 All right, welcome back to the show. Today, we have a special toolbox episode on networking to help survive the recession. Now, why do you need to focus on networking right now? We're going to talk about that, how to quickly increase your social capital and grow your dream network, as well as we end the show with the proven LinkedIn strategy that's going to allow you to connect with people without having to become an influencer, go to networking events, or even leave your house, as well as the power of an introduction and how to use it successfully without taking people off. I just got back from my wedding in Europe and some of the guests there, even our European guests, were talking about the economy. It's top of everyone's mind and that's why we wanted to put together a special toolbox episode for you today around what we're all seeing. Now, many of us right now might not be quite feeling the economy. We are happy in our jobs coming out of the pandemic, but there are some blinking red lights in the economy warning us that we could be in for a recession. And if you know the history of the company, you might know that we actually started this company during the last recession. And we're going to talk about some lessons we learned in growing a network and the importance of that network during the recession. Right, Johnny? Absolutely. And we were living in the financial district of Manhattan. And I remember that day vividly because I had only been in New York for a short time, maybe six months at that point, if not even shorter. And I just remember the overall atmosphere in the financial district. It was scary. Now, we pulled some news here that I want to share with everyone as to why this is so important. We are on the cusp of a recession. The Domino's are starting to fall in the US economy as the Federal Reserve pumps the brakes in the economy. Many American companies are already retrenching. There's a growing fear that as the central bank aggressively hikes interest rates to fight high inflation, it could actually tip our entire economy into a recession and executives are already cutting back. A host of companies have already announced job cuts or hiring freezes in just the last two weeks. And they range from Tesla, JPMorgan Chase to Redfin and Coinbase. So we're seeing in the tech sector, I know many of our listeners work in the tech sector. Now, networking is vital for those who want to move up in their career. According to HubSpot, 85% of jobs are filled through networking. In fact, according to CNBC, 70% of jobs are never published publicly. So with layoffs coming, jobs are going to be harder to find. Your network is going to become even more important. Now, these jobs are either posted internally or created specifically for candidates that recruiters meet through networking, through your efforts and your connections. Now, according to LinkedIn, 70% of professionals hired in 2016 had a connection at that company. And 80% of professionals consider networking to be vital to their career success. Now, it may be possible to get a job simply by sending your resume in aimlessly to job boards and postings. But these statistics clearly show that networking is the best way to create a successful career and maintain job satisfaction. Now, listen, networking is not just for your career. It also helps you succeed at business. Oxford Economics published a thorough study on the importance of networking for business relationships, business relationships, including clients and customers, partnerships and vendors. Now, networking is one of the most important ways to keep and find customers. The close rate for meetings is 40%, meaning that in-person meetings and in a sale or deal almost half of the time. So your network is not only important to finding a job, but also closing those deals if you work in sales. Furthermore, 75% of customers either require or prefer in-person meetings, meaning that you can lose clients simply by not being networked, not being connected to them. Now, the refusal to network with customers can also affect your business profits. Executives reveal that they lose 28% of their business if they'd stop networking. Why is this so important? We've talked about networking on the show in the past. Today, we want to focus a little bit more on how we network online and some of the strategies we've been using with our X Factor accelerator clients to allow them to break into new industries. Industries they've been interested in working in, but haven't had a network, haven't had experience or any connections, all using the power of LinkedIn. I'm excited to share this strategy. Yeah, that's going to be really fun and an anecdote here. I was just on the phone with somebody the other day who called about the X Factor and we were discussing. He said he was really excited to talk to me and he wanted to share a story. He sent out 200 resumes and he said most of those resumes went for jobs that he wasn't even qualified for. However, he felt good about it because he was listening to our show and he figured, why not shoot for the stars? Well, he got hired in one of those jobs. First of all, I love this story and this isn't new to our company. In fact, when we first got started, this was one of the results that we kept hearing over and over again. And I've always had this picture of Kramer from Seinfeld, when he had got that job and he's rolling around the office with a briefcase fuller with crackers because he had to put something in the briefcase. Now, what I love about this is the boldness to take that risk to go after something that you might feel that's a little bit above your skill level. But if you have the ability and the boldness and the confidence to put yourself out there to see if you can get that job, guess what you also have? You also have the boldness and the abilities