 Aloha, and welcome to Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We broadcast live every Thursday at 2 o'clock from 2 to 2.30 in the downtown studios of Think Tech, Hawaii, and the Pioneer Plaza. Our show focuses on positive stories about business in Hawaii, and there are many of those. We've got one here today. This is Vanessa Perez, who is the CEO of a company called S3C2. Now that's a cryptic, and she's going to explain exactly what that means here shortly. But the bottom line is that she is an expert in the powers of LinkedIn. So we're going to be talking a little bit about that network and how best to use it. Vanessa, welcome to the show. Oh, thanks, Reg. It's so great to be here. I'm really honored. Thank you. It's going to be very interesting. LinkedIn has been in the news recently, and we'll touch base on that, I guess a little later. But first, let's talk a little bit about you. Now, I know you've got a little bit of an accent, so where are you from, and how long have you been in Hawaii? I do have a bit of an accent, Reg. You may have picked up, and your viewers may have picked up by now that I'm Australian. Australia, all right. I'm from a beautiful city called Sydney out in Australia, down under. And my journey to come to this beautiful magical island started a number of years ago when I met the love of my life, who's a United States Marine. Hi, darling. Bill. And we met on a joint exercise in Australia. I was serving with the Australian Defence Force. And I had served for 23 years, primarily as a reservist, but I also had some pretty big careers on the side as well. And I did six years active duty in 17 as a reserve. And the majority of my time with the Australian Defence Force was serving with the Special Operations Command, and specifically one Commando Regiment. So I've sort of been around, you know, the military for most of my life, actually. Well, I can't say that I've been around it most of my life, although Hawaii, it's hard to escape from it. It seems to be all over the place in Hawaii. Yeah. But I was a Navy diver, and I did some interesting things. I know. I'm very impressed, Reg. You know, over Vietnam. So we had some stories that we can share someday. But you came to Hawaii how long ago? So I moved here in 2008, and Bill and I had already been married for two years at that time. He was posted here as his last posting cycle before he retired. And, you know, we were trying to have a family, and it's pretty hard to do in two different countries. So I left the Army. I was serving full-time, and I left and packed up the house, and I moved over here with my suitcase and started our new life in this beautiful island. And, you know, I was here for 12 months. And it's such a magical place. And our darling son, Henry, was born here at Castle Hospital, actually, in Kailua. That was a photo of the day that Henry and Bill met, actually. Bill was serving in Afghanistan when Henry was born. And that was the day they met when Bill returned. Precious photo. So, yeah, so I came here for 12 months and I've been here for nearly eight years. Eight years, very good. Yeah, we love it. And so during the eight-year period, have you been focused on, you know, the benefits and the power of LinkedIn this whole time, or? Do you know, I've been on LinkedIn for about eight years. And initially, I wasn't as a fanatic as I am now. But I did, I have been on it. And it's really only in the last five years that I've really been very active on LinkedIn and really started to leverage it and discover the power of it. And that's primarily through my work of working with transitioning veterans. So I love to be able to use, you know, my knowledge of the, you know, military language. Because I have a little bit of an interest there and there are so many veterans in town. Yes. What is it? How do you help them with the transition using LinkedIn? How does that work? I might go back a step and say that for two years, I actually worked as a transition trainer. So we actually call it TAPS or GPS in the military. Within the military? So I was contracted, actually. There's a program that's run by the Department of Labor and Department of Defense. And it's a mandatory three-day program that everybody in the military will go through before their transition. And it's designed to give them the tools and knowledge to posture for the current job market. That's so necessary. They didn't have that in my day, but it's so necessary to go through that. It really is, Reg. And, you know, pretty much every veteran, there's somewhere close to 350,000 a year that transition out. And they'll all go through this training. So it really sets them up to start thinking about interviewing skills and resumes. So I did that for a couple of years and found that this was my calling. This was my passion. I loved using my knowledge. You know, I spent most of my life hiring, recruiting, selecting and training people. So to be able to pass on that knowledge through this training platform. And, you know, I just wanted to do more, which is why I started my business in 2014. And I just wanted to do more with the military community and beyond to help people posture for transition success. So you had this contract for two years. You helped everybody through this training program. But now that contract is over and now you're doing this freelance. Well, I personally wasn't contracting. I was I was a subcontractor, I suppose, to the company that is contracting. So I should get that clear. And and whilst I loved it, I really, I really wanted to do more. I wanted to do more and kind of bridge the gap between what veterans are learning and some of the newer things that they actually need in transition now. So