 The 2017 LinkedIn was like, you know, where's the three-piece suit in the tie? Right. Yeah. The 2022 LinkedIn is, I don't need the three-piece suit in the tie. I've been home working in my yoga pants for two years and I've been working it good and I can show you that now. Hello, beautiful souls. Welcome back to Art of Awakening and a big welcome if you're new. My name is Ona and this is the, I think it's the third or fourth. I can't remember. I think it's the fourth episode of Souls of Fire, which is my weekly show for spiritual or spirit-led entrepreneurs or those who are thinking about it someday offering you inspiration and support in your business. And today we are so privileged to have an amazing social media expert on board. Mary Woo is your LinkedIn guru. She helps small business owners increase their online visibility using LinkedIn. So if you need to network out of your zip code, she's the one to help you with that. LinkedIn has changed and grown over the years and has become a great place for B2B networking, a community building and developing authentic relationships. It's often been said that it's not what you know, it's who you know. And Mary says she likes to add, and if you are top of mind, she says to show up consistently on LinkedIn, offer great value and watch the referrals fly. And Mary, I'm so pleased and delighted to have you on here. Thank you. And I cannot wait to hear what you can tell us about how to make those referrals fly on LinkedIn. Thank you so much for having me. It was such a pleasure. And I found you actually on LinkedIn. And I remember it was way back in the day, it was maybe five to seven years ago. I don't even remember how we connected. But we had a little kind of way connected on LinkedIn. It just had a little connect call. And I just I've had a lot of connect calls over the day, you know, but you just stood out in my mind over the years, right, as somebody who was really a pleasure to connect with and meet and get to know. And at that time, I believe you were doing virtual assistant work, correct? I started as a virtual assistant, slid from there over into helping me with all all of the social media platforms and found out that you cannot keep up with all of them. And the best place for my clients and the place place for me for doing things that would increase our business was on LinkedIn. Why was that? Why is that? Why did you find LinkedIn to be especially a great place for building business? When people are on LinkedIn, their business radar is up. When people are on Facebook, we're looking for cat videos or finding out how the neighbors grandbabies are doing. When people are on Instagram or TikTok, we're looking to get entertained. But when people are on LinkedIn, they more have their brain in the I'm here to meet people to do business with. I'm here to increase my business. I'm here to find people to provide me with business services. So when they're on LinkedIn, their brain is more in that business arena. Sure, sure. Yeah, so it was not that long ago that you just went completely just from social media in general into LinkedIn and being a LinkedIn specialist. The past two years have been interesting for everybody. And the last June we moved from Chicago area to Nashville area. And so my life changed drastically and it was time to embrace new changes. Sure, it has been a couple years of change in so many levels. And you were mentioning to me earlier that LinkedIn has changed a lot. LinkedIn has changed a lot. And a lot of that has happened over the years. I think I've been on it since 2011. A lot of changes have happened over the many years, but especially the past two years. And people, some people on LinkedIn are complaining because people are opening up too much. Sharing personal things now. There are I follow and I'm connected with a number of people that need LinkedIn, but also a number of LinkedIn experts. And one of the guys put it best when he was like, yes, people are sharing personal information on LinkedIn. Yes, it's like the toothpaste has come out of the tube and you can't push it back in. This is the change that's come to LinkedIn. We think it's because we were locked up for two years and couldn't talk to people. We didn't go outside of our houses. We weren't actively networking in physical groups. And so we started to network more online and LinkedIn moved from being in the boardroom and it's still in the boardroom, but we're also down at the water cooler and over at the coffee station. And we're talking to people about not only what's happening in the business, but how the football game was or what's going on with the kids. And that's where you can get deeper relationships, which is so beautiful. And actually from a spiritual perspective, that makes so much sense, right? Because 2020 was this kind of year of initiating a lot of awakening and bringing people back into their hearts, right? And it sounds like it's really hitting that business world on LinkedIn in a way that maybe nobody could have foreseen. Nobody could have seen it. One of the very cool thing happened earlier this year. LinkedIn, the toothpaste is out of the tube. And a lot of people