're proud of that part of our family.

[01:03:31] Like I posted today my immunity drink recipe because number one, it's, I think from a business perspective, if we're sick, we're not at our best. And we're in that time of the flu and bug. And, you know, my daughter was coming home with a sniffly nose and all the school stuff. And my immunity drink helps me stay the best I can at business.

[01:03:56] I think it's a great, if I was at lunch talking with people and they said something about, oh yeah, all the kids are coming home sick. I would go, oh, I got this immunity drink that served me well. I haven't had a colder flu in like five years since. Now is that going to be your next like fist bump branded product? Immunity drink? You know, I might have to get there, but, but I put that in LinkedIn. I think it's totally relevant. And I brought my post, brought it back to business.

[01:04:24] Like we can't be on our A game for business, serving our team, serving our clients and being our best. If we're achy and we have a cold and we have a flu and we're not our best, this is what I do to make sure I don't get sick. So I can always be on my A game. It's great content. It's real. People can relate to it. And the comments have been abundant. And some people have shared with me their own recipes, like all these things. And we've got this community of conversation around it.

[01:04:55] If I reached out to anyone that's commented on my posts around that and said, hey, thanks for commenting, dah, dah, dah. You want to have a chat? I bet most of them would do it. And if any of those are my, if you've done it and you're one of my ideal customers, you may hear from me because going all the way back to the beginning of what we were talking about, Carson, we use LinkedIn to create conversations.

[01:05:17] And I would throw out there, be provocative and try to be a catalyst for conversation because that's really what it's all about. LinkedIn isn't a, hey, look at me. It's, hey, this is my experience. I'd love to learn from others that have had similar experiences or have had experiences that I want to have. You know, those are the types of things. If you go at it with the attempt to create dialogue and conversation meaningfully with

[01:05:47] other people, you'll be pleasantly surprised. Yeah. And if, you know, you want a little hack, if you will, to it, think about what are you thinking? What are you observing? What are you feeling in your industry, with customers, with your team, anything like that? Those are your observations. And that makes great content because it's easy for other people to join in and go, you know what?

[01:06:12] I've thought the same thing, or I don't think that's really what's happening, or I've noticed this. It just, it creates an opportunity. And then if we're the center of conversation, we're remembered. I got totally distracted. Anthony, I like if I ever open, if I ever start an immunity drink, that is what it's called. The B-lixer. Amazing. Brandon's magic elixir. I love it. I love it.

[01:06:39] I know I had someone tell me the other day, like, Brandon, you missed your calling, man. You should have gone into branding and you could have been branded on branding. And I'm like, yeah, I probably missed that one. Life ain't over. Maybe that'll be his next venture. Hey, it's all about personal brand now. So maybe we bring that in. Brandon on personal branding. So, all right, Carson, I hope everybody got something out of this because I got a lot.

[01:07:05] And I can say from a lot of the conversations that I've been having over the last quarter to six months, CEOs and sales leaders are looking at LinkedIn going, we know we need to get better at this, but we're not sure what to do. And often what they believe is LinkedIn activity, they'll talk about, I get four or five messages a day pitching me their crap.

[01:07:31] And obviously they don't want to do that, but they believe they have to level up their LinkedIn. And our goal today was to help everybody start thinking about just a few practical ways to level up your LinkedIn. So that's my encouragement to everybody. Carson, before we wrap up, what's your final kind of message encouragement for everybody today? Don't put too much pressure on yourself to be perfect on LinkedIn.

[01:07:59] Show up in a way that you're open-minded and you're looking to just meaningfully connect with others. And you'll be pleasantly surprised with the result. There's a lot of ways that you can go out and create and engage, explore them, investigate them. Doing a show might not be for everybody. Joining a group might not add value for everyone. Writing a newsletter may not be your forte, but there's a lot of different ways you can go out and share video, share experiences, share pictures. Try a little bit and try a little bit.

[01:08:29] Start slow. Maybe you start with once a week goal. Maybe you get to once a day, whatever it is, just go out and progress over perfect. Yeah. And I would add to that, consider the show because every show that we do, I create about 15 pieces of additional content. And as we strategize episodes to be targeted to what we know our customers are challenged with, talking about, wanting to solve,

[01:08:56] that means that the content I'm creating is targeted to that ICP. And it's a real easy way to create a whole bunch of content after what we've now done as an hour episode. But, all right. Well, thank you everybody for joining us. I'm sorry that Tom wasn't able to join. I know he would have had a lot to share as well. Gosh, everybody, there's so many of you that I don't want to leave anyone out. Thank you for commenting.

[01:09:25] And everybody on the podcast, if you enjoy this, you like it, please, we would appreciate a review. If you know people that would like it, snap a picture of it, text it to them and say, go check these guys out. The hosts are total dorks, but they say some good stuff. Whatever it was, however you want to share it, we'd really appreciate it. So, Carson, wrap us up. Thank you, everyone. Great commentary today. Brandon, always a pleasure, my friend. And until next time, happy modern selling. Bye, everybody.

[01:10:01] Thank you for joining us today on Mastering Modern Selling. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe for more insights. Connect with us on social media and leave a review to help us improve. Stay tuned for our next episode where we will continue to uncover modern strategies shaping today's business landscape. Learn more about Fistbump and our concierge service at getfistbumps.com. Mastering modern revenue creation with Fistbump, where relationships, social, and AI meet in the buyer-centric age.