I like to think that I'm preparing people for the current career marketplace. Well, and that's important because there are distinctions. And what's interesting, at least in my mind, is that, you know, some of the challenges come not only from the mindset of the people that are transitioning out, but also the mindset of the people that they're going to be working with. And so there needs to be this orientation or training for both groups. You know, because I think sometimes the expectations in the private sector aren't always in sync with the reality of the person coming in. And I love that word sync, Reg, actually, I'm I'm using that now and saying that I actually synchronize talent with opportunity globally. And LinkedIn is a key platform, a key tool to be able to do that. And and, you know, you asked how I came about getting into, you know, this fanaticism of LinkedIn. And it really is because one of the gaps that I wanted to bridge between delivering the taps training for the military and what they actually need. And LinkedIn was a was a key gap that needed to be bridged. So I started doing LinkedIn training, coaching, teaching people how to do their own LinkedIn profiles. And for really busy clients, I actually write them or ghost write them. And it's necessary because not everybody is comfortable writing and promoting about themselves. Oh, you're right, even the best writers. So it's good to have somebody do that for them. It really is good. You're right, Reg, you know, the best writers in the world often stumble, you know, over writing about themselves and even I do if I have to write a paragraph about my expertise or my background. So so, you know, I think when when veterans and I think anybody who's joining the job market now, you know, or anybody, you know, competing in the current career marketplace, whether you're hiring, looking to be hired or want to promote your business, being on LinkedIn is a really valuable tool. And really, that's one of the big things that I the gap that I wanted to bridge. Now, I think it's also important that this is a service you provide not only the military, but also in the private sector as well. And you can help any person at any level in an organization from junior all the way up to the most senior level. And I don't want to promote you too much. But this also reaches an audience much broader than just Hawaii. I mean, this is a national potentially international opportunity for people to go out and find something to do somewhere else, almost anywhere else. Right. LinkedIn is a is a platform that's global. It's international. And people may not realize that there are four hundred and forty five million professionals engaged on LinkedIn across the globe. It's growing really rapidly. In fact, it's growing faster than Facebook and Twitter combined. And two more people join every single second. You know, so people are starting to see the value and the power of it. And one of the things that I really would like people to start thinking about, you know, I just want to change that mindset a little bit about people for people and help them realize that it's it's not a I don't consider social media. I'd like to people I'd like people to start thinking about LinkedIn as being a professional networking platform, global professional networking platform. And once I start thinking about that, that this is the platform they need to be on to establish their professional credibility to engage with other professionals in their industry or other industries go globally, they can learn on LinkedIn, they can share knowledge, wisdom and insight, they can become an industry thought leader. So it's more than it's a platform that allows you to do more than just find a job. I mean, there's five million jobs on it, but it allows you to do much more than that as a business owner, as somebody who's looking to hire or acquire talent, find it, acquire it. And for people that want to learn, I know we're going to drill down into the details of that a little bit more in the second half of the show. So we can talk about some of the more deeper concepts of what you just mentioned. And it's a very powerful tool and I use different parts of it at different times. You're good on it, Reg. Reg is very good on LinkedIn, you know, thousands, tens of thousands of connections, which is fantastic. You're using it well. To your point about the social media distinction, you know, I mean, I'm also active on Facebook and on Twitter and Google Plus and some other things. And there are certain posts that are acceptable in a Facebook environment. But I've seen people try to put similar type posts on LinkedIn. And they can do that. They can. But they get slammed or people like me, you know, and it's always interesting to see how quickly people are to remind others that this is not Facebook. This is not Twitter. This is LinkedIn. And they have different standards. I don't want to say higher standards, but they have different standards. It's a professional network organization that people go to. In some respects, they get work done. Right. And they don't want to have to deal with some of the silly little pet things and this and that, other stuff that's maybe popping up. It's of interest on Facebook, but it's certainly not of interest to LinkedIn people. And it's a great example to differentiate there. So I consider Facebook social media and it's a great platform to stay connected with friends and family across the globe and be a little bit more social. And you can share information there about what's your favorite meal for lunch and your favorite new bag that you've just bought and what your puppy did that day. That's right. That's right. But it's not for LinkedIn