to figure it out on the fly if that's what you really want to do. And everyone has that within them. It's about letting that out. And of course, that's what we've been doing here for the last 15 years, helping you develop your X factor so that you can move into these positions and use your boosted charisma, confidence, and communication skills to network in that office, to be an asset in the office, and be an incredibly high value person within that office. And once that is accomplished, you're indispensable. Now, I'd love to share a couple stories because when we started this company, it was focused solely on dating, getting better with women. And we worked primarily with clients who were looking to unlock success in their dating life. Why? Well, we were in our 20s, we were single guys at the start of all of this. And of course, we wanted to get better opportunities and options in our dating life. But when we moved to New York City to start the company, it became clear that all the skills that we had been working on in ourselves to be more attractive to flirt more effectively to build deep emotional connections with the dates we are going on, we're opening a ton of doors for us in business, helping us land a gig at Sirius XM radio with no satellite radio experience, allowing us to work with a company like Axe simply by happenstance in an elevator. So we talk about elevator pitch, we talk about network, we know the impact of this, even though we are starting this company during a recession. So there's no better time to start focusing on your network than now. You may be happy and comfortable in your job, but with these blinking red lights in the economy, it's important that you continue cultivating and building those connections that can open doors to opportunities that you never imagined. And in the worst case, you do lose your job as part of this recession, the economy does hit the bricks, then you have more connections out there to find those hidden jobs as we just talked about. It's twofold. Not only are you able to network, find a job, business opportunities and everything that goes along there, being able to find your community and build a network around you with like minded high value people allows you to feel better because we are herd animals. And when we are part of that herd, we are getting attention, approval and acceptance from people that are like minded that we feel good about, that allows us to feel better. That helps dissipate the anxiety and anxiousness and doom that we feel when we're outside of a community. And from a survival standpoint, human beings have been able to flourish in every habitat that this planet has to offer. In fact, you can hear some harrowing stories from Russian prisoners in the early 1900s who were shipped off into the Arctic, into Siberia and they were dropped off with nothing. And they had built communities and towns in these areas. But it was because of the bond and community that they had to put together in order to survive. It's ingrained in us. One of the things that I've been hearing over and over again as of lately since the pandemic is that folks had come out of it and they had noticed that the world had changed in subtle ways that had made them feel isolated or disconnected from people that they used to be tight with. And that's across the board. I felt it as well. And AJ, I know you've mentioned it on the show at times. And what people are looking for is a realignment of like-minded people that they feel good about being around, because they feel the world is changing around them. And so the world changing around them is heightening that anxiety and anxiousness. There's a lot of doom and gloom in the news. Anytime that you turn it on, you're just bombarded. And because of that, people are like, man, I don't know who my true friends are. We did an episode a few months ago where I discussed a silly story about having my wisdom teeth pulled at 48 years old and wondering who I was going to call to come pick me up due to being doped up from the dentist. And because I moved to Vegas, I was relatively new and wasn't sure who I could call. Yeah, it's a big ask. It is a big ask. And what was so amusing to me that on calls that I had had after that episode dropped, I had three or four people mentioning that silly story. And they said, I'm talking to you now because I had realized I don't have anyone that could help me move. I don't have anyone that I could call to pick me up from the dentist. It's illuminating about what is going on. It needs to be directed. I think for a lot of people, that shift during the pandemic with how people were using the technology, how people were aligning themselves with different ideas about what the pandemic was and how it was going to affect everybody and what we needed to do to get through it, everyone drew sides. And because of that, people were like, whoa, people I thought who I was aligned with are now over here and now these people are over here. And I better find my group in order so I can feel better and make sense of the world of what's going on. It was a very confusing time for everybody. And now as it seems that we're coming out, but not only coming out of the pandemic, but are dealing with the direct results of the response to that pandemic, which I'm sure is going to is affecting what is coming down the line. Economy wise, it's incredibly important. And I think what we all witnessed and experienced in the pandemic and the crisis that started to unfold is just how quickly we go to the people we trust most. So we had a situation where we were scared for our lives and who do you go to? The people that you trust, your close confidants and those relationships. So the time to build your network is not in a crisis. It's in preparation for the next crisis. At the start of the pandemic, we were not