are showing up on LinkedIn exactly as they are. And so for a while, a really popular hashtag on LinkedIn was hashtag inked in where people were showing images of their tattoos. I can be a professional. I can be 100% knowledgeable. I can be an expert in my field. And guess what? I can have a tattoo or I can color my hair purple or any of a million other things that I could be human, right? The 2017 LinkedIn was like, you know, where's the three-piece suit in the tie? The 2022 LinkedIn is, I don't need the three-piece suit in the tie. I've been home working in my yoga pants for two years, and I've been working it good. And I can show you that now. There we go. Wow. And so it's really becoming more authentic sounds like. Which I love. Yeah. Yeah. I love it too. But I've always had, okay, so I like a case in point, right? Because I have this channel. This is like my sole work, right? But then I also have a little marketing agency. And that can be sole work if it's if I'm working with the right people, right? But it's always been very separate. And because I know that LinkedIn, correct me if I'm wrong, but LinkedIn does not want you to have more than one profile, right? LinkedIn does not want you to have more than one profile. You could if you chose to have more than one business page. True. And you, a lot of people in our world, the more entrepreneurial world, have more than one arm of their business. Right. Yeah. And if you think about larger businesses, I mean, Nike does not stop at selling shoes. They also sell sweatshirts. True. So there are ways to do multiple things in a business and embrace all of them. Right. But for me, it's been a struggle trying to kind of have these two faces, which are now coming together, interestingly, but it seems like it's a perfect timing with where LinkedIn is at. But I know that a lot of people in my audience are multi-talented. And many of those who have businesses may have more than one business. They may have, you know, multiple services that they may offer that or different audiences that they're serving. What would you suggest to somebody like that who is kind of a multi-dimensional person? And it sounds like LinkedIn is moving into a more multi-dimensional sort of existence. And sometimes it's finding out what your umbrella is. Okay. And how your pieces fit together so you can showcase them as a, these are all the parts of who I am. It works better if you're not trying to create Rubik's Cubes while you're also doing abstract art. If you're too far apart, it confuses people. But if the, if similar messaging can be brought together, that's where Nike might be selling sweatshirts and they might be selling shoes, but they're selling things that you can go out and get active in and go in the community and run and jog and ride your bike and all the active things. Right. Yeah. Okay. I just have a client in mind that I've been working with on his business who, he's got an amazing, he's an amazing energy healer, right? And he's starting up his energy healing business and he's getting his brand figured out. But in the meantime, he wanted to get out of the work world, right? And so he partnered with somebody to start a moving business. And that has really taken off. How would you suggest somebody like him take these two very different businesses and because he wants to be growing the energy healer part? So that is really where, you know, his soul lies. But for the time being, would you suggest that, you know, he really focus on the energy work for LinkedIn or how would you? Well, some of that depends if you still have the day gig and are getting a paycheck from somebody, you always have to be a little bit aware. Everything on LinkedIn is public. So how much are you willing to share as you, if your employer can see it? Sure. And if you're okay with that, that's great. If you're not, as you pointed out, LinkedIn does not want us to have two profiles. Yep. You can have a business page. You can have what's called a company page and you necessarily have to tell anybody that you're attached to it. Right. Okay. All right. So he might choose to focus his personal profile on the energy healing and then have a business page for the moving or vice versa. Or have them both together. Okay, cool. It all depends. Since a lot of that would be like, okay, let's sit down and have a longer conversation with the one person about the two businesses. Sure. And try to find some sort of umbrella to tie it together. Yeah. Interesting. One thing that I think is a really common perception of LinkedIn. And I think you've already addressed this, but that it is stuffy for one. And you've already told us that it's starting to lose the stuffy. The stuff stuffy is coming out coming out of the shirts. But I think in terms of a business that is not B2B, if you're not offering business services, if you're offering, say, personal energy healing or maybe, I don't know, use cell crystals or something, what would you say to somebody with that kind of business? With something with that kind of business, a lot of times LinkedIn can be the place where you find your partners. So somebody who's selling crystals might want to