audiences. And you're right, like I'm one of the people that actually say, hey, can you get that back on Facebook? That's not really appropriate for this platform. And in fairness to the Facebook a little bit is that they also they do have business pages that are available that do promote businesses and they do a good job at that and you can put ads on it. And so, you know, Facebook does have a little bit of a balance, but it's just maintaining the, you know, the the the personality of LinkedIn. Just, you know, to be to have that credibility and looking to establish you have to be careful in what you post there. And it's, you know, people can start thinking about it is, you know, if you go for a job, for instance, it's really not within the scope of works for people to question you about your family or, you know, anything personal and social. So just think about that. I mean, if you're not able to be questioned about it in a job interview, don't necessarily share it here. People want to know about you, your professional credibility, what your career story is. They want to know that your network have validated that expertise. Well, and how long does that stay on LinkedIn? When you post something on LinkedIn, how long does it stay there? Well, I think whatever you post on the Internet stays on the Internet somewhere. And forever. Well, right, forever. And that's the point I was trying to make, is that, you know, you may be using LinkedIn for in a professional environment, but all of a sudden you get excited about something, you put something on there that maybe is more appropriate on Facebook. It's going to be there and people will see it. And I use LinkedIn, if people ask from my resume or my experience or what have I done, I almost always tell them to go to LinkedIn. And it's all right there in chronological order. I even have links on my website that will take you there. So it all works together. And I want to make sure that what's there, I'm not going to be embarrassed with. Right. And I like to say to people, when you get searched, when people search you, do you like what they see? And LinkedIn is the perfect platform for you to be able to establish your professional online reputation, brand and your credibility. And if you're not proud of what's there, then ramp it up, change it, improve it, enhance it. People think LinkedIn is a platform that they consider at a online resume or the place that you need to be on if you're looking for a job. But it's much more than that, as we'll discover a bit later. But I want people to start thinking about developing their online portfolio on LinkedIn. Start thinking about telling their full career story. And there are ways to post articles and get all kinds of information on there, particularly if you've been published before to put that on there. But let's we've got to take a quick break. Oh, OK. We're going to come back in about 60 seconds and we're going to drive down into the details a little bit more about how to make LinkedIn work for you and whatever needs those might be. This is business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We're going to be going on a quick 60 second break and we'll be right back to talk some more with Vanessa Perez about the powers of LinkedIn. Aloha, I'm Carl Campania. I hope you please visit us this summer. It's a wonderful summer. It's actually a cooler summer than we're used to. But I hope that you come back and visit us and watch our show Education Movers, Shakers and Reformers here on Think Tech Hawaii. It's at noon every Wednesday. See you then. Aloha, we invite you to join us on our Keys to Success show, which is live on the Think Tech live streaming network series weekly on Thursdays at 11 a.m. My name is Danilia D-A-N-E-L-I-A. And I'm the other half of the duo, John Newman. Our goal for Keys to Success is to provide a platform for professional and personal development tools and profound insights on how to achieve success in life, career and or business. We have incredible guests from all walks of life, including politicians, successful business owners, leaders, entrepreneurs and authors. As this is a live show, there are live mess ups as well, which are fun to watch. Aloha, and we'll see you on Thursday. Aloha and welcome back to Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. Today we are talking about talking with Vanessa Perez about the power of LinkedIn and LinkedIn can be useful in a lot of different ways. And we're going to talk about, number one, what those ways are and number two, how to make that work for you. So Vanessa, other than finding employment, what else can LinkedIn do for us? Oh, LinkedIn is like, I like to call it the opportunity giant. So, you know, the goal of LinkedIn is to connect talent with opportunity at massive scale. So people don't realize that they actually can do business on LinkedIn. It's beyond, you know, maybe when it was created, it was almost like an online resume platform. And people used to call it the Facebook for Chief Executives. Now, it's way beyond that. If you're a job seeker looking to be, you know, competitive in the current job career market, you should be on LinkedIn. There's no doubt about it. You need to be on LinkedIn. There are five million jobs on there. You have the ability to present your career expertise in ways that far exceed what you could ever do on one or two pieces of paper with a resume. And there's there's isn't there a video possibilities on there as well? I mean, you can do almost anything on LinkedIn. Absolutely. And I know that you've done a video introduction, Reg, for your business and what your professional expertise is. So I really would like to see more people thinking about