worried about making new connections and finding new friends and figuring out how to grow our professional networks. We were concerned about our health and safety. And we might be on the doorsteps of another economic crisis, which is not the best time when you've lost your job, when you're worried about making ends meet and where that next paycheck is going to be to worry about growing your network, which is why we want to set you up for success before this economic crisis unfolds because the time to start networking is now. The time to start building those connections, those loose connections that can lead to job opportunities that can lead to sales, customers, business for you is now. And there's no better time than ever to find those like minded people through the power of the internet. We want to first talk about what we call social capital. So many people when they think about networking, they think about what can I get out of this other person? What job opportunities do they have? What potential customers do they know? What opportunities do they have to help me grow my platform to get my podcast on serious to get me in front of a major audience? What stage could I be on that they have? And they always think about what's in it for them. What's in it for me? And if you're going about networking and that strategy, you're going to find it's very difficult to meet and connect with high value people. So instead, we actually want to turn our attention to what value do we provide others in our network. And we want to be clear in the value that we provide first before we go seeking out value from others. And this social capital, we break down into three components. There's three real types of value that you provide any relationship in your life at a professional at a networking level. And we're going to break down each one of these. And we're going to show you how you can leverage the internet to amplify this message, to amplify the value that you provide. Now, if you've been a fan of the show, you know, when we talk about value, we talk about attention, appreciation and acceptance. These are all basic human needs that we have for connections in our life. We want people to listen to us to pay attention to us. We want to feel appreciated when we do something great. And we want to feel part of a community or accepted when we are putting our voices out there, when we are sharing, when we are in a relationship with someone. So we're always seeking this value. Now, when it comes to your social capital, what you provide your network, we believe your social capital is made up of knowledge, your existing connections and relationships and emotional support. All three of those components make up your social capital. So if you're starting out in your career, maybe you just graduated, maybe you're entering the job force for the first time, you might not have a lot of connections. You might not have a lot of knowledge. So you might rely a lot more on emotional support, being someone who cheers people up, who celebrates their wins, who's there when they need assistance, some emotional support, maybe they're down, maybe they lost their job, maybe they need a roof over their head. That emotional support component might be what you have to offer right now as you start to work to develop these other two areas of your connections and your knowledge. Maybe you have a ton of knowledge because you just went to graduate school and you're really specialized and you know very specifically how to build websites, to build marketing funnels, to execute at a high level in operations and management. That knowledge is very valuable inside of your network. There are people who are lacking in that knowledge, who could use your support. And then of course, every relationship you have, every connection you have has value to other people and making those introductions to other people can help them grow their network, find opportunities, find jobs, find customers, clients, etc. So when you understand the value that you provide first, you have a solid foundation to start to build and grow your social capital and of course, build your network. And this is something that we focus on inside the X Factor Accelerator with all of our clients is first taking some time to self assess. Where am I really knowledgeable? And it might not be knowledge that you got from school. It might be a hobby, it might be a passion, it might be a side project that just jazzes you up and you stay up all night watching YouTube videos and listening to podcasts and reading books about it, but you never took a college class in it. That knowledge is still very valuable and it's still a part of your social capital. AJ, this is why in our programs, we have everyone define what their values are. I think that exercise stumps people at first because they tend to think, wow, I know what my values are, and they tend to rattle them off. And then you're asking them, how do you engage in those values on a daily to weekly basis? And then they usually at that point stop to think, well, I guess I really don't. Well, could you really call them values? And I bring this up because you were mentioning one part of skill set and passions. There's some other examples that you're going to have some knowledge in as well in your values, your worldview. This is more knowledge that you have as well, that not only will be, that can be useful to somebody like skills, but also to be able to relate to them as well. And this is why when we discuss how good you are at building those funnels or marketing projects, that can certainly help you in your job. But is that going to be when people have everyone go out for some drinks after work? Is that going to get you that invitation? Possibly sometimes. But I bet for a lot of those folks, if you're getting that invitation, it's because