partner up with somebody else who's doing essential oils or a chiropractor. Chiropractors might want to partner up with MDs that are looking for alternative healings for their clients. But LinkedIn has ways to search for things both locally and generally. So if you're in a physical universe where you have to do chiropractors, for instance, chiropractors can't have clients pop in from three or four states away. Michigan can't come down to Nashville, but they can reach out to the local doctors. The search functionality is great, and it can get regional. Oh, okay. Do you have any tips for somebody who's looking to just network and partner, how to find the right people on LinkedIn? And that's where the search functionality is pretty, we don't think about LinkedIn as, most people don't think about LinkedIn as a search engine. I actually do, because it's a great way to find out who are the people in your area that you can partner with. And when you're searching people, it shows you who your common connections are. So if you find out that the MD that's the head of whatever department over at the big hospital in your town also happens to play tennis with your neighbor, you might not know it's tennis, but you'll see that they're connected with somebody that you know. And it's like, no, this person, can you introduce me? Right. Okay. And how would you go about asking for an introduction? You ask. Okay, let's see. You might know, I will give an example. One of the people that I know has a magazine for teen girls to publish in. She would love to meet someone at the Malala Fund. She would love to meet somebody in that area. So if she happened to look and see that somebody knew somebody there, she'd be like, Hi, I really want to meet this person. Would you mind introducing me? Okay. And we as humans for the most part, are very generous. And if I think it could be, I love to look for mutual benefit. Sometimes that's not going to happen. Sometimes one party will benefit more than the other. I'm okay with that. As long as it makes sense. So I would not be telling somebody, you know, go talk to this person who I know is just going to try to sell you insurance that you don't need. But if it's somebody that can bring things that are of value to you or your people, then I will love to introduce people. Got it. Right. So would you suggest kind of? If you know the person well enough, pick up the phone. If you know the person, right? Message. And when I know two people that need to meet each other, I have a friend in Illinois that is looking for realtor in Tennessee. I'll do a LinkedIn message to both of them. Okay. Make sure they both touch base. And then I leave the conversation. The great thing, if I send email to two people, I don't know. I might be able to see if they've opened it, but I can't necessarily tell if they've responded. On LinkedIn, I can see if both people have checked in. Oh, okay. Once both people have checked in, I'm just like, you guys take it from here. Let me know later. Sure. Sure. Nice. I think one question that might come up because, you know, amongst spiritual circles is there's like different levels of comfort with talking about spiritual topics or with kind of coming out of the quote unquote closet about one's spirituality. What's your take on that about sharing spirituality on LinkedIn? And I know this is very similar to what you were talking about before, but I think it goes just a little bit deeper. One of the things about, there are, I don't remember the number off hand, millions of people on LinkedIn. They're not all going to like you. But the more you open up about who you are, the more you're going to attract the people that are interested in what you have to say. And if you keep it at that upper level, people won't really know what you're about. You will obviously turn off people that are not in that world, but as they're moving, it makes room for more people to find you. I really think there's a lot of room there, but your people will find you and be attracted to you. And I find the more that people are on LinkedIn, the more they're finding that LinkedIn will feed them what they want. If I want information about marketing, LinkedIn will feed that to me. If I want information about healing, LinkedIn will feed that to me because LinkedIn will start seeing what I'm looking at and give me more of it. So if they start talking about spiritual awakening, all of a sudden you're going to be attracting a certain amount of people that are looking for that. Sure. Okay. Or a spiritual healing or whatever it is that you're posting about. So basically it sounds like Mary's just given the go-ahead to go, yes, let's take over LinkedIn, wave the crystals around, smudge LinkedIn all over the place and be fine with that if that feels aligned to you, correct? As long as you're doing it, we mentioned that you're not just selling your services. You're talking about what's of value to the clients that you're looking for. Right. Yeah. Tell us a little bit more about that because I know that your posts are just so amazingly cool. Like I go on LinkedIn and I see one of your posts and it's always engaging. It's always