leveraging the features, the multimedia features on LinkedIn. So you can include video. You can include images. You can include websites. You can upload documents for publications or articles that you've written. And you can actually use it as a publishing platform. And in fact, I think LinkedIn, you know, is is is exceeding some of the newspapers, really, with the amount of publishing that's happening. So I said earlier that there's four hundred and forty five million professionals engaged on it. Every single one have the opportunity to create their own original long form content and publish it. So it's kind of like having a blog. But I'd be encouraging people that when they have a niche field of expertise to actually start documenting that and sharing it with their network so that others can learn from them, share insights and knowledge and wisdom. And your network really value it. Can LinkedIn be used in a form of like a blog? Because I mean, a lot of people have blogs, right? But there's nothing that would be wrong with taking some of those blog posts that they do and just put it on to LinkedIn as well. Absolutely. You're right. I'm working with a client at the moment that's had so many blogs published on other platforms and her website. We're just moving them now over onto LinkedIn so that the net and network get the value of her expertise. And, you know, I work a lot with transitioning military. So some of the posts that I write are to prepare people for transition. And it's great when people say, thanks, I really got a lot out of that. I learned something. Thanks for sharing that. So there's really great positive influence that you can have. And that leads to, I guess, a service that I utilize, you know, and I help a lot of different companies along the small, mid-sized business market and their owners. And sometimes questions come up that I just want to get feedback on what the options are. I maybe have a feel for what my answer is going to be, but I want to know what other options are out there. And so I belong to different groups and I can post a question depending upon the nature of the question into the different groups. And I can get a lot of feedback from people across the country. Yeah. On the question I might have. It's really valuable. I'm not quite sure how many groups they've got, but I got a bit of a feeling. It might be something like four million or something. There's a bunch. There's a lot. So you can really find a group that can provide guidance and advice and knowledge based on what you want to learn. And if you search veteran groups, for instance, I think there are about two and a half thousand of them alone. And the Veteran Mentor Network is a fantastic one for veterans to be part of. And, you know, I see messages from veterans that go, I've sent out 100 resumes and I'm not getting an interview. Can you help? And I'll often send a message, you go, send me a resume and I'll run my eye over it. By the time they do, they've had three job offers. You know, tapping into the groups that are relevant to you, your industry, your expertise or what you want to learn is really a valuable resource. Well, and even for people that are not maybe professionals in those areas, if I get a lot of questions about naturally about taxes or about estate planning or wealth management, and so I belong to those groups. And we can talk a little bit about what are the, you know, what's the rules in estate planning? You know, can I set up a trust and do this? Can I do that? And they have groups that answer all these questions for you. And it's and you're getting some very talented people. Yes. Engaged in a discussion with you on these issues. I I when I get some time, I like to actually follow some things on there and engage with veterans and offer them tips or people who are after career advice. And I love it. I like to be able to give back that way and people get value from it. It's a great way to learn. So it's a place for employees to go and hopefully look for a job. And they can get so specific, they could say, I want a job in New York. And so they can focus their efforts into a particular location. It's also an area that you can post questions and get answers and get some advice and consultation. But it's also a place that I think employers can go to find qualified people. It's the platform for talent sourcing. I like to say you can find, target and acquire talent. And if I might, I might talk about a specific scenario where I'm working or coaching a veteran at the moment who's in transition. And I coached him to what I call strategically optimizes profile. So it's about using the right words, the right fields, the right number of times. He now in searches for his field of expertise is number one out of 89 million. He's been able to leverage that to engage with decision makers and organisations in Colorado where he wants to retire to. And he's recently six months away from retiring. He's just flown over to Colorado to meet a handful of people that want to hire him. He's been found for his expertise. So it allows you to it's a platform that allows people, whether you're a HR professional, a hiring professional, a placement firm or just somebody running a small business looking for the best talent on the planet. That's a good point. I'm glad you mentioned that because it's not just the employers. It's also some of the search firms that are out there looking for people. I'm doing some talent scouting at the moment for a few small businesses. And, you know, they come to me and they go, we're looking for this niche expertise and I can't give me four minutes. I want to say give me three days. But it actually really only takes minutes to find the talent. And