you're able to relate to the other people in that office, that they feel good being around you, they have trust in you. Therefore, that bond is going to be carried on outside of work as well. And so we want to make sure the community that we are building, that we're matching on multiple different levels because that deepens and strengthens those bonds. And here's something to realize. No matter what happens to your stock portfolio in a recession, no matter what happens to your job, your knowledge, your network and the emotional support you provide others can never be taken away from you. That will never go to zero. You will never lose your knowledge. You most likely won't lose all of your connections. And you certainly won't lose your ability to be an empathetic listener, to be a supportive friend, to be someone who's there to cheer people on. And that's why we want to focus on this side of the coin. And we call it social capital. We know about financial capital stocks and what's in your portfolio. And many of us are concerned right now seeing what's going on in the markets. It's important to realize that your social capital is just as valuable for seeking out these opportunities for making connections with others. And in a time of a recession, might be the only thing you have to rely on to get ahead. So now that you have a good sense for what you're knowledgeable in, it might be that side project of building websites. Maybe you launched a blog during the pandemic on cooking sourdough bread. And now you know everything about WordPress and you know how to set up domains and link it to your host. That knowledge you may not have learned in school, but that's very valuable to people in your network who might be thinking about starting a side hustle, who might be interested in starting about business, but they don't have the technical know-how. A lot of CEOs, including Elon are saying they don't care where you got that piece of paper, where you got that degree. They want to see skills in action. So don't sit here and come up with excuses of, well, I didn't do this, or I should have went and got that. The skills that you provide right now is what people are looking for. Not the skills that a piece of paper says that you provide. That piece of paper might get your foot in the door, but you better back that up. But those people who understand how to do these things, who have the experience, that's just as good to a lot of these employers. If you feel right now, hey, my knowledge is a little lacking in some areas. Well, this is again the power of the internet. You can level up these skills in this knowledge and information on so many free platforms. We don't have to name them all, but understand that knowledge is a key component of that social capital. It's something that you should be working on growing day in and day out to bring more to the table, to bring more to your network, to add value to the relationships that you have in your life. Now let's talk about emotional support. This is another big one that many of us might not realize we bring to the table. And I know right now we've been separated from friends. We've moved apart from some relationships. We haven't kept in touch. But the power of social media, every single person in your life is posting about what matters to them right now. It might be negative news around losing their job. It might be positive news about getting promoted. It might be their wedding photos. It might be them moving to a new city. It might be them posting their newborn. It could be them posting about a trip that they're on. Each one of those moments that they're taking time to post about on social media is an opportunity for you to offer emotional support, to cheer them on, to cheer them up, to celebrate their successes, to offer their condolences and their loss, to be there to listen to them, allow them to vent, to be supportive if they need it. Now here's what people who actually get social capital understand about all those signals that are being posted on social media right now. The best way to offer emotional support is to go a level deeper. Now what do I mean by this? There are levels to connection and communication. Surface level is social media. I'm posting it up there. It might be public. It might just be close friends. But it's very easy and surface level for me to post it. What's the next level from there? It's email. The next level from there is phone call. The next level deeper from there is in person communication. So you have surface level, which is social media, nearly public or maybe completely public. You have email, which is a bit more intimate. Then you have your phone. And then ultimately you have in person. The people who understand networking at its best, at its greatest and are most effective are those who can take the surface level signals and go a level deeper and pick up the phone and congratulate someone on their wedding. To pick up the phone and be like, oh my God, I'm so sorry to hear you lost your job. Is there anything I could do to help support you? Where are you looking to go? What opportunities are you looking for? To offer emotional support to your network a level deeper than where it was posted or where you saw it is how you grow that social capital. So many people are like, oh, I write happy birthday on post. I like and comment on social media. I'm offering emotional support. And yes, those notifications are great and we all feel good when we see our friends liking and posting about stuff, but we certainly feel more supported by a phone call, by an in person meeting, even by a really thoughtful email or hand written note, understanding that emotional support is not at a surface level. And the more you can get involved in other people's lives and either cheering them on or cheering them up, the more support and social