like, oh, that's fun, right? And oh, you know, if I didn't know you already, I'd be like, I want to kind of know that person. So what's your secret? A lot of the secret comes with the authenticity because the more you are yourself, the more comfortable you are in your skin, the more you're able to express that. So if I'm perfectly fine being exactly where I am, then that's what I'm expressing. And a lot of times people are very, sometimes people can get very worried about, I want to make the sale, I want to make the sale. And the more you're doing that, the more you're pushing people away because all these things you want to make the sale, I don't want to buy. But if you're offering them value and they're like, this is interesting. The more interesting you get, the sooner people are like, what's behind the paywall? What's behind the curtain? I want to get there behind the curtain. Yeah, that's really a service mindset, right? How can you serve and give value with your very presence? And that's what exactly what you do, Mary. I'm just going to tell you, it's a pleasure to see your posts. And I don't say that about everybody. That's for sure. So is there like, if you could give just one piece of advice about LinkedIn, what would it be? Be there regularly offering value. And if you are feeling, if you're brand new, if you have just starting a new business, if you're just starting on LinkedIn, and you're like, I'm not quite ready to post yet, go in and start commenting. Look at posts of people that interest you. Comments are for or more well thought out words. Comments are not yay team or let's go or I agree. Comments are well thought out words. And I have found referral type relationships in the comments. Just because we've seen the vibe, yeah, just we're thinking along the same lines and we're working with the same people, but not doing exactly the same thing. And that's when you start reaching out to people. And you can really find good humans in the comments before you're ready to post. Yes, I want everybody to be on their offering value. Most people aren't. And that's why it's such a great platform to be on organically, because there's not nearly as much content as there are people consuming it. Right. Okay. And so what I'm hearing you say is to just, you know, not just go in there and post your stuff and get out, but actually go in there and be interested in what people are posting, interested in their lives and their experience in their business offer value, be a mirror if necessary, correct, and and just start making relationships. And relationships as we all know, take time. Yes. Any kind of relationship does. And you have to kind of accept that and go with it. Yeah. And there are certainly people that I've gotten a lot closer to in the past few years, just from continued communication. And yeah, in my experience, LinkedIn actually has been a really good place to pick up business. No, I haven't been on there with this business, but I have with my marketing and when I was a writer, that was actually a great place. And so I can really firsthand say that it is a wonderful place, especially if you're offering you to be services, but it sounds like it's opening up to more as well. So I really encourage anybody who has found this conversation enticing and inspiring to start connecting a little bit more with Mary to follow her, because I think you're kind of a living example of how to really rock LinkedIn. So with that said, how what's the best way for people to connect with you, Mary? There may be many Mary who's on LinkedIn, but there's only one that's in Nashville that looks like me. My profile photo looks like me. It's one of the things I absolutely encourage people is when you have a photo on there, that you have it look like you. And that way people know they're talking to you. So don't use one if you're 50, don't use one from when you were 25, right? I see that a lot. So are you your younger brother? Yeah, that doesn't actually work that well. You have to look like you. And actually LinkedIn requires that you have a photo of a person. Sometimes they don't always find people that don't and kick them out, but they could. They could just decide it's not a photo of a person you've lost your account, or you can get put in LinkedIn jail. Wow. Make sure it looks like you. Excellent. Okay. Yeah, that is that is really good to know. So look her up Mary Woo on LinkedIn and just I think if you were to just search in the LinkedIn box, Mary Woo your LinkedIn guru issue would probably pop up very first there. Thank you so much, Mary. This has been a real pleasure and I know it's I've picked up a few things and I hope everybody else has too. So if you've enjoyed this hit that subscribe button below and also be aware I'm giving a master class on getting super clear on your sole purpose that will be an October 8th. So if you feel like you want to be in business and aren't quite sure what business or if you have a business and it doesn't feel quite aligned, any of that stuff, be sure to look that up. It's by donation on October 8th. I'll leave the link in the description. And beyond that, remember you were born to be free.