then it's the engaging and you charge by the minute. Should $1,000 a minute. It's so easy to find the people. It's LinkedIn allows you to create the relationships with people, right? You know, it's about engaging, building, trusting relationships. You know, and that's what business is all about in general. And people say you can't do that unless you're face to face. You know, things are transitioning. It's a little different today than it was 20 or 30 years ago. May I tell you I have met some of the finest mentors on the planet through LinkedIn. Hello, Dr. Story Musgrave is an astronaut who's been out of space seven times and fixed the huddle telescope. We remember that some younger viewers may not remember it. He's the most amazing man on the planet. And I've connected. I was introduced to him through another friend on LinkedIn. And he's such a generous mentor and I can send him a message and he'll be in contact within 10 minutes. See, and that's something that you wouldn't be able to do without having the digital world supporting it. Who'd think that you'd ever be able to connect with somebody such a global influencer and amazing person on the planet? And LinkedIn's allowed me to connect with many, many people like that across the globe. OK, so we've got all this power. What else can can LinkedIn do? I mean, it can help build a brand. Probably, you know, the most important thing about being ready for today's career marketplace is thinking about how you're going to brand and market yourself and what you have to sell, whether you're a small business owner or whether you're somebody entering the job market for the first time or, you know, after a long period of time. So creating a professional brand is really important on LinkedIn and then being able to grow your networks and, you know, engage with people. But you've got to have content there. You know, it's important to have a photo that lets people know who you are. I like to say head and shoulders, make sure you're smiling. And it's not the platform for the family portrait or the selfie. It's the platform for having a professional headshot. And we want to see eyes and we want to see a smile. We want to know that we can trust you. So the photo is important. And then from there, the content that you write, tell us your career story, use images to back it up and validate it. If you've project managed a building, show us a photo of that when it was finished or the stages of it. If you fly an F-18 jet, give us a photo of it so that we know what it looks like. And then whatever that brand is, you want to communicate with your audience. You need to be putting it on there and showing everybody that this is my brand. This is who I am. Yes, it's really important and the content. And people overlook the importance of the skills and the endorsements on LinkedIn. And that's a way for you to define your expertise in line with your brand or what you're branding and marketing yourself for. And it allows your network to endorse you. And that's validation. That's people within your profession, usually, usually people who know you and have worked with you, endorsing and vouching that you have that skill set. Well, in my case, I have to be a little bit careful because I want to make sure that the people who do endorse me and a lot of them put commentary on their little testimonial. But I want to make sure it's credible and it's real. And occasionally I'll get somebody who I've never worked with and I don't really know them. And so they put something on there. And I'm just not comfortable, so I won't show that on there. And it's great. You have the ability to manage what people see on your profile or your portfolio. And recommendations are really fantastic. And I'd like to encourage people to actually seek recommendations and give them to other people that they've worked with who've done a great job. But that's part of validating. You have the choice to send it back and ask for changes. And you have the choice to display it or not. And then you have the choice to reorder them so that if you've had a great one two years ago and you want it up now, you can move it. Now, we're in our last probably 30 or 40 seconds of if Zuri is kind to me. And I wanted to just get your take on the acquisition that Microsoft just bought LinkedIn. Yes. Is that a good thing? How exciting is it, Reg? Like, I think it was the first of June. So it's a recent acquisition that the Tech Titan, you know, bought LinkedIn for $26.2 billion. I think it was the most expensive technology acquisition that we've ever heard of. So it's exciting. And it means that, well, I suppose we'll see how that evolves soon. But it's exciting to see that the global owners of the cloud are merging with the global owners of the network. And we're going to see some magic happen. Oh, the collaboration, the certainties. Isn't it exciting? That's going to take off now that you've got two of the powerhouses combining forces and having that integrated with Skype and all those other opportunities. It's going to be exciting. Linda.com as well. And I know one of the assets that LinkedIn had to offer was Linda.com, which is a learning platform. I mean, when you get your veteran free premium upgrade, you get access to Linda for free, which is video learning. Veterans get a free upgrade? Oh, veterans can get a free upgrade. Send me a message and I'll let you know how to get it. We got to wrap up. Oh, great. It's been fun. And I'm sorry we have so much more to talk about, but we've run out of time. Thank you. This is Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We broadcast live every Thursday at two o'clock. Looking forward to having you back again. See you next week. Aloha.