capital you bring to the table. The convenience that all this technology has brought us has made certain aspects suffer and connection and intimacy through connection is one of them because it's now so convenient that we don't even think about it. And you mentioned somebody's birthday and you maybe you like the photo and posted on there. Hey, it's my birthday post happy birthday. That does nothing. In fact, they're getting happy birthday from hundreds of people that they have met all over the world. And now you are one of those hundreds of people. If this is somebody you care about, if this is somebody who is special to you, then why do you want to duplicate with hundreds of other people have already done that is not registering to somebody that you care about understanding that picking up the phone is going to go much farther. Now, some of you might even be like, I don't talk on the phone anymore with all this technology. Okay, but you could still that's not an excuse. You could send a video message. Absolutely text. There's many different ways that you can separate yourself from the pack and let people know I am here for you. The extra mile is never crowded. Chris Winfield shared that on our show here, one of our great guests. And I completely agree. And if you follow me on social, you know, I don't post very much. I'm not very active on social media. I post a couple stories about my wedding. And of course, it was great to get some likes and responses. And then there are a few people who emailed a few people who called and those messages, those heartfelt messages go a long way to securing that connection to feeling more connected to the people in your life. So we have the surface level of social media where everyone is posting what's going on on their LinkedIn on their Instagram on their Facebook, et cetera, TikTok. Then if you have their email, if you have their phone number, going that level deeper and offering more emotional support is even better. Now let me give you an example from my life. So my good friend in Michigan celebrated his birthday and his birthday happens to be with a few other family members. So it's timed with his nephew and his dad. They're all celebrating birthdays in June. And they had a huge family gathering and I was asking him while I was gone. I came back. I was like, Hey, happy belated birthday. And he was like, yeah, I didn't really get a chance to celebrate it this year. It was kind of a mess with the big family. And I didn't get a birthday cake. And he was feeling a little bit down. Now his birthday was a couple of weeks ago. So what did I do? I hopped on door dash. I'm not in Michigan. I looked up a bakery. I found a bakery and I sent him a couple slices of birthday cake, knowing that he didn't have birthday cake on his birthday. And he was blown away at how thoughtful that was and how impactful of a way that was to celebrate his birthday. Now I didn't get on a plane to go to Michigan. I would have loved to, but I had just flown back from Italy and making my way through my email and social media and seeing all these messages. I knew that I had missed my friend's birthday and I felt bad about it. So these are little gestures, little five minute favors, things you can do to offer emotional support to people in your network. It might be your best friend or it might be that person you follow on LinkedIn. These simple gestures of emotional support go a long way towards developing and growing that social capital, which is key to your network, which is key to the value you provide your network. Absolutely. Knowledge and all of these different criteria is one thing. Being there for people is another. And it's, as I mentioned, it's easily overlooked and people need to put stock into it because I don't think people understand how powerful emotional support can actually be when it's done right. For a lot of people, and AJ, you've mentioned that you are recovering from this as well, is we always get people like, I'd love to show up to my friends events or I'm always the one that's trying to plan things. I'm always putting myself out there and I feel like I'm getting taken advantage of. That comes with the territory. You have to be willing to put out some risk to see who reciprocates that, who responds well, who is appreciative of that. These are the people that you're able to invest in more and get more return. If you invest time, effort, anything in somebody and it's not appreciated, that is your sign that this person gets moved to the side. Perhaps they don't get that investment anymore or they get a less investment. This is also why building your own community is so important. You want to work in both aspects. You want to be going in and out of other communities, but you should also be working on yours as well, where you're the center of that community because this will help into our next part, having that network and be able to connect other people. But showing up to people's events, people are not going out like they used to. People are scared due to the economic situation that may or may not be coming down the road. The signs are certainly pointing there and people are staying in more. It's comfortable and it's easy and they have everything that they need to be completely entertained. But when you have friends that are taking a risk to build something, to create something, to share, to indulge in their passions, to have that support when you come out to their event or you support what they're building, or you're able to show that support for what they are doing, that's a huge win. They take notice of those things. My silly anecdote a few months ago about the wisdom tea story, my friend who came and picked me up was somebody new that I had met here in Vegas. I had started communicating with that person through social media when I found out I was moving here because he was a promoter for concerts here in Vegas. And then we had met online. He started seeing me out. Not only did he see me out at other shows, he saw me out at his shows. And I had always went up to him, thanks for putting this on tonight. This was a band I've been wanting to see for months to let him know how much I appreciated the work that he's put in. I did that job. I did that job in my 20s. Promotion is one of the most thankless jobs that you can do. When the show goes great, all the bands pat themselves on the back and they're like, we did a great job. When that show goes poorly, they point at the promoter and they say it was all his fault. So when you go to these events, if you get involved in meetup.com and you're going to somebody's meetup, there's an organizer and some helpers that went out of their way who put hours of work into putting that together to walk up to that person and say, thank you very much. If it wasn't for your meetup, I'd be sitting at home tonight. This gave me a perfect opportunity to get out and meet some people. What's your name? Write on thank you very much. That goes a long way. And to those organizers, to put these events on again. So let's talk about this third piece to your social capital. And that is your network, the connections you already have. Now, this is the value that you provide others. So I'll give you a perfect example. If you follow the show, maybe you watch us on TikTok, you'll know that Johnny and I are not fashion aficionados. We have our own style, but we certainly wouldn't consider ourselves fashion experts. But we happen to have a pretty vast network of guys who are big into fashion, we're fashion influencers who we've built connections with over the years. And one of my friends reached out to me and said, hey, AJ, I just got a new job and I'm expected to dress the part. I'm now in a leadership position and I want to influence and persuade others. And I realized that the way I appear might not get the job done. Do you know anyone who can help me build up my fashion sense? Now, of course, I could give a couple tips, I could send a YouTube video, but I'm like, actually, in my network, yeah, I know a guy. And I've reached out to him and I said, hey, would you mind helping my good friend out with some fashion help? You just got a new job and he was super excited for that connection. You may not have knowledge in that area. You might not be able to offer emotional support when it comes to picking out some great office outfits, but you might have a friend who is an expert in that area. And making that introduction is adding value to the lives of people in your network. Helps my friend get better fashion and helps my buddy who's a fashion influencer get another client. So everyone wins in that scenario. Now, there is a caveat that I want to talk about here, because many are going to listen to this and be like, okay, great, I got to go out there and make a ton of introductions. I'm just going to start firing off emails. Hey, you're looking for a website. I know a designer. Hey, you're looking for sales help. I know a sales coach. Listen, it's very important that you understand that just making the introduction is not helpful. You first want to send a separate email message text or even phone call to each person and say, hey, I have someone in my network who needs your help or who you might be able to help. Do you have some time? Would you be interested in this connection? By asking them first and getting a double opt-in, meaning asking and soliciting both sides, if they're interested in the connection first, that is the highest value way to make a connection to ensure that both sides are truly getting value. And there will be some times where they're just too busy. Hey, your web designer friend just took on a major project for Planned Parenthood. He doesn't have time to work on a new website for your friend. He has no side hustle opportunity going on. So you asking first, hey, could you help this person? Do you have time to take on this person? Would you like this introduction? Does this make sense? First, getting that double opt-in is crucial. But when you do get the double opt-in and you make that connection, when you're the connection point, the super connector between those two people, you've grown your social capital. And the simple act of bringing great people together leads to more introductions, your direction, more people getting introduced to you because they see the value that you provide to their network. AJ, I can't wait for you to lay out this LinkedIn strategy that everyone can start using today. And before we get into that, I just want to set this up with this little analogy. When I'm talking with people, I hear a lot of, where do I find like-minded, high-value people? I hear this all the time. And when people want to go to a place where like-minded and high-value people are, well, certainly. And you're going to have to look at your interests and hobbies and knowledge and values and find out where those people are going. But there's another side to this. You can't just show up and wallflower it and hope that you're going to meet the right people. We talk about that as a defensive networking strategy. Well, if people come my way and order a beer next to me, maybe I'll start up a conversation and hope it goes well. I guess that's somewhat of a strategy, but that's not going to give you the best results. And you're going to have to put yourself out there. So I have this analogy that in order to find like-minded, high-value people, they are going to need to see that you are a high-value person who exhibits the attributes and values and mindsets that they have. You have to be able to hoist your flag as high as possible so that everybody around you can see it. When you hoist that flag, you're going to see some people salute it. Those are your peoples, but they're never going to be able to salute your flag if they don't see it. You may be able to salute theirs, but by the time they get to you because they're chatting with everyone who saluted theirs, hey, the event might be over or you might have missed that opportunity. It may never happen. So you have to get comfortable with raising your flag and you can do that incrementally. Hoist it a little bit here. Hoist it a little bit here. And there's many different ways that you raise that flag. Your presentation, how you dress, the words that you use, the work that you do, everything that you represent comes out in your body language. And we discuss this all the time on this show. You are communicating who you are, whether you know it or not, just by walking in the room. And if you're not able to hoist that flag, people will assign a flag to you. We interviewed Laura Wong a while ago and it was about her book, Edge, and about gaining an edge in the office. And one of the things that she mentioned, this stuck out in my mind because this was relevant to me, which was if you don't tell people your story, they will assign one to you. And it may or may not be the story you want to be assigned to you. And if people are nervous, if they see you talking to some people and not them, it's easy for them to start to think, well, this person thinks he's cooler than all of us, or this person's aloof, maybe that person's just shy. But you would never know because you haven't talked to that person. You hadn't told them what that story is. Now, for myself, if I'm in a very casual atmosphere, I'm going to be dressed as I normally do, and it certainly lends itself to a rock and roll aesthetic. And there's a lot that goes with that. And so I know that a lot of people who may be a bit nervous, or maybe they had a bad experience in high school with a rock and roller dude. But I know that if I don't say hello, if I don't introduce myself, if I don't talk with that person, they're going to cast ideas about me, and I'm not going to have any control over that. So if I am at a networking event, or I am somewhere at somebody's house, and there's some people there, I make sure that I introduce myself, that I say hello. And a lot of times that will shatter a picture that some people have. And that's just not me and how I look. This goes for everybody. That same mechanism is going on. And that's why Laura wrote about it and put it in her book, to make sure that you understand that you're going to have to put yourself out there. So let's talk about hoisting your flag on LinkedIn. We've talked a lot about going to networking events on this show. We talk a lot about in person communication. And over the years, I've had a lot of one-on-one clients approach me first starting to work on growing their network and social skills, and then realizing that they want to be an influencer. They want to be a thought leader. Maybe they want to start a podcast or a coaching company. I've found that LinkedIn is one of the best ways to grow your online platform. It has tremendous organic reach, meaning you don't have to pay a lot of money to get eyeballs, to get traffic, to get people to see what you're posting. And because of that, there are a lot of amazing thought leaders in the business world already posting on LinkedIn, already active on LinkedIn. Now, maybe you don't want to be a thought leader. Maybe you don't want to be an influencer. Maybe you don't want to be a podcaster. That's fine. I totally understand it. Maybe you are a little shy. Maybe you're a little introverted. You can still use LinkedIn and the organic reach and the power of LinkedIn to build amazing connections and relationships. And I'm going to share a strategy that I learned from Gary Vee around building a platform on LinkedIn, but I made some tweaks to it so that you can actually build real relationships, not just gain followers. So Gary Vee, and we'll link this in the show notes, Gary Vee wrote a post about growing your business on Instagram with his $1.80 strategy. Now, Gary Vee's $1.80 strategy is all around finding 10 different hashtags or 10 different niches or subjects and commenting on nine posts in those 10 categories. So that's 90 comments. And he says you should do this a day. Now, those comments are worth two cents, right? Give your two cents, give your opinion, your thoughts, your feelings, whatever strikes your fancy in those comments, that's how he described his $1.80 strategy. Now, we use this strategy to grow our Instagram and we use it to grow our LinkedIn back in the day. And I realized that, well, what's so awesome about this strategy, if you're not a thought leader, if you're not an influencer, if you don't have a network currently on LinkedIn, you're essentially a nobody on the platform, you can still use this strategy to enter the conversation that's happening online, to raise awareness around you who you are by adding thoughtful comments relating to what people are posting, adding your opinion into the conversation. And very quickly, you can start to use the power of propinquity, familiarity by people seeing your thoughts, your comments and your name to start to build connections on these platforms. And I've helped our client Sid become a thought leader and a coach from scratch on LinkedIn using this exact strategy, entering other conversations. So not posting yourself, you don't have to write long articles, you don't have to be a published author on Forbes.com, you don't have to be good on camera and create videos or be a podcast and post all of that content. Instead, you can leverage content that other people are posting other thought leaders, go in the comments and start adding your two cents. Why I love this so much and the tweak that I made to it that creates these real amazing connections is because once you start adding your two cents and people start reacting, meaning they're liking, they're commenting back, they're interacting with your opinion, right? So I like to think of LinkedIn like a party where there's a bunch of conversations happening around the party and you're just sauntering around the party and you overhear something interesting. Oh, maybe they're talking about Russian history like Johnny was earlier and you happen to take a course in college and you're going to add your two cents to that conversation. Or maybe they're talking about sustainability and you happen to work on this awesome project in your community around harvesting rainwater to grow crops inside an urban center. And all of a sudden, you add your two cents, you add your thoughts, your opinion, your views, your perspective, your commentary. People are going to turn, they're going to listen, they're going to react. Every single person that likes, that comments back, that interacts with that post, you can then go click connect on LinkedIn and start building that relationship. This is where so many people get LinkedIn wrong. They take a shotgun approach. They go to LinkedIn and they just start spraying connections. And if I were to go to my LinkedIn inbox right now, there's a bunch of people that I don't know messaging me, trying to sell me things that I don't want or need that I have no connection with, and immediately they start pitching me on something. And guess what? I don't click connect. I never answer those messages. I completely ignore them. Well, there's two crazes now that I've been seeing. One is, hey, random person, I saw that you were so and so. Mind if we have a 15 minute Zoom coffee? About what? There's no context. I have messages from people trying to tell me to start a podcast to give you an idea of just how zany LinkedIn is. Everyone is trying to just message, message, message, going about it the wrong way. But the reason I like this so much, and one of our clients, Eric, who wanted to get a job in the sustainability space, but he doesn't have a lot of experience, practical, professional experience in this space. He's worked on a lot of side projects and hustles in his community. And he's very passionate about sustainability and he's volunteered around it. But he's looking for a paying job in this field. And he's like, I don't have any connections. I don't have a big LinkedIn. I'm not a thought leader in this area. I don't have any content on LinkedIn. So he was very intimidated. We use this exact strategy. So Seth Godin had started posting about environmental issues. He became very interested in the environment. Now, Seth Godin has millions of followers. He's a massive thought leader. And what many people will try to do is they're going to try to message Seth. They're going to try to get Seth's time. They're going to try to interact with Seth, who's this massive thought leader who doesn't have any time or availability. I told Eric instead, start adding your two cents on Seth's posts or people who've added their two cents on Seth's posts, meaning they put their opinion, comment on their opinion, start a conversation around their opinion. So not the host, but the comments, starting conversations in the comments. And then if they like your response, they reply back, hit a connect, send a quick message. Hey, I loved your comment on Seth's posts. We'd love to connect with you. Boom. All of a sudden you're using the power of the internet, that printing press times a billion. You're finding the topics that you're passionate about. You're adding your opinion and allowing your opinion, your knowledge, your emotional support to strike up the conversation. And then you're using the platform appropriately by only following and connecting with people who've actually interacted back with you, who are interested in you. You're more likely to make connections. You're going to start having great conversations. And what Eric's been able to do is he's been able to build an entire tribe of people just from the comments section of Seth Godin and get on the sustainability radar, even though he doesn't have a LinkedIn profile that speaks to all this sustainability experience. You can use this in any area, sales, project management, coding, entrepreneurship, being a software founder, startups, all of these topics, pick a few hashtags. You don't have to go as crazy as $1.80 strategy, but do it consistently, day in and day out, spend 30 minutes to an hour on LinkedIn. Even if you have a great job, even if you work at one of these great companies, as we saw, Tesla laying people off, Netflix laying people off. You may think you have job security today, but in today's economic climate and where we are going, you might not have as much security as you think. So working on your network now, building these connections now, joining this amazing organic conversation that's happening on LinkedIn that is in a professional environment is just as good as hopping on a plane and going to those networking events, spending thousands of dollars on travel, airfare, hotel and the ticket to the event. You can do all of this online on LinkedIn. At the end of one month, I told Eric to do this consistently for 30 days. And at the end of one month, he's now at a place where he's posting himself on LinkedIn and he's working on becoming a thought leader. And he has a tribe of people who are interested in what he's going to post about, what he's going to share. That's the way to use the organic reach and a simple LinkedIn strategy that you can use today right now on your phone, on the bus, on your couch, without leaving the house to start setting yourself up for success and to build the safety net that we all need in the worst case scenario of the economy taking an absolute downturn in crashing around us.